This is a Global Player original podcast.

Welcome to Sweeney Talks. It's a podcast series where I get to interview people who've done serious stuff with their lives and then got into trouble.

Big trouble. I'm not here to lecture them about that. I'm kind of a professor of big trouble

ology myself. I've got history with the Church of Scientology, North Korea, Donald Trump,

Vladimir Putin, Tommy Robinson and the Russian army. I'm here to find out what it feels like

to be in the deep doo-doo.

How you survive it, and then how the hell you get out of it.

If you've been in trouble, you're not alone.

So, come along for the ride.

You might learn some new tricks.

You might have a laugh, but one thing is sure. The best stories aren't told

by the well-behaved. And once you've listened to the interview, you can hear what I really

think about it. In Sweeney keeps talking. Find that exclusively on Global Player. Today's guest is Elgin

Strait, which sounds like an exciting new Spanish gin, not too much tonic please, but is in fact

the name of a man who escaped from a dungeon of the mind and lives to tell the tale. Elgin was born into

the Moone's, the cult that likes to call itself the Unification Church. By the way, they say they're not a

cult. Elgin wasn't brainwashed, his parents were. So as a baby he was brought into a world where

brainwashing came as naturally as his mother's milk.

After my run-in with the Church of Scientology, they say I'm a bigger, a liar, psychotic.

I say they're a space alien cult. I've been fascinated by cults in all different shapes and sizes.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty, what's it like to be

born into the Moonez? A first question. Elgin, when you see people in North Korea or Putin's

...