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The First Degree

Episode 96: NXIVM

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

News, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.510.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of how Keith Raniere became an international self-help guru — and, later, a convicted sex-cult leader — is one of those cautionary tales that’s not unfamiliar. A man who is a master of manipulation, able to seduce, exploit, alienate and control countless individuals after developing keen abilities to select precise prey, bait them, and slowly coerce them into doing exactly what he wants. In episode 96, Jac, Alexis and Billy are joined by Josh Block of the podcast, Uncover: Escaping NXIVM as they dig into the cult that branded women, controlled their entire lives and eventually was brought to justice. 🎟 Catch up to FOUR bonus episodes per month plus full video episodes over on Patreon: patreon.com/thefirstdegree 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/thefirstdegree 🕺 TikTok: tiktok.com/@thefirstdegreee 👤 Facebook: facebook.com/thefirstdegree   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

First degree first degree first degree first degree first degree the first degree

0:13.2

These things are supposed to happen in movies not real life

0:22.7

There have been claims and allegations made about Keith going way back previous to

0:28.1

Next year, I'm certainly continuing to next year about his relationship with underage girls

0:32.8

That's very disturbing and you know, he spent a lot of time in addition to like his sermons or speeches or whatever you want to call them about

0:42.6

How men are inherently, you know, or women are inherently inferior to men. He also talked a lot about how

0:49.9

The age of consent and having sex with minors is that kind of social construct and something that

0:57.2

Was actually just like imposed on us and he seemed really sanctioned this idea of

1:03.1

pedophilia

1:06.5

Welcome to the first degree the true crime podcast that you might end up on my name is jack fanic

1:10.8

I'm sitting very far away from Alexis Linkletter and very far away from billy jensen

1:15.2

So today's episode is going to be pretty straightforward and we're not doing killing times

1:19.6

It doesn't really feel right at the moment and we did want to let our listeners know that we're going to be actively searching for more cases

1:26.7

involving black and people of color that are usually underrepresented or completely forgotten about in the media

1:32.9

And we promise to do our best to help fight the injustice in our country and give a voice to the people and stories that otherwise go untold

1:39.7

But our podcast is crowdsourced and relies almost completely on our first degree guest and their willingness to share their story

1:46.5

So please if you or someone you know wants us to amplify their voice and tell their story

1:50.5

Please email us at hello at the first group podcast dot com

1:54.4

And Billy what day is it today?

1:59.7

It's kind of slim pickens, but I'm going to go with national ballpoint pen day

2:04.0

Wow, that's the best day out of all of the days national urban spice day

2:10.3

Hmm, I do

...

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