Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hey, everyone. And welcome to part two of my conversation with Teddy Hoes.

Teddy Hoes grew up in the Unification Church, and the Unification

Church was an organization that is still around under other names. It was started by the

self-proclaimed Messiah, Samyang Moon, and that's why it came to be known as the Moonies.

They were based in Terrytown, New York, and while

its membership and businesses were run worldwide, Teddy's family lived on church properties

near the Moon family estate until he was 13. And eventually, his family left the church, but life

around the moons and around the organization was certainly

a different life than the one that Teddy has now.

Last time we talked about growing up in this way, and this time we're going to talk about

how the group has become more militaristic, and especially with its offshoots and that also at one point

Teddy remembers that the son of Sung Myung Moon, one of the sons, had committed suicide and he

wants to talk about how that was handled, how that was turned around, how that was given other meaning, and how, as he remembers it, the people in the church were made to be blamed for it.

Teddy is someone who is an artist and a writer. He lives in San Francisco now.

He also does stand-up comedy and cartooning and editorials. And he's spoken a lot in

public recently about his growing up within a cultic system. So here's Teddy now.

I remember one time going to a meeting for a particular cultic group that exists in some big cities.

And also the teacher was writing a lot of things on a talk word at the time.

And it was a lot of numbers and a lot of arrows and a lot of things.

And people were trying to get it and they were writing it all down.

...