Sarah Edmondson, Part 1 - Joining NXIVM, Meeting Keith Raniere, and Moving Up the Ranks

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, True Crime, Comedy

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week is part 1 with, at long last, Sarah Edmondson, NXIVM survivor, author, and host of A Little Bit Culty, a podcast and now book, co-hosted and authored with her husband, Nippy Ames. She’ll tell the girls how she first joined the self-help group—which turned out to be a sex cult—starting with a comment by Mark Vicente that shook her worldview. She’ll discuss why she was drawn to the goal-oriented framework and define some core tenets of NXIVM, including what it means to be “at cause" by demonstrating the exercise on Lola and Meagan.

Sarah will explain how tenets like being "at cause" were actually tools for manipulation used to deflect from the group’s wrongdoings. She will also discuss feeling starstruck when she first met leader Keith Raniere, who claimed to be the smartest man in the world, and the idea of “spiritual wives” (and how he may have stolen that from Lola’s prophet).

Next week we’ll get into her later years in the group, DOS, and how she left.

SOURCES

A Little Bit Culty

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is exactly right.
0:06.9	Hey, it's Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Disgraceland, I tell stories from the dark side of the music business.
0:13.2	And I'm thrilled to announce that now, Disgraceland and its celebrity spin-off, Hollywoodland,
0:18.0	have found a new home here at the Exactly Right network in partnership with
0:22.1	iHeart podcasts you can binge over 250 episodes of disgrace land's back catalog and listen to new
0:28.4	episodes every tuesday bonus episodes on thursday and rewinds on sunday now on exactly right listen to
0:37.0	disgrace land in hollywood land on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:44.7	Trust me. Do you trust me? Would I ever lead you astray? Trust me. This is the truth. The only truth.
0:53.0	If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't!
0:56.7	Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cult's extreme belief and manipulation from the two
1:03.3	smartest women in the world who've actually experienced it.
1:07.3	I am Lola Blanc.
1:09.0	And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
1:10.3	And of course, we are smart, but the smartest women in the world is a reference to
1:16.6	Kutrini calling himself the smartest man in the world.
1:19.8	No, no, I'm actually the smartest woman in the world.
1:21.9	No, I mean, I am too.
1:23.4	But I just, we have to sound humble.
1:26.4	No, no, sorry.
1:27.4	Yes. I mean, no, sorry, yes.
1:27.7	I mean, no, I'm not.
1:29.5	Is there a helicopter coming to you right now to,
	...

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