If you have your own story of being in a cult or a high control group or if you've had

experience with manipulation or abuse the power that you'd like to share, leave us a message

on our hotline number at 347-86 Trust. That's 347-868-7878. Or shoot us an e-mail at TrustMePod

at gmail.com. Trust me, do you trust me? Trust me, I'm like a smart person. Yeah, I've never

lied to you. I'll never have lied. If you think that one person has all the answers, don't!

Welcome to TrustMe, the podcast about cult, extreme belief and manipulation from two fans of the

movie stalker by Andre Tarkovsky who've actually experienced it, I am Lola Blank and I'm Megan Elizabeth.

And this week our guests are fellow podcast one podcasters Jamie Beebe and Jake Deptula, host of

the podcast Strictly Stocking. We're going to veer a little off of cults today and talk about as you

might have guessed, stalking. They're going to tell us about some of the scarier stories they've

heard from stalking survivors on their show, how Hollywood romanticizes controlling relationship

dynamics, what triggers people to stalk and the parallels with fandom. We'll also get into the

power dynamics of stalking, the empathy many victims feel for their stalkers, the importance of

establishing and keeping boundaries and whether restraining orders do anything. I think this episode

is very about cults. I think stalkers are cult leaders. You think they're cult leaders,

like little baby, yeah, two person cult leaders. They're baby cult leaders. The parallels are

unbelievable. Well, I think a point you brought up when we stopped recording the other day,

which I thought was really interesting, interesting, was... Perfect timing for me to bring it up when

we're no longer recording. It was a lot of cults who are more on the side of the kinds of groups that

really want to keep people in, because whatever they're different, it's a spectrum. We'll

resort to stalking like behaviors to harass and or intimidate their former members. That is

something that definitely happens a lot, even in the form of just like legal harassment, but also

...