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

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hi, everyone. On the show today, we have Sarah Landry.

Sarah Landry spent nine years as a follower of Nita Nythanianda, a self-styled Swami.

She became one of the most public representatives of the group in 2011 when she started

a YouTube channel on which she shared his teachings.

And due to the channel's huge popularity,

Nitenyanda brought her into his inner circle of public disciples,

and declared her the head of his social media team.

After discovering, though, that the devoted followers were being mistreated and were being made

to live in squalor at their own expense, somehow for their spiritual benefit, and that kids in the

organization's schools were being beaten, sleep deprived, and starved, she quickly exited and began researching cults last year, and now

she's coming forward to publicly denounce the group as a destructive cult. Here is the first part

of a two-part episode with Sarah Landry. Well, welcome, everybody.

I am so happy today to have Sarah Landry on the show.

And I know that you've been kind of making the rounds.

And it's a really important time.

It's a really important time in your life and for other people who have experienced

abuses and who have had similar experiences in the group that you're going to talk about and also

others. And then also to let people know that something that we talked about ahead of time was

that you were going to tell your story and talk about what happened to you, but also

what happens to you when you start to tell your story. Yeah. Internally, but also, you know, just

...