Tangled Up in Teal: Jon Kasbe & Bits Sola on Making ‘The Deep End’

Explicit content warning

06/20/22 • 68 min

3 Listeners

Dear Teal Swan: You continue to be a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in wrap-around Oakleys. Are you okay? For reals, we’re getting some super hinky vibes from all seven layers of your auric field. Dear Everyone Else: In case you haven’t watched all four installments of The Deep End, you might want to catch up before you listen to this ALBC conversation with the filmmaking duo behind the series. In this episode, director/cinematographer Jon Kasbe and producer/writer Bits Sola join Sarah and Nippy to share what it was like inside Teal Swan’s campy, creepy world. But don’t get your plastic Mala beads in a twist, Teal Tribe: ‘campy’ and ‘creepy’ are our words, not theirs...and those two words are about the nicest things we could think of to say. Also? Sorry, not sorry, Teal...but you just can’t deep fake this shit.

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The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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Producers: Will Retherford & Jess Tardy

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

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Hear Ye, Hear Ye:

Support the ALBC Pod:

Check out our Linktree to sign up for our mailing list. We’ve got some fun things coming your way soon. It rhymes with “t-shirts.” Okay, it’s t-shirts.

Producers: Will Retherford & Jess Tardy

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Trust Fall: Dr. Natalie Feinblatt on Trauma, Addiction & Cult-Informed Therapy

Finding a therapist can be mission critical when you’re recovering from a culty situation, but the process of finding a clinician with basic cult awareness can be a total cluster. In this episode, Sarah and Nippy chat with Dr. Natalie Feinblatt about why more therapists need to get cult-informed and the Venn diagram overlap between trauma and addiction. She also chats with Sarah and Nippy about tangible techniques for getting unstuck when fight/flight/freeze mode takes over.

Dr. Feinblatt is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles, California who specializes in the treatment of addiction and trauma. And one of her trauma sub-specialties is working with former cult members. She received her BA from UCSD and her Masters & Doctorate from Pepperdine University, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on psychotherapy with former cult members and has specialized in helping them ever since. She also does EMDR, Brainspotting, and other trauma-specific therapies. She was also featured on the series finale of ‘Leah Remini: Scientology & The Aftermath.’ Learn more at her website or follow her on Instagram for tips, tools, and healing resources.

Concepts/Resources mentioned in this episode:

Window of Tolerance

Dan Siegal, MD

Psychology Today

Hear Ye, Hear Ye:

Support the ALBC Pod:

Check out our Linktree to sign up for our mailing list. We’ve got some fun things coming your way soon. It rhymes with “t-shirts.” Okay, it’s t-shirts.

Producers: Will Retherford & Jess Tardy

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

Page Turner: Spencer Schneider on Writing His Way Out of ‘School’

“We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.”

That’s a snippet from Spencer Schneider’s compelling and creepy AF memoir: Manhattan Cult Story: My Unbelievable True Story of Sex, Crimes, Chaos, and Survival. This isn’t an ad, it’s just the truth: We think you’re going to want to grab yourself a copy before you hit the beach this summer. It’s that much of a page turner. In this episode of A Little Bit Culty, Spencer joins us to share more about what it was like living inside the nightmarish bubble of ‘School’, the ultra-secret Manhattan organization that consumed his life for 23 years. And just in case you’ve not heard of ‘School’, this particular culty shitshow gives us Eyes Wide Shut vibes with sprinklings of Eloise if she lived at The Plaza in the Upside Down. For extra credit, read up on the late Sharon Gans, the eccentric School leader whose cult resume lowlights include: forced adoptions, arranged marriages, twisted displays of public humiliation and conspicuous consumption, and forced labor. Glad you got the hell out of there, Spencer.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye:

Support the ALBC Pod:

Check out our Linktree to sign up for our mailing list. We’ve got some fun things coming your way soon. It rhymes with “t-shirts.” Okay, it’s t-shirts.

Producers: Will Retherford & Jess Tardy

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices