Discovering the Dysfunction in Self-help

[00:00:00] At Seek Safely, it's our mission to empower seekers to have a safe and meaningful self-improvement journey.

[00:00:07] Why do we care? Seeking to be your best self is an amazing, beautiful human impulse that has led us to create art, invent technology, tell amazing stories, and reach the moon.

[00:00:19] But we saw the dark side of self-help in 2009, when a recklessly run self-improvement retreat led to the death of three people, including my sister, Kirby Brown.

[00:00:30] We want people to seek, to dream their big dreams and chase their beautiful goals, but we want to make sure they're safe along the way.

[00:00:39] This podcast is about education and empowerment, and getting real about the promises and problems of self-help.

[00:00:46] We talk with people who understand and care about the self-help industry, and everyone it touches.

[00:00:52] I'm Jean Brown.

[00:00:53] I'm Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.

[00:00:55] And this is the Seek Safely Podcast.

[00:01:04] Hello, and welcome to the Seek Safely Podcast.

[00:01:08] My name is Jean Brown, and I am here with my co-host, Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.

[00:01:15] Hello, Dr. Glenn.

[00:01:16] Hello, Jean Brown.

[00:01:18] Hi.

[00:01:19] Jean like the pants, brown like the color.

[00:01:21] That's right.

[00:01:22] Yeah, it's been a minute.

[00:01:24] It's been a minute.

[00:01:25] And I have just to start us off.

[00:01:28] I have a short story to tell.

[00:01:32] Okay, let's hear it.

[00:01:33] I, Jean, as you may or may not know, I was mentored early in my career by a psychologist who is particularly well known in the trauma space.

[00:01:41] Mm-hmm.

[00:01:43] Mm-hmm.

[00:01:44] And now she's retired from practice, and she serves as a consultant to like these celebrity rehab places.

[00:01:50] Mm-hmm.

[00:01:51] And I've always said that I would love that gig.

[00:01:54] So if anybody's out there listening and wants to give me that gig, the trauma consultant gig to your celebrity rehab, please go ahead and offer me that.

[00:02:03] Contact me at Seek Safely.

[00:02:05] But I was contacted a couple weeks ago now by a company that represented themselves as a celebrity rehab.

[00:02:14] They said that we are a rehab, a drug and alcohol rehab.

[00:02:19] Now you know that like my passion is actually rehab work.

[00:02:21] Like I'm known for my trauma stuff, but like where my heart is really is in addiction recovery work.

[00:02:28] Mm-hmm.

[00:02:29] And they contacted me and they were like, we would love to collaborate.

[00:02:33] Here's the thing.

[00:02:34] And they said, can we get you on a Zoom call to talk about this?

[00:02:38] Here's the thing, Gene.

[00:02:40] In their introductory email to me, they said, hi, Dr. Glenn.

[00:02:44] Now you and I have talked about this.

[00:02:46] I hate being called Dr. Glenn.

[00:02:48] If you don't know me especially, like if you're a friend or you're a patient or if you're a social media follower, maybe you can call me Dr. Glenn.

[00:02:56] But we here at Seek Safely, we know that Dr. Whomever, first name, that's a red flag.

[00:03:02] Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura.

[00:03:04] Like we don't.

[00:03:06] So I got this email that hi, Dr. Glenn, we're a celebrity rehab.

[00:03:09] We would love to collaborate.

[00:03:10] And so I'm, so I'm already annoyed, but I'm thinking maybe they're going to give me that gig.

[00:03:15] Maybe.

[00:03:17] And so I, I emailed them back and I said, I just sent them back a one-liner.

[00:03:20] I said, Hey, what did you have in mind?

[00:03:22] Now they emailed me immediately back.

[00:03:25] And they said again, hi, Dr. Glenn, can we get you on a Zoom call tomorrow with our founder who I think his name was William.

[00:03:34] But that's all they said.

[00:03:35] No last name of the founder.

[00:03:37] And here they are calling me Dr. Glenn again.

[00:03:39] And they didn't even answer my question, Jean.

[00:03:42] Right.

[00:03:42] So now I'm annoyed on like three fronts.

[00:03:45] You called me Dr. Glenn.

[00:03:46] You didn't answer my question.

[00:03:47] And can we get you on a Zoom call with William is not a serious professional question.

[00:03:54] Plus, if I'm, if I'm enough of a big shot that you're reaching out to me on Instagram and you want to collaborate with me, like you're assuming that I can fit you in like within 24 hours notice on a Zoom call.

[00:04:07] So, you know me, Jean, you know, that I am not one given to impulse.

[00:04:11] I'm not one given to, to hasty decision making.

[00:04:14] You, you know, neither of those things are true.

[00:04:17] I promptly emailed them back and I started out with it's Dr. Doyle actually.

[00:04:23] And I proceeded to say, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't make time for cold pitches.

[00:04:27] I mean, I get a lot of this is true.

[00:04:28] I get a lot of these and I don't make time for cold pitches.

[00:04:32] So if you can't just tell me what your general idea for collaboration is, what does that mean?

[00:04:36] Does that mean co-sponsoring Instagram post or does it mean you're going to give me the gig?

[00:04:40] I said, I'm sorry, I can't make time for you.

[00:04:41] And then instead of saying, you want to try again?

[00:04:44] I just said, be well, GPD.

[00:04:47] And I just sent it up.

[00:04:49] Love and light.

[00:04:49] Love and light, as they say in the self-help sphere.

[00:04:52] And then five minutes later, I'm like, what am I doing?

[00:04:55] They were going to give me the gig.

[00:04:56] They were going to give me the, the passages gig.

[00:04:58] They're not.

[00:04:59] And what I think I was really hoping, Gene, was that they would immediately email me back

[00:05:03] and say, we're so sorry, Dr. Doyle.

[00:05:05] Dr. Doyle, please.

[00:05:06] Here's our, here's our outline.

[00:05:08] No, they, I've never heard from them again.

[00:05:11] So, uh, so I am Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle, not Dr. Glenn, unless, unless you know me and, and, and we like each other.

[00:05:18] Certainly not on our first email.

[00:05:20] I'm not Dr. Glenn.

[00:05:20] Yeah.

[00:05:22] Well, it's interesting.

[00:05:23] We can cover a few red flags there.

[00:05:25] So there's, um, unprofessional use of names, not addressing people or talking about people in a professional way.

[00:05:33] The word collaboration.

[00:05:35] It's frustrating because collaborating is, can be a very, very powerful thing when people do it.

[00:05:42] Mm-hmm.

[00:05:43] But sometimes I feel like people throw the word collaborating around, but then there's like no substance to it.

[00:05:51] And it's like, we're gonna, we're gonna collaborate.

[00:05:52] And then what they really want you to do is like, just kind of do something for them.

[00:05:57] Yeah.

[00:05:58] But there's no actual collaboration happening.

[00:06:00] So I'm always like a little, uh, wary of that word until I can see proof that there's something tangible there.

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:09] Yeah.

[00:06:09] And then not answering questions.

[00:06:11] Evading.

[00:06:12] Yeah.

[00:06:13] So that's another big red flag.

[00:06:15] There you go.

[00:06:15] We just got a little mini, mini lesson.

[00:06:17] See, we're already seeking safely.

[00:06:20] First five minutes.

[00:06:20] We're already seeking safely.

[00:06:22] So I don't know.

[00:06:23] Oh my goodness.

[00:06:23] Yes.

[00:06:24] I looked up their social media presence just out of curiosity and it was, it was scant and,

[00:06:29] um, it was, it was, it was, it was bare.

[00:06:32] It was barren.

[00:06:33] And part of me is like, well, they're a rehab.

[00:06:35] Maybe this is a discretion thing.

[00:06:37] But my other thought is that, man, if, uh, if that's how, if that's how you're going

[00:06:42] to treat me on a first contact and look, maybe this is my ego running amok, which is going

[00:06:47] to lead us into, we're going to talk about in a few minutes.

[00:06:50] It's guru's egos running amok.

[00:06:52] Maybe this is my ego just saying I'm too big of a deal to be talked to this disrespectfully.

[00:06:56] But, um, I tell you, man, like I'll say this and then we can leave this.

[00:07:02] But as a pro tip, if you're looking to engage an influencer, which I hesitate to call myself,

[00:07:06] I'm going to have to ask Christine Whelan if I'm an influencer.

[00:07:10] She's a, she's an expert, but if you're going to try to engage an influencer instead of just

[00:07:15] saying, Hey, can I get you on a call?

[00:07:17] Yeah.

[00:07:17] Lay out what a collaboration has in mind, you know, what, what you have in mind for collaboration,

[00:07:22] but also say, Hey, we love your work specifically this, this, and this, like this theme, this

[00:07:27] post, this book, like whatever it is, because I'll tell you when you reach out to me and say,

[00:07:32] we're interested in collaborating.

[00:07:33] My first thought is, are you interested in collaborating with me because I am brilliant

[00:07:37] or because I have a quarter million Instagram followers?

[00:07:39] Mm hmm.

[00:07:40] Just saying.

[00:07:41] Anyway.

[00:07:42] Yeah.

[00:07:43] Interesting stuff.

[00:07:44] It's been a minute, Jean.

[00:07:46] So yeah, I can speak to this idea of identifying red flags because I've become sort of like a

[00:07:53] unofficial expert on the self-help industry, which is not a position I really imagined myself being in.

[00:08:00] It was kind of what we're going to get into tonight.

[00:08:02] We're going to like go back a few years, like, uh, well, I guess it's 15 years.

[00:08:08] Well, and we're coming up on, as this episode is being released, we're coming up on our yearly

[00:08:14] fundraiser.

[00:08:15] Um, we, it used to be a single event that we would call the Kirby jam.

[00:08:19] We've expanded it into a week long event that we call seek week, where we do a week of,

[00:08:24] of nightly live streams with members of our board and, and, and, and our guests.

[00:08:29] But this all goes back to, we, we do it in October because it was in October of 2009.

[00:08:36] That's, um, that, uh, the, the, uh, spiritual warrior retreat in Sedona, Arizona ended tragically, um, with, with many people hurt and injured and, and three people having, uh, very sadly died among them.

[00:08:50] Kirby Brown, uh, your sister.

[00:08:52] Yeah.

[00:08:52] I heard about this.

[00:08:54] I mean, I know we've done entire podcasts about my history and my history, the James Arthur Ray, but I heard about this and my response, cause I was deep into the self-help ecosystem at the time.

[00:09:03] I'm like, Oh man, this was a freak accident.

[00:09:07] And, and the critics of self-help are going to use this as evidence that self-help is terrible.

[00:09:13] So I came at it from a certain perspective.

[00:09:15] And for years after we've talked about this for years afterwards, I was given James Arthur Ray, the benefit of the doubt.

[00:09:20] Um, you came to this obviously as a family member.

[00:09:24] I don't know if, if before any of this happened, if either you or your family were particularly into the self-help ecosphere, what did you know about self-help before any of this happened?

[00:09:37] Yeah.

[00:09:37] So at the time I was 26, it's interesting when I think about it, I'm, I'm like, you know, I was kind of prime time for getting into self-help in terms of that age that I was.

[00:09:51] And I was already like, no, I, my family, we weren't really self-help people.

[00:09:57] We, we grew up, like I grew up pretty religious.

[00:10:00] So I went to, you know, I wasn't seeking myself personally.

[00:10:04] I was not seeking outside of, um, that experience.

[00:10:07] I had a good experience growing up with the, our, our church, our Catholic church experiences.

[00:10:14] And, you know, my parents are very involved in the church.

[00:10:17] My parents also being mental health professionals were coming at it from a, that perspective.

[00:10:22] But on the other hand, like my mom always had lots of different books around and my dad and probably lots of books on the shelf that would be considered, you know, traditional self-help books.

[00:10:35] I know she's always been like a fan of Wayne Dyer and some, some of these other names that are pretty known as self-help people.

[00:10:42] And then I, myself, like I had gone to, I think I was open to other things and other ideas and possibilities.

[00:10:50] So I had gone to, you know, like a, a health resort in Thailand with Kirby actually, where we did like a fast and cleanse kind of thing, you know, some stuff that's not necessarily backed by science, but it's sort of like felt good and seemed nice at the time.

[00:11:08] And wasn't terribly harmful or dangerous.

[00:11:12] So yeah, not completely close to these things, but I personally did not have a lot of experience.

[00:11:18] I hadn't read a lot of self-help at that point.

[00:11:22] Yeah.

[00:11:22] I had never really gone to any events or that kind of stuff, but I could have seen myself getting more into it.

[00:11:29] Sure.

[00:11:29] Had I not had this experience.

[00:11:31] So, I mean, you kind of started out as, as somebody open to kind of the, the idea or the ecosphere of things being possible, self-improvement being possible.

[00:11:40] My, my understanding of, of Kirby was that just kind of by nature, she was a very open person.

[00:11:49] Like, like, like, I mean, famously, I think every time we get together with your extended family, somebody describes her as the action figure cousin.

[00:11:57] Yeah, exactly.

[00:11:58] Was she like, to your memory was, was she somebody who was kind of always into, into self-help, personal improvement, these kinds of things?

[00:12:06] So, for one thing, my experience with our church upbringing was different than Kirby's experience was.

[00:12:17] So, you know, in terms of sometimes we'll, we often talk about how self-help is sort of filling a void where traditional religion has kind of lost people.

[00:12:26] And I think Kirby was one of those people.

[00:12:28] She had seen some things and experienced some things in the Catholic church that really turned her off.

[00:12:33] So, I think she already, you know, she was one of those people for whom self-help was maybe filling some of that void, being a person who is otherwise kind of spiritual.

[00:12:45] And I think Kirby was very much the type of person who sort of recognized like the beauty and wonder in the world.

[00:12:52] And she, in some ways, was looking for a way to appreciate and celebrate that outside of the traditional religious experience.

[00:13:05] And then she was also a very adventurous person.

[00:13:08] And she lived a kind of alternative lifestyle.

[00:13:11] So, I think that the people that she was also surrounding herself with were the traditional self-help kind of people.

[00:13:18] And she was also just very open to talking with people and meeting people.

[00:13:22] So, I think she was also open to hearing lots of different experiences and perspectives.

[00:13:28] So, yeah.

[00:13:29] So, I mean, growing up, like there's a 12-year age gap between us.

[00:13:35] So, I don't know if she was reading lots of self-help type things for a long time before she started getting more heavily into it.

[00:13:46] But, yeah.

[00:13:47] I think she was always kind of one of those people who is just open to other ideas and other possibilities.

[00:13:56] You know, the fact that it's your sense that part of the purpose that self-help personal development played for her was filling a gap that had been left by bad experiences with traditional or organized religion.

[00:14:13] I think it's really integral to understanding what the self-help landscape looked like in 2009.

[00:14:19] The Secret had come out in, what do we want to say, 05, 06, I think?

[00:14:23] Yeah, I think 05.

[00:14:26] Right?

[00:14:26] And The Secret became, of course, we're talking about the book by Rhonda Byrne and the movie based on Sam.

[00:14:32] And it had become the biggest thing in the self-help space for eons.

[00:14:37] Mm-hmm.

[00:14:38] Right?

[00:14:39] One of the reasons why it hit so big was because it wasn't just self-help.

[00:14:45] Like, I mean, just as self-help, it would, you know, like visualization has been around forever.

[00:14:49] Like visualization and positive imaging.

[00:14:53] Manifestation.

[00:14:53] Manifestation.

[00:14:54] Like, the first time I was exposed to that concept was I had read a, it was in the early 90s.

[00:14:59] I had read a book by Norman Vincent Peale called Positive Imaging.

[00:15:02] That was probably from the, probably from the 60s.

[00:15:05] But the point is that, no, I think that Kirby was certainly not the only one who was attracted to the self-help space specifically because it had, again, like around 2009, really assumed some of the mystical and spiritual kind of pseudo-spiritual trappings.

[00:15:23] That was one of James' big shticks.

[00:15:25] Like, like, like James, James Arthur Ray really sold himself as a shaman explicitly.

[00:15:33] Like, like, like he, he said he'd been credentialed.

[00:15:35] We're going to get into credentialing in a minute.

[00:15:36] But like he said he had been trained and credentialed as a Peruvian shaman and as a Hawaiian huna, right?

[00:15:44] Like, like a kind of a Pacific Island shaman.

[00:15:48] And in fact, he even claimed, correct me if I'm wrong, but he even claimed that he was like the only white man to have been so accredited, right?

[00:15:55] That was kind of part of his, his, his self-identified mythos.

[00:15:58] I don't remember if he said that exactly, but that sounds tracks, right?

[00:16:03] If, if he didn't, then forget I said anything, lawyers listening to this episode.

[00:16:08] Anyway.

[00:16:09] It's hard to keep track of all the stuff that he said.

[00:16:12] There's a lot.

[00:16:13] There's a lot.

[00:16:14] Do you remember, um, the, the conversation that happened around Kirby going to spiritual warrior?

[00:16:19] Like, did she tell you that she was going to do it?

[00:16:21] Yeah.

[00:16:21] She had told me the summer before and it was kind of, she was like, oh man, have you read the secret or have you watched the movie?

[00:16:31] And she was like, you got, you gotta read it.

[00:16:34] It's so good.

[00:16:35] And she was like, yeah, I, so I'm like actually going to this event and she was really excited.

[00:16:39] I did.

[00:16:40] I'm going to this event that the guy, like one of the guy who's involved in the secret is, is running.

[00:16:46] And yeah.

[00:16:47] So she had told me about it and I was kind of like, yeah, okay.

[00:16:51] Like it sounds fine.

[00:16:52] I knew the secret had been on Oprah.

[00:16:55] It just, it, it, it was the kind of thing where you're just like, I mean, all right, whatever.

[00:16:59] Like you, there's just no, no reason to believe that it could be dangerous in any way.

[00:17:05] You know, there's just no, no reason to believe no, no really cause for alarm.

[00:17:10] When somebody says I'm going to this event and you just go, okay, that's, that's cool.

[00:17:14] Yeah.

[00:17:14] Let me know how it is, you know?

[00:17:15] And like, you're excited.

[00:17:17] I'm excited for you.

[00:17:18] So, so it was really planned out well in advance.

[00:17:21] I didn't realize that, that been like, like months prior because it, because it was an expensive event, right?

[00:17:28] It was expensive.

[00:17:28] Yeah.

[00:17:29] We, none of us knew how expensive it was before she was there.

[00:17:34] Yeah.

[00:17:35] So, so she goes and what happens, happens.

[00:17:38] And we've talked in other episodes and in other places, like we've talked a lot about, you know, how incredibly sad and traumatic that, that was for, I mean, for everybody involved, for your family specifically.

[00:17:48] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:49] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:49] But before Spiritual Warrior and, and, and, and before kind of all of this.

[00:17:53] So you say, you know, you had as much awareness of the self-help world as kind of a, of a lay person does.

[00:18:00] Like, you know, you've been told about the secret.

[00:18:01] Yeah.

[00:18:02] Pretty average.

[00:18:03] Yeah.

[00:18:03] After Spiritual Warrior and, and, and after the tragedy happens, your family starts.

[00:18:08] It's like, like my understanding of it is the way that, that James Arthur Ray and his organization was kind of communicating with her.

[00:18:16] Like, like it really rubbed the wrong way.

[00:18:19] Yeah.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:20] I mean, there was basically no communication at first, which was off-putting.

[00:18:24] Because you think, okay, this, this tragedy happened at your event and you're not reaching out.

[00:18:31] You're not giving us any real information about what happened.

[00:18:34] The call from James Ray was, I want to say it was about five days after maybe.

[00:18:40] So there was a real sense that he was like lawyering up and hunkering down and as opposed to just doing the kind of decent thing of just reaching out.

[00:18:52] I'm so sorry.

[00:18:53] How are you doing?

[00:18:55] You know, that kind of thing.

[00:18:58] So, yeah, that was, that was the first impressions started coming together as a result of just lack of communication.

[00:19:07] To your family, what was it more or less immediately clear even what had happened?

[00:19:13] No.

[00:19:14] I mean, there was a period of time just trying to piece together what had happened.

[00:19:19] So, you know, because we weren't getting any information from the James Ray organization, we were reaching out to other participants.

[00:19:30] And my, my mom had gone to a previous James Ray event with Kirby.

[00:19:36] So she was reaching out to the people that she knew from her kind of group at that event and whose contact information she had to try to see who had been at the event and then to try to get information from those people.

[00:19:51] So it was like kind of a period of time of trying to just gather information to piece together what had happened over the course of the five days of the retreat and then what had happened during the so-called sweat lodge itself.

[00:20:05] Yeah, it was this real like gathering of information feeling kind of in the dark at first.

[00:20:09] And it was that gathering of information kind of leads us into really what we want to talk about in this episode of, so you're learning about what happened at Spiritual Warrior.

[00:20:19] That kind of is entwined with learning progressively more about how James did business, which then kind of leads into your learning more about the self-help ecosphere generally, because you can't really understand the James R. Thray business model without learning and understanding some broader things about how guys like him, people like him, operate.

[00:20:42] Right. What was that like?

[00:20:44] Like as you kind of learned more about how James did business, what was that like for you guys to kind of learn?

[00:20:51] First of all, what did you learn?

[00:20:53] So in terms of how James did business, one of the first lessons that we got was that people lie, which sounds really stupid and obvious.

[00:21:07] But in this context, it was I mean this in a particular way.

[00:21:11] He was involved in this huge book.

[00:21:15] He was on Oprah.

[00:21:17] He was on the Today Show and Larry King.

[00:21:21] Like he was all over the place, which just kind of makes you, it creates this sense of legitimacy.

[00:21:28] And then he would say things like, I'm a HUNA.

[00:21:33] I'm certified in this technique.

[00:21:36] I'm certified in NLP and holotropic breathwork.

[00:21:40] Holotropic breathing, yeah.

[00:21:41] That's right.

[00:21:42] Yeah.

[00:21:43] And, you know, I have this qualification.

[00:21:45] And even if they're interesting qualifications like, you know, like a shaman training or whatever, you just go, okay.

[00:21:54] Like, I mean, that sounds different.

[00:21:57] But I'll take your word for it that when you tell me you have this qualification that you actually do, I'm qualified to build and lead a sweat lodge.

[00:22:06] So, the idea of learning that people lie.

[00:22:11] It was just kind of like, oh, he just made all of that up.

[00:22:14] And it never would have occurred to me to think this person who was seemingly vetted by mainstream media and huge people like Oprah, never would have occurred to me that all of the things that he was saying were not true.

[00:22:27] But yeah, that was a big kind of first lesson.

[00:22:30] That especially perhaps in an industry where image is so important, it really lends itself to people misrepresenting their qualifications.

[00:22:42] And then we see this kind of echo throughout the self-help industry when we see people, you know, saying that they're qualified to give certain types of advice or lead people through certain challenges in their life when actually they're not qualified to do that at all.

[00:23:00] I think there's an extent to which when somebody says something in public, when somebody makes an assertion, and that assertion seems on its face really easy to fact check.

[00:23:13] There's an assumption on a lot of people's part that this person wouldn't possibly be lying about this because it would be so easy to disprove it.

[00:23:22] It would be so easy to disprove it.

[00:23:23] And if somebody did fact check it, it would be devastating to them, right?

[00:23:27] So, who would do that?

[00:23:29] But then I think, I mean, we are in the midst of a political season and political campaigns, and we just had a presidential debate in which, I mean, I think various people from various sides of the spectrum would say that both candidates said things that were not exactly true.

[00:23:47] You know, we have lots of other conversations about the extent and character of the untruths being spoken.

[00:23:53] But the point is that, like immediately after the presidential debate, like both sides are going like, well, they said this thing that was not true.

[00:24:00] And they said that's not true.

[00:24:02] But my own observation is there's a large subset of people who, well, no, they said it in public in a very public way.

[00:24:10] Like, why would they lie about that?

[00:24:11] This must be true.

[00:24:12] And they don't take the, and it has nothing to do with being smart.

[00:24:16] It has nothing to do with being naive.

[00:24:19] It has everything to do with like a normal, what I think assumption is, yeah, like if somebody says something, they wouldn't be stupid enough or evil enough to say something in a presidential debate that's untrue.

[00:24:30] They wouldn't be silly enough to make, you know, charge $10,000 for a retreat based upon credentials that are easily checked to be untrue.

[00:24:39] But you guys found as you dug into James's background and credentials that a lot of the things he was claiming just didn't hold up.

[00:24:47] Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:50] Yeah.

[00:24:50] So that was kind of lesson number one.

[00:24:53] There's a lot of just misrepresentation of credentials in the self-help industry.

[00:24:59] Is it your understanding?

[00:25:02] I mean, of course, we can't exactly know what Caribbean or anybody was thinking.

[00:25:07] Is it your understanding or your impression that James's credentials specifically, the stuff that he was lying about?

[00:25:14] Like, is it your impression that that was particularly important to her faith in him or her interest in his teachings?

[00:25:22] I don't know that it was like consciously important.

[00:25:29] Like, okay, I like this guy because he's a hoona and I like this guy because he's, you know, qualified to do these techniques.

[00:25:38] But what I think is that it underpins the trust that people then put in him, you know?

[00:25:45] So when you're doing something like holotropic breath work, which sounds very woo-woo, but there is some biology behind it.

[00:25:57] Like taking in more oxygen, you're changing the oxygen levels in your blood and that has an impact on your mental state.

[00:26:04] And, you know, it actually does impact your body and your consciousness.

[00:26:13] So, yeah, you really do want the person to be qualified in a technique like that because it does affect you.

[00:26:22] And so when somebody says, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm certified to do this technique.

[00:26:27] And then you go, okay, good.

[00:26:29] So I can trust you to do this in a safe way.

[00:26:32] So I think that's more a sense of what the idea of the credentials that were lied about with the impact of that.

[00:26:41] It's about people's trust.

[00:26:42] Oh, sure.

[00:26:43] Well, and I think that too, that a lot of experts said quotes experts.

[00:26:52] And not just in the self-help space.

[00:26:54] I see this in the mental health space all the time.

[00:27:00] So, for example, as a psychologist, I have to go to continuing education events and, you know, the speaker will have a bio.

[00:27:06] You know, and oftentimes in the bio, it'll say something like, so-and-so, I remember this explicitly, so-and-so is a sought-after speaker.

[00:27:14] Like that's their, and usually they have something else, but to have that be the first thing, okay, they're a sought-after speaker.

[00:27:20] Like what does that mean?

[00:27:21] But I think a lot of gurus in the space and the self-help space get away with, well, I've been doing this for decades.

[00:27:28] Right?

[00:27:28] Like, like I've been to James himself, when somebody would bring up, well, you know, you're, you're a white guy from, from Oklahoma.

[00:27:38] You know, how are you, how are you credentialed to do a sweat lodge?

[00:27:40] He said, well, I've been doing it for years.

[00:27:42] Like I've done this X many times.

[00:27:45] We find it.

[00:27:46] And I have a proven, proven record of success.

[00:27:48] And safety.

[00:27:51] And testimonials.

[00:27:52] Yeah.

[00:27:53] Come on.

[00:27:54] No one's ever died at one of my events.

[00:27:56] As it turns out, people in the past had been injured at his, at his events and they'd come actually very close to the edge, but he actually saw that as a feature, not a glitch.

[00:28:07] Something that we were talking about before we started recording tonight was like, so one of the questions that we're often asked about at Seek Safely is, okay, so to what degree do participants in an event, followers of a guru, come on, like, like where does personal response to be?

[00:28:25] Responsibility begin?

[00:28:27] And why would somebody do something that was so dangerous?

[00:28:31] Like, why would anybody even go into a sweat lodge, for example?

[00:28:34] Yeah.

[00:28:34] Led by James Arthur, right?

[00:28:36] Led by a guy with thumb rings.

[00:28:37] Yeah.

[00:28:37] Come on, what are we doing here?

[00:28:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:28:39] And it reminds me of, so in your first year psychology or sociology class, you probably saw a video about the Stanley Milgram experiment, about obedience to authority.

[00:28:51] Yeah.

[00:28:52] If you haven't seen it, gang, look it up on the YouTubes, Stanley Milgram.

[00:28:58] They were doing an experiment and just very briefly, what the experiment was measuring was, you know, man, if there's a guy in a lab coat who represents themselves as an authority figure, and if he, and if you agree to do a research study and the guy in the lab coat tells you to do something, will you, will you do it?

[00:29:16] And to what extent will you keep doing the thing, even if, like, your senses may be telling you, hmm, this might be going weird, this might be, you know, getting destructive.

[00:29:27] What they did was they, the details of the experiment are less important than the fact that the subjects of the experiment were led to believe that they were administering shocks to somebody they couldn't see, to somebody that was, like, in the next room.

[00:29:41] And it was supposedly an experiment on, you know, if somebody gives a wrong answer to a question and you shock them, like, does that change their behavior?

[00:29:51] It's a lot like the opening scene of Ghostbusters with Bill Murray, like, that's, if you know what I'm talking about.

[00:29:55] So, anyway, put that in the show notes, Ghostbusters.

[00:30:01] Anyway, what the experimenters thought was that, man, like, at a certain point, people are going to stop administering the shocks, especially if the person in the other room is like, ah, I can't take it anymore, I'm having a heart attack.

[00:30:13] Now, mind you, no one was actually getting shocked.

[00:30:16] They were actors over there.

[00:30:18] Yeah.

[00:30:18] And when the subjects started getting queasy about administering the shocks, because they understood the other person being in distress, all the researcher in the lab coat would just say, just please continue.

[00:30:33] That's it.

[00:30:34] Just please continue.

[00:30:35] And almost all of the subjects went up to the highest level of shock.

[00:30:39] They didn't like it.

[00:30:40] They were clearly, you know, wigged out by it.

[00:30:43] But the point of the entire thing is that, you know, human beings are wired to have real problems not doing what an authority tells us to do, what we understand to be an authority tells us to do.

[00:30:56] Now, we can have differences on what constitutes an authority, right?

[00:31:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:31:00] But we see this over and over again when human beings do stuff that you're like, man, why did they do that?

[00:31:08] Always kind of look for the authority figure that told them it's not only safe, it's not only okay, it's necessary.

[00:31:16] Yeah.

[00:31:17] And that's what James was telling his people.

[00:31:18] James was telling his people, you know, look, you're not going to die.

[00:31:20] He even said that.

[00:31:21] He said, you're going to feel like you're going to die, but you're not.

[00:31:23] Mm-hmm.

[00:31:24] And you can stay in the sweat lodge.

[00:31:25] And it's important to your growth to stay in the sweat lodge.

[00:31:28] Yeah.

[00:31:29] Yeah.

[00:31:29] So that was definitely another lesson was the power and influence that an authority figure can have like this.

[00:31:38] And the ways that that authority can be established, like, pretty quickly in this arena, especially, like, in this industry.

[00:31:48] I think it's kind of a perfect place to have this authority and subject kind of relationship.

[00:31:57] Mm-hmm.

[00:31:58] To have those kinds of hierarchies, it's just kind of built for it.

[00:32:01] But it's really dangerous, the level of the influence that people can have.

[00:32:06] So it's given me kind of going forward from learning about what happened with my sister and learning about the details of that week and how that influence became so powerful.

[00:32:18] It's given me a greater sense of empathy for how people get into things that sound kind of crazy or people are swayed to do things that seem like really, really out there or out of character.

[00:32:30] I can understand that process of how they kind of go down that path of just following what the authority figure has told them.

[00:32:39] Well, especially after they've had a week, and not just a week, I mean, they had a week of heavy conditioning and obedience to James.

[00:32:48] Most of the participants had been part of his ecosystem for a while.

[00:32:52] Like, Spiritual Warrior was the top of a pyramid of events that got you further and further into the James Arthur Ray ecosystem.

[00:33:01] I mean, it reminds me a lot of, you know, we talk a lot about NXIVM, and people wonder how, you know, someone as smart and assertive as our friend Sarah Edmondson winds up in a position to be branded.

[00:33:17] Well, I mean, NXIVM had been grooming her, just like James had been grooming his participants over the long term to do what he, again, not only what he suggested, but what he insisted was necessary for their growth.

[00:33:34] Right, right.

[00:33:35] Yeah, and, you know, again, part of the learning of the wider self-help industry was understanding that many players in the industry do these kinds of things deliberately to establish that kind of control over their customers.

[00:33:53] So the types of control of the environment and the way of talking to people to, you know, the ultimate goal for those organizations is to get the people to buy further into the program or buy more products.

[00:34:07] But, I mean, I just assume that's their ultimate goal when the bottom line is at play.

[00:34:14] But the fact is, the impact of that is much larger than, oh, the person's now going to sign up for the next event.

[00:34:23] You know, the impact can be really profound in terms of influencing the way people approach problems or relationships in their lives.

[00:34:34] Influencing financial decisions that they make that could for them be kind of devastating.

[00:34:39] Or influencing them to do things that are physically unsafe.

[00:34:42] These are the repercussions of how, you know, establishing that kind of power and influence over people.

[00:34:51] Oh, you bet.

[00:34:52] Yeah.

[00:34:53] So as you guys kind of dug into what had happened in Sedona, and by the way, we should tell our audience that there's an excellent book titled Tragedy in Sedona, written by Connie Joy.

[00:35:08] She and her husband, Connie and her husband, were kind of in James's inner circle for a long minute.

[00:35:16] And so tragedy in Sedona really details, one, kind of what that ecosystem was like.

[00:35:22] I would call it grooming, but kind of what it's like to be on the inside of that process.

[00:35:26] But also, you know, Connie had done the spiritual warrior retreat in years past.

[00:35:32] So, I mean, she includes a lot of material about what that week is actually like for the participants.

[00:35:38] So I highly recommend, if you're interested in this, go check out Tragedy in Sedona by Connie Joy.

[00:35:43] But as you guys dug into this, and as you started learning more about James's deal and the kinds of untruths that he was telling to market himself, was the assumption on the part of your family that, okay, he's just, he's a bad guy.

[00:35:57] He's a bad actor.

[00:35:59] And this is a James problem.

[00:36:01] Or did it kind of become apparent early on that, hmm, this might actually speak to a wider problem in the self-help personal development space?

[00:36:10] Yeah, I think pretty quickly we saw it being a wider problem.

[00:36:14] I think I came across Rick Ross's website pretty quickly.

[00:36:20] And he, you know, just has a huge kind of database of like people's grievances or complaints or sort of documenting stuff that's happened at different self-help events.

[00:36:33] So, yeah, I definitely, definitely saw pretty quickly that some of what had happened at James's event is not far off from what happens at other events.

[00:36:45] I learned about LGATS, large group awareness trainings, and that was interesting.

[00:36:52] And again, seeing the way that those events like really kind of condition people and try to pull people in further and further.

[00:37:01] And then that people do get pulled in and stay in with these organizations for years and years.

[00:37:07] Yeah.

[00:37:07] So, I definitely did see it as a larger industry thing.

[00:37:12] Pretty quickly on we could see that, which is why we felt then when we were founding an organization, it needed to be bigger than just the event that we had experienced because we knew that it was about this larger industry.

[00:37:25] So, part of what we did learn that was surprising was, I mean, I knew like the self-help section in the bookstore is pretty big, right?

[00:37:34] But I had no idea just how much money was kicking around in this industry, like billions and billions and billions of dollars every year.

[00:37:41] That was a surprise.

[00:37:43] And to learn about how much the events can cost, how much some of these big players in the industry, like how much money they have, that was all quite surprising.

[00:37:55] Yeah.

[00:37:56] It should be noted that, look, we've kicked around this question for years at Seek Safely.

[00:38:02] We still don't actually know how much money the industry generates.

[00:38:07] I mean, we've tossed around various figures.

[00:38:09] It seems to grow every year.

[00:38:10] Yeah.

[00:38:11] But like a question that we often wrestle with, you and I have been around and around and around this question of like, okay, so what is the self-help industry?

[00:38:19] Are we talking about publishing plus events plus, you know, what about wellness teachers?

[00:38:23] What about Instagram?

[00:38:26] The influencers, right?

[00:38:27] So depending on how you define the space, the one thing that remains constant is that the amount of money is never small.

[00:38:34] Right.

[00:38:35] Like even if you take the most finite chunk of it, like the self-help book industry, right?

[00:38:42] As you noted, it's not a small section of the bookstore.

[00:38:44] No, we know.

[00:38:45] It's the largest nonfiction genre.

[00:38:48] It's bigger than history.

[00:38:49] It's bigger than how-to, right?

[00:38:52] Yeah.

[00:38:52] And even a subset of the how-to books kind of self-help books.

[00:38:56] Yeah, our kind of self-help books.

[00:38:58] A subset of the spirituality books, right?

[00:39:02] Like say you go to Barnes & Noble and you see Norman Vincent Peale.

[00:39:05] Where is he going to be?

[00:39:05] Is he going to be in self-help?

[00:39:06] Is he going to be in Christian books?

[00:39:08] So yes, it's already the largest nonfiction segment of the bookstore, but it has tendrils into all these other sections.

[00:39:16] Yeah, exactly.

[00:39:17] Memoir.

[00:39:18] You bet.

[00:39:18] And that's again part of the credential issue is that the self-help industry really seems to seep out everywhere.

[00:39:27] And even self-help individuals, I think, then end up seeping beyond their qualifications, beyond their kind of background.

[00:39:37] And then they start getting into these other things.

[00:39:39] So the lines are very murky.

[00:39:41] Like there's not – you can't really draw a box around it, which is challenging.

[00:39:45] No, you bet.

[00:39:46] So these are all things that are starting to surface as you guys are digging into what happens to Donna, what James Arthur Ray's deal is.

[00:39:54] Pretty soon you realize this is a James problem, but it's also an industry problem.

[00:40:00] Is it your sense that – well, let me ask this.

[00:40:03] How representative of the industry did you guys consider James to be?

[00:40:08] Like did you think like – so he's a guy who is basically like Tony Robbins, is basically like Wayne Dyer?

[00:40:14] Yeah, I think he felt pretty representative, especially because, as I said, like he was pretty mainstream.

[00:40:22] Like he was going very mainstream at that point.

[00:40:24] He was having a moment.

[00:40:24] That's true, yeah.

[00:40:26] Yeah.

[00:40:26] It wasn't like he was this random guy that, you know, Kirby had somehow gotten connected with through, you know, a friend's cousin's sister or something like that.

[00:40:38] But, you know, he was really big and he was out there.

[00:40:42] So I think our kind of feeling and, you know, to some extent our assumption was that he was representative of what was going on with the industry at that time.

[00:40:52] I mean, I'll tell you the reason I ask is because I remember reading profiles of James in which he explicitly said that he was trying to be the next Tony Robbins.

[00:41:05] Like he – in fact, I remember one profile.

[00:41:08] We could probably still find it if you Google it.

[00:41:10] But it was like, you know, he's the guy who would be Robbins and Chopra and whatever.

[00:41:14] Right.

[00:41:15] He was trying to kind of pull together the best parts, the quote-unquote best parts of other teachers.

[00:41:21] And if you read his book, Harmonic Wealth, this is his big book, his big bestseller.

[00:41:27] You can absolutely see where he's trying to do that.

[00:41:31] It's a staggeringly unoriginal book.

[00:41:33] And if anybody has a problem with my characterization, I defy you to read Harmonic Wealth and show me the original teaching, the original James Arthur Ray teaching.

[00:41:43] But the point is that – so by the time James came on the scene, so The Secret hits in maybe 2005.

[00:41:49] By the way, I also love when James is interviewed on The Secret, when he has his Talking Head segment.

[00:41:56] They call him a philosopher.

[00:41:57] You remember this?

[00:41:58] Mm-hmm.

[00:41:59] James Arthur Ray, a philosopher.

[00:42:01] Because he doesn't have anything else.

[00:42:02] It's like, what is he?

[00:42:02] He's a philosopher.

[00:42:05] Yeah, a philosopher.

[00:42:07] Go with that.

[00:42:08] Just like Keith Raniere, right?

[00:42:09] He was a philosopher.

[00:42:11] But my point is that he'd been on the scene for a few years.

[00:42:14] He was still pretty new.

[00:42:15] You're right.

[00:42:16] He was having a mainstream moment.

[00:42:18] But he was still pretty new.

[00:42:20] Like the other figures that we're talking about, like Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer, had really been around for decades.

[00:42:26] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:26] Was there any expectation?

[00:42:28] You say your mom – I know your mom and I have talked about Wayne Dyer.

[00:42:31] I started out as a big fan of Tony Robbins.

[00:42:33] I still have a complicated relationship with the legacy of Tony Robbins.

[00:42:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:39] Mm-hmm.

[00:43:09] And then also the idea of people being harmed at events.

[00:43:13] Mm-hmm.

[00:43:14] Because as you start digging into it and when you read, you know, stuff like what's on Rick Ross' website,

[00:43:20] Mm-hmm.

[00:43:20] You see that other people will say, you know, I've been hurt or, you know, one of the really sad ones is somebody I know and care for went to an event and then they committed suicide after the event.

[00:43:34] And there are stories out there that you can find.

[00:43:38] And it's hard to verify them.

[00:43:40] So that's always also been part of the challenge for SEAP.

[00:43:45] Yeah.

[00:43:45] It's a lot of anecdotal stuff.

[00:43:47] But you just start to get a feeling that there's something not quite right in the industry.

[00:43:54] And then also what became very apparent and something that we learned very, very quickly was part of the problem in the industry is that it's so big, it's so influential, there's so much money, and yet there's no regulation of the industry.

[00:44:09] So one of the kind of lines that we kind of came up with really pretty much right away was the idea of like, if James Ray was a product that was regulated by the FDA, he would have been recalled because people used as directed and they were harmed.

[00:44:29] So in other spheres where there is oversight and there is regulation, there would be consequences in a professional sense.

[00:44:39] Whereas, sure, James Ray did face legal consequences, but he did not face professional consequences.

[00:44:47] He's still out there in the self-help industry.

[00:44:51] You can comment on how successful he is now versus before, but there's nobody out there telling him, no, you can't do this work anymore because this industry has no self-regulation.

[00:45:06] It has no organizing body that can license people and then take away that license when they do things wrong.

[00:45:13] And there's very little regulation outside of the industry that you can really apply to it.

[00:45:19] So it takes something like people dying for the industry to kind of pop up in this way, or it takes something like NXIVM that the victims really pushed to get that story out there.

[00:45:36] But it takes that for any consequences to be given to people who are irresponsible.

[00:45:44] Oh, gosh. Well, in the case of NXIVM, it took the victims really pushing it.

[00:45:50] But even then, even after they had the ear of the New York Times, it took the Me Too movement to put it on the front page.

[00:45:58] This is something that's really explored in the HBO series, The Vow.

[00:46:02] Even still, in the legal sense, you know, the charges that he faced had nothing to do with him being a professional in the self-help industry.

[00:46:12] They had to find other things to charge him with because there's nothing there in the law or in any regulation that you can point to to say, you know, you broke the terms of your professional operation.

[00:46:26] There's just nothing there.

[00:46:28] So that was another big discovery about the industry that we learned pretty quickly as a result of Sedona.

[00:46:37] And it's why a big part of SIEC's mission has been pushing for some type of legislation.

[00:46:43] So in terms of trying to put a box around the industry or define it in some way for the purposes of that legislation, we've basically tried to delineate it as anybody who is otherwise unlicensed but is providing, you know, advice type services for people.

[00:47:02] Oh, you bet.

[00:47:03] So that's the way we got around that definition issue.

[00:47:06] Sure.

[00:47:07] Advice type services.

[00:47:09] Yeah, that's not what it says in the bill itself.

[00:47:14] I can't remember the exact wording right now.

[00:47:16] It's too late for me to remember that.

[00:47:18] The bill says, you know, advice like services.

[00:47:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:47:22] But speaking of which, one exciting thing that we can share on the podcast that hasn't really been, we haven't really had a chance to talk about yet is the fact that our bill in New York State did pass the Senate quite late in the legislative session.

[00:47:38] Back in June.

[00:47:40] So that's a huge step.

[00:47:42] The New York State legislature is kind of similar to the federal legislature in the sense that there are two components to it.

[00:47:50] So a bill has to pass both the Senate and the Assembly.

[00:47:55] So 2025 will be all about getting the Assembly to actually vote on it.

[00:48:00] And then if that happens, then it goes to the governor.

[00:48:03] And if the governor signs it, then it becomes law.

[00:48:06] So remember how the bill becomes a law.

[00:48:08] You remember Schoolhouse Rock?

[00:48:11] Yeah, exactly.

[00:48:12] Classic, classic.

[00:48:14] Podcast listeners, when I tell you that early one morning, Gene Brown texts me and says, can you talk?

[00:48:24] We need to talk.

[00:48:25] And then you said something like, everything is okay, but we need to talk.

[00:48:28] And this is how I found out the news that our bill.

[00:48:31] So this is a bill that we have been pushing in New York State, by the way.

[00:48:40] How interesting is it that Kirby died in Sedona, Arizona?

[00:48:46] That's where Spiritual Warrior was.

[00:48:49] We pushed this legislation in New York State because that's where your family lives, and that's where Sikh originates from.

[00:48:58] We had done research.

[00:48:59] We did kind of exhaustive research just over the years.

[00:49:02] We've done exhaustive research about other legislative initiatives aimed at kind of corralling the self-help industry.

[00:49:09] And we'd found various things of, you know, okay, so there have been some attempts to define what coaching is, for example.

[00:49:16] Right?

[00:49:17] Or, you know, you can get certified as a yoga teacher, as a license as a yoga teacher or something in some places.

[00:49:25] And these all kind of take little bites out of the problem that we're talking about.

[00:49:29] But the larger thing is if, you know, let's say a law is passed that, you know, look, if you're going to be a coach, okay, you need to have this licensure.

[00:49:38] You're going to have this accountability, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:49:40] There's nothing to stop James from saying, well, I never said I was a coach.

[00:49:43] I don't identify as a coach.

[00:49:44] I am a shaman.

[00:49:45] Like, whatever.

[00:49:46] But, yeah, we finally got the news that the Senate, thank you, Senator Skoufis, finally went through.

[00:49:54] So it's a step.

[00:49:56] But, Gene, this happened in 2009.

[00:49:59] The Spiritual Warrior happens in 2009.

[00:50:01] We are here in the year of our Lord 2024.

[00:50:05] Mm-hmm.

[00:50:06] And we finally got our first step.

[00:50:08] It's a long road.

[00:50:09] It's a long road.

[00:50:11] It was a long road.

[00:50:12] Whenever we talk about legislation, I and others in our movement get a little bit of pushback because we get a little bit of pushback to the tune of, so look, you think the nanny state is going to come in and this is going to be solved by government regulation.

[00:50:27] No, we never said that.

[00:50:28] This problem of ethics and accountability or lack thereof in the self-help space is actually only going to be solved by practitioners and consumers stepping up and both providing better and demanding better.

[00:50:40] The reason we think government needs to be involved, at least on some level.

[00:50:44] Like, I always use the example of good old Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

[00:50:49] Mm-hmm.

[00:50:49] When Elizabeth Holmes was found to be defrauding her investors, and really that's what James was doing.

[00:50:55] James and others like him.

[00:50:56] That's what they did.

[00:50:57] They defraud investors.

[00:50:58] You know, he was misrepresenting his credentials.

[00:51:00] He was misrepresenting what his services could do, how safe they were, how experienced he was, et cetera.

[00:51:05] When Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding her investors, one of the conditions of her punishment was she can't do that work anymore.

[00:51:15] Like, she can't be an executive of a company like that.

[00:51:20] Maybe ever again.

[00:51:21] I think it's for a period of time, but maybe ever again.

[00:51:23] James got sprung from jail and was immediately back at it.

[00:51:28] You know, there's nothing that tells him that he can't be a self-help guy.

[00:51:32] And not only was he back at it, I mean, we could talk about this all night, but not only was he back at it, but he was actually using what had happened as his next pitch.

[00:51:40] Yeah.

[00:51:41] Which I'm sure was not at all painful to you or your family.

[00:51:44] Mm-hmm.

[00:51:45] Yeah.

[00:51:46] Yeah, he was back on Piers Morgan like a few weeks after getting out of jail.

[00:51:50] Well, he was using what happened to boost his cred to somebody who had been through the fire.

[00:51:55] Yeah.

[00:51:56] Yeah.

[00:51:56] Yeah.

[00:51:57] Exactly.

[00:51:58] So.

[00:51:58] We can kind of wrap up this conversation.

[00:52:03] Like, we wanted to start out – God, Gene, did you know we're in season three of the Seek Safely podcast?

[00:52:08] We've lasted three seasons.

[00:52:09] No.

[00:52:10] No, no, no.

[00:52:11] We're in like season four.

[00:52:12] We're in season four?

[00:52:13] I thought this was season three.

[00:52:15] God.

[00:52:16] We are flying through these things, right?

[00:52:18] We're in season four.

[00:52:20] No, we want to start out the season with a broad discussion of why this matters.

[00:52:25] Like, we know we've talked about Sedona and the experience of Gene and her family and other podcasts in other places.

[00:52:31] But what we wanted to do was come back to our concerns about the self-help industry, what we actually know about the self-help industry, and why it still matters that there are organizations like Seek Safely and individuals, like the people listening to this podcast, that care about what happens in this space, care about the people who are invested in this space.

[00:52:51] Because we know that self-help products and services are a huge part of a lot of people's lives, and we don't find any shame in that.

[00:52:59] That's not the problem.

[00:53:01] Yeah.

[00:53:01] The problem is that when there's a lack of ethics and accountability, and when the business itself incentivizes that, that's where the problem arises.

[00:53:12] So that's why we thought it was important to start out season four, not three, four, with this conversation.

[00:53:18] Gene, I am always tremendously grateful.

[00:53:21] You and your family over the last decade plus have shared so much of yourself in often very public ways and in ways that I'm sure are not always comfortable or pleasant.

[00:53:36] And I'm always grateful when you share this aspect of your life with us.

[00:53:42] Like, we don't take it for granted.

[00:53:43] I don't take it for granted.

[00:53:44] So thank you for that.

[00:53:46] Yeah.

[00:53:46] You're welcome.

[00:53:47] Well, you know, it's like you said, the shame is not in the people seeking the help.

[00:53:56] The shame is in the people abusing that desire, right, on the part of these seekers.

[00:54:04] And the reason why I am willing to share this story, why my family has been willing to share this story is because Kirby was the seeker, right?

[00:54:15] And she didn't do anything wrong.

[00:54:18] And she didn't do anything wrong by going to that event.

[00:54:20] So if we can reach other people like her who are just looking for, you know, maximizing their experience in this beautiful world and they want to do that in a safe way, you know, we want to help with that.

[00:54:35] And as a teaser to what's going to be.

[00:54:39] As a teaser to what's going to come in future episodes of the Seek Safely podcast, there's a whole dimension in this conversation that we didn't even get around to.

[00:54:47] Like we mentioned that James, among the things that he was lying about, his credentialing, his training as a shaman, as a huna, etc.

[00:54:56] This all speaks to, and of course, you know, the tragedy centered around a, what was called a sweat lodge.

[00:55:05] It wasn't really a sweat lodge.

[00:55:07] The point is, one of the other things that the Brown family found out as they started digging into the self-help industry is how much of a standard just tentpole of the industry cultural appropriation and distortion is.

[00:55:21] Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:22] So we'll be, yeah, we can do a whole, we can really do a whole episode on that.

[00:55:26] We will absolutely be digging into that.

[00:55:27] Because that was definitely a big, a big part of my learning.

[00:55:29] Yeah, for sure.

[00:55:30] You know it.

[00:55:31] All right, seekers.

[00:55:33] All right.

[00:55:33] I think that's a good place to, to stop.

[00:55:36] Jean, it is so good to, to see your face.

[00:55:38] You guys don't even know, Jean is, is operating tonight.

[00:55:40] She, she has a nasty, a wicked cough, but she's showing up for you, Seek Safely Nation.

[00:55:46] It's not even a wicked cough, it's a wimpy cough.

[00:55:48] It's just an unavoidable one and it's so annoying.

[00:55:53] Yeah.

[00:55:54] That's good.

[00:55:54] Always happy to talk to you.

[00:55:55] Always happy to talk about this stuff and I'm looking forward to another season and yeah, let us know, let us know what you want to hear about as well.

[00:56:04] Everybody keep your eyes open for Seek Week coming your way in October.

[00:56:08] We're going to have a full week of, of nightly live streams.

[00:56:12] We had a lot of fun with this last year and we look forward to seeing you there.

[00:56:16] We're going to be on Instagram.

[00:56:17] We'll be on Facebook.

[00:56:19] We'll be on YouTube.

[00:56:20] All these places.

[00:56:21] Find us on the web at Seek Safely.

[00:56:23] All the, all the social stuff at Seek Safely.

[00:56:25] I'm on all the internet things at, at Dr. Doyle Says.

[00:56:29] And you're on the social things too, Jean.

[00:56:31] I don't know.

[00:56:32] Here and there.

[00:56:33] It's touch and go these days.

[00:56:35] You're, you're, you're killing it on threads.

[00:56:37] I see you on threads all the time.

[00:56:39] Yeah, yeah.

[00:56:39] I'm there sometimes.

[00:56:40] I don't even, JB Beans 8 on threads.

[00:56:44] There you go.

[00:56:46] All right, gang.

[00:56:47] I'm Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.

[00:56:49] Thank you.

[00:56:49] I'm Jean Brown.

[00:56:50] Thanks for listening to the Seek Safely podcast.

[00:56:52] Ciao, ciao.

[00:56:57] Thanks for listening to this episode.

[00:56:59] We hope that you have found it enlightening and we'd be so, so grateful if you'd share it with the seekers in your life.

[00:57:06] We all know at least one, right?

[00:57:08] Until our next episode, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Seek Safely.

[00:57:14] Connect with Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle at Dr. Doyle Says.

[00:57:18] And me, Jean, at Jean C. Brown on Twitter.

[00:57:21] Feel free to send us an email, info at seeksafely.org.

[00:57:26] To support Seek Safely, you can make a secure donation on our website, seeksafely.org slash donate.

[00:57:34] The Seek Safely podcast is produced by Citizens of Sound.