PoS Book Club
Exploring the worst and weirdest books the world has to offer. Who appointed these guys critics? No one.
PoS Book Club
S2E1: Twin Flames: Finding Your Ultimate Lover by Jeff and Shaleia Divine
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The fellas return for awards and festivities, followed by a feisty frolic through the infamous Twin Flames Universe - a spiritual romantic self-help grift turned alleged cult led by Jeff Divine and Shaleia Divine.
Intro
SPEAKER_05Twin flame pairs are always one masculine and one feminine polarity. There is no exception. God created us this way because God is both masculine and feminine, and because the communion of these two energies is so juicy. Ooh. I don't know.
SPEAKER_07To all members president worldwide, I hereby call this meeting of the Peace of Shit Book Club to Order. I'm your cheerful chairman, Caspian Rivers. And wow, what a meeting we have lined up today. If you're only going to attend one meeting this year, make sure it's this one PTA meetings, AA meetings, disciplinary meetings. Basically irrelevant compared to today's PSBC meeting because today is the 11th episode Extravaganza Awards Banquet The Pulitzers. Where we look back on our first 10 episodes and salute the stinkiest turds we've reviewed. Ten books were read. Now the judgment's here. The moment of truth for the fifth of the year. Which seeming pile will take the crown? The Pulitzers are coming to town. All right. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Beautiful, beautiful. Wow.
SPEAKER_07Before we kick things off, please join me in welcoming tonight's presenters from the Piece of Shit Book Club Ascatamy. Welcome in. Chip Wilson.
SPEAKER_05How are you doing? Excited to be here.
SPEAKER_07I'm so thrilled to be here that I flubbed my last line. Good to have you. We're used to that. Yeah. Jane Lynch, welcome in. Always a pleasure, Caspian. Thank you, Jane. And last but not least, Dr. Bodajian PhD. So good to see your beautiful face. I see you've dressed in your finest tuxedo for this evening's gala. You look every bit your name.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, what a special evening. It's a night of glitz and night of glamour here at the awards banquet. What a pleasure. I'm gonna have to crack open my first beer for the evening. Just super excited to be here. It's an honor just to be present.
SPEAKER_07The stars are out tonight, indeed. And not only do we have the Pulitzers, but as we do every meeting, we'll also be doing a deep dive into one particularly awful book after the award ceremony. And I promise you, it's worth sticking around. It is a great pick this week, despite what Dr. Dashton will tell you. So here's my pitch. If you've been looking for a metaphysical reason to abandon your spouse and take up with your hot coworker, or perhaps you're single and you need a permission structure to stock your crush, well, we've got the book for you as we look into Twin Flames Finding Your Ultimate Lover by Jeff and Shalia Divine. So that's coming up after the Pulitzers. But until then, let's turn it over to tonight's Pulitzer host, Dr. Bo Dashtden, PhD. Take it away, Dr. D, please.
SPEAKER_06Feeling the pressure, the weight of the evening. This is a historic event. I mean, no one gives a shit about the Oscars anymore, but I'm sure everyone cares about the Poolitzers.
Season 1 Awards Ceremony
SPEAKER_06I'll just give you a quick rundown of what our categories are. The votes have already been cast, we've already campaigned all the members of the club, everyone's got their votes in. But the the categories are gonna be biggest wiener, biggest grifter, shittiest author, stinkiest log, and of course the book you secretly agree with the most. I'm also really pleased to announce that we're gonna start a voting campaign for all our non-members out there and set up a People's Choice Award. So we're gonna throw a link up on the subreddit at uh at our Piece of Ship Book Club. Uh, get your votes in, vote for the one you think is the worst of the worst, and we'll be uh on our next episode, we'll be we'll be happy to announce the winner of the People's Choice. And next year I'll I'll try to get my shit together so that we do the awards banquet on the last episode of the season rather than the first episode of the next season. Should we dive right in for biggest wiener? Let's do it. Here's the nominees. We're gonna I'm just gonna read the nominees, then we'll we'll have a little discussion and then we'll we'll I'll make the announcement. So the first nominee for Biggest Wiener is Joseph Peterson's book, The Semen Retention Miracle, from episode three. Uh that's the book by the guy who thinks you shouldn't blow your loads. The second nominee is Roosh V's book, American Pilgrim. That's the book by the guy who thinks you shouldn't blow your loads. Third nominee is Pete Hegsess, the War on Warriors from episode 10. That's the guy that thinks you probably should be blowing your loads all over the beautiful boys in green. Those are our nominees, fellas. What do you think?
SPEAKER_09I gotta give it to Semen Retention Miracle because obviously he has the biggest dick because he hasn't been uh he hasn't been blowing his loads.
SPEAKER_05It's inflated like a balloon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Important clarifier: the biggest wiener reward is not the person with the biggest dong, which I suppose technically only one of our authors has claimed to have a huge dong. Do you remember who it was? Oh or if I'm more precise, his Mary Sue character had a huge dong. Of course. Um, Sean Avery. That's right. It was uh the the hockey romance book. But this category, biggest wiener, is for how do you describe a wiener? It's like the least manly man. It's a guy who's trying to prove he's something when clearly he's just a little wiener.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like he could still be masculine, but it's like really just trying to prove that you're masculine. And it's kind of a kind of needling effect, and yeah.
SPEAKER_07I really struggle with this one because in the nomination papers, it was least manly bracket biggest wiener. And to me, they're not analogous. So if we're going least, if we're going least manly, then so I voted up least manly. If we're going least manly, it's clearly the semen retention guy. I don't know if you've seen any of his other podcasts, his work. He's he's not a manly fellow. It's hard to label the guy who runs the most powerful military in human history, not the most manly. But if we're talking about biggest wiener, it's Hegseth, without a doubt. Hegseth is he's he's a he's a wiener and he's on a giant stage. I mean, he's compensating so hard. He's trying, he wants to be manly, he wants to be tough. He seems like the kind of guy that would be the most obnoxious out of the three of them to hang out with at a party.
SPEAKER_05Gotta I gotta give it to Roosh V though on a couple categories here. Um, I think like he documented well his the infection and rash that he had. He might have had a lot of swelling from that uh over the course of the scabies. So we don't know how swollen his wiener was. Roosh has always had a very, very wiener-ish qualities to me. Very true. Like to me, pickup artistry is definitionally someone that is extremely concerned with their masculinity uh and and so on.
SPEAKER_06So for anyone who didn't be tight. For anyone who didn't catch it, Roos Rooshavy was episode nine, and this is the guy who was a pickup artist until he found Jesus and then drove across the the US preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_09This is very exciting.
SPEAKER_06I don't remember who I voted for, and I'm very excited to see who wins. It's that time to announce the first the winner of the first award. The award in a near landslide for biggest wiener is Joseph Peterson's, the semen retention miracle. Yes, very exciting. Congratulations. I was surprised by that. I was the only person who voted for Pete Hagseth. Everyone else voted for the seaman guy.
SPEAKER_07I voted for the seaman guy because he is the least manly. It it was it gave me no joy. That was one of my favorite books that we read was the Semen Retention Miracle. It was readable, it was really practical and to the point. Um, if you're looking for just a guide on how to retain, it didn't run five, six hundred pages like Rouge V's book.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that was awful.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Big fan of the guy, and um, but not a man.
SPEAKER_06It's fine to be fans of people who are not men. All right. Our second award is the biggest grifter, and this is the award that goes to the book that was most clearly tied to a cash grab. Our three nominees are Elizabeth Gilbert, All the Way to the River, from episode six, Sean Avery and Leslie Cohen, Summer Skate. That's the hockey sex romance book from episode seven, and Gli Hongzh's uh Zhuan Falun from episode eight. Uh, so our three nominees are the Falun Gong guy, exactly. We have a book by the author of the Falun Gong, we have a hockey porno romance written by a guy who's famous for being an asshole, and we've got the Eat Prey Love Lady's book about her dead ghost lover. What do you think, fellas? Who's gonna take it?
SPEAKER_07The issue I had with this category, we didn't nominate, or that whoever the producers are, the academy didn't nominate the biggest grifter that we've done, which is clearly tuberculosis Jonathan.
SPEAKER_06The guy can I just say thanks for protesting and raising counterpoints to all of the way this has been organized. Thanks for raising it now, instead of the WhatsApp group where you were requested to raise these points before.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but hey, fair enough. The academy's not always gonna get things right.
SPEAKER_06There's snubs, there's snubs.
SPEAKER_05There's there's always gonna be some snubs. Uh, but I think this is an interesting category because they're all different approaches. There's a you got a little bit of a spiritual grift there. You have um uh like a memoir style grift, and then Sean Avery's, which I think he just explicitly said on a podcast, I think you can make a lot of money writing romance books, so that's I don't give a shit about it. Otherwise, I put it out.
SPEAKER_06I'd gotta say that I I think Elizabeth Gilbert, you know, that book, uh All the Way to the River from episode six, like when it opens, it opens with a letter she wrote, supposedly from the ghost of her dead lover, giving her permission to to write a book about her and cash it in and make lots of money. And we also know that Elizabeth Gilbert would get a huge payday from a book like this. That to me is like that's grift par excellence. Not only you grifting, you're you're writing your ex-ghost dead lovers permission to do so.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, see, that's my that was my take as well. Was that the other two are at least Sean Avery is definitely the the clearest easy cash grab. He's like he saw, you know, this is popular, hey, I should do that. And then I don't know, Jean Falon, it's less, I think it started off less as a grift, and kind of maybe maybe like the the sequels and other parts of it maybe turn more into a grift, but I don't know. I I can't I can't speak to it. But I think Elizabeth is just the shittiest grift, and just clearly like using using your dead lover as uh as a reason to write a book and and writing words for her is just fucked.
SPEAKER_07So I just don't see it. I mean, she's an author, that's what she does. She makes her living writing books. It's not really a grift to do your profession. And she could just she could squat over a pile of papers, piss on it, and she'd sell just as many copies. It has I think the content has little to do with how popular the book is gonna be. The exact same number of copies, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Different demo, though, I think.
SPEAKER_07But perhaps, yeah. Whereas in the Falong Gong guy, the book's free, so the book itself isn't really a grift. And I don't get the sense that he's squeezing his followers for money. Out of all the accusations that you read about Falun Gong, it's not there's little I haven't seen anything that says that people are giving their life savings over to this cult. So for me, it's Sean Avery, clear and simple, 100%. The guy did it for the cash. He said he did it for the cash. He, I mean, you have if someone says something, you have to believe them. If the if the one guy is saying, I'm the biggest grifter in the piece of ship book club, you gotta believe him when he says it.
SPEAKER_06Well, get ready to be shocked. Because the biggest grifter award goes to Leslie Cohen and Sean Avery for SummerSkate, episode seven.
SPEAKER_09Okay.
SPEAKER_06We kind of we kind of forget that there was actually two, there was a legitimate author involved in that book as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I thought we were just trying to be nice to her by leaving her name out of it, but yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Alright. Wow. This next category is the shittiest author, implying the worst person, not just the worst at writing. We'll get to worst books in a minute, but who's the worst actual person? And our three genuinely awful nominees, detestable fucking people. It's a bad people.
SPEAKER_05This is such a funny category to just name the worst person.
SPEAKER_06There's some bad hombres in this category, let me tell you. Bad ombre numero uno is Malcolm J. Brenner, who wrote Wet Goddess from episode one. I don't know if everyone's gone back and listened to that episode, but it's literally a true story by a guy who fucks dolphins.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, he fucks a dolphin. A dolphin.
SPEAKER_06Second nominee. That's not our idea, the specifics just yet. John Fetterman for his biography, I guess. Unfettered from episode five. And the third nominee is TB Joshua, who for some reason this pod is usually referred to as tuberculosis Jonathan. No, that's not his name, and he's not confirmed to have tuberculosis. He's the Nigerian scam preacher who wrote the book How to Cast Out Demons and Evil Spirits from episode two.
SPEAKER_07Three reprehensible men. Um I'm not a big fan of any of them. And you could have there's lots of people that also got snubbed in this category. Pete Heggseth, alleged date rapist, Sean Avery, just all around Pizza Human trash, abused his wife, his kid, um Roosh V.
SPEAKER_05We want to like acknowledge all the luminaries, you know, and all these hardworking individuals. Even if you're not nominated, you know, we recognize the work that goes into this stuff.
SPEAKER_07So it was hard to pick amongst the three that were nominated. Fetterman, he's a crazy warmonger who has contributed to the genocide indirectly in Israel. We don't want to get too political here. A guy who fucks dolphins. I mean, you can't say anything good about a guy like that. And then of course you have tuberculosis Jonathan, who also has a number of rape allegations against him. Yeah. Uh pretty easy to see how he's a reprehensible guy. Amongst the three, I gotta give it to T B Jonathan.
SPEAKER_06You know, in in defense of Malcolm J. Brenner, the dolphin fucker, he technically didn't break the law, as we discussed during the episode, because the laws around uh around bestiality at the time in Florida were very liberal.
SPEAKER_05You know, also in defense of him in for this award, like he only fucked one dolphin, right? But that was kind of a matter of matter of resources. We don't know how many he how many he might have been able to fuck.
SPEAKER_09Was it multiple times? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yes. Yeah. Um I feel like he's kind of a little bit of like an indie project up against some some major producers here between uh T B Joshua and Fetterman.
SPEAKER_06So well, the the award for shittiest author 2026 goes to in a landslide, 100% agreement. It is TB Joshua, aka Tuberculosis Jonathan, for his book, How to Cast Out Demons and Evil Spirits.
SPEAKER_07And his church collapsed and killed a bunch of people too.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, his church collapse killed a hundred people, most of them his worshippers.
SPEAKER_07That's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_06Genuinely awful person. And he helped spread Ebola. He helped spread Ebola. Yeah. Wait, sorry, him or John Fetterman?
SPEAKER_09He was also so shitty his wife killed him. I'm convinced of that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Alright, we've got two more awards to get to. The next award is the award for Stinkiest Log, uh, which is the worst actual book, where we kind of separate the art from the artist a little bit here, just to look at the book on its own for its literary merits or lack thereof. And our three nominees are Mr. Stephen Segall's book, The Way of the Shadow Wolves, from episode four. This is the book where a Stephen Segal Mary Sue character, who's a magical Indian, um, beats up terrorists. The second nominee is Sean Avery and Leslie Cohen's Summer Skate from episode seven. The third nominee is Pete Hegzeth's The War on Warriors from episode 10.
SPEAKER_05What do you think? Maybe it was just seeing you crack a beer earlier, but I got pretty I'm pretty optimistic about Pete Hegseth for this one. Um, it was uh an absolute piece of shit to read. Uh it was just a like a reproduction of of uh common talking points and uh ultimately extremely repetitive. So I think it has a really strong case as the worst single work.
SPEAKER_07The Stephen Segal book is one of the worst books I've ever read. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't even get through it. It was a DNF, as folks say online. It did not finish. So real strong case for Segal's book. Uh you know, I loved the Sean Avery book, so I'm probably not gonna vote for that one. It was one of the, I think my favorite book that we've done. It's the only time I've read a romance book and it really spoke to me. The Pete Heggseth book. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm romantic at heart. The Pete Hegseth book also, there's a good uh argument to be made that that's one of the worst books that we've read. Especially his influence and the fact that it's a like a Fox News book. So it's just like mainstream trash. And I think you have to consider that when you weigh it against some of the other turds that we've looked at so far in this piece of ship book club.
SPEAKER_09I had a really hard time with this category because well, I didn't read any of these books. So yeah. Did you listen to the podcast at least? I did. I did. Okay, good. I submitted a vote, but you know.
SPEAKER_05I was gonna say before, why is Jane allowed to vote when you sent it out?
SPEAKER_06Well, actually, that was my that was my tiebreaker rule. If if there was ever a tie, I just canceled his vote. It only happened once. The winner for stinkiest log is your favorite Secretary of War, Peter Hegseth's book, The War on Warriors. Wow. Alright. Last award. Um, and this is a bit of a different award. This is the award for the book you secretly agree with the most. Uh, and our three nominees are Malcolm J. Brenner's Wet Goddess from episode one. That's the dolphin fucker again. Joseph Peterson's The Semen Retention Miracle from Episode 3. And Steven Segal's The Way of the Shadow Wolves from Episode 4. Who do you think's gonna take it?
SPEAKER_07This one wasn't that difficult. I'm breaking with the formula. If you say that you agreed with any one of the other two books, then it puts you in a real suspicious light. The way the Shadow Wolves was all about illegal immigration and xenophobia, the dolphin fucking book was about fucking dolphins. The only one that makes sense that you could agree with is the Semen Retention book. And I think that there's a little bit of truth to it in the macro sense. Young men are masturbating too much, they're channeling their energies and desires into porn. If you don't blow your load for a few days, you do feel a little bit more energetic. Boxers have known for decades that you don't have relations before a fight. There's some science behind it in the macro sense. It's just when you come down to like, you know, not jerking off giving you magical powers, is where he loses me. So this doesn't make any sense. Why did you vote for the dolphin fucker book then?
SPEAKER_06Is this just a smoke screen? Is this just a smokescreen where you pretend that you voted for the Steven Retention Miracle when you really voted for the Dolphin Fucker?
SPEAKER_07It's supposed to be anonymous voting. What are you doing? You get thrown out of the academy for revealing my vote.
SPEAKER_09Just checking my sums. I also uh but I do agree with Caspian here that it really is a lack of options on this one. That it's really really tough, yeah. Hard-pressed to vote for any of them, but there's obviously a clear winner.
SPEAKER_06I mean, I voted for Steven Segal's book because I just finally someone's someone's standing up to the alliance of the Pope, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mossad, the Israelis, and what do they call him? George Loros or whatever his name was. Um, they George Soros is the real guy, but they remember in the book he has some stupid name, George Loros. George Loros or something like that. Well, it's a bit of a bit of a giveaway. Might as well reveal the winner of the book that you secretly agree with is the semen retention miracle, which is also then takes away the prestigious round of applause, uh very prestigious position of being the only multiple Publitzer winning book with two prizes. So congratulations, Joseph Peterson. Uh, you finally hit the big time.
SPEAKER_05We gotta put together a little award for him and send it out.
SPEAKER_07Ten books were read. Now the judgment is here. The moment of truth for the fifth of the year. Some steam and piles, they took the crown, the Pulitzers, they came to town. Dr. Dashington, thank you so much for leading us through the Pulitzers. I think, though, we should probably turn our attention to our feature book because uh time's a wasting. That book again is Twin Flames, Finding Your Ultimate Lover by Jeff and Shalia Divine. Dr. Dashington,
Feature Review - Twin Flames: Finding your Ultimate Lover
SPEAKER_07back to you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, thank you very much. I think what we basically decided we're gonna do. The like the authors of this book, Jeff and Shalia, are also Shalia, Shalia, Shalia. They're they're associated with some some pretty big public controversy. What we thought we'd do though is just introduce the book itself, talk about the book for its merits or what what it argues, and then reveal uh what they've actually been up to uh afterwards. So to really on the on the basics of this, Jeff and Shalia are a couple. They basically their core pitch, their core message to you and me and everyone else is they have the best relationship in the world. They're the most in love out of everyone on or off the planet, and that you can have that type of love too, your twin flame, if only you follow their advice. And they're willing to, out of the goodness of their hearts, to help you find uh your twin flame. And that's essentially the the goal of this book. The goal of the book is that they're achieving what they call your harmonious union with your twin flame. Um, and you know, this the twin flame process, it's not just a soulmate, it's not just someone you like to smash, it's not someone you like to rub one out to when you're not reading your semen retention book. It's it's much more magical and esoteric and cosmic and astrological and lots of other silly words uh than that. You know, if they look at the definition of a twin flame, they actually say the twin flame originates from the grand central sun god. The grand central sun extends out its rays, which are twin flame unions, and these rays then focus into a flame. Two or more flames split from one ray, and you are those flames, and you've got to bring yourselves back together.
SPEAKER_09I thought it builds from a romance novel in the 19th century.
SPEAKER_05The the term was coined in English from that romance novel, uh, which I tried to read as secondary research for this, which uh we can get into that maybe another time. It was a lot, it was actually quite fun. Uh but twin the twin flame thing is kind of like I think been out there for a long time uh in like new age spirituality. Uh it's just this idea that like rather than soulmates, like when people are created, they have a a defined pairing, you know, and it's maybe they're somewhere else in the world, maybe they're near you, uh, and eventually you'll be drawn back to them. I I just have a quote. Jeff writes twin flames, twin flames aren't just about having a really hot babe to smooch and love when you're at home. Twin flames are about having someone you can absolutely align your life with in every aspect because that's your natural design.
SPEAKER_07And you're the twin flame is you. They say that multiple times throughout the book.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that it is literally you. Wait, you're both of you're both the flames? You're you're one half of it.
SPEAKER_06It's like the yin-yang, they even have a yin-yang in the book to to explain it. Or to another metaphor they use, which doesn't really make sense, is to say, you know how you have identical twins and they're simultaneously two people and one people because they have the same DNA. Well, it's like that. That's another there's a lot of bad metaphors in the book.
SPEAKER_07You share a single soul.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_05It's the other half of your soul. And so, like how you feel affects them, even if you don't know them. You know, w how you're doing in life otherwise uh may affect them, this sort of thing. What I was thinking about is that it's like a really, really narcissistic way to try to understand what love is or what a partner might be. Because like the only way that you can define them is if they are you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I love them as much as I love me. Yeah. Oh, they're me? Oh, great. They sound awesome. Yeah, it's it's they describe it as like it's not just like a linear soulmate connection between two two people or two points. They they they describe it as like a 5D connection. You connect to to your lover with all five D's, um, which of course are length, width, depth, time, and presumably dong. Um, but they're yeah. It's one of the weird things about the book is like they kind of like trying to wrap your head around what religion they're actually advocating or what their spiritual points are. I started keeping a list of all the random wacky shit they kept mentioning. What their worldview is is completely unclear.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that that really stood out to me from the beginning is that that so they mention things in passing sometimes, but compared to a lot of other sort of spiritual books, there's there's no like use of scripture, for example. Like the guy is very Christian and they're connecting like, you know, loose Christianity. Like he believes he can channel God, that he can speak directly to Jesus, this sort of thing. Um, but there's no actual use of like even I don't think any a single maybe there's a couple quotes from the Bible, but very little. And then there's also no foundation set up for any other kind of belief structures that that it might be built upon. There's no like, you know, even even the semen retention miracle had way more references in it to like, you know, Taoist systems or or whatever, this sort of thing. There's like nothing there.
SPEAKER_06Excuse me. Multiple award-winning semen.
SPEAKER_09I totally thought that I didn't realize that they were a Christian cult. I thought they were like a new age spiritualism cult.
SPEAKER_06They I don't think they're I don't know if they're they're Christian, but they use some language. Like Jeff refers to himself as Christ and as the Messiah and as Jesus, but also claims to be in contact with Jesus.
SPEAKER_09In contact and in contact with God. Okay, yeah. Channeling God.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. I think what they're doing is blaspheming quite a bit.
SPEAKER_06No. So amongst their weird, like the the weird religious concepts that they just casually drop into a sentence somewhere, there is a mother-father god, there's also a separate source with a capitalized S, which is where everything comes from. There is karmic reincarnation, there's Christ, there's also Christ consciousness, which we can all achieve. Uh, and there's Jesus, there's also a sun god, uh, and there are also UFOs. Um, and how those things all fit together, fuck knows. No, not the faintest idea.
SPEAKER_05And also Jesus is connected to your twin flame. And uh like the really explicit about this that your faith is not like just like a sort of worship or or or subservience to Christ. Jesus becomes your lover, he's central to your twin flame. And so when you're making love to them, you're making love to God as well. You're fucking Jesus. Yeah, it's it's pretty explicit.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, it says multiple times like God is your ultimate lover. Yeah, like constantly. One of the funniest things about the book is like the number of times it actually says something all along the lines of, don't worry, I'm not making this up, or or don't worry, this isn't a cult, or just you gotta just believe me. This is totally not a scam. It says it like at least half a dozen times. It's really funny.
SPEAKER_05I I have a quote on the the God as a twin flame thing. You know, he says, you know, God is not just your father, your mother, or an omnipresence floating around far away from your eternal reality. God is your divine, divine lover through your twin flame only. Uh, this doesn't mean that just anyone can be your twin flame, that you can just make love with just anyone because you're with God. Uh, and then moving on, it might also be easy for you to think you can make love with just anyone because you see God in them. This is a great way to leak away your sexual energy into utter exhaustion and aging. Your hair will gray, your skin will wrinkle, and your energy will tire because what is meant for your union is meant only for you and your twin flame. You see, God is your twin flame, and that is the very being you love, adore, and desire so deeply. It is a God you desire. So it's it's this constant mixing of uh like of intimate relationship with God, including like a sexual engagement with Jesus or God and the person you desire in life.
SPEAKER_06The part I understand is like when you're jerking off, are you jerking off God? I think so, yeah. It's a I really didn't enjoy reading this. It's I I also like the book even less when about five minutes before we started recording today, when I realized that the art on the cover is a bunch of sperms swimming around a heart. I thought it was just some funky design. I don't know if you fellas noticed that or not. Um, it's sperms around a heart.
SPEAKER_07I didn't work at it closely. What what did you dislike about it? Because you've you've mentioned a number of times, just like how irritated you felt by this book, where Chip and I thought this was probably one of the best books that we've done so far on this podcast. This book was a relief. After wading through 500 pages of Rouge V and like 700 pages of that Falong Gong book and like the bullshit in the TB Joshua book. Like this was this was a tight 100 pages. It was right away hooked me. And I'd love to read the opening passage after we get your answer, but like it hooked me right away with the first couple pages and the rest of the book. I'm like, I love this guy. This guy is like, he he's got this kind of like angry nerd vibe, like comic book guy on The Simpsons, kind of like this hostile incel sort of vibe. Like for a guy who who claims that he gets a lot of loving and smooching from his twin flame. He sounds like a guy who's never touched a boob in his life. So, like, what what was it about this book that irritated you so much?
SPEAKER_06Firstly, he's smooching God. Let's just like let's try like stick to the facts. Not just some hot babe, not just some hot babe. Um, the I don't know. Some guy who's the messiah who calls himself Jeff? Like, fucking pick a better name.
SPEAKER_07He changed his last name to Divine.
SPEAKER_06Like he claims to have inf infinite power, but he lives in Lilanao County in northern Michigan. Like, seriously?
SPEAKER_07Like, fuck off. Yeah, but that's not where he started the he started the cult in a cool jungle hut. Can I let if you'll allow me.
SPEAKER_05They started the cult in Sedona, I believe.
SPEAKER_07Okay, but it when he starts the book, he's living in a cool jungle hut in Hawaii. I'd love to read for you guys. I condensed the first few paragraphs of the book, and and this is like, as I said, this got me hooked right from the beginning. So this is right at the beginning of the book. She messaged me that night. You horny? I blinked at my computer screen. This woman is ridiculous. Always, I replied while brushing her off. What kind of woman messages a man for the first time like that? I have so many other women interested in me, and she doesn't even look like America's next top model. I ignored her the best I could, but she wanted me to pursue her. I thought to myself, yeah, tough luck, cookies. I'm busy with nine million other women pursuing me. But the conversation with her continued. Within 30 minutes of talking to her, I had done something I'd never done before in my 26 years of babe hunting. I asked her to marry me. This was half a joke at the time. But looking back, I realized there was something different about this cookie chick. But anyway, she was cool and we were just going to be friends. She lived half the Pacific Ocean away, and I lived in the babe capital of Hawaii. I didn't even bother trying to girlfriend zone her, but I had fun talking with her. I'm a guy who had long hair, was almost naked all the time, and I lived in my own little jungle palace built from bamboo I cut down. I felt like women should be pursuing me. But then she offered me a psychic card reading. I was a sucker for psychic card readings, and it was the most accurate reading I ever received. She was the clearest psychic I'd ever talked to. And then he goes on to say later on, I'm not a woo-woo kind of guy, which is that's bullshit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Awful. But the the you you point out, I was actually going to read out the exact same quote, but for slightly different reasons. Firstly, because if it's the book is presented as being written by Jeff and Shalia, but it's very clearly written almost entirely by Jeff, right?
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_06And the number of times he does those little like negative comments, like those little petty insults towards this person who's supposed to be about her. Yeah, it's just constant. Like that point, she doesn't exactly look like America's next top mom. Have you seen this fucking pig? Like it's it's like be nice.
SPEAKER_07Later in the book, he tells her that like he doesn't even like her. Yeah. Because it's part of his like brutal honest, like his commitment to brutal honesty. He says, you know, I don't like you. There's a lot of things that you do that disgust me.
SPEAKER_05And when he says that, it's like three paragraphs later, he's like, by the way, when you're being when you're being brutally honest, you don't need to be mean or anything. Just the chapter sitting at the dinner table with your wife, and you're like, I don't like you at all, by the way.
SPEAKER_07As a person, I know the first thing you could say. I love you, but you disgust me.
SPEAKER_09Caspian, wait, so your favorite book before this was Sean Avery, and now, and this is one of the top ones, you really are a romantic.
SPEAKER_07I am a romantic. I I liked I like this one. I like the Siemen Retention book, and I like the Sean Avery romance book. And maybe, you know, I'm the only single guy um on the Piece of Ship Book Club Executive Committee. So maybe that's something to do with it. But yeah, this book really I I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_05Could be you just dream of settling down with a girl from small town Ontario. Some babe was gonna smooch me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. There's actually lots of great parts in this book. And like my favorite thing about this book is that there's a lot of blank pages and like empty white spaces. Like it actually reminds me of when I was a student and I'd have a stack of readings to do, and I'd look at them like just hoping that the last 10 pages were all citations. So I was flipping through this book, and then you see like a couple empty pages, it's like, oh thank fuck. And you just flip through it faster.
SPEAKER_05It's funny the citations at the end are further reading, it's just all their own materials and like their own website. Um, but you know, uh, another thing is that like this guy, like he has a very limited vocabulary, and the whole book is written in this like poor kind of conversational prose. And it like the voice, his voice really reminded me of like if a kind of like if a guy that just finished high school wrote a book. And then what's really funny is he has all these sections where he's channeling, where God is speaking through him, and there's like there's no effort to change the voice that he's writing in in those sections, and so it's just it's just him again. And it's like, oh yeah, the this chapter is written by Jesus himself, Jesus or God. I think he uses them interchangeably, and then like there's even parts where he like kind of forgets that he's channeling and we'll just like continue on talking about like, yeah, me and uh Shalia, blah blah blah. And it's like, wait, like where does God end and where do you begin?
SPEAKER_06He is good. He he also does a really funny thing, which reminds me both of Li Hongzhu, the fellow and gong guy, and also Pete Hegseth, which is to kind of have a little section being very clear that you know why you won't enjoy the book. Like Pete Hegseth says very clearly, you won't enjoy this book because it's gonna rock your mind. He was right. And Li Hong Zhu was like, oh wow, that my concepts are so so complex that I'm gonna fuck up all the grammar and spelling uh because of how complex. And and Jeff does that in this book too, basically saying you're not gonna enjoy this book because it's it's going to, you know, it can only speak to a balanced mind, and you don't have a balanced mind. So you're gonna experience a lot of discomfort while you're reading this book. It's just a really weird thing that's a commonality in the books we've read, like warning you you're not gonna enjoy it.
SPEAKER_07It's trying to speak to both hemispheres of your brain. And I forgot about that. Naturally passing through this discomfort is a necessary experience, which indicates that you that your mind has been properly magnetized and attuned to higher vibrational energies.
SPEAKER_09Can I ask, was this book like the springboard for the cult, or were they already like a well-founded cult and then they wrote this book? They were up and running.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. So they started as running like a couple's YouTube channel. So this was midway through that.
SPEAKER_07I I assume they must like at least had a Facebook page. So and after after reading this book, one of the things they do is recommend joining their Facebook community, which I did. I don't know, like, I don't use Facebook ever. Like, right after I joined, my mom messaged me on Facebook Messenger because she's the only one I know who uses it. And she's like, I see you're on Facebook. Do you want to connect sometime baba? I was like, Holy shit, did all my Facebook contacts just say that I joined Plains Universe? That's too funny.
SPEAKER_05I joined their Discord because they've making a Minecraft mod where they're trying to lure people into their uh trying to get the kids, yeah, with their Minecraft mod. But that's you know what I did do though is I reached out to someone connected to the documentaries because there was there is a document that's featured in them that is like their internal guidelines for their coaches and things like that. There's a few pages of it shown in the documentary. So I messaged and I was like, hey, like is that publicly available? Or is there any way you could share that document with us? And they're like, sure, like what outlet are you representing? I'm like, uh uh well of them. I'm like, yeah, it's called the Piece of Shit Book Club. And then, yeah, sure enough, no, no fruit communication.
SPEAKER_06It's bias from the main the lane. I mean, it's fair, I think. I think we Caspian you started telling this the story of how they first met, and they that story continues a little bit later in the book, but it continues at like they actually meet at the Comfort Inn, where they've arranged after they've been meeting talking online, they arrange to meet at the Comfort Inn, but he also makes the point of saying that this isn't his first time doing this. Like I was nervous because I've been in this exact spot before doing the exact same thing. It's like you've invited multiple weird women from the internet to meet at the Comfort Inn.
SPEAKER_07And not only has he he invited a woman before, but she stood him up last time. And so this is in the first 35 pages or so, it's revealed that even though he claims he's got nine million women chasing after him in the Babe capital of Hawaii, by his own admission, he's gone to California three times to chase after women. The first time it was a girl he was briefly dating. He goes to California. She clearly doesn't want him to be there. She didn't want him to come in the first place, and he leaves dejected. The second time he flies out there, and I guess she just did like a walk by at the comfort inn, saw like this neck bearded lunatic standing there, like, you know, with his his flip-flops and his uh rollerbag, just like nope. Because he gets stood up, and um, yeah, the third time he's uh his twin flame, uh and they're forever united in uh in in union after that. But yeah, the guy's a knob.
SPEAKER_05It's like a long history of him, you know, I guess what having like uh doing roleplay sexting and tarot card readings with women for a few months and then going to meet them. That seems to be the background of him and Shalia. You know, in the book, all those things serve as his like story of how you have through a series of failed relationships, you'll eventually find your twin flame, which is important because they're trying to sell this to people who are miserable and have had yeah, you know, uh in the midst of a failed relationship or just leaving one, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_07His they call them his false twin flames. If you if you think of like what your the twin flame is such a profound soul, not even soulmate, your soul DNA match that you would think that your false twin flames are going to be this long drawn out, you know, 10-year, tumultuous marriage. But when he describes his false twin flame, it's like just some lady he dated for a month who then like shluffed him off. And he's like, I thought she was the one, but alas.
SPEAKER_06And that quite, I mean, I'll give one credit to Jeff, since he's clearly the author, about this book. Contrary to many of the other books we've read, this book is actually organized thematically, and it there's an almost intuitive structure to the book. So credit to him for that. Um, because the first section is, you know, we've already touched on that. What are the twin flames? Chapter two is the question um that you know, Chip just mentioned, how do I find my twin flame? So for us who are reading this book, hoping to find love, uh, how do we actually go about finding them? And lucky for you, Jeff knows how to do it. And even luckier for Jeff is in order to find your twin flame, you need a divine channel who is basically a person who has a connection to God or possibly is God, who can then tell you who your twin flame is. And that's basically Jeff. Jeff is telling you he's got the innate ability to be able to identify who your twin flame is. Um, and sometimes he might identify a twin flame and it's some piece of shit you don't even like, but you just got to trust him on this one because he knows a lot more than you. He's the divine channel who can determine mother, father, god's decisions.
SPEAKER_07But there is an exercise that he lists in the book where supposedly you can find your own twin flame. And it's it's the part of the philosophy that perhaps is the most troubling or the most bizarre because it's all the underlying concept is just like total love all the time, regardless of anything. So you do this exercise, and it's just there's nothing to it. You just sort of you know imagine in your head who who are you talking to, and then that's your twin flame. I'm simplifying it, but that's basically it. And then you focus all of your love and adulation on this person, regardless of how they respond. And if they're married, too bad for them, uh, and maybe too bad for you as well. But you're to continue projecting your love towards them regardless of how they respond. So essentially it's a you know, it's a recipe. For stalking somebody. Yeah. Might be a married coworker, might be somebody, you know, the checkout cashier at the supermarket you like going to. But that's the basic formula is just pursue this person at all costs.
SPEAKER_09That seems like a lot of work. And I'm wondering if I can just pay Jeff to tell me who my twin flame is just to confirm. That would be a lot easier.
SPEAKER_05You got it.
SPEAKER_09Good news.
SPEAKER_06Good news for you. There's links in the book.
SPEAKER_05Awesome. Yeah, that's basically it. Jeff and Shale can accelerate this process for you. Exactly. You don't have to wait 10 years for this person's marriage to end. He can make sure it ends two in two years, maybe even six months, and then they'll come, they'll come to you.
SPEAKER_06Exactly. So that's, you know, again, the book's organized thematically. We've talked about what are twin flames, how do I find my twin flame? And the next question is, of course, how will I know when I've met my twin flame? And fortunately for you, Jeff's got nine key indicators of success. Uh, and as a man who's in love, I'm actually gonna put myself up to the test here to see if my love for my twin flames really holds up to the test. I'm I uh I'm of course my twin flame is Caspian Rivers. So I want to put I want to put our love to the test and and see if it passes.
SPEAKER_07We did agree like 10 years ago, even before you met your wife to be partners after watching um Paint Your Wagon that night.
SPEAKER_06So Yeah, we're not partners, but we are partners. Pardoners. Um so the first indicator is your twin flame will feel familiar to you. Nobody in this world feels as familiar and as comfortable as your twin flame. And my argument in favor of this point is that within a couple days of meeting you, Caspian, I already knew all of your bathroom habits, which included the fact that you only dropped a deuce about once a week and that your your stools were like 10 inches long and black as night.
SPEAKER_07That is 100% true at the time. I've since incorporated a healthy amount of textured vegetable protein into my diet. So the trains are running on time, but that was definitely true at the time.
SPEAKER_05Well, do you think connecting with your twin flame helped your belt movements? There you go. Could have been.
SPEAKER_07Are you running regular, Dr. Dashington?
SPEAKER_06It's it's it's hard to tell. Is it the semen retention? Is it connecting with your partner? I mean, who knows? The second indicator is your twin flame will share the same vision for for your life as you do. And my vision for for your life, uh, Caspian, is is sitting in a Filipino high-rise running chicken delivery scams and drinking two $2 cocktails. Does that sort of match your vision?
SPEAKER_07I'm proud to say that that sounds a lot like my current lifestyle.
SPEAKER_06You know, there's there's some more, some of them are a bit boring. One of them is your two twin flame will always genuinely enjoy your company no matter what you're doing together. I mean, the last time we hung out, I'm pretty sure we got drunk on Bulgarian beer and watched the entire Highlander series. Uh, had a good time.
SPEAKER_09How can he say how can he say that and then also say, I don't like my wife?
SPEAKER_06I don't know.
SPEAKER_07Well one of the eight keys is also back to my my uh earlier point is the persistence mandate, uh, juice for the journey. So persistence is described as the quote engine that keeps a person trucking forward even when you're extremely and obscenely upset or facing the same roadblock repeatedly.
SPEAKER_05Just to what you were saying, Jane, those are called upsets, by the way. Every relationship has upsets. And uh and so you might have a little upset in your relationship. They use a baby term for this for some reason. Yeah, and you have a TIFF.
SPEAKER_07And that that upset is uh is inherently internal. So anytime you have uh you think it's an external conflict with your twin flame, it's actually something that's misaligned within yourself. Upsets are considered manifestations of separation consciousness or the illusion that you're separate from your partner or the divine. So every sort of external irritation, as part of their mirroring exercise, which is sort of the central practice of twin flames, you're to channel that back inside and look within yourself as to what's causing the blockage and how can you apply more love to overcome it.
SPEAKER_05And it's a very simple exercise. You write down who's upsetting you, what they're doing, and then you write it down again with your name in the place. Uh so for example, if Caspian is upset that Jane never reads a book for the book club, um, he would sit down and he would say, you know, I never read a book for the book club. And you would reflect on that statement, and perhaps he'd go, you know, maybe I should be so prepared, so over prepared, that even if Jane doesn't, then uh then the podcast will still proceed. Um but they basically claim this exercise can like cure all PTSD and anything, which I think every everything. Yeah. I would suggest it, and they say it's scientifically proven as well as spiritually proven. But I I have a feeling that maybe it has a little bit of limitations when it comes to um, let's say, worse things that people could be dealing with in their lives. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and it's it's kind of like that the the mirror exercise, uh, as of course they call it, is it's it's like couched in this language of like self-acceptance. And it kind of sounds like you're doing like like there's like the mindful practice of like meta-loving kindness where you focus on yourself or another person and just focus on positives and channeling love either for the other person or yourself. And that sounds nice, but the implication is always if you're not achieving the aim of pure self-love, it's because you're failing and you're doing it right, which is actually really, really different from like Buddhist meditation and mindful practices, which are built on the idea that suffering is a part of life, and it doesn't matter what you do, you're always gonna have suffering unless you achieve Buddha state, which you're almost certainly not going to. But for Jeff and Shali's crew, it's basically keep doing the mirror exercise, you keep fucking it up, you gotta do it more. And another gripe, one of the reasons I hate this book, is you can explain the mirror exercise in about three fucking sentences. It takes up like 50 pages of the book. I know. Like no joke.
SPEAKER_07It's half the book, it's awful.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it it really is like setting up because it's like a something to introduce people to their courses to pay long term for and things, it's really obviously just setting up something where they it's the the participant is like constantly blaming themselves for their own issues, and then you know, uh Jeff and Shale can continue, can scold them. Like if anything's going wrong, it's like, well, it's clearly something you're not doing right. And and so it's it's it's about like sort of building a dependency on the on the guru.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. I think you're spot on. I realize I missed a spot. We we I we read out some of the the signs for how you know it's your twin flame. They've also got, and this is you know news for for those of us who are you know in relationships in the in the in the club, you got nine signs for when it's not your twin flame. So so have a listen. I'll read them out and see if any of these have been happening in your lives. Number one, they abandon you. Number two, they lie to you, they don't share your vision for the future, they don't share your core values, they hide their true selves, they do not create a vision for your life, they prevent you from going deeper, they're not interested in helping you do work on yourself, and the very a very nice and clear one, if they're not the person you're looking for. If they're not the person you're looking for, then they're not your twin flame. Easy peasy.
SPEAKER_09Thank God we have Jeff writing this book for us. But if he tells me who my flame is, that has to be the one that I'm looking for, even if it's not the one I'm looking for.
SPEAKER_06Exactly.
SPEAKER_09Even if you don't like her.
SPEAKER_06And notice, notice that's not one of the nine. You don't like your partner.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05But yes, that's that's the catch, Jane.
SPEAKER_06Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05I wanted to talk about the masculine and feminine strict binary.
SPEAKER_06I don't know if that's jumping ahead, bow or no, no, dive, yeah, that's that's dive in that. That's a core element.
SPEAKER_05This is a really odd, odd thing about their belief system. Because they're they're sort of superficially say they're pro-LGBTQ and so on. But in the twin flame theory, it is a masculine-feminine dichotomy. So every soul is either 100% masculine or 100% feminine. Uh twin flame pairs are always one masculine and one feminine polarity. There is no exception. God created us this way because God is both masculine and feminine, and because the communion of these two energies is so juicy. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, this is I don't know. God did it because it's juicy. It's like this really camp God. You know, he's like, wow, it'd be so juicy. It's like it's like Nathan played by Nathan Lane. Um, but um and and so what he says, so this is like where this comes up as as an issue, let's say later in the organization. Um, but he says, just because you are a feminine energy, so you can be a feminine energy in a male body or uh uh may masculine energy in a female body. And so this is like there are like in in many cultures, you know, like uh third gender concepts or things like that. Even in what's it uh in the Philippines, there's there's there's like the bacla or something.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's uh if you're if you're trans or you're gay, it's sort of looked at more like a third gender than in the West, where it's you know, just sort of continuum of genders. I don't know.
SPEAKER_05But but what they imply though is that there is, it means there's something out of sync. So, you know, it is essential for you to lovingly. I'm reading from him here. I'm not sure if this was God, him channeling God or him speaking. I'm not clear on that, but uh, it is essential for you to lovingly accept yourself for where you are right now and lovingly accept your twin flame. Uh in divine truth, you can easily transform your body into the one that aligns most appropriately with your polarity. Our bodies are made up mostly of water. Water can flow and change easily. Be reminded of this anytime you're upset at your body. It's an extension of your being, it is not your being. And then again, this is the the juiciness. If you feel you are a masculine energy expressing yourself as a masculine energy, this expression is what will ultimately feel juiciest to you. Um, so it's this is a path to the juice, yeah. But they're they're really but they're quite specific on this thing that for example, if you're if you're uh like a man attracted to another man, that's because there's like a female spirit living inside you. This sort of thing. And you may have a twin spirit that or sorry, uh twin flame that is the same gender as you, let's say, but there's something uh out of harmony there. Uh one of you needs to potentially change your gender.
SPEAKER_07And one of the main ways that you can tell which gender your flame is is how you like to make love. Do you like I'm not making this up, I'm just reading a book. Do you basically like do you like giving it or do you like yeah, do you like giving it or do you like taking it? And if you're someone who likes to give physical love, then you're masculine. If you're someone who's like a receptive lover, then you're female.
SPEAKER_05I hate when this guy discusses sex. There's something like that disgusts me about it. Yeah, it's this like this smug, enlightened spiritual orgasms from like if you if you look these guys up, you're like, I don't want to think about that.
SPEAKER_07Um they're both hideous looking.
SPEAKER_05Okay, yeah, and I just I I but that that like really permeates with the whole book is this kind of like, you know, the sex is gonna be so good. You know what I mean? And it's like in this, like you see, it's it's in this like cheese, he has this cheesy candor that's like if you worked with like a like a sales guy at an office and the kind of guy that would like go like sneak a sneak attack back massage. Oh, you feel so tense. Like that kind of I don't know if you ever worked with a guy that did that to you, but man, that's workplace harassment.
SPEAKER_07I never experienced that.
SPEAKER_05I it I agree. Yeah, that's yeah, I I I took it up with HR. They didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_07Even when I was 12 and didn't know anything about women or sex, I didn't sound as cringy as this guy does when he discusses women and sex. Like there's something uniquely just like gross and cringy about the way that he does it. And you're right, it's some part of it is tied into this new age kind of philosophy and language that he uses. And part of it is just he doesn't seem like a guy who's matured past the age of 14.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's like people talk about getting the ick. Like, I I got the ick from this book the whole time.
SPEAKER_06He's a runaway for like winner of biggest wiener of uh of the next year. Oh, of the century, potentially. I was thinking about the arbitrary.
SPEAKER_07We'll have to retire the category because there'll be no more winners after this guy takes the prize.
SPEAKER_06Going back to the the point like that that Chip was making earlier about uh you know about the issue of like the divine feminine and the divine masculine, and how in some couples it can be, you know, cishet couples, it can be same-sex couples um who aren't sure if they're the divine masculine, divine feminine. Jane, I'm sure you're asking yourself, what do I do if I don't know which of those two I am, or which of those two I should be, or my partner should be? Well, you just pay Jeff and he'll tell you what it is.
SPEAKER_01Perfect.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I love these easy wins. Yeah, and even if he tells you that you're a w a man when you don't feel like one, uh, you still gotta you're still a man. And so you don't have a choice. Or if he tells you you're a woman and you don't feel like a woman and you don't want to be a woman, uh tough. Jeff's already told you, and you gotta follow it.
SPEAKER_05And this is I don't know if did you had like additional media on this stuff that you were gonna play or anything, Po?
SPEAKER_06Not on that, no. No, I was going to play a clip. Now I just don't want to, to be honest with you, but I was gonna play a clip of their more recent, um, one of the more recent videos, because they both recently came out as neurodivergent, and so they've got this like two-hour long podcast about their neurodivergence. And his his proof that he's neurodivergent is that he's very gifted and he understands things like just immediately. Um he's very sensitive, which means he has a you know. I honestly I don't want to play it, it's it's painful to listen to.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, not a tangent too much, but it's super weird how that neurodivergent has become like a popular kind of trope in in media right now.
SPEAKER_05It's definitely trendy. It's definitely blatantly an excuse for behavior from grifters.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. And guys shouting the n-word at award ceremonies.
SPEAKER_05Okay, thankfully that didn't happen to us today.
SPEAKER_06I saw Caspian twitching. Caspian was like, he's about to do it.
SPEAKER_07I had to mute myself for a second.
SPEAKER_05But so they run into this issue over time with so they have all these people that are uh subscribed to their their books and their courses and things, right? And it ends up being like 80% women, and the their programs are not effective. So what they end up doing is matching up people within the programs, 80% women. So they basically just start telling a whole bunch of the women, actually, you're a man and you're in love with this other woman, uh, and like pressuring people to arbitrarily assigning a new gender to people and then pressuring them to change genders. So that's like what it kind of transforms into later, which is just fucking insane. And what is weird to me is like, where's the conservative outrage about these guys specifically? Like I was looking about I was looking this up a bunch online, and they're doing what like Hegseth thinks the military's doing under Obama.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Should we stop? We can we can talk spoilers now. Uh, I think that's everything we have to say about the book itself. We can talk spoilers about what these guys actually do and how fucking awful they are.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and I'm excited about this because so I I had never heard about these guys before Dr. Dashnan suggested this book. I only read the book. I'm not familiar with any of the news around them. I understand that there's some documentaries that they might be some shifty fellas or some accusations that have been made about them. So yeah, I'm really excited to dig into this and see what people are saying and where the controversy is.
SPEAKER_09Um before we get into that, I just wanted to ask: so, what was the final kind of like conclusion tie-up for this book? Was there anything at the end of it? Because it seemed like we had we had how to find it or like what it is, how to find it, how to when it's not, where does it go from there?
SPEAKER_06Just before yeah, great question. Fantastic question because it also segues into what we're going to talk about in terms of like the grift and things that happen. Is the last, I want to say 50 or 60 pages, which I'll be honest, I burned through real quick because it was fucking awful. It is it's a success story of a couple named Colby and Keeley, um, who are senior, senior members of the the twin flames, I forget what they call themselves, the Church of Union or whatever. And it basically just goes through their history of their relationship. I noted when reading it, shockingly, that section isn't structured according to the steps of success that Jeff notes earlier, um, which seems like a little bit of a thematic oversight. But it's it's really dull, it's really uninteresting. It's just a normal, boring couple kind of meeting and then saying, yeah. But it gets but it gets people into the cult.
SPEAKER_07That's kind of the finale. But it it is a guy who is engaged and has a one-year-old at home who leaves his partner to pursue the lady at the meat counter.
SPEAKER_05I think they left. I think their first relationships ended before this whole thing started, though.
SPEAKER_06Sorry, he left his partner or his partner?
SPEAKER_07His partner, you know, you don't leave your partner.
SPEAKER_06Okay, good.
SPEAKER_05If you've seen Paint Your Wagon, have you um were were you gonna get were you gonna cover like who this person ends up being as well? Keely? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Keely, I think, yeah, maybe that's a like a really good segue. So Keely is like she joined the Twin Flames universe, whatever they call themselves, the Church of the Union when she was really young. Um, and she was kind of then pushed into this relationship with this guy, uh, in in her own words, um, even though she didn't really want to be with him. She was young, by her own account, very young, naive, lonely, vulnerable, um, pushed into this marriage, which she then felt compelled to make work and then became kind of a senior like member of the group. Like, firstly, they become a coach, and you become a coach by sp spending something like 20,000, I think, on online classes, which goes to Jeff, obviously. Uh, but then she became like a key member in the organization. So since then, she's left and she's become one of the most public figures against the twin flames uh church, and and Jeff specifically. Every documentary you watch has her front and center. And to her credit, she's she's she's open and honest about the fact that she suffered abuse and was victimized and you know, grifted heavily by these guys, but she was also an abuser herself because she was a tool of their abuse on other people. So to her credit, she's at least acknowledged that that she then went on to abuse other people.
SPEAKER_05It's really fascinating. She's like, yeah, like you said, she was the main whistleblower. She's the one that's like most heavily featured in any documentaries about them. And I watched all that stuff first before reading this book. And then when I got to this section, I was like, oh, this is crazy. This is 10 years ago when she was in the heart of it. And this was actually probably like the most emotional I've felt reading any of our books because it was just so eerie and kind of sad um reading her documenting her relationship because it's all done in this promotional style. And you see all the red flags in it because it's like sections of her documentary or her diary, rather, sections of her diary at different points while she's getting connected to this guy. And she's like, Oh yeah, like had a great day. Jeff channeled the thoughts of my twin flame to me in a session and explained, you know, explained the intent of him or how he was doing. I got permission from Jeff and Shalia to make contact with the guy. And then like we became the second official harmonious union from them. At one point, there's like a community fundraiser for them that Jeff and Shalia organize. Then she becomes a teacher, she moves up the pyramid. She's talking about how much her life has changed. She's like, I moved out of a shitty place. Now I bought a BMW Merced or sorry, meeting Mercedes-Benz. I got a flew first class to Aspen. I bought a house. And it's like you see her uh just like rising up the ranks, like and you know, completely not like oblivious, but but you know, just in a in a totally presented totally positive style. And it was just like very dark and sad to read. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you you know from the like from the documentary as well. I mean, there's lots of documentaries, but they're you realize very quickly that somehow someone like they they did most of it's a very contemporary grift, right? Most of the meetings are all on Teams, it's all online. Um, and it's it's Jeff basically telling everyone what to do. And someone had the foresight to record it all and download it all. So you've got all this video footage of how Jeff actually leads and manages. And he's just openly kind of a horrible bully to people. But you also see that the people involved are, you know, as Chip already pointed out, are disproportionately female, but also very clearly disproportionately like lonely, vulnerable, um, sometimes very young and naive, sometimes a bit older and and just lonely, um, that are the people that they're that are basically being victimized. And they they have this, he he he basically gets them to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go through all the coaching and online courses and stuff at the same time that they all work for his business for free, and he doesn't pay them, and it's openly a business until later when he realizes he can change to a religion for tax purposes, all the while they have to work full time jobs to pay pay for all this stuff. And on top of it, Jeff is constantly. Posting these videos on YouTube about how rich and successful he is. Like just posting videos of like his new car getting delivered and shit like that. Yeah, here's my Porsche.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's weird because it's them that's this maintaining this lifestyle that they're promising. Um and it I I don't know. Like I I don't want to shit on people because when you get roped into something like that, it's it's hard to see through it, right? But it's it's like it's just it's crazy how uh obnoxious it is. Um you know, sort of flexing on these people that are that you're uh a vampire toward.
SPEAKER_07So these guys have become financially successful from this grift.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're very rich. One of their most recent YouTube videos is like check here are driving around our new Rolls Royce. They're immensely successful.
SPEAKER_07Because when the book's written, he he doesn't have any money. They she says, I think explicitly in the book that you know one of the things that she looked for in a partner was someone who was financially successful and stable, but Jeff hasn't achieved that yet, but they know that's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_05Oh, and it drives it drives me nuts, not just for moral reasons, like questions of morality, but also they're so mediocre. Like there's just nothing exceptional about them, the the the promise of the book, the writing. It they embody this like millennial cringe as well, uh, where they're the kind of people that would be like, I don't know, like I do my happy dance when I get bacon. Right.
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean, I've said it so many times. That's what drives me nuts about these scammers, is like it's such like such mediocre, transparent scams become so successful. Between the four of us, we put our heads together. I'm sure we could run a top scam. But I think you you almost like maybe you have to be dumb to do it on top of uh I think you have to be like a maybe even a little bit of a self-believer. Like a part of you has to buy into at least part of what you're selling. Like that what makes for a great salesman. And I don't know that any of us would be able to convincingly sell a grift.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, empathy often requires intelligence. And when you lack often people who lack intelligence also lack empathy. And so if you don't have that thinking about the other person, what they're going through, then you're more able to manipulate them without cause. But in terms of like their grift and their level of grift, they're like to refer back to our Pulitzer Prize nominees, they're not at like they're not at like Elizabeth Gilbert money, they're at like Sean Avery money. So they're doing pretty damn good for themselves, but they're still living in like rural, rural Michigan.
SPEAKER_07And we're and we're still at piece of shit book club money, which is zero. So I don't forget how to monetize this grip.
SPEAKER_05It's negative. But yeah, uh they're kind of a contemporary of Rouche V, actually. And it's like um they're kind of like the maybe like early adapters or something of social media, and you know, just being able to like use these networks, it's like it's more like a reflection of the changing economy than any individual product that people are putting out, you know. It's just like they pushed really hard to set up these Facebook groups and like probably like, hey, if you just like direct message people all the day, all day and like harass them to to stay in your group and stuff, you can start to build some momentum, which is quite sad. But you know, you wonder, for example, like today, I think like same with Roosh, like he retired basically. And I feel like really part of the reason he did is that he maybe he can't compete anymore. Yeah, and then I wonder, like, if these guys started this today, would they just be one of five million happy family couple YouTube channels that are, you know, so who knows?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And I guess in terms of like the harm they've caused, the the grift is like the obvious one, just like grifting these poor, poor women of it, of mostly women, not entirely, but mostly of everything they've got. Basically bullying and pressuring people to to transition their gender and and successfully bullying people uh into doing it. And you know, there in one of the documentaries I watched, the Netflix one, there was an interesting point where they kind of say, Yeah, it's you know, it's it's not for us to say as outsiders if someone's transition was genuine or if they were bullied into it or not. But one of people they interview in the in the documentary basically makes the point of, you know, every video of a person who's transitioned has them coming out and saying, like, I'm transitioning so I can become the person I'm supposed to be, which that observer then points out, but that's not what transitioning is supposed to be. It's not you're not you're not transitioning to who your society tells you to be. You're supposed to be transitioning to who you are, who you really are, right? And that's a huge difference. It just even that that really stands out. But they've even had members who were like openly saying that they have depression, they have no money to move forward, and they're just told you you need to do the mirroring exercise and you you're doing it wrong, and it's all your fault.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So they had members that commit suicide, they demand people separate themselves from their families and their loved ones, which can sometimes include uh a partner uh or a partner or a child. And yeah, so they've had many people flee. One of the funny parts from the documentary is one one of the, I can't remember who which which member it was, but one of the women leaves. And on their way out the door, they try to do some secret sabotaging. And one of the things they do is they had access to to all of Jeff's online advertising for Facebook and all that sort of stuff. And they basically, without telling him, like secretly changed the location of all that advertising. So it was all targeted to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, which is kind of funny. But I was also just thinking, man, haven't haven't those people suffered enough?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, really. First tuberculosis is Jonathan, now this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And and also in that account from Keeley early on, uh in or sorry, at the end of the book, you know, when she describes herself finding it, she's like living out of her car. She has like health issues, she's like just deciding to move back into repairs because she has like nothing. It's like, oh, and I found this forum online. So she, you know, as they they portray it as a success story, but they accidentally portray like the exact kind of victim that uh the system preys upon, right?
SPEAKER_07That was my impression reading it uh 100% is yeah, this is someone who's incredibly vulnerable, who's coming out of a broken relationship, who has no money, no agency, very little options, living in a car, and get suckered into this movement cult, whatever you want to label it, through a Facebook group. And you think, okay, though that's the kind of people that they're clearly targeting.
SPEAKER_05I wanted to, I don't know if it's a good time now, but I wanted to share uh this interview they did with uh an investigative journalist. So this is from W5, but it's CTV as well. I I assume maybe it's owned by an American firm or something like that.
SPEAKER_07Um W5 is a Canadian investigative news show, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Well, well, there we go. A little bit so that we're
Live Reaction - W5/CTV Interview Clips
SPEAKER_05gonna hit our CanCon quota when we apply for that. When we apply for that grant Council of Arts grant funding, yeah. So there's the original document, uh the kind of big documentary that came out. They received a lot of criticism. Then there is this report about a year later. And this is after Jeff and Shalia have done a bunch of PR spending, PR training and things like that, and they do a sit-down with a proper interview with a journalist. And I think it's really uh uh quite amazing just because of how badly they perform.
SPEAKER_07I'm excited to hear this guy. I tried to get the audio book and couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_02Jeff and Shalia Devine have a long list of allegations against them. They deny every single one and say they are the victims of cancel culture. They look, man.
SPEAKER_07So oh man.
SPEAKER_08We are not uh over-exercising our control to get people to do things that we want them to do. I appreciate this opportunity to be able to share our side of the story, to tell people like you may not believe me.
SPEAKER_02He stops looking at me and makes a direct appeal to camera.
SPEAKER_08Please hear what we have to say. Please listen to our students. They are not brainwashed. This is not a cult. This is a textbook example of cancel culture.
SPEAKER_02Explain that for me.
SPEAKER_08Well, you know, I think she's probably the better person to explain that. She's uh she's immediately to us.
SPEAKER_10And it got shared all around the internet, and it got picked up, and then it just kept snowballing and snowballing.
SPEAKER_02You have described yourself as the master christ.
SPEAKER_08It's a spiritual exploration. And, you know, this cancel culture takes everything super out of context to make it look like I'm some megalomaniac who's using these strange titles to claim power, or they say that I think I'm Jesus. And that's just so silly.
SPEAKER_02But you have said you think you're Jesus.
SPEAKER_08Where do you have me quoted saying, I think I'm Jesus? That's absurd. I've never said that.
SPEAKER_02But he has said this.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not hiding anything. Like I'm literally telling you, I'm Christ. Because God's been telling us, you know, we're the second coming of the Christ.
SPEAKER_10I'm banging the Christ.
SPEAKER_05Picture me to be depicted the cringe millennial style as well.
SPEAKER_07As awful as this guy is, though, there's something kind of refreshing about it. He clearly doesn't have any media training. He's not going into this interview with any kind of strategy. The first softball question they lob at him, he like ducks and lets his hit his wife in the face. Just diverts it to his wife immediately. Oh, so so there's like there's something about his lack of sophistication that that's almost kind of uh endearing.
SPEAKER_05I I don't know about endearing, but it's just it's amazing how badly they they bomb this interview.
SPEAKER_09I really like that. She said, I've been in the Christ and not the Christ has been in me. Okay.
SPEAKER_06In terms of like their media savvy, I will say that one thing like when he just turns and starts speaking directly to the camera, all of their media is basically like that. It's them staring directly into the camera all of the time, so that it has that real effect for I, you know, like like they're speaking to you. That's not just people having a conversation. It's they it like I watched way too much of their content trying to find some good clips.
SPEAKER_05Um, and it's almost entirely both of them staring directly at the camera, which is if you're running something like that, like you have to be in such a bubble after after years of of that kind of thing and and like less direct, you know, direct confrontational conversations where people are going to challenge you, things like that, you know.
SPEAKER_07I used to practice that when I was doing online pitches, just staring directly into the webcam. Because it it apparently there is data that suggests that you're more persuasive and more likely to close business deals through Teams if you make direct eye contact with the webcam.
SPEAKER_10With all the pictures we see depicted of Jesus, he kind of kind of looks that way. And so, like, haha, you know, I'm with Jesus. He's not Jesus. I don't believe that at all.
SPEAKER_08None of my students think I'm Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Have you told people to change genders?
SPEAKER_08We encourage people to explore. And I I hesitate to answer that question in the way that you're I'm feeling led to answer that question, which is yes or no.
SPEAKER_02But the reality is kind of is a yes or no, Jeff. Like it kind of is.
SPEAKER_08There is context here. The answer to your question is we encourage people to explore their spiritual, their inner world. And it's just an invitation to explore.
SPEAKER_02Except in the concerns about twin flames universe, the biggest, most harmful allegation is that you are dictating people's gender and that they are taking it to extreme lengths, including having surgeries and hormone therapies and changing their gender. And so I think it's a fair question. Of course. That's a yes or a no, and there's not really a ton of nuance in it.
SPEAKER_08Great.
SPEAKER_02So is it a yes or a no?
SPEAKER_08We've invited people to explore their gender.
SPEAKER_02And that that invitation to explore gender comes from God?
SPEAKER_08No, it comes from a human talking to a human.
SPEAKER_02No, but do you get the message from God that someone is in the wrong gender?
SPEAKER_08If you could give me a moment to collect myself. Thank you.
SPEAKER_06He's speaking to God.
SPEAKER_05He's doing the mirror exercises.
SPEAKER_08Clearly, an upset. God is a loving being. God wants the best for us. I am not God. I have never claimed to be God.
SPEAKER_02So my question was: do you get a message from God about somebody's gender?
SPEAKER_08It doesn't work that way. No.
SPEAKER_02There's no channeling from God about what someone's gender should be.
SPEAKER_08So we as professionals get intuitive. As professionals. Professional what? Yeah, just you might say. Hey, this might be a good idea. It's explorative. Like this heavy frame is just not the reality.
SPEAKER_02But Jeff, it's a heavy consequence to have kind of a whim that someone might be a different.
SPEAKER_05Just like the idea. That's how professionals work. They're like, you know, hey, why don't we just fucking try this? I don't have any training, man.
SPEAKER_08What if you had a dick? Once again, it's not something that's imposed upon you. You can't impose things upon people on their spiritual journey.
SPEAKER_10We were their like direct guide. They can chose not to do it or not to, you know, like if you have an element of control over them or sway over them.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And they hear you say that, and they know that it will please you.
SPEAKER_08We don't encourage that kind of power dynamic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You don't. No. No. Really?
SPEAKER_01You're my student. You do not school me. You should shut the f up and listen.
SPEAKER_10Your choice has been out of order, so you can make a new choice.
SPEAKER_08We we're very flexible with allowing freedom. But where freedom is abused, it will be taken from you. You probably have seen me yelling at my students. It's not abuse. In fact, people felt really loved and cared for when uh I would yell at them in classes. They felt like someone cares about me enough to yell at me because it's uncomfortable to yell at people. I don't want to do that if I don't have to, but I love these people. And so I put myself on the line in order to be able to um to help people.
SPEAKER_09That is the most blatant abuser. It's insane, right? That's just straight up abuser talk. That's not even trying to hide anything. What the hell?
SPEAKER_05People are lucky if I yell at them. Like I you should be so lucky to be screamed at by me. Answering a question like that in your, you know, your defense, your PR attempt is just is mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_02Yelling at people lets them know that you actually are showing them love.
SPEAKER_08Um, no, but kind of.
SPEAKER_02In this topsy turvy universe, love is expressed in anger, and hate is a consequence of love. Why are you the lightning rod for so much hate?
SPEAKER_08I think because we love people.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't make sense, Jeff. The equation doesn't add up. People who love don't usually receive hate.
SPEAKER_08It's not true. That's not true. Look at history.
SPEAKER_02Okay, tell me.
SPEAKER_10Well, uh, I'm not I'm not the uh Well, you look at, for instance, like a lot of like historical figures like Martin Luther King. I don't know, like I grew up Catholic, so I think of Jesus, you know, like he was just loving everybody, even though it was difficult.
SPEAKER_08When you love people deeply, it um touches parts of their hearts and themselves that um are hurt. And so that can cause that hurt to come out.
SPEAKER_02Hitler just love too much. Initially a deny they set up the church to evade taxes. Did you guys set up the church specifically to avoid taxes?
SPEAKER_08We're the church's largest donor. It's it's designed to support the spiritual community and the spiritual teaching.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Twice in the interview, Jeff out of the blue, starts crying over his love reasons.
SPEAKER_08You know, I grew up Catholic. Now you know the interview is going well. One of the I left the religion in the church because um of their stance on gay marriage. I felt that if two people loved each other, they should be very passionate about this.
SPEAKER_03They should be allowed to get married. I was so beautiful to leave my church. I have so much love for Jesus.
SPEAKER_05No, it's not fucking legit.
SPEAKER_09He's not actually crying. There's no tears or anything. She mentioned that uh they formed a church to avoid taxes. Do they actually have like tax exempt status? They did form a church, yeah. It's like the church. But but but and the government authorized that to be tax exempt. Because not all because you can form a church, like you can say that you're a church, and the government's not gonna be like it's not gonna be like, okay, yeah, you don't have to pay taxes for it.
SPEAKER_05No, they they filed it that way. There's it's like in the there's like videos that you know, a bunch of the videos that are in the documentaries that were like leaked by the whistleblowers or them literally sitting there saying, We should just form a church to dodge taxes. Yeah, like they're yeah, could not be more blatant about it.
SPEAKER_03Wowza. Respect.
SPEAKER_05But I love just twice out of the blue, he starts crying. This is the guy that's a hundred percent masculine, too.
SPEAKER_09I'm can I'm convinced it's the opposite. I think she's the masculine one.
SPEAKER_05Oh, interesting. She's the masculine flame and he's the feminine flame.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_07Well, she's the one that pursued him.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_05True. And just like adding it to him.
SPEAKER_09And she was inside Christ. So yeah, she likes giving it.
SPEAKER_05And they hint at some kind of they're there this this smug hinting at some kind of exceptional sex they've found.
SPEAKER_07Oh, you think he's into butt play? Maybe. I was trying to figure out what kind of archetype this guy was. He's he's this guy is like a fedora wearing malady guy. Yeah. That's this guy.
SPEAKER_05So that's what I've been saying, like he's millennial cringe. It's like a very particular kind of loser that's around our age bracket.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it's very specific. He's like he's a nice guy, but who's actually like just a cringy piece of shit.
SPEAKER_06He's not just smooching the hot babes and getting all juicy with them. He's uh he's trying to treat them like a divine feminine.
SPEAKER_07Right. I got this guy figured out now.
SPEAKER_06This like hour or however long longer that we've been talking with this guy has not shifted my opinion even slightly from the beginning that I fucking hate these guys.
SPEAKER_07I hate this guy, but I still love the book. I mean, uh as you said, you gotta separate the the art from the artist.
SPEAKER_06Um should we close things out with our uh traditional episode ending game? Or do we have any for last thoughts before we do that?
SPEAKER_07Well, only that if we're separating the art from the artist, he's this guy is then the Roman Polanski of romance grifters.
SPEAKER_06I don't know, man. You know more about these diddlers than I do, so I'd I'll I'll bow to your
Is it Worse than Hitler?
SPEAKER_06knowledge.
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, let's play the Hitler game.
SPEAKER_06Okay, well, let's let's play our game of is it worse than Hitler? Uh that's right. This is the game where we use Goodreads metric to see if the book of the week is ranked higher or lower than um Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is rated at 3.18 on Goodreads. Now we actually forgot to do it last week when we did Pete Heggseth, The War on Warriors. So should we start off with uh Pete Heggseth?
SPEAKER_05Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_06Better or worse than Hitler?
SPEAKER_05A Fox News book for Fox News audiences is gonna score better than Hitler.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think so too. Pete Heggseth comes in at 4.1. Confirmed better than Hitler. But the book of the week, Twin Flames, by Jeff and Shalia. Is it better or worse than Hitler?
SPEAKER_07A lot of controversy around this book.
SPEAKER_09This book ranks often in like worst self-help books or like worst books in those lists. Um but I still think it's gonna be higher.
SPEAKER_05I think it may be worse than Hitler because I think they're quite dependent on a fairly small group of people that they like suck the life out of. And broader, you know, whatever mainstream uh exposure they have is people that have seen the documentary.
SPEAKER_07I'm willing to buy that argument. There's way more people who have seen the documentary, maybe didn't even read the book, but just went online to Goodreads afterwards to downvote them. And I would imagine their core group is quite small, whereas um Yeah, I'm going lower than Hitler. These guys are lower than Hitler.
SPEAKER_06Twin Flames is scored. At 3.92 confirmed better than better than Hitler.
SPEAKER_10Wow.
SPEAKER_06I'm also starting to wonder if like we might have to retire this game. Is it worse than Hitler? Because only a couple of the books have actually been worse than Hitler, which is not everything is higher than 3.1, which is very bizarre.
SPEAKER_07Really give Mind Kampf a rough ride.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's not a testament to how badly rated Mein Kampf actually is. It's just weirdly that all of these horrible, horrible books are rated shockingly high.
SPEAKER_09I wonder what the skew of all ratings on Goodreads is, though. It must be very high. It must be like an average of like four or something, because it seems nothing is below three.
SPEAKER_05I think it's a Goodreads issue because three out of five stars seems kind of high for MindConf to me as well.
unknownYeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09The problem isn't with the game or us, it's with Goodreads. Let's just be clear. That's true.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. That's everything from me routing Twin Flames.
SPEAKER_07So thank you so much, Dr. Dashton, for taking us through the fascinating Twin Flames universe and playing a little bit of better or worse than Hitler. Uh before we wrap out today's wrap up today's
Mail Bag & Outro
SPEAKER_07meeting, we just want to go through the mailbag real quick. Uh last week's host had asked people to email in to us at POS Book Club. Uh what's our email address? Had asked us to email us at POSBookclub at gmail.com. We received two emails from our holy macro. Well, before you guys get two erects, both emails are from the same guy. So no.
SPEAKER_04Oh okay.
SPEAKER_07Still. So appreciate that guy. Thanks, guy. Could be. Bray from New Zealand writes, Hello. As a fellow bad book hater and enthusiast, thanks for making my workday more bearable with your podcast that I just discovered. Oh, by the way, the subject matter, not hate mail, sorry, because we had asked people to actually send in angry emails because we thought it'd be funnier. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the worst book I can remember reading. A son of blood and ruin. I was blind to the AX and Y and Z red flag because I desperately wanted a gender swapped Zorro who could become a Panther fighting colonial colonialist to be good. It was so bad. I also don't think the author had ever seen a cat movie from the way her Panther is written. But then he emailed back to say, Whoops, just started your Ep One, where you lay out that POS Book Club, what POS Book Club is, and maybe dunking on this is not a vibe for you. So I don't have you guys ever read a Son of Blood and Ruin?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean getting through episode one is a real slog, so rumor has it on the streets of 16th century New Spain, there's a new vigilante in town restoring serving justice. This reimagining of Zorro featuring a heroic warrior sorceress weaves Mesoamerican mythology and Mexican history two decades after the Spanish conquest into a swashbuckling historical debut fantasy. I haven't heard of it. Um this is actually on Goodreads a 3.19, which so it's basically the same as Minecraft according to the Goodreads community.
SPEAKER_09Uh that might be one worth thinking of it. This looks like it's been published. It doesn't look like we'd be picking on anybody.
SPEAKER_07We had said in episode one that we don't want to do books that are intentionally bad or Chuck Tingle kind of literature. So I don't know if that's maybe what he means.
SPEAKER_06Oh, is that what this is? I see. Yeah. If it's trying to be so bad, it's good, then it's it's not for us at all. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05I'll have to do some, you know, some additional research, but might be one worth looking at.
SPEAKER_07Well, thanks so much for your email, Bray. We really appreciate you taking the time to write us to everyone else. Uh thank you so much for attending today's meeting. I hope it was as important as I had claimed it was going to be at the beginning. Uh until next time, I am Caspian Rivers for Chip Wilson, Jane Lynch, and Dr. Bo Dashington. Like, comment, subscribe, drop us a message, visit our website, POSbookclub.com. We're on Reddit, our Pizza Chip Book Club. You can hit up our email address, POSBook Club at gmail.com. To all book club members, you're beautiful. I love you. I'll see you at the next meeting. Good night.