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April 22, 2023 - Conspirituality
40:28
Brief: Unmasking Liana Shanti (w/Jennings Brown)

Jennings Brown is becoming the Dr. Who of cult journalism. Every few years he pops up on a very different planet in the cultiverse, and tries to repair the timeline.  These days he’s deep into the story of a cult leader who seems to have no “presence” at all. Liana Shanti has managed to recruit about 180 women into her lucrative fever dream of Satanic Panic, recovered memories, starvation diets, and family destruction—all from behind a keyboard and a podcast microphone.  Who is Liana Shanti, and why isn’t she Liane Wilson any more?  Show Notes Inside Liana Shanti’s Lemurian Mystery School — Jennings Brown Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hello, everybody.
My name is Matthew Remsky, and I'm here with a brief called Unmasking Liana Shanti with friend of the podcast, Jennings Brown.
Jennings Brown, welcome back to Conspirituality.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm just going to do a few housekeeping notes before we chat.
Everybody, you can follow us on Instagram at ConspiritualityPod.
We are findable individually on Twitter, and you can find us on Patreon.
Also, please pre-order our book.
That's including the audiobook, which is now available, performed by yours truly, through the link at the bottom of the show notes for this episode.
I've got an endorsement here from Julian Field, co-host of QAnon Anonymous.
Julian writes, Intelligent and compassionate, Conspirituality is full of insight rooted in direct experience and rigorous analysis.
Beres, Remsky, and Walker are deeply familiar with and curious about their subject, an essential and unique book that captures both the yearning for and devastating effects of Conspirituality as a phenomenon and a way of life.
Thank you, Julian.
Okay.
Jennings, here's what I'm going to say.
I think you're kind of becoming the Doctor Who of cult journalism because every few years you pop up on a different planet and timeline in the cultiverse.
So for instance, you journeyed to Costa Rica to record The Gateway and that made you the top decoder of Teal Swan and That meant you had to track down how she digitized, like, her charismatic talents and bridge the gap between, you know, old school, in real life cultism and then recruitment by SEO.
Then you did a podcast called Revelations, where, I don't know, did it feel like you sort of went back in time when you traveled to Oregon House in Northern California?
A bit, yeah, I guess.
Yeah, it does very much, yeah, feel frozen and I guess it would probably be 1996 was their heyday.
Right, but I mean, it's this lavish compound and vineyards belonging to Robert Earl Burton, who's a millionaire dandy, a sex abuser, also a doomsday prophet who takes dictation from 44 angels, and then he stages sumptuous balls on the eve of whatever they tell him the apocalypse is going to happen.
And he calls the compound Apollo.
It's all decked out with Millions of dollars in antiques, marble statues and fountains.
He believes that he's created the ideal platonic environment for his followers to experience what he calls Presence with a capital P, which apparently peaks when he has sex with them.
So now you're 11 months deep, I think, into the story of a very different cult leader And unlike Teal Swan and very much unlike Robert Earl Burton, this is somebody with like almost no presence at all in the real world.
Because Liana Shanti has managed to recruit about 180 women into her lucrative fever dream of satanic panic, recovered memories, starvation diets, and then all the family destruction that goes along with these things.
And she's done it all from behind a keyboard and a podcast microphone.
And as far as I know, none of her followers have ever met her, but I might be wrong about that.
There is no retreat in Costa Rica, there's no manor house in wine country, so they don't meet with her because Liana Shanti also isn't her name, and she has these kind of airbrushed profile pics on her socials that aren't hers.
It's like she's a real QAnon-era cult leader.
She's a near-total LARP.
So, is this a fair framing to start with, Jennings?
What is your general thumbnail for Liana Shanti and how would you describe her place in the cult leader pantheon?
I mean, I do think she has a lot of similarities to Teal Swan.
I mean, that's how I first found out, is people reached out and were saying that she was Teal 2.0, using a very similar playbook.
She's also kind of the anti-Teal, in that Teal is very, you know, she very much wants to be famous, and she really wants, you know, she said she wants to be, you know, as big as the Pope, or like Oprah.
Right.
But Liana is, she's kind of a She has a big online presence, but she was sort of a ghost at first.
Who was really this person?
Her Instagram has 22.7 thousand followers.
I'm not entirely sure how many of those are real, but her hardcore dedicated group of They're called Lomerian Sisters.
The group that she runs is called the Lomerian Mystery School, and her followers of almost 99% women are called Lomerian Sisters.
They're incredibly devoted, but it's all on these private Facebook groups and Signal groups.
I mean, they are much more radical than I've seen any kind of group I've really dug into.
What does the radical consist of?
How would you run down her basic content?
It's a hodgepodge of...
Jesus is a big figure.
She's the only person who can channel Jesus, but she says the Bible is demonic.
A lot of fear of demonic forces, a lot of new-agey things, a lot of things pulled from theosophy.
She can access the Akashic Records.
but which contain all the information in the universe.
She also is sort of this descendant of Lemuria, which is a mystical land, much like Atlantis,
that also comes from both the Akashic Records and Lemuria kind of are pulled from
Madame Blavosky and Theosophy.
And then, yeah, a lot of like self-help, you know, women empowerment, you know,
business leader, millionaire mentor.
I mean, it's kind of like a mixture of, yeah, the like business.
business leadership, self-help gurus, but also a lot of weird esoteric things and some
bits of Christianity.
But a lot of more conspiracy type thinking, a lot of very QAnon adjacent things or Wu
Anon because there's also sort of like that meditation and yoga component of it.
The Bible is demonic?
How does that, what's going on there?
I don't know, I mean I think it's, it may be like more of an information control.
I mean she's kind of, because she's the vessel of all the information, I mean she discourages
people from listening to any other outside like YouTubes or, or,
Podcast, like I think one person sort of got exiled when Liana was saying, you can't listen to other podcasts.
And they were like, well, what about Joe Rogan?
And, um, you know, then she was cast out for, for questioning her authority.
So I think it's like, we don't, she doesn't want people to go to outside information.
She wants to be the vessel.
And then, so people are glued to her teachings and every time she releases a new audio course, um, you know, I think they're scrambling to buy it.
And, uh, you know, she posts on her Instagram stories.
And sometimes like over 100 times a day.
And to them, that's that's sort of the gospel.
Those are those are what she's channeling from Jesus.
And it's it's the pure it's it's the pure teachings from Jesus and not this thing that I think has been adulterated like the Bible.
I think the idea is like it's kind of been adulterated by, you know, the men who wrote it.
Now, does she claim any kind of Lineage or heritage?
Does she have a mentor?
Is it all just her?
It's, yeah, all her, I think.
You know, she says she's been, has had a direct communication with Jesus since the age of two.
Right.
I believe her kind of self-mythology has evolved over time.
I mean, some critics and ex-members have pointed out, like, that obviously the things she says about her supernatural powers have kind of changed.
Um, but yeah, no, she, uh, she doesn't, I mean, she's mentioned like a shaman that she worked with, but yeah, it's, it's really, it's just that she was kind of the, the true vessel, the true light worker of the era, the avatar of the era.
Now, she funnels her teachings, uh, in terms of monetization into very expensive human design courses that I think are basically audio.
Um, with that content, are there, are there any surprises that you came across?
I was surprised by how powerful her teachings are.
It talks about your mother wounds and your father wounds and cutting off your family cult and you can't heal until you've healed from these childhood wounds.
And, I mean, my first introduction was talking to people that had listened.
I mean, ex-members.
And then, you know, in my article, one of the primary interviews is a man whose wife got pulled into this.
And everybody kind of had a very similar experience when they talked about their loved ones who got pulled into it.
And it starts with, you know, strict diet control.
You know, it's a lot of like, I should have said this earlier, a lot of veganism and juice cleansing.
Right.
So they're doing these extreme juice cleanses there.
Then they start becoming more conspiratorial.
You know, the the the VAX is is Luciferian.
And they're going to like round everybody up into concentration camps and force them to get vaccinated.
And is it all vaccinations or is it just is it particularly the COVID vaccine?
I think it's particularly the COVID vaccine to become more conspiratorial.
And then a lot of them take the kids and flee to another state.
And that's kind of the big picture here, is that you have followers around the world, and Liana says the only place that you're safe is, I mean, the safest place is Florida.
Montana's kind of safe, Texas is kind of safe, but Canada is very dark, Australia's very dark, so there was this period where one ex-member called it the Great Migration, where Just these women around the world were all just like, basically overnight, like taking their kids and fleeing to another state because Liana was saying that, you know, that hinting, strongly suggesting that there was going to be a, this sort of master plan where they would round everybody up and put them into concentration camps and kind of put the fear of God, you know, that these reptilian overlords were going to force their kids to, and also because the vaccine kills your soul.
And also if you go near anybody who's been vaccinated, it, you know, it sheds on you and that could also affect you.
So, yeah, it was just like all these families all of a sudden their wives or spouses or daughters just completely transformed and like took the kids and left and wouldn't say where they're going.
And then, so back to the primary interview with my article.
Jason was saying that he knew his wife was getting into these teachings, so he started listening to the courses as kind of an effort to, I think, save his marriage, you know, to understand what she was going through.
Right.
And then they started to affect him, and then he cut off his mom.
Oh.
And he started to kind of feel more isolated.
And then his sister kind of started following Liana a little to try to understand what was going on with her brother and her sister-in-law.
And then she got pulled in.
And started trying to get the kids to think that the dad was evil and was worried that she was in California, she was worried they'd get locked up, so she was plotting to take the kids and go to Florida.
And this is all through these audio courses, and it's very kind of hypnotic, and she uses a lot of NLP, and you're supposed to listen to them over and over and over.
And so you have, I mean, I just kept hearing these stories of moms who were just alone all the time listening to these recordings and becoming increasingly paranoid and isolated and conspiratorial.
And it felt very, you know, black mirror to me, or just the idea of like, and all these men, they're like, 23 years, 19 years, 25 years of marriage and the occasional argument here and there, but we were on the same page.
Then all of a sudden during COVID, when they were very isolated and this became their new sense of community, they just kind of got radicalized through these audio courses.
So that was the thing that was kind of staggering for me, is just how convincing Liana can be through these courses.
Um, they do a lot of the things that I think Liana was doing.
I mean, um, that I think Teal Swan was doing where it kind of encourages you to look through your...
Um, your history, your personal history with, with a darker shadow and you know, it's like start, you start thinking like, Oh, that time that my dad left me in the car, well, that was abusive.
And the, you know, they, when she would, when they, they, my kid parents would kiss me on the forehead, like that was actually grooming or, you know, it's like a, you kind of start, Liana says, basically everybody goes to these courses, starts to realize their, their parents, um, were abusive and that their husband is a, uh, abusive narcissist and they become, It sounds like you're talking about something very powerful and narcotic, but did you find that the induction process was plausible in the sense that, you know, she would start with some small evocation of a sort of subtle memory about a kiss on the forehead and then would build from there in ways that you found compelling as well?
Honestly, to me, it's a lot of it's like kind of stream of consciousness.
But I think it's just the repetition of like, and it's like, you listen to it so much.
And it's so it's really dark, and it just like repetitive, and it makes you go back to these memories.
And also random planting little seeds, because she's this authority, you know, she'll say things like, when kids wet their bed, they've been sexually abused.
And so then if that happens to their kids, or if they're like, Oh, I wet my bed.
And then she really encouraged them to do these meditations to like uncover these memories.
And then the another component of this that's important to point out is in the she has these private signal groups where people can ask questions.
And she reads the Akashic Records and of course, it costs to get access to this.
And so as people are kind of uncovering or starting to reflect on their their childhood in different ways.
Um, they ask her questions.
Uh, you know, was, I'm starting to think maybe I was abused.
Was it, uh, in my church?
And she's always like, yes.
Or, you know, I was like, was it a male figure?
Yes, it was your uncle.
Um, and then all the other kids too, like my kid's wedding is bed is somebody, you know, and it's like, yes, it's your brother.
And it's this authority.
So people are entering the signal channel as though they're sort of approaching an oracle and she's answering questions just as though she's looking into, you know, the dimension of their lives when this thing happened and she's giving the answer and it's just that's the way it is.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's when, I mean, one person I talked to, yeah, they started uncovering these things.
Liana said, you know, her son was being hurt.
She went to the husband and was like, you know, Liana's saying these things are happening.
And he's like, why are you talking to this person?
And it's also like, because her pictures seem so, you know, airbrushed and ridiculous, I think to some people, um, you know, like I can imagine how someone's like, why are you, why are you, we making parent parental choices based on this?
And so then the mother will go to Liana and is like, well, my husband doesn't believe me.
And Liana's like, well, that's because he's actually abusing the kids or he's cheating on you.
Oh my god, so it's just a Kafka trap.
Now let me just say, too, that, you know, Jason, who you interview and who gives this incredible story about how his partner Jessica gets sucked into the Lemurian Mystery School and becomes convinced that she has to leave him with their two kids, and he has no idea where they go to, but he's FaceTiming with them a couple of weeks after they leave, and he can see that they're shivering in a barn.
Truly horrible stuff, but he goes on this quest with this little detour into being Leanna Pilt himself, and he finds other distressed family members whose loved ones have fled, and he finds out that Leanna Shanti is not who she presents as.
So, who is Leanne Wilson?
Yeah, Leanne Wilson was a lawyer in the late 90s.
I think she spent maybe 18 months, less than two years, at a pretty major law firm in Manhattan.
She has said in podcasts that at 9-11 she was, I think, eight months pregnant, and that was really kind of a shock to the system, as it was for all of us, but I imagine especially being there and about to bring life into the world, it was especially traumatic.
She ended up in, so she decided to leave law.
Her license is now suspended, I think, because of inactivity.
But she ended up in Hawaii, where she became apparently this master salesperson.
She was selling timeshares for Wyndham, and I think she was...
Was pretty good at it, by what I've uncovered.
She was fired.
She filed a class action lawsuit alleging some pretty severe sexual harassment in the workplace.
It really sounded like this old boys club, and I believe it was probably pretty toxic.
I think it was probably a pretty bad experience.
Right.
But after that lawsuit, She, I think, then kind of went through a sort of spiritual awakening, and she sort of transformed into, well, soon after that she started posting online as this new person, Liana Shanti, who was building this women's empowerment,
Health business kind of evolved into the Health Mastery Institute.
And I think, you know, that probably was this pretty like this safe space from, you know, after the pretty toxic work environment where it was mostly women and helping women empower themselves.
And, you know, I can understand that sort of origin story of why she got into it.
And then but she was she was very mysterious.
No, no photos of her.
Um, and over time, I think as people started saying, you know, your health advice, because there's, you know, a lot of vegan and pretty simple stuff, you know, cut out, uh, processed foods, whatever.
And people said, you know, you helped me cure myself from cancer and all this.
And I think over time, she started getting more into the spiritual and in the business.
And, um, finally in 2018, she posted her first, I think her first selfie, um, where she was, she did seem, I mean, they, and they sort of, Evolved over time that she seemed very ageless and young and she's now 52 And very much just like a I think suburban mom, but online she's this kind of ageless beautiful avatar of Jesus and Jesus with a little bit of kind of anime or manga filtering as well, right and
Yeah, it does.
I mean, it's very airbrushed and she gets a lot of criticism for that.
But I think some of it's unfair because it's like if, you know, I mean, a lot of male gurus are probably using filters and trying to make their pecs look better and stuff, you know, and they don't get they don't get flack for it.
Right.
So I don't wanna like, yeah, but I mean, she does appear different than like the pictures
that other people have dug up and of Leanne Wilson.
She has a toxic experience at Wyndham.
She leaves money management or timeshare selling.
But as far as her family origin story goes, she says in a bunch of different places
that she was always very supported as a child, she went to, you know, she had good schooling.
She doesn't have a cursed family story and, you know, how does she come to such insights around family cults and abuse?
Because somebody like Teal Swan, you know, having that as part of her origin story is key.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I think that's because she's perfect.
She's had the perfect life.
I mean, she says she's never had a drop of alcohol, she's never had any of these problems, and that's why, you know, it is, again, that's another kind of, like, anti-Teal thing.
Or the, you know, the opposite is that, like, Teal learned from these experiences.
But I think Liana's always been the perfect thing.
And that also goes back to her pictures.
It's like, people, when she posts these selfies, people are like, you're so flawless, you're so beautiful.
I think, like, people think that she's the one.
Well, you know, I have the first two minutes of her first podcast episode queued up for us to listen to.
like she about her sex life and her love life and how incredible and perfect everything is.
But like nobody else in the group, none of her followers, you know, they all have to heal their wounds
in order to get to where she's at.
Right, okay.
Well, you know, I have the first two minutes of her first podcast episode queued up
for us to listen to.
I have a couple of questions, but let's have a listen.
She's a motivator, millionaire mentor, Jesus lover, serial entrepreneur, mother, and former Wall Street
attorney who comes with her own personal trigger warning
on a mission to teach you how to empower yourself and heal your life from the inside out.
And now, welcome to Deep Throat, and by that I mean Throat Chakra with Liana Shanti.
Aloha everyone.
This is your host, your girl, Liana.
And by girl, I mean 51-year-old suburban mother of two.
I'm excited for this new platform, this new way to reach so many more people with my message of healing and unconditional love, empowerment and sovereignty.
Deep Throat, and by that I mean Throat Chakra, is a platform to showcase what healing your life really looks like, where I will be inviting some of the most amazing empowered women And the men who support them to share their journeys, triumphs, struggles, and everything in between.
About the name, Throat Chakra is the hub of the human design.
It's where everything manifests and we will be going deep on this podcast.
I came out of the womb empowered and with an activated throat chakra from day one and have been encouraging and empowering people since I was in elementary school, and I have never stopped.
In this very first episode, I'm going to give you a bit about myself, my perspective, my approach, and my personal journey, and then we'll go from there.
I have so many exciting episodes planned.
I'm going to start out by saying I have the most amazing, supportive, loving family and friends and community, and that is what has brought me to this place and to this understanding and awareness of what this podcast would be all about.
I do tend to trigger certain types of people, which is why my intro says I come with my own trigger warning.
You know, nothing is more scary, more threatening, and more enraging to The Patriarchy than a truly empowered woman, especially a woman who earns a lot of money.
I made my first million in my 20s, who truly loves herself at all times, is very successful, speaks her mind at all times, encourages, educates, and empowers people to be independent and free, and who also happens to be a mom who homeschools and has the three B's, blonde hair, blue eyes, and big boobs.
So, there's so much going on in this, Jennings.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
There's so much going on.
And in some ways, it doesn't feel that much outside of the realm of typical Boss Babe influencer stuff.
Yeah.
It's hard to imagine that there's this sort of, you know, undercurrent going on.
But first of all, I want to ask, she spills the beans directly here about being 51.
Does she address how that scans against the profile pictures at all?
Amazing skincare.
I mean, she's just, you know, I think it's a part of her whole, because a big part of this is the health, the juice cleansing.
If you do all the things I do, you will look like me.
Right.
Okay.
So, so even though, you know, people have dug up actual photos of her, she doesn't address that discrepancy.
She doesn't have to because that's fake news or something.
She doesn't really direct it head on.
I mean, she did recently release her first video on her Instagram.
It also seemed like heavily, like a good face filter.
Right.
So I took that as kind of a response, cause everybody's like, well, where are the videos of her?
You know?
And then she finally did that.
Of course, for years she was saying not to do any videos because that's a way of like capturing your soul
or something or, you know, so she discouraged people.
That was during COVID.
She said, don't nobody do zoom conferences or anything because that's, you know, kind of Luciferian.
Um, and so that was, you know, kind of stripping people of like a really, you know, important way of, of finding community and connecting with people during COVID.
Right now on the age sort of subject, You know, it feels like she's really mastered the sort of TikTok rhythm in terms of delivery, at least in the podcast here.
And she and I are of the same age, so do you have a sense of how she's done this?
Like, how she's learned how to just sound so, you know, on point?
Yeah, I mean, like you said, the podcast, I mean, a lot of it seems very, it's very accessible and welcoming.
And then I think once you get into the core, like the private Facebook groups, that's where it's more like, you know, they're helping people cross the borders illegally and take their children.
And that's another component that really, it's important to talk about, because there are so many kids that are caught up in this, this mess.
Right.
Yeah, I think what it comes down to is, again, she was an incredible salesperson.
I mean, timeshares.
Nobody enjoys buying a timeshare.
She was apparently bringing in $3 million a year or something, selling timeshares.
So I just think she's really good at just being very charming and charismatic and making you feel like the most important person in the room when she's with you.
Mom's who are struggling during a really bad time, you know, when everybody's locked up in their in their homes with their partners and everything gets on your nerves.
And it and here's, you know, this, this millionaire mentor, empowering guru, who is, you know, you're you're you want her to be your best friend.
And I don't I think that she's just really good at translating that in, in podcast, and all of our audio courses.
Now, she says in this intro that she's going to be featuring amazing women, but then she also says the men that support them, but I'm wondering if that's accurate.
I mean, are there any men featured in her content or are men generally narcissists and abusers when they're referred to?
It is very, very rare that she, like, there's been, I think, a couple men who were just very, like, that were super supportive and got, it sounds like they kind of started getting into it because they wanted to stay married.
Um, and that Liana kind of deemed them okay, but they're not, I think, I'm pretty sure they can't access like the Lemurian Mystery School and like the certain conversations.
But there's a couple of men that are sort of in a group that are more just like very supportive to, um, There's a very interesting version of feminism going on here, too, and I'm wondering if anybody pushes back on, you know, my big boobs on Wall Street threatened the patriarchy.
Ex-members all point that out, about how hypocritical that is.
There, they told me like, there's a lot of shame around sex and around, you know, sexuality and stuff with with it amongst the members.
because if you have sex with a abusive narcissist or somebody who hasn't healed their wounds,
then it's gonna affect you.
And if you have had sex, somebody has been vaccinated, that could kill your soul.
And so there's a lot of shame around that and anything that could invite that.
But yes, I mean, she does the opposite a lot of, I mean, yeah, she's the opposite of everything
that her followers are because she's trying to get their followers to be like her.
You've brought up the children wrapped up in this.
She's ruined a bunch of families, as per your reporting.
Can you describe the fallout generally?
Again, I talked to several ex-members, and since the first article came out, I've been, tons more people have reached out with describing very similar situations.
And yeah, I mean, I interviewed one woman who said that she coached her kids to say that the father was abusing them because she's like, in her words, she was like, I was so brainwashed when Liana told me my kids were being abused.
I believed it.
And, you know, she needed, she, so she wanted to, Liana was like, you have to leave him and, you know, get sole custody.
And the best way to do that is to, to get, you know, child protective services involved. And I
don't know that she ever directly, I'm not going to say like Leanna Sank, but she's very
clever about kind of putting things in motion without, you know, I think she has a lawyer brain. But yeah,
this, so this, this mother, like she believed her kid was being abused. So she got video of the
kid, you know, where she was trying to like basically coach. She said, I coached my kid to say that the
dad, you know, was abusive and got child protective services involved and then got a divorce.
And then she started spiraling and started having panic attacks from all these new realizations that, you know, she was abused and her kids were abused and finally checked herself into, Psychiatric care.
And now through that, she's been able to get out of it because she said, you know, that A, it got her kind of off, out of the group.
And B, she was forced to interact with therapists and doctors.
And Liana says, all therapists, all doctors, all family counselors are evil.
You can't trust them.
So then she was like, well, these people clearly want to help me.
So she got out of it.
And now, you know, she tells me, look, she said, I could not have asked for a better father to my kids.
Um, but I was so brainwashed that I, I believed that they were evil.
So I was, you know, I was coaching my kid and you know, now she's a lot of these ex members.
They tell me they're trying to like patch things up with their family and you know, to their credit, they're all, they're all taking accountability, but they're like, I wouldn't be in the situation without Liana.
And that's one thing they, You know, we all join cults of different kinds and hopefully come out of the other end, you know, and learn some things.
But these kids that are caught up, that are being taught to think that their dads are demons or abusers and that they had these experiences.
I mean, you know, it's like if it's like if Teal Swan were working directly with kids with, you know, and that sort of memory stuff.
Well, it is a very sort of poignant and tragic microcosm of the satanic panic in general because that was driven, those prosecutions were driven by children caught in this conflict of allegiances.
Between, you know, who are you going to try to please and who is making you safe and what must you say in order to, you know, retain the love of the parent who has this very strong idea about their partner.
Incredibly difficult.
Yeah, yeah.
It's, um, but you know, that's, that's a moral panic.
And I mean, I guess this is all part of kind of the modern moral panic of, you know, QAnon is kind of like the satanic panic of the era, obviously, you know, you go into that, but I mean, I rarely see it where it's coming directly from a woman or a, you know, a guru reading the Akashic records and saying this child that I've never met, you know, the child of a mother who I've never met in person, you know, knowing that they were abused.
And then that mother going and basically telling the kid that, you know, and planting those memories.
I think we're both kind of boggled by the ease with which this person was able to do something like this and make prognostications like that on Signal.
But I don't know, it like reveals some very deep vulnerability, I think, that while we're sort of puzzled at how She can pull it off in some way she pulls it off because the technology is available and because she can affect a kind of certainty and a kind of charisma through those channels and somehow it just works and as it works
There's no reason for her to stop.
In fact, she probably gains in terms of credibility and the attachment of her followers and probably even money through the positive reinforcement that is actually ruining people's lives.
Yeah, technology, the internet makes it so much easier to start a cult or a cult-like group.
I mean, you know, Scientology, uh, I mean, I probably should, I try not to say the word publicly, but, um, you know, uh, they, their whole thing is they do these, these psych, you know, they do these readings that you work with a sort of therapist type person and then they get all these confessions and then they use them and then you're afraid, you know, and like they're, they're, A lot of cult-like groups have a history of ways of gathering collateral.
Right.
Well, with this, it's like in these Facebook groups, there's this kind of momentum of everybody sharing all these things, and there's a real, you're supposed to be putting all your stuff out there, and then also you're encouraged to ask Liana about what's happening to you and your kids, and so people are posting all this stuff, and so she has, and then she'll just post the screenshots as soon as somebody is exiled.
Or doubts her or something, she kicks them out.
She'll start posting all these confessions on her Instagram stories and then sometimes tagging people's employers.
And so it's just so easy.
I mean, this thing that like these other groups throughout history have like had to have a whole system and employees to do this or people who were like tasked to do this.
I mean, it's all done on her phone.
And so that's just one example of the many ways that she's able to use the Internet to just being a natural salesperson.
Um, and, and just finding ways to, um, to get people more devoted to her and to give her more money.
Now, it looks like your reporting has like blown up your inbox.
You were mentioning a lot of tips coming in, but it's also focused some police attention on Leanne Wilson.
So what's going on with that?
Yeah, so in the article, I point out that she is currently on probation.
In 2021, she pled guilty to bank fraud.
She was concealing assets in a bankruptcy filing, which is bad.
It's not good to lie to the government when you're applying for bankruptcy.
So she's had to pay $21,000 and she's in probation for five years.
She, I think, can't leave Hawaii without getting permission from the court.
But when this article came out, a lot of people, I think, went to her probation officer.
I'm not entirely sure how the probation officer first saw the article.
But yeah, so the court ordered her to come in for a hearing.
I believe it's on Monday, the 24th.
She's got all of these businesses.
start looking into this and find out like if because you know the in theory
the the probation officer I think is supposed to have access to all of her
financial records and I think those are supposed to be pretty buttoned up but
she's got all of these businesses I mean her Health Mastery Institute is
registered in Nevada under one of her followers names Oh.
I was told that, like, a lot of the checks go to her husband, so I don't know what's going on.
I'm not a key, but it's like, it sounds like there's some weirdness afoot and that, you know, I can understand why a probation officer would want to look into that.
Okay, so we've got a purely online cult where the leader uses only audio and IG, you know, text decks and, and, you know, signal to communicate.
I imagine that because there's not a lot of sort of direct or, you know, a lot of the stuff is asynchronous, right?
And I'm wondering whether that means that if she starts going through legal stress, she'll be able to weather it.
How long do you think she's going to hold out, do you think?
It's like, I mean, when the article came out, she was, she was spotting and like, I know the probation officer probably like reach out and stuff.
I don't know.
She was spiraling on her Instagram.
I mean, she was still, she was attacking all the people.
I mean, she, she seems to like get more chaotic the more heat comes.
Right.
Yeah, usually I can kind of feel like I get a sense of people's motivations and stuff, but she really seems to be a chaos agent.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I think she's going to keep posting until maybe they I don't know how much they can restrict her access to social media, but yeah, I don't know what she's going to do.
In talking to her former followers, do you have concerns that if she does spiral with the stress of the scrutiny, that she will give them instructions to do things that are not in their best interests?
Other people have expressed that concern.
There is one Canadian member, because there's a lot that have come from Canada to Florida, and one bought this 1.4 million dollar McMansion in Jacksonville, and a few of the other Followers moved in and I think there were like 11 kids in this house and it's this pretty big property where all these and and that's when one one member when she was like that's When I had to get out because she was like if some kind of heaven's gate scenario happens there And I'm connected all this like what happens to my kids yeah, those were basically her words and Yeah, I don't I mean it is it's alarming that like she doesn't want anybody go to Hawaii.
I've heard I think she doesn't want anybody near her So she, for whatever reason, she's having most people go to Florida.
And yeah, I don't know.
I mean, again, because it's so chaotic, I have no idea what she's going to do.
And I mean, that is, I know other people do have the concerns that it could get really, really dark.
What do you ultimately hope people learn from this story?
Just log off.
Like, just get off the internet.
The internet was a mistake.
Or, you know, the current age of algorithmic anxiety.
We should have done everything we could to avoid it.
Like, I hope that, you know, the future, like, somebody comes back in time.
It like just go outside and find community in real life, because I mean, that's what these people didn't have that choice.
I mean, during covid, I think, again, a lot of people are locked in.
They found communities where they could.
And a lot of people found this community.
And it was a really, really powerful force because it was led by a really, really, I don't know, charismatic person who just knew how to sort of weaponize this.
But.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think that's what keeps me sane is having a community of people in my neighborhood who, who, you know, look out for me and we, we look out for each other and you know, I've, I've good family, it checks on me and good friends.
And I just, just try to, just try to get off the internet, like stop listening to podcasts.
Just, you know, don't worship your podcast host that you love.
Just go, please try to find some friends, like do a knitting class.
I don't know.
Jennings, it sounds like you have come from the future, maybe in a telephone box to give a very sage message at the end of this episode.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Good luck with this work.
Thanks for doing it.
It's hard.
Thanks for having me.
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