Dinner for Vampires: The Star of a Cult TV Show on Leaving a Real Life Cult

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bethany Joy Lenz became a household face during the meteoric rise of the teen CW soap “One Tree Hill.” However, as she appeared in homes across the country every week, she was leading a double life with her participation in a culty Bible group for a decade.

Lenz found her voice to break free and had the inspiration to write a personal memoir on the experience, “Dinner for Vampires,” sharing for the first time publicly her experience in the group and her struggles to break free. In this episode, Sarah and Nippy talk with Bethany about the surprising connections between her experience and NXIVM, the cult of fame, and their overlapping work in Hallmark movies.

Also… let it be known that:

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

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CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames

Production Partner: Amphibian.Media

Writer & Co-Creator: Jess Tardy

Associate producers: Emma Diehl and Matt Stroud of Amphibian.Media

Audio production: Red Caiman Studios

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	You have worked so hard to make your business into a reality, but achieving your next business
0:05.8	goal, that can be overwhelming.
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0:16.0	Ready with exceptional service every step of the way.
0:19.0	Let's dream together.
0:20.0	Visit merchants Bank.com to get started.
0:22.0	Merchants Bank is a proud member, FDIC.
0:25.0	This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, or mental health advice.
0:36.0	The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion group club organization business
0:44.0	individual anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson and I'm Anthony Nippy Ames and this is a little bit
1:00.1	colty cults are commonplace now from fandoms to fads we're examining them all. We look at what happens
1:05.6	with things that seem like a great thing at first, go bad. Every week we chat with survivors,
1:11.0	experts, and whistleblowers for real cultulte stories told directly by the people
1:15.1	who lived through them, because we want you to learn a few things that we've had to learn the hard
1:19.6	way.
1:20.6	For example, if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you might be prime recruitment material and who knows you could already be in a cult.
1:28.3	If you're not aware of your programming, you're probably being programmed, so keep listening to find out.
1:33.2	We'll talk about all sorts of topics on the show but be aware this podcast might
1:38.0	contain stories that could be alarming to some of our listeners so please check our
1:41.8	show notes for more detailed descriptions and take care of your story. our That's Patreon. Patreon. That's Patreon.
	...

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