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[Transcription begins] (Unintelligible) A: "--a part of the process, right?" B: "Totally." A: "Alright, I'm recording." B: "Okay." A: "Okay, so. If you wouldn't mind saying and spelling your name, please." B: "Sure. Briah Meier. B-R-I-A-H, last name M-E-I-E-R."  A: "Great. And. Can he?"  B: "Oh, yeah. He can. Demetri."  (Unintelligible) B: "Say and spell your name." C: "Why?" (Unintelligible) C: "D-E-M-T-R-I" B: "What? That's not." C: "D-E-M. D-I-M." B: "It's D-E-M-E-T-R-I. Last name Ida. I-D-A." A: "Okay, fine. Nice to meet you both. Thanks for taking the time today." B: "Thanks."  C: "D-E-M-E-R-T." B: "Demetri. It's fine." A: "Alright. So, maybe you could start by telling me a little bit about what happened, and the procedure." B: "Okay. Yeah. So. Sorry, it's going to ...

I was in a cult once. That was a long time ago.  My time with them began about 24 years ago, although pinpointing the exact year has proven to be slippery for me.  My time with them came to a close around five years after joining. I find myself thinking about them often. They called themselves "The World's Greatest." We were anything but, of course, which was kind of the joke after a while.  Yet, in retrospect the name served a purpose. When we called ourselves "The World's Greatest," amid self-aware chuckles and incriminating sidelong glances at one another, there was still something... aspirational about the title. Whether or not we actually were the world's greatest was debatable. Greatest at what? How was that measured? Who said so? It still gave us something to aim for.  The World's Greatest was an exclusive, invitation-only membership with a strict color-specific dress code, and whose members were each responsible for upholding a single piece o...