Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 3, 2025, and I could not be more excited for today's episode. Today we have in the house someone who's known globally by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, I'm guessing millions of people. But he might be a new name to many or most of my audience because his expertise is a, a little bit niche, or not so niche, depending on who you are. But today we have with us Danny Wrench. He is the author of a brand new book called Dark Squares How Chess Saved My Life. But Danny Wrench is also one of the Co founders of Chess.com I think he's the chief chess officer. He is an international master in chess, which means his rating at least at one point was what, over 2600 or

Danny Rensch [00:00:56] something like that around there? 2500.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] 2500. I'm, I'm new to a lot of this stuff, but I just read his book. I've read a lot of cult memoirs. You know, you guys know Tara Westover, Amber Skora, the list goes on and on. But this is a phenomenal cult memoir. I hope you don't mind me calling it that.

Danny Rensch [00:01:17] You call it whatever you want. Makes sense. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:20] And it's coming out the, I believe the week that this episode is going to air.

Danny Rensch [00:01:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:25] And so I want everyone to go buy this book and help make it an international bestseller. It absolutely. I was showing Danny beforehand, like every single page is marked with copious notes. And I love this stuff. So you're gonna love the book. It's also got a lot about chess. We're also welcoming to the extent that the broader global chess community is joining us today on Mormon Stories. Mormon Stories is a 20 year old podcast that I set up as an excommunicated Mormon. Actually, I was believing at the time I set it up and then the church excommunicated me for the podcast 10 years later. But the purpose of Mormon Stories is to provide stories that support people who are in a faith journey, particularly those who have experienced a faith crisis and are trying to find healing and support in their journey.

John Dehlin [00:02:20] Danny, you might be interested to know, I think I may have mentioned this to you before, that over half of our audience now has never been Mormon. But most importantly, we just. I am very, very confident that those of you who are interested in cults, high demand religions, or just trauma, addiction, relationships, healing, growth, are going to love today's story. So without any further ado, Danny Wrench, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Danny Rensch [00:02:46] Thank you for having me. That was quite the intro. And I'm thrilled to be here and appreciate the notes. I wonder how many of them we can get into, because I looked at the book too. It had a lot of notes there. So I can't wait to hear what you think. And again, thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:00] No, I love it. Yeah. And a couple other coincidences. So, several years ago, when I first found Chess.com, i created an account and logged on. Didn't know anything about who owned it or who didn't. And at some point, this guy named Eric reaches out to me, thanks me for Mormon stories, and I think he gave me a diamond account, which was super cool at the time. I'm like, whoa.

Danny Rensch [00:03:27] I could, like, you know, do all the things.

John Dehlin [00:03:29] Do all the things for free. Like, this is amazing. Eric Ollebest, it turns out, who is also one of the co founders of Chess.com is. The husband is married to Amy Olabest, who we've had on Mormon Stories now several times, the founder of Breaking Down Patriarchy. So. And now Amy and Eric have moved back to the Salt Lake area. You, Danny, have moved here. So that's another connection we have. And then a final connection is I served a chunk of my Mormon mission in the Mesa Gilbert Chandler Tempe area, which, it turns out is primarily where you grew up.

Danny Rensch [00:04:02] Probably close to where I was born. You might have come to the house that I was born in, given that at one point the collective, the cult that I was in, occupied a number of homes right there on 7th Street. So, anyway, yeah, who knows?

John Dehlin [00:04:14] Yeah. All right. Well, I read your whole book. I just finished it today, actually, and I'm super excited. Dig in any disclaimers you want to provide or any. Any intentions you want to share at the outset before we just dig right in.

Danny Rensch's Background and the Book

Danny Rensch [00:04:30] That's a great question. Never been asked that before at the start of a podcast. I don't think so. I'm excited to hear what questions you might have and what thoughts you might have about the particular group you mentioned quickly at the outset in terms of the purpose of the podcast, helping people in their faith journey and helping them maybe find their way through an experience that is either traumatic and. Or in a high demand group. Right. And the definition of those types of groups can kind of vary based on how people feel about that stuff. So I'm, you know, I didn't necessarily plan on even writing a memoir.

Danny Rensch [00:05:04] Didn't know where this journey was going to take me initially, but I feel I Feel now on the road and confident that it's leading to a lot of really healthy conversation. And I hope that this conversation is one that also can help people in any way possible. So.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:05:21] So let's go.

John Dehlin [00:05:22] All right, let's do it. Okay. So traditionally, when. When I bring someone on to talk about a cult that they're probably not familiar with, or even if they are, I start by maybe giving a background about the cult itself. So I would. So the church that we're going to be talking about today, or the cult is called the Church of Immortal Consciousness. And it was never a super large chur church, even at its Highest point, what, 200 members?

Origins of the Collective Cult

Danny Rensch [00:05:53] Maybe 300.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] 300 members? Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:05:55] You know, depending on whether being a member was fully defined as living in Tonto Village, Arizona, which is a northern. Northern Arizona suburb right outside of Payson, Arizona. Depending on the definition of it, I would say maybe 300 at its peak.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] Yeah. But still a significant cult nonetheless. So what I thought would be cool would be to back up a little bit and talk about kind of the culture that Trina and Steve Camp, the founders of the Church of Immortal Consciousness, kind of were swimming in, maybe along with your dad and mom, because that, you know, I've attended Landmark forum. I attended it once.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] I've learned about EST a little bit. Est. Yeah. And it turns out that even as I understand it, Scientology was influenced by the same sorts of things that influence EST and Landmark. So there's this kind of milieu of like late 60s, early 70s that seems to have been the breeding grounds for all sorts of stuff, including Charles Manson. So do you want to talk about what you even have learned about EST and Landmark and then have that segue into Trina and Steve Camp's story and then we can bring your parents into that next, if that makes sense.

Danny Rensch [00:07:14] Yeah. And I can speak to what I know about these groups. I guess one of the things that happened naturally during this process that is both kind of my own self reflection about my life and then also the, you know, the edification that came from expanding my own self reflective journey on how did this happen? How did we get here? What. What principles that I was raised on in the collective came from other places and. Or might even be like, you know, things that sound good and make sense, but were misused in that particular power dynam.

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Right.

Danny Rensch [00:07:43] And I think so to. To share that experience, I would just.

John Dehlin [00:07:46] To warn people. When he says the collective, he means that's what they called the.

Danny Rensch [00:07:50] The collective. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] So, yeah. So it's Collective with a capital C. Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:07:53] To just. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Right. It's obviously one of those things where when you're talking about something that's so close to you, you have your own blind spots on the terminology that isn't appreciated, but. Yeah. So the collective. I grew up referring to it often as just the family, which was another term. The collective certainly did not self identify as a cult.

John Dehlin [00:08:13] No, it does.

Danny Rensch [00:08:14] Y. No one does. But the. The collective that I grew up in had a number of different teachings, and of course, we're going to get into probably a lot of that today. Whatever. Whatever we decide to. But a lot of the teachings of EST and. Or the landmark forum came from, you know, there was a movement around that time. And again, I can't speak to all of it because it wasn't my experience. I wasn't even born yet. But I do know that both Stephen and Trina Camp and my parents, Steve Wrench and Debbie. Debbie Sampson, were involved in different groups, including rebirth. Rebirthing was a

Danny Rensch [00:08:48] process where people acknowledge that or embrace the idea that the most traumatic experience you have in your life is actually when you're born and you come into the world and that if you can rewrite kind of the story of that, that you might have trauma released. So there was a rebirthing community. The s. Community.

John Dehlin [00:09:05] Wait, I can't just jump over that, because as I understand it, adults would, like, sit in a bathtub full of water to emulate a rebirth.

Danny Rensch [00:09:14] Is that right? Yes. From what I understand, I have never been rebirthed, so I know that it is a thing that different people have done at different times. I don't know whether everyone was always kind of naked in a bath or if there was some other code to that. But generally, the idea was to try to. To relive that experience, to rewrite, you know, your neurosynapses and your sort of emotional stories, where possible to have a better experience of coming into the world. That was one thing that was going on.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] And Steve was a rebirth.

Danny Rensch [00:09:40] My dad was a certified rebirth.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] Oh, I met the other Steve.

Danny Rensch [00:09:42] So that's the funny thing. So just to clarify for the audience, there are two Steves in the story. There is Stephen Camp, who was the main leader, the founder of the collective, along with Trina Camp. And then Steve Wrench is my father, but I grew up calling Stephen Uncle Stephen or eventually Grandpa. So when I refer to him, I will say Steven.

John Dehlin [00:10:01] Okay?

Danny Rensch [00:10:02] That's when I say Steve. It'll be my father. Just because that's kind of how they're known.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] So who was the re? Was it Steven or Steven? They both were.

Danny Rensch [00:10:08] They were both certified rebirth from what I. From what I know. And anyway, so EST itself is something that was started by Warner Earhart eventually. I don't even know what S stood for. Apparently it was Earhart seminar training. I've also heard it was extreme spiritual training. I don't know what it really stood for, but EST was a group of.

Danny Rensch [00:10:31] That. There were a lot of things about that group that were about taking responsibility for your own life, appreciating the aspects of the world and existence that are meaningless, so that you can rewrite your own meaning, and in some ways, empowering yourself through a different perspective of what has happened to you versus the stories you've told yourself. A lot of that stuff is good. I mean, I, for one, often quote Carl Jung's we are not what happens to us. We are the stories we tell ourselves. We are what we choose to become. Right. I believe in that to the best degree I can, and I think it can be very empowering.

Danny Rensch [00:11:05] Where and how that can be used and misused is something we'll get into. Right? But there was a lot of those types of practices, I guess, and those things were taken into the founding of the collective. But a lot of that came about because Stephen and Trina met, not necessarily just because of the Rebirthing community and because of the S community, which eventually became the Landmark Forum, but also because Trina Camp was a trance medium. And Trina Camp, tell us what that is. What she did was she tranced, a spirit known as Dr. Duran. And at this point in the 70s, she was traveling a lot around the world, trancing for different groups in different seminars.

Trina and Stephen Camp as Cult Leaders

Danny Rensch [00:11:46] This was what she did. And we can talk about the process of trance and what that experience was, but essentially her and Steven met at a group where she was doing a trance circle, which is what they were called, where she would sit in a chair in a room with people often formed in a circle. And at some point when the lights were dim, she would.

Danny Rensch [00:12:12] She would engage in a channeling process where her voice changed, and it was no longer her speaking. It was the voice of Dr. Duran, and he would give a sermon. He might answer questions. This process was one that she had been doing for actually many years before she met Stephen Camp.

John Dehlin [00:12:29] Always with Duran or always with.

Danny Rensch [00:12:31] She did. From what I know, she also tranced other spirits at different times. She would describe herself as a medium. Her job was to sort of be an open vessel to spirits who might want to come through and deliver messages. But over time, the relationship between her and Duran, as she would say, became the one that was the most. That was what her job became, was trancing Dr. Duran all the time.

John Dehlin [00:12:57] And what was his, I'll say, alleged background historically? And also, do we know if someone named Duran actually existed?

Danny Rensch [00:13:05] I have never done that research. Okay, maybe with this book coming out and the story, maybe there'll be some people who do. I actually don't know whether there is a confirmation of whether Dr. Duran ever existed as a person. But the story was that Duran was a Doctor in the 15th century in England and that he actually went to. Again, I'm going to misquote because I don't know what the official names of schools are. Some sort of official university in England to become a medical doctor. When he eventually passed, he was given different teachings and trained by Moses on the astral. This was the story was that Moses

John Dehlin [00:13:44] was his teacher after he died.

Danny Rensch [00:13:46] After he died. And that a lot of what he learned as a spiritual teacher came directly from the teachings of Moses. And Dr. Duran, as he would be trans through Trina, had messages, had a teaching, had a framework for his followers in terms of how to be the highest versions of their own, of their own soul. And so it's funny, every time I do one of these podcasts, I feel like they start differently and you start explaining things in a way that I haven't quite explained before. So this is fun. So I'm gonna take a breath for me too.

John Dehlin [00:14:18] Like this stuff isn't in the book, by the way. This, like.

Danny Rensch [00:14:21] Yeah, yeah. So this is. So again, to take a step back. There is, there is and are the groups of different types of what you would call occult belief systems developing in the 60s and 70s, of course, there were all kinds of non denominational, non traditional religious and spiritual beliefs happening. We talked about rebirthing, which I don't even know if it would call itself a religion or spiritual belief. It was. It was a thing that was happening. And then there we talked about EST and eventually the landmark forum, the idea that Trina is traveling and trancing and again back to Dr. Duran, his life as it came to an end in the 15th century.

Danny Rensch [00:15:03] And then his training in the. In the astral, on the astral plane became one where he eventually was trancing through Trina or he was speaking through Trina camp. And she has shared this story publicly. There are actually videos of her having tranced on national television and otherwise some of them will probably be resurfacing more and more with this story as it comes out. But that process of her trancing was something that had been happening.

Danny Rensch [00:15:29] She met Stephen Camp at a trance circle in Southern California. And I share about their story of kind of how they came together in the book. But ultimately they decided eventually that rather than her continuing to travel, that they would set up shop in Mesa, Arizona and invite people to come here to Rand by visiting them rather than them traveling. And that was the quickest version. Knowing you can see how my brain is working. There are obviously a number of different sub bullets, but I will do my best to pause when I can and let you ask more questions. But essentially, Stephen and Trina Camp met during a trance circle.

Danny Rensch [00:16:03] Stephen Camp was a certified rebirther and a well known person within this sort of larger community, as was my father, actually. And while the collective was founded by Steven and Trina, my parents were then two of the earliest members, I guess, adopters. They eventually moved to Mesa along with a lot of the other kind of founding members of the group. And, and the group was setting up shop on East 7th street right there in Mesa, Arizona. And that was how the collective was formed.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] And you call Camp Uncle Stephen, right?

Danny Rensch [00:16:36] I grew up calling him Uncle Stephen.

John Dehlin [00:16:37] Okay, so Uncle Stephen, his quick bio. Wasn't he a professional, like a white collar professional before, or was that your dad?

Danny Rensch [00:16:45] No, that was my dad.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] Okay. Okay. Do you know Stephen Camp's background before he.

Danny Rensch [00:16:51] He was, he was a. He was kind of a wayward traveler. He was born in upstate New York and eventually made his way kind of into berkeley around the 60s and, and was educated.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] Not educated.

Danny Rensch [00:17:02] He went to Syracuse.

John Dehlin [00:17:03] Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:17:03] Yeah, okay. I would say, I would describe him as educated. And again from, you know, I know he went to college and I think he dropped out, but eventually made his way to Berkeley and was kind of a part of. He was a part of a lot of things that went. A lot of things that went down in Berkeley around the 60s and 70s. And that's. Yeah, that's probably the quickest version of that. My dad was an attorney in Southern California for several years before him and my mom moved to the collective in Mesa.

Life Inside the Collective

John Dehlin [00:17:33] Okay, so really quickly in the book becomes clear that by the time you're being raised in the collective, the words of Duran, as channeled through Trina, are synonymous with the will of God. And so I'm wondering, I don't know if theology is the right way to describe it, but kind of in the theology of the Church of Immortal Consciousness or in the collective, how was God, how Were God and Duran connected in terms of Duran channeling literally the mind and will of God, or was there a theology about that?

Danny Rensch [00:18:13] It's interesting because I would say that I would say yes to what you're saying and not 100% in terms of how it was presented or how the active members of the church related to it. Because one of the core premise of Durand's teaching was the concept of reincarnation. And so reincarnation, not necessarily as it's understood or believed in the Hindu belief system or other types of what I would describe as sort of casting systems that can have their own sort of hierarchy and be their own sort of high demand, high control type of experience. What I'm saying there is that a lot of.

Danny Rensch [00:18:54] Without casting any dispersions, I would say a lot of the framework of certain reincarnation beliefs can be that if you messed up in the last lifetime, that's why you're this. This lifetime, right? So if you think about what that actually means in practice, it means that the moment you're born, you are already cast and sort of placed within the broader hierarchical system of where you belong. Right. And it's because you're reaping the karma or the sins of your previous life. Right. So if you, if you continue to do the math on that, that means that maybe everybody who's rich deserves and has, has sort of the, you know, the, the, the card to kind of mistreat people who are lower than them in the caste system.

Danny Rensch [00:19:31] Right. So it's, it's not a great way to think about reincarnation, in my opinion. Duran's perspective on reincarnation was one that there is no moving backwards. There was only moving forwards. You can stay stuck at your current level of understanding, but reincarnation is not a system used to judge others. It was a system to evolve toward your highest self eventually. And so what Duran would say is that his teaching is something that was coming from him, which is that of someone who lived in the 15th century and someone who is a student of Moses. But it is not the ultimate word of God. Have your own path to God.

Danny Rensch [00:20:07] Everyone is moving in their own way toward their highest consciousness, self. I am here as a teacher. I am here to provide you with lessons and, or help you on that journey if you want it. But I'm not here to break your free will. I am not here to do anything more than what you want to engage with.

Danny Rensch [00:20:25] Now, again, there are all types of dynamics about the collective that we're going to get into, right? And ways that that was maybe said but not necessarily felt or practiced. Right. And so you get a lot of. You get a lot of very confusing power dynamics when you have a deity in Trina trancing a spirit in Duran, and a hierarchy within. Within the collective that allows Trina and Steven to essentially make decisions for everyone. Right. And sometimes those decisions are used under the auspices or ordainment of Duran, and no one really knows whether it ever came or not. And then you have Duran speaking through Trina.

Danny Rensch [00:21:05] But. But that message can be weird in terms of whether. Was it Trina's opinion that influenced that? Was this actually something that feels good to me because I'm told I am in charge of my own journey to God. So I guess what I'm saying at the start is it's obviously very confusing. And as a member of the collective who's, you know, been in therapy for almost 10 years and continues to work on all of his own grief and trauma and make sense of it for myself, I. I think, like many people who are in the collective, continue to try to make sense of it for my own self in terms of what do I feel was the baby versus the bathwater.

Danny Rensch [00:21:38] Right. To use an analogy that I've said a few times, even though it's a crass one in some ways. No, it's. It's. You know, I think a lot of people, when they go through those experiences of challenging their own faith or embracing skepticism while also trying to keep parts of something that feels good to them and actually does speak to their highest self, for lack of a better way to put it, I think that process can be a very painful one. Right. Deconstructing it and then rebuilding what matters to you. So I'm acknowledging openly here that I might even be someone who is still in the process of doing that.

Danny Rensch [00:22:07] Right. But I think I want to say that from where I view it, Duran's teaching, while misused and abused at a lot of different times, and there was a lot of confusion that a lot of people grew up with in terms of whether they even believed Iran was real or not, or whether they feel they had an experience, the spirit was real, but actually can still acknowledge the opposing truth that it was a cult.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] Those.

Danny Rensch [00:22:32] Anywhere in between. Right. There's a lot of different versions of gray in between. I think that that's a thing that a lot of people are still trying to unpack. But Duran, at its best, whether it is an entity or not, would say that it was there or he was there to help other people. Have an experience. Not necessarily to pretend that he is the end all, be all of God. Because again, back to what I said at the beginning. Reincarnation as a concept is supposed to be a self empowering one in your spiritual evolution, not one that is like. That is operating with as much. It would like to think. It's not operating with as much dogma as a traditional kind of Judeo Christian framework. I think that's what he would say, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:23:15] Yeah. And this makes total sense. And the only reason I brought it up is because later, and we'll get to this, once you start working directly with Stephen Camp as kind of your mentor, he starts saying you need to become a world chess champion because that's what God wants for you. So at some point God clearly gets mixed in. Now, whether that's 100% Stephen Camp mixing it in or Duran or Trina. Yeah, that. But that's why I asked the question.

Danny Rensch [00:23:43] And I'm an unreliable narrator in some ways, right? Because I lived it. I'm traumatized by what happened and also making the best sense I can of it and, and all that stuff. So I guess I. And I'm sorry if some of those answers are long winded.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] No, it's not at all. In fact, Mormonism has its own. I think religions and cults benefit from the ambiguity. So in Mormonism, it's. Was the Book of Mormon a translation you mentioned? You read the Book of Mormon at one point in the book, like, was the Book of Mormon a translation of God? How much was Joseph Smith putting his own stuff in there versus it being a literal translation? When past prophets have spoken, when were they speaking as a man, when were they speaking as a prophet? And you know, like all that stuff is in Mormonism and probably in all high demand religions. And I think religions benefit from that flexibility.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] If like you say in the book, when the prophecy or the council is helpful, the cult always gets the credit. But when things go wrong, it's the member that always gets the blame. But having that flexibility as well, if the prophecy of the advice is good, well, that was God, that was the collective. But if it goes wrong, well, maybe it was Trina was having a bad day or maybe Stephen Camp, it was, you know what I mean? That flexibility could be helpful. Anyway, I'm loving this all the way so far. So really quickly, did you call Trina a deity? Did I get that right?

Danny Rensch [00:25:10] Well, I sort of was using it as an example of how people would kind of understand this stuff. She was the. Okay, she was the boss, whatever you want to say, the deity, the guru, the boss of.

John Dehlin [00:25:19] She was the one with special powers.

Danny Rensch [00:25:20] She was in your life. Right. Who was. Who was trancing. Who was dancing? Duran, whether you believed in it or not. Right. She was sort of the reason the collective came together was because people moved there to hear Duran.

John Dehlin [00:25:30] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:25:31] Right. And ultimately Trina herself was a very. Trina was a very magnetic person, you know, very, very charming and. And likable and. And so I think sometimes when I'm explaining the broader kind of what is the framework, what is the infrastructure, so that as we dive into the conversation, people have context. I was sort of trying to explain that while I would say in many ways the collective was very much a patriarchy posing as a matriarchy, I think that she was the front person in a way that served how the machine worked in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about that. But undeniably, too, the reason people came to the collective was inherently to hear Durant, at least for most people. Right. And if Durand was real or not, whether they enjoyed the teachings or not, that came from Trina, which made her kind of the most important figure. Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] Yeah. No, it's kind of like the Mormon Church would say, it's all about Jesus, but Joseph Smith was the way we learn about the true Jesus. So in some ways, Joseph Smith historically has been elevated as the most important part of Mormonism, even though the church would downplay that.

Danny Rensch [00:26:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] No, no, that makes Jesus. Yeah, there's so many parallels, but. All right, fun.

Danny Rensch [00:26:41] So.

John Dehlin [00:26:43] So Trina is kind of the spiritual prophetess, I'm going to say my words. And her husband, Stephen Camp, is kind of the businessman, but also a guide as sorts as well. Is that right? He's kind of an operations guy, but also he's given a lot of wisdom. He's helping a lot of people as well. Right.

Danny Rensch [00:27:05] Yeah. I mean, he. So Stephen Campbel, in addition to being Trina Camp's husband and sort of operational partner, was a certified rebirther, which, regardless of judging the process or not, there was something that went into that understanding of kind of the traumas around, you know, early childhood pain and stuff. He was also a certified S trainer, which, again, is someone who, I guess you would. I don't know what all the hierarchy are steps to become that, but is someone who knew the Landmark Forum inside and out from that point of view

John Dehlin [00:27:37] and I think from background and self improvement.

Danny Rensch [00:27:39] Yeah. And had a background, I think, in psychology, actually, and self improvement. And so he understood, I mean, I mean, I would, I would categorize or describe Stephen Camp as brilliant when it comes to understanding the human condition and things that make people tick and, and what they look for and what they desire. And again, as we get back into at his best, depending on where that person sat within the larger kind of goals he had for the collective, he probably gave some really, really great advice and provided some interesting support to people. Right. And then at its worst, in terms of understanding the human condition, knowing how to leverage that and use that would be. That would be an understatement to say he knew how to do that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] I think I read in the book that neither are alive today. Is that right?

Danny Rensch [00:28:26] Stephen Camp is alive, actually, he is alive.

John Dehlin [00:28:28] Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:28:29] Trina Camp passed away in December 22nd.

John Dehlin [00:28:32] Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:28:32] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:28:33] So just a few years ago.

Danny Rensch [00:28:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:35] And do we know what? We'll get to that. Okay, so. All right, so maybe we talk about your parents now. Yeah, a little bit. About what? Maybe. I mean, it's common for high demand religions to help people who are in distress. Maybe talk about whether or not your parents kind of fit that category.

Danny Rensch [00:28:53] For sure.

John Dehlin [00:28:53] Whatever background you want to share, how they met and then how the early family develops or dissolves.

Danny Rensch [00:29:00] It's funny because as I share in the book, I don't know a lot about their courtship. Kind of by design. Right. As we're gonna, I mean, I'm gonna get into in a second. The twist ending is my parents. Marriage didn't make it everybody but. And so when you're, when your relationship doesn't make it within the collective, it's not something that you're gonna keep talking about for all the reasons we're gonna get into. And, and, and how that was, was again, weaponized and, and certainly passed on to me. But before we get into that, my parents were married when they moved to the collective. I know that they had been married for several years. They were in New York and then Southern California.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] Again. You, you say lay law school. Your dad.

Danny Rensch [00:29:37] My dad, My dad was a practicing attorney.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:29:41] At a pretty, at a pretty high powered firm in la. Actually, I don't, I don't remember the name, but he was doing well. And my mom was also educated but had been bouncing around basically her entire life. She was an army brat, lost both of her parents young. And so marrying my dad, my dad was kind of the opposite. He had stable home life and went to good schools and was practicing law in la. They're married at the time. My dad was a practicing Buddhist before discovering rebirthing in Est and then ultimately moving to the collective.

Danny Rensch [00:30:17] And so my dad had his own very spiritual journey. He would describe it as finding himself to the collective and to Duran. Again, I. I've said many times, and this is funny because sometimes when I talk about it, I say again, every time that I. I know limited information, partly because one, it was not told to me. And then also because then as I started unpack it, they both told me different versions of the story. Right. And I think that happens in divorces where, you know, from what I understand, my mom was the one who wanted to move to the collective. Steve Wrench and Stephen Camp never quite got along, really, ever, as far as the power dynamic goes.

Danny Rensch [00:30:51] But they did move to the collective. And then, ironically, despite the tensions between Steven and Steve, because they're both kind of alpha male sort of warriors on their own spiritual, and they both have kind of their s. Training stuff, they kind of quickly became more or less partners as like, kind of the top two men in the collective. And my mom didn't. Didn't continue to rise up the totem pole in the way that my dad did. And so not long. I don't know exactly the timing, but it was within a couple years, they were.

Danny Rensch [00:31:22] They were already on the verge of divorce. My dad decides that my mom has to have a baby or he's not going to stay with her for whatever reason. My mom said yes to that, even though they were not. They were no longer having sex. And so she was. It was in vitro.

Danny Rensch [00:31:37] I was inseminated and ultimately born. And not long after being born, my dad officially divorced my mom and married the oldest daughter of Steven and Trina Camp, which is where my story and mine and my mom's story sort of separated from my dad for the next 13 years until we get into what happened later. And so that's the fastest way to describe that. My parents found their way because my mom loved Iran. She heard Trina trance.

Danny Rensch [00:32:06] She wanted more opportunities to hear Duran. They moved to the collective in Mesa, and ultimately their marriage did not make it. And I was born and my dad divorced my mom. So I know that sounds like a weird bullet list to give, but that's kind of the bullet list to give.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] No, no, no. And I want to talk about the way marriage was treated and specifically the way wives were treated. Before we do that, you talk about a few of the theological or doctrinal pillars of the collective. You talk about processing. Is it called in residence? What is it called with your partner in light?

Control, Marriage, and Vibration Doctrine

Danny Rensch [00:32:49] Vibration in life. Vibration, like vibration Talk about a few.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] I have that in my notes, but I couldn't bring it up in memory. So talk about some of the core teachings or principles before we get into the way women were treated. Wives were treated, basically.

Danny Rensch [00:33:07] Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, we're like, we're doing a study case here. Right. So now my brain is summarizing where we're at. The collective is formed. My parents are there. The. There are. There are some foundational things that. That the collective adhered to and. Or was regularly practicing or using in their language. So the first one was this concept. If we go back to what I said about Duran's teaching and that reincarnation is a core principle, Karma is more of a. More of a spiritual law, in fact, than an opinion. What goes around comes around.

Danny Rensch [00:33:45] You know, you will reap what you sow lifetime over lifetime. This is a fundamental belief, and that as you move closer to God, lifetime over lifetime, you move closer to your, like, vibration. Now what is that? A like vibration is if we believe that we all came from the center of the universe at some point from the same place, and that at some point souls were dispersed everywhere, right? And they're. They're living all over the different universes and timelines and planets. As you evolve back toward your best self, you will be on a similar frequency and vibration with others who are moving back toward the same center, the same oneness.

Danny Rensch [00:34:22] This is. It's kind of interesting from a spiritual theory, right? And. And depending on how you feel about where we all came from, we can't answer those questions. We'll get into the. We'll get into the metaphysical later. Right? But. But the idea was, hey, we all came from the same place. You've had many lifetimes. As you've evolved and learned your lessons, and as you get closer to your final sort of soul evolution, you are with your like, vibration soul group, which can be a number of people. And like vibration as a person can be the individual who's, like, lack of a better way to say it is your soulmate.

Danny Rensch [00:34:53] That's a good comparison people can relate to. Right? So your, like vibration is supposed to be your soulmate because one of the final stages of becoming one with God is becoming one with another person. The idea that you learn how to compromise and have a healthy relationship can be a really healthy framework of how to be the best version of yourself, right? And so like vibration was a tool to say, hey, your like vibration is supposed to be your partner as you navigate everything in life, which means full chakra alignment, spiritual Alignment. Sexual alignment. Alignment. On. On. On. What you're doing together is how you're going to move back toward God.

Danny Rensch [00:35:29] So, like, vibration was a tool in Duran's teaching. So that's like vibration explained at its best. Before we talk about any of the ways it was misused. Right. The other thing you quickly mentioned was the process. The process was.

John Dehlin [00:35:41] And also the term out of integrity.

Danny Rensch [00:35:43] Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll get into all that stuff. Right.

John Dehlin [00:35:44] So

Danny Rensch [00:35:47] I wanted to explain, and again, I've obviously, you know, done a lot of my own work on this research. A lot. I share in my book that one of the things that, you know, was on my own path was that I have read a lot of spiritual literature, and I did it on my own regard and also at the suggestion of Dr. Duran, ironically or not. And so we'll get into that. But I. I have a lot of my own. There's no way I can't describe it without having to acknowledge that I've come to understand, I think, even for myself, what, at its best, the goal was.

Danny Rensch [00:36:15] Whether you believe in it or not, this was the goal. Right. Of what it was maybe before it was misused. So when I explain it, I like to say, hey, this is the idea of what it was. Right. And so that's like vibration. The process was. Was a.

Danny Rensch [00:36:28] In the collective, the process was multiple things. It was noun, adjective, and verb. And here's what I mean by that. Processes themselves were a thing that happened, which would essentially be group meetings, group therapy. Everybody would come together and discuss their issues, talk about things going on in their marriage, everything from as intimate as things going on in their bedroom to. To anything else they're struggling with. They would share their opinions and judgments on other couples and other things. And the processes were essentially group meetings overseen by the leaders of the collective, overseen by Stephen and Trina, eventually my dad and. And. And his wife Marlo, who's Stephen and Trina's oldest daughter.

Danny Rensch [00:37:08] The processes were a place where people came together to talk. I'll say. Someone also had their own process. What that means is, like, you know, this person's process is that they're struggling with X, Y and Z. They're struggling with being out of integrity in their marriage and in their, like, vibration relationship. So that's. That's the idea that someone could have their own process that they were working on. And then the other thing is someone could be processed, which is like a verb. Like, hey, Danny was processed last night about his bad chess tournament. What would that mean? It would mean I was essentially in one of the group meetings and I was in the hot seat and everyone was kind of telling me why I was struggling or giving me their judgments.

Danny Rensch [00:37:47] And that could be as crazy as some processes literally got physical and some processes were just what they were. They were just words. And maybe even some people left feeling good. Right. Depending on what happened. Right. So again, that is the process that happened. People had a process that kind of belonged to them and you could be processed. And those were ways that the terms were used within our collective.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] Right.

Danny Rensch [00:38:11] So I've given you the context you're asking for. Right. You want this, right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:14] Oh, yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:38:14] Fun for the audience.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] And it reminds me of Landmark, because when I went to Landmark, you'd. Sometimes the. The guide at Landmark would bring up someone to the microphone and they would give kind of tough feedback to the person. And then sometimes the audience would as well. And there was this whole dialectic of sort of tough feedback. Yeah. For the participant.

Danny Rensch [00:38:35] I mean, we'll get into my own opinions on that, if you want it. I think there are parts of. That can be super healthy. I think where things can get really messed up is when the person giving the feedb feedback also has an agenda and. Or motive for what you decide to do with the feedback. That is where it gets dangerous. And I've said this before, which in my opinion, John, and you'll have your own on this, is that where spirituality and religious frameworks can be healthy is encouraging people to ask tough questions and to reflect in big ways and all the things that come with the human experience, which is why am I here?

Danny Rensch [00:39:03] What is my purpose? What am I trying to do to feel good about my life? Helping people ask big questions I would argue is good. Good. Pretending you have the answers is where any religion can become a cult or

John Dehlin [00:39:12] manipulating people for your own.

Danny Rensch [00:39:14] Right. So, but because it's both, both of the same thing, either pretending you have the answers or thinking you have the. You have the thing they should choose.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:39:20] And I think the moment. The moment you cross those lines is like people have done intense leadership seminars and coaching, and some of them are influenced by Landmark Forum and others are influenced by these types of things. But the moment the person has a reason to be motivated by what that person does with the feedback is where it can become dangerous and the moment of religious or spiritual framework stops. Just encouraging people to reflect and starts telling them, I have all the answers for you is where it gets dangerous. But okay, that's another question. Right. So back to what was happening here. Was that, like, vibration is a tool.

Cult Processes and Psychological Manipulation

Danny Rensch [00:39:54] Processes are used to process people, to help them discover their. Their shit, right? To help them get into the weeds and figure out what's going on with them. But you have it being overseen by people who are running the collective and are ultimately now aware of everyone's problems and able to. And motivated in some ways to use it against them, depending on it.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] It's like the auditing, right?

Danny Rensch [00:40:17] And it's not even just the leaders. What you have is like, everyone in the collective is sort of in the same battle of how they end up coming out of those processes. How do they look? How did they express themselves? How. How does it. How does it feel in terms of. Of what they said versus what was said to them? How did they handle being on the hot seat? Because everyone had turns on the hot seat. So how did you handle that dynamic? And how did.

Danny Rensch [00:40:40] So that's the process. And then I would say the last pillar, if I'm drawing a triangle of what kind of made up the collective, I would say the last pillar that we'll get into is purpose. And purpose was a big thing, because purpose, as a thing is something we all want to believe we have and want to search for in our life. And it is whatever purpose in the collective was usually a thing that you were actually, like, given or told was your purpose. Right. And so that could be as. As menial as, like, your job is to do this. Your job is to clean the houses or to fix the cars or, like, hey, your purpose is chess, and your entire reason for being on the planet is to become, like, the greatest chess player of all time.

Danny Rensch [00:41:18] Right? And so the idea that everyone has purpose, we are all moving back toward our higher self with a partner, a soulmate. And let's have really amazing group therapy where we help each other on the way. I just drew a really positive triangle, right?

John Dehlin [00:41:34] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:41:34] Like, great stuff, great stuff, great stuff, Right? And then there's, like, how was it actually used in practice and what happened? And it's interesting because when you talk about stuff, you said that people join these groups because they are searching for help, right? And. Or they're. Some are running away from their past. Maybe some are openly aware that they're running away, but they're looking for help. Maybe there's a bunch of area in between where people are less aware of their own shift and become sort of infatuated with this idea that they can grow within a hierarchy and they're going to take advantage of it as best they can.

Danny Rensch [00:42:04] I would say that Every single one of those things happened and many things that I'm not mentioning, but people who are smart, people who are good end up in these groups. It's not as simple as, like, I've been asked by so many people, like, well, when did you first realize you were an occult in a scandal tape? It's like, well, that's like a really black and white way to say something. And how, like, you, like in a Hollywood version, have a moment of clarity and. And whatever, right? And like, the reality is just like good people end up in tough situations. It's not that easy to come to the clarity that you're even in one of those situations, even if you're born, let alone. I mean, maybe even harder because I was born in it. Right. And so.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] But your dad was attracted to it.

Danny Rensch [00:42:46] My dad was a successful attorney in LA for sure. Right. And he wasn't a dummy.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] He wasn't a naive dummy.

Danny Rensch [00:42:52] Exactly. And so, and so many people come

John Dehlin [00:42:55] to me and say, john, how can so many super smart Mormons still believe? And my answer is, because belief isn't about intelligence, it's about other things. Do you want community? Meaning, purpose, spirituality, connection? There are all sorts of reasons why. And it's more of a matter of what you need or what you value than your iq.

Danny Rensch [00:43:15] Well said. Right. And I think. And also there's nothing, okay, there can be things that are wrong in ways that is weaponized, but it's also good to acknowledge that there are things that feed the intellect and feeds. Things that feed the soul, if you want to call it that, the emotional body. Right. And I think that you nailed it. Right. The reason people are in those situations, as I. Because the reason I started that rant, I guess, is because I was describing the positive ways to look at that triangle. Now here are some ways that shit got ugly, right. And things broke down within that.

Danny Rensch [00:43:44] Right. We'll go back to like, vibration first, which is to describe that the idea of having a soulmate, the idea of having a partner who challenges you, who makes you be the best version of yourself is something that I certainly feel with my wife and partner and Shawna and I. And I love that part of our relationship. And it has not been easy making our marriage work. As I share a lot and I'm. And that's the truth, right? You work hard for this thing that you value, that you've committed to together.

Danny Rensch [00:44:11] But if. If the idea that you have a like, vibration ordained in all time and space becomes one where your marriage isn't working so you go, instead of trying to make it work, you go, well, maybe this person isn't my, like, vibration. Maybe this much younger woman is exactly right. Or even if that. It's not even a much younger woman, just any other woman is, right? As, as a guy, right? In this group where they're sort of not, not always carte blanche, but there is a clear path to being with someone else, right? You have a leader in Stephen Camp and Trina Camp. They're sort of overseeing everything.

Danny Rensch [00:44:43] There's this process that is happening now over here where if you show up as like an alpha and perform well, you might be attractive to the women in the group because of your performance, right? And if your broader purpose is also one that is either lucrative to the collective and, or just deemed valuable. Now there's like an obvious framework where this whole idea that instead of making your marriage work and making your relationship feel like a, like, vibration relationship, you're essentially casting aside your partner to choose a better one.

Danny Rensch [00:45:14] Now multiply that by like dozens of times, right? This is something that happened in the collective a lot. You had men leaving their wives for younger women. You had men leaving their wives for other women. You also had promiscuity by women too. And so I want to paint a clear picture that there was a dynamic where this was the game that was being played, right? And you had the process being used and weaponized, not just with information against people, but in terms of performance.

Danny Rensch [00:45:39] And then, you know, purpose itself could be anything from, well, it doesn't it sound good to have an ordained purpose by like a spirit. But also, if your purpose was essentially a low level job, used to like, fulfill the need in a financially merged communist community, which, by the way, one of the things we skipped right past was that the. The collective was completely financially merged. There were only a few bank accounts. Everything was ultimately overseen by Stephen and Trina Camp and sort of the leaders of the collective. And so, so then when you kind of unpack that framework, you go, okay, there's a lot of shit that it could go wrong here.

Danny Rensch [00:46:10] And it did. And that's, I guess, some of the stuff that we explained in my book. And I'll shut up there and let you ask this question.

John Dehlin [00:46:17] No. And, you know, Mormonism starts out as a collective as well. It was called the United Order, where Joseph Smith had everything financially in common, but he controlled the purse strings. And all the polygamy stuff that emerges within a short amount of time within Mormonism is similar to the like, vibration stuff really quickly, just a clarification when someone would do their process, Duran could be involved. So it's not just processing in a group. You might have a spiritual being as

Danny Rensch [00:46:47] Duran was actually rarely involved in process. Actually not, not. No. It was. That was. That was actually a human run experiment. So when were there were trances, I would say this. There were trances that could get heavy for sure. There were definitely trances where Duran might be more direct with someone about their issues or about something they're struggling with. But Duran never led processes like that

John Dehlin [00:47:10] or was involved or was involved. Okay. So you could get. You could get personal direction or feedback from Duran, but it would. That would be more of a. During a trance session than a processing.

Danny Rensch [00:47:21] Yes. And often Duran gave more direct feedback in smaller trances. There a few quite were called privates. You would have a private with Duran. So there was group trances that happened traditionally like every Sunday. You know, there was a ritualistic aspect of everyone would come together, sing songs, the lights would go low. You would kind of wait for Trina to come in. Eventually her voice would change to Duran's voice. And depending on the day, there might be a sermon. Depending on the day, he might just immediately open up for questions. Things like this happened. Right.

Danny Rensch [00:47:51] There were private trances where you could request to have a private with Duran. And sometimes a private would be just you and Trina Trancing. Sometimes the private would be overseen by Stephen Camp or another minister for a long time. I think privates were always overseen by a minister so that it wasn't just Iran and the person. Which, you know, I can see understanding that both ways. Both from like if Trina is trancing for people who are sort of like passing through the collective almost for like a safety reason. There was like, okay, someone else should be there because we don't know how. Who this person is.

Danny Rensch [00:48:22] And then there are times where the minister's interpretation of what Duran was saying was a big part of what came out of the private. Right. The human minister in the private trance with someone kind of had say so over what. What Duran really meant by what Duran said.

Danny Rensch [00:48:38] So private trances would happen. Then there were also small groups that happened. But the process itself was a. Was more of a. Honestly, I would. I would actually frame the processes as something that was more inherited from EST and the Landmark Forum type of stuff. Right. And made a part of how people grew within the collective more than. It was totally like a Duran ordained thing.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] Got it. But the mind and will of Duran could be incorporated into a process of creation. Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:49:07] For sure.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] All Right. This is, and you know, there's always this question, again, I'm tying, I always tie it back to Mormonism just for my audience and because it helps me make sense of the pattern. Right. But with Mormonism there's always like this question of did Joseph Smith really see God and Jesus?

John Dehlin [00:49:23] Did Joseph Smith really talk to Angel Moroni and get the golden plates and create the Book of Mormon or was it his own invention? And then there's also the sub question of did he think he talked to God in Jesus? Even if he didn't, did he think he was channeling an ancient people in writing the Book of Mormon or not?

John Dehlin [00:49:42] But the common apologetic response to that sort of questioning in Mormonism is it's kind of miraculous either way. And in Trina's case, if she was channeling a 15th century British dude who was wise, that's amazing. But if she was able to convince a pretty smart group of people that weekly she could communicate and extemporaneously had wise, smart things to say that helped people in the voice of a 15th century dude, it's kind of impressive either way. Does that make sense?

Danny Rensch [00:50:17] Yeah, I mean, and I think that that's a, you know, there's been a lot, I've had a lot of my own ups and downs, you know, new perspectives found. I mentioned kind of how you separate the baby with the bathwater and different versions of deconstructing my own experience with that. And I would say that, yeah, I mean, I think that having bounced pretty hard in my own journey at different times between.

Danny Rensch [00:50:42] At one point I was probably fully an angry atheist and heartbroken person who was not necessarily interested in being convinced that anything was real. It was probably a short lived for me versus like making sense of the practical reasons and the good, healthy reasons for me to, to find good and to do good and whatever the metaphor is of, you know, hatred is drinking poison and expecting other people to feel sick. Right. And, and the reasons you, you have to kind of look for good and to try to unpack maybe what happened. And I've certainly had an interpretation at times that was similar in terms of regardless of the source.

Danny Rensch [00:51:19] For a second I'm gonna focus on what I believe, what makes me feel good or doesn't, what was used and abused my way, and then kind of rewrite my own story, rewrite my own neuro synapses literally and kind of try to figure out what makes sense in a healthy way.

Danny Rensch [00:51:39] And I think what you said is true. And again, I was never Mormon. I can't speak for you or anyone else who would answer that question, I can say for me that there's, you know, there was definitely an experience of, regardless of how I feel about spirit and the potential opposing truth that, you know, maybe, maybe consciousness can live outside the body. There's all kinds of theories about this. Some of them are really popular right now. Donald Hoffman was on Diary of a CEO, if you don't know what that he was a lot of, a lot of very interesting, you know, progressive and edgy science on the proof of the mind's ability to maybe live outside the body and, or whether we understand what could exist after.

Danny Rensch [00:52:19] So I'm not going to get into that, but I am going to say that if you're even open to the idea that consciousness, forget about spirits or even whatever, but if consciousness can live outside the body, there's probably a framework to believe that. Why not the consciousness of people who've died? Why not your own higher consciousness that maybe has had an experience before you were in the body? And what does that look like? Right? And so as long as the teaching that is coming from this idea of consciousness is not inherently corrupting, abusing or worsening my life, let me be open to considering what was good and what wasn't.

Danny Rensch [00:52:50] And so before I even dove into rebuilding my own faith and deciding whether or not I did have an experience where spirit was sometimes real. And I could acknowledge that that doesn't necessarily mean that Trina Camp wasn't a fraud. I maybe did have an experience of some teachings that I find to be really profound. And I had direct experience of those teachings being misused and abused in my own life. I might even believe that there was something special on a spiritual level happening. But it was a fucking cult. It was a cult full stop, right?

John Dehlin [00:53:20] Abuse.

Danny Rensch [00:53:21] And so I think that, I think in people's anger and heartache as they find their way through faith journeys, it can be easier to be black and white, to believe that it was either all good or it was all bad, rather than embracing the nuance of, of maybe there were some good things that were intended and then bad shit happened. But the real mindfuck is maybe there were people there who were actually trying to do bad and the twist ending is twist on them. Some good things happened in weird ways. There's, there's all kinds of interesting things, right? And I, I certainly share a little bit of my version of that in that, you know, there were things that were objectively, nobody would approve.

Danny Rensch [00:53:57] Now, I would never let my kids go through what I went through. But here I am in. In a place in my life where, if I wouldn't change the ending, do I really get to cherry pick the middle and the. In the beginning, too? Do you really get to do that? And how does that actually work as you come to make sense of your life? So I'm apologizing. Sorry. Not sorry for the. For the rant, but to me, because I'm answering the question of, like. I think what you said is true in terms of how people impact their faith. I think in your own journey of like, like anger, heartache, making sense of things that maybe objectively were not okay, you might be tempted to move into the black and white lane.

Danny Rensch [00:54:33] I have settled in a place where I actually do believe there were some spiritual experiences I had, and I can say that it was a cult, and I'm actually okay with that. And I think both those things can live and be true. And so that is where I've landed on that. And I obviously will cut short there because there, you know, there's been a lot of things that have gotten me there in my own. In my own journey, but it's. It's a. It's a tough one. Right. And I. And. And, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:56] Love it. I mean that I. I was planning on maybe getting to that at the very end, but I'm really glad we hit it now because, I mean, we're talking about Duran, we're talking about Trina.

Danny Rensch [00:55:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] And it's. It's really powerful stuff, so I'm glad we have already.

Danny Rensch [00:55:12] And I don't mind getting to the end and whatever, but I'm. Yeah.

Danny's Parents and Their Path Into the Collective

John Dehlin [00:55:14] So back to the, like, vibration thing. We were just starting with your mom and your dad's story.

Danny Rensch [00:55:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] So now apply that corrupt, like, vibration. Well, that corruptible, like, vibration doctrine to your parents in the first couple years of their time together. Right?

Danny Rensch [00:55:31] Yeah. And this is super. This is super tough because one of the things I'll share is that what I have come to understand and now know, not even my own interpretation, or I'll say I know based on the amount of people who've confirmed this to me. As you become an adult, you learn what was really going on and different things. What I now understand about what happened was not what was told to me for years. Right. And so what happened was my dad grew very quickly within the collective and became the number two to Stephen Camp, the person who probably led more processes than anybody.

Danny Rensch [00:56:05] He was really on the front lines of those parts of the collective. And I would argue that my dad Never saw for years how he was being, you know, he was being used in that framework as the guy who was willing to say all the really inappropriate shit and bust people up. And then Stephen Camp got to be the good guy who cleaned up in the background. But it doesn't matter because my father was not a victim. And he chose to do that and ultimately probably did it and only did it because he was getting something out of it. No one does anything in life without some sort of payoff.

Danny Rensch [00:56:35] Right. To use the forum language. Right. And so my dad was obviously leading those processes for a reason. And as he. He accelerated himself within the eyes of Steven and Trina and Duran, my dad acted in all kinds of bad ways. He, you know, he. He had an affair on my mom while they were married. And you know, that that young girl is my half sister from a one night stand in the collective. My dad ultimately left my mom and decided that marlo, who was 19 at the time, My dad was 38 when

John Dehlin [00:57:03] Stephen Camp's daughter and Stephen.

Danny Rensch [00:57:05] Well, not biological, because Stephen Camp had no biological children.

John Dehlin [00:57:09] Children.

Danny Rensch [00:57:10] But she was Trina Camp's daughter.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] Trina Camp's biological daughter, yes.

Danny Rensch [00:57:14] It doesn't really matter, but I'm just clarifying.

John Dehlin [00:57:16] Like his stepdaughters. Yes, Stephen Camp's stepdaughters.

Danny Rensch [00:57:19] And so.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Danny Rensch [00:57:20] Yeah. So my dad leaves my mom and marries Marlo. My dad is 38 and she's 19.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] And you were how old at the time?

Danny Rensch [00:57:26] I was a six week old baby.

John Dehlin [00:57:28] Yeah. So, I mean, that's a lot. They're only, what, a year here, a year in Mesa?

Danny Rensch [00:57:33] Yeah, yeah. Somewhere between a year and two years. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] And your dad becomes the number two guy, decides that your mom isn't his. Like vibration. But also it would make every sense for some sort of dynastic relationship for the number two guy to marry the number one guy's daughter or stepdaughter. You know what I mean?

Danny Rensch [00:57:52] Not only that, what I have come to learn, like I said, the context I gave right before, the answer was that this was sort of positioned and proposed as like this really spiritual thing that happened. But I would learn many years later that this relationship between Steve Wrench and Marlo was basically put together by Trina Camp in like a drunken process one night. We haven't talked about alcohol yet because I described the pillars of purpose, like vibration and the process. What I didn't talk about is that the group of people were a bunch of very wounded human beings wounding each other with alcohol dumped all over place the them.

Danny Rensch [00:58:28] And this was something that was happening all the time. And people were drunk. Alcohol was encouraged. It was seen as a truth serum. Trina Camp herself, I don't think I'm breaking any news and saying that she was. She was a raging alcoholic. And part of that was why alcohol was so endorsed. And so I would learn later that Trina basically endorsed and. Or put my dad and her daughter together at a process where she was drunk and my mom had already gone to bed.

Danny Rensch [00:58:57] Now, apparently they didn't get together that night. But ultimately the seed was planted and eventually my dad would be marrying Marlo as a high powered lawyer who was making money with the oldest daughter. And.

John Dehlin [00:59:09] And your dad was in his 30s. She was, you said 18.

Danny Rensch [00:59:12] My dad was 38 and she was 19.

John Dehlin [00:59:14] Interestingly, people think of Mormons now as not being alcohol drinkers. In the early years of the church, alcohol was. Was heavily involved in people's spiritual experiences.

Danny Rensch [00:59:24] So that's interesting. I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [00:59:26] That does track. Yeah. Joseph Smith drank until his very last day on the earth.

Danny Rensch [00:59:30] Oh, I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [00:59:32] So. So, yeah, so that. That happened. And, you know, so your mom gets

John Dehlin [00:59:36] kind of thrown away.

Danny Rensch [00:59:37] Yeah, my mom is sort of again, cast aside or made. Made lower on the totem pole. There was a literal totem pole within the collective that was kind of what it was referred to as. As where you sat on the totem pole. And how people treated each other at times with. Was reflective of how they felt about the other person's position within the broader kind of hierarchy. And so.

John Dehlin [00:59:58] And didn't y' all move away, you and your mom?

Danny Rensch [01:00:00] So I was a baby at this time. My dad is now with Marlo, and over the next couple years, my mom would have my younger brother Josh with. With a man who was really only in the collective for like, it was basically a one night stand. And then my mom would eventually remarry a man named Dennis who came to the collective Mechanic.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] Right.

Danny Rensch [01:00:20] So Dennis is my stepfather. Debbie is my mother. At the age of somewhere between 4 and 5, the tensions between my mom and Marlo, who's a young wife to Steve Wrench, from what I've been told were at their peak, that peak tensions. In fact, the woman my dad had an affair with, her name was also Debbie. And so there has been literally a term in the collective the Debbie and Debbie days, the Debbie and Debbie karma. Literally the Debbie and Debbie karma, the Debbie and. And Debbie days were an actual thing. And at this time, it was kind of like hey, we need you to take a break and not be in the collective for a while so that you're not kind of front and center to Marlo and Steve's relationship. Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:01:03] And I was just certain, reading the book, that your mom's gonna take you leave and never come back. But that's not what happens. Not just with your mom, but with other people too. You could be totally shamed or damaged and somehow eventually find your way back. Right.

Danny Rensch [01:01:21] One of the things I've come to learn about these groups that is. That has a lot of similarities, is that what you think would normally be enough evidence or enough of an experience for people to say, okay, I'm done, is often the exact opposite thing that happens. And that the more times you can get someone to sign a covert contract that they don't even know they're signing, the harder it is for them to break. Break it. And this is an actual, like, behavior and like a manipulation thing that I've come to learn was. I think for many years I denied that it was premeditated or deliberate.

Danny Rensch [01:01:56] I've now come to the idea that it most certainly probably was. And that when someone has to repostrate themselves at the feet, when they have to consistently re. Adorn themselves, like I said, re. Recommit to the values of a dysfunctional situation, they're both writing a covert contract that they're committed, but they're also kind of writing a covert contract to sort of participate in the process. Right. And when you think about the broader collective, Stephen and Trina were kind of everyone's parents to a certain degree. And so that dynamic means that everybody is kind of a child to some degree, to what they think of them, to what the parents of Steven and Trina think.

Danny Rensch [01:02:39] Think. And so what happens is when you are sort of shunned as a child, you don't stop loving the person shunning you. You stop loving yourself. When you're an abused kid, you don't stop loving your abuser. You stop loving yourself. Because that is the safest thing to do.

John Dehlin [01:02:54] Or spouse. Right.

Danny Rensch [01:02:55] Or. Or a spouse. Right. And again, I'm not. I'm not a therapist, and I'm not going to pretend to, like, talk about what happens fully, but I have been in therapy for a long time, and I've. And I've. And I've looked into a lot of this stuff and. And of course, been to hell and back in terms of my own trauma, and I have tr. I have come to truly feel and integrate what this process looks like because I did it. Which is that when I was abused and I was hurt, I didn't start doubting the person who was hurting me. I started doubting myself.

Danny Rensch [01:03:21] This is why a lot of people, I think, avoid skepticism for a long time too. Because the moment you open up that thread, it's also full of a lot of self shame and self doubt. Because when you're, when you're in a position to question whether something happening to you is right or are okay, that's a very scary thing to do, especially when you are actually a child, because it's easier to believe that you did wrong, that you deserved the abuse, and that it's all your fault, because that means you are still safe with the person who's abusing you. And that sounds simple in, like, people understand this in marriage dynamics or when a parent is actually physically, you know, or emotionally mentally abusive, but in the broader settings of the collective, that was literally what was happening.

Danny Rensch [01:03:59] And so when someone is shunned and told they need to sort of re show that they are committed and show that the teaching of Duran is still for them and that the collective still belongs to them, they are actually more likely to come back even more loyal and even more motivated to prove it than they are to say, I'm done with this place. And so that's exactly what happened to my mom at the age of five for me. And however old she was, she was probably 41, I guess. I'm thinking she was 36, I think when I was born, something, something like that, we were demerged from the collective.

Danny Rensch [01:04:33] That was the term. You were demerged from the group. And we moved to Colorado with Debbie and Dennis, my younger brother Josh. Another family came with us. Elaine and her girls moved with us. She was also demerged because she was also the other woman in a different relationship that was happening. And I'm, you know, it's not my story or experience, so I will not tell that, but that was kind of what happened with her life. So we were all in Colorado together other.

Danny Rensch [01:04:57] And for about a year we lived there. And at some point, Stephen and Trina kind of started pulling them back in, saying, hey, Marlo's, calm down, you can come back now, these sort of things. And what's funny is what I've learned about that time is that my mom, despite everything I just described about what actually happens in those dynamics where my mom really was a child to Steven and Trina, who was being abused and shunned. And often what happens in those cases is you recommit yourself to get the parents love, just like an abused child does. Was my mom actually, from what I, from what I've heard, was actually kind of like yourself.

Danny Rensch [01:05:29] I'm actually not going back. From what I understand, she was actually more aggressive, but her marriage with Dennis was very young. And again, I'm speaking in hearsay a little bit, but from what I, from what I've heard, Dennis was ultimately convinced to come back, which made my mom convinced to come back, which made the whole thing happen in, like, a much more committed way. Now, my mom, again, for many years would say that Steven and Trina were her teachers and she loved Iran and that's why she came came back. But I've also heard that part of the story that maybe there was some moment where she did question it and she didn't want to, but either way, we did come back.

Danny Rensch [01:06:01] Yeah, and, and yeah, I guess I'll slow down there because I'm giving a lot of information to let you guide the combo. But yeah, I think that, just to summarize one more time, I think that dynamic surprises people when they hear about it, but it's actually, it's actually not very surprising if you've been an abused person or suffered in any way from that type of trauma. That is what happens often in those power relationships. That is a very difficult thing for people who aren't abused to kind of unpack and understand.

John Dehlin [01:06:26] Yeah, like, the term that I became familiar with studying cult literature is called blame reversal. But it started to emerge in the 19th century when, you know, like Jehovah's Witness movement, the leaders would predict a year for the return of Christ, and then the year would come and go and Christ wouldn't come. What the leaders would do is they would blame followers for not being righteous enough, and they would end up believing more than less, even though the prophecy didn't come true. That's blame reversal. And in the case of the Mormon Church, some of the top founders of the church, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, two good examples, they were excommunicated within the first six or seven years of the church's existence.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] And the church always reminds people, ah, but they came back. But what you're talking to us about really helps to fill in the pieces about why some of these people who experienced really horrible things ended up coming back. But the final thing that I'm hearing from you also is that conversion and deconversion is so often a social thing. And so it's not just simply, what did you experience? What do you think and feel once you have spouses and children and extended family involved, for sure, there's so many more dynamics that bind you to the organization than just literally your own experiences and. Or what you actually believe.

Danny Rensch [01:07:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [01:07:50] I mean, you nailed it. I think there's. You know, these dynamics probably go back a little bit to what I was saying is where. Where spiritual frameworks can be healthy because they help people ask questions. But how often are you actually really doing that with no agenda to what choice they make with that, with the inner wisdom they decide to come to? Because everyone does have their own inner wisdom, their own intuition.

Danny Rensch [01:08:08] Doing that can be okay. But then saying, okay, well, I asked those questions, but I know the answers, and this is the only way. And now I'm even gonna ask those questions in a way where I already know you're gonna come to the answer. And I'm just planting the seed. Right. Of recommitting yourself to the church. And, you know, this happened a lot because you touched on the social groups and the family dynamics. I think as the collective at its peak started to have people leave for different reasons. Because one of the things I witnessed often, and I didn't understand it until many years later, was that rather than Stephen Camp, for example, talking to a daughter or a son of a parent who left the collective, because this happened often as people who were in the collective had children my age and our generation started to come of age and be young adults, there were often times where the parent left first.

Danny Rensch [01:09:01] The parent would leave the collective and leave their now adult child who might be married, might be in their own group. They would leave them in the church, even though they came to the perspective that this wasn't okay. And the way that was often handled in the process or in Stephen Camp's communication with the people who were still in the collective was never with like an outright, I love you, I hope you don't leave too. That would be. That would be too direct. It would actually be. So usually when someone leaves, one of the kids goes with them. Are you going to be the kid, or you think it's going to be your brother?

John Dehlin [01:09:37] That.

Danny Rensch [01:09:37] No, that's actually how it would go. So now you would have the person saying, well, no, I'm definitely not going to leave. That's definitely not going to be me. Right. And even if it wasn't to create tension between the siblings that were still there, or is it going to be your sister, your brother? It would be, well, your mom has left and kind of disavowed the teaching which Is, you know, which you know, once you know that this teaching is the highest, that's even. Even. That's an even higher sin than. Than not never knowing. And so if they've left, are you going to leave the teaching too, or are you not going to leave the teaching?

Danny Rensch [01:10:06] And it was always posed as a question because, again, a question is much more powerful in getting someone to re sign the COVID contract. Rather than saying with an actual heartfelt response or. Or meaning like, I love you. I know you're going through a tough time. This has probably got to be hard for you. Like, that's a healthy thing to say to someone who's struggling with their parent who's left the collective, instead of saying, I love you. I know this is probably painful for you. I'm here for you. It's. Are you gonna leave the teaching too, or are you gonna not do that? Because we never know what's gonna happen.

Danny Rensch [01:10:36] Right. And so you consistently create this dynamic where people are recommitting to the thing, regardless of whether, again, this is the cult dynamic as it was run in the infrastructure, regardless of whether, as we've already said, there were some good teachings or not, or irrelevant at this point. The spiritual part of it that can be healthy for you has nothing to do with the framework that is being used to keep people there, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:10:58] Totally makes all the sense in the world. Yeah. So that constant recommitment, but also it's kind of reverse psychology.

Danny Rensch [01:11:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] Are you going to be the one that leaves? I'm not going to be the one that leaves. It's kind of insidiously brilliant in a way. Okay, so you and your mom and stepdad leave for a while, but then you come back. Maybe we could start talking about how you got interested in chess. Is that at the very beginning, is that worth going there? Is that okay?

Discovering Chess and Early Training

Danny Rensch [01:11:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:26] Is that too abrupt of a segue or is that okay?

Danny Rensch [01:11:28] No, no, that's great. And you're in charge, by the way. I'm just trying to tell the story and give you all the things that you're looking for. So we came back. At this point, the collective was still living on the block in Mesa, but very quickly relocated to Tonto Village. Tonto Village is a suburb in northern Arizona just outside of Payson. And that was where the collective would sort of set up shop for the. For the many years to come. And so I remember being five years old and hitting the village for the first time and being like, this is freaking awesome. These are all my friends.

Danny Rensch [01:12:04] I Knew from a couple years ago. Right. And now I get to see them again. And we're living in the village and moved back from Colorado. Whatever would happen over the next five years. I was a kid in the village like anyone else. And a lot of that's in the book, but it's kind of free range. I'm free range. Right.

Danny Rensch [01:12:20] A lot of kids growing up in the village, you know, had a great time. It was a close knit community. You're in the forest all day playing. And there wasn't really much about my childhood in that way before I learned how to play chess that I would say was that painful. I didn't even know Steve Wrench was my father. I didn't really know much about anything in regards to my parents dynamic.

John Dehlin [01:12:41] But that's crazy. They kept.

Danny Rensch [01:12:43] Which is so crazy by itself. Right. The only reason I learned that Steve was my dad was because my, my half sister Trina, Stephen Marlo's oldest child, said that she had a crush on me. And this is when I was 7, turning 8. So it was like, hey, he's been back in the village now for a couple years from Colorado. We should probably make sure he knows that Steve Wrench is his dad. So I remember that process where I was first told that Steve was my biological.

John Dehlin [01:13:05] People freak out and say, you can't date her.

Danny Rensch [01:13:08] I mean, I wasn't dating anybody. Right. I was seven.

John Dehlin [01:13:10] No, I know, I know. But I mean.

Danny Rensch [01:13:11] But yeah, it was.

John Dehlin [01:13:12] Don't get any ideas there.

Danny Rensch [01:13:13] Yeah, I had no idea. And it was, it was all, it was all being told to me for the first time. And I kind of rubbed it off and went all right back, back to playing cops and robbers in the woods, Right? No big deal.

Danny Rensch [01:13:22] Fast forward to the summer of 1995 when I was nine years old. A movie comes out called Searching for Bobby Fischer, which for those of you who haven't seen it, I'll give a big endorsement. It's a phenomenal movie.

Danny Rensch [01:13:35] And regardless of the fact that it was magical for me in terms of chess and I watched this movie and became obsessed with the idea of getting good at chess. And so that's kind of where it began in terms of my journey. I was until that point living at the bottom of the totem pole in the collective, having a blast as a kid in the village, very ignorant in terms of my mother, my mother and father's past, let alone kind of the foundings of the collective or much of the things I've explained at this point and just doing my thing Right. And at this point, now that I know how to play chess, Dallas, who was Marlo's first son before she married my dad.

Danny Rensch [01:14:10] Dad. So Dallas is Marlo's son from a previous marriage, just like I'm my father's son from his marriage with Debbie. We're stepbrothers, although I don't even know that or think of that, because at the time, I'm a kid not really thinking too much about the biological, or lack thereof, relationships.

John Dehlin [01:14:25] He's kind of a brother to you.

Danny Rensch [01:14:27] Yeah, we're friends. I mean, we're. We're like every kid in the village. Pretty close. Right. I mean, I would say at some point, like, probably the kids in the. In my generation growing up, would say that we probably had closer relationships than most, like families. You know, I mean, even if you weren't blood with someone, because we were. We were in a very small group,

John Dehlin [01:14:44] you would have thought of him as a stepbrother. Right. I mean, is your dad's stepson. Right. So, yeah.

Danny Rensch [01:14:50] Okay, again, I didn't use the term step brother.

John Dehlin [01:14:52] Yes.

Danny Rensch [01:14:53] But, yeah, so Dallas and I got obsessed with chess, and we played all that summer into the fall, and that was when I first developed a relationship with Stephen Camp, because until that point, you know, there wasn't really much for much of a reason for me to be kind of dealing with Stephen and Trina Camp as the. As the bosses of the collective. And.

John Dehlin [01:15:13] But Camp was a super fan of chess, it turns out.

Danny Rensch [01:15:16] Yes. And so. But. But Stephen. Stephen Camp, you know, regardless of the things about the collective, was genuinely loved. Yes. And. And loved the game he had been following that summer or into September. There was a world championship match going on between Gary Kasparov and Vishwanathan Anand in New York in 1995. So he was following that. He loved the. We love chess. Everyone loves searching for Bobby Fischer as a movie. So it was kind of this. This thing that was happening. And. And then we played in our first chess tournament in October of 1995, just after I turned 10, and I lost every game. I did not do very well.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] But Dallas did better.

Danny Rensch [01:15:51] Dallas did much better. But that didn't change Stephen Camp's perspective in terms of what he saw in me for whatever. Again, I say this now because he's both, you know, said it for many years, and obviously I did get very good at the game. So he clearly saw something, and he wasn't wrong. He was like, all right, Danny. Danny, like, has a knack for this game. Right. And so despite my poor performance, Stephen Camp was very quickly putting together a chess team at the Shelby School with more kids joining me in Dallas.

John Dehlin [01:16:19] And that's a. Shelby School's a preference.

Danny Rensch [01:16:21] So the Shelby School was the private school that served the collective kids.

John Dehlin [01:16:23] Kids.

Danny Rensch [01:16:24] It was a private school in Tono Village. And so the Shelby School was where we grew up playing chess. And very quickly, Stephen Camp had a chess team that he was overseeing and had kind of full say so over everything we did, which for us was freaking awesome because we played a lot of chess in a village where cops and robbers took a back seat to. To playing chess. And we had, we had a program that would rival, I would say most, maybe every intensive chess program that's ever existed. I mean, it was every day for hours. And that's how, you know, a small group of kids get really, really good at chess very, very quickly.

John Dehlin [01:16:59] When you're a kid and you're just free range, having a blast, you just remember the good stuff. But you also mentioned septic tanks and dark water and kind of levels of poverty, but also just living from house to house to house, not knowing who quite your guardian is. And it would be easy to both glorify and trivialize the childhood that you experience. And that's not even getting into kind of the chess. You call it chess gypsy dynamic. We're talking before chess even begins. It's in some ways idyllic and in some ways traumatizing childhood. Is that fair to say for sure.

Danny Rensch [01:17:43] And I guess you're right. I kind of focused on the glory days which kids do like to be a kid. But as I share in the book, there's, you know, in hindsight, you look back and go, there was a lot wrong here, right? There was a lot of things that were not good. We were all living in cabins. Two to three families to a home. These are like two to three at most bedroom homes. You know, I shared 10 to 15 rooms with 10 to 15 kids. We shared bath water to save money. We had no shoes. There was a shoe list where everyone would put their name on a shoe list in order to be in line to get shoes.

Danny Rensch [01:18:16] Turns out there was no shoe list. And it was just sort of a way to kind of oversee whether someone really needed shoes or not. And, you know, a lot of the cabins, which were supposed to be seasonal homes in the summer, were full year, were not only year round, fully used houses, but overused houses based on the multiple families living in them. So there were, there were, you know, the men in the collective would be pumping septic Illegally into the forest at night and doing the best they could to maintain the homes.

Danny Rensch [01:18:48] So there were a lot of things that screamed for what it was, which is that we were a communist group, financially merged, barely making ends meet, living in poverty in a very small village in Northern Arizona. Right. And as a kid, again, you do what you do, and everything's okay. Right. And there is a lot of great stuff to that, and there's maybe a lot of deep metaphors, wars there. Right. But there was also a lot that wasn't good. And, of course, as you grew into young adulthood and adolescent, you became more and more exposed to all this stuff. And so back to the. The chess team.

Danny Rensch [01:19:23] Very quickly, the chess team got very good. We won multiple national championships. And this is well known in the. In the chess world. The Shelby School, at its peak was a bit of a. Bit of a legendary team. I was. I was the best player, but there were so many just amazing chess players. I mean, we had had multiple kids on the team who were top ranked for their age in the country.

Danny Rensch [01:19:49] And so as we're winning national championships, we're also getting more and more attention. But early on in that road, we also ran into someone named Igor Ivanov. And Igor Ivanov has his own crazy story in terms of how he defected from the Soviet Union, which he would say the Soviet Union, not Russia Russia, because at the time it was the Soviet Union. He defected to Canada, eventually makes his way to the States, eventually finds himself in Phoenix, Arizona, and eventually bumps into Stephen Camp and the collective kids, and then eventually is offered a job to move to the. To the Tunnel Village to be the, you know, the chess master in residence to help teach all the kids.

Danny Rensch [01:20:29] And so I'm skipping past that story, not. Not just because, in the interest of time, it is a fascinating story and it is in the book, but just to get to the point, which is that that Igor Ivanov was a legend in the US Chess scene, not just because of his chess and his talent. At one point, he beat Anatoly Karpov, who was the best player in the world at the time, but also because he was a raging alcoholic. So he fit right in, into the collective in this way. And Igor was. Again, Igor put everyone else in the collective to shame in terms of his drinking. Like, this was a bottle of vodka a day.

John Dehlin [01:21:00] Human being, you said, bathed in rubbing alcohol. Literally. Literally. How did he have gallons of it?

Danny Rensch [01:21:07] Well, he just. I mean, this is. This is scenes I'm going to share because we're here. Not that I'm not that I'm ever holding back, but I always, I always question myself for a little bit. Do you really want to say this, Danny? I guess I'm going to say it, which is, I mean, I would walk in on him naked in his. In his trailer, naked in the bath in terms of what I assume was water, but then rubbing like a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, like all over his body, like he bathed in it. I think he thought it killed the smell of alcohol and twist ending addiction.

Danny Rensch [01:21:33] It didn't. Right. It made it worse. And so he, he was a crazy person in terms of his lifestyle. He was a. The definition of a chess gypsy, I would say, in that he traveled the world, was living like a rock star, sleeping around where he could, winning just enough money to get to the next tournament, along the way, drinking himself to death, literally, I mean, eventually. But ultimately he was.

Danny Rensch [01:22:00] He was also not totally unique in terms of what I would say that professional chess scene looked like, especially in the US in the 80s and 90s, because what you had was a lot of actually Soviet defected immigrants.

Danny Rensch [01:22:18] And the Soviet defectors were the best chess players in the US by far. Right. But there also wasn't a lot of money in the U.S. right. So in order to make that work, unless you were going to be a family and set up shop, which a lot of them weren't necessarily into, this was a thing. And again, these are a lot of people I have a lot of great relationships with. And I don't think any of them would deny this was the case. I think it was the lifestyle. It was what it was. Right. And so Igor ended up with an opportunity to join the collective and move up into Tono village and become the chess master in residence.

Danny Rensch [01:22:51] And the deal was that his bills would be paid for, he would be given enough alcohol to be happy, and he would teach the kids chess while traveling. And now using Tono village as his home base to travel and do his thing. But he wouldn't have to travel as much if he didn't want to, because his knees would be met. And that was what happened with our relationship with Igor for the two to three years he was there.

John Dehlin [01:23:11] And he became your personal tutor, where it almost seemed like instead of going to school every day, you would just go hang out with him, help him get sober from his hangover the night before. And then he would, yeah, try and teach you chess to the extent that he was coherent.

Danny Rensch [01:23:28] He was definitely my personal tuner. Spent more time with me than anybody. But I would say that every one of the kids Shout out to all of them who spent enough time with Igor, I'm sure, has their own stories that are similar to mine to some degree, but I definitely got more time with Igor than anybody.

Danny Rensch [01:23:44] And, you know, a lot of those days, yeah, it looked like me showing up to either help him nurse the hangover or get dressed and. Or make him a screwdriver. I learned how to make a vodka orange juice, you know, at 12 years old. A good one, too, I guess, for Igor. And so, yeah, and then we would work on chess. Igor was not a great teacher. He was not a great.

Danny Rensch [01:24:05] He was not the kindest person, to say the least. He was abusive. He was racist. He said all kinds of inappropriate shit to young boys that he shouldn't have said. But also, he became my sparring partner in terms of having somebody to play with. And then. Then as we'll get into, you know, my story with my. My family, in terms of what happened there, there was a very, very quickly. Igor became the most consistent figure in my life from the age of, like, 12 to almost 15. And. And, yeah, so, yeah, that was. He was my. He was my personal chess mentor for a long time.

John Dehlin [01:24:38] I'm trying to. I. I read this book just in the past day or two. He died when you were 15, is that right?

Danny Rensch [01:24:44] No, no, he died. He died later.

John Dehlin [01:24:45] Much later. Okay.

Danny Rensch [01:24:46] He died.

John Dehlin [01:24:48] Yeah. The timeline's.

Danny Rensch [01:24:49] Gosh. I was. I was already in my early 20s. I. I saw him many years later when he died. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] So. So, okay, something else made you guys stop working together.

Danny Rensch [01:24:58] Yeah, and we can talk about that. I mean, ultimately, what. What happened was that he was. He was in the collective. And again, at this time, and we'll back up and talk about how that happened, but I was. I was separated from my mom. A very coordinated abduction that went down, and I was basically kind of a chess orphan. Igor was this consistent figure in my life in the collective, and he and I traveled together everywhere and did chess all the time. And at one point, you know, there were probably two sides of the story. At one point, he became enough of an asshole where Stephen Camp and Trina Camp and my father decided it was just time to get rid of him. And I think that that is true. Like, he was an absolutely belligerent. You know, he was a jerk. Also, he was married to a woman who I believe was Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:25:45] St. George.

Danny Rensch [01:25:46] In St. George. And at one point, she either came into an inheritance or she was willing to take him back. What's crazy is we didn't know any of this while he was living with us. He was married to Elizabeth the entire time that he was with us. And we didn't know, but part of it was because he married her to get a green card, and she married him for him. He was basically a mail order evil Igor. You know, that's. That's the reality of what the relationship was. And whatever happened with their relationship, she was either willing to take him back, so he didn't need the Collective for security or support.

Danny Rensch [01:26:21] And he had been belligerent enough that even with the benefits to the chess team, it was time to get rid of him, because he was a. Which he was. And so that was an. And Igor, you know, wherever. Wherever Igor is at in the astral realm, I'm sure he would not want me to pretend that he was a fucking asshole, because he was a fucking asshole. And he was abusive in a lot of ways, but he found his way back to Elizabeth and he left the Collective on his own accord.

John Dehlin [01:26:46] Well, let's leave this as a reason for people to buy the book, but one of the most tender moments in the book is when he gifts you something at the end of his life that you still have. And someday I want to see that gift, but you have to buy it and read the book. There's so much. Much that the book covers that we're not covering. So please don't worry that because dear listeners, viewers, we're going into detail that you don't need to buy the book. The book is going to make today 50 times more interesting and valuable anyway. I just had to say that.

Rising as a Chess Prodigy

John Dehlin [01:27:15] So, okay, so why don't we talk about the parallel processes, little p of you growing in the ranks of becoming a chess champion, and how your relationship with your mom, with your biological dad, and with Stephen Camp all kind of processed in parallel along with that whole gypsy.

John Dehlin [01:27:41] And I know some people consider that term offensive. I'm using it because the book uses it. I'm sure you acknowledge that some people don't.

Danny Rensch [01:27:47] And I apologize also to those who find the term offensive, but it was. It was the term use what. What described the environment for chess professionals at the time. And so anyway, what I would say is that the Shelby School chess team is now very good. I'm an all American chess player at this time, which is to make the all American team, you have to be, like, in the. In the top for your age. And.

Danny Rensch [01:28:10] And at the age of 12. No age, probably 11, turning 12, somewhere in there, my. My purpose became ordained by Dr. Duran in a trance. And so I was in A trance, a normal kind of group, collective trance. And I was told that chess was my purpose, which again, I've talked about purpose as one of the pillars, right? But the idea of having a purpose was a super important one because a lot of what was taught to everyone in the collective was that Trina Camp became who she was and was this successful person that everyone was aspiring to because she committed herself young to her purpose.

Danny Rensch [01:28:44] And she did the hard work of being able to be a trans medium with which wasn't easy. And her ability to create the space for that to be possible was a phenomenon, right? And so she was sort of this like pillar of what purpose meant. And what I would learn kind of later is a lot of times purpose was used to just give people a job, like I said. But to be given a purpose in that sort of heavy way at the age of 12 was pretty rare. I was like a chess purpose prodigy within the collective, right? And so this became a really big deal because the idea, idea of purpose was that we talked about like vibration in the process.

Danny Rensch [01:29:20] But purpose was. Was more important than anything. Purpose was like, purpose was, you know, was. Was more important than your relation, than all of your biological relationships. It is your entire reason for your soul's being on the planet. And so very quickly, chess became something where it was no longer a fun game where I'm like playing some good chess and helping the team win. It became a thing that my entire life, life and spiritual self worth was sort of judged through, right? And this idea that if I was doing well, I was in purpose. If I wasn't doing well, then it could both be sort of called the question.

Danny Rensch [01:29:56] I used the idea where the question was asked. Well, it's just still your purpose, Danny. Do you want just to be your purpose? That was a way that it was sort of weaponized. The tournaments I had, whether good or bad, were always used as sort of the. The microscope to evaluate everything else in my life.

John Dehlin [01:30:13] Life.

Danny Rensch [01:30:14] How is my relationship with my mom going? How is my relationship with Dennis going? How is my relationship with anybody going? Am I. Am I doing a good job? And my purpose. And so.

John Dehlin [01:30:23] And if you won?

Danny Rensch [01:30:24] If I won, things were probably going well, but. But even if I was winning, one of the things that started to become clear was that the idea of whether or not. Whether or not Stephen Camp approved of Debbie and Dennis being the ultimate say sowers of my life because they are my parents. If chess was this ultimate purpose, and Stephen Camp, through the success of the Shelby School chess team, saw that My success in chess was very good for the collective. Right. It said a lot of good things. Right. It's hard to argue, at least in the chess world, that things are wrong at the Shelby School because the Shelby School was winning every damn chess tournament.

Danny Rensch [01:30:59] And Danny Gordon at the time, because that was Dennis's name, my name was Danny Gordon at the time was winning a lot of chess tournaments and I was an all American. And so, so can I just say

John Dehlin [01:31:09] it reminded me a little bit of Tom Cruise and John Travolta to Scientology, like cult leaders, or Osmonds to the Mormons or Steve Young to the Mormons. Like any high demand religion or cult loves to have a celebrity that can be kind of like the face and the global spokesperson for the brand. Kind of like you were to Chess.com, it almost seemed like in my real life read that Stephen Camp was trying to grow you to be the celebrity face of his movement.

Danny Rensch [01:31:41] I think that's totally fair. And yeah, and that's again, the analogy is what it is or the comparison, but within the collective, I can say for sure that that's a totally fair conclusion to arrive at. Right? And it was both overt and subliminal. Right. It was both directly said when I was doing well. Like, do you have any idea how important this is? Do you have any idea how much God you're bringing to the planet by winning chess games? Do you guys even get how big of a deal it is that you're doing this? Those types often frame through the question of like, yeah, like, we do.

Danny Rensch [01:32:12] Like, okay, this is great, right? And then if it's not going well, it's like, hey, like if your purpose isn't, you know, isn't doing well enough, like, literally nothing is more important than your ability to bring God through the planet through chess. So. So what do we got to do to make that possible? Right? Right. I would again learn later, just as I said, I learned things later about my parents marriage. I would learn later that there was open discussions Stephen Camp was having privately among the leaders of the collective that he was just going to adopt me, that he was going to take me away from Debbie and Dennis, my mom and stepfather.

Danny Rensch [01:32:44] One of the things that I learned happened was that Marlo basically freaked out at that idea because she was like, I'm not going to have Danny as my brother. Also, if anybody should adopt him, it should be Steve Wrench. He is his father.

Danny Rensch [01:32:58] And so weird to unpack the fact that my father was basically kind of like, either way, didn't really know or care what to do. Right. Also, Stephen Camp was in charge of everything. But what I would learn is that there were multiple processes where this was openly discussed in terms of where Danny was going to land.

John Dehlin [01:33:15] You're reminding me of the book that if Stephen Camp had adopted you, then you would have become your own uncle.

Danny Rensch [01:33:22] Yeah. Yeah. Which is crazy.

John Dehlin [01:33:24] Right?

Danny Rensch [01:33:25] And so. So these things were being openly. I. I didn't know this at the time, but, you know, as I. As I explained, there was a very, you know, planting of seeds here, sprinkling fairy dust here of ideas. But ultimately it built up to this point where I was first separated from my mom and told I needed to live with different people, to. To have different experiences in order to grow spiritually.

Separation From Family at Age Twelve

Danny Rensch [01:33:48] I bounced around the collective and lived with a number of different families at the age of 12. And that's why I said my. My separation really started at the age of 12 because I was. I was taken from my mom, living with families I didn't want to live with. One of the nights I. One of the winners, I actually got super sick, but they wouldn't let me move home because they were told I was. I was told I was making up the sickness, you know, to be with my mom, and that it wasn't real. And there was all kinds of stuff there that were, you know, taking a lot of years to unpack, you know, that stuff.

Danny Rensch [01:34:14] But it was. It was. It was abusive and traumatic already. But then I went back and lived with Debbie and Dennis for a short time. Ultimately, that summer was when Stephen Camp basically told me directly that it was time for me to go live with my father and that my. My mom and Dennis had been kind of being told the same thing, because on their side, it was like, hey, one. Do you really want to stand in the way of Danny's purpose? Would you actually do that?

John Dehlin [01:34:36] His purpose to your mom?

Danny Rensch [01:34:37] Yeah. Yeah. His purpose is more important than any of this. Right. And also the fact that you're so obsessed with him, Is that a sign that you're still in love with Steve Wrench? Is that a sign that there's something wrong in your marriage?

John Dehlin [01:34:47] Marriage.

Danny Rensch [01:34:47] I think to protect your marriage, you need to let this boy go. Let him go figure out his purpose so you can work on your marriage. Debbie and Danny, Christ's last words were, who is my mother? Who is my father? Purpose comes before anything in terms of, like, that was the seeds that I was being planted with. Right? And so we had this. You know, we had this experience where I was taken from my mom. And I was willingly involved to doing it, despite the fact that we were both in tears and gritted teeth in the whole process. And it was, was.

John Dehlin [01:35:16] And she tried. She was fine with it too, right?

Danny Rensch [01:35:19] Yeah. But she was not only fine with it. I mean, there were, there were moments where I would learn later that once I left, she literally broke down and. And screamed to. To the point where my. My adopted sister, Noel Debbie and Dennis eventually would adopt a sister. She was seven at the time. Would say that she still hears my mom's blood curdling scream. You know, sometimes that it's that. That traumatic, you know, that it was like what the. Was going on here.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] Right.

Danny Rensch [01:35:42] And it was just. Just crazy. So I basically was separated from my mom at the time in order to be with Steven Marlo as my parents, my dad. But very quickly, I wasn't actually living with them. I was living alone in the valley because being in the Valley, the few houses that the collective still had on 7th street made it easier for me to travel.

John Dehlin [01:36:01] So your mom is sort of conditioned. So basically your mom, your mom's first husband was taken away from her by the collective. In effect, this is my words, not yours. And now her son's being taken away from her by the collective. And yet during the event, when it's happening, you're convinced by the collective that that's the right thing to do. And she's convinced that it's the right thing to do. And she acts indifferent, which has you then leaving feeling like your mom didn't even give a shit about you, which is all sorts of twisted.

Danny Rensch [01:36:35] The fact that I can talk about this now, one without like, you know, sobbing or the fact that I can get through is its own testament to just, you know, years of, years of therapy, years of reflecting and understanding, and the fact that I eventually would, after many years later, it would be 10 years before my mom were really back in each other's life, which is his own crazy thing, that we could be in the same collective and not speaking and we'll talk about that if you want, but it's. It's what? It's, It's.

Danny Rensch [01:36:59] It's hard to describe how fucked up that feels in your gut to be like, knowing that something is wrong and you know the other person knows it's wrong. You're both willingly participating in the act under the idea that it's the right spiritual thing to do. It. It's hard to explain, you know, what that was. I obviously go into great detail about it in the book and it was. It was just absolutely nuts. And. And my mom and I would talk later, and she would say that all the things in terms of what was not going right in her brain at the time, wishing she had done it differently and ultimately taking responsibility for it.

Danny Rensch [01:37:39] And I would come to the compassion of understanding that she literally was also in a lose, lose situation, given that she was in a cult. And everything that was happening there was so much bigger. And, yeah, it's a wild thing that happened and ultimately put me on a path, ironically, what Stephen Camp thought he was doing, which was to give me the best chance to be successful at chess.

Danny Rensch [01:38:05] And there's. There's all kinds of things that might make other people uncomfortable or not. There's the question of when someone does something that is, you know, an atrocity and a crime, do they think they're doing the best thing or not? Right. And there's a lot of evidence to believe that Stephen Camp thought he was doing the best thing by.

Danny Rensch [01:38:22] By believing that this was the best thing, despite the pain that it caused. But, of course, the twist ending was that by creating this separation for me and my mom and essentially orphaning me in the Valley, I became the village bicycle, which meant, like, nobody owned me, right? And so when no one owns it, it's like a village. It's like a village car, which literally, I experienced village cars. There were cars that were owned by people, that people in the village were allowed to use. Those cars stay clean. Clean. And the reason that happens in our human dynamic is because when you feel accountable to another human being, you will pick up the McDonald's trash on the floor.

Danny Rensch [01:38:55] If it's a collective car, everybody leaves it because it's nobody's problem, right? And so it takes something happening, which is like, somebody gets processed and says, you got to go clean the baragada, like, clean the car, right? Or, hey, you got to handle this, or. Or it doesn't happen, right? And so that's. That's like a very. I think there's a lot of experiments that have been explained by George Orwell better than I can. Right. In terms of what happens in communism and different dynamics, right? But that was a thing that was happening. And I was a kid living alone in the Valley. Steve and Marlow were my parents.

Danny Rensch [01:39:26] We saw each other on holidays, and there was definitely dynamics that I explained where I was obviously developing a relationship with them, despite the fact that I was crying myself to sleep many, if not most nights about what had happened to me.

Danny Rensch [01:39:37] But for all practical purposes, I didn't belong to anybody. Right. I was being neglected in the Valley. And ultimately me. The path that Stephen Camp was trying to create created a much bigger problem, which was that that I was a broken human being with all kinds of issues, mental health wise. Right. And also physical health wise. That kind of tore my life apart.

John Dehlin [01:39:58] Yeah. And I'm pretty sure they. Your. Your biological dad and Marlo legally adopted you. Right.

Danny Rensch [01:40:06] I actually don't know if they did. Regardless, I changed my name. I did change my name to Danny. That's right. Wrenches. But my father's name. I don't know if they ever legally adopted me. I actually. That's a really good question because there's a lot of. I was. I was. As I. As I share in the book, I was thrown back and forth so many times, even as a young kid, that I didn't even know they were. They were wrestling over guardianship that I. I literally don't know who my legal parents were by the end.

John Dehlin [01:40:29] But you changed your legal name. But even then it didn't last very long. You're living with your biological dad and Marlon. Right. Just because there was so much tension in the family about adding a new teen, you know, that was.

Danny Rensch [01:40:45] Yeah. Well, I wasn't living with them, or I was and wasn't. Right. I was. They. They were living in the Village. When I was in the Village, I lived with them, but I was also living in the Valley alone a lot and overseen by different people who were down there. There were. The way it worked was there were a couple of houses on the block. We called it the block on 7th Street. And the block houses were used for people who were doing stuff. Like there were people who were going to school at ASU or there were people who were.

Danny Rensch [01:41:09] Who were, you know, and sometimes it was like where people were sent when they were kind of being punished. They were sort of being cast away from the main core epicenter of Tonneau Village. There were all kinds of reasons why those houses were being used, but they were being used for Danny because it was the easiest place for me to live in order to travel. And the.

Danny Rensch [01:41:29] I guess what I'm getting to is Steve and Marlowe were my parents. I was also down there a lot. I was down there with Igor a lot of the time, too. There were also other parents who were there who kind of oversaw me, but I was basically there alone doing my life. If that answers the question, I'm wondering

John Dehlin [01:41:43] if you would have qualified of some sort of child neglect or abuse and. Or if any non members of the collective. Like community members ever turned the collective in for what I think some would say is child neglect or abuse.

Danny Rensch [01:42:02] Everybody who came into, in and out of my life at those times, who was taping, taking me to chess tournaments, taking me to the airport, like they loved me. And I think that again, what I would say is like, people did their best, right? I wasn't their kid and I had, I would actually say, what was funny is I, I mean there, there were definitely some bad relationships, some people who, who abused me and took advantage of the situation. The fact that I had no parents, that, that definitely happened. And I share some of that for sure in the back book. But there were also a lot of people who like just kind of love Danny.

Danny Rensch [01:42:31] They didn't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole because no one wanted to get in trouble by calling out the fact, like, why hasn't this kid been sent home to his mother yet? Why isn't he with Debbie? Something's wrong here. The few people who spoke up about it and there were people that did, would just get destroyed in processes, right? Don't, don't bring this up. This is bigger than you. This is, you know, why haven't you overcome your blood? It would be turned on them. In fact, it happened many times. I saw it where they'd be like, why are you so obsessed with biology?

Danny Rensch [01:42:56] Why do you believe that biological relationships are more important than your spiritual purpose? Because Danny's got it, right? Danny has got his spiritual purpose on track. So why don't you worry about your own and not question this? It was a kind of thing that would happen, right? And so, so people were both like loving me and supporting me. And I had a lot of people who did and also not really touching it unless they were drunk enough at a process to up and do it and then get destroyed, right? And so what I would say is that was all happening despite the fact that I, I didn't really have anybody who owned me.

Danny Rensch [01:43:28] If you, you know, because in this term I'm using ownership in a good way, right? Someone who really oversaw me in an accountable way. And so, you know, that that was, that was its own problem that that would develop. But I would say that the relationships themselves, I think people didn't think about turning it in either because they spiritually believed in it. Maybe they thought it was okay even if it didn't sit well with them or they weren't, they were not actually abusing me. They were doing the best they could by this kid who was kind of In a weird situation, everyone really knows that Stephen Camp is actually his father.

Danny Rensch [01:43:58] Steve Wrench's biological father was posing as his father. He doesn't really have a relationship with Debbie anymore. Let's not talk about that, because that's not. I don't want to. I don't want to turn on my family. And those were kind of different unspoken dynamics that were bouncing around.

John Dehlin [01:44:12] Yeah. And there must have been a lot of secrecy in terms of people outside the group, because I'm just wondering if non members who were just neighbors or community members could have ever observed sort of child neglect.

Danny Rensch [01:44:26] Well, it's interesting. I think in the world of chess, people, people asked a lot of questions. There were people who asked like, why did you change your name from Danny Gordon or Daniel is my actual name, but Daniel Gordon to Daniel Wrench? There were a lot of questions like that. But I. I was, you know, I was complicit and cooperative in the lie, which was like, hey, well, my parents were divorced a long time ago, and I just should have changed my name. They just finally got to it. That was what I said. That's true.

John Dehlin [01:44:50] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [01:44:50] But it's not true. Right. And so I would. I would find very quick ways. Meanwhile, I'm playing chess and I'm doing well, and ultimately that's like, the main goal. And so many people saw my name change. It was a hot topic for a little while, especially because I was a. I was a very publicly known kid. It was like, there's this all American kid, Daniel Gordon, who is now Daniel Wrench. What happened to him on the top list? Right. And I had a lot of those questions for a while. Eventually, they went away because. Yeah, I think either I either told enough people or people kind of stopped questioning or secretly, like you said, they kind of knew something was off, but didn't know what to do about it or even. Or even who to talk to about it.

John Dehlin [01:45:28] Yeah. Maybe another way to say this is like. Let's just say we tell this story to a kid. A social worker in Arizona who's a caseworker. My guess is a social worker. There are at least some caseworkers in Arizona that would hear your environment and say, that's neglect.

Danny Rensch [01:45:43] Oh, in no way am I trying to justify it.

John Dehlin [01:45:45] No, no, I'm not saying you are.

Danny Rensch [01:45:46] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:46] I'm just wanting to. I'm just wanting to. As an observer, it sounds like the best of times, the worst of times. An amazing upbringing in some ways and a wretchedly horrible abuse, abusive upbringing in other ways. It's both, but I want to call it as both, which I think. You do too.

Danny Rensch [01:46:05] I do too. I think that's kind of. We've already touched on some of the bigger spiritual frameworks of the entire experience, which is allowing for opposing truths to exist, which is hard at times and not as easy as being black and white about it. But I think that you're nailing another one for sure. I think that it was both good and bad. And if we're just talking even further, I mean, we know I'm here because of, you know, being a co founder@chess.com and the uniquely awesome ride and, and, and great thing we built that I wouldn't be here probably unless everything I've said so far did happen to some degree. The fact that I was playing chess, how I was and, and being neglected led to kind of everything that would come later and ultimately finding my way

John Dehlin [01:46:42] to chess.com and camp's attention with you at such a young age and the school he built and all the resources that he gathered from the collective that then he diverted your way like it's, it's, it's your mind, I guess. Let's talk about your successes before the, the ear stuff happens just to give people a sense for.

Chess Success and Struggles With Addiction

Danny Rensch [01:47:01] Yeah, yeah, I was the top player in the country for my age. I talk about the levels first just for those. So to, to explain the, the chess rating system, when you reach the 2200 rating barrier, you become a master, which is obviously a big title. People think of a chess master, right? And so I was the youngest chess master in Arizona history. I was one of the youngest chess masters in the US A lot of records have continued to be broken. Right. So now it's funny being in the position I am@itchess.com it's almost awkward to refer to myself as a prodigy because I now have seen what's happened over the chess revolution.

Danny Rensch [01:47:37] There are prodigies who are breaking all the records that I and others set many times over. So I do not compare myself, myself to certain prodigies, but I certainly was and objectively, like, you know, in the top 0.00001%. And I was, I was breaking records, became the youngest master in Arizona history. I was reaching 23 and 2400, which, you know, you move into the professional rankings of when you're that highly rated. Not only are you, are you competing in elite invitationals, especially for your age, like US Junior championships, and I was winning national championship championships.

Danny Rensch [01:48:12] But, but yeah, you're, you're well on your way to what looks like becoming, you know, a US Champion and maybe being able to compete for the world championship. And so there were, you know, into 16, 17, I was, I was competing, you know, among the best in the world for my age, even if even at chess is a very. What is the best ecosystem to describe it? It's like golf and that, like no one owns chess. No one owns golf. There are all types of state organizations and national organizations and UJGA and PGAs and different things. And so ultimately your rating is like your handicap.

Danny Rensch [01:48:46] And no one can argue with that. No one can argue with your chess rating or your golf handicap. No matter what, they can see how good you are. And so I was ranked even though not everyone in the world always competes against each other. The junior in Arizona is not always playing the junior in Moscow, but you have a rating that allows you to make comparisons in terms of how good they are on a, on a global level, if that makes sense. So I was, I was one of the best in the world. And, and, and yeah, that, that part of the plan was, was going well, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:49:16] And then privately you started to develop some unhealthy coping. Do you want to talk about that?

Danny Rensch [01:49:22] Yeah, so I, I would say the first unhealthy coping started with. And again, I'm not going to, to pretend to, to, to, to. To preach or talk about all the different roads that might lead to someone's substance abuse. That is a very, it's a very heavy topic and all types of things can happen to people to get there. But I will say a common thread of like self loathing, self deprecation in terms of your views and behavior. Depression can often be the trigger points to it. And for me, panic attacks was something that I now look back and realize I was having at a very young age.

John Dehlin [01:49:54] Age.

Danny Rensch [01:49:55] And probably because of the pressure, for sure, because of the pressure. Also because I was, you know, orphaned and away from my mom and, and not doing well. And, and so also you have, I,

John Dehlin [01:50:04] you know, you mentioned ocd. That's what I specialized in as a psychologist.

Danny Rensch [01:50:10] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:50:10] And you know that that is known as an anxiety disorder. So high anxiety, right?

Danny Rensch [01:50:16] Yeah, I had high anxiety, to say the least. I was completely ocd. I describe a lot of these behaviors. You know, I now know that very early on I probably started the thought process of ruminating. Rumination is not necessarily depression itself, but it is also a symptom. Right. Your inability to kind of work through and so you find other things to focus on. You count and you. And you look for patterns and you do things right. And so I was.

John Dehlin [01:50:37] That's the O in.

Danny Rensch [01:50:38] Yeah, I was depressed.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [01:50:40] Right. For sure.

John Dehlin [01:50:41] But constant rumination is what can often lead to the depression. Because you become exhausted.

Danny Rensch [01:50:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:47] Because you're always. Was obsessing, ruminating.

Danny Rensch [01:50:50] Okay. Yeah, man, you just taught me something. Maybe, though, because I can, you know, I was ruminating in my own brain all the time, justifying to myself what had happened. Yep. I made the right choice. I'm with my spiritual parents.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] Leaving your mom.

Danny Rensch [01:51:01] This was always meant to be. Everything's going to be okay. Yeah, that's. This is. This is what's so in God. Like, you find yourself in a cycle of like, convincing yourself that what doesn't feel good is good.

John Dehlin [01:51:10] It wears you out, right?

Danny Rensch [01:51:11] And wears you out. Yeah. And. And so, yeah, I guess that's what happened. And it's funny because my therapist and I talked about a lot of stuff, but I've never actually diagnosed that. And so. And so, yeah, I first alcohol, again, was a massive part of the collective, as was smoking cigarettes. No marijuana or drugs, actually. I mean, people did it, but it wasn't endorsed in the same way alcohol and cigarettes were. And so I drank and smoke at a young age. Probably had my first cigarette at 9. Probably had my first actual tri. Drink at like 12. But I first drank when I was 16, having visited Russia.

Danny Rensch [01:51:50] I was there for a series of tournaments working with trainer Mark Dsky, Sergey Dtov for the chest audience tuning in. They'll know those names. They're. They're like, you know, Divetzky has. Has since passed away, but he was probably the. Considered the world's most elite trainer.

Danny Rensch [01:52:05] I worked with Igor Zaitsev, who was Anatoly Karpov's trainer. Trainer. And so I drank heavily one or two nights while I was there. But coming back from that trip was when I first started really heavily drinking, like all the time.

Danny Rensch [01:52:22] Both in secret, but also not. Not in secret because it didn't have to be in secret. Dallas and I were drinking buddies in many ways. And Dallas has his own story, which I won't tell, but he was dealing. Dallas was incredible athlete. He actually got a Division 1 basketball scholarship. Was. Was.

John Dehlin [01:52:35] He played a Southern Utah.

Danny Rensch [01:52:36] He played in Southern Utah.

John Dehlin [01:52:37] Another Utah connection.

Danny Rensch [01:52:38] Yeah. So. So Dallas has his own story of pressure and. And the problems that he developed in his own life, which again, is his story to tell. But. But Dallas and I were drinking buddies. Right. And. And so we.

Danny Rensch [01:52:53] We were over drinking at the ages of 16 and 17, to say the least. And we weren't alone in that. But as brothers, stepbrothers, I was now welcomed back to the Wrench family. There was a brief stint where Dallas and I weren't getting along, and he kicked me out. It's in the book. We're going to move past it because it's just too long of a story and complicated. But I'll just say that he and I were. Were close at that age of 16 and 17, and partly because we had a very shared experience of. We probably were the kids with the most pressure on us of, like, anybody to perform and take the spiritual mission out into the world. And that led to our own kind of, you know, early substance abuse is what I would say.

John Dehlin [01:53:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that you're battling that, which. Which really is just a way to anesthetize or medicate the anxiety and the pressure and the stress and the trauma that you experienced as a child and as a teen, for sure. And then the ear stuff starts. Well, I mean, the ear stuff was also building all along. Do you want to talk about that?

Danny Rensch [01:53:47] Yeah. In hindsight, as I've now kind of foreshadowed enough times, and like you said, people will read all the. All the details in the book, but. But one of the things I really love doing in the Valley was swimming.

Danny Rensch [01:54:00] It was my favorite thing to do. I probably swam more than I should have because I should have been studying more chess. At least that's what Stephen Camp would say. But. Yeah. So swimming. And as I pressure my ear right now, which hurts when you talk too much at times, but I've had. So I would lead to having all types of ear infections.

Danny Rensch [01:54:18] Driving up and down the Valley to Tono Village, the valley to the Mountain, as we called it, being on plane flights, I had earaches and pains all the time. This wasn't something I brought up, partly because I didn't have a natural mother to bring it to. And so it was kind of a scary thing for this woman who wasn't my mother, and she was young, and Marlo didn't really even want me in her family. And there, you know, it would take years for her to. Even her and I develop our own relationship, even as dysfunctional as it probably is now, whatever. Whatever the relationship is we've developed like that would take years to come.

Danny Rensch [01:54:48] You know, my dad came from a Christian Science background, and so I say this. It's. Yeah. Which was basically the idea that any physical ailment is a spiritual manifestation of a deeper problem. And so, you know, my dad was just always so heavy in processes with me, which was like, well, if your ears hurt, what are you not hearing? What do you don't want to hear spiritually? And so it became a thing where I was hiding my ailments because of the fear of what it was meant. And pretty much any physical problem I had was always made to be my mom's fault. And so that became a thing where it was like, it was hard to talk about.

Danny Rensch [01:55:22] So unless I was legit in pain, I didn't talk about it. And so, yeah, growing into my late teens, and we're skipping past a little bit to the fact that I, you know, would meet my wife and she has her own story, and. And she and I are already fully moved in together at the ages of 17 and 19, because that's what happened. Happened in the collective.

John Dehlin [01:55:41] Her name is Shauna. Shauna.

Danny Rensch [01:55:43] Yeah. And so. But I. Yeah. Eventually my ear problems would literally. Literally, like, explode and collapse on a plane flight home from the US Junior Championship in Lindsburg, Kansas, and we would find out that I had developed a benign.

Danny Rensch [01:55:59] Not malignant, but a benign growth had eroded my ear bones, my stapes in particular. And everything had kind of fallen apart at once. Given that it was years and years of scar tissue and built up neglect and. And lost my. Lost my hearing and ended up having a number of ear surgeries over the next couple years, basically taking my. My chess career as. As the top junior in the US not named Hikaru Nakamura, who now is a friend who I work with@chess.com and Hikaru is the number two player in the world currently.

Danny Rensch [01:56:27] Does he work for Chess.com He's a partner of ours. He's a creator. He streams content and does things. And so he and I have known

John Dehlin [01:56:33] each other since we were. Y' all have known each other since you were both kids. You played against each other in terms.

Danny Rensch [01:56:40] Yeah, because we were both very top juniors. I mean, I first met Hikaru when he was 8 and I was 10 right when I started playing chess. And so that's awesome. But. But yeah, so Hikaru. Hikaru is. And I'm not even comparing myself to Hikaru because seeing what Hikaru and Magnus Carlsen and the top prodigies became, Hikaru had already surpassed me, even though I was older. So Hikaru was like the top prodigy coming in the U.S. but I was, you know, the highest rated and among the top five kind of with Hikaru there. And. But I didn't play for. For two years. And. And would be under. Under and in and out of the knife, if you will. Right. Under, under surgery. And. And yeah, that was what happened.

John Dehlin [01:57:19] And that would be. I don't. Maybe if Hikaru's Michael Jordan, that would be like what was. What's another contemporary, Larry Bird having an Achilles rupture when he's playing for Indiana State. He's like on the rise, viewed as maybe the one or two best basketball player in the world or whatever. And then to have your trajectory, your inertia, your momentum cut short so dramatically on that ascent, I just like on top of all the other things that we've already talked about, all the trauma and distress and neglect that you had experienced, like, that's enough to maybe for some people not to make it through. Let's just be candid.

Danny Rensch [01:58:04] Yeah. I mean, I will not compare myself to Larry Bird because Larry's a legend. I'm a huge basketball fan. I will not. I will say, yes, I was a. I was. Yeah, I was. I was. It's. It's not out of the realm of we'll never know. Right. We'll never know how good I could have gotten. And I would argue that even regardless of the ear problems that came, my trajectory had already started to get slower in many ways because I was a broken human being.

Danny Rensch [01:58:29] I was a mentally ill, heartbroken kid, you know, who hadn't fully realized what was to come in terms of his issues that were developing with alcohol. It was. But there were other issues to come. And so I was.

Danny Rensch [01:58:40] I have perspective about it now. And you know, maybe some of my success allows me to swallow the pain of what could have been, but I also don't look at it with regret. So I can say that the comparison you made. I will not compare myself in the same way to Larry Bird, but it's not an out of whack comparison that I was a top player, I was a top prodigy. This person goes on to be one of the greats. I was. I was training with Mark Divoretsky and doing some awesome shit and ultimately it was all. It was all cut short. And Hikaru has teased me about that, that I'm the.

Danny Rensch [01:59:07] I'm diverts his biggest failure. He said that. Which is, I like to think Hikaru says out of love, but given that, given what my potential was, it didn't. It didn't. It didn't come to fruition. Right. For sure. And so.

Danny Rensch [01:59:19] And so, yeah, that is. That is not a crazy comparison. And it. It happened very, very fast. And then, you know, it forced me on a different path, right? A path where I was with my very young wife, married very young, and pressured to have children very young, as with the collective still being in charge, and Stephen Camp and Stephen Marlo and. And Stephen and Trina.

Danny Rensch [01:59:40] But also, ironically, as fate would have it, it pushed me into a path where, at the intersection of Danny's chess career and mental health problems are coming here. Mental and physical health problems are coming here. And here comes the Internet, here comes YouTube. And the early conversations that are like, what is. I mean, MySpace was still a thing, not even Facebook, right. Let alone other things. And so now, in hindsight, people look back and think it's silly when you say, like, I actually said to somebody, what's you YouTube? Watch this video on. On the Internet, I'm like, what? Where can I see it? It's on YouTube. What's YouTube? Right. That was a thing. Right. So that all. That was all happening right around then.

John Dehlin [02:00:17] You mentioned that Eric wanted Chess.com to be the MySpace of chess at one point. Did I get that right?

Danny Rensch [02:00:23] Yeah, that was his. That was his thing, was the MySpace of chess, which was not a bad thing to say.

John Dehlin [02:00:27] Eric.

Danny Rensch [02:00:27] Now we use it to make fun of him and whatever

John Dehlin [02:00:32] made all the sense of. And community is a big deal and identity is a big deal. So that. That was an important component for sure. So that's a big crash. It's just another thing that you had to absorb while you're dealing with a new marriage, new kids, your addiction, and all the past trauma. Again, those two years were probably super dark for you, I'm guessing.

Danny Rensch [02:01:00] I mean, you're saying that like you haven't read the book. I'm teasing you. But of course, you know. No, of course. For the audience, yeah, they were. They were. They were the worst years, right? They were the worst years of. Of my life. You always knock on wood when you say that because you never know what's ahead and in store for you in the universe. But those years were. I was abusing alcohol, to say the least. I also, in my panic attacks and I had been subscribed Klonopin and Xanax, and I was. I was taking those with alcohol, abusing them, and then that. I was hiding that from my wife. I would lie to her whether I had taken it with alcohol because she was worried about me.

John Dehlin [02:01:33] And those are benzos, right?

Danny Rensch [02:01:34] Smoking a lot, What.

John Dehlin [02:01:35] Those are benzodiazepines. I mean, that's how Judy Garland died. With alcohol and benzos.

Danny Rensch [02:01:39] Oh, yeah. I mean. Yeah. I mean, and I was. I was. I was. I think I was being careful. I don't know. I mean, I know that I. Again, I use the term addict loosely out of respect to, like, I don't want to ever.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [02:01:49] You know, grandualize things, whatever. But I was. I was abusing substances, and I. I've defined it through. Through my therapist in terms of helping. What defines that type of behavior? There are a couple things, which is one, are you hiding it? And two, does your behavior change when under the influence? And I definitely checked both those boxes. Right. And. Yeah. And it was for several years. And I. You know, we had our oldest son, Nash, and at this point, at the. Around. Around the start of Chess.com, we had our second son, Warner. So I'm 20. I just turned 23, and we have two kids.

Meeting Shauna and Shared Cult Experience

John Dehlin [02:02:21] As we're saying, Shauna grew up in the collective as well.

Danny Rensch [02:02:23] Yeah. Shauna has her own long story.

John Dehlin [02:02:25] You don't have to tell her story.

Danny Rensch [02:02:26] Yeah, yeah. She both grew up in the collective and didn't. But I think the part that is, like, crazy in terms of coincidental and just, you know, will obviously, you know, increase people's appetite to understand the story is that.

John Dehlin [02:02:38] And to buy the book.

Danny Rensch [02:02:39] Well, I mean, by the book and not that they should anyway, but I would say that, you know. Sure. So Shauna's mother cast Kathy and her father Rick, were in the collective. Rick also left Shawna's mom to marry the second oldest daughter of Steven.

John Dehlin [02:02:54] Like vibration fails again. Like vibration again.

Danny Rensch [02:02:57] Right. So. So Rick marries the second oldest daughter. Kathy left the collective because she was afraid that at some point her kids would be encouraged to choose new parents and be taken from her, which is obviously odd given that her daughter, her oldest daughter, would ultimately marry me. Right. And so they lived in Chicago. They were not in the collective. Shauna was not raised in the collective in the same way I was. And as she and I have unpacked a lot about our. Our different experiences of life and perspective, I'm. I'm eternally grateful for that because even though she carries similar damages and wounds in terms of the experience of her father leaving her mother for a daughter of Steven and Trina and things that went down, she also, I think when she did come back, her family ultimately moved back to the collective.

Danny Rensch [02:03:41] And you would go watch. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on in Kathy's life that I'm not going to get into, but she moved back. And part of what Shauna had, I think with a lot of, with a lot of hindsight we've looked at is she both very quickly knew a lot of, very quickly saw parts of it were like, this is fucked up, this is a cult. But also had had such a. Had such an interesting experience in the world and had seen her mother, you know, fuck up so many things and had this horribly abusive relationship that she also had a very interesting appreciation for the parts of the community that were good. You get what I'm saying? And so I was with this young girl who.

John Dehlin [02:04:17] Cause you know what, the only thing worse, this is an exaggeration, but there are things worse than a cult. Loneliness and aimlessness are two things that are potentially very toxic. Potentially worse than a high demand religion. And that's why, I think that's why culture religions exist and that's why they shouldn't only be demonized. Yes, call out all the bad, but clearly they meet a need or they wouldn't be constantly recreated across generations.

Danny Rensch [02:04:47] Well, I think that's totally fair. In addition to, you know, debates that we all have about forget why we're here, how are we here, there are miracles that are undeniable to the human existence. And again, we're not getting into the metaphysical, but I'm just validating that. I think the three things are loneliness, aimlessness and an undeniable hunger that human beings have to know why we're here. Like, how did this miracle of life happen? So I think when you have those three things, it's easy to understand how spiritual and religious frameworks can and maybe even should exist to some degree. But. But not for the. Not with the negative behaviors and manipulative reasons.

Existential Despair and Turning Points

John Dehlin [02:05:19] Yeah, let's just say existential despair is the third thing. All that stuff, existential despair, loneliness and meaninglessness and purpose pursuit, toxic.

Danny Rensch [02:05:28] So my wife is now in the collective as, as a, as a teenager because she came back, she's going to asu, but she's in the collective. And I think being with Shauna, you know, saved my life along with Chess in, in more ways than one. And I write about that. But I think a lot of the perspective she had was not just the things that helped me. See, I do need to heal my relationship with my mom. What happened to me is not okay. This is fucked up. This is, this is not good. But also she saw a lot of good things in terms of having been so lonely, seeing what can happen to abusive, you know, in abusive, toxic relationships when people don't have supportive community.

Danny Rensch [02:06:06] She had so much perspective that even if she didn't know she did, she did have it. Right. And so there was a lot of things happening there around this time. While also I'm a wreck of a human being dealing with all types of shame around the fact that I didn't just fail as a chess prodigy, my entire spiritual purpose failed. Failed. I'm no longer the Steven Camp apple eye or the apple of Stephen Camp's eye, at least to some degree, because until I would start making money@chess.com I. I had failed. Right. So at this point, I'm like, in a bit of a broken situation with a marriage and two young babies, with a chess career that has failed.

Danny Rensch [02:06:41] I'm not going to be a chess prodigy anymore. And. And I'm dealing with all of these substance abuse issues kind of at the same time.

John Dehlin [02:06:48] Yeah, yeah. You didn't just fail Stephen Camp, you failed your dad, your biological dad. You failed your entire collective community. Like, that's just. You were caring so much.

Danny Rensch [02:06:59] Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, again, it's hard because you see it with hindsight that you, that you, you know, maybe I was never gonna get back on track. But the way you're dealing with failure at the time, I think a lot of people would say this. It's not like you, again, have a black and white epiphany of, oh, I failed. You're denying it. You're in it. You're like, no, no, I'm going to get back on track. I'm still on the train. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm way behind Hikaru and these other guys now, but I have an excuse. I was bedridden for two years. Right. And so it's. It wasn't as simple as, like, I couldn't.

John Dehlin [02:07:29] You also couldn't travel. You couldn't get on airplanes.

Danny Rensch [02:07:31] Right, Exactly. Because of the pressure and everything. So. So yeah, there's like a. A self worth, self deprecation, depression, and the behavior that you develop. Because I felt very bad about what had happened in myself because I'm failure and I'm abusing things because of it. But I'm also denying it at the same time because my whole goal to fix the problem is to still, you know, become one of the best chess players in the world and. And fulfill the prophecy, if you will. Right. And so that was. That would be what I would describe as my early 20s until, like I said, the Internet and chess.com and until I met Eric and Jay, my co founders and ultimately the Chess.com part of the journey would be begin.

John Dehlin [02:08:11] Yeah, so let's talk about that. So you, you are paying attention to the Internet before you learn about Eric and Jay. You're having your own ideas about how you might, you have your own vision for what chess plus the Internet might do. I don't think we talked enough about, we talked a little bit about this chess gypsy problem, but there wasn't any viable economy for chess or a viable community at the time that could support a robust economy and competition. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that because I think that's powerful stuff.

Danny Rensch [02:08:48] Yeah, that's, that's a big part of what one of my goals was with the book was in addition to, you know, sharing openly and honestly and vulnerably maybe more than people expected that I would about all these issues. And it wasn't just, just a cult expose of blame, Right. I was sharing all the things that really happened.

Danny Rensch [02:09:07] But I also was trying to help explain how Chess.com came to be. It wasn't accidental, and it was partly accidental that somehow this organization, this website that we started just to do something cool with chess and to try to do, you know, do things differently, you know, kind of fell into a position with an opportunity to really change the game. Game. Right. For lack of a better pun. And, and, and so the chess world has always had a very feast or famine kind of hierarchy, right. Where like you're either one of the top players in the world or you're traveling and barely making ends meet, or you've given up and you're coaching and you're teaching. Right? And so this dynamic had, had existed forever.

John Dehlin [02:09:48] And so, and there's also the Soviet oligarch.

Danny Rensch [02:09:51] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:52] Monopoly, ussr.

Danny Rensch [02:09:53] Part of the reason that happened is because chess has also also always been revered as sort of the peak of human intelligence, as this intellect when you dive into what was going on during the Cold War and the dynamics between the US and the USSR and the, you know, the, the, the, the arms race to the moon and everything else, whatever, whatever could be won was up for battle, right? And chess became a huge part of that during the 1972 World Championship match with Bobby Fischer versus Boris Spassy. Right? And so chess, chess, chess, even though at that time Bobby Fischer won and became the first and only American world champion in history, Russia was still dominant.

Danny Rensch [02:10:31] Russia as it is now, the USSR was dominant. Right. Because chess was a state sponsored sport. And unfortunately for all of us in the US Bobby Fischer would go crazy. So chess would not have its moment. That what could have Become. Didn't happen, right? And so the USSR dominates chess, but because the USSR is also having a front, which is we're dominant world power, when actually it's a third world country, what was reality was that the best chess players in the world were all of Soviet descent, some sort of Eastern European or Russian country. But there wasn't really an economy to support the amount of brilliant fucking minds that were out there.

Danny Rensch [02:11:06] There were so many good chess players, and there was no. There was nothing to win because you were either Anatoly Karpov, Gary Kasparov at the top, or you didn't have a lot. And so. So this was the world that I grew up in. It was still this world. The US chess scene had started to have a little bit of a circuit. The Continental Chess Tour was this circuit that had open tournaments that Igor Ivanov and others were playing in. But it didn't really have enough money either to do anything besides, like I said, travel as a chess gypsy, right? For lack of a better term, in terms of bouncing around and whatever came with that lifestyle.

Danny Rensch [02:11:41] And so I grew up watching this system, right? While also being told by Stephen Camp, and one thing that he and I would still agree on today, which is that chess deserve better. Chess is an amazing game for human beings. I would say that the reason chess saved my life is because chess is education in so many ways. Chess bridges and breaks down the barriers of culture and age and race and religion and gender. And chess is this thing that is its own language and experience, right? And I would argue that education is more than just. More than just the academics, right? More than just reading, writing, arithmetic.

Danny Rensch [02:12:19] It's culture, it's travel, it's. It's food, it's music, it's games, because that is what we experience, right? And so chess and hindsight was giving me an education, and I was being exposed to this broken ecosystem, right? And. And at the same time, the people within the ecosystem would protect it just like a dysfunctional family, right? That's kind of how it works. Because they would be like. Like the rock stars of the top grandmasters would be like, they don't want to fraternize with everyone else down below in these open tournaments. They were sort of like idolized and put on a pedestal. Yet the fact that they wouldn't fraternize and make the game more inclusive is why you didn't have more money coming in, which ultimately would serve them and maybe allow them to live the life of a Michael Jordan.

Danny Rensch [02:12:59] Right. And I could see this dynamic even at a young Age and partly because Stephen Camp also helped me see that dynamic. And he was like, like, you see how broken this is? And this is why Bobby Fischer left us all in the lurk, because he could have been the person to change that dynamic. Why?

Danny Rensch [02:13:14] Because the US Is the richest country in the world. The commercialization of the game should happen here with western media. And if we had a star who could transcend how chess is currently viewed, like Bobby Fischer could have been, the money that would come into the game would change everything. It would change not just the benefits of the game, and you would have it in more schools because parents wouldn't be afraid of their kid becoming Igor. They would want their kid to become Magnus or Danny or Hikaru. Right. They would want that. And so we could change the game if we had stars.

John Dehlin [02:13:42] It's kind of like when, when Larry bird, Magic Johnson, Dr. J changed the NBA. Changed the NBA.

Danny Rensch [02:13:47] They did. And, and, and David Stern also, who wasn't the best commissioner in my book, but again, also had a vision for that. Right? There was so, yeah, that was like Stephen Camp. And, and, and he was right about this. Chess did deserve better. And he wanted me to be the person who fulfilled this mission. Right. And so, so what was funny is even back to the, back to the current timeline, even though my life is falling apart and even though I'm developing substance abuse abuse issues around the self worth of failing as a chess prodigy and my spiritual mission, what I had sort of, you know, assessed the, the audit that I had done in my, in my mind of what chess needed and that this ecosystem could be fixed and that it did deserve better, that didn't go away.

Danny Rensch [02:14:28] Despite the fact that I maybe was no longer going to become the next Bobby Fischer. Right. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer was not going to be a story about my life at this time.

John Dehlin [02:14:36] Right.

Danny Rensch [02:14:36] Because I'm falling apart. And so it was crazy because I still agreed with Stephen Camp about this and I would agree with him about it this day. The game deserved better and I wanted it to be better. And so what started to happen around my own kind of chess failed career was this idea that when I met Eric and Jay, the Internet was happening. And my vision was like, hey, the Internet is the key. This is how everything is going to change. Because the problem with the chess ecosystem as it exists is like everything relies on local communities. And the idea that you have to be in person to play in a tournament to win money, the idea that you can't even access a great coach if you're A kid in Costa Rica, not growing up in Moscow, at the Moscow Chess Club, you have no chance of becoming a great player.

Founding and Building Chess.com

Danny Rensch [02:15:21] Right? The Internet was the key to change all that, both in terms of access to content, but also in terms of access to just competition. And imagine growing up with Roger Federer in your backyard to play tennis, right? That's what these kids now have with Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura playing chess online. And so, of course, every one of the sub bullet points that ultimately got us to where we are now came with a million different hurdles. And it would be ridiculously arrogant for me to pretend like we knew everything that was coming, coming. But what I would say is what was immediately formed was like this crazy failed child chess prodigy who, even if it was for the wrong reasons to got there, had like a crazy passion about fixing this problem.

Danny Rensch [02:16:00] And I had seen what it did to Igor and had seen the brokenness of the ecosystem. And then you had Eric and Jay, who came at the same problem from a different angle because they love chess, but they were the ones being gatekept. I was the one who got close enough to the top to see that even the people at the top are part of the problem. They are gatekeeping the experience.

Danny Rensch [02:16:19] And they were the ones being gatekept. They were the ones like, chess deserves better, but there's no chess community for people like us who love the game and want to get better, but we're basically not good enough to fraternize with the chess elite. And we're better than all the beginners, but we want to create a space where everybody can come together.

John Dehlin [02:16:37] Jay and Eric also probably would have been seen as a potentially disruptive threat to money and power and community and leadership in the community when they wanted to enter. Is that possible in addition to our community?

Danny Rensch [02:16:52] You mean Mike?

John Dehlin [02:16:52] No, to the existing chess community before Chess.com had its ascent.

Danny Rensch [02:16:58] Oh, that's interesting. Yes. I think that that's. In fact, it's funny because they were sort of also, they were sort of like given the cold shoulder by a lot of top players, which is always weird when you think back about it, because you go. They just miss so many opportunities to see it. But it was, you know, again, that's what happens in these gatekeeping cultures. It's similar to, to like what happens when you shun someone in a cult. They sort of re proselytize themselves, right? And so like there was like this starving artist mentality, but it was like, I like to call it white trash arrogance.

Danny Rensch [02:17:25] I'm poor, but don't tell me I'm poor, right? It's like. It's like I'm struggling, but you don't get to tell me that. Right? And it's like. And maybe that's. Maybe that's an offensive thing to say, but there are a lot of people with problems who don't want to be told they have a problem. Right? And I think Eric and Jeff, hey, we're like, hey, we're trying to do this differently. And it's like, don't tell us to do this differently. Who are you to tell us differently? Right, exactly. Like, get out of here kind of thing.

John Dehlin [02:17:49] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you meet them at a tournament, is that right? You're they. They're at. They attend a tournament where you're playing or. Okay.

Danny Rensch [02:17:59] And I was still in the process of alcohol and, And Klonopin and, And. And Xanax and. And smoking cigarettes and in all the things that I was doing. But I had, because I was able to travel again. I had, while I was bedridden, taken the Google AdWords course and learned about SEO. And I had seen where this was going, but I didn't have the means to pursue it. And I was still obsessed with becoming a grandmaster and the best chess player in the world. Right? And so I'm at this tournament and in walk these guys with a Chess.com shirt, and I know, at least at this point, enough to know that that domain name, the name of Chess.com was incredibly powerful. Right? And so I'm sparing some of the

John Dehlin [02:18:41] Finer Details about what, 2000.

Danny Rensch [02:18:43] This was 2008.

John Dehlin [02:18:44] Okay.

Danny Rensch [02:18:46] And so, so I meet Eric and Jay, and we do not hit it off on the right foot because I'm crazy and want to do this my way, because I believe that I have the vision to fix the chess. And I'm probably still even gatekeeping them a little bit, because even though I see the problem, I'm probably a part of the problem even more than I. And I never did that, actually. But I can see now in hindsight that maybe I thought I knew better than I did and it came across that way. But I. But I also, I think, had enough knowledge now to know that I could elect, like they always say, the worst amount of electricity to know is just enough to.

Danny Rensch [02:19:18] To think you can change an outlet, right? And then, like, you know, you electrocute yourself. So, like, I knew enough to know what I didn't know too. Right. And so we, you know, we started our relationship and eventually sparing some of the details there eventually Agreed to start creating content and eventually started helping to manage and lead content. And in hindsight, that was just the beginning.

John Dehlin [02:19:42] Yeah. And again, the details are fantastic in the book, so don't feel like at all you won't have a lot of really cool, interesting things to learn. Buy the book and read it, please. But you kind of. You get the sense. I got the sense from the book that you had recommitted to becoming a grandmaster, but then when you met Eric and Jay, you sort of. That kind of paused you and you decided that maybe there was a different path for you. Is that fair?

Danny Rensch [02:20:17] Yes and no. I would say again, just like you don't wake up and realize you're in a cult, or at least that wasn't my experience. It was, it was a gray process to get there. But yes, in hindsight, two things were also happening around that time, which was that my wife and I were, were really not doing well. And I was. In order to earn money, I was going to the valley all the time from the village to teach private lessons. And I was grinding and having panic attacks on drives back home. And our marriage, marriage was falling apart. And it was just with two kids.

Danny Rensch [02:20:49] And so the idea that Chess.com might be something I could do online, even with slow Internet in tonal village, with a, with a BlackBerry phone, leaned up against the window to get a signal, that was a huge opportunity. And my wife saw it for what it was and she pushed me pretty hard to like, to not miss it. And so there was that. And then also, as much as I, I actually was playing decently well, there was, there was only so much denying that, like, even if I was going to become a grandmaster world champion was like, this is off the table now, right? And maybe US Champion, because I'm still delusional, lying to myself.

Danny Rensch [02:21:28] But the idea that whatever I was going to do in chess was only going to be through my playing career, that bubble had definitely popped, even if I was still trying to blow a new bubble or whatever. Like, it had popped. Right. And so I think, think those two things made me see this for what it was. Right.

John Dehlin [02:21:46] But did you say in the book that it can't. Chess.com kind of saved your life too, or not?

Danny Rensch [02:21:51] Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I talk about how I think chess gave me an education and gave me perspective about many of the good and the bad things about how I was raised over time and. But I would say that Chess.com coming when it did for sure was a life raft. Right. It literally saved my Marriage. And I would say my marriage saved my life for sure. So from that perspective, and I honestly don't remember exactly how I wrote it in the book, but yeah, I mean, the opportunity that was chess.com put everything else, gave everything else a chance. It gave my marriage a chance.

Danny Rensch [02:22:22] It gave my being a better father a chance at home. It gave, in many ways, being home more in the village started the process of healing with my mom, which I would say was ultimately the most important thing that could have happened. You know, getting, getting to the other side of what was that, you know, horrific experience and, and that relationship with my mom. You know, there's a reason the book is dedicated to my mom. Right. I mean, everything that happened through the process of healing that relationship and, and the grief and, and the sadness that we shared kind of says it all. Right. And, and, and, and so that's what I would say. So Chess.com from that perspective gave me, me a chance.

John Dehlin [02:23:03] And weirdly, if, if Duran had told you or if Stephen Camp had suggested to you that your purpose was to save Chess or to grow Chess or to whatever help Chess, it seemed like you were going to have a better, ironically, a better shot at doing that by partnering with Eric and jay and doing chess.com than even if you had beat Hikaru at some point.

Danny Rensch [02:23:36] It's crazy because.

John Dehlin [02:23:36] Is that right?

Danny Rensch [02:23:37] It definitely looks that way now. Right? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't trade my life for the world in terms of how we got here. And I mean that in that. I also, like I said, if you can't change the ending and you've done the work, work to be happy with your life and to save your marriage and to grow a successful business and to build a community where you're trying to do amazing things and contribute value. You don't get to cherry pick the different obstacles you face along the way. Right. Everyone likes to say the obstacles the way, but they don't like to say it while they're facing the obstacle.

Danny Rensch [02:24:12] They like to say that after they've overcome the obstacle. Right. And I think that that's true and that's still, that's still a good thing. Right. And, and I definitely would, would say I subscribe myself to, to a lot of stoicism in terms of how I kind of, you know, have found peace and, and, and choose to.

Danny Rensch [02:24:29] Choose to rewrite or choose my own story. Right. So for sure, what I would say is like, I don't know how to answer that. I was given this spiritual purpose that was then weaponized against me and separated me from my mom and broke my heart a million times over. And, and, and I died. I died many times. Right. And grieved the death of my mother long die because I, I as a 13 year old kid lost her. Right.

Danny Rensch [02:24:57] But that path ultimately put me into a situation that led me to chess.com and I, I, it's not even. I think I, I have managed to do more good for the game with Chess.com than I ever would have been able to do as a player for sure. And so that twist ending, I've joked with my kids that everything in life does happen for a reason. But the, but the twist ending is you get to choose the reason. And I tell my kids that. And so I think from that perspective, yeah, I mean like I think it's really weird to be or have gotten

John Dehlin [02:25:27] to where, where we did and just to kind of close that circle. Talk about how Queen's Gambit and other factors along with the innovations you made along with Eric and j led Chess.com to actually elevate chess because you kind of did. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Chess.com has absolutely elevated chess globally. Do you talk about the fulfillment of the, of the gypsy problem? You know what I mean?

Danny Rensch [02:25:55] Yeah. It's weird, right? Because we are, we are in a time where undeniably the world's oldest game or one of them is, is suddenly so popular again. Right. You see kids playing it. The Queen's Gambit on Netflix was a big was. It was a show that I believe is still the most viewed original show they've ever done on Netflix.

Danny Rensch [02:26:11] There are so many things that, that are to come. I mean there have been huge scandals, there have been all types of things that have happened over the last few years where people, people have seen chess everywhere. Right. So I'm going to say that taking for granted that there's no denying we are in a space that shocking to some people or not Chess, the chess revolution has happened and, or it is only at the beginning. And it's wild to think that a game that used to be criticized for not sexy enough, not enough grappling graphics like other video games. Not these things.

John Dehlin [02:26:39] Not a way to make money.

Danny Rensch [02:26:40] Yeah, it's never changed. Not a way to make money to like more people making money than ever. There is a multi million dollar creator ecosystem of influencers on the Internet. From Hikaru to Gotham Chess, Levy Rosman to the Botez sisters to so many others. They make their own money regardless of chess.com. right. Then you have an ecosystem that Supports the livelihood of professionals, like we said, fixing the chess gypsy issue, but because we went from having zero to millions of dollars in prizes in esports as a chess. As. As a chess event. Right. Where chess is one of the most popular and played esports, if you want to call it that, on the planet.

Danny Rensch [02:27:15] Right. Meaning just games that people play digitally. Right. And then you have the ecosystem on chess.com which is, which is both. There is a. There is an author economy, a marketplace where people can create courses, create lessons, lessons, interested chess improvers, pay them directly. Chess.com facilitates both the direct connection between student and coach. And, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year are going down in this sort of author and coach marketplace. Right. So we have an author and coach marketplace, we have a professional events ecosystem, and we have a creator economy.

Danny Rensch [02:27:50] That is kind of insane to think that that exists. And it happened. But also. So it wasn't totally accidental in terms of the Queen's Gambit dumped gasoline on our fire, but the fire was already burning.

John Dehlin [02:28:03] You were ready?

Danny Rensch [02:28:04] We were ready. A lot of what was happening with the fire was we were. We had built an amazing product, an amazing app for people to play chess and learn chess. But the main two things we had was playing chess, literally, and then solving puzzles, which is where you get a specific chess position and you try to guess the answer, which can be really good for pattern recognition and all these things.

John Dehlin [02:28:22] Things.

Danny Rensch [02:28:23] We had other things, but those two things, paying the bills, weren't necessarily enough to keep the game growing. And what was happening around the. What we now can look back. In hindsight, I always say this was the birth of fake news. Unfortunately, people don't know that a lot of the world they live in is information fed to them because the algorithm already knows. It's affirming your previously held belief, not actually giving you new factual information. And how did that really start? Well, it started because the social network platforms initially positioned themselves to all of you, everybody, as a social community website, which was, you're going to go there to connect and share pictures with family and, and, but that was the main reason to connect.

Danny Rensch [02:29:03] You could get news from other places, you could consume content from other places. But eventually these social networks and the platform saw that the value in the advertising dollar, the CPM they could deliver to people, was much higher if they just kept you on their site. And if they tracked all of your information, they could deliver you an ad that was super specific where you were gonna click on it. And so overnight, these platforms that were positioned to all of the companies, the websites like my own as a place to grow your brand were actually the fastest place for people to go and then never leave, right?

Danny Rensch [02:29:37] And once you were only using Facebook, news that was fed to you didn't necessarily have to be fact checked or stood up, right, because people were, people were building their entire online experience through Facebook, which was you can connect with people, you could, you could get your, get your information, you could even play your games, right? You could do whatever you needed to do. And, and, and so Facebook I use is kind of the, you know, the cream of the crop of the black box algorithm that was really being positioned as grow your brand, but really you better grow your brand on our site and pay us to grow your brand because we're not actually going to let our users leave.

Danny Rensch [02:30:14] We're not. And how did they limit this? Well, because if you made a post with a link that was external, they literally killed your exposure. Unless you were going to pay them for that post to improve your ctr, which is your click through rate, literally died like overnight.

Danny Rensch [02:30:29] These websites, which were both Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and this is even before Instagram and TikTok and others in the world we live in now where people doom scroll and they never leave those sites. This was the early birth of this. And so we were seeing this and I was seeing this and it was my job specifically to keep our game growing through content which is written articles and videos and fun things. And we were seeing traffic just die, right? And so we were in a position to make a strategic choice which was start giving our money to the black box algorithms or change our plan.

Danny Rensch [02:31:02] Right, change the strategy. And so, so in hindsight, what we did was both data driven, data driven and kind of intuitive. But it was the right call either way, which was, look, we don't have the bottom line to do this anyway. We don't have enough money. And also it's the wrong strategy anyway in the bigger scheme. This was kind of my theory that I was, that I was proposing, which is because we don't own chess, there are always going to be other chess websites to play and learn. We actually can't ever be the only place anyway.

Danny Rensch [02:31:33] And so the only way we're really going to win is by having the best product. And if we have the best product, people will eventually find you. All roads will lead to Rome as long as the game is growing. And so rather than us giving money, let's actually just change the expectations. Stop putting external links in our, in our Facebook posts where they're Killing our exposure because the algorithm was doing that automatically. Stop expecting people to leave our YouTube channel. Just try to grow the YouTube channel channel. Don't try to use YouTube chess to get people to chess.com just make amazing content. Don't try to use Facebook to get people to chess.com.

Danny Rensch [02:32:05] just make amazing, you know, buzzworthy, kind of quick versions of our content. Give the daily puzzle there for free. Don't make people leave. Right? And then when it came to our early ambassadors, your Levy Rosmans, Hikaru's, the chess bras, you know, all the people we were working with, what we saw was that even though Facebook was limiting our business, it wasn't limiting celebrities, because they want people to come for the social connect of something, celebrities. And so we actually turned our ambassador program into like a Trojan horse where we were using their profiles, we were helping them, and we did a lot of things for them, and everyone has won in the end.

Danny Rensch [02:32:40] So this. We weren't using them in any nefarious way. We were just like, look, we'll do a lot of the work to help grow your profile. You're just going to play on Chess.com and have a Chess.com logo. So if anybody finds you, eventually they'll say, well, where do they play? Oh, they play on chess.com, right? And so we built a completely free. Before. Before influencer was a term. We built a completely free influencer program, right, where we were helping them get bigger. And the risk was that by doing that, we were also advertising to members on chess.com to go, like, their Facebook page. We were leaving.

Danny Rensch [02:33:11] We were letting the door swing open, which was very crazy at the time. At the time, it was like, you don't do that, right? And so we were kind of breaking our own funnel because everything about the business is a funnel. How quickly do you take someone from being impressed of your brand to retaining them as a customer, to converting them to a paying user, right? This is the funnel. So we were kind of jumbling the funnel. It was risky, right? And it was the right thing to do. Because in the end, when chess did prove to be bigger than Chess.com when we were reminded that no one knows the game, when millions and millions of people were inspired to consider chess again, through the pandemic, through the Queen's gambit, through these other events we had done with celebrities, it was like.

Danny Rensch [02:33:52] It was like. It wasn't just that chess was everywhere. Chess.com was everywhere. We were everywhere. And everybody who was playing chess was playing on chess.com and we had done right by them, and so they became natural funnels to chess.com. right. And so I, Maybe that was a little longer than you wanted, but it's really, I think it's. I think it's interesting because it's a fascinating. Like, you know, we got lucky, but we also kind of didn't get lucky. Right. We were in the right place at the right time, because I think we were.

Danny Rensch [02:34:20] We were making the right decision given the difficult choice that Facebook and the other platforms were giving us. And. Yeah. And then in the end, the booms came and we were right where we needed to be. It was literally wild and the face of our business or the trajectory of our business. You know, know, we always joke it was overnight success ten years later. Right. It was like all of a sudden in, in 20, 20, more than 10 years. But, you know, the, the decade is. It rolls off the tongue easier to say overnight success 10 years later. We went from. Took 10 years to get a million daily active users and 100,000 paying subscribers to.

Danny Rensch [02:34:56] Within eight months, we had 5 million daily active users and a million paying subscribers. Right. It was just, it was, it was a different universe. And so it's the people peak, been the peak. We were at I think 12 or 13 Dow Daily Active users at one point. We, we sit now roughly around 8 million and about 50 million monthly active users.

John Dehlin [02:35:22] Yeah. And it became a billion dollar. In effect, an asset worth over a billion dollars.

Danny Rensch [02:35:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:27] Yeah. Big deal.

Danny Rensch [02:35:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:30] Yeah, that's. I mean, that's. I, I don't know that Duran or Joseph Smith or anyone could have predicted.

Danny Rensch [02:35:35] No, no one could have predicted. Yeah. And Duran would have said he wasn't a fortune teller. Right. He was there to help people learn lessons regardless of the, the if you believe in it or not. And so I, you know, there's no, There was no crystal ball that saw it coming other than we had a very committed mission, me, Eric and Jay and everyone who came into it, that it was like chess deserved better.

Danny Rensch [02:35:59] It's being gatekept and protected by the very people we're trying to help help, you know, and also chess is for everyone. We have to open. We have to open the gates here. We have to open the doors in a way that isn't trying to pretend that Chess.com is the only place. And like there's all kinds of places even now to play and learn chess. And so we've kind of, you know, fallen into having a pretty. A pretty good size of the market share, but in many ways it's not because we were trying to drive people to chess.com it's because we were actually considering ourselves sort of the stewards and the shepherds for the growth of chess in general.

Danny Rensch [02:36:33] And that worked out because now every time someone sees a chess set on a magazine, they go to chess.com right? And if they fuck up and go chss.com, google goes, did you mean chess.com? so we obviously, you know, we had some strengths working for us, you know, in hindsight as well.

John Dehlin [02:36:47] But yeah, and I don't think it's a coincidence and maybe it's a little bit ironic because I'm sure, as you know, there are a lot of people in the world that view the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of the Mormon Church as a cult as well or a high demand religion or not. But it's interesting that it wasn't just you in chess.com that came from a tradition that many people would call a high demand religion or a cult. That's not to say I'm calling the Mormon Church a cult. I'm not, but I'm sure anyway, isn't that a weird thing that it wasn't just you?

Danny Rensch [02:37:30] I don't even know what the comparison is there other than we were, you know, we, I joke about it in there that we were all, we were all on missions. I'll say that like in a weird way and I know that's a funny parallel to say because the Mormon Church obviously has missions that people go on. Right. We were all on that interesting mission. Right. And I, for chess and maybe there was a part of the DNA of all of us that we, whether it was self righteous or not, we both, we all kind of appreciated that we were doing something bigger than ourselves. And in a weird way, regardless of where the message came from, like we really believe it and we, and we still do from the point of view that like, look, we want to do right by chess.

Danny Rensch [02:38:11] We are fortunate that doing right by chess has been right by us. And that's not me. Like, like I'm not even like, you know, trying to frame that, you know, things are good or bad about the Mormon Church or about my collective or not. That's not really, it's hard for me to make the comparison. But I will say that we all, we all came at it from a place of trying to do things for the greater good, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:38:34] Well, I'll just say as an observer and as someone who's very invested in this topic, if you look at Joseph Smith, claimed Special powers had a sketchy beginning. You know, claimed to be able to speak to the dead, claimed, you know, got his reputation by having special powers, built a communist or communal society in his early years. There was all sorts of. It was a patriarchy, but there was all sorts of sexual scandal and those sorts of problems.

John Dehlin [02:39:08] There were all sorts of financial scandals and relational problems, but also a grandiose vision of what could become. And for Joseph Smith, he ended up being killed. And in some ways, as I look at how Trina and Steve, their lives kind of ended. And I don't want to jump ahead because I want to talk to the unraveling for you and the unraveling of the church. But like, in some sense, Joseph Smith was done. This is a dark thing to say. He was almost done a favor by being martyred because Joseph Smith was killed in 1844. He was martyred as a direct result of everything getting out of control, power wise, financially, sexually, everything.

John Dehlin [02:39:58] It's almost like they did the movement of favor because he didn't have the chance to become old, to become senile, and to have everything kind of fall apart. But just trust me, if you. Well, you don't have to trust me, but I observe not only profound parallels between your movement and Mormonism and so many other high demand groups that I've studied, but it does strike me as ironic that you could either talk to Eric and Jay and or their ancestors to probably find a lot of parallels of trauma and of that we all

Danny Rensch [02:40:38] left the churches we were raised in, I guess to some degree. Is that what you're saying?

John Dehlin [02:40:41] But also, but also I don't believe in, like I have this weird turn in 2025 where I don't no longer believe it's. I no longer believe that's healthy or accurate to only call out the bad parts of a cult. I think that it's probably no coincidence that a lot of your resources, your resilience, and I'm talking about you, Eric and Jay, a lot of your intelligence, your resources, your community, your hard work ethic, your values, your vision are probably attributable to your mutual communities and ethics and values that shaped you all. It's just a guess, but if I were able to interview Eric and Jay, I'm guessing we're gonna find a lot of parallels that mean that being raised in a high demand religion or cult has amazing blessings and goodness and opportunity along with potentially horrific trauma and abuse. It's both. It's both. It's both.

Danny Rensch [02:41:48] Well, it's funny. Well, I mean, yeah. And again, I mean, you. You know, you obviously are the. The expert on the topic, and. And the parallels you. You drew in terms of early Mormonism and Joseph Smith to Stephen and Trina, which is, I think what you. I don't think you were comparing me and Eric and J. To Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [02:42:03] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Joseph Smith.

Danny Rensch [02:42:07] So I understand what you. What you were saying there. And I think that, you know, there's no denying it is weird that, like, you're not. Your trauma can become your strong suit. That's what I'll say. Right. And that's actually, to some degree, it depends on what you do with it. Right. And that's where I always go back to some of my stoic sort of followings now, because ultimately we are not what happens to us. We are what we choose to become. So I'm basically validating that. I think there are parallels. There are fascinating ones, but ultimately there are also a lot of parallels of people who were disadvantaged.

Danny Rensch [02:42:39] And it hasn't necessarily worked out that way. And I don't want to in any way kind of sound trite or dismissive of that because I think that my story is a unique one, and it was definitely traumatic. There are definitely a lot of things that went down where I feel like people were more disadvantaged than me. I actually think that there are a lot of young women in the collective who. We'll see what happens with my book. I think there's. There's probably a reason to believe that my book is not. Is not the end of a chapter. It's the beginning of a new conversation. And I think a lot of people who want to tell their story will have the opportunity to do so.

Danny Rensch [02:43:18] And I think that. So I. I guess I'm both validating and saying that for sure. There's a lot of people who can, you know, objectively say, like, hey, I was truly disadvantaged by this cult or my experience in X religion. Right. And I. But at the same time, I would hope, because I would agree in the end that even with that being true, even as true as you make it in the end, you are still what you choose to do with it, no matter what. There are things that happen, and there are choices you make. And I think for whatever reason, I do choose to look at it.

Danny Rensch [02:43:48] I mean, you've read my book. That in the end, I express gratitude for the fact that Chess was made my purpose, that Stephen Camp had a crazy vision that my mom did let me go. Those are things that fucked me up beyond repair and almost Led to me destroying my own life and marriage and all kinds of shit in the process. Right. But when I've gotten to the other side, like, I have to look at it and know, like, in hindsight, God damn it, the obstacle was the way. Right. And there was something that was happening. And ultimately I don't change that because of where I got.

Danny Rensch [02:44:20] But I can say that again. We're back to opposing truths. I can say that while also not apologizing for my abusers. I can say that while still naming it for what it was. It was a cult. I can name it for what it was. I cannot apologize for my abusers. I can say that objectively this wasn't okay and it hurt me and I wouldn't let my kids go through it. But that doesn't mean I regret that it happened. Because I have a perspective.

Danny Rensch [02:44:42] I have a joy for life. I have a sense of gratitude that has come through the loss and the heartache of losing my mother. And we should probably get into that stuff. I have a perspective that I'm going to choose to share with the world in a way that I hope is helpful.

Danny Rensch [02:44:56] Again, not to be trite, not to be dismissive, and not to say that there are those who I think had it even harder than I did, especially a lot of the young women. And it's hard. It's hard to hold those opposing truths because it's easier to be fucking pissed and to be angry. But, yeah, I agree with you on that. And it is weird when you have parallels of people who've come to their own view on why they went through what they did is their choice. Right. And hopefully they do good with it.

John Dehlin [02:45:19] Yeah. And I'll just. I want to move to the unraveling and to your reconciliation with your mom and other things, but I'll just. For me, I like to kind of try and learn and draw parallels and distill. But what you mentioned, for example, in your book is how Stephen Camp was always willing to help people who were down. And what you mentioned in your book is how valuable it is to be handed a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a source for spirituality, a community set of friends, resources that the community can invest in you, someone telling you you're worth something, someone telling you that they see potential in you, a resolution about the afterlife, a set of morals or values and identity that help structure you and give you that meaning or purpose.

Parallels Between Cults and High-Demand Groups

John Dehlin [02:46:10] And that's for better or for worse, what a healthy church and. Or a semi healthy high demand religion or cult or A toxic cult. All of them have one thing in common. They pretty much give you those things. And, and one of the biggest insights I have from your book, you said a cult works until it doesn't, right?

Danny Rensch [02:46:31] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:46:32] And that's different for different people. So some people just have their experience in the cult and they're broken from the beginning, or some make it a few years and then they're broken. Other people write it for a lot of very, very positive, meaningful things along with trouble.

John Dehlin [02:46:50] And overall they're saying, I wouldn't trade it. And then there's other people that probably just never stop benefiting from it and ride that all the way to their death. And they're super rich, which is unfortunate. It's unfortunate, but it's also the way the world works. And so I love it that your book, and even now it's recognizing that there's a reason why these things exist. I think we as humans create them as much as we're deceived by them. Because in the end we need something.

John Dehlin [02:47:21] Because like we said, loneliness, meaninglessness, purposelessness, and no resources can actually be worse than a cult or a high demand religion. And so that's the, you know, that's the paradox. So let's talk about the unraveling. When did, when did the crack start forming for you? And I know to some degree it was happening all along long, but when did you start questioning your faith and then talk about the ultimate unraveling if you're comfortable? Oh, I'm going to talk about the reconciliation with your mom.

Danny Rensch [02:47:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:55] Because you were in, you were still in the collective several years into your marriage, into 2020, into the Chess.com years. Yeah, yeah.

Danny Rensch [02:48:05] And I was still at times picking up the sword for the collective, you know, and that's, that's something you do, and you do it through the best framework you can of thinking you're doing the best you can. Right.

Danny Rensch [02:48:18] And so again, you mentioned several things there. I did see good that was being done both by Stephen Camp and the collective. I also saw bad, of course. But you justify and you figure your way through some of those thought processes as you can, while also avoiding your own pain and issues and ruminating in hindsight and, and all that stuff.

Danny Rensch [02:48:40] But I already kind of, you know, said how I feel chess saved my life from the education it gave me ultimately for both good and bad. I would say that, you know, in, in hindsight, others have said that when I was taken from my mom the way that I was, that for them, like, that was actually their Moment. And, and I've had even, you know, woman who would go name this, that to her it was like a bomb went off in the collective and it was like, oh, shit.

Danny Rensch [02:49:05] Other. This had happened other times with older kids, but it was never the same way. It was like 16 year olds choosing new parents or changing their name or whatever. It wasn't like this. And so this was something that, that for others was a huge moment. Right? And so for me, I. I think that there were definitely times of seeing in hindsight, hypocrisy, abuse. Like, this wasn't okay. This was a mismanagement of money. That. That doesn't seem fair. That's not the right. Whatever that is. But I would say the thing that there were two things that happened for me. One was the amount of times my own relationship with Shawna, my own marriage began to be threatened with the idea that, oh, well, if you guys aren't in the teaching, you might as well break up because you were put together in the teaching.

Danny Rensch [02:49:48] So if you're not living the teaching, let's just call it what it is and get divorced. That was like maybe the most PG way it was said. It was like, hey, like, like, I can split you up. You know, I can, I can, I can, I can split up your marriage if you're not gonna get in line here or whatever. Right. And I was not. That was not unique to just me. Every. A lot of people had those experiences, right? And so when. And what's funny is that is a thing. John had already been done with our parents, right? They had. People had been taken apart and put together with other people right out of.

Danny Rensch [02:50:19] Yeah. And so what I'm saying is, what's funny is I now see with clarity this was always going to happen because Stephen and Trina Camp had already run this playbook and it worked with their peers. So why wasn't going to work with the kids who were born in the teaching? I think what they misunderstood is the kids who were born in the collective one had not signed the COVID contracts in the way that the parents had. They had not joined the collective. They were born into it. And I see that now, you know, with so much more clarity because I've done a lot of so much self reflecting, so much processing to not just prepare for these moments, but write a book book and to do the things I'm doing.

Danny Rensch [02:50:51] And so I've been like, ah, like that makes more sense to me now. The reason this was rejected was not just because people do want to have their own experiences. They want to go make their own money and find their own. Find who. Out who they are before they commit to a cult. And they had been born into it, so we had never done that. But also they were going to run the same playbook because they didn't know any better. They were going to try to do the same with us that they did with our parents.

John Dehlin [02:51:14] They were going to, like, vibration, vibration.

Danny Rensch [02:51:16] And they literally did they like vibration to everybody. They did things. And so in hindsight, we were always gonna reject it, but they were gonna do it anyway because there was no other game plan. And so when Art. When my marriage started to be threatened in the same way, that was never okay. And it was through different means. It could have been through money conversations, through this conversation. But when I was. When I was being asked to, like, give Stephen camp money to make sure it was okay that me and Shana could stay together, together, because now that we were having sex, we had to get married.

Danny Rensch [02:51:45] And I saw how much he was double dipping in my own life when I was making money with Chess. It was like, this isn't good, but I have to do it to make sure he doesn't take me away from Shawna. So that never felt good. But then the second thing that happened was the story I share around my own kids, when I had my own kids. And at some point, there was a conversation where I was basically threatened, through lack of a better word, that one of my kids was not my spiritual kid, which was implying directly that. That they could be taken from me or they might choose new parents, which

John Dehlin [02:52:13] would strike you at your hardest heart.

Danny Rensch [02:52:14] Which struck me deep. Right. And again, I'm. I'm not sharing all that, because I think that's already enough, and people should want to read the book for that. But it was. That was that experience of seeing what would happen if my kids were taken from me, and just the natural visceral reaction of, like, oh, no, this ain't happening. Like, I ain't doing this. Right? And the moment that happened, you're not taking my kids away from that was it. Right? And so I think that those were probably the two biggest. So what's crazy is that even with that, though, even with that, I still stayed in the collective for a long time.

Danny Rensch [02:52:44] And there are a lot of, you know, churchgoing folk and a lot of reasons to stay a part of something that you have inertia with, you have relationships with, and at times, you still experience the best of. Right? And so my wife became a teacher at the Shelby School, and Together I ran a Boy Scout troop by the way and a Cub Scout pack. We were the only non LDs in the area by the way. We were the only non denominational troop and pack because it was so good for the kids. We had tons of kids living below the poverty line at the Shelby School at this point.

Danny Rensch [02:53:12] The school had a charter, it had opened up to non community kids. And so we were involved in a lot of kids lives who we were making a difference. We were making a huge difference and tithing to the church in my mind tithing which I tithe 10% to the church of Immortal Consciousness until I left. I saw the good that it was doing. Right. It was supporting the school and the school school supported these kids. I was literally losing money in order to allow my wife to teach at the school. Like because I was making enough money now@chess.com where 10 of my income was like a lot of money for the people in, in the collective right. And for the school and for Stephen and Trina as we're saying, you were

Leaving the Collective for Good

John Dehlin [02:53:49] giving camp like 30 on, on top of the 10 right early on.

Danny Rensch [02:53:53] I was not at that time. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:53:55] I don't want people to think that was the only fee.

Danny Rensch [02:53:58] Yes, I, I, I, you know and that I kind of skipped past that. But no, it was just sort of framing the things that kind of of those were, those are things I would list in the bullet list of sub hypocrisies that I saw because they weren't even as big as my marriage being threatened or my kids being taken. But so the school is doing as well as it can. I'm all in on the idea that we're making a difference and I stand by that. And we did a lot of good things and my wife and I feel really good about the differences we made and, and I would do a lot of that again if I, if it was meant to be.

Danny Rensch [02:54:25] It's so funny what happened in the multiverse of then Covid hits, the school shuts down, my wife is home and Chess.com is doing this. And, and well we, we skip past the fact that my mom, you know had. I guess there's a third edifice and that's what we. Before I get into what happened with that I would let's back up and, and, and say because at this point, you know the other big twist. Unfortunately there is not a happy ending in my relationship with my mom because my marriage being threatened and my kids maybe being taken were two of the things. But the other probably biggest sort of nail in the Coffin was that not long after reconciling with my mom and doing the work, that was a very traumatic healing and getting her not just back in my life, but for the year and a half to two years that I had her.

Danny Rensch [02:55:17] She was my kid's grandma. And we had the relationship that I thought we were gonna have forever. And. And one conversation turned out to be basically the last one I had with my mom. And she had a massive stroke. And she did have time in nursing homes, and it wasn't an immediate death, but a lot of the neurologists said she probably should have died. The size of the subdural hematoma was more than a quarter. It was a huge stroke. And so she was never the same. We spent the next year and a half, two years, me and Josh in Noel, bouncing her around. But ultimately she died.

Danny Rensch [02:55:48] And what happened during that experience was just. And I'm careful with this only because I love so many people who ultimately, even though I love them, I would say they also kind of fell short in terms of what I hoped to happen. What I thought was going to be the reality of a collective being there for you when it mattered most turned into a couple things that I have now coined. And my wife always jokes about them because I make everything a rhyme, which is. I saw a bunch of people, people who were addicted to drama but didn't know how to deal with trauma. Suddenly I was the most mature person in the room in a group of a bunch of adults.

Danny Rensch [02:56:21] And it was like. Like, this is real shit. And like, you have a lot of people making it about them. I mean, even, like, competing over who has the worst health problems. It was like, the lack of awareness about what happened and the lack of support was devastating and heartbreaking. And I think a lot of people were doing their best with a very traumatic situation where one of their best friends also was dying young. My mom had her stroke at 60, too. So I'm saying that not just because you can tell. I'm obviously a very nuanced person, to the point where I've been called a cult apologist by people, but I've also been someone who.

Danny Rensch [02:56:51] I stand by how I've handled a lot of things because I like to believe in the best of people wherever I can, and not attribute motivation. But it was fucked up. We didn't have the support that I thought we were going to have. And it just put on blast the parts of the collective that were always a lie. And that, as you kind of mentioned early on and I wrote about in My book, you saw that when things go well, it's the reason that the collective exists. It's because of the collective and the spiritual mission that you do well. It's because of your faith. But when it didn't go well, it's because your faith isn't good enough.

Danny Rensch [02:57:22] Your faith isn't strong enough. And I saw that weaponized and abused with my mom, and that was like. That was kind of it for me, you know, directly with Stephen and Trina in many ways. And now I'm going to go back, you know, because, you know, of avoiding the crying. And I've talked about this enough to know that, like, with my mom, healing that relationship literally saved my marriage. Because it's not simple to say that when you. When your mom doesn't fight for you and you ultimately are then told a lot of reasons why she didn't fight you because she wasn't good enough, and ultimately you become to leave a lot of bad things about your mom.

Danny Rensch [02:57:58] It's not like that misogyny just goes away. And one of the things I wrote about in my book that. That I stood by, which is I wasn't going to write this unless I was going to go all the way, which was the reason my marriage was falling apart. At its core, I was a very hurt human being. I was wounded. I don't. I've forgiven myself for this, but I was an. And I was a misogynist at my core because I didn't respect women. That's the actual definition. Now, misogyny has varying levels, right? It was never physical or even really verbally abused. I was mentally. And I was manipulative with her for sure.

Danny Rensch [02:58:27] I weaponized the teaching, but. And I was. I was abusive in other ways that I do write about in the book. But I was a misogynist because I didn't respect women. And I didn't respect women because I didn't respect my mother, because she didn't do right by me. And again, it took years of healing. And it took my mom showing the courage to take responsibility in a way that when someone takes responsibility for that level of pain, when you objectively know that a lot of things were probably outside of their control, it pretty much disarms you. And if you're not someone who gets disarmed by that, it's probably a you problem at that point, right?

Danny Rensch [02:59:00] And so. So healing my relationship with my mom and being disarmed in the way that I was, and then to lose her as quickly as I did to the stroke and to not have the collective there. It was.

Danny Rensch [02:59:14] It changed everything very quickly. And even though we did stick around and I did tithe, and there were good parts of it, and you love people and you have relationships with people you grew up with, you know, with clarity, you see it for what it was. It was. It was never going to be the same. So, yes, I was choosing to live in the eye of the hurricane, but I was aware that it was a hurricane, and I was trying to be as calm as I could for my family in the middle of this. And then the pandemic hit. And the last thing I'll share, because I don't want to share more of my wife's story, but it is in the book that then the real final, final, final nail in the coffin was that the.

Danny Rensch [02:59:47] Probably the last reason for us to really be there was that Shawna's mom was still in Arizona. She wasn't in the collective. She had left the collective and been in the Valley. We were still kind of figuring out how to live in the eye of the hurricane. But Shawna's mom was diagnosed in February of 2020 with stage four breast cancer, and she was dead in June. And so it was, like, very quick. And her mom died at 62. So I had lost my mom at 64, stroke at 62. Shauna's mom was gone. We were two heartbroken orphan kids who married each other. And then, you know, it was time to move on.

Danny Rensch [03:00:17] And that was basically, you know, when it happened. And I had my. I had my final blow up with Stephen Camp that I write about in the book. And that was. That was. That also taught me a lot about what and why I was still around. I think, in many ways, regardless of the other seeing good, I was also still there because I was a broken kid, too, who wanted to believe that the lie was true, that he did love me more than other things. Right. And I. I'm not saying he didn't or that even that he doesn't now, I don't know, but I know that he doesn't know how to show it, and I know that he's a very damaged person.

Danny Rensch [03:00:52] And I know that he has a lot of behavior that would say that maybe a lot more of this was more premeditated and manipulative than I saw. Because in this moment where, you know, he tried to really use the questioning thing to get me to write the COVID contract one more time around this sort of are we family or not? Interaction that I share in the book led to.

John Dehlin [03:01:12] You basically were letting you know, you couldn't keep, you couldn't keep writing the check. You were.

Danny Rensch [03:01:15] Yeah. And that was, that was it when he did that.

John Dehlin [03:01:20] Do you want to tell that story or do you want to leave?

Danny Rensch [03:01:22] Sure, I can share the story, which is just that Shawna's mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. This was, I think now March, April, things are not going well. Sha's not doing well. I don't know that we knew she was going to die yet, but. But I had not been delivering Steven and Trina tithe checks for quite some time. In fact, I probably hadn't talked to Steven at that point for almost a year. Even though we were still supporting and the school was still there and we were doing the best we could to navigate and Shauna wasn't doing well. So I was like, honey, I'll take them the tithe check.

Danny Rensch [03:01:53] And I was able to do it at this point. I had done a lot of, a lot of spiritual and mental Jedi. I had been in therapy for almost four years. I started therapy kind of right after my mom died in 2016. Teen so almost four years I had been in therapy. And so I was.

Danny Rensch [03:02:11] I'm still a damage hurt little kid. I will not to pretend to be something I'm not. But I was, I was not afraid and I was okay. Of dealing with the situation. And so Shauna, who had been kind of dealing with them because it was just an easier way for us to do life. And probably it was good that I was avoiding them because the moment, probably in hindsight, the moment I was going to deal with them was the moment it was going to be the end. So maybe I was avoiding them subconsciously for a reason. Right. And so Shawna wasn't doing well. And so I, I drove down in my, in our Arctic Cat kind of a, you know, whatever, an off road vehicle and, and walked in and gave them the check and, and, and Stephen tried to hand me back a box.

Danny Rensch [03:02:47] And I looked in the box and the box was full of all the pictures of my family and all the holiday cards we had given them over the years, everything that connected us to them. Because at this point I was calling him Grandpa. Remember, I'm Stephen Marlow's kid. And so we had had a lot of good, or at least I thought in our relationship too, even though I've been avoiding a lot of stuff, all the bad. And when he handed me back the box of pictures and I'm like, what is this? Like, why are you doing this? And. And he was like, well, are we still family. Like, we're not really family anymore, right? Are we still family? Do you.

John Dehlin [03:03:20] He was asking that. Why? Because you were giving him money?

Danny Rensch [03:03:23] Yes, I. I had still been giving him tithe check, but it was like a gambit. Because again, this is. This is like literally one of like the 48 laws of power. And like that. That fucking book about how to manipulate people. You don't. You don't say, I miss you. You find a way to ask a question to get them to reprostrate themselves to the relationship, because that's a more powerful bond, right? You get them to sign a covert contract, which. Because the other answer I could have given was, of course we're family. I. I'm sorry I've been gone. I'm sorry I haven't seen you in a year.

Danny Rensch [03:03:50] This has just been hard stuff. Of course. Why would you say that? No, no, keep the pictures. Of course we're family. In fact, I'll start coming to see you more. In fact, you want to have a drink tonight? Let's get together tonight. Like, that is the thing I had seen many people do with him many times over. But instead, that gambit backfired.

John Dehlin [03:04:05] You were done. You were done playing that game.

Danny Rensch [03:04:07] Yeah, and I used the term gambit, I guess accidentally with chess, but it was. It was a gambit. He was trying to, like, see if he could lure me back to in. And I lost my mind. And everything else that happened then I write about in the book, which is. That was.

Danny Rensch [03:04:20] That wasn't the last conversation we had because as I wrote, I did after we moved to Utah, go back one more time to handle storage unit stuff. And we had a. We had kind of an intense interaction that was closing, but intense, but. But really, that was it. The jig was up and crazy enough.

Danny Rensch [03:04:41] Eric and Amy. Eric is my co. Founder of Chess.com, the CEO, and his wife Amy, they were moving to Salt Lake City, and Eric and I were breaking Covid restrictions. Guilty. We were seeing each other in August of 2020, and we were actually on a run. And Eric was like, hey, like, Amy and I are getting out of California. A lot of stuff happening for us, you know, Again, won't tell their story, but they're like, we're moving to Salt Lake because Amy's got family here, and we're gonna. I'm like.

Danny Rensch [03:05:09] I'm like, wow, big move for you. That's crazy, man. And he's like, you should come. I'm like, that's crazy. Yes. Both of our moms just Died because Kathy had died in June and this is August. But my wife would never go for that. I go home and say, honey, like, Eric threw out this idea. And she was like, that sounds crazy. Like, why don't we do a road trip? So we went on a road trip in September of 2020, and we bought a house in Utah in October 20th.

Danny Rensch [03:05:36] And that was a wild. That was a wild thing. And we are obviously very fortunate that we were able, even able to do that. But we were. And, yeah, that's the fast and furious version of what went down.

John Dehlin [03:05:50] And what was it like to finally leave? Was it hard? Was it just all euphoric and positive? Was it mixed?

Danny Rensch [03:05:57] It was, to this day, one of the hardest experiences of my life. But not for the reasons you would totally expect. Not because it was like, there was so much that had. Like, that had happened. Everybody, even people, you know, there are so many people I know who are dispersed from the collective all over the Southwest. People who, in the varying degrees of. Still wish it was going to, like, it's the most evil cult that ever happened in the world or whatever. Like, to the varying degrees of people, sit. I know people are gonna hear this and have their own experience of how and when they left and different things, but I know that I think for me and people who were still there at the time, there was so much denial going on about what this really was and how heartbreaking what we had seen fall apart.

Danny Rensch [03:06:41] No matter how angry you were, you were in denial about some aspects of it. And so. So many relationships were just not good anymore. And then what happened is this is. So. We didn't actually move till end of December, January 2020, even though we bought the house.

John Dehlin [03:06:56] House.

Danny Rensch [03:06:57] I got Covid. And I got Covid bad. I lost my whole sense of smell for a very long time. Which, by the way, was like. I'm. Like, I didn't realize. I'm a very sensory person. Maybe because I've lost my hearing. I love that I can smell things. And it was one of the most. I was so depressed. I had heavy Covid in December. I couldn't smell anything. Everything had lost its, like, motivation and taste. I don't think I read about this in the book, actually.

Danny Rensch [03:07:22] And so when what happened was I had horrible Covid. And so in addition to the fact that relationships were bad, like, no one could come help me anyway because I had Covid. And so my boys, we've moved to Utah, and Nash has gone. Nash is a very late bloomer. He's now 61 he's a monster. I don't know how he got so big.

Danny Rensch [03:07:41] But Nash and Warner were both little, so it was a very limited experience for them to help me. So I packed up our entire fucking house.

John Dehlin [03:07:48] House.

Danny Rensch [03:07:48] Depressed, exhausted, like, withered and lethargic with my two boys basically by myself. Over. Over. Like, we had to extend how long we had the U haul for because I couldn't get it done because I was, like. I was just so depleted and exhausted. And it was. It was so devastating. And there was nobody there. There was no support. There was no love. Even if there could have been, they couldn't because of COVID even if they wanted to. It was the worst first. And then we drove out of the village and, you know, eventually would sell our houses and the house that we had there. And. Yeah, so you lost.

John Dehlin [03:08:25] You lost family, you lost community, you lost a mentor or two or three. Were you still having access, A couple of moms?

Danny Rensch [03:08:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:34] Yeah. Lost. Yeah. Did. Were you still having access to Duran at that point, or did you stop?

Danny Rensch [03:08:39] Not really at that point, but. But not. Not too much previously. And. And, you know, I. I touch on this a little bit in the book in terms of, you know, giving the perspective I do about how I've come to terms with the experience of spirit, of there being higher consciousnesses that exist of your own higher consciousness and consciousness without the body. And how did I get here? What do I believe? And I. And, you know, you know, I'll let people read the book to figure out some of that, but I would say that I.

Danny Rensch [03:09:05] I was openly able to be skeptical, but still. But still experiencing what I liked out of it. And I think that in hindsight, that experience was probably also unique and probably also something that Chess and my wife gave me, because I think when it comes to people's relationships with churches and faith, and I'm saying this not to speak for. Experience it on my own, but I've had a lot of people tell me this, that a big part of, like, you avoid questioning anything because if you question one thing, you're actually secretly afraid you'll start questioning everything.

John Dehlin [03:09:38] Yeah, you pull the thread, and so

Danny Rensch [03:09:40] you pull the thread and so you're afraid. And I think what I would encourage any. Any religious infrastructure, any denomination to understand, and I've actually said this openly, that my big problem with religion is that they often try to fight. They try to fight dogma with dogma. They try to fight skepticism with black and white. You know, ye have little faith in doing this. And I would actually argue if someone's relationship with God or a faith or a way of thinking is meant to be, it is only strengthened through tearing the muscle, just like anything else. If you tear the muscle and rebuild it because of your own reasons and you reconstruct what you have deconstructed, you may find that what you do hold on to is more valuable to you than it was before.

Danny Rensch [03:10:21] But religions lose people because they don't allow space for people to go. Go through the gray and the nuance and the fear and the skepticisms and the loss that happens naturally because we're all dealing with hard. And so I, for whatever reason, had had an experience where I did go through that. I lost my mom and didn't have support, but I still went to trances. And I saw certain things that I thought saw were so good. I gave myself agency to say that trance wasn't real. That was Trina's.

Danny Rensch [03:10:51] That trance wasn't real, Trina was drunk. Nobody, nobody in the collective was allowing themselves to say that while it was obviously happening. I gave myself the agency to say that, which in turn, ironically allowed me to be like, I actually do think that part of Duran's teaching is super fucking healthy. I actually think that that is a very good principle. I think that that part of Stephen Camp, even though I've seen him manipulate people, people, was actually okay. And so I'm saying it whether, you know, I think that a lot of people lose their way because they are not allowed to explore skepticism in the middle of crisis.

Healing, Recovery, and Life After the Cult

Danny Rensch [03:11:30] And so instead you develop wounds that you're ignoring. Right? And I think either because I had been exposed to the world or because my wife was always kind of doing that way, she was ahead of me on that because of her experience and because, like, I just. I was okay with that and I didn't judge myself, but a lot of people judge themselves if they feel. If they feel. Feel like they're losing their faith, right? And so that is how I've explained to people who have questioned, why were you still there when this was obviously a lie? And I say, well, there were a lot of lies.

Danny Rensch [03:11:57] There were a lot of fraud, fraudulent behavior. There were things that weren't okay, but there were also things that were going on that were. That were good. And I was able to live in the eye of the hurricane, probably because I gave myself the agency to do it. And so that was what was happening. And so there were some trances, there were some not good trances. Even if Trina, Even if you believe Trina, even if you Believe all trances fake. If you're someone watching it and think that I'm a crazy person and that's your own, you can feel that way, regardless of what you believe about the source.

Danny Rensch [03:12:27] I was obviously able to discern what I thought was good or not. And because I was doing that in a way that I felt was healthy was good. Although I will acknowledge now that having written the book, I entered into the book thinking I knew what every one of the babies were and what all the bathwater was, I will acknowledge that I have changed some of that. I have. I have deconstructed even further in terms of my own views of something that I thought was good. And I'm like, actually, that shit was fucked up. That actually was never okay or no, Stephen Camp was trying to do good there.

Danny Rensch [03:12:55] Actually, I think that was actually way more premeditated than I realized. So I will acknowledge that even in this process, I have changed my own views on some stuff, but I've probably also put some things in bathwater, at least a little more in the gray, you know, And I think that that's been months.

John Dehlin [03:13:10] My.

Danny Rensch [03:13:11] That's been my experience with this. And. And it's. And it's been crazy. And. And that's. I guess I'll leave it at that.

John Dehlin [03:13:18] No, and. And what I hear you saying are two things. And I'm hearing you say the experience that you had was great in many ways and horrific in many ways, and it was both. So you're giving yourself permission to own, embrace, lean into the whole of the experience, which I think is not only probably healthy, it's also probably true in some sense that you got a lot of good and a lot of harm. So what good does it do you or anyone to deny the good?

John Dehlin [03:14:01] That just puts you in a place where you're not dealing with reality. But it's also critical that you could also call out the bad. But also what I also hear you saying is for your healing and growth, you've allowed yourself to keep the good. In other words, you're not. There's some people who, when they are A, B and C in a high demand religion, once they decide it was harmful or no longer good anymore, then they just sort of either consciously or unconsciously conclude, well, then I can't be A, B or C anymore anymore. So I need to be X, Y and Z, but never A, B and C.

John Dehlin [03:14:39] But I think what's most healthy and integrated is to say, you know what? A and B were actually okay. Now, C was fucked up, and I'LL leave D, E and F on the table as, as bathwater. But I'll keep A, B, R and Z, right, because they were phenomenally healthy. And I'll bring those with me. Not become the inverse negative of whatever I experienced, but instead bring the good and then add more good and hopefully become a healthier and a happier person afterwards versus becoming the negative instantiation of whatever I came from, which I think wrecks a lot of people, honestly.

Danny Rensch [03:15:16] I mean, you said it well. Yeah, and I, I agree. And it's a normal. And I will, I will say like everyone's process, to use a word, everyone's journey in that is its own, is its own process and everyone has the right to it, right? I think that sometimes you have to find yourself by hitting the guardrails and being angry or extreme about something. But I think in the end I meant what I said and it is not something I invented. But it is true that anger and hatred are drinking poison and expecting other people to feel differently. I mean, these days there are more and more scientific proof that it literally affects your cellular structure and way of being, whether you like it or not.

Danny Rensch [03:15:54] So it's good to do certain work. And, and you know, one analogy I've used when it comes to rethinking some of this stuff is before you get really on it about anything, consider that once you start a thought process, it's a lot like grabbing a pendulum and going here. And when you let go, what happens?

Danny Rensch [03:16:13] It has to go to the. A pendulum doesn't go from here to being healthy and balanced again. It takes some time, right? And like, so every time you're in one of those debates or as I say, religions fight dogma with dogma, you get, I don't know, it can become hard to recover from feeling so angry and so heartbroken. Even though I've been there, right? And so I've, I've tried to be like, before I grab it and go here with this thought, let me, let me do the best I can. Because even if you just go a little bit, at least that's a little bit more like the balance finds itself faster than the extreme of bouncing around.

Danny Rensch [03:16:46] And that's just been my own experience of, of how to handle, handle, you know, when I, when I try on these different thoughts and review things that have bothered me or, you know, come to come to new perspective about stuff. And you know, obviously you got to do the mental health work if you're, if you're a damaged brain individual. It is, it is mental, mental health is a verb. It is not a noun. You do not achieve it. And check it off. You have to do it all the time. Right. And so I keep doing that as well.

John Dehlin [03:17:13] Let me just ask you. I find addiction to substances being extraordinarily common in 2025 with my peer group, but even more pronounced with kind of younger generations, 20s and 30s. So for someone who's in the throes of alcohol addiction, cannabis addiction, or any other type of substance addiction, or let's just say any addiction at all, all. What tips can you offer to starting to address and or conquer substance addiction?

Danny Rensch [03:17:52] That's a big one. And I want to be careful about it because I also want to acknowledge I'm not a professional. Right. I can only speak from my experience. I know that's. I know that goes without saying, but I want to say it anyway because I really mean it. Like, I think that obviously everyone has their own road in terms of how they got there.

Danny Rensch [03:18:06] But the first thought that came came up for me is like, every behavior has a why. It has an underlying reason that it got there. And that is true with porn addictions. It is true with drug addictions. It is true with anything.

Danny Rensch [03:18:19] And I think just like every good mission, every good purpose should have a why. There should be a why you do anything you do. And hopefully that why is about service and about connection and about things that are good and then the job takes place from. That's kind of what I've learned about purpose in terms of someone who had purpose weaponized against him. Chess was never a purpose. Chess was a thing I did. But the why I do it should be about connecting with people and serving them and the benefits I've seen the game give to their brain or whatever. Like, there are whys that manifest into what you do.

Danny Rensch [03:18:51] And I would say on the inverse of the bad things that you do or the things that you don't like about your behavior. To say that, because I actually don't think anyone should think of themselves as bad. I think that's part of the problem. I think. I think the bad whys that you're afraid of looking at are often the reason you can't get out of the behavior. And so what I would say I learned is that you're not bad. There are no bad whys. And that the fear you have about getting into why you started because you don't want to look at that is actually the thing that keeps you from being able to quit the problem.

Danny Rensch [03:19:21] And so I have now written a book and openly talked about the fact that I was a misogynist. How many people would avoid saying that, that they lacked respect for women? I think there are many men in the world who would benefit from just acknowledging that we are conditioned to objectify, to have expectations, to hold to standards, and then judge and evaluate women about behavior that is not only worldly conditioned. And then you have any personal relationship where a woman did you wrong and a lot of men justify, you know, I would say misogynistic behavior or thought, or thought processes about this stuff. And, and like I now say it because I'm not afraid of my whys.

Danny Rensch [03:19:58] And I think I spent many years not thinking that I was God, that I was good, that I was love, that I was wholesome because I was a broken kid whose dad like left his mom, basically was like given a scarlet letter and told you're not anything in this world. And then developed all kinds of like, you know, accolades and kudos around external performance and behavior.

Danny Rensch [03:20:20] And it led to like a really fucked up sense of self in addition to lacking respect for women. And I became a fucking asshole. And I was, I was, and I was struggling. I was not a fucking asshole. I became a fucking asshole, right? And I think that's the language I use because my wife is always very big. She doesn't like it when I use language that is self judging because she corrects me. And that's why she's becoming a therapist, because she feels very strongly about helping people solve these problems. And what I would say is like, for me, and again, some addictions are worse than others.

Danny Rensch [03:20:50] And I was at a point where I needed antidepressants. I was on Zola for many years. I need a real therapy and real help. I needed real exercise. I needed things that jump started my battery. And there are people who get in spots where you need real things. I'm not saying that you listen to this podcast and oh, Danny talked about the why and that fixes it. Not at all. I think that there are times when I needed antidepressants and serotonin to help my broken brain deal with the parts of me that was not just self judging, but couldn't make sense of a world where I was depressed and had lacked safety and had lacked feelings that I was ever good for such a long time, that I needed real help.

Danny Rensch [03:21:32] But at the end of getting to that, getting that real help, when I started to be able to unpack this stuff, what I found was that the reasons I had developed these behaviors is cause I thought I was bad. I thought I had failed. I thought that I was. I was just going to be a jerk. I thought that I wasn't actually worthy of love. I thought that I was. I thought that there were these things that were wrong with me. And what I realized is, like being able to say that I had misogynistic behavior and some things that I did doesn't make me a horrible person.

Danny Rensch [03:22:01] It actually doesn't. In fact, more people should be willing to talk about their flaws because the lack of, the lack of awareness about it is usually the first step toward behavior that you've developed to cover it up. Because a lot of wives that even become bad are good. Like a lot of young men can develop addictions to porn because they're figuring out their body and they're horny. Like, for lack of a better way to put it, and they don't know what to do with it. And they're not being talked to because their dad is also struggling with sex shame issues. Right. Like these are the whys that no one's talking about.

Danny Rensch [03:22:33] And now they're manifesting in this way. And so if you don't want to talk about the why, you have a hard time fixing the behavior. You can take drugs for it, you can try to avoid it, you can self judge yourself, but a lot of times that behavior will keep coming back unless you just start with, why did I get there? Because. And so what my challenge would be, don't be afraid of the why. You are good.

Danny Rensch [03:22:55] Everybody is a child. Everybody is love. Everybody is good at their core. And if you remember that and are willing to face down the whys that got you you there, I would say that for me, that was the necessary step to, if we want to call it fixing the bad behavior that I had because I was never bad, I had bad behavior. And that's what I would say.

John Dehlin [03:23:16] That plus psychiatry and psychology.

Danny Rensch [03:23:18] Right. Okay. Getting help. I talked about.

John Dehlin [03:23:21] No, no, no, I'm. I'm repeating.

Danny Rensch [03:23:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:23:24] How you started.

Danny Rensch [03:23:24] Yes. And again, just for emphasis, not yeah, you need. If you need help. And again, exercise changed my life. I need. I was on antidepressants for a long time. I'm no longer on antidepressants. And that's been amazing that I was able to get off of them.

John Dehlin [03:23:35] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [03:23:37] And again, connection, community, family. Having people in your life who you feel safe enough to talk about these things with you. There are a lot of sub bullets. I was just getting to the, the core of my answer, which is when I stopped running from myself because I realized I was afraid of actually looking at these things. It changed everything in terms of not just being able to fix the problems, but my willingness to talk about it. And.

John Dehlin [03:24:00] Yeah, and I also got from the book that Shauna directing you. And you mentioned this earlier in today's episode. Shauna directing you to repair things with your mom was also crucial.

Danny Rensch [03:24:11] Oh, huge. And I, Yeah, I talked about healing the relationship with my mom and what that did for me, and then, unfortunately, the sad ending that had with my mom. But all. All of that really came about because of, you know, because of my wife, because of Shawna's desire, which, again, she was. Was pushing me in many ways because I think she knew that I needed to heal that relationship to be a better. A better husband and a better father.

John Dehlin [03:24:32] I don't want to argue with you about your own story, but I didn't see. I saw your reconciliation with your mom as one of the triumphs of the book, not as a tragedy.

Danny Rensch [03:24:43] Oh, no, no. I don't see it that. I mean, it's tragic that she died as quickly as she did. That's what I meant. No, no. My relationship with my mom is the. Is the. I wrote in the book, and I meant it. My wife is the hero of my story. But if the hero's journey got to something, it was my relationship with my mom. Right. It was the journey to come back to and heal that relationship. And my mom being the hero that she was, that. I mean, it is a triumph that I think completely changed my view of everything. And, yeah, she taught me what matters by taking responsibility for things that weren't even her fault.

Danny Rensch [03:25:23] Doing anything it took to heal my heart about what had happened happened just changed my perspective about valuing relationships over being right in a way that is like. It's funny because that's a phrase that was said in the teaching a lot. Value relationships over being right. But it really.

Danny Rensch [03:25:38] She actually lived the teaching in a moment that was. That was so difficult, where it's like she knew that to save this relationship, she had to consume all of my pain, even the things that she could have herself said. Well, I did it because of this, and. And it was because of that. We eventually got to a point where as an adult, I had compassion and understanding from my mom, and I still learn things now that give me perspective about the impossible situation she was in. But she was dealing with a hurt little kid who was fucking angry and who had been abused, and it wasn't time for that.

Danny Rensch [03:26:08] And so many people can't get their own shit out of the Way to just take responsibility for what you can to help heal another human being. And she did that at a level that like literally, like I said it, like it disarms me to this day to just think about the person that she was and the triumph that was us healing our relationship. And, and yeah, my wife, she knew, she knew that I needed to do that and she pushed me to do it. I didn't want to, but she was right. And, and yeah, what a beautiful story.

Writing the Book and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [03:26:39] Well, I, I mean, I want to give you a chance to talk about anything else you want to say about the book. I'm curious, like, how long it took you to write this book.

Danny Rensch [03:26:50] Three and a half years.

John Dehlin [03:26:50] Three and a half years. And how, like how many hours a week? Like I've thought about writing sometimes it

Danny Rensch [03:26:56] was a lot because there were, there were different processes where I would record and then listen back, transcribe audio. You know, you write things, you restructure things, you get feedback for things you

John Dehlin [03:27:07] did you consider a ghostwriter. And you don't have to.

Danny Rensch [03:27:10] I, I had editors and collaborators in that process, right. And so there were people helping me in that way. And ultimately I wrote and rewrote and re edited and read all the stuff, but I had collaborators helping me piece it together.

Danny Rensch [03:27:25] And some of the editors and collaborators were monumental in contributing to parts of the book that almost like a conversation. When you give someone else agency to kind of editorialize your life, as much as that sounds weird and you can be like self righteous and say you don't get to tell me about my life, but when you let people in and give them the perspective that you have and then allow them to kind of to have an opinion about. Well, it seems like this was your relationship with your dad and this and that sometimes at first the opinion goes, don't tell me that. And then you go, okay, well that is actually true, but we're not going to write that.

Danny Rensch [03:28:04] And then you go, okay, well we are going to write it, but we're going to say it my way. And then you go, well, actually the way you said it was pretty good, but let me change this, right? I mean that's literally a process that would happen throughout the whole thing. And so it was. So yes, I had a lot of help right. In that way and I'm super grateful for that.

John Dehlin [03:28:22] Well, I thought the book was incredibly well written. I really.

Danny Rensch [03:28:25] Well thank you.

John Dehlin [03:28:26] I don't read books cover to cover. In the amount of time that I did, I felt an instinct that I needed to and I'm super glad I did.

Danny Rensch [03:28:34] Thank you. Well, it was, it's been, it's been, it's been fun. And I think some of the best compliments I've gotten as the book is coming out. And I can't wait for your audience to read it and leave the comments because I think two of the comments I've been really proud of, obviously it's a big story and it was a heavy process for me to review. And at times my parent, my therapist was mad that I was doing it because she felt like I was re. Traumatizing my brain. And it was a crazy, it was a crazy thing to do over, over an almost four year period.

Danny Rensch [03:29:01] But the two compliments I've loved the most were people who love the chess sections, who do. Who don't know anything about chess, who were like, you really did a good job helping me feel like I understood this incredible history of this world. So I'm like, yes, we did it. Because that was something I really wanted to do.

John Dehlin [03:29:17] And then you have little chess vignettes in between each chapter. You have these really cool chess vignettes. They talk about AI yeah, they talk

Danny Rensch [03:29:24] about, they talk about all the stuff.

John Dehlin [03:29:26] We didn't even talk about the scandal.

Danny Rensch [03:29:27] We didn't talk about it. We don't have to. Unless you want to. But then the other thing is. And obviously there's a lot of behind the scenes about the scandal in the book, so. But the other thing was when people say, like, hey, you found a way to make it a page turner, even though it's a memoir. Because a lot of memoirs with no disparagement meant are about the name of the person. People buy Will Smith's memoir because it's Will Smith or Barbara Streisand. Right? And that's great. And I'm not, I am not Will Smith. Smith or Barbara Barbra Streisand. Not even close. Right? And so I knew that I wanted to, I wanted to tell a story that I thought was interesting, right.

Danny Rensch [03:29:59] For people to understand, you know, in a bit of a cliffhanger way, right. I was like, hey, if we're going to do this, let's Tarantino it. Let's kind of bounce around a little bit. Let's kind of leave people hanging. Let's, let's. And I think that committing to that idea that we were going to write it in a way that made it a page turner and that the chess vignettes would help people understand our world were two of the things that, regardless of my life, I feel really proud Of. And I think that that's. I think it actually turned out well based on the feedback that we've gotten.

John Dehlin [03:30:28] Absolutely. Well, just because we brought it up and because my son mentioned at the beginning, he's like, you know, be careful how you deal with the. With the cheating scandal, because, like, everyone, their dog, that's all they really care about. So don't like, you know, be thoughtful about that. Yeah, let's just flip it now. For all the people that have no idea what we're even talking about, but you want them to at least know about it. Is there anything you want to say?

Danny Rensch [03:30:54] Yeah, about what we're talking about, what I will. What I will say. And I think your son is a little too close to it because he's in that he's a real chess fan. Right. So he knows that everyone's talked about it. But I would bet a lot of your audience might know nothing about it.

John Dehlin [03:31:04] I'm sure most don't. Yeah.

Danny Rensch [03:31:05] So I will just say that one of the crazy things about writing my book is that my publisher, Shane, had already committed to the idea that this was a great. A great memoir, because I was raised in a cult and accidentally found my way to the epicenter of chess because of it. And. But in the middle of writing the book in September of 2022, so almost three.

John Dehlin [03:31:26] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [03:31:27] Three years ago, as of today, slash tomorrow, the biggest scandal in the history of chess happened where Magnus Carlsen, the world champion at the time and the greatest player really ever to put play, accused a young American of cheating. And Chess.com and myself were caught right up in the middle of that. Because the fact is this kid had cheated on chess.com I had personally handled that case and sort of kept it secret, but that didn't necessarily mean he had cheated here. And it forced all of these, like, cheating secrets into the open in the chess world. And then the way we handled it ultimately led to all, Hans Niemann, the young American, suing me and Magnus and others for $100 million.

Danny Rensch [03:32:09] And the case was ultimately dismissed with prejudice. But it led to this crazy scandal, partly because, and I'll just leave it at this, what made it most viral, for those who do know it, are going to say, oh, yeah, that was the kid with the anal beads. And that's a weird thing to say, but that's because what happened was somebody made up the idea, well, how could you cheat with hiding it? It's almost like maybe he had anal beads. A sex toy with Bluetooth buzzing. If he knew the chess piece and that idea was retweeted by Elon Musk, and then it went on to the Tonight show and the Daily show and it went viral with nobody fact checking whether it was real or not.

John Dehlin [03:32:44] I'm not sure the anal beads made the book.

Danny Rensch [03:32:46] It didn't. And that was partly by design, because I actually didn't. I didn't want to sensationalize that part of it because it was never fact. But everyone knows about this story. So what this in the book is the true story and my story and all the things and the anal beads, part of it is a massive part of what gave the scandal virality. But there's the whole behind the scenes of what happened. There is in the book. And that is definitely something that I think the chess community has been waiting for.

John Dehlin [03:33:17] And I loved. I'm not going to give anything away, but I love how compassionate you were, even to. To Hans. Is that even Hans? I think it was beautiful to me how your upbringing led you to want to have compassion for Hans, even though he was causing you, some could say he was causing you and others a world of heartache. You still, I feel, dealt with Hans compassionately, empathetically and respectfully.

Danny Rensch [03:33:48] I think I appreciate that and I would do that again. And I still feel that way today. And again, speaking of opposing truth truths, it's hard for many people in the chess world want to polarize what happened, too. They want to make it black and white. So I'm not allowed to say that I have deep compassion for what Hans went through and the position that he was put in. And I can still say that he doesn't get to have his cake and eat it too, because he did cheat. He put himself in a spot to be there. And in a world that celebrates child prodigies, you don't get to say, I was just a kid while you're playing the best in the world and winning thousands of dollars on either.

Danny Rensch [03:34:21] Right. Basically, it's a really hard thing to be in because you want to have compassion, especially for young people, and to provide a path for second chances. And that's how we've operated. But you also have to be able to say the truth in these moments. And so I stand by it today. I wish the best for Hans and I can say that while knowing that he did cheat, and he has continued to lie about the extent of it, from my view and in the report that we wrote. And so it's an interesting thing. And I understand. And I kind of understand why, and I understand that the dynamics are really hard for people to deal with this stuff.

Danny Rensch [03:34:56] And so anyway, I share, I share all of that. I think people will probably be surprised that I feel that way, because it was a lot. And he did accuse us of literally a federal crime and created a massive problem for everybody in the situation. And there was no conspiracy and there was none of that shit that he was saying was happening. So that was hard. But he was in a tough situation too.

John Dehlin [03:35:19] So one of the things I relate to, I feel like I entered the Mormon themed podcasting space with similar intentions of like, really wanting to be a part of a solution not only to helping my church get healthier and better, but also to helping a lot of people who I knew with the Internet were gonna be struggling with it. But one of the things I related to in your book, a negative way to spin it is no good deed goes unpunished. It's that sort of a cynical, negative way to say you try and help and all you get are headaches and criticism and negativity in return.

John Dehlin [03:35:54] That's not how I actually see my history. It's more that if you play in a big space, especially in the Internet world, you just, you're not facing reality. If you don't expect some real pain and difficulty. That just comes with the territory. And I, I, I, I, I found myself empath. I found myself empathizing with the extent to which you have probably been criticized and, or probably at times savaged over the years when I got a real genuine sense that you only just wanted to make the chess world a better place. Is that, is that a fair characterization of what you experienced?

Danny Rensch [03:36:32] It's more than fair. And, you know, I've, I've done a lot of work to try to be in the best, best mental health space about this, because it is super hard when you have, I mean, it's like these days I, you know, if I, if I do things in the chess community. There's a podcast I did that was an hour and 40 minute conversation with two very well known top grandmasters. They have a great podcast. And literally the video has been live for 13 minutes. You can see the timestamp and there's already a comment.

Danny Rensch [03:36:59] This guy I know, Danny Wrench is evil. Chess.com is always lying. This guy's just a political mouthpiece. He couldn't have even watched the video. And the first 15 minutes of the interview were actually me and Fabiano joking around about, like, jokes I told when he was on the world championship coverage with me. Like, it's just crazy, right? Where people are.

Danny Rensch [03:37:20] It is so obvious when you see it that what people say in that space is so much more about them and their experience. And I, and I've learned to kind of come to terms with it in a couple ways, which is one, one, people will often see in you the motivations or agendas they might have if they held your position.

Danny Rensch [03:37:41] And people can take that for what they want. That might. Maybe people reading that would be like, oh, that makes them angry. But often if someone is very quick to cast dispersions, he who casts the first stone, it often says more about them than it does about a person they clearly know nothing about, let alone really the details of it. Right. So the reality is people only know to project what they would do if they were in your spot or what they would have, which is for them to look at if they want to. And then the second thing that's given me peace about this is that people can't show great hate without great love.

Danny Rensch [03:38:12] And that is not a secret way for me to say all my haters really love me. That's not an egomaniac thing to say. But what it is saying, no, it really is true. Because what I realized is that they see me as having power over. Over something they love. They see me as having influence over something they love. And what do people do when something they love is threatened? They get scared and they get defensive and they, and they sometimes act out.

Danny Rensch [03:38:33] And so if people see me@chess.com as having influence or power or in some way I am a more influential character than they are over this thing that they love and they don't agree with one thing I said one time or they think I'm at the episode center of some scandal, they are reacting in fear to hate me. And again, that's. That is on them. But I, I have. It allows me in my framework, in my, in my mental Jedi ness to say I can love that person and have compassion for where they're at because they hate me because they're afraid that I will do something wrong with something they love.

Danny Rensch [03:39:10] And what they don't know is that I don't want to. I want to do good and I want to do good by the game. And there's a lot of evidence that we've done a lot of really good and, and that, and that the truth is usually they are actually more in the other bucket and I'm looking the other way for them. They actually are probably someone who's an asshole and needs to look at some. If you're Commenting on the Internet with hatred and vitriol over people you don't even know. It's like, come on. Like, that is usually not a good sign for your life. Anyone out there right now, I will say that if you're doing that to John, that's a problem, because often, like, that is about you.

Danny Rensch [03:39:43] You don't really know the person, so they probably are more in that bucket than I would acknowledge. But I try to lean the. Assume the best in everybody, and I can give everybody that often. Maybe you were put in that position by people in the Mormon church because, like, if you're embracing a conversation or inviting skepticism, there are people who will perceive that as you attacking something they love. And I think they will act in fear.

Danny Rensch [03:40:08] And I can't. I have. I have not listened to your. I'm just gonna be honest. I don't know. Right. So I can't speak for you or not, but I can imagine that, that, that would be a difficult thing for people. And so it allows me to, like, have compassion when they're basically being idiots and assholes about what's actually going on and they're making and casting dispersions at me and they don't fucking know shit about me, let alone what I've been through in my child, let alone anything that actually drives me. And so, like, it hurts. And it's probably not healthy that it's become white noise when I get death threats and I don't worry about it that much.

John Dehlin [03:40:40] Which you have.

Danny Rensch [03:40:41] Which I have. I've had many. And, And. But at the same time, like, it goes all right, like, this is what it is. And anyway, so that's. That is the mental gymnastics that I have done to not want to run away screaming.

Danny Rensch [03:40:54] And I also know that we've done a lot of good or there wouldn't be people mad, because I have learned that when you grow the pie to that level, maybe in 2016, everybody who commented on Reddit loved Danny Wrench, but the pool was a lot smaller. Now it's a lot bigger. And with it has come a lot of people, people who go, this guy. But really only because they think of me as the guy who runs the evil chess company, which isn't even evil. I use the app every day, but they shouldn't charge for any. I don't know what. Whatever it is, the story they tell themselves. Right. And so anyway, you. You kind of. You kind of come to terms with it as best you can.

John Dehlin [03:41:29] Yeah.

Danny Rensch [03:41:29] And that's. That's what I've done.

John Dehlin [03:41:30] Yeah. Beautiful. All right, this is my, my final substantive question. Maybe do you. And this is from one person raised in a high demand religion slash cult to another who's also a father. Do you ever find yourself wishing that your own children could have parts of your upbringing?

Danny Rensch [03:41:58] 100% every day.

John Dehlin [03:42:00] But, but, okay, I want to hear about that. And then the second part of the question is, like, if cults aren't the answer, do you ever think about, like, starting a new church? Not you personally, but like, how do we create a childhood and a teen and a formative experience, or for adults, a community of morals and values and ethics and purpose and meaning and spirituality and growth and healing? How do we create that without the toxic stuff, but still give our kids and ourselves and future generations all the good? Do you ever think about that type of stuff?

Danny Rensch [03:42:39] I go about it all the time because I now have adult children. Because when you have a kid at 19, 20. I have a 1920 year old and I'm not 40 yet. So I'll answer the first part first. There were aspects of serving others when I didn't want to. As a spoiled brat, we were taking care of the whole village and picking up trash and doing things that even if there were times and there were people who abuse, again, in every, every infrastructure, there are people who are going to abuse it. And I was. Then when I was orphaned in the valley, I was like made to pick fruit off the trees when it was 120 degrees heat because Stephen Camp wasn't around to say no and it wasn't,

John Dehlin [03:43:18] okay, you're cleaning bathrooms.

Danny Rensch [03:43:19] Right? All those things. But at the same time, like, the idea that my mom came down hard on me when I tried to have an attitude about serving older women in the collective. The fact that I was told that I will literally lose myself in the service of others. The fact that I learned at a young age to feel safe giving my opinion, even if then I learned to weaponize it and to, and to, and to process and do the things. Like, I learned to communicate and articulate in a way that I think social media and the way certain things are now, like, isn't that great?

Danny Rensch [03:43:50] Isn't that great in terms of, terms of, you know, not just the idea that people can ghost people, but they can get out of big moments of confrontation and relationships without ever dealing with it. I think you lose things when you don't have real relationships. You also, there's a lot that comes with the cult environment, but we're going to move past that because we're going to say we talked about that. I'm just going to talk about the good and say you can't have your cake and eat it too. And that you can't expect people to be there for you unless they're there for you. Unless they're there for you in the good and the bad.

Danny Rensch [03:44:17] And I think, think that lack of community, lack of training around how to deal with big conversations and lack of expectation on serving others at times is like I look for ways to create those experiences for my kids and curate them. Because there isn't a cult leader from on high saying to just do this right? And, or a hierarchy to compete with for attention and make your kids serve so that you look good and whatever else came with that. Right. And I, and those are just a few off the top of my head. Head. Like there are things there that I, I really do wish were, were more a part of our life.

Danny Rensch [03:44:49] And I don't know how to answer the second part right because I'm not, I'm not going to start a church, I'm not going to start a collective, and I'm not going to in any way pretend that I don't think even the process of certain parts of those things can.

Danny Rensch [03:45:02] Again, I've already said that I think helping people ask big questions is a super important thing you can do as a mentor. You can do it as a leader. A leader leader. You can help people feel supported and safe to deal with tough conversations and to encourage them to find their path and their purpose and their best thing. But you really have to do it without an agenda and without the, the pretense that you think you know the answer. Because I've seen what happens the other way. And so I actually get afraid about the idea of having influence in a way where I would like, I mean, you have influence of your own kids and you do the best you can with that, but then eventually you don't anymore.

Danny Rensch [03:45:35] You're not even the, the, the CEO anymore. You're like, you're like maybe on the board and you're hoping they come and consult you every once in a while. Right. And so that that relationship changes. Right. And so I don't know how to answer it other than I have always come back around to like the future of humanity is going to be saved by education. Because what I believe in education. And unfortunately we live in a world where even the word education has become polarized, weaponized political word, when fundamentally ignorance is the first step to bigotry and ignorance, lack of appreciation for lack of understanding and lack of appreciation for how other people feel and why other people view things is the first step toward a biased perception, which is not bigotry.

Danny Rensch [03:46:22] Yet I'm just starting with a biased perception on you knowing better or being able to objectify their experience to some degree. And so so many people judge other countries that they've never been to or they judge other cultures that they really don't know other than what XY news station tells them. And they're all guilty of it, right? And they're weaponizing extreme beliefs on both sides. And I think I've looked at the Internet with the hope that maybe at some point the Internet, you know, when we're not inheriting the legacy of our forefathers of, you know, information is power and trying to weaponize fake news and agenda, maybe eventually access, access to how everyone else thinks and feels on the planet will in a healthy way break down barriers where people understand each other better.

Danny Rensch [03:47:05] And instead of thinking, you know, everything about the Middle east, you will really have an understanding and feel it and empathize with it. Right? And realize that maybe there's a lot of people who are kind of a lot like you, who really just want a family and to feel love and to be understood. And so like my hope for humanity is that maybe in the future technology will actually shrink the world in a, in a healthy way. We'll break down barriers that are basically just lack of understanding, ignorance and that by being more educated about how other people feel, we maybe don't need the same governing bodies and infrastructures.

Danny Rensch [03:47:39] Not that they can't exist, that religions and churches and can exist, people can, people can choose their own adventure. But I'm a bit, a bit of a believer that maybe information, the Internet, education and kind of transcending these barriers instead of weaponizing them is kind of the future hope. And that is my message. Maybe it's my, I'm an optimist because I just am. And I believe that at some point we will stop weaponizing this, we will learn the power of what we have and it'll be something that can bring a lot of great things to the planet instead of being this where we pick and choose what we're telling people and, and polarize and antagonize further.

Danny Rensch [03:48:17] And cyber terrorism is a real thing. Right? So that's my hope that eventually it actually does provide education in a way that heals the planet versus tears it apart because otherwise I don't have an answer. And that, but that's just my hope.

John Dehlin [03:48:30] But you're not really just now. You guys didn't go to a new church or anything like that?

Danny Rensch [03:48:34] For lack of a non New Agey way to say this, we're not religious, but we are spiritual. We do not attend any traditional denomination. We do not go to church.

John Dehlin [03:48:43] Church.

Danny Rensch [03:48:44] We do have some family traditions. You know, use the term ritual if you want, in a healthy way, in terms of always taking Sunday to be together. Take time to talk. Sometimes we'll read from the Daily Stoic. We'll read from Titch, not Han. You know, Buddhist stuff. We'll have mindfulness affirmations. We'll. We'll watch an inspiring YouTube video about why you should put away your phone kids, because it's bad for your brain. My wife and I are very big on educate your kids, even to the point of you think this might be above their level, but do it anyway because ultimately, first of all, they're way smarter than you think.

Danny Rensch [03:49:14] They are way more observant than you think. And you would rather be the first source of information on shit, even if you're talking to your kids a little bit earlier than maybe like you should. I'm just a big believer in that because I'm kind of like, unless we're going to run away and be Amish, I'm going to empower my kids and make them. And so I always have a thing. Oh, you want to watch Pulp Fiction? Then let's talk about drug abuse and sex. You read. Ready? Let's go. Okay, you don't want to do that yet. Then you're not ready for Pulp Fiction. No, Dad, I don't want to talk about that.

Danny Rensch [03:49:41] Okay, well then you don't get to watch Pulp Fiction. Right, but then when my teenage boys do, it's like, yeah, let's watch Pulp Fiction. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what happened there. Right? So I'm, that's my, that's my thing that I've tried to do. And, and obviously you do it with tact. I don't talk to my 9 year old about Pulp Fiction, but I guess that's how we've handled it.

John Dehlin [03:49:59] What about Django and Chained?

Danny Rensch [03:50:01] We've seen Django and Shane, but we, but we, you know, I don't talk about, with that, with my nine year old, but, um, so anyway, that's, that's kind of how we've leaned into, into that and we do have.

Danny Rensch [03:50:12] You know, my wife and I are existential, spiritual, stoic people. That's kind of how we operate in, in the space and I, I don't focus so much on the why we're here, because the moment you do that, you're storytelling, no matter what religion you are. Human beings create stories for good and for bad. It's not, I'm not saying it's bad, but they do create stories. I like to focus on the miracle of how we're here and the undeniable reality that at some point something did come from nothing. And the existence of self awareness and consciousness to me is an undeniable thing. And I, I have developed my own spiritual framework through a lot of, of religious and reading and stuff that I won't get into now because people are probably sick of me at this point.

Danny Rensch [03:50:51] But, but yeah, I have my own spiritual views on stuff. And I do believe in consciousness. Beyond the body is a, is, is a thing. And, and that it's undeniable that we are here and that that's a miracle. But I don't like to wrap storytelling frameworks around it where possible. And so that'll be the quickest way to say what I believe and what we teach our kids, with a lot of encouragement for them to figure out what they believe too. So that's us.

John Dehlin [03:51:21] I love it. How many books does the Mormon Stories community need to collectively buy to maybe get you and maybe Shauna back to do a Q and A kind of book club thing?

Danny Rensch [03:51:30] Oh, man.

John Dehlin [03:51:31] I mean, 5,000, 10,000.

Danny Rensch [03:51:33] And that is a good one. So I, I told, I told Shawna that you wanted or you invited her to come and she's like, I don't want to do it alone. Like, no, you come with me. And like, she's been on podcasts before, but it's just not as much her thing, but I think she would. So I'll whatever, whatever they want to buy, we'll call it 5000 if you let me put it.

John Dehlin [03:51:51] All right. Marvel Stories, Community. I know that a hundred thousand plus people are gonna at least see this interview. Freaking five thousand of you. All of you, half of you. Buy this book. The book is dark. How Chess Saved My Life.

John Dehlin [03:52:06] Danny Rensch, one of the co founders of Chess.com, buy this book. Buy five, buy 10. Give it to your friends and family. Let's make this a super big seller out of the gate. Not just because this book deserves to, to sell well, but because you will love this book. I swear to Thich Nhat Hanh that if that what you heard in today's podcast is a single digit fraction of the wisdom and the information and the coolness that you will find in this book. So this podcast represents an augmentation of what you will read in the book, not a replacement for what you'll find in the.

John Dehlin [03:52:46] The book is worth it. Get it to transform your life, to learn more about your own cult or your own high demand religion or your own abusive relationship or whatever it is. Get the book. Heal, grow. Learn from it. And then when the overwhelming number of people buying this book from this podcast manifests itself, then we'll have Danny and Shauna back for part two and we'll do a Q and A where we'll do a live stream and y' all can. We'll have you. We'll let you come on the stream yard and actually live. Ask your questions to Danny and Shauna.

Danny Rensch [03:53:22] That could be fun.

John Dehlin [03:53:23] That'd be fun.

Danny Rensch [03:53:23] Well, first of all, that was amazing. Thank you, John. And I, I didn't expect the endorsement. I should. I should have asked for 20,000 because I think you're gonna get it. No. There you go. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And I. I'm actually excited to come back, so I hope everyone does. And I am, am. I've been nervous, I've been scared. Imposter syndrome doesn't even begin to cut it. Doing the best. So I hope to be back with my amazing better half and I'm really grateful for you to have me on here.

John Dehlin [03:53:53] Well, also, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for writing this book. But also, I wanted my son to like chess. I tried to teach him chess. Yeah. I'm at a family reunion just last month and my son's like, dad, come on, let's play chess. That wasn't my doing. That was inspiring of. However, I tried to teach my son chess. Something you and Eric and Jay shout out to Jay and Eric and all the good people@chess.com and in the broader chess community. Like, I'm happy that my son and my daughter Clara and even my daughter Maya are all interested in chess. Like y' all collectively did that. And it makes me happy and it gives us happy moments. And I think it's good for my kids. So thank you, Jay, Eric, Chess.com people, broader chess community, for enhancing something that is undeniably a positive contribution to humanity. Thank you.

Danny Rensch [03:54:56] Thank you for saying that. Seriously. It became a thing we started saying. And then unfortunately, when you become a big business, people weaponize what you say as that's just a big corporate. I've actually been called, called. I've been called the evil chess popularist. I've been called Mr. Big Chess, but I'm going to say the phrase that we have said, and we said it before, it was a thing, which is chess makes people smarter, and smarter people make the world a better place. So if you want to talk about an infinite mission, our mission is pretty awesome because chess is great. It's good for people. And there's a lot of studies about this, right?

Danny Rensch [03:55:29] It fights off memory loss. It improves cognitive development for young kids. Like, there are so many things about it, it. That are just fundamentally good for the brain and for people. In addition to it being fun and all the things that it used to be told it was, it wasn't enough. But now people love it. And so there's a part of us that feel like sometimes Eric and I have to check ourselves because we feel so exhausted and we have to go, oh, my God. We're kind of just at the beginning here. Like, chess is, like, it is good for people, and good people do good things.

Danny Rensch [03:55:59] Like, we have to keep doing this. Like, this is good. Good. So thank you for saying that, because it does fill our cup and the fact that chess got cool somehow. We're happy to be a part of it. I'm glad your kids are doing it. And go, chess. Go, team.

John Dehlin [03:56:14] All right, thanks again. The book is Dark Squares How Chess Saved My Life by Danny Wrench. Buy it, enjoy it, share it with others. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Brooklyn and Julia and Margi and everyone at the Open Stories for Foundation that makes all this possible. Thank you for the donors that makes that make Mormon Stories podcast possible. We couldn't do this without you. So if you're a donor, we've got like 1500 donors in the world. Weirdly, thank you to those who donate. Even though hundreds of thousands of people enjoy this podcast. Millions. Weirdly, about 1500 people donate. But thank you to those who do.

John Dehlin [03:56:49] We couldn't do without you if you valued this show. If you're new to this show, if you value this content you want to see continue. We lose donors every month. Please become a monthly donor or an annual donor and subscriber. That's how we pay the bills. Ad revenue is in decline on YouTube and elsewhere, but we're grateful that we rely on donor support. So please support us. If you can, go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. That's how we do it.

John Dehlin [03:57:18] And then also you can help us by subscribing, liking, commenting, sharing, and also by providing us with your feedback. Mormonstoriesmail.com that's how we hear from you. In addition, we read every comment on YouTube and on Spotify, so you could help us in all those ways. Don't feel bad if you can't donate or contribute, but those ways of subscribing, liking, commenting, sharing are all ways you can help without spending a penny. So thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Thanks again. Danny, anything you want to say to finish up? No, we went four hours.

Danny Rensch [03:57:54] Basically just appreciation for having me.

John Dehlin [03:57:57] All right, well, good luck with this book. I'm sure you're going to go on a big press tour.

Danny Rensch [03:58:01] Are you going to be on Good Morning America beginning, and it's going to be a really busy first couple months. And when it comes to media stuff, you don't know what's going to happen after that until it gets going. You know what I mean? So there may be more and more, and hopefully people buy the book and it resonates in whatever way it does for them. And I think if it starts to have an impact, then it'll probably. Like I said, we're probably just at the beginning. I'm a little nervous saying that, but here we go.

John Dehlin [03:58:27] All right, well, we wish you all the best. Good luck. Thanks again. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.