Manhattan Cult Story
My Unbelievable True Story of Sex, Crimes, Chaos, and Survival
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Narrated by:
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Austin Rising
About this listen
Right under the noses of neighbors, clients, spouses, children, and friends, a secret society, simply called School—a cult of snared Manhattan professionals—has been led by the charismatic, sociopathic, and dangerous leader Sharon Gans for decades. Spencer Schneider was recruited in the eighties, and he stayed for more than twenty-three years as his life disintegrated, his self-esteem eroded, and he lined the pockets of Gans and her cult.
Cult members met twice weekly, though they never acknowledged one another outside of meetings or gatherings. In the name of inner development, they endured the horrors of mental, sexual, and physical abuse, forced labor, arranged marriages, swindled inheritances and savings, and systematic terrorizing. Some of them broke the law. All for Gans.
“During those years,” Schneider writes, “my world was School. That’s what it’s like when you’re in a cult, even one that preys on and caters to New York’s educated elite. This is my story of how I got entangled in School and how I got out.”
At its core, Manhattan Cult Story is a cautionary tale of how hundreds of well-educated, savvy, and prosperous New Yorkers became fervent followers of a brilliant but demented cult leader who posed as a teacher of ancient knowledge. It’s about double-lives, the power of group psychology, and how easy it is to be radicalized—all too relevant in today's atmosphere of conspiracy and ideologue worship.
©2022 Spencer Schneider (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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The Soloist
- A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
- By: Steve Lopez
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
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When journalist Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he finds it impossible to walk away. More than 30 years ago, Ayers was a promising classical bass student at Juilliard - ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans there - until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia.
Over time, the two men form a bond and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers' life. The Soloist is a beautifully told story of devotion in the face of seemingly unbeatable challenges.
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Fantastic Audiobook
- By reggie p on 06-26-08
By: Steve Lopez
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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Here's the Story
- Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
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- Narrated by: Maureen McCormick
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Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all. But what viewers didn't know about the always sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick was living a very different - and not so wonderful - life. Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen and the woman she became.
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Gripping
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And So It Goes
- Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
- By: Charles J. Shields
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author and biographer Charles J. Shields crafts this fascinating portrait of literary icon Kurt Vonnegut. The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut’s life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.
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Probably only for die hard Vonnegut fans
- By Watery M on 12-22-12
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Wilde Lake
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- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
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Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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My Friend Michael
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Everyone knows Michael Jackson - the myth. This is the revealing true story of Michael Jackson - the man. To Frank Cascio, Michael Jackson was many things - second father, big brother, boss, mentor, and teacher, but most of all he was a friend. Though Cascio was just a few years old when he first met Jackson in 1984, at the peak of the pop star’s career, Jackson was at the center of his life for the next twenty-five years.
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A Love Story
- By Kathleen on 02-14-18
By: Frank Cascio
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
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At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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Peace from Broken Pieces
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New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.
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Iyanla is Inspirational! A GREAT LISTEN!!!
- By Theresa on 12-04-11
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Troublemaker
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The outspoken actress, talk show host, and reality television star offers up a no-holds-barred memoir, including an eye-opening insider account of her tumultuous and heart-wrenching 30-year-plus association with the Church of Scientology.
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This book is fascinating and funny! Fantastic!
- By Kim on 11-04-15
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Double Life
- A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood
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Gay marriage is at the forefront of America's political battles. The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life: A Love Story, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a 50-plus-year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century.
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Portrait of a Marriage--Before Gay Liberation
- By Susie on 03-06-13
By: Alan Shayne, and others
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Daring
- My Passages - A Memoir
- By: Gail Sheehy
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Candid, insightful, and powerful, Daring: My Passages is the story of the unconventional life of a writer who dared - to walk New York City streets with hookers and pimps to expose violent prostitution; to march with civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland as British paratroopers opened fire; to seek out Egypt's president Anwar Sadat when he was targeted for death after making peace with Israel.
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Enjoyed unexpectedly
- By Corinne O'Rourke on 09-06-23
By: Gail Sheehy
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In the Light of What We Know
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One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.” A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
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Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt.
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Fascinating and Perfect Performance!
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What listeners say about Manhattan Cult Story
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-22-22
Clickbait subtitle but well written
Unbelievable is correct. This story delivers zero sex, zero crimes, and zero chaos. The author tries to convince the reader of his heterosexuality, by the end of the book, I am still unconvinced. Arsenic and Old Lace (1943) is more salacious and contains much more crime. Sharon Gans is the most likeable character, and she is a self centered control freak, all other characters are weak willed dupes. Yuppie cult run by an aged hippie narcissist. Fairly well written with a capable narrator, though Austin Rising sounds like a pseudonym.
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- Karl
- 07-26-22
Brilliant and very scary
This is absolutely amazing. The storyline is captivating, everything is meticulously explained and vocabulary used is really fitting. Very hectic and intense story! Staggering to think this is happening in our day and age.
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1 person found this helpful
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- S.
- 02-13-23
Fascinating
This is a very well written, fascinating and cautionary story about how much we are all susceptible if we find ourselves unsatisfied for a moment in life.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Hubert Potts
- 12-27-22
A cult hijacks Gurdjieff and Ouspenky
Unfortunate hardworking educated lad gets taken over by a cult faking Gurdjieffian philosophy. All the more regrettable because the early incarnation of that group (i.e. Alex Horn in the 60's and 70's) though unforgivably brutal, seem to have taught Gurdjieffian philosophy very well
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- Tom
- 04-19-23
Says more about the Members than The Cult.
Many years ago I was moved by Keith Jarrett’s take on the Music of Gurdjieff and became fascinated by the Man and his Teachings. Since Schneider’s Cult was in some way based on that Philosophy and also because it was based in the New York City I had left in the Seventies, I thought I’d learn a little more about it.
I had never heard of School and knew nothing about it but, like all Cults, it reeked of Mind Control, Manipulation, and Danger. Listening to Rising’s excellent narration, I came away with a couple of troublesome thoughts: The first was how unbelievable was the history of Narcissism and Sociopathy demonstrated over twenty-plus years by Sharon Gans, the Demented Cult Leader. And Second, the constant descriptions of the Members as Well-Educated, Successful, and Prosperous, Manhattan Elites, suckered out of Time and Treasure for countless pointless nights of “Classes”, “Retreats”, and “Exercises”!
The First point is easily understood in 2023 after eight years suffering under the influence of just such a Self-Centered Narcissistic Sociopath, who shall go Nameless. Lawyers, Generals, Politicians, and Media Stars all fell under his sway!
What troubles me more is the notion that an Ivy League Education, and an Elite, Upper Class upbringing and Lifestyle offers no protection from dedicating a Life to slavish devotion to a Set of Fantasy Beliefs so ridiculously transparent to anyone with a Fifth Grade education and Ten years of Life Experience.
I assumed that this book would fill me with trepidation that Cults and their Followers would constitute a danger to me, my Family, and my Country. Instead it overwhelmed me with a mixture of Pity and Concern that even “The 1%” could be so weak and, excuse my bluntness, stupid. The Book could have been shortened to two sentences: “Oh Poor Me!” and “Will someone tell me how to be Happy?”.
Is it our Media (Looking at You, Oprah and Dr.Phil), our Educational System, (K-12 & “Higher Ed”), or our Mental Health Institutions that could produce Sheep capable of being fleeced out of their Lives by such nonsense?
Manhattan Cult Story did scare me but not in the way I expected, but it did issue a Wake-Up Call. For that I’ll give it Three Stars, with Four for Narration.
***!
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- Beth Solin
- 10-26-22
This story is true.
One of my closest friends was in this cult and before this book ever came out…I heard her tell many of the exact same stories. She is still traumatized from many of the events that took place.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Terra
- 01-12-23
Devoured the whole thing in 1.5 days
I think this book has a solid chronological explanation of how people end up in some cults, why they stay and how they get out. The narrators voice for the cult leader is scrumptious and I love it. If you have a history of sexual assault, there are parts that may be triggering (almost always in reference to the past).
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-11-23
it's very sad but good
I feel so sad he missed so much time with his family. I also wished he'd talked more about the rebonding with them. and also how things affected his son too. but regardless he's brave to tell his story. glad he finally got out.
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- Robyn
- 11-22-22
Salacious title but doesn't deliver
The performance of this book is excellent. The content, however... I read a lot about cults and I can usually feel where the victims are coming from, but I find it hard to find empathy for a bunch of upper middle class white people who got scammed into a racist, homophobic cult by a deluded narcissist. I am also baffled by how often the narrator tries to convince us that he's totally ultra mega straight? It's bizarre. And unconvincing - there's no shame in bisexuality dude.
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- Stephanie Weaver Thompson
- 11-27-22
Just goes to show
That ANYONE can get sucked into a cult. I discovered Spencer and his book on Roberts Blevins' "Life After MLM" podcast. The parallels between the"School" cult and multi level marketing companies were easy to make. I likened Sharon to the whacked out DeAnne Stidham of LuLaRoe infamy. Happy to know Spencer is out, doing well, and telling his story. If you're in a MLM company, you're also in a cult, and you too can get out.
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3 people found this helpful