Strange Country Ep. 277: The Sullivan Institute

Strange Country

Happy 2024! And Beth and Kelly are back with another tale of another cult on another year of Strange Country. What’s to say? It starts off with plans for communal living and burns out in abuse, financial malfeasance and weird sex awfulness.

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands.

Cite your sources: Hoban, Phoebe. “Psycho Drama: The Chilling Story of How the Sullivanian Cult Turned a Utopian Dream into a Nightmare.” New York Magazine [New York], 19 June 1989, pp. 41-53, https://books.google.com/books?id=XOcCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=sullivanians+1989+New+York+Magazine+article&source=bl&ots=IFdQMBb5im&sig=9gTIMcGzzHJpDx8Bz-pESJDkFZA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUo7SF3KDPAhVGWh4KHbTMDhwQ6AEIODAE#v=onepage&q=sullivanians%201989. Murray, Stephanie H., and Adam Serwer. “Why Parents Struggle So Much in the World's Richest Country.” The Atlantic, 5 January 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/01/america-failed-parents-rich-countries-raising-kids/677023/. Accessed 6 January 2024. Offenhartz, Jake, and Kerry Shaw. “Inside the Rise & Fall Of A 1970s Upper West Side Cult.” Gothamist, 21 September 2016, https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/inside-the-rise-fall-of-a-1970s-upper-west-side-cult. Accessed 30 December 2023. Stille, Alexander. The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. Winter, Jessica. “The Upper West Side Cult That Hid in Plain Sight.” The New Yorker, 14 June 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-upper-west-side-cult-that-hid-in-plain-sight. Accessed 30 December 2023.