635: Chip in My Brain

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. I think the thing that gets to me the most about the story that we're doing today is I feel for the parents in this story.

Like when you're a parent, at some point you're in the situation where your kid is having experiences and friendships with people that are completely out of your reach, right? You don't know what's really happening between them. You don't really know what's going through your kid's head. You're powerless.

The parents in the story today, they thought they were close to their son, who was doing really well in school. Things seemed fine. Anyway, it's our whole hour today, a story we call Chip in My Brain. David Kestenbaum tells what happened, which begins with basketball.

David Kestenbaum

It would probably be wrong to say that Cody Treybig loved basketball at the beginning. It would definitely be wrong to say he was good at it. He wasn't at all. He was good at World of Warcraft though, the video game.

David Kestenbaum

Cody says he wasn't exactly avoiding physical activity. The game was just super fun. He and his friends would all log on, go on adventures together. As someone who used to play a lot of video games, it felt like bad etiquette not to ask who his online character was.

Cody told me-- and knowing him a little bit now, this seems entirely appropriate-- he was a paladin, which is a holy knight who can fight. But also, he's nice. He casts healing spells when his co-adventurers get hurt. Cody eventually built them up to level 60, as high as you can go.

David Kestenbaum

All of which is just to say that sports were not Cody's top priority. In gym class when they'd have to run laps, he'd always be at the back. Basketball somehow though, he kind of liked. His dad had played when he was growing up. So early on, in third grade, Cody found himself on this local youth league team.

David Kestenbaum

That's Mom, Drew Treybig. And here's Dad, Jimmy Treybig.

David Kestenbaum

Drew describes herself as a kind of helicopter mom, which seems right. While I was there talking to Cody, she kept momming us. Are you guys hungry? How about a smoothie? I'm going to get one.

Drew says the whole family is kind of kooky. Whenever someone was leaving, they'd be sure to say I love you, to the other person. And I don't mean leaving the house, just like leaving the room. Cody's dad, Jimmy, says he had a hard time getting his father to say I love you. So this is their fix.

The Treybigs live in Texas in the outskirts of Austin. Jimmy was an early tech entrepreneur. He founded a company that made the computers that ran ATM machines. So they had a nice house on a big piece of land. There were cows around, but no neighbors you could walk to, which Jimmy told me he regretted.

As it happened, there was an old basketball court out behind the house. So they decided to get Cody some lessons. Like instead of a piano teacher or something, get him a basketball teacher. His dad found someone through the local youth league, a guy named AJ. Cody is in third grade at the time.

David Kestenbaum

So that first day, AJ walks in. They all hang out by the front door. Cody is shy, but AJ gets right down on his level. The two of them go out to the basketball court, talking the whole way. When they get there, Cody can't really even do a layup.

And AJ is like, OK, we can fix this. Let's do some basics. He teaches Cody this drill where you stand just to the side of the basket, try to bank it in off this magic spot. Then you get the rebound, go to the other side, and do it again, back and forth, back and forth.

David Kestenbaum

AJ works with Cody two days a week, then three days a week. Sometimes other kids come over so they can all train together. And it's great. Mom would bring out snacks for everyone. Or if other kids weren't around, Mom or Dad would get drafted.

David Kestenbaum

Word spreads around town about this great basketball trainer. Other parents hire him. But AJ and Cody, they have something kind of special. They just click, and they have this way of being around each other that seems sweet.

When AJ was working with Cody, they would trash talk on the court, which I always thought of as involving a lot of swearing. But AJ taught Cody this really hilarious kind of trash talking-- just messing with someone, asking weird, random questions in the middle of the game. Hey, what did you have for breakfast?

David Kestenbaum

Cody played constantly. If the family went on a trip, he would deflate a basketball, stick it in the suitcase, then re-inflate it after they arrived. When you're a kid, you want there to be something that you're special at, or even just a little good at.

Because as a kid, you start off being terrible at everything. That is the definition of being a kid. So when you meet someone who helps you get good at something, it can feel amazing. Cody remembers this one afternoon-- maybe fourth grade, on the court out back-- where it all just felt perfect.

David Kestenbaum

The next year, Cody got the MVP award for the school team. In some ways, AJ was like a big kid himself. Drew says he often seemed more comfortable with kids than adults. And as Cody gets older, he and AJ really start to become friends. After his games, Cody would always call AJ to tell him how it went.

David Kestenbaum

AJ would sometimes pick Cody up from middle school. Cody started to listen to the music AJ listened to. Young MC, "Bust a Move" was a favorite. When Cody went out clothes shopping with his mom, he picked out clothes that looked like things AJ would wear-- simple, solid color T-shirts. Cody fell in love with basketball. And he kind of fell in love with AJ.

David Kestenbaum

There's something Cody wrote about AJ that sums up how he felt and also weirdly foreshadows what was to come. It's from early on, a school assignment to write about your hero. I had Cody read from it.

David Kestenbaum

Cody runs through how they met the way a fourth grader would.

David Kestenbaum

The essay ends with an interview, Cody asking AJ what seemed like innocuous questions. Where did you grow up? What was your favorite subject in school? And then these two questions.

David Kestenbaum

Fast forward to the morning of February 7, 2012. Cody's in ninth grade. He and AJ have been hanging out for six years. Here's Drew, Cody's mom.

David Kestenbaum

They were instant messages between the woman's son, Lucas, and AJ. AJ had been coaching Lucas too. And they'd been typing back and forth over Skype. Lucas's mom had printed them out.

David Kestenbaum

There didn't seem to be anything physical going on. The messages were about religion, but not any religion that Drew was familiar with-- stuff from the Bible, but also things that were definitely not in the Bible. Some of it seemed really out there and scary.

David Kestenbaum

She sits there at Cody's desk and starts to read. Cody and AJ had been messaging and Skyping, sometimes late into the night, and clearly trying to hide it from her. The first pages are from some night when she'd been threatening to take his phone away.

Cody writes to AJ, "How do I communicate with you without technology"" AJ, "Please turn off everything and remain calm as possible. This is just for tonight." Cody, "Should I give them my phone if they ask for it?" AJ, "Delete everything and give it to them." She keeps reading, and it gets even stranger.

David Kestenbaum

It was like Cody and AJ were living in this other world. And it was vast-- some mix of science fiction and stuff inspired by the Bible, particularly the book of Revelation. At the time, Drew couldn't piece it all together. But as best as I can tell, this is the basic outline of it.

It starts with standard evangelical beliefs about the rapture, the end of days, when a select group of people will suddenly disappear from the Earth to go live with God. And everyone else is going to be left to suffer. Who will be saved, and who will be left behind?

Well, the devil is trying to capture as many souls as he can. And here's where the sci-fi stuff comes in. The devil is operating through a powerful and secret society called the Illuminati. The Illuminati have built a self-programming supercomputer somewhere in Belgium called "The Beast."

At some point, the Illuminati is going to try to control people by implanting a computer ID chip, an RFID chip, in everyone's hands or foreheads. This chip, it said, is what the Bible has been prophesying, the mark of the beast, a high-tech version of 666. If you get an RFID chip implanted, well, you are definitely not getting saved.

In the transcripts, AJ and Cody go back and forth about RFID chips a bunch. At one point, AJ writes, "It's here. This coming up year, it will be mandatory for all armed forces, followed by medical field, then everyone else. What it does to the body is inhuman."

Cody, "What do they do to your body?" AJ, "You lose mind control. Why do you think I took time to study the mind with you?" Cody, "How does it do that?" AJ, "Oh, [BLEEP], here we go. Are you sure? You want to know the truth?" Cody, "Yes, I do." Then the Skype log indicates AJ called him to talk.

David Kestenbaum

AJ writes, "For now, rest. I have so much more to show you. But you have class tomorrow." In some places, the conversation seems very middle school, except they're texting about the apocalypse. And one of them is 36 years old.

Like this time AJ is talking about how he's preparing to assist other followers of the Lord. And Cody compares the whole thing to a movie. Cody, "So it's like you're that guy from The Matrix who rescues Neo and takes him to the refuge underground."

AJ, "You must be talking about Morpheus." Cody, "Yes, that guy." AJ, "How do you know I'm not Neo?" Cody, "But Neo never goes and rescues people from the Matrix." AJ, "But he does show them the truth."

The most alarming part for Drew reading this is that AJ seems to be trying to slowly separate Cody from his family, to drive a wedge between her and her son. At one point, AJ is telling Cody that his parents are influenced by, quote, "the other side."

David Kestenbaum

Cody had been asking AJ what he should do if his parents tried to make him get an RFID chip implanted. AJ writes, "CPS, one phone call, 911. You can easily claim abuse, which is not a lie because they would be forcing you into hell. Tell CPS nothing about the chip. Stress potential harm to your body and yelling." Drew reads this and worries that Cody is about to run off with AJ.

David Kestenbaum

Drew calls Jimmy, her husband, who rushes home.

David Kestenbaum

The Skype transcripts only went back a month. But they eventually learned from Cody that he and AJ had been having conversations like this for years-- right there in the house, right under their noses. Drew and Jimmy call the police, but it's unclear if there's anything they can charge AJ with.

They decide for sure they need to cut off all contact with AJ, which they worry will upset Cody. They don't know how much of all this religious stuff he really believes. But they know he loves AJ. They need time to figure things out. So they just leave Cody at school for the rest of the day. He's going to classes, doesn't know any of this is happening.

They call a friend who's a lawyer, and they make a plan. When the school day is over, Drew will pick up Cody and also his friend Lucas, who had been messaging with AJ. She'll pretend like everything's normal. But she'll take them directly to the lawyer's office, where Jimmy and the other kid's parents will be.

David Kestenbaum

Looking at Cody, though, Drew couldn't tell what was going on with him. He didn't cry. He didn't yell. When they got home, she says she tried to talk to him about all this, but he wouldn't talk. They got him a therapist right away.

The lawyer told AJ he was fired and to stay away from the Treybigs. The family sent the school a photo of AJ, told them to watch out for him. AJ sent an email to the Treybigs' lawyer, threatening to sue them if they said bad things about him.

Cody had been a high honors student. But the next day, he got a 24 on a test. After school, he'd go to his room, stay in there, and go to sleep.

In the mornings, his parents would break down. They'd say, please just come home to us today. Don't run away with him. Of course, one of the weird things about this whole situation is that before this, Cody had seemed totally normal around the house, just his regular self.

When I first heard this story, I honestly didn't know what to think. It seemed incredible that all this could be going on and that no one would notice. How did this happen? And why did AJ do it? The Treybigs thought he was grooming Cody for years in some evil plan to control him and pull him away from the family. But maybe AJ was just a devoted religious guy with unconventional beliefs.

We reached out to AJ, who declined multiple interview requests. Then just before we went to air, he did finally agree to talk. So we have some tape of him, which you'll hear later. He has a different version of most of this.

But here is the story from Cody and his family's perspective. Those years where life in the Treybig household felt totally ordinary, here's what Cody says was actually going on. Cody says the first time he and AJ talked about religion was back in the sixth grade. AJ had been coaching him for a few years. And this one day, AJ starts talking about that video game that Cody loved, World of Warcraft.

David Kestenbaum

As for how this could all stay secret, this first conversation didn't. When other kids came over to play basketball that day, Cody disappeared into the house. He started to cry. And he told his mom.

David Kestenbaum

Drew says people have asked her now why she didn't fire AJ on that day. She says she tries to be open-minded about religion. People believe all kinds of things. AJ seemed like a good guy. So when Cody tells his mom, we've got to cancel World of Warcraft, she's like, no, we don't.

David Kestenbaum

Drew says she went out to talk to AJ, who was coaching the other boys. She said, what did you tell Cody? He's really upset.

David Kestenbaum

Pretty much immediately, they did talk about religion again. And this was a moment, if you rewind the tape, when things might have all gone differently. Cody could have believed his mom that all this stuff was ridiculous. But instead, he wondered why his mom didn't want him to learn about this stuff.

He adored AJ. And the stuff AJ was saying, if it was true, it seemed really important. Like it's hard to think of anything that could be more urgent. Cody canceled his World of Warcraft account and stopped playing. And he says, after that day, their basketball sessions started changing.

AJ told Cody he wasn't really there to teach him basketball. That didn't really matter. He said he was sent there because he, AJ, was one of the chosen. And Cody was special.

David Kestenbaum

It was like a story being revealed in many chapters about this whole world around them that was invisible to most people. If you only knew who I am, AJ would say. AJ said he could see demons gathering around the house. But when he came over, they'd flee because they were afraid of him. AJ said he sometimes saw demons around the basketball court while they were playing.

David Kestenbaum

Cody's dad's office had a particularly bad feel about it, AJ said. There was a statue of a snake in it. He said that was a sign of the Illuminati. As it happened, that's where Cody and I were doing this interview.

The snake was there on the table. It's just one of those corporate "we did it" kind of things from the sales team at his dad's company. But in Cody's mind, everything around him started to have a double, deeper meaning to it.

David Kestenbaum

There is a giant owl. Bohemian Grove is this enclave for the rich and powerful. Presidents have been there. But Cody's dad says he's never been. The things AJ said were hard to disprove, especially if you're in sixth grade.

AJ said he could see people talking about him when he wasn't there, that he could see people's dreams, sometimes read their thoughts. And those demons around the house, he said, they're spreading. That one was particularly alarming.

David Kestenbaum

There was an urgency to the whole thing. AJ said there were signs the rapture might happen during the upcoming Olympics, which meant the Illuminati were going to be trying to implant everyone with RFID chips. There was very little time left.

David Kestenbaum

I talked to some other kids who were around at the time. They said AJ talked to them about this stuff too. One of them told me he sees himself as a skeptical person, but he still found himself wondering. Maybe AJ knows something.

AJ would call him on his cell phone during school and say something like, are you in a secure location? It was scary, but also kind of exciting, like you were a secret agent. But Cody was the one AJ spent the most time with, and he believed it all.

His friends told me they had no idea. In his head, it was like Cody was living inside a movie. And as it turns out, it is an actual movie from 1972 called The Rapture.

That's where this whole story about a supercomputer called "The Beast," in Belgium, connected to people being marked with numbers-- that's where it comes from. I wasn't able to get a copy of the film. But we were able to find an LP which has a radio drama version of it in the style of War of the Worlds.

David Kestenbaum

I tracked down the screenwriter, a Christian author named Joe Musser. He said some of the promotional material for the movie was in the form of fictional news stories, which some people thought were real. They got passed around in churches and even published in one Christian magazine.

He wrote in to say, hey, you messed up. This isn't true. But it was too late. 40-something years later, the idea of a supercomputer in Belgium called "The Beast," it's still around.

Cody says he would wake up in the morning and check CNN to see if the rapture had happened, because for sure, it would be on the news. The things AJ said were terrifying, but the only safe place was with AJ. So instead of running away, he'd go back to him.

David Kestenbaum

Cody hid all this from his parents for three years. And just like in basketball, how you had codes so your teammates knew what play you were running, he and AJ had one too.

David Kestenbaum

Cody's mom says she did notice Cody was more interested in religion. He would pester her to let him talk to AJ about religion. She said no. At some point, Cody asked to get baptized. His mom worried that might mean that AJ was still talking to Cody about religion, which he'd promised not to do.

But Cody insisted, no, no, this is just something I want to do. So they said OK. Drew says, in retrospect, of course, all this looks very different.

David Kestenbaum

I talked to some experts about cults and brainwashing. And when I told them this story, they reacted the way doctors do when someone comes in with what they think is an unusual set of symptoms but that the doctor's seen a hundred times.

There's no official definition of a cult. But they all said, yeah, that sounds like one. Cults often promise the key to understanding the whole world. Followers are pressured to keep everything secret. The whole thing gets built up gradually, so it becomes hard to back out without admitting you were wrong the whole time.

At the top of it all is a charismatic leader. I asked if cult leaders knew they were cult leaders. The answer, sometimes. These experts told me perfectly healthy people with no history of mental illness fall into cults.

Part of what makes the whole thing work is that the leader introduces something to be afraid of, while also providing the solution to that fear, which creates this really strong bond. That technique, of course, is used in lots of places-- advertising, political campaigns. Here it's just all turned up to 10.

Cody's dad told me that this experience helped him understand those stories in the news about parents who wake up one day to discover one of their kids has disappeared and gone off to join ISIS. The one thing the experts told me felt unusual about this case to them is that it seemed to be what they called a one-on-one cult-- one leader, one follower. Those can be particularly hard to undo. In a very real way, it was as if someone had implanted a chip in Cody's brain.

Ira Glass

David Kestenbaum. Coming up, Cody's parents try to get the chip out of Cody's brain, which, as you might expect, is really hard. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Chip in My Brain. In the first half of today's show, if you're just tuning in, we heard how Cody Treybig got all kinds of sci-fi religious beliefs from his basketball coach. In this half of the show, his parents try to get him to unbelieve that stuff. Again, here's David Kestenbaum.

David Kestenbaum

Cody says in the initial therapy sessions, actually for most of the first year, part of him was super angry. Like, why do I have to go to a therapist? There's nothing wrong with me. The problem is with you.

He'd have these tantrums. His mom, Drew, would watch him hole up in his room for hours, and she'd just have to wait. Sometimes she'd say, please, please, talk to me. But Cody would just explode. Why can't I be with AJ? Can't we all just sit down with him and work this out?

Instead of getting better, there were just these reminders of how deep in this world he was. Like this one day took Drew totally by surprise. They were preparing to go on a special family trip they had planned ages ago.

They were going to go to London for the Olympics which, remember, was the very event AJ had said might mark the end of days, when the rapture could happen, which meant the Illuminati were going to be trying to implant everybody with RFID chips. Drew didn't know any of that at the time. But the morning they were getting ready to go, Cody would not get out of bed.

David Kestenbaum

Drew and her husband Jimmy told me they both felt like, OK, here is a moment where we can show him, prove to him, that none of this is real. Just come to the Olympics. You'll see.

David Kestenbaum

How do you convince someone that their whole worldview is wrong? Cody's therapist's take was that you couldn't. Cody was going to have to decide for himself. Maybe if you could take away the fear and the anxiety, it would allow his mental immune system, for lack of a better word, to function. Cody would start to examine the idea of a supercomputer in Belgium and the Illuminati and think it all through for himself.

Back then, lots of things were triggering a kind of terror in Cody. If he'd trip on something or miss foul shots, well, AJ had told him that was a sign the devil was close by. The therapist gave Cody ways to calm himself down when he felt that panic coming-- breathing exercises, simple facts to focus on. I'm around people who love me.

One counselor who has handled cases like this put it in this way that really stuck with me. He said, you have to help the fly find its way out of the bottle, the idea being that a fly in a bottle doesn't know it's in a bottle because the walls are transparent. But if you can get it to see the bottle, it can find its way out. The fly in a bottle is a reference to something Wittgenstein wrote, and he was talking about philosophers. But whatever, I found it useful.

Cody's therapist never told Cody that what he believed was wrong. He just asked questions, tried to create a place where Cody felt safe to talk about these things and to think about them. Cody did start to question things.

Instead of reading about RFID chips and the Illuminati, Cody started reading debates between atheists and religious scholars online. He grew to love Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But unbelieving something is hard.

David Kestenbaum

Over time, it seemed to be working. Cody started having these moments where he would feel at peace, little islands of normalcy where he wouldn't have crazy thoughts. Cody remembers driving home after this one therapy session.

David Kestenbaum

Cody says his sophomore year, he was still deep in the world that AJ had described. Junior and senior year, he was probably half in, half out. Like if you asked him if he believed in the Illuminati, he would say no. But it was like some deep part of him still did. He kept having these intense episodes of panic and anxiety.

One of Cody's friends told me that Cody wouldn't talk about how deeply he'd been affected and how this stuff was still with him. But they could tell he was having a hard time. We tried to help him, one said. But what did we know? We were 18 years old.

Cody had to take a medical leave from high school. Then he went back, finished. He applied to college, got in. And Cody thought, if I can do this, if I can go to college and get through that, it'll be like a certificate of sanity, a sign that I'm going to be OK.

It was just two hours from home. His mom told him, call anytime. I can get in a car, and I'll be there in just two hours. Things seemed to be going OK for a while. But she knew he was struggling. And then she got a call.

I can't do it anymore, he said. I can't do it. She drove to get him, went to his dorm room, which is when she saw how he'd been living. Cody had mentioned to her that he had raised his bed, which she thought meant that he'd converted it into a loft or something to make more space. But that wasn't it. He'd raised it a tiny bit and was sleeping under it in this little space.

David Kestenbaum

Cody later said he had thought about killing himself. It seemed like it might be the only way to make this stop. Cody and his mom drove home together. It had been four years at this point-- four years of, as Cody puts it, trying to fix his own brain.

Sometime after Cody moves home, his parents tell him there's something they need to talk to him about. They're pretty sure it's a bad idea. But they feel like they have to tell him, because if he wants to do it, he needs to decide soon.

It involved the court, and not a basketball one. They told Cody if he wanted to, he could try to sue AJ. It was a long shot. The law doesn't have a good way to deal with cases like this.

After all, no one was kidnapped. No money was stolen. Cody says nothing physical ever happened. All they'd done was talk. and in fact, talk about religion, which is specifically protected in this country. It's in the Constitution.

Cody's parents had done some research. And the best route seemed to be to sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The legal description of what they would have to show was daunting. The conduct had to be, quote, "So outrageous in character and so extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community."

If Cody chose to do it, the whole thing could take years. Cody would have to be in a courtroom with AJ. He would have to relive the whole thing in detail in public, while an opposing attorney tried to derail him. In the end, he might lose. Or put another way, AJ might win. And there wasn't much time to think about it.

David Kestenbaum

Cody thought about it. And one day before his birthday, he filed the paperwork to go ahead. There was over a year of legal wrangling. But this past September, it went to trial. I was there for the beginning of it.

Cody had all kinds of worries leading up to it. What if he had made all this up? He said that actually crossed his mind. Or what if, when he told all this to the jury, they thought there was something wrong with him instead of AJ?

Cody had panic attacks in the days before the trial. It was like he'd slid backward. But he took the stand in front of the jury.

David Kestenbaum

Cody's lawyer said this was a case of, quote, "The secret manipulation and isolation of a young boy." He called what happened psychological torture. I looked at the jury, but they were impossible to read. They sat there totally expressionless. Cody was on the stand for over seven hours. But then his part was done.

David Kestenbaum

And here, finally, is AJ. He was neatly dressed, carrying a Bible, and yes, tall, barely fit in the witness stand.

David Kestenbaum

That's AJ's attorney there. He asked AJ how he'd grown up.

David Kestenbaum

AJ went to college for a bit. He said he'd tried out for the NBA's developmental league but didn't make it. So he became an athletic trainer, often teaching kids. He said families loved him. They were really happy with his work, including Cody's family.

David Kestenbaum

And, of course, his lawyer asked about his religious beliefs.

David Kestenbaum

About the same age Cody was when AJ started talking to him about religion. One of the big questions I had going into the trial was whether AJ had actually believed all the religious stuff he'd told Cody. One possibility was that AJ would just say, yes, we talked about the rapture, the Illuminati, RFID chips. All that stuff is real. I was trying to save him.

Cody pointed out that if AJ really did believe it all, why wouldn't he just testify to that in court? But that is not what AJ said. Cody's lawyer asked AJ about the Illuminati. AJ said, yes, he had discussed the Illuminati with Cody, but not as a secret society that ran the world.

David Kestenbaum

Of course, in his Skype messages, AJ said something very different. He really seemed to believe in the Illuminati. He wrote, quote, "The Illuminati will kill you if you don't do as you're told. Give the system problems, and you die or live with their mark."

Cody's lawyer also asked about RFID chips. Over Skype, AJ had told Cody the chips cause you to lose mind control, quote, "It's imperative that you know what this chip does!!!" - three exclamation points.

But on the stand, AJ downplayed that, didn't say the chips were the mark of the beast. He talked about them like they were just some new technology he'd read about online.

David Kestenbaum

Where Cody said they had talked about religion for years, AJ said their conversations had been minimal, a matter of hours total. He said when they did talk about religion, it was because Cody had asked.

David Kestenbaum

This all took place in an old courtroom in Austin. I was struck by the smallness of it. There was basically no one in the audience. Very few witnesses took the stand-- Cody, his parents, his therapist, and AJ. The main piece of physical evidence was those Skype transcripts, 25 pages long.

This is the system we've come up with for settling disputes between people. We get a bunch of strangers together, the jury, who just have to decide what they think happened and how bad it was. Cody's lawyer, in his closing statement, said they weren't asking for a specific amount of money in damages. But he said Cody's therapist fees had totaled over $76,000. And the jury could add whatever they thought was appropriate for mental anguish.

AJ's attorney, in his closing statement, said no one could know for sure why Cody was so strongly affected. Thousands or millions of Americans share AJ's religious beliefs, he said. Why don't we have mental hospitals filled with kids who are terrified of the rapture?

The jury, still totally expressionless, recessed on Friday to deliberate. Was what happened beyond all possible bounds of decency? Was it atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community? That evening, I got this voicemail from Cody.

David Kestenbaum

There is one thing Cody did not mention in that message-- the amount of the judgment. The jury awarded Cody just $4 in damages, basically the minimum-- $1 for medical care, $1 for mental anguish, et cetera, which seemed weird. They agreed that AJ had done this thing that was beyond all possible bounds of decency. But when it came time to put a dollar figure on that, their answer was $4.

We talked to five members of the jury after the trial. So I can tell you what happened. The presiding juror who they picked to lead the discussion, and who happens to be a judge in real life, told me they started with a quick vote to see where everyone stood.

Seven jurors were yeses, ready to hold AJ liable. Three were undecided, and two were nos. So they debated and read through the Skype transcripts. And they took another vote, 10 yeses, two undecideds, both of them men.

The presiding juror told me two things seemed to win over the last two. One was the mothers on the jury, who just kind of went to town. And the other was this idea of awarding just $4 in damages. And everyone liked that idea.

For some, it was a way to acknowledge that maybe AJ hadn't known the harm he was causing. Legally, they only had to determine that his behavior had been reckless, not necessarily intentional. It seemed to some of the jurors that AJ actually believed the stuff about RFID chips and all that.

But for a lot of the jurors, the $4 was a way to help Cody put this behind him. Cody's family didn't need any money. And they figured, if they picked a large dollar amount, yes, that would punish AJ. But he probably wouldn't be able to pay it, which would just drag this whole thing out, more legal stuff. Maybe AJ would appeal. And everyone would have to go through this whole thing again.

So $4. I'm not sure that's how the jury was supposed to think about things, but it's what they did. After the trial, some of the jurors hugged Cody or came over to talk. One told me he also tried to find AJ to say good luck. But he'd already left.

I usually think of courts as deciding who goes to prison or how much money someone owes someone else. Here, it was doing something much more basic, just saying who was right, deciding for the record what actually happened. As I said, after the trial, AJ did finally agree to talk to us.

David Kestenbaum

The thing I was most interested in was, what was it all about? Why did he say all that stuff to Cody? But in our conversation, AJ basically denied saying those things. He said Cody made it all up or exaggerated.

He told me he stood by everything he said in court, 100%. And he's planning to appeal the ruling. So I took a different approach. Forget about what he said or didn't say to Cody. Did he believe those things? Somehow in court, no one had asked him that simple question.

David Kestenbaum

I told AJ what the experts told me, that this seemed like a one-on-one cult. He said he's not part of any cult.

David Kestenbaum

If you ask me what I make of all this after listening to four days of testimony, reading through the trial documents, interviewing the family and other kids and AJ for two hours, I think AJ believes all the stuff he told Cody. I found someone who knew AJ before all this, who said he talked about RFID chips and the Illuminati all the time, with enthusiasm.

I think the appeal for AJ is the same as it was for Cody. It's a story he is at the center of. I think he's learned how to present it in a way that draws people in. And Cody was a sweet kid who adored AJ.

I went to visit Cody after the trial. It did seem like the court case had put some final piece of this thing behind him. It was like Cody had gotten over his fear of the rapture and the Illuminati. But he still had a much more ordinary fear. He was afraid of a person. But in court, AJ did not seem supernatural. He seemed very human.

David Kestenbaum

I think those are the words of a fly finally looking at the bottle from the outside.

Ira Glass

David Kestenbaum, he's one of the producers of our show.

[MUSIC - "CULT OF PERSONALITY" BY LIVING COLOR]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Neil Drumming. Our staff includes Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Kimberly Henderson, David Kestenbaum, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Jonathan Menjivar, BA Parker, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Today is the last day for our production fellow BA Parker. She came here from her job as a film professor. She leaves a radio producer and essayist. We all look forward to having her stories here on the radio show very soon.

A special announcement, our brand new, newly-designed website is at thisamericanlife.org, with lots of new features. We also have a brand new app. Our app is available for both iPhone and Android. Whitney Dangerfield, Julie Whitaker, and Seth Lind on our staff made all that happen.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's cofounder, Mr. Tony Malatia. You know, he always gets so sad when he sees a garden gnome.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.