096 Sarah Steel (Let's Talk About Sects): Cult Psychology

A lot of people in society have this idea that you have to be an idiot to join a cult.

As you know,

That's not true at all.

A lot of people think that cults are just religious,

But that is completely not true,

Although many of them take on a religious element,

Even if they didn't start in religion.

These are the best methods to get someone to do what you want them to do.

So there's often like lack of sleep.

You keep people so busy that they don't have time to really think you're like undermining someone's trust in themselves so that they rely much on you to kind of make all of the decisions and impart all of the wisdom.

There's often separation from your outside circles and that might be physical,

But it might just be emotional.

Often there's confession type sessions.

You've got many people in these groups who are doing things that they would never otherwise have done if it weren't for the influence of this particular leadership.

Today's guest is Sarah Steele.

Sarah is the host of the Let's Talk About Sex podcast,

A show about cults.

It's a very delightful show.

I highly recommend it.

I also recommend a specific episode that she did,

A two-parter on one taste,

Which was the cult that I'm in and I'm also featured in the episode.

After being on her show,

Which comes out I think today,

The same day this episode is coming out or maybe tomorrow,

Something like that,

I wanted to learn more about her perspective on cults because I've only been in one.

I obviously have my opinions,

But she has covered many,

Many in depth.

So in this conversation,

We speak about some of the patterns in cults,

Manipulation techniques,

How they relate to non-cult scenarios like propaganda in society and the way technology is used,

Social media,

Etc.

And it was really interesting hearing her perspectives and takes on it.

Of course,

We covered ethics and other controversial ideas in the realm of cults.

So this was a very fun episode.

You can check out her work at ltaspod.

Com or look for Let's Talk About Sex on any app that you listen to podcasts.

You know how to listen to podcasts.

You listen to this one,

I assume.

All right.

Yeah.

Right now,

You're listening to episode 097,

Sarah Steele,

Let's Talk About Sex.

Correction,

It's 096,

Episode 97 or Interview 97 will be with the BJJ Globetrotter,

Christian Gierau-Gart that should come out in a couple of weeks.

That'll be a fun one,

I assume.

I haven't recorded it yet.

And episode 100 is coming up soon.

Who knew?

I probably should say more about that.

I'll save that for the next episode.

Enjoy.

The Ruwando podcast is an exploration of the unconscious and the game of life.

Be sure to visit ruwando.

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And free access to my content library.

Enjoy the show.

All right.

Sarah Steele,

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

So,

I love your show.

I've caught a few episodes,

I guess,

Since being on it.

The one taste episode is coming out next month?

Actually,

It's going to be coming out in about a day and a half,

But it's in two parts.

It ended up becoming a bit of a beast,

As you know.

So,

First episode this week and then the,

I mean,

First part this week and then the second part next week.

Oh,

Cool.

Yeah.

I'm going to go with it.

Yeah.

I guess this episode is probably going to come out the same day.

So perfect.

You have a much faster turnaround than I do.

Yeah.

Well,

I don't do much preparation or editing than you do.

So yeah.

So,

I mean,

It was fun being on your show and also listening to some of your episodes.

And of course,

I want to talk about cults today,

But before we jump into it,

I would love to know your background and,

You know,

Cults are,

A lot of people are interested in cults,

But you must be particularly interested to have made a whole show on it.

So how did you get into that?

Yeah.

Like,

To be honest,

I really came at it from that same interest that most people have.

And it was,

It started out as just a really base level interest.

Like how do these groups work?

What's the psychology behind it?

How come they keep replicating across cultures and societies?

And I was,

I was just listening to a lot of podcasts at the time and I looked for one about cults and there wasn't one,

Which now there's heaps,

But at the time there weren't any.

So my background is filmmaking and I was always making a short film on the side.

And I sort of thought,

Oh,

This is something I could do without having to get a whole film crew together.

But then the more I started working on the project and the more people I spoke to,

The more it became about really providing a platform for X members to talk about their experiences and to demonstrate the red flags for the general public,

I suppose,

Because it became so clear to me that there were so many of these groups out there.

Like I had no idea when I started and there are so many.

And they're causing quite a lot of harm to quite a lot of people,

You know?

Yeah,

Actually I had no idea either.

I mean,

I knew of mine and because I,

Other friends have asked me like,

So how many cults are there in America or in a world?

I really had no idea,

But it seems like you found almost unlimited cults,

Like active ones and throughout history,

Right?

I get that question all the time.

How many cults are there and how many cults are there in Australia?

And I have no idea because even some of the groups that I've looked into,

I couldn't Google them when I started researching them.

Some of them are so secretive that you just,

You can't have any idea of how many of these groups are out there for that reason.

But also I think because a lot of people are quite embarrassed and ashamed to talk about their experiences and they have this sense of shame for sometimes the things that they did when they were in a cult,

But maybe sometimes just even being involved because,

You know,

A lot of people in society have this idea that you have to be an idiot to join a cult.

And so it's just,

As you know,

That's not true at all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you been in touch with the ICSA,

Like the International Cultic Studies Association,

I think it stands for?

I haven't been in touch with them,

But I always kind of refer people to them at the end of an episode and I'm on their mailing list and I kind of keep up with what they're up to on social media.

The group that I have gone to a few kind of events for is it's called KIFS,

Which is cult information and family support,

Which is just an Australian group.

So it's a bit easier for me to get to those meetings,

But I do follow what they do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been interesting because I've been to a few of those meetings,

Especially after I left One Taste and the range of types of cults seems quite broad.

Like there's some like that are some,

Some of the people who go there are basically,

Sorry,

I don't know if you could hear the airplane.

It just happened to come over while I'm speaking.

Sometimes it's just like a family system or like a normal family where people go there to speak about their parents and their family seems,

Sounds kind of normal,

But they're definitely running on cult dynamics.

And I was wondering if,

I don't know if you come across that a lot,

Like a lot of people have a trouble defining what cults are exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I saw this from the outset when I started doing the work.

I saw that cult is a very nebulous term and it means different things to different people.

So I was quite careful to kind of define the terms that I was going to use for the show.

But yeah,

Definitely like they come from all different types of backgrounds.

You know,

A lot of people think that cults are just religious,

But that is completely not true.

Although many of them take on a religious element,

Even if they didn't start in religion.

But I think often with,

With religious groups,

It's just quite an easy shorthand to gain control over people.

If you can claim to have a line from God,

Like that's the ultimate authority.

So I think that's why they pop up a lot with religious type organizations.

But yeah,

I've been following the work of Jess Hill,

Who wrote a book in Australia about domestic abuse.

And she kind of talks about coercive control being on a spectrum where the kind of one on one domestic abuse relationship is at one end,

The totalitarian government is at the other end and cults are somewhere in the middle.

So all of those behaviors that you see in a coercive control relationship,

That's just a one on one relationship are just the same ones that you see in a cult,

Except with more people kind of coming under the coercive control dynamics,

You know.

So it's like a really big dysfunctional relationship in a sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And,

You know,

Like,

Yeah,

Like one of the groups that I covered was really so small.

It was just,

I think maybe six members or something that was a political group in the UK.

And what I've got coming up is quite small as well.

So it's,

Yeah,

They kind of ramp up and ramp down.

But I think that's right,

As you said.

Yeah,

It's,

Well,

We'll go into ethics,

Maybe in a second.

But could you actually share what your definition or the definition that you chose for cults,

At least when you cover them?

Yeah,

Yeah.

So I use three criteria.

And the first one is charismatic leader with close control of the members,

Usually particularly with regards to disengaging with the group and its ideology.

And this one is interesting because a few people are talking about,

And I know we're going to get into this a little bit later,

But things like QAnon being a cult where they don't necessarily have this charismatic leader.

So it's an interesting conversation,

But that's the one I've been using for the show.

The second one is who believe that they exclusively have access to the truth and the rest of the world is wrong.

And the third is that they're highly secretive about their inner workings to outsiders.

And I mean,

This might be,

Well,

Was there a reason why you chose those three specific things?

I don't remember exactly the ICSA's definitions,

But I believe they have a really long list.

It's like a 20 point list or something.

Yeah,

Yeah.

A lot of the other,

Well,

The experts have really long lists.

I think there's a 7.

1 that might be Lifton or,

You know,

Hassan has like the bite model and there's all these different ones.

Margaret Singer,

I think I referenced all of these different models and I kind of just wanted to distill them into a few key points to keep it pretty concise.

But definitely within those three areas,

There are a lot of other points that come into play.

Yeah.

Because I remember at my first ICSA meeting,

Looking at their list,

I remember thinking like,

Well,

What is an occult?

It sounds like you're describing like every group I've ever seen ever.

Yeah,

So it's interesting.

Yeah,

Sorry.

Good.

No,

No,

I was just,

I agree.

Like there are so many aspects of that cultic dynamic that are across all elements of society and you see them in workplaces and you see them in close personal relationships.

And I think it's worthwhile being able to recognise those things because they can be,

They can be problematic on their own,

But they might not be an indicator of a huge,

Like a cult situation that can just be useful to know when those things are being used.

And actually that's an interesting conversation to have with you because I think that you,

Based on our interview for my show,

You know,

You took a lot of positive things from what you learned from the cult that you were in.

And I think that can work in other ways as well.

It's kind of normal for humans to use these certain ways of manipulating each other to get what you want.

And we should all learn how to recognise those things and have more healthy relationships,

I reckon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was actually just going to ask you about that next because,

You know,

Some of the things you're describing,

Like from the two-person relationship to the government level,

These control mechanisms,

Like,

Do you think they're always negative in,

You know,

Like for a family to work together,

A team or a country,

You kind of have to believe in the same things.

And I guess I was wondering if you have,

If you've drawn a line where things become bad because it's kind of hard,

I mean,

It's kind of hard to come up with an objective of,

Here's where it becomes negative.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think that some ways that people kind of use manipulative tactics to get people to do things that they want them to do,

I don't know,

Possibly in a workplace situation,

They can be used in a more positive way.

Like there are things about charismatic leadership that I think a lot of leaders could learn from,

But I'd say,

Yeah,

I'm mostly looking at the red flags and,

You know,

I guess it's worth remembering that people who get into cults,

Then not necessarily joining,

Well,

They're hardly ever joining a cult.

You're one of the few people I've spoken to who had any awareness that there were cult accusations of the group that they were joining.

But as you said,

You didn't really understand what that meant at the time,

But you're joining for all of these other wonderful things that exist in these groups.

It's not that they're all negative at all.

There are many,

Many great things about that community and the way that they interact.

And that's why people are drawn in.

Yeah,

I guess maybe a hypothetical example would be like,

If you saw a group with a charismatic leader and,

You know,

The exclusive thing,

Basically your definition of a cult,

But it seemed like they really were doing everything great.

Like they were really benefiting everyone and,

You know,

Whatever it was,

Would you still be,

I mean,

I'm sure you'd be maybe wary,

But like,

Could you imagine that being okay or not a negative thing?

I suppose I really believe that for it to be a cult,

The person or people who are in control probably have to have some sort of,

You know,

I'm not a,

I'm not a psychologist,

So I don't really want to diagnose anyone,

But I would suspect that there would be like a narcissistic sociopathic tendency in any of these cult leaders.

It's like someone who isn't properly able to experience empathy on a level that means that when someone's coming to them saying,

This is impacting my life in a hugely negative way,

Or I'm traumatized coming out of this,

They have no desire to change or shift things.

And I think if it were really healthy and they were doing good things,

Then they probably wouldn't be freezing people out and dropping them if they disengage and they wouldn't have all of these other dynamics that are what make it a cult.

I think that that would be something else.

Yeah,

I guess you have to really,

I mean,

People joke about this,

About people who want to run for president.

Like you have to be a certain kind of person to want that much control over that many people.

Not to say that's even necessarily a bad thing,

But like the average person probably doesn't even want that if they could do that.

Yeah,

That's,

Yeah,

That's absolutely right.

But then you do get some real born leaders who I think can make a huge difference in the world.

And I think it's really worth analyzing what we value in leadership.

And it's probably something that you thought about quite a lot because the group that you joined was very matriarchal.

So there was a rejection of kind of patriarchal norms there.

But that's sort of what we tend to value in leadership.

I think the world is kind of having a bit of a reckoning with at the moment.

Yeah.

And also,

I mean,

In many ways it's kind of unnatural to organize in the groups to the size that we do.

I mean,

Maybe this is getting a little,

Yeah,

Well,

I mean,

It's to have that much,

I noticed this in myself for my short time in the cult,

In moments where I had a lot of power,

It definitely changed me.

Even though I genuinely had good intentions,

Like having that much power,

Like it's kind of hard for it to not go to your head.

And I'm sure this is not the case with everyone,

But like,

I mean,

Maybe you have to be a narcissist to really want all of that.

But I mean,

There's like,

Yeah,

The cliche of you want to know what someone's like,

Give them a lot of power or something like that.

I mean,

I wonder if everyone would corrupt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's,

Yeah,

It would be really interesting to see.

And I know that personally I've worked in enough toxic workplaces that that is the case,

You know,

For very many people who aren't ever going to be cult leaders.

It's something really at issue there.

But when you find a really healthy relationship or a really healthy workplace,

You can just tell the difference between that leader.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with Krishna Murthy?

He was like a spiritual leader,

I think in the 50s.

I'm not.

Okay.

Well,

I mean,

He's not well known.

I only know who he is because Bruce Lee was a big fan of his or something.

But his whole thing was he was actually like kind of groomed to be a cult leader.

Like I think he was chosen out of a bunch of children to be the spiritual guru and like this cult kind of formed around him and made him the chosen one.

But I guess at some point he was part of his enlightenment was recognizing what a toxic situation they were creating.

So like his last instruction to everyone was like,

Don't have a guru.

So of course he became forgotten.

No one knows who he is because he didn't market himself.

But I wonder if like that's actually what a healthy leader would do if they recognize people were deferring to them too much.

Yeah,

That's,

Yeah,

That's really interesting because,

And I'm going to not get this story completely straight and I should look it up,

But I was speaking to another couple of people on a,

On a,

This AMA thing the other day called experts,

Rachel Bernstein,

I think was who,

Who was talking about,

It was the leader of the Hare Krishnas who had gone to,

It may have even been an ICSA event,

But it was a cult awareness event and became engaged with all of the problematic elements of cults and really looked hard at what they were doing and said,

This,

There are cultic things going on here.

And he came back and figured out how to try to dismantle a bunch of those.

So yeah,

I think a good leader would recognize that there are problems if they were faced with criticism and,

And saw that people were being badly affected by whatever the dynamic is.

Wait,

And that was the active leader of the Hare Krishnas?

You know,

I,

I'm going to have to look it up because this is all secondhand knowledge.

So I feel like I'm not.

.

.

Gotcha.

No worries.

Yeah,

Cause actually,

I mean,

I don't,

I don't mean to speak negatively of them,

But it was interesting.

I went to a few meetings,

But I guess being in a room full of ex cult members,

I,

My experience,

At least in the one I went to,

In the city that I went to,

It felt kind of culty,

To be honest,

The ICSA.

I think,

I mean,

I guess if you're in a room full of people who are used to organizing like that,

It's maybe just natural.

The,

Sorry,

The ICSA felt culty?

A little bit,

Honestly.

Oh,

That's interesting.

Yeah.

So I've got a few friends now who came out of cults and I,

And I think that they are just very hesitant to get involved in any kind of group situations.

Like they just,

It now sits really poorly with them and they like balk at the idea of,

I don't know,

Even a support group or whatever.

And I totally get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I really,

I mean,

I think overall they're doing great stuff.

I don't mean to speak negatively,

But like I went to a couple of meetings and they had like a retreat weekend,

Which is pretty much how every,

That's how my cults got me.

I mean,

It just seemed very reminiscent of the thing they're criticizing.

Yeah.

And I'm sure that's just,

That's how a lot of businesses work as well.

Like it's just how you get people together and get them on the same page and do like a conference and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Yeah.

I mean,

Cults are,

Cults are very,

Very effective business models.

I mean,

For sure.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I'm curious about more patterns because you've,

I mean,

I only have my one anecdotal experience of being in a cult,

But you've covered many different ones.

And I mean,

We spoke about the types of leaders,

But I'm curious if,

What,

What do you,

What you've noticed in terms of maybe trends or similarities through the different cults you've covered?

Yeah.

I mean,

I guess when you look at the leaders,

There are a few things that seem to pop up all the time.

And I guess,

I mean,

Pretty much without fail,

There's this kind of hot and cold thing.

Like you don't know whether you're going to get the really charming,

Wonderful,

Loving person or the really angry vindictive person who's kind of getting at you for something or getting under your skin.

The,

Usually there's someone who,

Well,

They don't often invite questioning.

They're fairly unaccountable.

They don't want to face any kind of criticism,

But they still,

They position themselves as having all of the answers.

And often like a thing that pops up is there'll be these kind of endless sessions where the leaders imparting their wisdom for,

You know,

Potentially for hours on end.

And then of course the control aspects over different aspects of life.

So it could be control over who you date,

Whether you have children,

What you do for work,

Where you live all that sort of stuff.

And then,

I mean,

This is,

I think this is the patterns really repeat themselves across the groups because they're classic methods of kind of coercive control.

And it's almost like you feel like these people went to the same school to learn all the same techniques.

But I think that humans just have a way of figuring out that these are the best methods to get someone to do what you want them to do.

So there's often like lack of sleep.

You keep people so busy that they don't have time to really think you're like undermining someone's trust in themselves so that they rely much on you to kind of make all of the decisions and impart all of the wisdom.

There's often separation from your outside circles and that might be physical,

But it might just be emotional.

Often there's confession type sessions.

I think with your group,

This was some fear inventory or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was like there were direct reporting lines.

Like my mother figure in the calls was always getting secrets out of me.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And whether it's kind of like an official session or it's,

You know,

Like one of the groups I cover,

They like sit around in a circle and they kind of take turns in like sharing all of their,

What's going on in their lives.

And then they like question each other really deeply and,

You know,

Sinanone had something like that too.

That was a drug rehabilitation cult.

Yeah,

It's tough because I honestly,

I miss that.

Like I even do that with my friends.

Like it's really nice to share everything that's going on with people who are interested.

Like it's yeah,

I mean,

All these things,

I guess they work because they do really feel good when you can trust the people or think you're trusting the people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I would say,

I mean,

I'm quite an oversharer as well.

Like I'm very big on just kind of,

I don't know,

Being really transparent and honest with people.

I just,

I like getting feedback on decisions I'm making and seeing if other people think I'm doing the right thing for sure.

But I guess with the sort of confessions that happen in these groups that it's not that the session itself is necessarily bad,

But if the people are then taking that information and using it in a way that they can kind of hold over you or,

You know,

Take that to like work out what your kind of cracks in your armor are to better control the decisions that you make.

That's where it becomes problematic,

I suppose.

Right.

Right.

And I actually,

Like a lot of the things you were listing just there,

I mean,

Aside from maybe the sleep deprivation,

It kind of just sounds like bad parenting or like domineering parenting.

Like in my work,

I talk to a lot of people about their parents or like their past and like everything you described seems to be a thing that messes adult children up,

Like the hot cold thing and yeah,

The controlling of life and stuff like that seems to be a thing that people do when they're,

I guess I would interpret as insecure,

But they're in charge of another person's life,

Like a child.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's exactly right.

And I think that's why we see these kinds of behaviors kind of replicating across different circumstances because it's such a natural way that humans behave if they have this insecurity and it's,

I'm sure there's stuff we can do about it to make that not be the case,

But yeah,

It happens all the time.

Yeah,

I mean,

Almost if you look at even like a,

Maybe a super innocent example,

Like a big sister,

A little sister or whatever,

Two siblings and just the,

There's the bossy one and there's the one that listens to everything.

It's innocent when it's like a six year old and a four year old or something,

But it's almost the same dynamic.

Yeah.

So you mentioned something about like this,

Like it's almost like they went to the same school.

I actually haven't really verified this,

But an ex member of my cult mentioned this of like,

At least in America,

There's like a family tree of knowledge between the cults,

Like starting with the church of Satan and then the Manson family branched off and they affected Morehouse and S which became landmark and then Scientology.

Like,

So there's a lot,

Like they use a lot of the same terminology.

I was wondering if you've ever come across something like this or mapped out,

Like,

Is there a lineage of thought from cult to cult?

I haven't ever mapped it out specifically,

But there are a number of groups I've looked at where you can see,

Or you can learn that their leader went to some sort of Scientology sessions and maybe,

You know,

Some sort of Amway or like some other multilevel marketing thing.

And yeah,

Many of the religious groups I look at as well,

They really seem to have taken a lot of things from the other religious groups.

But yeah,

It's like,

There's no way that they're not paying attention to what the other groups are doing and figuring out how that could work to their advantage.

And I don't know if it's necessarily about what are the ways that we could control people better,

Or if it's more about what are the ways that we could be more successful at what we're trying to achieve and here's how this other group has done it.

But I suppose I feel like if you're taking that from Scientology,

You have a pretty good awareness of what you're trying to do.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's interesting because like,

You know,

I have to,

I have to learn internet marketing for my for my business and a lot of internet marketers use the word cult kind of in a,

I guess a cheeky way like,

Oh,

Like,

Look at what cults do.

Like this is how you create a cult following or ethical cult building is a term that I've heard a bunch.

And it's like everyone's trying to kind of copy cults with their marketing because they're so effective.

I haven't yeah,

I haven't come across this and I my like day job is in marketing.

So maybe I'm not paying enough attention.

But,

You know,

I suppose it's with all like influences and you know,

This is a way for people to kind of achieve big things in their businesses like everyone on LinkedIn trying to be the authority on whatever.

So yeah,

Building a personal brand probably can take a bunch of these things into consideration.

And I think if they're not using those things to control people and,

You know,

Line only their own pockets at the expense of others or,

You know,

Ignoring people who say something that you're doing is traumatizing for me,

Then probably no problem,

Right?

Yeah,

I guess so.

I think I still have had this like resistance like one of like these marketing teachers that I really like in general,

He uses like these cult terms like us like us versus them is a thing you need to create or like labeling your followers as something which I to me I just like it makes me cringe so I can never really do it.

But it seems to certainly be effective across the board.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I would also rail against any kind of us in their mentality because I come across that an awful lot and I think it can be really damaging and also just this general like black and white thinking about things is so huge in cults that you can see it also being damaging across society like there's a lot of gray areas and a lot of nuance and humans obviously are having a lot of trouble right now grappling with the complexities of the world but trying to reduce everything into this black and white kind of way of thinking is so it's so destructive as people need to really engage with the complexities and the nuances and recognize that things are not are not simple and that's unfortunate but you know that's where people I think are turning to conspiracy theories because they just want to understand something rather than just I don't know accepting that things are complicated but I do yeah when you say you know giving your giving your followers a name or whatever it is it's like the my favorite murder people in the murdery knows or whatever it is I think that can be kind of fun and harmless but then when you see those groups kind of becoming such rabid fans that the people who are at who are at the top of the fandom can kind of I don't know like sick them on someone who's done them wrong and then it's like this big online kind of doxxing session or whatever it is it's like you can see that being so damaging yeah and it's almost like I mean these are like really primal parts of our psyche I guess that get attached to these like being part of a herd it's I see I mean I don't I don't know how you feel about it but it almost seems inevitable that like when you create an identity you have to have I mean there's the fans and there's a non-fans right and if there is a conflict who are you gonna bandwidth the people wearing your shirt color or whatever and I think it's been frustrating with me watching American politics or I mean politics in general but I follow American politics more where it's like it's I almost wonder like is it possible for people to really see things with nuance or is are people just too busy and they just revert to joining the herd yeah yeah yeah I don't know it's um it's a really big problem and I'm I'm following American politics now more than I ever did which I think is probably the case for a lot of people around the world because it has such a big impact at the moment but um yeah you can see the fragmentation and you can see the polarization and oh it's difficult to watch yeah yeah um so I want to ask you about because I really appreciate that when you I mean that your perspective is around people who join cults like not making us look stupid or anything and really understanding but I was wondering if you have noticed trends in people who do join cults I've certainly not everyone exposed to cults joins has there been anything you noticed there yeah well surprisingly um not so much uh that's something I found really really interesting is there's not really a pattern I don't think that you can kind of pinpoint who is likely to join a cult and who isn't um you know almost every person I've talked to who's come out of a cult has actually been a pretty like exceptional person in a lot of ways has been um you know really really kind and thoughtful and you know very introspective about what they've been through um and the things that I find they have in common is not it's not really personality related or um demographically related it's much more to do with the stage of life that they're at when they come across the group so it is it seems to be fairly common for maybe someone who is at university when they're at that stage between you know living at home and moving out of home trying to figure out who they are and what their life is and what are they going to do with this life and what's going to give it meaning or maybe they've come out of a relationship and you know they're reassessing what they want their life to be at that point and I think that that that's kind of the kernel that can sort of determine whether someone gets really involved or not is if they're at a point in their life where they're really looking to give their life meaning and to me it just always seems like just the thing they've got in common is they just were unlucky enough to join the wrong group and they didn't know it from the outset they were always trying to do something either they were trying to do something really impactful for their own lives and sometimes something impactful for the world they wanted to change the world or they wanted to really improve themselves and they're always trying to do something really good which if it gets in the hands of the wrong person can be used against them in a way because that's someone who's willing to do a lot of work to to create something good and if you can kind of get them to to really dedicate that part of themselves to your cause and have them believe that this cause is something really fantastic you can really get a lot out of them.

Yeah so maybe if I could put into one sentence like an extreme willingness to change their environment or change their situation.

Yeah and I'm not even sure if it's that extreme like maybe for the people who get really involved it might be extreme but it's I really I really think that the thing that I try to get across with the podcast project is that it can probably happen to most people you think that it could can't happen to you or a lot of listeners and people like me think that it can't happen to you but I think if you were at the right point in your life where you were trying to figure out what the point of it all is and what's going to give your life real meaning and you happened to fall into the wrong group and there was a leader who could play on your insecurities to bring you around to their way of thinking I think it could happen to many more people than we realize.

You think anyone could be brought into a cult?

Like I almost said anyone but I'm not sure if that's true I would err on the side of it could probably happen to anyone yeah but there might be the odd like really I don't know untouchable person I wonder if it's like hypnosis you know some people are more susceptible and others aren't.

Have you are you familiar with Darren Brown?

I know I know his name and a bit about what he does but have you seen have you seen or he has a documentary on Netflix called Push where he basically he basically convinces a regular person to think they're killing someone over the course of many maybe a few hours and the first thing he did was he screened people for suggestibility so I think the he had them do some like meaningless quiz and they had to wait in a room and every time a bell rang some people stood and the ones who stood with the people without thinking those are the ones he picked because he knew that he could already get them to jump through a hoop and then he just makes them jump through bigger and bigger hoops until by the end he convinces them to kill someone.

Oh my gosh yeah and these are regular people like really sweet like regular normal people that you would meet anywhere.

And yeah I mean that tells you I think that tells you a lot about this kind of like conspiracy stuff that's getting so widespread at the moment is that your average person can just fall fall down that rabbit hole and and be convinced and you know like it's not people are responsible for their own actions and I think that that's a really tricky line with cults but you've got many people in these groups who are doing things that they would never otherwise have done if it weren't for the influence of this particular leadership you know.

Yeah it really makes me think about free will because like if someone if like you could change the environment every like social interaction of a given person of course their sense of normal would change like how I mean we kind of get our sense of everything from the people we talk to.

Yeah and so I actually want to ask you about if you notice any trends with like internet media and social media because on that note I remember when I was leaving the cult or close to leaving I had this I was very sure that one taste was like the biggest thing or like if people didn't know about them they were going to find out soon like it was clearly trending because partly because my social media if I looked at if I logged into Facebook every post was one taste because I clicked on one taste people's posts so obviously that's what Facebook showed me but it gave me the perception of like oh everyone's into one taste clearly even though it's maybe one percent of my Facebook friends and I'm wondering and we've heard this in like the American political elections and how Facebook ads are being hacked by whatever or not hacked but or optimized by marketing firms or whatnot I wonder if you notice anything with cults using technology in this way.

Look I think they have it's the same as any business really like they have the ability to reach wider audiences through you know the online capabilities that now exist the thing that I've noticed I guess is the what I kind of mentioned before is this sort of QAnon stuff and other groups like this which seem like very cult-like in the way that they behave but maybe don't necessarily have a leader who is controlling what everyone does with their lives and that sort of thing and that's people kind of I don't know like self radicalizing which is pretty pretty disturbing.

Sorry you mentioned what was the word QAnon I know you mentioned it before is that a.

.

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Oh are you not across QAnon?

No.

Ah this is a bit of a can of worms sorry to refer to it this is me being on my Twitter feed and feeling like everyone knows about QAnon because all I'm seeing is QAnon so that's my my own fault.

So QAnon is a big conspiracy theory in mostly in America but it's now spread across the world so you've got people turning up to anti-mask protests and things like that to do with COVID who are kind of displaying these QAnon signs and the idea behind it is this guy who called himself Q because he had Q clearance in the secret services the CIA I guess he released he releases these Q drops which are kind of like messages to let people know what's really going on in the deep state so it kind of the more you get into it the more it sounds completely wild but people really are believing this and are becoming very radicalized so they believe that there's kind of like a secret cabal of deep state players who are running a pedophile ring that is you know kidnapping babies and harvesting their blood to you know ingest this thing called adrenochrome which they supposedly get high on and so that's like the extent of the wildness but it's Trump is really at the head of this and he knows what's going on and so a lot of people who are refusing to accept the election results it's because they are QAnon followers and it's kind of propagating so there's kind of thousands of people now who follow this stuff yeah that was attached to the whole Pizzagate conspiracy and that's exactly right the guy that's emails right that's exactly right yeah yeah the Pizzagate thing he was a QAnon believer he went in and tried to you know uncover the the basement of the pizza place that had the children in it which the place didn't even have a basement so but people who are falling into this stuff they're definitely behaving like cult members they can't I guess they find a really welcoming community in there of people who seem really like they're trying to make a difference in the world and there are many many cultic things about it and you know I think that these people really they are they are victims and they need a lot of empathy in a place to go when they come out but in the meantime it's there's real concerns that they could like this Pizzagate guy who turned up with guns like they could get violent it's possible so yeah yeah so actually I have two minutes on QAnon yeah I mean I wasn't familiar with that but I have an acquaintance who's really into the Pizzagate conspiracy and he made this Facebook group and it's got a lot I mean I he invited me and I left because it was kind of crazy but I mean some of the things they said I was like well I don't I mean who's to say there isn't you know even I was like oh well I mean there's not like hard evidence that this isn't true but then and then the thing that really turned me off was that it seemed everyone I mean to your point everyone was kind of hitting the same note like every everyone happened to be a Trump supporter everyone happened to have the same they're just like echoing off of each other and if anyone questioned it they were booted from the group or anything and yeah anyway it's it's interesting seeing all this people get so much meaning out of these things that sounds like a real kind of QAnon group really and I like I've got relatives over here who I can see them starting to kind of come up with some of these bits and pieces and so even though people might not know that they're getting all of these this kind of conspiracy propaganda from QAnon originally they're still like spouting some of the lines that originated in this group and you know some people think it's even turning into a religion so it's yeah this sort of stuff is like absolutely propagating because of the internet and wouldn't yeah it wouldn't be nearly as widespread without so and I guess also because people kind of maybe in in lockdowns or whatever like an extra time yeah yeah yeah and not having their normal human contact which having healthy relationships I think helps you out in these situations and all of this stuff it's like yes it's so it's tough yeah and it's also just like tough to know what you're you know what what's real because we have all this information like certainly between CNN and Fox News in the States they share different interpretations or different facts even sometimes like it's like almost you have to choose what reality you want to be a part of yeah you can have a completely different reality from having watched other tv channels the same thing happens in Australia if you were watching Sky News Australia you would have a completely different interpretation of what's going on in the world than someone who's watching the national broadcaster but it yeah it's absolutely true and with these kind of targeted Facebook ads that you mentioned like Facebook might do fact checking on things that are completely public but if they're getting paid by the advertisers they're not doing fact checking on most of that stuff or they've only just started to do that now so people are seeing things they don't really understand how to verify if something is to be trusted or not like this all this disinformation is spreading everywhere some of it coming from you know potentially from Russian interests or whatever it is anyone who has an interest in sowing dissent in kind of western democracies or or whatever like it's you can understand the confusion and it's interesting a lot of you know these are mostly kind of right-wing groups that are falling into this QAnon stuff but it's also having a really big overlap with kind of new age groups that are traditionally more progressive and left-wing in Australia would be voting for the greens are now kind of turning to this QAnon stuff as well yeah I mean on the left I've seen this a little I mean yeah I've seen this a little bit in like certain extremist social justice groups that seem to follow the same exact patterns that their right-wing counterparts follow it's like people just you know collect in these forms I guess yeah yeah I've looked at a couple of cults now that are very you know proper cults that they come from quite a like hardcore socialist kind of background and I think it's that's that's sort of same thing it's people who really want to change the world and do something incredible and just fall into the hands of someone who reckons they have all the answers and I don't know I think you can get really passionate people in those circles for sure I'm familiar with the podcast Martyr Made have you heard of it?

No it's a really good history podcast but he just he's doing a series now on the Jim Jones cults on Jonestown and I didn't know much about it I knew about the Kool-Aid thing but he was actually bringing up the point that if say if Jim Jones were to have died in the six or before Jonestown happened or many years earlier he probably would have gone down as a civil rights hero because he did so many things the United States for like integrating black and white churches and schools and all these other things he just happened to go nuts or maybe it was always nuts but if he had died at a certain point we would have seen him as a hero because he did all this stuff for civil rights but he happened to tarnish his legacy with other yeah yeah yeah when you yeah when you hear about the formation of that particular group and all the civil rights stuff it's like you can absolutely understand why people joined it and it's like oh I could have seen myself joining that group for sure yeah so you mentioned in the beginning one of your motivations I guess for keeping the podcast going or one of your new motivations for the podcast was I guess warning people is there like a specific thing when we speak about let's say like the propaganda and the internet information all that stuff is there anything that you recommend after following all this stuff to maybe protect people from following the wrong rabbit or is it kind of just like you just have to be aware that everything could be false yeah I mean I think it's familiarizing yourself with the red flags and what elements constitute like coercive control and manipulation what I would really like to see change are laws around coercive control which they you can look at a couple of examples overseas Scotland's quite a good example they've got some across the UK but Scotland in particular I think has implemented it quite well but these are in domestic one-on-one relationships where they've criminalized coercive control and then educated the police force to understand how that operates and there have been a few cases that have come out of it so that's like in domestic abuse like in a two-person relationship exactly and so I think that there's real potential for that that model to be expanded so that coercive control can be seen as a crime in in cultic groups so that because what I so often see with people who come out of these groups is they'll say it's a woman who's come out at the age of 40 something she doesn't even know how to open a bank account or whatever she's had her whole life taken away from her sometimes she was born into it and never even had a choice to join she goes to the police and and tells them what happened to her and no crime has been committed and it's incredible like you've got so many people coming out of these groups who have PTSD sometimes it's financial abuse like all of these different things unless there's been sexual abuse or physical abuse there has been no crime and nothing can be done about it and that to me is is pretty incredible and I think that we can do better on that front that's something that I would like to see happen you know like what the specific or like an example of one of these laws like in Scotland for instance like how do they define coercive control I have looked into it before and I would have to go into it again I can't remember off the top of my head exactly how it operates I just know that that's that one's quite a good example so I'm gonna I'm not gonna try and attempt to explain it and say the wrong thing but yeah yeah so I was wondering it's probably such a vague thing because I could I could imagine I don't know what the laws are but I could imagine like they have something written down okay this is how we define coercive control and you have a well-meaning parent who maybe gets seen doing the wrong thing on the wrong day because your child is I don't know I might be thinking of a miss like a extreme example but like I could imagine it being misinterpreted and creating like false positives or something for whatever the what I'd imagine it's hard to put into concrete objective words what is coercive control and what isn't I've just I've just googled it while we've been talking and so as of August 2019 there were more than 500 crimes recorded under that law but they have and you know it is it's really difficult like it's that's the biggest problem with it but I think that we can advance ourselves with these sort of gray area things and you know avoid that sort of situation that you mentioned but they've got what constitutes abusive behavior and the new legislation says that abusive behavior it results in making a partner dependent or subordinate isolating a partner from friends relatives or other sources of support controlling regulating or monitoring a partner's day-to-day activities depriving a partner of or restricting freedom of action and frightening humiliating degrading or punishing a partner so that's an interesting kind of roundup of it yeah I mean it's just making me think of I have a friend who met his girlfriend they have as far as I know a good relationship but she was like amongst like not great crowd before they started dating and I mean as far as I can tell at least me as my friend seems to have directed her life in a very positive way as far as like her job and her work and her life but her old friends accused him of enrolling her in a cult because he her life did change a lot when she started dating him and yeah I mean I just I kind of shrugged when he told me that it's like well I mean it's kind of a kind of hard to define what's good or bad here well I think as long as she is using her own volition to come to that kind of arrangement and she's enjoying the new life and he's not kind of you know forcing her away from those friendships and by like monitoring her communications it's probably fine like I think that that's the whole kind of problem with the the backlash to the me too movement is this idea that it's just it's gonna go too far and now we're not even gonna be able to have sex without writing a contract first and it's like I think humans are a bit better than that like probably you're not gonna get in trouble if you're not behaving in these really bad ways you know yeah I mean I think I don't know I I do have anecdotes of friends of like false accusations and and things like that I think it does get tricky especially when there's like an incentive or like anger towards a certain person and like you know that you can get someone a huge amount of trouble by saying something I think on both sides of anything there are people who are gonna abuse the rules yeah yeah I think that's absolutely fair but I think I guess from my perspective it's like I would prefer the rules be in place that are gonna protect the most people and then we go after those who break the rules you know I was gonna ask this earlier but seemed like too big of a question I don't know we'll see I do you think there's such thing as free will ha ha I had this conversation with some friends recently and I got really annoyed with them about it because I yes I do believe there is free will but then we got into this like real tangle around the philosophy of free will and I don't know are you someone who thinks there's not free will I don't know I think we speak about manipulation and like well you know it's kind of hard to tell in you know in regular life but if you could control every aspect of someone's environment one could assume especially with like everything you've covered like maybe you can make them do whatever you want so is there free will if someone can really just toggle things in your environment and change your behavior it's kind of hard to tell yeah it's a really it's a really interesting topic because I do like I've spoken to so many people now who have done things that they would never have done otherwise so I totally totally see how I don't know the shortcomings of free will if someone can cause you to behave in ways that you wouldn't otherwise do and I guess yeah that's where I think there just need to be stronger laws in place that are gonna target the offenders like there has to be more protections around the leader who is going to exert that kind of control over someone if it has the potential to be that that damaging so as to you know circumvent free will yeah it's making me think is actually that that Facebook example I mentioned I had a conversation with Tristan Harris I don't know if you've heard of him he's he writes a lot about basically how big tech companies modify our behavior or get us addicted to things and he he's the one who pointed out to me like oh your Facebook feed like even if you and I know the same people if I click on certain things that's what's going to show up and my reality and we had a conversation about how I mean I mean I'm a bit spiritual and I like to if something repeatedly happens in my environment I take it as a sign but he's like well if I just hired three actors to tell you the same message you would probably do the thing and I'm like yeah probably like it's like well that's interesting what you were saying though because um I think yeah all of those YouTube algorithms I can't remember the name of the guy who came out of YouTube who'd worked really hard on those algorithms and you know he'd just been trying to figure out how to how to keep people on the platform and he was never trying to do anything negative but it turned into like basically radicalizing people to the far right because that was the algorithm that worked best for YouTube so yeah yeah because I guess it depends on the uh I mean for all programmable I guess it depends on the initial programmer on what they input yeah and I guess that that's those are some of the things that we can do better to control and yeah humans are we're a messy messy bunch like we gotta put some protections in place in some of these areas because social media is causing an awful lot of damage at the moment yeah is there anything because you shared about like the law side is there anything you recommend to individuals or maybe parents or people who want to protect other people they know from these influences yeah tricky yeah how do you how do you bring up someone to have a really strong sense of self and and confidence in themselves that they don't become susceptible to these kinds of leaders like yeah I don't know it's it's so it's so tricky I mean it's kind of like the motivation behind the podcast it feels like the one small thing I can do is try and put this work out there and try and help more people understand the red flags and what to look out for but it does it just seems like a drop in the bucket but you know I get emails all the time from people who have listened to the show and who really you know it's it's done a lot for them they've been able to share it with other people to let them know what they they went through and all of this kind of stuff so I don't know I don't know and then the question I get asked a lot is how can I get my family member or friend out of one of these groups which I don't know if you might have particular insight into this but I haven't come across any effective way to do so and the only thing I can ever suggest is that you remain completely available and judgment free so that they know that there's someone to turn if they do start to ask those questions yeah I mean I've had a few experiences helping people out of one taste but they were already kind of like leaning that way so it wasn't like I took someone super deep in and like did it I mean anything I mean they were kind of already on the path and I was maybe helping the thing and I was just gonna ask you about this it's like it's almost it's almost like you have to brainwash them into a different reality and even when you're saying about like raising raising someone to be protected I guess it's like when I think about like my friends who are maybe the most secure you kind of look back at their childhood and be like oh their parents kind of like trained them or like I mean in a sense brainwashed them or gave them the right environment for them to like be really secure for instance which is it's almost like everything is I'm curious what your thoughts on or if if this is all like spell casting in a way and like the only way to protect yourself is to have a stronger sense of propaganda or you know stronger message that beats the other messages yeah I mean I do I do think that like like so many things in life if we were able to figure out just better ways of kind of building healthy relationships and parenting children to form healthy relationships so that they're not so susceptible to propaganda like all of these things but it's I mean that's just that's a very big task that I don't see happening anytime soon so yeah I sort of fall back on what are the things we can do within like regulating and the law and education that's the only things I can ever think of I'm trying to help on the educating side but you know I can try and advocate on the law side but I'm not going to get very far with that yeah well I think yeah I think this is probably the best thing we have right now is the education piece yeah and I think it's important and I think it's a real credit to people like you who speak about their experiences because it's for a lot of people it's it's not a thing that they feel capable of doing so it's great that there are people who can thank you yeah well I think your show and your work and this conversation raises a lot of fun issues so thank you thank you for having this conversation with me I mean it's good stuff to think about yeah no thanks for having me on and yeah it's been a pleasure yeah so it's let's talk about sex on all the podcasting apps is there anything anywhere else people can find your work um no that's the main that's the main one I might you know have some other things out soon but just keep your eye out let's talk about sex that's the main awesome and the one taste episode is probably coming out today if you listen to this today oh yeah this week yeah cool yeah awesome thanks again thanks Ryan you I'm in vulnerable touch no optimus say I'm so mad you're comfortable you want a piece