Decoding the Gurus - Special Episode: Interview with Amanda Montell on Cultish Linguistics

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Amanda Montell is an author, linguist, and podcaster with a new book 'Cultish' on "how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language" to manipulate followers and cultivate power.In the interview she offers fantastic insights that cover not only guru linguistics but also the social dynamics of modern cults and 'cultish' phenomenon. We learnt a lot from Amanda and hope you will too!LinksAmanda's WebsiteCultish: The Language of FanaticismSounds like a Cult Podcast

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where an anthropologist, Chris Kavanagh, and me, a psychologist, Matt Brown, we listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about now sometimes we have experts on to help us understand other gurus so chris tell us who do we have today yeah so we have amanda montel an author linguist and I think also has a show coming out relatively soon, but also a podcast host and author of Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. And more recently, or not, I think coming out this month, cultish the language of fanaticism.

And I actually came across Amanda's work through the Conspiracy Guys, where she did an interview, and there was so much interesting stuff there that I thought it would be good to have a discussion. And after listening to her podcast, that was confirmed. So neither of us have read your book yet, Amanda, which I'm very sorry about, mainly because it's not out yet.

But I still have pieced things together from your content and other interviews. And so I have a bunch of questions. But thanks for coming on. Oh, thanks so much for having me you know it's so funny writing about cults and speaking in public about cults you'd be amazed how many people then turn around and call you a guru like jokingly they'll call you a cult leader and i'll joke about the cult that i'm starting the cult of cult lovers it's just really cult section yeah moment you start talking about cults and cultishness that's been happening to us too a lot of people have accused us of being gurus and demanding that somebody decodes us it's not fair yeah there's a there's a an ongoing i i feel a bit bad saying it because you know it's not people's fault that they make the same joke that

other people make repeatedly but because our podcast was called decoding the gurus we frequently get mentioned you know who's going to decode the decoding the gurus podcast then right it's uh yeah like it is funny but i've not heard it so many times i'm just like it's interesting because it's sort of like when someone accuses you of being crazy like the second someone makes the accusation and you begin defending yourself you sound crazy and the second someone accuses you of being a cult leader you start enumerating the reasons why you're not and then you automatically sound like a cult leader but the the reasoning i mean the number one reason why i'm not i would would love, I actually, I don't have

enough energy to start a cult, but the main thing that makes me not a cult leader, and again, I'll just start to sound like one the second I start to think it, is that like, I'm very transparently just trying to get people to read my book. And that is where my power starts and finishes. It's like, just please consume my book. Even if you get it from the library, that's fine. And I don't care if you listen to me in any other capacity. I've had people when they're pointing out

that we have a long form podcast and we analyze things and we present our opinions and they sort of say, well, so what's the difference from the characters that you're looking at? And I think a crucial distinction, which is that I don't regard us as the key chain in preserving civilization or people with galactic insights that the world needs to know about.

Yeah, I don't claim to have any prophetic or even useful existential wisdom about it. Yeah, I don't claim to have any prophetic or even useful existential wisdom about anything. I just have the social science books that I write. And unfortunately, now we're in time when you have to promote your ideas on the internet and on social media. And when you start packaging really complex ideas into really small nuggets of Instagram wisdom, I can actually see how someone would start to interpret that as like the nuggets of a guru trying to package their wisdom into like a palatable and kind of scammy quote gram or something like that in hopes that people will want to sign up to learn how to access God or whatever. But really, I'm just out here

trying to tell people about my book. Well, actually, the fact that it's a slippery slope and shades of gray with this kind of thing is kind of a nice segue into your linguistic analysis, which I found really interesting. And I guess one of the things that really struck me is that it's really, it's a difficult thing, isn't it? Because just by using language, we're invoking these intuitive associations and making distinctions that could be used to defy things or conflate things in a unhelpful way. And I think, yeah, we're all sort of trapped in this world of language. Right. So, well, where to begin? I mean, I studied linguistics in school, and even long before that, I've always been interested in the way that a person talks and how that affects the way they move through the world and how they're perceived and how they cultivate a personality or an identity and how they access

power, most importantly. So my work in general is about the relationship between language and power. And, you know, you learn all these things as a linguistic student about the relationship between language and thought, ideas of linguistic determinism versus linguistic relativism, the idea that language does not determine your thoughts or how you think you can, but it does influence it. So you can conceive of ideas for which there is no language, but the language that you have access to definitely shapes the way you're going to perceive yourself and the world at large. And also language is the, it's the material that fabricates our existence, right? Like you,

language is the it's the material that fabricates our existence right like you you cannot disseminate ideology or build solidarity or anything like that um with without language and so um in a way language really does help create the world it doesn't just simply reflect it um now in in everyday life as we move through the world speaking you know we take language totally for granted because it's something that we grow up speaking and we use it very organically. And so we don't always stop to notice the ways that it's actually shaping the way that we might think or perceive the world. And normally, or, you know, us everyday English speakers, we tend to agree on a set of linguistic rules that shape our reality. it's actually kind of amazing and something that we take for granted

that when someone invokes a familiar word, you pretty much know what they mean. And sometimes things get lost in translation, but oftentimes they don't. More often than not, they don't. But what a pernicious guru or cult leader might do is to use language in these really diabolical or underhanded ways to twist your perception of

reality or to instill a problematic ideology or to divide us into an us and a them in order to, for them to gain power. And so in the book, I talk about how gurus from Jim Jones all the way to Jeff Bezos and social media gurus use a systematic number of language techniques to create a cultish community. I tend to hedge that word cult because there is no cut and dry, hard and fast definition for the word. It's really subjective and up to interpretation. And there are lots of reasons for that. But I talk about this wide spectrum of cultish groups in the book, and how cultish language imbues our everyday lives and how basically, we're all we're all susceptible to it. Oh, yeah, we're very much on board with that. When we talk about our gurus, we also talk about cultishness. And we deliberately use that word because, yeah, you know, there are extreme versions of Jim Jones type cults, but there's also more subtle ways of enforcing social control and encouraging that kind of group behavior.

I think Amanda, on the podcast, you have a quite amusing way of codifying that with the three categories that you put, the cultish things that you look at. The interesting thing for me is that so far, I think there's two episodes out where you've looked at SoulCycle groups and The Bachelor, right? And these are obviously not topics that traditionally I think people would think of in the realm of like cults or gurus, but there's clear overlaps there. And I think you're addressing topics that the kind of traditional researchers into cults and gurus wouldn't think to look at, which is great. And then secondly, that you do have a nuanced perspective of it, of, you know, looking at how it is for, say, normal consumers of The Bachelor versus the people that are on it

versus people that have become highly fixated on it. And I appreciated that nuance, but also that you're tracing just how widespread these kind of techniques are, that they're not just restricted to the classic cult sets. Yeah. So I launched this podcast a couple of weeks ago to kind of go hand in hand with the book, but bring a slightly more pop culture oriented, lighthearted perspective. And so the podcast is called Sounds Like a Cult. And it's about the modern day cults that we all follow from Soul Cycle and Peloton to Instagram spiritual gurus to fraternities and sororities, that sort of thing. And my co-host and I have described this cultish spectrum with these three categories. And every

week we pick a different culty group from the zeitgeist and discuss it, invite on guests, play little cheeky games to try to figure out whether that group is a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out. Because we're kind of approaching it from the angle, and I approach cults from this angle in the book as well, but more formally and through a specific language lens. You know, we're trying to communicate the idea that, like, again, none of us are immune to cultish influence. It imbues our everyday lives. And we as contemporary media consumers and just, like, people, you know, moving through our lives, we think of cults as the Jonestowns, the Heaven's Gates, the Wacos, the Mansons. But the word cult did not always have this incredibly dark and sinister undertone. It really wasn't until the late 60s and 70s,

the Manson family murders and the Jonestown massacre, that cult became this sort of international symbol of fear. Before then, cult was this word that was associated maybe with quacks and charlatans. And even before that, it was simply just another churchly classification like sect. And cults weren't really seen as some kind of priority or any kind of real danger. It wasn't really until those two cult tragedies gained such media attention

that we've come to associate cults with something really negative and really exploitative. But even scholars who study cults, many of them that I talk to for my book, cannot agree on one singular definition for what a cult is. You can discuss different criteria, charismatic leaders, financial, physical, emotional exploitation, isolation, us-them attitudes, and justify-the-means philosophy. But not all cults exhibit these qualities. Not all groups that could have or that have been or could be called cults exhibit these qualities. There are groups throughout history that have been called cults that really are no more dangerous or wacky than the better accepted religious and social groups.

So it's totally like a subjective word. And what I aim to do is sort of implicate us all. You know, we like to think, ironically, we do what people inside these cultish groups do. We divide us into an us and a them. We say, those are those brainwashed, mind-controlled, desperate, disturbed, intellectually deficient cult leaders. I'm nothing like them. I would never be susceptible to that type of influence. But my argument is that to some degree, we all are. And the proof is in the way that we use language every day.

That's just excellent. Well said. We sign up to this wholeheartedly, of course. You signed up to the cult. There's no escape from those languages there. But okay, so one thing about that that's really valuable is emphasizing that there's this spectrum and shades of gray. And it's quite easy for most people to identify someone like Alex Jones as a conspiracy theorist. But part of what we try to do as well is say, hey, this conspiratorial ideation can permeate a lot of rhetorical language, and it's not always so obvious. So I think that's

analogous to what you're doing. And I also very much agree that we have to be careful about creating these labels like guru or cult and then just throwing them around as a pejorative when you know of course but everybody's a little bit guru-esque and everyone gets into some cult so sorry I'll turn this comment into a question. No no but I mean it's a good point because it's like, what are we talking about specifically? The word cult does not provide enough information to know what's really on the table here. And actually, I just had a miscommunication today. I did another interview and the headline of the interview came out kind of provocative and it was posted online.

And there was all this hubbub. The word cult was in the headline, and there was all this hubbub surrounding like what I was really talking about. And that's what the word cult causes. It causes such strong emotional reactions because nobody wants to admit that they're a part of a cult because we all are projecting, you know, our own stuff onto that word. But it's like what are we what are we talking about specifically here like are we talking about just a a group that you perceive to be deviant but actually isn't really all that dangerous or are we talking about

um a group of conspiracy theorists that assemble online or are we talking are we talking about a religious group are we talking about a secular group like and what are the dangers involved it's just we need more information than just calling something a cult. And yeah, tossing around the label willy-nilly is unproductive and really triggering for people. Well, I think that's connected to one of the other points you make, which is that buzzwordy rhetorical language sort of infuses our everyday culture. And in a very basic sense, it's just normal. So the great example is the corporate buzzword in language, talking about transformation and disruption

and leveraging opportunities and so on. But as an academic, what I am exposed to most is similar kind of language in this field, where at the moment, the words resilience and engagement are so hot right now. If your research isn't engaged, then why the fuck not? Get your act together. It's so funny. You'll probably appreciate that.

Obviously, I talked to a lot of academics for the book and questions for almost all of them was like, what's a group that you're a part of that you notice, where you notice cultishness? Or are there any groups that exist in contemporary culture that you think are culty, even if they're not full-blown cults? And they all said academia. Because we're just, you know, we're all a member of a group that's at least a little bit culty and the buzzwords and stuff. The buzzwords are, you know, a sign that you're definitely in a get the fuck out level cult, let's say, or even a watch your back level cult. It's just a sign that, you know, you're a part of a group that is really trying to drum up solidarity and maybe a little bit of elitism and maybe a little bit of those us them attitudes.

But it's like, how extreme is it? And and in certain environments it's more extreme than others like i don't know if you're aware of of we work the startup we work and the documentary that came out about we work but that's the example that's an example of a company that really put the cult in company culture and there were just way there was way too much bullshit corporate speak. And it really seemed to have kind of a religious undertone. It was there to elicit strong emotional reactions without actually meaning anything that couldn't be said in plain English. And what that does is create a culture of conformity. When someone uses a glossary of these really charged buzzwords they create the sense that they have access to the sort of transcendent wisdom and we all love an exclusive

code language we love being able to speak a language that other people can't understand because it makes us feel special and when someone creates that impression that they have access to this exclusive language this exclusive knowledge that's compelling, but it also might be a red flag. That's really interesting, Amanda. It touches on a point I wanted to raise with you. So there are circumstances where having technical terminology can be necessary or beneficial, right? If you want to get into the weeds or you have like a particular expertise, but there's always the issue with unnecessary jargon. And most of the things you've talked about, you know, there's a spectrum there. But in the gurus that we look at,

we tend to see a tendency for them to reference technical terminology in a way that feels performative, that they're referencing physics or mathematics, and they might even be qualified in those areas, some of them are, but they're talking about extremely complex maths and physics to a general audience who has no ability to discern the validity of the references or even to get the references. And the way that Matt and me have considered it is that it creates the aura of authority and that you are a galaxy level genius that is deigning to invite the audience in. But is there other aspects to it or is there cases where that might be a legitimate thing where you listen to some scientist and they simply know too much about a topic and don't pitch it to the right level?

Like, how do you distinguish between those two? Yeah, that's a great question. So I talk a lot in the book about how a lot of history's most notorious cult leaders, including L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology and NXIVM's Keith Raniere, will co-opt technical terms from scientific fields, from psychology to neuroscience to astrophysics to linguistics, and give them sort of these new sort of metaphysical cult-specific meanings. And yes, and that's largely to create this impression that not only are you an expert in science, but you're tapped into a wisdom higher than science,

because you're sort of blending the language of, say, the DSM or some sort of really high-level neuroscience textbook with kind of metaphysical new age language, talk of vibrations and frequencies, which are already physics, that's already physics language, but talk of like the Akashic records and manifestation. When you combine those two, you create this sense that you're not just a scientist, you're not just sort of this woo-woo spiritual leader. You're both. And that is, yeah, that's something that the average onlooker, the average listener is not going to fact check. But interestingly, like a lot of these cultish leaders from history, like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven's Gate and L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology, they were really just like these

sci-fi buffs. They were these space fantasy fiction writers who um who took it way too far like they could have just aspired to be the next jr tolkien but instead they were like no you know what i think i'll i think i'll start a religion surrounding this um so yeah it's it's quite troubling but you were saying earlier about like in a lot of fields the technical jargon really is necessary to a point. And it totally is. And the difference there is that in a field, oh, any any given field. You know, my parents are research scientists. My mom's a cancer cell biologist from her field all the way to my boyfriend's a film composer to film composing there. There's going to be a pretty robust glossary of specific terms that other people aren't going to understand, but those terms are there to make communication easier, to make it more succinct

and more clear once you know what the language means. But cultish language does just the opposite. It's there to sort of serve as a red herring or to make what you're talking about less clear, more hazy, more nebulous. And when people don't understand exactly what the person they're listening to is talking about, we're highly averse to those levels of internal conflict. We don't like to feel that confused. And so then we feel the need to default to this authority figure to know what we need to do to make sense of the world and what we need to do to feel safe. So when someone is combining the metaphysical language with the science language, it creates

this sense that they're tapped into an authority much higher than science. Yeah, I think you're completely right. There's that distinction. You can spot with a bit of practice the expert who actually makes a complex thing simple versus someone who's obfuscating and bullshitting and making sort of a simple thing that probably appeals to people's original prejudices sound extremely sciencey or complicated. Yeah. I mean, it's the difference between like Stephen Hawking and Dr. Joe Dispenza. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's one of these like

dime a dozen quote unquote doctors. I think his credential is he's a chiropractor, but he's one of these sort of new agey holistic gurus who establishes himself as like a science authority. Terms like quantum physics and quantum mechanics and the cosmos, et cetera, as if he's some sort of Stephen Hawking. But Stephen Hawking is like explaining black holes to an average person in order to like make real science accessible. And this other quack is just trying to like exploit the fanciness of science to like make a buck. Yeah, exactly. They're somewhat similar on the surface,

but actually they're going in completely opposite directions, aren't they? The other thing I wanted to pick up on is, you mentioned L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, and along with Deepak Chopra, perhaps, these certainly are the OG prototypical gurus. And I think L. Ron Hubbard is the best example because as you said, he was more science fiction-y, but it was the 1950s. It was a different time, wasn't it? My, or our suspicion is that these days, gurus are more sophisticated themselves and also preaching to a more sophisticated audience. So they're probably a lot less obvious in,

like L. Ron Hubbard and his 1950s stuff seems quaint to modern sensibilities, but I guess we feel that there is a modern crop of people who are purportedly secular public intellectuals, but are actually doing something similar. Would you agree? Yeah, I mean, the trickiness of Scientology is that, first of all, they don't lead with their wackiest ideologies. They sort of pitch it as, you know, this like self-improvement thing and it's not religious.

It is secular. And increasingly they get you into their levels and they take your money and then sunk cost fallacy kicks in and you're like, I've already been here for 10 years and spent $200,000. Like, sure, I'll sign up for the idea that like the spirits of

ancient aliens are clogging my soul or whatever. But back then, you know, as recently as 30 years ago, like you couldn't Google Scientology and know that it was bullshit. But actually, so yeah, so I think maybe folks are slightly savvier now because you can google anything but also like no one really you're because of confirmation bias people just want to believe what they want to believe and so you can fact check something on google but if you are desperate to believe say dr joe dispenza you're gonna believe him no matter what you going to find a way. I think that we're in an era of particular cultishness right now, just because there's so much cultural tumult, at least in the U.S., and we have lost so much trust of our large institutions that are supposed to support us, like government and healthcare and organized

religion. We're really steering away from those things. And so we're turning toward more of these alternative groups. And now with the internet, like there's a cult for everyone and it might be online and you might only be dipping a toe into it or something past it on Instagram. It's not like you're moving to a rural commune necessarily. But yeah, I think like the types of cults that appeal to us probably change over time and change along with the culture. But yeah, you know, definitely in like the Heaven's Gate era in the 90s, let's say, I don't think Heaven's Gate would go over quite as well now. Because back then, well, I don't know. I mean, people, I don't know, people are pretty UFOs are like kind of real though. Cause I don't know if you've seen any

of the news, but yeah, but back then digital technology was kind of new and was providing people with this like sexy new set of answers to humanity's oldest problems about like why we're here and what happens after we die and what's the meaning of life or whatever and i think yeah like l ron hubbard's ideas seemed maybe a little like sexier and edgier back then and now it's just kind of like oh it's just dime a dozen sci-fi stuff but i don't know people are gonna believe what they want to believe for whatever reason but you know you touch on a couple of really interesting things. One is that these cultish groups do tend to set themselves up against the orthodoxy and institutions and so on. And as you

say, we're in an era now where there's a loss of trust in those institutions. So I think that's an important feature. The other thing you touched on is, I guess, that providing meaning. So for people who are into UFOs or they could be into alternative health, anti-vax and promoting whatever their inner energies, it's more than just the specific topic of UFOs and more than just the specific topic of, you know, is this particular vaccine a good idea or a bad idea? It's a whole meaning providing system, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Oh, sometimes it's not about the beliefs at all because sometimes the beliefs totally change. Like, for example, the People's Temple, Jonestown,

that started out as an integrationist church, but then the very name of the group and its ideologies and its ethics and its practices changed as its population changed because Jim Jones wanted to be able to tap into like, you know, young, you know, sparkly eyed college graduates, but he also wanted to be able to appeal to, say, you know, middle-aged Black women who were active in San Francisco's church scene. So yeah, that's another reason why a lot of the language of these groups is really vague. It leaves the space for their ideologies to change. But yeah, no, it's really more about the things that really constitute religion. I'm quoting the theologian Tara Isabella Burton here because I like the way that she defines religion. Scholars have been arguing for even longer about what defines religion than they have about what defines a cult. But she says that it's easier to define what a religion does than it is to define what a religion is.

And she says what it does is it provides people with ritual meaning community and identity. And that sometimes has nothing to do with God. You can have like a quote unquote secular religion, but yeah, like conspiracy theories and cults like that overlap. You know, the Venn diagram is really quite circular because what attracts people to the ideology is in part the beliefs themselves, you know, the Venn diagram is really quite circular because what attracts people to the ideology is in part the beliefs themselves. You know, people want to feel like they have access to unique wisdom and people want to feel a sense of closure and comfort during crisis. Brittany Times and conspiracy theories provide that. But they also provide this sense of community and ritual and identity. It's like you're a part of something greater than yourself. And you in a lot of a lot of times you'll meet like your closest confidants, even even just online, like in these forums and stuff you don't even need to meet in real life.

So, yeah, you're completely right. It's not just about the beliefs. Sometimes the beliefs themselves are like the least important thing. It's about everything else. I really got that when I spent a bit of time in the Flat Earth Facebook communities, just out of this sense of fascination. Because I was just really curious. I wanted to know why.

And the penny really dropped for me when I realized that the vast majority of members, not all of them, but most of them, are young Earth creationists. members, not all of them, but most of them, are young Earth creationists, and that the flat Earth and the rejection of astrophysics, basically, they were really rejecting this physical world, which didn't put humanity at the center. Yeah, that's a perfect example. And it's the one I had in mind. Actually, our forthcoming episode of my podcast, Like a Cult is about the Flat Earth community. Great. Nice. Great.

There's a, Amanda, actually, your comment about religious scholars love to battle over definitions of religion. And I'm active in the cognitive science of religion field. So I have a paper about the definition of religion. Yeah. So it is, I know I'm actually complaining about the fact that there will never be an answer to that and people should just carry on.

But in any case, following on from what both you and Matt highlighted, I think an important point to emphasize and that you do a good job of in your material is that when we look back at the cults you know from the 50s or 60s some of it might seem quaint or to have rather uh like obvious sci-fi motifs or that kind of thing but at the same time like throughout the throughout history recent and and long-term, that people often attracted into cultish communities, run the full gamut of society and include, like in the case in Japan of Aum Shinrikyo, most of the adherents were highly educated, well-off people. And I know that's not an isolated case so i know it was it was really important for me

in the book as soon as i um well i'll say this i went into the book believing what a lot of us believe that the people who join and wind up staying for a long time in these cultish groups are uh you know naive that they're desperate that, you know, they've got a screw loose up there. Like, how could you stay a member of Scientology or Heaven's Gate for so long? But what I found consistently talking to so many former followers is that they were really quite bright. I mean, they're, I'd say this in the book, but their fatal flaw across the board, if anything, it wasn't desperation or stupidity. It was the opposite. It was an overabundance of idealism. It was this, you know,

idealism to a fault. Um, I talked to Steven Hassan, who's a well-known cult scholar and he's an ex Mooney. So he was a member of the unification church and he used to recruit people to the unification church. So he knows a little something about the type of person that they would go for. And it was never someone who had, you know, psychological problems or was liable to break down quickly because, you know, being in a cult is hard work. And, you know, you want someone who's going to have their chin up and their eyes bright and who's going to stick it out even when things get really hard and when the things they were promised out of the gate maybe don't come true. You're going to want people who are very service-minded, who want to do something great for humanity. Cynics and people who are extremely selfish don't tend to join cults

because they don't care about a cult leader's promise that they have the solutions to humanity's most urgent problems. So, yeah, no, we rationalize to ourselves that the people who wind up in groups like that are really simpletons, but they're not at all. This is not to say that absolutely anyone is susceptible to joining a group like Heaven's Gate. I do not think this is the case. It is a good thing to be vigilant and to be skeptical and to be constantly questioning, but our prevailing wisdom that

the people who wind up in cultish groups are stupid, it's really false. Yeah, but there's a nice parallel there with the thing we've noticed among our gurus, which is that the people who are attracted to them are often curious people and thoughtful and wanting to, and the, the appealing part is the digging deep into interesting topics and going behind the sort of headlines and so on. So, and it's, um, Oh, definitely. I call them, I call them spiritual nerds, or maybe, uh, maybe you all for the gurus you talk about would have a different, a different label a different label. But there are people who are not afraid to explore in the less traveled corners of humanity, who are interested in ideas that might not be mainstream.

And that's not inherently bad. I talk toward the end of the book about how when some of history's finest minds, like Carl Sagan, were given personality tests, they scored really high in both conscientiousness and open-mindedness. So decades ago, when it was like really kooky to believe in extraterrestrial life, Carl Sagan was willing to entertain that idea, but he wasn't so open to every woo-woo concept that crossed his desk that he was willing to believe UFOs had already landed on the earth and were sending us signals via crop circles or whatever. Like it's, it's a good idea to have a balance of both open-mindedness and skepticism.

So yeah, Amanda, you, we, and the people that we look at, because we don't focus as much on the kind of conspiratoriality sphere or health and wellness area, we've noticed a thing that we term science hipsterism, that they, that it has all the normal features of hipsters, but it's focused on scientific theories or, you know, and so like at the minute, a perfect example would be the lab leak is super appealing for that reason, especially if you can claim that you were there, you know, ahead of the curve, but, or ivermectin, ivermectin also at the minute being one, but it's a tendency we've noted, yeah, related to science science and it can even be that like you may reach a conclusion which is pretty mainstream like that you uh you believe global warming is

happening but it's not for the various lines of evidence that normal people believe in it's because of these giant craters in the siberian tundra yaml craters that's that's the key piece of evidence that people don't know about and it's oh that is so funny science hipsters that's hilarious it's like your snobbery doesn't surround indie music it surrounds like indie scientific theories yeah and it's definitely like that you'd never have heard of this theorist but he's great. Yeah, I did want to ask as well, Amanda, before I forget, that one faculty that we see recurrent, as well as the in-group jargon,

or like the invention of new terminology and abbreviations, some of our gurus like really love that. But another thing that they demonstrate is this really quite impressive ability to use metaphorical language and to layer metaphors on top of metaphors and and also to conjure them up in a quite an impressive way and it's it leads i mean on one side it does seem to create a sort of pseudo profundity. But on another level, actually, Matthew Remsky pointed out, you know, that a lot of the ancient spiritual traditions

and whatnot have this very beautiful metaphorical language that is regarded as profound. So I wonder from a linguistic perspective, does a faculty with metaphor, is that something you commonly see? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it takes, I mean, I think there is something sort of inherently profound about a good metaphor, but artistically, not really like logically. As a writer i certainly can appreciate a profound or pseudo profound metaphor my writing is not the most metaphorical thing in the world i do have a couple zingers i do have a couple zingy metaphors in the book um just you know as as a creative writer you gotta sneak them in there um but yeah what's your what's your best one just before i let you skip that oh oh uh actually let me just like open up to the end of um of like

part one of my book because i i am thinking of one in particular that maybe it'll sound silly like when i read it out of context. I think it's okay. I have part of the reason I admire the guru ability with metaphors is whenever I try to make one, I invariably lose the thread of like two or three sentences in. I really, yeah. No, I think metaphors should be appreciated for their artistic beauty, but maybe not, you know, we don't need to put too much stake in them

because it's, it is a poetic device, right? Like it's, it's not a logic device. I mean, I think that metaphors can sometimes help us reorient our perspectives in really interesting ways, but yeah, no, I think you're right.. I talk more about euphemisms in the book, although I do talk about metaphors in the context of loaded language. For example, early in the book, I give an example surrounding the term old soul, which to an everyday English speaker is kind of a compliment, meaning someone who's wise beyond their years. But in this one Kundalini yoga cultish group, it was redefined as something really awful, a sort of a threat, like an old soul was someone who'd reincarnated life after life after life and could never get

it right. And so what you can do with metaphors is basically redefine them and emotionally charge them as a way to steer people's behavior. But they can also be really beautiful. behavior. But they can also be really beautiful. So the last part of the last paragraph of part one, this Heaven's Gate survivor named Frank Lifford, who went on to become a life coach, so like kind of a guru, but in a different way. He talked to me and he said, our innest guidance is the best possible navigation any of us has. He said, this doesn't mean we can't. Oh no. Then I said, this doesn't mean we can't look outward or upward for help through the chaos. But to me, Frank continued, a good coach is one who does not guide, but shines light on a person's deepest desires and blocks. And then I say, not a guide, not a prophet, not a guru telling you just what

to say, but a candle in the dimly lit library of existence the only dictionary you need is already open that was very good yeah that was worth it but but i have to say it's not as good as jordan peterson's giant crystalline structure bursting out of the ground i forget what happened after that we listen to a lot of the content. The kind of format of our show is playing clips and analyzing the techniques in them. The multi-layered metaphors

and their very, very loose connection to the question that was asked is, he's a master of that genre. There is an element, I guess guess probably with you as well Amanda and definitely with me and Matt that you you sort of come to respect the craftsmanship of the the cult figures or the gurus that you're looking at and it it's perhaps worrying but I I get a kind of enjoyment in some sense from you know a very very well done manipulative technique yeah no totally actually um i was watching a youtube video a few months ago um breaking down how expertly kellyanne conway dodges direct questions and it's of course infuriating like

spiritually to watch her do that but you've got to admire it like she is so good at dodging direct questions and uh so yeah no you can like admire the the craftspersonship to gender neutralize that word um but you can't uh but you shouldn't yeah it's not something to be admired ethically yeah yeah actually you, we're not primarily focused on the political angle of things. But just recently, you know, some of these things, I think you called this kind of thing thought terminating cliches. And you see it a lot in political discourse. And I was listening to a debate yesterday yesterday where some a conservative was demanding that um the

interlocutor choose between equality of opportunity or equality of outcome choose it just oh we love a false dilemma we love the false dilemma yes yes yeah so thought terminating cliches um are i wish i had coined this. This is a term that was coined by this psychologist in the early 60s named Robert J. Lifton. And it's something I talk about a lot in the book. And it's the sort of thing where once you know what it is, you won't be able to unhear it. But there are these stock expressions that are easily memorized, easily repeated, and they're aimed at shutting down like independent thinking or analysis or questioning um and they alleviate cognitive dissonance and so they're they're really effective and they're by no means exclusive to cultish groups they they you know they'll show up in right political debate shows or even just their everyday lives like uh everything happens for a reason is a perfect example of a thought-terminating cliche you'll hear all the time or or it is what it is or boys will be boys that sort of thing um and uh cultish leaders really take advantage of thought terminating cliches because whenever someone notices a wrinkle in

their belief system their ideology or their whatever they're preaching um you can just you know without a thought terminating cliche to shut that person up for a while. Yeah. And it's not entirely unrelated to those metaphorical techniques you were just talking about. One of the gurus, we look at Brett Weinstein, he's very much on the anti-vaxxer train at the minute, but he clearly uses some caveats, of course, deny being an anti-vaxxer, but he will compare vaccines to playing russian roulette with a loaded gun like very very evocative like but he's not he's not saying they're dangerous yeah a lot of his followers said no he's just you know just talking about the relative like you know the probabilities and whatnot involved and like i wonder if there's any other motivation in choosing the loaded gun as a metaphor but uh amanda that related to that

that's maybe an example of a technique that brett and many of the gurus also use which is this what we've called the use of strategic disclaimers, that will often, I wonder if this is less common amongst actual gurus and cult leaders, because in the content we look at, people want to appear as public intellectuals and science minded people. So they're very careful to add in maybe before they start that, you know, look, I don't have all the answers. I'm just discussing possibilities here. I, I, I'm like, uh, like Sam Harris will do that. Yes. Yes. Like the Sam Harris shuffle, her two-step shuffle. Some people have described, but I, I wonder, is that something unique to the people that we're looking at that they, you know, the kind of people that they want the appeal to that they will invoke these like they might they might talk for one hour're not claiming to know but and if you criticize them right saying this was not the vaccine podcast demonizing the safety of vaccines people say no no no did you not hear right that they said they're just discussing possibilities i've described it as almost like a magic spell

if you just say i I'm not doing X, that it works surprisingly well, that there'll be a large amount of people that say, you couldn't have done that because you said you're not. That actually, that sounds like a thought terminating cliche. There's definitely some overlap there for someone just to say, well, I don't have all the answers. Boom.

Like then the discussion cannot continue. And that's, that's actually a great example of a thought terminating cliche. I think that one in particular is probably used more by the pseudo intellectuals. Like, I don't know for sure, but I can definitely imagine Keith Raniere, the NXIVM guy saying something like that because NXIVM wasn't like a religious cult. It was more of like the self-actualization, like pseudo-intellectual type of group. So I can totally like hear him saying something like that. But generally like with gurus that I was looking at,

they very much do claim to have all the answers. So yeah, they're not going to disclaim as much, but actually something they will do is they'll present, you know, all of it will, they'll use all of these linguistic techniques and methods of manipulation and persuasion or whatever coercion conditioning. And then sometimes maybe they'll say like, but you make up your own mind, that sort of thing. But it's like, okay, well I'll make up the mind that you've conditioned, uh, now. So it's like, okay, well, I'll make up the mind that you've conditioned now. So it's like, I'm just, you know, you've created this echo chamber and like, you've

convinced me that I'm thinking for myself, but really I'm just a mirror for you. But yeah, that strategic disclaimer thing sounds like slightly removed from the sorts of leaders that I was looking at. But wow, that's super infuriating. So Amanda, you've done an amazing job of delineating all of these ways in which language can be weaponized. So I guess one of the logical things to kind of finish up with

is to get your advice for people to be able to detect and avoid this kind of finish up with is to get your advice for people to be able to detect and avoid this kind of thing. It's probably a very difficult question, but do you have any? Yeah. I mean, cultishness, obviously we've said this again and again, like it's not a binary. There's not like good cults and evil cults. There's good and bad in so many different groups. And I think it's important to check in with yourself and to think, you know, is the language that I'm hearing and that I'm using, is it working to halt my independent thinking and questioning while triggering a strong emotional response? Does it make me divide, you know, everyone who's on the

inside from everyone who's on the inside from everyone who's on the outside, just because I'm able to use this language and I know what it means and other people don't? Does it create a sense of elitism and superiority in you? Do the slogans and the buzzwords, like, do they really mean anything? Can you explain what they mean in plain English? And if, you know, you answer all of those questions as like, oh, wait, actually, yes, yes, it does. Oh, no, it doesn't. You can just like check off the boxes and realize, huh, maybe the group I'm in is a little too cultic for comfort. At the end of the day, and Stephen Hassan told me this in one of my very early interviews for Cultish, anything legitimate will stand up to scrutiny. And if you can't express doubt in any way,

if you can't ask questions, if you can't dabble casually in the group that you're affiliated with, and if you're using too much of the specialized language, and if the thought-terminating cliches and loaded language are working too well on you to sort of morally divorce yourself from the rest of the world, then yeah, those are some signs that it might be time to tap out. Yeah. I really like that advice. I think a few of the things you mentioned kind of point to that interface between our intellectual selves and our emotional selves. And when those purportedly intellectual arguments are resonating with this at that gut kind of level, then that's probably a good point to step back a little bit and aim

for a little bit of dispassion and analysis and see whether it still holds up. Definitely. And I by no means, you know, want to encourage people to disengage from any alternative group that they might be affiliated with. You know, I think we as human beings, we're communal by nature. In a way, we're kind of like irrational and spiritual by nature. And I think it's healthy to engage in community rituals with other people doing the same, to engage in a slogan or a mantra or a buzzword here and there. But just to have that, that, you know, vigilant twinkle in your eye or that tingle in the back of your brain that tells you that there's some amount of make-believe here and that there needs to be a special time and place

to engage in those rituals and a time and place to reconnect with reality. I think that that's really important. And a lot of the ex-cult members that I talked to for the book, cult survivors, they told me that, you know, their solution really after having, oh, because if you've been a member of one cultish group, odds are you're going to join another and that's a whole other conversation. It's not unlike abusive relationships, really. I talk about that in the book too but same with conspiracy theories of course of course yeah but something that they said is like maybe the solution is to be a member of a whole bunch of cultish groups so you're not putting all of your eggs in one basket you're sort of like diversifying your spiritual and social portfolio

if you will the point about ritual psychology you, kind of resonating with people and not necessarily being a bad thing is music to my ears because my research work focuses on the kind of cognitive impacts of rituals. And like you say, you find them everywhere in all kinds of organizations and sports teams and so on. yeah they they can have positive and negative effects like you know born to a group goo it can be good just depends on the nature of the group but i kind of related question to that that i wanted to ask amanda before i forget them we i know you've been very generous with your time so trying not to keep you much longer but the the conspirituality guys that you spoke to,

they've noticed and their whole show, right. It's kind of named around this somewhat intriguing overlap between the health and wellness years and the kind of MAGA QAnon or a kind of reactionary right wing conspiratorial politics, which has sort of crept in. We've discussed how that might link back to earlier movements and not be entirely novel. But I'm just wondering, from your perspective, do you see in that overlap or any of the other political overlaps in the communities that you look at? Anything novel that is specific to the day? Or is it more related to, you know, technological change and web 2.0? Oh, that's a good question. Because a lot of it is really just like recycled doomsday kind of evangelical derived ideology and rhetoric, like even the new age stuff,

they'll talk about being born in trauma, but that's very similar to being born in sin. And they'll talk about a great awakening, but that's very similar to a rapture or a second coming. Um, so yeah, a lot, a lot of it is sort of recycled doomsday evangelical derived stuff. Um, is there anything brand spanking new um that's that's a good question i mean i think some of the like feminist conspiritualist circles feel new ish i mean there have always been you know sacred spaces for women and stuff but i think what's interesting is like some of the like divine goddess woo woo groups that have overlapped with pastel q anon and such and conspiratorial ideology um and how that has overlapped with feminist ideology and feminist rhetoric or certain like

interpretations of feminist rhetoric just the ways that like social justice and conspiracy theories and new age metaphysics have all conglomerated is um that feels kind of of the moment to me look i think um in terms of the political dimension i'd personally say that those linguistic tricks are across the political divide you can see them operating in woke communities and you can see them happening at the mega end as well oh completely oh i actually have a piece coming out soon about the like new age dialect that has taken over our culture how you'll hear talk of frequencies vibrations paradigm shifts actualization and cetera, pervading not just your woo-woo wellness influencers and your SoulCycle studios, but your startups, your hipster mega churches,

people just talk about their general life in terms of like, oh, my vibration has really upgraded since last year, blah, blah, blah. Like it really says something about how woo woo our culture at large has become in the wake of all this tumult. Um, and that's culty in a way that I think can be a little bit dangerous because two people could be using the exact same set of vocabulary and, and be talking about like completely different things, um, in a way that i think can be um a little scary but but yeah certainly like the internet and instagram and hashtags and the way that language evolves so quickly now is also kind of new but really just i sometimes joke that like

the algorithm the algorithm is the ultimate cult leader um because like internet algorithms are are designed to keep us using certain technology and social media platforms for longer. And so they'll send us down rabbit holes, um, you know, feeding us like more and more extreme versions of what we already want to believe. Um, and, and language can be kind of a gateway. Oh, absolutely. It's such a complex and fast changing environment at the moment.

I mean, you could pick out so many things, but just one example is the way that corporate buzzword-y language has embraced a lot of the woke, self-actualizing language as well. As a way to sort of mask that nothing about the corporation might be changing in terms of inclusion or whatever, or ethics or any of that, but now they're using the word holistic and now they're using the word. But now they're using the word holistic and now they're using the word organic and now they're using the term actualization.

And so it's kind of like a red herring. Yeah, the Amazon like kind of death box. It's probably the most obvious recent example of that. But yeah, I don't think it was labeled the death box, but that's what it looked like. So Amanda, like I said, you've been extremely generous with your time. And I think Matt and me could continue just to use up your phone battery and steal your knowledge. But we should probably let you go.

So before that, though, is there anything in the book or in your work that you think is important that we haven't touched on? And if not, or even if so, I believe that you have a new TV series maybe coming out as well as the podcast. Is that correct? Yeah, well, you know, as these Hollywood things go, my first book is in development at FX. So my first book was about language and gender, and I'm writing a show inspired by my first book about a young language genius

using her hyperpolyglot superpowers and her magical abilities to code switch and her freakish knowledge of etymologies and slang and that sort of thing to um to dethrone powerful people and access spaces and so yeah that's a show that i'm that i'm currently developing as uh to use a hollywood buzzword um which basically just means like i'm writing it and rewriting it and trying to figure out if it's actually going to ever be on TV. But that's a very exciting thing. Yeah, I love that because, you know, way, way back at the start of this, you were talking about the, you know, in-group terminology serving as this marker for the group that you belong to.

for the group that you belong to. And I couldn't help but thinking that, you know, in a very obvious way, accents function in that way, you know, just in normal everyday life. And I once met someone in London at a party who, when I met them, spoke in an English accent and then midway through the conversation switched to a Belfast accent. And it turned out they were originally from Belfast but had developed this ability to turn off their accent and it struck me as like inherently wrong and you know deeply and I became immediately suspicious of that person because they had that facility so your character that you described sounds like you know very interesting but also a monster yeah no totally she's like diabolical in this very sort of harmless way you know like again like we totally take language for granted it's like sticks and stones how much harm can language do but yeah

it's like so viscerally disturbing when someone uh you know someone's whole like your whole perception of somebody changes when they flip a switch like that. So yes, exactly. That's a type of Machiavellian superpower that I want her to have. It's really underrated. Your book seems fascinating. Really enjoyed listening to you on other podcasts.

And yeah, thanks so much for coming on. It's yeah, really just, yeah, fantastic stuff. Thank you so much for having me. Really, really enjoyed this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're terrible at serving.

What's the word? Signing off, signing off. We just sort of tail off and it kind of works fine. Yeah. So we'll edit it together. It will sound nice. So thanks for listening everybody and bye bye. Bye.

. you