Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Neurolinguistic Programming

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

What if the right words could rewire your brain… or at least make you feel like they did? This week, Amanda is joined by journalists and hosts of the podcast Mind Games,  Alice Hines (@alicehines_) and Zoë Lescaze (@zoelescaze), to unpack the cult of neurolinguistic programming, the self-improvement framework that promises transformation through language, mindset shifts, and a little bit of psychological sleight of hand. They dig into how NLP showed up inside NXIVM and explore why these techniques can feel genuinely helpful in everyday life, and how the line between self-help and manipulation often comes down to who’s in charge. Amanda even tries an NLP session herself, which is equal parts intriguing and slightly unsettling and begs the question: is NLP a useful set of tools… or a very persuasive vibe? Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia.  Come see Sounds Like A Cult LIVE at The Bell House in New York on April 21st! Tickets at amandamontell.com/events Thank you to our sponsors! To Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, Head to ⁠⁠https://www.squarespace.com/CULT Tear. Pour. Live More. Go to https://LIQUIDIV.COM and get 20% off your first purchase with code CULT at checkout. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at https://BollAndBranch.com/slac with code slac.  Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform to help entrepreneurs stand out and succeed online. I am a longtime Squarespace user. Sounds like a cult.com is a Squarespace website. I'm not that techie, but I do not struggle with making a website that I think looks really nice. And that's thanks to Squarespace's features, including their design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry-leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology. Squarespace payments also makes it incredibly simple to manage.

all your payments in one place, and sellers can also sync their product catalog directly with social media platforms to reach more customers. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Amanda, I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to imagine being on the ski slope wiping out in front of the popular girl. Where do you feel that in your body? It's like this rumble of heat within the gut.

So I want you to see her standing above you and feel that sort of grotesque rumbling heat of embarrassment and just how awful it is. And I want you to turn the volume on that feeling up to 11. Let it overwhelm you and now shrink it down. Banish it. Lizzie is a flamingo. Now, go back to the embarrassment. Feel the rumble again. It's horrible. You're so embarrassed. Now shrink it down again. Lizzie's on the horizon, the side of a postage stamp. Concert violins come in and everything is tinted green. How do you feel about falling right now? I think I might be over the Lizzie memory. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel, author of the book's Wordslet, Cultish, and the

age of magical overthinking all out now in paperback. Every week on the show, we discuss a different subculture or celebrity or brand that puts the cult in culture, from Taylor Swift to essential oils to the manosphere. To try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch are back or a get the fuck out. Because the thing is, cultishness these days isn't a binary. There is a cult continuum. For example, I don't know, fan fiction, or people who might just shop at IKEA a little

bit too much usually don't end up in the territory of abuse, death, and destruction. But some modern day groups, like conversion therapy believers or MAGA youth influencers, can be far more dangerous and manipulative and indeed culty than they may appear. Today's topic, some may argue, is incredibly persuasive, perhaps even relying on a particularly programmable audience. Culties, today, we are slipping mind and body into the ever so questionable world of neural linguistic programming. NLP, for short. If you clicked on this episode with absolutely no idea what the heck we're talking about, that reflects well on you. It is understandable.

This is a cult predicated on confusing its potential recruits. and it's loyalists. But it is deeply fascinating and more relevant to your life than you might think. And I am honored to have two extremely special expert guests joining me later today who are going to spill some flavor aid and help us understand.

But first, a little background, a little context. What is NLP? Who invented this unfortunate acronym? And why might it be considered a cult? NLP was born in the 1970s. Of course, classic cult era, to a couple A creepy old little cult daddies named Richard Bandler and John Grinder, a writer and a linguist.

They are still alive, by the way. They wrote this seminal book on the practice of neurolinguistic programming called The Structure of Magic. Not to be confused with the age of magical overthinking out now in paperback. According to its founders, Bandler, and Grinder, NLP is a set of techniques that reprogram the way we behave, think, and communicate. It was a kind of anti-therapy, invented to hack your brain by modeling the patterns of successful people and replicating them in every area of your life. Confidence, motivation, phobias, bad habits. NLP was like an early wellness bro invention, promised as a kind of magic bullet to cure your whole life.

Per Bandler and Grindr, it was also capable of healing your allergies. Myopia, okay, Jesus curing the blind, and the common cold. These sort of kitchen sink approach to healing claims are, of course, a classic cult recruitment tactic, because if you can promise a solution to every type of problem a person might walk in with, no one ever really runs out of reasons to stay. Now, before you assume this NLP stuff is just a bunch of malarkey that has nothing to do with you, let me be clear, most of us have probably already engaged with NLP to some degree, whether we know it or not.

Since the 1970s, it really embedded itself into a lot of different pockets of our culture, from the self-help quotes that your aunt might share on Facebook with a sunrise graphic to the optimize your life. I woke up at 4 a.m. and now I'm unstoppable TikToks. For my manifestation girlies. NLP is the foundation underlying so many Pinterest vision boards, journaling practices. One of the many, many, many reasons why corporate culture, the self-help business and wellness

all have this air of do the system perfectly and you will find success and happiness and hotness, and if you don't, well, it's not the systems fault, is because of the manipulative and mystical nature of NLP, which has snuck its way into so many of these industries over the years. Since the 1970s, NLP has spread into life coaching, corporate training, education, law, medicine, and even psychotherapy. But the wild thing is, is that there is no universally agreed upon definition of NLP. There is no regulatory body, no standardized certification, required to call yourself a practitioner, even an expert. And that's not an oversight.

It's actually pretty structurally convenient because while we think of a cult as having these rigid hierarchies and one easily identifiable charismatic leader in some high control systems, the absence of a fixed standard means whoever is in charge of their own mini subcult gets to start their own thing and move the goalposts whenever they want. NLP can mean whatever a practitioner needs it to mean for them specifically in that moment, which can make it pretty impossible to challenge and tough to leave because you're never quite finished improving. Now it is probably no surprise for you to learn that NLP is largely considered a pseudoscience. Some therapists actually do incorporate it, but most scientists and

medical professionals do not regard it as compatible with the scientific method. The only evidence in its favor is personal testimonials. Testimonials, which are so compelling and even necessary for a lot of religious cult recruitment in particular and for an LP recruitment. Now, speaking of science and religion, remember that book I mentioned that kind of helps start the whole thing, the structure of magic? I want to linger on that for a second because it is actually kind of a perfect encapsulation of NLP's entire energy.

Take mystical thinking, dress it in scientific-sounding language, neuro-linguistic programming, and suddenly magic feels like a methodology. Conflating metaphysics with science is an age-old trick in the cult handbook because it's how you get people to feel like they're being rational and enlightened at the same time.

So brings us to the ultimate question. Is NLP just kind of a cheeky little harmless griff or is it really hurting people? In a way that's a lot darker than the palette of those Pinterest vision boards. That's exactly what we're here to figure out, and to help us do it, we have two incredible guests joining us, Zoe Lascaz and Alice Hines, who are seasoned journalists and the host of a new podcast called Mind Games,

an investigation that traces NLP from its origins at a new age compound in California in the 70s to Fortune 500 boardrooms, the U.S. Army, and yes, even an infamous sex cult. I am such a fan of these two. I have been a longtime follower of Alice Hines' work. She has blown the lid off so many culty subcultures from core power yoga to the Twin Flames universe.

She did so much important work on that particular cult. NLP is just the latest, and Zoe and Alice didn't just report on it from a safe distance. They tested the techniques on themselves, and in this interview, they even tested them on. me. Without further ado, here is our juicy, juicy discuss on the cult of neurolinguistic programming with Alice and Zoe. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform to help entrepreneurs stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just starting out

or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to build a beautiful website that represents you and your content, connect with your audience, and sell absolutely anything from products to content to your valuable time. I am a longtime Squarespace user. Sounds like a cult.com is a Squarespace website. It was set up in minutes. I'm not that techie, but I do not struggle with making a website that I think looks really nice. And that's thanks to Squarespace's features, including their design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to help you build the website of your dreams and unlock unbreakable creativity. Squarespace payments also makes it incredibly simple to manage all

your payments in one place. And very usefully, you can use Squarespace to connect all of your social media accounts to your website as icons, direct links, or embedded feeds. And sellers can also sync their product catalog directly with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to reach more customers

and reduce the number of steps necessary to make a purchase. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey everybody. My name is Bob the Drag. And I'm on an exchange.

And we are the host of sibling rivalry. This is the podcast for two best friends Gab, Talk, Smack, and have a lot of fun with our black queer selves. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we are family. So we talk about everything, honey, from why we don't like hugs to Black Lives Matter, to interracial dating, to other things, right, Bob? Yes, and it gets messy, and we are not afraid to be wrong. So please join us over here. has still been rivalry available anywhere you get your podcast. You can listen and subscribe for free.

For free, honey. Holy shit. Welcome to you both. It sounds like a cult. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Amanda. Longtime fan, as you know, could you both introduce yourself in your work to our listeners? Yes, absolutely. I'm Alice Hines. I am a reporter, a documentary producer, and I also did some on-camera work for Vice News. I have a new podcast series out with my great friend Zoe. And it's called Mind Games. And it's about mind games as they may have been used on you or as you could use potentially on other people. So it's a psychology podcast. Hi, I'm Zoe Lascos. I'm a journalist.

I write about a lot of things, but often the way art and science intersect and that can take a lot of shapes. But my first book was about how humans have imagined prehistoric animals in their world, which might not sound relevant to our podcast. But actually, I was thinking about it. And the book is basically how, like, everyone knows what a dinosaur looks like now. Like, every kid can draw a T-Rex. But, like, how? How do we know that? And so I guess you could say I'm interested in these things that sort of lurk in plain sight, but bear further examination, like our knowledge of prehistory. And in this case, neurolinguistic programming, which is kind of the most famous alt-psychology form of therapy you've never heard of. A human after my own heart, I think everything comes back to dinosaurs.

What's your favorite dinosaur? Ooh, that's tough. My favorite dinosaur isn't actually a dinosaur. I really like the whole family of pterosaurs, which I think most people would accept that answer. I just want to clarify before the paleo nerds get on my case. They're a tough crowd. Incredible. Mine is, and correct my pronunciation, if I'm getting it wrong, but a parasor. Oralophis. Oh my God. I think you just out paleo nerd at me. Wait, tell us about these guys. They're omnivores. And they have like a very cool hollow crown, all the better for projecting whales far and wide, my dear. Okay, Amanda, I have a huge crush on you. And if I have a huge crush on you, I think like every paleo-inclined listener is like actually in love with you right now. So that was a flex. Good job. Wait. Oh my God. I'm sweating. Actually, I'm sweating. I turned up the heat too high my home.

Great. So we're going to transition now into the conversation at hand. And I hope it devolves into flirting, as cult dynamics often do. And that is the cult of neurolinguistic programming NLP out of the gate. I was wondering if each of you could describe some of the cultiest experiences you had in your reporting on this topic. Places you visited, stories you heard, things you saw. Like we want the culty, juicy nightmare stuff. Okay. Well, I guess I just want to jump in quickly. make the disclaimer that I don't think NLP is a cult, only because it is used in so many ways. Sorry, sorry. Whoops. Did we mislead you? No, it has been used by a lot of cults. But I just want to say, NLP is used by so many different people for so many different things,

like for everything from curing nail biting to curing cancer to getting women into bed. Like, it's so diffuse and generalized that it's hard to just distill it into one thing and that thing is a cult. That said, I'm going to let Alice talk about the cultiest aspects she's encountered because she has some great stories. The cultiest aspect that I encountered when reporting this podcast was definitely the nexium connection. I have been fascinated by nexium like so many other people. I mean, for all the reasons that we all know. But what never was clear to me was where the nexium methods came from. There's a whole self-improvement, dogma and doctrine that they presented as their

own and Keith Ranieri specifically presented as something he had come up with, but in a lot of cases, he was repurposing other methods. One of them was neurolinguistic programming. And so as part of the podcast, I interviewed Nancy Salzman, who was the co-founder of the company that became Nexium. And she told me about her training in neurolinguistic programming, what aspects of neurolinguistic programming she brought to Keith Renary and how he used them in ways that she says she could never have predicted and we're not what she thought she was bringing to him. So she says he misused her work. Fascinating. So Zoe, you mentioned you don't think neurolinguistic programming is a cult. What if I told you that on this podcast, we've called plant parents a cult, essential oils a cult,

Swiftie's a cult. The question is not, is it a cult? Because like, everything is. It's more, is it a live your life, a watcherbacker, get the fuck out. Right. What kind of cult is it? Yeah, we can take into that for sure. You have an expansive definition of cult on this podcast. Expensive is generous. Yes. We're just here to identify how cult-ish thinking and influence shows up in places you might not think to look. But you're absolutely right that NLP is this tool ideology. It's very diffuse. It's not this like one organized group with a leader at the helm. Although I guess we'll figure out whether or not that's even true. And I'm wondering, Alice, if you could talk about the spectrum of NLP like Nancy Sol. claims to have used it in ways that were net positive, that were then bastardized by the evil cult leader, Keith Reneer. Is there a helpful good version of NLP or is it doomed to be weaponized by these nefarious, pernicious figures? That's such a good question and I think the answer is both. I think that there is a helpful aspect to NLP and we learned in our reporting that it's helped a ton of people. We even used it on some of our own problems and some of our friends' problems in the podcast just to test it out. And with honestly kind of decent results, is it also destined to be weaponized by nefarious actors? History is proven that that's the case. So yeah, it's both. And I think with a lot of these groups who people often describe as cults, there is always so.

something positive about it. I mean, even nexium, like, there has to be some beneficial self-improvement aspect or people would never get in the door. So I think that's often true. I think that's a case of NLP. I even think that's a case of nexium. And I think when I say that it's so diffuse, so it's not a cult, in a way, that is also what makes it open to abuse by would-be cult leaders. It's because it is so decentralized. There is no oversight. There's no licensing body that reviews the ways in which people are using NLP and takes their license away if they're bad actors. You can just shell out a few thousand dollars, go to a seminar, get trained in NLP, and then train other people. So that means it can take on a lot of different forms. And so, yes, they're very nefarious forms of NLP out there for

sure. Totally. Yeah, I guess grading it on the curve of this podcast's interpretation of cults, I would align it more with the self-help industry, Pilates, Maybe even, I don't know, I was going to say chiropractic, but there are sort of governing bodies of chiropractic, maybe QAnon, you know, like it is this kind of like disorganized cult that doesn't necessarily mean it's innocent. But I want to talk about the key figures, if not the cult leaders that are on a pulpit Jim Jones style, those being NLP's two founding figures, Richard Bandler and John Grinder. In your reporting, I'm wondering what classic cult leader type behaviors did you identify in each of these guys? And at this point in NLP's journey, would you say that there are certain

cult leader-esque figures? You want to know if there's charismatic, megalomaniac type personas that are part of NLP or were part of it in its insipions? I mean, I think the answer is definitely. Like one of the things that jumps out to me about the Keith Reniery backstory, for instance, are these sort of wild, very easily fact-checkable claims he made about himself, you know, sort of having this insane IQ and being a prodigious martial artist or a concert pianist or, you know, like these kind of exaggerated talents. And that is something we noticed about Richard Bandler. He didn't necessarily start all these stories about himself. And I should, you know, insert a disclaimer that he denies a lot of these characterizations. But there are a There are all these stories swirling around him. Like, he owned a topless bar when he was 16. He got a black belt in karate. He was involved in organized crime. I mean, one guy told me that Richard Bandler can hear radar.

So that's kind of a crazy and maybe not so useful superpower. Wait, I'm sorry, how do you respond when someone tells you that? Are you just like, oh, need? Or are you like, no? Yeah, well, he sort of, it was weird. This guy had drank the Kool-Aid because he led with, yeah, I was skeptical at first, too, but then I looked it up and this is a real thing. And I was like, what?

And then I looked it up and I don't think that's a real thing. That kind of reminds me of NLP very much presents itself as a science and it has this affect of being this combination of computer programming and linguistics. And there are definitely some linguistics and legitimate psychology within it. But I do think it's interesting when it does tend to veer into the supernatural and it happens occasionally. James Marino, who was a good friend of Richard Bandler in the 80s and ultimately accused him of having murdered someone, which became part of this sensationalist trial that we go into in our podcast. James Marino was an NLP trainer and he claimed he could telekinetically control streetlights with NLP. So this is another

claim where it kind of gets beyond the realm of science to like, is it magic? And NLP plays on that. There was an early seminal text of an NLP called the structure of magic. And so, this idea of is it magic, is it science, what is placebo, what is real, this is what NLP is all about. Totally. And like the placebo is real. I love the placebo effect. Feed me a placebo pill all day long. But please God let the person feeding it to me not be a power hungry, annoying man. You know what I'm saying? Okay, but you did say that you derived some value from NLP. You did apply NLP to your own lives, you put it to the test, you joined the cult temporarily, one might say, can you talk about that experience, what it felt like? Did it resemble cult activity in any way to

you? I hypnotized Zoe's mom to help her get over her fear of biking. So I read a lot of the NLP texts and I watched a lot of videos online. Tony Robbins has a phobia cure. Richard Bandler has a phobia cure. A lot of it boils down to techniques that involve manipulating the sensory qualities of memories in order to change your emotional reaction to stimulus. So Zoe's mom was a fearless bike rider as a young person. By the way, she volunteered herself for this. I was going to say, like, this sounds mean. Yeah. Yeah. This was not covert. I had been working on this podcast with Alice for six months or so and talking about NLP. And eventually one day, she was like, Do you think that could help me?

Well, it's so crazy that you say that because, like, immediately when we're, like, analyzing NLP from a distance, I'm like, this is quackery, what tomfoolery, I would never. But the second you start saying, like, overcome a phobia, do it with the girlies, like, your daughter will do it to you. I'm like, wait, do it to me. Like, can you help you get over my phobia of podcast Apple reviews? I'll try anything. Well, I think I got it.

Amanda, don't read them. Oh, okay. Kid. Okay, thank you so much. Don. Helped me finally. Okay, so we're with consent hypnotizing Zoe's mother. That's right.

I also ripped some techniques off of guided meditations that I use, which are not branded as an LP or hypnosis, but which I believe to be very similar techniques to hypnosis after having learned about the structure of hypnosis. And, yeah, I basically interviewed Zoe's mom about some of the reasons why she had this phobia and developed like a guided meditation that I first did for her in person and then recorded for her. And then we went out to Governor's Island one day and did some sessions and actually biked. And I think it worked decently well. I think what we don't know is how well it would have worked just practicing biking.

Practicing getting over something that you're afraid of also works by doing it. This is something that doesn't necessarily need hypnosis or NLP to be effective. So was it both of those things that contributed? How much was it the NLP? We really don't know the answer to that. But she is biking a lot more now and I think is doing a lot better. Yeah, I will say that Alice is right practicing something that makes you nervous. Yes, eventually it will become less scary.

But I personally tried to get my mom to practice, occasionally with the help of a cocktail or two, which I guess in retrospect was ill-advised. I was like, come on, it'll just take the edge off. Let's hop on a bike, mom. No, there's not that much traffic. Don't worry about it. Anyway, that was not productive. So I think the techniques that Alice used actually were really helpful because the way she

ends up explaining it is that they sort of distance you from your fear. Like Alice was saying, these techniques help you kind of dissociate or detach from your memories and your triggers and your fear responses. So she was able to look at her fear, kind of like it was over there on the other side of the room and wasn't just this full body, my fear is me, synonymous, kind of weird one and the same experience of it. She was like, oh, yeah, that's over there and I can work on it. So it wasn't an instant fix, but it gave her the distance she needed to continue building on that. And I will say that some of the techniques at NLP calls by

different names, for instance, like Swish is one of the techniques that they've branded. They are sometimes very similar to things in cognitive behavioral therapy. Like there is a technique from CBT that's called imagery rescripting where you rewrite your memories and change certain sensory details of those memories in order to change how you feel about a memory. And NLP does the same thing. They call it something else. So the question of how much of NLP is you use the word quackery, Amanda, I think there's an element of it that absolutely is. For instance, I mean, there's been crazy claims. Like there was a post we found during COVID where someone was like, NLP cures COVID. Obviously, that's not true. But there are elements of this that do have evidence behind them and do

probably work for a lot of people. So I think it's a mix. Yeah. I mean, the way that you describe it, it reminds me so very much of something like essential oils, which like in a vacuum, great. Yeah, I'll dab some lavender oil on my pulse points and like make the room smell calming. And yes, there is evidence to suggest that aromatherapy has benefits or whatever. But now when somebody who is profit-driven and power-hungry is a, catastrophizing the fears of their vulnerable customers, followers, whoever they are, and then selling them an expensive, overcomplicated solution to those catastrophized problems, they probably could have sought out on their own through like much simpler, more down-to-earth means.

That's, I think, when you know you're getting into something slightly too cultish for comfort. And you mentioned the term swishing, which is just like a rebrand of something else that already exists and is perhaps more responsibly used by accredited therapist. Imagery rescripting. Yes. One of the signs of cultishness that I love to focus on is the development of specialized, loaded language that can be used to separate people into an us versus them to identify, you know, those who are really committed and loyal versus troublemakers to halt critical thinking.

And there is such a robust vocabulary of special terms in NLP, anchoring, modeling, reprogramming, rapport building. In your research, did you find that this jargon functions at all like Coltsby? I mean, honestly, those phrases you just used are the tip of the iceberg. Those are the most legible and intuitively understood phrases. Like, okay, anchoring. What about six-step reframing? I mean, there's just these extremely convoluted terms that I think serve to make people feel like specialists who are not necessarily experts. It serves to dress up these ideas and make them not only seem new, but make them seem super sophisticated and technical and advanced. And like you, the person who just walked into an NLP seminar, gosh, you don't know what a six-step reframe is. So you better

listen up. It puts certain people in a position of power where everyone has to look to them for the answers. And that's how gurus get created. It's like I have the solutions and you don't know anything. I also think there's a secondary effect of the jargon as well, which is it can be so dense and so boring that it literally puts people half asleep where they are more susceptible to being hypnotized. These books are almost unreadable. Yeah. Are you familiar with Scientology's culty linguistic method of word clearing? Explain it. I think I've read about it, but word clearing, that's an interesting combination. Yeah. So so much of NLP also reminds me of certain techniques used by Scientology, particularly the conflation of the mystical and the pseudoscientific.

But word clearing is this technique that a former Scientologist spelled out for me that also preys on the stamina of followers to stick with something super boring and tedious. So essentially, if a follower isn't a course reading a Scientology text, it's really fucking boring, and they demonstrate any sign of fatigue or not paying attention or not. understanding what they're reading. It could be something as simple as a yawn, then a higher up in the room will bring them a Scientology-approved dictionary and make them look up the word that they yawned at in this dictionary and read that definition. And if they continue to like seem tired while reading that definition, then they might have to look up another word within that

definition in the dictionary, which can create this dreaded word chain as it's called, that can keep you in that course paying money for hours and hours and hours. And it's all just a demonstration of loyalty and confusion and gaslighting. People underestimate the power of boringness as a cult tactic. Boringness is super powerful. And confusion is extremely powerful. To me, that's been actually one of the main takeaways that I learned learning about hypnosis and about NLP.

confusion, deliberately ambiguous language, language that kind of makes your eyes glaze over and you start to go daydreaming, that can be used on purpose. And the point is not to distance you from what's being said. It's actually to create an opening of influence outside of the awareness of your conscious mind. And honestly, that's one of the most brilliant parts of NLP because I think that this actually really works. And this observation of the NLP creators that this type of language has this effect on people, I mean, I think it's one of the more brilliant. and also more dangerous aspects of NLP. Yeah, like when I interviewed Ross Jeffries, the founder of the pickup artistry movement, who learned all of his tricks from NLP,

he spoke a lot about creating moments of confusion purposefully where you can quote-unquote get leverage in someone's unconscious mind. And he demonstrated throughout our interview, he was using these techniques. So I was asking him a question, and then he kind of interrupted me and seized on this one word I used and challenged me about it, kind of to make me lose track of what I was going to ask him. And I mean, it didn't work and we discussed it,

but it was a very purposeful technique. Because when you don't know what's going on suddenly, then someone can just kind of use that to flip the power dynamic and establish a new one. Yep, because they're like, oh, you're confused in this moment. I have the answer. Lock in. Or let's just take this in another direction. Like, now we're talking about this. And you're kind of of like, oh, okay, you know, and just kind of like trying to grab out something. So the conversation keeps making sense. Like, we look for patterns as humans and we're trying to like make this very disorderly chaotic universe makes sense all the time. And, you know, when you can make it not make sense, we sort of flail. And language is the medium we use to construct our reality, our bearings.

And so if someone is fucking with that, it's such an underrated way of controlling someone. And it also calls to mind another form of linguistic cult manipulation that I wrote about while drafting cultish, which was how religious leaders in charismatic Christian sex will encourage speaking in tongues or glossolalia specifically to incite dissociation in their followers to make them vulnerable so that they can swoop in and establish themselves as the person in power. So I'm also perceiving like a little bit of forced dissociation here. I don't know if that's a stretch. I think forced association is one way you could describe the techniques that we've been referring to. I think that that describes them pretty well, actually.

It's strategic confusion. It makes the person have a harder time creating meaning. And there are these rhetorical traps that people who are hypnotizing you with or without your knowledge will sometimes use, where they will present you with what seem like two options. Like you can either listen to every word I say or you won't listen to every word I say. But sort of no matter what, you're doing one of those things, right? So whichever when you do, it reinforces the fact that you're going into trance. There's no escape.

So that's another way in which language kind of capitalizes on your conscious ability to not get hypnotized and appeals directly to your unconscious. You also know that something is probably bad when subsex of the Manosphere are able to use it so effectively that being like this pickup artist guy. Like I would like to think I've never made anything that an in-cell woman hater would be like, oh my God, love this, can't wait to incorporate it into my business. I guess I don't know for sure. Speaking of confusion, just to like illustrate with crystal clarity what an NLP session or technique might look like, could you like do it to me real quick or like kind of walk me through what a session might look like? Like, what if I brought to you a fear?

really good one. I am terrified of falling down in public. I get humiliated when I like trip and fall in public. Does this happen to you a lot, Amanda? Okay, well, I avoid it. I think it's because when I was like 10 years old, I ran into a popular girl on a ski slope and I skied into a ditch in front of her. And I've been like mortified by the prospect of falling down in public ever since. And I can call to mind what it feels like to fall down in public. It's just, it's not the embarrassment that I feel like is for me. You know, I do things way more embarrassing than falling down in public all the time and it's fine. But that for whatever reason, like, really gets me. Can you help me with MLB? Absolutely. Yes. Alice, we can talk to this. Yeah. No, go for it, Zoe. I think this is a perfect

example that we can work with. Though I do want to just let people know that it's not an instant thing. So what we'll demonstrate now is something that if you want to continue with it, you can continue practicing. Got it. Yes. And we are also not expert NLP practitioners. We are journalists who have tried to wrap our brains around this, but that all said, here we go. Okay, Amanda, I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to imagine being on the ski slope wiping out in front of the popular girl. Where do you feel that in your body? Like, where do you feel that mortification physically? Oh, it's like all in my, I'm cold because I'm in the snow, but it's like this rumble of just heat within the gut, you know. Okay. So I want you to imagine yourself, like, what are you seeing? Like, are you looking up at her because you're on the ground? Is she laughing?

No, she was a sweet popular girl. Lizzie, shout the fuck out. I know she follows me on Instagram. I know she was a nice popular girl, but that made it worse in a way. Like in a way, I just wanted her to laugh at me to confirm that this was a really bad experience. Okay, so I want you to see her standing above you and feel that sort of grotesque, rumbling heat of embarrassment and just how awful it is. And I want you to turn the volume on that feeling up to 11, turn it up to 20. Just let it overwhelm you. And now shrink it down, banish it. Lizzie is a flamingo.

Lizzie is in black and white. There is music coming in. There's death metal coming in. Okay. Now go back to the embarrassment. Go back to the embarrassment. All right. Let it feel the rumble again.

Feel the rumble again. Lizzie's standing above you. It's horrible. You're so embarrassed. Okay. Now shrink that down. Shrink it down again. Lizzie's on the horizon, the side of a postage stamp.

Like concert violins come in. And everything is tinted green. And it's upside down. Okay. So this is the swish technique. and you would keep doing this. You would keep toggling back and forth and manipulating parts of this memory

until finally the practitioner would ask you, okay, how do you feel about falling right now? And ideally, after enough, you would say, wow, I guess it doesn't bother me anymore, but actually, how are you feeling? I'm so impressed that you were able to come up with those, like, totally chaotic kaleidoscopic examples off the top of your head like that.

That was really good. Frankly, me too. I don't know, like the muse was, I was channeling. She's on a postage stamp and there are violence and everything's green. I'm like, okay, David Lynch. Like, what? Yeah, but I mean, the question is whether it worked at all, which I would frankly be startled by. I actually, I think I might be over the Lizzie memory.

Okay. Yeah, I think I'm now embarrassed of how embarrassed I am by that, but that just might be by the nature of me saying it on a podcast. You know what it felt like? It felt like an improv exercise, which was cringy. You know what? That's so funny you say that because a lot of NLP had its origins in these kind of therapy LARPs where you would like get a bunch of people to pretend to be the patient's family members. So like if they're afraid of talking to their dad, you would have someone personify their father and then they could say all these things to their dad that they might not be comfortable saying

IRL. So that is a big part of NLP, if not this specific exercise or maybe yes and it's I think a lot of these cult leader dudes were just like theater kids whose parents didn't let them let their freak flags fly. Like just something on theater camp. You know what I mean? Like just let them get their sillies out there. And then they won't feel the need to start a cult one day. That's my thought. Could not agree more.

Hey, I'm Mike Barronholz. On my new show, funny you ask, trivia starts the conversation and then things immediately go off the rails. I ask a question. My guests think they know the answer. Sometimes they do. more often they do not. And then the conversation takes a turn. One trivia question turns into stories

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and trivia that exists purely to melt people's brains, this is funny you ask with me, Ike Barronholtz. Follow Funny You Ask with Ike Barronholds on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, we are Dan and Phil. And hard launch is our male podcast. We'll call it Mail Podcast. About the power of living your truth. We're better than that, honestly. Well, it's mostly us accidentally spilling scandalous info about our past dating lives. True,

and getting into inappropriately domestic arguments about it. After 16 years on YouTube, we decided to hard launch our relationship and now we are emboldened to overshare with you. So you might have seen us on Grindr this week. My ex texted me. What? He did. I have a confession.

I completely thought you catfish me when we first met. What? Join us every Monday on Hard Launch with Dan and Phil. Hard Mondays, start your week hard. Sorry. Okay, so this is something else that I'm confused about. So because there is no one single, charismatic authority, no standardized certification, no regulatory body, no peer-reviewed evidence,

and yet NLP is such a profitable, dare I say, multibillion dollar industry. How does NLP stay in the zeitgeist? Like how do NLP users and gurus maintain authority and keep recruiting people and continue to have believers, even though like there's kind of nothing keeping it together. Well, I think that actually helps. Like, the fact that there's nothing keeping it together and no one saying you can't say this or you can't sell this this way actually helps it spread because people can go to a seminar, learn it, and then put their own spin on it. Like, I went to an NLP seminar in London And I went there because Richard Bandler, who is the guy we've been talking about, who was the co-creator of NLP and has, you know, a really weird backstory. He was actually teaching hypnosis. And so I met all of

these people in the audience. And you would not believe some of the ways that they're applying in. I mean, there's everyone from a guy who sold Cairo chambers to, like, billionaires. And he was like in, like, boutique longevity. And he wanted to hypnotize people in business transactions. He told me that to a guy who was starting like a holistic gym and like another guy who was like a sexual assault survivor and who used it to get over his trauma. I mean, there was so many different reasons why people had come there. But I would say many of the people were trying to apply NLP to their professional lives in some way as well as their personal lives. So I think that the fact that there is no glue that holds it all together, that it is this amorphous thing, it actually

increases its ability to spread. Whoa, interesting. Do you think that people have been discouraged from pursuing more legitimate forms of therapy because their NLP, Sherpa or whatever, kept doubling down? I think so. I think that's a big issue with NLP. And especially actually, Richard Bandler, really has it in for therapists. And, you know, if you mentioned even colloquially that, you know, some people find NLP therapeutic or this is a form of therapy, he hates the word. And there's a big anti-therapy thing within NLP from the leadership. However, there's also a ton of therapists who do NLP. So I would say despite that rhetoric, there are therapists with PhDs and master's degrees who practice NLP, who are also integrating it into their practice.

And I think that they're doing it in a way that they're clearly not discouraging people from using other forms of therapy. It's one tool in their toolbox. Do you think the fact that it has this convenient acronym NLP, nLP, disguises the fact that the phrase neurolinguistic programming sounds like such cockamamie bullshit. I'm glad you find the acronym convenient. I mean, I find even having to call it by a set of three letters so lame and alienating. And yeah, once you say the full phrase, neurolinguistic programming, it is a huge turn off. It was actually a huge issue as we were writing the podcast. Like, how do we say this as little as possible while still reminding people what it is we're reporting on? Because it's off-putting. And yeah, I mean,

I think this gets back to your question about technical jargon. And there is this sort of L.P. lore surrounding the creation of the name that Richard Bambler was in a car and he got pulled over by a cop and he had to say what his profession was and he sort of cast about, and I don't he didn't have a name at this point. This is the early 70s in Santa Cruz, California. But he looked down and in the passenger seat, he had a book on neurology. He had a book on linguistics and he had a book on computer programming. So he said, I'm a neurolinguistic programmer. And somehow this was helpful in that interaction with the traffic cop. So he was just playing banana graham. Yes, that's how it came up with the name. Supposedly. I mean, there's five other versions, which is part of what made this so difficult to report. Like, this happened so long ago and everyone loves to invent their own mythology. So it's like, I don't know. That's one story. That's a really lame story. No offense to anyone. I think the name is not helping it. I just want to say one thing, which I think the name NLP is not

helping NLP. And I think it's illustrative that Tony Robbins, who is the most famous NLP practitioner who got his start in NLP, who we interview in our podcast and who like became a multi-millionaire from this. He for a period of, I think, you know, multiple years stopped using the phrase NLP and he renamed it something else neuroassociative conditioning. Like he tried to rebrand it again, though I'm not sure if and neuroassociative conditioning is any better, to be honest. Oh my God. I'm like hardcore in my misandrous era. And this just reminds me of like how men are so bad at coining terminology. They literally are like sociolinguists find time and time again that like the best most catchy slang is coined by young women of color, not middle aged white men. And that's why they're all out here saying

shit like biohacking. Like in a hundred years. No one's going to be saying that shit. They're so bad at this. That's really funny. Yeah. That's a great point. And I mean, yeah, the name neurolinguistic programming, it's tricky too. Like it sucks when you do use it, but it's also one of the reasons a lot of people haven't about NLP is because a bunch of people stopped using it all together. Using the word NLP, not the techniques. Yes, NLP techniques going strong. But the name a lot of people divorced from because Richard Bannler is super litigious. And at one point, he filed this lawsuit with 200 John and Jane Does in addition to a bunch of prominent NLP trainers. So a lot of NLP practitioners around the country were like, uh-oh, I don't want to get dragged into this. Even if we win,

this could destroy my finances. So I'm going to stop using that to turn. A lot of people rebranded. So that's also when people ask like, how is this everywhere? How does no one know it? It's like, well, people don't often call it that anymore, but it is out there. Have you talked to anyone who's like ex-NLP? Like, finally kind of was like, this isn't really delivering on its promises. And what was their experience of exiting that community ideology, betraying the resources they had invested in these ideas?

What did that look like? I'm thinking of Elisa. Oh, I was thinking of Debra. Oh. Debra. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Debra.

So this one woman who was involved in the early days of NLP at UC Santa Cruz, she was a student, as was Richard Bandler. John Grinder was a linguistics professor there. She went to all these workshops, like her whole friend group was involved in NLP. And she was all in until this one Christmas party in the mid-1970s when John Grinder and Richard Van der through this Christmas party. And they gave everyone a bespoke therapy gift, like a little exercise that was supposed to help them and be tailored to their particular bugaboos. So Debra goes to this party. She thinks it's a normal party. So she takes some mushrooms. She's tripping. And when it comes her turn to get her gift, John and Richard blindfold her. They hypnotize her. They do a double induction. So they're both speaking in both of her ears at the same time. They lead her outside. They tie her to a wooden cross. And then they set the cross on fire.

She was supposed to cut herself free. That was like the lesson that so she could learn how to not be a victim. Yeah. That was a therapy lesson. She has to ask someone in the crowd who's been given a knife to give her the knife to cut herself free. And somehow she manages to do this while tripping face, which is very impressive to me. And she was furious afterwards. She was really mad at them and laid into them.

And they just kept insisting that they were trying to help her not be a martyr. Whoa. Okay. So NLP also becomes this, I mean, not unlike the Bible, this text or this set of principles whose true authors can't really weigh in at this point that, you know, bad people can use to justify bad behavior, including like major misogynist. Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting is that Debra went on to become a therapist.

So she's a professional therapist today who does not use NLP in her practice. So, I mean, all of the how do we help people heal, the psychology underpinning of NLP. interested in. But after that experience, she was like, no. And I think NLP is really known, especially in its development, for going to extremes to help people with, quote, therapeutic techniques that others would never try. Like, they were just ballsy. And sometimes it was great. And sometimes it was really dangerous and traumatic. So that's kind of what the story shows. Yeah. Interestingly, though, DeVra, who does not use NLP as a therapist, she does use EMV. This is one of the most fascinating things Alice dug into for the podcast, the secret backstory of EMDR.

Yeah, EMDR was invented by an NLP trainer. Why does that make so much sense, actually? I know EMDR has helped so, so many people, and I've even tried a version of it myself. It, like, really helped my friend who was in a car crash, whatever. I know that it's, like, empirically backed, but it always felt culty to me. But that's the thing. No one really understands how it works. Yeah, it's still being researched.

The mechanism behind it is the subject of current. research, even though it's been around since the early 90s. So EMDR has elements that are shared with NLP. The big difference is that EMDR presented itself as a technique to be empirically verified by the scientific community. And it's solicited this type of peer review that NLP really didn't because, I mean, NLP was already fringe. Like, it was already something that was a sales technique. It was already part of these MLMs. It was already in this direction of, we don't really care if the powers that be put their stamp on us that we're empirical. Like, they didn't give a shit. Interesting. This gets back to the disdain for mainstream therapy, you know, because people would try to

empirically test NLP. Many researchers started taking, you know, specific exercises and saying, okay, how does that work? What's going on in the brain? And Richard Bander, at least, was fairly uncooperative. He was just kind of like jokes on you if you want to dig in to the nitty gritty of all this. I don't really care. I've already moved on to this other technique. I don't even use that technique anymore. There was no core group of things that he really was like, yep, this is NLP. I stand by this and I want you to prove it and blah, blah, blah. He's like, yeah, that's your bag. I never said. This might be one of the coldiest things about the whole rigamaral to me is the fact that it has claimed to be not only scientific but miraculous. And yet it would

any standards of verification or accreditation. It's like sticking it to the man for no reason other than this guy wanted to be what, like a cult leader pretty much. Yeah, he didn't want to join the establishment. Yeah. I do want to say for those who aren't familiar with EMDR, it stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And it uses bilateral stimulation ostensibly to help the brain like reprocess trauma. That's like my understanding of it anyway. And yeah, it does slightly give NLP's like older sister who went to grad school. That's right. I love that analogy. That's perfect. That's exactly who EMDR is. EMDR is super interesting. I also have a lot of friends who have benefited from it. One of the most interesting factoids that I found in the EMDR research when I dug in was that

playing Tetris while thinking of your traumatic memory has been shown to be effective as well for trauma reprocessing. So save your money, friends, and try some Tetris. Oh my God. I learned that from Soraya Shumali's book on resilience. She also, like, cites that study on Tetris. That's what I'm saying. It's like, there are a lot of free, uncomplicated ways to achieve the same result as this, like, expensive highfalutin culty NLP bullshit. And that's true of a lot of things. Yeah. I will say, like, there can also be benefits of telling the story of a traumatic memory to an empathetic therapist. Like that's another benefit. Like beyond the bilateral stimulation effect, which is part of EMDR, there's also, you know,

the presence of an empathetic listener, which has its own positive effect. So I'm not saying fire your therapist. I am saying that Tetris also works. So you could do that too. Totally, totally, totally. Oh my God. Yes. Let's be very clear.

Okay. I have like one and a half more questions and then I want to play a game. So as we've been mentioning, NLP turns up in some pretty sinister places, Tony Robbins, Empire, the pickup artistry stuff, Twin Flames Universe. What do you think is the worst case scenario of this weaponization of NLP? Like, where's the worst place it can go in terms of culty harm done to a practitioner? I think the worst impact of NLP that I've found was the use of it by organizations like Twin Flames Universe, which is the group that I reported on and made a dokey series about this alleged cult that said that they used NLP to, quote, reprogram your trauma.

And that actually ended up giving someone I interviewed memory loss. And, you know, her memories were permanently altered because of this experience. And, you know, she considered it very abusive. There was also all other sorts of abuse going on in this organization. I also think NLP has been used in really scary ways by NXium. So that's probably the worst. I mean, we interviewed someone in our show who describes the branding, which occurred in nexium where, you know, many women were branded as an anchor. Right. So like a hypnotic anchor from NLP is a physical stimulation that is triggering an emotional state. And a very extreme version of that could be a brand. So I think, you know, we don't have to speculate to come up with dark examples of how NLP has been used because unfortunately it's

already been used in some dark places. Yeah. Alice is reporting on Twin Flames universe and all of the media that you created around that still ongoing story is goaded. So thank you so much for that. And I know so many people who've been victimized by the Twin Flames universe are really grateful for your work. Oh, thanks, Amanda. Yeah. Unfortunately, they're still in operation, but they are under investigation by the Michigan Attorney General's office. So I'm happy about that. I have one more question, which is that NLP has been around for decades. But why do you think that this discussion, expose analysis is important against the backdrop of our culture right now. For me, I think it has a lot to do with the obsession with self-optimization that we see

virtually everywhere today, whether it's your meditation app that is sort of gamifying your meditation experience and encouraging you to compare how many minutes you've meditated with everyone else. I mean, it's competitive. Everything is sort of turbocharged to make you a better you, a calmer, healthier, skinnier, happier you. Why? So you can be more productive. I mean, this is like a whole industry predicated around what you can churn out. And it's often couched in a, like, it's for you and for you to have more agency. But it's really just so you can, you know, wake up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and work more and churn out more capital. So I think NLP, which began in this really idealistic sort of new age setting in 1970s, California.

It was developed down the road from Esselin in Big Sur. You know, it emerged from a very similar ethos of like, let's improve ourselves, let's heal ourselves. So by extension, we can heal our communities and heal the world and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then we see with NLP how it rapidly became a persuasion technology, a way to boost sales, a way to make money. And so I think that kind of loss of innocence that we see in the NLP story is something we see in America's drive to improve at any cost today. Oh my God, yeah.

Framing it as a loss of innocence story is really interesting. Okay, now it's time to play a game that is a classic sounds like a cult activity called culty quotes. So I'm going to read you a sequence of quotes that were either said by an NLP guru. or text or another classic cult leader from history. And you will simply have to guess whether the quote was said by a cult leader or an NLP person. The first quote goes like this. Emotions make excellent servants, but tyrannical masters. That's hard.

I mean, the fact that it could go either way so easily is really cool. I'm going to say cult leader, not NLP because it's pithy. Okay. And NLP people are like long-winded. Blah, blah, blah. It'll be way longer. Yep. In fact, that actually was an NLP person. It was John Seymour. He, you know, identifies as a psychologist and NLP trainer. He co-wrote a book called Introducing NLP, Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People. I am not shouting at that book. Literally do not buy it, but that is just who he is. The next quote is as follows. The best testimony we can make is to say that we are a free people. I would go with religious leader cult figure.

I'm on board with Zoe. You are correct. It was Jim Jones. Sociopolitical leader turned religious leader turned one of the worst people ever. Okay. Next quote, when we believe in something, we act as if it is true. NLP. Correct.

That is an NLP quote that is found like all over all the literature I was sitting through. Hate it. Yeah, it's sort of like the behavioral change. Like you can change your behavior. Yeah, just what if he didn't? feel that way. What if you just didn't, which can be productive. That can be a productive exercise, but when it's like, hey, what if you were really happy about getting branded instead of feeling violated by that? Yeah. What if you handed me $100,000? That'd be amazing. Okay, today is the first

day of the rest of your life. Not an LP. I feel like that's like on an inspirational calendar. You'd like find in a waiting room or something or like a recovery room. It feels like an AA. Yeah, I don't That is a common aphorism in everyday English, but it was first coined allegedly by Chuck Diedrich, the cult leader of Sinanon, which was the group that my dad forcibly spent his teenagers in, which was founded as an alternative to AA. That's really funny. Okay. All these things just get put in a blender and like come out like this crazy toxic smoothie. Yeah, totally. Yuck.

Ew. Oh, what would that taste like? Last quote. there is no such thing as reality, only our perception of it. That's NLP. 110% straight up. You are absolutely correct. That is from a book, again, I'm not shouting it out, called NLP for Rookies.

I'll shout out my actual favorite NLP book if people want. Use Your Brain for a Change was my favorite one, and I think it's the least jargony. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about Magic with a K. I also love Magic with a K. Yeah, okay, this is my actual favorite book. This is a book just to set you up that Alice found on what I believe was a anarchist PDF share and then started borrowing from to hypnotize my mother. I love this book. So this is esoteric NLP. It's called Visual Magic with a K by Jan J-A-N-F-R-I-E-S. And it's a practical guide to trance, sigals, and visualization techniques. I'm not an esoteric person, but the way that this book uses magic is more as a metaphor for the unverical. unconscious and how to harness the power of your own unconscious. And I really like this book. It's

well written too. It's a fun read, unlike some of the jargony NLP texts. Okay, great. Sounds like a cult book club. That can be our June pick. Okay. My last question for you, it's very important. The culties take this very seriously. Out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back and get the fuck out. Which category do you think neurolinguistic programs? coming falls into. I would say watch your back. Yeah, second thought, 100%. I think because it can go either way. And again, it's like there's two sides of the coin, right? Like, oh my God, your brain has so much unconscious power that you're not harnessing, like, woohoo, but also yikes. You know, so it sort of depends who is in the driver's seat, you or the guy at the front of the room,

who you're like, you're my new guru. For sure. You two have swayed me. Before this interview, I would have jumped to the conclusion that it was a GTFO. But you're right. It's a watcher back. Thank you so much for joining this episode. If people want to keep up with you and listen to your podcast, how can they do that? Mind games. Search for it wherever you get your podcast. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culting. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created by a man. Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Podcaven. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montpel.

Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it. If you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Oversinking,

Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet, A Feminist Guide, taking back the English language. Thanks as well to our Network Studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a cult pod, or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.