The Psychology of your 20s - 464. The psychology of cults

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

From abusive MLM’s and wellness programs to doomsday sects and UFO religions, we’re all fascinated by cults. Their mystery offers us a way to explore the darkest recesses of human behaviour, while remaining seemingly out of their reach. But how do we actually define a cult?  Watch on Netflix: HERE In this episode, we look at popular examples of cults, understand how they’re organised and recruit followers, and examine what makes some people so vulnerable to joining. We unpack:  • How a cult is defined, featuring the BITE model of authoritarian control• What makes cult leaders so distinctive - and dangerous • The (often surprising) tactics cults will employ to get people to join • How people behave during and in the aftermath of leaving a cult• Why there are cults all around us today, and people are still drawn to them Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [e-mail]  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeart Radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, Carl thought he was living a normal drama-free life until the messages started. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. Every piece of evidence pointed to the wrong guy.

He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the I-Hawks. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But no one will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and I said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him violent. Backhanded her, pow! Listen to the devil's quarry.

Season 2 in the Bone Valley Feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, black literature. I'm Jack Quist-Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black-Lit podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella bakers, Michael Waxes and Martin Luther King running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from. And considering this is Black-reading, month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to BlackLit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The miles change how you move, but more importantly, they change how you show up for

your life. I'm Emily Abadi. On the hurdle with Emily Abadi podcast, I sit down with elite athletes, record holders, coaches, and everyday runners to unpack the mindset behind pushing through when things get tough. Because the discipline, grace, and grit you build out there on the That's what helps you show up as your best self everywhere else. I'd just love to say I never know who's watching. So you want to make sure you, you through and through, and you just stay true to who you are. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. I'm Jemis Spike, and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our 20s.

our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast and welcome back to another episode where we break down the psychology behind everything from relationships to wellness trends to our 20s and today, cults. This is very unlike our usual episodes. If you're a long time listener, you know, but I couldn't help myself. I can't help myself. If there's one thing that fascinates me more than anything about human psychology. It is what drives people to leave the common ground of everyday society and join extremist alternative groups that often have very crazy ideas about the world that are highly irrational and mystical and a complete departure from reality, but people kind of believe it anyways. You know, groups like the one behind the

Jones Town Massacre were like, how many was it? Nine hundred people. all committed suicide in the name of their cult or these groups that live entirely isolated from society believing that like some random guy from Idaho is like Jesus. Like what is the psychological appeal? And what gets someone often very normal people to a place of wanting to join and refusing to leave cults even when it harms them? This is what, well, exactly what we're exploring today, the deep and fascinating domain of cults. psychology. I also want to talk about modern cults or things that we label as cults. You know,

the cult of Taylor Swift, the cult of Donald Trump, the cult of Disney adults. What makes these things cult like? What gets people obsessed and devoted and fanatical over these people and over these experiences? We're also going to touch on a very huge ongoing debate. What is the difference between a cult and a religion? How do researchers separate the two? What are the criteria for labeling something a cults or labeling something a religion? And where does money come into that? Because, I don't know if you know, but a big part of whether something is a cult or not is not psychological, it is, and all does come down to taxes. It's a huge episode. I know there's so many little twists and turns. I don't want to waste any more time with this intro. But,

quick reminder if you're listening to this episode, I want to let you know you can now watch this episode, plus many more on Netflix. There will be a link in the description, so go and check it out. But without further ado, let's get into the complete psychology of cults. I think we all have an idea of what a cult is. You know what a cult is. You've seen it in movies, you've seen it on crime, podcast in the news. But if somebody asked for a definition, I think I'd be pretty stumped. I don't think I'd be able to give them an exact word-for-word idea. Like, you kind of know it when you see it. That's kind of, I think that's what I would go with, which is not a very good definition. Luckily, some very smart researchers have thought about

this a lot deeper than me. And whilst it is actually a very debated topic, typically for something to be labeled a cults, it does have to meet a few criteria. So in short, cults are a social groups, So they have to be made up of more than a dozen or so people. B, they have to have unusual or some kind of extreme belief, whether it's religious, spiritual, or philosophical, and they have to have rituals that go along with that belief. C, they have to have extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal. D, it has to involve some kind of manipulation or control tactic

that makes it hard to leave, means that people cannot willingly come and go. The most popular criteria for telling if something is a cult or not is called the Bight model of authoritarian control. This was developed by the researcher and the cult expert, Stephen Hassan, I think back in like the 90s. And Bight is obviously an acronym, which everyone loves an acronym. If you want to sell a theory, let me say, make it into another word.

Like, that's my first bit of advice. People love acronyms, but bite, this acronym stands for B, behavior control. So a cult has to regulate the physical reality of somebody. So how they live, where they live, how they work, how they dress. It typically manages their money, their time. It requires a great deal of obedience physically and in terms of their lifestyle. I is information control. A cult will deliberately withhold or distort information.

So this involves often minimizing, access to non-group thinking and really restricting communication with outsiders. T is thought control, so a cult wants members to believe in absolute truth. They often use thought-stopping techniques, yes, like separating people from their relatives, but also like chanting or meditation to block critical analysis and often requires members to reframe their memories to fit the group narrative. And E, it involves emotional control. A cult manipulates a person's feelings, primarily through fear and through the installation of irrational fears. So fears of the outside world, of others, of damnation, of punishment. But also, the cult leader

is presented as the one who will save them from this. And the cult leader cannot do any wrong. This bite model is really important because, as I mentioned in the intro, in popular culture, we've all heard people describe things as cults, which may or may not actually be cults, the cult of yoga, the cult of Disney adults, the cult of reality TV, the cult of Road Beauty, the cult of Lulu Lemon, whatever it is. But these things don't cause tremendous harm on a wide, like, member basis. They don't change someone's psychological reality. at least not most of the time. I'm sure you can really go in pretty deep and have that happen,

but there isn't some global leader trying to make that happen. What we're really trying to say when we describe these things as cult-like is that they inspire a kind of devotion. And it's not uncommon to see people highly dedicated to something and defend that very thing to an irrational end, but it's not a cult. I think especially with celebrity worship, though, and celebrity culture, maybe like the lines kind of blur, you know, and we do see very irrational behavior. When we form a parasycial bond with somebody, we defend them like a friend, but also like a god. And it's intense, but is it a cult? So let's take the example of Taylor Swift, who I think is the center of like more than anything else cultish accusations.

In researching this episode, I cannot tell you how many PhD dissertations, articles, podcasts, the like, are written on the cultish. of Taylor Swift. Let's look at the evidence that, you know, she's this big mastermind running this like huge domain of followers. And then we'll look at the evidence against. So firstly, she does have a dedicated social group, the Swifties. That name alone separates you from being in or out of the group, which is fundamental to group think identity, a huge component of culture-thinking. Within the group, there can be extreme defensiveness and the policing of narratives. Like, so when any criticism of Swift comes in, it's met with very fierce backlash, she can do no wrong. The way that her swifties, like, defend her at every turn no matter what, that does indicate an irrational loyalty

that makes her almost inhuman. So incapable of doing wrong, forgivable at every turn, which mimics the idea of somebody who is godlike or a godlike figure. What's more, I would say many fans experience a very deep parasocial relationship to her that feels two-sided, even if it's one-sided. And this includes a strong sense of personal intimacy and like a spiritual connection to her lyrics. Swifties pour over every word that she writes, almost like scripture, right? The same way people pour over their Bibles. They feel that like what she's writing, her music is for them and them alone.

There is an emotional attachment to these words. there is a sense that her lyrics don't just give life like meaning or advice or solace, but they kind of ride out the truth or a correct way to live life or to think about life. Other examples of cult-like behavior include dedicated rituals. Yeah, this is kind of a fun exercise, but it's true, like making friendship bracelets, decoding cryptic Easter eggs in her music. Those are rituals. Treating concerts like communal events, kind of cult-like.

During her last tour, there were reports that fans experienced memory loss, confusion, hysteria. That's similar to reports of religious mass hysteria we see in cults like the people's temple and more. But there is a big difference. And there's a reason I wanted to go into this. There is a big difference between being a diehard Swifty and being part of a cult. Firstly, to be a Swifty doesn't involve coercion or isolation. Fans are free to leave, they're free to lose interest, they are free to listen to other music at any time without facing threats or isolation from their real world live. Somebody isn't going to come and hurt them.

Additionally, the Swifties are just another iteration of a type of fan behavior that we've seen time and time again. We saw it with the Beatles. We saw it with Elvis, Michael Jackson, with BTS. for the majority of people, they may adore her, but she is not the complete and utter centre of their lives in a way that they are so scared of her and the ideology that they will not leave. You know, most people will likely have friends or family members that are not Swifties that are out of these so-called cults. And most people will say, like, I don't live and die according to Taylor Swift's lyrics. It's interesting, though, there's a

it's an important exercise of like how things do overlap. And it raises that second important point that we made in the beginning, which is what distinguishes not just a person or a pop star from being a cult, but a religion, a real true religion from being a cult. Some people might say there's no difference. Some people. Let's talk about it though. Our religion, like a cult, is an organized social group. Like a cult, there is often a uniform way of thinking. There is often an absolute truth centered around God. There are traditions and sacred rituals. There may even be fear, often of hell or some kind of damnation.

And there may be some kind of coercive control in some situations. But in general, there is an important distinction, the same way there is an important distinction between Taylor Swift and cults. Most healthy religions offer kind of an open-door policy. They basically say, hello, please come in. If you want to join us, we'd love to have you. For as long as you like, you can come and go. There's no sign up for your commitment required unless you'd like to, of course.

Come if you'd like, stay if you wish, leave if you wish as well. That is a healthy religion. And healthy religions also encourage people to engage with broader society. They allow you to maintain relationships with family and friends outside of the faith. they allow you to participate in normal civic life. If they don't, that's when they become a cult. There's also often not totalitarian control other than from like God or Jesus or other or higher power. I will say we've seen a lot of instances of religious leaders misusing their power in a way that would be seen as a form of totalitarian, cruel, harmful control. You know, the Catholic Church

just got to single them out. That's probably the best example in recent memory. But still, that's one segment of the religion. That is not the entire thing. A cult, almost all aspects of it, will be highly authoritarian. And it's almost always centered around a single living leader. They actively isolate members from family. They encourage them to cut them out. And I feel like I'm really laboring over this point. It's just intensely psychological. It's everything. it dictates everything in their lives. Another critical element which distinguishes a cult from a religion, which I read about in a paper from the University of California, Berkeley.

This paper is titled, Who Decides the Difference Between a Cult and a Religion? I was so surprised by this. It comes down to something very arbitrary, which is taxes. Religions are tax exempt, cults are not. And who decides whether religion is a religion? The government. And sometimes they get it wrong. It all comes back to money, to be honest.

For example, the Church of Scientology. Most of us would say cult, right? It's actually a religion. They don't pay taxes. They are deemed by the IRS to be a legitimate religion, despite all we know, despite the disappearances of members, despite isolationism, despite fearmongering. It is not just harm that determines if something's going to be a cult. many layers of things and eventually, as I said, it comes back to money. How much money,

how many lawsuits basically does it take to buy your way out of cult status and into the status of a legitimate religion? So to get more into the emotional human side of things, how do cults even form in the first place? I think we need to take a short break here before we get into this research because it is truly fascinating and the personality of cult leaders is an episode of its own. We're going to try and cover it all after this short break. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But no one will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff and they said maybe she'll find out where

this girl is. I saw him violent. Backhanded a bow! And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with it. The clock is ticking down and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County. But I've met the devil and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarev, and this is season two of the devil's quarry. Listen to the devil's quarry season two on the IHeart radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear The Devil's Quarry Season 2 Add free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, we meet Carl Bryant. Carl thought he was living a normal, drama-free life

until the messages started. You will have hell to pay. For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life threatening to ruin him. Cyberstalking, swatting, extortion, impersonation. And then the text threats escalated. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. It's playing out in real life, not just on the phone. Every piece of evidence pointed to one man.

But every piece of evidence. was a lie. He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's me, W. Compte Bell. This season of my podcast who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Everything up to that point, build you as a comic, us going on the road, doing Battle Mountain and Ely. You took me, you were one of the first people took me on the road, which is funny because at the time I was like, I don't know if I like this guy.

With rapper, actor, David Diggs. The jump off for me was Hamilton and it was the most popular thing in a very long time. But it was still, for me, it was me and my friends making something dumb. Bruce Lee's daughter and Brandon Lee's sister, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. you're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with Debbie Kumabelle on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health.

I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and mid-life. directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids, to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood and also to have better day-to-day life.

Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player Carly Lloyd. I'm Fox Sports Reporter Jenny Taft. And on our new podcast, whatever it takes, we're talking motherhood, marriages, careers, and figuring out how to balance it all. And we'll discuss the game that brought us together because nothing is off limits. Do you remember your initial reaction when,

Fox called you to be a part of the World Cup? I was like, no, I don't want to do it. You said no? I played with players that didn't, I don't think that they really, truly love the game. I found the love with the ball at my foot. But in my head, it was the long game. It was like, I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps, and I'm going to learn it and love it and embrace it.

He said, this group of people will never be in the same room as part of the same team ever again. in your life. And it is your job to make sure that you enjoy the moment. You're proud of what you accomplish together. Listen to whatever it takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like these days, you and I have seen enough cult documentaries to know the warning signs. We kind of get it. That doesn't look good. We don't want to join that kind of organization. However, there are an estimated 10,000 active cults in the United States alone. How do, like, knowing what we know, how do people continue to join these things? How do they even start? So cults often start with one person. This is what

we call the charismatic leader or the visionary. This person has an idea of the world that they want to impress on others. Now, sometimes this is, and it begins as a legitimate and sincere view that they think would genuinely guide or help other people. Often though, this person does normally have an underlying desire for something more. They want control, they want power, they want financial gain, they want adoration. And I was reading this paper that said, a big warning sign is that this person has often tried to get that thing they want through other means unsuccessfully first. So they have tried to gain power through maybe a formal religion before getting kicked out, through business and money or fame before they've tried

this cult thing through control of their family. This is a very critical thing. A lot of cults start not just with an individual, but with an individual and their family. The family is often the first victim, the first people to be brought in. There was research published in 2004 in the Encyclopedia of Religious Psychology and Behavior that also identified how most, not all, but most cult leaders share a specific personality type. If you have done any kind of psychology course, you might guess what this is. It's called the Dark Triad, which combines narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, otherwise known as a cluster B personality type. They are seductive, they are impulsive, they are emotionally intense, they have a flair for

grandiosity, a chronic fear of abandonment. All of this makes them basically like a social weapon because they have such a low self-esteem and they have all the tools to execute their desire to gain other people's approval. This is an important point to emphasize. These people are brilliant, to be honest, and nobody really willingly joins a cult. They join this person because they think they're amazing. They join a movement that looks good and helpful and at first seems really incredible. They, you know, they've probably encountered something that they really think is going to change their life. Any good cult, good, in quotation marks, knows that the best kind of indoctrination takes time and they will go about it slowly. They really, it's like putting

a frog in boiling water. When a potential recruit meets, let's say a cult member, they are normally showered with love, they are showered with validation, that feels amazing. Love bombing is the term that we would give that in a relationship. And in fact, the term love bombing was actually first coined by a cult, a cult known as the Unification Church. And members of this cult were basically formally instructed to flood new recruits with gifts and flattery and warmth, and they wanted them to feel really valued and safe. They called that the hook. And then once someone, somebody was addicted to this feeling, the affection would end and it would be replaced by very strict rules and by emotional manipulation. And by then it's too late. It's like a relationship. By then,

they feel so indebted and bonded to this person or this group. They deeply believe that the good feelings are going to come back and they can't leave. That is the origin of the term love bombing. It's cult recruitment. Something else happens at the stage as well. Even if the person doesn't want to leave, so they're having a lot of fun with their new friends and with their fun cult leader, cults know that their family and friends will definitely want them to leave and that they can be very, very persuasive. So they're going to do everything in their power to either cut them out or bring them in. They will convince them that they're evil if they don't want to join the cult. They don't love them like the cult does. They may force them to surrender

their money and their belongings and their identity and their bodies to the cult leader. Sometimes, you know, new members are compelled to marry people. They've just met really, really quickly. They may use deprivation, punishment, other tactics to wear this person down after they've encountered the most amazing feeling of love they ever have. They make them swear oaths, anything that's going to psychologically hook them in. This is when the love is replaced by fear, two of the most powerful and convincing human emotions mixing together in this extreme circumstances. And two emotions that are often

biologically and psychologically impossible to ignore. Our brain is hardwired to pay attention to love and fear. The cult goes, you know, we love you. No one else does. If you leave, like, you're going to give up this love, but you're also going to give up so much more. You're going to be punished. Your way of life is going to be destroyed. We're going to hurt you. It's like a scaled up version of a toxic relationship with a manipulative controlling partner, but it's happening with this whole group of other people. I should say, I've emphasized cults which operate around like a centralized person. Important time to say not all cults have this. And this can lead people to believe that what they're experiencing isn't a cult if there isn't a leader. They think it's a community.

They think it's a friendship. In this situation where there isn't a charismatic leader, followers of said cult brainwash each other instead. In the absence of this one person in a decentralized cult, it's called, the ideology replaces the leader or a specific text or an overarching conspiracy theory, a shared lifestyle. That becomes the ultimate authority and the ultimate truth. Any deviation or questioning of this doctrine is quickly punished not by the leader, but by the community itself. In this situation, extreme peer pressure kind of replaces top-down commands. Members constantly police one another.

They expel or shun people as well. And in the digital age, online communities and online cults do this more than anybody else. You know, the mob mentality quickly kind of pushes and punishes dissenters. To be part of the group, you have to believe exactly what they believe. they want radical conformity. And there are countless examples of this on the internet. QAnon is a massive one. There is no central charismatic leader who is holding political, physical rallies

and giving direct daily orders to the masses. Instead, it's such a tight ideology that members collaboratively build the dogma, build the conspiracy theories, decode clues together, and they aggressively excommunicate anyone who has questions, meaning that the conspiracy theory remains solid. There can also be, like, in these decentralized cult situations, kind of a hierarchical structure. There's no one core leader, but there is always somebody above you.

And even the person at the top, there's somebody above them. And that extreme pressure of, like, who do I trust? Everybody's always watching one another. Authority is flowing in every single direction is powerful enough to mean that you don't need somebody as a central command. I think at its core, the danger of any cult lies with this, with this systematic stripping of critical thinking and personal autonomy. You cannot think for yourself anymore. You think only the way the cult wants you to. So again, this is the question that comes up. Why? Why do people join this? Like, why do they end up in these

situations. I think I have a lot of empathy. I think that you can't really understand how compelling the situation must be until you've been through it. I think this is the same line of questioning that comes up when people are like, why don't you leave an abusive relationship or a bad friendship or a bad job? What is underlying this desire to join and this desire to stay is deeply, deeply human. Number one, the reason that people often join cults is because they have a need to belong. In 1995, there were these two researchers, Roy Boymister and Mark Leary. We've talked about them before. And they basically presented this now very incredibly famous paper that said, needing to feel seen and cared for is as essential to our survival as humans as the need

for food, water and shelter. It has the same gravitational pool. Colts, offer to fulfill this innate desire to an extreme. It provides members with a tight-knit community. They are dedicated to one another. They are dedicated to a cause. They offer the promise that you're never going to be alone again. You're never going to be alone. As long as you follow some simple rules, you will always have family, you will always have friends, you will always have somebody who cares about you. When someone feels socially adrift or very isolated, they become a perfect candidate in that moment. Research conducted in 2017 by a group of experts in France actually found that a big number of people who join cults are in periods of major life transition. So they're transitioning into adulthood.

They're transitioning out of foster care. They're transitioning out of a relationship into retirement. They often have an eroded social system because of this transition they're going through. Those who are susceptible to cult recruitment might also be running away from someone. something, an unhappy life situation, addiction, abuse, a bad relationship, pressure to behave a certain way that they don't agree with, can no longer agree with. In some ways, it makes a lot of logical sense that that would leave them vulnerable to this situation, especially if you've gone through abuse.

You know, someone who has consistently suffered through things like psychological or physical or a mental abuse. A, they would be looking for an escape, but B, they would also be more vulnerable to some of the same practices of love bombing and fear that a cult uses because it feels normal and familiar. Like, they don't see red flags like you or I would because they've only ever known red flags. Many cults are also tied to a spiritual ideology as we spoke about, so a higher power, a God, something that will explain why the world is as ugly and confusing as it is, whether it's lizards or, I don't know, whatever. This is immensely appealing.

Even if we can rationally say that doesn't make any sense, if you are seriously at a low point in your life and you've experienced maybe a crisis of faith in your previous religion or you don't know what the future holds or you are so lost in the world, having a spiritual belief system delivered to you that feels very compelling and a social structure that is built around that, like that sounds like an amazing deal and only a little bit of it has to actually make sense if you are in a really dark place for you to just really want anything to hold on to.

There is this stereotype that the only people who join cults are unintelligent, they lack thinking skills, they're not very practical, maybe they're dumb, and that creates a lot of shame. It's actually one of the reasons why people don't leave because they know that they're going to be faced with this wall of like, how could you not know? You should have known better. The thing is, cults and coercive groups do not rely on stupidity. They rely on emotional needs. And they rely on a very well-versed knowledge of human psychology. In fact, someone being intelligent is an asset they may be more likely to be targeted. It's an asset to that cult because somebody who is smart will then be in turn, you know, very adept at recruiting more people. They're very good at engaging

manipulation tactics. They're very good at evading authorities. They become helpful and desirable. There's something else going on as well in this situation. And it has to do with the very same dopamine systems that explain why we get hooked on drugs, why we get hooked on gambling, on food, on nicotine. It is this addiction model that may explain why seemingly normal people end up in these situations. We're going to talk about it after this short break. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world

to hide the body. But no one will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him violent.

Backhanded her, pow! And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with him. The clock is ticking down and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County. But I've met the devil, and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarev, and this is season two of the devil's quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear The Devil's Quarry Season 2 ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Hey everybody, it's me, W. Comaubel Bell. This season of my podcast who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Everything up to that point Build you as a comic Us going on the road Doing Battle Mountain and Ely Yeah, you took me You were one of the first people

Took me on the road Which is funny because at the time I was like I don't know if I like this guy With rapper, actor, David Diggs The jump off for me was Hamilton And it was the most popular thing

In a very long time But it was still for me It was me and my friends Making something dumb Bruce Lee's daughter And Brandon Lee's sister Shannon Lee Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that.

You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with with Debbie Kumal on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, we meet Carl Bryant. Carl thought he was living a normal drama-free life until the messages started. You will have hell to pay.

For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life threatening to ruin him. Cyberstalking, swatting, extortion, impersonation. And then the text threats escalated. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. This department. It's playing out in real life, not just on the phone. Every piece of evidence pointed to one man. But every piece of evidence was a lie.

He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's. Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should

we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids, to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player, Carly Lloyd. I'm Fox Sports Reporter Jenny Taft, And on our new podcast, whatever it takes,

we're talking motherhood, marriages, careers, and figuring out how to balance it all. And we'll discuss the game that brought us together because nothing is off limits. Do you remember your initial reaction when Fox called you to be a part of the World Cup? I was like, no, I don't want to do it. You said no?

I played with players that didn't, I don't think that they really, truly love the game. I found the love with the ball at my foot. But in my head, it was the long. long game. It was like, I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps and I'm going to learn it and love it and embrace it. He said, this group of people will never be in the same room as part of the same team ever again in your life. And it is your job to make sure that you enjoy the moment. You're proud of what you accomplish together. Listen to whatever it

takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So something, as I hinted to, that's being increasingly discussed in the cult psychology space is this idea that those people who join cults may actually be experiencing a form of human or relational addiction. And they may have been more susceptible to addictive patterns or addictive habits in the past or in the first place. There was a study from 2017 and interviewed 31 former cult members in Sweden, and it discovered that a lot of them were displaying behaviors that match what we call Goodman's Addictive Disorders Criteria. The Goodman's Criteria is a very common tool used in psychology to identify whether somebody is in active addiction. They can be

addicted to anything. It's used for alcohol, it's used for food, sex, social media. People can also be addicted to the behaviors and the feelings of others and the behavior and feeling of being in a cult. That is what this research has started to show. For example, here are some of the criteria for being in a state of addiction according to this model. A, you feel that you may lack control. You may feel a sense of relief when you encounter the stimulus or you participate in the activity or the cult. You may have an inability to resist the thing and increasing tolerance for the thing, become more accustomed to a certain level of the feeling or the behavior and it affects you less and less. A great deal of time is spent with the thing that you're addicted to. It's difficult

to cut out the thing that you're addicted to. It's difficult to think about anything other than the thing you are addicted to. Replace thing with cults. The same neurological systems that drive cravings and intense desires are working in this situation. In fact, a lot of those individuals who we were speaking about initially actually reported having some other kind of addiction or some addiction in their past, whether it's too alcohol or gambling. And the research has basically suggested that when they joined the cult, they replaced the substance addiction with an addiction to the system. A switch was made. This is a critical part of this research. These people were already neurologically, some would say biologically and definitely psychologically vulnerable.

for something to come in and provide them with the relief that maybe alcohol or gambling or a substance had done in the past. And it felt a lot healthier because it felt like connection. This is a critical part. I keep saying that, but this is a critical part of this research. There was an incredibly high prevalence and there is an incredibly high prevalence of psychiatric conditions in people prior to joining cults. A lot of people over half from this study suffered from anxiety disorders and mood disorders in the lead up to when they joined. And interestingly, the majority of participants reported at first feeling better,

feeling psychological relief when they first got involved with their cult. Their symptoms of anxiety and depression and distress reduced. the same way that when you first take alcohol or painkillers, your feelings of depression and anxiety reduce. It feels like your savior. It feels like you found a thing that's going to give you a center until you need more and more of it to feel good and until it really becomes the center of your world and until it starts ruining your life. That is the cult addiction pathway. I really want to emphasize something here. It is actually not as rare as you think for someone. to be in a cult or to have encountered a cult or to have at least felt some kind of pull towards

this system. There is this man, he's since passed, but his name was Arthur Dekeman, I think, Dyckman, Dickman. He was a professor of psychiatry at the University of California. And he did a lot of work around cults and around social belonging, asking this same question we're asking today, what drives people to perform this social behavior? And in the this quest for answers, he conducted this series of seminars. Maybe it's like, I guess, a meeting. He just invited a bunch of former cult members in the 90s to this big conference and he spoke to them. And what he said and his report on it was, these people are so normal. They are so normal. And he also said a lot of their experiences in joining a cult are very similar to everyday experiences

that we would have in work, in politics, in relationships and in traditional religions, which made it hard for them to tell that something bad was going on. Deekman had this one sentence that I think really gripped people. He said, people join cults not because they are crazy, but because they have two kinds of wishes. They want a meaningful life and they want to feel taken care of and protected. Those are the two reasons people join cults. If you think about it, this is the exact same reason we pursue certain careers. We want meaning. We want to feel taken care of. It's the same reason. It's the same reason we vote for certain political parties, why we date certain people, why we choose a certain lifestyle, why we choose a certain diet, why we choose certain friends. Even where we get things like

plastic surgery, like we think it will make our life more meaningful, we think it will make our life happier because we will achieve greater acceptance. Everything and anything can be a cult. If the marketing is good enough and the manipulation is there and the community is strong, even certain brands, certain diets, certain movements, you know, like we said, Disney adults, like it's not a cult, it definitely could become one. If they found a charismatic leader who wanted to do harm, that is literally like so many of the systems that we have are just not being manipulated and therefore don't get the cult name. So with that in mind, if that's why people join them for these very human reasons, why don't people leave once they realize something is going wrong?

as we've realized people join cults for the belonging and for the love and for the meaning and they stay in cults because of the isolation and the fear and the cost of leaving. In that same study, the one from 2017 with the 31 former cult members, these same people, they were asked why did you join and they were asked why didn't you leave? And the biggest thing they said was my whole life was there. I had given it everything. These people were my family. If I left, like, I would have nothing.

It is the sunk cost fallacy that we all experience on a whole new scale. Of course, yes, there's the relationships that people are losing, which directly contradicts that human need to belong. So it's going to feel painful. It's going to act as a motivational force to stay. But there's also practical things like, money. People in serious cults often haven't had a job in the real world for a long time. All their finances are wrapped up in the cult. They have been asked to invest all their money

to sign away the deeds to their house, the deeds to their future earnings. Somebody might say, why don't they just go to the police? Why don't they go to charity? Why don't they go to government services for help? You know, yeah, it's the practical concerns. They may not have their birth certificate, their passport. They may not literally have public transport to leave the physical location. And then there's the most important element of all. As much as they fear the cult and they fear what's happening, they fear what's beyond and the unknown even more. Many people are initially, as we said, attracted to cults because, you know, they're scared, they're vulnerable, they believe the wider world to be bad or to be confusing.

cults then magnify this and indoctrinate their followers to further that sense of evil. They want them to believe this is the only place you are safe, this is a sanctuary, you have to stay here, if you were to leave, terrible things would happen to you. And if you say that to somebody enough times, they believe it. I read this interview with a woman who left like a very isolated cult in Australia, and she said she truly believed that people outside the cult would kill her, eat her and poison her. She was born into the cult, like her mother had joined as a single mother, and how would she know that wasn't true? Like, she'd never met an outsider.

She had no alternative evidence to what she'd been told. It is like you or I trying to imagine a color that we haven't seen before. If you have net, you just can't. She could not fathom that other people would feel safe. There was another person, I think it was in the same article, who escaped a cult in South Korea, and they did this interview with The Guardian. in. He was like, I genuinely believed the cult leader could hear my thoughts. So I couldn't even think, I was so indoctrinated. The thought of leaving didn't even enter my mind because it felt so blasphemous and dangerous. His brain was trained into avoiding the very idea of leaving itself. It's here

where we have to talk about the psychology of Stockholm syndrome, right? Feeling like the only safe thing is the thing that's hurting you. Some shameless self-promotion here. We did recently do a full bonus episode on this. It's not on Netflix. It's only on Spotify. We did it a month or so back. It's like a full history of Stockholm Syndrome. It's very fascinating. So if you liked this episode, you'll probably love that one. And it's the reason why I'm not getting fully into this. But Stockholm Syndrome definitely applies in cult situations, probably more than anything else, which we explored in that episode. A brief overview, Stockholm Syndrome was a term that was born from a hostage situation in Sweden in 1973. And in this situation, it was very strange. These hostages

developed deep empathy for their captors. They even defended them in the aftermath. And everybody in the news, all these rescuers were like, that is so unnatural. How could you feel any form of love or empathy for somebody who has harmed you? It has since become, we know it's a psychological phenomena. And we know what it derives from is the fact that humans will do anything to survive. and to adapt under extreme pressure. And if the only way for them to do that is to form a connection or an attachment with the very people who are going to harm them, if that's their only avenue to safety, they will do that.

In a cult setting, like so many parallels, so many parallels to that hostage kind of situation. Firstly, as a follower, you are probably experiencing small acts of kindness that convince you that it can't be that bad. your needs are probably taken care of. That creates a whole other layer of dependency. And so you're scared. You feel like your freedom is being curtailed,

but you also feel grateful. Your basic needs are being taken care of. And that is difficult to abandon. It's difficult to feel like, wait, something that wants to harm me probably wouldn't take care of me as well. And this creates a sense that they are indebted. They should be grateful. even as their other needs, like perhaps don't feel fulfilled, their primary needs are.

Like with Stockholm Syndrome as well, cult followers may also identify with the aggressor or the cult leader. Like, there might be some similarities. Like, they joined the cult for a reason. Obviously, there is some kind of shared vision or shared values that lines up. So it becomes hard to disentangle oneself, the same way someone may see themselves. in a captor or in a Stockholm syndrome situation because they need to see them as like them so they can understand them and survive. Of course, when people are in a violent situation, like in Sweden in

1973, outsiders can clearly see that something is wrong and they can intervene. But when it comes to removing someone from a cult situation that they may be choosing to be in, like things get very complicated. So when somebody does manage to leave a cult, like how do they feel afterwards? That's the natural next step, right? It's going to feel like, of course, like every human experience very different. But from what I've read, it's deeply traumatic, even if they know it's the right choice. I think the biggest way it's going to differ from person to person is whether someone chose to exit the cult willingly, whether they were subject to some kind of involuntary reprogramming, or whether the cult kind of imploded in on itself and in on them. And there are

many examples of this happening. There was this cult in Oregon in the 80s. Money and taxes comes into this a lot more than you think. And this cult was, I can't remember what it was called, but it was basically the huge utopia in the middle of the desert. And it fell apart like overnight because of a federal investigation into money laundering. And here are these people who joined not for money for religious reasons. And they were basically all flung back into the world completely unprepared. Like they really, they'd been there for a while. they had to adjust overnight. A study from 2023 looked at former cult members' experiences of leaving, and what they found was this in-between stage. They've just exited the cults, but they're not yet fully

integrated back into society. And in this study, they closely examined 11 individuals who were going through this, who had cult experiences and who had left, and they found that almost all of them described a state of internal psychological chaos immediately after leaving where they were like, I don't know if I've made the right choice and I feel worse than I ever have before. In this study, the former cult members described having a lot of them had lived in this like honor culture where acts of violence were very normalized and that itself required a lot of deprogramming and processing because A, like they rejoined society and they had to know you can't this eye for the eye justice doesn't work here. It's not tolerated.

B, they had to be okay and know that that wasn't going to happen to them. They were very scared of breaking rules and somebody, you know, doing something to them. The participants also described something that I found so interesting, which is that in the cult, everything was made sense for them. Like they could rely on the cult for meaning, for order, for their daily routines. And then they lost that structure and that made them feel very depressed, very hopeless. They had this, it was a spiritual crisis, it's a social crisis and then it's a physical crisis of like, what do I do with my days and what do I believe in? It's interesting because some researchers are very quick to say that people think entering a cult is the hardest and most disruptive part

of this whole process. And it's not. It's the six months after leaving where someone has to process everything that's happened to them. And they are also, probably a little part of them is still mourning the good stuff and still mourning the relationship, I guess. As I said in the intro, all of this is important to know because cult are on the rise. They are increasing significantly if you look at the data. Because the world is becoming more unstable, during times like this, more people will go out looking for an ideological center. And in the current climate we're in, misinformation and that

ideological misinformation reaches them a lot quicker. I think we're going to be seeing more and more of this deprogramming happening for more and more people who seem relatively normal. Colts are on the rise, literally in this research, I was like, I was like, I'm going to see if I can find a cult. I'm just going to see what I can find. I found three active cults with Instagram pages and TikTok accounts. One of them has. young members posting lifestyle content. And that is content that you or I could very easily consume and could very easily encounter. That is a cult recruiting through TikTok. So what are some of the new age cults that we need to be on the lookout for? I'm talking about cults that may not

look like the Manson Col or the Heavensgate cult or what we have in mind when we think of compounds and secret camps and Kool-Aid. These cults are a lot more sinister. I want to present three of the biggest ones of our day and age. I want to see if you guys ever encountered them. You've definitely encountered at least one. Stay with us. We're going to talk about it right after this short break. If anyone wanted to commit a murder,

up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But no one will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And I said, Maybe she'll find out where this girl is.

I saw him violent. Backhanded a bow. And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with him. The clock is ticking down and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County. But I've met the devil and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarov and this is season two of the devil's quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear The Devil's Quarry Season 2 add free with exclusive content. Subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, we meet Carl Bryant. Carl thought he was living a normal, drama-free life. until the messages started.

You will have hell to pay. For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life, threatening to ruin him. Cyberstalking, swatting, extortion, impersonation. And then the text threats escalated. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. Dance department. It's playing out in real life, not just on the phone. Every piece of evidence pointed to one man.

But every piece of evidence was a lie. He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's me, W. Compte Bell. This season of my podcast who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Everything up to that point Build you as a comic Us going on the road

Doing Battle Mountain and Ely Yeah you took me You were one of the first people Took me on the road Which is funny because at the time I was like I don't know if I like this guy With rapper Actor David Diggs

The jump off for me was Hamilton And it was the most popular thing in a very long time But it was still for me It was me and my friends Making something dumb Bruce Lee's daughter And Brandon Lee's sister

Shannon Lee Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that, you're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with me with Debbie Kumabelle on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player, Carly Lloyd. I'm Fox Sports Reporter Jenny Taft. And on our new podcast, whatever it takes, we're talking motherhood, marriages, careers, and figuring. out how to balance it all. And we'll discuss the game that brought us together

because nothing is off limits. Do you remember your initial reaction when Fox called you to be a part of the World Cup? I was like, no, I don't want to do it. You said no? I played with players that didn't... I don't think that they really, truly love the game. I found the love with the ball at my foot.

But in my head, it was the long game. It was like, I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps. and I'm going to learn it and love it and embrace it. He said, this group of people will never be in the same room as part of the same team ever again in your life. And it is your job to make sure that you enjoy the moment. You're proud of what you accomplish together. Listen to whatever it takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecom. at the Adriah Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should

we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they're concerned that one, they're not. have dementia and the other one is do I have ADHD? There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts are wherever you're listening now. So as I said, culture on the rise, sorry to scare you. It's true though. And that's because a big trigger, as I said, for these kinds of groups to emerge is periods of instability and periods of fear. And a big moment like that happened in recent history that sociologists have said acted as a major catalyst for the formation of thousands of new cults. And that thing was the pandemic. The pandemic was a perfect storm of fear, misinformation, loneliness, conspiracies about the government, a search for. for meaning and a search for freedom, like all kind of rolled into one, and it happened to so many

people. One of the biggest cults to come out of this was the sovereign citizens movement. I know in Australia, in Canada, New Zealand, Germany, membership in these groups skyrocketed. If you haven't heard of the sovereign citizens, they're essentially people who are deeply anti-government, but to an extreme degree, and they really believe that you shouldn't have to have to be. You shouldn't have to pay tax, you shouldn't have to follow certain laws, you shouldn't be subject to any kind of governmental authority. There is a massive sovereign citizen compound, or like I guess it's a hideout in rural Australia. And there was a huge case last year involving a member of this sovereign citizens movement who shot and killed two police officers. And if you're Australian,

you'll know this case. His name is Desi Freeman. If you want to look it up, it was all over the news. But the thing, like, obviously, it's shocking when that happens, but it made quite a stir because a lot of people in that community were like, we had no idea. We had no idea these people were just like around the corner. So sovereign citizen cults on the rise, doomsday cults are another one that are on the rise, which honestly, I kind of get it. I kind of get it. It's hard to not feel like end times are upon us if you read the news. But perhaps one of the most famous cults on earth at the moment is the so-called cult of Trump. Some cult experts, mind control experts argue that Trump fits the definition of a cult leader through his promotion of, well, because he is

a cult of personality. They point to his followers like intense devotion to him, his creation of an us versus them narrative, the use of truth social to spread a single truth about the world based on his views to his followers. He demands absolute loyalty. If you don't, if you're not loyal, you face ostracization, you face shame, you face maybe even violence. Some people call it political populism. Others say it is so much more dangerous than that. I guess it's the same sentiment, if I'm thinking about it, as like one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. One person's cult, we might call the cult of Trump a cult, but that's another person's political. beliefs, and it's another person's, I don't know, it's another person's religion.

There are also wellness groups which have come under fire for being cults. I have to mention that. It's a wellness podcast. I have to talk about them. For example, the universal medicine cult, the One Taste cult, which promoted orgasmic collective meditation. You heard that right. Modern wellness cults often use social media to lure people in because they

market self-improvement solutions and life coaching sessions and group programs that make people feel seen and bring them into the fold. And then they offer alternative practices. Then they offer packages you can buy with money. There's often a guru who asks for like unquestioning trust. They claim to possess exclusive secrets to health, to wealth, to enlightenment. And then that money component is critical because money, like that is what feeds the cult. There is this financial aspect that is truly the main intention of this group. They're offering these new age health practices that promise big things that ask you to cut off toxic family members that ask you to do all this stuff and it's only going to cost you, you know, all your life savings.

And these people get into serious trouble and they really do end up harming themselves. I think the only approach to people who find themselves in these groups is just unconditional empathy, not the people who start them, the people who find themselves in them. And I know this sounds controversial to say that, but I think we really have to understand and try and be empathetic of the fear and the desperation that drives people into these misinformation spaces. No one willingly wants to feel so petrified of the world around them that they part with their morals, part with thousands of dollars, distance themselves from their family, become only more isolated and scared. I have friends whose parents have been basically taken from them by online misinformation

groups that we could call cults. And it's devastating. I think when you see it up close, you truly do understand how much, it's just fear is at the heart of all this and how much desperation and hopelessness that was created by the pandemic and by all these other movements that happened at the same time. Again, it returns to one of my main points I've been making over and over again. The way the cults are depicted makes them seem like this rare standout thing that we can gawk at and we can watch a two-hour documentary and think that's not normal, how stupid must you be to have joined that, but actually it's basic human psychology that gets people involved. And it's basic human psychology that's just been manipulated in a certain

direction. And we're fascinated by it. This is the final thing I want to touch on for this episode. You know, we've examined cult leaders. We've examined cult followers. We've put the spotlight on them. What about us? Let's turn the attention back to us. What is the psychology behind why we find cults so fascinating, I guess, as viewers? So I've been thinking about this a lot. I think cults offer a fascinating clash between our intrinsic human desire to belong and like the terrifying allure of absolute control from the cult leader. I think when we watch documentaries like this, we kind of all ask ourselves that question, which is like, could that have happened to me? There was this New York Times piece written last year that also talks about

the fact that cults are compelling because it shows us that we are much more pliable and much more gullible than we think we are. There is a human vulnerability there that we recognize in ourselves. We know, like, we don't want to admit it, but we do. Also, I think cults contain, they contain almost every, everything that humans find psychologically irresistible to look at. They contain sex, power, belonging, charismatic. personality, secrecy, rebellion, money, danger. There is something voyeuristic about watching people fall into that without knowing and watch them surrender their individuality to a leader. Because there is this like, this danger. There is this danger and there is this like excitement

about watching that, that we kind of forget like these are real people. These are real people. This happened to them. Finally, I think the reason we're so obsessed with Colts is the train wreck effect. This is something I read about in an article by the author Kristen Alia, she teaches at Brown University. And she speaks about how watching a cult collapse is like watching or seeing a car accident and just needing to take a look. It gives us the safety of observing extreme human behavior that's fascinating or extreme human suffering that's fascinating from a distance and not actually being harmed by it. It's so novel because we don't think it's going to happen to us. We hope we don't experience it. And we want to see it from the safety of our homes and from behind

closed doors. We want to see how those decisions are made. We want to see how ordinary humans can be driven to do terrible things or join terrible things. A big part of this is also the cult leaders themselves, like they are fascinating because power is fascinating. Charisma, no matter how terribly it's used, is magnetic and it's intriguing to us as humans. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, they fascinate us because, like, what an insane ability to make people do such awful things. And part of us just wants to know how. it all comes back to our desire to understand our own human nature just a little bit more.

And that, my friends, is the psychology of cults. That's why we find them so fascinating. So before we end this episode, let me do a quick summary of what we've covered because we have discussed so much. We discussed how cults form the personality types of cult leaders, what distinguishes a cult from a religion or Taylor Swift from a cult, what makes people vulnerable to joining a cult what makes them difficult to leave, and the anatomy of modern day cults like the cult of Donald Trump or sovereign citizens. And of course, we examined our own relationship to cults

and why we can't look away, why we can't help but stare and ponder. So thank you for listening. If you have made it all the way to the end, I hope you learned something. And if you are listening on Spotify, leave a comment down below. What do you think is a modern day cult? Mine is Tradwives. I think Tradwives is a modern day cult movement. Controversial, I know, but I just believe it. So leave a comment down below, what is yours? Make sure that you watch an episode on Netflix. If you haven't yet, that would be very, very helpful. You can also follow us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast. Thank you as always to our researcher for this episode, Lucy Davidson. There are heaps of other pieces of research in the

description of this episode if you want to go even further. There's also a link to our substack where we put shorter transcript versions of these episodes in reading format that we send to your email. So if you like to read whilst you listen, that is a great way to do it. I think that's all my little reminders. I just hope you enjoyed this episode. I need a big glass of water after all that research. So I hope it was worth it. And until next time, be safe. Be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top

researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, Carl thought he was living a normal, drama-free life until the messages started. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. Every piece of evidence pointed to the wrong guy.

He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, black literature. I'm Jack Quist-Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lits podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella bakers, Malcolm Rexes and Martin with the Kings running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from. And considering this is Black Reading Month, they don't even.

real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But no one will find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and I said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is.

I saw him violent. Backhanded a pow! Listen to the Devil's Quarry Season 2 in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Fox Sports Reporter Jenny Taft. And I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player,

Carly Lloyd. And on our new podcast, whatever it takes, nothing is off limits. I played with players that didn't truly love the game. I found the love with the love with the ball at my foot. I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps

and love it and embrace it. Listen to whatever it takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.