I have been deeply interested in cults and coercive mind control for years. To me, there is no greater violation than to take the very essence of someone’s mind from them, unless you’re doing it for the money.
So, after years of trying to come up with an idea for a podcast that I knew I would be able to produce with some regularity, it hit me (of all places, on a massage table): Talk about cults.
There are tons of podcasts that cover cults on the web. I’ve listened to a bunch. But most of them come from a place (at least partially) of using the subject of cults and mind control as entertainment. It’s their right to do that, and if it gets people interested in knowing more, then good on them.
What I wanted to do was to create a podcast where I sit down with someone who has very close (preferably firsthand) knowledge of a cult, leader, coercive group, etc, and get them to tell me their story. I wanted to know about the people who get ensnared.
On Belief is a Podcast about how ordinary every single person I spoke to about cults is. It’s about how smart they are. It’s about how capable they are. And it’s about how they spent the time when they were being mind controlled, and how they got out.
In the coming weeks, you will hear stories that with shock you and make you cry, but my goal isn’t to scandalize. It’s to raise the alarm that thought reform is insidious and omnipresent. We’re living in a post truth society where even though you can Google any cult and find out in 10 seconds whether they are a cult, the allure of charismatic leaders who can make sense of our tough world is stronger than ever.
The first episode in this series is an interview with Rick Alan Ross of the Cult Education Institute. He tells me, among many other things, that while he has studied cults for decades, given the right conditions, he could be thought reformed.
I hope you’ll tune in to this episode, available here.
You can get more information on each episode including production notes and links to what was discussed by visiting the website here.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this series.