Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

Join Alisa Daniels, a former member of Il Chi Lee's Dahn Yoga/Body & Mind organization, as she reveals her family's harrowing journey through a high-control cult. She shares how a simple desire to help her son led them into a web of financial exploitation and emotional manipulation. From love bombing to identity shifts, Alisa discusses the pressures to recruit family members and the staggering costs involved. Now, as a survivor, she reflects on recovery and provides crucial advice for recognizing red flags and evading similar traps.

One of the most powerful tools in healing from childhood sexual abuse is for a survivor to have the opportunity to share their story and truly be heard. Many survivors of early trauma at the hands of Catholic Church Priests went unheard or unbelieved for decades. Several Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigations and media discussions surrounding the findings were one of the first opportunities for many local survivors to recognize the extent of their own abuse fully. It also served to help survivors realize that they were not alone. Jay Sefton was one of these individuals. He experienced childhood sexual abuse by his family’s parish priest, and he is now working to share his story while also empowering others to heal from theirs. Sefton is an actor, playwright, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor living in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He is the co-author and performer of UNRECONCILED, an autobiographical story of an adolescent actor cast as Jesus in a school play directed by a parish priest. I had the opportunity to see the play performed live. I listened to the discussion afterward, which included the former Boston Globe Editor Marty Baron, who empowered his Spotlight team to pursue the story of the church’s conspiracy to cover up the abuse. The play was amazing and there is a project to help bring it to a much bigger audience. Jay is a licensed mental health counselor and I believe his journey will be an inspiration for many. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her book, Sarma tells her story of how a successful businesswoman, co-founder and owner of the acclaimed NYC restaurant Pure Food and Wine and the brand One Lucky Duck, could fall for a con artist using a fictitious name, a covert backstory, and fantastical promises. Humans are social beings, and it’s that social aspect that manipulative and abusive characters can learn to exploit for their self-interest. With an increase in online dating and social media, individuals can be exploited relatively easily without knowing who they are really speaking to. Predators can create false identities. They can also buy profile data on a potential victim they wish to exploit. In addition, some unethical people earn money by teaching men how to manipulate women online using neurolinguistic programming (NLP) / hypnosis. With behind-the-times laws on recognizing and prosecuting coercive control in relationships, often victims like Sarma are blamed for criminal actions occurring as a result of abuse. Sarma Melngailis recounts her side of this traumatic story, ultimately culminating in her imprisonment on Rikers Island. She hopes that people who read her book will gain a better understanding of what happened to her and use it to warn others of their own vulnerability to online predators. She wanted to correct the story told in the Netflix documentary “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Exploitative documentaries are often inaccurate, leading to media distortion and public shaming of the survivor.Yes, folks- There ARE one on one cults! Fascinating story.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Cults, Culture & Coercion, I had the pleasure of speaking with Irene of Irene’s Entropy. Irene is a mechanical engineer turned musician, storyteller, pilot, and entrepreneur. Raised in a strict Mormon household where she underwent the experience of a recruitment mission, she left in her early 20s. She began documenting the honest rebuild of her identity as Irene’s Entropy.Her work blends songs, narrative, and a recurring symbol, a red door, through which she “walks” whenever she’s ready to learn and change. She calls her audience Door Walkers, and even launched Door Walker Coffee, a liberating nod to the Mormons’ coffee prohibition. Her ongoing experience as an ex-Mormon informs her work today, and Irene’s most vivid description of undue influence comes from her time as a missionary. She explains that the Missionary Training Center (MTC) is where scripts are drilled and identity is re-molded. Irene felt a strong need to reinvent herself after feeling the Mormon church had superimposed an identity onto her. After an intense reevaluation period, Irene decided to walk through the red door. Challenging herself to a new field of study, she pursued an engineering degree and worked up to an aerospace career to prove she could. Other critical personal changes followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Matthew D. Skinta, an expert in LGBTQ+ mental health, dives into the pressing challenges faced by queer and transgender communities amidst political upheaval. He sheds light on the harmful practices of conversion therapy and discusses recent political interference leading to the cancellation of crucial research. Throughout the conversation, Matthew emphasizes the importance of social safeness and compassion-based interventions for mental well-being. The discussion also highlights innovative approaches like psychedelic-assisted therapy and mindfulness practices for trauma recovery.

John Andrew Collins, a former third-generation member of William Branham's 'Message' movement, shares his transformative journey from cult life to research and healing. He discusses the radicalization linked to Branham's doctrines, including troubling connections to recent Minnesota murder cases. The conversation spans topics like Branhamism’s influence on modern ministries, the intertwining of Christian Identity and racism, and how militant rhetoric can lead to violence. Collins emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and returning to a message of love and compassion.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump series, dives into the mental health crises surrounding Trump. She discusses the impact of the Goldwater Rule, the challenges experts face due to censorship, and how dangerousness can be assessed without direct exams. Lee emphasizes the urgent need for mental fitness evaluations for national leaders and shares strategies for helping radicalized individuals. Lastly, she highlights the importance of public education to counter authoritarian influence and protect mental health.

Anne began our discussion by dispelling the myth that everyone in Nazi Germany simply went along with Hitler’s plans. She examined these resisters in her book Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. When I read the book, it didn’t become clear to me how vitally important it was that there was a vast resistance movement. One I had never heard about. She hopes that the past might give us clues for potential future playbooks.“I think one thing they did well was create a broad coalition. So, what they did was find people who opposed the Nazi regime, and some of them were monarchists, some of them were communists. They had Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, Atheists, you name it. And they agreed to put their differences aside until the end of the regime, and then they could start infighting again. But, over that period, they worked together.” Anne said, “That’s why I’m so adamant about people getting involved now and getting involved in a practical sense, not just the, you know, the street demonstrations, which are fine, but studying what needs to be done in terms of our government.” She hopes that this would help us figure out how to save our democracy while we still may have time. If you wish to be part of the hope of defeating the authoritarian Cult of Trump, roll up your sleeves and be part of heroic resistance! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History provides a developmental framework for understanding the evolution of ideas, allowing us to trace their origins and track societal impact. Dr. Rebecca Lemov is a Professor of History of Science at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her timely 2025 book, The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion, offers valuable insights into how the past might influence our future surrounding the topic of Mind Control. The Cold War era saw these techniques in the CIA’s secret MK-Ultra program (1953-1973), which investigated potential offensive and defensive applications of mind control for military purposes. Lemov brought up Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s work on treating PTSD and different types of “psychic numbing”. This might be the type of numbing one might experience in a holocaust type situation, or “ordinary numbing”. She said, “What you’re saying, a kind of dissociation or hypnotic, you know, out of body. In a sense, you’re literally out of your body, sometimes when you’re infinitely scrolling, or doomscrolling.” Her work delves into the hidden history of these influence methods while exploring their disturbing implications for our AI-driven future, particularly focusing on the emerging development of hyper-persuasion. These include advanced personalization, precise emotional targeting, and behavior prediction. We dissected the mixed blessings of social media and how it can provide some power to the individual voice, as long as the algorithm is designed ethically for pro democratic influence. This is a very important work which all citizens will find to be beneficial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Watching the Emmy award-winning documentary We Will Dance Again was really really difficult. This 2024 documentary captures Hamas terrorists brutally attacking the Nova music festival attendees on October 7th, 2023, and shows the horrifying events that followed, including hostages taking. Documenting a Terrorist Attack by Hamas from Multiple Perspectives is not an easy task. “I think that this is a terror attack that you can see for the first time from both perspectives that captured the same moments at the same time and I think this is the power of this film,” Yariv said. Yariv implored listeners to please remember that most Israelis are for human rights, democratic rule of law, and policies to stop the war between Israel and Palestine. “I think at this point, this war should have ended, the hostages should have been released. I think it’s the responsibility of the state and government of Israel to focus on their release, not killing Hamas and Palestinians controlled by Hamas. Israel should have stopped the war. The casualties of war, the innocent casualties of war, are devastating. And there is a point at which a country needs to understand that war cannot solve everything, and violence cannot solve everything,” Yariv said. We discussed what psychological warfare is also at play in this attack and the events following. I noted that both the United States and Israel are under extreme right-wing leadership at this time, and this directly impacts ongoing conflicts and continuing harm. “Do not blame every Israeli for every type of policy that our government is conducting,” Yariv noted. I mirrored the same about the United States: “Don’t hate the American people. Most of us are good people, and we don’t like Trump, and we’re appalled by his destruction of the checks and balances of laws, the applications of all the rights that we fought for.” I also reminded listeners that not everything was black or white in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and the history of harm in the region is extensive and complex. “I’m seeing entities of authoritarianism versus people who are pro-democracy and human rights and women’s rights and gay rights and indigenous rights and children’s rights,” I noted. Yariv and I both agreed that the pain being inflicted upon the Palestinian people was unacceptable and not helping any of these regions to heal. I added that I hoped we were able to find peace without further cooking our planet and destroying our environment, as wars are costly in so many ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices