Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

“You were involved for over 20 years with an apocalyptic, survivalist UFO-like cult. Before joining the cult, you were a bright 16-year-old who later attended Princeton and played football for them as a cornerback. Looking back, you were essentially a bright, educated, charismatic young man who happened to meet the wrong person at the wrong time.” Hoyt describes his upbringing as “normal,” growing up in an affluent family outside Philadelphia. He remembers himself as a social, talented athlete with many friends. While vacationing with family and friends on Nantucket, an upscale Cape Cod Island, he encountered a man named Frederick von Mierers (his real name was Freddy Meyers). Frederick approached 16-year-old Hoyt, laid a towel beside him, and engaged him in conversation about spirituality. Frederick would later become the leader of a cult known as Eternal Values. Hoyt’s life didn’t end with his cult experience; it inspired his purpose. He dedicated himself to filmmaking, podcasting, and advocacy, educating the public about cultic dynamics.Hoyt is currently developing a memoir titled Picture Perfect, a documentary series, and a feature film based on his life and experiences. This is a fascinating person. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I do feel we have an obligation to speak up,” Alexandra Stein, PhD said on this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, “and it’s tough for people to resist these systems when there is total silence, and that’s what these systems kind of rely on.” Alexandra exited a ten year stint in a left wing political cult when she was 36 years old. Alexandra is a writer and educator specializing in the social psychology of ideological extremism and other dangerous social relationships. Her latest book, Terror, Love, and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, was released as a second edition in 2021. She is also the author of Inside Out: A Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult. She presented her statement for the Congressional Record for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol titled Political Cults and the Use of Cultic Tactics in the Recruitment and Mobilization of Participants in the January 6 Attack on the Capitol. Based in the UK, Stein is one of a growing number of ex cult members who have become academics who wish to share their expertise with others. A Fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Cult survivors often have the instinct to want to save as many people as possible from the cult they survived. However, healing from the things they encountered while in the cult is often a first step before a survivor can help others escape. Cult survivors usually seek to heal with some form of therapy and move on. Nori was a member of ISKCON from 1978 to 1988. As a member of the PR office, Nori lived in a bubble with some of the cult’s abuses hidden from her so she could maintain her positive opinion of the cult as part of her work. After leaving the cult, Nori learned about the abuse of women and children in the cult. The University of Illinois Press published Nori’s memoir, Betrayal of the Spirit, in 1997. After that she wrote and self-published Child of the Cult and Cult Survivor’s Handbook For a more detailed look at the atrocities the Hare Krishnas committed, check out the documentary Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness, and the Hare Krishnas. Nori Muster and Steve Gelberg are two former members interviewed in this well-done film. Join us for a fascinating discussion that includes art therapy and other expressive therapy approaches to healing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many, practices like meditation and yoga are among the most thrilling avenues for deepening spiritual awareness. At their best, these techniques can serve as a neurological and biochemical reset—enhancing self-awareness and empowering transformation. But at their worst, they can cause a loss of personal grounding, leaving individuals vulnerable to exploitative relationships or mental, physical, and even sexual harm under unethical or authoritarian figures. As a result, people often find themselves wagering between powerful tools for psychological growth and the risk of undue influence. In this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I speak with my longtime friend and colleague, David Christopher Lane, PhD—Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Mt. San Antonio College—about this delicate balance. David is the author of numerous books, including The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar, The Radhasoami Tradition, Exposing Cults: When the Skeptical Mind Meets the Mystical, The Unknowing Sage, and The Virtual Reality of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press published his most recent book, The Sound Current Tradition: A Historical Overview, in 2022. He also co-authored an annotated bibliography on the Radhasoami movement for Oxford University Press. Beyond academia, David is a world champion bodysurfer with titles spanning from 1997 to 2016. David is also an expert on neuroscience and virtual reality technology.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Those who have experienced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) will often report the profoundly painful experience of being thrown into past trauma by a particular trigger. Common examples include war veterans who may experience full body activation following a loud explosive noise. Another example is victims of violent crimes being shown content about similar circumstances that can launch them into the past. This experience of being thrown back in time has been thoroughly analyzed utilizing Time Perspective Therapy (TPT) by co-developer and counselor Rosemary Sword. Rose is the co-author of the renowned 2012 book The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy. She worked on the book with her husband, clinical psychologist Richard Sword, PhD, and Philip Zimbardo, PhD, psychologist and professor at Stanford University. When Richard passed away from gastric cancer a year and a half later, she continued her work on TPT with Zimbardo, eventually coming to their new book Seeing Through the Grief. While it was released in the spring of 2024, Zimbardo sadly passed away in October. Other projects they worked on included a second TPT book titled Living & Loving Better, partnering with Happify.com Premium to offer Overcome PTSD and Heal from Grief and Loss, as well as a Psychology Today column, The Time Cure. This is a fascinating interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Power can be rapidly stripped away from individuals, or it can be taken away layer by layer. Not everyone makes it out of a cult, but life can become particularly meaningful when they do. A new purpose can arise for the person, more substantial than the grasp of mind control. Leaving an authoritarian cult is the experience that Dr. Debbie Haski-Leventhal, PhD, shared with us on this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum. She found this meaning after a period of healing and self-exploration when she left the Kabbalah Centre. Her parents brought her into it when she was only five years old. She devoted her life to it as a chevre (hand-picked servants of Philip and Karen Berg, its leaders). She was able to escape by age nineteen. Debbie currently describes her role as “a professor of purpose and impact”, working with individuals and companies to make lives more meaningful. She crafted her book after decades of exploring what pro-social and satisfying behaviors bring to life. Her book is both inspirational and practical, laying out pointers from the model she developed. She believes strongly in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and works with business leaders to better utilize their human resources into meaning on both an individual and group basis. I must say, I loved this book, listened to it as an audiobook, and then bought it as a paperback and read it. It is a must-read book, in my opinion, for all survivors of mind control cults. It is an inspiration! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“How did I get to the point where I am upset with this current administration?” Joe Szimhart asks at the start of this week’s Cult Conversations: Influence Continuum episode. His journey from a self-described “cult believer” to a leading expert on esoteric religious movements offers invaluable insights into how authoritarian influence takes hold in both spiritual and political spheres. Like Joe, I transformed my experience in my former cult, the Moonies, into a lifelong mission to understand undue influence and help others regain their minds. We are coming together on this episode because we are on alert about the dangerous overlap between authoritarian influence and today’s political landscape. Our conversation reveals a sobering truth: self-indoctrination can be just as powerful as formal brainwashing—and no one is immune. Being well-read won’t help you to avoid getting recruited into a cult. Nor will being highly intelligent protect you and or being happy. However, psychoeducation will help you learn how to identify destructive cults and what research you need to do before giving them your contact information or agreeing to do any activity with strangers- no matter how attractive the recruiter is. We talk about Agni Yoga and Church Universal and Triumphant cults- and how Vlamimir Putin and his wife were devotees of Agni Yoga and Michael Flynn did a “decree” from Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s cult. Flynn traveled the USA with the Moonies cult for their Rod Of Iron Freedom Festivals recruiting for Trump and the supposed “civil war” to come. This is a fascinating interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marietje Schaake is a Fellow at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. As a Dutch politician, she also served as a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands between 2009 and 2019. She was appointed to the United Nations High-Level Advisory Body on AI in 2023. With the announcement that Donald Trump would seek peace talks with Russia first without including Ukraine, and while U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance scolded Europe about free speech at the Munich Security Conference, many have said that we are seeing an end to the transatlantic alliance as it has been known since WWII. Schaake agreed with this concern and stated that not only is this an ending of an alliance, but that the U.S. has become an adversary to the European Union (E.U.). She explained that Vance’s speech, a week before the German election, was meant to boost the far-right Alternatives for Germany party at a precarious time. Schaake explained that while Vance portrayed Europe’s protection of speech as a lack of freedoms, she feels it is a trap to narrowly view the debate about social media and its harms through the lens of free speech. “On the one hand, European countries have very far-reaching protections of freedom of expression. It’s slightly different from the First Amendment, but it’s definitely widely protected. The whole idea that free speech is not protected in European countries is nonsense,” Schaake said. With Elon Musk taking over more and more of our government every day and ousting anyone who is not a strict loyalist, many have begun to ask when the right to free speech will falter. Join us for this vitally important conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk, a corporate billionaire and private naturalized American citizen born in South Africa, has taken an extraordinary amount of power in government since Donald Trump took office as President less than a month ago. Musk is seeking to interfere with elections in Germany and other countries around the world. Vance recently told European leaders to allow more “free speech” but what that means is use of social media and media to push authoritarianism. Dr. Stuart Shulman holds a PhD in American Politics and has done extensive teaching and leadership roles in collaborative interdisciplinary research. Additionally, as founder and CEO of Texifter, he discussed the analysis of Twitter data, his work supporting academic access to data, and federal agency review of public comments on proposed rules. Stuart and I discussed how Twitter was gamified through QAnon since 2017. He tracked QAnon, a tale of a high-up government official with a “Q-level” clearance covering nuclear weapons and related materials and tweeting about supposed confidential information. Coded language and “crumbs” were then created to entice signaling, and Trump often alluded to this through tweets. Stuart noted that in a December 1-12, 2017, dataset with 2.3 million mentions of Michael Flynn, “#followthewhiterabbit” and “the Great Awakening” and other QAnon buzzwords in the Tweets. Stuart noted how the Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) characters often have made-up names and emojis and could have come from anywhere in the world, including Russia, China, India, and other nations that may not have the best interests of voters and citizens in western democracies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kate Woodsome is the founder of The Invisible Threads Project, which studies the relationship between mental health and democracy. We talked about the recent election of Trump and the support for that process from the Heritage Foundation, Opus Dei implications, and Project 2025. She was part of The Washington Post team who won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in coverage of the January 6th Capitol attack. Woodsome left The Washington Post in 2023, stating in her biography that she could no longer normalize the trauma, burnout, and moral injury pervasive in the industry. She noted in our discussion that her childhood contained abuse and trauma that the Capitol attack would reawaken. Once able to rely on being a workaholic who pushed through, she decided to take a step back and focus on healing and the rediscovery of self-identity and self-worth. This eventually allowed her to return to focus on social movements. She covered The People’s March on January 18th, 2025, and then went on to speak with Trump supporters outside of the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., following his inauguration. “What I’m really trying to focus on is civil discourse and looking at the underlying roots of our problems, as opposed to their ugly symptoms,” said Woodsome.We discussed looking for opportunities with family and friends to find common ground and common beliefs. We also discussed empowering people to think for themselves. Not everyone is as radicalized, and fringe members may not fully understand the beliefs and practices of the core community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices