Claim OwnershipThe Influence Continuum with Dr. Steven Hassan
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Steven Hassan, PhD, is one of the leading experts on cults and undue influence in the world. A former member of the right-wing Moonie cult, Hassan was deprogrammed 45 years ago and has dedicated his life to helping people out of cults and destructive situations. Dr. Hassan is a licensed mental health professional and has written four books, including The Cult of Trump and the seminal book Combating Cult Mind Control. On this podcast, Steve will explain HOW mind-control works, and how to protect yourself from its grips. He will also address ethical influence as the podcast will address the entire Influence Continuum. He’ll interview the biggest names in this field.
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Mike tried to escape Scientology’s undue influence when he was 15. As punishment for trying to escape, he was isolated, sleep-deprived, and forced to do hard labor for over a year and a half. Mike reflects that he felt like a prisoner during this time. Mike finally escaped Scientology at age 27 and joined the military. He had little education and no credit history. Despite these odds, he was inspired by his family’s previous military service and flourished in the Army. Mike became a helicopter pilot and instructor. Mike served five combat tours between Iraq and Afghanistan in his nearly 20 years of service. Mike’s parents joined Scientology when he was seven. Later he says he was made to join the Sea Organization or “Sea Org,” a paramilitary section of Scientology. Mike’s mom, Rosemary, worked directly for one of Scientology’s top executives, Ronnie Miscavige Jr., older brother of the organization’s leader, David Miscavige. Mike reflects that the military was less controlling than Scientology for him. Later, Mike rescued his mother from the cult. An utterly fascinating story.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof has been the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, WA, since 2011. He’s appreciated for his mind-altering sermons, compassionate soul, and social activism. Unitarianism and Unitarian Universalism have traditionally been known as liberal religions, defined by their commitment to individual dignity and freedom of expression. They promote diversity and inclusivity and encourage their members to engage in the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” However, Todd has had a different experience. He believes the organization has undergone a significant policy change, with the value of autonomy and freedom of expression becoming less valued. As a minister, he was not allowed to discuss his concerns openly and was attacked when he did speak out. As a result, he was “disfellowshipped.” Eklof been widely appreciated for his environmental and gay rights activism, in addition to engaging in the areas of criminal justice reform, restorative justice, the peace movement, as well as immigration and racial justice. I wanted to interview him to highight just how polarized Americans have become. I was shocked to hear that he was “canceled.” Cancel culture is just not ok- on the right or the left. Come join this fascinating conversation.
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A former British Police Detective and Undercover Operator, Julie Jones is the founder and CEO of Human-I Intelligence Services, an international consultancy specializing in cybercrime investigations and online open-source intelligence (OSINT). She is a recognized international expert in human trafficking. A bestselling author of the book How to Be a World Class Investigator, international speaker, and former cast member of the award-winning factual reality UK TV series Hunted, Julie continues to work closely with media agencies as a consultant and researcher. Julie has developed and delivered training in sexual and gender-based violence, human trafficking, trauma-informed and victim-centered practices, major case management, strategic and criminal intelligence, cybercrime, and OSINT. She is a passionate and tenacious field investigator and conducts active operations globally with a focus on human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, stalking, and cults. She is a licensed private investigator in British Columbia and sits on the Advisory Council for the Anti-Trafficking Intelligence Initiative. This is an interview you dont want to miss.
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My guest on this episode of The Influence Continuum is Pamela Ryckman, who wrote the book Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science. Science and health institutions can mimic cult-like behaviors and dysfunctional systems when the structures within them become overly competitive and focused on limited resources to obtain professional goals. Ideals of collaboration for the good of the public can become crushed under systems of harmful competition and dogmatic attachments to old-fashioned ideas. The life story of Candace Pert, who discovered the opioid receptor, is a clear demonstration of how women and minorities have often been undermined, excluded, or driven out of that system. Virtually unheard of by most, her life work included significant discoveries in mind-body medicine, HIV treatments with Peptide T, and volumes of scientific research and publishing over her time working within the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Pamela Ryckman is an Emmy-winning producer and writer focusing on women in the workforce. She noted how the story of Candace Pert’s life work provided an ideal launchpad to discuss some of the most pressing issues plaguing science and healthcare today. Ryckman is also the author of the book Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business, which discusses the secret society of the world’s most powerful women shaping an underground movement for change. She has written for The New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, and many other publications. Join me for this utterly fascinating discussion.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Empowering patients or clients to have authority and control over their medical experiences is vital to beneficial therapeutic care. Likewise, well-crafted use of professional communication skills in setting expectations about clinical procedures and outcomes can mean the difference between a traumatic medical visit versus one being remembered with gratitude. Clinical studies show that clinicians trained in hypnotic skills can effectively help patients be more receptive to well-placed suggestions that may help reduce discomfort, eliminate the need for certain medications, lessen the side effects of treatments, and offer moderation over anxiety.
Dr. Elvira Lang-Anderson, MD, PhD, is an award-winning interventional radiologist and founder of Comfort Talk®. This skills-based program fosters improvement of patient satisfaction, optimizing outcomes, and the ability to complete medical procedures through rapid rapport and "word choice" techniques. She has studied patient/provider interactions and their impact on health outcomes, staff satisfaction, and the results of different techniques on the overall efficiency of healthcare systems. Come learn the “state of the art” in this important interview for all.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Russell Johnson is a former member of the Korean martial arts cult Chung Moo Quan. After much negative publicity, its name was changed to Oom Yung Doe. Now a professional security consultant, activist, and podcaster, Russell got involved with the cult as a teen and was involved for eight years. We first met in the early 90s when he contacted me after reading Combating Cult Mind Control. My book helped him understand how he had been manipulated in the cult using primary BITE model tactics. I have been on his podcast, Deceived, about his experience in the Chung Moo Quan cult. He also has a soon-to-be-published memoir called Deceived: A Journey into Darkness. I have heard from countless people about their involvement in destructive martial arts groups over the years.
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“America right now needs some exit ramps,” Jason Van Tatenhove said as we discussed his former role as national media director for the Oath Keepers, a group known for its far-right anti-government militia. While Jason would ultimately decide to leave the group in 2016 due to increasing racism and Holocaust denial within their membership, the Oath Keepers would go on to participate in the United States Capitol January 6th attack, led by followers of Donald Trump. Jason eventually testified before a U.S. House Select Committee about his position in media propaganda for the organization. He described their attempts at paramilitary tactics, plans for insurrection, and his relationship with Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, convicted of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering.
Jason publicly speaks about his concerns for continued paramilitary training groups and recruitment tactics in future election cycles, including the 2024 presidential race. His book, The Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should Be Concerned about a Future Civil War, discusses the unsettled state surrounding extremism in America today and provides an insider view into the tactics used to recruit, train, and further radicalize persons with former military backgrounds, first-responders, and individuals who may otherwise feel disenfranchised by United States Democracy at this time. Newsflash: Rhodes’ son Dakota Adams has decided to run for Montana’s Legislature!
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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As a Protestant, Matthew D. Taylor, Ph.D., is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS), where he specializes in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, religious politics in the U.S., and American Islam. ICJS produced a 30-minute documentary, Spiritual Warriors: Decoding Christian Nationalism at the Capitol Riot, featuring Dr. Taylor. His new forthcoming book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy, tracks the role those Christian leaders played, particularly those from the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) networks, in instigating Christians to participate in the January 6th Capitol Riot.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Hypnosis is everywhere on the Internet- either covertly like ASMR or overtly, where people are enticed to learn hypnosis or NLP, a version of Ericksonian hypnosis. My guest is the lead editor of a comprehensive textbook on clinical hypnosis. Still, it also includes two chapters I co-authored with law professor emeritus Alan Scheflin on the dark side of hypnosis, which includes MK-Ultra. The newly published Routledge International Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis is a compendium of state-of-the-art neuroscience focusing on practice-oriented aspects of clinical hypnosis in healthcare settings. It contains the work of 90 contributors from the global field. Dr. Julie H. Linden, Ph.D., was the lead editor. Julie spoke about the continued increased interest in medicine surrounding clinical hypnotic techniques. We discussed how important and beneficial that could be when prescribing physicians and their ability to offer patients alternatives or integrative therapies for traditional pharmaceutical-based treatment plans, such as pain management.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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In this enlightening episode, I speak to Ryan McBeth, an experienced military veteran and a recognized figure in cybersecurity, military analysis, and artificial intelligence, to explore a range of thought-provoking topics. Ryan brings a wealth of knowledge from his 20 years of service as an anti-armor and heavy weapons infantryman and his prolific work as a software architect, novelist, and YouTube content creator. Ryan appears on NEWSMAX as an intelligence consultant and consults for Veloxxity on Information Warfare and OSINT. He also performed C4ISR intelligence collection for various government customers and currently consults on intelligence collection and analysis methods. He has 856K subscribers on his YouTube channel and it is always educational learning from him. @RyanMcBethProgramming
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Anthony Davis is a British broadcaster, journalist, and voiceover artist. He was born in London and has been based in Los Angeles since 2017, where he works remotely from his home studio with networks worldwide. Since November 2021, his collaborations with the MeidasTouch media network, including the Five-Minute News, The Weekend Show, and America Uncovered, have exploded his reach across the US as a trusted voice in news commentary. Anthony argues that inviting religious far-right speakers into the very heart of American democracy shows the shift to unionize the right-wing church and state. Anthony feels America fell to a dictator when Trump’s misinformation about the election campaign was spread, and peaceful protestors in Portland were militarized. This erosion of democratic values poses a grave threat to the foundation of American governance, necessitating concerted efforts to safeguard the integrity of democratic institutions and uphold the principles of justice and equality upon which the Constitution was founded.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Analyzing online content and how people interact with that content is essential to understanding the process of online radicalization. Twitter/ X has been a major source of information for tracking QAnon and many bad actors from Russia as well as Christian Dominionists, Neo Nazis, and others. Bad actors worldwide use social media to post content to arouse emotions and create chaos. Distrust and polarization. With algorithms instantly and repeatedly feeding similar content, it is easy to go down a rabbit hole of authoritarian creation, resulting in undue influence. Dr. Stuart Shulman is the founding Editor of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics. He holds a Ph.D. in American Politics (Oregon 1999) and is currently the founder (2009) and CEO of Texifter, a software business serving academic, commercial, and government clients. DiscoverText is a web-based text analytics platform for improving human and machine learning. His past work includes extensive teaching and leadership roles, building externally funded teams for collaborative interdisciplinary research. His projects involve qualitative, quantitative, survey, and social media data and human annotation at scale, information retrieval, and machine-learning methods.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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The Trump University grift followed the same playbook as many predatory organizations, like Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) organizations. Victims are hooked through legitimate sounding offers, like a weekend sales course for $1,500. However, once the victims attend the weekend sales course, they are pressured into buying more courses for more money to achieve goals too good to be true. It’s a classic bait-and-switch. So, how can regular people receive justice when high-powered people and organizations wield deception and cult-like practices? That’s where Tristan Snell comes in. Snell is a lawyer and legal commentator featured on MSNBC, NPR, in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. He served as Assistant Attorney General for New York State, leading the investigation and prosecution of Trump University. Snell has developed a playbook for going up against Trump and others like Trump in court. This is a unique interview that you won’t want to miss!
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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1In this era of political polarization, the landscape in the United States is marked by the rise of Donald Trump as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. This despite Trump facing numerous legal challenges–including over his involvement in the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. However, Trump and his supporters are but the most visible element. The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is increasingly taking over the religious right movement and, in turn, influencing the Republican Party, which holds implications for Christianity and the future of democracy. The NAR is closely aligned with those who are on a mission to take over democracy worldwide under the guise of “religious freedom.” Not only are they backing Trump, but Trump is backing them. This movement of politicized Neo-Charismatic Pentecostals (NCP) seeks to assert dominance through their Seven Mountain Mandate, which we’ve previously discussed. There is a possibility that Trump could once again serve as a conduit for their agenda at the nation’s highest office, amplifying the impact of this cult movement towards religious theocracy through the legislative and judicial branches of government at all levels. The theocratic end goals are clearly laid out through Project Blitz, a state-level legislative program primarily led by NAR operatives. André Gagné and Frederick Clarkson returned to my show to discuss the NAR, its background, and ways to educate people worldwide about it. This is a very special interview of major importance.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Neşe Devenot is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS) at the University of Cincinnati and the Medicine, Society & Culture Research Fellow at Psymposia. I decided to use the title of her profoundly important journal article for this podcast. Psychedelics are all the rage. When I gave a talk at the American Psychiatric Association, there were many, many talks about the studies being done to see how drugs like psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA might assist psychotherapeutically. However, many people are experimenting on their own. Some get caught up with a malignant narcissist “shaman” or teacher and experience horrendous trauma and abuse. While the public is doing widespread experimentation, Silicon Valley billionaires reportedly use large quantities of these substances. Devenot points out these tech billionaires appear to believe, in her words, a “TESCREAL bundle of ideologies, which describes an interrelated cluster of belief systems: transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism.” This is an utterly fascinating discussion about how the super-wealthy promotes these beliefs, and either people follow the leaders or they will be left behind. Listen to this brilliant researcher on bioethics!
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Natural medicine might seem distant from the far-right fringes of society until you dig a little deeper and find the wealth of ‘wellness products’ being sold alongside political conspiracies. There is a constant quest for increasing well-being and less ‘toxic’ lifestyles. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories drain resources and instill fears, including political plots, controls, and cabals. It happens in the extremes on all sides, the quest for health alongside an implanted mission searching for “the truth.” Time magazine printed a November 2023 article called Wellness Conspiracy Theories are Spreading and highlighted the topic known colloquially as “conspirituality.” This leaves people simply seeking to feel better with the additional question of how to recognize scams from reality in holistic and natural health communities.
Dr. Melanie Trowbridge is a Licensed Naturopathic Physician and Acupuncturist practicing in Washington State. She and I spoke about the complexity of discernment in natural health communities at this time and about how AI is changing the future of medicine. Her first career was in technology and more recently completed a course at MIT on AI. Melanie also practices separately as an Ordained Spiritual Nature Minister.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the founder of iCivics, said, "The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool. It must be taught and learned by each new generation." It is the continuing mission of the iCivics organization and its current Chief Executive Officer, Louise Dubé, to ensure that future generations of Americans receive meaningful, high-quality, non-partisan civics education through the 145,000 educators and 9 million students in all 50 states served through this free-to-the-public program. Civics education is a cornerstone of learning in the United States. It is the curriculum mortar that helps to hold our democracy together. Students learn the principles of collaboration to form a more perfect union from a very early age in the school system. As they advance in other skills, so should their skills in civics responsibilities and their participatory understanding of the rights and healthy influence within a democratic society. By the time a young person is of voting age in America, we hope that they feel capable of being actively engaged in the formation of societal order. Our nation's continuation and ongoing commitment to its founding principles depends on the learnings of each successive generation. Join us in this very important interview to insure our future!
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Laura E. Anderson, PhD, was raised in a Christian family and experienced first hand what religious trauma is all about. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a Ph.D. in Mind Body Medicine from Saybrook University. She specializes in complex trauma, with a particular focus on domestic violence, sexualized violence, and religious trauma. Her new book is When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High Control Religion. She founded and directs the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery. She supports religious belief and involvement and wants people to be healthy. In this moment of religious extremism, her voice is a valued perspective.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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Legally released from an unenforceable NDA, the former 2016 campaign staffer discusses the cult-building tactics, Russian interference, and the who’s who of bad actors behind the scenes of the Trump campaign. Joining the campaign when then-candidate Trump was polling last in the GOP field, Alva is one of the very few former campaign staffers who worked under Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Dave Bossie, and Steve Bannon. Alva quit Trump the day the Access Hollywood tape was released, as she experienced remarkably similar behavior towards her from him as described in his Access Hollywood hot mic. Freed from the legal ramifications of an NDA, Alva wishes to help “reverse engineer” how the Trump campaign reached and recruited millions of Americans- with the help of Russian agents, data targeting, and money.
Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com
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In this New Year, we offer an episode on healthy, ethical influence. What is Integrative Psychology? What is “organization of mind?” If a person is interested in embodied mind practices, which include concentration meditation training, it takes very specialized training and practice to navigate this terrain effectively. Nigel Denning is a Counselling Psychologist and managing director of Integrative Psychology in Melbourne, Australia. We know each other because we both have received training from the famous forensic psychologist and Tibetan Buddhist teacher Daniel P. Brown. Sadly, Dr. Brown passed away last year, but his work lives on. Hopefully, we hope to empower individuals with the knowledge and tools to optimize their minds, create a nurturing environment for growth and healing, and develop awareness of and resilience against the numerous forms of undue influence that permeate our culture.
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It's what I've been noticing, seeing, knowing!! something wasn't sitting right with me. I just couldn't put it into words. Powerful stuff.
it's like you're talking about my original family. makes me want to cry.
Dr Hassan you hardly give your guest a minute to speak. The entire episode is a monologue!!!