Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

Radicalization, and the Minnesota Murder Cases John Collins grew up inside William Branham’s “Message” world, left it, then spent years mapping how the theology and network morphed into today’s authoritarian ecosystems. I welcomed him back to The Influence Continuum to speak about the murders and share his knowledge surrounding the twisted networks of doctrine and influence that may have influenced them. Collins’ most recent book is Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR. Author and webmaster of William Branham: Historical Research, John was born and raised in William Branham’s “The Message” cult following and is the grandson of Willard Collins, former pastor of William Branham’s “Branham Tabernacle” in Jeffersonville, Indiana. When we did the recording and broke the story about Boelter’s link to the extremist group, we got a message on my YouTube from Boelter’s former baseball buddy and floormate at college, who witnessed his radicalization. Jeff Petricka consented to a recorded interview on my YouTube channel. John’s story hits an essential point about brainwashing while growing up. He was taught such an extremist form of obedience that he was told if Branham said the sky was pink, his eyes were wrong. He was corporally punished regularly. He told me leaving felt like being air-dropped from a North Korean camp into the United States, where nothing is familiar. His deconstruction took years. With human resilience and persistence, John worked to heal himself and help others. John was told stringed instruments were “of the devil.” Today, he keeps his drums in the frame and every video on purpose, and I can see at least 8 (if not more!) stringed instruments on his wall. A really important interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The attack on experts and science itself is part of the mind control strategy to control citizens. Before Trump came to power, the media would regularly call on me and top experts like Dr. Lee to shed light on issues concerning mental health and public health. This authoritarian control of information forces citizens concerned with the public good to do what we can to message. I have interviewed Dr. Lee previously, but as the world is now seeing what she and other experts predicted, I thought it was time to assess the current moment. Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., is a forensic psychiatrist and internationally recognized expert on dangerousness. She is the editor of the New York Times bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President (2017). She followed up with The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew (2024) and The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew (2025). She has consistently been vocal on her views that President Donald Trump presents a Mental Health Emergency, which threatens our nation and the world. As it appears Trump’s health is failing and the Epstein file coverup continues, it seems clear that Putin and other puppetmasters are beginning to make plans for Vance to become President. But will he command the allegiance of sworn Maga devotees? I think this moment is critical to reach out to form, or reconnect with family and friends and warmly ask them their thoughts on current policies. Listen to this interview for more insights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Words matter, and how words or phrases are used may present completely different meanings to diverse cultural demographics depending on topics like history and associated symbolic language. That’s why having a leading bilingual female strategist such as Evelyn Pérez-Verdia on the side of truth in messaging is vital to organizations seeking to break down barriers with Latino communities. She is the Founder and Chief of Strategy for We Are Más, an organization focused on advising about diversity and translating culture, focusing on research, strategy, and creative communications. As a Hispanic small business owner, Evelyn has two decades of experience as an advisor to elections offices, grassroots groups, advocacy campaigns, and governmental agencies on messaging, communications, image, digital content, and micro-engagement. Recognizing her advocacy in protecting democratic organizations, Pérez-Verdia received the Woman of Impact Award in 2022 in Civics from the non-profit organization Mujeres Latinas Impulsando a Mujeres Latinas. She is also part of the University of South Florida’s Dean’s Advisory Council and the Department of State’s U.S. Speaker’s Program, giving workshops to journalists and civil society leaders in Latin America. When speaking to culturally diverse communities, the selection of words used in messaging means a lot. We talked about words often used by large national organizations in Washington, D.C., such as “Latinx” or “Progressive”, and how they can have the unintentional side effect of alienating different sections of the Latino community. She explained, “Yes, we have the Latinx, which the younger generations use, right? Where only 1.8% of Hispanics and Latinos, no matter the age affiliation, are like, I don’t feel identified with that.” Similarly, she noted the word “progressive” may represent “progressista” as a term young Hispanics might find objectionable. “They manifested peacefully on the streets against the dictatorship of Hugo Chávez, of Nicolas Maduro, and they see this youth using exactly the symbolism, exactly the terms that the dictator in the country uses,” she said. This is hugely important for all activists to listen to this interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Misinformation spreads like a virus,” explained Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., a Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He asked the question, “Is there a way to inoculate or immunize people?” His award-winning book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity explores this topic using decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies. He wrote the book to devise a new paradigm to help readers understand and defend themselves against a worldwide information infodemic. Van der Linden’s biography describes his body of research as looking at “how people process (mis)information, how it spreads in online networks, and how we can most effectively prebunk and inoculate people against false information.” He served on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) infodemic working group. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He co-developed Bad News, an award-winning fake news game designed to improve people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques! This is an very important interview. Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that environmental factors, rather than hereditary factors, are taking the lead in driving illness and early mortality? That shift is primarily due to the harm caused by corporations and their products, says Dr. Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services at the University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and the new Center to End Corporate Harm. A world-recognized expert and scientist who studies how exposures to environmental chemicals affect children’s development and health and translates scientific findings to improve clinical care. Dr. Woodruff previously served as a scientist and policy advisor in the US EPA Office of Policy. During our discussion, we discussed how the current administration’s policy will make people sicker. She noted the potential benefit of the MAHA Commission Report, which brings attention to the health harms from chemicals. Still, at the same time, the administration is eliminating funding and rules that protect people from exposure to harmful chemicals in air, food, and water. Unlike RFK Jr., she is solidly pro-vaccine. Dr. Woodruff stated that a third of deaths globally were associated with five commercial products, according to data from WHO and other sources listed in the resources below: 1) Tobacco; 2) Alcohol; 3) Sugar and ultra-processed food; 4) Toxic Chemicals; 5) Fossil Fuels/ Air Pollution. Citizens and Private Foundations must step up since the Trump administration is intent on helping irresponsible corporations. We MUST look to healthcare experts like Dr. Woodruff who rely on sound science and solid research. This is a vitally important interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There has been a huge increase in Christian “Bible” Cults over the past 40 plus years- especially ones that do “Shepherding or Dicipling” in an authoritarian structure. The public doesnt understand how millions of people are deceptively recruited and indoctrinated into these groups and why they are called “cults.” One such cult network started in Massachusetts in 1979 as “the Boston Church of Christ” and are not to be confused with the mainline Church of Christ or the United Church of Christ. This group uses BITE Model methods to recruit and indoctrinate followers to follow the top leader as an “apostle or prophet” or “God’s chosen man to lead Christianity on earth. Unlike legitimate Christian churches this cult claims to be the “only” path to salvation and demands people subit and obey a discpling partner as if they were Jesus. Their lives and free will are taken over by involvement with this group. REcruiting other, giving money, abandoning education and careers, even family are part of the playbook. Tania Diaz was recruited as an 18 college student in Mexico and spent over 20 years. She and her husband were groomed to recruit countless Hispanics into this cult. She would rise through the church’s ranks, only escaping nearly thirty years later to become an anti-cult activist, self-compassion advocate, and host of a podcast dedicated to survivors of religious abuse, Voces: Espacio Sagrado para Sobrevivientes de Abuso Religioso (In English, Voices: A Sacred Space for Survivors of Religious Abuse) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Finch has a Doctorate in Math and Theoretical Physics. He is also a Fellow of the International Society for Philosophers. Like many people I know, he was on a meditation journey and ended up with an Indian guru, then called “Guru Maharaji,” then just “Maharaji,” and later only by his given name: Prem Rawat. Mike was able to leave Rawat in 2000. Since then, Mike’s interests have included the exploration of why he surrendered to the guru, how he stayed for 30 years, and now how to deal with the aftermath. Mike’s book, Without the Guru: How I took My Life Back after Thirty Years (published in 2009), explores Mike’s journey into this rigid belief system, how he realized he was trapped in a cult, and then how he broke away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, “The Banality of Evil,” is actually wrong. It portrayed the lie Eichmann told when he was on trial. He said that he was “just following orders.” Arendt got conned. Eichmann was a true believer in Hitler’s final solution and a committed Anti-Semite. On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I spoke with accomplished Israeli filmmaker Yariv Mozer about his award-winning series The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes documenting senior Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann’s role as architect in the planning and implementation of the Holocaust’s Final Solution. We also discussed Mozer’s latest Emmy Award winning documentary, the Paramount+ movie, We Will Dance Again, based on footage, facts, and stories from the October 7th, 2023, Nova Festival, in which Hamas militants suddenly attacked Israel. He is a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors from his mother’s family, which he noted was an essential aspect of his story and identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monte Mader grew up in a Christian Nationalist family where indoctrination and abuse were ever-present. I became a fan of her powerful voice as she eviscerated the lies of Christian Dominionism, Christian Nationalism, and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) using her knowledge of scripture and Christian ideologies. She has over a million followers on Instagram as a “former alt-right Christian nationalist,” sharing her artistic talent and complex views to dispel widely believed radical Republican doctrine. She brings this knowledge forward and finds ways to bridge communications from her upbringing within a controlling but also highly influential alt-right family from Wyoming. She now shares the deconstruction of her childhood and aspects of her healing journey in several venues, including a new memoir she’s working on. Her experiences are also reflected in her music as a “Rocky Mountain rock artist” living in Nashville, Tennessee. She writes songs and performs with her band, The Big Sky. She is so talented and is an inspiration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The law is out of date on topics regarding how the mind works and how much social influence can sway people to do and believe things that are not common sense. Dr. Cutler has done cutting edge work in forensics and law enforcement analysis. He serves at Fielding Graduate University as both a Professor and Program Director. Social Psychology is one of the pillars of the Mental Health profession. In our current world, so many people are being influenced to believe things that are utterly absurd and follow leaders who are unqualified and even pathological. One especially important area of his work is testifying in courts about false confessions made in police interrogations. Cutler has held research grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States and the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada. He has worked on many publications, including Editor and Author of The APA Handbook of Forensic Psychology, the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, Reform of Eyewitness Identification Procedures, Conviction of the Innocent: Lessons from Psychological Research, and five other books. Come learn about important social psychology principles that will help us navigate the complexities of 2025. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ut2S8KpSRrC-4lcH4dEYHvO7CGAVtvSm/view Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Our brain is a like a VR headset. That’s what it is. It renders incoming data streams to interpret different worlds,” David explained. He proposed that we already live in a symbolic universe, such as the trash can on a desktop being merely a symbol of an action taken on a computer. “VR is a much better model to explain what our brains do,” he continued. David Christopher Lane, PhD and I discussed his experiences with the worlds of Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and neuroscience. I noted that technology could be used for good or evil and that it is essential to have responsible, ethical guidelines for such tools. David agreed, “The bad actors using AI, just like the internet, allowed lots of people to have voices that probably should never have had voices.” He then mentioned how podcasters such as Joe Rogan broadcast a lot of messages that are “not credentialed, not great historians, believing in all sorts of weird stuff.” We spoke about developmental psychology and ideas of mature self-knowledge, including values and beliefs that allow us to investigate and evolve our systems of consciousness and decision-making. David noted that in his critical thinking class, they discussed how one becomes a good critical thinker. “It is our ability and willingness to admit to being wrong or mistaken.” This is a fascinating discussion. AI is here and will get more prominent. Come listen and learn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The highly watched Netflix 2018 documentary Wild Wild Country for people “in the know” was terribly biased. There were no former members. No cult experts. The two people featured were still “true believers in the cult leader, Rajneesh–who was rebranded after his expulsion from the United States as Osho. This cult took over the small town of Antelope, Oregon through deceit and the commune was the relocation from Pune India, where the cult leader had with a history of legal problems, including owing back taxes and claims of drug smuggling. What was missing was what it was actually like to live at the ashram as a child, like Sarito Carroll did til the commune was disbanded due to criminal activities. On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I spoke with Sarito Carroll, about her 2024 memoir In the Shadow of Enlightenment: A Girl’s Journey Through the Osho Rajneesh Cult, to hear and share more of the real story of what it was like growing up within the cult. Sarito is a passionate writer who was initiated into the cult by Rajneesh himself at nine years old in the late 1970s. She described her latest books as exploring “the complexities of belonging, trauma, the struggle to break free of cultic ties, and the long journey towards self-acceptance.” The book follows her journey to exit the cult and eventually begin a career as a technical writer and attain her Master of Science in Chinese Medicine in 2007, despite never attaining a proper education through the cult. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The future of Public Health depends on protection against unrestrained corporate power. A sicker humanity means increased pain and suffering at large. In the past, we have identified numerous exposures that have made us sick, many of which are addictive, and created shield laws to protect the corporations that peddle them. We also know it’s our most toxic addictions that are killing the planet and its people currently, whether due to climate crisis or ingesting harmful chemical substances. When Big Tobacco tried to convince the world that ingesting tar and nicotine made people healthier (“9 out of 10 doctors smoke Camels”), science revealed otherwise and insisted upon laws to regulate the industry more closely. Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L suggests that we consider a similar strategy for sugar, particularly the fructose or refined fructose molecules commonly found to be overdosing society through packaged products. Per his biography, he wants to help “fix the food supply any way he can.” Lustig explaine that one of the essential patterns to recognize in battling addiction is the dichotomy between pleasure vs. happiness. Dr. Lustig is an Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and a Member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. He is a neuroendocrinologist with expertise in obesity, diabetes, metabolism, and nutrition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I discussed the steady rise of Pentecostal Christianity with award-winning journalist and author Elle Hardy. Her 2022 book, Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World, details how the charismatic movement has become a global phenomenon, with currently (2025) an estimated 900 million followers worldwide. As I wrote in the Cult of Trump, a key base for true believers are involved with megachurches involving millions of Americans. The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) has transformed Pentecostal Christianity from a spiritual movement to an aggressively politically motivated group. Hardy explains the phenomenon: “They don’t just want to save souls; they want to transform societies.” For example, prominent Pentecostal leaders, such as Paula White-Cain, who is in the current administration, refers to Donald Trump as a modern-day “King Cyrus.” In the Bible, King Cyrus is an imperfect, divinely chosen leader who fulfilled political and social ambitions on behalf of God to help his people. Trump’s portrayal as divinely chosen in these circles is strategically cultivated to amass the group’s support and reshape American politics. Hardy provided insights into the prosperity gospel, describing it as “the faith of the working poor.” This aspect of Pentecostalism attracts marginalized people seeking hope through promises of divine financial blessings in exchange for devotion and sacrifice. However, Hardy pointed out a troubling reality. Vulnerable individuals often give beyond their means, pushing them deeper into poverty through manipulative teachings. Our conversation highlighted how such practices illustrate financial exploitation and reinforce harmful “magical thinking” and loaded language. Authoritarian leaders commonly exploit these techniques to control followers, which are classic signs of undue influence. Unethical practices like these strip people of their critical thinking and autonomy. This conversation was exceptionally interesting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of Jane’s most striking points in her book and our conversation is that cults aren’t just something “other people” get involved in. Cults can deceptively recruit anyone and work in many different spheres of influence. “I just started pulling the thread,” Jane recalled, “and traced it back to the Puritans.” She explains how the theological worldview of early American settlers, particularly the Puritans, established a pattern of black-and-white/good-versus-evil thinking. The Puritans believed in things like divine judgment, righteous punishment, and the idea that only a few could be saved while the rest would suffer in the apocalypse. This religious idea was an organizing principle for our society and prevails today. For instance, the idea of an existential threat or ultimate salvation has bled into common culture. Whether it’s climate doomism, political collapse, or even the rapture, American society is addicted to “the end is near” thinking. It is everywhere, embedded into our popular culture. Cultic control today has many faces: multilevel marketing schemes (MLMs), political cults, religious cults, therapy cults, “wellness” gurus, and even one-on-one abusive dynamics. These groups reflect and exploit the very same psychological patterns found in traditional cults—fear, isolation, obedience, and identity manipulation. And there are many cults in the Cult of Trump. Check out this fascinating interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right-wing extremism, post-truth America, and media literacy converge in my conversation with David Pakman. Pakman is a prominent political commentator and the host of The David Pakman Show, with over three million YouTube subscribers. Known for his insightful arguments and approachable style, Pakman tackles complex social issues, educating us on the complex and nuanced sociopolitical landscape. Disclosure: I watch his show regularly and was a guest twice. In our conversation, he discusses key insights from his latest book, The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America, delving deeply into how decades of deliberate erosion of media literacy and critical thinking have contributed to our current rise into a landscape where fiction parades as the truth. It is a very intelligent, well researched and argued book. I recommend it highly. In this episode, we explored how modern media operates like a high-control group, using subtle brainwashing tactics and influence to shape beliefs and paralyze civic action. We started our conversation with what seems to be at the forefront of everybody’s mind: Donald Trump.  This was an important interview. Come give a listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cult influence can be found everywhere online, including the political sphere we see when we scroll on social media. Understanding how authoritarian control operates is critical in preserving our autonomy and individuality. In this new episode of The Influence Continuum, I talk with Dr. Stephen Kent, professor emeritus of sociology, who taught courses on alternative and sectarian religions. His research concentrates on issues related to harm caused by groups to individuals and society. It would be a mistake to call sounding the alarms reactionary. Yale scholars like Jason Stanley, Timothy Snyder, and Marci Shore, experts on fascism and propaganda, have left Yale to teach at the University of Toronto in Canada. They cite the rise of authoritarian structures in the United States as their reason for doing so. Our conversation draws lines between our collective decades of research into high-control groups and today’s authoritarian movements, disinformation wars, and the dangerous erosion of democratic norms. While these subjects once felt primarily like niche academic work, terms like “cults” and “authoritarian control” have become central to understanding our political world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices