A Little Bit Culty

In Part 1, Julianna Glasse joins us for a conversation about what happens when a woman starts reading, questioning, and noticing the system she was raised to accept as absolute truth. Raised in the Christian Evangelical Free church by a pastor father and homeschool-teacher mother, Julianna describes the slow internal unraveling that began with philosophy, poetry, science, and one very memorable sc...

Suzanne Jordan is back for Part 2, and this one starts exactly where it needs to: the moment 24-year-old Suzanne braced herself in a doorframe and told Yogi Bhajan she thought of him like an old grandpa. We get the full story of his sexual advance, her refusal, his explosive rage, and the martial arts training that meant the next time he came at her—fists up—she dropped into a fighting stance and...

Suzanne Jordan joins us for a deep dive into her time in the early days of 3HO, Kundalini, and the world built around Yogi Bhajan. She shares how childhood trauma, family rupture, Omega House, and a desperate search for safety and belonging created the perfect runway into an ashram that initially looked like a wholesome new family, with yoga, vegetarian food, chanting, and a suspiciously effective...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Sean Miller, we get into the messy business of figuring out what to keep—and what to leave behind—after spending 36 years as a Jehovah’s Witness. Sean talks about the anger, grief, and identity crisis that came with leaving, and how learning to incorporate the good parts of his past without excusing the harmful ones helped him move forward. We dig into the Jehova...

Sean Miller grew up as a Jehovah's Witness golden boy—son of a highly respected elder, raised in what he calls a nearly perfect JW family, and groomed from infancy to be the best Witness in the room. The only problem? Nobody asked Sean. He wanted to shred guitar and make art, but was too busy passing an invisible bar exam at five years old, with love that felt conditional on performance. We get Se...

Melissa Archer's story in 5F continues with a “deliverance,” a session conducted over speakerphone ( audio now public through Be Scofield's reporting) that turned deeply personal fast, and a follow-up call where the "prophet" asked if she was "wet" and how "thirsty" she was. That was a major crack, but not the exit. What happened there is a masterclass in coercive control: a middle-of-the-night br...

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Melissa Archer is best known as Natalie Buchanan on One Life to Live , with later stints on Days of Our Lives and a run of indie films. These days she builds software, including NeuroRewire, an app for rewiring thought patterns formed in situations people didn't choose. Somewhere in the middle of all that, she accidentally joined a cult. We first learned ab...

Our merch store just got a glow-up, and yes, it’s as Gen X as it sounds. We’ve teamed up with Dashery for new designs and better deals. Every purchase helps support the podcast—think cozy hoodies, sweaters, and mugs for fall and winter, plus shirts, tank tops, phone covers, stickers, pillows, totes, pins, magnets, hats, and basically everything you could use in your house or on your body. No unifo...

We’re back with Mark Vicente for Part 2 of this joint A Little Bit Culty and WTF is on my Mind?! episode. This one gets into the real meat of what happened at our book launch event gone sideways—and what it means beyond just us. We play the last 12 minutes of Sarah’s recording from the event, then the bookstore owner's public social media post about the incident. We contrast it with what actually...

In this special joint episode of A Little Bit Culty and Mark Vicente’s WTF Is on My Mind?! , Mark interviews us about the “Massy incident” during our Vancouver book tour for A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion . Together, we unpack what happened when a conversation about cult dynamics, extremism, and pattern recognition was hijacked by a highly charged political conflict—and...

In Part 2, Star gets into the red flags that finally became impossible to ignore at OneTaste: missing consent and accountability protocols, sexual boundary violations, spiritual bypassing, gaslighting, and an organization that seemed to have more “trust the process” than actual process. She shares how she slowly pulled away, eventually leaving the Bay Area, rebuilding her life, and finding her way...

In Part 1 of our third deep dive on OneTaste, Star Stone joins us to explain how a spiritual seeker looking for female empowerment and connection ended up inside a world of confusing intro events, “corporate vagina” demos, goalless orgasmic meditation, and communal housing that sounded like a nightmare waiting to happen. Star walks us through the slow creep from curiosity to commitment: Meetup mix...

In Part 2 of our Vancouver book launch, we do a full-on audience Q&A, covering everything from cult susceptibility and the “cult-shaped hole in your heart” to how groups can start with good intentions and slowly slide into coercion, control, and abuse of power. We talk recognizing your own hooks, spotting personality changes and loaded language, rebuilding trust after leaving, and why “What to...

We’re kicking off Season 9 live from our very special book launch conversation from July 2026 in Vancouver about our book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion . We chatted about the messy, hilarious, full-circle journey behind the book, then get into how to support someone who may be caught in a high-control group without pushing them further into isolation. We unpack love b...

Family is supposed to be your safe place—but what happens when home is the original high-control group? In this episode, Alicia Markowitz, co-host of the Spanish-language podcast Familias Horribles , joins us to talk about growing up in an abusive family system, becoming the scapegoat, and slowly realizing that the “family rules” were really just coercion, control, gaslighting, triangulation, and...

In this summer bonus episode, we joined Claire Headley on Blown for Good: Scientology Exposed for a wide-ranging conversation about our new book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion , and the patterns that connect Scientology to other systems of power and control. We talked about love bombing, coercion, life after leaving, healing from high-control groups, and why learning t...

In Part 2 with Alicia Duncan, we get into the really juicy stuff: the loaded language, the euphemisms, and the whole “don’t say the scary word or everyone clutch their pearls” universe around MAID. Alicia breaks down how terms like autonomy, dignity, and assisted dying get used as PR glitter, while the actual lived experience can look a lot more like coercion, gaslighting, and a bureaucratic escap...

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.  In this episode, we’re joined by Alicia Duncan for a conversation that takes ALBC somewhere new: not a traditional cult, but a deeply troubling story about coercion, undue influence, narrative control, and institutional power. Alicia shares what happened after her mother entered Canada’s MAID—Medical Assistance in Dying—program, and how a family alrea...

In the second half of our Cults to Consciousness bonus episode, the conversation gets even more practical: how to spot coercive control in real time, rebuild trust in your own intuition, and stop confusing love with obedience. We share more from our new book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion , including why survivor stories matter, how to talk about cultic experiences wit...

In this bonus episode, we hop over to Cults to Consciousness with past ALBC guest Shelise Ann Sola for a real, slightly sweaty, very honest conversation about how cults mess with your head, your body, and your sense of what’s normal. We talk about our new book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion , and how survivors can move from confusion and self-blame toward clarity, boun...

Gerette Buglion’s back for part two of our catch-up. This one dives deeper into the messy, important work of healing through writing, therapy, and self-trust. She talks about internal consent, knowing when to pause, and why it’s so important for survivors to move slowly when a story starts to light up the nervous system. We also get into the realities of publishing after cultic abuse, including ho...

In our next “Where are they now?” catch-up episode, Gerette Buglion is back, and she’s still doing what she does best: helping survivors turn cult experience into something meaningful, grounded, and actually useful. In this conversation with Sarah, she shares how life has evolved since we last spoke, from personal recovery and family life to the gentle, steady growth of Living Cult Free and her wr...

If you love listening to ALBC on your commute, while folding laundry, or as your little antidote to the daily chaos, you’ll be right at home with the audiobook version of A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion . This bonus episode gives you Chapters 3 and 4 from the audiobook, so you can hear the book the way it was meant to be heard—out loud, in your ears, and with all the sam...

If you love listening to ALBC on your commute, while folding laundry, or as your little antidote to the daily chaos, you’ll be right at home with the audiobook version of A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion . This bonus episode gives you the Preface, Introduction, Introduction to Part I, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 from the audiobook. You can hear the book the way it was meant...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Gillie Jenkinson, we move from her remarkable story into the practical question so many survivors ask: How do you actually recover after leaving a cult? Gillie shares how her own experience escaping a high-control Christian group led her to become one of the world's leading specialists in cult recovery, and why she set out to create ethical, trauma-informed s...