A Little Bit Culty

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. In this episode, we welcome back Alice Hines, co-host of the Mind Games podcast, and dig into her reporting on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), NXIVM, and the slippery gremlin bridge between self-help, persuasion, and manipulation. Alice explains how Mind Games traced the overlap between Twin Flames, NLP, and NXIVM. She spoke about interviewing ex-NXIVM...

In Part 2 with Harrison Hill, we go deeper into his book, The Oracle’s Daughter , and the wonderfully unhinged rise of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), which started out as Free Love Ministries and then took a hard left into full-blown extremity. Harrison talks about the limited public record, the giant legal paper trail, and the kind of reporting that makes you wonder...

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. In this episode, Harrison Hill joins us to discuss his book The Oracle’s Daughter and the rise and fall of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), a group that began as Free Love Ministries and spiraled into an intensely controlling Christian cult. He explains how founders Jim and Deborah Green evolved from 1960s hippies into charismati...

Part 2 with Melissa Duge Spiers picks up at the “WTF moment” when a call about her beloved father—a once‑celebrated Adventist youth pastor and doctor—exposes him as a child predator and shatters the good‑dad/bad‑mom story she’d carried her whole life. She walks listeners through confronting her parents, befriending “Dr. Z,” a former teen congregant who details the grooming and abuse, and realizing...

In Part 1 of our episode with Melissa Duge Spiers, she pulls back the curtain on Seventh‑day Adventism (SDA)—a massive but strangely invisible denomination she describes as a classic end‑times cult built on control of food, bodies, and behavior. She traces the movement’s roots through prophet Ellen G. White, mad‑hatters‑era health fads, Kellogg’s cornflakes‑as‑anti‑masturbation tool, and the churc...

In this episode, we finally sit down with Ashleigh Freckleton, one of the central voices in the Apple TV docuseries Twisted Yoga and a former devotee of MISA/Atman Yoga, the transnational yoga-tantra empire orbiting fugitive guru Gregorian Bivolaru. We’ve been trying to line this conversation up for years, and it was worth every time-zone fail and calendar mishap to get her in the (virtual) studio...

In this episode, Liz Gale shares what it means to be a third‑generation Scientologist, born into a fanatical family where every aspect of childhood—schooling, discipline, even getting sick—was filtered through L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology.” She describes being audited from before birth, sent to a Scientology boarding school at eight, and subjected to invasive “sec checks” by her own mother using t...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Nancy Ross, we dig deeper into the fascinating (and frankly under-discussed) world of Mormon temple garments, the sacred undergarments worn by many devoted members of the LDS Church. Building on the research we introduced in Part 1, Nancy walks us through the results of her large survey examining how these garments actually impact people’s daily lives, especi...

A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion dropped on Amazon this past weekend and has already hit #1 new release in the psychology & religion category! The Kindle version is coming any day now, and the book will be up at other online retailers in the next few weeks. Thank you! We love you! Also…let it be known that: The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not...

In this episode, Dr. Nancy Ross—religious studies professor, longtime Mormon feminist, and co‑author of the forthcoming book Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret —joins us to talk about what it’s like to grow up LDS in small‑town Maine, move into the hyper‑gendered world of southern Utah, and then turn all of that lived experience into rigorous research on faith, clothing, and control. She walks us...

In Part 2 of our conversation, Magnolia Zuniga goes deeper into how the Ashtanga world responded—or failed to respond—to decades of sexual abuse by Pattabhi Jois and what that reveals about belonging, power, and performative “accountability” in yoga culture. She describes discovering that early Western students had deliberately suppressed photographic evidence of his assaults, how senior teachers...

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. In Part 1 of this two‑episode conversation, Magnolia Zuniga—one of only about 20 certified Ashtanga teachers worldwide as of 2015—joins us to unpack how a practice she loved became a textbook example of how charisma, secrecy, and male‑centered power can warp modern yoga. She traces her path from early days in Bikram to that first Ashtanga class in Los Angel...

Welcome back for Part 2 with Bjorn Bolinder: dancer, photographer, and the guy whose heart was screaming “GET OUT!” louder than any cult alarm system we've ever heard. We pick up in 2016 as Bjorn signs up for SOP (the men's program) in a moment of pleaser panic, and then experiences a full-body revolt between the commitment meeting and his Washington Heights apartment. He listened, backed out, and...

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Bjorn Bolinder—photographer, NXIVM insider, and the guy on the ladder in The Vow Episode 3—finally tells his story. For NXIVM nerds, this is the episode you've been waiting for: a behind-the-scenes perspective from someone who witnessed it all but stayed largely unknown to the public. Bjorn walks us through his recruitment in January 2015, how a midnight ki...

In this bonus Q&A episode from our Patreon vault, Marc Headley broke down how Scientology actually works on the inside: from Sea Org recruitment scripts and billion‑year contracts to what really goes on at Gold Base behind the gates and cameras. He explained the day‑to‑day mechanisms of control—sleep deprivation, production quotas, “ethics” punishments, sec checks, disconnection, and constant...

Following last week’s conversations with ex-Corey’s Angels musicians Margot Lane and Jezebel Sweet, director Marcie Hume joins us to talk about making Corey Feldman Vs. The World , the cinéma vérité documentary that starts as a quirky comeback chronicle and turns into an unexpectedly raw portrait of a former child star wrestling with trauma, ego, and the need to be believed. Marcie shares how she...

In Part 2 with Margot Lane and Jezebel Sweet, we dive more into the spectacle of Corey’s Angels and the documentary Corey Feldman Vs. the World and what happens after you walk away from someone else’s narrative and start writing your own. They talk about the emotional and professional fallout of leaving Corey Feldman’s orbit, how it felt to watch their time in the band reframed on screen, and the...

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. In this episode, we’re joined by Margot Lane and Jezebel Sweet, former members of Corey’s Angels, the all‑female band and “angel” entourage formed and led by actor and musician Corey Feldman. Drawing on their experience, partially shown in the new documentary COREY FELDMAN VS. THE WORLD—a cinéma vérité chronicle of Corey’s attempt to reboot his career—they...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Sofia May, she continues sharing her experiences connected to Tara Mandala and the community around lama Tsultrim Allione. We get into the messy, nuanced territory where Buddhist teachings, spiritual leadership, and real-world power dynamics intersect. We explore what draws people to Tibetan Buddhist communities and retreat centers in the first place, and how thi...

In Part 1 of this conversation with stand-up comedian and former Tara Mandala practitioner Sofia May, she joins us to talk about how a beautiful Tibetan Buddhist retreat center in the Colorado mountains—founded by western author lama Tsultrim Allione—slowly revealed a deeply culty underbelly beneath the goddess imagery and tantric empowerment language. Sofia traces her path from sincere Buddhist s...

In Part 2 of our conversation with author Tia Levings, we go even deeper into what it actually takes to leave a high-control Christian fundamentalist marriage and rebuild a life on the other side. Tia shares more about how religious doctrine, patriarchy, and fear were used to justify control, submission, and abuse, and how difficult it can be to recognize harm when it’s framed as God’s will or “bi...

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. In this episode, Tia Levings—bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife and survivor of Christian fundamentalism who appears in the Amazon docuseries Shiny Happy People —returns to dig deeper into what happened after escaping her high‑control marriage and the broader world of Christian patriarchy and homeschooling that enabled it. She talks about navigating...

In Part 2 with former Landmark Forum staffer Anne Peterson, we dig into what it actually took to leave the Landmark ecosystem emotionally, financially, and socially—and how she began unpacking the “technology” and jargon she once used to coach other people’s breakthroughs. Anne breaks down the aftershocks of working inside a Werner Erhard–inspired large group awareness training (LGAT): the burnout...

In Part 1 of this conversation, former Landmark Forum staffer Anne Peterson returns to update us about life post- Is This a Cult? book launch. She takes us back inside the transformational training machine built on Werner Erhard’s EST curriculum, and how something sold as breakthrough personal growth slowly revealed classic high‑control dynamics. Going from enthusiastic participant to full‑time st...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Priya Hutner, we keep pulling back the curtain on life inside the Kashi Ashram and the world surrounding Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati (“Ma”), including what happens when devotion, hierarchy, and silence collide. Priya continues sharing her lived experience growing up in and around the ashram and how spiritual ideals were often used to excuse harm, blur boundaries, and...