Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

I have been saying for years that cryptocurrency has the structure of a multi-level marketing scheme: a small number of people at the top make enormous sums, while large numbers of ordinary people are recruited to invest, almost always lose money, and then recruit more people. Molly is an independent researcher and writer who covers cryptocurrency and the broader technology industry. She writes th...

When Lara Kaput was eight years old, she was required to clean bricks on Jehovah’s Witness building sites. She helped her father road-build on the church construction projects. She did cleaning, and gardening, and her childhood friends did this, and cleaning child-minding too. None of it paid, none very little of it optional. She did not recognize it as child labor at the time. Most children raise...

Russian disinformation no longer feels like a foreign problem you read about in long articles. It shapes what you see when you open your phone, what your relatives believe about a war they have never visited, and what large language models tell you when you ask a sincere question about world events. My guest this week on Cults, Culture & Coercion, Chris Sampson, journalist, terrorism analyst, and...

Detransitioning, a term for stopping, shifting, or reversing an initial gender transition, is a word that has been stripped of its human meaning by the political forces fighting over it. Last week, I shared my interview with Dr. Kinnon Ross MacKinnon, a trans researcher at York University whose landmark DARE study surveyed 957 people who had detransitioned. MacKinnon’s data show that the detransit...

Trans healthcare is an evolving discussion, and the implications greatly affect those in the LGBTQ+ community. At its heart, this is a conversation about the science meant to inform transition-related healthcare care, and what happens when politics deliberately distorts it. On March 31, 2026, The Supreme Court handed down an 8-to-1 ruling that conversion therapy, a practice every major medical and...

Ian Wilks was a high-ranking leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is a former bishop, a former branch president, and a member of the stake presidency in British Columbia, with responsibility for shepherding twelve congregations and thousands of members. Then-apostle Dallin H. Oaks, now the 18th president and living prophet of the LDS Church, personally recruited him, inter...

From Richard Dawkins to Larry Summers, brilliant minds get pulled in. I sat down with the journalist Virginia Heffernan for a recent conversation on Cults, Culture & Coercion to talk about who falls for the Trump cult and why. Virginia spent time inside a group of academics and intellectuals sponsored by Jeffrey Epstein, called Edge, run by literary agent John Brockman. She wrote about involvement...

Scientology recruitment rarely looks the way people imagine. There is no shadowy figure pulling you into a back room. The process is warm, and, for a curious young person, entirely easy to be “handled” and sucked in. Amir Essalhi was 18 years old and studying film when he first walked into the Edinburgh organization in late 2022. He had never heard of Hubbard. He did not know who David Miscavige w...

She Sought Out the People Who Threatened Her Deeyah Khan was editing a film when the BBC called. The threats were serious enough the police were already on their way. “Stay where you are,” they told her. “If there are windows in the room, move to a different one. Wait for us.” She had given an interview saying Britain would never be all white again. White supremacist sites in the United States pic...

The Community of Jesus was founded in 1970 by two housewives, Cay Anderson and Judy Sorensen. They told members they were "God's anointed" with a direct line to God. Any authority figure they appointed carried that same divine authority. Members were taught to obey without questioning the leadership’s authority. I spoke with former member and award-nominated writer Ewan Whyte. His fifth book, Moth...

Missionary kids often carry the weight of their parents’ choices. They are inculcated into the faith without opportunity for independent thought, according to author, historian, and former intelligence analyst Holly Berkley Fletcher, PhD. Her parents were Evangelical Christian missionaries in Kenya, and she speaks about that and the experiences of other children with similar backgrounds through he...

As the United States remains stalled on full disclosure and holding Epstein file perpetrators accountable, the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, has launched an inquiry into the recruitment methods and societal impacts of cults and organized fringe groups. Maria Esguerra is one of the directors of The Olive Leaf Network who testified and presented a written submission at the public hearing of thi...

Tracing the roots of Christian Nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation is no longer a fringe concern. It has become one of the most urgent forces reshaping American political life, and most people still do not understand where it came from, how it operates, or what it ultimately wants. Keri Ladner, PhD, does. A scholar of fundamentalist politics, she has spent years tracing the theological r...

Melissa Duge Spiers was raised as a several generations Seventh-day Adventist. It wasn’t until years later, when she discovered information about her father, who had been both a youth pastor within the Adventist church and a Loma Linda-educated doctor, that Melissa would be called to deconstruct her entire relationship with the organization. “In my early middle age, I found out that my father, dur...

Christianity has been “hijacked” by Christian Nationalists, right-wing Conservatives and Dominionists, according to John Fugelsang, author of the 2025 book Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. “The entire history of the organized religion has been authoritarian control,” he said on our interview for...

Bill Eddy has authored more than 20 books on high‑conflict personalities and disputes. He wants Americans, and societies everywhere, to keep a simple mantra in mind: “fantasy crisis, fantasy villain, fantasy hero with fantasy solutions.” Whenever we encounter another wave of chaos from the Trump administration or any potentially abusive elected official, this phrase helps us recognize the manufact...

White Christian nationalism is not an abstract political concept. For Adam James, it was the air he breathed from birth. Adam, who goes by @epistemiccrisis on Instagram with well over 700,000 followers, grew up in the Pentecostal and charismatic church culture of Augusta, Georgia, was raised inside the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), served as a worship leader and helped plant a church that is st...

Holly Pivec and Doug Geivett on Two Decades of Tracking the NAR’s Apostles and Prophets You walk into a church on Sunday morning. The worship band plays songs you’ve heard on Christian radio for years. The lyrics feel familiar, uplifting. What you don’t realize is that the words you’re singing were written to export a specific theology from a single church in Redding, California, one whose leaders...

Pam Hemphill has been fighting MAGA propaganda since the day she realized it nearly killed her. A retired substance abuse counselor cancer survivor and one of the most visible former participants of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol Pam served a 60-day federal prison sentence for her role that day. Her decision to reject Donald Trump’s presidential pardon and become a prominent activist e...

Rachel Bernstein is a licensed marriage‑and‑family therapist in Los Angeles and a seasoned cult specialist with more than 35 years of experience. Rachel specializes in helping individuals exit authoritarian cults and narcissistic relationships and begin healing. She works on a one-on-one basis, hosts group therapy sessions, and speaks more broadly through education and media appearances. Rachel al...

With speculations by experts that Donald Trump’s health appears to be deteriorating regularly noting bruises on his hands occasional stumbling or slurring in his speech and gait. The White House has denied these claims. As vice‑president JD Vance born and raised in Middletown Ohio stands to assume the presidency should Trump become unable to serve. Vance author of Hillbilly Elegy a memoir that chr...

For many Americans, untangling today’s U.S. politics feels especially tough because the rise of religious‑right conservatism can seem sudden and ominous. Without a grounding in religious history and its influence on American political development over time, sweeping dominionist initiatives like Project 2025, fringe movements such as QAnon, and shadowy organizations like the Heritage Foundation may...

Research on psychedelics has shown that one of the most profound effects of the experience is how it places people in a more vulnerable, highly susceptible state. Along with creating time dilations, this powerful period is also capable of establishing new thought patterns surrounding trauma or addictions. For those who aim to support healing, this moment offers tremendous opportunities to empower...

Dr. Frank R. George is an internationally recognized authority in psychology, neuroscience, narcissism, and addiction. Through his Substack newsletter, The Gaslight Report, he demystifies pathological narcissism, explores its underlying causes, and offers practical strategies that readers can apply in their own lives. Over many years, his research has spanned neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and gene...

The violent coup attempt of January 6th which sent Oath Keepers to jail was justice. Until Trump pardoned all of those people who were convicted and in jail, including Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes. Now with recent events we are resharing our previous interview with someone who was involved. “America right now needs some exit ramps,” Jason Van Tatenhove said as we discussed his former role as nationa...