A Little Bit Culty

In Part 2 of our conversation with journalist and author Chet Hardin, we trade the NXIVM rabbit hole for another deeply disturbing case of charisma, coercion, and a self-appointed king with a seriously dark side. Chet joins us to discuss his book, The Vampire’s Cult: The Untold Story of Obsession, Control, and a Shocking Small-Town Murder , which explores the world of convicted murderer Aubrey Tra...

Journalist and author Chet Hardin joins ALBC to revisit the early days of reporting on NXIVM, Keith Raniere, and the machinery of intimidation that kept members insulated from outside scrutiny. Chet was only a month into his job at Metroland when attorney Joe O’Hara called with a story about a group “some people might call a cult,” leading him to Toni Natalie, Rick Ross, and a dossier that made cl...

Ryan Carey grew up in the Geelong Revival Center, a Pentecostal Fundamentalist group where nuclear Armageddon was apparently on the calendar, but choosing your own career or dating without permission was a bridge too far. He joined us to talk about doomsday beliefs, religious trauma, shunning, and the coercive control that dictated everything from relationships to access to mental-health care—and...

In this episode, Sarah Green joins us to share what it was like growing up inside the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), a closed religious community led by her mother Deborah Green, a self-proclaimed prophet. Her family’s story began in the 1960s hippie scene and the Bear Tribe, then shifted into missionary life and a growing apocalyptic group—where homeschooling, isolation,...

Julianna Glasse is back for Part 2, and this one is all about what comes after the leaving and what you build when you refuse to swap one savior for another. We hear about the three years Julianna spent being, in her words, “spiritually promiscuous:” traveling the world, visiting temples and mosques, dating freely and non-monogamously, deliberately not writing her book until she could show women h...

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...