Dr. Steven Hassan: Are You In a Cult and Don't Even Know It?

In a conversation that’s equal parts psychological thriller and masterclass in influence, Trevor and Eugene sit down with world-renowned cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan. Recruited into the Unification Church (aka the Moonies) as a college student, Hassan rose through its ranks before ultimately breaking free — an experience that reshaped his life’s work and inspired his bestselling book The Cult of Trump. From fringe groups to social media echo chambers, the trio unpack how and why ordinary people get swept into systems of extreme belief, the ways loyalty is engineered, and what separates healthy persuasion from manipulation. They also explore why the line between conviction and control is thinner and closer to home than we think.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  This is something that I'm picking up on already is many of the things that a cult might say to you are actually true. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 0:13Trevor Noah?

  I do think mankind is asleep in that way. And we see it in what we eat, how we live, how we work, how we consume. There is a level of like asleep.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Sleepwalking.

• 0:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I go like, yeah, no, this is true. We're not in touch with our bodies anymore. We're not in tune with our minds. We, you know, we act mindlessly. If someone said that to me.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  People walking down the street.

• 0:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how many times I see people walk into the streets on their phone? And then a car has to swivel. I'm like, yeah, we are. So they would have me on that line. If they said mankind is asleep, I'd be like, carry on.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  But you're hitting on another universal point that's really demanding, underlining and with a red pencil, that the ideologies have truthful, important things in it. And they quote famous people who say really important things. So it's not just all BS. And that's also as a therapist, that's what I try to do in helping my clients deconstruct. How did they get hooked? What were the pieces that hooked them? And the technique, I'm jumping ahead and I'll circle back to your earlier question.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  But the technique that's most effective is I empower my clients to understand Chinese communist brainwashing, my model, et cetera. And the technique is this simple. I ask people to go back to that critical earlier moment when they were getting recruited or they were falling in love with someone who was a malignant narcissist that was gonna ruin their lives. If you knew then what you know now, what would you say and do differently?

• 1:58Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 2:05Trevor Noah?

  Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heatwaves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love. From Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy, to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick, from Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 2:40Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info and travel days, or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 3:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever. This episode is brought to you by Verizon. Pretty much every brand offers rewards these days, but most of them, let's be honest, they aren't that rewarding. Well, starting now, Verizon's doing rewards different. Rewards you'll love all year round for every customer. They're introducing Verizon Dollars, which gives you cash back every month just for being a customer. That's it. Plus, you have the flexibility to use those glorious new dollars how you want. Shop with Verizon. Get gift cards for the brands that you love, or transfer them to our partner programs. They're also introducing Verizon Shine,

• 4:09Trevor Noah?

  where now, every Monday, you can snag once-in-a-lifetime experiences like NFL tickets across the globe, all-inclusive music festivals, and the chance to meet your favorite stars. Plus, daily drops, tickets, and pre-sale access all week. So, let's recap. Cash back in your pocket every month with Verizon Dollars. And epic experiences from Verizon Shine every Monday, all year round. Now, those are some rewarding rewards. Only from Verizon. Enroll today at Verizon.com.

• 4:46Trevor Noah?

  How do you pronounce your last name?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Hassan.

• 4:48Trevor Noah?

  Hassan, okay.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Like Maggie Hassan.

• 4:50Trevor Noah?

  Because everyone has a different pronunciation of H-A-S-S-A-N. Some say what? Hassan? Hassan? Hassan? Hassan? Like they're all... Hassan? Now you're just adding words.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  So Hassan was the cousin of Mohammed in the Muslim religion.

• 5:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  But my, the derivation of mine is Ellis Island.

• 5:13Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, okay, okay.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  And my grandfather was a chazen, a Jewish...

• 5:18Trevor Noah?

  A chazen!

• 5:19Speaker 01

  A chazen.

• 5:19Trevor Noah?

  A chazen! I was almost there with Hassan. Yeah, you were, actually. But mine sounded more Schwarzenegger than... Yeah, chazen. Chazen. That chazen over there, chazen.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  I met Arnold when I first got out of the Mooney's, when I went public and he was promoting Pumping Iron. He was the guest before me. And he heard I was, I'd gotten out of the Mooney's and he said, "Can I join?"

• 5:43Trevor Noah?

  Join the Mooney's?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  No, he joined my segment.

• 5:46Trevor Noah?

  Oh!

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Because he wanted to talk about the Nazis.

• 5:50Trevor Noah?

  I thought that you left the cult.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I left the cult.

• 5:54Trevor Noah?

  And you told people about leaving the cult. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger heard about this and he's like, "Can I, I want to join the cult."

• 5:59Speaker 01

  I want to make a cult.

• 6:00Trevor Noah?

  I just heard you're talking about, "I want to, can I join?"

• 6:03Speaker 01

  No, but he, he stayed and he made some very...

• 6:06Trevor Noah?

  What, wait, what, this is 1970?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was on the Barry Farber Show in Manhattan. I had never met a bodybuilder. He was there with a gorgeous blonde.

• 6:17Trevor Noah?

  What is, what is the... Puppin' Heim was a documentary, right?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was his thing about becoming his...

• 6:22Trevor Noah?

  Bodybuilder.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is that the thing that blew him up?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what that's what inspired everyone to start pumping iron.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  That's what blew him up.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Venice Beach famous.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Way before he became governor.

• 6:31Trevor Noah?

  His documentary is great. I don't know if you've watched it.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:33Trevor Noah?

  Uh, the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary, like, and it's self-reflection as well. He's in it.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:38Trevor Noah?

  Talks about his life.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  How old is it?

• 6:40Trevor Noah?

  Maybe it's like a few years old now, maybe like two, three years.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I haven't seen it.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he talks about his illegitimate son and his relationship and.

• 6:46Trevor Noah?

  Talks about everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I've seen it.

• 6:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, talks about everything. It's really great.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  But I watched it again. I think I watched it too quickly.

• 6:52Trevor Noah?

  It's really, really great. So this was, wait, nineteen seventy? So, wait, how long were you in a cult for?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I was recruited at Queens College, the same month Patty Hearst was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Women flirted with me. My girlfriend had dumped me. And a few weeks later, I'm a right-wing fascist cult, but I didn't know what it was at all for months.

• 7:16Trevor Noah?

  I, I, I feel like that puts somebody in the perfect position. You know, um, I had a conversation with a monk about who can be a monk and how to become a monk and what, you know, a monk life is. And it was interesting. So, so we're in Bhutan and they took us to, um, it is, is it, is it a monastery?

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:39Trevor Noah?

  It is a monastery. Okay, just making sure. So we go to the monastery and there's all the monks there and everything. And there's all these young boys who've come from different childhoods.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:48Trevor Noah?

  Some have almost been on a path of monkhood their whole lives. Others have come in because they, they're living troubled lives.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:55Trevor Noah?

  And so somebody said in the group, and they were like, oh, but like, isn't that, you know, this guy, this kid's been through like this twenty-year-old or nineteen-year-old, he's been through, he's done all these things and can he be a monk? And the monk said something really amazing. He said, oh, he's the best person to be a monk. Because if you've been perfect your whole life and you're a monk. That's fine. It's normal. But if you haven't been perfect your whole life, you've lived the furthest life from perfect and then you become a monk. Hmm. He's like, I feel like you're the best disciple slash teacher. Hmm. Because you've actually experienced the things that you're talking about. Yeah. And I feel like that's, that's you.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Well, that's a piece of it, but I'd also say you have to have an ego before you can surrender your ego. If you're on a spiritual path.

• 8:40Trevor Noah?

  Ego death.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And a lot of people haven't figured out who they are. And to recruit them into something that's totalistic is not informed consent from my mental health professional point of view.

• 8:53Trevor Noah?

  No, but this is, this is what I mean is like you are, you are now an expert in the world of cults. You're an author who's written about cults. You teach people and you help them understand what a cult is, whether they're in a cult, the difference between cults, et cetera. But your origin story, I find particularly fascinating because it gives you a unique insight. You're not, you're not just coming at this from academia. Hmm. Like you just told us.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:16Trevor Noah?

  You were in it. So I, I didn't know much about this before I like read your story, but tell us about like the Moonies, tell us about the story. How, how does this journey begin for you?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  So I was not a joiner. I wa- I was raised in a conservative Jewish family in Flushing, Queens with two older sisters. And my mom's side was Orthodox. And my mom was an eighth grade art teacher in Brooklyn. And my dad took over his father's hardware store in Ozone Park, Queens. And I played basketball and was writing poetry at Queens College.

• 9:55Trevor Noah?

  A well-rounded gent.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And did not, I was reading philosophy. I was nineteen, had a ponytail, I'd skipped eighth grade, extra honors student.

• 10:04Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  So I was in the last draft lottery of the Vietnam War, which I was opposed, but I got a good number fortunately. Um, I hated Nixon.

• 10:13Trevor Noah?

  Wait, what do you mean? Sorry, what does that mean? I got a good number. What is that?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I was in the last draft lottery, meaning they were uh picking numbers of your birthday to decide who was going to fight in Vietnam.

• 10:25Trevor Noah?

  Damn, I didn't know it was like that.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  I'm aging myself, yes.

• 10:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  So if you got sixty or less, you were going to Vietnam. I got like three hundred out of, you know, three sixty-five.

• 10:38Trevor Noah?

  And that was basically the reason you didn't go?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:40Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  But I hated Nixon and then I get in the Moonies a few months later. I'm fasting for Nixon to be president despite Watergate and I think my dad's gonna appreciate me and I'm like, Dad, God wants Nixon to be president. I'm fasting for him. He goes, Steve, you are right. He's a crook. I'm like, Dad, you don't understand. God wants him to be president.

• 11:05Trevor Noah?

  But how did you, you, you understand what you just skipped for me? You just told me about art, basketball, philosophy, and then you're going to the gym? And then all of a sudden you just jumped into Moonies?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Fasting.

• 11:15Trevor Noah?

  No, I need to understand. I, I, I'll, and, and I'll elaborate on why later.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:21Trevor Noah?

  I need you to take us through the steps because I like what you said. I'm not a joiner. Sounds like you were a smart kid, came from a good family. You had your own point of view. And then what happens? When, when does the Moonies, so the Moonies is, is this?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Educated about the Holocaust.

• 11:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Bicycle across the US when I was sixteen.

• 11:40Trevor Noah?

  Wait, for why?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Because I was like wanting to see the United States and I was bicycling.

• 11:47Trevor Noah?

  What bicycle?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  So I was sixteen, I didn't have, no, I, this was a, this was a, an outing to have experiences.

• 11:55Trevor Noah?

  How did you get back before dark? What were you, what were your parents thinking?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  No, we would camp out or stay at hostels. I went with American Youth Hostels.

• 12:02Trevor Noah?

  Was it a Schwinn?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  It actually was a Schwinn. How did you guess?

• 12:07Trevor Noah?

  Eugene knows. Whenever you try to ride across the country, there's only one bike for you. Schwinn, Schwinn.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Anyway, um, no, my, my story is my girlfriend dumped me abruptly over Christmas and I'm sitting at Queens College cafeteria, ready to start the next semester and three women came over and started love bombing me, which is a term for cult recruitment.

• 12:33Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Oh, Trevor, you're so special.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Tell us about you, Trevor. And they were like with Steve and I'm like, there are three of them, I'm gonna get lucky with one of them. I can't, if I, if my-

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Your math was very good, even from an early age.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I said, are you students here? Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  You'd have a bright future with online gambling.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  If you had a time machine. Spread my odds here.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  What they didn't say is, we don't believe in sex.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Wait, so how, so, so they come to you-

• 13:03Speaker 01

  No, they were ju- they were just using sexual seduction as a recruiting tool.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Honey pot.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And I, they lied, they said they were students, they weren't. I said, are you part of some religious group? No, not at all.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  So you asked?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I asked, I literally asked, but they lied.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  What, what made you ask-

• 13:20Speaker 01

  That's also part of, people need to understand, destructive cults deceive.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  But wait, what, what, what, what made you ask that question? Cause I-

• 13:29Speaker 01

  I don't know, that's, I, I've- I've asked myself that question over and over again. The only major cult story was the Manson's back in seventy-four.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Cause that's a weird question to ask.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  It is.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  A group of women who've just approached you and said, wow, you look nice. And you're like, are you guys part of a religious group?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  No, I did ask that.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Perfect question to ask.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I can also tell you, because I've helped people for forty-nine years, and I a- asked them questions about what were their first contacts? What was the attraction? What, you know, what was going on for them in their life? And almost all of them have signals like that, of I thought it was crazy, or I thought it was odd, or I had a bad vibe. But they don't listen.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  They don't listen, they get overwhelmed by the external-

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  -influences. And it's a step-by-step thing where they don't say, hi, we have a cult, come and join us. They say, do you care about the world, Eugene?

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Do you care about starving children?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Because there's children starving. And they need you, and this kind of emotional stuff.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  And you're a teenager.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And they bring you to an introductory lecture and a free dinner, et cetera. The, the weirdest part of my story is I was working as a banquet waiter at the Holiday Inn on Hempstead, Long Island, every weekend, cause I was going to college and I wanted gas money and date money and whatever. So they were, you know, they met me, they invited me over for dinner and they said, "We're going away for the weekend, it's gonna be so great and we want you, please come." And I'm like, "I work every weekend." You know, "I'm sorry, I can't go, period." And but they kept asking over and over and over and over. And finally, I don't know why I said it, but I said, "If I don't have to work some weekend, then I'll go."

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And two days later, I called my boss up, as I always did, because it was a bar mitzvah, wedding, or this or that. He said, "You won't believe it, Steve, but the wedding was called off, so take the weekend off."

• 15:33Trevor Noah?

  Wait, did they have something to do with that?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think it was just bad luck or synchrony. But I was like, "Hmm, I'm wondering if I'm meant to go and with this, these folks, these fun people."

• 15:50Speaker 02

  So you called them up, they pull up in their station wagon?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  No, I went, I went to their house.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  There's always a station wagon.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  I made a mistake, this was way before cell phones, so I made the mistake to not bring my car, so I'd have wheels if I didn't like it. That was a big mistake. And I didn't have a phone number to tell my family or anybody where I was, so nobody knew where I was. And we're driving up to Tarrytown to this multimillion dollar estate. And as we're passing, it's dark at night, it was snowy.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  They're in your car?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  We're, I'm in their van.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Oh, you're in their van?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  I'm in their van and, and one of the people at the front says, "This weekend, we're gonna have a joint workshop with the Unification Church." And I went, "What?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  What? I'm Jewish, I'm not into church."

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Nobody said anything about a workshop, I'm out of here, drive me back to Queens. And I swear to God, that's exactly what happened.

• 16:53Trevor Noah?

  You know, can I tell you what you remind me of?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 16:55Trevor Noah?

  You remind me of how Eugene reacts sometimes, when he'll be in my car, and I'll just be like, "We're just gonna hang out," and then at the last second, I'll be like, "So we're gonna be moving furniture around in my house." And then Eugene is in the car like, "Ah, let me out!"

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Let me out of here, let me out of here.

• 17:13Trevor Noah?

  And he's just like, "Who's moving furniture?"

• 17:16Speaker 02

  It's all the

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Date and switch and all of that, but then and then I was like, it's snowing outside. It's completely dark. I don't have any means I could get on the road and hitchhike and ask somebody to take me to the police station. But there I said, bring me back. We're going in the morning. So just, you know, come in and you'll leave in the morning. So they but they had no intention of bringing me back in the morning because the van left.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Wait, wait.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And the phone wasn't working. The payphone. It was all later as I was a leader. I understood this was all heavenly deception. Yes, my man Eugene.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Before you become a leader.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  The van pulls up, right?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Then what happens?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  The van pulls into this estate formerly owned by the Seagram's family. And I hear this rap about workshop and the unification church. I have my thing. And they did the very typical mind control technique. They turned it around on me.

• 18:22Trevor Noah?

  Can you explain more?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I said, what do you mean church? I'm Jewish and what do I mean workshop? I thought we were just gonna have fun. And they're like, are you close minded about Christianity, Steve?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So they whatever objection you have, they make it your fault versus those motherfuckers, if it's okay to curse.

• 18:45Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Those motherfuckers said if they weren't religious, it wasn't a group. I was lied to. I want out of here. But anyway, it was not, I just, nobody explained to me how cults operate. And I was one of, as most people today, walking around going, I'm too smart to ever fall for a cult.

• 19:13Trevor Noah?

  So let's, let's.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  I'm educated. I come from a good family.

• 19:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but let's break this part down now. So now knowing the things that you that you know, let's go through these two major steps to help somebody else understand like what is actually happening. So let's go back to the to the university campus. Help me understand what that initial, do you have a name for that? Is there a term for what happened there? What is significant about the way that they approached you and brought you in?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  So the Mooneys call it witnessing, but that's a term Christians often use for proselytizing.

• 19:47Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  So, but the key thing is ethical religious groups tell people upfront who they are, what they believe and what they want from them.

• 19:56Trevor Noah?

  Okay, that's ethical.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Before they pressure you or guilt trip you or indoctrinate you into things.

• 20:03Trevor Noah?

  So they identify themselves and see what their agenda is.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I have an influence continuum. It's on my website, freedomofmind.com. You can download it for free. Of ethical influence looks like this.

• 20:14Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Respects your conscience, free will, creativity, um, um, love-based, ethical leadership, checks and balances, and destructive authoritarian cults. And I, my, my definition is really critical of authoritarian cults.

• 20:33Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  And that can be a one-on-one authoritarian relationship.

• 20:37Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  It can be a commercial cult. It can be a political cult. It can be a therapy cult or religious cult, whatever. But I have four overlapping criteria, and that's what I did my doctoral dissertation on. Behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.

• 20:57Trevor Noah?

  Okay. B I T E.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Byte model. I call it the Byte model. You can download it, the whole list. And so if they control your sleep, if they control your clothing, what you eat, you can start ticking off how authoritarian it is.

• 21:12Trevor Noah?

  The scale.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  But critically, did you have informed consent going in?

• 21:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And how free are you to question it or leave if you're not happy?

• 21:22Trevor Noah?

  So that's, so that's second part then. So when you, when they're saying to you, are you not open? What is that? What is that technique? Like, why, why is that so bad? And I'm literally just trying to understand this and play devil's advocate at the same time. Someone goes like, oh, are you closed-minded, Steve?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:39Trevor Noah?

  What are they actually doing there to you?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  So things have become far more sophisticated than we were in the seventies and the Mooneys, and much is going on online. So what I'd like to try to do in this conversation is explain what I now understand what's happening today in a way that's going to help the widest audience. So what I want to say is that our attention is very narrow. We can't focus, I think the number is between five and nine bits of information at any second. But we're taking in tens of thousands of bits of information, just visually, a second.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  So we have a conscious mind, kind of like a tuner on a radio, has AM and FM. But it's just listening to this one band, but all the rest is happening.

• 22:32Trevor Noah?

  At the same time.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  So understand that a lot of what happens today is misdirection, reversal, to distract people from what to really pay attention to.

• 22:43Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  So, you know, I'm asking this question, and now they're flipping it, or they're doing a reversal, or people are doing a projection onto somebody else. And you forget, I just asked about this, but now you're talking about that.

• 23:01Trevor Noah?

  You said, hey, guys, you said, why is there workshops? And I'm Jewish, they didn't tell me about religion, and they flip it.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  They lied to me. They didn't say, yup, we did, or we had to. We just said, do you have an issue? Obviously. You have an issue, Eugene, with trust, apparently, that you're even asking this.

• 23:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, is that, yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  But the technique of mind controllers, the more data they can gather on a person ahead of time, usually by asking the recruiter, who's already, and back then, you couldn't buy somebody's profile. Today, you can. So it's way more problematic now. Because if you're a person of influence, if you have money, for example, you can be targeted and have no idea you're being targeted online with AI. And that's why it's so important, my solution to what's happening in the world right now is psychoeducation, about how the mind works, how social psychology works, how neuroscience works.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And how are we going to be ethical so we have planetary survival? Because most people are good. Most people know there's climate warming due to fossil fuels. And don't want to buy into the constant brainwashing and propaganda saying, there's no scientific proof. It's like the big tobacco, there's no proof it's cancer causing. They knew it was cancer caused. And the big cults have hired sociologists of religion to say, there's no such proof of brainwashing at all.

• 24:41Trevor Noah?

  So they use many of the same techniques to turn the lens, to shift your view.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But it's formulaic. Once you know the formula, it's, you can see it, you can, I name it.

• 24:52Trevor Noah?

  I think it's also, it's also easier when you, when you hear it in a story. Cause now, now I'm with you when we go step by step. So you, you, you, you've just come into this compound in Tarrytown. Right. And now they've said to you, oh, wow, Steve, you're clearly the asshole. Cause you have a problem with Christianity. So now you go, no, I don't.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I want to go home, take me home. Sorry, we're not going. So like, let's just go in and we'll sit by the fireside and have roast marshmallows and sing some songs. And we'll take you back in the morning.

• 25:23Trevor Noah?

  But at what point does your brain stop going, I want to go home?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  When you're having marshmallows by the fireside with hot chicks.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  The point that I, I didn't opt for, this is dangerous. This is a mind control cult. Get me the hell out of here. I was like, I'll, I'll wait till the morning and they'll take me back. So this is a stall maneuver. This is another important feature. A mind controller wants to get you over there at the corner of the room. They don't say, walk to that corner of the room. They say, would you mind picking up that pencil that's over there? Oh, and do you see that interesting picture on the wall over there? Trevor, go over and, you know, see the detail on that picture. So they come up with ways to misdirect your attention. Till you're behaving the way they want you to behave.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And in the end, they want to program a new identity.

• 26:17Trevor Noah?

  And it's

• 26:18Speaker 01

  It's a dissociative disorder. So I was the real Steven and they wanted me to believe that Sun Myung Moon was 10 times greater than Jesus Christ or any religious figure in history, that he was sinless and he was gonna save the world. He was gonna bring peace. He was gonna feed all the starving children in the world. And I needed to be like him. So they built a moon identity that took over my identity. And this identity said, he's satanic. Don't listen to him. He wants to write poetry and have sex with girls and play basketball. Sex is a big no-no, except for the leaders.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  The leaders apparently got to have a lot of sex.

• 27:04Trevor Noah?

  They can always have sex.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Well, they're a lot, you know, they're

• 27:07Trevor Noah?

  Are we leaders?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Power, money and sex.

• 27:11Trevor Noah?

  Not with each other.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Power, money and sex is the universal for bad groups.

• 27:17Trevor Noah?

  So you, you're in this, you're in this, this, um, this place and you're having these conversations.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  He's having marshmallows.

• 27:23Trevor Noah?

  You're having marshmallows.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  By the fireplace.

• 27:25Trevor Noah?

  Nothing, nothing says non-threatening like marshmallows.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  And three hot chicks.

• 27:28Trevor Noah?

  I mean, you're in.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  So that's another point.

• 27:31Trevor Noah?

  You're in.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  So one of the techniques that cults like to do is in hypnosis, it's called age regression. They want you to become like a child.

• 27:40Trevor Noah?

  They bring you back to a childhood.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  They bring you back to camp. Where you're playing guitar around the fireplace and it's bringing up good feelings.

• 27:49Trevor Noah?

  Good feelings.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Trevor Noah?

  Oh, remember how it was?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Because it's easier to, to direct children than an adult.

• 27:57Trevor Noah?

  Ah, yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  It's very formulaic now. It's very, and that's why I've written books about it, why I'm teaching clinicians. There's no graduate program in the United States or the world that I'm aware of that teaches mental health professionals how to do therapy with former cult members.

• 28:18Trevor Noah?

  So I did, I did a course. I'm already learning so much. Now I know next time to give Eugene marshmallows in the car, before we go move the couches. Just to like soothe his spirits. Because I just throw couches. I'm like, couches? And Eugene's like, yeah! My back hurts. I should just be like Eugene. Would you like some marshmallows? The wheels on the bus go round and round. And bring a banjo. You know, the more you talk, the more I realize that this is more pervasive than we think it is.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  It's a global epidemic. It's an epidemic.

• 28:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  And I tried to explain to politicians that we should be declaring a public health emergency. We should treat this like a virus, a real virus, but a mind control virus. We should be doing inoculation programs to educate people, what the techniques are, how to tell, how to reality test. We should be training clinicians, educators, politicians, media people.

• 29:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  And we should be making it safe for people to exit authoritarian cults and not stigmatizing them by saying you're a moron.

• 29:28Trevor Noah?

  Once you're in, you're in forever.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  We told you it was a cult, Steve. How come you didn't listen? People would say that to me when I got out and it made me feel worse. It didn't make me, it didn't help me recover once I got out and realized it was a mind control cult.

• 29:43Trevor Noah?

  How did you get to leader, though? I mean, you, you go from not wanting to come along to slowly being soothed into this world. And then how many days are you there? How, how long is this process? How, how do you go from skeptic to leader of the, of the organization?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Good question. So there's another weirdo event, because I told you a weirdo event with my, uh, my boss at the Holiday Inn. So at the, I thought it was weekend, come Sunday night. No, it's a three day workshop. You have to stay for the most important day. I'm like, I'm a student. I have classes. Take me back now. And they worked on me, worked on me, worked on me. So they got me to stay for the third day. And I felt like my brain had been in a washing machine. I remember that, but I knew I needed to get the hell out of there. And I just got angry and kept saying, I want to go home. I want to go home.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  They started pressuring me to stay for a seven day workshop after the three day workshop. And nothing worked until I like threatened violence that I'm, I don't want to be here. So they did let me go home. And my mother and my father were like, where were you? We were worried. Your eyes are all glassy. Were you drugged? And I said, I don't think they drugged me. I haven't slept much. And that's a major technique of mind control. My mother said, let's go talk to the rabbi. That was her go to. And I went, sure, I'll talk to the rabbi. And he was completely clueless of what to say or even what to ask.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And he thought I wanted to convert to Christianity, which was the furthest thing on my mind.

• 31:29Trevor Noah?

  Furthest thing from his mind.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  But they had put in three days, they had put the idea in my head that we were living at a moment in history where the world was going to be transformed to be this Garden of Eden paradise because the Messiah was coming. They didn't say Moon was the Messiah yet, just that we're in this moment. And so I asked the rabbi that. What he should have said is, Steve, I've never heard of this group, but let me tell you, if a group is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny. Promise me you won't be in touch with them for the next few weeks and we'll research it together. That's what he should have said to me.

• 32:09Trevor Noah?

  But he didn't know to say that.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  He didn't know to say that. So I'm back at home, three days of hypnotic programming in my head. And I'm going, these people think the Messiah is coming. I want to write poetry.

• 32:24Trevor Noah?

  You're back in your normal life. Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  I want, save the world, write poetry. Save the world, do God's will, or write poetry. And I had this moment where I just was in my room. I had books all over the floor. I was reading two to three books a week because I'm a reader, like you.

• 32:43Trevor Noah?

  And I Not two to three books a week reading.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Back then, I was reading two to three books a week. I'm still reading a lot. In any case, I pick up a book about another cult leader named Gurdjieff. Have you ever heard of Gurdjieff?

• 32:57Trevor Noah?

  No, never heard of Gurdjieff.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Turned out my next door neighbor's father was into Gurdjieff, so he had introduced me to this. So I was already primed a bit into mankind is asleep and we have to wake up. And there were these esoteric forces that we-

• 33:14Trevor Noah?

  Which, by the way, can I just interject here and say, which I often find, a lot of these things are true, though. So this is, this is something that I'm picking up on already is many of the things that a cult might say to you are actually true. Do you get what I'm saying? I do think mankind is asleep in that way. And, and we see it in what we eat, how we live, how we, how we work, how we consume. There is a level of like asleep-

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Sleepwalking.

• 33:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I go like, yeah, no, this is true. We're not in touch with our bodies anymore. We're not in tune with our minds. We, you know, we, we, we act mindlessly. We, I can, if someone said that to me-

• 33:50Speaker 01

  People walking down the street.

• 33:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how many times I see people walk into the street on their phone? And then a car has to swivel. I'm like, yeah, we are. So they would have me on that line. If they said mankind is asleep, I'd be like, carry on.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  But you're hitting on another universal point that's really demanding, uh, uh, underlining and, and with a red pencil. Um, that, that the ideologies have truthful, important things-

• 34:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  In it. And they quote famous people who say really important things. So it's not just all BS. And that's also as a therapist, that's what I try to do in helping my clients deconstruct. How did they get hooked? What were the pieces that hooked them? And the technique, I'm jumping ahead and I'll circle back to your earlier question. But the technique that's most effective is I empower my clients to understand Chinese communist brainwashing, my model, et cetera. And the technique is this simple. I ask people to go back to that critical earlier moment when they were getting recruited

• 34:58Speaker 01

  or they were falling in love with someone who was a malignant narcissist that was gonna ruin their lives. If you knew then what you know now, what would you say and do differently?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And I have them reprocess because they didn't know what they didn't know. But if I knew it was the Moonies, that this fat Korean billionaire was a pervert and involved with the Korean CIA and the Washington Times, etc. I would have said, "You're not students. Get the hell out of here. I'm calling security." But the point is, it's a dissociative disorder. I was using my hands before. So the key is, once you're out, is deconstructing the programmed identity by going back to critical moments and rewiring using neuroplasticity and neurogenesisence,

• 35:56Speaker 01

  saying, "If I knew then what I know now, here's how I would have handled it, or could have handled it, or should have handled it." Because then it empowers you going forward into the future to not get taken again with those techniques.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Letting your brain train your body on how to react next time instead of freezing.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And the key is, the locus of control has to be in you, not looking outside to some authority figure or ideology to tell you what reality is or what the beliefs are.

• 36:29Trevor Noah?

  We'll be right back after this.

• 36:33Trevor Noah?

  Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads, so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid. It's everything you already love about YouTube just somehow even better.

• 37:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is smart downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ugh, I forgot to download anything!" And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded!" Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch... Or just on the internet. Smart downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium.

• 38:03Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime. Fall has a way of turning an ordinary night into a reason to gather. Whether it is a football game, a Halloween party, or a dinner on a cold evening. Whole Foods Market makes those moments easier with comfort food, seasonal treats, and quality standards built into every aisle. Start with a Whole Foods Market Kitchen's lasagna, packaged soup, or a build-your-own-family meal from the prepared foods counter, which feeds four for $35. For game day, add made-in-house wings, frozen pizzas, and 365 brand chips and dips.

• 38:46Trevor Noah?

  The limited-time bakery lineup brings the season home with pumpkin blondies, apple brown butter cookies, and chocolate bourbon pecan pie. And with no artificial sweeteners like sucralose, artificial colors like red dye number 40, or high-fructose corn syrup store-wide, nothing gets in the way of the flavors you came for. Shop four flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Markets. Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heat waves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love.

• 39:27Trevor Noah?

  From Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick, from Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  You know, the story of recruitment sounds so familiar to me. When I, when I was fourteen, we moved from the township to town. So we lived in this block of flats, my mom, my two other siblings. So we used to play soccer downstairs. So these friends of mine that I just made in the apartment block did not show up for soccer that day. Then there were two teenagers, like maybe in university age, who were outside our gate in the apartment because we played in the parking lot. And then kicked the ball, ball came over to them. They were on the other side of it and they just said, hey, how are you doing? And I said, I'm fine. They said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm playing soccer, but my friends are not here. They were like, ah, if the gate would open, we'd play with you. And I was like, yeah, the gate won't open, it's fine. We can just talk from here. They kept showing up until they were familiar to me.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  A week later, they said, they spotted me coming back from school because I had to take the train.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were targeting you.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  They said, you look like you've come from far. Because I was like, I was still going to a township school, living in town, so I took the train. So they said, you know what we could do? We, we're in university now, we could help you with homework if you want. Then I said, yeah, I'm fine with homework. They were like, trust me, we're good at math. And I hated math. We do all sorts of things, but if you want, we could help you. But now we're outside the gate just before I entered the apartment block.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  And I said, no, thank you. Two weeks went by, I saw them again, but now with my friends. So now this is important to mention, these were white kids. I'm black. Our apartment building was predominantly white. The two friends of mine, Fanny and Harold. Now, I'm seeing them interacting with them, thinking it's all normal. But the target here was me. So ultimately, they said to me, we know what you do, we could meet at the mall. The mall was not two blocks away from my house. They had restaurants. They said, we can meet at the mall, all of us. Fanny and Harold did not go. I ended up going. We got to a restaurant, there were two other people.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Three on, three to one ratio is the ideal recruitment, cult recruitment.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  There were two other people and there was a girl in there, so it felt safer. Started talking, they said, you could have anything you want in the restaurant, anything you want. I didn't know what I wanted. Then they ordered this drink, I'll never forget, it's ingrained in my mind, I've never had it ever since. It's called Horlick's. So it's almost like, um.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  But I think it's a Dutch drink.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Hot chocolatey slash warm milky thing.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  They had that came in a tall glassy mug with a long

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  teaspoon and I was staring at this thing for long. Cause I didn't know what was going on here and they were talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. That weekend I ended up in a bus without telling my mom to a stadium and it was a church event.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were trying to recruit you.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  I was there. I had they had red T shirts, the the organi- the church was called Hope. It was like a red T shirt with white writing on it on the chest. It was packed. I was in a stadium. Got back home that night. My mom was worried sick. I had to explain to her what really happened. She said, you're never seeing these people again. This will never happen again and they kept on coming and I never went out the gate again.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  So you listened to your mom?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Yes, I was fifteen.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  And she was a nurse. So obviously I'd seen a lot of these kind of things at the hospital, the ER. People who attempted suicide and all of that jazz. But it was a church cult.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And cults will tell

• 43:01Speaker 02

  It's exactly like that.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  people, don't tell your parents.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  I was in the car with these people. I didn't know who they were.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  I get it. It happened to me.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  I went to a stadium.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Hmm. No, it it it happens a lot. And I was I was listening to you read your book about your childhood.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And it sounded like one of those churches that you

• 43:20Speaker 02

  No, I mean, like you said, there's different ones. Cause remember, we use the word church for everything.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Hmm. But it's like, anyone can say church. Mm hmm. Do you get what I'm saying? It's like the church of, anything can say church and then everyone has a specific idea. What sticks out to me in the stories, I go, you were playing soccer? Yes. Wow, my friend. I was quite good at soccer, actually. Wow.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Good for him.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Even now he hates it. Is this why, Eugene? Have we found the source of why you hate? Why you hate football so much?

• 43:53Trevor Noah?

  I was like, is this, have we gotten to the root of the trauma?

• 43:57Trevor Noah?

  I was like, this is why my friend never wants to talk about soccer.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  He's laughing very loud.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  It's interesting.

• 44:04Trevor Noah?

  You're supposed to be on my side.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  I'm a mental health professional, I can't help it. I want to say something really important to today. So there are a lot of people who claim to be doing Christianity and evangelical Christianity. I really want to be clear. The people who talk about following Jesus, love, my kingdom is not of this world, no one will know the time, you know, render unto Caesar what Caesar... That's not what's happening to tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions around the world. What's happening is a form of authoritarian cultism called New Apostolic Reformation is the title.

• 44:45Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And what's different is these people who run these groups and mega churches, they say, "I'm an apostle or I'm a prophet and I speak to God."

• 44:55Trevor Noah?

  Follow me.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Okay. And God told me so-and-so won the 2020 election and don't listen to Satan. Because if you're, if you're feeling or believing that, it's because Satan is in you, but I can help cast out the demons.

• 45:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, leave it up to me.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  So look at the byte model.

• 45:13Trevor Noah?

  So they, so they basically become the intermediary between you and God. They go, "You don't speak to God, I speak to God." Yes.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  And they have you cut off from family and friends who are being like, "Go to this church." They actually follow the Bible instead of following a person who's doing these mind control techniques on them.

• 45:32Trevor Noah?

  So that's how they also don't stand up to scrutiny is they remove you from your environment so that you have fewer people or fewer places that can make you doubt them.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So another critical point I want to cover that I think you'll really find important is the notion of phobia indoctrination.

• 45:51Trevor Noah?

  Phobia indoctrination.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  So let's take um an elevator phobia. Someone is afraid to get in an elevator because they think they'll plummet to their death or they'll be trapped for eternity.

• 46:06Trevor Noah?

  Very reasonable phobia, I must say. So they create. Anyone who has that.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  They create movies in their mind where this is not safe. It's dangerous.

• 46:16Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  But the thing is, is we have fear to keep us safe from real danger.

• 46:22Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  So if there's emergency brakes, so it can't fall to your death. If there's a phone, the worst that happens is you be on yourself.

• 46:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  But you'll get out and everything will be fine. But if you have this phobia of being in an elevator, you'll walk forty flights of stairs, even though you're stritting like crazy because you're that afraid of it. Understand, people in mind control cults are like that. They can't imagine leaving the group and being happy and fulfilled or with God.

• 46:57Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  They can only, and here's another part of my story, since you were interested in how this happened to Steve.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I was taken with a hundred other Moonies to see the Exorcist movie. In Greenwich Village, they rented a whole theater. We went up to hear Moon speak and Moon said, God made the exorcist. This movie is a prophecy of what will happen if you lead the unification church.

• 47:23Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  And from that moment, I thought any doubt was a demon trying to possess my mind. So I was taught thought stopping. I was chanting in order to keep the, and I didn't believe in demons. I was Jewish. I didn't believe in Satan either.

• 47:42Trevor Noah?

  Does it, does it, does it make it harder for you to trust your own doubts and instincts when you're surrounded by many seemingly reasonable people who agree with what you're being taught?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  That's another very important point we teach in social psychology is that we're social beings and part of our brain calibrates off of who. We identify with.

• 48:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, we want to belong.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  And our brains even in train. There's a, there's, there's a neuropsychological phenomenon that they're tracking now. Where you're playing music, you're singing together. Your brains start to sink.

• 48:19Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a known phenomenon. You have a whole bunch of people singing in church or whatever.

• 48:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  It feels great. That was when people say, what was the best part of the moon is I said, I love singing in a group.

• 48:32Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, it's the reason um. Armies can march further together than they can. Remember when, when, when the first.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 48:40Trevor Noah?

  Large military, like the way we think of militaries. Started marching in unison on a beat. Roman military. Yeah, marching together on a beat with a drum and with like a vibe.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 48:50Trevor Noah?

  They went, they went further. And they got less tired. Yeah, that, cause that thing. It does something to us that we don't fully understand as humans.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  So the, one of the, one of the. Social psychology experiments I teach my clients and the public. There are three.

• 49:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Ash conformity study, Milgram obedience study and Zimbardo prison study.

• 49:11Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Any of those sound familiar?

• 49:13Trevor Noah?

  No, no.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Ash was a social psychologist in the fifties, very briefly, he. Did an experiment, he called it a social perception experiment. He had the person at the front of the room, people in a ring. They'd show a sample sized line, let's say three inches long, uh, three inch line, they have three sample. Lines, three, four and five inches. They had everybody in the room say which. Of the three was the same size as the sample line.

• 49:46Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Okay, they did it correctly twice. And then all of the people who were in on the experiments started confidently giving the wrong answer. But the person in seat six was then like.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  A two inch line is equal to a three inch line? No, no, no, and they disagreed. But two thirds start giving the wrong answer just to fit in

• 50:13Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  to the social conformity.

• 50:18Trevor Noah?

  See, that's

• 50:18Speaker 01

  And no one gets up to measure. That's what I teach. It's like, if you really want to know, look for an objective way to measure what's going on.

• 50:27Trevor Noah?

  But you see now, that, that for me taps into one of the greatest conundrums in, in society. And that is for most of society to function, we have to agree on things that aren't real or rather realities that are imagined so that we can function together, right?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  We have to trust.

• 50:49Trevor Noah?

  Like a traffic light, is a society agreeing on something that is not real?

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:53Trevor Noah?

  We go, the red light stops us. It doesn't stop us, but we all agree that we will stop.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  The rule that we've agreed to.

• 50:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but we, we all have to sort of imagine that the thing has happened or hasn't happened. Or, you know, the way people go quiet in certain spaces. We all agree to be quiet in the space or we all. So it's like, it's, it's a weird thing because it feels like we need to be able to do this as humans so that we can form societies. But now you're saying we also have to be careful of when we do it because then the society we form is a cult.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  So I believe cults exist from the ethical to the unethical. So I make a distinction because there are cult classic. I, I, I joke, I'm in the TEDx cult because I've done four TEDx talks.

• 51:37Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  And I love to watch them. I love to learn. I love to, uh, to have fascinating input in my brain or scuba diving. I, I'm passionate about scuba diving. And there's, it's great. It's expensive. I, you know, I have to buy equipment, et cetera, et cetera. But it's, it's my choice and nobody's forcing me or guilt tripping me that I'm a bad person.

• 52:00Trevor Noah?

  How do you know that nobody's forcing you or guilt tripping you?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Because I haven't, I know my experience and that's where it comes down to trusting your ability.

• 52:08Trevor Noah?

  I genuinely don't mean this facetiously. I mean, like many people who are in cults go, no, I'm not forced to be there. Their families will say.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  I didn't think I was forced in the moonies.

• 52:17Trevor Noah?

  So that's what I'm saying is like now it becomes this weird world where you're saying, I love scuba diving. Now, I don't think scuba diving is a cult, but I'm saying. We don't think we're in a cult when we're in a cult. And we don't think we're not in a cult when we're not in a cult. So then when are we in a cult and when are we not in a cult?

• 52:36Speaker 01

  So now you're tapping into another very important point. I knew you were gonna ask some good questions. So how did Steve get out of being a fanatical?

• 52:46Trevor Noah?

  No, first I wanna know how Steve became leader. I'm not forgetting that. I need to know how I go from, I don't wanna be here, to welcome to my haram.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  I'm still stuck at wanting to meet the real leader, the first leader.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's so many stories. How much time do we have?

• 53:02Trevor Noah?

  Oh, we've got time for this. We've got time.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  After this, we're watching The Exorcist.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  That was the first movie with subliminal images, by the way.

• 53:12Trevor Noah?

  Right? With like a flash, just like a?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Flashes of the devil were put in by the filmmaker.

• 53:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, just like a, yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Cause it actually can bypass our consciousness and we can be affected emotionally.

• 53:23Trevor Noah?

  When did they introduce that law? And I don't know if this is a myth.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Nobody's enforced the law.

• 53:29Trevor Noah?

  Okay, cause I, I remember reading once, and again, I should go and double check it now. Now that we have better search tools, that they changed the rules about like ads specifically. Where you, an ad has to be longer than a certain period of time on screen. Otherwise, people don't know that they've seen the ad.

• 53:49Trevor Noah?

  It's like you could just flash something and then people are like, mm, I'm craving something now.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  We can talk for a week about what's happening online with techniques that are are being used by state actors to hypnotically program the craziest of beliefs. But back to my story. So what happened in my case, interestingly, I think I got to the point in the story where my mom had asked me to talk to the rabbi. I'm sitting in my room with books and I pick up a book. It was a book about Gergi.

• 54:20Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And I just, my eyes go on one sentence and I, my brain interpreted that sentence as a message that I needed to go to the group. Because Gurdjieff was dead and following a living spiritual master was the way to go. And so I still, in my mind, I wasn't joining for my life, but I had this quandary. Is the Messiah maybe coming or isn't it? So I wanted to know more and that's part of the appeal at the beginning, isn't to commit your life, but is to learn more.

• 54:57Trevor Noah?

  Curiosity.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Open your mind.

• 54:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Don't be closed minded. Consider that there's a bigger path for you. And where I got hooked was I was selected by a top Japanese leader that Moon had brought over to the United States. Moon was very unhappy with the American movement because they weren't militant enough. So he brought this top Japanese guy over and the Japanese guy checked me out and he made me one of his disciples. So through this guy, I got to be in the room with Moon as we had discussions about infiltrating the US government and how God wants a theocracy and wants, thinks democracy is satanic.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  I got to hear all of these things in 1974. But I was a true believer because I learned to shut down any doubts. And I believed that if I just followed what Moon was saying, because he was plugged into God, then the world would be saved. Ten generations of my ancestors on my mother's and father's side would get out of a terrible situation in the spirit world, which I didn't believe in before.

• 56:09Trevor Noah?

  But, but this is something that's always confused me, like you're talking about the leaders are now in a room. I, I've, I've always wondered, do cult leaders themselves believe in the cults?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question.

• 56:23Trevor Noah?

  But do they though?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  It's a great question.

• 56:26Trevor Noah?

  But do they though?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  It's a great question. I can't say definitively, I'm a forensic expert, but I can tell you that when you're surrounded only by yes people, you tend to believe what you want to believe.

• 56:42Trevor Noah?

  That becomes your cult.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  So it becomes your reality. But it doesn't mean you don't have doubts.

• 56:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay, but now, but now this introduces now.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I'll say one more thing that's important.

• 56:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  So a lot of people think cult leaders are just con artists and criminals.

• 57:00Trevor Noah?

  Yes, that's why I'm asking the question.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  My experience, did I, I'm sorry.

• 57:03Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, that's, no, this is perfect. You didn't at all, you answered it.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  No, most cult leaders were in a cult themselves before. That's where they were trained. That's where they learned a lot of these techniques. So it's not, um, I'm a criminal, because most con artists and criminals, they want to get in, make the money and get out.

• 57:24Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  They don't want to create something for 20 years.

• 57:28Trevor Noah?

  They don't want structure.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  And, and.

• 57:29Trevor Noah?

  Followers.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  And, yeah, this, it's a lot of responsibility.

• 57:32Trevor Noah?

  Uniform.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  But.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  It turns out, what I learned, because I was a whistleblower for a congressional subcommittee investigation in 197, when I got it in 76. They were looking into Korean CIA activities in the United States, and the Moonies were a major part of the Korean CIA. And what I later came to understand, we're getting into politics, is this okay?

• 58:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  What I, what I understood was that because North Korea brainwashes, this is the height of the Cold War.

• 58:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  North Korea and South, and South Korea separated, there were two unsuccessful coups in South Korea. The CIA thought, we have to stabilize the regime, so we're going to help them set up a Korean CIA, and we're going to pick a proxy group to brainwash political dissonance.

• 58:27Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  And they selected the Moonies.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  So, the Moonies were used as a tool to brainwash.

• 58:37Trevor Noah?

  Dissidents.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  South Koreans.

• 58:38Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And they used the Moonies to make arms to give to dictatorships around the world by passing congressional approval.

• 58:47Trevor Noah?

  This is insane.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  No, but I'm not making this up.

• 58:49Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm, I'm.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I've written books on this.

• 58:51Trevor Noah?

  No, no, what I'm saying about insane is like I go, it's, it's just crazy. Like the CIA, that's what my brain was thinking, was just like, wait, what? Wait, what's happening here?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Well, but come, remember MKUltra?

• 59:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so the CIA was experimenting with LSD, hypnosis.

• 59:10Trevor Noah?

  Right, mind control.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  And after Jonestown, there was a special, I think ABC did a special, and the head, former head psychologist of the CIA said, yeah, we researched brainwashing, but we didn't find anything that worked, and we burned our records.

• 59:27Trevor Noah?

  Lies.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Total lies, and to this day, no government has been honest with its citizens of, we know how to hack people's brains, we know how to recruit and indoctrinate people, but that's where we're at now, is we have to educate everybody, because America is being hacked, we're in a coup, it's really horrendous what's happening, and people need to understand, this is a Cold War extension, we thought the Soviet Union collapsed, we won, and Putin and the other oligarchs who were KGB are like, we're taking down the US.

• 1:00:09Trevor Noah?

  You see, but this is, this is what I mean about where we draw the distinctions. Because in my head, I'm going, I hear when there are specific cults, and then I understand what you're saying about the B I T E, right?

• 1:00:27Trevor Noah?

  But, but then I go, it feels like, and maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like to me, there are some overlaps between things that are cult-ish, but not necessarily a cult.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:00:38Trevor Noah?

  And then there are things that are definitely cults, but don't seem like a cult, and so it leaves us in the space where you go, is this a tool that cults use, or is this a tool of cults that non-cults use? Oh, it goes both ways.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:53Trevor Noah?

  So. So you're not necessarily saying that, like, everyone is in a cult, or are you saying that they're in a cult? I can't figure it out.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Well, we have culture, I mean, I grew up in the fear of the nuclear holocaust. Austin, you know.

• 1:01:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Fearing Russia and getting under my wooden desk at PS one seventy three in Queens because Russia may nuke us. Um, and then I had my disillusionment with America and Vietnam.

• 1:01:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  When I thought it was a just war and I realized that they were lying from the whole time. And they're just killing innocent people who wanted their country, et cetera. But it was to fight communism.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  In any case, what I, what I wanna say is that we are either gonna continue to evolve as a species with the goal of planetary survival, which means cooperation with other countries. Or it's the authoritarians versus the rest of us.

• 1:01:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  You know, who want rule of law and human rights and gay rights and women's rights and indigenous rights and minority religious rights. So I think that there's more of us than them. And we just need to understand correctly to diagnose the situation and approach it.

• 1:02:15Trevor Noah?

  Now, actually, to that question, though, this is something I've always struggled and grappled with, but I, I've gone.

• 1:02:23Trevor Noah?

  Should we try to immunize everybody from cult or cultish ideas? And is that realistic? Or should we focus more on the environmental um, circumstances that make it easier for somebody to be in that situation? So going back, going back to what you were saying, you know, you playing football, you know, in your, in your little. One of the things that stuck out to me was your friends weren't there that day.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Trevor Noah?

  Do you get what I'm saying? So that becomes the first, I, I think you're less likely to go talk to these people and to be taken away.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  When my friends.

• 1:02:57Trevor Noah?

  If your friends were there.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Trevor Noah?

  So I, I just identify one point by myself as Trevor. I go like, oh, okay. So if you have a robust community, maybe it's less likely.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:06Trevor Noah?

  And then I, and then I think of like economic situations or circumstance. So.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Trevor Noah?

  If you're in an environment where, you know, you're not hungry and you're, you're not desperate.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  You're not heartbroken.

• 1:03:15Trevor Noah?

  You're not heartbroken.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  You're not lonely.

• 1:03:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you were heartbroken. You were alone in the cafeteria. I'm just picking up some of these traits. Horny as well.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  We can't, we can't skip that one.

• 1:03:24Trevor Noah?

  We can't skip horny. We can't skip horny.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Not still, but.

• 1:03:28Trevor Noah?

  We can't skip horns. So you go.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  No, but people have needs.

• 1:03:32Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but this is, yes, this is my point.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  And but destructive groups are trying to say that's a, that's an evil impulse and you should suppress it.

• 1:03:42Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  And it's, you know, and that's where we get into an overlap with groups that are giving informed consent.

• 1:03:48Trevor Noah?

  And groups that aren't.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  And aren't.

• 1:03:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  But, you know, the ones that say it's, it's unnatural to have sexual thoughts, it's like you don't understand human psychology.

• 1:03:58Trevor Noah?

  But now, but this is what I'm, so this is what I come back to, like, let's say when we talk about it now, if we, if we shift the lens into politics, you know, and people go, oh, what politics is doing, what authoritarian regimes are doing, et cetera. I've found very few instances, I'm not a historian, but when I read or when I watch a documentary or I found very few instances of authoritarian regimes that were able to start in good times. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  So that's another really important point that you're making and I, when I did my doctoral dissertation, I included a law professor's model called the social influence model.

• 1:04:38Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Which he created for expert witnesses to explain to judges and juries how to evaluate social influence. And he said, you have to look at the influency and their vulnerabilities, whether they were, you know, young, they were a minor, fifteen years old, or they had been assaulted as a child or whatever. The influencer or the predator, the predatory organization, was it a priest or was it a teacher? Or was it someone twice their age, et cetera? And this whole set of criteria around malignant narcissism, pimps and traffickers are, are, are also, and how they groom and recruit and indoctrinate people and what are the consequences?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  So it's a formula. When there's economic uncertainty, political turmoil, people are more confused than ever and they want hope.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  And desperate.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  And, and so, trust me, I know more than the generals. I know more than the economists, you know, Trump, you do a better Trump than me. Anyway.

• 1:05:44Trevor Noah?

  Don't get him started.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  I know more than any, or trust me, but it, the, the, the, the thing is falling apart now. The illusion over the Epstein files and, and.

• 1:05:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that, no, that's created a whole, yes.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  But QAnon was a psy-op. It was using alternate game technology to recruit people into believing that there was this conspiracy of traffickers.

• 1:06:12Trevor Noah?

  But wait, was it though? Because I, it's interesting. I, I don't know what the origins or, or not of QAnon are. Like you know definitively, because I remember, I remember, I remember, um, seeing that some people said that QAnon was this like deep conspiracy or organization that was trying to control. And then another group said QAnon was literally started by like trolls from 4chan and those pages.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Well, it was started on 4chan.

• 1:06:38Trevor Noah?

  Okay, yeah, but, but I thought it was started as like a joke. They were like, I'm gonna go out into the real world.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  It was a joke initially.

• 1:06:42Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Goof on the Trumpers. There were three people. I found this out from a source, who knows, because he was there. And he said, then they realized they could make money selling merch. And then the Russians got involved.

• 1:06:56Trevor Noah?

  Ooh.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And we know Michael Flynn got involved. And we know this because a, a PhD who has a company that's able to analyze Twitter. We can track back to the first mentions of QAnon and where we go, when we go, all, all the hashtags. And you can literally find who are the trolls, who's recruiting who, et cetera. So we have forensic evidence. And I actually did a bite model analysis of QAnon.

• 1:07:26Trevor Noah?

  So how, how do people get indoctrinated into a cult that they're not physically a part of? Because, because that would, that would defy what people believe a cult is then. Someone goes, I'm not in a cult. I'm at home, minding my own business. I don't wear a uniform.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  This is how.

• 1:07:39Trevor Noah?

  I don't, yeah, but I, I can, I can turn it off. Like, unlike you who stuck in Terrytown for the weekend.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  I turned it off and it freaking turned itself on. By itself. I did turn it on.

• 1:07:48Trevor Noah?

  Unlike, unlike Terrytown where you're like trapped, you can't go home. I can't be in a cult on my phone. I can just turn the thing off.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Well, so ask people to turn off their phones for 24 hours and.

• 1:08:01Trevor Noah?

  Are you crazy? You want me to miss out on my life?

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:08:03Trevor Noah?

  Sorry, guys, sorry, sorry.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:08:06Trevor Noah?

  Sorry.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  So here's where reality testing is so important. And you you've hit on a lot of key points and I want to emphasize. I believe you should have a trust pod. You were talking about Eugene should, if he had friends that they would have protected.

• 1:08:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, if they were there that day.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  You have a trust pod where you watch each other's back and even take roles. Who's going to be the contrarian? You know, if Trevor says, I want to go to this workshop in Maui with, you know, this or that. And Eugene goes, hey, dude, I checked this out. And this guy is a leech or he's a troll.

• 1:08:43Trevor Noah?

  Maui.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Maui, I'll go. But in any case, reality testing. So coming back to my story, what helped Stephen get out of this cult? He was willing to die on command, kill on command. What happened? Steve fell asleep at the wheel of a van, drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck on the Baltimore Beltway at 80 miles an hour, was trapped for a half an hour before I was rescued, needed surgery, but I was away from the cult.

• 1:09:15Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  For two weeks, sleeping, eating.

• 1:09:20Trevor Noah?

  Well, you can call it divine intervention.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  My brain came back online because it wasn't constant. I was sleeping three to four hours a night in the cult.

• 1:09:30Trevor Noah?

  You had switched off your phone for two weeks.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  I had no phone. This was 76.

• 1:09:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  No, I literally, so that opened the door to me calling my sister, who is the only one in my family that didn't say I was brainwashed in a cult. She convinced me to visit and meet my nephew had been born. I made her promise not to tell my parents because I was afraid of being deprogrammed. And she told my parents and they took my crutches away. And I I had a situation where I was going to be deprogrammed and I was going to snap my father's neck while he was driving a car on the Long Island Expressway. And I thought, but I know God and I know Father and they can't get me out of doing God's will.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  So why don't I prove to them I'm not in the cult and I'm not brainwashed? So that's what my my thought process was. And what helped me get out was learning what Chinese communist brainwashing methods were.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  So they used a book that was published in nineteen sixty-one. The little red book? Thought reform, no. Oh, another one. There was some red on the front cover, believe it or not. It's called Thought Reform: The Psychology of Totalism, A Study of Brainwashing in China, by psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, former Air Force psychiatrist. And he outlined eight criteria in chapter twenty-two. How to evaluate whether environment does brainwashing. And every single one, the Moonies did. Do you remember any of them offhand? Of course. This is my work. Yes. But I was like, we're God, they're Satan, communism is Satan. But we're doing the same brainwashing.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  This, this is where the, the dissonance, when my brain started kicking into gear. So milieu control is control of the environment and communication. Okay. Uh, sacred science, where you claim to have the ultimate science and moral vision. Okay. For the thing. Uh, loaded language, which are basically thought-terminating cliches. That, cause words are the tools we use to think. Okay. So if you can have buzzwords. Your vocabulary gets changed. You know, don't think about what the content was. Yeah, yeah. Just label it fake news. Um, what else?

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Uh, demand for purity, which is a perfectionism, where they always keep raising the bar. So you always are feeling shameful or insufficient. Okay. So you always are trying harder and harder. Uh, the cult of confession, and that talks about information control, finding everything about your background. And if you were, you know, feeling guilty over something you did, they use it against you, they have people turning in each other if they break the rules. This is all outlined in my byte model, that, cause I take in his model and made it more codified. Uh, one of the most important ones is called dispensing of existence.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  And that says, if you're in the cult, you have a right to exist. And if you leave, then you're nothing, you're a non-person. You can be killed, you can be lied to, or whatever. And it's Lifton's description of cancel culture.

• 1:12:58Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Cancel people, the right does it, the left does it, but you, I say, you know, people should have the right to leave an environment if they're not happy or they find something better.

• 1:13:12Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  If it's healthy, you let people go. Nope, you, you left us and you're the enemy now.

• 1:13:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and so you're no longer human, you're no longer, you disagree on this.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Yes, you're a traitor.

• 1:13:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Right, so, but, you know.

• 1:13:27Trevor Noah?

  But no, you see now, okay, now my brain then goes, everything is then a cult. That's what my brain says, because I, okay, so let, let me tell you why.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  So remember, culture, cult comes from culture, so we have culture, we need culture.

• 1:13:42Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm, I'm, I'm saying, both on my behalf and someone who's listening to this.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:48Trevor Noah?

  Alright, I start with like, let's say a family. A family can say, we are the Johnsons. You are a Johnson, I am a Johnson, and in the Johnson family, we always have dinner at 7pm. And at the Johnson household, we go for walks on Saturdays, and you know what I mean? And if you don't like it, you can leave, but if you leave this house,

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:14:09Trevor Noah?

  We will cut you off from the Johnsons and you're no longer Johnson. And you will never walk into this house ever.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  That's not a healthy family.

• 1:14:17Trevor Noah?

  Okay, but that's.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  So if you have the influence continuum chart, folks, please go download it so you have it in front of you.

• 1:14:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  And you can understand this. Healthy parenting recognizes that each child is a unique being. And healthy parenting is to help that unique being grow up to adulthood, to become their best self. It's developmentally appropriate, it's not too, micromanaging, it's not being too permissive, it's giving challenges, it's not, not constant praise, it's rewarding effort.

• 1:14:54Trevor Noah?

  And also not setting them up for failure.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  And not setting them up.

• 1:14:57Trevor Noah?

  To prove yourself right.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:14:58Trevor Noah?

  It's an addiction of some parents.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  So we know models of excellence for healthy attachment. Like you need, you need to keep babies off of screens for the first three years. This is well established neuroscientifically, not even TV screens, no iPads, no phones.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  Because the baby's brain is

• 1:15:20Trevor Noah?

  Smellable.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's pruning neurons and it needs to smell mommy and daddy and needs to

• 1:15:27Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Hear our voice, reading books to the child, etc. This helps the child to feel loved and to feel safe and secure. Healthy attachment is the key to avoiding all personality disorders.

• 1:15:44Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Unhealthy families are authoritarian.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  They want the kids to be obedient.

• 1:15:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  They often do corporal punishment, which is illegal in most civilized countries, except here. But beating children is traumatic to the brain.

• 1:16:03Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  It does not encourage children to think differently and act differently, etc. And, and, um, and often kids who are gay, if they're in a homophobic church or something, are kicked out. And then they're picked up by pimps or traffickers or somebody else on the street and more trauma happens. So when, when you say, Steve, some families are authoritarian cults, I'm like, yes.

• 1:16:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, but that's what, that's what I mean by everything is a, you, you get what I'm saying? So I'm saying

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  I wasn't beaten as a child. I was, I, I honestly, I had a very unusual

• 1:16:40Trevor Noah?

  On a weekend doing nonsense things, Steve. You see, when I, Steve, if you were in my house, you would have, hey, when I, Steve, where are you going? Yep, Uti, Schwinn, Uti, we can, hey, Steve.

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cult, you see your cult. But when you grow up with an authoritarian, you're gonna be attracted to an authoritarian cult.

• 1:17:02Trevor Noah?

  It's, it's exactly

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Cause it's familiar.

• 1:17:03Trevor Noah?

  That's the thing, the familiarity of control.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Sorry, as you speak, I'm thinking about How a lot of commercials, uh, how a lot of TV shows, there's a TV show where people who are frustrated with their own lives enter into a house, meet up with strangers.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  A reality TV.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Reality TV show. They're trapped into this house with cameras everywhere.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Not reality.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  There's a confessional booth where they go in and say their desires

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  to a faceless person that speaks to only them at that time and can find a way to manipulate so that they can get what they want. And the ultimate objective is to call everyone outside the house, which is the viewer, to vote for them. But there's temptation in the middle of it, because you can't have sex inside the house. But if you do, make sure that you're not seen, but the camera can see you, because it's got night vision camera. So that causes disorder inside the house. But ultimately, the most deceitful, the one who plays the game the best, will ultimately become the leader of the house once a week and will ultimately win the show. The show is called Big Brother.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Trevor Noah?

  Wait, you, you, I mean, it's crazy that they're like just taking.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:18:09Trevor Noah?

  They should have to pay royalties to the cults.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Well, so the, what we need is to celebrate people who have virtue and who are good people and not.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Those go first in the house.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  And not malignant narcissists. We should shame malignant narcissists.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  You're leaving the first week.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Who have hundreds of billions of dollars and they could be feeding the poor and they're pushing for, for legislation so people don't have healthcare and they can't feed children. Shame on them. And, and seriously, we need to start getting out of the, you know, the Hollywood and all of the social influence that this is okay to harm people and trick people and abuse people for entertainment. I was talking with one of your, your, your production people, Trevor, before, and I was just saying that there's so many cult documentaries and they're not educational.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why, why do you say that?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  They're trauma porn. Because they're not explaining what are the techniques that are being used in a way that the listener can understand.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  And avoid.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  And, yeah, and protect themselves and see how it could have happened to them. It's like trauma porn. Oh, look how screwed up they allowed it to be branded with, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Their crotch with no anesthesia. That's not the message. I want people to under— because I'm a survivor of a cult. Yeah. I mean, that's— this is why I've devoted my life to this is because it's like, it never— I've entered into a world where people need to know this on a global scale. Or we're gonna lose our world. Hmm. Like, it's getting really crazier and crazier. And it's not healthy.

• 1:19:55Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this.

• 1:20:02Trevor Noah?

  Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads, so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid. It's everything you already love about YouTube, just somehow even better.

• 1:20:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is Smart Downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ugh, I forgot to download anything!" And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded." Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart Downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch, so even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium.

• 1:21:32Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 1:21:35Trevor Noah?

  I think one of the things you realize when you start caring about clothes is that simple doesn't have to mean basic. Because a T-shirt is a T-shirt until you find the right T-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve. And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their Pima Cotton Lux Touch T-shirts. And it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it. The fit is great and it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit.

• 1:22:20Trevor Noah?

  You can throw on a jacket, a sweater, whatever you want, but everything works because you started with the right thing. That's what I like about Quince. It feels premium without feeling like you're trying too hard. It's effortless. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Hello over there. Oh, and if Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was What Now with Trevor Noah. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  I'm a raccoon.

• 1:23:02Speaker 04

  I'm a moose.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  I'm a skunk.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  If you're holding your phone while driving, you could hit one of us.

• 1:23:06Speaker 05

  And nobody like wants that. Right, raccoon?

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Right, skunk. Right, moose?

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  Right, raccoon.

• 1:23:11Speaker 05

  And that's why you should totally get a Cup phone from WeatherTech.

• 1:23:14Speaker 04

  It fits right in your cup holder and keeps your phone locked in place.

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  So your eyes stay locked on the road. It's amazing.

• 1:23:20Speaker 05

  It's brilliant.

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  It's killer.

• 1:23:22Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  Seriously, moose.

• 1:23:24Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry. That just sort of slipped out.

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  Protect yourself and everything else on the road with a Cup phone from weatherTech.com.

• 1:23:37Trevor Noah?

  It's interesting when you say, um, when you talk about how people speak about themselves post occult.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:45Trevor Noah?

  A lot of it sounds similar to how people speak about themselves post an authoritarian regime.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Because they are.

• 1:23:53Trevor Noah?

  So like when they interviewed people, when they interviewed people post Hitler and the Nazis, they asked many Germans and they're like, "I didn't, you know, I just found myself being part of this and I, I didn't know and I, I really just found myself..." And when they would talk to people in, in America who were part of, you know, whether it was the Ku Klux Klan or whether, they go like, "I, I just felt myself being swept up in a wave and, uh, looking back, I can't believe that that's me." That's what a lot of people say.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Trevor Noah?

  "I can't believe, uh, South Africans who, you know what I mean, in apartheid, why South Africans who like, "I, I can't believe I ever thought that, I, I just can't, it's, it's this, it's this..."

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 1:24:26Trevor Noah?

  "...interesting world where they do not see themselves now." You separate themselves from the... Yeah, from, from the person. And it feels like the same thing. It's like, in the moment, someone can do anything and then in hindsight go, "I can't believe that that would have been me. I can't believe that."

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Right. But instead of walking away, I realized, because I have such a unique perspective, having been in the room where they talked about taking over the United States and destroying the rule of law and, and, and separation of church and state and everything, I feel an obligation to say, "Hello, here's how they're doing it. These are the techniques we have to teach everyone how to protect themselves, how to talk to people, family and friends who've been radicalized."

• 1:25:12Trevor Noah?

  What do you think?

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  A lot of people have blocked their family and friends because they can't talk about...

• 1:25:18Trevor Noah?

  What's a mistake that families make when, when doing that? You know, because, like you, you said something interesting. You said, "I spoke to my sister because she was the only one who didn't say to me that I was crazy and I was in a cult."

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:25:29Trevor Noah?

  "But I didn't speak to the rest of my family." So what can someone do right to have a conversation with someone in their family who they feel is in a cult?

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Perfect question. So, I explain the real Steve and the Mooney Steve. The Mooney Steve was trained that if any attack happens against Moon or the doctrine or the policy... Defend, label it as evil, chant, pray or whatever. So what do we learn from this? We say, never attack with logic and facts, the leader, the doctrine, or the policy of the group that the person is in. Because it will make them deeper. It will paint you as the enemy. Okay, that's rule number one. What works is finding out from the person, another group

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  that they think is a cult or is brainwashed. That is hilarious. And with MAGA, it's Chinese communist brainwashing or pimps and traffickers. That is hilarious. And explaining the byte model and how people get taken in and how they are programmed and these behaviors. And the critical technique that works is being warm, being respectful, being an active listener, and asking good questions, just like you do. You ask good questions that make people think. That's the goal, not to persuade them to leave, to reality test for themselves. But if you understand the techniques that were used on them,

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  like I was saying before, I ask people, go back, what was your first feeling and thought when that person invited you to the thing? I remember. I remember, it was odd, or I had a feeling in my stomach, there was something wrong. And now that you know more, how would you have liked to respond? I would have liked to have questioned it, or I would have liked to say, no way, Jose, or whatever. But the point is, people want to be free. People don't like to be abused and lied to. But they need a face-saving way to exit. So if they understand how pimps recruit women to be sex slaves or labor trafficking victims,

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  if they understand the methods, and you ask them, so what's your understanding of how intelligent people can be controlled that way? And give them the tools and ask them to go back and reflect. Because a lot of people hated Trump, and then they got converted. Who converted them? They watched the movie, they went to a rally, they had a friend at work? Like, get them to remember what they thought they were hearing and learning.

• 1:28:21Trevor Noah?

  You know, I've seen a lot of people. I mean, I've obviously read about your book and you know what people have said and you were welcomed into many spaces. When you were writing just about cults, right?

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Every TV show in America. Sixty Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, everything.

• 1:28:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you were everywhere, basically. And then you wrote a book entitled The Cult of Trump.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  For Simon and Schuster.

• 1:28:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and then all of a sudden you were sort of.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  Crickets.

• 1:28:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Now, we all know, doesn't matter who you are, you don't even, this is not like a political thing. You just know many news organizations, many TV stations, they've just been very afraid to be on the wrong side of Trump. Companies as well, this is not like a, forget the politics side. They've even said, look, we're not trying to, we're not trying to get on the wrong side of Trump. But I want to know what the pushback was that you got on Trump. And I also want to know why you, why you so confidently could say that it is the cult of Trump? When someone who supports Trump would go like, no, hey, I'm voting for, um, you know, my country. I'm voting for the border. I'm, I'm, this is politics. Yeah, but also this is politics. Why are you making this about, about a cult? This has nothing to do with a cult.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  So I invite you to read The Cult of Trump because it still is valid. Everything's been validated. When I was asked by my book agent and Simon and Schuster.

• 1:29:47Trevor Noah?

  When did you write it, by the way? This was twenty.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  It came out in twenty nineteen. I wrote it in twenty nineteen. The Mueller investigation was going on. Um, I started because I grew up in New York, knowing that Donald Trump was a malignant narcissist. Because I knew Eric Fromm's work about Hitler, I knew about cults. So I knew he had a cult of personality for sure. And the people who worked for him were in that cult. But what I understood when I started researching was there are actual authoritarian cults that comprise the cult of Trump.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  That bring millions of their followers to follow Trump.

• 1:30:28Trevor Noah?

  Like sub organizations essentially.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  For example, I mentioned new apostolic reformation churches and mega churches. And there is thirty to forty million Americans in those that are saying that Trump won the 2020 election.

• 1:30:43Trevor Noah?

  And Trump is the vessel of God. I've seen some of them saying.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a King Cyrus figure, et cetera. So I made a distinction between people who just always voted Republican, just voting Republican the first time. But the second time, things have gotten connected with the billionaire techies.

• 1:31:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Hacking Facebook and algorithms and state level manipulation of people's perceptions and minds. It's not just disinformation. So I talk about a cult called The Family that recruited Democrats and Republicans into it. They were doing the national prayer breakfasts. Jeffrey Charlotte wrote two New York Times bestselling books and did a Netflix series on this political cult. I wrote about Opus Dei, which was a Catholic cult that was saying the Pope was satanic. They're the ones who put in the Federalist Society Supreme Court justices.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  They're the ones behind Heritage Foundation Project 2025, Opus Dei. And I've helped many people get out of that group.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  So I talk about different cults. Falun Gong does the Epoch Times Scientology, the Mormons. Mormons, nobody wants to talk about the Mormons as an authoritarian group. But talk to former leaders of the Mormons and they'll tell you what it's like. Pyramid Structure, B I T E. And you can go on my Substack and go through. Some of the criteria fits, some of them don't, depending on where you are in the pyramid or if you're a fringe member.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  But so the point is also that I named Russia as one of the puppet masters because I came to understand that when Trump was first in Moscow in 1987 and came back, he took out a full page ad in the New York Times saying NATO should be disbanded.

• 1:32:53Trevor Noah?

  He did it back then?

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Eighty seven.

• 1:32:55Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he had no political thing before that and who paid for that. And I interviewed Craig Unger, who has written numerous books. He's a very respected author. I interviewed him and a former KGB official for his book, American Compromat. And the former KGB official, no kidding, I had a two part podcast. He said, I was much higher up in the KGB than Vladimir was. It was standard operating procedure to take Western businessmen and co-opt them for our purposes. And so, and then he named the place in New York City.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  And, and the Russian, the Russians have been getting revenge on, on the United States ever since. And that's what people, Russia hoax, Russia hoax. It's like, read the Mueller report. There were Russians named.

• 1:33:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but you see, this is, this is where I now migrate.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Come on, let's go, buddy.

• 1:34:02Trevor Noah?

  No, but it's, no, no, no.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  No, bring it on.

• 1:34:05Trevor Noah?

  I spent seven years, like just in a world inundated by this stuff. And the thing I started realizing was the fingers that could be pointed in terms of how people saw the world in like the Trump world. Man, I also saw people who were anti-Trump. There's like an anti-Trump cult as well then, if that's the case.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  There is.

• 1:34:24Trevor Noah?

  Where some people go. Every anti and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I go, but okay, this, this has nothing. No, no, no. You see, he, he, he did this and this is, I'm like, okay, but what are you basing this on? Genuinely, what are you basing this on?

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 1:34:38Trevor Noah?

  You're basing it on one person who showed you one video, who made you think, and I know you hate him, but you should also not now just become a default.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:34:48Trevor Noah?

  Anti anything.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:34:50Trevor Noah?

  Because you might now be indoctrinated. You see what you just said.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  No, you're absolutely right. And that's what I say when I talk to any person in any group is like, change my mind. I'm really, I'll listen to whatever proof you have.

• 1:35:03Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  I'll show you my proof. You show me your proof and let's, if, if it's legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny.

• 1:35:11Trevor Noah?

  Someone might ask this question. They, they might ask, and I'd love to hear your response. And someone might say, okay, but if, if Trump is a cult, then how come his people are angry with him about the Epstein files? And Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned against him? And why is that happening then? What would your, what would your response be?

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  I'll tell you in one minute, but I first want to just say two points.

• 1:35:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  Forgive me.

• 1:35:33Trevor Noah?

  No, you're the, you're the.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  So if you, if you're Russia and you want to do psychological warfare on the United States, you want polarization and you want division. So you're not just influencing the right.

• 1:35:46Trevor Noah?

  One side.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  You're influencing the left.

• 1:35:48Trevor Noah?

  Oh, completely. Yes.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  So authoritarian manipulation is happening on both extremes.

• 1:35:54Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  To create confusion. So that's one point.

• 1:35:58Trevor Noah?

  Let me interrupt you on that point to add to it, by the way. Same team here.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  We're, we care about humanity.

• 1:36:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but in and around, not just the, the, the start of the war in Ukraine, et cetera. Microsoft did this whole thing where they analyzed a lot of where the information was coming from, from, like the farms and everything. And that is something that I wish more people understood to your point. Fight if you wanna fight, disagree if you wanna disagree, but also know what is prompting your disagreement. And they did find genuinely that a lot of the posts that were coming out online, both pro-Trump, anti-Trump, pro-Democrat, anti-Democrat. No, were coming from the same Russian farms. Yeah, yeah, full on.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Troll farms.

• 1:36:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, full on troll farms. And and then, I mean, I'll always say with a little asterix, I go, I always find it funny though that like, America says, wow, the Russian, then I'm like, but also you guys, I mean, you're the professionals of the, it's just a funny, you know, a world of every country doing everything.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Developed all these tools that are being used on us. No big, and thi- this is where we have to understand complex systems.

• 1:37:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  We invented roadside bombs for the Afghans to use on the Russians. And then we went into Afghanistan, they were used on Americans. Like, we were developing all of these technologies, et cetera, and it's being used on us. So, but but it's a complex system.

• 1:37:26Trevor Noah?

  Genuinely.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  So it's moving. So the other point I wanna make is something called fourth and fifth generation psychological warfare. I wrote about this in the Cult of Trump. Fourth generation warfare was first written down as a thing in the eighties by a guy, a military strategist, American, military strategist named William Lind. And it's about attacking experts, science, and democratic institutions to demoralize a society so you can influence and put in a dictatorship or whatever.

• 1:38:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, replace one authority figure with another.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Right, but so because human beings, we can't know everything. We depend on experts who spent their lives studying.

• 1:38:12Trevor Noah?

  Most importantly.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  We wanna trust the experts, but that's, we've seen a systematic assault on experts and on science. There's good science and there's bullshit science. Good science doesn't say we have the truth. It says we have an hypothesis. And we test, and we have a community of people who test the test to make sure that it really is what it says. And if we have a better hypothesis, we get rid of the old one and we go with the new one. That's progress. That's what we should be having. So fourth generation cycle, William Lynn met with Trump in the White House, connected with Michael Flynn, who would do it on the enemies of the United States before he got turned.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  And he's gotten involved with the Christian right that thinks that we should have a white Christian country and that everyone else, you know, is inferior, et cetera. Like, that's a real thing. The guy who did The Apprentice, Mark Burnett, is head of Seven Mountain Dominionism, the media part, who made Trump's

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  image as a successful businessman on that show.

• 1:39:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, when he was completely failing.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  But he was, he was a Christian, he's a Christian dominionist. So we need to understand there are specific actors in positions of influence and this has been going on for decades. This is not something that happened overnight.

• 1:39:44Trevor Noah?

  But all of this wouldn't have been easy to achieve if

• 1:39:50Trevor Noah?

  the status quo had done a better job of making sure that Americans weren't in a place where their rents and mortgages were out of control, where food became unaffordable, where schooling and healthcare was on. Do you get what I'm saying? So I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm just saying, we also, I think we should be careful to just like, sort of blame cults. But in this system, not understand that people are a lot less amenable to these ideas if the people in power actually address their needs and concerns. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Trevor Noah?

  We want to be angry with people for becoming a certain way, but we don't want to be angry with why the situation existed for them to be even open to be becoming that way.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, desperation and isolation, right? Absolutely. We want to be solution focused. You know, we can analyze what went wrong and how they did it.

• 1:40:41Trevor Noah?

  Because otherwise, otherwise we go Trump bad, or we go that thing bad, or... Yeah, but then you don't, you don't like go, no, no, no, no, no. What's bad is people feeling like they just have to vote to break a system because the system is not caring for them. When we had, you know, Mayor of New York now, Zohar Mhamdani, when we had him on the show.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  I saw it.

• 1:41:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, where he goes, the people don't, they don't, even, even him is a response. Send that way to that. People are going, look, we don't care about all these old school Democrat. There's no one else in this race. We're gonna vote for this guy. And then people are like, he's gonna break New York. And they're like, it's better he breaks it because the fixed New York was not working for most people in New York. Do you get what I'm saying? So it's this, it's this world where you're trying to find a balance between, as you're saying, analyzing the, the, the thing that's doing something wrong.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:32Trevor Noah?

  And then, because it's interesting seeing, by the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene, I find, I find.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you asked me about her and I can.

• 1:41:38Trevor Noah?

  Because of what you're saying.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Trevor Noah?

  Some of it speaks to exactly what you're talking about. Marjorie Taylor Greene has fully been with Trump from the beginning. Fully, fully, fully. Then she basically said, hey, man, this guy's deviating off the path. We, we said America first. We said no Epstein. We said, oh, what is happening here? And then now she's been cast as the, you know.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Traitor.

• 1:42:01Trevor Noah?

  The traitor and we will never talk to her and she's out on her own. It, it, it's interesting how that ties into what you're saying.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's part of what you realize when you're in an authoritarian group, that you think the other members are your friends. But you see what happens if somebody questions it or doesn't go along and how badly they're treated. People get that message.

• 1:42:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  And they're like, they're, they're, they'll, they'll only be my friend if I obey. And if I conform and do exactly what I'm told.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Look, um.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  I don't trust Marjorie Taylor Greene until she says, because she's saying, I'm not in a cult, I'm not in a cult. I'm a cult expert. QAnon was a cult. I wrote a whole bite model analysis. I called it a psy op. I, I analyzed why it's an online cult, but it was a mind control cult. Until she gets what I'm talking about, until she says, Trump did win, excuse me, Biden did win the 2020 election and anyone who says that Trump won it is in the cult. Until she says that, I don't trust anything she says.

• 1:43:19Trevor Noah?

  You, you think that she's just sort of making a splinter cult?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:43:24Trevor Noah?

  Is that common in cults, by the way?

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:26Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Because she doesn't understand brainwashing and mind control. And there are those colleagues of mine who thinks that she's co-opted by Russia.

• 1:43:38Trevor Noah?

  Damn, the Russians. The Russian, I would like to go get co-opted by Russia. It sounds like a fun vibe.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Hmm, criminal, criminal, you know.

• 1:43:49Trevor Noah?

  You guys are haters.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  You guys are haters, man. You're too nice.

• 1:43:52Trevor Noah?

  You guys are just haters out in these streets.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  He choose. So I have another quick story. Do we have?

• 1:43:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, go, go. Okay, go for it. We got time for one more story. Let's go.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Ninety-three, I'm invited to Moscow.

• 1:44:03Trevor Noah?

  Oh, here we go.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Fell. And they said, every cult from the United States is coming into Mother Russia. And we wanna psychiatrists and psychologists, we wanna understand what are cults? And what is, what, what is this all about?

• 1:44:18Trevor Noah?

  Like, they were, they were experiencing cults coming in?

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:21Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, so they called you.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Union collapsed.

• 1:44:24Trevor Noah?

  Yes. And. To open the wall was gone.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  And the mental health people are like, what's going on here with all of these Western groups that are showing up? So they brought me over. They didn't pay me. I paid my way and went to Moscow and I taught my work. So I'm teaching about Chinese communist brainwashing and my model. And they're like, Dr. Hassan, don't you understand? You're describing the whole system of pedagogy of the Soviet Union. And I said, uh huh. And they said, don't you understand? We would put dissidents into psychiatric facilities because they were criticizing the regime. And I'm like, uh huh.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  And they're like, oh, so you are counseling us?

• 1:45:11Trevor Noah?

  That is so insane.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  And I said, if, if the shoe fits.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  And then beyond those psychiatrists.

• 1:45:19Trevor Noah?

  Wait, but how did they respond to that? Were they, were they like?

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  No, they were, they were understanding the model because the model is, i- it does, it doesn't have any fluff.

• 1:45:29Trevor Noah?

  Interesting, so the, so the model is agnostic.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:31Trevor Noah?

  The model, you can, you're basically saying to everyone, hey, I'm not saying anything about your world. Here's a model.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:45:37Trevor Noah?

  I'm just gonna put it in front of you and then you just need to.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Find yourself there.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  And here's the influence continuum. Here's healthy.

• 1:45:43Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  And here's unhealthy. You decide for yourself. That's my approach.

• 1:45:47Trevor Noah?

  Ah, okay.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Is you determine.

• 1:45:49Trevor Noah?

  But you just don't use it eh? Just now you're not helping with couches anymore. I know how this goes. I have a disciple here in my midst.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  You know, all of this is interesting to me, especially when you think of where our country comes from.

• 1:46:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  And how you find that people who grew up in the generation during apartheid, sometimes long for those days. When things don't work out the way they should, according to them. They'll always say things were better during that time. And I'm not talking about the oppressed, I'm talking about the oppressed.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  No, I, and, and slavery in the United States.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  That was psychological brainwashing done to not only the slaves, but everyone else.

• 1:46:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Apply the bite model and it's like, duh, of course.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  And you think of how many people still long for those days when they talk about efficiency of anything, public transport, the roads, housing, education. And this is my biggest pet peeve and I've spoken to you about it with many of our other guests. And I've said, I hate how arts and culture have been slowly been eroded out of the schooling system. When you grew up, you had a mother that was doing this and you were.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  So important for brain and emotional development.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  You were riding a bicycle. All of that is being eradicated. And I see these young adults that have tried so hard to get an education and a job. Well, before, you would know this. You, it would have to be an interrogation or and a, a communist country or an authoritarian country that has video footage of people saying how they feel, good or bad.

• 1:47:17Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Right now, it's volunteer to everyone with these people, with people on social media. So now they're co-opting themselves, they're recruiting themselves for their next. Employ ensuring their desperation and the and the dead end that some systems that they've taken have taken them.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  And they're going to A I to do creativity instead of themselves going inside.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  So it's like we're living in this weird dystopia. I I think some if someone was in a cryogenic coffin and wakes up now forty years later, they'd be shocked. To see what's happening now. It's people are literally doing their own depositions. In the comfort of their own homes with their own devices and sending them out for for the world to see.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  And and the brain adapts to whatever environment's happening. And if you spend ten to twelve hours on digital devices, it's gonna rewire your brain. Attention spans are shrinking, creativity is shrinking.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  It is exactly the same debate that when I was growing up, our parents would say we're spending too much time watching television. This time, this generation is spending too much time making television.

• 1:48:18Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  No, you're right. And I I'm guilty. I watch T V, but I also read a lot of books.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was the same. I was a bit of a mix of both, you know?

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  No, technology is both a positive, that's fantastic, and can be used negatively. And we have to be wise. We have to be wise. We have to really realize how precious it is to have freedom. For ex-members, we know what it's like to live in authoritarian state, even though I didn't grow up in China or Russia. But China wants to make us like them. All this surveillance crap with Palantir and cameras everywhere.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but ironically, now you can't really separate a lot of how China works with how the U S is trying to work.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. This is this is not it's. We we need to keep the vision of what humanity and what, you know, human life's about. When people are on their deathbed, they're not going, damn, I wish I had another million dollars. They're like, I should have spent more time with my kids.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Or I always wanted to go kayaking, or I always wanted to learn scuba diving or whatever. And it's like, we need to come back to. This is a very unique, precious opportunity to be alive. And we have an amazing. I I'm so grateful to meet you because I've been listening to you for years. And I'm like, damn, Trevor wants me to be on. I'm coming.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  Oh, you're very kind. Thank you.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  No, I mean it because this has been a really interesting conversation because you you're getting at key things.

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  And we'll do a part two at some point, because there's so much more that we can say.

• 1:49:57Trevor Noah?

  This is my kind of guy.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  You know, we speak about this all the time.

• 1:49:59Trevor Noah?

  Part two.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  Well, I heard you with Mandami. You're coming back, you're coming back for a part two.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Part two is the way to go.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  No, there's a lot to share.

• 1:50:11Trevor Noah?

  You know what, this was, this was amazing, yeah?

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  Actually, what's interesting, what you've just mentioned, and you've made me realize it, I'm very, people who know me, they know that I'm, I'm very much against technology. I think there's a word that you used to describe.

• 1:50:21Trevor Noah?

  Ladite.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  A ladite.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know the term.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  So I, I try not to know as much about technology, because I still like the human experience. I like, I'd, I'd like us to throw information to each other, not Google if it's true or not. And we can discuss. I'd like some other things to be done physically. I try to spend as much time as I can in the outdoors and go on side quests and find new adventures. And things to learn. And that's what I wish for, for many people, is to just try things out. Try as much as you can to create your own memories instead of viewing other people's memories.

• 1:50:53Trevor Noah?

  Hey, bruh.

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  You know, and, and build social relationships, you know?

• 1:50:57Trevor Noah?

  No, that's a big one. Create your own memories and not explore everyone else's.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  And, and just appreciate the human experience. Every time we meet someone new, it's like opening another book and going, wow, tell me your story, you know, like show, tell me your journey. That's what you started with me. And, but it's fascinating. I'm a therapist. So I get to hear incredible stories and help people in their way. But I'm helping them to help themselves. So I'm not making myself, you follow me and I'll tell you how to get fixed. I'm teaching them the techniques and strategies that worked for me and that has worked with other clients. And there's reason to be hopeful and grateful, but we need to have strategy. We need to correctly diagnose the problem and we need to understand who's the bad actors.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  And we need to have a plan where we can bring out the best in each other to, to sustain this earth. We're on one planet.

• 1:51:57Trevor Noah?

  You know, I'll tell you now. Dr. Hassan, I like didn't know you before I met you.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Say.

• 1:52:03Trevor Noah?

  Now, now I've met you. You've you've pulled me in, man. I'm in your cult. I'm in. Sign me up.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:52:09Trevor Noah?

  Let's go to Terry Town for the weekend.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Call me Steve.

• 1:52:13Trevor Noah?

  Put that van and let's roll.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  And so I say, Freedom of Mind is what I decided to name my company, not Stephen Hassan Foundation. Freedom of Mind, I say it's your mind and only you should control it.

• 1:52:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  It's like own it. You can make mistakes, but learn, don't make the same mistake twice. But don't be paralyzed and not try new things.

• 1:52:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Be open to other perspectives. That's another key. Blind faith, the cure is perspective.

• 1:52:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  To look at it from other points of view. That's why looking at Chinese Communist brainwashing or pimps and traffickers is a new lens.

• 1:52:53Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  On.

• 1:52:54Trevor Noah?

  It gives you an opportunity to take a step back and say, oh, maybe I'm looking at this in like a limited way. And if I just just move myself around it, maybe I'll see a different side. That was, that's what Rodin always wanted, the the.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Sculptor.

• 1:53:09Trevor Noah?

  The sculptor.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Trevor Noah?

  The French sculptor. What made him so special, they said, was when you would look at his, his art, his sculptures, depending on where you looked at it from, you had a very different feeling of what was happening. So the same, the same sculpture could look like a pained person, a strong person, a pensive person, and he did that on purpose because he wanted you to feel, he always said, from every angle, I've made a different sculpture.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:36Trevor Noah?

  And so.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  That's true art.

• 1:53:37Trevor Noah?

  Thinking of it, yeah, thinking of it through that lens. That's all you have to ask yourself in your world, basically, is the system you're in, does it allow you to look at the sculpture from a different angle? If it doesn't, you should probably go and look at this website, download Byte, and then see what happens.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  And the influence continuum. One last thing, I know we're going over, but.

• 1:53:57Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Beware certainty.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Beware anyone who says 100% it's this. Because if you have a lens thinking your beliefs are certain.

• 1:54:13Trevor Noah?

  The world is flat.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Whatever information, you're only doing confirmation bias to confirm your worldview. If you start with this.

• 1:54:22Trevor Noah?

  Less Eskimo glasses.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  I have beliefs, but they could be wrong and there may be better perspectives. Then the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. And it makes you more curious, makes you more engaged to learn and get other people's perspectives. So you want to be this, you don't want to be this.

• 1:54:42Trevor Noah?

  So less Eskimo glasses, more Apple Vision Pros.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Not Apple Vision Pros, dude, you're the Luddite. You just flipped it.

• 1:54:51Trevor Noah?

  You clearly have never used an Apple Vision Pro. I was like Eugene, do you know what an Apple Vision Pro is like? Hey man, I think it's the one that lets you see out.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  No, virtual reality.

• 1:55:01Trevor Noah?

  Really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much, Steve.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me on.

• 1:55:06Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no, what do you mean? You have good stuff for joining us. Thank you so much. We had a great time with you.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Pleasure to meet you. Take care.

• 1:55:12Trevor Noah?

  This is fun. Thank you. You're amazing.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Thank you, my man.

• 1:55:18Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marzia Robiyou. Music mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

• 1:55:50Speaker 06

  Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music. Discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and we'll make you a personalized station for free. Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

• 1:56:02Speaker 03

  Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected. And each one more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need. And they're all connected on one platform. Doesn't Odoo sound all of it? Fertilizer, magic beanstalk, building blocks. For this simple, efficient software that can handle everything for every business needs. Sign up today at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.