Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

MeidasTouch Network
  • 4.7 (821)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

Steven Hassan, PhD, is one of the leading experts on cults and undue influence in the world. A former member of the right-wing Moonie cult, Hassan was deprogrammed 45 years ago and has dedicated his life to helping people out of cults and destructive situations. Dr. Hassan is a licensed mental health professional and has written four books, including The Cult of Trump and the seminal book Combating Cult Mind Control. On this podcast, Steve will explain HOW mind-control works, and how to protect yourself from its grips. He will also address ethical influence as the podcast will address the entire Influence Continuum. He’ll interview the biggest names in this field.

  1. 2d ago

    He Was Ordained by the Mormon Prophet: Former Mormon Bishop Ian Wilks on 37 years inside the LDS authoritarian cult

    Ian Wilks was a high-ranking leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is a former bishop, a former branch president, and a member of the stake presidency in British Columbia, with responsibility for shepherding twelve congregations and thousands of members. Then-apostle Dallin H. Oaks, now the 18th president and living prophet of the LDS Church, personally recruited him, interviewed him, called him, set him apart, and trained him into that role.¹ For 37 years, Ian devoted his entire life to his church. He paid tithing on his gross income. He sealed his marriage in the London Temple. He conducted hundreds of worthiness interviews. He trained bishops. He stood at pulpits and at altars. He made sacred covenants in the temple to give all he had, including his own life if required, for the building up of the kingdom on earth. In a snowstorm, the cost of those 37 years lands all at once. The thing he wanted most to be true, he learned was untrue. I spoke with Ian on my podcast Cults, Culture & Coercion and in a recent livestream. He is the co-host of the Inside Out podcast with Jim Bennett, son of the late US Senator Bob Bennett. What he told me confirms what former members of the LDS Church have been describing to me since my first book was published in 1988. The Mormon Church meets every criterion of an authoritarian cult under my BITE Model of Authoritarian Control™ and sits on the destructive end of my Influence Continuum©. Ian himself took the BITE Model self-test based on his decades of experience and scored the church at roughly 85 to 90 percent across the four dimensions of behavior, information, thought, and emotion. This group is one of the wealthiest, most influential groups in politics and its believers are over represented (compared to all other faith groups) in our FBI, CIA, Homeland security and faithful people will follow the direction of the Prophet over the Constitution (even though they swear an oath to uphold the Constitution) which should make all Americans worry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 5m

  2. May 25

    Smart People Fall For The Cult Of Trump With Journalist Virginia Heffernan

    From Richard Dawkins to Larry Summers, brilliant minds get pulled in. I sat down with the journalist Virginia Heffernan for a recent conversation on Cults, Culture & Coercion to talk about who falls for the Trump cult and why. Virginia spent time inside a group of academics and intellectuals sponsored by Jeffrey Epstein, called Edge, run by literary agent John Brockman. She wrote about involvement in the Epstein cult for The New Republic. She told me she was fortunately kept at arm’s length from the worst of it. “I was only there as a fig leaf because they didn't have any women,” she said. “They didn't want me at the parties or on the island.” She watched the dynamics around her. Edge included Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president. The Epstein correspondence released by the House Oversight Committee in November 2025 documents a years-long stream of personal advice Summers sought from a convicted sex offender. In the messages, Summers asked Epstein for guidance on his pursuit of a younger woman he described as a mentee. Epstein called himself Summers' wing man and urged Summers to play the long game by keeping the woman in a forced holding pattern (Harvard Crimson, November 17, 2025). Virginia framed it bluntly: “I would venture to say someone you would least expect to fall under a spell. These are grown men who should know better.” Virginia writes the Magic and Loss Substack, hosts the Omni Shambles podcast, and contributes to The New Republic. The 10th anniversary of her book Magic and Loss has her circling back to a question she has carried since 2016. I thanked Virginia for reading my book and then being the first media person to bravely and publicly support what I wrote about. She wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed that it was the “best explanatory framework” for what was happening politically. She then went on CNN to be interviewed about it. This led to Brian Stelter interviewing me about my book for his CNN show Reliable Sources. She put it plainly: “I was trying to solve a problem in my mind, which was, how did we get here? And you came along with your book; The Cult of Trump and you did me the favor of giving me a framework.” This is a fascinating interview with a crack journalist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 9m

  3. May 18

    He Was 18. Scientology Put Him in Charge. A former Scientology executive in Scotland on recruitment, control, and getting out with Amir Essalhi

    Scientology recruitment rarely looks the way people imagine. There is no shadowy figure pulling you into a back room. The process is warm, and, for a curious young person, entirely easy to be “handled” and sucked in. Amir Essalhi was 18 years old and studying film when he first walked into the Edinburgh organization in late 2022. He had never heard of Hubbard. He did not know who David Miscavige was. He knew one thing: He was into being an aspiring filmmaker, and loved Tom Cruise. When he was shown a Scientology recruitment video with Tom Cruise his curiosity to know more was the tool used to manipulate him. Less than two years later, Amir was running the group's social media strategy across TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, delivering public lectures, and serving as one of the senior executives of the only Scientology organization in Scotland's capital. He was 19. I spoke with Amir twice, first on a live stream, and then on my Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast. What he shared in both conversations is something every young person, and every parent of a young person, needs to hear. Scientology has been all over some social media channels as some people were running into Scientology buildings and posting the video of their illegal trespassing. I have been vocal criticizing this as has Leah Remini- whose original show I was on as a guest. Many of the platforms Scientology uses to reach young people carry no Scientology branding at all. Amir confirmed that promotional materials would sometimes run under names like "Dianetics" or localized event names, with "Scientology" buried in fine print or absent entirely. The group also uses front organizations, including Narconon (drug rehabilitation), the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, and Drug Free World, none of which disclose their Scientology ties in their public-facing materials. Destructive authoritarian cults know that if they give fully informed consent, no one would ever get involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 2m

  4. May 11

    Why filmmaker Deeyah Khan sits with extremists demonstrating how listening matters!

    She Sought Out the People Who Threatened Her Deeyah Khan was editing a film when the BBC called. The threats were serious enough the police were already on their way. “Stay where you are,” they told her. “If there are windows in the room, move to a different one. Wait for us.” She had given an interview saying Britain would never be all white again. White supremacist sites in the United States picked it up and ran with it. One of those sites had been frequented by Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine Black parishioners in Charleston in 2015. Now their followers were sending death threats by the hundreds, telling her to be afraid, telling her she should not exist. The police gave her a personal alarm and a security briefing. That night, sitting alone, she made an unusual decision. She would not hide. She would seek out the people threatening her, sit with them face to face, and try to understand who they were. I had the privilege of speaking with Deeyah recently on Cults, Culture & Coercion. She is a BAFTA and two-time Emmy winning documentary filmmaker. Over the past fifteen years, she has done what almost no one in journalism has been willing to do. She has interviewed convicted anti-abortion terrorists from the Army of God, the leader of America's oldest and largest neo-Nazi organization, and pro-Trump militia members plotting violence against refugees. She has done it warmly, with genuine curiosity, while also holding strong positions of her own about human rights, women's rights, and the basic dignity of every person. She is an inspiration and she has, but being respectful snd curious and asking questions without attacking, has been able to help deradicalize a major figure in the hate cult. Please read this blog on Substack and listen to this amazing interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 7m

  5. May 4

    The Cult That Helped Shape Christian America: The Community of Jesus child abuse and Christian Nationalism with Ewan Whyte

    The Community of Jesus was founded in 1970 by two housewives, Cay Anderson and Judy Sorensen. They told members they were "God's anointed" with a direct line to God. Any authority figure they appointed carried that same divine authority. Members were taught to obey without questioning the leadership’s authority. I spoke with former member and award-nominated writer Ewan Whyte. His fifth book, Mothers of Invention: Essays on the Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College, details life inside this cult and its affiliated boarding school in Canada. Ewan was raised in the group from childhood. He knows this organization from the inside, and what he shares deserves your full attention. The Community of Jesus is one of three surviving original covenant communities founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The other two are the Word of God, founded in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and People of Praise 1972, - founded around the same time and known today as the community Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is closely associated with. Of the three, the Community of Jesus has been, as Ewan argues, is historically, the most politically influential in shaping American evangelical culture of today. Here is something that stops most people cold: the most important best-selling book of Christian nationalism, The Light and the Glory, was secretly written inside this cult. As Ewan documents in his book, this revisionist version of American history, which argues that God intended the founding the United States to be a Christian nation, was produced by Community of Jesus members David Manuel and Peter Marshall Jr. Their work became a cornerstone text for the Christian nationalist movement and has shaped the beliefs of millions of Americans. Come listen to this enlightening interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    54 min

  6. Apr 27

    The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism with Holly Berkley Fletcher PhD

    Missionary kids often carry the weight of their parents’ choices. They are inculcated into the faith without opportunity for independent thought, according to author, historian, and former intelligence analyst Holly Berkley Fletcher, PhD. Her parents were Evangelical Christian missionaries in Kenya, and she speaks about that and the experiences of other children with similar backgrounds through her book, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism. “The mission field has long been the rugged frontier in a grand evangelical narrative, the ultimate proof of the American church’s virtue, rightness, and importance,” she writes in the book’s introduction.Holly’s unique first-hand knowledge of missionary work has enabled her to explore the role of missionaries as “Super Christians” in the eyes of the church. Likewise, she has been able to write about the more devious aspects of mission culture, including physical or sexual abuse, neglect of children, and other crimes often not prosecuted due to jurisdictional gaps in the legal relationships between nations. Holly would eventually return to the United States, go on to teach at universities, and work for 19 years as an Africa analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. Then she noted that the Trump / MAGA movement “would not exist without white evangelicals.” “That’s really the foundational, most solid support base that he’s had this entire time,” she concluded. She called White Evangelical Christianity a high-control religion with a persecution complex that has empowered a malignant narcissist. She said that’s what inspired her to write the book. “I felt like the missionary kid experience was a great way to shine a light on it, because it’s not a well-known facet to the broader public, but it is kind of the distillation of a lot of what white evangelical is.” While reading her book, I noticed that the religion reflected both a male-centric and colonialist perspective, as well as a problematic treatment of children. As I put it, “The kids get farmed off to boarding schools and to other places, while the parents do God’s work.” Holly agreed, explaining that she specifically included the term “White” Evangelical Christianity because the racial dimension is deeply rooted in the culture. She acknowledged that while the movement has become global, with many White Evangelicals who are not white, “you see similar dynamics in other cultures replicating this both on the political front and on the religious front as well.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 6m

  7. Apr 20

    The Olive Leaf Network: Public Testimony to the Parliament of Victoria on Children in Cults and High-demand Religious Groups with Psychologist Maria Esguerra

    As the United States remains stalled on full disclosure and holding Epstein file perpetrators accountable, the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, has launched an inquiry into the recruitment methods and societal impacts of cults and organized fringe groups. Maria Esguerra is one of the directors of The Olive Leaf Network who testified and presented a written submission at the public hearing of this inquiry in November 2025, alongside her co-directors Mirriam Francis and Dani Sorensen. Maria is a Queensland-based registered psychologist with over 15 years of experience working with people with disabilities. Bringing her professional expertise as well as personal insight from being a Second-Generation Adult (SGA) cult survivor, she is a leading voice for those harmed by high-control groups in Australia, as well as her global advocacy. Maria was born into and raised in the Children of God cult, one of the most abusive cults. The cult rebranded as “The Family” (one of numerous cults calling themselves this). She escaped at age 22 with her two young children. The Core Argument stated in The Olive Leaf Network’s written submission to the Parliament of Victoria inquiry, titled Children in Cults, is “Children in high-demand groups are victims of systemic coercive control”, not “recruits.” They are captives placed into systems of abuse by manipulated caregivers.” This leads to their Central Thesis statement, “The fundamental rights and safety of a child must supersede the claimed religious freedoms of any group or parent.” In our discussion, Maria emphasized, “My care is always for the most marginalized and the victims.” She noted the unique importance of focusing on the survivors, especially in SGA conversations, versus empathizing with adults who may have brought these children into the cult for a variety of reasons.In our discussion, Maria noted the importance of not remaining neutral in the face of harm against children, as “it’s important to look at the impact over the intent.” I agreed and noted that, while I was coerced into certain modes of thinking during my time in the Moonies, I would still expect to be held accountable for any criminal behavior committed during that time. Maria cautioned against protecting perpetrators or people who have harmed children or destroyed their lives. She noted that in addition to the mental, physical, or sexual abuses that children may experience during their time in a cult, they may lack even the most basic paperwork to document citizenship or necessary identification later. “We’re not talking about the same thing here. We’re not talking about an adult being coerced into something and having sort of a psychological moral injury, versus a child who’s had serious crimes,” she said. “Just because you are sort of coerced into it doesn’t negate the harm of that person,” she later followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 2m

  8. Apr 13

    American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom with Keri Ladner, PhD

    Tracing the roots of Christian Nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation is no longer a fringe concern. It has become one of the most urgent forces reshaping American political life, and most people still do not understand where it came from, how it operates, or what it ultimately wants. Keri Ladner, PhD, does. A scholar of fundamentalist politics, she has spent years tracing the theological roots of movements like the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and documenting how they moved from the margins of American religious life into the centers of government and policy. Her new book, American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom (Bloomsbury Academic, official release April 16, 2026), offers one of the most carefully researched accounts yet of how we arrived at this moment. Keri has been a guest on this podcast before. In our first conversation, we explored her 2024 book End-Time Politics: From the Moral Majority to QAnon, tracing the ideological line from Jerry Falwell through the movements that helped bring Donald Trump to power. I encourage you to listen to that episode. In this second conversation, we went deeper: into the theological architecture behind the New Apostolic Reformation, the manipulation of faith healing, the alleged sexual abuse inside NAR-affiliated churches, and what the so-called Seven Mountain Mandate has to do with your children's school curriculum. Why “Christendom” and Not “Christianity” One of the first things Keri established was her word choice in the title of American Dominion. She did not write “Christianity.” She wrote “Christendom,” and the distinction matters. “When we're talking about Christendom, we're really talking about power structures,” she told me. “The term has historically been used to describe the Church-State relations in Europe, particularly medieval Europe. What I'm trying to show is that we are looking at an age of very heightened Church-State relations, to the point that the church is pursuing a level of power that we have not seen really since the Middle Ages.” This is not a story about religion. It is a story about control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 3m
See All (236)

Shows with Subscription Benefits

MEIDAS MORE

Ad-free episodes + exclusive bonus podcasts

$5.99/mo or $59.99/yr after trial

View Subscription FAQs

Hosts & Guests

4.7
out of 5
821 Ratings

About

Steven Hassan, PhD, is one of the leading experts on cults and undue influence in the world. A former member of the right-wing Moonie cult, Hassan was deprogrammed 45 years ago and has dedicated his life to helping people out of cults and destructive situations. Dr. Hassan is a licensed mental health professional and has written four books, including The Cult of Trump and the seminal book Combating Cult Mind Control. On this podcast, Steve will explain HOW mind-control works, and how to protect yourself from its grips. He will also address ethical influence as the podcast will address the entire Influence Continuum. He’ll interview the biggest names in this field.

Information

More From MeidasTouch Network

You Might Also Like