February 25, 2026 • 42 mins
What if someone told you that you could skip years of therapy with a few mental tricks? It sounded impossible… until we found Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP is a form of hypnosis beloved by everyone from sex cults to the U.S. military to fortune 500 companies–yet almost no one knows it exists.
Long before she co-founded NXIVM, hypnotist Nancy Salzman encountered NLP as a radical method for reprogramming the mind. Her story leads us to its inventor, Richard Bandler, a volatile, self-made guru. As we dig into how it took hold in so many places, we face an unsettling possibility: NLP might actually work.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I completely dissociated for my body. I had so much panic,
and I was so afraid that when I opened my
mouth and said the five words that I said, when
I was in front of the room, I thought it
was someone else talking, and I said, I'm never doing
this again.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
In the late nineteen eighties, Nancy had a phobia of
public speaking and it was getting in the way of
her job. She was a nurse who specialized in working
with chronic pain patients.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
But there's something about being able to help somebody that
just makes me so It's probably the biggest motivator of
my entire life.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nancy wanted to share her skills with more people and
to grow her business, but there was one big problem.
She was terrified of public speaking. Get her in front
of a room of people, and Nancy would totally freeze.
Then she met someone, a woman who said she could
cure Nancy's lifelong fear in a few short minutes using
(01:10):
something called neuro linguistic programming, or NLP.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
She did an NLP phobia fix on me and took
away my fear of public speaking, and look at me now.
I'm a big ham and I love public speaking and
I would do anything to do public speaking. But she
fixed me. She fixed that problem using an NLP technique
and it never was a problem again.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Quickly, NLP became Nancy's whole life. Soon she was working
as a consultant for Fortune five hundred companies. As a coach,
she helped thousands of people conquer their own fears. This
was way more people than she had ever dreamed of
helping as a nurse, and it was all thanks to NLP.
NLP is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Nancy
(01:58):
used it to found us self help company for ambitious professionals.
The Dalai Lama even checked out one of their events.
The company was called Nexium.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Nexium is a methodology that allows people to optimize their behavior.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Brainwashing, sex abuse, and even branding.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Nancy Saltzman, the co founder of the Capital Region based
sex called Nexium, has been released from prison.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
NLP made a Nancy's career, but then a version of
it destroyed her and destroyed the lives of others. But
what even is NLP.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Take a deep brith is.
Speaker 6 (02:51):
And breathe out.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so
that I can speak primarily or your unconscious.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is episode one of
mind Games. I'm Alice Hines, I'm Zoe Lascas.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
You don't know how you did it.
Speaker 8 (03:15):
You did?
Speaker 9 (03:15):
You go into a little time to stars stake.
Speaker 7 (03:21):
And you're out of it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We're reporters, we're also friends. We're into some pretty weird shit.
Speaker 10 (03:27):
True story. We met at a shamonic sound meditation.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, that was a few years ago, and there were
some changes that occurred.
Speaker 10 (03:36):
Alice, understatement of the century. You astrauly traveled, as I recall.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I mean, yeah, you like basically do like a long
meditation at this thing, and I realized some shit about
my life. Number one, Zoe was my new best friend,
and number two, I actually broke up with someone who
I've been dating for five years after this event.
Speaker 10 (03:54):
Whoopsie, daisies. It was for the best. Yeah, everything worked
out just fine, especially the friendship. Here we are, but yeah,
I think it was that weekend, sometime before all the
gongs and rainsticks and chimes got going, that we realized
we have a ton in common. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
We're both reporters and kind of professional skeptics. Zoe being
a science journalist and me, being a journalist who has
exposed lots of wellness scams and cults, we sort of
have to smell the bullshit, but at the same time
keep an open mind.
Speaker 10 (04:25):
And we've also, between the two of us, logged something
like five million hours on the couches of our respective therapists,
and I think that's partly why we're interested in alternative therapies. Like,
what if you didn't have to spend hours and hours
and hours of your life in hundreds of dollars on
mainstream psychiatry.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I hope my therapist isn't listening to this.
Speaker 10 (04:45):
Yeah, sorry, Annie, they probably are. So in this series,
we're gonna go splunking into the murky depths of neuro
linguistic programming or NLP, and we're gonna try to find
out if it deserves its sort of shape reputation.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So I first heard about NLP because an alleged cult
that I was investigating said they used it. So this
wasn't Nexium, it was a different group called Twin Flames.
Speaker 10 (05:11):
And what did they use NLP for?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Okay, here's a quote from some of the documentation around
this group that they put out. Your practitioner will expertly
access your trauma like a world class computer programmer, rooting
out a bug in the system.
Speaker 10 (05:28):
Not scary at all. No, that sounds totally normal.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, so that's how they used NLP. But we were
curious whether these techniques could be used in other contexts,
and when we started looking into it, we realized NLP
is literally.
Speaker 10 (05:40):
Everywhere, and we do mean everywhere. You've probably used an
NLP technique without knowing it, or someone's used one on you.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
It's the basis of a ton of self help movements,
any type of manifesting, visualizations, vision boards. If you've done
any of that, you've done NLP.
Speaker 10 (06:01):
It has a ton of boldface name followers. There are
Olympic divers who have used NLP to perfect their form.
The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort used it for
closing deals. Fortune five hundred companies like Apple, IBM, Coca
Cola have spent tons of money on NLP sales trainings
over the past fifty.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Years, and so did Army intelligence. They sought out NLP
to improve soldier marksmanship and spycraft. They called it a
technology for enhancing human performance.
Speaker 10 (06:32):
And NLP spawned the self help behemoth that is Tony robbins.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
Anybody could be in a good state when things are
going your way, but if you can stay in a
beautiful state when things don't go your way, then you're
going to have a beautiful wife.
Speaker 10 (06:49):
That's Tony from one of his many ads for Unleash
the Power, within a four day event that regularly draws
thousands of people. He's coached Serena Williams, advised Bill Clinton,
and even taught Oprah to walk on hot coals. Tony's
built an empire telling people they can radically improve themselves
using NLP.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
You want to change your life, you want to get
out of suffering, trade your expectations for appreciation, and your
whole life will change in that moment.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
But NLP promises more than personal growth. It also promises
to teach you how to persuade others.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you,
what kind of life would you have? Somebody would scared
when I said word control people's behaviors. It's already happening.
Speaker 10 (07:37):
Fans of NLP say it's like finally getting a user
manual for your brain. It makes reprogramming the way you
think quick and easy. You can simply delete bad habits,
vanish crippling phobias, and install new patterns like software.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Sounds a little too good to be true.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
NLP is a model of language patterns to create behavior change.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
The human problem is a behavioral problem.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
All communication is some form of manipulation.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
By changing all behaviors, we could change the entire world.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
If you google NLP, you'll find a lot of credible
sources saying it's a pseudoscience.
Speaker 10 (08:17):
Yet not everything that doesn't go through peer review journals
and double blind studies is necessarily useless. Think of alternative therapies.
People get a lot out of anyway or hypnosis, right,
like hypnosis which is used by legit doctors to help
people with very concrete.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Problems smoking, cessation, pain management phobias.
Speaker 10 (08:40):
But then it also exists in the collective imagination as
this sort of magical Brainwashy's Fengali mind control tactic.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
By the way, a lot of NLP is hypnosis. There's
huge crossover. Hypnosis is actually how Nancy Salzman got into NLP.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I'll do a session with you at everyone. Okay, so
how do you feel about giving birth?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I am excited to give birth, but I'm also definitely
afraid of the physical ordeal. I'm here in a suburban
townhouse outside of Albany, New York with Nancy. We're sitting
on a comfy couch in her upstairs office, surrounded by
books about Buddhism and neuroscience. I was expecting the Nancy
Salzman I'd seen on HBO pantsuits corporate charisma, but today
(09:31):
she's stressed casually and feels more like a mom hosting
a soccer team. She's prepared an entire lunch spread for
us and seems really happy to have company. Her hairless
cat keeps jumping on my lap.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
What is that physical ordeal of birth in your understanding?
Let's see. The physical ordeal is, like.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I guess, I'm afraid of, like permanent change that is
irreversible to my body.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I'm afraid of injury, as.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You've probably guessed, I'm pregnant like do in a couple months.
When I went to visit Nancy, I'd already been trying
hypnosis for relaxation. Turns out hypnobirth thing is one of
Nancy's specialties. So we're giving in a whirl.
Speaker 10 (10:14):
Alice, Please don't get brainwashed by Nancy salesman.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Okay, I know everyone's probably thinking right now that I'm
a little nuts, but I came here to learn about
Nancy's methods and sometimes the only way to understand something
is to try it.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
How are you with risk? In other things? I'm okay
with some risk?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
What do you mean, like, I feel like I don't
think I could be a journalist without taking on some risk.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That is what I was thinking. So probably, like today,
for instance, you don't know me and here you are
coming into my house. I mean, you have a little
team with you, But who knows what I could have
done here in my house to create a reversible, permanent
change that could never be You never know, right, But
(11:06):
this feels okay to you? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So there are many I wasn't sure how much to
trust Nancy, and the fact that this whole thing was
being recorded and my producers were in the room was
also kind of awkward. This was also the very first
interview she was giving since she got out of prison.
Nancy pled guilty to some charges related to her work
in Nexium, but she's consistently maintained that she was also
(11:32):
a victim of the group, and she says she was
unaware of its most infamous crimes like branding and sex trafficking.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I thought doing this interview would be good because the
media that happened when my company fell apart was so inaccurate,
and I've always wanted people to know who I was,
what I was involved, and why I did the work
(12:02):
that I did because it was overshadowed all by the
media craziness.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I wasn't here to rehash the Naxiam story. I wanted
to learn more about her work with NLP, and I
had to give it to Nancy. She was very perceptive.
Anytime I used a word, she dug into the unconscious
reasons I had maybe picked it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And I'll be telling me, just listen very carefully to
what the person says, and I'm trying it on going.
Did I worry about that? Any of the women I've
ever I've ever done this with, ever say that I'm
worried about injury. Nobody's ever said that I'm worried about injury.
Speaker 10 (12:41):
Okay, just want to jump in here for a second.
It's very odd to me, Alice, that she said no
woman has ever told her they're worried about injury during childbirth.
For most women, I know that is a major concern.
Why do you think Nancy was going out of her
way to make you feel like a freak?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Okay, I guess you're right. I mean, so, here's what
I think she was doing. By making me think my
problem is in my head, it becomes weirdly fixable. So
it's a strategy.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Are your friends pain? Have you had much pain in
your life?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Some I got in a skiing accident once that was
pretty painful.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
What happened I actually don't really know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I had mixed feelings about this whole session. But later
Nancy used our conversation to make me a hypno birthing tape,
and I was surprised by how into it I was.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale, and notice
how your body feels. That you have a body, and
that your body has taken care of you all through
your life, and we'll continue to take care of you
(13:56):
now and in the future.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I listened to this tape regularly as I prepared to
give birth, although I will admit I transcribed it first
to make sure there wasn't anything creepy or sublimental messages.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
You can allow yourself to become more and more self assured.
Speaker 10 (14:25):
So did it work.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I think it kind of did.
Speaker 10 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I mean, even listening to it now, it makes me
feel relaxed.
Speaker 10 (14:32):
You too are Yeah, No, it's a vibe. It honestly
reminds me of something you'd find on a meditation app.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah. And it's not just Nancy's words, but her tone
and the way she's pacing it. It gave me confidence
as I listened it. Yeah, it totally took the edge off.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
And you can relax into each contraction and allowing your
body to do when it already knows how to do.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Nancy learned these hypnotic language patterns from NLP. It's her
secret sauce. When Nancy was a kid, her mother suffered
from debilitating back pain.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I grew up in New Jersey in a middle class family.
My mother had a chronic pain problem that started when
I was about six, and I think I was one
of those kids who was really empathic.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So she became a nurse specifically interested in treating chronic
pain patients through alternative medicine. That's how she found hypnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I didn't want to use drugs. I wanted to do
something non traditional, and my ex husband was a physician,
and he introduced me to the whole idea, whole idea
of hypnosis for chronic pain and biofeedback, and one thing
led me to another, to another to another.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
And hypnosis is how Nancy found NLP.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I thought the language patterns in NLP were brilliant. An
NLP said that you could break down any behavior and
teach it to somebody else. So I started learning to
break down behaviors and look for different things that I
had ever looked for before.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
But she was weary at first.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well, they made a lot of claims that the skills
of NLP could fix phobias, could do a whole number
of things that were amazing to me, and if it
was possible, I wanted to learn, but I was kind
of skeptical.
Speaker 10 (16:26):
If it was possible. If you're beginning to wonder what
exactly NLP is, that's normal. It can mean a lot
of different things and be used a lot of different ways.
Don't worry. We're going to explain it over the course
of the series, and we'll get into how some people
see it as the ultimate life hack, while others have
(16:46):
laundered it into extreme methods of controlling others.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
For now, what you need to know is that NLP
formed the basis of Nancy's self help programs. In Nexium.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I saw many, many, many many people benefit.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And you are still proud of the program you created.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yes, I'm absolutely proud of it. I'm not proud of
how everything ended up.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Nancy still believes in NLP deeply and uses it all
the time. It got her through prison.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I will tell you that the judge sentenced me to
go to a camp like Martha Stewart, and that's what
I thought was going to happen. And they sent me
to a maximum security female prison and it was a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Nancy pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for her role
in Nexium. She was sent to federal prison in West
Virginia in February of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I was terrified because they were really mean. They were
very mean. I had no rights, like you have no
rights when you're there, and whatever they want to do
with you, they're going to do with you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
She says. This dark chapter of her life still haunts her.
When she's feeling down, she turns to NLP.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And when I tell you the worst moments, moments when
I believed I had been dealt a really unfair hand,
and I had been stuck in a horrible situation where
I was given no control, and I allowed myself to
start really suffering about it and feeling really victimized and miserable.
(18:20):
About a month in, I said to myself, what is
wrong with you? You have all of these tools, use them.
And I put myself in a good state. And I said,
you see, you know how to do this. It is
inexcusable for you to stay in the state because you
(18:42):
are making yourself miserable. You don't know when you're leaving,
you don't know how long you have to be here,
you don't know what's going to happen. But you have
control of your state.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And I did, and I kept myself in a good
state the whole time I was stuck in prison.
Speaker 10 (19:02):
Oooh, yikes. That was intense.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, And I know, maybe some listeners are thinking, can
we trust Nancy here? Is it possible she's hyping NLP
because she's looking for a comeback or a way to
talk about anything other than exium. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 10 (19:22):
I actually find Nancy credible here. She didn't have to
talk about using NLP on herself in prison, and What
I find really striking is that NLP clearly isn't just
some scammy hustle she used on other people. She used
it on herself. This is what saved her.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, she's saying she used NLP in the most high
stake situation of her whole life.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Did she explain though, how that actually worked, like which
NLP methods was she using?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, So there's this concept in NLP. It has kind
of a CYBORGI name. It's called state control.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And what's so great the bad state control is that
once you learn that you can bring up an excited state,
it naturally follows that you can bring up any state
you want.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Nancy learned of these techniques from a man who was
incredibly influential in her life, NLP co founder Richard Bandler.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And what Richard Bandler taught me in that weekend, which
was the most amazing thing of all, was that I
had control over my emotional states and I had no
excuse ever to be in a bad state ever unless
I was allowing it. And I will forever be grateful
to him for that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
You were using these techniques decades later when you went
to prison.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I'm still using them. My mother just died. I could
just sit here and cry with you. I'm so sad,
but that's not what we're here to do, so I'm
not going to and you don't have to see that.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
So, just to give you some context, Nancy's mind died
three weeks before our interview. We were going to cancel,
but then she said she didn't want to, and when
we got to her house, she had cooked us this
whole lunch like black bean soup. So naturally when she
started crying in this moment, I felt really bad and
just wanted to give her a hug.
Speaker 10 (21:20):
Okay, apologies, this is going to sound incredibly harsh, but
I have to ask, are we sure she was actually
losing control of her emotions. Didn't she just tell us
she can be wildly happy in prison. Could she also
make herself cry on cue?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Part of me did feel like I was watching a
talented actor. It was kind of whiplash her swing from
anguish to then calmly referencing her mother's death, and these
emotions were also visible in her face and voice, so
it would just instantly shift. My take is that these
are Nancy's real emotions, but she has an insane level
(22:00):
of control about when to dial in to a specific
emotion and immediately shift to another. She says, anyone can
do this, it's the power of NLP.
Speaker 10 (22:10):
As someone who does occasionally fall to pieces, this ability
sounds incredibly seductive. I would honestly love to have more
emotional control on command.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, totally. But what's scarier is the idea that the
person teaching you these emotional control techniques could also use
them against you.
Speaker 10 (22:30):
This is one of the truly disconcerting things about NLP.
Even the most seemingly helpful techniques can be used in
sinister ways. And because NLP masters pride themselves on controlling
their every little word and emotion, it's really hard to
know who to.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Trust, including the guy who started it all, Richard Bandler,
a man with a checkered.
Speaker 10 (22:52):
Past and a crazy, spooky laugh.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
To understand neurolinguistic programming, you have to understand its contradictory founder,
Richard Bandler. Sources have told us Bandler is a liar
and a drunk, and he.
Speaker 10 (23:19):
Has a history of making violent threats.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Although Jesse, you know he disagrees with and denies all
of these characterizations.
Speaker 10 (23:26):
And yet here's the Bandler paradox. He spent his career
trying to help others, and he succeeded. Tons of clients
swear by him.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
For example, I've had a lot of people that have
you know, that didn't believe that people could change quickly,
that went to a workshop and walked out and changed
the whole world about that.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
As he explains in the seminar from the nineteen eighties,
Bandler's whole thing was making people feel like they had
the power to fix their own problems. We collected as
many of the DVD box sets of his seminars as
we could find, watching and studying hours of tape. Here
he is in another series, Creating Therapeutic Change.
Speaker 9 (24:04):
See, once you give people the resources, then you also
got to tell them it doesn't happen to them. Too
many people think that they come in and they go
hypnotize me and change me. And how's gon No, that's
too easy. You don't deserve that. So you have to
earn that from me. You have to go out and
kick the shit out of your own problem.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
First.
Speaker 9 (24:22):
I'll give you the basis to do it, but you've
got to actively participate in your own life.
Speaker 10 (24:27):
NLP has spread throughout the world since it emerged in
Santa Cruz, California in the nineteen seventies. Do a quick
search for therapists on psychology today and you'll find tons
of people with PhDs who include NLP in their list
of methods.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And some therapy professionals even use NLP without disclosing it,
maybe without even realizing it. The inventor of one of
the most widely used therapies for trauma, EMDR, was very
influenced by NLP.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
NLP changed over the decades, but the central promise remains
the same. These techniques will give you more power, this
Bandler explains is his goal for all his students.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Even though I do do it to them, I won't
tell them I did. I won't give them the satisfaction
of knowing, because I still want them, above and beyond
whatever change they make, to get actively involved in their
own life, actively involved in running their own brain.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
NLP is all about getting out of your patterns, out
of your head, and creating more choice.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
The reason they want you to come in and just
hypnotize me and make the problem go away is because
the reason the problem is there is because it mysteriously
has been controlling their life, and the missing piece is
their active participation.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
Bandler's idea was that with NLP, you can achieve anything
you desire, really anything.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
You must take as a presupposition that what they have
been doing in their life is absurd. If it is
not bringing them wealth, ecstasy, and happiness all at the
same time, it's got to be pretty absurd.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
In the early nineteen nineties, Nancy attended a five day
seminar with Bandler in Pennsylvania. So you trained with Richard Bandler.
What was he like as a person?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I want to say he was impressive in every way,
positive and negative, and his skills were amazing, and at
the same time he would devalue them by calling it
that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Nancy was paying one thousand dollars to learn that shit,
and while she was impressed with the techniques, she found
Bandler himself pretty off putting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yes, I was a little horrified by him at first.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
I was.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean, if I'm gonna be honest, you know that
I have deep respect for him. I just told you
he helped me tremendously. I think he's a genius, but
I was a little shocked at how unprofessional he was.
He would just show up in like his clothes often
looked like he had been sleeping in them for three
or four nights before he showed up in them.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
This is one of the many things that intrigued me
about Bandler. At NLP's height, he was teaching corporate success
techniques to executives. But the guy's own life was kind
of a mess. I mean, he was kind of an
unrepentant recreational drug user, right.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I wasn't aware of his drug use. I was aware
of his alcohol use because he did that quite openly.
I didn't see anything like that. I heard about it,
but I didn't see it.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Nancy told me this one crazy story about Bandler where
it seemed like he could kind of control her mind
and manipulate her into doing something she would never normally do.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
After training, he would go to the bar and drink
a lot with everybody. Didn't seem to get drunk, but
he could consume an awful lot of alcohol. It was impressive.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
One night, Nancy and some people were having drinks after
their NLP seminar and Bandler was there.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
We were sitting together and he wanted to go somewhere,
and I had watched him drink several several is a
thought for me, it's not three or four or five
or six even ten several is more than ten martinis.
And he wanted to go someplace, and I had just
(28:20):
gotten a brand new car, and he asked me if
we could go in my car, and I said yes,
and he convinced me to let him drive you. I
don't know how he did that.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You let Richard Vandler drive your brand new Volvo ten
martinis in.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
He didn't seem drunk.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
This guy had something he did.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
What did he have? I don't know.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Well.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Also, he was Richard Bandler and I was an NLP
master practitioner. I wanted to be around him. After it
was all over, I couldn't believe he convinced me to
do that.
Speaker 10 (28:58):
Damn Nancy goes hard.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
It should be noted Bandler denies the story.
Speaker 10 (29:02):
But seriously, this is a common Bandler motif. He somehow
persuades people to stand by him as he does extremely reckless, scary,
dangerous things. How does work on Nancy?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well, she thinks it's NLP.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Well do you know anything about NLP anchoring? So? An
anchor is a stimulus and a response. They happen normally
in life, like let's say, you can be anchored to
your your father's angry voice or your mother's angry voice.
So if they use that tone, you just stopped as
a child, and that's an anchor.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Okay, So Banglor often modulates his voice, That's one part
of it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, he played with his voice a lot, now that
I'm thinking back about him, he did different as, did
different accents, he did different intonation patterns. He was very
good at that.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
How much more fun could I be having? How much
better can it get? And as you keep that voice
in lock in your head, you're uncond His mind can
and will confirm that you will make this a way
of life that you can and will enjoy.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
As you can hear in his seminar Creating Therapeutic Change,
Bandler changes his voice on command.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
And as you do so, take a deep breath and
begin to feel a good feeling start to spread throughout
your body. That's right, start to tingle all around.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Starts to see these shifts in tones and accent. He's
trying to embed hypnotic commands with his voice.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
So there, slowly, as you return back to the waking state,
that commitment becomes locked, firm and solid.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
In NLP terms. That's called anchoring.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
Eight and the more your body will feel wonderful.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And as we were talking, Nancy was like, wait a second,
that's exactly what happened in the bar.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Oh, he anchored you to his voice. That's what he
was doing. When he was doing that, he would get
you in a certain state, and then when he would
use that voice again, you would go back into that state.
Speaker 7 (31:04):
Now, that's just a suggestion you will carry out and
follow utterly and completely.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
The idea of anchoring is that you trigger an emotional
response or behavior in someone with a physical sensation squeezing
their wrist or using a sound like a bell or
a word said in a certain tone. First, you build
a heightened emotional state in your client or target.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And nlkay, what they learned is that when you're having
an emotional state, it looks like a bell curve, you know,
up and around, and when the state is building, you're
going up, up, up, up, up up up with an
emotional state. At a certain point, the state peeks out,
meaning that's the full state.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Once they reached full state, that's when you anchor. Subscribe
now to.
Speaker 10 (31:59):
Mind Subscribe, now to Mine Game.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Subscribe now to Mind Games It's kind of like training
a dog, but you're doing it with a person.
Speaker 10 (32:10):
And that's allegedly how Bandler convinced Nancy to drive her
new car drunk. Isn't she an NLP wizard too?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Though?
Speaker 10 (32:18):
How did she not notice that? Do you think Nancy
is particularly susceptible to manipulation?
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, that's exactly what she says. She told me she
has a gullible streak.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
See I'm very gullible.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh my gosh, but she does really believe she was anchored.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Now I know what he did. I never could figure
out what he did. I was anchored to his voice.
Speaker 10 (32:45):
If that exists, that's an amazing power and amazingly dangerous.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I asked Nancy about that. Can NLP be used for
good or evil? Is it a neutral tool?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
You know, when people ask me about that, one of
the things that I say is a knife in the
hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife
in the hands of a murderer is a weapon. I
believe because I've worked with behavior change so much, and
even when people want to change sometimes it's hard. I
(33:21):
believe that for the most part, you have to have
very bad intent to try to figure out ways of
using these things negatively. But is it possible. I'm not
going to say it's impossible, because you know, you can
anchor in fear states in people easily.
Speaker 10 (33:47):
Uh, fear anchors. This is sounding not so neutral. When
people are afraid, they're more compliant.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yeah, and fear was an explicit part of Richard Bandler's therapy.
He scared people into mixing themselves.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You know, he did threaten punch me in the face.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
That was actually turned out to be a very good intervention.
You know, it helped me to have one of the
most profound experiences of my life.
Speaker 10 (34:11):
That's Don McCormick, a retired psych professor who knew Bandler
and Santa Cruz during the early days of NLP. He
was trying to learn a new technique but kept getting stuck.
It was only when Bandler thraned to punch him that
suddenly Dawn got it.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
There are even more stories like this. One that Bandler
told repeatedly was about a schizophrenic patient who thought he
was Jesus Christ. Bandler got the patient to build a cross.
He brought in the heavy wood beams and giant sized nails.
Then he had the guy stretch out on the cross
to measure him to make sure it was right. We
(34:47):
read about this in a book and honestly don't really
know what to make of it or what the patient's
reaction was.
Speaker 10 (34:53):
We do know many of Bandler's most dramatic therapies featured
threats of violence. He denies this, but it's been why.
I reported that at this one seminar in nineteen eighty four,
a client was trying to work on some problematic aspect
of his life, and he made the mistake of joking
to Bandler that the only thing that could possibly get
him to change would be a loaded gun. So Bandler
(35:15):
whipped one out.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Because in some versions of the story, Bandler has a
loaded gun with him.
Speaker 10 (35:20):
Naturally, and the guy's into it at first. He knows
Bandler and his aggressive antics, and he even says, well,
I'd have to believe you'd actually use it on me
for it to help. So Bandler's like challenge accepted. He
tells the therapist, you have no idea how nuts I am.
I don't have to kill you, I just have to
wound you. Apparently that did the trick. The guy tells Bandler, huh, okay,
(35:46):
mission accomplished. I can change that part of my life,
and Bandler's like, yep, I know, because I would have
shot you. By now, it should be clarified that Bandler
says he used a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun,
not a gun itself.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I have no idea what to make of this story,
Like what the fuck I mean? I honestly also am
like did it really happen? But also okay, let's say
it did and it supposedly worked.
Speaker 10 (36:15):
That's the thing. Even years later, the guy continued to
tell reporters that Bandler had helped him. In fact, most
of the people I've spoken to have said that when
Bandler pulls these kind of hardcore changer I'll kill you
sort of cures, he's just getting in there and doing
what needs to be done.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
He would sometimes use threats to get people to do
something or to or sometimes just even losing his temper.
So I had to him threatened me before.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
But I think what.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Well Richard, out of the goodness of his heart, would
have the ultimate compassion to hold a gun to the
side of a student's head to provide the motivating factor
that would allow them to make a change.
Speaker 10 (37:01):
Bandler didn't just intimidate students According to court documents, he
also threatened his employees with violence.
Speaker 9 (37:09):
Hey, push it to the limits, man, go for the
throat at this point, because this is exactly what's going
on in their life. They are choosing, and you wanted
to become a magnanimous choice one that's fairly obvious. Which
direction they're going to go in? A positive future or
shitty future? What's it going to be?
Speaker 10 (37:28):
And Bandler pushed it to the limits in his own life.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Were you around when he got accused of murder?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
No, I think it was before that was to talk
about it, they used to say, three people went in
the room, two came out alive.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, you heard that right. Richard Bandler stood trial for
murder in nineteen eighty seven and was acquitted. Oh interesting,
you joined up afterwards?
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Did you know about that?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
During his murder trial, including in his own court testimony,
the whole world learned that Bandler was a heavy cocaine
user and involved with shady characters like Santa Cruz drug dealers.
Even after Bandler was found not guilty, the trial became
part of his bad boy loose cannon mystique.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Now this is the.
Speaker 9 (38:20):
Kind of subtle stuff that I'm trying to get you,
guys to do all right. It's none of this sitting
around and going and how do you feel about that?
You know, or going into a meeting and going, uh, well,
do you see any good prospects for the future?
Speaker 7 (38:32):
Fuck that jam them in their head, you know.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
I find want people work for me to have a
positive view of the future. I'm going to take it
and put it on a brick and shove it right
in their skull so they don't miss it. I sort
of the sledgehammer approach to things.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Listening to Richard Bandler his sledgehammer approach to healing. It's
what's so provocative about NLP, the grand claims and the
seemingly absurdly simple yet weirdly effective techniques, and then there's
the whole, if you know, you know, aspect of the thing.
It was shocking to me that NLP was so unknown
(39:11):
and yet so relevant. It's literally in every meditation app
I've seen, especially as wellness pervades so many aspects of
our lives and we have this collective obsession with self
optimization and treating our brains as computers to be reprogrammed,
NLP seems more relevant than.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
Ever it's that pervasiveness that sent us down this road
of trying to figure out where it comes from, in
part through the story of one of its central figures,
Richard Bandler, brilliant outside the box healer.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
They wouldn't give me a license to do therapy because
I'm not qualified.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
Therapy tries to get you to relive trauma. I try
to get people to stop thinking about it so much.
My techniques focus on getting people to take control of
their mind.
Speaker 10 (40:00):
Slick Hustler who sold pseudo scientific life hacks to the
US military and inspired hundreds of imitators.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
It spread all over the planet. It's everywhere. I'm translated
into dozens of languages.
Speaker 10 (40:13):
We're deeply skeptical of gurus, but we want to separate
what's legit from the jargon and empty promises.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So we're going to interview sales with this.
Speaker 10 (40:23):
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused pick
up artists. She looked at me and she said, mondong
agon numb. And I said that's because you have a
message for me.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
What's your message? And then she.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Leaned over and none.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Tongue said something about wanting to pleasure me an.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
NLP's most famous practitioner, Tony Robbins.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Tony Robbins doing all this, he said he's the best
NLP guy in the world, which I did, and when
people said I wasn't, I challenged him. I said, what's
up an help off? You give me your worst patient
and we'll see who can handle them quicker. I said,
I'm happy to do it, and I want every time
I did, all.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Of whom credit NLP as the basis of their success.
So do some accused cult leaders or are they innocent victims?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Well?
Speaker 7 (41:07):
I knew that it was cultish and weird, but I
liked it for all of those reasons.
Speaker 10 (41:12):
We'll even test NLP on ourselves. I don't know what
I expected to get exactly, but what I got were
some pretty specific images from my childhood. This is wild
and on you, the listener, with your consent.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
A whole lot of NLP is pretty shady, but some
of it is real. We're going to dig into those
parts and the science of hypnosis behind them, and don't worry,
we will get to the murder.
Speaker 10 (41:43):
Oh and we'll even hear from the man himself, Richard Bambler.
Speaker 8 (41:47):
This is what we referred to as a hit job,
and I find this very fucking offensive.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Richard mind Games is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. The series is created and hosted by me
Alice Hines and Zoe Lascas. It's produced by writer Alsop
and Dara Lukpotts, edited by Kate Osborne, Editorial consulting from
(42:18):
Adiza Egan, original composition and mixing by Steve Boone, fact
checking by Aman Whalen from Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 10 (42:26):
Our executive producers are Ozwaloshan Mangesha Tikador, and Kate Osborne
from iHeart, Our executive producers are Katrina Norble and Nikki
Etour
I completely dissociated for my body. I had so much panic,
and I was so afraid that when I opened my
mouth and said the five words that I said, when
I was in front of the room, I thought it
was someone else talking, and I said, I'm never doing
this again.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
In the late nineteen eighties, Nancy had a phobia of
public speaking and it was getting in the way of
her job. She was a nurse who specialized in working
with chronic pain patients.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
But there's something about being able to help somebody that
just makes me so It's probably the biggest motivator of
my entire life.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nancy wanted to share her skills with more people and
to grow her business, but there was one big problem.
She was terrified of public speaking. Get her in front
of a room of people, and Nancy would totally freeze.
Then she met someone, a woman who said she could
cure Nancy's lifelong fear in a few short minutes using
(01:10):
something called neuro linguistic programming, or NLP.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
She did an NLP phobia fix on me and took
away my fear of public speaking, and look at me now.
I'm a big ham and I love public speaking and
I would do anything to do public speaking. But she
fixed me. She fixed that problem using an NLP technique
and it never was a problem again.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Quickly, NLP became Nancy's whole life. Soon she was working
as a consultant for Fortune five hundred companies. As a coach,
she helped thousands of people conquer their own fears. This
was way more people than she had ever dreamed of
helping as a nurse, and it was all thanks to NLP.
NLP is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Nancy
(01:58):
used it to found us self help company for ambitious professionals.
The Dalai Lama even checked out one of their events.
The company was called Nexium.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Nexium is a methodology that allows people to optimize their behavior.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Brainwashing, sex abuse, and even branding.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Nancy Saltzman, the co founder of the Capital Region based
sex called Nexium, has been released from prison.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
NLP made a Nancy's career, but then a version of
it destroyed her and destroyed the lives of others. But
what even is NLP.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Take a deep brith is.
Speaker 6 (02:51):
And breathe out.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so
that I can speak primarily or your unconscious.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is episode one of
mind Games. I'm Alice Hines, I'm Zoe Lascas.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
You don't know how you did it.
Speaker 8 (03:15):
You did?
Speaker 9 (03:15):
You go into a little time to stars stake.
Speaker 7 (03:21):
And you're out of it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We're reporters, we're also friends. We're into some pretty weird shit.
Speaker 10 (03:27):
True story. We met at a shamonic sound meditation.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, that was a few years ago, and there were
some changes that occurred.
Speaker 10 (03:36):
Alice, understatement of the century. You astrauly traveled, as I recall.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I mean, yeah, you like basically do like a long
meditation at this thing, and I realized some shit about
my life. Number one, Zoe was my new best friend,
and number two, I actually broke up with someone who
I've been dating for five years after this event.
Speaker 10 (03:54):
Whoopsie, daisies. It was for the best. Yeah, everything worked
out just fine, especially the friendship. Here we are, but yeah,
I think it was that weekend, sometime before all the
gongs and rainsticks and chimes got going, that we realized
we have a ton in common. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
We're both reporters and kind of professional skeptics. Zoe being
a science journalist and me, being a journalist who has
exposed lots of wellness scams and cults, we sort of
have to smell the bullshit, but at the same time
keep an open mind.
Speaker 10 (04:25):
And we've also, between the two of us, logged something
like five million hours on the couches of our respective therapists,
and I think that's partly why we're interested in alternative therapies. Like,
what if you didn't have to spend hours and hours
and hours of your life in hundreds of dollars on
mainstream psychiatry.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I hope my therapist isn't listening to this.
Speaker 10 (04:45):
Yeah, sorry, Annie, they probably are. So in this series,
we're gonna go splunking into the murky depths of neuro
linguistic programming or NLP, and we're gonna try to find
out if it deserves its sort of shape reputation.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So I first heard about NLP because an alleged cult
that I was investigating said they used it. So this
wasn't Nexium, it was a different group called Twin Flames.
Speaker 10 (05:11):
And what did they use NLP for?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Okay, here's a quote from some of the documentation around
this group that they put out. Your practitioner will expertly
access your trauma like a world class computer programmer, rooting
out a bug in the system.
Speaker 10 (05:28):
Not scary at all. No, that sounds totally normal.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, so that's how they used NLP. But we were
curious whether these techniques could be used in other contexts,
and when we started looking into it, we realized NLP
is literally.
Speaker 10 (05:40):
Everywhere, and we do mean everywhere. You've probably used an
NLP technique without knowing it, or someone's used one on you.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
It's the basis of a ton of self help movements,
any type of manifesting, visualizations, vision boards. If you've done
any of that, you've done NLP.
Speaker 10 (06:01):
It has a ton of boldface name followers. There are
Olympic divers who have used NLP to perfect their form.
The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort used it for
closing deals. Fortune five hundred companies like Apple, IBM, Coca
Cola have spent tons of money on NLP sales trainings
over the past fifty.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Years, and so did Army intelligence. They sought out NLP
to improve soldier marksmanship and spycraft. They called it a
technology for enhancing human performance.
Speaker 10 (06:32):
And NLP spawned the self help behemoth that is Tony robbins.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
Anybody could be in a good state when things are
going your way, but if you can stay in a
beautiful state when things don't go your way, then you're
going to have a beautiful wife.
Speaker 10 (06:49):
That's Tony from one of his many ads for Unleash
the Power, within a four day event that regularly draws
thousands of people. He's coached Serena Williams, advised Bill Clinton,
and even taught Oprah to walk on hot coals. Tony's
built an empire telling people they can radically improve themselves
using NLP.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
You want to change your life, you want to get
out of suffering, trade your expectations for appreciation, and your
whole life will change in that moment.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
But NLP promises more than personal growth. It also promises
to teach you how to persuade others.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you,
what kind of life would you have? Somebody would scared
when I said word control people's behaviors. It's already happening.
Speaker 10 (07:37):
Fans of NLP say it's like finally getting a user
manual for your brain. It makes reprogramming the way you
think quick and easy. You can simply delete bad habits,
vanish crippling phobias, and install new patterns like software.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Sounds a little too good to be true.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
NLP is a model of language patterns to create behavior change.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
The human problem is a behavioral problem.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
All communication is some form of manipulation.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
By changing all behaviors, we could change the entire world.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
If you google NLP, you'll find a lot of credible
sources saying it's a pseudoscience.
Speaker 10 (08:17):
Yet not everything that doesn't go through peer review journals
and double blind studies is necessarily useless. Think of alternative therapies.
People get a lot out of anyway or hypnosis, right,
like hypnosis which is used by legit doctors to help
people with very concrete.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Problems smoking, cessation, pain management phobias.
Speaker 10 (08:40):
But then it also exists in the collective imagination as
this sort of magical Brainwashy's Fengali mind control tactic.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
By the way, a lot of NLP is hypnosis. There's
huge crossover. Hypnosis is actually how Nancy Salzman got into NLP.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I'll do a session with you at everyone. Okay, so
how do you feel about giving birth?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I am excited to give birth, but I'm also definitely
afraid of the physical ordeal. I'm here in a suburban
townhouse outside of Albany, New York with Nancy. We're sitting
on a comfy couch in her upstairs office, surrounded by
books about Buddhism and neuroscience. I was expecting the Nancy
Salzman I'd seen on HBO pantsuits corporate charisma, but today
(09:31):
she's stressed casually and feels more like a mom hosting
a soccer team. She's prepared an entire lunch spread for
us and seems really happy to have company. Her hairless
cat keeps jumping on my lap.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
What is that physical ordeal of birth in your understanding?
Let's see. The physical ordeal is, like.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I guess, I'm afraid of, like permanent change that is
irreversible to my body.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I'm afraid of injury, as.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You've probably guessed, I'm pregnant like do in a couple months.
When I went to visit Nancy, I'd already been trying
hypnosis for relaxation. Turns out hypnobirth thing is one of
Nancy's specialties. So we're giving in a whirl.
Speaker 10 (10:14):
Alice, Please don't get brainwashed by Nancy salesman.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Okay, I know everyone's probably thinking right now that I'm
a little nuts, but I came here to learn about
Nancy's methods and sometimes the only way to understand something
is to try it.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
How are you with risk? In other things? I'm okay
with some risk?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
What do you mean, like, I feel like I don't
think I could be a journalist without taking on some risk.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That is what I was thinking. So probably, like today,
for instance, you don't know me and here you are
coming into my house. I mean, you have a little
team with you, But who knows what I could have
done here in my house to create a reversible, permanent
change that could never be You never know, right, But
(11:06):
this feels okay to you? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So there are many I wasn't sure how much to
trust Nancy, and the fact that this whole thing was
being recorded and my producers were in the room was
also kind of awkward. This was also the very first
interview she was giving since she got out of prison.
Nancy pled guilty to some charges related to her work
in Nexium, but she's consistently maintained that she was also
(11:32):
a victim of the group, and she says she was
unaware of its most infamous crimes like branding and sex trafficking.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I thought doing this interview would be good because the
media that happened when my company fell apart was so inaccurate,
and I've always wanted people to know who I was,
what I was involved, and why I did the work
(12:02):
that I did because it was overshadowed all by the
media craziness.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I wasn't here to rehash the Naxiam story. I wanted
to learn more about her work with NLP, and I
had to give it to Nancy. She was very perceptive.
Anytime I used a word, she dug into the unconscious
reasons I had maybe picked it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And I'll be telling me, just listen very carefully to
what the person says, and I'm trying it on going.
Did I worry about that? Any of the women I've
ever I've ever done this with, ever say that I'm
worried about injury. Nobody's ever said that I'm worried about injury.
Speaker 10 (12:41):
Okay, just want to jump in here for a second.
It's very odd to me, Alice, that she said no
woman has ever told her they're worried about injury during childbirth.
For most women, I know that is a major concern.
Why do you think Nancy was going out of her
way to make you feel like a freak?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Okay, I guess you're right. I mean, so, here's what
I think she was doing. By making me think my
problem is in my head, it becomes weirdly fixable. So
it's a strategy.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Are your friends pain? Have you had much pain in
your life?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Some I got in a skiing accident once that was
pretty painful.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
What happened I actually don't really know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I had mixed feelings about this whole session. But later
Nancy used our conversation to make me a hypno birthing tape,
and I was surprised by how into it I was.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale, and notice
how your body feels. That you have a body, and
that your body has taken care of you all through
your life, and we'll continue to take care of you
(13:56):
now and in the future.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I listened to this tape regularly as I prepared to
give birth, although I will admit I transcribed it first
to make sure there wasn't anything creepy or sublimental messages.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
You can allow yourself to become more and more self assured.
Speaker 10 (14:25):
So did it work.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I think it kind of did.
Speaker 10 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I mean, even listening to it now, it makes me
feel relaxed.
Speaker 10 (14:32):
You too are Yeah, No, it's a vibe. It honestly
reminds me of something you'd find on a meditation app.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah. And it's not just Nancy's words, but her tone
and the way she's pacing it. It gave me confidence
as I listened it. Yeah, it totally took the edge off.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
And you can relax into each contraction and allowing your
body to do when it already knows how to do.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Nancy learned these hypnotic language patterns from NLP. It's her
secret sauce. When Nancy was a kid, her mother suffered
from debilitating back pain.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I grew up in New Jersey in a middle class family.
My mother had a chronic pain problem that started when
I was about six, and I think I was one
of those kids who was really empathic.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So she became a nurse specifically interested in treating chronic
pain patients through alternative medicine. That's how she found hypnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I didn't want to use drugs. I wanted to do
something non traditional, and my ex husband was a physician,
and he introduced me to the whole idea, whole idea
of hypnosis for chronic pain and biofeedback, and one thing
led me to another, to another to another.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
And hypnosis is how Nancy found NLP.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I thought the language patterns in NLP were brilliant. An
NLP said that you could break down any behavior and
teach it to somebody else. So I started learning to
break down behaviors and look for different things that I
had ever looked for before.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
But she was weary at first.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well, they made a lot of claims that the skills
of NLP could fix phobias, could do a whole number
of things that were amazing to me, and if it
was possible, I wanted to learn, but I was kind
of skeptical.
Speaker 10 (16:26):
If it was possible. If you're beginning to wonder what
exactly NLP is, that's normal. It can mean a lot
of different things and be used a lot of different ways.
Don't worry. We're going to explain it over the course
of the series, and we'll get into how some people
see it as the ultimate life hack, while others have
(16:46):
laundered it into extreme methods of controlling others.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
For now, what you need to know is that NLP
formed the basis of Nancy's self help programs. In Nexium.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I saw many, many, many many people benefit.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And you are still proud of the program you created.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yes, I'm absolutely proud of it. I'm not proud of
how everything ended up.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Nancy still believes in NLP deeply and uses it all
the time. It got her through prison.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I will tell you that the judge sentenced me to
go to a camp like Martha Stewart, and that's what
I thought was going to happen. And they sent me
to a maximum security female prison and it was a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Nancy pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for her role
in Nexium. She was sent to federal prison in West
Virginia in February of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I was terrified because they were really mean. They were
very mean. I had no rights, like you have no
rights when you're there, and whatever they want to do
with you, they're going to do with you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
She says. This dark chapter of her life still haunts her.
When she's feeling down, she turns to NLP.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And when I tell you the worst moments, moments when
I believed I had been dealt a really unfair hand,
and I had been stuck in a horrible situation where
I was given no control, and I allowed myself to
start really suffering about it and feeling really victimized and miserable.
(18:20):
About a month in, I said to myself, what is
wrong with you? You have all of these tools, use them.
And I put myself in a good state. And I said,
you see, you know how to do this. It is
inexcusable for you to stay in the state because you
(18:42):
are making yourself miserable. You don't know when you're leaving,
you don't know how long you have to be here,
you don't know what's going to happen. But you have
control of your state.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And I did, and I kept myself in a good
state the whole time I was stuck in prison.
Speaker 10 (19:02):
Oooh, yikes. That was intense.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, And I know, maybe some listeners are thinking, can
we trust Nancy here? Is it possible she's hyping NLP
because she's looking for a comeback or a way to
talk about anything other than exium. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 10 (19:22):
I actually find Nancy credible here. She didn't have to
talk about using NLP on herself in prison, and What
I find really striking is that NLP clearly isn't just
some scammy hustle she used on other people. She used
it on herself. This is what saved her.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, she's saying she used NLP in the most high
stake situation of her whole life.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Did she explain though, how that actually worked, like which
NLP methods was she using?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, So there's this concept in NLP. It has kind
of a CYBORGI name. It's called state control.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And what's so great the bad state control is that
once you learn that you can bring up an excited state,
it naturally follows that you can bring up any state
you want.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Nancy learned of these techniques from a man who was
incredibly influential in her life, NLP co founder Richard Bandler.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And what Richard Bandler taught me in that weekend, which
was the most amazing thing of all, was that I
had control over my emotional states and I had no
excuse ever to be in a bad state ever unless
I was allowing it. And I will forever be grateful
to him for that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
You were using these techniques decades later when you went
to prison.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I'm still using them. My mother just died. I could
just sit here and cry with you. I'm so sad,
but that's not what we're here to do, so I'm
not going to and you don't have to see that.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
So, just to give you some context, Nancy's mind died
three weeks before our interview. We were going to cancel,
but then she said she didn't want to, and when
we got to her house, she had cooked us this
whole lunch like black bean soup. So naturally when she
started crying in this moment, I felt really bad and
just wanted to give her a hug.
Speaker 10 (21:20):
Okay, apologies, this is going to sound incredibly harsh, but
I have to ask, are we sure she was actually
losing control of her emotions. Didn't she just tell us
she can be wildly happy in prison. Could she also
make herself cry on cue?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Part of me did feel like I was watching a
talented actor. It was kind of whiplash her swing from
anguish to then calmly referencing her mother's death, and these
emotions were also visible in her face and voice, so
it would just instantly shift. My take is that these
are Nancy's real emotions, but she has an insane level
(22:00):
of control about when to dial in to a specific
emotion and immediately shift to another. She says, anyone can
do this, it's the power of NLP.
Speaker 10 (22:10):
As someone who does occasionally fall to pieces, this ability
sounds incredibly seductive. I would honestly love to have more
emotional control on command.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, totally. But what's scarier is the idea that the
person teaching you these emotional control techniques could also use
them against you.
Speaker 10 (22:30):
This is one of the truly disconcerting things about NLP.
Even the most seemingly helpful techniques can be used in
sinister ways. And because NLP masters pride themselves on controlling
their every little word and emotion, it's really hard to
know who to.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Trust, including the guy who started it all, Richard Bandler,
a man with a checkered.
Speaker 10 (22:52):
Past and a crazy, spooky laugh.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
To understand neurolinguistic programming, you have to understand its contradictory founder,
Richard Bandler. Sources have told us Bandler is a liar
and a drunk, and he.
Speaker 10 (23:19):
Has a history of making violent threats.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Although Jesse, you know he disagrees with and denies all
of these characterizations.
Speaker 10 (23:26):
And yet here's the Bandler paradox. He spent his career
trying to help others, and he succeeded. Tons of clients
swear by him.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
For example, I've had a lot of people that have
you know, that didn't believe that people could change quickly,
that went to a workshop and walked out and changed
the whole world about that.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
As he explains in the seminar from the nineteen eighties,
Bandler's whole thing was making people feel like they had
the power to fix their own problems. We collected as
many of the DVD box sets of his seminars as
we could find, watching and studying hours of tape. Here
he is in another series, Creating Therapeutic Change.
Speaker 9 (24:04):
See, once you give people the resources, then you also
got to tell them it doesn't happen to them. Too
many people think that they come in and they go
hypnotize me and change me. And how's gon No, that's
too easy. You don't deserve that. So you have to
earn that from me. You have to go out and
kick the shit out of your own problem.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
First.
Speaker 9 (24:22):
I'll give you the basis to do it, but you've
got to actively participate in your own life.
Speaker 10 (24:27):
NLP has spread throughout the world since it emerged in
Santa Cruz, California in the nineteen seventies. Do a quick
search for therapists on psychology today and you'll find tons
of people with PhDs who include NLP in their list
of methods.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And some therapy professionals even use NLP without disclosing it,
maybe without even realizing it. The inventor of one of
the most widely used therapies for trauma, EMDR, was very
influenced by NLP.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
NLP changed over the decades, but the central promise remains
the same. These techniques will give you more power, this
Bandler explains is his goal for all his students.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Even though I do do it to them, I won't
tell them I did. I won't give them the satisfaction
of knowing, because I still want them, above and beyond
whatever change they make, to get actively involved in their
own life, actively involved in running their own brain.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
NLP is all about getting out of your patterns, out
of your head, and creating more choice.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
The reason they want you to come in and just
hypnotize me and make the problem go away is because
the reason the problem is there is because it mysteriously
has been controlling their life, and the missing piece is
their active participation.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
Bandler's idea was that with NLP, you can achieve anything
you desire, really anything.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
You must take as a presupposition that what they have
been doing in their life is absurd. If it is
not bringing them wealth, ecstasy, and happiness all at the
same time, it's got to be pretty absurd.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
In the early nineteen nineties, Nancy attended a five day
seminar with Bandler in Pennsylvania. So you trained with Richard Bandler.
What was he like as a person?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I want to say he was impressive in every way,
positive and negative, and his skills were amazing, and at
the same time he would devalue them by calling it
that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Nancy was paying one thousand dollars to learn that shit,
and while she was impressed with the techniques, she found
Bandler himself pretty off putting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yes, I was a little horrified by him at first.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
I was.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean, if I'm gonna be honest, you know that
I have deep respect for him. I just told you
he helped me tremendously. I think he's a genius, but
I was a little shocked at how unprofessional he was.
He would just show up in like his clothes often
looked like he had been sleeping in them for three
or four nights before he showed up in them.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
This is one of the many things that intrigued me
about Bandler. At NLP's height, he was teaching corporate success
techniques to executives. But the guy's own life was kind
of a mess. I mean, he was kind of an
unrepentant recreational drug user, right.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I wasn't aware of his drug use. I was aware
of his alcohol use because he did that quite openly.
I didn't see anything like that. I heard about it,
but I didn't see it.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Nancy told me this one crazy story about Bandler where
it seemed like he could kind of control her mind
and manipulate her into doing something she would never normally do.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
After training, he would go to the bar and drink
a lot with everybody. Didn't seem to get drunk, but
he could consume an awful lot of alcohol. It was impressive.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
One night, Nancy and some people were having drinks after
their NLP seminar and Bandler was there.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
We were sitting together and he wanted to go somewhere,
and I had watched him drink several several is a
thought for me, it's not three or four or five
or six even ten several is more than ten martinis.
And he wanted to go someplace, and I had just
(28:20):
gotten a brand new car, and he asked me if
we could go in my car, and I said yes,
and he convinced me to let him drive you. I
don't know how he did that.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
You let Richard Vandler drive your brand new Volvo ten
martinis in.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
He didn't seem drunk.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
This guy had something he did.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
What did he have? I don't know.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Well.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Also, he was Richard Bandler and I was an NLP
master practitioner. I wanted to be around him. After it
was all over, I couldn't believe he convinced me to
do that.
Speaker 10 (28:58):
Damn Nancy goes hard.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
It should be noted Bandler denies the story.
Speaker 10 (29:02):
But seriously, this is a common Bandler motif. He somehow
persuades people to stand by him as he does extremely reckless, scary,
dangerous things. How does work on Nancy?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well, she thinks it's NLP.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Well do you know anything about NLP anchoring? So? An
anchor is a stimulus and a response. They happen normally
in life, like let's say, you can be anchored to
your your father's angry voice or your mother's angry voice.
So if they use that tone, you just stopped as
a child, and that's an anchor.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Okay, So Banglor often modulates his voice, That's one part
of it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, he played with his voice a lot, now that
I'm thinking back about him, he did different as, did
different accents, he did different intonation patterns. He was very
good at that.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
How much more fun could I be having? How much
better can it get? And as you keep that voice
in lock in your head, you're uncond His mind can
and will confirm that you will make this a way
of life that you can and will enjoy.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
As you can hear in his seminar Creating Therapeutic Change,
Bandler changes his voice on command.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
And as you do so, take a deep breath and
begin to feel a good feeling start to spread throughout
your body. That's right, start to tingle all around.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Starts to see these shifts in tones and accent. He's
trying to embed hypnotic commands with his voice.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
So there, slowly, as you return back to the waking state,
that commitment becomes locked, firm and solid.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
In NLP terms. That's called anchoring.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
Eight and the more your body will feel wonderful.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And as we were talking, Nancy was like, wait a second,
that's exactly what happened in the bar.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Oh, he anchored you to his voice. That's what he
was doing. When he was doing that, he would get
you in a certain state, and then when he would
use that voice again, you would go back into that state.
Speaker 7 (31:04):
Now, that's just a suggestion you will carry out and
follow utterly and completely.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
The idea of anchoring is that you trigger an emotional
response or behavior in someone with a physical sensation squeezing
their wrist or using a sound like a bell or
a word said in a certain tone. First, you build
a heightened emotional state in your client or target.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And nlkay, what they learned is that when you're having
an emotional state, it looks like a bell curve, you know,
up and around, and when the state is building, you're
going up, up, up, up, up up up with an
emotional state. At a certain point, the state peeks out,
meaning that's the full state.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Once they reached full state, that's when you anchor. Subscribe
now to.
Speaker 10 (31:59):
Mind Subscribe, now to Mine Game.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Subscribe now to Mind Games It's kind of like training
a dog, but you're doing it with a person.
Speaker 10 (32:10):
And that's allegedly how Bandler convinced Nancy to drive her
new car drunk. Isn't she an NLP wizard too?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Though?
Speaker 10 (32:18):
How did she not notice that? Do you think Nancy
is particularly susceptible to manipulation?
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, that's exactly what she says. She told me she
has a gullible streak.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
See I'm very gullible.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh my gosh, but she does really believe she was anchored.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Now I know what he did. I never could figure
out what he did. I was anchored to his voice.
Speaker 10 (32:45):
If that exists, that's an amazing power and amazingly dangerous.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I asked Nancy about that. Can NLP be used for
good or evil? Is it a neutral tool?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
You know, when people ask me about that, one of
the things that I say is a knife in the
hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife
in the hands of a murderer is a weapon. I
believe because I've worked with behavior change so much, and
even when people want to change sometimes it's hard. I
(33:21):
believe that for the most part, you have to have
very bad intent to try to figure out ways of
using these things negatively. But is it possible. I'm not
going to say it's impossible, because you know, you can
anchor in fear states in people easily.
Speaker 10 (33:47):
Uh, fear anchors. This is sounding not so neutral. When
people are afraid, they're more compliant.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yeah, and fear was an explicit part of Richard Bandler's therapy.
He scared people into mixing themselves.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You know, he did threaten punch me in the face.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
That was actually turned out to be a very good intervention.
You know, it helped me to have one of the
most profound experiences of my life.
Speaker 10 (34:11):
That's Don McCormick, a retired psych professor who knew Bandler
and Santa Cruz during the early days of NLP. He
was trying to learn a new technique but kept getting stuck.
It was only when Bandler thraned to punch him that
suddenly Dawn got it.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
There are even more stories like this. One that Bandler
told repeatedly was about a schizophrenic patient who thought he
was Jesus Christ. Bandler got the patient to build a cross.
He brought in the heavy wood beams and giant sized nails.
Then he had the guy stretch out on the cross
to measure him to make sure it was right. We
(34:47):
read about this in a book and honestly don't really
know what to make of it or what the patient's
reaction was.
Speaker 10 (34:53):
We do know many of Bandler's most dramatic therapies featured
threats of violence. He denies this, but it's been why.
I reported that at this one seminar in nineteen eighty four,
a client was trying to work on some problematic aspect
of his life, and he made the mistake of joking
to Bandler that the only thing that could possibly get
him to change would be a loaded gun. So Bandler
(35:15):
whipped one out.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Because in some versions of the story, Bandler has a
loaded gun with him.
Speaker 10 (35:20):
Naturally, and the guy's into it at first. He knows
Bandler and his aggressive antics, and he even says, well,
I'd have to believe you'd actually use it on me
for it to help. So Bandler's like challenge accepted. He
tells the therapist, you have no idea how nuts I am.
I don't have to kill you, I just have to
wound you. Apparently that did the trick. The guy tells Bandler, huh, okay,
(35:46):
mission accomplished. I can change that part of my life,
and Bandler's like, yep, I know, because I would have
shot you. By now, it should be clarified that Bandler
says he used a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun,
not a gun itself.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I have no idea what to make of this story,
Like what the fuck I mean? I honestly also am
like did it really happen? But also okay, let's say
it did and it supposedly worked.
Speaker 10 (36:15):
That's the thing. Even years later, the guy continued to
tell reporters that Bandler had helped him. In fact, most
of the people I've spoken to have said that when
Bandler pulls these kind of hardcore changer I'll kill you
sort of cures, he's just getting in there and doing
what needs to be done.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
He would sometimes use threats to get people to do
something or to or sometimes just even losing his temper.
So I had to him threatened me before.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
But I think what.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Well Richard, out of the goodness of his heart, would
have the ultimate compassion to hold a gun to the
side of a student's head to provide the motivating factor
that would allow them to make a change.
Speaker 10 (37:01):
Bandler didn't just intimidate students According to court documents, he
also threatened his employees with violence.
Speaker 9 (37:09):
Hey, push it to the limits, man, go for the
throat at this point, because this is exactly what's going
on in their life. They are choosing, and you wanted
to become a magnanimous choice one that's fairly obvious. Which
direction they're going to go in? A positive future or
shitty future? What's it going to be?
Speaker 10 (37:28):
And Bandler pushed it to the limits in his own life.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Were you around when he got accused of murder?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
No, I think it was before that was to talk
about it, they used to say, three people went in
the room, two came out alive.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, you heard that right. Richard Bandler stood trial for
murder in nineteen eighty seven and was acquitted. Oh interesting,
you joined up afterwards?
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Did you know about that?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
During his murder trial, including in his own court testimony,
the whole world learned that Bandler was a heavy cocaine
user and involved with shady characters like Santa Cruz drug dealers.
Even after Bandler was found not guilty, the trial became
part of his bad boy loose cannon mystique.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Now this is the.
Speaker 9 (38:20):
Kind of subtle stuff that I'm trying to get you,
guys to do all right. It's none of this sitting
around and going and how do you feel about that?
You know, or going into a meeting and going, uh, well,
do you see any good prospects for the future?
Speaker 7 (38:32):
Fuck that jam them in their head, you know.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
I find want people work for me to have a
positive view of the future. I'm going to take it
and put it on a brick and shove it right
in their skull so they don't miss it. I sort
of the sledgehammer approach to things.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Listening to Richard Bandler his sledgehammer approach to healing. It's
what's so provocative about NLP, the grand claims and the
seemingly absurdly simple yet weirdly effective techniques, and then there's
the whole, if you know, you know, aspect of the thing.
It was shocking to me that NLP was so unknown
(39:11):
and yet so relevant. It's literally in every meditation app
I've seen, especially as wellness pervades so many aspects of
our lives and we have this collective obsession with self
optimization and treating our brains as computers to be reprogrammed,
NLP seems more relevant than.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
Ever it's that pervasiveness that sent us down this road
of trying to figure out where it comes from, in
part through the story of one of its central figures,
Richard Bandler, brilliant outside the box healer.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
They wouldn't give me a license to do therapy because
I'm not qualified.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
Therapy tries to get you to relive trauma. I try
to get people to stop thinking about it so much.
My techniques focus on getting people to take control of
their mind.
Speaker 10 (40:00):
Slick Hustler who sold pseudo scientific life hacks to the
US military and inspired hundreds of imitators.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
It spread all over the planet. It's everywhere. I'm translated
into dozens of languages.
Speaker 10 (40:13):
We're deeply skeptical of gurus, but we want to separate
what's legit from the jargon and empty promises.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So we're going to interview sales with this.
Speaker 10 (40:23):
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused pick
up artists. She looked at me and she said, mondong
agon numb. And I said that's because you have a
message for me.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
What's your message? And then she.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Leaned over and none.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Tongue said something about wanting to pleasure me an.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
NLP's most famous practitioner, Tony Robbins.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Tony Robbins doing all this, he said he's the best
NLP guy in the world, which I did, and when
people said I wasn't, I challenged him. I said, what's
up an help off? You give me your worst patient
and we'll see who can handle them quicker. I said,
I'm happy to do it, and I want every time
I did, all.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Of whom credit NLP as the basis of their success.
So do some accused cult leaders or are they innocent victims?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Well?
Speaker 7 (41:07):
I knew that it was cultish and weird, but I
liked it for all of those reasons.
Speaker 10 (41:12):
We'll even test NLP on ourselves. I don't know what
I expected to get exactly, but what I got were
some pretty specific images from my childhood. This is wild
and on you, the listener, with your consent.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
A whole lot of NLP is pretty shady, but some
of it is real. We're going to dig into those
parts and the science of hypnosis behind them, and don't worry,
we will get to the murder.
Speaker 10 (41:43):
Oh and we'll even hear from the man himself, Richard Bambler.
Speaker 8 (41:47):
This is what we referred to as a hit job,
and I find this very fucking offensive.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Richard mind Games is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. The series is created and hosted by me
Alice Hines and Zoe Lascas. It's produced by writer Alsop
and Dara Lukpotts, edited by Kate Osborne, Editorial consulting from
(42:18):
Adiza Egan, original composition and mixing by Steve Boone, fact
checking by Aman Whalen from Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 10 (42:26):
Our executive producers are Ozwaloshan Mangesha Tikador, and Kate Osborne
from iHeart, Our executive producers are Katrina Norble and Nikki
Etour
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