March 5, 2025 • 59 mins
Dive into a thought-provoking exploration of cults and the mechanisms of control that often keep individuals bound to them. In this engaging episode, we connect with Gavri'el HaCohen, co-host of the Leaving Eden podcast, as we unpack the complexities of cult dynamics through the lens of the BITE model developed by cult expert Dr. Stephen Hassan. Discover what truly defines a cult, the psychological tactics they employ, and learn how even seemingly benign organizations can exert control over their members.
We also delve into personal narratives, illustrating the challenges faced by those who navigate life post-cult and the hurdles of rebuilding their identities. From exploring the critical differences between organized religions and cults to understanding the emotional toll coerced beliefs can have, our conversation highlights the essential takeaway: awareness and critical thinking are paramount. Cult-like influences linger in various aspects of our lives, making it crucial to discern where the line is drawn between supportive community and oppressive control.
Join us on this enlightening journey of curiosity as we unravel the nuances of belief, community, and self-empowerment. Subscribe now for insightful discussions and remember to share this episode with someone who could benefit from it!
Follow these links to check out Leaving Eden podcast:
instagram.com/LeavingEdenPodcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/6jh5cAYRXAoqBSIQ1OckG5?si=327fa267496b4390
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Victor (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast.
I am your host today, victor,joined always by Rob.
Hello, and Cesar, thank you forjoining us today.
Cesar, thank you for having me.
It's been a while we haven'tseen you on interviews.
Cesar (00:16):
Always there, I just don't say anything.
So you're like Chris, but Ihave a reason we can't have two
guys like that.
Victor (00:21):
I have a reason we can't have two guys like that On this
episode, we will be joined byGavi Hakohen, co-host of the
Leaving Eden podcast, to talkabout cults.
Do you guys know anything aboutcults?
Cesar (00:32):
No.
Rob (00:33):
Rob didn't you try to start one.
I did unsuccessfully, so I'mhere to figure out how to do it
the right way.
I had a couple followers, butthey left me.
Victor (00:46):
Just like everyone else in your life.
Cesar (00:48):
We're still here.
Hey, we have you.
You know what's funny?
I think, knowing everythingthat I know about Scientology,
that I should probably like it,but I don't.
I like science stuff.
It's all about science stuff,and it's never grabbed my
attention.
Victor (01:04):
I don't think there's any actual science.
Cesar (01:05):
No, yeah, it's about Errol Hubbard, and science.
Victor (01:07):
The science fiction writer.
Cesar (01:09):
Yeah, I like that stuff too.
Victor (01:11):
Gavi Ha-Cohen is here to help us answer the question.
I'm not dumb, but what's a cult?
Cesar (01:17):
Welcome to the I'm Not Dumb but podcast, where we won't
claim to have the answers tolife's deepest questions.
Victor (01:23):
But we'll give you an exciting journey into the realms
of knowledge you never knewyou'd either.
Cesar (01:27):
Might be mainstream, but not common knowledge.
From artificial intelligence toconspiracy theories, no topic
is too taboo for us to explore.
Let's get curious together.
Victor (01:38):
Gavi, welcome to the show.
Glad you can join us.
Gavriel HaCohen (01:41):
I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Victor (01:46):
So you are the co-host on the Leaving Eden podcast?
Yes, tell us how that cameabout and tell us what do you
guys talk about?
Gavriel HaCohen (01:53):
So the Leaving Eden podcast is a show I host
with my friend Sadie.
She was raised as a Christianfundamentalist.
She was raised in a very cultyversion of Christianity and we
became friends just because weworked at the same car
dealership in 2019.
(02:15):
And we both were interested inmusic.
We were both kind of interestedin religion and reading about
religion and stuff.
And this was after she had leftthat religious environment.
And then the pandemic hit andwe decided to start a podcast
about it.
Victor (02:29):
Nice Pandemic podcasts.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:31):
Yeah, and you know, five years later, almost
here we still are and here we'restill doing it, and now it's
like my main job that I do.
Is that podcast?
Victor (02:42):
I can't believe it's been five years.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:44):
Yeah, it feels like it was yesterday, doesn't
it?
Victor (02:46):
since the hoax.
Cesar (02:52):
Okay, I've gotten every vaccine, by the way even though
they're not even out.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:57):
Yet so we talk about like cults, we talk about
religion, we we talk about awide variety of topics, but
generally centered around cults,religion, christianity,
fundamentalism, things like that.
And that's what we do on theshow and it's a lot of fun and I
(03:19):
really get a lot out of it andI've learned so much throughout
the time that we've been doingit.
Cesar (03:24):
It's a pretty good listen .
I heard it.
Rob (03:26):
It's pretty good well, thank you so much and it's long
form, but it like you're in itwell, I I do a lot of editing to
try to cut the dead air out.
Victor (03:36):
So that's, I try to keep it moving when did you get that
first interest in religion?
Like what about religion waslike interesting to you?
Gavriel HaCohen (03:44):
To me.
So I was raised like Jewish,but not that Jewish.
Victor (03:49):
Okay.
Gavriel HaCohen (03:50):
Is how I would explain it, like I was raised
very culturally Jewish, but youknow, and we went to synagogue
sometimes and I went to Hebrewschool for a couple of years,
but there it never really stuckwith me.
When I was younger and as I gotolder it became something that
was more interesting to me.
So I'm from Portland, oregon,that's where I grew up, and
(04:10):
Portland is a very secular cityPortland- is a city.
It's not a place where you see achurch on every street corner
and it's not a place where mostof the people that you hang out
with when you're a kid even goto church or are really
religiously involved in general,but religion that has such a
(04:32):
massive impact on society.
So when I started reading moreabout religion and reading more
about different religions, Isort of approached it almost as
an outsider and I know I hadsome I don't want to say nominal
, but a decent amount ofknowledge.
But the way that I approachedit was much more as an outsider
(04:53):
rather than somebody who wasraised with a very strict
tradition, like I know a lot ofother people were.
So when I met Sadie, she wassomebody who, when I talked to
her, she told me basically I wasraised in a cult.
Victor (05:08):
Like that was the first thing.
Hi, my name's Sadie.
You were raised in a cult?
Gavriel HaCohen (05:12):
Well, no, she said she was raised in a cult.
Rob (05:14):
Oh, okay, she opened with that.
Yeah, that's one way.
Gavriel HaCohen (05:17):
So I mean, that's not how she introduced
herself to me, but it came uppretty quickly that she was
raised in a cult Like she wasraised in a form of Christianity
where, you know, women aren'tallowed to wear pants, they have
to wear skirts or, and you know, if you and very repressive for
women very extreme forms ofpurity culture which is not
(05:41):
something that you want.
It's very bad for peoplepsychologically.
There's a lot of people who Italk to now who are raised in
that sort of thing, who do haveissues with that.
As an adult they're stilldealing with.
But she was raised in a veryextreme form of Christianity and
so living in Portland andOregon most of my life, I mean I
knew people who were Christianbut I didn't know people who
(06:02):
were that crazy level ofChristian, because those people
tend to kind of insulatethemselves from everybody else
and they tend to only reallylike to hang out with each other
.
So when I meet somebody who wasraised like that, I had so many
questions, I was so interestedand that's kind of where
everything got started.
Victor (06:20):
I was raised Catholic, okay, and I didn't think it was
anything.
It was like the norm.
I mean, I'm from New York State.
Everyone that I went to schoolwith the majority were Irish,
italian and Spanish, so everyonearound me was Catholic.
Religion wasn't something thatwas really talked about.
There were the five Jewish kidsthat were in the school.
(06:41):
I remember going to Sundayschool right Like CCD and seeing
everyone that I went the school.
I remember going to Sundayschool right Like CCD and seeing
everyone that I went to schoolwith.
So I was like, oh, okay, thisis just an extension of the
neighborhood around me.
And it was only until, I thinkI left New York and really
started meeting other Christiansects that I was like, oh, okay,
(07:04):
it's different.
And I remember I accidentallywent to the christian service
instead of the catholic one.
Bro, I was blown away.
Like first of all, I was likewhere's jesus?
I'm like I don't see jesusanywhere.
Gavriel HaCohen (07:17):
This is kind of weird because it's idolatry,
right.
I don't have the crucifix, theyhave the cross.
Victor (07:21):
No crucifix the guy wasn't boring.
He was like exciting, he was upthere, he was just talking, he
started showing us movie clips.
But yeah, the music wasn't justlike depressing, I was like
what is?
Rob (07:32):
this, yeah, live music.
Gavriel HaCohen (07:34):
Everyone's dancing so what kind of like?
I'm curious what kind of uhchristianity was it?
Was it like baptist?
Was it like justnon-denominational, was it?
Victor (07:43):
I think it was non-denominational.
I think it wasnon-denominational.
It was like it resembled almostlike mega church type stuff.
Oh, so you had like the praiseand worship music with the live
band and the yeah, yeah, yeah,but it was like more upbeat and
honestly I felt kind of weirdbecause I was like this isn't
depressing and I'm not beingtold I'm a sinner.
It's a different vibe.
(08:04):
I mean, since then I am nolonger religious and since then
I look back on religiousgatherings and I'm like this is
weird.
Gavriel HaCohen (08:13):
I mean, I think for a lot of people, especially
when it's like for eitherCatholicism or Judaism or like
Orthodox Christianity, a lot ofit is like an ethnic thing.
A lot of it is like a culturalor like an ethnic thing just as
much as it is a religious thing.
Victor (08:28):
It's part community building.
Gavriel HaCohen (08:30):
Yeah, and a lot of you know if you have
immigrant communities, they'regoing to stick together in the
churches, the way that they'regoing to do that.
Victor (08:37):
Where do you think the line is drawn between a cult or
a religion?
Rob (08:41):
And after that, could you just what is your definition on
a cult too?
Gavriel HaCohen (08:45):
So we actually I'm glad that you asked that
question, because there is avery methodical and laid out way
to determine whether thedifference between cults and
religions.
So I'm going to refer you tothe work of the cult expert, Dr
Stephen Hassan.
He is somebody who grew up in aJewish family but he joined the
(09:11):
Moonies in the 1970s and then,after sort of getting out of the
Moonies and un-brainwashinghimself, he has basically
devoted his life to trying toidentify and build a system in
order to identify authoritarianand cult control.
And so if you go to his website,which is freedomofmindcom, he
(09:35):
has laid out there what he callsthe BITE model of authoritarian
control authoritarian control,and the BITE model is an acronym
.
So B-I-T-E B stands forbehavior, I stands for
(09:55):
information, t stands forthought and E stands for emotion
.
So there's four aspects of cultcontrol.
It is behavior control,information control, thought
control and emotion control.
And so if you go to his website, he has laid out there a lot of
examples of what behaviorcontrol, information control,
thought control and emotioncontrol can be and how they
manifest themselves.
Life to a certain degree.
(10:15):
For something to be classifiedas a cult rather than a religion
and there are some religionsthat you could say are culty
(10:36):
there are some cult groups thataren't religious at all.
You could say and I wouldpersonally agree with the
argument that an abusive,coercive domestic partnership,
like an abusive relationship,functions identically to cult
control.
So that could even just be asituation where that is a
one-on-one cult and there's noreligion involved in that at all
(10:58):
.
But it functions exactly thesame way as a cult would if it's
like Jonestown, if it's BranchDavidian, something like that,
and the methods of control arethe same whether it's one person
, or whether it's a hundredpeople or a million people.
Victor (11:14):
The spiritual aspect isn't always needed.
It isn't always needed.
Gavriel HaCohen (11:18):
But spiritualizing problems and
spiritualizing the things thatyou're going through can be a
very effective method foremotion control.
So I mean we can start withbehavior control if you want to
just like go through the bitemodel.
Victor (11:31):
Is it like a 20 question quiz that tells me what Game of
Thrones character?
Gavriel HaCohen (11:58):
I am, you could .
I'm Gryffindor.
That's weird, what we considerto be like the gold standard of
how you identify authoritariancontrol.
So for behavior control andinformation control.
Behavior control can be thingslike telling you how to dress,
telling you what food to eat,telling you where to go when,
but it can also be somethingthat is much more nefarious than
(12:20):
that, like it can determine whoyou have sex with or who you
don't have sex with, who you arearen't allowed to have sex with
.
It could say, oh, you arerequired to commit x crime as
like a show of devotion to us.
that could be almost like a gang, yeah I mean, uh, criminal
syndicates and criminal gangsoperate pretty much identically
(12:41):
to cults as well.
Often, and when you talk topeople who have left gang
culture, they talk about howdifficult it is to leave and you
can feel like you're betrayingthe other people that you're in
that gang with, or whether ornot you can feel like your life
might be in danger, becausethose are all tactics that cult
(13:02):
groups will use to try to keeppeople in.
So behavior control could bejust something as innocuous as
like oh, you wear this specialgarment around you to show your
religious devotion.
That's something that justbecause you do that, that
doesn't mean that you're in acult, but that is an aspect of
behavior control.
(13:30):
Aspect of behavior control,information control is pretty
easy to identify.
Information control can besomething like you only get
information from pre-approvedsources.
So, using the example of, say,you're in a really
fundamentalist church and thechurch has very specific
doctrines about what is andisn't appropriate content for
people to watch.
So you know, content that hasnudity is banned.
(13:53):
Content that has swear words isbanned.
You know, anything that'sbasically above a PG rating is
banned.
Then it could be a situationwhere you can only watch content
that isn't that if somereligious leader watches it
first and says, yes, this isokay for you to watch, so it's
restricting outside information.
Victor (14:15):
Could that just be convincing you that other
sources of information are bad?
Yes, absolutely.
Gavriel HaCohen (14:21):
That also goes into thought control as well,
and I'll get into that in alittle bit.
Part of information control canalso be creating a culture of
people informing on each otherif they've done things wrong and
that helps to create a cultureof mistrust.
(14:41):
So people, if they're havingdoubts about what they're being
asked to do or what is requiredof them, they feel like they
can't talk to anybody and it'svery isolating if they feel like
they might be disciplined forspeaking to somebody about an
issue that they might be having.
Victor (14:58):
But when?
Gavriel HaCohen (14:58):
you talk about authoritarian regimes and you go
back to communist Russia.
Authoritarian regimes like thatabsolutely function the same
way that cults.
Do you know?
If you look at countries likeNorth Korea, they function
basically with a cult ofpersonality around somebody like
Kim Jong-un, who is believed tobe basically godlike.
Victor (15:22):
And there is the reason the sun comes up in the sunsets.
Yeah, that's literally what.
That's what I heard.
Gavriel HaCohen (15:27):
That's what I heard yeah, but they have such a
tight control over whatinformation gets in and what
information gets out right and,and so propaganda and
manufacturing propaganda canjust as well be a part of that.
You know, um for informationcontrol.
Uh, sadie was raised in a formof Christianity where their
(15:49):
educational materials that shewas taught, the Christian
schooling that she went through,was very substandard and it was
really more like indoctrinationthan it was actual education.
So the indoctrination intosomething like being very
anti-evolution, because that wasa big issue for them, that she
(16:10):
was literally taught in schoolthat the Loch Ness Monster not
only is real but is a dinosaurthat survived the flood of Noah.
And scientists want to cover upthe fact that the Loch Ness
Monster is real, because theLoch Ness Monster's existence
disproves evolution and provesthat humans and dinosaurs lived
(16:34):
at the same time.
Victor (16:36):
I mean you're breaking my heart.
I'm keeping the hope alive,nessie.
It's not only the censorship,though, because I'm assuming
that, because people in cultsaren't completely isolated
unless you're in North Korea,you're still getting some
evidence information.
So the outside information thatyou're getting you're just
(16:57):
being told that's lies.
Gavriel HaCohen (16:59):
Right, and so that's sort of where thought
control can come in.
Victor (17:02):
Right.
Gavriel HaCohen (17:03):
That a big part of thought control, which is
the third element of the bitemodel.
Behavior control andinformation control are two
things that can be done to youby somebody else.
So somebody else can controlwhat you wear, somebody else can
control what you eat, somebodyelse can control what
information or what media youconsume.
But, the latter two elements ofthe BITE model, which are
(17:26):
thought control and emotioncontrol, are things that you can
only do to yourself.
Oh wow, so the thought controlis something that you have to do
to yourself.
You can be trained to do it,but part of thought control is
like thought-stopping cliches.
So let's use the evolutionthing as an example.
(17:46):
So Sady was taught thatwhenever a scientist came up to
you and said something likemillions and billions of years
and used the phrase millions andbillions of years, you were
supposed to laugh at that.
And they were taught physicallylaugh at that just to sort of
create the Like an emotionalanchor like a Pavlovian response
(18:09):
.
Yeah, exactly.
In your brain to say, whensomebody says millions of years
or billions of years, you laughat that because that's silly,
that's ridiculous, nobody couldactually believe that, because
we know that the earth is 6000years old, or just like a turn
of phrase that can be used toprevent you from thinking things
(18:30):
that are sort of unapprovedthoughts.
So in her life this is, I guess,a good example is that she was
taught to always have joy, andalways having joy means joy is
an acronym for Jesus, others,yourself, and that's the
priority with which you have toaddress the needs.
(18:51):
So the needs of Jesus first,then the needs of others, then
the needs of yourself, and youcan only really address your own
needs once you've addressed theneeds of everybody else.
There's also Bible verses thatyou can use, things like the
heart is deceitful anddesperately wicked.
So if you have a desire that isnot something that is sort of
(19:13):
approved, then you have to keeptelling yourself no, the heart
is deceitful and desperatelywicked, and that gets you to
self-doubt and doubt your ownmorality, so that you will defer
to others judgment rather thanbeing able to think for yourself
.
Cesar (19:27):
This is incredibly damaging to people who are
raised like this wow, yeah,breaking down this fortress,
right like your, your um co-host, sadie.
What triggered her to begin thehealing process?
Because you have all theseforces going against you.
There has to be some sort oflike, some, some kind of moment
in her mind or in anyone's mind,where they're like.
(19:49):
There has to be something else.
Gavriel HaCohen (19:52):
It's a long process and there's a lot of
people who have been through thesame sort of thing.
She was having sort of sometheological doubts about what
she was being taught, becauseshe's a very smart person and
her mother is still alive.
Her father sadly died a coupleof years ago.
It was very sad, and she grewup in an environment where women
(20:15):
were not allowed a lot offreedom and women were regarded
as very much lesser.
But her father really wantedher to have a good understanding
of the Bible and a goodunderstanding of religion and
what it meant to be a Christian,and so he educated her pretty
thoroughly theologically.
However, this tends to lead topeople having doubts because
(20:41):
when you go in and you readthings, then the more
fundamentalist approach and thedeeper you dig, the more
fundamentalist approach and morestrict approach tends to kind
of form some cracks, and so thepeople that are the most sold
out, the people that are themost like dialed in.
It tends to be a lot of thepeople that do tend to
(21:02):
deconstruct.
So part of it was that sherealized that she's bisexual she
, and that she was taught thatin order for people to be
bisexual, it meant it, or peopleto be gay at all.
It meant that they had eitherlike a demon was attacking them
or a demon was attached to them,or something had happened to
(21:22):
them in their lives that turnedthem gay.
And she knew the second hadn'thappened, and she knew that she
prayed so much that a demoncouldn't have possibly attached
itself to her.
So she started having questionsabout whether or not she was
being taught.
That was true and then afterthat, she was also having
(21:43):
questions about what it meant tobe saved and what salvation
truly meant.
Because she was raised in aversion of fundamentalism and a
version of Christianity, andthis, I guess, gets into, like
salvation doctrine and what yourspecific church believes,
because and different Christianshave different beliefs about
this Christians have differentbeliefs about this.
(22:05):
But her belief that she wasraised with was basically that
if you ask Jesus to save you,then you go to heaven, no matter
what, but if you don't, thenyou go to hell.
And so she would go and knock ondoors when she was a kid and as
a teenager and when she was ayoung adult, trying to get
people to pray a prayer with herand ask Jesus to save them so
that they could go to heaven,and it didn't matter whether
they converted to be her form ofChristian or not, because they
(22:32):
were also taught that if theytruly got saved, then they would
want to be her right kind ofChristian, because Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, would come intotheir hearts and change their
desires to make them want to beChristian.
And the more she thought aboutthat, that tended to be a thing
that didn't make as much sense,especially when she started to
think about all of the peoplewho lived places in the world
(22:54):
where Christianity wasn't reallyan option, and whether or not
God was going to condemn thosepeople to an eternity of
conscious torment just becausenobody had ever come to them and
told them about Jesus.
And the more she thought aboutthat, the less that made sense.
So she'd been thinking aboutthese things sort of under the
surface for a while and when shewas, I believe, 20 years old
(23:17):
and this was in 2012, so she was19 or 20 years old she was at a
Bible college called HilesAnderson College in Northwest
Indiana and the man who was thechaplain of the Bible College
(23:56):
was arrested because a scandalthat really rocked her church
and really rocked her beliefs.
At the same time, this man's sonwas the head of the
disciplinary committee of theBible college and she was being
persecuted by the disciplinarycouncil or whatever of this
Bible college for something thatwas pretty innocuous.
(24:17):
She got a side hug, basicallyfrom her boyfriend at the time,
and they threatened to kick herout over that head of this
disciplinary committee washaving people who were members
of this church write letters tothis judge asking leniency for
(24:38):
his father who had sexuallyabused a minor, and so there was
just this level of hypocrisythat really ended up being a
hard reason that helped push herout, and it took years and
years and years.
You know, in thisdeconstruction process, if
you're raised in thisenvironment, it isn't like
there's something, there's likea normal for you to default back
(24:59):
to all of the things thatpeople like myself, who was
raised very secularly thought,think of as like the default.
These are things that thosepeople have to learn for the
first time as adults.
So, there's no normal for themto default back to.
They have to learn all thatstuff again, and so this is a
process that takes a lot ofpeople years and years and years
(25:21):
and years and years.
Victor (25:22):
Would that cause any animosity, though, towards,
let's say, agencies such aspolice or FBI?
Whoever arrested them, how arethey to discern the difference
between they're being persecutedfor their beliefs or no?
Whoever arrested them, how arethey to discern the difference
between they're being persecutedfor their beliefs or no?
They actually committed a crime.
Gavriel HaCohen (25:38):
Well, it depends on how bought in you are
.
I mean, if you're bought inenough that you think that our
dear leader can do no wrong,then you would think, oh well,
the devil is attacking me.
The devil is attacking thischurch because it's too big and
it's too strong and this churchhas to save America and this
church has to save the world.
Rob (25:58):
This one time I was walking down Times Square with my
cousin.
She was in California so shewanted to check it out and we
were walking around and this guycomes up to us and he gives us
a card.
He's like why don't you guyscome by?
We're having a meeting later.
So my cousin's like oh, we'renot doing anything.
So I'm looking at the car.
I'm like I don't know what thisis.
I was like listen, we, you know, there's happy hour.
(26:20):
She's like let's, let's stop bythis thing.
I don't know what this is Like.
She's very like go with theuniverse type deal.
So we go to this place.
So they come in, they put usall in different rooms with a
huge TV screen and we all haveto sit down and we watch, like
this 15 minute video.
And I was like am I going toget?
killed in here and this videowas like hitting every like
(26:41):
insecurities problems,everything I got going on.
Victor (26:44):
It is just attacking every single one of them, so
it's telling you how you missedyour workout.
Yeah, you don't look good, so Iwalk out of there.
Yeah totally.
Rob (26:54):
They wouldn't even let me leave.
They were like you have to fillthis form out and the questions
it was like 50 questions and itwas so personal.
What are your failures Like?
What do you like Like?
Cesar (27:06):
like so many, real deep yeah, and I was like where do I
begin?
Rob (27:08):
I'm going to be for hours.
So I I I had to fill it out.
I was like where do I begin?
I'm going to be for hours Ineed another page here, yeah, so
I had to fill it out.
I was like I'm just going towrite whatever I need to get the
hell out of here.
We get out of there and I goI'm never doing this again.
Like what was that?
She's like I don't knowWhatever.
We walk out the back cab, justthe engine broke like completely
(27:32):
shut down, broke right in frontof the church.
And we come out and I was likeit is not a sign.
It is not a sign we got to getout of here yeah well, now I'm a
level eight silver dragon anduh, whatever they got, but by
then I thought it was reallyweird.
But so in like sadie's casewhere she grew up into it and
she was like indoctrinated at anearly age, I mean, what are
(27:54):
some of the tactics ortechniques they're using to kind
of get people in?
It seemed like a very like thatAnderson Renewal by Anderson
Windows guy who comes to yourhouse.
It felt like that.
It was very marketing forward,like very pressure-based.
Are they all kind of like thator like I think it depends.
Gavriel HaCohen (28:14):
Going back to Scientology, just real quick, if
you're interested in podcastsand this is a pretty fairly
well-known podcast, but there'sa podcast that I like that they
also talk about, like Colts,weird fringe science stuff like
this it's called oh no, ross andCarrie, and they joined the
church of Scientology to makecontent out of.
Victor (28:35):
Yeah, wow, and they joined the church of scientology
to make content out of.
Gavriel HaCohen (28:37):
Yeah, wow, and they're still alive to talk
about it.
Yeah, they have like a, I think, 10 or 12 episode series about
it.
They also joined the church ofjesus christ of latter-day
saints and and made podcastepisodes about their experiences
doing that.
Highly recommend that showinteresting.
Yeah, that's really good whatwas your, what was your question
again, like, just liketechniques or tactics like to
(28:58):
recruit new people a lot of itcomes from you know.
Say you have an adverse lifeexperience, say something awful
happens to you or you're justunhappy with yourself.
A high control group will do.
It's not about going andfinding everybody, it's going.
It's about going and findingthe people who will do it.
And those people tend to bepeople who they're going through
(29:21):
something, they're insecureabout something.
They have somethingspecifically in their life that
feels unfulfilling and what thechurch or what a cult will do is
.
They will say what the churchor what a cult will do is.
They will say we have astep-by-step rule book that if
you follow this to the T, thenyou will get desired result.
(29:42):
You will get the life that youwant.
I went to a gym once and theytold me the same thing.
Victor (29:51):
Yeah Well, I mean they use the same tactics mean have
you ever done crossfit?
Gavriel HaCohen (29:55):
and you're telling me that's not a cult,
that is a cult yeah, man, like Iknow of people you know their
parents were grew up in a veryunstable household.
You know they had a parent whowas like absent, or a parent who
was using drugs, or a parentwho was just like not there for
(30:15):
them and they didn't want toreplicate that same issue for
their kids.
But they also hadn't seen whatdoes good parenting look like
behavior modeled for them.
So they're like I don't knowwhat to do.
What do I do?
Do I raise my kids properly?
And you know who will tell youhow to raise your kids is
(30:36):
religious people will tell youhow to raise your kids.
They will.
They will give you all theinformation that you'll need.
They have their own parentingbooks.
They have the community.
They have a support system ofother parents who will tell you
what they're doing, who willhelp you out when you need
something, and they willbasically give you a checklist
(30:57):
of if you do X, y, z thing.
If you raise your kids in thischurch, you have them behave to
these set of standards, eitherhow you dress.
You spend this amount of timein your church.
You bring your kids up in youthgroup.
You send them to Christianschool.
You don't teach them aboutevolution but you teach them
about creation instead, and thenyou send them to our Bible
(31:18):
college, then what you're goingto end up with is a kid who is
going to get married and they'regoing to have children, and
you're going to be a grandparentand everybody's going to be
happy and they're you know,everyone's going to live happily
ever after.
And they're going to give youlike a prescribed list of if you
do xyz thing and it will bedifficult to do xyz thing,
because if it were easy theneveryone would do it but if you
(31:40):
do xyz thing, then you will getout.
You know this result and thatis the result that you want and
that's what they really prey on.
Because if somebody comes andknocks on your door and says,
hey, change all of yourbehaviors in your life or you're
going to go to hell, thenyou're going to say get out of
here, go bug somebody else.
But if somebody knocks on yourdoor and says, you may be
(32:02):
feeling down right now, butJesus loves you and come to us
and we will help you out and wewill give you tools that you
need to survive, then you wouldsay maybe there's something to
this, it's probably worth a shot.
Victor (32:18):
So people who are vulnerable, lost in sense of
belonging, or maybe they arelooking for community or just
looking just for guidance inlife.
Gavriel HaCohen (32:29):
Or people who are just otherwise vulnerable.
There there's one tony andsusan alamo were.
Have you heard of them are?
Cesar (32:37):
you familiar.
Gavriel HaCohen (32:38):
Uh, they ran a fairly large, uh, christian
organization throughout the1970s 1980s and what they would
do is and this was was in likeHollywood, california is they
would get homeless people andthey would say we'll feed you if
(32:58):
you come to our church, you canlive on our compound and you
can eat and we'll feed you.
And they would do that and theywould get them clean from drugs
and they would get them in thechurch and then they would use
(33:19):
that as basically like amarketing tool to say look at
all this good that we're doingin the community.
But then they would also dothings like child labor.
They would do things like youknow, just taking all of the
money from all of the people whowere living there.
They would start companies andhave the church members work at
the companies, basically forfree, and then donate all of
(33:39):
their paycheck back to thechurch.
They were having childrenmanufacture bedazzled jackets
that were a very big popularfashion item throughout the
1980s.
If you look up a Lamo jackets,it's spelled like Alamo.
But if you look up a Lamojackets, uh, you'll find these
(34:01):
bedazzled jackets that are madeby child labor.
In fact, michael Jackson woreone of these jackets on the
cover of his bad album.
Wow, it's the same sort ofthing that that you, and this is
one of the reasons why, uh,people such as myself believe
that cults and abusive domesticpartnerships basically function
(34:21):
the same, because abusers willtarget people specifically who
they think are going to bevulnerable for their tactics I
imagine for every like story,like sadie, who found the
discernment to figure out okay,there's something wrong here.
Cesar (34:35):
I got to figure out how to get out.
There's countless stories ofpeople who either find
themselves in a cult, who grewup in a cult, trying to get out
but can't.
Has Sadie gone back and spokento people within that
denomination that she was inbefore that denomination that
she was in before?
Gavriel HaCohen (34:51):
Yeah, and she has, and I don't really want to
speak on that because that's youknow.
I don't really want to speak onthe personal relationships that
she might have with people whoyou know she used to know from
an earlier part of her life orwhat they're saying now.
But when we think of cults, wethink of like people who are
(35:11):
living in a compound.
Right, you know, we think oflike Waco, of like people who
are living in a compound, right,you know, we think of waco,
waco, branch, davidians, uh,flds, that was one we think of
like uh jonestown, like youmentioned earlier yeah, and
where we think of like peoplebeing cordoned off and
specifically limited frominteracting with outsiders, when
(35:32):
, in reality, most of the peoplewho are in this situation are
people that are just like amongus and walking around us day to
day, but you don't know thatthey have something that's
really controlling them andreally taking their agency away.
People who want to get out.
There's often situations where,well, maybe you're being
(35:55):
physically prevented fromleaving, but the mental barriers
to leaving the guilt, the shame, the fear are, I believe, more
powerful than physical barriers.
Victor (36:09):
And you're also losing your community as well, like if
all your friends are part of it.
Gavriel HaCohen (36:18):
Yeah.
And how do you build acommunity Like if you're in your
20s and you leave a religiousgroup that you've been?
Rob (36:22):
in your whole life.
Gavriel HaCohen (36:22):
How do you build community out of that?
And you don't know how tosocialize outside of church?
Or you were raised in churchand you don't have good social
skills, and that really dependson personality type and I know a
lot of people who areintroverted have a lot of
difficulty with that, becausegoing out and just saying hi,
I'm, you know, I'm Gabi, youwant to be friends with me,
that's not something thateverybody could do.
I mean, I moved to a new city atthe age of 29 and didn't know
(36:48):
anybody when I moved there, andyou know, now I have friends and
I live here and I'm doing greatand I'm engaged, but not
everybody can do that.
Rob (36:56):
Right.
When I hear the word cult, ithas a negative connotation to it
.
So are all cults bad, or arethere some that are yeah, where
are the good?
Gavriel HaCohen (37:04):
ones at.
Definitionally, in order forsomething to be a cult, it has
to be coercive, and I thinkthat's bad.
So yeah, if you look at thebite model and you look at, you
know, especially when you getinto the the thought control and
the emotion control, when youknow you get in situations where
this emotion is a bad emotionand you shouldn't be feeling it
like you're not allowed to feelgratitude in this situation
(37:31):
rather than anger.
Anger is not allowed.
That's not something thatsomebody should be telling you.
That is inherently coercive.
Rob (37:44):
Do these cult leaders, do they believe in what they're
teaching?
Or is it like this nefariousthought, like I'm going to do
this and I'm going to get allthis?
Is there always another thought, like another plan to take
their money to?
Victor (37:51):
have a group, does it need to revolve around one
person?
Gavriel HaCohen (37:55):
I don't think that it needs to revolve around
one person.
I think that a lot of cults canbe around.
I mean some politicalideologies you could even
qualify as a cult.
Victor (38:05):
I would say Sports teams maybe.
Gavriel HaCohen (38:09):
I mean, look, I live in Philly, I'm an Eagles
fan, I won't deny it.
Rob (38:14):
Link if you're really not an Eagles fan.
Victor (38:20):
He's too deep.
He's too deep.
Rob (38:22):
It's okay, this is a safe space.
Gavriel HaCohen (38:24):
I drank Incredible Hulk's during the
Super Bowl because they weregreen.
That's my life now.
The Super Bowl, and, you know,because they were green, that's
my life now.
No, but it doesn't necessarilyneed to revolve around a single.
I mean, definitely, having acult of personality and a leader
(38:45):
can be helpful in recruitingpeople and, you know, keeping
people in and creating thatsense of information.
Well, the leader says this andwe, we really have to trust
their judgment.
That can be a valuable tool,but it isn't always necessary.
What was the other question?
The other question was-.
Rob (39:01):
Do the leaders actually believe it?
Gavriel HaCohen (39:02):
That really depends on the situation,
because some of them I think do,and some of them are just
straight up scammers, like there.
You would be shocked how manyof these cult leaders are just
people who were low-rentgrifters, who just figured out.
I mean, if I can pretend to bea religious guy, then these
(39:25):
people, then you know, I cankeep getting away with running
the same scam over and over andover in different cities and
then eventually it gets out ofhand and they have a whole cult
on their hands, um some pointdelude themselves into believing
.
Oh well, I'm a religious leader, I'm a good person, because,
you know, religious leaders aregood people.
I did a good thing in mycommunity.
I I contributed to this charitybut I always thought about that
(39:48):
.
Rob (39:49):
I was like, how do they start a cult like?
Like, do you have to be goodlooking to start a call?
Cesar (39:54):
because if I see this guy with, like you, ever seen what
I am not?
Rob (39:58):
what david koresh looks like no, david, not a good.
Gavriel HaCohen (40:01):
A lot of these people not great looking people
but they're just I mean, I, Icould tell you how many of these
people just low rentrentgrifters.
There's also a subset of peoplewho I would put somebody like
Jim Jones into this category.
Jim Jones was somebody who wasraised very religious and who
(40:26):
got sucked into a theologicalmovement called Oneness
Pentecostalism and also holinesspentecostalism, which are these
sort of niche christian sects?
Uh, so if you know, if you knowabout christianity, there's, uh
, you know, catholicism, there'sprotestantism, and
(40:47):
pentecostalism is sort of Iwould consider it like
protestant adjacent, but notexactly, and oneness or that's
not the one with the snakes isit?
Rob (40:56):
I mean some of them do that .
That's pescatarian um.
Gavriel HaCohen (41:04):
Basically, they believe that the holy spirit of
jesus came back to earth in anevent at the Pentecost or the um
, at basically a festival, andcaused people to do what we now
refer to as speaking in tongues.
Victor (41:21):
Oh, okay.
Gavriel HaCohen (41:22):
Okay, and so they put a big emphasis on what
they call gifts of the HolySpirit.
So they believe that the HolySpirit can sort of imbue you
with the supernatural abilities.
And the Holy Spirit for thoseof imbue you with supernatural
abilities and the Holy Spiritfor those that don't know, is
the third part of the Christiantrinity.
So there's God the Father,which is God up in heaven.
There's God the Son, which isJesus, and then there's the Holy
(41:43):
Spirit, which is the version ofGod that comes down and affects
your life on earth.
And the Holy Spirit came downto earth after Jesus died and
then went back up to heaven.
And the Holy Spirit came downto earth after Jesus died and
then went back up to heaven.
Now, oneness Pentecostalism is adoctrine of Christianity that
rejects the Trinity, so itbelieves that there is just one
(42:04):
God and not in the Trinitariandoctrine.
And then when that is combinedwith holiness Pentecostalism,
holiness Pentecostalism is areligious movement that believes
that God, when the Holy Spiritcomes and acts in your life, you
become a holy being, sort oflike Jesus.
So Jim Jones was involved inoneness Pentecostalism and
(42:28):
holiness Pentecostalism.
The thing that he did was hesort of was somebody who I
believe had like narcissistictendencies and a messianic
complex.
And so if you believe in theholiness Pentecostal movement
and you have narcissistictendencies and a messianic
complex, then you can also sortof take that extra theological
(42:50):
step and say I am, you know, theholiness comes through me, I am
also God.
Victor (42:57):
Right.
Gavriel HaCohen (42:57):
So when you go and you look at the things that
he was doing in Californiabefore he Right California and
trying to be very sociallyprogressive because this was
supposedly a good thing for himto be doing, even though I think
(43:26):
that his motivations for doingthat were much more
self-centered than altruisticand that was how he was
recruiting members.
He was recruiting members witha theology that he called
apostolic socialism, wherebasically it's like Christianity
but sin equates to capitalism.
(43:47):
So, that was his theologicalmovement.
So he was recruiting people inCalifornia in the 70s with very
socialist ideals and very uh,socially progressive ideals and
at the same time he was alsousing a lot of drugs and also
(44:08):
that'll do.
Victor (44:09):
Oh, he was.
Well, it was.
Gavriel HaCohen (44:10):
You know, it was the time he was I mean he
was sauced up like you know,like nobody crazy times and he,
he was, you know, deeplyparanoid, as will happen.
So when you look at a personlike him and you look at how
things ended with all of thosepeople dying, you end up with
somebody who of the himself atthe beginning that he's doing
(44:42):
the right thing because he hasall of these very altruistic
good works that he's trying todo in the community, but then
you know he he's being verycoercive at the same time and
ends up killing a lot of peopleis there a cult religious or
non-religious, or spiritual andnon-spiritual that you see in
like everyday society that kindkind of raises your suspicion or
(45:04):
makes you get kind of worriedabout?
Victor (45:06):
Let's talk about Apple.
Cesar (45:08):
Apple users.
Victor (45:09):
I will not have you talk shit about Tim Cook in this
podcast.
Gavriel HaCohen (45:13):
I mean you want to talk about failure of
succession?
Yeah, yeah, I mean I rememberApple was like, hey, we made a
iphone, iphone's cool.
And I was like wow.
And that was in like 2007.
It was amazing.
They made the ipod.
I had the ipod.
It was amazing they made theyou know, they made logic, they
(45:33):
made a final cut.
That's them right, or is thatanything?
I don't know yeah, they're likewe made all the software that
you want, we made all the, andnow they're like.
Cesar (45:41):
We have a better battery.
Victor (45:45):
We changed the shape of our AirPods.
Cesar (45:48):
We got rid of the jack, but now we brought it back.
Yeah.
Gavriel HaCohen (45:51):
A cult that I see in society today.
I mean, I could talk about MAGAand talk about who you know
view him as basically somebodywho can do no wrong, and that's
something that I I see is veryharmful.
Rob (46:06):
But I think that there's also the issue of the crisis of
succession there as well well,don't talk too bad, in case we
sell out on this podcast and gofull right.
Victor (46:16):
That's what we're trying to.
We got to get their attentionfirst.
I'll tell you.
Gavriel HaCohen (46:19):
It's a good.
It's a good way to make money.
Nothing sells like outrage.
You see these people on theinternet, on YouTube, and
they're just like.
This is why the latest Marvelmovie sucks.
It went woke and I'm just likeI don't even like it has like
three million views or somethingand you're just like who is
watching this shit?
Rob (46:39):
There was one movie that came out and I could never
understand, but it was like thegolden compass.
Why was that so controversial?
Gavriel HaCohen (46:46):
it's the golden cup that the golden compass
backing, like you mean, based onthe philip pullman book okay,
so it was after a book that Ididn't read.
Rob (46:54):
That's fine back in.
Gavriel HaCohen (46:55):
I would highly recommend that book.
Victor (46:56):
That book's fantastic for the rest of the audience
here, what do you?
Gavriel HaCohen (46:59):
is that animated talking about no, no,
so, actually no, here's.
Here's the thing.
I love those books and you wantto talk about like books about
religion and books about likereligious control over society.
Those are great books.
Uh, the his dark materialseries by philip pullman
fantastic.
They did a movie backing likethe 2000s with nicole kidman and
(47:20):
daniel craig.
The movie was not good.
Uh, I don't think it was a goodadaptation of the story at all,
but then in I want to say like2019, hbo did a series of it and
I thought the series was oh,really okay um, but I mean those
books are quite subversive whenit comes to the power of
religion in society and what itmeans and what sin means and
(47:44):
what the soul is and whatinnocence is.
And fantastic book series.
Highly recommend those bookseries.
That is like one of my favoritebook series ever.
Great like young adult fiction.
Fantastic About like teenagerstrying to save the world.
Rob (48:03):
Yeah, because I remember when it came out there was some
sort of religious.
I mean, I didn't watch themovie, but I didn't realize that
there was a whole book seriesbehind it.
But everyone online was like,oh, the books are better.
And I was like, yeah, well, howdo we read that?
Gavriel HaCohen (48:15):
I mean, I would definitely agree with that, but
it but like it's just you know,these days.
I think that especially one ofthe issues that I actually do
think is a huge issue as far asindoctrination into extremist
ideologies is social mediaalgorithms.
Once you understand that socialmedia is a platform for selling
(48:51):
advertising, and the moreamount of time that they can get
your eyes on that thing, themore money that they'll make.
So, rather than prioritizingwhat is good quality content,
they're prioritizing engagementabove anything else else, and so
the thing that drivesengagement is either you know,
if you want to watch, like am I,the assholes with an ai voice
over a subway surfers video orlike rage bait, so you can have
(49:12):
people making videos of thingsthat they're angry about, or
making videos that are designedto make you angry so that you'll
leave a comment, so it willdrive it up in the algorithm.
So, like I was saying there, itis very grifty, it is extremely
grifty and as somebody who, youknow, makes content for a living
, I'm frequently annoyed withthe low standards by which other
(49:36):
people have to.
You know, I mean, I guess ifyou're in an economy where
everybody has to be a grifter,then I can't be too mad at it,
but still, I wish people wouldbe better.
Victor (49:49):
I remember when we were younger in school there was a
whole thing about cite yoursources, and now we're just in
the whole.
I read it on Reddit source.
Trust me, bro.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:01):
Yeah.
Victor (50:02):
Yeah, it's very much like that and people just go
with it.
They just believe it.
Same thing with YouTubers.
I heard a guy talking aboutthis on YouTube.
He must be telling me the truth.
Rob (50:11):
Yeah, it's like my dad sends me a bunch of links.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:14):
I mean, I've been guests on some shows where
they wanted to talk to me aboutconspiracy theories or something
, something.
And they're like oh, what doyou think of this conspiracy
cult thing that's going on here?
And I'm like, and you just kindof have to like, huh that's I
don't know.
Victor (50:31):
I don't know if conspiracy theories would fit
under the the bite model oh, alot of them do oh do they?
Gavriel HaCohen (50:38):
yeah, so actually I can go back and I can
talk about this, uh, back.
So I I want to go back to thebook of revelation.
Have you, are you guys familiar?
Victor (50:46):
it's been some time I know of it, it's dusted off.
Cesar (50:50):
Yeah, I read the back the end is near and these are the
signs right yeah, that that.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:56):
So in the early 20th century the Russian Tsar
was running into some problemsin Russia.
There was this growingsocialist movement, this
Bolshevik movement within RussiaAlso.
They had basically lost a warwith Japan in the early 1900s
(51:19):
and the popular sentiment wasvery much against the czar and
against the regime.
And in order to try tocounteract this, the czar of
Russia decided to have adocument created to basically
blame all of the problems of thepeople on the Jews.
Victor (51:39):
It's a common thing in history.
Gavriel HaCohen (51:40):
Yeah, so you know, I mean it's Russia in the
early 1900s.
They hate the Jews anyway.
So what they did was theycreated a fabricated document
called the Protocols of theElders of Zion, and this
document it's based heavily onthe Book of Revelation,
basically based heavily on thesigns of the Antichrist that the
(52:04):
Jewish people would.
And it was basically a forgeddocument pretending to be
written by an organization ofJews who were trying to start
the one world government thatwould usher in the Antichrist in
the end of days.
And this document was calledthe Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, and part of it was alsothat they were trying to cast
(52:28):
the socialist, the Bolshevikmovement as a Jewish movement so
that people would be against itultimately unsuccessful and the
Bolsheviks overthrew theRussian government.
However, the Protocols of theElders of Zion lived a life of
its own beyond just Russia, andit ended up making its way to
(52:50):
the United States, where HenryFord got a hold of it.
Henry Ford had it published inthe newspaper that he owned
called the Dearborn Independent.
He also had it translated intoGerman, and that's how Hitler
got a hold of it.
So Hitler got a hold of thisdocument called the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion, and it wasone of the foundational texts
(53:13):
that he wrote that inspired himfor his attempted extermination
of all the Jews.
So, after the war was over, theUnited States was shifting our
focus towards basically beingvery anti-communist, and so this
document served as not the textitself but the ideas behind the
(53:38):
document served as theinspiration for what became
McCarthyism Then.
That, after McCarthyism sort ofdied out, throughout the 1970s
and into the 1980s, became thesatanic panic, where there was
this belief that there was acabal of Satanist people that
were conducting satanic ritualsand satanic ritual abuse against
(54:03):
innocent people, especiallychildren, and this became, it
really took on a life of its own.
Within the United States in the1970s and the 1980s, there was
this one guy named Mike Warnkewho wrote a book called the
Satan Seller where he claimedthat within about like six weeks
(54:24):
of when he was like 20, that hejoined the Satanist
organization in the UnitedStates and basically became
chief Satanist, and then herealized that Satan was a bad
guy and he became a Christian.
Victor (54:36):
And this is all people just interpreting these writings
different ways.
Gavriel HaCohen (54:44):
Yes, but because this original conspiracy
theory was based so heavily onthe book of Revelation,
conspiracies that spawned fromthat original conspiracy theory
struck a chord with people whoare Christian in the United
States, and the Christians werethe people who were so heavily
anti-communist I mean, everyonewas anti-communist, but
(55:07):
Christians more than others orwilling to believe conspiracy
theories about satanic ritualabuse.
This conspiracy eventually diedout, but then it came back in a
big way and that's what turnedinto QAnon.
So this same conspiracy theoryabout QAnon is the same
conspiracy theory that was theone that inspired Hitler in the
1920s and the one that basicallywas fabricated by the czar of
(55:31):
Russia because he was afraid ofthe Bolsheviks taking over.
Rob (55:34):
And now everyone has a copy of that in their driver's
manual of their brand new FordEscape.
It's in there in their driver'smanual of their brand new Ford
Escape.
It's in there I start to thinka little bit about free will.
Are people who get into thesecults?
Are they victims?
Is there an element of personalresponsibility, or they're just
(55:56):
being brainwashed?
Gavriel HaCohen (55:58):
I mean, there's definitely elements of both.
I like to say that there's nosuch thing as a perfect victim,
and no human being is perfect.
No one is not susceptible tobrainwashing tactics, and as
soon as you think that you'reimmune to these tactics, and
that's when they'll get you.
Rob (56:15):
Meanwhile, Victor got a timeshare.
Victor (56:20):
It'll pay for itself.
Okay, it'll pay for itself.
He went for a freehare.
It'll pay for itself.
Okay, it'll pay for itself hewent for a free breakfast.
Gavriel HaCohen (56:26):
I've seen the South Park episode.
Victor (56:28):
Yeah, gavi, thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate the time you tookto speak to us.
If anyone wants to check outyour content, where can they
find it?
Gavriel HaCohen (56:40):
Yeah, you can go.
Uh, look up the leaving edenpodcast.
Uh, we are on anywhere that youget your podcasts.
You can follow us on socialmedia.
We're on instagram and I'm onblue sky now hey, now that's
good.
Rob (56:54):
Thank you so much, man.
That's awesome.
Thank you again.
Gavriel HaCohen (56:56):
Thank you, yeah you guys have like I'm.
I'm.
Thank you guys for having me on.
I had a great time all right,right guys.
Victor (57:01):
So final thoughts Cesar.
Cesar (57:04):
You know it's crazy because I see some of the same
parallels with, like in politicssometimes, or like that bite
model that he originally talkedabout, coercion.
You know the mind.
Rob (57:15):
Whatever, I see some of that stuff in politics and it's
kind of crazy, as to say, likeman, it's kind of nuts rob, yeah
, I think, coming into this, oneof my biggest uh, one of the
things I was looking for for wastry to see red flags, like if
he could help me to discern redflags if I ever see culty
(57:36):
behavior or something of thatsense.
And and him bringing out thisfight model and then now me
thinking back to what I knowabout cults and doing a little
bit of research and talking tohim.
It makes a lot of sense.
And another question that Ireally had for him was when he
broke down the differencebetween cults and religions and
how cults always have thisnegative connotation and it's
(57:58):
because of this playbook thatthey have.
It is has a nefarious uh toneto it.
It can and does harm thoseindividuals.
I got a lot out of that.
Are you gonna start onetomorrow, or I might?
I mean now that I know how todo it you took a lot of copious
notes yeah, do you likewheatgrass?
Victor (58:16):
take this shotgun once again, we want to thank Gavi
Hakohen for joining us and don'tforget to check out Leaving
Eden podcast.
Wherever you get your podcast,you will find so much
interesting cult relatedepisodes.
We highly recommend it.
But since you're here, we wantto thank you for listening to us
(58:37):
, but we still need your help.
If you enjoyed this episode, Iwant you to find that share
button and send this podcast toa friend, family member or just
someone that you don't like, andif you could hit subscribe to
stay updated on new episodes.
Until next time, stay curiousLater.
Welcome everyone to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast.
I am your host today, victor,joined always by Rob.
Hello, and Cesar, thank you forjoining us today.
Cesar, thank you for having me.
It's been a while we haven'tseen you on interviews.
Cesar (00:16):
Always there, I just don't say anything.
So you're like Chris, but Ihave a reason we can't have two
guys like that.
Victor (00:21):
I have a reason we can't have two guys like that On this
episode, we will be joined byGavi Hakohen, co-host of the
Leaving Eden podcast, to talkabout cults.
Do you guys know anything aboutcults?
Cesar (00:32):
No.
Rob (00:33):
Rob didn't you try to start one.
I did unsuccessfully, so I'mhere to figure out how to do it
the right way.
I had a couple followers, butthey left me.
Victor (00:46):
Just like everyone else in your life.
Cesar (00:48):
We're still here.
Hey, we have you.
You know what's funny?
I think, knowing everythingthat I know about Scientology,
that I should probably like it,but I don't.
I like science stuff.
It's all about science stuff,and it's never grabbed my
attention.
Victor (01:04):
I don't think there's any actual science.
Cesar (01:05):
No, yeah, it's about Errol Hubbard, and science.
Victor (01:07):
The science fiction writer.
Cesar (01:09):
Yeah, I like that stuff too.
Victor (01:11):
Gavi Ha-Cohen is here to help us answer the question.
I'm not dumb, but what's a cult?
Cesar (01:17):
Welcome to the I'm Not Dumb but podcast, where we won't
claim to have the answers tolife's deepest questions.
Victor (01:23):
But we'll give you an exciting journey into the realms
of knowledge you never knewyou'd either.
Cesar (01:27):
Might be mainstream, but not common knowledge.
From artificial intelligence toconspiracy theories, no topic
is too taboo for us to explore.
Let's get curious together.
Victor (01:38):
Gavi, welcome to the show.
Glad you can join us.
Gavriel HaCohen (01:41):
I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Victor (01:46):
So you are the co-host on the Leaving Eden podcast?
Yes, tell us how that cameabout and tell us what do you
guys talk about?
Gavriel HaCohen (01:53):
So the Leaving Eden podcast is a show I host
with my friend Sadie.
She was raised as a Christianfundamentalist.
She was raised in a very cultyversion of Christianity and we
became friends just because weworked at the same car
dealership in 2019.
(02:15):
And we both were interested inmusic.
We were both kind of interestedin religion and reading about
religion and stuff.
And this was after she had leftthat religious environment.
And then the pandemic hit andwe decided to start a podcast
about it.
Victor (02:29):
Nice Pandemic podcasts.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:31):
Yeah, and you know, five years later, almost
here we still are and here we'restill doing it, and now it's
like my main job that I do.
Is that podcast?
Victor (02:42):
I can't believe it's been five years.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:44):
Yeah, it feels like it was yesterday, doesn't
it?
Victor (02:46):
since the hoax.
Cesar (02:52):
Okay, I've gotten every vaccine, by the way even though
they're not even out.
Gavriel HaCohen (02:57):
Yet so we talk about like cults, we talk about
religion, we we talk about awide variety of topics, but
generally centered around cults,religion, christianity,
fundamentalism, things like that.
And that's what we do on theshow and it's a lot of fun and I
(03:19):
really get a lot out of it andI've learned so much throughout
the time that we've been doingit.
Cesar (03:24):
It's a pretty good listen .
I heard it.
Rob (03:26):
It's pretty good well, thank you so much and it's long
form, but it like you're in itwell, I I do a lot of editing to
try to cut the dead air out.
Victor (03:36):
So that's, I try to keep it moving when did you get that
first interest in religion?
Like what about religion waslike interesting to you?
Gavriel HaCohen (03:44):
To me.
So I was raised like Jewish,but not that Jewish.
Victor (03:49):
Okay.
Gavriel HaCohen (03:50):
Is how I would explain it, like I was raised
very culturally Jewish, but youknow, and we went to synagogue
sometimes and I went to Hebrewschool for a couple of years,
but there it never really stuckwith me.
When I was younger and as I gotolder it became something that
was more interesting to me.
So I'm from Portland, oregon,that's where I grew up, and
(04:10):
Portland is a very secular cityPortland- is a city.
It's not a place where you see achurch on every street corner
and it's not a place where mostof the people that you hang out
with when you're a kid even goto church or are really
religiously involved in general,but religion that has such a
(04:32):
massive impact on society.
So when I started reading moreabout religion and reading more
about different religions, Isort of approached it almost as
an outsider and I know I hadsome I don't want to say nominal
, but a decent amount ofknowledge.
But the way that I approachedit was much more as an outsider
(04:53):
rather than somebody who wasraised with a very strict
tradition, like I know a lot ofother people were.
So when I met Sadie, she wassomebody who, when I talked to
her, she told me basically I wasraised in a cult.
Victor (05:08):
Like that was the first thing.
Hi, my name's Sadie.
You were raised in a cult?
Gavriel HaCohen (05:12):
Well, no, she said she was raised in a cult.
Rob (05:14):
Oh, okay, she opened with that.
Yeah, that's one way.
Gavriel HaCohen (05:17):
So I mean, that's not how she introduced
herself to me, but it came uppretty quickly that she was
raised in a cult Like she wasraised in a form of Christianity
where, you know, women aren'tallowed to wear pants, they have
to wear skirts or, and you know, if you and very repressive for
women very extreme forms ofpurity culture which is not
(05:41):
something that you want.
It's very bad for peoplepsychologically.
There's a lot of people who Italk to now who are raised in
that sort of thing, who do haveissues with that.
As an adult they're stilldealing with.
But she was raised in a veryextreme form of Christianity and
so living in Portland andOregon most of my life, I mean I
knew people who were Christianbut I didn't know people who
(06:02):
were that crazy level ofChristian, because those people
tend to kind of insulatethemselves from everybody else
and they tend to only reallylike to hang out with each other
.
So when I meet somebody who wasraised like that, I had so many
questions, I was so interestedand that's kind of where
everything got started.
Victor (06:20):
I was raised Catholic, okay, and I didn't think it was
anything.
It was like the norm.
I mean, I'm from New York State.
Everyone that I went to schoolwith the majority were Irish,
italian and Spanish, so everyonearound me was Catholic.
Religion wasn't something thatwas really talked about.
There were the five Jewish kidsthat were in the school.
(06:41):
I remember going to Sundayschool right Like CCD and seeing
everyone that I went the school.
I remember going to Sundayschool right Like CCD and seeing
everyone that I went to schoolwith.
So I was like, oh, okay, thisis just an extension of the
neighborhood around me.
And it was only until, I thinkI left New York and really
started meeting other Christiansects that I was like, oh, okay,
(07:04):
it's different.
And I remember I accidentallywent to the christian service
instead of the catholic one.
Bro, I was blown away.
Like first of all, I was likewhere's jesus?
I'm like I don't see jesusanywhere.
Gavriel HaCohen (07:17):
This is kind of weird because it's idolatry,
right.
I don't have the crucifix, theyhave the cross.
Victor (07:21):
No crucifix the guy wasn't boring.
He was like exciting, he was upthere, he was just talking, he
started showing us movie clips.
But yeah, the music wasn't justlike depressing, I was like
what is?
Rob (07:32):
this, yeah, live music.
Gavriel HaCohen (07:34):
Everyone's dancing so what kind of like?
I'm curious what kind of uhchristianity was it?
Was it like baptist?
Was it like justnon-denominational, was it?
Victor (07:43):
I think it was non-denominational.
I think it wasnon-denominational.
It was like it resembled almostlike mega church type stuff.
Oh, so you had like the praiseand worship music with the live
band and the yeah, yeah, yeah,but it was like more upbeat and
honestly I felt kind of weirdbecause I was like this isn't
depressing and I'm not beingtold I'm a sinner.
It's a different vibe.
(08:04):
I mean, since then I am nolonger religious and since then
I look back on religiousgatherings and I'm like this is
weird.
Gavriel HaCohen (08:13):
I mean, I think for a lot of people, especially
when it's like for eitherCatholicism or Judaism or like
Orthodox Christianity, a lot ofit is like an ethnic thing.
A lot of it is like a culturalor like an ethnic thing just as
much as it is a religious thing.
Victor (08:28):
It's part community building.
Gavriel HaCohen (08:30):
Yeah, and a lot of you know if you have
immigrant communities, they'regoing to stick together in the
churches, the way that they'regoing to do that.
Victor (08:37):
Where do you think the line is drawn between a cult or
a religion?
Rob (08:41):
And after that, could you just what is your definition on
a cult too?
Gavriel HaCohen (08:45):
So we actually I'm glad that you asked that
question, because there is avery methodical and laid out way
to determine whether thedifference between cults and
religions.
So I'm going to refer you tothe work of the cult expert, Dr
Stephen Hassan.
He is somebody who grew up in aJewish family but he joined the
(09:11):
Moonies in the 1970s and then,after sort of getting out of the
Moonies and un-brainwashinghimself, he has basically
devoted his life to trying toidentify and build a system in
order to identify authoritarianand cult control.
And so if you go to his website,which is freedomofmindcom, he
(09:35):
has laid out there what he callsthe BITE model of authoritarian
control authoritarian control,and the BITE model is an acronym
.
So B-I-T-E B stands forbehavior, I stands for
(09:55):
information, t stands forthought and E stands for emotion
.
So there's four aspects of cultcontrol.
It is behavior control,information control, thought
control and emotion control.
And so if you go to his website, he has laid out there a lot of
examples of what behaviorcontrol, information control,
thought control and emotioncontrol can be and how they
manifest themselves.
Life to a certain degree.
(10:15):
For something to be classifiedas a cult rather than a religion
and there are some religionsthat you could say are culty
(10:36):
there are some cult groups thataren't religious at all.
You could say and I wouldpersonally agree with the
argument that an abusive,coercive domestic partnership,
like an abusive relationship,functions identically to cult
control.
So that could even just be asituation where that is a
one-on-one cult and there's noreligion involved in that at all
(10:58):
.
But it functions exactly thesame way as a cult would if it's
like Jonestown, if it's BranchDavidian, something like that,
and the methods of control arethe same whether it's one person
, or whether it's a hundredpeople or a million people.
Victor (11:14):
The spiritual aspect isn't always needed.
It isn't always needed.
Gavriel HaCohen (11:18):
But spiritualizing problems and
spiritualizing the things thatyou're going through can be a
very effective method foremotion control.
So I mean we can start withbehavior control if you want to
just like go through the bitemodel.
Victor (11:31):
Is it like a 20 question quiz that tells me what Game of
Thrones character?
Gavriel HaCohen (11:58):
I am, you could .
I'm Gryffindor.
That's weird, what we considerto be like the gold standard of
how you identify authoritariancontrol.
So for behavior control andinformation control.
Behavior control can be thingslike telling you how to dress,
telling you what food to eat,telling you where to go when,
but it can also be somethingthat is much more nefarious than
(12:20):
that, like it can determine whoyou have sex with or who you
don't have sex with, who you arearen't allowed to have sex with
.
It could say, oh, you arerequired to commit x crime as
like a show of devotion to us.
that could be almost like a gang, yeah I mean, uh, criminal
syndicates and criminal gangsoperate pretty much identically
(12:41):
to cults as well.
Often, and when you talk topeople who have left gang
culture, they talk about howdifficult it is to leave and you
can feel like you're betrayingthe other people that you're in
that gang with, or whether ornot you can feel like your life
might be in danger, becausethose are all tactics that cult
(13:02):
groups will use to try to keeppeople in.
So behavior control could bejust something as innocuous as
like oh, you wear this specialgarment around you to show your
religious devotion.
That's something that justbecause you do that, that
doesn't mean that you're in acult, but that is an aspect of
behavior control.
(13:30):
Aspect of behavior control,information control is pretty
easy to identify.
Information control can besomething like you only get
information from pre-approvedsources.
So, using the example of, say,you're in a really
fundamentalist church and thechurch has very specific
doctrines about what is andisn't appropriate content for
people to watch.
So you know, content that hasnudity is banned.
(13:53):
Content that has swear words isbanned.
You know, anything that'sbasically above a PG rating is
banned.
Then it could be a situationwhere you can only watch content
that isn't that if somereligious leader watches it
first and says, yes, this isokay for you to watch, so it's
restricting outside information.
Victor (14:15):
Could that just be convincing you that other
sources of information are bad?
Yes, absolutely.
Gavriel HaCohen (14:21):
That also goes into thought control as well,
and I'll get into that in alittle bit.
Part of information control canalso be creating a culture of
people informing on each otherif they've done things wrong and
that helps to create a cultureof mistrust.
(14:41):
So people, if they're havingdoubts about what they're being
asked to do or what is requiredof them, they feel like they
can't talk to anybody and it'svery isolating if they feel like
they might be disciplined forspeaking to somebody about an
issue that they might be having.
Victor (14:58):
But when?
Gavriel HaCohen (14:58):
you talk about authoritarian regimes and you go
back to communist Russia.
Authoritarian regimes like thatabsolutely function the same
way that cults.
Do you know?
If you look at countries likeNorth Korea, they function
basically with a cult ofpersonality around somebody like
Kim Jong-un, who is believed tobe basically godlike.
Victor (15:22):
And there is the reason the sun comes up in the sunsets.
Yeah, that's literally what.
That's what I heard.
Gavriel HaCohen (15:27):
That's what I heard yeah, but they have such a
tight control over whatinformation gets in and what
information gets out right and,and so propaganda and
manufacturing propaganda canjust as well be a part of that.
You know, um for informationcontrol.
Uh, sadie was raised in a formof Christianity where their
(15:49):
educational materials that shewas taught, the Christian
schooling that she went through,was very substandard and it was
really more like indoctrinationthan it was actual education.
So the indoctrination intosomething like being very
anti-evolution, because that wasa big issue for them, that she
(16:10):
was literally taught in schoolthat the Loch Ness Monster not
only is real but is a dinosaurthat survived the flood of Noah.
And scientists want to cover upthe fact that the Loch Ness
Monster is real, because theLoch Ness Monster's existence
disproves evolution and provesthat humans and dinosaurs lived
(16:34):
at the same time.
Victor (16:36):
I mean you're breaking my heart.
I'm keeping the hope alive,nessie.
It's not only the censorship,though, because I'm assuming
that, because people in cultsaren't completely isolated
unless you're in North Korea,you're still getting some
evidence information.
So the outside information thatyou're getting you're just
(16:57):
being told that's lies.
Gavriel HaCohen (16:59):
Right, and so that's sort of where thought
control can come in.
Victor (17:02):
Right.
Gavriel HaCohen (17:03):
That a big part of thought control, which is
the third element of the bitemodel.
Behavior control andinformation control are two
things that can be done to youby somebody else.
So somebody else can controlwhat you wear, somebody else can
control what you eat, somebodyelse can control what
information or what media youconsume.
But, the latter two elements ofthe BITE model, which are
(17:26):
thought control and emotioncontrol, are things that you can
only do to yourself.
Oh wow, so the thought controlis something that you have to do
to yourself.
You can be trained to do it,but part of thought control is
like thought-stopping cliches.
So let's use the evolutionthing as an example.
(17:46):
So Sady was taught thatwhenever a scientist came up to
you and said something likemillions and billions of years
and used the phrase millions andbillions of years, you were
supposed to laugh at that.
And they were taught physicallylaugh at that just to sort of
create the Like an emotionalanchor like a Pavlovian response
(18:09):
.
Yeah, exactly.
In your brain to say, whensomebody says millions of years
or billions of years, you laughat that because that's silly,
that's ridiculous, nobody couldactually believe that, because
we know that the earth is 6000years old, or just like a turn
of phrase that can be used toprevent you from thinking things
(18:30):
that are sort of unapprovedthoughts.
So in her life this is, I guess,a good example is that she was
taught to always have joy, andalways having joy means joy is
an acronym for Jesus, others,yourself, and that's the
priority with which you have toaddress the needs.
(18:51):
So the needs of Jesus first,then the needs of others, then
the needs of yourself, and youcan only really address your own
needs once you've addressed theneeds of everybody else.
There's also Bible verses thatyou can use, things like the
heart is deceitful anddesperately wicked.
So if you have a desire that isnot something that is sort of
(19:13):
approved, then you have to keeptelling yourself no, the heart
is deceitful and desperatelywicked, and that gets you to
self-doubt and doubt your ownmorality, so that you will defer
to others judgment rather thanbeing able to think for yourself
.
Cesar (19:27):
This is incredibly damaging to people who are
raised like this wow, yeah,breaking down this fortress,
right like your, your um co-host, sadie.
What triggered her to begin thehealing process?
Because you have all theseforces going against you.
There has to be some sort oflike, some, some kind of moment
in her mind or in anyone's mind,where they're like.
(19:49):
There has to be something else.
Gavriel HaCohen (19:52):
It's a long process and there's a lot of
people who have been through thesame sort of thing.
She was having sort of sometheological doubts about what
she was being taught, becauseshe's a very smart person and
her mother is still alive.
Her father sadly died a coupleof years ago.
It was very sad, and she grewup in an environment where women
(20:15):
were not allowed a lot offreedom and women were regarded
as very much lesser.
But her father really wantedher to have a good understanding
of the Bible and a goodunderstanding of religion and
what it meant to be a Christian,and so he educated her pretty
thoroughly theologically.
However, this tends to lead topeople having doubts because
(20:41):
when you go in and you readthings, then the more
fundamentalist approach and thedeeper you dig, the more
fundamentalist approach and morestrict approach tends to kind
of form some cracks, and so thepeople that are the most sold
out, the people that are themost like dialed in.
It tends to be a lot of thepeople that do tend to
(21:02):
deconstruct.
So part of it was that sherealized that she's bisexual she
, and that she was taught thatin order for people to be
bisexual, it meant it, or peopleto be gay at all.
It meant that they had eitherlike a demon was attacking them
or a demon was attached to them,or something had happened to
(21:22):
them in their lives that turnedthem gay.
And she knew the second hadn'thappened, and she knew that she
prayed so much that a demoncouldn't have possibly attached
itself to her.
So she started having questionsabout whether or not she was
being taught.
That was true and then afterthat, she was also having
(21:43):
questions about what it meant tobe saved and what salvation
truly meant.
Because she was raised in aversion of fundamentalism and a
version of Christianity, andthis, I guess, gets into, like
salvation doctrine and what yourspecific church believes,
because and different Christianshave different beliefs about
this Christians have differentbeliefs about this.
(22:05):
But her belief that she wasraised with was basically that
if you ask Jesus to save you,then you go to heaven, no matter
what, but if you don't, thenyou go to hell.
And so she would go and knock ondoors when she was a kid and as
a teenager and when she was ayoung adult, trying to get
people to pray a prayer with herand ask Jesus to save them so
that they could go to heaven,and it didn't matter whether
they converted to be her form ofChristian or not, because they
(22:32):
were also taught that if theytruly got saved, then they would
want to be her right kind ofChristian, because Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, would come intotheir hearts and change their
desires to make them want to beChristian.
And the more she thought aboutthat, that tended to be a thing
that didn't make as much sense,especially when she started to
think about all of the peoplewho lived places in the world
(22:54):
where Christianity wasn't reallyan option, and whether or not
God was going to condemn thosepeople to an eternity of
conscious torment just becausenobody had ever come to them and
told them about Jesus.
And the more she thought aboutthat, the less that made sense.
So she'd been thinking aboutthese things sort of under the
surface for a while and when shewas, I believe, 20 years old
(23:17):
and this was in 2012, so she was19 or 20 years old she was at a
Bible college called HilesAnderson College in Northwest
Indiana and the man who was thechaplain of the Bible College
(23:56):
was arrested because a scandalthat really rocked her church
and really rocked her beliefs.
At the same time, this man's sonwas the head of the
disciplinary committee of theBible college and she was being
persecuted by the disciplinarycouncil or whatever of this
Bible college for something thatwas pretty innocuous.
(24:17):
She got a side hug, basicallyfrom her boyfriend at the time,
and they threatened to kick herout over that head of this
disciplinary committee washaving people who were members
of this church write letters tothis judge asking leniency for
(24:38):
his father who had sexuallyabused a minor, and so there was
just this level of hypocrisythat really ended up being a
hard reason that helped push herout, and it took years and
years and years.
You know, in thisdeconstruction process, if
you're raised in thisenvironment, it isn't like
there's something, there's likea normal for you to default back
(24:59):
to all of the things thatpeople like myself, who was
raised very secularly thought,think of as like the default.
These are things that thosepeople have to learn for the
first time as adults.
So, there's no normal for themto default back to.
They have to learn all thatstuff again, and so this is a
process that takes a lot ofpeople years and years and years
(25:21):
and years and years.
Victor (25:22):
Would that cause any animosity, though, towards,
let's say, agencies such aspolice or FBI?
Whoever arrested them, how arethey to discern the difference
between they're being persecutedfor their beliefs or no?
Whoever arrested them, how arethey to discern the difference
between they're being persecutedfor their beliefs or no?
They actually committed a crime.
Gavriel HaCohen (25:38):
Well, it depends on how bought in you are
.
I mean, if you're bought inenough that you think that our
dear leader can do no wrong,then you would think, oh well,
the devil is attacking me.
The devil is attacking thischurch because it's too big and
it's too strong and this churchhas to save America and this
church has to save the world.
Rob (25:58):
This one time I was walking down Times Square with my
cousin.
She was in California so shewanted to check it out and we
were walking around and this guycomes up to us and he gives us
a card.
He's like why don't you guyscome by?
We're having a meeting later.
So my cousin's like oh, we'renot doing anything.
So I'm looking at the car.
I'm like I don't know what thisis.
I was like listen, we, you know, there's happy hour.
(26:20):
She's like let's, let's stop bythis thing.
I don't know what this is Like.
She's very like go with theuniverse type deal.
So we go to this place.
So they come in, they put usall in different rooms with a
huge TV screen and we all haveto sit down and we watch, like
this 15 minute video.
And I was like am I going toget?
killed in here and this videowas like hitting every like
(26:41):
insecurities problems,everything I got going on.
Victor (26:44):
It is just attacking every single one of them, so
it's telling you how you missedyour workout.
Yeah, you don't look good, so Iwalk out of there.
Yeah totally.
Rob (26:54):
They wouldn't even let me leave.
They were like you have to fillthis form out and the questions
it was like 50 questions and itwas so personal.
What are your failures Like?
What do you like Like?
Cesar (27:06):
like so many, real deep yeah, and I was like where do I
begin?
Rob (27:08):
I'm going to be for hours.
So I I I had to fill it out.
I was like where do I begin?
I'm going to be for hours Ineed another page here, yeah, so
I had to fill it out.
I was like I'm just going towrite whatever I need to get the
hell out of here.
We get out of there and I goI'm never doing this again.
Like what was that?
She's like I don't knowWhatever.
We walk out the back cab, justthe engine broke like completely
(27:32):
shut down, broke right in frontof the church.
And we come out and I was likeit is not a sign.
It is not a sign we got to getout of here yeah well, now I'm a
level eight silver dragon anduh, whatever they got, but by
then I thought it was reallyweird.
But so in like sadie's casewhere she grew up into it and
she was like indoctrinated at anearly age, I mean, what are
(27:54):
some of the tactics ortechniques they're using to kind
of get people in?
It seemed like a very like thatAnderson Renewal by Anderson
Windows guy who comes to yourhouse.
It felt like that.
It was very marketing forward,like very pressure-based.
Are they all kind of like thator like I think it depends.
Gavriel HaCohen (28:14):
Going back to Scientology, just real quick, if
you're interested in podcastsand this is a pretty fairly
well-known podcast, but there'sa podcast that I like that they
also talk about, like Colts,weird fringe science stuff like
this it's called oh no, ross andCarrie, and they joined the
church of Scientology to makecontent out of.
Victor (28:35):
Yeah, wow, and they joined the church of scientology
to make content out of.
Gavriel HaCohen (28:37):
Yeah, wow, and they're still alive to talk
about it.
Yeah, they have like a, I think, 10 or 12 episode series about
it.
They also joined the church ofjesus christ of latter-day
saints and and made podcastepisodes about their experiences
doing that.
Highly recommend that showinteresting.
Yeah, that's really good whatwas your, what was your question
again, like, just liketechniques or tactics like to
(28:58):
recruit new people a lot of itcomes from you know.
Say you have an adverse lifeexperience, say something awful
happens to you or you're justunhappy with yourself.
A high control group will do.
It's not about going andfinding everybody, it's going.
It's about going and findingthe people who will do it.
And those people tend to bepeople who they're going through
(29:21):
something, they're insecureabout something.
They have somethingspecifically in their life that
feels unfulfilling and what thechurch or what a cult will do is
.
They will say what the churchor what a cult will do is.
They will say we have astep-by-step rule book that if
you follow this to the T, thenyou will get desired result.
(29:42):
You will get the life that youwant.
I went to a gym once and theytold me the same thing.
Victor (29:51):
Yeah Well, I mean they use the same tactics mean have
you ever done crossfit?
Gavriel HaCohen (29:55):
and you're telling me that's not a cult,
that is a cult yeah, man, like Iknow of people you know their
parents were grew up in a veryunstable household.
You know they had a parent whowas like absent, or a parent who
was using drugs, or a parentwho was just like not there for
(30:15):
them and they didn't want toreplicate that same issue for
their kids.
But they also hadn't seen whatdoes good parenting look like
behavior modeled for them.
So they're like I don't knowwhat to do.
What do I do?
Do I raise my kids properly?
And you know who will tell youhow to raise your kids is
(30:36):
religious people will tell youhow to raise your kids.
They will.
They will give you all theinformation that you'll need.
They have their own parentingbooks.
They have the community.
They have a support system ofother parents who will tell you
what they're doing, who willhelp you out when you need
something, and they willbasically give you a checklist
(30:57):
of if you do X, y, z thing.
If you raise your kids in thischurch, you have them behave to
these set of standards, eitherhow you dress.
You spend this amount of timein your church.
You bring your kids up in youthgroup.
You send them to Christianschool.
You don't teach them aboutevolution but you teach them
about creation instead, and thenyou send them to our Bible
(31:18):
college, then what you're goingto end up with is a kid who is
going to get married and they'regoing to have children, and
you're going to be a grandparentand everybody's going to be
happy and they're you know,everyone's going to live happily
ever after.
And they're going to give youlike a prescribed list of if you
do xyz thing and it will bedifficult to do xyz thing,
because if it were easy theneveryone would do it but if you
(31:40):
do xyz thing, then you will getout.
You know this result and thatis the result that you want and
that's what they really prey on.
Because if somebody comes andknocks on your door and says,
hey, change all of yourbehaviors in your life or you're
going to go to hell, thenyou're going to say get out of
here, go bug somebody else.
But if somebody knocks on yourdoor and says, you may be
(32:02):
feeling down right now, butJesus loves you and come to us
and we will help you out and wewill give you tools that you
need to survive, then you wouldsay maybe there's something to
this, it's probably worth a shot.
Victor (32:18):
So people who are vulnerable, lost in sense of
belonging, or maybe they arelooking for community or just
looking just for guidance inlife.
Gavriel HaCohen (32:29):
Or people who are just otherwise vulnerable.
There there's one tony andsusan alamo were.
Have you heard of them are?
Cesar (32:37):
you familiar.
Gavriel HaCohen (32:38):
Uh, they ran a fairly large, uh, christian
organization throughout the1970s 1980s and what they would
do is and this was was in likeHollywood, california is they
would get homeless people andthey would say we'll feed you if
(32:58):
you come to our church, you canlive on our compound and you
can eat and we'll feed you.
And they would do that and theywould get them clean from drugs
and they would get them in thechurch and then they would use
(33:19):
that as basically like amarketing tool to say look at
all this good that we're doingin the community.
But then they would also dothings like child labor.
They would do things like youknow, just taking all of the
money from all of the people whowere living there.
They would start companies andhave the church members work at
the companies, basically forfree, and then donate all of
(33:39):
their paycheck back to thechurch.
They were having childrenmanufacture bedazzled jackets
that were a very big popularfashion item throughout the
1980s.
If you look up a Lamo jackets,it's spelled like Alamo.
But if you look up a Lamojackets, uh, you'll find these
(34:01):
bedazzled jackets that are madeby child labor.
In fact, michael Jackson woreone of these jackets on the
cover of his bad album.
Wow, it's the same sort ofthing that that you, and this is
one of the reasons why, uh,people such as myself believe
that cults and abusive domesticpartnerships basically function
(34:21):
the same, because abusers willtarget people specifically who
they think are going to bevulnerable for their tactics I
imagine for every like story,like sadie, who found the
discernment to figure out okay,there's something wrong here.
Cesar (34:35):
I got to figure out how to get out.
There's countless stories ofpeople who either find
themselves in a cult, who grewup in a cult, trying to get out
but can't.
Has Sadie gone back and spokento people within that
denomination that she was inbefore that denomination that
she was in before?
Gavriel HaCohen (34:51):
Yeah, and she has, and I don't really want to
speak on that because that's youknow.
I don't really want to speak onthe personal relationships that
she might have with people whoyou know she used to know from
an earlier part of her life orwhat they're saying now.
But when we think of cults, wethink of like people who are
(35:11):
living in a compound.
Right, you know, we think oflike Waco, of like people who
are living in a compound, right,you know, we think of waco,
waco, branch, davidians, uh,flds, that was one we think of
like uh jonestown, like youmentioned earlier yeah, and
where we think of like peoplebeing cordoned off and
specifically limited frominteracting with outsiders, when
(35:32):
, in reality, most of the peoplewho are in this situation are
people that are just like amongus and walking around us day to
day, but you don't know thatthey have something that's
really controlling them andreally taking their agency away.
People who want to get out.
There's often situations where,well, maybe you're being
(35:55):
physically prevented fromleaving, but the mental barriers
to leaving the guilt, the shame, the fear are, I believe, more
powerful than physical barriers.
Victor (36:09):
And you're also losing your community as well, like if
all your friends are part of it.
Gavriel HaCohen (36:18):
Yeah.
And how do you build acommunity Like if you're in your
20s and you leave a religiousgroup that you've been?
Rob (36:22):
in your whole life.
Gavriel HaCohen (36:22):
How do you build community out of that?
And you don't know how tosocialize outside of church?
Or you were raised in churchand you don't have good social
skills, and that really dependson personality type and I know a
lot of people who areintroverted have a lot of
difficulty with that, becausegoing out and just saying hi,
I'm, you know, I'm Gabi, youwant to be friends with me,
that's not something thateverybody could do.
I mean, I moved to a new city atthe age of 29 and didn't know
(36:48):
anybody when I moved there, andyou know, now I have friends and
I live here and I'm doing greatand I'm engaged, but not
everybody can do that.
Rob (36:56):
Right.
When I hear the word cult, ithas a negative connotation to it
.
So are all cults bad, or arethere some that are yeah, where
are the good?
Gavriel HaCohen (37:04):
ones at.
Definitionally, in order forsomething to be a cult, it has
to be coercive, and I thinkthat's bad.
So yeah, if you look at thebite model and you look at, you
know, especially when you getinto the the thought control and
the emotion control, when youknow you get in situations where
this emotion is a bad emotionand you shouldn't be feeling it
like you're not allowed to feelgratitude in this situation
(37:31):
rather than anger.
Anger is not allowed.
That's not something thatsomebody should be telling you.
That is inherently coercive.
Rob (37:44):
Do these cult leaders, do they believe in what they're
teaching?
Or is it like this nefariousthought, like I'm going to do
this and I'm going to get allthis?
Is there always another thought, like another plan to take
their money to?
Victor (37:51):
have a group, does it need to revolve around one
person?
Gavriel HaCohen (37:55):
I don't think that it needs to revolve around
one person.
I think that a lot of cults canbe around.
I mean some politicalideologies you could even
qualify as a cult.
Victor (38:05):
I would say Sports teams maybe.
Gavriel HaCohen (38:09):
I mean, look, I live in Philly, I'm an Eagles
fan, I won't deny it.
Rob (38:14):
Link if you're really not an Eagles fan.
Victor (38:20):
He's too deep.
He's too deep.
Rob (38:22):
It's okay, this is a safe space.
Gavriel HaCohen (38:24):
I drank Incredible Hulk's during the
Super Bowl because they weregreen.
That's my life now.
The Super Bowl, and, you know,because they were green, that's
my life now.
No, but it doesn't necessarilyneed to revolve around a single.
I mean, definitely, having acult of personality and a leader
(38:45):
can be helpful in recruitingpeople and, you know, keeping
people in and creating thatsense of information.
Well, the leader says this andwe, we really have to trust
their judgment.
That can be a valuable tool,but it isn't always necessary.
What was the other question?
The other question was-.
Rob (39:01):
Do the leaders actually believe it?
Gavriel HaCohen (39:02):
That really depends on the situation,
because some of them I think do,and some of them are just
straight up scammers, like there.
You would be shocked how manyof these cult leaders are just
people who were low-rentgrifters, who just figured out.
I mean, if I can pretend to bea religious guy, then these
(39:25):
people, then you know, I cankeep getting away with running
the same scam over and over andover in different cities and
then eventually it gets out ofhand and they have a whole cult
on their hands, um some pointdelude themselves into believing
.
Oh well, I'm a religious leader, I'm a good person, because,
you know, religious leaders aregood people.
I did a good thing in mycommunity.
I I contributed to this charitybut I always thought about that
(39:48):
.
Rob (39:49):
I was like, how do they start a cult like?
Like, do you have to be goodlooking to start a call?
Cesar (39:54):
because if I see this guy with, like you, ever seen what
I am not?
Rob (39:58):
what david koresh looks like no, david, not a good.
Gavriel HaCohen (40:01):
A lot of these people not great looking people
but they're just I mean, I, Icould tell you how many of these
people just low rentrentgrifters.
There's also a subset of peoplewho I would put somebody like
Jim Jones into this category.
Jim Jones was somebody who wasraised very religious and who
(40:26):
got sucked into a theologicalmovement called Oneness
Pentecostalism and also holinesspentecostalism, which are these
sort of niche christian sects?
Uh, so if you know, if you knowabout christianity, there's, uh
, you know, catholicism, there'sprotestantism, and
(40:47):
pentecostalism is sort of Iwould consider it like
protestant adjacent, but notexactly, and oneness or that's
not the one with the snakes isit?
Rob (40:56):
I mean some of them do that .
That's pescatarian um.
Gavriel HaCohen (41:04):
Basically, they believe that the holy spirit of
jesus came back to earth in anevent at the Pentecost or the um
, at basically a festival, andcaused people to do what we now
refer to as speaking in tongues.
Victor (41:21):
Oh, okay.
Gavriel HaCohen (41:22):
Okay, and so they put a big emphasis on what
they call gifts of the HolySpirit.
So they believe that the HolySpirit can sort of imbue you
with the supernatural abilities.
And the Holy Spirit for thoseof imbue you with supernatural
abilities and the Holy Spiritfor those that don't know, is
the third part of the Christiantrinity.
So there's God the Father,which is God up in heaven.
There's God the Son, which isJesus, and then there's the Holy
(41:43):
Spirit, which is the version ofGod that comes down and affects
your life on earth.
And the Holy Spirit came downto earth after Jesus died and
then went back up to heaven.
And the Holy Spirit came downto earth after Jesus died and
then went back up to heaven.
Now, oneness Pentecostalism is adoctrine of Christianity that
rejects the Trinity, so itbelieves that there is just one
(42:04):
God and not in the Trinitariandoctrine.
And then when that is combinedwith holiness Pentecostalism,
holiness Pentecostalism is areligious movement that believes
that God, when the Holy Spiritcomes and acts in your life, you
become a holy being, sort oflike Jesus.
So Jim Jones was involved inoneness Pentecostalism and
(42:28):
holiness Pentecostalism.
The thing that he did was hesort of was somebody who I
believe had like narcissistictendencies and a messianic
complex.
And so if you believe in theholiness Pentecostal movement
and you have narcissistictendencies and a messianic
complex, then you can also sortof take that extra theological
(42:50):
step and say I am, you know, theholiness comes through me, I am
also God.
Victor (42:57):
Right.
Gavriel HaCohen (42:57):
So when you go and you look at the things that
he was doing in Californiabefore he Right California and
trying to be very sociallyprogressive because this was
supposedly a good thing for himto be doing, even though I think
(43:26):
that his motivations for doingthat were much more
self-centered than altruisticand that was how he was
recruiting members.
He was recruiting members witha theology that he called
apostolic socialism, wherebasically it's like Christianity
but sin equates to capitalism.
(43:47):
So, that was his theologicalmovement.
So he was recruiting people inCalifornia in the 70s with very
socialist ideals and very uh,socially progressive ideals and
at the same time he was alsousing a lot of drugs and also
(44:08):
that'll do.
Victor (44:09):
Oh, he was.
Well, it was.
Gavriel HaCohen (44:10):
You know, it was the time he was I mean he
was sauced up like you know,like nobody crazy times and he,
he was, you know, deeplyparanoid, as will happen.
So when you look at a personlike him and you look at how
things ended with all of thosepeople dying, you end up with
somebody who of the himself atthe beginning that he's doing
(44:42):
the right thing because he hasall of these very altruistic
good works that he's trying todo in the community, but then
you know he he's being verycoercive at the same time and
ends up killing a lot of peopleis there a cult religious or
non-religious, or spiritual andnon-spiritual that you see in
like everyday society that kindkind of raises your suspicion or
(45:04):
makes you get kind of worriedabout?
Victor (45:06):
Let's talk about Apple.
Cesar (45:08):
Apple users.
Victor (45:09):
I will not have you talk shit about Tim Cook in this
podcast.
Gavriel HaCohen (45:13):
I mean you want to talk about failure of
succession?
Yeah, yeah, I mean I rememberApple was like, hey, we made a
iphone, iphone's cool.
And I was like wow.
And that was in like 2007.
It was amazing.
They made the ipod.
I had the ipod.
It was amazing they made theyou know, they made logic, they
(45:33):
made a final cut.
That's them right, or is thatanything?
I don't know yeah, they're likewe made all the software that
you want, we made all the, andnow they're like.
Cesar (45:41):
We have a better battery.
Victor (45:45):
We changed the shape of our AirPods.
Cesar (45:48):
We got rid of the jack, but now we brought it back.
Yeah.
Gavriel HaCohen (45:51):
A cult that I see in society today.
I mean, I could talk about MAGAand talk about who you know
view him as basically somebodywho can do no wrong, and that's
something that I I see is veryharmful.
Rob (46:06):
But I think that there's also the issue of the crisis of
succession there as well well,don't talk too bad, in case we
sell out on this podcast and gofull right.
Victor (46:16):
That's what we're trying to.
We got to get their attentionfirst.
I'll tell you.
Gavriel HaCohen (46:19):
It's a good.
It's a good way to make money.
Nothing sells like outrage.
You see these people on theinternet, on YouTube, and
they're just like.
This is why the latest Marvelmovie sucks.
It went woke and I'm just likeI don't even like it has like
three million views or somethingand you're just like who is
watching this shit?
Rob (46:39):
There was one movie that came out and I could never
understand, but it was like thegolden compass.
Why was that so controversial?
Gavriel HaCohen (46:46):
it's the golden cup that the golden compass
backing, like you mean, based onthe philip pullman book okay,
so it was after a book that Ididn't read.
Rob (46:54):
That's fine back in.
Gavriel HaCohen (46:55):
I would highly recommend that book.
Victor (46:56):
That book's fantastic for the rest of the audience
here, what do you?
Gavriel HaCohen (46:59):
is that animated talking about no, no,
so, actually no, here's.
Here's the thing.
I love those books and you wantto talk about like books about
religion and books about likereligious control over society.
Those are great books.
Uh, the his dark materialseries by philip pullman
fantastic.
They did a movie backing likethe 2000s with nicole kidman and
(47:20):
daniel craig.
The movie was not good.
Uh, I don't think it was a goodadaptation of the story at all,
but then in I want to say like2019, hbo did a series of it and
I thought the series was oh,really okay um, but I mean those
books are quite subversive whenit comes to the power of
religion in society and what itmeans and what sin means and
(47:44):
what the soul is and whatinnocence is.
And fantastic book series.
Highly recommend those bookseries.
That is like one of my favoritebook series ever.
Great like young adult fiction.
Fantastic About like teenagerstrying to save the world.
Rob (48:03):
Yeah, because I remember when it came out there was some
sort of religious.
I mean, I didn't watch themovie, but I didn't realize that
there was a whole book seriesbehind it.
But everyone online was like,oh, the books are better.
And I was like, yeah, well, howdo we read that?
Gavriel HaCohen (48:15):
I mean, I would definitely agree with that, but
it but like it's just you know,these days.
I think that especially one ofthe issues that I actually do
think is a huge issue as far asindoctrination into extremist
ideologies is social mediaalgorithms.
Once you understand that socialmedia is a platform for selling
(48:51):
advertising, and the moreamount of time that they can get
your eyes on that thing, themore money that they'll make.
So, rather than prioritizingwhat is good quality content,
they're prioritizing engagementabove anything else else, and so
the thing that drivesengagement is either you know,
if you want to watch, like am I,the assholes with an ai voice
over a subway surfers video orlike rage bait, so you can have
(49:12):
people making videos of thingsthat they're angry about, or
making videos that are designedto make you angry so that you'll
leave a comment, so it willdrive it up in the algorithm.
So, like I was saying there, itis very grifty, it is extremely
grifty and as somebody who, youknow, makes content for a living
, I'm frequently annoyed withthe low standards by which other
(49:36):
people have to.
You know, I mean, I guess ifyou're in an economy where
everybody has to be a grifter,then I can't be too mad at it,
but still, I wish people wouldbe better.
Victor (49:49):
I remember when we were younger in school there was a
whole thing about cite yoursources, and now we're just in
the whole.
I read it on Reddit source.
Trust me, bro.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:01):
Yeah.
Victor (50:02):
Yeah, it's very much like that and people just go
with it.
They just believe it.
Same thing with YouTubers.
I heard a guy talking aboutthis on YouTube.
He must be telling me the truth.
Rob (50:11):
Yeah, it's like my dad sends me a bunch of links.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:14):
I mean, I've been guests on some shows where
they wanted to talk to me aboutconspiracy theories or something
, something.
And they're like oh, what doyou think of this conspiracy
cult thing that's going on here?
And I'm like, and you just kindof have to like, huh that's I
don't know.
Victor (50:31):
I don't know if conspiracy theories would fit
under the the bite model oh, alot of them do oh do they?
Gavriel HaCohen (50:38):
yeah, so actually I can go back and I can
talk about this, uh, back.
So I I want to go back to thebook of revelation.
Have you, are you guys familiar?
Victor (50:46):
it's been some time I know of it, it's dusted off.
Cesar (50:50):
Yeah, I read the back the end is near and these are the
signs right yeah, that that.
Gavriel HaCohen (50:56):
So in the early 20th century the Russian Tsar
was running into some problemsin Russia.
There was this growingsocialist movement, this
Bolshevik movement within RussiaAlso.
They had basically lost a warwith Japan in the early 1900s
(51:19):
and the popular sentiment wasvery much against the czar and
against the regime.
And in order to try tocounteract this, the czar of
Russia decided to have adocument created to basically
blame all of the problems of thepeople on the Jews.
Victor (51:39):
It's a common thing in history.
Gavriel HaCohen (51:40):
Yeah, so you know, I mean it's Russia in the
early 1900s.
They hate the Jews anyway.
So what they did was theycreated a fabricated document
called the Protocols of theElders of Zion, and this
document it's based heavily onthe Book of Revelation,
basically based heavily on thesigns of the Antichrist that the
(52:04):
Jewish people would.
And it was basically a forgeddocument pretending to be
written by an organization ofJews who were trying to start
the one world government thatwould usher in the Antichrist in
the end of days.
And this document was calledthe Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, and part of it was alsothat they were trying to cast
(52:28):
the socialist, the Bolshevikmovement as a Jewish movement so
that people would be against itultimately unsuccessful and the
Bolsheviks overthrew theRussian government.
However, the Protocols of theElders of Zion lived a life of
its own beyond just Russia, andit ended up making its way to
(52:50):
the United States, where HenryFord got a hold of it.
Henry Ford had it published inthe newspaper that he owned
called the Dearborn Independent.
He also had it translated intoGerman, and that's how Hitler
got a hold of it.
So Hitler got a hold of thisdocument called the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion, and it wasone of the foundational texts
(53:13):
that he wrote that inspired himfor his attempted extermination
of all the Jews.
So, after the war was over, theUnited States was shifting our
focus towards basically beingvery anti-communist, and so this
document served as not the textitself but the ideas behind the
(53:38):
document served as theinspiration for what became
McCarthyism Then.
That, after McCarthyism sort ofdied out, throughout the 1970s
and into the 1980s, became thesatanic panic, where there was
this belief that there was acabal of Satanist people that
were conducting satanic ritualsand satanic ritual abuse against
(54:03):
innocent people, especiallychildren, and this became, it
really took on a life of its own.
Within the United States in the1970s and the 1980s, there was
this one guy named Mike Warnkewho wrote a book called the
Satan Seller where he claimedthat within about like six weeks
(54:24):
of when he was like 20, that hejoined the Satanist
organization in the UnitedStates and basically became
chief Satanist, and then herealized that Satan was a bad
guy and he became a Christian.
Victor (54:36):
And this is all people just interpreting these writings
different ways.
Gavriel HaCohen (54:44):
Yes, but because this original conspiracy
theory was based so heavily onthe book of Revelation,
conspiracies that spawned fromthat original conspiracy theory
struck a chord with people whoare Christian in the United
States, and the Christians werethe people who were so heavily
anti-communist I mean, everyonewas anti-communist, but
(55:07):
Christians more than others orwilling to believe conspiracy
theories about satanic ritualabuse.
This conspiracy eventually diedout, but then it came back in a
big way and that's what turnedinto QAnon.
So this same conspiracy theoryabout QAnon is the same
conspiracy theory that was theone that inspired Hitler in the
1920s and the one that basicallywas fabricated by the czar of
(55:31):
Russia because he was afraid ofthe Bolsheviks taking over.
Rob (55:34):
And now everyone has a copy of that in their driver's
manual of their brand new FordEscape.
It's in there in their driver'smanual of their brand new Ford
Escape.
It's in there I start to thinka little bit about free will.
Are people who get into thesecults?
Are they victims?
Is there an element of personalresponsibility, or they're just
(55:56):
being brainwashed?
Gavriel HaCohen (55:58):
I mean, there's definitely elements of both.
I like to say that there's nosuch thing as a perfect victim,
and no human being is perfect.
No one is not susceptible tobrainwashing tactics, and as
soon as you think that you'reimmune to these tactics, and
that's when they'll get you.
Rob (56:15):
Meanwhile, Victor got a timeshare.
Victor (56:20):
It'll pay for itself.
Okay, it'll pay for itself.
He went for a freehare.
It'll pay for itself.
Okay, it'll pay for itself hewent for a free breakfast.
Gavriel HaCohen (56:26):
I've seen the South Park episode.
Victor (56:28):
Yeah, gavi, thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate the time you tookto speak to us.
If anyone wants to check outyour content, where can they
find it?
Gavriel HaCohen (56:40):
Yeah, you can go.
Uh, look up the leaving edenpodcast.
Uh, we are on anywhere that youget your podcasts.
You can follow us on socialmedia.
We're on instagram and I'm onblue sky now hey, now that's
good.
Rob (56:54):
Thank you so much, man.
That's awesome.
Thank you again.
Gavriel HaCohen (56:56):
Thank you, yeah you guys have like I'm.
I'm.
Thank you guys for having me on.
I had a great time all right,right guys.
Victor (57:01):
So final thoughts Cesar.
Cesar (57:04):
You know it's crazy because I see some of the same
parallels with, like in politicssometimes, or like that bite
model that he originally talkedabout, coercion.
You know the mind.
Rob (57:15):
Whatever, I see some of that stuff in politics and it's
kind of crazy, as to say, likeman, it's kind of nuts rob, yeah
, I think, coming into this, oneof my biggest uh, one of the
things I was looking for for wastry to see red flags, like if
he could help me to discern redflags if I ever see culty
(57:36):
behavior or something of thatsense.
And and him bringing out thisfight model and then now me
thinking back to what I knowabout cults and doing a little
bit of research and talking tohim.
It makes a lot of sense.
And another question that Ireally had for him was when he
broke down the differencebetween cults and religions and
how cults always have thisnegative connotation and it's
(57:58):
because of this playbook thatthey have.
It is has a nefarious uh toneto it.
It can and does harm thoseindividuals.
I got a lot out of that.
Are you gonna start onetomorrow, or I might?
I mean now that I know how todo it you took a lot of copious
notes yeah, do you likewheatgrass?
Victor (58:16):
take this shotgun once again, we want to thank Gavi
Hakohen for joining us and don'tforget to check out Leaving
Eden podcast.
Wherever you get your podcast,you will find so much
interesting cult relatedepisodes.
We highly recommend it.
But since you're here, we wantto thank you for listening to us
(58:37):
, but we still need your help.
If you enjoyed this episode, Iwant you to find that share
button and send this podcast toa friend, family member or just
someone that you don't like, andif you could hit subscribe to
stay updated on new episodes.
Until next time, stay curiousLater.
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