Cults make effective brands, and today, they’re all around us. Perhaps the most insidious way cults have influenced our reality is in everyday language that’s meant to control behaviors and change perspectives. It’s language we use with friends and colleagues, language in our media and content, and language we hear coming from today’s most powerful CEOs, on branded websites and in keynote addresses.

In this episode we’re talking with Amanda Montell, a language scholar and author of the critically acclaimed book, ‘Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism’ to understand why cults have had a resurgence in branding and in real life. Cults and businesses have always been intertwined, and understanding how they use the power of language to move people is the first step to decoding how they work.