Words matter, and how words or phrases are used may present completely different meanings to diverse cultural demographics depending on topics like history and associated symbolic language. That’s why having a leading bilingual female strategist such as Evelyn Pérez-Verdia on the side of truth in messaging is vital to organizations seeking to break down barriers with Latino communities. She is the Founder and Chief of Strategy for We Are Más, an organization focused on advising about diversity and translating culture, focusing on research, strategy, and creative communications. As a Hispanic small business owner, Evelyn has two decades of experience as an advisor to elections offices, grassroots groups, advocacy campaigns, and governmental agencies on messaging, communications, image, digital content, and micro-engagement. Recognizing her advocacy in protecting democratic organizations, Pérez-Verdia received the Woman of Impact Award in 2022 in Civics from the non-profit organization Mujeres Latinas Impulsando a Mujeres Latinas. She is also part of the University of South Florida’s Dean’s Advisory Council and the Department of State’s U.S. Speaker’s Program, giving workshops to journalists and civil society leaders in Latin America. When speaking to culturally diverse communities, the selection of words used in messaging means a lot. We talked about words often used by large national organizations in Washington, D.C., such as “Latinx” or “Progressive”, and how they can have the unintentional side effect of alienating different sections of the Latino community. She explained, “Yes, we have the Latinx, which the younger generations use, right? Where only 1.8% of Hispanics and Latinos, no matter the age affiliation, are like, I don’t feel identified with that.” Similarly, she noted the word “progressive” may represent “progressista” as a term young Hispanics might find objectionable. “They manifested peacefully on the streets against the dictatorship of Hugo Chávez, of Nicolas Maduro, and they see this youth using exactly the symbolism, exactly the terms that the dictator in the country uses,” she said. This is hugely important for all activists to listen to this interview!

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“Misinformation spreads like a virus,” explained Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., a Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He asked the question, “Is there a way to inoculate or immunize people?” His award-winning book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity explores this topic using decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies. He wrote the book to devise a new paradigm to help readers understand and defend themselves against a worldwide information infodemic. Van der Linden’s biography describes his body of research as looking at “how people process (mis)information, how it spreads in online networks, and how we can most effectively prebunk and inoculate people against false information.” He served on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) infodemic working group. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He co-developed Bad News, an award-winning fake news game designed to improve people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques! This is an very important interview.

Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com

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Did you know that environmental factors, rather than hereditary factors, are taking the lead in driving illness and early mortality? That shift is primarily due to the harm caused by corporations and their products, says Dr. Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services at the University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and the new Center to End Corporate Harm. A world-recognized expert and scientist who studies how exposures to environmental chemicals affect children’s development and health and translates scientific findings to improve clinical care. Dr. Woodruff previously served as a scientist and policy advisor in the US EPA Office of Policy. During our discussion, we discussed how the current administration’s policy will make people sicker. She noted the potential benefit of the MAHA Commission Report, which brings attention to the health harms from chemicals. Still, at the same time, the administration is eliminating funding and rules that protect people from exposure to harmful chemicals in air, food, and water. Unlike RFK Jr., she is solidly pro-vaccine. Dr. Woodruff stated that a third of deaths globally were associated with five commercial products, according to data from WHO and other sources listed in the resources below: 1) Tobacco; 2) Alcohol; 3) Sugar and ultra-processed food; 4) Toxic Chemicals; 5) Fossil Fuels/ Air Pollution. Citizens and Private Foundations must step up since the Trump administration is intent on helping irresponsible corporations. We MUST look to healthcare experts like Dr. Woodruff who rely on sound science and solid research. This is a vitally important interview!

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There has been a huge increase in Christian “Bible” Cults over the past 40 plus years- especially ones that do “Shepherding or Dicipling” in an authoritarian structure. The public doesnt understand how millions of people are deceptively recruited and indoctrinated into these groups and why they are called “cults.” One such cult network started in Massachusetts in 1979 as “the Boston Church of Christ” and are not to be confused with the mainline Church of Christ or the United Church of Christ. This group uses BITE Model methods to recruit and indoctrinate followers to follow the top leader as an “apostle or prophet” or “God’s chosen man to lead Christianity on earth. Unlike legitimate Christian churches this cult claims to be the “only” path to salvation and demands people subit and obey a discpling partner as if they were Jesus. Their lives and free will are taken over by involvement with this group. REcruiting other, giving money, abandoning education and careers, even family are part of the playbook.

Tania Diaz was recruited as an 18 college student in Mexico and spent over 20 years. She and her husband were groomed to recruit countless Hispanics into this cult. She would rise through the church’s ranks, only escaping nearly thirty years later to become an anti-cult activist, self-compassion advocate, and host of a podcast dedicated to survivors of religious abuse, Voces: Espacio Sagrado para Sobrevivientes de Abuso Religioso (In English, Voices: A Sacred Space for Survivors of Religious Abuse)

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Mike Finch has a Doctorate in Math and Theoretical Physics. He is also a Fellow of the International Society for Philosophers. Like many people I know, he was on a meditation journey and ended up with an Indian guru, then called “Guru Maharaji,” then just “Maharaji,” and later only by his given name: Prem Rawat. Mike was able to leave Rawat in 2000. Since then, Mike’s interests have included the exploration of why he surrendered to the guru, how he stayed for 30 years, and now how to deal with the aftermath. Mike’s book, Without the Guru: How I took My Life Back after Thirty Years (published in 2009), explores Mike’s journey into this rigid belief system, how he realized he was trapped in a cult, and then how he broke away.

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Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, “The Banality of Evil,” is actually wrong. It portrayed the lie Eichmann told when he was on trial. He said that he was “just following orders.” Arendt got conned. Eichmann was a true believer in Hitler’s final solution and a committed Anti-Semite. On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I spoke with accomplished Israeli filmmaker Yariv Mozer about his award-winning series The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes documenting senior Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann’s role as architect in the planning and implementation of the Holocaust’s Final Solution. We also discussed Mozer’s latest Emmy Award winning documentary, the Paramount+ movie, We Will Dance Again, based on footage, facts, and stories from the October 7th, 2023, Nova Festival, in which Hamas militants suddenly attacked Israel. He is a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors from his mother’s family, which he noted was an essential aspect of his story and identity.

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Monte Mader grew up in a Christian Nationalist family where indoctrination and abuse were ever-present. I became a fan of her powerful voice as she eviscerated the lies of Christian Dominionism, Christian Nationalism, and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) using her knowledge of scripture and Christian ideologies. She has over a million followers on Instagram as a “former alt-right Christian nationalist,” sharing her artistic talent and complex views to dispel widely believed radical Republican doctrine. She brings this knowledge forward and finds ways to bridge communications from her upbringing within a controlling but also highly influential alt-right family from Wyoming. She now shares the deconstruction of her childhood and aspects of her healing journey in several venues, including a new memoir she’s working on. Her experiences are also reflected in her music as a “Rocky Mountain rock artist” living in Nashville, Tennessee. She writes songs and performs with her band, The Big Sky. She is so talented and is an inspiration.

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The law is out of date on topics regarding how the mind works and how much social influence can sway people to do and believe things that are not common sense. Dr. Cutler has done cutting edge work in forensics and law enforcement analysis. He serves at Fielding Graduate University as both a Professor and Program Director. Social Psychology is one of the pillars of the Mental Health profession. In our current world, so many people are being influenced to believe things that are utterly absurd and follow leaders who are unqualified and even pathological. One especially important area of his work is testifying in courts about false confessions made in police interrogations. Cutler has held research grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States and the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada. He has worked on many publications, including Editor and Author of The APA Handbook of Forensic Psychology, the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, Reform of Eyewitness Identification Procedures, Conviction of the Innocent: Lessons from Psychological Research, and five other books. Come learn about important social psychology principles that will help us navigate the complexities of 2025.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ut2S8KpSRrC-4lcH4dEYHvO7CGAVtvSm/view

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“Our brain is a like a VR headset. That’s what it is. It renders incoming data streams to interpret different worlds,” David explained. He proposed that we already live in a symbolic universe, such as the trash can on a desktop being merely a symbol of an action taken on a computer. “VR is a much better model to explain what our brains do,” he continued. David Christopher Lane, PhD and I discussed his experiences with the worlds of Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and neuroscience. I noted that technology could be used for good or evil and that it is essential to have responsible, ethical guidelines for such tools. David agreed, “The bad actors using AI, just like the internet, allowed lots of people to have voices that probably should never have had voices.” He then mentioned how podcasters such as Joe Rogan broadcast a lot of messages that are “not credentialed, not great historians, believing in all sorts of weird stuff.” We spoke about developmental psychology and ideas of mature self-knowledge, including values and beliefs that allow us to investigate and evolve our systems of consciousness and decision-making. David noted that in his critical thinking class, they discussed how one becomes a good critical thinker. “It is our ability and willingness to admit to being wrong or mistaken.” This is a fascinating discussion. AI is here and will get more prominent. Come listen and learn.

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The highly watched Netflix 2018 documentary Wild Wild Country for people “in the know” was terribly biased. There were no former members. No cult experts. The two people featured were still “true believers in the cult leader, Rajneesh–who was rebranded after his expulsion from the United States as Osho. This cult took over the small town of Antelope, Oregon through deceit and the commune was the relocation from Pune India, where the cult leader had with a history of legal problems, including owing back taxes and claims of drug smuggling. What was missing was what it was actually like to live at the ashram as a child, like Sarito Carroll did til the commune was disbanded due to criminal activities. On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I spoke with Sarito Carroll, about her 2024 memoir In the Shadow of Enlightenment: A Girl’s Journey Through the Osho Rajneesh Cult, to hear and share more of the real story of what it was like growing up within the cult. Sarito is a passionate writer who was initiated into the cult by Rajneesh himself at nine years old in the late 1970s. She described her latest books as exploring “the complexities of belonging, trauma, the struggle to break free of cultic ties, and the long journey towards self-acceptance.” The book follows her journey to exit the cult and eventually begin a career as a technical writer and attain her Master of Science in Chinese Medicine in 2007, despite never attaining a proper education through the cult.

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