Everyone talks about missing the person who left. Nobody talks about missing the version of you that only existed inside that relationship. The one who had that specific laugh, that mapped-out future, that whole self... gone.

This isn't heartbreak. This is identity death. And your brain is grieving something it can't even name yet. Science explains why.

Nobody joins a cult. They think they're joining a community. By the time they realise the difference... it's already too late.

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the truth in cult psychology: the people who get recruited aren't broken, damaged, or gullible. Research shows they're typically intelligent, middle-class, and caught in an ordinary moment of vulnerability, a breakup, a move, a loss. They're you. They're me.

We're going into the mechanics of love bombing, information control, identity destruction, and why leaving feels psychologically impossible even when you can see what's happening.

And then, we're applying all of it to the communities, wellness spaces, and online movements you're probably already in.

The question isn't whether you'd recognise a cult. It's whether you already would have.

Hit play... Quietly ;)

Thirty million people bought The Secret. A NYU study then showed positive visualisation actually makes performance worse. So what exactly is going on?

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli dismantles one of the most commercially exploited ideas in modern wellness (manifestation) - and rebuilds it from the ground up using real science.

We cover why focused intention shifts what you notice and act on. The self-fulfilling prophecy and how belief drives behaviour without a single quantum particle being involved. Dr Gabriele Oettingen's landmark research showing that pure positive visualisation consistently undermines goal attainment, and her WOOP method, backed by 20 years of peer-reviewed studies, that doubles follow-through rates.

And the part nobody in the manifestation industry wants to talk about: the victim-blaming logic buried inside The Secret's most famous line, and how that logic has caused documented psychological harm.

This isn't anti-spirituality. It's pro-truth!

Your brain isn't broken... it's addicted. And the thing it's hooked on? Familiar pain.

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the neuroscience of why suffering becomes a habit, and why happiness can feel genuinely threatening to your nervous system. We're talking negativity bias, amygdala hijack, masochistic equilibrium, and the cortisol loop keeping you stuck in cycles you know aren't serving you.

This isn't therapy-speak. This is your brain on a leash, and how to finally take it back.

If you've ever picked a fight when things were going well, convinced yourself the good thing won't last, or just can't stop replaying the same painful thoughts, this episode is about you. In the best possible way.

Hit play. Your nervous system can handle it.

Last episode, we gave you eleven names. We promised to go deeper. Since then, the list has grown to thirteen, and Congress has said more names are coming. The FBI briefing deadline passed with no public answers. And one city keeps appearing in this story: Huntsville, Alabama, the Rocket City, where researchers die.

In this episode, we go all the way inside Amy Eskridge, the 34-year-old antigravity researcher who died in Huntsville in June 2022 with burns on her hands, a month after she'd already written down that if anything happened to her, it wasn't an accident.

We go into Amy's most extraordinary claim: that the craft governments have been hiding aren't alien. They're us. From 47,000 years in the future. Returned after an apocalypse. Trying to warn us about something we are still in time to stop.

IN MEMORY

Amy Catherine Eskridge, 34 - Institute for Exotic Science, Huntsville, Alabama

Joshua LeBlanc, 29 - NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

And to Ning Li - who found something first, and carried it into silence.

And to the ten others still missing or gone ... may there be answers

Eleven scientists. NASA. MIT. Caltech. Los Alamos. The nuclear weapons complex. The Air Force. All DEAD or missing between 2023 and 2026.

The White House called it "pretty serious stuff." The FBI opened an investigation. Congress wants answers.

But why did it take two years, and a missing general, for anyone in power to pay attention?

IN MEMORY OF GREAT MINDS

This episode is dedicated to the researchers, scientists, and engineers whose work pushed at the edges of what we think is possible -and who are no longer here.

Michael David Hicks — NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

Frank Maiwald — NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Matthew James Sullivan — U.S. Air Force Intelligence 

Nuno F.G. Loureiro — MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Centre

Carl Grillmair — California Institute of Technology / NASA 

Jason Thomas — Novartis Research 

Amy Catherine Eskridge — Institute for Exotic Science, Huntsville

And to those not yet found : Monica Jacinto Reza, Anthony Chavez, Melissa Casias, Steven Garcia, William Neil McCasland...may you come home.

And the list continues!

Everyone's panic-searching "AI taking jobs” , but host Charli is asking the question nobody else will: what if AI didn't steal your career, it just exposed that you were already checked out?

Backed by Gallup's bombshell finding that 80% of the global workforce is disengaged, this episode of Unusual Practice connects the AI anxiety spiral to a deeper meaning crisis hiding underneath it...and it gets uncomfortably personal.

Charli dismantles the AI fear narrative and replaces it with the one conversation your career counsellor, your therapist, and your LinkedIn algorithm have all been too polite to start. If you've ever felt a quiet flicker of relief at the idea of your job disappearing then this episode is for you, and you already know it. 

Unusual Practice: rewiring minds, disrupting the narrative - new episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

There's a specific kind of disorientation that only comes with real success: you built the thing, you run the thing, and somehow the thing is running you.

This episode dismantles the psychological trap of accumulated success- the slow drift from a life you designed to a subscription you're paying with your autonomy, and why the higher your status, the harder it becomes to notice the cage. 

Pulling from behavioral research on CEO identity capture, the philosophy of wei wu wei, pre-colonial African concepts of personal authority, and documented patterns in how successful institutions eventually imprison their founders, this is the episode for the leader who has everything on paper and can't shake the feeling that none of it was quite what they meant to build. 

The keys aren't lost. But finding them requires going into a room most leaders have been avoiding for years.

You didn't build a team. You built an audience.

This episode exposes the hidden architecture of how high-performing leaders accidentally fill their organizations with people who are professionally dependent rather than genuinely driven, and why the difference is almost impossible to see from the inside.

Drawing on organizational psychology, the science of homophily, and the documented paradox of narcissistic leadership, we break down how the most successful executives quietly engineer cultures of approval, what "managing the subscription" actually looks like in your org chart, and the three tests that separate real players from very well-dressed ghosts.

Essential listening for any leader who hasn't heard genuinely uncomfortable feedback in the last ninety days ... and is starting to wonder why.

This episode is in partnership with :

https://jupiter-investments.com

Jupiter Investments functions as an elite strategic advisory firm tailored for high-level executives, founders, and private ventures facing periods of significant transition. The organization specializes in identifying operational risks and resolving internal leadership friction to prevent costly organizational failures. Their service suite encompasses strategic restructuring, global market expansion, and the architectural design of new ventures across diverse international regions. By focusing on the intersection of human behavior and global capital, the firm helps clients refine their commercial positioning and decision-making frameworks. Ultimately, the source outlines a sophisticated approach to risk mitigation and value creation for institutional entities navigating complex, high-stakes business environments.

Why Scaling is Often a Sophisticated Form of Avoidance

3 Part series for professionals.

Most CEOs scaling into new markets aren't executing a strategy but rather running from a question.

This episode deconstructs the psychology behind expansion as avoidance: why high-performing leaders confuse movement with progress, how "overthinking the next opportunity" becomes a sophisticated dodge for the one decision that actually matters, and what behavioral economics, Stoic philosophy, and a century of leadership research reveal about the real cost of building faster than you think.

If your company is growing but something feels fundamentally off, this episode is the conversation your board won't have with you. For founders, CEOs, and senior leaders who suspect their biggest obstacle isn't the market but the meeting they keep postponing with themselves.