What if I told you that there was an  incantation that could control people’s minds?

A certain combination of words, used in the  right order, to bend people to your will? What if there were whole vocabularies of these?

Complicated mazes of buzzwords, mantras,  euphemisms, clichés, and redefinitions? And these all add up to a kind of spellbook that a   select few of history’s greatest  influencers secretly possess? From Jesus to Jim Jones to Jeff Bezos.

But also, Taylor Swift, Peloton instructors,   and even old friends selling  essential oils in your DMs.? And here is the kicker: You are probably under the  spell of these words right now. This is a story about words.

Words that alter the course of history. Words that hold invisible power. Power that can be used for good… or for evil.

Hi, I’m Amanda Montell, and I am a devoted  follower of the cult of social science. I’m a social commentator with  a background in linguistics   and the author of nonfiction books including  Cultish and The Age of Magical Overthinking. Welcome to a Crash Course lecture.

If I described my yoga studio as a cult,  a certain image might come to mind. It’s not a cult, really. But, there’s something about  it that’s definitely cultish.

Cult esque. And that something? It’s language.

The language some fitness  studios use is… striking. It’s driven by ideology, ritual, even dogma. They promise a kind of belonging  that isn’t necessarily bad,   but it is at the very least alternative.

And it’s not just yoga studios and Crossfit gyms. There’s cultishness in the places we work,   the places we go for fun, and  in our social media feeds. This kind of language is everywhere.

Each of us is constantly influenced  by the very same language strategies   that created notorious cults like  Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, and Synanon. Cultishness has been around throughout  human history, but…it’s different now. Ramped up.

If you ask me, today we’re living  in the most cultish era of all time. Why? It’s…complicated.

The modern world is chaotic. Our systems are riddled with  labor and wealth imbalances. Ads and influencers are  pushing us to consume more,   while environmentalists warn  us we should be consuming less.

And the crushing pressure to self-brand online has   made us so anxious that our cravings  for validation have become insatiable. Not speaking from experience or anything. In the past, during times of turmoil,   many people found at least some comfort or  guidance from traditional authority figures,   like church leaders, the government,  news reporters, and medical providers.

But here in the U. S., over the last 50 years, our  faith in institutions has been in steady decline. So much for comfort and guidance.

Meanwhile, in my friend group, we often joke about  starting a commune to deal with housing costs. “A compound just makes sense in this  economy!” Are we joking, though? These conundrums are all eerily familiar. They remind me a great deal of another time  in history that I am very familiar with.

They remind me of the world my dad,  Craig, grew up in, in the 1960s. I was raised on my dad’s  stranger-than-fiction tales. Stories of this remote stretch of land in  California where kids didn’t go to a real   school, and adults had to shave  their heads if they broke a rule.

Stories about how his parents, seeking a life  free from the obsession with work and wealth,   took him and his half-sisters, and joined a cult. This tale starts in 1969, a time of incredible  sociopolitical unrest in the United States. We’re on the heels of the John F.

Kennedy  assassination and Civil Rights Movement;   we’re in the throes of the Vietnam War. In the face of all this, in the ‘60s and ‘70s,  countercultural groups started springing up,   full of people seeking ways to thrive  without relying on those systems. From Woodstock-era hippies and Transcendental   Meditators to more sinister groups like  The Way International and Scientology.

It was so dramatic that some scholars refer to  this period in the mid-20th Century as the Fourth   Great Awakening — grouping it together with other  major religious transitions in American history. And here, we find my dad. Or the person who would become my dad,   because Craig was all of 14 when he  moved with his family to Synanon.

Synanon was a community that started  as an alternative drug rehab center,   but expanded to attract “lifestylers” like my  grandparents — that was the word for so-called   squares, who didn’t need rehab but still  wanted in on this lifestyle experiment. “The best thing for people is people,   and Synanon provides the environment to bring  together peoples from all walks of life...” [Amanda] Synanon was the antidote to all  the problems of the modern day. Offering a template for who to be and how  to live morally, sustainably, healthfully. Which, I get!

It relieved some of that stress I   mentioned at the start — it provided  that missing comfort and guidance. And at its best, Synanon  was saving people’s lives. Moving there was truly transformative for many,   including talented artists and musicians  who chose to trade their addictions for   playing nightly tunes, and getting  high on nothing but group bonding.

But from my dad’s perspective, things  in Synanon were a little weird. Like, everyone dressed  alike—overalls, short haircuts. It was actually a pretty hip  look by today’s standards.

Cult chic? Compound casual? Members used all kinds of special  words and did mandatory rituals.

But the thing that really freaked out  my dad was how everyone was so obsessed   with Synanon’s visionary leader, Chuck Dederich. A normal guy who they treated as a man-God. So, my dad became a loner, just  trying to fly under the radar.

As I grew up, I became  fascinated by groups like this,   wondering what drives the irrational,  and overly uniform, beliefs within them. And I started to notice something. The same kind of language that Synanon used   to recruit and isolate their  followers — it was everywhere.

This language can be found in our  everyday lives, manipulating us,   even — and especially — in  places we wouldn’t expect. But pause. Before we get much deeper, we should  figure out what the word “cult” even means.

Because on the surface, an exercise bike company   and a sober compound in the hills  don’t have all that much in common. I’ve heard it said that cults are like porn. It’s a joke that references a famous 1964  Supreme Court case, where, when asked for a   definition of pornography, Justice Potter  Stewart said, “I know it when I see it.” And as soon as I say the word “cult”, you  might picture a certain image of robes,   a dazed look, super-long hair, dirty feet?

But, that’s just a stereotype. The word “cult” hasn’t always  had sinister undertones at all. Let’s take a detour to the 17th century.

The earliest written usage of “cult”  traces back to the 1600s, when the   word meant “homage paid to divinity,”  or offerings to win over the gods. 200 years later, by the mid-1800s,   “cult” evolved to mean a kind of churchly  categorization, more like “sect,” used   specifically to describe “ancient or  primitive systems of religious belief.” The word connoted something unorthodox,  maybe, but not necessarily malignant. Around this time, dozens of socio-spiritual  cliques were cropping up and fading in the US. Polyamorous communists, egalitarian inventors,   vegan farmers… there was basically  a cult, or sect, for anyone.

I mean, one of the reasons the U. S.  was founded was for religious freedom,   and America had gained a reputation as the sort   of place where you were free to get as  socio-spiritually freaky as you liked. It wasn’t until the 1960s and ‘70s, that the  word “cult” started gaining a darker reputation.

The mass emergence of nonconformist spiritual  groups unsettled traditional Christians. Then came several high-profile cult-related  tragedies: the Manson Family murders of 1969,   where celebrities and everyday  people were killed in their homes. And the Jonestown Massacre of 1978,   where over 900 people unwillingly took their  lives under the influence of their leader.

From there, the word “cult” was  solidified as a national symbol of peril. What followed was a period in the 1980s known  as the “Satanic Panic,” when conspiracy theories   about cults abusing suburban kids  spread around the U. S. like wildfire.

Here’s what I find especially interesting, though:   As soon as “cult” became synonymous with harm and  infamy in the 70s, it also became… kind of cool. That’s why we have slang like “cult following”  and “cult classic” to describe midnight   showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show or the  followings of jam bands like The Grateful Dead. This wink-wink, hyperbolic interpretation  of the word to describe devoted fanbases is   why I can cheekily reference SoulCycle  as a “cult brand” or describe Disney   Adults as “culty,” and you know I’m  not talking about communes and death.

At least… hopefully not? Which brings us back to the task at hand:  I was supposed to be defining cult here. But as you can see, it’s really hard.

You understand how we get to,  “I know it when I see it.” Because that’s the thing about  language: In everyday practice,   definitions are determined not by academics  or dictionary-makers, but by us, the speakers. Meaning depends on the person  you’re talking to, and the context. Like when “cult” is used to write off groups that   mainstream society judges — folk  magic practitioners, for example.

There’s more on that aspect of the  term in Crash Course Religions. But when it comes to sinister cults, it can be  helpful to have a less vibes-driven definition. A number of psychologists have  developed rubrics for this.

They include things like: Does it have a charismatic  and idol-worshiped leader,   who offers validation and is the  only source of truth and wisdom? Is there abuse, including financial,  sexual, and/or labor exploitation? Is there extreme paranoia about the outside  world, and no tolerance for questioning?

Is there meaningful financial transparency? And is there a viable exit strategy? That’s the checklist I tend to use,  personally, and it comes in part from   psychiatrist Robert J.

Lifton and in  part from the Cult Education Institute. There’s ongoing disagreement among scholars  about what should go on these lists. But, the point is, when I  say something is cult-ish,   it usually checks off at least one of these boxes.

The checklist can be applied broadly. Like, I can think of some  celebrated Hollywood cliques,   Silicon Valley companies, and fitness  studios that check some of these. And, unfortunately, you won’t find a major  religion that doesn’t check some of them either.

But I see the world through a  sociolinguistics lens, so for me,   the most interesting connection here isn’t  that you can find abuses of power everywhere. It’s that you can find the same  type of language everywhere. Strategic language that holds  a lot of power and influence.

Society has changed since 1969  when my dad joined Synanon. And it’s primed us to become  the most cult-ish era ever. But before we can get into the real cult tea,  we’ve gotta understand what happened in the 1960s.

When my dad moved with my grandparents to Synanon,   it was a time of cultural turbulence and  fear, not all that different from today. But this was also before the internet. Before social media.

To learn about Synanon, my grandfather had to get  up, leave the house, and talk to people in person. Contain your shock, Gen Z. But, in today’s world, we’re more isolated.

In 2024, an American Psychiatric Association  poll surveyed over two thousand American adults,   and found that 30% had felt lonely  every single week during the last year. So, how did this happen? According to a 2024 survey from Harvard,  participants reported being overworked.

Not seeing family enough. A lack of spiritual life. And the biggest culprit for  loneliness is digital technology.

Let’s be real: Skimming through your friends’  life updates isn’t the same as catching up IRL. Add to all this, the fact that  we’ve basically got a “tragedy   on demand” machine in our pocket at all times? A 2019 report from Johns Hopkins University  looked at young people who spent more than   three hours per day on social media, and  it found that those people internalized   problems more, making it harder to  cope with depression and anxiety.

So many of us are more disconnected than ever. While also carrying the weight  of the world in our pockets. It’s like we’ve forgotten, we’re  humans!

We’re all about community. It’s part of how we’ve managed to  survive as a species for so long. And if we’re not getting community in person,   many will try and fill that  relationship void some other way.

Cue: the Heavenly Internet,   #blessing us with the keys to find any  kind of community we could ever want. In a way, that’s beautiful. But when I say any kind of  community, I mean any kind. Including fanatical fringe groups.

With charismatic leaders. Who are paranoid about outsiders. Who think they have all the answers.

And whose beliefs are dangerous to question. Unlike my grandfather, we don’t have to leave  our homes to subscribe to new ideologies. We can be profoundly influenced  without even leaving the couch.

Today, most zealous fringe groups build a  digital system of morality and community,   and in lieu of a physical meeting place,  jargon gives them something to assemble around. I’ll never forget when I first downloaded  Instagram in the summer of 2012, I was   struck that the app called its account holders  “followers” instead of friends or connections. “It’s like a cult platform,” I remember saying. “Is it not encouraging everyone  to build their own little cult?” And while these platforms claim to make  an effort to stop truly dangerous ideas   and disinformation from spreading, those  safety nets certainly don’t catch everything. Ultimately, algorithms tend to prioritize  spicy content, whether or not it’s true.

In fact, one 2018 MIT study found it takes  true stories about six times longer than   false ones to reach 1,500 people on  the app formerly known as Twitter. Why? Because false information seems  more novel, more exclusive and wise.

Authentic in its outlandishness. Here’s an example of how this has worked.

QAnon: a disparate online group, which has  been linked to real world extremist violence. QAnon involves a kind of spider web of  different conspiracy theories, rituals,   and buzzwords — all of which promise  answers in these uncertain times. The most extreme of QAnon’s ideologies  attests that an evil cabal of “elites,”   or Satan-worshipping child abusers, secretly runs  Hollywood, the media, and the Democratic party. And Donald Trump was divinely sent to save  America and the world from this vast evil.

QAnon rose in fame and popularity not  through in-person meetings, but rather,   internet forums and social media posts. QAnoners use a glossary of lofty, vague,  and ever-changing vocabulary like “5D   consciousness” and “do the research”  in order to intrigue curious recruits,   who might not get on board with overtly  violent language out of the gate. They also do this to avoid the surveillance of  social media companies, who might be on high   alert for QAnon threats and shut down  accounts that use certain terminology.

It’s easy enough to dismiss online “cults”  as not threatening in the real world,   but the influence of groups like  QAnon has led to very real harm. For example, in 2016, a man  radicalized online showed up   at a pizza parlor in D. C. that was the  center of a bogus conspiracy theory.

It was spread on sites like 4chan,  which became a major hub for QAnon. He opened fire in the restaurant  and told police he was there to   “self-investigate” the conspiracy theory. Of course, QAnon is not the cult for everyone.

But what about influencer fandoms,   which seem positive at first but end up  taking over someone’s whole value system? In today’s world, many of us find  ourselves in parasocial relationships,   where we feel like we have a special  connection with someone we see online… And when someone makes us feel known and seen,  especially if we’re isolated from the people   around us, that’s a well-documented risk factor  for falling prey to charismatic cult leaders. So, in 2025, our ultimate cult  leader may be Father Algorithm.

And comment sections, our new compound. It’s easier than ever to fall into nefarious  ideas, or get wrapped up in something cult-ish. And the really wild thing is  — the language tricks that   cult leaders use?

Our brains are  actually wired to fall for them. So, what are those tricks, and  how do they work? Enter, The Game.

The most memorable of my dad’s Synanon stories  had to do with something called “The Game.” The Game was the centerpiece of Synanon life, and  it was essentially a form of endurance training,   or “group therapy,” where followers  gathered around in so-called “tribes”   and were invited to single out other  members to verbally berate them. The Game could be hostile and even traumatizing,   and yet, in Synanon language, it was  described as something you “played.” And playing was required, even for kids. It happened several nights a week and  might involve, say, one member calling   out another with whom they had personal beef  and shouting at them for being lazy or spoiled.

This was called a “pull-up.” Then, others were encouraged to join in on the  vitriol — also known as “backing the play.” Life in Synanon was framed within two rhetorical  categories: “In the Game,” and “Out of the Game.” And when you were “In the Game,”  nothing else in the world existed. After “The Game” was finished, you were  supposed to compartmentalize, move on with   your daily Synanon tasks, as if you hadn’t  just been verbally maligned for seven hours. “And people say well what  is the Synanon Lifestyle? We all play the game here, the Synanon  Game and the contrast between the Game   and the Not Game is what makes up the Lifestyle.” When I heard about all this, I was  fascinated by the way Synanon used   euphemisms and insidery buzzwords  to reshape followers’ reality.

It sent a shiver down my spine. My dad said that some members, like my  grandfather, were actually addicted to it. In this way, The Game kinda reminds me of when  online comment sections get really heated.

You know when people can’t stop posting  negative or conspiratorial comments,   thinking they’re calling someone  out for some moral infraction,   but really they’re just aiming  for clout and, maybe catharsis? Let me know what you think in  the comments below. *wink* The Synanon Game was like that… but in real life. Describing what it felt like to  play The Game at 14, my dad said, “To me, the torrent of heated accusations felt   like verbal carpet bombing.  I wished I were invisible.” He felt constantly gaslit.

Trapped in the linguistic prison of The Game. OK, buckle up. Things are about to get nerdy.

In linguistics, there’s a concept known  as “the theory of performativity” which   argues that language doesn’t just describe  or reflect our reality: It creates it. The idea here is that speech itself has the  ability to cause measurable changes in the world. If that sounds a little hocus pocus,  think about when a justice of the   peace pronounces a couple married,  or when an umpire calls “you’re out!” That’s how that works, right?

I’m  not really in the cult of sports… And in Synanon, that exclusive,  heavily repeated jargon — including phrases like “In the Game”  and “Out of the Game” plus all the   charged verbiage wielded during the Game itself— worked to create a new reality for followers. Studies have shown that repeating words  and phrases makes our beliefs stronger. This is a describable phenomenon.

It’s called the illusory truth effect. The illusory truth effect is  one of many mental shortcuts   that our brains use to make efficient decisions. And for most of human history, before a  time when misinformation could spread so   fast and far online, the illusory  truth effect worked well enough.

Like, picture, you’re a hunter gatherer;  you’re not on BlueSky, okay: if everyone   in your community tells you the red berries in  the swamp are poisonous, that’s gonna stick. It might even save your life  when you're out foraging. And if that isn’t true, at least it didn’t hurt.

The trouble is, our minds are still inclined  to interpret any repeated phrases as reality. Like if you heard something repeatedly during  The Synanon Game — even if it was cruel,   even if it was untrue — it could  easily start to feel like a fact. And if you wanted to question that?

If you confided to a friend that, actually,  you don’t think The Game is helpful? They might respond with the  Synanon phrase, “act as if.” Essentially, this was a cue to pretend  you agree with the cult’s rules,   until one day, you sincerely do. You know that phrase, “fake it ‘til you make it”?

This was kinda like Synanon’s version of that. But in Synanon, “act as if” was rooted  in the belief that anything invented by   Chuck Dederich had to be good,  because he was supremely wise. “Act as if” is an example of a cult language  technique called the thought-terminating cliché. “Thought-terminating cliché” was coined  by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in 1961,   and it describes a kind of zingy stock expression  that’s easy to memorize, easy to repeat,   and at its worst, is aimed at shutting down  independent thinking, questioning, or pushback. Thought-terminating clichés combined with another  linguistic strategy to keep Chuck in power: loaded language, aka emotionally charged labels  and buzzwords that meant something innocuous,   or nothing at all, to outsiders,  but could be used on followers to   create an “us vs. them” mentality,  or even make psychological threats.

Like, does the term “splittee”  mean anything to you? Probably not, but in Synanon, that was  the label used to describe those who’d   left the group — the ultimate  betrayal and cardinal sin. Loaded buzzwords like these are  hyper-effective because they jibe   well with our brains’ tendency  to form in-groups and out-groups.

And again, detecting social patterns like these  has historically been really helpful for survival! But when a community’s aims are more  cerebral than foraging for food,   relying on our crude “us vs. them” instincts  rather than critical thinking becomes a problem. But to people in Synanon, this might not have  felt nefarious at all: It may even have felt… fun.

In my experience talking to survivors,  cult-ish language is often the first   thing you pick up when you get involved with  an in-group, and the last thing you let go,   because it’s organic, invisible,  and seemingly commitment-free. Remember learning Pig Latin  on the playground as a kid? It was like a secret code.

And it immediately made you feel  like one of the cool kids, right? What’s that? Well, at least I thought they were cool.

Anyway, Pig Latin is pretty far  from Synanon lingo, and so far,   you might be thinking you’ve been able  to escape the worst of cultish influence. Trust me, I get it. I’d like to think I have too.

But, it's not just infamous cult  leaders who’ve caught onto this. In fact, this kind of manipulative language is   suffused into our everyday lives  in ways we don’t even notice. Introducing: corporate jargon.

You might not work at a company where people  walk around saying things as ridiculous as, “We   need to leverage our synergies to drive innovative  solutions” — or maybe you do, in which case…whoa. But most companies have some kind of  loaded language, used to motivate people   to work hard and help them feel like  they’re a part of the company mission. A business scholar named Manfred F.

R. Kets de  Vries explained to me that in the workplace,   an excess use of slogans, code words, meaningless  corporate jargon, and company chants can be   a clue in distinguishing if an employer is  treading into dangerously cultlike territory. In his words, “All companies have special terms,   and sometimes they make sense,  but sometimes they’re nonsense.

As a consultant, sometimes I enter an  organization where people use acronyms,   but they don’t actually know  what they’re talking about. They’re just imitating what top management says.” A famous example of this is Amazon,  a company whose ideals take classic   American values like meritocracy,  individual ambition, and climbing   ladders and institutionalizes them into what  I interpret as a religious dogma of sorts. For example, Amazon has its own  version of the Ten Commandments,   so to speak, called the “Leadership Principles.” They include hifalutin phrases  like “think big,” “dive deep,”   “have backbone,” and “deliver results.” According to the New York Times, Amazon encourages  employees to memorize the principles when they’re   hired, then live and breathe them both in and  outside the office, like Biblical proverbs.

Some employees even teach them to their kids. Ex-Amazon employee and writer Kristi Coulter  once told me that some employees misinterpret   the Leadership Principles as a justification  for asserting power over their coworkers,   like using the “Disagree and Commit”  principle as an excuse to pick fights   or tear apart fellow employees’ pitches in  meetings, almost as a stunt to demonstrate   their loyalty to Amazon’s mission…  not terribly unlike the Synanon Game. In a society where work and consumerism are slowly  replacing classical religious institutions as   a system of belief and belonging, this kind  of language is worth keeping an ear out for.

An even more famous example comes from the  multi-level marketing industry, a.k.a. MLMs. “This is Tupperware. You can  Freeze it, Stack it, Any Which Way” Within pyramid-shaped MLMs, recruits sell products  — like leggings or health supplements — to   their family and friends… in turn, luring  these people to become sellers themselves.

Recruits are regarded as business owners,   even though none of the traditional  rules of entrepreneurship apply. MLM acolytes are labeled “consultants”  or “distributors”—and the higher one   moves up the structure, the more  grandiose their titles become. “Director,” “Executive,” “Triple Crown Diamond”... ”Most Distinguished Mistress of Linguistics,”  yeah, I can see why that’s appealing! What’s fascinating about MLMs is  that they’re not actually selling   financial independence in any concrete way.

Instead, they’re selling something much  more abstract and very American: optimism. Faith that you can achieve the American  Dream even if it’s numerically impossible. And that promise is made  with this sparkly language.

Imagine a note like this sliding into your  DMs from an old high school classmate: “Hey girlie pop! Lovinggggg your posts lately. You have such an amazing energy.

Have you ever thought about turning  that energy into your own business? I used to be miserable at my old 9 to 5,  and now I make a full-time living working   part-time for myself from home without  ever having to leave my little ones’ side. Would loveeeeee to grab coffee and tell you more!” Data shows that since the Tupperware Party  days, MLMs tend to target stay-at-home wives   and mothers, as well as other demographics like  college students and immigrant communities,   who are generally locked out of the dignified  labor market and simultaneously seeking purpose.

They also tend to have a strong base of friends  and family to recruit from, lots of hope for the   future, and at least some spare money and  time that they’ll likely never get back. Even beyond work, similar strategies stretch  into our niche interests, our fandoms. Like, don’t get me wrong, I love T Swift’s Red  album, but it isn’t lost on me that Swifties   have a robust glossary of fan lingo, used to  build community around their parasocial god.

References like Gaylors and Kaylors, the  numbers 13 and 89, and phrases like “Not   a lot going on at the moment" are used  to make fans feel part of a movement,   to give them power — to show that they’re  real devotees, above casual listeners. Countless internet communities, from  fantasy sports leagues to political forums,   have loaded language of their own, too. And while it can be used to construct  a positive sense of belonging — DFTBA, am I right? — it can also create needless us-vs.-them  conflicts and shut down independent thought,   especially if the people involved  don’t quite know why they’re saying   these chants and buzzwords that  incite such strong emotions.

That language-to-brain connection is powerful. It can be used to bind someone to an in-group,  and make them feel they can never leave. It can be used to confuse a follower so they  start to believe the only way to know what’s   true and guarantee their safety, is to  depend on the all-knowing leader.

Forever. [menacing laughter] OK, so we’ve talked about what a cult is, how  language is a cult leader’s most powerful — and   sneakiest — tool, and why modern society  is so susceptible to these strategies. But there’s still a question that haunts me. If cultishness shows up in the words we use every   day — if we can hear it around us —  then how is it still so effective?

Cultish language can actually be really hard  to clock because it often evolves slowly. For example, sometimes cult leaders  take existing English words that   followers have been using their  whole lives and gradually twist   their meanings until they have a whole  new definition that serves the cult. I once interviewed a survivor of the  Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization,   or 3HO, a dogmatic Kundalini Yoga-based  group, who told me that one common   English term that meant something totally  different to her group was “old soul.” To most of us, “old soul” describes  someone who’s wise beyond their years.

It’s a positive thing. But to a 3HO member, the phrase was  warped to mean someone who’d reincarnated   life after life after life after life and  could never get it right—it was threatening. And it could be used to frighten followers into  obedience, because if you broke one of 3HO’s   rules, like by eating meat or failing  to study scripture at a certain time,   you’d be at risk of “lowering your  vibration” and becoming an old soul.

In different flavors and with varying aesthetics,   this kind of language is used to  coerce people in all destructive cults. But people don’t fall for things  like this because they’re foolish. In large part, it’s because cult leaders  are taking advantage of not just the   power of language, but also a handful of  vulnerabilities that have been hardwired   into our heads since the days when we spent  most of our time gathering nuts and berries.

I see it like this: the brain is like an  operating system - let’s call it OS Human. In lots of ways, OS Human is really advanced these   days - it can send a text message and  open 250 browser tabs at the same time. Not to brag.

But in other ways, it’s the  same basic operating system   we’ve been using since we started walking upright. For one thing, OS Human has a strong  natural inclination toward communalism:   loyalty to our own group, which we  may view as superior to other groups. And this makes sense, evolutionarily.

The famous biologist Charles  Darwin pointed out that,   for survival purposes, it’s ideal to  have a relatively small community. Think about it: It’s way easier to  take care of a few dozen people,   than a few hundred… or a few billion. But, our world is much larger now —  we’re connected to way more people.

And yet, OS Human hasn’t completely updated. We still tend to be fiercely loyal to the insular  groups we’re a part of — even if they’re virtual,   even if they’re not really our groups in any  sense resembling what Darwin was talking about. And here’s the thing: that OS Human source code  was built on some not-so-reliable foundations.

This is due to cognitive biases: psychological  tricks that developed in early human brains to   help us make efficient decisions with our  limited time, memory, and brain power. The illusory truth effect I  mentioned earlier is one of them. Another is confirmation bias.

This is our tendency only to seek out, notice,   and internalize information that  validates what we already believe. Confirmation bias can make it hard to accept  or even notice new, contradictory information. It allows us only to hear what we want to hear.

And part of a cult leader’s charisma  is their ability to intuit this. Like, going back to Jonestown… One survivor  named Laura Johnston Kohl once told me,   “I was there for political  reasons, so Jim thought,   ‘Every time I see Laura sitting in a  meeting, I have to address politics.’ I let him address my priorities and  put blinders on for other things.” This is classic confirmation bias. One more major flaw in OS  Human?

The sunk cost fallacy. This is the belief that if you’ve already spent  resources on something — like money and time,   or even hope and secrets —  you can’t give that thing up. If you’ve already sunk ten years and  your life savings into a group that   promised you transcendence, you’re going  to be heavily motivated to justify your   choices — to prove that any day now, the  time and hope you put in will pay off.

Sunk cost fallacy +  thought-terminating cliché? Game over. That’s the power of cultish language over an  operating system full of cognitive biases.

So, there are all of these factors working against people getting out of cults — sometimes  it can seem nearly impossible to escape. But, there is reason for hope! Here’s  the story of how my dad got out.

When my dad was in high school,  he was in the thick of it. He was surrounded by friends, family,  teachers, doctors — everyone around him   had so fully absorbed the language of Synanon  that there was really no other language spoken. There was no education except cult education: Synanon kids were required to  go to the “school” on site,   which wasn’t teaching multiplication  tables or multiple perspectives.

It was designed to keep them  solidly enmeshed in Synanon culture. But Craig was simultaneously learning to think  in a different way — by being exposed to science. He worked in the group’s microbiology lab,   where he’d test followers for diseases because  they wanted to avoid outside hospitals.

In a way, the lab was his sanctuary — it was the one space in all of Synanon that  was governed by questions and empirical facts. It gave him practice thinking critically  and accessing a diversity of information. And, as his interest in biology grew,   he knew he’d need to go to college  if he wanted to continue to learn.

That meant he needed an accredited  degree from an outside high school. So Craig began hitching rides  into San Francisco to attend one — against tradition, and against  the urging of people around him. According to Chuck Dederich, Synanon was  utopia, and leaving it was a death sentence.

But, Craig did it anyway. And with each passing day, the world of  Syananon felt more contrived and toxic. Ultimately, when graduation came, the  decision to leave was actually an easy one.

In fact, he was desperate to go. So, against the pressure of everyone on  the inside, he traded Synanon for college — just in time to witness its downfall from afar. By the late 1970s, Chuck’s “act as  if” protocols became harder to follow,   as his dogma grew more and more extreme.

For example, some survivors say when Chuck’s  doctor told him he needed to lose weight,   Chuck forced everyone else in  the group to go on strict diets,   too, coercing them to participate in  humiliating mass weigh-ins in the nude. After Chuck’s wife passed away from cancer  and he fell in love with someone new,   he demanded that everyone else go through the  same grief process as a personal growth exercise,   and he separated all the married couples in  Synanon, then assigned them new partners. That was the last straw for Craig’s dad and  stepmother, and they finally left Synanon in 1977.

As time went on, Chuck also became  increasingly paranoid about outsiders. That inspired him to scrap one of his  original cardinal rules: no violence. He instituted a personal militia  called the “Imperial Marines,”   who he mandated to physically beat “splittees” — the traitorous defectors.

This all culminated in one, last act of violence. Chuck instructed his army to place a rattlesnake  in the mailbox of a lawyer representing splittees. The snake bit the lawyer, landing him in the  hospital, and Chuck Dederich was arrested—though,   due to declining health, he  never spent any time in jail.

Synanon disbanded shortly thereafter,  though remnants of The Game still live on. In online communities, in comments sections. As for my dad?

He must’ve had one heck of a college essay,   because somehow, he got into UC Berkeley,  graduated with a degree in bacteriology,   then moved onto UCLA, where he  earned his PhD in microbiology. He went on to marry a fellow research scientist  — hi, mom! — and eventually became a professor. So, Craig got out!

But where  does that leave the rest of us? We’re living in an increasingly complex  world—teeming with heady problems,   overwhelming choices, fractured communities,  and a constant onslaught of both true and   false information that our brains  simply did not develop to handle. So, our cognitive biases sometimes tell  us to double down on cultish choices — to stay with that candidate a little longer,   to try a final month at that culty fitness  studio, to buy one more Stanley cup — despite enormous evidence  that we should reconsider.

Simply put, our once-useful cognitive  shortcuts are clashing with the modern world. As for why my dad didn’t buy into so many of  the cultish strategies that worked on his peers? Well, in part, he had his interest  in science to thank for that.

This just goes to show that even  in highly oppressive environments,   a hint of skepticism can point you toward hope. But short of running a microbio lab… what  are the rest of us supposed to do about this? What can we take away from my dad’s story,   as people who are exposed to  cult-ish language every day?

Well, I argue that being  manipulated… isn’t always bad. Anything can be taken too far. But as a whole, just because something is a little  cult-ish doesn’t mean you have to give it up.

Because here’s the thing: Human  beings influence each other,   oftentimes in irrational ways—it’s what we  do! We’re a social and mystical species. And cultish language can be a  way to mobilize people for good.

Like, one of my best friends  works at a cancer nonprofit,   and she’s recruited me to do  some fundraising for them. This is an objectively good  mission that I believe in,   but vying for research funding is hard,  and I’ve noticed how the mantras and   labels used within this nonprofit to  keep people inspired can be cult-ish: “Someday is today!” “You are the greatest generation of warriors  and heroes in this quest for a cancer cure!” Am I being manipulated when I  hear phrases like that? Totally.

But when it’s safe, respectful, and easy  to get out of when you’ve had enough — being a little irrational about  the things we love, together? Well, that’s a core part of being human. We chant at sports games, cry-shouting  the same phrases over and over again   until we really do believe  that our team is unbeatable.

We wear special friendship bracelets to concerts,   and flash funny hand signs at each other,  to show we belong to communities we love. Is it all a little mystical? Sure.

But that’s how humans are. And admitting that might just  be the key to making the best of   our cult-ish proclivities without  letting them take over our lives. I believe that we can strive to  preserve the sanctity of facts   without giving up the fun of ritual  or the might of cultish language.

For example, we can use what we know about the  illusory truth effect to spread real facts. Pretty fonts, rhyming slogans, and constant  repetition aren’t just for cult leaders. Memory scientist Lisa Fazio once told me:  “Remember, it’s OK to repeat true information.

People need reminders of what’s true.” Ultimately, my goal with my writing  is to be more compassionate toward   others’ irrationalities — and skeptical of my own. In this ever-complicated and culty age, I  think that’s the best each of us can do. And with that, I suppose all I can say is: stay  curious, stay critical, and—dare I say—amen.

Thanks for watching this Crash  Course Lecture which was made   with the help of all these nice —  and only slightly culty — people. If you want to help keep Crash  Course free for everyone,   forever, you can join our cult on Patreon.