My name is Mark Vesente. I'm a director, producer, writer, and troublemaker. I'm most known as the director of the film What the Bleep Do We Know, and as one of the next-team whistleblowers featured in the HBO series, Aval. Let's just say, I know a thing or two about cults. I don't consider myself a cult expert, but I'm definitely an expert in being screwed over, waking up, and

knowing how to spot them.

And let me tell you, they're everywhere.

My mission is to help people see patterns of abuse across multiple contexts.

From personal to family, to group, to societal.

It's all the same pattern at every scale.

As you'll hear, I have a pretty salty approach to most things.

So there might be some blasphemy.

One or two sacred cows might get knocked over, and there'll likely be some foul language.

You never quite know what you're going to get, because it really does depend on what the

fuck is on my mind.

Hello and welcome back.

Those of you who are pagans, happy solstice, that's actually when I'm recording this,

but I think this episode will come out just before New Year,

so happy New Year to all of you that celebrate those things.

We're not much celebrators, you know, we just tend to hunker down, you know, have family time,

eat, drink, be married, that kind of stuff. But, you know, we actually don't even do gifts.

It's a very, very strange people. Maybe we're pagans. So something that has been on my mind

for, I don't know, close to five years now.

And I want to see if I can try to get it out of my head, out of my mouth, I should say.

I want to talk about suppression today.

That's what I've been thinking about a lot.

...