My name is Mark Vissente.

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 Nixium whistleblowers featured in the HBO series, The Vow.

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.

One of my many passions 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.

I want to arm people with the knowledge to recognize and navigate these kinds of abuses

so they can experience

true freedom and be their most authentic selves. Along the way, I'm going to touch on psychology,

spirituality, consciousness, morality, cults, science, filmmaking, media, and philosophy. You never quite know what you're going to get,

as it really does depend on WTF is on my mind.

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back.

It's good to be here.

Thank you to all of you that listen to me

ramble on about all kinds of things. I really do appreciate it. I've been thinking a lot about

this concept I call prickly people. Now, it's not very well thought out what I'm about to talk

about. I'm going to kind of ramble through some things, so please be patient. But I've been

inspired by this, I guess, a feeling I have around certain people. And I call them

prickly people. So my question is, you know, have you ever been around someone who seems like

...