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, all.

So, what a time to be alive.

The world is insane.

So I was thinking about what it's like inside a cult.

And one of the things that happens is you don't realize it because you're so used to the environment, but you're terrified of stepping outside of certain boundaries.

And those boundaries have been provided usually by the cult leader, actually always by the cult leader.

And although you're never explicitly told if you

step outside of these boundaries you're screwed but it's implicit that if you

step outside of the boundaries you're a certain kind of person a bad person

you know a suppressive you know you know, whatever it is, whatever

culture you're in.

...