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.

Welcome back to WTF is on my mind.

What's been on my mind is ideology.

And I thought, who better to talk to than Richard Grannon?

I have been musing about a few ideas.

I'm going to do the asking of questions, Richard,

and you're going to do a lot of answering,

because you're going to help me figure this out.

Yep.

Because I have some, I feel this, I have feelings about ideology,

and then when I try to get my head around them, I struggle.

And here's what I'm struggling with.

...