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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, cliches, 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, Pelaton
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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 Montel and I'm a devoted follower of the cult of social science. I'm a social commentator with a background in linguistics and the author of non-fiction books including cultish and
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the age of magical overthinking. Welcome to a crash course lecture. [Music] 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. Cultesque, and that's 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
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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, Heavensgate, and Cinon. 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
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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
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comfort or guidance from traditional authority figures like church leaders, the government, news reporters, and medical providers. But here in the US 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? [Music] These conundrums are all eerily
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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
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halfsisters and joined a cult. This tale starts in 1969, a time of incredible socopolitical unrest in the United States. We're on the heels of the John F. Kennedy assassination and civil rights movement were in the throws of the Vietnam War. In the face of all this, in the 1960s and '7s, 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
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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 Cinon. Cinanon was a community that started as an alternative drug rehab center but expanded to attract lifestylers like my
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grandparents. That was the word for so-called squares who didn't need rehab but still wanted in on this lifestyle experiment. Best thing for people is people and Cinon provides the environment to bring together peoples from all walks of life. Cinon 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
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missing comfort and guidance. And at its best, Cinanon 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 Cinon were a little weird. Like everyone dressed alike. Overalls, short haircuts. It was actually pretty hip by today's standards. Cult chic,
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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 Cinanon's visionary leader, Chuck Dedric, 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
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kind of language that Cinanon 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. [Music] 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
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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." As soon as I say the word cult, you might picture a certain image of robes, a kind of 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
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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 conoted something unorthodox maybe, but not necessarily malignant. Around this time, dozens of sociospiritual clicks were cropping up and fading in the US. Polyamorous communists, egalitarian inventors, vegan farmers. There was
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basically a cult or sect for anyone. I mean, one of the reasons the US was founded was for religious freedom. And America had gained a reputation as the sort of place where you were free to get as socioposiritually 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 non-conformist spiritual groups unsettled traditional Christians. Then came several high-profile cult related tragedies. The Manson family
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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 US like wildfire. Here's what I find especially
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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 fan bases is why I can cheekily reference soul cycle as a cult brand or describe Disney adults as culty. And you know I'm not
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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
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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 worshipped leader who offers validation and is the only source of truth and wisdom? Is there abuse, including financial, sexual, and
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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 cultish, it usually checks off at least
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one of these boxes. The checklist can be applied broadly. Like I can think of some celebrated Hollywood clicks, 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 socio- linguistics 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.
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strategic language that holds a lot of power and influence. Society has changed since 1969 when my dad joined Cinon and it's primed us to become the most cultish era ever. [Music] But before we can get into the real cultine, we've got to understand what happened in the 1960s when my dad moved with my grandparents to Cinon. 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
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Cinanon, my grandfather had to get up, leave the house, and talk to people in person. Contain your shock, Jenzie. But in today's world, we're more isolated. In 2024, an American Psychiatric Association poll surveyed over 2,000 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
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for loneliness is digital technology. Let's be real, skimming through your friend's 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 John's Hopkins University looked at young people who spent more than 3 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
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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 managed to survive as a species for so long. And if we're not getting community in person, many will try to 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
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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 lie of a physical meeting place, jargon
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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
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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 1500 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 disperate online group which has been linked to real world
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extremist violence. Q Anon involves a kind of spiderweb of different conspiracy theories, rituals, and buzzwords, all of which promise answers in these uncertain times. The most extreme of QAnon's ideologies attest 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. Q Anon rose in fame and popularity not through in-person
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meetings but rather internet forums and social media posts. Qanoners use a glossery of lofty, vague, and everchanging 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
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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 DC that was the center of a bogus conspiracy theory. It was spread on sites like 4chan, which became a major hub for KQAnon. He opened fire in the restaurant and told police he was there to self-investigate the conspiracy theory. Of course, KQanon is not the cult for everyone. But what about influencer
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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 doumented risk factor for falling prey to charismatic cult leaders. So in 2025, our ultimate cult leader may be father algorithm and
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comment sections are new compound. It's easier than ever to fall into nefarious ideas or get wrapped up in something cultish. And the really wild thing is the language tricks that cult leaders use, our brains are actually wired to fall for them. [Music] So, what are those tricks and how do they work? Enter the game. The most memorable of my dad's Cinon stories had to do with something called the game. The game was the centerpiece of Cinon life, and it was essentially a form of
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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 Cinanon 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
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was called a pull-up. Then others were encouraged to join in on the vitriol, also known as backing the play. Life in Cinon 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 Cinon tasks as if you hadn't just been verbally maligned for 7 hours, you know. And people say, "Well, what is
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the Cinon lifestyle?" We all play the game here, the Cinon game. and that the contrast between the game and the notame is what makes up the lifestyle. When I heard about all this, I was fascinated by the way Cinanon 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 kind of reminds me of when online comment sections get really
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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 of that idea in the comments below. The Cinon 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
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felt constantly gaslit, trapped in the linguistic prison of the game. Okay, 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
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couple married or when an umpire calls you're out. That's how that works, right? Not really in the cult of sports. And in synonyon, 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
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illusory truth effect. The illusory truth effect is one of many mental shortcuts that our brains used 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 blue sky, okay? If everyone in your community tells you the red berries in the swamp are poisonous, that's going to stick. It might even save your life when you're
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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 Cinon 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 synonym phrase act as if. Essentially,
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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 till you make it? This was kind of like Cinanon's version of that. But in Cinon, act as if was rooted in the belief that anything invented by Chuck Dedrich had to be good because he was supremely wise. Act as if is an example of a cult language technique called the thought terminating cliche. Thought-terminating cliche was coined by psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton in 1961.
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And it describes a kind of zingy stack expression that's easy to memorize, easy to repeat, and at its worst is aimed at shutting down independent thinking, questioning, or push back. Thought-terminating cliches 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 versus them mentality or even make
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psychological threats. Like, does the term splitty mean anything to you? Probably not. But in Cinon, 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 jive well with our brains tendency to form in-groups and outroups. 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
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food, relying on our crude us versus them instincts rather than critical thinking becomes a problem. But to people in Cinon, this might not have felt nefarious at all. It may have even felt fun. In my experience talking to survivors, cultish 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
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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 synonyon 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 on to this. In fact, this kind of manipulative language is sused into our everyday lives in ways we don't
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even notice. [Music] 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, wo. 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 Frqued Devise explained to me that in the workplace an excess use
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of slogans, code words, meaningless corporate jargon, and company chance can be a clue in distinguishing if an employer is treading into dangerously cultlike territory. In his words, quote, "All companies have special terms, and sometimes they make sense, but sometimes they're nonsense." As a consultant, I sometimes 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
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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 high flulutent phrases like think big, dive deep, have backbone, and deliver results. According to the New York Times, Amazon encourages employees to
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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 Christy Coulter once told me that some employees misinterpret the leadership principles as a justification for asserting power over their co-workers. 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
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demonstrate their loyalty to Amazon's mission. Not terribly unlike the Cinon 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, aka MLMs. This is Tupperware. You can freeze it, stack it any which way. Within pyramid-shaped MLMs, recruits sell products like leggings or health
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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 at the structure, the more grandiose their titles become. Director, executive, triple ground diamond, most distinguished mistress of linguistics. Yeah, I can see why that's appealing.
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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, girly pop. Loving your posts lately. You have such an amazing
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energy. Have you ever thought about turning that energy into your own business? I used to be miserable at my old 9 to5 and now I make a full-time living working part-time for myself from home without ever having to leave my little one's side. Would love 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
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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 glossery of fan lingo used to build community around
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their parasocial god. References like Kalor and Gaylers, 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 their 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 versus
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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 tobrain connection is powerful. It can be used to bind someone to an in-group and make them feel like 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. [Music]
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Okay, 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
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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 condundalini 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
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to a 3o member, the phrase was warped to mean someone who'd reincarnated 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 3'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 coers people in all destructive
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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
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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.
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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
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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 to only 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
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allows us only to hear what we want to hear. And part of a cult leader's charisma is their ability to intuitit this. Like going back to Jonestown, one survivor named Laura Johnston Cole 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
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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 10 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. Sun cost fallacy plus thought terminating cliche. Game over. That's the power of cultish language
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over an operating system full of cognitive biases. [Music] So there are all 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 Cinanon that there was really no other language
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spoken. There was no education except cult education. Cinanon 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 imshed in Cinanon 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
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way, the lab was his sanctuary. It was the one space in all of Cinanon 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
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people around him. According to Chuck Dedrich, Cinanon was utopia and leaving it was a death sentence. But Craig did it anyway. And with each passing day, the world of Cinon 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 Cinon for college, just in time to witness its downfall from afar. By the late 1970s, Chuck's act as if
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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
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separated all the married couples in Cinanon, then assign them new partners. That was the last straw for Craig's dad and stepmother, and they finally left Cinon 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 Splatizes, the traitorous defectors. This all culminated in one last act of
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violence. Chuck instructed his army to place a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer representing Splatizes. The snake bit the lawyer, landing him in the hospital, and Chuck Dedrich was arrested. Though due to declining health, he never spent any time in jail. Cinon disbanded shortly thereafter, though remnants of the game still live on in online communities and comment sections. As for my dad, he must have had one heck of a college essay because somehow he got into UC Berkeley,
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graduated with a degree in bacteriology, then moved on to UCLA where he earned his PhD in microbiology. He went on to marry a fellow research scientist. Hi, Mom. And eventually became a professor. [Music] So Craig got out, but where does that leave the rest of us? We're living in an increasingly complex world teeming with petty problems, overwhelming choices, fractured communities, and a constant onslaught of both true and false information that our brains simply did
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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
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science to think 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 microbiol, 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 cultish 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 cultish doesn't
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mean you have to give it up. Because here's the thing, human beings influence each other often times 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
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within this nonprofit to keep people inspired can be cultish. 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
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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 cultish 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
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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 Fosio once told me, "Remember, it's okay 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
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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 of 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. [Music]
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