Loading summary
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is Stock up savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for storewide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tax to earn on eligible items from Smart Water, Healthy Choice, Continental, arrowhead, Red Bull, St James, Tillamook and Special K. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions.
Zoe Lascaz
Thy ticket lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Geth with the times.
Kaz Riley
With the times.
Alice Hines
You're playing the loot.
Zoe Lascaz
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?
Richard Bandler
Discover is accepted at 99% of places
Ryan Seacrest
that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
Turn if you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car, start at CarMax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget. From luxury cars to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. So hey, want to get started? Just head to CarMax.com for details and get pre qualified today. Want to drive CarMax? Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back to tested against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for Informational purposes only and is not an investment, recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.
Alice Hines
Kaleidoscope so when you were in California, Zoe, and you were hearing all of these crazy stories of people fixing all of their psychological issues, but also, you know, being crucified, did it make you want to try this stuff?
Zoe Lascaz
Oh, 100%. It not only made me want to try this stuff, but it actually really upped the stakes of the stuff I wanted to try. Try specifically the NLP crew's experiments with hypnosis. Back then, they were playing around with it for the first time, sort of testing the limits of what they could do. So you might find them installing and uninstalling phobias in their friends and making people hallucinate things that weren't there or hypnotically deleting things that were. But of all these applications of hypnosis, one stood out to me, specifically this one guy, Terry, told me about how the co developers of nlp, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, put him in a trance and he was able to remember details of a car accident he'd been in years earlier that he thought he'd blacked out completely.
Alice Hines
So hypnosis can actually help you recover memories that you've lost?
Zoe Lascaz
Well, it's really controversial.
Kaz Riley
Hey, let me just press. Ok, perfect. All right.
Zoe Lascaz
But I personally have a reason for wanting to believe it works. I was trying to think of meaningful applications of NLP and hypnosis to my life. And I certainly have some embarrassing habits and little flaws I'd love to banish, but I was thinking of something a little more substantial than saving my cuticles and nails from my picking and biting. Or I'm on a call with an English hypnotist who has studied nlp. Her name is Kaz Riley. And really, what sort of haunted me throughout my life is this void left by my father who died when I was young. My father died of cancer when I was six. And although I love the person I've come to know through stories from my mom and their friends, I don't have that many of my own memories of him. Can I get some back through hypnosis? Just like he must have held me as a child, he must have lifted me up, he must have touched me. You know, just like colors, impressions, moments, the light, things like that deeper sense of him. That's the goal. But I'm wary of even trying this because hypnotic memory recovery is not at all an exact or even remotely proven science.
Kaz Riley
That's a very hotly debated subject, and
Zoe Lascaz
quite rightly so, because it's apparently alarmingly easy to install memories in someone's mind using hypnosis. People have come out of trances with false memories of alien abduction or even childhood abuse. But the way Kaz openly acknowledged the risks helped put me at ease.
Kaz Riley
It's my view from the work that I've done is that we can certainly help people get a deeper sense of somebody that they lost, especially somebody like a parent when they were younger. But we will never know if those memories are real or not.
Zoe Lascaz
With the disclaimer that what we get might not be capital R real, Kaz still believes it's worth doing. Kaz says she avoids installing fake memories by steering clear of leading questions.
Kaz Riley
It just. It's really opening your mind and seeing what's in there with regards to dad and bring it into a more conscious state if you like.
Zoe Lascaz
You're about to hear Kaz hypnotize me. If you're driving, skip ahead to our theme music.
Kaz Riley
Now, I wonder if you knew, Zoe, that ever since the day that you were born, you've learned and experienced so many wonderful and amazing things. And there's a very special, wonderful, amazing, and unique part of you. Your inner mind, your subconscious mind can have full access to all those wonderful things that lay within. Now, in a moment, you can hear me count down from 10 all the way down to zero. And as I count down from 10 all the way down to zero,
Zoe Lascaz
take a deep breath in.
Richard Bandler
And breathe out. Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so that I can speak privately with your unconscious mind.
Zoe Lascaz
You can notice that you feel rested, more alert, confident. From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, this is Mind Games episode three. I'm Zoe Lascoz.
Alice Hines
And I'm Alice Hines.
Richard Bandler
You don't know how you did it, do you? You go into a little time distortion state and you're out of
Alice Hines
Zoe. Re listening to that clip. What happened to you, dude?
Zoe Lascaz
I cannot even listen to that clip without slipping into a trance. It's like she's the whistle, I am the dog. Kaboom.
Alice Hines
That's so funny because it really does nothing for me.
Kaz Riley
What?
Zoe Lascaz
Are you serious?
Alice Hines
Yeah, I feel like I'm just listening to a podcast.
Zoe Lascaz
Her sexy hypno voice.
Alice Hines
I mean, she's addressing you. She says your name. That might be part of it.
Zoe Lascaz
That makes a lot of sense, actually. It is very personal for. For me, when I'm slipping into trance, it feels like my body is getting heavier at the same time that my mind is getting Lighter or like parts of my brain are even fluttering. And it's kind of addictive because in trance you can feel or be whatever you want. So your body can be really big or really small. I can feel I'm in my body.
Alice Hines
It's funny that you describe it that way. That's exactly how this hypnotherapist Stephen Gilligan, explains trance.
Daniel Spitzer
I can feel that I'm up on the ceiling. I can feel that I have five hands. I can feel like I'm five years old.
Zoe Lascaz
I can feel like I'm 10,000 years old.
Alice Hines
Last episode. Richard Bandler was an undergraduate running experimental psych groups with linguist professor John Grinder. It was the early 70s, and what they were doing was weird, but it was also part of a larger alternative therapy moment.
Zoe Lascaz
Everything changed when Bandler and Grinder learned about hypnosis.
Richard Bandler
NLP grew out of my fascination with trance phenomenon more than anything else, because when I saw people doing this stuff, I started going, it's the same brain doing it. I mean, if your brain will do it, it's just a question of who's driving the bus.
Alice Hines
That's Bandler talking about his interest in hypnosis during one of his seminars in the 80s. If you've ever seen tranced out people on a stage making out with strangers or forgetting their own names, you're, you know. Hypnosis can unlock weird mental feats. Bandler thought we could harness that.
Richard Bandler
Now, the thing is, is that once you get them into the altered state, you will remember to take the person back, take the new learnings they just built, the new attitude, and smooth through their personal history by having them go through and feel how much easier it would have been to have this attitude, how much more enjoyable, and see what freedom it would have given them. And then propel themselves out in the future with twice to four times as much good feeling and sense of want and anticipation about how this is going to permeate their life.
Alice Hines
This is Bandler in a seminar creating therapeutic change. What he's saying is that you can use hypnosis to achieve your goals, whatever they may be. For Bandler and Grinder, that included making a lot of money as the 70s turned into the 80s. And of course, some people wanted to use hypnosis to control others, although to
Zoe Lascaz
what extent that's actually possible is a big source of debate. More on that later.
Alice Hines
Hypnosis is tricky to study scientifically. Even hypnotherapists don't have a single official definition, Right?
Zoe Lascaz
That's right. And there's no one unifying physical cue. All people demonstrate when they're in trance. No one part of the brain that lights up. I think hypnosis is a little like lucid dreaming. You're not a zombie, you're not not there. You're in a state of possibility.
Richard Bandler
The thing about trance is that most of your beliefs get suspended in the altered state because it's not that you can't do it, it's that you believe you can't.
Zoe Lascaz
In 1974, Bandler and Grinder went down to Phoenix, Arizona to meet a big deal psychiatrist named Milton Erickson, who probably did more than anyone else to put hypnotherapy on the mainstream medical map.
Alice Hines
I looked into Milton Erickson further. This guy's a hypnosis icon. As a teenager, he had polio and was paralyzed with limited speech. It made him an astute observer of other people's micro expressions and tones of voice. Eventually, he was able to use self hypnosis to recover his speech and mobility. Later, as a doctor, he became a talented and innovative hypnotist. His big idea was to change the rhetoric of trance so commands were disguised as suggestions.
Zoe Lascaz
Perhaps you notice the breath naturally slowing, Deepening.
Alice Hines
Notice how she said the word perhaps. That's on purpose. By the way, this tape is from one of my favorite meditation apps where I hear Erickson's technique all the time.
Zoe Lascaz
Do they call it hypnosis?
Alice Hines
No, they don't. So my theory is that hypnosis just got rebranded for our generation as mindfulness. Another one of Erickson's favorite techniques was the so called handshake interrupt. He'd come in and shake your hand, but. But instead of actually grabbing it, he'd touch your wrist and guide your hand up towards your face.
Zoe Lascaz
That would definitely confuse me.
Alice Hines
Yeah, that was the point. It was basically to open a window into someone's subconscious through confusion. I should also mention that Erickson pretty much only ever wore purple, which maybe contributed to the general sense of weirdness people got when they met him. They called him the wizard in the desert, and he was kind of magical. He developed his own style of hypnosis. It's called permissive hypnosis. Erickson told his patients deliberately confusing stories seemingly unrelated to their problems while they were in trance. It's purposely hard to follow in order to disorient your rational analytic brain, forcing your unconscious mind to participate and supply the details.
Zoe Lascaz
So that's what Bandler and Grinder picked up from Milton Erickson when they met him in Arizona in 1974. Bandler and Grinder came back from that workshop with a new bag of tricks. At first, they used trance to turbocharge their therapy sessions, hypnotizing people to get them past particularly stubborn mental blocks. Then they began using it more as a self improvement hack. Traveling abroad. Try hypnosis for speedy language learning. Here's Daniel Spitzer again, Bandler's former drum student. We met him last episode.
Daniel Spitzer
There was a period of time when Richard and John would use double induction.
Zoe Lascaz
That's when two people speak into each of your ears to put you in trance.
Daniel Spitzer
And they would guarantee fluency in one of several languages within 72 hours and charge a huge sum.
Zoe Lascaz
So does that work? Can you learn a language in 72 hours? If you've got two guys whispering in
Daniel Spitzer
each ear, you can learn some aspects of communication.
Alice Hines
Okay, Zoe, should we try a double induction?
Zoe Lascaz
Yes, let's do it.
Alice Hines
But not for languages. Let's install something else in our listeners.
Zoe Lascaz
Don't worry, it's not going to be anything bad. But if you're driving right now or operating heavy machinery, please pause this podcast or skip ahead 30 seconds. We're going to do a double induction.
Alice Hines
You're walking through a desert. There's red on the horizon. You haven't seen a telescope for hundreds of years. You're wearing white robes and can feel the grains of sand on your skin.
Zoe Lascaz
Wednesdays are days that can be.
Alice Hines
Your mouth is parched, moving backwards, your ears into podcasts. The sun bakes on your aura. All right, so we'll tell you what we were going for at the end of this episode, but we're going to give it a beat to marinate in your subconscious mind.
Zoe Lascaz
Bandler and Grinder grew so confident in their hypnotic abilities, they even began using hypnosis to attempt to cure physical conditions like skin reactions to poison oak.
Richard Bandler
One of the ladies came into the seminar. One of these young college students came in with one of the worst cases of poison oak I have ever seen. And so I, you know, I had done this with her before, so I turned around and went. She went out, you know, and I had her meet me in the middle of nowhere and put magic dust on her to have it go away. And damned if it didn't.
Alice Hines
Another bold, highly doubtful Bandler story.
Zoe Lascaz
I know I was obviously skeptical of these sorts of claims, but I only kept hearing them. Terry McClendon, another early NLP guy I interviewed, swears he was farsighted until Richard Bandler and John Grinder put him in a trance. Did John and Richard really cure your eyesight? How did that work?
Daniel Spitzer
It was hypnosis.
Zoe Lascaz
Terry noticed his eyes went blurry when he got stressed. So Bandler and Grinder performed an age regression. They hypnotically led Terry back to his childhood, to a time before he needed glasses. While he was in the trance, Terry struck upon a memory of watching the Lone Ranger on tv.
Daniel Spitzer
So I'm watching television and my mother says, terry, you should go outside because if you watch too much television, you're going to have to wear eyeglasses.
Zoe Lascaz
Bandler and Grinder identified this as the source of Terry's vision problems. So they hypnotically asked the Lone Ranger to give him a hand.
Daniel Spitzer
And I was out on the prairie and I was all alone. This little boy, 8 years old, and Lone Ranger comes up. Lone Ranger, will you help me with my eyesight? He said, sure, pardner, I'll help you.
Zoe Lascaz
In the trance, the Lone Ranger reached into his pocket, gave Terry a silver bullet, and rode off. So you're sort of identifying your vision problems as a psychosomatic, but B, maybe a kind of hypnotic suggestion from your mother during childhood.
Daniel Spitzer
Exactly. So it's a two part thing. People say, oh, I can't believe it's not magic. It's using hypnosis to allow yourself to have better vision by removing these old suggestions.
Zoe Lascaz
Can I ask you a quick question? I just. So if your mom said not to watch too much tv, it'll strain your eyes. I mean, lots of mothers say that to their kids. Are you. Do you seriously think that mothers are giving their children vision problems when they.
Daniel Spitzer
No, no, no. But I'm suggesting that parents give their kids suggestions all the time. I mean, you got to eat your greens or you'll never be able to do this. You're stupid. You will become a success.
Zoe Lascaz
Right, but being stupid is, you know, that seems more about self perception than being able to see clearly or not.
Daniel Spitzer
You keep sitting like that, you're not going to be able to use that leg when you get older.
Zoe Lascaz
I mean, that still seems really different than deteriorating eyesight.
Daniel Spitzer
If you do, if you get rid of suggestions, it allows you to do the exercises that strengthen your eyes.
Zoe Lascaz
Okay, so anyone could correct their vision if they do the exercises?
Daniel Spitzer
No, they're not gonna make my eyesight and my right eye any better.
Zoe Lascaz
I mean, you're wearing glasses, I'm wearing glasses.
Daniel Spitzer
That started with as you grow older.
Alice Hines
So this dude was literally wearing glasses when you had this exchange?
Zoe Lascaz
Literally wearing glasses. And when I pointed that out to him, he said they were for a different issue, that his eyesight had deteriorated with Age versus his mother. Programming him to be first sighted as a kid.
Alice Hines
Huh.
Zoe Lascaz
Terry's explanation was that his eyes only got blurry when he was stressed. So he's saying that the underlying issue is more of a mental thing than some physical reality, like the shape of his cornea.
Alice Hines
I guess it's actually not that absurd to say that certain physical issues are rooted in our beliefs. It reminds me of hypnosis for pain relief, which is actually one of the best documented use cases for hypnosis clinically.
Zoe Lascaz
Because pain is both physical and mental.
Alice Hines
Right. There's lots of studies on this. I was reading a meta analysis that showed a 42% reduction in pain for people who are especially suggestible to hypnosis. It didn't work as dramatically on everybody, but hypnosis reduced pain in most people. Everything from sickle cell anemia to fibromyalgia to chronic pain and even childbirth.
Zoe Lascaz
Speaking of which, how'd it go with the hypnobirthing tape you got from Nancy?
Alice Hines
Yes, my trance coach, Nancy Salzman. So you remember Nancy Salzman made me a hypnobirthing tape. I listened to it pretty regularly in my third trimester. And Nancy also gave me another weird tip. Pair the tape with an anchor. So I would basically listen to the tape and then squeeze my wrist. The idea is you can train yourself to conjure a calm emotional state, or really any emotional state on command. Hmm.
Zoe Lascaz
Okay. How'd that go?
Alice Hines
Honestly, it worked pretty well, but I didn't end up using it in the hospital.
Zoe Lascaz
Right, because you had a cesarean.
Alice Hines
Yeah, I had a healthy dose of anesthesia and a scheduled cesarean. So zero pain to relieve through hypnosis or any other mind hack. But the hypnosis exercises have actually proved super useful since I've been using anchors on my daughter.
Zoe Lascaz
Wait, how does that even work? She's a few months old. So?
Alice Hines
Children are actually some of the most hypnotizable people, Zoe. It's an ability that we lose touch with during adolescence.
Kaz Riley
Hmm.
Zoe Lascaz
Interesting.
Alice Hines
So what I do is I use a gentle hypnosis to get her to sleep. I have a series of anchors. I don't squeeze her wrist, but I sing a lullaby and stand in a specific position. And I noticed after a few weeks of doing this, her eyes started to get small. With just the first few bars of the lullaby, Nancy gave me another weird tip. Basically, she said to calm my baby down, I could hold her and match my breathing to hers, then slow my breathing down, and my baby would follow unconsciously.
Zoe Lascaz
This is something hypnotists do to build rapport with their subjects.
Alice Hines
Yeah, exactly. But to be honest, I haven't been able to pull it off yet.
Zoe Lascaz
Interesting that you can do nonverbal or even preverbal hypnosis. The only baby hypnosis I've heard of is that children's book, the Rabbit who Wants to Fall Asleep and by a Swedish NLP guy.
Alice Hines
Yeah, this was a huge book. It was a huge success. I think desperate parents have bought it in like 43 countries.
Zoe Lascaz
How many copies did you get at your baby shower?
Alice Hines
I have a copy.
Zoe Lascaz
There we go. So it's like a bedtime story full of hypnotic commands, bolded phrases like sleep now that parents are supposed to emphasize as they read it.
Alice Hines
Yeah, that's right. So did Kaz do anything similar with you?
Zoe Lascaz
I think putting me to sleep would have been small potatoes for Kaz. What she ended up doing was much crazier.
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is Stock up savings time now through March 31st spring in for storewide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tax to earn on eligible items from Smart Water, Healthy Choice, Continental, arrowhead, Red Bull, St James, Tillamook and okay then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures let's talk about modern home shopping.
Redfin Narrator
It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2,200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?
Richard Bandler
Right?
Zoe Lascaz
And the best part, they accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby. Get with the times.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
Right.
Zoe Lascaz
So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.
Richard Bandler
Discover is accepted at 99% of places
Ryan Seacrest
that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
Kaz Riley
Okay, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to. As I've already said to you, anywhere you want to move, just move. You're not going to break. It's not a magic spell.
Zoe Lascaz
This is my first hypnosis session with Kaz.
Kaz Riley
You know, we go in and out of hypnosis all the time. Anyway, I know you did it last night when you went to sleep, for example. So it's a nice, easy thing to do.
Zoe Lascaz
She asked me to hold up my hands and imagine a magnetic field between them.
Kaz Riley
You can begin to feel the force of that magnetic field pulling those hands closer and closer together.
Zoe Lascaz
My fingers touched, my eyes closed. And Kaz led me deeper into the trance.
Kaz Riley
Somewhere deep inside, always there when you want to return to it.
Zoe Lascaz
We began this episode with an experiment to see if I can hypnotically recover memories of my father. We had a few false starts. I got distracted several times by random thoughts. And when music started blasting outside on the street. But every time I emerged from the trance, Kaz counted back down nine, drifting
Kaz Riley
and letting go down and down towards.
Zoe Lascaz
I was not optimistic at this point, but we tried again and something she said clicked. She was asking me about Gork the Octopus, a character my dad invented and used to tell me stories about.
Kaz Riley
And when you just think about the stories of Gork the Octopus, just allow your amazing mind to show you how they used to make you feel. Funny, exciting, adventurous, happy.
Zoe Lascaz
I saw a vaguely hideous rocking chair in my childhood bedroom I'd forgotten about. And then I felt myself in a lap. I sort of feel like my knees bent must like unfolded up, like maybe in someone's lap. It doesn't feel like totally identifiable, you know, but just that sense of being kind of like being very small and like gangly. And then I heard his voice. I don't remember specific words, but I do sort of remember like the timber of my father's voice, like not, but more kind of the like slow deliberation of his voice. With every scene I described, Kaz would pluck out a certain sensation and weave it into her next hypnotic prompt to see if it led somewhere new.
Kaz Riley
So take a nice deep breath, go into that feeling of being small and gangly. Allow yourself to go back to be immersed in that memory where the salad bowl is there, you see the salad bowl. Was it something dad said? His tone we did, or perhaps his excitement having shared such a lovely thing with you. Just notice whatever that brings next. Take your time there. Take all the time you want to be there.
Zoe Lascaz
I began to see things. My dad's head turning and not the way it might have looked in a photo taken by someone else, but the feeling of it turning up close above me. Oh yeah, the smell is crazy. Because you know, people's smell doesn't linger after they die. I just feels like very immediate and visceral to sort of flood oneself with
Kaz Riley
that, to breathe him in.
Zoe Lascaz
Funny I think like thinking about the smell also brought me to his closet in my parents bedroom. And just like that, being a sort of center for that smell. The deepest parts of the trance felt like a vivid dream or an intense trip. Viscerally felt, but difficult to put into words. When I was in my parents closet for instance, I could also sense this wild topography of cascading hills and undulating plateaus in shades of blue. It felt like my brain kept zooming in and out, like telescoping towards the horizon and back. This was at nine in the morning and I hadn't even had Coffee, let alone any other drugs.
Kaz Riley
So 1, 2, 3, lighter and lighter. 4, 5, 6. Brighter. 7 and 8 and eyes opening up. That's wonderful. 9 and 10 and just had a bit of movement moving through.
Zoe Lascaz
Wow, Cass, this is wild. Like, oh my God. So much going on there. But like your use of now is so effective, but to the point where even when you said other words with that assonance, like sound, it had the same effect, but it's just like really bonkers again, like, this is such a, like neophyte. Like, whoa, this hypnosis stuff is crazy. You know this already, but. I know, but I. I still.
Kaz Riley
Now after 20 odd years, I'm still like, wow, this hypnosis stuff is so amazing.
Zoe Lascaz
Before Kaz hypnotized me, I'd been expecting images of my father. But what I got were moods, temperatures and physical sensations, which kind of tracks often.
Kaz Riley
This is what comes up, especially when people have lost a parent when they're very young. It's about just being in their vicinity in their presence. It's not like on March 4th, we went to the zoo and we saw four penguins, a giraffe. You know, that tends not to be what it is. It tends to be this kind of feeling of just being with somebody.
Zoe Lascaz
I'm not sure these memories are real, but I don't really care if they're not. They're powerful and we do forget things all the time only to find them later.
Alice Hines
That sounds really beautiful.
Zoe Lascaz
Well, ultimately it was so tremendous, Alice, because it was like things that don't occur to you if you just sit down and you know, say to yourself, I'm gonna remember my dead dad today. It's like the feeling of his voice coming through his chest. Like the reverberations that you feel when you're pressed against someone. I was crying and I've had so many years without my dad. That's not like a thing I cry about. I've lived most of my life without him, but I was absolutely a mess. I was exhausted afterwards as well.
Alice Hines
How has it been sitting with you in the time since you did that hypnosis?
Zoe Lascaz
I've been grateful for it. I feel like it was this lovely way to cultivate some sort of posthumous intimacy. And I'm really not that attached to the idea of reality, I guess. Cause I've spent so much of my life having no idea if what I think I remember, remember about him is legit. It's like, well, this was really emotionally affecting and physical. Like my skin could feel the temperature of his body.
Alice Hines
That really tracks with what I've been reading about the science of hypnosis. So they've actually hypnotized people and measured what's going on in their brains. And when you're in a trance and you get a suggestion to feel something, your brain behaves as if you're having the actual experience. In real life, if you're not under hypnosis and you get the same suggestion, a totally different part of your brain works.
Zoe Lascaz
So it really transports you vividly into these memories and I think suggests something about the power of our expectations. Right, because hypnosis is kind of capitalizing on this well of experiences we rack up. Our brain has this whole repertoire of knowing what it feels like to be held, for instance, or what pain feels like. So in that state, when you conjure those things, you're actually reliving them.
Alice Hines
And it points to the fact that our realities are already often constructs. But when we go about our day, we can't actually process all of the different physical stimulation. So our brains make predictions. And what hypnosis does is sort of harness those to actually imagine something new.
Zoe Lascaz
This is a lot like the placebo effect. People who think they're getting real drugs often experience the same effects.
Alice Hines
That may honestly be a big part of why NLP works in therapeutic contexts. You go in with an expectation that a rapid, quasi magical transformation is going to occur. And it does.
Zoe Lascaz
It's the power of suggestion. And that can be harnessed to sell, to sell pretty much anything. As Bandler told seminar goers, when I
Richard Bandler
was selling cars, I mean, to me, you know, I literally did a trance at the end of the closing. I mean, it's as deep a trance as the one I do at the end of workshops, you know, and as they signed the contract, I'd say, now just I want you to close your eyes for a minute and feel good about. About what you've done.
Zoe Lascaz
Bandler didn't actually sell cars, did he?
Alice Hines
I looked into it, but I couldn't verify it. But he was selling NLP to people who did sell cars.
Richard Bandler
Right now, with your eyes shut, you can't see your car. But in a minute, when you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings that you're going to want to share them with other people to realize that you've made the right decision and to realize who helped you you to do that.
Alice Hines
They began marketing NLP as a persuasion technology in their seminars. By 1979, they're traveling around training salesmen, lawyers, and corporate Types trying to close big deals. That's, as you just heard in Bandler's dvd, creating Therapeutic Change. Perceptual grids. In other words, using the skill set of hypnosis in a commercial context. And as part of that, Bandler taught people how to modulate their voices.
Daniel Spitzer
Try the word relaxed.
Richard Bandler
Snakey. Snakey. Very snaky.
Daniel Spitzer
Because if you go relax with a
Richard Bandler
little hiss at the end, poor people
Daniel Spitzer
like the word now in English really flows off your tongue. You go now.
Alice Hines
Bandeler also taught clients how to read people's nonverbal cues and to classify people according to their preferred representational systems. That basically just means whether someone thinks in terms of images, sounds, or physical sensations.
Richard Bandler
The thing is, when you put information into a system and it matches the system perfectly, it's absolutely irresistible. It's not that the information that you're putting is being forced through, it's that you can just put it out like bait. And if it's in the right package, it's irresistible. They want it. That's why I said, like offering them a specific vacation. If you can pick one that the person probably wouldn't go on on their own and know how to describe it in terms of meta programs, they'll want it. And you can make them want it just because the packaging of it fits the. The way they are so much.
Alice Hines
So.
Zoe Lascaz
We watched this one together. It's a DVD called Building and Maintaining Generalizations. And Bandler's saying, you should listen to people and notice if they say things like, I see what you mean instead of I hear you. That would suggest they're a visual person instead of an auditory person.
Alice Hines
I'm skeptical of this. I feel like those are just figures of speech.
Zoe Lascaz
And I'm not necessarily sure that you can hack those systems. Right, because this is the premise of what Bandler and Grinder are saying, that once you figure out if someone is visual or kinesthetic or auditory, then you can manipulate them by appealing to that system.
Alice Hines
And like in hypnosis, you're speaking to the person's unconscious.
Richard Bandler
I'm damn blunt. Straight ahead. And you know, people may not like it, but at the unconscious level, they know they can trust it.
Alice Hines
This is what really made NLP take off. Beyond Santa Cruz, Bandler and Grinder get
Zoe Lascaz
written up in psychology today in 1979. It's a big, splashy article with the headline the People who Read People. And it went a long way to legitimize them and their methods. Here are two experts who can teach you how to clock other People's subtle
Alice Hines
cues, but also exploit them to get what you want. I read that article and they were selling how to control and manipulate people and basically tip them into a decision to buy a car or whatever else.
Zoe Lascaz
Yeah, this was their product. The power of persuasion. And by the late 1970s, Bandler and Grinder were full time traveling gurus, instructing people in all sorts of different industries in which they had no personal experience how to be successful.
Alice Hines
And business was pretty good. By 1979, Bandler was selling out 10 day workshops at 1,000 bucks ahead. He was curing people's phobias and addictions on stage. And the psych people who were originally in the room were increasingly being joined by corporate salespeople.
Zoe Lascaz
That must have been odd for the psychiatrist to suddenly be sharing, you know, a row with like, a bunch of car salesmen who were like, tell me how to control my clients.
Alice Hines
Yeah, I think they left.
Zoe Lascaz
So with this new cash flow, Bandler moved from living on the Spitzer commune to a single super splashy, nouveau riche mansion. Please describe. Well, it was very California playboy. It had shag carpets, a swimming pool, big redwood beams, a tennis court, and the garage was stacked. He bought two BMWs, a Fiat Spyder and a Mercedes. Dude also bought a vacation home in Hawaii because, you know, sometimes you just gotta take a break from the oppressive mansion life, okay. But as Bandler and Grinder got more successful, their early mentors got worried.
Daniel Spitzer
He and John were suddenly in the business of holding trainings and seminars and acting as stage therapists. They had no certification as therapists and no background as therapists, but suddenly they were doing it on the stage, kind of like a magic show felt a little bit like hucksterism.
Zoe Lascaz
Bandler and Grinder's focus on quick fixes, their obsession with reading people for personal gain, and their interest in covert persuasion concerned Daniel's father, Dr. Bob Spitzer. If you remember from last episode, Bob was basically an adoptive father to Bandler and a major early supporter of nlp.
Daniel Spitzer
Richard Bandler and John Grinder were very effective in what they did often, but there was collateral damage from time to time. And what happens in the stage doesn't necessarily translate into what happens subsequently off the stage. And I know that my father was really concerned about what would happen afterwards.
Zoe Lascaz
Family therapist Virginia Satir, one of the main people Bandler and Grinder borrowed from, also expressed her concerns to Daniel, particularly
Daniel Spitzer
when it became manipulative. How do you recognize how people organize their thoughts and then work with their language in a way to modify Their thoughts, that's sinister. And she was very uncomfortable. She told me that several times.
Zoe Lascaz
So you think Bandler was fully cognizant that bringing it in this direction was unethical?
Daniel Spitzer
These are brilliant guys, or at least very smart guys, and they heard plenty of times from plenty of people that what they were doing was questionable. And there was desperation there. Richard hung with the wrong people. He did massive amounts of cocaine, and cocaine is really difficult on people's brains. And he carried a gun for years. And these kinds of forces can really twist your mind for a period of time.
Alice Hines
Bandler's cocaine use has been documented in court testimony, as has his gun ownership. Ultimately, Bandler's response to critics was something like fuck em, as he told paying seminar goers, because it wasn't easy, you
Richard Bandler
know, to be the new kid on the block and come in and say, look, you know, everything you're doing works, but you don't know when or how.
Alice Hines
This is Bandler speaking at a seminar during the 1980s.
Richard Bandler
People would go, oh, no, we don't want to know consciously. If we know consciously, then we'd be manipulating. Who knows, we might even be effective. And then we wouldn't have clients. We'd run out. That was the big psychotherapist fear. When they learn nlp, they'd think, but if I cure all my clients, how will I make my car payments? And I try to reassure them there is plenty of nuts around. There's no shortage of them. Well, whatsoever.
Alice Hines
Bandler made it out like therapists were criticizing him out of self interest, that they wouldn't make as much money if someone started curing their patients more efficiently. But it sounds like they were worried
Zoe Lascaz
about something else, something that had crept into NLP. The thrill of controlling other people. In 1983, Science Digest published a story on NLP featuring various critics sounding the alarm bells. One cult expert quoted in the article said NLP could become the most sophisticated mind control technology ever.
Alice Hines
Detractors were especially worried about the ways it could be used in the marketplace, where NLP seemed like a hazardous tool for personal manipulation and, in the wrong hands, a dangerous instrument of social control.
Zoe Lascaz
At the time, Grinder said he was getting a dozen complaints every every month about what he called unethical manipulation. People teaching car salesmen and others to do unscrupulous things with nlp.
Alice Hines
This trend seemed to bother Grinder. He said he'd kicked people out of seminars who didn't seem like they were there for the right reasons.
Zoe Lascaz
Still, he and Bandler had trained about 5,000 people in NLP at this point. And those people had gone on to train as many as 50,000 more.
Alice Hines
NLP was spreading fast and these techniques actually seemed to work. That's what frightened NLP's detractors the most.
Zoe Lascaz
NLP had its critics, but it also got some new fans. US Military and spies rushed to hire Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and a young kid who would take NLP global.
Richard Bandler
I'm Tony Robbins. You know, I'm a business specialist, specialist and performance coach. I use a variety of techniques and tools. I have 114 companies across about 12 different industries.
Daniel Spitzer
We do today about $9 billion in business.
Richard Bandler
But I think the thing you're most
Zoe Lascaz
interested in, I assume is what I'm
Richard Bandler
doing related to my history with Neuro linguistic programming, nlp. Is that correct?
Zoe Lascaz
Next time on Mind Games, I interview Tony Robbins about where his empire began.
Alice Hines
But wait, wait, wait. Did we control your mind?
Zoe Lascaz
Oh yeah. Dear listeners, you have to tell us if we managed to manipulate you with our masterful double induction demo.
Alice Hines
Yeah. So here's the reveal. Did any of you go get a drink of water or juice or any other liquid?
Zoe Lascaz
Let us know in the comments. We were trying to make you thirsty.
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is stock up savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for store wide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tax to earn on eligible items from Smart Water, Healthy Choice, Continental, Arrowhead, Red Bul, St James, Tillamook and Special K. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like etc ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures let's talk about modern home shopping.
Redfin Narrator
It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it? That's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise, and Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.
Zoe Lascaz
Well, many thanks good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance fairs? Yeah, they do.
Alice Hines
Here.
Zoe Lascaz
Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Getth with the times with the tines.
Alice Hines
You're playing the loot.
Zoe Lascaz
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discover is accepted at 99% of places
Ryan Seacrest
that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report,
Zoe Lascaz
Mind Games is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series is created and hosted by me, Zoe Lascaz and Alice Hines. It's produced by Ryder Alsop and Dara Luk Potz. Edited by Kate Osborne Editorial consulting from Adeza Egan Original composition and mixing by
Alice Hines
Steve Bone Fact checking by Eamon Whalen from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers are Oz Wiloi Mangesh Hatikador and Kate Osborne from iHeart. Our executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki Etor.
Zoe Lascaz
Special thanks to Kaz Riley for hypnotizing me. Check her out@kazrily.com.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names.
Ryan Seacrest
I want to take a second to
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of, but I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the Big Game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words.
Ryan Seacrest
And sometimes standing next to someone is enough.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
And you can show support by sharing
Ryan Seacrest
the Blue Square hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is Stock up Savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for store wide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tax to earn on eligible items from Smart Water, Healthy Choice, Continental, arrowhead, Red Bull, St James, Tillamook and Special K. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions.
Richard Bandler
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with
Zoe Lascaz
a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much.
Sponsor Voices (e.g., Julian Edelman, Ryan Reynolds)
Please, for the love of everything good
Zoe Lascaz
in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying.
Richard Bandler
No judgments.
Zoe Lascaz
But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
Alice Hines
of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price
Zoe Lascaz
plan options available, taxes and fees extra.
Alice Hines
See full terms@mintmobile.com it's Shelly Rome Late at night, I think a lot about how the mind actually works. That's why I use the Waking up app created by Sam Harris. It blends meditation with real science and ideas that help you see your mind differently. If you want a smarter, calmer reset, explore waking up for 30 days free with my link wakingup.com roam.
Mind Games – Episode 3: All In Your Head
Host: Kaleidoscope
Date: February 3, 2026
In the third episode of Mind Games, journalists and best friends Zoë Lescaze and Alice Hines plunge into the hypnotic world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP): its controversial roots in 1970s California, links to hypnosis and mind control, and its seductive promise of hacking psychological reality. They explore how these tools have leapt from self-help circles to Fortune 500 boardrooms and pop culture, touching everything from life coaching to sales and even parenting. Zoë undergoes a real-time hypnotherapy session, aiming to recover lost memories of her deceased father. The episode ultimately asks: Is mind control real? And if so—how much of our reality is already just in our heads?
Kaz Riley: “It’s my view from the work that I’ve done is that we can certainly help people get a deeper sense of somebody that they lost [...] But we will never know if those memories are real or not.” ([05:33])
Zoë Lescaze:
Kaz Riley:
Richard Bandler:
Alice Hines:
Alice Hines:
Richard Bandler:
Daniel Spitzer:
Kaz Riley on recovered memories:
“We will never know if those memories are real or not.” ([05:33])
Zoë, post-trance:
“It was like things that don’t occur to you if you just sit down and say to yourself, ‘I’m gonna remember my dead dad today.’ [...] I was crying and I’ve had so many years without my dad. [...] But I was absolutely a mess. I was exhausted afterwards as well.” ([33:19])
Richard Bandler, on belief and reality in trance:
“The thing about trance is that most of your beliefs get suspended in the altered state because it’s not that you can’t do it, it’s that you believe you can’t.” ([11:33])
Alice Hines, on parenting with hypnosis:
“Children are actually some of the most hypnotizable people, Zoë. It’s an ability that we lose touch with during adolescence.” ([21:33])
Daniel Spitzer, on therapy vs. manipulation:
“[Their technique] felt a little bit like hucksterism.” ([41:11])
Next episode teaser: An interview with Tony Robbins about his empire and NLP’s spread through pop culture and business.
Did the double induction work on you? Let them know if you got thirsty...