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And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a want your back or a get the fuck out. After all, cultish influence these days falls along a spectrum. I personally think that we're living in the most cultish era of all time. But not all modern day cults are created equal. Some groups truly reek of cult. Their members dress funky, they're all wild eyed and passionate about the thing they're into, whether it's Disney or, I don't know, Trader Joe's products. But at the end of the day, even though they're full of zealotry that resembles classic cults from the 70s, when you look under the hood, the consequences and stakes of those groups aren't anywhere near as destructive as some more mainstream communities that engage in us versus Them mentalities and ends, justify the means, philosophies and all kinds of exploitation and abuse, but don't necessarily look like cults on the outside. That is what the show is all about, scrutinizing and even poking a little bit of fun at the ways people seek identity and meaning and purpose and answers in the modern age. Today we're confronting one of the most loaded and controversial communities we've probably ever covered on Sounds like a Cult, but that has amassed a lot of attention and power over the past few decades. We're talking about anti vaxxers now. We could have a debate about even referring to this community that way. Anti vaxxers, some people call them the vaccine awareness movement. To simplify things, we're going to be using the term anti vaxxers today, referring to a sort of disproportionate, disparate group that has many sects within it, but whose beliefs are all rooted in some of the same culty stuff and whose influence has genuinely posed a public health risk. Historically, anti vaxxers have been framed as more of a conspiracy theory, but at this point I think it's safe to classify them more as a cult for reasons that we'll get into throughout today's analysis with our expert guests. It's a community that as far as I can tell, sees itself as righteous, independent, even heroic, as well as anti establishment. These enlightened mavericks protecting their kids against the evils of the mad scientists in alleged cahoots with Big Pharma. No matter what the evidence shows about the not only safe but life saving benefits of vaccinations. And yet these beliefs are dangerous because not only are they rooted in mistrust and disinformation, but because it's attached itself to an identity that is hard to question and under the guidance of a few choices, cult leaderish voices, which are varying degrees of charismatic. Now, in the spirit of being balanced I guess, but also mostly just not more alarmist than I necessarily need to be, I do want to say that the majority of the American population is getting vaccinated against a host of diseases that we will enumerate shortly. But vaccination rates are declining. I know the anti vaxx community doesn't like the cdc. I know they don't trust them. But if you can bear with me for this statistic real quick. The CDC did release some new federal data this past July showing that childhood vaccination rates dropped again during the 2024-2025 school year with MMR coverage that refers to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine falling well below the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity. This decline also coincides with a record measles outbreak, the worst since the disease was declared eliminated in the year 2000, with over 1300 confirmed cases in 2025 and three deaths. Okay, so I want to be super upfront. I am not a freaking scientist. Okay? But we are gonna have one joining us later. That said, I grew up in a household of scientists. I really vibe with science. I think vaccines are good. Dare I say I get em. Do I like getting poked in the armhole? No. Do I like the idea of protecting my fellow human from dying of some 1800s ass disease? Why yes, yes I do. Do I think it's always super helpful to call the people who disagree with me a whole ass cult? No. But we throw around that word real liberally here on this show and I just sometimes feel so mind blown that something as empirically grounded and obviously like so, so helpful to society with so much compelling evidence to support as vaccination has become the center of this polarized culty ass cultural debate. My goal with this episode is to unpack that and to do that in a way that feels convincing. I am so excited to be joined by not one but two expert guests today. The first is a top epidemiologist who's joining us to lay down some facts. No fear mongering, no pharma speak, just some bonafiti facts about what vaccines are, how they actually work, why they're important, but also why they've become such a controversial cultural lightning rod. That expert is none other than Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, pediatrician and global health leader. He showed up in a bowtie to our interview. Okay, he was not here to play check it out on YouTube. Yes, sounds like a cult also has a YouTube. And then we're gonna get into a cool more cultural and psychological analysis with an author named Jane Borden. Jane is a culture critic, a journalist, and most recently the author of a book titled Cults Like Us. And she's going to talk to us about the historical and cultural factors that led us to the anti vaxx community as we know it today. All the way from the Puritans to the Facebook echo chambers. So whether you identify as vaccine, skeptical, allergic to the jab or vax to the max, we it sounds like a cult. Really hope that you'll give this full episode a listen as we dig into one of the most Divisive and high stakes cult like communities in modern memory. So before we get into our interviews, I want to rewind for a second because sometimes I think of anti vaxx movements as being like, I don't know, 10, 20 years old, but they go almost as far back as the origins of vaccines themselves. So let's take a time travel journey, everybody, back to the 1700s, to the invention of the very first vaccine back in the 18th century. That's when an English doctor named Edward Jenner, no relation to Chris, Kylie or Kendall that I'm aware of, Edward Jenner noticed that milk maids, you know, maids that milk cows who contracted cowpox, didn't seem to get smallpox, which was a way more deadly disease. He was like, huh, what's going on there with these milkmaids? So he did what any, you know, semi unhinged mad scientist of the 18th century would do. He took pus from a milkmaid's cowpox. Soar, yum. And scratched it into the arm of a young boy. And thank goodness for those wackadoodle physicians of yore, because this little experiment worked. That boy did not get smallpox. That kooky little idea led to the invention of the first vaccine. Vaccine, Named after the word vaca, Latin for cow, little etymology. Fun fact for you. Jenner's method sparked a revolution in public health that would go on to save hundreds of millions of lives. Of course, since then, vaccines have evolved dramatically. We're not scratching pus into people anymore, okay? Now, traditional vaccines used live or inactivated viruses to train your immune system. But today we've got newer technology, everything from viral vector platforms to cutting edge MRNA vaccines like the ones developed for COVID 19. And don't worry, stick around. We're going to explain what all of this means. All you need to know for now is that this new technology allows vaccines to be developed more rapidly than ever while still undergoing rigorous safety testing protocols. Now, I mentioned, despite the fact that medical professionals see vaccines as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, there have always been haters, skeptics, anti vaxxers, so to speak. For example, in the 1800s, as soon as Edward Jenner started using cowpox to prevent smallpox, some people freaked out. Critics called it unchristian, unscientific, and a violation of personal liberty. Does this sound familiar? One UK protest featured a child's coffin and an effigy of Jenner. They were not subtle, of course. Then smallpox went on to be cured, eliminated. It was an incredible victory. But yeah, it had these early critics who found it blasphemous. Fast forward to the end of the 19th century. England and the US saw the rise of unified anti vaxx groups including the Anti Vaccination League and the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League. There was legal hullabaloo. Some parents literally chose to go to jail over vaccinating their kids. So shit is getting extreme by this point. Indeed, it lands the issue in courtrooms and the vaccine panic didn't die down from there. There was a whole ass mayhem in the 70s and 80s over the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine, otherwise known as dtp, which could also stand for the down to penetrate. Lol. Sorry. A wave of concern over this vaccination caused media frenzies, lawsuits and the formation of anti vaxx advocacy groups. Despite later studies showing that the vaccine was actually super safe, I myself don't know a single person who's ever gotten tetanus and how nice that is. Now in the 90s, that's when things really take a culty turn. Despite the overwhelming success of vaccines like eradicating smallpox, nearly wiping out polio, a truly dangerous myth started to spread. The year in question is 1998. That's when a now disgraced British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a paper falsely claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. That paper, published in the Lancet, was later fully retracted and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license. As reported by the British Medical Journal, his study was not only riddled with ethical violations clinical, but was proven to be outright fraudulent. Dozens of peer reviewed studies since then have proved there is no link between vaccinations and autism. And we're going to talk about that a lot more with Dr. Hotez very soon. Still, the damage was done. Wakefield's claim lit a cultural match that started a major wildfire of sorts. And that fire continues to rage. When you combine that lingering distrust with social media echo chambers, political polarization, pandemic anxiety and the desire to find someone, anyone to blame for pain, illness and suffering, you end up with something much bigger than a health concern. You end up with a belief system, with a dogma, with a cult, or at least something that sounds like a cult. Anti vaxxers have a whole culture now, complete with special language. For example, if you've ever scrolled through anti vaxx type spaces, any social media platform, you might be familiar with some of this insidery language that helps divide people into insiders and outsiders, allies and enemies. It cultivates belonging and that sort of like in the know versus Sheep kind of vibe, here's something that's especially disturbing. According to Vice, one of the more chilling terms that's caught on among anti vaxxers is pure blood, a nickname proudly used by unvaccinated people to suggest that their bodies are somehow untainted or superior. And yes, it is a not so studded nod to Voldemort's eugenics coded obsession with bloodlines in the cult of Harry Potter. Other buzz phrases and euphemisms include medical freedom, Big Pharma characterizing the vaccines as poison, referring to them as the jab in order to avoid getting flagged by the misinformation overlords online. And then we have perhaps the most frustrating mantra of all time, the thought terminating cliche. The do your own research. Anti vaxxers often inject, haha pun intended this phrase into debates about vaccines in order to shut down conversations and encourage people to go down a self reinforcing rabbit hole where conspiracy and confirmation bias drives the outcome. At this point, I do think it's safe to say that the anti vaxx community functions more like a cultish subculture than this sort of loose network of skeptics. Multiple studies we'll link some reveal these sort of clear echo chamber dynamics, especially on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where the vaccine hesitant will cluster tightly, mostly interact with like minded content, the algorithm does what it does, and outside information, even if it's so empirically watertight, becomes demonized and ineffective at changing any minds. But even more cultish than that, vaccine skepticism has also become a marker of identity. I admit I struggle to understand how this makes any measure of inherent sense, but longitudinal studies show that political conservatism consistently predicts vaccine hesitancy across racial groups, even when adjusting for socioeconomic status. Something that makes the anti vaxx community so powerful, so emotionally compelling, is their use of emotionally charged personal anecdotes where a moment will come online, make a YouTube video or an Instagram reels, whatever it is, and share a story about how her child was never the same after he got the vaccine, even if even though that is a spurious correlation that's spreading misinformation and fear mongering. Fear is such a critical ingredient in this anti vaxx recipe that comes through in memes, in testimonials, from fringe experts, in scare quotes. All of these techniques work to reinforce group loyalty and dismiss mainstream science as not only untrustworthy, but immoral and even evil. At a point it almost feels like these dynamics, the echo chambers, the identity stuff the narrative control, the moral absolutism, the inability to push back, parallel so many of the techniques that classic cults from history have used to recruit and retain their followings. They offer clarity and belonging and a sense of control and moral superiority during times of turbulence, meanwhile insulating members from dissent or critique. And with that, I think it's time to get to these guest interviews. First, I am so honored to introduce Dr. Pete Hotez. He is co Director of the Texas Children's Hospital center for Vaccine Development, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, and a professor of pediatrics and Molecular virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. With decades of experience developing vaccines for parasitic diseases and coronaviruses, Dr. Hotez is iconic. He's known for having gone toe to toe on the Joe Rogan Podcast and for offering to debate RFK about vaccines, to which the response was I'm good. No, I don't want to go up against this guy. He's just a sweetie lab nerd. You'll hear him talk. He does not so speak using the rhetorical strategies of a cult leader. Okay? He's just trying to friggin help people not die of diseases, for Pete's sake. Pun intended. Stick around for after the break when we get into a low key, unprecedented type of conversation for Sounds Like a Cult about vaccines with Dr. Peter Hotez. Look, I pay rent. Some of you probably pay rent. Nobody likes to do it. But if you have to, BILT makes it worth it. Bilt is revolutionizing how millions of people think about paying rent by rewarding their members with exclusive points and benefits around their neighborhood every single month. By paying rent through bilt, you earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. But it doesn't stop there. Bilt is about making your entire neighborhood more rewarding. 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Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code cult Dr. Hotez, thank you for joining. Sounds like a cult. Were fans, were admirers of your mind and your sartorial choices. So thank you.
