The Cult of Neurolinguistic Programming

Summary

Sounds Like A Cult – "The Cult of Neuro-Linguistic Programming"

Date: April 21, 2026
Host: Amanda Montell
Guests: Zoe Lascaz & Alice Hines, journalists and hosts of "Mind Games" podcast

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Sounds Like A Cult" investigates Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)—a set of techniques that promise to "reprogram" the mind for personal or professional success. Host Amanda Montell is joined by journalists Zoe Lascaz and Alice Hines, whose podcast "Mind Games" explores the origins, spread, and modern influence of NLP. Together, they question whether NLP, which has woven itself into self-help, wellness, and even dangerous cult dynamics, qualifies as a "cult" in the show's taxonomy: "live your life," "watch your back," or "get the fuck out."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: What is NLP and Where Did It Come From?

[03:16]

• Amanda Montell introduces NLP as a "kind of anti-therapy invented to 'hack' your brain by modeling the patterns of successful people," promising all-encompassing solutions from phobias to myopia to the common cold.
• NLP was founded in 1970s California, the classic "cult era," by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
• Quote: "Take mystical thinking, dress it in scientific sounding language... and suddenly magic feels like a methodology." – Amanda Montell [07:53]
• There's no central regulating body for NLP—anyone can become a practitioner, and the definition is ever-shifting.
• NLP has permeated self-help, corporate culture, education, even medicine, and is notorious for grandiose, unsubstantiated claims.

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2. Cultish Characteristics and NLP's Diffuse Structure

[15:42-19:44]

• Zoe Lascaz: "I don't think NLP is a cult only because it is used in so many ways... it's so diffuse and generalized that it's hard to just distill it into one thing."
• Alice Hines describes direct links between NLP and infamous cults, such as NXIVM, whose co-founder had NLP training.
• The lack of central authority makes NLP highly abusable—"there is no oversight, there's no licensing body... anyone can train others after a seminar."

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3. The Founders: Archetypal Cultish Behavior

[20:42-22:58]

• Richard Bandler and John Grinder: Both surrounded by "exaggerated talents," dubious claims (e.g., Bandler allegedly being able to "hear radar"), and mythmaking.
• Bandler is noted for "charismatic megalomaniac" tendencies and a willingness to leverage fantastic stories as status symbols.
• Quote: "There are all these stories swirling around him... one guy told me that Richard Bandler can hear radar." – Zoe [21:41]
• NLP blurs the line between science and magic, often veering into "supernatural" territory for effect.

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4. Personal Experiments with NLP

[23:33-26:51]

• The guests personally tested NLP: Alice "hypnotized" Zoe’s mother to help her overcome her fear of biking.
• Results were ambiguous—was it NLP or just exposure therapy?
• Quote: “These techniques help you kind of dissociate or detach from your memories and your triggers and your fear responses.” – Zoe [26:21]
• Some NLP techniques overlap heavily with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), e.g., imagery rescripting.
• The danger is when profit-driven or manipulative actors "catastrophize fears and sell expensive, overcomplicated solutions."
• Quote: "It's a rebrand of something else... more responsibly used by accredited therapists." – Amanda [27:39]

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5. Loaded Language and Jargon as Cult Tactics

[28:44-32:34]

• NLP employs dense jargon ("swish," "anchoring," "six step reframing"), which can:
  • Create an “us vs. them” in-group feeling.
  • Grant unearned authority to trainers.
  • Confuse and even lull people into suggestibility.
• Quote: "These books are almost unreadable." – Zoe [30:19]
• Boring, confusing language is a feature, not a bug—a deliberate hypnotic tool to lower defenses and increase suggestibility.
• Parallels to Scientology’s word clearing (tedium as loyalty test, weaponizing confusion).

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6. Demonstration: What Does an NLP Session Look Like?

[35:14-40:14]

• Zoe performs a live “swish” (imagery and sensory manipulation) technique to help Amanda swap the shame of a childhood memory ("ski slope wipeout") with neutral or humorous imagery.
• Quote: "Lizzie is a flamingo. There are violins. Everything is tinted green..." – Zoe [39:15]
• Amanda's response: "It felt like an improv exercise, which was cringy... but I think I might be over the Lizzie memory." [39:36]
• NLP derived from "therapy LARPs"—theater-like group exercises.

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7. Authority, Spread, and Rebranding of NLP

[43:01-48:57]

• The amorphous, unregulated nature of NLP actually enables its spread—anyone can rebrand, train, and teach their own version.
• NLP practitioners have moved away from the name itself due to litigation (Bandler’s lawsuits), adopting euphemisms or creating new brands (e.g., Tony Robbins’ “Neuro-Associative Conditioning").
• The acronym "NLP" disguises the pseudo-scientific-sounding full name; even its creators spun fanciful stories about its origin.
• Quote: "He was just playing Bananagrams... five other versions, everyone invents their own mythology." – Amanda & Zoe [46:51]

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8. Dark Side: NLP’s Use in High-Control Groups and Abuse

[55:18-56:51]

• NLP techniques have been actively used by harmful groups (NXIVM, Twin Flames Universe) and in manipulation (pickup artistry).
• Victims have suffered trauma, manipulation, and even memory loss.
• Quote: “Her memories were permanently altered because of this experience [in Twin Flames Universe].” – Alice [55:48]
• NLP’s lack of empirical grounding enables "justification for bad behavior... including, like, major misogynists."
• Alice recounts the story of Devorah, an early participant who was traumatized by an extreme hypnotherapy "Christmas party" experience.

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9. Scientific Legitimacy and EMDR Connection

[51:52-54:20]

• EMDR, a respected trauma therapy, was developed by an NLP-trained practitioner, showing the blurred lines between NLP and more empirically-supported modalities.
• Quote: “EMDR has elements that are shared with NLP. The big difference is that EMDR presented itself as a technique to be empirically verified by the scientific community.” – Alice [52:10]
• EMDR and NLP both employ sensory manipulation, but only the former submitted to peer review.
• Fun fact: Tetris can be effective for trauma reprocessing! [54:16]

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10. Wider Cultural Influence: Self-Optimization and American Productivity

[57:15-58:57]

• NLP’s "innocent" roots in new-age optimism morphed into a tool for persuasion, sales, and toxic self-improvement culture.
• Encapsulates an American obsession with productivity and gamified self-betterment.
• Quote: “This loss of innocence that we see in NLP is something we see in America’s drive to improve at any cost today.” – Zoe [58:56]

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11. Final Judgement: How Cultish is NLP?

[63:11]

• Both guests agree NLP falls squarely into the "Watch Your Back" category.
• Quote: "It can go either way... It sort of depends who is in the driver's seat, you or the guy at the front of the room." – Zoe [63:13]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "Magic feels like a methodology." – Amanda [07:53]
• "There are all these stories swirling around him... one guy told me Richard Bandler can hear radar." – Zoe [21:41]
• "These techniques help you kind of dissociate or detach from your fear responses." – Zoe [26:21]
• "Boringness is super powerful, and confusion is extremely powerful... it's actually to create an opening of influence outside of the awareness of your conscious mind." – Alice [31:52]
• "Lizzie is a flamingo. There are violins. Everything is tinted green..." – Zoe [39:15]
• “Her memories were permanently altered because of this experience.” – Alice (re: NLP used abusively in Twin Flames Universe) [55:48]
• "This loss of innocence... is something we see in America’s drive to improve at any cost today." – Zoe [58:56]

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Important Timestamps

| Time (MM:SS) | Segment | Description | |------------------|--------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------| | 03:16 | Background on NLP, cult continuum | Amanda's intro & NLP's origins | | 15:42 | Cultish attributes and breadth of NLP | Zoe/Alice on diffusion and abuse | | 20:42 | Cult leader analysis (Bandler & Grinder) | Exaggerated founder stories | | 23:33 | Personal NLP experiments | Hypnotizing Zoe’s mom, technique overlap| | 28:44 | Language and jargon | NLP as cult speak | | 35:14 | Live NLP demonstration | The “swish” technique | | 43:01 | NLP's spread, branding, litigation | Bandler lawsuit fallout | | 51:52 | EMDR, science, and therapy | Parallels and differences | | 55:18 | Harm, cult weaponization | Nexus with high-control groups | | 57:15 | Widespread influence, loss of innocence | Cultural critique | | 63:11 | Cult categorization: "Watch Your Back" | Verdict and closing reflections |

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Overall Tone & Style

Lively, skeptical, and humorous — the hosts and guests strike a balance between entertaining language ("flavor aid," "theater LARPs," "bananagrams") and sharp cultural critique. They keep the conversation grounded in real stories, journalistic inquiry, and first-hand experimentation, while always emphasizing the potentially dangerous or manipulative aspects of seemingly innocuous self-improvement techniques.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes that NLP is neither outright harmless nor inherently dangerous: It's something to "watch your back" around. Its flexibility, lack of regulation, and seductive pseudo-scientific vernacular make it ripe for both sincere self-improvement and egregious manipulation. NLP is most cultish when it's used as a catch-all by unaccredited gurus to justify power-grabs, extravagant fees, or even outright harm—a cautionary tale of "improvement culture" gone off the rails.

Recommended listening: "Mind Games" podcast by Zoe Lascaz and Alice Hines for further deep dives into NLP's surprising influence.

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Transcript

[Amanda Montell]

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform to help entrepreneurs stand out and succeed online. I am a longtime Squarespace user. Sounds like a cult.com is a Squarespace website. I'm not that techy, but I do not struggle with making a website that I think looks really nice and that's thanks to Squarespace's features including their design intelligence which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology. Squarespace Payments also makes it incredibly simple to manage all your payments in one place and sellers can can also sync their product catalog directly with social media platforms. To reach more customers, 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. This podcast is brought to you by Liquid iv. Being a water girly has never been my thing and you know what? That's fine because Liquid IV makes your water taste delicious and hydrates better than water alone. One stick of liquid IV in 16 ounces of water helps replenish electrolytes and offers essential vitamins to support every everyday hydration. It gives you a hundred percent of your daily value of B vitamins, is an excellent source of vitamin C and is backed by a scientific advisory board. I would not survive those dry plane rides and all the running around in the rigmarole without Liquid iv. Soak up unforgettable memories with on the go hydration from Liquid IV. Tear poor live more go to Liquid IV.com and get 20 off your first purchase with code CULT at checkout. That's 20% off you your first purchase with code [e-mail] the views expressed on

this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Amanda, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine being on the ski slope wiping out in front of the popular girl. Where do you feel that? In your body?

[Amanda Montell]

It's like this rumble of heat within the gut feeling.

[Zoe Lascaz]

So I want you to see her standing above you and feel that sort of grotesque rumbling heat of embarrassment and just how awful it is. And I want you to turn the volume on that feeling up to 11. Let it overwhelm you and now shrink it down. Banish it. Lizzie is a flamingo. Now go back to the embarrassment. Feel the rumble again. It's horrible. You're so embarrassed now shrink it down again Lizzie's on the horizon the side of a postage stamp Concert violins come in and everything is tinted green how do you feel about falling right now

[Amanda Montell]

I think I might be over the Lizzie memory this is Sounds Like a

Cult, A show about the modern day

cults we all follow. I'm your host, Amanda Montel, author of the books Word Slut, Cultish and the Age of Magical Overthinking, all out now in paperback. Every week on the show we discuss a different subculture or celebrity or brand that puts the cult in culture, from Taylor Swift to essential oils to the manosphere. To try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult. But is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into?

A live your life, a watch your

back, or a get the fuck out. Because the thing is, cultishes these days isn't a binary. There is a cult continuum. For example, I don't know, fanfiction or people who might just shop at Ikea a little bit too much usually don't end up in the territory of abuse, death and destruction. But some modern day groups, like conversion therapy believers or MAGA Youth influencers, can be far more dangerous and manipulative and indeed culty than they may appear. Today's topic, some may argue, is incredibly persuasive, perhaps even reliant on a particularly programmable audience. Culties Today we are slipping mind and body into the ever so questionable world of neuro linguistic programming. NLP for short. If you clicked on this episode with absolutely no idea what the heck we're talking about, that reflects well on you. It is understandable. This is a cult predicated on confusing its potential recruits and its loyalists. But it is deeply fascinating and more relevant to your life than you might think. And I am honored to have two extremely special expert guests joining me later today who are going to spill some flavor aid and help us understand. But first, a little background, a little context. What is nlp? Who invented this unfortunate acronym and why might it be considered a cult? NLP was born in the 1970s, of course, classic cult era, to a couple of creepy old little cult daddies named Richard Bandler and John Grinder, a writer and a linguist. They are still alive, by the way. They wrote this seminal book on the practice of neuro linguistic programming called the Structure of Magic. Not to be confused with the Age of Magical Overthinking, out now in paperback. According to its founders, Bandler and Grinder, NLP is a set of techniques that reprogram the way we behave, think and communicate. It was a kind of anti therapy invented to hack your brain by modeling the patterns of successful people and replicating them in every area of your life. Confidence, motivation, phobias, bad habits. NLP was like an early wellness bro invention promised as a kind of magic bullet to cure your whole life. Per Bandler and Grinder, it was also capable of healing your allergies, myopia, okay, Jesus. Curing the blind and the common cold. These sort of kitchen sink approach to healing claims are of course a classic cult recruitment tactic. Because if you can promise a solution to every type of problem a person might walk in with, no one ever really runs out of reasons to stay. Now before you assume this NLP stuff is just a bunch of malarkey that has nothing to do with you, let me be clear. Most of us have probably already engaged with NLP to some degree, whether we know it or not. Since the 1970s. It really embedded itself into a lot of different pockets of our culture. From the self help quotes that your aun might share on Facebook with a sunrise graphic to the optimize your life. I Woke up at 4am and now I'm unstoppable tiktoks for my manifestation girlies. NLP is the foundation underlying so many Pinterest vision boards, journaling practices, one of the many, many many reasons why corporate culture, the self help business and wellness all have this air of do the system perfectly and you will find success and happiness and hotness. And if you don't, well, it's not. The system's fault is because of the manipulative and myst nature of nlp, which has snuck its way into so many of these industries over the years. Since the 1970s, NLP has spread into life coaching, corporate training, education, law, medicine, and even psychotherapy. But the wild thing is, is that there is no universally agreed upon definition of nlp. There is no regulatory body, no standardized certification required to call yourself a practitioner or even an expert. And that's not an oversight. It's actually pretty structurally convenient. Because while we think of a cult as having these rigid hierarchies and one easily identifiable charismatic leader in some high control systems, the absence of a fixed standard means whoever is in charge of their own mini sub cult gets to start their own thing and move the goalposts whenever they want, NLP can mean whatever a practitioner needs it to mean for them specifically in that moment. Which can make it pretty impossible to challenge and tough to leave because you're never quite finished improving. Now it is probably no surprise for you to learn that NLP is largely considered a pseudoscience. Some therapists actually do incorporate it, but most scientists and medical professionals do not regard it as compatible with the scientific method. The only evidence in its favor is personal testimonials. Testimonials which are so compelling and even necessary for a lot of religious cult recruitment in particular and for NLP recruitment. Now. Speaking of science and religion, remember that book I mentioned that kind of helped start the whole thing, the Structure of Magic? I want to linger on that for a second because it is actually kind of a perfect encapsulation of NLP's entire energy. Take mystical thinking, dress it in scientific sounding language, neuro linguistic programming, and suddenly magic feels like a methodology. Conflating metaphysics with science is an age old trick in the cult handbook because it's how you get people to feel like they're being rational and enlightened at the same time. So brings us to the ultimate Is NLP just kind of a cheeky little harmless Griff, or is it really hurting people in a way that's a lot darker than the palette of those Pinterest vision boards? That's exactly what we're here to figure out. And to help us do it, we have two incredible guests joining us, Zoe Lascaz and Alice Hines, who are seasoned journalists and the host of a new podcast called Mind Games, an investigation that traces NLP from its origins at a New Age compound in California in the 70s to Fortune 500 boardrooms, the US army, and yes, even an infamous sex cult. I am such a fan of these two. I have been a longtime follower of Alice Heinz work. She has blown the lid off so many culty subcultures, from Core Power Yoga to the Twin Flames universe. She did so much important work on that particular cult. NLP is just the latest, and Zoe and Alice didn't just report on it from a safe distance, they tested the techniques on themselves. And in this interview they even tested them on me. Without further ado, here is our juicy, juicy discuss on the Cult of Neuro Linguistic Programming with Alison Zoe.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform to help entrepreneurs stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to build a beautiful website that represents you and your content, connect with your audience, and sell absolutely anything from products to content to your valuable time. I am a longtime Squarespace user. Sounds like a cult.com is a squarespace website. It was set up in minutes. I'm not that techy, but I do not struggle with making a website that I think looks really nice. And that's thanks to Squarespace's features including their design intelligence which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to help you build the website of your dreams and unlock unbreakable creativity. Squarespace Payments also makes it incredibly simple to manage all your payments in one place and very usefully. You can use Squarespace to connect all of your social media accounts to your website as icons, direct links or embedded feeds, and sellers can also sync their product catalog directly with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to reach more customers and reduce the number of steps necessary to make a purchase. Head to squarespace.com 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. This podcast is brought to you by Liquid iv. I'm going to be very real with you Culty. My life would be worse without Liquid iv. I don't know if I'm just not mature enough to drink plain old water, but being a water girly has never been my thing. And you know what? That's fine because Liquid IV makes your water taste delicious and hydrates better than water alone. One stick of liquid IV in 16 ounces of water helps replenish electrolytes and offer offers essential vitamins to support everyday hydration. It gives you 100 of your daily value of B vitamins, is an excellent source of vitamin C and is backed by a scientific advisory board. I have personally been obsessed with Liquid IV's hydration multiplier sugar free Mandarin orange, a vibrant burst of candy sweet mandarin orange balanced with delicate florals and a refreshing citrus zest. They've also got rainbow sherbet, mango, pineapple and so much more. And now that the weather is getting warmer, it's even more important to stay hydrated. I been traveling a ton. I'm in a hotel room right now and not to sound dramatic, but I would not survive those dry plane rides and all the running around and the rigamarole without Liquid iv. It's also amazing for festival season. Soak up unforgettable memories with on the go hydration from Liquid IV. Tear poor live more go to Liquid I dot com and get 20% off your first purchase with code COLT at checkout. That's 20% off your first purchase with Code CULT@Liquid I dot com Holy shit.

Welcome to you both. Sounds like a cult.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Thanks for having us.

[Alice Hines]

Thanks, Amanda.

[Amanda Montell]

Longtime fan, as you know. Could you both introduce yourself and your work to our listeners?

[Alice Hines]

Yes, absolutely. I'm Alice Hines. I am a reporter, a documentary producer, and I also did some on camera work for VICE News. I have a new podcast series out with my great friend Zoe, and it's called Mind Games, and it's about mind games as they may have been used on you or as you could use potentially on other people. So it's a psychology podcast.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Hi, I'm Zoe Lascaz. I'm a journalist. I write about a lot of things, but often the way art and science intersect, and that can take a lot of shapes. But my first book was about how humans have imagined prehistoric animals in their world, which might not sound relevant to our podcast, but actually I was thinking about it, and the book is basically how, like, everyone knows what a dinosaur looks like now. Like, every kid can draw a T. Rex, but, like, how. How do we know that? And so I guess you could say I'm interested in these things that sort of lurk in plain sight, but bear further examination, like our knowledge of prehistory and in this case, neuro linguistic programming, which is kind of the most famous alt psychology form of therapy. You've never heard of a human after my own heart?

[Amanda Montell]

I think everything comes back to dinosaurs. What's your favorite dinosaur?

[Zoe Lascaz]

Ooh, that's tough. My favorite dinosaur isn't actually a dinosaur. I really like the whole family of pterosaurs, which I think most people would accept that answer. I just want to clarify before the Paleo nerds get on my case. They're a tough crowd.

[Amanda Montell]

Incredible. Mine is. And correct my pronunciation if I'm getting it wrong, but. Aparasaurolophus.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Oh, my God. I think you just out Paleo nerded me. Wait, tell us about these guys.

[Amanda Montell]

They're omnivores and they have, like, a very cool hollow crown. All the better for projecting whales far and wide, my dear.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Okay, Amanda, I have a huge crush on you. And if I have a huge crush on you, I think, like every Paleo so inclined listener is, like, actually in love with you right now. So that was a flex. Good job.

[Amanda Montell]

Wait. Oh, my God, I'm sweating. Actually, I'm sweating. I turned up the heat too high in my home. Great. So we're gonna transition now into the conversation at hand, and I hope it devolves into flirting, as cult dynamics often do. And that is the cult of neuro linguistic programming. NLP out of the gate. I was wondering if each of you could describe some of the cultiest experiences you had in your reporting on this topic. Places you visited, stories you heard, things you saw. Like, we want the culty, juicy nightmare stuff.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Okay, well, I guess I just want to jump in quickly and make the disclaimer that I don't think NLP is a cult only because it is used in so many ways. Sorry, sorry. Whoops. Did we mislead you? No, it has been used by a lot of cults. But I just want to say NLP is used by so many different people for so many different things. Like for everything from curing nail biting to curing cancer to getting women into bed. Like, it's so diffuse and generalized that it's hard to just distill it into one thing. And that thing is a cult. That said, I'm going to let Alice talk about the cultiest aspects she's encountered because she has some great stories.

[Alice Hines]

The cultiest aspect that I encountered when reporting this podcast was definitely the NXIVM connection. I have been fascinated by nxivm like so many other people, I mean, for all the reasons that we all know. But what never was clear to me was where the Nexium methods came from. There's a whole self improvement dogma and doctrine that they presented as their own. And Keith Ranieri specifically presented as something he had come up with. But in a lot of cases, he was repurposing other methods. One of them was neuro linguistic programming. And so as part of the podcast, I interviewed Nancy Salzman, who was the co founder of the company that became Nexiv. And she told me about her training in neuro linguistic programming, what aspects of neuro linguistic programming she brought to Keith Renary and how he used them in ways that she says she could never have predicted and were not what she thought she was bringing to him. So she says he misused her work.

[Amanda Montell]

Fascinating. So Zoe, you mentioned you don't think neuro linguistic programming is a cult. What if I told you that on this podcast we've called Plant parents a cult? Essential oils, Occult Swifties, a cult. The question is not is it a cult? Because like everything is. It's more, is it a live your life, a watch your back or get the fuck out of.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Right? What kind of cult is it? Yeah, we can dig into that for sure.

[Alice Hines]

You have an expansive definition of cult on this podcast.

[Amanda Montell]

Expansive is generous. Yes, we're just here to identify how cultish thinking and influence shows up in places you might not think to look. But you're absolutely right that NLP is this tool ideology. It's very diffuse. It's not this like one organized group with a leader at the helm. Although I guess we'll figure out whether or not that's even true. And I'm wondering, Alice, if you could talk about the, the spectrum of nlp, like Nancy Salzman claimed to have used it in ways that were net positive, that were then bastardized by the evil cult leader Keith Ranieri. Is there a helpful good version of NLP or is it doomed to be weaponized by these nefarious, pernicious figures?

[Alice Hines]

That's such a good question. And I think the answer is both. I think that there is a helpful aspect to nlp and we learned in our reporting that it, you know, it's hard, helped a ton of people. We even used it on some of our own problems and some of our friends problems in the podcast just to test it out and with honestly kind of decent results. Is it also destined to be weaponized by nefarious actors? History has proven that that's the case. So yeah, it's both. And I think with a lot of these groups who people often describe as cults, there is always something positive about it. I mean even nexium, like there has to be some beneficial self improvement aspect or people would never get in the door. So I think that's, I think that's the case of nlp. I even think that's the case of nxivm.

[Zoe Lascaz]

And I think when I say that it's so diffuse. So it's not a cult in a way that is also what makes it open to abuse by would be cult leaders. It's because it is so decentralized. There is no oversight, there's no licensing body that reviews the ways in which people are using NLP and takes their license away. If they're bad actors, you can just shell out a few thousand dollars, go to a seminar, get trained in NLP and then train other people. So that means it can take on a lot of different forms. And so yes, there are very nefarious forms of NLP out there for sure.

[Amanda Montell]

Totally.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah.

[Amanda Montell]

I guess grading it on the curve of this podcast's interpretation of cults, I would align it more with the self help industry. Pilates, maybe even. I don't know, I was going to say chiropractic, but there are sort of governing bodies of Chiropractic. Maybe QAnon, you know, like it is this kind of like disorganized cult that doesn't necessarily mean it's innocent. But I want to talk about the key figures, if not the cult leaders that are on a pulpit, Jim Jones style. Those being NLP's two founding figures, Richard Bandler and John Grinder. In your reporting, I'm wondering, what classic cult leader type behaviors did you identify in each of these guys? And at that this point in NLP's journey, would you say that there are certain cult leader esque figures?

[Alice Hines]

You want to know if there's charismatic megalomaniac type Personas that are part of NLP or were part of it in its incipience?

[Zoe Lascaz]

I mean, I think the answer is definitely like one of the things that jumps out to me about the Keith Ranieri backstory, for instance, are these sort of wild, very easily fact checkable claims he made about himself. You know, sort of having this insane IQ and being a prodigious martial artist or a concert pianist or, you know, like these kind of exaggerated talents. And that is something we noticed about Richard Bandler. He didn't necessarily start all these stories about himself. And I should, you know, insert a disclaimer that he denies a lot of these characterizations, but there are all these stories swirling around him. Like he owned a topless bar when he was 16, he got a black belt in karate. He was involved in organized crime. I mean, one guy told me that Richard Bandler can hear radar. So that's kind of a crazy and maybe not so useful superpower.

[Amanda Montell]

Wait, I'm sorry. How do you respond when someone tells you that? Are you just like, oh, neat, or are you like, no?

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah, well, he sort of. It was weird. This guy had drank the Kool Aid because he led with. Yeah, I was skeptical at first too, but then I looked it up and this is a real thing. And I was like, what? And then I looked it up and I don't think that's a real thing.

[Alice Hines]

That kind of reminds me of nlp, very much presents itself as a science and it has this affect of being this combination of computer programming and linguistics. And there are definitely some linguistics and legitimate psychology within it. But I do think it's interesting when it does tend to veer into the supernatural. And it happens occasionally. James Marino, who was a good friend of Richard bandler in the 80s and ultimately accused him of having murdered someone, which became part of this, you know, sensationalist trial that we go into in our podcast. James Marino was an NLP trainer and he claimed he could telekinetically control streetlights with nlp. So this is another claim where it kind of gets beyond the realm of science to, like, is it magic? And NLP plays on that. There was a. An early seminal text within NLP called the Structure of Magic. And so this idea of, is it magic? Is it science? What is placebo? What is real? This is what NLP is all about.

[Amanda Montell]

Totally. And, like, like, the placebo is real. I love the placebo effect.

Mm.

Feed me a placebo pill all day long, but please, God, let the person feeding it to me not be a power hungry, annoying man. You know what I'm saying? Okay, but you did say that you derived some value from nlp. You did apply NLP to your own lives. You put it to the test. You joined the call. Temporarily, one might say. Can you talk about that experience? What it felt like? Did it resemble cult activity in any way to you?

[Alice Hines]

I hypnotized Zoe's mom to help her get over her fear of biking. So I read a lot of the NLP texts, and I watched a lot of videos online. Tony Robbins has a phobia cure. Richard Bandler has a phobia cure. A lot of it boils down to techniques that involve manipulating the sensory qualities of memories in order to change your emotional reaction to stimulus. So Zoe's mom was a fearless bike rider as a young person, by the way, she volunteered herself for this. We didn't.

[Amanda Montell]

I was gonna say, like,

[Zoe Lascaz]

yeah, yeah. This was not covert. I had been working on this podcast with Alice for six months or so and talking about nlp, and eventually one day she was like, do you think that could help me?

[Amanda Montell]

Well, it's so crazy that you say that, because, like, immediately when we're, like, analyzing NLP from a distance, I'm like, this is quackery. What tomfoolery.

I would never.

But the second second, you start saying, like, overcome a phobia. Do it with the girlies. Like, your daughter will do it to you. I'm like, wait, do it to me? Like, get over my phobia of podcast Apple reviews. I'll try anything.

[Alice Hines]

Well, I think I got it. Amanda. Don't read them.

[Amanda Montell]

Oh, okay.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Thank you so much.

[Amanda Montell]

Helped me, finally. Okay, so we're, with consent, hypnotizing Zoe's mother.

[Alice Hines]

That's right. I also ripped some techniques off of guided meditations that I use, which are not branded as NLP or hypnosis, but which I believe to be very similar techniques to hypnosis after having learned about the structure of hypnosis. And, yeah, I basically interviewed Zoe's mom about some of the reasons why? She had this phobia and developed, like, a guided meditation that I first did for her in person and then recorded for her. And then we went out to Governor's island one day and did some sessions and actually biked. And I think it worked decently well. I think what we don't know is how well it would have worked. Just practicing biking, practicing getting over something that you're afraid of also works by doing it. This is something that doesn't necessarily need hypnosis or NLP to be effective. So was it both of those things that contributed? How much was it the nlp? We really don't know the answer to that, but she is biking a lot more now and I think is doing a lot better.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah. I will say that Alice is right. Practicing something that makes you nervous, yes, eventually it will become less scary. But I personally tried to get my mom to practice occasionally with the help of a cocktail or two, which I guess in retrospect, was ill advised. I was like, come on, I'll just take the edge off. Let's hop on a bike, mom, you know? No, there's not that much traffic. Don't worry about it. Anyway, that was not productive. So I think the techniques that Alice used actually were really helpful because the way she ends up explaining it is that they sort of distance you from your fear. Like Alice was saying, these techniques help you kind of dissociate or detach from your memories and your triggers and your fear responses. So she was able to look at her fear kind of like it was over there on the other side of the room and wasn't just this full body. My fear is me synonymous. Kind of, we are one in the same experience of it. She was like, oh, yeah, that's over there, and I can work on it. So it wasn't an instant fix, but it gave her the distance she needed to continue building on that.

[Alice Hines]

And I will say that some of the techniques at NLP calls by different names. For instance, like swish is one of the techniques that they've branded. They are sometimes very similar to things in cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, there is a technique from CBT that's called imagery rescripting, where you rewrite your memories and change certain sensory details of those memories in order to change how you feel about a memory. And NLP does the same thing. They call it something else. So the question of how much of NLP is. You use the word quackery, Amanda. I think there's an element of it that absolutely is. For instance, I mean, there's been crazy claims. Like there was a post we found during COVID where someone was like, NLP cures Covid. Obviously that's not true, but there are elements of this that do have evidence behind them and, and do probably work for a lot of people. So I think it's a mix.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah, I mean the way that you describe it, it reminds me so very much of something like essential oils which, like in a vacuum. Great. Yeah. I'll dab some lavender oil on my pulse points and like make the room smell calming. And yes, there is evidence to suggest that aromatherapy has benefits or whatever, but. But now when somebody who is profit driven and power hungry is a catastrophizing the fears of their vulnerable customers, followers, whoever they are, and then selling them an expensive, over complicated solution to those catastrophized problems they probably could have sought out on their own through like much, much simpler, more down to earth means. That's I think when you know, you're getting into something slightly too cultish for comfort. And you mentioned the term swishing, which is just like a rebrand of something else that already exists and is perhaps more responsibly used by accredited therapists.

[Alice Hines]

Imagery, rescripting. Yes.

[Amanda Montell]

One of the signs of cultishness that I love to focus on is the development of specialized, loaded language that can be used to separate people into an us versus them, to identify those who are really committed and loyal versus troublemakers, to halt critical thinking. And there is such a robust vocabulary of special terms in nlp. Anchoring, modeling, reprogramming, rapport building. In your research, did you find that this jargon functions at all like cult speak?

[Zoe Lascaz]

I mean, honestly, those phrases you just used are the tip of the iceberg. Those are the most legible and intuitively understood phrases like, okay, anchoring. What about six step reframing? I mean, there's just these extremely convoluted terms that I think serve to make people feel like specialists who are not necessarily experts. It serves to dress up these ideas and make them not only seem new, but make them seem super sophisticated and technical and advanced. And like you, the person who just walked into an NLP seminar. Gosh, you don't know what a six step reframe is, so you better listen up. It puts certain people in a position of power where everyone, everyone has to look to them for the answers. And that's how gurus get created. It's like, I have the solutions and you don't know anything.

[Alice Hines]

I also think there's a secondary effect of the jargon as well, which is it can be so dense and so boring that it literally puts people half asleep where they are more susceptible to being hypnotized.

[Zoe Lascaz]

These books are almost unreadable.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah. Are you familiar with Scientology's cultilinguistic method of word clearance?

[Alice Hines]

Explain it. I think I've read about it. But word clearing, that's an interesting combination.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah. So, so much of NLP also reminds me of certain techniques used by Scientology, particularly the conflation of the mystical and the pseudo scientific. But word clearing is this technique that a former Scientologist spelled out for me that also preys on the stamina of followers to stick with something super boring and tedious. So essentially, if a follower is in a course reading a Scientology text, it's really fucking boring. And they demonstrate any sign of fatigue or not paying attention or not understanding what they're reading. It could be something as simple as a yawn. Then a higher up in the room will bring them a Scientology approved dictionary and make them look up the word that they yawned at in this dictionary and read that definition. And in if they continue to, like, seem tired while reading that definition, then they might have to look up another word within that definition in the dictionary, which can create this dreaded word chain, as it's called, that can keep you in that course, paying money for hours and hours and hours. And it's all just a demonstration of loyalty and confusion and gaslighting. People underestimate the power of boring. Boringness as a cult tactic, Boringness is

[Alice Hines]

super powerful, and confusion is extremely powerful. To me, that's been actually one of the main takeaways that I learned, learning about hypnosis and about NLP confusion. Deliberately ambiguous language, language that kind of makes your eyes glaze over and you start to go daydreaming. That can be used on purpose. And the point is not to distance you from what's being said. It's actually to create an opening of influence outside of the awareness of your conscious mind. And honestly, that's one of the most brilliant parts of nlp, because I think that this actually really works. And this observation of the NLP creators, that this type of language has this effect on people. I mean, I think it's one of the more brilliant and also more dangerous aspects of nlp.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah, like when I interviewed Ross Jeffries, the founder of the pickup artistry movement, who learned all of his tricks from nlp, he spoke a lot about creating moments of confusion purposefully where you could can, quote, unquote, get leverage in someone's unconscious mind. And he demonstrated throughout our interview he was using these techniques. So I was asking him a question, and then he kind of interrupted me and seized on this one word I used and challenged me about it, kind of to make me lose track of what I was going to ask him. And, I mean, it didn't work, and we discussed it, but it was a very purposeful technique, because when you don't know what's going on, suddenly then someone can just kind of use that to flip the power dynamic and establish a new. Yep.

[Amanda Montell]

Because they're like, oh, you're confused in this moment. I have the answer. Lock in.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Or let's just take this in another direction. Like, now we're talking about this, and you're kind of like, oh, okay. You know, and just kind of like, trying to grab at something so the conversation keeps making sense. Like, we look for patterns as humans, and we're trying to, like, make this very disorderly, chaotic universe make sense all the time. And, you know, when you can make it not make sense, we sort of flail.

[Amanda Montell]

And language is the medium we use to construct our reality, our bearings. And so if someone is fucking with that, it's such an underrated way of controlling someone. And it also calls to mind another form of linguistic cult manipulation that I wrote about while drafting cultish, which was how religious leaders in charismatic Christian sects will encourage speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, specifically to incite dissociation in their followers to make them vulnerable so that they can swoop in and establish themselves as the person in power. So I'm also perceiving, like, a little bit of forced dissociation here. I don't know if that's a stretch.

[Alice Hines]

I think forced association is one way you could describe the techniques that we've been referring to. I think that that describes them pretty well, actually. It's strategic confusion. It makes the person have a harder time creating meaning.

[Zoe Lascaz]

And there are these rhetorical traps that people who are hypnotizing you with or without your knowledge, will sometimes use where they will present you with. With what seem like two options. Like, you can either listen to every word I say, or you won't listen to every word I say. But sort of no matter what, you're doing one of those things, right? So whichever one you do, it reinforces the fact that you're going into trance. There's no escape. So that's another way in which language kind of capitalizes on your conscious ability to not get hypnotized and appeals directly to your unconscious.

[Amanda Montell]

You also know that Something is probably bad when subsects of the manosphere are able to use it so effectively that being, like, this pickup artist guy. Like, I would like to think I've never made anything that an incel. Woman hater would be like, oh, my God, love this. Can't wait to incorporate it into my business. But I guess I don't know for sure. Speaking of confusion, just to, like, illustrate with crystal clarity what an NLP session or technique might look like, like, could you, like, do it to me real quick or, like, kind of walk me through what a session might look like? Like, what if I brought to you a fear? I have a really good one. I am terrified of falling down in public. I get humiliated when I, like, trip and fall in public.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Does this happen to you a lot, Amanda?

[Amanda Montell]

Okay, well, I avoid it. I think it's because when I was, like, 10 years old, I ran into a popular girl on a ski slope, and I skied into a ditch in front of her. And I've been, like, mortified by the prospect of falling down in public ever since. And I can call to mind what it feels like to fall down in public. It's just. It's not the embarrassment that I feel, like, is for me, you know, I do things way more embarrassing than falling down in public all the time, and it's fine. But that, for whatever reason, like, really gets me. Can you help me with nlp?

[Zoe Lascaz]

Absolutely, yes, Alice. We can tag team this.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah, no, go for it, Zoe. I think this is a perfect example that we can work with, though I do want to just let people know that it's not an instant thing. So what we'll definitely demonstrate now is something that if you want to continue with it, you could continue practicing.

[Amanda Montell]

Got it.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yes. And we are also not expert NLP practitioners. We are journalists who have tried to wrap our brains around this. But that all said, here we go. Okay, Amanda, I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to imagine being on the ski slope wiping out in front of the popular girl. Where do you feel that? In your body? Like, where do you feel that mortification physically?

[Amanda Montell]

Oh, it's like, all in my. I'm cold because I'm in the snow, but it's like this rumble of just heat within the gut, you know?

[Zoe Lascaz]

Okay, so I want you to imagine yourself, like, what are you seeing? Like, are you looking up at her? Because you're on the ground? Is she laughing?

[Amanda Montell]

No, she was a sweet, popular girl. Lizzie, shout the fuck out. I know. She follows me on Instagram. No, she was a nice, popular girl, but that made it worse in a way. In a way, I just wanted her to laugh at me, to confirm that this was a really bad experience.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Okay? So I want you to see her standing above you and feel that sort of grotesque rumbling heat of embarrassment and just how awful it is. And I want you to turn the volume on that feeling up to 11. Turn it up to 20. Just let it overwhelm you. And now shrink it down. Banish it. Lizzie is a flamingo. Lizzie is in black and white. There is music coming in. There's death metal coming in. Okay, now go back to the embarrassment. Go back to the embarrassment. All right, Let it feel the rumble again. Feel the rumble again. Lizzie standing above you. It's horrible. You're so embarrassed. Okay, now shrink that down. Shrink it down again. Lizzie's on the horizon, the side of a postage store stamp. Like, concert violins come in, and everything is tinted green and it's upside down. Okay, so this is the swish technique. And you would keep doing this. You would keep toggling back and forth and manipulating parts of this memory until finally the practitioner would ask you, okay, how do you feel about falling right now? And ideally, after enough, you would say, wow, I guess it doesn't bother me anymore. But actually, how are you feeling?

[Amanda Montell]

I'm so impressed that you were able to come up with those, like, totally chaotic kaleidoscopic examples off the top of your head like that. That was really good, frankly.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Me too. I don't know. Like, the means she's on a postage

[Amanda Montell]

stamp and there are violins and everything's green. I'm like, okay, David lynch, like, what?

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah, but I mean, the question is whether it worked at all, which I would frankly be startled by.

[Amanda Montell]

So I actually. I think I might be over the Lizz memory.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Okay.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah, I think I'm now embarrassed of how embarrassed I am by that, but that just might be by the nature of me saying it on a podcast. You know what it felt like? It felt like an improv exercise, which was cringy.

[Zoe Lascaz]

You know what? That's so funny you say that, because a lot of NLP had its origins in these kind of therapy LARPs where you would, like, get a bunch of people to pretend to be the patient's family member. So, like, if they're afraid of talking to their dad, you would have someone personify their father, and then they could say all these things to their dad that they might not be comfortable saying. Irl. So that is a big part of nlp, if not this specific exercise or maybe yes and it's part of it all.

[Amanda Montell]

I think a lot of these cult leader dudes were just like theater kids whose parents didn't let them let their freak flags fly. Like just send them theater camp. You know what I mean? Like just let them get their sillies out there and then they won't feel the need to start a cult one day. That's my thought.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Could not agree more.

[Amanda Montell]

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Okay, so this is something else that I'm confused about. So because there is no one single charismatic authority, no standardized certification, no regulatory body, no peer review, reviewed evidence, and yet NLP is such a profitable, dare I say, multibillion dollar industry, how does NLP stay in the zeitgeist? Like, how do NLP users and gurus maintain authority and keep recruiting people and continue to have believers even though like there's kind of nothing keeping it together together?

[Alice Hines]

Well, I think that actually helps, like the fact that there's nothing keeping it together and no one saying you can't say this or you can't sell this this way actually helps it spread because people can go to a seminar, learn it, and then put their own spin on it. Like I went to an NLP seminar in London and I went there because Richard Bandler, who is the guy we've been talking about, who was the co creator of NLP and has, you know, a really weird, weird backstory, he was actually teaching hypnosis. And so I met all of these people in the audience and you would not believe some of the ways that they're applying it. I mean, there's everyone from a guy who sold Cairo chambers to like billionaires and he was like in like boutique longevity and he wanted to hypnotize people in business transactions. He told me that to a guy who was starting like a holistic gym and like another guy who was like a sexual assault survivor and who used it to get over his trauma. I mean, there was so many different reasons why people had come there, but I would say many of the people were trying to apply NLP to their professional lives in some way as well as their personal lives. So I think that the fact that there is no glue that holds it all together, that it is this amorphous thing, it actually increases its ability to spread.

[Amanda Montell]

Whoa, interesting. Do you think that people have been discouraged from pursuing more legitimate forms of therapy because they're ethnic nlp, Sherpa or whatever, kept doubling down?

[Alice Hines]

I think so. I think that's a big issue with nlp and especially actually Richard Bandler really has it in for Therapists. And you know, if you mentioned even colloquially that, you know, some people find NLP therapeutic or this is a form of therapy, he hates the word. And there's a big anti therapy thing within NLP from the leadership. However, there's also a ton of therapists who do nlp. So I would say despite that rhetoric, there are therapists with PhDs and master's degrees who practice NLP who are also integrating it into their practice. And I think that they're doing it in a way that they're clearly not discouraging people from using other forms of therapy. It's one tool in their toolbox.

[Amanda Montell]

Do you think the fact that it has this convenient acronym NLP disguises the fact that the phrase Neuro Linguistic Programming sounds like such cockamamie bullshit?

[Zoe Lascaz]

I'm glad you find the acronym convenient. I mean, I find even having to call it by a set of three letters so lame and alienating. And yeah, once you say the full phrase Neuro Linguistic Programming, it is a huge turnoff. It was actually a huge issue as we were writing the podcast, like, how do we say this as little as possible while still reminding people what it is we're reporting on? Because it's off putting. And yeah, I mean, I think this gets back to your question about technical jargon. And there is this sort of NLP lore surrounding the creation of the name that Richard Bandler was in a car and he got pulled over by a cop and he had to say what his profession was. And he sort of cast about NLP didn't have a name at this point. This is the early 70s in Santa Cruz, California. But he looked down and in the passenger seat he had a book on neurology, he had a book on linguistics, and he had a book on computer programming. So he said, I am a neuro linguistic programmer. And somehow this was helpful in that interaction with the traffic cop.

[Amanda Montell]

So he was just playing Bananagrams?

[Alice Hines]

Yes, that's how it came up with the name, supposedly.

[Zoe Lascaz]

I mean, there's five other versions, which is part of what made this so difficult to report. Like this happened so long ago and everyone loves to invent their own mythology. So it's like, I don't know.

[Amanda Montell]

That's one story that's a really lame story. No offense to anyone.

[Alice Hines]

I think the name is not helping it. I just want to say one thing which I think the name NLP is not helping nlp. And I think it's illustrative that Tony Robbins, who is the most famous NLP practitioner who got his start in nlp, who we interview in our podcast and who, like, became a multimillionaire from this. He, for a period of, I think, you know, multiple years, stopped using the phrase nlp and he renamed it something else. Neuro Associative Conditioning. Like, he tried to rebrand it again, though I'm not sure if and. And Neuro Associated conditioning is any better, to be honest.

[Amanda Montell]

Oh, my God. I'm like hardcore in my misandrist era. And this just reminds me of, like, how men are so bad at coining terminology. They literally are like sociolinguists find time and time again that like, the best, most catchy slang is coined by young women of color, not middle aged white men. And that's why they're all out here saying shit like biohacking, like in 100. No one's going to be saying that. They're so bad at this. That's really funny.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah, that's a great point. And I mean, yeah, the name Neuro Linguistic Programming, it's tricky too. Like, it sucks when you do use it, but it's also one of the reasons a lot of people haven't heard about NLP is because a bunch of people stopped using it altogether.

[Alice Hines]

Using the word nlp, not the techniques.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yes, NLP techniques going strong, but the name a lot of people divorced from. Because Richard Bandler is super litigious. And at one point he filed this lawsuit with 200 John and Jane does, in addition to a bunch of prominent NLP trainers. So a lot of NLP practitioners around the country were like, oh, I don't want to get dragged into this. Even if we win, this could destroy my finances. So I'm going to stop using that term. A lot of people rebranded. So that's also when people ask, like, how is this everywhere? How does no one know it? It's like, well, people don't often call it that anymore, but it is out there.

[Amanda Montell]

Have you talked to anyone who's like, ex nlp, like, finally kind of was like, this isn't delivering on its promises. And what was their experience of exiting that community? Ideology betraying the resources they had invested in these ideas? What did that look like?

[Zoe Lascaz]

I'm thinking of Eliza.

[Alice Hines]

Oh, I was thinking of Devra. Oh, Devra. Devra.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah.

[Zoe Lascaz]

All right, let's talk about Deborah. So this one woman who was involved in the early days of NLP at UC Santa Cruz, she was a student, as was Richard Bandler. John Grinder was a linguistics professor there. She went to all these workshops. Like her whole friend group was involved in nlp. And she was all in until this one Christmas party in the mid-1970s, when John Grinder and Richard Van Laur threw this Christmas party, and they gave everyone a bespoke therapy gift, like a little exercise that was supposed to help them and be tailored to their particular bugaboos. So Deborah goes to this party. She thinks it's a normal party, so she takes some mushrooms. She's tripping. And when it comes her turn to get her gift, John and Richard blindfold her. They hypnotize her. They do a double induction, so they're both speaking in both of her ears at the same time. They lead her outside, they tie her to a wooden cross, and then they set the cross on fire.

[Alice Hines]

She was supposed to cut herself free. That was, like, the lesson that. So she could learn how to not be a victim. Yeah, that was the therapy lesson.

[Zoe Lascaz]

She has to ask someone in the crowd who's been given a knife to give her the knife to cut herself free. And somehow she manages to do this while tripping face, which is very impressive to me. And she was furious afterwards. She was really mad at them and laid into them, and they just kept insisting that they were trying to help her, not be a martyr.

[Amanda Montell]

Whoa. Okay. So NLP also becomes this. I mean, not unlike the Bible, this text, or this set of principles whose true authors can't really weigh in at this point that, you know, bad people can use to justify bad behavior. Behavior, including, like, major misogynists.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting is that Devra went on to become a therapist. So she's a professional therapist today who does not use NLP in her practice. So, I mean, all of the how do we help people heal? The psychology underpinning of NLP she's very interested in. But after that experience, she was like, no. And I think NLP is really known, especially in its development, for going to extremes to help people with, quote, therapeutic techniques that others would never try. Like, they were just ballsy. And sometimes it was great, and sometimes it was really dangerous and traumatic. So that's kind of what the story shows.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah. Interestingly, though, Devorah, who does not use NLP as a therapist, she does use emdr. This is one of the most fascinating things Alice dug into for the podcast, the Secret Backstory of emdr. Yeah.

[Alice Hines]

EMDR was invented by an NLP trainer.

[Amanda Montell]

Why does that make so much sense? Actually, I know EMDR has helped so, so many people, and I even tried a version of it myself. It, like, really helped My friend who was in a car crash, whatever. I know that it's like empirically backed, but it always felt culty to me.

[Zoe Lascaz]

But that's the thing. No one really understands how it works.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah, it's still being researched. The mechanism behind it is the subject of current research, even though it's been around since the early 90s. So EMDR has elements that are shared with NLP. The big difference is that EMDR presented its itself as a technique to be empirically verified by the scientific community, and it solicited this type of peer review that NLP really didn't. Because, I mean, NLP was already fringe. Like, it was already something that was a sales technique. It was already part of these MLMs. It was already in this direction of we don't really care if the powers that be put their stamp on us that we're empirical. Like, they didn't give a shit.

[Amanda Montell]

Interesting.

[Zoe Lascaz]

This gets back to the disdain for mainstream therapy, you know, because people would try to empirically test nlp, many researchers started taking, you know, specific exercises and saying, okay, how does that work? What's going on in the brain? And Richard Bandler, at least, was fairly uncooperative. He was just kind of like jokes on you. If you want to dig in to the nitty gritty of all this, I don't really care. I've already moved on to this other technique. I don't even use that technique anymore. There was no core group of things that he really was like, yep, this is nlp. I stand by this and I want you to prove it. And blah, blah, blah. He's like, yeah, that's your bad. But I never said this might be

[Amanda Montell]

one of the cultiest things about the whole rigmarole to me is the fact that it has claimed to be not only scientific but miraculous, and yet it rejects any standards of verification or accreditation. It's like sticking it to the man for no reason other than this guy wanted to be, what, like a cult leader?

[Alice Hines]

Pretty much, yeah. He didn't want to join the establishment. Yeah.

[Amanda Montell]

I do want to say, for those who aren't familiar with emdr, it stands for Eye Movement desensitization and Reprocessing. And it uses bilateral stimulation, ostensibly to help the brain, like reprocess trauma. That's like, my understanding of it anyway. And yeah, it does slightly give NLP's like, older sister who went to grad school.

[Alice Hines]

That's right.

[Zoe Lascaz]

I love that analogy. That's perfect. That's exactly who I'm Ian. EMDR is.

[Alice Hines]

Emdr is super interesting. I also have a lot of friends who have benefited from it. One of the most interesting factoids that I found in the EMDR research when I dug in was that playing Tetris while thinking of your traumatic memory has been shown to be effective as well for trauma reprocessing. So save your money, friends, and try some Tetris.

[Amanda Montell]

Oh, my God. I learned that from Soraya Shamali's book on resilience. She also, like, cites that study on Tetris. That's what I'm saying. Saying it's like, there are a lot of free, uncomplicated ways to achieve the same result as this, like, expensive, highfalutin, culty NLP bullshit. And that's true of a lot of things.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah, I will say, like, there can also be benefits of telling the story of a traumatic memory to an empathetic therapist. Like, that's another benefit. Like, beyond the bilateral stimulation effect, which is part of emdr, there's also, you know, the presence of an empathetic listener, which has its own positive effect. So I'm not saying fire yourself therapist. I am saying that Tetris also works, so you could do that too.

[Amanda Montell]

Totally, totally, totally. Oh, my God. Yes. Let's be very clear. Okay? I have, like one and a half more questions and then I want to play a game. So, as we've been mentioning, NLP turns up in some pretty sinister places. Tony Robbins empire, the pickup artistry stuff, Twin Flames Universe. What do you think is the worst case scenario of this weaponization of nlp? Like, where's the worst place it can go in terms of culty harm done to a practitioner?

[Alice Hines]

I think the worst impact of NLP that I've found was the use of it by organizations like Twin Flames Universe, which is the group that I reported on and made a docu series about this alleged cult that said that they used NLP to, quote, reprogram your trauma. And that actually ended up giving someone I interviewed memory loss. And, you know, her memories were permanently altered because I of this experience. And, you know, she considered it very abusive. There was also all other sorts of abuse going on in this organization. I also think NLP has been used in really scary ways by nxivm. So that's probably the worst. I mean, we interviewed someone in our show who describes the branding which occurred in nxivm, where, you know, many women were branded as an anchor. Right. So like a hypnotic anchor from NLP is a physical stimulation that is triggering an emotional state and a very extreme version of that could be a brand. So I think, you know, we don't have to speculate to come up with dark examples of how NLP has been used because unfortunately it's already been used in some dark places.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah. Alice is reporting on Twin Flames Universe and all of the media that you created around that still ongoing story is goated. So thank you so much for that. And I know so many people who've been victimized by the Twin Flames Universe. I really grateful for your work.

[Alice Hines]

Oh, thanks Amanda. Yeah, unfortunately they're still in operation, but they are under investigation by the Michigan Attorney General's office. So I'm happy about that.

[Amanda Montell]

I have one more question, which is that NLP has been around for decades, but why do you think that this discussion expose analysis is important against the backdrop of our culture right now?

[Zoe Lascaz]

For me, I think it has a lot to do with the, the obsession with self optimization that we see virtually everywhere today. Whether it's your meditation app that is sort of gamifying your meditation experience and encouraging you to compare how many minutes you've meditated with everyone else. I mean, it's competitive. Everything is sort of turbocharged to make you a better you, a calmer, healthier, skinnier, happier you. Why? So you can be more productive. I mean, this is like a whole industry predicated around what you can churn out. And it's often couched in a, like it's for you and for you to have more agency, but it's really just so you can, you know, wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed and work more and churn out more capital. So I think nlp, which began in this really idealistic sort of new age setting in 1970s California, it was developed down the road from Esalen in Big Sur. You know, it emerged from a very similar ethos of like, let's improve ourselves, let's heal ourselves, so by extension we can heal our communities and heal the world and you know, blah, blah, blah. And then we see with NLP how it rapidly became a persuasion technology, a way to boost sales, a way to make money. And so I think that kind of loss of innocence that we see in the NLP story is something we see in America's drive to improve at any cost today.

[Amanda Montell]

Oh my God.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah.

[Amanda Montell]

Framing it as a loss of innocence story is really interesting. Okay, now it's time to play a game that is a classic. Sounds like a cult activity called Culty Quotes. So I'm going to read you a sequence of quotes that were either said by an NLP guru or text or another classic cult leader from history. And you will simply have to guess whether the quote was said by a cult leader or an NLP person. The first quote goes like this. Emotions make excellent servants, but tyrannical masters, that's hard.

[Zoe Lascaz]

I mean, the fact that it could go either way so easily is really,

[Alice Hines]

I'm gonna say cult leader, not nlp because it's pithy.

[Amanda Montell]

Okay. And NLP people are like long winded,

[Alice Hines]

blah, blah, blah, blah. It'll be way longer.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yes.

[Amanda Montell]

In fact, that actually was an NLP person. It was John Seymour. He, you know, identifies as a psychologist and NLP trainer. He co wrote a book called Int Producing NLP Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People. I am not shouting at that book, literally, do not buy it. But that is just who he is. The next quote is as follows. The best testimony we can make is to say that we are a free people.

[Zoe Lascaz]

I would go with religious leader, cult figure.

[Alice Hines]

I'm on board with Zoe.

[Amanda Montell]

You are correct. It was Jim Jones, sociopolitical leader turned religious leader turned one of the worst people ever. Okay, next quote. When we believe in something, we act as if it is true.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Nlp Correct.

[Amanda Montell]

That is an NLP quote that is found like all over all the literature I was sitting through. Hate it.

[Alice Hines]

Yeah, it's sort of like the behavioral change. Like you can change your behavior.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah. Just what if you didn't feel that way? What if you just didn't? Which could be productive. That can be a productive exercise. But when it's like, hey, what if you were really happy about getting branded instead of feeling violated by that?

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah. What if you handed me a hundred thousand dollars? That'd be amazing. Okay. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

[Alice Hines]

Not nlp.

[Zoe Lascaz]

I feel like that's like on an inspirational calendar you'd like find in a waiting room or something. Or like a recovery room. It feels like an aa. Yeah. I don't know.

[Amanda Montell]

That is a common aphorism in everyday English, but it was first coined, allegedly, by Chuck Diedrich, the cult leader of Synanon, which was the group that my dad. Dad forcibly spent his teenage years in, which was founded as an alternative to aa.

[Zoe Lascaz]

That's really funny. Okay. All these things just get put in a blender and like, come out like this crazy toxic smoothie.

[Amanda Montell]

Yeah, totally. Yuck. Ew.

[Alice Hines]

Oh.

[Amanda Montell]

What would that taste like? Last quote. There is no such thing as reality, only our perception of it.

[Zoe Lascaz]

That's NLP 110% straight up.

[Amanda Montell]

You are absolutely correct. That is from a book Again, I'm not shouting it out. Called NLP for rookies.

[Alice Hines]

I'll shout out my actual favorite NLP book if people want. Use your brain for a change was my favorite one, and I think it's the least jargony.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Oh, I thought you were going to talk about magic with a K. I

[Alice Hines]

also love magic with a K. Yeah, okay. This is my actual favorite book.

[Zoe Lascaz]

This is a book just to set you up that Alice found on what I believe was a anarchist PDF share and then started borrowing from to hypnotize my mother.

[Alice Hines]

So I love this book. So this is esoteric nlp. It's called Visual magic with a K by Jan J, A N freeze, F R I E S and it's a practical guide to trance sigils and visualization techniques. I'm not an esoteric person, but the way that this book uses magic is more as a metaphor for the unconscious and how to harness the power of your own unconscious. And I really like this book. It's well written too. It's a fun read, unlike some of the jargony NLP texts.

[Amanda Montell]

Okay, great. Sounds like a cult book club. That can be our June. Okay, my last question for you. It's very important the culties take this very seriously. Out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which category do you think neuro linguistic programming falls into?

[Alice Hines]

I would say watch your back.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Yeah. Second thought, 100%, I think, because it can go either way. And again, it's like. Like there's two sides of the coin, right? Like, oh my God, your brain has so much unconscious power that you're not harnessing. Like, woohoo. But also, yikes, you know? So it sort of depends who is in the driver's seat, you or the guy at the front of the room. Who? You're like, you're my new guru for sure.

[Amanda Montell]

You two have swayed me. Before this interview, I would have jumped to the conclusion that it was a gtfo, but you're right, it's a watch your back. Thank you so much for joining this episode. If people want to keep up with you and listen to your podcast.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Podcast?

[Amanda Montell]

How can they do that?

[Alice Hines]

Mind games. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts slay.

[Amanda Montell]

Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty,

[Zoe Lascaz]

but not too culty.

[Amanda Montell]

Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montel Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Kolb. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it 5 stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, the Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality and Word A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71 and be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse. Soundslikeacultpod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad free at patreon.com soundslikeacult.

[Zoe Lascaz]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone Paying Big Wireless Way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just 15amonth. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[Alice Hines]

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[Zoe Lascaz]

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[Alice Hines]

TikTok's got millions of them. Could you whip one up in under eight?

[Amanda Montell]

Probably. But hey, it's not a race.

[Alice Hines]

Grab the recipes on TikTok and start cooking.