← What Are You Made Of?
What Are You Made Of?
Inside the Mind of a Cult: Steven Hassan on Brainwashing, Freedom, and Reclaiming Identity
00:39:40
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to that one studio on the what do youo Made Of Show. It's your boy, C Rock here. I have my guest, Stephen Hasson here, and you guys are in for a treat because this is a great topic and I am always interested in, in, in, you know, understanding how cults formed and how people fall into it and how to get out of it and, but we also want to know how Stephen came into this in the first place. Stephen, welcome to the show.
- [00:25]
B
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Mike. I really appreciate it.
- [00:29]
A
Yeah, my pleasure. And I really was intrigued when we had our 15 minute call. I do a lot of those to connect with people and I was like, man, we got to go deeper in this. So the 15 minutes isn't enough. It's enough to give me a little taste and give the other person a little insight on what I'm focused on and, and then, you know, go from there. So we had to have you here and I'm thankful. Let's get right into it. We always start the show with the same question, and that is, what are you made of, Steven?
- [00:55]
B
Yeah. Well, you're meeting me now, almost 50 years after being deprogrammed from a far right fascist cult that I was recruited to in college and I had a radical personality change and dropped out of college, quit my job, thought my family was satanic and that the US government had to be infiltrated and democracy was satanic and we needed a theocracy. And you know, know, I, I, I got out after a near fatal van crash due to sleep deprivation which led to a deprogramming when I learned about Chinese Communist brainwashing. And at that point I was like, how did this happen to me? And I just wanted to understand Chinese Communist brainwashing. Persuasion, attitude change, hypnosis. And I became a mental health professional and I've been helping people get out of all types of destructive authoritarian relationships and cults ever since.
- [02:02]
A
Wow. Wow. So what would, what would you, how would you, how would you say, like, you know, the, the ingredients that have gone into making you like that, what would you say you're made of in a, in a high level?
- [02:17]
B
Well, I, I like to think I'm very courageous. And just an aside, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but long time ago I heard the first big book that you read as a kid formed a major frame in your head. And I thought back and my, the first big book that I read was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round. Wow, Mike. And so the notion of like standing up for goodness against evil has always been kind of a theme and that's pretty much how my life has been going.
- [03:01]
A
I'm gonna have to go back and try to figure out what it was that I read first time. I'm gonna have to think about.
- [03:06]
B
Yeah, it was formative and, and you know, it's. People say, wow, it's really heroic what you're doing, standing up to multi billion dollar evil groups that threaten you and, you know, sue you and harass you and you keep speaking up and that. It makes me feel like I'm doing something good to contribute to the world.
- [03:30]
A
Yeah, you're going against their M.O. and that's a problem for them.
- [03:36]
B
Yeah. But I also want to say I believe I'm a man of faith and that Jewish, in a very progressive Judaism that believes in a loving God and that we, our job on Earth is to repair the world or the term tikkun alum, and that our job isn't to finish the work but to contribute to it. And so I've written five books and I've done an online course for clinicians and I've taught online courses for mental health professionals and others. And I'm wanting to teach people how to protect their minds and how to understand and their families and their friends and how to, to counter all this authoritarianism that we see happening around the world.
- [04:31]
A
Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of it. And you know, it's also not just on the political spectrum, but it's also in, in, you know, interpersonal relationships and.
- [04:41]
B
Absolutely.
- [04:42]
A
Marriages and parenting, all that, you know. So. All right, so how did you get into the cult in the first place? Let's dive in there. And by the way, we're going to dive into some of the, the things you're talking about in your books as well. But I want to know the behind the scenes of this. So let's see.
- [04:56]
B
Yeah, I was, I was a creative writing major. I was an extra honor student. I skipped eighth grade. I grew up in Flushing, Queens, New York, and I was a student at Queens College. My girlfriend dumped me abruptly over Christmas vacation. The spring semester was starting. I was sitting in the cafeteria waiting for classes to start, and three women came over and flirted with me and asked if they could sit at my table and started talking with them. They said they were students and I don't know why, but I asked them, are you part of some religious group? I don't know, a vibe or whatever. But they said, oh, no, not at all. We're just, you Know, students here, you know, interested in making the world a better place. And they just asked me a ton of questions about myself. And, and to make a long story short, within two weeks I was away on a weekend workshop at the Moonies. And they had put in my mind the idea that these were the last days and the Messiah was coming back again and that I was chosen by God and I needed to stay and go to the next workshop to find out what my path was. And I, I rebelled, I went home. But they had put the idea in my head and my, my parents were like, where were you? And you look glassy eyed. Are you on drugs? And I'm like, I don't think they drugged me. And my, my mother said, let's go talk to the rabbi. I said, fine. And the rabbi thought I wanted to convert, which I didn't. I just wanted to know because Jews have a, an idea of a moshiach Messiah figure who brings PE and ends warfare, et cetera. But I had what I thought was a spiritual experience, that God wanted me to learn more about this group. And then they talked me into a 40 day separation agreement to not talk to my family or friends. And they started indoctrinating me. And within two months I was selected as a top leader and personally groomed and was with Sun Young Moon, the guy who claimed to be 10 times greater than Jesus Christ or any other spiritual leader in history. And I was co opted.
- [07:37]
A
Was this based on a Christian, the Christian religion or what was it based on?
- [07:42]
B
So the, it's very interesting, but yes, I would say they want to be seen as Christian except they don't believe in fundamental tenets of Christianity. But tell the public that like they don't believe in virgin birth or physical resurrection or Trinity or, or, or that Jesus is coming back again. They reframe it. That Jesus came to Moon when Moon was 16 and said I failed. I wasn't supposed to go to the cross and I need you to finish my unfinished mission. And, and the theology is that that Jesus should have gotten married and had sinless children. John the Baptist should have been his number one disciple. And the Jews should have marched on Rome and taken over Rome and taken over the world so that God's plan for a Garden of Eden would be restored. That was the simplistic description of the ideology. But I wasn't fundamentally interested in joining a group. I was kind of a loner. I like to play basketball, I was on a basketball team. But I liked to read books and I was writing poetry that was My thing.
- [09:01]
A
And so did they have a book that they used?
- [09:04]
B
Yeah, they call it the Divine Principle. I was made into a lecturer. So I gave the three primary introductory lectures to try to get the public to go to a three day workshop that would turn into a seven day workshop and a 21 day workshop and a 40 day workshop. And so I really, I. There was a lot of very educated, smart people from Yale and Harvard and Princeton who got sucked into this mind control cult. And, and fortunately my family rescued me. And because I was really a fanatic, I really believed that 100%.
- [09:47]
A
Yeah. So they, they use a tactic. And you're familiar with all these things probably, but you may call it something different, but they use the boil the frog tactic. Right. They work on a gradient scale and introduce just a little bit at a time and you don't even know realize what's happening until it's you're level 10 and you're like, how did I get here?
- [10:07]
B
Is that right?
- [10:08]
A
That's how they started with the ladies that came to your table.
- [10:11]
B
So it's interesting, Mike, but that's actually been debunked the boil the frog notion that frogs will actually jump out as soon as the temperature gets a little warmer. But I totally agree with you that you don't know that they. There is a systematic social influence process that they're very good at for identifying each person's specific buttons to press and in what sequence. And a lot of it is related to sleep deprivation and privacy deprivation. But keep in mind, this was 1974, Mike. This was. I was recruited the same month that Patty Hearst was abducted physically by the left wing Symbionese Liberation Army. So there was no information about the Moonies until much, you know, months after I got in, when he came out supporting Richard Nixon during Watergate and I was sent to Washington to fast for him. But no, and, and I've come, I. I've come to learn about hypnosis and how people's critical faculties can be sidestepped and ideas can be implanted without a person's conscious agreement and alignment. And, and the other thing I want to say is that I've created a bite model of authoritarian control. I did my doctoral dissertation on it. It looks at behavior control, information control, thought control and emotional control variables. And I have the complete list on my freedom of mind.com website that anyone can download. And the more of these variables you can control, the more you can control and create a new pseudo identity that's in the image of the leader or the Group. And we can talk about religious cults, political cults, therapy cults, commercial cults, including trafficking pimps or labor traffickers, as well as governments. One can look at the Chinese Communist government, say, this is a political culture.
- [12:26]
A
Yeah, well, so, okay, so going back to that. Yeah, so go check that out, folks. Actually, absolutely. We're going to say that again at the end of the episode too. But what. When you were in it, how long were you in it? Until you.
- [12:37]
B
Fortunately, I was only in for two and a half years from age 19 to 22. 19 and a half to 22. But I was working seven days a week, 18 to 21 hours a day with no vacations. And I cut off from my family about a year in because they made me afraid that demons were going to possess me if I interacted with my family, I might add. They brought me and 100 other Moonies to see the Exorcist movie. And then they brought us up to Tarrytown. And Moon himself said, God made this movie. This movie's a prophecy of what will happen if you leave. And I was deathly afraid of my own thoughts after watching that movie. So we were taught to chant and pray if we have a doubt entering our mind, to stay pure and to stay centered on Sun Myung Moon as the sinless Messiah.
- [13:40]
A
So was. Were there some positive things not, not the overarching thing of how they did it and all that, but was there, was there, were there some things that made you a better person or made you more able or.
- [13:56]
B
It's interesting question. And I get asked that a lot, of course, you know, looking backward to who I was and the trajectory I was going because I was wanted to be a college professor and teach English and creative writing. I can say that I got a graduate level education in brainwashing and mind control. And, and that was from people who had studied Chinese Communist brainwashing who said, you know, you know more than we know. And you should study psychology because you're describing far more sophisticated methods than what we studied. But I can also tell you I learned how to public speak in the Moonies. I can tell you I learned to fast for seven days in the Moonies. Not that I've ever done it since leaving, but I know I can do it if I have to. And I. I experienced the loss of my freedom. And when I got out and I reclaimed my personal freedom, it was so amazing. And I've never taken it for granted since. It's like we, we are so spoiled in the United States. But talk to People who are raised in Soviet Union or China and how everyone's going to turn you in if you say something that you shouldn' and all of those things, things that we're worried about now happening in our country. I just, I feel so grateful to be free to and to speak my mind and to and to learn. And I have an insatiable curiosity to learn. So I love to read books and listen to podcasts and meet interesting people like you.
- [15:51]
A
Yeah, I like, I like that perspective of, of what you could get up, you know, taken out of it, despite it being a negative experience because, you know, we could take the, you know, frame it into. Thank God I went through that because it might have helped you do well. It's obviously helped you write amazing books and become who you are today.
- [16:08]
B
So for sure, I never would believe any intelligent person from a good family could get into a situation that I got into. So it was a very humbling experience, I can tell you that for sure. And it's just helped me be much more empathetic to people who are trauma victims. You are mentioning family cults and abuse of parenting and such. I've learned as a therapist how to help people heal and use our incredible brains and our minds and our spirits to be the best people we can be and move forward to the future.
- [16:48]
A
Yeah. And then coming out of it, right, so when you came out of it, it was more of. It was a far right wing cult, right?
- [16:55]
B
Yep.
- [16:56]
A
Did it push you when you got out of it all the way over to the other side or where did you end up as far as at that time? It's obviously could evolved over the years, but I'm talking about at that time, did it, did it?
- [17:08]
B
Yeah, back in 76, Mike. I would say the first few months I was just ashamed and embarrassed and confused. I didn't know who I was. I kind of felt like I had been stripped naked and, and like, okay, you're born, you know, you, you got your life back. And I had to like start reconstructing. First of all, I looked at videos, I looked at pictures I met with family, friends, community members tell me stories of who I was before to reconstruct that. But I can say honestly that life's a journey, buddy. And I do feel very grateful because I've helped so many people and it gives me incredible amount of fulfillment when I hear from people that I've helped decades ago and they're like, you helped me. And I'm married and have five kids and four grandkids and whatever it Just makes me feel like I'm using my. The gift of life.
- [18:19]
A
Well, yeah, well, yeah, obviously. And anytime we can impact people's lives, man, it's just. That's the most fulfilling thing. You know, I've made a lot of money in my life, but it's never been like, when I get that letter that says, I put that. That gun down or I put the alcohol down, you know?
- [18:34]
B
Right, exactly.
- [18:36]
A
So I wanted to know, when did you have this moment where you were like, I'm writing books about this. I'm going to talk to people about this. I'm going to learn as much as I can about this, and I'm going to teach people and start wr books. How long after you came out?
- [18:48]
B
It's a good question. So for me, I just started reading again. And it took me a while. I had to buy a dictionary and re. Remind myself of the meaning of words. That's how atrophied my brain had gotten, even though I was an English major. And I re. I kept rereading Robert J. Lifton's book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of A Study of Brainwashing in China. It was published in 1961. And I kept re. Reading it, and I was like. My experience was so much more intense and sophisticated than this. So I tracked down Robert Lifton and found him at Yale. I got him on the phone, And I said, Dr. Lifton, your book saved my life. And he said, which book? And I said, thought Reform. And he said, that old book? Why? Because he has written so many different books. He just passed away at age 91, by the way. 99, I should say. But he. He said, come and meet me. So I met with him. I had a cast on my leg from the automobile accident, from falling asleep. And I started to describe how the Moonies would recruit and indoctrinate people. And I'm looking at him. I'm watching his wall of hardcover books from the ceiling to the floor on this college dropout from the Moonies, ashamed and embarrassed. And he says, you know, I just studied this secondhand. But you've lived it. They did it to you, and you did it to other people. And what you're describing is so much more sophisticated than what the Chinese were doing. You need to study psychology and explain it to people like me. And I was like, really? I can do that?
- [20:46]
A
Yeah.
- [20:48]
B
And in. In therapy, this is called a therapeutic reframe. It's like you had lemons. Make lemonade, buddy.
- [20:57]
A
Right.
- [20:57]
B
People will drink. I can do that.
- [21:01]
A
The fire was lit at that moment.
- [21:03]
B
It really was because I. I felt so guilty too, for all the people I had recruited into the cult. I felt like a traitor to my country and the princ. Symbols of democracy. But to answer your question, I didn't flip to the left, but I went back to who I was before, which was kind of like an introvert who is just a love lifelong learner. I just wanted to understand. So I started reading books. And then I started having the nerve to call famous people after I read their books and said, let me tell you about my experience. And they wanted to hear, like, Philip Zimbardo became a mentor of mine, the fellow from Stanford who did the prison experiment, if you remember, from 71. And he brought me out. He started teaching a course for 15 years. He also passed away in the last couple of years, but he. He would taught a course called the Psychology of Mind Control. And he used two chapters. Chapters of my first book, Combating Cult Mind Control. In it, he involved me in his online. He did the first online course for college called Discovering Psychology. He put in a unit on cults. And he really encouraged me a lot. So I have a lot of teachers that I have to thank for sharing their expertise and opening doors for me. And when I published my first book in 1988, a lot of very famous people said, this is the best book on this topic. And it kind of began my reputation.
- [22:46]
A
What was the name of the first book?
- [22:48]
B
Combating Cult Mind Control. Yeah.
- [22:50]
A
Okay.
- [22:51]
B
And it was published in 10 different languages. And I flew around the world and. And was on a lot of television shows. A lot of, you know, a lot of famous people have interviewed me. So I've been doing media interviews for going on 50 years.
- [23:08]
A
And so I know when the Cult of Trump book came out, that that was. You're gonna have people coming at you just the way it is. Was it like that with the first book at all? Did you get pushback? Did you get. I mean.
- [23:22]
B
Well, I. Did I get pushback or any.
- [23:25]
A
Or people coming at you and trying to.
- [23:28]
B
It was very different than the Cult of Trump book. No, it was more like people coming out of the woodwork going, holy mackerel. Ah, let me tell you about my church or let me tell you about my experience. I started getting letters, interestingly, from many people in the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons. And I. I was like, why are you rewriting me? They said, are you kidding? You described the. The Watchtower. You described the LDS Church. And I'm like, really? And they're like, yeah, really? We. We underlined your whole book. And I'm like, teach me. And so they started teaching me. And that's how I evolved the bite model of authoritarian control. Because all of these authoritarian groups have very specific criteria. Behavior, information, thought, and emotional control variables. And so now I have an influence continuum that says these are ethical values all the way to unethical bite model things. Here's the criteria. You decide what your family was or your corporation that you've been a member of. And. But. But when I wrote the. When I. When I was asked to write the Cult of Trump, at first I said, no way. I said, I'm not political. But I grew up in 1.3 miles from Donald Trump in his childhood home. And I know Donald Trump as a malignant narcissist. That was the one thing I knew was the stereotypical profile of cult leaders, and that was Erich Fromm's criteria of malignant narcissism. What I didn't know is that there were actual cults in the cult of Trump that were bringing the base to him. And the largest group are a network of mega churches and churches called New Apostolic Reformation groups. And how this is different than Christianity, nor mainstream Christianity, I should say, is that they have people at the top who say, I'm a prophet or I'm an apostle. I speak directly to God and I can cast out demons and do faith healings. But they run their groups as authoritarian cults where people are afraid if they have a doubt against the apostle, that a demon is invading their mind. Just like I thought when I was in the Moonies. And it's these 30 to 40 million Americans who were listening to their apostle who said, God told me Trump won the 2020 election. So don't believe the fake media, don't believe the 60 judges in court cases. Don't believe William Barr, the Attorney general, or Miles Taylor, who Trump appointed to do a free and fair election. So people believe blindly. And I really believe that God's plan was not to brainwash Adam and Eve to be obedient, but to give free will, to have choice and to follow out of faith. So that's what I teach in my work. And I don't tell people, you're in a cult. You need to leave. I just say, here are the models. Here's what I learned about Chinese Communist brainwashing. Here's what pimps and traffickers do to get people to be slaves. You decide. You tell me what fits of the model, what doesn't fit for you, and you decide what you want to do with your life.
- [27:22]
A
Yeah, it takes a lot courage to write a book like that because you knew what could come. So as you wrote that book and you pushed that out, what kind of reaction did you get?
- [27:31]
B
Well, when the book was written, you know Simon and Schuster, they send out advanced copies. Everyone in the world wanted to interview me. They said oh my goodness, the response has been overwhelming. We're going to push back the pub date from August 15th of 2019 to all October 15th because people will be back from vacation from the summer. And I said great. And then October 15th came and crickets. And I said what's up? And the, the, the publicist for Simon Schuster said I, I talked with one of my friends and TV and she said if Steve Hassan wants to say the Attorney General of the United States States is in the cult and thinks he can get on tv, forget it. And I wrote that William Barr was a member of on the board of directors of Opus dei, which is the group that's behind the project Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 and the Federalist Society and it's, I name them as one of the cults and the cult of Trump. Interestingly the woman didn't say if Steve Hassan wants to say the President of the United States is a cult leader. But I said it, I said here's the model. I went back in time to Edward Bernays 1928 book Propaganda. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was the first to put psychology and politics together in a formalized way. Goebbels tried to hire him for Hitler by the way. He said no, but Goebbels was using what he came up with. And what I say in the book is that what's happening today, this has been a 45, 50 year project to dismantle the checks and balances of our Constitution, the separation of church and state. And there are different authoritarian factions that are currently as of 2025 vying for different visions. And right now the one I didn't know about and didn't write about in the book initially I should say it was re released in 2024 with a forward by George Conway. But the group I didn't know about didn't identify it was the tech bro Billionaires that want to do network state and they want to be bigger and they don't want AI regulation or regulation over their platforms. And this is how people are being mind controlled. Now unlike the Moonies now you don't need to get people to, to isolated physical compounds because people are on their phones 10, 12 hours a day and personalized algorithms are being, you know, put into their brains directly. And our, the only hope, Mike, is to educate everybody how to tell the differ difference between verifiable scientific information, fact based information, trustworthy experts and propaganda.
- [30:48]
A
Yeah. Because you don't know who's being paid.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah. And there, there are agendas and you know, I'm a human rights guy and I'm a rule of law guy and I, I wanna, I wanna protect women's rights and gay rights and indigenous rights. I want minority religions to be respected and not impose a monolithic worldview of privilege for you know, trillionaires over working people. Like my dad had a hardware store, you know, very blue collar.
- [31:29]
A
Well, what has happened, I've noticed is with this is that you get, get regular everyday people now supporting the billionaires and trillionaires versus saying hey wait a minute, this isn't right. But they, they get so wrapped up in it that they don't, they just, they're blindly following. And yeah, that's one thing about the.
- [31:47]
B
Billionaires should pay taxes, you know, and the little people shouldn't have to pay huge taxes if they don't have a lot of income. It's just not fair.
- [31:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, it, I agree there's problems there. I mean there's, yeah, a lot of, I know some billionaires and they don't pay taxes at all. It's not like they pay their fair share. They don't pay at all. I, I know they, they, they wrap it up in real estate and trusts and all these different things and overfund life insurance policies and then borrow against that for tax free money and then they. Yeah, I mean I understand the game and they really don't pay. Right, but they'll argue with you and say they do.
- [32:32]
B
Right. But you know, if you come down to it, when people are at the end of their lives and they're on their deathbed, do you think they're thinking I could have made another, you know, million dollars? Or they're thinking why didn't I spend more time with my family, with, with my friends contributing, making the world a better place. And so I really think that this is a values thing that we really need to be messaging to the billionaires. How much more money do you need? And what about the fact that we're on one planet and we really need to protect our environment for our children and our grandchildren and for future generations? And I'm very concerned about unregulated AI and this rush to I'm seeing now this push to robots and to displacing a lot of workers and how are they going to feed their families? Like, seriously, you got to think repercussions as you develop technology. You have to think holistically too.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah, there's definitely a problem there. And Elon says it's going to be high universal income. And I don't. Well, and then now you don't have purpose. People that don't that usually use their job as purpose, they're going to lack purpose. What is there?
- [34:01]
B
Humans need purpose. People need to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. We need humans. We need to like hug human beings. Not, not androids. Like we need to, you know, to be with human beings. Our children need to be with humans. Not with screens.
- [34:22]
A
100%. That's why I'll tell you this, I've figured out something that's AI proof and that's why we built such an amazing community with what we're doing at that one network and that one quantum expansion. It's all about connection and we're going to need it more. So I'm trying to get ahead of the curve with this because I know that this is going to become major need for people. And I can see a culture developing where there's going to be all different kinds of communities, but also sub communities for this purpose. This is going to be scary. Like, you know, when things become scarce, they become valuable and community is going to become scarce. So building community now is more important than ever.
- [35:03]
B
To come back from the eye, completely agree with you and, and bottom up organizing, not looking to authority figures to.
- [35:12]
A
Fix everything, you really impacted me with that. You know, when we talked in my community that I'm building, I've been in part of many communities. I've been a part of probably things that could be considered cults. And there's a figurehead and they're put on a pedestal and it's all about them. And if anybody starts to shine anywhere close to them, they hammer them down.
- [35:34]
B
Yeah, that's not healthy.
- [35:35]
A
Or they get rid of them. And so when I'm building this community, one of the core, you know, tenants is that I have to make sure that it's about the people. It's about the people. But there's got to be a leader. But it doesn't have to be about the leader.
- [35:49]
B
Exactly.
- [35:50]
A
And you know, so a question I had for you as we. Because we're getting up against the clock, I want to make sure I hit on this what are some things that people can watch throughout their life whether it's their. And I know they can get the book but just high level whether it's their church, politics, corporate, commercial, inside relationships like give. Give us some like a few things that they can look out for.
- [36:12]
B
Yeah. So malignant narcissism is a specific, you know, personality profile that you don't want to be in business with and you don't want to marry. You want to protect your kids from getting involved with people like that for sure. I have created what's called an influence continuum. If I can hold that up, people can download this for free. Ethical influences here and unethical and destructive is there. And I do believe there are cults that are productive communities with healthy leaders. But we have the criteria of healthy leaders who know that they can make mistakes, are accountable and transparent and apologize if they mess up and whatever that we have institutions with checks and balances and such. I say, you know, if something is legitimate it will stand up to scrutiny. So ask the direct questions. Don't just listen also to the words but look at the behaviors. You know that's really important. I say it's not. The burden of proof isn't on us to prove a group is bad but it's up to a group to prove that it's good.
- [37:32]
A
Yes. What about self determinism? Freedom of self determinism and agency.
- [37:40]
B
Yeah. So that you're hitting now on why I call my company freedom of mind. So I say it's your mind and only you should control it. Don't look outside of you for some external authority including ChatGPT or something to tell you how to think or what to think. You have to have the locus of control in your body and you. You have to take responsibility for your choices and avoid perfectionism. You know making mistakes and learning from them is so important and so valuable. And hang out with people smarter than you or and hang out with people from other fields of discipline because it will help expand your consciousness. You don't want to just have confirmation bias for what you already know.
- [38:33]
A
Huge. Yeah.
- [38:35]
B
Yeah.
- [38:35]
A
Stephen, where can people go again? Do you want to.
- [38:39]
B
Freedomofmind.com is my website. I have a substack Stephen Hasson a YouTube Dr. Stephen Hasson and I love to. To teach and to share. I've written five books. I have a whole course on for mental health professionals. I have a book on how to help a friend or a loved one who's gotten radicalized my methodology so and I want to teach more people who can teach more people so that we can scale this around the world in many different languages.
- [39:15]
A
Amazing. Stephen, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. The vulnerability of sharing the story. And yeah, congratulations on the book success and the impact that you're having.
- [39:25]
B
Yeah, thank you so much.
- [39:27]
A
All right, my pleasure, Mike. While I wrap this up, folks, thank you so much for being here on the what do youo Made Up Show. It's your boy, C Rock, signing off. For now, make sure you hit the subscribe or Follow button at the top of your favorite podcast platform and keep coming back. And until next time, be that one.