Speaker 1: So it's been a while since the first season of
Speaker 1: The Dream aired, and in the intervening time, we've received
Speaker 1: a ton of email, text and dms from people in
Speaker 1: MLMs asking for help. They're mostly really sad stories of
Speaker 1: people feeling stuck in the cycle of throwing good money
Speaker 1: after bad and wondering how to get out. That's why
Speaker 1: we're doing this episode and why it's so important. Hopefully
Speaker 1: it's actually helpful. In our last episode, we started to
Speaker 1: explore just how similar MLMs are to colts. A dear
Speaker 1: friend of the podcast and an attorney who's worked on
Speaker 1: a number of MLM cases, Doug Brooks talk to me
Speaker 1: about his legal run ins with a man named Keith Rhinieri,
Speaker 1: the founder of the MLM slash human trafficking cold called Nexium,
Speaker 1: and towards the end of our conversation he said something
Speaker 1: that caught my attention. He told me that to try
Speaker 1: and fight organizations like Nexium in court, we needed the
Speaker 1: help of someone named Steve, thinking that really we need
Speaker 1: people like Steve to explain to us how it could
Speaker 1: be that someone just sort of suspends their critical thinking
Speaker 1: and despite all the information that they have in front
Speaker 1: of them about their own experience and about the experience
Speaker 1: of other people, why would they continue to stay in it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know who this Steve guy was and
Speaker 1: why we needed his help, So I asked Doug if
Speaker 1: he thought we could get the two of them in
Speaker 1: a studio together, and being the gentleman that he is,
Speaker 1: Doug made it happen. The conversation started out hot. It
Speaker 1: doesn't surprise me that Keith Rannery did not invent any
Speaker 1: of this stuff. He's plagiarized from scientology and am Way
Speaker 1: and probably a dozen other things. But he's not this
Speaker 1: brilliant original thinker that he portrays himself to be. Right
Speaker 1: A liar, another pathological liar. Keith Ranieri was known to
Speaker 1: tell his followers he was one of the smartest people
Speaker 1: in the world, claiming he had a Nike of two
Speaker 1: forty so to give some context, a score of one
Speaker 1: forty five to one fifty nine is considered genius level
Speaker 1: and is only achieved by about one percent of test takers.
Speaker 1: I could listen to these guys talk shit about Ranieri forever,
Speaker 1: but we need to back up here and find out
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Steve. My name is Steven Hassan,
Speaker 1: I'm a licensed mental health counselor. I operate out of Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: I've been helping people get out of destructive cults and
Speaker 1: controlling relationships for over forty three years since my own
Speaker 1: dprogramming out of the Moon Cult. The heyday of the
Speaker 1: Moonies is over, so I'm going to catch everyone up
Speaker 1: a bit. It's actually called the Unification Movement. People call
Speaker 1: it the Moonies because it was founded in South Korea
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four by a man named Sun Myang.
Speaker 1: Moon Moon's followers believe that on Easter Day in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, Jesus appeared before Moon and asked him to
Speaker 1: continue the work he had started so very long ago.
Speaker 1: I suppose. The Moonies were known for being very secretive
Speaker 1: with their church doctrines, and also for holding gigantic wedding
Speaker 1: ceremonies which would absolve participants of past since, including one
Speaker 1: at Soul's Olympic Stadium for thirty thousand couples. Since Moon's
Speaker 1: death in twenty ten, the group split into several factions.
Speaker 1: Although Moon's widow is considered by many to be the
Speaker 1: current messiah, and the quote Mother of all Humankind sounds
Speaker 1: very game of Thrones. I am in Paul with a
Speaker 1: forensic think tank at Harvard Medical School pursuing a doctorate,
Speaker 1: and I want to train young clinicians, and I want
Speaker 1: to create a standard in the legal system for undue
Speaker 1: influence and to develop a forensic evaluation that meets the
Speaker 1: standards so that any judge or jury could look at
Speaker 1: something like annexiom when Keith Rini's on trial, currently can
Speaker 1: listen to the testimony of everyone and understand how intelligent,
Speaker 1: educated people can fall under someone else's control. I asked
Speaker 1: Steve what he meant by undue influence. So, for example,
Speaker 1: ethical influence, you have informed consent, you have respect, You're
Speaker 1: not being manipulated. Your conscience is being honored. You have
Speaker 1: free will to read whatever you want to read, and
Speaker 1: talk to whoever you want to talk to. And you
Speaker 1: have the freedom to exit at any time without any
Speaker 1: great fear or any type of punishment that happens. Whereas
Speaker 1: in undue influenced situations there's fraud, there's coercion, there's control,
Speaker 1: there's manipulation. There's often use of altered states of consciousness exercises,
Speaker 1: but it's bypassing people's critical rational thoughts and capturing their imagination.
Speaker 1: I had my own journey into the world of mind
Speaker 1: control that lasted two and a half years, and I
Speaker 1: wound up dropping out of college, quitting my job, donating
Speaker 1: my bank account, turning my back on my religion, which
Speaker 1: is Judaism, turning my back on my family and friends,
Speaker 1: my creative writing aspirations, and becoming a right wing fascist
Speaker 1: who thought that Moon was the Messiah and that we
Speaker 1: needed to establish a theocracy to rule the world. When
Speaker 1: I was nineteen and an upper junior Queen's College college,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend had dumped me. I was sitting in the
Speaker 1: cafeteria waiting for my next class, and three women approached
Speaker 1: me flirting with me, pretending to be students who were
Speaker 1: basically recruiters for the Mooney Cult, which I had never
Speaker 1: heard of before, and like destructive cults, operate through deceptive
Speaker 1: recruitment and manipulation. I was involved for two and a
Speaker 1: half years, and how I exited was due to act
Speaker 1: of love from my family. They hired a team of
Speaker 1: deprogrammers and my sister lured me to come visit to
Speaker 1: see my nephew who had been born, and they did
Speaker 1: an intervention with me that lasted five days that I
Speaker 1: agreed to do because I was so sure I wasn't
Speaker 1: brainwashed and I wasn't in a cult. I was just
Speaker 1: following God. But in that five days, I'd had a
Speaker 1: chance to reflect on who I was before the crime
Speaker 1: at the group and what actually was happening. When you're
Speaker 1: in a mind control group, you're kept so busy and
Speaker 1: so sleep deprived that you don't have time to reflect,
Speaker 1: and they alienate you from family, friends, from other sources
Speaker 1: of information. And I describe it as a dissociative disorder
Speaker 1: where I was given a new Mooney identity and told
Speaker 1: to die to my old self and Moon and his
Speaker 1: wife or my true parents. Jonestown was the big event
Speaker 1: where I realized, and I saw the bodies of three
Speaker 1: hundred children who had been poisoned by their parents at
Speaker 1: the hands of Jim Jones. I realized, this is much
Speaker 1: bigger than just the Moon cult, and so I've really
Speaker 1: developed an expertise at helping people to exit and to recover. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what do you actually call what you do? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like deprogramming is kind of outdated. I was
Speaker 1: struggling for a term, and I still don't have a
Speaker 1: snappy one word term, but I describe what I do
Speaker 1: as strategic interactive approach because it's a process oriented, team
Speaker 1: ethical counter influence campaign that's all aimed at empowering the
Speaker 1: person to think for themselves and make their own decisions,
Speaker 1: contrary to what cults do, which is a systematic social
Speaker 1: influence process to get people to be dependent and obedient
Speaker 1: on them and do what they want you to do.
Speaker 1: This is a really aimed at getting people in touch
Speaker 1: with themselves and giving them tools. Okay, let's talk about
Speaker 1: cults and what they are and your work getting people
Speaker 1: out of them. There are religious cults, there are political cults.
Speaker 1: There are therapy cults. There are commercial cults, including human
Speaker 1: traffickers as well as MLM as well as cults. A
Speaker 1: personality where someone is completely under someone else's control and
Speaker 1: thinking is black and white, all or nothing, good versus evil.
Speaker 1: We are the chosen, We have the special knowledge and
Speaker 1: the special formula for success. The universal mind control technique
Speaker 1: is phobia indoctrination, where people have irrational fears that terrible
Speaker 1: things will happen to them if they exit. The amount
Speaker 1: of attention that people give to you, praise surrounding you,
Speaker 1: looking for commonality is oh, yeah, I grew up there,
Speaker 1: or oh that's your favorite music, mind too, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't to create a sense of bonding, and then
Speaker 1: the behavior modification, withdrawal of reinforcement and outright punishment if
Speaker 1: you're doing things that violate rules or doing things that
Speaker 1: you're told that it's not appropriate to bring that particular
Speaker 1: question up. We live in an era of such incredible
Speaker 1: knowledge of the human mind and human interaction that is
Speaker 1: being used against people's best interests and is not being
Speaker 1: channeled only to bettering people and helping people who've had
Speaker 1: tragic lives get functional and better because there's no money
Speaker 1: in it. Unfortunately, family and friends who watch somebody they
Speaker 1: know change and get radicalized into this cultic like group
Speaker 1: try to wake them up and yell at them intractionally,
Speaker 1: argue with them and tell them that they're brainwashed, and
Speaker 1: that has the exact opposite effect of the person feeling
Speaker 1: more defensive, of the group doing more thoughts, stop getting polarized,
Speaker 1: feeling persecuted. People need to process so many disillusioning thoughts
Speaker 1: and experiences, so many things that had happened during those
Speaker 1: five years. Let's say that they can unpack it and
Speaker 1: then they can process it, and it's an unfolding where
Speaker 1: people become empowered to take their life back again. How
Speaker 1: do you talk rationally to someone who's in love with
Speaker 1: somebody and tell them their cheater I saw them with
Speaker 1: another guy an hour ago. If you're in love, you
Speaker 1: don't want to believe that because of emotion. It's not
Speaker 1: because of intellect. It's because of emotional need and desire.
Speaker 1: So what I do with my families who are worried
Speaker 1: about a loved one, as I teach them how to
Speaker 1: understand the mindset of somebody who's been indoctrinated. I bring
Speaker 1: along former member of MLMs, for example, and I show
Speaker 1: them videos of other cults, and I really then teach
Speaker 1: them how to have respectful conversations where you're asking questions
Speaker 1: that are very strategic in their designed to empower the
Speaker 1: person to feel good about themselves, to reconnect with who
Speaker 1: they were before they were in the group, to even
Speaker 1: imagine a future outside of the group, in order to
Speaker 1: take a time out and research the whole issue of
Speaker 1: social influence, undue influence, cults and with love, with respect,
Speaker 1: with timing, it's a very successful strategic interactive approach. When
Speaker 1: families care that much to bring me in to do
Speaker 1: something like this, it really creates a platform. Because they're educated,
Speaker 1: the family and friends understand mind control. They don't say
Speaker 1: the hurtful things that almost every normal family would say
Speaker 1: to someone who's coming out of a mind control experience,
Speaker 1: like how could you be so stupid? I told you
Speaker 1: it was a cult five years ago. Why didn't you listen?
Speaker 1: You would have saved so much money and so much headaches.
Speaker 1: And they don't do that because they understand what the
Speaker 1: person was subjected to, and they're compassionate, and that creates
Speaker 1: the foundation for a healing and an exit that's really
Speaker 1: important for somebody to move on with their life. One
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to talk to Stephen about
Speaker 1: was something I found while reading an interview he did
Speaker 1: a few years back. In it, the interviewer focuses on
Speaker 1: something Stephen developed called the BYTE model, which describes this
Speaker 1: specific methods cults use to recruit and maintain control over people.
Speaker 1: BYTE stands for behavioral, informational thought and emotional control b
Speaker 1: i TE. Behavioral control includes things like regulating how much
Speaker 1: a person eats, or what they wear, or who they
Speaker 1: can talk to and creating a system of rewards and
Speaker 1: punishments to help with behavior modification. Informational control is a
Speaker 1: way of regulating a person's connection with the outside world
Speaker 1: by monitoring or distorting the information they're allowed to see.
Speaker 1: Thought control is instilling people with that black and white
Speaker 1: good versus evil way of thinking that Stephen was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, like changing people's names and asking them to
Speaker 1: dissociate from friends and family. And finally, emotional control is
Speaker 1: basically nagging and guilting the shit out of people. Enormous
Speaker 1: number of people from different cults as well as multi
Speaker 1: level marketing groups have looked at the influence continuum and
Speaker 1: the byte model and reflected over what their experience was
Speaker 1: and went, Holy mackerel, this is a destructive end of
Speaker 1: the continuum and the byte model. We're doing most of
Speaker 1: these things, and it gives them a wake up moment.
Speaker 1: Say you know what, you can be free. You don't
Speaker 1: need to do this anymore. Do you feel that most
Speaker 1: or all MLMs are cults? All MLMs by definition are
Speaker 1: using deception. In my understanding of MLMs, they're all using deception, fraud,
Speaker 1: and byte model techniques. Destructive groups will either omit critical
Speaker 1: data distort information, or outright lie, and MLMs do all three.
Speaker 1: There's usually that one on one relationship where the person
Speaker 1: tells you stories of how great their life is and
Speaker 1: how wealthy they are, and they're typically lying as they
Speaker 1: were allied to by the person who recruited them. If
Speaker 1: you have invested heavily and to something, you emotionally and
Speaker 1: intellectually align to justify that. And unless one steps back
Speaker 1: and looks at the big picture and realizes, you know what,
Speaker 1: if I stay in this another year, another year, another year,
Speaker 1: I'm still not going to make the fortune. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to get deeper in. There's a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: investment of time and energy, often listening to lots of tapes,
Speaker 1: reading books, going to meetings in order to inculcate this
Speaker 1: proper commitment of thought. That's very much in most mind
Speaker 1: control cults. There's manipulation of sleep, often because you're pushing
Speaker 1: yourself so hard. There is often a manipulation of diet,
Speaker 1: especially if you're in an MLM that's selling products. You're
Speaker 1: using a lot of those particular products, so it's capturing
Speaker 1: people's hopes and dreams and short circuiting their critical thinking.
Speaker 1: By telling them that it only works if you believe
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. It installs phobias and people's minds irrational
Speaker 1: fears that if they share their doubts, if they even
Speaker 1: think the doubts, terrible things are going to happen for them.
Speaker 1: There'll be an utter failure. So in my worldview, there
Speaker 1: are ethical constructive cults and they're destructive cults. And I say,
Speaker 1: any group that's using deception and manipulation to make people
Speaker 1: dependent and obedient, that's exploiting them socially, financially, emotionally, psychologically,
Speaker 1: is a destructive cult. So it turns out Steven's been
Speaker 1: working on getting people out of MLMs for years in
Speaker 1: much the same way he's helped people get out of cults.
Speaker 1: He told me there's probably too many people to count
Speaker 1: at this point, but he did give me the names
Speaker 1: of a few MLMs he helped people get out of.
Speaker 1: Some of them sounded pretty familiar, like am Wei and Herbalife.
Speaker 1: So is the process similar when you're trying to get
Speaker 1: someone out of an MLM as a post to a cult,
Speaker 1: or like, how does that work with people in MLM?
Speaker 1: When I'm meeting the person, they've already agreed to meet
Speaker 1: with me. They think that their parents are crazy. It's
Speaker 1: typically their parents, sometimes it's a husband, sometimes it's a wife,
Speaker 1: and I just say, listen, I'm here because they love
Speaker 1: you and they're worried about you. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about myself. And then I start talking about the Moonies,
Speaker 1: and they're almost always fascinated, like how could you believe
Speaker 1: in the mooney you're about to the floor with? Or
Speaker 1: garan billionaire made automatic rifles. And I'd show them a
Speaker 1: BBC documentary about the Moonies and they're like, holy crap,
Speaker 1: how did you how? What is this about? And then
Speaker 1: I started explaining about social psychology. I explain about how
Speaker 1: the mind work, and so people are fascinated to learn
Speaker 1: the stuff. I'm not attacking the MLM. I'm just creating
Speaker 1: a frame where people are learning valuable things about the
Speaker 1: way the mind works. And then I asked them to
Speaker 1: tell me their story. Who were they before they met
Speaker 1: the group? And I really want to hear from them.
Speaker 1: What was it that caught their attention? What made them
Speaker 1: think this was a good thing. What Steve is asking
Speaker 1: here feels very familiar. We had the same questions throughout
Speaker 1: this series when listening to people involved in MLMs. If
Speaker 1: all the statistics point to a ninety nine percent failure
Speaker 1: rate for new distributors, why join and why stay? Often
Speaker 1: I'll say, you know I'm meeting you now, it's five
Speaker 1: years later. You know your wife's left you, your thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in debt. If you knew then what you
Speaker 1: know now, if you could go back in time to
Speaker 1: that moment when a recruiter was inviting you to hear
Speaker 1: this wonderful opportunity, what do you think you would do?
Speaker 1: In their face, they go why, And there's a long silence,
Speaker 1: and they often say I don't think I would go.
Speaker 1: And then I say, you know, when I was in
Speaker 1: the cafeteria Queen's College and those women were flirting with me,
Speaker 1: if I could go back in time, knowing about cults
Speaker 1: and knowing about the moonies, I would have told them
Speaker 1: to get lost. In fact, I would have called security
Speaker 1: to have them thrown off the campus. And so we
Speaker 1: join in that moment of you know what life happens,
Speaker 1: and you just got to move on. You just got
Speaker 1: to move on. As Steve knows more than just about anybody,
Speaker 1: that's easier said than done. But Stephen is going to
Speaker 1: continue the lonely work of trying to get people out
Speaker 1: from under undue influence, one person at a time. Recently,
Speaker 1: several people from the FTC reached out to Jane to
Speaker 1: tell her they were listening to and enjoying season one
Speaker 1: of The Dream Over at the actual offices of the
Speaker 1: actual FTC. Apparently they're ready to reassess the way they've
Speaker 1: been handling MLMs, and the FTC employees who reached out
Speaker 1: told us that they had even asked the chair of
Speaker 1: the FTC to listen. Apparently the chair's first response was
Speaker 1: what's a podcast? But there is some hope that they
Speaker 1: will listen and maybe even take some action on behalf
Speaker 1: of the eighteen point two million distributors, who we know
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of will lose money this year. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, Steve is staying positive, so I will too. Yes,
Speaker 1: you may have to be embarrassed to say to your folks,
Speaker 1: I should have listened to you or your friends who said, hey,
Speaker 1: that's a scam or that's a cult. So there's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of face saving that we always want to do,
Speaker 1: but it's it's you know, we're human and we didn't
Speaker 1: know what we didn't know. And that's part of what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do with my life work is role
Speaker 1: model and say, hey, I got sucked into a cult,
Speaker 1: but life doesn't end. You know when you're in a
Speaker 1: cult or you get out of a cult. You use
Speaker 1: it to enrich your your appreciation of being free. You
Speaker 1: use it to improve yourself and your ability to learn
Speaker 1: how to trust yourself and others based on critical evaluation
Speaker 1: of data and behavior and not just trusting wishful thinking.
Speaker 1: The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher,
Speaker 1: written and reported by Me, Jane Marie, and Dan Galucci,
Speaker 1: with help from Lyra Smith. We're edited by Peter Clowney.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Chris Bannon, Dan Galucci and me.
Speaker 1: We have a brand new season coming out in a
Speaker 1: few months, so don't forget to subscribe, and we also
Speaker 1: appreciate you rating and reviewing the podcast anywhere you listen.