International Cult Awareness Month: Andrew Pledger and BJU

Journalist Emma Lehman is the creator of the independent podcast Gooned, which dives into the Troubled Teen Industry or TTI – a network of for-profit congregate care facilities for youth ranging from ...

20 Feb 202435min

Harry Palmer created Avatar after his presidency of the Church of Scientology's Elmira Mission ended in the mid-1980s, as a result of legal proceedings around trademark infringement. Avatar says that ...

13 Feb 202449min

Thomas Parsons joined the Twelve Tribes community in Hiddenite, North Carolina in April 2019, and left in November 2021. With Hiddenite being the unofficial headquarters of the organisation, he had di...

23 Jan 20241h 15min

This episode was recorded live at Woodford Folk Festival on 1 January 2024. Many people in the audience would have come across the Twelve Tribes previously at that very festival, as they used to build...

16 Jan 20241h 15min

Matson Browning is a law enforcement officer who, along with his wife Tawni, spent years undercover infiltrating various hate groups to research and report on the rise of hate crimes and white suprema...

14 Des 202343min

Yaakov Aharon and Shula Kirovsky’s lives in Sydney’s famous beach suburb of Bondi were lived largely separate from mainstream society, within the Chassidic sect of Chabad. Their families’ lifestyles w...

12 Des 20231h 24min

Rachel Bernstein is an LA-based therapist who has specialized in cult intervention and re-acclimation for over 30 years. She serves on the advisory board of the International Cultic Studies Associatio...

14 Nov 202353min

Xenos was originally set up as a leaderless group that rejected the structures and trappings of mainstream churches. Springing forth from the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it focus...

12 Okt 20231h 3min