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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, we've talked about something in the past, friends and neighbors, something called n LP, short for neuro linguistic programming. This is a group term for a series of technique strategies, experimental models, all built to theoretically help you people reach a variety of what
we'll call improved outcomes. You know, if you have a problem speaking in public, maybe NLP can help. It can help you quit consuming tobacco. It might, as we're going to learn, even help you become a sharpshooter.
Well, recently we've probably heard about NLP in a different context because as the AI boom, we're amongst it right now, as it's been growing and generating. We hear natural language processing rights to as NLP a lot, which is just the way that computers are able to actually use human language, interpret, and then basically regurgitate human language.
They do it so well too.
And that might be an episode for another day, but that's an important distinction there, Matt. The parts of NLP that we're talking about neural linguistic programming here. They're huge in the self help industry. They're used by some of the most famous life coaches, but as well as some of the world's most well known celebrities and athletes. They'll swear by this, you know what to look for. You will begin to recognize these tactics or these practices all
over the place. But what is NLP exactly? Can you really hypnotize yourself into becoming a better person. On the flip side, what if you could secretly hypnotize people into giving you whatever you want? These are headache questions. Luckily we are not exploring these alone. We are thrilled, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists to welcome the journalist, the author, the podcaster and creator of the hit new podcast Mind
Games Zoe List. Guys, Zoe, thank you so much for joining us today.
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Guys.
Got to tell you, Zoe, we just finished listening to all the episodes, I believe nine episodes of mind Games. Yeah, there is so much contained within your show that is difficult to even know where to start. I was hoping maybe we could go back to Santa Cruz, California, the nineteen seventies, let's say, to a time when therapeutic techniques were being developed by college students and just we were getting real weird with it.
Yeah, it was getting pretty weird. That's a great place to start. That's where neurolinguistic programming originated. And as you say, it's a super slippery subject. It means a lot of different things in different places, in different contacts. So it's also where I like to begin to explain it. Basically, you have California in the nineteen seventies. Santa Cruz is just down the road from Big sur where you've got
the headquarters of Esslin and the Human Potential Movement. So you know, this is a place where people are trying really novel approaches to become better versions of themselves, to you know, reenact their births, to primarily scream, ideally to well, I don't know. The podcast is not about Esslin but.
Self actualized perhaps.
Yeah, I was trying to avoid that traced out there, and he is so laced. I mean even the name right is this really odd putting jargony acronym, which, as you say now has another meaning that but yeah, it's
like very alienating in so many ways. But basically, this guy, Richard Bandler, is this sort of loose cannon, troubled twenty something who's at EC Santa Cruz, specifically at this one really experimental college within the university, Krisgi College, where it was sort of conceived as this experimental new school where students built their own dorms with lumber. When the school opened, teachers that cross legged on top of their desks, barefoot
in blue jeans, talking about communism. You know, this was the vibe. So basically I'm here for yeah, I know, find me out right. It actually is very beautiful. I've been to the campus now and although it's grown a lot and changed, it is on this beautiful hill in the middle of a redwood forest, so that's sort of mist hanging in the branches. There's views of the ocean. It's very atmospheric, and so Bandler is this sort of
troubled guy with a checkered past. We can talk about his background a little more because it's fascinating, but he's there, and he teams up with a linguistics professor, a young professor who's in his thirties named John Grinder, and together they basically start running these experimental therapy sessions on students on Bandler's peers, and they're bringing in a lot of
different therapeutic modalities Virginia Setyer's Family Systems therapy. They're bringing in gestalt where you basically yell a lot, among other things. But you know, there's a lot of LARPing in both of these therapy models, like you you know, have other people pretend to be your family members, for instance, and then you talk to them. Yes, lots of role play,
so it's very physical. It's you know, amusing at times, but people are having these real breakthroughs, and eventually they add hypnosis into the mix, and that really is what launches NLP into the world, specifically the corporate world and some other sectors. But I hope that's a helpful origin story and we can dig into any parts of that more detail.
Just for sure, front though, is NLP is not I mean it's not the same as run of the mill hypnosis, right, and they're related, but there's it's like a plussed.
Up version of hypnosis.
I'm kind of interested in your thoughts on the connection between those disciplines.
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, there's not really a run of the mill hypnosis. It's the thing like hypnosis is probably the only form of therapy that you know, can be used in these really rigorous, medically backed contexts like smoking, cessation, pain relief, et cetera. But also sell
out stadiums in Las Vegas. I mean we've all seen people, you know, quacking like a duck on stage, or you know, giant dudes being made to imagine they're delicate ballerinas, all of this sort of you know, I think very like BDSMI humiliation based stage stage hypnosis. So you know there's hip Hiosis has also been used for forensic purposes. I mean a bunch of states have outlawed evidence collection from witnesses or people who have been put into hypnotic states.
That's kind of a no, no, frowned upon.
You know.
Amazingly, it took a while, but you know, so it's existed in all these places. But yeah, it's you know, regarding the relationship between NLP and hypnosis, I would say NLP is using hypnosis in various ways among other techniques borrowed from these other therapeutic models. So it's one of many things in this grab bag, but it's probably the most dominant factor within NLP.
There we go, and so I've got a couple questions here to step back. For anybody who is unfamiliar, My games is hosted with your collaborator and close friend, Alice Hines, and in the in the beginning of this journey, you all describe a pretty interesting origin story of your own partnership. Could you tell us a little bit about how you guys met and then how you became interested in in LP and bonus points for anyone who doesn't know, could you describe an LP.
Al Science is one of my best friends, and we met about ten years ago at a sound meditation in New Jersey which involves sleeping over at this house near the water and basically getting gongs and rainsticks and chimes played over us and a group of other people.
Sound bad so much a sound bath, it was.
Like a twelve hour sound bath, so it was pretty transformative. Alice came to that event dating someone she's been with for five years, and by the end of her astral journeys, induced by the experience, she was no longer dating that person, at least meant to me. She was still dating him. Yeah, she had to fill him in on these new developments. But it was there that we met that we found out we had a ton in common. We're both journalists,
were both reporters. I think we're both interested in these kind of subcultures and niche aspects of culture that kind of fly under the radar but actually really shape how we think and what we believe as a society, and NLP is definitely one of those things. We became interested in hypnosis kind of generally. Alice had stumbled across NLP in her reporting on the Twin Flames Universe cult for
Vanity Fair. She did a great piece for them that then became a documentary which I recommend everyone goes and watches. But basically she'd encountered NLP and a cult context. I encountered it through researching hypnosis and figuring out which aspect of it we should dig into. Like I was saying, there's a ton of different forms of hypnosis. Well, unsurprisingly, we settled on the one that is popular with cults, the one whose founder stood trial for murdering a woman
in the nineteen eighties. That woman happened to be a sex worker and his kokiine dealer's girlfriend. And I just became fascinated by Richard Bandler, by this guy who has this, you know, has this sort of like sordid criminal record, but at the same time is selling his wares to the US military. NLP was widely used by government spies, by army training dudes, So we can get into that. But just like what that bizarre Nick felt Worth exploring an answer to your third question, can I describe NLP?
I would describe NLP as a as a rogue form of hypnotherapy that took over the world. That's my one life to.
But that's a great place to start, for sure.
So the ubiquity is part of the fascination for you, for sure, Alice, could you tell us now that we have that understanding, that's the best definition I've heard rogue hypnotherapy. What makes it as a concept so controversial in certain academic circles.
Yeah, I mean it's been widely described as a pseudoscience. I actually went to this NLP event, the NLP Leadership Summit, a few years ago, and all the NLP trainers there were sort of all in a twitter about how the first line about NLP on Wikipedia is that NLP is the pseudoscience. I mean, this is just the way people
generally perceive it. That has a lot to do with the founders antipathy for traditional therapy, even though they were borrowing from some of you know, these pioneering psychiatrists like Setier, like Milton Erics and the hypnotherapists, they had a lot of contempt for most therapists. They thought it was a total ripoff that you would spend years and years and years on your therapist couch getting to the bottom of
your problems when you could just fix them instantly. That was what they were trying to do, and that basically became the selling point for NLP. You know, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars, you can just show up to an NLP session and boom your curt So they never were interested in putting NLP through a rigorous, peer reviewed scientific process. Some people have tried to do that,
but Bandler and grind are the two founders. They were always pretty contemptuous of that, and they were just like, onto the next thing. If it works, it works, you know, and jokes on you nerds if you want to dig into the like nitty gritty details and do these lame experiments.
There's something so thoroughly American too about that idea of no deferred gratitude, get me my results instantly. I have to wonder if LP could have reached the success it has if it had or the abiquity it has if it had not been started in the US.
That's a great question. I mean, it is very popular in countries around the world. Now. At that event I mentioned there were NLP trainers from Egypt, from Brazil.
You know.
It has a huge presence in the UK and Germany, also Australia. You know it really its reach is very wide at this point. But no, I think it is a uniquely American story. And really that transformation from those early days in Santa Cruz when all these movements, not just NLP but like Esselyn, etc. Know, it was all about like you know, realizing your full potential for good.
You know, if we can make ourselves better individuals, we can avoid another Vietnam War by you know, by extension, we can you know, reform the ways we relate to each other by figuring out how we relate to ourselves,
et cetera. And then you go from there to NLP at least becoming marketed as this kind of self optimization technique and like a lot of self help therapies that are presented as being very you know, outside the box and novel, like they really just sort of reinforce status quo values like be a better version of yourself so you can like work more, crank out more capital, you know,
sleep better so you can be more productive. I mean, it's it's sort of beenal like ultimately what it what it ended up hearing.
World and speaking of American stories, I mean, like the idea of being a life coach or a self help guru. That's sort of a way of getting around licensure and like actually going to school for psychology and studying rigorous being able to kind of brand yourself. Is this thing, this influencer type without actually being you know, a professional.
Is that part of it? Like, is there any licensure involved. Is there a governing body? Ben?
That was your question I saw in the outline. It just really occurred to me. I think it's a great time to ask.
Yes. That is one hundred percent part of NLP, and it's part of what contributes to the sort of sketchy reputation you were asking about earlier. Ben, I mean the fact that you can just show up to an NLP seminar for I mean, they used to be thirty days. Now people are banging them out in a weekend. But
you can go to one of these events. You can shell out a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, get trained by someone, and then go train other people or practice on clients who may come to you with say real trauma or with lifelong phobias, and hope that you can fix them. And you are not subject to the same oversight whatsoever. As a practicing psychologist. You know, you can't have your NLP license revoked in the same way, because there's no license. The first place you get a
certificate when you get trained practice suits. Yeah, you're right, I sued my pseudo scientific n LP.
Sorry warm up, Yeah, I know.
I'm amazed. I stuck the landing on that one. Yeah, this is this is really haunted NLP from its early days too, right because at us at EC, Santa Cruz, Bandler and Grinda were really tight with Gregory Bateson, who you know, was and is the sort of extremely influential polymath. He is regarded as one of the founders of cybernetics, but you know, was also the sort of dude who can like give you a lecture on like the structure of beetle wings or whatever.
I mean.
He also studied trance. He was married to Margaret Meade, the anthropologist, and so you know, he connected them to Milton Erickson. He also connected them to NAPAs State Hospital, which is a psychiatric hospital not far from you see, Santa Cruz and Bandler and Grinder and their other like undergrad collaborators got cart Blanche to just experiment on the
people there, people with schizophrenia, with absolutely no oversight. I mean, these are people who came up with this like rogue form of hypnotherapy and then it was like, yeah, why why do you see if it helps these inmates or sorry they're patients, but I mean, honestly give them the state of psychiatric hospitals back then.
There you know, not consensual patients.
Yeah, very vulnerable people who presumably were not in a state to you know, elect to receive this kind of therapy that didn't even have a name at that point.
Can we talk more about Grinder. I feel like he has a weird past that you get into in the podcast, but he feels even more mysterious to me and like there's something there because he has quite a bit of a military like Cold War strategy kind of past. Right.
Yeah, I mean there's tons of lore surrounding both of the founders of NLP, and it can be really hard to sort of nail down what's real in both of their cases. We did ultimately interview Bandler. Grinder wasn't interested in getting an interview, but I can tell you what said about him. He is said to have been some sort of spy. He was definitely in the army. He was definitely an officer serving in Europe during the Cold War.
He traveled widely and was apparently very gifted with languages and not just learning sort of the words, grammar, vocabulary, but also kind of the physical way in which people in different cultures communicate, and so that kind of you know again to the role playing that was sort of a big part of NLP. Like one one NLP concept essentially is that if you change your physiology, which means, you know, say, stand up straight instead of slouching over,
you'll feel more confident. You'll be that confident person that you're trying to, you know, think your way into being well. You also need to physically embody that confidence. So you know, some of this is pretty intuitive, but Grinder's background helped him come to those realizations.
Yeah, can I just say the moment you said that, I sat up more straight because I wanted to self.
That I know, I know I was likestus school. That stuff they don't.
Want to know you guys to know reminds me of your water conversation early on in one of the episodes, right about what Illicit's thirst.
Yeah, that was one of our cheeky demos. Badler and Grinder would do these things called double inductions, where they would each whisper in someone's ear at the same time saying different things, and the idea is one person This is a hypnotic technique. It's still used in other context, but basically one person is saying actually relevant stuff like they're embedding commands like you'll feel this, you'll do blah. The other person is just speaking about whatever. I mean.
It could be utter nonsense. Indeed it should be. Basically, you're trying to distract the conscious mind, and so the brain basically can't process all this stuff, and then that makes it more susceptible to the messaging. So, Alison, I tried a little version of that. You'll have to let us know if it worked on you. But it was basically us just playing around and trying to figure out if we could pull the stuff off.
I thought, what I think we all really loved about that in particular is when we start off with in LP as a concept. It's such a broad group term for various tactics and models that it's incredibly helpful to hear some of the nuts and bolts specific So the double induction is one technique. What are some other things people might encounter that could be called in LP techniques that they might not consciously clock.
Yeah, let me think of some quick ones. So if you've ever heard, for instance, that people's eyes dart to the left when they're lying, or that they'll look a certain way when they're lying when they're telling the truth. That's essentially derived from NLP. NLP is a whole system of eye movements that correspond to what people are thinking, supposedly, So if you glance up, you're in the visual field and you're either imagining things that don't exist visually or
you're recalling images that you have seen before. And then there's sort of directions for sounds, for feelings, and all of this is supposed to help you basically read people's minds and help you sort of guide or guide them in a therapeutic context or manipulate them. If you're trying to sell them a used car, you know, if you see them glancing up into this supposed visual realm, you might emphasize the visual aspects of the car you're trying
to sell. So you might say, like, you know, imagine yourself on the open road and the wind is you know, in your hair when the convertible. But if someone's glancing down into the physical sensation directions, then you might be like, yeah, those those plush leather seats.
Wow, I'm a.
New York you actually like what do you say about cars? But you know, roar of the engine for hearing anyway, So you use these tells to appeal to people's thoughts, and I think that that premise has trickled down to us in various ways undernaths that are not an LP.
Well, now that's interesting because there is a there is a you know, a method of trauma processing and therapy called e m D that focuses on some of the same left to right eye movement. It seems like almost the flip side of what you're talking about, But that does appear to be evidence based and something that is you know, there's a lot of stock put into Yes.
This is what's crazy. So one of the big revelations of our podcast is that the founder of EMDR was an NLP practitioner. She was working for John Grinder as an office assistant for many years. She practiced NLP. She wrote about NLP, She was a card carrying NLPR. She sort of coincidence pulled away from NLP after Bandler's high profile murder trial, for which she was acquitted. I should mention, but it was a big, sordid tabloid story that focused
a lot of negative attention on NLP. So after that she distanced herself from NLP and came up with this kind of cockmany story about how she figured out EMDR. She said, right, this is Francine Shapiro, and she said that while she was trying to think of the dissertation subject in psychology, she was walking through the park and thinking about something upsetting, and she just so happened to notice that her eyes were moving very rapidly, and those
movements helped her feel. Okay, Like people have pointed out, like, there's no way you would clock the fact that your eyes are moving as quickly as they would need to. But yeah, I think her interest in eye movements clearly derived from NLP, and then unlike van Ler and Grinder, the founders of LP, she was interested in those clinical
trials putting it to the scientific test. And that's why today NLP is regarded as a pseudoscience and EMDR is a widely practiced trauma therapy that's endorsed by the World Health Organization and the US military.
But the same eye movement thing, you know, which is in a lot of ways just kind of this lore that was you know, created, and it's not really seems to be real and doesn't seem to be real to me, at least we see massive YouTube channels and other creators out there who use this as ways to analyze tape,
let's say of a court case or something. You've likely seen some of this where there are huge true crime creators that just study eye movement and they will tell you whether or not someone's lying and what they're actually thinking about. It's just fascinating to me that something could be conjured, you know, in the nineteen seventies as this one thing NLP. Then it goes into a therapeutic technique later on, but it can also then spawn YouTube careers.
Yeah, that's fascinating. I hadn't even made that connection, but that is a very concrete use case of NLP ideas trickling out, And that is what's fascinating about NLP. Like whether it's because that sort of damning press coverage during the murder trial, or because it's the pseudoscience NLP often is used under other names. We find it in a lot of places, whether it's those eye movement divinations or
just you know, corporate HR speak. You know, a lot of the language baked into that is derived from NLP. I interviewed a former Army intelligence officer. This didn't make it into the podcast, but he moved from the government espionage context to corporate espionage. He founded a business and he would use NLP techniques all the time, and he would train people. He'd sort of had a consultancy, and
he would train Allied government spies. You know, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a lot of newly Allied members need to sort of be brought up to speed on US intelligence gathering techniques, so they didn't go around doing the Soviet model, and so he was teaching them NLP. He said this, but he didn't call it NLP because
the terms are just so alienating. So instead he would just be like, Okay, here's the thing that I found really helpful, without using the like very technical jargon like this is a six step reframing, or this is a switch technique, which is just like, maybe.
You don't need to know, Zoe, I'm here in a bonus episode because that's an interview i'd love to check out.
Yeah, oh sweet, Well that's that's good feedback. I should talk to my producers.
Well, one thing we do need to go back to or I definitely want us to go back to this. This is something that our audience has already clocked that we should explore in depth to the degree that you're comfortable. We mentioned a murder, right, We talked about Santa Cruz in the nineteen eighties. Something tragic occurred there. That is a I mean, it's a podcast version of a page turner.
It's one of the episodes I listened to repeatedly. Could you take us back to nineteen eighty six and tell us how this homicide relates to the larger than life figures of NLP.
Absolutely so. In the nineteen eighties, Bandler was having a tough time. He basically broke up from his co founder, John Grinder. He also so divorced from his first wife, Leslie Cameron Bandler, who was a NLP practitioner, And he was in Santa Cruz and falling in with this kind
of increasingly seedy underbelly of the city. He found a close friend and this guy, James Marino, who had a two page rap sheet of mostly petty crimes, but was a prolific cocaine dealer, shall we say, and user, and they sort of bonded over their mutual love of that drug and of NLP. James Marino was into NLP. So with Marino with this woman, Karen Christiansen, who was Marino's on again, off again much younger girlfriend, also Bandler's bookkeeper. Maybe it's all a little hazy and a sex worker
in Santa Cruz. He spends a lot of time with these people, and things take a turn when Marino grows increasingly paranoid about Karan Christensen. He thinks that she arranged for him to be beaten up at a Halloween party, for instance, and Bandler. It depends whose testimony you believe. Bandler and Marino had very different versions of these events, may or may not have come to suspect Korean of
being involved in that violin attack on his friend. In early November, Karean Christianensen was killed in her living room. She was found by police on the floor with a single gunshot wound too the face. She had been doing cocaine at the time. She was killed in the early hours of the night with two men, Richard Bandler and James Morino. They were the only two guys present and they pointed the finger at each other. And this story basically took off not only in California, but attracted national
media attention as well. The military contacts that Bandlor had worked with earlier in the nineteen eighties, rushed to his defense. They got him out on bail. This was important, so he didn't show up to you know, the subsequent court proceedings in a prison jumpsuit. We interviewed his defense, We interviewed people who who spoke to him at the time, who spoke to Marino at the time, and we get into all the kind of horrifically sorted details in that
episode of the podcast. But hopefully that's a that's an okay overview. Sorry I couldn't.
That's been phenomenal, That's phenomenal. We also we also in the follow up. One thing that will surprise a lot of people, do check out that episode in particular, folks check out the whole show, but for the for the deeper blow by blow. That's a canot miss and one of the most surprising things. Can't speak for everybody, but at least for me, was not just the acquittal, but the fact that later Bandler is able to arguably leverage this and become like the NLP guide to see post trial. Is that true?
Yeah, one hundred percent. I actually interviewed someone in the NLP world who told me that it might have even burnished Bandler's reputation. He said, I'm paraphrasing. He said thing like yeah, if you're you know, from Sweden and you've never met an accused murder before, you know, this was a hugely seductive opportunity to study with Richard Bandler. Bandler had sort of cultivated a bit of a loose cannon
mystique throughout his life prior to the murder. He actually recently bragged to a journalist for The Guardian about deliberately electrocuting his stepfather when he was a little kid. He said that his stepfather was abusive and to get back at him, he basically rigged a wire to a doormat to a door knob during an electrical storm. But basically when the guy opened the door, he got electrocuted and went to the hospital. And Badler was ten years old
when he supposedly did this. But anyway, it's a kind of fascinating thing to tell the mainstream media after you've you know, stood trial for murder. So he clearly hasn't shied away from some of these more controversial stories about himself despite that.
And here will pause for a word from our sponsors. We'll be back with more mind games.
All Right, we're back. Let's hop right into it with Zoe.
I want to talk about another seductive opportunity in the form of Ross Jeffries.
Okay, so.
Right, yeah, this is a bit of there's a bit of a walk. So last night my partner and I watched Inside the Manosphere. This is the new Louis Thureau thing that you can find here on Netflix, actually, and it reminded me of his other film, My Scientology movie, which is one of the first times guys, I think I think some of the first interactions we had with NLP is when we were talking about Scientology. Some of the technology of NLP being used within that church in at least some ways.
Are those techniques I want to use during some of the whatever the confession setting, that's the word.
Some of this stuff is taught in like multiple organizations similar to Scientologist.
Yes, it just took me down that whole pathway, which then got me to this video or this this clip that you play within the show of Louis throw with Ross Jeffries at like a cafe or something. Can you I know this is silly because I don't think we can play it in this medium. But if you can just explain, like just briefly, say what happened there between that interaction and then what this guy, Ross Jeffries did with NLP that was different.
Yeah, for sure, I love that sequence. This was a clip from Louis Thuru's former show on the BBC Weird Weekends, and he did an episode around hypnosis. He looked at a few different applications of hypnosis, but the one we focused on for our purposes was his work with notorious pickup artist Ross Jeffries, the so called dog father of the up artistry movement. And for your younger listeners, pick up artistry was kind of a big deal in the
nineties and early two thousands. And there's this book The Game by Neil Strauss, this journalist who embedded with Jeffreys and a bunch of other pickup artists to learn how to get women into bed using these kind of scripted verbal patterns and other techniques. So Ross Jeffries basically learn
everything he knew from Richard Bandler. He went to go train with him sometime after the murder trial, sometime around the murder trial, and he's a little shaky on the dates but basically he learned how to hypnotically persuade women to sleep with him. That's his claim, And Alison, I have a lot of theories on pickup artistry and could unload with some of those. There's a lot to say about it. But I went to San Diego to interview
Ross Jeffries. That's where he lives. And in the clip, Ross goes to this cafe and Marina del Rey he was living in Los Angeles at the time, and he demonstrates how pickup artists can supposedly talk anyonoman to sleeping with them, or at least going on a day with them, and it's pretty crazy to watch. I recommend everyone check this out. He goes up to this woman. She's sitting at a cafe with a friend. She's smoking a cigarette,
she's having a coffee. She has this kind of nineties Meg Ryan style haircut, and he sits at the table next to her. He doesn't come on super strong, like hey baby, you know. He sits down next to her and he starts asking her to imagine these fantasy vacation spots. He sort of gets her to start conjuring these positive images, and as she does that, he begins running his finger up her arm slowly, and then he does that later.
And this is an NLP hypnotic technique, calling yes exactly, And so you can anchor an idea or an emotion to a touch, a physical a physical sensation, a sound. It's basically Pavlovs dogs for humans. You know, like instead of hearing the balance salivating, this woman supposed to feel that touch and then go back to thinking about, you know, these extremely relaxing, sensuous vacation spots. So that's what happens
in that clip. I went to go talk to Ross Jeffries in San Diego and he actually I was sort of braced for this interview. You know, you've been leaving me a lot of voice memos telling me he was going to covertly hypnotize me during the interview. That didn't exactly have it, Yeah, it was. It was really weird. He also showed up to the interview wearing this like purple jacket over a purple shirt. It was like, which felt to me like a kind of hypnosis deep cut
because various purple yeah, yeah, yeah. And he actually ended up being one of I think are more lucid sources sort of breaking down some of these hypnotic techniques and how they're supposed to work. So that's one of my favorite episodes. I love the pick up Artist.
Let's stay on hypnosis here for a moment, Zoe, How would you define hypnosis and why is it considered so controversial in some circles? Is it because of the sometimes extravagant claims that hypnotists make, or is it because of misconceptions like what is the what is hypnosis to you?
And is it itself considered pseudoscience by some you know, in the psychological community and the psychology community.
Well, I would shy away from defining hypnosis only because medical experts have failed out this task. I mean, that's one of the fascinating things about hypnosis, Like even among hypnotherapists who use it, who study it, who research it, there's no single agreed upon definition of what it means to slip into a hypnotic trance, to be hypnotized. And that's partly because different things can happen when you've been hypnotized.
You know, if you're prompted to visualize something, you know a different part of your brain is going to light up an EKG. Then you know, if you're imagining pain or the absence of pain, and so it's just really tricky to study because you know, brains are weird and the mind doesn't really But I wouldn't say it's regarded as a pseudoscience by anyone in the medical community. I mean there's tons of research surrounding its impact on subjective
experiences of pain, for instance. So yeah, yeah, yeah, So you know, it doesn't work for everyone to the same degree. I mean, some people aren't going to get a lot out of it, but for the people who are hypnotizable, yeah, it can show pretty dramatic reductions in pain relief in situations like childbirth. It's also use for anxiety. You know, there are people who have, you know, phobias of going to the dentists. So there's actually this whole like pro
hypnosis dentistry community. But yeah, hypnosis is totally bonkers. Like I read this one experiment where I'm not sure if you've ever come across this other experiment. This might be too clunky to explain, but basically it's where like the words of different colors are printed in colors. Yes course, yeah, right, Okay, you know this there's a name for us about escaping me right now. But so it's like, you know, you'll see the word blue but it's printed in red. You'll
see the word green but it's printed yellow. Hypnosis and it's supposed to be really hard to read like it, and it reveals, you know, how our brains like kind of go on fritz trying to do that. Well, they had hypnotized people do it, and they just had no stumbling blocks whatsoever. They're just like, oh, red, green, blue, yellow, bluh.
You know it was fine, Zoe. I cheated just a bit. I believe we're talking about the stroop effect.
There we go.
Yes, that's the why, because it was right on the tip of my tongue. It does you know the stroop waffle effect right now, I'm going to remember.
It as the waffle effect green.
Yeah.
I do want to share one story that'll that is a bit of a walk, but I promise it'll it'll lead us to something, uh that is mission critical for a lot of our audience.
I had, well, Francine Shapiro discovered EMDR on a walk. So who knows where this is going to be the next week trauma therapy.
Everybody, close your eyes, look up, roll your eyes up and put yourself in a walking situation by a beach. So here we go. I had, I had done a lot of research previously on different allegations of things like the Satanic panic, right, or child abuse rings or UFO UAP encounters and abductions. You alluded to this just a moment ago, and I don't want us to lose it.
What I kept finding over and over again is that for many years a form of hypnosis, a genre of hypnosis called regression therapy, was treated often as concrete evidence in these experiences or these stories. Could you tell us your take on this memory regression, memory recovery stuff and why it is considered so controversial.
Yeah, one hundred. I actually have a pretty personal stake in this as someone who tried it for my personal lives. So yeah, hypnosis from memory recovery is one of, if not the most controversial application of hypnosis. You mentioned the
Satanic panic. Basically, this one woman who was working with her psychiatrist who later became her husband, through hundreds of hypnotic sessions, recovered memories of being abused by a Satanic cult as a young child, and despite the fact that her siblings her family were like, what are you talking about that did not happen. She quote unquote recovered memories of watching them, you know, sacrifice babies and turn them
into you know, ash smoothies. I mean it was really specific and disgusting, and she you know, described murders, She described all these really serious crimes. And so instead of making people you know, shy away from this, it sparked this huge boom where suddenly there were tons of copycat imitators, people you know, recovering memories of satanic abuse through hypnosis. So people went to jail, you know, people were ostracized from their communities, you know, school teachers who were accused
of you know, kidnapping children. It was really awful and gave hypnosis a bad name in these contacts, and it also inspired a bunch of research.
That is all discussed in the incredible podcast The Devil you Know with Sarah Marshall, who we also had on the podcast not terribly long ago from the CBC.
So if you're interested in digging more.
Into that, check out that podcast and maybe go back and listen to the interview.
Just talking to folks out there in Netflix Land.
Yeah, you're talking to me too. I missed that episode, but great one. Yes, Elizabeth Loftus is this oneble talk about that memory researcher. Okay, so she comes up in that All right, great, well I really want to watch it now. I'm kind of flow key obsessed with her. But basically she studies memory and she she actually had an experience, despite being a memory researcher, where some family members were a family member accident implanted this false memory
in her. Her mother drowned when she was a young child, and I think her aunt found the body floating in a swimming pool. But she was talking to this relative as an adult and the relative was like, oh, yeah, you know when you found your mom's body, and she was like, what, No, that was my own. They're like, no, no, I think you found her. And then she found over the subsequent days that she was sort of having these images,
you know, the hair swirling in the swimming pool. And eventually the relative got in touch and was like, oh, I'm so sorry, I was mistaken, and she's like, geez, Louise, you know, this Israeli potent. So she did a lot of the pioneering research on deliberately installing fake memories in experimental participants, and it's really not that hard to do, is what she demonstrated.
So I kind of part of the plot of Shutter Island, the Scorsese movie. There's a big plot line and that that's very similar to what you just described.
No spoilers, but that's it.
And you said you have a personal steak in this to the degree that you were come for bo Zoe, would you mind sharing a little bit about your first hand experience with the technic?
I should be comfortable sharing it because it's sort of episode three in the podcast. Right before that episode aired, I was like, what the fuck was I thinking? Like this? So this is so personal. I never do things this personal in the context of my reporting. But yes, I made myself a guinea pig for the sake of mind games and worked with a hypnotherapist on recovering memories of my father, who died when I was six of lung cancer,
and throughout my whole life. It's kind of amazing, Like when I go to a cocktail party I don't know and it comes up that my dad's dead, people are always like, oh, wow, how old are you among six? And they say, wow, that's really young. How much do you remember about him, and like, oh, I get why they're you know, I get why they're curious, but it's like, oh, you kind of just asked like the like staking my hard question, you know, at this cocktail party. I don't
really know is the answer. I mean, I've definitely had experiences where I think I have a memory of him, like the quality of the light in the room, it feels like a memory. And then all stumble upon a photo in a childhood photo album and be like, oh, I clearly constructed a memory around this photo that I have seen before.
Shoot.
So you know, memory is really slippery. It's really hard to know what's real and what's not it to begin with, you know, even when you haven't you attempted hypnotic memory recovery. But I went into work with this therapist with the understanding that any memories we quote unquote recovered may or may not be capital are real. Like, there's just no way of knowing. And so she really Covey added that she was like, look, I think this could still be productive.
That could still be a way to cultivate some sort of posthumous intimacy with your dad. You didn't get to spend a lot of time with him, and I was like, great, let's give it a shot. I went into it extremely skeptically. You know, it's not like I hadn't tried to think about my dead dad before. But you know, if you just sort of sit down in your chair, let's come up with some memories. You know, they're not forthcoming, or at least they haven't been for me over the course
of my entire life. And then I tried this with her and it was extremely moving. It was really profound and surprising. Like I'm a pretty visual person, so I expected like images, even just fleeting moments, and instead what I got were these physical sensations, like the heat of his touch and like his voice, you know, not coming from over there, but like the way a voice vibrates through someone's chest when you are being held by them. I mean, it was just intense. I was like crying.
I couldn't even like talk to my partner about it for weeks or anyone. I was just like really processing. So we did a few sessions and yeah, you know, if you're curious, if anyone listening is curious about trying this kind of work, I do personally recommend it, but just really going into it with that understanding that like you can't know if they're real or not, which didn't bother me because I don't know whether I'm real. Memories are real, so whatever wasn't in.
That context, it makes so much sense.
How could you can gain insight from it but then using it in court proceedings for example, or you know, as a way of you know, accusing someone of a crime.
That makes a whole lot less sense. And that's sort of the point.
Right, yes, exactly, And like, you know, what I did get were these like lovely sense memories but pretty nonspecific, like being hell, you know, maybe like you know, I kind of remembered the setting, but I wouldn't be able to say, like, on July fifth, my dad he'll be you know, like this holds up and yeah, and you know, like my hypnotist was also pretty careful to check whether
I was going looking for trauma, because she was. I don't think she would have worked with me if that had been the case, but it was like no, no, no trauma. Aside from the dad dying part.
CAT appreciate the caveat as well that that your therapist proposed and was very clear with that at the beginning, So it sounds like what we're saying here is Zoe, is that even though we cannot one hundred percent verify whether a memory is quote unquote real or created, it still lends some some sort of helpful outcome, right, some sort of breakthrough. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, that's an hundred percent fair to say.
Hypnosis is so striking to me because of it the intensity of one on one focused attention, which I feel like is one of the major keys to a hypnosis session or being taken under hypnosis. There is a human being with you, generally, and they are talking to you, They are making eye contact with you, they are talking and very you know, the patterns that you've described in the show. I feel like that is such the key
to it. When we're we walk around most of the time with our phones in our faces, you know, unable to pay real, true attention to many of the things happening around us. And I wonder how often those hypnosis techniques can be weaponized against us and we would be wholly unaware, think very easily.
I mean, if you've ever watched TV like that, has al underd person appened to you. But I mean the thing is you don't have to make eye contact with someone to hypnotize them. You don't have to be in the same room with them. Caz, my hypnotist, was in London and I you know, we met through zoom. There are also crazy stories about people just listening to hypnotic tapes and having pretty behavior mind altering stories like I'm not sure if you like dug into the God what
were they called the Bunny the Bunny sex tapes? Like they oh there, oh yeah, you guys know about this, Like right, so these people were sort of inducted into this one man's sexual orbit. He had them listen to these hypnotic tapes and they were, you know, willing to do it. They were kind of into kinky stuff, but they did not anticipate it basically completely transforming them and being hypnotically forced into doing all the stuff. So yeah,
they were just listening to audio. So yes, it is easy to abuse.
And you, you and your co host have a thankfully not that similar and experience as the Buddy tapes, but you have you have an experience where you receive you all receive hypnotic tapes. I think in the lead up to a birth, a pregnancy, and listening through to those tapes about I guess addressing concerns right which anybody would have carrying a child. Could you talk a little bit
about that experience, because it just hit me. Yeah, that's another ten ten textbook example of listening to hypnotic cues over and over again.
Yeah.
I mean, neither of us smoke. If we did, we would definitely have tried it for smoking cessation. But Alice was pregnant when we started making the podcast, and so she bravely volunteered herself to try hypnobirthing to deal not only with you know, pain during childbirth, but with with anxiety leading up to it because you know, like a lot of people, she was understandably freaked out about the
kind of violent experience that is childbirth. So what's crazy about her time exploring this is that she did it with Nancy Salsman. Nancy Salzman is the co founder of the most notorious sex cult of this century NEXIM, and what very few people know about Nancy is that she was a hypnotist and an NLP practitioner before she founded
that organization. So we dig into her backstory on the podcast and how hypnotic and NLP techniques found their way into NEXM and were used against members, perhaps even against Nancy herself. But Nancy made a hypno berthing tape for Alice. It was I think maybe five or ten minutes long, and Alice listened to it repeatedly over the course of
her pregnancy. She did find it helpful. She didn't end up using it during the birth itself because she ended up going in for a scheduled see section for medical reasons, so there was no pain to control hypnotically or otherwise.
I see, Well, let's pause right here here from our sponsors, and then we'll be right back to create some more therapeutic change.
We've returned, we're out of our trans state and backa zooey. What are the questions that we have to ask when we're on a journey on a show like this is what surprised you and your co host the most in your discovery so far.
I think discovering that NLP isn't total hogwash was pretty surprising for both of us. I mean we went into it pretty skeptically. I mean, see for sentence on Wikipedia this is a pseudoscience, and you know, we're just kind of like what, you know, what is this thing. It seems to attract really nefarious people, you know, people who want to pull one over on unsuspecting victims, like what
could possibly be redemptive here? And as we began experimenting with it, we actually found some of the techniques really productive in our own lives, and just I think there are aspects of NLP that both of us will continue using.
And as I did with the reporting, you know, I was the one to interview a lot of people who were involved in the early days of NLP, and so many of them have hearts of gold and are just lovely people and who really believe this is, you know, the most powerful and potent technology, as many of them referred to it, for improving the human condition, for helping people become all that they can be, and overcoming these hurdles that are very difficult to address in other ways.
And they just want to spread the good word, you know. And I was kind of touched by their earnestness, which sort of counterbalance some of the shadier applications of NLP.
So take away don't throw the baby out with the bath. One.
I don't throw the maybe out with the bath will hutter, but definitely do your homework on the baby, make sure that baby is right for you.
Because and maybe don't automatically drink the bath water because someone tells you it's good.
Yeah, yeah, I regret.
Throw out the bath water. Yeah we're gonna let it die or go down a drain, and I guess yeah there. I would just advise anyone who's curious to try NLP to maybe read some books before you sign up for a really expensive seminar. You might not need a guru to benefit from NLP. We certainly learn techniques on our own and have gotten, as I said, a lot out
of them. So maybe maybe you know, do your homework and know that not all NLP practitioners are created equally, because like we were talking about earlier, Noel asked the question about oversight. I mean, there's just no quality control. Anyone can say they're an NLP practitioner if they coughed up the cash or aster an LP practitioner, which meets you coughed up even more gosh, and you know, spend somewhat more time doing it.
But like you know, or you just see confidently just say yeah, I'm an LP qualified person with my just out at my posture nice.
Exactly after you though, there's something you mentioned right towards the end of the show where you're talking about oh gosh and the Tony Robbins of it all and the self help versions of this, where you're where NLP is being used for sales, and you know you're taking these
classes by gurus. Where in that time, I believe it's in the late seventies early nineteen eighties, you describe it as a time of inflation in the United States, stagnant wages, job losses, cuts to social welfare, extreme competition in the workforce, a new social Darwinism that's arising in that time. And I do wonder if we're not inside currently of another one of those times, or entering into one of those,
you know, as things occur around us in society. I do wonder if we should be on the lookout for new versions of something like this that would come our way that we might try and defend ourselves against, Like don't fall prey to someone who's trying to sell us this kind of guruism.
I think you're spot on. I think the entire self help movement in the United States was born out of these conditions you just described. The fact that, you know, people were competing with one another as their jobs got sent overseas. I mean suddenly you had to have an edge to survive in the workplace, to get ahead, and
that really transformed workplace culture. And I think, yeah, as we see what happens with AI, I mean, I think it would be naive to think that's not going to radically change the labor market, what work looks like in the United States, and a lot of people are forecasting widespread unemployment, and should that happen, there are definitely going to be people who say they have the answer, who say they can help you, you know, outshine your competitors,
or you know, you can train yourself not to sleep so you can just do more. I mean, yeah, it could take a lot of different forms, but I think you're righty, the.
End times are a real opportunity period, you.
Know, for sure, Just booming, take five seconds to just talk about the AI connection, because Matt mentioned it at the top, about how the term is being more broadly applied to some of that language learning model type stuff, and I don't think we touched on it again, I'm just I'm curious personally.
Yeah, I mean, that's just kind of a coincidence that they happen to these two very different things happen to have the exact same acronym. I mean, it's certainly one of the reasons why NLP neuro linguistic programming has become difficult to research, because you start NLB and you get a whole lot of AI stuff, which is over my
head for the most part. But yeah, I mean, there are there are a certainly people working in the tech space who use NLP, and you know, startup culture surely incorporates aspects of that kind of NLP we were reporting on. But there's always been this kind of uneasy connection between NLP and Silicon Valley. Like Richard Bandler and John Grinder were early distributors of Apple computers that didn't mean a
whole hell of a lot in the nineteen seventies. You basically just had to buy more than one or maybe it was four something. These are the garage days, right, Yeah, yeah, these are garage days, and they but you know, nonetheless, they they were attracted to this new technology, they bought it, and I think it's so interesting that you know, they were they were drawn to Apple because NLP is not so different in the sense that the central promise of
NLP is that your brain is a computer. You've just never got the user manual, and they promised to take this really complicated, chaotic thing called the mind or the self and make it legible, make it easy to hack. And Apple computers correct me if I'm wrong. They're not inherently so much better than IBM computers or any other kind of computers, but they are way easier to use if you are not a tech savvy person. So they kind of nail the intuitive design features that make them so popular.
Well.
NLP appeals to a similar ethos, like, let's just simplify its streamline and let's give you the consumer the rings brilliant.
Oh so well done. That connection. That absolutely nails it. We've got just a couple more follow up questions. There's so much more we want to get to, folks. Please do check out mind Games available now wherever you find your favorite shows. Early on in the show, you all have a quotation that really stood out to me and I kept revisiting it. It is quote, all communication is a form of manipulation. And I'm sure a lot of people have already asked you to unpack what we mean
by that brilliant statement. But before we do that, here's what this means me think of And this is one of our last questions, Zoe, have you used n LP techniques on us during this interview?
I wish I could say I deployed some masterful hypnotic strategy, but no, you guys are are fun to talk to, so it wasn't necessary. I reserve the right to hypnotize you if you.
Mis behave, and I'm open to it.
You know, did you notice the collection of blues and reds and our screens? All of us.
Believe the same like purple growth liminal.
We got a great deal on blue lights, is what it was.
They're all really into plants like and ask monsterra just off screen.
I brought drums, but I didn't have a knife, so I brought a hatchet. The drummer with the knives the episode.
This is the only way we get window.
What do we hope our audience takes way from mind games? Like after people listen through the show, what are some of the big learning opportunities there?
For me?
I think some of the main takeaways from the show are to be a little suspicious of the sort of guruism that has pervaded so many aspects of our society. You know, we look at Richard Bandler and his influence, but you can see this in all sorts of places, the promise of the quick fix, and the promise of techniques that purport to give you more agency and control over your own life, when in fact you may end up just spending more money surrendering your agency to someone
else's ideas. I mean, there's this great George Garland that where he's riffing on self help. This is from the eighties or nineties, so he was really watching this industry boom around him, and he says something like, if you read a self help book, it's not self help, it's
help you ask someone else for help. Like and anyway, I love that bit, and I do think it just kind of neatly encapsulates the dependency that's baked into a lot of these purported self help technologies, Like you know, it's it's a way of making people feel better sometimes about giving over the reins. I think it can also be productive to think about that dynamic in terms of like do we even want control over our own lives? I mean, we sort of tend to claim, like, yes,
give me more agency. I just want more agency. Agency is such a buzzword. But do most people really want agency or I mean, or is it just this sort of thing where we think we want it and then we kind of realize it's actually easier to just get through life if someone else is kind of telling us what to do, you know, what to eat, how to work out, how to you know whatever, make ourselves better
and like better for what cause? So these are sort of the questions we tried to trojan Horse into the podcast.
For Sometimes the agey comes from choosing who to listen to.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, And it's a product. I mean, it's just these people are selling something exactly. I mean, also, maybe you know, be on guard for mena cafes who creepily stroke the ladies.
We often talk on this show about there being the smallest truth at the center of the craziest conspiracy theories. You might hear and that that truth, when you hear it spoken or you see it written somewhere, it might
resonate with you. And then there's all this other, all these other details they get glommed on to that one truth that then becomes this big conspiracy, whether it's you know, everything from reptilian overlords, you know, controlling the world, to flat Earth to all these crazy theories that we've talked about on this show. At the heart of it, there's something about this feeling of not being in control that is so human to you know, to it on and
on and on. But there is one thing that Richard Bamler says when you're when I think, is it you or Alice.
That talks to him?
A goes really well.
And when Alice is talking, we'll talk about that. But when Alice is talking to him, he says, if you change the way you think, it changes how you feel and therefore changes what you're capable of doing and not doing. And that kind of tiny little nugget, you know, at the heart of some of the NLP practices really does resonate with me and and it probably resonates with a lot of people.
The power of positive thinking, right, I mean, to a degree.
But that kind of thing allows you to build all this other junk around it that then, you know, becomes the vocabulary and becomes the techniques and the reason why you need this new book that has all the updated stuff in it to me at least.
But the nugget is something that any of us could have probably figured out on our own.
Is that what you're saying, Matt's.
Part of it?
Yeah, kind of.
And this goes to you know, this goes back to Zoe, your powerful point about agency and what people want to think they want versus what sort of satiates them in their experience and their existence. This is a lot to ponder and we can't thank you enough, along with your co host Alice, for making this phenomenal show. We're not blowing rainbows, guys. This is worth checking out, Zoe. For anybody who wants to learn more of your work outside of mind Games, where can they find you?
That's so nice of you to ask? They can check out Zoe Lascaus dot com. It's just my first name, hard to spell, last name dot com. That's where I tend to plunk all my journalism. I write about art and science in various ways. I just filed a story for The Science Times about these endangered snails off the coast of Mexico, for instance, and this indigenous community that extracts purple dye from them. So you know, my interests range.
It might be meteorites one day, snails the next. It was certainly NLP for a while, and that I think will continue to preoccupy me. So yeah, I keep an eye out for bonus episodes, and yeah, check out mind Games wherever you get your podcasts.
Nice. Also check out Paleo Art Visions of the Prehistoric Past. I believe a new edition just published last year.
That's right, Yeah, thanks for the plug. Yeah, So this was my first book. It's about how humans have imagined the prehistoric world. So basically, if you were a scientist or a scientific artist in the nineteenth century and very little was known about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, you might get handed a tooth and a femur and someone would say, what did this animal look like? And of
course the results were wildly speculative, imaginative. They drew a lot from the tradition of drawing dragons and other monsters, and so this is a book about how that tradition evolved over time, from around the eighteen thirties to around the nineteen nineties. I was published by Tasha and yeah, there's a nice new edition.
We love toash.
Nomenal, We love Tasha, and thank you again. Zoe. Again, mind Games is out wherever you find your favorite shows, and there you have it, folks, what a wild ride. Again, we are not being hyperbolic. This show Mind Games really blew our collective minds so much so that before we did this intro, guys, I had to walk out and get some mayor. I had to take off my jacket. Now I'm just in a short sleeve shirt because it got so hot.
E see was the opposite for me.
It chilled me to my very core, and I had to put on a sweater, which I then subsequently removed because I didn't want to break the illusion that I was here from earlier.
You went and done and Ben, so I fully support your.
Move there, and I kept my clothes exactly the same.
Matt actually has a continuity person there just to make sure all the full they take my rods, you know, metahuh.
She's a very good to us, Yes, yeah, very loyal and.
A point dog American and on the point of continuity, you know, I feel like this was such an amazing compliment to our earlier episodes on things like inn LP on Nexium. It's related to so many things that we have talked about in the past, including weird experiments by Uncle Sam. So we would love to hear your thoughts. Folks, have you experimented with hypnotism? Have you ever hypnotized someone or felt that someone has hypnotized you? What's your take
on in LP? We would love to hear your thoughts and we can't wait for you to join us. You can find us on the lines. You can call us on a phone. You can always send us an email.
Are you hypnotized right now?
You can reach out to us at the handle conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show on your social media platform of choice.
And there's another way to contact us if I'm not mistaken.
Yes, you can call us. It's an opportunity to use your voice on us. Call one eight three three std WYTK. Why don't you go ahead and call that number? See if you can hypnotize us all of us. Woo wouldn't that be fun?
Please do it? Please, I'm here for it. I will come out and say that I am fully open to this.
Me too, Ben you in no comment?
Okay?
You can also send us an email.
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet out of raid sometimes the void writes back quick pro quo plarice. Give us a random fact and you will receive one in return. We can't wait to hang out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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