40 Years Under His Spell: Waking Up from NXIVM

WTF is on my Mind?!

Mark Vicente

True Crime, Film, Society & Culture, Documentary, Nxivm, Cult, Philosophy, Narcissistic Abuse, Tv & Film, Psychology, Television, Narcissism, Coercion, Coercive Control

4.8 • 706 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode Summary: In this deeply intimate conversation, Mark sits down with his old friend Karen Unterreiner — a woman who spent four decades at the epicenter of what the world came to know as NXIVM. Once a high-ranking member, deeply entangled both professionally and personally with Keith Raniere, Karen shares her long journey of waking up from psychological captivity. What does it mean to have your entire adult identity shaped by someone else’s manipulative design? How do you start to rebuil...

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Mark Vesente. I'm a director, producer, writer, and troublemaker. I'm most known as the director of the film What the Bleep Do We Know, and as one of the next-team whistleblowers featured in the HBO series, Aval. Let's just say, I know a thing or two about cults. I don't consider myself a cult expert, but I'm definitely an expert in being screwed over, waking up, and
0:21.7	knowing how to spot them.
0:23.4	And let me tell you, they're everywhere.
0:26.2	My mission is to help people see patterns of abuse across multiple contexts.
0:30.5	From personal to family, to group, to societal.
0:33.7	It's all the same pattern at every scale.
0:36.5	As you'll hear, I have a pretty salty approach to most
0:39.1	things. So there might be some blasphemy. One or two sacred cows might get knocked over, and there'll
0:44.4	likely be some foul language. You never quite know what you're going to get, because it really does
0:49.5	depend on what the fuck is on my mind. Welcome back, guys and gals.
0:55.4	I have a super special guest today,
0:57.6	somebody that I've known for a very long time,
1:01.6	maybe 2004.
1:03.3	She'll tell me in a second if that's correct.
1:06.5	We were in, what you guys know is Nixium.
1:09.3	We called it ESP,
1:10.6	but you guys know it as Nixium. We called it ESP, but you guys know it as Nixium.
1:12.1	We called it executive success programs.
1:15.0	And she was a high-ranking member like me.
1:19.0	She was on the executive board, and she is one of the people that was in what you guys called Nixium the longest.
1:26.0	So a huge thank you to my friend, Karen
1:29.1	Untariner, for being here today. Yay!
	...

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