A History of Brainwashing and its Use Today

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News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

In her new book, “The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyperpersuasion,” Harvard historian of science Rebecca Lemov examines the many ways our minds can be controlled against our wills. Lemov chronicles the use of brainwashing techniques on a range of people from U.S. soldiers who were imprisoned in Korea in the 1950s – some of whom refused to come home after the conflict ended – to members of back-to-land cults that proliferated in the Bay Area in the 1960s. She joins us to talk about how brainwashing is used, the troubling implications, and how anyone can fall victim to mind control, even you. Guests: Rebecca Lemov, professor of the history of science, Harvard University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:08.7	From KQED.
1:23.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:33.3	What is the line between persuasion and coercion? How do you know where the boundary is between your thoughts and those who are trying to influence you? Historian of science, Rebecca Lamov, provides a fascinating entree into these questions in her new book,
1:39.3	The Instability of Truth, Brainwashing, Mind Control, and hyper-persuasion, which begins in the
1:46.0	POW camps of North Korea, but spends much time dwelling here in our region's emergent cults
1:52.0	and emerging technologies. That's all coming up next, right after this news. News. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Years ago, I was going through some of the archives of the Atlantic magazine.
2:19.4	When I happened upon a 195 article titled Brainwashing, Time for a Policy.
2:26.7	Beyond the quite funny headline, I read, quote,
2:29.5	The Korean War confronted us with a new secret weapon, brainwashing, the conquest not of a man's body,
2:36.8	but of his mind and spirit. And indeed, it was in the context of the Cold War that this concept
2:43.3	of brainwashing bursts into American society. In a big, ambitious book out today, historian of
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