My name is Mark Vissente. 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, The VAL. 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

knowing how to spot them.

And let me tell you, they're everywhere.

My mission is to help people see patterns of abuse across multiple contexts.

From personal to family, to group to societal, it's all the same pattern at every scale.

As you'll hear, I have a pretty salty approach to most things.

So there might be some blasphemy.

One or two sacred cows might get knocked over, and there'll likely be some foul language.

You never quite know what you're going to get, because it really does depend on what the fuck is on my mind.

Welcome back, everybody.

Those of you who've been around for a while, remember that I did a podcast episode with

Sarma Melm Gaelis last year, I think.

Was a year and a half ago?

Was a year and a half ago?

Yeah, a year and a half ago, March, 2024.

Yes, March 224.

Wow.

And for those of you, you know, in the cult space, in the narcissism space, if you have not seen the Netflix show Bad Vegan, where have you been?

But that's part of the problem we're going to talk about as well, because that show is incredibly misleading and does Sarma no favors.

And what Sarma has done in the meantime, we've spent a lot of time the last few months talking.

And what Sarma has done in the meantime is she's written a book and the book is now out.

So we want to talk with Sarma about that and all things cultish.

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