Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting this podcast and who is making it possible.

And I really want to thank you also for your calls

and for your emails and your messages of affirmation. It is really very gratifying. And I'm so glad

that this has been helpful to you and to your families. And again, thank you so much for the

feedback. It's very powerful.

And I want to do a special shout out for the people who are helping to support this on Patreon at $10 and above per month. To Alexandra, to Anne and Richard, Brianna, Camus, Christina, Corey, Jake, James, John, Lillian, Linda, Maureen, Ms. Nunya, Peter and Cynthia,

Scott, and Sylvia. I could not do this without you and without all of the supporters.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Stephen Kent is a sociology professor and an adjunct professor in the interdisciplinary program of religious studies at the University of Alberta.

He researches and teaches courses on groups variously called sects, cults, and alternative religions.

He has been involved in court cases concerning controversial groups in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland,

and he gave invited testimony before a federal German parliamentary committee investigating sex and psychological groups.

He's been quoted in hundreds of media accounts around the world, including newspapers, magazines, television shows, and radio interviews.

In Canada, the U.S., the UK, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, India,

Uganda, and Vietnam. Recent academic publications have included studies of anti-government

movements, polygamy, Scientology, brainwashing, and religious-based child sexual abuse, a wide variety of

topics.

And that makes for a very interesting discussion with Stephen.

We go a lot of different directions.

And today, we have part one of a two-part conversation.

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