I know many of you have joined recently to listen to or watch Insta Guru,

and a number of people in the comments have been saying,

like, who is the smart guy? And what's his story? And why is he talking about all this stuff?

So I thought I better just reintroduce myself.

First, if you're new here, welcome.

My name is Mark Bacente.

I'm a director, producer, writer, and a troublemaker.

I'm most known as the director of the film What the Leap Do We Know,

and also is one of the Nixon whistleblowers featured in the HBO series The Vow.

So 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.

One of my biggest passions is helping people see patterns of abuse across multiple contexts,

from personal relationships to family dynamics, to groups, to religions, to corporations,

to politics, to entire societies.

It's all the same pattern just at a different scale.

I want to arm people with the knowledge to recognize and navigate these kinds of abuses

so they can experience true freedom and be their most authentic selves.

Along the way I touch on psychology,

spirituality, consciousness, morality, cults, of course, science, filmmaking, media, philosophy, you name

it. You never quite know what you're going to get because it really does depend on what

the fuck is on my mind. And just so we're clear, Instaguru is not over. It is very much part of a much larger mission I

...