How to Tell When You've Joined a Cult with Amanda Montell

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon is joined by author Amanda Montell to talk about all things cultish. There isn’t always a standard definition of a cult, but there are things to look for, and we’ve all fallen for cultish practices or groups before. Language is often used as a tool of influence, like thought-terminating cliches, mantra phrases that are used to shut down independent thinking or questioning. Cultish leaders also take advantage of people by relying on our confirmation biases. We may think we couldn’t be fooled into joining a cult, but human nature is full of mystic moments and irrationality; it’s inevitable that we’ve joined a few cults along the way.

Special thanks to our guest, Amanda Montell, for joining us today. You can order a copy of Cultish here.

Hosted by: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Amanda Montell

Executive Producer: Heather Jackson

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. So happy that you're joining me today because we are going to dive
0:10.0	into the fascinating underbelly of cults. My guest today is author Amanda Montel, who
0:17.7	has a book out called Cult-ish, and I can't wait to share this with you. So let's dive
0:22.8	in. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting. Amanda, thank you so much
0:32.2	for being here. Oh, it's my distinct fletcher and honor one could say. I read your book
0:38.7	Cult-ish and okay, the first of all, this book about cult language. And we'll get into
0:43.4	that. But it was a realization to me that Cult-ish is a language much like Swedish is a
0:51.8	language. Yeah, much like English is a language. There is a language that you call cult-ish.
0:58.7	Yes, thank you for noticing the double-on-tall-on-tall word nerd as I am. I was I was proud of that one.
1:06.0	Yeah, so the book is called Cult-ish not only because the groups I discuss in it fall along a
1:12.5	spectrum of cult-ishness. We might not all think of both Heaven's Gate and Soul Cycle as full-blown
1:20.5	cults, but we can at the very least agree that they are Cult-ish. But also, yes, the sort of system
1:26.4	of linguistic techniques that this wide continuum of groups uses can be classified as Cult-ish,
1:32.9	like English or Spanish or Swedish. There are quotes in linguistics attempting to distinguish
1:37.6	like what separates a language from a dialect. Sometimes people will say like a language is just a
1:43.0	dialect with an army in an avie because you know, there's a lot that goes into the classification
1:48.2	of a language involving like politics and borders and how much power certain group of people
1:53.8	have. So anyway, I might be the only person alive calling this dialect of Cult-ish a language,
2:00.6	but there you have it. Well, it's fascinating. And of course, Americans are very interested in cults,
2:07.8	just broadly speaking. And you talk about this in the book too, and they always have been probably.
2:13.0	There have been cults in the United States since its inception. Some of them you can look back on
2:17.6	and you were like, are you kidding me? Like, have you ever researched the sex cults of the 19th century?
	...

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