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, Aval. 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, to WTF is on my mind.

There's a lot of my mind today.

But first, for those of you that live under a rock,

there is a new podcast out starring Alison Mack from CBC.

And I have been doing a Patreon-only response. I started with the first episode.

I'll probably do one per week at least about my thoughts about the podcast and

what Alison's saying. I lived with Allison for many years. I've known her for a long time.

I have a lot of thoughts.

But I'm going to go one by one. So if you want to listen to what I have to say, it is at patreon.com forward slash Mark Vesente. Go check it out. It is somewhat unfiltered. I have to be careful for legal reasons, but it's pretty unfiltered. And if I'm

filtering, I'm sometimes inferring, and, you know, because there's lawyers listening and watching

and taking notes, as always. But today, I am honored to welcome Jared Mello, better known as the

wizard of radical self-respect. Jared has walked through addiction, mental health Jared Mello. Better known as the Wizard of Radical Self-Restpect.

Jared has walked through addiction, mental health collapse, codependency, and repeated entanglements

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