You're listening to? Serious inquiries only.

Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries only. This is episode 256. I'm Thomas and if I sound weird,

that's because I am recording after the debate. I had to watch the debate of course,

Kamala Harris and Mike Pence bought dead running corpse Mike Pence. I also went on cognitive

dissonance and did a little live stream with them. Go find that at find YouTube's everywhere.

Just Google it. It was really funny. It was really fun. And all that is to say, I didn't realize I

would have to record this bumper and the kids are asleep and I can't go up in the studio. So,

I know I sound a little weird, but that's okay. The main episode was recorded at a different time.

Don't worry. And speaking of, tonight, today, whenever you're listening to this, I have a conversation

with Lindsay Ostriman on cults. What draws people to cults? How do they keep people in cults?

And it does center around the HBO show The Vow, which is about the next same cult. I have a ton of

thoughts. And as always, I've got thoughts and Lindsay's got science. Hopefully, it's a good combination.

So, this is part one. There's actually a part two. I'll tell you more about that after the conversation.

But here we go. Here's part one with Lindsay Ostriman.

I'm joined again by Lindsay Ostriman. How are you doing, Lindsay?

Doing well. Happy to be here. It's hard to believe it's already been two years.

It may have been like my brain for a split second was like, geez, did we go another two years?

I think we found that much news. I never know. And then somehow though, Eli Bosnick's baby is only

three and three months or something. Because we were texting the other day and I was like, well,

surely your baby's got to be in high school by now with how long the pandemic takes. And he's like,

no, three months, three months. So it's both, I'm sure we're all having this mental process,

where it's both no time has passed and infinite time has passed depending on what thing you're

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