Mara teaches at Queens College, the very place where I was recruited into the Moonies cult in 1974. She came to the study of influence through advertising and media. I came to it through my experience in a destructive cult and my work helping others understand and recover from authoritarian control.

We had a great deal to talk about.

On Cults, Culture, and Coercion, we discussed her book, Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. It examines how commercial interests draw on our desire for belonging, our insecurities, and our trust in other people to shape what we buy and believe. Mara spent a decade working in advertising and television before questioning what she was helping accomplish. As she told me, getting people to watch more television could not be all she was supposed to do with her life. She returned to school, studied with Neil Postman, and earned a doctorate in media ecology, which examines how communication technologies change society. She has written numerous books and teaches at my alma mater.

Her background helps her explain what many of us encounter every day without fully understanding: the planning behind the pitch. A social media post may look spontaneous. A recommendation may feel like advice from a friend. A community may appear to have formed entirely around shared interests. Mara asks us to look more closely at the commercial arrangements and incentives behind those experiences. One of her most useful ideas is the “anxiety economy.”

We often hear that platforms compete for our attention. Mara argues that this description leaves out a crucial part of the business model. Anxiety can keep us engaged. We scroll because we are worried, encounter more upsetting material, and keep scrolling in search of relief. Along the way, advertisers have more opportunities to reach us. The proposed relief may be another video, a purchase, a course, or a membership. The underlying message is familiar: something is wrong with your life, and someone has what you need to fix it. This is an enlightening discussion.

What happens when you tell people what you actually believe? Kate Cohen discovered that the answer can be much less frightening, and much more interesting, than you expect. For years, she participated in religious life without believing in God. Then she became a mother. Faced with children who trusted her to explain the world, she found she could no longer present something as true when she did not believe it herself.

“I could not tell them something I didn’t believe was true,” she told me. “I just couldn’t do it.”

That commitment to honesty runs through our conversation on Cults, Culture, and Coercion. Kate is a former Washington Post contributing columnist and the author of We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too). She now writes Scratch on Substack. We talked about raising children, questioning religious authority, defending democracy, and the ordinary acts of creativity that help us remain active participants in our own lives.

We did not agree about every label or every approach to religion. That made the conversation interesting and valuable. Freedom of mind includes the ability to explore different points of view while holding the other person with respect. Too many people today think is simplistic binaries and so if another thinks differently, they might get labeled as “less than” and in the worst case, an enemy.

When someone promises you financial freedom, it is worth asking how much freedom you have to question what they are selling. Can you challenge their claims? Can you consult independent experts? Can you change your mind without being mocked, shamed, or told you are missing the opportunity of a lifetime? When celebrities like Tom Brady and Taylor Swift promote crypto- do people understand they are not experts on business and economics? Many people know Ben McKensie from The O.C., Southland, and Gotham. I wanted to speak with him about his investigation into cryptocurrency—and the patterns of influence that make its promises so compelling.

Ben wrote Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud with journalist Jacob Silverman. His new, independent documentary, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, brings that investigation to the screen. I watched the film and loved it. It is funny, disturbing, and accessible, even if you have never understood what cryptocurrency actually does.

Our conversation explored how financial promises can become bound up with identity—and how difficult it becomes to reconsider a belief when your money, community, and self-esteem are invested in it. Crypto is part of the Tech bros plan to usurp democracy by promoting dark money that corrupt elections! Ben testified before Congress. Fortunately, the “Clarity Act” crypto bill was not passed in the Senate due to not including ethics requirements. This was a big blow to the crypto lobby which spent more than Big Oil in the 2024 election.