Cult Following
The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations—and Take Over Our Lives
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Narrated by:
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Kimberly M. Wetherell
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By:
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J. W. Ocker
About this listen
From the author of Cursed Objects and The United States of Cryptids comes an eye-popping compendium of the most infamous, audacious, and dangerous cults in history.
Have you ever wondered how smart, normal people end up enmeshed in extreme cults? Weird history expert J. W. Ocker strives to answer that question in Cult Following. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about history’s most notorious cults–and the psychology of the people who join them–is packed into this accessible, engaging volume. Walk in the footsteps of the followers who were lured into these sinister groups, including:
- Branch Davidians: Led by David Koresh, this cult was waiting out the apocalypse in 1993 when the FBI infamously raided their compound in Waco, Texas.
- Narcosatanists: This cult of drug traffickers in 1980s Mexico was led by Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, who believed he had magic powers and committed human sacrifice.
- Brotherhood of the Seven Rays: The earliest known UFO cult, the infiltration and study of the Brotherhood by psychologists inspired the term “cognitive dissonance.”
- Ho No Hana Sanpogyo: The founder, Hogen Fukunaga, claimed to be able to tell someone’s fortune by examining their feet.
- Breatherianism: Breatherians believe that humans can live on air alone. Their founder, Wiley Brooks, claimed to have gone without food for nineteen years.
- NXIVM: This twenty-first century cult attracted several members of Hollywood and engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, and racketeering under the guise of personal development seminars.
In Cult Following, Ocker sheds light on the terrifying attraction of cults, demonstrating the elasticity of belief, the desperateness of belonging, and the tragedy of trust.
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Story
Through a series of cult commandments, Jody reveals how you can change how people feel about you and your brand, and why some brands effortlessly attract a devoted following while others struggle on the sidelines.
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The future of marketing
- By Kindle Customer on 09-17-24
By: Jody Raynsford
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Cults
- Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them
- By: Max Cutler
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli, Raquel Beattie, Erin Ruth Walker, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it’s this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it’s that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick.
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Disappointed
- By KJ on 04-12-23
By: Max Cutler
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Clown World
- Four Years inside Andrew Tate's Manosphere
- By: Jamie Tahsin, Matt Shea
- Narrated by: Jamie Tahsin, Matt Shea
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2022, Andrew Tate went from a little-known kickboxer and failed reality TV star to a lifestyle icon for legions of men and boys, and a figure that would define a new era of misogyny. Tate started the year as a fringe internet celebrity, but by August he was the most googled man in the world. In that same month, Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin gained access to his Bucharest compound and infamous War Room, making a documentary that would result in the first women coming forward to accuse him publicly of sexual and physical violence.
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Compelling true crime tale
- By Kindle Customer on 11-07-24
By: Jamie Tahsin, and others
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Sophie
- The Final Verdict
- By: Senan Molony
- Narrated by: Jonathan White
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Sophie: The Final Verdict tells a remarkable story that could not until now be revealed. Senan Molony was the first national crime correspondent at the scene. From his growing unease at his helper Ian Bailey's conduct, to the astonishing moment when Bailey was arrested for a murder the suspect himself had been covering, it is an insider's account of those infamous early days of a doomed investigation, and the astonishing years to follow - as Bailey, a violent misogynist and pathological liar, escaped trial in his adopted country despite compelling evidence.
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Great Delivery
- By Marcia on 11-20-24
By: Senan Molony
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The Question of Unworthy Life
- Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century
- By: Dagmar Herzog
- Narrated by: Kaliswa Brewster
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diagnosed with psychiatric illness or cognitive deficiencies. Not until the 1980s would these murders, as well as the coercive sterilizations of some four hundred thousand others classified as “feeble-minded,” be officially acknowledged as crimes at all. The Question of Unworthy Life charts this history from its origins in prewar debates about the value of disabled lives to our continuing efforts to unlearn eugenic thinking today.
By: Dagmar Herzog
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All That Is Wicked
- A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer—some have called him a “Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter”—whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity.
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PLEASE STOP The Politicizing of Everything
- By Anonymous on 10-15-22
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Saving Abigail
- The True Story of the Abduction and Rescue of a Three-Year-Old Hostage
- By: Liz Hirsh Naftali
- Narrated by: Liz Hirsh Naftali
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Saving Abigail is a true story about a little girl taken hostage by Hamas the morning of October 7, 2023, after thousands of terrorists breached Israel by land, sea, and air. That day, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and 246 innocent people were dragged across the border into Gaza against their will. Among them was three-year-old Abigail Mor Edan.
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A Devil in the Valley
- By: Paul Holes, Peter McDonnell
- Narrated by: Jim Clemente, Paul Holes
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Original Recording
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In 1994, an aspiring young cold-case investigator in California’s East Bay, Paul Holes, puts aside trying to solve the Golden State Killer case as he waits for science to catch up. Paul returns to an old file cabinet at the back of the forensic lab to look for another cold case he can work—something with DNA. He finds one. The 1978 murder of a married mother who went for a morning jog in a nearby park. The original investigators believed that a serial killer named Phillip Hughes was responsible; they just couldn’t prove it.
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Excellent!!!
- By Nick on 08-05-21
By: Paul Holes, and others
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Lethal Luxury
- The Menendez Brothers' Path to Patricide
- By: Nicolas Church
- Narrated by: Chris Reynolds
- Length: 2 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Delve into the chilling saga of Erik and Lyle Menendez, whose quest for wealth and privilege led to a shocking act of violence. This gripping true crime novel unravels the twisted motives behind the murder of the Menendez brothers' wealthy parents and exposes the dark side of affluence. Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, "Lethal Luxury" explores how the pursuit of luxury and entitlement spiraled into a deadly family betrayal, leaving a trail of devastation and a scandal that captivated the nation.
By: Nicolas Church
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No Haven
- The Connecticut Mob and the Rise of America's Model City
- By: Paul Bleakley
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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One of America's most historic and enduring cities, New Haven has wrangled with a perpetual identity struggle, torn between worlds that occasionally converged in chaos and violence. In the 1930s, Connecticut became a region where Mafia families like the Genoveses, Gambinos, Colombos, and Patriarcas shared turf—working together with enough profits to go around or descending into open war to rival that experienced in any major city. Central to this conflict were three men who were, at different times, cautious allies or sworn nemeses.
By: Paul Bleakley
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Hit #29
- Based on the Killer's Own Account
- By: Joey the Hit Man, David Fisher - contributor
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1969, a public execution in an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn earned Joey a mention in the New York Daily News and a twenty-grand payout from the mob. On the surface, his next job seemed just as routine: The bosses suspected their trusted numbers controller, Joe Squillante, was skimming the nightly bets to settle personal debts. Joey gave Squillante two weeks to live.
By: Joey the Hit Man, and others
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Here, Where Death Delights
- A Literary Memoir
- By: Mary Jumbelic M.D.
- Narrated by: Mary Jumbelic M.D.
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Jumbelic has been obsessed with death since the loss of her father when she was 13. The sudden departure of her dad, the mother left behind, and her position as an only child led her to grow up quickly. Yet the why and how of her father's death plagued her. She chose to view an autopsy at the age of 15 and discovered a science that explained the process. College, medical school and becoming a forensic pathologist wasn't a given. She struggled before ultimately deciding on a career as a medical examiner.