
The Instability of Truth
Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion
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Narrated by:
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Patty Nieman
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By:
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Rebecca Lemov
About this listen
An acclaimed historian of science uncovers the hidden history of brainwashing—and its troubling implications for today.
Because brainwashing affects both the world and our observation of the world, we often don’t recognize it while it’s happening—unless we know where to look. As Rebecca Lemov writes in The Instability of Truth, “Brainwashing erases itself.” What we call brainwashing is more common than we think; it is not so much what happens to other people as what can happen to anyone.
The Instability of Truth exposes the myriad ways our minds can be controlled against our will, from the brainwashing techniques used against American POWs in North Korea to the “soft” brainwashing of social media doomscrolling and behavior-shaping. In our increasingly data-driven world, anyone can fall victim to mind control. Lemov identifies invasive forms of emotional engineering that exploit trauma and addiction to coerce and persuade in everyday life. Tracing the word “brainwashing” from deep in the files of an operative of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in the 1950s to the pioneering research of Robert Jay Lifton, to the public trials of cult leaders and the case of Patty Hearst, Lemov also studies how the idea of mind control has spread across the globe and penetrated courtrooms, secret labs, military schools, and today’s digital sites.
The Instability of Truth offers lessons from mind-control episodes past and present. Truth is always subject to question in more mundane walks of life than most people believe, and Lemov equips us for the increasing challenges we face from social media, AI, and an unprecedented, global form of surveillance capitalism. The Instability of Truth develops a rigorous new understanding of both brainwashing’s paradoxes and its emotional roots, by giving voice to brainwashers, the brainwashed, and third-party observers alike.
©2025 Rebecca Lemov (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
A superbly crafted analysis of a universally deplored but seemingly irresistible technique.—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Provocative and illuminating…. Lemov’s deeply researched exploration reveals how the persuasive power wielded by charismatic figures can answer, in a warped way, a person’s yearning for self-reinvention and meaning.—Publishers Weekly, starred review
A chilling and spellbinding history of mind control, from prison camps to online algorithms.—Jill Lepore, author of If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
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Audio quality
- By Chas30166 on 03-29-25
By: Phil Tinline
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Psycholinguistics
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Fernanda Ferreira
- Narrated by: Lisa S. Ware
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This Very Short Introduction to psycholinguistics is an accessible and engaging description of how people use language. Talking and understanding language probably seem like simple and straightforward skills, but research in psycholinguistics has shown that complex computations take place behind the scenes when you communicate with others. Recent debates concerning how AI tools such as ChatGPT work highlight some of these core questions about the language faculty and how it is that humans comprehend, produce, and learn language.
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Human Nature
- Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
- By: Kate Marvel
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Human Nature is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief—but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted.
By: Kate Marvel
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More than Words
- How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World
- By: Maryellen MacDonald PhD
- Narrated by: Maryellen MacDonald PhD
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The groundbreaking science of how and why we talk, and how this ability impacts every area of our lives.
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Very interesting but the author should not have narrated too
- By johnm on 06-14-25
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Cults Like Us
- Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
- By: Jane Borden
- Narrated by: Jane Borden
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, journalist Jane Borden argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away; it went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our allegiance to influencers and self-help, susceptibility to advertising, and undying devotion to the self-made man, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult-like thinking.
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Depth
- By Robert on 06-28-25
By: Jane Borden
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The Other Ancient Civilisations
- Decoding Archaeology's Less Celebrated Cultures
- By: Raven Todd DaSilva
- Narrated by: Raven Todd DaSilva
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Go beyond the popular stories of Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Inca, and the Maya, and uncover the rich diversity of people that are often overlooked. From the world's first peace treaty to daring expeditions across the Pacific, learn about twenty ancient and historic cultures from around the world that have had monumental impacts on our modern world.
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Excellent survey of largely unknown peoples
- By No ya on 05-30-25
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Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age
- A Forgotten History of the Occult
- By: Raphael Cormack
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind readers, and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential. Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, Raphael Cormack follows two of the most unusual and charismatic figures of this age.
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Interesting…
- By Alexis Perlloni-Raguan on 05-16-25
By: Raphael Cormack
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Ping
- The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication
- By: Andrew Brodsky
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning professor, management consultant, and virtual communications expert Andrew Brodsky is here to tell you that, yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice note (really!). And your camera—it’s okay to turn it off; sometimes it’s even better. If you’re crushed under the weight of your inbox or exhausted from back-to-back-to-back video calls, then Ping is here to help workers at all levels and of all stripes—remote, hybrid, and in person—who use communication technologies as part of their jobs.
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Relevant
- By DerekD on 04-11-25
By: Andrew Brodsky
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What We Value
- By: Emily Falk
- Narrated by: Emily Falk
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Amid the many competing priorities of our busy lives, it can feel difficult to make the right decisions―ones that feel aligned with the things we care about. Change can feel almost impossible. In this book, award-winning researcher Emily Falk reveals how we can transform our relationship with the daily choices that define our lives by thinking like a neuroscientist about what we value.
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Insightful and interesting
- By EJ on 06-29-25
By: Emily Falk
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The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
- A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East
- By: John M. Allegro
- Narrated by: Martyn Swain
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Where did God come from? What do the bible stories really tell us? Who or what was Jesus Christ? This audiobook challenges everything we think we know about the nature of religion.
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Hated it,
- By Troy Sunde on 12-22-22
By: John M. Allegro
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The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue
- A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street
- By: Mike Tidwell
- Narrated by: Brandon Pollock
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2023, author and activist Mike Tidwell decided to keep a record for a full year of the growing impacts of climate change on his one urban block right on the border with Washington, DC. Tidwell's story depicts the neighborhood's battle to save the trees and combat climate change: The midwife who builds a geothermal energy system, the Congressman who battles cancer and climate change, and the Chinese-American climate scientist who wants to bury billions of the world's dying trees to store their carbon and help stabilize the atmosphere.
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Juxtaposed challenges to his intimate neighborhood with global trends.
- By Leslie Ann Taylor on 05-24-25
By: Mike Tidwell
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The Captive Mind
- By: Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Zielonko - translator, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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The best-known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right. Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.
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Every U.S. citizen should read this.
- By Tim Christenson on 09-27-20
By: Czeslaw Milosz, and others
Great research. But too hard to listen to.
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