Speaker 1: Hey, it's me and Devin. We're off again this week,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back again next week. We got some
Speaker 1: really good episodes on Horizon. But this week we want
Speaker 1: to share a new show we're really excited about. It's
Speaker 1: called mind Games by journalists Zoe and Alice who are
Speaker 1: best friends diving into this world of neuro linguistic programming,
Speaker 1: which is a controversial form of hypnosis. NLP, as it's
Speaker 1: otherwise known, is relatively unknown, but it's also kind of
Speaker 1: used all over the place. From startups to US Army
Speaker 1: and the NFL are all using this form of hypnosis.
Speaker 1: So in mind Games, they go deep into the crazy
Speaker 1: world of MLP and it's crazy cast at Disciples and
Speaker 1: they try to figure out does this weird form of
Speaker 1: hypnosis like actually work. This is gonna be the first
Speaker 1: episode of the series in your Feet this week. If
Speaker 1: you like what you hear, We're gonna leave a link
Speaker 1: to this show page in our show notes so you
Speaker 1: can click on ourverd Air subscribe and follow along so
Speaker 1: you can get new episodes of my games every week.
Speaker 2: All right, I guess I.
Speaker 3: Completely dissociated for my body. I had so much panic
Speaker 3: and I was so afraid that when I opened my
Speaker 3: mouth and said the five words that I said when
Speaker 3: I was in front of the room, I thought it
Speaker 3: was someone else talking, and I said, I'm never doing
Speaker 3: this again.
Speaker 4: In the late nineteen eighties, Nancy had a phobia of
Speaker 4: public speaking and it was getting in the way of
Speaker 4: her job. She was a nurse who specialized in working
Speaker 4: with chronic pain patients.
Speaker 3: But there's something about being able to help somebody that
Speaker 3: just makes me so It's probably the biggest motivator of
Speaker 3: my entire life.
Speaker 4: Nancy wanted to share her skills more people and to
Speaker 4: grow her business, but there was one big problem. She
Speaker 4: was terrified of public speaking. Get her in front of
Speaker 4: a room of people, and Nancy would totally freeze. Then
Speaker 4: she met someone, a woman who said she could cure
Speaker 4: Nancy's lifelong fear in a few short minutes using something
Speaker 4: called neuro linguistic programming, or NLP.
Speaker 3: She did an NLP phobia fix on me and took
Speaker 3: away my fear of public speaking. And look at me now,
Speaker 3: I'm a big ham and I love public speaking and
Speaker 3: I would do anything to do public speaking. But she
Speaker 3: fixed She fixed that problem using an NLP technique and
Speaker 3: it never was a problem again.
Speaker 4: Quickly, NLP became Nancy's whole life. Soon she was working
Speaker 4: as a consultant for Fortune five hundred companies. As a coach,
Speaker 4: she helped thousands of people conquer their own fears. This
Speaker 4: was way more people than she had ever dreamed of
Speaker 4: helping as a nurse, and it was all thanks to NLP.
Speaker 4: NLP is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Nancy
Speaker 4: used it to found a self help company for ambitious professionals.
Speaker 4: The Dalai Lama even checked out one of their events.
Speaker 4: The company was called Nexium.
Speaker 5: Nexium is a methodology that allows people to optimize their behavior.
Speaker 6: Brainwashing, sex abuse, and even branding.
Speaker 7: Nancy Saltzman, the co founder of the Capital Region based
Speaker 7: sex called Nexium, has been released from prison.
Speaker 4: NLP made a Nancy's career, but then a version of
Speaker 4: it destroyed her and destroyed the lives of others. But
Speaker 4: what even is NLP.
Speaker 8: Take a deep breath, is.
Speaker 9: And breed out.
Speaker 5: Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so
Speaker 5: that I can speak privately on your unconscious mind.
Speaker 4: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is episode one of
Speaker 4: mind Games. I'm Alice Hines, I'm Zoe Lascas.
Speaker 10: You don't know how you did it.
Speaker 11: Tell you you're going to a little Time to stars stake.
Speaker 7: And you're out of it.
Speaker 6: We're reporters, we're also friends.
Speaker 4: We're into some pretty weird shit.
Speaker 6: True story. We met at a shamonic sound meditation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a few years ago, and there were
Speaker 4: some changes that occurred.
Speaker 6: Alice understatement of the century. You astraually traveled as I recall.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, you like basically do like a long
Speaker 4: meditation at this thing, and I realized some shit about
Speaker 4: my life. Number one, Zoe was my new best friend,
Speaker 4: and Number on I actually broke up with someone who
Speaker 4: I've been dating for five years after this event.
Speaker 6: Whoopsie daisies. It was for the best. Yeah, everything worked
Speaker 6: out just fine, especially the friendship. Here we are. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I think it was that weekend, sometime before all the
Speaker 6: gongs and rain sticks and chimes got going, that we
Speaker 6: realized we have a ton in common.
Speaker 4: Yeah we do. We're both reporters and kind of professional skeptics,
Speaker 4: Zoe being a science journalist and me being a journalist
Speaker 4: who has exposed lots of wellness scams and cults, we
Speaker 4: sort of have to smell the bullshit, but at the
Speaker 4: same time keep an open mind.
Speaker 6: And we've also, between the two of us, logged something
Speaker 6: like five million hours on the couches of our respective therapists,
Speaker 6: and I think that's partly why we're interested in alternative therapies, Like,
Speaker 6: what if you didn't have to spend hours and hours
Speaker 6: and hours of your life and hundreds of dollars on
Speaker 6: mainstream psychiatry.
Speaker 4: I hope my therapist isn't listening to this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, sorry, Annie, they probably are. So in this series,
Speaker 6: we're going to go spelunking into the murky depths of
Speaker 6: neurolinguistic programming or NLP, and we're gonna try to find
Speaker 6: out if it deserves its sort of shady reputation.
Speaker 4: So I first heard about NLP because an alleged cult
Speaker 4: that I was investigating said they used it. So this
Speaker 4: wasn't Nexium, it was a different group called Twin Flames.
Speaker 6: And what did they use NLP for?
Speaker 4: Okay, here's a quote from some of the documentation around
Speaker 4: this group that they put out. Your practitioner will expertly
Speaker 4: access your trauma like a world class computer programmer, rooting
Speaker 4: out a bug in the system.
Speaker 6: Not scary at all. No, that sounds totally normal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's how they used NLP. But we were
Speaker 4: curious whether these techniques could be used in other contexts,
Speaker 4: and when we started looking into it, we realized NLP
Speaker 4: is literally.
Speaker 6: Everywhere, and we do mean everywhere. You've probably used an
Speaker 6: NLP technique without knowing it, or someone's used one on you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's the basis of a ton of self help movements,
Speaker 4: any type of manifesting, visualizations, vision boards. If you've done
Speaker 4: any of that, you've done NLP.
Speaker 6: It has a ton of boldface name followers. There are
Speaker 6: Olympic divers who have used NLP to perfect their form.
Speaker 6: The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort used it for
Speaker 6: closing deals. Fortune five hundred. Companies like Apple, IBM, Coca
Speaker 6: Cola have spent tons of money on NLP sales trainings
Speaker 6: over the past fifty.
Speaker 4: Years, and so did Army Intelligence. They sought out NLP
Speaker 4: to improve soldier marksmanship and spycraft. They called it a
Speaker 4: technology for enhancing human performance.
Speaker 6: And NLP spawned the self help behemoth that is Tony Robbins.
Speaker 9: Anybody could be in a good state when things are
Speaker 9: going your way, But if you can stay at a
Speaker 9: beautiful state when things don't flow your way, then you're
Speaker 9: going to have a beautiful wife.
Speaker 6: That's Tony from one of his many ads for Unleash
Speaker 6: the Power within a four day event that regularly draws
Speaker 6: thousands of people. He's coach Serena Williams, advised Bill Clinton,
Speaker 6: and even taught Oprah to walk on hot coals. Tony's
Speaker 6: built an empire telling people they can radically improve themselves
Speaker 6: using NLP.
Speaker 7: Do you want to change your life? You want to
Speaker 7: get out of suffering, trade your expectations for appreciation, and
Speaker 7: your whole life will change in that moment.
Speaker 4: But NLP promises more than personal growth. It also promises
Speaker 4: to teach you how to persuade others.
Speaker 7: If you could control the behavior of anybody around you,
Speaker 7: what kind of life would you have? Somebody would scared
Speaker 7: of when I said word control people's behaviors. It's already happening.
Speaker 6: Fans of NLP say it's like finally getting a user
Speaker 6: manual for your brain. It makes reprogramming the way you
Speaker 6: think quick and easy. You can simply delete bad habits,
Speaker 6: vanish crippling phobias, and install new patterns like.
Speaker 4: Software sounds a little too good to be true.
Speaker 3: NLP is a model of language patterns to create behavior change.
Speaker 7: Every human problem is a behavioral problem.
Speaker 3: All communication is some form of manipulation.
Speaker 7: By changing all behaviors, we could change the entire world.
Speaker 4: If you google NLP, you'll find a lot of credible
Speaker 4: sources saying it's a pseudoscience.
Speaker 6: Yet not everything that doesn't go through peer review journals
Speaker 6: and double blind studies is necessarily useless. Think of alternative therapies.
Speaker 6: People get a lot out of anyway.
Speaker 4: Or hypnosis, right, like.
Speaker 6: Hypnosis which is used by legit doctors to help people
Speaker 6: with very concrete.
Speaker 4: Problems smoking, cessation, pain management phobias.
Speaker 6: But then it also exists in the collective imagination as
Speaker 6: this sort of magical Brainwashy's Fengalia mind control tactic.
Speaker 4: By the way, a lot of NLP is hypnosis. There's
Speaker 4: huge crossover. Hypnosis is actually how Nancy Salzman got into NLP.
Speaker 3: I'll do a session with you whatever you want, okay,
Speaker 3: So how do you feel about giving birth?
Speaker 4: I am excited to give birth, but I'm also definitely
Speaker 4: afraid of the physical ordeal. I'm here in a suburban
Speaker 4: townhouse outside of Albany, New York. With Nancy. We're sitting
Speaker 4: on a comfy couch in her upstairs office, surrounded by
Speaker 4: books about Buddhism and neuroscience. I was expecting the Nancy
Speaker 4: salesman I'd seen on HBO, pant suits, corporate charisma, but
Speaker 4: today she's stressed casually and feels more like a mom
Speaker 4: hosting a soccer team. She's prepared an entire lunch spread
Speaker 4: for us and seems really happy to have company. Her
Speaker 4: hairless cat keeps jumping on my lap.
Speaker 3: What is that physical ordeal of birth in your understanding?
Speaker 4: Let's see. The physical ordeal is, like I guess, I'm
Speaker 4: afraid of like permanent change, that it is irreversible to
Speaker 4: my body. I'm afraid of injury, as you've probably guessed.
Speaker 4: I'm pregnant like do In a couple months. When I
Speaker 4: went to visit Nancy, I'd already been trying hypnosis for relaxation.
Speaker 4: Turns out hypnobirth thing is one of Nancy's specialties. So
Speaker 4: we're giving in a whirl.
Speaker 6: Alice, Please don't get brainwashed by Nancy salesman.
Speaker 4: Okay, I know everyone's probably thinking right now that I'm
Speaker 4: a little nuts, But I came here to learn about
Speaker 4: Nancy's methods and sometimes the only way to understand something
Speaker 4: is to try it.
Speaker 3: How are you with risk in other things? I'm okay
Speaker 3: with some risk? What do you mean, like, I feel
Speaker 3: like I don't think.
Speaker 4: I could be a journalist without taking on some risk.
Speaker 3: That is what I was thinking. So probably, like today,
Speaker 3: for instance, you don't know me and here you are
Speaker 3: coming into my house. I mean, you have a little
Speaker 3: team with you, but who knows what I could have
Speaker 3: done here in my house to create a reversible, permanent
Speaker 3: change that could never be You never know, right, But
Speaker 3: this feels okay to you. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So there are many I wasn't sure how much to
Speaker 4: trust Nancy, And the fact that this whole thing was
Speaker 4: being recorded and my producers were in the room was
Speaker 4: also kind of awkward. This was also the very first
Speaker 4: interview she was giving since she got out of prison.
Speaker 4: Nancy pled guilty to some charges related to her work
Speaker 4: in Nexium, but she's consistently maintained that she was also
Speaker 4: a victim of the group, and she says she was
Speaker 4: unaware of its most infamous crimes like branding and sex trafficking.
Speaker 3: I thought doing this interview would be good because the
Speaker 3: media that happened when my company fell apart was so inaccurate,
Speaker 3: and I've always wanted people to know who I was,
Speaker 3: what I was involved in, why I did the work
Speaker 3: that I did, because it was overshadowed all by the
Speaker 3: media craziness.
Speaker 4: I wasn't here to rehash the Naxium story. I wanted
Speaker 4: to learn more about her work with NLP, and I
Speaker 4: had to give it to Nancy. She was very perceptive.
Speaker 4: Anytime I used a word, she dug into the unconscious
Speaker 4: reasons I had maybe picked it, And.
Speaker 3: I'll be tell me, just listen very carefully to why
Speaker 3: the person says, and I'm trying it on going. Did
Speaker 3: I worry about that? Any of the women I've ever
Speaker 3: I've ever done this with, ever say that I'm worried
Speaker 3: about injury. Nobody's ever said that I'm worried about injury.
Speaker 6: Okay, just want to jump in here for a second.
Speaker 6: It's very odd to me, Alice, that she said no
Speaker 6: woman has ever told her they're worried about injury during childbirth.
Speaker 6: For most women, I know that is a major concern.
Speaker 6: Why do you think Nancy was going out of her
Speaker 6: way to make you feel like a freak.
Speaker 4: Okay, I guess you're right. I mean, so, here's what
Speaker 4: I think she was doing. By making me think my
Speaker 4: problem is in my head, it becomes weirdly fixable. So
Speaker 4: it's a strategy.
Speaker 3: Are you afraid of pain? Have you had much pain
Speaker 3: in your life?
Speaker 4: Some I got in a skiing accident once that was
Speaker 4: pretty painful.
Speaker 3: What happened? I actually don't really know.
Speaker 4: I had mixed feelings about this whole session. But later
Speaker 4: Nancy used our conversation to make me a hypno birthing tape,
Speaker 4: and I was surprised by how into it I was.
Speaker 8: Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale, and notice
Speaker 8: how your body feels that you have a body, and
Speaker 8: that your body has taken care of you all through
Speaker 8: your life and will continue to take care of you
Speaker 8: now and in the future.
Speaker 4: I listened to this tape regularly as I prepared to
Speaker 4: give birth, although I will admit I transcribed it first
Speaker 4: to make sure there wasn't anything creepy or supplemental messages.
Speaker 8: You can allow yourself to become more and more self assured.
Speaker 6: So did it work?
Speaker 4: I think it kind of did. Yeah. I mean, even
Speaker 4: listening to it now, it makes me feel relaxed, you.
Speaker 6: Too, are Yeah, No, it's a vibe. It honestly reminds
Speaker 6: me of something you'd find on a meditation app.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's not just Nancy's words, but her tone
Speaker 4: and the way she's pacing it. It gave me confidence
Speaker 4: as I listened it. Yeah, it totally took the edge off.
Speaker 8: And you can relax into each contraction and allow your
Speaker 8: body to do what it already knows how to do.
Speaker 4: Nancy learned these hypnotic language patterns from NLP. It's her
Speaker 4: secret sauce. When Nancy was a kid, her mother suffered
Speaker 4: from debilitating back pain.
Speaker 3: I grew up in New Jersey in a middle class family.
Speaker 3: My mother had a chronic pain problem that started when
Speaker 3: I was about six, and I think I was one
Speaker 3: of those kids who was really empathic.
Speaker 4: So she became a nurse specifically interested in treating chronic
Speaker 4: pain patients through alternative medicine. That's how she found hypnosis.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to use drugs. I wanted to do
Speaker 3: something non traditional, and my ex husband was a physician
Speaker 3: and he introduced me to the whole idea whole idea,
Speaker 3: hypnosis for chronic pain and biofeedback, and one thing led
Speaker 3: me to another, to another to another.
Speaker 4: And hypnosis is how Nancy found NLP.
Speaker 3: I thought the language patterns in NLP were brilliant, and
Speaker 3: NLP said that you could break down any behavior and
Speaker 3: teach it to somebody else. So I started learning to
Speaker 3: break down behaviors and look for different things that I
Speaker 3: had ever looked for before.
Speaker 4: But she was weary at first.
Speaker 12: Well, they made a lot of claims that the skills
Speaker 12: of NLP could fix phobias, could do a whole number
Speaker 12: of things that were amazing to me, and if it
Speaker 12: was possible, I wanted to learn, but I was kind
Speaker 12: of skeptical.
Speaker 6: If it was possible. If you're beginning to wonder what
Speaker 6: exactly NLP is, that's normal. It can mean a lot
Speaker 6: of different things and be used a lot of different ways.
Speaker 6: Don't worry. We're going to explain it over the course
Speaker 6: of the series, and we'll get into how some people
Speaker 6: see it as the ultimate life hack, while others have
Speaker 6: laundered it into extreme methods of controlling others.
Speaker 4: For now, what you need to know is that NLP
Speaker 4: formed the basis of Nancy's self help programs. In Nexium.
Speaker 3: I saw many, many, many many people benefit.
Speaker 4: And you are still proud of the program you created.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm absolutely proud of it. I'm not proud of
Speaker 3: how everything ended up.
Speaker 4: Nancy still believes in NLP deeply and uses it all
Speaker 4: the time. It got her through prison.
Speaker 3: I will tell you that the judge sentenced me to
Speaker 3: go to a camp like Martha Stewart, and that's what
Speaker 3: I thought was going to happen. And they sent me
Speaker 3: to a maximum security female prison and it was a nightmare.
Speaker 4: Nancy pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for her role
Speaker 4: in Nexium. She was sent to federal prison in West
Speaker 4: Virginia in February of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: I was terrified because they were really mean. They were
Speaker 3: very mean. I had no rights, like you have no
Speaker 3: rights when you're there, and whatever they want to do
Speaker 3: with you, they're going to do with you.
Speaker 4: She says. This dark chapter of her life still haunts her.
Speaker 4: When she's feeling down, she turns to NLP.
Speaker 3: And when I tell you the worst moments, moments when
Speaker 3: I believed I had been dealt a really unfair hand,
Speaker 3: and I had been stuck in a horrible situation where
Speaker 3: I was given no control, and I allowed myself to
Speaker 3: start really suffering about it and feeling really victimized and miserable.
Speaker 3: About a month in, I said to myself, what is
Speaker 3: wrong with you? You have all of these tools, use them.
Speaker 3: And I put myself in a good state. And I said,
Speaker 3: you see, you know how to do this. It is
Speaker 3: inexcusable for you to stay in this state because you
Speaker 3: are making yourself miserable. You don't know when you're leaving,
Speaker 3: you don't know how long you have to be here.
Speaker 3: You don't know what's going to happen. But you have
Speaker 3: control all of your state. Use it. And I did,
Speaker 3: and I kept myself in a good state the whole
Speaker 3: time I was stuck in prison.
Speaker 6: Oooh, yikes. That was intense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I know maybe some listeners are thinking, can
Speaker 4: we trust Nancy here? Is it possible she's hyping NLP
Speaker 4: because she's looking for a comeback or a way to
Speaker 4: talk about anything other than exium. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 6: I actually find Nancy credible here. She didn't have to
Speaker 6: talk about using NLP on herself in prison. And what
Speaker 6: I find really striking is that NLP clearly isn't just
Speaker 6: some scammy hustle she used on other people. She used
Speaker 6: it on herself. This is what saved her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's saying she used NLP in the most high
Speaker 4: stake situation of her whole life.
Speaker 6: Did she explain though, how that actually worked, like which
Speaker 6: NLP methods was she using.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's this concept in NLP. It has kind
Speaker 4: of a CYBORGI name. It's called state control.
Speaker 3: And what's so great about state control is that once
Speaker 3: you learn that you can bring up an excited state,
Speaker 3: it naturally follows that you can bring up any state
Speaker 3: you want.
Speaker 4: Nancy learned of these techniques from a man who was
Speaker 4: incredibly influential in her life, NLP co founder Richard Bandler.
Speaker 3: And what Richard Bamler taught me in that weekend, which
Speaker 3: was the most amazing thing of all, was that I
Speaker 3: had control over my emotional states. And I had no
Speaker 3: excuse ever to be in a bad state ever unless
Speaker 3: I was allowing it. And I will forever be grateful
Speaker 3: to him for that.
Speaker 4: You were using these techniques decades later when you went
Speaker 4: to prison.
Speaker 3: I'm still using them. My mother just died. I could
Speaker 3: just sit here and cry with you. I'm so sad,
Speaker 3: but that's not what we're here to do, so I'm
Speaker 3: not going to and you don't have to see that.
Speaker 4: So, just to give you some context, Nancy's mom died
Speaker 4: three weeks before our interview. We were going to cancel,
Speaker 4: but then she said she didn't want to, and when
Speaker 4: we got to her house, she had cooked us this
Speaker 4: whole lunch like black bean soup, So naturally when she
Speaker 4: started crying in this moment, I felt really bad and
Speaker 4: just wanted to give her a hug.
Speaker 6: Okay, apologies, this is going to sound incredibly harsh, but
Speaker 6: I have to ask, are we sure she was actually
Speaker 6: losing control of her emotions. Didn't she just tell us
Speaker 6: she can be wildly happy in prison? Could she also
Speaker 6: make herself cry on cue?
Speaker 4: Part of me did feel like I was watching a
Speaker 4: talented actor. It was kind of whiplash her swing from
Speaker 4: anguish to then calmly referencing her mother's death, and these
Speaker 4: emotions were also visible in her her face and voice,
Speaker 4: so it would just instantly shift. My take is that
Speaker 4: these are Nancy's real emotions, but she has an insane
Speaker 4: level of control about when to dial in to a
Speaker 4: specific emotion and immediately shift to another. She says, anyone
Speaker 4: can do this, it's the power of NLP.
Speaker 6: As someone who does occasionally fall to pieces, this ability
Speaker 6: sounds incredibly seductive. I would honestly love to have more
Speaker 6: emotional control on command.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. But what's scarier is the idea that the
Speaker 4: person teaching you these emotional control techniques could also use
Speaker 4: them against you.
Speaker 6: This is one of the truly disconcerting things about NLP.
Speaker 6: Even the most seemingly helpful techniques can be used in
Speaker 6: sinister ways. And because NLP masters pride themselves on controlling
Speaker 6: their every little word and emotion, it's really hard to
Speaker 6: know who to.
Speaker 4: Trust, including the guy who started it all, Richard Bandler,
Speaker 4: a man with a checkered.
Speaker 6: Past and a crazy, spooky laugh.
Speaker 4: To understand neurolinguistic programming, you have to understand its contradictory founder,
Speaker 4: Richard Bandler. Sources have told us Bandler is a liar
Speaker 4: and a drunk, and he has.
Speaker 6: A history of making violent threats.
Speaker 4: Although Jesse, you know he disagrees with and denies all
Speaker 4: of these characterizations.
Speaker 6: And yet here's the Bandler paradox. He spent his career
Speaker 6: trying to help others, and he succeeded. Tons of clients
Speaker 6: swear by him.
Speaker 11: For example, I've had a lot of people that have
Speaker 11: you know, that didn't believe that people could change quickly,
Speaker 11: that went to a workshop and walked out and changed
Speaker 11: the whole world about that.
Speaker 6: As he explains in the seminar from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 6: Bandler's whole thing was making people feel like they have
Speaker 6: the power to fix their own problems. We collected as
Speaker 6: many of the DVD box sets of his seminars as
Speaker 6: we could find, watching and studying hours of tape. Here
Speaker 6: he is in another series, Creating Therapeutic Change.
Speaker 11: See, once you give people the resources, then you also
Speaker 11: got to tell them it doesn't happen to them. Too
Speaker 11: many people think that they come in and they go
Speaker 11: hypnotize me and change me, and aw's gon No, that's
Speaker 11: too easy. You don't deserve that. So you have to
Speaker 11: earn that from me. You have to go out and
Speaker 11: kick the shit out of your own problem.
Speaker 8: First.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the.
Speaker 11: Basis to do it, but you've got to actively participate
Speaker 11: in your own life.
Speaker 6: NLP has spread throughout the world since it emerged in
Speaker 6: Santa Cruz California in the nineteen seventies. Do a quick
Speaker 6: search for therapists on psychology today and you'll find tons
Speaker 6: of people with PhDs who include NLP in their list of.
Speaker 4: Methods, and some therapy professionals even use NLP without disclosing it,
Speaker 4: maybe without even realizing it. The inventor of one of
Speaker 4: the most widely used therapies for trauma, EMDR, was very
Speaker 4: influenced by NLP.
Speaker 6: NLP changed over the decades, but the central promise remains
Speaker 6: the same. These techniques will give you more power, this
Speaker 6: Bandler explains is his goal for all his students.
Speaker 11: Even though I do do it to them, I won't
Speaker 11: tell them I did. I won't give them the satisfaction
Speaker 11: of knowing, because I still want them, above and beyond
Speaker 11: whatever change they make, to get actively involved in their
Speaker 11: own life, actively involved in running their own brain.
Speaker 4: NLP is all about getting out of your patterns, out
Speaker 4: of your head, and creating more choice.
Speaker 11: The reason they want you to come in and just
Speaker 11: hypnotize me and make the problem go away is because
Speaker 11: the reason the problem is there is because it mysteriously
Speaker 11: has been controlling their life, and the missing piece is
Speaker 11: their active participation.
Speaker 6: Bandler's idea was that with NLP, you can achieve anything
Speaker 6: you desire, really anything.
Speaker 11: You must take as a presupposition that what they have
Speaker 11: been doing in their life is absurd. If it is
Speaker 11: not bringing them wealth, ecstasy, and happiness all at the
Speaker 11: same time, it's got to be pretty absurd.
Speaker 4: In the early nineteen nineties, Nancy attended a five day
Speaker 4: seminar with Bandler in Pennsylvania. So you trained with Richard Bandler.
Speaker 4: What was he like as a person?
Speaker 3: I want to say he was impressive in every way,
Speaker 3: positive and negative, and his skills were amazing, and at
Speaker 3: the same time he would devalue them by calling it
Speaker 3: that shit.
Speaker 4: Nancy was paying one thousand dollars to learn that shit,
Speaker 4: and while she was impressed with the techniques, she found
Speaker 4: Bandler himself pretty off putting.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was a little horrified by him at first.
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I'm gonna be honest, you know that
Speaker 3: I have deep respect for him. I just told you
Speaker 3: he helps me trem ment. I think he's a genius,
Speaker 3: but I was a little shocked at how unprofessional he was.
Speaker 3: He would just show up in like his clothes often
Speaker 3: looked like he had been sleeping in them for three
Speaker 3: or four nights before he showed up in them.
Speaker 4: This is one of the many things that intrigued me
Speaker 4: about Bandler. At NLP's height, he was teaching corporate success
Speaker 4: techniques to executives. But the guy's own life was kind
Speaker 4: of a mess. I mean, he was kind of an
Speaker 4: unrepentant recreational drug user, right.
Speaker 3: I wasn't aware of his drug use. I was aware
Speaker 3: of his alcohol use, because he did that quite openly.
Speaker 3: I didn't see anything like that. I heard about it,
Speaker 3: but I didn't see it.
Speaker 4: Nancy told me this one crazy story about Bandler where
Speaker 4: it seemed like he could kind of control her mind
Speaker 4: and manipulate her into doing something she would never normally do.
Speaker 3: After training, he would go to the bar and drink
Speaker 3: a lot with everybody. Didn't seem to get drunk, but
Speaker 3: he could consume an awful lot of alcohol. It was impressive.
Speaker 4: One night, Nancy and some people were having drinks after
Speaker 4: their NLP seminar, and Bandler was there.
Speaker 3: And we were sitting together, and he wanted to go somewhere,
Speaker 3: and I had watched him drink several several is a
Speaker 3: thought for me. It's not three or four or five
Speaker 3: or six, even ten several is more than ten martinis.
Speaker 3: And he wanted to go someplace. And I had just
Speaker 3: gotten a brand new car, and he asked me if
Speaker 3: we could go in my car, and I said yes,
Speaker 3: and he convinced me to let him drive you. I
Speaker 3: don't know how he did that.
Speaker 4: You let Richard Vandler drive your brand new Volvo ten
Speaker 4: martinis in.
Speaker 3: He didn't seem drunk.
Speaker 4: This guy had something he did.
Speaker 3: What did he have? I don't know. Well. Also, he
Speaker 3: was Richard Bandler, and I was an NLP master practition
Speaker 3: I wanted to be around him after it was all over,
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe he convinced me to do that.
Speaker 6: Damn, Nancy goes hard.
Speaker 4: It should be noted Bandler denies the story, but seriously,
Speaker 4: this is a common Bandler motif. He somehow persuades people
Speaker 4: to stand by him as he does extremely reckless, scary,
Speaker 4: dangerous things. How'd this work on Nancy? Well, she thinks
Speaker 4: it's NLP.
Speaker 3: Well do you know anything about NLP anchoring? So, an
Speaker 3: anchor is a stimulus and a response. They happen normally
Speaker 3: in life. Like let's say you can be anchored to
Speaker 3: your your father's angry voice or your mother's angry voice.
Speaker 3: So if they use that tone, you just stopped as
Speaker 3: a child, and that's an anchor.
Speaker 4: Okay. So Banglor often modulates his voice, That's one part
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he played with his voice a lot, now that
Speaker 3: I'm thinking back about him. He did different accs, did
Speaker 3: different accents, he did different intonation patterns. He was very
Speaker 3: good at that.
Speaker 5: How much more fun could I be having? How much
Speaker 5: better can it get? And as you keep that voice
Speaker 5: and lock in your head, your unconscious mind can and
Speaker 5: will confirm that you will make this a way of
Speaker 5: life that you can and will enjoy.
Speaker 4: As you can hear in his seminar Creating Therapeutic Change,
Speaker 4: Bandler changes his voice on command.
Speaker 5: And as you do so, take a deep breath and
Speaker 5: begin to feel a good feeling start to spread throughout
Speaker 5: your body. That's right, start to tingle all around.
Speaker 4: Start to see these shifts in tones and accent. He's
Speaker 4: trying to embed hypnotic commands with his voice.
Speaker 5: So there, slowly, as you return back to the waking state,
Speaker 5: that commitment becomes locked, firm and solid.
Speaker 4: In NLP terms, that's called anchoring eight.
Speaker 5: And the more your body will feel wonderful.
Speaker 4: And as we were talking, Nancy was like, wait a second,
Speaker 4: that's exactly what happened in the bar.
Speaker 13: Oh took me.
Speaker 3: He anchored you to his voice. That's what he was doing.
Speaker 3: When he was doing that, he would get you in
Speaker 3: a certain state, and then when he would use that
Speaker 3: voice again, you would go back into that state.
Speaker 5: Now, that's just a suggestion you will carry out and
Speaker 5: follow utterly and completely.
Speaker 4: The idea of anchoring is that you trigger an emotional
Speaker 4: response or behavior in someone with a physical sensation squeezing
Speaker 4: their wrist or using a sound like a bell or
Speaker 4: a word said in a certain tone. First, you build
Speaker 4: a heightened emotional state in your client or target.
Speaker 3: In NLP, what they learned is that when you're having
Speaker 3: an emotional state, it looks like a bell curve, you know,
Speaker 3: up and around, and when the state is building, you're
Speaker 3: going up, up, up, up, up up up with an
Speaker 3: emotional state. At a certain point, the peeks out, meaning
Speaker 3: that's the full state.
Speaker 4: Once they reached full state, that's when you anchor Subscribe
Speaker 4: now to mine game.
Speaker 6: Subscribe now to mine game, Subscribe.
Speaker 4: Now to mind games. It's kind of like training a dog.
Speaker 4: But you're doing it with a person.
Speaker 6: And that's allegedly how Bandler convinced Nancy to drive her
Speaker 6: new car drunk. Isn't she an NLP wizard too?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 6: How'd she not notice that? Do you think Nancy is
Speaker 6: particularly susceptible to manipulation?
Speaker 4: Well, that's exactly what she says. She told me she
Speaker 4: has a gullible streak.
Speaker 3: See I'm very gullible.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, but she does really believe she was anchored.
Speaker 3: Now I know what he did. I never could figure
Speaker 3: out what he did. I was anchored to his voice.
Speaker 6: If that exists, that's an amazing power and amazingly dangerous.
Speaker 4: I ask Nancy about that. Can NLP be used for
Speaker 4: good or evil? Is it a neutral tool?
Speaker 3: You know? When people ask me about that, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I say is a knife in the
Speaker 3: hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife
Speaker 3: in the hands of a murderer is a weapon. I
Speaker 3: believe because I've worked with behavior change so much, and
Speaker 3: even when people want to change sometimes it's hard. I
Speaker 3: believe that for the most part, you have to have
Speaker 3: very bad intent to try to figure out ways of
Speaker 3: using these things negatively. But is it possible. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to say it's impossible, because you know, you can
Speaker 3: anchor in fear states in people easily.
Speaker 6: Uh, fear anchors. This is sounding not so neutral. When
Speaker 6: people are afraid, they're more compliant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and fear was an explicit part of Richard Bandler's therapy.
Speaker 4: He scared people into fixing themselves.
Speaker 2: You know, he did threaten punch me in the face.
Speaker 6: That was actually turned out to be a very good intervention.
Speaker 6: You know, it helped me to have one of the
Speaker 6: most profound experiences of my life. That's Don McCormick, a
Speaker 6: retired psych professor who knew Bandler and Santa Cruz during
Speaker 6: the early days of NLP. He was trying to learn
Speaker 6: a new technique but kept getting stuck. It was only
Speaker 6: when Bandler thraned to punch him that suddenly Dawn got it.
Speaker 6: There are even more stories like this. One that Bandler
Speaker 6: told repeatedly was about a schizophrenic patient who thought he
Speaker 6: was Jesus Christ. Bandler got the patient to build a cross.
Speaker 6: He brought in the heavy wood beams and giant sized nails.
Speaker 6: Then he had the guy stretch out on the cross
Speaker 6: to measure him to make sure it was right. We
Speaker 6: read about this in a book and honestly don't really
Speaker 6: know what to make of it or what the patient's
Speaker 6: reaction was. We do know many of Bandler's most dramatic
Speaker 6: therapies featured threats of violence. He denies this, but it's
Speaker 6: been widely reported that at this one seminar in nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty four, a client was trying to work on some
Speaker 6: problematic aspect of his life and he made the mistake
Speaker 6: of joking to Bandler that the only thing that could
Speaker 6: possibly get him to change would be a loaded gun.
Speaker 6: So Bandler whipped one out.
Speaker 4: Because in some versions of the story, Bandler has a
Speaker 4: loaded gun with him.
Speaker 6: Naturally, and the guy's into it at first. He knows
Speaker 6: Bandler and his aggressive antics, and he even says, well,
Speaker 6: I'd have to believe you'd actually use it on me
Speaker 6: for it to help. So Bandler's like challenge accepted. He
Speaker 6: tells the therapist, you have no idea how nuts I am.
Speaker 6: I don't have to kill you, I just have to
Speaker 6: wound you. Apparently that did the trick. The guy tells Bandler, huh, okay,
Speaker 6: mission accomplished. I can change that part of my life
Speaker 6: and Bandler's like, yep, I know, because I would have
Speaker 6: shot you. By now, it should be clarified that Bandler
Speaker 6: says he used a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun,
Speaker 6: not a gun itself.
Speaker 4: I have no idea what to make of this story,
Speaker 4: Like what the fuck I mean? I honestly also am
Speaker 4: like did it really happen? But also okay, let's say
Speaker 4: it did and it supposedly worked.
Speaker 6: That's the thing. Even years later, the guy continued to
Speaker 6: tell reporters that Bandler had helped him. In fact, most
Speaker 6: of the people I've spoken to have said that when
Speaker 6: Bandler pulls these kind of hardcore changer I'll kill you
Speaker 6: sort of cures, He's just getting in there and doing
Speaker 6: what needs to be done.
Speaker 14: He would sometimes use threats to get people to do
Speaker 14: something or to or sometimes just even losing his temper.
Speaker 14: So I had to him threatened me before.
Speaker 3: But I think what.
Speaker 14: Well Richard, out of the goodness of his heart, would
Speaker 14: have the compassion to hold a gun to the side
Speaker 14: of a student's head to provide the motivating factor that
Speaker 14: would allow them to make a change.
Speaker 6: Bandler didn't just intimidate students. According to court documents, he
Speaker 6: also threatened his employees with violence.
Speaker 11: Hey, push it to the limits. Man, go for the
Speaker 11: throat at this point, because this is exactly what's going
Speaker 11: on in their life. They aren't choosing, and you want
Speaker 11: it to become a magnanimous choice.
Speaker 13: One that's fairly obvious.
Speaker 11: Which direction they're going to go in? A positive future
Speaker 11: or shitty future? What's it going to be?
Speaker 6: And Bandler pushed it to the limits in his own life.
Speaker 4: Were you around when he got accused of murder?
Speaker 3: No? I think it was before that was to talk
Speaker 3: about it, they used to say, three people went in
Speaker 3: the room, two came out alive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you heard that right. Richard Bandler stood trial for
Speaker 4: murder in nineteen eighty seven and was acquitted. Oh interesting,
Speaker 4: you joined up afterwards? Did you know about that? During
Speaker 4: his murder trial, including in his own court testimony, the
Speaker 4: whole world learned that Bandler was a heavy cocaine user
Speaker 4: and involved with shady characters like Santa Cruz drug dealers.
Speaker 4: Even after Bandler was found not guilty, the trial became
Speaker 4: part of his bad boy loose cannon mystique.
Speaker 5: Now this is the kind of subtle stuff that I'm
Speaker 5: trying to get you guys to do. All right, it's
Speaker 5: none of this sitting around and going and how do
Speaker 5: you feel about that? You know, are going into a
Speaker 5: meeting and going, uh.
Speaker 11: Well, do you see any good prospects for the future?
Speaker 11: Fuck that jam them in their head. You know, if
Speaker 11: I want people work for me to have a positive
Speaker 11: view of the future, I'm gonna take it and put
Speaker 11: it on a brick and shove it right.
Speaker 5: In their skull so they don't miss it. I sort
Speaker 5: of the sledgehammer approach to things.
Speaker 4: Listening to Richard Bandler his sledgehammer approach to healing. It's
Speaker 4: what's so provocative about NLP, the grand claims and the
Speaker 4: seemingly absurdly simple yet weirdly effective techniques, and then there's
Speaker 4: the whole if you know, you know, aspect of the thing.
Speaker 4: It was shocking to me that NLP was so unknown
Speaker 4: and yet so relevant. It's literally in every meditation app
Speaker 4: I've seen, especially as wellness pervades so many aspects of
Speaker 4: our lives, and we have this collective obsession with self
Speaker 4: optimization and treating our brains as computers to be reprogrammed,
Speaker 4: NLP seems more relevant than ever.
Speaker 6: It's that pervasiveness that sent us down this road of
Speaker 6: trying to figure out where it comes from, in part
Speaker 6: through the story of one of its central figures, Richard Bandler,
Speaker 6: brilliant outside the box healer.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't give me a license to do therapy because
Speaker 5: I'm not qualified. I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 13: He tries to get you to relive trauma. I try
Speaker 13: to get people to stop thinking about it so much.
Speaker 13: My technique's focus on getting people to take control of
Speaker 13: their mind.
Speaker 6: Or Slick Hustler, who sold pseudoscientific life hacks to the
Speaker 6: US military and inspired hundreds of imitators.
Speaker 13: It spread all over the planet. It's everywhere. I'm translated
Speaker 13: into dozens of languages.
Speaker 6: We're deeply skeptical of gurus, but we want to separate
Speaker 6: what's legit from the jargon and empty promises.
Speaker 4: So we're going to interview sales with us.
Speaker 10: I gave her some suggestions to be sexually.
Speaker 6: Aroused pick up artists.
Speaker 10: She looked at me and she said, Mondongo gun numb
Speaker 10: and I said, that's because you have a message for me.
Speaker 10: What's your message? And then she leaned over and numb
Speaker 10: tongue said something about wanting.
Speaker 9: To pleasure me.
Speaker 4: And NLP's most famous practitioner, Tony Robbins.
Speaker 7: Tony Robbins doing all this, he said he's the best
Speaker 7: NLP guy in the world, which I did, said I wasn't.
Speaker 7: I challenged him. I said, let's have an ALP off.
Speaker 7: You give me your worst patient and we'll see who
Speaker 7: can hale them quicker. I said, I'm happy to do it,
Speaker 7: and I want every time I did.
Speaker 4: All of whom credit NLP as the basis of their success.
Speaker 4: So do some accused cult leaders or are they innocent victims?
Speaker 3: Well? I knew that it was cultish and weird, but
Speaker 3: I liked it for all of those reasons.
Speaker 6: We'll even test NLP on ourselves. I don't know what
Speaker 6: I expected to get exactly, but what I got were
Speaker 6: some pretty specific images from my childhood. This is wild
Speaker 6: and on you, the listener, with your consent.
Speaker 4: A whole lot of NLP is pretty shady, but some
Speaker 4: of it is real. We're going to dig into those
Speaker 4: parts and the science of hypnosis behind them, And don't worry,
Speaker 4: we will get to the murder.
Speaker 6: Oh and we'll even hear from the man himself, Richard Bambler.
Speaker 13: This is what we referred to as a hit job
Speaker 13: and I find this very fucking offensive.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: Richard mind Games is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
Speaker 4: iHeart Podcasts. The series is created and hosted by me
Speaker 4: Alice Hines and Zoe Lascas. It's produced by writer Alsop
Speaker 4: and Dara Lukpotts, edited by Kate Osborne, Editorial consulting from
Speaker 4: Adiza Egan, original composition and mixing by Steve Boone, fact
Speaker 4: checking by Aman Whalen from Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 6: Our executive producers are Ozwaloshan Mangesha Tikador, and Kate Osborne
Speaker 6: from iHeart. Our executive producers are Katrina Norbl and Nikki
Speaker 6: Etour