VULTURE

This week in true crime podcasts: In season three of DIE-ALOGUE, host Rebekah Sebastian is diving into stories she refers to as “cult-adjacent.” (The season opener was an interview with LulaRich directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby-Nason.) Sebastian’s latest conversation is a smart and funny exchange with linguist and podcast host Amanda Montell, author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. Montell, whose father spent his teen years in Synanon, a Southern California–based cult, examines how the language and strategies used by cult leaders have permeated our mainstream vernacular and behavior — in spite of the fact that we also generally believe that cult members are people who have nothing to do with us and that we could easily avoid falling in with them. There’s so much to listen for: the victim blaming that we project onto people when they won’t “just leave” a cult, the use of religious language in targeting of wives and mothers in pyramid schemes, and the question of what’s perhaps the most toxic MLM of them all: Amway. —Chanel Dubofsky