SAVE THE DATE: My new podcast is launching October 30th, 2025
Hoodwinked with Dr. Mara Einstein
& special guests
Hoodwinked is a limited series about how marketers use the same tactics as cults, hosted by Dr. Mara Einstein and produced by Multitude Productions.
Featuring conversations with academics, practitioners, and past cult members, the show is a perfect resource for those who want to understand not only why they buy, but how they have been manipulated to buy too much.
Upcoming Episodes
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What is a cult?
This episode drops on October 30th, 2025
Katie Lofton, Yale professor of history and divinity, explains the difference between religion and cults, and the intersection between consumer culture and belief systems.
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Cults: Let’s get into the nitty gritty
This episode drops on November 11th, 2025
A Little Bit Culty co-host, Sarah Edmondson, digs into the nitty gritty of cults helping us understand who gets pulled in, how they get pulled in, and how they can get out.
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A new kind of cult
This episode drops on November 25th, 2025
Dr. Mara Einstein, author of Hoodwinked: How marketers use the same tactics as cults, explains the many ways in which marketers work in the same way as cults.
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What are brand cults?
This episode drops on December 9th, 2025
Chris Kneeland, co-founder of marketing agency the Cult Collective, explains the rise of the brand cult phenomenon and why this framework is so important to marketers.
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MLMs the ultimate commercial cults
This episode drops on December 23rd, 2025
Julie Anderson used to be a top seller for multilevel marketing company, Monat. Today, she is a fierce anti-MLM advocate, fighting to help women who have been ensnared in these commercial cults.
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Digital media changed the game
This episode drops on January 6th, 2026
Jamie Cohen, media scholar and digital producer, and special guest explain how digital media have reframed the cultural discourse around advertising while we ask the question: what are the real cults?
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Influencers as cult leaders
This episode drops on January 20th, 2026
Influencers are the (often stealth) purveyors of marketing messages. While some content creators work to provide helpful information to their followers, others game the system with disinformation and rage-bait content to generate as much revenue as possible--to the detriment of their followers and society as a whole. In this episode, a practitioner and an activist explain the incentives that lead influencers toward less altruistic ends.
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Getting out
This episode drops on February 3rd, 2026
Dr. Tanya Johnson, a neurodivergent, queer, Cuban-American licensed mental health counselor, provides listeners with the tools to understand how people are pulled into cults, and more important, how they get out.
ABOUT THE PODCAST: Hoodwinked with Dr. Mara Einstein
When people think of cults, they imagine Jonestown, Waco or Heaven’s Gate. That’s old thinking. Today, cults coalesce around brands and influencers, MLMs and politicians.
In Hoodwinked, we talk with leading authors, activists, and scholars about the changing definition of cults, why they have become so pervasive now, and what that means for us as individuals and as a society.
Over the course of the podcast, listeners will learn why cult ideas have become more prevalent, why people are more vulnerable to them now than ever, tips for how to avoid being taken in by cults…and how to get friends and family members out of them.
Cult content is having a boom, per Forbes, and it is easy to see why. People are feeling anxious and vulnerable, which leaves them open to cult tactics. We want to believe someone has the answers to all of our problems, especially as times become more insecure. Hoodwinked will give you information you need to know to avoid being taken in by cults—whether they are religious, commercial, or political.