The Pickup Artist Playbook

This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families.

“Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime.”

The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. - I was a monster. - Listen to burden of guilt season two on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

- Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award winning country music artist, and one of the most authentic voices in music today.

- The guy that says he's always going to be there

and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread to conversation with my son. - Listen to on purpose, with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

- I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? - It has been made to fit.

- The moment you look at the whole picture of a case, collage.

“- What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?”

- Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies

working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. - The sixth bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. - Listen to the sixth bureau on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Goodbye, Scott. - There's this question that's been haunting our series, Zoe, and also neural linguistic programming in general. Here it is.

Is it possible to hypnotize someone to get them to do what you want without them knowing? - This is the big spooky question. In 1983, Science Digest was quoting experts who warned NLP could become, quote,

“"the most sophisticated mind-control technology ever."”

A lot of academic say it's BS. There's no magic switch that works on everyone. Not even hypnosis. The CIA tried to hypnotize people and to becoming unwitting assassins in the 1950s,

and it totally didn't work. Right, mentoring and candid at stuff. But there is one school that suggests hypnotic mind-control is real. And that's the pickup artists. Yep, the get-in-e-woman to sleep with you,

speed seduction guys. And get this. There's one pickup artist in particular who got everything he knows. From NLP. I'm really good in inducing trance.

I could speak to you in a way where I induce trance. I will not unless you give me your consent because it's not a toy. Master hypnotist Ross Jeffries. Here he is in 2000.

Proudling Marina Del Rey and Los Angeles with BBC correspondent Louis Theroux. Where are we now, Ross? This is the coffee bean in T-Leaf. One of the premal places in the Marina to pick up women.

Ross as he prefers cafes like this to clubs or bars, because in clubs and bars. Women are there to reject man and get free drinks. I have to shout to be heard, it sucks. But this is a nice friendly place.

People are off their guard, you know. His targets have just finished work. They're relaxed and down to chat. He's yours in on a blonde woman with a 90s Meg Ryan-style haircut, sitting outside having a coffee and cigarette with a friend.

No, I don't know many people I just moved here. Don't tell me, but you're from the Midwest. Yes, how could you tell? You're from Chicago or Wisconsin. Detroit.

Detroit, but close, huh?

First of all, my name is Ross.

I'm Jen. OK. As Ross chats her up, he slips into an empty chair. Not at her table, but just beside it. He sits legs apart, confident,

peccasual, turning slightly so he can face her. Then, he launches into a speed seduction pattern. OK, I'm going to tell you something about yourself. You make imagery in your mind. Barry, very vividly.

You're very to the day dream. And in fact, so you're smiling because you know I'm right. You can look at someone and they can think you're listening. And usually you are listening. OK.

But if you're bored, you can be looking right at, even though you're looking right at this person.

You could be a million miles away in your favorite

True. You're right. I'm absolutely right. Yeah.

Notice how he keeps the language vague.

He's not asking her where that fantasy vacation spot is or what it's like. He's just getting her to imagine it to ease her into a pleasurable state. How do you know that? I do a very rare, very unusual, hardly anyone knows that.

It's a form of hypnosis that involves no sleep. No. I call it bliss-nosis. The two chat a bit more, and then the show cuts to Louie

“interviewing Ross and the woman, Jen, about what just happened?”

Did Ross just try and pick you up? I didn't think of it as him picking me up, but we had a great conversation and we're going to have coffee sometime. Did he understand about you in a much deeper level than most people? Yeah, I felt it.

Yeah. And you know what?

You know that feeling, right?

Just as Ross reminds her of that feeling, his voice drops into a slow deliberate tone. He starts running a finger slowly up her arm towards her shoulder. Louie looks horrified. Better.

Better. Even better right now. Oh yeah. Yeah, more you focus in, the more intense the more. And why don't you put it low, low?

What do you do? I work for an airline. Really?

“And you're not just trying to be on TV, right?”

No, no. I just do some voodoo on your arm. That's okay.

Thank you very much, Jennifer.

See you later. Bye. Was that real? Yeah, totally. Was that real, seriously?

That's totally real, man. You know what you're talking about? You're hypnotized. I didn't hypnotize it. Take a deep breath in.

And breathe out. Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so that I can speak primarily of your unconscious mind. You can notice that you feel rested, more alert, unconscious. From Colitiscope and I Heart Podcasts,

this is episode 7 of mind games. I'm Zoila Scaws. I'm Alice Hines. You don't know how you did it? Do you?

“You're going to a little time to start your stay?”

And you're out of it. When we left off our last episode, Richard Bhandler had just been acquitted of murder. People were wondering if he could have hypnotized the jury or warped his friend James Moreno's mind.

Around the time Bhandler walked free in 1988. He got a new student who would take NLP into the internet age and spawn the pickup artist movement. Okay, so for younger listeners, we should explain what the fuck the pickup artist movement is.

Here's how I figured it out. So I was in high school in the 2000s and there was this best selling book called The Game. People's annoying older brothers were showing up at parties and they were reading it and pretending they had all these hacks

to sleep with the hottest girls. The Game introduced readers to a bunch of guys intent on restoring the natural order of the universe. You know, where every man gets the babe herum. He's so rightly deserves.

pickup artistry was a big deal in the 90s and 2000s. And part because more women were supporting themselves and some men felt like they were getting a raw deal. The movement gained so much attention that major pop culture reporters like the BBC's Louis Thurru

even profiled at stars. There were economic reasons for this. The American dream was falling apart. Guys couldn't just go and get manufacturing jobs and support households with them like their dad's had.

At the same time, there was a huge backlash against feminism. And so this guy, Ross Jeffries, was the provocative face of the so-called pick-up artist movement. Here he is on a major talk show of the day, while he George's hot seat.

For women, getting thumb is a choice. For men getting thumb is a chore. Oh, you don't recognize that. You're gonna get your word you did. Hey, I have news for him, getting thumb is impossible.

Tom Cruise even played an alpha male seduction guru based on Ross in the 1999 movie, Magnolia. Respect the cock. And tame the cunt. Tame it.

This is from the 90s, but it's still so relevant. Guys talk like that on the internet today,

And then there's this so-called alpha influencers,

“like Andrew Tate, who somehow convinces men”

if they're misogynistic, they'll also get rich. Okay, brief science rant. It drives me completely bonkers, Alice, how the manosphere uses the term alpha, like it's a real biological concept.

Wait, okay, so it's not? No, the idea that there are alpha wolves doming all the beta wolves for the right to breed is total BS. It was based on studies of wolves in captivity.

Packs in the wild are just families, like parents with kids.

The biologist who did most of popularize the idea of alpha

in the 1970s has even said he was completely wrong about everything and has begged his publisher to stop printing his book. That's crazy.

“Okay, but we're not here to talk about all the absurd claims”

the manosphere makes about science and what's quote unquote natural. We are here to talk about pickup artists, though. And we want to use them as a case study to figure out whether hip no NLP mind control could actually be real.

Most of the people we've met so far use NLP on willing subjects. You hire Richard Banner because you want him to reprogram your brain. You pay gazillions of dollars to go see Tony Robbins because you want to unlock all that unlimited power. Even if you go to a card dealership and the salesman uses NLP

on you without you knowing, you're only there because you're fundamentally open to buying a car. But women don't go to coffee shops to get hypnotized and creepily stroked on the arm, right? And this is what sets Ross Jeffery's apart.

The idea that you can use these techniques on anyone, anywhere. I went to San Diego to find out how and if it works. Good morning. I hope you're not too jet lag. I hope you're ready because I'm coming loaded for fair.

And have all sorts of sneaky covert NLP. Get not a trick. So nicely Zoe, Zoe. Can't wait to see you there. Before I met Ross, he sent me many, many voice members.

The suffering of many men is inconceivable. I'm not putting down how women suffer, how women are abused. So full disclosure, Ross asked me to call him by his civilian name, Paul. Which I did when we were talking. But because everyone knows him as Ross Jeffery's,

we're going to use that for the rest of the episode. Sorry, Paul. Sorry, Ross. These days, he's expanded his brand to include sales. He's embraced the possum of meditation and built himself as a healer, focused on men's pain.

But the kind of man is shamed. They're now allowed to talk about it. As he said, he can't talk to anyone about it. He can't be shamed about it. Ross had just texted me a screenshot of something called the Ross Jeffery's elite student mastermind group.

A man there said he was a 31-year-old virgin, who'd been abused as a child, and that he had severe exima all over his face and body. Speed seduction, he wrote, had been a big help. And so I send this to you, because I want to share with you how I joke around and I call myself the guru getting laid.

That's actually one of his more polite sobercaves. He's also called himself the guru of gash. I use a vulgar language and stuff to attract attention. But I send this to you and the hope that you paint me in a fair light.

Because if you don't, the people who need that help will never reach out for it.

Ross was worried I dragged him through the mud, which is a reasonable concern, because a lot of women hate him, at least his Ross Jeffery's persona. These days, Ross is in his late 60s with short, curly white hair, moustache and beard. When we met, he was wearing a purple buttoned-down, under a plumb-colored blazer,

“which honestly felt like an NLP deep cut.”

Big deal hypnotherapist Milton Erickson or a lot of purple, and Erickson is one of Ross's all-time heroes. Ross's polarizing persona was born in the late 1980s. At the time, Ross was a failed comedy writer living in Los Angeles, furious with all the women who wouldn't sleep with him.

I was very awkward, socially backward, was unattractive, at least I thought I was, and what you project is what people see. I didn't have social skills and I was not brought up in a family, where those were emphasized or modeled or taught. And I certainly didn't have any skills in attracting women again.

No skills until he discovered NLP. He was browsing at a bookstore when he felt an almost mystical pull.

to tell when someone's bullshit in your, your inexperienced journalist, and this is what happened. My hand floated up, and I grabbed a book, and it said frogs into princes, Richard Banner and John Grinder live.

“I thought, oh, okay, I'll give you this a shot, why not?”

I recalled distinctly sitting down on the floor of that bookstore and flipping through it and thinking, oh, that's interesting.

Ha, that's uh-oh, wow, this is amazing.

Frogs into princes wasn't about getting laid. It was the first approachable, not too jargony book from NLP co-founders, Richard Banner and John Grinder. It came out in 1979 with a psychedelic fantasy prince on the cover and got a ton of people hooked on NLP, including Ross.

The book revealed Erickson's conversational model, where it's completely a matter of what appears to be a conversation, but it has presuppositions, it has metaphors, it has stories, that immediately struck me as something of incredible power. And I began to see how I can use that in conversations with women

to engineer states of emotion, which to me is what it's all about,

but engineering consciousness.

“Ross read every scrap of NLP literature he could get his hands on.”

Around 1988, he attended a seminar with Richard Banner, and another hypnotist named Dawn Wolf in San Diego. Dawn gave him a hypnotic command to call Banner an asshole and each had Banner said, "Monwell, Noriega." I guess Banner was into talking about Panamanian dictators,

because sure enough, he said the name. And I remember jumping up and calling him an asshole, and he came over to me and threatened the throttle me. And then something happened that I don't remember. Apparently Richard took me backstage and hypnotized me

and told me that I was going to take NLP and a completely new direction,

innovate with it. Oh my god, he did it. He just said, "New direction or nude erection." That's like this pig of artistism. It's a sneaky command to imagine boners,

which supposedly gets you interested in people,

“though I honestly don't know if that works at all.”

You don't feel it Alice? No. The irresistible image of a boner. It's not working on you? No. Huh, weird. Well, this and more hypnotic speed seduction tactics after the break.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground.

He identified Termine Hudson as the perpetrator. Termine was sentenced to 99 years. And like Laura, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth.

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt season two on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2023, a story gripped the UK of looking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict of villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi.

Lucy Leppi has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the full story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it.

To ask what really happened, when the world decided who Lucy Leppi was. No voicing of any skepticism are doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to doubt the case of Lucy Leppi on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are.

The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there

is the only guy that's not there. I'm an Australia when Bow is born. The whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. Over my job, I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say?

Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside.

This is Special Agent Riegel, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Here how they got it on the 6th Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life.

And that's the Unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets.

Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Reading his books and watching his videos, I couldn't help feeling like once you cut through the cringe marketing. A lot of Ross Jeffries' speed seduction tactics are just basic social skills.

Among other radical strategies, Ross recommends asking women questions about themselves. And actually listening to what they have to say. Here he is demonstrating on a woman named Barbara for a crowd of men in a video someone posted on YouTube in 2020.

“So let me ask you, do you mind if I ask what do you do for a living?”

Sure. I'm a writer and author. Ah, okay, cool, and now my response is one of genuine curiosity because I like creative people. This is not saying, I really enjoy it. Let me ask you a question. I know as a writer, people face certain challenges.

There's always the challenge of selling your work and all that.

There's stuff. Amen. Amen to that. So I'm getting some rapport. I'm pacing her world by demonstrating verbal understanding. I demonstrate understanding so I get rapport. But other more sophisticated techniques involve hypnosis. Speed seduction newbies learn scripted stories and language patterns designed to elicit certain reactions,

like arousal and trust. The whole idea is that you can use NLP to change your own emotional state and that'll be your prospects. If I said, if I wanted to create a fate of fascination with Barbara and I looked at it,

“said, you will be fascinated with me. You will hang on everywhere and you can't happen to me, okay?”

Now I could try to create a fascination by saying if we've been really, really intrigued by someone. You ever meet someone like a teacher who is just you knew that this person had such a passion for what they were doing. That everything they said painted vivid, mental images in your mind. There were its regards to your own experience. So with each word, you're interesting.

So Ross is trying to get you to daydream. So you lose track of what you're doing in the conversation. Or maybe that you're trying to exit this conversation. Ross broke down methods like this for me during his interview. What's the technique? Well, let me give you the principles behind it. First and foremost, I believe that any kind of persuasion, whether it's a sail, whether it's an interview, whether it's a seduction, the currency of any of that is focus.

It's a person can't focus deeply on what it is you're listening to. And that smile only means that a deeper and more exploratory part of your mind is responding in a way where you didn't

“expect. Anyway, so you need to create focus. And after focus, it's a matter of what states of”

consciousness do you want that person in. There's all sorts of ways to evoke these states. I mean, a jump in. So when you slow down your voice and do your hip, no pulse peak, it's not supposed to be putting me in a transfer. I'm leaning, I'm leaning into it so you can see it.

I would normally never be this overt about it. It would be covert. What? Okay, give me the same line,

but covert mode. Covert. We're expecting it, but. No, I mean, this is such an artificial situation. We've got folks in the other room. There's all sorts of ways to evoke these states. Okay. For example, some of them have to do the kinds of questions you ask.

if we were on a date, and I said, what do you like to do for fun? Everyone asks that,

but if I asked, what's something you always dreamed of doing fantasized about doing,

but haven't let yourself dare. That requires an answer from a different part of your consciousness.

“It has to activate your, you have to activate your imagination and your emotions to answer the question.”

That's not a seduction in and of itself, but it's a start of getting leverage into that part of your consciousness. Another way to gain that leverage is through a hypnotic technique called a pattern interrupt, basically purposely derailing a conversation. See if you can catch the way Ross does it here during our interview. So when you were teaching

seminar still and you were promoting them in the ineffable way you did, were you ever concerned that the

crassness and the vulgarity of the Ross Jeffries ad copy would lure people who had dark intentions to your seminars and maybe even alienate dudes and need who were kind of turned off by the sexist powder? Crass, interjecting your personal opinion into objective journalism. Now that's crass.

“Now that's an NLP technique called reflexively apply to the speaker. I took your term and I”

reflexively applied it to you. And that is supposed to make me feel how? It's a minor pattern interrupt. Now your, your very experience is not going to do jack shit with you, but it's a way of

diverting, but more importantly it's interrupting the pattern. Okay so he's like trying to create

confusion, which is supposed to derail your interview and I guess make you forget what you were going to ask him about? Yes and then you use that fleeting moment of what the fuck to establish a new power dynamic. I've seen Richard Banner doing really similar things and honestly I think he does it even better than Ross Jeffries. Check out this DVD called the art and science of nested loops from 2003. Banner's describing watching someone from across the room. If you see a woman and you're really

interested in her, you can try to work up the courage to walk over or you can go like this. Banner waves his hand like he's beckoning a woman over. It's easier and she'll come over and go yes and you go, did you want something? Did you want something? Did you want something? He makes it seem like she was the one who wanted something, not him, which I can honestly see working. He's creating

“an opening for conversation through disorientation. Pattern interrupts are subtle, but that's what”

makes them disconcerting. The idea that merely by interrupting you or saying something that doesn't quite make sense, someone can capitalize on your confusion. There's no distinction in my mind between shifting someone's consciousness unexpectedly and a hypnotic technique. If I created confusion by giving you an unexpected response, it creates a temporary what I would call a mind-stutter. A little pause in your conscious mind and it creates a window of suggestability. Just a little one,

not a deep trans where you're out and I can do surgery on you, but it's the start of getting leverage into your unconscious mind. Once you have that leverage, you can establish an anchor or embed a command. NLP tactics we've encountered before. An anchoring is what happened and not clip you heard at the beginning of the episode. Better. Better. When Ross ran his finger up that woman's arm at the coffee shop. It takes finesse. You can't just abruptly start stroking people.

You've gotta be smooth. There are some techniques like anchoring that get used in various different ways. I mean to help people anchor positive feelings about themselves for instance, but also used out in the field on women. Can you talk about using in women? With women. Okay, it's collaborative. It's a party. It's participatory. How do you use it? When you say that with irony and a little sarcasm in your voice, well, let's take it as given. Truth be wrong. Tell me about how you would

use anchoring. Tell me how you would use anchoring. My voice is my anchor. Your voice is your anchor. I'm the very distinctive voice. So if I wanted anchor, I'd just slightly speak just a little softer. When I want to give commands and suggestions, I'd just be a little softer. I'm leaning on it so they can hear it at home. So if I ever give you commands or suggestions to describe my ideal vacation, I would anchor using my voice. I would say, do you like to travel Debbie? Really, tell me about your

you can imagine this as I describe it. That's a command to imagine where I'm about to describe.

Here's the idea. Because those words are subtly set off, the brain absorbs them differently than everything else in the sentence. It processes it outside of conscious awareness. Ross admits his techniques don't work on every woman, but he says they work most of the time.

“Well enough to have inspired a host of indicators. Are you familiar with nagging Zoe?”

Yeah, it's not a raw thing, but it's probably the most notorious pick-up artist track, right? It's when you insult a woman in a supposedly playful way to make yourself conscious. Like, oh, it's so cute how your teeth are a little crooked. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So you might have

experienced this and maybe it worked on you, maybe it didn't. I've been trying to figure out

if nagging is NLP. We don't know exactly where it's inventor, who was a different pick-up artist, got it from. But I did find bandlor talking about using something similar with clients. It's from this tape called Creating Therapy to Change from 1987. In fact, typically I like to embarrass them once in an anchorate. Because one of the things about being embarrassed is it is one of the forms of unfamiliarness that allows people to escape their traditional ways that they act.

“Alice, do you think that works? I think nagging doesn't work. Like, it wouldn't work on me,”

but I think it could work on someone who is maybe quite young or for some reason is in a vulnerable

place in their life and is looking for approval. Someone whose nag could then be like hooked because

they're waiting for that compliment that was withheld. I buy that. It's kind of a diagnostic tool for pick-up artists to see if the person they're talking to is seeking validation from someone else. So, Alice, I've obviously been thinking a lot about seduction while doing this reporting, and I had a kind of disturbing thought the other day. I think journalists might have more in common with pick-up artists than we'd like to admit. I mean, absolutely. I've been thinking

about the same thing throughout this whole podcast, and I would use Richard Banner's Backending Trick to approach someone at a conference who might otherwise try to avoid me if I came on directly. That's a good one. And I mean, it's been said before, right? Like, everyone got super pearl-clutchy when Janet Malcolm, the New Yorker staff writer, famously described the journalistic

“process as seduction and betrayal. But I think she's dead on. Like, when we do interviews, the whole”

point is to put people at ease and charm them and get them to tell us stuff they don't consciously want to say. It makes me go back to the question we raised at the beginning of the episode, like, is mind-control real? Is it actually possible to hypnotically manipulate someone covertly and get them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do? Okay, so no, I don't think it's possible to hypnotically make someone a mindless puppet. But I do think we are being manipulated all the time,

covertly, by advertising, by politicians, and it really just depends on how you define trance or how you define persuasion. One definition is that all communication is persuasion or manipulation. You're changing someone's emotional state when you tell an exciting story or a scary story, think of the score of a movie or a podcast. Suspense, romance, tragedy, curious, scientific, investigatory. This all manipulates your emotions in a certain way and perhaps may

be coming more aware of the power dynamics that are inherently part of everyday interactions, anyone can gain them. And everyone can become Ross Jeffries. We're all pick apart. Yeah! Okay, but reality check, I do not know how to hypnotize people even when I'm really on fire in an interview. Same, unfortunately. Unless I'm doing it unconsciously, but I don't think I am. Yeah, I don't sell yourself short-kid. I did ask Ross about this, though. I asked him to do a demo

at the end of our interview and what he said actually felt key to understanding how covert manipulation actually works. Can you sort of break down some of the techniques that you were using? A little bit. I gave you the pre-talk. I said you're not going to go to sleep. You're not going to quack like a duck. Then I gave you something called permissive hypnosis. I didn't say you're going to listen to every word I say. Then you'll just go to sleep. I said you can listen to every word I say

and you don't have to. So what kinds of conditions are you creating with those objects? I'm creating

the trans is working. Oh, interesting. So there's no escape. It's called the inclusive set

and ratification. I'm letting you ratify through your own experience that it's working. So what he's describing is a rhetorical trap, right? Because he's giving you two options, you might hear every word I say or you might not. But whatever you experience ends up reinforcing the trends. Yeah, it's disarming. And I could see this maybe working on someone who wants to get hypnotized. But again, would this work on someone who is just a stranger in the street? I still

am skeptical about that. I don't think any of these techniques could work on someone who's truly resistant. And that's the problem with pickup artistry overall. I mean, I wonder if the real

“secret of pickup artistry is simply empowering a bunch of men who are insecure. Like these”

guys who have been rejected a million times and they're afraid of women and shy. And Ross

Jeffery's basically tells them he's giving them magic hypno powers. So when they go out, even if they don't successfully hypnotize women, they probably feel as though they have these secret weapons. And that makes them more confident and that confidence is inherently more attractive. And then on top of that, the pickup artist tell them to just do not stop until you pick up a woman. So it's a number's game. No matter what techniques you use, if you use them on 300 women in a single weekend,

one of them is bound to hit. Exactly. So at the very end of our interview, I asked Ross if speed seduction was just that. Basically, something you believe in so it works, a placebo effect, or maybe there's more to it. Is it possible to use NLP to manipulate people? Define manipulation. To make them do something that they wouldn't otherwise do. I had a mentor. I don't care to mention his name. And I said, "Hey, can you use hypnosis to make people do things against their will?" He gave me

very interesting answers. So he said, "Well, technically no, but in fact, in reality, and actuality, most people don't have a will." I said, "What do you mean by that?" He said, "Most people just have wishes that fit in and out their mind, conflicting desires, but will, an actual focused, strong, intent, and desire. They don't have that." So if you're talking about getting people to do things against their will, most people don't have a will. If you're talking about manipulation,

let's unpack what we mean by that, because let's be clear in our terms.

“Manipulation, if you want to call it that, if you want to use the term, just means skillful means”

of creating change. For example, I had a surgery. The scars are very small. Recently, to fix a double hernia. That surgeon was extraordinarily good at manipulating the robot. The robot actually does the surgery. He is very good at it. I had a very short recovery time. So that's a form of manipulation. If by manipulation you mean, taking someone at a certain state of consciousness and then moving them to another one in a way

that doesn't harm that in fact serves them. For Ross, there's a difference between destructive forms of manipulation, like knowingly selling someone a car that's going to explode or praying on their deepest darkest weaknesses and the supposedly neutral, harmless approaches to changing someone's state of mind. See, you can look at what I do, whether it sales or seduction is getting ideas and past the person's conscious mind into their unconscious. But you can also look at it,

is expanding their consciousness to include new ideas, new perspectives that they otherwise would not have had from their autopilot. What really jumps out at me here, Alice, is the idea

that people don't have a will. When he first said that, I was like, excuse me, I have a will,

how dare you suggest otherwise. But I actually got it. We like to think of ourselves as these

“super rational singular beings, but that's just not true. And that's why covert hypnosis could”

work. Some targets unconsciously want it to work. That's why stage hypnosis works. When people are walking on all fours and barking like a dog and pretending to be a poodle, well, it's actually kind of fun and liberating. We're full of conflicting desires. And maybe if you do persuade someone to sleep with you, it's not about overriding their will. It's about appealing to one of their many contradictory selves. And you know what, Zoe? I also think that's weirdly why people seek

out workshops on pick-up artistry, or any form of self-help. We're unsatisfied with a kind of like

Jeffries, or even Tony Robbins, or Richard Bandler, and NLP capitalize on that. They tell followers

that can fix all their internal conflicts and make them whole. And most groups also promote the idea that they're going to give you more agency and power in that process. Right, but what's really scary is that once you start to depend on a guru to provide your sense of power, that person can take it away. So once you've sort of taken that step, then it means, actually, I don't know what's best for me,

“and you do know it's best for me. That's how it can become so scary. Like, if someone had said to me”

that in 12 years, I was going to be branded with the leaders' initials, I would have clearly

given them the finger and ran up the door. What nexium, a notorious cult whose leader was convicted of sex trafficking, stole from NLP. That's next time on mine games. Mind games is a kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series is created and hosted by me, Alice Hines, and Zoey Liscos. It's produced by writer, Alsop, and Dara Lookpots, edited by Kate Osborn, editorial consulting from Adiza Egan, original composition and mixing

“by Steve Bohn, fact checking by A.M. and Wailin. From kaleidoscope, our executive producers are”

Oswo Lotion, Mangesh Hatika Dore, and Kate Osborn. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norville, and Nikki E. Thor. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. Listen to burden of guilt season two on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist,

and one of the most authentic voices in music today. The guy that says he's always going to be there

and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread the conversation with my son. Listen to on-purpose, Jay Shetty, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt the case of Lucy Letby. We unpack the story

“of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story?”

That has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture of the case, collapse. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my god, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt the case of Lucy Letby, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security. One of the most mysterious intelligence agencies

in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.