Jon is a leading expert on authoritarian cult groups as well as a best-selling author. He has worked with hundreds of former members and has lectured and written extensively in a career spanning four decades.

Jon wrote Scientology: The Cult of Greed as a simple introduction to the subject. His influential book Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky is the only comprehensive history of this bizarre group. He has published two novels, Voodoo Child (slight return) and Halcyon Daze as well as a translation of Lao Tze’s Tao Te Ching. In his spare time, he hybridises tomatoes, plays drums and paints.

‘If you want to make your body stronger, go to a gym. If you want to make your mind stronger, pay close attention to what this book tells you.‘
– Alan Scheflin, praise for Opening Our Minds

According to Professor Stephen Kent, Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, ‘initiated the era of modern scholarship on Scientology.’ Professor Emeritus Alan Scheflin, in the introduction to Opening Our Minds, said, ‘If you want to make your body stronger, go to a gym. If you want to make your mind stronger, pay close attention to what this book tells you.’

Through his popular YouTube channel and podcast, he endeavours to make complex psychological ideas accessible. His scholarship has been supported by many academics from varying fields of study.

Jon’s book Opening Our Minds shows how cultic behaviours are established throughout society and sheds light on the methods used in pseudo-religions, therapy and commercial cults, terrorism, gangs, grooming, hazing and modern slavery. He also shows that these methods succeed because of failures in our education system.

Support Jon’s Work on Patreon

Please consider donating to help create new content and cover costs.

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Jon Atack Family & Friends Podcast

Subscribe to Jon Atack Family & Friends YouTube channel for more than 400 fascinating longform conversations with experts and former members discussing how to spot, avoid, and overcome exploitative persuasion of all kinds. The channel also features Yuval Laor, Ph.D.’s groundbreaking work on belief, awe, and fervor, and interviews with many experts on authoritarian cults.

You can also subscribe to Jon’s podcast to listen to these conversations on all major podcasting platforms.

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For a more personal view, check out Lyrical Whacks, wherein Jon and his lovely wife discuss their shared love of music, poetry, art and good books in addition to reading some of their own work.

Opening Our Minds:

avoiding abusive relationships and authoritarian groups

Every abusive relationship, every destructive group, every dangerous government has a human predator at its heart.

Predators rely on persuasion. Honest persuasion lets us know all the facts – and differing opinions about those facts. It allows us enough time and privacy to consider these facts and opinions.

Predators persuade by controlling information, and hiding important facts and differing opinions. This is manipulation. To ‘manipulate’ means to manage or influence skilfully, especially unfairly. Facts are hidden or distorted, and we are rushed into decisions that take away our own authority and harm our interests.

Predators cause upset, conflict, corruption and devastation. By seeing through their methods, we can take power away from human predators and have a much better chance to overcome the problems they cause in our personal and group relationships.

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Critical acclaim for Opening Our Minds

‘Jon has written a classic. He uses storytelling effectively to bring the book to life. Opening Our Minds orients the reader and provides an understandable framework for how our minds work, and how intelligent and functional people can become victims of undue influence … Hopefully, this book will be translated in all languages and it will serve as a foundation to create global awareness about how humans can be deceived, manipulated, and enslaved so we can protect human rights everywhere.‘
~ Steven Hassan, PhD, director of Freedom of Mind and author of Combating Cult Mind Control, Freedom of Mind and The Cult of Trump.

‘If you want to make your body stronger, go to a gym. If you want to make your mind stronger, pay close attention to what this book tells you.‘
~ Alan Scheflin, professor emeritus of law

‘Opening Our Minds shines a laser beam into every key bit of
research on manipulating the human mind and surgically extracts the
kernel in each. This has created a book of immense breadth and depth
without the lumbering weight of an academic tome … If there were a
required reading list for maintaining one’s critical thinking in the over-
information age, Opening Our Minds would be at the top.’
~ Ira Chaleff,
author Courageous Followership, and Intelligent Disobedience.

‘Jon Atack’s book Opening Our Minds is exactly what I expected: an
interesting, important and incredibly helpful book. The work perfectly
illustrates Jon’s brilliance, learning, wisdom and compassion.’
~ James A. Beverley, Research Professor, Tyndale University, Toronto, Ontario.

‘Jon Atack gives us clear insights and precision tools for protecting
ourselves and our society from … exploitative techniques … This book has
been on my “must-read” booklist for members, ex-members, and their
families since it was first published.’
~ Christian Szurko, DialogCentre UK.