Go and watch a tape of a so-called charismatic cult leader and the charisma everyone swears is there simply isn’t on it—just an odd bloke with a staring problem. So where does it come from? Not the leader. The followers confer it, and the leader is only ever an emblem they gather around. Which is why the cult runs itself when he’s a continent away, and why Musk stayed an icon no matter how many promises he broke.

• Successful prophets — the article this lecture grew from
• You Can Catch Madness — the previous lecture, on shared madness
• Mundane cults
• The charismatic leader (Weber)
• Cult charisma as social recognition, not a leader trait
• Charisma as representation
• Education is entertainment — the Musk write-up
• Social identity theory
• When culture trumps evidence
• Everything is ideology
• The loneliness epidemic

• Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate — the 1997 video and contemporary coverage
• Teal Swan — a recent video and the Gateway podcast coverage
• Joe Navarro, “Dangerous Cult Leaders” (Psychology Today, 2012)
• Robert Hare, the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R)
• Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie
• Meindl, Ehrlich & Dukerich, “The Romance of Leadership”
• Haslam, Reicher & Platow, The New Psychology of Leadership
• Max Weber, on charismatic authority
• Xavier Marquez, on charisma as representation
• Festinger, Riecken & Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (and a critique of the study)
• Janja Lalich, Bounded Choice — self-sealing systems
• Eastern Lightning