The 12 Best Nxivm Podcasts (2026)

Escaping NXIVM is the podcast that set the standard for NXIVM coverage. Produced by CBC, it follows Sarah Edmondson’s journey out of the organization through 12 episodes of investigative reporting by documentarian Josh Bloch, who happens to be Edmondson’s childhood friend. That personal connection gives the whole thing a texture you rarely get in true crime audio. Sarah’s testimony carries the show. There are long stretches where it is just her voice, recounting her years inside the group, the branding ceremony, and the slow realization that something was deeply wrong. The production is deliberately spare, almost minimalist, which makes her words hit harder. You forget you are listening to a podcast and start feeling like you are sitting across from someone at a kitchen table as they tell you the worst thing that ever happened to them. The series earned a 4.7 rating from over 600 Apple Podcasts reviewers, and it deserves every bit of that. Episodes range from about 20 to 55 minutes, with the bonus episodes filling in details the main arc could not cover. If you only listen to one NXIVM podcast, this is the one. It is focused, personal, and does not waste your time with filler. The reporting is careful without being dry. Sarah and Nippy Ames became the public faces of the NXIVM whistleblower movement, and hearing the story in their own words, before any documentary crew showed up, remains essential listening for anyone trying to understand what actually happened in Albany.

Uncover is CBC’s flagship investigative true crime series, and its NXIVM coverage is some of the best audio journalism about the case that exists. The show runs multiple seasons on different topics, but two of them are essential for NXIVM listeners. The original Escaping NXIVM season laid groundwork that later became its own standalone feed, and more recently, Season 35 brought Allison After NXIVM, a seven-episode deep look at Allison Mack’s story from TV star to federal prisoner and what came next. That season is hosted by Natalie Robehmed and produced by Vanessa Grigoriadis of Campside Media, and it features the first on-the-record interview Mack gave after her release. The show has accumulated over 10,000 ratings on Apple Podcasts with a 4.5 average across all its seasons. Each season operates like a standalone documentary, so you do not need to listen to the full 305 episodes to get the NXIVM content. The production values are consistently high, with CBC pouring real resources into the reporting. What makes the Allison Mack season particularly compelling is its willingness to sit with the uncomfortable question of whether she was a victim, a villain, or something in between, rather than handing you an easy answer. The narrative pacing is deliberate and measured. It trusts you to think.

Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames fell in love inside NXIVM. They also helped blow the whole thing apart. Their podcast A Little Bit Culty takes that lived experience and turns it into a weekly interview show about high-control groups, manipulation, and recovery. With over 300 episodes and nearly 2,800 ratings (4.6 stars) on Apple Podcasts, they have built something bigger than their own story. The format is conversational and long-form, usually running well over an hour per guest. Sarah and Nippy bring in survivors from all kinds of groups, from religious sects to abusive workplaces to spiritual communities, and give them real room to talk. The best episodes are the ones where a guest starts out nervous and then slowly opens up because the hosts clearly get it. They have been through it themselves. That changes the dynamic in ways a journalist host just cannot replicate. You will recognize both of them from HBO’s The Vow documentary, but the podcast lets them go much deeper. They release two episodes a week and have covered everything from Landmark Forum to Christian fundamentalism. Their stated mission is helping people understand, heal from, and avoid abusive situations one little red flag at a time, and they take that seriously. The show can feel a bit unstructured at times, but that looseness is also what makes guests comfortable enough to share things they might not say elsewhere.

Infamous: NXIVM’s Inner Circle comes at the story from an angle nobody else had. Journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis was granted access to NXIVM’s inner circle members, including Seagram’s heir Clare Bronfman and Smallville actor Allison Mack, while the organization was actively trying to reshape its public image. That access became the backbone of this six-episode investigative series from Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. The result is a show where you hear from people who were still inside, still defending the group, which creates this fascinating tension as the legal walls close in around them. Episodes run 27 to 38 minutes, making it a tight, bingeable listen you can finish in a single afternoon. The writing and narration are strong, with Grigoriadis bringing real journalistic chops to the material. Some listeners have noted that audio quality gets rough in spots, particularly during what sound like secretly recorded conversations, but that rawness also adds to the feeling that you are hearing something you were not supposed to hear. It carries a 4.7 rating on Apple Podcasts, though with a smaller review pool of about 25 ratings. If you have already heard the survivor perspective from Escaping NXIVM, this gives you the other side of the story: the people who stayed, the people who believed, and the moment that belief started to crack.

The Times Union newspaper in Albany covered NXIVM longer and harder than almost any other outlet, and NXIVM on Trial is their podcast version of that reporting. Editor Casey Seiler, reporter Robert Gavin, and producer Jessica Marshall discuss the legal proceedings, trial developments, and behind-the-scenes details across 32 episodes. This is the show for people who want the nuts and bolts of the federal case: the extortion charges, the sex trafficking allegations, the courtroom testimony. The hosts bring a local reporter’s familiarity with the upstate New York scene where NXIVM operated, which gives them context that national outlets missed. They also provided running commentary on HBO’s The Vow documentary, fact-checking it against their own years of reporting. The podcast has a 4.2 rating from over 300 reviewers on Apple Podcasts. Fair warning: the audio quality is a recurring complaint in listener reviews, with remote interview segments sometimes sounding tinny and hard to follow. A few reviewers also felt the hosts took too lighthearted a tone for subject matter this serious. But if you can get past the production issues, the actual journalism underneath is solid. These reporters were covering Keith Raniere before most people had ever heard the name NXIVM, and that institutional knowledge shows in every episode.

Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth both spent time in cultic groups, and that personal history makes Trust Me one of the most empathetic cult podcasts around. They interview survivors from organizations like NXIVM, Heaven’s Gate, the Manson Family, and OneTaste, balancing serious subject matter with dark humor in a way that never feels disrespectful. The show publishes weekly on Wednesdays and has built up nearly 250 episodes with a 4.5 star rating from over 2,300 reviewers on Apple Podcasts. What sets it apart is how the hosts handle their guests. Former cult members often come on other shows and feel like they are being treated as curiosities or spectacle. Lola and Meagan treat them like people, because they have been in similar situations themselves. The NXIVM episodes are particularly strong, but this is also a good show to keep listening to after those episodes end, because it expands your understanding of how coercive control works across many different settings. The Exactly Right network and iHeartPodcasts distribute the show, so production quality is consistent. Episodes typically run around an hour and feature a single guest going deep on their experience. If you are coming to this category because NXIVM grabbed your attention and you want to understand the broader patterns of cult manipulation, Trust Me is the natural next step.

Tyler Measom and Liz Iacuzzi host Was I In A Cult?, a documentary-style interview show that covers everything from intensely dark cult experiences to stories that land closer to huh, that was weird. That range is part of the appeal. Not every high-control group looks like NXIVM, and this show explores the full spectrum. They have featured NXIVM survivors alongside people who escaped Scientology, polygamist groups, abusive yoga organizations, and even David Archuleta talking about Mormonism. The show has 141 episodes with a 4.5 star rating from over 3,200 reviewers, which is a strong audience for a niche topic. The hosts describe their approach as using levity and info-tainment to humanize cult survivor stories, and reviews consistently praise them for holding space without making it about themselves. Each episode focuses on a single guest’s experience, and the pacing gives people room to tell their stories without being rushed. It is categorized under Comedy on Apple Podcasts, which might throw you off, but the humor is there to make deeply difficult conversations a little more manageable, not to make light of anyone’s pain. If you want NXIVM-specific content, search their back catalog for those episodes. But stick around, because the broader catalog gives you important context for understanding why intelligent, capable people end up in groups like NXIVM in the first place.

Sarah Steel’s Let’s Talk About Sects is an award-winning podcast that has been quietly producing some of the best cult-related audio content since 2017. Each episode focuses on a different high-control group, examining leadership structures, recruitment tactics, and the psychological dynamics that keep people trapped. The show has earned a 4.7 rating from over 450 Apple Podcasts reviewers, and critics consistently use words like meticulously researched and ethically produced to describe it. Steel’s approach is measured and academic without being cold. She combines survivor interviews with structural analysis of how these groups operate. Her NXIVM coverage benefits from this framework because she does not just tell you what happened, she explains the mechanisms behind it. The show runs 108 episodes and publishes monthly, which means each installment gets real research time. That slower pace pays off in depth. If you have burned through the major NXIVM-specific series and want something that connects the dots between NXIVM and other manipulative organizations around the world, this is your show. Steel also released a book called Do As I Say that extends the podcast’s analysis into print. The production is clean, the sourcing is transparent, and the episodes avoid the exploitative dramatization that plagues a lot of cult-related content. It respects both the subject matter and its audience.

Cults from Parcast (now Spotify Studios) is one of the biggest cult-focused podcasts in existence, with over 320 episodes and more than 12,600 ratings on Apple Podcasts at 4.5 stars. Hosts Greg Polcyn and Vanessa Richardson take a narrative-driven approach, walking through the history of various cults in multi-part episode series that cover the group’s origins, rise, and eventual fall. The show handles everything from Jonestown to the Unification Church, Waco to Heaven’s Gate, and its structured format makes it easy to pick the topics that interest you without needing to start from episode one. The production follows Parcast’s reliable formula: scripted narration, clean audio, and a consistent episode structure that alternates between the psychology of the leaders and the experiences of the followers. That formula is both the show’s strength and its limitation. Some listeners find the delivery style a bit rigid, with reviews occasionally mentioning that the hosts sound too scripted. But the research is thorough, and the multi-episode deep dives on individual groups are genuinely educational. For NXIVM listeners, the value here is context. Understanding how NXIVM fits into the broader history of cult movements makes the specific NXIVM story land differently. And at over 300 episodes, there is plenty of material to keep you busy.

Spencer Henry’s Cult Liter has a remarkable 4.9 star rating from over 5,000 Apple Podcasts reviewers, which puts it in rare company. The show covers cults, crime, and televangelists with a personality-driven style that keeps nearly 600 episodes consistently engaging. Spencer does his homework. The research is detailed and the storytelling is confident, but what listeners keep coming back for is his delivery. He brings genuine enthusiasm to dark subject matter without being flippant about it. The show publishes twice a week, with main episodes typically dropping on Tuesdays. Each one runs about an hour, and Spencer often tackles multi-part stories that let him really get into the details. His NXIVM coverage sits alongside episodes on everything from small-town cult leaders to nationally known con artists. The Morbid Network partnership gives the show solid distribution, and there are video versions on YouTube if you prefer watching. Listener reviews consistently highlight two things: the quality of the research and Spencer’s ability to make you feel like a friend is telling you about something wild he just learned. That combination of rigor and personality is hard to pull off, and it is probably why the ratings are so high. If you like your cult coverage with some character and a lot of substance, this is a strong pick.

Robert Evans hosts Behind the Bastards, one of the most popular history-meets-true-crime podcasts running, with over 1,100 episodes and more than 15,000 ratings (4.4 stars) on Apple Podcasts. The show profiles the worst people in history and the systems that enabled them, and Keith Raniere has gotten the treatment. Evans brings in guest experts and comedians for each episode, creating a format that mixes serious historical research with genuine humor. The Keith Raniere and NXIVM episodes are worth searching out specifically. Evans’s reporting style is thorough, pulling from court documents, news archives, and academic sources, but he delivers it all in a conversational tone with a rotating cast of guests who react in real time. Episodes run anywhere from 50 minutes to over three hours depending on the topic. The show has been running since 2018 and streams on Apple Podcasts, Netflix, and YouTube. It is not exclusively about cults, and that is actually an advantage for the NXIVM episodes, because Evans places Raniere in the broader context of manipulative leaders and power structures rather than treating him as an isolated case. If you want to understand how someone like Raniere compares to other figures who exploited people’s trust, this show draws those connections clearly. The production is solid through Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts.

Shelise Ann Sola hosts Cults to Consciousness as a former devout Mormon and childhood sexual abuse survivor, bringing firsthand understanding of high-control environments to every conversation. The show features nearly 400 episodes of interviews with survivors who left coercive groups and people, maintaining a clear stance: anti-abuse, not anti-religious. That distinction matters, because it keeps the door open for guests who might feel defensive about their backgrounds while still holding abusive systems accountable. The podcast has earned a 4.9 star rating from nearly 500 Apple Podcasts reviewers. Shelise’s interviewing style is warm and patient, creating a space where guests share things they might hold back in a more confrontational setting. Recent episodes have featured Warren Jeffs’s son Jaden Jeffs, Olivia Plath from TLC’s Welcome to Plathville, and survivors from Amish, Mennonite, and polygamist communities. The show publishes weekly and episodes run long, often over an hour, which gives guests room to tell their full stories. Her husband Jonathan Rosales co-produces. For NXIVM listeners specifically, the value is understanding how the manipulation tactics NXIVM used mirror patterns across dozens of other groups. Once you hear enough of these stories, you start recognizing the playbook. Shelise makes those connections without ever reducing someone’s personal experience to a talking point.