Was I In A Cult? - Boys Christian League: "Training Boys for God's Army"

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Michelle Dowd was born into a cult that was literally training boys to fight in God’s army when the apocalypse came.It started in sunny Pasadena, California when her grandfather - a former Boy Scout leader - decided the Scouts weren’t strict enough and built his own organization. Boys were recruited young, drilled like soldiers, and raised to believe they were preparing for the end of the world.Michelle grew up inside the group known as “The Field,” running miles before breakfast, enduring military-style obedience drills, selling candy to fund the movement, and eventually living for years on a remote mountain with basically no formal education.What eventually happened is almost unbelievable: a secret college application, a full scholarship, and a cult survivor with no formal education… to becoming a professor teaching critical thinking.Michelle Dowd is now a writer and the author of Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult._____________________________________MICHELLE DOWD LINKS → Instagram @michelledowdz | Subscribe to Michelle's FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTERListen to Michelle's book "Forager" on SPOTIFY FOR FREEPick up a copy of Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult"Michelle’s NYT Modern Love essay: “Love in a Time of Low Expectations”***Tyler’s mascot book mention: Where Are the Fighting Giraffes? by David WinderFOLLOW US For more culty content - follow us on Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacultSUPPORT THE SHOWJoin our Patreon! Get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and behind-the-scenes conversations. (And our forever gratitude)HAVE A CULTY STORY?Email us → [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. Welcome, everyone, to Was I in a cult? I'm Liz Ayakousy. And I'm Tyler Meesam. It sounds, I feel like I want to do something else. Do something.

Yeah, you know, like, I'm Tyler Meesam and you're not. door. I'm Tyler. I don't know something, just like a tagline. I don't know if that would be considered a tagline, because a tagline comes at the end. Oh, yeah. Just do the Harry Carey. Hey. Hey, everyone. It's Harry Carey. I'm Tyler, me, so. I grew up on Harry Carey. There's not a funnier Harry Carey than Will Ferrell's Harry Carey. We all know that the moon is not made of green cheese. Yes, that's true, Harry.

But what if it were made of barbecue spare ribs? Would you eat it then? What? I know I would. Heck, I'd have seconds. And then polish it off with a tall, cool, budwiser. Yeah, yeah. Would you?

I'm confused. It's a simple question, doctor. Would you eat the moon if it were made of ribs? I don't know how to answer that. It's not rocket science. Just say yes, and we'll move on. I'm Lizzie. There's your wacky intro.

it. What we got today, Liz? What do we have? Tyler, today's episode is basically set in your backyard. It is. It's literally in my backyard. I started a cult. We've been talking about it for a while. It's not doing well, you guys. It's terrible at love bombing. It's not doing well.

No, but this is a cult that was, is, I guess, was in Pasadena. Yes, it was. And I lived in Pasadena for a number of years. I now live in a cute little hamlet of Sierra Madre, which is right next to Pasadena. just east of it. A cute hamlet. Yeah, it means a little town. It is a cute little hamlet.

I'll call it that. But when you were in Pasadena, did you know there was a nearly 100-year-old Doomsday cult operating right there in your neighborhood? I didn't know that. And I looked at where it is, where the field is, where this cult took place.

And right now it's even closer to me. It's just a scant. I could drive there in 10 minutes. Really? In L.A., it means it's really close. You should go. You should go to the field. But no, I did not know there was a cult close by, but I mean, it is Southern California, so I just assumed that that's normal.

Every neighborhood has an in-and-out burger and a cult. If you're lucky. If you're lucky. Well, our guest today, her name is Michelle Dowd. She wrote a book called Forger Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult. And it was her grandfather, a guy named Oric Hampton, who started this cult. in 1929. It was a splinter group of guess what, everyone, the Boy Scouts of America.

Why not? Why not? I guess rubbing two sticks together to earn your fire safety merit badge needed to be amped up just a little bit with some fear of God, maybe some doomsday prepping. Yeah, got to add the end of the world in there.

Are the Boy Scouts a cult, Tyler? Because I bought my Christmas tree from the Scouts this year. I don't think the Boy Scouts are occult. I don't think so either. They were very kind, very kind boys. They followed me all over. Yeah.

They were just like sniffing on my neck. Like, are you ready to buy that one? Would you like to buy that one? Are you ready to buy that one? And I'm like, dude, I promise you when I pick out my tree, I will, you will be my guy? Jerry rig it right up to my car. With your not tying merit badge? They were very sweet.

So yes, Oric Hampton was a scout leader, I guess. And then he took some of those boys from the scouts and then he recruited more boys. and he slowly built a survivalist cult that would last guys nearly a hundred years. In fact, it's still going on. I mean, that's kudos to him. Most things in L.A. don't last more than a season or two. So, and as you may gather, this cult was, well, it was full of kids,

not adults, young boys. Little boys. They were literally training kids to fight in God's army when the apocalypse was to come. Yes, which apparently is any more. minute now. Any second now. We used to joke about that, but maybe it's not a joke anymore. Maybe the joke is on us.

Yes. Ah, ah. Ah. Ah. So our guest today, she was not only born into this group, cult, but her grandfather, like we said, was the leader. And her father was one of the young boys who was pulled in as a kid and never left. And never left.

This cult was called the Boys Christian League for 45 years. years and then apparently took the word Christian out. I don't know. Boys League. Doesn't sound very good. No, no, it doesn't. It sounds like middle school boys would name their after-school Pokemon club. You know, the Boys League. No girls allowed.

Boys League. But for the real Boys League, if you were an inner circler inside, like Michelle, you called it the field, which is how she refers to it in her book. So with that, let's please welcome Michelle Dowell. I'm so excited to have you here. You can just introduce yourself. My name is Michelle Dowd. I was raised in a cult that my grandfather started. My grandfather absolutely said that we were not Christian. Like he separated himself from Christianity, but it is completely born from all of what the Judeo-Christian value system. So what did he quantify it as then? We were chosen of God. I think it was just he didn't like the word Christian because I've been too watered down. To be fair, though, he was. did start the organization as the Boys Christian League. Then he took the word Christian out and changed the name. A rebrand. Cults love a rebrand. So take us back to the beginning of this organization.

My grandfather came from Oklahoma. And apparently 1931 was the first time that the LA Times listed him and his organization as Boys Christian League in the newspaper. So I think it started around 1929 and 1930. And it started with my grandfather having a group of boys that he had taken from the Boy Scout. So he used to be a Boy Scout assistant leader and the Boy Scouts were not rigid enough for his taste. And probably also some of the boys aged out when they turned 18. And so my grandfather took some of his boys who had become men and put together a group where they started going camping and doing a lot of things the boys did. I think was a fairly small organization. But the ideology in the beginning was I want to help the future men of America. Yes, and I do think he really intended to do that. I don't think I've ever covered

any other call like this, but that the recruit is a child. So effective. But nobody became a member who wasn't a child. You had to be a child to become a member. They didn't take on adults. But boys were taken away from, I mean, but their parents let them, but there was a lot of acceptance of that. I think, especially in the 50s and 60s, you wanted your boy to go off and learn new things. And then And there was also, like, people who just wanted their kids to be religious. And it was, like, almost like sending them to a monastery. Like, you wanted your kid to be the chosen one, especially if, you know, if your own life hadn't gone well, you wanted something better for your kid. My grandfather came from Oklahoma.

His mother died when he was fairly young. And then his father died when he was a teenager. So he came to Los Angeles when L.A. was barely anything. You know, it was just sparse and buggy. And he had nothing. And he was uneducated. Orrick also had a brother who died as well, so this man was riddled with trauma. And so he moves to L.A. to go find a half-brother.

And then this half-brother doesn't even take him in. And then there are a whole bunch of question marks in his story. Stuff he never told his family, apparently. Michelle didn't really know how he went from a 15-year-old little kid, new to Los Angeles from Oklahoma, to, well, running a cult. And part of the reason for that is because her grandfather was apparently a pathological life. That'll do it. Yeah, not necessarily a prerequisite for starting a cult, but a good trade to have.

A good trade to have if you're going to run one, guys. So over the years, he created a story about his education. I was raised to believe he had a PhD from Berkeley and some postdoc from Stanford. And it's funny because after this book came out, lots and lots of former members of the field, they have told me so many stories my grandfather would tell about how he swam from. the beach over here to Catalina, that he was a long-distance swimmer, that he had acted in silent films under different names. He was good friends with Disney, but I have no evidence that any of it's true. And it was an incredible mind trick on me to think all these things were true when I was a kid,

and then to ask my family, and they swore it was all true, even though it was absurd. There's no way anyone could have done those things. I think he puffed himself up to survive. He was certainly intelligent. He probably didn't have passed an eighth grade education, but I say this only to say that in that era there were a lot of people who were very uneducated. My guess is my grandfather couldn't get jobs because he was probably

mentally ill. I would guess, bipolar we can't really diagnose someone after the fact, but there seems to be a lot of evidence and many people told me that they think he was bipolar because he just, he was so mercurial and he had to have these illusions of grander clearly. He believed he was a prophet. He was going to live to 500 years old.

So in the 30s, he probably mostly took rag tag groups of boys and he didn't get married until he was 30. So he was a single man. Now, I will go on record as saying, I believe he was gay. He certainly never came out as gay, but that would have been absolutely unheard of in those days. It would be a really difficult time to be gay because what you're supposed to do other than join the Catholic Church, right? Was he religious? I think he probably was religious growing up because when he came here, he got involved in a church right away and then he broke from the church. And then he married my grandmother who was a church pianist.

And my grandmother earned all the money through her music. She taught piano to everyone. She performed professionally and she cooked for everyone. I mean, she did everything. And she had five children and the patriarch got to just run around and go camping or around you did. So my grandmother came from Kansas. She was a Quaker.

She was a good girl who was very religious. And she met a man who said, if you come with me, we will run a church and we will do good work in the world. She did not have a good life. She just seems so sad and miserable. But of course, how would you feel if you were married to him? He was very mean to her. It was really mean to her. It felt like he was always kicking a dog. It was awful to watch. What age would you say when he started in the actual Boy Scouts? Oh, probably 18 or 19. And that's where he got a lot of his training and he did get some camp training. Although, my understanding as they started doing camping, that kind of thing,

probably in the Thursday. I mean, they had to go through the depression. And I, and I I think in the 40s, it really started being a sports organization. And I would say that started probably around 1945, probably right after the war. All these kids were being born. My grandfather ran an after school program, and he would play at the schools. And then they started doing traveling baseball. And they would travel over the United States. He found a lot of misfits.

He would find boys who didn't have a future. They had no social capital. And he would take them on. And I feel like my own father was very much one of those boys. My father, he joined at age 12. This is just a random orphan kid almost. His father was abusive and alcoholic. He was an only child.

He has a single mom who works in a factory and has eighth grade education, no money. And they lived in Connecticut. And she just got him up in the middle of the night, put him on a bus. Didn't even tell him what he was doing so she could leave her abusive husband. And he ended up in California and he didn't even know where he was going. And then, but he spent all his time with a grandfather. Which I think it's confusing when I keep saying these things. but my father's name is Michael.

My grandfather's name is Oric. And so it would have been, again, later, his father-in-law, but at this point, just a random dude. So it was an after-school program, and everyone who's there just deeply committed to being part of the program every day after school, and then they would have church in my grandfather's house. My father wasn't raised in a religious household.

He was Irish. He had a mom who was young and also incredibly hardworking. And, I mean, to the end of her life, she worked cleaning motels. Like she never worked above minimum wage her whole life. And so she's just trying to keep her son fed. And she's glad that this man at the school is playing sports with her son. And then after he turned 18, after he graduated from high school,

she wanted him to go to college and do things and become a man. And he said, I have to follow this leader. And she kicked him out of the house because she said, you can't live with me if you're just going to follow this leader. She didn't like him at all. And my grandfather said, follow me. You know, be fisher of men. you got to leave your mom behind.

The way this cult work when you're 18, kind of like Boy Scouts is like you can't be there unless you're going to be a leader. They got leadership training and then they had to sign leadership for life forms. It was a lifetime commitment. Otherwise you couldn't stay. They kicked you out. Can I say something about quince real quick, Tyler? I'm allowing this.

Yes. Well, you know, I love quince. But I just got a new order. I'm in a whole thing about it. You're always in a whole thing. Yeah, because I love quince. I love quince. I just got their sweats.

Okay. These are like high quality sweats. I don't think I've ever owned sweats this nice before because I never was willing to spend like $150 on a sweatshirt, which I didn't with Quince, but it's Supremo. I've basically been wearing them. They're so soft. Yeah. That's basically all you've been wearing. And people are noticing.

People are noticing. It's okay. But yeah, it's okay. You can talk about it. I feel like every time you get a Quince order, you go through this enamored process. Because it keeps happening. And they've been a sponsor for a while now. So it's not like I'm in the honeymoon phase anymore.

This is now a real relationship. Yeah. You know, what we learned is that we just were told that Quince is our number one sponsor. So thank you, Quince. And also thank you everyone who bought something with Quince because they get it. They get it. Our people get it, you know? And as you guys know, their stuff genuinely holds up because it is quality.

Did I tell you about the running shorts I got? I did. Did we mention that? No. I got running shorts. I went to the store. When you needed some running shorts, went to the store. They were like $65 or something for running shorts.

Got online, running shorts were still like $50. And then I was like, does quince, actually? They can't have running shorts. And you know what? They did. They not only had running shorts, they were $39. And they're great. Great drawstring in the front without the thin little flimsy, back pocket, two pockets.

Yeah. Honestly, I'll never go anywhere else for running shorts. No, it's same. I just got underwear from them. Sorry, it's good. It's really good. I was like, I was like, ugh, I don't know. Because I'm very picky with underwear. I'm like a hanky, pinky girl all the day. This is too much information. It is. It's too much. Maybe the underwear is too much.

But Quinn's works with directly with factories. They skip the middleman, which is why you're able to get top quality, good organic cotton, top quality cashmere, European linen without the absurd markup. We got it, Liz. We got it. So right now, go to go to sell. Go to quince.com slash cult. You'll get free shipping and 365 day returns. Yeah, that's a full year. If you guys don't want to return it until March. 2027, if we're still around, you can do that.

You can do it. It's available in Canada as well. A? So do it. Don't settle for clothes. It won't last. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash cult. Q-U-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash cult for

free shipping 365 day returns. Tell them we sent you. We appreciate it. Quince.com slash cold. Go running now, Tyler. Get out of my face. They moved in Pasadena in the early 40s and my mother was born in 42. By that point, he ran the organization entirely in their home. So my mother grew up with all boys in a home coming in and out. My mom didn't want to associate with women because women had a really hard life where we come from. And my mom, basically acted like a man in the sense of she got away with having some authority as the founder's daughter. And it wasn't until the 1950s that they found this old literally a dump. And so they built a church on a dump in the 1950s. And that's when it really became truly secluded,

where you could keep other people away. And they didn't really become super, super culty, I think until in the 1960s they started a school. And then if you did that, you had to be in the leadership academy. You couldn't be there. if you were going to a public high school. So how did the leaders come to be? Grandfather hadn't selected them, but they had to be raised in the program and do everything right year after year, and then they would earn the right. So the girls, it was a very small program,

but if the girls stayed long enough, they could earn the right to marry, and they always married them off to older men. And you couldn't get married there unless you went through Leadership Academy, and nobody got married until 1966. And no one who's gotten married there has ever gotten divorced to this day, not even separations. Like, everyone is still married. You know, it is a commitment for life, for sure, and that you really have to be deep into the call in order to be able to get married and have your children be born there.

So it's a, it's a privilege. And so a lot of these men had a really difficult time later finding partners because they went through so long being taught that the end of the world was coming. So the end of the world was going to be one. Originally it was going to be in 1977. But the thing is, the world was going to end and then there was going to be the reign of terror that we were going to be. So we would still be on the earth for a while. And that didn't happen. And then my grandfather died in the 80s.

And so they just waited for my grandfather to come back like Jesus in the air. And so at some point, they stopped talking about. And then they're just like, we don't know when this is going to happen. But the trumpet is going to sound. And we're all going to be called to different things. And some people will be left behind. And there was just a lot of language around that. It's obvious why people use doomsday as a tactic.

because if the world's going to end on a date, then you don't need to live your life. You don't need to get educated. You don't need money? What a great tactic. What a great reliever of any responsibility ever. You know, my mom was 24. She wasn't married yet, and they wouldn't let her date.

And that wasn't old maid in the 60s. And finally her mother, Ruth, said, husband, we have to let her daughter get married. And so he ended up letting her get married to his top guy, who was my father. And they got married in 1966. And then I think my mom really admired him. And I think she was happy to be able to get married.

I don't think she wanted children, but you really had no choice at that point. This is the first time families are started in the late 60s. And that's when the other leaders are then allowed to marry. And then the babies were born. And we were all raised together collectively at the beginning. Well, I was born at the end of 68. My father was on one of the trips. He drove the bus around the United States.

and he didn't come back when I was born. I was born and my mom didn't breastfeed or do anything. She didn't breastfeed any of her kids, but she was adamantly against bonding. She didn't believe in attachment. She thought that would keep you from God. She handed me over to this group. We were just rotated to different houses

and there were probably caregivers, 10 different people a day maybe, like, you know, wherever. We would go on these long trips across the United States. We were just traipsed around in the bus at the back and people would pass us around or whatever they would do. And so we were just raised by whomever. And my mom believed that if she gave her children to this organization, to this collective, that God would take care of it. And she was taking care of other people's kids.

And she was asking those parents to give up their kids. And so she felt she had to give up her kids. And what was your grandfather's justification for this separation? Jesus said you're supposed to leave your mother and your father and follow me and I will make you fishers of men. So he felt that everyone had to leave their parents and cleave unto your family, you have to cleave and God. And so the bigger family was, you know, and siblings, we were kept separate. And my younger sister and I were talking about how we knew we were siblings. And later when we were teenagers, especially the two of us, we would spend time trying to be together and they would try to keep us apart.

We would just be sent to different homes in the organization. And we weren't supposed to talk to each other because we were supposed to be part of the family that we were living with. And so being born there, I started being doctored at such a young age that by the time I was eight, I was already like thoroughly. indoctrinated. Like, I was raised to be in the army of God. We were raised to believe that this place, the field, was God's chosen people and that if God called you to stay, then you had to stay or you would spend eternal damnation in hell. And why the field? Well, we all called it the field from the inside, but it's, that was never the official name. So paint us the picture of like what the community looks like. Okay, so there was a dump in the middle, and there were houses around the

dump. My grandfather had this office that was like on like stilts almost like this floating thing. And we did not live right around it because we didn't have any money coming in from anywhere. So nobody was donating to our particular nuclear family. Was there financial commitment? You had to give everything there. So anybody who had money probably would give it, but he didn't really market to a lot of wealthy people because I think they would have figured out what was going on. My understanding at the beginning, they really were playing sports and then he would have them line the field or go out and sell. So there was always selling of candy, selling of raffle tickets. And that was still going on when I was a teenager that we would sell.

I was selling since I was a little kid, always selling on street corners. But usually the leader is not poor. My grandfather had a lot more than we did, but he kept his own daughter poor, which is interesting, and his grandchildren. And so later, we would go over and get food from my grandparents' house, and we'd steal it. And we were just pretty destitute, and that's how we ended up on a mountain. P.S., this is not a metaphor, like up a creek or between.

between a rock and a hard place. When she says, we ended up on a mountain, that's a real mountain. They moved to the mountains. It was seven, I was turning eight. We lived on the mountain, and it was just our nuclear family who got moved there

because we had nowhere to live. We got kicked out of where we were living, and we were on one of those trips, and everything we owned was in a camper, and it burned up. And we had a dog in there, and the dog burned up. And then my grandfather sent us,

his daughter's husband and her four kids, up to this mountain that he had leased in the 1940, for the Boys Christian League to have, it was only 16 acres, but it was bordered by 700,000 acres of national forest in the Angeles National Forest, right? So they used that as that kind of retreat center, retreat's probably the wrong word, but like a spiritual building block, and people would come up there to do that. So we moved up there, and we didn't have any really way to talk to people, and we lived on that mountain as a home. And this wasn't just a weekend mountain stay. She was there for

10 years, 10 years living on a freaking mountain, foraging for food, using an outhouse. Now, we still went on those trips, and I still went to the hospital, but that was the only thing I had. But, you know, a lot of times my siblings weren't even there, and when my dad was gone, like, he would take the kids down to work for grandpa or whatever. So how did you entertain yourself as a kid? Oh, we worked all the time, like especially in our family. we were always put to work. The thing about a cult, or at least being born in one,

is there's no normal day. Like, you know, there's a whole sequence. Like, my father had been drafted, and he served in the Korean War. So he had military training. Every day was a form of boot camp. You would get up and you'd have to run two miles every morning, no matter how out of shape you were,

you had to run two miles. Like, no matter what age, we were, like, I don't know the first time, probably five. But we were raised running. Then my dad, when we lived on the mountain, would blow his whistle, and we had to beat our time all the time. So I was raised doing that.

We had to jump rope, but then we also would clean the buses. Everything had to be perfectly clean, like military training. You had obedience drills. Like, you had to move all the rocks to one side, and then they would tell you to move all the rocks back just to make sure that you did it. And when we lived on the mound, we would chop wood. We'd do all the things. So we did a lot of manual labor. And if you were tired and you wanted to quit, what was the punishment?

My dad would hit you or kick you. But, like, we also learned just not to complain. And while Michelle was mostly alone with her family in this cabin, occasionally, there would be this horde of church members coming up to play war games against Satan. And so the kids would come up for a week at a time. And when I said kids, it was teenagers. And I would be part of that training. And my mom did teach survival training to be in the army of God. When the apocalypse came this and there was like a thousand years of terror rained upon the earth, like presumably if my grandpa was going to be 500, we would also live to be that. And so we would

fight off the devil and his demons. And when the second coming came, there would be some people who would rise and be part of heaven, heaven's army. And we would wear the army of God, the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the sort of truth and all that stuff. So in the early years, they would have gone home to their parents for dinner. And it's not until you get older that my grandfather insisted you go on these trips. You'd be kicked out if you didn't. So by the time you were 13, you had to go on a trip for 10 weeks of indoctrination away from your parents. And you weren't allowed to talk to your parents. There was no phone calls allowed. And so if you didn't agree to do this or your parents wouldn't let you, then you

got pulled out and you wouldn't be part of it anymore. And so they would do the boys trip and an all girl's trip, but we would go on both. Ten weeks. What is happening? I mean, a lot happens. You hear my grandfather talk for two hours every morning. He talked on this like microphone thing and in the bus and you have to listen to him. You read the Bible. You do whatever. And you would just be at different places every night and I never knew what state I was in. You know, it's all over the place. And so you'd get to the campground, you'd put up the tent, you'd go around and like proselytize to all the campers and all the, everyone, and you'd tell them about the play that was going to be that night, and you would tell them about God.

And then we sold things in order to pay for things. And also, we took donations every night in the campgrounds. We solicited money everywhere. And then we would put up the set, which sometimes would take two or three hours, and then we would perform the play, and then we would clean up from all that. And then we would take one-minute showers in the campgrounds. Those were all time. You had to rapidly.

Of course, how are you going to get everybody through all that? And then you would have time to sleep. You'd get up and you'd run. You weren't allowed to go to the bathroom during the night. You couldn't get up to use the bathroom. You had to run before you used the bathroom. Yeah, do all the time. And then we went selling all the time.

Like, we would sell every day for money for the organization. And then later, by the time I was 12, I started working on what they had was like a day camp where they would charge parents to drop off their kids during the summer. So you were never a kid. I really feel like I was never a kid. I can't even remember. At any time, I would have considered myself a child. I certainly was grown up by the time I was seven.

So you weren't getting school? I went to normal school through second grade. And then they pulled everyone out. And this is the 1970s. And so at that point, they created a school. It was in like a trailer. And kindergarten through sixth grade would get together and sometimes would play tackle football or would do whatever.

And then sometimes someone would reach us from the Bible or do whatever. Yeah, we were not allowed to have traditional education. I'm really glad. I'm really grateful for the three years that I had public education. It was a huge advantage of my life. Was Anna Colt? This is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, you wise folks, you chose to hit play on this podcast today. That. And guess what? Progressive loves to help people make smart choices, which is why they offer a tool. It's called AutoCode Explorer, allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. Yeah, they're not afraid of the competition, you know what I'm saying? Not afraid. They're like, try me. Try me a bit. So you save time

on the research and you can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Because isn't it a time you took care of you? Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Price is vary on how you buy. where I be your grandfather just energetically, physically. Trump? He was a little over six foot, white guy. Again, my younger sister and I and my brother, too, we all just said we don't have a single good memory of it.

We didn't see the charismatic side. I mean, he must have been charismatic, but we didn't see his charismatic. He seemed to mean to us. Was he physical with you? Yes, he was. But a lot of times we could steer clear. But he was pretty old and we could run fast enough to get away.

But he was physical with other people, too. I mean, a lot of it was just hitting people over the head or kicking them or doing whatever. But he would order other people to be spanked a lot. Boys got spanked even as teenagers, you know, a lot of humiliation type stuff. We weren't allowed to have feelings. You couldn't ever express them. You weren't allowed to have friends. You couldn't be close to anybody.

You weren't allowed to spend any time one-on-one with a member of either sex. That was frattingizing. And like if somebody said something, you had to turn them in for having a bad thought and thoughts were as bad as actions. I never made a friend in my life. Like, I was born with these people. And I was around these boys for 10 years when I started getting boobs or whatever, you know. And it was, we were resented, but then, you know, you sort of become attractive and then, you know, you're desirable, but then also shamed.

And I was definitely shamed a lot because if a boy looks at you with less than his heart is obviously the fault of the girl, you know, for making the boy lest. And so my grandfather liked to cut off girls' hair around puberty, which, you know, he was very authoritarian against women. And my mom always had this really short buzz cut, and my grandfather really just hated every aspect of femininity. And my mom really did too. She really, she bound our breasts, like she wanted us to stay prepubescent, you know, so you really had to closet things. And then my grandfather shamed sex completely. So a lot of these cults, these men are having sex with women, but I have heard some stories about him potentially touching, not underage boys, but leaders. They became men, young adult men who had been raised and groomed from the beginning.

getting, and he certainly did not seem to like girls. He really didn't want them around. I am not letting him off the hook, but I think it would have been so difficult. Tons of gay men obviously got married to women. They all had to get married to women. What else they could they do? And they would be so persecuted. Do you have any good memories of your grandfather?

No. The only reason I can answer so categorically is because my younger sister and I were talking about this, we were trying to come up with one. She can't come up with one single good memory of our entire childhood, but with anyone at any point. As a teenager, there were some moments. Like I had this semi-boyfriend type, but he gave me a walkman and a cassette tape that he had made. And my sister and I used each one in an earpiece and we were listening to this on our grandma's couch because we would just share the couch and sleep there at night. And she had a bunch of dogs and they would pee and poop all over the couch.

We didn't have blankets. We had nothing. And I have a positive memory about that. To me, it was romantic that I got to listen to this music. It was the first pop music I'd ever heard. And that was a very powerful memory for me. So I think I have some moments like that. Having an ally and a boy was really a ticket to freedom for me.

And I obviously had to hide it. But there was some pleasure in that because someone cared about me. And someone cared enough to make me a cassette tape. Now, first off, making a cassette mixtape was, and possibly still is quite simply the best way to have wooed a girl in the 80s. Even if that girl was in a cult. And I understand, because. Because some of my best memories when I was a child was just listening to music.

You know, back when sometimes that's what you did. You just listen to music. You didn't do anything else. You just listen to music. So for Michelle, that was a nice memory. But, of course, we're talking about cult, so it doesn't just stay as good memories. Something would happen that would make for not so many pleasant ones. And I ended up with an autoimmune disease and ended up in the hospital.

And so I went to Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. And I moved in there basically at age 10. So I was there for three and a half years pretty much. I mean, I also lived at my grandparents' house because I couldn't go back home to my parents because they were too far away. And so I would stay at my grandparents and sleep on the couch or there I had a chair that I slept in for a while. And I'd go back and forth to the hospital. So what happened? I had an autoimmune disease called adiopathic thromisidopinia but basically it's of unknown origin.

it's not genetic, and your body attacks itself. And so I ended up having my spleen removed. And then I had some infection issues because I was neglected as a teenager. But I had that done it 13.5. My dad never came ever, not once. So what did your grandfather say about your disease? Well, he said it was because of sin, and that's why God brings sickness. And it was sin inside of me, but probably also inside of somebody in the organization.

What did you do all day long in the hospital? Eventually, I got all the books, yes. Sometimes they'd have a mobile library and somebody would come by with a tray of books and you could choose a couple and they'd just fill out a little card. And then, you know, I read my side of the mountain. I read like, Island of the Blue Dolphins and like, you know, the kinds of things that a hospital would have. Were you allowed to read in the group? No, but nobody was there.

Did you feel bad about it or were you like? Yeah, I felt really bad about it, but you had to do something. And like, I think I became a reader probably around the hospital time. But there was also so much shame. I was so ashamed of my body. I was so ashamed. I was sick. I really thought I was a sinner.

I assumed I was dying because it's what it seemed. Some of my roommates died, like my 10-year-old roommate, Sondra died, and then my 13-year-old roommate, Gail, died. And these are girls that I stayed quite a bit with. And so, yeah, it was really an awful way to spend a childhood. Leading up, what was the symptoms that led you to the hospital? Oh, I didn't tell anybody. I was really sick. I mean, I would complain sometimes about the things I was feeling.

Like I had my whole body hurt all the time. I was bruised everywhere. I had patiki eye, which is basically broken blood vessels. And it was only, it was another mom who saw my body when I was changing at her house who literally took me to the doctor because she was so worried. She thought was going to die. I didn't know what was happening and nobody told me unless the doctors, sometimes the doctors would walk me through like some of what was going on in my body. But I didn't have the language for it. You know, and I didn't understand.

And I got my period in the hospital for the first time, you know, and that was really scary because I didn't know what it was. And it was just like, you know, there was just all this fear for me around everything. And I didn't know how to tell a nurse. I always felt ill. You know, like I thought my whole life was awful. So I didn't even think when I went, I wasn't even complaining. This is just the nature of my life was painful. And when you got out of the hospital, you were better.

It was all. They didn't know if I was going to be better or not. I was better enough to stay on the mountain that summer. My parents left. So I had my surgery in the middle of May. And by the end of May, my parents were out on the road for 10 weeks, and I was 13, so I was just left there for the summer. So this hospital, as awful as it was for Michelle, was also her first real glimpse of the outside world. And maybe the outside world wasn't the evil place that she was raised to believe that it was.

Do you have a memory of questioning any of this as a kid? Yes, internally. And I would sometimes ask questions that they were shot down so quickly that I started doing the research. search on my own, just basically using the King James Bible and trying to do cross-referencing. And since I had some ability to read, I did that. But I just felt like I needed to try something else. I didn't feel like I would stay alive if I stayed. You know, I just couldn't.

And I know I thought I was going to go to help by leaving, but I also didn't have the ability to stay. There was no place for me there. I mean, it was just horrible at that point. Like, I just didn't have the attachment because I had just been so ignored and neglected for so long. It just felt like I needed to try something else. And I didn't ever, you know, my parents never said that I love you. I just couldn't live like that. I couldn't do it to the next generation. I didn't want to have children there. I didn't want to have children at all. I just,

I just felt like I could not. But it's not like I thought I was right and they were wrong. I literally thought I was wrong. I just could not stay. Listen up, campers. It's time to buckle up, pitch a tent and take a hike. This is Camp Counselor's podcast with Zachariah Porter and Jonathan Carson. Consider this podcast. Consider this podcast. your new favorite variety show. Where the badges mean nothing. And the drama means everything. Is this podcast even about camping?

No, but it is camp. We cover everything. I have a theory that a chicken finger is the perfect chaser for a tequila shot. No, because at the end of the day, I was a child actor who fell victim to an audition scam. I'm gonna be vulnerable for a second. Have you ever had to shop in a husky section

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Listen wherever you get your podcast. Lights out campers. Books, books, books. Much like the Walkman and the mixtape, Michelle managed to get her hands on, Books may have saved her life. And look, while I tend to romanticize music, I'll happily do the same for the printed word. because a book,

book is a strange little miracle, ink and paper that can quietly hand you an entirely different world when the one you're living in isn't working out so well. Books remind you that there are other lives, there are other ideas, there are other ways to think and be, and sometimes that is all it takes. One page, one paragraph, one sentence that makes you realize,

well, you don't actually have to live the life someone else planned for you. So, yeah, Listeners, read, read books, read them whenever you can. They might not change your life every time, but every once in a while, they absolutely will. We had nothing. And I was working extra so I could get money so I could figure out how to get out. So I was doing secret house cleaning jobs, and I was squirreling away money that sometimes my dad would find, but my dad was not as mad about it because he would just take it and use it because we didn't have money.

I was working at this house in San Marino, and it was a nice house. And I'd been working there for a long time, and she'd asked me to, like, take care of some catering things. And afterwards, she said, like, I would love to have you just work here for your life. But also, you're really smart. And she gave me an application to college. I filled it out in pencil. I did. And I mailed it secretly.

She told me I needed to do this. And I sent it to Pomona College in Claremont, because she's like, I think you could go to a really good college. I think you're really smart. Go Pomona College, Sagehands. And then they. transferred my application to Pitzer. Go Pitzer Sagehens. They're the same.

So here's the thing about Claremont. Claremont, California is a lovely little town just east of Pasadena. I go there often. It has five different colleges that share a similar infrastructure. The consortium features Pomona, Pitzer, McKenna College, Harvey Mud College, and Scripps College. Pimona and Pitzer, they share a mascot. But McKenna is home of the stags.

Scripps College are the Athenas, which is the Greek goddess of wisdom. and Harvey Mudd College is known as Wally Wart. The Wally Warts? No, a Wart. That's the mascot is Wally Wart. They're the Warts, Wartz. Wartz. Right, the Wally Warts.

Yeah, it's intentionally goofy and kind of on brand for a small engineering school. But Warts isn't even the weirdest mascot. The Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, their mascot is, are you ready for this? Mm-hmm. The Nads. N-A-D-S N-A-S. Like the ball sack? Yeah, Nads.

It's true. And when their teams play, the fans chant, Go-N-N-S, go-N-S. Go-N-N-S. It's true. The basketball team is named the balls. The fencing team is named the pricks. And the mascot costume is called Scrody.

Is that because nobody at RISD plays basketball? I probably. I look, RISD is renown. for being this very quirky, odd school. It's very open and free and progressive and kind of just let the students do what they want and make the art they want. It's really great.

But their mascot, it's basically a guy dressed in a very big pink plush cock and balls. And I'm not even joking. It's like big huge balls by his feet and just a big penis. I hope the RISD nads aren't covered in Harvey's warts. And where do I get these fantastic facts? You ask,

We had a listener who was happy with my stupid little mascot facts, and she sent a book that her brother-in-law, David Winder, wrote. It's called Where Are the Fighting Giraffes? And it's all about mascots. I loved reading it. It was such a pleasure. And since I told everyone to read earlier, the link is in the show notes. No, this book may not change your life, but it's a fun read.

Well, Michelle was contacted by the sagehens of Pitzer. Pitzer gave me a full ride to college and I didn't even apply there. And so I think they were happy to have somebody who was unusual because that college didn't even start until the 1960s. And this is the 1980s. And I think it was still a new place. They wanted to help unconventional learners. And so that was sort of just this really wonderful opportunity. And I didn't feel excited.

I felt like it was really, yeah, I was very terrified. But I also think that that was a great ticket out for me. I moved into the dorms when I was 17, and I did fill out the application in a rather conservative way, so I had a Mormon roommate. We didn't drink and we didn't have boys and we didn't do anything. And I just didn't tell anyone where I came from. I never told anybody anything.

I was very quiet because you need to just serve to see how people live. I was embarrassed all the time with the things I didn't know. I mean, there was just so much. I didn't know any pop culture. School wasn't hard. It was the social. environment that I didn't understand. I mean, I think I was just so keen and I was so mesmerized by knowledge. I wanted to read all the books. I wanted to learn the things I didn't know. I would come after class and say,

how could I get hold of this? Where did you get this information? And I just wanted to learn. So because I'd been doing so much on some level critical thinking to figure things out, like, I mean, for example, I was really good at Shakespeare because I had been reading the King James Bible really thoroughly like my whole life. I also had done a lot of building and I had been doing basic geometry and I had done a lot of writing secretly on my own. And so I developed a little bit of a voice. So I tested out of writing classes. I didn't even take writing in college. I tested out math. There was a professor who became my advisor and she took me under a wing. And she just really helped me see myself as somebody who was capable. And I just, I felt bad about myself all the

time. And she helped me see that there was a world that I could learn. And I had kids, I mean, had kids young. I got married while I was still in college. So who was your husband? How did that happen? I knew him my whole life. He was one of the boys I was selling with him. He was older. And so when I left, and I had had a suicide attempt at some other things, and he knew about it because everyone talked about things. And so he came to my college, my freshman first semester, and to find me and find out what had happened to me. And he said, I need to leave.

And I can't leave unless you marry me. And at that time, I didn't understand like the rest of the world. And so I married him when I was really young. And then we made a life. It was just really hard. I think he needed to get educated, which he did. And I helped him. And he went to Cal Poly Pomona.

And he ended up becoming an elementary school teacher. And we moved to Boulder when I went to grad school. And I started teaching college when I was 21 at University of Colorado Boulder. I got kind of like a writer-in-residence program thing when I was teaching. And we just started having babies because that's, you know, you do. Leaving the cult, were you cast out? It was awful because we were completely ostracized and incriminated and moving to Colorado really helped. You know, there was no social media and stuff, so we didn't, nobody kept track of us. And so I was raising kids and I had the ability to work.

And I didn't even ask permission. I brought my babies into the classroom when I was teaching college. Like, I just strapped them on my body. And like, and then later, like, I would put, like, a blanket with some snacks and little cards. and be like, okay, just don't leave the blanket, but you can see me. You know, and I raised my kids. And so it took a long time to deal with the aftermath. There was a lot of things that came up that didn't really happen until my 30s. Because, you know, I was really good at denying, like, my feelings, obviously, but also denying any needs that my body would have.

When was the first time you said, I love you to somebody or somebody said, I love you to you? Oh, I said it to my kids. I did a lot of research when I had babies. And so I was doing it, but not with other adults. And certainly my siblings still don't say. What about your husband? I'm trying to think of the first time. He never had ever gotten me a gift or said, I love you or anything.

And we just didn't talk about our past. We just tried to refine ourselves. And it wasn't until the kids started getting older that we're just like we don't even know each other really. Like we, you know, we were so used to just playing roles. And it was just really difficult to figure out the things that we, just emotionally, we just were children. But I went through that whole like coming of age thing in my 30s.

And then we separated at that point. And it was painful. But he's a, you know, he's always been, I think, on some level in my corner. I met this man who was younger than me, but he was not an academic. He was mainly a music journalist. And his father had been a pastor. And his father left the faith and became a music professor. And so he taught me a lot about like musical influences.

But I had a lot of training in music, but mostly through hymns. So when I met him, I was in my late 20s. He was in his mid-20s, and he basically gave me CDs that I'd never, you know, had access to. So getting a music education from him was really rich. But we had a really interesting love relationship that did not include my kids. At the time, my husband was just the only man I ever married, but like he said to me, you need to go have a life. You should meet up with this guy.

Like, you should see because there's something happening in you that you're growing and we can't grow. the way we're doing it. And so I wouldn't say that it was an open marriage because we weren't really together anymore, but I put my energy into that. And then I learned what I needed to learn, but he wasn't the right person to help me raise the kids. And I got back together with my husband to whatever degree. But it changed me. It changed me to have somebody know me. First time somebody said, I love you. I don't know. I feel like probably the first person was when I was probably 30 and I had a relationship. My husband and I separated and I fell in love with this guy who lived in Virginia and he ended up coming to California to be with me after we had a long-distance

relationship for three years. And yeah, I remember him telling, I think he said I love you before my husband did. Yeah. What was that like? It was wonderful because he really had done the work to get to know me and he is the very first person I told where I came from or anything. I mean, we knew each other for years and he wanted to do a lot of things. Anyway, he passed away during COVID. But he was just like the first person in my entire life, whoever said they love me, but also I ever felt loved me. How did you deprogram from this mentality? I think we teach what we most need to learn. And I think because I was teaching, I had to teach people to argue. And then I taught philosophy and critical thinking for decades. And I really loved.

learned really deeply what critical thinking is. But yet you weren't able to know what you were in was the cult. No, because I really bifurcated myself. I didn't think about my past. And so when I was in the cult, I wasn't educated. And then when I left the cult, I got educated and stopped thinking about where I came from. I took abnormal psychology. I took tons of psychology courses and I learned about mentally ill people and the kinds of

things. And I didn't study cult specifically except for an abnormal psychology. We absolutely did. We looked at people who are charismatic leaders. and ways that you dominate and like... Are you like, oh, grandpa? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, I knew that's what he was.

I just didn't talk about it out loud. And so learning that in college and graduate school helped me see that all of these methods of control had been utilized before. Do you think that was something positive maybe that came out of this cult? I had a really strong work ethic and I could read a room.

I don't know if that's really good, though, because I wasn't happy during any of it. Like, I did really, really like. of my children in attachment, parenting was something that came naturally to me. And I breastfed my kids for years. Moving there was the whole thing around attachment parenting. And so I had done my research. And I wanted the kids to feel safe. Mom and Dad, how did that end up? My parents, of course, stayed together. And there was a huge sexual abuse scandal at the organization that my mom was not implicated in like she didn't do anything,

but she was in charge so she should ostensibly have known about it. So she was subpoenaed. and so my parents ended up moving out to the desert. And that sort of gave enough space for me to go visit them in the desert. Did you and your mother ever have a... We, I think, to whatever degree, forgiveness, I don't know that I even held it against her to begin with. But I was okay with my mom. I wanted her to love me and she couldn't ever say that. Did she love me?

Probably. She couldn't be proud of me. She could never admit that at least. And she couldn't ever forgive me for leaving. So I think that's why I was so angry at my mom for so long because I felt that she could have and should have done better. And it really wasn't until recently, like in the last five years, that I completely see her as a victim. Think about having to turn yourself against your own children. I mean, that would be a horrible thing to have to do. I hadn't really thought about it from her

point of view because when I had kids, I was like, how could she have done this? This is the most unnatural thing in the world to hand your baby away. But to think that she had been groomed for that since she was born. You could see the sadness that she didn't get to raise her babies. And that made me really sad. And she couldn't talk about it because that would be saying something against her father or whatever. You know, when she was dying, I, and there was a hospital-style bed that hospice had brought in that she'd had for a while. And I was on the bed with her. And I was talking to her and I know that I would say to her, Mama, I know that you did the best that you could. And I'm sorry, you don't get to raise us to. And like, and I just, I felt so much compassion that she had

spent her life having to defend something that she didn't come up with. You know, it wasn't her cult. She was just born there and she didn't know how to leave. What about your dad? No, my niece doesn't forgive me. Sometimes it's frustrating because my dad can't see me as a human even now. And I think I have to let go of that, you know, like it's not my job to punish my dad or to try to teach him something.

I mean, I've tried to tell him what I think, but he doesn't want to hear it. My younger sister and I talk quite a bit. I wouldn't help her get out of the, or, organization and she went to the same college. I did. So we were in college for a couple years together. So we bonded. And then my older sister doesn't want to talk to me anymore because of the book. Your older sister's still in the cold? Yeah. She running it? I mean, she's not the head. They would never let a woman be in charge. She's running the school part. She believes all of this. And and she does the best she can. And how big is it now today? It is more, I mean, it's still very

religious, but they're more just like extreme right-wing, like Christian, conservative. What's the name today? Still the same name, but now they have a school that really is a school. It's a prep school. I think the kids, though, the young people who are there are probably just receiving a really strict kind of religious education. Your heart today, your relationship to love. I think love is really important to me. And I think sometimes when I talk to my adult children, the thing that I'm most proud of is that all my kids are partnered with people who deeply love them. Like, they were able to love themselves and choose people who love them. And I'm just so grateful for that.

So I tell them I love them all the time. Like, every time I talk to them, I'm like, I love you, you know, I love you, right? You know, like, that kind of thing. I think a lot of parents do that. But it has felt like that was one thing that they just didn't have to feel insecure about. So I'm really grateful for that. I will just finish on the book because I want to mention it. What made you write it?

and get the strength to do that. I really honestly didn't intend to write a book. I was teaching. So I then became in charge of the journalism department at my college. And I was having my journalism students. And I said, I want you to get some rejections. I'll give you points if you can get rejected because I think it's super important to let go of thinking rejections are a problem because they're how we learn.

And so I wrote an essay and I wrote it fairly quickly. I wrote an essay to Modern Love so I could get no rejection so I could show them. And so the essay went into the New York Times and it went pretty viral. I mean, but it was just a little bit about being raised on a mountain and people really identified. It's called love and the time of low expectations. And it was sort of like when you don't expect someone to love you, what do you end up with? But that came out in 2020. And so I was approached by agents who said, hey, why don't you write a book?

Because this is really good. I didn't have a book. I wrote the book in four months. What? Yeah. I sold it on proposal. And then the book came out. The book didn't come out to the beginning of 2023.

Yes, Michelle is now writing books. This is a woman who was kept out of schools that spent years doing many boot camp in the mountains. She is now a professor and a full-time writer. The book that she wrote about living in the mountains and how the land became the only thing that actually raised her. It's called a forger field notes for surviving a family cult. My marketing team put the word cult on there, even though I didn't want. wanted at the beginning. They were 100% right. I will go on record of saying this. But I had field notes for survival. And they were like, no, we're putting on cult. I said, no, my, seriously,

my parents will kill me. Like, they will murder me. My mom died before it came out. And my dad is very mad about it. But it is a cult. I'm going to say that definitively. I was raised in a cult. I'm now working as a writer. But books are like one of the most important healing tools in my life. And I don't want something out there unless I really feel strongly that it is something that people can benefit from. I actually have two books that I've written since then that hopefully are coming out soon. You were fantastic and fascinating and I could talk to you for another five hours. Thank you, Liz. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for coming on and sharing your story. Thank you for this conversation. You're amazing. It was awesome.

Michelle Dowd everyone. Go read Forager. Actually, you should listen to it on Spotify first because she narrates it herself and it's free if you have a Spotify account. And she gets like good kudos if you do that. So do that. Yeah, but didn't I just praise the printed word and reading books? But also listen and read it. Well, then read it later and then sign up for her newsletter where you get to read other things. Right.

Or listen to it and then read another book. Right. Yeah. Her newsletter is at Michelle Dowd.org and that is two L's in Michelle's name. And D-O-W-D. I have many Michelle people in my life with 1L. They get very triggered by the 2L situation. So shout out to all the Michelle's with 1L.

And shout out to all the Michelle's with 2Ls. We see you. We love you. We appreciate you. Yes. We love everyone with 1L or 2Ls. We don't discriminate here. Was I in a cult?

Michelle with 2Ls was born in. Somehow a cassette tape. A stranger notices her body. is failing, a pencil application. She mails in in secret and she gets out. And that is what our show is all about, guys. The resilience of the human condition and how we can overcome. And then she's teaching critical theory at 21 years old.

Yeah, at the University of Boulder. Come on. Yeah, ridiculous. It's really kind of amazing. These people that have left cults, sometimes I just am in awe of what they can do. Yeah, when people say, I would never be in a call, call people, send them this episode. And then you tell me if people

and cults are stupid. Yeah, you go write three books. She told me when she wrote Forger that she just wrote it, right? And then basically her editor had no notes. It's kind of incredible. Some people have it. So if you guys are fond of this show and what we do here, we appreciate you.

You can find us on Instagram and TikTok where it was Anna Colt. And if you would like add free episodes, which I know a lot of you, do want. So guess what? There's a place for that. It's our Patreon bonus content. We're just grateful for all our Patreon supporters because they help us. They really do. So we have a number of new Patreon badasses like Stella Newman, Rebecca, Katie Kingston. Kingston is a cold name. The Kingston Clan. The Kingston Clan, yeah. There's Tracy Hagberg. There's Rachel and her mascot is the

Hagbergs. Rachel Humphrey. Live Diggy. Great. Great name. You don't even need a mascot name if you're Liv Diggy. We're just the diggies. Yeah.

Susie Geisler. M. Just M. Amanda. Just Amanda. There's a lot of Madonna listeners here. It's like Cher. Medona.

Ebj and Olivia Kinsel. So thank you, beautiful, wonderful women. No, they're not just, most of those are women. But maybe Liv Diggy is a man. Maybe, J's a guy. So. Maybe. But if you have a culty story, please. You know where to find us, guys?

Email us info at Was I an occult. We want to hear some more incredible out there, bizarre cults like next weeks. Next weeks is incredible. A vampire, a vampire cult. A what, you say? Online vampire cult. And if you try to figure that out, don't. because it will just be more bananas than you could imagine yourself.

Liz dumped a five-hour interview on it, which you know it's good. It's so good. She's fantastic. The story is why I love doing this show because you're like, wait, what? Truth is stranger than fiction, everyone. It really is. And finally, he said, well, do you trust your mom? I said, what are you talking about?

Do I trust my mom? And he said, when you were lost to New Orleans, Armand and I saw your mom in a restaurant. And my blood at this point runs cold because if they're really who they say they are, then first of all, what the fuck? You went and talked to my mom, but you're not going to let me see you? That's rude. Secondly, if you really are who you say you are, you're dangerous. Why are you fucking with my mother? Was I an occult?

That's our show. Here's the time for my outro, my witty-wacky. This could be your tag. And that's all she wrote, folks. And that's... Hey, and that's... And that's the word on the street, people. Something like that.

Was I an occult is written, hosted, and produced by Liz Bug Juice, I, Coosy. And this guy, Tyler, the dump in the middle. I don't know if I like that. I don't know if I like that. I don't know. Sound mix and design and edit by Rob One Minute Shower, Pera, which is all we give him because... That's all he gets.

It better be a fucking cold shower, Rob. We should come up with like a tag off. And that's it. Make sure to stay out of cult. Yeah. And if you see a cult, don't do it. Call your mom and hug her. It's got to work on it.

And that's the rest of the story. That's one stolen. But all right, we'll come up with one. Next week we'll have a really good. That's our end. I have to go back to reading my psychological thriller now, Tyler, that is currently changing my life. Is it? No, I read so many of these, like, trashy psychological thrillers.

Some are good, some are terrible. None of them really change my life. You know, like I said earlier, not all of them are going to change your life. I am currently reading the Lauren Michael's biography. It's really, really good. Interesting. It's so good. Okay, I'll get on that.

It's so good. Right after I finish, the house. The housemaid is a bad book. It's not good. But isn't it a popular movie right now? I don't know how. I don't want to get off my high horse about the housemaid because I wanted to really like this book.

But holding Magoli the cliches and the conveniences and hey, no disrespect. It's doing very well. So, you know, that's what happens. If you are reading it, email me if you feel the same gripe because the ending, what The mother says to her at the end, I was like, okay, I'm done. I'm done. Can't. At least you got to the end.

I have to. It's a thing I have to do. You know, I used to do that when I was younger. Are we still recording? If I started a book, it's the, it's the ones I had a cold book club. It's what people are really asking for, Liz. Notice my voice gets up higher when I know I think it's a lie. But actually, this is a good segue into next week's cult because it is all inspired by one of the biggest

vampire books ever written interview with a vampire. Oh, I was thinking Twilight. So if you guys want to prep yourself for next week's episode, that's the book you should read and then go watch the movie because come on, Brad Pitt is a vampire. He is hunky. Just don't read the Vanity Fair article about the plane ride with his wife. I don't want to read that. And I don't want to ignore all that.

They don't make men like that anymore. No offense, Glenn Powell. Okay. All right, love you, everyone. All right. See. you later next week.