Julianna Glasse and Amanda Montell! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WOMEN READ

[0:01]Thank you all so much for being here.

[0:02]I'm going to ask Juliana a few questions and then we're going to play a game that we can all participate in.

[0:08]Okay, fun.

[0:09]Juliana and I first met because I had her as a guest on my cult podcast, Sounds Like a Cult, which is about the modern day cults we all follow.

[0:18]And we did an episode on the cult of Christian pop music.

[0:22]And the booking of that episode's guest just happened to coincide with an email that crossed my desk for your diligent representative.

[0:32]And I loved that episode, and I feel like our work is very aligned, so I'm excited to share it with the class.

[0:40]But for those who haven't read the book yet, could you tell us a little bit about the world that you grew up in?

[0:46]The life that you thought you were supposed to have and then what eventually began to unravel for you.

[0:53]Yes.

[0:55]Well, to put it very short, gays and books changed my life.

[1:00]So blame it on them.

[1:02]So I was raised in a very deeply fundamentalist conservative Christian household.

[1:07]My dad was my pastor and my mom was my homeschool teacher.

[1:10]And so I was raised to believe that a woman's role was to be subject to the man of the house.

[1:15]So for me, that was my father for my childhood.

[1:18]And then when I got married very young, it then became my husband.

[1:20]And so my proximity and my understanding of being a woman was really painted by What it meant to be a Christian.

[1:27]And so it wasn't just the way that I worshipped.

[1:29]It was my philosophies.

[1:31]It was my morals and my ethics.

[1:33]It was the way that I moved through the world.

[1:36]And I truly did believe that I was on a mission to save humanity.

[1:40]I was on a mission to save humanity for the cause of Christ.

[1:44]And so what better way to do that than music?

[1:46]I was gifted in songwriting and performing.

[1:48]And so I became a Christian pop singer for 11 years, had seven different music releases, was teaching tens of thousands of women at a time about their role in their submission to their husbands.

[2:02]And in modesty and in how to be a godly woman, how to be a godly wife.

[2:07]I had three children.

[2:09]I now have 17, 15, and 11-year-old children.

[2:12]But when they were much younger, that's really the beginning of when things began to unravel because the whole premise and the foundation of what I believe to be true Is built upon what's called the doctrine of depravity.

[2:26]So the fundamental belief in Christianity, in my version of Christianity, was that you're born broken and depraved and separate from God.

[2:33]So that's the need for this outside savior of Jesus Christ.

[2:37]And so it's in putting your faith in this other being, a man, conveniently, that you will then be saved.

[2:45]And so when I had my children, though, I couldn't.

[2:49]Imagine telling my infant daughter that she was born broken.

[2:54]That was very confusing to me as I'm holding the most holy thing I've ever held before.

[3:00]I couldn't imagine telling my daughters that they would have to be subservient to a man one day.

[3:06]Couldn't imagine telling my son that he would one day have to be the head of the house.

[3:11]And so really having my children was the beginning of the dismantling of what I had built my entire life upon.

[3:19]And it wasn't like I was 18 and changing my mind in my major.

[3:24]I was 33 years old and really radically questioning the entire containment through which I lived my world, my life.

[3:33]Then I met my gay neighbors.

[3:37]That'll do it, man.

[3:40]I mean, I met Mark and Patrick.

[3:42]I changed their names in the book, but they said, on tour, use our real names because they're so proud, which I love.

[3:48]So Mark was a pastor.

[3:49]And I was like, you cannot be a pastor and be gay.

[3:52]This is like not allowed in my version of Christianity.

[3:57]And they were so welcoming to me.

[4:00]And it was such a beautiful, Invitation to be welcomed into their world and into their life.

[4:08]And so I quickly fell in love with the LGBTQ community and my friends there and at the same time recognized the really severe harms that this institution that I was a part of and upholding was promoting.

[4:22]So I was the artist that Donald Trump had come and sing at his 2017 National Prayer Breakfast Weekend.

[4:28]And that was because I had, to that time, been predominantly anti-women's rights and anti-LGBTQ.

[4:36]And as a girl who had been sexually violated to then be, I voted head of house so you vote the way that your husband votes, to then vote for a man who was explicitly bragging about sexually harassing and harming women was very confusing.

[4:54]So it was this kind of cluster Of a moment of the queer community and Donald Trump and my children being young that I was like, I think it's all bullshit.

[5:05]I think.

[5:06]And the nail in the coffin was that my friends gave me Plato's allegory of the cave.

[5:12]And now I have Plato tattooed on my arm because he royally fucked up my life.

[5:17]Because I read the allegory of the cave and realized, oh, I have been the prisoner.

[5:23]I have been the one living in the cave trying to make sense of Shapes and shadows on the wall for my whole life.

[5:29]So what is it going to look like for me to exit?

[5:35]A moment.

[5:37]A moment for the gorgeous summary.

[5:40]It's such a profound story.

[5:41]It's so timely.

[5:42]It's so important.

[5:44]And I'm obsessed with the title of this book.

[5:47]It feels like a double entendre and very meta because it was a statement that was spoken and directed at you.

[5:57]And now it's also like a direct reference to like the product of what came of that statement.

[6:03]So I'm obsessed with that wordplay and that mind fuck.

[6:08]Or whatever the opposite of a mindfuck is.

[6:11]Could you tell the story of where this title comes from and offer some sentiments on what it feels like to have it plastered across your book cover now?

[6:23]Yeah, it feels really good.

[6:25]It feels really good to reclaim things that were meant to harm you.

[6:27]It feels really good to take something and flip it around and use it for good.

[6:35]So when I started rapidly dismantling my life, I was insatiable.

[6:40]So Plato began my love affair with philosophy and philosophy began my love with transcendentalism and led to more modern writers of our time because transcendentalism was like at the forefront of the suffrage movement.

[6:52]So now I'm Reading Simone de Beauvoir and like really dangerous stuff and my then husband and I, we had been in therapy for three years as I had been quietly unraveling this internal containment and I was being told you have an unhealthy obsession with love if you're reading Rumi poetry.

[7:11]Stop reading Rumi poetry and like your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

[7:15]You've got to stop reading philosophy like this is because philosophy is the healthy discourse about what religion is trying to answer, right?

[7:23]And so I started hiding my books, admittedly for over a year, just like behind the blow dryer, just like under this over here, under the bed, because I didn't really have, I did not have the language to explain what was happening to me internally.

[7:41]I didn't have the courage.

[7:43]I knew that to question this was to question the entire framework of my whole life.

[7:49]I didn't anticipate The amount of backlash that I would receive, but I knew that it would be catastrophic to a degree.

[8:02]When I came out as pro-LGBTQ and pro-women's rights because as a Christian Performer, you have to sign a statement of faith before you're allowed to perform.

[8:11]So you'll sit down like with the pastor or the promoter and they'll be like, here's your statement, can you please agree?

[8:17]And I had started to see over the years that these statements were not typically, not usually about theological or ideological ideas.

[8:29]They were more political and they were more focused on a woman's role and more focused on LGBTQ rights.

[8:36]So, man, it's like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

[8:40]And I felt so out of alignment with love and I was like, I can't do it.

[8:45]I'm just not going to do it.

[8:45]I cannot sign this thing.

[8:47]And so then my whole like career world starts falling apart.

[8:52]So I just came out publicly and I was like, I am pro LGBTQ.

[8:56]I am pro women's rights.

[8:57]I am not going to sign these statements of faith anymore.

[8:59]I don't care if I lose it all.

[9:01]And then I did.

[9:03]So I lost my next tour.

[9:05]I lost my third book deal.

[9:06]They pulled my books off the shelves.

[9:08]And the public shaming began.

[9:10]And my then husband called me up to our room.

[9:14]He had found my books and had piled them in the floor.

[9:19]And he started mocking one of them and then threw it on the floor and pointed at me.

[9:22]And he said, you see, this is what happens when women read.

[9:26]I get full body chills when you tell that story.

[9:31]And it was like, The runway of my life lit up like, oh my God, he is so right.

[9:36]This is actually what happens is that we can notice what we are and we can name what we are in and you better bet I'm going to challenge what I'm in and then I'm going to leave it and now we're going to change it.

[9:48]So now we write it.

[9:53]The sort of like, come to Jesus is actually really, really not the phrase here.

[10:01]The come away from Jesus moment that you describe in the fallout, it's so extreme.

[10:07]I think the scenario that a lot of people imagine when they want to question some group or ideology or belief system that they're a part of, even a casual one, like the belief system of A pop star fan community that they've deeply invested in and your story is significant for people to to use as kind of a guide.

[10:34]I think in this particularly ideologically divided and polarized time when people can enmesh their identities in communities that aren't even as extreme and all consuming is this one.

[10:48]But this book asks you to revisit some deeply personal experiences while examining larger systems, the ones that shaped them.

[10:57]So I'm curious, like from a craft perspective, how did you Approach writing about your former self with both honesty and compassion, especially when now you see those beliefs so differently.

[11:11]It's such an important question.

[11:15]Regarding the writing process, I'm very much a method writer.

[11:18]It was very important for me to go back into all of my journals from when I was a young kid because I was journaling every single day ever since I could write because that was just required.

[11:28]And so to read my journals and to read the anguish of my heart of like, God, make me lesser.

[11:36]Why do I want more?

[11:37]Please strip this from me.

[11:39]It was really heartbreaking for me to dip back into.

[11:43]And then to read my journals when I'm 18, like, Lord, what is wrong with me?

[11:46]Why have I not found my husband?

[11:48]Why am I not married?

[11:51]And then to be married and read, God, make me the submissive wife.

[11:54]This is so hard.

[11:56]Help me never refuse my husband's sex.

[11:58]This is so hard.

[11:59]And like, just make me lesser.

[12:01]Why do I want to be?

[12:01]It was in constant conflict with my own desires, with my own just natural proclivity for life and for curiosity and for growth and for knowledge.

[12:13]And so it was difficult for me to really enmesh myself into...

[12:21]Who I used to be, but it also was very, very important because of how hyperpolarized we are.

[12:26]I think the tendency that I have seen at least, and especially for women is like, I was this way, and like, ta-da, now I'm this way, and here we go, like another hero story in that way, or like, I was a Christian, now I'm an ex-evangelical, or I was straight, now I'm queer, or I was married to him, now I found the true love.

[12:45]So there's always this constant exchange for labels and for identification as women that I think we're really obsessed with and My desire for the book was to bring you into all of the very murky, liminal, unpategorized places.

[13:03]So I didn't want to ever write anything for you guys that felt prescriptive.

[13:08]Like, well, she did this and now she's this, so maybe that's how I need to think about things.

[13:13]So writing it was incredibly important for me to not look at it from a 30,000-foot view.

[13:18]I wanted to be in the mire with you.

[13:23]So that when you are in the mire too, you feel seen.

[13:27]Yeah.

[13:28]I'm wondering if you could talk about any experiences you had after coming out as pro all of the ideas that you were once so fervently against.

[13:40]After that experience, did you find that there were any groups that wanted to take you in and sort of capitalize on that Moment of vulnerability when you realized you would have to leave your former life behind that felt almost as cultish as the group that you were leaving.

[14:03]Because I've sometimes found in my work that the phenomenon of so-called cult hopping can cause people to...

[14:15]You can take the girl out of the cult, but you can't take the cult out of the girl.

[14:18]Did you have any experiences where you felt attracted to a similar system, even if the beliefs were totally different, and how did you avoid those?

[14:27]Attracted to them, no, but I certainly played with them.

[14:32]Once I left in 2019, I decided to very actively regain my autonomy, and I created a plan, because this is how I am.

[14:41]I'm like, I'm going to reclaim myself intellectually, I'm going to reclaim myself spiritually, I'm going to reclaim myself sexually, and I'm not going to allow my life to become about exchanging one savior for another.

[14:51]I'm not going to do it.

[14:53]And so I set out really to To play with institutions and to, as Whitman says, he says, reexamine all you have learned in school, in church, and in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

[15:10]And so there was this really audacious permission for me to explore, to read everything I could get my hands on, to study whatever I wanted to study, to travel the world, to sit down with women, That are deep in the Muslim tradition.

[15:23]To sit down with women that were deep in Catholicism or Judaism and to actually travel to these places and to sit with them and to hear their stories and to see the ways in which religion has been in some ways liberating for them, in other ways very oppressive.

[15:38]Just to kind of get my bearings.

[15:40]And so in that way, I would say I was exposed to a lot of people that were like, we've got the answer, or we've got the...

[15:47]And even if it was like trying yoga for the first time, or going to a tarot card reader for the first time, and there's this constant sort of promise of like, I have the answer, but I was so allergic to anything of a binary structure, That, as Whitman said, I just dismissed it.

[16:08]I was like, no.

[16:10]I was fervently and adamantly against ever ushering out my agency to anyone or anything ever again.

[16:18]And I haven't done it.

[16:19]I love that Whitman quote so much because, yeah, the latter half of the quote that invites you to dismiss anything that violates your soul, great.

[16:31]The first part of the quote is like read it, consume it, like expose yourself to it.

[16:36]And that's so important because even in extremely well-meaning, you know, kind of good faith communities these days, I've found that there is a lot of shame that comes from even like looking at what the other side has to say.

[16:54]For no other reason than just to arm yourself with arguments against it.

[16:58]It is helpful to return to literature, especially literature that was written before these times, to see what were those people doing?

[17:09]How did those people approach ideas and community and ritual?

[17:15]And yeah, that Whitman quote really encapsulates it quite beautifully.

[17:18]What books have you been reading lately that you've found to be extraordinarily stirring or challenging in the way that those philosophical texts were for you earlier?

[17:33]So we were talking about fiction earlier.

[17:34]I'm not very, I don't read a lot of fiction, I think because when I left in 2019, reading became like Necessary for me to stay alive, quite literally.

[17:46]So it was like I needed this thing, so I approached every piece of literature that I was reading with an incredible honor and respect and tenacity, like for every single word.

[17:57]I was paying attention and poking and peeling apart.

[18:00]So I haven't really found that in fiction, but that's just an exercise that I've not really tried on yet, and so I'm trying that on right now.

[18:08]And that's been very fun for me to And weirdly has helped me relate to some of the stories in the Bible, again, in a new way.

[18:18]So a friend of mine, her name's BK O'Connor, beautiful writer, she wrote a book called Eve, and it's re-imagining Eve as the first woman Not as someone who was tempted to have the tree, but who came into the world like, of course I'm going to eat the tree.

[18:31]It's the tree of knowledge.

[18:32]Why wouldn't I eat the tree?

[18:32]I'm going to eat the damn tree.

[18:33]Like, hello, I'm eating the tree.

[18:35]So she just had, she carried herself in this sort of outrageous way that was really new that helped me reconsider a story that I had long held in a new way.

[18:44]Yeah.

[18:44]I mean, so much iconic fiction is just biblical fanfare.

[18:49]Narnia and fucking Harry Potter.

[18:52]Lord of the Rings.

[18:53]Lord of the Rings is like, Christian fanfiction that Tolkien spun into a world of his own.

[19:00]And yeah, there are so many connections.

[19:04]But I mean, honestly, if the Bible hadn't become such a big deal, it would be now considered a fantasy book.

[19:11]Yeah, for sure.

[19:13]Just saying.

[19:15]Can I just add to that, while we're on that, that this is why no world wars have been fought on behalf of Shakespearean literature.

[19:25]Because they weren't claiming to be God.

[19:27]Lord of the Rings is not claiming to be speaking on behalf of God.

[19:30]And this is the real danger when we see religion being weaponized in this way and spiritual texts being weaponized in this way.

[19:37]It is what causes world wars.

[19:38]It is what causes extreme inequality, depravity, inaccess to education.

[19:46]I mean, name it.

[19:46]At the seed of every inequality is religion being weaponized against a certain people group.

[19:52]It's like, couldn't youth groups and Bible studies just have been like a nice book club?

[19:56]You know, you read it once and then you move on, you know?

[19:59]It could have been so simple.

[20:02]Okay, so as I've mentioned so many times, your story feels particularly timely during this era of book bans and what feel like really retro political battles over women's rights and online communities becoming their own ideological bubbles.

[20:19]I was wondering if you could talk about Why you think this story, as specific it is, is actually quite universal right now so that everyone will see the universality in it and buy it.

[20:31]And buy it.

[20:32]And buy it for your friends.

[20:35]Yeah, so a couple of different thoughts.

[20:37]So I'll take you back to when I was in D.C. and it was the Women's March.

[20:43]And I was in my Jesus era and I was terrified, you guys.

[20:47]I was like, see, this is proof that women should be subordinate to their husbands because like the loudness and the power and the pussy hat and the whole, I was just like, ah, no.

[20:58]So for me in that time of my life, I was not ready to be met with this loud, gorgeous, powerful voice of womanhood.

[21:08]I wasn't there.

[21:10]It would not have helped me for any one of you to yell at me or to corner me or to say that I was dumb or to think that I'm just whatever.

[21:18]So it's important, I think, for all of us to not be so We get so wrapped into this very anti-intellectual movement of cancel culture or imagining that one of us has all of the right things to say at all of the right times and like there is no progress to be made here because I've got it nailed people.

[21:37]It's just an arrogant posture and I think it continues to perpetuate this polarization because we're not meeting each other with grace.

[21:46]And so what I needed was my gay friends welcoming me into their lives.

[21:52]What I needed was them to be like, do you want to go to dinner?

[21:55]And they were nervous to ask me.

[21:58]And I went.

[21:59]And then after a couple of glasses of wine, we're like, you know, we're friends.

[22:03]So it takes, we can't approach dogmatism with more dogmatism.

[22:09]It is physics, you guys.

[22:11]It'll just make them bounce further apart.

[22:14]So I think when we consider Story lives in that liminal space of discovery.

[22:21]Story is that quiet imagination on the interior of a woman that's like, oh, maybe something new.

[22:28]Oh, maybe there's something different.

[22:30]And that doesn't exist.

[22:32]And there's not a soft landing place for that imagination when it's being met with this very dogmatic posture.

[22:40]So I would say be the safe person.

[22:44]Be the safe person for your MAGA neighbor.

[22:47]Be the safe person for your homophobic teacher.

[22:51]Be the person that, you don't know what's rattling around in their head.

[22:54]You don't know who they've met.

[22:55]You don't know what's going on.

[22:57]You don't know that their son just came out as gay and now this mother's heart is completely thrown.

[23:03]She doesn't know what to do.

[23:04]So if we can just be Like this with one another and welcome the progress and the discovery and the evolution of one another.

[23:12]I think that we would actually begin to see people liberating and changing themselves.

[23:20]Yeah, I've been asked so many times what people's advice is for If you have a family member, a close loved one, or a friend in a cult, how do you get them out?

[23:30]And I obviously don't know the answer, but I can speak confidently toward what not to say.

[23:37]And it's not helpful to say you're in a cult, you're brainwashed.

[23:42]Here, read this article from this publication that has been contaminated by everything that they're hearing.

[23:49]So if you can stomach it, yeah, I completely agree.

[23:53]Be the Socratic, Listener and asker and then, but yeah, and sometimes we can't stomach it and then sometimes we have a martini and we can.

[24:02]That's right.

[24:03]And I would say if you're not safe to, if it's not safe for you to be that space for another person's discovery, don't be.

[24:10]Like don't, don't ever neglect your safety or the safety of your children or the honor of who you are in the home of your children.

[24:19]There was a period of time where people were not allowed in my home.

[24:22]That would not honor who I was, and that was really important as I was finding my own way.

[24:27]But once you can stomach it, to be the person that goes back into the cave, to be like, yo, those are shadows, it can be

[24:37]a gift too.

[24:39]Yeah, 100%.

[24:40]Have you heard from anyone from your former community about this book?

[24:44]Like any reactions?

[24:46]Yeah, for sure.

[24:49]So we are, we have been number one on audiobook sales for the last two weeks.

[24:56]And I know, and that is what 100% all of these women do.

[25:02]And I'm getting their messages and their DMs and they are mad.

[25:06]And it's fine.

[25:06]You can be mad at me.

[25:07]It's okay.

[25:07]You don't have to hide an audiobook.

[25:09]It's on your phone.

[25:09]You don't have to hide it.

[25:10]But they're like, I'm listening to the thing.

[25:12]I'm listening to the thing.

[25:13]I just listened to your... And I'm like, oh my God, that's why we're number one.

[25:16]Thank you so much.

[25:18]But yeah, I mean, I think anytime... Like books are projection.

[25:21]Books are like a mirror.

[25:22]So if you get upset at me about some place that I have found freedom in my life, then that's just a mirror back to where you've not yet set yourself free.

[25:30]So it's been really fun.

[25:32]To see people's responses because I get to say maybe entertain finding that freedom within yourself.

[25:41]And that's fun.

[25:44]Okay, now we're going to play a little game because I've said the word cult a few times and it's up for debate whether or not the community you grew up in meets the qualifications for a cult.

[25:55]But I, in my work, argue that We're all a member of a cult of some kind, whether or not we'd like to believe it in 2026.

[26:02]And so I am going to read a list of culty scenarios, modern day situations you might find yourself in.

[26:13]And we as a group are going to determine whether we think each situation is a live your life, a watch your back, or a GTFO level cult, okay?

[26:25]Meaning, is it kind of ritualistic and fringy, but net harmless?

[26:32]Does it check some of the culty boxes you don't have to run for your life, but do go in with eyes wide open, watch your back?

[26:38]Or is it like, cancel the app, run, delete, delete, delete?

[26:46]Okay, this is the first scenario.

[26:49]You join a trendy yoga studio for your back pain, but soon your instructor is calling classes a portal to your highest self and encouraging you to attend five days a week.

[26:58]When you take a break, she suggests your resistance is your ego trying to keep you small.

[27:02]Oh, GTFO.

[27:02]No, no, no.

[27:06]As long as there's a sign that says exit above it, no.

[27:10]Yes.

[27:10]Okay.

[27:11]Do we agree?

[27:11]Yes.

[27:11]Okay.

[27:13]Next scenario.

[27:15]Your romantic book club is a blast until members start spending hundreds on special editions and treating their favorite authors like infallible geniuses.

[27:23]Anyone who criticizes a beloved book is accused of being morally suspect or media illiterate.

[27:28]Members who skip meetings or enjoy the wrong fictional characters are treated like traitors.

[27:33]I have the same answer.

[27:35]I'm probably going to say the same thing.

[27:37]A GTFO to the romantic book club?

[27:39]I don't know.

[27:42]Get out.

[27:42]Get out.

[27:43]Get out.

[27:43]Anytime there's accountability, I think is one of the primary qualifiers for being an actual cult is that when there's that quote unquote accountability, you have someone overseeing your attendance.

[27:54]High exit costs.

[27:55]High exit.

[27:55]Yes.

[27:57]Okay, you join an online community for sourdough recipes, backyard chickens, and tips on living a more self-sufficient life.

[28:05]But popular online creators begin insisting that feminism has ruined women, husbands should have the final say, and working mothers are neglecting their purpose.

[28:12]Members who disagree are told they're brainwashed and encouraged to cut off unsupportive friends and family.

[28:17]Tradway Fibes.

[28:18]Yeah.

[28:18]Yeah.

[28:20]100%.

[28:22]As much as we all love sourdough.

[28:25]Okay, you attend a luxury wellness retreat where a charismatic guru promises to unlock your most authentic self through breath work, emotional breakthroughs, and intense group bonding.

[28:34]When participants question the methods or can't afford the expensive follow-up program, they're told they're resisting growth or failing to invest in themselves.

[28:40]Alumni are encouraged to recruit friends because anyone who doesn't understand the work simply isn't ready to evolve.

[28:49]This is a trick game.

[28:53]I mean, anything that doesn't let you ask questions that is trying to control your mind or control your body, those are the first two things that systems of oppression try and control.

[29:02]Women's minds, women's bodies, or men's too.

[29:05]I mean, anything that fits that to me.

[29:09]You join a pop stars fandom for the concert outfits, friendship bracelets, and friendships themselves.

[29:14]But some true fans are expected to buy every release and defend the artist against all criticism.

[29:20]Members who question the star are accused of betrayal while fans organize attacks against journalists, ex-partners, and rival artists.

[29:28]Some even treat the star's commercial success as proof of her moral superiority.

[29:32]Taylor Swift, what?

[29:39]Live your life?

[29:40]Watch your back?

[29:42]Get the fuck out?

[29:43]You think it's a watch your back?

[29:44]Well, I don't know.

[29:45]Are you the person that's, like, in it and causing mayhem, or are you the person that's just in it and in it for the friendship and the bracelets?

[29:52]I'm in it for the friendship.

[29:53]yeah, for sure.

[29:54]So it's a watch your back?

[29:56]Is it because you're in that one?

[29:58]Am I?

[29:59]Sure.

[29:59]Who isn't?

[30:02]Someone on the call, let's see.

[30:03]All right.

[30:05]Thank you so much for entertaining that game.

[30:07]That was so fun.

[30:08]Obviously cheeky.

[30:09]Love it.

[30:11]And yeah, let's take some questions.

[30:13]Yeah.

[30:16]So you look amazing and beautiful and happy now.

[30:18]It's so nice.

[30:19]I want to know the nuts and bolts.

[30:21]Like, did you get physically ill?

[30:23]Did you get threatened?

[30:24]I know it's a big question.

[30:25]Like, was your life in danger when you were leaving?

[30:28]Was it like that bad?

[30:30]Have you read the book?

[30:31]No.

[30:31]Yes, it was very much.

[30:35]So I gained 65 pounds.

[30:37]I was deeply suicidal, depressed.

[30:40]Everyone in my life abandoned me.

[30:44]My family for four years.

[30:46]I lost all of my community and friendships and never lost my children ever.

[30:52]But I lost my sense of self.

[30:55]There's something profoundly disorienting about your life being so well defined for you.

[31:00]It's very easy to live that life when the man just tells you how to behave and what to do and what to think and how to vote.

[31:06]So I was face to face with myself and I was terrified by it.

[31:12]So I was deeply unwell for a couple of years.

[31:19]Alcoholic and in a moment of just pure survival, I signed myself up for a detox facility and took myself out in California in the desert for 12 days and just didn't know what else really to do.

[31:37]And then I became, then that for me was like the moment of really needing to take care of myself or else I knew I wasn't going to make it.

[31:48]And I found solace in books.

[31:51]I knew that if I could pick up someone's book here, that their life is encapsulated between these two binds, that I could do it too.

[32:00]And there just was not another option, because I had to show my children another way.

[32:05]And so the day that I determined to really begin this, I wrote in the top of my journal, show your children this freedom.

[32:13]And it was so much less about me And it was more about paving a pathway for them.

[32:18]And it was weird that I had such advocacy for my daughters and my son, and I couldn't have it for myself.

[32:24]And so over the last couple of years, it's been this beautiful metamorphosis of applying that advocacy that I have for my children to my walking self.

[32:34]So entering into a bar or going on a date, and how would I feel if my 15-year-old daughter was right here?

[32:39]What would I let her deal with?

[32:41]And so anyway, I digress.

[32:46]Very dangerous.

[32:47]For a year, my kids and I had to leave the country, and then it was just very deeply tormenting.

[32:55]But you brush the cheek of death and survive, and I tell you what, you just don't give any fucks anymore.

[33:02]Thank you.

[33:08]I thought you painted such a good narrative of the life before and how ingratiated you were, like you were a Christian pop star for God's sakes.

[33:17]I'm thinking of your kids and I imagine their dad might still be Christian or at least have in-laws or family members or like a culture around them.

[33:27]So how do you kind of use have both like the narrative there?

[33:32]Like it sounds like a very stark black and white of like two worlds.

[33:36]So how do you talk to them about that?

[33:38]Yeah, it's such a great question.

[33:40]There's a couple of things that I've done, but they were younger.

[33:44]You know, this was seven years ago now.

[33:46]So they were younger when I first left.

[33:50]And the question that I would ask them because they knew that I was questioning, they would come to me with these theologies that they hear like in Sunday school because their dad became more deeply religious.

[34:01]And they'd be like, what does this mean?

[34:03]And what do you think about this?

[34:05]And what should I say back?

[34:07]And what does this mean for me?

[34:08]And I would say, does this feel like love or does this feel like fear?

[34:14]And that for me became like kind of a north star compass for me as I navigated it because it was just a very primal invitation to pay attention to what is so intrinsic within us like intuition is primal a woman's sense of where she's safe and not safe is primal like we we know you know our bodies know little puppies if they walked in here would know you know what feels like love and what feels like fear and so it was really It has been such a gorgeous gift to give them the opportunity to pay attention to what I believe is intrinsic within them, and then also to welcome debate.

[34:53]We have forced family fun night at my house.

[34:55]It's called dinner.

[34:58]But we play Uno, and in between the Uno cards are very existential questions.

[35:03]But you're allowed to ask, say, offer up any perspective.

[35:07]It's safe there.

[35:08]And so just welcoming that curiosity, just challenging them.

[35:13]My kids challenge me all the time.

[35:15]It's very annoying to have smart kids.

[35:18]But we'll talk about how does that apply to the woman in Saudi?

[35:22]How does that apply To the young girl with a learning disability in East Asia.

[35:27]How does this apply to the people?

[35:28]Stretch it out across time, stretch it out across culture, and does it hold up?

[35:32]And so just offering them those tools, tools that I wish that I had, tools that I am even cultivating for myself has been really important.

[35:43]Thanks.

[35:43]Yeah.

[35:44]What were you geographically when this was going on?

[35:48]I was all over the US actually and I was raised in Iowa and when I got my undergraduate at Belmont University in Tennessee.

[35:57]And then, because of the nature of my job and my ex husbands, we were all over the US, but I like to explain to people that aren't really familiar with indoctrination that to be indoctrinated into religion.

[36:10]It's sort of like if you were born and contact lenses were plopped on your little infant eyeballs without your consent.

[36:17]And so you're seeing the world in different colors and in a different way, and you've never seen it any other way.

[36:24]And so...

[36:27]Geographically, I was exposed, mostly exposed to different people.

[36:32]There was always a, you know, bad company corrupts good morals, and there was always kind of a warning label against getting too proximate to people that were different than me.

[36:41]But I had to because it was my job to save them.

[36:44]And so there was always just like this agenda towards my relationships to people that were different than me.

[36:49]I remember in the interview that we did on The Cult of Christian Pop Music, my co-host and I asked you, How you felt and your peers felt about secular heathens listening to your music because a lot of Christian music is very popular among non-Christians.

[37:09]And I sort of expected the answer to be like, Oh, we find that blasphemous.

[37:16]We turn our nose up at that.

[37:19]But you were like, we loved that because it was spreading the mission, spreading the message to those who need to hear it most.

[37:27]And yeah, it was really haunting to hear.

[37:32]So true.

[37:32]Yes.

[37:34]As you were emerging from the fog of indoctrination, how did you assess whether the new source of information you were seeking were valid, true, kind?

[37:44]How were you able to distinguish when your internal context was tweaked so hard for so

[37:50]long?

[37:52]That's a great question.

[37:53]I was very intentional about that, so I decided to go back to school.

[37:59]And I applied to the University of Oxford because I thought I want to take myself out of very white Western Christian thinking.

[38:07]I understood that I was in a cave.

[38:08]I couldn't really, like I'm in the light.

[38:10]I don't really know what this is yet.

[38:12]Like, so I was aware enough to know that I needed to grow and I needed to learn.

[38:18]And so my decision to go there was For school was important because I wanted to be uncomfortable.

[38:26]I wanted to be around different people whose first language was not English, who worshiped differently than what I had ever experienced.

[38:33]And so in preparation for that, for my research, I did a year-long listening tour.

[38:38]And this was the tour where it took me around the world, like from the Atlas Mountains to Sahara Desert to Old Jerusalem, the forests of Japan.

[38:49]Talking to women specifically and trying to understand, make sense of feminism from a global perspective.

[38:59]And so what became really interesting to me was less about what was externally oppressive to women and more about what is internally the same.

[39:14]So I really wanted to find what are the similarities in our That are holding us back.

[39:20]And so when I did my research, I did it on the internal weaponization of religion against women and girls around the world.

[39:26]Because I initially was doing it on like access to education, controlling a woman's mobility, FGM, child marriage.

[39:35]I was doing it on all of these external things.

[39:37]And I thought, but what do all of those have in common?

[39:40]It was like, oh, well, shame.

[39:42]Shame stretches from Iowa to the UK To Australia, to Japan.

[39:51]Fear stretches across the globe.

[39:54]Psychological manipulation stretches across.

[39:57]We all have experiences with that.

[40:00]So true and not true, we could probably get into a fun little conversation about what truth is.

[40:06]But what I'm really interested in is like, where do all of the women go?

[40:11]Oh my god, me too.

[40:12]Yes, that resonates to my soul even though my experience is vastly different than yours.

[40:19]Let's do one more question and then have you sign some books.

[40:23]Okay.

[40:24]But I love the questions.

[40:25]I'm open to all of the questions.

[40:27]Do more?

[40:28]Okay, okay.

[40:28]Never mind.

[40:29]Or whatever.

[40:30]No, I was being mindful.

[40:31]I was being mindful

[40:32]of the time.

[40:33]Not me being like, you guys are stuck here for another two hours.

[40:35]No.

[40:36]Yes, go ahead.

[40:38]I just had a question about your neighbors, and have you talked to them about what prompted them to invite you to that dinner, and how had they observed you, and how had you observed them prior to that engagement?

[40:52]Yeah, they were aware of me, and I was aware that they were married.

[40:59]And because we were next door neighbors in Chicago, it's like the brownstone, so you're really close to one another.

[41:04]And so I found out that they were married really early.

[41:09]So I think that they could see the incompatibility within what I would say and how I would behave because I was never a vitriolic person or hateful or even critical in any way.

[41:23]But what I would write would sound that way.

[41:25]And what I would say I was believing would sound that way.

[41:27]And the way that I was voting and be telling people on social media to vote would sound that way.

[41:31]And so I think they could see my inconsistency.

[41:34]And I know that Mark, as a pastor himself, and I find this really important, was trying to offer me a new version of Christianity that I clearly had not received as a child.

[41:49]Yeah.

[41:50]Yeah, of course.

[41:52]Yeah.

[41:54]Well, I just love the courage.

[41:55]And so when you decided to change and come out, so to speak, you found that you were not alone.

[42:04]Can you talk about that a little bit?

[42:05]How did you find that you were not alone?

[42:09]By, like, emailing you.

[42:11]Cold email, like, yo, I've been listening to your thing.

[42:14]No, really, honestly, like, I got an apartment in New York.

[42:18]I knew no one.

[42:20]I just decided, I went back to school, I just decided to put myself where other people were doing work that I admired.

[42:29]Part of the listening tour as well was reaching out to different philosophers, female philosophers around the U.S. and just being like, can we have a conversation?

[42:37]And reaching out to different people.

[42:39]So I was just very active in trying to find the right people and the people that I felt like could help me Grow and that could help me know that I wasn't alone because for a very long time I felt that way.

[42:55]So I'm so grateful just to like love bomb on you guys.

[42:58]This is new for me.

[43:00]Like my book is two weeks old.

[43:02]And so to have people that show up and go like, yeah, we're here for this.

[43:06]This is fine.

[43:07]Like we're not going to burn down your house.

[43:10]It's very cool.

[43:11]So thank you for being here.

[43:14]Yeah.

[43:17]Do you talk in the book or maybe on podcast or publicly about, in interviews about, I really like what you said.

[43:27]This is not prescriptive.

[43:29]I'm not telling people how to do it or how to live their lives.

[43:32]I'm just sharing what I went through in your own journey, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who come to this looking for a prescription, right?

[43:44]So You clearly had the funds to get an apartment in New York or to go to Oxford or do whatever.

[43:50]So I think unfortunately what happens to a lot of women is they get stuck because they can't afford to leave or they're scared to leave or because of what you were so honest about that year.

[44:04]They don't know if they could handle it.

[44:07]So do you talk about that?

[44:13]Where can women find their, I'm not looking for you to like send someone to an organization.

[44:19]I'm just saying to just find that strength, to just find that will, to find others in their community that might be feeling the same.

[44:27]Do you talk about that at all?

[44:29]Because I am curious about that.

[44:31]That's the last chapter because in March of 2025, last year, I launched This Is What Happens When Women Read as an organization.

[44:41]And so we find feminist leaders around the globe that are stuck in high control religions and we take them to Oxford to earn their MBA.

[44:50]And we have brilliant scholars from all over the world With incredible stories of resilience and tenacity and escaping, like literally escaping.

[45:01]Some of our scholars, they won't even tell their families they're leaving until a week before.

[45:06]And I know, and we know like the cars picking, I'm pointing at Carlos who's on my team with my organization if you want to ever hear more, but we're like actively rescuing, not rescuing, wow, we're actively helping women to rescue themselves.

[45:21]And so that's one piece of what we're doing.

[45:23]And then the second piece is that I wrote a curriculum with a doctor of clinical psychology out at Berkeley.

[45:30]And it's a, it's a 14 chapter curriculum right now.

[45:33]And we use, he used to be a cult leader and we both escaped through philosophy.

[45:38]And so now he is doing what he's doing.

[45:41]And so I asked him to partner with me.

[45:43]And so the curriculum uses philosophy Psychology, case study, meditation, and poetry.

[45:51]Those were the five really sort of core things for me that I wish that I had had.

[45:57]And so the case studies are actual stories of individuals leaving all of the major Abrahamic religions, which have For all intents and purposes, the most in and out kind of cult.

[46:11]Like we have people leaving cults and we have a person that's left MAGA in a really big way.

[46:17]And so the goal with the curriculum, it's done, we're gonna scale it to the US.

[46:22]So that's gonna come out in 2027.

[46:27]But my hope was to give them a story first to like make them know that they are safe and not alone.

[46:33]And then the next step to be like, and if you need help, On how to leave and how to leave safely, then that'll be coming out next year.

[46:47]What's your relationship with music like now?

[46:49]You mentioned you had gifts when you were younger and you kind of built your early professional identity around it.

[46:56]I was wondering if you still perform or if that's just something you also left in the

[46:59]past.

[47:00]I performed, I wrote a one-woman play for our launch in March.

[47:05]And I know that music is in the future for me.

[47:08]I can't get away from it.

[47:11]It has me.

[47:12]It's addicted to me, I think, or something weird.

[47:16]So I think music will come back.

[47:18]I know that there was a lot of trauma attached to that that I wanted to heal first before dabbling into that.

[47:29]When you're looking back at your journal when you were younger, do you feel at that point you had curiosity in your questioning and then once you had your children, that was kind of like, you know, this job that comes back?

[47:41]I know I was curious.

[47:43]I know, like I was a girl that I was, Spend my time in the trees and on my parents' roof and was writing poetry and songs my whole childhood.

[47:52]So I know you're not a creative and not be curious.

[47:55]So it was really just the religion that was keeping me, you know, sort of repentant and small and not trusting of that sort of creative bent.

[48:08]So your children went on the whole journey with you, everywhere you went?

[48:13]On the listening tour?

[48:14]No.

[48:14]I'm sorry.

[48:18]Yeah, for a large part of it, yeah.

[48:21]We split time with their dads, so yeah, they come

[48:24]with me.

[48:26]Okay, maybe now this is the last question, I think.

[48:29]Yeah.

[48:31]In many of the fundamental religions, women aren't allowed to have money or work.

[48:36]Right.

[48:44]Yes, you're right.

[48:46]And it's a trap.

[48:47]And thank you also for recognizing the privilege that comes and there are so many needs attached to a woman's exiting, safety being one of the most important.

[48:59]In 2016, when I started realizing that I was probably inching towards an exit, I opened up my own bank account and now my money was becoming my own money instead of it didn't know.

[49:19]And on that note, let's do a book signing.

[49:23]Thank you so much for doing this.

[49:25]Congratulations.

[49:32]Thank

[49:35]you both for such a wonderfully honest conversation, but also Carlos has his own