Hey everybody, it's Dave Neal here, stand-up comic, host of the Rush Hour podcast on this weekend episode for you, Saturday, February 15th, 2025.

Hope you guys had a great Valentine's Day and are able to unwind. It's not often that I give an intro to my interviews, but this one felt like it deserved that, not that my other ones don't, but I

interviewed Tia Levings. Now, Tia is a best-selling, New York Times best-selling author of a book called

The Well-trained Wife. She talks about her escape from a high-control religion. I wanted to

preface that before we get into the interview. I understand the conversation

around religion can be very sensitive to a lot of people. A lot of people might feel as though

I'm criticizing their religion when I share somebody else's trauma. And they couldn't be further

from the truth. I was surprised, I guess I should say I surprised one of my

audience members when she spotted me in church with my family. That's right. Every once in a while,

I still go to Catholic Mass with my parents. We went to a mass in Nashville here a few weeks ago.

So I'm not, I don't know what you would call me religiously, but I do know that there's a lot of trauma in high control religion.

You might have a perfect relationship with God or Jesus or Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Yahweh, whatever the hell you want to call it.

But I do think it's interesting just to clarify that before we get into this interview, because her story is so brave, so rich and so inspiring to hear essentially how she escaped in the nick of time.

I'm telling you, I could totally see this made into a movie. She's a brave, strong woman who now

shares her story about being in a high control religion. Look, a lot of religion can be good.

You might be a part of a good church community. You help out. And then there are instances where

people will interpret the Bible in ways that might benefit them. And they're able to talk to God.

And they tell you how to do certain things. There's so, there's so many instances of people that

have, you know, you know, as we talk to our friend Dr. Laura, who, you know, has a PhD in religious

trauma. And there's so many instances where we talk to people that had a rough go of purity

culture. And it was taken too far and they were, you know, recovering from that process. So, you know,

if you're religious, say a prayer. And if you're not, don't. And let's just be mindful of that

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