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Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at Lifehacker.com, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley, Lifehacker's deputy editor.

And today we're talking about cults, how they operate, how you identify one, what it's like to be in one,

and how to get out of one. To that end, we're speaking with author Rebecca Stott, whose book

in the days of rain, a father, a daughter, a cult, details her childhood in the exclusive

brethren, a cult that believed the world is ruled by Satan. I was astonished to find out how many suicides there were a great deal of mental illness as well and severed families.

We're also talking to Rick Allen Ross, the founder and executive director of the Cult Education Institute.

There is this element of bait and switch, a kind of con game that is run on people

when they are recruited into a destructive cult. And we'll talk with Elizabeth Yucco, a journalist

who's written extensively about cults. Their leader there was a former actor, model dancer,

porn actor, abuser, et cetera, but they didn't know that part at the time.

Melissa, I grew up believing I was definitely going to be in a cult at some point. How did you get

that idea? I think it was from growing up in the 70s with, you know, a lot of talk about the

Manson family from the Helter-Skelter book and then film and the movie, Blinded by the Light, as we all know.

No.

No.

I know the song.

Blinded by the light.

Rapped up like a douche another runner in the night.

...