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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and welcome to our last little leader of 2022, where I'm reading the stories that you send to me. If you have a story you'd like to share with the cult, send it on over to Spencer at Cult Leader.com.

You won't hear it this year, but I guarantee we got a lot of room next year. That's right, we're starting strong with the dad jokes. The sea next year. A lot happened in 2022. I was looking back this morning at the episode catalog from this past year.

I think I can honestly say that it was my favorite year yet. I wish I had done a more holiday themed episode for our last episode of the year, but hey, we just had too much to talk about in regards to QAnon. I mean, it was 1,000% our cultiest year. I can say that for sure.

Ending the year by talking about satanic panic and QAnon the past few months has been so interesting because it's just wild to see what was happening then and how it ties into what's happening now and how media and politics just drives people to do and act in extreme ways.

I don't think we've heard the last on either of those topics. Well, I know we have it on at least one of them because without spoiling too much, our first episode of the year is doozy and it is related to QAnon.

I also did my first interview episode this year in May with Amanda Knox, which is just wild that she was my first guest. I still can't believe that. I feel like I learned so much from her and hearing her story and even prepping for that episode, reading the book, watching the documentary, and then getting to have that conversation with her was a very cool experience.

And I really liked doing that episode. I learned a lot from her and then we of course had Val on for the Jehovah's Witness episode. And I mean, damn, talk about a learning experience. I could talk to Val all day long. She just had so much knowledge and it just made for an amazing guest experience.

It was also cool because it resonated with a lot of you guys and I heard from a lot of you in messages and emails about your personal experiences and how much you related to Val's story and that was just incredible.

I definitely would love to do more interviews next year. I would like to incorporate it into a monthly thing maybe where every like fourth episode we have an interview.

I have some ideas but feel free to suggest ideas on who you'd love to hear come on the show. And I'm not talking about collaborations or anything. I mean, maybe down the pipeline will have a few collaborations next year. But really, I like hearing people's personal stories who lived through experiences that we talk about on the show.

And this is having Sean Donnelly on recently and getting to hear his personal firsthand experience dealing with a parent who kind of fell down the QAnon rabbit hole. Like those are the stories that I want to hear and those are the stories that I want to share because I think it relates to a lot of people.

The way I view it, I'm like, okay, if I'm going to do an interview with somebody, I want there to be substance to it and I want it to be something that there's a point in sharing this story versus just talking about something purely for entertainment.

But we covered a lot this year and I was actually surprised. One of our most downloaded episodes was How Sad, How Lovely.

Where I told the story of singer, songwriter, Connie Converse. And I say I'm surprised not because people were interested in the story, but I mean, I never have any idea or gauge on what people are going to be more interested in topic wise or story wise.

And that was one that I feel like did get a lot of feedback and there was a lot of conversation happening around it. And it was also interesting to me because it was a story that I had not heard told before.

And Connie was somebody who definitely deserved to be remembered. And I remember a lot of people around that time after I released the episode were sharing the episode, which is probably why it brought in a lot of new listeners and sharing her music.

And that felt really cool and like a really cool moment for me of like, I mean, I'm not like, oh, I discovered this person. I don't think that at all, of course. I'm like, oh, a lot of new people are finding her music for the first time because we did an episode on her.

And I think that's really cool because her music was definitely something that needed to be shared out into the world.

Yeah, I would say my personal favorites this year were definitely the Anton Lové episodes that I did with Madison. That's such a wild story. The Bjorks stalker episode is the one that definitely I'm giving you like my Spotify wrapped.

Like, this is the one that did this. This is the one that did this. But the Bjorks stalker episode, that's the one that fucked me up more than anything.

I get asked a lot like, are there any episodes that stick with you more than other cases that stick with you more than others? The Bjorks stalker episode visuals that I will never get out of my head.

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