Welcome to The Dream. I'm Jane Marie. Before we get into today's topic, I need to thank a really

incredible organization for helping us continue to do this work. They're called IMI, the Independent Media

Initiative. And they gave us an award for our investigative journalism last year that came with money,

which was one of the weirdest emails I've

ever woken up to. Like I sent it to my mom and I was like, does that say money? What? Anyway,

I did completely over a dress for the awards ceremony, but the dress was rented.

IMI is aiming to create a sort of public media space, but for the digital age.

And some of the coolest creators and projects and some of my favorite people can be found on their website.

TheimI.c.O.

Go check them out.

Okay. Who wants to talk about cults? Everybody? Everybody everywhere?

All at once? Et cetera. Sometimes it's rather hard to tell if something is a cult. I think that's by design. It's not hard to tell when, say,

you're held down on a table and branded or when you're just dying to hitch a ride on a UFO.

But sometimes, cults do good things alongside the bad. And that was the case with an organization

called Midwest that today's guest joined. Just a warning that this

episode discusses sexual assault. My name is Amanda Lee, and I am, I'm a nurse currently,

and I'm in recovery, so I spent several years, like as an alcoholic addict and everything, have spent a ton of years, probably 20 years in recovery. Like, and I've had some relapses, but I've done a lot of AA, a lot of counseling, a lot of stuff around the recovery, spiritual type community.

But have also, I know we're going to be talking about the Midtown cult.

And I was in that for about 10 years and we'll be getting into that.

That's one thing about me.

But I think like one of the biggest things is that I've overcome a lot. You know, I was on, I've had seven felonies and I ended up on the

most wanted in 2014. But it wasn't anything crazy. I did not hurt anyone or, I mean, like, kill

...