Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly, welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.

For today's episode of Hot Crime Summer, we are diving deep into the world of cults.

With two former cult members, later we'll be joined by Dr. Stephen Hassan, one of America's

leading cult experts and as a former cult member himself, we'll tell you how he got recruited.

He was a totally normal guy. He was an adult. He was like in his 20s when he got lured in.

He now helps individuals and families who have been trapped in cults. But we begin with

the story of Michelle Dowd. Michelle was born into the ultra religious cult called The Field,

run by her maternal grandfather. He convinced generations of followers that he would live 500 years

and ascend to the heavens when Doomsday came. Michelle spent 10 years for childhood

living on a mountain, suffering from all sorts of abuse and severe poverty. There she was forced

to learn skills necessary to survive. Michelle eventually gained the strength to flee the cult

at 17 years old and is now a professor and author and totally candid about what life was like for her

in that environment. She tells her story in her new book, Forager, Field Notes for surviving

a family cult. I'm fascinated by your entire story. If you don't mind, I'm sure you've told

her a million times, but if you don't mind, let's start at the beginning. So you were born

into a cult. So how did that happen? Well, yes, indeed I was. In fact, my mother was born into

the same cult. My grandfather was a young man from Oklahoma, was orphaned in his teenage years,

some debate on how old he was because he often exaggerated. The truth or sometimes completely

misled people. But in any case, he came to LA Hollywood area sometime in his teenage years and

began working as a voice scout leader. When he was unable to have the control that he wanted as a

voice scout leader, then he left. He kind of segmented off and created his own organization,

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