**Note: This episode originally aired in September 2021. Stick around til the end for a catch up interview with Daniel 4 years later.**

With rockstar aspirations, Daniel O'Brien wasn't looking for anything but a good time. But when heartbreak rocked his world, he tripped into something that lifted his spirits and rallied his hopes - the Jehovah's Witnesses. Before he knew it, Daniel had traded his guitar for a green Bible and found himself rapidly rising through the ranks of the religion. A wife, and two kids later, he was a fully indoctrinated, high ranking Elder in the church. But when Daniel realizes that he's part of a life much different than the one he originally signed up for, he knows that he must leave. The only problem is... he can't.

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When Raidah left medical school in Sydney to spend the summer at what was promise to be an Islamic utopia in Jordan, she thought she was taking a break to heal.

Instead, she found herself inside a high-control religious community led by Nuh Ha Mim Keller — an American-born Catholic convert who reinvented himself as a Sufi sheikh and built a devoted following of Muslims living in Western countries.

Through his English-language books, lectures, and retreats, Keller promised these diaspora Muslims a spiritual home — a refuge from Western chaos and Islamophobia.

But what Raidah found instead… was a cult.

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FOLLOW RAIDAH SHAH IDIL

Follow Raidah on Instagram → @raidahwrites

Check out her debut novel How to Free a Jinn — available now from Allen & Unwin (ANZ and Asia) and Simon & Schuster in the U.S

READ Storm Without a Port (PDF) — the 77-page survivor testimony compiled by former members of the Jordanian Sufi cult.

Visit In Shaykh’s Clothing — a resource for Muslim survivors of spiritual abuse.

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Today’s story isn’t about a reality TV show—though a lot of people think it starts there. In truth, it began long before the cameras, before the matching outfits and the too-perfect smiles.

You know the TLC series 19 Kids & Counting—the Duggars and their seemingly perfect world built within the IBLP.

But there was another Duggar—of sorts. Not a sibling. The cousin. Amy. Or as America came to know her, “Crazy Cousin Amy.”

Except she wasn’t crazy. Isn’t crazy. Not even close. She just wasn’t in their cult—the IBLP. What no one saw, though, was that Amy—an only child—was surviving her own hell at home.

Her new memoir, Holy Disruptor, is a story of breaking cycles, setting boundaries, and finding herself in the aftermath. Today, she joins us to talk about her journey—from the quiet terror of her childhood to life in the public eye, through the scandals that shattered her trust, and toward a life built on truth, healing, and peace… even when it means disrupting “family.”

And no, she wasn’t in the IBLP, but by the end, she may just find herself wondering… “Wait—was I in a cult?”

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FOLLOW AMY DUGGAR KING

Folly Amy @amyrachelleking

Get her new memoir: Holy Disruptor — available wherever books are sold.

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