This week on Friday Power Lunch, we explore the powerful psychological forces that shape how people form communities, follow leaders, and sometimes lose themselves inside powerful narratives.
Our first guest is Daniella Mestyanek Young, author of “The Culting of America: What Makes a Cult and Why We Love Them.”
Known online as the Knitting Cult Lady, Daniella is a sex-cult survivor, U.S. Army combat veteran, TEDx speaker, and researcher who studies toxic leadership and group behavior. She joins us to discuss the “cultiness spectrum,” a framework she developed with co-author Amy Reed showing how coercive group behavior appears across many types of communities, from extremist movements to trusted institutions. Drawing from her own experience growing up in a religious cult and her later research on leadership and group dynamics, Daniella explores why humans are drawn to powerful narratives and how recognizing these patterns helps us better understand the groups we belong to today.
Our second guest is Susan Wagner, co-founder of Markers for Democracy and host of “It Needs to Be Said” on Substack Live. Susan joins us to discuss her recent open letter challenging political media to move beyond familiar pundits and break out of the insider cliques and echo chambers that dominate today’s political commentary. She argues that when coverage focuses only on crisis and collapse, audiences are left feeling powerless, while the real stories of grassroots organizing and civic action happening across the country go largely untold.
This week’s show also continues the Persisterhood Project Series as part of Women’s History Month, featuring “Why I Run.”