Amanda Montell is a a writer, linguist, and podcast host living in Los Angeles. She is the author of the book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism and co-host of the Spotify Top 20 podcast, “Sounds like a cult.”

Carole M. Cusack is professor of religious studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Trained as a medievalist, Cusack has taught about contemporary religious trends, publishing on pilgrimage and tourism, modern pagan religions, new religious movements, the interface between religion and politics, and religion and popular culture since the 1990s.

Lindsay Hansen Park is host of the “Year of Polygamy” podcast and executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation, which is a platform to discuss the diverse range of Mormon belief and practice through scholarship, art, short fiction and poetry.

David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He specializes in sociology of religion, with a particular emphasis on the study of New Religious Movements and the anti-cult movement. He is co-editor of Cults, Religion, and Violence.    

Angela Denker, a veteran journalist and Lutheran pastor, is author of Red State Christians: A Journey Into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves Behind.

Lauren Turek is associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio. Turek is a specialist in U.S. diplomatic history and American religious history and is the author of To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations, which examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy […]

Margaret Susan Thompson is a political historian, with a focus on the 19th-century United States and, particularly, the Congress. Her first book, The ‘Spider Web’: Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant, reflects both her scholarly and hands-on experience, the latter as American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.