Our June 2025 pick was “Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail" by Andrea Lankford.

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Reminder: the May episode with Mary Roach is coming later this year!

"From an award-winning former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies. As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left off: three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her. Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever encountered: missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases by land and by screen: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming. Beautifully written, heartfelt, and at times harrowing, TRAIL OF THE LOST paints a vivid picture of hiker culture and its complicated relationship with the ever-expanding online realm, all while exploring the power and limits of determination, generosity, and hope. It also offers a deep awe of the natural world, even as it unearths just how vast and treacherous it can be. On the TRAIL OF THE LOST, you may not find what you are looking for, but you will certainly find more than you seek."

About the author: Andrea Lankford is the author of Ranger Confidential and three trail guides. During her career with the National Park Service, Andrea won several awards for her criminal investigations. After leaving the ranger ranks, the accomplished outdoorswoman thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, kayaked from Miami to Key West, and she and her friend, Beth Overton, were the first to mountain bike the 800-mile Arizona Trail. Andrea is now a registered nurse living in Northern California.

As mentioned in the author's note: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

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Welcome to another archives episode! Where I speak to a previously selected book club pick author.

In 2024, I launched this podcast to delve deeper into our book club's nonfiction selections by engaging directly with the authors, the experts behind these compelling works.

Over the years, our club has explored some exceptional books, and today, I got the chance to speak with Sarah Edmondson about her book, "Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life," a book we read in 2022!

This episode is being released on a special day: around this time marks the 8-year anniversary of Sarah and her husband Nippy leaving the cult!

About the book: "Scarred is Sarah Edmondson's compelling memoir of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, the 12 years she spent within the organization (during which she enrolled over 2,000 members and entered DOS—NXIVM's 'secret sisterhood'), her breaking point, and her harrowing fight to get out, to expose Keith Raniere and the leadership, to help others, and to heal. Complete with personal photographs, Scarred is also an eye-opening story about abuses of power, female trust and friendship, and how sometimes the search to be 'better' can override everything else."

Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is also a well-established voice-over artist for popular series such as Transformers: Cybertron and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 2005, when NXIVM, a personal and professional development company, promised to provide the tools and insight Sarah needed to reach her potential, she was intrigued. Over her twelve-year tenure, she went from student to coach and eventually operated her own NXIVM center in Vancouver. Questions kept coming up about the organization’s rules and practices, which came to a head in 2017 when she accepted an invitation from her best friend to join DOS, a “secret sisterhood” within NXIVM.

In 2019, Sarah published Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life, with Kristine Gasbarre. In this tell-all memoir, she shares her story from the moment she takes her first seminar to her harrowing fight to get out. Her full story as a whistleblower is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM (downloaded over 25 million times) and The Vow, the critically acclaimed HBO documentary series on NXIVM. Now with the launch of A Little Bit Culty, Sarah and her co-host/husband Anthony “Nippy” Ames are keeping the conversation going by discussing the healing process with the help of experts and fellow survivors.

Links:

PRE ORDER

SCARRED

Me in IG

ALBC on IG

Enjoy the episode!

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"There is a common, nebulous understanding among Americans that MLM is off and exploitative. But a shrug goes along with it, too, as one does with Scientology, or other factions of this country's colorful fringe. It is one of our many freak sideshows, falling somewhere between a cult, a crime, and a joke. Something to gawk at, pity, or ignore."

Order "Little Bosses Everywhere" here: https://bookshop.org/lists/morbidly-curious-non-fiction-recommendations

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Here is my conversation with Bridget Read on her book, "LITTLE BOSSES EVERYWHERE: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America."

Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and—most precious of all—financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the 'multiple levels' of MLM. Overwhelming evidence suggests that most people lose money in multilevel marketing, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes. Yet the industry’s origins, tied to right-wing ideologues like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, and teachers—anyone who has been left behind by rising inequality. In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net, then profiting from the chaos. Along the way, Read delves into the stories of those devastated by the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn. A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism’s stealthiest PR campaign, a cunning grift that has shaped nearly everything about how we live, and whose ultimate target is democracy itself."

About the author: Bridget Read is a features writer at New York magazine, reporting on housing inequality and the real estate industry for Curbed. Previously, she wrote for The Cut and was a culture writer at Vogue. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Enjoy!