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In this revealing conversation Amber Scorah opens the box into the psychology of religious belief to show how, exactly, religions and cults convince members that theirs is the one true religion, to the point, she admits, that she would have gladly died for her faith. As a third-generation Jehovah\\u2019s Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God\\u2019s warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture \\u2014 and a whole new way of thinking \\u2014 turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities\\u2019 notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an \\u201cescape hatch,\\u201d Scorah\\u2019s loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah\\u2019s Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery \\u2014 with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it\\u2019s like to start one\\u2019s life over again with an entirely new identity. Scorah and Shermer also discuss:

• the legals and logistics of writing a memoir
• the rise of the nones and disbelief and why stories like hers provide social proof for living without religion
• what Jehovah\\u2019s Witnesses believe and why they believe it
• what it\\u2019s like to go door-to-door witnessing for a religion
• Armageddon and what doomsayers do when the world doesn\\u2019t end
• the mindset of the fundamentalist
• why religions are obsessed with female sexuality
• why religions forbid homosexuality
• the psychology of deconversion
• the problem of evil, or why bad things happen to good people
• how she would try to talk someone out of joining ISIS
• what it\\u2019s like to be expelled from a religion and be an apostate, and
• how to start your life over when you\\u2019ve lost everything.

Amber Scorah is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her articles have been published in The New York Times, The Believer, and USA Today. Prior to coming to New York, Scorah lived in Shanghai, where she was creator and host of the podcast Dear Amber: An Insider\\u2019s Guide to Everything China. Leaving the Witness is her first book.

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