Extreme Religious Conversion - Kelsey Osgood on women, religious transformations, and what anorexia has to do with it (PREVIEW)

This week, I’m joined by author Kelsey Osgood to discuss her recent book “Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys To Religious Conversion.” The book, which profiles women who traded secular lives for religious communities such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, evangelical Christianity, Quakerism, Orthodox Judaism, Saudi-based Islam, and even the Amish faith, is fascinating in its own right. But we also discuss Kelsey’s previous book about her struggle with and recovery from anorexia, which overlaps with her religious transformation in some surprising ways. In that book, How To Disappear Completely, Kelsey wrote not just about anorexia itself but the culture surrounding it, notably the “peak sad girl” era of the late 1990s through early 2000s. The therapeutic approach that accompanied it, she argues, took universal human questions that have been asked for millennia and repackaged them as personal neuroses to be indulged and then solved — or, more often, deemed unsolvable. Her conversion to Judaism and participation in an Orthodox community helped reframe her entire way of thinking and changed her life for the better.

GUEST BIO

Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia, which was chosen for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program, and Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion, which came out in April from Viking. Her work has appeared online or in print at The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper's, and the New Yorker, among other outlets.

Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.

HOUSEKEEPING

📖 Order my new book, The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, on Amazon or directly from the publisher here.

📘 The Catastrophe Hour book club for yearly paying subscribers starts June 11 and will run for 14 consecutive Wednesdays, 3-4 pm ET. We will meet on Zoom.

📹 The Unspeakeasy Live livestream takes place every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. ET. Look for a notification on your Substack app when we’re live.

Stuff to read and listen to:

New York Times, Jan 31, 2025: The L.A. Fires Taught Me To Accept Help

Recent(ish) solo episodes:

• January 9: The First 24 Hours
• January 16: The Immaterial World
• January 27: Housing Wars
• February 5: Remembrance Of Things Past
• February 13: What Is A "Catastrophe?"
• March 2: A Mental Infection
• March 31: Dignity Is Out Of Style

📺 Visit The Unspeakable on YouTube.

✈️ The Unspeakeasy’s 2025 retreat season is underway. It includes a just-announced COED retreat with more attendees and multiple speakers. October 11-12 in New York City. Programming and ticketing info here.