... a member of a little known religion from the 1844s ...
This is a pretty well-informed crowd. You don't need to explain what a libertarian is, you don't need to explain who Feynman was, and most people will know what you are talking about if you mention Bahai. And those who don't know how to use wikipedia.
I do not think I explained things, did I? The Feynman books influenced me at a time, when they were new to me, thats why they play a part in my story. If I only heard about them here, then the effect would be far less.
The reason for not mentioning Bahai is because I do not want to spread the name everywhere I go.
To break up the awkward silence at the start of a recent Overcoming Bias meetup, I asked everyone present to tell their rationalist origin story - a key event or fact that played a role in their first beginning to aspire to rationality. This worked surprisingly well (and I would recommend it for future meetups).
I think I've already told enough of my own origin story on Overcoming Bias: how I was digging in my parents' yard as a kid and found a tarnished silver amulet inscribed with Bayes's Theorem, and how I wore it to bed that night and dreamed of a woman in white, holding an ancient leather-bound book called Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (eds. D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky, 1982)... but there's no need to go into that again.
So, seriously... how did you originally go down that road?
Added: For some odd reason, many of the commenters here seem to have had a single experience in common - namely, at some point, encountering Overcoming Bias... But I'm especially interested in what it takes to get the transition started - crossing the first divide. This would be very valuable knowledge if it can be generalized. If that did happen at OB, please try to specify what was the crucial "Aha!" insight (down to the specific post if possible).