In the summer and fall of 2016, reports of “killer clowns” lurking at the edges of American towns spread from community to community. This week, Mike and Merinda watch the documentary Clown Panic currently streaming on Hulu to explore that moral panic and ask how it spread. Was it local media, Facebook, Pokémon Go, a Rob Zombie movie, or something deeper about how we form communities around fear and safety?

They also get into how the film treats the rural, Southern communities where many sightings happened, and why one interview subject’s portrayal bothered them. Mike makes the case that the clown panic is part of a larger cultural shift that began around 2013–14, one that also explains our current cult documentary boom.

Plus, Merinda recommends a new podcast, Experts in a Dying Field, and Mike shares his latest grilling obsession.

Links

Zac Morris’s deep dive on the 2016 clown panic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOq7-B207U8

Interview with the documentary’s makers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMFAFc8zn8

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Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

What justifies calling something a conspiracy, What is "conspiracy" really shorthand for, and How does the term "conspiracy" function for people? In this episode, Mike and Merinda use the documentary Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy to theorize how something comes to be labeled a conspiracy and what this does for the classifier. They also discuss the differences in labeling something a conspiracy vs. a cult. They ask, how is the role of media similar in conspiracy theory documentaries to what we've seen in cult documentaries? Along with this, this episode features a discussion on the implications of oversimplifications and how these operated in the "Just Say No" campaign highlighted in the documentary.

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

Can there be a cult without a camera pointed at it? Mike and Merinda have asked this question a lot and it is central to this week's documentary. The Cult of the Soulful Journey tells the story of a new age group based in Minnetonka, Minnesota organized around new age teacher and channeler Soulaire Allerai. The documentary depicts Soulaire as a controlling and charismatic "cult leader." But why? Along the way we hear from former members Rik and Bil, who found themselves in the group while helping Soulaire produce a video game. We also hear the story of Rachel Raines who joined as a psychic medium along with her son David. Along with this cast of characters, the documentary gives the audience all the usual cult tropes from brainwashing to interesting beliefs to communal living and weird sex stuff.

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

Merinda and Mike dive into the documentary chronicling Eternal Values, the New York new age group built around self-styled guru Frederick von Mierers — and the model, Hoyt Richards, who spent years inside it. It starts on a Nantucket beach in 1978, with talk of alien walk-ins, past lives on the star Arcturus, and a coming tribulation only Frederick's followers are prepared for. It ends with a mercy killing, a mutiny, and a group scattered in the late '90s.

Along the way: a modeling career that seems to prove Frederick's teachings are working, a compound in Lake Lure, NC built to house alien spacecraft, an "antichrist" scandal, a Richard Bey talk show appearance gone sideways, and a Vanity Fair exposé that blew the whole thing open.

Merinda and Mike break down whether this one hits all the "cult doc" genre's usual beats (charismatic leader, mind control, communal living, aliens, guns, deprogramming) and ask a bigger question: how many more stories like this one are still waiting to be told?

Plus, this week's Cult Favorites: Merinda recommends The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages by Christopher Pinney and Mike makes the case for Love Is Blind UK Season 3.

Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @cultfavoritepod, and be sure to subscribe and leave a rating and review.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance and our production intern Sierra Ruden.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

It's relaunch week here at Cult Favorite! You might notice some changes and some new things as we roll into the fall. So keep checking in!

On this episode we discuss the summer's biggest "cult documentary," Trust Me: The False Prophet from Netflix. This story of an abusive FLDS leader who emerges in the wake of Warren Jeff's incarceration and the woman who gains his trust in order to bring him down raises a lot of important questions. Why is the word "cult" used so little in this documentary compared to others? What does it mean when someone says they are "called" to something? What is the role of trust in this story?

Join us as Merinda and Mike try to answer some of those questions and ask a lot more.

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio. Special thanks to Julianne Losacco for help with our logo.

Our production intern is Sierra Ruden

In our final episode of our summer mini-series, Merinda and Mike discuss how people online are thinking about the "cult documentary" genre. What do the ways people talk about "cult docs" tell us about how the term "cult" functions in our current discourse? Listen in and find out!

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

The summer is almost over but we still have one more episode from the archives for your last days of vacation travel. In this episode from last spring Mike and Merinda talk about the first season of Amazon's Shiny Happy People and why certain kids of Christianity get the "cult" label.

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

******

Pull up a chair or twenty, and join us for a conversation about Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (2023). Made famous in the mainstream for their TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar presented a very specific image of a very large family within the “Quiverfull” movement whose children were reliably obedient and mild-mannered. Behind the literal and figurative scenes, however, the line between authority and abuse was often a blurry one, both for the family and for the Institute in Basic Life Principles, whose teachings were reflected by the Duggars at every turn. Merinda has logistical questions about big families and returns to the mundane workings of power. Mike watches cartoons and muses about strategies within group mobilization. As always, we think together about how/when/why “cult” rhetoric appears, who wields it, and what its effects are.

Links:

Danielle Lindemann, True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us (2022) ⁠https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374720964/truestory/⁠

Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1991)

⁠https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300050608/the-democratization-of-american-christianity/⁠

We have another episode in our summer series of meta conversations about cults, cult documentaries, and the cult discourse of our current moment. This time we talk about some of the very unhelpful terms that get used to talk about those groups that get labeled as "cults." Mike and Merinda breakdown "belief," "brainwashing," "intent," and "authenticity." Listen today so you can understand what's up with the ways people talk about "cults"!

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance.

The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.