Cult Favorite

What can possibly make sense of a billion-year contract or a billion-page menu? We're on the case, with a conversation that ranges from Scientology’s Sea Org to The Cheesecake Factory’s dizzying array of food options. This week, we’re talking about Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Cameos include (but are not limited to): Rock Hudson, Majorie Cameron, John Travolta, Aleister Crowley, and (most importantly, as far as Merinda’s concerned) Kate Bornstein. When does the relationship between religion and money seem fine v. not-fine and why? What makes makeshift military pastiche different from time-honored religious rituals/garb? What makes a group appeal to people, and when do we feel compelled (or not) to explain that appeal in the first place? And does our podcast deserve a playlist?

Links:

A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today

(Kate Bornstein’s memoir, 2021):

https://www.beacon.org/A-Queer-and-Pleasant-Danger-P1760.aspx

My (New) Gender Workbook (2013):

https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-03-16_5c8d897ecfb93_kate-bornstein-my-new-gender-workbook-a-stepbystep-guide-to-achieving-world-peace-through-gender-anarchy-and-sex-positivity.pdf

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

https://open.spotify.com/album/4OnjUMJXgFC6lG8JHOrwuu

Queen of the Villains trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL86963D0MQ

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Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

This week, we go online and off the grid to The Garden, where video posts began a debate over whether the group is a commune or a cult. But who ultimately decides? What criteria do they use? And what (if anything) is gained by the question in the first place? We discuss these matters and more, learning along the way a few things about how subsistence and social formation converge/collide. So come burn a fear tower with us as we intrepid explorers trek boldly into analysis! While the dynamics of holding a community together are legion and complex, there is clarity about the following: If you’ve got a hankering to put some first-person pronouns in a research paper, Merinda’s classes have got your back...but in the event of a natural disaster and/or zombie apocalypse, Mike’s house is definitely where you should take shelter. #cultfavorite

Links:

Interviews w/ Producers

https://www.cynopsis.com/cyncity/pushed-to-the-limit-for-the-garden-commune-or-cult/

https://worldscreen.com/tvreal/the-garden-commune-or-cults-annie-taylor-naimah-holmes/

For Everyone Collective:

Religion in Culture MA Program at University of Alabama:

https://religion.ua.edu/graduate/

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Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

This week, Mike convinced Merinda to watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives! Luckily, docu-soaps offer a neato middle ground between documentaries and reality tv. We talk genre, gender, sexuality, power, audiences, tradwives, the capital of “cute,” and Mormon media. Merinda quotes people she admires. She also describes her Very Strong Feelings about the tendency to reduce/oversimplify complex worlds inhabited by women creating media content. Inasmuch as we should #believewomen, we should also pay serious attention to pop culture by and about women, even (especially?) when it cuts against our comfort zones. We should also, it turns out, make sure to label moving boxes with some degree of nuance. Come hang and follow/subscribe wherever you listen to things. Meanwhile, know this: if you invite us to an important life event, we promise to show up for you. We will also totally tell you if we ever see toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

Links/Notes:

Sadaf Ahsan’s essay, “Inside the Real Housewives’ Feminism”: https://this.org/2021/11/02/inside-the-real-housewives-feminism/

The LDS Church’s low-key rebuke of the show: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/commentary-when-entertainment-media-distorts-faith

You’re Wrong About episode “The Tradwife Rises”: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/the-tradwife-rises-with-sarah-archer/id1380008439?i=1000657221736

How are these shows produced?: https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2021/05/real-housewives-produced-excerpt-from-housewives-brian-moylan/

Real Houswives lawsuit: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/real-housewives-bravo-reckoning

“Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Fame-Work and the Production of Entrepreneurial Sisterhood”, Alice Leppert, in Elana Levine. Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn : Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century. University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Tressie McMillan Cottom on Slate's The Wave podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/the-waves/2023/09/bama-rush-tok-from-sorority-life-to-trad-wife-how-the-greek-system-is-really-run-by-the-white-male-gaze-with-tressie-mcmillan-cottom

Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549444/bachelor-nation-by-amy-kaufman/

Follow us on all the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

This week, the long and winding road to Oregon presents

Links:

Swami Prema Niren’s book: USA v. OSHO: A Legal History

Cult Favorites:

Follow us on all the socials at @cultfavoritepod! Leave a rating and a review. And share our show with your friends!

Production assistance from the Department of Religious

Theme music produced with Udio.

The Netflix documentary Wild, Wild, Country tells the story of Rajneeshpuram, a commune founded by the Indian guru Shri Bhagwan Rajneesh in Oregon in 1981. The followers turned a 60,000 acre ranch in central Oregon into their own spiritual commune. Led by Bhagwan's personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, the Rajneeshees eventually took over the government of nearby town of Antelope, Oregon and its population of 40 residents. As more and more Rajneeshees moved to Oregon, tensions between the spiritual seeker newcomers and the conservative locals turned dangerous. In part 1 of 2, we discuss the first three episodes of the documentary series. It's an example of when a religious minority lays claim to and tries to participate in behaviors and norms of "traditional American values," we see the mundane ways that stuff inevitably plays out: petitions, injunctions, city orders, land use, and lawsuits. There is a lot of bureaucracy to religion.

Links:

Mike's book on Hinduism in America: ⁠https://www.routledge.com/Hinduism-in-America-An-Introduction/Altman/p/book/9781138389649⁠

Merinda's Cult Favorite:

Extending Play: The Feminization of Collaborative Music Merchandise in the Early Twenty-First Century ⁠https://global.oup.com/academic/product/extending-play-9780190085643?q=extending%20play&lang=en&cc=us⁠

Mike's Cult Favorite:

The League: ⁠https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-league⁠

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

On one level, the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion is about the Brandy Melville brand, the messed-up social norms it relies on and perpetuates, and the teenage girls it harms. On another level, though, it’s also about fast fashion as a phenomenon—with Brandy Melville as just one example of a much bigger machine and structural reality. In exploring Brandy Melville, the film examines how fast fashion is built on racist, colonial, and exploitative practices that disproportionately affect women of color around the world.

The doc goes back and forth between the teenage girl employees of the company and the abuses they describe and Accra, Ghana, where there’s an unconscionable amount of textile waste. We learn about how it gets there, what the effects are, and what some people are trying to do about it.

In our discussion of the talk about how desire is produced and how the real cult is capitalism.

Links:

Insider piece from 2021: https://www.businessinsider.com/brandy-melville-teen-fast-fashion-racism-exploitation-hitler-marsan-2021-9

Textile waste statistics: https://theroundup.org/textile-waste-statistics/

https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/

April 2024 Vogue piece by Alyssa Hardy (interviewed in doc) on meaning/evolution/consequences of fast fashion:

https://www.vogue.com/article/what-is-fast-fashion

The Or Foundation: https://theor.org/

Remake Advocacy Group’s “5-Minute Actions”: https://remake.world/take-action/

Merinda's Cult Favorite:

D’Trespa Consignment & Vintage Boutique: https://www.dtrespa.com/

16th Cross Pearson:

https://www.16thcrosspearson.com

Mike's Cult Favorite:

@cyberexboyfriend on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cyberexboyfriend

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.

A new three-episode documentary series from National Geographic and Hulu focuses on the last day of The Peoples Temple. Why are we fascinated with these stories of trauma, violence, and horror? Why can't we look away from Jonestown?

Links:

You’re Wrong About episode, “The Jonestown Massacre”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jonestown-massacre/id1380008439?i=1000465289969

J.Z. Smith chapter on Jonestown: http://faculty.trinity.edu/mbrown/whatisreligion/PDF%20readings/Smith-Devil%20in%20Mr%20Jones-Imagining%20Religion.pdf

Nora Stone’s book How Documentaries Went Mainstream ⁠htt⁠ps://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-documentaries-went-mainstream-9780197557303?cc=us&lang=en&#

Grumpster's album Grumpster: https://open.spotify.com/album/0jGwE9dthw7rKVkUdO9W45

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Production assistance from the Department of Religious

Theme music produced with Udio.

It's part 2 of our discussion of Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults on Hulu. Let's talk about Heaven's Gate and Star Trek!

Links:

Interview with director Clay Tweel: https://www.increativecompany.com/watch/v/z75zx742kghz982dff7nndjp5435xz

The Author Clock https://www.authorclock.com/

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious

What if Heaven's Gate wasn't as weird as it appears at first glance? And how do we make the strange more familiar?

Links:

Mark Muesse "Religious Studies and 'Heaven's Gate'" https://www.chronicle.com/article/religious-studies-andheavens-gate/

Our Cult Favorites:

Mike: Druid City Brewing Company https://www.instagram.com/druidcitybrewingco/?hl=en

Merinda: Sleater-Kinney album "Little Rope" https://sleaterkinney.bandcamp.com/album/little-rope

and diagraming sentences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_diagram

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious

In June, Netflix released Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult and in this episode Mike and Merinda talk about the role of performance in social media and cult documentaries. What makes something "real" or "genuine"? Why would a cult recruit TikTok dancers? What sort of stories do we tell about families and cult members?

Content warning: this episode includes discussions of sexual

Links:

The Cut article about Wilkings and 7m: https://www.thecut.com/2024/06/wilking-sisters-7m-allegations.html

Our Cult Favorites:

Mike: Stoic., a journaling app https://www.getstoic.com/

Merinda: Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374105952/artmonsters

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious