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.

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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.

We are diving back into the archives again this summer while Mike goes surfing and Merinda is writing and conferencing. We take you back to the first year of our show in November 2024 and this episode reviewing Netflix's Escaping Twin Flames docuseries. It's a great example of the "cult documentary" tropes we discussed in our last episode. Check it 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.

We are back with a new episode in our summer series of meta conversations about "cult documentaries." In this episode Mike and Merinda ask:

1. What is the basic formula of a cult documentary and what makes it effective?

2. What makes them easy to make, produce, and consume?

3. What’s the media’s role in perpetuating a certain definition of “cult”?

4. Is there something about this particular media moment that shapes our relationship to “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.

Merinda and Mike are enjoying summer vacation but we don't want to leave you with nothing for your ears. We have a lot of new listeners so we are dropping this deep cut from the Cult Favorite vault. You might have missed this the first time so don't miss it now! We'll be back soon with new content but for now, have a cold drink, sit back, and enjoy one of our favorite episodes.

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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

Please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube and leave us a rating and a review. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @cultfavorite.

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.