If the ingredients of something called a “cult” include a charismatic figure and unquestioning followers, the phenomenon of “Kai the Hitchhiker” helps us think about what happens when the power dynamic between those elements is inverted. Famous for the local news interview that launched a thousand memes, Kai was an unlikely hero whose lowkey charm saw people clamoring to make him a late-night and reality tv star. What do people offer and, alternatively, ignore when we want to see a particular story play out in a way that satisfies us? How do we respond when someone doesn’t follow our social scripts about wealth and power? What stories do we tell retroactively to make it make sense? What do we expect of someone deemed charismatic, and what does that tell us about ourselves? We explore these questions and others, like: will we ever get the video working for this podcast? Hang in as we keep trying, dear listeners!

Merinda's Cult Favorite:

Hanif Abdurraqib’s “To Chan Marshall: A Letter to Cat Power” (in season 2 of the Lost Notes podcast); then his own examination of musical moments and figures in 1980 for the 3rd season (the episode that reckons with the deaths of John Lennon and Darby Crash [lead singer of punk band Germs] is so good). Both are examples of attending to context with empathy, which is one of his trademarks and which siiiiiiiigh, thank you.

Mike's Cult Favorite:

“I Don’t Like Who I Was Then” by The Wonder Years

As an undermatured 40 year old recovering emo kid, a song where a dude sings about genuinely tryingto be a better person with the lyric “Like I'm working babyface, Out of Mid-South in the eighties, I kept a blade hidden in my wrist tape” just hits me right in the heart.

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

Theme music produced with Udio.

We’ve made it to our 25th episode! In all the excitement, Merinda forgets her computer, and Mike swoons over his latest thrift store find. But we do manage to talk about new Max documentary Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu. The story of a guru-turned-prisoner is also a story about evolutions in the Indian legal system and about the relationships between religious and political power. As ever, questions abound. How does the “cult” label morph when applied to a group of 40 million people? How does its functionality as an othering/familiarizing device hold up? What about cult discourse might get lost in translation across different contexts? And when was the last time you wrote/mailed a letter? Thanks for spending your valuable time with us and seeing us through to our 25th documentary discussion!

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

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

Theme music produced with Udio.

This week, we’re staying in the 90s and are still talking about abuses of power that turned into tv spectacle. Performances of masculinity continue to abound, but gone are WWE’s costumes and Springer’s staged fights. The skirmishes in this case appear within federal agencies and their approaches to an insulated religious group. Join us as we discuss Waco: American Apocalypse (2023), which details the 51-day standoff between the Branch Davidians and the US government. Negotiators, snipers, the ATF, the FBI, armored tanks, desperate parents, a frenzied media, and Timothy McVeigh all make appearances in a story that sees conflicting visions/versions of American identity cancel each other out and go up in literal flames. On much lighter notes, we catch a glimpse into Mike’s childhood dinner rituals, and Merinda opines about tough-guy energy. #cultfavorite #waco #studyreligion

Links:

Bio of abstract expressionist painter Cy Twombly, Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly,by Joshua Rivkin

https://citylights.com/art/chalk-art-erasure-of-cy-twombly-2/

“For the Plot” new single from As December Falls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-IqeMj9sE

John Stewart used John Cena’s heel turn this past weekend to explain our current geopolitical climate:

Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

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

Theme music produced with Udio.