Holy Watermelon

Totalitarian control is popular in religious groups. Zinnia escaped the Christadelphian church a few years back, and now she hosts a podcast (Life After Leaving) all about supporting ex-Christadelphi…

Previously a Patreon Exclusive episode: We're opening the vault to showcase some of our older subscriber content.

For the first time, Katie reads the Torah (The Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses), th…

Is belief a choice, or are our beliefs inherent to us? How do we decide whether something is true or not? With more than 8 billion people on the planet, there are about 10,000 different types of reli…

Martin Luther is a hero to countless Christians around the world. The birth of European Protestantism and the Lutheran Church cannot be expressed without citing the 95 theses that Martin Luther poste…

Tasawwuf is the old word for dressing in wool, the typical identifier for a monk, ascetic, and mystic. Today, we pronounce it Sufi.

The Sufi tradition dates back to the foundation of Islam, though bot…

Christian mysticism is widely spread through this relatively common but fairly new tradition derived almost exclusively from what might have been parody pamphlets that told the story of Christian Ros…

Kabbalah isn't just another branch of Judaism--it's more mystical and personal. The idea is hat you really connect with the creator of the universe--but if you fail at that, there's always another sh…

Over millennia, countless dietary traditions have formed around the world; many are tied strictly to religious traditions, and have thereby been empowered to stand the test of time (with some scienti…

Mina Angotti has a Master's degree in theology, focusing her studies on Mary, the Mother of Christ. Mina is a longtime friend of the show, and a devout Catholic. She's here to tell us about the detai…

Vatileaks (or Vatican Document Leaks) caused a lot of trouble in Rome in 2012, leading directly (allegedly) to the Pope abdicating his office for the first time in centuries.

Paolo Gabriele (papal but…

Daoism (formerly called Taosim) is the more prominent indigenous religion of China.

Daoism incorporates philosophical writings from ancient scholars, and mystic divination based on a variety of fascin…

Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto) led a modest cultus that grew rapidly beyond the borders of its native Japan. 

A blind acupuncturist,  Asahara was convicted of selling pharmaceuticals illegally …

Literature is full of doomsday cults, but the real world is much more chilling.

This week we explore the Great Green Arkleseizure, the Cthulhu mythos, and the many gods described in the works of Neil …

Hoodoo is a terribly syncretic religion, developed as a sibling to Voodoo (and there are other siblings in this family, too). 

Magickcrafts have been traded for as long as people have been trading spi…

Keith Raniere is the object of worship in the NXIVM cult, a god in the plainest sense of the word. The founder of a few MLMs, this guy knew how to make a fortune from people who turned out to be easy…

New Age religion is a lot more than a scheme to sell books and crystals, it's a belief that a new age of enlightenment is dawning--or did so centuries ago--or is centuries away. It might be something…

Latin  America has managed to preserve some of its pre-Columbian religious heritage, so we're going to explore the traditions of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations. 

We explore cocaine, purifica…

It's time to take another look at religion in popular culture, in particular, cults in film, and why we love telling these stories.

The Wicker Man (Either Christopher Lee's 1973 classic, or Nicolas Ca…

Dr. Sean Hannan did his post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of MacEwan University in Edmonton Alberta. His studies revolve around St. Augustine of Hippo, and…

After ragging on people who surely don't deserve the veneration they receive from faithful Christians around the world, for their questionable morality, or even dubious historicity, it's time for us …