What can possibly make sense of company founders’ forgetting their own address in a deposition, doling out sex advice for retailers, and reading from the Book of Mormon at leadership retreats? This week, we’re going shopping! Don’t get distracted by the racks of leggings and maxi skirts, though: we’re looking for answers, using the promo code offered by LuLaRich. LuLaRoe is the store, but the proverbial mall is MLMs, and that mall is shaped like a pyramid. It’s easy to get lost in there, so we’ll take you through it, highlighting corporate appeals to individualism, capitalist aesthetics, and the ways that both those things prey especially upon women. As we wind our way through mall-walkers, Mike plays some very impressive word jenga, Merinda doesn’t know whether someone gets “gaslit” or “gaslighted” (she goes with the latter), and they learn that they are both pro-candy corn. Beware of grifters and their glower of positive thinking, folx. If we get separated, just meet back at the food court, and we’ll buy you an Orange Julius.

Links:

Interview with Sianne Ngai- https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/43/jasper_ngai.php

Interview with producers: https://deadline.com/2022/04/lularich-jenner-furst-julia-willoughby-nason-blye-faust-cori-shepherd-stern-interview-contenders-tv-1235008620/

This American Life episode: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/543/wake-up-now

Barbara Ehrenreich's 2009 book Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312658854/brightsided

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

Theme music produced with Udio.

What’s that...? You thought Led Zeppelin’s appeal was to do with Robert Plant’s soaring vocals and bodacious hair? Well. You clearly haven’t listened to their lyrics backwards. Come with us—if you dare—into the Haunted House of Rock Music [cue thunder crashes and villain laughter]. We’re piling into Marty McFly’s DeLorean time machine and traveling back to 1989 to watch Hell’s Bells: The Dangers of Rock ‘n’ Roll. It’s what’s playing in the background at a Halloween party thrown by the Satanic Panic, a new moral majority, parental advisory labels on “porn rock,” and general fears about teenagers enjoying themselves. Mike gets groovy with a Sandi Patty deep cut and a Grateful Dead jam session, while Merinda stands by the punch bowl muttering surly critiques about failures in textual analysis. What do our fears (and the ways we try to manage them) say about us? What do code-cracking and spreading conspiracy theories have in common? And what makes metaphors a trick for some and a treat for others? We have lotsa thoughts and zero jump scares. Listen and lurch!

Follow us on social media at @cultfavoritepod.

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

Theme music produced with Udio.

Why would Tarzan leave Manhattan for Brentwood, TN? Find out as we take a tour of the Remnant Fellowship Church by way of the HBO/Max documentary The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin. Conversational topics include but are not limited to: 1980s diet culture, patriarchy in conservative American Protestantism, gender politics and anti-fat bias, and what gets normalized when religious groups are said to warp/twist/exploit a certain text or tradition. Mike drops some personal lore about parenting workshops, Merinda explains why she doesn’t like an exceptionalism narrative, and both agree that it’s annoying when gawking at big hair stands in for critiquing capitalist tax codes. PSA: Individual experiences are always wrapped up in and reflective of structural realities, everybody. Cult favorites include the amazing Aubrey Gordon. Less explicitly, we seem also to love accidental segues and a lack of transitions! Join us and follow wherever you listen to things.

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