Cult Favorite Podcast

Cult Favorite Podcast Cult Favorite is a podcast about all those cult documentaries you can't stop binge watching. Hosted by Merinda Simmons and Mike Altman.

We are two religious studies professors trying to understand our current cult documentary era.

01/15/2026

Mike had very specific reasons for not watching Grizzly Man until our episode this week.

Buckle in and get ready to hear two of the worst Werner Herzog impressions of all time. Not unlike the famous filmmaker,...
01/14/2026

Buckle in and get ready to hear two of the worst Werner Herzog impressions of all time. Not unlike the famous filmmaker, we just couldn’t seem to help ourselves! In his case, however, the self-indulgence comes tethered to a story nominally about Timothy Treadwell, the so-called Grizzly Man who inspired a 2005 documentary by the same name. What does that 20-year-old cinematic exploration have to do with cults, you ask? Lots! Most of all, we talk about what’s at work when stories (whether told by filmmakers, journalists, or scholars) become projections. “The subject of the dream is the dreamer,” the great Toni Morrison reminds us, so how might we account for distinctions in/of methodology and genre while remaining mindful of their mediators? Digging into that question helps us avoid the perhaps-tempting-but-definitely-inane (or at least none-of-our-business) questions about whether Treadwell had the right or wrong motivations and whether his ex-girlfriend should or shouldn’t listen to an audiotape (Herzog has advice for her). Adjudication and analysis are different, methodologically speaking. What is exceedingly clear in any context, however, is that Mike and Merinda should never attempt voice acting.

01/13/2026

NEW EPISODE: Grizzly Man (2005)
Find it wherever you get your podcasts!

This week, we hop into a car Louis Theroux is driving, but we have questions about his vehicular management...or at leas...
12/01/2025

This week, we hop into a car Louis Theroux is driving, but we have questions about his vehicular management...or at least about his playlist choices. Luckily, we’ve saved a seat for the insider/outsider problem, and it’s a great navigator! Yep, we’ve cued up My Scientology Movie, a title that at least offers truth in advertising. It is very much Theroux’s movie that follows his curiosity based on his interviews staged with his curation. As such, it puts front and center a refrain here at Cult Favorite: how we talk about something says as much (if not more) about ourselves than about whatever we’re talking about. Speaking of which, no post two weeks ago has everything to do with Merinda’s brain fog and nothing to do with an absent episode. We have one! It’s about Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence (talk about the work titles do, eep). Consider this a twofer? Or a post-thanksgiving second helping.

Ghoulfriends, we’ve got a Halloween special for you just in time spook season!! Despite our better judgment, we watched ...
11/01/2025

Ghoulfriends, we’ve got a Halloween special for you just in time spook season!! Despite our better judgment, we watched TWO features that deal with Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demon-hunting duo of Conjuring franchise fame. We talk about scary stories, the people who tell/sell them, and the societal anxieties they reflect and assuage. For the Warrens and their lucrative career, whether or not the ghosts and demons were real, the profits certainly were. Join us for some spine-tingling analysis, and give candy corn an honest shot while you’re at it.

10/16/2025

Not everyone who shows up to help is there for the best reasons.

Hear more of the story in our full podcast episode reviewing The Synanon Fix: Is the Cure a Cult.

10/13/2025

“Cult leaders” don’t appear out of thin air. They fill the voids we leave behind. What social voids are being left right now?

10/09/2025

In Synanon, “The Game” was supposed to help members confront their own behavior—a no-drugs, no-violence space where people could “hold up a mirror” to each other.

But how long can a space like that stay safe?

🎧 Hear the full breakdown on Cult Favorite

10/08/2025

We’re talking about the HBO Max documentary The Synanon Fix: Is the Cure a Cult on our latest podcast episode. Have you seen it? What did you think?

10/07/2025

New episode! Let’s talk about The Synanon Fix and why someone would put a rattlesnake in your mailbox.

On this week’s show, Mike’s cult favorite was his new dog, Otis. Here he is. Otis is a good boy.
10/07/2025

On this week’s show, Mike’s cult favorite was his new dog, Otis. Here he is. Otis is a good boy.

This week we’re talking about The Synanon Fix: Did the Cure Become a Cult? (HBO, 2024), yet another documentary that rem...
10/06/2025

This week we’re talking about The Synanon Fix: Did the Cure Become a Cult? (HBO, 2024), yet another documentary that reminds us why we must always take care with a subtitle. It’s the story of Synanon, a drug addiction treatment community founded in the late 1950s by Chuck Dederich. The group offered solidarity and stability to people on society’s margins, they were unapologetically integrated, and they threw great parties. The centerpiece of their program was “the game,” which involved a lot of yelling and, ideally, self-reflection and catharsis. Celebrities like Lucille Ball and Leonard Nimoy came to hang, and there was even a movie made about them starring Eartha Kitt! Dederich became increasingly invested in the wealthy, self-aggrandizing “allies” who made hefty donations and less present for the people who helped build the group from the ground up. In the process, the man who invented the literal game began breaking his own rules. We talk about the ever-appealing rhetoric of individualism that got deployed even as assistance turned into assimilation. We also talk about how the trope of “cult leader” helps the doc bury a lead regarding mental illness and psychosis. When and why do we distinguish a group from its leader, and when/why do we choose not to? Learn about this, as well as Mike’s new dog Otis.

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