The Good Friends of Jackson Elias

We’re back and we’re examining our beliefs. Everyone believes things that seem weird to other people. Whether this is that a dead god speaks to us in our dreams or that podcasting is a serious career, others may be bemused or horrified when we express it. Most of the time, however, these beliefs don’t impact others (although our sacred tenet that we should only bathe during solar eclipses has cut down on party invitations). When a cult forms around such beliefs, however, things might become more sinister. Probably no more fragrant, however.



Main Topic: Cults part 2



We are continuing our discussion of real-world cults and how they might relate to Call of Cthulhu. This time, we delve into the kinds of belief systems cults build themselves around. In the process, we cover some unusual variations, from terrorist groups to multi-level marketing firms. We try very hard not to conflate the two.



Perceptive listeners will notice that this episode is a little longer than usual. There is a story behind this…



We meet (online, these days) once a month to record our standard episodes. Usually, this gap doesn’t present any problems, as our episodes tend to be on discreet subjects. The longer runs are either heavily scripted, as in At the Mountains of Madness, or broken into subtopics, like The King in Yellow. With the cults episodes, we are just working to a single page of bullet points, bringing our own research and experiences to the conversation.



While we go into some detail about Paul and Matt’s experiences with a certain cult-like organisation, we are once again very cagey about names. Sorry! We can’t afford to get sued!


Well, during the last month, we lost our place in our notes and completely forgot where we had got to. Paul and Scott are old, and so have an excuse for poor memories, but we are very disappointed in Matt!



All this means that we ended up talking about some of the same things in episodes 2 and 3. To save on redundancy, we have edited two recordings together into a single episode, removing repeated talking points and anecdotes. The two recordings aren’t exactly duplicates, however. The unedited versions going out to Patreon backers will have plenty of juicy material that didn’t make it into either episode.



Once again, the lockdown means we recorded this episode remotely. We hope that we’re getting the hang of making this sound all right. It’s far from the biggest problem current circumstances have presented, but it’s still a challenge.



Links



Things we mention in this episode include:




* Joshua Kennon’s article on cult beliefs



* Folk Horror



* Quiverfull



* Great Replacement



* The Wicker Man



* Shub-Niggurath



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