Hosted by Merinda Simmons and Mike Altman · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 55 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
A podcast about all of those cult documentaries you love to binge watch. We are two religious studies professors that are curious about our current cult documentary streaming era. What stories do these shows tell and what do they tell us about ourselves? Hosted by Merinda Simmons and Mike Altman
Merinda Simmons and Mike Altman hosts Cult Favorite, a tv show with 55 episodes published.
We are diving back into the archives again this summer while Mike goes surfing and Merinda is writing and conferencing. We take you back to the first year of our show in November 2024 and this episode reviewing Netflix's
We are back with a new episode in our summer series of meta conversations about "cult documentaries." In this episode Mike and Merinda ask: 1. What is the basic formula of a cult documentary and what makes it effective?
Merinda and Mike are enjoying summer vacation but we don't want to leave you with nothing for your ears. We have a lot of new listeners so we are dropping this deep cut from the Cult Favorite vault. You might have missed
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are o
This week we are taking a break from all of those cult documentaries you can’t stop binge watching to have a conversation about our journey so far and where we are going. We have a lot of new listeners so we want to revi
Put your brain in Warrior 2 and join us for a conversation about the new documentary series Twisted Yoga on Apple TV+ (in which Gregorian Bivolaru assaults women in the name of divine transmogrification at yoga retreats)
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are o
http://www.sarahkernochan.com/documentaries/index.html https://www.vice.com/en/article/marjoe-director-sarah-kernochan-talks-about-her-incredible-doc-on-the-evangelical-conman-456/ Follow us on the socials at @cultfavori
This week, we dive into Kumaré, in which Vikram Gandhi fashions a social experiment that turns into a journey of self-discovery...or something. Topics include but are not limited to: guru persona as ideological container
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are o
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are o
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 t
It is the end of the semester and we here at Cult Favorite are ready for a long winters nap. So, we have a special episode from deep in the Cult Favorite archives that you may not have heard yet. This week we are replayi
What drives someone to risk everything for a calling? In this episode, we dive into The Mission (2023), a gripping documentary that follows the story of John Chau—a young missionary whose journey to reach one of the worl
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
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are o
It's our 2nd annual Halloween special episode!!! And that's doubly funny because Mike hates Halloween. For this year's special we take on TWO documentaries (and kind of a third one too) about Ed and Lorraine Warren, 20th
This week’s documentary tracks a religious leader who separated followers from their families, made them take vows not to critique authority, engaged in shady financial misdeeds, strictly controlled access to information
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 tr
Follow us on the socials at @cultfavoritepod. Production assistance from the Department of ReligiousStudies at the University of Alabama. Theme music produced with Udio.
Sponsor detection runs nightly. Check back soon.
No public pitch examples yet for this show.
Generate your own personalised pitchBased on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:
Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
Cult Favorite has a verified contact on file. Create a free PitchCentric account to access it and generate a personalised pitch in seconds. Research at least 3 recent episodes first and lead with a specific angle that serves their tv audience.
Cult Favorite is hosted by Merinda Simmons and Mike Altman. The show is categorised under tv (film) and has published 55 episodes.
Cult Favorite has published 55 episodes.
Cult Favorite regularly covers tv, film. It sits in the tv category, with a film focus.
Cult Favorite is accessible for guests with genuine tv expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Cult Favorite hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Cult Favorite average 70 minutes, giving guests a long-form format with plenty of time to expand on their expertise.
Our data rates Cult Favorite's guest bar at 80/100 (Premium tier). Established thought leaders with verified media credentials. Sign in to PitchCentric to see how your own Pod Score compares against this show.
Methodology. Booking Probability™ blends Listen Score, 30-day Virality, open-to-guests detection, and Apple ratings. Data refreshed every 60 minutes. Listen Score and Booking Probability are calculated by PitchCentric. Last enriched today.
