Episodes
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In this episode of "The Workers Cauldron," we delve into the intersection of feminist paganism and direct action through the lens of Starhawk and her cohorts' activism against nuclear power in the 1980s.
We navigate the rich history and dynamic landscape of the feminist pagan movement, exploring how spiritual practices intertwined with feminist ideals fuelled a potent form of activism. Drawing on the writings of Starhawk, a prominent figure in both feminist and pagan circles, the episode unpacks the significance of reclaiming feminine power in the face of environmental destruction and patriarchal oppression.
Bonus features: Anarcha-Feminism, EcoFeminism, Spiritual Feminism, Socialist Feminism, all the feminisms.
Sources:
Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s
Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics
The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
Cynthia Eller: Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today
Merlin Stone: When God Was a Woman
Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (ed): Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion
Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
Peggy Kornegger: Anarchism: The Feminist Connection
Françoise d'Eaubonne, Le Féminisme ou la MortYnestra King: The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology
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On this episode of The Workers Cauldron, we discuss the schism between radical and cultural feminists in the 1970s. We focus on the life and works of Z Budapest, who founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven no. 1 in 1970, the first of many covens devoted to what she termed “Dianic Wicca.” This reformulation of Wicca was staunchly feminist and believed men could only be initiated into the craft when true gender equality was won.
Sources:
Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in AmericaAlice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today
Kristy S. Coleman, Re-riting Woman: Dianic Wicca and the Feminine DivineJulia Kubula, Teaching “Bad Feminism”: Mary Daly and the Legacy of ’70s Lesbian-Feminism
Shai Feraro, “The Goddess is Alive. Magic is Afoot.”: Radical and Cultural Feminist Influences on Z Budapest’s Dianic Witchcraft During the 1970s–1980sZsuzsanna E. Budapest, My Dark Sordid Past As A Heterosexual: First Destiny
Deborah Netburn, This feminist witch introduced California to Goddess worship
Roz Kaveney, Why won't pagans accept trans women?Support the show
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Missing episodes?
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In this episode, we tackle the contentious Radical Feminist movement, particularly the actions of the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, aka W.I.T.C.H. We discuss the shifting political ideas of W.I.T.C.H co-founder Robin Morgan and consider how the contradictions within radical feminism--a movement of women who criticized the root of patriarchal society-- gave way to cultural feminism, which held the seeds of a burgeoning feminist spirituality movement.
Sources
Jo Freeman, WITCH
Redstockings, Miss America Protest
WITCH Manifesto,
Robin Morgan, Goodbye to All That
Sisterhood is Powerful, An Anthology of Writings from the Womens Liberation Movement
Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State
Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan WitchcraftSusan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution
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We are publishing a more relaxed episode this month as we prepare for the next series. Brenda Salguera of the Monstras: Latinx Monsters and Folklore podcast joins us to discuss the strange case of flying humanoids(but maybe illegal gold miners with jetpacks) In Loreto, Peru that made headlines last month.
Sources from Radio Programas del Perú:
"They are aliens!": Loreto residents denounce the presence of strange beings that attack them at night
Loreto: Police and Navy arrived at community where residents reported presence of aliens
Prosecutor's Office believes it is likely that illegal miners are behind the appearance of "strange beings" in LoretoSupport the show
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This month, Dr. Jennifer Koshatka Seman joins us to talk about her book Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo. We focus on the life of Teresa Urrea, a folk saint and spiritual healer in late 19th century Mexico that inspired indigenous and poor workers from the borderlands of Mexico to rise up against the Presidency of Porfirio Diaz.
Jennifer Koshatka Seman, Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo
Charles Wollenberg, Working on El Traque: The Pacific Electric Strike of 1903Brandon Bayne, From Saint to Seeker, Teresa Urrea's Search for a Place of Her Own
Barbara June Macklin and N. Ross Crumrine, Three North Mexican Folk Saint Movements
Gilbert M. Joseph and Jurgen Buchenau, Mexico's Once and Future Revolution, Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century, Chapter Two, Porfirian Modernization and its Costs.
Telegrams, Multiculturalism: Are We Celebrating or Appropriating? (Guest Post by Dr. Jennifer Koshatka Seman)
David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893-1923,
Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries
Paul Vanderwood, The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth CenturySupport the show
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There is a peculiar phantom rumored to haunt the rural roads of the South American Andes. The pishtaco takes the form of a tall, well-dressed white man who steals the fat from the bodies of the region's indigenous inhabitants. We explore how this monster was born out of the horrors of colonization and how it recreates itself throughout the history of Peru as the personification of oppression.
Sources:Mary Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes
Ernesto Vasquex Del Aguila, Pishtacos: Human Fat Murderers, Structural Inequalities and Resistances in Peru
Anthony Oliver-Smith, The Pishtaco: Institutionalized Fear in Highland Peru
Peter Gose, Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes
The Guardian: Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'
Time, Peru's Fat-Stealing Gang: Crime or Cover-Up?
Democracy Now: Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters in Amazon JungleSupport the show
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Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's administration was portrayed as a "Voodoo Dictatorship" by the Western press due to his tense relationship with the Catholic Church and his conflicting approach to the nation's Vodou beliefs. However, the claims of his political use of the religion's spirits and beliefs are based on shaky foundations. On this episode of The Worker's Cauldron, we try to shift through competing claims in an attempt to uncover the true history Haiti's right-wing dictator.
Sources:
David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti
John Cussans, Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and The Zombie Complex
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti, State Against Nation: Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism
Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti
Robert Lawless, Haiti's Bad Press: Origins, Development, and Consequences
Kate Ramsay, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
Tampa Bay Times: Haiti’s Recognition of Voodoo Brings New Freedom to Faithful
Whicker’s World: Papa Doc: The Black SheepSupport the show
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Focusing on the years between American military occupation and the dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, the Workers Cauldron Podcast examines the ways in which Haitian literary groups represented the African diaspora religion of Vodou. After being moved by indiginisme, an ethnological movement to ground Haitian identity in its African past, future dictator Francois Duvalier helped to organize a group of black nationalist or noiriste writers called Les Griots who rebelled against the enlightenment principles of republican democracy.
Sources:
David Nicholls: Politics and Religion in Haiti From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti
Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930-46
John Cussans: Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and The Zombie ComplexMichel-Rolph Trouillot: Haiti, State Against Nation: Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism
Michel S. Laguerre: Voodoo and Politics in Haiti
Mathew J. Smith: Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957Support the show
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In the final episode of our 2022 season, we discuss the rise of a bizarre cryptid popularly called The Dogman. We explore the works of the late great Linda Godfrey, who passed away on November 27 of this year, and her role in popularizing Wisconsin’s Beast of Bray Road and the Michigan Dogman. Over the last decade, the monster has grown from humble rural origins into a cryptid of international fame.
Linda Godfrey: The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf
Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America
"The Gable Film"
Yorkshire Post: '˜Truth' behind those sightings of Hull's Beast of Barmston Drain werewolf
Monsterquest: America’s Wolfman Caught on Film
PBS: The Beast of Bray Road
Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
Neal Arnold: Monster!: The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena
Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie B. Thomas: Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore
Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary PerspectivesSupport the show
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We continue our journey into the intersections of gay liberation and the neopagan movements with a discussion of Eddie Buczynski a young witch, brought under the wing of famed gay witch Leo Martello, who founded the Minoan Brotherhood--combining what he believed to be ancient goddess worship with a new mystery cult for gay men. We then discuss the pagan turn of Arthur Evans, formerly the strategist for the Gay Activist Alliance, with the 1978 publication of Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Finally, we dive into the Radical Faeries, organized by gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, who sought to create a new, gay spirituality. We also our joined by Lisa Grimm of the Beer Ladies Podcast to talk about Margaret Murray and the witch cult hypothesis.
Sources
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
Michael Lloyd, Bull of Heaven: The Mythic Life of Eddie Buczynski & the Rise of the New York Pagan
Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture
Peter Hennen, Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine
Stuart Timmons, The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay MovementSupport the show
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We are back and in time for Halloween we are discussing, among other things, the first pagan pride “Witch-In” in New York’s Central Park on October 31, 1970. The organizer of the event, an eccentric Sicilian-American named Leo Martello, used his experience in the gay liberation movement to craft a (somewhat problematic) political identity for the emerging Wiccan religion. We discuss his life, influences, and how he related to the gay liberation movement after the Stonewall uprising.
Bonus: Cian Gill of the Wide Atlantic Weird Podcast joins us to discuss how 19th century folklorist “discovered” The Gospel of the Witches, which would later form the foundation of Martello’s stregheria
Sources:
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon
Ethan Doyle White, Wicca: history, belief, and community in modern pagan witchcraft
MIchael Bronksi, A Queer History of the United States
Leo Martello, Weird Ways of Witchcraft, and Witchcraft: The Old Religion
Off the Grid, Out of the Broom Closet: Gay Activist & Village Wiccan Leo Martello
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and WiccaGay Liberation Front Platform Statement, December 2, 1970
Harry Hay, “Statement of Purpose—Gay Liberation Front, Los Angeles, California”Support the show
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This episode we speak to UCLA social historian Robin Derby, whose upcoming book, Werewolves and other Bêtes Noires: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands, focuses on manifestations of demonic animals on the island of Hispaniola. We talk about the links between colonization, capitalism and monsters--particularly the mysterious figure known as the bacá.
Further Reading:
Robin Derby and Marion Werner: The Devil Wears Dockers: Devil Pacts, Trade Zones, and Rural-Urban Ties in the Dominican Republic
Peggy McInerny: Shape-shifting and storytelling in HispaniolaSupport the show
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Sometimes monsters take on the most unlikely form. Today we talk about the night doctor, a shadowy medical menace that appears in Black folklore at the beginning of the 20th century. Fear of the night doctor reflected a very real history of racist medical abuse in the United States.
CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains discussions about dissections and unethical medical experiments that some may find disturbing.
References:
Night Riders in Black Folk History
By Gladys-Marie Fry
Medical Apartheid
By Harriet A. Washington
Bodies in the Basement: The Forgotten Stolen Bones of America's Medical Schools
By Dolly Stolze
Night Doctors
By Colin Dickey
Fear Of The Dark: The Night Doctors In Folk Belief And Historical Reality
By Mark LaskeySupport the show
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The Chupacabra is undoubtedly one of the most well known cryptids. It is a recent monster, emerging in Puerto Rico only in 1995. We discuss what was going on in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the spread of the Chupacabra to Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement where it merged with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and how it became associated with both coyotes suffering from mange and immigrants in the 2000s.
We are joined by Brenda Salguero and Dr. Orquidea of the podcast Monstras: Latinx Monsters and Folklore, Dr. William Calvo-Quirós, author of “Sucking Vulnerability: Neoliberalism, the Chupacabras, and the Post-Cold War Years,” and Dr. Ed Guimont of the Impossible Archive podcast.
Bonus: The time a teddy bear was victimized by El Chupacabra, Scully and Mulder get problematic, and kangaroo chihuahuas
References
William Calvo-Quiros: “Sucking Vulnerability: Neoliberalism, the Chupacabras, and the Post-Cold War Years”
Robert Jordan Michael: “El Chupacabra: Icon of Resistance to U.S. Imperialism”
Lauren Derby: “Imperial Secrets: Vampires and Nationhood in Puerto Rico”
Silvia Rodriguez Vega: “Chupacabras: The Myth of the Bad Immigrant”Scott Corrales: Night of the Chupacabras
The 1996 "Chupacabra Homepage"
Asher Elbein: Chasing the Chupacabra, A Lonestar Legend
Benjamin Radford: Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore
Joe Bandy: Bordering the Future: Resisting Neoliberalism in the Borderlands
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This week we take a look at the strange moving statues phenomenon that attracted hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics to shrines across the country in the summer of 1985. The moving statues were part the bleak social landscape of Ireland in the 1980s, and a series of scandals leading up to that summer ignited something of a social movement that politicized the alleged miracles.
We are joined by Victoria Anne Pearson of University College Cork and Cian Gill of the Wide
Atlantic Weird Podcast who help contextualize the strange occurrences.
J. Ryan and T. Kirakowski, Ballinspittle, Moving Statues and FaithSharon Tighe-Mooney, Irreconcilable differences?: The fraught relationship between women and the Catholic Church in Ireland
Nell McCafferty, A Woman to Blame: the Kerry Babies Case
Michael Allen, From men, to women, to children: some changing paradigms in the anthropological understanding of religionSupport the show
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Finally, we travel to Vietnam, where both National Liberation Front fighters and American GI’s allegedly encountered Bigfoot-like creatures in the midst of the Vietnam War. We discuss how Vietnamese scientists respond to the Nguoi Rung or forest people in light of the nation's astonishing biodiversity..
Bonus material: The applications of Friedrich Engels to Bigfoot research
Sources:
Kon Tum: The truth about the horror and bloodthirsty "forest man with no tail"
Nguoi Rung: mythical or missing ape
Kregg P. Jorgenson, Very Crazy GI! Strange but True Stories of the Vietnam War
Loren Coleman & Jerome Clark, Cryptozoology A To Z
Nguyen Dinh Khoa, Forest Man of Vietnam (Nguoi rung)
Bernard Heuvelmans, Neanderthal: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman
Helmut Loofs-Wissowa, In Search of Unidentified Relic Hominoids in Southeast Asia
Rock Apes of Vietnam: Jungle Cryptid of the Vietnam War?
Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption
John Mackinnon, In Search of the Red ApeSupport the show
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This week we follow the tracks of the mysterious Yeren, aka "China's Bigfoot," and discuss how revolutionary Chinese scientists have grappled with the development of a “people’s science” as it relates to the country's enigmatic cryptid.
Bonus material: The taste of Bigfoot meat
Sigrid Schmalzer: The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China
Lauren Chen: Dreamers, crackpots or realists? The diehards on the trail of China’s ‘Bigfoot’
The legend of the Wild Man is alive and well and transforming remote villages in northwest China into booming tourist towns
Bigfoot and the Yeren: A dialogue with Joshua Blu Buhs and Sigrid Schmalzer
Science for the PeopleSupport the show
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How a select group of explorers and scientists from the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of Mongolia came to believe that a species of primitive, human-like creatures called Almas or Almasty haunted the mountains of Central Asia. Also, we interview Dr. Ed Guimont on the role socialist science fiction may have had on a leader of the Soviet expedition to find the Yeti. Check out his podcast, The Impossible Archive, here.
Sources
Boris Porshnev, The Soviet Sasquatch
Artemy Magun, Boris Porshnev's Dialectic of History
Translated Essays from Porshnev, Koffman, and Damdin at the Relict Hominoid Inquiry
Ingvar Svanberg and Sabira Ståhlberg, Wildmen in Central Asia
Edina Dallos, Albasty: A Female Demon of Turkic Peoples
Monstertalk, The Zana ProblemSupport the show
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In our season 3 finally, we pay homage to the great tradition of Christmas Ghost stories by looking into the haunted house. Jumping off from classic gothic literature and the wave of supernatural horror movies at the dawn of neoliberalism, we dive into the popularity of haunted house stories in modern reality television. We discuss the frightening undercurrents of domestic violence, the re-entrenchment of “traditional” gender roles, and the horrors of unstable housing markets.
Bonus: Some LEGO facts, possessed bowels, Cedric Jameson
Sources for our most reference heavy episode yet (sorry):
Avery Gordon: Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
Julia Leyda, “Demon Debt: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY as Recessionary Post-Cinematic Allegory" in Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film
Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie B Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary FolkloreDale Bailey: American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction
Annette Hill, Paranormal Media: Audience, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture
Drew Beard, Horror Begins at Home: Family Trauma in Paranormal Reality TV
Karen E Macfarlane, “If You Have Ghosts: Haunting Neoliberal Real Estate in Paranormal Reality Series” from PopMec.com panel “The Ghosts of Capitalism: Neoliberalism and the State”
Owen Davies: The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts
Colin Dickey: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
Douglas Kellner, "Poltergeists, Gender, and Class. Horror Film in the Age of Reagan," Cinema and the Question of ClassAmy Lawrence, Paranormal Survivors: Validating the Struggling Middle Class
James Houran,V. K. Kumar,Michael A. Thalbourne &Nicole E. Lavertue, “ Haunted by somatic tendencies: Spirit infestation as psychogenic illness” in Mental Health, Religion & CultureFrederic Jameson, Historicism in “The Shining”
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In this edition of the Workers Cauldron, we are headed over to the strange world of TikTok, where a new folklore is developing around creatures appropriated from indigenous American spiritualities. These spirits, oddly euphemized as “Flesh Pedestrians” and “Windy Bois," are said to steal unwary hikers off trails and into the deep forests of North America. We break these stories down, and discuss how this form of appropriation sidesteps the very real history of colonialism, to the horrors of Canadian residential schools to Kit Carson’s brutal attempt at ethnic cleansing in the American Southwest.
Bonus Material: Deer that are not deer. They are #notdeer
Sources:
Shawn Smallman, Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History
Jack Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and TerrorismDina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
CBS "We're not just relics of the past": How #NativeTikTok is preserving Indigenous cultures and inspiring a younger generationDazed Digital: Skinwalkers: the creepy creatures terrifying TikTok
Noah Nez ,Native Skeptic, Skinwalkers
Adrienne Keene, Native Appropriations, Magic in North America Part 1, ugh
Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo
Robert Fletcher: Connection with nature is an oxymoron: A political ecology of “nature-deficit disorder”JD Sword, Not Deer, or a Deer?
SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD AND The BEER LADIES PODCASTSupport the show
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