But, before we get into it, I wanna give a shout-out to this week's sponsor, Bright Cellars. You know that we love to break down complex ideas at Wisecrack, but after a long day of reading disturbing accounts of cults, I don't want to think about my after-work drink. And this is where Bright Cellars is a game-changer. Wine can be complicated, and it's hard to figure out what you like. But Bright Cellars is the monthly wine club founded by two MIT graduates that uses an algorithm to match you up with wines that you'll love. Just take their six question quiz and Bright Cellars will recommend great wines that will hit all the right notes for your palate. And, even if you have zero prior wine knowledge, all they need is your preferences on things like juice, chocolate, and tea to figure out which types of wines you'll love. And as you review the wines they send you, you'll get to know your taste more and more, so your wines are even more specific to you. For example, I now know that I am perfectly suited for a cool climate Pinot Noir. Who would've known? If you're of legal drinking age, you'll get these delicious wines shipped right to your door, which is much more fun than staring at the wine aisle at the grocery store, trying to magically teach yourself Italian. And, because I enjoy learning what I drink, I love that each bottle comes with a wine education card that gives tasting notes, shows me how to pair wines, and lets me know which temperature to serve it at. It makes wine tasting feel way less snobby, and makes for an amazing at-home date night. Right now, they're offering NUMBER_PERCENTAGE_TOKEN off your first six bottle box, but only if you hit the link in the description. So, go on and treat yourself. Now, back to the show. Now, to understand why cults have captivated the country, we first need to figure out what the heck a cult is anyway. Unfortunately, that, much like the milk crate challenge, is easier said than done. See, the word "cult" didn't always invoke sexy, knife-wielding Manson teens. In fact, when it came into use in the NUMBER_TOKENth century, it merely meant "to worship anything". The definition only really began to shift around the late NUMBER_TOKENth century, when it began to refer to scary religious groups, like the Mormons. The turn of cults from neutral to super negative was also somewhat rooted in racism. Scholar Phillip Jenkins notes that it, "derived from growing Western contact "with non-Christian and polytheist religions "in Asia and Africa, "which were presented in the West "in terms of primitive idolatry and ritual violence." Basically, in the late NUMBER_TOKENth century, as contact between different continents became more frequent, religious ideas began to blur across geographical boundaries, which seriously freaked out some Christians. People began writing anxious screeds about the rise of new religions, referring to them as "cults", and the anxiety/name-calling has never gone away. But the line between cult and religion is so tenuous that scholar Reza Aslan notes, "the biggest joke in religious studies "is that cult + time = religion". Randomly enough, rocker Frank Zappa also quipped that,
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN But, before we get into it, I wanna give a shout-out to this week's sponsor, Bright Cellars. You know that we love to break down complex ideas at Wisecrack, but after a long day of reading disturbing accounts of cults, I don't want to think about my after-work drink. And this is where Bright Cellars is a game-changer. Wine can be complicated, and it's hard to figure out what you like. But Bright Cellars is the monthly wine club founded by two MIT graduates that uses an algorithm to match you up with wines that you'll love. Just take their six question quiz and Bright Cellars will recommend great wines that will hit all the right notes for your palate. And, even if you have zero prior wine knowledge, all they need is your preferences on things like juice, chocolate, and tea to figure out which types of wines you'll love. And as you review the wines they send you, you'll get to know your taste more and more, so your wines are even more specific to you. For example, I now know that I am perfectly suited for a cool climate Pinot Noir. Who would've known? If you're of legal drinking age, you'll get these delicious wines shipped right to your door, which is much more fun than staring at the wine aisle at the grocery store, trying to magically teach yourself Italian. And, because I enjoy learning what I drink, I love that each bottle comes with a wine education card that gives tasting notes, shows me how to pair wines, and lets me know which temperature to serve it at. It makes wine tasting feel way less snobby, and makes for an amazing at-home date night. Right now, they're offering NUMBER_PERCENTAGE_TOKEN off your first six bottle box, but only if you hit the link in the description. So, go on and treat yourself. Now, back to the show. Now, END_SPONSOR_TOKEN