Altar Ego

For years, millions of Southern Baptists were encouraged to boycott Disney—but why? What transformed the "Most Magical Place on Earth" into the center of one of the largest Christian consumer boycotts in modern history? In this episode of Altar Ego , Jeri unpacks the rise of the Southern Baptist Convention's campaign against Disney, exploring the cultural and theological battles that...

Sources: The Bible ⁠⁠ Mark Singleton — Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010) Oxford Academic — Yoga Body ⁠ Andrea R. Jain — Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014) Oxford Academic — Selling Yoga ⁠ Andrea R. Jain — “Modern Yoga,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Oxford Academic — Modern Yoga ⁠ Andrea R. Jai...

CW: Discussions of SA and ritual abuse. In the 1980s, at the height of what's now widely known as the Satanic Panic, a Utah social worker Barbara Snow, and a colleague by the name of Teena Sorenson developed a framework for how children supposedly disclose abuse. A framework where denial, inconsistency, and even retraction could all be read as steps toward eventual confirmation. Snow’s work in...

One of the most famous hauntings in Canadian history began with a terrified young woman... but was Esther Cox haunted by a violent spirit, or was she living through the devastating aftermath of trauma? In this episode, we revisit The Great Amherst Mystery and trace the extraordinary events that transformed Esther Cox into one of the paranormal world's most enduring figures. From unexplained scratc...

What does the Heritage Foundation have to do with the most profitable MLM ever? This week, Jeri takes us through a deep dive of Amway (short for American Way), one of the most influential and recognizable multi-level marketing companies in the world. From its borrowed recruiting tactics to the powerful influences built around it, we look at how many MLMs use similar techniques found in high-contro...

What began as a simple LEGO consignment spiraled into a saga of criminal charges, disputed evidence, alleged police misconduct, and a community left wondering who could be trusted. In this episode, we unravel the extraordinary story behind the Utah Bricks & Minifigs controversy—from the Mansell family's original consignment and the takeover of the franchise, to Ben Schneider and the allegation...

In 1989, a drug cult operating out of Matamoros, Mexico, was exposed when a member blew through a border checkpoint — believing himself invisible — and was followed straight back to Santa Elena Ranch. What investigators found was confusing and deeply disturbing. What the media told the world about it brought deep harm and stigma to one of the oldest continuously practiced African diasporic religio...

In the second episode of Heather's Mormonism in Utah series, we pick up after the death of Joseph Smith, when the future of the Mormon movement was uncertain. Into leadership stepped a carpenter-turned-apostle who would lead thousands of followers across the American frontier and transform the desert of Utah Territory into the center of a new religious empire. Brigham Young was more than a pioneer...

This is the final installment of Jeri's LSD series, and we're ending it in Detroit. A group of kids from Lincoln Park start playing guitar after school in 1963, and by 1968, they are living in a commune run by their manager, getting surveilled by the FBI, and sharing a roof with someone on the bureau's ten most wanted list. MC5 was performing punk rock before anyone had a name for it. This episode...

Content Warning: This episode discusses polygamy, coercion, and religious control within a historical context. Joseph Smith is known as the founder of Mormonism, a prophet to millions and a figure surrounded by faith, devotion, and controversy. But the story of how the religion began is far more complex than many realize. In this episode, we step into early 1800s America to trace Smith’s rise from...

Founded in 1968 as a radical response to systemic racism and state power, the group openly aligned themselves with the Black Panther Party as supporters. Once referred to by the FBI as one of the most dangerous and threatening groups in America. Their message was simple and controversial: white Americans had a responsibility to dismantle oppressive systems from within. How? Through altering relati...

At a quiet crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, a legend was born. Robert Johnson is one of the most influential blues musicians of all time. His music shaped generations, yet his story is wrapped in something far darker. According to folklore, Johnson disappeared as an unremarkable guitarist and returned with a talent so extraordinary that people struggled to explain it. The answer, some believed...

Five children vanish in a house fire… and no bodies are ever found. On Christmas Eve 1945, the Sodder family fire should have been a tragic accident. A home goes up in flames. Parents survive. Five of their children are presumed dead. Except there’s one problem; there were no remains. No bones. No evidence they were ever in the fire at all. What follows is decades of unanswered questions, strange...

In this episode of Altar Ego, Heather takes us to Jamaica’s Rose Hall to explore the legend of Annie Palmer, known as the White Witch. Said to have practiced dark magic and ruled her plantation with fear, her story lives at the crossroads of modern paranormal beliefs, folklore, violence, and exploitation. Was Annie Palmer even real? Was she a practitioner of the occult? Or has her legacy been shap...

The second installation in our LSD series... This week, we're diving into one of history's most fascinating fungi: ergot. From the sacred rituals of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece, through the terrifying plagues that swept medieval Europe, to its profound cultural significance throughout indigenous practices and its role in shaping modern medicine and psychedelic history.

In this special bonus episode, Heather shares her personal take on Heated Rivalry and how it hits surprisingly close to home. More reflective and intimate than our usual episodes, join us for a gentle review of Heather's experience watching the series that we've all fallen in love with.

CW: violence involving minors, themes of mental illness, delusion, and psychiatric hospitalization. Listener discretion advised. In this episode, Heather takes us back to 2014, when two twelve-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, lured a friend into the woods and attacked her after becoming convinced they needed to prove themselves to the fictional internet figure known as Slender Man. We walk t...

In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD by accident and experienced the first-ever LSD trip. By the mid-1960s the U.S. government had funded over 1,000 clinical studies on it, secretly tested it on soldiers without their consent, and then criminalized it entirely... all within the same two decades. In the first of a several-part series, this episode covers the discovery and history o...

CW: This episode discusses suicide, attempted suicide, depression, substance use, and themes of self-harm. Listener discretion advised. In 1990, Judas Priest stood trial in a Nevada courtroom. Not for drugs. Not for violence. Not for anything they physically did. But for what their music supposedly said. Two young men attempted suicide after spending hours listening to the band’s song “Better by Y...

CW: This episode discusses adult themes, including sexuality and coercion, sexual and labor trafficking, and sexual abuse. Not appropriate for children. Listener discretion advised. OneTaste was marketed as a path to awakening, empowerment, and liberation, but in actuality was sexual coercion and exploitation that led the founders to federal court. This episode examines a notable shift in accounta...

In 1930s Key West, a man calling himself Dr. Carl Tanzler believed fate had promised him a woman he'd seen in childhood visions. When he met Elena Milagro de Hoyos, she was alive... and battling tuberculosis. After her death, he did not accept the loss. What happened next went far beyond mourning. In this episode, Heather explores obsession disguised as devotion, the shocking lengths Tanzler went...

CW: Brief mentions of child abuse and SA. In this follow-up episode, we discuss the case of a man now known as “The Rain Boy,” Donnie Decker, who became the center of an odd 1983 case in which witnesses claimed water appeared inside with no clear source. Rather than asking only what happened , this episode, Jeri walks us through a different curiosity: what can happen when the body's survival respo...

Ed and Lorraine Warren are two of the most recognizable names in paranormal history. Demonologists, ghost hunters, and the couple behind some of the most famous haunting cases of the 20th century. But before the movies, the mythology, and the merch, they were just two people who found each other and built something much bigger than themselves. In this episode, Heather traces how the Warrens met, h...

What... or who is the Hat Man, and why do so many people describe the same figure? In Part 1 of this two-part series, Jeri explores the Hat Man phenomenon: a shadowy “watcher” reported across cultures and decades. We look at what people consistently report, why these encounters often happen in liminal states like sleep paralysis, half-awake moments, exhaustion, and high fear, and how stress may sh...

CW: This episode includes discussion of child death, addiction (alcoholism and drug use), and mental health crisis, as well as death, grief, and occult themes. Listener discretion advised. Led Zeppelin didn’t just reshape rock music; they became wrapped in something far darker. Tragedy, strange coincidences, and enduring rumors have fueled the legend of the so-called Curse of Led Zeppelin for deca...