The Worker's Cauldron
A podcast about the cultural politics of the paranormal. Where Karl Marx shakes his fist at the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot speaks to us about the legacies of colonialism. We discuss the contemporary obsession with all things supernatural through a socialist, feminist lens and ask what our strange experiences and beliefs tell us about the society we live in.
Episodes
46 episodes
Witchcraft and Women's Liberation Part 3: Feminist Spirituality and Magical Politics
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 his...
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Season 5
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Episode 8
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53:02
Witchcraft and Women's Liberation Part 2: The Susan B. Anthony Coven no. 1
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 ...
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Season 5
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Episode 7
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50:34
Witchcraft and Women's Liberation Part 1: The Story of the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell
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 ...
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43:14
A Brief Conversation with Brenda Salguero from Monstras
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 c...
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30:10
Teresa Urrea: Rebel and Saint
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 ...
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Season 5
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Episode 4
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1:00:19
Peru's Problem with Pishtacos
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...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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44:26
Vodou Nationalism Part 2: The Truth About Papa Doc
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 o...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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39:42
Vodou Nationalism, Part 1: Between Occupation and Duvalier
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 religi...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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49:13
An American Werewolf for Christmas
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 Wi...
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Season 4
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Episode 10
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47:26
Gay Liberation and Witchcraft Part 2: From Minoans to Faeries
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-...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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54:10
Gay Liberation and Witchcraft Part 1: The Mysterious Life of Leo Martello
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...
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1:02:33
Monsters of the Caribbean
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 ...
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31:38
The Night Doctors
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 ...
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53:01
Goatsuckers at the End of History Neoliberalism, Borders and El Chupacabra
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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1:21:23
When Mary Moved: Ireland 1985
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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53:46
Communist Cryptozoology 3: Big Footprints in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
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 fo...
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1:24:29
Communist Cryptozoology 2: Yeren in the People's Republic of China
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.<...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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1:08:58
Communist Cryptozoology Part 1: The USSR
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. Als...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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1:18:13
A Haunted House Christmas
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, w...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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1:00:50
The Terrified Teens of TikTok
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 “F...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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1:15:04
Paranormal PSYOPS
In this episode of The Worker’s Cauldron, we look at how the military of the United States has exploited supernatural beliefs in the process of growing its empire. From the infamous use of the Filipino Aswang to suppress the hukbalahap rebel...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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45:05
Abducted! Part 2: Aliens at the End of History
Having discussed the first landmark cases of alien abduction in the last episode, this week we investigate the explosion of abduction claims in the 1980s and 1990s. We discuss the works of artist turned hypnotist Budd Hopkins, the strange en...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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1:09:26
Abducted! Part 1: The Beginings
Welcome to our first episode of our exploration of the very weird world of alien abductions. We talk about the strange mixture of Cold War anxiety, racial tension, emerging biotechnology that shaped the very first accounts of alien abduction...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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1:22:27
African Magic Against Slavery
This week we are headed to Jamaica to discuss the role of Obeah, a sort of Afro-Caribbean magic practiced there, in the islands history. We'll talk about how English writers used it to justify slavery, how it inspired slaves to rise up in...
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28:31
Colonialism, Creationism and Cryptozoology
In this episode of the workers cauldron we talk about how rumors of living (non-avian) Dinosaurs in Central Africa and alleged glowing pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea are intricately linked to the history of racism and colonialism.Bonus ...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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39:18