Conspirituality20 Nov 2025

284: When Prophecy-Science Fails (w/Thomas Kelly)

In 1954 a doomsday alien cult headed up by Chicagoland housewife Dorothy Martin was waiting for the cataclysmic flood that would herald the arrival of spaceships to transport her and her followers to safety. When the hour came and went and nothing happened, she and her followers made up a Bible’s worth of excuses, saying that the group's penitence and piety had saved them, and so the failure of the prophecy was actually a validation of their new religion. And even though its central claim had been refuted, they accelerated their efforts to proselytize and convert new followers. This is the story of the 1956 classic study, When Prophecy Fails, by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. Problem is—this didn't really happen. At least not that way. As our guest this week Thomas Kelly points out from his investigation of newly unsealed archival materials, the psychologists not only embedded themselves in Martin's cult in a way that provoked their most irrational statements, they fudged the outcome of Martin story to suit their virally popular new theory of cognitive dissonance. Show Notes Debunking “When Prophecy Fails” - Kelly - 2026 - Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Failed Prophecies Are Fatal | International Journal for the Study of New Religions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(854)

Book Club: Man In The Mirror

When the Black, 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator stepped onto the F train in Manhattan on May 1, 2023, he was ranting angrily about being hungry and thirsty, willing to kill, die, or go to jai...

26 Sep 21min

327: AOC Meets MAHA

Listen ad free Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been meeting with MAHA activists in an attempt to bring the coalition to the Democratic party. Recent reporting reveals that she’s been meeting (or trying ...

24 Sep 1h 15min

DROP: When Spiritual Teachers Abuse Their Power

Today's Drop is a crosspost of an interview Matthew Remski did with Brianna Patten of the Surviving Satchidananda Podcast. Patten asked him a bunch of really good questions about high control groups...

22 Sep 1h 1min

Bonus Sample: Swoletarians and the Left Manosphere Attack a Disability Activist

Matthew tracks the attack on disability justice activist Beatrice Adler-Bolton after a clip from her Socialism 2026 panel — "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State" — was stripped of ...

21 Sep 5min

Book Club: Fed Up

Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman returns with Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. In the book, he tries a variety of major diets, breaking down the la...

19 Sep 35min

326: The War on Empathy

Humans are social animals. We’re not the strongest, fastest, or even best adapted to our environment. But what we excel at is our ability to work together, which means we’ve been able to adapt to ever...

17 Sep 1h 7min

Bonus Sample: What Happened to Yoga?

A recent article in The Atlantic ponders the current state of yoga. Derek weighs in based on his decades-long experiences. Show Notes What Happened to Yoga? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m...

14 Sep 6min

Brief: The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory (w/AJA Woods)

AJA Woods (The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy) joins Matthew to trace how "cultural Marxism" mutated from Nazi "cultural Bolshevism" and the British Union of Fascists' attacks on modernist art, through L...

12 Sep 42min