Introducing: Worldwide Panic
A new podcast by the minds behind Failed State Update and The Satanic Temple
Worldwide Panic is a weekly conversation about the stories, anxieties, myths, and cultural flashpoints that shape how we understand the world. Each week, journalist Joseph L. Flatley and The Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves examine how fear spreads, how belief takes hold, and why certain narratives return again and again—long after they’ve been debunked.
In the debut episode, we dig into a wave of recent media stories that echo the classic Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s. From the revival of recovered memory therapy and “parts work,” to new legislative pushes against imaginary ritual abuse cults, it appears that the cultural machinery for moral panic is still very much intact.
Why are discredited conspiracy frameworks resurfacing in mainstream reporting, clinical therapy, and state legislation? What does this say about political polarization, memory, trauma culture, and the collapse of shared reality? And what happens when influencers, journalists, and policymakers all start telling a story that feels true—even when the evidence isn’t there?
This episode explores:
Seasonal media cycles of demons, possession, and exorcism stories
The return of recovered memory / multiple personality disorder narratives
The role of therapy models such as IFS (Internal Family Systems) in shaping belief
The Utah “ritual abuse” bill and governance as spectacle
How Epstein, UFOs, and DID TikTok fit into a wider secular religious mania
Theme Music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet
Stories discussed include:
“The Therapy That Can Break You” by Rachel Corbett (New York Magazine / The Cut): https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html
“Utah advances bill to criminalize ‘ritual abuse of a child,’ in echo of 1980s satanic panic” by Brandy Zadrozny (NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/utah-advances-bill-criminalize-ritual-child-abuse-rcna140025
Be sure to check out The Satanic Temple’s streaming platform to watch this episode in scintillating video: https://thesatanictemple.tv/
Very exciting! Can't wait to listen in after work!
If you ever do a supplemental episode on the Satanic Panic, you should in delve in to the bs that was Ross Cheit’s laughably bad book “The Witch Hunt Narrative” which people like Richard Beck debunked which to a laughable “rebuttal” of Beck by Cheit.