PODCAST · religion
Holy Watermelon
by Holy Watermelon
Welcome to the Holy Watermelon podcast, where a Christian and an atheist talk about the weird and wonderful things that people do because of what they believe. It's a show about religious studies.Join us, Katie and Preston, as we dive into the world of comparative religion. We use humor and research to have real, challenging, and uproarious conversations about the world's religious traditions and behaviors. If you're interested in religious studies, learning about other people and cultures, or fun facts for your dinner conversation, tune in to our monthly episodes.
Episodes
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Escaping Christadelphianism - an Interview with Zinnia
Totalitarian control is popular in religious groups. Zinnia escaped the Christadelphian church a few years back, and now she hosts a podcast (Life After Leaving) all about supporting ex-Christadelphians to tell their stories and find support. Zinnia tells us about the history of the movement…
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Torah! Torah! Torah!
Previously a Patreon Exclusive episode: We're opening the vault to showcase some of our older subscriber content. For the first time, Katie reads the Torah (The Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses), the first chunk of the Hebrew Bible (AKA Old Testament). Join us for this sacred journey through…
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Reviewing Belief
Is belief a choice, or are our beliefs inherent to us? How do we decide whether something is true or not? With more than 8 billion people on the planet, there are about 10,000 different types of religious beliefs. How do we come to our conclusions? Epistemology is a complex area of philosophy…
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Can't Buy Me Love
Martin Luther is a hero to countless Christians around the world. The birth of European Protestantism and the Lutheran Church cannot be expressed without citing the 95 theses that Martin Luther posted to the church door on Halloween 1517. A diet of worms follows. Whether you want to celebrate…
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Sufi-Caliph-Rajah-Mystic-expialidocious
Tasawwuf is the old word for dressing in wool, the typical identifier for a monk, ascetic, and mystic. Today, we pronounce it Sufi. The Sufi tradition dates back to the foundation of Islam, though both adherents and opponents have claimed that it's even older than Islam--certainly some of the…
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Roses, Crosses, and Confessions
Christian mysticism is widely spread through this relatively common but fairly new tradition derived almost exclusively from what might have been parody pamphlets that told the story of Christian Rosenkreuz. Johann Valentine Andrea claims to have written one such pamphlet to make fun of the…
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Receiving Red Rope
Kabbalah isn't just another branch of Judaism--it's more mystical and personal. The idea is hat you really connect with the creator of the universe--but if you fail at that, there's always another shot with the benefits of reincarnation. Mystical concerns include finding hidden meaning (often in...
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Heart and Stomach
Over millennia, countless dietary traditions have formed around the world; many are tied strictly to religious traditions, and have thereby been empowered to stand the test of time (with some scientific speculation). We examine the details that outline kosher food, and how it's much stricter than...
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Nativity Narratives - an Interview with Mina Angotti
Mina Angotti has a Master's degree in theology, focusing her studies on Mary, the Mother of Christ. Mina is a longtime friend of the show, and a devout Catholic. She's here to tell us about the details of the Nativity deduced from history, combined with a fundamentalist understanding of the...
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Papal Papers Please
Vatileaks (or Vatican Document Leaks) caused a lot of trouble in Rome in 2012, leading directly (allegedly) to the Pope abdicating his office for the first time in centuries. Paolo Gabriele (papal butler) snuck documents to GianLuigi Nuzzi (Italian journalist) to expose the corruption of…
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Let's Get Dao to Business
Daoism (formerly called Taosim) is the more prominent indigenous religion of China. Daoism incorporates philosophical writings from ancient scholars, and mystic divination based on a variety of fascinating methods. The Dao-de-jing (or Tao Te Ching) is one of the most famous classics, along with…
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AUM-mageddon
Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto) led a modest cultus that grew rapidly beyond the borders of its native Japan. A blind acupuncturist, Asahara was convicted of selling pharmaceuticals illegally before he decided to sell people faith instead. Asahara studied many religious traditions before...
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Cthulhu and the First Sneeze
Literature is full of doomsday cults, but the real world is much more chilling. This week we explore the Great Green Arkleseizure, the Cthulhu mythos, and the many gods described in the works of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Douglas Adams' approach to popular culture brought us a fantastic new...
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Root Awakening
Hoodoo is a terribly syncretic religion, developed as a sibling to Voodoo (and there are other siblings in this family, too). Magickcrafts have been traded for as long as people have been trading spices and weapons, and Hoodoo Conjurers have collected a fantastic variety of tools from their...
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Branded Self-Help
Keith Raniere is the object of worship in the NXIVM cult, a god in the plainest sense of the word. The founder of a few MLMs, this guy knew how to make a fortune from people who turned out to be easy to manipulate. From collecting voluntary celebrities and multi-millionaires to veritable human...
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Written in the Stars
New Age religion is a lot more than a scheme to sell books and crystals, it's a belief that a new age of enlightenment is dawning--or did so centuries ago--or is centuries away. It might be something to fear, or something to celebrate. Astrology is all trash, and we're happy to point out the best...
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Mayan'd Your Business
Latin America has managed to preserve some of its pre-Columbian religious heritage, so we're going to explore the traditions of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations. We explore cocaine, purification rituals, human sacrifice, gods from throughout history, and Catholic syncretism. All this and...
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Cult Classics
It's time to take another look at religion in popular culture, in particular, cults in film, and why we love telling these stories. The Wicker Man (Either Christopher Lee's 1973 classic, or Nicolas Cage's 2006 remake) is a fantastic story about a man trying to save a girl who doesn't want to be...
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An August Assembly - an Interview with Dr. Sean Hannan
Dr. Sean Hannan did his post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of MacEwan University in Edmonton Alberta. His studies revolve around St. Augustine of Hippo, and the medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart von Hochheim. Augustine of Hippo was a profoundly...
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Don't Skip the Good Ones
After ragging on people who surely don't deserve the veneration they receive from faithful Christians around the world, for their questionable morality, or even dubious historicity, it's time for us to look at a heptad of saints who are genuinely good role models--at least on the surface.... For...
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The Imperial Church
The Church of Rome doesn't represent all of Christianity, but it is a major portion of the global population, so it's time for us to look at their foundation, and what makes them distinct from other groups. We explore the history of the Catholic Church, including the history of apostolic…
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Don't Fear the Reaper
Gods of the underworld are not the same as gods of death, nor are the guides the same--not even the Grim Reaper. Hades is the minder of the subterrestrial realm, just as Zeus and Poseidon are the minders of the Mountain (... and the sky) and the Sea (tough to argue for pluralizing those realms)....
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Cover Your Shame
Religious clothing is as varied as any other kind of fashion, but there are a few common themes that we will highlight: Chastity is encouraged in modesty, and it's weird that covering your hair is more important that loose-fitting tops; weirder still when covering your hair with more hair has...
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Stop Hitting Yourself
If sin were ugly, the world would be a paradise. Sin has a lot of faces in religious traditions around the world, some more consequential than others. Hamartiology is the study of sin, and it looks like some folk only want to define the line so they know how close they can stand. Sin is simply…
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Let's Build a Church
What is a church? How does a religious society really differentiate itself from any other kind of society? What does it take to become a priest of the Holy Watermelon? Some people join self-help groups without realizing they've been trapped in a cult. We'll be up front about it: this is a church....
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Dying to Know
Why are there no bear ghosts? Nearly all the ghosts in the world seem to come from a specific period of time, long before any of us were born. There is a universal obsession with death, so we're going to explore death from the perspective of those left behind. (Traditions about what lays beyond...
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Touched by the Angels
Angels in most traditions are heavenly messengers, and modern pop culture has greatly exaggerated almost every feature. While it makes sense to assume that there are female or feminine angels, each one named in Abrahamic scriptural tradition is a man. The word Angel comes from the Greek Aggelos...
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In the (Hubbard) Navy - An Interview with Katherine Spallino
Katherine Spallino is the author of The Bad Cadet, a memoir of her days as a child-slave to the secretive Scientologist "Sea Org." Before she joined the Sea Org officially, Katherine was raised away from her family in a boarding school for cursed and abandoned children, part of the last batch...
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The Alien Escape
Bonnie Lu Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jr. founded what is known today as Heaven's Gate, a fantastic group of UFO enthusiasts and religious believers. Though they both came from a Christian background in Texas, the mystery of Area 51 affected their daily lives to the very end. Nettles…
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How YOU Could Become a God
Apotheosis is the process of becoming a god, and that gift isn't always limited to the dead. Some classic examples include Asclepius, Ariadne, and Glaucus. Apotheosis also appears in the Abrahamic tradition, in a varity of manifestations, including the Alawite tradition, which elevates Ali ibn…
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How They Became Gods
Euhemerism is essentially the hypothesis that many of the gods who have been celebrated throughout history may not have been simple fabrications but real people around whom great myths developed and grew to legendary proportions. Euhemerus was a fellow who entertained and educated with tales of…
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Sounds Suspicious
Ever wonder why we bother with the groundhog, or horseshoes, or four-leaf clovers? Have you noticed city employees relying on divining rods to find your water leak? Where do all these superstitions come from, and how do they manage to linger in our science-powered information age? All these...
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The Legend of (Persian) Zoro
Zarathustra is the mythical hero at the foundation of Mazdaism, and thus it is better known as Zoroastrianism. Because ancient sources disagree on when this camel herder lived, it's nearly impossible to prove that he ever did, though there must have been an original founder of this ancient…
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Priesthood to Parenthood - an Interview with Frank McMahon
Frank McMahon served in the VATICAN. Now, he's joining us to talk about his experience with Playboy, puberty, alcohol abuse, Buddhism, and the things he loved about his service with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, as well as why he left, and the things he hopes to see change in the...
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Some Santas that You Used to Know
St. Nicholas' Day has passed, but we're not done with Christmas visitors yet. Santa has taken a few different forms over the centuries, and he's got an army of companions and alternates, too. Santa Claus takes inspiration from a variety of European folk traditions, and many of these old…
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Questionable Saints
There's no shortage of saints with questionable careers, even during their "faithful years." For others, we might be looking at people who never existed. Let's explore more saints who might not deserve such exalted status. We can say with almost rock solid certainty that Saint Vernoica never...
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Pretty Fly for a Mennonite - an Interview with Andrew Penner
Andrew Penner grew up in the Mennonite tradition of the Anabaptist movement. The Anabaptists have a colorful history of subversion from the Catholic Church, despite their commitment to pacifism. There's an awful lot to learn on these subjects, including the connection with the Amish and Hutterite...
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Spellbound Puritans
As we close out the spooky season, it's time to talk about Puritanism and the extremism that led to witch hunts and barbaric murders of innocents. The Puritan movement was born from the Church of England, with the idea that King Henry VIII and the new English national episcopalian congregation...
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This is Halloween
Halloween is--despite what you might hear from your local evangelical group--a Christian holiday... kinda. There's a lot to it, and there are layers of syncretism to dig through, but just under the secular (not-technically-pagan) veneer of sugar and chocolate, is a thick layer of juicy Christian...
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San Lanatus Fellowship Anniversary
We've really enjoyed doing this show together, and we've learned a lot. It's time to reflect on the foundation we've built. The natures of knowledge and belief are tricky philosophical concepts, and the motives any person might have for believing anything or claiming knowledge are as varied as...
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Story and Ceremony - an Interview with Cheryl Whiskeyjack
Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is right around the corner, and we've decided to interrupt our regular programming in favour of an interview with Cheryl Whiskeyjack from Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, and some important First Nations Stories. Canada's name is derived...
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Tomorrow is a Later Latter Day
If you think you know Mormonism, this one's for you. We examined the origins of the Latter Day Saints last month, and now we're taking a look at the men that led the Mormons in various divisions. There was a nonet of splinter groups that left the early Mormon Church before the assassination of...
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Tomorrow is a Latter Day
Brigham Young gets a lot of credit as the "American Moses," but it's nothing compared to the work Joseph Smith did to earn that title. Moses led the people for many years, from place to place, but he never entered the Promised Land--like Joseph Smith. Joshua was the one who led the final trek…
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Lost and Found: Sacred Texts
Lost books include apocryphal literature from heretics, grifters, and entrapment-dodging translators, but there's also genuine works that were abridged or edited later, allowing the originals to disappear in the fog of disuse. Some books are lost because their religious traditions and communities...
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Staring Down the Canon
Staring Down the Canon might be intimidating for some, but now that we've explored several holy texts, we're ready to talk about the nature of scriptural authority and how texts are measured against one another within religious traditions. Books are a great way to preserve knowledge, testimony…
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Check Out These Noods
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of the best books of religious satire released this century, and maybe it will hold that status for a while--only time will tell. After a serious look at the most revered books on the planet, it's time to lighten things up with the Pastafarians…
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Plates of Palmyra
The Book of Mormon has a better story than you might think, though not quite what you might have heard in Stone & Parker's musical of the same name. Rather than a tome of collected works, each the subject of contentious discussion in council, The Book of Mormon is an abridgement of a continuous...
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The Next Guy is a Book
What is the Granth Sahib? What is the Adi Granth? The Guru Granth Sahib is the last and eternal Guru, an authoritative collection of sacred verses from not only the greatest Sikh leaders, but also from faithful Muslims and Hindus. Like other sacred texts, this collection has an interesting…
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Repeat After Me
What is the Quran? It is among the most published texts in the world, and among the most vilified in the global west. Who was really responsible for the book as we know it today, and how did imperial power play into its history? Why is it that so many interpretations of the text are considered...
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Imperial Influence on Scripture
The Christian New Testament is a tiny collection of letters, and a small handful of modestly interdependent testimonies of a personal Jesus from a small town in the unnamed northern province (now known as Galilee). The outliers are almost as valuable as the more orthodox materials. The Bible...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to the Holy Watermelon podcast, where a Christian and an atheist talk about the weird and wonderful things that people do because of what they believe. It's a show about religious studies.Join us, Katie and Preston, as we dive into the world of comparative religion. We use humor and research to have real, challenging, and uproarious conversations about the world's religious traditions and behaviors. If you're interested in religious studies, learning about other people and cultures, or fun facts for your dinner conversation, tune in to our monthly episodes.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Holy Watermelon have?
Holy Watermelon currently has 119 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Holy Watermelon about?
Welcome to the Holy Watermelon podcast, where a Christian and an atheist talk about the weird and wonderful things that people do because of what they believe. It's a show about religious studies.Join us, Katie and Preston, as we dive into the world of comparative religion. We use humor and...
How often does Holy Watermelon release new episodes?
Holy Watermelon publishes regularly with 119 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Holy Watermelon?
You can listen to Holy Watermelon on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Holy Watermelon?
Holy Watermelon is created and hosted by Holy Watermelon.
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