Worldwide Panic

Watch this episode on TST TV! https://thesatanictemple.tv/categories/worldwide-panicIn this episode of Worldwide Panic, we catch up after Lenny's launch of a new podcast, The Inner Empire, an investigation into why people believe what they believe, featuring cult members, magicians, and Christian evangelicals. Lucien discusses the value some Satanic Temple members find in tarot reding and other ritual practices they don't take literally. From there we turn to the main topic: a recent Open Global Rights report, "The Devil Wears Handcuffs: How Russia Invents International Extremist Movements," and Lucien walks through the surreal history of Russia's campaign against the Satanic Temple — from Putin's early digs at the Baphomet monument, to state media falsely tying TST to financing the Ukrainian military, to Russia's 2023 "undesirable organization" designation and the diplomatic scramble that followed.Subscribe to Failed State Update: http://lennyflatley.substack.com/Lucien's newsletter: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/https://luciengreaves.substack.com/

From Joseph L. Flatley, co-host of Worldwide Panic.THE INNER EMPIRE is a podcast that pulls together a lot of what I’ve spent years reporting on and thinking about: cults, the occult, conspiracy culture, and the platforms that have inserted themselves directly into our daily life.Here’s the simplest way I can put it: for five hundred years, people have known how to install a belief in someone’s mind: magicians did it with ritual and symbol, cults did it with repetition and isolation, ad men did it with images. What’s changed is that the same basic mechanism now runs automatically, every time you open an app, with nobody at the controls. This show is about tracing that mechanism across history and figuring out how it ended up running our lives without anyone deciding it should.Enjoy this introduction. Be sure to subscribe so you can hear new episodes when are released.Available wherever you get your podcasts.And be sure to sign up for my newsletter, Failed State Update: ⁠⁠https://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠

Watch this episode on TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/In this episode of Worldwide Panic, we discuss the oeuvre of Emma Katherine, host of the Imagination Podcast, an conspiracy influencer who platforms self-described survivors of satanic ritual abuse and MKUltra “programming.” Lucien recounts his own 2024 Twitter clashes with Emma and her followers, who accused him of being secretly connected to the Process Church of the Final Judgment — a defunct 1970s cult he’d researched and appeared in documentaries about — and who labeled him a “pedophile protector” for publicly debunking the Hampstead ritual-abuse hoax. Emma’s work is a case study in how conspiratorial communities validate one another’s claims through anecdote and mutual reinforcement rather than evidence, and how social media's format rewards volume and repetition of assertion over coherent argument.From there, the conversation widens into a broader discussion of media credulity around satanic panic and MKUltra mythology, including a detailed takedown of the Netflix Sons of Sam docuseries and its reliance on the late Maury Terry’s evidence-free theory linking the Process Church to the Son of Sam and Manson murders, Greaves’ own testy exchange with the documentary's filmmaker, and a shared frustration with credentialed figures like Mitch Horowitz lending unwarranted credibility to shaky claims in similar productions. Subscribe to Failed State Update: https://lennyflatley.substack.com/Lucien's newsletter: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/

Watch this program on TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/Congress held hearings on the CIA's MKULTRA mind control program last week, but instead of uncovering new evidence, lawmakers mostly resurrected conspiracy narratives that have been circulating since the 1970s. In this episode of Worldwide Panic, Lenny and Lucien break down what actually happened during the hearing, who the witnesses were, why they were pretty fucking lame, and how documented government abuses have become entangled with decades of speculation about psychic assassins, mind-control slaves, and other enduring myths.Along the way, they examine the strange political incentives driving today's "declassification" movement, the difference between genuine historical scandals like COINTELPRO and sensationalized folklore, and why bad evidence remains bad evidence — even when it's used against bad people.Lucien Greaves on Substack: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/Lenny's newsletter, Failed State Update: https://lennyflatley.substack.com/Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

NOTE: We accidentally uploaded the wrong audio file before. This is the corrected version.This week: Lucien receives a “top secret” book exposing the coming ruling cabal (available on Amazon), as well as Lenny’s recent book on Timothy Leary. And we discuss an absurd documentary revealing that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a double.Next, we dig into academic papers by Colin Ross and Michael Salter, and recount some of Lucien’s run-ins with the ISSTD over the years.Also: Ted Gunderson, Stan Romanek, a self-styled psychic soldier who went by Omega Unit 193, and the time Lucien got stuck in an elevator with Warwick Middleton.Further Reading:-Subscribe to Joseph L. Flatley's Failed State Update newsletter: ⁠⁠http://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠⁠-Lucien Greaves on Substack: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

Watch this episode on TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/programs/wp-202-a-therapist-a-search-warrant-and-a-coverupA prominent trauma specialist is accused of warning a patient about an impending police search warrant, a decision prosecutors say allowed evidence to be destroyed before investigators arrived. What begins as a bizarre criminal case soon opens onto a much larger story about recovered memories, dissociative disorders and ritual abuse allegations.From there, Joseph L. Flatley and Lucien Greaves talk about the ISSTD, a professional community that has spent decades defending claims many researchers consider discredited. Along the way, they explore the enduring influence of conspiracy thinking in therapeutic settings, the legacy of the Satanic Panic, and why certain beliefs continue to survive long after the evidence behind them has collapsed.Also: Feral House has a new series on TST TV! And Lucien catches fire while filming a video for Satanic Planet.Links:-Lucien Greaves on Substack: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/-Subscribe to Joseph L. Flatley's Failed State Update newsletter: ⁠⁠http://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠⁠Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

Watch this episode on TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/programs/wp201-is-it-disclosure-day-alreadyIn this episode of Worldwide Panic, Lucien and Lenny kick off Season 2 with a look at the recent wave of Pentagon UAP file releases and the decades-old "disclosure day" mythology that ufologists have built around the promise of a coming revelation.The conversation traces how thin, uncontextualized documents get inflated into proof through credentialed-sounding "whistleblowers," recycled tabloid sourcing, and sloppy AP-wire framing, drawing a direct parallel to recent Epstein files coverage, where a single ambiguous mention becomes a headline regardless of what it actually says.The episode closes with Lenny discussing his new book The Occult Timothy Leary, and Leary's own derisive take on UFO believers.Subscribe to Joseph L. Flatley's Failed State Update newsletter: ⁠⁠http://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠⁠More info on Lenny's book The Occult Timothy Leary: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Occult-Timothy-Leary/Joseph-L-Flatley/9798888500842Lucien Greaves on Substack: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

In this episode of Worldwide Panic, we examine Let the Devil In, a recent docuseries centered on a 1988 New Jersey murder-suicide that has been retroactively framed through the lens of Satanic panic and occult fear.The conversation interrogates how the series presents its material: the use of reenactments, graphic imagery, and speculative testimony to imply supernatural causation where evidence is fragmentary or altogether absent. What emerges is a critique of true-crime storytelling in the streaming era: not as entertainment alone, but as a belief-producing system that rewards implication over proof and atmosphere over accountability.Watch this on TST TV: ⁠https://thesatanictemple.tv/⁠Subscribe to Failed State Update: ⁠http://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

This week, Lucien and Lenny pick up where recent headlines left off: Australian authorities claim they disrupted an “international satanic pedophilic network,” and the hosts unpack why that framing echoes the Satanic Panic era even as today’s internet-born extremist micro-scenes muddy the picture. They draw a hard line between sensational “occult crime” narratives and what evidence-based investigation can actually support—especially when institutions build task forces explicitly to hunt “ritual” crimes and then declare they’ve found them.Lucien also explains his suspicion that modern “satanically branded” online networks (including 764 and O9A) are being amplified or exploited as propaganda vectors, potentially intersecting with Russian disinformation efforts. From there, the conversation turns to the professional ecosystem that keeps “ritual abuse” mythology alive: the ISSTD, “trauma-based mind control,” recovered-memory culture, and the way unfalsifiable frameworks can contaminate investigations and courtroom outcomes. The episode closes with a brief look at The Satanic Temple’s effort to help members evacuate Ukraine early in the war—and why Russia’s propaganda narrative latched onto it.Watch this on TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/Subscribe to Failed State Update: http://lennyflatley.substack.com/Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetFurther Reading: The Satanic Cult Crime Conspiracy Is Still Nowhere To Be Found by Lucien Greaves

In this episode of Worldwide Panic, Lenny and Lucien talk about the realities of surviving as an independent journalist in 2025, including Lenny’s recent move into private investigative work as a way to stay financially afloat without abandoning long-form reporting. They discuss the pressures of audience-building, the exhaustion of social-media performance, and how influencer culture warps both journalism and public trust.Support Lenny’s investigative journalism & PI career: Help cover essential surveillance and reporting equipment by donating via GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/4d367900aThe conversation then unspools into a deep dive on the strange and largely unnoticed BiChip scam—an earlier “Mark of the Beast” microchip grift that quietly helped seed the later COVID-era microchip conspiracy. Lucien recounts bizarre emails, fake conferences, invented cult leaders, fabricated police raids, and a shadow disinformation network that blurred the line between incompetence, belief, and deliberate fraud. Along the way, they trace how recycled Satanic Panic narratives keep resurfacing through pop culture, from award shows to country concerts—and why none of this ever actually goes away.Lucien's original article on the event: https://luciengreaves.substack.com/p/revisiting-the-most-elaborate-displayTheme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetFurther reading: Frederik Kulager's story featuring Lucien (in Danish) (Zetland)“Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about Human Microchips” (CSIS)Subscribe to Failed State Update: http://lennyflatley.substack.com/ 

In this week’s episode, we break down the New South Wales Police announcement that they had dismantled an international satanic child-sex ring. Within hours, major outlets—including CNN and Al Jazeera—ran with the headline unquestioningly. What didn’t show up in any of the early coverage? Evidence. Not even the basic details that would justify calling the case “satanic” in the first place.Lucien walks through what he uncovered in his own reporting, including the origins of Strike Force Constantine, a special police unit formed in April 2025 specifically to investigate satanic ritual abuse. Within just eight months of its creation, the task force claimed success—yet the public record raises more questions than answers.Next, the conversation shifts into the psychological machinery that makes these panics self-renewing. We look at Sarah Y. Krakauer’s 2019 ISSTD case study on Dissociative Identity Disorder therapy, which describes clients “recovering” memories of ritual abuse under highly suggestive visualization procedures. The paper is a window into how certain clinical subcultures—especially those aligned with the ISSTD—continue to reaffirm ritual-abuse mythology through “inner wisdom,” hypnotic techniques, and guided imagery that closely resemble recovered-memory practices of the 1980s.Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetSubscribe to Failed State Update: ⁠http://lennyflatley.substack.com/⁠TST TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/⁠https://thesatanictemple.tv/⁠Further reading: "Australian Police's Dubious Claim of 'International Satanic Child Sex Ring'" (Lucien Greaves)⁠https://luciengreaves.substack.com/p/australian-police-dubious-claim-of⁠“Four arrests over alleged ‘international satanic child sex abuse material ring.’” (CNN) ⁠https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/01/australia/sydney-satanic-child-sex-abuse-ring-intl-hnk⁠

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 this week’s episode, Lucien and Lenny dig into a shocking and almost entirely unreported case out of New Jersey: a 2025 civil lawsuit in which 23-year-old Courtney Tamagny accuses her father, neighbors, and a sprawling network of state agencies of participating in an international Satanic Ritual Abuse cult.What begins as a bizarre news clipping quickly unfolds into a textbook Satanic Panic narrative—complete with recovered memories, dreams treated as evidence, conspiracy-therapist “experts,” and a therapist pipeline straight out of the 1980s ritual-abuse moral panic. Lucien and Lenny walk through the case, the complaint, the procedural posture, and the deeper cultural forces that allow these narratives to keep resurfacing, unchallenged, in courts and media.The conversation also situates the Tamagny case in the long tail of modern conspiracy culture: the way JFK, MK-ULTRA, and the Epstein files have created a worldview where nothing is provable, everything is possible, and where therapeutic malpractice flourishes in the cracks.This case is worth paying attention to; not because the allegations are credible, but because it showcases how an entire therapeutic subculture continues to manufacture SRA narratives, ruin families, and destabilize public understanding of trauma and memory.Further reading: “Daughter of NJ police chief accuses him, others of ‘ritualistic’ abuse, years of sexual assault: court docs” (NY Post)Theme music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetWatch the video version on The Satanic Temple’s streaming service: https://thesatanictemple.tv/

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 this week’s episode, Lucien and Lenny dig into the messy and largely unreported history of Bessel van der Kolk, the superstar trauma doctor behind The Body Keeps the Score. Before his bestselling fame, van der Kolk was deeply linked to the recovered-memory movement, ISSTD conspiracy therapists, and the experts who fueled the original Satanic Panic. We trace how these ideas migrated into today’s therapeutic culture and why they continue to distort public understanding of trauma, memory, and mental health.This episode also looks at the modern ecosystem that keeps these beliefs alive: influencer therapists, social-media diagnoses, dissociative-identity subcultures, and the profit-driven therapeutic marketplace that blurs the line between treatment and mythology.ALSO: The Satanic Temple flies its Flag over a City Hall in New HampshireHow TST successfully flew its flag over Somersworth City Hall—directly above a Ten Commandments monument installed during the 1950s PR campaign for Cecil B. DeMille’s film. Lucien explains viewpoint-neutrality, legal backlash, media framing, and why pluralism still matters.https://luciengreaves.substack.com/p/the-satanic-temple-flies-its-flagAND: America is Hell: Anima Noira, 1987–2025A reflection on the life and sudden death of a Czech occultist who believed she was called to the U.S. by Satan. A meditation on belief, ritual, and the divide between theistic and non-theistic Satanisms.https://lennyflatley.substack.com/p/terminal-belief-america-is-hellTheme Music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetWatch the video version on The Satanic Temple TV: https://thesatanictemple.tv/

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 this 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 storiesThe return of recovered memory / multiple personality disorder narrativesThe role of therapy models such as IFS (Internal Family Systems) in shaping beliefThe Utah “ritual abuse” bill and governance as spectacleHow Epstein, UFOs, and DID TikTok fit into a wider secular religious maniaTheme Music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic PlanetStories 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-rcna140025Be sure to check out The Satanic Temple's streaming platform: https://thesatanictemple.tv/And subscribe to the newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com/