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 Hampshire

How 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-flag

AND: America is Hell: Anima Noira, 1987–2025

A 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-hell

Theme Music: “Satanic Planet” by Satanic Planet

Watch 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:

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