Cult News covers the movements that organize themselves around the end of the world. We take each seriously as a human phenomenon — neither credulous about their claims nor cruel to their members — and we try to answer the only question that survives every story: why now, and why this?

We are staffed by people who have, variously, studied these movements, reported on them, and in one case belonged to one. We think that last qualification is the most useful.

The desk

• Marguerite Sable — movements & money
• Dev Okafor — AI & accelerationism
• Nadia Holloway — New Age & contact
• Tomas Reyes — Eastern & non-dual
• Sister Perpetua Lund — correspondent, and formerly a member of a movement she declines to name
• the Data Desk — the Index
• the Ends Desk — obituaries