Is it magic?

HOST

Host of Magic in the United States, Freeman has been fascinated by magic, witchcraft, religion, and spirituality since a kid. In 2020, Freeman created the movie-turned-podcast series Familiar Shapes about the early modern English witch trials and bots on social media. In Magic, she turns her sights towards her own home and time travels to explore some of America’s most riveting — and at times devastating — stories of magic, spirituality, religion, and the occult.

https://linktr.ee/heatherdfreeman

PRODUCER

Amber C. Walker is a multi-platform journalist, strategist, comedian and founder of We Made Media LLC, an audio-first digital media consultancy. Amber prides herself on leading with humor, humility and humanity on every project. She’s worked in various roles across the education, healthcare and digital publishing sectors. She is a graduate of New York University, where she earned her M.A. in Digital Innovation in Journalism. She attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate, where she double majored in Gender-Sexuality-Feminist Studies and Africana Studies. She is a proud southside of Chicago native who never puts ketchup on a hotdog.

Follow her across all social platforms @AmbaWalka.

EDITOR

Lucy Perkins is a freelance editor based in Pittsburgh, Penn. Her work has appeared on The Washington Post’s daily podcast Post Reports, NPR’s All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Morning Edition, Here & Now, and Hidden Brain, The NPR Politics Podcast and the BBC.

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Noor Gill is a freelance producer and reporter based out of Brooklyn. Her work has appeared on This American Life and Reply All and she’s worked at places like The New York Times and BuzzFeed News.

SOUND DESIGNER

Jennie Cataldo is an award-winning radio and podcast producer. She is the creator of Accompany Studios, an audio storytelling production company based in San Francisco, California. Her work ranges from audio documentaries focusing on music, art, science, history, and culture to in-depth interview shows and narrative audio storytelling. Her audio productions might sound like magic, but that's just the sound of her decade+ of experience, her artistic ear, and her fine-tuned intuition.

FACT CHECKING

Born in Montreal, Dania Suleman holds a Master's degree in International Law from UQAM. A lawyer by training, she now works in media as a researcher, producer, and fact-checker. Suleman is also the author of Les malentendues (2021).

Executive Producer for PRX Productions

Project Manager

Project Manager

Scholar, Women's Studies Research Center | Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University

www.helenaliceberger.com

Prof. Helen Berger is a sociologist and author of four books (two co-authored), an edited volume, and many articles focusing on contemporary Pagan and Witchcraft beliefs, practices, and social structures. Within these groups, Dr. Berger studies phenomena of social change, concepts of the self, political attitudes and behaviors, and changing notions of community.

Associate Professor of Africana Studies | The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

www.religiousracism.org

Dr. Danielle N. Boaz, author of Banning Black Gods: Law and Religions of the African Diaspora (2021) and Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur (2023), brings a unique combination of expertise in law, legal history, religious studies, and Africana studies to the project. Dr. Boaz’s research focuses on discrimination and violence against Africana religions from the 19th century to the present. She has a Ph.D. in History, a J.D. with a concentration in International Law, and a LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Africana Religions. Dr. Boaz is also a licensed attorney in the State of Florida and the State of North Carolina.

Professor of Black Studies and Religion | Swarthmore College

academichoodoo.com

Prof. Yvonne Chireau is an authority on Africana religions in America, religion and magic, and black American religions. She is also interested in religion and comics, manga, and graphic novels. The author of Black Magic: African American Religion and the Conjuring Tradition (University of California Press, 2003), she has also coedited, with Nathaniel Deutsch, Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (Oxford University Press, 1999). She has also published articles in publications including the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, and Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. Professor Chireau teaches courses on Religion in America, African American Religions, Black Women's Spirituality, and writes about Voodoo memes at AcademicHoodoo.com.

Lecturer in English (Emeritus) | Colorado State University – Pueblo

blog.chasclifton.com

Chas Clifton started out to be a journalist, working for two daily newspapers and other publications. As a newspaper reporter during the “cults scare” of the 1980s, he became more deeply interested in questions about the formation and development of new religious movements and earned an MA in religious studies at the University of Colorado. He started a zine, Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religions, which Fritz Muntean, founder of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, cited as one of his influences. This journal, in addition to Clifton’s research on syncretism, definitions of “magic” versus “religion,” and the legitimization of new religious movements, offered an early version of what is now called contemporary Pagan studies. He is the author of Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America ( AltaMira Press, 2006) as well as numerous articles, serves as editor of The Pomegranate, and co-edits a Pagan studies books series for Equinox Publishing.

Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native American Spiritual Traditions | Texas Christian University

abelrgomez.com
@jaratura

As a scholar, educator, and writer, Dr. Abel R. Gomez highlights Indigenous movements to protect land and envision futures where all of us can thrive. He earned a PhD in in the academic study of religion from Syracuse University, with a focus on Native American religions and a graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies and is Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous spiritual traditions in the Religion Department at Texas Christian University. Alongside teaching, he regularly writes and gives talks in community to increase public understandings of Native issues and share strategies for respectfully participating in Native movements. He is a first-generation queer Latinx scholar descending from Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and Mexican lineages that migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, homeland of Ohlone peoples.

Associate Librarian | State University of New York at Cortland

Daniel Harms holds two Masters degrees, (Anthropology and Library + Information Science) and researches magic from antiquity to the present. Harms is also editor of The Long-Lost Friend: A 19th Century American Grimoire; The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic; Of Angels, Demons, and Spirits: A Sourcebook of British Magic; and author of the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. He has also been published in Folklore, Thanatos, the Journal for the Academic Study of Magic and the Journal of Scholarly Publishing.

Author and Lecturer in American Studies and English | Middle Tennessee State University

Besides his academic career teaching English and American Studies, Dr. Cory Thomas Hutcheson is the cohost of the popular podcast New World Witchery. He has a doctorate in American Studies with specializations in folklore, religion, and ethnicity from Penn State. He is a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies and American Myths, Legends, & Tall Tales, and he has written for popular occult publications, including Witches & Pagans.

Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology and Chair of the Program in Religion | The University of British Columbia

Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D. is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the interdisciplinary Program in the Study of Religion at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. A recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, SSHRC, Fulbright and Hewlett fellowships, and an honorary Fellow of the American Folklore Society, she has published on religion, folklore, foodways, festivals and witchcraft in Europe and North America, and is a leading authority on the modern Pagan movement. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including The Two Madonnas: the Politics of Festival in a Sardinian Community (1993, 2005), Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (2004), Neopagan Sacred Art & Altars: Making Things Whole (2001), and with filmmaker John M. Bishop produced the documentary film series “Oss Tales,” on a May Day custom in Cornwall and its reclamation by American Pagans.

Professor of Religious Studies | The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Prof. Sean McCloud teaches, researches, and writes about American religions and religion and culture. He is the author of Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955- 93 (2004), Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies (2007), American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States (2015), and co-editor of Religion and Class in America: Culture, History, and Politics (2009) He is primarily interested in examining how religion in different contexts creates, maintains, or tears down boundaries and identities; how religion both enables and constrains our conceptions of the world; and how religion itself is defined—by academics, journalists, and practitioners—and how such definitions work in social and cultural arenas to “mark” the status of different individuals and groups.

Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies | UNC Chapel Hill

Thorn Mooney is globally known through her publications and YouTube channel, and her book Traditional Wicca: A Seekers Guide (Llewellyn Worldwide) which is an essential text for contemporary practitioners of initiatory Wicca. As an academic scholar of religious studies, she has presented at the American Academy of Religion, possesses a Masters in Religious Studies, and is initiating her doctoral research in Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill this Fall.

Director of Communications and External Relations, College of Arts and Architecture | The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Before joining the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture in 2011, Meg Whalen served as the Director of Public Relations and Community Engagement for the Charlotte Symphony, following a decade-long career as an arts journalist. Whalen is a founder of Arts Impact Charlotte, a local initiative committed to understanding how the arts and design address issues of justice, equity, mobility, and well-being in Charlotte. In conjunction with that effort, she has served as a co-principal investigator on research projects funded by the Gambrell Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently, she has served on the steering committee for the City of Charlotte Arts + Culture Plan.