their conversations both prior to and after a failed prophecy from their charismatic leader. Their work was later published in the book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. In the late 1980s, doomsday cults were a major topic of news reports, with some reporters and commentators considering them a serious threat to society. A 1997 psychological study by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter found that people turned to a cataclysmic world view after they had repeatedly failed to find meaning in mainstream movements. People also strive to find meaning in global events such as the turn of the millennium when many predicted it prophetically marked the end of an age and thus the end of the world. An ancient Mayan calendar ended at the year 2012 and many anticipated catastrophic disasters would rock the Earth. Political cults A political cult is a cult with a primary interest in political action and ideology. Groups that some have described as "political cults", mostly advocating far-left or far-right agendas, have received some attention from journalists and scholars. In their 2000 book On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth discuss about a dozen organizations in the United States and Great Britain that they characterize as cults. In a separate article, Tourish says that in his usage: In 1990, Lucy Patrick commented: In Iran, a "cult of Khomeini" developed into a "secular religion". According to Iranian author Amir Taheri, Khomeini is called imam, making a "Twelver Shiism into a cult of Thirteen." Khomeini's image is engraved in giant rocks and mountain slopes, prayers begin and end with his name, and his fatwas remain valid beyond his death (something that goes against Shiite principles). Also slogans such as "God, Koran, Khomeini" or "God is One, Khomeini is the Leader" are used as war cries of the Hezballah in Iran. Even though Khomeini's photographs still hang in many government offices, it is said that by the late 1990s "Khomeini's cult had faded". Ayn Rand Institute Followers of Ayn Rand have been characterized as a cult by economist Murray N. Rothbard during her lifetime, and later by Michael Shermer. The core group around Rand was called the "Collective", which are now defunct; the chief group which is disseminating Rand's ideas today is the Ayn Rand Institute. Although the Collective advocated