Speaker 1: Cold Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we
Speaker 2: have uncomfortable conversations about section sexuality and the nineties, the
Speaker 2: Bay Area in the early two thousands. It's going to
Speaker 2: be awkward for everybody.
Speaker 3: Getting a lot of quadrants, hitting a lot of important quadrants.
Speaker 2: There, hitting a lot of big cues, big cues, a
Speaker 2: lot of Robert ces. Jamie loftist our wonderful guest, back
Speaker 2: in the saddle again to talk about the orgasm cults.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Jamie.
Speaker 3: I'm it's great to be back in the in the
Speaker 3: the medical saddle.
Speaker 2: That makes you come oh okay, well yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Like a weird choice today, buddy.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Look, we're all struggling to say things that sound like.
Speaker 2: It's weird, especially like again, this is all so adjacent
Speaker 2: to like things I've done and were a part of
Speaker 2: my youth that it's really kind of weird to me,
Speaker 2: Like the reaction everyone else has to like the and
Speaker 2: then they're doing like public sex demonstrations in front of
Speaker 2: crowds of People's like, no, I've been to a bunch
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, there's a lot of fine people at these events.
Speaker 2: M hmm. There's good there, you know. I we did.
Speaker 2: We had one at one of the We did an
Speaker 2: event one year where like the theme was because there's
Speaker 2: different every year, bad idea and so like my roommate,
Speaker 2: who is a lady and is a bit older than me,
Speaker 2: I think she's like thirty, wanted to do like a
Speaker 2: demo and like how to use like different like safe
Speaker 2: sex objects and stuff like that because it's like a
Speaker 2: big five day camping trip where bunch of people are
Speaker 2: having sex. And she was like, well, there should be
Speaker 2: an option for people to learn that in addition to
Speaker 2: the weird kink camps that teach you how to use
Speaker 2: like a fucking Saint Andrew's cross or a whip or whatever.
Speaker 2: The problem was that the structure we had for it
Speaker 2: this year was also made to kind of meet the
Speaker 2: theme of a bad idea. So it was a big
Speaker 2: like pyramid like tint shade struckture thing with like a
Speaker 2: huge bed thing at the bottom, but the top was
Speaker 2: like a disco ball that we had made by cutting
Speaker 2: up hundreds of pieces of glass and putting them into
Speaker 2: like a paper machet ball, and they were just kind
Speaker 2: of glued on and it's like one hundred degrees and
Speaker 2: so as it heats up as people are like cuddling
Speaker 2: or doing the safe sex demonstrations or whatever, in their
Speaker 2: pieces of like jagged glass are just like falling down
Speaker 2: and we had put up like a tiny little net
Speaker 2: to catch it. But again, it's supposed to be a
Speaker 2: bad idea, so we didn't want to protect people too much.
Speaker 2: We just made sure people were warned by the way
Speaker 2: it rains glass inside the inside the This sounds like.
Speaker 3: A saw trap. What are you talking?
Speaker 2: It was about fun. Very few people got cut. It
Speaker 2: was a really nice week.
Speaker 3: It was all a jigsaw's tracks. We were young.
Speaker 2: It was a good time and there were like maybe
Speaker 2: four to five stitches required as a result of the
Speaker 2: shattered glass disco ball. It was a great week. I
Speaker 2: had a really good time. I've got bad idea attooed
Speaker 2: on my fingers because of that week. It was great. Wow.
Speaker 3: From that was at the lore drop.
Speaker 2: At the end, I nearly killed a man with a flamethrower.
Speaker 2: It was an awesome week.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Accidentally, guys, guarantina, let's move on.
Speaker 2: So if you type the words welcomed consensus orgasm, which
Speaker 2: is remember the group that kind of descends from the
Speaker 2: Moorhouse community the Welcomed Consensus. If you type those three
Speaker 2: words into Google, as I did, you'll be presented with
Speaker 2: the Amazon page for a video titled Deliberate Orgasm Expanding
Speaker 2: Female Orgasm, Volume one. It currently costs one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty two dollars on Amazon.
Speaker 4: Two five stars, fifteen.
Speaker 2: Reviews, two point four really.
Speaker 3: Oh, the color the cover is haunting. The car is
Speaker 3: like what it looks sixty.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 2: It's it's a naked woman and like a man who's
Speaker 2: like straddling her and has a hand around her buttocks,
Speaker 2: but he's wearing jeans. She's completely fully clothed in jeans.
Speaker 3: If it looks like a cropped Guantanamo picture, it's horrific.
Speaker 4: It looks like some ship from grape Thank you.
Speaker 3: I hate it. You have to really want I actually
Speaker 3: do the financial barrier, not just anyone should be able
Speaker 3: to look at that. You have to be a pervert
Speaker 3: with money.
Speaker 2: Are not ready? I also love that it's under the
Speaker 2: special interests section of the DVD categories for Amazon. Is
Speaker 2: indeed a special interest full jeans.
Speaker 3: So you're like, let's be clear, no one's comfortable.
Speaker 2: Nobody's having a good time. No one's having what you
Speaker 2: would call sex right like.
Speaker 3: Rod jeans on human skin. Not for another. It's that
Speaker 3: that that lady's gonna chafe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone's shaving. Yeah. This is one of several video
Speaker 2: guides published by the Welcome Consensus. By the time that
Speaker 2: Nicole didone, found it in nineteen ninety eight. She had
Speaker 2: dated Erwin for a while, and while that didn't last,
Speaker 2: her interest in deliberate orgasm did. She pressed Erwine to
Speaker 2: connect her to more training, and rather than send her
Speaker 2: to morehouse, he advised that she look into this splinter
Speaker 2: group instead.
Speaker 3: And this is this pre like huge groups. This is
Speaker 3: pre operating theater coming.
Speaker 2: No, they're doing that like the Moorhouse had done that.
Speaker 2: Remember they'd done that thing where they said like it's
Speaker 2: a three hour orgasm. Like they had done some demos
Speaker 2: like that. Largely is like pr things to like bring
Speaker 2: people in, and the Welcome Consensus did. It wasn't that big,
Speaker 2: but they did do live demonstrations. Right. One of the
Speaker 2: things that they because the Welcome Consensus is totally about
Speaker 2: orgasm and pleasure and they declare it our birthright because
Speaker 2: we were conceived in orgasm. That's like the motto of
Speaker 2: the group essentially, and to bring in new members, they
Speaker 2: do live demonstrations where a woman would be masturbated for
Speaker 2: an hour, and they also sold really risque merch, like
Speaker 2: they're very proud of how horny their merchandise is. They
Speaker 2: have t shirts that brag life is too short for
Speaker 2: mediocre sex. The Welcome Consensus didn't call new members marks. Instead,
Speaker 2: they used the term benchmarks because it's just a little
Speaker 2: different than the.
Speaker 3: Sounds less antagonistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one, this is the burger King of the moor House,
Speaker 2: Like it's a burger. It's the burger King of orgasm cults, folks.
Speaker 2: That's what the Welcome Consensus is.
Speaker 4: Life is too short for mediocre sex is pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good shirt. It's a pretty good shirt. It's
Speaker 2: not attached to a cult.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know, nothing's gonna nothing's gonna get me
Speaker 3: in the door, like some fun, weird merch. So I
Speaker 3: was like I too. Then I'm like, at what point
Speaker 3: would I entertain going through the doors? And it is
Speaker 3: the fugly shirt.
Speaker 2: It's the fugly shirt. Yeah, that's what they know. So
Speaker 2: the Welcome Consensus again they call new members benchmarks, but
Speaker 2: it only costs eleven dollars to visit. They've got a
Speaker 2: they've got a compound obviously that's elsewhere in California, but
Speaker 2: they've got a clubhouse in San Francisco and they do
Speaker 2: like weekly game nights there. And these are games that
Speaker 2: have been invented by the group that are and you know,
Speaker 2: those like card games that are like, do you and
Speaker 2: your spouse want to communicate better? This card game, we'll
Speaker 2: have you talking better and you know, however long it
Speaker 2: takes to play or whatever like that, right like, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. Those are the sort of games that
Speaker 2: they're playing. These are like games they've created to aid
Speaker 2: and communication intimacy, and that are also usually you know,
Speaker 2: we did our episodes on Sin and On right like,
Speaker 2: because that comes out of the self help movement that
Speaker 2: all this stuff is related to a big thing in
Speaker 2: Sin and On is these sessions where people sit arounder
Speaker 2: the circle and like insult each other, and they're definitely
Speaker 2: influenced by that. They've got some games that are like
Speaker 2: we'll all sit around, we'll talk, we'll tell someone honestly
Speaker 2: something about like themselves there, but it's usually supposed to
Speaker 2: be positive, but often there's like a negative side too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how there. I used to work at UH
Speaker 3: now Closed Comedy Theater, and we would teach stand up
Speaker 3: sketch and improv one of the most evil things you
Speaker 3: can do, and on UH in the stand up classes,
Speaker 3: the first day would always be just that to be you,
Speaker 3: you would have to get on stage. I never took it,
Speaker 3: but I watched each student who just wants to put
Speaker 3: themselves out there, stands on stage, and every other student says, there,
Speaker 3: what are some assumptions people might make about you? And
Speaker 3: this is in Boston, Massachusetts, so you're hearing some really nasty.
Speaker 2: Stuff, wild stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you're just told like, so, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe that's something you might want to play up on stage.
Speaker 3: You're like, it's just anyone who I don't know. The
Speaker 3: Radical Honesty movie. Man, I'm just like, please less disastrous.
Speaker 2: We need to lie more. We need the lie more
Speaker 2: to each other.
Speaker 3: You know, really for our own protection. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: want to know.
Speaker 2: It's not that we need a lie more. We need
Speaker 2: to just know less about each other. It's not lying
Speaker 2: just to not tell someone everything. And we don't all
Speaker 2: need to tell someone everything, you know, So most of
Speaker 2: these games again just kind of yet like the dark secrets,
Speaker 2: like tell me the darkest thing that turns you on
Speaker 2: or stuff like that. Like that's a lot of like
Speaker 2: the kind of games that they're playing and doing so
Speaker 2: in public is really frightening but also kind of thrilling
Speaker 2: and cathartic, and it creates this sort of stressful bonding
Speaker 2: experience that other self help groups like you know, this
Speaker 2: is all of them are doing something like this in
Speaker 2: this period of time, and even kind of still into
Speaker 2: the modern day. Everything is just kind of sent and
Speaker 2: on when you get right down to it. Now. The
Speaker 2: founder of the Welcome Consensus our Ja Testament, which sounds fake,
Speaker 2: was a cowboy coded dude. He's always wearing like a
Speaker 2: fucking cowboy hat. He's in like his fifties, and he's
Speaker 2: What people will tell you about r J and the
Speaker 2: COLT is that he's really good at calling people on
Speaker 2: their bullshit. And here that phrase means he's really good
Speaker 2: at psychologically abusing people, right, Like that's what that means.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 2: R J was attended to by four women who were
Speaker 2: his lovers and also helped run the group. This was
Speaker 2: specifically framed more as polyamory than as polygamy. Uh and
Speaker 2: one thing everyone got who lived at the group's ranch
Speaker 2: was plenty of sex and a near total escape from
Speaker 2: the real world. New members like Nicole were promised that
Speaker 2: they too could escape the grind of regular life if
Speaker 2: they just gave themselves over to the cause. They then
Speaker 2: got to live on an organic farm, growing their own
Speaker 2: food and orgasm at least five times per day. You
Speaker 2: really are not allowed to do it. Less, you're not
Speaker 2: allowed it.
Speaker 3: It's not sounding like there is an opt out.
Speaker 2: Okay, no, now can you lie? Of course they're not checking,
Speaker 2: but oh you can lie. Everyone does.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 2: The WC framed their sex work as a sex as
Speaker 2: sexual experimentation. Again, just like the morauses, Like, we're really
Speaker 2: more researchers trying to learn, like you know, this math,
Speaker 2: the scientific secrets of sex that have been locked away,
Speaker 2: and their goal is to create like an elite level
Speaker 2: sexual experience. They were actually more as much as they
Speaker 2: were inspired by their self help groups. They're inspired by
Speaker 2: like fine dining restaurants, like the French laundry. That's very
Speaker 2: much how they like build themselves.
Speaker 3: This is like a orgasm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a Michelin star cup. Yes, so, Nicole was an
Speaker 2: instant fit. In short order, she'd paid fourteen thousand dollars
Speaker 2: for a two week class on how to feel and
Speaker 2: acknowledge her orgasms. Hewitt notes that in her bio for
Speaker 2: the group website at the time, she wrote, orgasm is
Speaker 2: the thread that weaves my life together. There is nothing
Speaker 2: but orgasm as much as I want. That's That's really
Speaker 2: how a lot of the stuff in the later cult
Speaker 2: that she's gonna make is gonna sound like they talk
Speaker 2: about it like fucking mana right, like their wizards and
Speaker 2: this is their magic power is orgasm, like like it's
Speaker 2: a quantifiable thing. Like it's not it's not like a
Speaker 2: moment that happens. It's like a quantifiable kind of energy
Speaker 2: you just have with you and like do a Duken's
Speaker 2: with It's kind of it's kind.
Speaker 3: Of like almost I mean, I know it won't be
Speaker 3: for long, but it is almost kind of sweet. How
Speaker 3: they're talking about orgasms as if it was their idea
Speaker 3: and they're the first people to think of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one else thinking this out. So the older
Speaker 2: group members noticed right away that Nicole was very good
Speaker 2: at winning new recruits, at convincing people to join the group.
Speaker 2: And to pay money. One of her first gets was
Speaker 2: a young woman named Allison, who was referred to the
Speaker 2: group by Rwan after meeting him at a rave. Again,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of like after parties for Burning Man
Speaker 2: and stuff that people are being like recruited for to
Speaker 2: some of these groups and shit like that's that's like
Speaker 2: a thing. And Irwan is kind of the thing I
Speaker 2: get is that he's kind of like their floater, Like
Speaker 2: he's probably I think, a good looking guy, and he's
Speaker 2: going out to like parties and stuff to find women
Speaker 2: like Nicole and Alison and you know, talk them into
Speaker 2: showing up at a place like this. So Alison meets
Speaker 2: Ariwon at the rave, and she goes to the Welcome
Speaker 2: Consensus and at her first meeting, she meets Nicole and
Speaker 2: she tells Nicole, oh, you know, I just got awarded
Speaker 2: a bunch of stock at work, so I just cashed
Speaker 2: in like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Nicole is
Speaker 2: like cash register signs, right, So she starts flirting with Alison,
Speaker 2: and Alison falls in love with Nicole, even though she'd
Speaker 2: always considered herself straight before. And I think this has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with just Nicole is very charismatic.
Speaker 2: She's very good at making you feel like you're the
Speaker 2: only person in the world, and she's very good at
Speaker 2: making you feel that, like, doing things that feel good
Speaker 2: with Nicole are also like revolutionary acts that are helping humanity.
Speaker 2: You know, that's kind of Nicole's superpower. Yeah, so we've
Speaker 2: talked about, like we talked about the Greeks, we talked
Speaker 2: about more House about how they went from like, you know,
Speaker 2: when women orgasm, it's so incredibly powerful, and they've used
Speaker 2: that as a way to like say, obviously that means
Speaker 2: women always want it right and the same thing happens
Speaker 2: to a welcome consensus right per the Book of Orgasm,
Speaker 2: or sorry per the book Empire of Orgasm.
Speaker 3: For the book, because.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, they invoked biological generalizations about the way female
Speaker 2: mammals and estress and nonverbal signals to attract mates and humans.
Speaker 2: They argue this manifested through emotions. Women can therefore emit
Speaker 2: emotional calls and induce men to respond. When men are
Speaker 2: feeling turned on or at peace or enraged, that's because
Speaker 2: they're responding to a call that a woman is putting out.
Speaker 2: Right now, this means that women are responsible for men's
Speaker 2: arousal for how men feel right, and men are not
Speaker 2: for how.
Speaker 3: They responsible for making sure that they're taking care of
Speaker 3: And that's actually feminism when you think about it, isn't it, ladys?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. And as is the case with any
Speaker 2: group that dedicates themselves to reimagining human relationships while fucking
Speaker 2: on an isolated farm, they spiraled into madness as time
Speaker 2: went on, as researchers the group decided to experiment with
Speaker 2: violence and whether or not that might be a healthy
Speaker 2: way for people to express emotions honestly. And the way
Speaker 2: how this happens, Like RJ and a bunch of the
Speaker 2: men are like, I get angry and just want to
Speaker 2: hit women sometimes maybe that's good. Like that's literally the
Speaker 2: thought process here and.
Speaker 3: At this university. We're choosing to explore things we already
Speaker 3: know and they already do.
Speaker 2: God, yeah, it's fucked up. So one example Ellen Hewitt
Speaker 2: gives is a male member of the Welcome Consensus who
Speaker 2: gets into an argument with a female member and punches
Speaker 2: her hard enough to knock her to the ground, and
Speaker 2: she goes to RJ to complain and he says, hey,
Speaker 2: you need to cop to whatever it is you were
Speaker 2: doing that made him angry or I'll beat you up myself. Right,
Speaker 2: And this is liberating, right yeah, because.
Speaker 3: That means you're powerful, and that's me acknowledging you're powerful.
Speaker 2: As me acknowledging your power. So RJ, this won't surprise anybody.
Speaker 2: Was an aging drunk who went crazy with power and
Speaker 2: was as likely to give his followers pain as pleasure
Speaker 2: when he was doing these orgasm sets. Sometimes, if he
Speaker 2: was angry at a woman that he was like stroking,
Speaker 2: he would stroke her clitter is so hard that it
Speaker 2: like was agonizing. And then like when someone would be like, hey,
Speaker 2: you're hurting me, he would accuse her of refusing to surrender.
Speaker 2: And it was not like he regularly would like literally
Speaker 2: just slap or otherwise hit his partner's generals during these
Speaker 2: if he got angry at them. So again, these are
Speaker 2: not like nice times a lot of the time. Right, No,
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's super shocking to hear.
Speaker 3: I don't know, so fun say more. No, not great,
Speaker 3: And this is all happening in group set. This is
Speaker 3: like there's no of witnesses.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, lots of witnesses.
Speaker 4: That just reminds me of that Samantha Jones quote from
Speaker 4: Sex and the City when they're at the massage store
Speaker 4: and there's a bunch of women there but are not
Speaker 4: actually shopping for massage, but they're shopping for vibrators. And
Speaker 4: she looks at this woman she goes, not.
Speaker 3: That one that will burn. You're cut off? Okay, perfect, Wow,
Speaker 3: She's always with us, She's always with.
Speaker 4: Us, ahead of the times.
Speaker 2: So Alison, not long after Nicole convinced her to join,
Speaker 2: became the target of RJ's ire. There's like an evening
Speaker 2: where they're like there's several a bunch of people hanging
Speaker 2: out at the property and Arjie gets really drunk and
Speaker 2: he tells Alison like, get down on your hands and knees,
Speaker 2: and he pulls up her skirt and he starts whipping
Speaker 2: her with a writing crop and just like screaming and cursing.
Speaker 2: He's just like a maniac. Right, Nicole does nothing, even
Speaker 2: though Alison is very clearly frightened. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: something to Cole takes with her, is that this person
Speaker 2: who I thought was into me and was like it
Speaker 2: convinced me that this was a safe place, brought me
Speaker 2: into the situation and said nothing when this happened, right.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, you know, this echoes a lot of colts,
Speaker 3: but it feels very nexium adjacent in the way that
Speaker 3: we are being weaponized to recruit other women.
Speaker 2: Yes, and happening at the same Nicole's COLT is going
Speaker 2: to happen at the same time as nexium. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is too next time. I think get started in
Speaker 2: the nineties some but they're very similar movements. Yes, there's
Speaker 2: a lot that they have in common. Nicole would later
Speaker 2: brag when she starts her cold that she was one
Speaker 2: of the only women RJ never tried to hit, which, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that says. Yeah. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, after three years with the Welcome Consensus, Nicole
Speaker 2: decided she had reached the peak of what they could
Speaker 2: give her. Their top training course was called Validation, and
Speaker 2: to pass you had to complete a three hour orgasmic
Speaker 2: stroking session into a one hour public demonstration. To even
Speaker 2: attempt this costs one hundred thousand dollars. Nicole doesn't have
Speaker 2: that kind of money, so she goes to Aerwon and
Speaker 2: is like, hey, man, you've just come into an inheritance.
Speaker 2: Why don't you pay for us both to have the
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars class, and Airwon pays initially, but
Speaker 2: then he gets cold feet and he backs out and
Speaker 2: demands a refund of the money he'd put down, and
Speaker 2: RJ refuses to refund his money. So Airwan sues the
Speaker 2: group and accuses them of prostitution and says, and he
Speaker 2: had been part of this, right Airwon was, but he says,
Speaker 2: just selling sex.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So journalists start converging on the community, they get
Speaker 2: a bunch of bad press and that Rgie's kind of
Speaker 2: getting old at this point, so he just backs off
Speaker 2: and they really reduce their recruitment efforts. He eventually decides
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna like kind of fade away, right, like,
Speaker 2: like I'm too old for this shit. I don't want
Speaker 2: to have to like fight the outside world.
Speaker 3: And that's the abusive grift was good while it lasted.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And that's when Nicole kind of decides it's
Speaker 2: time to leave, right It's time for me. She can
Speaker 2: see like, Okay, the welcome consensus is on its way out.
Speaker 2: It's time for me to start my own orgasm cult
Speaker 2: slash training program. And we'll talk about all that once
Speaker 2: we finish these ads, so to find and start her
Speaker 2: own cold Nicole knows she's gonna need money, right, and
Speaker 2: she does not have any. So before she leaves, she
Speaker 2: finds a married couple, Rob and Carol Kandall, who had
Speaker 2: recently joined Welcomed Consensus. Yes Yes, very good name Carol,
Speaker 2: Yeah ka n d e LLL. They want to spice
Speaker 2: up their boring one percent er corporate life.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: Rob is a successful businessman. I think he's I don't
Speaker 2: know if he's like rich or just upper middle class,
Speaker 2: but he's got money and he and Carol had lived
Speaker 2: up this point a pretty standard life. Like they get married.
Speaker 2: Rob is very successful. He works his way up the
Speaker 2: corporate ladder, and then kind of when they're in you know,
Speaker 2: the thirties with middle aged and agent sight, Rob is like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like we're boring, right, And so he
Speaker 2: goes to Burning Man with his wife and they take
Speaker 2: mushrooms and he decides he wants more out of life
Speaker 2: than just like making money. And that's what brings Rob
Speaker 2: and Carol to the Welcomed Consensus.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And Rob is because Nicole spots immediately that this is
Speaker 2: the guy I need to bring with me when I
Speaker 2: leave this cult. And that's because he's going to be
Speaker 2: the model for the kind of dude that she is
Speaker 2: going to kind of fashion her entire life around soaking
Speaker 2: for cash. Unfortunately, she's often going to do that by
Speaker 2: like making other women fulfill that guy's weird and sick desire,
Speaker 2: so he pays her. But that's coming in a bit.
Speaker 2: What she sees right away with Rob is that Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley is filled with dudes who spend all their you know,
Speaker 2: when they were in school, they were always studying, they
Speaker 2: were big nerds. They didn't spend a lot of time partying,
Speaker 2: they didn't do a lot of dating, and then they
Speaker 2: start working in their workaholics and they don't spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time dating too, And you know, if they
Speaker 2: get married, they probably feel like they never got to
Speaker 2: sew their wild oats. They didn't get to do enough partying,
Speaker 2: they didn't get to have enough sex, right, and they
Speaker 2: wind up bored and feeling like life is passing them by.
Speaker 2: And she sees that in Rob, and she realizes this
Speaker 2: kind of guy will do anything to prove to himself
Speaker 2: that he's not just another middle aged, middle class white
Speaker 2: guy with money, right, and I think that.
Speaker 3: This like personality profile too, is like there's always an
Speaker 3: element of like revenge to having access to a lot
Speaker 3: of sex and that it's been owed to you. You're
Speaker 3: getting it back.
Speaker 2: Yeah I never got it in high school, right, And yeah,
Speaker 2: he definitely a big part of what he feels is that,
Speaker 2: like I will do anything to have sex with a
Speaker 2: lot of young women. Right, that's what That's what Nicole
Speaker 2: sees in Rob.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: So she first enters Rob's life when he goes to
Speaker 2: a benchmark gathering and she walks in wearing this elaborate,
Speaker 2: sexy costume. He would later describe it as like a
Speaker 2: moment from a movie where the music changes to mark
Speaker 2: an important plot point, because all these guys want to
Speaker 2: feel like they're the leading man in a blockbuster film
Speaker 2: and like, finally, like my life is turning into a movie.
Speaker 2: I'm no longer going to be like this boring slub
Speaker 2: work and a job, right, And Nicole sees that and
Speaker 2: sees like that's just what you tell him. You just
Speaker 2: tell him this is a great adventure, Like you're the
Speaker 2: protagonist of life. We're going to make like this is
Speaker 2: like that's that's forever and now as long as you
Speaker 2: stick with me. So for the moment, Carol needs to
Speaker 2: be around too, because Rob is not willing to immediately
Speaker 2: dump his wife, and Nicole manages to convince them both
Speaker 2: that she can provide a more exciting and lucrative future
Speaker 2: for them than the Welcomed Consensus. So she poaches these
Speaker 2: two and two other students before leaving, and they all
Speaker 2: move into Rob's house in San Francisco. Well, Nicole tries
Speaker 2: to figure out what to do to differentiate her grift
Speaker 2: from the ones that had come before her. Right, she
Speaker 2: knows she wants to do something like the Moorhouse and
Speaker 2: the Welcome Consensus, but she wants it to be her
Speaker 2: own thing, and she wants it to be something that
Speaker 2: can last and will not wind up pissing off a
Speaker 2: bunch of like newspapers and stuff. Right, she has to
Speaker 2: make it like somehow how do I make it work?
Speaker 2: And how do I make it palatable for like people
Speaker 2: in the nineties who are less sexists than these dudes
Speaker 2: from like the sixties and seventies who had started the
Speaker 2: other orgasm cults.
Speaker 3: Or at least a different kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or at least a different kind. So before she
Speaker 2: figures out what her grift is going to be. Well,
Speaker 2: they're all still living at Rob's house. She knows. She
Speaker 2: wants to launch a food donation charity called fill Up America.
Speaker 2: And this is not an act of charity. This is
Speaker 2: something she had learned because both the Welcomed Consensus and
Speaker 2: the More House people did this right where they had
Speaker 2: food donation charities and they would take food donations, but
Speaker 2: the purpose of these were not to give out food.
Speaker 2: It was so that you didn't have to shop. Right,
Speaker 2: you take in, you make yourself known as like this
Speaker 2: is who you donate food to, and people donate food,
Speaker 2: you take out the good stuff and you use that
Speaker 2: to feed everyone for free at your commune, and then
Speaker 2: you give away the bad stuff to like a food
Speaker 2: pantry or something like that. Like that's literally what it is,
Speaker 2: and that's what Nicole is doing. It's very unethical.
Speaker 3: God, that's so horrible. Yeah, where it's just like a
Speaker 3: gigantic shipment of like soaking wet peb and jas.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and you got out all the good ship. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have to I have to say, like the future
Speaker 3: sex cult having something called fill up America is so funny.
Speaker 3: Fill Up America.
Speaker 2: That's gross. It's really gross. You had to know that, Nicole.
Speaker 2: This was like the year two thousand and one, Like
Speaker 2: we weren't that in the fucking what.
Speaker 3: You do fill up America? Nasty?
Speaker 2: It's It says a lot about Nicole that she's like, first,
Speaker 2: even before I know what the grift is, when I
Speaker 2: know what the colt's going to be, before I have
Speaker 2: any like members or any classes. We've got to have
Speaker 2: our fake food charity so we don't have to pay
Speaker 2: for groceries. Right now. Nicole starts writing her own guide
Speaker 2: to what she called orgasmic meditation, which pulled back from
Speaker 2: the multi hour sessions the welcomed consensus had worked up to.
Speaker 2: She realized it was more a lot more marketable to
Speaker 2: sell lestoral stroking as a fifteen minute meditative technique, something
Speaker 2: you can plug into your morning routine without much fuss.
Speaker 2: She specifically says, I want this to replace coffee for
Speaker 2: like young professional women in like the Bay Area and
Speaker 2: stuff like, instead of your morning coffee, you have like
Speaker 2: your morning fucking fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: I do she already, I will say, basically prior other
Speaker 3: than like she's it's a better hook than what.
Speaker 2: Vick is it's a way better hook.
Speaker 3: It's much coffee with coming.
Speaker 2: It's a great genius. It's genius in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah not Hey guys, did you know my wife
Speaker 3: could come? Should we start a business? Like she's she
Speaker 3: has learned?
Speaker 2: And what tells you how ahead of the curve she
Speaker 2: is is like, in like twenty sixteen, you would have
Speaker 2: written this as like a joke start up right to parody,
Speaker 2: like the health and wellness culture and the body optimization
Speaker 2: culture in the in the valley and the Bay. But
Speaker 2: this is like twousand and one or two, right, she's
Speaker 2: really ahead of the curve. She sees this part of
Speaker 2: San Francisco before. It's as much of a meme as
Speaker 2: it's kind of a come prem yeah pre goop. Now
Speaker 2: there is conflict arises pretty quickly between her and Carol.
Speaker 2: Carol is convinced that Nicole wants to make convince her
Speaker 2: husband to abandon her, because that is exactly Carol what
Speaker 2: Nichole is trying to do.
Speaker 3: Carol get out of there.
Speaker 2: So Carol gets pissed and she's like Rob and I
Speaker 2: are leaving. We're gonna go stay in a nice place
Speaker 2: in Jersey for like a couple of weeks and you
Speaker 2: need to be gone when we get back. So that
Speaker 2: Robin Carroll fucking bounce And before they leave, Nicole is like,
Speaker 2: you'll regret it. Your life will be nothing but boring
Speaker 2: once you get back home if you leave us, and
Speaker 2: that says like she leaves, her little nascent colt leaves
Speaker 2: and they try to find a new place to be,
Speaker 2: and Robin Carroll come back and they do kind of
Speaker 2: miss the cult. They are like, oh, it is really
Speaker 2: boring without Nicole. I'm just kind of like making money
Speaker 2: and living in like the bay. I kind of want
Speaker 2: to be back in a cult. It's a lot more
Speaker 2: fun than my life.
Speaker 3: So there's not a lot of good movies out right now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'd like to read take acid and party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we took.
Speaker 3: An prodcast and it wasn't fun.
Speaker 2: We want didn't fix things.
Speaker 4: This is two thousand and one. But is this two
Speaker 4: thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Or so before nine to eleven or probably after an
Speaker 2: leven Now I don't know, all.
Speaker 8: Right, all right, I just want to I just want
Speaker 8: to understand the cultural vibes of the time.
Speaker 2: Sure, So she Nicole calls Rob a few weeks you know,
Speaker 2: into this, and is like, hey, you guys want to
Speaker 2: come over and take acid, Like we're staying at this
Speaker 2: new place, why don't you all party? And like they
Speaker 2: do when soon they're back in the group and she
Speaker 2: eventually talks Rob into leaving his wife, and she basically
Speaker 2: does it by pitching him like, look, we're going to
Speaker 2: create this new tech savvy community of orgasm entrepreneurs, and
Speaker 2: we're going to sell this technique to all of these
Speaker 2: like rich people in the bay and all these beauti
Speaker 2: full young women in the bay. And I want you
Speaker 2: to be basically a human billboard. Rob, You're gonna have
Speaker 2: endless access to women's bodies as you just kind of
Speaker 2: like help help help us afford this while we're getting
Speaker 2: off the ground and Rob a grease kidd Yeah that
Speaker 2: Rob takes the deal ultimately does leave his wife.
Speaker 3: I was trying to like drop myself into the experience
Speaker 3: of someone making like telling me to my face they're
Speaker 3: an orgasm entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know that she uses that word, but
Speaker 2: that is what they're doing, right, They're starting an orgasm business.
Speaker 3: And like do but I do believe that guys like
Speaker 3: this would would feel so comfortable just letting that I'm
Speaker 3: a bit of an orgasm entrepreneur, you could say, and
Speaker 3: then my clitterist would just fall off right there.
Speaker 2: So around the same time that all this is happening,
Speaker 2: Nicole has started gathering a cotterie of older men to
Speaker 2: her right that she's at first she's going, I use
Speaker 2: for money and then for like some of their knowledge
Speaker 2: and advice. And in all of these cases she's kind
Speaker 2: of like you get the some of it. Times it's
Speaker 2: spelled it, sometimes it's not, But she's kind of offering
Speaker 2: up her body in some cases to these men that
Speaker 2: she needs something from in order to get pieces that
Speaker 2: she needs to complete this cult. And that's going to
Speaker 2: be relevant because of like what she's going to do later, right,
Speaker 2: But that is a that is an aspect of this
Speaker 2: that's not always directly discussed. But sometimes it's even just
Speaker 2: like these old guys just want to like spend time
Speaker 2: and feel like they're influential to this young, hot woman.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they are getting something physical out from it.
Speaker 3: The first of these different version of the Elizabeth Holmes playbook.
Speaker 2: Right right right, exactly exactly my hot young ward yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And the first of these men was the former Morehouse
Speaker 2: founder Vic Baranco, who by this point was old and
Speaker 2: dying and was living in Hawaii. He had just a
Speaker 2: handful he basically again Morehouse still exists, but he'd kind
Speaker 2: of given up and had just retreated to this like
Speaker 2: nice place in Hawaii with a few of his closest followers,
Speaker 2: right because he knows he's not going to last much
Speaker 2: longer and he just wants to enjoy life. Wow, bless,
Speaker 2: And she thinks that she convinces him over a couple
Speaker 2: of days, and who knows what goes on to make
Speaker 2: her his heir so she can take over after him
Speaker 2: and like move Morehouse into a new age. But that
Speaker 2: was just a lie, like he was he never meant that,
Speaker 2: And she eventually realizes that she's been had and he
Speaker 2: was just kind of screwing around with her, And so
Speaker 2: she leaves with her followers from the Morehouse compound and
Speaker 2: they rent another place in Hawaii for a while, and
Speaker 2: they start like planning out, like what is our what
Speaker 2: are we going to do? Like what is our course
Speaker 2: curriculum going to be? And they start writing out obviously
Speaker 2: taking these ideas from Warhouse and the Welcome consensus and
Speaker 2: throwing in some of their own, mostly Nicole's and they're
Speaker 2: putting stuff together. They move back to San Francisco, where
Speaker 2: they meet the next of these older guys, who's a
Speaker 2: forty five year old former musician named Don Mary's his
Speaker 2: longtime girlfriend had recently died from some sort of cancer,
Speaker 2: and Don is just deeply depressed. He's certainly not a
Speaker 2: rich guy, but he's got a house of his own,
Speaker 2: and he's got some amount of money, and they really
Speaker 2: just need a place right. Nicole had known him when
Speaker 2: she was in her early twenties and had been partying
Speaker 2: and doing a lot of drugs, and you know, he's
Speaker 2: a musician, so they'd kind of known each other, and
Speaker 2: she latched onto him like ten or so years ago,
Speaker 2: even though he was a lot older. And he'd avoid
Speaker 2: getting entangled with her then because a friend of us
Speaker 2: had told him quote, she's a monster. But she shows
Speaker 2: up a decade later. He's really lonely and sad, and
Speaker 2: she's like, Hey, we're doing this like fun thing. We're
Speaker 2: going to start an orgasm business. Can we like do
Speaker 2: it in your house? And he's like, okay, I guess
Speaker 2: why not?
Speaker 3: Cool? Cool?
Speaker 2: She doesn't critically, I said, she doesn't say it's an
Speaker 2: orgasm business. We're doing like a self help thing, and
Speaker 2: we're going to come up with like a new training
Speaker 2: program to sell people and start a business. Can we
Speaker 2: do it in your house?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And orgasms are what they're like the zenu of the operation,
Speaker 3: like yes, oh, yes, by the way.
Speaker 2: You have to Don, Yeah, Don's gonna have to wait
Speaker 2: to learn the orgasms or what this is all about.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So while he's out working because he's still like a
Speaker 2: handyman or something, Nicole and her friends are at his
Speaker 2: house writing courses on argasmic meditation and platoral stroking. Don
Speaker 2: is kind of only dimly aware of, like literally what
Speaker 2: they're doing. He's mostly just happy to not be lonely,
Speaker 2: it kind of seems like to me. And he starts
Speaker 2: to become aware that, like whatever they're doing during the day,
Speaker 2: Nicole seems to be flirting with him, and Don is
Speaker 2: a smart enough guy to know, like, well, that can't
Speaker 2: be genuine, Like I know, like I'm I'm way over
Speaker 2: the hill. I don't feel good anymore, like this is
Speaker 2: she's got to have an angle in this.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm grieving like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So one day she tells Don is in the room,
Speaker 2: but Nicole is talking to Rob, and Nicole tells Rob,
Speaker 2: I should may read Don. I think that would be
Speaker 2: really good for the group if I married Don. And
Speaker 2: she doesn't even say this to Don and they went
Speaker 2: up taking acid later, and he kind of gets pissed
Speaker 2: about this because again he's grieving, and he's like, you
Speaker 2: shouldn't joke about stuff like that, and he like kind
Speaker 2: of leaves for a while, but he comes back and
Speaker 2: she keeps pushing him to spend more time with them
Speaker 2: and to party with them and kind of flirting with
Speaker 2: him more, and even after they eventually leave his place
Speaker 2: because Rob gets a new place near San Francisco and
Speaker 2: she's like, Don, why don't you come with us and
Speaker 2: stay for a few days. And he's like, I know
Speaker 2: something's going on here. I know this isn't on the
Speaker 2: up and up, but I am old and sad and
Speaker 2: I kind of want to take drugs with this hot
Speaker 2: young lady and her orgasmical what might be an orgasmical?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: He's going through a hard time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, She applies Don with LSD and he winds up
Speaker 2: spending like more than like weeks there, and her followers
Speaker 2: pitch him on what they'd started calling the Institute of
Speaker 2: Monastic Understanding. They like because the acronym is I am
Speaker 2: you right, Oh yeah, there you're seeing you Nope. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So their food charity is in full swing by this point,
Speaker 2: and they start recruiting people who volunteered to help them
Speaker 2: bag and distribute groceries right to join the cult. These
Speaker 2: people are here about the orgasms. Don still is not.
Speaker 2: People come and go from the property, including Don's cousin, William,
Speaker 2: who Donald calls Will up and Will comes down for
Speaker 2: a few weeks and he writes a fictional book about
Speaker 2: his time there and about like falling in love with
Speaker 2: these like LSD cultists, and he would includes some lines
Speaker 2: from it in her book. And this Don's cousin's writings
Speaker 2: give a pretty compelling glimpse inside the minds of these
Speaker 2: older men that she's bringing in and like, because this
Speaker 2: is going to be relevant the whole growth of this cult.
Speaker 2: This is what's always going on in the dude's heads quote.
Speaker 2: Think of it, the endless excellent sex, the lively intellectual conversation,
Speaker 2: the intense tripping, all the new people I was meeting,
Speaker 2: and just the entire unknown adventure of it all, and
Speaker 2: this community. More happened in a week every week than
Speaker 2: what happened in three months back in the old world,
Speaker 2: my other life, that place when I had an American
Speaker 2: Express card a lifetime ago. Right, Well, don't you even
Speaker 2: have to think about money or work. It could just
Speaker 2: take drugs and have sex. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right. But then also, priz that I feel so so
Speaker 3: like crucial to these kinds of grips is to not
Speaker 3: make it just sound like what it is. Just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: drugs and sex and the illusion of power and access
Speaker 3: and all this stuff, and being like this is a
Speaker 3: spiritual mission and you're doing the bust at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that is what I got out of the
Speaker 2: events I used to go to as a young person
Speaker 2: because they were that they were totally honest. It was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: for like five days, we're gonna do drugs and have
Speaker 2: a bunch of weird sex, and there will be a
Speaker 2: bunch of art and music to dance too. But then
Speaker 2: we then you go home, then you go back your
Speaker 2: life and it's cr and then you go home.
Speaker 3: And if you have a nice time, that's great, but
Speaker 3: it does not make your God.
Speaker 2: You do, but you're not God, and you haven't figured
Speaker 2: out the universe. You've just learned that doing drugs and
Speaker 2: fucking for five days with your friends can be a
Speaker 2: pretty good time, which, like you knew already before you
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 3: Well, if you disinfected those cuts from the glass that
Speaker 3: was falling from the ceiling, Oh say glass cuts.
Speaker 2: Whoever got hurt by glass other than the people? So
Speaker 2: Don agrees eventually to marry Nicole, knowing it's a bad idea,
Speaker 2: and Nicole admits to him at this point after he says,
Speaker 2: let's get married, She's like, by the way, this whole
Speaker 2: thing is all about orgasms, this is an orgasm cult
Speaker 2: that we're doing, and he is. He's initially pissed, but
Speaker 2: at this point he's agreed to marry her. Right, so
Speaker 2: he forgives her and they have a weird wedding where
Speaker 2: she kind of ignores him until they're married, and then
Speaker 2: she tells him she turns him, and she says, actually,
Speaker 2: you've just married everyone in this room and it's all
Speaker 2: of the other cult members. Horrible time for Don and
Speaker 2: her followers jokingly make Donn a shirt that says indignant
Speaker 2: man kidnapped by love colt like a like a fake
Speaker 2: headline as a joke that I love, Like they are
Speaker 2: really poor, like don is he's getting sucked with. But
Speaker 2: so they were just saying, what was happening, man, Like
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's like at some point, well I don't I don't
Speaker 3: even know. This guy can't catch a break and they're
Speaker 3: caullying him.
Speaker 2: And they're bullying him, and I think his attitude is
Speaker 2: kind of like I bought the ticket, I took the ride,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's not the ultimate victim. His story
Speaker 2: is just very funny to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like at some point it just gets
Speaker 3: weird where he's like, well, yeah, it's just like someone
Speaker 3: acting like they're wearing handcuffs when it's like, no, man,
Speaker 3: you own the house.
Speaker 2: This is your house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you are not trapped here. He's like, well, there's
Speaker 3: nothing I could do.
Speaker 2: So the group, still going by IMU, starts offering courses
Speaker 2: for money, and so for the first time, people start
Speaker 2: paying them and attending. But they're not a lot of people.
Speaker 2: This is not a big group yet, and they're not
Speaker 2: teaching orgasm at first. In these classes, they're not doing
Speaker 2: the stroking or anything of that. Instead, they're teaching Nicole's philosophy,
Speaker 2: which is a bunch of warmed over bullshit from like
Speaker 2: the middle of the last century, and basically, like basically
Speaker 2: Nicolls that it is like life has no inherent meaning
Speaker 2: other than the one that you give it, which sounds
Speaker 2: like it could be fine. Right. People take that in
Speaker 2: healthy ways. This is often the case of Nicole stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a way you can interpret that healthily. But what
Speaker 2: Nicole means by that is that if you have a
Speaker 2: bad experience, that's because you're choosing to frame the thing
Speaker 2: that happened to you is a bad thing, and you
Speaker 2: don't have to do that. And the point that she
Speaker 2: will tell in these in these classes to illustrate what
Speaker 2: she's saying is that, you know, when I was a child,
Speaker 2: I used to think that my father had molested me.
Speaker 2: But now that I'm a mature adult and I've done
Speaker 2: a lot of work and gone through all of the
Speaker 2: coursework and stuff on this, I know now I seduced
Speaker 2: my father. I was the one with powers. So she's just.
Speaker 3: Teaching SHARV like that's yeah, yeah, yeah, that is that's okay, okay,
Speaker 3: because that's very upset. Yeah, it's really, I mean, especially
Speaker 3: because it's upsetting yeah, because you're like, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: like the VOT. You gotta feel for her that it's like,
Speaker 3: if she does believe it, that's really tragic and.
Speaker 2: Really fucked up. Yeah, that I think. I don't think
Speaker 2: that she. I think this is maybe she believes or not,
Speaker 2: but I think this is consciously she's doing this because
Speaker 2: she knows what she's going to be doing to the
Speaker 2: people who are her followers, right, and she wants this
Speaker 2: is a really good thing to convince everyone to believe
Speaker 2: at the baseline before you start doing the other shit.
Speaker 2: She's going to do that. If you think something's bad,
Speaker 2: it's because you're interpreting it as bad.
Speaker 3: It's like a grouping tactic, like you've just taken a
Speaker 3: course on why everything that's about to happen to you
Speaker 3: is actually okay.
Speaker 2: It's fine, is good? Yes, uh yeah, And obviously that
Speaker 2: that really like sends a message to her followers. Early
Speaker 2: on in two thousand and three, after Carol leaves and
Speaker 2: Don marries Nicole, Nicole brings a new guy in to
Speaker 2: the fold, a new old guy. This is Ray Vetterling.
Speaker 2: Ray Vetterlin had been a protege a vic at Moore
Speaker 2: at the Moorhouse thing, and he he was like the
Speaker 2: almost famous version of a cult leader. Like he'd been
Speaker 2: pretty big in Morehouse. He'd done some cult stuff of
Speaker 2: his own, but it had never really taken off. He'd
Speaker 2: like done, he'd made some money, he'd done okay, But
Speaker 2: now to industry, he's a working cult leader. Ray is right,
Speaker 2: you take.
Speaker 3: It personally, man, it couldn't.
Speaker 2: Time, yeah, exactly. Yeah, But Ray knows the business right.
Speaker 2: Ray knows if you're going to start a cult, here's
Speaker 2: the things you want to do, here's how you build
Speaker 2: the curriculum that you're going to sell, and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And so she brings him in and he writes down
Speaker 2: a lot of his best tips and tricks, and he
Speaker 2: helps her kind of plan the cult. She's going to
Speaker 2: start from the ground up. And this is kind of
Speaker 2: a situation where Ray is both going to get physical
Speaker 2: access into Cole's body. He's going to be doing all
Speaker 2: of these physical orgasm demonstrations where he's like stroking her.
Speaker 2: But he also he gets to like he gets to
Speaker 2: kind of live through her because she is young enough
Speaker 2: and has enough energy to start a successful cult and
Speaker 2: he doesn't anymore. And I think that's a big part
Speaker 2: of it for Ray, Right, so he writes out a
Speaker 2: document for her laying out how this orgasm cult ought
Speaker 2: to function per the book Empire of Orgasm quote, some
Speaker 2: of the lessons were nothing bolts. Practical teachers should be
Speaker 2: in couples, ideally in their early thirties, big enough that
Speaker 2: twenty year old students won't see them as mom and
Speaker 2: dad making out. Host a law a day long intro
Speaker 2: course twice a month, he said, and use a short
Speaker 2: demo of a woman in orgasm at the end of
Speaker 2: the class as a safe showstopper, a format that one
Speaker 2: taste that's her later cult would employ for more than
Speaker 2: a decade. The minute one woman sees another woman getting
Speaker 2: off like that, they want to be there too, Ray wrote, Right,
Speaker 2: So they spell this out all very directly, and his
Speaker 2: pitch to her as to like why this is going
Speaker 2: to work is that more House had failed because it
Speaker 2: was too patriarchal, It was too trapped in the seventies
Speaker 2: and eight eighties. Right, People today didn't want to hear
Speaker 2: like a fucking dude with a mustache talk about how
Speaker 2: much he's getting laid. They want the illusion at least
Speaker 2: to feminism and gender equality, and they want to be
Speaker 2: told that what they're doing isn't it just because they're horny,
Speaker 2: It's because it's going to optimize their health. It's going
Speaker 2: to make them more powerful. It's going to make you smarter,
Speaker 2: it's gonna make you faster, it's going to make you
Speaker 2: better able to compete in the cutthroat tech industry. Right.
Speaker 3: That is such a like it's it's the same sexual crime,
Speaker 3: but being positioned by a woman who claims this will
Speaker 3: optimize you.
Speaker 2: Let will optimize you're eating their drinking the right juice. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: super funny.
Speaker 3: I mean that's like that is even though it is
Speaker 3: funny and a great pitch replacing, Like it's so Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley brain to be like, I come instead of drink
Speaker 3: coffee and it saves me time and it actually releases
Speaker 3: more chemicals.
Speaker 2: It's me eight minutes a day. Right, Yeah, emails I've
Speaker 2: sent it's the same as the AI thing, really, right,
Speaker 2: any more emails I send than everyone else. I'm productive.
Speaker 3: They all they like, they're all in a language I
Speaker 3: don't speak, but they send it. And that's what matters.
Speaker 2: That's what that's all that matters in business. Ray has
Speaker 2: in this document, He writes, he has a line that
Speaker 2: is one of my favorite things from this. Since we
Speaker 2: are not yet selling the god hustle, what do we do?
Speaker 2: What we have to sell is an organically healthy lifestyle
Speaker 2: with sensuality and intimacy. Ray's really good at this. Like,
Speaker 2: Ray's honestly a great mind in the in the con business.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know.
Speaker 2: Who else is a great mind when it comes to
Speaker 2: conning people?
Speaker 6: You?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the sponsors of this podcast and we're back.
Speaker 2: So Ray wrote that anyone showing up to their classes
Speaker 2: was by definition missing something right. This is like, because
Speaker 2: this is something Nicole knows a lot of this, but
Speaker 2: Ray's kind of writing out all of his lessons and
Speaker 2: one thing he writes that anyone's going to show up
Speaker 2: to like an optimize your Life fucking Orgasm class is
Speaker 2: missing something right. They don't have everything they need. They're
Speaker 2: not fully happy, otherwise they wouldn't be here. And the
Speaker 2: one thing that Americans are more likely to miss than
Speaker 2: anything else is intimacy. Right, So if you can create
Speaker 2: situations that fake very sudden, very intense intimacy with a
Speaker 2: large number of hot people, you can make a fuck
Speaker 2: load of money because people will get addicted to that,
Speaker 2: and they'll pay any amount of money to keep being
Speaker 2: around it. And all you have to do is be
Speaker 2: brutally honest about what they're doing wrong, at which point
Speaker 2: they'll listen to whatever you tell them is the right
Speaker 2: way to do things right, because they want to stay there.
Speaker 2: They want to keep having these experiences, they want to
Speaker 2: keep feeling that they're having revelations and stuff because they're
Speaker 2: just doing things that feel good for their body and
Speaker 2: that's nice, and people can't accept that. People can't just
Speaker 2: accept that, like, oh maybe I like having sex and
Speaker 2: like a fucking weird group situation, which is a perfectly
Speaker 2: fine thing for people to do if that's what gets
Speaker 2: you off. But they can't just accept this feels good.
Speaker 2: It has to be opt amising me. This has to
Speaker 2: be unlocking a secret hack in my brain. Otherwise it's
Speaker 2: a waste of time because I won't make more money
Speaker 2: at Apple right.
Speaker 3: And literally thing and it's like going back to the
Speaker 3: fucking twelfth century is like this, This woman orgasming has to
Speaker 3: have some sort of like crucial productive function where it
Speaker 3: just nothing can just feel good.
Speaker 2: And that's that's really what drew me in to like
Speaker 2: the fucking events that I like, these little burn events
Speaker 2: that I went to was like the whole the whole
Speaker 2: pitch was like, you know what sucks capitalism? You know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't suck doing drugs with your friends in the woods,
Speaker 2: Like where's that? Like the hedonism is important?
Speaker 3: Where's the this shit sucks?
Speaker 2: They had that back in more House, but it got
Speaker 2: really again, if there's also a guy that.
Speaker 3: For the experience, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: The other important thing is that. And there's not like
Speaker 2: a guy, Like it's just a bunch of people hanging out,
Speaker 2: Like no one's getting rich off of this. Like as
Speaker 2: soon as there's a guy, and as soon as you're
Speaker 2: paying thousands of dollars, like things get very quickly problematic.
Speaker 2: And but but if you're paying thousands of dollars, then
Speaker 2: it can't just be something that feels good, because like,
Speaker 2: actually feeling good can be really cheap. I get like
Speaker 2: I had to sit on the couch like with my
Speaker 2: partner and we both have a really like feel really nice,
Speaker 2: like watching a movie. But nobody makes money off of that.
Speaker 2: You can't tell a fucking yeah, they can be worth anything.
Speaker 3: They have a meeting at the beginning of every day
Speaker 3: do not tell people they can just comm at their house.
Speaker 3: Do not tell them.
Speaker 2: Don't tell people that. Don't let them know they can
Speaker 2: just actually find love and companionship without like paying money,
Speaker 2: because that you can just start.
Speaker 3: A conversation with someone and see what happens. Don't tell
Speaker 3: them that shit.
Speaker 2: Don't let them know. Don't let them know. So Don
Speaker 2: and Nicole and their little group are living at Ray's
Speaker 2: place at this point, right, they moved into Ray's house,
Speaker 2: and they're helping Nicole explore how to make her They're
Speaker 2: basically prepping. They're they're going to be doing these public
Speaker 2: organism demos, and they're they're they're training, right, They're doing
Speaker 2: they're like preparing for like these marathon public orgasm sessions, right,
Speaker 2: And this means that Nicole every day is lying down
Speaker 2: in a room full of mirrors while Don and Ray
Speaker 2: and Rai's in his seventies masturbate her at the same time.
Speaker 2: And Ray is supposed to be kind of like teaching
Speaker 2: Don how to do it, because the idea initially is
Speaker 2: that Don will do this because he's her husband in
Speaker 2: the actual like public classes, and Nicole is she's not,
Speaker 2: you know, she's she's having these with a lot of
Speaker 2: her followers, like they're all practicing these masturbation techniques. And
Speaker 2: Nicole is keeping a blog in which she writes about
Speaker 2: her experiences in lurid detail, and this is gonna give
Speaker 2: you an idea of like how she's because she you
Speaker 2: can't ever talk about it like sex. You should never
Speaker 2: describe the sexual sensations or what you're seeing or doing
Speaker 2: in a sexual manner. You don't want it to be hot.
Speaker 2: You want it to sound like a fucking poem or something,
Speaker 2: right like, because that makes it not gross. So for
Speaker 2: an example that here's one description that Nicole wrote about
Speaker 2: how it felt to be masturbated by Ray, this elderly
Speaker 2: cult leader. The laughter welled and weld inside of me.
Speaker 2: I became swollen with laughter, and then like champagne pouring
Speaker 2: over the sides of the bottle, tears began to flood me.
Speaker 2: Right And again, the key here is that there's nothing
Speaker 2: about sex in there right that makes it seem profound
Speaker 2: and also marketable.
Speaker 3: Some Lna del rey ass I was like, like, whatever,
Speaker 3: writing sex poetry is fine, but if that's like a
Speaker 3: hard rule, then it starts to feel kind of like dissociative.
Speaker 2: But also that makes it feel very different from these
Speaker 2: prior cults. There's no guys going and this is so hot,
Speaker 2: isn't it? Like because they're not they're being like no,
Speaker 2: it's like champagne pulling over the sides of a bottle.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: It just feels more intellectual and thus safe, right, right,
Speaker 2: that's the basic idea, And part of the idea here
Speaker 2: is that like, while she's being stroked for an audience,
Speaker 2: she'll call in like people to put her hands, their
Speaker 2: hands on her and describe how they felt. And the
Speaker 2: idea is that like this is such a like a
Speaker 2: powerful spiritual thing that like everybody is affected by it
Speaker 2: in the room right, and gets everyone to buy into it,
Speaker 2: and it makes them feel connected and included and helps
Speaker 2: make it an addictive experience. Soon she's got like twenty
Speaker 2: or so followers, but she's not making money off of this,
Speaker 2: and she feels like the group is incomplete until one
Speaker 2: day Ray is like, hey, Don's not working for like
Speaker 2: the sex demo stuff. Nobody's gonna want to watch Don
Speaker 2: do this. I think you should bring Irwan back because
Speaker 2: Irwan's hot and he's really good at doing these these demos.
Speaker 2: Don cannot you should bring him in, Ray fucking Don.
Speaker 3: He's so fired from the manipulative sex local theater truths.
Speaker 2: So sad and Don he's growing increasingly disillusioned. He hears
Speaker 2: over what one day he overhears Ray and Erewan talking
Speaker 2: because she brings an erawon and Ray and Erewan called
Speaker 2: Donn a throwaway person.
Speaker 3: Okay, in there is like a Eugene Levy invest in
Speaker 3: show quality to Don.
Speaker 2: To me, he's just like, it's really funny. Gene Levy
Speaker 2: twenty years ago would have been the guy to cast
Speaker 2: for Done.
Speaker 3: For Don be like, hey, so oh, you're really bringing
Speaker 3: down the vibe at the sex cal.
Speaker 2: Done. So Don flips out and Don leaves. Nicole divorces him,
Speaker 2: and by the time she and Erwan do their first
Speaker 2: public demo in front of an audience of forty, he
Speaker 2: is all but forgotten. This first public Don good for you,
Speaker 2: Bye Don, Bye Don. This first public like stroking demo
Speaker 2: happens in August of two thousand and three. He wits
Speaker 2: book describes the scene and detail and I don't feel
Speaker 2: the need to tell you what Irwan did to this
Speaker 2: woman's vulva step by step. I appreciate that Ellen does.
Speaker 2: Her book is very good. You learn a lot about
Speaker 2: this group and exactly what they're doing. We don't need
Speaker 2: to talk about that. You get the idea, right. What's
Speaker 2: important is what he tells the audience after Nicole has
Speaker 2: a massive, shuddering, hour long orgasm in front of a crowd. Quote,
Speaker 2: it's pure euphoria. You can have as much of that
Speaker 2: sensation as you like. You can feel it in your
Speaker 2: body as much as you want. If she can do this,
Speaker 2: so can you. And then he invites audience members up
Speaker 2: to touch Nicole and this works like gangbusters. Right. People
Speaker 2: love this, They tell their friends. Soon more folks are
Speaker 2: signing up to go watch the orgasm class right.
Speaker 3: Doing like a horny Arena Abramovic thing. It just feels
Speaker 3: like it's like a it's like a performance art thing.
Speaker 8: It's yeah yeah, And he's like the made treaty. He's
Speaker 8: the he's the you know, guy with the microphone.
Speaker 4: Y come first, come all.
Speaker 2: And that's gonna be a problem, right, because Nicole she
Speaker 2: got into this to be the one, right, she's the
Speaker 2: cult leader. If Airwan is like the star of the show,
Speaker 2: because he's actually doing the demonstration and talking and she's
Speaker 2: just kind of like mutely, not mutely, but like she's
Speaker 2: not making like she's not speaking. She's she's supposed to
Speaker 2: be having an orgasm, right, She's kind of a secondary
Speaker 2: figure in the demo that is not going to work
Speaker 2: for Nicole.
Speaker 4: One she has details to add here is that this
Speaker 4: man's name is definitely Irwin, but Robert.
Speaker 8: Keeps calling him arrow on like the grocery and I
Speaker 8: E R W A N. And I've been enjoying it
Speaker 8: the entire time, but I think, but I think we're
Speaker 8: about I think we're about the last of this man,
Speaker 8: and I wanted to get it in.
Speaker 2: We're not going everyone's not gonna be around all that
Speaker 2: much longer because Nicole Nicole is basically as soon as
Speaker 2: this first demo goes the way it does, Nicole has
Speaker 2: like a team meeting, like a cult meeting, and she's like,
Speaker 2: you guys got to choose him or me, Like she
Speaker 2: has enough, She's got the instincts where she's like, if
Speaker 2: I let this get established is the way we do things,
Speaker 2: he's going to be the cult leader, right, and I
Speaker 2: don't want that. That's not okay.
Speaker 3: This is such a Silicon Valley approach to cult leading.
Speaker 2: It's it is a wild very much. This is like
Speaker 2: meeting ship. Yeah, it's the PayPal mafia with weird orgasm
Speaker 2: fucking teachings.
Speaker 3: So he's nuked, he's gone.
Speaker 2: He's nuked. Yeah, the colt picks Nicole. Nicole wins, and
Speaker 2: one leaves the picture. Irwin whatever you want to call him.
Speaker 3: Ray is kicked out, Irwin, whatever your prices are high,
Speaker 3: great produce.
Speaker 2: Sorry, and uh Ray gets kicked out right after that,
Speaker 2: not long after that, because Nicole no longer needs any
Speaker 2: old men like hanging around the right. She's figured things out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Grift is now ready. This is a fully operational
Speaker 2: battle station. The Grift is now ready for the prime time.
Speaker 4: Farewell of You're sorry. I just like that. She's kicking
Speaker 4: out all these.
Speaker 3: So far.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In March of two thousand and four, Nicole finally
Speaker 2: settles on a name for what they were doing. One taste.
Speaker 2: It was taken from the title of a book by
Speaker 2: a philosopher and attributed to a statement by the Buddha.
Speaker 2: Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste
Speaker 2: of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one
Speaker 2: taste the taste of liberation. Yes, one taste, the taste
Speaker 2: of liberation. He's talking about that Budda talking about I
Speaker 2: guess Buddhism. Oh yeah, but she's like one taste. When
Speaker 2: you have one taste, not pussy. Yeah, they're not doing that, Jamie.
Speaker 2: But when you have one taste of the life we
Speaker 2: offer you, you'll never want anything else for yourself, right,
Speaker 2: That's how it's supposed to feel, you know. So. On
Speaker 2: July thirtieth, two thousand and fourth, the One Taste Urban
Speaker 2: Retreat Center opened in San Francisco's Fulsome Street, which is
Speaker 2: probably the most sex positive neighborhood in the US at
Speaker 2: the time. There's a big street fair on Fulsome that's
Speaker 2: like a bunch of leather daddies and like some really
Speaker 2: depraved public sex acts. If you really want to see
Speaker 2: some shit, go to the Fulsome Street parade.
Speaker 3: San Francisco in the two thousands is still like kind
Speaker 3: of hanging on to.
Speaker 2: Still pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Nicole and her followers ran there orgasm demos there,
Speaker 2: but they also like this is like a big warehouse basically,
Speaker 2: and they've got like several different businesses that they operate
Speaker 2: out of it. They've got a yoga studio, they've got
Speaker 2: a massage parlor, they've got like a cafe that sells
Speaker 2: fucking frozen yogurt because it's two thousand and four, and
Speaker 2: they're also hosting workshops, not just the orgasm stuff, but
Speaker 2: they've got some very Bay friendly subjects like conscious cuddling
Speaker 2: right where again it's and you get a lot of like, oh,
Speaker 2: people think you have to pay to like cuddle with
Speaker 2: a bunch of people because they don't know they don't
Speaker 2: have any community. Like that's a bummer. Again, that stuff
Speaker 2: was just free. When I was younger, we didn't have
Speaker 2: to pay to fucking do a workshop next to a
Speaker 2: fro yo stand. So the orgasm stuff was kooky and
Speaker 2: out there, but for the most part they blended into
Speaker 2: the scenery of San Francisco. At that time, One Taste
Speaker 2: was a business, and her cult members are also all employees,
Speaker 2: although they are not receiving regular or sufficient Bay for
Speaker 2: the fourteen hour days that they're putting in Valley. Paid
Speaker 2: an experience, paid an experience baby.
Speaker 4: Since you mentioned froyo, it does One Taste does sound
Speaker 4: like a bink berry.
Speaker 2: It would be funny if they hadn't become a criminal cult,
Speaker 2: which is where this ends, and it had just pivoted
Speaker 2: hard into fro Yo. I was just explaining the origins
Speaker 2: of a popular frozen yogurt company.
Speaker 3: It was just like, wait, so we just realized Froyo
Speaker 3: is where the money is. So we're dropping the sex call.
Speaker 2: We'rep It's like if you were looking up like the
Speaker 2: marble slab creamer, like, oh, they used to fuck on
Speaker 2: the slab. I didn't guess that. I guess the ice
Speaker 2: cream was a better business. Yeah. McDonald's just to used
Speaker 2: to just be a guy named McDonald in a bedroom.
Speaker 2: But then he started serving burgers, and you know, one
Speaker 2: thing led to another. So morehouse starts having weekly sessions
Speaker 2: where though again they're playing communication games to draw in
Speaker 2: the normies.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: Instead of calling it the mark group or the benchmark group,
Speaker 2: she called this the in group, a term which I
Speaker 2: think deeply revealing to the social dynamics that are at
Speaker 2: play here. Because most people, most of us, weren't cool
Speaker 2: at high school or at any of the schools that
Speaker 2: we went to. And some people grow up and they
Speaker 2: enter the wide world and they find their place in it,
Speaker 2: and we forget that we ever wanted strangers to think
Speaker 2: that we were cool. Other people don't get over that,
Speaker 2: and they particularly never get over a lot of men
Speaker 2: never get over seeing like the cool hot guys at
Speaker 2: their high school hang out with the cool hot girls
Speaker 2: who didn't know they existed, right, that like eats at
Speaker 2: them the remainder of their lives. And so that's why
Speaker 2: she's calling it the in group, right, is it's kind
Speaker 2: of to be like, you're one of the cool kids
Speaker 2: if you're hanging out with us, right, Like you're one
Speaker 2: of the cool kids if you pay for our classes.
Speaker 2: This is how to be that because we're having lots
Speaker 2: of fun, experimental, weird sex. Now, it would be very
Speaker 2: unfair of me, I should I should note just to
Speaker 2: say that, to talk about because I've largely been talking
Speaker 2: about what is drawing like these men, particularly these men
Speaker 2: with money into this group, right, what is bringing them in?
Speaker 2: And it'd be really unfair of me to say that
Speaker 2: and not talk about what the women who are joining
Speaker 2: the cult are getting out of this because most of
Speaker 2: the cult leaders I think are women or cult members
Speaker 2: are women, right, and they're women of all ages. They
Speaker 2: are really heavily recruiting younger women, but there are women
Speaker 2: who are in their forties and fifties who are joining too,
Speaker 2: and so it's important, like what are how is Nicole
Speaker 2: reaching them? Because I can understand the marketing to middle
Speaker 2: aged men thing, right, but I don't know, like what's
Speaker 2: drawing these because it seems like a lot of vulnerability,
Speaker 2: a lot of putting your body on display, a lot
Speaker 2: of like risk and anyway, I looked into a bunch
Speaker 2: of like their advertising videos and I found some of
Speaker 2: those that I think make that a little easier to understand.
Speaker 2: Sophie's going to play a video for you called Overcoming
Speaker 2: Depression through Orgasmic Meditation, and it shows one example of
Speaker 2: how the cult sold themselves to women.
Speaker 7: Yes, I didn't know another way of being Like I
Speaker 7: was like, oh, everybody has this, everybody has these thoughts
Speaker 7: and feelings, but you have to keep them hitting.
Speaker 5: When I see how people are treated for depression, now
Speaker 5: it breaks my heart. The very last thing you need
Speaker 5: is a diagnosis that comes onto you like an additional sentence,
Speaker 5: because most people who are depressed feel guilty.
Speaker 7: My whole life, I struggled with depression. I never felt
Speaker 7: a lot of joy like I didn't have a big
Speaker 7: range of emotions above sadness. I'd come home from work
Speaker 7: and lay on the couch. I would drink, I would sleep,
Speaker 7: take sinking feels, to anything to make the thoughts in
Speaker 7: my mind stop and to not have to feel what
Speaker 7: I was feeling, I'd take an anidepressance. You know, many anidepressants,
Speaker 7: many anti anxiety medications, and the best they did was
Speaker 7: just numb the feelings a little bit. The thoughts were
Speaker 7: still there, the doubt, the fear, the lack of joy
Speaker 7: or happiness was still there. So it didn't seem like
Speaker 7: those provided me with a solution. I wanted to actually
Speaker 7: have a full of the full life that I wanted
Speaker 7: to live.
Speaker 5: What is aimed to heal them in their depression actually
Speaker 5: just numbs them and has them feel that much more
Speaker 5: disconnected from life.
Speaker 2: So okay, first off, you see the pitch, are you
Speaker 2: depressed and sad? We have an answer. Boy. Medication isn't
Speaker 2: always pleasant, and it kind of the diagnosis can feel
Speaker 2: like an anchor. There's a lot of anti medical stuff
Speaker 2: in that video, right, and she describes that like many
Speaker 2: people are have like suffer both from the disc It's
Speaker 2: not just depression, is suffering people suffer, sure, but then
Speaker 2: when you get on the drugs, it disconnects them and
Speaker 2: that's the kind of suffering too, right.
Speaker 3: I guess it's like I it's it's very new agey
Speaker 3: bullshit and like trying to separate you from potential tools.
Speaker 3: But also I don't know. I targeting women in their
Speaker 3: forties and fifties is interesting to me because I'm wondering
Speaker 3: if if it's connected to possibly you know, when women
Speaker 3: hit midlife, they're treated like they don't exist as sexual
Speaker 3: beings and that that's like not something that is.
Speaker 2: I think so well, and especially older women in this
Speaker 2: period would have grown up in a time that was
Speaker 2: even more sexually restricted, right, and people are starting to
Speaker 2: talk openly. That's kind of part of why like people
Speaker 2: are so affected by this. Is like, if you're someone
Speaker 2: in that situation and you like lay down and there's
Speaker 2: like this hot young guy who like tells you, like
Speaker 2: looks at you and tells you you're beautiful and then
Speaker 2: starts massaging you like that, I'm not surprised a lot
Speaker 2: of people get very addicted to that and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this did more for my depression than than therapy was doing. Right,
Speaker 2: They would feel like that in the moment, and then
Speaker 2: it get wrapped up in a cult that causes much
Speaker 2: much more damage. But it's just the.
Speaker 3: Way that they're targeting people is very particular. That that
Speaker 3: was a freaky ad.
Speaker 2: It's really it's about to get freakier because Sophie's gonna play.
Speaker 2: You continue playing that, but from can you play? From
Speaker 2: one thirty two to seven from the same video Sophie.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Many have turned successfully to her gasmic meditation
Speaker 6: and attention, a training practice with defined procedures in own
Speaker 6: a partner strokes a woman's clutteress for fifteen minutes with
Speaker 6: no other goal than to feel what is present in
Speaker 6: the moment.
Speaker 8: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: They did her dirty in that edit. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a bummer. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 2: little it's a it is a bummer. Yeah, it's depressing.
Speaker 2: Now a big thing that Nicole is doing here. She's
Speaker 2: recruiting and stocking her events with a lot of attractive
Speaker 2: young women and some attractive young men, but most of
Speaker 2: the guys in the group are like closer to or
Speaker 2: past middle age. And when those other dudes saw that,
Speaker 2: like the guys who were in the cult, giving clatoral
Speaker 2: massages to twenty two year olds who are also like
Speaker 2: in the cult or like just playing card games and
Speaker 2: laughing like close friends with these same girls. Their brains
Speaker 2: go right back to the eleventh grade, right only now
Speaker 2: Nicole is there with an offer, which is pay me
Speaker 2: for classes and you get to be in the end group,
Speaker 2: right right, and they're you know, that's kind of part
Speaker 2: of it, is like, yeah, you get to be cool
Speaker 2: and you get to have this these new cool friends
Speaker 2: who are all like free with each other's bodies, with
Speaker 2: each other, and people are just so fucking lonely, Like
Speaker 2: this is very appealing to some folks, right, It's a bummer.
Speaker 3: It's not. It's it is really sad, and I know
Speaker 3: it's like not necessary. It does feel like very American
Speaker 3: to like monetize the idea of community like this, and
Speaker 3: you know, just like whatever, hyper hyper target people who
Speaker 3: are made invisible by the culture they're in and be
Speaker 3: and being like Okay, you're seen, now, you're valid, you're attractive,
Speaker 3: you're loved. That'll be five thousand dollars and then call
Speaker 3: that unity. It's just like yeah, and a.
Speaker 2: Big thing Nicole is doing because when she's like recruiting,
Speaker 2: particularly the younger people who are going to like be
Speaker 2: like doing most of the work in this is she's
Speaker 2: a bit older than them, but she seems like she
Speaker 2: has her life together. She seems like she has an identity.
Speaker 2: She's offering an identity. And all you have to do
Speaker 2: is like a whole bunch of plaittoral massages and sometimes
Speaker 2: open yourself sexually to a bunch of like weird older
Speaker 2: men who are giving the cult money. And this kind
Speaker 2: of in this period makes the transition from previously to
Speaker 2: kind of get the things the cult needed. Nicole that
Speaker 2: add to either sleep with directly or at least like
Speaker 2: offer pieces of herself up to these like older and
Speaker 2: wealthier men that she needed something from. Now the cult
Speaker 2: is established increasingly, what she's going to do is these
Speaker 2: younger women and some of the younger men she's bringing
Speaker 2: in because she does abuse a lot of younger men
Speaker 2: this way. Now, hey, the group needs you to have
Speaker 2: sex with this person because they will spend a lot
Speaker 2: of money if you do that. Right, That's the route
Speaker 2: this goes on is from I am going to make
Speaker 2: that choice for myself to I am going to kind
Speaker 2: of convince other people to make that choice to make
Speaker 2: me money. Right, That's the journey Nicole has gone on
Speaker 2: in this story thus far. So one of her big
Speaker 2: teachings that she's because in addition to the orgasm stuff,
Speaker 2: there's always way more convoluted philosophical stuff. And she's teaching
Speaker 2: her followers life is a game, and it should be
Speaker 2: viewed as a game. And in a game, you have
Speaker 2: to explore all the nooks and crannies and try everything
Speaker 2: to solve different kinds of puzzles, right, or find power
Speaker 2: ups or whatever. And so when she would ask a
Speaker 2: member to own or to have sex with somebody that
Speaker 2: they didn't find attractive, that's a game. Oh you don't
Speaker 2: like this like rich, older dude who's kind of like
Speaker 2: weird and lecherous to you, Well, it'll be a game
Speaker 2: for you to figure out how to have fun, you know,
Speaker 2: Like that's the game. Like when what yeah, like exactly,
Speaker 2: And she'll do this will be very directly. When wealthy
Speaker 2: men or women will like walk into a one Taste
Speaker 2: event and Nicole will notice that they're like attracted to
Speaker 2: her hitting on a specific member of the cult, she'll
Speaker 2: tell that person go flirt with them, right, maybe you
Speaker 2: don't have to have sex with them right away, but
Speaker 2: convince them to like take a class to sign up.
Speaker 2: They'll get to hang out with you, and she'll put
Speaker 2: She'll give some of our followers free your discounted classes
Speaker 2: to make sure they're in the same class as like
Speaker 2: these dudes who were joining because they never know. Most
Speaker 2: of the cult is pretty there's a lot of women
Speaker 2: in it, but most of the people paying for classes
Speaker 2: are paying to get physical access to the bodies of
Speaker 2: the younger female cult members, and there's not enough women
Speaker 2: paying for classes for like that. Like Nicole has to
Speaker 2: constantly putting people in and that's just prostitution, right, go
Speaker 2: in and they will pay money to touch you right right.
Speaker 3: But it sounds like what if there was a model
Speaker 3: for sex work in which only Nicole was making money
Speaker 3: makes money, Like that's not how that works, and that
Speaker 3: no one has technically consented to be doing this sex work.
Speaker 2: No. Now, a big part of the game is to
Speaker 2: keep people talking about one taste, you know, hype and
Speaker 2: a lure spread by word of mouth, and so Nicole
Speaker 2: starts offering because they've got this yoga center, they offer
Speaker 2: naked yoga classes which get newspapers. There's a bunch of
Speaker 2: stories about it, you know, like it becomes like this
Speaker 2: oh San Francisco sort of thing, right it he helps
Speaker 2: drive more people to the business. Maybe they come in
Speaker 2: to see the naked yoga class, but they find out
Speaker 2: or gasmic meditation. What's that, right, and so they take
Speaker 2: a class. Now, as you've probably heard by now, they're
Speaker 2: referring to ohm orgasmic more meditation. They're pronouncing it ohm
Speaker 2: like you know, the ohm right, the meditative you know
Speaker 2: chant thing. At the same time, they have turned the
Speaker 2: actual like clatoral stimulation massage thing into this almost sexless procedure.
Speaker 2: In one of the ten books the group would publish
Speaker 2: under Nicole's name, she described orgasmic meditation as quote a
Speaker 2: structured attention training practice described in concrete terms as one
Speaker 2: person stroking another's clitterist for fifteen minutes according to specific instructions,
Speaker 2: and that language which works really well in terms of
Speaker 2: getting newspapers and other media organizations to treat one taste
Speaker 2: very differently than they treated more House or the Welcomed Consensus,
Speaker 2: both of which were described accurately as creepy, weird sex
Speaker 2: clubs for perverts. One taste is going to be treated
Speaker 2: like a startup right, or at least like a massively
Speaker 2: popular alt health practice. And to kind of make that point,
Speaker 2: here's a segment from a two thousand and nine New
Speaker 2: York Times article by Patricia Ley Brown and Carol Pogish. Quote,
Speaker 2: at seven am each day, as the rest of America
Speaker 2: is eating cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating,
Speaker 2: about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie
Speaker 2: with eyes closed in a velvet curtained room while clothed
Speaker 2: men huddle over them, stroking them at a ritual known
Speaker 2: as orgasmic meditation owming for short. The couples, who may
Speaker 2: or may not be romantically involved, call one another research partners.
Speaker 2: A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating the
Speaker 2: orgasm that exists between them. In the words of one resident,
Speaker 2: may sound like the ultimate California satire. The notion of
Speaker 2: a San Francisco sets commune focused on female orgasm. It's
Speaker 2: part of a long and rich history of women being
Speaker 2: public and empowered about their sexuality, said Elizabeth A. Armstrong
Speaker 2: and associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, who has
Speaker 2: studied San Francisco's sexual subcultures, and I find that that's
Speaker 2: really interesting because liked, not only did you all fall
Speaker 2: for it, the New York Times kind of repeated their
Speaker 2: ad pitch where like other people are stuck in traffic
Speaker 2: and going to work, you're just coming all the time.
Speaker 2: If you join the culture.
Speaker 3: The first time, it's so it is how I mean,
Speaker 3: how instantly. And I like, Nicole is really smart to
Speaker 3: do this. If you're trying to do this, like just
Speaker 3: like co opting any feminist talking point and the history
Speaker 3: of feminism in the area is like thing number one
Speaker 3: to do it. It's like it's from straight from the
Speaker 3: Sandberg playbook. Yeah, like don't read too carefully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see the puzzle pieces, You've got the border
Speaker 1: set up where it's going to end up in part
Speaker 1: three being very I see the Silicon Valley of it
Speaker 1: all happening.
Speaker 2: And as you note, Jamie, like Professor Armstrong isn't like
Speaker 2: wrong per se sure, but also she wouldn't have described
Speaker 2: Morehouse as part of a long and rich history of
Speaker 2: women being public and empowered about their sexuality role. And
Speaker 2: this is the same thing. They've just dressed it up
Speaker 2: as a text start.
Speaker 3: Sure, and I'm curious about I mean, like what I
Speaker 3: guess this does feel very like Silicon Valley, clinical to
Speaker 3: like mask something else but removing all of this. It's
Speaker 3: like all of the sexy parts of sex but keeping
Speaker 3: all of the vulnerable parts of sex. Interesting I'm trying
Speaker 3: to I mean, it's it's leading to something, obviously, but
Speaker 3: it's just interesting how quickly we're People at the time
Speaker 3: were like, so this is great, right, yea, like the
Speaker 3: least sexy sex that you could possibly have, and it's
Speaker 3: expensive and.
Speaker 2: It costs money. Well, part of what I want to
Speaker 2: be clear, it's only the classes where it's deliberately not sexy. Okay,
Speaker 2: outside of the classes, there's a lot of regular sex happening.
Speaker 2: Is we'll talk about in the next part. These people
Speaker 2: are living together for a chunk of this, right, for
Speaker 2: a lot of this, and Nicole is also telling them
Speaker 2: to pair up with people that like, I think it
Speaker 2: would be good for you to have sex with this
Speaker 2: guy who's gonna give us money. I think it'll be
Speaker 2: a growth experience for you to like fuck this this
Speaker 2: guy or this lady who we need something out of it. Right,
Speaker 2: But that's in the that's happening underneath these public sterile
Speaker 2: sex demos, and so the law who comes is going
Speaker 2: to be like, well, whatever this is, it's not prostitution.
Speaker 2: They're clearly not horny, and they're ignoring all of the
Speaker 2: straight up prostitution that's happening in the background right right
Speaker 2: off either, they're clearly not horny. Let's keep yeah off
Speaker 2: to find somebody else. It's also important I note kind
Speaker 2: of at the end here that the image of this
Speaker 2: is that what's different about One Taste is that Nicole
Speaker 2: is running things. The boys aren't in charge. So this
Speaker 2: really is feminine and empowering. But that's not really what's
Speaker 2: happening either, because by the time they start doing demos
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, Nicole is the stroker who's performing most
Speaker 2: often in front of these large groups. That's what they
Speaker 2: call it, right, And so she's often when the media
Speaker 2: comes by, she'll often do the demo that they see
Speaker 2: of this these meditative techniques. But she's the only woman
Speaker 2: in the cult who regularly got to perform as a
Speaker 2: stroker for classes and demonstrations. The other strokers in public
Speaker 2: are almost always men. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean she has yeah because it's like
Speaker 3: she has every other woman works under her, right, there's
Speaker 3: no at this point, she's she has gotten rid of
Speaker 3: everyone who can be considered to equal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely gonna be some other women who have
Speaker 2: power in the cult that start like forming because she
Speaker 2: has to rely and delegate a lot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, okay, Well I'm looking forward to part three.
Speaker 2: Well that's part two.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean, guys, really, it's going to get.
Speaker 4: All plug some pluggables.
Speaker 3: Let's plug baby.
Speaker 2: I Yeah.
Speaker 3: You can listen to Bachdaelcasid Weevan Housed every single week.
Speaker 3: I've got a book coming out next year that I'll
Speaker 3: be able to talk more about soon. I can't talk
Speaker 3: about it. Yeah, follow me on Instagram, Jamie Christ superstar.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Excellent podcast is over.
Speaker 2: We're done now.
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