Part Two: The Orgasm Cult

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we have uncomfortable conversations

“about section sexuality and the 90s, the Bay Area and the early 2000s.”

It's going to be awkward for everybody. >> Hit in a lot of quadrants, hit in a lot of important quadrants there. >> Hit in a lot of big cues, big cues, a lot of Robert cues. >> In fact, Jamie loftists are wonderful guests, back in the saddle again to talk about the orgasm cult.

How are you doing, Jamie? >> It's great to be back in the medical saddle that makes you come. >> Oh, okay, well.

>> Yeah, I was like, Sam, he's a weird choice today, buddy.

>> Okay.

“>> Look, we're all struggling to say back at the high level, isn't it?”

>> It's sound like-- >> It's weird, especially like, again, this is also adjacent to things I've done and we're a part of my youth that it's really kind of weird to me. The reaction everyone else has to like, and then they're doing public sex demonstrations in front of crowds of people, it's like, no, I've been to a bunch of those actually. >> Yeah, there's a lot of fine people at these events.

They're, you know, we did, we had one, we didn't event one year, we're like, the theme

was because there's different every year, bad idea, and so like, my roommate who is a lady

and is a bit older than me, I think she's like 30, wanted to do like a demo on like, how to use like different like safe sex objects and stuff like that, because it's like a big five day camping trip where a bunch of people are having sex, and she was like, well, there should be an option for people to learn that, in addition to the weird kink camps that teach you how to use like a fucking Saint Andrews cross or a whipper, whatever.

The problem was that the structure we had for this year was also made to kind of meet the theme of a bad idea, so it was a big pyramid, like tent shade structure thing with like a huge bed thing at the bottom, but the top was like a disco ball that we had made by cutting up hundreds of pieces of glass and putting them into like a paper machete ball, and they were just kind of glued on, and it's like 100 degrees, and so as it heats up as

people are like cuddling or doing the safe sex demonstrations or whatever in there, pieces of like jagged glass or just like falling down, and we'd put up like a tiny little net to catch it, but again, it's supposed to be a bad idea, so we didn't want to protect people too much, we just made sure people were warned by the way it rains glass inside the inside the. This sounds like a saw trap, what are you talking about? It was fun, very

few people got cut. It was a really nice week. It was a good time, and there were like maybe four to five stitches required as a result of the shattered glass disco ball. It was a great week. I had a really good time. I got bad idea, tattooed on my fingers because of that week. It was great. I got electrocuted twice. I nearly killed a man with a flame thrower. It was an awesome week accidentally guys. I'm Kevin, and I'm Nick, and guess what,

we created our own podcast called Hey Jonas, we invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it, we just controlled it to our people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired of just a strong way to put it, but you know, tired and sick, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen, we don't care where you hear it.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day, and Headwriters, Streeter Side L helped an occapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and friends on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it was good. You're listening and I learned the

heart way with your favorite therapist and host care games. This space is about black men's experiences having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armament? It's similar to the world that you're not to be played with,

“and just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to.”

Listen to learn the hard way on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Michelle McFee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever

Multi-million dollar house for ouries and Lamborghinis private jets a billion dollar fraught.

“But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me?”

Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So, if you type the words welcomed consensus orgasm, which is the remember the group that kind of descends from the more house community, the welcomed consensus, if you type those three words into Google as i did, you'll be presented with the Amazon page for a video titled "Deliberate orgasm," expanding female orgasm, volume one. It currently costs $132.

$155. 15 reviews.

The cover is haunting. The cover is like, it looks like it's a naked woman and like a man who's

like straddling her and has a hand around her but he's wearing jeans. Fully clothed in jeans. It looks like a cropped guantonimo picture. It's perfect. It looks like some shit from the head of grey. Thank you. I hate it, guantat.

“But I'm drunk right. You have to really want that. I actually do have to really”

financial barrier. Not just anyone should be able to look at that. You have to be a pervert with money. I also love that it's under the special interest. This is indeed a special interest. Full jeans. So you're like, let's be clear. No one's comfortable.

Nobody's having a good time. No one's having what you would call sex, right?

Like what jeans on human skin? Not for now. That lady's going to shave. Everyone's shaving. This is one of several video guides published by the welcome consensus by the time that Nicole DeDone found it in 1998. She had dated Irwan for a while and while that didn't last, her interest in deliberate orgasm did. She pressed Irwan to connect her to more training and rather than send her to more house, he advised that she looked into this

splinter group instead. And is this, is this pre, like, huge groups? This is pre-operating theater coming? No, they're doing that. The more house had done that, remember? They said they're like, it's a three hour orgasm. They had done some demos like that. Largely is like PR things to like bring people in. And the welcome consensus did. It wasn't that big, but they did do live demonstrations, right? One of the things that they, because the welcome consensus is totally about orgasm

and pleasure. And they declare it our birthright because we were conceived in orgasm. That's like the motto of the group, essentially. And to bring in new members, they do live demonstrations. Where a woman would be masturbated for an hour. And they also sold really riskay merch. Like, they're very proud of how horny their merchandise is. They have t-shirts that brag,

“life is too short for mediocre sex. The welcome consensus didn't call new members marks.”

Instead, they used the term "binch marks" because it's just a little different than the cold cause it sounds less antagonistic. Yeah. This is the Burger King of the More House. Like, it's a Burger King of orgasm cult. But that's what the welcome consensus is. Life is huge short for mediocre sex is pretty good. Yeah. It's pretty good shirt. It's a pretty good shirt. It's not attached to a cold. Maybe I don't know. Nothing is going to get me in the door

like some fugly, weird merch. So I was like, I don't know. I'll tell them. Like, at what point would I entertain going through the doors? And it is the fugly shirt. It's the fugly shirt. Yeah, that's what they know. Yeah. So the welcome consensus, again, they call new members benchmarks. But it only costs $11 to visit. They've got a compound. Obviously, that's elsewhere in California, but they've got a clubhouse in San Francisco. And they do like weekly game nights there. And these

are games that have been invented by the group that are, you know, there's like card games that are like, do you and your spouse want to communicate better? This card game will have you talking better? And you know, however long it takes to play or whatever like that, right? Like, that kind of thing. Those are the sort of games that they're playing. These are like games that created to aid and communication to intimacy. And that are also usually, you know, we did our episodes on

Sennon on, right? Like, because that's comes out of the self-help movement that all this stuff is related to a big thing in Sennon on is these sessions where people sit around the circle and like install each other. And they're definitely influenced by that. They've got some games that are like,

They're, but it's usually supposed to be positive, but often there's like a negative side too, yeah.

“That's how they're, I used to work at now close comedy theater. And we would teach”

a stand-up sketch and improv. What are the most evil things you can do? And on, uh, in the stand-up

classes, the first day would always be just that to be, you would have to get on stage. I never

took it, but I, I watched, uh, each student who just wants to put themselves out there stands on stage. And every other student says, the, what are some assumptions people might make about you? And this is in Boston, Massachusetts, you're hearing some really nasty stuff. And then you're just told, like, so, you know, maybe that's something you might want to play up on stage. You're like, it's just, uh, anyone who, I, I don't know, the radical honesty movement, I'm just like,

please, less disastrous. We need to lie more. We need to lie more to each other, you know? Really, for our own protection. Yeah. I don't want to know. I thought we need to lie more. We need just no less about each other. It's not lying just to not tell someone everything. And we don't all need to tell someone everything, you know? Um, so most of these games, again, just kind of, yeah, like, dark secrets, like, tell me the darkest thing that turns you on or stuff like that.

Like, that's a lot of, like, the kind of games that they're playing and doing so in public is really frightening, but also kind of thrilling and cathartic. And it creates this sort of stressful bonding experience that other self-help groups, like, you know, this is all of them are doing something like this in this period of time. And even kind of still into the modern day, everything is just kind of sending on when you get right down to it. Um, now the founder of the

welcome consensus, RJ Testerman, which sounds fake, was a cowboy code to dude. He's always

wearing like a fucking cowboy hat. He's in like his 50s. And he's, people will tell you about RJ and the cold is that he's really good at calling people on their bullshit. And here that phrase

“means he's really good at psychologically abusing people, right? Like, that's what that means.”

Um, um, RJ was attended to by four women who were his lovers and also helped run the group. This was specifically framed more as polyamory than as polygamy, uh, and one thing everyone got who lived at the group's ranch was plenty of sex. And a near total escape from the real world. New members like Nicole were promised that they too could escape the grind of regular life if they just gave themselves over to the cause. They then got to live on an organic farm, growing their

own food and orgasming at least five times per day. You really are not allowed to do it less. You're not allowed to do it. I was going to say, I don't do it. That's not that hard limit. It's not sounding like there is an opt-out. Okay. No. No, can you lie? Of course. They're not checking. But oh, you can lie. Okay. You everyone does. So the WC framed their sex work as a sexual experimentation. Again, just like the more

houses like we're really more researchers trying to learn like, you know, this math, the scientific secrets of sex that have been locked away. Um, and their goal is to create like an elite level sexual experience. They were actually more as much as they were inspired by their self-help groups. They're inspired by like fine dining restaurants, like the French laundry. That's very much how they build themselves. This is like a homemade orgasm. Yeah. A Michelin star come. Yes. So Nicole was an

instant fit in short order. She'd paid $14,000 for a two-week class on how to feel and acknowledge her orgasms. Hughit notes that in her bio for the group website at the time. She wrote, orgasm is the thread that weaves my life together. There is nothing but orgasm as much as I want. That's that's really how a lot of the stuff in the later cult that she's gonna make is going to sound. Like they talk about it like fucking mana, right? Like their wizards. And this is their magic power.

Is orgasm? Like it's like it's a quantifiable thing. Like it's not a, it's not like a moment that

“happens. It's like a quantifiable kind of energy. And you just have with you and like do a dokins with?”

It's kind of, it's kind of like almost, I mean, I know it won't be for long, but it is almost

kind of sweet how they're talking about orgasms as if it was their idea. And they're the first

people to think of this. Yeah. No one else. I guess it's out. So the older group members noticed right away. The Nicole was very good at winning new recruits. It convincing people to join the group and to pay money. One of her first gifts was young woman named Allison, who was referred to the group by Erwan after meeting him at a rave. Again, there's a lot of like after parties for burning land and stuff that people are being recruited for to some of these groups in shit. Like that's

like a thing. And Erwan is kind of, the thing I get is that he's kind of like their floater. Like he's probably, I think, a good looking guy. And he's going out to like parties and stuff to find women like Nicole and Allison. And you know, talk them into showing up at a place like this.

she meets Nicole. And she tells Nicole, oh, you know, I just got awarded a bunch of stock at work.

“So I just cashed in like hundreds of thousands of dollars and Nicole is like cash register signs. Right?”

So she starts flirting with Allison. And Allison falls in love with Nicole, even though she

always considered herself straight before. And I think this has a lot to do with just Nicole is very

charismatic. She's very good at making you feel like you're the only person in the world. And she's very good at making you feel that like doing things that feel good with Nicole are also like revolutionary acts that are helping humanity. You know, that's kind of Nicole's superpower. Yeah. So we've talked about like we talked about the Greeks. We talked about more house about how they went from like, you know, women orgasm. It's so incredibly powerful. And they've used that as a way to like say,

obviously that means women always want it. Right? And the same thing happens to the welcomed consensus. Right? Per the book of orgasm or sorry, per the book empire of orgasm. For the book, because that's bad. Yeah. They invoked biological generalizations about the way female mammals and estrus and nonverbal signals to attract mates. And humans, they argued this manifested through emotions. Women can therefore emit emotional calls and induce men to respond.

When women are feeling turned on or at peace or enraged, that's because they're responding to a call that a woman is putting out. Right? Now, this means that women are responsible for men's arousal for how men feel and men are not responsible for how they're responsible for making sure that they're taking care of. Exactly. And that's actually feminism when you think about it. Is it late? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And as is the case with any group that dedicates themselves to

reimagining human relationships while fucking on an isolated farm, they spiraled into madness as time went on. As researchers, the group decided to experiment with violence. And whether or not that might be a healthy way for people to express emotions honestly. And the way how this happens is like RJ and a bunch of the men are like, I get angry and just want to hit women sometimes. Maybe that's good. Like that's literally the thought process here. And at this university,

we're choosing to explore things we already know. Yeah. It's fucked up. So, one example L&U it gives is a male member of the welcome consensus who gets into an argument with a female member and punches her hard enough to knock her to the ground. And she goes to RJ to complain and he says,

“hey, you need to cop to whatever it is you were doing that made of angry or I'll beat you up myself.”

Right? And this is liberating. Right? Yeah. Because that means you're powerful and that's me acknowledging

you're powerful. That's me acknowledging your power. Yeah. So RJ, this won't surprise anybody, was an aging drunk who went crazy with power and was as likely to give his followers pain as pleasure when he was doing these orgasms sessions. Sometimes if he was angry at a woman that he was like stroking, he would stroke her clitoris so hard that it was agonizing. And then like when someone would be like, hey, you're hurting me, he would accuse her of refusing to surrender. And it was

not like he regularly would like literally just slap or otherwise hit his partner's general stirring these if you got angry at them. So again, these are not like nice times a lot of the time. Right? No. I'm sure that's super shocking to hear. I don't know this one. Say more. No, not great. And this is all happening in group set. This is like there's no footage of witnesses. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of witnesses. That just reminds me of that a Samantha Jones quote from

sex in the city when she threw out the massage door and there's a bunch of women there that are not actually shopping for massage but they're shopping for vibrators. And she looks at this woman

she goes, not that one. That will burn your clittle off. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Well, she's always with us.

She's always with us. How do the times? So Allison, not long after Nicole convinced her to join became the target of RJ's eyeer. There's like an evening where there's like there's several a bunch of people hanging out at the property and RJ gets really drunk and he tells Allison like get down on your hands and knees and he pulls up her skirt and he starts whipping her with a writing crop. And just like screaming and cursing, he's just like a maniac, right? Nicole does nothing

even though Allison is very clearly frightened. And that's kind of something Nicole takes with us. That this person who I thought was into me and was like it convinced me that this was a safe place brought me into the situation and said nothing when this happened, right? It's, I mean, this echoes a lot of cults but it feels very nexium adjacent in the way that we're being weaponized to recruit other women. Yes. And it happening at the same, and Nicole's cult is going to happen

“at the same time as nexium. I mean, this is too. Next time I think it started in the 90s some,”

but they're very similar movements. Yes. There's a lot that they haven't common.

to hit, which like I don't know what that says. Yeah. In 2001 after three years with the welcome

“consensus, Nicole decided she had reached the peak of what they could give her. Their top training”

course was called Validation. In the past, you had to complete a three-hour orgasmic stroking session and do a one-hour public demonstration to even attempt this cost a $100,000. Nicole doesn't have that kind of money. So she goes to Air 1 and is like, hey, man, you've just come and do an inheritance. Why don't you pay for us both to have the $100,000 class? And Air 1 pays initially, but then he like gets cold feet and he backs out into man's a refund of the money he'd put down and RJ refuses

to refund his money. So Air 1 sues the group and accuses them of prostitution and says, and he had been part of this, right? Air 1, but he says, he can't get the refund. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So journalists start converging on the community. They get a bunch of bad press and that RJ is kind of getting old at this point. So he just backs off and they really reduce the recruitment efforts. He eventually decides, I'm just going to like kind of fade away, right? I'm too old

for this shit. I don't want to have to like fight the outside world. The abuse of grift was good while it lasted. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when Nicole kind of decides. It's time to leave. Right. It's time for me. She can see like, okay, the welcome consensus is on its way out. It's time for me to start my own orgasm cult slash training program. And we'll talk about all that once we finish these ads. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers and guess what, we have some big news. What's the new

news? We created our own podcast. Oh. Hey, Jonas, we invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it.

We, we just contributed to first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of

podcasts, right? But this one's extra special. So how do we, how do we actually come up with

“the name? Hey, Jonas, guys. I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should”

call it. And oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. Well, this is how you guys remember going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast. People could call in and say, hey, Jonas, and then I broke down on my little note pad. Hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, I got it. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to hey, Jonas, on the

I heart radio apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, we don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funny this week. My guess SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters Streeter side L helped an occapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen Kingdom on Earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman had a pulse Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. For our recent Lamborghinis, private jets meeting the president of Turkey,

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When Jacob met Levant, this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different

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“You need to tell me what you know is somebody coming after me. Jacob told Levant,”

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stopping the muscle grave. Listen to superhuman on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So to find and start your own cold, Nicole knows she's going to need money, right? And she does not have any. So before she leaves, she finds a married couple, Rob and Carol Candle, who had recently joined the welcomed consensus. Yes, yes, very good name. Carol Candle. Yeah. K-A-N-D-E-E-L. Um, they want to spice up their boring one-person to

rich or just upper middle class, but he's got money. And he and Carol had lived at this point a pretty standard life, like they get married. Rob is very successfully works his way at the corporate ladder and then kind of when they're in, you know, the 30s with middle-aged and set an agent site, Rob is like, oh my god, like we're boring, right? And so he goes to burning man with his wife and take mushrooms. And he decides he wants more out of life than just like

“making money. And that's what brings Rob and Carol to the welcomed consensus, right?”

Okay. And Rob is, because Nicole spots immediately that this is the guy I need to bring with me when I leave this cult. And that's because he's going to be the model for the kind of dude that she is going to kind of fashion her entire life around soaking for cash. And fortunately, she's not often going to do that by like making other women fulfill that guy's weird and sick desire. So he pays her, but that's coming in a bit. But what she sees right away with Rob

is that Silicon Valley is filled with dudes who spend all their, you know, when they were in school,

they were always studying, they were big nerds, they didn't spend a lot of time partying,

they didn't do a lot of dating, and then they start working and they're workaholics. And they don't spend a lot of time dating too. And if they get married, they probably feel like they never got to sew their wild oats, they didn't get to do enough partying, they didn't get to have enough sex, right? And they wind up bored and feeling like life is passing them by. And she sees that in Rob and she realizes this kind of guy will do anything to prove to himself that he's not just

another middle-age middle-class white guy with money, right? And I think that this personality profile too is like there's always an element of like revenge to having access to a lot of sex, and that it's been owed to you, you're getting it back. Yeah. I never got it in high school, right? And yeah, he definitely a big part of what he feels is that like I will do anything to have sex with a

“lot of young women, right? That's what that's what Nicole sees in Rob, right? So she first enters”

Rob's life when he goes to a benchmark gathering, and she walks in wearing this elaborate sexy costume, he would later describe it as like a moment from a movie where the music changes to mark an important plot point because all these guys want to feel like they're the leading man

in a blockbuster film. And like finally, like my life is turning into a movie, I'm no longer going to be

like this boring, slubwork and a job, right? And Nicole sees that and sees like that's just what you tell him. You just tell him this is a great adventure, like you're the protagonist of life. We're going to make like that that's forever and now as long as you stick with me. So for the moment, Carol needs to be around too because Rob is not willing to immediately dump his wife. And Nicole manages to convince them both that she can provide a more exciting and lucrative future for them

than the welcome to consensus. So she poaches these two and other students before leaving and they all move into Rob's house in San Francisco while Nicole tries to figure out what to do to differentiate her griff from the ones that had come before her, right? She knows she wants to do something like the more house and the welcome consensus, but she wants to be her own thing. And she wants to be something that can last and will not wind up pissing off a bunch of like newspapers and stuff, right? She has

she has to make like somehow how do I make it work and how do I make it palatable for like people in the 90s who are less sexist than these dudes from like the 60s and 70s who had started the other orgasm cults. Or at least a different kind. Yeah, or at least a different kind. So before she figures out what her griff is going to be, well they're all still living at Rob's house. She knows she wants to launch a food donation charity called Fill Up America. And this is not an act of charity.

This is something she had learned because both the welcome to consensus and the more house people did this, right? Where they had food donation charities and they would take food donations, but the purpose of these were not to get out food, it was so that you didn't have to shop, right? You take in, you make yourself known as like this is who you donate food to and people donate food and you take out the good stuff and you use that to feed everyone for free at your commune and then you

give away the bad stuff to like a food pantry or something like that, like that's literally what

“what it is and that's what it is. It's very unethical. Yeah, that's so horrible. Yeah, it's”

like a gigantic shipment of like soaking wet PB and J. Yeah, and you got that all the good shit. Yeah, I have to say like the future sex cult having something called Fill Up America is so funny. Fill Up America is funny. That's gross. It's really gross. You had to know that Nicole. This was like the year 2001, like we weren't that in the fucking church. You know what you're doing.

Fill Up America, Nasty. It's, it's just a lot of out Nicole that she's like first. Even before I know

what the griffed is, what I know what the cult's gonna be before I have any like members or any classes, we've got to have our fake food charity so we don't have to pay for groceries. Right. Yeah, Nicole starts writing her own guide to what she called orgasmic meditation, which pulled back from the multi-hour sessions. The welcomed consensus had worked up to. She realized it was more a lot more marketable to sell clistoral stroking as a 15-minute

She specifically says, I want this to replace coffee for like young professional women in

“like the Bay Area and stuff. Like instead of your morning coffee, you have like your morning”

fucking 15 minutes. I do see already, I will say, basically, probably other than like she's,

it's a better hook than what Vic is saying. It's a way better hook. It's a much more expensive coffee with coming. It's a great mess. Genius. It's genius in a way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. Hey guys, did you know my wife could come? Should we start a business? Like she's, she's learned. And what tells you how ahead of the curve she is is like in like 2016, you would have written this as like a joke, start up right to parody like the health and

wellness culture and the other body optimization culture and the in the valley and the Bay. But this is like to this one or two, right? She's really ahead of the curve. She sees this part of San Francisco before it's as much of a meme as it's kind of a comp. Pre-goop. Yeah. Pre-goop. Now, there is conflict arises pretty quickly between her and Carol. Carol is convinced that Nicole wants to make convinced her husband to abandon her because that is exactly what Nicole is trying

to do. Now, get out of there. Get out of there. So, Carol gets pissed and she's like, Robin, I are leaving. We're going to go stay at a nice place in Jersey for like a couple of weeks.

“And you need to be gone when we get back. So, Robin, Carol, fucking bounce. And before they leave,”

Nicole is like, you'll regret it. Your life will be nothing but boring. Once you get back home, if you leave us. And that says like she leaves her little nascent coat leaves and they try to find a new place to be. And Robin, Carol, come back and they do kind of miss the coat. They are like, oh, it is really boring without Nicole. I'm just kind of like making money and living in like the bay, I kind of want to be back at a coat. It's a lot more fun than my life. So, there's not a lot of good

movies out right now. We'd like to really take acid and party. Yeah. We took an improv class and it wasn't fun. We wanted to take things. This is 2001, but it's just 2001 or so. Before 9/11, or after 9/11, now I don't know. All right. All right. I just want to, I just want to understand the cultural vibe. It was the tap. Yeah, sure. So, she in Nicole calls Rob a few weeks, you know, into this and is like, hey, you guys want to like come over and take acid. Like,

“we're staying at this new place. Why don't you all party? And like, they do when soon they're back”

in the group. And she eventually talks Rob into leaving his wife. And she basically doesn't

like pitching him like, look, we're going to create this new tech savvy community of orgasm entrepreneurs. And we're going to sell this technique to all of these like rich people in the bay, and at least beautiful young women in the bay. And I want you to be basically human billboard, Rob. You're going to have endless access to women's bodies. Is you just kind of like help, help us afford this while we're getting off the ground. And Rob agrees. Rob is not okay. Rob agrees. Yeah.

Rob takes the deal ultimately does leave his wife. I was trying to like drop myself into the experience of someone making like telling me to my face, they're an orgasm entrepreneur. Yeah, I don't know what she uses that word, but that is what they're doing, right? They're starting and orgasm business. And I do, and I do, and I do think that guys like this would, would feel so comfortable just letting that. I'm going to get an orgasm entrepreneur. You could say,

and then my Twitterist would just fall off right there. So around the same time that all this is happening, Nicole has started gathering a kudari of older men to her, right, that she's, first, she's going to use for money and then for like some of their knowledge and advice. And in all of these cases, she's kind of like, you get the, some of it times it's spelled at some times it's not, but she's kind of offering up her, her body in some cases to these

men that she needs something from in order to get pieces that she needs to complete this cult. And that's going to be relevant because of like what she's going to do later, right? But that is

us, that is an aspect of this, that's not always directly discussed, but sometimes it's even just like

these old guys just want to like spend time and feel like they're influential to this young hot woman, sometimes they are getting something physical out from it. The first these older women. The version of the, the Elizabeth Holmes playbook. Right, right, exactly. Exactly. My, my hot young ward. Yeah. Yeah. And the first to these men was the former more house founder, Vick Barranco, who by this point was old and dying and was living in Hawaii.

He had just a handful, he basically, again, more house still exists, but he kind of given up control and had just retreated to this like nice place in Hawaii with a few of his closest followers, right, because he's knows he's not going to last much longer. And he just wants to enjoy life. Kind of less, um, and she thinks that she convinces him over a couple of days and who knows what goes on to make her his heir so she can take over after him and like move more house into a new

she's been had and he was just kind of screwing around with her. And so she leaves with her followers

“from the more house compound and they rent another place in Hawaii for a while. And they start”

like planning out like what is our, what are we going to do? Like what is our course curriculum gonna be? And they start writing out obviously taking these ideas from more house in the welcome consensus and throwing in some of their own mostly Nicole's and they're putting stuff together. They move back to San Francisco where they meet the next to these older guys, who's a 45-year-old former musician named Don Mary's, um, his longtime girlfriend had recently died from some sort of

cancer and Don is just deeply depressed. He's sitting at a rich guy but he's got a house of his own and he's got some amount of money and they really just need a place, right? Nicole had known

him when she was in her early 20s and had been partying and doing a lot of drugs and you know,

he's in musicians so they'd kind of known each other and she'd latched onto him like 10 or so years ago even though he was a lot older and he'd avoid getting entangled with her then because a friend of this had told him quote, "she's a monster" but she shows up a decade later, he's really lonely and sad and she's like, "Hey, we're doing this like fun thing, we're gonna start an orgasm business. Can we like do it in your house?" And he's like, "Hey, I guess why not?" "Cool, cool, cool."

She doesn't, critically, I said, she doesn't say it's an orgasm business. We're doing like a self-help thing and we're going to come up with like a new training program to sell people and start a business. Can we do it in your house, right? Right. And orgasms are what? They're like the

“z-new of the operation, like, "Yes, oh, buy the way, buy the way." You have to, for Don, yeah, you're”

getting Don's gonna have to wait to learn the orgasms or what this is all about. So while he's out working because he's still like a handyman or something, Nicole and her friends are at his house writing courses on our gasmic meditation and clitoral stroking. Don is kind of only dimly aware of like literally what they're doing. He's mostly just happy to not be lonely. It kind of seems like to me and he starts to become aware that like whatever they're doing during the day,

Nicole seems to be flirting with him. And Don is a smart enough guy to know like, "Well, that can't be genuine." Like, I know, like, I'm way over the hill. I don't feel good anymore. Like, this is, she's got to have an angle in this, right? I'm greasy. Yeah. Yeah. So one day, she tells Don is in the room, but Nicole is talking to Rob and Nicole tells Rob, "I should marry Don." I think that would be really good for the group if I marry Don. And she doesn't even say this to Don. And they

went up taking acid later and he kind of gets pissed about this because again, he's grieving and he's like, "You shouldn't joke about stuff like that." And he like kind of leaves for a while, but he comes back and she keeps pushing him to spend more time with them and to party with them and kind of flirting with him more. And even after they eventually leave his place because Rob gets a new place near San Francisco and she's like Don, why don't you come with us and stay for a few days? And he's

like, "I know something's going on here. I know this isn't on the up and up." But I am old and sad and I kind of want to take drugs with this hot young lady and her orgasm called, what might be an orgasm called, right? He's going through a hard time. Oh, I can't feel it through the hard time. Yeah. Yeah, she plays Don with LSD and he winds up spending more than like weeks there and her followers pitch him on what they'd started calling the Institute of Monastic Understanding.

No, they like because the acronym is IMU, right? No, yeah, there she's seeing it. Gross. Nope. Yeah. So their food charity is in full swing by this point and they start recruiting people who volunteer to help them bag and distribute groceries, right? To join the cold, these people are hearing about the orgasms. Don still is not. People come and go from the property including Don's cousin William, who don't like calls will up and will comes down for a few weeks and he writes

a fictional book about his time there and about like following and love with these like LSD cultists and he'll include some lines from it in her book and this Don's cousin's writings give a pretty compelling glimpse inside the minds of these older men that she's bringing in and like

because this is going to be relevant the whole growth of this cult. This what's always going on

in the dude's heads. Quote. Think of it. The endless excellent sex, the lively intellectual conversation, the intense tripping, all the new people I was meeting and just the entire unknown adventure of it all and this community more happened in a week, every week, and what happened in three months back in the old world, my other life, that place when I had an American express card, a lifetime ago, right? We didn't have to take it out money or work. It could just

take drugs and have sex. Yeah. Right, but then also for the positioning that I feel like so so

“like crucial to these kinds of grips is to not make it just sound like what it is, which is like”

yeah drugs and sex and the illusion of power and access and all this stuff and being like this is a spiritual mission and you're doing the best at it. Yeah, that is what I got out of the events

five days we're going to do drugs and have a bunch of weird sex and there will be a bunch of art

“and music to dance to but then we then you go home then you go home and then it's done and”

you go home and then you go home and if you have a nice time that's great but it's great it does not make you go home. But you're not God and you haven't figured out the universe you've just learned that doing drugs and fucking for five days with your friends can be a pretty good type. Wow. Yeah. Which like you knew already before you did it. Both you disinfected those cuts from the glass that was falling down the ceiling.

Oh my god. Save it last cuts. Who ever got hurt by glass? Other than the people. So Don agrees eventually to marry Nicole knowing it's a bad idea and Nicole admits to him at this point after he says let's get married she's like by the way this whole thing is all about orgasms. This is an orgasm code that we're doing and he is he's initially pissed but at this point he's agreed to marry her. Right. So yeah. He forgives her and they have a weird wedding where

she kind of ignores him until they're married and then she tells him she turns to him and she says actually you've just married everyone in this room and it's all of the other goat members horrible time for Don and her followers jokingly make Don a shirt that says indignant man kidnapped by love cult like a like a fake headline as a joke that I love like they are really port like Don is he's gonna talk to us but also they were just saying what was happening man like I don't know

it's like I at some point well I don't I don't even know this this guy can't catch a break

“and they're killing him and they're bullying him and I think his attitude is kind of like”

I bought the ticket I took the ride you know like he's not the ultimate victim his story is just very funny yeah it's just like at some point it just gets weird where he's like well it's it's just like someone acting like they're wearing handcuffs when it's like no man you own the house this is your house yeah you are not trash here he's like well there's nothing I could do

so the group still going by IMU starts offering courses for money and so for the first time

people start paying them and attending but they're not a lot of people this is not a big group yet and they're not teaching orgasm at first in these classes they're not doing the stroking or anything of that instead they're teaching Nicole's philosophy which is a bunch of warmed over bullshit from like the middle of the last century and basically like basically Nicole's attitude is like life has no inherent meaning other than the one that you give it which sounds like it could be

fine right people take that in healthy ways this is often the case of Nicole's stuff there's a way you can interpret that healthily but what Nicole means by that is that if you have a bad experience that's because you're choosing to frame the thing that happened to you is a bad thing and you don't have to do that and the point that she will tell in these in these classes to illustrate what she's saying is that you know when I was a child I used to think that my father had

molested me but now that I'm mature adult and I've done a lot of work and gone through all of the coursework and stuff on this I know now I seduced my father I was the one with power so she's just teaching like that's yeah yeah that's okay okay that's very upset it's really I mean especially because it's upsetting yeah because you're like I mean it's like the bump you you got to feel for her that it's like if she does believe it that's really tragic and yeah really fucked up yeah that said

“I think I don't think that she I think this is maybe she believes enough but I think this is consciously”

she's doing this because she knows what she's gonna be doing to the people who are her followers right and she wants this is a really good thing to convince everyone to believe at the baseline before you start doing the other shit she's gonna do that if you think something's bad it's because you're interpreting it as bad it's like a really really tactic like you've just taken a course on why everything that's about to happen to you is actually okay it's fine is good yes yeah and obviously that

that really like sends a message to her followers early on in 2003 after Carol leaves and Dawn Mary's Nicole Nicole brings a new guy into the fold a new old guy this is Ray Vetterling Ray Vetterling had been a protege of Vic at more at the more house thing and he was like the almost famous version of a cult leader like he'd been pretty big in more house he'd done some

cult stuff of his own but had never really taken off he'd like done he'd made some money he'd done okay

but the cult industry cult industry is a tough industry he's a working cult leader Ray is right

oh yeah but Ray knows the business right Ray knows if you're gonna start a cult here's the

things you want to do here's how you build the curriculum that you're gonna sell and all this stuff and so she brings him in and he writes down a lot of his best tips and tricks and he helps her kind of plan the cult she's gonna start from the ground up and this is kind of a situation where Ray is both gonna get physical access into coals body he's gonna be doing all of these physical orgasm demonstrations where he's like stroking her but he also he gets to like he gets to kind of live through

her because she is young enough and has enough energy to start a successful cult and he doesn't

“anymore and I think that's a big part of it for Ray right so he writes out a document for her”

laying out how this orgasm cult ought to function per the book Empire of orgasm quote some of the lessons were nuts and bolts practical teachers should be in couples ideally in their early thirties you again off the 20 year old students won't see them as mom and dad making out host a lot a day-long intro course twice a month he said and use a short demo of a woman in orgasm at the end of the class is a safe show stopper a format that one taste that's her later cult would

employ for more than a decade the minute one woman sees another woman getting off like that they want to be there too Ray wrote right so he they spell this out all very directly and his pitched to her as to like why this is going to work is that more house had failed because it was too patriarchy it was too trapped in the 70s and 80s right people today they don't want to hear like as fucking dude with a mustache talk about how much he's getting laid they want the illusion at least

a feminism and gender equality and they want to be told that what they're doing isn't it just because they're horny it's because it's going to optimize their health it's going to make a more

powerful it's going to make you smarter it's going to make you faster it's going to make you better

able to compete in the cutthroat tech industry right that is such a like night it's it's the same sexual crime but being positioned by a woman who claims this will optimize you this will optimize you like eating their drink of the right juice yeah yeah yeah I mean that's like that is even though it is funny and a great pitch replacing like it's so silicone valley brain to be like I come instead of drink coffee and it saves me time and it actually releases more chemicals it's

he's be eight minutes a day right yeah I'm gonna be emails I've sent it's the same as the AI thing really right he's just like you know many more emails I send than everyone else I'm productive

“they all they like they're all in a language I don't speak but they sent it and that's what matters”

that's what that's all that matters in business um Ray has it in this document he writes he has a line that is one of my favorite things from this since we are not yet selling the god hustle what do we do what we have to sell is an organically healthy lifestyle with sensuality and intimacy Ray's really good at this like you race or honestly a great mind in the in the con business you know who else is a great mind when it comes to conning people you yeah and the sponsors

of this podcast hey it's us the Jonas brothers and guess what we have some big news what's the new huge news we created our own podcast oh hey Jonas we invented a podcast well we didn't invent it

we we just contributed to first people to do podcast pretty yeah pretty wide range of podcast

starting trend but this one's extra special so how do we how do we actually come up with a

“name hey Jonas guys I honestly don't remember I think it was on a call about what we should call it”

and oh we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas brothers well this is how you guys remember going down yes I have a very different memory of this we were talking about a thing a bit for the podcast we could call in and say hey Jonas and then I broke down in my little note pad hey Jonas and offered it up as a potential title oh that's awesome but thanks for remembering that guys listen to hey Jonas on the iHeart

radio apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast just listen we don't care where he hear it another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on humor me with Robert Smygo and friends me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman help make you funny this week my guest SNL's Mikey Day and head writer streeter side L helped an occa peliband with their between songs banter where does your group perform we do some retirement homes

those people are starving for banter listen a humor me with Robert Smygo and friends on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect we were God's chosen kingdom on earth he felt destined for greatness so when a swaggering Armenian businessman had a pulse Jacob into an extraordinary world

Omishomic fee and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracy's I've ever come across

when Jacob met Levant this went to a billion dollar fraud but with two kings from entirely different

world just how long can their empire survive the largest tax investigation in American history

“you need to tell me what you know is somebody coming after me Jacob told Levant you're ruining my life”

listen to kingdom of fraud on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged it's the enhanced games some call it grotesque others say it's unleashing human potential either way the podcasts superhuman documented it all embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth listen to super

human on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back so ray wrote that anyone showing up to their classes was by definition missing something right this is like because this is something that co-nose a lot of this but rays kind of writing out all of his lessons and one thing he writes that like anyone's going to show up to like an optimize your life fucking orgasm class is missing something right they don't they don't have

everything they need they're not fully happy others they wouldn't be here and the one thing that Americans are more likely to miss than anything else is intimacy right so if you can create situations that fake very sudden very intense intimacy with a large number of hot people you can make a fuckload of money because people will get addicted to that and they'll pay any amount of money to keep

“being around it and all you have to do is be brutally honest about what they're doing wrong”

at which point they'll listen to whatever you tell them is the right way to do things right because they want to stay there they want to keep having these experiences they want to keep feeling that they're having revelations and stuff because they're just doing things that feel good for their body and that's nice um and people can't accept that people can't just accept it like oh maybe I like having sex and like a fucking weird group situation which is a perfectly

fine thing for people to do if that's what gets you off but they they can't just accept this feels good it has to be optimizing me this has to be unlocking a secret hack in my brain otherwise it's a waste of time because I won't make more money at Apple right and like that literally it's the fucking thing and it's like going back to the fucking 12th century is like uh uh uh

this woman orgasming has to have some sort of like crucial production or it just nothing can just

feel good and that's that's really what drew me in to like the fucking events that I like these little burn events that I went to was like the whole the whole pitch was like you know what sucks capitalism you know it doesn't suck doing drugs with your friends in the woods and like where's

“they would not know like the hedonism is important where's the hedonism this shit sucks”

they had that back in more house but they got really again if there's also a guy that you're likely needed for the experience yeah that's the other important thing is that and there's not like a guy like it's just a bunch of people hanging out like no one's getting rich off of this right as soon as there's a guy and as soon as you're paying thousands of dollars like things get very quickly problematic um and but but if you're paying thousands of dollars then it can't

just be something that feels good because like actually feeling good can be really cheap like like I had to sit on the couch like with my partner and we both have a real like feel really nice like watching a movie but nobody makes money off of that you can't tell a be a fucking yeah they haven't been anything they have a meeting at the beginning of every day do not tell people they can just comment their house you do not tell them don't tell people that don't let them

know they can just actually find love and companionship without like paying money because that you can just start a conversation with someone and see what happens don't tell them that shit don't let them know don't let them know so don't in a coal in their little group are living at raise place at this point right they moved into raise house and they're helping to coal explore how to make

her they're basically prepping they're gonna be doing these public orgasms demos and they're

they're they're training right they're doing they're like preparing for like these marathon public orgasms sessions right and this means that Nicole every day is lying down in a room full of mirrors while dawn and ray and rays in his 70s masturbator at the same time and ray is supposed to be kind of like teaching dawn how to do it because the idea initially is that dawn will do this because he's her husband in the in the actual like public classes and Nicole is she's not you know she's

she's having these with a lot of her followers like they're all practicing they're these masturbation

lured detail and this is getting you an idea of like how she's because she you can't ever talk

“about it like sex you should never describe the sexual sensations or what you're seeing or doing”

in a sexual manner you don't want it to be hot you want it to sound like a fucking poem or something right like because that makes it not gross so for an example that here's one description that Nicole wrote about how it felt to be masturbated by ray this elderly cult leader and her laughter welled and welled inside of me i became swollen with laughter and then like champagne pouring over the sides of the bottle tears began to flood me right and again the key here is that there's

nothing about sex in there right that makes it seem profound and also marketable some Lana Del Ray ass I was like it's like whatever writing sex poetry is fine but if but if that's like all hard rule then it starts to feel kind of like dissociative but also that makes it feel very different from these prior cults there's no guys going and this is so hard isn't it like because they're not they're being like no it's like champagne pouring over the sides of a bottle it just feels

more intellectual and thus safe right um that's the basic idea um and part of the idea here is that like wow she's being stroked for an audience she'll call in like people to put her hands their hands on her and describe how they felt and the idea is that like this is such a like a

powerful spiritual thing that like everybody is affected by it in the room right and that gets

everyone to buy into it and it makes them feel connected and included and helps make it an addictive experience soon she's got like 20 or so followers but she's not making money off of this and she feels like the group is incomplete until one day Ray is like hey don't's not working for like the

“sex demo stuff nobody's gonna want to watch Don do this I think you should bring Irwan back”

because Irwan's hot and he's really good at doing these these demos. Don cannot actually bring him in. Fuck it don't he's so fired from the manipulative sex logo theater truth so sad and don he's going increasingly disillusion he hears one over what one that he overhears Ray and Erwan talking because she bring his an air wand and Ray and Erwan called Donna throw away a person he okay in there is like a Eugene levy and best in show quality to Donna to me he's just like

it's really funny yes Eugene levy 20 years ago what up in the guy to cast for Don for Don be like hey so people you're really bringing down the vibe at this like skull so Don flips out

and Don leaves Nicole divorces him and by the time she and Erwan do their first public demo in

front of an audience of 40 he is all but forgotten. This first public. Good for you. Bye Don. Bye Don. This first public like stroking demo happens in August of 2003 he would spoke describes the scene in detail and I don't feel the need to tell you what Irwan did to this woman's role the step by step. I appreciate that Ellen does her book is very good you learn a lot about this group and exactly what they're doing we don't need to talk about that you you get the idea right

what's important is what he tells the audience after Nicole has a massive shuddering hour long orgasm in front of a crowd quote it's pure euphoria you can have as much of that sensation as you like you can feel it in your body as much as you want if she can do this so can you and then he invites audience members up to touch Nicole and this works like gangbusters right people love this they tell their friends soon more folks are signing up to go watch the

orgasm class right students like a horny solverina a bramovic thing it just feels like it's like a it's like a performance art thing it's yeah yeah yeah yeah he's like the maid tritty he's the

he's the you know guy with the microphone y'all come first come all and that's gonna be a problem

right because if she got into this to be the one right she's the cult leader if air one is like the star of the show because he's actually doing the demonstration and talking and she's just kind of like mutely not mutely but like she's not making like she's not speaking she's she's supposed to be having an orgasm right um she's kind of a secondary figure in the day that is not gonna work for Nicole one of my team's enough details to add here is that this man's name is definitely

Urwin but Robert keeps calling him error on like the grocery store and I love it

“er w a n and I've been enjoying it the entire time but I think yeah but I think we're about the last”

of this man and I wanted to get it in yeah yeah we're not we're not everyone's not gonna be around

way it does Nicole has like a team meeting like a cult meeting and she's like you guys got to choose him or me like she has enough and she's got the instincts where she's like if I let this get established is the way we do things he's gonna be the cult leader right and I don't want that that's not okay this is such a silicon valley of approach to cult leading it's it is very much this is like like a peorty yeah yeah it's the PayPal mafia with weird orgasm fucking teachings um so so the

cult he's nooked he's gone he's nooked yeah the cult picks Nicole Nicole wins and everyone leaves the picture or when whatever you want to call him raise kick out or when whatever your prices are high great photos sorry and uh rakes kicked out right after that not long after that because Nicole no longer needs any old men like hanging around the right she's she's figured things out yeah the grift is now ready this is a fully operational battle station the grift is now ready for the

prime time so long fair well of either sorry I just like that she's kicking out all these

you like great yeah yeah uh in March of 2004 Nicole finally settles on a name for what they

were doing one taste it was taken from the title of a book by a philosopher and attributed to a statement by the Buddha just as the great ocean has one taste the taste of salt so also this teaching and discipline has one taste the taste of liberation yes one taste the taste of liberation he's talking about it's Buddha talking about I guess Buddha doesn't yeah but she's like one taste because you have one taste not pussy yeah they're not doing that Jamie but when you have one taste of

“the life we offer you you'll never want anything else for yourself right that's how it's supposed to”

feel you know um so on July 30th 2004 the one taste urban retreat center opened in San Francisco's Folsom Street which is probably the most sex positive neighborhood in the US at the time there's a big street fair on Folsom that's like a bunch of leather daddies and like some really depraved public sex acts if you really want to see some shit go to the Folsom Street parade and then Francisco in the 2000s is still like kind of hanging on to still pretty cool right yeah it's pretty cool yeah

yeah so Nicole and her followers ran their orgasm demos there but they also like this is like a

big warehouse basically and they've got like several different businesses that they operate out of it

they've got a yoga studio they've got a massage parlor um they've got like a cafe that sells fucking frozen yogurt because it's 2004 and they're also hosting workshops not just the orgasm stuff they've got some very bay friendly subjects like conscious cuddling right um where again it's

“and you get a lot of like oh people think you have to pay to like cuddle with a bunch of people”

because they don't know they don't have any community like oh that's a bummer again that stuff was just free when I was younger we didn't have to pay to fucking do a workshop next to a Frollo stand so the orgasm stuff was cookie and out there but for the most part they blended into the scenery of San Francisco at that time one taste was a business and her coat members are also all employees although they are not receiving regular or sufficient bay for the 14 hour days that they're

putting okay little come valley pay to the experience paid an experience baby since you mentioned Frollo it does one taste does sound like a pink berry it's like I mean yeah yeah it would be funny if they hadn't become a criminal cult which is where this ends and it had just pivoted hard into Frollo and it was just explaining the origins of a popular frozen yogurt company yeah it was just like wait so we just realized Frollo is where the money is so we're dropping the sax calls

and it's like we're looking up like the marble slab creamer like oh they used to fuck on the slab huh wow I didn't guess that guess the ice cream was a better business um yeah McDonald's just to just be a guy named McDonald in a bedroom but then he started serving burgers and you know one thing led to another um so more house starts having weekly sessions where they'll again their planned communication games to draw in the normies you know instead of calling it the mark group

“or the benchmark group she called this the in group a term which I think deeply revealing to the”

social dynamics that are at play here because most people most of us weren't cool at high school or at any of the schools that we went to and some people grow up and they enter the wide world and they find their place in it and we forget that we ever wanted strangers to think that we were cool

other people don't get over that and they particularly never get over a lot of men never get over

seeing like the cool hot guys at their high school hang out with the cool hot girls who didn't know they existed right that like eats at them the remainder of their lives um and so that's

if you're hanging out with us right like you're one of the cool kids if you pay for our classes

this is how to be that because we're having lots of fun experimental weird sex now it would be very unfair of me I should I should note just to say that to talk about because I've largely been talking about what is drawing like these men particularly men with money into this group right what is bringing them in and it'd be really unfair to me to say that and not talk about what the

“women who are joining the cult are getting out of this because most of the cult leaders I think”

are women or cult members are women right and they're women of all ages they are really heavily recruiting younger women but there are women who are in like their 40s and 50s who are joining too and so it's important like what are how isn't a co-reaching them because I can understand the marketing to middle-aged men right but I don't know like what's drawing these because that seems like a lot of vulnerability a lot of putting your body on display a lot of like risk

and anyway I looked into a bunch of like their advertising videos and I found some of those that I think make that a little easier to understand so if he's going to play a video for you called overcoming depression through orgasmic meditation and it shows one example of how the cult sold themselves to women. I didn't know another way of being like I was like oh everybody

“has this everybody has these thoughts and feelings but you have to keep them fit it.”

When I see how people are treated for depression now it breaks my heart. The very last thing you need is a diagnosis that comes on to like an additional sentence because most people who are

depressed feel guilty. My whole life I started with depression. I never felt a lot of joy like I

didn't have a big range of emotions above sadness. I'd come home from work and lay on the couch. I would drink who it's the takes they can build anything to make the thoughts in my mind stop and do not have to feel what I was feeling. I'd taken in at a presence you know many in at a presence many and I anxiety medications and the best they did was just numb the feelings a little bit. The thoughts were still there the doubt the fear the lack of joy or happiness was still there.

So it didn't seem like those provided me with the solution I wanted to actually have a full

“of the full life that I wanted to live. What is aimed to heal up them in their depression actually just”

numb them and it has some feel that much more disconnected from life. So okay first off you see the

pitch are you depressed and sad we have an answer boy medication isn't always pleasant and it

kind of the diagnosis can feel like an anchor there's a lot of anti-medical stuff in that video right and she describes that like many people are have like suffer both from the disc it's not depression it's suffering people suffer sure but then when you go on the drugs it disconnects them and that's the kind of suffering too right and it's like it's it's it's very new agey bullshit and like trying to separate you from potential tools but also I don't know I targeting

women in their 40s and 50s is interesting to me because I'm wondering if it's connected to possibly you know like when women hit midlife they're treated like they don't exist as sexual beings and that that's like not something that is about well and and especially older women in this period would have grown up in a time that was even more sexually restricted and people are started to talk openly that's kind of part of why like people are so affected by this is like

if you're someone in that situation and you like lay down and there's like this hot young guy who like tells you like looks at you and tells you you're beautiful and then starts massaging you like that I not surprised a lot of people get very addicted to that and they're like yeah this did more for my depression than then therapy was doing right and they would feel like that in the moment and then it get wrapped up in a coat that causes much much more damage but it's just the way

that they're targeting people is very particular that was a freaky ad it's really it's better get freaky here because Sophie's gonna play you continue playing that but from can you play from 130 to 147 from the same video Sophie thank you for depression many have turned successfully to orgasmic meditation and attention training practice with defined procedures in own a partner strokes a woman's clitoris 13 minutes with no other goal than to feel what is present in the

moment yeah yeah they did her dirty in that edit oh my god yeah um so this is a bummer yeah it is

recruiting and stalking her events with a lot of attractive young women and some attractive young

“men but most of the guys in the group are like closer to or past middle age and when those other”

dudes saw that like the guys who were in the coat giving clitoril massages to 22 year olds who were also like in the cult or like just playing card games and laughing like close friends with those same girls their brains go right back to the 11th grade right only now Nicole is there with an offer which is pay me for classes and you get to be in the end group right and they're you know that's kind of part of it is like yeah you get to be cool and you get to have these new cool friends who are all

like free with each other's bodies with each other and people are just so fucking lonely like this is very appealing to some folks right it's a bummer it's not it is really sad and I know it's like not necessary it does feel like very American to like monetize the idea of community like this and you know just like whatever hyper hyper target people who are made invisible by the culture they're in and be and being like okay you're seeing now you're valid you're attractive you're

loved that will be $5,000 like and then call that community it's just like yeah and a big thing Nicole is doing because when she's like recruiting particularly the younger people who are going to like be like doing most of the work in this is she's a bit older than them but she seems like she has her life together she seems like she has an identity she's offering

“an identity and all you have to do is like a whole bunch of literal massages and sometimes open”

yourself sexually to a bunch of like weird older men who are giving the cult money and this kind of not as long as the transition from previously to kind of get the things the cult needed Nicole that had to either sleep with directly or at least like offer pieces of herself up to these like older and wealthier men that she needed something from now the cult is established increasingly what she's going to do is these younger women and some of the younger men she's

bringing in because she does abuse a lot of younger men this way now hey the group needs you to have sex with this person because they will spend a lot of money if you do that right that's the route this goes on is from I am going to make that choice for myself to I'm going to kind of convince other people to make that choice to make me money right that's the journey Nicole has gone on in this in this story thus far so one of her big teachings that she's because in

addition to the orgasm stuff there's always way more convoluted philosophical stuff and she's

“teaching her followers life is a game and it should be viewed as a game and in a game you have to”

explore all the nicks and crannies and try everything to solve different kinds of puzzles right or find power ups or whatever and so when she would ask a member to to Ome or to have sex with somebody that they didn't find attractive that's a game oh you don't like this like rich older dude who's kind of like weird and let your esteu well it'll be a game pre-deficient how to have fun you know like that's the game like when what yeah like exactly and it

she'll did this will be very directly when wealthy men or women will like walk into a one-taste event and Nicole will notice that they're like attracted to her heading on a specific member of the cult she'll tell that person go flirt with them right maybe you don't have to have sex with them right away but convince them to like take a class to sign up they'll get to hang out with you and she'll put she'll give some of our followers free your discounted classes to make sure they're in the same

class as like these dudes who were joining because they never know most of the cult is pretty

there's a lot of women in it but most of the people paying for classes are paying to get physical access to the bodies of the younger female cult members and there's not enough women paying for classes for like like Nicole has to constantly putting people in and that's just prostitution right I was like this is like going and it will pay money to touch you right yeah but it sounds like what if there was a model for sex work in which only Nicole was making money makes money like

yeah that's not how that works and that no one has technically consented to be doing the sex work no now a big part of the game is to keep people talking about one taste you know hype and allure spread by word of mouth and so you uh Nicole starts offering because they've got this yoga center they offer naked yoga classes which get newspaper there's what just stories about it you know like it becomes like this oh San Francisco sort of thing right did he helps drive more people

to the business maybe they come in to see the naked yoga class but they find out the word orgasmic meditation what's that right and so they take a class now as you probably heard by now they they're referring to own orgasmic meditation they're pronouncing it own like you know the um right the meditative you know chant thing um at the same time they have turned the

the 10 books the group would publish under Nicole's name she described orgasmic meditation as

“quote a structured attention training practice described in concrete terms as one person stroking”

another's clitoris for 15 minutes according to specific instructions and that language works really well in terms of getting newspapers and other media organizations to treat one taste very differently than they treated more house or the welcomed consensus both of which were described accurately as creepy weird sex clubs for purverts one taste is going to be treated like a start-up right or at least like a massively popular alt-health practice and to kind of make that point here's

a segment from a 2009 New York Times article by Patricia Laybrown and Carol Poghish quote

at 7 a.m each day as the rest of America is eating Cheerios are trying to face gridlock without

hyperventilating but it doesn't women naked from the waist down lie with eyes closed in a velvet curtain room while cold men huddle over them stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation oaming for short the couples who may or may not be romantically involved call one another research partners a homie dedicated to men and women publicly creating the orgasm that exists between them in the words of one resident may sound like the ultimate California satire the notion of

exan Francisco sex comedy and focused on female orgasm is part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality said Elizabeth A. Armstrong an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University who is studied San Francisco sexual subcultures and I find that it's really interesting because like y'all kind of not only did you all fall for it the New York Times kind of repeated their ad pitch well like other people are stuck in traffic

and going to work you're just coming all the time if you're joined the cult I mean how instantly and I like Nicole is really smart to do this if you're trying to do this like just like co-opting any feminist talking point and the history of feminism in the area is like thing number one to do it's like it's from straight from the Sandberg play playbook yeah I read too carefully yeah I see the puzzle pieces you've got the border set up where it's gonna end up

in part three being very that's right I see the Silicon Valley of it all happening yeah and as you as you note Jamie like professor Armstrong isn't like wrong per se but also she wouldn't have described more house as part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality right and this is the same thing they've just dressed it up as a text start short and I'm curious about I mean like what I guess this does feel very like Silicon Valley

clinical to like mask something else but removing all of this it's like all of the sexy parts of sex but keeping all of the vulnerable parts of sex I'm trying to I mean it's it's leading to something obviously but it's just interesting how quickly where people at the time were like so this is great right yeah like the least sexy sex that you could possibly have and it's expensive and of course money well part of what I want to be clear it's only the classes where it's deliberately

not sexy okay outside of the classes there's a lot of regular sex happening as we'll talk about in the in the next part these people are living together for a chunk of this right for a lot of this

“and Nicole is also telling them to pair up with people that like I think it would be good for you”

to have sex with this guy who's gonna give us money I think it'll be a growth experience for you to like fuck this guy who's lady who we need something right but that's in the that's happening underneath these public sterile sex demos and so not the law who comes to the deck well whatever this is it's not prostitution they're clearly not horny and they're ignoring all of the straight of prostitution that's happening the background right off like they're clearly not horny let's keep

yeah off often find somebody else it's also important I note kind of at the end here that the image of this is that what's different about one tastes is that Nicole is running things the boys aren't in charge so this really is feminine and powering but that's not really what's happening either because by the time they start doing demos in San Francisco Nicole is the stroker who's performing

“most often in front of these large groups that's what they call it right and so she's often”

it when the media comes by she'll often do the demo that they see of this these meditative techniques but she's the only woman in the cult who regularly got to perform as a stroker for classes and

demonstrations the other strokers in public are almost always men yeah yeah yeah so I mean

name she has yeah because it's like she has all every other woman works under her right there's no at this point she has she has gotten rid of everyone who didn't be considered to be cool yeah

because she has to rely and delegate a lot but yeah yeah okay well I'm looking forward to part three

“well that's part two yeah yeah I see guys really I look it's going to plug some plugables”

let's plug baby eye yeah you can listen to back to the cast and we've been housed every single week I've got a book coming out next year that'll be able to talk more about soon I can't talk about yeah follow me on instagram jamey crazy superstar hell yeah yeah excellent

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