Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Orgasm Cult

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Robert continues to tell Jamie about Nicole Daedone's OneTaste, orgasm cult. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Also Media. 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. Hitting a lot of quadrants. Hitting a lot of important quadrants there. Hitting a lot of big cues, big cues, a lot of Robert cues. In fact, Jamie Loftus, our wonderful guest, back in the saddle.

again to talk about the orgasm colts. 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 saddle. Weird choice today, buddy. Okay.

Look, we're all struggling to not say things that sound like. It's weird, especially like, again, this is all so adjacent to like things. I've done and were a part of my youth, that it's really kind of weird to me. Like, the reaction everyone else has to, like, the, and then they're doing, like, public sex demonstrations in front of crowds of people's like, no, I've been to a bunch of those, actually. Yeah, there's a lot of fine people at these events. Mm-hmm.

There's good. You know, I, we did, we had one at one of the, we did an event one year where, like, the theme was, because there's a different one every year, bad idea. And so, like, my roommate, who is a lady in 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 people to learn that in addition to the weird kink camps that teach

you how to use like a fucking St. Andrew's cross or a whip or whatever um the problem was that the structure we had for it this year was also made to kind of meet the theme of a bad idea so it was a big like pyramid like tint 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 mache 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 are just like falling down. And we had 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... 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. I used to hang out in all a jigsaws tracks.

We were young. 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've got bad idea tattooed on my fingers. Because of that week. It was great. Wow.

I got electrocuted twice. I was like the lore drop at the end. I nearly killed a man with a flamethrower. It was an awesome week. Wow. Accidentally, guys. All right, Tarantino. Let's move on.

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Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first 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 is 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. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to you.

Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network. Eyeheart. Open your free IHeart app and search BodyBags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. So if you type the words welcomed consensus orgasm, which is remember the group that kind of descends from the Moorhouse 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 or.

orgasm, volume one. It currently costs $132 on Amazon. 2.5 stars. 15 reviews. 2.4 stars. Really? Honey. Oh, the color, the cover is haunting.

The cover is in like 160. It looks like he's where. Like it's a naked woman and like a man who's like straddling her and has a hand around her butt. but he's wearing jeans? She's completely fully clothed in jeans. It looks like a cropped

Guantanamo picture. It's horrific. It looks like some shit from fucking Alguerabe. Thank you. I hate it. It's disgusting. God. You have to really want I actually do appreciate the financial barrier. Not just anyone should be able to look at that.

You have to be a pervert with money. Most people are not ready. I also love that it's under the special interests section of the TVD categories for Amazon. 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?

Raw jeans on human skin, not for nothing. It's that that lady's going to chafe. Big time. Everyone's shaving. Now, this is one of several video guides published by the welcome consensus by the time that Nicole Dodone 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 Morehouse, he advised that she looked into this splinter group instead.

And is this pre-like huge groups? This is pre-operating theater coming? No, they're doing that. Like the Moore House had done that. Remember, they'd done that thing where they said it's a three-hour orgasm. Like, 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. a woman would be masturbated for an hour. And they also sold really risque 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 benchmarks, because it's just a little different than the cult they're kind of ripping off. It sounds less antagonistic for one. This is the Burger King of the Morehouse. Like, it's a burger king of orgasm, folks. That's what the welcome consensus is. Life is too short for mediocre sex is pretty good.

It's a pretty good shirt. It's a pretty good shirt if it's not attached to a cult maybe. I don't know. Nothing's going to get me in the door like some fugly weird merch. So I was like, up until then, I'm 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 knew. So the welcome consensus, again, they call new members benchmark. 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, and, you know, those, 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 have created to aid in communication and intimacy, and that are also usually, you know, we did our episodes on Synanon, right? Like, because that comes out of the self-help movement that all this stuff is related to.

A big thing in Synanon is these sessions where people sit around in the circle and, like, insult each other. And they're definitely influenced by that. They've got some games that are like, we'll all sit around and we'll talk, we'll tell someone honestly something about, like, themselves. But it's usually supposed to be positive, but often there's like a negative side too. Yeah. That's how I used to work at now closed comedy theater and we would teach stand-up sketch and improv. One of the most evil things you can do. And in the stand-up classes, the first day would always be just that.

You would have to get on stage. I never took it, but I watched. Each student who just wants to put themselves out there stands on stage and every other student says, what are some assumptions people might make about you? And this is in Boston, Massachusetts. So you're hearing some really nasty stuff. Wild stuff. Yeah.

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, ugh, ugh. Anyone who, 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. We really, for our own protection. Yeah, I don't want to know.

It's not that we need to lie more. We need to just know 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? So most of these games are, 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 selves.

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 synodon when you get right down to it. Now, the founder of the welcome consensus, R.J. Testerman, which sounds fake, was a cowboy-coded dude. He's always wearing like a fucking cowboy hat. He's in like his 50s. And he's, he's, what people will tell you about R.J. and the cult 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.

Yes. 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. 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 assess. 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. I was going to say, you got to do it. That's a hard limit. It's not sounding like there is an opt out. Okay. No. Now, can you lie? Of course.

They're not checking. Oh, you can lie. Okay. 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, the scientific secrets of sex that have been locked away. 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, like, build themselves. This is like a gourmet orgasm. We want you to have a Michelin orgasm. Yeah, a Michelin Star Cup. 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.

Hewitt 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 really how a lot of the stuff in the later cult that she's going to make is going to sound. Like they talk about it like fucking mana, right? Like they're wizards and this is their magic power is orgasm? 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 you can just have with you and like do Hedukins with. It's kind of, it is 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 has figured this out. So the older group members noticed right away that Nicole was very good at winning new recruitment. recruits at convincing people to join the group and to pay money. One of her first gets was a 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 Man and stuff that people are being, like, recruited for to some of these groups and shit. Like, that's, 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.

So Allison meets Arawan at the rave and she goes to the welcome consensus and at her first meeting 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'd 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. And we talked about, Moorehouse, about how they went from like, you know, when 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. Keep going on it. That's bad. Yeah. They invoked biological generalizations about the way female mammals and estrus send

nonverbal signals to attract mates. In 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 aren't responsible for men's arousal for how men feel. Right. And men are not. They're not responsible for how they're responsible for making sure that they're taking care of. And that's actually feminism when you think about it. Isn't it? 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. And they already do. Yeah, it's fucked up. So one example Ellen Hewitt 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 him 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 orgasm sessions. Sometimes if he was angry at a woman that he was stroking, he would stroke her clitoris so hard that it was agonizing. And then 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 genitals during these.

If he got angry at them. So again, these are not like nice times a lot of the time, right? 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 sets. This is like there's no shortage of witnesses.

Yeah, yeah, lots of witnesses. That just reminds me of that Samantha Jones quote from Sex and the City when they're at the massage store and there's a bunch of women there but are not actually shopping for massages, but they're shopping for vibrators. And she looks at this woman and she goes, not that one, that will burn your clit off. Honey. Perfect. Okay. Wow. She's always with us.

She's always with us. Ahead of the times. So, Allison, not long after Nicole convinced her to join, became the target of RJ's ire. There's like an evening where there's, there's several, a bunch of people hanging out at the property. And Arja 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 her, is 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, I know this echoes a lot of cults, but it feels very nexium adjacent in the way that women are being weaponized to recruit other women. This is, and it happening at the same.

Nicole's cult is going to happen at the same time as nexium. I mean, this is two. Next time I think it's started in the 90s some. But they're very similar movements. Yes. There's a lot that they have in common. Nicole would later brag when she starts her cult that she was one of the only women RJ never tried to hit, which like, I don't know what that says. Yeah.

In 2001, after three years with the welcomed consensus, Nicole decided she had reached the peak of what they could give her. Their top training course was called validation. and to pass you had to complete a three-hour orgasmic stroking session and do a one-hour public demonstration. To even attempt this cost $100,000. Nicole doesn't have that kind of money, so she goes to Erwan and is like, hey man, you've just come into an inheritance,

why don't you pay for us both to have the $100,000 class? And Erwan pays initially, but then he, like, gets cold feet and he backs out and demands a refund of the money he'd put down, and RJ refuses to refund his money. So Erwan sues the group and accuses them, of prostitution and says, and he had been part of this, right? Right. But he says they're just selling sex.

He can't get a refund. Yeah. Yeah. So journalists start converging on the community. They get a bunch of bad press. And 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? Like 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 welcomed 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. Renno mishap? That's embarrassing. You know what's not embarrassing? Using fig for a home improvement loan. A quick, simple, and training. transparent offer in minutes.

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Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember.

I think it was on a course. call about what we should call it. We were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this.

We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. 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.

Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group.

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news,

BodyBags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to BodyBags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, Eye Heart. Open your free Eye Heart app. and search body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. So, to find and start her 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 names. Carol Candle. Ooh. Yeah, K-A-N-D-E-L-L. Good for her. They want to spice up their boring 1% her corporate life, right?

Rob is a successful businessman. I don't know if he's like rich or just upper middle class, but he's got money. And he and Carol had lived up this point a pretty standard life. Like they get married. Rob is very successful. He works his way up the corporate ladder. And then kind of when they're in, you know, the 30s with middle aged in sight, age in sight, Rob is like, oh, my God, like we're boring, right?

And so he goes to Burning Man with his wife and they 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 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. What she sees right away with Rob is that. Silicon Valley is filled with dudes who spent 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, you know, if they get married, they probably feel like they never got to sow 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-aged, middle-class white guy with money, right? And more to the point, they'll do-

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 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 slub working 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's forever now as long as you stick.

with me. So for the moment, Carol needs to be around to because Rob is not willing to immediately dump his wife. And Nicole manages to convince them both that she could provide a more exciting and lucrative future for them than the welcomed consensus. So she poaches these two and two 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 grift from the ones that had come before her, right? She knows she wants to do something like the Moore House and the welcomed consensus, but she wants it to be her own thing. And she wants it to be something that can last

and will not wind up pissing off a bunch of newspapers and stuff, right? 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'd start of the other orgasm colts.

Right. Or at least a different kind. Yeah, or at least a different kind. So before she figures out what her grift is going to be, while 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 welcomed consensus and the Morehouse people did this, right? Where they had food donation charities and they would take food donations. But the purpose of these were not to give out food. It was so that you didn't have to shop, right? You take in a, 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. that like that's literally what what it is and that's what Nicole is doing it's very unethical yeah god that's so horrible yeah where it's just like a gigantic shipment of like soaking wet pb and jays

yes yes and you got out all the good shit yeah i have to i have to say like the future sex cult having something called fill up america is so funny fill up america is gross that's gross It's really nasty. It's really gross. You had to know that, Nicole. This was like the year 2001. Like, we weren't that in the fucking, like, you know what you're doing. Nicole.

Fill up America nasty. It says a lot about Nicole that she's like first, even before I know what the grift is, when I know what the cult's going to 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. Now, Nicole starts writing her own guide to what she called organic. Meditation, which pulled back from the multi-hour sessions the welcomed consensus had worked up to. She realized it was a lot more marketable to sell clitoral stroking as a 15-minute meditative technique.

Something you can plug into your morning routine without much fuss. 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-minute stroke. I do, she already, I will say, based, other than, like, she's, it's a better hook than what Vic is saying. It's a way better hook. She's much smarter than Dicker, aren't you? Saying, we're placing coffee with coming is a great pitch. It's genius.

It's genius in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Not, hey, guys, did you know my wife could come? Should we start a business? Like, she's, she is 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 startup, right, to parody like the health and wellness culture and the body optimization

culture in the valley and the bay. But this is like 2001 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 become. Pre-goop. Yeah, pre-goop. Now, there is conflict arises pretty quickly between her and Carol. Carol is convinced that Nicole wants to convince her husband to abandon her because that is exactly

what Nicole is trying to do. Carol, get out of there. Get out of there, girl. So Carol gets pissed and she's like, Rob and 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 Carroll 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 colt leaves and they try to find a new place to be.

And Robin Carol come back, and they do kind of miss the cult. They are like, oh, it is really boring with that. Nicole. I'm just kind of like making money and living in like the bay. I kind of want to be back in a cult. It's a lot more fun than my life. So there's not a lot of good movies out right now. Yeah. We'd like to rejoin Nicole. Can we take acid party? Yeah. We took an improv class and it wasn't fun. We wanted to call it. Didn't fix things. This is 2001, but is this 2001 or so? Before 9-11 or

after 9-11? Probably after 9-11 now. I don't know. All right. All right. I just wanted I just wanted to understand the cultural vibes of the time. Sure. So she, Nicole calls Rob a few weeks 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 and soon they're back in the group. And she eventually talks Rob into leaving his wife.

And she basically does it by 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 all these beautiful young women in the Bay. And I want you to be basically a human billboard, Rob. You're going to have endless access to women's bodies as you just kind of like help help us afford this while we're getting off the ground. And Rob agrees. No kidding. Rob agrees?

Yeah. That's crazy. 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. telling me to my face they're an orgasm entrepreneur. Yeah, I don't know that she uses that word, but that is what they're doing, right?

They're starting an orgasm business. And I do believe that guys like this would feel so comfortable just letting that. I'm a bit of an orgasm entrepreneur, you could say. And then my clitoris would just fall off right there. So around the same time that all this is happening, Nicole has started gathering a coterie of older men to her, right? That she's, at 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 it, sometimes it's not, but she's kind of offering up 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 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 from it. The first these older men. It's a different version of the Elizabeth Holmes playbook.

Right, right, right. Exactly. Exactly. My hot young ward. Yeah. Yeah. And the first of these men was the former Morehouse founder, Vic Barranco, who by this point, was old and dying and was living in Hawaii.

He had just a handful. He basically, again, Morehouse still exists, but he'd 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 knows he's not going to last much longer. And he just wants to enjoy life. Kind of less house. And she thinks that she convinces him over a couple of days and who knows what goes on to make her his air so she can take over after him and, like, move Morehouse into a new age.

But that was just a lie. Like, he was, he never meant that. eventually realizes that she's been had and he was just kind of screwing around with her. And so she leaves with her followers from the Morehouse 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 going to be? And they start writing out, obviously taking these ideas from Morehouse and the welcomed

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 of the. these older guys who's a 45-year-old former musician named Don Marys. His long-time girlfriend had recently died from some sort of cancer, and Don is just deeply depressed. He's certainly not 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 a musician, 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 us 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 going to start an orgasm business. Can we, like, do it in your house? And he's like, okay, 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 zenu of the operation? Yes, yes, very much.

By the way. By the way. Okay. For Don, yeah. Don's going to have to wait to learn that orgasms are what this is all about. Okay. 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 orgasmic 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, 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 grieving. Like, 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 married 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 cult, what might be an orgasm cold, right? He was going through a hard time. He's going through the hard time. Yeah. Yeah. She plies 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,

which they like, because the acronym is I am you. Right? Yeah, there's your Zinu. Gross. Nope. Yeah. So their food charity is in full swing by this point, and they start recruiting people who volunteered to help them bag and distribute groceries, right? To join the cult.

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 calls Will up and Will comes down for a few weeks. And he writes a fictional book about his time there and about, like, falling in love with these, like, LSD cultists. And Hewitt includes 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 is 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, than what happened in three months back in the time. the old world, my other life, that place when I had an American express card a lifetime ago, right? We didn't have to think about money or work. It could just take drugs and have sex. Yeah.

Right. But then also positioning that, I feel like so, so, like, crucial to these kinds of grifts is to not make it just sound like what it is, which is like 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 I used to go to as a young person. Because they were totally honest.

It was like, no, no, for like 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 back to your life. Then you go home is the crucial part. Then you go home. And if you have a nice time, that's great. But crucially, it does not be.

make you God. 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 time. Yeah. Yeah. Which you should, like you knew already before you did it. Hope you disinfected those cuts from the glass that was falling from the ceiling.

A little bit of glass cuts. Whoever 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 cult that we're doing. And he's initially pissed, but at this point, he's agreed to marry her, right?

So 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 cult members. Horrible time for Don. And her followers jokingly make Donna a shirt that says, indignant man kidnapped by love cult, like a fake headline as a joke that I love.

Like they are really poor. Like Don is, he's getting fucked with, but also they were just saying what was happening, man. Like, I don't know. It's like, at some point, well, I don't, I don't even know. This guy can't catch a break. And they're bullying 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's just very funny to me. Yeah, it's just like, at some point it just gets weird where he's like, well, 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, bro. Yeah. You are not trapped here. He's like, well, there's nothing I can do. Sir.

So the group, still going by IMU, starts offering courses for money, for money, 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 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 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 a mature adult, and I've done a lot of work and gone through all of the coursework and stuff on this,

know now I seduced my father. I was the one with power. So she's just teaching Darvo. Like that's... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the class.

That's... Okay. Okay. That's very upsetting. Yeah. It's really... I mean, especially because... It's upsetting.

Yeah. Because you're like, I mean, it's like the moment... You got a feel for her that it's like... Sure. If she does believe it, that's really... tragic and... That's really fucked up. Yeah.

That said, I think, I don't think that she, I think this is, maybe she believes or not, but I think this is consciously she's doing this because she knows what she's going to 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 going to do. That if you think something's bad, it's because you're interpreting it as bad. It's like almost like a grooming tactic. Like you've just taken a course on why everything that's about to happen to you is actually

actually okay. Yep, it's fine, is good, yes. Wow. And obviously that really sends a message to her followers early on. In 2003, after Carol leaves and Don marries Nicole, Nicole brings a new guy into the fold, a new old guy. This is Ray Vetterling. Ray Vetterlin had been a protege of Vic at the Morehouse thing, and he was like the almost famous version of a cult leader.

Like he'd been pretty big in Morehouse. He'd done some cult stuff of his own, but it'd never really taken off. He'd like done, he'd made some money. He'd done okay. The tough industry, cult leaders. It's a tough industry. It's a tough industry. He's a working cult leader, Ray is, right?

Don't take it personally, man. It could have just as he's on one leg at a time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But Ray knows the business, right? Ray knows if you're going to start a cult, here's the things you want to do. here's how you build the curriculum that you're going to 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 coach she's going to start from the ground up. And this is kind of a situation where Ray is both going to get physical access to Nicole's body. He's going to 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 30s, young enough that 20-year-old students won't see them as mom and dad making out,

host a law, 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 showstopper, 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 they spell this out all very directly. And his pitch to her as to like, why this is going to work is that Moore House had

failed because it was too patriarchal. It was too trapped in the 70s and 80s, right? People today didn't want to hear like a fucking dude with a mustache, talk about how much he's getting laid. They want the illusion, at least, to feminism. gender equality. And they want to be told that what they're doing isn't just because they're horny. It's because it's going to optimize their health. It's going to make them 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, 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 drinking the right juice. Yeah. Yeah. Super funny. I mean, that's like that is, you. You know, even though it is funny in a great pitch, replacing, like, it's so Silicon Valley brain to be like, I come instead of drink coffee and it saves me time and it actually releases more chemicals. It seems to be eight minutes a day.

Right. Yeah. Look at how many emails I've sent. It's the same as the AI thing, really, right? Jesus. Yeah. You can't have many more emails I send than everyone else. I'm productive.

They all, they're all in a language I don't speak, but they sent them. And that's what matters. That's all that matters in business. 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, Ray's honestly a great mind in the con business. Wow. You know who else is a great mind when it comes to conning people? You? Yeah. And the sponsors of this podcast. Sending a spicy picture to your work chat instead of your significant other? That's so embarrassing.

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We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did 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. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it 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 wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. 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.

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Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle. age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news,

body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, Iheart. Open your free IHeart app and search BodyBags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. 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 Nicole knows a lot of this, but Ray's kind of writing out all of his lessons. And one thing he writes that, like, anyone's going to show up to like a optimize your life fucking orgasm class is missing something. Right. Right. They don't have everything they need. They're not fully happy. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. Right.

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. And people can't accept that.

like, oh, maybe I like having sex in 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 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's literally, that's the fucking thing. And it's like going back to the fucking 12th century is like a ciswoman orgasming has to have

some sort of like crucial productive function where it just, Nothing can just feel good. And 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. Yeah. Where's the hedonism? It was like that the hedonism is important.

Where's the hedonism? This shit sucks. They had that back in Morehouse, but it got really, again, if there's also a guy that you're paying 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. Like, as soon as there's a guy and as soon as you're paying thousands of dollars,

like, things get very quickly problematic. 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, I can just sit on the couch, like, with my partner, and we both have a real, like, feel really nice, like watching a movie. Yeah. But nobody makes money off of that. You can't tell.

You can't be a fucking, yeah, can't be worth anything. They have a meeting at the beginning of every day. Do not tell people they can just come at their house. 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 will ruin us. 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 and Nicole in their little group are living at Ray's place at this point, right? They moved into Ray's house. and they're helping Nicole explore how to make her, they're basically prepping, they're going to be doing these public orgasm demos,

and they're training, right? They're doing, they're like preparing for like these marathon public orgasm sessions, right? And this means that Nicole every day is lying down in a room full of mirrors while Don and Ray, and Ray's in his 70s, masturbate her at the same time. And Ray is supposed to be kind of like teaching Don how to do it,

because the idea initially is that Don will do this, because he's her husband 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 these masturbation techniques. And Nicole is keeping a blog in which she writes about her experiences in lurid detail. And this is, going to give 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. Oh, no. The laughter weld 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 Rey-Ass line. I was like, it's like, whatever, writing sex poetry is fine. But if that's like a 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 hot, isn't it? Like, because they're not, they're being like, no, it's like champagne pulling over the sides of a bottle. You know, it just feels more intellectual and thus safe, right?

Right. That's the basic idea. And part of the idea here is that like while she's being stroked for an audience, she'll call in like people to put 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's not working for like the sex demo stuff. Nobody's going to want to watch Don do this. I think you should bring Erwan back because Irwan's hot and he's really good at doing these demos. Don cannot catch a break. Fucking Don. He's been fired from the manipulative sex local theater troops.

It's so sad. And Don, he's growing increasingly disillusioned. One day he overhears Ray. and Arawan talking because she brings an Arawan and Ray and Arawan called Don a throwaway person. He hears that. You're so sad. There is like a Eugene Levy and best in show quality to Don to me. He's just like.

It's really funny. Eugene Levy 20 years ago would have been the guy to cast for Don. For Don. Be like, hey, so people, you're really bringing down the vibe at the sex cult. Don. 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.

Bye, Don. Bye, Don. Good for you. Bye, Don. This first public, like, stroking demo happens in August of 2003. Hewitt's book describes the scene in detail. And I don't feel the need to tell you what Erwan did to this woman's vulva 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 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? Just doing like a horny Marina Abramovic thing. It just feel like it's like a performance art thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like the matriety.

He's the, he's the, you know, guy with the microphone. Yeah. Come first. Come all. And that's going to be a problem, right? Because Nicole, she got into this to be the one. Right? She's the cult leader.

If Erwan 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 supposed to be having an orgasm, right? She's kind of a secondary figure in the demo. That is not going to work for Nicole. One of my favorite details to add here is that this man's name is definitely Irwin, but Robert keeps calling him. arrow on like the grocery store. And I love it. It's spelled ERWA-N.

And I've been enjoying it the entire time, but I think, uh, but I think we're about to see, I think we're about the last of this man and I wanted to get it in. We are. We're not, we're not, we're not, everyone's not going to be around all that much longer. Because Nicole, Nicole is basically as soon as this first demo goes the 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 in, she's got the ins, she's got the ins,

instincts where she's like, if I let this get established is the way we do things, he's going to be the cult leader, right? And I don't want that. That's not okay. This is such a Silicon Valley approach to cult leading. It's so wild. It is very much. This is like the PayPal mafia shit.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the PayPal mafia with weird orgasm fucking teachings. So he's nuked. He's gone. He's nuked. Yeah. The cult picks Nicole.

Nicole wins. And Erwin leaves the picture. Irwin, whatever you want to call him. Bye, Irwin. Whatever. Your prices are high. Great produce. Sorry.

And Ray gets kicked out right after that, not long after that, because Nicole no longer needs any old men, like hanging around the group. Bye, Ray. 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.

In March of 2014. Well, Avita, sorry. I just like that she's kicking out all these fucking weird men. You like that rakes gone? All the fuck boys and fuck elderly men are gone. It's nice so far. Yeah. 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. One taste? The taste of liberation. Yes. One taste.

The taste of liberation. He's talking about, that's Buddha talking about, I guess, Buddhism. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she's like one taste. Not pussy, you guys. 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? 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 U.S. at the time. There's a big street fair on the one. Folsom. That's like a bunch of leather daddies and like some really depraved public sex ass. If you really want to see some shit, go to the Folsom Street parade. San Francisco in the 2000s is still like kind of hanging on to still be cool.

Right. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 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. 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, but they've got some very bay-friendly subjects, like conscious cuddling, right? 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 Froyo stand. So the orgasm stuff was kooky 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 cult members are also all employees, although they are not receiving regular or sufficient pay for the 14-hour days that they're putting in. Okay, Silicon Valley. Paid an experience.

Paid an experience, baby. Since you mentioned Froyo, it does, one taste does sound like a pink berry. It was a good idea of a Froyo name. 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 Froyo. Yeah. And I was just explaining the origins of a popular frozen yogurt company.

Yeah. They're just like, wait, so we just realized Froyo is where the money is. So we're dropping the sex cult. We're dropping the sex. It's like if you were looking up like the marble slab cream, you're like, oh, they used to fuck on the slab? Huh. Wow. I didn't guess that.

Guess the ice cream was a better business. Yeah, McDonald's used to just be a guy named McDonald in a bedroom, but then he started serving burgers and, you know, one thing led to another. So Morehouse starts having weekly sessions where, though, again, they're playing 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, hanging out with the cool hot girls who didn't know they existed, right? That like eats at them, the remainder of their lives. And so that's why she's calling it the in-group, right? Is it kind of,

to be like, you're one of the cool kids 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 note, just to say that, to talk about, because I've largely been talking about what is drawing like these men, particularly these men with money into this group, right? What is bringing them in? And it'd be really unfair of 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 is Nicole reaching them? Because I can understand the marketing to middle-aged men thing, right? Yeah. But I don't know, like, what's drawing these, because it 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 hit 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 onto you like an additional sentence because most people who are depressed feel guilty.

My whole life I struggled 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. I would sleep. Take sleeping pills anything to make the thoughts in my mind stop and to not have to stay. feel what I was feeling. I'd take an antidepressants, you know, many antidepressants, many anti-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, the full life that I wanted to live. What is aimed to heal them in their depression actually just numbs them and has them feel that much more disconnected from life. So, 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? Yes. And she describes that, like, many people suffer both from the disc, it's not just, depression is suffer, people suffer sure, but then when you get on the drugs, it disconnects them. And that's the kind of suffering too, right? I guess it's like, 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 thought about. Well, and especially older women in this period would have grown up in a time that was even more sexually restricted. Right. And people are starting 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'm not surprised a lot of people get very addicted to that. And they're like, yeah, this did more for my depression than therapy was doing, right? How they would feel like that in the moment. And then they get wrapped up in a cult 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 about to get freakyer because Sophie's going to continue playing that. But can you play from 132 to 147 from the same video, Sophie? Thank you. For depression, many have turned successfully to orgasmic meditation, an attention training practice with defined procedures.

In Ome, a partner strokes a woman's clitoris for 15 minutes with no other goal than to feel what is present in the moment. Yeah. Ah! They did her dirty in that edit. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, this is a bummer.

Yeah. Yeah, it is a little, it is a bummer. Yeah. It's depressing. Now, a big thing that Nicole is doing here, she's recruiting and stocking 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 cult giving clitoral massages to 22 year olds who are 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 girls. 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's not, it's, 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-target people who are made invisible by the culture they're in and being like, okay, you're seen now, you're valid, you're attractive, you're loved. That'll be $5,000. 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. 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 clitoral massages and sometimes open yourself sexually to a bunch of weird older men who are giving the cult money. And this kind of, in this period, Nicole makes the transition from previously to kind of get

the things the cult needed. Nicole had 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 has 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 root this goes on is from I am going to make that choice for myself to I am going

to kind of convince other people to make that choice to make me money, right? Right? That's the journey. Nicole has gone on 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 nooks 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 own 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 lecherous to you? Well, it'll be a game for you to figure out how to have fun, you know? Like, that's the game.

Like, yeah, like, exactly. And she'll do 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 or hitting 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 or 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 Nicole has to constantly putting people in. And that's just prostitution. Right. Right. You're going to have to go in and they will pay money to touch you. Right. But it sounds like what if there was a model for sex work in which only Nicole was making money?

Makes money? That's not how that works. And that no one has technically consented to be doing this sex work. No. Now, a big part of this. game is to keep people talking about one taste, you know, hype and allure spread by word of mouth. And so Nicole starts offering, because they've got this yoga center, they offer naked yoga classes, which get newspaper.

There's a bunch of stories about it, you know, like it becomes like this, oh, San Francisco sort of thing, right? It helps drive more people to the business. Maybe they come in to see the naked yoga class, but they find out orgasmic meditation. What's that, right? And so they take a class. Now, as you probably heard by now, they're referring to om, orgasmic meditation. They're pronouncing it oom. Like, you know, the om, right, the meditative, you know, chant thing.

At the same time, they have turned the actual, like, clitoral stimulation massage thing into this almost sexless procedure. In one of the ten 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 Morehouse or the welcomed consensus,

both of which were described accurately as creepy weird sex clubs for perverts. One taste is going to be treated like a startup, right? Or at least like a massively popular alt health practice. And to kind of make that point, here's a, a segment from a 2009 New York Times article by Patricia Lay Brown and Carol Pogish. Quote, At 7 a.m. each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained

room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation, oming, for short, the couples, who may or may not be romantically involved, call one another research partners. A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating the orgasm that exhumed. exists between them and the words of one resident may sound like the ultimate California satire. The notion of a San Francisco sex commune focused on female orgasm as 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 has studied San Francisco's sexual subcultures.

And I find that that's really interesting. Because like, not only did you all fall for it, the New York Times kind of repeated their ad pitch. where like other people are stuck in traffic and going to work, you're just coming all the time if you join the cult. Yeah, see, I wouldn't be there first time. It's so, how, 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 straight from the Sandberg playbook. Yeah, I don't read too carefully.

Yeah. I see the puzzle pieces. You've got the border set up where it's going to end up in part three being very. That's right. I see the Silicon Valley of it all happening. Yeah. And as you note, Jamie, like, Professor Armstrong isn't like wrong per se. Sure.

But also, she wouldn't have described Morehouse 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 up. 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 the, it's like all of the sexy parts of sex, but keeping all of the vulnerable parts of sex.

Interesting. I'm trying to, I mean, it's leading to something, obviously. But it's just interesting how quickly were 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 it costs money. Well, part of what I want to be clear here, it's only the classes where it's deliberately not sexy.

Outside of the classes, there's a lot of regular sex happening. As we'll talk about in the next part, these people are living together for a chunk of this, right? Oh, okay. 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 going to give us money. I think it'll be a growth experience for you to like, fuck this guy or this lady who we need something out of, right? But that's in the, that's happening underneath these public sterile sex demos. And so that's the law who comes is going to be like, 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 in the background. Right. Right. Officer, they're clearly not horny. Let's keep me. Yeah. Off to find somebody else. Um, It's also important I note kind of at the end here that the image of this is that what's different about one taste is that Nicole is running things. The boys aren't in charge. So this really is feminine and empowering. 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, when the media comes by, she'll often do the demo that they see of 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.

So, I mean, she has. Yeah, because it's like she has, every other woman works under her, right? There's no, at this point, she has gotten rid of everyone who could be considered her equal. Yeah. There's definitely going to be some other women who have power in the cult that start, like, forming because she has to rely and delegate a lot. But yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm looking for. to part three. Well, that's part two. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, guys.

Really good. Jamie, let's plug some plugables. Let's plug, baby. Yeah, you can listen to Bechtelcast and We be unhoused every single week. I've got a book coming out next year that I'll be able to talk more about soon.

I can't talk about it. Yeah. Follow me on Instagram, Jamie Cry Superstar. Hell yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Podcast is over. We're done.

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