Sounds Like A Cult - BONUS: Exposing Our Cult

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Welcome to Cult Girl Summer, five weeks of bonus episodes where Isa and Amanda are sharing unfiltered cult convos, footage from the cutting room floor, much-requested Part 2s, and more. Kicking off this juicy summer vibe is an episode to help listeners get to know the “cult” of Sounds Like A Cult a little bit better: This week, Amanda and Isa are answering your most frequently asked questions: Who we are, how we make the show, what “cults” to expect in future episodes, and beyond.

I'll start. Let's talk about what kind of level cult this is. What do you think the cult of theater kids falls into? I mean, Issa, what do you think? Out of the three cult categories, Olivia Life, Watch Your Back, or Get the Fuck Out. The Cult of Jared Leto, The Cult of Essential Oils, The Cult of True Crime, The Cult of Trader Joe's! Why can't we drumroll? There we go.

All right, let's do the end. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. I don't have my headphones on so how does this sound there? This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week here on our show we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, from Disney adults to Elon Musk, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty news and behind-the-scenes pics, follow us on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult Pod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell, and I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina.

Issa Medina, and feel free to check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show or hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com Slash Sounds Like a Cult, where our episodes are available at free. This episode is our very first installment of Cult Girl Summer. These are five weeks of bonus episodes where we're sharing off-the-cuff cult convos, Q&As, footage from the cutting room floor, about much-requested part 2s, and more. Okay, so the title of this episode is admittedly a little bitty, titty, slighty clickbait. Amanda's idea, she's a clickbait queen. Clickbait queen, I used to write for the internet, you can't begrudge me it.

Whereas I'm like, they're gonna come after us. No, no, but really, like, we wanted to do this bonus episode for our most zealous culties, for our loyalist listeners. It's really more of a behind-the-scenes, behind-the-cults bonus episode in the middle of this mid-season break. We just realized that our listeners who've assembled a bit of a cult of their own, as passionate podcast listeners tend to do, they don't really know much about us as humans or how the show came together. Yeah, so we asked our most loyal listeners, our most loyal culties on Patreon and Instagram, to hit us with some questions and we compiled a list of the most frequently asked ones to give you a little peek behind our culty curtain and who we even are?

Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck am I? I thought it was really funny when you told me that one of the most asked questions was, how do you guys even know each other? How did you meet? What's your relationship outside of being co-hosts? Because it's actually a really funny story, famously. Famous among our friends, people who know us. I'm just like, of course everyone listening knows this story, but how could they? We met through a mutual friend who I met volunteering at a crisis line for queer youth. Yeah, and I went to college with the guy who volunteered there. I didn't volunteer there.

I do other things. You're a good person. I am a good person. I met Amanda at like a pregame. That was the first time we met. It was a pregame for you, but I ended up staying at that party really late and doing things. Right, I was there too pregame. I don't think I ended up ultimately going out, but we stayed a while and we chatted. We vibed. We vibed. We really did vibe. And I remember texting Tom, our mutual friend, later and being like, who was that girl? She was so cool. Her and her boyfriend gave off really chill vibes. And he was like, oh, that's Amanda and Casey, blah, blah, blah. And I was like,

I want to be their friend. I know. I know. We said the same thing. We were like, we should hang out with that girl. That's her name. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yes, my boyfriend that we have mentioned, by the way, is the composer of our theme music. Yeah. Do you want to say hi to our listeners? Hi. Really good composer otherwise for like TV and film. Yes. Talented composer. If you're an executive. But yeah, we met at that pregame. And then I think our actual like hard bonding moment

was when we were at the birthday party. We went to Tom's birthday party. He had like a fancy dinner at his house. Well, at his artists loft, we need some context. Like he's a sculptor. He lived in this artist's warehouse, very bohemian, very eclectic. He set up what was very much a Midsommar-esque feast. Yeah. It was like the longest dinner table I've ever seen. Same. And it's like a testament to Tom how like he planned ahead of time. And he went grocery shopping because whenever I try to get like a last minute dinner party together, I text like five or six people. I'm like, hey, like I'm going to cook for people.

And people are like, I have plans. That is why you are an ENFP. And not an ENFJ. Yeah. Like me. Oh my God. Cult of Myers Briggs. Yeah. And that's why we make a good team, which we keep doing that. We did that at a barbecue the other day. Okay. Unfortunately, we do keep conversing in regular pedestrian life as if we're recording an episode of the podcast, which is uncomfortable for other people. Yeah. But I'm having fun. Yeah, me too. And the first time that happened was when we were at that dinner party and we made up a song. We made up a song. It was called In the Bathroom. And it was based off of like Amanda Bynes.

Like, like, you know the girls room? Yeah. The girls room from the Amanda show. Yeah. Or was it all that? I think it was the Amanda show. Okay. Hi and welcome to the girls room. Tom put us like at the end of the dinner table, like next to nobody else but each other. Yes. And so we were like, we're going to go to the bathroom and start our own coals. Yeah. But this was long before this podcast. It was probably when you were just starting to research for your book. Yeah. Our relationship outside of being co-host is literally just like, we're friends who are both really talkative and like bits. We're performer types. Yeah.

I mean, I've done stand up. So obviously I knew I was a performer type, but I, I don't think it was until I moved to LA that I realized I like vibe really well with theater kids, which is like what you are. We're covering theater kid. Yeah. And it's fun when you like meet other people like that because it's for lack of a better word. We just like vibe and just vibes. And I do think it's funny because we have like really opposite like looks and I mean, do we? Yeah. No, we don't. I don't, I don't know. Like I think we are very different in some ways, but we're also very similar in other ways. I think we're both extroverts. We're both creative. We both have big dreams, but I think I'm a little

nerdier and you're a little jokier. And this might sound, I don't know, meta or naval gazey, but I think, I think that dynamic just happens to make for a podcast. And I'm just so grateful that we were both willing to take a shot on this and that it's like working out so far. It kind of compliments each other. Like as we've mentioned before, like we do edit the podcast, you know, because like there's so much to talk about and we want to make sure that we like keep it snackable. That was like our whole MO and focused and focused. And so like, I think we do a really good job of holding each other accountable. I think so too, because I can get really in the weeds, especially if I'm talking about something I've researched at length. And

then I can start talking about random things that have nothing to do. Yeah, I guess the long and the short of it is like we're friends and we really do hang out in real life. Yeah. Yeah. And now we live in the same neighborhood. Well, that perfectly leads us into the next question. How did we come up with the idea for the podcast? Yeah, I think this one's simple, if you want to take it away. Sure. I mean, I wrote this book called, Cultish the Language of the Natuses. Have you, have you guys heard of it? I mean, some people. I've never heard of that book. Well, I don't have three copies. Oh, two hard copies, one digital. I have been fascinated with cults for a long time,

in part because my father grew up in a notorious cult called Synanon. I've mentioned it on the podcast a few times and I grew up on his stories. And so I got this idea to write a book about the language of cults from Scientology to SoulCycle. My background is in linguistics. I'd published my first book in 2019. That one was called Wordslet and it's about language and gender. A cultish is my second child. I started writing it in 2019. I finished writing it in very, very early 2021. So most of it was written during the pandemic and I was just sort of brainstorming ways I could continue talking about this concept of the cultish spectrum, you know, not just groups like the Mansons and the Mooneys, but the cult-like

brands and communities and figures that are only becoming more prevalent in our society. And people had always asked me, I think this question probably comes up a lot with people in LA who are chatty, like, have you ever thought of starting a podcast? And my answer was always, like, no, the world doesn't need another podcast. I know. And I've said this before on another episode, but now when people are like, oh, you're a podcaster, I'm like, that's the most embarrassing thing about me. And I do stand up comedy. Are you kidding me? That's so embarrassing. Yeah. But during the pandemic, we started to hang out more because I kind of just like joined Amanda's bubble life. Yeah, you did. We potted. Yeah, we potted in the panty. And we were hanging out a

lot at her apartment. And she was like, wait, I have this idea for like a podcast. I want to do more like the subjects that I wasn't able to cover in my book and make it also comedic. She was like, would you want to do this with me? And I was like, fuck, yeah. Yeah. It really just started out as like a creative exercise and an opportunity to collaborate because writing is so solitary. Yeah. And it feels really serious and it feels really cerebral a lot of the time. I mean, I think like my book comes across as lighthearted as well. It is a work of journalism, though. I just wanted to be able to work with someone else who, yeah, brought something else to the table. Like you bring this like hilarious bestie energy. And I think I bring the like nerdy energy to the table. But

yeah, I wanted to be able to talk about the groups that had wound up on the cutting room floor of the book because there are so many cults that I wasn't able to cover. I wanted to talk about them in a context that wasn't just language specific. I wanted to talk about them in more of a pop cultural context. And I just love how shows like my favorite murder have really exploded and captured people's attention. And there's just really something to talking about dark subjects in a cheekier tone that people resonate with. I love to bring cheeky. And also for me, it was like when a man asked me if I wanted to do this, I was at a place where I felt like it's really hard to like start a project and finish it, especially with like comedy. It's like this ever growing set. Like

you're always just adding to your set unless you get a special, you're not like done with that material. There is no such thing as a finished product. Yeah. And with a podcast, it started off as a, we were like, okay, we're going to do 10 episodes. And it's just going to be one season. And if people listen to it, great. If people don't listen to it, we have a proof of concept. And for me as like a documentary filmmaker and a comedian, I was like, okay, I know how to edit. I know how to like do all this stuff. So I was like, let's make like a bad ass proof of concept. If it doesn't blow up, at least I can like use it to apply for a job. It literally did never even occur to me that it would find a listenership ever. I was just like, this will be fun.

This will be another like multimedia skill that I could maybe come to learn because I didn't go to school for podcasting. I went to school for writing and linguistics. I do want to give a shout out though to this one podcast that I listened to, which I had forgotten, but there's this podcast called Millennial. And it's like a one season podcast. And it's about a millennial woman who wants to get into podcasting and how meta. Yeah. And every episode is about her making a podcast and how to make a podcast. And I don't know. The other day someone asked me, how did we know how to make a podcast? And I was like, I don't know, but then I remember, yeah, we didn't. But I remembered I like listened to this podcast during an internship

one summer. And so I think I like subconsciously learned a bunch from that podcast. Oh, I didn't actually know this. Yeah. I didn't know anything about how to make a podcast, but I've listened devotedly to a number of podcasts over the years. What's funny though, is that I've never listened to a podcast like this one. I listened to the investigative style podcast. I listened to like science podcasts like Radio Lab or Science Versus, or I'll listen to really elaborately produced podcasts like S-Town or The Gateway, which is that podcast about Teal Swan made by a pal named Jennings Brown. But isn't it always the case that you never make the thing that you also consume? I do love that, not to like be like me, me, me,

but I do love that we like ultimately are women in podcasting because I do get insecure sometimes that this podcast is a cross between journalism and also our opinions. So I get insecure that people are going to be like, who cares about their opinions? But then I go on social media and I see an endless pit of men spewing their dumb little opinions. And I'm like, you know what? We can spew our little opinions all over the internet. Well, they're informed opinions. And I guess that leads us into another question. What is the episode research process like? So for some of our episodes, I felt well equipped to be able to talk about them because I had researched them at length, interviewed multiple sources, read a wide variety of source material for the book, episodes like

SoulCycle, CrossFit, Celebrity, Mega Churches. Well, Mega Churches, that's an example of one that ended up on the cutting room floor for the book. And I was just like chomping at the bit to be able to talk about it on the podcast. I think when we did our first 10 episodes, the research was already pretty much done. Yeah, MLMs. I had already looked into those at length. There was like already an outline. And that's the thing is like that's when we were like had so much more time. We weren't weekly like we prerecorded everything. Yeah. And so we would meticulously edit everything. And it was like, perfect. And we would almost script it. Yeah. But now like we are weekly and we still do a lot of research for each episode, but we don't really have like a team. I mean, aside from like

Aaron, our studio audio engineer, producer, and then our editor, Kate Anderson, who was like, we could not do this without Kate. We could not do this weekly thing without Kate. She's so good. Yeah. Our listeners would love her. She's like our target demo. And then we have our intern who we hired on a freelance basis after the internship was over and we did pay her stipend. And we now pay her hourly. And now we pay her hourly. Noemi Griffin. So I'm just like giving shout outs here. It's like when an artist thinks they're banned. Yeah. But like, yeah, pretty much that's our team. It's like us, Noemi, Kate, Aaron, and Noemi, everyone else pretty much helps with like production and post production. But like Noemi is the only additional help that we have for research. For

content. Yeah. And it's really scrappy. Like there are a lot of podcasts in our category who have like a team of writers and researchers and they'll script episodes over the course of multiple months. Even if it doesn't sound like the episodes are scripted, they are not this one, baby. Yeah. It is just us every week. And that's why we always mention that it's edited because we'll record for a really long time to make sure that we cover everything. And then later we'll edit it down to like the key points. Always knowing that like we're doing our best under the constraints. And that's also how could we forget like the most important member of our team is our listeners who engage with us because that's why we do the listener callings because even though we don't

include all of the listener callings, sometimes we hear about points or things that we should have that we can like look into further. Exactly. Yeah. This is truly like a crowdsourced show. So like in terms of basic research, we start with an outline of, you know, we always want to make sure like, like, I don't, I always think of my mom who's obviously listens to this podcast. And sometimes she just doesn't know my dad listens to and sometimes she just doesn't know what the topic is. So I'm like, we start off with like defining the topic and like where it started, where it came from background. And then we kind of like start diving into culty aspects. And then from there, like, we might have a guest. The way that we decide how to look into it is like through the

language of Amanda's book and like the categories. Yeah. Because the word cult is so subjective and up to interpretation. And my book investigates the history of the word cult. And this show kind of picks up where the book left off with the understanding that cultiness can show up in all kinds of places. It's just a matter of analyzing specifically how dangerous that cultiness is. Then we find primary and secondary resources online. And it's one of those things where the research starts with one article and then another article is linked in that article. And then you kind of follow this like rabbit hole. And then all of a sudden you have a large trove of resources. And we make sure we pull from all different kinds of sources, including Reddit forums. Like we want

to hear what the population has to say. Like we always talk about if we just like follow our algorithm, like it would just be like a biased take. And invariably, our takes are still going to be biased no matter how many sources we look at. Even proper like research is biased. Like even science is biased. Yeah. The next question is how do we pick the topics for each episode? It's what our listeners tell us. Yeah, it's partially what our listeners tell us. Again, some of them are just topics that I've been itching to cover. We also like created before we even started the season two before we decided, okay, like let's do this thing. Let's go weekly. We had an Excel sheet of topics like over 60 topics. Oh, now we have hundreds. Oh, now we have hundreds.

But before when like I would go out or people would talk about like a story or something, I would just put it in my notes folder and then add it later to like the Excel sheet. So like we started season two with like already like 50 to 100 topics. Or sometimes something would trend on social media, on TikTok, which I'm not on. And I am. It's really a mix of topics that we know are going to be of interest no matter when we upload them like MLMs. Yeah. With topics that come up in the news. Like when Elon Musk bought Twitter, we were like, oh, we got to slide that in real quick or preview for a future episode, which we want to do like a lot of research for, which is why we haven't done it yet. But we want to do like an episode on the cult of like the

Supreme Court because of the most recent news. And for those more like serious episodes, we take a little bit longer because we want to like do them justice. We try to. Yeah. No pun intended. But speaking of the seriousness versus late-heartedness, there are certain topics that are just like not a fit for this show because of the tone. The tone isn't right. Like if it is so obviously a get the fuck out level cult, we're not going to want to cover it because first of all, that's the type of group that another show would cover. Like we really traffic in these sort of gray areas of like, is this a cult? Is this not a cult? Maybe when we run out of topics, we'll do that, but we actually will never run out of topics. The list grows exponentially every

day. And listeners are always, always DMing us and commenting topics that we would have never even thought of, but then it'll spark something where we're like, that is fascinating. People keep requesting the cult of marching band. People keep requesting the cult of summer camp, Jeeps, Ray Dunn, that live laugh love brand. It's never ending. You've been in like the cult space for way longer than I have. So you're probably used to these DMs, but sometimes I get like a DM that's like, Hey, I need your help. Like I just escaped a cult. And I'm like, Oh my God, I am not a trained professional. Right. Right. When I have time, I like add all of these to like our Excel sheet so that when we're planning for future episodes, I'm like, Oh,

someone mentioned this. Those DMs really just speak to the fact that there are not very many resources for people who've experienced cult like abuse, especially when that type of cult abuse shows up in a place you might not think of as a cult like a startup or like a self-help seminar to your point that like there aren't that many resources for people who've survived cults. Like I feel like there's so many resources for not so many. This is still America. We lack resources, but there's resources for people who are addicted to things, 12 step program or survivors of like domestic abuse. There's like structure to that kind of stuff. But I feel like escaping a cult or escaping like a community that has taken advantage of you. There's not really like any place that

people go to for that. I know. I know. And that's why they end up joining other cults. It's really so true. And that, I mean, there are so many reasons for that. First of all, like we are a nation founded on religious freedom and we do have our free will here. And I mean, we talk about this in our episode on the cult of seven M films, but what is the difference between doing something voluntarily and doing something under coercion? Like these are such heady, intangible topics. But you're right. I mean, at the end of the day goes back to the fact that it is so hard to define what a cult even is and what even makes a cult dangerous. But that 12 step programs episode was actually really kind of divisive and one will need to do

a part two on because we really, really do pay attention to our listeners feedback, especially when it is phrased respectfully. We are truly doing our very best with this podcast, having no training and podcasting. We want to keep it entertaining, right? So like some episodes are more conversational than others. And so when we do lean into like the conversational aspect, we'll have forgotten to cover certain things. And then we can do a part two because, babe, we plan on sticking around. Exactly. And you know, that that 12 step program episode was one where we had meticulously outlined, you know, a lot of criticisms of 12 step programs. And then we got into the conversation with our guests who just like had a personal experience

and we had to kind of just run with it because that was the conversation at hand. There is always room for the conversation to continue and there's always room for a part two. Yeah, exactly. And like, and, and so if you have a comment on like an episode, literally leave a comment. Literally leave a comment on our Instagram. Next question. How do you pick the guests for each episode? Ooh, that's a good question. Sometimes we'll know someone personally who are like, oh, they can definitely speak on this, whether it's a journalist or someone who is more or less in that cult. Yeah. Other times we kind of work backwards, like we want to work with a friend or someone.

And so we'll ask them, is there a topic that like you think you know really well that we can talk about? Yeah. Sometimes we'll have like a dream guest like Leah Thomas, the intersectional environmentalist for our Cult of Fast Fashion episode was like the only person I wanted for that episode. So I just like cold slid into her DMs and she was kind enough to respond. But sometimes we just really, really need a guest and we don't directly know anyone who can speak to that topic. So we just blast out cold DMs and see who responds first. Yeah. And spoiler for a future episode, because I did see a comment about it. We did record an episode of the Cult of David Dobrik a while back, but we are trying to get

his friend on as a guest, which is why we haven't released it. The guy who was like hit in the face with like a crane. Oh my God. The story all. Yeah. And so like we are, sometimes we like record an episode and we're waiting for like the right guest before we like release it. Yeah, that's true too. And we try to keep a mix of like people who are really, really critical of the Cult at hand, like our essential oils guest or our fast fashion guest. Sometimes we'll interview someone who's like kind of in the cult, but still criticizing it like our true crime guest. Yeah. And then sometimes we interview people who are like full blown in it like our Disney adults guest. Yeah. And that's fun as well. We keep a mix. Yeah. Next question. What recommendations do

you have for books, other podcasts, movies and TV shows about cults or cult like groups? Oh, we actually created a Spotify playlist of sounds like a cult approved podcast. We did that we can share on our Instagram. So this isn't technically a cult topic, but I feel like it's a similar vibe. There's this podcast called Celebrity Memoir Book Club by Claire and Ashley. And every week this is insane. They read a different celebrity memoir book. And so it's kind of culty because it covers that celebrity for the week. And then they talk about the memoir and their life and they kind of assess the memoir. Oh, you listen to a book club podcast? Yeah. It's my two comedians. Bad worms, my little heart. Yeah. But I met one of the comedians on

a show in New York that we were both on and she told me about it. And I was like, wait, you read a book a week? I was so impressed. Oh, well, they're celebrity memoirs. Yeah, that's true. They're a quick read. You can read it like one sitting. Yeah. But it's a really fun podcast. That's cool. Yeah. Some other podcast recommendations. If you're looking for something more investigative, the dropout, that's the Theranos podcast, the gateway that I mentioned, that's the Teal Swan podcast. Scamfluencers is a great newer podcast. Violating Community Guidelines is another great podcast. Those two are slightly more similar to this show. I mean, if you haven't already watched the documentary on that workspace, what's it called? WeWork. WeWork. The WeWork

documentary is great. The documentary is great. It's so culty. Oh, the podcast is a little bit culty hosted by my friend Sarah Edmondson and her husband Nippy Anthony Nippy Ames. They're Nexium survivors and they do a slightly more serious formal interview show with cult survivors and experts. I was on an episode talking about cult language. That's a great one too. Next question. What's your favorite episode of the podcast or your favorite cult that you've covered? I'm pretty proud of the Instagram therapy episode because that was also based on many, many months of reporting that I had done. Yeah. I'm really proud of our Trader Joe's episode. It was our first episode this season and I feel like we did a really good job like

collecting listener Collins and analyzing all of the different groups in the cult itself and like not just the people who go to Trader Joe's but also the people who work at Trader Joe's. I also just think it's a really great episode because we really nailed down the format and the structure of the show. I think it says a lot that when I talk to fans of the show, they say that that was one of their favorite episodes and I love that because it's such a simple topic, but we dove in and we created an entire episode around it. That episode really represents the show. Yeah. Okay. Next question. If you were in a cult, which one would you be most likely to join? I mean, as you guys know, I joined it like a different cult every week.

Yeah. This is like a little bleak, but we decided to do our toxic relationships episode because that was the most humbling things I discovered while writing my book that the dynamic in an abusive relationship is really similar to a cult dynamic. While I don't tend to gravitate toward groups, I do tend to sort of lash onto really charismatic individuals, whether it's a friend or a lover. My boyfriend now, by the way, our composer, an angel. Yeah. Yeah. Really kind boy. But I love like a charismatic bestie. Yeah. Are you Michael? No. Yeah. I would love to be. Come into my cult. But no, I think for me, probably like the cult of social media, honestly. Oh, wait. I think that's the one that I've stayed with the longest. Me too. I'm completely in the

cult of Instagram. It has captured my brain chemistry. Yeah. And TikTok too. And like, I want to post more on TikTok and be less on TikTok, but I'm like addicted to it. And like, sometimes the internet is just so funny. Like, I feel a warmth around me when I go on and I see content that I relate to. And I'm like, this is so funny. And I still DM you the content, even though it's deleted TikTok. The reason you feel that warm feeling is because there is literally a gush of happiness chemicals. It's like a drug. It is a drug and it is designed to be. And I too am in the cult of Instagram. But if I could start a cult, this was not the question. It would be a tiny house compound in the woods where everyone would wear puffy sleeves and turtleneck sweaters

and we would just write. Yeah. Amanda is actively working on making that happen. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. The next question, I like this one. What is your favorite and least favorite part about doing the show? My favorite part about doing the show is that this is going to be sappy, but we kind of got to start like a small business with a friend. Oh, yeah. Like we get to just like work with each other and like, I think it's really insane that people like want to hear what we have to say. Yeah. The fact that it has developed into this weekly thing is such a delightful surprise. I'm truly so shocked. Yeah. Yeah. I think my least favorite part of the show is that we started to incorporate a video aspect, but I love it because like, I think it's important for the content and

whatever, but now we have to like wear makeup and like look good. And like, I loved when we would just record with no video. I so agree. My favorite part about the show, this is also going to be sappy and it's going to sound like I'm sucking up, but truly it's like listening to the listener columns. It is so fun to hear people engage. Our listeners are so funny. I love when they pick up and use our language, like when they call themselves culties, when they use with your life, watch your back at the fuck out. Or for a while, some people were like, responding to my Instagram story, like to Gigi, like the girls that get it. Yeah. Oh, I've done some in-person book events now where listeners have showed up. Thank you very much and have asked me to write StayCulty,

but not too culty in their books. That is so fun. I also have loved getting to meet some people I really admire because they've been guests on our show. Like, oh yeah, when we were guests on like George Lopez's podcast, that was like the first big name that we got to talk to. And that was so cool. That was really cool. And then he asked me to like open for him at the Laugh Factory, which was like insane and like honestly, like life changing for me, for me. Yeah. But then also like the guests that we've had on the show. Yeah. Like I was a longtime subscriber and fan of Lauren Toyota, our veganism guest. I really admire Leah Thomas of the Intersexual and Environmentalist, was such a huge platform. It was really nice of her to be on the show. So many journalists that I

admire have been on like Sarah Weinman and Stephanie McNeil. And then of course our stand-up guest, May Martin. I'm like such a fan genuinely. Yeah, same. Are there any cults that we're too afraid to cover because of the followers? I mean, I think immediately like that episode that comes to mind is the Instagram Therapist episode. Oh, yeah, we were afraid of her followers, so we didn't name her. Yeah. But that ended up being really interesting because people were dope. People were clamoring to guess who it was. Yeah. And actually, if you join our Patreon, I included an interesting clue. Just for the Patreon patrons about who it was. Yeah. Also, you can literally just go on the post on Instagram that people were like commenting on and like

people were asking each other. Like they were like, oh, you know who it is? Like DM me. That was really fun to see people engaging that way. Because I'm like, we're not going to say it, but if you figured it out and we're not going to say it because literally this woman is so litigious and so known for harassment. Speaking of litigious. Oh, what? Oh. Kim Kardashian is now a lawyer. So do we want to cover the cult of the Kardashians or is she going to come out for us? I think we're small potatoes for the Kardashians. Okay. Last question. What episode are you most looking forward to next? Yeah, let's look at our spreadsheet. This one is one that we've gotten requested a million times and we are going to do, but I'm really looking forward to the episode

of the cult of crypto because I've been working on a documentary about crypto for the last year. And so I've really been in the weeds with it and that's why we haven't covered it yet because I just want to do it justice and we're going to try and get like an anonymous crypto influencer on it. So like we're in the process of doing that. Yes, that's going to be a great one. Much requested. I'm excited about the episode on the troubled teen industry because the troubled teen industry is a descendant slash an offshoot of that cult that my dad spent his teenagers in Synanon so I really can't wait to deep dive into that and a comedian friend of yours within one of these programs. Yeah, it's crazy. I know like two or three comedians who like were in these

programs. I'm excited about so many. I'm excited about the cult of chiropractors. Yeah, I'm really excited for the Supreme Court episode because we're going to try and cover like the history of different opinions and how they've developed over the years and just the insane fact that like these nine people preside over an entire country's rights. Yeah, it's just a different way of tackling this cultishness topic. So many good ones. Momfluencers, Swifties. I don't want to give too much away but we have really good shit coming. And part of the reason why we're taking this break is so that we can prep for it. Yeah, well, we also just want to thank all of our listeners so sincerely for tuning into this show, for being in this cult of sounds like a cult. I love you.

And that's on love bombing. Yeah, and you're tuning in for the first time. This is not a traditional episode. No, this is like a behind the scenes bonus and we hope it's allowed you to get to know us a little bit better. Yeah, that's our show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with the new cult girl summer next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant Noemi Griffin. Subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show,

feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.