Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Playboy

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Playboy sold the world a fantasy of luxury and sexual liberation, but behind the velvet curtains, the reality was far more complex. This week, Amanda, Chelsea, and special guest Amy Rose Spiegel (@verymuchso) dive into the Playboy phenomenon…not just as a magazine, but as a carefully curated world built on power, control, and illusion. From the mystique of the Playboy Mansion and its exclusive parties to the troubling stories from former Playmates, we’re exploring how Hugh Hefner crafted an empire that blurred the line between empowerment and exploitation. Was Playboy truly a symbol of freedom, or just another gilded cage? And how does nostalgia shape the way we view its legacy today? Join us as we unravel the cult-like influence of Playboy and the contradictions that made it both iconic and insidious. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Find exactly what you’re booking for on https://Booking.com, Booking.YEAH! Follow Don't Cross Kat on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT Start earning points on rent you’re already paying by going to https://joinbilt.com/CULT   Please consider donating to those affected by the Los Angeles Fires. Some organizations that Team SLAC are donating to are:  https://mutualaidla.org/ https://give.pasadenahumane.org/give/654134/#!/donation/checkout https://shorturl.at/SGW9w Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guess what? The Cult of Sounds Like a Cult is coming to the real world with a very exciting live show on Monday, June 9th in Los Angeles at the El Rey Theater. This show is so much fun. It's called The Big Magical Cult Show and it is like a live podcast on hallucinogens. Join us to catch some of the voices that you hear week after week, but matched to their IRL bodies. It's wild as we discuss a very spicy and very timely topic

with the help of some live show elements that you just simply could not convey in podcast form, including drag and burlesque performances, custom drinks and merch, a parasocial PowerPoint, audience participation, there's also gonna be a meet-and-greet and a book signing for my second book cultish which is finally coming out in paperback. It is truly so much fun. So come get your cult on at the Big Magical Cult Show on June 9th at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Artist presale starts on starts on April 15th at 10 a.m. on West Coast time.

Just use the password, cult, to buy your tickets. And then general on sale starts on Friday, April 18th. You can find the ticket link at soundslikeacult.com or in the link in bio on our Instagram. Snag your tickets before they sell out and we so hope you join our cult for a night. our cult for a night. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable

fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The idea was that any woman that you saw, you could possess and would be a sexual foil for you in some way. That changed sexual culture in this country immensely. I could not put my finger on why Playboy was attractive and aspirational even to like our 12, 13 year old selves. But of course, it's the girl next door. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow.

I'm your host Amanda Montell and I'm an author. And I'm your co-host Chelsea Charles and I'm an unscripted TV producer. Every week on this show, we discuss a different zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture, from Lululemon to Harry Potter, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out? After all, not every group these days that looks like a cult, sounds like a cult,

smells like a cult, is equally destructive. You know, cultish influence falls along a spectrum. It's fluid. And the point of this show is to kind of scrutinize how fanaticism and ritual show up in everyday life in 2025, to poke a little bit of fun, to have a chuckle at humans search for meaning these days and to legitimately critique how power abuse shows up in places that you might not think to look. Like a cult of bunny tailed bombshells promising a life of luxury, rebellion and free love with a few sinister fine print clauses.

We're talking Playboy, the so-called progressive empire that revolutionized sexuality, media, and the male gaze, all under the leadership of one pipe smoking, pajama clad guru, Hugh Hefner. I mean, when you put it that way, the verdict is there, but we have a gorgeous episode and lots of analysis and juicy tidbits coming your way anyway. Because, you know, I'm open.

We can walk away with a different impression of Playboy. I don't think we will. This episode of Sounds Like a Cult is brought to you by Booking.com. Booking dot yeah. Every time I use Booking.com to find a place to stay in the US, I genuinely find exactly what I'm looking for. They have a huge variety of options from hotels to vacation stays. Genuinely, I've found that booking.com has something for everyone. It's the first website that I go to when trying to find a

hotel in the US, so no matter who you are, booking.com helps you find the stay that's ridiculously right for you. Find exactly what you're booking for on Booking.com. Booking.yeah. When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search. The trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening.

All they have to do is follow her lead. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondry, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

What starts as an investigation into a missing person case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. When influence turns into control, how far would you go to get what you always wanted? Follow Don't Cross Cat on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus. I wanted to ask you, cause so far in the 2025 season of Sounds Like a Cult, we've been deconstructing a lot of nostalgic franchises so far, you know, like we did our Nickelodeon episode, we did our Harry Potter episode, and this is kind of another one of those enterprises that definitely was present in my childhood. I assume yours too as 90s kids, early 2000s tweens. Growing up, I definitely was aware of Playboy

because of the reality show, The Girls Next Door. And it scared the shit out of me. I can't say I have particular nostalgia for Playboy. When you were a kid growing up, what was your impression of Playboy? So, I mean, a lot of my thoughts and opinions were based upon the environment that I grew up in. And as all the listeners probably know already,

I am very Southern and I grew up very and as all the listeners probably know already I am very southern and I grew up very devout southern Baptist and so anything that's associated with women being any type of unclothed it was porn okay okay straight up at porn and just not anything that I could be aligned or associated with, obviously because I was a child too, but my perception of Playboy was that it was porn, straight up. What was your church environment like? It's extremely like traditional Baptist.

So like we grew a full gospel, but Baptist as well. There's a huge emphasis on praise and worship and it's a massive, massive church. It lasted maybe from nine in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon. It's an massive, massive church. It lasted maybe from nine in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon. It's an event, okay? Yeah, totally. I don't know if you ever seen videos of people like shouting

and like it was that. Totally. Like catching the Holy Ghost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. I grew up super reformed Jewish because of my dad, but I would sometimes skip Hebrew school to attend my middle school best friend's mega church

because her mom was a born again Christian. And I was fascinated by the fact that it felt like a pop concert, really. That's what it feels like. Yeah. And it was so different from like Hebrew school. Yeah. But I was also very interested

in the kind of like pop culture and trendiness. That was obviously a very important community building and recruitment tactic for this church in juxtaposition with incredible shame surrounding sexuality. And I remember there being like a pregnant teen program at this church and my best friend, I think in rebellion against her mother,

really embraced playboy culture specifically. In the early 2000s, it was like 2004, 2005, we're 12, 13. She like kind of had a woman body already. I remember she like pierced her belly button and she had a Playboy bunny belly button ring that like dangled and she had a Playboy bunny thong and like Playboy bunny posters and paraphernalia in rebellion, I think against her evangelical mom.

So that early 2000s purity culture, clashing with Playboy culture, very much defines our tween years, I feel. Yes. But that's just our kind of like childhood impression. It was porn, but it was alluring. It was like a source of intrigue, but also shame. And then now in more modern years,

obviously like exposés and testimonials have come out from ex-Playboy playmates and reporters, and we'll be talking to one later, sort of revealing that Playboy was exactly the cult that it kind of seems to be on paper. But Chelsea, could you walk us through the origin story and history for those who may not know the background of this franchise?

Of course, but it's actually so funny because a lot of Hugh Hefner's background, which we're gonna learn, is that he grew up in a very devout Methodist household, which kind of sparked his inspiration to live out his freaky, freaky lifestyle. Yeah, oh my God, dude, this is why Americans have such a weird relationship

to sexuality or really anyone who grows up in a sort of like religiously oppressive and or puritanical environment. The pendulum swings the other way sometimes and like way too far. So that's what I'm kind of seeing happen here. And that is culting itself. So let's rewind all the way back to 1953 when Playboy first hit the shelves.

Hugh Hefner, first of all, I love Hugh's name because I love alliteration. My name is Chelsea Charles. I don't know. I just, I'm obsessed. Anyway, I love it too. Hugh Hefner, who at the time was just a 27-year-old ad copywriter living in Chicago, was craving more than the conservative, button-up world he was living in. He was looking to tap into something deeper, something more liberating.

Hugh grew up in a very conservative, Methodist household. According to Hefner, his childhood was repressed, shaped by rigid religious values that viewed sexual pleasure as something shameful. His mother, Grace, was deeply devoted to her faith and strict about morality, while his father, Glenn, was a quiet accountant who adhered to traditional values. Hugh Hefner often recounted how his mother wanted him

to become a missionary, which, spoiler alert, did not happen. All right, Squander Dreams. He had to kind of make up for that lacking in his family. This backstory is so illuminating, but learning this shows so much. You know, when you combine that religiously repressed background with Squander Dreams, with American entrepreneurialism

in the Leave It to Beaver 1950s when morale was high in this country. Damn. It's very telling. After being denied a $5 raise at his copywriting gig, Hugh Hefner didn't sulk. He schemed. He took out a $600 mortgage loan and $8,000 scraped together from 45 investors, including an $1,000 lifeline from his mother, who as Hefner famously said in 2006 via E-News, didn't believe in the business, just in her son. He set out to launch a revolutionary men's magazine, originally christened Stag Party. Yuck. I know, ew. That was a good rebrand.

Stag Party? Oh, barf. A last minute legal change forced Hefner to rebrand the venture as Playboy, a decision that would prove to be iconic. Seriously. Yeah, I know. I'm like, when you think about the name Playboy,

I don't know. I know. It just does something to you. Well, it's so fascinating to me that the word boy is literally in the name, which is like gendered masculine. But the fact that it's a diminutive boy, and the fact that the logo is this iconic, unmistakable bunny who's like feminine, but also wearing a little bow tie, if I'm not mistaken.

It's this incredible mishmash of masculine and feminine, right? From the name to the logo that is very sexy. Iconography can really be essential to a quote-unquote successful cult and Playboy has so much of it. The first issue hit newsstands in December 1953 featuring none other than Marilyn Monroe showcased from a racy 1949 nude calendar shoot. That issue sold more than 50,000 copies catapulting Hefner to publishing fame. However, Monroe herself didn copies catapulting Hefner to publishing fame. However, Monroe herself didn't see a dime from Hefner

or Playboy for the use of her photos. See, this is the shit. This is my ass that you're profiting off of. Literally. I'm already disgusted. Okay. Yeah. Well, so far, I mean, look, we have a charismatic leader, ding, ding, ding. We have labor

exploitation out of the gate. And I kind of touched on like that juxtaposition of masculine and femininity earlier, but I think for the 1950s, that was radical. And you kind of suggested it earlier, and we'll talk more about this with our guests, but like Playboy was supposed to be this like free love, sexually liberated brand. It was supposed to be an answer to all of that sexual repression. And that was encapsulated by the logo, by everything about the branding. So when you have charismatic leader who's like making these big promises about what our sexual future could be, but also already labor exploitation, I'm already scared. I'm terrified. But it's also like a sexual liberation that's one-sided because on the surface level,

we think that it's a representation of femininity and women taking control of their own sexuality, but this is also all motivated by the male gaze. So completely. I mean, the bunnies in those early days, well, actually up until later days were forced into these outfits that were so constricting, hard to breathe. I remember hearing about how cultish that uniform itself was. It was literally physically constricting. You had to fit into it and that is the literal opposite of liberation when you're trying to squeeze your body into.

How can I be liberated in a waist trainer? So here's a fun fact. Though the two never met, Hefner's obsession with Monroe endured for decades. In 1992, he bought the crypt beside Monroe's at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery for $75,000, declaring that spending eternity beside her was an opportunity too sweet to pass up, he told the LA Times. Creep. Oh my God, that is the cultiest shit ever.

It's not enough to have possession over women on earth. He needs possession of them in the fucking afterlife. Right. Jesus. Wow. Okay. So I'm so excited about today's interview. We're going to dig a lot deeper into our culty analysis of the household name that is Playboy. And to help us do that, we've got a super special guest and a friend of Sounds Like a Cult, Amy Rose Spiegel, who is an editor, a writer, and an author known for her work exploring themes of sexuality, feminism, and pop culture.

And famously, she has written some very important exposés of Playboy. So we're about to get the tea from Amy. Here we go. I do want to say first that we were laughing before we started recording because I've literally never done this in the history of Sounds Like a Cult before, but I decided to record in bed in my pajamas today, which is incidentally very Hugh Hefner coded. Also, Amy, you're a speaker coded, you somehow knew that you would be in safe hands. Maybe there are good parts of his cult.

Maybe. Maybe we say that, maybe we're learning. Blanket permission to wear pajamas? I mean, look, like it's a hilarious cult leader uniform, just silk PJs. They had his monogram and he would get up at about like 4 p.m. and then terrorize his staff while wearing his little booby clothes.

I can't take anybody seriously. You can't berate me in silk pajamas. Watch me. Uh oh. Sounds like the cult is about to get real meta. Amy, could you please for the listeners introduce yourself, your work and your relationship to the cult of Playboy? Hello, hello. I am Amy Rose Spiegel. I am a journalist, an editor, an author.

I made the podcast Power Hugh Hefner, which is about Playboy but told through the women who were closest to the brand and to the magazine. So people like Hugh Hefner's daughter, people like the women who worked in the Playboy clubs, the women in the magazines, but also the women who edited the magazines. I talked to a lot of people. It was some of the most fun I've ever had in my career and why I wanted to do it. So my first book, Action, a book about sex is about, guess what? Cephalopods.

No, it's about sex. And so it's very much like marked by looking at power differentials in terms of gender and sex and Playboy comes up in that lifelong interest over and over and over. I wasn't setting out to do this, but I made effectively like what is a really workable biography of Hugh Hefner through talking to all of these people who were so affected by his life and work and who really are the people that he should have been giving credit to for everything that he had. Yeah.

Well, I love the idea of triangulating a biography of a cult figure through the oral histories of the people they inducted, abused, allegedly lured in, people who had a very hot of hot and cold relationship with him over the years. That's really fascinating. Well, yeah, Amanda and Chelsea, when you invited me on the show, I really took a second to think about, does it seem fair as a biographer to talk about Hefner as a cult figure? And I was looking at some of the commonalities. And one is that a lot of the most famous women

who went through the Playboy ecosystem came from situations in which they didn't have very much. Their relationships were very strained. And then I was like, okay, I think I can cut the show. That actually does seem intellectually honest. Love that. And there's a lot of sort of plausible deniability and benefit of the doubt that goes on on Sounds Like a Cult as well, just due to the fact that our discussions are under a shroud of humor.

But that is very valid too, because this word cult is so fluid and there actually is no legal definition of it. And people have been attempting to define it in the way that they've been attempting to define the term religion for decades. And there's not one definition that's like equally satisfying to everyone.

So I think you can have an intellectually honest conversation about a figure that you are trying to characterize objectively using the word cult because it can mean so many different genuinely useful things depending on the context. Totally. And I think that's what I love about your show is that it allows for that wiggliness and then we get to do fun things like talk about Playboy. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform that allows entrepreneurs, artists, professionals

of any kind to create a beautiful website and stand out online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to create a stunning website, to engage with your audience, and to sell things, including time, content, products, all in one place, all on your terms. You so don't have to be a software engineer or web developer to create a beautiful website using Squarespace, and that is thanks to features including their

design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry-leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology to help you unlock your strongest creative potential and create a website that people will really want to engage with and maybe even buy things from, which is also super easy on a Squarespace website thanks to Squarespace Payments, which allows you to manage all of those transactions in one place. If you are a creative, you can even sell content on a Squarespace website and then either charge a one-time fee

or get people to subscribe. SoundsLikeACult.com is a Squarespace website. I am proud of it, mostly because it took like 30 minutes to make, which was important to me. And updating it is incredibly simple every single time. I am proud of it, mostly because it took like 30 minutes to make, which was important to me. And updating it is incredibly simple every single time. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com

slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search. The trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation,

Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises. What starts as an investigation into a missing person case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. When influence turns into control, how far would you go to get what you always wanted? Follow Don't Cross Cat on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad free right

now by joining Wondry Plus. So Amy, listeners have actually been requesting us to cover Playboy since the start of the show. So off the bat, what do you think are the key qualities that make Playboy more than a franchise but a cult? Hugh Hefner was incredibly particular and convinced the people around him within his business, his personal life, and the wider culture that really embraced him, that his particularities, his ways of doing things, his weird pajama wearing habits were intrinsic to the success of what happened and in fact, would change American culture. And was he right? Maybe.

Like, but my thing is with Hefner on the flip side, he demanded that women look a certain way, super white, super thin, blonde, but not this kind of red lipstick, cause that makes you look old, hard and cheap, but also look like Marilyn Monroe, but also don't, but also look like this and that. And there's always a man in the picture.

It was a set of rules. When I was a teenager, the Playboy aesthetic of the 2000s was everywhere and so demanding. Get a fake tan, weigh zero pounds, all of that. And I think that that part of his cultishness is the most interesting, the way that it radiated through the culture for probably the 60s, at least through the 2010s. His influence was really vast. And that's interesting to think of us all as his cult members in that way, in terms of how we engage with sexuality. That is so astute and accurate and really reflective of what Chelsea and I were talking about before you joined our call. I guess we didn't fully explore this. Chelsea, do you think that even despite

your religious upbringing, Playboy still had an influence on your own relationship to like aesthetics, femininity and sexuality? Yeah, absolutely. Because I feel like, again, to the point of like Hugh's constricted upbringing as it applies to religion and mine, I still feel like there was a sense of yearning for that confidence

that the Playboy brand represented. And I mean, just two Halloweens ago, I dressed as a Playboy bunny. So it's still like from childhood to even in adulthood, we're still experiencing those, for lack of better terms, ramifications, positive or negative of the standards that were set. Yeah, totally. There's always this moving target with Hugh Hefner and his hypocrisies seem really hard to keep up with. That is so culty in and of itself.

Oh my God, when I was recording the show, I started dreaming about him. It was so bad because it's like Chelsea says, you have fun with Playboy. That's the idea. Like it's selling a fantasy. Also, it is so inextricable from like what we understand as being like free and liberated person doing your thing and like engaging with mall culture. So my two favorite things. Freedom in malls. Yeah, very American. When it comes to Hefner, there is so much about him too,

where some of those hypocrisies were also like, he would go to war with feminists on very big popular TV shows, but he would also fund abortion rights and really throw his weight behind that. And so it does become like really naughty. And I think just on an individual level, so many of the people that I spoke with who

were young women in the 60s and 70s, that was their ticket to an independent life, to be involved with Playboy. And so that kind of thing is pretty hard to square to. So Amy, in your opinion, how did the reality of the lifestyle inside the Playboy Mansion differ from what the Playboy lifestyle promoted in public? So I think to tell this story, we should start with why Heffner started Playboy in the first place and like how that happened. So let's go way back and he's in Chicago. He's a former army guy. He is married now to a young lady, his high school sweetheart, obsessed with her love, sorry.

She cheats on him and he thinks, okay, I'm gonna throw myself off a bridge, literally. I'm not kidding, standing on a bridge. And he's just like, what if I instead started a magazine for like the young and sexy male who like loved being out and about? And so he sold himself as the original Playboys.

He was his vision. He said, I'm going to drink the best liquor, sleep with the most beautiful women. I'm going to have the best clubs. This is that. In reality, he is a little man in pajamas. His mother owns him money for the magazine like the first issue. He finds a calendar with Marilyn Monroe's nudes on it, prints that. It was very accidental.

The story of Playboy is a long one in that he starts there and then he ends there too. He also ends as this little man on amphetamines in pajamas while Holly Madison is looking gorgeous around him. All he ever had he owed to women. I will say the Playboy image of, ooh, we're having sex in the grotto, and this, this, that, is maybe not matched by living in the mansion where there was dog piss all over the carpets and a diagram of how to make Hefner the perfect ham sandwich, or else he'd have a tantrum taped up

for the staff in the kitchen. Like, it's just, he loved to play Monopoly. Like, it's not exactly a one-to-one. Yeah. It is so fascinating because, like, the canonical image of a cult I love to play Monopoly. Like it's not exactly a one-to-one. Yeah. It is so fascinating because like the canonical image of a cult that I think springs to most people's minds is either that kind of Midsommar-esque commune

where people are dressed in robes and flower crowns and kind of like behaving in a very new agey style. Or it's the kind of like satanic basement conspiracy theory illuminati sort of thing. Playboy was so public and it's so glamorous and so fun. But that said, it takes off every box. Like you talking about how he found his success by accident. So did Keith Ranieri.

So did so many infamous cult leaders who were not geniuses, they were opportunists. So true. I think that's a fabulous point. I will say though, not to knock our friend Hugh too too much, we can do that later. He did have a really good vision in terms of what he wanted from his magazine.

He had been like some kind of like lower level person at Esquire and was really disappointed by the fact that they were doing sort of like work a day journalism. And he thought, okay, what if we actually do create a magazine that is evolved? And what that included was over time publishing James Baldwin. It included creating these arguments like in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. It was just very, I mean, we have a lot of like those gay Tlisi style white guys that I don't care about, but there's a legacy of that.

And then there's like all of these women who got their jobs behind the scenes of this magazine too, like really high flying editors, photographers, people who made this thing sing. And so he was an opportunist and he was kind of a dunderhead, but like he didn't make that happen. And we say, thanks for that. Thanks for that. I mean, no cult would be as successful as Playboy

if it didn't have a whole bunch of good things going on too. True. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform that allows entrepreneurs, artists, professionals of any kind to create a beautiful website and stand out online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand,

Squarespace makes it super easy to create a stunning website, to engage with your audience, and to sell things, including time, content, products, all in one place, all on your terms. You so don't have to be a software engineer or web developer to create a beautiful website using Squarespace. And that is thanks to features, including their design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to help you

unlock your strongest creative potential and create a website that people will really want to engage with and maybe even buy things from, which is also super easy on a Squarespace website thanks to Squarespace Payments, which allows you to manage all of those transactions in one place. If you are a creative, you can even sell content on a Squarespace website

and then either charge a one-time fee or get people to subscribe. SoundsLikeACult.com is a Squarespace website. I am proud of it, mostly because it took like 30 minutes to make, which was important to me. And updating it is incredibly simple every single time. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com

slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Attention renters, I highly recommend you take advantage of built. Earn your favorite airline miles and hotel points through built just by paying your rent on time. Let me explain. There's no cost to join. And just by paying rent, you unlock flexible points that can be transferred to your favorite

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So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, what are you waiting for? Start paying rent through BILT and take advantage of your neighborhood points by going to joinbilt.com slash cult. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash cult. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Joinbilt.com slash cult to sign up for BILT today. So you mentioned the dog piss. That is something that I don't know, Chelsea, if you ever saw this episode

of the girls next door or remember this lore. But like I would for sure watch the girls next door when I was growing up. I was a super late bloomer, by the way, like I could never hope to teeter up against playboy style sexuality when I was a tween. We're all the same age, by the way. Chelsea I could never hope to teeter up against playboy style sexuality when I was a tween. We're all the same age, by the way, Chelsea and I are 33. There were like girls with tits in my middle school who for sure were like, I wanna be Holly Madison or whatever,

but like that was a hopeless pipe dream for me. Like, yeah, like this is not gonna happen. But I did watch lots of the girls next door because I was fascinated. It was its own kind of cult documentary. And I fixated on the episode where the girls were like running around and shrieking about dog poop on the floor and dog piss on the floor.

Also, there's so much about, I love that show and I love women in that show. I mean, I love Holly Madison. I interviewed her for second to last episode of my show. She is really sharp in looking back at the fact that she grew up in Alaska and then moved to Oregon and then hoofed it to L.A. Really did think that Playboy was so glamorous and her thing. And Bridget and Kendra's too who are on that show.

They talk so much about whether they're allowed to work. Bridget is like studying for school. Hefner's getting jealous. They can only go out twice a week. And then when they come home, they're expected to have sex with him. That's a cult. Okay. It's perfect timing that you mention that because we wanted to bring up the book, Bunny Tales Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion by former bunny Isabella St. James, which really outlined so many of these strict rules, some of which you've already hinted at. There were these curfews and surveillance

where women living in the mansion had a strict 9 p.m. curfew, security monitored their movements. They could be fined or even kicked out if they broke a rule. They had weekly allowances and financial control. Girlfriends of Hefner were given $1,000 weekly allowance, but only if they followed his rules. I was wondering if you could talk about what you think are some of the cultiest rules and rituals that look really glamorous and fun on the outside. I will say that there were things that you could and couldn't wear. There were definitely like theme nights on which

you had to dress a specific way. As I mentioned, like your lipstick had to look one way versus another. It seems like a lot of the time, the people who were girlfriends or lived in house or otherwise were in orbit immediately of Hefner were more afraid, not so much like the financial demerits, which sucked, but they were scared of what he would do when he saw you breaking the rules,

which is cry crocodile tears and stamp his feet and say, you don't love me. You don't care for me. And that seemed to be like the big, big punishment. We see this radiate out though. I mean, I'm glad you brought up the bunny iconography because that brings up the topic of the Playboy clubs. Famously, the first one opened in Chicago and then they were all over the world. There were casinos in London. This is that. But in the first club in the 60s, there was this huge handbook of things that you couldn't do down to the way that you moved. So if you're serving a table and you're serving drinks, you have to do what is defined in the handbook as the bunny dip. You can't lean over

at the waist because it shows too much cleavage. You don't want to put your breasts in someone's face while you're putting down their Brandy Alexander or whatever the fuck they drank at that point in time. Instead, you have to learn how to like put your elbow against your hip and swivel and serve it all the way down like a rocket almost. And if you didn't do that, or if you didn't have your right pantyhose shade, or if you didn't wear your makeup properly,

they were strict. You would get kicked out of work like really quickly. Bunny aesthetic was an accident. Hefner wanted the magazine to be called Stag and have a deer as its little logo. That did not work out. So his art director was like, what about a bunny? And like the bunny is a gentleman.

And he was like, okay, sounds great. Total accident, but worked out beautifully for Halloween costumes. Dang, I thought there was some like deeply rooted lore. Oh, everything about Hapmul, it's as you say too, he's an opportunist. Like all of his talents are somebody else's talents. And he's just like this person, the center of it with his mystique. That's what it is. He's just like this little hollow man.

It's such a house of cards. And yet for a time it really worked because if you have a knack for curating talent or talented people and like casting them in your life, and sort of an eye for aesthetics, and absolutely no shame and no qualms with exploiting others, yeah, you can run a cult for a while. Totally. And the thing is that he did put other people on. He was like a really great employer of women editors and photographers is one that really wasn't as big of a deal. He did do a lot of work around black liberation. Again, this is not his work.

It's just like there around him. There's a lot of like really progressive, interesting things going on. But from like maybe the 70s on, he also became increasingly cloistered. He wouldn't leave the mansion except for like in the girls next door days, there were like two club nights a week. Otherwise, he wanted to be playing Pac-Man and doing amphetamines. That was just an honestly beautiful... Like as somebody with a Miss Pacman tattoo I do get that but I think this thing that he made took on a life of its own and he was all too happy to be the figurehead but just so much in that it afforded him his weird comfort

of like a staff kitchen making him biscuits and gravy and playing video games all night. What a dweeb. Yeah. Also not hot ever. No. What a shame that the person who. Also, not hot ever. No. What a shame that the person who made this is not hot ever, dang. Huge shame. Men doing the least always. I kind of wanted to make a point about the bunny aesthetic and the girls when they had their, like,

their strict uniforms and stuff. I've been listening to this podcast called Dinner Party History, and the hosts just talk about historical figures and who they would have over for dinner. They just talk about their lives. I listened to an episode a few weeks ago on Sigmund Freud. I have been exploring everything through the Freud lens.

That's my own love of recently. That's why I love the question! So you know, Freud explored many themes of repression and reaction formation. And one theory that stuck out in particular is the Madonna-whore complex that suggests that men who were raised in strict sexually repressive environments may split women into two categories. The virtuous, untouchable Madonna and the hyper sexualized whore. And I was thinking about this and it feels like to me that Playboy would represent the utopia that is a manifestation of Hugh Hefner's mind that kind of marries the two. Because it's like a subconscious feeling

of the need for purity, because you know, like in his childhood, it's like those mommy issues, he felt like there's not that connection, and then the simultaneous indulging and extreme sexual fantasies, the whore. So you need to wear stockings, don't show too much cleavage,

but also you can't work, and you have to have sex with me anytime I choose. You've cracked it perfectly. So the girl next door, the name of the show, they created that in the first year. But the girl next door originally, after the Marilyn Monroe cover and all of that sposhiness, you're right, it was a new creation.

It was this woman who worked at Playboy as a secretary, posed as the first nude centerfold. And the idea was that any woman around you, somebody you work with or your next door neighbor or like somebody at the grocery store, I believe they called her like your ready plaything, this image. And so you're so right. Like what they were looking for was the idea that just it wasn't just like these like sort of pornographic calendar people or actresses that are alluring, but like don't really go into that. The idea was that any woman that you saw you could possess and would be a sexual

foil for you in some way that changed sexual culture in this country immensely. It wasn't just like, OK, here's what we do. And that like we're deifying people this way or some way. That changed sexual culture in this country immensely. It wasn't just like, okay, here's what we do, and that like we're deifying people this way or that way. And it really did come from, as you say, like Hefner growing up in the 50s. And he has said, all right, like, you know, I grew up in this culture where you couldn't have sex, you couldn't do this, you were expected to just like be in the army, be a good family man, and that's all. And everyone was miserable. And so I did it this way instead. Never thought I connected to Freud, dang.

No, I'm obsessed with these analyses and it illuminates so much because I could not put my finger on why Playboy was attractive and aspirational even to like our 12, 13 year old selves. But of course, it's the girl next door. It's that marriage of Madonna and whore. And that was relatable, but aspirational in this very cult like capacity to the point that when you were demonstrating Amy the bunny dip, my impulse was to want to get up and practice it. That's the point. I like relish being able to do it in front of two strangers.

It's like, like, Yes. Like, hell. I'm like, oh my god, I'm banging your chance. That is Freudian. That is fucking Freudian. It's not real, it's, yeah. And I think that's what was so satisfying

and poignant and lovely about reporting this project was just speaking to so many people. I think the oldest person I spoke to was, oh my God, Annie Judas, the second black playmate centerfold. She is killing it on Instagram. I recommend her jump ripping videos. Like she's amazing.

But she was like, yeah, I never felt exploited. Like, sure, like they called me this kind of thing. Like this is that, but like it gave me my life. Wonderful Jackie Nett, another early black Playmate, said the same thing. A lot of it is alluring and desirable because of the way that things are set up for us still. It was really interesting for me to not try to litigate it. Whether I was talking to Holly or Jackie Nett or Judas Annie, you can't really say to people like, well, your experience was fucked up.

That was so wrong. They gave them what they needed at that time. It was complicated. Sometimes gave them things that were cruel and abusive and hard, but I love the legacy of Playboy as something to inform the way that we think about each other now,

and that maybe we don't say things like so black and white. I don't know, it's hard. I don't know. Okay, I feel like now though is a really good time to pivot to the debaucherous cult gatherings, the Playboy parties. Yay, fun. I'm just mad we never got to go to one.

So while the parties at the mansion were legendary, many insiders say that they weren't always the glamorous affairs depicted in the media. Drug use was rampant with reports of women being allegedly pressured into taking Quaaludes, which Hefner allegedly referred to as thigh openers. Gross, disgusting. Also, despite its reputation as a luxurious haven, many former insiders have claimed that the mansion itself was not well maintained, which we kind of got into a little bit earlier.

In an article on the US Sun, several ex-residents reported on the disgusting conditions. Carpets were stained with dog urine, have had many pets, and some women claim the house always smelled bad. Rooms were cluttered with old, hoarded junk. Instead of a glamorous Hollywood estate, some say it felt more like a frat house that hadn't been cleaned in decades. The infamous grotto, a hot tub area that was supposed to be a sexy paradise,

was actually a breeding ground for bacteria, with multiple reports of guests contracting infections from it. According to an article in The Guardian in 2011, the mansion was linked to a health scare with over 100 guests reported flu-like symptoms after attending an event. Health officials identified the presence of Legionella bacteria in the mansion hot tub, which can called Legionnaire's disease.

Oh my God, I won't even go in the hot tub in an Airbnb. I can't even like imagine. Nickelodeon slime, okay? I have four words for you, and those words are rancid, Johnson's, baby, oil. Just like everywhere. I don't know. It's just disgusting.

It's not like cool, big, fun, mansion party time in that way. I mean, there's a Sex and the City episode where they're all there. In reality, it's just like, is anyone ever going to shampoo that carpet? Ever? Also, like, why are these girls up in like carpeted rooms? Pissy carpeted rooms? And like, so this man was a scrapbooker. He was holding on to everything, like pasting photos and doing this and don't throw that away because I need this. He was an old man who loved his pets and couldn't smell anymore maybe. We don't know. Now before we get into some closing commentary and ultimately our verdict, we should probably talk about the

psychological toll that all of this took on Hef'smates, and girlfriends. So as we've been saying, while Playboy claimed to be this bastion of sexual freedom, in reality it often functioned as this insular, highly controlled environment that relied on strict power dynamics. Like many cult-like groups, it had a false sense of empowerment where women were told they were a part of a progressive movement only to realize they were ultimately serving someone else's fantasy. And many women who lived in the mansion have since spoken out about the emotional toll that it took on them. I'll list some of the statements that have been made over the years.

And then we'd love to hear from some of your reporting, Amy. Holly Madison, Hef's iconic former number one girlfriend, Alaskan queen, described the mansion as a cult-like environment in her memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole. She said that the women felt isolated, manipulated and psychologically controlled and that as they competed for Hef's approval, Kendra Wilkinson, she was my favorite

when I watched Girl Next Door. Another former girlfriend admitted that she moved into the mansion at 18 without fully understanding what was expected of her, revealing that there was pressure to sleep with Hefner in order to secure a place in the mansion at 18 without fully understanding what was expected of her, revealing that there was pressure to sleep with Hefner in order to secure a place in the mansion. And another former playmate named Sandra Theodore claimed in the A&E docu-series Secrets of Playboy that Hefner kept extensive tapes of sexual encounters, often without the knowledge or consent of the women involved. So I guess Amy, we would love to hear about some of the stories that you've heard in your reporting to kind of contextualize the effects that followed these former cult followers,

you could say, even years after they left the mansion. Well, it's tremendously sad, like something that kept coming up in my reporting. I'm not going to name specific names like here and now, but I would talk to, in terms of the women who like lived there or were part of the magazine or clips. Again, it was like many, many, many people, like upward of 50 people over the decades. And something that really moved me and made me so sad was that they would delineate these experiences of abuse and coercion or just like the thing that we were talking about before, where as in Holly Madison's case, like she came from Alaska and then Oregon and didn't have anything and like whatever. And so it's susceptible. That happened over and over. And so the pattern that I saw was people

who didn't have very much, but were eager for an opportunity, loved the opportunity. And so in talking to them about these things, they would be like, I don't want to talk badly about him. I loved him. He was like a father to me. And I was like, well, valid, sure, 100%. But that I think was like the main thing that I kept running into where I thought a lot about how do we afford agency to people when they insist this was my agency? And when they say, yeah, that was hard, but I also loved him. And that is just the interesting question that has stuck with me from this is how do we listen to people without litigating in this way? Like, how do we give weight to their real experiences in the way that they put them?

And with Hefner, it's very hard. It's very hard with him. There's also the Cosby question. I mean, like, Bill Cosby was one of Heffner's really good friends and used the mansion as a place to, we've heard from different people, potentially enact his terrible things that he did. And it's tough when you see everything swirling around Playboy. There was a lot of really wild and bad and harmful shit that happened. As always, my thing is forever going to be, I'm glad you mentioned this books and those people, because I think the women have it down. Their experiences of it are the most compelling to me.

And I think the most illustrative here. Yeah. The last thing I want to ask to both of you actually, is the heyday of Playboy seems to be behind us, right? It's not in the zeitgeist, the way that it was when we were growing up. But there are a lot of things going on right now in contemporary culture that are shaping sexuality in a way that I find deeply sinister in its own way. I'm sure you've

probably heard various lore or like rough statistics about how younger generations are having less and less sex than any prior generation. So that's just one data point. But then I also learned in my New York Times newsletter, literally a couple of days ago, and I was like, whoa, that compared to like five, 10 years ago, Christianity in the United States is being re-embraced in a huge way. And a lot of our work on this podcast is talking about how people are embracing alternative sites of religion and connection in the wake of old school Christianity. We kind of like swept

by the side, but in the pandemic era and as culture shifts in like these really unpredictable and tumultuous ways, more people have been actually re-embracing Christianity just as we're like finally getting to a point where we're like unpacking the negative effects that it has had on gender equality and sexuality. And so I guess I'm curious to hear both of your opinions on like why it's important to deconstruct and ask questions and think about Playboy as a cult in the context of what's going on in contemporary culture. I think when we look at these sort of,

I would call them a little bit of intergenerational panic, these reports of people having more sex, people having less sex. First, let's look at how that research is collected and who is performing that poll. So something like a pew or a gallop is calling people on their landlines still to collect data about that. Or it's self-reported and self-reported data is sometimes flawed too. However, that being said, I actually

do believe it. I think that younger people are having less random ass sex. Yeah, yeah. Having sex with a partner, but whatever. From there, yeah, I think that like maybe that is not a function of religion, but like the religion could be a function of it. And here's what I mean. We need ways to socialize with each other. We need it. We need either school or we need church or we need synagogue or we need mosque or we need this gathering place, right? And so I guess it would clock that if it's not sex or if sex can only give it to you in one of a few ways that you would want to go to church or like feel religious.

I'm glad when people have relationship with God, but I'm very worried of all this stuff is like, even sex, all of it, like I'm afraid of using any of this as like an organizing life principle, I guess. You helped me kind of like conceptualize how I feel a little bit because church and the subgroups that we are a part of is community. And so when you talk about like post pandemic,

when we were all cramped in our houses, we couldn't go anywhere, we were searching for a sense of community. Right now in this political climate climate it is so polarizing. Religion is even political right now. And so with religion, specifically talking about Christianity, Christians, and I can say this as a person that grew a very devout Baptist, we have a superiority complex as it applies to what it means to be a Christian. So that means it's either you're in or you're out.

There is no middle ground. And we see this sort of extremist puritanical ideology being weaponized by our current administration. So Amanda, to your question of why is it important for us to continue to analyze and kind of break down all these things that are hypocritical about our subgroups is that it can be harmful when you're blindly a part of a religion that openly rejects the way the world is changing around you. You can't question, you can't challenge, you can't be critical. It's just not the Christian way. And so it's important for us to do that because if not we're just blindly being

a part of something that could potentially be extremely harmful to us. Thank you so much for raising that. I've been thinking about that so much in terms of Judaism lately. Just like we're a religion that at its core is against the oppressor and with the oppressed. And I try to live that value every day, even though like I'm not religious like that anymore. It's just like you think about the way the world is. Right. Yep. It's hard.

Yep. And everything that you two are saying, this is what's so delish about this podcast, is we can start off giggling about a cult leader in pajamas and end up talking about the most important subjects of our culture, I feel, which are how do we find belonging? Where does that go askew? How do we clock power abuse? How do we engage in healthy community despite those risks? And I think it continues to be important to talk about groups like Playboy because what was Playboy other than a

reaction to Hugh Hefner's religious repression and like you mentioned the polarization in our society right now Chelsea and like so much more than ever I think in our society that motivates us to connect or to disconnect has to do with reactivity. Oh, I don't want to be like that. So I'm going to go over here. And then it's like, oh, there's something fucked up about that. So now I'm going to swing all the way over there. And it's so hard not to do that, especially because we're all in like a panic state. Those of us who spend any time on the internet, I'm constantly challenging myself not to make choices in a reactive headspace.

And that can help me at least resist cultishness, you know? What a point. Yeah, thank you. Incredible. Okay, Amy, I have loved this conversation. Chelsea, your Freud point, gonna be thinking about that for the next 10 years. If folks wanna keep up with you and your reporting and your haircut, where can they do that? I'm not gonna do a haircut, marron. I just come back from blonde and then cut it all off. So yes, more TK there. So if you wanna find me, I'm amyrospegal.com

or my Instagram is at very much so. And I put way too many playlists on it. So that's me. Beautiful. Cool. We love you, Amy. Thank you so much. Love you both.

Okay, Chelsea, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which do you think the cult of Playboy falls into? Live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which do you think the cult of Playboy falls into? Amanda, the thigh openers told me all I needed to know about Hugh, Heffy Heff. It's gonna be a get the fuck out for me. Plain and simple.

Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. It is a get the fuck out. The writing is on the wall. The slime is in the grotto. The piss is on the carpet. Those dogs were pissing in cursive script. Get the fuck out. Get the fuck out. Yeah. And like, I loved our conversation with Amy, that ending dialogue about why it's still important to talk about cults that might not be totally at large anymore,

but still were like very much a part of our coming age is still important. I really valued that. And I think that's what this show is all about. It was just like so freaky. The freakiest moment of our conversation to me was when she was like demonstrating that bunny dip. And I was like, I wanna do the bunny dip.

Yes. The death grip that Playboy culture still has on us, you know? To this day, I also found it super interesting geographically what Playboy represents to each of us. Just because in your experience, we had similar experiences in a sense of we weren't out here chasing Playboy, but maybe kids who were raised in bigger cities, they just have a different relationship and understanding of sex exploration

and subsequently with Playboy. Yeah, bigger cities, bigger titties. They were out here with their Playboy ears on. Who wasn't me? Definitely wasn't me. This is irrelevant, but do you ever meet someone and you can tell either exactly what they're gonna be like when they're really old or exactly what they were like when they were really little? Absolutely.

I think it was when you were wearing your trad wife dress during our Sounds Like a Cult shoot, I like got this vision of who you were as like a nine-year-old kid and it was like so unbelievably adorable to me. I love when you describe your childhood because I think you and I would have been very good friends. I think we would have been know-it-alls, very mischievous, stuffing our bras, but also like only doing it in private, never in public. Agreed.

I have this vision of us being like 11 years old in a community theater production of like Aladdin or something. Being like a double cast is the genie, I don't know. Yes. I'm the feet mask. Oh wait, Genie didn't have feet. I'm on the ground.

You're just like the floating tail. Ha ha ha. I'm the arms. That is way too funny. Okay, so that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. produced by Chelsea Charles. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you liked this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my

other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet, A Feminist's Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio, SeventyOne. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult Pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform that allows entrepreneurs, artists, professionals of any kind to create a beautiful website and stand out online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super

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