Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Van Life

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Get in losers, we’re going…who knows where?! If you’re anything like us, dear cultie, then the current state of the world might have you feeling a wee bit…lost? Well, this week's cult will have you “finding yourself” and dangling the /real/ ticket to true freedom and oneness with the earth. That's right, the cult of #VanLife promises salvation can be yours at the low low price of a down payment on a Sprinter — so long as you can hang when your pee bucket overfloweth. The Pandemic:tm: instilled an unshakeable sense of wanderlust and affinity for faux-sipping-coffee-in-nature-candids in both the social media feeds and hearts of THOUSANDS, but as the #VanLife trendscape begins to skew towards de-influence (and even sometimes *warnings*), we can’t help but wonder if life on the wide open road is as freeing as it looks, or if culty secrets lie in wait just beyond the interstate… Amanda and Reese enlisted IRL Van Lifer Bella Janssen (@thelonesol) to hop in the driver’s seat and reveal the reality of living on the road. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Go to https://LIQUIDIV.COM and get 20% off your first order with code CULT at checkout. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT Please consider donating to those affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Team SLAC are donating to the PCRF, a nonprofit organization providing vital medical care, food, and humanitarian aid to children and families in need. The Big Magical Cult Show is coming to Just For Laughs Toronto on September 27th. Get your tickets before they sell out!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Once you start van life, there is no stopping. Do you have this like awakening? You're like, I can go anywhere. I can do anything. I can travel to any location I want. I can make friends with anybody I want. Your eyes are really open to a lot of possibilities that I don't think you can have

whenever you're living in an apartment or like living in a house. There's nothing holding me back, which is cool and also may be a little dangerous. Have you just gone through a breakup? Did COVID fuck up your college or career plans? What if you could start over and reject mainstream society and, like, live on nothing but a sprinter van and your husky? I'm in. At the end of the day, it's all about trusting your gut and just being really smart. If you don't trust your gut and if you are not thinking about how you can get out of a situation,

you can get yourself in some really shitty situations. This is Sounds Like a Cult. A show about the modern day cults. I'll follow. I'm your host, Amanda Montel, and I'm an author. And I'm Reese Oliver, your co-host and Sounds Like a Colts resident rhetoric scholar. Every week on this show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group or guru from the cultural zeitgeist, from cruise ships to Christian pop music. Today, we're addressing the cult of Van Life to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really?

And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into, a live your life, and watch your back, or get the fuck out? After all, in 2025, cultishness is in the eye of the beholder, and not every culty-looking group these days is equally bad. The point of this show is to analyze how culty behaviors show up in everyday life, including places you might not think to look. Cultish behavior has a funny way of finding you, no matter how far off into the open road you gallivant. In fact, sometimes it's waiting for you right off the only exit for miles once you realize you've trekked too far from home to turn back. Wow, vibey, moody, spooky, but not as spooky, some members of today's cult might argue, as the stifling static existence of traditional homeownership or apartment rentership, that mainstream imprisoning lifestyle, those carpet walkers, don't know what that means? You will. to find out. Let's not mince words. And to be clear, we recognize we come from a very privileged

place when we say this. Reese and I are both tucked cozily into our homes. But most of us living in America in 2025 can probably agree that the cost of living is not exactly affordable, humane. We're not getting our bang for our buck these days. Amidst all this angst, emerges a cult of sorts. An alternative, a transcendent opportunity to leave. the ills, the false promises of boring suburban life behind you, and hop inside the world of hashtag van life to remodel a sprinter van into a millennial pink and Pinterest plant green utopia to buzz around from the redwood forest to the Gulfstream waters because this land was made for you and me and share it all online. I don't know. We're talking about fucking

Van Life O'Day. Exactly. Exactly. Nothing beats Jet 2 holiday except a sprinter road trip, question more. There is a cult for everybody these days. And Van Life could have been the cult for me. I mean, we're talking about this emergent population of mostly young people, but not always. A lot of retirees too, who decide to trade in the classic American dream for a life on the road. and this lifestyle has been popularized by social media. It blew up especially during COVID when people were really reimagining what their life could look like. Reese, what is your relationship to van life? Do you follow any van lifers online? I follow a couple of them from very much a place of like,

I want to see if you'll turn into a tried wife in five years or not because it's really anybody's guess. But for now, I'm loving the peel and stick tile in the van. I think it looks really cute. Oh my God, that is such a relatable perspective. One of my eyes is like earnestly seated and tuned in for the sprinter van Renault. And the other eye is like, when is this person going to publicly renounce vaccinations? Exactly.

It's very much like a part of me is jealous of it. And then a part of me is like, I don't think you're getting out of this what you're supposed to be getting out of things. In part, I think that feeling might be because of the social media of it all. Yeah, so I think what makes hashtag VanLife culty out of the gate for me is exactly what you're saying, this juxtaposition of this ultra-romanticized boho paradise that it looks like on Instagram or YouTube. That's where I discovered Van Lifeers on YouTube. In contrast with the ugly, dirty, brutal nastiness of having to clean a compost toilet and avoid getting lost. in the middle of the wilderness, because you're just a girl. Yeah, I think there's a lot of really harsh contrast going on in van life,

especially the way that it's presented to us. And there's a little bit of a spoiler for later. But in writing prompts for the Would You Rather game, I kind of felt myself having a little bit of a critical thought moment because a lot of the scenarios where I was like, what's something really bad that you could endure living in your van? It just turns into like, oh, these are ways. that a lot of people live and realities that a lot of people live with. Not for funzies because it's a

fun travel thing they can post on their Instagram. Some people really only shower at gyms because that's their reality. Okay, yes. It reminds me a little bit of our Burning Man episode. And I remember some listeners yelling at me for this, I think because they were like defensive of camping. And like I like to camp too. But there's just something a little bit culty about people. who have nice setups in life foregoing it. Like for the adrenaline rush of living a lifestyle that they can opt in and out of. Exactly. I think a lot of people living in 2025 crave an aesthetic simplicity.

Like, we want to go back to a time before iPhones, but we also want iPhones. The convenience. We want all of the convenience, but all of the benefits of living in a world without convenience. It's very ironic. And I think Van Life's promise, the cultish promise of Van Life, of Van Life. Who is Van Life? Van Life. Who's that drag queen?

Vana Life. That is funny. I know that queen. She's like dressed like Vana White, but in Palazzo pants, Paisley. She's a Camelback. She knows the difference between diesel and regular fuel. So what were you saying? Oh, yeah.

The promise of Vana Life is that you are going to connect with the Earth. but you're also going to become a famous influencer. But you're going to be really comfortable the whole time, and it's going to be a really great photo op everywhere you go, and it's going to cost, like, no money because you're not paying for anywhere you're living. And all the locals everywhere you go are going to love you, and all the food you eat is going to be great. Look, and I can't lie, I eat this shit up in the pandemic

when a lot of us were questioning what the future might be and why we cared about some of the capitalistic things, we seem to care so much about and have returned to caring about, I guess. But during this brief moment when we were doing all that questioning, my YouTube algorithm was serving me the most cottage core-ass content, including tiny housers and homesteaders and van lifers. And I followed this van life couple who then settled down and started renovating a cabin in Canada where they're from.

Eamon and Beck, they're going to come up in our interview. But they are sort of leaders in the YouTube. van life world. They were this incredibly aspirational couple that I found who seemed like they were just living this really healthy, wholesome, super together life. They were like Renaissance people. They could whip up a gorgeous vegan meal and renovate their own van themselves. And I was really in that headspace during the pandemic. So that's how I got interested in this world. It does very much give you like all of the slices of life. But if you're willing to do everything in a way that's a little

bit smaller, which I think we're all craving right now is for the world to feel a little smaller, then it'll all be okay. And you can have your cake and eat it too and whatnot. And I do very much understand the impulse. I think with COVID especially, it's like, let me get out of my current apartment and just completely start over. And if I'm starting over, then like, why does it even really matter where I go? And like, everyone's working from home anyway. And I hate where I am. And Everything feels so transient that committing to the transients almost feels like the best thing you can do. Like you have more agency, right. It makes you feel like, okay, the world around me is chaos.

If I embrace the chaos, then it can't hurt me. And Van Life, I think, was one of those modern day cults that really found its legs or found its wheels during COVID, alongside more destructive ones like QAnon and lighter-hearted ones, like, I don't know. Love Island. Reality TV vandums, exactly. But Van Life did not start during the pandemic. It has a longer history. So before we get into a sim analysis and ultimately our interview, let's rewind a little bit. Put your van in reverse because we're going back to the 1950s. So when you think Van Life, when you think 1950s, I know I think Volkswagen. She was the mother. In trying to define a leader of this cult, I think Mother Wagon could very much be a contender here. Why are we coming up with so many amazing drag personas during the episode, Van der Leight?

Mother Wagon, she's like carries around dildos and a little red wagon behind her. And she has a German accent. Mothervagen. Mothervagen, yes. According to cult surfing.com. History of van life. I'll look back into time. The 1950s brought along the Volkswagen T-1, known as the Splitty, to the public,

which made larger-scale road travel seem more achievable for the layman. At this point, cars were still new, but just kind of the thing you drove to work and got around in. They weren't really like a legitimate means of larger-scale travel. But I'll read a quote from this article. post-war Europe was ready for something new, and the T-1 came in clutch as a symbol of hope and the spirit of exploration. Its simple, reliable design made it easy to customize, which sparked a movement. Surfers in France, free spirits in Spain, and artists cruising through Germany found freedom in a van that could take them anywhere they wanted to go. Wow.

Ooh, okay. Technological advancement often lends itself to new ways of culting. It's like, oh, wow, we have a van, and we can turn the seats sideways on it. There's a room for lots of cultishness in here. Yeah, we can have a seance in here. You could have a seance, you could have an orgy, you could do drugs. Like, the cultish possibilities with the T1 were truly endless. All you had to do was turn the seats to the side.

Van life is so prime for members of other cults or people looking to join a cult because you can be very broke. And as long as everyone together can afford the payment on the T1, you're fine. So true. So for a long time, it was just some hippie freaks living in a van. And then the internet, living in a van, became hashtag van life in 2011. I had to Google to verify this because I was like, 2011, that's a long-ass time ago. No way hashtags were a thing in 2011. The first hashtag was used in 2007, guys.

Wow. I was four years old. Don't tell me that. The birth of a hashtag and the death of a subculture, as it just becomes like a thing to look like becomes an aesthetic choice. Posers participate. So there was obviously a huge upswing in Van Life at this point and it kind of steadily increases throughout the 20 teens and then another big swing in our cultural zeitgeist, the pandemic. We all know in Hader. From Yahoo Finance, van dwellers in the United States have nearly doubled since 2020 from 1.9 million at the start of the

pandemic to 3.1 million in 2022. For context, that's more Americans living in their cars than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and North Dakota combined. Obviously, we acknowledge not all of these are hashtag van lifers, or not all of them do it by choice or for the glamour of it all. But I do think that the massive uptick is at least in part thanks to Ms. Hashtag Van Life. and the pandemic wanderlust that has onset upon our society. To some, especially those whose YouTube algorithms look like mine, living in a van suddenly seems very, very attractive. But I can't imagine that's true for everyone who is not up to date

on these gorgeous Pinterest-worthy venos. So it begs the question, who exactly is partaking in van life and leaving it all behind to live on the road? Well, according to Christian Schaffer, who is one of the largest faces of the van life movement. If you look her up on Instagram, she's got like 300 something thousand followers, white, skinny, blonde, wears a big white hat. Seems like someone you would love to jump in a lake with maybe.

She spoke to the New York Times, talked about how she's been living this van life lifestyle since 2019, and said that the demographics of van lifers is made up of the following. Trust fund babies with money to burn. Some remote workers with nothing to lose. and then some people who were displaced by endlessly rising rents. And then I also think, as we learned from our guests later and as I know from other content I consume, there's also a population of like retirees who decide to live the van life

after they've worked so hard their whole life. So COVID was a real turning point for the hashtag van life culture and the business, of course. not only were aspiring influencers emerging on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok by the bigillions. Companies and startups were erecting to meet that demand. For example, Seattle's Cabana, founded by the former head of the Seattle Department of Transportation, attempted to rent out these tricked out vans for around $200 a night before the company's demise in 23, there were so many businesses for renting out snazzy, expensive, tricked out vans so that

people wouldn't have to do their own remodels. It was definitely a booming business and some sort of like OG hippie van lifers weren't necessarily too thrilled about all of this 2020's media hype slash adventure porn. There was a New York Times piece titled How Veterans of Hashtag Van Life feel about all the newbies. And some of the veterans were expressing a little bit of saltiness, particularly on the heels of that movie Nomadland, which came out in 2020, the perfect year for this film, which was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. And then everybody started loving a thing and everybody started doing the thing. And Van Life got a little too cool. And then as happens with all trends, the only thing that we love better than pointlessly

hyping up a lifestyle choice that's probably not as one size fits all as we might like it to seem is tearing people down for choosing to listen to all of the hype and go with said lifestyle choice. So now we're de-influencing the hashtag van life. And a lot of van life content that I am seeing nowadays is about how the hashtag van life is not really what it is all cracked up to be. And I don't want to say we're getting gatekeeping, but we're definitely making sure that the followers know what they're getting into because there are people who have invested thousands into lifestyles that didn't end up being sustainable for them, such as Jake Fruh, who has lived in a van since 2018 and he's still living in a van, so it's somewhat sustainable

for him. But he is behind a very popular video called Van Life is Overrated, which warns a lot of followers of like potential missteps and things that they might not foresee all of the harsh realities of living in a van. And a lot of hashtag van life content nowadays is also more about the renovation of the van I've noticed. It's splintered into different factions of van life content, which we'll talk a little bit more about later. But I feel like in that way, that's a version of it desaturating as well. Yeah, true. It is funny though, because I definitely, when I watch van life for videos, I was definitely the most interested in the very, very beginning of people's van life journey and not the follow-through or the harsh

realities. And I think that bubble has kind of burst a little bit, especially after the murder of Gabby Petito and the media frenzy surrounding that, which definitely cast a dark shadow on the van life lifestyle because, I mean, I'm sure most people remember this true crime story, but Gabby Petito was this like pretty white young aspiring van life influencer who like took out on the road with her boyfriend and then he killed her. And I think it showed this dark side of van life that you can romanticize it in the image of the influencers that you love all you want. But at the end of the day, like it is not actually going to fix your problems. That was like an extreme story and portrayal of that culty promise or culty bait and switch.

But now when I think of van life, yes, I think about being in the pandemic and imagining what that lifestyle might be like. But I also quickly think of how I don't want to shit in woodchips. Yeah, just about the reality of it, because I do feel like a lot of van life content is what a lot of travel content is, which is almost a very survivor-ish. I'm making myself uncomfortable in all of these ways that you won't to obtain. this reward that you can maybe vicariously taste some of by watching me. Oh, yeah.

It's aspirational, but it's also a slight holier than now vibe. It's a little masochistic. Yeah, masochistic, too. It's like, look how little I need. Oh, it reminds me of the cult of minimalism. That's what I was going to say. It's a very minimalist. Yeah, it is so one of those cults that, like, would sucker me in for a few months.

Yeah, but, like, it's such a. dramatic lifestyle change, that that's not really something that you can kind of just back out of and to be fair, I think that's why there's a lot of lower commitment, trendier options like the rentals popping up. Some of the van lifers that New York Times piece said are a little bit upset by what they refer to as those weekend warriors. But for the most part, the OG van lifers aren't really that worried about oversaturation because they think that like the more foot traffic, the better, a quote from Christian Schaffer. She says, van lifers could become an asset for small towns as the movement grows, suggesting business opportunities like parking lots with toilet and shower

facilities, gyms with week-long passes or amenities that are hard to find for those without spacious houses or yards like wood shop rentals. So like gentrification for a good cause, supposedly? I guess. Honestly, like, we'll get into it with our guests and we'll learn more. But my first impression my like gut instinct of this cult is that it's one of those groups that we cover here and there where like at first it seems really fringy and extreme and also really annoying because it comes with like the influencer side of things there's that dishonest aspect to it where you're just like yeah yeah yeah this is like totally a modern day cult but not in a dangerous way i actually don't know if that's true though like i don't really know what it's really really really like

which is why we're excited to hear from our guest. But before we get into that, we were curious about what some van life horror stories might be because there has to be something in between like living your best boho life and literally getting murdered. Right? Like what's just like a Tuesday morning? You know, what's like a mild inconvenience that we might not know about or even consider something we might have to deal with as the carpet walkers, carpet stepers, carpet walkers?

Carver Walker. Carver Walker, shall we are. And I think it's important to share some of these horror stories because Van Life is not just an aesthetic answer to all of your life's woes. It gets very fucking real out there. So yes, I visited Reddit and the users had some stories. One user got stuck in the Mojave Desert. They were fine where they originally parked and then they stayed for a few days and couldn't get out. So make sure you park on solid ground. that isn't sand. Oh my God, I've made that mistake. What are some other horror stories here?

Female solo. Great start. Locked myself in my vehicle, alone surrounded by forest, blocked in by a drunk man's vehicle, while he stalked around outside and tried to see in for nearly half an hour, yelling about how much he likes a challenge. Oh, oh, that is so, so scary. Honestly, the whole six months I had work along the East Coast,

but more specifically, August in Baltimore. My van has no AC once you shut off the engine for the night. It was 80% humidity, 90 degrees in the day, and I doubt it dropped below even 75 at night. I would find places outside the city, cheap hotels every other night to shower, but I was so motherfucking hot and sticky, I could barely sleep. Sleeping warm, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's terrible. Honestly, now that I have central AC, I feel like I've reached Nirvana,

and thus no cult could get me. Central AC is one of those things that, like, I truly think is an evolution in humanity. I don't think we have felt as burden-lifting an aid to our biological incapabilities since glasses. Literally. It's like the invention of fire. Boring. Central AC, let's hear a couple other horror stories before we get into our interview. Had my generator stolen out the side of mine while I was at work, an insurance refused. to cover it. I still don't have a replacement generator, and it sucks. How are you supposed to van without the life? Okay, we got one more for y'all. My friend slept out of his van going on a cross-country road trip. He left the windows open and parked behind a dumpster near Yellowstone.

Fell asleep to wake up to scratching outside his vehicle. He opened his eyes to see a bull elk with its head stuck through the window, eating his granola bars. There's any lesson from this and it's roll up your windows. Listen to me. See, the reality is, I would not love for an elk to be in my van eating my granola bars, but I think that that would be this like cottage core snow white fantasy. And that's what this cult is. So I feel like to demystify the reality of van life, we've got to get into our guest interview.

So we would love to introduce Van lifer and the content creator behind at The Lone Soul, Isabella Jansen, who has been living this hashtag van life for most of her life. After the break, we'll talk to Bella. Hello, you guys, it's Heather McDonald, and I have a juicy scoop for you on Audible. I've been loving their romance collection. They are a leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, and they've got this down. Romance fans are among their most engaged and voracious listeners, so there is a

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Conditions apply. Bella, thank you so much for joining this episode. I'm the cult of Van Life. Hello, thank you guys for having me. I'm so excited to be here. We are just jazz to take this bumpy little journey with you. First, could you just introduce yourself and your work and your lifestyle to our listeners. My name is Bella, or as a lot of people know me on Instagram and TikTok, the lone soul. I am a full-time van lifer and content creator, have been for the last year and a half and see myself doing it for many more. Love it. Give us a little taste. Give us a little

taste of your origin story. How did you find van life or how did van life find you? I love how you phrase how did van life find you because that's very prevalent in my life. So my family when I was three years old got on the road and they moved into RVs when I was three. And so as one could say they were like the original van lifers, RV living on the road super hippie. And so I grew up living in RVs, living in trailers, living in vans. And I did that for 10 years. My parents eventually settled down and lived in houses. It was kind of me that made them get off of the road. I was a really angsty teenager. And for a while, I actually hated van life. I hated living in RVs because it was what I did for my entire childhood. And I was just like, I want nothing to do with this. This sucks.

Living on the road, no stability, being in new places every other week, this sucks. I love how your version of rebellion was like, I want a stable, steady lifestyle mom and dad. Literally, they blame me for them getting off the road. I was like, I want to go to school. I want to have homework. I want to have friends. I had a lot of friends living in RVs growing up, but I was like, I want to have stable friends. And so when I was like 14, they got off the road and we were stationary for a long time. And then when I was 17, 18 was when the spark came alive again. And I started seeing more of the aesthetic van life stuff that was happening on Instagram. And I was following YouTubers. And I was like, oh, I did this when I was younger. Maybe I could do this now. This looks really fun again. And so at 19, I bought my van. And I I converted it with my dad and just kind of got on the road. I fully sent it off the deep end, going back to my roots. Okay. So you were like sort of born into this cult, like a kid who grows up on a compound. Pretty much. Yeah. And then you rebelled against it and had to rediscover it on your own through the Paris filter is what I'm hearing pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Born into the

Colt. I really was. Like, I was indoctrinated in this. Okay. So, obviously, we're using the word cult cheekily here, but we're also genuinely trying to understand the contours of this group, this ideology, this way of life. When we say the cult of Van Life, what aspects, rituals, us versus them dynamics, what qualities for good and for ill come to mind for you? I feel like there's so many things. Because one, Once you start van life or like become a nomad as a lot of people in the community will say, like not a lot of people will call themselves van lifers. They'll call themselves nomads, which I guess is something that maybe not a lot of people know. Once you start, there is no stopping.

Do you have this like awakening? You're like, oh my word, I can go anywhere. I can do anything. I can travel to any location I want. I can make friends with anybody I want. Your eyes are really open to a lot of possibilities that I don't think you can have whenever you're living in an apartment or like living in a house. And I think a lot of van lifers and people in the nomadic community begin to have that ingrained in them. That just like

sense of, oh shoot, I can do whatever I want to. There's nothing holding me back, which is cool and also maybe a little dangerous. Well, it feels like a sort of almost aesthetic libertarian mentality of like, I want to stick it to the man. And who doesn't want to like opt out of all the ills of society and be unencumbered. I think a lot of us, even those of us who don't have actual wilderness skills or the ability to strike out on our own, do romanticize what it could feel like to be free the way that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were once free, picking up and like putting their whole life on their back and moving to a new place. So I like totally understand that promise. And we'll want to understand some of the ways in which that promise is not

fulfilled maybe later in the conversation, but I totally get the pitch. So you grew up with kind hippie parents, like that was their mentality. How did they come to it? It's kind of interesting. So they grew up in the Midwest. My mom's from Iowa. My dad's from Minnesota. Never had heard of living in our vs or being nomadic or honestly any of the more like crunchy habits that a lot of people have today. My mom was discovering cloth diapers. She was going raw food. She was composting. She was discovering all of this in 2007, right whenever a lot of it was bubbling up, I think, in society. I was three years old. She was exploring different things, like how to be a good mom, how to like raise kids, homeschooling, unschooling, like all these different things. And

she stumbled upon RV life and living in RVs and traveling around and it just piqued her attention. She brought it to my dad, and he was like, sure, why not? So they bought a little VW bus, traveled around in it for like three months on the occasional trip. They still had a house at this point. They were kind of testing it out, and they were like, we love this, but we're going to need something bigger. So they bought their first RV, downsized everything, sold everything, and moved into an RV full time. The craziest thing about this RV is that it fully ran off of veggie oil from fast food restaurants. And their first, like, tour around the U.S. was teaching people how the RV ran off veggie oil.

They were like original broke RV people. They slept in people's driveways for free. Reached out to just random people. My mom had a blog where she was sharing all of this. They were dirt cheap at the beginning and they just made it work. And then the rest is history. They just kept buying RVs and just couldn't get off the road. They were inducted into the cult.

So I'm wondering today, who do you think are some of the core leaders driving the cult? of van life? Are they influencers? Are they brand founders? Like, who are these people? I think each individual has someone that sparked the interest for them. For me, there are these YouTubers. Their names are Amon and Beck. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they... Those were the van lifers. I followed. Amin and Beck, like, they ran my life for so many years. Like, everything they did, I wanted to do. They are one of the reasons why I bought a Sprinter van. I loved their van. I loved how they were living their life. So for me, it's Amin and Beck. I think for different people, it's different creators, different YouTubers. There's a couple other OG ones. Like Kara and Nate

are another really big Van Life couple that's mostly on YouTube. I will say it's mostly the YouTubers that started in like 2014 that really built up the hype around Van Life and now all of the influencers who are doing Van Life content creation now are just piggybacking off of the movement that they kind of started, like the next movement of Van Life. even know what nomad lifestyle or van lifing would be without youtube like you need youtube a to learn how to do it and be to be inspired i agree with you i feel like youtube even in the content creation world like that is the baseline that is where everybody started and then eventually like moved over to instagram and ticot and whatever new app is coming out so i i agree with you youtube is

that base i feel like if you can look at anybody as a leader it would be the bigger like van life YouTubers. Van life to me, it kind of feels like the YouTube intersection between like the family vlogger and the more masculine travel content. It's kind of for people who aren't really into either of those, but still want something escapist they can like project on to. Because I think a lot of the time, the intimacy of the van life content is a big part of it too, where it's like, oh, just me and my partner will go run away and frolic somewhere tropical that looks nothing like where I live and like it'll be beautiful and we'll vlog it and eat fruits and like our remember what I saw. The big come up of it was also watching a lot of the like raw fruit

vegan movement and like all of these different crunchy cults overlapped. And I think it really illustrates the horseshoe that we see time and time again on sounds like a cult of like where the crunchy gets conservative. And I feel like Van Life really tackles all of it. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, I feel like I've teetered up against so many of these YouTube corners that make me feel paranoid about potentially accidentally supporting someone who's like low key a conspiratialist and not even know it. Like, I went vegan for four years because of YouTube. I was this close to buying a tiny house in the pandemic because of YouTube. That would be so cute for you. I know. Honestly, though. Like, I still might do it. I love,

tiny house, tiny girl, tiny commune. Hello. Let's do it. But I feel like Van Life was the perfect cult for me to watch from afar because it is escapist. It is really. rugged, but ultimately at the end of the day, it was about simplicity. It was about asking questions like, what are my values? What actually do I want out of life? These are the existential culty questions that Van Life specifically asked a lot of its viewers to answer. I want to ask you, Bella, what like existential questions do you think the cult of Van Life was helping you answer and is helping you answer. When I personally started van life, it was right after a breakup. And I do think with a lot of people, this is a theme that I see. It's either someone has a breakup or they get out of the

military, have a divorce, lose their job. Like, there is something that has been lost in their life that they're trying to find through travel, through van life, through living on the road, however you want to say it. And that is the common theme I have found with a lot of people I have met. It's like they lost something and they went to find it. And the answer for them was van life. That was their catalyst to find what they're looking for. Whether that is closure, whether it's adventure, whether it's experience, friendships, all of the above, they went searching for that. For me, it's interesting because even though I had a breakup and then bought my van, so that kind of played into it, Living in a van, for me, was more of coming home. So, like, that was my purpose. It was kind of a

homecoming rather than this big thing happened. I need to run away and find something new and get out of my old habits and routines. Moving into a van was, I want to go back to what I knew as a kid. And it was a very comfortable thing. I integrated into van life way easier than a lot of my friends did because I knew how it worked. I knew the stresses of van life. The mentality I had to have going into van life and also you just have to have a specific fire to like maintain van life. And I feel like I was lucky enough to go into it with said like fire in my soul. This reminds me of like a slightly fringier version of like the wave of middle aged women who wanted to like go to a yoga retreat after reading Eat, Pray, Love. Or like the Cheryl Strayed wild thing. I feel like there

are certain super super mainstream pieces of media that will inspire. like the average everyday, restless, on-wee-saturated suburban mom to like want to go have an adventure. Have you just gone through a breakup? Did COVID like fuck up your college or career plans? You know, what if you could start over and reject mainstream society and like live on nothing but a sprinter van and your husky and some like baggy pants you made yourself? I'm in. I know. I think that is like such a compelling. I do. idea and to your point, I think there are probably a lot of people who can't handle it when they actually get into it. We do want to ask some questions about the insidery click of

Van Life and about how that might contribute to its culty vibes. Of course. You gave us a great one off the top with Nomad. Can you give us some other particularly culty lingo or vocab that you have picked up in your travels? The only other two I can think of, the first one is a carpet walker. This is my personal favorite. This is someone who lives in an apartment or is a van lifer that has moved into a house. You're a carpet walker now. That sounds Scientology coded as fuck because it's like, let me take a really normal thing and inflect such terribleness onto it. Turn it into a slur. Yeah, phrases like that are what, like, okay, this is a colt. I'm going to highlight a cult that some of my friends are in. The barefoot shoes

cult. This is a cult that really intrigues me. I feel like this is part of that. Oh, my God. That's so good. I mean, it's us versus them. Terminology meant to shame defectors, right? Exactly. No, literally. I mean, people move into apartments, leave Van Life, were immediately just like, oh my word, you carpet walker. You carpet walker. You carpet walker. It sounds dirty. It does. Well, because it sounds like another carpet theme. It's one I can think of, and then one that I personally had as a kid, because I grew up in RV parks. We were in our V parks for weeks on end. And then you'd have people come in on the weekends and make everything rowdy and be annoying and it would get busy. And so we just call them weekenders. We'd be like, oh, the weekenders are here. You can get protein at home or

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Okay, so I am curious to hear about how some people might get recruited to Van Life, not necessarily like a Scientologist passing out flyers on the street, but like they'll get lured in by how amazing it looks online and then show up and it's maybe not what they thought. Is Van Life as freeing as it seems online? or are there sort of like unspoken rules, challenges, maybe even some bait and switches that outsiders aren't privy to? I would say Van Life is as freeing as it is made out to be on social media for the people that know how to handle the struggles that come with Van Life. Van Life comes with a very specific set of issues if you want to call it or struggles that you have in your day-to-day

life, one of them being you really don't turn off. Your brain is always going. You can't just go back to your apartment that you know you can be in that has air conditioning and is nice and is a safe space. You are always thinking of where you're going to sleep. You're always thinking about if you're running out of something, propane, water, gas. What do I need next to survive, quote unquote? Your space gets dirty quickly. You need to find places to throw out trash. There are so many questions in your day-to-day that are not stressful to the person that can handle them, but are stressful to the person that is not prepared to handle those things. So they go into it with the perspective that van life is this like perfect butterflies and rainbows and you're always going to be camping with

your back doors open to the mountains and you can camp anywhere and like everything is easy to find and it's so stress-free because you don't have to deal with an apartment or a car or a job or whatever, but it comes with its own set of struggles and rules. Like, there are a lot of rules, like, as a van life or even just with the law. Like, you think of living in a van. And when I first moved into my van, I was so unaware of even just local laws and rules that come with sleeping in your vehicle. It is illegal in a lot of places to sleep in your vehicle. If people don't know this, like, you're getting knocked on, you're getting tickets. And it just comes with knowing where you're because you can obviously avoid those issues if you know these things. But if an outsider comes

into Van Life and is just moving into their rig, they're not going to know any of these things. And it's stuff you have to learn over time. But I also think it's stuff that it's good to be prepared to know about, which is why I try and talk about it. This is what Van Life is actually like on my own social media and stuff and lean away from the super aesthetic side because there's a lot of people that show it's super aesthetic and freeing, but you also have to be aware that it comes with challenges as well like anything. For sure. I'm thinking about how earlier you said that you, because you were kind of indoctrinated at birth, had a much easier time working your way back into modern van life lifestyle than

maybe some people who found it via Pinterest or just through the modern online days. I'm wondering about that gap between the kind of person who sees it and wants it and like what actually gives someone that fire you were talking about earlier and make someone like a good candidate for this to be a sustainable lifestyle. So beyond just like preparation, do you think there are any specific like qualities or predispositions that make someone more apt for van life? I would say naturally someone who's going to go into van life is going to be quite independent and have ambition and also drive. If you don't have independence and you don't have ambition, van life is probably going to come to a halt. Because everybody who lives in a van and has

moved into a van has had to go through the stage of, what if I live in a van? I could potentially do this. What are the action steps to do this? Okay, I'm going to fully commit. And then they committed to it. And they had enough independence and belief in themselves that they were able to jump into that. And they also had enough drive and ambition that they were able to pull the trigger and actually buy a van or actually move into their car or actually take the road trip that they were talking about. Van life doesn't just happen on its own. It's something you really have to work towards and put into motion on your own, especially for, like, a person coming from the background of

lived in a suburban neighborhood for 20 years of their life, went to school, went to college, and is looking at van life. They're not going to have the same fire that I do, but their drive is going to be different in the way that maybe they're sick of school. They don't want to work in the job that they're working in. They don't want the life that their parents gave them when they were a kid. They want more adventure. Everybody has different motivators, and I think it just depends.

on how driven that specific person is to get on the road. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about the pressure that one might feel to live up to this like super aesthetic van lifer identity. Could you talk about that a little bit? I think the pressure to be aesthetic only exists on Instagram. You get into the actual communities of van life and that completely disappears. Being aesthetic doesn't belong in the van life community at all because you have so many different characters, so many weirdos, so many different people coming together and living their life,

that at the end of the day, no one truly matters what rig you're living in, how it looks, how nice it is, if it's perfectly clean, if you are in a $100,000 sprinter van or a $500 minivan. Nobody cares. I was just in Bend, Oregon, surrounded by probably 50 other van lifers and nomads and the rigs ranged from a box truck to a composite truck camper to a trailer to a minivan to a 2007 diesel sprinter to my sprinter which is like $60,000 to a pro master that cost $30,000 like everybody's rig is different and everybody's story is different and it's one of the reasons I love the van life community is because judgment doesn't exist and if judgment does exist it's for the right purposes like it's for the purposes who leave a trace it's for the people that

don't clean up after themselves and are leaving their shit everywhere. Those are the people we judge. It's the people that are like geotagging locations to their hundreds of thousands of followers and blasting places that can't handle like thousands of people coming to them and camping. I think that is one thing with the community as well that I love. It's like, we aren't gatekeeping. We are protecting in a way because it's like, I never share locations on my Instagram. Maybe if someone DMs me, he's like, yeah, where was this hike or like this campsite's cool, give general locations or the name of the hike, but it's like, you only get judged if you are hurting the natural habitat or hurting other van lifers to very extreme things. But like when it comes

to aesthetic or like how things look or how much money you have, it doesn't matter whatsoever. Have you seen people show up and break those rules and cause harm because they got a certain impression of the van lifer lifestyle online and then they like didn't actually know how to be? I know stories. I had some friends who were stuck in the mud and had to dig out like trenches in this road to get out a truck and they didn't fill the trenches back up. And so you're just left with these huge holes in the middle of the road when you could have just filled them back up. Like it's stuff like that, not even like leaving trash. It's just being conscious of the people that are coming next and also just the natural habitat because like we do drive giant rigs. I would say

being conscious of being on established roads as well. I have seen people who will just drive off of the established road and go into really fragile environments that are not meant to be driven on whatsoever. That's when you'll find judgment. I think the difference is like if they know that that is wrong or if they're ignorant to that being wrong. And I always believe that like people can be taught and people can learn to be good stewards of the land that we technically get to live on. Because like as van lifers like public land and wild land in general is 90% of where we live. So like we want to we want to be kind to it, you know? Of course. Okay. So admittedly, I'm not on the super the van life side of YouTube. Most of where I do see the van life content is Instagram, the more aesthetic side of

van life, because I see the more HGTV side of it. The like I'm creating my van or flipping this school bus or whatever to begin my nomad journey. And it is such an interesting cult to me because there are a lot of entry costs that don't necessarily exist in a lot of cults, although they are ultimately an investment in their future. Because as you said, you're not paying for an apartment. But then I do think about how much more dangerous or I guess how much less stable. I mean, duh, that makes it when you do want to opt out later if you decide, hey, this isn't for me and this is nothing like it looked on Instagram. could you talk a little bit about the entry and exit costs associated with van life? I think gauging exact entry costs for van life is difficult because like I've said before,

there's so many different ways to do it. For me, my entry cost was really high. My entry cost was a $27,000 loan on an old Amazon cargo van that I wanted to buy, a sprinter. And then another roughly $30,000 that I put into the build because I knew for a fact I wanted to live in it for years. That's my own personal story because I grew up on the road. I know I want to do this for five years. It made sense to invest in a rig that costed more that wasn't going to break down, that had all the amenities I wanted. Like, I have an oven. I have a big fridge. I have a toilet. I have tons of batteries that can keep me off grid for days. She's glamping. I'm not roughing it in here by any means and I didn't want to. I think for the average person that is thinking about getting on the road, they can make their entry.

cost so much lower by doing some trial and error. Like if you have a car, you can put your seats down, you can buy a sleeping pad, you can put a pillow in there, get a couple twinkle lights, get some bins with your clothes, a little propane stove that you can cook on outside, and take a weekend camping trip. Like, see if you enjoy it. And then that's when you can gauge how much you want to spend. So if you want to spend $5,000 on a little junker van that might break down and cost you $10,000 in repairs down the road, you can, or you can choose to invest in, say, a more expensive rig that may not break down, but is going to last you for a longer period of time. Entry cost is high, but for anything, I think taking small steps is mandatory, especially for the people

that don't know if they want to do it. So if you're not 100% certain, maybe don't go and take out a giant loan on a van. Like, it may not be wise. Just small steps. Use the car that you already have and take a road trip. Like, I know so many people living out of their car, and it is far more doable than people think. It's another reason why I love social media, because there are so many people living out of their cars. Like, maybe on the side of social media that you guys are on, it's more so, like, big vans and expensive sprinters and buildouts. With a lot of my friends, though, it's like, they're living out of cars, and they're making it work, and they're working seasonal jobs, and they're doing it for a short period of time and saving and being really smart

financially. And so I definitely think you can get on that side of van life Instagram and roadlife Instagram and be more inspired in that way to keep costs low if that's more realistic for you. Oh my God. Totally. Now that you're saying that I realize my YouTube algorithm at some point changed to people who are living much more bare bones out of their car and it was not like aesthetic and covered in like Pinterest plants. It was super super utilitarian. And I think that's an important aspect of the algorithm to tap into too because remodeling an airstream or a school bus and like living in big sir just sounds like a recipe for a money pit that never goes anywhere to me at least i guess more sort of cerebrally i want to ask if you think the transient nature

of van life contributes to or dilutes the culty vibes at all because on one hand I'm thinking like, okay, a classic cult is a commune where a bunch of people are constantly together and you forget where you end and another person begins. Whereas Van Life is a lot of time alone, but wherever you go, there you are. So I guess I'm just wondering if like the peripatetic traveling adventure vibes, how that overlaps with cultishness, in your opinion. Van Life forces you to confront a lot of your problems, which I think is interesting. I feel like if you're quote-unquote joining a cult like we were talking about earlier. It's like you're going because something broke down in your life or you're running away from something or you're trying to make

a big change to discover this fix. But I've always said that van life will by no means get rid of your problems. They will amplify them because you are so much more emotional in a van. You are so much more overwhelmed in a van. Everything, I will be honest, is like twice as hard in a rig because of just the nature of it. And so I think van life doesn't dilute anything in your life. I think it makes you confront the issues that you've potentially had and honestly work through them. I've had to work through a lot of stuff getting on the road and I'm now even working on being

alone. This is an interesting one because you said like van life is being alone a lot of the time. For me, I'm the complete opposite. I have barely spent any time alone because I immediately sought out community. I stock people on Instagram. I found meetups. I went on Facebook. I went up to van lifers in parking lots. Like, I wanted community so bad. And I wasn't allowing myself to be alone. And over the last probably month, I realized that's my thing I need to confront. Like, the thing I need to confront is the fact that I struggle to be alone in a way, which I think is interesting because many people assume that van lifers, you're getting on the road to be alone. and you're going to be isolated in nature and, like, not talk to anyone, which is a very real part of van life. I will be honest. Like, you can go drive your van into the middle of nowhere and not talk to people for weeks. I never did that. I don't do that. And so I'm learning to be alone while living in my van because it gets lonely. All you have is like 70 square feet and half of that is your bed. You have nowhere to go. Like, you can go outside, but sometimes it just like you physically can't think of anything to do. And so dealing with that loneliness is actually something I've been working through.

which has been interesting. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, there are way fewer distractions away from Oh, yeah. Your angst. There's zero distractions. You are so forced to just confront all of it. And for me, like, my work is my life. And so, like, I can't go to work and forget about my issues and distract myself. My work is so embedded in who I am and, like, what I'm doing, living in a van, that I have to confront them every day. And I'm like, oh, my word, sometimes I wish I could just escape Okay. We've talked a lot about all of the wonderful things that Van Life can offer you in all of the ways in which it's kind of similar to other Colts and what it borrows from other Colts and also a lot of ways in that it's very unique. If you had to sum up one key thing that Van Life can teach you that you can't find in any other Colt, what do you think that would be? I feel like Van Life teaches you resilience and the art of adapting. Like adapting to certain situations is probably the biggest thing I have learned living in a van. When I lived in my apartment or when I was living at home, like I would have something happened to me. My situation would change. Emotional stuff would happen

and it was just like an immediate breakdown. And I was like allowed to break down. But in a van, you have to very quickly adapt to the situation. Look at what's going on in your life. Look at what's going on in your van and be like, all right, what is the most reasonable thing I can do right now? because I have to maintain a level head. Like it is very hard to completely be breaking down while you're in a van and like having a super hard life lesson because like I said, you always have to be on. Like you can't just shut off. So like you have different things like whether it's breakdowns or loneliness or whatever you're feeling. Like you can feel those things. But you have to adapt to those emotions and just be like, okay, I am going to be like okay in this scenario. I also will say,

another lesson and it may seem counterintuitive but van life forces you to ground yourself in every scenario people think of being grounded as like okay I am in one place I am steady I am stable but that grounding comes from quite literally yourself like you are the person that has to be grounded and you keep yourself grounded when everything is going crazy because your house is on wheels you don't know where you're sleeping. There might be a freak storm coming. Like a breakdown is happening. You learn to ground yourself and to like fully be there. And like I said, adapt to things. Van life, I'm going to be honest. I'm realizing this is a very spiritual experience. It's quite interesting. Well, it's so interesting because it is so fucking real. Like when I think about me

joining the cult of veganism, whatever, and I again, I mean that with fondness. And I still do try to abide by a lot of those values, blah, blah, blah, even though I, you. cheese now. I wasn't uprooting my whole house to be vegan, you know? Like, it's just wild because to follow a van life or on YouTube or Instagram, you're just like looking at beautiful images. But to actually live that life, it gets so fucking real, so fucking fast. And I can't necessarily think of another cult we've covered so far on the show where things get that real that fast when you start to go from a fan or a follower to a member or like a liver and breather. Well, I think a lot of cults, their interest is imparting their reality on other people

and on their followers and spreading the ideology and evangelizing, whereas the whole ideology behind Van Life is putting yourself in different situations and doing pretty much all of the traveling externally and therefore also internally, whereas other more traditional cults gain a lot more from you being static in both of those ways. Yes. Oh my God. Okay. So like, speaking of things getting real, really fast, my mind, of course, goes to some worst case scenarios with Van Life. I mean, I think of like Gabby Petito, you know, like it was like a domestic abuse, intimate partner violence nightmare. And then it also started a conversation about the missing white woman phenomenon in our society because everybody freaked out about what she went missing. And that happens to black and brown women all the time. And there's not the same. media attention. So anyways, it's such a romanticized cult, but it gets so real so fast. What are some of the worst potential scenarios from that? I was almost in a worst case scenario. Nothing crazy, but like my van wouldn't start in the middle of nowhere with no service and the closest

town was an hour drive away. And I got so lucky to have one of my friends there, but I just constantly think like I didn't have my Starlink, which is the Wi-Fi that I use. I can have Wi-Fi anywhere with Starlink. And no cell service. I was in the middle of nowhere. If I hadn't had my friend there with me, I would have been walking to the side of the road. I would have been hitchhiking to try and get help. I would have been stranded. That is scary worst-case scenario, which I think with a lot of worst-case scenarios in van life, they are preventable if you take the right measures to be safe. So as a solo female, I have Starlink, so I can have Wi-Fi anywhere. And I leave it on. If I need to call my mom, if I need to call 911, if I need to get a tow, like, whatever it is, I have Wi-Fi. I don't have to worry about being out of service, which I think is where a lot of, like, the worst-case scenario things happen. Because if you don't have service, like, what are you going to do? You're in the middle of nowhere. Like, it is scary to think about. And also, like, I have heard of cases of, like, stalking. As a influencer, content creator, that's one of, like, the things that scares me the most is people stalking me because, like, I have a recognize.

van. I've been recognized out in public, all by very sweet humans who I don't fear whatsoever, but like, when you live in public, that's scary. Yeah. If someone sees me get in my van and is crazy and, like, wants to follow me. I'm like, what do I do in that scenario, you know? And obviously, like, if you see them following you, you drive to the police station. There are a lot of worst case scenarios, but at the end of the day, it's all about trusting your gut and just being really smart. Like, you can't be dumb and live in a van. Well, that's a lie. You can be dumb and live in a van, but, like, you want to try to not be dumb and live in a van. If you don't trust your gut, and if you are not thinking about how you can get out of a situation,

if this happened, like, if something happened, if you're not constantly, like, thinking ahead or being wise, like, you can get yourself in some really shitty situations. Like, I've parked in places in San Diego at midnight, 1 a.m. in the morning, I've pulled up to park, and I get there and I'm super sketched out, and I'm like, I'm leaving. I don't trust this. I don't know if someone's going to try and break into my van. I don't know if I'm going to get knocked on. I don't know what's going to happen. But my gut told me to leave.

Like, I've pulled up to all sort of spots in the middle of nowhere where I've been like, I don't want to camp here. This feels wrong in my gut. So, yeah, I think one of the biggest consequences is not listening to your gut. And I don't want to know what would have happened if in one of the like 50 scenarios where I felt unsafe, what would have happened if I didn't leave, you know? It's scary a little bit. Oh, fully.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I probably would feel so fucking. terrified most of the time personally. Yeah, being solo on the road, like, you take precautions. Yeah. And I'm intrigued to hear more about how social media interacts with that, both in terms of like how you were talking about the lack of work-life balance and the content creation aspect interferes with a more holistic connection with nature or the real van life of some kind. But also from the angle of, I follow a lot of like solo female travelers. Right now, I'm watching a lot of

backpackers. And I see a lot of the time when they do document their like altercations or unsafe experiences they've had and like they film like, this is how I got myself out of it. This is how I behaved in this situation. A lot of the time, which is so routine for women on the internet talking about anything, the comments are full of these women getting blamed for traveling by themselves or for however way they react no matter what it is. And it's really such a shame because it's like, no, we should be able to travel and we should be able to document it and like, yes, it's probably not the safest to go to the middle of nowhere as a woman alone. But I don't think that should always override my human desire to go frolic in nature,

damn it. And like, I don't want to be villainized for that. So I'm just curious to hear more your thoughts on that. Yeah. I think blaming the people that are the victims, it's like, you can't do that. If there's a, say, a guy also in the middle of nowhere that sees this solo female, like, why not blame him for going up to her? And like, like, Literally. Make her feel unsafe. Like, it just goes back to trusting yourself. It's very safe to be in the middle of nowhere.

Honestly, like, I feel safer being on public land in the middle of nowhere than I do being in a city. Because, like, city, people are more dangerous. And, like, if someone's going to be also out in the middle of nowhere, I'm going to be honest, like, I don't think they're going to be bothering me. We're both out here. Like, why would we want to talk to people, you know? Much less kill them.

I know. I think it's like, it's a lot of work. I will be honest. Also, you look at the. statistics of women that get killed or kidnapped or whatever and it is a far higher chance that's going to be someone that knows them like it is very very rare that it is a stranger that is attacking somebody like there is always an intention and you it's like a one and however many that a random person who is going to get attacked by another person you're more likely to

get attacked by like a bear like you leave food out and a bear comes and like comes to your camp be like, oh, hello. Okay. I know. I feel like we grew up hearing like stranger danger and we remember it because it rhymes, but there needs to be a rhyming phrase like, boyfriend. Family friend danger. Yeah, literally. Family friend danger. What rhymes with family friend. Yeah. Those are the people. Family friend, shmammily, don't do that. Family friend, relationship end. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel like we're coming to understand the shape, size, weight, make and model of this cult. We want to ask one more question and then we want to play a little game. What would you tell

someone with zero experience who is thinking of starting their hashtag Van Life journey? The first thing that I would want this person to know is that Van Life is one of the most welcoming communities that I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. And that I think that people see social media and are immediately like, oh man, it's all these influencers. They're just going to gatekeep. Nobody wants to be friends with me. Like, I'm just this new person getting on the road. Biggest lie. Look yourself in the mirror. Say your affirmation and be like, people in the Van Life community want to be my friend. We want to welcome people and we want people to get on the road. Like, we love seeing new people. There's so many different characters.

There's so many different people like you will find a spot within the community. The second thing, which is more practical, is like I was saying earlier, is start small. Do not feel the pressure to get a super expensive van, to put all your life savings into this, to do something crazy, unless you want to. I am a huge advocate for the full send. I love it. Like, I love people who just dive into the deep end. But if you want to start and you're not sure, like, take small steps, take a weekend

trip, go on a little road trip, take some time off, do some hiking, get out into nature, figure out what you want to do with it, and just release the pressure that you, you may feel seeing everybody on social media. I also think it's good to think about the fact that everyone you see on social media is in their step 20. You are at your step one. And it is unfair to you to compare yourself to someone who has gone through all of the steps that you still have to go through to get to where they're at.

So you're at step one and everybody had a step one and you are going to get to where they're at. But you can't compare yourself yet because you're just starting just like they did. And you don't see that often. You don't see where they started. You just see where they're at. And that's what you compare yourself to. So don't do that.

Be kind to yourself. Actually, something that you said just there reminded me of some of the comments you were making about, like, the lack of work-life balance because your job is your life and your life is your job. Do you think people who are not only van lifers, but also influencers? Do you think that makes the barrier to exit higher? Because if you stop van-lifing, people will be. think you, like, betrayed them? Man, I don't know if it's, like, betrayal, but people just get sad. We love every, like, we are such a close-knit community that it's like, if someone leaves van life, like, oh, no, you're going to live in a house and can't just come camp with us in the

middle of nowhere for weeks on end. This is, like, so sad for us and for you. You're going to be a carpet walker. No, I think there's so much love in the community and, like, any time we're like, oh, you moved into a house, there's an air of joking to it and also maybe a little bit of jealousy because I do think, like, oh, van lifers eventually want to live in a house, like, want to have land. An end goal for a lot of van lifers is to have land. Have a tiny house to, like, have a place that you can call home. But it's like, yeah, if someone leaves the road, you're going to be sad. Like, you're going to miss them. We're kind of family, you know? I had never thought about that before that, like, people who are inside of a cult, whether it's a

lighthearted cult or a more destructive one, when people that they used to commune with leave, we think all the time about like the shame and the shunning, but I've actually never thought about how some people actually might be a little jealous. Because like everybody who throws their whole self into an extreme lifestyle, there's probably some part of them who's wondering like, I wonder if I had made a different choice. Yeah. What if I committed a little less hard. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think it's very, very like baseline jealousy because everybody who's on the road like loves being on the road but there is like I think for everybody there is that desire to have a place and to settle in and to be able to like call somewhere home like after living on the road for

however many years like I know people who lived on the road for four or five years and have gotten houses because they're just like I loved my time living in a van I love my time being on the road but now it's time for stability and like that's totally okay they had their time they lived their life and now they're going into a different season and it's okay even if for so no one's really expected to do it forever and ever and ever. Yeah, no one's expected to do it forever, no. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, it's something that I think once you start traveling, it's hard to get rid of the itch to continue to travel. Yeah. Okay, before we let you go off on the rest of your life's adventure, we're going to play a little game. It's just a classic, would you rather? So,

So we're going to present some would-you-rather scenarios having to do with the cult of van life versus a few of the other modern-day cults we've covered on the show, and you'll just have to say which you would rather choose. Would you rather spend your winter van-lifing through Alaska with a broken heater because you committed to the trip or have to sell a small boutique's worth of Lula-Row leggings? Oh gosh. Probably the leggings because I've done van life without a heater and in Alaska my rear-wheel drive van wouldn't survive. I would get stuck and I would get frostbite. I would die.

You would die. I would die. Yeah, you would die. Would you rather get quizzed on last night's new Love Island episode every single morning or go on a road trip where you have to memorize your day's directions before leaving? Oh, my brain has already rotted from social media, so I'd probably just debrief Love Island. I am so directionally unaware. I would get on to the highway and I I would not know where I'm going. I'm like, which exit was it again? Like, I have no clue. Oh, my God. Wait, how old are you, Bella? I'm 21. Reese just turned 22 yesterday. But neither of you have ever read a paper map. No. That's so crazy. Yes, do ones like on the wall count? Like, I have like, help.

No, I mean, like, used a map to navigate. No. Disneyland. I need one. I need one. Not to be that bitch, but I do think it is useful to learn how to read an analog paper map. map. Oh, obviously. I read my Google map. Yeah. I look at, I look at it. Okay, great. Yeah. Don't out your brain too much. Next. Would you rather cook all of your meals for the next year via induction burner or buy all of your groceries from Airwan? Oh, I'm already like a bushy grocery girl. Like, I spend so much money on groceries. I'm like, what's a couple more hundred dollars, you know? I would say Airwan because I hate induction. That's my hot take is I hate induction stoves.

I have a gas stove in my van and yeah, I will never use induction. And you're entitled to that. Yeah. Great. Only as hot a take as the induction burner gets, which is never hot enough, am I right? I knew you were going to say that. Literally. Would you rather, for the rest of your days, live in a renovated school bus or,

at a boarding school. Probably the school bus. Schoolies are sick. Like, right? I see a lot of those are cute. Schools are so cute. I would, the only thing is I'm six feet tall. And so school buses are short. They are for children. That's true. I feel like that would present just a little bit of an issue. But I mean, I feel like boarding school wouldn't be that much better because boarding schools are also child sides. Like the twin bed would probably. Yeah, I know. Wouldn't do boarding school. At least if I was in a schooly, I could still like move around. Would you rather address a leak in your compost toilet or only use rave porta-potties for a week? I've dealt with some nasty shit in my compost toilet.

So, like, I would address a leak. Also, like, my pee jug has overflowed into my van before. And I had, like, she's trapped. I had piss all over my floor the first week I lived in my van. So I think I could do it. You are made of strong stuff. Bella, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. If people want to keep up with you and your hashtag van life, hashtag juror, hashtag me, where can they do that? You can find me on

Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at The Loan Soul. Soul is S-O-L. But yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I've been listening to this podcast for years. You DM'd me and I like, no, I'm, I'm dead ass. Like, you DM me and I freaked out because I was like, I've been listening to this podcast for so long. That's amazing. Okay. Well, we've had a lot of cults cozyed up next to Van Life. Oh, yes. I love all of it.

Thank you so much. Okay, Reese. Out of these three cult categories, live your life. Watch you back and get the fuck out. What do you think the cult of van life falls into? This is a tricky one for me because it's one that like, I think if you do it right could be really good for you and is probably like builds a lot of character

in ways that a lot of people really need. But I think you can be really screwed if you do it wrong. And I hope it's not a large proportion of people that rush into it unknowingly and unpreparedly. And just because the experience can vary truly, much. And like, you can van life at any level. Like, if you have a driver's license, you can find a way to do it. And I think it makes it both less and way more culty, because that's very dangerous. And I think for that reason, I'm going to go watch your back. Interesting. You know,

I think that van life is risky for sure, but not in a culty way. Like, I think the culty aspects of it, like the slight us versus them dynamics, like the true van lifers and veterans from the newcomer. and weekenders and carpet walkers. The kind of like gentle, false aspirational promise of the social media van lifers who are like, this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, whatever. Like all of those culty aspects, I think are a live your life. But I do think as we've learned, like it can be dangerous. It can put you in harm's way. It can be a money pit. It can fail to live up to your expectations. but I don't think those risks are necessarily culty. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah.

Like I think the exit cost being like literal homelessness and like not really knowing what you're doing with your life next is very scary. But I do think like the fact that it is so build your own adventure. I see your point. I think makes it slightly less culty. Hmm. No, maybe now I'm changing my mind because I think our guests went into it with a lot of awareness and experience. but I can imagine that some people like literally throw away their life to go all in on van life and it doesn't work out and then what? That's kind of my thought. It's just like it looks as easy as a few IKEA DIYs when you're watching an Instagram

real of it and then it's like the plumbing and what is functional your house doesn't work. I think that's a bigger deal than people realize it is. I know. I think I'm like still brainwashed by the van lifers I've seen online. I'm like, how bad can it be? But yeah, no, I think it's probably closer to a watcher back now that I'm thinking about it. Just look in your rear view. I don't know.

I liked what Bella said about go camping. Yeah, like test it out. Yeah. And I like that the community allows that. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the green flag for me is that you're not so shamed for participating in it casually or for leaving that you have to go all in. You actually don't.

And I think that's cool. Yeah. Like, cars are ultimately something that people do usually own secondarily. So I think it is kind of, and especially because it rose during COVID, a hobby to a lot of people. And I think that, like, even if it is your life, you can't really get mad at the people for whom it's just a hobby. Totally. Makes it less coldy. I agree.

Okay. So maybe it's like a light watcher back, but also literally watch your fucking back if you go out there. Just be, like, really sure you want to join this goal if he joined this goal. Yeah, exactly. Right, either dip one toe in or be so, so, so, so, so sure. Well, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult.

Next week, but in the meantime, stay culty. But not too guilty. Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Podcaven. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montpel and Reese Oliver. This episode was produced by Reese Oliver. 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 like 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 O overthinking, notes on modern irrationality and words slut a feminist guide to taking back the English language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71. 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.