Was I In A Cult? - OneTaste: "Empire of Orgasm"

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

NOTE: This episode discusses sex, sexual exploitation, coercion, and sexual abuse.  What happens when female empowerment, Silicon Valley startup culture, spiritual enlightenment, and clitoral stroking walk into a fluorescent-lit conference room? You get OneTaste. In this episode, we sit down with Bloomberg investigative journalist Ellen Huet, author of Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult, to unpack the rise and fall of OneTaste, the orgasmic meditation company founded by Nicole Daedone that promised connection, healing, and transformation through a 15-minute partnered orgasm practice called OM (Orgasmic Meditation). But behind the language of liberation and "turn-on" were allegations of sexual coercion, financial exploitation, sexual abuse, forced labor, and a belief system that taught members their discomfort was just something to push through on the path to enlightenment.  Ellen walks us through how her 2018 investigation helped expose the darker side of the company, the criminal case that followed, and why OneTaste's story is not just about sex. It's about power, belonging, manipulation, and the very human longing to be seen.   FIND ELLEN:  Instagram: @ehuet  Book: Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult  Bloomberg: bloomberg.com/authors/ASmGayS_jTQ/ellen-huet__ ___________________________________ FOLLOW US  → For more culty content — follow us on Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacult SUPPORT THE SHOW Join our Patreon! Get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and behind-the-scenes conversations. (And our forever gratitude)   HAVE A CULTY STORY? Email us → [e-mail]

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Libson or its affiliates. Guest accounts are personal recollections shared from their own perspectives. References to specific individuals, organizations, or groups are presented as commentary, opinion, and personal experience and should not be interpreted as definitive statement of fact. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Quick heads up before we start. This episode talks openly about sex, orgasms, because those two don't always go together. Sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. Please take care while listening.

I would wait till after drop off to press play on this one. Welcome back, everyone, to Was I in a cult? I'm Tyler Mesa. And over here, I am Liz Ayakuzi. Now today, we are diving back into the world of one taste. Muff diving, that is. Ten seconds in and Liz already has a juvenile joke. Wasting no time, Liz.

Liz, my 15-year-old boy co-host. Talking about sex and you've got to say diving. I did not set you up. I said the word diving and you found the dirty, juvenile. Sure, you did. That was on purpose. One taste, everyone, of course, is the orgasmic meditation company slash spiritual, sexual,

wellness startup slash alleged sex cult founded by Nicole de Dawn. Nicole, a woman who looked at Silicon Valley in the early 2000s. This was a place that was already full of men trying to disrupt taxis and hotels and dating and attention spans

and eventually our own American democracy. And she said, well, cool, let's disrupt orgasms as well. Specifically, the female orgasm or more accurately the concept of the female orgasm as a mindfulness practice, spiritual path, and eventually federal criminal case. Now, I know you ladies, always boast, always boast about the power of the female orgasm. Don't be jealous, Tyler. There's a slight tinge of jealousy. But this, one taste, this takes it to a whole

different level. But most perplexing is the name one taste. It sounds like a cute little cafe that has little hors d'oeuvres. Are you wondering where it comes from? I know the answer. Please. Please. The name comes from a Buddhist idea that all of life, pleasure and pain, desire and discomfort, can be met with the same one awareness.

I think it's a stretch, but. I will say, and having done over 100 of these episodes so far, cult leaders sure do love to take ancient philosophies and just put their own little sticker on it. They're just a cover band. That's what it feels like. And claiming they wrote the song. That's true. That's the difference. Yeah. That is the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You cover band can cover the Beatles, but at least they're saying this is the Beatles. Yeah. Coal leaders take the Beatles and say, I wrote that song. Yeah. You're like, no, actually you didn't. Change a word or two. Yeah. Now, today, we are going to look at one

taste through the reporting of Bloomberg investigative journalist Ellen Hewitt, author of Empire of Orgasm, sex power, and the downfall of a wellness cult. She had been following this story for years, and in 2018 published a major investigation into the darker side of one taste. And her reporting was followed by the FBI investigation, so, you know, just a little casual article that may have helped bring down an entire orgasm empire. The power of the pen. No big deal. Along the way, a founder Nicole Dodone herself became strangely aware of Ellen. Which we will get into an abit as well as, oh my God, all the insane stuff that Nicole is up to currently from her jail cell.

Wouldn't have it any other way. One taste grew into an expensive self-help empire with courses costing tens of thousands of dollars, celebrity followers, wealthy investors, communal living houses, and devoted members who believed the practice could completely transform their lives. Until former members started coming forward. And Ellen Hewitt started asking questions. I'm really excited we're doing this right before you have a baby, so she could go into labor any second. So we're really grateful she's here. Well, welcome to the show. Can you just briefly introduce yourself?

Yeah, I'm Ellen Hewitt. I'm an investigative reporter and I work for Bloomberg News, but I am also the author of the new book, Empire of Orgasm. The subtitle is Sex, Power and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult. And it's the story of one taste, a woman-led sexual wellness startup that was also alleged to be a sex cult that teaches a practice called Orgasmic Meditation. I've been a journalist my whole career. It's an amazing job. I feel like it's such a privilege to get to be a reporter in this day and age. You know, I started out my career as a local crime reporter in San Francisco covering breaking news, fires, crime, courthouse, animal stories.

I was kind of my training in San Francisco. And then I shifted to covering business news. And I wrote about the startup boom of San Francisco and Silicon Valley in the 2010. So, you know, and then I started working at Bloomberg and covering startups. You know, writing about technology as journalism. and the tech industry is a great opportunity for accountability journalism because there is so much money and power that's being collected in the hands of just a few people. Like if you are running one of the major tech companies in the world right now, you are way, way more powerful

than a head of state because these platforms reach billions and millions of people every day. The choices that they make have huge impact on society. And I think that that is what keeps me going. That's what keeps me interested in writing about technology and how it affects like our daily lives. Yes, Ellen came to the story as a tech and business reporter, which is important because one taste wasn't marketed as join our cult. You know, if only cults had the decency to put the actual ingredients on the label. Truth in advertising, finally, right? You know, it's rude, Colts. Yeah, just tell us what we're getting into.

It would be a whole lot easier to get out of. We could write the check accordingly. Yeah, giving money away to something that will not change my life or actually will but not in the way I want. I wanted it too. Thank you. Love, Liz. Here's my money. Ellen's whole beat is accountability journalism around companies that get very powerful by promising to change human behavior. Which one taste very much did. Just with more lube. And I was never focused on reporting on Colts. I was not writing about the sex industry or anything related to One Taste. what actually happened is in 2017, I was pitched a story about them from the angle of it's a woman-led

startup. And you write about startups. Maybe you're interested in writing about this orgasmic meditation startup. It's obviously fascinating. Like, it's a very interesting and attention-grabbing topic. Because it's sex and it's glideral stroking. It's like in the name of the spirituality of the female orgasm. Right. Is it a body hack? Is it spiritual? Is it both? Is it sex? Is it not? It invites all these question. So I was definitely curious. Well, all of the coverage about One Taste up until that point had really been focused understandably on what is orgasmic meditation, how does it work? Where did it come from? And yeah, decided to take a meeting with the leadership of the company at the time. And they kind of gave me the basic pitch. They were like, this is what orgasmic meditation is about. They called themselves

the whole foods of sexuality because it's like organic and good for you. And I wasn't sure if I was going to write a story, but I mentioned to a friend, I was like, oh, you know, I might write about orgasmic meditation or One Taste. And my friend said, oh, I know someone who you should talk to who had been involved in One Taste and didn't have a good time. And then when I met with this person and then when I met with a few other people after that, what I started to hear was that they had been financially exploited by the company, pressure to take on credit card debt in order to buy increasingly expensive courses, that they felt that they had been sexually exploited by the company in some cases, pressured to have sex with or do orgasmic meditation with customers, with other

staff members as part of furthering the business. And yeah, just that they generally felt that this was a psychologically damaging experience. And that side of the story had not been talked about before. Before this, what was your understanding of a cult and what constituted a cult? I mean, I think I had just honestly never thought about it. You know, I probably would have listed some of the well-known characteristics of a cult, which are well-known for a reason, you know, charismatic leader and, like, they're very controlling, and they have unusual beliefs. Like, I think I really would have tapped out at that level of knowledge.

Talking to these people, were they coming to calling it a cult? Or were they not aware yet? Some people in that first story called it a cult. I have since come to an understanding. in all my reporting that cults exist on a spectrum. And like, you know, I don't want the focus to always be on like, is it a cult or not? Like, I want people to understand, like, what are the characteristics that can create these types of groups and which ones are present and not.

I thought that people who end up in these high demand groups, like, they deserve our compassion. Like, they deserve our understanding of what it is that we all share as humans that makes us vulnerable to these things, rather than the experience of being judged or ostracized, That was one of the big motivating factors for me writing this book is that I wanted people to hopefully glimpse some of the same things that I had come to understand. I'm also not interested in like a black and white story. Like it's boring. I didn't want to write something that felt sensationalized.

It is really easy for me to see multiple sides of a story. And that means that when someone comes to me and shares something unusual, I can, it is, it's not hard for me to try. to imagine, like, what drew them in? What were the things about the teachings of the group that had value? Like, what about it was fun? What about these leaders' teachings are actually grounded in some kind of wisdom? Because there's a lot of that, too. And, you know, I am, again, I am someone who, as a reporter, you know, like, I like to listen to all sides. And there have been plenty of times that I have wondered if I'm not somehow capturing the whole story or, you know,

just like accepting that like the version of the story that I tell, I just have to make peace with the fact that there are going to be people who vehemently disagree with the characterizations that I make. And correct me if I'm wrong, your article that was a piece on One Taste was the first dive into One Taste in this way, correct? Yeah, it was definitely the first article to go into depth about allegations that this group was a dangerous or predatory cult. And although I don't know it for sure, it seems like it kicked off an FBI investigation, which then led to the criminal charges down the road. And then what I remember being surprised by was some of the reactions that I got from former members reaching out to me and saying, thank you so much for writing this story. Or like, I also want to talk about what I experienced and, you know, more about the history of the group. And Nicole herself, she's not really a big presence in that first story, but she is obviously the main.

character of the story of this company and this group. And so a lot of people wanted to talk to me about their experiences with Nicole. So that kind of kept my reporting going. All right, everyone. So on this show, you often hear, Liz and I extol the many virtues of our sponsor, Quince. That we do because Quince has become our demigod in a sense. We praise it. We love it. And we really actually really love the quality and the price tag because it's legit. And we talk about shopping on Quince all the time, but we never actually do it on air. So I'm going to go right now to quince.com slash cult. I'm going to get a T-shirt.

Men's Cotton V-neck tea, organic cotton. I'm going to get two of them because I tend to get blood stains on my t-shirts, not my blood. Don't ask. There's some great, great things on here. Is it something else? Something like that. And then I do slash cult. place my order,

Bing, bang, boom, and just like that, I just bought two great t-shirts on quince.com slash cult. We love quince. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Just like Tyler did, head to quince.com slash cult. You'll get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Quince is now available in Canada, too.

So go get it, Canada. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com. slash cult. Once again, don't forget the slash cult at checkout, put in our podcast, and you'll get free shipping and 365 day returns. Thank you for supporting our show, quince.com slash cult. We're back. So Ellen did write a book about One Taste, but there was also a documentary made about the cult from Netflix with the very provocative title, Orgasm, Inc, the story of One Taste. This uses years of archival footage and interviews with former members to trace One Tastes rise from Buzzy San Francisco Wellness startup to the center of very disturbing allegations.

But for a while, in circa, I don't know, 2018-ish, One Taste was a very popular practice. It got media attention, celebrities got involved, wellness world, legitimized it. In fact, Guineath-Paltrow's wellness brand gave Nicole a massive platform, endorsed her book, and had Nicole. on her Goop podcast. Chloe Kardashian praised Nicole's method on her website, writing that, quote, orgasmic meditation is the key to ultimate satisfaction and also recommended her book.

And this one might surprise you, listeners. Theo Vaughn said he did orgasmic meditation and was involved in that world. That surprised me. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. Does it, though? I don't know, Theo Vaughn? I don't see him as like the spiritual, I don't know, maybe he is. I don't listen to his podcast.

He's rubbing clits. Must a male be spiritual to rub vaginas. And Tim Ferriss, the author of Four Hour Workweek, endorsed Oming in his follow-up book, The Four Hour Body. He had two chapters dedicated to it. The 15-minute female orgasm, part un. That's French, part one. And the 15-minute female orgasm, part two. De.

Not complaining about celebrity endorsements. I do think sometimes the celebrity culture has gotten a bit out of hand. And I'm saying this as a massive celebrity myself. So I understand the slippery platform in which I stand. For those who might not know, orgasmic meditation, as developed and popularized by Nicole at One Taste, was a 15-minute partnered mindfulness, meditative, clitoral stroke, practice in which the strokinge, the person receiving the stroking, generally a woman, would get

naked from the waist down. And then the stroker, who tended to be a man, would remain fully clothed, put a glove on his left hand, some loob on his left index finger, and very gently stroke the clitoris of the woman for 15 minutes exactly. And during those 15 minutes, both partners would have no goal other than to meditate on the sensations in their body that came up during that stroking session. So the idea was that if you owned multiple times a day and made it a daily practice that you would transform your life, you would experience better relationships, better sex, better intimacy, you'd become more in touch with your desire. There were even people who claimed that it helped them get over symptoms from autoimmune

diseases or other kind of depression and other things like that. And so it was all focused on the female orgasm, if you follow this path, that you would, yeah, become enlightened. And here is Nicole herself in an interview giving a bit more insight into oming. We're dedicated to spreading connection through the practice of orgasmic meditation. Orgasmic meditation. The new technology. OM. Uh-huh.

Ome. Ohm. Like, scientifically, there is so much potential in terms of what orgasm can do if it's intersected with a practice. Okay. In my mind, the end goal is to have an extraordinarily heightened capacity for empathy. What number am I shooting for

every week? How many orgasms would I, am I looking for like in the 20s or 30s or what? No? So when I say orgasm, I have a more expanded definition. So when we talk about orgasm, most people are referring to climax and climax has

physical signifiers, really that the sympathetic nervous system has been activated. So you see like swelling, you see maybe a pool of ejaculate involuntary, If you have extended practice, you can get that from the very beginning to the end. One, okay? I hear you.

So, like, we could solve global warming by creating some warming down here. Yeah, exactly. That maybe all you like that. Yeah, I feel like you might see that on our website now. That's so powerful, yeah. I don't know who to mock more in that interview. So I will just move on. I will keep silent.

Now, keep in mind with one taste that men would stroke the female clitoris. I'm glad I put female in front of clitoris, but they were only allowed to stroke the upper left quadrant. Because apparently in one taste, the clit had zoning laws, and only one quadrant was approved for arousal. And by the way, this wasn't taught in private. One taste would hold live demonstrations in conference rooms under sexy fluorescent lighting, and members would sit in these like uncomfortable. looking plastic conference chairs and just watch. Yes. This is exactly how I would picture a sex cult in Silicon Valley.

Sacred sexuality with a bunch of dudes coding in the background. At the same time. Much like everything in Silicon Valley, it all revolves around money. Money, money, money. Well, you didn't think magic orgasming was free now, did you, Tyler? And so Nicole, when she started this company, the main business model was selling courses on first how to do orgasmic meditation, but then as people got more involved in one taste, they would often take these courses on more esoteric ideas like how to become an ignited man or they had a course called taboo in which you learned about your own taboos. And then there was a multi-month coaching program that could cost up to $20,000. and that was when you learned principles of an orgasmic lifestyle on how to become a coach

so that you could train other people to do. Anyway, you get the picture. But in the first few years of the company, the business was not making money, which, of course, is very common among startups. And the way that they kept their doors open is that Nicole met a man named Reese Jones, who's a Silicon Valley investor. And he was interested in one taste. He and Nicole started dating.

and he started supporting the company financially. Like he would pay for business expenses, he would loan the company money. And in exchange, according to court testimony and my own reporting and many people's recollections, in exchange he was given sexual favors by One-Taste employees. So those often looked like for his birthday every year, they would arrange these elaborate, immersive theatrical experiences

that often included a lot of sex and BDSM, You know, one year it was themed after the Wizard of Oz, another year after seven deadly sins. And then there was also an arrangement for many years in which a rotating cast of female one-taste employees would be asked that they wanted to serve as Reese's handler, which meant living with him in his house in San Francisco, tending to household tasks and then also sexually servicing him every day. This was positioned as a spiritual honor and something that was very highly prized. So prostitution in the name of spiritual enlightenment.

That is one way to look at it. I mean, not to be put any sex worker down, but when you're getting paid for sex, that has a name. No, I know. I think this is also the journalist in me being like, I can't say that. You're really getting a sense of like how we think,

which is like we really have to be careful about these things. But I can say it. I can say it. And so this arrangement, which went on for many years, I think gives you a sense of the pattern of a lot of the alleged exploitation that were also used to encourage people to say yes to these types of arrangements, which would then benefit the company. You know, for example, one of the teachings at One Taste was this thing called aversion practice where you were taught that to move further in your path to spiritual and sexual enlightenment. you should embrace doing actions that you felt an aversion to. And the more of an aversion you felt, the more liberated you would feel if you did it.

And these were often sexual. And a lot of people who had been involved in one taste talked to me about how they felt like, yeah, they were told by a manager or someone else within the company that they should, oh, or have sex with a certain customer to bring them in and help them have a good experience so that they buy another expensive course.

and if you said, I don't want to do that, then you would be told, okay, you should do it anyway because now it's part of your aversion practice. Like, that can be incredibly damaging. Like, it totally undercuts and bulldozes your sense of boundaries and consent. But there was a very strong mentality and teaching within one taste that considering yourself a victim was weak-minded, small, bad, shameful. Like, to have a victim mentality was such a put-down. Yeah, and within this group, you know, when people had damaging and hurtful experiences,

you know, if they tried to report it to someone else, they would be told, like, basically like it's your fault for feeling hurt. That's your choice. If you're feeling like the victim, that's your choice. Again, another teaching within one taste that I found pretty reprehensible is this idea that they really wanted to uphold women as super powerful. That was part of the idea of putting all this emphasis on studying the female orgasm. but in doing so, they would put forth these ideas like women are so powerful that they are always

admitting something called call. And men, whatever actions they take are only in response to a woman's call because a woman is so much more powerful. So guess what? This led to situations where, like, if a man violated some boundary with a woman within one taste, many women believed that it had been their fault because they had been taught that they were always the ones in control because they were always putting out call and if a man responds well it's like what did the woman do to cause that um yeah so you can see how these things that on the very surface promised empowerment but then very quickly spun into these extremes and i think that's a tragic thing about one taste because it really reshapes you're thinking about who is at fault, like, you know, like it made people feel so guilty

for certain things that had happened or made them unable to access healing for a long time, even after leaving, because they had been taught for so many years that thinking of yourself as a victim was wrong. So how did the levels work? When did you, quote, graduate to the next level? So, yeah, you would start off with these, like, basic courses about how to own or intro to and then they would quickly become bigger and more esoteric. And so they offered a class, for example, called Magic School, where you learned about all sorts of occult practices that they thought related to an orgasmic lifestyle. And then there were these very expensive courses that cost up to $36,000 were called the Nicole

Daydon intensive. And that was a two-week course where you would spend time getting a lecture from Nicole every day. There was also an offering that you could buy called Memoir. which was something like $55,000 or $60,000. It lasted for a year. And it meant that you could take any course you wanted for free. And that when Nicole lectured, you could sit in the front row and that you had special access. And then on top of that, there was even a three-year option for membership called lineage, which then cost $180,000. In order to afford these courses, people did a variety of things. First of all, sometimes wealthy people were targeted by want to a salespeople. They were given

and lots of attention and really, you know, warm invitations and love bombing to be brought in so that they would buy these courses. Then there are many people who talk to me about being encouraged by Wantay staff to take on credit card debt or other kinds of debt in order to pay for these courses. And then Nicole, you know, there are videos of her giving, giving lectures to her students in which she says that money is just energy and that, you know, if you really, if you need to make $20,000 appear in order to take a course, like if you can tap into your orgasm, like, that's going to happen for you. At the same time as the sales team was often pushing quite hard for people to spend large amounts of money with the company, they would be

teaching philosophies in their courses in which they devalued the reality of money. They would say it's not real. It's just energy. Like if you're feeling scared about spending this amount of money, it just means that there's something really big for you to learn in that experience. Yeah, all these things that were being required of people in order to advance on that path. It was all framed as like, okay, well, if you want a personal growth, you're going to have to do this. You said in the beginning, like, you know, I talked to a lot of people who said this was a cult or they say, I had a negative experience. And then there's the people that push you off and say, no, I had a great time. I'm genuinely curious. What did they say, if anything, was the positive

thing that resulted from that? So, you know, in this practice, of this 15-minute orgasmic meditation session. First of all, there's no goal. You know, you're not supposed to be trying to achieve orgasm or climax, as they would call it. They kind of redefine what we call it orgasm to be climax, and then they expand the definition of the word orgasm to mean a much more broad, erotic energy. But basically, like, you're not supposed to feel any certain way. It really is like sitting meditation.

You sit and you notice what's happening in your body, what's happening in your mind. I think the benefits of that are really huge for people who have felt trapped by this sense that within a sexual encounter, you need to get somewhere. You need to, you know, this is like people, a lot of people in the world struggle with performance anxiety during sex, something like 10 to 15 percent estimate of American women struggle to like have an orgasm. So I think that goallessness is really can be quite revelatory for some people. And then same, the Ome session is explicitly taught to be non-reciprocal. So it's often for women the first time in which they are going to receive sexual touch from another person and be explicitly told, like, you do not owe this person to anything. After that 15 minutes, you don't owe them a handshake, a hug, your phone number, more sex,

anything like that. And so other women have also described to me how powerful that was, how unusual, how revelatory. And I think both men and women have described to me, and I totally believe them, that they practiced paying attention to their bodies in this intimate setting and that it really made them more attuned to sexual partners. People came to one taste when they had gone through a divorce or their marriage was falling apart or they realized that they really did not know how to connect with people sexually or intimately or maybe they'd had sexual trauma in their past or they're just like these are really struggles that hit close to the heart. I guess I just feel a lot of

compassion for people who came to one taste looking for that because it is not commonly offered and it is something that a lot of people really yearn for. You know, there were lots of people who would talk to me about that dual, multifaceted experience. So throughout all this, we have heard the name Nicole de Dadeone uttered. Now, certainly, a cult leader of her stature has to have some sort of twisted backstory. Am I right? With Nicole, like we get so swept up, in the cult of personality, right? And just her charisma. But what is her trauma?

Okay. So Nicole has spoken frequently in her public appearances about her father, who was a convicted child sex abuser. He was incarcerated once for child sex abuse when Nicole was young. And then again, when Nicole was in her 20s, and he died very soon after that. And she has often talked about his death as being this catalyzing event for her that sent her on a period of wanting to search and understand the healing power of sexuality after seeing how it had been this poisonous influence in her father's life. In her public discussions about

her dad, she never really addressed fully the question of whether he had ever behaved inappropriately toward her or abused her. There's also a point in her story later on when she's starting one taste, when she starts to reframe the story of what happened with her father and tell it from a point of view in which she casts herself as like an instigator of it and as wanting it, or seeking it out in some way. And if you talk to experts who study, yes, child sex abuse, they will say that this is actually quite common. Yeah, young victims will see their experience through a lens in which they had agency.

It's a way to try to like regain agency in a situation that no one should go through. Of course, it then ties into these later lessons that she teaches at one taste about how you should never think of yourself as a victim and like you should take on 100% responsibility for your life experience. And so there are many things that create Nicole. Some of it is just like her personality and how she was born. But I have to believe that whatever happened with her dad is a big part of her story as well. And, you know, and I don't think it excuses what people have said that she's done to them, but it is part of understanding who she is and where she comes from. 1,000% it does. So Nicole's father was a convicted child molester. Now there are rumors that he used Nicole to attract his young victims, and she was mostly raised by her mother as her father was largely a distant sporadic figure in her life. But then when Nicole was 27, she gets a call from her mom, who informs her that her dad is not only in jail after being convicted of molesting two young girls,

but is dying of cancer in 90 minutes. And so she drops everything, runs to the jail, and says goodbye to him. Now, his death led Nicole to an apparent emotional collapse and sent Nicole down the road to exploring sexuality. But this is what she said about her father's crimes. You know, my dad died in prison for 52 counts of child molestation. And I never took on the idea that he was a bad person. I took on the idea that he was just so expansive and fourth dimensional

that he couldn't confine himself into the arbitrary laws of the third dimension. That was his only crime in my mind. Now, a few years after her father's death, she spent about two years living at a place called the Welcomed Consensus, an alternative lifestyle commune and educational group based in Northern California, which focused entirely on teaching, quote, Gormay sex and female pleasure. And by educational group, we mean a sex commune that figured out a workaround, you know, package group orgasms as a tuition-based seminar to avoid the cops or being called a sex cult.

I kind of have to go back to the gourmet sex word because it is very strange to put gourmet at the front of it. It goes great with Sanssaire. Everything goes great with Sanssaire. It really does. It's my favorite white. Now, the wellness consensus was known for its teachings on, wait for it, deliberate orgasm. Yes, they called it doing, doing deliberate orgasming. And what was that, guys?

Well, it was a set of techniques that was designed to extend the female orgasm and turn the entire body into a state of, quote, turn on. Now, wait, wait, wait, wait, that basically just means that she stole the entire. thing from welcomed consensus. She took DO doing, wrapped it in a yoga mat and called it oming, o-eming. You drew that conclusion. I just laid the facts. Except she made one crucial change. The commune versions were these massive hour-long marathons, but Nicole probably realized Silicon Valley tech bros didn't have that kind of time. So she put a timer on it, capped it at exactly 15 minutes and marketed as a quick wellness house. I mean, there's a part of you that wants to tip a cap to the marketing genius.

It's like a shot of vital greens, but you charge thousands of dollars for it. Tens of thousands, but no big deal. And for reasons that we won't assume here today. No, we won't assume. We could assume if we wanted to assume. But we aren't. We aren't choosing to do that. No, but we could if we wanted to assume.

We could, but we aren't. But Nicole used her own theories to deflect rape. I did a women's group. And they were like, oh, I'm so scared to turn on because all of those terrible men will rape me. And I said, if you want to know the real way to deflect rape, it's to turn on 100%. Because then there's nothing to rape. My experience is that a woman turned on 100% has every single man around her bowing. Who was I?

Oh, I was talking to Kim and Ye about this yesterday. Like, I can go out on the street and I can just be like the Pied Piper with like a whole, I feel like, oh my God, I can't believe all these matters so attracted to it. Or I can go out of the street and I can just be like totally 100% cloaked and invisible. That's the power we have. The problem with the victim story for me is that it takes it. it takes away your power. I'm not normally a guy who doesn't have much to say,

but in that case, I have little to say, except for a lot. So first off, everything about that is terrible. Everything about what she said is awful. And why people didn't stand up and boo her immediately, I don't understand why this person has a microphone. Oh, but Tyler, there's more. Oh. Of course there is.

I think I told the story in here when I was a stripper, and they put a knife up to my throat. Oh, well, anyway. I did it for whatever. I've had my experiences, but I did learn this little trick of turn-on and limbic connection. And so there I was in this back black room with nine-inch nails playing really loud. And there we were. He headed up against an eye. And I just, like, turned.

And I said, how'd you know I like that? And I turned on my pussi as high as I could turn it on. And bam, we were just in that place together. And all of a sudden, it absorbed everything that was in there. Okay, good. There. That's great advice, everyone. Follow her.

Just to be clear, that was not our bleep over the word. word. That one was, though, just because it's nice to censor Liz whenever I can. Pussy. Got it. Yes. I'm glad you said it. I tried with me saying it, and I just don't think me saying the word pussy.

Oh, God. Gross. I know gross, isn't it? It's gross, isn't it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry to our listeners. Weep that, Rob. Our sponsors, both my offspring and my offspring and my.

ancestors for saying that word into a recorded device. A lot of people would say, like, when she looks at you, she sees into your soul. And there's something about that, right, where we as humans are so desperate to be seen. Yeah. I mean, you're totally right that she is very, very skilled. at putting her attention on people in a way that makes them feel special and doing it at just the right moment. There are so many stories that people had told me about how it felt to have Nicole shine her spotlight on you. I think she's very skilled at that. And it's a big part of how

she draws people in. At these intro sessions, they would play a game called hot seat where some person gets put in the middle of the room and that everyone puts their attention on them for a certain period of time to ask them all these questions and these probing sorts of questions. And one person described the experience of that as feeling drunk on attention, just feeling like, wow, like you just don't get that in normal life. And I think in what they really understood on a deep level how to put attention on someone that they wanted to draw in and then also how to pull it away. Like people have also described to me that after they made it clear that they were not going to keep buying courses, that they would just feel the attention.

pulled away. And in fact, they even had a term for it, which used like an om metaphor, which was finger off. If someone told you finger off toward that person, that meant that, like, you should take your finger off of them. As though you were in an om, you were going to remove that point of contact so that they felt the, like, lack of connection. What's your relationship, Nicole? I know you didn't meet her a lot. I had never met her, or I didn't meet her for many years. When I started reporting on the book, that was one of the first requests I made is I let them know I was going to be writing a book and I was like, look, I would love to interview Nicole. And, you know, as is her prerogative, she declined. And, you know, I asked several times for the course of several

years. You know, but in the meantime, I spent all this time talking to people about her, digging up old records about her youth and her past and talking to people who knew her before she started one taste. And I had definitely devoted a lot of energy to trying to understand her. And we did meet I don't have a conversation, a very short one time in 2023, which was right after she'd been indicted. And she was going to have a court date. And so Nicole and Rachel show up with this whole entourage of attorneys and supporters. Nicole stays me and she immediately says hi.

She's like, hi, Ellen, and she calls out to me. And I was both surprised and not surprised. I think she is just someone who, that's her mode, and she likes to lay on the charm. You know, we walked up to each other and I asked her if I could shake her hand. And so we shook hands. I said, it was nice to meet you. And she held on to my hand. And she looks at me and she says, we have a strange intimacy.

And I was like very taken aback. It's like it's a weird thing to say. But I think it is acknowledging this sense that our lives have intersected in this way. And I, yeah, I think I said something like, okay, I'll see you in court. Like went up to the courtroom. You know, during the trial, she, you know, she's very, very good at like always keeping a sort of a light smile on her face. And then during the trial, she would often turn around and smile at her supporters or trying

to make eye contact with the jurors. She's very poised. Like she is in control of how she's presenting. But Nicole was sentenced to nine years in federal prison and Rachel to six and a half. What was she charged with? And then what was she actually convicted of? So there was only one charge, one for Nicole, one for Rachel, was the same crime. This is Rachel Cherwitz.

She was one-taste's former head of sales. Yeah, I think it's same to say former head. She's also in jail. So there was only one charge, one for Nicole, one for Rachel, was the same crime, forced labor conspiracy. So that means technically that they were charged with a crime of conspiring to obtain someone's labor in an unlawful way, as defined by the federal statute. You know, in this case, the prosecutors were arguing that the labor was obtained by using serious, or threats of serious harm. And that serious harm is defined by not just physical, but can be psychological, financial, reputational, et cetera. So it's pretty broad. But her time behind bars has

become interwoven with her continuing story. Like it's very much, has become the current chapter of what her supporters like to talk about, which is that she is a woman who is practicing unconditional freedom, even when she is behind bars. They say that she's teaching other inmates how to meditate and things like that. And, you know, One Taste has been very vocal, especially in the last few years, about defending its side of the story, as is their right.

And the company still has many loyal devotees. Some of them work for, you know, the company has changed names. They have some of these spin-off associated groups. There's a core group of loyalists who are very devoted to Nicole and Rachel, who believe strongly in and maintain their inner since even after the guilty verdict, even after they had their day in court.

What in your learned past eight years, what do you feel like constitutes a cult? I think there's something central about the ideology and practices of cults that strikes me as like it's necessary for a group to be damaging. And it's that message, which is, I have something to offer you that is going to. transform your life, fix this deep problem and yearning that you have. And if you reject my teachings, if you do not follow everything else that I say needs to come with that, you will suffer on a deep level. I think it's instilling in people that fear of leaving, I think, is cruel and deeply exploitative. I have heard lots of people who describe to me the same thing,

this fear that if they left, that they would, you know, not only lose their friends, their job, their home, their community, their lovers, but also suffer on a pretty extreme spiritual level. People would say to me things like, I believed that orgasm was God and Nicole was like Jesus or Muhammad, like she was the person by which we could access this divine force. And they felt like if they left, they would lose access to God. One taste is still functioning. Yes. And it's still in the Bay Area?

Yes, in California and also New York. And they offer classes online. And they're actually restarting the coaching program, but calling it the connection program. And they run a food nonprofit in New York. And yeah, they're very active. How is that possible after all of these not just allegations, but. Yeah, they have sources of funding that are allowing them to continue. I don't know for sure exactly what they are.

So I can't say. I just have my guess. of course. And they'll probably rebrand soon if they haven't. They have rebranded many times. It's currently called like the Eros platform. But it's okay. There you go. Cults love a rebrand. Okay, I have to pop in here real quick because not only is this Eros platform still going, but from jail. I shit you not. Nicole is putting out lectures on her Instagram from jail. How is she doing this? They have created, and I'm not joking, this is the worst use of AI I've ever encountered. It's literally, I'm going to show this to you, Tyler. Okay.

I can't wait. It is her avatar standing with some sort of weird Buddhist-type type robe across her left shoulder, talking to camera and giving a lecture. All A-Ied voice? All in her voice, AI. Her mouth is moving. She is talking. They made her look much better than she does in real life, by the way.

And she apparently writes these dissertations, writes these lectures from jail, sends them to her people. The people then create the AI version. To all the forces visible and invisible that make this moment possible, my llama, Jhupon, Rev, and all who have come before, the shoulders we stand on, who have supported this endeavor into being and have really been there to usher it into the world. Today is an incredibly special day. Right now, at MDC, Brooklyn, something is happening that has never happened before. I'm giving a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment

inside of a prison. It goes on and on and on, by the way. It's 15 minutes long of just nonsense. There's multiple ones of these lecturers up on her Instagram. Yeah. We could put that link in our show notes, but we're not going to. No.

We are not going to because everything you just heard is more than enough to satisfy your craving for insanity. Injail. For your craving. for genuine insanity. Today is an incredibly special day. Right now, at MDC Brooklyn, something

is happening that has never happened before. I'm giving a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment inside of a prison. It is the same blessing the first Dalai Lama received passed down teacher to student all the way to the current Dalai Lama, to my Lama, Gwen Mullen, to me, and now to the women. of East MDC Brooklyn Federal Detention Center.

A prison can be a place of degradation. It can also become, through practice, a place where the deepest vow is made visible. Now, let's get back to a real human, shall we? Isn't it nice when you talk to real humans nowadays? I feel like I just need more human individuals, more drawings by people, or songs from instruments.

Fuck. Not AI from jail. But we'll end on the positive note, which is how you live. Oh, yeah. People ask us all the time, what constitutes a cult? And can there be a community

without it being a cult? And then I meet you and you tell me, well, golly, geez, yeah. So just tell us briefly. A brief overview. Yeah. So, you know, a big part of One Taste was communal living. Like, they ran these formal and informal One Taste houses in which own practitioners lived together. And at one point, one of their communal residences was a 50-person warehouse in downtown San Francisco that people just, you know, two to a bed. People were packed into this experience. And some people really loved it. Yeah, basically there's a network of these types of houses in the Bay Area. And I've lived in a couple of them. One of them was like one house, with many bedrooms, and then the current place that I live is six buildings on a compound, but there are dozens of these. But it's not a cult.

I think an important difference, like I said earlier, like it lacks that sense that if you leave, you are dead to us. It's like, in fact, we have lots of former members, former residents who come by and hang out all the time. Just, you know, there's no charismatic dominant leader. There's no dogma of the way you know. need to live, right? It's actually just what we used to strive for as humans and used to have was community. And we all pitched in and we all helped out. Totally. We take rotations,

cooking dinner for everyone. There's no like co-parenting, but it's more like parallel parenting. So there's a lot of young kids and they will come and hang out in the yard together. Like it is the kind of close living in proximity with other people that we used to have more of. It's more of a village. There are a lot of forces that guide people toward nuclear family, isolated living, living in a single family home. And there's also like a growing interest, you know, among millennials and other young people in the Bay Area to try to live life differently. What's like the most reassuring or thing that brings you the most joy with living like this? I just think it's fun to, I mean, I'm such an extrovert. I don't think I've ever wanted to

live in a place where I was living alone. But I think an extra fun thing is just, just getting to be intermittently in the lives of like your friend's kits. Like you really just get to watch them grow up and they're so cute and you get to play aunt or uncle to them. And then also you get to go to chat during the day as you make your breakfast. That's the best part. And I think when people hear about this, some people are like, oh, that's my worst nightmare. That's totally fine. And then a lot of people hear it and they say, oh, I wish I had more access to that or the easier version of this is try to live near your friends. You can have that kind of relationship where you're like the Kramer.

to their sign, you just bust in the door. Like, that's the best guy. Studies would suggest it is good for your health to have strong social ties. Well, just tell us your book. Yeah, my book is called Empire of Orgasm. It is the full telling of one taste.

So it's the story of this group, but also the story of what makes us human and what makes us want to seek the things that this group was promising. Do you feel changed from this experience? Do you feel more enlightened from going through this? I think like, you know, writing the book was this like a huge ordeal in my life. And it took, you know, five plus years, five to seven years, depending on how you count.

I just feel like I have a more open-hearted and compassionate understanding for other people and what they are wanting and why we make the choices we do and why we're such social creatures. We're always making choices that reflect what values are most important within the, often very small social sphere that is important to us, what's going to get us approval, what's going to save us from disapproval. And looking at it that way really helped me open my mind to why people make choices that on first blush might seem totally incomprehensible.

It's like, well, guess what? They're actually playing the same game that we are, which is just to try to belong and to feel safe. So if you're seeking enlightenment, don't join a cult, just investigate one. It's an easier way. Let's just all live on a healthy communal get away from all this. That's amazing.

Well, keep us updated on all that because that is fascinating. We'll do. Thank you so much for all of your time today. I really appreciate it. This was really fascinating. And good luck with your baby. Thank you. Take care.

So as we learned, it's not the commune that makes the cult. It's the leader and other things. book is Empire of Orgasms, Sex Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult. She also narrates the audiobook, so go give it a listen, and the link is in the show notes. I just want to go back in time. You remember the movie The Village? Spoiler alerts out there, but they basically, the world is crazy, and they go back to the 1800s, and they live in a small farm. I just kind of want to do that same thing, but instead of going back to the 1800s, I just want to go back to 1985 and just create like a four block radius, you know, a downtown, a little suburb area,

and there's a blockbuster video and a movie theater and an arcade, and there's no cell phones. And you just, for a period of time, you just live in 1985. That's the village I want to go to. Who's with me? I'm bringing my fish. I know. It's so crazy. Like people are literally

becoming in a cult with a robot They're falling in love There was a great article about it in the Atlantic And it's terrifying And it's terrifying Nonetheless, that is where we are In a very modern cult Cult mechanics are everywhere

People just be safe out there Everyone go get some fresh air Go on a hike, go to the beach I don't know Hug a tree Like just eat a leaf Just don't look at a screen for a little while.

Enjoy your loved ones. And come and stay in my 1985 village. Just bring a Deaf Leopard cassette tape and a member's only jacket. That is your entrance. And we can all live peacefully. I look forward to that book by Ellen. So with that, everyone, I think I'm going to go, I'm going to go touch my lower right quadrant of my clitoris right now because I hear that quote.

quadrant has not been getting enough attention from the people. I do appreciate, Liz, that you do bookend the podcast with a softmark joke at the beginning and a juvenile joke at the end. Perfect balance. It's a complete quadrant. Hey, everyone. We do have a Patreon. It does help. It really does help us make this.

And you can get ad-free listens. You can also get some very cool stuff like borrowed Eastern philosophy. that we pawn off as our own. We had some great cult members join just this week, like... Talia Kerr, Shana, Tracy Watson, M. Rosebud, and Brianna, and more. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining. Really, we love you.

And we love you. And we appreciate you. We appreciate you. And I'm not just saying that. We feel the connection. It's genuine. You can feel it. I feel it.

We should just start posting like... Eastern Buddhist quotes, like inspirational quotes, and then just write Liz and Tyler, said by Liz and Tyler. That's a good idea. Okay, we're going to do that. We'll do that. We will also put this entire interview up, the entire two plus hour interview for your listeners, pleasure. And we'll do it in a video format so you can watch mouths move. It's a good idea. We will do that. Speaking of interviews, Liz did a nine plus hour interview over the course of three. three successive days with this kick-ass woman who told a very harrowing story about being in the Harry Krishna cult. Hari Krishna.

Great. It's a hairy story about the Hari Krishna's. Save the jokes for next week. So, a hundred percent renunciation is required. You renounce all of your worldly possessions, can't have any personal attachments. We didn't have things. We didn't have toys. Nothing is yours in this lifetime.

Otherwise, you will develop attachments and then you'll have to be born again into this hellish existence and do it all over again until you learn how to renounce. You renounce everything. And with that, the cults keep on culting. Was I in a cult? Is written? Produced. Hosted, et cetera. By me.

Liz. Leif Quadrant. Ayagozy. And Tyler, the AI podcaster from prison, Mism. I. That sounds like a good. living right there. And Rob Silicon Valley lube on glove para. Thanks, Rob. Rob master clitoris rubber, spiritually inclined. His mom listens to this. Sorry. I don't think she does. Everyone,

thank you so much for listening and tolerating us. We do appreciate it. We do love the job that we do. And thank you, Apple, for giving our show back. I hope you guys didn't give up on us.