Part Two: The Orgasm Cult

Summary

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Orgasm Cult

Date: May 26, 2026
Host: Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts
Guest: Jamie Loftus

Episode Overview

In this episode, "Behind the Bastards" continues the in-depth examination of the history and evolution of so-called "orgasm cults," with a focus on the Bay Area’s infamous groups—a blend of self-help, cult dynamics, Silicon Valley grift, and twisted approaches to sexuality. The discussion traces the journey from post-Sexual Revolution weirdness to Nicole Daedone’s development of “OneTaste,” a contemporary “orgasmic meditation” startup/cult. The tone is simultaneously darkly humorous, analytical, and empathetic toward victims.

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Key Discussion Points & Structure

1. Setting the Scene: Sex, the Bay Area, and the Nineties (00:05)

• Hosts introduce the topic: uncomfortable conversations about sex, sexuality, cults, and their intersections with 90s/2000s Bay Area counterculture.
• Jamie Loftus quips: “It’s great to be back in the medical saddle that makes you come.” (00:37)
• Hosts share personal anecdotes about attending public sex demos at festivals and parties—setting the tone of odd but non-cultish “sex positive” culture in contrast to cult environments.

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2. The Welcomed Consensus: Descent from Morehouse (06:44)

• Origins: Welcomed Consensus, a Morehouse splinter group, sold videos like “Deliberate Orgasm,” featuring bizarre, uncomfortable visuals—naked women, fully clothed men.
• “You have to be a pervert with money.” – Jamie Loftus on the $130 price tag for the video (07:50)
• Recruitment Tactics:
  • Live public masturbation demonstrations.
  • Risqué merch (“Life is too short for mediocre sex” shirts).
  • Clubhouse gatherings with custom intimacy card games, inspired by Synanon’s group honesty sessions.
  • New members referred to as “benchmarks.”

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3. Cult Dynamics and Abuse within Welcomed Consensus (11:27)

• RJ Testerman, the leader, is described as a psychologically manipulative cowboy type.
• Members promised sex and escape from “regular life,” including mandatory five orgasms per day on their organic farm.
• Polyamory vs. Polygamy: Framed as empowering, but in reality governed by uneven power dynamics.
• Abuse & Violence: The group rationalized violence as “honest emotional expression.”
• Quote: “If he was angry at a woman...he would stroke her clitoris so hard that it was agonizing...and accuse her of refusing to surrender.” (19:05)
• Parallels with NXIVM: Weaponizing women to recruit other women; leader's manipulations framed as empowerment.

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4. Nicole Daedone’s Split and Creation of OneTaste (22:15)

Transition from Follower to Leader:

• After the Welcomed Consensus falls into disarray due to lawsuits and negative press, Nicole sees her chance and leaves, taking a handful of followers and donors with her.
• Key Insight: Poaching “the right man” (Rob Candle)—a Silicon Valley archetype, successful but unfulfilled and eager to buy into the “sex as self-optimization” narrative.
• Cult uses food charity "Fill Up America" as a front to source free groceries—ethical issues discussed. (31:01)
  • "It's so horrible ... you make yourself known as who you donate food to, take out the good stuff for the commune..." – Jamie Loftus

Marketing the Orgasmic Meditation Grift:

• Rebrands “orgasmic meditation” as a 15-minute morning routine—a more “Bay Area” self-help pitch (32:10).
• “Coffee with coming is a great pitch”—Jamie Loftus (32:20).
• Nicole’s strategy: recruit older men for resources/knowledge, use personal/sexual leverage as needed.

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5. Cult Building: Sex, Power, and Curriculum (36:25)

• Recruits experts from previous cults (e.g., Ray Vetterlein), gathers tips for curriculum and structural con artistry.
  • “Since we are not yet selling the God Hustle, what we have to sell is an organically healthy lifestyle with sensuality and intimacy.” (49:49)
• The group starts “IMU” (Institute of Monastic Understanding), developing their teachings and running a fake food charity.
• Simultaneously planning a unique twist: packaging sex as health/optimization for upwardly mobile clients.

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6. Key Manipulations and Cult Philosophy (45:16)

• Nicole’s philosophy: reframe all trauma or negative experience as internally-generated interpretation—a classic predatory cult abuse tactic.
  • “When I was a child, I used to think that my father had molested me. But now [...] I seduced my father. I was the one with power.” (45:28)
  • Jamie Loftus: “That’s very upsetting...if she does believe it, that's really tragic and really fucked up.” (45:46)
• Early classes do not feature sex but lay groundwork for later exploitation.

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7. Assembling the Money Machine: “Orgasmic Meditation” as Female Empowerment (61:14)

• Public orgasm demos become the centerpiece—demonstrated for audiences, then offered to participants.
  • “It’s pure euphoria. You can have as much of that sensation as you like... if she can do this, so can you.” — Irwan, demo lead (61:07)
• Nicole insists on central control: kicks out contenders, consolidating her status as sole cult leader.
• Rebranding to "OneTaste"—appropriation of Buddhist terminology for marketing (63:41).

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8. The OneTaste Urban Retreat: From Cult to “Startup” (64:39)

• Opens in San Francisco's Folsom Street, blending into the sex-positive culture of the time.
• Offers a “menu” of yoga, massage, froyo, and orgasmic meditation workshops.
• Unique Branding: OneTaste marketed as both a spiritual discipline and health & wellness “hack” for Silicon Valley types.
  • "Paid in experience, baby." (65:53)
• “The In Group”: Cultivates an “exclusive cool kids’ club” mentality targeted at those who never felt “in” before.

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9. Gendered Recruitment and Vulnerable Targets (68:39)

• Targets lonely, disempowered men and women seeking connection or sexual rediscovery.
• Video Example: ‘Overcoming Depression through Orgasmic Meditation’ – cult pitches OM as substitute for medications, targeting women in midlife/after invisibility.
  • “You’re seen now, you’re valid, you’re attractive, you’re loved. That’ll be $5,000, and then call that community.” – Jamie Loftus (73:13)
• OneTaste exploits both the unmet social needs and the “optimization” mindset typical of its era and location.

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10. Ethics, Sex Work, and Exploitation (76:25)

• “What if there was a model for sex work in which only Nicole made money...and no one consented to be doing this sex work?” – Jamie Loftus (76:25)
• Turning spiritual “games” into coercion: members are tasked to sex/OM with clients for the cult’s financial benefit.
• Media and the public fall for the “empowerment” angle, often repeating the cult’s marketing language uncritically.
  • “The New York Times kind of repeated their ad pitch...” (79:16)
• Despite female leadership, core dynamics remain exploitative and patriarchal beneath the surface. Nicole monopolizes public-facing demonstrations, controls women’s opportunities.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “This is the Burger King of orgasm cults.” —Host 2 (09:54)
• “You have to be a pervert with money...” —Jamie Loftus, on video pricing barrier (07:50)
• On cult violence: “If you have a bad experience, that's because you're choosing to frame the thing that happened as a bad thing.” (45:16)
• On target demographic: "Silicon Valley is filled with dudes...workaholics...bored and feeling like life is passing them by." (27:25)
• On branding: “Coffee with coming is a great pitch.” —Jamie Loftus (32:20)
• On media gullibility: "The New York Times kind of repeated their ad pitch...you're just coming all the time." (79:16)
• On exploiting women: “Every other woman works under her...she has gotten rid of everyone who could be considered her equal.” —Jamie Loftus (82:20)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Highlight | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:05 | Introduction: Uncomfortable conversations about sex, cults, and the Bay Area | | 06:44 | Welcomed Consensus, “Deliberate Orgasm” demo videos | | 09:51 | The cult’s marketing and recruitment with weird games and merch | | 17:50 | Justifications for violence and group’s spiral into abuse | | 22:39 | Nicole leaves, steals followers, starts planning her own venture | | 27:25 | Recruitment of the Silicon Valley “Rob” archetype | | 31:01 | Fake food charity “Fill Up America” | | 32:10 | Branding orgasmic meditation as a productivity hack | | 36:25 | Cult foundations—grifting lessons, curriculum, “IMU” | | 45:28 | Nicole’s core philosophy & abuse-masking logic | | 49:49 | Ray’s manual on building a scalable sex cult | | 61:07 | First public orgasm demonstration | | 63:41 | “OneTaste” rebranding and launch | | 68:39 | Discussion of cult’s advertising aimed at vulnerable women | | 73:46 | How sexual and emotional labor is extracted for cash from members | | 79:16 | Media falls for feminist/empowerment messaging | | 82:20 | Reality of control—only Nicole leads, other women subordinate |

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Tone & Analysis

The hosts combine dark humor with incisive analysis. They openly critique the manipulative, exploitative dynamics of both historical and modern "orgasm cults," highlight the cult’s disturbing logic, and draw pointed analogies to Silicon Valley start-up culture. Jamie Loftus’s blend of wit (“Coffee with coming is a great pick”) and empathy for the victims lights up the episode, while the hosts’ skepticism keeps the discussion grounded.

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If You Missed the Episode...

This episode lays out the disturbing rise of Nicole Daedone’s OneTaste and its forerunners, dissecting the blend of pseudo-science, cult abuse, Silicon Valley grift, and manipulation of members’ needs and vulnerabilities. The exploration provides key historical context, clear-eyed warnings about modern “self-help cults,” and keen observations about how these groups dress up old manipulations in new, tech-friendly language.

Transcript

[Host 1]

Call Zone Media.

[Host 2]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast where we have uncomfortable conversations about sex and sexuality and the 90s, the Bay Area and the early 2000s. It's gonna be awkward for everybody.

[Jamie Loftus]

Hitting a lot of quadrants, hitting a lot of important quadrants there, hitting a

[Host 2]

lot of big Q's, Big Q's, a lot of Robert Qs. In fact, Jamie Loftus, our wonderful guest, back in the saddle again to talk about the orgasm cults. How are you doing, Jamie?

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm. It's great to be back in the, in the, the medical saddle that makes you come.

[Host 2]

Oh, okay.

[Host 1]

Well, yeah, yeah, I, I was like, sad. Weird choice today, buddy.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay, look, we're all struggling.

[Host 2]

I was going to say back in

[Jamie Loftus]

high life again, sound like

[Host 2]

it's, it's weird. Especially like, again this is all so adjacent to like things I've done and were a part of my youth that it's really kind of weird to me. Like the reaction everyone else has to like the. And then they're doing like public sex demonstrations in front of crowds of people's like, no, I've been to a bunch of those actually.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, there's a lot of fine people at these events.

[Host 2]

There's good. You know, I, we did, we had one at one of the. We did an event one year where like the theme was. Because there's a different one every year. Bad idea. And so like my roommate who is a lady and is a bit older than me, I think she's like 30, wanted to do like a demo on like how to use like different like safe sex objects and stuff like that. Because it's like a big five day camping trip where a bunch of people are having sex. And she was like, well, there should be an option people to learn that in addition to the weird kink camps that teach you how to use like a fucking safe Andrew's cross or a whip or whatever. The problem was that the structure we had for it this year was also made to kind of meet the theme of a bad idea. So it was a big like pyramid like tent shade structure thing with like a huge bed thing at the bottom. But the top was like a disco ball that we had made by cutting up hundreds of pieces of glass and putting them into like a paper mache ball. And they were just kind of glued on. And it's like 100 degrees. And so as it heats up, as people are like cuddling or doing the safe sex demonstrations or whatever in there, pieces of like jagged glass are just like falling down. And we had put up like a tiny little net to catch it. But again, it's supposed to be a bad idea. So we didn't want to protect people too much. We just made sure people were warned. By the way, it rains glass inside the. Inside the.

[Jamie Loftus]

This sounds like a saw trap. What are you talking about?

[Host 1]

It was fun.

[Host 2]

Very few people got cut. It was a really nice week.

[Jamie Loftus]

I hang out in all of Jigsaw's tracks.

[Host 2]

We were young, it was a good time. And there were like maybe four to five stitches required as a result of the shattered glass disco ball. It was a great week. I had a really good time. I've got bad idea tattooed on my fingers because of that week. It was great.

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow.

[Host 2]

I've never heard of that.

[Jamie Loftus]

From what I was like the lore drop at the end.

[Host 2]

I nearly killed a man with a flamethrower. It was an awesome week. Accidentally, guys.

[Host 1]

Come on, Tarantino, let's move on.

[Host 2]

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[Host 2]

So if you type the words Welcomed Consensus Orgasm, which is, remember the group that kind of descends from the Morehouse community. The Welcomed Consensus. If you type those three words into Google as I did, you'll be presented with the Amazon page for a video titled Deliberate Orgasm Expanding Female Orgasm, Volume 1. It currently costs $132 on Amazon.

[Host 1]

2.5 stars 15 reviews 2.4 stars really honey?

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh the color. The COVID is haunting. The COVID is in like one it

[Host 2]

looks like he's wearing like it's a naked woman and like a man who's like straddling her and has a hand around her buttocks. But he's wearing jeans. She's completely naked, and he's fully clothed in jeans.

[Jamie Loftus]

If it looks like a cropped Guantanamo picture, it's horrific.

[Host 2]

It looks like some shit from fucking Al Ghu Rabe.

[Host 1]

Thank you. Hate it.

[Jamie Loftus]

130K. You have to really want. I actually do agree with the financial barrier. Not just anyone should be able to look at that. You have to be a pervert with money.

[Host 2]

Most people are not ready. I also love that it's under the special interests section of the DVD categories for Amazon. This is indeed a special interest.

[Jamie Loftus]

Full jeans. So you're like, let's be clear.

[Host 2]

No one's comfortable, nobody's having a good time. No one's having what you would call sex, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Like raw jeans on human skin. Not for nothing, it's that. That. That lady's gonna chafe.

[Host 2]

Mm. Yeah, big time. Everyone's chafing now. This is one of several video guides published by the welcome Consensus. By the time that Nicole Dodone found it in 1998, she had dated Irwan for a while. And while that didn't last, her interest in deliberate orgasm did. She pressed Irwan to connect her to more training. And rather than send her to Morehouse, he advised that she look into the splinter group instead.

[Jamie Loftus]

And is this. Is this pre. Like huge groups? This is pre operating theater coming?

[Host 2]

No, they're doing that like the Morehouse had done that. Remember they'd done that thing where they said it's a three hour orgasm. Like they had done some demos like that largely as like PR things to like bring people in. And the welcome Consensus did. It wasn't that big, but they did do live demonstrations, right? One of the things that they. Because the welcome Consensus is totally about orgasm and pleasure. And they declare it our birthright because we were conceived in orgasm. That's like the motto of the group, essentially. And to bring in new members, they do live demonstrations where a woman would be masturbated for an hour. And they also sold really risque merch. Like they're very proud of how horny their merchandise is. They have T shirts that brag, life is too short for mediocre sex. The welcome Consensus didn't call new members marks. Instead they used the term benchmarks because it's just a little different than the cult you're kind of ripping off.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sounds less antagonistic for one.

[Host 2]

This is the Burger King of the Morehouse. Like, it's a burger. It's the Burger King of orgasm cults, folks. That's what the welcome Consensus is.

[Host 1]

Life is Too short for mediocre sex.

[Jamie Loftus]

This pretty good.

[Host 2]

Yeah, it's pretty good shirt. It's a pretty good shirt. If it's not attached to a cult, maybe. I don't know.

[Jamie Loftus]

Nothing's going to. Nothing's going to get me in the door like some fugly weird merch. So I was like, I know up till then I'm like, at what point would I entertain going through the doors? And it is the fugly shirt.

[Host 2]

It's the fugly shirt. Yeah. That's what they knew.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

So the welcome consensus again. They call new members benchmarks, but it only costs $11 to visit. They've got a. They've got a compound obviously that's elsewhere in California, but they've got a clubhouse in San Francisco and they do like weekly game nights there. And these are games that have been invented by the group that are. And you know, there's like card games that are like, do you and your spouse want to communicate better? This card game will have you talking better and, you know, however long it takes to play or whatever. Like that. Right. Like that kind of thing. Those are the sort of games that they're playing. These are like games they've created to aid in communication and intimacy and that are also usually. You know, we did our episodes on Synanon, right? Like, because that comes out of the self help movement that all this stuff is related to. A big thing in Synanon is these sessions where people sit around in the circle and like insult each other. And they're definitely influenced by that. They've got some games that are like, well, I'll sit around and we'll talk. We'll tell someone honestly something about, like, themselves. But it's usually supposed to be positive. But often there's like a negative side too. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's how there. I used to work at now Closed Comedy Theater and we would teach stand up sketch and improv. What are the most evil things you can do? And on. In the stand up classes, the first day would always be just that to be you, you would have to get on stage. I never took it, but I, I watched each student who just wants to put themselves out there stands on stage and every other student says, what are some assumptions people might make about you? And this is in Boston, Massachusetts. So you're hearing some really nasty stuff.

[Host 2]

Wild stuff. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

And then you're just told like, so, you know, maybe that's something you might want to play up on stage. You're like, it's just, ugh. Ugh. Anyone who I Don't know. The radical honesty movement. I'm just like, please let's disastrous.

[Host 2]

We need to lie more. We need to lie more to each other.

[Jamie Loftus]

We really. For our own protection. Yeah, I don't want to know.

[Host 2]

It's not that we need to lie more. We need to just know less about each other. It's not lying just to not tell someone everything. And we don't all need to tell someone everything, you know. So most of these games are again just kind of. Yeah, like dark secrets, like tell me the darkest thing that turns you on or stuff like that. Like, that's a lot of like the kind of games that they're playing. And doing so in public is really frightening, but also kind of thrilling and cathartic and it creates this sort of stressful bonding experience that other self help groups. Like, you know, this is. All of them are doing something like this in this period of time and even kind of still into the modern day. Everything's just kind of Synanon when you get right down to it. Now, the founder of the welcome Consensus, RJ Testerman, which sounds fake, was a cowboy coated dude. He's always wearing like a fucking cowboy hat. He's in like his 50s. And what people will tell you about RJ and the cult is that he's really good at calling people on their bullshit. And here that phrase means he's really good at psychologically abusing people. Right? Like that's what that means. Yes. RJ was attended to by four women who were his lovers and also helped run the group. This was specifically framed more as polyamory than as polygamy. And one thing everyone got who lived at the group's ranch was plenty of sex and a near total escape from the real world. New members like Nicole were promised that they too could escape the grind of regular life if they just gave themselves over to the cause. They then got to live on an organic farm, growing their own food and orgasming at least five times per day. You really are not allowed to do it Less. You're not allowed.

[Jamie Loftus]

I was going to say gotta do

[Host 2]

it, but that's our limit.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's not sounding like there is an opt out. Okay.

[Host 2]

No. Now can you lie? Of course they're not checking, but.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, you can lie. Okay.

[Host 2]

Everyone does. So the WC framed their sex work as a circle sex as sexual experimentation. Again, just like the Morehouse is like, we're really more researchers trying to learn like, you know, this math. The scientific secrets of sex that have been locked away. And their goal is to Create like an elite level sexual experience. They were actually more. As much as they were inspired by their self help groups, they're inspired by like fine dining restaurants like the French Laundry. That's very much how they like build themselves.

[Jamie Loftus]

This is like Michelin orgasm.

[Host 2]

Yeah. A Michelin star cup. Yes. So Nicole was an instant fit. In short order, she'd paid $14,000 for a two week class on how to feel and acknowledge her orgasms. Hewitt notes that in her bio for the group website at the time she wrote, orgasm is the thread that weaves my life together. There is nothing but orgasm as much as I want. That's. That's really how a lot of the stuff in the later cult that she's gonna make is gonna sound like. They talk about it like fucking mana. Right? Like they're wizards and this is their magic power. Is orgasm like it's a quantifiable thing. It's not like a moment that happens. It's like a quantifiable kind of energy you just have with you and like do hadoukens with.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's kind of, it is kind of like almost. I mean, I know it won't be for long, but it is almost kind of sweet how they're talking about orgasms as if it was their idea and they're the first people to think of this.

[Host 2]

Yeah. No one else has figured this out. So the older group members noticed right away that Nicole was very good at winning new recruits, at convincing people to join the group and to pay money. One of her first gifts was a young woman named Alison, who was referred to the group by Erwan after meeting him at a rave. Again, there's a lot of like after parties for Burning man and stuff that people are being like recruited for to some of these groups and shit. Like that's, that's like a thing. And Erwan is kind of the thing I get is that he's kind of like their floater. Like he's probably, I think, a good looking guy and he's going out to like parties and stuff to find women like Nicole and Allison and, you know, talk them into showing up at a place like this. So Alicent meets Erawan at the rave and she goes to the welcome consensus. And at her first meeting she meets Nicole and she tells Nicole, oh, you know, I just got awarded a bunch of stock at work. So I just cashed in like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Nicole is like cash register signs. Right. So she starts flirting with Alison and Alison falls in love with Nicole, even though she'd Always considered herself straight before. And I think this has a lot to do with just. Nicole is very charismatic. She's very good at making you feel like you're the only person in the world. And she's very good at making you feel that, like, doing things that feel good with Nicole are also, like, revolutionary acts that are helping humanity. You know, that's kind of Nicole's superpower. Yeah. So we've talked about, like, we talked about the Greeks, and we talked about Morehouse, about how they went from, like, you know, when women orgasm, it's so incredibly powerful. And they've used that as a way to, like, say. Obviously, that means women always want it. Right. And the same thing happens to the welcomed consensus. Right. Per the Book of Orgasm. Or. Sorry, per the book Empire of Orgasm. The Book of Orgasm, yeah. They invoked biological generalizations about the way female mammals in estrus and nonverbal signals to attract mates. In humans, they argued this manifested through emotions. Women can therefore emit emotional calls and induce men to respond when men are feeling turned on or at peace or enraged, that's because they're responding to a call that a woman is putting out Right. Now. This means that women aren't responsible for men's arousal for how men feel.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Host 2]

And men are not responsible for how they.

[Jamie Loftus]

Responsible for making sure that they're taking care of.

[Host 2]

Exactly.

[Jamie Loftus]

And that's actually feminism, when you think about it, isn't it, ladies?

[Host 2]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And as is the case with any group that dedicates themselves to reimagining human relationships while fucking on an isolated farm, they spiraled into madness as time went on. As researchers, the group decided to experiment with violence and whether or not that might be a healthy way for people to express emotions honestly. And the way how this happens is like, rj and a bunch of the men are like, I get angry and just want to hit women sometimes. Maybe that's good. Like, that's literally the thought process here.

[Jamie Loftus]

And at this university, we're choosing to explore things we already know we already do.

[Host 2]

God, it's fucked up. So one example Ellen Hewitt gives is a male member of the welcome Consensus who gets into an argument with a female member and punches her hard enough to knock her to the ground. And she goes to RJ to complain, and he says, hey, you need to cop to whatever it is you were doing that made him angry, or I'll beat you up myself. Right. And this is liberating, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, because that means you're powerful, and that's me acknowledging you're Powerful.

[Host 2]

That's me acknowledging your power. Yeah. So rj, this won't surprise anybody, was an aging drunk who went crazy with power and was as likely to give his followers pain as pleasure when he was doing these orgasm sessions. Sometimes if he was angry at a woman that he was, like, stroking, he would stroke her clitoris so hard that it, like, was agonizing. And then, like, when someone would be like, hey, you're hurting me, he would accuse her of refusing to surrender. And it was not like he regularly would, like, literally just slap or otherwise hit his partner's genitals during these if he got angry at them. So again, these are not, like, nice times a lot of the time. Right? No, I'm sure that's super shocking to hear.

[Jamie Loftus]

I don't know this one. Say more.

[Host 2]

No, not great.

[Jamie Loftus]

So, and this is all happening in groups, that this is like, there's no shortage of witnesses.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of witnesses.

[Host 1]

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

[Host 2]

Okay, perfect.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, she's always with us. She's always with us ahead of the times.

[Host 2]

So Alison, not long after Nicole convinced her to join, became the target of RJ's ire. There's like, an evening where they're like. There's several. A bunch of people hanging out at the property. And Arja gets really drunk and he tells Alicent, like, get down on your hands and knees. And he pulls up her skirt and he starts whipping her with a riding crop and just, like, screaming and cursing. He's just like a maniac. Right. Nicole does nothing, even though Allyson is very clearly frightened. And that's kind of something Nicole takes with her, is that this person who I thought was into me and was, like, convinced me that this was a safe place, brought me into the situation, and said nothing when this happened. Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's. I mean, I know this echoes a lot of cults, but it feels very nxiv adjacent in the way that women are being weaponized to recruit other women.

[Bethenny Frankel]

This is.

[Host 2]

And happening at the same. Nicole's cult is going to happen at the same time as nxivm. I mean, this is too Nexium. I think it started in the 90s some, but they're very similar movements. Yes. There's a lot that they have in common. Nicole would later brag when she starts her cult that she was one of the only women RJ never tried to hit. Which, like, I don't know what that says. Yeah. In 2001, after three years with the welcomed consensus, Nicole decided she had reached the peak of what they could give her. Their top training course was called Validation. And to pass, you had to complete a three hour orgasmic stroking session and do a one hour public demonstration. To even attempt this costs $100,000. Nicole doesn't have that kind of money, so she goes to Erewhon and is like, hey man, you've just come into an inheritance. Why don't you pay for us both to have the hundred thousand dollar class? And Erewhon pays initially, but then he like gets cold feet and he backs out and demands a refund of the money he'd put down. And RJ refuses to refund his money. So Erewhan sues the group and accuses them of prostitution and says, and he had been part of this, right? Erwan was. But he says they're just selling sex.

[Jamie Loftus]

He can't get a refund.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah. So journalists start converging on the community. They get a bunch of bad press and that RJ's kind of getting old at this point. So he just backs off. And they really reduced the recruitment efforts. He eventually decides I'm just gonna like kind of fade away. Right? Like, I don't, like, I'm too old for this shit. I don't want to have to like fight the outside world.

[Jamie Loftus]

The abuse of Grift was good while it lasted.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah. And that's when Nicole kind of decides it's time to leave. Right. It's time for me. She can see like, okay, the welcomed consensus is on its way out. It's time for me to start my own orgasm cult training program. And we'll talk about all that once we finish these ads. Guys don't like talking about ed, but if something's been off in the bedroom, you're not alone and you don't need to wait longer than you need to take action. Getting real treatment is simple and through hims, it's a hundred percent online. At some point you've got to stop blaming stress, sleep, or just getting older. If bedroom performance is in question, it's probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news, you don't have to jump through hoops to fix it. HIMSS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment. Options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines. You just complete a simple online intake form and a provider will review your information and determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your treatment ships directly to your door in discreet packaging. To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ED, weight loss and more, visit hims.com BTB that's himss.com BTB for your free online hims.com BTB prescription required. See website for details and important safety information. Sodenafil is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatris, a Viatris Specialty llc. HIMSS not affiliated with or endorsed by Beatris. This ad is brought to you by VIIV Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with hiv, do learn about Devato Divato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

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[Host 2]

Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines, visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

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[Host 2]

So to find and start her own cold, Nicole knows she's going to need money, right? And she does not have any. So before she leaves, she finds a married couple, Rob and Carol Candle, who had recently joined the welcomed consensus. Yes, yes, Very good name. Carol. Yeah. K A N D E L L. Good for her. They want to spice up their boring 1 percenter corporate life, right? Rob is a successful businessman. I think he's. I don't know if he's like rich or just upper middle class, but he's got money. And he and Carol had lived up to this point a pretty standard life. Like they get married. Rob is very successful. He works his way up the corporate ladder. And then kind of when they're in, you know, their 30s, with middle aged insight age in sight, Rob is like, oh my God, like we're boring, right? And so he goes to Burning man with his wife and they take mushrooms and he decides he wants more out of life than just like making money. And that's what brings Rob and Carol to the welcomed consensus. Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay.

[Host 2]

And Rob is. Because Nicole spots immediately that this is the guy I need to bring with me when I leave this cult. And that's because he's going to be the model for the kind of dude that she is going to kind of fashion her entire life around soaking for cash. Unfortunately, she's often going to do that by like making other women fulfill that guy's weird and sick desire. So he pays her. But that, that's coming in a bit. What she sees right away with Rob is that Silicon Valley is filled with dudes who spend all their, you know, when they were in school, they were always studying. They were big nerds. They didn't spend a lot of time partying, they didn't do a lot of dating. And then they start working and they're workaholics and they don't spend a lot of time dating too. And you know, if they get married and they probably feel like they never got to sow their wild oats, they didn't get to do enough partying, they didn't get to have enough sex, Right. And they wind up bored and feeling like life is passing them by. And she sees that in Rob, and she realizes this kind of guy will do anything to prove to himself that he's not just another middle aged, middle class white guy with money. Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

And at the point, this, like, personality profile, too, is like, there's always an element of, like, revenge to having access to a lot of sex and that

[Host 2]

it's been owed to you.

[Jamie Loftus]

You're getting it back.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I never got it in high school. Right. And yeah, he definitely a big part of what he feels is that, like, I will do anything to have sex with a lot of young women. Right? That's what. That's what Nicole sees in Rob. Right? So she first enters Rob's life when he goes to a benchmark gathering, and she walks in wearing this elaborate, sexy costume. He would later describe it as like a moment from a movie where the music changes to mark an important plot point. Because all these guys want to feel like they're the leading man in a blockbuster film. And like, finally, like, my life is turning into a movie. I'm no longer gonna be, like, this boring schlub working a job, right? And Nicole sees that and sees, like, that's just what you tell him. You just tell him this is a great adventure. Like, you're the protagonist of life. We're gonna make like, that's forever now. As long as you stick with me. So for the moment, Carol needs to be around too. Cause Rob is not willing to immediately dump his wife. And Nicole manages to convince them both that she could provide a more exciting and lucrative future for them than the welcomed consensus. So she poaches these two and two other students before leaving, and they all move into Rob's house in San Francisco while Nicole tries to figure out what to do to differentiate her grift from the ones that had come before her. Right? She knows she wants to do something like the Morehouse and the welcome consensus, but she wants it to be her own thing, and she wants it to be something that can last and will not wind up pissing off a bunch of, like, newspapers and stuff, right? She has to make, like, somehow, how do I make it work and how do I make it palatable for, like, people in the 90s who are less sexist than these dudes from, from, like, the 60s and 70s who had started the other orgasm cults, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Or at least a different kind.

[Host 2]

Yeah, or at least a different kind. So before she figures out what her grift is gonna be while they're all still living at Rob's house. She knows she wants to launch a food donation charity called Fill Up America. And this is not an act of charity. This is something she had learned. Cause both the Welcomed Consensus and the Morehouse people did this, right? Where they had food donation charities and they would take food donations, but the purpose of these were not to give out food. It was so that you didn't have to shop. Right. You take in a. You make yourself known as like, this is who you donate food to. And people donate food and you take out the good stuff and you use that to feed everyone for free at your commune. And then you give away the bad stuff to like a food pantry or something like that. Like, that's literally what it is. And that's what Nicole is doing. It's very unethical. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

God, that's so horrible. Yeah. Where it's like a gigantic shipment of like soaking wet PB and js.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Yes. Yes. And you got out all the good shit. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

I have to, I have to say, like the future sex cult having something called Fill Up America is so funny, Philip. America.

[Host 2]

Really funny.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's gross.

[Host 2]

It's really gross. You had to know that Nicole, this was like the year 2001. Like, we weren't that in the fucking.

[Jamie Loftus]

Like you knew what you do, Philip. America nasty.

[Host 2]

It's. It says a lot about Nicole that she's like, first even before I know what the grift is, but I know what the cult's going to be before I have any like members or any classes. We've gotta have our fake food charity so we don't have to pay for groceries, Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Now Nicole starts writing her own guide to what she called orgasmic meditation, which pulled back from the multi hour sessions the welcomed consensus had worked up to. She realized it was more, a lot more marketable to sell clitoral stroking as a 15 minute meditative technique. Something you can plug into your morning routine without much fuss. She specifically says, I want this to replace coffee for like young professional women in like the Bay Area and stuff. Like instead of your morning coffee, you have like your morning 15 minute.

[Jamie Loftus]

I, I do she already. I will say basic prior other than like, she's. It's a better hook than what Vic is.

[Host 2]

It's a way better hook. She's much smarter than Dicker.

[Jamie Loftus]

Coffee with coming is a great pick.

[Host 2]

It's genius. It's genius in a way. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. Absolutely. Hey, guys. Did you know my wife could come? Should we start a business? Like, she has learned and what tells

[Host 2]

you how ahead of the curve she is is, like, in like, 2016, you would have written this as, like, a joke startup, right? To parody, like, the health and wellness culture and the body optimization culture in the. In the Valley, in the Bay. But this is like 2001 or 2002, right? She's really ahead of the curve. She sees this part of San Francisco before. It's as much of a meme as it's going to become. Pre goop. Yeah, pre goop. Now there is conflict arises pretty quickly between her and Carol. Carol is convinced that Nicole wants to convince her husband to abandon her, because that is exactly what Nicole is trying to do.

[Jamie Loftus]

Carol, get out of there. Get out of there, girl.

[Host 2]

So Carol gets pissed and she's like, rob and I are leaving. We're gonna go stay at a nice place in Jersey for like, a couple of weeks, and you need to be gone when we get back. So Rob and Carol fucking bounce. And before they leave, Nicole is like, you'll regret it. Your life will be nothing but boring once you get back home if you leave us. And that says she leaves. Her little nascent cult leaves, and they try to find a new place to be. And Rob and Carol come back, and they do kind of miss the cult. They are like, oh, it is really boring without Nicole. I'm just kind of, like, making money and living in the Bay. I kind of want to be back in a cult. It's a lot more fun than my life.

[Jamie Loftus]

So there's not a lot of good movies out right now. We'd like to recreate.

[Host 2]

Can we take acid and party?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. We took an improv class, and it wasn't fun. We went, didn't fix things.

[Host 1]

This is 2001. But is this 2001 or so before 911 or after?

[Host 2]

We're probably after 911 now. I don't know.

[Host 1]

All right, all right. I just wanted. I just wanted to understand the cultural vibes of the day.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sure.

[Host 2]

So she. Nicole calls Rob a few weeks, you know, into this and is like, hey, you guys want to, like, come over and take acid? Like, we're staying at this new place. Why don't you all party? And like, they do, and soon they're back in the group. And she eventually talks Rob into leaving his wife. And she basically does it by pitching him, like, look, we're gonna create this new tech savvy community of orgasm entrepreneurs, and we're gonna sell this technique to all of these, like, rich people in the bay and all these beautiful young women in the bay. And I want you to be basically a human billboard, Rob. You're gonna have endless access to women's bodies as you just kind of like, help, help, help us afford this while we're getting off the ground. And Rob agrees. Rob is all the way.

[Jamie Loftus]

No kidding. Rob agrees.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's crazy.

[Host 2]

Rob takes the deal, ultimately does leave his wife.

[Jamie Loftus]

I was trying to, like, drop myself into the experience of someone making, like, telling me to my face. They're an orgasm entrepreneur.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I don't know that she uses that word, but that is what they're doing, right? They're starting an orgasm business.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I do believe that guys like this would. Would feel so comfortable just letting that. I'm a bit of an orgasm entrepreneur, you could say. And then my clitoris would just fall off right there.

[Host 2]

So around the same time that all this is happening, Nicole has started gathering a coterie of older men to her, Right. That she's. At first, she's going to use for money and then for, like, some of their knowledge and advice. And in all of these cases, she's kind of like. You get the. Some of it. Sometimes it's spelled out, sometimes it's not. But she's kind of offering up her body in some cases to these men that she needs something from in order to get pieces that she needs to complete this cult. And that's going to be relevant because of, like, what she's going to do later. Right. But that is an aspect of this that's not always directly discussed, but sometimes it's even just like, these old guys just want to spend time and feel like they're influential to this young, hot woman. Sometimes they are getting something physical from it. The first of these older men version

[Jamie Loftus]

of the Elizabeth Holmes playbook.

[Host 2]

Right, Right, right. Exactly, exactly.

[Jamie Loftus]

My hot, young ward.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Yep. And the first of these men was the former Morehouse founder, Vic Baranko, who by this point, was old and dying and was living in Hawaii. He had just a handful. He basically, again, Morehouse still exists, but he'd kind of given up control and had just retreated to this, like, nice place in Hawaii with a few of his closest followers. Right. Because he knows he's not gonna last much longer, and he just wants to enjoy life kind of less house. And she thinks that she convinces him over a couple of days, and who knows what goes on to make her his heir so she can take over after him and, like, move Morehouse into a new age. But that was just a lie. Like, he was. He never meant that. And she eventually realizes that she's been had and he was just kind of screwing around with her. And so she leaves with her followers from the Morehouse compound and they rent another place in Hawaii for a while and they start like planning out, like, what is our. What are we gonna do? Like what is our course curriculum gonna be? And they start writing out, obviously taking these ideas from Morehouse and the welcome consensus and throwing in some of their own, mostly Nicole's, and they're putting stuff together. They move back to San Francisco where they meet the next of these older guys who's a 45 year old former musician named Don Marys. His longtime girlfriend had recently died from some sort of cancer. And Don is just deeply depressed. He's certainly not a rich guy, but he's got a house of his own and he's got some amount of money and they really just need a place. Right. Nicole had known him when she was in her early 20s and had been partying and doing a lot of drugs. And you know, he's a musician, so they'd kind of known each other. And she'd latched onto him like 10 or so years ago, even though he was a lot older. And he'd avoid getting entangled with her then because a friend of his had told him, quote, she's a monster. But she shows up a decade later, he's really lonely and sad, and she's like, hey, we're doing this like fun thing. We're gonna start an orgasm business. Can we like do it in your house? And he's like, okay, I guess, why not?

[Jamie Loftus]

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

[Host 2]

She doesn't critically. I said, she doesn't say it's an orgasm business. We're doing like a self help thing and we're going to come up with like a new training program to sell people and start a business. Can we do it in your house?

[Jamie Loftus]

Right, right. And orgasms are what, like the xenu of the operation? Like you're like, oh, by the way, by the way.

[Host 2]

Okay, for Don. Yeah. Don's gonna have to wait to learn that orgasms are what this is all about. Okay? So while he's out working, cause he's still like a handyman or something. Nicole and her friends are at his house writing courses on orgasmic meditation and clitoral stroking. Don is kind of only dimly aware of like literally what they're doing. He's mostly just happy to not be lonely, it kind of seems like to me. And he starts to become aware that like whatever they're doing during the Day, Nicole seems to be flirting with him. And Don is a smart enough guy to know, like, well, that can't be genuine. Like, I know. Like, I'm way over the hill. I don't feel good anymore. Like, this is. She's gotta have an angle in this, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm grieving. Like, it.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Yeah. So one day she tells. Don is in the room, but Nicole is talking to Rob. And Nicole tells Rob, I should marry Don. I think that would be really good for the group if I married Don't. And she doesn't even say this to Don. And they wind up taking acid later. And he kind of gets pissed about this because, again, he's grieving. And he's like, you shouldn't joke about stuff like that. And he, like, kind of leaves for a while, but he comes back, and she keeps pushing him to spend more time with them and to party with them and kind of flirting with him more. And even after they eventually leave his place because Rob gets a new place near San Francisco. And she's like, don, why don't you come with us and stay for a few days? And he's like, I know something's going on here. I know this isn't on the up and up, but I am old and sad, and I kind of want to take drugs with this hot young lady and her orgasm cult. What might be an orgasm cult. Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

He was going through a hard time. Oh, I was feeling through the hard.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah. She plies Don with lsd, and he winds up spending, like, more than, like, weeks there. And her followers pitch him on what they'd started calling the Institute of Monastic Understanding.

[Host 1]

Nope.

[Host 2]

Which they like because the acronym is imu, Right? Yeah. There she Sinu.

[Jamie Loftus]

Gross.

[Host 1]

Nope.

[Host 2]

Yeah. So their food charity is in full swing by this point, and they start recruiting people who volunteered to help them bag and distribute groceries. Right. To join the cult. These people are hearing about the orgasms. Don still is not. People come and go from the property, including Don's cousin William, who Don, like, calls Will up, and Will comes down for a few weeks, and he writes a fictional book about his time there and about, like, falling in love with these, like, LSD cultists. And Hewitt includes some lines from it in her book. And this Don's cousin's writings give a pretty compelling glimpse inside the minds of these older men that she's bringing in. And, like. Cause this is gonna be relevant, the whole growth of this cult. This is what's always going on in the dudes heads. Quote, Think of it. The endless Excellent sex. The lively intellectual conversation, the intense tripping, all the new people I was meeting, and just the entire unknown adventure of it. And this community. More happened in a week, every week, than would happen in three months. Back in the old world, my other life, that place when I had an American Express card a lifetime ago. Right. What if you didn't have to think about money or work? It could just take drugs and have sex.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, right. But then also positioning. That I feel like, so. So, like, crucial to these kinds of grifts is to not make it just sound like what it is, which is, like, drugs and sex and the illusion of power and access and all this Stu. And being like, this is a spiritual mission and you're doing the best at it.

[Host 2]

Yeah. No, that is what I got out of the events I used to go to as a young person, because they were totally honest. It was like, no, no. For, like, five days, we're gonna do drugs and have a bunch of weird sex, and there will be a bunch of art and music to dance to. But then we. Then you go home. Then you go back to your life and it's done.

[Jamie Loftus]

Then you go home.

[Host 2]

Then you go home.

[Jamie Loftus]

And if you have a nice time, that's great. But crucially, it does not make you

[Host 2]

the thing to do. But you're not God, and you haven't figured out the universe. You've just learned that doing drugs and fucking for five days with your friends can be a pretty good time.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Which, like, you knew already before you did it.

[Jamie Loftus]

Hope you disinfected those cuts from the glass that was falling from the ceiling. Save travel.

[Host 2]

Save the last cut. Whoever got hurt by glass, other than the people. So Don agrees eventually to marry Nicole, knowing it's a bad idea. And Nicole admits to him at this point, after he says, let's get married, she's like, by the way, this whole thing is all about orgasms. This is an orgasm cult that we're doing. And he's initially pissed, but at this point, he's agreed to marry her, right? So he forgives her, and they have a weird wedding where she kind of ignores him until they're married. And then she tells him. She turns to him and she says, actually, you've just married everyone in this room, and it's all of the other cult members. Horrible time for Don. And her followers jokingly make Don a shirt that says, indignant man kidnapped by Love Cult. Like, a. Like a fake headline as a joke that I love. Like, they are really poor. Like, Don is. He's getting fucked with. But also they were just saying what was happening, man. Like, I don't know.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's like at some point. Well, I don't. I don't even know this. This guy can't catch a break. And they're bullying him.

[Host 2]

And they're bullying him. And I think his attitude is kind of like, I bought the ticket, I took the ride, you know, like, he's not the ultimate victim. His story's just very funny to me.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, it's just like at some point it just gets weird where he's like, well, yeah, it's. It's just like someone acting like they're wearing handcuffs when it's like, no, man, you own the house. This is your house.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

You are not trapped here. He's like, well, there's nothing I could do.

[Host 2]

So the group still going by IMU starts offering courses for money. And so for the first time, people start paying them and attending. But they're not a lot of people. This is not a big group yet. And they're not teaching orgasm at first in these classes. They're not doing the stroking or anything of that. Instead, they're teaching Nicole's philosophy, which is a bunch of warmed over bullshit from like the middle of the last century. And basically, like. Basically Nicole's attitude is like, life has no inherent meaning other than the one that you give it, which sounds like it could be fine. Right. People take that in healthy ways. This is often the case with Nicole stuff. There's a way you can interpret that healthily. But what Nicole means by that is that if you have a bad experience, that's because you're choosing to frame the thing that happened to you as a bad thing. And you don't have to do that. And the point that she will tell in these classes to illustrate what she's saying is that, you know, when I was a child, I used to think that my father had molested me. But now that I'm a mature adult and I've done a lot of work and gone through all of the coursework and stuff on this, I know now I seduced my father. I was the one with power.

[Jamie Loftus]

So she's just in that relationship. Like, that's.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

That is the class.

[Jamie Loftus]

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

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Because you're like. I mean, it's like the moment you gotta feel for her that it's like, if she does believe it, that's really Tragic and really fucked up. Yeah.

[Host 2]

That said, I don't think that she. I think this is. Maybe she believes it or not, but I think this is consciously. She's doing this because she knows what she's gonna be doing to the people who are her followers. Right. And she wants. This is a really good thing to convince everyone to believe at the baseline before you start doing the other shit. She's going to do that. If you think something's bad, it's because you're interpreting it as bad.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's like almost like a grooming tactic. Like you've just taken a course on why everything that's about to happen to you is actually okay.

[Host 2]

It's fine. Is good. Yes. And obviously that. That really, like, sends a message to her followers. Early on in 2003, after Carol leaves and Don marries Nicole, Nicole brings a new guy into the fold. A new old guy. This is Ray Vetterlein. Ray Vetterlin had been a protege of Vic at Moore at the Morehouse thing. And he was like the almost famous version of a cult leader. Like, he'd been pretty big in Morehouse. He'd done some cult stuff of his own, but had never really taken off. He'd, like, done. He'd made some money. He'd done okay, but tough industry.

[Jamie Loftus]

Cult leader.

[Host 2]

It's a tough industry. He's a working cult leader. Ray is right.

[Jamie Loftus]

Don't take it personally, man. It could have.

[Host 2]

Just as he's on one leg at a time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But Ray knows the business, right? Rey knows if you're going to start a cult, here's the things you want to do, here's how you build the curriculum that you're going to sell and all this stuff. And so she brings him in, and he writes down a lot of his best tips and tricks, and he helps her kind of plan the cult. She's going to start from the ground up. And this is kind of a situation where RHA is both going to get physical access to Nicole's body. He's going to be doing all of these physical orgasm demonstrations where he's, like, stroking her. But he also. He gets to, like. He gets to kind of live through her because she is young enough and has enough energy to start a successful cult. And he doesn't anymore. And I think that's a big part of it for Reynolds. Right. So he writes out a document for her laying out how this orgasm cult ought to function. Per the book Empire of Orgasm, quote, some of the lessons were nuts and bolts. Practical teachers should be in couples, ideally in their early 30s, young enough that 20 year old students won't see them as mom and dad making out. Host a day long intro course twice a month, he said, and use a short demo of a woman in orgasm at the end of the class as a safe showstopper. A format that one tastes that's her later culture would employ for more than a decade. The minute one woman sees another woman getting off like that, they want to be there too. Ray wrote. Right. So they spell this out all very directly. And his pitch to her as to like why this is gonna work is that Morehouse had failed because it was too patriarchal. It was too trapped in the 70s and 80s. Right. People today didn't want to hear like a fucking dude with a mustache talking about how much he's getting laid. They want the illusion at least of feminism and gender equality. And they want to be told that what they're doing isn't just because they're horny, it's because it's going to optimize their health, it's going to make them more powerful, it's going to make you smarter, it's going to make you faster, it's going to make you better able to compete in the cutthroat tech industry. Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

That is such a, like, it's, it's the same sexual crime. But being positioned by a woman who claims this will optimize you.

[Host 2]

This will optimize you. Like eating the drink of the right juice.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 2]

Super funny.

[Jamie Loftus]

I mean that's like, that is even though it is funny and a great pitch replacing like, it's so Silicon Valley brain to be like, I come instead of drink coffee and it saves me time and it actually releases more chemicals.

[Host 2]

It's me eight minutes a day, Right? Yeah. Look at how many emails I've sent. It's the same as the AI thing. Really. Right. How many more emails I send than everyone else. I'm productive.

[Jamie Loftus]

They all, they like, they're all in a language I don't speak, but they sent them and that's what matters.

[Host 2]

That's all that matters in business. Ray has it in this document. He has a line that is one of my favorite things from this. Since we are not yet selling the God Hustle, what do we do? What we have to sell is an organically healthy lifestyle with sensuality and intimacy. Ray's really good at this. Ray's honestly a great mind in the con business.

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow.

[Host 2]

You know who else is a great mind when it comes to conning people?

[Host 1]

You.

[Host 2]

Yeah. And the sponsors of this podcast. This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir lamivudine. If you're living with hiv, do learn about Dovato Divato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

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[Host 2]

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[Host 2]

And we're back. So Ray wrote that anyone showing up to their classes was by definition missing something, right? This is like. Because this is something. Nicole knows a lot of this, but Ray's kind of writing out all of his lessons. And one thing, he writes that anyone's gonna show up to, like, a optimize your life, fucking orgasm class is missing something, right? They don't have everything they need. They're not fully happy. Otherwise they wouldn't be here. And the one thing that Americans are more likely to miss than anything else is intimacy, right? So if you can create situations that fake very sudden, very intense intimacy with a large number of hot people, you can make a fuckload of money, because people will get addicted to that. And they'll pay any amount of money to keep being around it. And all you have to do is be brutally honest about what they're doing wrong, at which point they'll listen to whatever you tell them is the right way to do things, right? Because they want to stay there. They want to keep having these experiences. They want to keep feeling that they're having revelations and stuff, because they're just doing things that feel good for their body. And that's nice. And people can't accept that. People can't just accept that. Like, oh, maybe I like having sex in, like, a fucking weird group situation, which is a perfectly fine thing for people to do if that's what gets you off. But they can't just accept this feels good. It has to be optimizing me. This has to be unlocking a secret hack in my brain. Otherwise it's a waste of time because I won't make more money at Apple, right? And like, that, literally, that's the fucking thing.

[Jamie Loftus]

And it's like going back to the fucking 12th century as, like, a cis woman orgasming has to have some sort of, like, crucial productive function where it just. Nothing can just feel good.

[Host 2]

And that's. That's really what drew me in to, like, the fucking events that I. Like these little burn events that I went to was like, the whole. The whole pitch was like, you know what. What sucks capitalism? You know what doesn't suck? Doing drugs with your friends in the woods.

[Jamie Loftus]

Where's the hedonism?

[Host 2]

It was not like, the hedonism's important.

[Jamie Loftus]

Where's the hedonism? This shit sucks.

[Host 2]

They had that back in Morehouse. But it got really. Again, if there's also a guy for the experience. Yeah, that's the other important thing is that. And there's not, like, a guy. Like, it's just a bunch of people hanging out. Like, no one's getting rich off of this. Like, as soon as there's a guy and as soon as you're paying thousands of dollars, like, things get very quickly problematic. But if you're paying thousands of dollars, then it can't just be something that feels good because, like, actually feeling good can be really cheap. Like, I can just sit on the couch, like, with my partner, and we both have a real, like, feel really nice, like watching a movie. But nobody makes money off of that. Can't be worth anything.

[Jamie Loftus]

They have a meeting at the beginning of every day. Do not tell people they can just come at their house. Do not tell them.

[Host 2]

Don't tell people that. Don't let them know they can just actually find love and companionship without, like, paying money.

[Jamie Loftus]

Because that will just start a conversation with someone and see what happens. Don't tell them that shit.

[Host 2]

Don't let them know. Don't let them know. So Don and Nicole and their little group are living at Ray's place at this point, right? They've moved into Rhea's house, and they're helping Nicole explore how to make her. They're basically prepping. They're not gonna be doing these public orgasm demos. And they're. They're. They're training, right? They're doing. They're like, preparing for, like, these marathon public orgasm sessions, right? And this means that Nicole, every day, is lying down in a room full of mirrors while Don and Ray. And Ray's in his 70s. Masturbate her at the same time. And Ray is supposed to be kind of like, teaching Don how to do it. Because the idea initially is that Don will do this because he's her husband in the. In the actual, like, public classes. And. And Nicole is. She's not. You know, she's having these with a lot of her followers. Like, they're all practicing these masturbation techniques. And Nicole is keeping a blog in which she writes about her experiences in lurid detail. And this is going to give you an idea of, like, how she's. Because she. You can't ever talk about it. Like, sex. You should never describe the sexual sensations or what you're seeing or doing in a sexual manner. You don't want it to be hot. You want it to sound like a fucking poem or something, right? Like, because that makes it not gross. So for an example, that. Here's one description that Nicole wrote about how it felt to be masturbated by Ray, this elderly cult leader.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, no.

[Host 2]

The laughter welled and welled inside of me. I became swollen with laughter. And then, like champagne pouring over the sides of the bottle, tears began to flood me. Right? And again, the key here is that there's nothing about sex in there, right. That makes it seem profound and also marketable.

[Host 1]

Some Lana Del Rey ass.

[Jamie Loftus]

I was like, like, whatever. Writing sex poetry is fine, but if. But if that's, like, a hard rule, then it starts to feel kind of, like, dissociative.

[Host 2]

But also that makes it feel very different from these prior cults. There's no guys going. And this is so hot. Isn't it? Like, because they're not. They're being like. No, it's like champagne pouring over the sides of a bottle. You know, it just feels more intellectual and thus us safe. Right? Right. That's the basic idea. And part of the idea here is that, like, while she's being stroked for an audience, she'll call in people to put her hands, their hands on her and describe how they felt. And the idea is that this is such a powerful spiritual thing that everybody is affected by it in the room, right? And that gets everyone to buy into it, and it makes them feel connected and included and helps make it an addictive experience. Soon she's got, like, 20 or so followers, but she's not making money off of this. And she feels like the group is incomplete. Until one day, Rhea is like, hey, Don's not working for, like, the sex demo stuff. Nobody's gonna wanna watch Don do this. I think you should bring Erwan back. Cause Erwan's hot and he's really good at doing these. These demos.

[Jamie Loftus]

Don cannot.

[Host 2]

You should bring him in. Fucking Don.

[Jamie Loftus]

He's been Fired from the manipulative sex local theater troupe. It's.

[Host 2]

And Don. He's growing increasingly disillusioned. He hears one day he overhears Rhaey and Erawan talking. Cause she brings in Erewhan and Ray. And Erawan called Don a throwaway person.

[Jamie Loftus]

He said there is like a Eugene Levy and best in show quality to Don. To me, he's just like, that is really funny.

[Host 2]

Eugene Levy, 20 years ago would have been the guy to cast for Don.

[Jamie Loftus]

For Don, be like, hey, so people, you're really bringing down the vibe at the sex cult, Don.

[Host 2]

So Don flips out and Don leaves. Nicole divorces him. And by the time she and Erewhan do their first public demo in front of an audience of 40, he is all but forgotten.

[Host 1]

Bye, Don.

[Jamie Loftus]

Bye, Don. Good for you.

[Host 2]

Bye, Don. Bye, Don. This first public stroking demo happens in August of 2003. Hewitt's book describes the scene in detail. And I don't feel the need to tell you what Irwan did to this woman's vulva step by step. I appreciate that. Ellen does. Her book is very good. You learn a lot about this group and exactly what they're doing. We don't need to talk about that. You. You get the idea, right? What's important is what he tells the audience. After Nicole has a massive, shuddering, hour long orgasm in front of a crowd. Quote, it's pure euphoria. You can have as much of that sensation as you like. You can feel it in your body as much as you want. If she can do this, so can you. And then he invites audience members up to touch Nicole. And this works like gangbusters, right? People love this. They tell their friends. Soon more folks are signing up to go watch the orgasm class, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Doing like a horny Marina Abramovic thing. It does feel like it's like a. It's like a. A performance art thing.

[Host 2]

It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

And he's like the maitre d. He's the, he's the, you know, guy with the microphone.

[Host 2]

Come, come first, come all. And that's gonna be a problem, right? Because Nicole, she got into this to be the one, right? She's the cult leader. If Erewhon is like the star of the show, because he's actually doing the demonstration and talking and she's just kind of like mutely. Not mutely, but like she's not making like she's not speaking. She's. She's supposed to be having an orgasm, right? She's kind of a secondary figure in the demo. That is not gonna work for Nicole.

[Host 1]

One of my favorite details to add here is that this man's name is definitely Erwin, but Robert keeps calling him Erwan, like the grocery store. And I love it.

[Host 2]

E R W A N. And I've

[Host 1]

been enjoying it the entire time. But I think. But I think we're about to see. I think we're about to be the last of this man. And I wanted to get it in.

[Host 2]

Everyone's not going to be around all that much longer because Nicole. Nicole is basically. As soon as this first demo goes the way it does, Nicole has like a team meeting, like a cult meeting. And she's like, you guys got to choose him or me. Like, she has enough. She's got the instincts where she's like, if I let this. This get established is the way we do things, he's gonna be the cult leader. Right. And I don't want that. That's not okay.

[Jamie Loftus]

This is such a Silicon Valley approach to cult leading. It's so wild.

[Host 2]

Very much. This is like the PayPal mafia shit. Yeah, yeah, it's the PayPal mafia with weird orgasm fucking teachings.

[Jamie Loftus]

So he's new. He's gone.

[Host 2]

He's nuked. Yeah. The Colt picks Nicole, Nicole wins, and Erwan leaves the picture. Erwin, whatever you wanna call him, Ray is kicked out.

[Host 1]

Erwin, whatever your prices are high. Great produce. Sorry.

[Host 2]

Good soup. Ray gets kicked out right after that. Not long after that, because Nicole no longer needs any old men, like, hanging around the Grift. Right. She's figured things out. Yeah. The Grift is now ready. This is a fully operational battle station. The Grift is now ready for the prime time in March of 2020.

[Host 1]

Farewell, Avidr. Sorry, I just like that she's kicking

[Host 2]

out all these rape. Scott. All the poison elderly men are now.

[Host 1]

So far.

[Host 2]

Yeah. In March of 2004, Nicole finally settles on a name for what they were doing. One Taste. It was taken from the title of a book by a philosopher and attributed to a statement by the Buddha. Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste. The taste. Liberation. Yes. One taste, the taste of liberation. He's talking about. That's Buddha talking about, I guess, Buddhism. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she's like, one taste. When you have one taste.

[Jamie Loftus]

Not pussy.

[Host 2]

Yeah, they're not doing that, Jamie. But when you have one taste of the life we offer you, you'll never want anything else for yourself. Right? That's how it's supposed to feel. You know, so on July 30, 2004, the One Taste Urban Retreat center opened in San Francisco's Folsom street, which is probably the most sex positive neighborhood in the US at the time. There's a big street fair on Folsom that's like a bunch of leather daddies and like some really depraved public sex acts. If you really want to see some shit, go to the Folsom street parade.

[Jamie Loftus]

San Francisco in the 2000s is still like kind of hanging on to still people. It's pretty cool, right?

[Host 2]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

So Nicole and her followers ran their orgasm demos there. But they also, like, this is like a big warehouse basically, and they've got like several different businesses that they operate out of it. They've got a yoga studio, they've got a massage parlor, they've got like a cafe that sells fucking frozen Yogurt because it's 2004. And they're also hosting workshops. Not just the orgasm stuff, but they've got some very BAE friendly subjects, like conscious cuddling. Right. Where again, it's. And you get a lot of like, oh, people think you have to pay to like cuddle with a bunch of people because they don't know they don't have any community. Like, ah, that's a bummer again. That stuff was just free. When I was younger, we didn't have to pay to fucking do a workshop next to a Froyo stand. So the orgasm stuff was kooky and out there, but for the most part, they blended into the scenery of San Francisco. At that time, One Taste was a business and her cult members are also all employees, although they are not receiving regular or sufficient pay for the 14 hour days that they're putting in.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay. Silicon Valley. Paid an experience.

[Host 2]

Paid an experience, baby.

[Host 1]

Since you mentioned Froyo, it does. One taste does sound like a Pinkberry.

[Host 2]

It's a good idea for a Froyo name. Yeah.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

It would be funny if they hadn't become a criminal cult, which is where this ends. And it had just pivoted hard into Froyo. And I was just explaining the origins of a popular frozen yogurt company.

[Jamie Loftus]

They're just like, wait, so we just realized Froyo is where the money is. So we're dropping the sex cult.

[Host 2]

We're dropping the sex. It's like if you were looking up like the marble slab creamer, like, oh, they used to fuck on the slab. Huh?

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow.

[Host 2]

I didn't guess that. Guess the ice cream was A better business. Yeah. McDonald's used to just be a guy named McDonald in a bedroom, but then he started serving burgers. And, you know, one thing led to another. So Morehouse starts having weekly sessions where they'll, again, they're playing communication games to draw in the normies. You know, instead of calling it the mark group or the benchmark group, she called them this, the in group. A term which I think deeply revealing to the social dynamics that are at play here. Because most people, most of us weren't cool at high school or at any of the schools that we went to. And some people grow up and they enter the wide world and they find their place in it. And we forget that we ever wanted strangers to think that we were cool. Other people don't get over that. And they particularly never get over. A lot of men never get over seeing, like the cool hot guys at their high school hang out with the cool hot girls who didn't know they existed, right? That like, eats at them the remainder of their lives. And so that's why she's calling it the in group, right? Is it's kind of to be like, you're one of the cool kids if you're hanging out with us, right? Like you're one of the cool kids if you pay for our classes. This is how to be that. Cause we're having lots of fun, experimental, weird sex. Now. It would be very unfair of me, I should note, just to say that, to talk about. Cause I've largely been talking about what is drawing, like these men, particularly these men with money into this group, right? What is bringing them in. And it'd be really unfair of me to say that and not talk about what the women who are joining the cult are getting out of this. Because most of the cult leaders, I think are women or cult members are women, right? And they're women of all ages. They are really heavily recruiting younger women. But there are women who are in like their 40s and 50s who are joining too. And so it's important, like, what are. How is Nicole reaching them? Because I can understand. And the marketing to middle aged men thing, right? But I don't know, like, what's drawing these, because that seems like a lot of vulnerability, a lot of putting your body on display, a lot of like, risk. And anyway, I looked into a bunch of like, their advertising videos and I found some of those that I think make that a little easier to understand. Sophie's gonna play a video for you called Overcoming Depression through Orgasmic Meditation. And it shows one example of how the cult sold themselves to women.

[Sophie]

I didn't know another way of being. Like, I was like, oh, everybody has this, everybody has these thoughts and feelings, but you have to keep them hidden.

[Host 2]

When I see how people are treated for depression now, it breaks my heart. The very last thing you need is

[Jamie Loftus]

a diagnosis that comes onto you like

[Host 2]

an additional sentence because most people who are depressed feel guilty.

[Sophie]

My whole life I struggled with depression. I never felt a lot of joy. Like I didn't have a big range of emotions above sadness. I'd come home from work and lay on the couch. I would drink, I would sleep, take sleeping pills, anything to make the thoughts in my mind stop and to not have to feel what I was feeling. I'd taken antidepressants, you know, many anti antidepressants, many anti anxiety medications. And the best they did was just numb the feelings a little bit. The thoughts were still there. The doubt, the fear, the lack of joy or happiness was still there. So it didn't seem like those provided me with the solution. I wanted to actually have the full life that I wanted to live.

[Jamie Loftus]

What is aimed to heal them in their depression actually just numbs them and has them feel that much more disconnected from life.

[Host 2]

So, okay, first off, you see the pitch. Are you depressed and sad? We have an answer. Boy. Medication isn't always pleasant and it kind of the diagnosis can feel like an anchor. There's a lot of anti medical stuff in that video, right? And she describes that like many people suffer both from the disc. It's not just depression is suffering. People suffer, sure, but then when you get on the drugs, disconnects them. And that's the kind of suffering too, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

I guess it's like I, it's, it's very New agey bullshit and like trying to separate you from potential tools. But also, I don't know, I. Targeting women in their 40s and 50s is interesting to me because I'm wondering if it's connected to possibly, you know, like when women hit midlife, they're treated like they don't exist as sexual beings and that that's like not something that is.

[Host 2]

Well, and especially older women in this period would have grown up in a time that was even more sexually restricted and people are starting to talk openly. That's kind of part of why people are so affected by this is if you're someone in that situation and you lay down and there's this hot young guy who looks at you and tells you you're beautiful and then starts massaging you, I'm not surprised. A lot of people get very addicted to that and they're like, yeah, this did more for my depression than therapy was doing. Right. How they would feel like that in the moment and then they get wrapped up in a cult that causes much, much more damage.

[Jamie Loftus]

But it's just the way that they're targeting people is very particular. That was a freaky ad.

[Host 2]

It's really, it's about to get freakier because Sophie's gonna play. You continue playing that, but from. Can you play from 132 to 147 from the same video? Sophie, thank you.

[Dovato Medication Ad Voice]

For depression, many have turned successfully to orgasm cosmic meditation, an attention training practice with defined procedures. In OM, a partner strokes a woman's clitoris for 15 minutes with no other goal than to feel what is present in the moment.

[Jamie Loftus]

Ah, yeah. So they did her dirty in that edit. Oh my God.

[Host 2]

Yeah,

[Jamie Loftus]

this is a bummer.

[Host 2]

Yeah, it is a little. It is a bummer. It's depressing. Now a big thing that Nicole is doing here, she's recruiting and stocking her events with a lot of attractive young women and some attractive young men. But most of the guys in the group are like closer to or past middle age. And when those other dudes saw that, like the guys who were in the cult giving clitoral massages to 22 year olds who are also like in the cult or like just playing card games and laughing like close friends with those same girls, their brains go right back to the 11th grade, right? Only now Nicole is there with an offer which is pay me for classes. And you get to be in the, in group, right? And they're, you know, that's kind of part of it is like, yeah, you get to be cool and you get to have these new cool friends who are all like free with each other's bodies with each other and people are just so fucking lonely. Like, this is very appealing to some folks, right? It's a bummer.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's not. It's. It is really sad. And I know it's like not necess. It does feel like very American to like monetize the idea of community like this and, you know, just like whatever, hyper, hyper target people who are made invisible by the culture they're in and be and being like, okay, you're seen now. You're valid, you're attractive, you're loved. That'll be $5,000 and then call that community. It's just like, yeah, very dark.

[Host 2]

And a big thing Nicole is doing because when she's like recruiting particularly the younger people who are going to be doing most of the work in this is she's a bit older than them, but she seems like she has her life together. She seems like she has an identity, she's offering an identity. And all you have to do is like a whole bunch of clitoral massages and sometimes open yourself sexually to a bunch of weird older men who are giving the cult money. And this kind of. In this period, Nicole makes the transition from previously to kind of get the things the cult needed. Nicole had had to either sleep with directly or at least like offer pieces of herself up to these like older and wealthier men that she needed something from. Now that the cult is established, increasingly what she's going to do is these younger women and some of the younger men she's bringing in. Cause she does abuse a lot of younger men this way now, hey, the group needs you to have sex with this person because they will spend a lot of money if you do that. Right? That's the route this goes on is from I am going to make that choice for myself to I am going to kind of convince other people to make that choice to make me money. Right? That's the journey Nicole has gone on in this story thus far. So one of her big teachings that she's. Cause in addition to the orgasm stuff, there's always way more convoluted philosophical stuff. And she's teaching her followers, life is a game and it should be viewed as a game. And in a game you have to explore all the nooks and crannies and try everything to solve different kinds of puzzles, right? Or find power ups or whatever. And so when she would ask a member to om or to have sex with somebody that they didn't find attractive, that's a game. Oh, you don't like this like rich older dude who's kind of like weird and lecherous to you? Well, it'll be a game for you to figure out how to have fun, you know, like that's the game when. Well yeah, like, exactly. And she'll do this will be very directly when wealthy men or women will like walk into a one taste event and Nicole will notice that they're like attracted to or hitting on a specific member of the cult. She'll tell that person, go flirt with them, right? Maybe you don't have to have sex with them right away, but convince them to like take a class to sign up. They'll get to hang out with you and she'll put, she'll give some of her followers free or discounted classes to make sure they're in the same class as, like, these dudes who were joining. Cause they never. Most of the cult is pretty. There's a lot of women in it. But most of the people paying for classes are paying to get physical access to the bodies of the younger female cult members. And there's not enough women paying for classes for, like, Nicole has to constantly be putting people in. And that's just prostitution. Right? You're gonna have to go in and they will pay money to touch you.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right, Right. But it sounds like, what if there was a model for sex work in which only Nicole was making money? That's not how that works. And that no one has technically consented to be doing this sex work.

[Host 2]

No. Now, a big part of the game is to keep people talking about one taste. You know, hype and allure spread by word of mouth. And so Nicole starts offering because they've got this yoga center. They offer naked yoga classes, which get newspaper. There's a bunch of stories about it. You know, like, it becomes like this, oh, San Francisco sort of thing, right? It helps drive more people to the business. Business. Maybe they come in to see the naked yoga class, but they find out orgasmic meditation. What's that? Right. And so they take a class. Now, as you probably heard, by now they're referring to om, Orgasmic meditation. They're pronouncing it om, like, you know, the om. Right, the meditative, you know, chant thing. At the same time, they have turned the actual, like, clitoral stimulation massage thing into this almost sexless procedure. In one of the ten books the group would publish under Nicole's name, she described described orgasmic meditation as a structured attention training practice described in concrete terms as one person stroking another's clitoris for 15 minutes according to specific instructions. And that language works really well in terms of getting newspapers and other media organizations to treat one taste very differently than they treated Morehouse or the welcomed consensus, both of which were described accurately as creepy, weird sex clubs for perks. One taste is going to be treated like a startup, right? Or at least like a massively popular alt health practice. And to kind of make that point, here's a segment from a 2009 New York Times article by Patricia Leigh Brown and Carol pogish. Quote, At 7am Each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet curtained room while Clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation. Oming for short. The couples, who may or may not be romantically involved, call one another research partners. A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating the orgasm that exists between them, in the words of one resident, may sound like the ultimate California satire. The notion of a San Francisco sex commune focused on female orgasm as part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality, said Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University who has studied San Francisco sexual subcultures. And I find that that's really interesting because, like, y' all kind of. Not only did you all fall for it, the New York Times kind of repeated their ad pitch where, like, other people are stuck in traffic and going to work. You're just coming all the time.

[Jamie Loftus]

If you join the cult, wouldn't be their first time. It's so how. I mean, how instantly. And I like, Nicole is really smart to do this. If you're trying to do this, like, just like, like co opting any feminist talking point and the history of feminism in the area is like thing number one to do. It's like straight from the Sandberg play playbook. And it's like, don't read too carefully. Yeah.

[Host 1]

I see the puzzle pieces. You've got the border set up where it's gonna end up in part three being very like. I see the Silicon Valley of it all happening.

[Host 2]

And as you note, Jamie, like, Professor Armstrong isn't like wrong per se. But also, though she wouldn't have described Morehouse as part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Host 2]

And this is the same thing. They've just dressed it up as a tech startup. Sure.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I'm curious about. I mean, like, what. I guess this does feel very like Silicon Valley clinical to like mask something else, but removing all of this. It's like all of the sexy parts, parts of sex, but keeping all of the vulnerable parts of sex interesting. I'm trying to. I mean, it's, it's leading to something obviously, but it's just interesting how quickly were people at the time were like, so this is great, right? Yeah, like the least sexy sex that you could possibly have. And it's expensive and it costs money.

[Host 2]

Yeah. Well, part of what I want to be clear here, it's only the classes where it's deliberately not sexy. Outside of the classes, there's a lot of regular sex happening as we'll talk about in the next part These people are living together for a chunk of this, right? Oh, for a lot of this. And Nicole is also telling them to pair up with people that, like, I think it would be good for you to have sex with this guy who's gonna give us money. I think it'll be a growth experience for you to like, fuck this guy or this lady who we need something out of pimp. But that's in the. The. That's happening underneath these public, sterile sex demos. And so the law who comes is gonna be like, well, whatever this is, it's not prostitution. They're clearly not horny and they're ignoring all of the straight up prostitution that's happening in the background.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right, Officer? They're clearly not horny.

[Host 2]

Let's keep moving off to find somebody else. It's also important, I note kind of at the end here that the image of this is that what's different about one taste is that Nicole is really. The boys aren't in charge. So this really is feminine and empowering. But that's not really what's happening either because by the time they start doing demos in San Francisco, Nicole is the stroker who's performing most often in front of these large groups. That's what they call it. Right. And so she's often, when the media comes by, she'll often do the demo that they see of these meditative techniques. But she's the only woman in the cult who regularly got to perform as a stroker for classes and demonstrations. The other strokers in public are almost always men. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

So I mean, she has. Yeah, because it's like she has. Every other woman works under her.

[Host 2]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

There's no. At this point, she's. She has gotten rid of everyone who could be considered her equal.

[Host 2]

Yeah. There's definitely going to be some other women who have power in the cult that start like, forming because she has to rely and delegate a lot. But yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay.

[Host 1]

Well, I'm looking forward to part three.

[Host 2]

Well, that's part two. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Awesome, guys. Really good.

[Host 1]

Plug some pluggables.

[Jamie Loftus]

Let's plug, baby. Yeah. You can listen to Bechtel casting with the Unhoused every single week. I've got a book coming out next year that I'll be able to talk more about soon. I can't talk about. Yeah. Follow me on Instagram. Jamie Christ Superstar.

[Host 1]

Hell yeah. Yeah.

[Host 2]

Excellent. Excellent.

[Host 1]

Podcast is over.

[Host 2]

We're done.

[Host 1]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel. YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking,

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