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- [00:01]
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- [01:11]
Podcast Host
Hello everybody and welcome back to Infamous, a Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media production. So I know you just listened to an episode about Alison Mack, but we are now going to talk about another strange sex cult. So this is a bit of a sex cult doubleheader this time. It's run by a woman. I'm talking about what's called Orgasmic Meditation and the organization that rose up around that practice. It was led by a woman named Nicole who appeared to be a blazered business oriented orgasm flight philanthropist of a sort. As has been written, as we all know, women have orgasms at way lower rates than men. I don't know if anybody saw that Nicole Kidman movie Baby Girl where she's like married to the hot Spanish guy, but she admits that she hasn't had an orgasm throughout their entire marriage. And then she gets addicted to a younger employee and having sex with him and he has this very weird dog. It's a pretty surreal movie, but it's all about her lack of orgasm. So in this episode we're going to talk about orgasmic meditation, or OM as it's called, and talk to the writer who wrote the initial story about it in Bloomberg Businessweek many years ago. She's now published a book, somewhat coyly, entitled Empire of Orgasm. It's great and everybody should go get it. So we will be back after Thanksgiving with some less twisted and perverted stories. But for now this is what we got. So I'm going to throw it over to Natalie.
- [02:56]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So can you go ahead and introduce yourself?
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Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Yeah. My name is Ellen Hewitt and I write features and investigations for Bloomberg and Bloomberg Businessweek. And I'm also the author of Empire of Orgasm, a book coming out November 18th.
- [03:08]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So Empire of Orgasm is all about one taste, this now notorious wellness cult. But when did you first hear about one taste?
- [03:18]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
I first heard about OneTaste in 2013 when I read this article in Gawker by Natasha Tiku, who's actually now a reporter at the Washington Post. It was this fabulous article all about orgasmic meditation, om, pronounced omn, and OneTaste, this company that was selling orgasmic meditation. And at its essence, Orgasmic Meditation is a 15 minute practice in which a stroker, usually a man, is fully clothed, puts on a glove, puts some lube on his finger, and then strokes the clitoris of a woman who is naked from the waist down. And for those 15 minutes, this man strokes this woman very gently on her clitoris in this very prescribed way. And both parties have no goal other than to notice and meditate on the sensations in their bodies that come up during this period. And that's it. It's obviously really out there. But that is. That is the core of the practice.
- [04:18]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Well, yeah, I was going to say, I mean, you did a very good job of explaining that in a very professional and kind of sanitized way. But like, it's weird. Like they would have these public demonstrations.
- [04:30]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Right, where it's sort of like a.
- [04:32]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Woman'S legs are spread open, she's sort of maybe nestled in pillows.
- [04:35]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Yes.
- [04:35]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
And a man gets up there and.
- [04:37]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
It'S really a showstopper. Like, it is something that people have never seen before. And you know, I think orgasmic meditation is a fascinating idea because it is really out there. And so for most people, they are going to be like, that's crazy. It can sound scary. Especially when you learn that OneTaste encourages people to do OMS, not only with their monogamous partner, but the idea is that actually you should be able to do this with a variety of people. But I will say there's a lot about orgasmic meditation that I think really appeals to people in the sense that they are genuinely trying to address this pleasure gap, this orgasm gap that we see in heterosexual couples in which women's pleasure is just not prioritized. So they were really trying to do this radical thing which was like leaning all the way in the other way. They're going to have this practice that is only focused on female pleasure. And I think for a lot of people that's incredibly refreshing. It's compelling. And they also the way that orgasmic meditation is set up is that there is no goal. The goal is only to feel. And so for a lot of people, especially women who might have struggled to reach orgasm during sex, or men who feel a lot of pressure from performance anxiety during sex, this can be incredibly compelling as a prospect. And so for a lot of women, it can end up being this transformative experience where it's the first time that they've received sexual touch and pleasure from another person, where they were not expected to do anything in particular other than just receive it.
- [06:13]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
You know, I have to say, this is also in the time of the girl boss. Was there this sense that if women had more orgasms and if we centered the female orgasm more, that it would help women become, like, more productive, better people? Like, was that also part of it?
- [06:29]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
I mean, definitely. One Taste is run by a woman at the top, Nicole De Don. And also many of the other people who were powerful executives within the company were women. And there was this idea that a woman's erotic power can unlock many other powers in her life. She'll feel more vitality. She'll feel more in touch with her intuition. She'll feel more desire and clarity in her life. All these things that would lead to this really, like, enriched life with a lot of vitality were really woven into the pitch of orgasmic meditation.
- [07:00]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
That's very compelling, especially for women who statistically have fewer orgasms than men in heterosexual relationships. So let's talk about Nicole. Who is Nicole?
- [07:09]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Yeah, so Nicole De Don is really the main character of the book Empire of Orgasm. She really is spiritually the main character of One Taste. Technically, she was a co founder of the company with this man, Rob Kendall. But the truth is, Nicole has always been the spiritual leader, the visionary, and she is a fascinating woman. She was born in the Bay area in the 70s and grew up actually in Los Gatos and kind of in the South Bay. And she led this very unconventional life. Like, she went to college, did some graduate studies, but then quickly stopped. And then, you know, in her 20s, she did all this life experimentation in which she talks about having been a sex worker. She talks about having been an escort or working as an exotic dancer and then also experimenting a lot with drugs. So part of what we talk about in the book is her unusual early life. And I talked to people who did meth with her when she was young, people who did acid with her.
- [08:08]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Then she sort of disappear for a few years and just do acid. Totally.
- [08:13]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
I mean, that is what she says. And an interesting challenge as a reporter was trying to, you know, Nicole has told various versions of her life story over the years. She's a very compelling speaker. She's really good at weaving her personal biography into whatever point she's trying to make at the time. And I found that. My assessment is, although she occasionally would embellish certain details of her life, she, in general, I didn't find that she had ever made up something, you know, that I found someone who said that never happened, you know. But I did do a lot of work trying to talk to people who knew her when she was younger, before she was famous, before she was running. One taste. And I get the sense from all my reporting that she was someone who was really dedicated to trying to understand herself by pushing herself to her extremes, whether that was through psychedelic experimentation, whether that was through exploring sex work. And an important part of her life story, which she has told varying versions of over the course of her career, is her relationship with her father. Court records show that her father was a convicted child sex abuser and that he both went to prison for this when Nicole was young, and then was again arrested and charged with similar child sex abuse charges when Nicole was in her twenties. But then he actually died pretty soon after that. But there are these two moments in Nicole's life where her father enters the criminal justice system for child sex abuse.
- [09:40]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Do we know if he abused her?
- [09:42]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
So that's a key question that I really wanted to answer in the book, because in her public interviews about this over the years, she has always sidestepped that question, and she has generally said or suggested that that is not the case. But when I talked to people who knew her in her 20s, there was a period of time in which she told people close to her that her father had sexually abused her. I think that this is an incredibly important aspect of her life. And she has talked about. She has talked about wanting to take her father's story and in her own words, turn poison into medicine. So she has made this part of her story, this idea that she saw how sexuality could have this harmful, dark, poisonous side, and how that inspired her to want to show that sexuality could heal as much as it could harm. So, yes, according to people who knew her at the time, she has talked about having experienced sex abuse from her father. But later in her life, she actually would spin that story into something more empowering. This idea that she reframed it. It gets complicated. Yeah, she reframed it as something that she was a person, participant in, something that she may have even sought. It gets very complicated. And again, it's something that, yeah, I tried to treat with a lot of care in the book, but it's something that I thought could end up being really important to understanding what motivates her.
- [11:05]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
No, absolutely. And I think, I mean, it's so often the case. Like, I've done quite a few stories at this point about people who've experienced child sex abuse or child abuse in various ways. And yeah, I mean, it does end up crossing these wires oftentimes in a very complicated way where it can make people as adults act out or have a very naive understanding of sex, or it can go so many different ways. It almost feels too simple to like ascribe all of this to that. But I do think it's a really important, a really important part of the story.
- [11:36]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
You know, later when she's lecturing to students at Onetaste, you know, many people ended up seeking out OneTaste. Not everyone, but many people ended up seeking it out because they had complicated experiences with sexuality in the past, whether they'd experienced sex abuse or had some sort of difficult emotional barrier related to sex. And one of the ways that Nicole really appealed to these people was that she would project this story of having been in that darkness and being able to understand it. And I think that that is probably a very compelling way in which she related to people who were looking for that. But what's hard to reconcile is also these stories of people who I then found through my reporting who, who said that Nicole or that one taste abused them or that they perpetuated a cycle of abuse. So again, it is one of these things that I consider my responsibility as a reporter to treat really sensitively and with a lot of care. But I wanted readers to be able to understand all the pieces that might have contributed to this whole structure of one taste totally. And the structure of Nicole's life.
- [12:52]
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- [14:59]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Just to go back to, to orgasmic meditation. She didn't come up with this right. Like, she kind of learned about this practice in another group that she was a of. Can you tell me about that group?
- [15:10]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
That's absolutely right. So Nicole was first exposed to this mindful clitoral stroking practice by two other groups, one called the Wellcomes Consensus, which was actually a spin off of the second group, Morehouse. And so both of them are based in the Bay Area and they both taught this practice and they called it deliberate orgasm. And what happened was Nicole studied with these groups, learned this practice, learned frankly how to run one of these like sex communes, and decided in this key moment that she wanted to do it herself. She was like, I'm going to start my own thing. She, you know Rewrote the origin story to be more related to her. They called it orgasmic meditation, which made it much more of a, like, spiritual wellness practice. And they added all these guardrails to the practice in an attempt to make it feel as safe and as palatable to like, the average person as possible. So 15 minutes only. We're going to use gloves and lube. We're going to have all these specific scripts that you're going to say. You know, it's like you start off by saying, would you like to om? And the other person says yes or no. And then you like, set up the nest in this very specific way with like a yoga mat and two pillows and like a little Zafu meditation cushion. And then all of these guardrails, which they call the container, are in general an effective way to make it feel more safe so that you can kind of relax into this experience. That was a really savvy and smart way to repackage this practice that she had discovered elsewhere into something that could become a mainstream business, that could be discussed on daytime tv, that could be endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim Ferriss and all these people. But I got to give Nicole credit for her branding.
- [17:00]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So when did you actually go to see a demo of OM and what was that experience like?
- [17:07]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
So when I was reporting that initial story for Bloomberg Businessweek, toward the end of my reporting, I signed up for an introduction to OWN class because they were available. And I went to the class, it was in San Francisco. And I will say I have reason to believe that the version of the class that I experienced might have been different from a version where a reporter was not attending. Like, you know, I didn't do anything to hide my identity. But the demo, this is their bread and butter. This is like what they do. And it is. It's a fascinating experience. I knew what to expect, but basically it's just really confronting. Like, I think for a lot of people, if you have hang ups or complex feelings about sex, it's probably going to spark emotion in you. There's this thing that OneTaste tends to do during demos where there are staffers in the back. They encourage you to call out your sensations that you feel in your body during the demo. So as the stroking is happening in the front, you might hear people in the audience, whether they are audience members or maybe the staff sitting in the back, calling out things like, I feel heat in the back of my legs, I feel salivation in my mouth. You know, I spoke to like, cult researchers when I was reporting on this book and one of them had written something that really stuck with me, which was basically that like often in social situations, humans don't need to be told explicitly what to do. We're actually very good at and looking around and deducing like what the appropriate behavior is for that moment. That has really stuck with me because I think that's a really big part of how group behavior is dictated. It doesn't happen explicitly, it is often just inferred. And we're very good at it. And we're often inferring automatically and naturally without even thinking about it. So in these moments where you're like watching this demo and you're like, what am I supposed to be doing during this moment? And then you hear other people calling out these suggestive, sensual things, but nothing like too sexually explicit. It's just interesting to me, like how behavior gets shaped by these unspoken norms that we see around them. And I think that was like kind of an example of how that behavior happens. But I saw it happen again and again in these stories that people told me about One Taste where, you know, Nicole didn't have to threaten or order or tell people explicitly to do abc. Often she would praise someone who did A or shame someone who didn't do B. And people around her would immediately and automatically pick up that if they wanted to do well in this group or get Nicole's approval, which was something that everyone wanted, they should do A, they should do B, they should do C. And you don't need to be told. And in fact it's like more powerful if you aren't told. And I think that's something that I'm going to remember for a long time, even when this book is far in my rear view mirrors, is the way that humans make decisions in these social environments.
- [20:19]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So she starts this in 2004. Can you tell me what the very beginnings of one taste were and how it started to grow and expand?
- [20:26]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Yeah, by 2004 she had maybe 20 or 30 students and followers in this loose knit community. They had been staying at this other person's house in Brisbane. It was all a bit chaotic, but when they first get a location in San Francisco, that's kind of when it kicks off. They open their One Taste center on Folsom street, which of course you know, famous for like the Kink and Leather Fair. It's very much like in Soma in San Francisco. This also a place where there were a lot of startups at the time. Like it's really kind of a Gritty and happening part of San Francisco. And they first open this center where they start to have classes and they run a little cafe and they have a yoga studio. And then they expand down the street to have a warehouse, which becomes their first communal residential facility where up to 51 Tay students are living at a time in this enormous warehouse where there's no walls and there's like 14 beds and everyone can hear each other having sex all the time. And it's this fascinating experiment in communal living. And they eventually actually expand to a headquarters on Market Street. I love the symbology of this because their office on Market street is across the street from Uber. It's across the street from Twitter. It's like really in the heart of the early 2000 and tens tech boom in San Francisco. I mean, what I think is so fascinating about what Nicole did is she decided that she was like, I want to spread orgasmic meditation to the world. And the way I'm going to do this is by making it a startup. She decided that capitalism and like making this a mission driven startup, kind of like all these other companies in San Francisco at the time, was going to be the best way to spread that message. The main way that they made money was they sold courses. So they sold these courses about not only orgasmic meditation and how to do it, but how to live a life in line with the philosophies of orgasmic meditation, how to live a life that was in line with capital O, orgasm, which they kind of treated as a term for this erotic life force that you could tap into by doing a lot of oming.
- [22:25]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
I mean, and actually in terms of selling courses, it reminds me of a lot of other groups in that way. Right? It's very Naxian. So, okay, so they had people doing courses, they had these different centers, these experiments in communal living. There were also these different kind of exercises that they would do, like pulling desires and blow your cover, which sounded to me a bit like the game. Can you tell me about those different exercises she would do to sort of push people's buttons or ostensibly help members grow?
- [22:56]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
There's a way to think about OneTaste, which is like, yeah, the sort of front facing part of onetaste is they sell these courses about orgasmic meditation, some of which, by the way, become very expensive, tens of thousands of dollars to take, like intensive courses that might last a week or two. And that's all very in keeping with the growth of the personal transformation industry at the time. So you might recognize names like Tony Robbins or Landmark Forum or these other groups that are promising these, you know, big ticket seminars. But it's like they're really engaging and in person. And you would go for a week and then it's like going to change your life. And then behind the scenes, like if you became someone who was really involved in one taste, it would become your life. And part of that experience of life was living your daily life according to kind of like Nicole's philosophy and her philosophy for how to live an orgasmic Life. You know, I think part of the richness of the book comes from these, like, individual stories of experiences that people had in this world. So often they would be working for onetaste. They would be living in a communal onetaste. They would residents. You would experience a social culture in which you would do these life experiments. So often they were sexual, but not always. And so one of the things that, for example, was that Nicole or other people in one taste would give each other assignments a lot. They would give their students assignments. Many people told me about being assigned to, you know, maybe they were told like, oh, your, your orgasm is like a little blocked up these days. You should have sex with a different person every day for 30 days. You know, often women were assigned cock sucking. Excuse my language, but that is how they, you know, they preferred to use the words pussy and cock because of the charge associated with those terms. They thought it was more edgy. They kind of liked that it brought up feelings for people.
- [24:42]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
The John Waters school of language. Keep going.
- [24:46]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
You know, women told me that, yeah, they were. They would be assigned cock sucking for 30 days. So it meant that they had to give a blowjob to someone in the community or, you know, really anyone, but often a person in the community every day for 30 days. There was a story that people told me about two people, a couple who were fighting a lot, who were then assigned to be handcuffed together for a week because it would push them to either stay together or break up. And so these two people, you know, it's like they would go to the bathroom together, shower together once a day, someone came and unlocked them so that they could change their clothes. But other than that, they were handcuffed together for a week. You know, and I'll say people who were really enmeshed in the community sometimes, they were really excited to do these assignments. So it's not necessarily that it was against people's will, but it was. They often wanted to do it because they wanted to impress Nicole. They wanted approval from her. They thought that it would lead to personal growth. Those were often the motivations that led people to do some of these actions that, you know, you as a reader might read them and be like, that's crazy. I would never do that. But I think if you were living in this world and it was socially rewarded to be pushing yourself to these edges, that people actually respond quite strongly to the incentives and structures of the world that is directly around them. And that's one takeaway that I think I personally have taken away from reporting this and that I hope readers do as well. This idea that you might think that you have these boundaries or preferences or these actions that you would or wouldn't do, but under a particular set of social pressures, rewards and punishments, you would probably do a lot of things that you would be surprised by. And so people would often do these assignments because they thought that it would help them grow. Even though the assignments would often reflect Nicole's belief that you gained more enlightenment or you grew as a person if you pushed yourself. Again, she was really about pushing yourself to your extreme. She actually said in one course that, like, oh, the only way to know yourself is to know your edges, to really see where you are at that edge where you're, like, about to lose it.
- [26:55]
Nicole De Don (Subject of the Book)
Desire does not make any promises to protect you or keep you safe. That's not the nature of desire. So if you're looking for that kind of. If you want to be a child within the refuge, desire is not the path to take at all. Desire is an extreme sport in that way.
- [27:18]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
I think she loved that. I think she really thought that that was where you came to understand yourself. For some people, it did lead to good things. And for a lot of people, it led to a lot of hurt, 100%.
- [27:27]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Again, I'm reminded of NXIVM, this was kind of a really core tenet of NXIVM, was that you have to push past your boundaries and your limitations. And that's sort of what led in a lot of ways to some of the worst behavior within, like the women's only subset of nxivm dos, which was like the much smaller women's so called sorority. And also, even as you're talking about assignments that Nicole gave people, that was one of the core things that got Alison Mack, the Smallville actress and then member of nxivm, into big trouble, was that she gave some of her quote, unquote slaves, the people who sort of reported up to her in this women only sorority, she gave them the assignment to go and seduce Keith. And it was Under a similar premise that it was like, okay, by pushing up against your boundaries or the things that make you uncomfortable, you'll push past that. And there is something to that, right? Like, why do people run marathons? You know, you get to a certain point in your 30s where everyone's like, running marathons or taking like, I don't know, a clowning course or something, and it's like, yeah, just to sort of.
- [28:33]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Push, push yourself getting out of your comfort zone. Of course there's benefit in that. Exactly. And you can see how often a bad idea is a good idea taken way too far. And I think that that's at the core of so many of the teachings. Not just that one taste, but I think this is true of alleged cults in general. You know, this idea that like, of course they have a kernel at the center of it that is valuable, of course. And if it's taken to an extreme, that can really lead to damage. Hearing you talk about pushing these boundaries also reminded me of another core teaching at one taste that I think is really representative of how this could go off the rails. It was this practice called aversion practice. So this idea that the more you could do things that you were averse to, the more power you could draw from it. And that applied to both sexual and non sexual situations. And again, it's like you can kind of understand, like, maybe you think you have a preference for this thing, but if you push yourself to try something outside of your preferences, you might be surprised. You might learn something about yourself. There is some value in that. And at one taste, aversion practice was used as this justification to, you know, this is according to people who were there. They told me that aversion practice was used as a justification to push people to do things that they did not want to do. One of the complicated things at one taste was that they would often mix sex and sales. And this is again, according to people who were there. They told me that they were often encouraged to like, flirt with or put attention on or maybe even own with a customer who was on the verge of buying an expensive corner. Onetaste employees also say that they were asked to sexually service an investor of the company. And basically aversion practice was then used to rationalize why someone should do something even if they didn't want to. And it was this idea that, oh, you know, we're going to ask you to own with this person because he might buy a course and you don't want to like, okay, well, but you should do it anyway. Because it'll be part of your aversion practice. It's going to be good for you. It's going to lead to personal growth. If you do this thing that you don't want to. And I just can't think of a teaching or a philosophy that would be better designed to confuse you about your boundaries or this idea of consent or agency or anything like that. This idea is like, how can you consent if what you're being taught is that you should say yes to something because you don't want to do it? Like, it's, it's, it's fascinating to me and it's incredibly complex and I think it's at the heart of what a lot of people were really involved in. Onetaste are trying to process for themselves after they leave.
- [31:25]
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- [32:27]
Narrator/Promoter for 'Forged' Podcast
Norval Morzo is one of the most famous indigenous artists ever. Looking at his paintings, it's easy to see why.
- [32:34]
Nicole De Don (Subject of the Book)
Colors are intense.
- [32:35]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Color is medicine.
- [32:37]
Narrator/Promoter for 'Forged' Podcast
But look a little closer and you'll see something else. Fakes.
- [32:41]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
We believe it's the world's biggest art fraud.
- [32:43]
Narrator/Promoter for 'Forged' Podcast
There are thousands of fake Norvell Morisot paintings beneath some of these forgeries. Assaults, abuse, and even an unsolved murder.
- [32:51]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
I want my pain back.
- [32:52]
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- [32:55]
Narrator/Promoter for 'Forged' Podcast
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- [33:05]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So OneTaste kind of starts in this early to mid 2000s and it, it gradually grows to these various centers and it starts attracting mainstream attention and sort of sanitizing itself in a Lot of ways. And I want to catch us up to when you received a PR pitch for One Taste and it was framed to you as a fast growing company in the wellness space that was run by women, and you start investigating, I mean, what do you find?
- [33:35]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
So what happened was in late 2017, I was working at Bloomberg News, which is where I still work. I was covering startups. So I was based in San Francisco. My beat was startups. I was writing about WeWork. I was right. You know, there was lots of crazy stuff going on at the time. And I got a pitch from a woman who works in PR who I had, you know, talked to about a different story in tech. And she came to me and she said, hey, I have this like, unusual pitch. You might be interested. It's a fast growing, woman led wellness startup. You know, I was curious and I went in and had, you know, an initial interview with the two women who were leading the company at the time, which was actually not Nicole. Nicole had recently sold her shares of the company and was kind of stepping off to the side. And around the same time that I did that first interview, I also decided, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to hear what they have to say, but I'm going to ask around and see if I can find people who were involved in One Taste. I want to hear what they thought it was like. And I ended up finding someone who had been a customer of OneTaste and had been really involved in the group. And this person was the first person I talked to where they said, like, this group is not at all what it seems. I feel like I was exploited financially and psychologically in my time at the company. I really feel like they're predatory. And that was a fascinating conversation. And it was the beginning of this whole reporting experience that I did not expect of getting in touch with one person and then a couple more. And then this snowball of talking to people who felt like their experience of OneTaste had not at all been represented in the press that One Taste had gotten up until that point. And to be clear, the press they'd gotten was quite impressive. A lot of it was. Nicole had given a TedX talk. She had spoken at south by Southwest.
- [35:17]
Nicole De Don (Subject of the Book)
My topic is female orgasm. I do think we have a pleasure deficit disorder in this country. And I don't think that it's medical. I think it's a cultural issue. I do think, though, that there is a cure, and that cure is orgasm.
- [35:42]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
A lot of it was focused on what is this titillating practice Orgasmic Meditation. Tell me more. No one had really turned over this rock and seen, like, what was underneath it. They had at that point been endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow. Nicole had spoken on stage at a GOOP conference. They'd been endorsed by Tim Ferriss, who had a whole chapter about orgasmic meditation in the Four Hour Body. Even Khloe Kardashian said she, like, loved Orgasmic Meditation and, like, endorsed Nicole's book. And so it was fascinating to see that there were all these people waiting to tell their story of their experience at One Taste, which was really different from what was out there. And so that's what I then ended up reporting on for, you know, six or seven months. I mean, it was a big project. And I wrote the story that came out in 2018 that was really the first to get into these allegations of, like, this darker side of OneTaste, and people saying in this story that they thought OneTaste was a dangerous cult. And that first story kicked off a bunch of things at Onetaste. They actually stopped offering in person classes. They kind of went into hibernation. And a few months after that story came out, I started to hear from sources that agents from the FBI were showing up at their house, knocking on their doors, asking about what had happened at OneTaste. That then led to several years in which we really didn't know what was going on. Like, all we knew was that the FBI was continuing to investigate this case. I had many sources who were being interviewed by FBI agents who would then tell me, like, they came again. They interviewed me this time. Maybe they brought, like a assistant U.S. attorney with them. And for many years while I was working on this book, I just didn't know what might happen. And then in 2023, prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Nicole and Rachel Churwitz, who was actually Nicole's former head of sales and kind of her second in command. And that was shocking to me. I mean, it was shocking to, I think, a lot of people involved in the One Taste world. But it was the culmination of that FBI investigation. And then that kicked off this long process which eventually led to a trial this past summer in New York in which Nicole and Rachel were actually convicted of forced labor conspiracy. That's the specific charge.
- [38:06]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
And you're. You're too modest to say it yourself, but your reporting really is what kicked off the government paying attention, the FBI investigating them. I mean, it's just really remarkable that this led to, yeah, actually them being charged with forced labor conspiracy and So, I mean, have they been sentenced? Like, where do things stand at this moment?
- [38:28]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
So there was a trial this summer, which I went to New York. It happened in Brooklyn, and I went to New York and watched it. And actually, you know, it's the same branch that also prosecuted nxivm. Yes.
- [38:39]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
So wait, so tell. Tell me what that trial was like going in there. I mean, did you see Nicole? I mean, have you met Nicole?
- [38:46]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Well, readers will get a treat at the end of the book, which is there's a scene in which I meet her for the first time. And it was. I mean, I had, like, shivers all over my body. You know, it was really intense. And at that point, you know, I had spent years studying her, talking to people who knew her. In some twisted way, it almost felt like I was, like, one of her most dedicated students. I mean, I don't know that she would agree with that statement, but, like, I felt like I had dedicated a lot of time to trying to understand her, but I had never met her in person. And I end up meeting her in person for the first time in the courthouse at one of her, like, pretrial hearings. And we, like, have this conversation. It's like, what did she say? Basically, other onetaste people, when I had seen them in court, had either ignored me or given me these kind of stoney looks, which is their right. I don't think I'm their favorite person, and that's fine. But when Nicole saw me, you know, I was waiting in the lobby of the courthouse, and I saw her come in with her, like, entourage, and she sees me, she immediately smiles and waves, and I'm like, oh, my God. And then she comes closer, and she calls out to me. She's like, hi, Ellen. And we've never met, you know. And she walks toward me, and I approach her, and I'm sort of like, can I shake your hand? And she shakes my hand, and then she kind of, like, does this little bow, and she looks me in the eye, and she says, we have a strange intimacy. And I was like, oh, my God. I was, like, shocked. I was like, ah, yes. I'm gonna like, it's nice to meet you. I'll go upstairs and see you in court. I was really, like, flummoxed of all.
- [40:24]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
The words she could choose.
- [40:25]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Also, I know it was a good line to give her credit. She really is good at being in that moment and trying to, like, charm people when she meets them. This is something many people had told me that she's very good at that. And I witnessed that myself. But anyway, I would say, in general, the energy was, yeah, quite, quite tense because you had Nicole and Rachel both with their teams of attorneys, and then a bunch of OneTaste people who would come and support every day, and some of them would really, like, be actively scanning the courtroom, looking at whoever walked in, trying to assess, like, who's there? Who's paying attention? And then there were these witnesses that would come up and, you know, and these are, like, people who had once been very close to Nicole and Rachel, in some cases, taking the stand and describing in great detail some of the ways that they felt that they were, like, abused by these women and by the. By the company that they had led and created.
- [41:23]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
Does One Taste still exist?
- [41:25]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
One Taste does still exist. In fact, maybe just a week ago, they announced that they are reviving a version of what they used to call their coaching program, which was kind of their main training course for One Taste devotees. They are calling it something else, but they are reviving it. The company still exists. You know, they were quite active in trying to advocate for Rachel and Nicole during the trial. It's unclear to me exactly how they're bringing in money, but basically, in the meantime, Nicole and Rachel, you know, they were convicted in June. The next day after the conviction, the judge actually decided to, I guess the correct term might be revoke their bail. They had been out on bail, but there was a new bail hearing the day after the conviction, and the judge basically decided that they would not allow the women to be out on bail. And so they were taken into custody that day. And Nicole and Rachel have been in jail in Brooklyn since then. So it's been several months, and they are awaiting sentencing, but each of them could face up to 20 years in prison. And it's really unclear to me what is going to happen in the last year or so, OneTaste has made a concerted effort to push or. They have gotten a lot of coverage, I should say, from leaning media outlets who have described the case as a threat to religious freedom. An example of prosecutorial overreach. And OneTaste has embraced this. At the end of the book, there's a quote from Nicole, who talks about how even though she grew up radically liberal, she now finds herself joyously side by side with conservatives fighting in this great political battle.
- [43:10]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
And she would love a pardon.
- [43:15]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Yes. Her lawyer has been careful not to say distinctly whether they are or are not seeking one. But I believe she said in response to a question from someone about, like, would you. Would you like a partner? Like, would you accept one? I think they were like we, you know. Sure. And I think if you are to read between the lines, I think it is fair to assume that they are trying to see if that's an option.
- [43:38]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
That is fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us, Ellen. This was absolutely fantastic. And everyone should go get Ellen's book book Empire of Orgasm, Sex Power and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult that is out November 18th.
- [43:53]
Ellen Hewitt (Guest, Author and Reporter)
Thank you so much for having me.
- [44:00]
Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
That's it for Infamous. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at natrope. That's N A T R O B E. And if you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book Blurred Lines Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. See you next week.
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Natalie (Co-host/Interviewer)
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