Investigative journalist Ellen Huet joins the show to discuss her stunning new book on OneTaste, the wellness startup that rose to Silicon Valley fame before spiraling into allegations of manipulation, coercion, and cult-like control. We unpack how a company selling “female empowerment” turned into one of tech’s most disturbing cautionary tales, and what its downfall reveals about power, charisma, and the blind spots of the startup world.This conversation goes deeper than the headlines and asks a larger question:How does a community built on self-improvement end up crossing the line into harm?If you follow the intersection of tech, power, psychology, and accountability, this is one you won’t want to miss.
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Many people told me that sales workers were often chastised if
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they weren't hitting their sales goals, but they would be told
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that it's not because they were asking the wrong questions or
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going after the wrong customers, it was because their orgasmic
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energy was blocked up. Welcome back to the Newcomer
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Podcast. I'm Madeline here with my Co
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hosts Eric and Tom. And we're joined by Ellen Hewitt
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from Bloomberg to talk about her latest book, which just
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published. What was it 2 weeks ago?
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Two weeks ago at the. Store empire of orgasm, sex,
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power and the downfall of a Wellness cult.
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So salacious topic for the newcomer podcast.
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Ready to dive in? Ellen, welcome to the show.
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Thanks so much for having me. I want to quickly say before we
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jump into questions, Ellen, I remember going to Eric's
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wedding, I think the last time or one of the last times you and
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I hung out, which is sad. It's been that long.
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And you were like deep in the throes of working on the book
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and. You were.
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You were barely conscious. I felt like things were things
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were things were intense for you.
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That was 2023. Yeah, yeah. 2022 and 2023 were
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were were, I would say, a moral, you know, low point for the book
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process, but overall a very satisfying and rewarding and
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creatively challenging experience.
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If anyone ever wants tips on how to manage the sole aspect of
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writing a book, I can, I can give you tips on that.
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Just hit me up. Yeah.
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And Ellen was my desk mate at Bloomberg when you first wrote
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the Business Week feature. That that is right.
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Eric and I used to sit right next to each other.
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And as I like to tell people he was, he spoke so loudly while on
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the phone that if I happen to be on a phone call at the same time
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as him, people thought that Eric had joined our phone call.
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They were like, who? Who?
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Why is there a third person on our call?
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I thought it was just us. I'm like, no, no, it's my desk
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neighbor. I'll move.
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Who? Who built an open office for the
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private active. Yeah.
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Reporting. Yeah.
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I, I I blame Bloomberg on that one.
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And anyway. I can relate to this this too,
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Ellen quickly when Eric and I'll work together at the
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information. One time he sneezed and the guy
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on the other side of the line said bless you that.
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Is that 100% checks out. I, I, I want to be heard.
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You know, I have a he's expressive.
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He's expressive. Well, we're excited to see the
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all of that come to come to its fulmination.
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Yes, culmination with this book. So people haven't followed this
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closely, don't know the whole story.
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There's there's so much to it. But give the Super high level.
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Totally. Yeah.
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So I spent the last five years, you know, I've been, I have been
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and am a reporter at Bloomberg. I'm a features writer.
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I write about tech and AI and Silicon Valley.
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But at the same time, in my nights and weekends, I have been
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spending the last five years working on this book.
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Empire of Orgasm, which, you know, chronicles the rise and
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fall of this sex Wellness cult called One Taste.
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And One Taste was a company that was started in San Francisco in
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2004 by a woman named Nicole Dejon.
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And it grew fairly mainstream, despite the fact that its main
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business was selling courses on a sexual spiritual practice
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called orgasmic meditation, also known as OM or OM.
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And orgasmic meditation is a 15 minute partnered clitoral
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stroking meditative practice in which a stroker, usually a man
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who remains fully clothed, puts a glove on his left hand and
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some Lube on his left index finger and strokes the clitoris
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of a woman who is naked only from the waist down for 15
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minutes exactly. And the goal of the experiences
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for both parties to simply meditate on the sensations in
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their bodies during those 15 minutes.
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And that's it. And this practice, Ohm, was
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promised, you know, if you were a regular practitioner, it was
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promised that you would not only have better sex, better
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relationships, better connection and intimacy with other human
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beings. But also that if you delve more
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deeply in the practice, that you might experience a better sense
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of your intuition and your desire and maybe even a
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connection to the spiritual or the divine erotic energy that
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apparently is in the world all around us.
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And then, you know, Fast forward to today, the leader and the
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second in command of this group have actually been indicted by
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the feds and were convicted in a criminal jury trial this summer
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in New York and are currently in jail in Brooklyn for forced
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labour conspiracy, which we could get into it, but it's a
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kind of a specific federal charge and are currently in jail
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in Brooklyn awaiting sentencing, which will probably come early
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next year. There's your afterword.
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I, I mean, there's so much to dive into with this topic, but I
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kind of actually want to start off with just you as a reporter
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on this, because you've been a start-ups reporter at least
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while you've been at Bloomberg. And I think before that you were
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at the Chronicle and we're like a crime reporter.
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Yeah, and I worked at Forbes for a brief stint, too.
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But yeah, it was a breaking news and crime report at the
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Chronicle. Yeah.
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But coming to this story, which, you know, you really do tie up
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into the history of cults and Wellness in the Bay Area, but
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also startup culture. I mean, specific to the startup
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side of things. Like, why to you was this a
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startup story? Like, how is this wrapped into
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the kind of Bay Area business community and the mentality of
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people who kind of flock here for the very specific reasons
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that the Bay Area is, you know, a startup world?
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Yeah, I, I both recognize that it looks different than a lot of
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startups. And, you know, I'm certainly not
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pretending it's exactly the same as them, but there are some
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striking similarities. Like Nicole really decided that
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the way to spread the mission and the message of this sexual
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practice that she believed in was not by starting like a media
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company or a nonprofit. It was by starting a for profit
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business that was going to proselytize this thing.
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And at one point, one taste had the business mission statement
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of to bring capital O orgasm to a billion people.
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And to be clear, they redefine orgasm to mean more like a
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broad, broadly defined erotic energy.
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But nevertheless, the mission statement to bring orgasm to a
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billion people. And it doesn't feel out of
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place. If you remember the era of the
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Wework mission statement to elevate the world's
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consciousness or these things that you know, you might, you
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might laugh at it, but they were really in the water in the 20
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tens. Well, it's very Silicon Valley
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Season 1. It's.
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Very Silicon Valley season 1. We are making the world a better
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place through BT. They are, but in this case
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actually much more of a spiritual physical.
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Practice making the world a better place through orgasmic
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meditation. And they they did lots of things
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that mimicked what tech companies and tech founders did
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at the time. Nicole gave this TE DX talk that
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was viewed on YouTube for, you know, more than two million
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times. She spoke on stage at South by
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Southwest for an hour. She and her company even hosted
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these two conferences in 2013 and 2014 at the Regency Center
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in San Francisco, where, you know, 1000 people showed up for
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the whole weekend and wore those lanyards around their neck that,
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you know, instead of saying like WWDC or like Google IO, they
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happened to say agent of orgasm because the the conference was
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about orgasmic meditation. But if you didn't know what they
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were gathering for, it would honestly look like a developer's
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conference. And there was this sense that
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they were tapping into some of the ethos that was also really
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popular in San Francisco in the 20 tens.
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And to be clear, they were also in New York, LA, Austin,
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Boulder, London, Australia. But in SF, you think about
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people who were moving to San Francisco, people were, you
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know, exploring polyamory, people were doing biohacking.
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All of a sudden, this practice that is a 15 minute hack to a
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better life. It, it doesn't sound so out of
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place. And they even got endorsed by
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Tim Ferriss, who, of course, is kind of like a hero to a lot of
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people in tech who are looking for like peak performance,
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whether that's, you know, mental or physical.
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And they used to set up booths at like the early morning sober
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dance parties that I, you know, maybe you guys don't go to, but
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I definitely know people who have gone to those.
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And you know, they would hold Ohm workshops at Burning Man
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occasionally or they would set up booths at like the
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Bulletproof coffee conferences. Like it.
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It was both interesting how what they were selling was quite
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fringe, and I'll acknowledge that.
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But it was also they found footholds in what was kind of
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this growing mainstream, both Wellness.
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It represents how much culture, the capitalism sort of ethos and
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aesthetic reached everything. I think once your sex cult
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decides, oh, we should wrap ourselves in like, the world of
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startups and business, Yeah, it does say something in the
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culture about just the ascendancy of.
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And don't forget, like the Wellness industry was booming at
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the time. Nicole spoke on stage at the
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Goop Health Conference in 2017. I was going.
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To say this is very goop, yeah. It's very goop and of course,
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they managed to get that clinch that most important endorsement.
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She's Gwyneth House is the queen of Wellness alternative
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therapies. And at the same time, in the 20
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tens, there was also this desire to see female founders at the
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top of fast growing startups. Like, I hate to use the term
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CEO, but remember we used to use that term like very seriously,
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girl boss. Like there was just this energy
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that propelled the company, which was this mix of Wellness
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startups, female empowerment, female leader, you know, female
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leaders. And yeah, just this idea that we
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can improve our bodies through a practice like this.
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And Ellen, what's interesting to me too, is you and I both grew
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up in the Bay Area. You're like, you're a Peninsula
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kid, right? I'm from Fremont, so it's kind
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of like Fremont. Southeast Bay, what is that?
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What is that? SE Bay?
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OK. But yeah, I mean like.
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Somewhere in Batura. Yeah, it's it's Bay Area, but I
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don't know which one you call it.
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It's an 880. You're an 80 suburbs.
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Yeah. It's like, you know, you see a
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lot about what makes this area interesting is that there does
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have this kind of leftover hippie mentality, very like 1
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battle after another. These people who, you know, try
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to change the world through cultural and maybe radical ideas
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that sort of settle into the sort of capitalist system that,
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you know, is very rewarding to people.
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But you still hold on to your beliefs.
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You're sort of somewhat leftist cultural beliefs.
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And they're always at conflict with each other.
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And you have to sort of resolve the conflict in some way.
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And, you know, sometimes it just comes up that you're Steve Jobs
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and you make one of the greatest, you know, most
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successful companies of all time.
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And then there's also the kind of scammy aspect of it in which,
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like, the two sides don't really meld all that well.
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And I think that's why something to a degree, why it like, you
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know, one touch only really could have existed in one taste.
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I'm sorry that that one taste more than one touch what one
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taste could have only existed in the Bay Area because it's just
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it's it's something unique to the culture here and why it was
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also ultimately so destructive, I think and so.
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Damaging. It's this mix of yeah, it's this
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mix of like spiritual pursuits plus like, yeah, this
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capitalistic energy that has, especially over the last couple
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decades, become, you know, an inherent part of San Francisco
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in the Bay Area. You know, it if we it, it sounds
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kind of funny now because it's so ingrained in our thinking,
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but it was pretty radical 15 years ago to imagine using
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mindfulness and meditation to like, improve your output at
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work. But that is such a bizarre
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combination that came about in San Francisco.
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You know, it's like what's interesting about one taste is
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it does bridge these like older and like sent this sense of kind
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of the spiritual new age seeker side of San Francisco, which has
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been around for decades. And then it it happened to come
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about at this time when people were looking at those influences
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and then also asking themselves, how can we use this to make more
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money? You'd imagine like the Wisdom
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2.0 conference or like Google employee workshops on
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mindfulness in the workplace, like those are all examples of
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that melding. And I think that melding is also
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what helped one taste be successful in this particular
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time and place. Totally.
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I did want to say also what I found, you know, when things of
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course inevitably take a turn with cults and sex and power,
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the the blending of those two aspects of San Francisco culture
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were also apparent, right? Like people were simultaneously
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getting, you know, into these complicated sexual dynamics with
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power plays that were also corrupted by not hitting their
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sales goals by selling the courses, right?
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So you would have simultaneously your cult leader also be your
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boss that's chastising you for underperforming at work.
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And it's kind of to blend that work workaholic kind of
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capitalist ideal of bringing Wellness to the masses through
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mass produced courses saw, you know, many archetypes of the
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common takedown of a business that was run by an abusive boss
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just as much as it was a sex cult leader that was
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manipulating people through really harmful relationships.
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I think more so than other hypothetical groups that people
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might imagine when they think of cults.
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You might have this kind of outdated idea that a cult is
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like a bearded man on a rural homestead with followers who all
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wear the same clothing, and they do like the usual.
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It's the wild it is. Country.
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Exactly. Yeah, people are thinking of
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that. But the truth is cults adapt
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with the times. This is one of the most
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interesting things that I learned while researching this
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book is that they are constantly changing to reflect what people
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value, what people look at, what feels current.
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And so, you know, when I talk to researchers who study cults,
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they were like, oh, yeah, we expect that in the future, more
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than in the past, cult leaders might be women or that they
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might have a presence that is very online or that they might
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reach new followers through Instagram or have YouTube
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seminars or. And you can see examples of
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these already popping up. And I think, you know, what's
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fascinating is to realize that, yeah, they are also going to,
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you know, they might end up looking more commercial.
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And what one taste did was sure it was the spiritual pursuit,
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but it was also like a business where they were very much, as
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you said, pushing to reach sales goals all the time.
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And in fact, you would see how the philosophies that
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underlined, like their ideas of orgasmic living, would also then
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push them to do more sales or they would be interconnected in
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some way. Like for example, many people
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told me that sales workers were often chastised if they weren't
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hitting their sales goals, but they would be told that it's not
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because they were asking the wrong questions or going after
00:14:53
the wrong customers. It was because their orgasmic
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energy was blocked up. And so the solution that would
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help you make more sales was often that your manager or some
00:15:04
leader above you in the group would say you need to go have
00:15:06
sex with someone or you need to go have sex with your Co worker.
00:15:08
If two Co workers were disputing, people told me that
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they were sometimes instructed to go own together or have sex
00:15:14
with each other as a way of like unblocking the sexual energy.
00:15:17
So there's this unique mix of their spiritual teachings with
00:15:21
this. Yeah, this very nuts and bolts
00:15:23
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00:15:25
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Build to create your first app. Core to the crime here was what
00:15:59
employees having sex with Nicole's boyfriend, who is
00:16:04
basically a tech guy who is like throwing money around and
00:16:08
keeping this thing afloat? Is that a fair, fair gloss?
00:16:12
Right. Wasn't he their major Angel
00:16:13
investor or basically their main investor?
00:16:15
Yeah. So in the early days of One
00:16:17
Taste, the company, as many startups are, was not
00:16:22
profitable. Reliant was losing it, was
00:16:25
losing money. They were paying, you know,
00:16:27
expenses like rent and money that they needed to run the
00:16:31
business and they weren't bringing enough through courses.
00:16:33
And one of the ways that they ended up supporting the business
00:16:36
and keeping it afloat was that Nicole happened to meet in the
00:16:39
mid 2000s, this man named Rhys Jones, who is a venture
00:16:43
capitalist. He had sold a company to
00:16:45
Motorola in the early 2000s for about $200 million.
00:16:49
And he later became involved with Singularity University,
00:16:53
like he was very interested in esoteric topics and, and like
00:16:56
the singularity and, and, you know, sciency things like that.
00:17:00
And he was also interested in one taste.
00:17:02
And he and Nicole started dating.
00:17:04
And what he did is he would pay for certain business expenses
00:17:07
for the company. He would loan them money and his
00:17:11
repayment instead of, you know, maybe shares in the company.
00:17:16
And this is documented in court testimony as well as in my
00:17:18
reporting. He was rewarded with sexual
00:17:21
favors by one taste employees. And that often looks like, you
00:17:26
know, these elaborate BDSM immersive sexual experiences for
00:17:31
his birthday, which again, according to court testimony,
00:17:34
were themed after things like the seven deadly sins or the
00:17:38
Wizard of Oz. And he was also arranged to have
00:17:44
a sexual handler, someone who was, you know, there was a
00:17:46
rotation of people who took this role, but they would do
00:17:49
something like live with him, take care of some household
00:17:52
tasks, maybe take care of his dog and then sexually service
00:17:55
him every day. And this was, you know, so in
00:17:57
some sense, again, it's like, yeah, a startup finds an early
00:18:01
Angel investor who believes in them and helps get them off the
00:18:04
ground. But of course, the arrangement
00:18:05
is, is very unusual and, and not something that I've done.
00:18:09
It's true of most of our startups.
00:18:10
Did it make good money at any point?
00:18:12
Like how, how did one taste the business?
00:18:13
They have said that at their peak, they brought in something
00:18:16
like 12 million in revenue in, in one year.
00:18:19
So again, in the grand scheme of companies that are often
00:18:22
discussed on this podcast, small potatoes, but you know they.
00:18:27
Had a 1 billion. They didn't, they had no, they
00:18:29
had no outside, they had no outside investors.
00:18:33
It was actually, you know, at some point I believe Nicole was
00:18:37
something like the only shareholder so that you know, in
00:18:40
the end when she sold her stake in the company in 2017, that was
00:18:45
before I had done any reporting on them.
00:18:48
She apparently walked away with, yeah, something like $12
00:18:52
million. You you have to wonder, like
00:18:55
what percentage of people who, you know, there's so many randos
00:18:59
in tech that have sold their business for like $200 million.
00:19:02
And to have that much money, I some huge percentage of them
00:19:06
have to be like trying to create like schemes, like, you know,
00:19:09
have little worlds that like revolve around them of different
00:19:13
degrees of like sexual depravity.
00:19:15
But you always wonder, who knows?
00:19:17
Is this Eric, who knows what the post economic scene is right
00:19:19
now? You know.
00:19:20
Right. Yeah, exactly.
00:19:21
This is did. Was this guy just sloppy?
00:19:24
You know, it's like other people were like, you know, had their
00:19:26
lawyers more involved or were more buttoned up, like who
00:19:29
knows? I couldn't say.
00:19:31
But yeah, truly if you, if you have, you know, if you have
00:19:34
enough money to be post economic, I think as we've seen
00:19:37
with many people in Silicon Valley, you can then you're free
00:19:40
to explore lots of interesting things.
00:19:41
Like I, I, you know, there are people who then, you know, go
00:19:45
off and do a bunch of meditation or they get really into like
00:19:47
designer watches or they start another company or, you know,
00:19:51
it's like, that's the freedom that that kind of money can get
00:19:53
you is you can pursue your interests.
00:19:56
Right. I mean, there is sort of this
00:19:57
like I wouldn't call them middle class, but the kind of like an
00:19:59
archipelago of of, of deca millionaires and and maybe some
00:20:04
centimillionaires in the Bay Area that you don't think that
00:20:06
much about. But that's, you know, a huge
00:20:07
amount of money to fund your pursuits, whatever they may.
00:20:11
Be your Burning Man can't fund a very, very expensive art car
00:20:15
that you can trot around the Playa look, I I'm sure that
00:20:18
there's someone who's. Done a good, a good percentage
00:20:19
of people do just fund it towards that right?
00:20:21
They funnel their money towards extremely elaborate Burning Man
00:20:24
experiences and that's, you know, relatively this is non
00:20:29
destructive. It's hard to hard to say.
00:20:30
That's probably its own book. They probably, they probably
00:20:33
just start Angel investing, yeah.
00:20:36
Yeah, we can do both, really. I mean, ideally, I can't believe
00:20:40
I'm the one asking this question here, but it's just something
00:20:43
that kind of came to me as, as we were, you know, discussing
00:20:46
this topic. But you know, like the, the
00:20:48
mystification of the female orgasm, I feel like is this
00:20:52
thing that, you know, has has been going on for some time.
00:20:57
I mean, you know, this idea of like, oh, it's this mysterious
00:21:00
thing that, you know, contains spiritual properties to it.
00:21:03
And you know, it's, it's more than just a biological act.
00:21:06
There's some sort of like mystical, you know, a thing
00:21:09
going on here, obviously that that's a big part of female
00:21:11
empowerment. I feel like, and, and you know,
00:21:14
the way that and and like look in your book, you also talk
00:21:16
about pickup culture being sort of interwoven into this culture
00:21:21
too. So it's like in one sense
00:21:22
there's like high minded feminine ideals, but also like
00:21:24
the most misogynistic impulses of men on like how to break
00:21:27
women down and the. People coming into this
00:21:30
community are have been familiar with the pickup artist world,
00:21:33
right? Wasn't that?
00:21:34
Part of your book, I mean, there were, yeah, essentially just to
00:21:37
kind of situate one taste in time.
00:21:40
It's like there were some men who maybe started off in the
00:21:44
pickup artist community and then actually drifted toward one
00:21:47
taste because they thought they didn't like the sort of
00:21:50
misogynistic attitude of the pickup artist world and wanted
00:21:53
to have something that was a little bit more spiritually
00:21:56
inclined. And but certainly that wasn't
00:21:58
like a majority thing. But it just, if people remember
00:22:01
what the energy of the world was like in 2005 when Neil Strauss's
00:22:06
The Game was like at the top of the New York Times bestseller
00:22:08
list, it's kind of like a a marker in time.
00:22:12
But Tom, to your question, or at least what I think you were
00:22:14
getting at, I think that a major selling point, a major selling
00:22:19
point of orgasmic meditation of these courses that one taste was
00:22:23
offering is that sexuality is for a lot of people this puzzle
00:22:28
that maybe they've had a traumatic or complicated past.
00:22:32
Or maybe they're one of the 10 to estimated 10 to 15% of
00:22:35
American women who struggle to have an orgasm.
00:22:37
Or maybe there's someone who struggles with performance
00:22:40
anxiety during sex. Or maybe you have a fulfilling
00:22:43
partnership, but the physical spark isn't quite there or
00:22:45
something has changed. Like I have a lot of compassion
00:22:48
for people who were looking for answers as to these deep and
00:22:53
really personal questions, in part because there are very few
00:22:56
places where you can go to talk about them.
00:23:00
And One Taste was one of the few places I was really putting up a
00:23:03
banner and saying we will have straightforward, like really
00:23:07
direct conversations about your sex life.
00:23:09
And we have a promise that doing this practice as confronting as
00:23:13
you might consider it is going to help.
00:23:15
And so for people who are looking for answers and not
00:23:18
finding that many places that are offering them, I think it
00:23:22
made them more likely to want to see what one has had to offer.
00:23:27
And maybe even if they had some misgivings, to continue with the
00:23:30
courses because it's such a deep and primal human need to feel
00:23:35
connected to other people in that way.
00:23:36
Which is what makes the exploitation even more gross,
00:23:40
right? Is that these are.
00:23:40
It's tragic because. Yeah.
00:23:42
Yeah, orgasmic meditation, the practice has a lot that is
00:23:46
commendable about it. And I hope that, you know,
00:23:47
readers of Empire of Orgasm like come away with a nuanced
00:23:50
understanding of what was being offered here.
00:23:53
Like it was a radically female focused pleasure practice.
00:23:56
We don't have a lot of those. There was this commendable
00:23:58
desire to kind of correct what they saw as an unfair focus on
00:24:06
male pleasure in sex or an unfair conditioning of women to
00:24:09
feel like part of their job is to provide sexual pleasure to
00:24:13
men rather than to, like, receive it.
00:24:16
And so there's a lot that I think was genuinely valuable
00:24:19
about the practice and that people, even those who feel that
00:24:22
they were mistreated or harmed by one taste, they've also
00:24:25
expressed to me that they mourn the fact that this practice
00:24:29
never really got the chance to shine on its own separate from
00:24:32
this. So for the for the startup
00:24:34
entrepreneur listening to this podcast, you think, you know,
00:24:37
one taste is just too soon. Like, you know, it's like
00:24:40
Andreessen Horowitz needs to, you know, back the next version.
00:24:43
You think there are, you know, avoid a couple of the, you know,
00:24:46
pitfalls. And I mean, look, I think
00:24:49
sexuality like it's a tough business and you'll probably
00:24:54
struggle to like get banked by, you know, and, and, and deal
00:24:58
with payments and stuff. That being said, like, I, you
00:25:01
know, over the course of my time as a reporter, I have
00:25:03
occasionally talked to people who run companies and startups
00:25:08
that are trying to help people like improve their sex lives or
00:25:11
have like they're really well-intentioned.
00:25:14
And it is it is a tough business, but these people are
00:25:16
often quite motivated by the idea that it, it is, I think if
00:25:20
you can crack it, a huge market. And I think it's it's do you
00:25:23
remember when we went to South by Southwest together?
00:25:26
I think you and I as reporters went to some party where it was
00:25:29
like an app that was clearly like, I think a sex worker app
00:25:33
or there always these. Do you remember that?
00:25:34
You know, I'm talking, I vaguely remember that.
00:25:37
I mean, it's like with good intentions, they're trying to do
00:25:41
this. Yeah, well, we haven't we had
00:25:43
any. When I was in college, when I
00:25:45
was in college, we had a founder, I think this was, you
00:25:47
know, about, you know, seven years ago.
00:25:49
But we had a founder who had gone to Barnard and had founded
00:25:54
like this really feminine focused like sex toy company and
00:25:58
had raised some good venture capital funding and was, you
00:26:00
know, like packaging this, you know, it was Consumer Packaged
00:26:04
Goods as a company, it was DTC, but it was, you know, is part of
00:26:08
this sexuality Wellness push. And her, you know, talking about
00:26:12
it did come from a very, you know, understandable and
00:26:15
somewhat in noble place because you know, this this is a gap and
00:26:19
this is a need that needs to be filled and there is a market for
00:26:21
it that in a healthy way. And so.
00:26:23
More more morally redeemed than gambling or whatever.
00:26:26
Isn't, you know, the prediction gambling, right?
00:26:30
What's your view on capitalism now?
00:26:32
You know, you work for Bloomberg.
00:26:33
We all write about money and like this this was sort of peak
00:26:38
capitalism ethos like I don't know what yeah.
00:26:42
Where do you think this is headed?
00:26:43
Is is it like just like whatever, you know, this this
00:26:47
real need to sort of demystify. I don't know if, you know,
00:26:50
orgasm or help people with sexuality.
00:26:52
Like is that a market? Will the market ever solve that
00:26:56
or you think it needs to exist outside of a company or any
00:26:59
observations about the role for companies in these deep human
00:27:02
yeah problems. I think it's an interesting
00:27:05
question because if you, if you spend time in the, oh God and
00:27:09
kind of the like sexual spiritual communities and, and
00:27:12
there are a lot of places that will offer workshops about
00:27:16
sexuality. People do sometimes debate the
00:27:19
idea that like, can you sell this in a way that is never
00:27:23
going to, you know, corrupt the offering?
00:27:27
And I don't know, I mean, I believe that capitalism is
00:27:30
pretty effective. Like I, you know, I, it's hard
00:27:34
for me to see that that is inherently going to do some
00:27:38
project. I think you can probably have a
00:27:43
business that is offering something really helpful and is
00:27:45
charging money for it. And like, that seems to make
00:27:47
sense to me. What I think happened at One
00:27:51
Taste is that, you know, the personalities and the forces
00:27:55
that were running this company were, you know, Nicole is an
00:28:00
interesting and fascinating character and my read of her to
00:28:04
some extent is that she experienced what she believes as
00:28:09
personal growth through extreme experiences, sexual and
00:28:14
otherwise, like she has. She also has talked about taking
00:28:17
lots of drugs, taking lots of LSD in her past.
00:28:20
And she believed that this form of pursuing personal growth
00:28:25
worked for her and should work for other people.
00:28:27
And so the culture within one Taste was infused with this
00:28:31
sense that extreme experiences and intensity, we're going to
00:28:35
bring you personal growth. And for some people, that was
00:28:41
true and it was helpful. And for some people, I think it
00:28:43
led to really harmful places. And I think that that's more at
00:28:49
the heart of it than the fact that they were charging money
00:28:52
for it. I mean, to be, to be clear, if
00:28:54
you spend enough time in the startup story, more in that
00:28:58
like, oh, great startups often attract these leaders who are
00:29:01
like see themselves as Messiah like figures.
00:29:05
And sometimes that leads these companies to great success.
00:29:07
And they also are like often antisocial personalities that
00:29:11
treat people poorly. And then you add layer in, she
00:29:14
has access to all this sex to throw it around and control
00:29:17
people with It goes off the rails even more than just an
00:29:21
Adam Newman who's, you know, telling you to live your life.
00:29:24
Keep in mind, like if you're if you're going to look at other
00:29:27
startups and say like, oh, the fact that this company grew so
00:29:30
big and had such a huge valuation, that was, you know,
00:29:32
if you try to say that that's what led to problems, well, it's
00:29:35
like, yeah, one taste was never valued that highly.
00:29:38
And it's it's still, you know, so I think money certainly
00:29:42
played a role in some of the pressures that people felt
00:29:45
within one taste because there were times that they felt like,
00:29:47
Oh yeah, we really need to bring in a lot of revenue in order to
00:29:49
keep the business going. And that led to this pressure
00:29:51
cooker type environment. But I think the truth is, the
00:29:56
problems that people describe to me at this company have roots
00:29:59
that go much deeper than simply the commercial aspect of it.
00:30:03
Right and you think about like, you know, the term that we use
00:30:07
very literally is the cult of the founder.
00:30:09
Like there is this sort of embrace within Silicon Valley on
00:30:12
like these people have they they are imbued with unique
00:30:15
properties that you just want to be around and they will bring
00:30:18
you towards enlightenment and fulfilment, whether it's
00:30:21
capitalistic or sexual or otherwise.
00:30:24
It's like there's something unique about these people that
00:30:26
you just want to be around them. And even if the business model
00:30:28
doesn't make sense, if there are things about what they're doing
00:30:31
that like cross a huge number of your personal ethical boundaries
00:30:34
doesn't matter because they figured it out.
00:30:36
They know something greater. And like that's enough for
00:30:39
people to invest in companies for VCs, I mean.
00:30:42
Cult dynamics exists on a spectrum.
00:30:44
Cults exists on a spectrum. One take away I hope people take
00:30:48
from the book is that it's a little you kind of lose sight of
00:30:51
the of the goal when you debate like is it a cult or not?
00:30:56
It's more like, OK, what are some dynamics that exist
00:30:59
commonly in Colts? And are they present here or are
00:31:01
they not present? And one of the things that Colts
00:31:03
do really well, and this can sometimes be a positive thing or
00:31:08
a negative thing, is that they're very good at behavior
00:31:10
change. So if you get enmeshed in one,
00:31:13
like your life will change. And so I think for a lot of
00:31:17
these companies that have maybe like a reputation of having sort
00:31:20
of like, oh, we're going to use the word cult to describe them
00:31:23
in a light hearted way. They might be gesturing at that.
00:31:26
They might be gesturing at the fact that when you are part of
00:31:29
this group, you feel like you have a new mission and there's a
00:31:32
purpose and maybe like it becomes a bigger part of your
00:31:35
personality than just a normal employer or a normal workplace.
00:31:38
And I'm not necessarily saying that that's inherently a bad
00:31:42
thing. Like I think if you really want
00:31:44
to change your life like some of these groups can offer, it's
00:31:46
true in relationships is everything you are, who you
00:31:48
spend time with, and it's all just sort of a spectrum of how
00:31:52
sort of coercive those things are.
00:31:55
Meddling of a last word, last question.
00:31:58
Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, is Soul Cycle a cult Like
00:32:01
that's that's a group that results in a lot of behavior
00:32:03
change and chanting in some ways in a dark room with a leader,
00:32:06
so. Well, one of the, I mean, one of
00:32:09
the sort of obvious but interesting things about what
00:32:13
makes people vulnerable to high demand groups or cults is that
00:32:17
if they are feeling isolated or lonely or purposeless in their
00:32:20
life, and then something comes along to offer it, then they
00:32:24
might be more likely to be drawn in.
00:32:26
And yeah, you know, it's like if people aren't having regular
00:32:30
access to moments of awe and wonder and transcendence and
00:32:35
community, you know, could something like Soul Cycle help
00:32:38
fill that gap? Sure.
00:32:39
Could something like one taste fill that gap?
00:32:41
Sure. Like, you know, it's, it speaks
00:32:45
to, you know, I think Soul Cycle is like, you know, somewhere on
00:32:48
the spectrum. And one taste might be on a
00:32:49
different spot on the spectrum, but their existence and their
00:32:52
appeal speaks to this very universal human need that we
00:32:56
need to fill that sense of awe. I do think we have a core
00:32:59
problem. Just like people like going to
00:33:02
church. Not as much as they used to.
00:33:04
God, God is dead. Or it's like for many of you
00:33:07
know, people don't believe in God anymore.
00:33:08
I don't believe in God. If you don't believe in God,
00:33:10
what are you supposed to do? It feels silly to, like, go to
00:33:13
church. They search for all these other
00:33:15
things, a lot of them pretty hollow.
00:33:17
They only speak to, you know, some of humanity.
00:33:20
So yeah, I feel like we haven't as a society, invented a church
00:33:25
replacement that that sort of covers the same ground.
00:33:28
I spoke to someone who is like a former cult member and who kind
00:33:32
of is like a consultant that tries to help people leave high
00:33:37
demand groups. And I asked her, like, you know,
00:33:40
if you could prescribe something broadly for society that would
00:33:42
help lower the risk of people joining these damaging groups,
00:33:44
what would you do? And she said, I really wish I
00:33:46
could just bring back healthy religion.
00:33:50
Like she was like, if more people were religious, we would
00:33:52
have less of this risk. And so obviously that comes with
00:33:56
complicate, You know, that's easier said than done, but I
00:33:59
think it's speaking to something true about our our digital age,
00:34:03
our COVID era lives like our increasingly secular lives.
00:34:08
It's it creates this breeding ground where people are looking
00:34:11
for meaning and sometimes finding it in the wrong place.
00:34:15
A good. Yeah, there's a Unicorn company
00:34:17
to come out of this somebody. I'm sorry.
00:34:20
A representative of the era, I guess that feels like a good of
00:34:24
places. Any yeah that's great to end it
00:34:26
so the I really want to have like a Larry King live like any
00:34:30
like the book is called empire of orgasm.
00:34:32
Yes, Ellen Jewett. Please, Empire of Orgasm, it's
00:34:34
out now. Yes, Find it wherever you find
00:34:37
your books. Amazon Bookshop, your local
00:34:39
bookstore. Thanks for coming on.
00:34:40
Thanks for having me on OH. I didn't even get to ask you
00:34:43
about Gooning. Thank you for tuning into this
00:34:45
week's episode of the podcast. If you're new here, please like
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and subscribe. It really helps out the channel.
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