How to Startup a Cult

What this episode is about

The content explores the complexities of a sexuality-focused organization, OneTaste, which portrays itself as a wholesome and healing community, yet reveals troubling practices of financial and sexual exploitation among former members. It highlights the dual nature of such groups, where individuals may experience both valuable lessons and harmful exploitation, shedding light on the subtle manipulations often present in cult-like environments.

Key takeaways

• One Taste: where organic sexuality meets financial exploitation—proof that wholesome labels can mask harmful practices.
• Cults are like therapy with a twist: fun, appealing, and just shady enough to leave you asking 'What's my credit card doing here?'
• Nicole embodies complexity: a charismatic leader whose childhood shadows dance in the periphery of her sexual wellness empire.
• Healing or exploiting? The duality of One Taste’s experiences demonstrates that beneficial lessons can emerge from harmful situations.
• Conspiracy theories and cults: both offer a false sense of belonging, stroking egos while leading members down precarious paths.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dax Shepard (Host) · 7 min speaking
• Nicole (Guest) · 10 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: One Taste, Bwan, Oregon
2. 3:00 – 6:00: San Francisco, Bay Area, Temple University
3. 6:00 – 9:00: One Taste, San Francisco
4. 9:00 – 12:00: One Taste
5. 12:00 – 15:00: One Taste, San Francisco
6. 15:00 – 16:25: One Taste, San Francisco, Austin, Australia

Notable quotes from "How to Startup a Cult"

• What are the benefits? But yes, you're right. Then I started asking around a little on my own, finding people who had been involved in one taste and started to hear from people…

  about One Taste · at 0:23

• Yeah. If it was just bad, it wouldn't be first three months with the Bwan up in Oregon. It looks [ __ ] great. The Rajnishis are party. A lot of cults are fun.

  about Bwan · at 1:35

• Let's be real, like Nicole is the main person. And she is a fascinating and complicated person. She grew up in the Bay Area. Currently, she's in her late 50s. I think that she…

  about Bay Area · at 2:54

• Oh, sure. Could have easily. We are talking about spirituality and ohms. But she returns to San Francisco after a year. Yeah.

  about San Francisco · at 5:56

• Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.

  about San Diego · at 15:58

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Companies & orgs

• One Taste — Company · Business focus · 12 mentions · first at 0:04
  Central subject of the podcast, discussed for its controversial practices and business model.
• Temple University — Company · Educational background · 1 mention · first at 5:46
  Briefly attended by Nicole Daedone, the founder of One Taste.
  Like inspired by intensity and edges and that kind of thing, right? So, she goes to Temple but just for a year then come Temple University.

Places & events

• San Francisco — Place · Headquarters · 5 mentions · first at 3:00
  Primary location where One Taste was founded and initially operated.
• Bay Area — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 3:00
  Childhood home of Nicole Daedone, the founder of One Taste.
• San Diego — Place · Business expansion · 1 mention · first at 16:01
  One of the cities where One Taste expanded its operations.
• Austin — Place · Business expansion · 1 mention · first at 16:03
  One of the cities where One Taste expanded its operations.
  Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.
• Boulder — Place · Business expansion · 1 mention · first at 16:03
  One of the cities where One Taste expanded its operations.
  Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.
• New York, New York — Place · Business expansion · 1 mention · first at 16:03
  One of the cities where One Taste expanded its operations.
  Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.
• Australia — Place · Business expansion · 1 mention · first at 16:05
  One of the countries where One Taste expanded its operations.
  Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.
• Bwan — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 1:36
  Mentioned in the context of cult-like experiences, possibly related to One Taste's practices.
• Oregon — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 1:36
  Mentioned in the context of cult-like experiences, possibly related to One Taste's practices.
  Yeah. If it was just bad, it wouldn't be first three months with the Bwan up in Oregon. It looks [ __ ] great. The Rajnishis are party. A lot of cults are fun.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 So I had that first meeting with One's leadership and you know they made the basic pitch to me. They were like we're the whole foods of sexuality. We're the organic good for you version of sexuality. They were very much like our practice is

0:13 wholesome and helps heal people. Do you have any spidey senses going off during that first thing?

0:17 Not a ton. You were like okay. I was like okay this is an I mean there's so much to be intrigued about. You're like how does it work?

0:23 Yeah absolutely. What are the benefits? But yes, you're right. Then I started asking around a little on my own, finding people who had been involved in one taste and started to hear from people who were former customers, former members that they felt like they'd been exploited by this company. Um, some people spoke about feeling like they had been exploited financially. So pressured to they said that they had been pressured to take on debt in order to buy expensive courses, which could cost upwards of 30 grand um for like an intensive course. And then some of them talked about feeling like they had been exploited sexually. Um feeling like they had been taught or you know pressured to have sex with potential customers

1:05 um in order to have those customers buy courses and support the company financially. Um and it's it's this subtle

1:11 it's not black and white. It's like for a lot of those people, they also felt like they had learned things of value during their time at one taster or that it had been this like

1:21 interesting, helpful, sometimes even healing experience and at the same time simultaneously harmful. That was kind of the

1:28 intriguing part of it. That's how all of them are. There's always something. Yeah. They wouldn't grow and expand if they weren't appealing and fun.

1:35 Yeah. If it was just bad, it wouldn't be first three months with the Bwan up in Oregon. It looks [ __ ] great. The Rajnishis are party. A lot of cults are fun.

1:43 You join a cult and it feels like you've discovered a special purpose. You've you're part of this special group that has a special knowledge about like they're your new mission in life. You're going to change the world. You have these cool new friends. Everyone's really excited.

1:56 You've unbridled yourself from society in essence. You've declared I'm I'm going to try a different approach to this. So you feel ex you probably your ego is also stroked by

2:06 Yeah, I think that's how conspiracy theories work too. same situation where it's like, oh, we're in this special group that knows something most people don't.

2:14 Yes. Now, I want to say you do end you write a piece in 2018. This becomes a humongous kind of viral thing that really shakes the foundation of this place.

2:25 Totally. But now I want to let's talk about Nicole and where she comes from because she's a fascinating charact. She's hyper intelligent.

2:34 Totally. Yeah. She's like attractive, hyper intelligent, seemingly fearless, confident charismatic

2:41 one might say. Yes. Um Nicole is the main character of One Taste of like this company of everything that it stands for. She is the creator, the visionary, the founder. There was technically another co-founder, but let's be real, like Nicole is the main person. And she is a fascinating and complicated person. She grew up in the Bay Area. Currently, she's in her late 50s. I think that she was growing up in the 70s. Um, and she had a really difficult childhood, which is something that we get into in the book. Um, where her father was a convicted child sex abuser.

3:19 Yeah. Single mom from Michigan. Single mom in and out. Yes. She had she was raised by a single mom. Also, maybe her grandmother was in the picture, but in her own retelling slash, as much as I've been able to corroborate with other people who knew her, um, she really loved her dad, even though he was this somewhat absent figure in her life. He had other families, other many other children, um, several other wives, not at the same time, but, you know, he had a an itinerant life elsewhere. And she adored him. And according to court records and according to her own retelling, he was a convicted child sex abuser. you know, he went to jail for this at least once when she was younger and then again when she was in her 20s and in that case he was arrested and charged and then died pretty soon after. So there was never like a conviction for the second one, but one of the alleged victims in that

4:10 case was like his granddaughter. Not hard to extrapolate that she might have been a victim. What's complicated is over the years she has spoken about her father's sex abuse history, but she has often sidestepped the question of whether he ever abused her. And I wanted to treat this subject really carefully and sensitively in the book. Um, but I did find people who knew her when she was in her 20s and around that time who told me that she told them that he had sexually abused her.

4:44 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she does have a piece of writing that was once public and is not anymore in which not only does she kind of allude to this, but she actually spins it in this very

4:58 complex way where she suggests that she perhaps initiated it or was, you know, and keep in mind that

5:06 what is being discussed here is a scenario in which she would have been like under 10.

5:11 Yeah. Yeah. and her public addressing of it evolves and I want to save to the end as it's unraveling where she ultimately goes with it which like I couldn't [ __ ] believe what was coming out of her mouth.

5:22 Yeah. Um okay so she's a competitive uh little girl. She's a spelling bee person or at least according to her. She's very bright.

5:31 Yeah. She's like an intense person and I think that has been clear. you know, anyone who knew her knew that she had this and she also, I think, liked to play that up in her own retelling of her biography that she was someone who was like inspired by intensity and edges and that kind of thing,

5:46 right? So, she goes to Temple but just for a year uh then come Temple University.

5:54 I didn't know you meant the temple. Oh, sure. Could have easily. We are talking about spirituality and ohms. But she returns to San Francisco after a year. Yeah.

6:03 And now she finds herself in some kind of communal living situations. She also loves meth and she loves psychedelics.

6:10 So she's a psychonaut. Her 20s are a string of what I would describe as intense experiences. According to people who knew her, that involves meth use, copious amounts of LSD, um sex work. She has talked about being um an escort uh a stripper and she also ran an art gallery. So I mean some of that was a little bit more pedestrian but she has described this era of her life and other people who knew her have corroborated this that it was yeah quite extreme. She wasn't really living like the normal path of like getting a job.

6:43 And she allegedly spent 3 years or so living in what she later refers to as an acid house. A house with a bunch of other women in San Francisco where they did tons of acid. Yes.

6:53 I mean, this is all a mix of her retelling, and she is someone who is very good at telling stories about her life in a way that supports

7:02 a point that she's trying to make at the time. One thing I'll applaud her for is she doesn't really ever take kind of a victim narrative, which of course is a tenant of this. Um, but there's no sense that at any point she was a victim in any of these scenarios.

7:17 But she meets a dude, Irwin, at a party. Yes. And this guy kind of hits her with this notion of what's it called then?

7:25 They call it deliberate orgasm. Deliberate orgasm. So the way she tells the story is that she went to a party and she met a guy who is sometimes described as a Buddhist monk. Erwan had lived at an ashram for some point. I don't know if he considered himself a monk, but whatever.

7:38 He's in his 20s, good-looking, a little younger than her. His name is Arowan. Yeah. Not

7:43 I thought it was Irwin. Not Not Awan like grocery stores spelled E R W. Oh, okay. I got it.

7:50 But he, you know, in this in the retellings, he supposedly comes up to her at this party and says, "I'd like to introduce you to a sexuality practice." And she's like, "What?" And he's like, "I'd like to introduce you to a sexuality practice."

8:03 And she says, "Yes." And I don't think they do it right then and there. I I believe they met up later. He shows her this meditative clitoreral stroking practice. And he talks about how like I'm going to here's what's going to happen. I'm going to stay clothed. You're going to remove your clothing from the waist down. It's 15 minutes as well right?

8:20 15 minutes probably. Um, they like to use the word [ __ ] So, I'm going to use it within one taste for a period of time. They preferred to use the terms [ __ ] and [ __ ] to describe female and male genitalia in part because it had charge to it because it was this provocative word.

8:37 But again, I'm so confused by this because it's like it's supposed to be a program, Monica. Jesus.

8:43 It's supposed to be not you're not supposed to climax. It's supposed to be just meditative and then it's also like the most sexually charged thing possible.

8:52 I would say the way to think about it is what One Taste was eventually selling was you know these horses on orgasmic meditation which is a pretty fringe and provocative idea right like most people are not going to be like great sign me up you might need a little convincing. So in order to do so they did try to make it quite safe seeming clinical. That's why it's like the 15 minutes the prescribed

9:15 script the like all these safe and they don't want you to not climax. They just are saying it's much more it's bigger than just the climax.

9:23 They're like climax like sure but there's more. It's just very the juxiposition of like

9:29 but then when you get deeper inside that's where some of the stranger things come up. So, if you're sensing a discordance, you're like, it doesn't line up,

9:39 it's probably because the outer pitch was a little bit more buttoned up or as buttoned up as you could make

9:45 literal stroking, right? And then for those who became more deeply involved like they worked for the company, they lived in a communal residence with other one taste people, they made this company and this lifestyle their whole life. Then that's where you get into some of the there are layers unsurprisingly.

10:04 Okay. So she has this experience, she describes it as quite transcendent and for her it's the highest level of intimacy she's ever experienced. So she's converted

10:17 as she tells it. It's a pivotal moment in her life. She experiences this thing. She even likes to say that she was about to join a Buddhist monastery and then throughout that plan and was like, "This is supposed to be your wild week."

10:27 Yes. Just kidding. I'm going to pursue this meditative cliteral stroking practice. And now this guy Awan, he is working under another guy who has broken off from yet another organization that started much earlier in the 70s or

10:42 Yeah, it's a little complicated, but essentially the origins of this what becomes orgasmic meditation was these two other groups that had a relation to each other. One was a spin-off of the other and they taught a practice called deliberate orgasm.

10:56 Yeah. And both of those groups were less businessoriented than one taste. They were a little bit more like insular and they were both run by men and deliberate orgasm was like a little bit more freewheeling like it wasn't 15 minutes. It didn't have as many guard rails. So Nicole ends up going with Awan to like become part of one of these groups. And what essentially happens is she learns how to run a community like this and she learns the basics of this practice. And after that she's there for a couple years and after that she decides I want to do this on my own.

11:34 It has the same trajectory as like some of the um Christianity movements in the country where it's like they just keeps being these schisms that break off into their own and they all need a little bit of a proprietary approach to justify why they're a different thing but it's all pretty much the same. I mean what's interesting is yeah they all share this lineage and if you want to trace it far enough back there's even many shared lineages back to like EST and what is now Landmark Forum and there's probably a connection to Nexium and there's you know it's like this

12:04 tree essentially of personal development personal transformation groups they often have a tie to each other

12:10 so if you wanted to like map out that genealogy idea you have in there you have all these it's a perfect area to be in

12:18 yeah and and you'll see that certain idea ideas that were popular at one taste show up in some of these other groups as well.

12:25 Be you know for example like taking 100% responsibility for your experience like I have friends who have taken leadership seminars where that is a big tenant

12:35 and there's actually a lot of value to that idea and it can be taken too far and used to

12:40 like gaslight people into thinking that everything that happens to them is it's impossible to be a victim. Exactly.

12:45 Yeah. Someone jumps out of an alley. The victim narrative is like a really central part of understanding this and you know what you said earlier about Nicole never seeming like a victim like we can come back to it but that is a key thing because it is both empowering and it can be used to convince people that well if they're feeling harmed or if they're feeling like someone has been hurting them that's their problem.

13:12 Yeah. Yeah. And if you couldn't, you know, to be a victim is to have such a small-minded mentality or it's only for the weak-minded to think of themselves as the victim. And that can be really convenient. You know, if there's no victims, then there's no perpetrator. So, oh, how nice. Exactly.

13:26 It's a nice clean setup. Mhm. Just though, I think it's interesting to say that more the Moore house, there were a hundred more houses at one point. A lot of these have really successful. I just watched the Cinon talk about a little bit in the book, but I watched that doc and I was like, it's crazy how big was huge. Yeah.

13:43 Yeah. And they're all kind of borrowing from each other. They all kind of a little bit laced with some Buddhism.

13:47 Yeah. Morehouse, you know, we won't spend too much on it, but basically, yeah, they had this like network of houses across the US that were all painted purple and they all had this like philosophy about living with like more pleasure, more fun. And

13:59 was that a different one or is that connected to this? That's one of the two groups that taught deliberate orgasm.

14:03 That's where the the orgasm kind of started. Every once in a while when you mention that there's someone who's like, "Oh, I know someone who lived in a one of those purple houses or I know like they're sometimes called the purple people."

14:14 Oh, yeah. Okay. So, she breaks out on her own, she's having kind of middling success. She gets a warehouse in San Francisco and invites people to live in it.

14:23 Yes. So, when she starts One Taste, they start off by having like a center in San Francisco where they have like a yoga studio and they start offering classes. And this is in 2004 or so. And pretty quickly within a couple years, they also rent a warehouse down the street. And that becomes the first communal residence of One Taste participants. And

14:47 that starts like a whole history of like One Taste people living together and having that be kind of like the inner experience, the kind of the kind of like once you get more involved Yeah.

14:59 and you join, you might then you're living it. Yeah. So, for a lot of people who get involved in one taste, you might join and just take a few classes and be like, great, I learned what I needed.

15:08 Uhhuh. See you later. Yeah. And then there's other people who join and then they're like, I want more. I want to be more immersed in this world. And the path that a lot of those people end up following is they would quit their old job and start to work at One Taste, usually on their sales team, selling courses to other people. They would move out of their old home and move into one of the one taste communal residences and they would gradually stop spending as much time with their friends and family who didn't understand their orgasmic life.

15:39 Yeah. And start spending all their time Yeah. start spending all their time with people at one taste. And that is kind of

15:45 how it can advance for certain people. Okay. So it takes off. um she decides to start franchising and selling more and more and it starts growing into a pretty good size.

15:58 Yeah, they have offices not just you know they start in San Francisco but they end up with offices in LA, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York, London Australia.

16:08 Here's a tough question. How how much do you think the news and media h bears some responsibility? Cuz this was like a fledgling nothing. She does a demo in 2008 and the New York Times reports on it. Yeah.

16:21 And that's when the explosion happens.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How to Startup a Cult"?

Dax Shepard (Host), Nicole (Guest).

What is "How to Startup a Cult" about?

The content explores the complexities of a sexuality-focused organization, OneTaste, which portrays itself as a wholesome and healing community, yet reveals troubling practices of financial and sexual exploitation among former members. It highlights the dual nature of such groups, where individuals may experience both valuable lessons and harmful exploitation, shedding light on the subtle…

What is mentioned in this Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including One Taste, San Francisco, Bay Area, San Diego, Austin, Boulder. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How to Startup a Cult"?

The episode runs 16 min; the transcript is about 3,276 words in 75 timestamped sections.

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