Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Sounds Like A Cult — Meet Your New Co-Hosts!

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

This is Sounds Like A Cult, a show with two sparkling new cult leaders, ahem, co-hosts!!!!!!  We’ve been keeping this secret for months, and it feels downright ~transcendent~ to let you culties know: Joining host Amanda for the next season of Sounds Like A Cult are two brilliant, kind, warm, and hilarious recurring voices—unscripted TV producer Chelsea Charles and theatre/rhetoric student Reese Oliver (whom you may already recognize as SLAC’s beloved coordinator). Tune into today’s surprise bonus minisode for some angelic wee introductions, teasers, and deats about what to expect from SLAC 2.0. The next season premieres Tuesday, September 17! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell @chelseaxcharles @reesaronii To order Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, click here. To subscribe to Amanda's new Magical Overthinkers podcast and/or watch full episodes on YouTube, click here :) Thank you to our sponsor!  Visit BetterHelp.com/CULT today to get 10% off your first month.

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One of my favorite things about June's Journey is not only that it is a fun and challenging game, but it's beautiful to look at. You can celebrate in style with masquerade-themed events and decorations. My favorite time to play June's Journey is when I am in between work tasks and I need a beautiful chef's kiss of the game to relax to, to stimulate my mind to. It's perfect

for that. Dive into the mystery and celebrate June's Journey's seventh anniversary. Download it for free on iOS and Android today and gear up for thrilling new adventures. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash cult today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash cult. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations.

The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern-day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell. And I'm Chelsea Charles. And I'm Reese Oliver. And we are your leaders. Yeah, it's gonna sound good when we put it together.

Eeeeee! Yes, yes! Ah! So lit. New co-hosts. What did you tell me to say? New co-host has entered the chat. No, what is it? New co-hosts dropped. New co-hosts just dropped.

Yes! Holy shit, colties. This episode has been such a long time coming. My heart is pitter pattering out of my little chest. That's not me telling you how big my boobs are. Yeah, right. They are. They do what they need to do.

That's not what this episode is about, the cult of boobs. Anyway, I'm nervous. Gotta work out this nervous energy because today we are introducing the new, sounds like a called, leadership. This is a long awaited hard launch of my official new co-hosts, Chelsea Charles and Reese Oliver.

I have been holding on to the secret for so long. I mean, almost a year. Cause Chelsea, when did you slide into my DMs? Almost a year? Because Chelsea, when did you slide into my DMs? Last January. It was New Year's. Yes. Okay.

So it's been like eight months. And then Reese and I have been working together for eight months. And this all came together so organically and beautifully and I am excited to explain how this co-host energy came to manifest. I just, I'm so happy this day has come. So this is just like a little mini bonus episode to get you culties hyped for the next season of Sounds Like a Cult, which features, thank God, not just my voice anymore. You're going to get to know and fall in love with these two human beings who are like such gifts to the fucking universe not to love bomb you.

It feels so good. So I'll explain a little bit about how this all came to be, and then I will kick it to Chelsea and Reese and they will introduce themselves so you can all get to know the two new voices that you will soon worship. So it sounds like a cult. It really, it's meant to be a co-hosted show, not only because it's awkward to have a conversation

with just yourself, I do my best, but also because this show is predicated on the thesis that this concept of cultish influence is up to interpretation. It's subjective depending on your background and your beliefs and your relationship with pop culture and community in general. And so, you know, not everybody is going to connect with my voice or my opinions or the like Amanda character on Sounds Like a Cult, which it is a character. And that is why when people say mean things about the show, it doesn't affect me as much

as it might because not to break the fourth wall, but this is a persona and I'm excited. I know, shocker. Media, movie magic, podcast magic, anyways. So yeah, it's just sorely needed to have multiple perspectives, a bit of disagreement. It was starting to get too culty up in here. I'm so thrilled that you both are here. And the way that it came together was just,

well, so Reece started as a, sounds like a cult intern, paid intern, and then was like such a fucking gift to this show and like understood its thesis so perfectly, so naturally that I immediately was like, cannot let this human go. And so now Reese's a coordinator for this show and also my other show, magical over thinkers. And it's not even like I had this grand master plan to have Reese co-host episodes, but there was this one topic in particular, our cult of tradwives episode where I did the interview and I was like, oof, I really, I need some help with the intro

to set this topic up. And Reese had already been putting together outlines for the show and was just like more than prepared to step in. So we did that episode together and then it performed so well. That Cult of Tradwives episode has been like our most downloaded episode of the past four months. So I was like, we gotta get Reese up in here. It's just so much more fun to talk to someone.

So then we started doing a couple more episodes together and then sort of simultaneously Chelsea, who's not someone that I knew, was just a listener of the show. Maybe you can explain it, but Chelsea just cold slid in to the Sounds Like A Cult DMs being like, I hear you lonely on the mic and I just wanna like- Your smoke signals are being seen. I'm here to answer your prayers. on the mic and I just wanna like. Your smoke signals are being seen. I'm here to answer your prayers.

Literally that. Absolutely. You were like, I hear you blinking twice and I wanna just shoot my shot and throw my hat in the ring to like co-host some episodes with you. Yeah. Let me tell you right now, it made me wanna cry receiving your message

because it was so encouraging. At that point, even my dad, who was Sounds Like a Cult's biggest fan and most dedicated listener was hinting that the show could benefit from an interlocutor. I told him, trust me, I agree with you. I was like, this person seems so gracious and so like, sane and lovely. But what are the odds that the only person to ever slide into my DMs with an offer like that would be the right fit? And then we zoomed like a whole bunch of times and we got to know each other. And I was like, wait, no, like in a kind of kismet cosmic way. This is exactly the right person for the show.

And so now we have not one, but two angels descending from the culty heavens to bless this podcast. That's how this all came together. But enough from me for fuck's sake. Chelsea, first, could you just introduce yourself to the culties, tell them a little bit about yourself, your real self, your persona, who is she? And then I'll have Reese do the same.

Absolutely. First of all, hey, Kulties. I am a Kultie myself. I was a listener of the show. I was super obsessed with the show. And that is honestly just what prompted me to step in and slide in Amanda's DMs, because I was just so impressed. Just so impressed, I just, I loved everything about it. I am from Louisiana, I'm 32 years old,

I am a newlywed, and I am an unscripted TV producer. I make all of the guilty pleasure TV shows that some of you may not love to admit that you watch. I mean as of late we've had a lot of requests for the very shows that you work on, Lone Island, which is all to say that Chelsea is hyper qualified to be involved with this show, regardless of you listening to it or appreciating it. She's on the front lines of cult influence. Absolutely. Yes, because reality TV and media is like a huge culty category on this show.

So your voice was very much welcome. Yeah. Anything else? Any other little factoids or tidbits? Yeah, I'm just happy to be here. To know Chelsea is to love her. Oh, to know Chelsea is to love her. That's so sweet.

Also if you're discovering this episode just organically on our RSS feed, on whatever platform you listen to Sounds Like a Cult, you got to head to our Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult Pod because we did a photo shoot, y'all, to intro these two new co-hosts that is so over the top. It's not worth explaining. You just have to give it a gander. It was a Sounds Like a Cult fever dream. If you know, you know, replete with inside jokes Easter eggs, dare I say. Absolutely. Q drops.

It was really something. So you gotta go take a look. Also because this is a podcast and we don't have a video component, but you gotta take advantage of any opportunity to get an eye full of Reese and Chelsea, because in addition to being kind and brilliant geniuses and very funny, Chelsea and Reese are also very beautiful.

Oh my God. You're too kind. No. Okay, Reese, introduce yourself in your own words with you. Okay. Hello everybody. Hi, culties. My name is Reese like Chelsea. I was also a cultie before

I mean, I still am a cultie. I will always identify as a cultie I grew up around the Los Angeles area in a town called Laverne if anybody knows where that is Which I'm sure you do not. I am currently a senior in college I am getting my bachelor's in theater and rhetoric and communication studies. Little double major moment. What else? Oh, famously, I do not know how much effort goes into making sourdough. So I would like to apologize to all of the very passionate sourdough bakers out there for implying that it's easy.

I was wrong. Yeah. Some feedback was given. I'm dancing around the drama that was Sourdough Gate. Sourdough Gate. There were some culties who upon listening to the Tradwives episode were not pleased with Reese's suggestion that it was easy to make sourdough. I mean, I get it. If I spent a lot of time working on something and someone was like, oh, that's easy. I would also be upset. Yeah. Look, I just took a pottery course, a six week pottery course.

I was the worst one in class. And if someone were to poo poo my efforts, I might take to the Instagram comments as well. It was, poor Reese, it was trial by fire, you know? Like the most meta thing in the world is that like, this is a show about the cults we all follow. And that is naturally going to attract a certain type of fanatical listener,

which we love and appreciate, and is always fascinating anthropologically and sometimes scary emotionally. But I guess we had it coming. We do appreciate you all. I just can't believe how well this has all come together because Chelsea's background and proclivities being a reality TV producer, Chelsea is perfectly

poised to talk about the pop culture and consumerist cults that we often cover on the show. And then Reese, some of you may have heard this on the Trad Wives episode, but she's our resident Gen Z girly, extremely online in the the like sort of fundy snark roasting of niche extremist religious communities on the internet, like how religion overlaps with social media. And so those are like two such important buckets of cultishness that we cover on the show. So it's nice to be able to have two people who are so passionate about those things. Okay, and then yeah, I'm Amanda, I'm 32,

I'm from Baltimore. And yeah, I am just also happy to be here. Just your yappy cult mother, thrilled to be joined by some new sister wives. Join by some new sister wives. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Something that's wonderful about therapy is that it can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder because your back to school era can come at any age. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. I tried BetterHelp myself for the first time a few years ago when I was in between therapists and feeling really intimidated by the process of having to find someone new. It was really nice just to be able to do that online knowing that I could switch therapists anytime for no charge if I didn't find the right person at first. Therapy has been such a useful tool for me. It's not only healed me in a

lot of ways, but helped me develop a sense of curiosity about my own mind. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash cult today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, h-e-l-p dot com slash cult. So I thought it would be fun as a little icebreaker, not that we need to break the ice amongst ourselves, but to break the ice with the culties. I was going to ask you a couple of questions, each of you. Uh-oh. Couple of getting to know you questions. The first is, and maybe Chelsea could go first and then Reese, a cult you're in, a cult you've left, and the cult that got you interested in cults.

Okay. All right. So I belong to a few cults, okay? The cult of Beyonce, first and foremost, Lord and savior, she is thee, all right? The cult of Nara Smith and foremost, Lord and savior. She is thee, all right. The cult of Nara Smith, period, point blank. Reese's face. I said what I said, Reese. I said what I said.

I love it for you. Listen, and last but not least, the house of the dragon. But weirdly, I'm not a Game of Thrones cultie, which is kind of strange. I didn't know that was possible. Yeah, I completely respect it. It's like I'm obsessed with Better Call Saul, but I could give or take Breaking Bad. Yeah, same thing.

You know, same thing for yourself. We love a spinoff. Sounds like a cult is a spinoff. We love it 2.0. Screamy. We are all a spinoff. Hashtag screaming. A cult I left.

Oh, I don't cult I left, ooh. I don't think I left any. Greek life? No, what's funny about Chelsea is that she doesn't leave cults. She only joins them. Only join, I'm in for life. I'm in for life. Also, I heard you say Greek life, no.

Actually, still in. Just for anyone who doesn't know, I'm a part of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority incorporated which is the same sorority as Kamala Harris I don't know if you know her but we should try to get her on the show that girl knows cults. Oh my god, Madame President? We should definitely try to get her on the show. She's highly qualified to talk about cults. And then the cult that got me interested in cults, that's also very hard.

Hmm. I mean, Scientology, obviously. I think that's the one that got me interested, but I know that there's another that I just can't think of off the top of my head. But Scientology makes sense because we live in LA. Absolutely. And you work in Hollywood and you know you and I both well I don't want to give anyone fodder to like dox us but we live

close enough to the Church of Scientology. Oh we live close. At a point you do you do stumble by, you do stumble in. It's yeah it's right there. Absolutely. Reese, what say you? Oh wow. Okay. Let's see I'm cold time in I mean feeder kids stuff. I feel like that's kind of low-hanging fruit As listeners already know I am a deconstructing member of the glossy a cult So I guess I'll say that for a cult I've left you glossed away from glossy a I did I You glossed away from Glossier. I did. I had glossed away. Sorry. I took that Milky Jelly cleanser. And you cleansed your soul. I revealed my true self. And the cult that got me into cults. Ooh, I mean it would be multi-level marketing. That is my bread and butter I actually just presented. I did my senior thesis a year

early for my rhetoric and communication studies degree. Overachiever. Oh stop. The title of my senior thesis was The Future is Female, and it was about how multilevel marketing leaders are cult leaders in disguise. And because they're women, they go undetected. Yes ma'am. And something that I want to cover on the show next season or at some point in 2025 maybe or at some point in 2025 maybe is the latest iteration

or the new cloak that former MLM girlies are wearing. Reese and I were just texting about this last night, which is the digital marketing girlies who are selling $500 courses, teaching you how to sell $500 courses. Yes. They're the ladies who like, you know, in MLM speak, you're constantly deriding nine to five workers. But in the language of the digital marketing girlies, they're constantly deriding those W2 jobs. So it's like same, same, but different, different dialect of the same language or so to speak. Okay. Oh, yes, I will go.

Different dialect of the same language or so to speak. Okay, oh, yes, I will go. A cult I'm in, it's a cop out to say the cult of sounds like a cult, but I can't leave no matter how hard I try. I mean, I love to brush up against cults without truly joining. So I'm like definitely brushed up against the cult of Chapel Rhone.

I'll dip a toe in, but I'm not at the altar of the chapel, if you will, you know? I'm just kind of standing in the back of the pews. You're not fully immersed. I'm not fully immersed. I don't think that she's like a goddess who will save us all, but I do like to go at least knee deep and commune with her. What are they called? What are they called? What are her fans called? Chapel Ronies? Oh, I feel like I should know because I love Chapel, but I don't know.

They don't have a name yet. Okay, interesting. Well, green flag. And like, I love brushing up against the cult of wellness. Like I do do infrared sauna cold plunge. I live in LA ultimately, and I like a wellness activity that allows you to remain sedentary.

But you know, I'm not like out here filling up my cart at Goop. Oh, I was vegan for a long while until the cult of a good cheese plate sucked me out. So I guess I and I say this with deep respect, that is a fanatical fringe group that I left. Also, the cult of theater kids. Oh my God, a cult that we've all actually been involved with. Yes. Also probably why we get along so well, because we can all just be cringe together and we can yes and together, which is so important in podcasting.

And then the cult that got me interested in cults would of course be Synanon, the 70s era cult that my dad spent his teenage years in against his will. The cult that cracked me open, got me fascinated in not only sort of quote unquote classic cults, but how those same methods of influence show up in places where you might not think to look. And that was the baseline fascination behind my book, Cultish, behind this podcast. And I can't believe that we've all found ways

to continue to talk about it and be interested in the subject matter for all these years. But like, every time I think I've run out of ideas, someone slides being like, do the cult of roller derby, marching band, Jeep owners, fucking. I mean, I constantly think like, oh, I'm on the edge of tiring of this topic. And then Reese will send me down a Christian sex fluencer rabbit hole. And I'm like, nevermind. I'm back.

Doing the law of. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Well, okay. If you could leave the culties with one sentiment, one thing to get excited about for the episodes that we've been banking for these few months, what would each of you say?

I was trying to make a play on words with the word soul because of the cult of Costco. So the owner soul. A little teaser, a little teaser. Oh, Chelsea, did you see? I'm going to incorporate it in. A New York Times piece just dropped about the cult of Costco. It didn't say the cult of Costco, but the headline of the piece was something about millennials and psychology and Costco and the whole experience and culture of it. I'm going to weave some of that into our recording and pickups. Oh, you should. Yes, you definitely should. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, this is this is timely. So anyway,

there's a fucking teaser. Yep. Cult of Costco is coming right up. And Chelsea told one joke in that recording that like sent me. I remember you telling me after you recorded this, you were like, Chelsea made this joke. I told everyone I know about it. I was like, that shit had me by the throat. It was so funny. Okay, Reese, what about you? A little tease, a little something.

Something that sticks out. Things are about to get cultier than you could imagine in every direction. Okay, okay, reality TV promo. Yeah, that was a teaser. Was that not the vision? No, it's the vision. It's absolutely the vision.

Things are about to get cultier than ever. Teaser, I know her well. Yes, we are going there with these episodes. We're taking big swings. That's what I'll say. All right. Well, get excited. Oh, actually, the last thing I want to say before we hop off is that we three are not

going to be on every episode. So let me set up expectations. Basically, Reese, Chelsea, and I all have jobs already. So we can't all be involved with the show every single week. So what you can expect is that some episodes will be just me and Chelsea and then maybe a special guest. Some episodes will be just me and Reese and then sometimes a special guest. There are a couple straggling episodes that I've already pre-banked that are just me and a special guest or two. And then we are going to do at least one episode before the end of the year.

That's all three of us. So get excited. And then who the fuck knows in 2025, the future of Sounds Like a Cult is always unwritten. With that said, the next season of Sounds Like a Cult premieres Tuesday, September 17th, 2024, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have episode suggestions for the next season, the next year, you can always email them to us.

Our email is on our website, soundslikeacult.com. While we don't have time to respond to every single email that comes in, we do see them and we have gotten some really good suggestions lately. Waldorf Schools, Teach for America, Buy Nothing Facebook groups, that's a good one. Nursing slash healthcare workers, Raves, Bath and Body Works, Shen Yun, and so many others that span the wide spectrum of our live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out cult categories. So keep them coming.

Well, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.