Sounds Like A Cult

This week, Amanda and Chelsea get into the cult of TikTok Sleuths, where people fall down conspiratorial rabbit holes and rally around theories that inspire a whole new level of group-think. The Lindsay Clancy case and the death of Nolan Wells show how fast that can happen once Father Algorithm starts feeding thousands of people the same suspicion. And there could not be a better guest for this one than Annie Elise (@_annieelise), one of the biggest names in true crime online. She joins the show to talk about what she’s seen from inside these communities and the parasocial worship of people who are experiencing the most horrific moments of their entire lives, IRL. And what does it say about the current state of our society that citizen sleuths feel the need to actually hold investigators feet to the flame?

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When does hate following become its own kind of devotion? This week, Amanda and Iman descend into the anonymous world of influencer snark, where strangers gather to dissect creators’ relationships, bodies, businesses, politics, and every perceived inconsistency in real time. They get into Reddit groupthink, parasocial “accountability,” the thin line between critique and bullying, and the time suck of doing something from such a negative place. Joining them is writer and influencer Hannah Stella (@hannahstella), who became the subject of an intense snark community during her public divorce. Hannah opens up about being nearly four years “Googling myself sober,” the real life impact of anonymous speculation, and how engaging with snark can chip away at your soul. And fittingly, the episode drops alongside Iman’s new novel Once in a Timeline, a darkly funny Groundhog Day story about an influencer trapped inside the algorithm, exploring the masks we perform online, the loneliness behind the feed, and what happens when your audience knows you a little too well.

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Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

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This week, Reese and Iman cha cha slide straight into the surprisingly culty world of Dancing With the Stars, where celebrities come for career rehab, pros become stars in their own right, and millions of viewers suddenly believe they are qualified to critique a Paso Doble from their couch. Joining them is pop culture commentator and So Bad It’s Good host Ryan Bailey (@sobaditsgoodwithryanbailey), who went from openly mocking the show to rearranging his schedule for the East Coast feed and contemplating DWTS merch. We get into the TikTok fueled voting wars, old fans versus new recruits, parasocial shipping, and fan favorites survival in the ultimate popularity contest. And a five, six, seven, eight...

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Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

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This week, Amanda and Chelsea enter The Cult of Dog People, from pup birthday parties and breed evangelists to raw-feeding wars, “adopt don’t shop” morality, and the steadfast conviction that your dog can detect bad vibes better than you can. How did man’s best friend become a personality trait and a reason to feel morally superior to cat owners? We (lovingly) poke fun at the dog people culture before taking a much darker turn with our anonymous listener who, for the first time publicly, shares her experience working inside what she now describes as a dog-training cult. And this cult had everything: an isolated property, a charismatic guru, secretive and abusive training methods, rigid scripts, and the belief that hurting dogs could be justified because they were “saving lives.” Content Warning: Cruelty to animals. Please take care while listening.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

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What happens when your cool older stepbrother gets a mullet, a microphone, and millions of impressionable young men listening to him yap for three hours at a time? This week, Reese finds out while covering The Cult of Theo Von, the comedian-turned-podcast juggernaut whose whole brand is built on seeming like he has absolutely no brand at all. Joining her is Hysteria host and political commentator Erin Ryan (@eringloriaryan) to talk about Von’s particular place in the manosphere. They get into the power of playing dumb, why “authenticity” can be just as manufactured as professionalism, the parasocial appeal of the endless hangout podcast, and what happens when a guy who claims not to stand for much keeps handing his enormous platform to people who very much do. Maybe the cult leader isn’t always the guy pulling the strings, sometimes he’s just the mascot standing at the mouth of the funnel.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

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Grab your onions, this week, Reese and Iman are entering The Cult of Shrek, a fandom that somehow evolved from a beloved children’s movie into an online religion (or dare we say... cult). Joining them are Bechdel Cast hosts (@bechdelcast) Caitlin Durante (@caitlindurante) and Jamie Loftus (@jamiechristsuperstar), two certified Shrek scholars whose devotion includes transatlantic Shrek tourism, academic conferences, a $200 themed dinner, and, in Jamie’s case, selling roughly 200 green-painted Shrek nudes for Planned Parenthood. Together, they get into why Shrek inspires such a uniquely sincere brand of irony, why Shrek 2 may actually be a feminist masterpiece, and how fans apparently bullied DreamWorks into reconsidering Chad Shrek. Is Shrek love? Is Shrek life? We're heading far far away into the swamp to find out.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

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We’re taking a little holiday break this week, but unfortunately, incels are not. With the “male loneliness epidemic” becoming a bigger part of the cultural conversation, we’re revisiting one of the internet’s darkest and most tragically cringey cults: self proclaimed “involuntary celibates,” who believe they’ve been cursed by the universe (read: women) to live a life without love, sex, or accountability. Amanda and Reese are joined by cult comedy kings Henry Zebrowski (@drfantasty) and Ed Larson (@eddietunes) of Last Podcast on the Left (@lpontheleft) to trace how a chronically online subculture became a full-blown belief system with its own doomer mythology, and a whole lot of weaponized loneliness. Enjoy this trip back into the manosphere, culties. We’ll be back next week with a brand-new cult lurking somewhere much greener, muddier, and suspiciously swamp shaped.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

Thank you to our sponsors!

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This week, Chelsea and Iman investigate The Cult of Bellum Entertainment, the true crime production company whose founder, Mary Carol McDonald, allegedly spent years building a very different kind of crime empire behind the scenes. True crime podcaster Jami Rice (@jamionair) joins us with an especially wild perspective: she was working at the bank that approved McDonald for a $15 million loan after she allegedly posed as an heiress to an $80 million fortune. We get into bouncing paychecks, unpaid freelancers, fake family lore, suspiciously persuasive baked goods, a lawyer with his own bonkers backstory, and the sunk-cost psychology that kept employees hanging on even as the red flags started multiplying. Come for the Hollywood labor exploitation, stay for the revelation that apparently even the pies were part of the grift. Granny Delvy, your table is ready.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

Thank you to our sponsors!

Thanks to Article for sponsoring this podcast! Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit h⁠⁠⁠ttps://www.article.com/discount/cult ⁠⁠⁠and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

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This week, Reese dives into The Cult of Celebrity Wellness Brands, where skincare, mental health, spirituality, supplements, and good old-fashioned celebrity worship have melted together into one extremely Instagrammable belief system. From Goop and Rhode to Rare Beauty, Kardashian supplements, children's skincare, and the spectacularly messy rise and fall of Selena Gomez's mental health startup Wondermind, Marketing critic and Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults author Dr. Mara Einstein (@drmaraeinstein) joins us to unpack parasocial trust, brand cults, wellness grifts, scarcity marketing, and why the most effective sales pitch is just convincing you that something is wrong with you first. Enlightenment is only a 12 step skincare routine, GLP-1-adjacent supplement, and celebrity approved app away.

The Cut: What Happened at Wondermind by Angelina Chapman

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!

Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com!

Thank you to our sponsors!

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This week, Amanda is joined by author and travel writer Sheila Yasmin Marikar (@sheilaym) to descend into The Cult of Dark Tourism, the booming travel industry built around vacationing where very, very bad things have happened. From Chernobyl excursions and serial killer pub crawls to war zone tourism, suicide forests, nuclear disaster sites, and the "haunted house" where people willingly sign up to be tortured, we’re asking what possesses someone to look at human tragedy and think: I should book a trip there. Helping us to unpack the cultiness is dark tourism legend David Farrier (@davidfarrier), documentarian and creator and host of Netflix’s Dark Tourist, to share what he learned after traveling to some of the strangest destinations on Earth. We discuss the bragging rights, rubbernecking, questionable ethics, and impressive mental gymnastics required to turn death and disaster into a bucket list. Because apparently, a beach vacation just isn’t enough for some people.

Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!
Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. 

Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible!

Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com with code CULT!

Thank you to our sponsors!

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