Sounds Like A Cult

Culties, it’s time to count down from five and press play. This week, Chelsea, Reese, and Iman investigate Mel Robbins, a polarizing lawyer-turned-life-coach who built a cult-like following through motivational speaking, podcasting, and writing her bestselling self-help book, Let Them. But are her “life-changing” methods of improving yourself truly life changing, or is there something more sinister at play? Joining our hosts is Kat Van Buren (@katvanburen) of the Feeling Things Podcast (@feelingthingspodcast), a mental health expert and therapist who specializes in body image and eating disorders. Together, they unpack Mel’s culty habit of repackaging ideas of radical acceptance as her own discoveries, and the harmful outcomes her methods might incur. From mirror high-fiving rituals to repetitive thought-terminating cliches, the Mel Robbins method will leave you wondering: is she a motivational godsend, or a monetizing master manipulator? 

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What group, other than a cult, convinces you to wear the same colors every Saturday, learn secret hand signals, plan your life around a weekly gathering, and develop an irrational hatred of strangers because they went to the wrong school? This week, our managing producer Katie Epperson (@katieepp) takes over the mic to investigate her own lifelong cult: college football. From inherited fandom and booster money to Texas A&M rituals that genuinely require an orientation manual, the parallels get a little too easy to spot. Joining Katie is college football creator and College Football Happy Hour co-host Lucy Rohden, (@CFBLucy), a proud Iowa Hawkeye who has also been indoctrinated since birth. Together, they get into why rivalries feel so personal, how NIL has changed the power dynamic between players and programs, and what happens when a sport built on loyalty asks young athletes to sacrifice quite literally everything for the team. And yes, they also determine whether refusing to wear your rival’s colors belongs at the tailgate or inside the cult compound. Fight songs. Loyalty tests. Sacred Saturdays....Lane Kiffin? Sounds like a cult to us.

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

Order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! 

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BOO! We’re bringing back one of our favorite Halloween episodes from the SLAC crypt. This week’s re-air takes us back into the deeply uncanny world of reborn dolls with Corrine Vien (@corrinevien) and Sabrina Deana-Roga (@sabbertoothtiger) of Two Girls One Ghost (@twogirlsoneghost). Reborners can include grieving parents using dolls as therapeutic tools, collectors devoted to hyperreal craftsmanship, and people who simply want to spend a shocking amount of money on a silicone baby that may or may not look like it has seen things. Reese and Amanda investigate why people make them, buy them, and become completely obsessed with them, and if there's a culty fixation that requires some attention. Consider this your Halloween rerun: spooky dolls, complicated feelings, and two paranormal girlies helping us make sense of it all. Next week, we’re back with a brand new episode investigating a cult built on inherited loyalty, sacred rituals, irrational rivalries, and sacrificing an ENTIRE day of the week....

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

Order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! 

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

Order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! 

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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.

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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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!

Thank you to our sponsors!

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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!

Thank you to our sponsors!

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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!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices