Sounds Like A Cult

Oops a politically flavored episode of Sounds Like A Cult!!!!! Would you believe it if we told you we recorded this nearly SIX MONTHS AGO and just crossed our fingers it would resonate whenever it ended up going live??? This week, host Amanda is joined by Puck reporter and former MAGA youth recruit, Tina Nguyen, author of the 2024 memoir The MAGA Diaries, who’s here to shed light on the culty mode...

Learn more about host Amanda's Italian writing "cult" ;) It's a Live Your Life!!!  https://trovatrip.com/trip/europe/italy/italy-with-amanda-montell-oct-2024  If you’ve ever seen a suburban lady wearing a tee shirt that reads, “I wine because he whines” or “I’m not a normal mom, I’m a wine mom,” then you have likely born witness to a follower of this week’s “cult.” Wine moms may have nailed the me...

From TV executives abusing kids on sets to Scientology's "Celebrity Center," the cult of the entertainment business can getcha from about 6,000 different angles. After all, what other mainstream American industry is glamorized and lusted-after to this extreme degree, only to betray its most successful acolytes with financial and physical exploitation, social isolation, dehumanization, and a destro...

Listen to Isa's new podcast: I'm Right You're Wrong! Isa is the co-creator and former host of Sounds Like A Cult

You culties preyed and preyed for us to analyze the cult of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, and at long last, host Amanda Montell and coordinator Reese Oliver are blessing you with one of our favorite episodes in a very long time 🥲 To the undiscerning eye, Netflix’s new “America’s Sweethearts” series may look like an innocent little feature on the NFL’s most treasured cheerleading squad… but to...

Class is in session and boy oh boy is it perturbing. Teaching is not just a profession, it's a calling to shape young hearts and minds—one that looks all wholesome on the outside, but once you're lured in, actually comes with labor exploitation, emotional manipulation, weird power dynamics created by the tenure system, and other sinister qualities that high-key resemble a cult. The cult of teachin...

Catch Amanda back on tour this summer! July 29: The Age of Magical Overthinking book talk at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA (free!) Imagine you’re a little kid and your parents are actually your bosses. Now imagine that, as your professional superiors, your parents' job is to engineer and exploit every single precious moment of your childhood for millions of people on the internet to beho...

Listen to Isa Medina NEW PODCAST – I'm Right You're Wrong on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or wherever! Isa Medina is the Former Host and Co-Creator of Sounds Like A Cult Podcast. Follow Isa on IG @isaamedinaa for info about her live stand up comedy and her new podcast @ethicalgirlies. The episode preview ended at 23 min 40 seconds if you want to start where we left off and finish the episode

Catch Amanda back on tour this summer! July 29: The Age of Magical Overthinking book talk at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA (free!) WE TRIED OUR BEST not to get too roasty in this long overdue episode, where host Amanda and her special guest, music journalist and host of the Songs My Ex Ruined podcast Melissa Locker, examine the cult of jam bands from Phish to the Grateful Dead. Where fre...

Catch Amanda back on tour this summer! July 29: The Age of Magical Overthinking book talk at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA (free!) Time to Milky Jelly™ cleanse your souls, culties. If you were alive in 2017, and anywhere near our same millennial pink corner of the internet, then you KNEW what a Glossier girl was. The emblem of relatable-but-aspirational coolness helmed by cult leader… ah...

Catch Amanda on tour! First of all, we are downright GIDDY to share two iconic voices on this week’s episode—not only our expert guest, culture reporter (and personal hero of Amanda’s) Anne Helen Petersen, but also Sounds Like A Cult’s very own intern (actually recently promoted to coordinator 😎), Reese Oliver!!! Speaking of new voices, team SLAC has been cooking up additional cult leaders to add...

Hi Culties

Catch Amanda on tour! Lace yourselves up for this haunting and twinkle-toed episode covering one of our most consistently requested topics: Ballet! Despite the tutus and baby pink palette, this ruthlessly competitive industry often seems less like a dainty art form and more like a doggone cult. Think about it: Why do we audience members just blindly accept and support an industry helmed by power a...

Introducing the Magical Overthinkers podcast, a show for thought spiralers, exploring the subjects we can't stop overthinking about. Host Amanda is elated to share her latest audio project, based on her New York Times-bestselling book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality. Magical Overthinkers is out this week on all major podcast platforms (as well as YouTube)! Links belo...

For our ~true followers~, behold a wee bonus episode to tide you over during our mid-season break, while host Amanda is on book tour and in production for the new MAGICAL OVERTHINKERS podcast (coming May 15)! Nostalgia is a warm-and-fuzzy coping mechanism for when the present feels painful, BUT it's also a key ingredient in sooooo many modern-day "cults," from Disney Adults to tradwives. How dange...

You culties have been THIRSTING after this episode, and it’s finally here! With the help of the piss-your-pants funny duo from the Add to Cart podcast, Kulap Vilaysack and SuChin Pak, host Amanda unpacks the evangelical fanaticism surrounding these objectively not-that-special, too-big-to-fit-in-any-goddamn-cup-holder water vessels, which contain not just the keys to hydration but apparently our v...

Host Amanda's new book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality is out TODAY!!! Get your copy wherever you buy books (including audiobooks). The book is about magical overthinking in the Information Age—how our deep-rooted cognitive biases are clashing with contemporary culture to create a new era of delulu. Themes covered in the book include celebrity worship, nostalgia, and...

Order a copy of Amanda's new book The Age of Magical Overthinking! Catch Amanda on tour!!! Stereotypes say that homeschool kids are a little, well, ~quirky~ but is that because they grew up in a "cult" of sorts? The American homeschool landscape is currently undergoing an especially fraught *paradigm shift* with upwards of 2 million kids being taught at home as of 2023. This surge is fueled by a r...

Order Amanda's new book! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Magical-Overthinking/Amanda-Montell/9781668007976  Get ready to live, laugh, love, and possibly get into an “aisle fight” over this longgggg overdue episode, featuring the iconic Griff Stark-Ennis from the Petty Crimes podcast! In what may just be our *pettiest* episode ever, Griff joins Amanda to discuss the cultish fanati...

Come party with Amanda on tour!!! Ahoy, and welcome to our first ever "Interview a Listener" episode of Sounds Like A Cult!!! Could you imagine a more tantalizing subject for this week's ~dive deep~ than this gazillion-dollar industry of floating compounds where the lines between leisure and obsession blur worse than a Carnival cruiser's vision after 12 "free" Mai Tais?? Joining the pod as Amanda'...

It's a cult of one dynamic almost too frightful for this show. When your very own caregiver poisons, manipulates, exploits, and lies to you for personal gain... it's the cult of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a nightmare phenomenon made internationally famous by the notorious (iconic?) Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a victim of child medical abuse, who played a role in the murder of her cult leader of one,...

First of all, what the hell is going on with culty leggings companies that have too many Ls in their brand name: LuLaRoe, Lululemon... sounds like a conspiracy!!! Anyway, after many long years of listener requesting this topic, Sounds Like A Cult is finally diving into the spandex heart of darkness that is Lululemon. With the help of special guest hosts Taz and Marah, the ridiculously charming voi...

You're invited to The Big Magical Cult Show!!! Catch host Amanda on tour this April to celebrate her new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking. Half the events are star-studded bookstore stops (where she'll be in conversation with the likes of Molly Ringwald and Pauline Chalamet!), and the other half are these wacky, witchy variety shows, featuring cult-followed podcasters (like Kelsey from Normal...

Would you sacrifice your phone, passport, dignity, and freedom to move into an isolated pod for 10 days and compete against a sorority of strangers in search of True Love™, all for a world of fiendish reality TV consumers to see??? Sounds like cult behavior to me!!! This week, just in time for the Season 6 premiere, we’re FINALLY covering the cult of Love Is Blind, one of the most ~radical~ realit...

Grab your rosary and slap on your plaid skirt (although you WILL need to recite six “Our Fathers” if it rides even one millimeter above the knee!!!) because this week’s theatrical episode is here to validate and possibly trigger all our former Catholic School #religioustrauma girlies. Recovering Catholic Aiden Arata—writer, “queen of depression Instagram,” and Amanda's former college pal—joins the...