Bridget Read (on multilevel marketing)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.6 • 68.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 133 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bridget Read (Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America) is a features writer, journalist, and author. Bridget joins the Armchair Expert to discuss working as a young writer at Vogue during the blog boom, how door-to-door salesmen evolved into multi-level marketing, and the winners, losers, and buy-in rules that designate a Ponzi scheme. Bridget and Dax talk about vitamins being the original pyramid scheme product, the staggering fact that 99% of folks involved in MLMs will lose money, and the pseudo-feminist origin story of Mary Kay. Bridget explains the mystical and religious appeal of multi-level marketing language, how pyramid schemes are really a microcosm of our entire system of income inequality, and why refusing to buy from loved ones involved in MLMs actually helps them in the long run.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.
0:06.5	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.0	Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14.1	Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.
0:17.1	I'm Dan Shepard.
0:17.9	I'm joined by Lily Padman.
0:19.4	Hi.
0:19.8	Hi.
0:20.5	Today we have Bridget read on.
0:23.5	Bridget is a reporter and features writer at New York Magazine. And she has a new book out now called
0:29.8	Little Bosses Everywhere, How the Pyramid Scheme-shaped America. This is all about multi-level marketing. MLMs, baby.
0:39.9	This was fascinating. We learned so much. I've been talking about this one a lot.
0:45.0	Yep. And great advice, too, for people within this episode. Please enjoy Bridget Reed.
0:51.5	We are supported by Audible. Thanks to Audible for being the presenting
0:56.3	sponsor of today's episode. We could all use an escape these days and the best way to do it,
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	...

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