Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power and the Downfall of a Bay Area Wellness Cult

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2011, Nicole Daedone took to the stage at a San Francisco TedTalk to discuss her biggest business venture: the female orgasm. The founder of OneTaste, a company dedicated to “orgasmic meditation”, told a tale of women’s empowerment and exploration of female sexual pleasure through the business’s many retreats, centers and workshops. But in the years that followed, stories of sexual, financial and labor abuse and manipulation in OneTaste emerged. In the new book, Empire of Orgasm, Ellen Huet investigates the cult-like nature of the operation through accounts of former clients and community members that led to the company’s recent criminal conviction on federal forced labor conspiracy charges. Guests: Ellen Huet, investigative journalist and features writer, Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek - author, "Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from Earth Justice. As the largest environmental law organization in the country,
0:08.4	Earth Justice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. They wield the power of the law to protect public lands,
0:17.7	defend your right to clean air and water, and combat climate change.
0:22.3	Earth Justice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer.
0:26.3	Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.
0:32.7	Support for this podcast comes from Post, Peninsula Open Space Trust.
0:39.6	Post is protected and cared for more than 93,000 acres of open space on the peninsula and in the South Bay for the benefit of all.
0:46.1	Learn more at openspacetrust.org.
0:51.2	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:56.0	In the late arts and early 2010s in San Francisco, there were different histories and possible futures intersecting in the city.
1:04.0	There was the legacy of the spiritual seekers who sought enlightenment and many other things across the Bay Area, and there was a rising
1:12.5	technology culture, both native to the city and implanted from Silicon Valley. There were venues
1:18.3	where the two overlapped, like a Burning Man. But perhaps no single organization distilled and
1:24.9	mixed these two traditions quite like one taste.
1:28.3	It was at once a hard-charging startup trying to scale and a descendant of several cult-like organizations with their roots firmly in the 1970s.
1:38.3	They sold sexual awakening, women's empowerment, wellness, and community, and they sold it hard. Here to discuss
1:46.8	her groundbreaking work on One Taste, we're joined by Ellen Huit, an investigative reporter for
1:51.9	Bloomberg, and the author of the new book synthesizing her years of reporting empire of orgasm. Welcome,
1:58.2	Ellen. Thanks so much for having me. So let's just start kind of with the
2:02.5	outer face of one taste. I mean, I remember living in San Francisco during these days of one taste,
2:08.7	and it was kind of something you heard about, somebody's friend's friend. Like, it was kind of possible
2:14.0	to stumble on this place in Soma, too, right?
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 27 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KQED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KQED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.