Sounds Like A Cult Amanda Montell & Isa Medina

Catch Amanda back on tour this summer in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle!!

Friday, July 12: The Big Magical Cult Show at Park West in Chicago, IL (buy tickets here!)

Saturday, July 13: The Big Magical Cult Show at Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, MN (buy tickets here!)

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… ahem, CEO… Emily Weiss (of The Hills fame) was so much more than a cosmetics line. Glossier was a lifestyle, a uniform, an identity template, a cultural phenomenon, a religion? Come on, those pink bubble wrap pouches??? If you had one, it meant you’d reached a certain kind of ~enlightenment~. Alongside the likes of other rare brands like Starbucks and SoulCycle, Glossier was a ”cult-followed” company through in through… but was something more sinister lurking underneath? Why did the brand take off as astronomically as it did? And what is the status of the “cult” now? At long last, host Amanda is (over)analyzing the spiritual movement that is Glossier with none other than beauty journalist Marisa Meltzer, author of the New York Times bestselling book Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier (out now in paperback!).

Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell

To order Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, click here :) To subscribe to her new Magical Overthinkers podcast click here!

Thank you to our sponsors, who make this show possible:


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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 to the hosting rotation later this year, and Amanda is v excited not to have to converse all by herself 😂 In all seriousness, everyone at team SLAC has been feeling a lot of gratitude lately, and we want to thank you listeners for sticking around for this wacky roller coaster ride. NOW, onto introducing the “cult” of tradwives. Short for “traditional wife,” this disturbing cultural craze marries idealizations of biblical womanhood with romantic social media aesthetics to create a freaky wave of politically regressive influencers, who’ve rejected feminism in favor of oppression… but make it "cute?" In between churning their own butter and brushing their naturally birthed kids’ hair, tradwives evangelize a host of ideologies so racist and sexist, at first it seems like a bit… and then it’s not. SCARY!!!! Join Reese, Anne, and Amanda down the rabbit hole, as they attempt to puzzle out this confounding modern-day “cult.”

Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell

To order Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, click here :) To subscribe to her new Magical Overthinkers podcast click here!

Thank you to our sponsors, who make this show possible:


Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to LiquidIV.com and use code CULT at checkout
Go to stopscooping.com/SLAC and enter promocode SLAC to save an EXTRA $50 on any Litter-Robot bundle.  
Dipsea is offering an extended 30 day free trial when you go to DipseaStories.com/cult. 
Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Hi Culties 3 Isa Medina here, former host and co-creator of Sounds Like A Cult! With a special announcement.... My New Podcast is Coming! I'M RIGHT YOU'RE WRONG hosted by Isa Medina & Lydia Keating. Click to subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your pods. If you want to stay up to date with me, my comedy, live shows & my new podcast, follow me on my instagram @isaamedinaa 33  Follow the podcast on IG @ethicalgirlies

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 abusive men, who have absolutely no problem taking little girls away from their families, working them to the bone, and literally starving them, all in pursuit of so-called greatness? Orrrrrr is that take a bit dramatic? To help us figure it out, podcast producer and former ballerina Erika Lantz, host of THE TURNING, joins the pod for a deep discush of how culty the ballet world is really. 

Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell

To order Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, click here :) To subscribe to her new Magical Overthinkers podcast click here!

Thank you to our sponsors, who make this show possible:


Dipsea is offering an extended 30-day free trial when you go to DipseaStories.com/cult. 
Go to Zocdoc.com/CULT and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.
Go to the App Store or Google Play store and download the FREE Ibotta app to start earning cash back and use code CULT.
Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

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 below.  



Subscribe on Spotify



Subscribe on Apple



Subscribe on YouTube



Here is a look at episode 1, "Overthinking About Narcissism." Episode description below!

Is it just us, or does American culture have narcissism fever? Between 2004 and 2016, the volume of Google searches for the word “narcissist” grew exponentially. Thanks to factors like the rise of therapyspeak, TikTok mental health diagnoses, and badly behaving reality stars-turned-world leaders, discourse about this buzzy, yet poorly understood phenomenon has exploded. Are we as a society becoming more narcissistic? Or are we now over-using and misusing this term to the point of meaninglessness? Wait, is obsessing about other people's narcissism its own kind of narcissism?? In an effort to soothe these thought spirals, host Amanda (@amanda_montell) settled in for an illuminating chat with her debut guest, psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula (@doctorramani), author of the New York Times bestseller "It's Not You" and one of the world's foremost narcissism experts. Tune in for a relatable, brain-tingling, and clarifying discussion about this confounding topic, complete with questions submitted by the "Magical Overthinkers Club" and bits of wisdom to help us overthinkers get out of our own heads. 


Join the "Magical Overthinkers Club" by following the pod on Instagram @magicaloverthinkers.
To access early, ad-free episodes and more, subscribe to the Magical Overthinkers Substack.
Pick up a hard copy of Amanda's book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, or listen to the audiobook.
Sources: What Is Narcissism? Science Confronts a Widely Misunderstood PhenomenonTime grows on trees: The effect of nature settings on time perceptionTherapist Aisha's Instagram

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 dangerous a weapon is nostalgia, really? That's what this episode, featuring an audio excerpt from Amanda's new book The Age of Magical Overthinking (an instant New York Times bestseller!) aims to find out. Regularly scheduled SLAC episodes will return Tuesday, May 21—thanks for sticking around til then! 💫

Get The Age of Magical Overthinking audiobook here!

Purchase the book in hardback.

Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from THE AGE OF MAGICAL OVERTHINKING by Amanda Montell, read by the author. Copyright © 2024 by Amanda Montell. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Catch Amanda on book tour!

May 9: Portland, OR — Live Wire Radio Festival (tickets here)

May 11: Columbia, MD — Books in Bloom Festival (free, RSVP here)

June 11: Mill Valley, CA — Mill Valley Public Library Author Talk (free, register here)