Empire of Orgasm

Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult

By: Ellen Huet

Narrated by: Ellen Huet

A cautionary tale of sex and salvation for the wellness generation: how orgasmic meditation turned into a cult.

OneTaste hoped orgasm would change the world. Emerging in the midst of the late-aughts for-profit wellness boom, the company was unwavering in its faith in orgasmic meditation, or OM, a fifteen-minute practice featuring a woman being clitorally stimulated by a clothed, usually male partner. Nicole Daedone, the group’s magnetic and cunning founder, envisioned a world where OM was as widespread as yoga. But Daedone’s vision came with a price: behind the militant loyalty she inspired and her millions of dollars of sales was what former members describe as a cult of manipulation, abuse, and coercion driven by a relentless quest for control. And by the time the FBI showed up at her door in 2023 with an indictment alleging she conspired to commit forced labor, even Daedone herself was no longer safe.

Building on the viral Bloomberg article that exposed the dark side of OneTaste and Daedone, Ellen Huet’s Empire of Orgasm is a deeply reported and cinematic chronicle of how a boundary-pushing wellness program became a cult that, according to dozens of witnesses, ruthlessly exploited its members. Huet, the undeniable authority on the group, reveals how, in demanding absolute fealty to Daedone as a path to enlightenment and healing, OneTaste pushed its followers past their limits―sexually, emotionally, financially―and left many of their lives in shambles.

A riveting saga and a nuanced exploration of the mechanics of manipulation, Empire of Orgasm is an extraordinary account of wellness gone wrong.

©2025 Ellen Huet (P)2025 Spotify Audiobooks

This is a Masterpiece of Journalism

Ive lived in Silicon Valley near San Fransisco for the entire number of years that this story played out and was completely unaware of this cult. it is certainly apparent that people have a need to belong and can easily get sucked into an environment that ultimately crushes them. the story is so disturbing that I probably can't listen to it a second time.

Great reporting!

I hadn’t heard about OneTaste before, but the title grabbed my attention. From the beginning of the book to the end, I was hooked. As a survivor of SA, this book brought up so many things…my therapist just got a couple of weeks worth of work thanks to this book.

I hope all of the people negatively impacted by Nicole, Rachel, and OneTaste find healing and peace.

And I watched the Netflix doc…nice to put a face with the voice of the author. 🙂

Very interesting story, told well , read well

I knew nothing about this before listening to this book, but I got sucked in fast. I love when the author reads it and Ellen does a really good job.

Far more than an orgasmic medidation

This is a story with far more layers than first meets the eye. Others who covered One Taste in prior years focused on the irresistible nature of its core practice, a consensual OMing practice designed to bring women to orgasm, and presented it as a kind of new wellness routine, bolstered by the checkbox of a strong female founder owning her narrative. But Ellen chased down a truly astonishing number of personal stories and details which unwrapped the parts of this that few people wanted to see surfaced, thus turning a story about female empowerment into a lens into romp through the full gamut of the 7 deadly sins and cult behaviors gone wrong.

While there are other tales of cults that went off the rails, what makes this particularly interesting is how shockingly close to mainstream it was. I came up in San Francisco during the days where One Taste was a known name among the communal houses and knew many people who had explored various levels of its practice. In a community oriented towards self exploration and growth, how could one not give it a try…? In a community oriented towards big save-the-world ideas and growth at all costs, how could the practice of orgasms-as-savior not find itself caught in the same race to expand? What could go wrong?

The narrative is compelling on its own. It traces the lineage and reinvention of both the OM practice and charismatic founder at its core, and it follows both as One Taste's leadership stretched to realize their own power over vulnerable people. It's full of tales of individuals broken down but yet made more ALIVE by their proximity to something deep, meaningful and shared. It's fascinating how close One Taste came to realizing the kind of healing power that it promised, except it fell victim to the all-too-human incentives and character flaws of precisely the kinds of people it takes to bring something like this forward.

Some day maybe we'll figure out how to reap the benefits of a cult - the belonging, the energy, the meaning - without the power games, control games and sex games that seem to inevitably take them down. I'm not sure one can exist without the other, or that the kinds of individuals most compelled by the energy of the experience wouldn't inevitably create an unsustainable culture ripe for corruption.

To me, what's more fascinating in today's environment is how members and staff, who witnessed shocking violations of human boundaries and dignity, justified their actions and pushed off blame. I couldn't help feeling echoes of the kinds of internal justifications that allowed humanity's most awful past events, like the holocaust, to occur among and by everyday people. The way the layers of the cult became a cultural "you're in or you're out" funnel for the most manipulable people is similar to how today's political environment culls out the just and rewards the callous, opportunistic and cruel with power and wealth.

So, ultimately, it's not the abnormal nature of this story which makes it compelling but rather the fact that it reflects how its most problematic pieces pervade so many other well accepted stories that continue in our culture today.

A shocking story, told with nuance, depth, and care

Wow, I enjoyed that, what a story! This book combines two things that rarely coexist: 1) a riveting, character-driven, page-turner of a story and 2) an impartial journalistic commitment to truth-seeking. Pulling off both at once, especially with a topic this complex, is incredibly hard, and somehow Ellen does it.

Many awful things were done here, and by the end it was clear to me why a jury found a guilty verdict. And yet, as I read about each character and every major decision they faced, I kept finding myself able to empathize with multiple perspectives at the same time. It’s easy to write a clear hero-vs-villain tale. It’s a far greater accomplishment to write a story where the reader is constantly reevaluating whether someone is a hero, a villain, or an anti-hero. The writing is straightforward, but still has moments of delight. My favorite line described a row of clitoral strokers “like druids stirring their bubbling cauldrons.”

During the years OneTaste was active, I founded a startup in SOMA, popped into an OM workshop at Burning Man, and was woven into similar cultural spaces. I was only vaguely aware that OneTaste existed. But I know how difficult it would be to accurately portray OneTaste without being fluent in the surrounding culture, and this book makes it abundantly clear that the author is, indeed, fluent. This leads me to the conclusion that this moment of history has been captured here in the best way that we could have hoped for. I hope it brings healing to everyone who was hurt along the way.