What can possibly make sense of company founders’ forgetting their own address in a deposition, doling out sex advice for retailers, and reading from the Book of Mormon at leadership retreats? This week, we’re going shopping! Don’t get distracted by the racks of leggings and maxi skirts, though: we’re looking for answers, using the promo code offered by LuLaRich. LuLaRoe is the store, but the proverbial mall is MLMs, and that mall is shaped like a pyramid. It’s easy to get lost in there, so we’ll take you through it, highlighting corporate appeals to individualism, capitalist aesthetics, and the ways that both those things prey especially upon women. As we wind our way through mall-walkers, Mike plays some very impressive word jenga, Merinda doesn’t know whether someone gets “gaslit” or “gaslighted” (she goes with the latter), and they learn that they are both pro-candy corn. Beware of grifters and their glower of positive thinking, folx. If we get separated, just meet back at the food court, and we’ll buy you an Orange Julius.

Links:

Interview with Sianne Ngai- https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/43/jasper_ngai.php

Interview with producers: https://deadline.com/2022/04/lularich-jenner-furst-julia-willoughby-nason-blye-faust-cori-shepherd-stern-interview-contenders-tv-1235008620/

This American Life episode: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/543/wake-up-now

Barbara Ehrenreich's 2009 book Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312658854/brightsided

Follow us on social media at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.