WAKE UP AND SMELL THE KOOL-AID

A story about going viral for all the wrong reasonsBy Brian Sonnier

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Length59m

About this audiobook

When struggling life coach Derek Puddington posted an eleven-minute video suggesting that alarm clocks were instruments of oppression, he expected maybe a hundred views and a good night's sleep. What he got instead was a viral movement, a 40,000-seat annual conference, a branded Merlot, a Sedona compound with a salt cave, and a devoted lieutenant named Kenneth who once urinated in his pants from the sheer spiritual weight of a single sentence. Wake Up and Smell the Kool-Aid is the gloriously unhinged story of one man who accidentally built a $340 million wellness empire out of chamomile tea, bad judgment, and eleven minutes he will spend the rest of his life trying to explain.

Satire Antihero Found Family Identity Psychological Coming of Age Rebellion Journey Healing

Audiobook details

Rating★★★★★ 5.0 (2)

GenreGeneral Fiction

Length59 mins

Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices

FormateBook with Audio

Publish dateMar 6, 2026

LanguageEnglish

1WAKE UP AND SMELL THE KOOL-AID

2Chapter 1: The Guru Who Couldn’t Even Guru Himself

3Chapter 2: The Algorithm Smiles Upon the Absurd

4Chapter 3: The Flock Gathers

5Chapter 4: The Summit at Derek’s Apartment

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6Chapter 5: The Spiral

7Chapter 6: The Reckoning (Or: Derek Posts an Apology and It Goes Viral)

8Chapter 7: The Number That Changed Everything

9Chapter 8: The Transformation of Derek Puddington (Interior)

10Chapter 9: The First Annual Sovereign Summit (Or: Oh God, There Were So Many People)

11Chapter 10: The Sacred Texts, the Schism, and the Splinter Group That Wanted to Rename Tuesday

12Chapter 11: The Sovereign Academy, the Certification Program, and the Dark Night of Derek’s Soul (Which He Accidentally Turned Into a Podcast Episode)

13Chapter 12: Five Years Later, or, The State of the Sovereign Church of Chronological Liberation (Non-Denominational)

14Chapter 13: The Night Before (A Merlot in Three Acts)

15Chapter 14: What Happened at the Summit While Derek Was Asleep (A Brief, Magnificent, Deeply Unfortunate Account)

16“On the morning of our greatest gathering,” Kenneth said, raising his voice over the crowd with the confidence of a man who had fully arrived at his destiny in a navy blazer, “the man who taught us what it means to wake — has chosen not to. He has honored his chronotype. He has lived the truth. He has—” Kenneth paused for effect, and the pause was, objectively, excellent — “walked the walk.”

17Chapter 15: The Awakening

18Epilogue: Lisbon