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Speaker 1: H what what what? What? Behind the bastards? Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: it's a podcast about the worst people in all of

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Speaker 1: history with me Robert Evans, the worst podcaster in all

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Speaker 1: of history.

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Speaker 2: It's not fair.

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Speaker 1: You're right, you're right, you're right.

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Speaker 3: There's there's definitely worse and the Yeah, sure, I could

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Speaker 3: think of several.

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Speaker 2: I like, off top, there's definitely way worse.

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Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. I finally uh uh got you

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Speaker 1: to got you to praise me on air, Sophie.

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Speaker 2: That was all wonderful.

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Speaker 1: That was it. That was the long con.

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Speaker 2: I'm like, you're not the worst one. Congrats? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: what pride praise?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that. I really feel good. I'm definitely ahead

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Speaker 1: of the guys at the Serial Vapists podcast.

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Speaker 2: Is that a podcast?

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Speaker 1: It was a podcast. It was one of the back

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Speaker 1: when we were all still working at Crack. I like

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Speaker 1: after I because the first podcast I listened to was

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Speaker 1: like a hardcore history or something. I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of neat, and I was just like

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Speaker 1: fucking around. I think I think it was looking for

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Speaker 1: Cereal because people had told me Cereal was a good podcast,

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Speaker 1: and like underneath Cereal popped up another podcast, The Serial Vapists.

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Speaker 1: I've talked about this on air before, but it is

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Speaker 1: like some guys who lived in like North Carolina and

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Speaker 1: just like drove to local vape shops and reviewed them.

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Speaker 2: And reviewed a vape shop.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so funny.

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Speaker 2: That's so great. Also, Katie Stoles here, everyone.

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Speaker 1: Hey, Katie Stole, one of the best podcasters.

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Speaker 2: Agree agree?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, oh I wouldn't, but that's for my therapist and

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Speaker 3: idol Unpack.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Katie Stole. You and I used to, uh

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Speaker 1: used to work together on a podcast that is currently

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Speaker 1: legally condemned by eleven US states. So while we while

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Speaker 1: we get through the litigation, how's your deposition, By the way.

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Speaker 3: I'm not at liberty to say right, right, of course,

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Speaker 3: of course, fucking crushed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh good, oh good, oh good. Sanders really tore

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Speaker 1: me apart on the stand. So that's that's nice to hear. Katie.

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Speaker 1: How do you feel about yoga?

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Speaker 3: I am so glad you asked. I'm gonna get some

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Speaker 3: hate for this, I know it. Not a big fan,

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Speaker 3: not a fan of yoga. I know.

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Speaker 1: You're so graceful. I would have assumed, Oh, thank.

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Speaker 2: You, I do. My body lends itself to yoga.

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Speaker 3: I've got open hips, like I can do all the

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Speaker 3: positions and stuff.

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Speaker 2: It frustrates me.

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Speaker 3: Yoga does which probably is a suggestion that I should

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Speaker 3: do it. But holding a pose makes me angry. And

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Speaker 3: somebody might say, maybe somebody we talk about today, that

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Speaker 3: there's some energy moving through me.

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Speaker 2: But it makes me angry.

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Speaker 1: People say there's energy moving through you. Guys.

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Speaker 3: Know, there's something about yoga that it's I I always

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Speaker 3: would go to it saying I should do this, and

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Speaker 3: I dropped dropped that completely drinking the pandemic. I also

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Speaker 3: have a little bit of an issue with how nobody

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Speaker 3: understand like there's there's all sorts of understanding. There's different

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Speaker 3: types of yoga, but in La it's very much a

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Speaker 3: yoga culture. Yeah, and uh and they're always selling something

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Speaker 3: and you got to wear your outfits and all this

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Speaker 3: stuff you don't gotta but you know, uh so I

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Speaker 3: I have a bad taste in my mouth with yoga currently, and.

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Speaker 1: Katie, that is not going to change today because we

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Speaker 1: are we are talking this week about two different yoga conmen.

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Speaker 1: For you know, I should I should say my part.

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Speaker 1: I've done a decent amount of yoga in my life,

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Speaker 1: I used to do it. I used to do it

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Speaker 1: like every single week. Sometimes I do like a video.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes i'd go to a class. When I lived in

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Speaker 1: La I would do you know, I did Bickram from

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Speaker 1: time to time, who we'll be talking about in their

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Speaker 1: second episode this week. And I like it, like I

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Speaker 1: don't like as a general rule, I hate exercising around

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Speaker 1: other people. It's part of why, Like as soon as

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Speaker 1: I got a house, like I built myself a gym.

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Speaker 1: I don't do like yoga regularly, but like I do

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Speaker 1: like these days, I do particularly like a lot of

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Speaker 1: hollow bodies and planks because I hurt my lower back

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Speaker 1: in Iraq a couple of years back and ever since then,

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Speaker 1: Like if I don't I find if I don't do

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Speaker 1: a bunch of both of those things like every single week,

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Speaker 1: like my back starts to fucking seize up on me.

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Speaker 1: So I value like the the health benefits you can get,

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Speaker 1: which I think are undeniable, that there are like significant

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Speaker 1: potential health benefits to yoga. It is probably worth noting that,

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Speaker 1: like you can also seriously hurt yourself doing it if

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Speaker 1: you're not like careful. But all of that is kind

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Speaker 1: of beside the point, because we're not talking about like

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Speaker 1: the merits of yoga is exercise. I canch again that yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it can be great. We're talking about yoga as a

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Speaker 1: thing that khan men gravitate to, which which should not

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Speaker 1: be read as like us, we're not we're not trying

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Speaker 1: to cancel yoga if you like yoga.

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Speaker 3: Also, I just need to chime in again and say, like, yes,

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Speaker 3: even though I started off with the rant about yoga,

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Speaker 3: it is objectively beneficial, especially for depending on your body

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Speaker 3: and your physique with anything you have to do.

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Speaker 1: Go to the right that all exercise has.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but but yeah, uh.

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Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's that's where we are. That's what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today. Again, one way or the other, We're

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Speaker 1: going to take a lot of shit online for this stuff.

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Speaker 1: But like I do want to make it clear, there's

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Speaker 1: no we're not talking about like we're not trying to

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Speaker 1: like blow up yoga. We're not trying to like, uh

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Speaker 1: reveal the evil that's behind stretching and ship in a

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Speaker 1: group of people. It's just that yoga, like everything else

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Speaker 1: in American culture, lends itself to conmon and cult leaders. Yeah, exactly, right,

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Speaker 1: It's not different than like politics or religion, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's this is just another yet another thing that lends

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Speaker 1: itself to comment and cultists, and they're they're different type

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Speaker 1: kinds of common and cultists. Yoga cult leaders are a

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Speaker 1: special breed and and we're talking about two of them

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Speaker 1: this week. So yeah, I before when I was kind

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Speaker 1: of figuring out how to put these episodes together, I

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Speaker 1: kind of briefly flirted with giving like an overview of

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Speaker 1: like the entire long history of yoga. But to be honest,

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Speaker 1: like there's so much debate by people who study it

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Speaker 1: about like how exactly to describe the evolution of yoga

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Speaker 1: as a discipline, And I am not one of those historians,

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Speaker 1: So I feel like I would fuck it up if

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Speaker 1: I tried to go into too much detail that about

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Speaker 1: that I am going to give, you know, what I

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Speaker 1: think is kind of like the briefest accurate description of

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Speaker 1: like what yoga was historically. Yoga is the right approach

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Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, yeah, because it's it is complicated well, and.

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Speaker 3: Also it's part of what's gross about it when I

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Speaker 3: talk about la yoga culture is just people not understanding

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Speaker 3: what they're talking about in terms of the history or like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: you know, the spiritual nature of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, continue, Yeah, Well, because yoga, as you know, when

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Speaker 1: people in La who have like got their four hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars Lululemon like outfits or whatever, talk about yoga that thing, right,

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Speaker 1: the yoga that you will experience if you type yoga

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Speaker 1: into Google Maps and rock walk into like the nearest store, right,

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Speaker 1: that's like one hundred years old, right, arguably significantly less.

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Speaker 1: Obviously a number of the different kind of moves that

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Speaker 1: you do, the different kind of stretches and stuff, are

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Speaker 1: much older, and some of the concepts are much older.

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Speaker 1: But like yoga as as we kind of talk about

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Speaker 1: it is a fairly new thing now. Obviously, there's also

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Speaker 1: a yoga that goes back much much further. The earliest

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Speaker 1: yoga teachings are kind of a mix of philosophy and

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Speaker 1: like different sorts of breathing styles and kind of health rules.

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Speaker 1: You can you can kind of compare some of them

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Speaker 1: to sort of the you know, in the Bible, the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament. You've got these rules like donate you know,

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Speaker 1: cloven hoofed anim or whatever. Like it's it's kind of

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Speaker 1: some stuff like that too. Alongside in one kind of

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Speaker 1: branch of yoga asanas or like postures. Right, development of

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Speaker 1: what became yoga probably started around like fifteen hundred BC.

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Speaker 1: A lot of it is like kind of like fifteen

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Speaker 1: hundred BC to five hundred BC is sort of like

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Speaker 1: the earliest period of yoga. I think generally agreed to be. Hey, everyone,

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Speaker 1: Robert here, just wanted to clarify. If you look into this,

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Speaker 1: A lot of people will talk about, you know, the

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Speaker 1: origins of yoga dating back like five thousand years, which

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Speaker 1: is obviously a bit older than fifteen hundred BC. You know,

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Speaker 1: it depends on kind of what you're talking about. The term,

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Speaker 1: you know, the word yoga is much less old than that,

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Speaker 1: broadly speaking, without kind of getting into or taking aside

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Speaker 1: because that's certainly not my place, it's it's worth looking.

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Speaker 1: You can look at kind of yoga and all of

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Speaker 1: the things that sort of around it and fed into it. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's not really a clean start date. Something that's brought

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Speaker 1: as old in its earliest origins is like Judaism, Right,

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Speaker 1: it's in that ballpark at least.

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Speaker 2: I actually am surprised that's so long ago.

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Speaker 1: It's so but it would not be it's nothing like again,

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Speaker 1: it's not like what you get right when you walk

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Speaker 1: into a store. It's like a series of different like

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Speaker 1: meditation or like like like philosophical like discussions.

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Speaker 2: And I really shouldn't be surprised, but it was like.

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Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, yeah, it's not like stretching and stuff, right,

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Speaker 1: it's much it's like kind of a philosophical, spiritual like

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Speaker 1: set of like teachings and stuff, probably the most influential.

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Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of different branches, right, So like

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Speaker 1: like if you were in you know, Northeast India right

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Speaker 1: talking about and someone were to say, around like five

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Speaker 1: hundred BC talk about yoga, they might mean something very

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Speaker 1: different from somebody who's like, you know, in Bombay or whatever, Mumbai.

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Speaker 1: That's just like there were different sort of like branches

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Speaker 1: or schools of yoga. And the school of yoga that

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Speaker 1: was kind of most influential to what people in Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles mean when they talk about yoga is called Hatha yoga,

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Speaker 1: which was heavily influenced by Buddhism. Several of the earliest

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Speaker 1: Hatha texts, which date from around a thousand a d

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Speaker 1: or so, focus on the preservation of vital force This

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Speaker 1: is often embodied by semen or minstrel fluid, which was

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Speaker 1: believed to like drip out of the body, so there's

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Speaker 1: some like retention of like, you know, vital fluid stuff

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Speaker 1: in there. Hatha yoga translates most directly to the yoga

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Speaker 1: of violence or force, But the violence there does not

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Speaker 1: mean like not like beating people up or whatever. It's

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Speaker 1: the forceful fusing of opposites, or at least that's how

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Speaker 1: the book Hell Bent by competitive yoga guy Benjamin Lore,

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Speaker 1: that's how he explains it. Quote. The violence of the

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Speaker 1: violent yoga comes primarily from the method used to achieve

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Speaker 1: these results, the forceful fusing of opposites. It's an ideal

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Speaker 1: embodied in the sanscript named Hatha, where stands for the

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Speaker 1: solar masculine energies and thaugh for the lunar feminine forces,

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Speaker 1: and reiterated throughout all Hatha practice. But it is perhaps

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Speaker 1: best appreciated by the knats, which is like kind of

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Speaker 1: the guys doing hatha yoga. Principal innovation postures or bending

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Speaker 1: the body into forms. Prior to the medieval rise of

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Speaker 1: Hatha yoga, standing contortive postures simply did not exist. In yoga,

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Speaker 1: the word asana was present. However, it was used almost

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Speaker 1: exclusively in the etymological sense as seat or throne. The

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Speaker 1: asana practices described in pre Hatha Yogic literature were meditative postures,

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Speaker 1: firm and stable positions, thrones from which to contemplate existence. Right. So, initially,

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Speaker 1: this is the kind of asanas is referring to, like,

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Speaker 1: this is how you sit while you're doing these meditations

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Speaker 1: on these kind of spiritual things. In the medieval period,

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Speaker 1: when Hatha yoga, you know, becomes a branch of sort

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Speaker 1: of the different sort of yogic disciplines or whatever, this

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Speaker 1: expands from just sort of like a meditative posture to

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Speaker 1: something closer to what we would recognize if we walk

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Speaker 1: into a yoga shop.

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Speaker 3: La.

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Speaker 1: Right now, Hatha yogi's are kind of religious wild men, right,

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Speaker 1: And this is a thing. This is a big thing

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Speaker 1: in India. Actually, you get like people kind of play

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Speaker 1: acting like this, and certain particularly like Pentecostal disciplines in

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Speaker 1: the United States, but like, India is a place I've

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Speaker 1: spent a decent amount of time. When you're in certain

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Speaker 1: cities particularly, you'll see these like crowds of dudes called

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Speaker 1: Sadhu's who are these Like, I mean, they're effectively like

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Speaker 1: kind of wild roving priests. They'll have these like long

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Speaker 1: like often like down to their feet, dreadlocks, and beards

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Speaker 1: that are like painted and these bright like orange colors,

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Speaker 1: and they some of them engage in like these really

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Speaker 1: like in public and stuff. These really like physically like

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Speaker 1: this is like the laying on beds of spikes kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff, right, yeah, like yeah, yeah, these kind of

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Speaker 1: like very demonstrative acts of like intense physical demonstrations and

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Speaker 1: whatnot that are kind of showing their level of mastery

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Speaker 1: and stuff that they have over their body or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Like this is a constant that goes that is kind

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Speaker 1: of like very common all throughout different kind of Indian

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Speaker 1: religious traditions. And the Hatha Yogi's were one of like

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Speaker 1: the earlier examples of this. Uh. Their yoga included kind

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Speaker 1: of what would sound to modern people like it includes

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Speaker 1: kind of a peculiar variety of health acts. One of

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Speaker 1: the things they would do was suck water up through

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Speaker 1: their anuses to perform in a self nima. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: self animas or a thing. I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 1: how to do that, Katie, but that's a thing they

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Speaker 1: would do. They would like they supposedly they would teach

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Speaker 1: that the UK.

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Speaker 3: I almost did, but I did it, But I did

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Speaker 3: do it. Put a marked out on my notepad to

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Speaker 3: look at it later.

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Speaker 1: They would also do stuff like they would teach people

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Speaker 1: that if you, if you, if you could drink the

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Speaker 1: middle third of your urine stream, it would destroy diseases

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Speaker 1: of the eyes or or give you the ability to

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Speaker 1: do claravoyance. And this is again thistually not uncommon. There

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Speaker 1: were a lot of different cultures were like some degree

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Speaker 1: of drinking urine was something that people that was like

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Speaker 1: a part of traditional medicine. And there's a number of

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Speaker 1: meso American groups who were like mix urine with tobacco

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Speaker 1: or whatever. Oh yeah, it's like it's a thing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was taken aback by by what did you say?

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Speaker 2: Mid stream?

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Speaker 3: So it's the beginning, the middle of the stream, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: the middle third collected or do you bend over?

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Speaker 1: And you know I didn't for me to go, I

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Speaker 1: should have. I should have looked that one up further.

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Speaker 1: And I do apologize for you.

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Speaker 2: You know what, this is my bad.

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Speaker 3: I don't need to get a hung up on the

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Speaker 3: specifics here.

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Speaker 1: This is this is kind of as far as I

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Speaker 1: can tell, you wouldn't go wildly amiss and kind of

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Speaker 1: looking at this the way that most Americans look at

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Speaker 1: like snake handlers in the Pentecostal tradition, where it's like,

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Speaker 1: this is not it's not like nobody follows these guys

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Speaker 1: or like nobody thinks that these guys you know, have

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Speaker 1: something to them, And in fact, a decent number of

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Speaker 1: people probably think, you know, these folks have are right

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Speaker 1: about a number of things, but they're also they're kind

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Speaker 1: of fringe, right, this is not the Hatha Yogis are

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Speaker 1: not like the most mainstream chunk of the Yogic discipline.

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Speaker 1: They're not. They're like they're they're kind of seen as

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Speaker 1: weirdos at the time by a lot of people, right.

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Speaker 2: And the way I can get that, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in the same way like a lot of monks,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're seen traditionally is like, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: we think they're holy, but they're also a little exactly right.

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Speaker 2: It's not that you're like disrespecting them.

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Speaker 3: They're there, but it's not representative of how everybody is moving.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hatha Yogi's engaged in acts of extreme

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Speaker 1: religious estheticism, like chaining themselves in place for days at

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Speaker 1: a time or sleeping on beds of nails. They were

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Speaker 1: often seen and kind of treated something like wizards in

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Speaker 1: old medieval folklore. Right, they're they're dangerous and they're generally

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Speaker 1: to be avoided, but they also possess potent knowledge, and

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Speaker 1: so maybe you'd go to one of these guys. Maybe

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Speaker 1: most of the time you would kind of want to

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Speaker 1: keep your distance because they're weird and like kind of

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Speaker 1: off putting, but like you get like your kid gets

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Speaker 1: sick or something, maybe you go to them hoping that

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Speaker 1: they know something right, because they're seen as sort of

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Speaker 1: possessing this knowledge that can be useful to people who

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Speaker 1: are who are desperate. Now, when the British take over,

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Speaker 1: the new Raj has no place for anything as strange

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Speaker 1: or as uncontrollable as Hatha yoga, it's practitioners became outlaws,

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Speaker 1: banned under a law restricting miscellaneous and disreputable vagrants, which

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Speaker 1: is also an interesting an accurate description of everyone we

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Speaker 1: hire here at Cool Zone.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is so ah interesting.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cody, let's be fair.

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Speaker 3: I know, yep, I was thinking that too, and our

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Speaker 3: whole team everybody.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so yoga was much wider as a discipline than

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Speaker 1: just Hatha, and many Hindu monks still embraced kind of

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Speaker 1: different branches of what many of them Yoga is often

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Speaker 1: considered by these guys, they think talk about it like

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Speaker 1: a science, right, that consider it to be a science,

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Speaker 1: And so I think it might be accurate to say that,

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Speaker 1: Like if you were to like talk to one of

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Speaker 1: these yogis, you know, from like the sixteen, seventeen, eighteen

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Speaker 1: hundreds and show them a bunch of like people doing

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Speaker 1: modern day what we call yoga in La and be like,

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Speaker 1: this is yoga. It would be like walking up to

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Speaker 1: a scientist with an eighth grade biology textbook and being

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Speaker 1: like this book is signed, like this is all science,

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Speaker 1: Like this book is what science is. Like, well, no,

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Speaker 1: that's one example of it, but like there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of other things involved in the jay. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Also what we see is probably unrecognizable to them for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So in eighteen ninety three, a Hindu monk who

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Speaker 1: came to be known as Swami Vivekananda was born to

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Speaker 1: a wealthy family in Calcutta, which was the capital of

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Speaker 1: the British Raj He became a disciple of a mystic

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Speaker 1: rama Krishna and took monastic vows right before his teacher

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Speaker 1: passed on, Which is kind of a story you hear

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Speaker 1: a lot among these sort of like guru type guys,

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Speaker 1: is like they'll have this teacher, they'll follow them, and

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Speaker 1: like when that teacher's on their deathbed, they'll make some

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Speaker 1: sort of like vows and stuff in order to carry

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Speaker 1: on their work. Vivid Cananda traveled the country for five

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Speaker 1: years before deciding it was his karma to go to

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Speaker 1: the United States and spread an understanding of the Hindu faith.

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Speaker 1: The best place to do that in eighteen ninety three

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Speaker 1: was the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago. Back in the

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Speaker 1: day before we had TikTok and Twitter to teach us

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Speaker 1: about foreigners and various kinds of grindset, people held massive

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Speaker 1: fairs every few years to get an idea of what

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Speaker 1: was happening in the world. Right that was your TikTok.

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Speaker 1: Because you'd show up in Chicago or New York. They'd

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Speaker 1: build a bunch of like dangerous fire hazard buildings that

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Speaker 1: looked pretty from a distance, and you'd look at some

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Speaker 1: like Frenchman show you new cannons that were about to

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Speaker 1: massacre people in Africa.

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Speaker 3: It's like a mash up of TikTok and burning Man.

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Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, TikTok, burning Man and like a Raitheon

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Speaker 1: arms fair. Yeah, that's the that's these expositions.

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Speaker 3: Honestly, this feels much healthier just to get it all

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Speaker 3: done at once, Yeah, and just do all was and then.

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Speaker 1: The rest of the time you don't have to deal

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Speaker 1: with it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you see Andrew Tait one week and then he

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Speaker 1: dies in a structure fire like it's beautiful.

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Speaker 2: That's much more tolerable to me.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so yeah, these were basically early trade shows,

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Speaker 1: except the industry was the human race, and as a result,

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Speaker 1: the Colombian Exposition had a World's Parliament of Religions, which

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Speaker 1: was an inner faith conference with the noble goal of

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Speaker 1: making Americans less chauvinist about their weird brand of Protestantism.

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Speaker 1: Now a bit of a legend has grown up around

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Speaker 1: this guy and this this meeting at the World Parliament

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Speaker 1: of Religions that says that he kind of announced to

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Speaker 1: the crowd at the Parliament that he considered them sisters

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Speaker 1: and brothers of America, and he was met with rivers

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Speaker 1: of applause, and he used this momentum from this meeting

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Speaker 1: to go on this successful lecture tour where he sold

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Speaker 1: a bunch of books, and he like spread Eastern mysticism

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Speaker 1: all around the United States for the first time, and

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Speaker 1: he even opened several branches of like a mission on

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Speaker 1: US soil. Pieces of this are true, but painting vi

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Speaker 1: Cananda's speech as an unqualified success leaves a lot out,

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Speaker 1: As this write up by Philippe de Slip makes clear,

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Speaker 1: the approval given to Vivid Cananda at the Parliament in

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Speaker 1: Chicago was not unique to him. However, in the account

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Speaker 1: of the Parliament published by its president, John Henry Barrow's

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Speaker 1: applause was also freely given to the other speakers as

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Speaker 1: part of the self congratulatory spirit of the parliament, and

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Speaker 1: Vivid Cananda did not just receive praise at the Parliament.

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Speaker 1: Barrows also noted that very little approval was shown to

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Speaker 1: some of the sentiments expressed by Vivid Cananda in his

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Speaker 1: closing address. Vivid Cananda's subsequent lecture tours drew curiosity and interest,

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Speaker 1: but also some hostility. In a letter to one of

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Speaker 1: his American students in eighteen ninety seven, Swami Vivid Cananda

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Speaker 1: described himself as a much reviled preacher in the United States,

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Speaker 1: which I don't think is surprising, right that Americans not

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Speaker 1: at all would meet their first Hindu like religious leader

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Speaker 1: and be racist, right like that, that's not shocking, you know,

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Speaker 1: I like.

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Speaker 2: This seems yeah to be expected.

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Speaker 1: He it's the eighteen nineties.

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Speaker 3: Or I'm surprised with the idea that he was a

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Speaker 3: raving success that immediately as a very successful book tour,

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Speaker 3: lecture tour.

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Speaker 2: I mean I was like, wow, okay.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, I'm kind of surprised nobody tried to assassinate him.

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Speaker 1: Like that's better than I would have guessed from Americans

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen minutes.

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Speaker 2: So he made it out of there a lot.

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Speaker 1: He made it. You know what, I might raise that

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Speaker 1: flag up on my flagpole today, America. Sometimes we're slightly

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Speaker 1: less racist than you'd think. You know what else is

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Speaker 1: less racist than you'd think, Katie?

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Speaker 3: Oh h h.

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Speaker 2: What what Robert?

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Speaker 1: I can't beget products and services that support this podcast.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely obviously, Katie. Yeah, yes, sometimes anyway, yeah, sometimes.

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Speaker 1: Ah, we're back and uh yeah, better than ever or

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Speaker 1: more or less the same as ever either way. So

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Speaker 1: well yeah, despite the predictable distaste that many Americans felt

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Speaker 1: for him, Vivid Cananda's teachings on Indian religion and mysticism

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Speaker 1: had a signific I should say on the Hindu religion

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Speaker 1: and mysticism because it's this is actually a big problem.

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Speaker 1: Like a huge number of Indians are are Muslim. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to be. And also you know there's like

434
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:19,879
Speaker 1: not just Muslim in Hindu. I don't want to be.

435
00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:23,359
Speaker 1: Like the Indian religion is Hinduism. That's a big problem today.

436
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:26,119
Speaker 1: But like he is talking specifically about like the Hindu religion,

437
00:22:26,200 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: Hindu mysticism, and his teachings on that topic have a

438
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:33,160
Speaker 1: significant impact on what you might call early American seekers.

439
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: Even at that period of time, there was widespread interest

440
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 1: in the East and alternatives to kind of the same

441
00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:41,440
Speaker 1: old Judeo Christian clap trap that seem to a lot

442
00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:43,640
Speaker 1: of people in this period to be kind of dreary

443
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:46,960
Speaker 1: and lacking in avenues to pursue self fulfillment. Right. Part

444
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 1: of what's happening in this period is that Christianity has

445
00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:53,000
Speaker 1: not caught up to modernity, right, and so people are

446
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:56,560
Speaker 1: experiencing this rapid advance in science, but like they're still

447
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:59,600
Speaker 1: basically worshiping kind of in the same way they would

448
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:02,520
Speaker 1: have in teen seventeen hundreds. And folks are like, well,

449
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 1: this kind of seems boring as shit, right, especially folks

450
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:08,880
Speaker 1: who are like, you know, upper middle class or wealthy. Right,

451
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: it's just not as exciting to those folks into like

452
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 1: intellectuals as this guy Vivid Cananda coming in and talking

453
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: about this like weird new religion they've never heard anything about.

454
00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: Of particular interest to these early seekers was yoga. Now,

455
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 1: Vivi Caananda was a not a big believer in Hatha yoga,

456
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: nor was he teaching asanas to like large groups of people.

457
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 1: He's not leading like what you know again, what we

458
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 1: would recognize in the modern terms, like yoga sessions. But

459
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,920
Speaker 1: he did mention various practices that were part of yoga.

460
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: Although at the time there was kind of fairly little

461
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: agreement about what yoga was. Vivid Cananda spoke about it

462
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 1: mainly as a philosophy of self improvement and often as

463
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 1: dietary guidelines too. I'm gonna quote from Filipe again here.

464
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: His published lectures in the United States are flooded with

465
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 1: the word power, and in one of them he enjoins

466
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,879
Speaker 1: his listeners to stand as a rock. You are indestructible.

467
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: Not unlike in immobile Rock vivid. Cananda's approach was devoid

468
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: of the flowing sequences of asanas or postures that are

469
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: now commonly associated with the practice. So while he avoided

470
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: talk of hatha yoga in public, he did speak more

471
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 1: openly about it to his close followers. He admitted to

472
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 1: them that in eighteen ninety he'd gotten interested in it

473
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 1: as a solution for his health, but had backed away

474
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:26,360
Speaker 1: from his studies after his master admonished him to audiences

475
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: he called hatha gymnastics and queer breathing exercises. But in private,

476
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,679
Speaker 1: over the years he taught small groups of students a

477
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,399
Speaker 1: handful of different poses. Right, So this is kind of

478
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 1: a thing that maybe he was a little bit lukewarm on.

479
00:24:38,720 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: There was some stuff he found interesting. So when he's

480
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: got these more dedicated groups of practitioners, he'll walk them

481
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,199
Speaker 1: through some poses. He'll do probably the very first like

482
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: yoga sessions like in the United States, But in public

483
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: when he's doing is bigspe he doesn't really talk about

484
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 1: this other than to kind of broadly mention like, ah ye,

485
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 1: and some people do this, you know. Vivid Cananda's time

486
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: in the United Slime States marks, according to religious studies

487
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: lecturer Suzanne Newcom, a turning point in how Indian religiosity

488
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 1: was understood outside of India. In the decades to come,

489
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: the profile of such teachings would be raised again by

490
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 1: a wave of immigrants to the United States, many of

491
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: whom came to work dangerous jobs on railroads. The government

492
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,000
Speaker 1: was loathed to give them civil rights, and so many

493
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 1: of them wound up itinerants, wandering around the country and

494
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: dispensing spiritual advice, because like, what else are they going

495
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: to do? Right, There's not a lot of gigs, you know.

496
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: One prominent American writer in nineteen thirty eight referred to

497
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: these people as traveling salesmen, writing that every winter we

498
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 1: can find advertisements of the appearances of yogis in the

499
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: cities of the East, and during the spring and the

500
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:46,239
Speaker 1: summer they work the back places. But by the end

501
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties, a revival of hathapractices in India

502
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: had brought a wider knowledge of the asanas to the

503
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:56,919
Speaker 1: United States. Gradually, many progressive Americans started to view yoga

504
00:25:57,040 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: not as some sort of foreign magic but as a

505
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: physical exercise and kind of That process is pretty steady

506
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: over like a twenty year period or something like that,

507
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: but there are some hiccups in it. And probably the

508
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: biggest hiccup in like the road to yoga being seen

509
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: as respectable is the life and career of an American

510
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: named Pierre Arnold Bernard. He's probably the first man to

511
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 1: get rich off of yoga in the United States, and

512
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: of course he is a white dude, right, it makes

513
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: sense that the first guy to get fucking loaded from

514
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: yoga in the US is a white guy.

515
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 2: Yeah.

516
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's another thing that's absolutely not surprising, not all disappointing.

517
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 2: I was, I mean I was.

518
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,399
Speaker 3: I had to hope that Vivi Canando was going to

519
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 3: be the person who got rich and was a bastard.

520
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 2: But that's not the way.

521
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 3: This is. No.

522
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I don't think he is. I don't

523
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: think like. I don't I don't think he was like

524
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 1: broke from doing what he was doing. But he does

525
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 1: not seem to have bit like I don't.

526
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 3: Actually wish that in any capacity, but unsurprising that this

527
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 3: is enter the white Man, the.

528
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,959
Speaker 1: Inter the white Man. Yeah, this is our first yoga Grifter.

529
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: Born Perry Baker in eighteen seventy six.

530
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 2: He met he changed his name to Pierre.

531
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sure did. He sure did. This is before

532
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,199
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. It was good to be freaky.

533
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 2: Thank you for noticing that, Katie.

534
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:27,680
Speaker 1: Born Perry Baker eighteen seventy six. He meets his first

535
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: Yogi at age thirteen in Eastern Nebraska, which gives you

536
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:33,959
Speaker 1: an idea of, like, how many of these guys are

537
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: kind of wandering around like a kid in eighteen like

538
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: ninety nine, East Nebraska meets like a wandering Yogi, which

539
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: paints again we often think differently about America in the

540
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: past than it would have been. I think that's kind

541
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:54,239
Speaker 1: of worth noting. So Perry had long been obsessed with

542
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,159
Speaker 1: spirituality in the occult. You know, we've talked about this

543
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 1: in the Helena Blovotsky episodes. Jamie talks about this in

544
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: her Ghost Church podcast. The end of the eighteen hundreds

545
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, there's this wave of spiritism, right, these

546
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: like people are doing like channeling and they're they're talking

547
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: to the dead, and you know, you've got all these

548
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: kind of like magicians wandering around the country doing shows.

549
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: The occult is really sort of taking off in popular culture.

550
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,439
Speaker 1: And as a kid, Perry's super into this stuff. So

551
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: when he runs across this Syrian Indian yogi named Silvaus

552
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: Hamadi who's a practitioner of Hatha yoga, he's really he's

553
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: down with what this guy is teaching. Now, I can't

554
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: tell you if Silveus Hamadi was like a legitimate for

555
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: one thing, He's like, I can't, I can't like guarantee

556
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: for you that this guy is in any way teaching

557
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: legitimate yoga. Like it's the eighteen nineties. You know, who

558
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: knows what's going on here. But with Silvus at least

559
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: his yoga includes what's described in the literature I read

560
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: as magical sex rights that were acts of worship for

561
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: the god shak D. So you know, Perry gets on

562
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: board with this shit and kind of as a young man,

563
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: he and his guru moved to San Francisco, where Perry

564
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: changes his name to Pierre. He starts teaching hatha to

565
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: interested seekers in charging an exorbitant price for the privilege.

566
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: One hundred dollars. That's like what it costs to get

567
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: like initiated into his orders so you can like do

568
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: yoga with them, which is several thousand dollars today, Like

569
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 1: he is, Yeah, he is fucking charging like that's a

570
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: lot of money today.

571
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 3: It's a lot of money to pay twenty five bucks

572
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 3: thirty bucks for a yoga class.

573
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, you're you're paying like the equivalent of several grand.

574
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: Now you're paying that to become like a member of

575
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: this sort of yoga organization so you can come in

576
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,120
Speaker 1: and do like regular although I think you're often kind

577
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: of like pushed to, you know, give donations beyond that.

578
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: Obviously he's he's not targeting poor people, right, why would he? Yeah, Now,

579
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: this is not a popular business to be in. San

580
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: Francisco was not at this point a willing mecca for

581
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: the weird, and Bernard was forced to flee with his

582
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 1: few followers, who called themselves the Tantricks with ak you've

583
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: heard of tantric you know yoga or like they are

584
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: they spell a t A N t ri i K.

585
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh six, they moved from San Francisco to Seattle,

586
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: which was also not yet strange enough to host them.

587
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: And so three years later, after having picked up and

588
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: they're picking up people, he's picking up followers like he's

589
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: running like a little cult and he's getting cult. Yeah yeah.

590
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: He picks them up in Noracal, he picks them up

591
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: in Washington, and then they head east to New York City.

592
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: Now by this point, Bernard's followers are calling themselves the

593
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: Tantric Order, and they, you know, with the kind of

594
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: limited funds they have because they're not doing great. They

595
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 1: get by a townhouse which they decorate in mystic stylings

596
00:30:56,480 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: and start to operate as a yoga school and a sanitarium. Now,

597
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: the best book on Bernard is called The Great Um

598
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 1: by Robert Love, and in that book, Love describes Bernard's

599
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: early East Coast clientele as a mix of well healed

600
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: interested parties, doctors, patients, the sickly, occultists, spiritual seekers, and

601
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: health fad enthusiasts. So this is not a lot's changed.

602
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically folks,

603
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah.

604
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 4: So the city right, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, New York. Honestly,

605
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 4: New York hasn't changed a whole lot. Now, yeah. Quote

606
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 4: the Tantrick Herald spread the news there was a new

607
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 4: guru in town. Come try our hatha yoga classes offered

608
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 4: several times a week in the evenings along with instruction

609
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 4: and yoga, breathing, meditation and philosophy, or drop by on

610
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 4: the weekends on back in it evenings when food and

611
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 4: drink would be offered and the house was open to

612
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 4: respectful curious seekers. And you know he's mixing. The Tantriks

613
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 4: are like not again, this is not you wouldn't like

614
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 4: if you were to like bring some yogas over from India,

615
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 4: they would have a lot of notes on what these

616
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 4: guys are doing. But people doing like back in eight evenings,

617
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 4: which is like not, you know, Hindu is evidence of

618
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 4: kind of they're they're mixing and mashing a lot of stuff,

619
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 4: but they're using kind of the branding of yoga because

620
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 4: it's it's Eastern and mysterious, right and it has you

621
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 4: have to think too here. Yoga has a connotation that's

622
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 4: more like if you talk about like magic today again

623
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:30,719
Speaker 4: like than like it does now. Yeah, these people are

624
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 4: not just thinking like oh, I'm going to go get

625
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 4: like in better shape and improve my joint health. Right,

626
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 4: that's not why people get into yoga in this period

627
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 4: of time.

628
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 3: It's probably more like going to your U Tarot person or.

629
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely right, but yeah, definitely closer than like

630
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get healthy, you know, I'm gonna get fit,

631
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you know, flexible. One of these early

632
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: seekers was a woman named Zellia hop She lived with

633
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 1: her which is a pretty cool name out by the way. Yeah,

634
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: she lived with her parents in the Bronx and had

635
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: suffered from a series of ill defined but serious physical ailments.

636
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: Numerous doctors had failed to offer her any relief or

637
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: long term benefit, and she was ill enough. It's kind

638
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: of unclear, like what's wrong with her. It seems like

639
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: it's one of either one of those things where they

640
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 1: just didn't have a diagnosis. It might have been just

641
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: like maybe she had some sort of allergy that at

642
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: the time everything her parents were giving it like and

643
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 1: they just didn't idea yeah exactly, like right, yeah, we

644
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 1: don't really know, but she's ill enough that her parents

645
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: are terrified that she might suffer from the worst fate

646
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: a woman can experience, not being married to a dude.

647
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 2: Yes, is it being single?

648
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: Is it being single? Yeah, it's being single. Well she's

649
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: a spinster, she's like twenty one, you.

650
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 2: Know, Oh my god, I don't really.

651
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: So Zellia has got an older sister, Esther, who had

652
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: heard the news about the Tantricks arrival in the Big Apple,

653
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: and she told her parents that like, hey, you know,

654
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: there's these guys, this new order. They're doing this Eastern

655
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 1: philosophy that's like got medical aspects to it. And I

656
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: hear there's the you know, their leader is this guy,

657
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:16,320
Speaker 1: doctor Warren, who's a powerful healer who just come from Seattle.

658
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: Now doctor Warren is Bernard. This was another name he

659
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:23,280
Speaker 1: went under. And you know, Pierre Bernard is not a doctor,

660
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: although I should note when I say that most doctors

661
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen or nine aren't really doctors. Yeah, exactly, So

662
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 1: this is not as alarming as it.

663
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 3: Normally it is the qualification for doctor, and then was

664
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 3: just deciding you are one.

665
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:39,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so he changes his name. He's not even

666
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 2: Pierre Bernard as doctor Warren.

667
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it's ot a left field there, yeah, yeah,

668
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: at least in his like public facing stuff. So Pierre

669
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: told them that he was like they you know, they

670
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 1: go to him to kind of get a consult and stuff,

671
00:34:55,840 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 1: and Pierre's like, I'm an expert in curing neurasthenia, which

672
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: is a heart condition that he said that she had. Now,

673
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:08,200
Speaker 1: Pierre he knows more about medicine than the average person.

674
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,320
Speaker 1: He's not educated, but he's an autodidact, so he reads

675
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: a lot of medical texts along with a lot of

676
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 1: spiritual texts, and he's really good at like weaving all

677
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 1: of this together and like mixing. Some of this is

678
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: like legitimate, you know, yoga. Some of this is like

679
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,319
Speaker 1: different aspects of like Hindu or Buddhist beliefs that he's read.

680
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: Some of this is like shit he picks up from

681
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: medical textbooks, and some of it's like probably Blovatsky style,

682
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: like a cult, you know whatever. And he's he's pretty

683
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:35,240
Speaker 1: good at like mixing and mashing all of this together.

684
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: And he really impresses the family in his first visit

685
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: or in their first visit to him, but he still

686
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,399
Speaker 1: charges them, Like when after he gets their consult, they're

687
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:47,800
Speaker 1: like into what he's saying, but the price he quotes

688
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:51,840
Speaker 1: them to treat her is like outrageous. It starts with

689
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: a forty dollars initiation fee, which is, you know, an

690
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: average American at that point gets about thirteen dollars a

691
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: week for about fifty fifty nine hours of labor. Right,

692
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: So he's charging them almost three weeks of like full

693
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: time labor to get it initiated, right, and then there's

694
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 1: ongoing charges after that.

695
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 2: Also doesn't sound that different from.

696
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 1: Uh today, No, yeah, this is how a lot of

697
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,919
Speaker 1: like quack stuff still works right where. You know, we've

698
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,239
Speaker 1: talked about this in a bunch of different contexts. But

699
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: her parents are able to put together the funds even

700
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: though it's a serious like it is like a burden

701
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 1: for them, and off Zellia goes. Robert Love writes about

702
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 1: what happens next. The next day, with her parents' approval,

703
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: Miss Hop traveled alone to Manhattan and arrived at the Brownstone,

704
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 1: where Bernard Cigar in hand ushered her into a back

705
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:46,439
Speaker 1: room and conducted a physical exam. He concluded that yes

706
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: he could help her, Yes she could regain her vitality

707
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: and even flourish under his care, but it would take

708
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 1: extreme measures and individual attention. He sent one of his

709
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:58,319
Speaker 1: associates to find a suitable place, and in November he

710
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 1: installed her in his new sanitary, a rented apartment at

711
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: seventy West one oh ninth Street near Central Park. Zelia's

712
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: father visited the place to make sure it was on

713
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 1: the up and up before allowing his daughter to move in.

714
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: Beneath the cloak of therapy, however, a powerful attraction developed

715
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,239
Speaker 1: between the worldly thirty three year old Bernard and the

716
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Zelia. Her first night in the apartment,

717
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: Bernard paid her a visit. In between boasts of his

718
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: knowledge of spiritual domains, he kissed her until her breath

719
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: gave out. She was a lucky woman. He told her

720
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: he was very powerful, very wealthy. He assured her of

721
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,719
Speaker 1: his commitment and his honorable intentions. She felt herself fall

722
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: completely under his power, hypnotized to obey him. Several nights later,

723
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: she surrendered to the most pressing of his wishes and

724
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:45,479
Speaker 1: the couple made love. So, yeah, that's problematic. We could say,

725
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: you know, he's supposed to be her doctor. She's living

726
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: in a sanitarium that he runs. You know, the age

727
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 1: GAP's a little bit problematic too, Like, there's a lot

728
00:37:55,400 --> 00:38:00,839
Speaker 1: that's problematic about this problematic. Yeah, Zea becomes a living

729
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: at the tantriuc House, where the two make love on

730
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 1: a regular basis until her family stops being able to

731
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: pay for her treatments. At that point, she is kicked

732
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: out of the sanitarium, but when she gets back home,

733
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:16,240
Speaker 1: she's apparently free of her heart condition, Like she feels better,

734
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 1: So I don't maybe she just needed like you know,

735
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, like I who am I to say?

736
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 1: So for a while, her parents are like, well it

737
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: was worth it, right, Like she's feeling better, you know.

738
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 1: They don't know exactly what's happened, but they see that

739
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: she seems to be in better health and that's mostly

740
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: what they care about. So for a while, everything's fine.

741
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 1: But Zellia's turnaround had more to do with the fact

742
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,080
Speaker 1: that she'd fallen in love with Pierre than the healing

743
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: power of whatever he was advertising as yoga. A modern

744
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: person might have recognized that a dude who kicks you

745
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,359
Speaker 1: out because you can't afford the rent and his unlicensed

746
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: hospital is not your soulmate, but these were more primitive times,

747
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: and Lifetime Original movies hadn't yet taught that message to people.

748
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: The business, the business at the Tantric House continued to

749
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: evolve They developed an enrollment contract for potential students, which

750
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 1: offered them either an upfront fee of one hundred dollars

751
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:16,200
Speaker 1: or three monthly installments of forty dollars each. For twenty dollars,

752
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,239
Speaker 1: Bernard would give you a physical examination, and for just

753
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 1: two dollars you could acquire your very own copy of

754
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: their newsletter, the Journal of the Tantric Order. Yeah, which

755
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 1: I'd love to get a copy of if anyone runs

756
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: into one out there.

757
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 2: Of the Tankic Order.

758
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds good. Initiated students could attend yoga classes

759
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Pierre, an early trailblazer, realized

760
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: that the best way to get repeat customers was to

761
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: put the hot chicks in his flock up front and center.

762
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: His best instructor then was Aura Ray named real name Gertrude,

763
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: who wore quote yogi suits, skin tight colored tights covered

764
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: in tantric symbols that were basically the only attractive clothing

765
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,080
Speaker 1: that anyone wore in a sim like this is like

766
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, right, Everybody's like, yeah.

767
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 2: This is prototype Lululemon, right.

768
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He's a trailblazer.

769
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have him to blame for the yoga outfits.

770
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he is the guy who's like, well, if

771
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: we just like get attractive people to wear yoga pants,

772
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 1: we can get all sorts of folks to just come

773
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:23,640
Speaker 1: in and hang around, right like, this is how we

774
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:24,280
Speaker 1: make money.

775
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 3: You know.

776
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: Go God so love rites that many of their customers

777
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: were quote older men in search of rejuvenation, which often

778
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: came from young women teaching them to stand on their

779
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: head and making strategic physical contact to guide them in

780
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: the asanas. These older men were often comparatively well off,

781
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:46,240
Speaker 1: which was required to afford the blistering fees Pierre charged.

782
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: He appeared only sparingly in classes to lecture his students

783
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: on spiritual matters and give them his own esoteric advice

784
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:57,240
Speaker 1: on health and diet. Zelia continued to visit whenever she could,

785
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 1: and over time she grew concerned and suspicious of about

786
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 1: how many of his followers were attractive young women. She

787
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: was as she did, Yeah, I bet she did. She

788
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: was also frustrated by the fact that he kept sections

789
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:12,840
Speaker 1: of the townhouse off limits to her for obvious reasons.

790
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 2: Okay, so are they still dating in some capacity here?

791
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,239
Speaker 2: I mean, is charging her.

792
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: She would say they're dating. Pierre would say they are

793
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: not dating, right, Like, I think that's kind like me alone.

794
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm teaching her, right like she's

795
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 1: a she's a student. You know, I'm teaching her in

796
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: the only way that I can. So eventually she demanded

797
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: that he marry her if she was going to keep

798
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: dropping by and you know, putting out Somehow, the State

799
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,760
Speaker 1: of Affairs ended with Gertrude and Zellia meeting and Pierre

800
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: talking them into having a threesome with him. So now,

801
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:56,439
Speaker 1: Katie that that sounds gross, right, like that's that's that's

802
00:41:56,560 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 1: that's problematic, But it kind of goes in a good

803
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: direction because Gertrude and Zellia, in an unlikely fashion, like

804
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 1: become friends and they start talking without Pierre there about

805
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: the way he's treating them both, and Zellia starts asking

806
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: Gertrude questions like, Zellia like you would expect, you know,

807
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:17,280
Speaker 1: especially given the time, like even the day, you'd expect

808
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: Zellia to be like, fuck Gertrude, fuck this lady who's

809
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:21,879
Speaker 1: like getting in between me and this guy. But Zelly

810
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,479
Speaker 1: is like, has he been paying you for all the work?

811
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,879
Speaker 1: That you do teaching yoga classes. And Gertrude's like, well, no,

812
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: he's not paying me, And Zelli is like, you know

813
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: that's fucked up, right, Like you know you should be

814
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: getting paid to do this job.

815
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,839
Speaker 3: I like this turn for Yeah, sure, I like these

816
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 3: two women. Good good job girls. Also there's part of

817
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 3: me that's also.

818
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 2: Like, what year are we at right now on the timeline?

819
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: This is like nineteen o nine, nineteen ten.

820
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 3: I do love I do like the introduction of a

821
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:53,320
Speaker 3: little threesome situation in the early nineteen hundreds.

822
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 2: In general, I'm a three skit. I just don't like

823
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 2: a man demanding it.

824
00:42:57,480 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: No, but I do like that it is a It

825
00:42:59,880 --> 00:43:03,439
Speaker 1: is a threesome that a man institutes problematically that ends

826
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: in the two women becoming friends and being like, wait

827
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: a second, he's not paying you for your labor, Like whoa,

828
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,479
Speaker 1: we got a fucking deal with this. Yeah, I'd watch

829
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: that movie. Yeah yeah, yeah. And the story there's some actually,

830
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: there's some fun beats coming up. But you know what's

831
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: even more fun than the romantic equivalent of unionization?

832
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:28,320
Speaker 2: I got it this time? Is it advertisements? It is advertisements.

833
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 3: The romantic, the romantic unionizations of products and podcasts.

834
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, that's right. We're back. So so

835
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: Gertrude and Zellia start talking, and Gertrude realizes, like this

836
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:50,839
Speaker 1: is you know, oh yeah, this is a really fucked

837
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: up situation, and so she bounces. She abandons Pierre and

838
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,120
Speaker 1: the tantric order, and Zelly is like, you can come

839
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:00,880
Speaker 1: crash with me and my parents, and so she starts.

840
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: She's like living with Zelia and her parents. I don't

841
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: know what Zellia tells her parents. Yeah, like I'm gonna

842
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:09,800
Speaker 1: guess she doesn't bring up the threesome.

843
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 2: Right my friends.

844
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, buddy, Yeah. But like Gertrude crashes there for a

845
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 1: for a while. Pierre gets worried after a period of

846
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 1: time like that she's been absent for so long, so

847
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,240
Speaker 1: he sends one of his followers to talk her into returning,

848
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, we need you here. We've

849
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: got like some business stuff like this is like especially

850
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: if you want to get paid, like you got to

851
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: come back and like we got to take care of

852
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 1: some things. So Gertrude's like, all right, well I'll go

853
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:41,919
Speaker 1: back with you to like deal with this because maybe

854
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: it'll work out, but she promises Zellia, I'm gonna come back,

855
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:50,320
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna stay there obviously, So Gertrude leaves.

856
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be just for a little while, but

857
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: days go by and Zelia starts to get worried, so

858
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: she writes to Gertrude's sister in Seattle, and in the

859
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: letter that Zelia writes gertrude sister, she kind of insinuates

860
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 1: Gertrude might be being held against her will. Zellia doesn't

861
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 1: really know what's going on, but she knows Pierre. She

862
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 1: kind of knows the vibes, and she's like, I think

863
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 1: something fucked up is going on. So Gertrude's sister travels

864
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: east and like travels east with like fucking hell on

865
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: her mind because she had not been happy when Gertrude

866
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 1: had left Seattle with this guy, so she's kind of

867
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: been like waiting for something fucked up to happen. So

868
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,600
Speaker 1: she travels east with the intention of like fucking shit

869
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,399
Speaker 1: up for Pierre. She had Also, it's also probably worth

870
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,000
Speaker 1: noting she had been dumped by a member of the

871
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: Tantric Order earlier, so she also has yeah, yeah, yeah,

872
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: her sister adds, there's like she's not a little bit

873
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 1: of a brud too. Yeah, this is these are this

874
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 1: is a messy story, so chaotic you can make although

875
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: again there's a there's a pretty good like Hulu plus

876
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 1: you know original series in this absolutely. So she and

877
00:45:57,280 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 1: Zelle a Gertrude's sister, and Zellia go to the police

878
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: lurid stories of like dark sex, magic and presumed unlawful

879
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: imprisonment and a few nights and the police like take

880
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: it seriously. And so a few nights later, you know,

881
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: classes are going on at this at this townhouse where

882
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 1: where Pierre runs you know, his order out of and

883
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:18,400
Speaker 1: during classes, Zella comes to the door of the townhouse

884
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: and she gives they have like a secret knock. So

885
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 1: she gives the secret knock, and whatever guy's at the

886
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 1: door opens the door for her and a bunch of

887
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: New York detectives Russian uh, and they find you know,

888
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: when they bust in what one detective describes later as quote,

889
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 1: a young man clad in filmy garments and squatting as

890
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:38,879
Speaker 1: a sort of presiding demi god among a dozen men

891
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: and women strangely garbed and tight fitting gowns of one piece,

892
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: which is a very funny, like old timey description of

893
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: like people in yoga outfits.

894
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, yoga outfits.

895
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: Yeah proto to like early yoga outfits gin one. So

896
00:46:56,520 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 1: they also find Yes squatting. They also find Gertrude, and

897
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 1: she is dressed in a revealing swimsuit like garment and

898
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: nearly hysterical with fear. When she sees her sister, she

899
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: sprints over to her and begs her, for God's sake,

900
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: take me away. In his book The Great Um Love,

901
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: Descri continues the scene quote Bernard surveyed the house and

902
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:22,320
Speaker 1: glared coldly at Zelia. So this is your revenge, she snapped,

903
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: You're sore because you're jealous of Gertrude. One of the

904
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 1: tantric women focused a menacing glare on Gertrude and began

905
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: chanting on ominously, zimzimzim zz z. Gertrude, who had been

906
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: around these other women for some time, was obviously spooked.

907
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: She is putting a curse on me, she screamed. In

908
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: the midst of all this, someone doused the lights, but

909
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:43,319
Speaker 1: it was clear even in the confusion and darkness that

910
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: the young man in the filmy garments was the person

911
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: the police were looking for. You're under arrest, said Callahan,

912
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: the detective to Bernard. Detective Joseph Lennard, the wise guy

913
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: of the two partners, pointed at the symbols on Bernard's robe.

914
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,359
Speaker 1: What are those things on your chest? He demanded. When

915
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,839
Speaker 1: Bernard filled him in, the cop replied, so that's the bar.

916
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: After his initial indignation, Bernard stood calmly before the police.

917
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:06,760
Speaker 1: He confirmed his identity and that of the quivering girl

918
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: in tights, Gertrude Leo. Then the detectives rousted the entire

919
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: party and moved them down the steps of the Brownstone

920
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,080
Speaker 1: and into the spring night. The officers, the irate witnesses,

921
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: the young women in bathing suits, the others hissing curses,

922
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 1: and finally Bernard, wearing the elaborate ceremonial robe of a

923
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:26,280
Speaker 1: seventh degree tantric priest bearing the ancient symbols of birth, death,

924
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 1: and regeneration. Together they set out from the Brownstone, and

925
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,240
Speaker 1: a comical looking pert parade headed for the West sixty

926
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 1: eighth Street police station. It's yeah again, great Hulu series.

927
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:42,320
Speaker 2: In this whole story, wonderful, wonderful scene. Uh right there.

928
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 3: I also, like, I wonder if they're doing I do

929
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 3: know a little bit hatha breathing that uujaya breathing.

930
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing that.

931
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:53,880
Speaker 1: Or at least like whatever, because you know, you have

932
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: to assume like whatever teaching they're getting is probably like

933
00:48:56,719 --> 00:48:59,720
Speaker 1: translated through a couple of different books and language barriers,

934
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: Like I.

935
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 2: Mean, it sounds like they're hissing or whatever.

936
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I'm just imagining everybody doing that.

937
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. So news of the arrest quickly ripped through the city.

938
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 1: The New York Times headline the next day read arrest

939
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,880
Speaker 1: Hindu seyr, The Herald added, says he's a swami, and

940
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: the Tribune noted his students in tights. Pierre was locked

941
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: up and charged with abduction and accused of having inveigled

942
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:29,879
Speaker 1: and enticed Zelia. When he finally showed up in court

943
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: to be arraigned, the judge asked, what is this man?

944
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: A doctor? The detective responsible for the case replied, No,

945
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 1: he's not a doctor. He's a Hindu teacher. He claims

946
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 1: to cure people by controlling spirits. Now, Bernard did not

947
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:45,840
Speaker 1: look very much like a yogi. He is a balding

948
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: like Irish American dude in his thirties. He could have

949
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: passed for a banker in the right place.

950
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what like the headline, Hindu whatever ard a

951
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 3: portly old white man easily.

952
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: He's like thirty three, but like, yeah, he's not like

953
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 1: he does not look particularly mystic. Yeah, the detective added,

954
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: when we got upstairs, we saw eight elderly men and

955
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:13,759
Speaker 1: five women in tights and bathing costumes. They were just exercising.

956
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 1: They were tumbling on a mat which had strange figures

957
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,479
Speaker 1: on it. The defendant was standing by a crystal ball

958
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: and was cladd in tights that came to his knees,

959
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: in a jersey on which there were some queer figures.

960
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: So again that's like the kind of and that gives

961
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: you an idea too of like who they're they're going after,

962
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: because like Pierre has these young women who are like

963
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,440
Speaker 1: basically working as instructors, and then these old men who

964
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:38,439
Speaker 1: are presumably wealthier, who are basically paying to like hang

965
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:40,919
Speaker 1: out with a bunch of attractive young women wearing tight

966
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: clothes and stretching. Right like that that is what he's offering,

967
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: you know. Also again, and it's New York City, yeah,

968
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 1: it's New York City. It is interesting to me that

969
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,840
Speaker 1: a crystal ball was involved. I've done a number of

970
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: yoga classes, none of which involved a crystal ball.

971
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 3: Never never, although, look, I'd show up for that class.

972
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,319
Speaker 3: Maybe I'd show up for that class. Yeah, yeah, I

973
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 3: have different emotions around this. Well, we still have story left.

974
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do wish that my yoga involved a palanteer though. Yeah, yeah, Saramon,

975
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 1: like does it puts like a sixty minute yoga video?

976
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 2: Oh now that would be fun.

977
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, staff yoga. So bail is set

978
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 1: at fifteen thousand dollars and Bernard is sent out of

979
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: the courtroom. As he's leaving, Zellia's father sprints up and

980
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: shouts that man ought to be killed and I'd do

981
00:51:32,880 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 1: it if I could, which is you know, solid parenting. Well,

982
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 1: Pierre languished in jail. A reporter from the Evening Mail

983
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 1: managed to secure an interview with him. Perhaps given the

984
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: desperate state he was in, or perhaps just due to

985
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: his exhaustion and the skill of the interviewer, Bernard was

986
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: uncommonly honest. He told the journalist, I never lived in India.

987
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: The whole scheme is physical culture, that's all. Only some

988
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: of those nasty tongued women got busy. You know, if

989
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: you pay more attention to one than you do to another,

990
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: she gets jealous. This whole white slave business was too much.

991
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: Wonder they didn't hold me for murder?

992
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:13,840
Speaker 3: All right, Pierre fu motherfucker fucking Pierre.

993
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: Now you'll note that he mentions, he says, this is

994
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,719
Speaker 1: this is physical culture. That's a savvy move by him.

995
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: Now we've done a pair of episodes on Bernard McFadden,

996
00:52:23,719 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: who was like the first big workout exercise guru and

997
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 1: like American pop culture right around this time. Yeah, he's

998
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: running a bunch of big magazines that are like one

999
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 1: is called physical culture. So Pierre is as he's being

1000
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: interviewed by this guy he's trying to you know, normally,

1001
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:45,759
Speaker 1: when he's like trying to con people into giving him money,

1002
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 1: he wants to portray himself as like this Eastern mystic

1003
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:52,520
Speaker 1: who has access to like magical powers. When he's in trouble,

1004
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I'm just like this guy who's like

1005
00:52:54,719 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: popular and rich and famous, right, Like this is just

1006
00:52:57,120 --> 00:52:59,760
Speaker 1: another kind of physical culture, you know, it's like lifting weights.

1007
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:03,280
Speaker 1: He attempts to do that only when he's in trouble,

1008
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:04,840
Speaker 1: but that I think that is interesting.

1009
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's smart.

1010
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So another trend that is sweeping the nation,

1011
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: like physical culture, is a trend that sweeping the nation

1012
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: in this period of time, and he's trying to tie

1013
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: himself into that one season trouble. But another trend that's

1014
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: sweeping the nation is a panic over the existence of

1015
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: what are generally referred to as white slavers. The same

1016
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 1: day that Pierre was arraigned, a twenty seven year old

1017
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:31,279
Speaker 1: Russian named Levinson confessed to selling young women with the

1018
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 1: aid of two and like he uses a word for

1019
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: black women that we don't anymore. Jenny Miller, Gertrude's sister,

1020
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 1: saw kind of tying in what he had done to

1021
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: this like white slaver panic as a savvy way to

1022
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:46,440
Speaker 1: get revenge on Pierre. So she told the press that

1023
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:49,280
Speaker 1: the tantric order was engaging in an even quote higher

1024
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 1: order of the of the white slave traffic, adding wealthy women,

1025
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: women whose fortunes run high into the millions, are prime

1026
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 1: movers in this traffic.

1027
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 2: This historic gets messier, I'm messier.

1028
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,120
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of like proto QAnon stuff. In

1029
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:07,880
Speaker 1: here right, Yeah, Now, the Tantric Order and yoga in

1030
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: general became the center of a scandalous news cycle, one

1031
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 1: that galvanized much of New York high society against the

1032
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:19,840
Speaker 1: very concept of Eastern mysticism. As always happens with media frenzies,

1033
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 1: there was a period of several weeks where any newsman

1034
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:25,000
Speaker 1: who could come up with a bloody minded story about

1035
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: evil yoga cults could claim to be sure of a paycheck.

1036
00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: Some of them sat down with anyone from the West

1037
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:32,319
Speaker 1: Coast who would claim to have been a former member

1038
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:34,320
Speaker 1: of the Tantrik Order, and a lot of these people

1039
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 1: were just like lying, right for whatever reason. But others

1040
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:42,120
Speaker 1: journalists started digging through various Hindu texts, often like bad

1041
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 1: translations of Hindu texts that they only partly understood, looking

1042
00:54:46,440 --> 00:54:49,839
Speaker 1: for anything that they could like tie into this broader thing, right,

1043
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: that they could like, Ah, here's another you know, it's

1044
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:56,879
Speaker 1: it's journalism hasn't changed either, you know, Centurion or so, I.

1045
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,000
Speaker 5: Mean, all this feels eerially familiar. Yeah, it's very very

1046
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 5: very modern story. In the great um love rights quote,

1047
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 5: reports surfaced in the press on those salacious details of

1048
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,839
Speaker 5: Hindu tantric practices. A diligent New York World reporter had

1049
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:14,960
Speaker 5: turned up a copy of Bernard's Vira Sadhana and published

1050
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 5: excerpts under the headline Tantrick's worship calls for dead bodies

1051
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 5: and young girls. Since the Vira Sadhana was a compendium

1052
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 5: of abridged mystical tracks and translated Hindu writings that were

1053
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 5: long on metaphor and symbol, UM's enemies found everything they wanted.

1054
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 5: They picked from a combination platter of yoga's alleged supernatural powers,

1055
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 5: sex rituals, phallic worship, and yes, even a mention of

1056
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 5: medieval Hindu rights that used dead bodies. When apprized by

1057
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:41,719
Speaker 5: a reporter that some of the texts he published were

1058
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 5: sealacious in nature, Bernard answered wistfully, that's the trouble with people.

1059
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 5: They so readily misunderstood and a true conception of the system.

1060
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 5: And a lot of this is like, you know, you

1061
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:56,760
Speaker 5: can find like texts in pieces in the Bible, pieces

1062
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 5: in like literally every religious text that like most practitions

1063
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 5: will they are like, well, that's a metaphor that's not

1064
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 5: meant to be literal like and also it is like

1065
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:06,800
Speaker 5: I don't know the quality of the translations he's getting,

1066
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:10,040
Speaker 5: but people are finding stuff from like these medieval texts

1067
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:13,400
Speaker 5: that like are fucked up sounding to modern ears, and

1068
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:15,719
Speaker 5: he's kind of just like printed out in order to

1069
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 5: have something to sell, and they're accusing him of like

1070
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 5: stuff he's not doing.

1071
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 1: Right. Like, at the end of the day, Bernard is

1072
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: like a creep and probably a rapist, a sex pest,

1073
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:30,160
Speaker 1: but he's not like sacrificing people or like, you know,

1074
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:33,520
Speaker 1: doing rituals with dead bodies. You know, he's like a

1075
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: pretty pedestrian kind of creep. No.

1076
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:39,320
Speaker 3: I mean you could also add into grift or baby

1077
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:43,279
Speaker 3: or you know, appropriating something, not understanding what he is.

1078
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 2: He's teaching at all. Yeah, definitely not doing those things.

1079
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:52,400
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on on yoga or on on

1080
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:56,280
Speaker 1: Hindu mysticism, but I do not believe Crystal Ball's feature prominently.

1081
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:57,720
Speaker 2: No, I've never heard of that.

1082
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:02,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of it's also kind of worth

1083
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: noting that. Again, while he is definitely a sex pest,

1084
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:06,799
Speaker 1: a lot of what got him damned by the press

1085
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 1: in his day are statements that were just two pro

1086
00:57:09,719 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 1: sex and even sometimes pro woman. For the era, one

1087
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,920
Speaker 1: passage from the virus ad Hanna was particularly outrageous to

1088
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:21,400
Speaker 1: people in nineteen ten New York. Sex worship as a

1089
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 1: religion represents a stage in the development of the human mind,

1090
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:26,640
Speaker 1: and the grand theologies of today are the outcome of

1091
00:57:26,640 --> 00:57:29,120
Speaker 1: this mode of worship. It constitutes the basis of all

1092
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: that is sacred, wholly, and beautiful. The whole world is

1093
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:36,480
Speaker 1: embodied in the woman. Now, yeah, that's heteronormative, but to

1094
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:38,439
Speaker 1: most people in twenty twenty three, it's not what you'd

1095
00:57:38,480 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: call like a particularly offensive statement, even if it is

1096
00:57:41,680 --> 00:57:44,920
Speaker 1: a bit reductive and you know, horny. That said, as

1097
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:48,400
Speaker 1: the arraignment went on, the allegations continued to pour out.

1098
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 1: Some were likely true and some were you know, exaggerated

1099
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:55,360
Speaker 1: or just false. Zelia, who was never a full initiate,

1100
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 1: told lurid stories of blood oaths that either you know,

1101
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 1: were exaggerated. You know, she's in kind of a heightened

1102
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: state when she encounters this, But you know, I don't

1103
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:07,120
Speaker 1: think anyone was like doing any serious like blood magic

1104
00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: or whatever. But she also told like stories of like

1105
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: orgies in sort of like sexual like being pressured into

1106
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: having group sex and stuff that definitely did happen, right

1107
00:58:18,160 --> 00:58:22,200
Speaker 1: ay for sure. Yeah, things got really dark when Gertrude

1108
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: took the stand. Though she alleged that on September seventeenth,

1109
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, Pierre had threatened to drug her with

1110
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:31,959
Speaker 1: morphine when she became what he called hysterical, She said

1111
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 1: that he kept her prisoner with his hypnotic powers. Now,

1112
00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not like a particular believer in hypnotic powers,

1113
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: but I certainly believe that a mix of drugs, the

1114
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: mind altering impact of cult dynamics, and good old fashioned

1115
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: gas lighting canna have the effect of keeping someone a

1116
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:48,240
Speaker 1: prisoner without having them chained to a wall.

1117
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 2: Right, We've seen it time and time again.

1118
00:58:50,160 --> 00:58:51,680
Speaker 1: It happens all over the world.

1119
00:58:51,800 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 3: This is yeah, uh, accounting for the time frame that

1120
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 3: we are in as well, where you know, I am

1121
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:05,760
Speaker 3: imagining these women being swept up in this and really

1122
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 3: not having the tools to understand or remove themselves from

1123
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 3: a situation.

1124
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:13,520
Speaker 1: Well, and even like even if they'd had sort of

1125
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:15,600
Speaker 1: you know, in more a culture that had given them

1126
00:59:15,640 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: more tools. This exact story, cult leaders plying followers with

1127
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: like a mix of drugs and gas lighting and sexual abuse.

1128
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: That happens, That's happening there's thousands of people living that

1129
00:59:25,720 --> 00:59:26,520
Speaker 1: life right now.

1130
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:28,960
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, absolutely, And I also do not mean to

1131
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:32,040
Speaker 3: suggest that you know people now should know better or

1132
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 3: whatever I'm just imagining at that time, being like it's

1133
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 3: even an element of magic and email and.

1134
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: Yes, well, and also today, if you get out of

1135
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,720
Speaker 1: that situation today, there's infrastructure to help you. Right even

1136
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: in that infrastructure, just you can find books that people

1137
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:50,120
Speaker 1: have written about going through similar experiences and the way

1138
00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: cult dynamics work that doesn't really exist for someone like Gertrude,

1139
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen ten, she told the court quote,

1140
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:00,440
Speaker 1: I both feared and loved him. He made me believe

1141
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:02,760
Speaker 1: that he could communicate with priests of the Order all

1142
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: over the world who would sit in counsel at his

1143
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 1: command and take a awigh my mind if I did

1144
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: not obey him. And one of the heartbreaking dimentions about

1145
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:12,920
Speaker 1: this is that in order to lay out the abuse

1146
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: that both women absolutely experienced, Zelia and Gertrude had to

1147
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:21,240
Speaker 1: admit to having premarital sex. In Gertrude's case, this involved

1148
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 1: sex with a number of men as part of sexual rights.

1149
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 1: Some of this does sound very satanic, panicky, but part

1150
01:00:28,560 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: of why I tend to like why I believe like

1151
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: what they're saying is that Gertrude and Zelia they suffered

1152
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: massive personal consequences for doing this. Going up in front

1153
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: of like a court and saying that you had sex

1154
01:00:42,080 --> 01:00:46,320
Speaker 1: outside of marriage in this period of time closes off

1155
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: opportunities for you as a woman.

1156
01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't something you just do, No, something. It's

1157
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 2: also not.

1158
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 1: Something that not that it's something you just do today.

1159
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 1: But this is there's even more consequences.

1160
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:03,720
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, big deal. Very brave of them. Yeah no,

1161
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 3: it's just like I very brave too.

1162
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a terrible situation for them to be put in.

1163
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 1: As the Atlantic Constitution put it in one headline, ruin

1164
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:17,360
Speaker 1: brought to this woman by high priest, right, Like that's

1165
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: the way it's being category. Like she's been ruined by him,

1166
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 1: you know. The judge did decide to sustain the charges,

1167
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 1: and a grand jury later indicted Pierre on two counts.

1168
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 1: The newspapers started referring to him derisively as the Great Ome.

1169
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 1: His followers dissolved, and the townhouse lay vacant while he

1170
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:38,520
Speaker 1: languished in jail waiting for his trial, but as the

1171
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 1: weeks ticked by his lawyers found what they called evidence

1172
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:45,920
Speaker 1: against Gertrude's previously chased character. They alleged that she had

1173
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:48,160
Speaker 1: lied about her age and that she had slept with

1174
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: someone outside of marriage previously. Pierre's lawyer offered to produce

1175
01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 1: these claims and witnesses to them in court, so the

1176
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:58,720
Speaker 1: DA dropped Gertrude as a witness and a complainant. Right

1177
01:01:58,960 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 1: he dropped the charge is based on Pierre's abuse of

1178
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:05,000
Speaker 1: Gertrude because this lawyer was like, I found evidence that

1179
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: she had sex outside of marriage once, Like that's the

1180
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:13,280
Speaker 1: time wherein he reduced bail on Pierre. But the case

1181
01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 1: did go forward at this point, though, Zelia decided that

1182
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: she too wanted off the case. Her family said that

1183
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:23,080
Speaker 1: she had moved out of state. She wanted the charges.

1184
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:25,680
Speaker 1: She just wanted it to end. Like the way her

1185
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 1: family described it is that the case had nearly driven

1186
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:30,640
Speaker 1: her insane. I think it was just too much for her,

1187
01:02:30,720 --> 01:02:32,960
Speaker 1: and once Gertrude kind of was out, it was like,

1188
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,400
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't go through this, like.

1189
01:02:35,560 --> 01:02:37,400
Speaker 2: The just by myself.

1190
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:41,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's horrible. They're they're both in a horrible situation. Eventually,

1191
01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: the case folded and Pierre was released a free man,

1192
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 1: But as stain had been left on yoga that would

1193
01:02:47,640 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: take decades to wash away, As Robert Love wrote in

1194
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: this column for Mental Flaws. The next year, a Christian

1195
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,920
Speaker 1: mystic named Evelyn Arthur c was arrested in Chicago and

1196
01:02:57,040 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: charged as a white slaver. His trial was a virtual

1197
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:03,120
Speaker 1: replay of the Bernard proceedings. Meanwhile, back in New York City,

1198
01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: esoteric psychologist doctor William Latson, who taught Hindu dancing as

1199
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: a way of freeing his female patients from their liberal restraints,

1200
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: committed suicide in his office. Combined with Bernard's notoriety and

1201
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 1: seized conviction, the lats and scandal turned public sentiment against

1202
01:03:18,440 --> 01:03:22,360
Speaker 1: yoga and mysticism. Newspapers began publishing feature length expose as

1203
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 1: blaming yoga for domestic infelicity, insanity, and death. The federal

1204
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 1: government opened official investigations against various swamis and Hindu priests.

1205
01:03:31,480 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 1: America was fascinated, horrified, and obsessed with what the Washington

1206
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:37,800
Speaker 1: Post called the soul destroying poison of the East, the

1207
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 1: tragic flood of broken homes and hearts, disgrace and suicide.

1208
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:44,120
Speaker 1: Yoga had become public enemy number one.

1209
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:47,440
Speaker 2: There there she goes again, America.

1210
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: Good old America, Now, Katie. No moral panic is stronger

1211
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,000
Speaker 1: than the desire of upper middle class white people to

1212
01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:57,440
Speaker 1: feel connected to something that makes them different from the

1213
01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:01,040
Speaker 1: people they play bridge with. So Bernard was eventually able

1214
01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:05,240
Speaker 1: to establish several successful yoga schools. He rebuilt his he

1215
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 1: rebuilt his cult. He became fabulously wealthy. He established a

1216
01:04:09,240 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: sizable compound with a herd of elephants in it. I

1217
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: believe somewhere like Upstate New York. It's in somewhere in

1218
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 1: the Northeast. And he worked with a number of the

1219
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: wealthiest people in the country at the time, including the

1220
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,600
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt daughters. Yes, he's extremely successful. If you want to

1221
01:04:22,680 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 1: learn about this guy's whole life story, I really recommend

1222
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: Robert Loves the Great Um. It's an interesting, well written

1223
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:32,320
Speaker 1: book about this fella. Yoga itself languished until the late

1224
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:35,880
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, when enough distance from the moral panic years

1225
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: allowed a new generation to see it as simply a

1226
01:04:38,720 --> 01:04:43,160
Speaker 1: secular exercise remedy. It was still transmitted to people largely

1227
01:04:43,200 --> 01:04:47,640
Speaker 1: by white Americans like Richard Hitelman, and Lilias Folan. Television

1228
01:04:47,720 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 1: was key to this spread. It made it easy to

1229
01:04:49,760 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: show people different poses in a manner that seemed straightforward

1230
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:56,040
Speaker 1: and absent the trappings of mysticism that had made Pierre

1231
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: Bernard seem so shady. Then the nineteen sixties hit, the

1232
01:04:59,800 --> 01:05:02,000
Speaker 1: h bees all started doing yoga and the New Age

1233
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:04,600
Speaker 1: movement took off, and in the middle of that process,

1234
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:07,840
Speaker 1: a young Indian immigrant would introduce the continent to a

1235
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:11,480
Speaker 1: new version of yoga. His name was Bickram. And we're

1236
01:05:11,520 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all that in part two.

1237
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 2: Katie, I cannot wait. I can't wait because it don't

1238
01:05:17,520 --> 01:05:19,400
Speaker 2: have to wait long. We're going to record it a media.

1239
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:21,080
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna talk about this in like ten minutes.

1240
01:05:21,160 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the rest of you all have to wait.

1241
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 1: You get Yeah, you gotta wait like a day or so. Motherfuckers, shittheads.

1242
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 2: That was very interesting. Yeah, and I'm excited for the

1243
01:05:32,880 --> 01:05:33,160
Speaker 2: night here.

1244
01:05:34,200 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 1: So am I, Katie? You got any plug ub host plug? Wow?

1245
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:40,040
Speaker 2: I guess so, I guess problematic, I guess I do.

1246
01:05:40,240 --> 01:05:40,520
Speaker 2: I guess.

1247
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 3: I'd like to tell you guys about our little show

1248
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 3: called some More News.

1249
01:05:45,080 --> 01:05:46,240
Speaker 2: You've heard me talk about it before.

1250
01:05:46,320 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 3: We have a channel called some More News that our

1251
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:53,280
Speaker 3: friend Cody Johnston hosts and I'm on and we have

1252
01:05:53,320 --> 01:05:57,760
Speaker 3: a podcast called even more News. You can find both

1253
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:01,040
Speaker 3: of them in the same audio feed. And you know,

1254
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 3: we're on social media and stuff.

1255
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:06,720
Speaker 2: Like that too. And also i'd like to promote next week's.

1256
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 3: Episode of this show, part two of this episode. Oh cool,

1257
01:06:12,760 --> 01:06:17,080
Speaker 3: That's what I'd like to promote today. Robert anything we

1258
01:06:17,120 --> 01:06:19,880
Speaker 3: lost Robert? Oh, Robert, Scott, Roberts Gon. You know what, guys,

1259
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:22,520
Speaker 3: that's it for us here behind the Master. Robert has

1260
01:06:22,600 --> 01:06:26,400
Speaker 3: dropped off off the zoom and now we've taken control.

1261
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:28,800
Speaker 2: What I want to What do I want to do

1262
01:06:28,880 --> 01:06:45,320
Speaker 2: with this power? I don't know. He's back.

1263
01:06:46,000 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: Ah fuck ah fuck? Are we still recording or did

1264
01:06:48,720 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 1: we end? Well?

1265
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 2: We're ending now randing Now.

1266
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 3: Well, we said some really horrible ship about you, and

1267
01:06:54,880 --> 01:06:56,280
Speaker 3: I've asked you just to bleep.

1268
01:06:56,080 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 2: All of it.

1269
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:00,480
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, that's good, that's good, that's good.

1270
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:04,880
Speaker 3: I felt appropriate anyways, by motherfuckers, buy motherfuckers.

1271
01:07:05,600 --> 01:07:09,080
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1272
01:07:09,320 --> 01:07:12,040
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1273
01:07:12,400 --> 01:07:15,680
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1274
01:07:15,840 --> 01:07:19,080
Speaker 2: Dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1275
01:07:19,120 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.