Speaker 1: H what what what? What? Behind the bastards? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a podcast about the worst people in all of
Speaker 1: history with me Robert Evans, the worst podcaster in all
Speaker 1: of history.
Speaker 2: It's not fair.
Speaker 1: You're right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 3: There's there's definitely worse and the Yeah, sure, I could
Speaker 3: think of several.
Speaker 2: I like, off top, there's definitely way worse.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. I finally uh uh got you
Speaker 1: to got you to praise me on air, Sophie.
Speaker 2: That was all wonderful.
Speaker 1: That was it. That was the long con.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're not the worst one. Congrats? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: what pride praise?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that. I really feel good. I'm definitely ahead
Speaker 1: of the guys at the Serial Vapists podcast.
Speaker 2: Is that a podcast?
Speaker 1: It was a podcast. It was one of the back
Speaker 1: when we were all still working at Crack. I like
Speaker 1: after I because the first podcast I listened to was
Speaker 1: like a hardcore history or something. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of neat, and I was just like
Speaker 1: fucking around. I think I think it was looking for
Speaker 1: Cereal because people had told me Cereal was a good podcast,
Speaker 1: and like underneath Cereal popped up another podcast, The Serial Vapists.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this on air before, but it is
Speaker 1: like some guys who lived in like North Carolina and
Speaker 1: just like drove to local vape shops and reviewed them.
Speaker 2: And reviewed a vape shop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so funny.
Speaker 2: That's so great. Also, Katie Stoles here, everyone.
Speaker 1: Hey, Katie Stole, one of the best podcasters.
Speaker 2: Agree agree?
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh I wouldn't, but that's for my therapist and
Speaker 3: idol Unpack.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Katie Stole. You and I used to, uh
Speaker 1: used to work together on a podcast that is currently
Speaker 1: legally condemned by eleven US states. So while we while
Speaker 1: we get through the litigation, how's your deposition, By the way.
Speaker 3: I'm not at liberty to say right, right, of course,
Speaker 3: of course, fucking crushed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh good, oh good, oh good. Sanders really tore
Speaker 1: me apart on the stand. So that's that's nice to hear. Katie.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about yoga?
Speaker 3: I am so glad you asked. I'm gonna get some
Speaker 3: hate for this, I know it. Not a big fan,
Speaker 3: not a fan of yoga. I know.
Speaker 1: You're so graceful. I would have assumed, Oh, thank.
Speaker 2: You, I do. My body lends itself to yoga.
Speaker 3: I've got open hips, like I can do all the
Speaker 3: positions and stuff.
Speaker 2: It frustrates me.
Speaker 3: Yoga does which probably is a suggestion that I should
Speaker 3: do it. But holding a pose makes me angry. And
Speaker 3: somebody might say, maybe somebody we talk about today, that
Speaker 3: there's some energy moving through me.
Speaker 2: But it makes me angry.
Speaker 1: People say there's energy moving through you. Guys.
Speaker 3: Know, there's something about yoga that it's I I always
Speaker 3: would go to it saying I should do this, and
Speaker 3: I dropped dropped that completely drinking the pandemic. I also
Speaker 3: have a little bit of an issue with how nobody
Speaker 3: understand like there's there's all sorts of understanding. There's different
Speaker 3: types of yoga, but in La it's very much a
Speaker 3: yoga culture. Yeah, and uh and they're always selling something
Speaker 3: and you got to wear your outfits and all this
Speaker 3: stuff you don't gotta but you know, uh so I
Speaker 3: I have a bad taste in my mouth with yoga currently, and.
Speaker 1: Katie, that is not going to change today because we
Speaker 1: are we are talking this week about two different yoga conmen.
Speaker 1: For you know, I should I should say my part.
Speaker 1: I've done a decent amount of yoga in my life,
Speaker 1: I used to do it. I used to do it
Speaker 1: like every single week. Sometimes I do like a video.
Speaker 1: Sometimes i'd go to a class. When I lived in
Speaker 1: La I would do you know, I did Bickram from
Speaker 1: time to time, who we'll be talking about in their
Speaker 1: second episode this week. And I like it, like I
Speaker 1: don't like as a general rule, I hate exercising around
Speaker 1: other people. It's part of why, Like as soon as
Speaker 1: I got a house, like I built myself a gym.
Speaker 1: I don't do like yoga regularly, but like I do
Speaker 1: like these days, I do particularly like a lot of
Speaker 1: hollow bodies and planks because I hurt my lower back
Speaker 1: in Iraq a couple of years back and ever since then,
Speaker 1: Like if I don't I find if I don't do
Speaker 1: a bunch of both of those things like every single week,
Speaker 1: like my back starts to fucking seize up on me.
Speaker 1: So I value like the the health benefits you can get,
Speaker 1: which I think are undeniable, that there are like significant
Speaker 1: potential health benefits to yoga. It is probably worth noting that,
Speaker 1: like you can also seriously hurt yourself doing it if
Speaker 1: you're not like careful. But all of that is kind
Speaker 1: of beside the point, because we're not talking about like
Speaker 1: the merits of yoga is exercise. I canch again that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be great. We're talking about yoga as a
Speaker 1: thing that khan men gravitate to, which which should not
Speaker 1: be read as like us, we're not we're not trying
Speaker 1: to cancel yoga if you like yoga.
Speaker 3: Also, I just need to chime in again and say, like, yes,
Speaker 3: even though I started off with the rant about yoga,
Speaker 3: it is objectively beneficial, especially for depending on your body
Speaker 3: and your physique with anything you have to do.
Speaker 1: Go to the right that all exercise has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but but yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's that's where we are. That's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. Again, one way or the other, We're
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of shit online for this stuff.
Speaker 1: But like I do want to make it clear, there's
Speaker 1: no we're not talking about like we're not trying to
Speaker 1: like blow up yoga. We're not trying to like, uh
Speaker 1: reveal the evil that's behind stretching and ship in a
Speaker 1: group of people. It's just that yoga, like everything else
Speaker 1: in American culture, lends itself to conmon and cult leaders. Yeah, exactly, right,
Speaker 1: It's not different than like politics or religion, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this is just another yet another thing that lends
Speaker 1: itself to comment and cultists, and they're they're different type
Speaker 1: kinds of common and cultists. Yoga cult leaders are a
Speaker 1: special breed and and we're talking about two of them
Speaker 1: this week. So yeah, I before when I was kind
Speaker 1: of figuring out how to put these episodes together, I
Speaker 1: kind of briefly flirted with giving like an overview of
Speaker 1: like the entire long history of yoga. But to be honest,
Speaker 1: like there's so much debate by people who study it
Speaker 1: about like how exactly to describe the evolution of yoga
Speaker 1: as a discipline, And I am not one of those historians,
Speaker 1: So I feel like I would fuck it up if
Speaker 1: I tried to go into too much detail that about
Speaker 1: that I am going to give, you know, what I
Speaker 1: think is kind of like the briefest accurate description of
Speaker 1: like what yoga was historically. Yoga is the right approach
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, yeah, because it's it is complicated well, and.
Speaker 3: Also it's part of what's gross about it when I
Speaker 3: talk about la yoga culture is just people not understanding
Speaker 3: what they're talking about in terms of the history or like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, the spiritual nature of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, continue, Yeah, Well, because yoga, as you know, when
Speaker 1: people in La who have like got their four hundred
Speaker 1: dollars Lululemon like outfits or whatever, talk about yoga that thing, right,
Speaker 1: the yoga that you will experience if you type yoga
Speaker 1: into Google Maps and rock walk into like the nearest store, right,
Speaker 1: that's like one hundred years old, right, arguably significantly less.
Speaker 1: Obviously a number of the different kind of moves that
Speaker 1: you do, the different kind of stretches and stuff, are
Speaker 1: much older, and some of the concepts are much older.
Speaker 1: But like yoga as as we kind of talk about
Speaker 1: it is a fairly new thing now. Obviously, there's also
Speaker 1: a yoga that goes back much much further. The earliest
Speaker 1: yoga teachings are kind of a mix of philosophy and
Speaker 1: like different sorts of breathing styles and kind of health rules.
Speaker 1: You can you can kind of compare some of them
Speaker 1: to sort of the you know, in the Bible, the
Speaker 1: Old Testament. You've got these rules like donate you know,
Speaker 1: cloven hoofed anim or whatever. Like it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: some stuff like that too. Alongside in one kind of
Speaker 1: branch of yoga asanas or like postures. Right, development of
Speaker 1: what became yoga probably started around like fifteen hundred BC.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is like kind of like fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred BC to five hundred BC is sort of like
Speaker 1: the earliest period of yoga. I think generally agreed to be. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: Robert here, just wanted to clarify. If you look into this,
Speaker 1: A lot of people will talk about, you know, the
Speaker 1: origins of yoga dating back like five thousand years, which
Speaker 1: is obviously a bit older than fifteen hundred BC. You know,
Speaker 1: it depends on kind of what you're talking about. The term,
Speaker 1: you know, the word yoga is much less old than that,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, without kind of getting into or taking aside
Speaker 1: because that's certainly not my place, it's it's worth looking.
Speaker 1: You can look at kind of yoga and all of
Speaker 1: the things that sort of around it and fed into it. Well,
Speaker 1: there's not really a clean start date. Something that's brought
Speaker 1: as old in its earliest origins is like Judaism, Right,
Speaker 1: it's in that ballpark at least.
Speaker 2: I actually am surprised that's so long ago.
Speaker 1: It's so but it would not be it's nothing like again,
Speaker 1: it's not like what you get right when you walk
Speaker 1: into a store. It's like a series of different like
Speaker 1: meditation or like like like philosophical like discussions.
Speaker 2: And I really shouldn't be surprised, but it was like.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, yeah, it's not like stretching and stuff, right,
Speaker 1: it's much it's like kind of a philosophical, spiritual like
Speaker 1: set of like teachings and stuff, probably the most influential.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of different branches, right, So like
Speaker 1: like if you were in you know, Northeast India right
Speaker 1: talking about and someone were to say, around like five
Speaker 1: hundred BC talk about yoga, they might mean something very
Speaker 1: different from somebody who's like, you know, in Bombay or whatever, Mumbai.
Speaker 1: That's just like there were different sort of like branches
Speaker 1: or schools of yoga. And the school of yoga that
Speaker 1: was kind of most influential to what people in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles mean when they talk about yoga is called Hatha yoga,
Speaker 1: which was heavily influenced by Buddhism. Several of the earliest
Speaker 1: Hatha texts, which date from around a thousand a d
Speaker 1: or so, focus on the preservation of vital force This
Speaker 1: is often embodied by semen or minstrel fluid, which was
Speaker 1: believed to like drip out of the body, so there's
Speaker 1: some like retention of like, you know, vital fluid stuff
Speaker 1: in there. Hatha yoga translates most directly to the yoga
Speaker 1: of violence or force, But the violence there does not
Speaker 1: mean like not like beating people up or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: the forceful fusing of opposites, or at least that's how
Speaker 1: the book Hell Bent by competitive yoga guy Benjamin Lore,
Speaker 1: that's how he explains it. Quote. The violence of the
Speaker 1: violent yoga comes primarily from the method used to achieve
Speaker 1: these results, the forceful fusing of opposites. It's an ideal
Speaker 1: embodied in the sanscript named Hatha, where stands for the
Speaker 1: solar masculine energies and thaugh for the lunar feminine forces,
Speaker 1: and reiterated throughout all Hatha practice. But it is perhaps
Speaker 1: best appreciated by the knats, which is like kind of
Speaker 1: the guys doing hatha yoga. Principal innovation postures or bending
Speaker 1: the body into forms. Prior to the medieval rise of
Speaker 1: Hatha yoga, standing contortive postures simply did not exist. In yoga,
Speaker 1: the word asana was present. However, it was used almost
Speaker 1: exclusively in the etymological sense as seat or throne. The
Speaker 1: asana practices described in pre Hatha Yogic literature were meditative postures,
Speaker 1: firm and stable positions, thrones from which to contemplate existence. Right. So, initially,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of asanas is referring to, like,
Speaker 1: this is how you sit while you're doing these meditations
Speaker 1: on these kind of spiritual things. In the medieval period,
Speaker 1: when Hatha yoga, you know, becomes a branch of sort
Speaker 1: of the different sort of yogic disciplines or whatever, this
Speaker 1: expands from just sort of like a meditative posture to
Speaker 1: something closer to what we would recognize if we walk
Speaker 1: into a yoga shop.
Speaker 3: La.
Speaker 1: Right now, Hatha yogi's are kind of religious wild men, right,
Speaker 1: And this is a thing. This is a big thing
Speaker 1: in India. Actually, you get like people kind of play
Speaker 1: acting like this, and certain particularly like Pentecostal disciplines in
Speaker 1: the United States, but like, India is a place I've
Speaker 1: spent a decent amount of time. When you're in certain
Speaker 1: cities particularly, you'll see these like crowds of dudes called
Speaker 1: Sadhu's who are these Like, I mean, they're effectively like
Speaker 1: kind of wild roving priests. They'll have these like long
Speaker 1: like often like down to their feet, dreadlocks, and beards
Speaker 1: that are like painted and these bright like orange colors,
Speaker 1: and they some of them engage in like these really
Speaker 1: like in public and stuff. These really like physically like
Speaker 1: this is like the laying on beds of spikes kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, yeah, like yeah, yeah, these kind of
Speaker 1: like very demonstrative acts of like intense physical demonstrations and
Speaker 1: whatnot that are kind of showing their level of mastery
Speaker 1: and stuff that they have over their body or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like this is a constant that goes that is kind
Speaker 1: of like very common all throughout different kind of Indian
Speaker 1: religious traditions. And the Hatha Yogi's were one of like
Speaker 1: the earlier examples of this. Uh. Their yoga included kind
Speaker 1: of what would sound to modern people like it includes
Speaker 1: kind of a peculiar variety of health acts. One of
Speaker 1: the things they would do was suck water up through
Speaker 1: their anuses to perform in a self nima. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: self animas or a thing. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do that, Katie, but that's a thing they
Speaker 1: would do. They would like they supposedly they would teach
Speaker 1: that the UK.
Speaker 3: I almost did, but I did it, But I did
Speaker 3: do it. Put a marked out on my notepad to
Speaker 3: look at it later.
Speaker 1: They would also do stuff like they would teach people
Speaker 1: that if you, if you, if you could drink the
Speaker 1: middle third of your urine stream, it would destroy diseases
Speaker 1: of the eyes or or give you the ability to
Speaker 1: do claravoyance. And this is again thistually not uncommon. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of different cultures were like some degree
Speaker 1: of drinking urine was something that people that was like
Speaker 1: a part of traditional medicine. And there's a number of
Speaker 1: meso American groups who were like mix urine with tobacco
Speaker 1: or whatever. Oh yeah, it's like it's a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was taken aback by by what did you say?
Speaker 2: Mid stream?
Speaker 3: So it's the beginning, the middle of the stream, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the middle third collected or do you bend over?
Speaker 1: And you know I didn't for me to go, I
Speaker 1: should have. I should have looked that one up further.
Speaker 1: And I do apologize for you.
Speaker 2: You know what, this is my bad.
Speaker 3: I don't need to get a hung up on the
Speaker 3: specifics here.
Speaker 1: This is this is kind of as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, you wouldn't go wildly amiss and kind of
Speaker 1: looking at this the way that most Americans look at
Speaker 1: like snake handlers in the Pentecostal tradition, where it's like,
Speaker 1: this is not it's not like nobody follows these guys
Speaker 1: or like nobody thinks that these guys you know, have
Speaker 1: something to them, And in fact, a decent number of
Speaker 1: people probably think, you know, these folks have are right
Speaker 1: about a number of things, but they're also they're kind
Speaker 1: of fringe, right, this is not the Hatha Yogis are
Speaker 1: not like the most mainstream chunk of the Yogic discipline.
Speaker 1: They're not. They're like they're they're kind of seen as
Speaker 1: weirdos at the time by a lot of people, right.
Speaker 2: And the way I can get that, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the same way like a lot of monks,
Speaker 1: you know, we're seen traditionally is like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we think they're holy, but they're also a little exactly right.
Speaker 2: It's not that you're like disrespecting them.
Speaker 3: They're there, but it's not representative of how everybody is moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hatha Yogi's engaged in acts of extreme
Speaker 1: religious estheticism, like chaining themselves in place for days at
Speaker 1: a time or sleeping on beds of nails. They were
Speaker 1: often seen and kind of treated something like wizards in
Speaker 1: old medieval folklore. Right, they're they're dangerous and they're generally
Speaker 1: to be avoided, but they also possess potent knowledge, and
Speaker 1: so maybe you'd go to one of these guys. Maybe
Speaker 1: most of the time you would kind of want to
Speaker 1: keep your distance because they're weird and like kind of
Speaker 1: off putting, but like you get like your kid gets
Speaker 1: sick or something, maybe you go to them hoping that
Speaker 1: they know something right, because they're seen as sort of
Speaker 1: possessing this knowledge that can be useful to people who
Speaker 1: are who are desperate. Now, when the British take over,
Speaker 1: the new Raj has no place for anything as strange
Speaker 1: or as uncontrollable as Hatha yoga, it's practitioners became outlaws,
Speaker 1: banned under a law restricting miscellaneous and disreputable vagrants, which
Speaker 1: is also an interesting an accurate description of everyone we
Speaker 1: hire here at Cool Zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is so ah interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cody, let's be fair.
Speaker 3: I know, yep, I was thinking that too, and our
Speaker 3: whole team everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yoga was much wider as a discipline than
Speaker 1: just Hatha, and many Hindu monks still embraced kind of
Speaker 1: different branches of what many of them Yoga is often
Speaker 1: considered by these guys, they think talk about it like
Speaker 1: a science, right, that consider it to be a science,
Speaker 1: And so I think it might be accurate to say that,
Speaker 1: Like if you were to like talk to one of
Speaker 1: these yogis, you know, from like the sixteen, seventeen, eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and show them a bunch of like people doing
Speaker 1: modern day what we call yoga in La and be like,
Speaker 1: this is yoga. It would be like walking up to
Speaker 1: a scientist with an eighth grade biology textbook and being
Speaker 1: like this book is signed, like this is all science,
Speaker 1: Like this book is what science is. Like, well, no,
Speaker 1: that's one example of it, but like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other things involved in the jay. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also what we see is probably unrecognizable to them for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in eighteen ninety three, a Hindu monk who
Speaker 1: came to be known as Swami Vivekananda was born to
Speaker 1: a wealthy family in Calcutta, which was the capital of
Speaker 1: the British Raj He became a disciple of a mystic
Speaker 1: rama Krishna and took monastic vows right before his teacher
Speaker 1: passed on, Which is kind of a story you hear
Speaker 1: a lot among these sort of like guru type guys,
Speaker 1: is like they'll have this teacher, they'll follow them, and
Speaker 1: like when that teacher's on their deathbed, they'll make some
Speaker 1: sort of like vows and stuff in order to carry
Speaker 1: on their work. Vivid Cananda traveled the country for five
Speaker 1: years before deciding it was his karma to go to
Speaker 1: the United States and spread an understanding of the Hindu faith.
Speaker 1: The best place to do that in eighteen ninety three
Speaker 1: was the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago. Back in the
Speaker 1: day before we had TikTok and Twitter to teach us
Speaker 1: about foreigners and various kinds of grindset, people held massive
Speaker 1: fairs every few years to get an idea of what
Speaker 1: was happening in the world. Right that was your TikTok.
Speaker 1: Because you'd show up in Chicago or New York. They'd
Speaker 1: build a bunch of like dangerous fire hazard buildings that
Speaker 1: looked pretty from a distance, and you'd look at some
Speaker 1: like Frenchman show you new cannons that were about to
Speaker 1: massacre people in Africa.
Speaker 3: It's like a mash up of TikTok and burning Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, TikTok, burning Man and like a Raitheon
Speaker 1: arms fair. Yeah, that's the that's these expositions.
Speaker 3: Honestly, this feels much healthier just to get it all
Speaker 3: done at once, Yeah, and just do all was and then.
Speaker 1: The rest of the time you don't have to deal
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see Andrew Tait one week and then he
Speaker 1: dies in a structure fire like it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: That's much more tolerable to me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so yeah, these were basically early trade shows,
Speaker 1: except the industry was the human race, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the Colombian Exposition had a World's Parliament of Religions, which
Speaker 1: was an inner faith conference with the noble goal of
Speaker 1: making Americans less chauvinist about their weird brand of Protestantism.
Speaker 1: Now a bit of a legend has grown up around
Speaker 1: this guy and this this meeting at the World Parliament
Speaker 1: of Religions that says that he kind of announced to
Speaker 1: the crowd at the Parliament that he considered them sisters
Speaker 1: and brothers of America, and he was met with rivers
Speaker 1: of applause, and he used this momentum from this meeting
Speaker 1: to go on this successful lecture tour where he sold
Speaker 1: a bunch of books, and he like spread Eastern mysticism
Speaker 1: all around the United States for the first time, and
Speaker 1: he even opened several branches of like a mission on
Speaker 1: US soil. Pieces of this are true, but painting vi
Speaker 1: Cananda's speech as an unqualified success leaves a lot out,
Speaker 1: As this write up by Philippe de Slip makes clear,
Speaker 1: the approval given to Vivid Cananda at the Parliament in
Speaker 1: Chicago was not unique to him. However, in the account
Speaker 1: of the Parliament published by its president, John Henry Barrow's
Speaker 1: applause was also freely given to the other speakers as
Speaker 1: part of the self congratulatory spirit of the parliament, and
Speaker 1: Vivid Cananda did not just receive praise at the Parliament.
Speaker 1: Barrows also noted that very little approval was shown to
Speaker 1: some of the sentiments expressed by Vivid Cananda in his
Speaker 1: closing address. Vivid Cananda's subsequent lecture tours drew curiosity and interest,
Speaker 1: but also some hostility. In a letter to one of
Speaker 1: his American students in eighteen ninety seven, Swami Vivid Cananda
Speaker 1: described himself as a much reviled preacher in the United States,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is surprising, right that Americans not
Speaker 1: at all would meet their first Hindu like religious leader
Speaker 1: and be racist, right like that, that's not shocking, you know,
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: This seems yeah to be expected.
Speaker 1: He it's the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Or I'm surprised with the idea that he was a
Speaker 3: raving success that immediately as a very successful book tour,
Speaker 3: lecture tour.
Speaker 2: I mean I was like, wow, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, I'm kind of surprised nobody tried to assassinate him.
Speaker 1: Like that's better than I would have guessed from Americans
Speaker 1: in the eighteen minutes.
Speaker 2: So he made it out of there a lot.
Speaker 1: He made it. You know what, I might raise that
Speaker 1: flag up on my flagpole today, America. Sometimes we're slightly
Speaker 1: less racist than you'd think. You know what else is
Speaker 1: less racist than you'd think, Katie?
Speaker 3: Oh h h.
Speaker 2: What what Robert?
Speaker 1: I can't beget products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 2: Absolutely obviously, Katie. Yeah, yes, sometimes anyway, yeah, sometimes.
Speaker 1: Ah, we're back and uh yeah, better than ever or
Speaker 1: more or less the same as ever either way. So
Speaker 1: well yeah, despite the predictable distaste that many Americans felt
Speaker 1: for him, Vivid Cananda's teachings on Indian religion and mysticism
Speaker 1: had a signific I should say on the Hindu religion
Speaker 1: and mysticism because it's this is actually a big problem.
Speaker 1: Like a huge number of Indians are are Muslim. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be. And also you know there's like
Speaker 1: not just Muslim in Hindu. I don't want to be.
Speaker 1: Like the Indian religion is Hinduism. That's a big problem today.
Speaker 1: But like he is talking specifically about like the Hindu religion,
Speaker 1: Hindu mysticism, and his teachings on that topic have a
Speaker 1: significant impact on what you might call early American seekers.
Speaker 1: Even at that period of time, there was widespread interest
Speaker 1: in the East and alternatives to kind of the same
Speaker 1: old Judeo Christian clap trap that seem to a lot
Speaker 1: of people in this period to be kind of dreary
Speaker 1: and lacking in avenues to pursue self fulfillment. Right. Part
Speaker 1: of what's happening in this period is that Christianity has
Speaker 1: not caught up to modernity, right, and so people are
Speaker 1: experiencing this rapid advance in science, but like they're still
Speaker 1: basically worshiping kind of in the same way they would
Speaker 1: have in teen seventeen hundreds. And folks are like, well,
Speaker 1: this kind of seems boring as shit, right, especially folks
Speaker 1: who are like, you know, upper middle class or wealthy. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just not as exciting to those folks into like
Speaker 1: intellectuals as this guy Vivid Cananda coming in and talking
Speaker 1: about this like weird new religion they've never heard anything about.
Speaker 1: Of particular interest to these early seekers was yoga. Now,
Speaker 1: Vivi Caananda was a not a big believer in Hatha yoga,
Speaker 1: nor was he teaching asanas to like large groups of people.
Speaker 1: He's not leading like what you know again, what we
Speaker 1: would recognize in the modern terms, like yoga sessions. But
Speaker 1: he did mention various practices that were part of yoga.
Speaker 1: Although at the time there was kind of fairly little
Speaker 1: agreement about what yoga was. Vivid Cananda spoke about it
Speaker 1: mainly as a philosophy of self improvement and often as
Speaker 1: dietary guidelines too. I'm gonna quote from Filipe again here.
Speaker 1: His published lectures in the United States are flooded with
Speaker 1: the word power, and in one of them he enjoins
Speaker 1: his listeners to stand as a rock. You are indestructible.
Speaker 1: Not unlike in immobile Rock vivid. Cananda's approach was devoid
Speaker 1: of the flowing sequences of asanas or postures that are
Speaker 1: now commonly associated with the practice. So while he avoided
Speaker 1: talk of hatha yoga in public, he did speak more
Speaker 1: openly about it to his close followers. He admitted to
Speaker 1: them that in eighteen ninety he'd gotten interested in it
Speaker 1: as a solution for his health, but had backed away
Speaker 1: from his studies after his master admonished him to audiences
Speaker 1: he called hatha gymnastics and queer breathing exercises. But in private,
Speaker 1: over the years he taught small groups of students a
Speaker 1: handful of different poses. Right, So this is kind of
Speaker 1: a thing that maybe he was a little bit lukewarm on.
Speaker 1: There was some stuff he found interesting. So when he's
Speaker 1: got these more dedicated groups of practitioners, he'll walk them
Speaker 1: through some poses. He'll do probably the very first like
Speaker 1: yoga sessions like in the United States, But in public
Speaker 1: when he's doing is bigspe he doesn't really talk about
Speaker 1: this other than to kind of broadly mention like, ah ye,
Speaker 1: and some people do this, you know. Vivid Cananda's time
Speaker 1: in the United Slime States marks, according to religious studies
Speaker 1: lecturer Suzanne Newcom, a turning point in how Indian religiosity
Speaker 1: was understood outside of India. In the decades to come,
Speaker 1: the profile of such teachings would be raised again by
Speaker 1: a wave of immigrants to the United States, many of
Speaker 1: whom came to work dangerous jobs on railroads. The government
Speaker 1: was loathed to give them civil rights, and so many
Speaker 1: of them wound up itinerants, wandering around the country and
Speaker 1: dispensing spiritual advice, because like, what else are they going
Speaker 1: to do? Right, There's not a lot of gigs, you know.
Speaker 1: One prominent American writer in nineteen thirty eight referred to
Speaker 1: these people as traveling salesmen, writing that every winter we
Speaker 1: can find advertisements of the appearances of yogis in the
Speaker 1: cities of the East, and during the spring and the
Speaker 1: summer they work the back places. But by the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties, a revival of hathapractices in India
Speaker 1: had brought a wider knowledge of the asanas to the
Speaker 1: United States. Gradually, many progressive Americans started to view yoga
Speaker 1: not as some sort of foreign magic but as a
Speaker 1: physical exercise and kind of That process is pretty steady
Speaker 1: over like a twenty year period or something like that,
Speaker 1: but there are some hiccups in it. And probably the
Speaker 1: biggest hiccup in like the road to yoga being seen
Speaker 1: as respectable is the life and career of an American
Speaker 1: named Pierre Arnold Bernard. He's probably the first man to
Speaker 1: get rich off of yoga in the United States, and
Speaker 1: of course he is a white dude, right, it makes
Speaker 1: sense that the first guy to get fucking loaded from
Speaker 1: yoga in the US is a white guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's another thing that's absolutely not surprising, not all disappointing.
Speaker 2: I was, I mean I was.
Speaker 3: I had to hope that Vivi Canando was going to
Speaker 3: be the person who got rich and was a bastard.
Speaker 2: But that's not the way.
Speaker 3: This is. No.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I don't think he is. I don't
Speaker 1: think like. I don't I don't think he was like
Speaker 1: broke from doing what he was doing. But he does
Speaker 1: not seem to have bit like I don't.
Speaker 3: Actually wish that in any capacity, but unsurprising that this
Speaker 3: is enter the white Man, the.
Speaker 1: Inter the white Man. Yeah, this is our first yoga Grifter.
Speaker 1: Born Perry Baker in eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: He met he changed his name to Pierre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sure did. He sure did. This is before
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. It was good to be freaky.
Speaker 2: Thank you for noticing that, Katie.
Speaker 1: Born Perry Baker eighteen seventy six. He meets his first
Speaker 1: Yogi at age thirteen in Eastern Nebraska, which gives you
Speaker 1: an idea of, like, how many of these guys are
Speaker 1: kind of wandering around like a kid in eighteen like
Speaker 1: ninety nine, East Nebraska meets like a wandering Yogi, which
Speaker 1: paints again we often think differently about America in the
Speaker 1: past than it would have been. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of worth noting. So Perry had long been obsessed with
Speaker 1: spirituality in the occult. You know, we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the Helena Blovotsky episodes. Jamie talks about this in
Speaker 1: her Ghost Church podcast. The end of the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, there's this wave of spiritism, right, these
Speaker 1: like people are doing like channeling and they're they're talking
Speaker 1: to the dead, and you know, you've got all these
Speaker 1: kind of like magicians wandering around the country doing shows.
Speaker 1: The occult is really sort of taking off in popular culture.
Speaker 1: And as a kid, Perry's super into this stuff. So
Speaker 1: when he runs across this Syrian Indian yogi named Silvaus
Speaker 1: Hamadi who's a practitioner of Hatha yoga, he's really he's
Speaker 1: down with what this guy is teaching. Now, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you if Silveus Hamadi was like a legitimate for
Speaker 1: one thing, He's like, I can't, I can't like guarantee
Speaker 1: for you that this guy is in any way teaching
Speaker 1: legitimate yoga. Like it's the eighteen nineties. You know, who
Speaker 1: knows what's going on here. But with Silvus at least
Speaker 1: his yoga includes what's described in the literature I read
Speaker 1: as magical sex rights that were acts of worship for
Speaker 1: the god shak D. So you know, Perry gets on
Speaker 1: board with this shit and kind of as a young man,
Speaker 1: he and his guru moved to San Francisco, where Perry
Speaker 1: changes his name to Pierre. He starts teaching hatha to
Speaker 1: interested seekers in charging an exorbitant price for the privilege.
Speaker 1: One hundred dollars. That's like what it costs to get
Speaker 1: like initiated into his orders so you can like do
Speaker 1: yoga with them, which is several thousand dollars today, Like
Speaker 1: he is, Yeah, he is fucking charging like that's a
Speaker 1: lot of money today.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of money to pay twenty five bucks
Speaker 3: thirty bucks for a yoga class.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, you're you're paying like the equivalent of several grand.
Speaker 1: Now you're paying that to become like a member of
Speaker 1: this sort of yoga organization so you can come in
Speaker 1: and do like regular although I think you're often kind
Speaker 1: of like pushed to, you know, give donations beyond that.
Speaker 1: Obviously he's he's not targeting poor people, right, why would he? Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a popular business to be in. San
Speaker 1: Francisco was not at this point a willing mecca for
Speaker 1: the weird, and Bernard was forced to flee with his
Speaker 1: few followers, who called themselves the Tantricks with ak you've
Speaker 1: heard of tantric you know yoga or like they are
Speaker 1: they spell a t A N t ri i K.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh six, they moved from San Francisco to Seattle,
Speaker 1: which was also not yet strange enough to host them.
Speaker 1: And so three years later, after having picked up and
Speaker 1: they're picking up people, he's picking up followers like he's
Speaker 1: running like a little cult and he's getting cult. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: He picks them up in Noracal, he picks them up
Speaker 1: in Washington, and then they head east to New York City.
Speaker 1: Now by this point, Bernard's followers are calling themselves the
Speaker 1: Tantric Order, and they, you know, with the kind of
Speaker 1: limited funds they have because they're not doing great. They
Speaker 1: get by a townhouse which they decorate in mystic stylings
Speaker 1: and start to operate as a yoga school and a sanitarium. Now,
Speaker 1: the best book on Bernard is called The Great Um
Speaker 1: by Robert Love, and in that book, Love describes Bernard's
Speaker 1: early East Coast clientele as a mix of well healed
Speaker 1: interested parties, doctors, patients, the sickly, occultists, spiritual seekers, and
Speaker 1: health fad enthusiasts. So this is not a lot's changed.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically folks,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: So the city right, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, New York. Honestly,
Speaker 4: New York hasn't changed a whole lot. Now, yeah. Quote
Speaker 4: the Tantrick Herald spread the news there was a new
Speaker 4: guru in town. Come try our hatha yoga classes offered
Speaker 4: several times a week in the evenings along with instruction
Speaker 4: and yoga, breathing, meditation and philosophy, or drop by on
Speaker 4: the weekends on back in it evenings when food and
Speaker 4: drink would be offered and the house was open to
Speaker 4: respectful curious seekers. And you know he's mixing. The Tantriks
Speaker 4: are like not again, this is not you wouldn't like
Speaker 4: if you were to like bring some yogas over from India,
Speaker 4: they would have a lot of notes on what these
Speaker 4: guys are doing. But people doing like back in eight evenings,
Speaker 4: which is like not, you know, Hindu is evidence of
Speaker 4: kind of they're they're mixing and mashing a lot of stuff,
Speaker 4: but they're using kind of the branding of yoga because
Speaker 4: it's it's Eastern and mysterious, right and it has you
Speaker 4: have to think too here. Yoga has a connotation that's
Speaker 4: more like if you talk about like magic today again
Speaker 4: like than like it does now. Yeah, these people are
Speaker 4: not just thinking like oh, I'm going to go get
Speaker 4: like in better shape and improve my joint health. Right,
Speaker 4: that's not why people get into yoga in this period
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 3: It's probably more like going to your U Tarot person or.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely right, but yeah, definitely closer than like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get healthy, you know, I'm gonna get fit,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you know, flexible. One of these early
Speaker 1: seekers was a woman named Zellia hop She lived with
Speaker 1: her which is a pretty cool name out by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she lived with her parents in the Bronx and had
Speaker 1: suffered from a series of ill defined but serious physical ailments.
Speaker 1: Numerous doctors had failed to offer her any relief or
Speaker 1: long term benefit, and she was ill enough. It's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear, like what's wrong with her. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's one of either one of those things where they
Speaker 1: just didn't have a diagnosis. It might have been just
Speaker 1: like maybe she had some sort of allergy that at
Speaker 1: the time everything her parents were giving it like and
Speaker 1: they just didn't idea yeah exactly, like right, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't really know, but she's ill enough that her parents
Speaker 1: are terrified that she might suffer from the worst fate
Speaker 1: a woman can experience, not being married to a dude.
Speaker 2: Yes, is it being single?
Speaker 1: Is it being single? Yeah, it's being single. Well she's
Speaker 1: a spinster, she's like twenty one, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Oh my god, I don't really.
Speaker 1: So Zellia has got an older sister, Esther, who had
Speaker 1: heard the news about the Tantricks arrival in the Big Apple,
Speaker 1: and she told her parents that like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there's these guys, this new order. They're doing this Eastern
Speaker 1: philosophy that's like got medical aspects to it. And I
Speaker 1: hear there's the you know, their leader is this guy,
Speaker 1: doctor Warren, who's a powerful healer who just come from Seattle.
Speaker 1: Now doctor Warren is Bernard. This was another name he
Speaker 1: went under. And you know, Pierre Bernard is not a doctor,
Speaker 1: although I should note when I say that most doctors
Speaker 1: in nineteen or nine aren't really doctors. Yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: this is not as alarming as it.
Speaker 3: Normally it is the qualification for doctor, and then was
Speaker 3: just deciding you are one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so he changes his name. He's not even
Speaker 2: Pierre Bernard as doctor Warren.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it's ot a left field there, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least in his like public facing stuff. So Pierre
Speaker 1: told them that he was like they you know, they
Speaker 1: go to him to kind of get a consult and stuff,
Speaker 1: and Pierre's like, I'm an expert in curing neurasthenia, which
Speaker 1: is a heart condition that he said that she had. Now,
Speaker 1: Pierre he knows more about medicine than the average person.
Speaker 1: He's not educated, but he's an autodidact, so he reads
Speaker 1: a lot of medical texts along with a lot of
Speaker 1: spiritual texts, and he's really good at like weaving all
Speaker 1: of this together and like mixing. Some of this is
Speaker 1: like legitimate, you know, yoga. Some of this is like
Speaker 1: different aspects of like Hindu or Buddhist beliefs that he's read.
Speaker 1: Some of this is like shit he picks up from
Speaker 1: medical textbooks, and some of it's like probably Blovatsky style,
Speaker 1: like a cult, you know whatever. And he's he's pretty
Speaker 1: good at like mixing and mashing all of this together.
Speaker 1: And he really impresses the family in his first visit
Speaker 1: or in their first visit to him, but he still
Speaker 1: charges them, Like when after he gets their consult, they're
Speaker 1: like into what he's saying, but the price he quotes
Speaker 1: them to treat her is like outrageous. It starts with
Speaker 1: a forty dollars initiation fee, which is, you know, an
Speaker 1: average American at that point gets about thirteen dollars a
Speaker 1: week for about fifty fifty nine hours of labor. Right,
Speaker 1: So he's charging them almost three weeks of like full
Speaker 1: time labor to get it initiated, right, and then there's
Speaker 1: ongoing charges after that.
Speaker 2: Also doesn't sound that different from.
Speaker 1: Uh today, No, yeah, this is how a lot of
Speaker 1: like quack stuff still works right where. You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this in a bunch of different contexts. But
Speaker 1: her parents are able to put together the funds even
Speaker 1: though it's a serious like it is like a burden
Speaker 1: for them, and off Zellia goes. Robert Love writes about
Speaker 1: what happens next. The next day, with her parents' approval,
Speaker 1: Miss Hop traveled alone to Manhattan and arrived at the Brownstone,
Speaker 1: where Bernard Cigar in hand ushered her into a back
Speaker 1: room and conducted a physical exam. He concluded that yes
Speaker 1: he could help her, Yes she could regain her vitality
Speaker 1: and even flourish under his care, but it would take
Speaker 1: extreme measures and individual attention. He sent one of his
Speaker 1: associates to find a suitable place, and in November he
Speaker 1: installed her in his new sanitary, a rented apartment at
Speaker 1: seventy West one oh ninth Street near Central Park. Zelia's
Speaker 1: father visited the place to make sure it was on
Speaker 1: the up and up before allowing his daughter to move in.
Speaker 1: Beneath the cloak of therapy, however, a powerful attraction developed
Speaker 1: between the worldly thirty three year old Bernard and the
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Zelia. Her first night in the apartment,
Speaker 1: Bernard paid her a visit. In between boasts of his
Speaker 1: knowledge of spiritual domains, he kissed her until her breath
Speaker 1: gave out. She was a lucky woman. He told her
Speaker 1: he was very powerful, very wealthy. He assured her of
Speaker 1: his commitment and his honorable intentions. She felt herself fall
Speaker 1: completely under his power, hypnotized to obey him. Several nights later,
Speaker 1: she surrendered to the most pressing of his wishes and
Speaker 1: the couple made love. So, yeah, that's problematic. We could say,
Speaker 1: you know, he's supposed to be her doctor. She's living
Speaker 1: in a sanitarium that he runs. You know, the age
Speaker 1: GAP's a little bit problematic too, Like, there's a lot
Speaker 1: that's problematic about this problematic. Yeah, Zea becomes a living
Speaker 1: at the tantriuc House, where the two make love on
Speaker 1: a regular basis until her family stops being able to
Speaker 1: pay for her treatments. At that point, she is kicked
Speaker 1: out of the sanitarium, but when she gets back home,
Speaker 1: she's apparently free of her heart condition, Like she feels better,
Speaker 1: So I don't maybe she just needed like you know,
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, like I who am I to say?
Speaker 1: So for a while, her parents are like, well it
Speaker 1: was worth it, right, Like she's feeling better, you know.
Speaker 1: They don't know exactly what's happened, but they see that
Speaker 1: she seems to be in better health and that's mostly
Speaker 1: what they care about. So for a while, everything's fine.
Speaker 1: But Zellia's turnaround had more to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that she'd fallen in love with Pierre than the healing
Speaker 1: power of whatever he was advertising as yoga. A modern
Speaker 1: person might have recognized that a dude who kicks you
Speaker 1: out because you can't afford the rent and his unlicensed
Speaker 1: hospital is not your soulmate, but these were more primitive times,
Speaker 1: and Lifetime Original movies hadn't yet taught that message to people.
Speaker 1: The business, the business at the Tantric House continued to
Speaker 1: evolve They developed an enrollment contract for potential students, which
Speaker 1: offered them either an upfront fee of one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: or three monthly installments of forty dollars each. For twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: Bernard would give you a physical examination, and for just
Speaker 1: two dollars you could acquire your very own copy of
Speaker 1: their newsletter, the Journal of the Tantric Order. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I'd love to get a copy of if anyone runs
Speaker 1: into one out there.
Speaker 2: Of the Tankic Order.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds good. Initiated students could attend yoga classes
Speaker 1: on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Pierre, an early trailblazer, realized
Speaker 1: that the best way to get repeat customers was to
Speaker 1: put the hot chicks in his flock up front and center.
Speaker 1: His best instructor then was Aura Ray named real name Gertrude,
Speaker 1: who wore quote yogi suits, skin tight colored tights covered
Speaker 1: in tantric symbols that were basically the only attractive clothing
Speaker 1: that anyone wore in a sim like this is like
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, right, Everybody's like, yeah.
Speaker 2: This is prototype Lululemon, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He's a trailblazer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have him to blame for the yoga outfits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he is the guy who's like, well, if
Speaker 1: we just like get attractive people to wear yoga pants,
Speaker 1: we can get all sorts of folks to just come
Speaker 1: in and hang around, right like, this is how we
Speaker 1: make money.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Go God so love rites that many of their customers
Speaker 1: were quote older men in search of rejuvenation, which often
Speaker 1: came from young women teaching them to stand on their
Speaker 1: head and making strategic physical contact to guide them in
Speaker 1: the asanas. These older men were often comparatively well off,
Speaker 1: which was required to afford the blistering fees Pierre charged.
Speaker 1: He appeared only sparingly in classes to lecture his students
Speaker 1: on spiritual matters and give them his own esoteric advice
Speaker 1: on health and diet. Zelia continued to visit whenever she could,
Speaker 1: and over time she grew concerned and suspicious of about
Speaker 1: how many of his followers were attractive young women. She
Speaker 1: was as she did, Yeah, I bet she did. She
Speaker 1: was also frustrated by the fact that he kept sections
Speaker 1: of the townhouse off limits to her for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: Okay, so are they still dating in some capacity here?
Speaker 2: I mean, is charging her.
Speaker 1: She would say they're dating. Pierre would say they are
Speaker 1: not dating, right, Like, I think that's kind like me alone.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm teaching her, right like she's
Speaker 1: a she's a student. You know, I'm teaching her in
Speaker 1: the only way that I can. So eventually she demanded
Speaker 1: that he marry her if she was going to keep
Speaker 1: dropping by and you know, putting out Somehow, the State
Speaker 1: of Affairs ended with Gertrude and Zellia meeting and Pierre
Speaker 1: talking them into having a threesome with him. So now,
Speaker 1: Katie that that sounds gross, right, like that's that's that's
Speaker 1: that's problematic, But it kind of goes in a good
Speaker 1: direction because Gertrude and Zellia, in an unlikely fashion, like
Speaker 1: become friends and they start talking without Pierre there about
Speaker 1: the way he's treating them both, and Zellia starts asking
Speaker 1: Gertrude questions like, Zellia like you would expect, you know,
Speaker 1: especially given the time, like even the day, you'd expect
Speaker 1: Zellia to be like, fuck Gertrude, fuck this lady who's
Speaker 1: like getting in between me and this guy. But Zelly
Speaker 1: is like, has he been paying you for all the work?
Speaker 1: That you do teaching yoga classes. And Gertrude's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: he's not paying me, And Zelli is like, you know
Speaker 1: that's fucked up, right, Like you know you should be
Speaker 1: getting paid to do this job.
Speaker 3: I like this turn for Yeah, sure, I like these
Speaker 3: two women. Good good job girls. Also there's part of
Speaker 3: me that's also.
Speaker 2: Like, what year are we at right now on the timeline?
Speaker 1: This is like nineteen o nine, nineteen ten.
Speaker 3: I do love I do like the introduction of a
Speaker 3: little threesome situation in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: In general, I'm a three skit. I just don't like
Speaker 2: a man demanding it.
Speaker 1: No, but I do like that it is a It
Speaker 1: is a threesome that a man institutes problematically that ends
Speaker 1: in the two women becoming friends and being like, wait
Speaker 1: a second, he's not paying you for your labor, Like whoa,
Speaker 1: we got a fucking deal with this. Yeah, I'd watch
Speaker 1: that movie. Yeah yeah, yeah. And the story there's some actually,
Speaker 1: there's some fun beats coming up. But you know what's
Speaker 1: even more fun than the romantic equivalent of unionization?
Speaker 2: I got it this time? Is it advertisements? It is advertisements.
Speaker 3: The romantic, the romantic unionizations of products and podcasts.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, that's right. We're back. So so
Speaker 1: Gertrude and Zellia start talking, and Gertrude realizes, like this
Speaker 1: is you know, oh yeah, this is a really fucked
Speaker 1: up situation, and so she bounces. She abandons Pierre and
Speaker 1: the tantric order, and Zelly is like, you can come
Speaker 1: crash with me and my parents, and so she starts.
Speaker 1: She's like living with Zelia and her parents. I don't
Speaker 1: know what Zellia tells her parents. Yeah, like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess she doesn't bring up the threesome.
Speaker 2: Right my friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, buddy, Yeah. But like Gertrude crashes there for a
Speaker 1: for a while. Pierre gets worried after a period of
Speaker 1: time like that she's been absent for so long, so
Speaker 1: he sends one of his followers to talk her into returning,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, we need you here. We've
Speaker 1: got like some business stuff like this is like especially
Speaker 1: if you want to get paid, like you got to
Speaker 1: come back and like we got to take care of
Speaker 1: some things. So Gertrude's like, all right, well I'll go
Speaker 1: back with you to like deal with this because maybe
Speaker 1: it'll work out, but she promises Zellia, I'm gonna come back,
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna stay there obviously, So Gertrude leaves.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be just for a little while, but
Speaker 1: days go by and Zelia starts to get worried, so
Speaker 1: she writes to Gertrude's sister in Seattle, and in the
Speaker 1: letter that Zelia writes gertrude sister, she kind of insinuates
Speaker 1: Gertrude might be being held against her will. Zellia doesn't
Speaker 1: really know what's going on, but she knows Pierre. She
Speaker 1: kind of knows the vibes, and she's like, I think
Speaker 1: something fucked up is going on. So Gertrude's sister travels
Speaker 1: east and like travels east with like fucking hell on
Speaker 1: her mind because she had not been happy when Gertrude
Speaker 1: had left Seattle with this guy, so she's kind of
Speaker 1: been like waiting for something fucked up to happen. So
Speaker 1: she travels east with the intention of like fucking shit
Speaker 1: up for Pierre. She had Also, it's also probably worth
Speaker 1: noting she had been dumped by a member of the
Speaker 1: Tantric Order earlier, so she also has yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: her sister adds, there's like she's not a little bit
Speaker 1: of a brud too. Yeah, this is these are this
Speaker 1: is a messy story, so chaotic you can make although
Speaker 1: again there's a there's a pretty good like Hulu plus
Speaker 1: you know original series in this absolutely. So she and
Speaker 1: Zelle a Gertrude's sister, and Zellia go to the police
Speaker 1: lurid stories of like dark sex, magic and presumed unlawful
Speaker 1: imprisonment and a few nights and the police like take
Speaker 1: it seriously. And so a few nights later, you know,
Speaker 1: classes are going on at this at this townhouse where
Speaker 1: where Pierre runs you know, his order out of and
Speaker 1: during classes, Zella comes to the door of the townhouse
Speaker 1: and she gives they have like a secret knock. So
Speaker 1: she gives the secret knock, and whatever guy's at the
Speaker 1: door opens the door for her and a bunch of
Speaker 1: New York detectives Russian uh, and they find you know,
Speaker 1: when they bust in what one detective describes later as quote,
Speaker 1: a young man clad in filmy garments and squatting as
Speaker 1: a sort of presiding demi god among a dozen men
Speaker 1: and women strangely garbed and tight fitting gowns of one piece,
Speaker 1: which is a very funny, like old timey description of
Speaker 1: like people in yoga outfits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yoga outfits.
Speaker 1: Yeah proto to like early yoga outfits gin one. So
Speaker 1: they also find Yes squatting. They also find Gertrude, and
Speaker 1: she is dressed in a revealing swimsuit like garment and
Speaker 1: nearly hysterical with fear. When she sees her sister, she
Speaker 1: sprints over to her and begs her, for God's sake,
Speaker 1: take me away. In his book The Great Um Love,
Speaker 1: Descri continues the scene quote Bernard surveyed the house and
Speaker 1: glared coldly at Zelia. So this is your revenge, she snapped,
Speaker 1: You're sore because you're jealous of Gertrude. One of the
Speaker 1: tantric women focused a menacing glare on Gertrude and began
Speaker 1: chanting on ominously, zimzimzim zz z. Gertrude, who had been
Speaker 1: around these other women for some time, was obviously spooked.
Speaker 1: She is putting a curse on me, she screamed. In
Speaker 1: the midst of all this, someone doused the lights, but
Speaker 1: it was clear even in the confusion and darkness that
Speaker 1: the young man in the filmy garments was the person
Speaker 1: the police were looking for. You're under arrest, said Callahan,
Speaker 1: the detective to Bernard. Detective Joseph Lennard, the wise guy
Speaker 1: of the two partners, pointed at the symbols on Bernard's robe.
Speaker 1: What are those things on your chest? He demanded. When
Speaker 1: Bernard filled him in, the cop replied, so that's the bar.
Speaker 1: After his initial indignation, Bernard stood calmly before the police.
Speaker 1: He confirmed his identity and that of the quivering girl
Speaker 1: in tights, Gertrude Leo. Then the detectives rousted the entire
Speaker 1: party and moved them down the steps of the Brownstone
Speaker 1: and into the spring night. The officers, the irate witnesses,
Speaker 1: the young women in bathing suits, the others hissing curses,
Speaker 1: and finally Bernard, wearing the elaborate ceremonial robe of a
Speaker 1: seventh degree tantric priest bearing the ancient symbols of birth, death,
Speaker 1: and regeneration. Together they set out from the Brownstone, and
Speaker 1: a comical looking pert parade headed for the West sixty
Speaker 1: eighth Street police station. It's yeah again, great Hulu series.
Speaker 2: In this whole story, wonderful, wonderful scene. Uh right there.
Speaker 3: I also, like, I wonder if they're doing I do
Speaker 3: know a little bit hatha breathing that uujaya breathing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing that.
Speaker 1: Or at least like whatever, because you know, you have
Speaker 1: to assume like whatever teaching they're getting is probably like
Speaker 1: translated through a couple of different books and language barriers,
Speaker 1: Like I.
Speaker 2: Mean, it sounds like they're hissing or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I'm just imagining everybody doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So news of the arrest quickly ripped through the city.
Speaker 1: The New York Times headline the next day read arrest
Speaker 1: Hindu seyr, The Herald added, says he's a swami, and
Speaker 1: the Tribune noted his students in tights. Pierre was locked
Speaker 1: up and charged with abduction and accused of having inveigled
Speaker 1: and enticed Zelia. When he finally showed up in court
Speaker 1: to be arraigned, the judge asked, what is this man?
Speaker 1: A doctor? The detective responsible for the case replied, No,
Speaker 1: he's not a doctor. He's a Hindu teacher. He claims
Speaker 1: to cure people by controlling spirits. Now, Bernard did not
Speaker 1: look very much like a yogi. He is a balding
Speaker 1: like Irish American dude in his thirties. He could have
Speaker 1: passed for a banker in the right place.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what like the headline, Hindu whatever ard a
Speaker 3: portly old white man easily.
Speaker 1: He's like thirty three, but like, yeah, he's not like
Speaker 1: he does not look particularly mystic. Yeah, the detective added,
Speaker 1: when we got upstairs, we saw eight elderly men and
Speaker 1: five women in tights and bathing costumes. They were just exercising.
Speaker 1: They were tumbling on a mat which had strange figures
Speaker 1: on it. The defendant was standing by a crystal ball
Speaker 1: and was cladd in tights that came to his knees,
Speaker 1: in a jersey on which there were some queer figures.
Speaker 1: So again that's like the kind of and that gives
Speaker 1: you an idea too of like who they're they're going after,
Speaker 1: because like Pierre has these young women who are like
Speaker 1: basically working as instructors, and then these old men who
Speaker 1: are presumably wealthier, who are basically paying to like hang
Speaker 1: out with a bunch of attractive young women wearing tight
Speaker 1: clothes and stretching. Right like that that is what he's offering,
Speaker 1: you know. Also again, and it's New York City, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's New York City. It is interesting to me that
Speaker 1: a crystal ball was involved. I've done a number of
Speaker 1: yoga classes, none of which involved a crystal ball.
Speaker 3: Never never, although, look, I'd show up for that class.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'd show up for that class. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: have different emotions around this. Well, we still have story left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do wish that my yoga involved a palanteer though. Yeah, yeah, Saramon,
Speaker 1: like does it puts like a sixty minute yoga video?
Speaker 2: Oh now that would be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, staff yoga. So bail is set
Speaker 1: at fifteen thousand dollars and Bernard is sent out of
Speaker 1: the courtroom. As he's leaving, Zellia's father sprints up and
Speaker 1: shouts that man ought to be killed and I'd do
Speaker 1: it if I could, which is you know, solid parenting. Well,
Speaker 1: Pierre languished in jail. A reporter from the Evening Mail
Speaker 1: managed to secure an interview with him. Perhaps given the
Speaker 1: desperate state he was in, or perhaps just due to
Speaker 1: his exhaustion and the skill of the interviewer, Bernard was
Speaker 1: uncommonly honest. He told the journalist, I never lived in India.
Speaker 1: The whole scheme is physical culture, that's all. Only some
Speaker 1: of those nasty tongued women got busy. You know, if
Speaker 1: you pay more attention to one than you do to another,
Speaker 1: she gets jealous. This whole white slave business was too much.
Speaker 1: Wonder they didn't hold me for murder?
Speaker 3: All right, Pierre fu motherfucker fucking Pierre.
Speaker 1: Now you'll note that he mentions, he says, this is
Speaker 1: this is physical culture. That's a savvy move by him.
Speaker 1: Now we've done a pair of episodes on Bernard McFadden,
Speaker 1: who was like the first big workout exercise guru and
Speaker 1: like American pop culture right around this time. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: running a bunch of big magazines that are like one
Speaker 1: is called physical culture. So Pierre is as he's being
Speaker 1: interviewed by this guy he's trying to you know, normally,
Speaker 1: when he's like trying to con people into giving him money,
Speaker 1: he wants to portray himself as like this Eastern mystic
Speaker 1: who has access to like magical powers. When he's in trouble,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I'm just like this guy who's like
Speaker 1: popular and rich and famous, right, Like this is just
Speaker 1: another kind of physical culture, you know, it's like lifting weights.
Speaker 1: He attempts to do that only when he's in trouble,
Speaker 1: but that I think that is interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So another trend that is sweeping the nation,
Speaker 1: like physical culture, is a trend that sweeping the nation
Speaker 1: in this period of time, and he's trying to tie
Speaker 1: himself into that one season trouble. But another trend that's
Speaker 1: sweeping the nation is a panic over the existence of
Speaker 1: what are generally referred to as white slavers. The same
Speaker 1: day that Pierre was arraigned, a twenty seven year old
Speaker 1: Russian named Levinson confessed to selling young women with the
Speaker 1: aid of two and like he uses a word for
Speaker 1: black women that we don't anymore. Jenny Miller, Gertrude's sister,
Speaker 1: saw kind of tying in what he had done to
Speaker 1: this like white slaver panic as a savvy way to
Speaker 1: get revenge on Pierre. So she told the press that
Speaker 1: the tantric order was engaging in an even quote higher
Speaker 1: order of the of the white slave traffic, adding wealthy women,
Speaker 1: women whose fortunes run high into the millions, are prime
Speaker 1: movers in this traffic.
Speaker 2: This historic gets messier, I'm messier.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of like proto QAnon stuff. In
Speaker 1: here right, Yeah, Now, the Tantric Order and yoga in
Speaker 1: general became the center of a scandalous news cycle, one
Speaker 1: that galvanized much of New York high society against the
Speaker 1: very concept of Eastern mysticism. As always happens with media frenzies,
Speaker 1: there was a period of several weeks where any newsman
Speaker 1: who could come up with a bloody minded story about
Speaker 1: evil yoga cults could claim to be sure of a paycheck.
Speaker 1: Some of them sat down with anyone from the West
Speaker 1: Coast who would claim to have been a former member
Speaker 1: of the Tantrik Order, and a lot of these people
Speaker 1: were just like lying, right for whatever reason. But others
Speaker 1: journalists started digging through various Hindu texts, often like bad
Speaker 1: translations of Hindu texts that they only partly understood, looking
Speaker 1: for anything that they could like tie into this broader thing, right,
Speaker 1: that they could like, Ah, here's another you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's journalism hasn't changed either, you know, Centurion or so, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, all this feels eerially familiar. Yeah, it's very very
Speaker 5: very modern story. In the great um love rights quote,
Speaker 5: reports surfaced in the press on those salacious details of
Speaker 5: Hindu tantric practices. A diligent New York World reporter had
Speaker 5: turned up a copy of Bernard's Vira Sadhana and published
Speaker 5: excerpts under the headline Tantrick's worship calls for dead bodies
Speaker 5: and young girls. Since the Vira Sadhana was a compendium
Speaker 5: of abridged mystical tracks and translated Hindu writings that were
Speaker 5: long on metaphor and symbol, UM's enemies found everything they wanted.
Speaker 5: They picked from a combination platter of yoga's alleged supernatural powers,
Speaker 5: sex rituals, phallic worship, and yes, even a mention of
Speaker 5: medieval Hindu rights that used dead bodies. When apprized by
Speaker 5: a reporter that some of the texts he published were
Speaker 5: sealacious in nature, Bernard answered wistfully, that's the trouble with people.
Speaker 5: They so readily misunderstood and a true conception of the system.
Speaker 5: And a lot of this is like, you know, you
Speaker 5: can find like texts in pieces in the Bible, pieces
Speaker 5: in like literally every religious text that like most practitions
Speaker 5: will they are like, well, that's a metaphor that's not
Speaker 5: meant to be literal like and also it is like
Speaker 5: I don't know the quality of the translations he's getting,
Speaker 5: but people are finding stuff from like these medieval texts
Speaker 5: that like are fucked up sounding to modern ears, and
Speaker 5: he's kind of just like printed out in order to
Speaker 5: have something to sell, and they're accusing him of like
Speaker 5: stuff he's not doing.
Speaker 1: Right. Like, at the end of the day, Bernard is
Speaker 1: like a creep and probably a rapist, a sex pest,
Speaker 1: but he's not like sacrificing people or like, you know,
Speaker 1: doing rituals with dead bodies. You know, he's like a
Speaker 1: pretty pedestrian kind of creep. No.
Speaker 3: I mean you could also add into grift or baby
Speaker 3: or you know, appropriating something, not understanding what he is.
Speaker 2: He's teaching at all. Yeah, definitely not doing those things.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on on yoga or on on
Speaker 1: Hindu mysticism, but I do not believe Crystal Ball's feature prominently.
Speaker 2: No, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of it's also kind of worth
Speaker 1: noting that. Again, while he is definitely a sex pest,
Speaker 1: a lot of what got him damned by the press
Speaker 1: in his day are statements that were just two pro
Speaker 1: sex and even sometimes pro woman. For the era, one
Speaker 1: passage from the virus ad Hanna was particularly outrageous to
Speaker 1: people in nineteen ten New York. Sex worship as a
Speaker 1: religion represents a stage in the development of the human mind,
Speaker 1: and the grand theologies of today are the outcome of
Speaker 1: this mode of worship. It constitutes the basis of all
Speaker 1: that is sacred, wholly, and beautiful. The whole world is
Speaker 1: embodied in the woman. Now, yeah, that's heteronormative, but to
Speaker 1: most people in twenty twenty three, it's not what you'd
Speaker 1: call like a particularly offensive statement, even if it is
Speaker 1: a bit reductive and you know, horny. That said, as
Speaker 1: the arraignment went on, the allegations continued to pour out.
Speaker 1: Some were likely true and some were you know, exaggerated
Speaker 1: or just false. Zelia, who was never a full initiate,
Speaker 1: told lurid stories of blood oaths that either you know,
Speaker 1: were exaggerated. You know, she's in kind of a heightened
Speaker 1: state when she encounters this, But you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone was like doing any serious like blood magic
Speaker 1: or whatever. But she also told like stories of like
Speaker 1: orgies in sort of like sexual like being pressured into
Speaker 1: having group sex and stuff that definitely did happen, right
Speaker 1: ay for sure. Yeah, things got really dark when Gertrude
Speaker 1: took the stand. Though she alleged that on September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, Pierre had threatened to drug her with
Speaker 1: morphine when she became what he called hysterical, She said
Speaker 1: that he kept her prisoner with his hypnotic powers. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not like a particular believer in hypnotic powers,
Speaker 1: but I certainly believe that a mix of drugs, the
Speaker 1: mind altering impact of cult dynamics, and good old fashioned
Speaker 1: gas lighting canna have the effect of keeping someone a
Speaker 1: prisoner without having them chained to a wall.
Speaker 2: Right, We've seen it time and time again.
Speaker 1: It happens all over the world.
Speaker 3: This is yeah, uh, accounting for the time frame that
Speaker 3: we are in as well, where you know, I am
Speaker 3: imagining these women being swept up in this and really
Speaker 3: not having the tools to understand or remove themselves from
Speaker 3: a situation.
Speaker 1: Well, and even like even if they'd had sort of
Speaker 1: you know, in more a culture that had given them
Speaker 1: more tools. This exact story, cult leaders plying followers with
Speaker 1: like a mix of drugs and gas lighting and sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: That happens, That's happening there's thousands of people living that
Speaker 1: life right now.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, absolutely, And I also do not mean to
Speaker 3: suggest that you know people now should know better or
Speaker 3: whatever I'm just imagining at that time, being like it's
Speaker 3: even an element of magic and email and.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, and also today, if you get out of
Speaker 1: that situation today, there's infrastructure to help you. Right even
Speaker 1: in that infrastructure, just you can find books that people
Speaker 1: have written about going through similar experiences and the way
Speaker 1: cult dynamics work that doesn't really exist for someone like Gertrude,
Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen ten, she told the court quote,
Speaker 1: I both feared and loved him. He made me believe
Speaker 1: that he could communicate with priests of the Order all
Speaker 1: over the world who would sit in counsel at his
Speaker 1: command and take a awigh my mind if I did
Speaker 1: not obey him. And one of the heartbreaking dimentions about
Speaker 1: this is that in order to lay out the abuse
Speaker 1: that both women absolutely experienced, Zelia and Gertrude had to
Speaker 1: admit to having premarital sex. In Gertrude's case, this involved
Speaker 1: sex with a number of men as part of sexual rights.
Speaker 1: Some of this does sound very satanic, panicky, but part
Speaker 1: of why I tend to like why I believe like
Speaker 1: what they're saying is that Gertrude and Zelia they suffered
Speaker 1: massive personal consequences for doing this. Going up in front
Speaker 1: of like a court and saying that you had sex
Speaker 1: outside of marriage in this period of time closes off
Speaker 1: opportunities for you as a woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't something you just do, No, something. It's
Speaker 2: also not.
Speaker 1: Something that not that it's something you just do today.
Speaker 1: But this is there's even more consequences.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, big deal. Very brave of them. Yeah no,
Speaker 3: it's just like I very brave too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a terrible situation for them to be put in.
Speaker 1: As the Atlantic Constitution put it in one headline, ruin
Speaker 1: brought to this woman by high priest, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: the way it's being category. Like she's been ruined by him,
Speaker 1: you know. The judge did decide to sustain the charges,
Speaker 1: and a grand jury later indicted Pierre on two counts.
Speaker 1: The newspapers started referring to him derisively as the Great Ome.
Speaker 1: His followers dissolved, and the townhouse lay vacant while he
Speaker 1: languished in jail waiting for his trial, but as the
Speaker 1: weeks ticked by his lawyers found what they called evidence
Speaker 1: against Gertrude's previously chased character. They alleged that she had
Speaker 1: lied about her age and that she had slept with
Speaker 1: someone outside of marriage previously. Pierre's lawyer offered to produce
Speaker 1: these claims and witnesses to them in court, so the
Speaker 1: DA dropped Gertrude as a witness and a complainant. Right
Speaker 1: he dropped the charge is based on Pierre's abuse of
Speaker 1: Gertrude because this lawyer was like, I found evidence that
Speaker 1: she had sex outside of marriage once, Like that's the
Speaker 1: time wherein he reduced bail on Pierre. But the case
Speaker 1: did go forward at this point, though, Zelia decided that
Speaker 1: she too wanted off the case. Her family said that
Speaker 1: she had moved out of state. She wanted the charges.
Speaker 1: She just wanted it to end. Like the way her
Speaker 1: family described it is that the case had nearly driven
Speaker 1: her insane. I think it was just too much for her,
Speaker 1: and once Gertrude kind of was out, it was like,
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't go through this, like.
Speaker 2: The just by myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's horrible. They're they're both in a horrible situation. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the case folded and Pierre was released a free man,
Speaker 1: But as stain had been left on yoga that would
Speaker 1: take decades to wash away, As Robert Love wrote in
Speaker 1: this column for Mental Flaws. The next year, a Christian
Speaker 1: mystic named Evelyn Arthur c was arrested in Chicago and
Speaker 1: charged as a white slaver. His trial was a virtual
Speaker 1: replay of the Bernard proceedings. Meanwhile, back in New York City,
Speaker 1: esoteric psychologist doctor William Latson, who taught Hindu dancing as
Speaker 1: a way of freeing his female patients from their liberal restraints,
Speaker 1: committed suicide in his office. Combined with Bernard's notoriety and
Speaker 1: seized conviction, the lats and scandal turned public sentiment against
Speaker 1: yoga and mysticism. Newspapers began publishing feature length expose as
Speaker 1: blaming yoga for domestic infelicity, insanity, and death. The federal
Speaker 1: government opened official investigations against various swamis and Hindu priests.
Speaker 1: America was fascinated, horrified, and obsessed with what the Washington
Speaker 1: Post called the soul destroying poison of the East, the
Speaker 1: tragic flood of broken homes and hearts, disgrace and suicide.
Speaker 1: Yoga had become public enemy number one.
Speaker 2: There there she goes again, America.
Speaker 1: Good old America, Now, Katie. No moral panic is stronger
Speaker 1: than the desire of upper middle class white people to
Speaker 1: feel connected to something that makes them different from the
Speaker 1: people they play bridge with. So Bernard was eventually able
Speaker 1: to establish several successful yoga schools. He rebuilt his he
Speaker 1: rebuilt his cult. He became fabulously wealthy. He established a
Speaker 1: sizable compound with a herd of elephants in it. I
Speaker 1: believe somewhere like Upstate New York. It's in somewhere in
Speaker 1: the Northeast. And he worked with a number of the
Speaker 1: wealthiest people in the country at the time, including the
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt daughters. Yes, he's extremely successful. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn about this guy's whole life story, I really recommend
Speaker 1: Robert Loves the Great Um. It's an interesting, well written
Speaker 1: book about this fella. Yoga itself languished until the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, when enough distance from the moral panic years
Speaker 1: allowed a new generation to see it as simply a
Speaker 1: secular exercise remedy. It was still transmitted to people largely
Speaker 1: by white Americans like Richard Hitelman, and Lilias Folan. Television
Speaker 1: was key to this spread. It made it easy to
Speaker 1: show people different poses in a manner that seemed straightforward
Speaker 1: and absent the trappings of mysticism that had made Pierre
Speaker 1: Bernard seem so shady. Then the nineteen sixties hit, the
Speaker 1: h bees all started doing yoga and the New Age
Speaker 1: movement took off, and in the middle of that process,
Speaker 1: a young Indian immigrant would introduce the continent to a
Speaker 1: new version of yoga. His name was Bickram. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all that in part two.
Speaker 2: Katie, I cannot wait. I can't wait because it don't
Speaker 2: have to wait long. We're going to record it a media.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna talk about this in like ten minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the rest of you all have to wait.
Speaker 1: You get Yeah, you gotta wait like a day or so. Motherfuckers, shittheads.
Speaker 2: That was very interesting. Yeah, and I'm excited for the
Speaker 2: night here.
Speaker 1: So am I, Katie? You got any plug ub host plug? Wow?
Speaker 2: I guess so, I guess problematic, I guess I do.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: I'd like to tell you guys about our little show
Speaker 3: called some More News.
Speaker 2: You've heard me talk about it before.
Speaker 3: We have a channel called some More News that our
Speaker 3: friend Cody Johnston hosts and I'm on and we have
Speaker 3: a podcast called even more News. You can find both
Speaker 3: of them in the same audio feed. And you know,
Speaker 3: we're on social media and stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that too. And also i'd like to promote next week's.
Speaker 3: Episode of this show, part two of this episode. Oh cool,
Speaker 3: That's what I'd like to promote today. Robert anything we
Speaker 3: lost Robert? Oh, Robert, Scott, Roberts Gon. You know what, guys,
Speaker 3: that's it for us here behind the Master. Robert has
Speaker 3: dropped off off the zoom and now we've taken control.
Speaker 2: What I want to What do I want to do
Speaker 2: with this power? I don't know. He's back.
Speaker 1: Ah fuck ah fuck? Are we still recording or did
Speaker 1: we end? Well?
Speaker 2: We're ending now randing Now.
Speaker 3: Well, we said some really horrible ship about you, and
Speaker 3: I've asked you just to bleep.
Speaker 2: All of it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, that's good, that's good, that's good.
Speaker 3: I felt appropriate anyways, by motherfuckers, buy motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 2: Dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.