1
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:02,400
Speaker 1: Wow.

2
00:00:02,720 --> 00:00:08,240
Speaker 2: Wow, Wow, that's what we're starting with. Katie Stole admitting

3
00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:13,920
Speaker 2: to committing a crime. Sophie, can you get the DEA

4
00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:16,840
Speaker 2: on the horn real quick? Just just call them up.

5
00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:19,520
Speaker 2: We gotta we gotta report this now.

6
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,520
Speaker 3: It's legal behavior on your speed dial, not on mine.

7
00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:28,240
Speaker 4: I love Robert reporting me the DEA.

8
00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:34,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll show him your book on my bookshelf about drugs.

9
00:00:34,840 --> 00:00:38,440
Speaker 2: Hey, hey, hey, hey, whoa. You can't. You can't prove

10
00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:41,879
Speaker 2: ship just because it has my name in it. You

11
00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:45,559
Speaker 2: know that doesn't mean anything. Books are lies all the time.

12
00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:48,559
Speaker 4: Love Robert front page.

13
00:00:51,880 --> 00:01:00,680
Speaker 2: That doesn't prove ship, Katie. What have you heard about Chowtury?

14
00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:03,000
Speaker 5: Uh?

15
00:01:04,520 --> 00:01:08,720
Speaker 1: Not that much, Robert? Just really okay, okay, I actually haven't.

16
00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:11,720
Speaker 6: So they did commented from So there was a billboard

17
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:16,280
Speaker 6: in Los Angeles on Olympic and like Barrington for Bickram

18
00:01:16,360 --> 00:01:19,000
Speaker 6: yoga my entire life.

19
00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:27,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I feel like more it's it's a I

20
00:01:27,240 --> 00:01:29,760
Speaker 1: definitely have seen Bickram. I do have some sort of

21
00:01:29,800 --> 00:01:35,920
Speaker 1: vague association with negative association with the person. I don't

22
00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:39,040
Speaker 1: think it's because I'm here on behind the bastards and

23
00:01:39,160 --> 00:01:43,000
Speaker 1: I understand the uh what happens here.

24
00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:45,640
Speaker 4: On this show. But yeah, I don't got I haven't

25
00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:46,920
Speaker 4: got any information on him.

26
00:01:47,360 --> 00:01:49,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh okay, well that's this is great. That this

27
00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:52,400
Speaker 2: is great. You're coming in cold. He used to be,

28
00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:55,720
Speaker 2: as Sophie mentioned, like there were billboards for this guy,

29
00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:58,320
Speaker 2: like an entire style, like probably one of the most

30
00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:02,680
Speaker 2: like like famous and prominent types of yoga literally bear

31
00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:06,480
Speaker 2: like in you know, the American conception of yoga literally

32
00:02:06,520 --> 00:02:11,519
Speaker 2: bore his name for decades. And he is a fucking monster,

33
00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:16,680
Speaker 2: very bad dude. And uh, I mean obviously I started this.

34
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:18,560
Speaker 2: I initially been planning to kind of do a two

35
00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:22,639
Speaker 2: parter on Bickram, honestly, like I felt like in order

36
00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:25,840
Speaker 2: to do that, we would have just been repeating very

37
00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:29,240
Speaker 2: similar stories about abuse in a way that was not productive.

38
00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:32,079
Speaker 2: And then I found out about you know, Pierre Bernard

39
00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:33,480
Speaker 2: and was like, oh, I think this is actually a

40
00:02:33,520 --> 00:02:35,760
Speaker 2: really useful way to lead into the story of Bickram,

41
00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:38,520
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of continuity between the two guys,

42
00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:42,960
Speaker 2: and obviously they are not the only kind of yoga

43
00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:45,520
Speaker 2: cult leader abusive types. In fact, there was a one

44
00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:49,640
Speaker 2: of Bickram's students is currently like his yoga you know

45
00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:52,200
Speaker 2: cult that he created in New York City is like

46
00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:55,400
Speaker 2: falling apart under allegations of like horrible abuse. So like

47
00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:58,200
Speaker 2: this is there we are. That's part of why I

48
00:02:58,200 --> 00:02:59,480
Speaker 2: wanted to do it this way. It is like there's

49
00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:02,360
Speaker 2: a chain of these kind of guys taking advantage of

50
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:06,320
Speaker 2: the sort of trappings of yoga and you know, Hindu

51
00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:10,040
Speaker 2: and Buddhist mysticism in order to abuse people. And that's

52
00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:12,079
Speaker 2: that's bad. You know. We talk about we talk about

53
00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:14,079
Speaker 2: people doing that with Christianity all the time. It's worth

54
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:16,960
Speaker 2: talking about that when people do it using other you

55
00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:21,600
Speaker 2: know things. So from the very beginning of the physical

56
00:03:21,639 --> 00:03:24,960
Speaker 2: asana component of Hatha yoga, there was an element of

57
00:03:25,040 --> 00:03:27,600
Speaker 2: exhibitionism to it, right. We talked about this a little

58
00:03:27,639 --> 00:03:30,240
Speaker 2: bit in the last episode. This is like the yogi's

59
00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:32,840
Speaker 2: laying on beds of nails. That's a prominent example of this.

60
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,240
Speaker 2: As yoga in India became more centered around physical movements

61
00:03:37,280 --> 00:03:41,880
Speaker 2: and the early prescriptions against halfa faded, exhibitionist elements of

62
00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:44,600
Speaker 2: it became more common. A good example of this would

63
00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:48,880
Speaker 2: be Rebo Rakshet, an Indian bodybuilder and yoga advocate who

64
00:03:48,920 --> 00:03:51,960
Speaker 2: studied under a teacher named Bishnu Ghosh, who we will

65
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:55,320
Speaker 2: talk about more in a little bit. Riba immigrated to

66
00:03:55,440 --> 00:03:58,560
Speaker 2: Kolkata after the partition of India and with the withdrawal

67
00:03:58,600 --> 00:04:01,120
Speaker 2: of the English menace, and by the early nineteen fifties

68
00:04:01,200 --> 00:04:04,040
Speaker 2: she was winning titles and bodybuilding. She also started to

69
00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:06,680
Speaker 2: perform for circuses, where she would lift the legs of

70
00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:10,120
Speaker 2: elephants onto her chest and let them stand on her

71
00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:13,920
Speaker 2: without crushing her. She also like, let fully loaded. I'm

72
00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:16,880
Speaker 2: sure there's like some probably it's a lot that like

73
00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:18,960
Speaker 2: elephants are smart and don't want to crush people. I

74
00:04:18,960 --> 00:04:20,880
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm not an expert on like how this works.

75
00:04:21,400 --> 00:04:24,160
Speaker 2: She would also let fully loaded cars drive over her body.

76
00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:26,640
Speaker 2: And I bring this up because number one, it's pretty cool.

77
00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:28,240
Speaker 2: I think this stuff is neat. I'm a big fan

78
00:04:28,279 --> 00:04:33,000
Speaker 2: of like circusy shit, and it's also interesting to I

79
00:04:33,040 --> 00:04:35,000
Speaker 2: also bring it up because like to make the point that,

80
00:04:35,120 --> 00:04:39,560
Speaker 2: like you might say, the kind of circusy vibe of

81
00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:42,880
Speaker 2: public yoga has a pretty proud tradition back in India. Right.

82
00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:47,440
Speaker 2: Bikram Chowdery was born in Calcutta in British India in

83
00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:50,919
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four. I haven't ever seen a credible exact

84
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:54,040
Speaker 2: date for this guy's birthday. That's not really uncommon given

85
00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:57,800
Speaker 2: the time record keeping wasn't perfect. It's also the case

86
00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:00,360
Speaker 2: that Bickram is an inveterate liar, so I'm not sure

87
00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:02,640
Speaker 2: I would even trust a birth date if he gave it.

88
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:06,360
Speaker 2: But nineteen forty four is pretty seems like a pretty

89
00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:08,640
Speaker 2: good ballpark estimate for like when this guy was born.

90
00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:11,800
Speaker 2: We know very little about his early life life, save

91
00:05:11,839 --> 00:05:14,520
Speaker 2: that he claims he grew up quite poor. This is

92
00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:18,359
Speaker 2: certainly possible, even likely. In the version of his life

93
00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:22,360
Speaker 2: that he spun for interviewers, Bikram Chowdery describes the foundational

94
00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:25,880
Speaker 2: moments of his existence this way. I remember all the

95
00:05:25,880 --> 00:05:28,559
Speaker 2: Bengali kids used to play a little ball, and somehow

96
00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:31,200
Speaker 2: I crossed the alley and I saw Gosh's College of

97
00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:34,520
Speaker 2: Physical Education. About fifteen or twenty kids there are doing

98
00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:36,840
Speaker 2: the postures. So I said, wait a minute, I can

99
00:05:36,880 --> 00:05:38,840
Speaker 2: do those things a lot better than you are doing it.

100
00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:40,960
Speaker 2: There's a man who was sitting there. He says, hey,

101
00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,159
Speaker 2: you come here. What's your name? I said, Bikram. He said, wow,

102
00:05:44,440 --> 00:05:47,440
Speaker 2: come every day here, I will teach you more. And

103
00:05:47,480 --> 00:05:50,880
Speaker 2: that guy is Bishnu Ghosh we mentioned a little bit earlier.

104
00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:57,680
Speaker 2: He's the guy who trains Riba and Bishnu. Gosh is

105
00:05:57,720 --> 00:06:00,359
Speaker 2: the younger brother of a famous guru and an author

106
00:06:00,600 --> 00:06:05,960
Speaker 2: named Paramahansa Yogananda who wrote a book called Autobiography of

107
00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:09,280
Speaker 2: a Yogi that was published in nineteen forty six. This

108
00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:11,800
Speaker 2: is generally seen as the book that helped to widely

109
00:06:11,839 --> 00:06:15,719
Speaker 2: introduce yoga and meditation to Westerners in the sixties and seventies.

110
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:19,680
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs found Eastern philosophy as a teenager by reading

111
00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:23,240
Speaker 2: Autobiography of a Yoga and he was a vocal about

112
00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:26,520
Speaker 2: rereading it every single year. Mark Benioff, who is the

113
00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:29,240
Speaker 2: current CEO of Salesforce, has set on record that ad

114
00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:32,840
Speaker 2: Jobs's memorial service, you know, during his funeral, everyone who

115
00:06:32,839 --> 00:06:34,880
Speaker 2: attended was given a copy of the book. Like That's

116
00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:38,719
Speaker 2: how central Jobs considered this. In his own life, George

117
00:06:38,760 --> 00:06:41,760
Speaker 2: Harrison read Autobiography of a Yogi for the first time

118
00:06:41,800 --> 00:06:44,640
Speaker 2: in the late nineteen sixties when Ravi Shankar gave him

119
00:06:44,640 --> 00:06:49,320
Speaker 2: a copy. Elvis Presley readit it around the same time. Now, obviously,

120
00:06:49,320 --> 00:06:52,440
Speaker 2: I bet, I bet my grandma read it.

121
00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:55,000
Speaker 1: I've been hitting on this nugget that my grandma, my

122
00:06:55,080 --> 00:06:59,400
Speaker 1: great grandma, a white woman.

123
00:07:00,040 --> 00:07:02,440
Speaker 4: Well taught yoga in the sixties, started.

124
00:07:02,120 --> 00:07:05,159
Speaker 2: To oh sure, oh yeah, Like there's not even a question,

125
00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:07,440
Speaker 2: there's not even a question that she read that book

126
00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,680
Speaker 2: like it. It was it was like foundational to the

127
00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:14,840
Speaker 2: to not just like yoga, but just in general to

128
00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:17,160
Speaker 2: like the New Age movement, right is it? It's just

129
00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:21,320
Speaker 2: a massively influential text, and as you might expect among

130
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:25,560
Speaker 2: religious scholars, as among like historians who study yoga, among

131
00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:29,240
Speaker 2: people who are like experts in in like the actual

132
00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:33,800
Speaker 2: like like uh study of the religious traditions that kind

133
00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:37,040
Speaker 2: of autobiography of a yoga is talking about. There are

134
00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:40,320
Speaker 2: very mixed opinions about this book. There are some criticisms

135
00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:43,960
Speaker 2: that it's basically pure mysticism, filled with stories of miracles

136
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:47,440
Speaker 2: and other things you know, seen as impossible. But you know,

137
00:07:47,760 --> 00:07:50,160
Speaker 2: critiquing what is essentially a religious belief is not the

138
00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:52,040
Speaker 2: place of this podcast, so I'm not going to get

139
00:07:52,040 --> 00:07:55,360
Speaker 2: into it. Obviously, this is like an incredibly popular and

140
00:07:56,280 --> 00:08:00,840
Speaker 2: influential text about spirituality. Of course, there's there's a myriad

141
00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:05,160
Speaker 2: set of opinions on it, so it's worth giving this

142
00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:08,920
Speaker 2: overview of like Bishnu Gosh and his brother, because you know,

143
00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:11,160
Speaker 2: his brother, who writes autobiography of the Yogi, is a

144
00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:13,680
Speaker 2: little bit more of a high level kind of spiritual guy.

145
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:17,680
Speaker 2: Whereas Bishnu, while he's he's definitely using some of his

146
00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:22,520
Speaker 2: brother's ideas, he's very grounded in like physical sciences, and

147
00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:28,440
Speaker 2: his application of yoga is like really kind of relentlessly

148
00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:33,679
Speaker 2: focused on both like physical fitness and also physical rehabilitation.

149
00:08:34,080 --> 00:08:36,160
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote from the Yoga Pedia here.

150
00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:39,760
Speaker 2: Bishnu believed that the root of all disease is stress.

151
00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:42,400
Speaker 2: He thought that the body's energy centers around the spine,

152
00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:45,360
Speaker 2: so spinal health is key to physical, emotional, and mental health.

153
00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:48,679
Speaker 2: He combined weightlifting and bodybuilding with Hatha yoga practice to

154
00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:51,880
Speaker 2: promote physical and mental wellness. Bishnu Ghosh would work one

155
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:54,559
Speaker 2: on one with a student, diagnosing the problem and developing

156
00:08:54,559 --> 00:08:57,760
Speaker 2: a specific program to promote healing. His program was founded

157
00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:00,600
Speaker 2: on the eighty four yoga postures that his famous brother caudified.

158
00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:05,120
Speaker 2: And like, he seems pretty rad. Actually, everything I've read

159
00:09:05,160 --> 00:09:07,800
Speaker 2: about him is pretty good. He was a very big

160
00:09:07,840 --> 00:09:11,280
Speaker 2: advocate for a specific set of abdominal muscle ass isolation

161
00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:15,640
Speaker 2: exercises traditional to Hatha yoga that his brother taught, and

162
00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:18,559
Speaker 2: Gosh has kind of like he's got this very academic

163
00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:22,000
Speaker 2: and even scientific attitude towards integrating this stuff with modern

164
00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:26,000
Speaker 2: physical education. He trained at the University of Calcutta, and

165
00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:29,320
Speaker 2: he mixed these kind of ancient teachings about diet and

166
00:09:29,400 --> 00:09:34,000
Speaker 2: lifestyle with modern bodybuilding techniques from the West. And in fact,

167
00:09:34,320 --> 00:09:36,640
Speaker 2: as much of an influence as his brother's book was,

168
00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:39,920
Speaker 2: Goosh was also influenced by the book Muscle Control by

169
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:44,040
Speaker 2: a German bodybuilder named Max Sick. And I don't know,

170
00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:46,360
Speaker 2: like it's one of those things when I read about it,

171
00:09:46,360 --> 00:09:48,360
Speaker 2: it makes sense to me just in terms of like

172
00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:50,920
Speaker 2: what's worked for me. A big, a major focus of

173
00:09:51,120 --> 00:09:54,760
Speaker 2: my own exercise is just like lower backshit, because I

174
00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:57,480
Speaker 2: just kind of noticed as a kid that all of

175
00:09:57,520 --> 00:10:00,880
Speaker 2: my older male relatives like the thing that aged and

176
00:10:01,360 --> 00:10:04,079
Speaker 2: like them the most and cause them the most problems

177
00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:06,600
Speaker 2: and misery in their life was like fucking lower back pain.

178
00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 2: I think that's not an uncommon story.

179
00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:15,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what most people don't necessarily know is how

180
00:10:15,760 --> 00:10:19,079
Speaker 1: important core strength is to lower back and vice versa,

181
00:10:19,160 --> 00:10:22,679
Speaker 1: and that absolutely if the back those muscles are actually

182
00:10:22,760 --> 00:10:25,760
Speaker 1: part of your core or if they're not there, you know.

183
00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:28,400
Speaker 1: So there are some a lot of like I do

184
00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,439
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of activities. I know, I

185
00:10:30,760 --> 00:10:33,760
Speaker 1: kind of shit on my yoga practice in episode one.

186
00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:36,760
Speaker 1: I see it's important, but I have it incorporated in

187
00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:38,560
Speaker 1: everything I do and that deep.

188
00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:40,880
Speaker 4: Yeah anyway, Yeah.

189
00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:42,200
Speaker 2: No, I mean it makes total sense to me. The

190
00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:44,520
Speaker 2: idea that like you would kind of look at what

191
00:10:44,679 --> 00:10:47,960
Speaker 2: makes people get old and be like, oh, well, the

192
00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:50,080
Speaker 2: back is the key to all this makes total sense

193
00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:52,040
Speaker 2: to me because like that's what's going to fuck up

194
00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:54,319
Speaker 2: your mobility more than almost anything else.

195
00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:56,160
Speaker 4: Yeah.

196
00:10:56,240 --> 00:10:59,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, pretty rebish, new Ghosh, Pretty reasonable dude.

197
00:11:00,280 --> 00:11:03,400
Speaker 2: So this is the guy that little kid Bikram finds

198
00:11:03,559 --> 00:11:09,000
Speaker 2: and learns from. And yeah, it was Ghosh who kind

199
00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:11,960
Speaker 2: of first put together this list of twenty eight asanas

200
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,000
Speaker 2: and two breathing techniques that Bickram would later take to

201
00:11:15,040 --> 00:11:18,360
Speaker 2: the West. But for a time he was Bickram's teacher, and,

202
00:11:18,400 --> 00:11:22,560
Speaker 2: according to Bikram Chowdery, Bickram was an excellent student. He

203
00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:25,480
Speaker 2: credits Ghosh as being the greatest health culturist of the

204
00:11:25,480 --> 00:11:28,520
Speaker 2: twentieth century, a rare compliment for a man who most

205
00:11:28,520 --> 00:11:32,800
Speaker 2: frequently compliments himself. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I think it's

206
00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:34,360
Speaker 2: one of those things where like you got to talk

207
00:11:34,440 --> 00:11:37,280
Speaker 2: up your teacher because like it makes the case that

208
00:11:37,320 --> 00:11:38,360
Speaker 2: you're extra awesome.

209
00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:42,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is. That's a self serving compliment.

210
00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:44,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Bickram claims he was such a good

211
00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:47,360
Speaker 2: student that at age eleven, he entered and won his

212
00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:51,920
Speaker 2: first major yoga championship, becoming the All India Yoga Champion

213
00:11:52,040 --> 00:11:55,040
Speaker 2: that year. In competitive yoga is like a thing in India,

214
00:11:55,880 --> 00:11:58,439
Speaker 2: although as we'll talk about, not really in this period.

215
00:11:58,520 --> 00:12:02,559
Speaker 2: So he and Gosh, Bikram claimed later toured around the

216
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:05,600
Speaker 2: country showing off various feats of yoga prowess as a

217
00:12:05,640 --> 00:12:08,960
Speaker 2: mix of like Carnival act and evangelical revival for the

218
00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:12,320
Speaker 2: religion of yoga. Bickram claims his Guru told him to

219
00:12:12,320 --> 00:12:15,120
Speaker 2: refuse any payment for the work they were doing and

220
00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:18,120
Speaker 2: that he lived without any material possessions at this time.

221
00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:22,559
Speaker 2: If this is true, it's not a habit he's stuck with. Yeah.

222
00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:26,040
Speaker 2: Bikram also claims that he won the All India Yoga

223
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:28,800
Speaker 2: Championships for the next two years in a row. When

224
00:12:28,840 --> 00:12:33,079
Speaker 2: talking about this three years of purported victories, he said unbeaten.

225
00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:37,360
Speaker 2: The whole country complains if Bicctram competes, nobody else ever wins,

226
00:12:37,640 --> 00:12:41,840
Speaker 2: so they make me retire. Now, this is definitely a lie,

227
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:43,640
Speaker 2: like the claim that he was just so good that

228
00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:46,280
Speaker 2: he was forced to quit by, you know, the yoga

229
00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:49,880
Speaker 2: powers that be in India. There's an Indian journalist named

230
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:53,520
Speaker 2: Chandrama Paul who dug into his backstory with rigor. She

231
00:12:53,640 --> 00:12:56,000
Speaker 2: was unable to find evidence that there was any sort

232
00:12:56,040 --> 00:13:00,080
Speaker 2: of All Yoga Champion All India Yoga Championship in the

233
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:03,440
Speaker 2: country at this time that matches his description. The best

234
00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,840
Speaker 2: evidence I found suggests that like it was several years

235
00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:08,640
Speaker 2: later that like the first competition that kind of matches

236
00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:11,480
Speaker 2: this came into existence and he probably just sort of

237
00:13:11,520 --> 00:13:13,760
Speaker 2: retroactively claimed that he'd won it because he knew the

238
00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:16,760
Speaker 2: record keeping was bad. The Internet wasn't a thing, you know,

239
00:13:16,800 --> 00:13:18,640
Speaker 2: when he started doing this, it was an easy lie

240
00:13:18,679 --> 00:13:22,000
Speaker 2: to get away with. In other versions of the story

241
00:13:22,040 --> 00:13:24,120
Speaker 2: he would later tell, he would claim that he was

242
00:13:24,200 --> 00:13:27,400
Speaker 2: asked by the head judge of the competition, yoga luminary

243
00:13:27,559 --> 00:13:31,240
Speaker 2: Bksi Inngar, to retire from competing in order to give

244
00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:35,559
Speaker 2: other contestants a chance. Now, most of the version of

245
00:13:35,559 --> 00:13:37,680
Speaker 2: the Bickram story I'm giving you is from a recorded

246
00:13:37,720 --> 00:13:40,000
Speaker 2: interview he gave that was used by the producers of

247
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:43,520
Speaker 2: a Netflix documentary about the man. But Bickram's claims about

248
00:13:43,559 --> 00:13:46,000
Speaker 2: himself are not consistent over time, and I'm going to

249
00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:49,080
Speaker 2: quote from a write up by NPR summarizing some of them. Here.

250
00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:52,920
Speaker 2: In some accounts, he started training at three, sometimes at six,

251
00:13:53,200 --> 00:13:56,520
Speaker 2: other times he won the championship at eleven, twelve or thirteen.

252
00:13:56,880 --> 00:13:59,400
Speaker 2: And his famous yoga sequence, the very core of Bickram

253
00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:02,920
Speaker 2: yoga was actually not so much developed or designed by Bickram,

254
00:14:02,920 --> 00:14:05,960
Speaker 2: but largely observed it with only the slightest of changes

255
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:08,240
Speaker 2: from a longer series of ninety one postures that have

256
00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:11,120
Speaker 2: been firmly in the public domain for the last hundred years.

257
00:14:12,320 --> 00:14:15,319
Speaker 2: So you know, this is like not an uncommon kind

258
00:14:15,320 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 2: of grifter backstory that you would like.

259
00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:19,800
Speaker 4: Like a real George Santo's.

260
00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:23,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's Santo saying pretty already here. The

261
00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:26,760
Speaker 2: most common Bickram story after this point says that he

262
00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:31,880
Speaker 2: became next a professional bodybuilder. Again, you always have to

263
00:14:31,920 --> 00:14:35,160
Speaker 2: double check everything this guy says, because he's an inveterate liar,

264
00:14:35,360 --> 00:14:38,600
Speaker 2: But there is some evidence for this, namely, there's photos

265
00:14:38,640 --> 00:14:42,000
Speaker 2: of him looking super jacked and lifting heavy weights. So

266
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:44,960
Speaker 2: I can confirm at least that Bikram Chowdery was once

267
00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:51,440
Speaker 2: yoked as absolute fuck like yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely definitely

268
00:14:51,600 --> 00:14:54,720
Speaker 2: was swoll at one point. Yeah, it's like Alex Jones,

269
00:14:54,760 --> 00:14:56,760
Speaker 2: where it's like, well he was. He was in fact

270
00:14:56,840 --> 00:15:01,880
Speaker 2: shredded for a period of time, you know. Uh. So

271
00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:05,280
Speaker 2: he claims that b Ksi Nngar, who's he says is

272
00:15:05,320 --> 00:15:07,360
Speaker 2: the guy that told him to stop doing yoga so

273
00:15:07,400 --> 00:15:09,920
Speaker 2: other people could win, advised him to do this, and

274
00:15:09,920 --> 00:15:12,920
Speaker 2: that he quickly went on to break records in powerlifting. Now,

275
00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:16,120
Speaker 2: this is probably a lie because there's no evidence of it,

276
00:15:16,360 --> 00:15:19,600
Speaker 2: and whenever he says something without evidence, it's definitely a lie.

277
00:15:21,040 --> 00:15:24,240
Speaker 2: NPR continues and these are you know, his claims. He

278
00:15:24,360 --> 00:15:27,320
Speaker 2: ran marathons with no training, he became a competitive weightlifter

279
00:15:27,400 --> 00:15:30,440
Speaker 2: and broke records. He continued public exhibitions, drawing larger and

280
00:15:30,560 --> 00:15:33,360
Speaker 2: larger crowd, stretching out over a bed of nails, dragging

281
00:15:33,400 --> 00:15:36,480
Speaker 2: automobiles up and down Calcutta streets, and slowing his heart

282
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:40,560
Speaker 2: rate until he could be buried. Alive around this time. Yeah,

283
00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:42,560
Speaker 2: and this is like he's not the only guy doing

284
00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:44,400
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. These are these are like common

285
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:47,160
Speaker 2: sort of like I don't know, tricks. Seems like a

286
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:49,600
Speaker 2: little bit reductive, but you get what I'm saying, Like

287
00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:53,320
Speaker 2: these are common like at performances that that people are

288
00:15:53,360 --> 00:15:56,240
Speaker 2: doing in the country around this time. It's not He's

289
00:15:56,280 --> 00:15:59,440
Speaker 2: not the only guy doing this sort of stuff. I'm

290
00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:02,240
Speaker 2: going to continue that in pr quote. Around this time,

291
00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:05,280
Speaker 2: Bickram learned he didn't need to sleep. From here, things

292
00:16:05,320 --> 00:16:08,840
Speaker 2: get weird. At age seventeen, during a routine training session,

293
00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,480
Speaker 2: Bickram slipped and dropped a three hundred and eighty pound

294
00:16:11,560 --> 00:16:14,720
Speaker 2: weight on his knee, crushing his patella like a seashell.

295
00:16:15,320 --> 00:16:17,280
Speaker 2: Doctors who were rushed to the side of the young

296
00:16:17,320 --> 00:16:22,520
Speaker 2: celebrity declared he'd never walk again. Now, like, that's about

297
00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:26,080
Speaker 2: what I deadlift at this present moment. I don't know

298
00:16:26,160 --> 00:16:29,560
Speaker 2: how you would drop a weight because I think in

299
00:16:29,640 --> 00:16:31,280
Speaker 2: other things that I've read, well, I mean, that's not

300
00:16:31,360 --> 00:16:34,480
Speaker 2: really that much. I think in other like it because

301
00:16:34,520 --> 00:16:36,200
Speaker 2: I think it was like he's claimed that he was

302
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:38,200
Speaker 2: basically like deadlifting at the time. He may have been

303
00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:41,040
Speaker 2: doing like an Olympic lift though, but like I either way,

304
00:16:41,080 --> 00:16:43,040
Speaker 2: I don't know how you actually crush your knee with

305
00:16:43,080 --> 00:16:47,480
Speaker 2: the weight, Like I just difficult. It seems hard to

306
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:50,800
Speaker 2: drop it on one knee like that, Like it's easy

307
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:53,240
Speaker 2: to injure yourself doing lifts like that, but like I

308
00:16:53,280 --> 00:16:55,640
Speaker 2: don't know how you shatter a single knee that way.

309
00:16:55,880 --> 00:16:57,840
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't know how

310
00:16:57,880 --> 00:16:58,360
Speaker 2: you do it.

311
00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:02,640
Speaker 4: The mechanics are eluding me. That's for you.

312
00:17:02,800 --> 00:17:04,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a little baffling to try to like

313
00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:08,720
Speaker 2: work out in your head. He claims that, like the doctors,

314
00:17:08,760 --> 00:17:11,280
Speaker 2: because he was, like he's in his version of events,

315
00:17:11,280 --> 00:17:13,600
Speaker 2: he was a super famous weightlifter, and so all these

316
00:17:13,640 --> 00:17:15,960
Speaker 2: doctors run up to the stage when he hurts himself

317
00:17:16,359 --> 00:17:18,920
Speaker 2: and they you know, do a scan, and he says

318
00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:21,679
Speaker 2: his knee is broken into a thousand pieces. And he

319
00:17:21,720 --> 00:17:23,960
Speaker 2: gets told by these doctors always never even going to

320
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:26,359
Speaker 2: be able to walk again, and he's like, no, I

321
00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:30,760
Speaker 2: won't accept this. I will learn to walk again. And

322
00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:34,400
Speaker 2: so he claims that, like you know, is in kind

323
00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:37,680
Speaker 2: of this journey to prove them wrong. He heals himself

324
00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:41,639
Speaker 2: by discovering this mix of asanas and breathing techniques that

325
00:17:41,720 --> 00:17:43,960
Speaker 2: he's later going that are later going to become what's

326
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:46,879
Speaker 2: known as bickram yoga or you know in some cases

327
00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:49,439
Speaker 2: hot yoga, right that he invins it in order to

328
00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:53,720
Speaker 2: heal his shattered knee. This in almost this like supernatural fashion,

329
00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:56,200
Speaker 2: and like I'm not going to say, like, if you've

330
00:17:56,200 --> 00:17:58,480
Speaker 2: got bad knees, I think there's there's different things in

331
00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:00,760
Speaker 2: yoga that can be helpful with that. I don't think

332
00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:04,040
Speaker 2: doing hot yoga is gonna heal your knee if it

333
00:18:04,119 --> 00:18:07,639
Speaker 2: shattered into a thousand pieces. I question that.

334
00:18:09,520 --> 00:18:15,400
Speaker 1: No, honestly, Yeah, hot yoga gives you a risk of

335
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:19,360
Speaker 1: injuring those muscles because you don't you're so lu you're

336
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:21,800
Speaker 1: so warm that you don't know when you've gone too far.

337
00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:25,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. AnyWho, Yeah, then yeah, there's a bunch of risks

338
00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:29,159
Speaker 2: of overtraining with it. Yeah. But he says that in

339
00:18:29,280 --> 00:18:33,000
Speaker 2: six months of doing this yoga his leg is all better.

340
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:36,480
Speaker 2: But he's sadly is no longer jacked because he had

341
00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:40,200
Speaker 2: to give up weightlifting. So that's tragic. We hate to

342
00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:43,520
Speaker 2: see it. So Ghosh told him to travel to Mumbai

343
00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:46,280
Speaker 2: next and open a shop and teach this marvelous new

344
00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:49,800
Speaker 2: healing sequence to all comers, using his injury as proof

345
00:18:49,840 --> 00:18:53,359
Speaker 2: of his prowess. His yoga techniques exploded in popularity and

346
00:18:53,400 --> 00:18:56,320
Speaker 2: in short order people were calling him Yoga Raj, the

347
00:18:56,400 --> 00:19:00,160
Speaker 2: Guru of Mumbai. He continued on this path for several

348
00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:03,560
Speaker 2: years until Bishnu Goosh got sick or in some versions

349
00:19:03,560 --> 00:19:06,000
Speaker 2: of the story, Gosh decided to die and induce a

350
00:19:06,040 --> 00:19:09,959
Speaker 2: heart attack and himself at age sixty nine. I don't know,

351
00:19:10,320 --> 00:19:12,359
Speaker 2: Bickram is like, yeah, he decided that that was the

352
00:19:12,440 --> 00:19:16,639
Speaker 2: least painful way to die and he was done being alive, which, honestly, boss,

353
00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:18,840
Speaker 2: move if that's the case, if.

354
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,680
Speaker 4: You control and you're able to do it.

355
00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:24,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, man, Hey, I'm gonna go worse ways to

356
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:27,760
Speaker 2: leave the world. Sure, And also sixty nine pretty funny

357
00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:32,760
Speaker 2: age to make it too, so yeah, yeah nice. Bikram

358
00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:36,680
Speaker 2: claims that before he went, Ghosh made him swear an

359
00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:39,560
Speaker 2: oath quote. My Guru took my hand and told me

360
00:19:39,600 --> 00:19:42,760
Speaker 2: something in English which he never spoke. Promise me you

361
00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:46,119
Speaker 2: will complete my incomplete job, he said. He meant bringing

362
00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:48,080
Speaker 2: yoga to the rest of the world, to the West

363
00:19:48,119 --> 00:19:52,000
Speaker 2: and America, and I replied, yes, I promise I will.

364
00:19:53,240 --> 00:19:55,400
Speaker 2: And again there's no evidence that, I mean, he definitely

365
00:19:55,400 --> 00:19:58,159
Speaker 2: worked with Ghosh. There's no evidence that Gosh was like

366
00:19:58,480 --> 00:19:59,880
Speaker 2: in the you know, at the end of his life.

367
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:02,240
Speaker 2: You must you must promise me that you'll go to

368
00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:05,639
Speaker 2: America and teach them yoga. You'll go, You'll go, please,

369
00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:08,719
Speaker 2: like your sacred duty is to go to Hollywood and

370
00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,480
Speaker 2: teach fucking you know, what's his name? The guy from

371
00:20:11,800 --> 00:20:15,080
Speaker 2: Er George Clooney had a fucking stretch better here.

372
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:18,080
Speaker 1: It's also like, if this Ghostbella is as enlightened and

373
00:20:18,119 --> 00:20:21,679
Speaker 1: wonderful as he's being made out to be, and I'd like,

374
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:26,119
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten to the specifics of Bikerm yet, but yeah,

375
00:20:26,240 --> 00:20:28,119
Speaker 1: I've got an idea of where this is going.

376
00:20:28,760 --> 00:20:31,080
Speaker 4: Hi, Yeah, I don't think that he would be this.

377
00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:35,720
Speaker 1: He must know this person's character, like no any him

378
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:40,640
Speaker 1: as wanting money, all the money, and yeah.

379
00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:41,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you have to assume, you know, at

380
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:43,800
Speaker 2: this point, Bickram's claiming that he's, you know, he has

381
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:46,480
Speaker 2: no money. He's just kind of living, you know, off

382
00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:49,840
Speaker 2: of donations and refusing to accumulate any any kind of

383
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,960
Speaker 2: wealth or possessions. Again, there's also no evidence that this

384
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:56,760
Speaker 2: is true, but perhaps it was. People go on go

385
00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:59,920
Speaker 2: through journeys. It is kind of worth noting the yo

386
00:21:00,320 --> 00:21:02,760
Speaker 2: he is doing, the yoga that he like that Ghosh

387
00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:05,040
Speaker 2: is doing that he kind of like takes is not

388
00:21:05,119 --> 00:21:07,960
Speaker 2: really hot yoga. Yet he's doing it. Obviously, he's doing

389
00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:10,320
Speaker 2: it in like Calcutta, which is an extremely fucking hot

390
00:21:10,359 --> 00:21:12,000
Speaker 2: part of the world. He's doing it in Mumbai, also

391
00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 2: very hot part of the world. But it's not they

392
00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:18,760
Speaker 2: are not heating up where they're doing these sessions specifically, right,

393
00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:22,680
Speaker 2: That's not a part of it. Yeah, So it's it's

394
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:27,040
Speaker 2: worth kind of looking at the story as we kind

395
00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:29,359
Speaker 2: of go into this next phase of Bickram's life of

396
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:32,120
Speaker 2: Bikram Chowdhurry as not just the story of a guy

397
00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 2: who you know later becomes an abusive cult leader. That

398
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:38,280
Speaker 2: is an element of this, but the way that he's

399
00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:42,200
Speaker 2: crafted this kind of story about his early background also

400
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:45,680
Speaker 2: owes a lot to kind of long held storytelling traditions

401
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:49,760
Speaker 2: in Indian culture. Chandrympaul, who's that journalist I quoted earlier

402
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 2: when interviewed about her research into Bickram, is always careful

403
00:21:53,119 --> 00:21:56,200
Speaker 2: to point out that The fabulous and often impossible stories

404
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:59,320
Speaker 2: he weaves for listeners are reminiscent of the many tall

405
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:03,040
Speaker 2: tales in popular Indian books, movies, and folklore. We grew

406
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:05,800
Speaker 2: up with characters like this. To actually find someone in

407
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:07,720
Speaker 2: the flesh and blood who was capable of spinning these

408
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:13,120
Speaker 2: yarns was quite something, and you know, yeah, it's it's

409
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 2: it's like if you if you spend a lot of time,

410
00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 2: like in India, talking like just like about different kind

411
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:24,479
Speaker 2: of historical figures and stuff, you'll encounter some pieces of this.

412
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 2: Like I under like, it makes sense to me that

413
00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 2: like she's kind of trying to integrate him into this

414
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:32,200
Speaker 2: this kind of tradition of sort of like local folklore,

415
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:36,440
Speaker 2: because you can't really understand how he's portraying himself sort

416
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,679
Speaker 2: of without that. It's not it's not quite the same

417
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:41,000
Speaker 2: as as like the way in which like a George

418
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 2: Santos lies in.

419
00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: The United States and you know, me little bit stand

420
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:47,160
Speaker 1: there's a cultural suspension of disbelief.

421
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:51,320
Speaker 2: Yeah maybe maybe a little bit, yeah.

422
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 1: You know, an acceptance, And it's not it's not the

423
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 1: way we see a George Santos as just being a liar.

424
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also not going to do most of this

425
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:01,920
Speaker 2: lying over there, So maybe I think it might it

426
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:05,000
Speaker 2: might be more. I think what Sandrina is saying is

427
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 2: more that like, well, he probably gets to some extent,

428
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:12,240
Speaker 2: he's probably kind of inspired in like how he's framing

429
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:14,479
Speaker 2: himself by the way these stories of these other kind

430
00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:19,320
Speaker 2: of folkloric figures are told. Yeah, which makes sense. You

431
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 2: know what else makes sense, Katie?

432
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: Uh, using podcasts to sell stuff.

433
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 2: Using podcasts to sell Who better to tell you what

434
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:35,680
Speaker 2: to spend your money on? Then two people whose primary

435
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 2: job is sitting in front of a microphone and you know,

436
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,880
Speaker 2: talking about shitty people. Where else can you learn what

437
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 2: products and services are are going to finally make you happy?

438
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: Absolutely, this is probably the only place that you can

439
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: possibly be advertised to, I think these days.

440
00:23:56,240 --> 00:24:00,720
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Yeah, It's it's very hard to find, you know,

441
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 2: people whose life experience, uh is largely limited to the

442
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 2: entertainment industry, who can tell you, you know, here's here's

443
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:14,359
Speaker 2: what you can spend your money on to finally be happy.

444
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:16,120
Speaker 2: You know, this is this is it folks.

445
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:18,720
Speaker 4: But you can trust us.

446
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can trust us. We we have your best

447
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:23,399
Speaker 2: interests at heart, that's all, Katie and I talk about,

448
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:26,399
Speaker 2: you know, in private, is your best interests? What do

449
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 2: you think? What do you think is good for for

450
00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 2: our fans? Katie? You know that's what we ask ourselves. Anyway,

451
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 2: spend some fucking money, you you sheep. Ah, we're back.

452
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:43,400
Speaker 4: I hope spend your money.

453
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope you sheep are happy.

454
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:50,160
Speaker 4: Well, code bastards. I don't know.

455
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, Katie, I've got I've heard this new technique that

456
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:56,200
Speaker 2: I'm using with the fans. It's called negging. You heard

457
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 2: of this? Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?

458
00:24:58,200 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 2: It works great?

459
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 4: Heard about it? Yes, it does work very well, unfortunately.

460
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm big into it these days. It's a it's

461
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:11,640
Speaker 2: it's great. Really, it does work so groundbreaking. Yeah, yeah,

462
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 2: it's good. I'm trying it everywhere now. The other day,

463
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 2: I was at the gas station and you know, in Oregon,

464
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to fill your own gas up because

465
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 2: that's considered dangerous and sketchy for for reasons that are

466
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 2: impossible to explain. But I'm at the gas station and

467
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,200
Speaker 2: I just kind of started, you know, negging my gas

468
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 2: station attendant as he was filling up my car, and uh,

469
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:36,880
Speaker 2: you know, I gotta I got a dollar off. Yeah,

470
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 2: I think you just want to rest me. Yeah, there

471
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 2: you go.

472
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 1: See everybody get out and Robert, what are you doing.

473
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:45,679
Speaker 1: Everyone's going to become absolute assholes.

474
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the world. I want to say that

475
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:53,480
Speaker 2: ship's disrespect Sophie, Sophie, it's the it's the only way

476
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 2: to destroy the power of the pick up artists. If

477
00:25:56,640 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 2: everyone is negging, then their teachings will have no worse

478
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 2: behind them.

479
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 3: Be nice, to be nice to the gas station workers.

480
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 6: Wow, okay, yes, last time I got gas, I got

481
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 6: a great boomer joke from my They were like, do

482
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 6: you want to receipt? And I was like, no, thank you.

483
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 6: They're like, that's cool. Receipts are for boomers. God, that

484
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 6: was a product and a service, Thank you, sir.

485
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 2: It is so funny, like this fucking state, like an Oregon,

486
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 2: like you can open carry, you know, a sword, should

487
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 2: you wish, completely unregulated. You can buy still basically any

488
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 2: kind of firearm that's legal in the United States. But

489
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,640
Speaker 2: if you want to pump your own gas, that's a problem. Yeah,

490
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 2: the state's got issues with that. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

491
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 4: I love it. I would it would take me a

492
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 4: minute to adjust. But I think it would be thought

493
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:55,919
Speaker 4: I would hate it. It's delightful.

494
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 2: See, I hate it. But I like pumping my own gas.

495
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 3: Because you're knowing WEIRDO continue.

496
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 2: I like to get out, you know, the start pumping gas,

497
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 2: light a couple of cigarettes. You know, sometimes I just

498
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 2: toss lit cigarettes around the gas station. It's a good time.

499
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 2: It's a good time. So we're talking about Bickram Chowdery.

500
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 2: So at any rate, we can say with some certainty

501
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:20,919
Speaker 2: that Bickram next left India for Japan, and this is

502
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 2: where he would make what is, by some accounts, the

503
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 2: only real breakthrough of his career. He found the winters

504
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 2: in Japan horrible. Again, This is a guy who grows

505
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 2: up in India in particularly hot parts of India, and

506
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 2: Japan has real rough winters. Right, large parts of Japan

507
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:41,439
Speaker 2: get extremely fucking cold. So he is miserable there and

508
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 2: he has difficulty. He finds he has difficulty performing a

509
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 2: number of his the postures that he's trying to do

510
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 2: because he's like shivering so badly. So he decides to

511
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 2: bring yes fucking shattered, ask me. He decides to bring

512
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 2: in space heaters to class first, just to keep himself warm,

513
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 2: and then he notices that, like, the students who are

514
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:05,719
Speaker 2: kind of nearer to the heater are like having an

515
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 2: easier time, So he puts more heaters in the room,

516
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 2: and he notices that the warmer he makes the room

517
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 2: the easier of a time, his students have locking up

518
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 2: their knees and touching the floor with their palms and

519
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 2: doing you know, a number of the movements. Over time,

520
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 2: he keeps turning the room off hotter and hotter and hotter,

521
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,640
Speaker 2: until the temperature in the room matched the vicious heat

522
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 2: of Calcutta, where he'd first trained, And he seems to

523
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 2: have started at around like ninety five degrees, but eventually

524
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 2: settled on one oh five, although sometimes he'd crank things

525
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 2: up to like one ten. Now there is an extent

526
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:37,760
Speaker 2: to which heat, you know, you can like it like

527
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 2: you put a heating pad on, like if you've got

528
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 2: like a stiff knee or something, and you'll notice that

529
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 2: it like makes it easier to move. Heat can benefit

530
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 2: movement and make it easier for people with conditions like

531
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 2: arthritis to move. But as you noted earlier, Katie, that

532
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 2: can there's sometimes that can be helpful. It can allow

533
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 2: people to do the kind of stretching and exercise that

534
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,479
Speaker 2: can you know, help deal with and entreat and improve

535
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 2: their condition. But also it makes it easier to overtrain,

536
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 2: right like if you're because like maybe you'll go a

537
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 2: little like too hard, harder than you ought to than

538
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 2: you would if you like.

539
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

540
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: The yoga that I have perhaps the most well not

541
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: the most I've done some heated yoga, and there are

542
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: absolutely some benefits to it.

543
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you get a hell of a workout.

544
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, hell of a workout.

545
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: It make it made me incredibly nauseous though, oh yeah,

546
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: multiple times. Uh, And you're like so far away from

547
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: the door and there's all these people dealing with their

548
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: own issues in the heat, and you're like, how do

549
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: I get out of here?

550
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 4: Byfore I throw up over everyone?

551
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 2: No, And that's the that's the part. So there are again,

552
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 2: like there's benefits to like doing yoga in warmer rooms,

553
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 2: the actual medfical benefits well, uh, where off will before

554
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees and like by the time you get

555
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 2: up that high you are like there. You know, there

556
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 2: are some benefits to it, but like there's serious risk

557
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 2: of like heat stroke, of overtraining people die doing this,

558
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 2: you know, and in part because like it is a

559
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,840
Speaker 2: it can be traumatic for your body to exercise like

560
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 2: that in that kind of heat, especially if you're not

561
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 2: drinking enough water, if you're not like you know, taking

562
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 2: proper precautions. Not that it's bad for everybody, but like

563
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 2: a number of people are going to have problems in

564
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 2: that kind of environment. That said, when you're when you

565
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 2: put people in that kind of situation when it's one

566
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 2: hundred one hundred and five hundred and ten and they're

567
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 2: doing these intense stretches in this like boiling heat with

568
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 2: this group of people and you've got you know, as

569
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 2: you as you stated, Katie, it can make you feel

570
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 2: like you're like locked in and trapped. But also if

571
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 2: you can, if you push through that, there's a kind

572
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 2: of physical elation even euphoria that a lot of people

573
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 2: experience when they're doing that. And also because it is

574
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 2: so difficult, there's like a kind of trauma bonding that

575
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 2: you can get with other people you're doing And so

576
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 2: it it's addictive, right, yeah, you know, like there's a yeah,

577
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 2: there's a degree which it's just deeply addictive. The inciting

578
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 2: incident for Bickram's rise to power, wealth and influence, and

579
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 2: his version of events was a long trip that President

580
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 2: Richard Milhouse Nixon took to Southeast Asia that included a

581
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 2: visit to Japan in nineteen seventy three. This was to

582
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 2: shore up the increasingly toxic relations between our two countries

583
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 2: due to his agreement to visit China. He's like, you know,

584
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 2: in a number of parts of the region at this time.

585
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 2: It's kind of unclear where Bickram is supposed to have

586
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 2: met him, but Bickram claims that during Nixon's time in

587
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 2: the region, he's you know, he's riddled with phlebitis, which

588
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 2: is an inflammation of a vein that can It's usually

589
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:47,719
Speaker 2: not serious, but it can cause serious health issues. And

590
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 2: you know, Nixon is you wouldn't call him our healthiest president, right.

591
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 2: I sure Nixon is, like he claims to have like

592
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 2: that his phlebitis is like reared up to such a

593
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 2: level that he like might lose his leg at some point.

594
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 2: You could find like news articles about this, but they

595
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 2: don't come out until he's like getting pardoned by Gerald Ford.

596
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 2: So I think there's a degree to which it's like, oh,

597
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 2: was Nixon just sort of pretending that he was super

598
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: sick in order to get people to like, you know,

599
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 2: maybe want to lay off him to get like sympathy.

600
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: But really that's a pr move I've ever heard one.

601
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 2: And Bikram doesn't start making these claims about Nixon until

602
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 2: kind of like years after this would have happened, So

603
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 2: it looks like what happened. Nixon is in Southeast Asia

604
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 2: before his like visit with Mao, and then a couple

605
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 2: of years later when he gets forced out of office,

606
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 2: he he like talks about how bad his pholebitis is

607
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 2: to get sympathy, and Bickram is like, oh, yeah, you know,

608
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 2: when he was in Southeast Asia, Nixon like his people

609
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: brought me to him, They like flew me out to

610
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 2: him so that I could like help him with his

611
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:00,239
Speaker 2: phlebitis and I got him in a swimming pool and

612
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 2: we did yoga together, right. I think in one version

613
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 2: of the story, he spends like four days with Nixon

614
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 2: and that like he like basically teaches him a set

615
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 2: of asanas that Nixon can do in order to like

616
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 2: make his flebbitis better, and it works so well that

617
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 2: the President can't tell any longer yellow, which was his

618
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 2: good leg and which was his bad leg. Because Bickram's

619
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 2: just so good at this stuff. And Bickram says that,

620
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:26,440
Speaker 2: you know, tells Nixon, if you do your yoga regularly,

621
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 2: the problem won't persist. Which number one, the idea, the

622
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 2: very idea that Dick Nixon ever did yoga, I find inconceivable,

623
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 2: Like I simply don't believe it. But it's also like,

624
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 2: you know, after this point he will continue to complain

625
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 2: about his phlebitis, which I guess if you're Bickram, you

626
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 2: could be like, well, you know, Nixon didn't keep his

627
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: yoga up or whatever, Like I don't know if you're

628
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 2: if you're a kind of liar, you can find ways

629
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 2: to explain this away. In any case, Bickram claims the

630
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 2: president was so great that he expedited and signed off

631
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 2: on a special green card just for Bickram. In some

632
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 2: versions of the story, he like greets Bickram on the

633
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 2: runway when the yogi flies into the United States to

634
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 2: start his first school. I gotta tell you right now,

635
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 2: we're talking about like all of the different like timing

636
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:18,399
Speaker 2: shit on this. There's no way this happened, Yeah, right,

637
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 2: like this absolutely did not occur. There's no evidence the

638
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 2: two men ever met Researchers have talked to the Nixon

639
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 2: Library and were like, hey, this like very prominent yoga

640
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 2: guy is claiming that like Nixon got him a green

641
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 2: card and he like cured Nixon's phil bidis with yoga.

642
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 2: Is there any evidence that the two even talk to

643
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 2: each other? And the Nixon Library folks like went through

644
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 2: their records looking for any evidence that the two men

645
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 2: ever met a correspondent and there's just there's absolutely nothing.

646
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 4: Now you feel like there would be something.

647
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:49,759
Speaker 2: You feel like because like, look, Nixon covered up a

648
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 2: lot of shit about his presidency, but I don't feel

649
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 2: like he would have fought to cover this up like this,

650
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 2: This couldn't couldn't be a priority for Dick to like

651
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 2: ide yeah, And it's like it's it's it's fascinating because I.

652
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 4: Would watch a movie about this relationship though.

653
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,720
Speaker 2: I would, Yeah, I would like a little buddy comedy

654
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 2: Dick Nixon and is like yoga guru hanging out in whatever,

655
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:14,439
Speaker 2: Indonesia or something.

656
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:20,479
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, Nick k I don't know why, Nick Cage, but.

657
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:24,720
Speaker 2: No, Nick k Oh Nick Cage as Nixon I feel

658
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 2: like we do deserve that.

659
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: Like I basically I think that's the level because we

660
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 1: don't want to do any reverence to Nixon.

661
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 4: No, no, no, let Nick Cage do his thing to Nixon.

662
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 2: Nick k like Nick Cage just doing drunk Nixon, like

663
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 2: learning how to do yoga like that's yeah, that's a

664
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 2: that's that's perfect.

665
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 5: Maybe that would be casting. Okay, continue again, Hulu hit

666
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 5: us up. You know we've got this ship. So Bickram,

667
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 5: he does make it to the United States, he does

668
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 5: get a green card. I just there's no evidence that

669
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 5: fucking Nixon signed and Bickram launched his Yoga College of

670
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 5: India at a small North Beach studio in San Francisco

671
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy two, which again doesn't seem to time

672
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,800
Speaker 5: out with when Nixon was in Southeast Asia.

673
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 4: But whatever that, it does time out with my great grandma.

674
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 2: It does time out with your great grandma. I've also, again,

675
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,239
Speaker 2: there's always multiple shit. I found some articles that say

676
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 2: Bickram's first studio was in Beverly Hills. I think it

677
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:28,879
Speaker 2: was in San Francisco, but it's a little unclear either way.

678
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:30,399
Speaker 2: You get the idea.

679
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 4: Pretty sure she was still in San Francisco at that point.

680
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a good chance she was aware of

681
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 2: this guy. So his yoga studio, with its heaters and

682
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 2: boiling temperatures, an intense series of stretches and breeding exercises,

683
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:48,800
Speaker 2: took the new health conscious California set by storm. He

684
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 2: hits the California New Age community like a fucking bomb.

685
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from The Guardian here. From the

686
00:36:56,560 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 2: mid nineteen seventies onwards, he drew in a celebrity clienteleading

687
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson, Jeff Bridges, Shirley Maclain, Barbara streisand and Raquel Welch.

688
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 2: His classes, heated to a regulation forty degrees celsius, designed

689
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: to mimic conditions in Kolkatta, offered a combination of constructive hazing,

690
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 2: cosmic wisdom, and pantomime eccentricity. He would wear speedos and

691
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 2: issue bizarre commands. In two thousand and seven, a writer

692
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 2: for GQ magazine went to a class and reported him

693
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 2: telling a student, you miss teeny winnie bikinis, spread your legs.

694
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,879
Speaker 2: He loaded the color green and banned people from wearing it.

695
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 2: He had never seen carpet until he arrived in America.

696
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 2: And believing it represented the height of luxury. Had all

697
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:37,759
Speaker 2: his studios carpeted, hygiene be damned, which is horrible. You

698
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 2: do not want a room, Yeah, you do not want

699
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 2: a room designed to be sweated, to have carpets.

700
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 4: Oh no, that's so bad.

701
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not great, that's not ideal.

702
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:51,320
Speaker 4: Carpet didn't last a week before.

703
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 2: No, oh horrible. So it was actually actress Shirley Maclain

704
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 2: who he credits with convincing him to give up the esthetic,

705
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 2: possession less life of a yogi that his guru had

706
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 2: advised him and to start charging for instruction. She had

707
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 2: met him in Mumbai years ago at his first yoga

708
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 2: shop and told him that while taking donations might work

709
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:15,919
Speaker 2: in his home country, Americans couldn't possibly understand the concept, right.

710
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 2: I think there's some example of like, they won't respect it,

711
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 2: they won't like take it seriously if they're not spending

712
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,920
Speaker 2: money on it, YadA, YadA, YadA. Speaking of which, Katie,

713
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 2: do you know what is worth taking seriously because it

714
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:30,280
Speaker 2: costs money?

715
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 4: I don't know, Robert. Is it products and services.

716
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 2: To be average as products and services? It is? Yeah?

717
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 2: Just you know what? Don't even look, I'm going to

718
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:42,399
Speaker 2: need something from the audience here, which is a little

719
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:44,600
Speaker 2: bit of faith in us. You know, don't don't even

720
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 2: listen to what the ads are for. Just go to

721
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 2: the first URL I read to you during the ad break,

722
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,080
Speaker 2: figure out their bank routing number and wire them your

723
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:54,840
Speaker 2: life savings.

724
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 1: Just do it.

725
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 2: You know, what's the horm code? Yeah? Yeah, use the

726
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 2: promo code. You get five percent off of your life savings,

727
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 2: you know, do ith There we go ads, Oh we're back.

728
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 2: I yeah. I hope you're all enjoying the possessionless life

729
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:21,800
Speaker 2: of a yogi now that you've given your life savings

730
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 2: to I don't know, fucking Blue Apron or whoever who

731
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:30,279
Speaker 2: sponsors as Sophie is at Blue Apron HelloFresh, Hello Fresh

732
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, send him the money. They need it.

733
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 6: So.

734
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 2: Over the years, you know, Shirley Maclain kind of tells

735
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 2: Bickram that he has to give up, you know, living

736
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 2: without possessions and taking you know, funding his his yoga

737
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 2: based on donations and start charging people. Over the years,

738
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:50,320
Speaker 2: as his actual contact with celebrities expanded, Bickram starts telling

739
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 2: lurid lies about other famous people he'd worked with. He

740
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 2: took credit for opening the Beatles up to Eastern Spirituality,

741
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,240
Speaker 2: claiming that he had worked with them in nineteen fifty

742
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 2: nine and helped like bring them, you know together. The

743
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 2: Beatles did not exist in nineteen fifty nine, so like

744
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 2: this definitely did not happen.

745
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: Well, I mean maybe the early version of the Beatles,

746
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: back when they still had Pete Best do on the

747
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: exact timeline, but they were so far.

748
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:15,320
Speaker 4: Off in this stage.

749
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely drugs. Yeah, no, they hadn't. They weren't doing

750
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:22,840
Speaker 2: anything cool. Like it's like, actually, the Beatles, like getting

751
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 2: into Eastern Spirituality is super well documented and none of

752
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 2: the ah bitram jottery we would know, Yeah, it would

753
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 2: not be it would not be hard to prove. He

754
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 2: claimed to have taught his yoga to astronauts at NASA's behest.

755
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 2: There is again no evidence of this in reality where

756
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 2: he did have a lot a lot of famous people

757
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 2: are doing Bickram yoga. You can find like clips of

758
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 2: you know, like fucking George Clooney and shit talking about

759
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:52,799
Speaker 2: doing Bickram in various like late night shows and shit.

760
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 2: But while he you know, winds up a lot of

761
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 2: famous people do his yoga. His first follower in the

762
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 2: United States is a reggueler dude named Tony Sanchez. Tony

763
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,840
Speaker 2: started taking Bickram's yoga in nineteen seventy six while he

764
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 2: was still in high school n PR Rights. After his

765
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 2: first class, Sanchez approached Choudhury to thank him and asked

766
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 2: what his philosophy of life was. He said, be good

767
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:17,240
Speaker 2: to others, so others will be good to you. Chowdhury

768
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:19,640
Speaker 2: was already heating his studio, but only to eighty five

769
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 2: or ninety degrees. Sanchez started coming in every day, then

770
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 2: began working the front desk part time. He felt that

771
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,320
Speaker 2: yoga was sacred, says Sanchez, a discipline that would actually

772
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 2: help people not only physically but also mentally, spiritually, and morally.

773
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 2: And this is where you get to kind of a

774
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 2: thing that's unclear to me, which is like, was Bikram

775
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:42,799
Speaker 2: a khan man from the beginning or was he someone

776
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:45,799
Speaker 2: who developed into a con man over time as he

777
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 2: got influence over people, as he got like exposed to wealth,

778
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 2: like did he kind of degenerate? And part of why

779
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 2: it's unclear is that from the time he becomes prominent,

780
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 2: he's lying about his past. He's lying about all this stuff.

781
00:41:57,960 --> 00:41:59,680
Speaker 2: That happened, and I think that can kind of like

782
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,839
Speaker 2: back words cloud the story of the guy that he

783
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 2: is when you get like one of the things that's

784
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 2: interesting about what Tony says is he's like, yeah, you know,

785
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 2: it's like eighty five or ninety degrees, which is like

786
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 2: a reasonable temperature for to do a hot yoga thing in,

787
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 2: but he keeps bringing it up up up up to

788
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 2: a degree that's like a lot less healthy and a

789
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 2: lot less reasonable. I think over time he realizes, like

790
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 2: the intense impact that this has on people, that it

791
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 2: kind of the unpleasantness makes it more addictive, and I

792
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,359
Speaker 2: feel like there's a degree to which that's something he's

793
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 2: absolutely conscious of and like purposefully doing. I also think

794
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:41,720
Speaker 2: it's possible that like he comes in with better motivations

795
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:44,720
Speaker 2: at the start, and as he gets famous, he becomes

796
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 2: sort of more Number one, having money changes you, and

797
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 2: number two having that degree of influence over people, like

798
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 2: people following you, treating you as a guru. That's not

799
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 2: like good for you, Like it doesn't make you a

800
00:42:58,000 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 2: better personally.

801
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:02,319
Speaker 4: And we can all blame Shirley McLain for this.

802
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: I guess, yes, greatest monster, you you what was his

803
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:09,320
Speaker 1: teacher's name, Ghosh.

804
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:11,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Guru Ghosh.

805
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 4: He I mean you specifically said that.

806
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:20,959
Speaker 1: He specifically said, we cannot accept money for these teachings. Yeah,

807
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: And I don't know, maybe I've just seen this movie too,

808
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:28,319
Speaker 1: not this specific movie, but like the story of the

809
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: person that, you know, the younger person that says, but

810
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 1: it can be this way or whatever, and or you know,

811
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: really I wants to go to America.

812
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 4: Whatever it is. I don't know, missing pieces showing. I

813
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 4: don't know. I think that there is. It sounds like

814
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 4: the origins of his training were legit.

815
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, but.

816
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's not contaminated.

817
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's certainly. It's like it's unclear like was he

818
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:01,280
Speaker 2: always this kind of guy or did it happen later?

819
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:04,279
Speaker 2: You know, that's a little bit of a mystery. I

820
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 2: think guys like Sanchez seem to suggest that, like he

821
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 2: was a better person earlier on, which isn't surprising to

822
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 2: me if that is the case, Like that's not the

823
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 2: only time that's happened.

824
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just did a whole episode on money and

825
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:22,360
Speaker 1: how to fix people over at our other show Some

826
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:22,920
Speaker 1: More News.

827
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's that's definitely a part of the Bickram

828
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 2: Chowdery story. So when Sanchez meets this guy, he says

829
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 2: the yogi was attached to his strict Indian diet, but

830
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 2: as Chowdery began to make some money, he found a

831
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:41,320
Speaker 2: fellow Indian immigrant to emulate the controversial Ashrom leader Bogwan

832
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 2: Shri raj Niche. If you watch that show Wild Wild Country,

833
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:48,839
Speaker 2: right like that that's the guy and ra you know,

834
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 2: there's a number of things problematic about him, but a

835
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 2: big thing that he's doing is he gets super rich.

836
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 2: He has this very large colt and he's like always

837
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 2: he dries everywhere he goes. He's in the fucking Rolls Royce. Yeah,

838
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 2: he's ye Rolexs And Bickram sees this and is like,

839
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 2: oh shit, that actually looks pretty dope, right. Rajnische is

840
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 2: also like a sex guru right now. Sanchez claims that

841
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 2: when he meets him, Chowdhurry is in. He's in. You know,

842
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:17,399
Speaker 2: he's got a couple relationships over time, but they're always monogamous.

843
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 2: He's interested in like massages and stuff, but he's not

844
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 2: really like motivated by sex. Sanchez claims that even told him, like,

845
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 2: I'm not really sex doesn't mean much to me. This

846
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:30,760
Speaker 2: is not always going to be the case for Bickram.

847
00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 2: During a trip back to India in nineteen eighty four,

848
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,439
Speaker 2: he met Rajashri, a teenaged girl who became his wife

849
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 2: via an arranged marriage. She was a yoga champion at

850
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 2: the same school he'd studied at, and the whole situation

851
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 2: is kind of problematic. But as far as I've been

852
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:48,760
Speaker 2: able to tell, she seems to have been an active

853
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:51,879
Speaker 2: and engaged part of his business. There are a lot

854
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 2: of allegations that she is a huge part of the

855
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 2: fucked up shit he does later. She's certainly an enabler

856
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 2: right of this, that is, that is at least something

857
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 2: that people will allege. It is, in fact, after marrying

858
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 2: Rosistere that he got really serious about expanding his business.

859
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 2: By the end of the nineteen eighties, Bickram was making

860
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 2: good money and steadily expanding both the size and the

861
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 2: notoriety of his business. As the money rolled in, Bickram

862
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,720
Speaker 2: equipped himself with the trappings of wealth, a Rolex watch

863
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 2: and a fleet of Bentley's. He would try to like

864
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 2: claim that this didn't mean that he was, you know,

865
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,800
Speaker 2: as rich as he was, by telling interviewers like, oh,

866
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 2: these Bentley's were like Rex, and I restored them all,

867
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 2: you know, you know, and my my main job is

868
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 2: helping restore people to health. But my spare time I

869
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 2: fixed Bentley's. Again, zero evidence of this.

870
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really hard to square this spiritual kind of

871
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: a thing with wanting Bentley.

872
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially multiple Bentley's. Right, Yeah, you get rich and

873
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 2: you get one Bentley. Like, I don't know, maybe you

874
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 2: could still be like when you by the point you

875
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 2: have a fleet of Bentley's, It's like, I don't know,

876
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:59,359
Speaker 2: man like that. That seems like it seems like there's

877
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 2: probably some something shady going on here. Yeah. So it

878
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:06,319
Speaker 2: is around this time that the first signs of what

879
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,959
Speaker 2: we might call clt shit from Bikram become a parent.

880
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 2: It started the same year as his marriage, when he

881
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 2: excommunicated his first student, Sanchez, after Bikram demanded that he

882
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,839
Speaker 2: break up with his girlfriend and Sanchez refused. So that's

883
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:23,439
Speaker 2: we've got some cults. He's trying to isolate his followers from,

884
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:26,000
Speaker 2: like their loved ones and stuff, you know, you can's

885
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:28,279
Speaker 2: that's that we're starting to get into that good old

886
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 2: fashioned cult shit. Right by the early nineteen nineties, Bikram

887
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 2: had expanded to Tokyo in San Francisco. He started holding

888
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:38,439
Speaker 2: teacher training classes each three months long, and he would

889
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 2: accept just twenty five trainees per year, although eventually he

890
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:46,240
Speaker 2: increases that substantially. People paid somewhere around ten thousand dollars

891
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:48,960
Speaker 2: for the privilege of learning from Bickram for several weeks.

892
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 2: Classes were intense, including hours of stretches every day in

893
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 2: blazing heat, long dia tribes from Bickram that had to

894
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 2: be listened to in full, and late nights of Bollywood

895
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 2: movies in Bickram's hotel. He still claimed that he didn't

896
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 2: really need to sleep, so nobody else should either. Bickram

897
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 2: was extremely discriminating about who he allowed to open schools

898
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 2: and who he allowed to use the Bickram name. He

899
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 2: was also proactive about policing what he saw as his brand.

900
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty five, Raquel Welch published a book that

901
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 2: he claimed was a copy of his different yoga teachings.

902
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:25,440
Speaker 2: He settled with her for enough money to buy a

903
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 2: house in Beverly Hills, and look, maybe Raquel Welch was

904
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,279
Speaker 2: stealing somebody's from Bickram. I certainly, like it seems like

905
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:34,399
Speaker 2: there was enough there that he was able to force

906
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 2: a settlement on the issue. In two thousand and two,

907
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't I'm not invested in Raquel Welch's

908
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 2: intellectual honest. Yeah. So like it's whatever.

909
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, but also it's like you're scummy too, like.

910
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's what. Yeah. So he settles for her.

911
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 2: He gets a house in Beverly Hills. He says some

912
00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:57,839
Speaker 2: like wild shit about her like that, like she's in

913
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 2: terrible shape and like has horrible muscles, and it's like, man,

914
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 2: she is Raquel Welch in the nineteen case, like we

915
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 2: like nobody's kind of bond. Yeah, nobody's buying. Yeah. In

916
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 2: two and two, we have eyes, Yeah we can. We

917
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:18,399
Speaker 2: can go watch a series of nineteen eighties movies. In

918
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, he started registering trademarks and applied

919
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 2: for a copyright for his yoga, which you'll remember was

920
00:49:25,280 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 2: based on a series of asanas and breathing patterns that

921
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:31,360
Speaker 2: were generations old and had first been organized in the

922
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 2: structure that Bickram used by his matester bishnu Ghosh, who'd

923
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 2: made no attempt to like copyright them or limit who

924
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 2: could use.

925
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 4: Them, right, Yeah, you very much do remember that.

926
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super fucked up. He starts this process of

927
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 2: trying to be like I own this kind of yoga

928
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:50,919
Speaker 2: and you can't do it without paying me in two

929
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,880
Speaker 2: thousand and two. Uh. That eventually led to a long

930
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:58,439
Speaker 2: series of lawsuits, which gets settled in twenty twelve when

931
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 2: the US Copyright off and a federal judge say like, no,

932
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 2: you can't do this. You can't copy your ideoga like

933
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:08,120
Speaker 2: it's which is fine. That's yeah, a good good call.

934
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like the right choice.

935
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 2: Yeah. It would be like if you developed like a

936
00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:18,440
Speaker 2: mix of like squats and like weightlifting, and we're like,

937
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:22,719
Speaker 2: I own this. No, man like people, you can't copyright

938
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 2: how people use their bodies. Yeah, yeah, you can copyright

939
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 2: I don't know having Richard Simmons do it, but you

940
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 2: can't copyright the movements themselves. So it is unclear when

941
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 2: precisely Bram started to sexually harass and abuse students, but

942
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 2: we do know that this was a fairly regular occurrence

943
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,359
Speaker 2: by the early two thousands. When Sarah Bond took her

944
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 2: first class, her first Bickram class in Washington State, she

945
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 2: was a sophomore in college and had suffered from scoliosis

946
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 2: since high school. So obviously, like, this is the kind

947
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 2: of thing that Gosh developed, you know this, this mix

948
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 2: of asanas and breathing technics specifically to treat Here's how

949
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair describes what happens next. What happened next is

950
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 2: the archetypal Bickram story. She loved the yoga, and as

951
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 2: it healed her spine and spirit became consumed by it,

952
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:13,600
Speaker 2: dropping out of school and taking out loans to attend

953
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:15,799
Speaker 2: teacher training so that she might devote her life to

954
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:18,360
Speaker 2: this thing that had changed her life. She was pretty

955
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:22,280
Speaker 2: and enthusiastic the first week, with Chowdery presiding, every trainee

956
00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 2: introduced herself for himself. When it was Bond's term, she said,

957
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 2: this yoga saved me. Now I'm happy. I don't get sick,

958
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 2: I don't get pain. As Bond recalls in an interview,

959
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 2: I looked up to Bickram and said at Bickram, I

960
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:36,720
Speaker 2: love you more than chocolate, and everybody laughed, and he laughed.

961
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 2: The third night, as students were demonstrating postures, she says

962
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 2: she found Chowdery staring at her, then watched as he

963
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,279
Speaker 2: dispatched a young woman brushing his hair to bring Bond

964
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:48,920
Speaker 2: his diamond spangled rolex. She returned it after class. She

965
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:51,040
Speaker 2: was flattered by the guru's attention. I had a very

966
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 2: deep backbend. I thought he probably just noticed my spine,

967
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:57,840
Speaker 2: but also found it uncomfortable. After class, he kept her behind,

968
00:51:58,120 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 2: she says. He told her they knew each other from

969
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 2: past life and kissed her on the cheek. On the

970
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 2: fifth day of training, According to the lawsuit filed this

971
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 2: past March by Bonn, Chowdery called her into his office

972
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 2: and said, should we make this a relationship? I have

973
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 2: never never felt like this about anyone. Shocked, she protested,

974
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:17,320
Speaker 2: made her way out of the office and broke into tears,

975
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 2: She says. After telling her boyfriend what had happened, she

976
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:23,480
Speaker 2: approached Greg Vlani, who ran teacher training and, according to

977
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:26,960
Speaker 2: Bonn's legal complaint, revealed Chowdery's overture to him as well.

978
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 2: In an interview, Bond told me that Villani said she

979
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 2: should separate the man from the teacher and not tell

980
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 2: Chowdery's wife what had happened. So that's you know, that's gross.

981
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 2: There's a lot of that too, and part of it

982
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 2: is that, you know, some of these other teachers all

983
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,800
Speaker 2: had like some of the different kind of physical problems

984
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 2: that were helped by you know, this yoga they're doing,

985
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 2: and then like Bonn, they kind of turn it into

986
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,839
Speaker 2: their life because they get you know, they feel both

987
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 2: the sense of gratitude to it and maybe even kind

988
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 2: of an addiction, and it also becomes the way that

989
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,239
Speaker 2: they make money, and so so over and over, you

990
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:02,960
Speaker 2: hear this idea that like a woman will come in

991
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 2: with a complaint and like everyone will be aware that

992
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 2: Bickram is a creep, but they'll kind of be like,

993
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 2: just just don't be alone with him. We'll all stay

994
00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 2: in the room when you guys are together, We'll make

995
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 2: sure that you're never alone or whatever. And they always

996
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,400
Speaker 2: fall short of that. There's kind of maybe some suspicions

997
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 2: you get reading it that sometimes they know that they're

998
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 2: abandoning her, right, Like it's unclear.

999
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:35,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is an unfortunately very classic story of a

1000
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 1: man in power using that abusing that position, and people

1001
00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:42,919
Speaker 1: enabling it. There's a myth there's a magic to him,

1002
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 1: even though it is more modern. We're not talking about

1003
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:48,480
Speaker 1: the last episode, whereas you know, turn of the century,

1004
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, but like it.

1005
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 4: And you know that still exists. It's a little bit

1006
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 4: better now, but not much.

1007
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:00,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, not much at all. And like you know what, honestly,

1008
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:03,280
Speaker 2: like as much of this is based in like yoga

1009
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 2: and mysticism. The abuser, one of the abusers that most

1010
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 2: reminds me of Bickram is fucking Weinstein.

1011
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:12,240
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1012
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like this. He's this big industry figure. They

1013
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 2: are all working for him, their careers rely on his approval.

1014
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,640
Speaker 2: And that's the center of the abuse that he's able

1015
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:24,400
Speaker 2: to do. And that's in a big part of the

1016
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 2: abuse he's able to do is a lot of people

1017
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:29,960
Speaker 2: around him. They're not all entirely aware, but like they

1018
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 2: know enough and they just kind of like avoid making

1019
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 2: it there, letting it be their problem, you know. Also,

1020
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:39,040
Speaker 2: which means throwing a colleague under the bus, you know.

1021
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as we've established with this copyright thing, Yeah,

1022
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,120
Speaker 1: you know, I'm trying to it's he does. He is

1023
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 1: he has successfully positioned positioned himself at the center of

1024
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: a practice that actually is very helpful for people that

1025
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: actually he can be life changing.

1026
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's not him, He's not.

1027
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:09,600
Speaker 2: No, he's taking the teachings of you know, his his guru,

1028
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 2: who was a much better, like actual expert on physical health.

1029
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:18,200
Speaker 2: He's tweaked them a little bit, but like he's he's

1030
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:21,839
Speaker 2: pretending that like he is the font of these techniques

1031
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,439
Speaker 2: that have benefited people, when in reality he's just kind

1032
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:29,399
Speaker 2: of like enclosing them and capitalizing on them and then

1033
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:35,399
Speaker 2: using his perceived control over them to abuse women who guy.

1034
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:40,520
Speaker 2: So the entire world of teaching this popular brand of

1035
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 2: yoga is basically close to you without Bickram's approval, and

1036
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 2: as someone whose serious spinal problems had been treated to

1037
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:49,879
Speaker 2: a substantial degree by this yoga, someone who also had

1038
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:53,439
Speaker 2: decided to like make this her professional life, Bond more

1039
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:55,759
Speaker 2: or less took the advice of her colleagues at first,

1040
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:57,319
Speaker 2: right where she's just like, I'm just going to try

1041
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 2: not to be alone with them. Yeah, I'll try to separate,

1042
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 2: you know, the teachings from the things about him that

1043
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:04,879
Speaker 2: are imperfect. You know, nobody's perfect, right like she's doing.

1044
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 2: You know, this is not an uncommon way to react

1045
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 2: to this. She continues to attend events while he's present,

1046
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 2: and you know, just tried to avoid being alone with him.

1047
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 2: Bram had picked. Bickram had picked another mistress by this point,

1048
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 2: which helped on the few occasions when he did try

1049
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 2: to make advances on Bond, she was able to get away.

1050
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:26,239
Speaker 2: So for a while things are fine. She's moving up

1051
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,320
Speaker 2: in yoga. She's an extremely prominent person in the community.

1052
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 2: She's doing great, and eventually Bickram's wife invites her to

1053
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 2: a Thanksgiving dinner at their home. This was a big

1054
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 2: event within the professional community, so she chose to attend there.

1055
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:43,759
Speaker 2: Bickram waited until other folks had left and his wife

1056
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:46,680
Speaker 2: went to bed, and he assaulted Bonn again, like he

1057
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 2: comes after her. He's, you know, putting it on her

1058
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:52,680
Speaker 2: and stuff. He's like going in with his hands. She

1059
00:56:52,840 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 2: reacts negatively to his advances. He complains about being lonely

1060
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 2: and calls his wife a bitch. And then when Bond

1061
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,120
Speaker 2: still didn't buy it, when she somehow didn't find that endearing,

1062
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:07,279
Speaker 2: he said, you will never be a champion without me.

1063
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:10,759
Speaker 2: Sure enough, at the next year's Yoga Championships, she came

1064
00:57:10,800 --> 00:57:13,319
Speaker 2: in second, despite what she claims should have been a

1065
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 2: clear victory. Now I can't judge that statement. I'm not

1066
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 2: a yoga expert. NPR talked to one of the judges.

1067
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 2: There's one judge who like bound claims, was like tells

1068
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 2: her you were robbed, right, Basically, Bickram came to the

1069
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 2: judges and told us not to give you the win.

1070
00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 2: NPR talked to that same judge, and the judge kind

1071
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 2: of waffled. They didn't back up Bond's claims, but they

1072
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 2: also like didn't deny them either. So I don't entirely

1073
00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 2: know if that's accurate, but there's significant evidence that he

1074
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:48,920
Speaker 2: harmed a number of people's careers directly when they would

1075
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 2: not like yield, and including Bond, when they would not

1076
00:57:51,320 --> 00:57:54,440
Speaker 2: like yield to his sexual demands. Later that year, at

1077
00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 2: a training camp in Acapulco, Bond was assaulted again by

1078
00:57:57,600 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 2: Bickram and again managed to get away. From this point on,

1079
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 2: he stopped letting her teach advanced classes and contacted studios

1080
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 2: that had booked her for sessions and advised them to

1081
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:09,040
Speaker 2: drop her. And when I say, as salt, we're generally

1082
00:58:09,080 --> 00:58:11,840
Speaker 2: talking about like you know, going in like like not

1083
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:17,480
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about like sexual harassment, right, like

1084
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 2: sexual harassment on to a degree that's legally actionable. So yeah,

1085
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 2: there are numerous other stories of Bickram's behavior with other women,

1086
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:33,480
Speaker 2: many that unfortunately went even worse than Bond's own. As

1087
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 2: a rule, Bickram seems to have a pattern. He will

1088
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:40,400
Speaker 2: invite promising new instructors into his inner circle. At some event,

1089
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:42,680
Speaker 2: they will all wind up in his hotel room watching

1090
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:46,120
Speaker 2: Bollywood movies. At a certain point, everyone else just kind

1091
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 2: of knows to leave, and then Bikram has his way

1092
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:52,160
Speaker 2: or attempts to have his way with someone else. Vanity

1093
00:58:52,200 --> 00:58:56,680
Speaker 2: Fair describes what happened to another instructor, Larissa Anderson quote

1094
00:58:57,120 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 2: one day after dinner, when Rajastri had gone to bed,

1095
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 2: chowder asked her to give him a message while he

1096
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 2: watched a Bollywood movie. Eventually, Anderson says, she started to

1097
00:59:05,160 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 2: nod off from fatigue, but Chowdery asked her to stay,

1098
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 2: then tried to kiss her. She said no, she wasn't

1099
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 2: interested in that. You are my family and I want

1100
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 2: to go to bed now, but Chowdery persisted and raped her.

1101
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 2: According to Anderson's suit, Larissa was horrified and went into

1102
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 2: what she now understands was trauma shock. She simply froze.

1103
00:59:21,520 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 2: Larissa could not find her voice to cry out for help.

1104
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 2: Defendant forcefully spread Larissa's legs apart and ejaculated. It did

1105
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:31,560
Speaker 2: not last long. That's a very you know, clinical police

1106
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 2: way of talking. But you know that's a sexual assault.

1107
00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 2: You know that's rape. Like Bonn Anderson was unable to

1108
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:41,880
Speaker 2: leave the environment, right. She has spent a huge amount

1109
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 2: of money making a profession out of teaching yoga. This

1110
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 2: is her job. She can't just like bounce right. It's

1111
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 2: not like, you know, not that it's easy when it's

1112
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 2: like someone that you're socially related to with. But like

1113
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 2: her ability to like survive is reliant upon being involved

1114
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:58,560
Speaker 2: in this community. She believed that her life would be

1115
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 2: effectively over if she lost Bickram's favor entirely, so she

1116
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:04,840
Speaker 2: tried to continue on keeping her distance from the man.

1117
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:10,080
Speaker 2: This was, as covered basically impossible. Bickram's other instructors seemed

1118
01:00:10,120 --> 01:00:14,200
Speaker 2: to have been at least passive accomplices, clearing out with

1119
01:00:14,320 --> 01:00:17,640
Speaker 2: surprising regularity when he wanted time alone with a new victim. Again,

1120
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:20,760
Speaker 2: it's unclear what they knew what he told them, But yeah,

1121
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:22,840
Speaker 2: it seems a little sketchy when you read a bunch

1122
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 2: of these stories kind of in sequence yeah quote. The

1123
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,600
Speaker 2: pattern allegedly repeated with Jane Doe one, who liked Jane

1124
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 2: do two, filed suit early last May. When Jane Doe

1125
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 2: one assisted at the Fall Teacher Training in twenty eleven,

1126
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:37,600
Speaker 2: she says Chattery flattered her by saying he had a

1127
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:40,600
Speaker 2: gift for her, a transmission, because they thought the same.

1128
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:43,200
Speaker 2: According to the suit, on another night soon after, he

1129
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 2: told her, I have never met someone who had a

1130
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 2: mine quite like my Guru. You have the divine in you.

1131
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 2: You have been touched by God. One morning, her legal

1132
01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:52,680
Speaker 2: complaint asserts, when she was doing her duty of tidying

1133
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 2: his suite and making sure there was fresh fruit, Chottery

1134
01:00:55,240 --> 01:00:57,480
Speaker 2: surprised her and forced her onto the bed, pulling her

1135
01:00:57,480 --> 01:00:59,200
Speaker 2: pants off. As she told him she didn't want to

1136
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 2: do this, he called her idiot over and over. She says,

1137
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 2: he forced her to perform oral sex, then raped her.

1138
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:08,560
Speaker 2: According to the suit, defendant Chowdery force fully manipulated her

1139
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:11,040
Speaker 2: legs into a yoga posture and laughed at her, saying

1140
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,919
Speaker 2: you are a yoghini. As with the other women, Jane

1141
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 2: Doe Well number one says walking away from the Bickram

1142
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 2: yoga community wasn't a simple choice for her. She was broke.

1143
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 2: She had spent what was for her a lot of

1144
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:24,600
Speaker 2: money to attend teacher training and had invested the last

1145
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:27,240
Speaker 2: five years of her life in teaching Bickram. She stayed

1146
01:01:27,240 --> 01:01:29,439
Speaker 2: at the training and kept working, though she broke down

1147
01:01:29,480 --> 01:01:32,680
Speaker 2: crying at a staff meeting, then cleaning Chowdery's room. Days later,

1148
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:35,640
Speaker 2: she says she was attacked again. The plaintiff could not

1149
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 2: feel in her body. She felt dissociated. Jane Doe's Number

1150
01:01:38,840 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 2: ones lawsuit says she could not run erect. Plaintiff remembers

1151
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:45,240
Speaker 2: feeling that his sexual assaults were incestuous, like a family

1152
01:01:45,280 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 2: member attacking her. Eventually, she borrowed money from her mother

1153
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:50,040
Speaker 2: to enable her to leave the training.

1154
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:54,560
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and it's he's horrifying, really yeah, I mean

1155
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:55,120
Speaker 4: it's terror.

1156
01:01:55,160 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 2: He's a fucking monster. Like these are. I do want

1157
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:01,240
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit because this is a very

1158
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,440
Speaker 2: common thing that you will encounter from like shitty people,

1159
01:02:04,480 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 2: particularly cops when someone is raped, is like why didn't

1160
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:10,360
Speaker 2: you fight back? Right? Why didn't you? And like these

1161
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 2: these are you know, Bickram is an older guy. These

1162
01:02:12,720 --> 01:02:16,000
Speaker 2: women are often like physically taller and even sometimes stronger

1163
01:02:16,040 --> 01:02:19,080
Speaker 2: than him, you know, why don't they fight back? I

1164
01:02:19,560 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 2: And to tell to kind of talk about that one

1165
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:23,480
Speaker 2: of the things that comes up in my mind a lot.

1166
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 2: I interviewed a man years ago who, while he was

1167
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:31,600
Speaker 2: a marine stationed in Iraq going out and combat missions

1168
01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 2: every day, was raped by his male sergeant. And he

1169
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:37,560
Speaker 2: was like, he was not bigger than me, Like I

1170
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:40,840
Speaker 2: was a I like fought for a living. I was very,

1171
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:44,680
Speaker 2: very physically strong. He describes it the same way that

1172
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:47,960
Speaker 2: Jane do Won. He just associated right, the fact that

1173
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,280
Speaker 2: this person who he had like been in this trusting

1174
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 2: position with the fact that this person he was like relying

1175
01:02:52,520 --> 01:02:56,960
Speaker 2: on to keep him safe out in combat like assaulted him.

1176
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 2: He just completely lost the ability to physically act.

1177
01:03:01,720 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 1: Right, because you also don't know what the ramifications of

1178
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: reacting might be a bigger picture.

1179
01:03:07,040 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 4: Who's going to believe you x y Z my job?

1180
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:14,959
Speaker 4: There's but also just in that moment, yeah, to give uh.

1181
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 1: I mean probably a lot of your listeners already know this.

1182
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 1: But it's not fight or flight. It's fight flight, fawn

1183
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:29,360
Speaker 1: or freeze. Yeah, and especially when someone is attacking you

1184
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:34,280
Speaker 1: in a position of power. Uh, You there's something in

1185
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 1: you your body business, assist you.

1186
01:03:35,680 --> 01:03:36,080
Speaker 4: You don't know.

1187
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:38,560
Speaker 1: You might want to like appease the situation. You might

1188
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 1: want to try other tactics than fight. You're not fighting

1189
01:03:42,200 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 1: somebody you respect necessarily, You're still figuring out what the

1190
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:45,760
Speaker 1: fuck is happening to you.

1191
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:48,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And and again we're kind of bringing

1192
01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 2: this up just to note that like everything these these

1193
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,760
Speaker 2: women have said is completely consistent with I mean, god

1194
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:58,280
Speaker 2: knows how many millions over our time of sexual assault.

1195
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 2: These are not uncommon store There's nothing about this that

1196
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:05,400
Speaker 2: is that is abnormal in terms of their reactions or

1197
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 2: how they how they handle this. Eight women in total

1198
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:13,360
Speaker 2: would eventually accuse bitrum of rape while or various other

1199
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 2: kinds of sexual assault and while all or harassment, and

1200
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 2: while all this is going on, he would brag loudly

1201
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:23,400
Speaker 2: and often like kind of like weirdly about his sexual

1202
01:04:23,440 --> 01:04:27,080
Speaker 2: prowess in interviews, claiming stuff like that he had seventy

1203
01:04:27,080 --> 01:04:30,080
Speaker 2: two hours of marathon sex while my partner has forty

1204
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:34,360
Speaker 2: nine orgasms I count. He also claimed this was I

1205
01:04:34,360 --> 01:04:36,280
Speaker 2: think this was him kind of trying to protect himself.

1206
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,920
Speaker 2: He would tell interviewers that women begged to have sex

1207
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 2: with him. Like from his classes, and that would they

1208
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:45,880
Speaker 2: had threatened to kill themselves if he said no. And

1209
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 2: again I suspect that was him like trying to like

1210
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:51,320
Speaker 2: set up like, oh so if somebody later accuses me,

1211
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:53,440
Speaker 2: I can say, like, oh, no, it was that, you know.

1212
01:04:53,760 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 2: I that's my guess as to why he was doing that.

1213
01:04:58,080 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 2: So all of this is fucking nightmarish, but none of

1214
01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:05,440
Speaker 2: it's what brought his empire down. It started with simple racism.

1215
01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:09,000
Speaker 2: In May of twenty eleven, Pandora Williams and it's spelled

1216
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:12,160
Speaker 2: p A N d h O r A Pandora Williams

1217
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:14,800
Speaker 2: sued him over a training session she had attended the

1218
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 2: previous year. She claimed that during a training he had

1219
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:20,480
Speaker 2: started ranting about how all gay people should be put

1220
01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 2: on an island and left to die of ades. After training,

1221
01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:25,520
Speaker 2: she was like, what the fuck?

1222
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 6: Man?

1223
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:28,800
Speaker 2: And I think her exact statement was like yoga's isn't

1224
01:05:28,880 --> 01:05:31,840
Speaker 2: yoga supposed to be about love? And he responded to her,

1225
01:05:31,960 --> 01:05:34,680
Speaker 2: we don't sell love here, bitch, And then he told

1226
01:05:34,720 --> 01:05:37,800
Speaker 2: an assistant, get that black bitch out of here. She's

1227
01:05:37,840 --> 01:05:42,800
Speaker 2: a cancer, so that's pretty bad. Williams was forced to

1228
01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 2: leave and the eleven thousand dollars she had paid for

1229
01:05:45,880 --> 01:05:49,520
Speaker 2: training almost was not refunded. So that's awesome.

1230
01:05:49,680 --> 01:05:51,959
Speaker 4: Pretty my jaws on the floor.

1231
01:05:52,400 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 2: He's a real piece of shit, So you'll get in

1232
01:05:56,840 --> 01:05:59,320
Speaker 2: this documentary there will be moments where he's like he's

1233
01:05:59,360 --> 01:06:02,080
Speaker 2: making jokes about people. He'll like give him little nicknames

1234
01:06:02,080 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 2: and stuff, and it's a little bit insulting, but like

1235
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:06,320
Speaker 2: in a way that like people do with their friends,

1236
01:06:06,360 --> 01:06:08,440
Speaker 2: and you can see in the reactions of other people

1237
01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:10,720
Speaker 2: they respond well to it. And then other times, and

1238
01:06:10,760 --> 01:06:13,960
Speaker 2: there's again documentation of this, he'll he'll be incredibly abusive.

1239
01:06:14,360 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 2: And I think part of what makes the abuse both

1240
01:06:17,200 --> 01:06:20,920
Speaker 2: more baffling and kind of it takes people maybe sometimes

1241
01:06:20,960 --> 01:06:24,000
Speaker 2: longer to figure out what's happening, is that, well, sometimes

1242
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:26,320
Speaker 2: he does this in a way that's not abusive. Sometimes

1243
01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:29,320
Speaker 2: it's kind of playful and like fun, and then he'll

1244
01:06:29,360 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 2: turn and it'll say it's very suddenly not at all playful.

1245
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:35,560
Speaker 2: And that's part of classic abuser shit. Yeah, very very

1246
01:06:35,560 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 2: classic abuser shit. Right when she sued Bitcram's legal representative

1247
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:43,000
Speaker 2: for the company, right, you know, because he's got a

1248
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:47,640
Speaker 2: corporate entity, was Mickey Jaffa Boden. She had started recently

1249
01:06:47,720 --> 01:06:50,160
Speaker 2: and found the company to be a mess. There was

1250
01:06:50,200 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 2: what she'd called a total commingling of personal and corporate assets.

1251
01:06:54,000 --> 01:06:57,000
Speaker 2: Bickram would regularly do rich asshole shit like refuse to

1252
01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:59,160
Speaker 2: pay his hotel bills in one case to the tune

1253
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:02,400
Speaker 2: of one point eight, which is like, you know, we

1254
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:05,320
Speaker 2: can talk about like the things that are not financially

1255
01:07:05,360 --> 01:07:07,600
Speaker 2: appropriate he did, But I don't really care about that

1256
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:11,000
Speaker 2: when we're talking about like a serial rapist, like the

1257
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:13,480
Speaker 2: fact that his finances weren't in order, It's not my

1258
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:19,440
Speaker 2: primary concern. So Jaffa Boden kind of gets hired to

1259
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:22,000
Speaker 2: do this job. He gets her like a green card

1260
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:24,280
Speaker 2: or whatever. She's because she's an Indian woman. So she

1261
01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:26,800
Speaker 2: comes over the United States, and again she's in a

1262
01:07:26,880 --> 01:07:30,080
Speaker 2: very vulnerable position because she is reliant upon this this

1263
01:07:30,200 --> 01:07:32,360
Speaker 2: state of employment in order to stay in the country.

1264
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,960
Speaker 2: So she finds this kind of mess and she's working

1265
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:41,160
Speaker 2: on fixing it, and these allegations that woman Pandora Williams

1266
01:07:41,200 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 2: sues him, and she's kind of as she's trying to

1267
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:48,360
Speaker 2: work through the financial problems within the company, kind of

1268
01:07:48,440 --> 01:07:51,800
Speaker 2: shaken by this. And I'm going to quote again from

1269
01:07:51,840 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair here and this is them talking to Jaffa Boden.

1270
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:56,840
Speaker 2: I realized that if half of this was true, we

1271
01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:59,919
Speaker 2: were facing a very serious situation. Jeffa Boden tells me now.

1272
01:08:00,160 --> 01:08:03,880
Speaker 2: She conducted internal investigations and challenged Chowdery on his behavior.

1273
01:08:04,120 --> 01:08:06,440
Speaker 2: She found him unremorseful. He would pick on someone in

1274
01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:08,200
Speaker 2: the crowd. If someone got up to go to the toilet,

1275
01:08:08,240 --> 01:08:10,680
Speaker 2: he would say, where are you going to change your tampon?

1276
01:08:11,040 --> 01:08:14,240
Speaker 2: He uses profanities, he's anti Semitic, he's homophobic. He'll say

1277
01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:17,080
Speaker 2: things like blacks don't get my yoga. And once he

1278
01:08:17,120 --> 01:08:19,599
Speaker 2: starts on his ti rate of profanity, he doesn't stop.

1279
01:08:19,840 --> 01:08:21,559
Speaker 2: Once he's picked on you, then you've had it for

1280
01:08:21,560 --> 01:08:24,519
Speaker 2: the entire class. Why did no one stand up to him?

1281
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:26,720
Speaker 2: There's very little you can do. He's up there on

1282
01:08:26,760 --> 01:08:29,559
Speaker 2: a podium, he's miked up, and it's really hot. Many

1283
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:32,040
Speaker 2: trainees feared losing the thousands of dollars they had already

1284
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:34,800
Speaker 2: spent on their fees. Their livelihood depends on putting up

1285
01:08:34,840 --> 01:08:36,760
Speaker 2: with it. The problem was that Bickram had set things

1286
01:08:36,840 --> 01:08:39,480
Speaker 2: up in such a way that without his continued patronage,

1287
01:08:39,600 --> 01:08:42,280
Speaker 2: you can't teach anywhere else. Some of his victims would

1288
01:08:42,280 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 2: come back to his training and just try to take precautions. Eventually,

1289
01:08:46,240 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 2: Bickram started sexually harassing Jaffa Boden. She quit in part

1290
01:08:50,320 --> 01:08:52,800
Speaker 2: because he'd also asked her to shut up other witnesses.

1291
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 2: And then she got together with one of the lawyers

1292
01:08:55,240 --> 01:08:59,320
Speaker 2: who'd been representing Bickram's other victims. She sued him, and

1293
01:08:59,360 --> 01:09:02,120
Speaker 2: the lawsuit ends. To make a very long legal story short,

1294
01:09:02,120 --> 01:09:05,280
Speaker 2: the lawsuit ends with her in legal control of Bickram,

1295
01:09:05,360 --> 01:09:08,479
Speaker 2: the yoga entity, which is now generally brand Yeah. Yeah,

1296
01:09:08,479 --> 01:09:12,280
Speaker 2: she's and he has. He is not It's not like

1297
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:14,479
Speaker 2: he's not like in jail or anything like. He has

1298
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:17,799
Speaker 2: not been charged criminally, but he has lost a number

1299
01:09:17,880 --> 01:09:20,680
Speaker 2: of legal cases. He owes a shitload of money to

1300
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:24,320
Speaker 2: a bunch of different people. So he's yeah, he's still alive.

1301
01:09:24,320 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 2: He just fled the country, like he's been. He's violated

1302
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:31,280
Speaker 2: a number of court orders to be deposed basically in

1303
01:09:31,360 --> 01:09:34,479
Speaker 2: order to avoid being like held legally to account for

1304
01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 2: the things he's doing. He just like bounced, He like

1305
01:09:36,560 --> 01:09:37,679
Speaker 2: left the United States.

1306
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:38,320
Speaker 6: Uh.

1307
01:09:38,360 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 2: He spends a lot of his time in India. He

1308
01:09:40,040 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 2: does a lot of training still in Mexico. He is

1309
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:47,080
Speaker 2: still doing teaching sessions and young yoga instructors still like

1310
01:09:47,240 --> 01:09:50,400
Speaker 2: pay huge amounts of money for him to teach them. Uh,

1311
01:09:50,479 --> 01:09:52,639
Speaker 2: he did like a tour of India after he left

1312
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:55,400
Speaker 2: the United States. So like it's one of those things

1313
01:09:55,439 --> 01:09:58,080
Speaker 2: where his reputation is fucked for sure.

1314
01:09:58,120 --> 01:09:59,280
Speaker 4: That blows my mind.

1315
01:09:59,680 --> 01:10:04,120
Speaker 2: And he lost control of Bickram, like the corporate entity.

1316
01:10:04,600 --> 01:10:07,160
Speaker 2: But like, you know, he's not over. He's not like

1317
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:10,439
Speaker 2: in jail. He's not all of his money's not gone.

1318
01:10:10,640 --> 01:10:13,160
Speaker 2: You know, he has like a divorce with his wife,

1319
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:17,479
Speaker 2: but it's so that she can protect their assets and stuff. Like,

1320
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:19,839
Speaker 2: it's not I don't know, it's not the worst story

1321
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 2: we've had in terms of you know, a bad guy

1322
01:10:24,720 --> 01:10:30,200
Speaker 2: like not getting what they deserve, but it's not the best.

1323
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:38,040
Speaker 2: So it's not great. Yeah that's the story that I mean,

1324
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:40,479
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's not nothing like that.

1325
01:10:40,520 --> 01:10:43,400
Speaker 1: He doesn't have control of that company. You know, it's

1326
01:10:43,400 --> 01:10:47,000
Speaker 1: not nothing. It's fine, but it does make me think,

1327
01:10:47,320 --> 01:10:52,599
Speaker 1: you know, everyone's like just in general the age we live.

1328
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:55,360
Speaker 4: In, and maybe I guess it's just always true.

1329
01:10:56,720 --> 01:11:01,080
Speaker 1: But like he can't get canceled you're gonna have other opportunities.

1330
01:11:01,120 --> 01:11:03,120
Speaker 1: You'll just go find the people that are like, yeah,

1331
01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:05,360
Speaker 1: fuck people that are two PC or whatever.

1332
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:07,839
Speaker 4: Fuck women, I hate those people.

1333
01:11:09,200 --> 01:11:15,200
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, like, that's disappointing, but he legally lost

1334
01:11:15,439 --> 01:11:15,920
Speaker 1: that thing.

1335
01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:20,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I'm not gonna say it's the best case scenario,

1336
01:11:20,640 --> 01:11:24,320
Speaker 2: but it is consequences, and that is better than you

1337
01:11:24,760 --> 01:11:26,360
Speaker 2: and a lot of it's it's better than a lot

1338
01:11:26,400 --> 01:11:27,160
Speaker 2: of these stories.

1339
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:29,760
Speaker 4: And so I don't know, and I was surprised by that.

1340
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:34,439
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, there's that's something, Katie. You want to

1341
01:11:34,479 --> 01:11:35,640
Speaker 2: plug any pluggables?

1342
01:11:35,960 --> 01:11:37,160
Speaker 4: Oh boy, I do, I do.

1343
01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:38,200
Speaker 5: Uh.

1344
01:11:39,040 --> 01:11:43,160
Speaker 1: I've got a show called some More News with Cody Johnston.

1345
01:11:43,280 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 1: We have a whole YouTube channel with lots of long,

1346
01:11:47,840 --> 01:11:53,200
Speaker 1: funny videos. I mean I think they're funny, informative, and

1347
01:11:53,280 --> 01:11:56,240
Speaker 1: a podcast called even more News. And we've also take

1348
01:11:56,280 --> 01:11:58,680
Speaker 1: the audio from the YouTube channel and it's a podcast.

1349
01:11:58,760 --> 01:12:03,600
Speaker 4: Lots of options. But yeah, that's that's me.

1350
01:12:04,960 --> 01:12:08,120
Speaker 2: Well, I am also me. I have a book. It's

1351
01:12:08,120 --> 01:12:10,639
Speaker 2: called After the Revolution. You can buy it wherever books

1352
01:12:10,640 --> 01:12:13,519
Speaker 2: are bought. Uh. You should also check out other Cool

1353
01:12:13,600 --> 01:12:16,559
Speaker 2: Zone podcasts like Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which

1354
01:12:16,640 --> 01:12:19,080
Speaker 2: is the opposite of the show, and we'll do a

1355
01:12:19,200 --> 01:12:21,920
Speaker 2: nice job of making you feel less shitty after hearing

1356
01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:23,160
Speaker 2: stories like this shit.

1357
01:12:23,400 --> 01:12:25,040
Speaker 3: Katie's been a guest, she was wonderful.

1358
01:12:25,080 --> 01:12:26,719
Speaker 4: I have I love that show.

1359
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:31,160
Speaker 2: It's a great show, very fun, uh not depressing. So

1360
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:35,760
Speaker 2: check that shit out. It's yeah, it's like a c

1361
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:39,960
Speaker 2: just like hot yoga for the soul. Oh yeah, there

1362
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:41,200
Speaker 2: you go.

1363
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:44,720
Speaker 1: I'm thinking i might crank my heat up to one

1364
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:49,519
Speaker 1: ten pop. Okay, yoga class, I'm not going to do that.

1365
01:12:49,720 --> 01:12:50,280
Speaker 4: Don't do that.

1366
01:12:50,320 --> 01:12:53,599
Speaker 6: And on that note, peace out, motherfuckers.

1367
01:12:53,760 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, motherfuckers.

1368
01:12:56,840 --> 01:12:59,519
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1369
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:04,080
Speaker 3: More from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,

1370
01:13:04,200 --> 01:13:07,480
Speaker 3: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1371
01:13:07,560 --> 01:13:09,200
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.