Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Deepak Chopra’s Epstein Emails and the Wellness World’s Accountability Problem (Part 2)

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Deepak Chopra’s Epstein Emails and the Wellness World’s Accountability Problem (Part 2) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to pick up
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: where he left off with the Salon article about Deepak
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Chopra and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein once again. This
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: article was authored by Nicole Carlis. In one twenty sixteen email,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Chopra shared an article he had written arguing that everyday
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: reality is a human construct. In another email the following year,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Chopra told Epstein that reality is an illusion, adding whenever
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: time permits, I'll do an experiment with you to show
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  Speaker 1: you why. Epstein responded that he was looking forward to it.
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  Speaker 1: The two men seemed to share the conclusion that reality
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: did not exist. Well, that must have been a shock
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: to Epstein. Huh when fucking reality came crashing down around him.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: In March of twenty seventeen, Epstein wrote to Chopra, find
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: me acute Israeli blonde matter over mind. In the same exchange,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Chopra took the conversation to a different level, writing, atoms, galaxies, mind,
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  Speaker 1: body are hallucinations that in prison humanity we have to
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: get rid of two thousand years of human conditioning. Well,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: what happened two thousand years ago, someone to refreshed my memory.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Christianity, right, So is that what Choprah is
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  Speaker 1: talking about? Probably? And we all know that Jeffrey Epstein
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: he didn't give a shit about religion one way or
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  Speaker 1: the other. The only thing he was loyal to was self.
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  Speaker 1: But all of these new age wirdos, one of the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: first things they attack is Christianity. And I say that
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  Speaker 1: as an agnostic. I'm not somebody that believes one way
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  Speaker 1: or the other because I'm not arrogant enough to think
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  Speaker 1: that I know. But there's no doubt that Christianity is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: under assault by these new age wirdos one thousand percent.
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  Speaker 1: And to hear Chopra talking like that doesn't shock me.
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  Speaker 1: Later that same day, Epstein responded, I would argue that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: there's no awareness or consciousness. There is only chemistry. So
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: basically we're living in a simulation. Is that what they're saying.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what, it's pretty concerning considering how
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  Speaker 1: many people that are high level you know, physicists whatever,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: talk about a simulation theory, and imagine if that's the case,
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  Speaker 1: I would be so pissed because the kid that's playing
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: my character, right, now is like the kid from the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: nineties who used to play the sims and then just
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: leave the game on and go out with his friends
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  Speaker 1: and let whatever disaster happened happen. So, whoever's in control
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of my character, if we're in a simulation, can you
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: please lighten up a little bit and help a Paisano
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: out every now and then. But all kidding aside, that
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  Speaker 1: whole simulation thing is very interesting. I don't know one
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: way or the other, but it's certainly interesting to think about.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: A few days after that, Choper wrote to Epstein again,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: telling them the biological selves and the entire physical universe
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: or human constructs, but that cute girls were aware when
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: they make noises. What the fuck does that mean? Depak Choprah,
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  Speaker 1: What exactly were you doing with Jeffrey Epstein and not
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: just with Epstein on your own? Cute girls are aware
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  Speaker 1: when they make noises? Like, what does that even mean?
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  Speaker 1: Epstein responded, So when the girl says, oh my god, yes,
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  Speaker 1: that's divine transcendence, Chopra said, Epstein answered, oh, I thought
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  Speaker 1: she was just referring to me, And yo, he's only
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: half kidding. I don't think people understand this fool thought
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  Speaker 1: he was a demigod. He really thought that he was,
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  Speaker 1: you know, a modern day Achilles or whatever. And I
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: don't even know if Achilles had the same kind of
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: high opinion of himself that Epstein has of himself. For
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: some observers of the New Age and wellness industries, the
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  Speaker 1: controversy around Choprah's association with Epstein doesn't simply erode Choprah's
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  Speaker 1: credit bit as a guru, but it also points towards
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: deeper issues. The unfortunate references to Q Girls and the
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  Speaker 1: context of Choprahs a parent friendship with a registered sex
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: offender underminds his self presentation as a spiritual authority. Stephanie
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  Speaker 1: Alice Baker, a sociology professor at City Saint George University
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  Speaker 1: of London who studies wellness, misinformation and conspiracies, pulled salon
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  Speaker 1: Choprah's philosophical claim that there's no objective reality and that
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: we have to get rid of thousands of years of
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  Speaker 1: human conditioning. Suggested Matthew Lemsky, the co author of Conspirituality,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: how New Age conspiracy theories became a health threat may
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  Speaker 1: have offered Epstein a spiritual framework for his illicit activities.
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  Speaker 1: There is no evidence that Choprah had any such intention.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know enough about this new
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  Speaker 1: age nonsense to tell you one way or the other.
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  Speaker 1: I have no idea. But anybody who's relying on raw
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: or chakra or whatever, I mean, do you really think
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: that stuff works? I guess you still believe in Santa Claus.
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  Speaker 1: For Epstein, his work was of his own making, probably
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  Speaker 1: more than anybody else in the last hundred years. Remsky said.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Epstein was simply able to decide what he wanted to
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: do in any given moment, and then it happened. He
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: organized his world like an old timey tantric deity, where
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: he could just think of something and it then appears.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Somebody showing up the massagem and do sex work. He's
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: got amazing food coming in, and then there's a plane
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  Speaker 1: taking him to a fucking island. Well, that sums it up.
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  Speaker 1: This guy was literally doing whatever he wanted, when he
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  Speaker 1: wanted to do it, and there was no kind of ramifications.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, he was protected at every turn. That kind
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  Speaker 1: of behavior, Remsky and others interviewed for the article agreed
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  Speaker 1: involves what has been called spiritual bypassing, a term originally
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  Speaker 1: defined by therapist John Wellwood as a tendency to use
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  Speaker 1: spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved
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  Speaker 1: emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks, or, in
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  Speaker 1: simpler terms, to dodge accountability. No wonder so many people
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: are spiritual A you know, I'm into Rocks and Deepak Chopra.
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  Speaker 1: I don't have any kind of self responsibility for the
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  Speaker 1: bullshit I got up to, because you know that was
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  Speaker 1: just my fate. Remsky said he sees connections between the
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  Speaker 1: kind of New Age spirituality pioneered by Chopra and the
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  Speaker 1: other developments in society, economics, and politics that have enabled
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  Speaker 1: a hyperindividualist culture. Craig Cashwell, a professor at Clemson University
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  Speaker 1: who researched the impacts of spiritual bypassing, said that while
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: he believes religion and spirituality can enhance people's lives, it's
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  Speaker 1: important that we acknowledge that there's a shadow side of both,
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  Speaker 1: which most often comes in the form of religious abuse, trauma,
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  Speaker 1: and spiritual bypass. Cashwell added that it's not possible to
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: argue that spiritual bypass was involved in Chopper's case or
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: any other specific situation without more information, but said it's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: certainly true that sacred teachings can be twisted and used
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  Speaker 1: to justify actions incongruent with the actual teaching. Well, that
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  Speaker 1: goes for anything. People will use anything for justification. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: look at people who commit acts of terrorism, they point
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  Speaker 1: to you know, the Hadis, they point to the Quran
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  Speaker 1: and then that becomes their motivation. Or look at people
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  Speaker 1: on the flip side of that, like the idiot who
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: went into christ Church and killed all those people. The
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  Speaker 1: point is, when people are crazy and they're looking for justification,
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  Speaker 1: they're gonna fucking find it. Baker agreed that it was
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  Speaker 1: unclear whether Epstein had used Chopra's teachings to justify his abuse,
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  Speaker 1: but cited a long history of guru figures abusing their influence,
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  Speaker 1: pointing to allegations of sexual miscondos, but against numerous yoga gurus,
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  Speaker 1: including Bikrm Chodery, John Friend, and Gregorian Bivolarou. Ronald Prusser,
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  Speaker 1: a professor of management at San Francisco State University and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the author of Macmindfulness, How Mindfulness Became a New Capitalist spirituality,
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  Speaker 1: sees the controversy around Chobra as more than another moment
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  Speaker 1: of high profile hypocrisy. It's a deeper reflection, he suggested,
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  Speaker 1: of why and how these scandals keep happening within the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: contemporary guru economy, which has three elements that don't mix
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  Speaker 1: well together moral authority, celebrity, culture, and the marketplace. As
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  Speaker 1: soon as someone becomes a brand, the incentives become relentless.
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  Speaker 1: Preserve the image, persona, the audience, the flow of money,
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  Speaker 1: and last but not least, preserve the aura. He said,
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  Speaker 1: This is not unique to Chobra. It really seems to
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  Speaker 1: be a structural characteristic of the entire spiritual wellness industry. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Look again, I don't know enough about the industry or
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: whatever it is to dive deep on it. What I'm
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  Speaker 1: trying to do is show you that Epstein had people
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: like Chopra, who are supposed to spiritual leaders in his pocket,
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  Speaker 1: and it just shows you the different levels that Epstein
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  Speaker 1: was operating on. Market driven spirituality, Purser said, favors charisma
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  Speaker 1: and certitude. Conversely, it punishes nuance and often lacks real accountability.
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  Speaker 1: So far, the revelations about Chopra's friendship with Epstein have
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: had limited effects in the real world. In a statement
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to Salon, the University of California San Diego said it
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: would end Chopra's appointment as an unpaid clinical professor at
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: its medical school in June, calling any form of association
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  Speaker 1: with Epstein regrettable. Chopra does not have any active responsibility
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  Speaker 1: at U SEE San Diego, nor will he have any
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  Speaker 1: active responsibility at any point between now and the conclusion
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  Speaker 1: of his appointment. The statement said, Well, that's a good idea,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: get ahead of it. Who needs those kind of issues, right?
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  Speaker 1: Does Deepak Chopra bring that much to a university? I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: doubt it. A Warehouse Books, a new age oriented bookstore
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  Speaker 1: in Regina, Saskatchewan, posted a video of an employee ribbing
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  Speaker 1: up Choprah's books and announced it would no longer order
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: or carry him. Well, that's the owner's choice, right. If
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you want a store, you own a shop. Whatever you
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: get to call the rules. Some former Chopra fans have
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: also spoken out on substack. Writer Scott Mills took a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: deep dive into the public details of the Choprah Epstein relationship,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: writing at length about his sense of heartbreak. Best Selling
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: author Lisa Rankin wrote an extended Facebook post about her
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  Speaker 1: disappointment that wellness gurus such as Chopra and Peter Attia,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: another prominent New Age physician, appear in the Epstein files.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it's my age, but all of this scream's quackery
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  Speaker 1: to me. This is some miscleotype shit. When physicians prioritize
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  Speaker 1: access to power over ethical judgment, they often break the
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  Speaker 1: foundation covenant of medicine. She wrote, we need a basic
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: standard for physicians and leaders built on the principle that
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: scientific authority and ethical integrity cannot be separated. I think
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty good way to go. I mean, have
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  Speaker 1: a little decency, that's all, a little discernment, and it's
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: always the smartest people quote unquote in the room who
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: seem to be the dumbest. For nearly a decade, b Schofield,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a reporter on cult movements and the author of Hunting
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Lucifer One reporter search for Cults and Demons, has followed
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  Speaker 1: what she considers the New Age movement's dark side. She
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  Speaker 1: said that she found the response to Choprah's association with
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Epstein noteworthy given the industry's tendency to overlook or ignore
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  Speaker 1: its own internal scandals. You can't really compare out things
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: are handled in the spiritual world with the normal world
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  Speaker 1: because there are so many scandals within this field, and
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  Speaker 1: most of the teachers and the institutions remain silent. Schofield said,
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  Speaker 1: So for the spiritual world field, what happened is very significant,
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  Speaker 1: and if it helps shine a light on all of that, great,
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  Speaker 1: But again, I don't know what's going on in the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: world of spirituality. I have no idea. I find the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: shit all weird, though, and I find it creepy. Still,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: many who follow the industry expect little change in an
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: industry they described as largely driven by profit, despite claims
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of a greater concern for the public's well being. There's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: no more accountability in the wellness in yoga industry than
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: there is in any other form of capitalism. Remsky said.
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  Speaker 1: It might actually be worse because there is nothing institutionalized
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  Speaker 1: about it. Purser said he sees scandal not as an
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: accident or a bug, but rather a feature of the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: New age economy. It's risk inherent in the guru celebrity model,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: he concluded, And look again, I'm not going to go
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: into that because I have no idea but what I
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: will tell you is this, the emails that were shared
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  Speaker 1: between Deepak Chopra and Jeffrey Epstein very concerning and who
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: are these cute girls that he's talking about. Were they
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: girls that were abused? Were they girls that were being trafficked. Unfortunately,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: we don't have those answers, but like usual, we'll keep
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: grinding looking for them and when we have some more
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: information about this story, will get it added to the catalog.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: All the information that goes with this episode can be
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: found in the description box