Todd Hubler
Despite the daily inundation of new breaking news from the Narcissist-in-Chief, I’m about to recommend a pair of recent podcasts, each one featuring a subject whose self-absorption rivals, if not outright trumps, well, Trump: “Bikram,” the 30 for 30 season-length deep dive into the surprisingly dark history of hot yoga, and Gizmodo’s “The Gateway,” an investigative report on the controversial online spiritual guru Teal Swan.
ESPN’s 30 for 30 empire started off as a series of 30 documentary films commissioned to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the sports network. That first round was a massive ratings and critical success, leading to dozens of short films and the Academy award winning O.J.: Made in America.
The first two seasons of the 30 for 30 podcast were five episodes each, covering topics as broad as the beginnings of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the protracted battle behind lights going up at Wrigley Field, the notorious Yankees Suck t-shirt, and the first all-women expedition to the North Pole.
For the third season, though, the show took aim at a single topic: Bikram Yoga. Simply titled “Bikram,” producer Julia Lowrie Henderson spends five whole episodes on Bikram Choudhury, the fascinating but ultimately infuriating (to say the very least) “inventor” of the brand of yoga that took Hollywood and then the rest of the country by storm starting in the 1970s.
Every episode begins with warnings that the content you’re about to hear will contain talk of sexual abuse, which is a tip off of where this story eventually ends up. But the path to that final dark place is circuitous, and I’m thankful that Henderson was given the time and space to take the necessary detours to fully flesh out Choudhury and what it was that gained him so many devoted followers. The resulting profile is richly reported and multi-faceted while thoroughly damning.
As concerning and relevant as “Bikram” is given the past year of #MeToo revelations, “The Gateway,” an early podcast venture from the website Gizmodo, is even more potent because it takes place in the present day. Across its six-episode run, reporter Jennings Brown fully immerses himself in the world of self-styled new age therapist and “Spiritual Catalyst” Teal Swan, who has amassed a dedicated following with the help of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube algorithms.
There’s a ton of money to be made in the field of self-help books, lectures, and retreats (just ask Tony Robbins), but what Swan does is considerably more insidious. With a focus primarily on anyone experiencing depression and/or suicidal ideation, Swan, who is not regulated by any sort of licensing organization, is playing fast and loose with the mental health of people who are already in a dangerously fragile headspace. Swan encourages her “patients” to not only lean into their sadness, but also to meditate on their deaths. Later in the series it’s revealed that Swan’s practices are possibly planting false memories of familial abuse in the minds of her followers.
Brown’s interest in Swan began when he stumbled onto one of her videos and progressed significantly when he discovered that one of Swan’s followers had in fact committed suicide despite extensive “treatment” from the online guru. Brown is granted a surprisingly deep (and ultimately damning) level of access to Swan and her devotees, recording interviews at one of her Costa Rican retreats, as well as exploring in depth the stories of people Swan has affected, directly and indirectly.
The trajectories of Choudhury and Swan might not be perfectly parallel, but taken together they show, among a great many other things, an evolution of narcissism and how it’s infiltrated pop culture. Listening to “The Gateway,” I couldn’t help contemplating what Bikram’s empire would have looked like if he had the same Search Engine Optimization options available to him that Swan has at her fingertips. And on the other side of things, what does Teal Swan’s future hold as a mental health “disruptor” if, say, she were to gain the vocal support of a celebrity who would sing her praises online the same way that Madonna and Shirley MacLaine did for Choudhury?
The thing about narcissism is that it renders narcissists incapable of seeing themselves with anything approaching a rational perspective. Both of these podcasts finish by interviewing their subjects, and neither instance results in the “guru” taking even the slightest bit of responsibility for their actions. Instead they seem content to just focus on themselves, both making wild claims that I would generously qualify as “batshit insane.”
Both shows are tremendous examples of well-produced, fast-paced journalism, the likes of which I want to hear more of. And they provide a healthy antidote to the daily Washington, D.C., roundups we wake up to each morning.
