Maintenance Phase - Oprah Winfrey & ＂John of God＂

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that remembers your spirit,

00:00:15.580 but also your immunity to highly communicable diseases.

00:00:19.120 Ooh.

00:00:20.040 Ah.

00:00:20.760 Now I'm worried that you know what this show is about.

00:00:22.920 I just know the vague direction.

00:00:25.460 My name's Aubrey Gordon.

00:00:27.080 I'm Michael Hobbs.

00:00:27.780 And we are back again with our Oprah correspondent, Kimberly Springer.

00:00:33.460 Hi, Kimberly.

00:00:34.320 I am haunting you like Oprah.

00:00:36.040 Hello.

00:00:37.580 To talk about a surprise secret episode of Oprah that Mike has chosen.

00:00:43.780 A mystery topic.

00:00:45.540 A mystery topic.

00:00:47.060 I really fancied myself a Sherlock Holmes type.

00:00:50.760 Cracking this code.

00:00:51.780 All that consisted of was looking at Mike's Twitter feed.

00:00:54.800 And I was like, oh, I think I know what that episode is about.

00:00:56.520 The real weak link in the show is my lack of impulse control.

00:00:59.780 Oh, that's me too, though.

00:01:00.960 And let me see if I can transition us.

00:01:02.640 If listeners want to enact their impulse to support the show, they can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase.

00:01:12.140 Nailed it.

00:01:12.660 Thank you.

00:01:13.340 And they can also hear a bonus episode where the three of us talk about Oprah's infamous Harry and Meghan interview, which basically has nothing to do with wellness whatsoever.

00:01:23.560 but like all of us had thoughts and we wanted to talk about it yeah and we're gonna release the

00:01:28.200 episode next week with that michael hobbs yes what are we talking about today okay are either

00:01:35.200 of you familiar with a person named john of god well no i feel very nervous now no i do not no

00:01:44.480 i feel fortunate not to know every gay bone in my body was like i don't feel good about this 0.59

00:01:49.860 I'm delighted. I'm so happy with this development. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through this story from the beginning and I'm going to try not to give you any spoilers of like where it's going. 0.99

00:02:02.540 Great. So John of God is a faith healer in Brazil who appeared on Oprah not once but twice in 2010

00:02:12.260 and in 2013. And we are going to start out with a clip from Oprah's second show featuring John of

00:02:20.920 God, where we're going to talk a little bit about his background, his upbringing. Oh boy.

00:02:26.640 This is an interview I wasn't sure would ever happen. One of the most famous spiritual healers

00:02:31.300 in the world, rarely talks to anyone on camera.

00:02:34.840 John of God agreed to sit down with me under a mango tree

00:02:37.800 on the grounds of the casa.

00:02:40.180 A group of his patients gathered to watch.

00:02:42.940 John of God speaks only Portuguese,

00:02:44.840 so Heather Cumming helped translate.

00:02:48.060 Ready, guys?

00:02:49.780 You describe yourself as a spiritual medium.

00:02:52.280 What does that mean, a medium?

00:02:58.060 As a medium, he's a spiritualist.

00:03:00.460 He believes a great deal in God, and he practices this mission already 55 years.

00:03:08.760 Born on a farm to a family who rarely had enough to eat,

00:03:12.600 Joao Tejera de Fria was the youngest of six children.

00:03:16.680 His father was a tailor.

00:03:18.660 His mother, a housewife, who also ran a small hotel to make ends meet.

00:03:22.500 Joao left school when he was seven to work in his father's tailor shop.

00:03:26.700 To this day, he cannot read or write.

00:03:30.460 As a boy, Joao says he realized he was clairvoyant when he predicted a terrible storm that destroyed a neighboring village.

00:03:39.340 This event began his journey as a spiritual medium.

00:03:43.580 What do you guys think? No red flags. I know there's no red flags, but what do you think other than that?

00:03:47.720 Just the unremitting willingness to entertain quackery is baffling to me.

00:03:56.680 unbelievable yeah it's it's really interesting to me that these oprah episodes all happened

00:04:02.400 sort of a decade or two before we started having more critical conversations about the idea of

00:04:08.200 platforming people i know from this to dr oz to all kinds of stuff right now it's this really

00:04:14.340 interesting mix of like a person who many of the people in my life have very fond feelings toward

00:04:21.760 who has also kind of opened this series of like pandora's boxes right of like kind of wild people

00:04:31.360 to be on a national or international stage right and there's also you can see in the clip too

00:04:36.920 it doesn't appear that they've done much research on this guy's actual background other than just

00:04:40.960 like asking him they're like he predicted a storm in advance she's not really quoting any like

00:04:45.580 anyone skeptical of this or anyone like putting this into context that like kids say lots of

00:04:50.660 stuff and some of it seems kind of weirdly magical but like not every kid is like a magical kid it's

00:04:55.860 interesting when she's a journalist and when she's not a journalist yes exactly on his website he says

00:05:00.700 that he's treated bill clinton but it's not clear if she ever actually checked with bill clinton to

00:05:04.260 confirm this right like well can people just say that or what it's easy enough to check yeah like

00:05:09.240 especially for her aren't they in like the illuminati meetings in switzerland every year

00:05:13.060 she can just like sidle him at the guacamole they saw each other at bahamian grove or whatever

00:05:18.920 Exactly. Basically, this is like a little glimpse of who this guy is. And by the time he sort of

00:05:23.240 shows up on the American radar, he's been at this for decades. He starts appearing in the press

00:05:28.500 around 2000 in the American press. And there's oftentimes like a sort of perfunctory paragraph

00:05:34.680 where they go into his background and they're like, little is known about the background of

00:05:38.760 John of God. And they give these like the kind of the same details. This is from a 1999 Irish

00:05:43.680 Times article. It says, the son of a tailor, he has had only two years of formal education,

00:05:48.920 but his psychic powers mean that he can channel the medical expertise

00:05:52.660 of 33 deceased doctors, surgeons, dentists, and other spirit guides,

00:05:57.740 including King Solomon, St. Ignatius Loyola, and Oswaldo Cruz,

00:06:02.700 a doctor who eradicated yellow fever in Brazil.

00:06:05.220 Wow.

00:06:05.900 So it's just like normal, like normal details.

00:06:08.820 Anyway, he's a medium for 33 deceased doctors.

00:06:12.960 You know, there's part of this that reminds me a great deal

00:06:15.180 of our conversation about the medical medium and celery juice.

00:06:18.360 Yes.

00:06:18.660 Someone who makes these kind of wild claims about their own childhood and their own abilities in a culture, I would say the dominant culture of the United States is not generally want to believe in supernatural things necessarily, but is willing to sort of permit them. And this feels like a moment of permitting it.

00:06:38.700 Yes. But also hiding behind this sort of mysticism and it's foreign and he was illiterate. So maybe there aren't written records about who he is. So we couldn't verify it anyway. So they're excusing themselves at the same time.

00:06:50.920 Yeah. And also, to fast forward to a passage that I wanted to read you guys later, a lot of this is wrapped up in this idea of sort of like the racial and cultural other.

00:07:00.120 So this is an excerpt from an article that appears in O Magazine in 2010.

00:07:05.680 Brazil has deep roots in the traditions of shamanism and spiritism, both of which feature the notion that individuals can and do cross the boundaries between this worldly existence and the afterlife.

00:07:16.580 In this lexicon, it's perfectly understandable that King Solomon and other powerful spirits known as the entities would swing by to offer help incorporating in John's body.

00:07:27.060 It's like, well, you know, they do weird spirit stuff in the developing world.

00:07:30.920 It's poor people. 1.00

00:07:31.900 It's countries we don't understand. 1.00

00:07:33.560 Are they in touch with fucking King Solomon? 0.99

00:07:35.460 Sure. 0.99

00:07:36.780 It's like somehow more believable if it's from a culture that we sort of consider exotic already.

00:07:42.440 And we think that like a different set of rules applies.

00:07:44.540 But so then what is Oprah doing in this space? Is it because it can fall under the umbrella of

00:07:50.440 spiritualism?

00:07:51.820 Yeah. A lot of this she couches as like sort of becoming a more spiritual person and like

00:07:55.640 becoming more in touch with your spiritual self, which is like a good goal, but also it makes her

00:08:02.200 vulnerable to some like pretty wild claims. So John of God starts showing up in the Western

00:08:07.260 media in the early 2000s. There's a number of sort of magazine articles about him. There's an ABC

00:08:12.120 special in 2005. At that point, he's already quite popular in Brazil. But this international

00:08:17.480 coverage makes him like one of the most popular sort of destinations for people looking to do

00:08:23.440 this kind of alternative healing. So he's in a very remote village in Brazil. Like he's one of

00:08:30.060 the only sort of economic drivers of this city. And there's a clinic that he runs. It's kind of

00:08:35.760 like part clinic, part church called the Casa. You have to wear white. So it's like the images

00:08:41.720 that come out of these documentaries are, like, really interesting. It's all these people in sort

00:08:45.860 of, like, loose-fitting, flowing, like, robes and, like, you know, big white t-shirts and big white

00:08:50.980 pants, just, like, waiting in line to see this guy. So this is an excerpt from a 2016 Newsweek

00:08:57.580 article. During each of these two daily sessions, he sees more than 500 people in three hours.

00:09:02.860 A young man in a wheelchair has traveled from Australia in the hope of finding a cure for the

00:09:07.040 muscular dystrophy which has left him bone-thin and fragile. A woman from South Africa has a

00:09:11.660 tumor in her heart, an Englishman in a wheelchair because of a bad fall during a trip on LSD, 0.98

00:09:16.560 a wasted Brazilian woman who can't be more than 20 leaning on a stick, a white woman carrying a 0.52

00:09:21.560 child with cerebral palsy, an older couple guiding a mentally handicapped girl, a black man with a 0.99

00:09:26.800 huge growth on his neck. These people, many of whom have tried all other possible remedies,

00:09:31.600 are hoping that John will cure them, or at least give them the answers which they have not found

00:09:35.860 anywhere else. Again, the sound of the flapping of red flags in the wind.

00:09:41.660 well also while you were talking about like everyone comes in wearing loose fitting white

00:09:49.100 clothing i was like man if i saw that picture all i would be thinking was like cult i know i know

00:09:54.920 are they wearing the nikes or not i mean another thing that stands out to me from that excerpt

00:10:01.140 is like how wide of a range of ailments there are yeah a guy with a tumor a guy who like sprained

00:10:08.120 his ankle during a fall right again it's snake oil it's celery juice it's moon juice it's like

00:10:13.500 a bunch of the sort of like cure-all kind of things he's like he's like a swiss army knife

00:10:18.360 for any ailment right he's a real leatherman also medical care from hundreds of years ago

00:10:24.940 famously effective yeah that's right one of the weird cameos i came across while i was researching

00:10:30.160 this was do you guys know who shirley mcclain is absolutely so famous child actress she remained

00:10:35.660 dope throughout her life she went to john of god in the early 90s and he cured her cancer

00:10:42.000 according to her what yes this was just like an offhand reference in like one of these random

00:10:46.960 articles from like 2005 and then i was like this is weird and then i went to her wikipedia page

00:10:51.940 and i found this sentence on an episode of the oprah winfrey show in april 2011 mclean stated

00:10:59.860 that she and her neighbor observed numerous ufo incidents at her new mexico ranch what 0.65

00:11:05.520 so i was like okay well now it's assigning me more fucking oprah episodes to do of like the 0.88

00:11:11.940 time when oprah did a ufo episode with shirley mcclain i am waiting for bated breath for a 0.81

00:11:19.620 marianne williamson cameo oh my god yes the story it really feels like a matter of time

00:11:25.320 So I'm going to drop some text into the chat.

00:11:28.940 This is a description from a woman named Susan Casey, who is talking about her treatment.

00:11:36.140 I think it's worth noting that a lot of the people going to John of God,

00:11:39.700 there's a lot of like cancer, a lot of chronic illnesses, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome,

00:11:44.160 a lot of people dealing with sort of like diagnosed medical conditions.

00:11:48.020 But there's also a lot of people coming there for sort of more inchoate conditions of just like,

00:11:53.380 i'm sad or i don't have as much energy as i used to or i'm dealing with trauma and so this

00:12:00.240 description i think encapsulates kind of why people are seeing john of god and what they're

00:12:04.600 getting out of it so which one of you wants to read this who wants to be susan i will this

00:12:09.500 feels like sunday school being asked to read of course i will yeah susan was also searching for

00:12:16.740 her own healing after her father suddenly passed away two years ago susan experienced a quote

00:12:22.420 tsunami of grief, unquote. She wondered if John of God could help heal her grief. Susan met with him.

00:12:29.120 He looked at a picture of Susan and her father. He then told Susan to sit in the, quote, healing

00:12:34.020 room, a room in the casa reserved for meditation and prayer for three hours. Susan says she was

00:12:40.280 surrounded by hundreds of people in the healing room, all of whom were praying and meditating with

00:12:45.160 their eyes closed. Quote, three hours went by like 20 minutes, and it was blissful. It was like I was

00:12:51.380 floating, unquote. In her own state of meditation, Susan says she was able to speak with her father.

00:12:57.760 Quote, it was very real, more of a vision than I had ever had before. I got this feeling like

00:13:02.700 I shouldn't be sad that everything was okay. Hmm. What do you guys think? It feels very

00:13:07.840 reminiscent to me of the ways that people from the US will talk about traveling to Central America

00:13:13.920 and doing ayahuasca. You know, they've really got something figured out down there. It's also how I

00:13:20.100 describe going to the eurovision song contest three hours went by like 20 minutes otherworldly

00:13:27.420 i was floating it was amazing i'm trying to figure out what did he do other than tell her to go sit

00:13:33.420 in the room right so yeah it's this exotic experience that she can actually sit and pray

00:13:40.560 and meditate at her house probably for three hours but it might feel like three hours particularly if

00:13:46.400 you're not used to praying or meditating. I think that there's something very interesting,

00:13:51.400 especially with the kinds of patients that are seeing him for something sort of not diagnosable

00:13:56.620 or not all that specific or measurable, right? Something like grief or trauma. He oftentimes

00:14:01.460 tells people that like, you know, you must stay here for five weeks. He often tells people to

00:14:07.500 abstain from, you know, eating pork and drinking alcohol and staying up late for 40 days.

00:14:12.020 there's this whole industry that's grown up around him in this small remote city. And a lot of people

00:14:17.920 will go there for a couple weeks. And, you know, they'll see him two or three times. But the rest

00:14:22.140 of the time, they're sort of hanging out with other travelers. There's like hiking trails and

00:14:26.300 activities around this town. And a lot of what they're doing is just like meditating and chilling

00:14:31.520 out. And so part of me feels like, well, yeah, you feel better. Yeah. I mean, all of what you

00:14:36.180 just said could also be used to describe a vacation. Yes, exactly. I feel better after

00:14:41.820 a vacation. People feel better after vacations. And what we call self-care now. Dude, yeah. Do

00:14:46.680 you know how I felt after I went to Eurovision? Are you fucking kidding me? Amazing. There's 0.99

00:14:52.860 actually an interesting break here because some of what he's doing is just like this kind of stuff

00:14:57.080 of just like woo-woo, like go think about your life for three weeks and go on a hike. But he's

00:15:03.400 also doing actual surgical procedures i am not gonna show you the fucking footage because it is 0.97

00:15:09.860 absolutely disgusting and i cannot watch sorry footage exists and you watched it i mean i watch 0.97

00:15:16.160 it through my fingers like i wasn't like watching it watching it i feel so troubled and heartbroken 0.60

00:15:20.940 for you and having watched this knowing what that does to you in the way that you uh seem to feel 0.88

00:15:27.100 for me when i read the entire goddamn book about celery juice i hated it i know how much you hated 0.60

00:15:32.660 that would be like every fiber of your being my boyfriend often like listens to podcasts when he's 0.96

00:15:37.660 doing dishes or whatever in the kitchen so he like can't really hear me but then at one point

00:15:41.860 i heard him cry from the kitchen he's like are you moaning like i can hear moaning

00:15:45.820 so in this line of people outside he sort of does like a little assessment of like what they need

00:16:02.280 And then for a lot of people, and this is like what the really grisly footage is, he does this thing where he sticks a pair of forceps up their nose.

00:16:11.880 Oh.

00:16:12.480 Did this come up for you in the medical carnival thing research, Aubrey?

00:16:16.380 The snake oil stuff?

00:16:17.580 Yeah.

00:16:18.000 I don't remember anything in particular about forceps up noses.

00:16:22.680 Don't.

00:16:23.340 You would remember.

00:16:24.640 I feel like that would have made the cut.

00:16:26.020 This is an old carnival trick.

00:16:28.260 Oh, Jesus.

00:16:29.020 there's a cavity up your nose that sort of goes to the back of your throat it's about four and a

00:16:34.180 half inches long and like you can put something in there and it looks it looks impossible right

00:16:40.220 you're like there's no fucking way like an entirely you know pencil or whatever is going to go all the

00:16:43.720 way up your nose but there is just like human anatomy there is this cavity that goes back there 0.93

00:16:48.580 and it feels very weird when it happens to you but it doesn't hurt particularly but so it looks

00:16:52.960 kind of magical so if you've seen at sort of carnival shows or street performers oftentimes

00:16:57.020 it's a nail they'll sort of nail like a long nail right have you guys seen that i have unfortunately

00:17:03.100 i've also seen it in the form of covid tests exactly that's what i was thinking too how's

00:17:07.960 it all getting up there yes so apparently this was invented by indian medical showmen and the

00:17:14.500 first documented instance in the united states was in 1926 this is like a very well-known carnival

00:17:21.240 trick essentially that you can do it on yourself and it looks totally impossible or you can do it

00:17:25.400 on other people. And they're like, this has to be magical because there's no way anything could go

00:17:29.220 like that far into my face. So he does this sort of forcep trick. And in some of the clips that I

00:17:35.120 had to watch, he sticks the forceps so far up people's noses and he kind of twists them around

00:17:40.760 and they do actually start bleeding. Oh, Jesus. This is something that he does. Like people come

00:17:45.440 in there with like breast cancer and he does this to them. He also does this thing where this is

00:17:51.280 like also extremely old school you'll go to what you know medical quack whatever and they'll make

00:17:57.400 like a small kind of light incision in your body and they'll kind of put their fingers in it and

00:18:02.460 make it look like they're drawing something out of you right they'll be like oh there's a tumor

00:18:06.320 inside of you and then they'll pull out some sort of little snake worm thing but it's it's just a

00:18:13.280 sleight of hand trick like it's basically close-up magic right that they have this little thing in

00:18:18.120 their hand and there's like a lot of blood or like they'll put a lot of fake blood on you

00:18:21.960 and so there's so much kind of fake blood everywhere that you can't really tell how

00:18:26.520 deep the incision is it's basically like a paper cut and they pull out this little like worm

00:18:31.020 looking thing and they're like oh my god you've been living with this inside of you all this time

00:18:35.340 and you're like oh my god that's it that's why i can't sleep anymore or like that that was my

00:18:39.800 leukemia the whole time and like you can find people doing this all over the world this is

00:18:44.440 a very well-known, again, kind of carnival trick. Well, it's also like, you've also got a quarter

00:18:50.380 behind your ear. Yes. I've got your nose. Yeah. That's a really good comparison because that's

00:18:55.460 basically what it is. And also, I mean, it's just as dishonest, right? I think that with some of

00:19:01.060 this stuff, like Amanda Chantal Bacon and Gwyneth Paltrow, whatever, I do think that in general,

00:19:07.240 these people actually believe in what they're selling. But then there's also this, there's a

00:19:11.260 broad spectrum there and with stuff like this the forceps and the fucking close-up magic trick like 0.98

00:19:16.940 they know it's a scam they know that they are scamming you like this is the worst possible 0.97

00:19:22.060 version of this where like this dude knows that people are coming to him with leukemia and like 0.99

00:19:27.700 trauma and like real stuff and he is promising them a cure and he is fucking lying to them like 0.72

00:19:33.340 there is no world in which he even pretends to believe that any of this stuff is real right 0.89

00:19:38.240 Yeah. I mean, I also think like when you are in a situation where you have a really complicated or really troubling or really kind of intractable health issue, I think it's also easy to undersell the role of hope in all of that.

00:19:55.340 Yeah. Like, I remember what it was like before I was dealing with this thing. I just want to be free of it. And there is this moment after trying a new treatment where you're sort of, you're almost like levitating, right, with hope. You're almost like, you're just sort of like soaring with like, oh my God, this might have been the thing. I might be there, right? That also probably comes with some physiological effects, right?

00:20:20.560 Yes. And I mean, my beef with this whole thing is because I don't think that Oprah or any of the people that wrote these magazine articles ever truly considered the possibility that this dude was a fucking grifter, like a straight up carnival barker ass grifter. 0.99

00:20:36.940 the two options consistently that are presented to readers are like either this works or it's 0.94

00:20:44.100 harmless and you know he believes that it works but it's not really real nobody really considers 0.83

00:20:48.680 like this dude's fucking scamming you and doing like slight of hand on you what do you attribute 0.91

00:20:53.000 that to mike like why do you think that's not getting questioned here i honestly don't know 0.99

00:20:58.980 i think it's a lot of it is the the ethics of journalism i think because you know for example

00:21:03.540 if Oprah really considered the possibility that this dude was a grifter. The next obvious question

00:21:09.060 is, well, wait a minute, why are you giving airtime to a grifter? It implicates the journalist 0.95

00:21:13.240 to truly consider the fact this guy's just lying and scamming people out of their money

00:21:18.700 because it makes you question your own power as a journalist. Anyone you feature on Oprah,

00:21:23.900 that person is going to make millions of dollars, right? Like the Oprah's book club effect.

00:21:28.640 So to truly consider the fact that like maybe this dude is lying, you then have to actually

00:21:33.520 put some systems in place to be like, well, hang on a minute. We should check if he's lying first.

00:21:37.700 Like we should do some due diligence on this guy. Like, did he predict the storm when he was a tiny

00:21:41.240 child? Right. It also feels like if we take this and then we take again, like the medical medium,

00:21:48.080 Anthony William, and sort of the responses to both of these, right? There is definitely like

00:21:53.160 uncritical platforming of him, but there is much more overt criticism. So I also think there's this

00:21:59.060 degree to which folks in the US are, again, like more likely to kind of fetishize indigenous forms

00:22:09.480 of medicine because of sort of like the guilt of imperialism and whiteness and all of that kind of

00:22:16.480 stuff are also less likely to criticize it. That's a really good point, Aubrey, because I feel like 0.53

00:22:20.360 once you add faith into this, it also gets much harder too, because it can feel like you're sort 0.99

00:22:26.440 of shitting on somebody for being a Christian. And that can feel really hurtful to people. And I 0.96

00:22:30.340 think we all want to like be respectful of other people's beliefs. And so I think that's just like

00:22:34.640 another disincentive to sort of bring it up. Yeah, that's right. We're in a culture and in

00:22:39.640 a sort of political setting where we have forced religion into the public square, but also made it 0.58

00:22:44.920 sort of sacrosanct and untouchable and undebatable. Yeah. Right. So it's this weird combination of 0.91

00:22:50.180 like, it's the most public thing and it's the least discussable or debatable thing.

00:22:54.740 Yeah. There's also, I mean, a lot of Americans are Christians and Christians are predisposed to believe that like Christian faith healing is real. Like I also, I think the fact that Oprah's a Christian and she talks about this as part of her Christianity is also part of the reason why she falls for this.

00:23:10.260 And she sits at that nexus of like, she was credited with opening up TV and news to diverse

00:23:19.480 voices and to an individual experience. But yet, we always get to forget that these individuals

00:23:25.720 are consumers and that she's somehow able to make this profitable for these people she's putting

00:23:31.980 before us. Yes, exactly. And I think that that is something that she doesn't really reckon with.

00:23:37.100 Right. So I've got another excerpt. This is an excerpt from the infamous Oprah magazine article

00:23:43.700 from 2010. This is about one of his surgical procedures. Oh, Jesus. Thank you.

00:23:50.620 From my vantage point, only 10 feet away, the change in his body and demeanor was easily visible.

00:23:57.160 Now his eyes were more intense, and they flashed noticeably darker. His gait became stiffer,

00:24:03.160 his movements more deliberate. He turned to the three women standing against the wall,

00:24:08.280 took the one closest to him by the hand, and gently sat her in a wheelchair. Her eyes fluttered 0.97

00:24:13.980 white as she meditated. Reaching to the tray, he selected a short knife with a wooden handle,

00:24:20.060 a cheap-looking type that you might use to pair an apple, and he held it up to the room,

00:24:25.100 making sure that everyone saw its sharp blade. He tipped her head backward, running his hand

00:24:30.760 across her face, and he opened her left eye, holding the eyelid wide. Jesus Christ, Mike.

00:24:37.580 I'm telling you, you do not Google this.

00:24:40.440 And then he began to scrape the knife across her eyeball back and forth.

00:24:46.320 Unbelievably, the woman sat absolutely still without flinching or recoiling.

00:24:52.260 How on earth could a knife across your eyeball not hurt? 0.93

00:24:56.760 What do you think? 0.58

00:24:57.300 Mike, I feel like you need to bake and mail me a cake.

00:25:00.300 I know.

00:25:00.760 for making me read that quote. We're done here. So is he doing cataract surgery?

00:25:06.540 Well, this is one of those things. He does this procedure on like basically everybody.

00:25:11.620 There's no relationship between the procedures that he's doing and what people's ailments are.

00:25:17.980 The author of the article actually admits later on that the thing that explains this is that in,

00:25:23.860 you know, on your eyeballs, the white part of your eyeballs don't have any nerves.

00:25:28.760 So it's actually perfectly reasonable that somebody lightly scraping something across 0.72

00:25:35.040 the white part of your eye would feel fucking weird, but wouldn't hurt.

00:25:39.340 I understand that you have researched this and that it is demonstrably true. 0.85

00:25:44.200 And also every fiber of my body rejects it.

00:25:46.840 I'm like, anything going in my eye is going to hurt.

00:25:48.720 I don't trust it.

00:25:49.500 I don't want anybody getting in my eyeballs like a rusty knife.

00:25:53.760 Our next tagline is just like, welcome to maintenance phase,

00:25:56.520 a podcast that encourages you to stick sharp objects in your eye.

00:26:00.800 But this is sort of what I think is the cardinal sin of so much of the coverage of John of God

00:26:04.660 over the years, is that many of the articles admit that like this might not be real, but they

00:26:11.140 don't sort of jump to the obvious conclusion from that. The 1999 Irish Times article ends with,

00:26:17.680 although I saw no miracles and have yet to comprehend what my own operation involved,

00:26:22.000 this analytical agnostic has to confess that her visit to John has had a profoundly positive effect

00:26:28.000 on every level. Magic? Who cares? Going to like remote Brazil and staying in a hotel like a

00:26:34.940 meditation retreat for three weeks, people are spending tens of thousands of dollars on this

00:26:39.220 treatment. It's actually pretty relevant if it's real or not. Because if all he's offering is sort

00:26:45.520 of some inner peace and some fucking hiking, most of us can get that within like an hour of where 1.00

00:26:49.760 we live right most of us can find a questionable cabin in the catskills yes it's a gay enclave 0.98

00:26:56.440 peninsula thing but if i can get my acne cured at the same time i'll pay double yeah that's right 0.66

00:27:02.480 but this actually this actually brings us to the oprah episode so in 2010 oprah does an entire

00:27:09.540 episode dedicated to john of god do you guys want to guess what it's called john of god g-a-w-d

00:27:14.720 no it's called do you believe in miracles question mark oh we've covered this on the 0.95

00:27:25.760 show so many times that it's just like that fucking question mark is just such a get out 0.94

00:27:29.340 of jail free card i mean i'm just asking questions also came up in our q anon episode right sort of 0.95

00:27:35.640 this idea of like i'm just asking but like if you're all like upset about it that's on you

00:27:40.960 I'm just asking a question.

00:27:42.720 Oh, totally.

00:27:43.200 Yeah.

00:27:43.360 And I think particularly having this couched in the language of Christianity and of miracles,

00:27:50.060 which is like a particularly like Oprah slice of Christianity, right?

00:27:55.340 Feels really, oh.

00:27:58.040 It's bad.

00:27:58.560 Feels like that sound.

00:27:59.880 So this episode, or at least the clips of it that I could find online,

00:28:03.580 she doesn't just come out and say like, this guy's a miracle healer and everything is real.

00:28:07.340 She does the same thing we saw in that interview that we watched earlier,

00:28:10.260 where she's like this is pretty woo-woo and like i don't know i'm pretty skeptical and she takes

00:28:15.440 the tone of sort of like she's the straight man and everybody else is sort of trying to talk her

00:28:19.520 into this it's like an infomercial right i'm thinking about who her audience was for the show

00:28:24.420 and and i still i still just can't figure out like who are you why are you hedging your bets

00:28:29.560 just right either say you support him and you believe him right or not i i think that to me 0.98

00:28:35.600 is the fundamental chicken shit-ness of this framing. We see Dr. Oz doing this constantly, 0.97

00:28:41.620 where it's like, these magical medical supplements, some people say they're incredible,

00:28:46.560 and I lost 50 pounds in two days, and other people say they don't work. But like, I'm just

00:28:51.200 presenting the debate. But it's like, well, no one has heard of these pills before you told me about

00:28:55.260 them. So it's like, she's introducing this guy into American homes and saying like, there's some

00:29:00.280 chance that he's a miracle healer. And I don't think that she's taking that responsibility

00:29:04.620 seriously at all. You know, as you were saying that, I was realizing that that like, people are

00:29:10.100 talking, some people are saying this really goes on our list of like, now that's what I call maintenance

00:29:15.960 phase. Oh my god, I know. If you can't cite like, who's talking and who's saying what? Yes. If you

00:29:20.840 just say people are talking, and then you say a bunch of stuff, then the people who are talking

00:29:25.280 are pretty much just you. Yeah. And I mean, the example that they always use in journalism

00:29:29.600 is, you know, if one person says it's raining outside and the other person says it's sunny

00:29:35.080 outside, your job as a journalist is not to report what both people are saying. Your job is to fucking 0.99

00:29:39.580 go outside. That is supposed to be what journalism is. But because we have sort of these precepts of 0.99

00:29:46.220 objective journalism, which we could do easily like 10 entire episodes on, journalists often do

00:29:51.440 take this stance of I'm just reporting on the debate. And they think that that's the responsible

00:29:55.320 way to do it when the actual responsible thing to do is to investigate this person before you

00:30:00.840 put them on your show and before you bring them this extra level of visibility we keep coming

00:30:04.980 back to oprah as journalism which i have a point to make i still disagree because even if oprah

00:30:14.600 says well this person says this and this person says that all of those people are potentially

00:30:21.160 still going to watch the show and be the audience that is driving up the advertising fees.

00:30:28.560 Like, it makes sense in that kind of capitalist framework of, we don't care who the audience

00:30:34.960 is or what they actually think.

00:30:37.000 Yeah.

00:30:37.440 And we can make that clear by saying, there's a debate.

00:30:40.780 Right.

00:30:40.980 Well, we see this so much, too, that people who are de facto playing a journalism role

00:30:46.840 in people's lives like informing the public on issues of public concern will deliberately reject

00:30:53.020 the title of journalism because they know journalist comes with it a set of ethics and

00:30:58.120 a set of norms people are getting their information from oprah show right i think you're right that

00:31:02.900 she wouldn't necessarily identify as a journalist but what she is doing is journalism in a lot of

00:31:07.840 ways yeah okay uh it's clip time oh this is a clip from the infamous 2010 do you believe in

00:31:15.920 miracles episode no god what you were describing so you obviously didn't have the same kind of

00:31:24.300 experience he didn't cut on you other than the the nose probing and you still have cancer uh stage

00:31:32.380 four cancer so everybody that comes isn't healed right that's correct why i have no way to

00:31:41.840 understand that. And I think that's where we need to do the research. I think that every case is so

00:31:46.980 individual. One person can come before John of God with a particular illness and be given one

00:31:52.360 prescription. The next person can have that very same illness and be given a very different

00:31:56.520 prescription. It's very individual. One person can be told to go meditate. And we all, it's the

00:32:02.740 journey of a soul. And we all are trying to use the illness to learn something that is unique to

00:32:10.000 our particular situation i believe okay so the panel that she has the woman who she gestures to

00:32:17.080 is susan casey she is the woman who went to john of god for grief over her father's death and the

00:32:24.160 excerpt that we read earlier was from her oprah magazine article which we're going to talk about

00:32:28.720 in great detail in a second the dude on the panel is jeff rediger who i think is at harvard

00:32:36.280 I genuinely don't know like where to put him on the sort of doctor versus grifter spectrum.

00:32:43.900 He has written a book on this thing called spontaneous healing, which is a real thing

00:32:49.120 that there are quite a few medical conditions where like some people just get better.

00:32:53.700 You know, when I was doing research for the Tuskegee experiment, one third of people with

00:32:59.380 long-term syphilis, like they just don't have it anymore. And we don't actually really know why.

00:33:03.740 he calls that spontaneous healing. I think there's definitely a grifter aspect to this

00:33:08.780 entire field. But then it's actually a legitimate medical phenomenon that I don't think is very

00:33:13.760 well understood. Yeah. I mean, this is part of where all of these kind of miracle cures things

00:33:19.580 show up and so many grifters show up, right? There is still so much that we just don't know

00:33:26.220 about medicine. There's so much that we don't know about physical and mental illness.

00:33:30.240 any place where we don't know we tend to sort of reach for you know almost like any port in the

00:33:37.160 storm right yeah which sort of opens up this whole world of totally unproven totally untested

00:33:45.640 kind of stuff so i don't necessarily like begrudge this dude wanting to study that it seems very

00:33:52.540 strange to have someone who's studying that show up on oprah on a show called do you believe in

00:33:59.580 miracles, right? Yes. I think it's a legitimate question to ask. I don't know if I agree with his

00:34:05.640 answer to that question. No, of course. Of course, of course, of course. Yeah. And so the third person,

00:34:10.160 whose name is Lisa Millman, is a South African woman who had breast cancer and went to see John

00:34:15.340 of God. And she talks in this Oprah episode about how sort of she saw him. She underwent this long

00:34:21.600 treatment in Brazil. She came back and her doctor said that her cancer was still metastasizing,

00:34:28.100 but it sort of wasn't metastasizing as fast as they would have expected and she it appears denied

00:34:35.920 herself like western medical treatment of her own cancer and she died two years after this aired

00:34:40.940 jesus christ it's this weird haunting interview now where it's this woman describing deliberately

00:34:47.020 not getting care for the condition that will eventually kill her oh it's rough i know i thought

00:34:52.140 we were gonna avoid victim blaming in the clip but but we we eventually get there with the whole

00:34:57.160 journey of the soul talk and yes like he works with the energy that you bring to him there's

00:35:03.020 like a subtle like your energy was not right and it just like this idea that you're supposed to

00:35:09.060 fight and mobilize yourself the body in a particular way and there's just a thread of

00:35:15.180 that in that yeah if it didn't work it's not that it didn't work it's that you didn't do it right

00:35:20.540 yeah yeah and it's also i mean one of the reasons why i chose this clip was because it's fascinating

00:35:25.260 that they're just basically like blithely mentioning in the middle of an hour-long

00:35:29.380 episode called Do You Believe in Miracles that like it might not work for you and we have no

00:35:34.620 we have no criteria for determining in advance whether this is going to work for you or not.

00:35:40.040 They're just like oh yeah by the way lots of people who go there get no effect at all. But

00:35:45.120 then again they don't follow that to the logical conclusion that like maybe this guy is full of 1.00

00:35:49.760 shit. Right and also it does feel really interesting to me again sort of going back to this like 1.00

00:35:54.540 there's a researcher on this panel it feels really interesting to me to be in a place of

00:35:59.660 talking about research that's in process in the absence of any findings i'm researching this thing

00:36:05.040 and i don't really know about it yet right here's some ideas that i maybe have but i can totally see

00:36:10.400 that like oprah her show and the 24-hour news cycle coinciding with a push for academics to

00:36:17.060 become quote-unquote public intellectuals and him getting a lot of credit for showing up on oprah

00:36:23.360 to talk about his research and it's also one of the other things that drives me nuts about this

00:36:28.360 is that she brings him on as sort of like the skeptical voice he's the only person that she

00:36:34.920 brings on who's not like i received this treatment and it worked for me right so it's like she's

00:36:40.080 she's using his medical expertise as a way to give herself and him credibility as like we're

00:36:45.360 hearing from all sides here but she doesn't bring on anybody who's like uh this guy is absolutely 0.99

00:36:50.460 full of shit yeah he's the he's the skeptic but he's not skeptical yes have you guys heard of 0.82

00:36:57.820 somebody named the amazing randy it sounds like it's it sounds like i made that up i realized 0.99

00:37:03.800 from aubrey's cattling that it sounds like something that only exists in my head it just

00:37:08.580 sounds like some dude you went to middle school with he just like you know like people would pay

00:37:15.120 him to eat worms so he's like a sort of legendary debunker guy he was actually originally a magician

00:37:21.780 which is how he found out about these sort of sleight of hand tricks where it looks like

00:37:25.400 somebody's pulling a tumor out of you he used to appear in the 80s and 90s on the tonight show

00:37:31.280 and like debunk people there's this infamous clip where some guy comes out and says that he can like

00:37:35.840 bend spoons with his mind you know and then they bring out the amazing randy and the amazing randy

00:37:41.180 he's like, I brought my own set of spoons. Can you bend these ones? And then all of a sudden,

00:37:45.480 magically, the guy's like, I don't think the spirit is speaking to me right now. I can't do

00:37:49.180 it. And like, they're very obviously just trick spoons. But so the amazing Randy wrote a long,

00:37:54.880 very interesting essay about John of God, because he was asked in 2005 to be sort of like the

00:38:01.140 skeptical voice on an ABC special that investigated John of God. And one thing that he says, he has

00:38:07.500 this fascinating passage where he talks about how, you know, it's interesting on like Oprah

00:38:11.720 and this ABC special, they'll talk to doctors, but they won't talk to people who are experts

00:38:17.200 in like medical grifting and like the economies and tactics of people who lie for a living

00:38:23.920 and sell fake services for a living.

00:38:26.700 Like that is actually in some ways a more relevant expertise, right?

00:38:31.120 Because the only thing that a doctor is qualified to say about this is like, does this make

00:38:35.980 sense medically or does it not whereas somebody who's an expert in like scams can say like well

00:38:41.600 this works economically yeah it does feel really interesting that all of this stops short of that

00:38:46.720 yes right that there's like no willingness to entertain that there might actually be like

00:38:51.040 you know unproven practices here or there might actually be ill intent here yes and you can also

00:38:56.500 tell that oprah and her producers didn't do any due diligence on this guy because one thing that

00:39:03.120 she mentions throughout the show is that you know john of god works for free and it's kind of like

00:39:07.320 well obviously this guy's like a man of god because he's not charging anything for these treatments

00:39:11.880 he's not getting rich off of it he's doing it because he wants to you know increase human

00:39:15.180 happiness in the world whatever but what nobody mentions is that almost everybody that goes to

00:39:20.940 john of god like one of the first things that he prescribes is like herbs and his wife sells the

00:39:25.880 herbs oh my god and so like he is making money and one thing we find out after all of the scandalous

00:39:32.640 stuff which we'll get to in a second is that he owns like a huge number of properties in this

00:39:39.600 small town in brazil and so a lot of the tour companies that are sort of charging you thousands

00:39:45.280 of dollars of like you know we'll get you a bus to go to this remote village etc he's getting a

00:39:49.780 huge cut of those and he's getting a cut of the hotels of course the economy is making money so

00:39:55.360 he's making money exactly so like he is the economy of this town so he is getting extraordinarily

00:40:01.920 narrowly wealthy off of this they didn't do any of that background they're just like oh he provides

00:40:06.240 it for free yeah oh i thought i thought you'd have more than that aubrey look i it just it's

00:40:13.300 just really fascinating to me that there's like zero follow the money on any of this i am convinced

00:40:18.300 that this is another weird developing country thing with this sort of like magical people

00:40:23.580 in the developing world idea that americans have like with how little information we have about

00:40:28.680 like how developing countries actually function, I think that we tend to overlook that like there

00:40:32.900 are human incentives at play in these societies as well. And there are huge inequalities in

00:40:38.360 developing countries as well. Yeah. And, you know, we find out later that John of God is like he's

00:40:44.040 all wrapped up in like the mayor. He's wrapped up in like national Brazilian politics. It's like,

00:40:49.100 no, there's structures of power in other countries too. Well, and all of that context is stripped

00:40:54.220 away right from like any and all of this like yes we're not looking at the full picture we're just

00:40:59.800 going this guy says he performs miracles and maybe he does right we're like whoa hey so that's

00:41:07.740 basically all we're going to say about the episode but i do want to dwell on the article in oprah

00:41:13.780 magazine that comes out in correspondence with this episode because it's one of the worst things

00:41:20.500 i've ever read so i i have a document in front of me with all the quotes that i want to read

00:41:27.420 and i highlight quotes in yellow that i want to read and like the whole page is yellow so i'm

00:41:31.560 gonna i'm trying to like resist the urge just like let's just read the whole thing guys it's

00:41:36.580 10 pages long so you missed a spot i'm resisting this okay aubrey i'm gonna make you read this one 0.99

00:41:43.360 okay one physician i knew to be interested in john of god's work was memet oh fuck you 0.92

00:41:49.420 Michael, as a cardiac surgeon, his training had been rigorously scientific, but he wondered about 0.97

00:41:56.100 what Western medicine didn't yet know. Quote, I think the next big frontier is unlocking the

00:42:02.100 doors to energy medicine, Oz told me. Quote, it dramatically broadens our vista of opportunities

00:42:08.080 to heal. The challenge we have is that energy is not as easily quantified as the surgeon's

00:42:13.960 scalpel, end quote. But the stories coming out of Abadiania challenged that stance. Five years ago,

00:42:21.740 Oz had participated in a primetime live segment focusing on John of God. He'd examined hours of

00:42:28.240 film footage from the entity's healings. He'd looked at scans and biopsy reports, and there

00:42:33.380 were results he couldn't explain. The shrinkage of an aggressive cancer, for instance. Quote,

00:42:38.060 this guy had glioblastoma, which is a very deadly brain tumor, Oz recalled. Quote,

00:42:43.840 it was grade four. They biopsied it and proved it. If we can understand what role he's playing

00:42:49.360 in reversing illness, Oz said at the time, we should be doing that here. What do you think?

00:42:54.560 I mean, like, that's fine. Study it and then present the findings. I don't really get this

00:42:58.640 whole thing of like, this is something we should look into. Just based on your Oz episode,

00:43:03.800 he's always doing market research right so he's not trying to look for anything to disprove he's

00:43:08.420 trying to look for something to to bottle and sell oh yeah yeah that's right a huge red flag

00:43:13.160 in this is that it says dr oz examined hours of film footage from the entity's healings that

00:43:19.880 footage was provided by john of god it would have to be i don't know where else it would come from

00:43:24.480 john of god and sort of his supporters have made a bunch of videos of his surgical procedures

00:43:28.540 but they're filmed very carefully oftentimes you can't actually see what's happening like with this

00:43:33.540 you know sleight of hand stuff where he pulls the tumor out or whatever they're filmed like with his

00:43:37.520 back to the camera and they're not there there's no close-ups and they're they're in black and

00:43:41.540 white and they're in bad like they almost seem deliberately bad so that you can't actually see

00:43:46.740 what's going on well it's enabled to buy our own kind of imperialism ideas about yeah well they

00:43:52.500 probably didn't have like great cameras over there so this is what he has like they have

00:43:56.400 iphones in brazil man this guy makes millions of dollars like they can get some 4k out of brazil

00:44:03.140 dude i think there's also like journalism drag dude we're almost like play acting at being

00:44:10.040 journalists but we have like a very clear agenda we're not going to research things yeah we're like

00:44:16.720 here to um promote a set of ideas or a worldview yeah there's plenty of skepticism of like you know

00:44:25.020 weight neutral health care or of like community health workers right and then there are moments

00:44:30.920 like this where you're like, why is no one skeptical? Can I illustrate that with one more

00:44:36.720 story? Yes. Kimberly, do you want to read this one? Yes. This is still from the O Magazine article.

00:44:42.660 I met Jeanette Lodia, a 40-year-old blonde woman from the south of Brazil who had battled with 0.97

00:44:47.700 recurring cancer. It had begun 17 years ago in her knee and migrated so thoroughly into her bones

00:44:53.720 that no treatment was possible. She too arrived in Abadania with one last hope. Quote, come back

00:44:59.840 21 times, the entity said, and you will be healed. This was a pretty tall order considering that

00:45:06.060 Jeanette's commute required a 40-hour bus ride that left her wracked with nausea. But she did

00:45:11.380 as he said. Eventually, she began to feel well again. Three years later, however, the cancer

00:45:17.260 returned with a vengeance, this time in her uterus. She went back to the casa, disappointed and upset.

00:45:23.420 Quote, don't be unhappy, the entity told her. I'm going to give you the present you hope for.

00:45:29.040 Once again, Janet followed his instructions.

00:45:31.980 Six years later, she became pregnant, and on April 26, 2000, her daughter, Eveline, was born. 0.97

00:45:37.980 This would be a miraculous event for any woman who'd been that sick. 1.00

00:45:41.320 But the bar was even higher. 1.00

00:45:42.580 In a calm and measured tone, Jeanette told me that she had given birth despite having previously undergone a complete hysterectomy.

00:45:49.320 Wait, what? 0.96

00:45:50.220 Quote, Jeanette had no tubes, no uterus. 1.00

00:45:53.240 The doctor said it would be a psychological pregnancy. 0.97

00:45:56.620 Whoa, wait, okay. 0.94

00:45:58.400 i know holy shit but then they did an ultrasound and she was five months along close quote 0.98

00:46:05.300 lot going on my brain just exploded so it's like she had cancer and it went away oh and by the way 0.96

00:46:13.960 she had a daughter despite having had an hysterectomy that's a pretty big deal yeah

00:46:20.460 did she sorry i'm re i'm rereading it you guys are just reeling right now

00:46:26.000 I genuinely, you know, I can yell talk about just about anything.

00:46:31.800 This one is fully blowing my brains out of my head.

00:46:34.540 Was it a psychological pregnancy, Mike? 0.92

00:46:36.660 That's usually your question when I tell you about pregnant ladies. 1.00

00:46:38.980 Always. 1.00

00:46:39.580 Anytime a baby's involved.

00:46:41.000 Psychological pregnancy?

00:46:41.780 Was it a psychological pregnancy?

00:46:44.760 Do you want to hear how the author tries to justify it?

00:46:47.240 Yes, please.

00:46:48.140 Yeah.

00:46:48.440 She says, I was being asked to believe what science could flatly deny,

00:46:52.900 that a pregnancy could occur in the absence of an egg.

00:46:55.380 but there was evelyn a long-legged sprite of a girl with wavy brown hair

00:47:00.360 hugging her mother's waist as janet recounted her story so it's like well it has to be true

00:47:05.280 because the baby is right there but it's like that's not the difficult part of the story to

00:47:10.160 believe right that a person had a child people have babies what are the chances that the entity

00:47:17.560 and the medical medium spirit are the same the same prankster from the future the same

00:47:23.800 ill-intended ghost.

00:47:27.380 So we're going to watch

00:47:28.240 one more clip.

00:47:29.640 This is from Oprah's

00:47:30.700 second TV special

00:47:32.560 about John of God.

00:47:33.880 The first one was so successful

00:47:35.460 that in 2012,

00:47:36.960 she actually goes down

00:47:38.120 and visits John of God.

00:47:39.740 Oprah girl, why?

00:47:41.180 I know.

00:47:41.980 Truly, truly, why?

00:47:45.580 The first time I saw it today,

00:47:47.620 I was humbled by the experience.

00:47:49.540 When she saw people today,

00:47:52.160 a little bit of this belongs to you a part of this belongs to you how so I don't understand

00:48:03.580 because you are human well could the entity tell me what does human energy look like because as I

00:48:10.960 understand it each person that comes before you the entity sees the energy of that we have an aura

00:48:18.500 We have different colors in our world.

00:48:21.180 So human energy looks like colors?

00:48:24.220 Yes.

00:48:25.240 Various different colors.

00:48:28.480 What does something like cancer look like when you see inside?

00:48:34.540 When he sees cancer, he starts asking that this be taken away, be removed, being God's will.

00:48:47.640 because it is not his he does not have the power it is god who has the power and he prays to have

00:48:54.760 the person's cancer removed by god if it is his will if it is god's will

00:49:00.300 in my brain the birds in the background are like don't listen to him 0.99

00:49:05.420 everyone make a fuss so oprah can't hear this fucking grifter oh my god what did you guys think 0.97

00:49:13.820 i mean it's really interesting right like this is actually the closest that we've gotten to his 0.98

00:49:17.920 actual methodology and it feels like he's doing his own praying for you but it's also nothing new

00:49:24.760 right i mean auras energy reading oh yeah again this is like classic grifter stuff if she had

00:49:30.680 spoken to some like amazing randy type debunkers they'd be like oh yeah he's gonna give you some

00:49:36.220 aura bullshit it's also so funny to me how oprah like nods profoundly at his just like absolute 0.95

00:49:43.360 empty bullshit complete word salad that's a good point you made magnetic poetry set you can tell 0.99

00:49:52.220 that she's like in some way bought into it because she's not asking him anything skeptically like 0.98

00:49:56.200 what what color is cancer is like not a tough question because there's no wrong answer to that

00:50:01.280 question so it's never about resolving the question mark of these headlines or show titles

00:50:06.340 okay i'll just check it so wait is this dude still doing his thing oh do you guys want to 0.99

00:50:12.200 get to the fucking twist and downfall like the horrifying shit oh god okay this is absurd because 0.99

00:50:17.820 sort of the structure of this episode because this is like a wellness podcast we're mostly 0.99

00:50:22.240 focusing on like his wellness grifting but then in 2018 we find out that this dude is a serial

00:50:28.720 rapist oh god it's actually kind of fascinating in in 2018 we're in the midst of all of this me

00:50:35.640 too stuff like this flood of allegations against powerful men is happening one of the people who

00:50:41.020 is inspired by this her name is Zahira Moose she's a choreographer in the Netherlands and she had

00:50:47.100 gone down to visit John of God a couple years previously I believe in 2014 and she posts this

00:50:52.520 like very long post on Facebook this is like extremely rough by the way so if you want to

00:50:58.720 be like me watching surgery footage and fast forward that's totally fine she was seeing him

00:51:03.540 for sexual trauma and so she flew to Brazil she was waiting in line she waited hours and hours I

00:51:10.200 believe all day and it seemed that sort of he almost sort of arranged it so that she would be

00:51:15.240 his last patient of the day and she went in for a consultation and he said like let's you know let's

00:51:20.580 let's go to my healing room like this back room where the healing happens which turns out to be 0.90

00:51:24.540 his bathroom and then he like pins her to the wall and he like viciously rapes her jesus christ like

00:51:31.280 she is super traumatized she says that she's never really been able to process it she's never gotten 0.99

00:51:36.000 over it and she was seeing him for sexual trauma like it's the worst fucking thing that's the 0.97

00:51:40.180 thing that gets me is like there's no there's no like gradation of like sexual trauma right or 0.97

00:51:46.960 sexual assaults that like at least not that i'm willing to get into right but like there is

00:51:51.800 something so specifically horrifying about someone who's seeking treatment and then to experience

00:52:00.020 that same trauma from the person you're seeking treatment from is so deeply deeply awful and

00:52:07.840 troubling well he's playing on her vulnerability i mean this is like classic abuser stuff is he sees

00:52:12.780 her as a mark because this is something you know the desperation and the pain is something that 0.93

00:52:17.640 makes people easier to target and then fucking gaslight afterwards right this business model 0.66

00:52:23.100 is perfectly structured to deliver him potential victims right it's a bunch of desperate people 0.89

00:52:28.240 who see him as this like prophet and he's like linked up with god it's not even like i want to

00:52:33.120 take a shower it's like i want to take a shower in like so bad rubbing alcohol or something you

00:52:37.980 know what i mean like i'm just like ah this is so gross and upsetting and the worst okay do you

00:52:42.380 want to hear the worst part in an interview with new york times after all of this happens they ask

00:52:47.740 you know how did you hear of john of god and she says i heard of him from a friend and i saw oprah 0.62

00:52:53.120 winfrey's documentary oh fuck bad any quote from oprah's camp on that probably not yeah we eventually 0.91

00:53:00.440 we eventually get like an extremely fucking anodyne public statement this is like the most 0.98

00:53:05.940 boring thing i've ever read out loud in my life she says i went to brazil in 2012 to tape an 0.94

00:53:10.680 episode of oprah's next chapter that explored the controversial healing methods of john of god

00:53:15.380 the episode aired in 2013 i empathize with the women now coming forward and hope justice is

00:53:21.320 served but then you know after this facebook post you know journalists brazilian journalists start

00:53:25.980 looking into it a couple weeks later there's a brazilian tv special with zahira and three other

00:53:31.180 victims none of whom are named and this is like a massive because you know he's quite famous in

00:53:35.340 brazil and this tv special is a sensation and within 36 hours 78 more people come forward

00:53:43.740 by now there's more than 600 victims have identified themselves 600 yeah it's bad and

00:53:51.240 they all describe exactly the same pattern that zahira describes where it's like they were singled

00:53:55.180 out by him they were taken into a back room like it's exactly the same pattern oh yes i'm both

00:54:01.720 curious and afraid to ask is there a shift in the sort of media coverage around this guy more

00:54:07.820 broadly what's extremely frustrating about this is that there had been previous allegations 0.79

00:54:13.020 oh fuck before oprah's episode there had been sort of these were always kind of like a footnote

00:54:18.620 in these glowing you know is it a miracle type reports of like yeah there's some things with 0.97

00:54:22.620 women but like anyway he denies the allegations but like no one really looked into it and i don't

00:54:28.300 know how to sort of fit the rape stuff in with the medical grifting it is interesting to me that

00:54:33.260 it's only after the abuse allegations came out that oprah finally removed all of this stuff from

00:54:38.140 her web page wow like i think our line for like not platforming people shouldn't be rapists i 0.87

00:54:44.280 think it should just be like lying about medical shit like don't platform those people right yes 0.97

00:54:49.620 deplatform the serial rapist but like those shouldn't be the only people that we deplatform 0.99

00:54:53.560 right when you uncritically platform people this is part of the potential cost of that well i mean 0.75

00:55:00.580 this is the thing is i i don't think that every i'm a miracle healer charlatan is a serial rapist

00:55:07.240 like i don't i don't think that that's like a high probability but also by promoting these kinds

00:55:12.580 of methodologies like you're putting people in contact with like shady people yeah and that

00:55:18.340 leads to all kinds of other immoral behavior right has he faced any consequences for all of this

00:55:23.220 yes this is this is like the happy the happy-ish ending to the story is that he's now serving 19

00:55:28.540 years in prison for rape jesus christ i don't know that a prison sentence is ever like a happy ending 0.98

00:55:34.400 but also like at least a fucking rapist isn't being put on oprah he's also facing a bunch more 0.99

00:55:40.260 charges and his his daughter has come forward and said that he molested her for years jesus and said 1.00

00:55:46.460 that he's a monster. Like, this guy is unbelievable bad news.

00:55:50.860 But I don't doubt that the charlatanism ends with him being in prison because,

00:55:54.660 you know, he's a grifter, so he's going to grift in jail, too.

00:55:57.600 Do you guys want to hear an extremely perfect epilogue to this?

00:56:01.580 Okay.

00:56:02.480 This is actually not that bad, Aubrey. Don't worry.

00:56:04.440 Okay. I just, I feel like I'm really reeling from this episode.

00:56:09.420 This is the ending of an excellent Sydney Morning Herald article about him being convicted of all

00:56:14.660 rapes and it's talking about sort of like the town like what happens to this town now and it

00:56:19.980 closes with the number of international tourists is decreasing but guides continue to promote the

00:56:25.160 town and the casa as a sacred place they say there's an enormous crystal in the ground which

00:56:30.700 gives energy to the entities and that they're even stronger now so the entities will be able to

00:56:36.780 embody somebody else it's just like grifters got a grift like we got nothing is gonna stop the

00:56:42.760 fundamental grift here. No. This is the tee up for the sequel. Yes, exactly. Like the long con

00:56:48.860 remains, even as the short con destroys itself. They learned so well. So that's it. That was

00:56:54.620 that was John of God. Wow. I will say the feeling that I am having right now is like a sailboat

00:57:00.100 without any wind. Just kind of hanging out, just adrift. Not really sure how I'm going to get

00:57:05.800 anywhere from here. I can tell, Aubrey, throughout the Skype, I can tell that your aura is devoid of

00:57:10.280 color. It used to be purple.

00:57:40.280 You

Maintenance Phase - June 22, 2021

Oprah Winfrey & ＂John of God＂

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