Maintenance Phase - Oprah Winfrey & "John of God"

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Special guest Kimberly Springer joins us to talk about an infamous, dangerous faith healer and his two — two! — appearances on Oprah's talk show. This episode contains, we're sorry to say, detailed descriptions of sexual assault. Buy Kimberly's books:Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American CultureLiving for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980Support us: Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and moreLinks!Behind the Bastards podcast series on John of God The O Magazine articleJohn of God, the Miracle HealerCelebrity Healer in Brazil Is Accused of Sexually Abusing FollowersOprah’s 2012 articleSupport the show

Hi everybody and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that remembers your spirit, but also your immunity to highly communicable diseases. Oh! Now I'm worried that you know what this show is about. I just know the vague direction. My name's Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hobbs. And we are back again with our Oprah correspondent. Kimberly Springer.

Hi Kimberly. I am haunting you like Oprah. Hello. To talk about a surprise secret episode of Oprah that Mike has chosen. A mystery topic. A mystery topic. A mystery topic. I really fancied myself a Sherlock Holmes type, crack in this code.

All that consistent of what's looking at Mike's Twitter feed. And I was like, well, I think I know what that was. The real meek link in the show is my lack of impulse control. Oh, that's me too, though. And let me see if I can transition us. If listeners want to enact their impulse to support the show, they can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase.

Nailed it. Thank you. And they can also hear a bonus episode where the three of us talk about Oprah's infamous Harry and Megan interview, which basically has nothing to do with wellness whatsoever, with like all of us had thoughts and we wanted to talk about it. Yeah. And we're going to release the episode next week. With that, Michael Hobbs, what are we talking about today?

Okay. Are either of you familiar with a person named John of God? Well, no, I feel very nervous now. No, I do not, no, I do not feel fortunate. Not to know. Every gay bone in my body was like, I don't feel good about this. I'm delighted.

I'm so, I'm so happy with this development. Okay, so I'm gonna walk you through this story from the beginning and I'm gonna try not to give you any spoilers of like where it's going. Great. So, John of God is a faith healer in Brazil who appeared on Oprah not once but twice in 2010 and in 2013. And we are going to start out with a clip

from Oprah's second show featuring John of God where we're going to talk a little bit about his background, his upbringing. Oh boy. This is an interview I wasn't sure would ever happen. One of the most famous spiritual healers in the world rarely talks to anyone on camera. John of God agreed to sit down with me under a mango tree on the grounds of the casa, a group of his patients gathered to watch.

John of God speaks only Portuguese, so Heather coming helped translate. Ready, guys? You describe yourself as a spiritual medium. What does that mean, a medium? As a medium, he's a spiritualist. He believes a great deal in God and he practices this mission Already 55 years

Born in a farm to a family who rarely had enough to eat Joao Tehera De Ferria was the youngest of six children His father was a tailor. His mother, a housewife, who also ran a small hotel to make insmeat. Joao left school when he was seven to work in his father's tailor shop. To this day, he cannot read or write. As a boy, Joao says he realized he was clairvoyant when he predicted a terrible storm

that destroyed a neighboring village. This event began his journey as a spiritual medium. What do you guys think? No red flags. I know there's no red flags, but what do you think other than that? Just the unremitting willingness to entertain Quakery. I know. Yeah. Definitely unbelievable. Yeah, it's really interesting to me that these Oprah episodes all happened sort of a decade or two before we started having more critical conversations

about the idea of platforming people. I know. From this to Dr. Oz to all kinds of stuff, right? I know. It's this really interesting mix of like a person who many of the people in my life have very fond feelings toward who has also kind of opened this series of like Pandora's boxes,

right, of like kind of wild people to be on a national or international stage. Right, and there's also you can see in the clip too, it doesn't appear that they've done much research on this guy's actual background, other than just like asking him. They're like, he predicted a storm in advance. She's not really quoting anyone skeptical of this,

or anyone putting this into context that kids say lots of stuff, and some of it seems kind of weirdly magical, but not every kid is a magical kid. It's interesting when she's a journalist and when she's not a journalist. Yes, exactly. On his website, he says that he's treated Bill Clinton. But it's not clear if she ever actually checked with Bill Clinton to confirm this. Right? Well, well, can people just say that? Or what?

It's easy enough to check. Yeah, like, especially for her. Aren't they in like the Illuminati meetings in Switzerland every year? She can just like sign a call in at the Guamoli. They saw each other at Bahamian Grove or whatever. Basin, this is like a little glimpse of who this guy is. And by the time he sort of shows up on the American radar, he's been at this for decades. He starts appearing in the press around 2000 in the American press, and there's oftentimes

like a sort of perfunctory paragraph where they go into his background, and they're like, little is known about the background of John of God, and they give these like the kind of the same details. This is from a 1999 Irish Times article. It says, the son of a tailor, he has had only two years of formal education,

but his psychic powers mean that he can channel the medical expertise of 33 deceased doctors, surgeons, dentists, and other spirit guides, including King Solomon, St. Ignatius Loyola, and Oswaldo Cruz, a doctor who eradicated yellow fever in Brazil. Wow. So it's just like normal, like normal details.

Anyway, he's a medium for 33 deceased doctors. You know, there's part of this that reminds me a great deal of our conversation about the medical medium and celery juice. Yes. 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. Yes, but also hiding behind this sort of mysticism and it's foreign and he was a literate. 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. 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. So this is an excerpt from an article that appears in O magazine in 2010. 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. 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.

Uh-huh. It's like, well, you know, they do weird spirit stuff in the developing world. It's poor people, it's countries we don't understand, are they in touch with fucking King Solomon? Sure. Right? It's like somehow more believable.

If it's from a culture that we sort of consider exotic already, and we think that like a different set of rules applies. But so then, what is Oprah doing in this space? Is it because it can fall under the umbrella of spiritualism? Yeah, a lot of this she couches as like sort of becoming a more spiritual person and like becoming more in touch with your spiritual self.

Which is like a good goal, but also it makes her vulnerable to some like pretty wild claims. So John of God starts showing up in the Western media in the early 2000s. There's a number of sort of magazine articles about him. There's an ABC special in 2005. At that point, he's already quite popular in Brazil. But this international coverage makes him like one of the most popular sort of destinations

for people looking to do this kind of alternative healing. So he's in a very remote village in Brazil, like he's one of the only sort of economic drivers of this city. And there's a clinic that he runs, it's kind of like part clinic, part church called the Casa. You have to wear white. So it's like the images that come out of these documentaries are like really interesting. It's all these people and sort of like loose fitting flowing like robes and like you know big white t-shirts and big white pants Just like waiting in line to see this guy So this is a excerpt from a 2016 newsweek article during each of these two daily sessions

He sees more than 500 people in three hours A young man in a wheelchair has traveled from Australia in the hope of finding a cure for the muscular dystrophy which has left him bone-thin and fragile. A woman from South Africa has a tumor in her heart, an Englishman in a wheelchair because of a bad fall during a trip on LSD. A wasted Brazilian woman who can't be more than 20 leaning on a stick. A white woman carrying a child with cerebral palsy. An older couple guiding a mentally handicapped girl, a black man with a huge growth on his neck. These people, many of whom have tried all other possible remedies, are hoping that John will cure them,

or at least give them the answers which they have not found anywhere else. Hmm. Again, the sound of the flapping of red flags in the wind. Yes. Well, also, while you were talking about like, everyone comes in wearing loose-fitting white clothing, I was like, man, if I saw that picture, all I would be thinking was like, cult? I know. I know.

Are they wearing the night keys or not? I mean, another thing that stands out to me from that excerpt is like how wide of a range of ailments there are. Yeah. A guy with a tumor, a guy who like sprained his ankle during a fall. Right, again, it's snake oil, it's celery juice. Yeah. It's moon juice.

It's like a bunch of the sort of like, kiraal kind of things. He's like, he's like a Swiss army knife for any ailment. Right, he's a real leather man. Yeah. Ha ha. Also medical care from hundreds of years ago, famously effective. Yeah, that's right.

One of the weird cameos I came across while I was researching this was, do you guys know who Shirley McLean is? Absolutely. So famous child actress, she remained dope throughout her life. She went to John of God in the early 90s and he cured her cancer, according to her. What? Yes.

This was just like an off-hand reference in like one of these random articles from like 2005. And then I was like, this is weird. And then I went to her Wikipedia page. And I found this sentence on an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show in April 2011, McLean stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her new Mexico ranch. What?

What? So I was like, okay, well now it's assigning me more fucking Oprah episodes to do. Of like the time when Oprah did a UFO episode, was Shirley McLean? I am waiting for Bated Breath for a Mary Ann Williamson cameo. Oh my God, yes.

The story really feels like a matter of time. So I am going to drop some text into the chat. Oh, this is a description from a woman named Susan Casey, who is talking about her treatment. I think it's worth noting that a lot of the people going to John of God, there's a lot of cancer, a lot of chronic illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, a lot of people dealing with lot of chronic illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, a lot of people

dealing with sort of like diagnosed medical conditions, but there's also a lot of people coming there for sort of more inco-weight conditions, of just like, I'm sad, or I don't have as much energy as I used to, or I'm dealing with trauma. And so this description, I think, encapsulates kind of why people are seeing John of God

and what they're getting out of it. So, which one of you wants to read this? Who wants to be Susan? I will. This is like Sunday school being passed to read. Of course I will. Yeah. Susan was also searching for her own healing. After her father sadly passed away two years ago, Susan experienced a quote, tsunami of grief. She wondered if John of God could help

heal her grief. Susan met with him. He looked at a picture of Susan and her father. He then told Susan to sit in the quote healing room, a room in the Casa Reserve for meditation and prayer for three hours. Susan said she was surrounded by hundreds of people in the healing room, all of whom were praying and meditating with their eyes closed. Quote, three hours went by like 20 minutes, and it was blissful. It was like I was floating on the boat. In her own state of meditation, Susan said she was able to speak with her father. Quote, it was very real. More of a vision that I had ever had before.

I got this feeling like I shouldn't be sad that everything was okay. What do you guys think? It feels very reminiscent to me of the ways that people from the US will talk about traveling to Central America and doing ayahuasca. You know, they've really got something figured out down there. It's also how I describe going to the Eurovision Song Contest. It's a kind of a three hours went by like 20 minutes.

Otherworldly, I was floating, it was amazing. I'm trying to figure out what did he do other than tell her to go sit in the room. Right. So yeah, it's this exotic experience that she can actually sit and pray and meditate at her house probably for three hours. Yeah. But it might feel like three hours, particularly if you're not used to praying or meditating. I think that there's something very interesting,

especially with the kinds of patients that are seeing him for something sort of not diagnosable or not all that specific or measurable, right? Something like grief or trauma. He oftentimes tells people that like, you know, you must stay here for five weeks. He often tells people to abst that like, you know, you must stay here for five weeks. He often tells people to abstain from, you know, eating pork and drinking alcohol and staying up late for 40 days. There's this whole industry that's grown up around him in

this small remote city. And a lot of people will go there for a couple weeks. And you know, they'll see him two or three times, but the rest of the time, they're sort of hanging out with other travelers. There's like hiking trails and activities around this town. And a lot of what they're doing is just meditating and chilling out. And so part of me feels like, well, yeah, you feel better. Yeah, I mean, all of what you just said could also be used to describe a vacation.

Yes, exactly. Or I feel better after a vacation. People feel better after vacations. And what we call stuff care now. Dude, yeah, do you know how I felt after I went to Eurovision? You fucking think? You think they did.

Amazing. There's actually an interesting break here because some of what he's doing is just like this kind of stuff. Of just like woo woo, like go think about your life for three weeks and go on a hike. But he's also doing actual surgical procedures. I am not gonna show you the fucking footage

because it is actually disgusting and I cannot watch. Wow. Sorry, footage exists and you watched it? I mean, I watched it through my fingers. Like I wasn't like watching it, watching it. I feel so troubled and heartbroken for you and having watched this, knowing what that does to you in the way that you seem to feel for me

when I read the entire goddamn book about celery juice. I hated it. I know how much you hated that one. Every fiber of your being. My boyfriend often listens to podcasts when he's doing dishes or whatever in the kitchen, so he can't really hear me, but then at one point I heard him cry from the kitchen.

He's like, are you moaning? I can hear him moaning. I'm like, I'm not going to ask that. And I was like, I was on the couch watching these clips and I was like, oh, I'm like, I'm going to hit this. So in this line of people outside, he sort of does like a little assessment of what they need. And then for a lot of people, and this is like what the really grizzly footage is,

he does this thing where he sticks a pair of four seps up their nose. Oh. Did this come up for you in the medical, carnival thing, research, Aubrey? The snake oil stuff? Yeah. I don't remember anything in particular

about four seps up noses. Don't. You would remember. I feel like that would have made the cut. This is an old carnival trick. Oh, Jesus. There's a cavity up your nose that sort of goes to the back of your throat.

It's about four and a half inches long. And like you can put something in there and it looks, it looks impossible, right? You're like, there's no fucking way, like an entire, you know, pencil or whatever is going to go all the way up your nose. But there is just like human anatomy. there is this cavity that goes back there. And it feels very weird when it happens to you, but it doesn't hurt particularly.

But so it looks kind of magical. So if you've seen at sort of carnival shows or street performers, often times it's a nail, they'll sort of nail like a long nail of a night. Have you got seen that? I have unfortunate. I've also seen it in the form of COVID tests. Exactly, that's what I was thinking too. How's it all getting up there?

Yes, so apparently this was invented by Indian medical showmen and the first documented instance in the United States was in 1926. This is like a very well-known carnival trick, essentially, that you can do it on yourself and it looks totally impossible, or you can do it on other, and it looks totally impossible, or you can do it on other people,

and they're like, this has to be magical, because there's no way anything could go like that far into my face. So he does this sort of forsep trick, and in some of the clips that I had to watch, he sticks the forsep so far up people's noses, and he kind of twists them around, and they do actually start bleeding.

Oh, Jesus. This is something that he does, like people come in there with like breast cancer and he does this to them. He also does this thing where this is like also extremely old school. You'll go to what, you know, medical quack, whatever. And they'll make like a small kind of light incision in your body and they'll kind of put their fingers in it

and make it look like they're drawing something out of you. They'll be like, oh, there's a tumor inside of you. And then they'll pull out some sort of little snake worm thing, but it's just a slight of hand trick. It's basically close-up magic. That they have this little thing in their hand, and there's a lot of blood, they'll put a lot of fake blood on you,

and so there's so much kind of fake blood everywhere that you can't really tell how deep the incision is. It's basically like a paper cut. And they pull out this little worm looking thing. And they're like, oh my god, you've been living with this inside of you all this time. And you're like, oh my god, that's it. That's why I can't sleep anymore.

Or that was my leukemia the whole time. And you can find people doing this all over the world. This is a very well-known, again, kind of carnival trick. Well, it's also like, you've also got a quarter behind your ear. Yes. I've got your nose. Yeah. That's a really good comparison, because that's basically what it is. And also, I mean, it's just as dishonest, right?

I think that with some of this stuff, Amanda, Shontal Bacon, and Gwyn, Paltrow, whatever, I do think that in general, these people actually believe in what they're selling, but then there's also this, there's a broad spectrum there, and with stuff like this, the four seps, and the fucking close-up magic trick, they know it's a scam, they know that they are scamming you. This is the worst possible version of this. We're like, this dude knows that people are coming to him with leukemia and like trauma and like real stuff

and he is promising them a cure and he is fucking lying to them. Like there is no world in which he even pretends to believe that any of this stuff is real. Right. 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. 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, it's like 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. 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, the two options consistently that are presented to readers are like either this works or it's harmless and you know he believes that it works but it's not really real. Nobody really considers like this dude's fucking scamming you and doing like slight of hand on you. What do you attribute that to Mike? Like why do you think that's not getting

questioned here? I honestly don't know. I think it's a lot of it is the ethics of journalism I think because you know for example if Oprah really considered the possibility that this dude was a grifter, the next obvious question is, well, wait a minute, why are you giving airtime to a grifter? It implicates the journalist to truly consider the fact this guy is just lying and scamming people out of their money because it makes you question your own power as a journalist. Anyone you feature on Oprah, that person is gonna make millions of dollars, right? Like the Oprah's book club effect. So to truly consider the fact that like,

maybe this dude is lying, you then have to actually put some systems in place to be like, well, hang on a minute, we should check if he's lying first. Like we should do some due diligence on this guy. Like, did he predict the storm when he was a tiny child? Right. It also feels like if we take this and then we take again,

like the medical medium, Anthony William, and sort of the responses to both of these, right? There is definitely like uncritical platforming of him, but there is much more overt criticism. So I also think there's this degree to which folks in the US are again, like more likely to kind of fetishize indigenous forms of medicine because of sort of like the guilt of imperialism and whiteness and all of that kind of stuff

are also less likely to criticize it. That's a really good point, Aubrey, because I feel like once you add faith into this, it also gets much harder too, because it can feel like you're sort of shitting on somebody for being a Christian. And that can feel really hurtful to people. And I think we all want to be respectful

of other people's beliefs. And so I think that's just like another disincentive to sort of bring it up. Yeah, that's right. We're in a culture and in a political setting where we have forced religion into the public square but also made it sort of sacrosanct and untouchable and undebatable. Right? So it's this weird combination of like it's the

most public thing and it's the least discussable or debatable thing. 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. Yeah. And she sits at that nexus of like she was credited with opening up TV and news to diverse places

and to an individual experience. But yet we always get to forget that these individuals are consumers and that she's somehow able to make this profitable for these people she's putting before us. Yes, exactly. And I think that that is something that she doesn't really reckon with. Right. So I've got another excerpt. This is an excerpt from the infamous Oprah Magazine article from 2010. This is about one of his surgical procedures. Oh Jesus, thank you.

From my vantage point, only 10 feet away, the change in his body and demeanor was easily visible. Now his eyes were more intense, and they flashed noticeably darker. His gate became stiffer, his movements more deliberate. clashed noticeably darker. His gate became stiffer, his movements more deliberate. He turned to the three women standing against the wall, took the one closest to him by the hand, and gently sat her in a wheelchair. Her eyes fluttered white as she meditated. Reaching to the tray, he selected a short knife with a wooden handle, a cheap looking type that you might use to pair an apple, and he held it up to the room, making sure that everyone saw its sharp blade. He tipped her head backward,

running his hand across her face, and he opened her left eye, holding the eyelid wide. Jesus Christ, Mike. I'm telling you, you do not Google this. And then he began to scrape the knife across her eyeball back and forth. Unbelievably, the woman sat absolutely still without flinching or recoiling. How on earth could a knife across your eyeball not hurt? What do you think? Mike, I feel like you need to bake and mail me a cake. I know, for me, I'm really that good.

We're done here. So is he doing cataracts or what? Well, this is one of those things. I know, for me, I'm really that close. We're done here. So is he doing cataracts or jury? Well, this is one of those things. He does this procedure on, like, basically everybody. There's no relationship between the procedures that he's doing and what people's ailments are. The author of the article actually admits later on

that the thing that explains this is that in, you know, on your eyeballs, the white part of your eyeballs don't have any nerves. So it's actually perfectly reasonable that somebody lightly scraping something across the white part of your eye would feel fucking weird, but wouldn't hurt. I understand that you have researched this

and that it is demonstrably true and also every fiber of my body rejects it. I'm like, I don't even go in my eye, it's gonna hurt. I know, I don't trust that. I don't want anybody to get in my eyeball, it's like a rusty knife. Our next tagline is just like, welcome to maintenance phase,

the podcast that encourages you to stick sharp objects in your eye. But this is sort of what I think is the cardinal sin of so much of the coverage of John of God over the years is that many of the articles admit that like this might not be real, but they don't sort of jump to the obvious conclusion from that. The 1999 Irish Times article ends with, although I saw no miracles and have yet to comprehend what my own operation involved. This analytical agnostic has to confess that her visit to John has had a profoundly positive effect on every level. Magic? Who cares?

Going to like remote Brazil and staying in a hotel like a meditation retreat for three weeks, people are spending tens of thousands of dollars on this treatment. It's actually pretty relevant if it's real or not. Because if all he's offering is sort of some inner peace and some fucking hiking, most of us can get that within like an hour of where we live. Right. Most of us can find a questionable cabin in the Catskills. Yes, it's a gay, un-claved peninsula thing. But it's actually my acting shirt, if you say, that's not a big double-tank.

Yeah, mostly. That's great. But this actually brings us to the Oprah episode. So in 2010, Oprah does an entire episode dedicated to John of God. Do you guys want to guess what it's called? John of God, G-A-W-D. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Oh, it's called, do you believe in miracles? Question mark. Oh. We've covered this on the show so many times

that it's just like that fucking question mark is just such a get out of jail free card. I mean, I'm just asking questions also came up in our QAnon episode, right? Sort of this idea of like, I'm just asking, but like if you're all like upset about it, that's on you, I'm just asking question. Oh, totally, yeah.

And I think particularly having this couched in the language of Christianity and of miracles, which is like a particularly like Oprah slice of Christianity, right? Feels really... It's bad. It feels like that sound. So this episode, or at least the clips of it that I could find online, she doesn't just come out and say, like, this guy's a miracle healer and everything is real. She does the same thing we saw in that interview that we watched earlier where she's like, this is pretty woo woo. And like, I don't know.

I'm pretty skeptical. And she takes the tone of sort of like, she's the straight man. And everybody else is sort of trying to talk her into this. It's like an infomercial, right? And I think you know who her audience was for the show. And I still just can't feel like, who are you? Why are you hedging your bets? infomercial right hmm and think about who her audience was for the show and hmm and I still I still just can't be like who are you why are you hedging your bets just right I just say you support him and you believe him right or not I think that to me is the

fundamental chicken shitness of this way we see we see Dr. Oz doing this constantly where it's like these these magical medical supplements, some people say they're incredible and I lost 50 pounds in two days and other people say they don't work, but like, I'm just presenting the debate, but it's like, well, no one has heard of these pills before you told me about them. So it's like she's introducing this guy

into American homes and saying like, there's some chance that he's a miracle healer. And I don't think that she's taking that responsibility seriously at all. You know, as you were saying that, I was realizing that that, like, people are talking. Some people are saying this really goes on our list of, like, now that's what I call mean and say.

Oh my God, I know. If you can't cite, like, who's talking and who's saying what? Yes. If you just say people are talking and then you say a bunch of stuff, then the people who are talking are pretty much just you. Yeah, and I mean, the example that they always use

in journalism is, you know, if one person says it's raining outside and the other person says it's sunny outside, your job as a journalist is not to report what both people are saying. Your job is to fucking go outside. Yeah. That is supposed to be what journalism is. But because we have sort of these precepts of objective journalism,

which we could do easily like 10 entire episodes on, journalists often do take this stance of, I'm just reporting on the debate. And they think that that's the responsible way to do it. When the actual responsible thing to do is to investigate this person before you put them on your show and before you bring them this extra level of visibility. We keep coming back to Oprah as journalism, which I have a point to make. I still disagree because even if Oprah says, well, this person says this

and this person says that all of those people are potentially still going to watch the show and leave the audience that is driving up the advertising fees. Like it makes sense in that kind of capitalist framework of we don't care who the audience is or what they actually think. Yeah, and we can make that clear by saying there's a debate.

Right. Well, we see this so much too that people who are de facto playing a journalism role in people's lives, like informing the public on issues of public concern, will deliberately reject the title of journalism because they know journalist comes with it a set of ethics and a set of norms. People are getting their information from Oprah show. Right. I think you're right that she wouldn't necessarily identify as a journalist, but what she is doing is journalism in a lot of ways. Yeah. Okay, it's clip time. This is a clip from the infamous 2010 Do You Believe in Miracles episode? Oh God.

What you were describing, so you obviously didn't have the same kind of experience. He didn't cut on you other than the nose probing. And you still have cancer, stage four cancer. So everybody that comes isn't healed. Right, that's correct. Why? I have no way to understand that. I think that's where we need to do the research.

I think that every case is so individual. One person can come before John of God with a particular illness and be given one prescription. The next person can have that very same illness and be given a very different prescription. It's very individual. One person can be told to go meditate. And we all, it's the journey of a soul.

And we all are trying to use the illness to learn something that is unique to our particular situation, I believe. Interesting. Woof. Okay, so the panel that she has, the woman who she gestures to, is Susan Casey. She is the woman who went to John of God for grief over her father's death and the excerpt that we read earlier was from her Oprah Magazine article, which we're going to talk about in great detail in

a second. The dude on the panel is Jeff Reddiger, who I think is a Harvard. I genuinely don't know where to put him on the sort of doctor versus grifter spectrum. He has written a book on this thing called spontaneous healing, which is a real thing that there are quite a few medical conditions where like some people just get better. You know, when I was doing research for the Tuskegee experiment,

one third of people with long-term syphilis, like they just don't have it anymore, and we don't actually really know why. He calls that spontaneous healing. I think there's like definitely a grifter aspect to this entire field. But then like, it's actually like a legitimate medical phenomenon that like I don't think is very well understood. Yeah, I mean, this is like part of where all of these kind of miracle cures things show up and so many grifters show up, right? There is still so much that we just don't know about medicine.

There's so much that we don't know about physical and mental illness. Any place where we don't know, we tend to sort of reach for, you know, almost like any port and a storm, right? Which sort of opens up this whole world of totally unproven, totally untested, kind of stuff. So I don't necessarily like begrudge this dude wanting to study that. It seems very strange to have someone who's studying that show up on Oprah on a show called Do You Believe in Miracles, right? Yes. I think it's, it's a legitimate question to ask. I don't know if I agree with his answer. To that question. No, of course. Of course, of course.

Yeah, and so the third person whose name is Lisa Melman is a South African woman who had breast cancer and went to see John of God. And she talks in this Oprah episode about how sort of she saw him. She underwent this long treatment in Brazil. She came back and her doctor said that her cancer was still metastasizing, but it sort of wasn't metastasizing as fast as they would have expected. And she, it appears, denied herself like Western medical treatment of her own cancer.

And she died two years after this aired. Jesus Christ. It's this weird haunting interview now where it's this woman describing deliberately not getting care for the condition that will eventually kill her. It's rough, I know. I thought we were gonna avoid victim blaming.

But we eventually get there with the whole journey of the soul talk and, yes, like he works with the energy that you bring to him. There's like a subtle, like your energy was not right. And it just, I, this idea that you're supposed to fight and mobilize yourself, the body in a particular way. And there's just a threat of that in that clip.

If it didn't work, it's not that it didn't work. It's that you didn't do it right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, I mean, one of the reasons why it chose this clip was because it's fascinating that they're just basically like blively mentioning in the middle of an hour long episode called Do You Believe in Miracles that like it might not work for you.

And we have no criteria for determining in advance whether this is going to work for you or not. They're just like, oh yeah, by the way, lots of people who go there get no effect at all. But then again, they don't follow that to the logical conclusion that like, maybe this guy is full of shit. Right, and also it does feel really interesting to me

again sort of going back to this like, there's a researcher on this panel. It feels really interesting to me to be in a place of talking about research that's in process in the absence of any findings. I'm researching this thing and I don't really know about it yet. Right, here's some ideas that I maybe have. But I can totally see that Oprah, her show,

and the 24 hour news cycle coinciding with a push for academics to become quote unquote public intellectuals. Do. And him getting a lot of credit for showing a lot of Oprah to talk about his research. And it's also one of the other things that drives me nuts about this is that she brings him on as sort of like the skeptical voice. He's the only person that she brings on who's not like I received this treatment and it worked for me, right? So it's like she's using his medical expertise

as a way to give herself and him credibility as like we're hearing from all sides here But she doesn't bring on anybody who's like this guy is absolutely full of shit. Yeah, he's the he's the skeptic But he's not skeptical. Yes. Have you guys heard of somebody named the amazing Randy? It sounds like it sounds like I made that up. I realized from August's cattling, that it sounds like something that only exists in my head. It just sounds like some dude you went to middle school with. He just like, you know, like people would pay him these worms. So he's like a sort of legendary debunker guy.

He was actually originally a magician, which is how he found out about these sort of slight of hand tricks, where it looks like somebody's pulling a tumor out of you. He used to appear in the 80s and 90s on the tonight show, and like debunk people. There's this infamous clip where some guy comes out and says that he can like bend spoons with his mind, you know? And then they bring out the amazing Randy, and the amazing Randy's like,

I brought my own set of spoons. Can you bend these ones? And then all of a sudden, magically, the guy's like, I don't think the spirit is speaking to me right now. I can't do it. And like they're very happy to just trick spoons. But so the amazing Randy wrote a long, very interesting essay about John of God,

because he was asked in 2005 to be sort of like the skeptical voice on an ABC special that investigated John of God. And one thing that he says he has this fascinating passage where he talks about how, you know, it's interesting on like Oprah and this ABC special, they'll talk to doctors, but they won't talk to people who are experts

in like medical grifting. And like the economies and tactics of people who lie for a living and sell fake services for a living. Like that is actually in some ways a more relevant expertise, right? Because the only thing that a doctor is qualified to say about this, is like does this make sense medically or does it not?

Whereas somebody who's an expert in like scams can say like, well, this works economically. Yeah, it does feel really interesting that all of this stops short of that, right? That there's like no willingness to entertain, that there might actually be like, you know, unproven practices here, or there might actually be ill intent here.

Yes, and you can also tell that Oprah and her producers didn't do any due diligence on this guy, because one of the things that she mentions throughout the show is that, you know, John of God works for free. And it's kind of like, well, obviously this guy's like a man of God because he's not charging anything for these treatments. He's not getting rich off of it. He's doing it because he wants to, you know, increase human happiness in the world, whatever.

But what nobody mentions is that almost everybody that goes to John of God, like one of the first things that he prescribes is like herbs, and his wife sells the herbs. Oh my God. And so like he is making money, and one thing we find out after all of the scandal of stuff which we'll get to in a second, is that he owns like a huge number of properties in this small town in Brazil.

And so a lot of the tour companies that are sort of charging you thousands of dollars of like you know will get you a bus to go to this remote village, etc. He's getting a huge cut of those and he's getting a cut of the hotels. Of course. The economy is making money, so he's making money. Exactly. So like he is the economy of this town. So he is getting extraordinarily wealthy off of this. They didn't do any of that background. They're just like, oh, he provides it for free. Yeah.

Ooh. I thought you'd have more than that, Aubrey. Look, it's just really fascinating to me that there's like zero follow the money on any of this. I am convinced that this is another weird developing country thing with this sort of like magical people in the developing world idea that Americans have like with how little information we have about like how developing

countries actually function, I think that we tend to overlook that like there are human incentives at play in these societies as well, and there are huge inequalities in developing countries as well. Yeah. And we find out later that John of God, he's all wrapped up in the mayor, he's wrapped up in national Brazilian politics. It's like, no, there's structures of power in other countries too.

Well, and all of that context is stripped away, right? From like any and all of this, like, we're not looking at the full picture, we're just going, this guy says he performs miracles and maybe he does, right? Well, hey. Hey. So that's basically all we're gonna say about the this guy says he performs miracles and maybe he does. Right? Whoa. Hey. So that's basically all we're gonna say about the episode.

But I do wanna dwell on the article in Oprah Magazine that comes out in correspondence with this episode. Because it's one of the worst things I've ever read. Oh no. Oh my God. So I have a document in front of me with all of the quotes that I wanna read and I highlight quotes in yellow I've ever read. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Okay, Aubrey, I'm gonna make you read this one. Okay. One physician I knew to be interested in John of God's work was Mehmet. Oh, it's fuck you. As a cardiac surgeon, his training had been rigorously scientific, but he wondered about

what Western medicine didn't yet know. Quote, I think the next big frontier is unlocking the doors to energy medicine. Oggs told me, quote, it dramatically broadens our vista of opportunities to heal. The challenge we have is that energy is not as easily quantified as the surgeon's scalpel." But the stories coming out of Abadiania challenged that stance. Five years ago, Os had participated in a primetime live segment focusing on John of God. He examined hours of film footage from the entity's healings, he'd looked at scans and biopsy reports, and there were results he couldn't explain, the shrinkage of an aggressive

cancer, for instance. Quote, this guy had Gleeoblastoma, which is a very deadly brain tumor, Oz recalled. Quote, it was grade 4, they biopsied it and proved it. If we can understand what role he's playing in reversing illness, Osir said at the time, we should be doing that here. What do you think? I mean, that's fine, study it, and then present the findings. I don't really get this whole thing of like this

or something we should look into. Just based on your ass episode, he's always doing market research, right? So he's not trying to look for anything to disprove. He's trying to look for something to bottle and sell. Oh yeah, that's right. A huge red flag in this is that it says, Dr. Oz examined hours of film footage

from the entity's healings. That footage was provided by John of God. It would have to be, I don't know where else it would come from. John of God and sort of his supporters have made a bunch of videos of his surgical procedures, but they're filmed very carefully. Oftentimes you can't actually see what's happening. With this slight of hand stuff where he pulls the tumor out or whatever, they're filmed with his back to the camera

and there's no close-ups. And they're in black and white and they're in bad. They almost seem deliberately bad so that you can't actually see what's going on. Well, it's enabled to buy our own kind of imperialism ideas about. Yeah, well, they probably didn't have like great cameras over there. So they probably have.

Like, they have iPhones in Brazil, man. That's kind of these millions of dollars. Like, they can get some 4K out of Brazil, dude. I think there's also like journalism drag, dude. We're almost like play acting at being journalists, but we have like a very clear agenda. We're not going to research things. We're like here to promote a set of ideas or a worldview.

Yeah. There's plenty of skepticism of like, you know, weight neutral healthcare or of like, community health workers. Right. And then there are moments like this where you're like, why is no one skeptical? Can I, can I illustrate that with one more story?

Yes. Kimberly, do you want to read this one? Yes. This is still from the O magazine article. I met Jeanette Lodia, a 40 yearold blonde woman from the South of Brazil who had battled with recurring cancer. It had begun 17 years ago in her knee and migrated so thoroughly into her bones that no treatment was possible.

She too arrived in Abedani with one last hope. Quote, come back 21 times, the entity said, and you will be healed. This was a pretty tall order considering that Denex commute required a 40 hour bus ride that left her racked with nausea. But she did as he said. Eventually, she began to feel well again. Three years later, however, the cancer returned with a vengeance, this time in her uterus. She went back to the casa, disappointed Amupset.

Quote, don't be unhappy, the entity told her. I'm going to give you the present you hope for. Once again, Janet followed his instructions. Six years later, she became pregnant and on April 26, 2000, her daughter Evelyn was born. This would be a miraculous event for any woman who'd been that sick. But the bar was even higher. And a common measure tone,

to netto me that she had given birth despite having previously undergone a complete hysterectomy. Wait, what? Quote, Danette had no tubes, no uterus. The doctor said it would be a psychological pregnancy. Whoa, wait, okay. I know. Holy shit.

But then they did an ultrasound and she was five months along close quit. Lot going on! My brain. Just explode. So it's like she had cancer and it went away. Oh and by the way, she had a daughter despite having had a hysterectomy. That's a pretty big deal.

Yeah. Did she? Sorry I'm re-reading it. You guys are just reeling right now. Yeah. I'm totally like, I'm shin, you know. I can yell, talk about just about anything. This one is fully blowing my brains out of my head.

Was it a psychological pregnancy, my? That's usually your question, my. I tell you about pregnant ladies. Always. Anytime a baby's involved, psychological pregnancy? Was it a psychological pregnancy? Do you want to hear how the author tries to justify it? Yes, please. Yeah.

She says, I was being asked to believe what science could flatly deny that a pregnancy could occur in the absence of an egg. But there was Evelyn, a long-legged sprite of a girl with wavy brown hair hugging her mother's waist as Janet recounted her story. So it's like, well, it has to be true because the baby is right there. But it's like, that's not the difficult part of the story to believe.

Right. That person had a child. People have babies. What are the chances that the entity and the medical medium spirit are the same? The same prankster from the future? The same ill-intended ghost. So we're gonna watch one more clip. This is from Oprah's second TV special about John of God. The first one was so successful that in 2012,

she actually goes down and visits John of God. Oh my god, why? Truly, truly why. The first time I saw today, I was humbled by the experience. Because a little bit of this belongs to you. A part of this belongs to you. How so, I don't understand. Because you are human. Well, could the entity tell me,

what does human energy look like? Because as I understand it, each person that comes before you, the entity sees the energy of that person. The most famous audio. We have an aura. We have different colors. So, human energy looks like colors.

Yes. Var looks like colors. Yes. Various colors. Various different colors. What does something like cancer look like when you see inside? When do you see Aranya? When he sees cancer, he starts asking that this be taken away, he removed being God's will,

because it's not his, he does not have the power. It is God who has the power, and he prays to have the person's cancer removed by God. If it is his will, if it is God's will. In my brain, the birds in the background are like, don't let's hit him. Everyone make a fuss. So Oprah can't hear this fucking grifter.

Oh my god. What did you guys think? I mean it's really interesting right like this is actually the closest that we've gotten to his actual methodology and it feels like he's doing his own praying for you. But it's also nothing new, right? I mean, Aura's energy reading. Oh yeah, again, this is like classic grifter stuff. If she had spoken to some like amazing Randy type debunkers,

they'd be like, oh yeah, he's gonna give you some aura bullshit. It's also so funny to me how Oprah like nods profoundly at his just like absolute empty bullshit. It's a complete word salad. That's a good point you made, magnetic poetry set. You can tell that she's in some way bought into it, because she's not asking him anything skeptically.

What color is cancer? Is not a tough question, because there's no wrong answer to that question. So it's never about resolving the question mark of these headlines or subtitles. Okay, I was just kidding. So is this dude still doing his thing? Oh, do you guys wanna get to the fucking twist and downfall like the horrifying shit? Yes.

Yes, okay. This is absurd because sort of the structure of this episode because this is like a wellness podcast. We're mostly focusing on like his wellness grifting, but then in 2018 we find out that this dude is a serial rapist. Oh God. It's actually kind of fascinating.

And in 2018, we're in the midst of all of this Me Too stuff, like this flood of allegations against powerful men is happening. One of the people who is inspired by this, her name is Zehira Moose. She's a choreographer in the Netherlands, and she had gone down to visit John of God, a couple of years previously, I believe, in 2014.

And she posts this very long post on Facebook. This is like extremely rough, by the way. So if you wanna be like me watching surgery footage and fast forward, that's totally fine. She was seeing him for sexual trauma. And so she flew to Brazil, she was waiting in line, she waited hours and hours, I believe all day, and it seemed that sort of,

he almost sort of arranged it so that she would be his last patient of the day. And she went in for consultation and he said, like, let's go to my healing room, like this back room where the healing happens, which turns out to be his bathroom. And then he like pins her to the wall and he like viciously rapes her.

Jesus Christ. Like she is super traumatized. She says that she's never really been able to process it. She's never gotten over it. And she was seeing him for sexual trauma. Like it's the right fucking thing. That's the thing that gets me is like, there's no, there's no like gradation of like sexual

trauma, right, or sexual assault that like at least not that I'm willing to get into, right? But like there is something so specifically horrifying about someone who's seeking treatment and then to experience that same trauma from the person you're seeking treatment from is so deeply, deeply awful and troubling. Well, he's playing on her vulnerability. I mean, this is like classic abuser stuff is he sees her as a mark because this is something, you know, the desperation and the pain is something that makes people easier to

target and then fucking gaslight afterwards. Right. This business model is perfectly structured to deliver him potential victims. It's a bunch of desperate people who see him as this profit and he's linked up with God. It's not even like I wanna take a shower. It's like I wanna take a shower in rubbing alcohol. Or something. I'm just like, ah, this is so gross and upsetting.

And the worst, okay, do you wanna hear the worst part? In an interview with New York Times, after all of this happens, they ask, you know, how did you hear of John of God? And she says, I heard of him from a friend and I saw Oprah Winfrey's documentary. Oh, fuck. Bad.

Any quote from Oprah's camp on that? Probably not. Yeah, we eventually get like an extremely fucking anodine public statement. This is like, I was boring thing I've ever read out in my life. She says, I went to Brazil in 2012 to tape an episode of Oprah's next chapter that explored the controversial healing methods of John of God.

The episode aired in 2013. I empathize with the women now coming forward and hope justice is served. But then, you know, after this Facebook post, you know, a journalist, Brazilian journalist, start looking into it a couple weeks later, there's a Brazilian TV special with Zahira and three other victims, none of whom are named. And this is like a massive, you know, he's quite famous in Brazil.

And this TV special is a sensation. And within 36 hours, 78 more people come forward. By now, there's more than 600 victims have identified themselves. 600? Yeah, it's bad. And they all describe exactly the same pattern that Zahira describes, where it's like

they were singled out by him, they were taken into a back room, like it's exactly the same pattern. Oh, yes. I'm both curious and afraid to ask, is there a shift in the sort of media coverage around this guy more broadly? What's extremely frustrating about this

is that there had been previous allegations. Oh, fuck. Before Oprah's episode, there had been sort of, these were always kind of like a footnote in these glowing, you know, is it a miracle type of parts of like, eh, there's some things with women, but like anyway, he denies the allegations.

But no one really looked into it. And I don't know how to sort of fit the rape stuff in with the medical grifting. It is interesting to me that it's only after the abuse allegations came out that Oprah finally removed all of this stuff from her web page. Wow.

I think our line for not platforming people shouldn't be rapist. I think it should just be like lying about medical shit. Don't platforming people shouldn't be rapist. I think it should just be lying about medical shit. Like don't platform those people. Right, yes, de platform the serial rapist, but those shouldn't be the only people that we de platform. Right, when you uncritically platform people,

this is part of the potential cost of that. Well, I mean, this is the thing is, I don't think that every, I'm a miracle healer, charlatan is a serial rapist. Like I don thing is I don't think that every I'm a miracle healer Charlatan is a serial rapist like I don't I don't think that that's like a high probability But also by promoting these kinds of methodologies like you're putting people in contact with like shady people Yeah, and that leads to all kinds of other immoral behavior right has he faced any consequences for all of this? Yes, this is this is like the happy the happy-ish ending to the story, is that he's now serving 19 years in prison for rape. Jesus Christ.

I don't know that a prison sentence is ever like a happy ending, but also at least a fucking rapist isn't being put on Oprah. He's also facing a bunch more charges, and his daughter has come forward and said that he molested her for years. She's and said that he's a monster. Like this guy is unbelievable bad news. But I doubt that the Charlotte ends with him being imprisoned because he's a grifter so he's gonna grip in jail too. Do you guys want to hear an extremely

perfect epilogue to this? Okay. This is actually not that bad, Aubrey, don't worry. Okay, I just I feel like I'm really, whoo, reeling from this episode. This is the ending of an excellent Sidney Morning Herald article about him being convicted of all the rapes. And it's talking about sort of like the town, like what happens to this town now. And it closes with the number of international tourists

is decreasing, but guides continue to promote the town and the Casa as a sacred place. They say there's an enormous crystal in the ground, which gives energy to the entities and that they're even stronger now. So the entities will be able to embody somebody else. It's just like, grifters got a grift. Like we got, nothing is gonna stop the fundamental grift here.

Now this is the tea up for the sequel. Yes, exactly. Like the long con remains even as the short con destroys itself. It learns so well. So that's it, that was John of God. Wow. I will say the feeling that I am having right now is like a sailboat without any wind. Just kind of hanging out, just a drift.

Not really sure how I'm gonna get anywhere from here. I can tell Aubrey throughout the sky, I can tell that your aura is devoid of color. Thank you. you