ESPNs 30 for 30 Podcasts Tackles The Sordid History of Bikram Yoga

In a curious departure from a working formula, ESPN’s 30 for 30 Podcasts kicked off their third season with a 5-part serialized story about the sinister origins and founder of the popular Bikram yoga. The format change is noticeable for a couple reasons. For starters, in the podcasts previous two seasons, each episode was a standalone story. They hadn’t even run a two-part podcast to date. The second change is the story premise. While previous 30 for 30 Podcasts episodes chronicled “core” sports around baseball, hockey, basketball, and even tangential sports like the UFC and professional poker, yoga likely isn’t a topic many would consider a “sports podcast” to cover.

I mention this simply because it’s my only issue with this podcast season. I do wonder if other traditional 30 for 30 fans would prefer the original format covering interesting stories confined in the wide world of sports. I also question if listeners interested in the tumultuous story of Bikram would have found it under the ESPN umbrella. Just asking unanswerable questions here before I gush over the production of the podcast.

Without giving too much of the core story away, this season of 30 for 30 covers the origins of the once highly-popular fitness routine, Bikram yoga. If you’re unfamiliar with the workout, it’s a specific yoga routine performed over 90 minutes typically in over 100 degree temperature. I’ve never done the exercise myself — since being in close proximity with others as we’re all sweating profusely is my version of hell — but from those that have done Bikram yoga, I’ve learned it’s a grueling as it sounds. This specific brand of yoga was popularized by Bikram Choudhury, an Indian-born yogi who, at least on paper, has an impressive resume. Through his teaching and evangelical followers, Bikram yoga exploded throughout the US and Choudhury’s fame and wealth soared along with it.

Unfortunately, over the past 18 months we’ve learned that sometimes success and power can be intoxicating and lead to heartbreak. In 2015, six women came forward with allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and rape. The podcast — reported on for over a year and a half — hits especially hard during the #MeToo movement. Choudhury has fled the US and shied away from the press since. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.

The whole season was reported and produced by Julia Lowrie Henderson, who previously was a devout fan of Bikram yoga and managed a Bikram-style yoga studio in New York City. Through Henderson’s reporting and interviews, she’s able to empathize with the yoga fans who almost sound like ex-cult members, while sympathizing with the victims of Bikram himself. Henderson tells Refinery29, “There were layers and bigger picture issues of identity and fallen heroes, narcissism, and cultish personalities.”

The podcast itself carefully crafts and blends the narrative through historical audio footage of Choudhury and some of his early followers, interviews with some of the most prominent yoga fans, and balanced interviews with several of the survivors and their supporters. After the first episode, I noticed a similarity in structure and narrative to Stitcher’s Heaven’s Gate podcast. Only after getting further into the story did I realize how Bikram purposely fostered a cult’ish following as well.

Though Henderson was able to track down and interview Choudhury in Mexico, the audio interview isn’t included in the podcast. From her synopsis of the conversation, he continues to dodge the allegations and shame the survivors. Though the audio would have been a nice bookend to the story, I can imagine there were some legal release hurdles that would have either overly-polished the interview or else given more control to Choudhury about what was disclosed. In her recounting of the interview, Henderson’s voice perfectly conveys the contempt she undoubtedly feels towards her subject. At the 9:30 mark in the fifth episode (aptly titled “Reckoning”), she says, “He told me he was done with America. He talked about how stupid we are, how we fucked up, how he had sacrificed so much for us and we were too dumb to get it and he was done with us now.” Specifically when she says “we fucked up,” you can hear her seething as she says the words.

What the podcast excels at, likely intentionally, is infuriating their listener base by transparently displaying the lack of accountability on Choudhury’s part and the lack of a satisfying conclusion to the story. I came away from the podcast enraged that he not only hasn’t been punished, but he doesn’t show an ounce of remorse. Henderson again tells Refinery29, “In the moment of #MeToo and #TimesUp, a lot of people are finally seeing accountability placed on people who have done wrong. Unfortunately, this story is about someone that’s not the case yet for.”

Related reading: Jody Avirgan can’t just stick to sports hosting both ESPN’s 30 for 30 Podcast and FiveThirtyEight Politics