Emily Guerin  00:00

Previously on Imperfect Paradise...

Jaclyn Gelb  00:01

[music in] It feels like, Oh, the cosmos conspired to put me here to learn from this woman.

Nicole Norton  00:08

She's actually kind of like Kundalini royalty.

Rabbit  00:11

She demanded that we call him Guru Jagat. And in my own head I said, I'll be damned if I'll call you Guru Jagat. It's Katie, not Guru Jagat.

Philip Deslippe  00:23

The closer you are to Yogi Bhajan, the more direct your contact, the more juice and authority you have.

Emily Guerin  00:30

A warning this episode includes descriptions of sexual assault and harassment. [music out] In January 2020, two things happened that marked the end of seemingly unrelated eras. One, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States. Two, a book came out about the founder of Kundalini Yoga, Yogi Bhajan. It was written by one of his former students. And I'm not sure that Guru Jagat or anyone else really, knew it at the time, but these two things, the book and the virus- they would tear her Kundalini Yoga community apart.

Emily Guerin  01:10

[music in] Do you remember how you first found out about it? Like do you remember where you were when you first found out about it?

Jaclyn Gelb  01:17

I was going on a trip. So I, I downloaded the book to take it with me. And I read it on that, on the plane, and I wanted to not believe it.

Emily Guerin  01:27

Jaclyn Gelb, the woman who considered Guru Jagat her teacher was on the way to scuba dive in Papua New Guinea when she began reading Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage. A friend who practiced Kundalini Yoga had told Jacqueline she needed to read it. It was a memoir written by a woman named Pamela Dyson. And Pamela had been one of the highest ranking officials in Yogi Bhajan's organization. When Jaclyn finished the book, she started it again from the beginning. She read parts of it out loud to her husband on the boat at night.

Emily Guerin  01:58

And maybe this seems like an obvious question, but what was it about what Pamela had written in the book that was so upsetting to you?

Jaclyn Gelb  02:09

Oh, Yogi Bhajan had been presented to us as a master, you know, a, a bodhisattva, a, a realized being, and then to read a book where it was like-- [laughs nervously] he was not, the, maybe he was all those things, and he was also, you know, almost like a typical predatory man. [music out]

Emily Guerin  02:35

Around the world, Kundalini students were picking up Pamela's memoir and having nearly identical experiences to Jaclyn. For them, reading White Bird in a Golden Cage became one of those, "I remember exactly where I was" kind of moments.

Nicole Norton  02:48

And I ended up having a breakdown, [music in] coming to that realization that this person that I had been following, is actually a really horrible, horrible person.

Gursant Singh  03:03

I, quite frankly, didn't know what was really going on until I read this book.

Cassidy George  03:09

I mean, learning that the yoga that you've been practicing and preaching was created by a serial predator and rapist- it was like a mirror getting shattered.

Emily Guerin  03:23

When I first started looking into the radicalization of Guru Jagat, I thought it was the pandemic that had spurred her evolution from wellness celebrity to right wing conspiracy theorist. And then I learned from my reporting that she'd had a penchant for conspiracies long before the pandemic even started. The yoga she practiced and the people she surrounded herself with had made it worse. But I know now that there was something else going on, a #metoo reckoning in the Kundalini yoga community. And Guru Jagat viewed it as an existential threat, maybe even more so than the pandemic. From LAist Studios, this is Imperfect Paradise: Yoga's "Queen of Conspiracy Theories." I'm Emily Guerin. [music out] [break]

Emily Guerin  04:13

In 1968, Pamela Dyson walked into the East-West Cultural Center in Los Angeles to take a class with Yogi Bhajan, the man who founded Kundalini Yoga. Outside the doors of the small beige house, it felt like the country was turning on itself. [music in] There were protests against the Vietnam War. Chicano students were walking out of their schools in East LA. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Pamela's own life was in turmoil too. She was recently divorced and suddenly found herself with far fewer people to spend time with. She had a vague sense that yoga and meditation would help fix things. Pamela told me she wasn't up for being interviewed. But here she is speaking on the Project Hope podcast last year.

Pamela Dyson  04:59

[audio clip] So I was vulnerable, and I really went looking for a spiritual teacher. The tendency of the time of those, you know, 60s and you know, the Beatles going to be with Maharishi in India and the songs, the music, the energetic was all towards the East.

Emily Guerin  04:59

In her memoir, she describes how she was mesmerized by Yogi Bhajan after seeing him speak for the first time. She went to his studio to take a class. Afterwards, while she lay on the ground, he groped her. She was shocked and confused, but also still believed this man could be her guru.

Pamela Dyson  05:43

[audio clip continues] Just being in the presence of somebody with a tremendous amount of charisma and power- it gave me sort of a shock. We become childlike, you know? It's like, "Okay, Daddy." [host laughs and says: What?] "You're gonna tell me who I am and how to live and how to do it right. And in order for me to understand or take that in, I'm gonna have to completely trust in you."

Emily Guerin  06:12

She made a clean break from her old life. She gave up her name Pamela, and became Premka, Yogi Bhajan's mistress, his secretary, his personal attendant. She worked long hours for no pay and massaged her guru to sleep at night. She was totally devoted to him. And so when she became pregnant with his child, she followed his instructions to have a secretive abortion in India. It was an illegal procedure, and later, she nearly hemorrhaged to death. The whole experience left her wondering if Yogi Bhajan cared more about preserving his own image than her survival. [music out] 16 years passed this way. But over time, she started to grow disillusioned. Yogi Bhajan kept her from marrying or even having close friends while he had a wife, children, and many lovers. Finally, she left. She got married and she moved as far away from Yogi Bhajan as she could: Hawaii. Over the years, she did a few interviews about her experience with Yogi Bhajan. But at the age of 76, she decided to tell her story in her own words.

Pamela Dyson  07:24

[audio clip] This earthly realm is a realm of suffering, which sounds horrible, [host laughs] but it's the truth! It's a realm in which we actually learn from suffering.

Emily Guerin  07:37

More than 30 years before Pamela Dyson's memoir came out, a woman named Katherine Felt had sued Yogi Bhajan. She accused him essentially, of holding her hostage and sexually assaulting her. Her lawsuit was dropped, and few people in the Kundalini yoga community believed her. Publicly, Yogi Bhajan joked about the lawsuit and denied the allegations.

Yogi Bhajan  07:59

[audio clip-YouTube] And if I tell you one example of the complaint, you shall be shocked.

Emily Guerin  08:06

This is Yogi Bhajan, speaking in 1986. In this YouTube video, he's sitting in front of a large crowd that's off camera.

Yogi Bhajan  08:14

[audio clip continues] One of the complaint is [audience laughs] Sahdani Grumukh Khals and Sadani Grukihar Khalsi physically held down at the ground, and I perform an act of sod-

Emily Guerin  08:36

He looks around like, what's the word again?

Yogi Bhajan  08:39

[audio clip] I don't know what they call it. [audience mumbles] Sodomy. And then I got up and I peed. [laughter] [duck under]

Emily Guerin  08:47

As the crowd laughs, he holds his palm up like he's saying, I know this sounds crazy, but just hold on.

Yogi Bhajan  08:53

[audio clip] That's what it says.

Emily Guerin  08:58

Here's another speech that was uploaded to YouTube.

Yogi Bhajan  09:03

[audio clip-YouTube] Rape is always invited, it never happens. A person who is raped is always providing subconsciously, the environments and the arrangements.

Emily Guerin  09:16

This message coming from the same man who also preached, "Love is the ultimate state of human behavior where compassion prevails and kindness rules." Yogi Bhajan died in 2004. [music in] After Pamela's memoir came out in January 2020, other women began to come forward with similar stories. They did so mostly in this private Facebook group that grew eventually to have over 6000 members. There were so many stories it became impossible to ignore. So two months later, the organization Yogi Bhajan founded commissioned a third party to look into the allegations. That report came out in August 2020, and it found that Yogi Bhajan, quote "more likely than not engaged in sexual harassment and rape."

Pamela Dyson  10:04

[audio clip] I had no idea of the impact my book would have.

Emily Guerin  10:08

This is Pamela Dyson again on the Project Hope podcast.

Pamela Dyson  10:11

[audio clip] All of a sudden, these Kundalini yoga teachers who had paid thousands and thousands of dollars for their certification are going, W- what? You guys have covered this up, and this man was an abuser?

Emily Guerin  10:28

Once people started digging, the truth wasn't hard to find.

Philip Deslippe  10:33

You have drug smuggling, gun smuggling, phone fraud, wire fraud, gemstone fraud, people being swindled out of inheritances and signing away deeds to homes.

Emily Guerin  10:48

Through his research on Kundalini Yoga, Philip Deslippe discovered a surprising amount of fraud and illegal activity being perpetuated by Yogi Bhajan's students.

Philip Deslippe  10:59

Money and gifts to Yogi Bhajan provide status and they provide access. So there is a kind of accepting culture of criminality within the inner circle.

Emily Guerin  11:11

In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission filed charges against a member of Yogi Bhajan's inner circle for running a gemstone investment scheme. Two years later, authorities arrested another student of Yogi Bhajan, who was involved in an office supply scheme. This student was Harijiwan. Guru Jagat's mentor Harijiwan. He pled guilty to mail fraud, was ordered to pay $155,000 in restitution, and sentenced to two years in federal prison. I talked to a man named Gursant Singh, who says he worked alongside Harijiwan, selling office supplies for 10 to 20 times what they were worth. [music out]

Emily Guerin  11:27

Was it to make money for Yogi Bhajan and his organization?

Gursant Singh  11:56

Well, that, that was the idea, that we were trying to fund this Dharma as we called it, okay? Um, it wasn't pitched exactly, to give money to Yogi Bhajan, specifically, because we uh, we always thought that by doing these meditations, by doing this yoga, by uh, being out there with a- wearing all white and wearing these turbans and everything, that we were saving the world. That was my understanding, that we were trying to raise the consciousness of the world. You know, free the world from wars and famine, and all these things by raising consciousness of everybody. And here we were, ironically, [laughs] telling people lies.

Emily Guerin  12:35

Gursant began practicing Kundalini in the 1970s. He became disillusioned with Yogi Bhajan, after seeing the extent of illegal activity that he condoned. And since, he's become something of an anti-Yogi Bhajan activist, trying to draw attention to his misdeeds.

Gursant Singh  12:51

You know, I definitely bought into it. I, I guess the only reason I did was because I was young and naive. But, you know, the idea was that there was no karma on the phone, he would say, and that, um you know, kind of the end justifies the means. So, whatever it took to get money, just, just do it.

Emily Guerin  13:10

As Kundalini Yoga expanded, Yogi Bhajan's followers established other companies. There was tea. There was cereal. And then there was this: private security for federal immigrant detention centers.

Sundeep Morrison  13:25

I was just dumbfounded. I could not believe it.

Emily Guerin  13:29

This is Sundeep Morrison. They're a queer, non-binary Sikh writer and artist. They found out about Yogi Bhajan's private security company, which is called Akal Security, while watching a panel about ICE detention centers back in 2019.

Sundeep Morrison  13:44

I thought, Oh, my gosh. In the name of yoga and Sikhi, a faith that a lot of people don't know about, they're capitalizing off of the oppression of people.

Emily Guerin  13:55

Sundeep knew who Yogi Bhajan was because Yogi Bhajan was also Sikh. And when Sundeep was a child, Yogi Bhajan, had visited their place of worship in Canada. They remember him walking in, draped in jewels, and surrounded by white women in turbans.

Sundeep Morrison  14:11

And I had never seen someone dressed like that before. You know, you put ego on the side, and the centering is our faith is beautiful. We center around service, community service. And so that was a big contrast. He conflated an over 500 year old religion of Sikhi, during the, the yogi guru boom of the 60s, where, you know, white women were essentially shopping for religions and identity. And he conflated it with an over 5000 year old practice of yoga, and, and then created his cult practice. So then you have, [music in] you know, some well-intentioned souls who are looking for a practice who have no idea what they're actually practicing.

Emily Guerin  14:50

The official story that Yogi Bhajan had told his followers was that Kundalini Yoga was an ancient forgotten practice that he brought to the West. It turns out that story wasn't true.

Philip Deslippe  15:01

The reality is that Yogi Bhajan was a dabbler. He studied with various yoga teachers and spiritual teachers in India.

Emily Guerin  15:15

Philip Deslippe discovered that when Yogi Bhajan arrived in LA, he kind of cobbled together the practice known as Kundalini Yoga in order to meet the demands of his American audience.

Philip Deslippe  15:26

The only person who's telling the stories, the only person who could really verify them, is Yogi Bhajan himself.

Emily Guerin  15:33

I don't know whether Guru Jagat knew that Yogi Bhajan fabricated Kundalini's origin story, [music out] or if she cared. What matters is that she made it her own.

Philip Deslippe  15:42

I think the best way to understand Katie, Guru Jagat, is the photocopy of a counterfeit bill.

Emily Guerin  15:51

Philip told me that Yogi Bhajan and his organization 3HO take elements of the Sikh tradition and exaggerate them.

Philip Deslippe  16:00

And they're giving them other meaning and other explanation removed from the vast majority of Sikhs throughout the world. What Katie is doing is taking the 3HO playbook and then exaggerating it even further.

Emily Guerin  16:17

For example, Phillips said, the turban. For Sikhs, uncut hair is sacred. And the turban is an article of faith like a yarmulke, as well as a source of personal pride. But according to Yogi Bhajan,

Philip Deslippe  16:31

People shouldn't cut their hair because hair is your psychic antenna, and that you should tie a turban because it adjusts the plates in your skull. This is complete nonsense to the rest of Sikhs throughout the world.

Emily Guerin  16:48

Guru Jagat takes it a step further by letting her hair hang out of a messy loose turban.

Philip Deslippe  16:54

It- This would be even more absurd to any Sikh who would think about the covering of their own hair. It would be like someone wearing a sports bra and deliberately having one breast hanging out. It's completely absurd.

Emily Guerin  17:10

And to Sundeep, it's deeply offensive how Guru Jagat- Katie- can slip her turban and her Sikh name, on and off.

Sundeep Morrison  17:19

As someone who grew up a Sikh, my father wears a turban, my brothers and cousins. Our articles of faith are received very differently on a white body than they are on a black or brown body. When we see a white woman with a turban, we think, Oh, what is this mystical person? Because that's white privilege. You know, you can disassociate yourself from whiteness, dip into another culture, and then go back to your safety.

Emily Guerin  17:43

Not long after the George Floyd protests in May 2020, Sundeep posted a video clip of Guru Jagat to Instagram. In the video, Guru Jagat is speaking on a panel about intersectional feminism, and she wonders out loud if she may have been a person of color in a previous life. I can't play this for you because it's from RA MA's subscriber's only website. Sundeep commented on the post: "Katie, aka Guru Jagat, has built her brand by misrepresenting Sikhi, by commercializing sacred prayers, and presenting the turban as part of the quote "commercialized yoga aesthetic." [music in] Guru Jagat had just wrapped up RA MA's annual New Year's festival when the revelations against Yogi Bhajan began to emerge. Some yoga studios immediately stopped offering Kundalini classes and denounced their guru. Others tried to separate the teacher from the teachings. They argued that the yoga Yogi Bhajan created really helped people, even if he was harmful. Guru Jagat would take an even more extreme approach. That's after a break. [music out] [break]

Emily Guerin  18:58

In February 2020, a month after Pamela's memoir came out, Guru Jagat's mentor Harijiwan released a YouTube video called "The Futile Flow of Fate: A Story About a Teacher's Love and a Student's Betrayal." The video begins with Harijiwan sitting on a stage addressing a group of students. A large, framed photo of Yogi Bhajan hangs on the wall beside him.

Harijiwan  19:23

[audio clip] [music in] Someone I think needs to speak up on behalf of Yogi Bhajan. She's making claims against him that date back 50 years ago. Who knows what happened? But some people want to read the story and go in a certain direction with the story.

Emily Guerin  19:39

Guru Jagat [music out] reposted this video on her Instagram account. She captioned it, "This tale is no truer than any other tale. The truth as always, lies in the eye of the Beholder," and turned off the comments. I asked Jaclyn Gelb about this period.

Emily Guerin  19:58

Do you remember Guru Jagat addressing Pamela Dyson's memoir directly in any of the classes at the time?

Jaclyn Gelb  20:04

In the beginning, she was always- it felt like she was diplomatic.

Emily Guerin  20:09

Here she is in a RA MA class from February 4th, 2020, just a few weeks after the memoir came out. This video was shared to YouTube, and in it, Guru Jagat seems to be implying that everything happens for a reason.

Guru Jagat  20:21

[audio clip-YouTube-The Language of Destiny] The worst things can happen to me, the hardest things, the worst things, the most challenging things, and I will always look at it as the great miraculous hand of the cosmic mind. That is prosperity. So that's why I'm, you know, I'm not into this whole thing of [ ]- Oh, would happened? It's like fuck you. What happened to you?

Emily Guerin  20:50

But Jaclyn says after Harijiwan came out with his take on Pamela Dyson's memoir, Guru Jagat changed.

Jaclyn Gelb  20:57

After that she became very positional. And when people would ask questions, she would shut them down. It kind of broke the community apart a little bit and kind of split it in two.

Philip Deslippe  21:08

And of course, that's what makes RA MA distinct. In early 2020, when everyone else in the Kundalini Yoga world zigs, they zag...

Emily Guerin  21:19

Philip Deslippe was watching all of this unfold.

Philip Deslippe  21:23

So many people are apologizing. They're sad, they're grieving. RA MA does the opposite. In many ways, they have a very Donald Trump like response. It's all lies. It's all fake news. None of these allegations are true. It's all slander.

Emily Guerin  21:43

I struggled to make sense of Guru Jagat's response to the allegations against Yogi Bhajan. She spoke at the California Women's Conference. She ran the Aquarian Women's Leadership Society. She marketed herself as "a leading global figure helping to create the new feminine matriarchal archetype." So why would she say she didn't believe the people accusing Yogi Bhajan of sexual assault?

Cassidy George  22:06

That bewilders me to this day.

Emily Guerin  22:09

Cassidy George wrote a story for Vice about how Guru Jagat and the RA MA Institute responded to the sexual assault allegations, among other controversies.

Cassidy George  22:18

I think for Guru Jagat, it was more about this other woman coming out from the past who was posing a threat to Guru Jagat's authority, to Guru Jagat's reputation as a feminist, to Guru Jagat's reputation as a leader, you know, in a female space. So I think her anger and her kind of doubling down was in defense of her business but also coming from a deeper kind of resentment. And I think it also has to do with Harijiwan.

Emily Guerin  22:50

Cassidy's theory on this is that in defending Yogi Bhajan, Guru Jagat may also have been defending her teacher, Harijiwan, and his take on the scandal. Guru Jagat's own origin story may also help explain her response. [music in] Philip Deslippe told me that in Kundalini Yoga, there's this idea of "the golden chain." It's the idea that knowledge is passed from teacher to student, and from that student to their student, and you can trace it all the way back to Yogi Bhajan himself.

Philip Deslippe  23:22

You see so many Kundalini yoga teachers have their connections to Yogi Bhajan as their main form of credentialing. Yogi Bhajan was my teacher, I lived alongside him for decades. He taught me directly.

Emily Guerin  23:39

The closer you are to Yogi Bhajan, the more authority you have. Guru Jagat told people that Yogi Bhajan named her, told her to move to LA, and told her to start the RA MA Institute. He even gave her the business plan. So it would have been awkward, even compromising if the person she derived her authority from was a serial abuser. And so it might make sense for her to discredit the people he abused. Especially given that throughout Yogi Bhajan's life, he told his students that there would come a time when his enemies would try to take him down, and they would have to come to his defense. Philip Deslippe told me that he primed his students to doubt women like Pamela Dyson.

Philip Deslippe  24:22

So when accusations come out, his followers immediately have a box to put those accusations in. Well, of course, he's gonna have enemies. Of course, he's gonna be slandered. [music out]

Emily Guerin  24:37

I was doing this spin class at home recently, when the instructor said something along the lines of "let go of that which does not serve you." It sounded vaguely motivational, but it also sounded a lot like "ignore anything that you don't agree with."

Natalia Petrzela  24:54

So much of this world has relied on a kind of like fetishization of natural solutions, of kind of individuals having the "true" knowledge over their own bodies and their health. And I think that particularly like the relativism around truth, which has so long been a part of a lot of kind of wellness cultures really re- reared its head in the pandemic.

Emily Guerin  25:20

Natalia Petrzela is a historian who studies American culture, and she's written a book about the history of fitness. She said that this kind of "find your own truth" language was mostly all well and good in the before times.

Natalia Petrzela  25:33

But when it's the pandemic, and that kind of language is being deployed to kind of foment like, anti-vaccine sentiment, or COVID denialism, um, it has the same power because we're all steeped in this culture, where we're like, yeah, look inside, find your own truth, but it can be used for real harm.

Emily Guerin  25:51

After Pamela Dyson's memoir came out, and during the pandemic- that's when Guru Jagat's stepfather, Rabbit, started noticing her becoming more and more detached.

Rabbit  26:01

She decided that making up your own truth was just as real as an objective reality around you.

Emily Guerin  26:07

So do you think that the whole kind of disregarding objective reality, creating your own truth, that that came from doing Kundalini Yoga?

Rabbit  26:17

I think it came from her teacher, that taught her about the fact that empowerment is a personal space inside yourself. And to do that you have to create your own reality, and keep going with it, create your own truth, and then try to get that truth out into the world in some fashion.

Emily Guerin  26:35

I was rewatching that YouTube video that Guru Jagat's teacher Harijiwan made about Pamela Dyson's memoir, and part of the way through, Harijiwan makes a sudden jump from talking about Pamela Dyson, and he begins talking about the Coronavirus. [music in]

Harijiwan  26:50

[audio clip] And Pamela Dyson's story can be taken as a virus. It depends what you want to do with it. This is your choice. [music out]

Emily Guerin  27:01

At first, it's confusing. What do these two things have to do with each other? But to Harijiwan and Guru Jagat, both are simply stories we can choose to believe, or not.

Harijiwan  27:15

[music in] [audio clip] Everyone's allowed to tell their story. Everyone has the freedom to express themselves. Then the question becomes what's truth? It's your truth. You decide what you want to believe in the story. [music out]

Guru Jagat  27:30

[audio clip-singing] All I want is the truth/ Just give me some truth. [duck under]

Emily Guerin  27:36

In January 2021, Guru Jagat released a video on YouTube of her singing John Lennon's song, "Gimme Some Truth." The video is kind of a mash up of close ups of Guru Jagat singing and members of the RA MA staff dancing, contrasted with clips of protests, politicians, people wearing masks and getting the COVID vaccine.

Guru Jagat  27:57

[audio clip-singing] I've had enough of reading things/ By neurotic psychotic, pigheaded politicians/ All I want is the truth... [fade out]

Emily Guerin  28:06

It feels to me like she's saying, This is all bullshit. The only thing that's real is here, on the mat. Your yoga practice, your reality. That's the truth. I think it's resonating. "We have lost a shining light here on Earth," someone wrote, "You've helped me get through this [audio clip: Guru Jagat sings: All I want is the truth...] nightmare. I can't believe you're gone."

Guru Jagat  28:27

[audio clip-singing] Just gimme truth. [music out]

Emily Guerin  28:33

Since Guru Jagat died, the RA MA Institute moved into a new space in an office park in Santa Monica. [music in] When I went to take a midweek class last year, the studio was nearly empty, but Guru Jagat's presence was everywhere. White dresses from the Guru Jagat collection hung in the lobby. Photos of her were for sale at the front desk for $175. And in the studio itself, that same photo hung on an altar, above lit candles, pink lilies, and a crystal ball. Even more so than in her studio, her influence lives on among her followers. This is a woman named Angela Sumner, who posted a long YouTube tribute the day after Guru Jagat died.

Angela Sumner  29:18

[audio clip] Even if you think that she's a scam artist, even if you think she's a conspiracy theorist, you can't look at her eloquence and her teachings and deny that she is one of the greatest teachers that's ever lived during our time.

Emily Guerin  29:35

Angela goes on to say that she herself has been radicalized by Guru Jagat.

Angela Sumner  29:40

[audio clip] I would be lying if I didn't admit that there's a new fire that her death has lit under me. There's a desire to impact more people. There's a desire to change lives, to wake people up. And if you think her death was an accident, no. I am well aware that speaking out means that I might be targeted. But I'm willing to do whatever it takes for humans to understand what's really going on in the world.

Emily Guerin  30:12

Guru Jagat began the pandemic as a famous yoga teacher who spoke occasionally about conspiracy theories. She ended it as a martyr. [music out]

Emily Guerin  30:38

[music in] Imperfect Paradise: Yoga's "Queen of Conspiracy Theories" is written, reported, and hosted by me, Emily Guerin. The show is a production of LAist Studios. Shana Naomi Krochmal is our Vice President of Podcasts, and Antonia Cereijido is the Executive Producer for LAist Studios. Production research and sound design by Emma Alabaster. Research and additional reporting by Francisco Aviles Pino. Editing by Kelly Prime and Antonia Cereijido. Fact checking by Tess Kessler, Emma Alabaster, and me. Mixing by Donald Paz. Original music by E. Scott Kelly, with additional instrumentation by Will Marsh, Nicholas Young, and Kamini Natarajan. Our theme song was written by Raaginder. Our website LAist.com is designed by Andy Cheatwood, and the digital and marketing teams at LAist Studios. The marketing team of LAist Studios created our branding. Thanks to the team at LAist Studios, including Taylor Coffman, Sabir Brara, Kristen Hayford, Kristen Muller, Andy Orozco, Michael Cosentino and Leo G. Special thanks to Megan Garvey and Karlene Goller. Imperfect Paradise is a production of LAist Studios. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]