S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , the fallout continues from wellness guru Deepak Chopra's more than 4000 mentions in The Epstein Files. Voice of San Diego's Jacob McWhinney shares his latest reporting. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. The latest release of The Epstein Files include names of many of the world's most rich and powerful. A prominent San Diego figure is listed over 4000 times bestselling author and wellness guru Deepak Chopra. Thousands of documents reveal his longtime correspondence with Epstein over the years , and now UC San Diego has said Chopra's affiliation with the with that university will be ending in June. Now , joining me to talk about it is Jacob McWhinney. He covers education for Voice of San Diego. And just a note the following conversation may contain sensitive language and topics. Jacob , welcome back to Midday Edition.
S2: Thanks for having me , Jade.
S1: Glad to have you here. Okay , so Deepak Chopra , he is a figure known all over the world , not just here in San Diego , but for those who need a refresher. Who is he ? Yeah.
S2: So Deepak Chopra is a world famous Indian-American guru and physician. His kind of holistic approach to health and wellness , which included everything from like nutrition and mindfulness and a sort of like catch all spirituality first , really started to take rise in the 1990s and buoyed by , you know , appearances on things like Oprah Winfrey's show , he his star continued to rise over the past three decades. He's written nearly a hundred books on everything from neuroscience to yoga to nutritious recipes. Most recently , he has hopped on the AI wave and created an AI chatbot that is supposed to act as a , you know , guru , using a lot of his content along the way. As you referenced , he also developed a connection with UCSD , first as a assistant professor , and then about a decade ago , they elevated him to a full time professor. But during that time , he was always based out of a Carlsbad Chopra Center , which is a it was no longer open now , but it was a meditation sort of retreat yoga center that people went to for wellness and mindfulness sort of treatments. In any case , he is now at the center of a very different kind of scandal.
S1:
S2: And from the House Oversight Committee. Those those documents showed that Chopra and Epstein met at least a dozen times from 2016 to 2019 , and it's important to note that Chopra and Epstein's relationship began already about a decade after Epstein was arrested for soliciting sex with a minor , and that sweetheart deal back in 2008 , during which he was incarcerated at this kind of cushy prison that allowed him to leave for 12 hours at a time. Really kind of set the stage for the whole scandal that we're living through now , and mostly because despite the fact that he was he was convicted of soliciting to soliciting sex with a minor. It was very clear that his sex crimes were much more expansive than that. And even in those kind of early communications between Epstein and Chopra , we started to get a hint of some of the flavor of what was to come in later releases. For example , in one email between the two men. Epstein shared a link to a 2016 article about a woman who had dropped a civil lawsuit claiming that President Donald Trump had raped her at a sex party hosted by Epstein.
S1: How old ? I'm sorry.
S2: How old ? A woman who said that as a 13 year old. President Donald Trump had raped her. And as , yes.
S1: As an adult.
S2: She okay ? Yes , exactly. So Chopra responded to that email and said that she also dropped the civil case against you. Epstein responded saying , yep. And Chopra responded , good. Wow.
S1: Wow. I mean , these two were pretty frequent pen pals. And as you just kind of shown , they emailed about a range of topics from the mundane to the misogynistic.
S2: I mean , they interacted thousands of times over this three year period from 2016 to 2019. And as you mentioned , it wasn't just about this sort of misogynistic sexual stuff. They talked about everything from consciousness to Trump to dogs , but they often veered into more sexual topics. They they repeatedly messaged about , you know , cute and sexy girls. And on at least one occasion , Somebody whose number is redacted but based on constant context clues appears to have been Epstein references. Pray. So it was a very mixed bag , much of which , given who Epstein was , is pretty disturbing. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. I mean , sifting through the documents , what kind of rhetoric is used to describe women ? Sure.
S2: Now , just a disclaimer here. You know , there is lots of conversation about girls. It's unclear exactly what they mean by girls , whether these are , you know , minors , minors. In addition to that , you know , just being included in the Epstein files , having interacted with him or exchanged messages with him does not by itself mean that somebody has engaged in wrongdoing. But that being said , they contain quite a few examples of sort of disturbing language regarding girls and women in one text conversation that I just read.
S1: You know , if they're directed , which the comments , if they're directed at girls or women.
S2: It's difficult to tell. I mean , you know , the phrase girls , I think colloquially can be used to refer to either , and there are not necessarily ages included in these emails , so it's difficult to tell. In one conversation that I referenced earlier , the pair well redacted number , who appears to be Epstein , speaks to Chopra about a girl that he picked up on the street , and the person then texted Chopra about his Chopra's interaction with the girl. That quote , I liked watching you zero in on your prey made me smile. In response , Chopra texted back , I am not a predator , just a lover. And like I mentioned earlier in a number of conversations , Oprah or chopstick reference girls. For example , in the response to an invitation that Chopra sent to Epstein to a debate he was participating in , Epstein said he'll bring the cheerleaders. And in trying to get Epstein to come to events in Switzerland or Israel , Chopra urged him to bring his girls the Israel trip , in particular. Epstein turned down , but he asked Chopra to find him , quote , a cute Israeli blonde. In response , Chopra agreed , but warned that the Israeli blondes they were referring to were , quote , militant , aggressive and very sexy. In another communication from 2017 , Epstein offered to send two girls to an event hosted by Chopra. Chopra accepted , and the communications show that Epstein's assistant and Chopra and Chopra's assistants arranged for these two girls to come to this event , and Chopra urged that his cell phone number be given to them again. You know , girls is a is a broad term and it's it's not entirely clear exactly what they mean by that. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S3:
S2: Responded with a social media post in which.
S3: He says.
S2: Quote , I was never involved in , nor did I participate in any criminal or exploitative conduct. Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity. But he also wrote that some past email exchanges have surfaced that reflect poor judgment in tone. I regret that and understand how they read today , given what was publicly known at the time. I mean , it is an example though. Chopra was just one of many , many , many wealthy , powerful , many men , but often , sometimes women , who decided that despite the fact that Epstein was known convicted sex criminal , that they would still interact with him and they would still have conversations that went not just from the , you know , sexual , but at times pretty lurid. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: They emailed me that Doctor Chopra is currently a voluntary clinical professor without salary in the School of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine , and his expected job end date is June 30th , 2026. And they say , quote , he does not have any active responsibilities at UCSD or UC San Diego , nor will he have any active responsibilities at any point between now and the conclusion of the appointment term. While we are not able to comment further on personnel matters , the crimes Jeffrey Epstein committed were horrific and any association with him is regrettable.
S1: You know. More files reveal that Epstein provided funding for a UC San Diego lab , led by the director of UC San Diego Center for Brain and Cognition. Tell me about that. Yes.
S2: Yes. Yeah. So , uh , they show that despite the fact even , you know , given Epstein's identity , there were still people who were willing to take funding from him. And this wasn't just folks at UCSD. There were whole labs in places like MIT funded by Epstein. And so in one exchange between Chopra and famed neuroscience scientist V.S. Ramachandran , who's done really groundbreaking work in the field of phantom limb study , among others. The pair discuss research Ramachandran was conducting on this quote , an autistic savant who displays telepathy. In one email , Ramachandran wrote to Chopra that he didn't have a problem with Epstein funding his lab , and in follow up emails show that Epstein instructed his his accountant to send $25,000 to the UK's Board of Regents to help fund some of that research , which really falls in line with the kind of stuff that Epstein and Chopra talked about. I mean , like I said , it wasn't just sexual stuff. They were very they spoke in , in very strange kind of heady verse at times in IND in ways that indicated that not only did they seem to , you know , spend a lot of time together , they seem to have visited each other dozens of times over these this three year period , but also kind of jive in a , in a very interesting way about this kind of stuff , whether it was telepathy or , you know , God or consciousness , they they really seem to speak in a way that that , that that's indicated that they were very simpatico on these kinds of things.
S1:
S2: I don't know that I saw anything specific , but obviously we know that this was something that that Jeffrey Epstein was , was very interested in , not only via the sort of fertility attempts to do fertility experiments using , you know , the , the genetic material of , of , of wealthy and intelligent people that seemed to be based out of his ranch , but in a whole lot of other emails with other , other kinds of folks. It isn't necessarily something that we saw in the Chopra emails , but , you know , who knows ? There are likely millions more emails to come. And so it's anybody's guess what what what's to come ? Hmm.
S1:
S2: I mean , one of the the things that we know about all of these files is that what we're getting is incomplete. And that doesn't just relate to the fact , to the way in which the government seems to be redacting or not , including files related to Donald Trump. There are a whole lot of other files and millions more yet to be released. One of the things I'm curious about is just how much funding he provided to local universities. There are other connections. There was a San Diego State University professor who seemed to have an interaction with him , as the Daily Aztec reported. I'm also just curious how often Epstein was in San Diego. We know that on at least one occasion he did visit , um , Chopra here. Uh , in , I believe , 2017. The pair met at the San Diego , uh , or the Science of Consciousness conference that was also attended by famed linguist Noam Chomsky. And during that trip , Chopra offered to set up a massage for Epstein at the Chopra Center up in Carlsbad. One of the interesting things that I'd like to learn more about as well is just how long they interacted. The last email we have between them came in 2019 , shortly before Epstein's arrest in just three months before his death. But who knows , maybe there are more to come.
S1: Wow , great reporting as always , and you can find all of Jacobs work at Voice of San diego.org. I've been speaking with Jacob McWhinney. He's education reporter for Voice of San Diego. Jacob , thank you so much.
S2: Thanks so much , Jane.
S1: That's our show for today.
S4: I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
