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- [00:00]
Kristen Bell
Hi, I'm Kristen Bell. Carvana makes car buying easy. Isn't that right, hun? Dax.
- [00:06]
Dax Shepard
Dax, sorry. Did you know about this? 7 day money back guarantee.
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Kristen Bell
A week to evaluate seat comfiness.
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Dax Shepard
You say a week of terrain tests? Yeah, I can test the brake pad resistance at variable speeds.
- [00:18]
Kristen Bell
Make sure all the kids stuff fits nicely.
- [00:21]
Derek Barris
Make sure our stuff fits nicely. Oh the right.
- [00:24]
Dax Shepard
Still need to buy the car. Getting ahead of ourselves here.
- [00:27]
Kristen Bell
Buy your car with Carvana today, ladies.
- [00:31]
Dax Shepard
You'll end up shopping for your guy's deodorant. Right, so try Degree's original Cool Rush.
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Kristen Bell
You see, last year Degree changed the formula and men were mad. One guy even started a petition so Degree admitted they messed up and brought the original Cool Rush scent back.
- [00:45]
Dax Shepard
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Kristen Bell
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Dax Shepard
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Kristen Bell
Find out why it's the best selling men's antiperspirant for the last decade.
- [00:56]
Dax Shepard
Degree Cool Rush is back.
- [00:58]
Kristen Bell
And it smells like Victory Foreign.
- [01:12]
Matthew Remsky
It's the temple of Isis and beautiful temple. And I'm just kind of cruising around and we're all cruising around. Wow. Like this is, this is powerful. This is beautiful. And then we enter this one dark chamber and I'm in there in the dark chamber.
- [01:33]
Kristen Bell
It was the holy of holies.
- [01:34]
Matthew Remsky
The holy of holies, like the sanctum sanctorum of this temple. And Matthias is there and he's doing an activation in there. And we're in the dark and Alana and Vi are in there. And I receive a message as clear as any message I've ever received. And it felt to me, coming through the voice of Isis. She didn't announce herself, but that was implicit in my understanding, in this almost telekinetic understanding. And it says you need to have children with both of them. And I go, excuse me, like what?
- [02:19]
Kristen Bell
That's mega millionaire, anti vaxxer, Trump supporting supplements. And new age life coach tycoon Aubrey Marcus, 44, telling the world that while doing spiritual tourism in Egypt, the goddess Isis commanded that he must impregnate Both his wife, Vailana, 37, and the third member of their throuple, Alanna Beale, 28. Now that would have to happen after he becomes fertile again after almost a decade of taking tea and maybe after doing the therapy that self important men might need to do to become parents who realize they're not the actual baby anymore because they're not gonna get all the attention now. The command from ISIS is not what he expected or wanted, he goes on to say, and if we rolled the clip farther, we'd hear Vailana weep as she does a few times throughout this unbearable 2.5 hour podcast, talking about how the spiritual command up their sacred monogamish union salted her deepest betrayal wounds and made her feel like dying countless times. Their episode is called A New Pattern of Sacred Relationship Emerges and alongside Marcus guiding Vailana and Alanna through accounts of their strained throuple experience, Marcus also has his on call guru Mark Gaffney, an old school spiritualist most famous for the long list of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against him on the panel to frame their drama as a sacred crisis and to pre objections from Marcus's 1 million-plus followers across social platforms. But whatever the strategy might have been in play, it didn't work. So today we'll use our coverage of Marcus over the years to see how it predicts this moment, and we'll pick apart the spectacle itself and assess how badly he's getting his ass beat for it from several political angles.
- [04:09]
Derek Barris
You are listening to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [04:21]
Kristen Bell
I'm Matthew Remsky.
- [04:23]
Dax Shepard
I'm Julian Walker.
- [04:24]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod. We are also all individually over on Blue Sky. You can search our names there and you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality if you are an Apple Podcasts user, you can subscribe to just receive our bonus episodes every Monday via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
- [05:04]
Kristen Bell
So Derek and Julian, this is quite a moment and I think for us the setup is unsurprising because this super rich guy has been running a cultish operation in plain sight for a long time. But you know, not the 1970s brick and mortar ashram type. It's the more fluid and monetized parasocial type organized around a core group of influencer underlings who specialize in fitness or dime store psychology or divine gender bs. And you know, altogether with them. Marcus sells a lifestyle of new age bro science optimization and a central part of his gig has always been the public commodification of his own sex life as a blueprint for enlightened relationship. But with this new crisis, the commentariat is outraged at his transparently cruel rationalizations for unilaterally reorganizing his public marriage. And that's because they might not know. He's always kind of been like this. He's always been adaptable, pan spiritual, a post moral syncretist from 2012 on until his super fast marriage to Violana in 2019. And I have to resent how much brain space we have to devote to this to keep all of these years straight. He was in a fluid, sometimes mono, sometimes open or poly, but usually poorly defined for the public partnership with a woman named Whitney Miller, who we'll hear commentary from in the end. And that provided a source of brand content as they talked about the relationship in various settings and you know, on various media, on podcasts. And so what's different now? Why such a backlash even from his followers or primarily from his followers? Why is it in this age of seemingly absolute non accountability, is this guy crashing out? And I think part of the story is that Marcus opportunistically recruited a reactionary new listenership as he pivoted into MAGA territory in 2020. And as we're going to hear, a lot of those followers were particularly attached to his new invocations of Christian devotion and his performance of a more conservative sacred monogamy union with Filana, who from the beginning was clear that she wanted an exclusive relationship. They even did fit for service workshops on the holiness of their commitment. And it seems that, you know, he's just not going to talk himself out of that now.
- [07:33]
Derek Barris
Well, I know Matthew, you posted this podcast in our slack. Shortly after it happened, I was blissfully unaware as my wife and I and our puppy were on the coast yurt camping for a couple days where I got to actually be offline.
- [07:48]
Kristen Bell
Nice.
- [07:49]
Derek Barris
And upon returning I got a bunch of DMS from a whole lot of different people being like, have you seen the Aubrey thing? And I'm like oh fuck. Because I was happily forgetting about him for a while. We haven't touched him in a while. And to be honest, even doing this episode, if it was just about their throuple, I would not be involved in this because I think that the sort of relationship gossip that dominates so much or occupies so much space in people's brains is the lowest form of basically humanity. The idea that you should care about someone else's relationship is absolute garbage to me. And I can see it how it functions gossip in terms of people around you to be aware of assholes, for example, or things going on. But the idea that I would care about an actor, actress together or a life coach and a spiritual guy, like, whatever. It's just absolutely mind boggling that that occupies people's space. But the reactions that we saw to what had happened I think is worth covering. And a few things that do jump out at me. First off, just broad picture about the podcast itself, because I did listen to all of it. Aubry obscuring his desire of just wanting to a lot of women through spiritual language is something I've seen in the wellness yoga spaces for a while. But that people put him up on these platforms with hundreds of thousands of people following is a real red flag. And the way that he manipulates the language, not even the people, is really demeaning. And then having Gaffney and I know we're going to get a little deeper into who he is and we have covered him a little bit before, but having a 60 something year old man sitting there like giving guidance to us 20something woman who got pulled into this situation was just so gross.
- [09:43]
Kristen Bell
Yeah.
- [09:43]
Derek Barris
And then just the overall privilege of these people. First of all, the. The idea that people would care, but apparently people do. So we're commenting, but the level that they're able to talk about their experiences that we're going to hear in clips and we'll get. We'll also flag this later. But Gaffney saying you guys would be in this if you all were poor, it's just absolute garbage. Because the opening clip is the three of them going through Egypt on Aubrey's dime from selling bullshit supplements for hundreds of millions of dollars.
- [10:17]
Dax Shepard
Totally.
- [10:18]
Derek Barris
So you know that that's my general framework going into this. It's absolute garbage. People spouting nonsense, but it is actually dangerous. And I'm really. I will say the reason I'm partaking is to see the rawness and the beauty and the pushback that so many people, but especially women, gave to him in the comments.
- [10:38]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I mean, it's like one of those Internet memes, right? Where it's like nobod and then like, or everybody and there's an empty space, like nobody said anything. And then Mark Gaffney, well, I mean, if you guys were poor, he's like totally trying to preempt all of the obvious stuff of like, oh, yes, when you're, when you're sailing down the Nile and you suddenly realize you need to change your relationship structure and yeah, like both of you. Derek, you're saying it's so gross that there's this gossip culture. And Matthew, you're saying why, why does this have to take up brain space, you know, cataloging the history of these people's relationships? But the thing is, we're covering a phenomenon which is that this is the emergence of the social media influencer, guru kind of culture in which cataloging your relationship in glossy form and like really pushing the buttons of what feeds the algorithm in terms of stuff that is salacious and controversial, that's part of the brand building, that's part of, of reaching the audience, that's part of then being able to pitch your products on the other side of that, as we're actually going to see during this episode. But here we are again, the long of male new religious movement leaders especially, who just so happen to hear a divine voice that commands them to have multiple wives. It's staggering, right? Somehow the gods are very interested not only in who does what to whom with which body part, as the evangelicals never tire of telling us, but also how certain very special chosen individuals should structure their sexual and power relations. And bottom line, like, to me, even if they believe it, these guys who have tended to do this, which I doubt, I think it's always just a manipulative religious justification for living out what is the predictable narcissistic male fantasy of being at the top of the food chain and getting to have all the babes to yourself. If Marcus can couch his infidelity and desire for more new sexual experiences in spiritual language, then that's only further strengthened by having this older male guru figure blessing his impulse and delusions as sacred and kind of translating them into his language of like, evolutionary, very, very important global spirituality. Let's bear in mind this is a podcast with almost 630,000 subscribers on YouTube. Their top 10 videos have over 1 million views each. The editing aesthetic of this episode is somewhere between reality TV and one of those daytime talk shows with a studio audience, right? This is the evolution of this kind of and culture like this very slick production. There's an almost four minute lead into the two and a half hour video that has highlights and B roll footage and carefully placed musical cues. And, you know, some of the B roll is candid, but some of it is like clearly staged. Like, okay, let's go get the footage of you standing next to the pillar pouring the water, you know, putting on your clothing in the, in the dim, you know, morning light and that kind of stuff. And it really gives you a feel for the characters that you're about to engage with.
- [13:42]
Kristen Bell
I think you're absolutely right about the production values, because as I think of it, it's like what you would see on Dr. Phil or any kind of big daytime production. I think that's all accessible to these people who are as wealthy, but they, you know, don't have mega studios, but they're able to assemble all of the resources they need, you know.
- [14:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And we're introducing you to these characters not by asking them questions about their lives, but by showing a very emotive kind of aesthetic vibe of who they each are. And then the conversation itself is on this beautiful professional set. To your point, Matthew, there are different backdrops essentially for each speaker in terms of how the set has been built. There's a multi camera system that can cut back and forth and allow for compelling split screen moments between the characters as they get into their emotions. So we're being invited into very intimate territory, but in a highly curated and produced format.
- [14:33]
Kristen Bell
I just wanted to pick up on something that you said, Derek, which is that like the excess of the lifestyle on display and we'll get into this. It also, it's a function of the escapism of the parasocial sort of connection that people cultivate with these figures. And I wonder if there's a turning point with the backlash to this that also that's not just about how is Marcus obviously manipulating the language around non monogamy or polyamory or whatever it is he's doing with that. But is it also about like, how is he displaying a basically leisure filled life as being somewhat important when it's obviously quite silly and not okay, so let's get into a series of clips that we have. We're going to go sort of in order. We're not going to spend a lot of time on the actual content because we can, you know, we can, we can summarize a lot of that, but I think it's important to sort of hit the main points. And where we start is with how Aubrey Marcus frames and choreographs these very important messages that he has to deliver to his audience.
- [15:47]
Matthew Remsky
And so people are looking for different options. What are they? Do they work? Is it possible? And for some people, the traditional models, monogamy as it has been for thousands of years, just works perfectly. And so we're not here to be advocates of our way, but we're here to just humbly tell the story of our way. And the reality is that we didn't plan to be here. This was not like we set out with this intention. We arrived at this intention through a variety of choices and mystical interventions and just the acceptance of what is. And what is has really guided us to where we are now. And where we are now is a story that we have not yet told. And so here we are to tell the story and also tell the story in the context of a world, a planet that's really, as you would say, drenched in shame.
- [16:49]
Derek Barris
Yeah.
- [16:49]
Dax Shepard
So that I actually just realized, totally reminds me of the Aubrey Marcus and Charles Eisenstein moment. Here we are. Here we are. Oh, it's this key moment in the present of incredible significance. Right away, you have this artful linking, just in humility. Right. Of where we are, which is like him and his two sister wives and the planet, because his love life is of ultimate significance to the spiritual evolution of humanity.
- [17:13]
Kristen Bell
Yeah, exactly.
- [17:14]
Dax Shepard
And then also, right. This topic of shame, which is what he has rationalized, all of the confusing and the confusion and the suffering that the trio, especially the two women, especially his wife, have been going through, it's actually just about shame and learning how to overcome shame, especially his wife's struggle. Right. As it requires some kind of spiritual courage to move through so as to get beyond the shame and the jealousy and the triggers of lower consciousness. And that's a story I've. I've heard a lot, frankly, in. In our overlapping subcultures.
- [17:44]
Derek Barris
They also keep playing this line, especially Aubrey, where they're talking about things that are ancient and they're not really going to change things, but they're offering a different perspective. And when he says monogamy, as it's been for thousands of years, that. That just. I mean, you might be surprised to learn that AUB doesn't know anything about history, but the idea of romantic love that we think of as monogamy, bringing you into union with another person is relatively new historically because predominantly throughout history, relationships were more social, and therefore you had to do things like dowries and arranged marriages, like most cultures had that as part of. I mean, there. There's a whole. There's a whole bunch of Shakespeare about this stuff. So it's not like we have had monogamy for thousands of years as we know it. No, we have something new today. And I would argue that throughout time, or at least definitely in our time, any sort of combination of relationship that you have takes a lot of work, and there is no perfect way to do it. It's fluid, it's always evolving, and you got to figure it out with the one partner or the multiple partners that you have. But there's no, like, framework that exists to work from that's going to just make it perfect.
- [19:03]
Kristen Bell
Well, that's why, Derek, you would benefit from the guidance of Mark Gaffney because the reason that he's there in that room is interpretive. It's to offer new frameworks, but also to. He's there to disclaim, right, the sort of. And to preempt the objections that listeners might make. So he brings all kinds of caveats. And one of the things that he does. We'll listen to him in a moment, is that he wants to reassure Aubrey's listeners that they all still think that monogamy is very respectable and it actually is. Socially, it's top tier. But if it doesn't work for all of the reasons that they'll go on to name, and it has to be radically defined, then they can do it. And if it is radically redefined in a way that causes pain, then that will be good pain and it will be worth it and it will transform you. And I think what everybody has to know about Mark Gaffney is that he is just excellent for this role, given his backstory. He is a master of damage control and rationalization in relation to his own history. He's a former Orthodox and Jewish Renewal rabbi, and he's faced decades of sexual misconduct allegations. In 2004, two women accused him of sexual assault from the 1980s. Gaffney has admitted a relationship with a 14 year old girl when he was 19, and he called it consensual. But the victim does not. A woman named Judy Mitzner alleged abuse in 1986 when she was 16 and Gafni was 24. Then in 2006, he is in Israel in Jaffa, and five women at the congregation that he's working at there accuse him of misconduct. And so he has to flee Israel. He loses his rabbinical ord, and there are currently open lawsuits against him under New York, New York's Child Victims Act. And so he's got a lot of experience with, you know, being in the position of the male spiritual teacher who is having to face down controversy and give a lot of explanations for it. And so let's take a listen to how he kind of weaves himself in and positions himself as the master here.
- [21:27]
Julian Walker
Classical monogamy, which, which again, I think is probably the best path for most people most of the time is filled with holy and broken hallelujahs. And the reason why Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah has more covers made of it than any other story is because it's.
- [21:45]
Kristen Bell
About.
- [21:47]
Julian Walker
Wow, love is not a victory march. Right? It's a cold and It's a broken. It's a holy and broken hallelujah.
- [21:54]
Kristen Bell
Right.
- [21:55]
Julian Walker
Meaning it's not simple. There's agony, there's ecstasy, there's pain, there's abandonment, there's trauma. So monogamy itself is a beautiful and gorgeous journey, which works for many people or doesn't, but it's a gorgeous, sacred possibility which should be at the center of culture.
- [22:14]
Kristen Bell
Beautiful. We got that.
- [22:16]
Julian Walker
And it's a critical. And historically, what's happened is the way monogamy has been lived is through deception.
- [22:25]
Derek Barris
Leonard Cohen would have to call upon his years of living in a Zen monastery to not smack Gaffney in case where he's still alive at this moment.
- [22:35]
Kristen Bell
Yeah, except that. That's what they did at that particular monastery. They smacked themselves quite a bit. Yeah. And he's misquoting that song, too, because that song is actually about infidelity.
- [22:45]
Dax Shepard
It's about betrayal.
- [22:46]
Kristen Bell
It's about betrayal.
- [22:46]
Dax Shepard
Absolute heartbreak. It's not about how it's all, you know, all actually wonderful. Love is pain. Monogamy is deception. Lena Cohen's song somehow refers to this new awakening fire, references to Old Testament stories. And. And what? And again, we have this, like, ahistorical notion of classical monogamy. This guy's really a talker if you've not heard him before. Right.
- [23:07]
Derek Barris
And if you did not listen to all 2 hours and 40 minutes of this fucking podcast, he keeps referencing it over and over. He keeps going back to it.
- [23:16]
Kristen Bell
Well, there's a good reason for that, which is that Leonard Cohen is actually a Jewish poet. Yeah. And Caffe isn't. Right. And I think that, like. Like, it's almost like in the same way that Marcus needs Gaffney in the room to make him feel smart. I think Gaffney needs Leonard Cohen in the background or in the ether somewhere to make him feel smart. And I just want to say, too, that, you know, his claim that monogamy is deception is subtle in a smart way, because what he's referring to is that for some people, the exclusive demands of monogamy can provoke deception and the harboring of secret lives. So he's not wrong about that. This is part of the thing that, you know, is always very irritating about him is that he can say things that sound true, but we also don't know how he's defining deception or infidelity, like in some discourses that includes one partner using porn but not disclosing it. His suggestion is that somehow his three spiritual students here have achieved peak honesty. That's what he's there to suggest.
- [24:37]
Derek Barris
Hablas espanol Spritz du Joyce.
- [24:40]
Kristen Bell
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- [24:51]
Dax Shepard
Speaking a new language in just a.
- [24:52]
Kristen Bell
Few weeks with over 16 million subscriptions sold and a 20 day money back guarantee. Just start speaking another language with Babbel right now. Up to 55 off your Babel subscription at babbel.com Spotify podcast spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify podcast rules and restrictions may apply. This episode is brought to you by Selectquote Life insurance can have a huge impact on our family's future with select quote Getting covered with the right policy.
- [25:16]
Dax Shepard
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Kristen Bell
Selectquote's licensed insurance agents will tailor your experience to find a life insurance policy for your needs in as little as 15 minutes and SELECTquote partners with carriers that provide policies for many conditions. Selectquote they shop, you save. Go to selectquote.com SpotifyPod today to get started. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine.
- [25:41]
Dax Shepard
Who saved her comrades. A hero.
- [25:44]
Kristen Bell
She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real?
- [26:00]
Dax Shepard
Is this real?
- [26:01]
Kristen Bell
Is this real?
- [26:02]
Derek Barris
I just couldn't wrap my head around.
- [26:04]
Kristen Bell
What kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying?
- [26:12]
Dax Shepard
This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.
- [26:18]
Matthew Remsky
I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.
- [26:25]
Dax Shepard
Listen to Deep Cover the Truth About Sarah, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:34]
Kristen Bell
Okay, two more bits from Gaffney. We have to do this one where he primes listeners to view the crisis and attachment wounds that are bleeding out all over this episode as ultimately positive.
- [26:48]
Julian Walker
Reality is, at its core, structure the evolution of relationships. And what moves reality forward from the molecular to the world of animals, of life, to the world of humans is crisis. Every crisis is always a crisis of relationship. It's never not so. Every crisis is a crisis of intimacy. You solve a crisis of intimacy by actually reaching for a next and new structure of intimacy. Reality is the progressive deepening of intimacies.
- [27:21]
Derek Barris
Okay, I want to hear him explain physics so we can understand the crisis at the molecular level. Since These idiots love to invoke. Invoke molec all the time.
- [27:31]
Dax Shepard
It's the relationship between, you know, electrons and protons. They're. They, they're having an intimacy issue and that leads to fission or fusion or whatever the hell it is that makes an explosion. But this is the galaxy brain guru shtick, right? From the single celled amoeba to the self realized union with the divine, it's all about relational crisis. So the fact that you're struggling right now, it's actually part of a much bigger story that we can take solace in. All the wounding, all the transgression, all the betrayal, all the chaotic relational trauma, it's ultimately the divine for itself through eros and agape. Convenient.
- [28:05]
Derek Barris
I'm reading a book about the history of chemistry right now, and I'll just say that there was a moment in the 18th century where alchemy, which was the original study of chemicals, split apart and chemistry actually became its own field of study. And what the new chemists realized were that the metaphorical language had use for understanding if you had a spiritual practice, but it was utterly useless as a science. And that is when alchemy disappeared. And that's just what I'm getting from this. This idea that you can alchemize things that actually don't have any bearing in reality whatsoever.
- [28:42]
Dax Shepard
Well, wait until I announce my side project of turning base metal into gold. It's going to happen, bro.
- [28:48]
Kristen Bell
So who has time to do all of this stuff? One last preemption caveat from Gafni before we move on, where I think you can tell that in his notebook in front of him, he actually brought notes to the meeting. He's ticking off the things that people will object to. And here he's, I think he's. He's anticipating that people will complain about, you know, these folks just living lives of leisure and pretending that their relationships are somehow important.
- [29:21]
Julian Walker
A strange thing to say, but let's say a strange thing. The three of you would be at this table if you were poor. And that's a really important thing to say. This is not, oh, wow, we've got some dispensable time, a little extra income, you know, we're kind of in Miami. No, no. And it's. In other words, and we've been through these depths. If you guys were like, for whatever reason, wow, right. The whole world turned around and we were poor, God forbid. Right? Because everyone should be filled with plenty and we should take care and there.
- [29:50]
Kristen Bell
Should be no poor.
- [29:52]
Julian Walker
If you were. Or you would still be in this constellation. And that's deep. So there was a deep searching, there was a deep integrity, and there was a deep listening to the intimate universe. And there's not a bone in my body that's not proud of that.
- [30:08]
Derek Barris
He's so good. He's good because he realized how much of an asshole he was when saying, God forbid we're poor, but everyone should have money.
- [30:14]
Kristen Bell
Everyone.
- [30:15]
Derek Barris
Yeah, let's make everyone rich.
- [30:16]
Dax Shepard
And hold on a second. You'd all be sitting at this table if you were poor? Well, they might be, but Mark Gaffney would not be sitting across.
- [30:23]
Derek Barris
Oh, no, no, no, no.
- [30:24]
Dax Shepard
Because I bet he comes at a pretty fucking penny.
- [30:27]
Kristen Bell
Well, I think he's really working for his dinner. He's blessing whatever Marcus wants to do. But, you know, he also periodically in this episode, he throws in quips like, you guys are a real pain in the ass. Because he's describing getting, like, crisis texts from Egypt. So he also gets to play this kind of hassled spiritual dad who has of the kids. But here's my favorite Gaffney clip. Before we move on, this is just a little taste of the kind of jargon that he's capable of.
- [31:01]
Julian Walker
We've given this a name. We're calling it Radical Monogamy in the field of erotic mystics. So paradoxically, this is not about polyamory. That's the paradox. It's actually about radical monogamy, meaning deep, exclusive, lifelong, committed relationship. Right. But not in the classical monogamous sense. It's an expanded monogamy, but there's a radical monogamy, but it's just not a monogamy of two. It's a slightly bigger monogamy, but it's not. Okay, we're not, like, moving in and out of partner. No, it's not the polyamory road. It's not the classical monogamy mode. It's a radical monogamy of deep exclusivity between Aubrey and Vi. And then there's gonna be a new goddess who will step into the field who will also step into this field of radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystic.
- [31:57]
Dax Shepard
It's a pizza, but it's not really a pizza. It's a sandwich. But you see, it's a pizza that's a sandwich. But if you melt the cheese, just stromboli.
- [32:04]
Kristen Bell
The invoice. An invoice for that alone is huge. The line items on that. He's gonna give himself a fucking and stroke coming up with that. Like, can you imagine twisting yourself up so hard and then going on a podcast that gets like hundreds of thousands of views and showing your ass like that. It's incredible.
- [32:24]
Derek Barris
There was a moment, and I'm sure, Julian, you remember this, because I know it was in the LA yoga scene, but it was in the New York yoga scene in the 90s, where, you know, these. These master teachers would say the most, just pedestrian, that if you read it on paper, you would throw it out, but they would say it in such a way that, you know, it had some deep spirit insight. And everybody ooh and ah. And I feel like that's just what he's like. How many times can you say radical monogamy as if that's going to stick, it's going to become sticky. And that's what it felt like.
- [32:54]
Kristen Bell
Well, the thing is, is that the second phrase, Derek, you don't understand, you didn't listen carefully enough, is that it's radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystics. But, yeah, you got to get the two parts. It's in the field because the radical monogamy is Marcus and the two Marcuses. Right, right. Aubrey and Violana. And then the field is what opens up to invite Alanna in as the third goddess, really. So anyway, we'll get to that because we have to actually tell their story now.
- [33:24]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, it's like a portal into an ontological reality that's been discovered where the erotic mystics hang out. And this is the thing. This has always been the field, man. Yeah, it's the field. And this has always been the shtick, Derek. This is the crazy wisdom shtick. This is the misuse of non dual philosophy from Vedanta. It's. It's essentially to. You say that things are not. Are not what they are, and you find ways, constructing that with your language that make people go, wow, that's deep and profound. I've been away from this subculture for so long now that I forget about this whole preoccupation with messages from spirit and how, like, spirit really tells you, you know, everything that you need to do with your life. And it's. And in a way, I actually find it really sad because it's like a parody of meaningfulness and authenticity to have, you know, every aspect of your life. Like, spirit is just telling you what to do. And very often it's what you don't want to do. But you have to listen to spirit.
- [34:16]
Derek Barris
Matthew, did you know a story by Michael Roach about toothbrushes? That was a thing in the Jivamukti scene. For a while that he gave some sermon about toothbrushes that all the fucking teachers were repeating for months.
- [34:29]
Kristen Bell
Well, he used to use specific sort of, I don't know, toothbrush shaped objects.
- [34:36]
Dax Shepard
I don't want to know.
- [34:36]
Kristen Bell
I don't want to know. Like pencils and pens to make a point about. About the Buddhist theory of emptiness. So it was like it was a display object for teaching about the nature of reality and that you can't actually tell where the toothbrush actually is or what it's made out of.
- [34:54]
Dax Shepard
So he watched MTV in the 90s, and he saw the Magritte reference that this is not really a pipe.
- [35:02]
Kristen Bell
Something like that. Yeah. And, I mean, I think that what Gaffney is trying to do here, I just wanna pick out one kind of serious thing that we'll talk about a little bit later, is that he is actively, you know, muddying the waters with regard to what they are calling this particular relationship. So it's not monogamy. Exactly. It's also not polyamory. He has to help them move the goalposts all over the relationship world so that whatever they do is fine and okay and that nobody really has any rules or responsibilities that you can make it up as you go along. And the problem with that is that whoever has the most social power in the room is just going to dominate. That's the problem. And I think Gaffney is facilitating that complete removal of boundaries and definitions.
- [35:55]
Dax Shepard
All right, so thank you very much, Mark Gaffney, for providing us with all of those good laughs and opportunities for analysis. Matthew, I know you've looked into the backstory of the three main characters here in detail to help us understand how we got here. So Aubrey previously had a very public, open relationship in the way that we've been discussing, and then seemed to pivot to monogamy in recent years, is that right?
- [36:19]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. And we'll just give a little synopsis of the story that they tell in this podcast so that, you know, we understand what has been framed here for dinner. So, yeah, Aubrey Marcus and Violana marry in 2019 with a monogamish commitment. And that's in contrast with Aubrey's recent years with a woman named Whitney Miller. But at this point, Violana is less interested and more triggered by relationship openness than Aubrey is. And this timing, or the switch to monogamy just happens to coincide with a rightward political and social turn in 2020 as the pandemic gets going and Aubrey starts to change his market focus, his content focus, over to MAGA type Content. And during this time, Aubrey, Marcus, and Violana have open relationship experiences, but it's not clear when those actually start. It seems like they move from a kind of more committed monogamy to something that's more open over the five years.
- [37:23]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah. So that's not entirely clear. And maybe that's sort of obscured deliberately, given what you were just saying about the political utility of presenting as traditional monogamy.
- [37:34]
Kristen Bell
Right, yeah.
- [37:35]
Dax Shepard
But by the time we get to Miami, which seems like it's around 20, 23, it does seem like they're on the lookout for threesomes.
- [37:45]
Kristen Bell
Yeah, definitely.
- [37:46]
Dax Shepard
They're on a dating app. And so this is when Alana enters the picture, right?
- [37:50]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. So they're holidaying in Miami for about a month. They describe basically trawling for threesome partners. And then Marcus gets a message from spirit during a workout.
- [38:03]
Dax Shepard
Such a great moment.
- [38:04]
Kristen Bell
Check his raya D. And he sees Alana listed. Of course, he has to swipe once first because whoever pops up on the top is not the right one. Not the right one. And he kind of knows. I don't think he says this directly, but he knows that this is special because he never looks at his phone while working out because he's such a concentrated guy.
- [38:26]
Dax Shepard
And so, yeah, so he's working out. He never normally checks his phone. But then Spirit tells him he must look because someone really important is going to be there. And then I guess the first woman is not attractive or something. He's like, yeah, no, thanks. Right. That's not the one. No, this is the one that spirit chose for me. She's. She's just right. So he tells the story as having this kind of mystical, cosmic connection. And then he sends her a message that basically says that he's like, oh, well, I'm just going to go all in and say, spirit told me I should connect with you. Right. What. How does Alana receive that message?
- [38:56]
Kristen Bell
Well, she's receptive to it. And she says, I don't mind woo. And. And this could be a match, I guess. They have a good series of first interactions. She describes herself as being in the middle of a career transition. She's moving out of modeling. She's trying to figure out what to do next with her life. They connect, and on their second meeting, they all take some sort of medication together. And it's called the God bomb ritual, and it involves singing bowls and Alanna getting bodywork from Aubrey. And this ritual, they say, reveals how pure and worthy Alanna is of their attention and inclusion in their relationship. And before long, Alanna starts traveling with them. And the story is. Part of the story is that her presence allows Violana to sing better than she ever has before. Violana is a singer, and apparently she accesses, you know, greater range or tone or whatever.
- [39:55]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah. Marcus says new octaves open up, which is pretty impressive.
- [39:59]
Kristen Bell
That's pretty impressive, right? Right.
- [40:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah. And the other thing I'll just add here is that. Is that Alana says this is her first time ever on a dating app. It's her first day on the dating app.
- [40:09]
Kristen Bell
Yeah.
- [40:09]
Dax Shepard
It's the first message, it sounds like. We don't know if that's necessarily true. I may be speculating there, but yeah, she's very. She's very fresh and innocent and new to all of this. And wow, here comes. I can only imagine the hot millionaire guy is chatting her up and saying that spirit said they should connect through Raya. So that's amazing. Then to go even further into this or briefly hears the voice of the goddess Isis in a temple in Egypt, as we've said. And that's where things start to get really intense.
- [40:36]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. And we're not sure how much time has elapsed between the initial meeting on through Raya and them traveling the world together. But, you know, as soon as they tell this part of the story, they're also describing a kind of swirling, incoherent drama, because having children with another person are an even darker red line for. For Vailana. And I just want to say I think they should be aligned for everybody in this situation, because if, you know, Aubrey thinks that relationships are hard and transformative or that they should be, I just want to tell him that when children comes along, he's going to have a lot more to consider and to think about. And then there are multiple references to Alanna playing a mediating role between Aubrey and Vailana as they actually rage at each other through the crisis. And then Marcus also discloses that he has given Vailana a soft ultimatum, which is that if she doesn't like the throuple arrangement, he of course, would give her a buyout, which is, you know, sounds like a red flag of power and consent to me. So let's rewind a little bit because I think a key moment that we want to make sure we don't miss is this ritual God bomb induction part, and this is how it gets described.
- [42:01]
Matthew Remsky
So for our second date, we share with Alana that Vailana and I had been developing, you know, what we really believe is a lineage medicine practice that we call the God Bomb. And there's been many people who've come on here and shared their experiences with the God Bomb, from, you know, Layla who's shared it to, you know, Shaman Jen and Valko who's shared it. And many people have shared, shared it. And we were in the developing of this and we let you know, we're like, hey, we have this particular type of ceremony. It's quite intense, but it's really safe. And we'll be there with you, you know, to guide you through this process. And you're like, yeah, let's go. And we're like, we're like, really?
- [42:44]
Derek Barris
For sure?
- [42:44]
Kristen Bell
She really trusts.
- [42:46]
Matthew Remsky
I was like, for sure.
- [42:47]
Kristen Bell
Like, we're good and we deserve the trust. But like you also just met. I mean, I know we're great, but.
- [42:52]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, so like good read a character fair in that and, and good discretion and so you show up.
- [42:59]
Kristen Bell
I just want to flag that I didn't hear this before, but I'm realizing by their reaction that them being surprised to her saying yes really gives me the sense that a lot of people have said no to them maybe recently. Right. Like this is. There's some. They're like, oh, are you really going to do this? I think they've pitched this before.
- [43:18]
Derek Barris
Well, they have for years. And when we listen to this, we kind of speculated what the God Bomb was. So I had to find out. And I found it in a 2023 interview that Aubry did with a self proclaimed Neo Tantra coach named Layla Martin. Here it is.
- [43:37]
Matthew Remsky
We've kind of kept it a little bit secret. It's been our own baby that we've been incubating that came to us from a variety of different cues from the universe. But the core of it is the combination of two medicines, ketamine and cannabis in congenital conjunction.
- [43:52]
Kristen Bell
Yeah.
- [43:52]
Matthew Remsky
And it forms this unbelievable sacred handshake of Hieros Gamos. And to me, ketamine is the ultimate divine masculine energy. And it's. But it's, it's not even like the divine masculine we've been talking about. It's like this shivic universal energy of all, the possibility of all creation and just the life force energy that's available without even having to be formed. Form, you know, so mater matrix. It's like the form is the mother and this is ultimate formlessness. So much so that you would never say, oh, grandfather ketamine, like you would say grandfather Wachuma or grandfather peyote. No, it doesn't even have that energy of the masculine and it's so, so removed from that. It's just. Just the fine essence of ether and spirit.
- [44:41]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [44:42]
Matthew Remsky
And then you mix that with cannabis, which is the rich goddess. It makes all the food taste better. It makes your love. Making tast makes the touch feel better. It makes everything come alive in your body and the somatic awareness come. And when we realize that those two things would pair together, and in the pairing of the alpha and omega, the chi was formed, which is the intersection. And that intersection has to do with the heart that is available to come through when the masculine and the feminine meet.
- [45:12]
Dax Shepard
You see, it's a pizza. It's a pizza, but it's got truffle oil sprinkled on top of it. And when you pair it with the Pinot Noir, there's something that. That happens.
- [45:22]
Derek Barris
Oh, my God, he's such a douchebag. So, all right. When I heard that, I have a history of these substances, but dating back to the 90s, ketamine somehow got caught up in the psychedelic space. And I think it was partly because of 80s culture, the club culture, because it became something that people were doing, taking bumps of while they were on psychedelics. And then it became perceived as a psychedelic, which it is not. It is chemically known as a disassociative. It is used to treat animals or soldiers. In Vietnam, was the first usage after FDA approval for people to be put under.
- [46:02]
Dax Shepard
One of the big reasons, Derek, actually, that I think it got woven into psychedelic culture is John Lilly. All of John C. Lilly's early experiments with. With flotation tanks and with working with dolphins, he was using ketamine. And people got really caught up in this idea that ketamine and that movie Altered States with. With John Hurt, William Hurt, all about ketamine and how ketamine is sort of this. Do more way into being able to time travel and communicate with dolphins and aliens and all the rest of it.
- [46:31]
Derek Barris
Right. So I'm not gonna go into my anecdotes about it, but I just want to talk about. They're relatively safe now. I don't know the dosage amount. And I will say that if you were to take a bump of ketamine and some cannabis, you could have a very lucid experience. Absolutely. I had great times. My friends had great times. If you were to do what we sold in college, which was a bag, a 20 bag of ketamine and cannabis, there was only one time in my life where I was lying down, sitting, then standing, and I couldn't physically tell where I was Spatially, that is the only time out of all of the too many psychedelics experiences that I had that I didn't know where I was spatially. And I bring that up because again, it is a disassociative which basically with your consciousness to the point of where you don't know where you are in space. And I know people who don't remember what happens to them after taking it. So I don't know what doses he's using, but that makes it very suspect that they've dialed in the perfect amount for people.
- [47:36]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And then this whole idea that it's a lineage medicine practice, I mean they, it's like the combination of tech bro speak and like psychedelic shaman wannabe. Right. And their personal spiritual experimentation then of course has these grandiose implications and framing. And they've developed this ceremony using this very powerful combination of drugs, which of course they refer to as a God bomb. It's going to show this vulnerable younger woman the ultimate nature of reality on their second date. And look, the, the whole thing about dating, right, is that initially we get very excited because we don't really know the other person. And we project all sorts of things into what this new connection means. If you add to that the language of spirit is bringing us together undeniably. And then on the second date you take a very, very powerful drug together. There's shades of cult indoctrination here. I'm sorry, that's. That's how it feels to me.
- [48:28]
Derek Barris
And it also gets me these anti pharma, anti vaccine people who consistently use pharmaceuticals. Like Matthew, you flagged earlier, Aubrey couldn't produce enough sperm because he was on testosterone for a decade. And now they're talking about a pure creation of the pharmaceutical industry that they're co opting into some sort of spiritual lineage. It's all just garbage. It's like, like fine, you wanna do the drugs you wanna do, that's totally fine. But understand there are chemical implications to everything you put in your body.
- [49:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And there's recent research actually making the rounds and a lot of stories, especially coming out of the uk, that if you use ketamine consistently over an extended period of time, probably, you know, a fair amount of it, you end up with lots of complications, including loss of bladder control, even in quite young people.
- [49:18]
Kristen Bell
Is there a way in which Marcus is making some kind of metaphorical sense about ketamine? You're saying that it' associative. I've seen it in action because my own son had his arm reset with ketamine. And I could see that he disappeared. He couldn't remember where he was. And Marcus is describing that as well, right? He's describing sort of vacating. So that's sort of equated with a spiritual experience. But then he's saying that the cannabis kind of like, I don't know, changes that or makes him present at the same time or turns him on sensually. Is that what is that? What do you think? That's accurate, Derek.
- [49:54]
Derek Barris
At least in my personal experiences, cannabis has used as a sort of either accelerant or as some sort of enhancement to all sorts of psychedelic drugs. So from my own use, doing psilocybin with, with cannabis helps me to bring it up and then bring it back down at certain phases of the trip. I am not an experienced person with ketamine. I only did it a few times, even though I had some crazy experiences. That's mostly why I only did it a few times. So it is totally possible that he's using in some way that enhances it. But how that's using or how he's trying to manipulate the drugs or the peoples he's around, I can't really speak to.
- [50:33]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, and I'll just add here that from my perspective, however much you're spiritualizing a certain combination of drugs, it's. It's pretty common for drug users to like experiment with how you combine different drugs and have one amazing, amazing experience and then be chasing, trying to get the chemistry just right in your amateur, like, like apartment, you know, setting.
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Matthew Remsky
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Kristen Bell
Students cost varies by pace, transfer credits and other factors. Fees apply. What I think is the most complex piece is that, you know, at 26, Alanna is an adult choosing to throw her lot in with a cruiser on Raya and it doesn't sound like anyone twisted her arm to take these drugs during this ritual. But at the same time, to your point about cultic dynamics, Julianne we know that undue influence is real, that social power always plays a role, and that Alanna is describing a kind of situational vulnerability with regard to her life stage and career path. We also know from her ig feed she's consuming content from real new age trad wife dingbats like the sexual archetypes coach Kel Kazarian. You know, these are the type of person who's doing their best to out Brogan Brogan. You know, divine women become free from the demands of feminism by being dominated by divine men and so on. But you know, overall, Alanna seems to be in this situation with the affect of a kind of inscrutable equipoise. It's it's kind of hard to tell what the impact is. And it seems that whatever the internal cost, she's presenting a fairly understandable and, you know, frictionless path that she's going to be a peacemaker. She's going to be someone who respects the elder wife and seems unattached to the outcome. But they are also positioning her as the pure goddess who may ultimately heal the rocky primary relationship. And Aubrey makes this big deal of saying that when he's alone with Alanna because he and Violen are fighting, she never seeks to displace Violanna. So she's a real angel figure. And the result is that, you know, very few people in the comments which we'll get to are calling Alanna out as some kind of homewrecker. That particular form of sexism isn't prominent because she was pursued by them together. And because the focus is on Aubrey as a manipulator, that complicates the perception of what Alanna is or isn't choosing to do. You can't really argue both sides that he's a manipulator, but she's a homewrecker. Although maybe, you know, there are some gray areas there. But let's get to the emotional impacts of how this all plays out amongst the three.
- [55:08]
Julian Walker
At first, when you shared that with.
- [55:10]
Kristen Bell
Me, I felt pretty calm and collected and was able to, like, hold it from a place. But the more that our conversation continued, you know, like, it was. It was bringing up that piece of me that feels like, you know, like I always get, like, hit at a left field. It's like as soon as I feel.
- [55:31]
Dax Shepard
Safe.
- [55:34]
Kristen Bell
Like, there's something else. And so it was a lot of that woundedness around, like, this always happens. And like, I've been so open in the blessing and trusting. And then, like, the thing that I literally was the most afraid of.
- [55:50]
Dax Shepard
And this is like, you know, I had a little bit of hesitancy about.
- [55:57]
Kristen Bell
This podcast just because it's. It's exposing, you know, the most vulnerable part of my journey. And, you know, we had a really difficult day, as you can imagine. And, you know, once we kind of, both of us are very dramatic. So we went, like, full out. I have a little thing on my ring, but I, like, tried to, like, pull off my ring, and I couldn't pull it off.
- [56:29]
Julian Walker
And then that hate when that happens. You're trying to get the ring off in a dramatic way. I mean, it was full drama.
- [56:38]
Matthew Remsky
I almost threw myself off the Nile in the Nile. It was dramatic.
- [56:42]
Kristen Bell
People next door. I'm just like, jesus Christ.
- [56:44]
Derek Barris
That was full drama. That's the thing that jumped out at me. I want to make an observation here. I don't know these people personally, and I. So I don't want to extrapolate from that, but I will make an observation about having consumed their content for years is that I've known people in my life who are always working on themselves. And I don't mean, like I think everyone's always working on things, which is fantastic. But I always just ask the question is, when are you actually okay? When I hear words, when I hear things like on my journey and, and the constant suffering and everything is this like just dramatic instance. And then I think about like what we've been talking about here today. Like we're talking about people who have access to millions of dollars and just travel the world basically doing this, doing psychedelics and vacationing as, as an actual lifestyle. And then I think about the work that I mostly do on this podcast, which is like advocating for socialized medicine and then reading all of the research on people who go medically bankrupt and can't afford, afford to, to buy their prescription drugs so they can stay alive. Those disparities are not lost on me because so many people are just trying to get by. And then you list. I listen to podcasts like this and I'm just like, what world are these people occupying that they can't actually self reflect and understand what they have and everything they've been given and yet everything is still this sense of drama. And again, I don't want to take away from anyone's personal traumas or healing they need to do, which I think is, is definitely possible for people. But looking at these things in the broader scope, especially under the framework as Aubry presenting it as a form of spirituality is, is just really tough for me to stomach.
- [58:35]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah, so you have the time, you have the money and the time on your hands to be able to be really preoccupied with like, how do I, how do I become this, you know, really unique, amazing self actualized human being in all these different ways. And then, and then there's this exhibitionist component to it, right. Which essentially the way that a lot of this money keeps flowing is through this really being your job. And so your job is to share your spiritual journey, which more and more is about like very intimate and sensationalist kind of controversial details on the big stage in a highly produced and curated way. And yeah, then it becomes absolutely about, about drama and reality TV framing as, as we said earlier. And I also found just a little bit of this. Like there's the transition from violence, real emotional vulnerability into a kind of almost like making fun of the drama of it. Oh, I hate it when you can't get the ring off in a dramatic moment. Like he's almost acknowledging like, yeah, you're on camera and you're trying to have your big moment. And then it's like, wait, she's actually like Struggling.
- [59:40]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. Well, it's gotta be cut short somehow, right? It has to be reframed and contained and put back in the box. And, you know, to the privilege point, Derek, I would say that, like, to the extent that they develop a fandom that is aspiring to their wealth and to their leisure time, their sort of continual commodification of their own leisure is, in my view, it's a form of class war, because it really does draw people's attention away from their neighborhoods and their everyday lives. And I think you're right, Julian, that leisure is their job. And the question is, who really profits? Who owns the assets? And one of the things that I thought from this clip was that Vailana is really stuck in, you know, whatever is going on in the relationship, but at least in the performative side that we're seeing. On one hand, she's supposed to be honest about how the open relationship rules really hurt and are not natural for her, like her confession. And the tears are painful and they are also part of the product of this brand. And that's what Marcus's intention is. But it backfires, as we'll see. And so it's also the thing to work on and transform to your point earlier, Derek, about always having to work on something. So this is commodified emotional labor that she has to do. And, you know, I think the editor put the tears into the opening montage because it's actually a selling point. They are counting on viewers clicking through to see this person in vulnerability, in a form of surrender. But then, on the other hand, the metaphysics of the moment as set up by Gaffney have already decided that all of the upset is actually kind of childish. It's really just a tantrum that will pass. It's something that you have to realize is funny and meaningless. So in labor terms, it's disposable. Like, it's there to draw views and allow the men on the panel to caregive, apparently. But it's also a foregone conclusion that the tears will not change the ordained outcome that absolutely contrary to Violana's expectations, now she's going to be a co parent with Alanna with somebody who's 10 years younger.
- [61:55]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And she has a few different moments like this of emotional overwhelm. And at one point, this is in this general parody to the podcast, she actually asks Mark Gaffney to speak on sacrifice, because there's something that she is being called in a very holy way to sacrifice in order to maintain her relationship with Marcus. And Then you see all of the, sorry to use the term, but the spiritual gaslighting of her struggle.
- [62:18]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. So how do people respond to this as we head into the home stretch? You know, it was incredible to see. See actually the vast majority of Maybe more than 10,000 comments excoriate Marcus for this particular display. There were long, you know, quite earnest, overly polite call ins from disillusioned followers, mostly women who think that Violana is trapped, that, you know, they hope she finds a way out. There were disillusioned comments from women who were invested in the fantasy of their divine monogamy. There were responses from Wellness Bros on YouTube who, you know, thought that actually Marcus was just doing it all wrong and that any kind of non monogamy will cause disease and especially if it involves allowing your female partner to have sex with other men. Because that was another part of the story, was that a rationalization for this new arrangement was that Marcus had actually given or granted Violena some sexual freedom previously. But these guys, you know, on YouTube, they were German new medicine guys and they were saying that, you know, basically if you allow your female partner to have sex with other men, there's no nothing more humiliating because what they want to do is criticize Marcus for not doing gender essentialism in the right way. There's also this really large YouTuber contingent that seems to be discovering corruption in the awakened community for the first time. And I was really surprised by how much content was produced in how short a period of time. I guess I'm not on YouTube that much, but there was a real wave with a whole bunch of people weighing in with what they thought were unique kind of observations about wow, there's corruption in the spiritual community or people, you know, or there's who knew or there's charismatic leaders or something like that. There were also some more feminist analysis pieces that cut closer to the sort of argument of nobody cares what you do with consenting partners, but don't pretend that you've studied, you know, how to do consensual non monogamy or polyamory or its agreements or its discourse or anything around that or its rules, because look who's actually in consequence control as per usual. And when we don't follow rules, then we have power, you know, mess ups like this. So yeah, that's a survey of the comments. What did you guys think about the comments?
- [64:38]
Dax Shepard
I thought it was really refreshing to see, you know, here's, here's for the first time, Orbe Marcus really sticking his neck out on something like this. And the backlash is almost unanimous. And it's a lot of very, very powerful, eloquent women who are really able to take him to task. And you know, it's ultimately I was cheering them on and just calling out.
- [65:03]
Derek Barris
His like straight up. What one thing I found refreshing about the comments is it was just straight to the bone. There was no, it was, they didn't need to enter. Some, some people did entertain Aubrey a bit, but most of them did not entertain any of the utter that he spouted. They were just like we said, see you. We know what this is. It happens over and over again. And I actually went on to Alana's page because she closed the comments on her Aubrey post about the podcast, but she didn't close the comments. So people were commenting on her previous posts and there were actually some women who were just like, hey, look, you're at a place in your life. You're young, be careful. I've been through this. I know this guy. You are not. This does not lead to anything good here. And I, I found that really refreshing is seeing slightly older women step up to be like, I was that younger woman. And we, it's so clear to us and we just don't want to see that happen to you. And that actually, that gave me some, some good feelings there of people looking out for other people in this way, especially against assholes like Aubrey Marcus, who.
- [66:13]
Kristen Bell
We have to say actually after maybe four days of backlash and deleted all comments from the main posts and closed the comments under YouTube, which I've heard from reliable sources, he's actually never done before. Like actually he's, he's been very clear that he doesn't want to ever delete comments and this just, it became too much. He's got a couple of explanations up online that we can link to. But you know, when this broke and I saw the overwhelming and unique backlash, I wondered why this was, was the moment and whether any of it would impact him. Because in the background of this is a kind of crisis over accountability, especially in the sort of larger backlash against the MeToo movement. But as of yesterday, Aubrey Marcus's most recent post on Instagram is this kind of thank you to all the haters who put me through the spiritual flow. And it consists of a montage. Did you guys see this?
- [67:15]
Derek Barris
Yeah. Thanks, dude. I had to fucking watch it. That was horrible.
- [67:18]
Kristen Bell
Yeah, well, it's this montage of really family friendly clips where he's presenting himself as the fun loving daddy who's playing pickleball and doing puzzles and riding horses with these younger women and also making yummy pancakes. So I think that the divine dad branding has already commenced.
- [67:37]
Derek Barris
But also that moment, that moment of pickleball, we have to point out, it's the two of them playing against him and he chose a shot where they bested him and he laughs it off. It was so fucking cringe. Staged.
- [67:50]
Kristen Bell
Yeah. And I just want to underline this again, Aubrey, if you're listening.
- [67:54]
Derek Barris
Oh, he's definitely listening.
- [67:55]
Kristen Bell
This whole thing about wanting two babies, I. You know, you have a real something coming, right? Like, because once your partners have babies, you're not going to get all the attention anymore, even if you have an army of house help. And also, God forbid you have an autistic or otherwise disabled child. You know, and also, fair warning, the vast majority of people doing the hard work of parenting are not posting about parenting. So, you know, you're not going to get that out of it.
- [68:23]
Derek Barris
Aubrey is listening. We know this because he made an entire documentary where he stole Matthew's voice to respond to one of our episodes. So, dude, give us credit at least. I know, I know you love to be voyeuristic and herein. So at least put us. Put us on the fucking byline there.
- [68:39]
Kristen Bell
We have to end with somebody who knows more about this than everybody, perhaps than the, you know, three principals involved. And that would be Whitney Miller, who went on IG Live. And, you know, I reached out to her, but she says publicly that she's not speaking to journalists, so. Journalists. So she did this IG Live that I happened to listen to, and she was the one who was in a relationship with Aubrey Marcus prior to the marriage to Violana. This is from 2012 to 2019. She was super diplomatic throughout this Q and A that she did. She isn't grinding an axe. She isn't. She's choosing to speak because she's getting a lot of questions and she wants to shed light on patterns that, you know, she can shed light on. She says that Marcus's relationship transitions are lightning fast. She said that she moved in with him very shortly after he broke up with his previous partner, Caitlin Howe, in 2012. She calls herself an idiot for doing. But in 2019, Whitney hears about Violana on a Sunday, and Aubrey has moved in with her by Wednesday and, like, within two weeks, they're married. And contrary to the narrative put out at the time, she wanted to make clear that there was little clarity about all of this and that they were definitely not all friends at the time. Now she's 22 to 30 years old while they're together. And she does describe love and some growth. But she also says that she was continually pushed to expand her boundaries, that every expression of discomfort and resistance was described as a shortcoming and the need for her to do more shadow work. Now, through therapy she has come to understand what she describes as narcissistic patterns, and she says that listening to this podcast episode with the throuple was like listening to an older version of herself trying to make sense of something she didn't understand. And then I think this is the most important thing. A listener dm's a comment to her during the IG live saying that her partner, the listener's partner basically forced her into an open relationship and she tried to make it work and it didn't. And you know, together they were inspired to do this by Aubrey Marcus and Whitney Miller and other comments about Marcus inspiring male partners to pressure wives are also online now, including a story of one who called his wife from a hotel room while with another woman and the wife had a four month old baby at home. And you know, I think that these are really important things to keep in mind for everybody who thinks that influencers like this have some sort of insight into, you know, relational health, especially as more and more young people become more interested in consensual non monogamy for a variety of reasons. Trip Planner by Expedia.
- [71:43]
Dax Shepard
You were made to have strong opinions about sand.
- [71:47]
Kristen Bell
We were made to help you and.
- [71:48]
Dax Shepard
Your friends find a place on the beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub.
- [71:54]
Kristen Bell
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