Richard Simmons Isn't Missing

Summary

Podcast Summary: Maintenance Phase – "Richard Simmons Isn't Missing"

Introduction

In the Maintenance Phase episode titled "Richard Simmons Isn't Missing," hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes delve deep into the enigmatic life of fitness icon Richard Simmons. Released on November 21, 2024, this episode scrutinizes Simmons' meteoric rise to fame, his subsequent withdrawal from the public eye, and the complex interplay of personal struggles and public perception that defined his career.

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1. Richard Simmons' Rise to Stardom

The episode opens with a discussion of Richard Simmons' early life and ascent into the spotlight. Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes recount Simmons' background, highlighting his upbringing in Louisiana, experiences with bullying due to his weight, and his transformative move to Italy, which played a pivotal role in his personal development.

Notable Quote:

• Aubrey Gordon (00:44): "I think the main arc of this episode is Richard Simmons' rise to stardom and then decision to disengage from stardom."

Simmons' theatrical persona and unique approach to fitness quickly attracted media attention. His appearance on the television show "Real People" marked his first significant media exposure, setting the stage for his enduring presence in the fitness industry.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Hobbs (07:50): "General Hospital is an extremely long-running American soap opera. And soap operas, I would say, are like telenovelas that never end."

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2. Personal Struggles and Relationships

The hosts explore Simmons' tumultuous relationship with his father, who was a source of both inspiration and adversity. Simmons' struggle with severe eating disorders, including an extreme weight loss regimen that led to significant physical and psychological consequences, is examined in detail.

Notable Quote:

• Richard Simmons (03:40): "If you don't exercise while you're losing the weight, you will end up to look like a very thin glad bag."

Gordon and Hobbes discuss how Simmons' aggressive stance on weight loss, often perceived as bullying, contrasted with his own personal battles with body image and self-worth.

Notable Quote:

• Aubrey Gordon (04:27): "This is some of the sort of selective stuff that people listen to with Richard Simmons. He was very consistent about saying that he starved himself and that that was a bad idea."

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3. Business Endeavors and Media Expansion

Simmons expanded his influence through various business ventures, including infomercials, exercise videos, and branded merchandise. His approach to fitness was not just about physical exercise but also incorporated entertainment, characterized by his flamboyant costumes and engaging routines.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Hobbs (12:07): "In that intro, Mike, we get Richard Simmons, among other things, we get him doing a lot of fitness with a lot of costumes."

The hosts highlight Simmons' creative marketing strategies, such as his "Deal a Meal" diet board game and inclusive exercise classes that featured a diverse range of participants.

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4. Turning Point: Grief and Personal Loss

A significant turning point in Simmons' life was the passing of his mother, Shirley Simmons, in 1999. This event deeply affected him, leading to a noticeable decline in his public enthusiasm and a shift in his approach to his career.

Notable Quote:

• Richard Simmons (36:06): "After Shirley passed away, I was asked to do several national television shows... I just didn't feel like being funny."

Gordon and Hobbes interpret this period as a moment where Simmons began to grapple with profound personal grief, influencing his decision to gradually withdraw from the relentless pace of his public life.

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5. Disengagement from Public Life

By the early 2000s, Simmons started to withdraw from the public eye. Reports emerged of him becoming less responsive and more reclusive, sparking widespread speculation about his well-being. Instances such as the 2004 assault charge at Phoenix Airport and his later interactions—or lack thereof—with friends and associates fueled the narrative of his "disappearance."

Notable Quote:

• Aubrey Gordon (55:22): "He thinks that black magic is what caused him to be tormented."

Simmons' relationship with his long-time housekeeper, Teresa Raveles, became a focal point of speculation, with rumors suggesting a controlling dynamic that might have contributed to his withdrawal.

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6. Public Speculation and "Missing" Narrative

The combination of Simmons' reduced public presence and sporadic media reports led to a pervasive "missing" narrative. The Smoking Gun reported his alleged assault at an airport, while later stories, including a sensationalized New York Daily News piece, painted a picture of a man trapped within his own life by supernatural forces.

Notable Quote:

• Aubrey Gordon (51:57): "He is treating him like an ATM for validation."

These narratives were further complicated by the National Enquirer's unfounded rumors about Simmons' personal life, including baseless claims about his gender identity, which only intensified public confusion and concern.

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7. Death and Legacy

On July 13, 2024, Richard Simmons passed away at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 76. The LA Medical Examiner reported his death as the result of a fall, with heart disease as a contributing factor. Posthumously, his housekeeper Teresa Raveles spoke to the media, asserting that Simmons had been planning a Broadway musical about his life and was reconnecting with fans.

Despite his passing, reflections from listener experiences, such as the subdued turnout at his funeral mass in New Orleans, underscored the disconnect between Simmons' public persona and his private struggles.

Notable Quote:

• Aubrey Gordon (61:40): "The church was not full. It underscored this sort of theory that I've been developing of like, again, like validation atm."

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Conclusion

In "Richard Simmons Isn't Missing," Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes present a multifaceted examination of Richard Simmons' life, peeling back the layers of his public persona to reveal the personal battles that shaped his journey. The episode challenges listeners to reconsider the narratives constructed around public figures and emphasizes the importance of viewing them as complex individuals with their own struggles and motivations.

Final Thoughts:

• Aubrey Gordon (63:45): "Richard Simmons didn't owe us anything. That doesn't mean that people didn't have genuine feelings about him and don't still."

The hosts conclude by urging listeners to reflect on their own relationships with influential figures and to recognize the humanity behind the public facades.

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Notable Quotes Summary

• Aubrey Gordon (00:44): "I think the main arc of this episode is Richard Simmons' rise to stardom and then decision to disengage from stardom."
• Richard Simmons (03:40): "If you don't exercise while you're losing the weight, you will end up to look like a very thin glad bag."
• Aubrey Gordon (04:27): "This is some of the sort of selective stuff that people listen to with Richard Simmons. He was very consistent about saying that he starved himself and that that was a bad idea."
• Michael Hobbs (12:07): "In that intro, Mike, we get Richard Simmons, among other things, we get him doing a lot of fitness with a lot of costumes."
• Aubrey Gordon (51:57): "He is treating him like an ATM for validation."
• Aubrey Gordon (63:45): "Richard Simmons didn't owe us anything. That doesn't mean that people didn't have genuine feelings about him and don't still."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions of the Maintenance Phase episode on Richard Simmons, providing a nuanced understanding for both fans and those unfamiliar with his story.

Transcript

[Aubrey Gordon]

Man, I'll tell you what. All I ever want to drink when we're recording is, like, fizzy things. And it's the worst idea I know.

[Michael Hobbs]

Because you have fizz in the background and you have the burps.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. You get just lovely little gurgles. To join us on the podcast the Gurgle Cut.

[Michael Hobbs]

Releasing the Gurgle Cut. I think. I mean, I think maybe I'll go literal. Welcome to Maintenance phase, the podcast that will make you cry slightly less in this episode than the previous episode. This is what I was promised. This is why I'm here.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You're really selling it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm fucking. I'm leaving if you make me cry.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But I think. Listen, I think the main arc of this episode is Richard Simmons rise to stardom and then decision to disengage from stardom.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm Michael Hobbs.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm Aubrey Gordon. Oh, my God. We hadn't said our names through all that shit.

[Michael Hobbs]

Forgot again. You have to say your thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you'd like to support the show, you can do [e-mail] maintenancephase or you can subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the same audio, same stuff. Michael, Aubrey, we're talking about Richard Simmons again. Can you give us, like, a. Like a brief nutshell overview.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Of sort of what we learned last time?

[Michael Hobbs]

Grew up, Louisiana. He talks a lot about being bullied for being fat by his father and also other K. Then he moves to Italy, becomes a happy little meatball, ends up moving back to LA and essentially having, like, a very severe eating disorder to lose £100, and then discovers a group exercise and opens a gym and then a chain of gyms.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. Because his gym is based in Beverly Hills and because he is such a theatrical dude, it is not long until the media takes note. Richard and Ana Asylum are ultimately featured for the first time on TV on a show called Real People. Are you ready to watch a clip?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

[Richard Simmons]

What was it that compelled you to lose all that weight? I had a friend who had a friend who died from obesity from just being fat. And that's when I started going to autopsies. Like, you know, looking at people's hearts and being able to take this picture into the classroom and go, do you see this heart? This heart is covered with cookies and pies and grease. And your heart may look like this, and you never know when it's going to stop beating. Weren't you afraid that if you lost weight, you couldn't get Work as an actor if you were thin. Every fat person has the fear that they will change in some way, mentally, physically, spiritually and sexually if that weight loss goes. I tried every diet in the whole world. I had the jaws wired, I tried the pills, I tried the shots and finally I basically starved. I lost 123 pounds in two and a half months. My hair fell out, the eyes drooped, the chin drooped. If you don't exercise while you're losing the weight, you will end up to look like a very thin glad bag. I had to go to a plastic surgeon, chin had to go up, eyes had to be done, nose fixed, 900 hair transplants. I mean, you're looking at a four door Cadillac paid for. When you look at this face, what's to prevent other people from looking at you and saying, hey, Richard did it. Why can't I do it? Because they shouldn't make the same anguish mistake that I made because I almost died.

[Michael Hobbs]

I didn't know he had that much plastic surgery.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, he had quite a bit of, I assume there was like some loose skin removal stuff to do. But yeah, he was very open about having had a lot of work done.

[Michael Hobbs]

He also has this weird thing of I lost weight the wrong way so that's why I, you know, had this kind of drooping face. But my understanding is that like you have that no matter what, it's like you, if you lose weight, you just have extra skin on your face.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes, absolutely. It's the same thing as like when people are like ozempic face and you're like, yeah, that's just people losing weight and you got less fat everywhere. People just lose weight.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And then your skin hangs a little lower and there you go.

[Michael Hobbs]

I feel like it makes me kind of like respect the message a little bit less. If he's promising people, you know, that they can look like Richard Simmons after losing so much weight when he's presumably spent thousands of dollars on a bunch of plastic surgery.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is some of the sort of selective stuff that people listen to with Richard Simmons. Yeah, he was very consistent about saying that he starved himself and that that was a bad idea. Yeah, a lot of people missed that message. He was pretty consistent about talking about having work done. A lot of people chose not to pay attention to that. And he was also pretty consistent, as you see in this clip, with really haranguing fat people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

About being to blame for their own deaths, basically. Right, yeah. In a People magazine profile from the time called Former fatty Richard Simmons is the Grand Duke of diet and the clown prince of fitness.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's not even what.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, it's exactly right. They write, quote off camera. Simmons himself has even been known to accost strangers caught in the act of overindulging. I'll see an overweight woman eating a butterscotch sundae, he says, And I'll sit at her table and say, what is this for me? This is not a job. It's a mission.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's like, bullying worked for me, so I have to bully people. But it's like, Richard, it doesn't sound like it actually worked for you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally. And I will say he doesn't really talk a ton in interviews about his relationship with food, but when you get little glimpses of it, it's very clearly not an easy relationship.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

There's one Men's health interview where he lists off just, like, dozens of foods that he can't have in his house.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Let yourself have a potato chip once in a while. My guy.

[Michael Hobbs]

So he probably just has a low grade eating disorder for essentially the rest of his life. It's how he keeps the weight off. Well.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And now not only is it his perception of his own health and his perception of his own social value and other people's perceptions of those things too, it's also his fucking job.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah. He can't ever be seen to gain any weight.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think the thing that I took home from this clip, when I first saw it, as I was like, holy hell, his message was so much gnarlier and more like tough talk than I remembered, you know?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it's a scared straight stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think people tend to think of him as the antidote to, like, toxic weight loss messages. And I think that's the part that people listen to the loudest. Yeah, but he had plenty of extremely judgmental messages in there because that is how he felt about himself.

[Michael Hobbs]

So is this just a show that's just like, here's a random guy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's the TV show equivalent of get a load of this guy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Like the guy who got calf implants on True Life on mtv that I still remember for some reason.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, boy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Remember that one?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No. What?

[Michael Hobbs]

I think about that all the time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And here you said you didn't get TV references. Nice try.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's all I did as a kid was go over to Friends house who had cable and watch MTV and be like, go away. I'm watching mtv.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Were your parents like a. We refused to have cable House.

[Michael Hobbs]

We were a cheapskate house. And cable was like, $32 a month.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's where you get it.

[Michael Hobbs]

It is Aubrey, Yes. It's a genetic trait.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So, unsurprisingly, after his appearance on Real People, Richard is a huge hit. And the next thing he did, Michael, was that he landed a recurring role as an aerobics instructor on General Hospital.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, here come the weird references to things the youths will not understand.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. General Hospital is an extremely long running American soap opera. And soap operas, I would say, are like telenovelas that never end.

[Michael Hobbs]

We have to give it to people. In Mr. Beast, imagine Mr. Beast, but there's a script that he talks and there's 50 Mr. Beasts and they work in a hospital. That's how young people will understand.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Imagine you unwrap your shredded cheese and there's a big pile of blue mold. The way that he talks about getting the role is another one of these sort of, I don't know, Richard kind of ingenue stories where he's like, I was on a plane to Las Vegas and I got into my seat and I was sitting next to a professional looking brunette in a three piece suit who asks him, aren't you that guy who jumps around on television?

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he says, yes, I guess I am. And she says, you're very funny. I've never seen anyone like you on tv. And he says, well, that's because there isn't anyone on TV like me.

[Michael Hobbs]

Nice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, I was like, I don't think this exchange happened at all in this way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, no.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And I don't think you stumbled into a role on General Hospital. She, this professional looking brunette, then says, hey, I'm in casting for General Hospital and I'd like to write a role for you on the show. And he's like, I turned her down.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, you didn't.

[Michael Hobbs]

I feel like a theme in celebrity memoirs is people write out their ambition oftentimes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yep.

[Michael Hobbs]

It sounds like he probably wanted to get on tv. He got a little taste of celebrity, he liked it, and he's like, okay, what other opportunities are there? And he probably went out of his way to try to make these opportunities happen. There's nothing wrong with that. But people want to make it seem as if it's like, I'm so special that people couldn't help but notice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think he had gotten a taste not only of sort of being on camera, but of the kind of adulation that he had absolutely never gotten in his life before. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Everything up until now has been mostly people rejecting him.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And then he gets this thing where people not Only accept him. They adore him.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right, right, right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He talks during this era about how there were whole bags of fan mail just for him.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is around the time that he starts his pretty legend legendary relationships with his fans. In his memoir, he writes that he usually makes 40 to 50 phone calls a day.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Even when he's on the road and on a really busy day, he'd go up to 100 phone calls.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is my bad place.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hellscape.

[Michael Hobbs]

This would kill me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hellscape. So Richard lands this role on General Hospital. It goes really well. He's really loved on the show. He calls his dad to tell him he's on General Hospital.

[Michael Hobbs]

I don't know.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And his dad's response is basically, why don't you have your own show?

[Michael Hobbs]

What the fuck? That's such garbage.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So from there, Richard went on to host his own daytime talk show, the Richard Simmons Show.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, really? Like, immediately?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. He started General Hospital in 79, and he started the Richard Simmons show in 1980.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay, we're gonna watch the intro, which will give you a taste.

[Michael Hobbs]

Good, good, good, good, good.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I sent you the link.

[Michael Hobbs]

Intro. Okay. The Richard Simmons show by Tim doing fitness. Great transitions. PowerPoint transitions.

[Richard Simmons]

Okay.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's like a preacher skit.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay.

[Michael Hobbs]

Fitness in top hats.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Vaudeville fitness.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, it's like pranking people in grocery stores.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In the grocery store. Getting into a hot tub. Fully clothed for some reason.

[Michael Hobbs]

Fully clothed. God. He's driving a car with why are you fat? On the license plate?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Why are you f A T T?

[Michael Hobbs]

Why are the comments turned off? They're afraid of people roasting him. It's too spicy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I really hope it's that. That's not for bad. But listen, this was uploaded by someone with 13 subscribers.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, like 13 subscribers. Okay, fair enough.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In that intro, Mike, we get Richard Simmons, among other things, we get him doing a lot of fitness with a lot of costumes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Very weird. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

At one point, we see him dressed as an angel. That costume is for a character he called the Weight Saint.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, no.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Who was the angel on your shoulder reminding you to count calories? Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's what he was doing in the grocery store was like telling that lady, don't get that.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Get this.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my gosh. She was in the produce aisle.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Richard, he had other characters on the show. He frequently did, like, sketches on the show.

[Michael Hobbs]

I don't know if that's his gift. I don't know if that's his gift.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He played a nun named Sister Mary Lo. Cal.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, is it A whole talk show dedicated to weight loss. This sounds so boring.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is a fitness themed half hour talk show every day.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God. Why would anybody watch this?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He has another character named Anna Maria Spaghetti. He plays a reverend named Reverend Pounds.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Who is a man of the tablecloth.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my. Okay, that's pretty good. All right, fair enough.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Who says things like, twinkies are my shepherd, I shall not want.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And though I waddle through the valley of linguini and clams, I shall fear no evil. Richard.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's terrible.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He has a sketch about broccoli going to the unemployment office because, quote, people just don't eat vegetables anymore.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He plays a cop from the slob squad. He gives out tickets at grocery stores to people who are buying fattening foods. He had celebrity guests. Bob Barker came on, Betty White came on, phyllis diller, jack lalanne and barbara eden. You wanted your 70s celebrities, let's go.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, man. We're not explaining a single one of those.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Barbara Eden. Just I Dream of Jeannie. That's all you need to know.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, I didn't actually know that one. I didn't actually know that one.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It was my ringtone for years.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mine is just my neck, my back song in its entirety.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So doing the Richard Simmons show allows Richard to buy a house for himself. He doesn't really want a house. He's never really home for it. But everyone keeps telling him there's this gorgeous house and he just ought to buy it. So he buys this house. He can afford it. He buys this house. And he calls his family and says, come out to la. I'll fly you all out. I'm hosting Christmas. I got a house. I'd love for you guys to come out and see it. His family arrives and his dad walks through the entire house making note of all of the flaws.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's such toxic dad behavior.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is such a specific parent.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah. The pipes a little loose here, Richard. You're like, what? What am I supposed to do about this right now?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He. The appliances are all stainless steel, which is like a very fucking fancy thing in the early 80s.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he just keeps going. They're going to be covered in fingerprints.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ooh. Anti cybertruck king Richard Simmons's dad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he's like, there are too many steps in one house. I've never seen this many steps in my whole life. So Richard gets his family settled into their rooms, and his dad immediately starts shouting to him about how there's no hot water. Like, the hot water is out.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, I would complain about that. I would complain about that.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I'm gonna send you his quote from his memoir explaining what happened next.

[Michael Hobbs]

We're back in the crying in the driveway section of the podcast episode.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Get ready to get sad about it, dad.

[Michael Hobbs]

My father said, we fly all the way out here, and now we're in a mansion, this big modern thing, and there's no hot water. Do something, Richard. I called the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and managed to get a string of rooms. That's how I spent Christmas that year. The next day, December 26, I put the house up for sale. I didn't want to clean all those windows anyway. Oh, that's so sad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's so sad. So, like, he bought the house because other people thought he should buy the house, and he sold the house because other people didn't like the house.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's sort of like, what did his dad, like, want? Like, what did he expect?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, I mean, I think. Listen, I'm just spitballing here, but I think his dad was a showbiz guy who gave it all up to have kids. And here Richard is having a good amount of success in showbiz.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And who said that he didn't want showbiz kids because they are annoying.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And I'm like, well, you got an annoying kid who is having a great deal of success in the thing that you left.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I will say, over time, Richard says that his relationship with his father starts to sort of soften. Oh, he doesn't give a lot of great examples of that. The closest he gets is, like, there is a conversation that he recounts where his dad says, I'm really proud of you.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And it's clear that that meant a lot to Richard. I remain skeptical in a protective way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Be like, leave him alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You know what I mean? Because this dad has been, like, bad news. And also, as part of that relationship softening, Richard's like, I started sending him gifts, okay? And it's like, cashmere sweaters and tailored shirts and, like, nice ass. Shit.

[Michael Hobbs]

Look at what my gay son got me. Look at the gay things that my son got me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Richard eventually ends up buying another house, and he wants to hire a housekeeper to look after the house. Cause he has gone so much. Richard Simmons has many dogs, and they are all Dalmatians.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, really? Like, famously difficult to care for dogs.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Every Dalmatian is named after a character in Gone with the Wind.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wait, really?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Scarlet, Hattie, Ashley, Rhett.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, Richard Simmons and I would not have been friends if we met each other under different circumstances.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also collected dolls. So many old dolls in the house.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. How you doing, buddy?

[Michael Hobbs]

There's no way I want to maintain my affection for this man. These are not choices as an adult that I have made.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he's interviewing housekeepers, and he interviews someone, and he says, hey, do you like dogs? And she says, yes, I like dogs. And when I was a kid, I had a Dalmatian. And he goes, you're hired.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Her name's Teresa. She lives with him for decades, working as his housekeeper.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

When people ask him if he's married, he says, I live with a wonderful woman named Teresa.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, man. Ooh. Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. According to Tereza, who has shared this since he passed, he also bought two grave sites side by side, one for him and one for her.

[Michael Hobbs]

Huh.

[Aubrey Gordon]

While Richard is doing the Richard Simmons show, his father falls ill. He goes in for surgery for kidney stones. And Richard is like, how bad do you need these kidney stones removed? You're 85. There are complications from the surgery. So Richard flies out to New Orleans to see his dad because he's 85, and he's experiencing complications from surgery. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put together the risk there. Right? He talks about seeing him in his hospital bed and sort of scarcely recognizing him.

[Michael Hobbs]

He should walk around his dad and criticize all the flaws with it. Your nose doesn't look right. Be like, oh, your ears are garbage.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Once his father's released from the hospital, Richard gets him all settled in and then says, okay, is there anything else that I can do for you? And his father says, yes, Richard, there is one other thing you can do for me. Go to Rome and meet the Pope.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And say a prayer with him for me.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is like some sort of, like, three riddles to cross this bridge type shit. This is like a video game character. He's like, go on this quest.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm gonna go cameras on for a second so that you can see.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. Okay. Wait. What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

That is Richard Simmons meeting the fucking Pope.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, so he actually pulled this off somehow?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He went to Rome and he met the Pope. He does not explain the mechanics of how that happened.

[Michael Hobbs]

He sat next to him on a plane. I think he sat next to him on a plane?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

What do you do?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He like, really? Yada yadas it? Where? He's like, I called my agent who worked out the details, and I was on a plane to. And I'm like, no, that is not a sufficient explanation, Richard.

[Michael Hobbs]

I wonder if he Told the Pope that he's Jewish.

[Aubrey Gordon]

By the next spring of the next year, Leonard Simmons Sr. Died on April 18, 1983. This is a big loss for Richard. His relationship with his dad was complicated and rough, but even in its complication and roughness, it still loomed large in his life in a big way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And I think for anybody who's grieved somebody who you.

[Michael Hobbs]

Who sucked? Who sucked? You can say who sucked.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. Who was really close to you and also who sucked. You know how complicated it can be to feel grief and relief and anger and all of that at the same time.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is how I felt when Queer As Folk went off the air. It was not good, but it was very important to me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he's lost his father. While all of that is happening, his career continues to take off. In addition to his talk show, in addition to General Hospital, in addition to all of that, he releases a diet book. It's his first book called Never say Diet.

[Michael Hobbs]

Is this supposed to be a pun on never say die?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes. He says he doesn't like the word diet because the first word is die. The first part of the word is die. So his is a live it program is what he calls it throughout.

[Michael Hobbs]

He takes these little things, and he makes them so much worse.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They're so sweaty.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, live it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he's talking in this section about people who've tried everything and just can't lose weight. And, like, why should you listen to me about this? Right. He's sort of credentialing himself.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says the difference is that you've failed and I haven't. I used to weigh 268 pounds. I used to be fat and round and miserable, and I didn't like it. So I found the way to beat the fat and come out a winner. And I know where you've gone wrong and why you failed so far. This is kind of mean.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And also, like, I'm so sorry you beat the fat and came out a winner. That's how you're describing, like, hospitalization induced by starving yourself. Like, what are you talking about?

[Michael Hobbs]

He just said this more succinctly on the show with the why are you fat? License plate. That's kind of like his whole thing. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think the other thing to know here is that, like, this is absolutely the template for how former fat people are urged to feel about themselves, whether or not they feel that way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Their urge to feel and say, like, I was fat, that was bad. I made a decision to be thin. I had the grit to achieve it and I came out a winner.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And I should say he is not a person who has mentioned any formal training at any point in any of this.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, good point. Yeah. He's just like a guy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think a lot of his shit is based on vibes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his own experience and your own experience is not replicable. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

While all of this is happening, he keeps teaching his classes at the anatomy asylum now called Slimmins.

[Michael Hobbs]

Finally, he's becoming himself.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's starting to believe he starts teaching classes. His regulars really love him. And one of his regulars is named Ellen. She became a favorite of his. She made these teeny, tiny little teddy bears and would sell them at local gift shops and would bring them to him as a gift. She'd bring them little bears every so often. He doesn't see her in class for a while and asks after her and finds out that she has passed away. And he's like, what happened? And the person is like, well, she was anorexic for a really long time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he says that at this point, anorexia is not a term that he has heard. So he asked another couple of regulars who are both nurses, what anorexia was.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the passage that he writes about it in his memoir.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, so an anorexic is a person who stops eating for no reason and millions of reasons. It's someone who gets smaller and smaller, just like those little teddy bears. That alarmed me because I had once starved myself to lose weight. I asked the nurses, when I starved, was I anorexic? Not necessarily, though it's a fine line. They told me, you starve to lose weight. Anorexics starve to disappear. There are usually feelings of self loathing or lack of self worth connected with anorexia. In Italy, when I'd starved, it was because I finally realized my own self worth. So I thought I'd wanted to live and to look my best so I would fit in. Although I'd gone about it in a very harmful way. Oh, this is like what he's telling himself. He's like, I didn't hate myself. I just did it because I hated myself.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's so sad and self soothing by being like. Even though I behaved indistinguishably from someone with profound anorexia, being thin is still healthier than being fat, even if you starve to do it. It's like someone who is really bending over backwards to tell himself stories that make sense of his own experience and sort of protect it.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also so interesting how you can, like, you can make somebody stare this stuff in the face, right? Of being like, starving yourself because of low self esteem and poor body image, et cetera, is unbelievably bad for you. And an actual, like, diagnosed medical condition. And he can look at that information and still be like, I mean, I did that, but not in like the bad way.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Like, it's not. It's not that you can like, tell people that this exists and they'll have this eureka moment and be like, oh, my God, I shouldn't do that. It's like, oh, oh, oh. But I don't count.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We are now, Michael, solidly in the mid-80s. And 1985 is the dawn of the infomercial era.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah, another thing we have to explain.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I did not know why infomercials sort of showed up in the 80s. I just sort of knew that they did. Do you have a guess about why infomercials showed up?

[Michael Hobbs]

The invention of the Ron Co rotisserie oven. It was so good. They were like, let's put this on TV six hours a night, every night, this shamwow.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They just had to look.

[Michael Hobbs]

They had to get the word out.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is part of the Reagan administration's massive deregulation effort.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

So Reagan's changes to the FCC abolish the fairness doctrine that had been in place since 1949, which was the doctrine that required broadcast television to fairly cover differing viewpoints on controversial issues.

[Michael Hobbs]

Should chicken rotate? Should chicken not rotate?

[Aubrey Gordon]

This deregulation also removed restrictions on advertising to kids. So this is when we also start to get a huge wave of ads aimed directly at children during children's programming. And it loosened restrictions on how long an individual advertisement could last. So now you could have a 30 or 60 minute advertisement.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, those were advertisements? I thought they were just like talk shows that only ever existed for one episode.

[Aubrey Gordon]

All of them had the same catchphrase, which is just like, there's got to be a better way.

[Michael Hobbs]

The thing is, I did watch them when I was like 6 years old and like, I absolutely fell for it. I was like, oh, I learned on a talk show about, like, this knife that can cut paper or whatever.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I grew up in a house with Cutco knives and a miracle thaw. I am not above the infomercial.

[Michael Hobbs]

Miracle thaw was the best one. It was just like a cutting board on the counter. It's like meat defrost. Like. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And it's metal. So meat does not defrost. It just makes the Metal cold. Now everything's cold. Congratulations. So at this point when infomercials sort of roll around, Richard Simmons had a two minute TV ad for his product Deal a Meal, which is sort of like a hybrid board game diet. It's like a very bad board game and a. Okay. Diet.

[Michael Hobbs]

We don't have time, Aubrey. That's.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We don't have time. We're not doing it. We can't run through every part of the Richard Simmons empire because we would be here for. I would come out of my office with a Rip Van Winkle beard.

[Michael Hobbs]

The diet board game Deal A Meal.

[Aubrey Gordon]

For many of our listeners in our age group will have been their first diet. Because it's sort of a gamified kid friendly.

[Michael Hobbs]

Is it like you spin a wheel and you can like eat an apple or a blueberry or something?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, you have like a little play wallet. And you have cards in the wallet that are like. You get seven vegetable cards and two lean protein cards.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God. It's a roguelike.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And you move them over to the other side of your wallet when you eat them.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's balatro.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I don't know any of the words you're saying.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just don't worry about it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not a single one of them.

[Michael Hobbs]

Welcome to my world, Aubrey. Anytime you mention Survivor to me, I.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Don'T watch survivor or whatever. 90 Day Fiance.

[Michael Hobbs]

And you know that are those different.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Direct your hate mail to michael.com. so the ad, his two minute ad for Deal Emile was a big hit, and so was the product. So the production company approaches him about doing an infomercial for Deal Emile. He does, and it becomes a big hit. And Richard just sort of keeps doing infomercials.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The very next year, 1986, Richard Simmons starts making exercise videos.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In 1982, Jane Fonda's complete Workout came out and was a massive hit.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

One of the things that people say about that time is that the video was so popular it increased VCR sales.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I couldn't find confirmation of that anywhere. But like, that's like. I think it's a gesture at how popular those videos were. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

My understanding is that the rise of the vcr was like 99% pornography.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, that makes more sense.

[Michael Hobbs]

But 0.5% was probably at home. There's only two things that you need privacy to watch.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Most of those tapes were cranked out. Few of them used any recognizable songs. Richard describes them as elevator music.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, interesting. Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And I went back and did watch some other. I watched Richard Simmons workout tapes, and I Watched some others from the time and you're like, yeah, it's a little bit like the Angela Lansbury positive moves one right. Where you're like, oh, it's just like.

[Michael Hobbs]

Sort of synthy vibes or in today's parlance, creative comics. Lemons. It's Poddington Bear, early Pottington bear.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The production company once again approaches him and this time is like, what if you made an exercise tape? And he was like, cool, cool. But I want it to be like my classes where we play my records. And he wants it to be his favorite songs that he listened to as a kid in the 50s and 60s. So he plays It's My Party and he's a Rebel and beyond the Sea and these older timey songs for the.

[Michael Hobbs]

80S and for his middle aged audience, which is actually like very smart. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He casts the videos like his classes. They are mostly women, but not exclusively women. They include fat people and they include super fat people and they include visibly disabled people. It's radical inclusivity for that era. Radical right. But it's also inclusive in the name of making those fat people thin.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it's all on a relative scale. It's totally advancing from what it was before, but it still has a long way to go.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I'm gonna go cameras on again. Up until this point, Richard's personal uniform is like a ballet dancer.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Tights and a leotard. And he looks gorgeous. Oh, wow. The hips, right? Yeah, he looks stunning.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, he looks great. Yeah. I also recently discovered leggings.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, you gonna start getting into leggings?

[Michael Hobbs]

I found them at the children's section of Goodwill. Like everything else I wear, I'm a very small man.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's like, people always told me I had great legs. And they're right, I do. And I'm like, yes, you do, Richard. You do have great legs. Good job.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, man.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In the lead up to Sweating to the Oldies, he meets a wardrobe person named Leslie Wilshire, who he calls, quote, my own Edith Head. Which I'm like, boy, Richard, the references are not getting timelier. My guy, she is the one who brings him a pair of dolphin shorts for the first time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, explain dolphin shorts to me. People have been tweeting this at us too. Why are they dolphin shorts?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It was the brand name D O L F I N. But then people over time thought it was like just the animal.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, I've never heard of this, but those are like the little tiny short shorts that he's wearing in every video.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You'Ve seen them yeah, they're the little, tiny short shorts. They're like the dude version of hot pants.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is my only, like, traditional, like, we used to be a proper country take. It's like, bring back short shorts on men.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Shocking take from a G. Want to.

[Michael Hobbs]

See more of the gentleman?

[Aubrey Gordon]

She brings him the dolphin shorts, which he describes as being, like, very in at the time. Like, this was, like, the look.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And she gives him a flowy, flashy, like, tank top. And he writes in his memoir about trying it on for the first time. I just sent you a quote.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, in that tank top and those shorts, I finally knew what Superman must have felt like when he put on the cape for the first time. My legs looked great, and the tank top covered my waist. It camouflaged the area where my underwear made little love handle dents around my waist. It also gave me an incentive to work a little harder on my chest and arms. It was the perfect outfit.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I just love him having this moment of, like, I look awesome. I feel awesome. It makes me sad that built into that is, like, my waist is covered and I need an incentive to work on my arms and that kind of thing.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But I'm like, this is a moment of Richard feeling straightforwardly, like, great about how he looks and how he feels in his body and all of that sort of stuff. And I'm like, I love this for you.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is also you striving to find any moments of joy in this book that is so joyless. You're like, we found one.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So this becomes his signature look. Of course, Sweat into the Oldies also became a huge hit in the exercise tape world. It made him even more of a household name, and it opened the floodgates for sort of Richard Simmons, Inc. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He starts making branded clothing. He starts making Richard Simmons workout shoes. He starts making fat free popcorn, which I would argue. Oh, popcorn has fat free popcorn. What?

[Michael Hobbs]

It's just popcorn with, like, a bunch of NutraSweet sprinkled on it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Just dry, plain air, popped popcorn.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, one thing we have not talked about yet is the economics of all this home videos for, like, $20 in, like, 1985 money, which is like 45 or 50 bucks now. Like, it must have been so profitable to have, like, a home videotape empire.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also starts making huge appearances in malls and big box stores.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In order to promote this merch, like, he releases a steamer at one point, okay. And he goes and does, like, a big, like, exercise class in the middle of a mall with the steamer. So they can sell the steamer. Richard Simmons keeps sort of Energizer Bunnying his way through his work life right until 1999, when his beloved mother, Shirley Simmons, passes away. And Richard describes this very openly in the memoir as a real turning point for him. It is sort of an earthquake in his personal life. This is from one of the final passages in Richard Simmons memoir.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, after Shirley passed away, I was asked to do several national television shows. Even though I was so proud of myself for being so strong, I had lost my enthusiasm. Remember the saying, the show must go on? Well, I just didn't feel that way. I just didn't feel like being funny. Jay Leno's parents had both died recently, and he had done a moving tribute to them on his show. I remember that I had been a guest during the time he'd returned from his father's funeral. I was there for him, and now I guess he was going to be there for me. I still had my doubts, but I knew I couldn't hide forever. Eventually, I said, yes, of course I'll go on. I feel like I know what's gonna happen. People aren't gonna let him be serious about his mom because he's Richard and he's a clown, and nobody wants to hear him be serious.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's not the story that he tells.

[Michael Hobbs]

God, I want to cancel Jay Leno again. God damn it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, you can do that for other reasons.

[Michael Hobbs]

For the cars, due to the cars.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Due to the denim. After this little passage, he writes about having a pep talk from his late mom that he heard her voice telling him to just be himself and to not say anything to aggravate his brother, which I absolutely believe his mom said to him a lot.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mr. Business, Mr. Heterosexual.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So that is where the memoir ends, is like, I don't feel like being funny anymore, but I guess I kind of have to.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I gotta go on Jay Leno and get made fun of. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is hard to read. And I think, to me, it has the tone of an editor being like, you can't end on such a sad note.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's funny because his alleged happy ending is also kind of a sad ending. Yeah, it's like, continue being the clown for everyone.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. I mean, I think that is sort of the chapter that we're leading into is like, culture does not let him have some space from there. Richard continues to make some media appearances, but he is sort of slowing down from the 80s and 90s. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

How old is he at this point? He's born in 46. You said right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's born in 48.

[Michael Hobbs]

48, okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So in 2000 he would have been 52. 52.

[Michael Hobbs]

As I've gotten older, I used to have like two hours a day of extroversion in me, and now I'm down to like one interaction with a Trader Joe's cashier. He probably started at a higher baseline than me, but I can see how some of the energy that he's using on this is probably dwindling by 52. It's funny because, like, at the time when people kind of noticed that he had disappeared from Public Light, it was sort of in some ways constructed as a mystery, but it seems like this book kind of answers this question. Yeah, he was a guy with a lot of hurt that he was carrying around and nobody really took any of that seriously or like listened to him. And he had this kind of one dimensional public Persona. So like, yeah, of course, he was just like, eh, I don't really want to do this anymore. That makes perfect sense to me, doesn't it?

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I felt like I had sort of even just after reading the memoir, I was like, oh, well, I feel like I have a real good sense of why he disappeared from public life. He was experiencing grief.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he just like, was like, I don't have this level of like, you know, be the life of the party in me.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What an extremely human response.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he didn't step away from public life entirely at this point. He just started to slow down like people like our fellow people in middle age tend to do.

[Michael Hobbs]

Cut to Mike and Aubrey going, we're not gonna produce as many episodes. Yeah, it's like a Norma.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So we start getting these reports of Richard getting really short with people and. Which is something that doesn't really exist in previous media about him.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So In March of 2004, the Smoking Gun reported that Richard Simmons was charged with assault in the Phoenix Airport.

[Michael Hobbs]

I do not remember this at all.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So here is the report from the Smoking Gun.

[Michael Hobbs]

It says the 54 year old fitness guru laid the smackdown on one Chris Farney, a 23 year old Mesa man who happens to cage wrestle in his spare time. According to the Phoenix Police Department report, when Farney spotted Simmons walking through the Sky Harbor International Airport, he said, look, Richard Simmons, drop your bags. Let's rock to the 50s. Farney told cops he was referring to an old Simmons workout tape the diminutive star got. The diminutive star responded by walking over to the strapping Farney and saying, it's not nice to make fun of people with issues. He then slapped Farney's face. The motorcycle salesman who was not injured called cops, who cited an emotional and repentant Simmons for assault. I mean, don't slap people. But also, I can see how you would sort of snap.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes. And also, Richard Simmons tells a very different version of this story.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In 2012, Richard gives an interview with Men's Health, and he talks about. About this instance, Richard Simmons says that Chris Farney was talking shit about fat people and making fun of the fat people in his videos. That I believe.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, have you seen the video of Bajork attacking that paparazzi?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Why are you saying it like this when I'm saying, no, it's not.

[Michael Hobbs]

I've heard a lot of Icelandic people get it wrong, but it's actually Bajoric. Oh, okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Have you seen the video, though, of Bjork slapping someone?

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, it's wild. It's like normal paparazzi video of, like, a celebrity leaving an airport. You know, you've seen this clip a million times. And then this lady goes, welcome to London. Or, like, welcome to New York or whatever city it is. And Bjork just goes fucking nuts on her. Like, feral. Like, jumps at her, grabs her microphone and is just, like, beating her fucking ass with this microphone. And it's like, out of context. You're like, what the fuck? Like, this. Like, this pop star is completely unhinged. But according to Bjork, later, this is this paparazzi lady who had been hounding her for, like, weeks. Weeks. And showing up in her, like, private vacations and fucking with her. And, like, it felt super passive aggressive. Just, like, welcome. And that's when she, like, really snapped.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

So if you have the full context, it's like. I mean, again, it's not defensible to sort of blow up and, like, physically attack somebody, obviously, but it actually kind of makes sense in context. Or at least it's, like, more legible as human behavior in context. And I can see something like that happening with Richard Simmons. You imagine that this must have been some sort of prolonged interaction.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So when Men's Health asks Richard Simmons in 2012 about this instance, this is his response.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, you can't just do that in front of me. You can say anything you want to me, but you better not say anything that's going to upset me about obese people. I've gotten emails where they go, my wife's a fat pig. She'll buy your videos. But then she eats Doritos. I'll email that man back and say, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are there to support your wife, not call her animal names. How dare you? This is the woman that loves you. She's the mother of your children. You need to embrace her, tell her that you love her, and never call her names or embarrass her in front of other people. Yeah, slap that motherfucker, Richard.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right? I was like. I read that quote and I was like, I have been fully turned around on the slap. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Some people do deserve violence.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the kind of energy that you never actually see from thin people or from formerly fat people who are now thin people. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, sorry. You were gonna yell about fat people in the middle of the airport. I mean, absolutely. Gonna fucking do the human being equivalent of, like, getting out the squirt bottle and being like, hey. Like, no, I would respect him more.

[Michael Hobbs]

If he had a literal squirt bottle. That would be amazing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the thing that I was thinking about recently is if I got into a fight, I'm not confident that I would know how to throw a punch.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, really? You've never been in a fight, Aubry.

[Aubrey Gordon]

A physical fight.

[Michael Hobbs]

You've never been in a physical fight?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Sorry, what about me?

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, cause you went to a fancy school. Somebody didn't go to public school.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, that is not what's happen here. I'm just docile.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm just chill.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think I was in my 30s before I would consider being like, hey, you got my order wrong at a restaurant, dude.

[Michael Hobbs]

The last day of eighth grade, I was getting bullied by this other. This is like a chronicle of me being bullied in middle school. Now, this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This podcast, Were you too sleepy to be bullied?

[Michael Hobbs]

No, this was after. This was not after the seventh grade roller skating. This was after the eighth grade crews and this kid, whose name I really want to say, but I'm not going to say it, who had bullied me all fucking year, was fucking with me, and he shoved me down and I tripped and fell, and he was like, oh, bitch. Or whatever. And he started walking away from me, and I got up and I, like. I tapped him on the shoulder and I was like, oh, hey. And he turned around and I just did the cheapest fucking shot. I just punched him in the face as hard as I could. And it felt so good. I just like, boom. And he had fucked with me all year, and then he, like, fell down. It was like. It was like Mike Tyson's punch out was like. And they go, like, different Directions. And it takes him, like, Ella long to fall down. And, like, as he was falling down, I, like, realized what I had done. I was like, I just punched, like, a popular kid in the face. And I'm like, not a popular kid. So, like, as he was, like, still slow motion falling, I turned around and ran. Cause I was like, if he gets up, he's gonna beat the shit out of me. Obviously, the only way I could have done this is with a cheap shot. So I, like, I booked my ass off to the school bus because. So I'm like, if I can get to the school bus, it's the last day of school. I'm just never gonna see this person again. And, like, if I can get to the school bus, I'm, like, in safety. I booked as fast as I could to the school bus. I, like, jump on. I'm like, get on the school bus. And this kid goes, I heard you just punched somebody in the face. I was like, how did the rumor get here?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Travels fast.

[Michael Hobbs]

Before I got here.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What the fuck?

[Michael Hobbs]

And everyone was like, is it true? Am? How the fuck do you people know about this? But yes, it was, and I feel great about it. And I never saw that guy again.

[Aubrey Gordon]

God, my heart was just pounding for Tiny Mike.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, dude. I know.

[Aubrey Gordon]

For teeny Tiny, I was like, the stakes could not be higher. And then I was like, I know how it turns out. You're here, you're fine.

[Michael Hobbs]

I did live, but I'm still Tiny Mike.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So in that same Men's Health interview, Richard Simmons talks about some more things that I personally found really troubling. He talks about keeping himself strictly to a 1500 calorie a day diet, which is, again, like, Minnesota starvation study levels. It's a little bit lower. He was born with what he calls, quote, unquote, a crippled leg.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And has been wearing corrective shoes since early childhood.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's so weird. He doesn't say that in the book.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He just deals with it. It's painful, but he says, quote, thank goodness for ice and hot bag. So you get the impression that he is in pain. Yeah, with some regularity. Enough that he has a routine around it. Right, right. And his job is exercising in public.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also funny how, again, it's like he was telling us in public, like, I'm a more complicated public figure than you think I am. And just, like, nobody listened.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. He said. He described his role in the world as being part priest and part clown.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Oh, God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is no mystery at all that this was a Person who needed a break. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So In February of 2014, just a couple years after that Men's Health interview, Richard Simmons stops making public appearances. It's not long before rumors start to circulate about his quote, unquote, disappearance. Which is a sort of wild word choice in this case. Right, right. It's not someone who's vanished off the face of the planet. It's a guy who's at home and.

[Michael Hobbs]

Like by that point, like 60 something year old guy who just like, isn't out and about doing stuff anymore.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just like, totally. He's basically retired.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The wrench in the works here is that he also sort of stops responding to a bunch of people that he knew through Slimmins.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Friends start calling. Some of them show up at the house and Tereza turns them away and she tells them that he doesn't want any visitors. Right. Now, on a friend level, I can absolutely understand how that would be really hurtful and confusing. But also, this is not an unclear boundary.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, his life probably feels like a prison of his own making. Right. Because if he's playing this role where he's everybody's therapist, he might not want to play that role anymore. And he might feel like a lot of those relationships, even as you can say, it's kind of self inflicted. And on some level, these people, of course, do care about him. You can see somebody who's created this life for themselves that they just don't really want to participate in anymore.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's not like necessarily defending it. I'm like, my feelings would be hurt too. But also, it's like you kind of. It's understandable and human.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So In January of 2015, TMZ reports that the LAPD did a welfare check on Richard Simmons. They had gotten an anonymous tip. They reported out publicly, like, he's okay. He's, quote, responsive and alert. Like, he's fine. Then over a year later, the New York Daily News runs a story called the Haunted Twilight of Richard Simmons.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is where the sort of disappearance, quote, unquote story really seems to take off. It's just a bunch of people who, they considered him a friend who were like, he's not returning calls. Right. My favorite of his, his friends was a woman named June who owned a store called Wigs Today in Los Angeles and said that she and Richard became friends because he was a regular customer at Wigs Today. And I was like, I love this.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love that. He was like, I'm at the wig store so much. I'VE made friends together, but does she.

[Michael Hobbs]

Say, it's just, like, we used to hang out, now we don't hang out anymore? Is that, like, the extent of it?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, there's a fair amount of that, but the bulk of the story, the main source, is Morrow Oliveira. Morrow. Oliveira was on Richard Simmons payroll. First as a massage therapist and then as a personal assistant. There have been all these rumors that they were partners, right? That they were romantically involved, but Richard Simmons doesn't say that ever out loud to anybody.

[Michael Hobbs]

Does the guy. Does Morrow identify himself as a boyfriend or partner?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He never really says either. At least not that I have seen.

[Michael Hobbs]

Interesting. Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He lived in an apartment that Richard Simmons owned. And he, according to him, he sent in a rent check every month that he says that Simmons never cashed. Oh, okay, so he would just write a check every month and Richard Simmons would, like, you know, throw it in the garbage or whatever. Recycle it. He seemed like a recycler.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, he did. He did.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So we're gonna start with one of his early. One of the early passages.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

About Morrow's story from this New York Daily News story.

[Michael Hobbs]

Let's talk it over. Oliveira says, said, I want to sit here and make sure you'll be okay. Let's go upstairs. I'll give you a massage and relax you. Simmons called up to Teresa Raveles, his live in housekeeper of nearly three decades. Moro is going upstairs with me. He said. No, no, no. Raveles shouted from the second floor, according to Oliveira. Get out. Get out. Oliveira looked at his friend, who told him in a soft voice, you've gotta go. Oliveira leaned in towards Simmons. Is she controlling your life now, as Oliveira tells it? Simmons looked down and with one resigned word, confirmed his worst suspicions. Yes, this was the last time he saw his friend.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is sort of the key part of his story, he believes. And the story that he tells to the New York Daily News is that Tereza is keeping Richard Simmons captive in his home.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He doesn't offer a motive for that. He just says she is a witch who practices witchcraft.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, he literally says this?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes. He's careful to note in the interview that that isn't part of many Americans belief system, but that it's a very real thing. Where he comes from, which is Brazil, and where Teresa comes from, which is Mexico. He tells the New York Daily News that he thinks that black magic is what caused Richard to be, in his words, tormented.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, so a very unreliable narrator.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Would you like another layer of unreliable?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, give it to me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He Wrote and self published a book about the whole situation called King Rich and the Evil Witch.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, he learned from Richard. You could tell. Maybe they were boyfriends.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Maybe something rubbed off a shared love for terrible titles. He calls the book a living fairy tale. He self publishes it. Character in the book include the good, goofy King Rich, the evil witch Bereza, which is Teresa Bereza. There is King Rich's brother, Prince Benny, Lenny.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's the fictional story of Bitchard Bimins, no relation to any real.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And then there's a character just called the Artist, and that is very clearly.

[Michael Hobbs]

Moro, this beautiful, intelligent young man who gets caught in the witchcraft. Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And the thing that I find maybe most galling about this piece is that it ignores its own context. In this piece they talk to Richard Simmons, manager, who's like, he's fine. He's been on the road for 40 years. He's just at home.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He'd had trouble with his knees. It makes sense to me that you would need what he got, which was a full knee replacement on one side and he needed another. And it reports in this piece that his last living dalmatian, Hattie, had a terrible long health decline before ultimately being put down. Morrow says in the piece that he visited at 2pm on a Sunday and Richard was asleep. And Morrow was like, this is out of control. You gotta get out of the house and you gotta get up and at him. And I was like, his fucking dog just died.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's in his 60s. You let the man nap.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Let the man have a depression nap when he has lost so many beloved people and creatures in his life. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think especially in periods of grief, like, it does call you to like, zoom out on your life and be like, is this what I fucking wanted?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's very conceivable that in that state you would go, I think I'm actually fucking done working.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In response to all of this dust kicking up, Richard gives an interview to the Today show saying he's totally fine, he's doing what he wants to do, nobody needs to worry. The fact that it is an audio only interview just adds fuel to the fire for people. It's true Crime Brain happening in direct response to Richard Simmons being like, I'm fine, please stop. They're like, this means he's definitely not fine.

[Michael Hobbs]

This whole time I'm thinking like, okay, you're a fan of Richard Simmons. It turns out he's like, been whatever, semi kidnapped by his maid or whatever. Or like, yeah, he's in some like, Severe depressive funk. Now what. What do you do? You don't know this person.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It really just seems like people were treating him like an ATM for validation.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And not like a person. And when he was like, hey, I'm a person and I need a break, people were like, where the fuck is my money? This ATM is busted. Where did it go?

[Michael Hobbs]

Weird.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They're absolutely treating him like a utility. Got shut off.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, you're allowed to just not be a public figure anymore.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think you and I are probably both two people who will just one day be like, oh, I'm done.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. I will also be kidnapped by my housekeeper.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay.

[Michael Hobbs]

And there will be a strange Brazilian man who tells a story about me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's Brian Bicep.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm going to be very. How dare you do a call back to that. My telephone habits.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Two of us to a bonus episode.

[Michael Hobbs]

Too ridiculous.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Bold as brass. So in November 2016, Richard Simmons closes Slimmons.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

There's not really a formal statement from Richard. They just, like, post up signs on the door being like, hey, this is gonna be our last day.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm sure this just digs up the controversy again.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right? So on the last day, people are like, maybe he'll show up for the last class. He doesn't. He hasn't shown up to anything in over two years at this point.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He finally later addresses it in a Facebook post. Here is that post.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, I've never been very good with beginnings and endings. Well, it's been over 40 years now, and I'm finally taking my own advice. I'm being kind to myself and putting myself first. I'm making changes and taking time to do the things I want to do. Please know that I'm in good health and I'm happy. Happy. No one has ever been able to tell me what to do. And the same is true today. I'm still independent, determined, and opinionated. I simply am making a new beginning for myself, quietly and in my very own special way.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Slimmons closes in November of 2016. It's four months after even that last chapter that Missing Richard Simmons premieres.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So at this point, there's been the wellness check. There's been the Today show interview. There's been this Facebook post about Slimmons. He's been really clear. I am taking time off. His manager is saying that. And that's when this podcast comes out. It's hosted by a journalist who had become a regular at Slimmons and who had been over to dinner at Richard Simmons house. This is kind of the apex of the Richard Simmons is missing narrative. Right. This is the biggest stage that it gets. The next month, on the heels of the podcast release, the LAPD got more tips to conduct another welfare check, man. They go so far as to issue a public statement saying that Richard Simmons is, quote, unquote, perfectly fine. And, quote, right now he is doing what he wants to do, and that is his business, man. In the following month, the month after that, Richard Simmons was hospitalized for severe indigestion. While he's in the hospital, he posts a photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, I'm not missing, just a little under the weather. Yeah, but the picture is from a few years earlier, because as we know, Richard Simmons in the hospital is probably not posting a picture of what Richard Simmons looks like while he's in the hospital.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, no. So then I'm sure the Internet sleuths are like, oh, the picture's old. Whatever. Remember the Kate Middleton psychotic?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes. People are like, it's an old picture. He's faking it. This is Teresa doing it. I also think there are plenty of public figures who would not elect to post a picture of what you actually look like when you're checked into a hospital.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Especially if you're making a post that's trying to reassure people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, ultimately, Richard Simmons is a boomer. And he's like, he's just posting on Facebook. He's like, oh, I'm posting a little thing and I'll just put a photo on there. Why not?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just like, attach a photo. And the whole Internet is just like, what about the metadata of the photo? Like, people just zoom in when, like, he might just not have been thinking about it all that hard.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right. Richard Simmons was born the same year as both of my parents. And I'm like, oh, was he also going to attach a photograph of his TV screen?

[Michael Hobbs]

The post is in all caps. For some reason, he doesn't know why. He doesn't know how to turn that off.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also FaceTimed someone, but it was just showing his ear because he lifted the phone up. That same year, the National Enquirer starts publishing a series of articles alleging that Richard Simmons was trans and started accessing gender affirming care.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

One of the headlines was, richard Simmons, colon, he's now a woman.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God. Where the fuck is this coming from?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's the National Enquirer, right? So there Someone's kicking up some dust. That is all made possible by the he's missing narrative, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If we don't have the he's missing narrative. Richard Simmons name is not in the news. And this doesn't become a story that the National Enquirer probably cares to publish, much less cares to publish at the level that they did.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's funny contrasting him with Johnny Carson, who also, like, retired from public life very publicly. Right. Like there was this like series of shows, the end of the Tonight show and then he just never did anything again. He just like played golf and hung out on his yacht, but like, no one cared. There wasn't like a narrative of like, he's missing or whatever. He, he also, it appears, stopped hanging out with all of his, like, celebrity friends.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

He disappeared from public life and most people were like, oh, this is kind of cool. Yeah, it's weird that the culture did not allow Richard Simmons to do that when we allow people to do this all the time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely. So on July 13, 2024, Richard Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76 years old. According to the LA Medical examiner, his cause of death was a fall the day before, with heart disease reported as a contributing factor. According to People magazine's interview with Teresa Ravelis, this is her first time speaking to the media. It's after his death, she says that he spent his final days doing what he wanted. He was working with a well known composer on a Broadway musical about his life.

[Michael Hobbs]

Aw.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He was in touch with his fans and was writing people letters and he was planning some media appearances for the first time in a while. She was like, he was kind of starting to feel up to like doing an interview or something. So there's a funeral mass for Richard in New Orleans. New Orleans has embraced Richard Simmons with its whole heart. People from New Orleans love Richard Simmons so much. We heard from some listeners who were at that funeral mass and one of them said that they were really shocked and sad to see that the church was not full.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's shocking.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It really underscores this sort of theory that I've been developing of like, again, like validation atm.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You know, we talked in the last episode about like, these are all ways that formerly fat people are encouraged to feel. The way that people were interacting with him is as a currently fat person.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Which is like he doesn't have a story of his own. He's the fat best friend, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's the gay best friend. And he's the bit characters who are there for comic Relief and the comic relief just is their difference.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right. Just say Rosie O'Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle. This is taking forever. Also, when all the information was so available, too. It's like the man wrote a fucking memoir. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

None of this was hidden at any point from anyone. He was saying this in interviews for years. He was saying it in his book. When people asked how he was. He would be pretty on. People put me, you know, take me out of the box when they need entertainment, and then put me back in the box when they don't. Yeah, I think he was right.

[Michael Hobbs]

In the same way, there's, like, the happy meatball Richard, and the. Selling his jewelry to people Richard. And, like, we want the best for all these Richards. There's also, I think, the last 10 years of his life. Richard. Yeah, we don't know that much about that period of his life. He never got the chance to write about it. He never got the chance to tell us about it. But, like, I choose to believe that he got some of what he wanted. And he decided at the end, you know, like he said in his Facebook post, like, he's an independent guy. He made a decision that this is what he wanted to do with the last 10 years of his life. And, like, all evidence is that he did.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of Internet talk about, like, so and so doesn't owe you anything. Right. And I'm like, this is a moment where we have to go, richard Simmons didn't owe us anything.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That doesn't mean that people didn't have genuine feelings about him and don't still. That doesn't mean that people aren't allowed to feel close to him. It just means that we should do a little check on how much of that was us projecting.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think it's also worth thinking about people in your life who have that kind of energy, that really kind of social energy. It's always important to sort of check in with those people to make sure there isn't something behind it or.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely.

[Michael Hobbs]

They're training you not to see them in a certain way. I always. This is a really dark little transition, but my friend who killed himself when I was in my twenties was very much like that, like, social butterfly. Everybody's friend, always making jokes. The last person you think would be struggling with stuff, and then out of the blue, he killed himself. It's like, people. It doesn't mean every single person who's bubbly is hiding some dark secret underneath it. But just because somebody is bubbly and, like, oh, my God, you seem so happy. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be checking in with that person.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. I mean, I think it is sort of incumbent on all of us, right, to do a little relational inventory on that front. Is there someone who you're treating as just sort of entertainment for you, or as a vessel for your complaints or your grievances, or as just a source of guidance for you? Right. Are you treating someone as a wellspring of a resource, or are you treating them as a person?

[Michael Hobbs]

And the thing is, if you recognize us from the podcast and you come up to us and I get the slightest whiff that that's the way you think of us, I will slap you in the face. I will spin you around like Tekken 8.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I might start carrying around a tiny squirt bottle.

[Michael Hobbs]

You've had some bad energy actions, too. I feel like.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, just a can full of rocks. I can shave, get.