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Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Naturopathic Doctor Who Bombed a Plane

28 Apr 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 26.938 Robert Evans

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And we've got a fun one for you this week, folks. I know it's been a rough year. There's been a lot of pedophiles. I'm not just talking about the U.S. government. I'm talking about on the podcast. We've been covering a lot of pedophiles, in part because there's a lot of pedophiles in the U.S.

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26.978 - 51.246 Robert Evans

government, to be fair. But But this week, thank God, we're handling just an honest, simple grifter. You know, one of the good, decent con men who makes this podcast and this nation possible. And to talk with me about just a corn-fed, good old-fashioned down-home... Con artist. Brandy Posey.

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51.346 - 58.923 Robert Evans

Brandy, you're a comedian, and you run your own comedy record label, and you've got an album, Milk Job, that's out right now?

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59.484 - 59.805 Brandy Posey

Right now?

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59.825 - 60.246 Robert Evans

Absolutely.

60.486 - 63.493 Brandy Posey

Right now. Right now, baby. Hell yeah.

63.513 - 67.281 Robert Evans

Welcome to the show, Brandy. How you doing? How you been since last we talked?

67.48 - 78.858 Brandy Posey

Um, I've been good also keeping up on the pedophile news and probably, you know, with the pedophiles. Yeah. Grinding my teeth as much as you, I imagine. Yeah.

78.878 - 98.429 Robert Evans

Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's frustrating to be aware of the world these days. I don't recommend it instead. Why don't you, why don't we all just sink into a story of days gone by, uh, and talk about a con man from like a family of con men, uh, This will be a nice one, everybody. I hope you all enjoy it.

Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Robert Spears and what is his significance?

1057.285 - 1077.185 Robert Evans

Wow. Your baby's got whooping cough. Let me wring their neck. That'll fix them. Absolutely. The James Bond of doctors. It's crazy how many people who call themselves doctors still think like, oh, your kid's coughing too much. I got to basically break their spine. You got to let me get my hands around that fucking neck and just really throttle it like a son of a bitch.

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1078.287 - 1083.898 Robert Evans

That's still a lot of guys who say that they're doctors today. They paralyze kids all the time.

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1083.878 - 1108.333 Robert Evans

abuse the child until they say they're okay yeah um so now that said as wild as that last paragraph was from this point osteopathy develops after this into again what is today a largely real field of medicine there are still some quacks who call themselves osteopaths but over time the good osteopaths who cared about evidence-based care won out over the bad ones i think that's how

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1108.313 - 1129.719 Robert Evans

The articles I've read make it seem I'm not a doctor except for in New Jersey. Right. But Dr. Lust is studying osteopathy when it is still firmly in its quack era. He also studies chiropractic medicine and takes classes on that. And if you remember our episodes on the history of chiropractic, it was founded by a guy who learned the secrets of spinal manipulation from a ghost.

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1130.08 - 1132.483 Robert Evans

That is where chiropractic medicine comes from.

1132.783 - 1132.903

Right.

1132.883 - 1157.222 Robert Evans

Oh, wow. Yeah. Amazing stuff happening in the early late 1800s and early 1900s. So, yeah, Lust gets into chiropractic, osteopathy, and he starts exploring botanical medicines, you know, what people would call like plant based medicines. And he gets interested in the emerging field of what becomes known as physical culture. Bernard McFadden, who we've done episodes on, is a major factor in this.

1157.262 - 1173.285 Robert Evans

He and Lust are kind of contemporaries, and they're writing about health and about a lot of the shit RFK is in. It's like, how can you stay looking buff longer if you're a dude, you know? Like, how can you get big biceps? Like, what kind of chemicals will make it easier for me to keep muscle on?

1173.265 - 1180.634 Brandy Posey

I feel like you're trying to convince me that RFK Jr. might actually be a time traveler from this era. That's the only way he actually makes sense, right?

Chapter 3: What were the early influences on naturopathy as a field?

1288.775 - 1298.629 Robert Evans

And a lot of real doctors are just doping you the fuck up. That's not an unfair critique of the day. That doesn't make what they're selling work any better, but it is sometimes less harmful, right?

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1298.669 - 1316.255 Robert Evans

Sometimes if your doctor's prescribing you like fucking arsenic and your fake doctor's prescribing you fucking homeopathic arsenic, which is just water, you're better off with homeopathic arsenic, you know? 100%, yeah. So the central tenet that Dr. Lust and his colleagues land on is this.

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1316.636 - 1331.498 Robert Evans

The body can repair itself and that rather than treating sickness, physicians should seek to restore balance to the body so that it can cure its own illnesses, right? And it can avoid getting sick because if the body stays in balance, then it won't get ill.

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1332.199 - 1346.621 Robert Evans

The website Indie Health Facts has a good summary of what Lust eventually comes to believe and push to make the center of naturopathy as a discipline. Dr. Lust was opposed to the processing of foods because such manufacture tends to destroy their true nutritional values.

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1346.941 - 1364.547 Robert Evans

He was opposed to the administrations of all drugs and narcotics because they are unnatural elements which the human body is not capable of assimilating. He's opposed to the regimentation of the American people under medically controlled elements because such legislation will wipe out other methods of treatment and bring inestimable damage to the health of every man, woman, and child affected.

1364.527 - 1381.641 Robert Evans

He is opposed to any legislation which in practice would prevent a family from attending to its own ills or the choosing by such family of any type of treatment it might desire because such legislation restricts personal liberty and tends to take from the American people the right to use the beneficial homespun efficient remedies which have been handed down from generation to generation.

1382.102 - 1395.529 Robert Evans

He is – That's a lot of words. It's just RFK. It's just RFK. Right. I don't think you should be able to tell people that anything they believe is medicine isn't medicine. That's a crime. That's the only crime. Not selling nonsense is medicine.

1396.454 - 1414.932 Robert Evans

Now, the name naturopathy is actually coined by a married physician couple, the doctors John and Sophie Scheel, who are kind of colleagues and contemporaries of Dr. Lust. They come up with the name in 1902, and Lust buys it from them. He purchases the naming rights, because as soon as he hears naturopathy, he's like, I can't beat that.

1415.313 - 1417.815 Robert Evans

That's the best marketing name for this thing that we're doing.

Chapter 4: What controversies surrounded the practices of early naturopaths?

1698.635 - 1706.548 Brandy Posey

Man, honestly. Great stuff. But seriously, shout out to him for being able to sell somebody's shit back to themselves. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That is a hell of a salesman.

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1706.568 - 1710.595 Robert Evans

Your own blood. Selling your own blood. Man, you made that, bro.

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1711.276 - 1711.476 Brandy Posey

Yeah.

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1711.496 - 1735.201 Robert Evans

That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. Now, to be totally fair to Dr. Lust and his colleagues, it's like 120-something years ago. Again, real doctors aren't always a lot better than the quacks. And the naturopaths, you know, they have some points in this era. But what's happening is you're going to start not long after this period seeing the development of, like, real medical science.

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1735.281 - 1755.726 Robert Evans

Like, medicine from 1900 to, like, 1960 – Probably gets better faster than it has at like any other point in history. You'd be hard pressed. I mean, maybe the like 60 years after that. But even then, I don't think we had jumps quite as big as that leap from in 1900. A lot of people are still basically living.

1755.706 - 1761.492 Robert Evans

The same with similar medical access to what they would have had in like the 1600s, right? In a lot of parts of the world.

1761.512 - 1780.07 Robert Evans

There's not massive differences from how shit would have been in like the Enlightenment era in terms of the average person's access to good medicine to by 1950 to 60, even people out in the sticks have a much better access to real quality medicine and to doctors who actually know something meaningful about how disease spreads.

1780.29 - 1797.617 Robert Evans

And you have the ability to actually prevent a lot of these diseases for the first time. And that's going to be disastrous for this first wave of naturopaths, right? Is that, especially from like 40 to 60, it becomes really impossible to deny that like, okay, well, the people who use the naturopaths are still getting sick and dying from all of like the weird plagues going around.

1797.918 - 1802.065 Robert Evans

And the people who are getting vaccinated don't. Are living, yeah.

Chapter 5: How did Dr. Benedict Lust contribute to the naturopathic movement?

1922.452 - 1939.369 Robert Evans

And they were primarily getting into the naturopathy not because they saw themselves as – they're mostly not like lust. They don't see themselves as scientists who are part of a movement. They've got a thing to sell. And if that's the attitude you approach your discipline from, that's not conducive to good science.

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1940.07 - 1945.036 Brandy Posey

Yeah, you're coming at it – yeah, scientific method versus the vibe is what we're talking about.

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1945.056 - 1959.574 Robert Evans

And versus I'm already – if this doesn't treat this disease, I'm out a shitload of money. Like I'm ruined. Like this – I have to be able to sell this even if I realize it doesn't work after a while because I'm pot committed to this shit.

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1959.674 - 1970.135 Robert Evans

Speaking of pot committed, you know who's pot committed to this podcast? Our sponsors. Oh, very nice. Huzzah. Yeah, they can't get away from us now.

1973.742 - 1974.283 Unknown

Two percent.

1974.864 - 1989.533 Michael Easter

That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

1990.153 - 2012.073 Unknown

I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress.

2012.333 - 2019.881 Robert Evans

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

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