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There is another way.

You've found Chameleon season eight, and this is Doctor Miracle, a production of campside media. Oh, the bench. When you hear the word wellness, maybe you picture Gwyneth Paltrow dressed in soft neutrals, serenely sipping bone broth. Or Gwyneth Paltrow doing yoga without sweating or taking a dip in an ice bath. Again, serenely. But I want to take you back 15 or 20 years to the two thousands when the wellness movement looked very different. It was a time when drinking juice didn't mean cucumbers and aloe and kale, but rather tropicana, with or without the pulp. It was a time when people went for wogs, something between a walk and jog, or they just did step aerobics at the gym. It was a time of boy bands and velour track suits of big blondes falling out of nightclubs in taebo on vhs. But even if trends felt different back then, a lot of the goals were the same as they are today. Look hot. Lose weight. Feel energetic. Be healthy.

Atkins diet is more popular than ever.

Lose 20 pounds for $20.

Low energy, brain fog, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high cholesterol. Cholesterol, heartburn, fatigue. 99% of the cases, the prescription that I wrote for them, it was food. That's right, food.

Food is the foundation of wellness. What you choose to eat and when you choose to eat, it become rules. They become rituals. If we can follow certain principles, we get to feel good. If we fall short, we feel bad. And these principles, these rituals and beliefs, they help create order out of the chaos of daily life. More than just a lifestyle, a wellness trend can become like a religion. And like with any religion, people can get a little fanatical. Things can go off the rails. I'm going to talk to you about one of the big wellness trends of the early aughts. It's one you may not have heard of, the alkaline diet, back to the garden, back to the greens, back to God's butter, avocado. It's all about eating lots of leafy green vegetables and, yes, God's butter avocados. There's a lot of juicing involved, and there is even a loose Gwyneth altro connection. She's basically the spokesperson for a particular brand of alkaline water. Flow. Water are great partners. We love flow. It's an incredible water. Naturally alkaline. In some ways, the alkaline diet is just another one of these little wellness religions that pops up, then fizzles out, only to be replaced by the next trend.

But the story of this particular diet is much bigger than that. It's about how terrifying things can get when people take wellness a step too far. Because some people on this diet would end up being dumped alone at hospitals, some would die, and others would lose their hope completely. The situations that would arise from this diet are deeply disturbing. But they didn't arise just from the diet. They were spun into existence by one man who claimed he had all the wellness answers that some people on the alkaline diet were seeking, even if they were very sick with terrible diseases, including cancer. This man gave cancer patients what they thought was a cure. He seemed to be absolutely sure that everything he said about medicine and nutrition, and really life in general, was true. He played God, and he seemed so nice at first. From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside media, and Dorothy street Pictures. I'm Larrison Campbell, and this is Doctor Miracle, episode one. I'm in my forties and from Mississippi, where you're far likelier to find racks of ribs than bone broth. But I also grew up in the 1980s and nineties when following fad diets was practically an act of virtue.

My mom had that little scale from nutrisystem and stacks of Jane Fonda videos, and I've always kept an eye on health trends, even before self care became a buzzword.

I tried the zone in the 1990s, Atkins in the early two thousands. I ate ostrich jerky and fistfuls of soy nuts, which are objectively terrible. I even used to have a job writing about public health and saw firsthand the absolute mess that is the us healthcare system. I understand why many people are desperate for an alternative, but there are so many alternatives out there. Should you go paleo or keto? Or maybe try the whole 30? Should you be intermittent fasting or eating three square meals a day? Or is it six small ones?

A new study says a little bit of cheese is good for you. There are about a million diets to choose from, but some diets are more intense than others, and the alkaline diet is one of them.

Let's talk about alkalinity right now, because.

One of the greatest changes that I.

Experienced in my life was by alkalizing and energizing.

Tony Robbins was very into alkalinity. Kelly Ripa, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth. Name a celebrity, chances are they've tried it. Victoria Beckham. Known at one point as posh spice and for singing about desire, even alkalies. The alkaline diet was a cultural signifier of its time. Like red kabbalah bracelets, the diet became a brand, a religion. Even its adherents called themselves alkalarians, which does sound a little kooky. And it all kind of was, at least at first. There was one man who was leading this charge, Doctor Robert Young.

My background is in microbiology, nutrition, and biochemistry.

Doctor Young is the face of the alkaline diethenne, a friendly face. He's published many books, including his blockbuster, the ph. Balance your diet, reclaim your health.

We take better care of managing the ph of our swimming pools, and we do our own internal fluids. Managing that through an alkaline diet and lifestyle is the healthiest advice. And it's inexpensive. You see, it's easy.

Doctor Young wants to make people's bodies more alkaline and less acidic. That means avoiding the stuff we all know is bad for you. Alcohol, sugar, those little apple pies from McDonald's, because those are acidifying.

There's some confusion here. It's not that we're overweight, it's that we're over acid.

Let me take you back for a moment to middle school science class. Acidity and alkalinity are measured on the ph scale. Pure water is neutral with a ph of seven. Acids like vinegar have a ph lower than seven. And alkaline substances like dish detergent have a ph above seven. Fresh leafy greens and vegetables, tofu. Young says that stuff makes you more alkaline. But to really alkalize, you need to help your body eliminate acids. And one way to do that, according to Young, was through colonics.

You lay down on the table, and they put this tube up your butt, and they put all this water in, and then everything comes out as gross as it sounds.

Young maintained that this was a key method for eliminating acids from your body.

The four channels of elimination, urination, perspiration, respiration, or defecation.

For respiration and perspiration, there were exercise classes. Doctor Young was a former tennis player, a college tennis star, and he loved movement.

Hi, I'm Doctor Rob Young, and I'd love to introduce you to a new form of exercise that I created called younga yoga. This type of exercise incorporates cardio stretching, breathing exercises, and core exercises that will make you sweat till you're wet.

Doctor Young wasn't from California, but you can tell he fit right in.

So laid back, happy.

He was the type of guy who got really into things like decorating for Christmas. Here's another employee at Christmas time.

He had 1234-5678 trees.

I think he loves singing Christmas carols. We found this recording of him performing one.

When it seems the magic slips away, we find it again on Christmas Day.

People really loved Robert Young, his passion. It was infectious. He was easy to trust, to believe in. Now if you only wanted to lose a little weight or have more energy, maybe like those celebrities who did the diet, for a time, you were sort of on the outer rung of the al Kalarian lifestyle, and you probably didn't even know Doctor Young. But if you wanted to address something more serious, like immune diseases, diabetes, hiv, cancer, you might go see Doctor Young at his wellness center, which was called the PH Miracle center, though everyone called it Miracle Ranch. I was actually at the ranch not that long ago. It's up in the hills of north San Diego county. Everywhere you look, there is abundance and beauty.

Groves of citrus trees drop ripe fruit.

Right onto the street. The lush green hills are dotted with these vibrant wildflowers. A winding road curves uphill, and if you follow it, you'll come upon an iron gate and then a house, white and California modern, with a coy pond and big stepping stones leading to the front door. Follow the path behind the house and suddenly you're looking out over a vast 48 acre property, a bounty of cactus and trees heavy with fruit, pomegranates, grapefruit, guava. So many avocados. Framing the image are distant snow capped mountains. It's awe inspiring, like you're both small and part of something majestic.

Everything for me was just so powerful.

That's Dawn Calley. Dawn is one of Doctor Young's followers, and you'll be hearing a lot from her.

Everything meant so much. The grounds were beautiful, with bougainvillea everywhere. The avocado farm and grapefruit ranch and all these little dwellings. The tennis courts is just gorgeous. I'm here at the ph miracle center, where so many people would just die to be in my position.

Mary, a cook at the ranch, thought it was beautiful, too.

You walk down like a big, long path, and you go into this entryway, and there's a big glass wall that looks out on the pool and looks at Palomar Mountain, you'd have people up to the kitchen. They'd set up a table, and people would sit around and he would talk.

The people at Miracle Ranch really loved listening to doctor Young spin his theories.

Donegan when he walked in the room, there was definitely that celebrity feeling. Ah. And he was extremely trim and very fit. And I remember Zach Lee was wearing, was wearing a blue v neck, like, cashmere sweater. And he just kind of came in nonchalantly and, like, you almost could have missed it, you know? And he just came in and just introduced himself and started talking. And I felt this really sentimental attachment because my father had recently passed away, and I had been kind of following all his teachings. I just felt almost like a father feeling towards him and Jesus Christ, because I very, I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual, and Jesus is a friend of mine. And so I saw him as both those two things. So that's pretty powerful, you know? And I cried. I cried when he, when he came in.

Meeting doctor Young and being on his ranch stirred up a lot of feelings in dawn. What she didn't know, and no one else around the ranch knew at this time, was that Doctor Young had been arrested years earlier. He'd told two women he could cure their diseases with herbal products, made all sorts of claims about how he was a doctor who could heal them. He was charged with two third degree felonies, but the case was ultimately settled as a misdemeanor. And yet now Doctor Young was, to dawn and so many others, a famous savior, a best selling author and healer, a pop culture diet, Jesus. But could he be trusted?

Hey, Chameleon listeners, this is Josh Dean, your host of the OG season Chameleon Hollywood conqueen. And I'm here to tell you about a podcast I think you should check out. It's called the Confessions of Anthony Raimondi, hosted by the great Mark Smerling. Mark's an Emmy award winning filmmaker who you might recognize as one of the creators of the jinx, an all time favorite doc series of mine, as well as the podcast crime town and Crooked City. This time, Mark is investigating the story of Anthony Raimondi, a former mafia enforcer who claims that Pope John Paul I, who died just 33 days after being elected in 1978, didn't die of natural causes, even though the Vatican said he did. Anthony says the pope was assassinated by the mob and that he witnessed it. This is one of those claims. It's almost too incredible to believe. Until you hear the podcast, I'd encourage you to check it out as soon as you can to listen to the confessions of Anthony Raimondi. Search for the confessions of Anthony Raimondi in your podcast app. That's the confessions of Anthony Raimondi.

So, as I said, you're going to be hearing a lot from Don Calley. The reason is that Don is one of Doctor Robert Young's adherents who had a very particular relationship with him, one that became quasi familial and very much about life, death. It started many years ago, and things got quite dark because doctor Robert Young didn't only believe that his diet could.

Help people lose weight.

He believed it could help people with the most serious diseases out there, including cancer.

Don Kali has short gray hair and a beatific smile. She's only just turned 50. Her parents gave her the middle name Kali, after the hindu goddess of time and death, and she took it as her last name when she got divorced. She surrounds herself with beautiful things, colorful jewelry, vibrant houseplants, big crystals. The crystals actually are sort of a relic of her unusual upbringing.

My dad was a dreamer. He was an artist, a guitar player. You know, I was going to kind of a rough junior high, and I was having some troubles with some of the girls there. I was getting bullied, and he sent me to school with a crystal.

Did it work?

Hold this. Hold. If I used it as a weapon, maybe. So that was like my father's way of dealing with my emotional problems.

It wasn't just crystals. They were also into alternative medicine. When she was sick, it was primarily tinctures and home remedies. She was born on a commune in Humboldt, California. Her parents were hippies, and their drug use got harder and harder. So to get away from this scene, they moved to San Francisco, where she felt like an outcast, until she started a friendship with a kid next door whose family was also vegetarian. And then dons father left dawns mother for that kids mom. But even that didnt really break up the family.

We all became kind of one big happy family. So with the exes and everybody, we did birthdays and even eventually vacations.

Then as a teenager, something weird happened. That kids aunt, who was now her aunt, was a spiritual teacher. She was intuitive and even told dawn that she was the chosen one going to have a special role in the world. No one had ever given this kind of attention to dawn or told her she was special, and the two grew very close. But her practice evolved to include ecstasy and sessions where 30 people would sit in a circle and read spiritual tomes, then go off into corners. Once the drugs kicked in. One night, dawn met a handsome man there. He was 22 and she was just 16. But they fell in love and she got pregnant for the first time at 17, then again at 18. Her family was by now so anti hospital that she had home births. Her father had even told dawn that she was a nervous person because her mom had delivered her in a hospital.

We went to, like, homeopathic doctors. My family didn't like antibiotics, didn't like anything like medicinal, unless it really was necessary.

But of course, sometimes medical things really are necessary. Let me take you back to 2007. By now, Dawn's in her thirties. It's afternoon, and she's sitting on the couch talking on the phone to a friend when something strange happens.

I had breast implants at the time, so I was always feeling my breast implants. And so I was touching the side of my breast implant and I felt this lump and it was hard. And I was like, oh, what's that?

Dawn didn't have health insurance. She didn't go straight to a primary care doctor or an oncologist. She went to the plastic surgeon who.

Did her breast implants and she said, I don't like it. You were never here. Go get yourself some insurance. And I was like, oh, okay. And a week later I was in surgery.

The doctors were concerned enough that they wanted to remove the lump immediately.

I remember coming out of the anesthesia and seeing the doctor leaning over me and I said, was it cancer? And she said, yes. And we always. We knew it was.

Now the tumor her doctor had found was tiny, only about the size of a pea. She had stage one breast cancer. Dawn's chances of surviving, of even being cured completely were extremely good, the doctor said, but she had to get it treated.

She just laid it on thick about how serious this was, how dangerous this particular type was, how aggressive it was. With some cancers, you could get away with just radiation and maybe a lumpectomy. But she said, with yours, you need everything. You need the chemo, you need the radiation.

Dawn was out on the street in her car, and all this information is swirling around in her head. She's only in her thirties. The single mother of three kids, her own mother was on the fence about what dawn should do. She was terrified of dawn getting chemotherapy and radiation and at the exact same time was terrified of her not getting those things. And dawn is also torn. She wants to get better. But the prospect of more surgery and being injected with toxic chemicals that would make her sick, really sick, it goes against everything she was raised to believe.

I was driving down California street, and I just remember, like, the buildings were so tall and everything. I felt so surreal.

I called my aunt, Dawn's aunt. Remember, the spiritual leader?

I just started freaking out. And she, in her very stern voice, that she was mama, stop.

And now her aunt was confessing something to dawn, something she'd never told dawn before. She'd been diagnosed with cancer, too.

She didn't tell anybody, and she just went on this natural journey.

Her aunt encouraged dawn to do the same thing, that she had to go on her own natural healing journey. There are herbal remedies, detoxification therapies, all these alternative diagnostic tools, but they're no match for cancer. Like, for example, there's microscopy, or blood analysis. When you get your blood drawn at a doctor's office, they can tell you if you're pre diabetic or at a higher risk for a heart attack. Microscopists say they can tell you even more, but they can't. Microscopy is like reading tea leaves. It's a parlor trick. It's not science. Still, Dawn's aunt takes her to see a microscopist. He looks a lot like the people don grew up with. He has a sort of hippie vibe, but at the same time, his setup feels very sciency. He pricks her finger, puts the blood under a microscope, and when the images appear on the screen, he starts interpreting what he sees.

This one's yeast. This is fungus. Oh, this is mold. This looks bad. It looks like you have cancer. And here, this guy didn't even know. And he was able to say. Cause it showed up in this certain area, that it was in my breast region. And I was just like, wow.

As far as dawn can tell, this guy knew she had breast cancer just from eyeballing a drop of her blood. It seemed like proof that microscopy was the real deal. So whatever advice this guy gave, she was ready to follow it. And what he recommended was that dawn follow an alkaline diet to heal herself. Because as it happens, the microscopist who trained this guy, that was Doctor Robert Young, the guru of the miracle ranch.

Just like in a swimming pool or in an aquarium, that delicate ph balance, if the ph goes off a little bit, the fish get sick. And, of course, it's a metaphor that I use. What would you do? Would you treat the water or treat the fish or change the water?

The water in the fish tank is our environment, specifically, the food we eat, and our bodies are the fish. So if you're eating toxic or acidic foods, well, it's going to make every cell in your body acidic. And like that fish, you're gonna get sick. But take in alkaline foods. And young says the body becomes alkaline. And he says an alkaline body cannot get sick. This makes sense to dawn and a lot of other people, people who wanted to heal themselves, except it is complete garbage. It is not true. It may be great to eat green foods, it definitely is great to eat green foods, but it does not change the ph of your blood, period. Doctor Robert Young's bigger point was that you are in charge of making your body alkaline. By following his diet, you are able to make yourself healthy. This was really the central tenet of the wellness movement that was ramping up around this time in the two thousands. And it was all very tied in with one of the biggest cultural touchstones of that moment, a movie and book called the Secret.

The Secret is the law of attraction. Everything that's coming into your life, you are attracting into your life.

The secret was all about positive thinking and manifesting your desires, even in the realm of health and wellness.

Well, we come with a basic program. It's called self healing. You get a wound, it grows back together. The immune system is made to heal itself. In terms of Doctor Robert Young, the secret became very important to his popularity in sort of a roundabout way. It became important through one of his adherents, a 50 year old woman named Kim Tinkum. Here's Kim.

Shortly after the secret aired, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was shocked, but most of all, I became mad, not because I had cancer, but because most of the doctors that I've spoken to have all said surgery was absolutely necessary. Within the next month, after much thought, I have decided to heal myself, heal herself.

That's what Kim was going to do via alternative treatments. Making this choice was surprising from someone like Kim in a way that it wasn't from dawn. See, Kim's a type a entrepreneur. What Kim was seeking was a sense of control.

I'm very practical. I have a lot of common sense. I do a lot with my intuition. But I felt really stupid when I was talking to the doctors, and I didn't like that feeling, and I didn't like being rushed because I'm a researcher.

So she searched for another path to healing and wrote a letter about it to Oprah. And Oprah invited her on the show. The next thing she knew, Kim was on her way to Chicago. She was entering the green room in Oprah's soundstage, and then she was sitting next to Oprah on a cream colored sectional, so close, their knees are almost touching.

The medical community, as we know, have been able to perform what some people call miracles. I think it's irresponsible not to take advantage of that.

Oprah is saying, when chemo, radiation and other interventions have been proven to help people survive cancer, why would you say no? But Kim stuck to her guns.

Is this about holding onto the breast? It's about holding on to my rightful choice, okay, that I respect.

And what choice did Kim Tinkum make? She chose to follow doctor Robert Young in his ph miracle program.

My joints. Within a week, my joints were. I woke up and I thought, oh, my gosh, I slept through the night.

Even though Don and Kim were complete opposites, when they got their breast cancer diagnoses, they both ended up in the same place under the care of Doctor Robert Young at Miracle Ranch, hoping, believing that he would help them heal themselves. Just like in the secret three simple.

Words, thoughts become things.

What most people don't understand is a.

Thought has a frequency.

Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal.

That is drawing the parallel back to you. Now, Robert Young didn't exactly say that your thoughts could cure you. He believed that his program could cure you. And his program appealed to both hippie, idealistic don and nose to the grindstone Kim hed combined what he said was rigorous research and science with nature with tapping into the healing powers of mother Earth. But was it all it was cracked up to be? In 2009, Dawn Calley finds another lump in her breast. But instead of calling her doctor, she calls Robert Young, and he tells her this time she needs to stay away from surgery. This is Don's chance to go all in on the alkaline diet. Now Young has designed liquid cleanses that are supposed to alkalize your body in a more intense way than just the regular alkaline diet.

You lived on the toilet on his plan. Yeah.

Like I said, doctor Young's diet was intense.

Like, if you had 20 times, you know, and you were. Your bowel movement was all liquid. He would celebrate it just because it was acids.

This regimen was tough.

I was like, oh, my God, I can't eat anything. Like, you can't eat a thing. You can't. It's like mushrooms. No. You know, no starches, no breads, no. Not even quinoa. I mean, nothing in for twelve weeks, you have to do this liquefied diet, and I always fail and eat a burrito or something.

She feels like if she can't stick to the diet, then she can't beat her cancer. As the months pass, dawn falls into a cycle. Commit to cutting out all acidic foods. Cave and eat something acidic vomit. Get back on the wagon. Repeat. And in the middle of dawns spiral as if she doesnt have enough on her mind.

I also found out in February of 2010 that I was pregnant.

Now, this was totally unexpected. It had been a few years since she split up with her husband, who.

Was the father of her first three.

Children, and that had been a dysfunctional relationship, tumultuous. Now she had a new boyfriend and things were much more stable. But they weren't even thinking about having a baby. It was all so intense. But birth, death, the cycle of life, this sort of intensity was normal for the people connected to Miracle ranch, because even as dawn was dealing with being pregnant, Kim Tinkum, doctor Robert Young's most famous patient, was still battling her cancer.

I was amazed because I said, what causes cancer?

This is Kim in a video with doctor Young.

And you said, there is no such thing as cancer.

The cancer or cancerous conditions is a result of metabolic or dietary acids that are being eliminated into the fatty tissues.

Kim's husband, Scott Tinkum, says it seemed like the alkaline diet was helping Kim.

She wasn't tired. She was in the same health. You know, she kept good care of herself, exercised every day.

She'd spend time on the ranch, and then she'd come home to Texas and their life was normal. Scott said sometimes he even forgot she'd been diagnosed at all, except for one thing.

She had a lump on her chest. It was almost, it was the size of a golf ball, and it was coming out, which was really weird, kind of like supporting what he was saying, that it can't live in her body.

When Kim's tumor stuck out more, Young supposedly said it wasn't growing bigger, it was just working its way out, trying to escape her alkaline body. This was a good sign. According to doctor Young and Kim's husband, Scott believed him that she was getting better, even though to the naked eye, the mass was growing steadily, alarmingly bigger. It would be a matter of months until Kim and her husband had to face the truth. The truth being that Doctor Young is a fraud who seems willing to play with people's lives and listen to this. As much as Doctor Young espoused green and clean living, employees say he didn't follow the diet himself.

He had a sweet tooth.

I remember on his birthday, Rosie playing him a box of eclairs. He would eat all of them. Another employee said she also saw young sneaking junk food.

I'd go up there a couple of times, and they were eating sandwiches from whole foods and chips from whole foods.

What does it mean that doctor Young didn't stick with his own diet, even as he's telling very sick people that this diet can cure them, save their lives? Maybe it means he doesn't appreciate right from wrong, doesn't care about others. He's reckless. And eventually, that recklessness would capture the attention of law enforcement in California. After a meticulous investigation, they would learn that the basis of doctor Young's business.

That he was a good doctor who.

Like all doctors, was upholding an oath to heal and not harm, was based on a lie. Doctor Young didn't have a medical degree to be advising any patients at all.

Robert Young's not a doctor. He's not who he portrayed himself to you as. He got all of his degrees from a diploma mill that was shut down in the state of Alabama. He obtained a bachelor's, a master's, and a PhD, I think, all in the span of 18 months.

The thing is, nobody who was at Miracle Ranch would know any of this for a long time, not until way after his patients started dying. Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to unlock all episodes of Chameleon Doctor Miracle ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge podcast Channel. Just click subscribe at the top of the Chameleon show page on Apple Podcast or visit getthebenj.com to get access wherever you get your podcast. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge Channel page on Apple Podcast or getthebinge.com to learn more this season on Doctor Miracle. There are losers.

There are people that owe us money. They're gonna have to tell the truth.

And set us up those shit right.

When we found that out. Oh, this changes the game a little bit. We might have a homicide charge.

One time she told me, I've never seen you look worse. She said, just be careful.

Doctor Miracle is a production of Campsite Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Dorothy Street Pictures. The show was hosted by me, Larrison Campbell. I reported it with Lily Houston Smith, our producer, and also our field recordist. Shoshi Shmulowicz is our managing producer and editor. Our executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriotis and me, Larisson Campbell from Sony Music Entertainment. Our executive producer is Catherine St. Louis, our sound designer and mix engineer is Michelle Macklem studio. Recording by Ewan Ly Trimuen. Story editing by Amy Padula. Fact checking by Julia Case Levine. Additional help from Rachel Yang and Rajeev Gola. If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend. It really does help spread the word.