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Madison Marriage receives an email from a desperate father named Stephen. Over the past five years, he says, his twin daughters have changed drastically. They were bright and outgoing, with exciting plans for their future. But over their early twenties, they became increasingly distressed, struggling to eat or sleep and disassociating from normal life. Stephen believes the root of his daughters’ problems is a particular network of intensive meditation retreats.

For support or more information about adverse meditation experiences, take a look at the Cheetah House website.

If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact your local emergency services or reach out to a mental health helpline, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US or Samaritans in the UK.

Note: This podcast previously included a YouTube clip that described a Vipassana meditation retreat that was not linked to the Goenka network, as originally implied.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Emily’s twin sister spirals after going on a Goenka retreat, and she’s not the only one. Madison Marriage hears multiple accounts of terror, hallucinations and psychosis. Was meditation just the catalyst that unleashed psychological problems? Or did this network of silent meditation retreats actually cause their suffering?

For support or more information about adverse meditation experiences, take a look at the Cheetah House website.

We also spoke to Miguel Farias and Jonny Say to corroborate claims in the podcast about adverse meditation experiences. You can find out more about Farias’s work here, and Say’s here.

If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact your local emergency services or reach out to a mental health helpline, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US or Samaritans in the UK.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Jaqui was 22 when she signed up to a 10-day Goenka retreat. It was the last known thing she did before she died. This is Jaqui’s story.

For support or more information about adverse meditation experiences, take a look at the Cheetah House website.

If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact your local emergency services or reach out to a mental health helpline, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US or Samaritans in the UK.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Madison Marriage hears of another death, one that happened five years before Jaqui’s. Was the Goenka network aware of the dangers of intensive meditation? Marriage asks what the organisation is doing, if anything, to protect people from harm.

For support or more information about adverse meditation experiences, take a look at the Cheetah House website.

If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact your local emergency services or reach out to a mental health helpline, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US, or Samaritans in the UK.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing Power for Sale, a new season of Untold from the Financial Times. In Untold: Power for Sale, host Valentina Pop and a team of FT correspondents from all over Europe investigate what happened in the Qatargate scandal, where EU lawmakers were accused of accepting payments from Qatar to whitewash its image.

Untold: Power for Sale airs May 29. Follow wherever you listen.

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Valentina learns of raids and arrests at the European parliament and a scandal unfolds. They talk to the face of the scandal, Eva Kaili, and hear about the day of the raids through her eyes.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Through wiretap transcripts and surveillance footage, captured by Belgian intelligence, Valentina and the investigative reporting team learn just who is involved with this scandal and how it all worked.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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