Part Two: Gary Young: The Fake Doctor Who Drowned His Own Baby

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by comedian, Billy Wayne Davis to continue discussing D. Gary Young, the Fake Doctor Who Created The Essential Oil Craze.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what's part in my twos? Because it's part two
Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans, podcast host who as
shames his producer Sophie every episode with a new introduction
that just does not land. I like the drawball one,
Thank you, thank you. I like that, Thank you. Billy

(00:22):
Wayne Davis my guest today. You can pop to comedian
with a website yet abe for a tour. You can
find me on Twitter too at Billy Wayne Dave. All
my ship comes up at Billy Wayne Davis. We're getting
a little bit more of a plug from you each time.
I am getting better at promotion. Thank you man. We're
watching you learn in real time. Representatives say it helps

(00:44):
with the money, sort of like how Gary Young learned
in real time how to be a doctor. I don't
think he did keep. I don't think learning how to
be a doctor was his game. I don't think it's
something you do by trial and error. You medicine like
science is as a discipline, but individually that's not you
should Learning was never one of his pursuits. No, not

(01:04):
with having his head caved in by a trade. He
like ambition, yes, super ambitious. You can't fault the hustle. Yeah, no, no,
it is. It's impressive and the there's a perseverance that
you don't see in a lot of doctors. No matter
who you were, no matter what government agency you were,
you were not powerful enough to stop Gary Young from

(01:24):
pretending to be a doctor, as long as you don't
look in Washington State or Mexico or California or California sometime. Well,
I could see where he went to Utah and it's
about to be a different country. There's always this. There's
a certain type that finds their way to Utah. There
is a certain type or in a hatch and Gary
Young types and Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith. Well, I

(01:46):
mean he never made it quite out there? Is that
that mob killed him? Yeah? Well he was headed there.
He knew that was his spot. That was got him there.
Something is calling me there. I feel like I feel
like someday I'm going to treat people's cancer in Utah
with regano oil. I've got I've got a secret. It's

(02:07):
a Reagano all right. I mean what kind of the
it's the thought process because it is calculated, like, hey,
these people are desperate. Yeah, science can't do some things,
and a real doctor is occasionally going to have to say,
I'm sorry, there's just nothing we can do. There's nothing.
But Gary Young is never going to say there's nothing

(02:27):
we can do. Gary Young is gonna say, you've got
two thousand bucks a week, yet we can always do something.
You can do so much, but you don't know about
let me tell you about hot tubs, if their uses
for babies. He just he's like that guy. And it's like,
and I don't mean Trump, you know, jumps in everything,
but it is that same kind of thing where it's like, oh,

(02:49):
you just lie. All of these people left or right
whatever they align themselves with, all of the people who
are grifters have way more in common with each other
than with anybody else that without Yeah, yeah, I mean
it's not even because that's like more of a political thing.
This is just like the eternal similarity of grifters, like
the similarity of what's his name the Wakefield, the guy

(03:09):
who like created like the autism like vaccine belief epidemic,
and Donald Trump and Alex Jones or Keith re Neary
who was like more of a lefty side guy of this.
He was the dude behind that colt where like when
Hollywood were branding themselves, they're all the same guy. Yeah,
they know, they really are. Where it's just like you
just don't say like I've never done anything wrong. Yeah yeah,

(03:31):
never never. And none of them were as good as
l Ron Hubbard, who was the king of that type.
I just think he had he had a gift. He
had a gift. He did have a gift. You can't
get that big without like something special. No, he could
just put out nonsense. Yeah, he was amazing. And if
you can flood anybody like not even just like print

(03:53):
media or the Internet or just just anyone's brain with
just nonsense, you can flood it. They just turn it off.
And this I'm just one out of this. Everybody has
a nonsense that they're vulnerable to. Yeah. Yeah, and it's
different for everybody because we can all look at like
the nonsense that like this group of people buys into it,
like Central oils good care and cancer. Yeah. No, then

(04:14):
you find your nonsense and do you look on your
Instagram faith, that's your nonsense what you're getting sold. I've
realized that if it's says tactical, I'll be like I'll
click on it. Yeah, yeah, I have so many machetes,
and I do use machetes regularly, but not as many
as I have, not nearly as many as I have to.
I have to and I live in a nice neigh

(04:35):
We have like six. Yet it's a very nice work.
I do not need a machete for everybody needs one
mache on A good deal on a machete. You just
leaving machetes on the today, I thought I might need
another machete for the back. I feel like all of
my life problems can be solved. I just find the
right machetes. It's a big knife. It's awesome. It's awesome. Hey,

(04:57):
and I'm from there's a certain thing where, yeah, I
got I've gave my son a little knife. He's nine. Yeah, yeah,
you give him a knife, and you could tell he
terrified him and he just put it in his drawer.
I'm I'm uggling a little like pistol that's an a
R fifteen, but a pistol with like a tiny little grip.
And it's like, I know it's dumb. I know it's
gonna break anyone's ear drum that uses it. It's gonna

(05:19):
like ruin my wrists. It's a stupid, stupid thing. But
look at how need it looks. It looks pretty cool,
real cool. So we all have something we're vulnerable to.
That's that's bad for us. Uh. And there are grifters
out there who are are great at make you understand it,
and so don't trust grifters. Let's read about the rest
of Gary Young. The problem is that they're very trustworthy.

(05:41):
They are they are, that's their gift. Yeah, and I'm
gonna guess if you met Gary Young, you would not
immediately be like that seems like a guy who drowned
his baby and hots up. Well, it's like George W. Bush.
That's why they picked him. He's so I don't like him,
but I like him. Yeah, Yeah, I've I've I've I've
seen him. I've been very close to him at like
a speech and stuff like like not even a speech

(06:01):
like A. He was doing like a Q and A
and he's super likable. You're instantly sort of like, oh,
I get I get why, Like you know, like they're
all the leaks that have come out of the Truby administration,
I get why that ship didn't happen with the Bush administration.
You just like if you spend time around the guy,
like even if you like know the fund up ship
that's going on, like you kind of like just like
it still pretty fun, dude. It's just because they're good

(06:23):
at And I'm gonna Obama had that same gift where like,
I know we're dropping a lot of bombs on Yemen,
but like he makes me feel so good about myself
and he's doing some other good stuff. That was. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not saying I don't think either he
or Bush were grifters, even though I'm very critical of
the Bush administration, because they're both people who tried to

(06:43):
do concrete things as opposed to like trying to perform
on registered surgery. Yes. Yeah, So there are numerous large
essential oil companies in the United States today, and there's
all thanks to Gary Young's vision and the staggering success
of Young Living. Now within the industry, Young Living differentiates
itself from all these imitators with a string to focus
on the highest possible quality standards for their products. I
brought this up last time. They say there are no

(07:05):
purer essential oils on the market. That is the claim
they make, But I found counterclaims in a number of
places allegations that Young Living oils are in fact adulterated.
Most compelling of these allegations claimed from a former if
it isn't their adult The most compelling of these allegations
came from a former distributor for the company and a
blog post titled the Day Young Living Broke My Heart.

(07:26):
Now I wouldn't normally use a personal blog like this
as a source, but this person actually went to the
trouble of having his oils tested at reputable laboratories, and
he posted every piece of evidence on his blog, from
like the shipping information to prove that he shipped it
directly to the labs, um to like the results of
the lab sent him like it's what did they rip
him off for? I'll get to that. Sorry, yeah, yeah,
it's actually yeah, you can motivated. It is motivated, And

(07:49):
it's like one of those things where I suspect this
guy believes some things I don't believe about essential oils,
but he really, like from a journalistic rigor point of view,
did a good job of laying out his case and
providing the evidence, Like Fired Up probably had a respectable
ships where he's been like I have to prove my points.
That's exactly what he got. So the writer's issue with
Young Living came from their Seed to Seal guarantee, which

(08:11):
promises that none of their oils have ever been adulterator
had anything added to them. So this dude sent his
cinnamon oil into a lab for testing and found that
multiple synthetic chemicals were present inside it, including synthetic cinnamonal
including a synthetic There are a bunch of synthetic chemicals.
I'm not going to try to read that fucking thing. Yeah,
it had a bunch of fake stuff in it. Quote.

(08:32):
Tears filled my eyes as the reality of the situation
began to sink in. This is serious for him. I know,
I know, but it's cinnamon. My close family used cinnamon
bark internally, not to mention the sheer volume of Thieves products,
which is like one of their product lines that contained cinnamon.
I've attempted some conversations with my uplines about the issue,
but merely got don't worry, and I've used the products

(08:53):
for years and I'm fine. Quickly realizing that I would
not get the answers I wanted from them, and not
knowing where else to turn I sent an email to
Young Livings chief operation eating officer, Jared Turner and included
a copy of the test report. Hope and faith briathfully
returned when I steeved a reply from Jared thanking me
for bringing the issue to his attention and promising me
a reply, but he never got a reply. Yeah. So
this guy was like a true believer who also seems

(09:15):
to be a real big believer in the truth. And
it was very frustrated by this and had been like
advising his family to take this stuff medicinally, and so
it's they just say, here's a bunch of stuff. So
it's not just like the smell stuff. That's what I
know essential oils to be. Yeah, and there are some
there is some mild evidence that essential oils are useful

(09:35):
in complimenting traditional medical therapy from like a recovery standpoint,
some very mild evidence that certain ones can be helpful
therapeutically along with actual medicine and certain specific situations. They
don't you cancer, but like Young Living is one of
those companies where they're like, oh, you take this internally
if you have this problem and this problem, and so
this guy was like having his family take this stuff

(09:57):
and was horrified to realize that they were cutting it,
which is essentially what's going on is these people are
cutting it just like you know, my coke dealer used
to do with baby laxative, and it's just you know,
he was as angry as I was when I found
out that I had been cheated. I found myself saying
this a lot lately. It's just quoting the jerk where
he's like, oh, it's a profit deal. Yeah, that's exactly

(10:21):
what's going on here. So yeah, this guy, this guy
was very horrified and promised not to buy their products anymore.
But of course, not every Young Living devotee has his
devotion to the truth. In the first episode of this
podcast series, I mentioned a review I found of Gary
Young's wife written biography on a website called Cultivating mom Now.
The author of this site was another distributor for Young Living,

(10:43):
and she reviewed Gary Young's biography and deeply entertaining. Here's
what she wrote. You know what, I'm going to give
this a review. I am a researcher. It is in
my blood. So before I signed up to become a
member of Young Living Essential Oils, I did my research. Wow,
the negativity, vitriol, and blatant lies that have bound on
the Internet have not left the father of essential oils.

(11:04):
She capitalized the first letter in every word of that unscathed.
One thing that became clear was that there was no
evidence to back up many of the claims against him,
some of which, if they were true, would have landed
him in jail as opposed to being the world leader
of a global enterprise. I chose to see the lies
for what they were, vicious attacks on someone who has
spent his whole life trying to help others. That's why
when this book came out, I could not wait to
get my hands on it in order to finally hear

(11:26):
the real story. In the words of Gary's wife, Mary Young,
I mean, can we can? I just say, real quick, yeah.
I just want you to imagine going to your wife
and being like, hey, I got an idea when she
read a book. You write a book about me about me?

(11:48):
People won't believe it. If I write a book about me,
I can't do it because of my humility and the
head thing. And I don't type so good. You know,
I smashed things, but you I just keep breaking computers
with an ax. So the review goes into detail about
Gary's famous accident, which is discussed exhaustively and everything ever

(12:11):
published about Gary Young. The author hilariously writes this as
Mary Young has always said, Garry does not like to
talk about his accident that left him with the prognosis
that he would be confined to a wheelchair for the
rest of his life. But she was able to put
together the compelling story that takes the reader from Gary's
depths of despair to his regaining his ability to walk.
So still nothing about that brain, Not a damn thing

(12:31):
about that brain. Now, This reviewer also notes, quote the
reader gets to walk with Gary through every expansion and
farm purchase. Reading about what he did in Ecuador is
beyond belief. After seeing the poverty and conditions at local schools,
Gary decided he had to change would looked like a
hopeless situation for the children of surrounding communities, out of
which grew the Young Living Academy to teach and enable
these children to have a bright future. Now, hearing about

(12:53):
Ecuador made me curious, and thankfully I found a little
bit more about Gary Young's work in Ecuador in that
New Yorker article. I've been quoting from You Remember Sterling,
the former CEO of Young Living. Sterling says he was
also alarmed by a video he saw of Young, whose
only medical degree is a doctor in naturopathy from an
unacredited school, performing gallbladder surgery and giving essential oils intravenously

(13:15):
at a clinic in Ecuador. He's like, he's not a
place to commit surgery. Is committing surgery? Yeah, It's like
like I did some murders, he said, I did some surgery.
How many Ecuadorians have died under Gary youngs ins Scalpel.

(13:36):
I shouldn't be laughing, but he just is. So he's
so relentless about wanting to perform medical operations, to be
like just to look at somebody like, you know, I
fix you. I'm just sitting you know, I'm a doctor.
You came into my village and you want to cut
me out. And he's like, now I'm a doctor. You

(13:57):
got cancer. I can tell it from your blood. That's
some Elizabeth Holmes ship. It is weird that they both
do like fingerprick blood tests. I will say Gary Young's
clinics blood tests work as well as there and because

(14:18):
people are doing the same thing to send cat's blood
and twins and stuff to Elizabeth Holmes. I didn't hear
about cat's blood, but yeah, there was their their their
tests were not good. It turns out Gary Young only
opened his clinic in Ecuador because a two thousand five
lawsuit closed his clinic in Utah. Apparently, a young woman
was prescribed so much vitamin C that her kidney shut down,
almost killing her. She successfully sued the company, forcing Gary

(14:41):
to hop to Ecuador to continue pretending to practice medicine.
A lot of them that is a way too much
vitamin so much that your kid needs are like come on,
They're just like nope, what do you do? How many
oranges are you eating? You gotta get out. And it
was not any safer working on one of Gary's farms
than being a patient in his clinics. In August seventeen, Yeah,

(15:02):
on August seventeen, two thousand, one of his homemade A
sential oil distillers ruptured at the lid, killing a worker
at the Young Living farm in Mona, Utah. The farm
was fine ten thousand, two d eighty dollars for seven
safety violations. The Utah Ocean Division reported quote the entire
operation was designed by Gary Young, President and built on site.
The vessels were not built under any consideration to American

(15:25):
society mechanical engineers code for pressure vessels. No type of
pressure relief device was installed on any of the vessels.
So he basically built bombs to distill stuff with you.
It's it's you make more money. You don't do it
the way the government says. Because the government they want
you to do all these things like not have your
things explode in people's faces, which is fucking that's why

(15:48):
regulations bad. You have to wait, I don't wait. The
free market says, your factory can be indistinguishable from an
I E. ED if I have a stuff thing. That's
what the free market says. That's what Charles told me.
Did he tell you that in the free market, that's

(16:09):
based on everyone starting from zero and we're not going
to do that. Well it's a yeah, yeah, and he's
got his ax. Okay, we'll get out of here. He's
got his Actually, just not like you talking about flaws
in the free market. Yeah. So uh, speaking of free markets,
it's so if you're saying that's an okay, products, we're back.

(16:37):
We're talking about trash cans. Trash can liquor and how
they help you have sex if you grew up in
the Deep South. But that's all we're gonna tell you
about that. You got to learn the rest for yourself
to go in there and find out for down there
and figure that out. Okay, where the hell were we? Right?
So Gary Young had just shut down that woman's kidneys
with vitamin C started performing on regulated surgery in Ecuador,

(16:59):
and he got I killed by building a bomb instead
of distiller on accident. I've had a rough six months.
Oh jeez. So you can't make essential oils without breaking
a few human beings, and no amount of death and
misery stopped the rocket light growth of Young Living. By
the early two thousands, they were by far the largest
essential oil vendor in the market. It's hard to say

(17:21):
exactly how large they were, but we're talking about hundreds
of millions a year in revenue by this point, exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
they're like a billion dollar company now, at least they
claim to be and probably are. Like it's always they're
an MLM too, so it's always like there are a
multi level marketing how they get their products out? Yeah,
they do sell a lot of their very popular essential

(17:42):
oil sellers. So they sell a lot of product, but
a lot of their money comes from like the MLM
thing where like you sign up to be a distributor,
but the money is really in signing people up underneath you.
So again not a pyramid, multi level legally distinct from
a pyramid, just horseship. Yeah, so we don't know exactly

(18:02):
how much, but but it's a lot. They're making a
funckload of money, and yeah they don't really. Yeah, it's
so it's hard to get hard a funkload of money
is fair to say. So success inspires imitators, companies eager
to repeat Young Living success in selling dubious healing oils,
maybe without the fraudulent founder who kept getting arrested for
pretending to be a doctor. And in two thousand twelve,
the most successfully as imitators, a company called dou Tera,

(18:24):
had grown to be nearly as large as Young Living.
Some analysts suspected they were even larger. That year, Gary
directed his company to sue do Tera for three and
fifty million dollars. Now. Young Living alleged that do Terra's
founders had stolen both trade secrets and distributors from Young Living.
The court case rolled along slowly until in two thousand fifteen,
both companies announced that they had passed one billion dollars

(18:45):
in sales. Now it took about five years for the
case to reach a civil jury trial, and on the
second day the smell of Essential oils was so strong
that the judge in the case complained of a headache
and a stomach ache and begged both sides to wear
slightly fewer essential oils. The jury eventually dropped all charges
against Duteran. That was like two seventeen or so, I think. Yeah.
So basically their claim was, hey, you're doing our scam. Yeah,

(19:07):
you're doing our scam. Stopped doing our took them to court,
and the judge was like, everyone smells too much. Scam
is hurting me. Please stop physically hurting my brain. In
June two seventeen, the New Yorker Center reporter to Young
Livings Fulfill Your Destiny distributor convention in Salt Lake City,
quote the hallways were packed with good natured, heavily fragrant

(19:30):
people heading to workshops with names such as Yoga a
Business Tool, and Essential Care for Animals. They wore t
shirts that said essential Oils heck, yeah, and there's an
oil for that. And I'm silently assessing your oil needs.
Never have I sneezed so much, Never have I been
blessed so enthusiastically what I sneezed. We'll have the article
up on our side. It's a fun article. Fulfill your destiny.

(19:53):
Give me two dollars, two thousand dollars. Let me maybe,
let me try delivering your baby in a hot tub.
I'm probably a doctor, are you not? By this point
Gary Young's company, Oilman, you had grown too over a
hundred and fifty options, from basics like oregano and centronella
to Christmas Spirit cell citronella that keeps the mosquitoes. Yeah,

(20:15):
that does. Like, Yeah, I've used a lot of especially
traveling without healthcare, I've used a number of different Like
I'm actually a big plant based medicine nerd. I make
a lot of my own saves and poultices for injuries
and stuff like that, just because I'm out in the
middle of nowhere a lot. Like there's plants like plantain
and yarrow and comfrey that have real proven medicinal benefits,
stuff like willow bark, which is where we get our
aspirin from that you can. Well, we got chemicals from

(20:38):
the earth to start with. Where the pills exactly, they
don't come from nowhere, and some of them do. Some
of them were just like switching atoms around at this point.
It's crazy, but like this isn't Some of the stuff
that works the best is still just fucking plants and
ship oh man, speaking of plants, I don't know. This
is like a free ad just from marijuana. It is, Yeah,

(20:59):
do it? I feel like that's a great ad. Marijuana.
Nike really has the best slogan ready. If they start
a pot brand just like medicinal marijuana or not medicinal
sports marijuana, that'll happen CBD for your CTE. Damn it,
that's a good idea. I know. I'll call him. That

(21:20):
should happen, okay, uh so yeah. Christmas Spirit, which quote
taps into the happiness joint comfort with the holiday season.
There's dragon time to create feelings of stability and calm
during cycles of moodiness, and of course highest potential, which
it presumably helps you get riches. Shit. Now, this is
probably a good place to get into just how exactly
not A Dr Gary Young claimed his essential oils work.

(21:42):
Here's Dr Eva Briggs dissecting some of Gary's claims from
a book titled The Missing Link, where Gary lays out
the scientific underpinnings of the essential oil chemistry. Quote from Gary.
One of the primary agents in the blood that is
responsible for the delivery of the nutrients through the cell
walls is called oxygen. Now, I'm not a big science guy.
Doesn't sound like a controversial statement to me because I'm dumb.

(22:04):
But Dr Eva makes a good point quote. Animals do
not have cell walls. The most basic high school biology
courses teach that only bacteria and plants have cell walls.
Animals do have cell membranes. Gary. Quote, you see in
the human body, we have a substance called blood, and
that blood has a very specific purpose. That purpose is
to transport nutrients to We've got what we go what

(22:27):
in there. The purpose is to transport nutrients to the
cells to nurture and feed the cells. When we look
at essential oils, they have the same role and play
the same function in the plant as blood does in
the human body. That one even idol, that's not what
they do. But let's hear from Dr Eva. Essential oils
do not transport nutrients to plant cells, flow him transport

(22:49):
ports nutrients to plants, and xylem transports water. Examples of
the functions of essential oils and plants may include attracting
beneficial organisms such as pollinators, or repelling organisms that might
eat or infect the plant, which is why citrinella does.
It's like third and fourth grade. So that's real fucking basic. Yeah,
that's but he's he's really calling people's bluff, that's what

(23:09):
he's doing. Because you're not going to check that out
if you're signing up to be a distributor in an MLM. No,
you're just not. That's I wouldn't have caught the cell
walls thing because it's been too long, and all I
remember is that the fucking mitochondria is the powerhouse of
the cell. We both Yeah, the essential oil thing where
it takes it. You're like immediately like, I don't think
that's how I don't think that's how that works. I

(23:34):
can't correct you on how it works, but I know
that you're full of sheep. If you're telling me this
thing that burns when I put it on my skin
is the same as blood. It's plant blood. Yeah, it's
a plant blood. Yeah, that's true. I either feel like
you're a doctor. Now, where's your baby again? I keep

(23:59):
I keep coming actually killed his own baby thing, but
I feel like it's really worth dwhile, like, well, it's
also that thing, like the reviewers said, the ladies like,
I read all these awful things about this man and
I just didn't believe them. And it's like, well, there's
newspaper articles from the eighties talking about that one. Well,
but she does raise a good point. She's like, if
you don't, why isn't he in jail? And it is like,

(24:20):
I'm with you. One that is a good question. Probably
ought to be in jail. But it sounds like also
he always gets fine, like ten thousand dollars seems to
be reoccurring fee. So he's like an old hippie where
he just carries around ten grand for bail money. He's like,
this will get me, hippie. He's like, they'll throw you
in jail and Arkansas. So always have safty five bucks

(24:41):
in Massa. Now go to Mexico, be a doctor a game. Yeah,
they don't want anything. Distributors at the lowest level of
the young living hierarchy members never rise higher than that.
The top of this legally distinct from a pyramid, are
people at the Royal Crown Diamond level, who make up
less than one tenth of one percent of young living.

(25:03):
Many of the speeches at the convention that The New
Yorker went to were delivered by diamond level distributors, who
earn a median monthly income of two dollars. Now, almost
no one at young Living reaches that level. The few
who do essentially act as posters for what might be
possible to the hopeful masses. One of the diamond level
speakers that the New Yorker writer met built her business
upple working as a TV anchor. In other words, she

(25:24):
had a platform completely impractical distributors to ever build. Help. Yeah,
here's what she said to the assembled people with the convention.
There's nothing holding you back but yourself. We all have
the same oils, were all the same twenty four hours
in the day. The only ones who don't make it
to diamond are the ones who give up. Anybody in
this room can do it. Very basic MLM stuff. It's

(25:45):
it's your lack of effort. Yeah, it is your lack
of effort. If you do not succeed with this not
in your built in broadcasting. Yeah, now, I'm sure you're
not surprised to learn Young Livings two million active members
made less than a dollar in two thousand and sixteen. Meanwhile,
most Royal Crown Diamond distributors made more than a million
a year. Most people would call this a pyramid, but
it technically isn't for reasons lawyers could argue in court.

(26:07):
At the two seventeen Fulfill Your Destiny convention, Gary Young
made his entrance by writing into the convention center on
a sled pulled by huskies. The year before he flew
in on a zip line. These garish introductions were necessary.
He was trying to hype up the launch of new
oil blends in two thousand seventeen. That blend was also
called Fulfill Your Destiny. Thirty four dollars would get you
five million leads of black pepper, blue Spruce and Franken's

(26:30):
black Pepper. Well, if you throw that in with the
frank Consense, which actually does Frankinsense has some medicinal properties too.
Cool stuff that you can do with Frankinsense. Not this way.
Gary claimed that this would open up your pineal gland. No, no, no, no,
DMT opens the ship at it. I was going to say,
it's like, if he's got if he's selling d m T,

(26:51):
I'm interested. And if you say if he's if he's
making some fucking essential oil at a mimosa hostiles root bark,
then I'll be like, okay, brother, Yeah, that'll open your
fucking pioneer up. Do smoke it out of a crack pipe? Yes, Now,
I guess we should be grateful. He didn't try to
inject any of this to do his patience via IVY,
although he probably did in an Ecuador. Starting in the

(27:14):
mid ots, franken sence became an increasing focus for Gary
Young and his company. He was apparently inspired by a
trip to a market in Oman where he saw thousands
of bags of frankensance resident in the streets. He built
a distillery in Salala and in two thousand ten opened
the first modern frankinsence distillery in the world. There's just
one problem with that. Producing essential oils and industrial capacity
requires vastly more franknstance resident than the world's existing trees

(27:36):
can supply. According to Antinette de Carlo, an environmental scientists
focused on the plant Young livings demand threatens entire ecosystems
in the Middle East and North Africa. So so I'm
trying to save some people I needed to make me
rich from my abundance oil. This is actually a crucially important, important,

(27:56):
and undertold part of the essential oil story. Despite their
Earth friendly IMAGH can focus on pictures of wholesome farms,
Young living in its competitors are something of an environmental plague.
Before Gary Young, essential oils were a thing, but they
weren't particularly popular. Tens of millions of people were not
constantly dolloping their body in frankinstance and mirror and oregano
and lemon peel. The market for these products has increased
tenfold in just the last couple of decades, and producing

(28:18):
essential oils is not easy on Mother Earth. The Earth
Island Journal notes quote in order to produce a single
pound of essential oil, enormous quantities of plants are required.
Ten thousand pounds of rose petals, fifty pounds of lavender,
six thousand pounds of melissa plant, fred lemons, and so forth.
It sounds like r Kelly Studio orders, Yeah, it kind

(28:39):
of does. We need more ross, we need more roast petals.
So where do all these thousands and thousands of thousands
of plants come from quote, the majority of popular essential
oils companies source their raw materials from corporate farms that
turn out large quantities of plants. As with the cultivation
of products on many large farms, pesticide usually just common,
and there's currently no organic certifications specifically for essential oils,

(28:59):
which large companies like Young Living and do Terris site
as a reason for foregoing organic certification altogether, and the
end consumers are left largely on their own when it
comes to discovering which pesticides are used on crops that
are used for essential oils, especially since most companies aren't
voluntarily giving up that information. You're putting pesticides on your body,
which is also true if you're smoking weed. By the way,

(29:19):
just haven't been out to a lot of those farms.
You can't trust when they say there's not pesticides on
them unless you know the grower, you can't. Yeah, there's
pesticides on all of them. Dan, I've been through so
many of those fields. And if you they wear they
wear tai vex suits to spray them down, they look
like like there there's chemicals on all of it. And
you know how you can tell if it's got it
on there, it let harsh burn after you smoke it.

(29:42):
Because if you go to Eugene where they do all
the organic stuff, it does not have that. And there's
still even then they still have to wear the suits
because they're using like sulfur and stuff rather than the
chemical for like pesticides, Like you still have to keep
the pests off it, like it just depends on what
you use for it. They use different bugs too sometime. Yeah,
you can't let fucking mites get on those things. You
lose tens of thousands of dollars in a day. Crazy.

(30:05):
You know what else is crazy? The value of the
products and services that are about to be advertised to
your ears. We're back, we're talking about essential oils now.
It is possible that Young Living, the company founded by
a man who drowned his own baby on accident repeatedly

(30:26):
impersonated a doctor, hold itself to the most stringent safety
and environmental standards. Fun fact, Young Living recently pled guilty
to illegally trafficking rosewood oil and from Peru, where the
plant is a threatened species. The company was also found
to be illegally sourcing Spicknard oil from Nepal. There were
fined three and a half million dollars. That's not the
only regulatory trouble the company got into, of course. In
two thousand fourteen, Gary Young's business ran a foul of

(30:48):
the f D. A quote from the FDA based on
our review, FDA is determined that many of your Young
Living essential oil products such as, but not limited to,
thebes cinnamon, bark A, regano immune, new power, rosemary, myrtle, sandalwood, eucalyptus,
blue peppermint, you laying, laying frankinstance, and orange are promoted
for conditions that cause them to be drugs under Section
two O one G one B of the Federal Food

(31:10):
Drug and Cosmetic Act because they are intended for use
in diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease. Now,
the FDA pulls some specific examples of the most egregious
lies literally printed in Young Living brochures and on their products.
Among those lies, Young Living seemed hell bent on convincing
its consumers that their essential oils could prevent a bola. Quote.
Viruses including a bowla are no match for Young Living

(31:32):
essential oils under the subheading top oil choices for viruses.
Top on my list is Thieves. Thieves is highly antimicrobial.
It could help against a bola and a BOWLA virus
cannot live in the presence of cinnamon, bark nor a regano.
Good to know. Interesting, somebody, somebody should maybe let all
those people in Africa no that they just need more cinnamon. Yeah,

(31:59):
that's that's drop cinnamon. It's that sprinkle it. It's just
god damn it. It's it's that saying about famous people,
like if they were nice before they got famous, they're
gonna be extra nice when they're famous. If they were
like whatever they like before they were famous. It's like,
it's the same about these motherfucker's where they're like they're

(32:19):
shitty on whatever level, and then they get access and money,
and then they're gonna be shitty on this giant Yeah,
they're just it just gets bigger where they're sucking up
countries instead of states. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what they do.
Like they start with like sucking up their own life
and drowning their baby in a hot tub, and then
move on to fucking up ecosystems and convincing millions of

(32:41):
people that they can cirabola with cinnamon. That's exactly what
they're doing. Yeah. Now, young living has its own experts,
like a Roman therapist David Stewart, who argued that doctors
like Eva Briggs and those hacks at the FDA don't
understand the essential oils have their own divine intelligence which
allowed them to heal without harming people, providing ourselves with
everything ourselves need. What's that you don't that seems based

(33:07):
I just about I just want to I need to
sum up and say out loud what I think that
that person just said was that essential oils have their
own they they're choosing to heal you. Yeah, so they're sentient. Yeah, yeah,
it seems like it. Well, i'll read the quote. I'll
read the quote from David Stewart, and you let me
know what it seems like. He's the molecules of a

(33:30):
therapeutic great essential oil form a harmonious, coherent, functional family
designed and intended to serve us and heal us according
to the highest will of their creator and our creator,
who is one and the same God, which really ties
into what you're saying about the owner's manual and him
thinking he's God. Because he's the one making all this bullshit.
He thinks it's his manual. It's his manual. Wow, you

(33:51):
got knocked in the head and now he's God. We
really really should do more research on head injuries. Now,
just got if something happy, you gotta watch them. That
doesn't mean that anything. A lot of people have them.
They're fine. I I want to be doctors and politicians
and there's nothing wrong with it, but keep an eye
on it. If they keep pretending to be a doctor

(34:12):
and maybe drowned their baby, keep an eye on some
of them. I wanted to get an idea of exactly
how Gary himself built the scientific efficacy of his essential oils.
I found a video of him from the mid Odds.
In it, he and his interview are standing in a
snowy forest. He has a chainsaw in his hands, and
we're gonna watch this video. And I want to make
sure that the video's turned towards him, so you should

(34:32):
see g G. Young. I got a robot ax. He's
gonna tell you how balsom wood works and so exquisite.
Can you tell us about the health properties of falsome oil? Oh,
it is Terry. It's very exciting. Because first I did

(34:54):
the studies seven years ago you talking before him, and
that as phenomenal because as we know, cortisol is a
hormone in the body and is referred to as a
death hormone. The cortisol is what makes us age prematurely,
is what reduces the immune system or a compromise immune system.

(35:14):
Cortosol levels are always high. We also see that people
who experience depression have high levels of cortosol. When the
body is high with cortisol, it also produces high acid levels.
And I thought, there's something that this falsive oil besides
other things that I was looking for. So we started

(35:38):
doing a study in the clinic and lo and behold,
we discovered that just breathing the aroma from the oil
through the distillation was lowering cortisol. So, god damn it,
can I can I describe the First of all, he's
dressed like a lumberjack, like straight up lumberjack, including holding

(36:01):
a chain. He's holding a like a commercial chainsaw, like
that's a that's a and he's but he's just he's
leaning on it. He's not actually holding he's leaning on
in the way that you don't with a commercial chainsaw.
If you're a lumberjack, it's just a very what and
what he's describing is very confusing to what he's presenting visually.

(36:22):
Do you know what like? Because he's also describing like
like he's a doctor, but he looks like a lumberjack,
lumber He looks like he's about to finish this interview
for his company's official video and then start shopping some trees.
He's like, we got some work today. We're down in
my n didn't call in, but here, how you got
a little lump. I'll take care of it tomorrow. You
know what, I got this chainsaw? Why don't I just

(36:42):
give it a try? Well? And it also like lets
me in. I had this picture of like a more
of a schmoozy salesman type, but he's not. He's got
this earnest way about him. I can see why people
who don't know anything about medicine would find him convincing. Yes,
because he's not a yeah, he's not like what you'd
think to snake oil salesman would be. No, he's not

(37:04):
like Lyle Lanley like he's he seems like he's like
like a like a he seems like a like a
country doctor, like a doctor who would like work in
a town that is a one room schoolhouse. Yeah, like
he's yeah, no, he does. Like he reminds me of
like one of my grandpa's friends who's like also a lawyer,
but also with a dairy farmer, you know what I mean. Yeah,
one of those people out in the sticks who does

(37:25):
farming and also does like a like serious professional trade
like medicine or like he does he look he feels
like probably because he grew up around a bunch of
those people and decided to do that, but without going
to school. Well, that's that's what I was just thinking.
Like while we were talking ab, I was like, Oh,
that's what has happened, is a tree's fell on his head.
He doesn't have the ability, but he has picked up

(37:46):
on this kind of hokey how they present. Probably after
the tree fell on him, the county doctor came over
imprinted on him. Yes, that's who he was around the most.
I'm going to be a doctor now. Boy, we figured
him out. We figured him out, but we figured him out.
This kind of rhetoric and these claims of great healing

(38:06):
potential have consequences. The Atlantic Institute is a pro essential
oil romatherapy organization, but one that urges responsible use of
the substances rather than treating them as cure alls with
their own divine intelligence. I found a fun two thousand
fourteen article where they list the ten worst side effects
suffered by people misapplying essential oils. Most of them sound
utterly terrifying but fairly minor, like this quote undeluded oil

(38:28):
on mouth source between twenty and thirty five drops of
essential oil on canker source and mouth or tongue after
being told it was safe. This resulted in a trip
to the e er because of racing, heart panicking, gagging,
dry heating, extremely hot, fever, dizzy, sick, and higher blood pressure.
I thought I was going to die. Yes, he did,
I bet you did. Don't do that. I did the
thing and then I died. Yeah that I almost died. Well,

(38:50):
we're getting to that now. The most serious side effect
they found evidence of came from somebody dosing themselves with
what is known in the crazy part of the essential
oil community as a morphine bob. Now this does not
include morphine, which I would be ordering it right now
if it did. This is a mix of balsam fur oil,
the oil Gary was talking about in that video with Coobiba,
which I have not heard of. In frankinstance, the most

(39:11):
prominent recipe I found for the morphine bomb was by
Kalin Backs, a distributor with Young Living Essential Oils. All
the oils and the recipe are of course made by
Young Living. Well of the picture of her recipe up
on the site. Here's what one person experienced after taking
a morphine bomb for extreme pain. Quote. The advertised it
could be used via inhalation on skin or ingested. I
trusted this combination would alleviate my pain due to their claims.

(39:33):
Within a few hours of adjesting the oils, I began
having racing hearts, shortness of breath, pressure in my chest
that radiated to my back, up my left jaw, and
down my left arm. The symptoms continued and I eventually
experienced cold switch and nausea. The symptoms did not go away.
I went to a hospital. They gave me an e
k G bloodwork in a cat scan, they determined I
was having a heart attack. I remained hospitalized for three
days and underwent a heart catheterization. Thank god Gary Young

(39:56):
was not catheterizing that heart. I can do no I
know what to do. Let me get my chainsaw. Let
me just root around on that for a little bit.
You got any fishing line? I learned this an Ecuador.
They's got that like waste. Like he knew what he

(40:20):
was talking about. It was clear he did not. It
was clear blood shot out like that. On the subject
of the amazing ability of essential oils to divinely analyze
your health and provide yourselves with everything they need and
nothing they don't, I found a read at a m
A with a former Young Living employee. This employee claimed
obliquely that Gary Young pressured his employees about how to

(40:41):
vote in two thousand and sixteen. Yeah quote. One of
the biggest stories I heard was that he called a
company wide meeting around election season and basically told everybody
that they should be voting for a certain political candidate.
Won't mention who. This does not need to be a
political debate. Many people were scared that they would lose
their job if they didn't vote a certain way, so
it took an assurance from the executive team, not Gary,
to ease everyone's minds. So I don't know who he

(41:03):
was urging him to vote for. Theories I have inclination.
I have an inclination because it feels like a tactic
that the certain politician would. It does feel like that,
it does feel like that. This employee had also had
several hilarious stories of these divine oils badly injuring people. Quote.
The greatest story you have to tell us about when
I had a woman who called in because she read

(41:24):
something that putting that oregano in her sports brawl would
help her losing weight. Ended up with her burning her breasts,
reported the FDA, and was given a full refund. FDA
is literally breathing out the company's next so they're very compliance. Quote.
One of the worst adverse reaction cases we had was
when a guy's wife had followed another boss babe's recipe
for eye drops that included thieves and peppermint oil. The

(41:46):
poor guy was given the drops and not only did
it burn to high help, but the guy's eye was
to put it simply a color it never should have been. Drops.
These are better than what the doctor gave you now.
Boss babes is a term people in that subreddit, which
is focused on like m l M S and stuff,
used to describe people like the lady who wrote that

(42:08):
fonding review of Gary Young's autobiography, or the lady who
wrote the morphine bomb recipe. They are women, mostly young mothers,
who attempt and occasionally succeed in building distribution networks for
young living products. Many of these people wind up desperate
to move product, which is what leads them to stretch
further and further the sort of claims they make about
what exactly essential oils can do. One question or in
the Reddit threat asks quote, why do these oil MLM's

(42:29):
promote putting the stuff on animals when many are knowingly
toxic to animals? Is corporate okay with the claims that
this stuff is fine to use on animals, to which
the op replied quote their stance as very confusing, as
they would not shut down recipients for animals, but they
also would heavily promote their animal line of products that
they claim would work with some off brand peed instead
of suggesting regular oils. I would always tell members that's

(42:49):
not saved at all. Though. Now if that's true, this
person was distinctly not in line with his company's values
and January two, eighteen, women's Facebook post went viral when
she warned that she had accidentally poisoned her cat by
getting a eucalyptus essential oil diffuser. Eucalyptus, for everyone listening,
is toxic to cats. Don't keep eucalyptus in your house
if you've got cats. I don't know if it's bad

(43:09):
for dogs too, maybe look into that, but it's fucking
bad for cats now. The post was shared something like
seven thousand times and prompted warnings from the A s
p c A about exposing pets to essential oils. BuzzFeed
notes quote neither do Terra nor Young Living immediately returned
questions from BuzzFeed News about their products and animals. However,
on its website, Young Living states that you can absolutely

(43:30):
use its products on your animals, So that's great. Absolutely absolutely,
they may kill them, but you can. You can do it.
You can, absolutely, but you can. Gary Young died in
Salt Lake City on May twelve, two eighteen, after a
series of terrible strokes that all his essential oils were
tragically unable to prevent. He's survived by millions of Young

(43:51):
Life distributors and in a very real sense, dozens of
spiritual children who have picked up on his methods and
created their own dangerous medical scams and Gary Young's own image.
In June of two thousand eighteen, James Joseph Martin of
West Sacramento, California was sentenced to one year in jail
and five years probation after pleading no contest to three
felony counts of practicing medicine without a license. He had

(44:11):
been going by the name Dr James Martin d P
s C. Now, you may not have heard of a
P s C, D or d p s C. It
sounds like a PhD uh so most people don't question it.
Here's what the website Credential Watch says, quote. Hundreds of
practitioners are using the credentials P s C, D or
dps C and or Doctor of Pastoral Medicine to promote

(44:33):
their services. These titles come from the Texas based Pastoral
Medicine Association, which licenses practitioners and registers perspective patients as
members who wish to receive care from these providers. The
p m A, which is headquartered in Irving, Texas, describes
itself as a private ecclesiastical membership association with a mission
to promote scripture based health and wellness concepts. That's yep.

(44:54):
A lot of the best doctors get their training from
the scripture, from the scripture exactly, exactly, a lot of
medicines based on the Old on the Old Testament. So
that's just great. The directory of doctors who have received
this degree includes more names. So while Gary Young maybe dead,
you can rest easy knowing that thousands upon thousands of
other fake doctors have taken up his mantle and are

(45:16):
probably delivering children with dangerously little qualifications and oversight right now. Wow,
just Airbnb doctors air filter out. Is there a hot tub?
Is there a hot tub we can get we can
get that baby out of you, ma'am. That is I
was just thinking, like, is that a mental illness where
you're like, no, I'm a doctor, where you just like

(45:37):
I wonder, or is it conniving where you're like they
go home every day that I can't believe this ship works. Man,
It's crazy. I feel like with Gary it is more
on the illness side of things, just because when he
got rich, he didn't stop. If it was just about
money and wanting to pretend to be a doctor for money,
why would you be doing surgeries still after you've got
hundreds of millions of dollars. Does feel like that's like

(45:58):
an urge. He really want to be a doctor. I
won't get in there and fix what's going on. I
wanna think anything's going on there. Let me get in there,
Let me get in there. Every now and then, he
just stared at where I think my appendix was in
a way that I've only seen men. Look at my tips.
I want to cut you open. I want to cut

(46:18):
you open. Let me get an ax. I'm a doctor,
a doctor. But then he it's frustrating because he's also
very competent. It's certain things exceptionally so, and then other things.
No fucking clue at all. No, I'm gonna guess that
gall bladder surgery and Ecuador did not probably not go well.

(46:42):
There's still they still tell that story, like when the
white man came and opened up our cousin. That was
the crazy. We don't know what he took, but it
was not his gall blacker is not allowed back in
this village. If you came from Ecuador and know anything
about what the funk Gary Young was doing down there,
please reach out. That would throw us a line. It

(47:04):
is fun. I mean, how far he went billions? Yeah,
and what cracks me up. Is like it's just one
word removed from Snike oil, yeah, which is he was
literally selling oil that he claimed could cure all your problems,
but he called it essential and not snake. Yeah. Yeah,
and people are like, just put it on me. Yeah.

(47:26):
And the focus on oils is in part because it's
so expensive because if you're actually, if you actually spend
any amount of time caring about like sort of you know,
like the non woo bullshit side of like natural plant
based medicine. You just buy plants. It's very get pounds
of most of the stuff that does anything good for
pretty cheap, even if you're using frankensincein a couple of
bucks for like, like it's not that expensive to get

(47:47):
like a lot of it. But essential oils are expensive
as fuck. The thing. You gotta do the thing and
then adulterated with a bunch of stuff so it's cheaper
for you. And then yeah, it's it's an odd scam,
an odd scam, and they don't work. They don't do it.
Like they're like there's a lot of stuff that like, yeah,
there's some health benefits to this, but like not to
the essential oil. There's no evidence that that does anything. Well,

(48:09):
it's got its own brain and it will figure out
what's wrong with you and it will go to there
and fix it, which is very similar to fucking Elizabeth Homescap,
very similar if we're if we're just gonna go. She
just said it was science. Yeah yeah, and her thing
was like, for this tiny drop of blood, we'll know
what's wrong with you. My favorite life of hers was

(48:31):
the we can tell if you ate something bad. Yeah,
that's the one where I was like, I was like,
who even I know, Like, that's not how that works, Elizabeth.
You were you went to school for this for a
year and a half. Like I spent more time in
that learning Arabic, and all I can remember is how
to say United Nations. I took way more than that

(48:51):
in Spanish, and I can I live in a Spanish neighborhood, yeah,
barely communicating. Yeah, it's like, I'm gonna guess you don't
learn all that much about blood science and your first
two and a half semesters I figured it out. I
will let one lady's like, no, you didn't know, No,
you did not, you did not. It's very hard. It

(49:12):
takes like a decade. I want you to, but you didn't.
But you don't know what you're talking about. She just
heisman her, just stiff armed her and moved on and
then didn't blink at all those old that's what they
all did. Well, yeah, but that's the same. It's the
same scam. They're all the same. All of these scammers
are the same, whether or not they're tricking Joe Biden

(49:33):
into thinking they're blood testing machines work or tricking single
moms into thinking that a regular oil is the right
kind of eye drop to use. Like, they're all the
same person. Well, and it's like any setback wasn't like
a real setback for them. I think that's the amazing
mental trick they do. They're very mentally resilient people. Yes, yeah,
because most people would be like, Okay, what is fucking

(49:55):
me up here? Yeah? Because I get to a point
every time and then I have to leave. Oh it's
because I'm not a doctor, but I seem capable enough
I could go to medical. I feel like I'm a doctor,
but you know what, I'm a dog. I'm a doctor.
I'm just gonna keep saying it till it's real. It's
that thing like you were when the secret was a
big thing. Is that does work, but just for grifters. Yes,

(50:17):
they're not wrong. You just keep saying you're the present.
One of these days it'll be true. And it happened.
It happens. Well that's the thing with Trump too. I
fascinated with that. I try to remind people like they're like,
how can you be look that Like, well, his lifestyle
has never been affected ever, nothing, He's still no matter
if he loses in court today or whatever. He goes

(50:39):
to the mansion, gold mansion in the sky. Yeah, it's
just and has his male wife that he ordered. It's
like Gary Young, none of his none of that. Getting
convicted of pretending to be a doctor multiple times never
was a set. He was just like, let's go where
it's just find another state. I'm tired of this. I'm
tired all his gray in rain. Let's go down finally, Well,

(51:00):
just go to Utah. They don't give a funk what
you do in Utah. Just keep selling room. I mean
that's what we live in Hollywood. So yep, yep, yeah,
I mean this is the thing is like, if you're
a grifter and you find wind up in Hollywood, it's
fine because The worst case scenario is you make the
Boondocks Saints um like or the room or the room. Yeah,

(51:22):
yeah exactly. But like in Silicon Valley it's you make
a fake blood test and company, and in Utah it's
you wind up performing on licensed surgery. You're exactly, Yes,
that is so grifters just moved to l A. Just
come to l A. The weather is great, it's and
if you don't make it, it's pretty good life anyway. Yeah,
the weeds fine, like it's cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

(51:46):
Your ability to handle rejection will serve you very well
in this town. It is. That's the number one skill here.
If you can take no luck it didn't happen. Yeah, yep,
you'll be We get into some dark stuff about the
stand up and just yeah, yes, not just stand up,
not just stand up this whole yeah, the whole, the

(52:07):
whole civilization. Actually, um, billy, let's plug those plug uh.
Just if you want to follow me on any of
the socials, just google Billy Wayne Davis. I'm on most
of them. All that stuff will come up. I am
going on tour very soon this week. Next week, I'll
be in Colorado. If you got to be w D
tour dot com. All that stuff comes up. I'll be

(52:29):
in Nashville soon. I'm going to Austin, Houston, Oklahoma City,
and your neck of the woods, the Kabu Festival. Dallas. Yeah, Dallas,
That's where I spent a lot of time as a kid.
I'm going in and out. Cool that spaceship over there
in Irving, Yeah yeah, check out of the whatever it
wasn't Irving we talked about. Oh yeah, you could go

(52:51):
go pay forty nine dollars and get licensed as a
doctor of pastoral medicine and Irving. I might do that.
Doctor Billy Wayne David would be fantasy Ecuador. This is
some big year for me. I remember Evans. You can
find me on Twitter at I right. Okay, if you
live in Ecuador and know whatever the fun Gary Young
was doing up there, please do hit us up. You

(53:12):
can find this podcast on a website behind the Masters
dot com. You can buy shirts at t public dot com.
Behind the Bastards. They have things on them, jokes, such
stickers to mouse pads, uh, coke spoons. Coke spoons all
branded um all with my face on them. So that's

(53:33):
kind of cool. We're on Twitter and Instagram and at
Bastards Pod and I have another podcast called it Could
Happen Here, which you should watch. If you want to
be really really really listen to. You should listen to Sophie.
It's been two hours. You should listen to the podcast
if you want to be sad. That's it. That's the
end of the show. Go fucking hug a cat. Bye.