Untold: Opus Dei

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 ...

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 webs...

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...

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 ...

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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Since the podcast published earlier this year, Madison’s inbox has been filled with emails. Some were from former volunteers at the Goenka network who wished to speak out. In this bonus episode of The Retreat, they pull back the curtain on why they believe some people are not being supported when they come on retreats and find themselves psychologically unraveling.

Translations of Sayagyi U Ba Khin’s discourses from Daniel M Stu...

Introducing Toxic Legacy, a new season of Untold from the Financial Times. Host Laura Hughes uncovers a lead poisoning epidemic across the UK. You might be living with lead and not know it: the toxin is often invisible to the human eye, but wreaks havoc on our bodies once we’re exposed. The first episode of Untold: Toxic Legacy launches October 22.

For information on how to live safely with lead, please visit the LEAPP Alliance ...

Laura Hughes receives a tip that horses are dropping dead in Wales. As she investigates, she finds decades of academic studies researching the problem. She learns these aren’t isolated incidents. Something is spreading across the countryside. It’s undetectable to humans, nobody knows it’s there — until they fall ill.

For more information on how to live safely with lead, please visit the LEAPP Alliance website.

Read a transcri...

The UK has some of the oldest housing in the world. Although the use of lead paint is banned, what happens to the paint already on your walls? Laura Hughes speaks to families fighting for answers and the children poisoned by their own homes. She learns that it’s not only old homes that pose a serious risk.

For more information on how to live safely with lead, please visit the LEAPP Alliance website.

Read a transcript of this ...

A toddler in Leeds died from lead poisoning. Laura Hughes speaks to doctors in the UK to learn what must be done to prevent it from happening again. She learns that truly addressing the problem will be a massive undertaking. It would require a complete overhaul of the housing, environmental and food standards systems. But first, we need to find out where the lead is. 

Learn more about Untold: Toxic Legacy.

For more infor...

Swamp Notes: The Bethlehem Project is a new FT podcast series that tackles some of the US’s biggest political and economic issues through the lens of one city: Bethlehem Pennsylvania. The city is a politically divided area in a critical swing state, and reflects a lot of conversations happening nationally. The first episode tackles what happens when immigration enforcement comes to town, and the second episode explore what it's lik...

How much do we really know about ageing? For decades, scientists have been trying to understand the biology of the ageing process - what happens to our bodies as we get older? And is it possible to slow that process down or even stop it all together?

In this series of Tech Tonic, the FT’s Hannah Kuchler and Michael Peel look into the past, present and future of longevity - the wellness movement focused on extending and bettering...

In this special bonus episode from The Financial Times, "The Broker" tells the story of how a failed baseball hopeful and disgraced stockbroker reinvented himself as one of America’s most consequential modern arms dealers.

From a family-run warehouse in Virginia Beach, Will Somerindyke built his company into a crucial conduit in the Pentagon’s covert supply chains — sourcing Soviet-era weapons for wars in Syria and Yemen before ...

Introducing Opus Dei, a new season of Untold from the Financial Times. Host Antonia Cundy uncovers the cultural and political influence of a controversial Catholic organisation in America. Opus Dei exists to help people get closer to God, but some members say they found other agendas – and unexpected harm – entangled in that spiritual mission. The first episode of Untold: Opus Dei launches on March 25. Listen on Apple Pod...