Summary
John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend John Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to The Daily Show Ears Edition on the iHeartRadio app, Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Key Points
- So I value like the health benefits you can get, which I think are undeniable that there are like significant potential health benefits to yoga.
- When you're in certain cities, particularly, you'll see these like crowds of dudes called sadhus who are these like, I mean, they're effectively like kind of wild roving priests.
- Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast.
- The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture.
- The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else, like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines.
- Listen to The Daily Show, ears edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Key Moments
Undeniable health benefits of yoga despite its complicated history
Robert Evans acknowledges that yoga has significant, undeniable health benefits while noting you can also seriously hurt yourself if not careful, setting the stage for a discussion about how yoga as a discipline attracts con men and cult leaders like any other part of American culture.
"I value like the health benefits you can get, which I think are undeniable that there are like significant potential health benefits to yoga."
Modern yoga is only about 100 years old
The hosts discuss how the yoga people experience when they walk into a studio today is roughly a hundred years old or less, while the broader philosophical and spiritual tradition goes back thousands of years to around 1500 BC, with the two being very different things.
"the yoga that you will experience if you type yoga into Google Maps and walk into like the nearest store, right? That's like a hundred years old, right?"
Ancient yoga origins dating back to 1500 BC
Robert explains that the development of what became yoga probably started around 1500 BC, making it comparable in age to Judaism, though early yoga was primarily philosophy, meditation, and breathing exercises rather than physical postures.
"Development of what became yoga probably started around like 1500 BC."
Hatha yoga introduced physical postures in the medieval period
The episode explains that standing contortive postures did not exist in yoga before the medieval rise of Hatha yoga. Before that, the word asana referred only to seated meditation positions, not the flowing physical sequences we know today.
"Prior to the medieval rise of Hatha yoga, standing contortive postures simply did not exist in yoga."
Vivekananda brings yoga philosophy to America in 1893
Swami Vivekananda traveled to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 to spread Hindu faith and yoga philosophy, marking a turning point in how Indian religiosity was understood outside of India.
"Vivekananda traveled the country for five years before deciding it was his karma to go to the United States and spread an understanding of the Hindu faith."
