"Inside the Tent" with Dr. Miracle host Larrison Campbell
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Campsite Media. Hello, everybody. This is Vanessa Grigoriadis. I am one of the co-founders of Campsite Media. If you've been listening to Chameleon for a while, you may recognize me from the first season of Chameleon, which I co-created with Josh Dean. I'm talking about Hollywood con queen and that epic journey to try to figure out who was impersonating all of these female executives in Hollywood.

Our company makes all of the Chameleon series, from Wild Boys to High Rollers to Dr. Dante. And we also are putting out an exclusive podcast called Inside the Tent, which is behind the scenes of all of our Chameleon shows or the other shows that we make, like Suspect or Noble or White Devil.

You can hear about all of those at our podcast, Inside the Tent. And I'm going to play for you something you can hear there. It's my interview with Larison Campbell, who you probably know as the host of Dr. Miracle, our latest season of Chameleon.

If you want more behind-the-scenes content from our shows and the people who made them, head over to joincampside.com to become a free member of the Campside community. Again, that's joincampside.com. Now here's my conversation with Larison. All right, Larison Campbell, thank you so much for coming on our Campside show to tell us all about Dr. Miracle. Thanks so much for having me, Vanessa.

So, Larison, you and I started working on the show. I was, you know, essentially the editor and you're the writer and the producer and the person who put it all together. And we started talking about this, I don't know, eight months ago, maybe nine months ago. Oh, no, this was like well over a year ago. I think you first came to me with this. And do you remember that first conversation? Yeah, I do. Because you were like,

So what do you know about the alkaline diet?

And I was like, well, as it happens, I know quite a lot about alkaline water. At the time, at the time I was dating somebody who did like some, you know, ad stuff for one of those companies. It turns out I actually knew nothing about either subject compared to what was out there. You know, I was like... Well, but you knew, you knew that alkaline water is trendy. Oh, that's exactly. I knew, I knew, yeah, I knew it was twice the price of regular water.

I knew it promised all sorts of benefits that no one could quite put a finger on, but definitely made you a lot like a much better version of yourself. Right. And so, yeah, I was immediately intrigued.

It was right up my alley. But then did we also discuss how the podcast series that we eventually made called Dr. Miracle was also going to involve a lot of disease and death? Yeah, we did. We got into that too. So, I mean, it's funny because on the one hand you presented it to me and you said, you know, it's about this sort of very glamorous diet. Basically, any celebrity you name has at some point publicly said that they are on.

I mean, Kelly Ripa, we've got Victoria Beckham, we've got Jennifer Aniston, of course. And so you have this glamorous side to it. And what I don't think anybody who is publicly talking about this diet knows is

is that the origin of it is like all of this disease and death. - Right. So basically alkaline water and the alkaline diet is all based on the idea that you can change the pH of your blood by what you eat and drink, which is anatomically not actually possible. So explain to me how you know that to be true and also who this guy is who convinced everybody that it was true.

Yeah, so this was honestly, for me, one of the big revelations of the podcast was that there is this alkaline empire. And it turns out it's all a myth. And we talked to a bunch of very, you know, well-respected doctors, biologists, microbiologists, endocrinologists, all of these people who specialize in this stuff, oncologists. And they said, you know, here's the thing. Your kidneys exist to keep the pH of your blood steady. Right.

So if you change the alkalinity of what you consume, whether it's water, whether it's your diet, your kidneys just have to work a little bit harder to get your blood back to the pH that your body is supposed to be. Your body has a set pH. And they can do that.

that. They do it all by themselves. They don't need the water. Yeah, human body is a wonder. It is a wonder and a very expensive water isn't going to change the way it works. But this man had built this empire off of it, made millions and millions of dollars off of it. So who is he? Yeah, so this is Robert O. Young. And the Young in his last name is, in fact, at least as far as we can tell, this

This is something we actually don't get into that much in the podcast, but it's a fun fact about him. He is a direct descendant of Brigham Young, one of, you know, sort of the big founders of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City. I mean, he, along with it, turns out 30,000 other people. Yeah.

Claim the same patronage. Yes. Brigham Young had a few wives and quite a few children. So it's not a narrow gene pool. So Robert O. Young is this sort of self-styled naturopath, microbiologist, multi-degree carrier who has written a couple of books when he was in about his mid-40s, claiming that he has discovered

One of those things that is a cure for everything. And of course, it turns out, and this is one of the things we learned as we started really digging into who he was, the man not only wasn't a microbiologist or a naturopath or any sort of medical professional at all. In fact, he, as far as we can tell, we got a hold of his college transcripts.

He took one science class in college. It was a biology class, his freshman fall, and he did pass it, but it was a pass-fail class. That's it. That was the extent. I have actually had, I'm a terrible science student, but I've actually had like the same amount of science training that this man has, and I would not ever recommend that.

I certainly wouldn't formulate a scientific theory and publish a book based on it. Right, exactly. That goes contrary to everything that every other doctor believes. I know. I actually, as a side note, my mom is a doctor. And so at one point when I was reading this, I was like, you know, it'd be really

be really helpful if I just had a casual conversation with a doctor about all of this. You know, someone who I wasn't interviewing officially, and I gave it to her. And I was like, just look through it and tell me where the problems are. And she got, I'd say halfway through, and she called me up and she was like,

Larissa, are you going to make me read this whole thing? Because every single page is completely false. The whole basis of everything is a lie. And so as a result, everything he's extrapolating from it is a lie. So he basically sells the world on the idea that there's this alkaline diet and you should be part of it. You should eat leafy greens and avocado and, you know, get an IV of baking soda to alkalize your blood. And this is this is the root of all disease. But then he

also opens his own wellness center, right? Like his own Golden Door, his own Esalen, his own little, very, very expensive home for all of his ideas in San Diego called Miracle Ranch. People who are really sick start flocking to this place. And then what happens? Yeah, so I think he gets the place up and running in like the early to mid aughts. And...

At first, he's, I think, bringing in a decent amount of money, really kind of helping people lose weight. That's where he makes his mark. I'm going to teach you to eat healthy. I'm going to teach you to eat green. I'm going to teach you and you're going to be active. But he believed in certain principles of expelling things from your body, releasing toxins. And it was like perspiration and respiration and...

He had fitness classes in the morning where he had everyone bounce and dance on trampolines. And it was like a very upbeat, fun kind of cult of personality. But it felt like at that point it was really in a harmless way. You know, he would joke with the guests. They'd all sit out at the dining area and he'd tell jokes and he'd tell stories about himself. And this group of women would be in his thrall. But the problem...

The problem with the weight loss thing is that people would come, they'd stay for a week, they'd leave, and it just wasn't bringing in that much money. But he had sold this idea based on his, quote, theory that his diet could cure everything. And so people who were really sick and had really serious things like cancer and MS and ALS started...

reading his book and they would come to him and they would say, hey, can you cure this? And he started taking those people in. And unlike the people who were there for a diet, the really sick people, they wouldn't stay for a week. They'd stay for two months.

And they would get these expensive treatments and that he could give them IVs that he would say were alkalizing IVs, but really it was just baking soda and water. But he would charge $500 for those. Right. And it was like $2,000 a night. And then, you know, what the podcast is about in some ways is the experience of particularly one woman who went there and

when she had stage one breast cancer and followed all of his protocols and just got sicker and sicker, like a lot of other people there. Because people are there sometimes as a last ditch effort. You know, we talk about wealthy people flying in to the airport, you know, as the doctors have said, there's nothing else that can be done. And this is the last thing they're going to try is this

alkaline diet to see if they can save themselves. But tell me a little bit about the woman who a lot of the podcast is about. Yeah, so we were really lucky in that we met this woman. Her name is Dawn Calley. She was raised in California and she was raised by kind of hippie parents who were very into free love and casual drug use. And she grew up in this environment where she was really brought up to distrust traditional medicine. And

So she finds a lump in her breast one day when she's about 30. And she had had breast implants. So she goes to see her plastic surgeon. And her plastic surgeon is like, oh, this is actually cancer. You need to have it taken care of. And so she goes and she has the lump removed. But then all these forces in her life and in her family are like,

You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have trusted traditional medicine. So she doesn't really have anything done after the lump is cut out. And instead, she gets connected with Robert Young. And he says, I can handle this. She has stage one cancer at that point. And he puts her on a diet. And it isn't just the diet, but his center really kind of becomes the center of her life.

She winds up staying there for long periods of time. She virginally starts as a volunteer for him. And then she ends up starting a coaching business there with one of her friends at the center. And he really becomes this father figure. She describes him as this mixture of he was like a father figure to her and like Jesus Christ. And he was kind of her everything. He was her North Star.

The sad thing about Dawn is that, you know, she started with stage one cancer, but because she wasn't seeking traditional treatment, it started to spread. And it started very slowly, but over a couple of years, the signs that it was spreading, she developed more lumps. She started feeling fatigued. Her back was hurting. And Young just kept on telling her to stay the course with this thing. Don't go see doctors. Don't trust doctors. Believe in me.

And she doubled down on him and, you know, ultimately at the cost of her health. She was a great storyteller and she really just does such an incredible job of taking us to that period in her life and really showing us the center and showing us young through her eyes. Yeah. So the very unexpected thing that happened while we were making this podcast is that

I mean, I suppose not unexpected because when you have stage four breast cancer, eventually the treatments don't work anymore. But, you know, Dawn passed away. And it was devastating, I think, to all of us, but also to you because you had just been there with her a few months prior. You had flown to California to sit down with her, to talk to her and get the whole story from her. So it's really the last witness statement she'll ever make, right?

Right. Yeah. Against this guy. Yeah, it was we were I think we were recording the very last episode when we found out that she had died. And I think it's fair to say it was unexpected, even though she had stage four cancer. And even though when we had interviewed her, she died on May 29th of twenty twenty four.

And we interviewed her around Valentine's Day. And when we sat down with her, she, I mean, she told us, she said, I have stage four cancer. Eventually the treatments are going to stop working, but I've always managed to stay one step ahead. Because she did eventually go and seek traditional medical treatment. She left young. She understood who he was, stopped cancer.

talking to him and actually found a real doctor and got real treatment. And that real treatment did allow her to live for an additional 10 years. But she said, you know, I've always managed to stay one step ahead on the treatments. And at some point, I'm not going to be able to. And when she said it, I thought, God, this is only going to be in a couple of years. And Dawn had a 13-year-old son. And

And it seemed like she was going to be able to make it maybe until he graduated from high school. I think that was really what she was hoping for. I never would have imagined in February that if you had told me in February that she would be dead by May, I could not have wrapped my head around it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's so sad because, as you say, she had a son. She had an Etsy store, which everybody should check out, called Dawn Discovered with her different kinds of cute dresses and things that she was selling there. Great caftans. Really cool jewelry. Yeah, she needed to make money. Even though she had brought a civil suit against him and she was awarded by a jury $100 million worth

was not able to collect on that sum. So she did not die a rich woman. It's just really all around a tragic story. But I think also one that has so many lessons for the way we live now in terms of just...

think about the number of things that you're sold every day on Instagram. Like I can't go on my Instagram before somebody's like, buy this rose oil because it'll make you gorgeous. Buy this other jojoba oil, if that's how you pronounce it, because it'll make you gorgeous or it'll make you live long, gorgeous and live long. That would be the ideal, right? To me, this is really a story about how

There are people out there who may want to lead you astray, and this may have been one of them. There are people out there who may have beliefs that aren't supported by science. And as a layperson, there's really only so much you can do. She was a smart woman, but she chose to believe this.

Yeah. And I think I tend to be attracted to stories that take me into a place that I don't really know that much about. And it turns out I didn't really understand the world of, you know, nutrition selling, I think, or wellness, I think is probably the best way to say it.

And it has made me see that whole wellness industry in such a completely different light and how much all of these things that people do, they put out there that they'll sell on Instagram or they'll sell in a magazine or, you know, on Goop. How easy it is to read between the lines of that and realize that what they're really selling you is a promise and hope.

And it's just comes in a different package. And sometimes it's, you know, jojoba oil, however you say that. And sometimes, sometimes it's a juice cleanse and it's all really at the end of the day, kind of getting down to the exact same thing, which is this idea that there is a product out there that will transform you if you just believe in it enough. Yeah.

Right. And I mean, one of the things that was so hard for me with this story is that belief matters. Like when you're very, very sick, having watched relatives be very, very sick, hope matters. You know, believing that there's a cure around the corner, it matters. But in this case, you know, we're talking about people

people who were on this wellness ranch in some cases had their pain medication taken away. They were obviously very hungry because they were eating a green diet for the most part, although some of them did have some other stuff, but they were separated from their family. And this is how a lot of people spent the last months or years of their lives. There's hoping and then there's

Like torturing yourself, right? And I think this maybe crossed over into the torturing yourself area. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, hope feels really good. And if you are in a really awful place, you know, especially if you're somebody with a chronic or a terminal illness, right?

Like really the only way to get through every day is like you were saying, to hope that there is something better at the end of it. And I think that's what's so insidious about Young, Robert Young, is that he was able to

take these feelings of hope he was really able to take people who were desperate and Make them believe that their desperation Was hope and the sad thing about that is that they gave up two things when they did that They gave up a lot of money and a lot of times their families would take out mortgages on their houses And you know things like that. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars here and

And they also gave up time. Yeah. And that, I think, is the most heartbreaking of all of this, is that when you do have a terminal illness, time is really the only thing you have. Yeah. And he took that from them. He had them come and stay at his ranch. You had mothers with young children, and they left their children behind because they thought that they were getting more time. And really, they were just giving their time to him.

All right, everybody. Thanks so much for listening and check out join campsite.com where you can hear all of our behind the scenes reporting, or you can read essays from people like Josh Dean about how we put together our investigative podcast series. Thanks so much.