'Politicians are only into power-mongering, corruption and cronyism'

We speak to alt revolutionary DEEPAK CHOPRA about biomarkers, his digital twin and his work to save humanity from disease

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Deepak Chopra is convinced he’s about to be booted off X (formerly Twitter). He’s just called Elon Musk “a troubled narcissist”, an “inflamed”, “stressed” and “needy” man. Yet sometimes, he adds, that neediness “drives the entrepreneurial spirit. A lot of good can come from that. I call it the wisdom of insecurity.”

Will Musk see the criticism as positive? Doesn’t matter: Chopra is resigned to his fate. His audience on X stands at three million, and while losing that would be a shame, he also has three million on Instagram and more than half a million on YouTube. He already lost 6,000 X followers last month when Joe Biden stood down from the re-election race and he thanked the President for his years of service. Truly, the only numbers he cares about are those on his trackers: Chopra uses no fewer than five, including a glucose monitor, to measure his “biomarkers” (“I’d show you what they are, but they’re charging at the minute”). He is not, like Musk, an insecure type. But he is, by his own admission, “neurotic”.

Chopra is the health guru to end all health gurus. Born in New Delhi in 1946, his father was a cardiologist and one-time medical adviser to Lord Mountbatten, having served in the British Army during the Burma campaign of 1944. Chopra Jr followed in his footsteps, studying medicine and moving to the US in 1970, where he began to explore the topic at the root of his success: the mind-body connection. In the Eighties, he became involved in transcendental meditation and brought Ayurveda to the US — a system of traditional Indian medicine that became popular via stars like Elizabeth Taylor.