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[0:00] Unknown speaker: It was so incestuous and culty and wild and fabulous. It was every fucking color of the rainbow.

[0:16] Unknown speaker: From its inception, SoulCycle was the hottest, fastest-growing fitness studio in New York City, catering to the rich, obsessive, famous, and fame-adjacent.

[0:26] Unknown speaker: A lot of the instructors partied hard. I mean, partied hard, so the young ones would stay out all night doing God knows what, a lot of drugs, and then coming in, popping an Adderall, and then like getting on the bikes, spinning a million miles an hour. We made it this monster, this beautiful fucking monster of a whole bunch of bikes in a dark room. We were all hot and wild and some of us homewreckers, some of us on page six. We'll explore how this cultural phenomenon captured the zeitgeist in a way nothing has before or since. We're on a bike in the dark. You're going nowhere, but we went everywhere. We went everywhere. Oh, well, I am so adored by this community. I can say whatever the fuck I want. I can do whatever the fuck I want. What a rush.

[1:20] Unknown speaker: Noon on Monday. It was like bracing for war. Noon on Monday is not a thing anywhere else. It never was before, and it never will be again. Make no mistake. It was a magical time, but they're like anything. There's always, when you peek behind that curtain, this is the cult of body and soul.

[1:44] Unknown speaker: At the risk of sounding dramatic, it's euphoric. It was club culture meets fitness, meets guru, meets self-help. There was nothing like it. Never was, never will be.

[2:05] Jess Rothschild: My name is Jessie Rothschild. I'm a writer and producer living in Manhattan. In 2023, I created a docu-series centered on the history, mystique, and lore of Fire Island, home of the oldest queer communities in the United States.

[2:27] Jess Rothschild: Over the last 20 years, I have found connection and meaning in two places, on Fire Island and in the New York City fitness community, specifically at SoulCycle. And while I've spent much of my adult life dedicated to fitness, my time at SoulCycle transcended far beyond that of boxing, yoga, or boot camp. I've spent years obsessed with soul, analyzing every single aspect of the phenomenon with friends.

[2:56] Jess Rothschild: My first class was in 2011, and I went about four times a week until 2019. People I met at SoulCycle spoke at my wedding. They were also there for me when that relationship suddenly ended. We took destination spin rides in the Hamptons, Miami, and LA. Destination spin is basically an excuse to travel and then revolve your day around an instructor's schedule. I got instructors to my home for Thanksgiving, and I was so intrigued by the secretive nature of the training program that I almost applied to be an instructor myself.

[3:33] Jess Rothschild: Today, I find myself looking back, yearning for this time in my life. Like, what were the ingredients that made it so unique and special? Throughout this series, you'll hear from instructors, studio managers, and other riders like me. We'll even talk to folks who worked on the corporate level. While all instructors are named, other employees have chosen to remain anonymous.

[3:58] Unknown speaker: Well, you have to understand something. The story of SoulCycle is you get these two incredibly media-trained, very savvy businesswomen who have come up with an idea of a story that they want to tell, but it's not the whole story. There's a third person that was integral to creating this thing who was literally iced out, who was pushed out through legal means. For whatever reason, they just figured out one day, she doesn't fit into this.

[4:28] Unknown speaker: To fully understand the story of SoulCycle, we need to go to Los Angeles in the 90s.

[4:41] Janet Fitzgerald: Okay. I've been a dancer my whole life, and I had a very colorful upbringing, and by colorful, I mean disaster. I eventually was such a mess. I was at CalArts doing dance, majored in dance with a minor in drugs, or maybe it was the other way around.

[5:01] Janet Fitzgerald: This is Janet Fitzgerald. Many fitness contemporaries cite Janet Fitzgerald as one of the original spiritual fitness instructors. Janet took the intention setting typically associated with yoga and applied it to high-intensity spin classes.

[5:18] Janet Fitzgerald: Through her voice and specific music curation, she is able to take riders to a place of reflection and meditation. Eventually, it got so messy that I ended up attempting suicide and then was released to my parents in Palm Springs. It was wild because they wanted me to go to rehab, and I mean, maybe I should have. I promise we're going to get from crack to the wheel in a second.

[5:46] Janet Fitzgerald: Janet is playfully naughty and has commanding energy. Think Madonna in Truth or Dare. She was the director of instructor training at SoulCycle for a decade, producing over 200 instructors, and she still teaches at Soul six times a week.

[6:03] Janet Fitzgerald: Soon after landing in Palm Springs, Janet began dating a drummer in a Christian rock band. She believed his straight-edge lifestyle would wear off on her, and it worked for a while.

[6:14] Janet Fitzgerald: I was so in love with him that I got super sober, literally hauled up in church on Sundays, praying to whoever will listen to take the desire for wanting to do drugs out of my body.

[6:31] Janet Fitzgerald: The idea of a 12-step program didn't speak to Janet at this time, so she did it her own way. So I was like, no, no, no, I'm just going to pray and get this desire taken out of my body, and I did.

[6:45] Janet Fitzgerald: For Janet, overcoming the desire for drugs appeared to open up a whole new chapter of health and also a starter marriage. I call it Christian rehab, really, but that marriage only lasted a couple of years. Yearning to reconnect with her true calling for dance, Janet quickly got a job teaching aerobics. But while Janet was stuck in the Palm Springs desert, there was a mecca of studio fitness exploding just two hours west in Los Angeles.

[7:15] Janet Fitzgerald: I would go and take a class, download all of the choreography, take it back to the desert and teach it again. And I would make these trips often to become inspired, really, because Los Angeles was everything. They had all the cool music and all the cool mixes and the new choreography, and it was just like the best place in the whole world to go to. I mean, it was really like Studio 54 of fitness.

[7:37] Janet Fitzgerald: Around this time, a new form of cardio was emerging, using a stationary bike, combining basic cycling, motivational coaching and breath awareness. The result was a workout called spinning, originally developed by Johnny Goldberg, a.k.a. Johnny G, a South African cyclist.

[7:56] Janet Fitzgerald: So when spinning started, it was Johnny G and there were 15 bikes, the first bikes that he made in his backyard. Andrea Lewent is another fitness pioneer from Los Angeles. She was one of the first spin instructors to cultivate a hardcore following. Covered in tattoos, Andrea attracted lots of athletes and rock stars who would use the bike to rehabilitate their bodies after injuries.

[8:26] Andrea Lewent: I fell in love with it and no one would let me teach it. They were like, no, because Johnny G was doing his thing. Johnny G was a professional athlete and cyclist, having completed the Race Across America, the longest, most grueling cycling race in the world. Johnny G designed and built the very first spin bike by hand. He also trademarked the word spinning. Therefore, all future studios, including SoulCycle, could not use the word spinning to describe their services. They had to advertise it as, quote, indoor cycling.

[8:59] Unknown speaker: Indoor cycling, a.k.a. spinning, is low impact, high intensity cardio using a stationary bike. Up until the early 2000s, you would actually ride in your sneakers, just hoping your foot didn't slide out or lose any toenails. This evolved into the modern use of spin shoes, specifically designed to clip into the bike. Instructors are the star of the show, but you control the resistance knob based on their cues. You can simulate a climb, run, jog, or sprint in and out of the saddle as you pour on the resistance. Think of running through piles of sand.

[9:36] Unknown speaker: Another compelling aspect is its correlation to a dance class. In any boutique spin class today, there is a level of respect paid to the instructor. You don't come late or leave early. You follow the routine and you applaud at the end of class, just as you would in a dance studio. The walls are mirrored with the instructor on top of a podium demonstrating each of the moves. You'll perform choreography on the handlebars, which is mostly useless theatrics, but it's fun, like learning a dance routine. When a class is riding together as a pack, totally in the pocket of the music, it can feel absolutely euphoric.

[10:17] Janet Fitzgerald: Janet was now officially in LA. Through the urging of a friend, she found a spiritual counselor who would change her life forever.

[10:30] Janet Fitzgerald: She would say things like, well, I see you have a ring on your finger. Now, are you in love with that man? And then I pause and she goes, it's okay. I already know the answer to that question. So let's go ahead and talk about a date that you're going to break up. That woman read me up and down and sideways. And it was the most transformative thing that I think has ever happened in my life. And it was also one of those things where she had said, she goes, you know, by the way, I'm not sure if you have ever thought about dating women before, but you definitely have had a lot of both male and female lifetimes. And so if you were to have an attraction toward women, it wouldn't be a shocking thing. Like, what?

[11:26] Janet Fitzgerald: It's now 1995, and the spin craze is grabbing a hold on Los Angeles. And a studio called Todd Tramps was the place to ride in West Hollywood. The headlining instructors at Todd Tramps were Andrea Lewin and the co-owner Debbie Rocker. But Janet was yet to be sold on spin.

[11:42] Janet Fitzgerald: Let's fast forward to now I have a girlfriend and I'm living in Burbank. OK, I am depressed, laying on the couch and my friends are like, listen, can you just please come to this spin class with us? And I'm like, no, I tried it one time and it's not for me. Andrea Lewin first started teaching at Todd Tramps and immediately brought her celebrity following. So some of the people in my class that just started showing up seal Rod Stewart. God bless Ashley Hamilton. I love him. I stood up in his wedding. A lot of supermodels, Angie Everhart, Scott Weiland, the guys from Bad Religion, Joey Castillo, who's an amazing drummer. He drummed with everybody. A lot of tattoos in that room.

[12:32] Janet Fitzgerald: And I went and I took the class and I dropped my head and I closed my eyes. And at some point in the class, I cried. I cried because I felt the first little glimpse of empowerment. And I was like, oh, I'm not dead. I'm in there. OK, I think I can save myself. I can come back out. I can get hold of this thing.

[12:53] Janet Fitzgerald: So what exactly was the difference between taking a spin class at a gym versus a dedicated studio like Todd Tramps? Well, you go to a gym. What's happening? People are on their phones coming in and out. Plus, the class is free, included in their gym membership. And let's face it, you get what you pay for. There's no real respect for what's going on. It's just like, oh, it's free. They're coming in and out. There's no real code. But Debbie laid down the law early and she didn't let people fuck around in her class. There were no shenanigans whatsoever. There was no crosstalk. There was no coming in late, leaving early. You did the routine and you respected the people that you were next to.

[13:44] Janet Fitzgerald: Janet had a vision and longed to create an experience beyond just a fitness class. People were just like, oh, come in with like 20 cassette tapes and been like, oh, which one of these do I want to listen to today? And I started to go like, why would I want to repeat a ride? Well, everyone did. Even Debbie did. Even Andrea did. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm going to make a fresh playlist every

[14:53] John Hill: Club mixes of pop songs, Janet was finding ways to take the rider through a musical experience. Playing old, tired, sped up—we could listen to real music on the bike! Why would you put a backbeat to "Rocketman"? Let's just listen to "Rocketman." That was a whole nother culture of gay boys teaching in West Hollywood. But there were still a few missing elements that her mentors excelled at. Janet was clearly told by the owner, you're doing a good job, but you need to develop your conversation and your motivational skills on the bike. You can't just be hot energy and good music. You have to learn to speak to the people. And she did. She figured it out by closely observing her mentors, the other instructors at the studio, Andrea and Debbie Rocker.

Suddenly, an opportunity. She was handed a highly coveted Sunday morning class, and she set out to strategize. Janet needed hype and a captive audience. In a stroke of marketing genius, Janet created a scarcity mindset, letting all of her riders know that this particular Sunday morning class was going to sell out. If they wanted a bike in class, they must sign up early. I'm bringing a bunch of people. I don't want my regulars pushed out of this. I need you on a bike that morning. Do you understand me? Phone flying off the hook. Everyone signed up. It sold out for the first time. Only Andrea and Debbie ever did it. I woke up that morning to teach, and I'm going to make sure that I knock this so far out of the park.

There's no way that anyone will ever miss another Sunday. They showed up. We turned people away, and I carefully curated the whole thing. We rattled the walls of that place, and there was never a Sunday that didn't sell out like that again because I knew I had the goods, but nobody else. Do you know what I mean? I was like, I know I can deliver, but I got to have the people there, and I got to have the hype. Word of mouth started to spread, and suddenly, Janet, Andrea, and Debbie Rocker were headlining back-to-back sold-out weekend classes at the studio. Now there's press being written about me. Now there's people in the parking lot trying to pay people to give them their bike. There's people that are fighting for front-row bikes.

There's articles about class and the guru of this and the guru of that. It just blows up, and then all of a sudden, you couldn't get in Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Then you couldn't get in Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. All of a sudden, you can't get in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You can't get into my class. This, of course, was the seed that SoulCycle was able to iterate on, brand, and scale to perfection. The addictive feeling of riding to rhythm led by a motivational figurehead you could project anything onto. Obsessive. They reminded me of my religious upbringing, evangelical Christians.

[18:30] John Hill: The structure, the ritual, the group, the community, and then the elation at the end, it was just very similar to being raised in a Christian environment. John has experimented with nearly every form of boutique fitness class because he travels between New York and L.A. for work. Well, it just paralleled so much of it. The church for me growing up was not as much about having intellectual discussions. It was about community and going and showing up and having a schedule and then seeing the same people every day and joking with them. Then you all collectively get together and praise the Lord. That is exactly like SoulCycle. People, we would get there at the same time. You would always go when your favorite preacher was preaching that whatever sermon or your favorite lady from down the block was leading the worship service.

You'd go to the favorite ones and then you'd all get together. Then by the end of the ride, you're all praising the Lord. It was rapturous. Everyone gets caught up in the spirit, slain in the Holy Spirit.

[19:49] John Hill: While Todd Tramp's became the hottest spin studio in West Hollywood, it was hardly glamorous. The locker room bathroom was carpeted. The nastiest carpet you've ever seen in the world was stains all over it that looked like perhaps the toilet had overrun several times. The studio itself was also carpeted at the time. That was, as you can imagine, very smelly and nasty. We had a mic stand. The sound system was floor to ceiling. It was this giant thing with these crazy speakers. It was so loud. It's amazing any of us can hear at all. The bikes were pretty rickety, and the place was pretty nasty. It was a freestanding building with all of these celebrities. Every celebrity you can imagine in Los Angeles spun in that building.

Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster, Alanis Morissette. The list could go on and on and on. Again, I just want to reiterate, the nastiest, smelliest, broken down piece of shit building was very unattractive. They did continue adding more and more and more and more bikes because we were bursting at the seams. All of us were living the high life thinking we were the hot shit. When I left, it was a big deal. It was a big, big deal. Channeling addiction into a healing practice is perhaps the most common path to fitness instructor next to musical theater major. I'm lucky to have never dealt with drug or alcohol addiction personally, but I've often wondered why I'm always drawn to people in recovery. A therapist explained that I have the same compulsive addict energy, and I'm drawn to those similarly on a healing path.

[21:47] John Hill: I first arrived in class because my inpatient rehab center had a partnership with SoulCycle where patients could ride for free. We had unlimited. When you hear that something's unlimited, you're like, even if I don't want this, I'm going to take everything I can because I'm paying $100,000 to go to this fucking rehab. I'm going to take this really expensive thing and just run it into the ground. You start going. It's like a bitter or just kind of a stick it to the man thing. Oh, yeah. I would go twice a day. It was something to do. I would smoke cigarettes. I would be smoking with the other guys in rehab. We would walk to the SoulCycle in Brooklyn. For something to do, it's either watch TV, eat pancakes, smoke cigarettes, nap, or do SoulCycle.

We just did that because we wanted to feel like we were doing something. You just walk in and be like, okay, here we go. Then I got really into it. I became super obsessed. I spoke about the obsessive compulsive nature of addicts and how it can be easily channeled into fitness while in recovery. Even before I started getting super into fitness, the first year I got sober, I just – and a lot of people say this. I was walking from Williamsburg to watch What Happens Live, my job at the time, across the Williamsburg Bridge to and from work. I just couldn't stop walking, listening to music. Your mind is active. It's like you wake up from being asleep from a horrible nightmare. When I got sober, for real, for real, it was like making amends to your body, which you've trashed for years.

That, for me, that's how I can explain it the most. That was the first little kernel of it. It was like, okay, I have polluted my body. I have treated it like shit. The only gift we actually have in this world is the body we're given. I have treated it like trash. What can I do? You learn in sobriety and recovery. You learn to be gentle with yourself, to be kind to yourself, something you don't do as an addict. You're mean to yourself. You tell yourself you're a piece of shit. You're worthless. You're a failure. You'd say all those things, but when you get sober, you get a little recovery. You start feeling like, oh, maybe I'm good. Maybe there are good things about life, so it's easier to treat your body better. Then, because we're addicts and compulsive, we take it to the extreme.

[24:12] John Hill: Janet and Andrea had become two of the most sought-after fitness instructors in Los Angeles. By the year 2000, they both left Todd Trance with investors throwing money at them to open and brand their own studios. Andrea's would become the rock and roll, rough-around-the-edges, CBGB's vibe called Made in L.A. It's one of those fairytale, weird-ass Hollywood stories. I have no money, and I'm walking down the street, and this woman pulls over, and she says to me, I want a membership. I'm like, we're not going to be open for a minute. She's like, I don't care. Who did I make the check to? It was New Year's Eve, and I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I'm like, I've never written a check for $10,490.

That was the rent at that time. There you have it. She was all because she was a client of mine, and she was going to follow me wherever I went. Therefore, she was like, I'm going to write a check right now. I just looked up and went, okay, I guess we're going to do this. SoulCycle went on to recruit nearly every Los Angeles instructor with a following, but the one they could never convince was Andrea. It's a funny story because they offered me a job a couple of times. It was like hats off, props to these women because they loved what they did, and they branded the hell out of it, which started to take down a lot of boutique fitness. It's funny if you ask people, they'll say, it's your class.

They just talk like you talk. I'm like, I wouldn't go that far, but it is. It's the groundwork we laid for it not being about writing, but I didn't like SoulCycle for myself. As SoulCycle was taking off, many of their top instructors had been Andrea's students for years. They flew me to New York, first of all, and threw out the red carpet. I was like, I like this. I'll come back again. I sat down and they cut right to the chase. Janet and I go way back. I mean, a lot of their lead teachers were my students for many years. It may have been stupid, but I taught that class for 23 years of my life. People followed me everywhere. People supported me. They were my family. And when I just start crunching numbers and I became a good businesswoman, which is awesome.

I said, when I'm done, I'm done. You know what I mean? I'm going to be done and then I'll be done. And then I was done. While Andrea was running Made in LA, Janet was approached by the CFO of Disney, who offered $1 million to go into business with him. Janet's studio would reflect the spiritual nature her classes embodied. This would become body and soul. It was about soul searching. It was about spirituality. It was about going deeper. It was about the next level. You have to understand what year it was, right? Because we opened in May of 99. So looking like a sushi restaurant was everything. Every hotel looked like a sushi restaurant. Every restaurant, even if they didn't serve sushi, looked like a sushi restaurant.

So we kind of looked like a sushi restaurant. I'm not going to lie to you. We had like fountains in the hallway and bamboo on the ceiling and backlit mirrors in the spin room, cucumber water in the training room. Because we had been in such like a scum teaching for so long, I was like, I want this to be special. Okay. I had orchids at the front desk and candles. It was honestly stunning. No one had ever seen studio fitness like this. So it put us on the map in that way. It's true. No one had seen studio fitness like this, including a devoted body and soul writer of Janet's, a talent agent named Julie Rice. Julie Rice, which at the time was named Julie Taylor, was taking my class. She always.

[28:15] Unknown speaker: Rode in about the third or fourth row by the windows. She probably rode with me for a long time without me even knowing her name. We never really had too much of a conversation either. She was just kind of quiet and did her ride and left. We didn't really have a relationship other than she loved my class and her life was changed and enhanced by it. She would talk often when she went to New York about missing my voice, couldn't find my voice. While working in Hollywood, Julie worked as a talent agent and manager for Benny Medina. Benny Medina was a record exec and known for turning celebrities into brands. Think Jennifer Lopez, Tyra Banks, Mariah Carey, and yeah, even Sean P. Diddy Combs. It was this understanding of how to turn instructors into brand ambassadors that would become one of SoulCycle's secret weapons.

[29:20] Unknown speaker: 2006, New York City. Julie Rice and her husband had left Hollywood to be closer to family in New York because they now had a five-month-old baby. They were now living on the Upper West Side and Julie was regularly taking classes at the most popular gym in the city, Reebok Sports Club. Julie became friends with her spin instructor at Reebok, a woman named Ruth Zuckerman. Ruth was a former dancer, fresh from a divorce, and a single mom to teenage girls. Ruth had been cobbling together a teaching schedule between the luxury Reebok Sports Club and out in East Hampton. While Julie was the core of Ruth's following at Reebok, she found another dedicated rider out in East Hampton named Elizabeth Cutler.

Just like Julie, Elizabeth also had relocated to Manhattan with a young baby. Separately, both Elizabeth and Julie confessed to Ruth that they had dreams of opening their own spin studio. While Julie did not have any money, Elizabeth did. With her own success in real estate and running her own healing practice, her family had money to invest in a startup. Naturally, Ruth set up a lunch to introduce Julie and Elizabeth. They would meet at the Soho House, where Julie and Elizabeth bonded instantly. The recipe was simple. Elizabeth brought the capital, Julie brought the marketing and branding, Ruth brought her riders and would be the face of the business.

[31:01] Unknown speaker: The story of SoulCycle is, you know, you get Julie and Elizabeth, who are these two incredibly media-trained, very savvy businesswomen who have come up with an idea of the story that they want to tell, but it's not the whole story. There's a third person that was integral to creating this thing, who was literally iced out, who was pushed out through legal means. For whatever reason, they just figured out one day, she doesn't fit into this. Maybe it's the rule of three thing, like maybe one person doesn't fit in. I don't know. But the bottom line is that everybody knows that Ruth brought everybody over for Reebok. Everybody knows that. There would be no SoulCycle without her. But she got iced out.

[31:46] Unknown speaker: SoulCycle opened its doors in April of 2006. Together, the three founders rented a space on the Upper West Side that they found on Craigslist. Per their lease, they were not allowed to use any outside signage. So you really had to find the place. It was very DIY. Julie and Elizabeth were designing the studio out of IKEA furniture. They folded their own towels and they passed out flyers on the street. The founders kicked around a few names before landing on SoulCycle. But I wonder if Julie's experience at Body and Soul had any lasting imprint. You know, that's the reason why there's no clocks on the walls, because Janet used to hate when people would stare at the clocks at Body and Soul and she would rip them off the wall and she would stick them on your handlebars.

[32:32] Unknown speaker: Ruth was the one and only instructor while Julie and Elizabeth ran the business. They knew every single rider who came through their doors. At the time, I was 30 years old. It was a pretty big point in my life because I had just gotten this big job. I was a buyer at a department store.

[32:49] Aaron: I am an original rider from the 72nd Street era. I work in fashion and first this year, I discovered Soul the way most savvy New Yorkers shared information in 2006, through blogs and email newsletters.

[33:02] Aaron: The reason why I bring that up is because I had like disposable income for the first time in my life. Because normally, you know, you would have classes that would be included in your gym membership and that's what everybody did. The idea of like going outside of your gym to pay more money, like it just didn't make any sense. No one was doing that at the time.

[33:18] Unknown speaker: In the early 2000s, subscribing to the Daily Candy email newsletter was your best bet for finding the best restaurants, clubs and bars in Manhattan. It was before social media, but I was very online. I mean, like everybody had a Blackberry then and I was all about my Blackberry. I used to be able to text on Blackberry without looking at it. I had the entire feel of the keyboard memorized that I could just, if I had to, I could type underneath my desk and not look at it. I knew exactly where all the keys were. I loved it. I was getting these newsletters every single day like Daily Candy. One week they reported about this boutique spin studio on 72nd Street. There wasn't a sign outside and it was all of these women. I mean, I was literally, I think I might have been the only man in the class for like at least the first like six classes that I went to. You had to be in the know to even know that this place existed.

[34:16] Glenis: We were at the Columbus Avenue Street Fair and there were these two girls underneath this yellow tent talking about their new brand SoulCycle and they were about to open the 72nd Street studio up. I don't know if they had opened it maybe that week, but they handed my husband a schedule on a postcard that I actually still have.

[34:36] Glenis: There were three classes and maybe it wasn't even seven days a week yet. My husband said, look, you should really go. I was like, wow, it's $28. Now it's $40, but it was $28 a class and I think I was paying like $28 a month for gym memberships. I think I was there either the first class or the first week.

[35:05] Unknown speaker: The people who were taking spin classes at big box gyms did not use the rest of the gym, so they were paying a monthly membership for just this one class. Therefore, it made it easy for them to abandon their gym membership and pay for something that solely focused on the thing they cared about.

[35:24] Unknown speaker: I remember we had to have shoes to clip in. I thought, wow, that's weird because I was used to riding in my sneakers. Ruth Zuckerman, who was one of the owners, she was teaching the class. I had taken one of her classes at Reebok and I thought to myself, wow, the music was in a place I had never heard before. I felt like I was back at Studio 54 in 1982. That's how it felt. I heard the sound system was going through my body. I always loved exercise, but that first day was different. There was no group yet. There was no community. It was just people exercising.

[36:05] Unknown speaker: Then when it started to get more popular, it was just strange because then you started seeing all these new people coming in. There was this Democratic fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton that got national press coverage. Then you'd hear that Brooke Shields was in the class or Katie Couric or Kelly Ripa, Tiki Barber. It was much, much different after that.

[36:28] Unknown speaker: I think by two months after I started going there, I came outside one day and there was just this line of town cars picking up all these rich ladies who lunch. There was no Uber at the time, so they were literally escalate after escalate. It was incredible.

[36:59] Unknown speaker: The remaining founders, Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, seem intent on expunging their former partner from their past. The company's story on SoulCycle's website doesn't even mention her. In a joint interview with Julie and Elizabeth, they simply said, Ruth worked for us for a time. We decided to part ways. We wish her the best. Yet they seemed visibly uncomfortable, hands tucked between their thighs as if bracing for impact.

[37:28] Unknown speaker: Julie and Elizabeth are media trained within an inch of their life. They control the narrative and they basically wrote her out of a story. We'll never know exactly what the conversation was between the three women, but we can certainly piece the story together. While Julie and Elizabeth were experienced businesswomen, Ruth was naive and did not have any proper legal protection in place.

[37:54] Unknown speaker: She did not have her contract written. That's very sad and also very shocking. Maybe she thought it was so small at the time that it wasn't necessary. I have no idea. I got hired into such a whirlwind. I had to create an army so fast. I didn't even have two seconds to think about what happened to Ruth or why it didn't work out.

[38:20] Unknown speaker: May this be a lesson for all of us, and I'm learning it too, is to get that shit in writing and don't assume that other people are going to do right by you. In talking with Janet, I remembered how Ruth still maintains to this day that, quote, they don't know anything about spin. They don't need to. They don't need to. That's why they've been successful. No one else is open. But here's the thing. We could say they don't know anything about spin and that's maybe true, but they knew the heart of spin and the soul of spin, and that's why it was successful.

[39:01] Unknown speaker: Julie and Elizabeth are media trained within an inch of their life. They control the narrative and they basically wrote her out of a story. Maybe at some point, these two businesswomen were like, wait a second, we don't need her. She's a fitness instructor. Ruth wasn't savvy enough to lawyer up the way these other two women were. So I think that she didn't have the legal protections or the contracts in place by the time that this got very, very big and started making a lot of money. I think that Julie and Elizabeth were like, we don't need her. And Ruth didn't have the power to stay in. And all of a sudden, she showed up and she realized she wasn't a part of it anymore.

[39:40] Unknown speaker: And what about the riders? Did they have any idea what was going on behind the scenes? I could tell you what I heard, but I don't know if it's true. I mean, I heard that she just wasn't pulling her weight as she wanted to just teach and do what she does. And they needed more help on the nitty gritty. I mean, that's what I had heard, that she just really didn't want to have anything to do with the financials. And back then, you're like, oh my God, she's not replaceable. But look what happened. You're like, oh God.

[40:08] Unknown speaker: So you know these people who work there, you talk to the people who are at the desk, and you got a sense that it was something that was not talked about. They weren't going to talk about it with you. And from some of the instructors, it was just, it was a nonstarter. You just didn't talk about her. She wasn't talked about. She was completely written out.

[40:26] ♪ Musical number: "Naughty Nadia" — performed by BETTY ♪

[41:17] Unknown speaker: Cult of Body and Soul is created, executive produced, and narrated by Jess Rothschild. Sound design by Kaitlin White. Theme song and original music composed by Elizabeth Ziff. Naughty Nadia by the band Betty.

[41:33] Unknown speaker: My dear, my dear Bugger off, my dear. Your sighs and sobs won't save you Nor will your sexy cries. Time for you to understand The consequence of lies. Naughty, naughty Nadia makes promises she can't keep. She's out dancing with the boogeyman while you are fast asleep.