Gotham Chopra

Gotham Chopra (born Gautam Chopra on February 23, 1975) is an American sports documentarian, media entrepreneur, producer, podcast host, director, journalist, and author. He is a co-founder of Religion of Sports, Liquid Comics, Chopra Media, and the Chopra Well. He is known for his sports-centric films, having worked with athletes such as Tom Brady, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Simone Biles and Michael Strahan. Early life Chopra was born Gautam Chopra in what is now part of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts in 1975, the son of spiritualist and author Deepak Chopra and his wife, Rita. He is a first-generation American and the first in his family to be born outside of India. He and his sister Mallika were raised in the Boston suburb of Lincoln. As a child, Chopra was extremely interested in sports, enough that his mother worried that he would never have a career. He is a lifelong Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins fan. His favorite athlete while growing up was Larry Bird. At age 13, he went on tour "as a roadie" with Michael Jackson, a friend of his father's, on his Dangerous World Tour. Chopra's father was busy and rarely home during the first years of Chopra's childhood. He recalls that his father drank and smoked a lot until he joined the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement when Chopra was five. The family as a whole started practicing TM. Chopra graduated from Belmont Hill School in 1993, then Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in English and Literature. In 1993, while Chopra was in college, the family relocated to California. While at Columbia, he wrote his first book, Child of the Dawn, and helped Michael Jackson write lyrics to his songs. Career After graduating from Columbia, Chopra was a news anchor for the Los Angeles-based Channel One News, which broadcast to teenagers in social studies classes across the United States. He found out later that he was hired because one of the Channel One executives was a fan of his fathers'. He became a war correspondent and was stationed internationally. It was during this time that a producer recommended Chopra change the spelling of his name, Gautam, to match how he pronounced it to prevent mispronunciation. In August 2001, he was arrested at Islamabad International Airport when empty bullet shells were found in his bag. These were a gift from the Taliban, who he had been in Pakistan to interview.