111: Who's Afraid of Teal Swan (pt 2) (w/Jennings Brown)
Our guest today, Jennings Brown, is a bright light in an increasingly chaotic cult-content economy. His 2018 podcast on Teal Swan, The Gateway, produced with Gizmodo, sets a high-watermark standard for research, fairness, and sensitivity. A lot has happened since that pod dropped: #MeToo, MAGA, QAnon, COVID, and now a post-reality Supreme Court in which Justice Thomas publishes a concurrence in which he states that COVID vaccines use the tissues of aborted fetuses. All of which is to say: we don’t know how intensely the insanity of the era will escalate, but we do know that clear, ethical reporting on difficult issues is a very thin lifeline back to sanity, communication, and trying to do something.If you listened to episode 109 (if you haven’t we encourage you to stop here and go there), you’ll hear our criticisms of The Deep End docuseries about Teal Swan. You’ll hear us interview the director, Jon Kasbe. We lean on him, maybe too gently, on the numerous integrity issues with his film. Bottom line: with deceptive edits and a vacuum of expert commentary and research, we feel that this project is a real setback for everyone trying to understand cultic dynamics in the online age. And as we’ll report at the top of the show, before our interview with Brown, the story of this embedment is only getting messier.Our interview with Jennings steers clear of the muck, because what we really wanted to hear was all about his process, his editorial decisions, and the help he got from his producers. We were also very lucky to have him drop some previously unreported data into the mix. Spoiler alert: it’s about the types of things that Swan used to write in her secret runic alien language.Show NotesJennings Brown — About page with tip line contact infoEpisode 109: Who's Afraid of Teal Swan? w/ Jon KasbeJon Kasbe wishing Teal Swan happy birthdayBits Sola rapping Teal Swan happy birthdayGizmodo Launches 'The Gateway,' an Investigative Podcast About a Controversial Internet Spiritual GuruOpen Shadow — Paola MarinoPaola Marino on The Deep End (clip)Jennings Brown — Revelations
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You can follow us individually on Twitter and collectively on, that's including Derek, on Instagram and also on Facebook.
You can leave a rating for us on Apple or whatever your podcast service is and you can also support us on Patreon where for five dollars a month you get access to all of our bonus content and You get early access to something that we're going to tell about a little bit more in this little intro here.
This episode is the second of what might end up being three open episodes in our Swan Song series, which will continue on Patreon.
I want to interrupt you, Matthew.
access bonus episodes on all things teal so early access means that we'll paywall each episode for a few weeks and then we'll put them right here in the regular feed like easter eggs in addition to our main thursday episodes i want to interrupt you matthew yeah i want to interrupt you because i feel like every time we talk about this stuff we're talking about it as being teal centric and And in a way, it is, because that's sort of what's popped up on the cultural radar.
But in another way, it's all of these underlying, related, overlapping issues and cultural phenomena that sort of spiral around what Teal's story represents, right?
And what the representation of Teal is about.
Right.
Yeah, and you're sort of prefacing the rest of how I'm describing it here, because I think we are using the phenomenon around the Deep End and Teal Swan as a filter, actually, for talking about how there's this convergence of themes that have really kind of haunted our beat.
In the first A bonus episode for this series.
We're actually going to put you in the limelight to describe how a cultish yoga group that you were in during the late 1990s and early aughts.
It was led by Anna Forrest.
How you trauma-bonded over her insistence that her students harbored repressed memories of childhood abuse.
And I can just say that I think our discussion of the disaster of false memories will be nuanced and pretty high-level, I think, given that we're both cult survivors and we're friends and we're comfortable together.
So that drops this coming Monday in Patreon.
And future episodes, as you were mentioning, will dig into the foundational literature of the satanic panic to study the ways in which SWAN both recovers and updates its core fever dreams.
Now, as with episode 109, today we'll be talking about stories of child sexual abuse, so do take care of yourself.
In Spirituality 111, Who's Afraid of Teal Swan, Part 2, with Jennings Brown.
Our guest today, Jennings Brown, is a bright light in an increasingly chaotic cult content economy.
His 2018 podcast on Teal Swan, The Gateway, produced with Gizmodo, sets a high-watermark standard for research, fairness, and sensitivity.
A lot has happened since that pod dropped.
Hashtag MeToo, MAGA, QAnon, COVID, and now a post-reality Supreme Court in which Justice Thomas publishes a concurrence where he states that COVID vaccines use the tissues of aborted fetuses.
All of which is to say, we don't know how intensely the insanity of the era will escalate, but we do know that clear ethical reporting on difficult issues is a very thin lifeline back to sanity, communication, and trying to do something.
If you listened to episode 109, now if you haven't, we encourage you to stop here now and go there, you'll hear our criticisms of the Deep End docuseries about Teal Swan.
You'll hear us interview the director, John Casby.
We lean on him, maybe too gently, on the numerous integrity issues with his film.
And bottom line, with deceptive edits and a vacuum of expert commentary and research, we feel that this project is a real setback for everyone trying to understand cultic dynamics in the online age.
And as we'll report off the top of the show, before our interview with Brown, the story of this embedment is only getting messier.
Our interview with Jennings steers clear of the muck, because what we really wanted to hear was all about his process, his editorial decisions, and the help he got from his producers.
We were also very lucky to have him drop some previously unreported data into the mix.
Spoiler alert, it's about the types of things that Swan used to write in her secret runic alien language.
All right, Julian, let's start with a clip.
Here's John Casby, who we interviewed two weeks ago, wishing Teal Swan a happy birthday.
Now, this was just leaked by Swan yesterday, so it's July 1st today.
She put it up onto Facebook as part of her ongoing defense against the Deep End, and she claims that this birthday message was sent to her for her June 2021 birthday.
So, here it is.
The video that director John Casby made me for my birthday.
Happy birthday, Teal.
Hope you're having a great day.
I speak for the whole film crew when I say we have so much appreciation and gratitude to you and everyone on your team for welcoming us into your lives and into your family.
I feel like we've learned so much along the way and Just feel lucky to have met someone like you who's so brave and intuitive and willing to do the hard things to make the world a better place.
So thank you for doing what you do and for being who you are.
We love you.
All right.
So if Swan is correct that this is for June 2021, that would put these sentiments 10 months after that confrontational scene in episode one with the man named Simon who was Challenging her on her expertise and you know who she looked up to and whether or not she was accountable to anybody.
But it would also have been two months before the waterboarding scene featuring what appears to be Sabrina, but then resolves sort of unnoticeably until it's pointed out into Sylvana.
So again, we refer you to episode 109 for the detail on that.
But these are two scenes that John has said in interviews were chilling to him.
And then this is the birthday message.
And Julian, what Comes to mind when you hear that.
I mean, it's, uh, it's very loving.
It's very sweet.
It is, uh, simultaneously an expression of personal, uh, really kind regard, but it's also, he's, he's idealizing her.
He's, he's talking about her as this really important person who's doing amazing work and, and is willing to do the hard things and is so courageous.
It's, uh, You know, on the one hand, someone could say he was faking that so as to win her trust and then, you know, do a documentary that was critical of her.
I would wonder more if he had gone down the teal rabbit hole and had been kind of pilled into really believing her Her presentation as this really important, brave, insightful, intuitive, gifted teacher and leader.
And who knows what happened after that?
You know, something just occurred to me listening to you, and it's not in my notes here, but I'm realizing that hearing his voice, this is kind of what you would expect to hear from the director of an art film who was praising their lead actor for their daring choices.
And, you know, I've done enough theatre in my time to know what that kind of encouragement sounds like.
And there's this overlap into sort of like psychological praise for openness and for vulnerability and so on.
And so, yeah, there's something more than the fraternization going on.
There's also a kind of encouragement, I hear, whether that's intended or not.
Yeah, that's a really interesting hit, right?
That they're sort of in this little, very close theater company for a time together while they create this piece of art.
Right.
And you're the star, and I really want to acknowledge you as the star on your birthday because your bravery is what is going to make our work really meaningful.
Yeah, everything is revolving around you and the bravery that you have to deal with this material, whether this material is like, you know, mental health issues and suicidality or the script of a hit play, do you know?
Like, what is the material?
The material is the spectacle of Teal Swan at this point, right?
Alright, well, we've got another clip, but I advise taking some prophylactic cringe medication.
Now, I'm not sure what works.
Probably fucking turmeric.
Maybe a mindfulness meditation on how deep down you yourself are a great big nerd, and there but for the grace of God, you too might find yourself one day rapping praise to a satanic panic throwback.
You know, you could take a big long inhale.
I, too, can be a great nerd who wants to get in and have good vibes.
You can do a big exhale.
It's okay to make youthful mistakes that backfire and increase cultic chaos.
The second clip I'm going to show you is Bitsola.
This is the producer that was with us for the entire duration of the project.
Here is her birthday video to me.
Once again, this is from June of 2021.
Happy birthday to you!
Excuse my sweaty appearance here.
I mean, happy birthday.
I hope you're just having a sensational day and celebrating in all the ways that only you all can.
And I'm so sorry not to be there.
But thank you for seeing each of us, for seeing us for who we are and helping us on our journeys as we attempt to share your journey with the world.
It's a really special thing and it's rare.
And I know we're all incredibly grateful to be a part of it.
In thinking of today, down to business, in thinking of today, I wrote a little poem, a little rap poem, so I will now read it.
Okay, so where to start?
The Queen, she looks on over all of us so that our trauma is seen.
It's both a laugh and serene, concocts exotic cuisine, colourful, tasty and lean, from all the places she's been.
She gets past the junk, the clunk, debunks what's defunct in every one of our brains, so we become less deranged.
Her presence never goes missed, through obstacles she persists.
She is a fire, inspires, we but inquire, admire, as not to mire in dire life paths, crossfire of feeling, her voice a lyre of truth, whether it's soft or uncouth.
She's not afraid.
Her mission to expand humankind's vision.
Her cognition sees fission and heals it with erudition.
A rhetorician physician in human pain demolition.
Her intuition alone has no living competition.
She has ambition, volition, is thankful with exposition.
Puts herself in position to remake healing tradition with unique disposition for giving us all a chance to take a positive stance towards a future more bright and more deserving of light.
On top of that, that she's a star wears heels and still can walk far as we stare on amazed my shoes and envious gaze so when i think of today it feels most pressing to say that till you are a wonder you lead us through as we blunder we're here to celebrate you with joy and gratitude true go outside laugh and play because june 16th your day happy birthday my name is my name is what go what i don't
i don't even know what to say i I mean, it's, yeah, that is, that was something.
I feel so, I feel so awful with such muscular tension.
But you know what, you know what jumped out at me right away?
In addition to all of the, you know, hail fellow well match kind of like, sorry for my sweaty appearance, oh my goodness, hello, all that lovely English kind of stuff, before she does the slam poem thing, she says, down to business.
And I was like, Oh, that's, that's an interesting, perhaps unconscious tell, you know, we don't want to read into it too deeply, but it's like, okay, here's, here's the business of delivering this thing.
But I don't personally think that I can imagine myself crafting, uh, such an over the top,
It's a praise-filled, you know, just generous offering of like, I'm going to reflect back to you all of the things that I think are so amazing about you as a queen who sees all of our trauma, who is remaking healing traditions, who can walk in heels in a way that just blows my mind.
She can walk far.
She can walk far in heels.
Well, yeah, that was the one sort of rhyme that maybe deserved some editing.
It's, I can't imagine putting something like that together and then delivering it.
Now of course she takes great joy in delivering this and she's sort of showing off something in a fun way about herself, but I can't believe that in that moment she wasn't sincere.
That's just my interpretation.
I believe in the sincerity as well, and I think that It's also the generous take.
It feels right in my gut.
And the problem is that all of this incredible boundary-less sloppiness actually begins to generate Paranoia and conspiracy theories amongst the people who most need clarity around the content of somebody like Thiel.
So, on our own feed, people are reasonably wondering whether Casby and Swan are actually engaged in some sort of long con for engagement for both of their companies.
That's an interesting angle.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So maybe, so in other words, maybe this is all part of how, how we sell this thing is by creating this subterfusion and drama.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Can you, can you really fault anybody for, for being that cynical?
No.
Then B. Schofield, who's the veteran gonzo cultbuster that Molly Monaghan broke her cult teeth on, quote-unquote, investigating and smearing on behalf of a client, dug up this comment from a Teal supporter, which says, the more this story goes on, the more it's looking like they have been, meaning Casby's team, have been directly sent by agents of the state
to affect Teal's sense of self, confidence, self-trust, specifically by sending characters that mimic traits such as empathy, compassion, etc., which they know Teal would take to.
So great!
So now we have more Swan followers who are justifiably more distrustful of the world, more prone to paranoia, more prone to black and white thinking, Yeah, and you called this, you know, when we talked about this in the last episode, and as we were preparing for that episode, the first one on this topic, this is something that we discussed.
This is what is so fascinating about the story as we're covering it, right, is that there is this documentary that comes out.
It draws a lot of attention.
It gets a lot of very quick hot takes about how it's completely damning, fertile, and it gets my hot take for the first three episodes while I waited for the fourth, that this was, you know, glamorizing her and both sides in it in a way that I thought was irresponsible.
But the longer we stay with this unfolding story, I think As we started to catch on to what was going on, that was exactly the concern we had.
Like, wow, there are all of these people who might be trying to make sense of their relationship with Teal and with her work and with her community, who would benefit from something really sober and really careful with high journalistic integrity.
And potentially, we thought, instead, they're getting something that could do exactly what you just said, amplify paranoia, create a sense of insular bonding around like, oh, it's the agents of the state that are trying to ruin something so revolutionary and so, you know, beautiful and truthful and transformational that now we have to get even more tightly defended against any legitimate criticisms.
Well, I also just think about how The small number of Teal Tribe people who would already reflexively defend her to the death are surrounded by an outer layer of people who are very attracted to her messaging and to her content.
I mean, I don't have data on this, but it's over a million followers on Facebook.
So what percentage of those people are kind of in this middle ground where this is an interesting person who seems to be filling a gap in a negligent health care system, who seems to be coming at things with some kind of third wave feminist empowerment, you know, juju.
What about those people?
is going to help clarify their relationship with that content.
It certainly isn't going to be something that is so easily portrayed as a hit job, that's so easily portrayed as deceptive and emotionally manipulative.
It reminds me of Rajneesh and Rajneesh's brand washing into our show and how many people I've known in the yoga community who knew nothing about the history, nothing about what went on in the inner circle, nothing about all of the big news craziness that happened, I guess it was in the 80s.
And just would see memes on Facebook and just had the sense of like, yeah, Osho, he was a brilliant, insightful, holy man who inspired people to live their best lives.
And then when you would tell them about the background and the history, they'd say, well, you weren't really there.
You don't know what really happened.
There's always stuff like this that tries to take down, I mean, they crucified Jesus, right?
Right.
You know, let's just imagine for a moment that the crew, that Caspi, that Bitz, that they are, from the outset, teal-pilled.
That they don't do much diving into the journalism, that they don't listen to the Gateway carefully, that they don't...
Really look into, you know, how does this material around recovered memories come from Barbara Snow and what does that mean?
Let's imagine that they just find the ritualized processes to be helpful and let's imagine that they're really taken and smitten by her charisma and the filming process is
Three years long, there might be a turning point there where they realize they are not going to release the devotional portrait that they felt they might be starting.
Or because I don't, when John speaks about how he went in open trying to find out what the real sort of feeling was of Teal's community, these birthday messages indicate that there was a real attraction towards her sort of charismatic flair, plus the fact that we didn't really follow up on that he describes having been brought up in a very spiritual environment and having been a seeker all of his life.
I mean, the thing that's, trying to get the timeline right is interesting because During 2021, I would imagine they were done with shooting?
Do you know what the timeline is in terms of which three years?
So I would imagine they were there 2017 to 2020.
No, because Gateway is published in 2018.
Oh, gotcha.
Okay.
And so there's got to be a half a year or more between the dropping of that podcast and even the casting of the production.
So there's a pretty quick turnaround between when they leave So, in this generous reading, let's imagine that they have been pilled, that they really have signed on to this project, and they want to represent it in a In a very emotive way that's respectful and that communicates the beneficence of her message.
And at what point and what kind of guidance from the producers, from the money people, what might have intervened to say, Okay, are you getting too close to these subjects?
Or can you tell us a little bit about your process?
Like, I'm just wondering, at what point, if this was the kind of bonding that was going on within the filming environment, was there any way of stopping that?
Was there any way of pulling away?
Was there any way of gaining more distance?
Or are we talking about a fairly small film crew That could easily get subsumed into a kind of wild ride.
Well, seeing as we're speculating, I will say that looking at the different videos, because there's, what are there, three videos of crew members giving their happy birthday greetings, they seem to me young.
Super creative, like the psychological type, you know, that's open to new experience, that's very fluid, that's very, just like lovely, the kinds of people that I've always enjoyed.
Yeah, Team Casby, really.
I mean, everybody has the same vibe on the team, right?
That's right, that's right, yeah.
There's nobody who's 45.
No.
Or 50, like you and I saying, oh, well, we're supposed to send a birthday message.
I hope it's a good one, Theo.
Yeah, there's none of that.
They're ready and they have the beautiful, messy hair of someone who's just rolled out of bed and wants to, like, off the cuff say some inspiring things.
So, my point is...
I would speculate that this is a small group, they go in, I would actually wonder if some of them, certainly Casby and probably Bitts, would have reviewed Gateway, and we have some reason to think that that's the case, and would have looked at some of that material, but as is often
You know, to my chagrin, I often find that no matter with certain people, no matter how much you present to them a well laid out kind of body of evidence or, or background information, they can still choose to disregard and say, well, you know, Okay, that's what one person thought or yeah, that Barbara Snow thing was kind of interesting.
I didn't really look into it any more deeply because who knows with therapists and I don't know, whatever, like they may not be as curious or be as impacted by that kind of information.
And so going into it saying, let's really approach this as an experiential deep dive as, as Casby said to us.
And I would, I would wonder about them going through Whatever experience they went of really bonding with them, really trying the different therapeutic techniques, being the anthropologist who's both an observer and a participant in the scene, right?
Being transformed, as Caspi said, he actually wanted to be.
That was his intention.
And that's what he wanted then to have the audience also experience.
But at some moments, maybe having real misgivings, maybe filming certain scenes and being like, wow, she was really harsh in that scene.
But she's amazing and she's a truth speaker and she knows what's up and she's psychic.
So I'm going to go with it.
Or, wow, that seemed kind of abusive, but I don't know enough of the history, etc.
And then maybe in the editing process, going over all of that stuff again and having some sort of ambivalence emerging about how they really felt.
Yeah, he said specifically, there was no doubt in my mind that we were filming abuse between participants.
Do you remember?
Okay, now if the birthday message comes after this, there's another aspect of... Yes.
Indoctrination or being sucked into a teal-pilled state that becomes relevant here because I can imagine if those birthday wishes are sincere that the person who is sincerely influenced by this person is pushing those moments to the side as all actually high-demand group members do.
And actually, they're reaffirming in the mode of protesting too much what they actually want to be true, which is, you are a wonderful person who's doing an incredibly brave and rare thing.
And so, yeah, there might be some almost overcompensation going on if that birthday message comes late in the game.
Yeah, and that's why I was trying to make sense of the timeline to situate those birthday messages in like where they may have been in that process.
And then of course the other thing that may have occurred, and I don't know if we're going to talk about this later, but is that they may have presented the footage
Put together in whatever way their initial cut was, maybe to Freeform, maybe to Hulu, and they may have gotten feedback that just said, you know, this is too much of a puff piece, it's beautifully shot, what you've done is really special, but can you maybe heighten some of the interpersonal drama in a way that would make this bingeable content?
Right.
Anyway, lots of unknowns.
They might be sincere, they might have been teal-pilled, they might be grifters.
I mean, we just don't know, but I think we can say that there's a kind of absolute disregard for boundaries professionally that's now on full display.
And because that happens, the work of legit journalism on high-demand groups becomes, like, a lot harder for people like us.
I mean, that's not what my main complaint is, but I mean, it's a big impact because even if by some miracle good journalism does get made, it gets funded, which is really difficult, stuff like this will make it entirely non-credible for those who need it most.
You know, and just to give a sense of how, I think, pervasive I'm starting to understand this problem to be, it's that Bitsola is also a producer on HBO's The Vow.
And I hate to say this, but this means that that production is compromised.
I mean, I already had problems with a number of things, but, you know, this is another sort of issue, I think.
I knew that, but I hadn't really let it sink in and put those things together, because really what you're describing now is an emerging Genre of very, very high profile cult, beautifully shot cult documentaries that is lacking some of the types of analysis that we feel would do a cultural and social service to people in terms of understanding this type of phenomenon.
Yeah, and so cults are becoming big business.
And the irony is that that's not just for those who lead them at this point, but for those who use them as content.
So, as with every commodification process, we get this sacrifice of nuance on the altar of engagement.
And, you know, so I'm sure that over the coming months we'll be talking more about this monetization of cultic dynamics and traumatized sociality.
I mean, it's part of our theme anyway as we cover how trauma awareness as a therapeutic discipline or discourse is itself commodified.
Yeah, so I would say that in the meantime, for listeners, if you want cult-reporting, integrity, palate-cleansing material, I recommend viewing or going back to Seduced featuring India Oxenberg and directed by Cecilia Peck and featuring expert analysis from Friends of the Pod.
Janja Lalic, who was on episode 64, and Rachel Bernstein, who has visited us for episodes 65 and 99.
Seduced is extraordinary because it's survivor-centered, it's closely, narrowly focused on India's experience and also her self-discovery.
The scenes are recreated in dreamlike animation form, so there's no sort of We've got a great interview with Jennings Brown.
How did you feel?
TV, the entire thing is trauma informed.
It's extremely well resourced.
And at the same time, there's nothing dry or clinical about it at all, even though you have experts on screen saying, "Hey, this is what's happening." So anyway, enough.
We've got a great interview with Jennings Brown.
How did you feel?
What did you come away with from our sit down with him, Julian?
You know, I thought that Jennings was extraordinary.
I thought he was a down-to-earth, really curious, really humble, and honest, high-integrity human being.
And I don't string that list of descriptors before anyone's name lightly.
You don't, you don't.
Like me, you're pretty curmudgeonly that way.
Yeah.
We hate people, basically.
A lot of people.
We're misanthropes, yeah.
I felt that he was...
There are things about the preparation that he did and the stories he uncovered and the threads he pursued for the gateway that he set aside at times because he didn't feel like he had enough information to proceed responsibly, even though it would have been sensational stuff.
And at times out of a sense of human decency and empathy towards Teal and wanting to not, you know, pile on in terms of how many layers of stuff he was sort of exposing about her.
Yeah, I thought the world of him is one of my favorite interviews that we've done.
All right, we'll roll it.
I'll just say that The Gateway is linked in the show notes along with Jennings' new fascinating investigation of the Northern Californian Fellowship of Friends cult called, the podcast is called Revelations.
Also, he's asked us to publicize that he has a tip line email address.
It is jenningsbrown at protonmail.com or His DMs are open on Twitter or Instagram at T Jennings Brown.
Jennings Brown, thank you so much for taking the time to visit us on Conspirituality Podcast.
It's Matthew here with Julian.
Welcome.
Hey, thanks.
I really appreciate it.
Great to have you.
Now, we're not going to make you trot out the Teal Swan 101 primer here, because you have done that enough.
We've also covered the facts in detail in several episodes, including two episodes back.
And to do that, we've leaned on your super tight reporting on the Gateway Podcast, which we'll link to yet again in the show notes.
So, I think that our listeners are up to speed in the Teal Department, but what we do want to explore are the several stories within stories that I think have been vibrating in the margins of your reporting for a number of years now, and which we believe shed a lot of light on how a story like this comes to the public, but also what can happen to it in the marketplace of ideas.
Now, you and I have spoken a little bit by phone, we've emailed a little bit more.
There's a bunch of really bright threads that we're going to pull on.
And as we do, I think we're going to start to see how the internet holds and exacerbates our vulnerabilities as individuals and as historical actors.
So, we're going to be talking about how echoes of the satanic panic Pizzagate, a frivolous lawsuit that you survived, a personal depression, and then a seemingly random cue-up of the MASH theme song in your algorithm all connected to weave together this now central chord in your reporting life.
And just as a caveat before we start, the current events context for our conversation, of course, is the growing visibility of and controversy surrounding John Casby's The Deep End series on Hulu.
And your reporting in The Gateway earned you an executive producer of creative position on that documentary.
But there's also a long and winding path to look at that shows what happened to that reporting in terms of editorial control and creative issues.
And we'll focus on that a little bit.
As our listeners know, we've interviewed John Casby and covered the issues related to the doc, and we'll continue to do so in our Patreon stream.
So we're going to leave that discussion there.
So at the beginning of the beginning, we've heard you note numerous times in previous interviews that you're scrolling through YouTube late at night, It's a It's just after you have gone through a relationship breakup and you happen upon Teal Swan.
Now, that is true, but there's also something else going on because You were then, as now, a freelance journalist, but at that point you were facing a lawsuit brought by a proto-QAnon actor.
So how old were you at the time and how far into your tech reporting career?
What happened with all of this?
What's the origin story?
Well, I want to clarify first, I'm a development executive producer on The Deep End, which, you know, is a big distinction.
I mean, there was the two, the executive producers on it, you know, they put a lot of work and, you know, years of their life into it.
I was involved in development, and we can talk about that more later, but just wanted to clarify that distinction.
But yeah, going back to the beginning, Yeah, at the time I was, it was, I just left a job at Bocative, which was a kind of startup tech news site that is no longer around.
But I was, this was 20, Going into 2016, I was reporting on kind of the dark corners of the internet, a lot of fringe conspiracy theories and extremist online and a lot of info wars world.
I was also reporting on like uh sanctioned suicide forums where people were posting about you know how to you know having discussions about suicide but I was just yeah this was like 2014-2016 I was really felt like I was kind of in the in the trenches of the weird and dark corners of the internet so I was already sort of in that world and I already saw I mean I was like sort of watching you know the rise of pizzagate and and how conspiracy theories were taking over and and
You know, this was a time when Trump's platform was rising and a lot of people didn't take it seriously, but just seeing that sort of fervor, like what was festering on the internet, I was like, there's something building here that's truly unusual and terrifying.
So that I think I was already sort of in at least like my internet profile probably looked like a lot of the kind of people who are who are genuinely interested in these sort of things.
I mean my YouTube watch history is bonkers and all kind of ancient alien stuff and people posting about suicide and
I think right before, so I left Locative and I was doing more freelance stuff and I did this story for the Daily Beast on this guy who is sort of becoming the face of Pizzagate and I don't really want to say his name just because he's sort of become my Voldemort, but you know you can read the article, you can post it, I don't mind, but it's just now anytime he sort of Put his attention on me.
I get all sorts of death threats or you know attacks online, right?
Yeah, so this was I was doing this story on kind of the rise of pizzagate and this guy who he was a cryptocurrency vlogger and then kind of pivoted to Hillary's health and then pivoted into pizzagate and that's when His YouTube views went from like 500 to 5,000 to 50,000 and he just really blew up.
And I, as somebody who'd kind of been reporting on the rise of these sort of things, I was fascinated by that.
I mean he'd written a book Uh, called all your favorite conspiracy theories are wrong and something about like how to become a publicity whore off of a sort of a fake news sensation.
I was like, I just like this guy is kind of the perfect guy to become the face of Pizzagate.
And then also he was like validated by all that support and then really leaned into it.
So I was just reporting on it from just kind of the fascination of who he was as sort of a profile, and then he, after that story came out, he sort of turned his focus on me, and I never dealt with that kind of Just angry mob of people and trolls.
Now looking back, you know, probably a lot of bots just attacking my Twitter.
And, you know, I got a threatening phone call saying something effective like, you know, we're going to make you a famous journalist just like you've always wanted.
Oh man.
Yeah, I was scrubbing everything with my address off the internet, afraid of getting doxxed.
He had this huge YouTube following.
He started making YouTube videos about me with a sort of countdown to when he was going to sue me.
And then, you know, everybody was so then, of course, all of his followers were sort of piling on that.
And the time I was I was freelance and I didn't really have any sort of guarantee that the Daily Beast would would represent me, you know, would help me with with a lawsuit.
They eventually did, thankfully.
But, you know, as a freelancer, you don't just have that.
That's the sort of that's the good thing about being at a being full time staff writer at a news organization is, you know, Basically, the lawyers have your back.
But this, yeah, I was going into it a little blind.
I was scared.
I was 30, 31 as I was reporting this.
This was 2017.
Yeah, it was just me in my Brooklyn studio, between jobs freelancing, like you said, just coming out of a breakup.
And so I both had the My journalistic curiosities based on that, you know, I think I was watching a lot of YouTubes at that particular time when Teal sort of came in.
I remember considering a story about people who review InfoWars supplements.
You mean people who review them for YouTube?
Like they take InfoWars supplements and they see how big they're bulking up kind of thing?
Yeah, just like the brain force.
I'm like, oh, I have so much clarity, you know?
Yeah.
Just to show you how deep in that weird world I was, where I was both reporting on kind of dark things, but some that I was like, this is weird and fascinating.
And, uh, you know, fortunately, I don't know, nobody, also something that you would think was niche, but wasn't, isn't actually niche given the numbers, because, because Jones is actually selling way more supplements that we know.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, a lot of the stuff I was sort of looking into, it kind of became bigger stories.
Like, I think a year after that, there was this, someone reported on how, like, Goop and InfoWars used some of the same ingredients in there, some of the same products, and so there was more interest on that.
But I was so deep in the stuff that seemed fringe at the time, and then became so much bigger and darker and more twisted.
So yeah, that's why I think I was kind of early to getting into Teal and kind of connecting the threads to Satanic Panic and the rise of QAnon and all that.
Because I was going into it as a tech reporter, but I was also sort of a seeker and interested, and I was sort of starting to see the things connect.
But I wasn't really thinking like that when, you know, Teal Swan started appearing in my YouTube recommendation bar.
And as you said, you know, it's in the podcast, but I was reporting all these weird things and Planet X conspiracies and ancient aliens and, you know, the Panama Papers was actually, you know, there was some deeper purpose for it.
All these weird things were happening.
I was trying to make sense of it.
And I was in a dark place.
And then, for whatever reason, it recommended... I don't know if it was because I was reporting on sanctioned suicide forums, which goes back to the early days of the internet.
But for whatever reason, it recommended the MASH theme song.
And I was listening to it.
And as you know, suicide is painless.
And then it recommended I watch a Teal Swan YouTube video.
And I clicked, and I was fascinated and kind of creeped out.
And I just kind of had this tingling sensation.
Like, you know, the spidey sense is that there's something more here.
Like, who is this woman I've never seen with this huge following that is so confident and seems to be speaking about spirituality and self-help in a way that I wasn't familiar with?
And then I just fell down the rabbit hole.
I'm wondering whether, like, there was also something relieving about the fact that you're not watching Alex Jones stans shout about supplements, that she has this beautiful New Age music and, you know, she can kind of lull you in with some kind of validation for how you're feeling.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it was kind of a calm from the storm, but, you know, in hindsight, maybe it's more of a siren song.
That's a great way of putting it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just, I was sort of in this sort of place of acceptance that, you know, I'd been in the dark place and like she was talking about that.
It wasn't such a shift from, you know, like, look, I spoke to someone in the podcast.
He was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.
And he said spirituality helped him get out of it, out of that dark space, but nothing really, all of it was kind of too woo-woo and happy.
Nothing really resonated with his darkness until he met Teal.
And as he said, he was like the, the sort of the misery that she went through as a child, her satanic ritual abuse, you know, uh, he said that, that darkness was on the level of, of what I went through in the, in the genocide.
So he, he found, you know, she, she helped him, he believed.
Um, but yeah, so I think it was kind of a, it was a nice sort of break from all that, but still on the level that I was at.
There's this randomness that seems to be the mode here, but in a way, as we now know, you were also explicitly targeted by Swan's, you know, SEO and keyword optimization for words like suicide.
So, you know, it feels like we can say that Swan actually recruited her finest investigator, By finding you, and it brings up this question of like, you know, whether or not she wants not only to be seen, but on some level to be found out.
That might be a deeper question for later on in our discussion, but it certainly seems like she found you with this kind of targeted algorithmic search.
Yeah, I feel, you know, in hindsight I was kind of the right person to I was in that headspace and also just my interest of internet and weird online fringe communities and spirituality.
It was perfectly targeted for me as a journalist.
Whether it be Source or The Algorithm, it connected us.
Yeah, the universe brought you together and the gateway was the result.
So once you get going on sort of really digging into researching Teal, I'm curious how you find solid ground.
You know, the gateway opens with a study of the circumstances surrounding Leslie's death, who is Teal's first client.
Was that an anchor point for you?
And what's your sense of what really happened to Leslie?
From that point, I then was getting out of freelance.
I was interviewing at Gizmodo, and I think in my first meeting with them, you give your potential first stories you want to do, and I was like, I think there's this interesting online spiritual guru who's doing something different.
There is a lot of allegations that she is causing suicide.
My initial pitch to my editor was, I think there's something here to explore that would show how
Uh, you know, spirituality is kind of evolving, uh, through the internet and, and, um, and, you know, there's, I think it intrigued my editor because it was kind of this, you know, a younger woman, spiritual guru and with some controversy and it, it just seemed like, so she greenlit it, but then immediately we, we realized there was so much more There.
I mean, initially, it started with the Leslie stuff.
I mean, it was like, OK, we could we both wanted to see the power of what she was doing.
And that was interesting to to follow, like what she was doing as a spiritual guru and frankly, like a woman in a male dominated industry of charismatic leaders.
I mean, that was fascinating.
But we also yeah, Leslie was the main thing that a lot of her detractors brought up.
So that was that was kind of the second starting point.
Like, OK, now we need to see if she actually is causing harm.
So yeah, that was that was the beginning.
And, you know, there was.
And the first episode is basically laying out like what was already there, you know, like the people had found the videos of her speaking about Leslie's death in a very problematic way.
So, yeah, that was kind of my foundation.
And we we sort of we knew about Teal's backstory.
And in the beginning, that was almost we had the discussion of, like, maybe this story is too Messy and dark to do like like it's This woman is clearly it seems like she's what you know, I I knew enough about satanic panic to to know that the allegations of satanic ritual abuse and and sacrificing children and all that was
I'm so used to talking about this in a very careful, edited way, and I'm afraid to talk about it kind of off the cuff.
But I knew there was enough there, but it was also clearly she had been through something, and we were like, I don't know if this is the right time to go into this, but once we A little later on, once we realized Barbara Snow was involved and we could make that thread, that's when we realized it was important and newsworthy to go into that.
So it just kind of evolved.
And pretty early on, we knew it was a podcast.
We knew it was going to be an investigative podcast where you could show these conversations and show a little of our work.
You know, it's like that component of being able to kind of discuss these things with my producer, Jessica Glaser.
Anyway, we just, and fortunately my editor, she was then the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, Kelly Bourdais, who I think is fantastic, one of the best editors in the industry, honestly.
She understood early on that we needed to We needed to have the resources to really go deeper into this and to contextualize it and have these important conversations and, you know, convinced, uh, I was at Gizmodo at the time, uh, Gizmodo to, um, to give us the resources to really do this, this properly.
And I mean, it was a journalist's dream to have basically a year and a whole team to help me do that and, you know, to fact check it and, you know, have legal counsel.
Uh, I mean that, and that's kind of what pivoted my career into doing more of this because it's, This was a time when my day job was, I mean, I was allowed to do features, but it was kind of churning out a lot of stories about Facebook and cybersecurity and things that Trump was doing in the tech and internet space.
And that was maddening.
It was, you know, that's what I, you turn almost, you know, corkboard guy, we were connecting all that you're seeing, like the creeping dystopian surveillance state.
And this was, and you're not really able to step back and think of like, how to do this responsibly.
But with this story, we had the resources and the time to really do it, I think, responsibly and in a thoughtful way.
You also had a figure, like, you know, when we're talking about churning out articles about Facebook and the surveillance state, you know, behind that there are people.
And I think Teal Swan's own content and her persona and her community provide sort of real-world, tangible storylines and people to talk to about how they are interacting in that particular web.
So you get this Great opportunity, and you wind up having a first encounter with Teal Swan in Costa Rica, and you know that at that point, or do you, that Barbara Swan had been... Barbara Snow.
Barbara Snow, sorry.
That's an interesting... Yeah, yeah, you're just blending the two, yeah.
Right.
But had you known at that point that Swan had been a client of Barbara Snow?
I... can't...
Recall exactly.
I think at that point, we were just excited to go to have that opportunity to go out to her to her healing center and see her work in action.
I knew enough.
I mean, because, yeah, I think, like I said, once once the Barbara Snow component, we knew we had a story there.
So it was starting to come together.
I had no idea at that point how deep we'd go into the memory stuff.
But yeah, we knew about Leslie.
We We were planning on going a little deeper into that, as I recall.
Again, this was a few years ago.
But at that point, I was like, I need to see this hub of what she's doing.
And it sounded like this spiritual startup where a lot of people were living there and working for her and making this content.
So yeah, we wanted to get that component, especially because I knew the deeper I got into it, the more I'd be exploring Stuff that Teal probably wouldn't want to talk about as much so, you know, we really were focused on just what kind of access we could get with her so we'd have enough to sort of work from wherever the investigation took us.
Right, so you knew though that once you started connecting the satanic panic dots and you ran into maybe the legal filing that Snow made on Swan's behalf, that you are in very tangled, you know, recovered memory, story territory.
Why was it important for you to make sure that that was all laid out for your listeners?
Like I said, we had a team who was working on this, and it was really wonderful to have that.
Jessica Glaser was my producer, and we also had another producer, Emily Pontecorvo.
And Emily, she's now pursuing science writing, and she was the one who first started saying, I think we need to go deeper into the satanic panic.
And she started, she just kind of took it on her own to do all this, like, memory wars research and, you know, lining up experts.
And I kept being like, honestly, at first I didn't, I didn't see the purpose of going that deep into it.
Wow.
And so it really, I have to give credit to her.
I mean, again, we saw it early on, we knew that was a thread, but we didn't know that It wasn't until I went to Costa Rica and I saw how they were doing the channeling, where you're having other people at the retreat who are being possessed by people's dead family, who are helping them work through what actually happened in their past.
And I was like, oh, these people are coming out with new Harmful memories.
And the more people I spoke to, I saw the pattern of people realizing, coming up with these memories of horrific abuse from their childhood, or like government testing, or all that.
And when I saw that pattern of like, Teal is doing this, and there's that echo there of the satanic panic, and we have this connection to Barbara Snow.
Yeah, it was a combination of Emily, And going deeper into that and doing more of that research of the SRA side and then seeing this pattern and us having these meetings.
I mean, we had the whiteboard where we're doing sort of the corkboard of connecting it all.
And we really kind of came to that together that this had to be sort of where the podcast went, where it was like the The harm and issues and trauma here that people are focused on, the focus is the suicide part aspect of it, but we saw this whole other issue just working together, and we're like, that has to be an important part of Teal's story, and if this is going to be the first big thing that explores that, we need that context.
It's very interesting because the satanic panic at this point, I suppose if we're talking about 2016, has kind of been stitched up, at least in legal terms, since 1996, I believe.
And it's faded into this kind of broader mainstream social memory.
It's interesting that it sounds like your producer, Emily, has maybe some historical knowledge on board that she's already coming with, but that when you see Memories apparently being manufactured in real time.
There's no doubting that there is some sort of historical pattern going on.
Yeah.
I mean, that was, again, it's something, you know, there's a lot of podcasts about this.
I mean, there's, I've seen documentaries about it, but seeing it happen in real time and we were able to sort of trace, I mean, there's one woman who went to Teal and Teal said, Basically, suggested she could see inside her past and knew these terrible things happened to her and her dad maybe tried to kill her.
I don't know.
It's been a while since I was in that space, so forgive me if I get anything wrong from the podcast.
And then we could see through the Teal Tribe, her postings, her development of reading Teal's book and being triggered and realizing she had that same experience.
Um, and then, and then posting, you know, videos and all that, and then becoming like, then she, she started making YouTubes about her abuse that she wasn't covering.
And to, to see that happen in real time when it's, it's like this thing that you thought was in the past.
I mean, obviously moral panics happen throughout history, but, um, but to see it happening in real time and how it was, it was shaping these people and, and, and, and harming them and, and, and disrupting their families.
I mean, that was, that was pretty wild.
And also to see the parasocial element where this follower is actually mirroring the stories that they are being fed online and then owning them almost instantly.
They're identifying with them, they are making them central to their own lives so that this barrier of the screen actually begins to dissolve.
Yeah.
And the follower's story becomes indistinguishable from the leader's story.
Really super interesting.
And I imagine that that was something that you could see as a tech reporter as well, because up until that point, you're watching sort of one-way influence where, you know, maybe Alex Jones is filling people up with misinformation and they're taking particular political stances.
But this is another level deeper where the influencer is Embodying a certain type of story that then the follower begins to live out in their own lives.
And that seems to be a lot more thick, a lot deeper.
I think some people may be surprised that Teal Swan, it was the focus of a podcast from a tech news organization.
But to me, it was, I mean, that was such an important component of it is, you know, it's all these sociological or psychological phenomenons that have happened throughout history and As a tech reporter, I'm able to see that the algorithm, the internet, this sort of fucked up system that we log into every day when we wake up, is just putting all this stuff in hyperspeed.
And going just spiraling out.
I mean, whereas the the satanic panic, like blew up and then kind of went away.
This stuff is just sort of spiraling beyond any kind of control.
I mean, with that, I don't know.
I don't know really how it died down.
I guess just these things do.
But, you know, there was there was investigation from the FBI looking into this.
And it was like there eventually there really wasn't any there there.
So it kind of fizzled out.
But now there's no way of of controlling this.
Yeah, so it's like the vulnerabilities are the same, the social component of it is the same, the underlying psychological preoccupations that are being evoked are the same, but now you have a new, faster, more widespread, more intense, more immersive kind of technological environment within which that can all be recycled.
History can repeat itself.
Yeah, and it's just rotting our brains.
Yeah, and to bring you back to Costa Rica, you know, in the Gateway, there's this period where you're orienting yourself to what goes on at the Retreat Center, and you're hearing people having intense, emotional, cathartic experiences.
You're sort of having a reaction to like, is that okay?
You know?
And essentially the response is kind of classic, where it's like, oh, this is triggering for you.
This is an opportunity for you to do some work.
Like you might really want to look at that.
The fact that you're hearing someone scream bloody murder for 20 minutes from the other side of the retreat center.
And all you're doing really is you're saying, what's going on over there?
Can you tell us what's going on?
Is everything okay?
And so what I find really amazing and really vulnerable in terms of how one of the ways you handle that is you say, Okay, well, I want to know about this completion process.
And it's been suggested that maybe, you know, I have some stuff that that might come up as a result.
And so you include a session.
In the podcast where this happens.
Tell us about that because it strikes me that now you're in that murky territory, right?
Where it's like memory, interpretation of memory, an interviewing style that is sort of quasi-therapeutic, but really is based in a very particular metaphysics.
What was that like and what do you think about it now?
At the time, I remember being kind of torn about should I have Teal take me through a completion process so that I could see what she's talking about, but ultimately I figured, yeah, out there where I have no control of my environment, I'm in this gated healing center, we're surrounded by all of her followers, and I knew enough to know that people came out of it with different memories, and it was a very emotional experience.
I didn't think that that would keep me, I was trying to be as objective as possible.
I felt like that could hinder that.
Mostly because it would have been done by the subject, where she's doing a form of therapy on me.
I mean, that just seemed like very messy territory as a journalist.
But I do sort of tend to jump in, and my journalistic curiosity gets the better of me sometimes, and I don't make the safest decisions, so I could have seen myself doing that.
You know, I consulted with my team and, um, you know, cause, cause Jessica was there with me and, and, um, yeah, we decided that wasn't the place, but the more people I saw, again, the pattern of people coming out with these memories and like, I wanted a better understanding of what the completion process was, and it seemed important to be able to sort of record that, and to be able to describe what happened.
So I thought the sort of safest, neutral way to do it was, I found somebody on Teal's completion process website, where she trains all these sort of Completion process disciples to, you know, she trains them in this and then they can do it online, do it over zoom.
And because I was exploring the sort of internet component of it, I just wanted to see how easy it was to set it all up.
And, you know, she has people who work for her who are, you know, come from the tech field.
So I was, I was interested that, you know, a lot of these spiritual gurus, their websites are very janky, but everything was, was pretty slick.
Anyway, I found this completion process practitioner in Queens, you know, I'm in Brooklyn, so I was like, all right, we're kind of on the same level, it's sort of in my world.
She seemed like a great human, I think she had a pug or some kind of dog, and it was just like, I was like, this, I can do this, I know this, I'm not like in a mystical world designed by Teal, but I went into it thinking, I know, again, I know enough about this to know that a lot of people come out with these new memories about their family, and so I wanted to, I was like, I'm just not going to, anything that kind of questions you go to family stuff, I'm not going to go there.
Kind of wanted, I had like, I felt like I kind of had the protector on, but it still took me to this memory, and I I don't know, I still don't really know what to make of it.
It took me to a memory of, as I describe, my cousins, these two twin older cousins, and they stuffed me in a clothes hamper and closed it, and I felt stuck there and claustrophobic, and the point of that was like, this is where, because I deal with claustrophobia sometimes, and that was, I'd mostly recently been triggered by being claustrophobic on a bus, so that's where we went, and that took me to this memory that I've never thought about before.
It may have happened.
I had never really thought about it.
It just kind of like she was really pushing me to like think of a time like early on in a childhood when you felt you felt sort of trapped or closed in and that's what I came to.
And just whether it was real or not, it was not, it was just kind of this fleeting memory, but now it became a very real memory.
And I really, cause she had me sit with it and think about it.
And like, this is the root of your trauma.
Basically that my, you know, my cousins, they were three years older and we would pick on each other.
I like dropped a rock on one of their heads.
Thankfully they survived.
You know, I, I did just as stupid stuff to them.
And I, and I love them, you know, Drew Preston, sorry if this is bringing anything out, but you know, I called them both after it and this wasn't in the podcast, but I called him after I was like, Hey, do you, Remember this?
Because I was really like... And they didn't.
They didn't.
Neither of them.
I don't know what age, but again, they were like three years older.
I was maybe five.
They were eight.
I don't know.
I guess it would have been younger.
But there's two of them.
I mean, that sounds confirmatory, right?
They're not going to lie to you.
It wasn't some terrible thing.
Yeah, I don't think they lied, but I don't, I think, you know, again, we were always doing this.
They didn't remember.
I have a distinct memory of dropping a rock on Preston's head from my treehouse in Macca.
And he doesn't remember that.
I mean, maybe because of a brain injury.
But, you know, there are things from childhood that aren't significant to you.
But now, whatever, it is a very real memory that I've confronted them about, and that I think about, like, well, maybe that is why I... So, that was within an hour session, me going in with kind of trying to be with the guards up, and I still came out with this memory that...
In a minor way, affected the way that I view two dear family members.
And so I can only imagine if you go in being totally open to Teal's teachings, especially if you really idolize, if you're doing it with Teal or somebody that has sort of the grace of Teal to do this process, I can only imagine how much deeper that could have gone.
It seems to me that there's an underlying kind of belief here that says Teal is infallible.
Teal has psychic access to everything that is true.
The completion process is her expression of how Mere mortals can learn how to maybe have some access, right?
The grace of Teal.
Someone who was a lot more invested in that and open to that and vulnerable, where do you draw the line as to what you accept as true and don't?
That's a distinction in, you know, we say in The Gateway that You know, with Barbara Snow, it's somebody you're paying that you believe has some sort of better, you know, they're educated in how to do this.
They have some sort of influence over you.
But with Teal, she has this sort of higher spiritual authority and knows everything about you.
So you're more inclined to, I think, to internalize these things and believe them.
Do you know two things come to mind in listening to the story about the clothes hamper again is that I'm not that well versed in dream analysis and literature, but it really does sound like in the discussion with the completion process therapist, you are being encouraged to
Make the kind of dream-like connections that a brain makes when it's trying to understand something that has happened, when it's trying to process a sensation, or the day, or something like that.
What did that feel like?
Oh, it feels like being closed in a hamper, and then you're being encouraged to sort of look for the next detail.
And to literalize it.
And to literalize it and then to make that real.
So that's kind of fascinating to kind of think about how that plays out in real time.
But I also realized that you kind of have an interesting potential cross-examination test because if you sent your cousins to the same completion process person and saw if they came up with memories about you, But they were different.
That would kind of be interesting to do a cross check.
That's kind of a joke.
I'll see if they're up for it.
On a totally serious note, you managed in the reporting process for The Gateway to track down Doc and interview him, which is kind of extraordinary.
So for listeners who might need a refresher, Doc is the mysterious yet central character in Teal's a childhood ritual abuse story, a friend of the family, a holistic veterinarian, somebody who ostensibly cared for the family's horses, but was also, as I said, a family friend, and was also apparently
Suffering from some sort of dissociative identity disorder that also prompted him to abuse her in various contexts and from various points of view.
So you find this person, because they are a real person in the world, and in your review of that recorded conversation with your producer, Which, and that conversation is kind of ambivalent.
There's not really much that you uncover.
You are confrontational at one moment, very mildly, where you say, did anything inappropriate happen?
And he says flat out, no.
But as you're talking about it with Jessica, you both strike an ambivalent tone.
You note that it does seem to be odd that they spent a lot of time together, especially when she's so young.
Jessica points out that it seems to be odd that he pointed out that he was wearing overalls when they hugged, and why would he mention that or even remember that detail?
So there's no fire in this story, but there's a little bit of a whiff of smoke.
And it becomes hard to imagine Swan inventing absolutely everything, whether Doc was involved or not, and to what extent.
So I wanted to just ask, how do you make sense of that particular seemingly dead end now?
Yeah, that one was really tough as far as how to bring in that bit of reporting.
I mean, Teal had And if she had mentioned him a lot, spoken about him, I think it, you know, some people, some detractors had found him before, you know, we had the police report where he was in there and, you know, making this, this story where that was a big component of and putting it out into the world.
I wanted to give him.
A, give him the opportunity to comment, because these are serious allegations, even if she changes name.
I mean, she, you know, accuses him of, she said, you know, he's killed children, not just like all the horrific child rape, I mean, and ritual abuse.
I mean, you know, these murdered children.
And if, you know, by putting this out, you know, it might encourage people to look more into him or whatever.
We thought we should give him a chance to comment.
We also, you know, once the ritual abuse component became an important part of the story and became, you know, why this was more newsworthy and important to tell, and it was relevant, we felt that we needed to do as much reporting, you know, with these extraordinary claims comes, you know, extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence.
So we want, we're trying to find as much evidence to whatever To corroborate or discredit any of these crazy allegations, we were trying to find as much truth in this weird metaphysical world.
Also, Teal, just being around her, I mean, she truly seems otherworldly.
I mean, being at Philia, there is this Mystique and magic that she enchantment that she Manifests within this world that she built and it was like all these old these stories So she seemed like this kind of mystical creature and then her stories were so mythological I was like, I just want some sense of like who she was as a child.
I mean none of these stories were It just seemed grounded in reality.
And so, you know, it was helpful to talk to, we talked to Lauren Stokes, one of her best friends, but she saw her, I think it seemed like they didn't live nearby.
And I know I'm getting away from your question.
I'll get back to it, but.
No, it's good.
She saw Teal, I think, fairly rarely.
They didn't live in the same town, so that didn't really help as much.
We went to the Logan Library, found her yearbooks, just to confirm that she did go to school.
I mean, we tried to fact check as much as possible, and we tried to call other people in the yearbook, and no one really seemed to remember her, but it was just like...
And her parents, I mean, her dad, you know, reached out to the dad and he decided not to speak to us.
But it was just kind of like, we just want to understand Teal and like some reality for all these stories.
And we didn't end up including a lot of that because, you know, a lot of it wasn't really newsworthy.
And we wanted to have a reason, you know, we're going deep into this person's life and their history.
I mean, they are a public person and a celebrity and there are serious allegations of causing harm.
So I think that warrants Going this deep, but you don't necessarily have to show it all when it's kind of personal and anecdotes from childhood.
But anyway, Doc we wanted to talk to.
And after we interviewed him, you know, we just got this kind of, I got this sort of ick feeling around him.
You know, I drove along with him in a car and I just...
This is what we talked about in the podcast.
The way he talked about these things just felt off and concerning.
And we had a really hard time thinking how to introduce that stuff.
Unfortunately, again, I had this amazing team.
Kelly Bourdais was my editor who was consulting all the time.
Jessica Glaser was my producer, Emily Punsicoro was also a producer, Pineapple Street Media was helping us edit it, so Barry Finkel there.
So I want to give credit to everybody, because these were these tough conversations we were having.
Also, Gizmodo, our sister site, was Jezebel, so I consulted some other journalist colleagues there who give Uh, training on how to report on sexual assault.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Like you, you have a lot of help.
Which is, which is rare and yeah.
And so yeah, we, we had these conversations about how to include that in a responsible way as like also Me Too was unfolding and we're having this very important conversation about believing survivors.
And so we just tried to be as neutral as possible.
Like, look, we talked to this guy, I didn't find anything that completely discredited that he may have been inappropriate with Teal.
He said he wasn't.
So we tried to have a conversation around that, but I think we did strike a very neutral tone because we were trying to be very careful.
I didn't mean to be ambivalent about it, but it was this important component of Teal's story that we tried to be thoughtful and careful with.
Yeah well I think you did an amazing job and there's another detail in there that you've given that is kind of interesting to me that you personally didn't have a good feeling around the guy that you were in the car and it seemed odd but to be fair he's also aware of the allegations that have been put out against him and he's wondering I imagine what you're gonna ask and how this is gonna turn out and you know how much more he's going to have to
But I mean, what I come away with from that sequence is, we're not quite sure what happened.
It sounds like something was off.
It sounds like something was, some sort of harm occurred.
So, when you think about that question now, what happened to Teal Swan between the ages of 6 and 19, where are you at with that?
I don't know.
Again, that's what we were trying to figure out, and the yearbooks didn't help.
Childhood memories.
Other people from her high school, middle school, couldn't get anybody to remember Teal.
Talking to Lauren Stokes, it wasn't much new information.
Now, with the Mormon Stories interview of another childhood friend, Diana, I forget her last name.
It's Rivera.
Diana Ribera.
I mean, that fills in a lot, which I just listened to that and I'm still kind of processing it.
I want to listen to it more closely because it does fill in a lot.
I mean, I wish that we'd been able to speak to her when we were reporting this, but there was another thing that we sort of found that didn't make it into The podcast that gave us a bit of a sense.
We were reporting for about a year and we were so deep in the weeds where Jessica and I, my main producer, were just like, when you find little these clues, we just get overly excited.
But we kind of had to contain them, keep them to ourselves.
They weren't really a part of the story.
And now a lot of those things, I think, are more relevant because this has become a much larger story that a lot of people are digging into and talking about and posting on Reddit and all this.
So but one of those things was You know, in the the Open Shadow documentary, that was the first documentary that came out about Teal.
It was kind of more of a and I know I believe you spoke to the director.
Yeah.
I interviewed Paolo Marino about it.
And it was fascinating, actually.
Yeah.
2017.
And you were about to describe it as it's a it's a it's a quite open ended, ambivalent exploration of the feeling of being around this person.
It's also not a historical review.
Yeah, it doesn't claim to be.
No, it doesn't claim to be.
I think it does a good job of capturing the sort of mystique around Teal and her mythos and all that.
We gave credit, but we ended up using an interview with Teal's parents in the Gateway.
Paola gave us permission to use that, which I'm thankful for because it gave us some sort of insight into what Her family life was like, but yeah, we in it, you know, Teal shows these these diaries these that she had and I think in the deep end, you know, I've watched it.
I've seen she has she references these these diaries and you know, she talks about this kind of alien language.
She had because she's I think she's gone away from this sort of messaging, but she has spoken in the past about how she is an Arcturian soul fork.
She's sort of This lineage to aliens and has past lives and all that and so she has this alien language that she writes in and she says, you know, here I was writing about the, you know, the abuse I was going through in the group and, you know, and also there's like blood on it and it's really jarring and it's the sort of thing she holds up and it looks like, okay, clearly this person is going through, was going through a lot at the time.
With this alien language scrolling in the blood.
Anyway, we watched this documentary because Paola spent a lot of time with Teal and trying to find clues.
And it's fascinating how this came about.
So Jessica, my producer, her now husband, then fiancé or partner, he loves puzzles.
He's a bit of an amateur cryptographer.
And he was walking by and saw that and just kind of, I guess, lit up.
He was like, I think I can crack this.
And as Jessica told me, you spent a few hours and finally cracked the code to Teal's alien language.
Because it seems like it's a pretty straight alphabet cipher, which I didn't know much about at the time, but you know, if you have enough letters You can find the patterns and you can crack the language.
And then if the decoder makes out actual intelligible sentences that make sense and are cohesive, then it's basically impossible that it's wrong.
And so we were able to read some of her diaries.
And at the time, again, we were going deep into Teal's history and origin story.
You're able to read her diaries from the screenshots from Paul Marino's documentary.
You don't actually have the diaries, but this is some real sort of forensics, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, just the screen.
And so it was very limited.
We had like three pages that she holds up.
Right.
And just those were kind of revealing.
But yeah, so it was it was like this sort of excited moment we had, but then we didn't really know.
It just didn't fit in at that time.
What did the alien language say?
I have.
I can pull them up.
It's incredible.
This is an incredible story.
I just want to say here, too, it also sort of links back to a question you had earlier, Matthew, about the perhaps subconscious desire to be found out.
Yeah, I mean to hold up the diary.
I mean, the diary seemed to feature quite prominently in Open Shadow and then I think she refers, it looks like she's actually picking the same books.
Yeah, yeah.
And you have that collage, that very, very graphic collage that includes sort of blood, tears of blood and that sort of thing in both films.
Yeah.
And that's the thing again at the time being the first big piece of media coming out about Teal going so deep in her life for the first time it didn't feel appropriate or necessary it didn't really seem to have a place but now she has you know in the deep end she shows them it seems to be something that she is a part of kind of like validating this this story that is kind of Being is gives her power and is being weaponized and all that it seems a little so it was interesting to go back.
So I'm looking at my old notes from when I was making the gateway and in this scene when she holds them up.
She says so this is an event which occurred when I was in the group and she references the you can watch it in the open shadow and she references the page.
Um, and she says it's describing something happening in the satanic cult.
And what it actually says, and it picks up, you know, it's like she's writing on a page, it kind of picks up mid-sentence.
Think I'm dangerous and a liar.
Is it possible for me to have convinced myself of things because I so much for them to be true?
And some of the words are kind of cut off because of the way the page is.
So, is it possible for me to have convinced myself of things because I so much for them to be true?
What if my talents are only a way to cover up being fucked up with uniqueness?
What if the basis of my life and beliefs are wrong?
Is it possible for me to be any less credible in other people's eyes?
And will they ever trust me?
Not if I write in this language and wear my kind of clothes and have the mind I do.
Not if I can't seem more real.
It's unbelievable.
And that was, according to the date, I think around, she was 19.
And she says, she says, she described any abuse, which I forget the timeline of when she said she was going through this, but at 19, I mean, this is when she was seeing, closer to when she was seeing Barbara Snow.
Let's just back up because, because this is, this is kind of complex just for the listeners.
Yeah.
Paolo Marino shooting months of tape with Teal Swan, getting her parents on, you know, in an extended interview and getting really close.
And at one point, Teal Swan shows her these diaries and she specifically says that the pages in which I'm writing in this code hold things or contain things that Does she suggest I didn't want anybody else to see, or they were too horrible for me to risk that somebody would come and read them?
Is that the impression that you got?
She said, yeah, have the transfer from that scene.
She says, so that's how I dealt with recording the things, but not having everyone else know is writing in the language.
So she wanted to, yeah, she wanted to record these things, but didn't want other people to know what the pages contained.
Okay, so we're meant to believe that when she's writing in code, she's describing something so abject, she can't even put it into regular language.
Right.
But according to the cipher, what she's actually doing, or what she seems to be doing, is confessing a series of doubts about how she's organizing this imaginative world, and how she's describing it, and how she's presenting itself.
So the secret is actually some kind of self-doubt.
Is that what you make of this, Julian?
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I also just wanted to add that part of the implication I was picking up from her at this moment, and I think in other moments in talking about this, is that she was afraid of the punishment that would come about from the cult if it was revealed that she had told anyone, so she's going to write it in secret.
Yeah, and so yes, isn't it just a little bit ironic that the most horrible thing that I don't want anyone to know is that I actually wonder if I'm making all of this up?
Psychoanalyze it too much, or to interpret it.
But now that you have so many people who are trying to understand Teal's past, it seems like an important piece.
But yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
It's sort of, I guess it's up for interpretation.
I mean, I see someone who's clearly a confused teenager who's struggling with a lot of self-doubt, who does not fit in in a Mormon, conservative Mormon town, which she's spoken about.
I appreciate this insight so deeply and I think it adds a lot of empathy to the story.
I also really understand why you didn't go there when you released the podcast originally because it does seem like extremely exposing and yet here we are with, you know, four years down the road and the story that much bigger as you say.
It also, I mean, it's mixed in with a lot of other more kind of benign, just childhood things.
Like, this alphabet is easy for me.
I get a new teacher.
I get new teachers on Monday.
And then somewhere she's writing about fantasies and fairies.
And it's just kind of like, for once I was like, Oh, finally, like this is a teal that I can, I can relate to, you know, like somebody who was like struggling with self, self doubt and, and like a fantasy nerd and all that.
And, um, I really, it helped me feel like this, this person who I've been Yeah, I really appreciate the decision that you made and the neutrality and the lack of interpretive overreach that you're expressing around all of this.
So there it is.
I mean, make of it what you will.
Yeah.
I really appreciate your, the decision that you made and the, and the neutrality and the sort of lack of, of interpretive overreach that you're, that you're expressing around all of this.
It does, it does seem to me really well, One, I really hear what you're saying about here's a portrait of a young person who spends a lot of time alone and kind of lives in their own world and takes the time to construct this alphabet of symbols that they're then going to write a secret language in.
And that is very humanizing.
And at the same time, there's woven through all of this to go back to what you were saying, Matthew, about Michelle remembers as well is that the sense that once you're, and this goes back also to you being willing to do some completion process stuff, Jennings, is that once you, once you've stepped into this kind of landscape, any, any, any doubt can so easily be interpreted as resistance or denial, or, you know, not wanting to know the deep dark truth.
And that to me is what is so catastrophic about this type of psychological ideology, is that at any point if you're expressing doubt, then well, that's just a sign that you're not wanting to go deeper, right?
Yeah.
Jennings, is it in 2017 that you and your producer get an email from Barbara Snow that confirms her continued interest in satanic panic themes?
Yeah, that came in 2018.
2018, okay.
Yeah, just wanted to clarify that.
And at that time, it sounds like she expanded her definition of ritualized child sex abuse to include things now like military psyops and multidimensional trafficking.
And to us, this starts to sound like She herself is either making the small leap from Satanic Panic to something like QAnon, or that perhaps she's being influenced by this new online movement.
So, we see QAnon going mainstream sort of 2017-2018.
Does the timeline match up here?
Yeah, this was definitely, you know, the beginning.
It's pizzagated, morphed into QAnon.
So yeah, Jessica got this email where they're mentioning multi-dimensional child sex abuse rings, medical military sponsored mind control, and I was like, this is QAnon.
I've kind of been in those trenches and saw it festering.
I think I remember that.
Yeah, there was a there was a point when like working with with Jessica where she just wasn't in that world.
And I was like, that's where I sent sounded like the corkboard guy.
You know, she was just like, no, this is just to say she still clearly believes this.
I was like, oh, my God.
No, like.
She's back in it!
Like, this is all... And yeah, that's when I was like, oh God, this really is coming back, and it's like the same things.
Oh, that's incredible.
So you're kind of framed on both.
You're straddling two worlds.
So you have one producer who knows sort of the Satanic Panic history.
You are already fast forward into 4chan and Ikkun.
And then Jessica is kind of like, no, let's stick to the plot here.
Yeah.
And also, Emily, she was kind of the scully, I think.
I mean, they both kind of were, you know, like, well, you know, if Teal was in another, this is another time, like, she would be maybe worshipped for her powers or her, you know, and so we all, we had this kind of ongoing conversation, but we are all coming from totally different places, and I think it was great results.
It was something that everybody can Take something from.
But yeah, I was I was definitely like, you know, you guys don't understand.
This is this is yeah, this is a big problem.
This is growing.
This is indicative of something bigger.
Right.
Did you start speculating that Snow maybe had accounts on 4chan and she was baking and creating and making drops and memeing along with the Anons?
You know, I can't.
No, I thought I was like, oh, this is re like my concerns, like they think this is getting back into the mental health world.
I was like, I think these are the conversations they're having.
I think I was like, I think this is what like I knew it was happening in 8chan and all that.
But I was like, I think it's it's starting to bubble up.
through the ether into the mental health.
I've been getting a lot of emails since this from mental health people who are like, I appreciate your podcast, but everything you're saying about satanic ritual abuse, that's really bad and harmful and wrong.
And that's been the scary thing seeing how this that like I was I was right there at the cusp seeing like how it was bubbling up from yeah the message boards to to actual therapist and and that's this is where you know I get really concerned and that's that's a whole other whole other topic I think.
I want to turn to the meta level for a moment because as I understand it from our prior communications You produce Gateway while you're working for Gizmodo, so Gizmodo retains the IP.
It gets sold to a developer, as I understand it.
It changes hands a couple of times, and it finally winds up at Freeform.
And then they reach out to you for development help.
How did you see and feel your editorial vision and creative angle morph amidst all of those changes?
Like, at what point was the Gateway Project kind of out of your hands?
I mean, it's there as a podcast that exists in the world, but when did you understand that it was becoming something else?
After the podcast came out, there was a lot of production companies and agencies reaching out to want to develop this into something like a doc series, a documentary.
And I was both like, it's kind of exciting, to be honest.
And I was a little nervous, because as a journalist, it's always You know, great when somebody wants to develop, you know, wants to, um, uh, develop your project as something bigger, um, you know, once option, and then it's even more exciting when that actually comes out.
But I, yeah, I was really nervous because this is a very, very messy, nuanced, complex story about suicide and trauma and memory recovery.
And, um, I, you know, so I was nervous and there was, there were, there were some production companies that I could tell they're more, They would be a little more salacious, sensational, and we picked the documentary group because, you know, they had a history of doing really thoughtful, compassionate work, very trauma-informed.
And so, you know, it's kind of like, and I didn't, you know, I didn't own the intellectual property.
That was, it was a Gizmodo thing, as you've said.
So I'm, they could have just cut me out entirely.
So I'm glad that, you know, I was able to kind of Pick somebody and kind of help usher it over.
So once they they made a deal with the documentary group You know, I basically I mean I had to I was happy to but I you know, I handed over all all my notes all the recordings every interview all I mean and Jessica and Emily were very good in their in their Documentation and note-taking.
I mean I am too, but I'm a little messy But we had it all very organized that we could hand it over.
We also had tons of footage We filmed so much that of what was in the gateway Because we were thinking of developing that into a doc.
And we used that to pitch it out.
The documentary group had all that footage.
They made a sizzle.
I went out with them to LA to pitch it.
And I was like, I'm involved in this stage and I wanted to do everything I could to make sure it had a good foundation.
So I was involved with all of that early stuff, and I was trying to make sure that steer people, make sure it was done as responsibly as possible, but there is kind of this little nervous when something you make that's very messy goes out in the world, and you can't control that.
You know, I didn't have creative control.
I wasn't involved in the filming, the editing, producing.
The documentary group brought in John Casby, who, you know, I watched his film Lance becomes lions and it was just beautiful stunning like incredibly well shot I mean he's he's sort of a magician with you know his cinema verite and so you know I knew he was kind of good at being a fly on the wall and I was like well if because being in Till's world I was like there's so much more that I can't Describe?
I mean, my role as a journalist was to sort of contextualize and do the reporting, but I was like, so much of this, her power and charisma, you kind of have to see.
And so I thought, you know, there's a value to that for people actually being able to see.
Yeah, so I gave all, handed all over the notes.
I introduced Teal's team to the documentary group.
And to my surprise, they were, after that, you know, they were They were, at first, I think, cautiously open to letting a crew back in.
But, yeah, it's a little surreal seeing... I mean, obviously, it's become something entirely different.
I mean, John, again, he took it...
I don't know how closely he listened to The Gateway, or if he did.
When they decided to go with him, I know we met for drinks and talked extensively about The Gateway, and kind of felt like I was like, alright, here's your...
You're handing over my metaphorical box, like this is your thing now.
Go with God.
I hope only the best for your mental health.
Can I just ask you, it sounds like at a certain point you're in the pitching process, you put together a sizzle with your own footage, and you go out to LA, and I imagine at that point you're At the center of a potential production, or did you already know that you were not going to be leading a film project because that's not your field?
We didn't know.
We left it open.
You didn't know.
So at a certain point, we could have gotten a streaming documentary where you're the narrator and the talking head.
Yeah.
These things are weird and tangled.
When I was at Gizmodo, it was owned by Univision, which they had this channel Fusion, which is now defunct, but they were trying to turn all their online properties into shows.
For instance, they have a car website called Jalopnik, and they had a A car racing show.
And this was like, they were like, so I was like, sure, if y'all want to film me and try to turn it into something, that's sure.
That's fine.
But then Fusion died and we had all this footage.
So we handed over, but so that, that could have been a thing.
I don't think it would have been a very good thing because filming somebody make a podcast just isn't that interesting.
And like, you can't, the shots aren't good when, you know, I've got my headphones and my mics up, like I'm like inches from Teal's face with a mic in her, you know, like it just, it just didn't work.
So that was a concept at the time, and I'm glad it didn't happen, because I think it would have done the podcast a disservice.
But yeah, that was when we were pitching it out.
We didn't know if Teal was on board, and it was like, maybe it could be a continuation of my investigation.
But once Teal was on board, and we had this filmmaker who is good at just sort of blending in, that's the direction they decided To go with it.
And so, yeah, I mean, the gateway was, yeah, it was, they own it now and could do whatever they want with it.
And that's, that's where it landed.
Jennings, rounding up, I thought maybe we could talk about your gateway conclusions.
They're still, of course, are unanswered questions.
I think it's one of the things we actually really appreciate about your work.
These are somewhat satisfied, in our minds at least, by the fact that you really took them seriously.
So the first one would be, we don't know if Teal Swan is causally responsible for the suicide deaths of Leslie or anyone else.
The second would be that it's hard to say if she's really running a cult.
If she is, it's a kind of 2.0 form which diffuses in-person intensity with online virality and abstraction.
Yeah, and you do make two strong statements that are not quite conclusions, but they present a position.
You point out that while overzealous satanic panic therapists used leading questions to elicit false memories, Swan really ups the ante with channeling, with intuition.
You also point out that in pre-digital times, people would have to work really hard to find someone that could influence them in this way, but At this point, Swan is able to find people who are primed for her content.
And you use a very strong word.
You use the word insidious to describe this escalation.
So here we are in 2022.
Teal Swan is bigger than ever.
She's also facing more blowback than ever.
And it's possible that the deep end will expand her profile even.
So, I guess our last question is, given everything that has happened in the tech and political realms since you released this podcast in 2018, from QAnon to January 6th, how would you characterize SWAN's significance today?
There's some things that I guess I could have, I saw sort of early on, but you know, I of course never, I didn't envision like, TikTok would come out and she would sort of, I mean, she's really thriving there in the same way that she was perfect for YouTube.
I mean, she's even more perfect, I think, for TikTok.
You know, COVID and the rise of conspirituality and her sort of leaning deeper into that, you know, she, yeah, she influences a lot of people.
I mean, some of my Friends are into her.
Some of them got into her through the gateway and, you know, post there.
I mean, my my ex, I saw her post a teal swan meme on her Instagram a few weeks ago.
And she was and she said, yeah, you you introduced me to teal.
Amazing.
She has infiltrated, not the same ex that I mentioned earlier, but yeah, she's really, I don't know, she's just, she really seems everywhere.
I don't know, I can't speak to that.
I mean, I'm glad that...
People like you are kind of helping contextualize this and follow the threads.
I mean, this is part of the reason I had to get out of tech reporting, just seeing all this stuff and trying to connect the dots and trying to warn people of what's coming and just stress me out.
I just try to tell one story as well as I can, as responsibly as I can, so that When those people become bigger, when these phenomena become bigger, somebody who's looking these people up can go to this, and here's this well-packaged thing that they can listen and understand.
And since the VPN came out, so many more people are listening to The Gateway, and I think that's part of the conversation.
And I'm glad that they have that kind of context.
But yeah, this is something, I don't know, like I said, you said it, I described it as insidious.
I mean, it really wasn't This wasn't a conversation about is, is this a cult?
I mean, after this, I did this podcast revelations about the fellowship of friends and that's, that's something that's been widely accused of being a cult.
I mean, there's like allegations of all this abuse and trafficking and that's obviously a whole other conversation, but that I can, you know, it's, it's about like letting people know that this group is going on and like getting away with these, these alleged crimes.
That's a very neat package, neat thing that, you know, like there's no, But with Teal, it's this thing that is like, it's a part of this larger, insidious, weird thing that's developing.
And we're all, and it's just like influencing us in so many different ways that most people aren't even aware of how it's kind of, how she's fitting into the conversation around vaccine and politics, vaccines and politics and public health and suicide and trauma.
And it's just, and it's like, It's hard to know a responsible way to cover that.
Anyway, this is just like a giant ramble fest.
I don't know.
I want you to tell me what to make of her now, because it's just weird.
It's weird seeing how she's sort of grown and gotten more powerful.
I think I saw you tweeting about this, Matt, that it's like she has sort of become more responsible in some ways about Just mentioning saying the right language around, you know, using public health and kind of disclaimers.
And I don't know if that's her being more strategic or just like more just better publicity management, you know, or like, you know, trying to become safer and she's being more strategic and thereby becoming more concerning because she can grow bigger and like and not get prosecuted or persecuted.
I don't know.
Right.
Well, part of what I was saying is that there are positive aspects, whether they're ass covering or not, that, yeah, she's doing good disclaimers in front of all videos.
I don't know if that's true of TikTok, actually, because I don't know that you'd have the time, but she says that she has licensed therapists on site she's not talking about.
It was interesting to hear from John Casby that in the three years that they spent with With her community, she didn't bring up the satanic ritual abuse story at all, that that's not really part of her current narrative.
All of these things might be strategic, and if they're strategic, and if they launder something, then that has a liability to it.
She could get bigger on the basis of becoming more socially acceptable.
And at the same time, a really accurate reporting both about the past and the present is, I think, the only real sort of ballast that any of us have.
I think that it was interesting that you have gone on to identify with your next subject, which we have to have you back on to discuss with Revelations, this
You know, pretty textbook case of a brick and mortar high demand group with an incredibly dominant charismatic leader at the center of it who is making predictions every couple of years about the world's demise and has now, as the New York Times tells us, his group has also had an impact on tech companies like Google.
You've moved to a much more sort of concrete I like the fact that there's some cleanness there for you, but also that you can recognize that when we're talking about teal swan we're talking about something a lot more porous, a lot more watery, just like the backdrops behind Her videos.
And I think we also have to acknowledge that while she carries forward so many of these unexamined and perhaps problematic influences, that she does actually manage to be globally popular because she speaks to essential issues that people are actually very very interested in and can't find help with elsewhere.
And so, you know, I just think that the default is really, really accurate reporting on how all of that plays out.
And also the role of expertise in commenting on it, even if there aren't really any experts in the world who can fully, you know, grasp who Teal Swan is or what she's doing.
So that would be my two cents.
Julian, what do you think?
Well, I was just going to say, Jennings, it really struck me when you said this in your last response that your intention seems to be to create pieces of work that are situated within this larger context it really struck me when you said this in your last response that your intention seems to be to create pieces of work that are situated within this larger context of the information sphere and the
and the timeline so that as people, if you're catching people early on in their rise into prominence, there is some solid reporting that people that people can come back to to sort of understand like, wait, what's going on here?
Where did this person come from?
Have they been looked at before?
The integrity and the sort of service orientation that I hear in that is just really laudable.
So I would feel incomplete if I didn't acknowledge that.
- Yeah, we're fans, we're big fans. - Well, thanks.
Again, that means a lot coming from you all, because I don't know how you do it every week, just diving in.
And so, yeah, I mean, I'm happy that this could be, you know, this could be helpful in how you talk about this, all this, because it's a messy, weird world.
And, you know, I'm glad we have good guides like you into it.
