Lydia Greene and Steph Kimmerer dissect the credibility of figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and RFK Jr. after abandoning conspiracy theories, questioning whether their shifts stem from genuine reflection or political pandering—Greene’s Epstein revelations or anti-vaccine harm may trigger change, but Steph demands a public apology to David Hogg for proof. Media’s focus on engagement over facts, like CNN’s interview with Pam Hemphill, risks undermining accountability; Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists (Jan 6) and LeavingMAGA.org’s vetting efforts offer frameworks for assessing sincerity. Trust hinges on consistent moral growth, not performative gestures or emotional manipulation without factual reckoning. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that is creating and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
I'm Spencer, your host, and I have two special guests today.
We have Steph Kimmerer.
Hello.
And we also have Lydia Green back today.
Hello.
Been busy doing many other things other than small-time podcasts like this, but I called in a favor and she's here.
So, yeah, we're going to talk today about the experience of not the experience necessarily of people who leave former beliefs,
but how we as people who look at them, audience members, people in Paris social relationships, how the rest of us should maybe view and look at people who have left unreal beliefs and particularly famous people who've left unreal beliefs today.
This is sort of the topic, sort of real formers talking about how this is going to occur.
And of course, I have two here today, Steph Kimmerer and Lydia Green.
So we have recently, in the example of Marjorie Taylor Greene, we have a prominent person who has in the past indicated very strong unreal beliefs, like conspiracy theories, right?
Over the past few months, she has subsequently said things that indicate she maybe no longer believes these things as strongly as she once did.
And while I don't want this episode today to be just entirely about only Marjorie Taylor Greene, I do think she's a good excuse to bring up the topic, right?
Everyone is, so this is a big thing everyone's talking about.
So how do we treat someone who's pulling away from their unreal beliefs?
How do we encourage them to keep moving toward reality?
How can we eventually come to trust someone who once believed these conspiracies and these unreal things and has since changed their mind or maybe only apparently changed their mind, maybe only doing it for the appearance of changing their mind?
We don't really know.
And how would any of us, how would any of this become different or more difficult when the person is in, is famous and in a position of influence and authority?
An elected official in the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
For a quote-unquote normal person, we might be able to do all of the normal things.
Listen, understand, remind them of what isn't actually real and what is actually real.
Let them come to reality at their own pace.
Let them heal at their own pace.
Let them deal with their sense of self and their ego and their own sense of responsibility at their own pace.
But all this becomes more difficult with someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
How do we treat her?
Should we deny her access to any political power until she's had a chance to figure herself out?
I have a worry that this could become not unlike how we sort of train dogs with like a reward system.
Every time the dog does what we want, we give the dog a treat.
But the only item that would suffice as a treat for someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene is more power and influence.
Would it be responsible to reward each step she takes toward objective reality with more power and more influence?
Would we simply be giving away the future on the hope that someone who previously damaged others' ability to see reality might themselves hope to gain it?
And I said that I didn't want this to be entirely about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and it's not.
I think it would be an objectively good thing if RFK Jr. began advocating for vaccines tomorrow.
But if he did, would we think his heel turn was a bit sudden?
Would we still worry that he might flip-flop back to anti-vaccine ideas just as easy as he flipped forward?
Would we still want him to step down as head of the NHS despite the fact that he might appear to be finally doing the job correctly?
These are questions that might have seemed out of place four months ago.
If I had asked them then, people might well have asked me why I would waste time on a potentially imaginary future.
But I think now we can see that it's not entirely imaginary.
Even some of the most unreal thinkers can, apparently, change their minds.
But are they sincere about the change?
And can they be trusted?
So with that, as a lead in, we get to your thoughts.
Please, your first thoughts on this.
Me?
Oh, yeah, okay.
Anyone?
I'm more familiar with RFK, so I'll go there.
If he actually changed his mind and honestly did, he would step down.
He would have enough insight to realize that he has no business in his position and step down.
And so if he doesn't do that, it's not a real change in any way, shape, or form.
It's pandering.
It's pandering to whoever he feels is going to give him that power.
So I, yeah, that's my opinion on that.
If he, if he did, it would, for me to believe it, he would have to step down.
All right.
Yeah.
And this appears to make sense.
In the case of RFK Jr., there are a host of other people qualified for his particular position, right?
Yeah.
Much, in our opinion, anyway, much more qualified.
And even if he started to advocate for vaccines, they would still be many times more qualified, having much more medical experience.
But he might that there's a sort of an idea, like I might call it the one ring problem, where Frodo tries to give the ring to several other people who have more power and they say, no, no, no, no, I can't take this because it will corrupt me, right?
You know, I would take this out of an idea that I might do good with it.
And so, you know, right now, probably RFK Jr. has convinced himself that he's taken this power in order to do good.
In his opinion, good is reduction of vaccines.
If he decided that vaccines were good, I could see that he might want to keep the power just to do the better thing of doing the vaccines.
He's going to be like, well, if we're going to change it, it would take months, right?
We want the vaccines now.
But of course, as you point out, this is a problem.
This is a, you know, he might not do it.
He might still not do it right.
Even advocating for them, he might still not do it right because he's not, he's really not qualified.
He's just not.
And a full realization would still seem strange if he did it in a blink.
Like if he said tomorrow, got to the mic and said, you know what?
I've been wrong this whole time.
I think everyone should say, okay, well, you need some time, bud.
Like go reflect somewhere and leave the control room.
We can give it to someone else.
Yeah, Steph, what are your thoughts on this?
Well, The one time when I interviewed Travis View for the article that I had worked on about the crisis actor movement, he said this one thing that just sticks with me.
Like, even, I mean, this is like years later and it still pops in my head, shadow work.
Like you can't, you can have that, the concept to me of shadow work.
And I never even looked it up.
I just kind of instinctively knew what he meant.
Like, you have to go out, the vision quest.
You have to go out into the desolate wilderness and be alone for, not, not literally, but and you have to go and be alone for a little bit and do that shadow work before you can even start to really do your apologies, which is the next step after saying I was wrong is like doing the apologies and writing the wrongs and stuff like that.
But you don't see a lot of these people like with Pam Hemphill, with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
You don't see these people doing that shadow work where like that self-isolation and that concept of, I'm just going to sit here and think about what I've done, you know, and because that's what it really is.
And I have very complex feelings about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Like I've always disliked her, but I've also, there's just how much of a bitch she is.
I've always liked that.
I've always liked that.
And I don't think that, and I've heard other people say this, and they said this on the QA episode about her.
Like, all it takes to de-radicalize someone is five years in Congress.
You know, once you have the, she had this idea of how the government worked and it didn't work.
And then she had direct experience with it.
And then she realized, oh, no, this isn't the way these things work.
And so I think with her, I think there's a little bit of genuine change.
Like she does seem more mature.
She even used the word whom instead of who in one of her, you know, but there is, I've noticed more maturity, but I don't really think she's necessarily changed.
The world, she's like David Icke.
Her ideas haven't really changed.
It's just the world around her is kind of caught up with those ideas.
I think, and, you know, listening to like QAA and some other, you know, people that know more about this stuff, like there does seem to be this consensus of she has principles, but not necessarily has she had a change of heart because her ideas really haven't changed, you know, if you look at it.
And, but I, I, I, for one, would like, I don't know.
I like, I, she's, she's like my female Alex.
I love, hate her in a way.
Well, what you mentioned about taking some time is a thing that we have that, I mean, we, we talk about, we've mentioned to each other in private conversations, Steph, about, about the idea that, that We feel there does need to be some time for that reflection before we will believe that someone has really changed.
But this is a very informal thing, right?
Like how much time would it be?
Would it be a different amount of time for each person?
There's no way to have like a rule for this, except that it's just a feeling that it's a thing that probably has to be there.
In the direct experience that is in front of me today and of other people that have been on the podcast who've had this experience, there's always been, they've all related this sort of a interim period at which they sort of left behind beliefs and then,
you know, retreated from whatever level of engagement they had and then sort of reconfigured some things, looked at, did their own research themselves in their own way, right?
I mean, this is also a thing that I think Lydia has described in her experience, actually looking up and looking past the things she was being told to other sources and then, you know, through that new lens and then coming up with a greater sense of what actually is real.
And this is sort of a, you know, we aren't scientists, we aren't sociologists, we aren't anthropologists, we haven't gone through and listed all the individual parts of what we think needs to happen, but we do sort of all feel it needs to happen.
But in the case of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or if RFK Jr. started doing the right things tomorrow, they probably don't have time to do that or they probably feel like they don't have time to do that.
It might be that Marjorie Taylor Greene agreed to step down because she does feel she needs the time to do that.
Maybe she is truly sincere.
I mean, this is a possibility that we need to factor in.
Maybe she does feel like she really needs the time away from the spotlight and all of these other things to do what she needs to do.
I don't know.
She saw something so ugly that she just didn't want to be part of it anymore.
Like that's when you're there and you see like how gross, like for her, she came out about the Epstein stuff and was like, what are you guys doing?
Like that's gross.
Like we need to support the victims.
Like, I just think she really, for lack of a better term, got the ick.
And just wanted, and it happens to people who are anti-vaccine that change their mind too.
Like babies die.
And you have to, you have to really sit with that and actually admit, like the stuff that we say kills babies.
And you have to, and, and to do that, like we're back to shadow work, to do that shadow work and sit with the implications of what you've been saying and believing and actually fully, fully lean into it.
Lean in, I always say like lean into that discomfort, even though it's uncomfortable.
But you come out the other side with, you know, a fresh perspective and you kind of are able to, you can't put that stuff behind you without like looking at it, right?
So like when I, when I, you know, that the, the fact that these ideas kill children and the fact that, you know, anti-vaxxers are ableist and think horrible things about disabled disabilities and autism and, you know, that I was part of that.
The fact that I was so ignorant, I didn't get my autistic son treatment because there's no way he would have autism because he's not vaccinated.
And he had a delay of care.
And just leaning into the ugly things I thought, like, well, I don't have to worry about vaccinations because I can afford all these supplements and that's a poor person thing now.
Like just like really ugly, ugly thoughts, ugly things, and just like really looking at them.
And maybe, maybe that's why she stepped down because it was so icky for her and she didn't want to go through this publicly because it is, it is a psychological discomfort.
Like when you're going through reevaluating all these beliefs that you held for so long, it's, it's very unsettling and very like uncomfortable.
So I maybe, maybe she is, you know, in her own, on her own time over like looking at everything she believes, not just, I think maybe that was like the thing that kind of pushed her.
Cause we all have that one thing that makes us think about, it's like a catalyst.
It's a trigger to make you finally stop digging your heels in and just look around, you know, and maybe she saw something that she, that really triggered her into, to that self-reflection.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The what you mentioned about harm is, I think I suspect, and I don't know because I've not been there, but I suspect that some people who are experiencing unreal beliefs, they get caught up in the project, the project of convincing everyone else, right?
And it becomes like a personal political project for people in that way.
And they just get, you know, in the way that you get when you grit your teeth and you're really arguing with someone on social media.
No, no, no, I'm really going to get my thumbs together and type it out and show them the thing.
And like they get caught up in that over as a campaign over the course of a thing.
Right.
And part of it, I suspect, is a further justification of their own beliefs.
But part of it is also, I think, the need to, you know, if they sincerely believe that the better outcome is from having other people believe these things, which is probably like the debate over vaccines, that has to be at the heart of it.
The idea that the greater harm comes from the opposite decision has to be generally driving everyone.
But once the real thing, the rubber meets the road, as they say, when it really is compared to objective reality.
Is the real outcome, is the thing you're advocating for actually leading to better outcomes?
And, you know, once we look hard at that data, we can see the truth of it.
And that's where, I mean, I think some people strategically avoid looking at that.
Some people don't.
And so when you get someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, if she, you know, I sort of put this into two groups, people who will look and people who won't look.
And some people will look and they have a sincere project of protecting people.
And in wanting to protect people, it's possible that this is a thing that led her to believe in the QAnon stuff that she believed in.
She believed that Trump needed to be in power in 2020.
So she assisted as much as she could in January 6th stuff and protecting the January 6th people and all those things that are terrible.
There's a huge list of things that she did that were as part of a project to help Trump and help this thing move along.
And it's all in line with what QAnon believed.
But if her goal was not to push Trump, but instead to protect children, and she always compared that to what was happening, this is a thing that might be pulling her out.
The idea that continuing with what she was doing, all the projects she was doing, actually hurts more people than it helps.
Then this is, you know, to me, reality and showing the reality is always what should work to bring people back, which should help with this.
Sometimes we say that facts don't change minds.
I think facts are the only thing that change minds.
It's just that showing one fact one time isn't what changed minds.
It does take consistency.
It does take the right view.
It does take empathy.
It does take a personal approach.
It does take all the feelings that are involved.
Like I think you both have mentioned this on my podcast when you mention your stories, that it does take a part of what, you know, you have to take into account what they were feeling when a person got themselves into the state where they were, you know, believing all the things, all the unreal things.
And then you have to take that into account.
But at the end of the day, it's also, you need the facts of what actually is true to help them to realize where they are in the world, where they, because probably what led them to where they are is an idea that they weren't understanding the world enough and weren't, you know, were being led to bad conclusions by whatever they thought was leading to them to that.
But the right conclusions have to be part of the overall treatment.
It's not the only part.
But I think it, at the end of the day, if it's not included, if you were just trying to mollify a conspiracy theorist by, you know, dealing with their feelings and ignoring the actual reality of facts, it wouldn't be enough at the end of the day.
And I think with the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's possible.
I hope, like, I sincerely hope that she is sincere, that she is going to be real.
She's going to have, you know, a sense of what is and isn't real from this point forward.
You know, but how she gets there is a big question.
So, yeah, what do you think?
She's seeing that QAnon was at the right building, but knocking on the wrong apartment door.
Because she said it recently.
She said, there is no plan to save the world.
And that's a direct reference to the QAnon thing.
That was a dog whistle in reverse.
That was interesting.
And the thing that is, and I've been saying this lately, that QAnon was at the right building, but the wrong door.
Because the more stuff that's coming out about Epstein, you get this sense, oh my God, the world really is run by pedophiles.
I'm not saying it is, but you, you have, there's, there's all this evidence.
And all QAnon needed to do was focus on that.
They didn't need to get into blood drinking and Satanism.
They didn't need that.
All they needed was, oh my God, dude, we have a problem.
We have a problem.
So big problem.
And that's what I've said about conspiracy theories is like the strange stuff is it's happening in the open and these things come to light.
It's not even like, you don't have to go into these absurd theories.
It's, it's bizarre enough.
Yeah.
It's bizarre.
Reality is stranger than fiction.
Yeah.
You know, like it, you don't have to.
It's fine.
And then it kind of makes when you do that, it kind of makes truth and fiction hard to separate because you've kind of muddied the water, but you don't actually have to, you know, find all these like Illuminati secret cult things.
Money corrupts people.
That's, that's a fact.
Power corrupts people.
Of course, these things are going on.
Like it doesn't have to be, you know, the way that by doing what they've done, they've distracted from the truth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They muddied the waters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Harder to see what's happening.
Conspiracy theories distract you from the real conspiracies.
Yeah.
And they, and they, you know, forever and they'll go, well, this was right, but how many were wrong?
You know?
Yeah.
How many were so looking out there?
And even being right, it was only partly right, right?
It was only like a few elements were sort of right.
Yeah.
Like so many are wrong and absolutely bonkers, you know?
So does that mean anything?
No, like it's the broken clock thing.
It's, it doesn't give them any more credence because they had a lucky guess.
Yeah.
So I have a fear.
I have a sort of a worry that that I don't know how important it is, really, but when we have people who are taking a step, like what appears to be happening with Marjorie Taylor Greene, appear to be taking a step away from previously held unreal beliefs that, you know, sometimes we might treat them in such a way that is,
that just drives them back to the place they were, right?
So like, you know, if a, if a person like if, I don't know, a lesser known person who's less public, like let's say Jiki Leaks, the Twitter account run by unknown, you know, relatively unknown person who advocates against vaccines, fairly famously, troll army stuff, right?
If this person started to come away from anti-vaccine beliefs, you know, if we mocked that person and trashed them and said, you know, absolutely no, well, I, I will not trust you.
Would this just lead them to right back to their anti-vaccine beliefs and say, well, screw you then.
I'll just keep damaging the timeline as much as I can then.
Or, you know, like, like, is there a way to help them to encourage them to take more steps versus a way we could treat them that is uncomplimentary and doesn't encourage them to do that?
It makes it more difficult rather than easier.
Like, is there a way we could treat some of these people that do make that first sort of awkward step to being like, hey, man, it's cool.
Like, come to this side.
We have candy or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like, is there a way we could treat them that's better than a different way we could treat them that's worse?
If we just left ourselves to our own, our own machinations, which might just be to just mock them into infinity until they went away.
I guess it depends what kind of, if you, how big of an asshole you were.
I mean, well, Jicky Leaks are pretty big asshole, right?
Like, I know.
So like, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's why I picked that one.
And it doesn't matter.
You're an asshole.
Like I just, that's kind of how I feel about like you're not owed a platform just because you turned around and you're not owed kindness just because if you are a complete asshole about it, maybe you should just go away.
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe I don't want someone that was so awful, you know, speaking at all.
And that's okay too.
Like maybe they're going to show genuine regret or whatever and come off the other side.
But if you're genuinely like an awful person, like I don't, I don't see why anyone owes you a voice or owes you kindness.
I mean, it's, it's free to give kindness, sure.
But I'm like, I don't know.
I just think this kind of depends on the person you were when you before all of that.
Because there are people who believe really shitty things that are, you know, well-meaning.
And then there are people who believe shitty things that are just shitty people.
And I think we can kind of separate.
Like it's, I don't know.
I feel like I can tell the difference.
I think, I think it's important at this point to just interject.
Like I agree with what you said.
The people who are sort of advocating for, you know, the real beliefs, if you want to call it that, I would certainly call it that.
Not all those people are not assholes either.
Like some of them.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm even sometimes an asshole.
Like, I'll admit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not perfect.
I'm not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm no saint, right?
I would like to see Marjorie honestly.
And, you know, she's in the public eyes.
So you have to look at everything she does with a grain of salt because, you know, she's got a lot of people.
She might still be doing it for political benefit, right?
Yeah.
Right.
But I would want to see her do a public apology to David Hogg.
Well, yeah.
She followed him once again.
Yeah.
That, that would be and like as a political stunt.
She did that.
There will be signs.
There will be signs.
But it's real.
There will be signs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and I think, I mean, certainly like I, you have both, like I've mentioned several times, you've both been on my podcast talking about your experiences.
And, you know, I've seen times where you, you have confronted, you know, whether it's in public or in private or whatever, confronted some of the things that you have felt having, you know, knowing how you were then and some of the things you did then and that those things maybe weren't good for people in society.
But and having seen those is a big part of the reason why I personally trust you both, right?
Like being able to show that contrition is a, I think, a fundamental part to that trust personally.
And so, but sufficient level of contrition is a still a fairly arbitrary measure.
It's probably different for each person and certainly a different level if you were personally wronged by that person.
So certainly David Hogg would have a different level of contrition he would expect from Marjorie Taylor Greene than I would expect in the same thing.
But I think we were probably in agreement that some level is necessary at some point.
Not just a recognition that, you know, an offhand comment that that, what did she say?
There, there is no plan or whatever.
But like a recognition that what she's done has been a net negative advocating for the release of the J6ers and pushing election lies and all of the, you know, there's a laundry list of things that she's done that were fake and not real and objectively not real, easily proven to be, you know, lies.
you know, where I think we need that.
I think we're going to need that somewhere along the step.
Like it's not a situation where we need it today.
Otherwise, she's trash.
There's, there's not really a time limit on this, but I think there is a time limit before we can, you know, trust her with any important decisions.
For me, when I realized there was no, like, like the things I believed were virtually impossible, when I went to a conference I was speaking at and we were, I was allowed to stay for this.
Meeting that that the insurance uh, the insurance providers, the pharmacies the, the pediatricians and a few other different organizations were discussing how to increase vaccination rates with no funding and no money, and like how, there are so many levels of complexity in the system that these
conspiracies of like big pharma just wants to vaccinate everybody.
If that was true, they would just do it because they have, they have the means.
They could easily fund vaccines for free.
You have all these different government levels and departments trying to figure out how to how to make sure there aren't healthcare deserts and how to make things accessible to people that work all the time.
And they're coming up short.
Like they can't do it.
And like, to me, that's like, that was like the biggest wake up call was like being a fly on the wall, watching people discuss something that they had no real means to do.
And I wonder for Marjorie, if seeing how, you know, being in government for a few years and like getting a reality check of like how watching how the sausages are made.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then go like, and then see the things.
And I think maybe that one, that one last thing was like a moral catalyst for her where it just grows throughout to the point where she's like, I can't, I can't do this anymore.
I can't be part of this.
These people don't believe what they say.
They're awful.
Cause as shitty as she is, like, I think she actually believes what she says.
Yeah, she does have an air of genuineness about her.
Yeah.
I don't think everyone in politics believes what they say.
I think she genuinely believed what she said.
And so I think that's what drew people to her was this, you know, a sincerity.
Yeah.
A sincerity, even though it was like, even though it was all QAnon stuff, she was, I believe she was sincere about it.
Like if you asked me a year ago, she believed all that stuff.
I would say, absolutely.
Every time I see her, she looks like a true believer.
And even if she hasn't really had a genuine change of mind, and I know this is kind of like a flimsy philosophical argument, it was like with Princess Diana when they would like put her in like the vests and they'd like, they'd have her go through like the minefields and stuff like that.
You know, she has no risk of getting harmed and stuff like that.
But because she was this public person, She was doing this publicity stunt, but it had a good effect.
And even if Marjorie hasn't had a change of mind, she's fighting for these victims.
And I'm going to tell you, I saw the picture of that dentist chair, and that wasn't for dental work, okay?
And the that went on on that island, the shit that went on on the planes, and all of these buildings.
Yeah, that photo.
And you know, evil when you see it.
Yeah, I also know a torture fuck dungeon when I see it too.
And that's that's that's why I was surprised that they released the photo of the dental chair.
That I, that first thing I saw that, I'm like, that was not, that was a sex dungeon.
And all of this stuff, even if she hasn't really had a change of heart, I think she kind of has.
She's still doing good.
And that, you know, like, do the ends justify the means type of thing.
And if some good is coming out of it, then yeah.
But the central tenant of QAnon was that Donald Trump was going to save the world from the pedophiles.
And she's realizing very quickly, oh, God, he might be at the top of this ring.
Yeah.
So I think I have one last question that I'd like if like each of you to answer kind of separately or together, whatever you want.
Coordinate on your work.
I don't care.
But if, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green was just on 60 Minutes for whatever cultural relevancy it still has.
She'll undoubtedly have other interviews on other media, you know, in the future.
Let's say hypothetically that she's going to get interviewed by someone, some important talking head on CNN, and you're a producer on CNN and you get to, you know, help prepare that talking head, whoever they are, for the interview.
What question would you personally want that person on CNN to ask her specifically about what's happening with her right now or what happens in the future?
Whatever you want to ask.
What specifically would you want to ask to help determine for yourself or for all of us, what's really going on with her?
I stumped you.
Shit.
I did this to Brent Lee once too.
I know.
I have an answer right away.
Okay.
Okay.
One of the most telling questions is, what's your biggest regret?
And the manner and the language that the person uses to answer that question.
There's a lot of psychology that you can draw out of that.
And I think that's kind of the litmus test.
Like, if you were to ask me, what's my biggest regret?
would be denying the lives and deaths of the people on the planes and denying the lives and the deaths of mass shooting victims.
That is my biggest regret that my beliefs, even if they weren't known to other people, cause some kind of like, you know, psychic damage, if you want to call it that.
And when you hear other people, you know, like someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Pam Hemphill would say, oh, my biggest regret is that I fell for this lie.
Well, you're framing it in relation to your ego.
Yeah.
The way people see you rather than what you are experiencing on the inside.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
That's that.
That's what you want to look for.
Mine was all close to that.
It'd be like, what, what was the hardest part of this for you?
Like, what was the?
It's kind of a similar question.
It's like, what, what did you find so difficult?
Like, what was your biggest struggle before you came to this decision?
And what, what would you uh?
I mean uh, let's say, her answer to the biggest struggle was something like um, you know, she struggled with how she was going to justify this or something.
Would that be satisfactory or would that be a, an indication more of of what?
What Steph was saying, that it's more about public image.
Well, I think i'm just looking for sincerity yeah yeah, and if it's just like, if it's missing that, if it's missing those things like, like I said yes, being an asshole is the worst, but I think we have people can see when someone's sincere yeah, can see when someone's done the shadow work right yeah, I mean I, I indicate that no, you haven't done the work.
Yeah, like i've.
I've known a lot of assholes in my life and i've been one once in a while but like, that doesn't mean that you're not likable, that doesn't mean that you're not able to be like uh, a useful person or or even an ally in in situations.
Right yeah, it's.
There's no hard line rule about this necessarily.
Um which, which is what makes it complicated, which is which makes it really complicated somehow.
You know that.
And you also have to keep in mind that somehow Pam Hemphill keeps getting interviewed by these major media outlets, despite all the evidence out there being that she is a lying narcissistic, moonshows and grifter who just wants attention.
So it I I I, I also think a lot of the media outlets need to, CNN needs to put Doni in charge of this kind of stuff exclusively.
Doni, only that, you know, like he's the only one that's really qualified to kind of cover some of these things.
I don't want CNN much.
Which one's Doni I don't look at um, Doni O'sullivan he does, he did the special on Negative 48.
Um, he covers the conspiracy stuff exclusively.
But I you, you also, I mean you also have to take media stuff with a grain of salt, because I I, I mean, what was it like?
A few months ago, the Guardian did an article on Pam Hemphill um, the guy who did um Zero Hour, the podcast about 9-11.
He did another podcast and I was listening to it, I was binging it, it was great, and then I got to an episode and then Pam Hemphill's in it and I turned it off because everything that he just said may have been right, but he, you threw it all away.
You threw it all away, I think I.
I think what you have both mentioned is the key factor, which is mostly that it's about a sense of sincerity.
Um, and you, they'll get to that by mentioning how they feel, and they'll only convince people by mentioning, by talking about how they really feel, about what they really did believe then and what they really believe now.
Um, and they might say all manner of thing about it one way or the other, but we don't we, we don't have a.
This isn't a test.
This isn't a test that has a, a specific like, a specific set of answers.
But when a person in what's currently Marjorie Taylor Green situation is is uh, when they're asked about their feelings on this stuff, that's when they're going to convince, or fail to convince, the public about where they are and what they think is really real and and whether we should trust them.
That's, that's the real.
If you want to call it litmus test, it to call it a litmus test is also a failure because like, a litmus test is literally one single thing that has to be over a certain line in order to be the thing, which isn't the case here.
It's much more uh, it's, it's much more inexact, but people are going to feel that, they're going to feel that sincerity, it's a if they have any empathy at all, that's the thing that's going to to allow that to either occur or not occur.
In the case of what you mentioned, Pam Hempil, there isn't that sincerity.
Her concern has always been for how she's perceived and the media is good.
In media they do shitty things.
They do all the time like i've done media interviews and like they'll say like, uh what uh uh, former anti-vaxxer caves to vaccination and vaccination.
I cave and yeah, say it that way like, like you were, you were buckling under the weight of all of the things.
Yeah and it.
So it actually goes against the very message that i'm trying to say, because now the people that need to hear my story are seeing that and they're like, i'm not gonna cave, i'm not a pussy.
Yeah, i'm gonna, i'm gonna buckle down, i'm much, i'm much stronger than Lydia.
Yeah like, and I just so like, when it comes to like media.
You have to be so careful and, as a person that's been in the media multiple multiple, multiple times, I I now like know how to talk to them and be like, you can't say it like this, you can't say it like that.
No, you can't see my children, I don't let them take pictures of my family.
You know like yeah, like you know, I just did this documentary for CBC and they were like, can we see your kids?
And I was like actually no, you know, and before before, like a long time ago, i'd be so afraid to say, you know what I really want.
And now, because i've done this so many times, like no, I know what you guys want to do.
Yeah, we'll just tell a story, but I also have my own interests to protect.
So you have to be really careful with what you read in the media, how they present things, because they they want that engagement, they want those clicks, they want to foster negative feelings because people get in a huff and respond more.
So there's things that they do to to increase, and one of those is rage farm, and I think when they write about me in that context, they're rage farming and they're they're not actually trying to clickbait stuff.
Yeah yeah, solve a problem.
It's more about ads and engagement and all that.
So I think that I think there's an aspect to this that's about what might be called like responsible audience membership where, you know, I I don't look for the personal parts of a person, even if I don't like them, like I see it in other people that they look for that.
You know, if there's a person they don't like, I don't know Jicky Leaks or whatever they would love to, you know they're, they're not for doxing, but if they understood that you know something personal about Jicky Leaks, they would absolutely Talk about it kind of thing, right?
I'm like, none of those things are factors, right?
And so if your argument, if you're on the side of actual facts and the facts matter, then flipping to that level of engagement sort of undercuts the idea that facts matter, right?
Because you're getting personal.
And so I think that we, we as audience members, need to also be responsible, tune out when those things happen, turn the channel off, not engage in that.
You know, recognize clickbait.
Don't go there.
Make clickbait not successful by just not clicking on it.
Yeah.
It's like AI.
If your account has AI, I block you immediately.
I don't do it.
Just don't do it.
It's not engaging.
It's a problem.
Yeah.
It's a big problem.
And, you know, I don't want to get in the whole AI thing.
I'll do another outcome.
That's another episode somewhere.
Yeah.
I love you, robots.
I'm not actually.
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
Yeah.
Please don't kill me in the future.
Yeah.
This podcast is sponsored by Skynet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that was a joke in case anyone cuts that out of context.
And yeah, that was podcast isn't sponsored by anyone.
It's only sponsored by me.
I feel like all right.
So we'll wrap up here.
Is there anything that either of you would like to plug?
If I could really quick.
My friend Noelle Cook is her first book is coming out.
It's called The Conspiracists: Women Extreming Extremism and the Lure of Belonging.
And she's going to be doing a book tour.
The book drops on Tuesday, January 6th.
And if you are anywhere in the Pasadena area at Vroman's bookstore at 7 p.m., she's doing a book signing and a talk with our beloved Mike Rothschild.
And that's Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, January 6th at 7 p.m.
And I understand that that's like kind of, you know, if you're in the area, okay.
But she will be doing other book tours.
My husband and I are going down there to check it out.
I'm in the book.
Erica is in the book.
And Rich Logis of Leaving MAGA is also quoted in the book.
Noel reached out to us and asked us for some of our experiences and stuff like that.
And the book is really good.
She has plugs from Mike Rothschild, from Dr. Sarteci, and Travis View.
You know, they all did little blurbs for her book.
And it's, I think it's, it's an very important thing.
And it just feels nice to be in a book with Rich and Erica.
And, you know, these are wonderful people.
And also Rich's organization, LeavingMAGA.org, he does a lot of vetting.
He does a lot of work to suss out who is a genuine former and who isn't.
And, you know, I've seen how some of the sausages are made in the back, you know, like, because I'm in some of these chats and I see all that he goes through trying, is this person genuine?
Is this what can we do to suss this stuff out?
I highly recommend his group also for people who feel like they're ready to come over to the left side.
Or just not the mega side.
You could just be in the center.
You don't, you know.
Yeah.
Just not leaning on the one side of the teeter-totter and just coming to the middle is still a perfectly reasonable position.
You don't have to go all the way over to the other side.
If you're not comfortable with that, it's fine.
It's not just two extremes.
It's a whole spectrum.
Yeah.
Maybe even more than just a single line.
Like, wow.
Yeah.
Anyway, Lydia, did you have anything going on?
Similar.
I have a support group on Facebook called Back to the Vax.
And we vet people too, like, because there are people that are coming in to try to scare the members, you know, from making the decision they're making.
So we kick those people out right away.
And there are people that are genuinely just wanting support through the anxiety of vaccinating their children after believing that, you know, it was harmful.
And you can join us.
It's all support.
It's not medical advice.
It's all just parents that have been there supporting the parents.
Well, I'm not in the group, so I can't say what it is, but I'm so glad you're doing all of this, Lydia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know how I find the time.
Having listened to your podcast that you don't, haven't done any new episodes of.
I do have a podcast.
No shame.
It's still up.
I just, it's been a long time.
I just keep a nurse and then my time.
My time just went.
I'm glad that you found time for this.
Yeah.
No, I am too, because I, it's really like my life consists of work, family, and weightlifting.
That's all I'm so like in this routine of the things that, you know, I just don't have time.
I don't, I'm barely on Twitter.
I used to be there too, but I just, I don't have time anymore.
It's hard.
So, yeah, I have, as I mentioned, Lydia had a podcast.
It's still worth listening to.
It's not like it's only relevant in the time period that it was.
I found when I listened to it that I learned a great deal about the feelings of people who are leaving behind this these beliefs.
And that was highly instructive for me and what I'm doing now to try to understand even more every day.
Right.
So I encourage people even now to go back and listen to that podcast.
It was really good.
It was called Back to the Vax, right?
Yep.
Yeah, right.
And this podcast, if anyone has any questions, comments, complaints, concerns about anything they've heard here, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
You can find me on the slowly deteriorating reality space, unreality space that is formerly known as Twitter at Spencer G. Watson.