Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/6/24: Whistleblower Exposes SUGAR DADDY Website As Trafficking Front

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Brook Urick's book on the website Seeking Arrangement.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. When the Matt Gaetz scandal broke in 2021, I was reached out to by the New York Times and by ABC 2020. Those stories never came out, and those journalists don't talk to me anymore. They tout it as, what's wrong with an older man giving someone money? But the reality is much more sinister. Did you see situations where either intelligence,

informants, that type of thing, or very powerful people were entangling themselves? The website Seeking Arrangement has gotten a little bit of time in the limelight because of the controversy surrounding Matt Gaetz and his failed attempt to become attorney general. People may not know the details of this, but some of the scandal that Gaetz was involved in appears to begin with this website-seeking arrangement,

which describes itself as a place for sugar daddies and sugar babies. And one of the apparently underage people that became involved with Gates through, I guess, his friend Greenberg, met Joel Greenberg through this seeking arrangement site. So it just so happens that there's a new book out by Brooke Urich called Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, Sexual Exploits and Secrets from Inside a Sugar Daddy website, which we could put up here as well, which is something of a blowing of the whistle about the site. And also a personal memoir narrative about how Brooke went from a sugar baby user of the website to its spokesperson later to then outside critic of the organization. Brooke is here to talk with us about the book, about her life, about what this site is. Brooke, thanks so much for joining us. And apparently you're a viewer

of the show as well. Yes. thank you so much for having me. I am a CounterPoints, BreakingPoints stan. What you guys are doing here. Which one's better? Honestly, this is it for me. I like your banter better a little bit more. It's not as serious. Take that, Sagar and Crystal.

I just love Emily so much. I think she's my favorite. I'll take that, Ryan. Yeah, no, I just love Emily so much. I think she's my favorite. Yeah, no, I like Ryan too very much. But the discourse that you all have on this show is everything. I think people, the country needs this right now. And the more people that become aware of this show and can see that they can agree with people on both sides of the aisle, I think that's really important.

So kudos to you guys. Thank you. Very kind of you to say. So let's start with Matt Gaetz. So I'm not sure how much you can say about this, but tell us what you can say. My understanding is that you've spoken with some people involved in that scandal, some of the girls who are now women. What do you know about the role of Seeking Arrangement there? What do you know about what went on there? Well, it was a couple years ago that I was contacted. Contacted by one of the girls? No, by an attorney.

Okay. So let me just be clear that I don't know what happened behind closed doors with Matt Gates. I've never met Matt Gates. Don't know him. But I do have some personal experiences that have led me to believe certain things. And I will share those with you. So as you know, I used to work for this company. And I contacted a nonprofit called the National Center on Sexual Exploitation because I found a really interesting article they'd written that sounded like I'd written it. And it was after I'd had some other experiences with mainstream media not publishing this story.

And I reached out to them and they actually contacted me with an attorney who was representing the minor. And what he told me is that he was suing them or she was suing Seeking Arrangement and Matt Gaetz. He was suing them on her behalf. And he contacted me to ask me some questions about the mechanics of the site and how it works. And so I gave him that information. And at the same time, I was corresponding with a journalist from ABC. And that journalist told me that the reason the indictment was dropped was because that girl believes that the relationship was consensual. And she settled with him privately out of court, in addition to settling with seeking arrangement privately. So that's what I know. And that's led me to believe that there was something that happened that transpired. I don't know what it was. It leads me to believe that that girl was indeed underage. And I know that there are plenty of underage users on the site because it happened all the time while I was working there. But if I had to speculate on like what went down in that situation, I would say that Greenberg is

probably the procurer or the sex trafficker, if you will, the pimp, colloquially we call them, who uses the website to find the girls to then move them to another place to have them paid for sex by another person. by a party or something to a party yeah and i think there's a common misconception about like what sex trafficking is like we hear it a lot in the media and people think oh like children immigrants being bought and sold which does happen right but a lot of times the people who are being trafficked are actually like willing participants who believe that it's consensual and don't really realize until years later than when they're looking back that they were coerced and manipulated into doing that. And if I had to guess, I would say that most like men in power like oftentimes aren't users of the site, they are friends with people like Joel Greenberg, who are the ones who procure the young girls for them.

And they may not know, actually. Right. Like, because if you're Joel Greenberg, you wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, by the way, I use the website. You might not know. Not that they would care either way. It's not a defense. And, Brooke, you can speak to this, actually, as you're answering that.

How does it work? Like, you're literally the spokesperson you were for seeking arrangements. So could you just give us a little bit of background on mechanically what happens, how people are contacted, how they get on the website for broad, I think, context as we discuss your story and people keep in mind what maybe happened with Gates? That's a super important question because the website touts itself as not being a place for prostitution and sex work, right? They say they're a dating website. But if you are actually a user of the site, you'll learn very quickly that it is a site for buying and paying for sex, which is very confusing, especially for young people who get on the website and the marketing, the advertising, what people say is, oh no, sugar daddies aren't paying for sex. Oh no,

sugar babies aren't sex workers. But the fact is there is no difference. They are sex workers, but they are reframing it and coining it to be something different. Like what are the differences? There are no differences. That's what I'm saying. So it's just straight up like, it's a PR. Well, what we did while I was working there, and I started working for the company when I was 22. So I was also very young and I didn't really understand the entire scheme of what was going on. It took me a long time to really unpack that because they tout it as being, oh, just looking for an older guy with deep pockets. And what's so wrong with that? What's

wrong with an older man giving someone money? But the reality is much more sinister. Not only are the men on the site looking to pay for sex, but there's also a lot of like fraudsters and scammers who either will say they'll pay you for sex, but then don't because the victims are vulnerable and of course discredited because they were asking for it on a website that pays people for sex. But which is it? Is it a website where, oh, no, no, no, it's not that? Or were they asking for it on the website? So it just make it make sense. And it's very confusing. And victims are ashamed of what they've done because of the stigma and secrecy around sex work. People aren't willing to come forward about their experiences, which allows the predators to continue to perpetuate this. So back to your question. The way that people get on the website was when I was working there, it was through the marketing and they've pretty much quieted their accounts. They've completely changed the website, scrubbed it from what it used to be,

probably because of this case and of other cases. They shed their skin, so to speak, over time to code as more vanilla, but the core user base knows exactly what it is and the word of mouth, they know exactly what it is. So people join the site thinking it's a dating website where you can pay people for sex, right? So people come to the website of their own volition and that has for a long time left the website not liable for the interactions between their members because of Section 230, right? And I'm sure like

a lot of your audience probably knows what Section 230 is, but I'll just break it down real quick. So there's this provision. It was actually written in 1996 before anyone knew what the internet would become and that the internet would be like 90% user-generated content. So it's very outdated. And it's the provision that says websites are not held criminally liable for the content that third-party users post on the website. So I'm sure you remember Mark Zuckerberg back in 2017 was talking to Congress about wanting to section 230 to stay in place, right? And it is important. And which, to interrupt real briefly, has its merits in the sense that as this show, for instance, like I read a bunch of the

comments down in the comment section on YouTube. That's how you learned you were CIA. Exactly. I don't want to be liable for the garbage that people are posting in our comment section. Of course. I'm not doing that. But anyway, that's the counter argument, but it's so layered and complicated after that because what is YouTube elevating some of this? Is Facebook elevating some stuff over other stuff? And then are they responsible for that if they're doing blah, blah, blah? Anyway, go ahead. Well, it goes back to publishers of books.

And the distributors of the content are not treated as the publishers of the content. Which, yes, of course. Which is fair. You're just shipping the book. Totally fair. Yeah. Understandable. And rightly so.

And without it, the internet wouldn't be able to be what it is and no one would be in the comments section and we wouldn't have this wonderful discourse. So I fully understand that that's a protection that should be in place. There's a tension there. Yeah. Yeah, of course. But when it comes to dating websites. Back page was a huge Section 230 case.

Well, yes, that is my next point. So in 2017, 2018, actually while I was working for the company, Backpage was shut down. The founder was arrested on sex trafficking charges, and then he committed suicide in prison. So anyway. And that was a result of that FOSTA-SESTA? Yes. Give us that background there. In 2018, after Backpage had been shut down, or the process of Backpage being shut down, and the resulting legislation was FOSTA-SESTA. So it's the Freedom of Human Sex Trafficking Act.

And it's basically an amendment to the amendment, right? So it's a provision in Section 230 now that states websites that facilitate, assist, and support sex work or sex trafficking are no longer covered by Section 230. So Backpage was shut down. And if you're not familiar with Backpage, it was like a classifieds website for sex workers. I actually first became familiar with it when I saw my cousin on it, scantily clad, offered at $300 an hour. And I was like, whoa, I was like, this is a thing. Right. And it's more explicit, right? Because you just said at $300 an hour, like that's putting a price tag on. Whereas Seeking, which is now just seeking, as you write

in your book, they dropped the word arrangement because arrangement is like, what's the arrangement? Right. Nevermind. It's just seeking. Right. What are you seeking? Well, nevermind. Don't worry about it. It's not explicit. Like it's not, it's not, okay, this act will be $300 for this amount of time. It's more like, we're going to kind of work it out on our own-ish. Explain the differences between Backpage and Seeking. Yeah, good question. Backpage was more explicit and they had reviews. So a sex worker or a John would have reviews of their profile on the website so that someone else would know they were safe. So it was actually a safer place for sex workers. And when it was shut down, a lot of sex workers saw that as a bad thing because this was a place where they could be safe. And many of the people

who were kicked off Backpage went to seeking because the website is intentionally anonymous, which absolves predators, right? But what Backpage was really doing and why they got caught was because they were coaching their members on what not to say and what not to do on the website, which Seeking does through winks and nudges, which basically are little slaps on the wrist that say, oh, no, no, no, don't do that on the website. So they come back a little wiser. So Backpage was explicit, but not totally explicit. Sure. Because they were trying to make it not seem like that on the outside. It would be like per hour, but we're not telling exactly what we're doing in that hour.

And they do that by flagging certain words and having people agree to terms and conditions, things like that, that basically teach them how to absolve themselves through the website. And the website counts on those nudges to make themselves not liable. So, like, there's two parties that are liable, right, is the users of the website and the website itself. And the website pushes all of that blame onto the users without taking any of the accountability itself. And how did you, and people should read the book for the full story, but could you just give us a quick, you know, explanation of how you got involved and then ultimately became disillusioned with the experience? I was told about the website by a friend, which is usually how you're told about the website. And how old then? I was 21. I was 21. And I live in Las Vegas. I mean, being 21 in Las Vegas, you go out a lot, you know, cute girls get paraded around like we're a commodity right in Las Vegas. So it really didn't seem that far off to me to seek out rich

guys. I'm like, well, I'm partying with them at the club all the time anyway. Like, what's the difference, you know? And I actually joined the site because my friend told me they were doing a reality show casting. So I was like, ooh, like, I'll be the next Kim K, you know? So that was really in my mind. Like, so I actually did end up getting cast for the reality show, which was not a reality show at all. It was a bunch of BS. And I was coached and told to lie on behalf of the company. I was also paid for my appearance, which journalistic integrity dictates that you can't pay case studies. So what they do is they make case studies sign a contract that says they won't say they were paid, but each and every case study is coached, paid, and coerced, essentially, and made to sign a contract that says if they don't appear, that they'll be sued. So they're scared.

And that changed a lot during the company. It got more and more intense, the contract did, between the case studies and the company. What are these case studies used for? So sugar baby case studies, essentially sex worker case studies that go on air and say they're not sex workers. Okay. And yeah, that's like in the contract is you can't say you were paid for sex when in fact most of them certainly were. And the problem with that is that it's a bunch of lies.

The sex is just downstream of the friendship and the fun. Yes. But the problem with the psychology of it is that the girls don't think they're sex workers because the marketing told them that. So they don't think they're sex workers, but they're willing to be paid for sex. And the guys, oh, no, no, I'm not a John, but I'll pay you for sex. So what the website did is codify that idea between the two that absolves them of legal responsibility because neither one of them think they're participating in sex work.

So are they? And what Matt Gaetz said in his defense was that people were mistaking his generosity to his girlfriends for paying for sex. And in reading your book, you can kind of see that. Like, there's a bunch of the guys that you're involved with are, like, buying you shoes or, like, watches. And here's some money, a little walking around money to enjoy yourself. But then the sex is separate. Like, I mean, obviously it's not, but like you can, you can see

how everybody involved rationalizes it and tells themselves that. Although from your perspective, did you tell yourself that in the beginning or were you like, this is a way for me to make money and get shoes and stuff? That's a very good distinction because there is both on the website, right? Like at first I didn't think that's what I was getting into. And then I realized like I was getting into that and then I was like, okay, pay me. And then I realized quickly that that's not what I wanted. I was only paid for sex a few times, like I would say directly. And I decided that wasn't for me. And I really wanted a rich boyfriend, someone to spoil me or whatever. And I guess that does happen.

But most of the time, it's just people straight up paying for sex. And the defense that, oh, no, it was my girlfriend and I was being generous. That's a great defense. Like it. I mean, it is. Yeah. And that's not necessarily the problem I see. Right. Like it's not all bad. Like a broken clock is right twice a day, but that doesn't negate the fact that this website is being used to lure, coerce juveniles into lives of sex work. And I've heard so many horror stories about people who are threatened by their traffickers and children who use this website because it's just a dating website. So are you over 18? Yes. And you can get on the website. While I was working there, there were always people that were emailing us saying, hey, my daughter's on the website. And it's hard to get them off

because there's no protections in place for the users. They don't care about the users. They especially don't care about the sugar baby users because sugar babies don't pay to be on the site. Only sugar daddies pay to be on the site. So the site is geared towards sugar daddy preferences and indiscretions. What would the response be in your experience from the company if a parent reached out and said, hey, my daughter's on this thing? An underage daughter. My underage daughter is on this thing. They would ask for her ID. But the problem with that is the site is anonymous. So she could just open a new one. She could just open another account or use someone else's ID. A lot of people don't have pictures on the website of themselves. Most of the men don't

have pictures at all. And that's the problem is when underage people or predators, scammers, bad actors get kicked off the site, they can just make new accounts. So it was my observation while I was working there that they stopped kicking them off because it was easier to keep track of them when they weren't kicking them off because they could just make a new account. And especially for the sugar daddies,

it was a terrible user experience to be kicked off the account and lose all your messages and have to make a new email and all of this. So they would just leave them on. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children

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that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships.

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Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries

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ago, you were saying you were kind of hoping to find a rich boyfriend that would spoil you. So talk a little bit about how that draws people into the site. People are disillusioned with the idea that they might get saved, especially in the economy we're in right now. People don't see a way out. And most of the girls on the website are susceptible, impoverished, vulnerable communities who truly do see that as a way out. And I'm not saying that never happens because certainly it does. Like certainly there are relationships where he saves you, but that's usually a myth. And most people on the website use that farce to lure in people and trick them into sex or whatever with that sort of false promise. And the fact that we all kind of buy into that Prince Charming fantasy is part of the problem. And, you know, social media adds to that with people only posting their best shots and glamorous vacations of, you know, rented cars and rented handbags and edited photos.

Yeah, Ryan. The worst about this. But people believe that. And like Crystal actually mentioned something a couple of weeks ago that the online world is becoming more real than the real world. And that's exactly what's happening here is people perceive what is real based on what's online. But then what's actually happening is so much further from that reality. But what's being perpetuated is what's online. So it's this paradox that is like just absolutely confusing. And it's happening at so many levels right now. So, I mean, that's what makes this really

interesting is it's a layered story that kind of reveals all these patterns that are happening in a lot of places that have to do with the anonymity of the internet and of these demented algorithms and an AI, right? When you think about these populations of vulnerable, susceptible communities on this website that are destitute, looking for money, what would happen if we fed that information to AI? How are we going to retarget these vulnerable populations? What are we going to do to those populations? It's very scary to think what the Internet has created and what it's become. Obviously, there's good and bad, you know, two sides of the coin, but it's just something to consider.

Well, and let me ask a really dumb question. Is there good and bad to seeking arrangements? Are there case studies where people do sort of use this service to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps and find their Prince Charming and the website sort of facilitated the happy ending. I guess that's a little bit of a double entendre, but let's just take the devil's advocate argument there. Or are there, I'm sure you'd hear about college students who just make money on the side or something. What's your experience with that? Or is it all negative Like what's your assessment of it? I did meet many people who had good experiences, but, and however, if you think about how predators work, right? If there is one good experience, if there is someone who finds their Prince Charming, well, they get off

the site, right? So that's one, that's 1%. But the predators return to the site to bait their next mark. And one predator can hit dozens, hundreds, thousands of users. There are some men who've been using this website for nearly two decades, right? They get older and the girls stay the same age. And just because there are a few cases where it does work out, it doesn't mean that a website that directly targets and preys on vulnerable populations should be allowed at all. And while I was working there, yeah, I did hear some okay stories. But 99% of the time, the people who I met while I was working there that were users of the website, they had a horror story for me. It was pretty shocking. And when I was working there, I rationalized. I was like, oh, well, you know, they just always want to talk about the bad stuff. But as I grew to be more aware,

I realized that it's actually mostly bad stuff. And it seemed like it was, it's set up in a way that girls and women are just, it's set up to lose. And there was one moment in your book, you can talk about this a little bit, where you quit a job because you've got a guy that you think is like now going to start paying you. And you need money and you hit him up. You're like, hey, I need money. And he like ghosts you for like a week, and you realize, oh, like now I pushed too hard, which then tells women that, okay, there's an arrangement, but it's an unspoken kind of arrangement. And so if you push too hard, then the big prize that you're looking for is never going to come through, which then would allow 99% of the guys there to just exploit that.

Exactly. So that basically seems like the most common experience there. Yes. Is that right? Absolutely correct. Yeah. And that's what I learned through meeting many sugar babies and through my own experience was that in order to be successful, you have to be complacent, which I think is common in lots of industries. The ones who

are good little sheep are elevated. And that's what happens to sex workers as well. The ones who- But most often here, ripped off. Oh, yeah, for sure. And yeah, the second you expose yourself as not being in love with him or maybe being a little bit too holding him accountable for his bad actions, then you don't get the money anymore. So you're taught to be subservient and have sex easily without question. And that's what young women are taught to do in our society, right? They're being fed birth control pills, being told that they can have casual sex and you're empowered. And in my opinion... With no consequences except for empowerment. With no consequences, of course. But what I've learned is that's actually not biologically

possible for women to have casual sex because of the hormones that we excrete while we're having it. And in my belief that the birth control is a way to easily control women and to get them to have sex easily without question. And the money is a way to keep them doing that. So it's really hard when you're in it and when you don't have a lot of money and when your basic needs aren't being met. It's hard to say, oh, don't go after that. Like, don't chase money. But the more you get older and the younger those girls look and as you're looking back, things look much differently. And that's what I exactly tried to dictate in this book. Can I just say how powerful that is for a moment because these websites we don't get a lot of insight into them

they're very you know obviously hard to penetrate the all of the layers because they're intentionally obfuscating what's going on and you don't hear a lot of perspectives from people like yourself who have come from one side and have said, you were literally the spokesperson. Like, that is to go from one to the other based on your own experience and being honest with yourself and talking about, you know, I don't suspect that you're some, like, evangelical Christian moralizer, but to come to that perspective, I think, on the sexual revolution and some of these technologies having, you know, the double-edged sword of something like birth control, I just think that's really, really powerful. And it's probably not easy to make

that case in media. So I don't know what your experience has been like. I was curious of actually going to ask you about, if I went back, I went back and looked at some of the media coverage of Seeking Arrangements. And there are some stories that are almost glamorizing it. And you were facing the media. I pitched some of those stories. You may indeed have. Yes. So did you find, I mean, I remember ABC did this kind of glamorous look at OnlyFans a couple of years ago.

It was like an episode of 2020, I think. And I remember just being like, the only negative, they spent like a couple minutes on people potentially being subjected to violence or something like that. And I was like, nothing about the owners. It was a lot about empowerment. Nothing really about the dark side of the business. Did you find the media to be kind of credulous when you sort of fed them the feminist line or the sort of line about empowerment? Yes, absolutely. And like you said, we don't get a lot of insight into this, right? So media would use it for sweeps as a clickbait article. And when media does cover the website or did cover the website because the coverage has kind of subsided, they lend credence to the fact that it's not an illegal website, right? Because if it was illegal, then it wouldn't be

around and the media wouldn't be covering it. So it basically solidifies the idea in these young girls' heads that, oh, it's not that. Because if it was, then would it be on 2020? So it's very confusing. And yes, the realizations I came to about feminism and third wave feminism, particularly that kind of failed us a bit, they are from my own experiences. And I'm sure some people do feel as though they're empowered or whatever. But what I found was that birth control made me crazy. Not uncommon. and it not uncommon and it distorted my perception of what things really were and once I got off of it I was a very different person and and while I was working there yeah we were spoon-feeding these narratives to media and the fact that the media is covering them made me continue to do it but also they pay people so much at the company like I didn't't come from money. I was being paid more.

There's more money than I'd ever seen in my life. So when you stay quiet, you get more money. And so it was very hard to break that. And that's what happens to sex workers too, right? And what kind of money are we talking about, by the way? Like it has to be, I mean, you're in Vegas and the money that's just in Vegas alone is astronomical. Do you mean how much should I make at the company? Well, just like what does it look like when somebody who comes from a background of not having a lot of money gets on the website and can probably, I would assume, suddenly be living a very, very different lifestyle? I mean, there is lots of money. It just depends.

Like some guys pay $200. Some guys will give you $2,000. It really just depends. But I mean, by the law of supply and demand, there are not enough sugar daddies to go around. The expendable income of these men simply does not exist. But they use what the marketing that Seeking tees up and they just go in there and they say, oh, no, no, I'm going to take you to Aruba. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.

But the reality is they're not going to. And I'm not saying that men don't do that off the website. But a website like this that particularly preys on them, I mean, it's just, it's criminal. And it's actually a criminal by FOSTA, but for some reason it's not being prosecuted. Camp Sheen, one of America's-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have

received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are there any through lines on the men here?

Or is it just basically all men that you would encounter using this site? Oh, I mean, there were like sugar mommies on there, like a few. No, no, no. What I mean is like the different kinds of men. Like, were there any characteristics of men that make them more likely to be on this kind of site? Or in your experience, like the men that you meet there are actually just the same as all men that you meet in the real world? No, they're not the same. If a man has been on seeking arrangement or has paid for sex and is not working on himself, he's not the girl for you, honey. Like, I promise. These men are missing something in their lives, be it emotional maturity, intimacy.

Most of the men on the website are married, so they're not receiving what they want from their wife. Maybe she's had a few kids and he doesn't find her attractive anymore or whatever it may be. But no, the men on the site are not good guys. They do not come to the website because they're just good philanthropic guys. That's not how it works. And I think the Prince Charming fantasy is like rooted in our culture. So we're taught to believe that pretty woman, the movie pretty woman, the pretty woman pipe dream. Yes. Lots of sex workers think that's going to happen, but I just don't think that Richard Gere's character in that movie is such a good guy if he really has to pay a sex worker. Because think about it, like a real good rich guy

has plenty of options. He doesn't need to go to a site like this. So it just it doesn't make sense to me. It begs the question, why did you come to that website in the first place? Can I actually ask about the term sex work? Because I have mixed feelings on it myself. On the one hand, it's an oxymoron that, you know, or I think it should be culturally considered an oxymoron. On the other hand, there's something powerful about conflating sex and work and sort of telling in and of itself. But I know a lot of people, especially on the right, are very uncomfortable with it because they think it normalizes exploitation, that work and exploitation are necessarily different. So when you are thinking about that, and this gets to the question about whether it's possible to do quote unquote sex work ethically, how do you think about that term yourself? I use the term because prostitution has this negative connotation that people in the industry prefer the term sex work.

And it's also all-encompassing. So sex work isn't just having sex for money. It's actually sexual services as well. So OnlyFans models, porn stars, anyone who is doing sex acts or sexual services and then receiving money for that, it sort of encompasses everyone. And I mean, as far as porn and stuff like that goes, like, yeah, it's a very damaging industry. And as far as like, do I think sex work should be legal in terms of like prostitutes or sex workers? I mean, I think people should make their own decisions. That's why I wrote the book, because I want them to make their decisions after reading my book.

With more context that you don't hear from the media, as we just talked about. With more context, exactly. I would not wish sex work on my worst frenemy. It's the most haunting and horrifying money you will ever make. And I worked for Seeking Arrangement. So I can tell you that. But it's hard to explain that to a young girl who has no money. And she sees this website where she thinks she can make easy money with her body.

And what's the big deal? Well, hand her my book, please. I'll tell you what the big deal is. And you had a line in here that I thought was quite profound about the money that you eventually were making, but professionally as a employee rather than through the sex work. And so you talk about the first transatlantic flight that you ever took, and you get booked in a business class. And you write, I recline the seat into a bed just like I've seen in the movies. It feels like I'm scratching the surface of stardom. I resist

taking Instagram photos and just soak it in. The sparkling wine greeting, the zippered bag with an eye mask and socks, and the tiny cup of warm nuts. This is the luxury a sugar baby should experience. And I didn't need to sell my body, just my soul. That last part of that line really struck me because it goes to the way that everybody's selling something to get to that place. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution that you went through? I mean, like I mentioned earlier, people who are complicit and who are willing to sell their souls are the ones who are elevated and the ones who get business class paid for by the traffickers because I was complicit. And I think

they elevated me because I was a sugar baby and because I was okay with selling my body. So that's why they chose me. And I think that happens at many levels. I think it's happening in celebrity right now, as we're learning, you know, many of these child stars were preyed upon, you know, and that's why they were elevated. And then they turn around and prey on other people. And that's exactly what happened to me is I was told at a young age that this was okay. And then as I got older, I was like, oh, this is okay. Like, this is what people do. I was told this by people who were older than me and now I'm older and now it's okay. But the more I became an adult and I had my own coming of age working there. I started when I was 22. I left when I was 27 and you really start to see things differently. And those girls start to

look so much younger and you realize that you can't let them sell their souls. Like we need to protect our children from this. And I know it's an awkward conversation to have with your kids, but the fact that we're not having that conversation is why they're being lured to this website in the first place. And maybe Emily's too young to have had this experience, but like when I go to a college campus now and look around, I'm like, wow, these kids, these are kids. They look so young. And I think about myself when I was 18, 19. I didn't think of myself as young. I thought I was just as big as everybody else. But I was just a kid. And now it's so clear to me when I look around a college campus. So how did you get to that place? Was it just slowly day by day or was there a moment? Although you talk about

getting laid off. So in some ways, after this legislation was passed, the website thinks it's going under. You guys get laid off. So in some ways, the decision was made for you. How did you then, like, what was your own moral evolution like? I wanted to leave the company for a long time. I was already looking for other jobs, but they were paying me like six figures and I had no skills. So I couldn't find another high paying job. And I had already set myself up for an expensive life because I was young.

And that's what you do when you're young and you make a bunch of money is you spend it. So my evolution actually came after I worked for the company and after I was laid off. When the Matt Gaetz scandal broke in 2021, I was reached out to by the New York Times and by ABC 2020, who flew me out. ABC flew me out to New York, put me up, had a day of production buzzing around me back at the beginning of 2022. And I told them my whole story and I felt very seen by them and by the New York Times, felt very seen. I thought that these big conglomerates, these hard-hitting

news pieces would really expose the website. And I felt like the journalists really understood me. And they knew that this website was a smoke and mirrors show for what's truly going on, which is like victimization and sex trafficking in mass. And, you know, those stories never came out. And those journalists don't talk to me anymore. And why do you think that is? Now you're asking the right questions. I don't know. But four years ago back then, I was a normie reading the New York Times and watching ABC and thinking I was well-informed. And it was through my own personal experiences that I began to distrust mainstream media. And actually, that's how I found breaking points.

I was talking to a guy and telling him about my distrust and he was like, you remind me of Crystal Ball. Many such cases. Yeah, and I was like, who's that? And now I'm flattered. But then I was like, who is this? I was like, what is this? Like, what are they talking about?

Like, why have I never heard of this before? And that's what pushed me to find independent media and independent journalism and become so obsessed with you guys. I love the show. And I actually ended up finding Whitney Webb, who is the author of One Nation Under Blackmail. She wrote a two-volume book about Jeffrey Epstein's financial crimes and then his sex crimes later on. And I was trying to find a publisher at the time. And lots of the big agencies would nibble, but no bites. No one was interested in this. And I wrote a badass book

proposal. So I knew there was money to be made. And I couldn't get anyone to take it up. And I'm just like, what's going on? And then I heard Whitney Webb talk about her publisher. And she's like, this is a guy who publishes books that people are scared to publish. And I was like, I need to talk to that guy. And that's my publisher, Trine Day. So I'm very appreciative of them taking a chance on me. I think it's going to pay off. But yeah, I mean, if there's a normie in your life that is worshiping ABC and the New York Times, send this segment to them.

They need to know that these mainstream organizations do not have you in their thoughts or their prayers. Your best interest or public interest is not of their concern. They care about Corn Flakes and Ozempic and politicians and lobbyists. That's who they're beholden to. And I learned that through personal experience. So it definitely changed the tune of the book. And what I try to expose is how the news is made at those mainstream organizations, which is they're fed lies by criminal PR reps, like I did. And then they parrot those lies

to the public who willingly believe them and join the site and do lots of other things because they believe what's being parroted by these news organizations. And as Crystal says, they're crumbling. And I think this election has been super insane and has shown people how much they're crumbling. Now, you write at the end of the book that in exchange for your severance, you signed an NDA. Are you in trouble? Are they coming after you? What's the situation there? Because obviously you're speaking. I am speaking and I did sign an NDA. And the thing about NDAs is they can't be used to cover criminal enterprises. So I have a great lawyer and I was expecting to receive

a cease and desist or perhaps a lawsuit or something like that from the company, but I haven't received one. Nothing yet. Well, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I do have one last question on that criminal enterprises point because it's full circle with the Gates thing. We were just talking, you were just talking about the kind of corruption that is almost fueled by disinterest in the press and just sort of by the political business establishment. So with Matt Gaetz, there's a question of whether he's compromised because his potential sex with minors is sort of used and has been used as a weapon. And if it's true, it's you know, fair use of a weapon if it's not true it's obviously Problematic and so I guess do you have insight into how seeking arrangements and I'm sure this is also true of OnlyFans

I'm sure it was true of Backpage Can be used to compromise. I mean, did you see Situations were either intelligence informants that type of, or very powerful people were entangling themselves in these quote unquote arrangements in ways that could be affecting business and politics just by virtue of the people who are involved? I saw on the website myself when I was working there, policemen using the website to lure men into sting operations or whatever. I remember when that happened, originally, my boss told me to go through the users and see if I could find anyone who was a cop who was doing that, because that's against our terms, you know. So I did that. And all I did was just type in police into the, like, email search bar. And there were so many that came up. People using their police IDs.

Using their police email addresses on the website. And so I was like, oh, man, there's a ton on here. And so I start clicking them. And they're users of the site. And so I was like, oh man, there's a ton on here. And so I start clicking them and they're users of the site. And I was like, oh, I don't think he's like trying to lure anyone. I think he's trying to lure, but not for his own law enforcement purposes. Yes. And I heard from many girls on the website that they were involved with politicians, very high profile people. And I mean, the website's entirely anonymous. So I don't know who's a user of the site, who's not. I mean, if they're smart, they're not putting their

picture on there. They're not using their information and they don't have to. I mean, is it being used as a honeypot? Is it being used for sex trafficking? Yes. Yes. 110% yes. That's exactly what Joel Greenberg did. Right. And I read, too, that he got the girl a fake ID because of his status. Then it's... Oh, yeah, he was like the register of whatever. The Seminole County tax collector. Yeah, so...

The king of Florida. I mean, I don't know of any personally, but I do know that that happens. If I were a foreign intelligence operation, I would send honey traps onto the site in D.C. and New York, L.A. Of course. Yeah, and I'm sure they do. I mean, I don't know about that through evidence, but I know about that anecdotally because I've heard about it many times.

So interesting. Yeah. And I mean, again, just your perspective is very much underrepresented in the media conversations about these services. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And so the book is Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge by Brooke Urich. You can find it wherever you buy books, I guess, online, sexual exploits and secrets from inside a sugar daddy website. Brooke, thanks for joining us. Thanks for watching. Thank you.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningloss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. voiceover. I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.