Maintenance Phase - "Illness Influencer" Belle Gibson

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

In 2015, Belle Gibson was an Australian "eco-preneur" with a vegetarian cookbook, a blockbuster wellness app and a terminal cancer diagnosis. Today, she's one of the most hated figures in the country.Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks!The Woman Who Fooled The WorldWhat we know about Belle GibsonThe mystery of Belle Gibson, who claimed she cured cancer with clean livingFriends and doctors raise doubts over 'Healing Belle' cancer claimsMega-blogger Belle Gibson casts doubt on her own cancer claimsMelbourne mum Belle Gibson on taking the world by storm with her app The Whole Pantry, while fighting terminal brain cancerThe Belle Gibson scandal: The rise of lifestyle gurus as micro-celebrities in low-trust societies Belle Gibson: "My lifelong struggle with the truth"Catalog of Belle’s posts and timelineBad Influencer: The Great Insta ConCosmo: An honest account of our experience with Belle GibsonJulia Watson's "Breakfast, School Run, Chemo" Support the show

What's your tagline? What do you have for us? We're doing an influencer, yeah? Oh, it's a cancer influencer. Does that help? Jesus Christ! Do you have a cancer singer? I'm pretty. Ha ha! Not a human! You've been saving?

Uh, oh! Here we go. Hi everybody and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that aims to be more benign than malignant. Oh, doesn't work. You did have one. Did I have one? Good, good, good, good. I'm Aubrey Gordon.

I am Michael Hobbs. If you would like to support the show, thank you so much. You can do that by visiting us at patreon.com slash maintenance phase, where we have bonus episodes for you, including a forthcoming bonus episode that is a mailbag of all of the absolutely wacky emails we get from mostly people who don't listen to the show. Yeah, we also get a lot of offers from products

wanting to sponsor the show. Yeah. And, like, sit up influencers that want to be on the show. So we will be reading those out loud and making fun of them. It's gonna be fun. Sit up influencers. You know the one I mean.

I do. You saw that mail. And today we are talking about some kind of influencer. Yes. We are talking about someone named Bill Gibson. Are you familiar with this person? I am not. Like at all.

This person, you mentioned something about, is this person Australian? Yes. She is a very well-known Australian lifestyle influencer. Would you put this person more in a like YouTuber style camp and Instagram style camp like an Amanda Shantal Bacon? What's the Wu level here? And what's the platform of choice? Those are the two things I would like to know. I would say six and Instagram. Okay. I think Amanda Shantal Bacon is the level we're dealing with here. Excellent. One of the chapters of her book is called Own Your Magic.

It's a lot of that kind of stuff. Oh, my God, I already love it. So this is really a story of Instagram. Most of this takes place in 2013 and 2014, which is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but in Instagram slash internet time, it's like five generations ago. So to give you a sense of who this person is

and her general vibe, I am going to send you a, I would say, prototypical Instagram post from the peak of her fame. Okay. Boop. Oh, okay. So she looks like one of the pretty little liars. Oh, she does? Yeah.

So the Instagram name is Healing underscore Bell, B-E-L-L-E. Healing Bell. It's a picture of a young, conventionally attractive white woman wearing sunglasses. She looks like she's in her probably mid-20s, is my guess. She is definitely wearing makeup, but it's like the no makeup makeup. Oh yeah. And the caption says,

on my way to my first official duties as an American author with the humidity high and rain coming down, big love to the TWPXUSA community who helped me out last night. You're all incredible. Hashtag grateful. This is very 2013, 2014 Instagram, right? Yeah, Hashtag blessed.

Hashtag friendship. So this is another one, also at the peak of her family. I just wanted to give you a sense of the kind of influencer ring that she's doing on Instagram for most of her social media career. Okay, so this next one is a picture of a smoothie with either a green straw or like a lime wedge or something in it. It's a really, that smoothie looks good.

Yeah, it's like bright, lovely purple. Ugh, the caption says, you don't always have to supplement your diet, but it's so easy. Why wouldn't you give your system extra support? This one is for my rash, thanks liver cancer, inflammation, thanks flying, and for general immunity. Raw mango steam powder, wild strawberries, blueberries, hemp protein, bee pollen, maca, coconut milk, for brain function metabolism and hormone health, peanut milk for brain function, metabolism and hormone health, flax seed oil and golden turmeric,

you can choose to add just one. I mean, you see the Amanda Shantal bacon nanny, right? Yes, if there's like a moon juice scale of like zero to 10, I would put this at a nine. I would take one point off because that's movie has zero mushrooms in it. I know that's the pattern. She doesn't mention hydration in here.

There's no anti-aging. I'm livid. I'm talking myself into giving it an eight now. So you're getting a sense of her overall vibe, right? She's a thin white lady. She's got health problems, and she's recommending these foods for health problems. Correct.

And now we're gonna rewind to her upbringing. This is the story that she tells in her book. This is the story that she tells in her book. This is the story that she tells in a million interviews and a million talks over the years. These are the sort of general chapters of her life as told by Belle Gibson. She's born in 1989. She grows up in social housing in Brisbane.

Her father is out of the picture. Her mom will later describe him as a sperm donor. Wow. Her mother has MS and her brother is autistic. Oh, dang. Her father is out of the picture, her mom will later describe him as a sperm donor. Wow. Her mother has MS, and her brother is autistic. Oh, dang. So, from age six, she says, she's the mom of the household. She's making sandwiches, she's doing dishes.

She talks about standing on a chair to reach the stove top so that she can cook macaroni and cheese for her and her brother. Wow. This is excerpt from an L article that's published in 2014. It says, both she and her brother were severely overweight, subsisting on frozen meals and cheap fruit juice. Uh-oh. I don't like where this is going.

I'm planting little red flags. I don't like just the phrase severely overweight is not a great. She also says that she moved out at age 12. She bounced around staying with friends, staying with friends of the family. She ends up dropping out of high school. She moves to Perth at age 16, which is as far from Brisbane as she can possibly get. And she starts working at a health insurance call center. Mm hmm.

When she's at this job, she starts working at a health insurance call center. When she's at this job, she starts to experience weird health stuff. She has trouble reading. She sort of stumbles when she walks. She's having memory problems. So I'm going to send you an excerpt from her book that ends up coming out in 2014 called The Whole Pantry. All right, quote, I had known for a while

that something didn't feel right, but when I saw the doctor, he told me to ignore what I was experiencing and to trial antidepressants. I tried them, but they made no difference. So I went off them and went back to the doctor. All he said was, you work too hard, you're looking at a computer all day and you're socially isolated.

Let's get your eyes tested and start that medication I gave you again. At this point, I could have taken control of my own life and gotten a second opinion, but instead of listening to my body and trusting my intuition, I put my faith in one quote unquote professional. I felt like I had hit a brick wall. Soon afterwards, I had a stroke at work. I will never forget sitting alone in the doctor's office three weeks later, waiting for my test results. He called me in and said, you have malignant brain cancer, Bell. You're dying. You have six weeks, four months tops. What do you think? Very tough for a couple of reasons. One is like, you know, if you talk to people who have chronic illnesses, this is not an uncommon story.

There are just sort of like people who don't get believed about their bodies and have their symptoms minimized. And that is also an on ramp to like next level quackery, right? So like it's both like what a horrifying, terrible experience to have, if this is how this happened, I know you. So maybe it is. I way, so question mark,

Jury's still out there. That's truly horrifying and really, really awful. And given the influencer path that I know that we're on, it feels like this is going to lead to some like, that's why you got to have sodium cluster salts in the form of cellulose juice every day, kind of nonsense, right? All of this is leading us to the purple smoothie, so yes. So after she gets this diagnosis, she has six weeks to live, four months tops. She ends up moving to Melbourne because there's

specialists there and she can get chemotherapy. She does two months of chemotherapy. She says after the first month or so, after the first round, it's so bad. She ends up puking and passing out on a bench in a little park across the street from the hospital. Oh, yay. She's like, I can't do this anymore. She starts reading online. She says, posts about the detoxifying properties of lemons.

So I'm going to send you another quick excerpt from her book. Thank you. You're going to be the voice of Bell. Oh, God. I'm going to send you another quick excerpt from her book. Thank you. You're going to be the voice of Bell. Oh God. I'm going to be the voice of Carl Lagerfeld. So there's nothing you can do to me that will compete with that. Six weeks after my diagnosis, I changed my diet. Like most Australians, I found I was still eating too many sugars, red meat, and refined foods. I pulled myself out of chemo and radiotherapy, Jesus Christ. My doctors freaked out, but they couldn't stop me. I was empowering myself to save my own life

through nutrition, patience, determination, and love, as well as salt vitamins and Ayurvedic treatments, craniosacral therapy, oxygen therapy, colonics, and a whole lot of other treatments. She's already saying stuff that I don't know what it is. Oh boy, it's real fucking dark when people are like, so against my doctor's advice, I pulled myself out of treatment for cancer. I know! There are a lot of things that make the medical system really, really difficult. And also, don't fuck around when it comes to cancer, Jesus. Another phrase that stands out is, I was empowering myself to save my own life. Ooh.

You know, the doctors aren't working for that. The doctors, they don't care if she lives her dies. I realize people have had very bad experiences with the medical system, like not everybody's experiences really good, but the idea that you're empowering yourself by not undergoing proven remedies. Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, it's not good.

So at this point, she switches to a vegetarian diet without any dairy, gluten, preservatives, GMO foods, or sugar. Sure. It's very limited what she can eat at this point. No alcohol, no caffeine. Uh-huh. So the first, the internet starts hearing about Bel Gibson is on 2010 when she starts posting on pregnancy forums.

Oh. She's pregnant with her son. How old is she at this point? She's 21? Yep, 21. Okay. There's a forum in Australia called What To Expect. And she starts posting on these message boards

about a lot of it is about diet and lifestyle stuff, a lot of it is about undergoing cancer therapy, like the previous stuff that she was doing. This is an excerpt from a biography that's been written about her by Bo Donnelly and Nick Tuscano. She wrote about having cancer, detoxinging and chiropractic treatment. She said that half a panadol tablet affected her severely and that she wouldn't get into a warm bath after learning about the chemicals you absorb from unfiltered water. The form seemed to be

less of a parenting resources than it was a place prey lonely young women to connect. It feels like some real significant foreshadowing that there is a biography of her with two authors. I know. Okay, we're going places. Understood. I'm tipping my cards toward you slowly. I'm slowly revealing where this is going. So she's working in retail. She's posting on this forum. She eventually moves over to Facebook as much of the internet did at that time. She sets up a Facebook group for something she calls the whole pantry. That's what she's calling her program diet lifestyle program. She says giving out more advice.

And then in 2012, she moves over to Instagram. Gotcha. There's also, at this time, you will be shocked to learn. There's also some weird red flags. The quack. So she blames vaccines for her cancer. Oh, good. Because I guess she got a cervical cancer vaccine.

And then she's like, that's when I got brain cancer. She starts telling that thing. She says that she only drinks non-flouradated water, which is a fucking episode we're going to have to do at some point. She says in a 2012 Facebook post, I've been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer for the past few years with natural medicine,

gursan therapy and foods. Are you familiar with gursan therapy? I've never heard that word until right now. It's illegal to practice in the United States. Oh, cool. It's one of these things that dates back like a hundred years. It's basically this guy that said that you could cure cancer with an extremely regimented diet.

So this is from the National Cancer Institute, which is like, do not do this. Everyone, don't do this. The diet is strictly vegetarian for at least six weeks and consists of specific fruits and vegetables eaten either raw or stewed in their own juices. No animal protein is allowed, though some whole grains such as oatmeal are included. A glass of freshly prepared juice from vegetables and fruits must be consumed every hour for

13 hours throughout the day. Good lord. It's a great plan in that basically it's so specific and deranged that nobody can stick with it. Yeah, that sounds right. So, when you, a normal person, cannot do this for any length of time and your cancer doesn't get cured, well guess what? It was your fault for not sticking to it.

This is the logic of like, kind of every diet that claims to quote unquote, fix something about you. If you're diabetic and you went vegan because someone told you that being vegan can reverse type two diabetes and your type two diabetes didn't get reversed. Well, that's on you. You weren't vegan enough and you probably accidentally have some money. The accountability flows one way. The responsibility flows one way and it's all that sort of downhill back to the person who's doing

the diet, not to the logic of the diet itself or the science behind it itself or any of that kind of stuff. It drives me bananas, Michael. I mean, well bananas, you can't have those on this diet. So, oh no, mine, I love a banana. So, we are going to watch a brief clip. So we are going to watch a brief clip. The next chapter of the story is like the peak of her fame. 2014 is when everything is going extremely swimmingly. Bell Gibson is a mother, a business woman, and she's also living with brain cancer. But the 25-year-old has turned her cancer diagnosis

into a positive, believe it or not. She's created the world's first health, wellness, and lifestyle at the whole pantry. And the response has been amazing, with her online community reaching followers around the world. I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a Bill Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneur. She is an eco-proner. We taste like mango. They'll launch the whole pantry at last year.

It's essentially a recipe collection full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes, which is the way that we encourage people to get back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables. The whole pantry was born through Bill's own battle with brain cancer. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago. After trying the traditional treatment methods, she turned to whole foods to heal herself instead and she soon began to develop an app. And you were quite inspirational, I wouldn't mind vetting that that's a fair bit behind all of this as well. For a person living with brain cancer, Marta, add you look incredibly healthy.

Tell us what your top tips, obviously it's quite holistic, your life at the moment I mentioned, what are your top tips for health? I think it's about getting back to the fundamentals of a healthy life. We talk about in the app going back to basics and eating more of those fundamental foods, you know, getting adequate water intake, eating more fruits and vegetables, it's really simple and people overthink it.

People overthink it. People overthink it when I tell them to fucking overthink it. Also, the Kairan on this show for this particular story. Absolutely fabulous. I have it in my nose. Whoever wrote that Kairon, I hope your career is so. Do they give Pulitzer's for Kairons? So I found that excursiating. What did you think of the content of that? I mean, it just felt like an early version of like, I healed myself using whole foods.

People are really concerned with health and wellness. It's pretty simple. You have to eat more fruits and vegetables, which is why we made this weird Byzantine system to make you eat more fruits and vegetables rather than just saying that. It just, it feels like this is the playbook being written. I'm speeding through this part because it's just, it's so generic.

A lot of this stuff. Yeah. The only, not that interesting, but vaguely interesting part of this is that she essentially jumps from Instagram to having an app. It was described here and it's described everywhere as the world's first wellness app. This is 2013. I don't think that's true. No, it's just grabbed everywhere as the world's first wellness app. This is 2013. I don't think that's true. No, it's not.

People keep saying this if it's true. But it's like, no, we had apps about wellness. Somebody, I found one person that actually looked into this and said that there were literally 2,500 wellness apps by June 2009. Not even 2,13. I don't know why people keep saying this. If you look at the actual app,

I mean, everyone says the app is fine, but the app, it's 50 recipes. What? It's not like doing anything. It's a cookbook on your phone. Exactly, and so this was the number one app in Australia the month that it launched. It costs $3.79.

Oh, it's a paid app. Did we charge money for apps back then? I'm like, why would people do this? But they did this, apparently. Well, we still charge money for some of them now. I mean, I guess I don't really download those kinds of apps. I only use Grindr and it's free.

Um, so due to the massive success of this app, and I think because everybody keeps going at the first wall of this app, Apple invites her to Silicon Valley. What? Yes, they are developing a suite of apps that are going to be standard on the Apple Watch. And that happened so she was there for the launch in Silicon Valley. Wow! Also in 2014 her book, The Whole Pantry, is published with Penguin. I could eat percent of it as recipes. There's also a 3,000 word essay where she tells her

life story. These are the excerpts that we read earlier where she's talking about how the recipes inspired her and her journey with cancer and it's in remission, but it could come back and I'm trying to live a clean life blah, blah, blah. Gotcha. I was gonna do a whole thing on the book, but it's like again, pretty, pretty standard, like whole foods hot salad bar type of recipes. foods, hot salad bar, type of recipes. Wait, hot salad bar. Hot salad, that's the buffet at Whole Foods. Wait, what?

When you go in there and you're like, oh, I'm gonna have a slice of lasagna and some veggies and it's like $24. What do we look all at? It's a hot salad bar. You're going to, hot salad is amazing. So I'm not gonna read a bunch of excerpts. It's just a bunch of like vague platitudinous,

at one point she says, embrace food as a life source, not just fuel. Need you could write a book like this, I feel like. We should totally, Michael, now this is what I want. We could do the like one sentence at a time, writing exercise where the next person is gonna leave you the last sentence written. The problem, Aubrey, is that it would sell well,

and then we'd have to lean into it. I just like the idea of like you and I, as like soulless husks of ourselves, showing up on some TV morning show, being like, if you eat spirulina every day, you'll become immortal. Give every interview just wiping a purple smoothie from my chin. Totally.

So a couple other things that happened in 2014, she wins Cosmos' Fun Fearless Female Award in the category of social media. What? Cosmos says she's fun and fearless because, colon, she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, but instead of giving in, became the impetus for her dedication to health and well-being. Fun! Tired these people dying of cancer giving in.

Just giving up. Super chill, super chill wording. There's a glowing article in L. She does a bunch of events, she does a bunch of fundraisers. So one of the main things with her app, she'll say like, oh, this week, if you download the app, all proceeds are going to go to, there's this kid whose name is Joshua Schwartz, who has brain cancer, he's four years old, this becomes a really important story in Australia that year. She's like, okay, every download this week, the money is going to go to his parents, or she'll say, oh, we're helping to build schools and Sierra Leone.

So if you come to this fundraising event, we're going to donate all the proceeds. I don't like where this is going. Damn it. Damn it. I'm trying to keep you in the dark. It feels like we're going in like a very Sean King direction. Are we, is that what's happening? First Sean King mentioned on the show, wow.

It just, it just feels not right to me. All right, so there's gonna be, there's gonna to be, there's going to be a downfall chapter. You knew the downfall chapter was coming. We wouldn't be talking about it if it were. It's not downfall chapter. We're like an hour into the same episode. It's not that interesting so far. So, okay, last Instagram post.

This is an Instagram post that becomes very famous later. Okay. So the Instagram image is a bunch of pink balloons in the shape of a heart. The caption says, with frustration and ache in my heart, my beautiful game-changing community, it hurts me to find space tonight, to let you all know with love and strength that I've been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer.

One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver. I am hurting. What do you think? Well, that is really terrible. So this is July of 2014. The downfall, the whole crumbling house of cards comes down. There's three days.

Day one, March 8th of 2015. There is a article in the Sydney Morning Herald with the headline, Charity Money Promised by Inspirational Health App Developer, Bell Gibson, not handed over. Okay, I just want to go on record that I called this so hard. I'm weirdly so pleased with myself. I was doing Chekhov's charity donation.

I'm like, no, I just want to make sure I tell you this charity donation is false. So, the app has now been downloaded 300,000 times. It costs roughly four bucks, Australia, and every time. That's a lot of money. These journalists do an extremely basic thing where they just contact the charities. Like, okay, you're building schools in Sierra Leone. Okay, what's the name of the charity?

Okay, we're gonna contact them. They start contacting all these charities, and the charities are like, who? No. Bell, what? A lot of these charities and the charities are like who? Bell what? A lot of these charities literally didn't know that she was doing fundraisers with their name. They're like the nonprofit equivalent

of the Mariah Carey, I don't know her meme. Yeah, exactly, they're all putting on sunglasses. Yeah, good lord. None of the charitable donations have materialized in any way. But they also find is that of course, as part of reporting the story, as you do, you reach out to the person who the story is about. You're like, okay, we've heard that these charities

don't know anything. They send her a list of 21 questions, very specific questions by email. They then hear back from one of the charities, they're like, oh yeah, Bell Gibson did actually give us a thousand dollars yesterday. So like after the journalist of the charities, they're like, oh yeah, Bell Gibson did actually give us a thousand dollars yesterday So like after the journalist sent the email they sent it like three o'clock and then the charity got a donation like 345 Oh God, so in an active foreshadowing Bell responds to this with a long

Facebook post where she says, oh, you know, it's all a big misunderstanding long Facebook post where she says, oh, you know, it's all a big misunderstanding. We're still calculating our revenues so we don't know how much revenue we had. So it's impossible for us to give away a portion of our revenues because we're still figuring it out. It's all, you know, it's with our accountants and we don't know. She also does some like fake news media stuff where she says like, oh, the journalist never even reached out to me, which is not true. And she told the journalists that one of these big fundraiser, she's like, oh, we only earned like 750 bucks from that anyway. And so instead of giving it to this charity, I actually just gave it to this refugee family

that I know. What? And there's no record of this. And like, I'm not going to give you their names for privacy reasons, but like, I just gave it to like these needy people in my life. And they're like, okay, that sounds pretty weird to like these needy people in my life. And they're like, okay, that sounds pretty weird that like you gave money away in the only way that leaves no paper trial. And also that one of these high dollar important people fundraisers only produced

750 bucks. Yeah, that's not good. And then in her Facebook post, she's like, they didn't even mention the refugee family that I'm supporting. Oh my God. Well, that's because it sounds real fake. Oh God. How old is she at this point? She is 24. I will say this. I don't think I would have become like a wellness grifter

or anything, but I do think regularly about how happy I am to have become a public figure in my late 30s and now- Oh my god, I know. Oh my god. So when I think about like any kind of media attention while I was 24, I'm like, honestly, they're but for the grace of God, go I- My thoughts at that age, Aubrey. I was not a person you should have listened to.

Woof! All right, that was day one of the downfall. Oh my god, I forgot that this is like a three day, three day, like mega downfall is what it sounds like we're ramping up for. Day two, we find out that she never had cancer. What? Never any of it? Never no non-cancer ever.

Non-cancer. Oh Jesus, Michael, this is dark. The whole episode you've been like, why are we talking about this boring influencer? There's like nothing, there's like nothing interesting here. And then you're like, fake cancer and I'm like, okay got it. The fake-tabbing cancer.

So, the article is called mega-blogger bellgibs and casts doubt on her own cancer claims. So she outed herself? This is a dark and winding tale that we will dissect at great length. So I am sending you a little excerpt for you to read. Quote, an investigation by the Australian has uncovered a series of unusual and contradictory medical claims by Gibson dating from May 2009 when she claimed to have undergone multiple heart surgery operations, and momentarily died on an operating table.

Gibson has also stated that in July that same year when she was 20, a doctor told her she had terminal brain cancer and would be dead in four months. But according to the birth date on her own corporate filings, she was 17 at the time. Oh, baby grifter. I lied earlier. Belgiumson was born in 1991. She is 21 years old when the app launches. She's not 24.

Okay, think about all the shit I just said about not wanting to be famous when I was 24. I know. Now, just like multiply that by hundreds. I know. For not wanting to be famous when I was 17. That seems terrible. The Australian, you can sense their frustration through the faux objective journalistic tone.

They're talking about how they've asked her over and over again for any documentary evidence that she had cancer. I know from a doctor, an appointment, a scan result. After visit summary, any, any, anything, nothing. She can't produce anything. And she makes these winding claims, but journalist was interviewed for a BBC documentary on this case that came out this year.

And he talks about how you can't interview her about anything because she just, she rambles, she goes off into little corridors, she doesn't, she never directly answer the question and it's impossible to get clear information from her. So even in this story they're like, we don't really know because like you can't really nail her down on anything to check it. So her explanation for this is that she was misdiagnosed.

This is, I'm so stressed out about this shit. I am so stressed out, Michael. It says in the article, it says, in an interview with the Australian, Gibson said she now believes she was misdiagnosed by a medical team using magnetic therapy from Germany, asked to name the leader of the team she declined, and indicated she was not certain whether he was a medical doctor.

What? She still insists that she had the old cancer. The first cancer is real, even though she can't provide any evidence of it, but that her new diagnosis, the 2014 at Spread to My Liver, Spread to My Spleen, she's like, I think I was misdiagnosed by these German doctors and it's my mistake. Oh my god So day three Of the town full God. Oh my god. We have another fucking day. Yes, I keep forgetting and then it keeps coming back to me I'm like Jesus Christ. What could it be? So now it's like she doesn't have a child. What is it?

No, okay, okay crazed what could it be? So now it's like she doesn't have a child. What is it? No. Okay. Okay. So this is an article in the City Morning Herald by Nick and Bo, where the guys who wrote a biography of her that is called The Woman Who Fools the World. I couldn't tell you that earlier because then you know what the twist was. Of course. Of course. These are the guys that have been investigating her for months, and this includes quotes from five members of her inner circle who say that they have suspected that she didn't have cancer for months. What? There's a trail of people behind her,

former business associates, people that were gonna get into business with her, that were like, oh, she's fucking lying. Whoa. It says, one former friend pulled out of a superfoods business with Ms. Gibson last year because she questioned the app developers character after Ms. Gibson

said she had many aliases. My accountant wanted some basic paperwork stuff, full name, date of birth, address, and Bell said that might be an issue. She said, I have several names that I go under. It's a long story. Another person who previously worked for Ms. Gibson said she did not believe the Cancer Survival story. She would post on social media

that she's been a doctor's appointment all day, but she really was just going to the dentist. She got her veneers done. What? She would make it sound like it was for cancer-related illness. Oh my God. Michael. So there are lots and lots of reasons

that people change their names, that people change their names, trans people change their names, people who've been, you know, targeted by stalking or domestic violence change their names. There are lots and lots of reasons for that. Do we have any sense that any of those sorts of like things might be true about as she said anything about like. This is, I mean, this is kind of the next chapter of the story. Okay. Immediately after these three stories come out, she basically disappears. It's it's two months before anybody hears anything from Bel Gibson essentially. During that two months, we find out a lot of things. Okay. So as we often find on the show,

once somebody pushes the door, everybody else crowds through it. So all of a sudden, all these journalists are sifting through her life. And as with the thing with the aliases, the thing with her age, she lies to everybody in her life about everything. Her mom contacts journalists, her mom did not know that she was an influencer or had an app or had a bestselling book. They haven't spoken in years. And so her mom is like, well, yes, I have MS, but it's really not severe. So with that thing about her being the caretaker in the house when she was six is just not true. My MS doesn't actually disable me all that much.

Her brother is not autistic. What? They contact the brother and he's like, no, I'm a non-autistic person just living my life. The thing about her being fat wasn't true. People find photos of her as a child and a teen and she's like very thin. This is from the biography. Oh, yikes! I just, okay.

Yeah. Quote. Those who knew her describe a melodramatic girl with a tendency to imitate others who was prone to lying. Over the years, she told a number of people that she was in a witness protection program. I know. One classmate recalls Gibson claiming she was a test tube baby. Quote, we all felt like none of her stories she told us were true, she says.

Another classmate said Gibson's supposed health crises were part of an attempt to keep a boyfriend at the time. Jesus, God. Yeah, that's the theory is that that's when she started doing the cancer stick was when this boy wanted to break up with her. This is like seven law and order SVU episodes. Her story has changed multiple times over the years she told it said Kelsey Gamble, who went to a neighboring school, but attended drama classes with Gibson.

In our hometown, she was extremely well-known for what basically amounts to compulsive lying. She was honestly a laughing stock half the time. People made fun of her. Kelsey was friends with Gibson on Facebook until 2014, when she wrote a public Facebook message accusing her of lying and was blocked. Yeah. This is so bad and so grifty and so disprovable. And also, it definitely makes me wonder if there is some kind of trauma history or mental health diagnosis or something going on here because like, this is way a lot. Also people can just be bad and say things that are not true.

I know. Minipulate other people. It's complicated, yes. I was gonna say, I didn't expect this episode to like get really complex. I know, it gets just wait. Okay. So another thing that we don't find out until this book comes out a couple years later is that two of her closest friends, their names

are Chanel and Jared, had an intervention with her. What? This was months before the book comes out just kind of after she had signed the papers and put in the text. Chanel, who's like kind of a fascinating person, was someone who worked for Belle Gibson and didn't really think anything was fishy, and then her friend's mom got cancer and she saw two things. She saw first what it is like to live with cancer. Yeah.

It's not Belle Gibson's lifestyle. On airplanes all the time, going off to Bali, for a yoga retreat, jogging in the mornings. Yeah, it's not a fucking Instagram post about a mango steam smoothie. Exactly. And just constant, like, just curated, perfect, healthy life, but oops, asked her if I also had brain cancer. Oh.

She's like, this is not cancer. And also, her friend's mom ended up dying partly because she didn't undergo conventional cancer treatment. Ah, motherfucker! And she's very clear. She's like, I don't blame Belle Gibson. Like, it's not, I'm not gonna draw a straight line between Belle Gibson and my friend's mom,

but it's part of a whole kind of pond of bad information that she was swimming in. Right. She starts to have doubts, so her and this other inner circle person, named Jared, go over to Belle's house, and her like, Belle, your book is about to come out. You are about to explode into the public mainstream

in a way you never have before. You need to show us some sort of proof that you had cancer. We have questions. All of this stuff is really fishy. Nobody had ever asked her extremely basic questions about whether she actually had cancer or could describe it in any way. This is very important, so I'm going to send you an excerpt from the book of them confronting

her about this." Chanel can still recall the exchange that night word for word. She started by asking Gibson about the Instagram post, the one in which she announced that her cancer had spread to other vital organs. She asked her if she could tell them the name of the doctor who had given her the diagnosis. Dr. Phil, she said, are you serious? Chanel was incredulous. Dr. Phil? He's now disappeared, she said. His colleagues told me his practices were questionable. Questionable said Chanel. Doesn't that mean your diagnosis is questionable? Gibson said she supposed it could be. Well, wouldn't the first thing you do be to go and find out what the your diagnosis is questionable? Gibson said she supposed it could be. Well, wouldn't the first thing you do be to go and find out what the real diagnosis is?

I don't have time. It seems like this is what it's like to have conversations with both Gibson. You're not like worried about the fact that you might not have cancer. You're not gonna like go investigate that at all. Also, Dr. Phil, like, you know, does Dr. Phil air in Australia?

Yes. It is astonishing to me that she would say that her cancer had metastasized. I know. And undercut her own fucking diet. Like, it's just wild. I know. As this episode progresses,

I'm just becoming like a series of like just whales. Like just sounds of disgust and bad feelings. My favorite detail of this is that at one point, Bel Gibson says that she feels outnumbered and ganged up on. So she calls a naturopath that she's been working with and has him to come over to sort of be her support for this long and difficult conversation. And according to the natural path

who they interview for the biography, he turns on her halfway through. And was like, yeah, Belle, it's really weird that you can't produce any evidence that you had cancer. Wow. Even the woo-woo people are like, oh, it really seems like you're lying. Yeah, like this is fucked up.

Colin, I mean, just also like, Colin, the reinforcements and then the reinforcements are like, wait that other guy's making some good points. Yeah, sorry, I'm actually... Basically, this night she walks out that night, saying to Bell, like, you need to pull this book. You can just kind of disappear at this point. You're just a person on Instagram.

Yeah. And you need to take the gravity of this really seriously. You're about to do something really stupid that you can't take back. And Belle just can't hear it. And so Chanel leaves and she contacts reporters. Wow! Good for honestly good for Chanel.

That's an incredible, a difficult thing to do. But also, if that was my mom or a family friend who was dear to me or something, I would be hard pressed to find any other course of action. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think Chanel is the only person with any moral compass in the story. So, she's like Christmas. This is wrong. She gave Bel Gibson the opportunity to quietly back down.

Yeah. But now, I mean, based on the app, the book coming out, this two month period after these three stories come out and all this information, the interview with the mom, interview with the brother, everything else, to this day, Bell Gibson is one of the most hated figures in Australia. Wow. Like, easily top five.

Ooh, this is a rough one, man. I'm surprised. You thought it was gonna be easy and about smoothies being dumb, but it's actually about cancer being bad and how people shouldn't lie about that. I thought it was gonna be right in my wheelhouse of like, juice cleanses her nonsense. No.

And whatever else. But then I got really mad reading all of the coverage from this period. Because all of the stories are framed around. You won't believe how shameless this person was. She's lying to her friends. She's lying to her boyfriend, she's tricking the whole country. Look how shameless and how terrible this person is. But then also, if it was this fucking obvious, why were you putting her on TV? Yeah.

Why were you giving her awards? Why were you not checking this stuff? I mean, the fact that Belle Gibson was so obvious of a liar and so compulsive of a liar and lying about everything. Yeah it makes Bell Gibson look bad. It makes the media look way worse. But Michael, Michael, she was fun and fearless. Fun, fearless female. Cosmo said she was fun and fearless. What am I supposed to think? That she's not fun and she's not fearless Because she has nothing to fear. Come on. Do you want to do you want to hear about Cosmo? Oh God tell me about Cosmo

So this I'm I'm live it and I want to take you to live it town with me So after Cosmo and Elle both published these glowing articles about Bel Gibson in 2014, they both receive the same letter. And you are going to read it. Okay. It has come to my attention that you have published a story about a girl I have known my whole life. Her name is Bel Gibson, creator of the whole pantry app, and book, and a so-called terminal cancer patient. Unfortunately, there are a few things you might need to know before you consider publishing more about this woman. For one, this girl isn't 26 years old. She was born in 1991, class of 08,

Wynnum High School in Queensland. I've known Bella since her childhood and I'm close with her mother, and she has always had a problem with fabricating stories from nothing on a regular basis. You must be aware of this before you publish stories about this woman. She is selling her fake sob story in order to profit from her app and book sales. She's a wolf in sheep's clothing, a master manipulator, sincerely sick of seeing her lies published. Okay, so this could have been the shot around the world. This could have been when this story broke.

Oh yeah, okay. So Cosmo and Elle do nothing with this. Yeah. They get specific information. This is the year she graduated. They get a huge lead. They, it appears like do some light googling, and then give it up.

I'm so livid about this because both Elle and Cosmo in this two months period before Bell responds, they both published Mia Culpas of like, whoops, we published this lady, who doesn't have cancer, we told you, they have cancer, and Elle and Cosmo published this letter. They're like, well, we did receive the letter. And you're like, right, but you didn't do anything.

Ugh! She's claiming to cure cancer with a gluten-free vegetarian diet. Like, you actually have a huge responsibility to check those things before you just put them out in the world. I feel similarly about Cosmo that you sort of expressed feeling about Matthew Walker's book, which is like when you are writing for a popular audience,

you are duty bound to get it right. The core argument here is like it's popular media, so what does it matter? No, what we need to be focusing on here is it's going out on the biggest platform to the widest audience. Yes. Yes. It totally fucking matters that you fact check your shit. Yes. And Cosmo in their Miyakulpa does the most chicken shit thing. So I'm gonna read this to you. They say, we need to acknowledge that we not only promoted her work to our readers,

but also may have unwittingly fed this situation if she has in fact lied. Fall unwittingly. This one, you're gonna die. To be fair, Bell wasn't honored for being a role model, because she was honored for her app, which is still fantastic. What? Fuck off, it's called the Fun Female Award. Not the like decent running app award.

Like she's clearly, you're clearly lifting her up as someone to be emulated. Come the fuck on. I gotta say, I like it when you get a little mad. I got so mad, it's so chicken shit. I like it when you get a little tuned up. Jesus Christ. The thing that also drives me nuts is you can also tell that they didn't do the most

basic fact checking of any of her actual claims because as soon as all this information comes out, people start contacting doctors and doctors like, oh yeah, that's not how brain cancer works. Bell was talking about having stage two brain cancer. There's no such thing. Brain tumors are measured in grades. It's like grades one and two. No.

A two minute conversation with an oncologist and they're like, oh yeah, that's big. Yeah, I mean, it feels like this is also the level of skepticism we're willing to use when it comes to quote unquote wellness shit. It's just like she says she has cancer and she says this cure it. So here we are, like it's just fucked, man. It's just like she says she has cancer and she says this curative. So here we are.

Like it's just fucked man. It's just fucked. We also find out that her publisher kind of sort of knew what? So there are emails to her publisher five months before the book comes out. We don't know who these emails are from. One editor emails another editor and says that a jealous friend is saying that bell gives him his lying. So that might have been Chanel. It might have been somebody else because there's so many other people who are

like, this lady's lying. But we know that they were tipped off. And the really, I mean, honestly, from like even a self preservation standpoint, back a thing was instead of putting the brakes on and being like, okay, thing, was instead of putting the brakes on, it being like, okay, well, let's check out, let's make sure we have documentary evidence that she had cancer, like let's triple check this. What her publisher does is they go, oh, Belle, you're gonna get questions,

so we need to give you some media coaching. Ah, Michael! So they do a 90 minute, this has now gone online, deposition style video, where they basically play the role of a tough grilling journalist, and they ask Belle all this stuff about her cancer. And she does her bellgips and thing, where she's like, pervericates, and she's really vague,

and it's all twisty and turny, and they can't nail her down on anything. And they just keep going back to like, oh, you're gonna have to know, you're going to have to have a better answer on that next time because journalists are really going to probe that. At no point did they consider the possibility that she's actually full of shit? Yeah, it's so tough because like the amount of work and investment it takes for an author

and a publisher to release a book is humongous. And this feels a little bit like a movie getting to post production and like it's trailer coming out and then it never being released. It's essentially what we're like proposing here, which is like a lot to fucking answer for. I can understand the fears of how it would come off and all of that kind of stuff, but those

have to be fucking outweighed by the fears of telling people who have real cancer, advice from someone who has made up cancer. Do you want to guess what their defense of this is? Because of course, during this two month period before Bell speaks, they are called upon to be like, well, did you fact check this book, did you do anything? Do you want to guess what their response was? Well, the industry standard is not to fact check nonfiction books.

Even worse, they say we didn't feel it was necessary because the whole pantry is a collection of recipes. Cool. Cool. Good. We live in a utopia, everything's great. is a collection of recipes. Cool! Cool! Good! We live in a utopia, everything's great. First of all, you should test recipes. Yeah, correct.

Secondly, it also includes a 3,000 word essay where Belle talks about having cancer and how she cured it with foods. The only reason anyone is buying this book is because of her personal story. People can get recipes anywhere. God damn it. The biography also notes that for some reason people also call on Apple. Like what the hell did Apple check out this app at all? And Apple like sticks by her. Apple is like Bell we know there's lots of lies

floating around to put you on the internet but we believe you. It feels so hard for me to lose faith in like Apple but that is also what just happened. So 2015, the book is pulped. Oh wow, so they did end up bagging it. Oh, it's toast. Okay. The app is quietly pulled from the app store. A lot of information about her like old articles

and stuff have been pulled off the internet. If it's wild, her old blog isn't even an archive.org. I didn't even know people could do that. Whoa. Okay, so this was like stage one of the internet. It's wild, her old blog isn't even an archive.org. I didn't even know people could do that. Whoa. Okay, so this was like stage one of the backlash. Do you want to watch a clip of Bell returning to public life? Oh, yikes. This is gonna be even darker somehow.

It's hard, it's hard. I find this totally impossible to watch. You're 23, right? Well, actually, how old are you? I've always been raised as being currently a 26 year old. How old are you? Well I live knowing as I've always known that I would be 26. Okay Bill. This is a really really simple question. How old are you? I believe that I'm 26. I have two birth certificate,

and I've had my name change four times. The identity crisis there is big, but that was my normal when I was growing up Tara, that what do you know the truth to be now? That's probably a question that we'll have to keep digging for. Oh! right. So while I was watching that, I was thinking about how uncomfortable you got seeing a clip of a musical when you were talking about the movies on your wrong about it. If you're threshold for discomfort is musical theater, this is, this shit is in the stratosphere. This shit is so far off the charts of like discomfort world.

I have my little hands over my little face. Also, I am 100% keeping this window open because as soon as we finish recording, I'm gonna go watch this entire fucking thing. So like, that's the other thing that feels challenging about the media role here is that,, is that we've seen her on TV and we've seen her become this rising star with the help of major boosts from major media outlets

like Sunrise and Cosmo, and now they're going to be major boosts to major media outlets who pick at the corpse of the story, right? And do all of this downfall coverage as well. Also 60 minutes paid her $75,000 for this interview. Fuck off, Michael! Fuck off. This gets to one of the other reasons why this interview is so uncomfortable is because they're clearly milking this. They're going to make way more than $75,000 from this special. It's one of the most watched TV events of the year in Australia that year. And the whole interview, they'll read her things that she wrote

in 2009 or they'll read her Instagram posts. And they'll be like, were you diagnosed in a doctor's office or not in a doctor's office? And then they just kind of badger her back and forth. But there's no, there's no actual endeavor to figure out what happened. They don't interview anyone else, they don't do any investigation. It's just this quote unquote hard hitting interview, but at the end of it, you haven't learned anything. Yeah.

And it's also, I don't know if you picked this up from the clip that we watched, but like she doesn't seem to be capable of admitting that she was lying about anything. Right, so it just becomes like, how, however, 34 minutes and 31 seconds, I'm looking at the time stamp of what's the truth? What's the truth? What's the truth? And getting like different versions of the same answer every time and this weird slippery thing, which is like, okay, I feel like your point is made by the length of the clip that you just sent me.

I don't wanna say that I feel sorry for Belle in this interview, but it's like, they're not really doing journalism here. Yeah. I mean, I am against diagnosing anyone with something if you haven't met them, so I don't know what her actual deal is and I don't wanna speculate it,

but the behavior that she is exhibiting is some sort of compulsive or pathological lying. The definition of pathological lying is people who lie for no personal gain. And this is what is so striking to me, it's throughout the interview, but especially in this clip, that it's like it's so unstrategic. Like any cool, calculated mastermind manipulator would just admit to the lying about the age thing. I was too young, nobody would take me seriously, they thought I was three years younger.

So I said that I was 21 when I was 18. Yeah. No one knows how old Mariah Carey is. Like lying about your age is not the biggest deal in the world, but the fact that she can't just admit it and move on or even admit the fact that she can't just admit it and move on or even admit the fact that she's lying about cancer, she sort of pervericates like,

well, I believe that at the time sort of stuff, there's no strategy. I worked as a kindergarten classroom assistant for a year. There was this one point at which I was like out supervising recess and I watched this one kid, look down, see a pine cone, pick it up, and whip it at another kid. And I just watched the entire thing happen.

And I barked his name at him. And he just sort of wheeled around and didn't see even where the, you know, call out was coming from. But like while he was wheeling around in his eyes were searching, he went, I didn't do it! And I was like, all you heard was your name, kid. It feels like that's part of what's happening here.

It's just like someone who has freaked the hell out. And is weirdly backed into a corner for sort of through a weird hell of their own making for no discernible reason. Another thing that I think is really, is really telling is in this interview with her mom, where her mom is like, her bell was not doing housework.

My MS isn't severe. This is the quote from her mom. Bell never cared for me. Her brother's not autistic, and she's barely done a minute's housework in her life. I've practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life. Phone bills, clothes, beauty treatments, you name it, and this is how she repays me.

She's just a girl who's always had ideas above her station. She was never happy with what she had and was embarrassed by her family. Her taste became more expensive and she was living beyond her means and she was addicted to her computer. She doesn't seem to be sorry, I've never seen her cry in her life. I'm not even sure she's capable of empathy. Jesus, God, from your fucking mother in the meat. From your mom, dude, it makes me feel really uncomfortable to hear parents talk about their kids like this. Every part of this is so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable. And then the journalists who write the biography

talk about they interviewed the mom. She at some point also says that she's in witness relocation. She says that she moved because of the mafia. She has all these other health problems that she talks about. And she's like, oh, it's terminal. I'm gonna die in a month. And then they'll talk to her the next day. And she's like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. It's like it barely affects my life at all.

Wow. Her mom is also, her mom is lying just like Belle is. And they talk about how after they interview the mom, the mom starts calling them every day and talking for hours and it's totally inconsistent. She changes her story about Belle too. She says really nice things about Belle. And then she says really mean things about Belle.

She, at one point, says that she has six kids, but her own mom says that she only has five kids. What? I don't know. Did her mom at some point tell her that her brother was autistic and she believed it? Yeah, I was gonna say this points in a direction that I did not anticipate, which is like possibly just like straight up learned behavior. This isn't even the most deranged twist. Do you want to hear the most bananas shit about this? Okay. There's been like 10 other podcasts and a bunch of documentaries about this.

I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else and it's a really important detail. Are you ready? I am because I must be. Dr. Phil was real. What? That's not true. That's not true.

That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. So in 2014, there was a guy floating around Melbourne, natural healing world, named Phil Best. Oh! And the authors of the book track him down, and it turns out he did actually diagnose Bel Gibson with cancer. He also had a TV show where he launched the career of bad baby. Fuck, man. They've seen receipts that he was providing services to her.

He was on a $600 monthly retainer. What? And she ended up paying him I think $8,000. He denies it, oh, I never diagnosed her with cancer. But also, it's illegal in Australia for people who aren't doctors to give diagnoses, I believe. So he, I can't say that he's lying, but he has an incentive to lie if he did diagnose her with cancer. Well, this is also just like this entire episode is a whole world of fucking deeply unreliable narrators. So at this point, I'm just like, sure man, everyone's telling the truth, everyone's lying, everything's garbage.

I don't know. I mean, we've talked so many times about how these simple media narratives of like she's a terrible person, often obscure more interesting stories. So the interesting story here is that it seems in 2014, she was seeing some quack dude

who told her she had four cancers or something. She then went into a hospital to get a real scan. They scanned her and said it was negative, but she kept telling people that she had cancer. So it's not this weird binary thing of like, did she believe it or was it a lie? It's like, she believed a version of it, but she was also exaggerating even the version of it that she believed.

This is the like white lady influencer version of like when a fucking white person commits a mass murder and we say, oh, that person had a mental illness, right? And when someone who's not white does the same thing, we talk about them in terms of like terrorism or in terms of crime. Super predators. Right. So like, I am, I can feel myself bending over backwards to give this woman the benefit of the doubt. And also, I know that that is part of a fucking pattern of doing that with white people in a way that we absolutely never do with anybody else. It feels so tricky to talk about this, but like on the face of it, this is someone who lied to people who have cancer. Well, to me, I already know the emails that we're gonna get that are like, you're defending Belle Gibson. And like, no, that's not, I don't think this exists

on some sort of binary thing of like either she's bad or she's good. I think that if you believe that this woman is a huge piece of shit, I don't know that I disagree. But also, Belle Gibson is not the last piece of shit who's going to use Instagram. Belle Gibson is not the last piece of shit who's going to lie and try to sell people some cure for cancer.

Yeah. It's like it's almost irrelevant. All of this personal stuff and you know what led her to do this because the whole thing is there are no systems in place to prevent this from happening again. And also it's now 2021. All of this happened in 2015 and it has happened like 10 more times. Yeah, totally, totally. It's interesting as a human story why somebody would do this.

But the fact that she is now one of the most hated people in Australia and like penguin books and Cosmo are not like that to me is a much bigger problem that these institutions that have no controls in place are still essentially doing the same thing. It's so tough because all of this shit, right, like the people who have to deal with the fallout of this are certainly bell in her mom, right? But there's a ton of blowback on a ton of people who didn't ask for it. Like people who actually have cancer and MS. And like people who are chronically ill and disabled who already face like untold levels of like

is your disability real? Prove it. I know. How severe is it? We're going to change your fucking income, your disability income based on how real it seems to us. I know. And I think the recklessness of all of this is like, I don't know, man, blow up your own life if you want to. I guess. But like, dragging in like people who are genuinely dealing with all of this shit. I know. It's like so deeply fucked.

Do you want to like so deeply fucked. Do you want to hear the deeply fuckedest thing that I was saving for later, but I'll tell you now. Okay, tell me now. So that little kid who actually had brain cancer and ended up dying of brain cancer at age five, because he was associated with Bell Gibson, they had done Instagram posts,

she had done fundraisers for this kid, his parents spent the last couple months of his life getting hate males from people saying your son is faking cancer too. And also they got no money from Bell's fundraisers because she was fucking lying about that. Yeah, they're grieving the loss of their small child and they're also dealing with threats on the basis of their association with someone who

told them she would help them. Exactly. And the worst outcome of these kinds of cases is like, oh, we have to like check everybody's cancer diagnosis now. Or like if somebody on the internet says, like, I have long COVID, it's like, no, you don't, that's a terrible outcome from this.

Yeah. Which is yet another reason we should be able to count on existing media institutions with existing resources to check these claims. Yeah. You know I abide strictly by the Spider-Man Principle, where there's great power, there's great responsibility, who has more power in this situation. Right.

The people who have power here are less people and more like people in institutions. Yes. And those institutions are not exactly like small and struggling. It's fucking Cosmo and 60 minutes. These are not small outlets. These are major, major machines of publishing and TV production. And deliberately blind to how much power they have. Yeah.

When you give somebody attention like this, when you legitimize somebody's claims, you can't then turn around and be like, oh, we do, it was praise or app or app works well. I also like your Cosmo voice. Mm, mm, mm. Oh, that's what all the women's magazines sound like. My little brain. Fucking women's magazines in some like my little brain.

Fucking women, they all sound like this. I want to end with a quote. Julia Watson was someone who actually had cancer and she wrote about Bell in 2015. And then she died of her cancer in late 2016 because she had real cancer. of her cancer in late 2016 because she had real cancer. So she says, it may be hard to believe that anyone could believe Bell Gibson. But let me tell you, there's nothing more compelling than a glimmer of hope offered by women with unlined hands and healthy nails and seemingly the potential for long and healthy

lives. Women who are once just like you, pregnant with deadly malignancies, cured with that one single bag of cytotoxic chemicals delivered into their bloodstream. I didn't seek an alternative path to cure my cancer, opting for what has been a brutal but proven protocol to extend my life. Because chemotherapy has worked for me, I have had 15 months of precious time. Time has allowed me to experience and enjoy and watch my children grow, and the potential is still there for much more time.

And that alone is the reason I can't forgive Belle Gibson. She would like us to see her as a victim, that a difficult childhood robbed her of her relationship with the truth. I like to think of myself as a compassionate person, and I can feel a little bit for her. Yep, she fucked up alright, but not for a few days, a few weeks, or a few months. Nope. For years, she raked it in by defrauding people and charities that didn't know she was collecting on their behalf,

and they didn't see a cent. But the very worst thing that Bell did was to rob people of the months and maybe years of life they might have had if they took the conventional path and time offered by cancer treatments that well toxic are proven to work. Ooh.

So that's what Bell did, and that's what the people who amplified Belle did. I didn't expect that we would have an influencer episode where now I just am left with this like deep sense of dread and despair, but here we fucking are. To know. And I think that I know what will take care of my deep sense

of dread and despair? And that is a mango steam smoothie. Gerson therapy, I gotta look into that. You only had 12 cups of juice. I'm gonna go call Dr. Phil and see what he records. Thank you. You