The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast - A Conversation with Josh Seiter

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

On Monday, August 28th, many news outlets reported that former Bachelorette contestant Josh Seiter had passed away. When in fact, the following day, bachelor nation learned that the reports were in error.  Ashley and guest host Jared speak directly with Josh to discuss the events of this week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi, my name is Enya Eumanzor. And I'm Drew Phillips. And we run a podcast called Emergency Intercom. If you're a crime junkie and you love crimes, we're not the podcast for you. But if you have unmedicated ADHD... Oh my God, perfect. And want to hear people with mental illness, psychobabble.

Yes, yes. Then Emergency Intercom is the podcast for you. Open your... free iHeartRadio app search emergency intercom and listen now every case that is a cold case that has dna right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast america's crime lab every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth he never thought he was going to get caught and i just looked at my computer screen i was just like gotcha this technology's already solving so many cases listen to america's crime lab on the

the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer Lopez, and in the new season of The Over Comfort Podcast, I'm even more honest, more vulnerable, and more real than ever. Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have kids and to really just devote myself and my time? Join me for conversations about healing and growth, all from one of my favorite spaces, The Kitchen.

Listen to the new season of the Overcomper podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast

this is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast with IHartRadio Hey everyone, welcome to a special episode of the Almost Famous Podcast Today, as will be the case for the next two weeks, Ben is out, so I'm having Jared fill in for him. Today. We don't know this is moving forward. No, probably not.

Today. But I like how to having you here. Well, I was downstairs, so. You're convenient. You're convenient get. They're like, oh, no, we need a co-host. Who can get? Well, Jared's 25 feet away from Ashley.

Let's just bring them in. Yeah, well, so we have it today Josh Sider. And he made headlines on Monday because according to Instagram, according to his Instagram, he had died. Yeah, it was really tragic. Is Josh here with us right now? He's not here yet. Okay.

But I just wanted to, you know, quick brief. And then the next day, about 24 hours later, he got on and he was like, guess what? I'm here and alive. I've been hacked, he said. So you were actually on Caitlin Bristow's season with Josh. You were only there for one night with him because he got eliminated night one. Yeah, I was convinced that he was going to get the rose before me because there was one rose left on the table. I was the final rose of the evening.

and I remember thinking at the time because he was so good looking. I did not know he was a stripper at the time. He was also stripper slash law student. Law student. And so I was like, oh, this guy's a law student. He's very good looking, very nice, down to earth. I was like, he's definitely getting the rose.

And then I luckily got the rose. And then I haven't seen him since. All right. So we are going to bring him in now to get his story. Yeah, of course. Hi, Josh. Hey, how are you guys? Good, how are you?

Good. Josh, long time, no, C. I haven't seen you in eight years. I know. I still remember talking to you. I think you're the only person I talked to when I was on the show because I was obviously not there very long. So you're like the only person I remember.

I was just telling a story about how I think I was standing next to you in the row ceremony and or you're either next to me or like one over. And at the time, you're a law student. and very good looking down to earth. And I remember there was one rose left. And I was like, I'm definitely going home because he's getting above me. And then luckily, I can't call my name. And I was like, holy shit.

And then obviously, miraculously, he met my wife on Bachelor and Paradise, which is insane. But it's good to see you. Welcome to the Almost Famous Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's been a wild 48 hours for you to say the least.

Before we talk about that, I kind of wanted to just catch up. up with you quickly. What is, you know, you were on the show with me eight, eight years ago. My God. Wow, we're old. What has life been like for you since? Yeah. So obviously, I took kind of a different path than everyone else that was on the show with me.

Obviously, I didn't last very long. I was on, you know, for two minutes tops. But I was a dancer at the time, like you mentioned. And so for the next five years, I just continued doing that. and working at my craft to dancing at the time. And then I transitioned out of that in about 2017. And I started blogging on Instagram about mental health. I didn't have a following at the time, maybe like a thousand followers or something.

And over time, built that up to where it's at now, almost half a million. And I think what I do is resonated with a lot of people. A lot of people can relate to my story. And so I've really been just focused on that. I also do have the only fans that I started in 2018. that for some reason, I don't know why it's successful, and I've done very well at that. So that helps pay the bills, but it's not fulfilling. It doesn't give me a sense of purpose.

So my mental health work is kind of what grounds me and is what I find a sense of meaning and purpose in in my day-to-day life. So you said that your story resonates with a lot of people. That's how you've garnered so many followers. So what is your mental health story, if you could give us a little brief background? Yeah, so I think it starts being homeschooled. So I was homeschooled my whole life up until college. I went to public school for one year, but didn't work out. So my mom homeschooled me and my three brothers, I think coming it up in that strict religious upbringing where you're homeschooled, they see the world as evil. They think there's the devil lurking behind every corner. That created kind of a latent anxiety in me as a young, you know, as a five-year-old, my mom's telling me I'm going to go to hell if I don't. believe in God. So when I was about 15, I think just the isolation of being homeschooled, growing up in a strict religious family, it all kind of manifested. And I had a lot of

anxiety and depression. And I started seeing a counselor for that. And then in 2021, when I was in college, I just underwent kind of like a dramatic experience where I ended up getting hospitalized and, you know, kind of committed for a while. And so I've been open and honest about all of that stuff that happened then and since and that I'm still dealing with with all of my followers on Instagram. And I think a lot of them identify, even if not directly with like my story, just generally dealing with anxiety and adulting and being a human in the world that we live in today. What are those conversations like? Like when you talk to people who follow you and they're dealing with a lot of issues that you've dealt with as well.

I mean, obviously don't say anybody's name. But I'm sure that's confidential. But, you know, like, what are some of the things that can help someone who's going through a pretty difficult time? Yeah, so I wish there's a magic pill or a magic answer that I could give someone. I can't, what I can give them is tools. So what help has been very effective for me is cognitive behavioral therapy, which I practice with my therapist, which is basically the premise of it is we stress ourselves out with our faulty thinking. We think we must be loved by everyone.

We must be liked by everyone. We must have everyone's approval. We must be successful. We must do well. And that's not true. Those aren't truths. They just exist in our head. And the truth is we don't need to be liked by everyone.

Everyone can hate us and life goes on. We don't need to be successful. We don't need to be perfect. We can fall short. And that's okay. And so we stress ourselves out when we employ that faulty thinking. So we need to restructure our thoughts so that we need to restructure our thoughts so that we don't musterbate or I must be liked. I must be loved. I must be successful. And instead

just say, I would prefer to be these things. But if I'm not, I'll do better, but I'm not a terrible human being. And you don't draw sweeping generalizations about yourself based on your failure to succeed or your failure to be liked. That doesn't make you a terrible person. And so I try to just share that with people, and I point them to literature and books and therapists that might be able to help them restructure their thoughts with cognitive behavioral therapy. And I'm always confident that that will help them as much as it's helped me. So let's talk about your Instagram getting hacked. So you say that it was hacked on Monday. And why don't you just, can you just tell us the story? Like what happened? Uh, yeah. So I was trying to log into my account on Monday.

I couldn't log into it, which is weird, because normally click the, you know, I have an iPhone. I click the Instagram icon on my iPhone, and I'm automatically taken to my profile. And, you know, I was asking me to log in manually, and I thought that was weird. So I'm trying to do it. It's not working. I'm trying to remember my password. And I'm like, I can't really remember my password, but I think this is it. And at the same time, like a short time later, my phone starts going off with just hundreds of text.

messages and it's ringing off the hook while I'm trying to log in. And I'm like, something's weird. Like, I have a feeling this is all connected. And so anyways, you know, people started sending me screenshots of something that had been posted on my page. And I was like, oh, man. I was like, so like someone's either playing a prank or someone got in it. I didn't know what was going on.

So I spent, it was from the time it happened until I got back into my account, it was 18 hours. Obviously, I slept some. during that time. So I spent about nine or 10 hours frantically trying to get back into my account. I don't have like a social media manager or a team or a PR team. It's just, you know, me and my house on my phone. So I'm not very technologically adept. So I hit up some of my friends and was like, dude, like do you know any way like that something's going on? Like someone obviously got into my account. We need to get them out and like change the password. And

eventually I was able to and that's when I posted the videos but I heard that you didn't even file a report with Instagram why would you think not to do that uh it's just you know once I got back in and reset my password put on two-factor authentication um I don't know for me it just didn't isn't like my top priority my top you know I had family members from Texas calling me crying I had my mom crying I had um you know hundreds of text messages I was fielding and I'm still fielding. Even today, I've spent all morning fielding, and I'm doing interviews with CNN,

Good Morning America, the Today Show extra. So filing a report after the fact with Instagram is like, I don't know if that's just not, hasn't been like a top priority, but I feel like I, we remedied the situation. I'm back into my account.

I feel like it's safe and protected now. And so it's just not a top priority for me. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, do this, pull that, turn this.

It's just... I can do my eyes closed. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.

Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then, as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. See? Listen to No Such Thing on the I Heart Radio.

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, my name is Enya Humanzor. And I'm Drew Phillips. And we run a podcast called Emergency Intercom. If you're a crime junkie and you love crimes, we're not the podcast for you. But if you have unmedicated ADHD... Oh my God, perfect. And want to hear people with mental illness, psychobabble.

Yes, yes. Then Emergency Intercom is the podcast for you. Open your free. Free iHeartRadio app, search emergency intercom, and listen now. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on. DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your...

your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Your ex-girlfriend of two weeks, who you dated this month, Monica Beverly Hills from

Rupal's drag race, she's kind of come out and said that if you needed someone that had a following to get the message out there quickly, you could have always reached out to her. How do you respond to that? I hung out with Monica three times in my entire life. I'm 36 years old. I have hung out with her three times for a total of maybe six hours at her beckoning. She'd been messaging me on Instagram since 2018. So I, you know, we were both in Chicago.

So I ended up hanging out with her three times over a week and a half period. She's not my girlfriend. I don't know why the media is. They're just referring to that because it's sensational to say that she's my ex. I've had more physical contact with my mom and my dad who's been dead for two years than I have with Monica but why would I talk to her? I wasn't even talking to her at the time

so I'm not going to hit up someone I hung out with three times and say, oh, can you make a statement? I thought it was better for me to prioritize getting back into my platform with half a million followers and post directly to them a video of myself letting them know I'm here in the flesh and I'm alive, and hitting up some chick I hung out with, you know, a few weeks earlier and telling her to make a written statement saying Josh is alive because he told me so. Like, it defies reality. It doesn't even make sense. I'm assuming you're working on trying to figure out who hacked your account, but what do you think the motive was behind this?

You know, for me, it just kind of slaps of anti-mental health. I know a lot of people find that concept. foreign, but I've been dealing, you know, I've been blogging about it and one of the more vocal people on Instagram talking about it for the better part of six years. For those six years, I'd say every day I get people telling me you should commit suicide. You're a stupid idiot that suffers for mental illness. You should just die. Too bad you weren't successful. It's so funny, you have anxiety and depression. I mean, there's a real anti-mental health ethos and pathology out there where people like to mock it. And I think social media rewards people that say things for shock value.

So if you tell someone who has mental illness, you know, go kill yourself, you should die. They know that it's going to rage bait people and they know it's going to get people upset and they get rewarded for it because they get clicks. So I feel like the person that posted that thing basically mocking me and saying I'm suffering from depression and anxiety and I decided to take my life. it's very similar to the type of language that I see in the messages that the hateful messages that come to me. Just take your life. You should just do it. So I'm not, I can't get into that person's mind. So I'm just, you know, guessing I'm not clairvoyant. But to me, I feel like it was

an attack on mental health. And honestly, I feel like in Donald Trump's America, science and things that are established like mental illness are not taken as seriously in the america that we live in things that should be taken seriously like climate change mental health trans rights LGBT rights they're not taken seriously by a large um a large part of the population and so they mock it and they make fun of it because they don't understand it and so i think this just has a lot of underlying like things beneath it so i don't really want to like try to guess but that's just kind of how it comes off to me i feel like it it was it was mocking me and it was basically telling me to go kill myself and i should be dead some people are speculating that possibly

you were the conductor of this whole thing that like you were the one that posted it just to get attention. And we certainly have seen a lot of headlines about you over the past couple days. So how do you respond to those people who are thinking that this has not been a legitimate hacking? Yeah, I think those are all like, you know, legitimate things to allege and to say. I think there's legitimate detractors out there. And it's just that, you know, it's a fire rod issue on so many levels. It's reality TV, mental health, Josh Sider, um hacking death life um so it's kind of going to get people from from all sides of the aisle so i look i think there's some people with some legitimate concerns i've been trying to answer all of

the questions that i can um i wasn't the hacker so i can't answer i can only answer questions as josh cider i was also a victim of this um but i've tried to do my best um but uh yeah i can't all I can do is speak the truth and the truth is I wasn't behind it and people can either choose to believe it or not. Like I said earlier, you can't please everybody and I don't really care if people don't believe me or, and I really don't care if people hate me. It just doesn't affect me or my happiness. So all I can do is speak the truth and if they believe me and believe the truth, great. And if they don't, I don't care. It's not going to affect my life. So what has your mental state been over the past 48 hours um so it's it's been definitely better now

i mean i was having like you know panic anytime there's a spike in my anxiety i kind of have panic attacks a little bit of depersonalization which a lot of people know what it is i it's a lot to go into now but a little bit of dissociation but now much better um but there's still a lot of hate out there on my Instagram. I have hundreds of messages that come in daily. Just you, you are behind this. I know it. And so that, you know, gives me a little anxiety, just reading how much some people hate me. But overall, I'm doing pretty well. I try to find meaning and purpose in my day-to-day life that is, regardless of what's going on. So even if I'm not experiencing success in my personal life or things are going wrong on social media,

I still try to ground myself through diet, exercise, going for walks. So even though I've been stressed out lately, I've tried to kind of maintain structure throughout. And now that the storm is kind of passing, I'm definitely doing a lot better. But I think it's important that we're able to just no matter what is going on in our lives, we have some kind of a way to just kind of level ourselves out so that we don't like lose our marbles during it. So, but overall, I'm doing good and I appreciate you asking. I know that you don't want to talk about Monica, Beverly Hills anymore, but I do have one

question. I just want to get out there. That's fine. I don't care. She says in one article and one interview that she did this week that you have had multiple Instagram accounts and that you have planted. stories on the internet about you being a clout chaser yeah i saw that that was so weird so i i'm very honest about you know i only have one instagram account i have there's a lot of like fan page there's

a lot of fan pages of me like when i first started doing mental health um i don't know how many are still out there um but i don't own any other or run any other instagram pages i don't have time to i mean usually i only make like one post a week on my own instagram and honestly i don't go when i'm on instagram i'm only posting on my instagram i don't go through the explore page usually i'm not looking at other people's posts i don't interact with other people so i certainly wouldn't be managing other accounts where i'm doing that i don't even like doing it on my own account i just get on upload my post copy and paste my mental health caption in occasionally post a story and and that's it so i did see her saying that i run multiple accounts i'd be

interested in knowing like what i almost feel sorry for that she thinks that i don't know if someone told her or what but it's such a weird thing to accuse me of but it's completely false and baffling to me and then the clout chaser thing i've been called a clout chaser i've dated women from 90 day fiancee love after lockup uh other reality i can't even think i think there's a couple other reality shows out there of women that I've dated. So people like to accuse me of lots of things and the accused the moniker, Cloud Chaser doesn't bother me. I kind of think it's funny. Why do you think you're drawn to women from reality shows? I don't know. During COVID, there's a lot of boredom going on because we were all locked down. So I was definitely, you know,

just bored. And I think we're all on our phones more. and I was single, so I was chatting to people, and, you know, it's just the relationships would develop after talking for a while. But I don't know, like, if there's a rhyme or reason behind it, it's just kind of how it's played out. You know, just like people find love on a reality show. It's like, well, why do you find love on a reality show? That's such an odd thing and an odd place to go to search for love. What was your motivation for doing that?

It's like, I mean, I don't know. Why do we? that's a fair point I know no kidding I ask myself that every day I admit one fan of the show two I do like attention three

wanted to find someone yeah kind of all worked out it worked it did knock on wood well Josh thanks so much for joining us today we really appreciated you know wishing you the best hopefully everything gets cleared up

I can only imagine what you're you know because obviously I'm thinking about your family too like you talked about your mom i mean yeah that's a scary scenario just kind of see that and not know what's going on so wish you nothing but the best thank you again for joining us good seeing you buddy thanks guys i appreciate it take care bye josh bye see you follow the ben and ashley i almost famous podcast on iHeart radio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts hi my name is enya umanzor and i'm drew phillips and we run a podcast called emergency intercom

If you're a crime junkie and you love crimes, we're not the podcast for you. But if you have unmedicated ADHD... Oh my God, perfect. And want to hear people with mental illness, psycho babble. Yes, yes. Then Emergency Intercom is the podcast for you. Open your free IHeartRadio app. Search Emergency Intercom and listen now.

I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer. A new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jenna Lopez, and in the new season of the Overcomfit Podcasts, I'm even more honest, more vulnerable, and more. More real than ever.

Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have kids and to really just devote myself and my time? Join me for conversations about healing and growth. All from one of my favorite spaces, The Kitchen. Listen to the new season of the Overcomber podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The Super Secret Festi Club podcast season four is here.

And we're locked in. That means more juicy. cheese me terrible love advice evil spells to cast on your ex no no no we're not doing that this season oh well this season we're leveling up each episode will feature a special bestie and you're not gonna want to miss it my name is curly and i'm maya get in here listen to the super secret bestie club on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast this is an iHeart podcast