There Are No Girls on the Internet - Chris Pratt is the Least Interesting Thing About the Hallow App (A Message to Live Action)

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

In last week's news roundup, we did a short segment about the Hallow App.  It's a subscription-based app that helps you pray and learn about scripture with celebrity spokespeople. It's also partially funded by Peter Thiel and JD Vance, people actively involved in building surveillance technology. We had some concerns!  A writer named Nancy Flanders did not appreciate the segment! She wrote an article for the anti-abortion organization  Live Action about our segment, strangely focusing on our criticism of Chris Pratt, even though he was just a minor part of the segment.  We love connecting with new audiences! To meet this new-found demand for our content amongst the anti-abortion crowd, we're taking a deep dive into the Hallow app.  We'll take a close look at their investors, those investors' connections to the Trump administration and creation of a surveillance state, privacy concerns with the app, and the motley crew of scumbags the app has hired as spokespeople. We'll also talk about Chris Pratt a little more. We know what you like.    Let us know what you think about Chris Pratt, or anything else, by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.      Pre-order our forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com!    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.

Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd. And this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. In our latest News Roundup episode, we were talking about how Nikki Minaj tweeted out her enemies list and how funny it was. But Mike, thinking about it, I guess I also have an enemies list. And it is rare, but you know that since we started the podcast, we have done a few, like just a handful of episodes about my personal feuds. You do have a little bit of an enemies list.

It reminds me of this throwaway joke from an episode of Gilmore Girls. when Rory and her roommate Paris are at college and somebody wrote die jerk on their door and they're trying to figure out who did it. And Paris is like, we should all update our enemies lists just to be sure. Consider my enemies list updated for 2026 because we have a feud.

A few weeks ago in our news roundup, we talked about the hollow prayer app. Now, you all know. The roundup is casual. It is just me giving my. off-the-cuff feelings and takes in opinions. It is not meant to be a deep dive. It's more just my takes on the stories of the week.

And that week, I had some thoughts about the subscription-based prayer app, Hollow, and some of their spokespeople, like Gwen Stefani, Mark Wahlberg, and Chris Pratt, which we'll get to in a moment. Episode goes out. Surprisingly, people had a lot of opinions about the episode. You said that you got texts from people that you hadn't spoken to in a long, time, specifically asking about Chris Pratt. Is that right? It is, yeah. Asking and sort of like applauding us for for criticizing me, I guess.

You know, my friend Seth, who has listened to the show for years, but I haven't talked to him in a while, like, texted me out of the blue and was like, yeah, give it to him. So yeah, I think it really struck a nerve with people who seem to, like, your distaste for Chris Pratt seems to be pretty commonly helpful. among a lot of people. The wild thing is, I don't even think I went too hard on Chris Pratt. I held back mostly because I just find him annoying. I don't have, if people want a deep dive on my thoughts on Chris Pratt,

I'm happy to do that. I did not think this episode was that. That's right. We didn't really talk about him all that much. It was like, I went back and listened. It seemed like some pretty mild criticism. And then we moved on and talked way more about other people. Exactly.

So imagine my surprise when live action, the anti-abortion nonprofit, published what I would describe as a little bit of a hit piece on their blog called, and I'm quoting the actual title of the blog post on live action here. Chris Pratt takes heat for partnering with Catholic pro-life hollow app by a freelance writer for the anti-abortion organization, Live Action, named Nancy Flanders. Now that piece by Nancy Flanders on Live Action's website quotes heavily from our Roundup discussion about the Hollow app and Chris Pratt. Mike, you are also quoted by name, by the way. I was. I think it's the first time that I have been quoted for my work on this podcast. So it was, you know, felt kind of nice, actually. Anti-abortion people are targeting me. I must be doing something right. So I do think that Nancy listened to the podcast, at least that segment, because she quoted so heavily from it.

And I almost wonder if live action has some sort of a situation where they have a news alert set for people talking about Chris Pratt and the Hollow app. Yeah, you were talking about that to me, that they, you know, it seemed like they must have had some kind of news alerts set up. And it does seem that way because I can't imagine that Nancy just regularly listens to our podcast. Back in December, Nancy Flanders wrote a piece about Gwen's to find. Bonnie being called out for her partnership with the Hollow app after an episode of a podcast that I love, a bit fruity with Matt Bernstein, came out. And so part of me wonders if Nancy's job is to have a Google News Alert set for when any old podcaster mentions the Hollow app unfavorably and to go in and say, I actually didn't like your, like what you said about this

prayer app on your episode. What a job. What a sad job that would be. Nancy, girl, I feel for you. However, if you're listening to this podcast episode, because we're certainly going to put Halo app in the SEO to get your attention if that is what's going on, if you're listening to this, Nancy, welcome to the podcast. First of all, it is always nice when people engage with my work. I really appreciate it. Thank you for linking to the podcast episode in your live action piece. A shout out is a shout out.

I will take it. Always nice to have listeners. Love a fan. Thank you so much for listening. But Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. Here is the thing. Girl, you listen to my segment and then you wrote a piece about it on the anti-abortion live action blog that basically left out most of what I actually said, my main arguments, my substantive criticisms. Nancy, why? Because if you read Nancy's whole piece

without having heard my episode, you might think that my entire beef with the hollow app is that Chris Pratt is one of their spokespeople, and I personally find Chris Pratt annoying. That's it. The whole thing, according to Nancy, Bridget Todd doesn't like Chris Pratt. And you know what? That is true. I do not particularly like Chris Pratt. We'll get to that.

But that is merely a footnote in what I said. Mike, you re-listen to our conversation. What do you agree? Yeah, I went through and I actually started counting words of different things that we talked about in that segment. to get like a quantitative measure of how much we talked about Chris Pratt. I stopped doing that because I thought it would be a little ridiculous and listeners wouldn't actually care.

But suffice it to say that like Chris Pratt was not the majority of what we talked about that segment by a long shot, right? We talked about Mark Wahlberg. We talked about privacy considerations. Chris Pratt was mentioned, but like I said before, it was just kind of like light criticism and then we moved on. This is one of the perks of having a data science.

that is also your podcast producer, because if there's one thing Mike's going to do, it's get some hard numbers to back up what we're saying. So, Nancy, it sounds like what you're asking for is a deep dive episode. We talked about the Halo app very briefly as one of several segments in a news roundup. It seems like you want us to go deeper because you wrote a whole piece about it in which you tagged me. So let's do it. Let's go deeper. Thank you for the suggestion. Let's do the episode that you, Nancy apparently wanted meat to make. This one is for you, Nancy Flanders, of live action, because let me hit you with some facts. The man who funds the Hallow Prayer app also funds our deportation machine. One of his other investments is a fertility and menstrual tracking app that will hand your data

over to law enforcement. And Hallow's biggest celebrity partner, who is also a financial investor of the app, is a convicted felon who beat two Vietnamese men with a wooden stick and still has not apologized to the black child he threw rocks at. And your anti-abortion nonprofit live action wrote a disingenuous piece about my podcast episode and neglected to mention any of that. So let's talk about the pieces that live action left out for whatever reason, the things that they did not want to talk about that we raised in that episode. Let's dig into some of those, shall we?

And just to expectation said for listeners, Bridget has written about 26 pages of notes here, so buckle up. In the words of Tupac, first of all, fuck your bitch and the click you claim. Just kidding, just kidding. Although I did listen to several hours of disc tracks to prepare for this recording because that is the energy I would like to bring. Nancy should have just sat there and ate your food, but let's do it. Let's start for the beginning because in our brief news roundup segment, we didn't really do a proper breakdown. of what the Hallow app is.

Hallow app is a Catholic prayer app. It has things like scripture, rosary prayers, meditations, that kind of thing. It has been around for a few years, but it's really gotten popular recently, and it recently broke into the top 10 downloads on the app store. Genuinely, an impressive feat for a faith-based app.

But here's where things get interesting. The app has a tier that $70 a year or $11 a month when prayer is famously free. Now, one of Nancy's big, non-chris-Prat-related quibbles with my episode and the quibble that she makes with the A Bit Fruitie podcast is that we leave out that there is a free version of the app that gives users free access to limited content.

Again, it seems like maybe Nancy's whole job is writing an article on live action whenever somebody does not do a good enough job of saying that there's a free version of the hallow app. Again, what a sad job, Nancy, I feel for you, girl. But the full experience to fully experience what this app has to offer from scriptures and prayers, that costs money. Right, Nancy? You are not accessing the full experience of this app for free.

So that's just a fact. And listen, I am not fundamentally opposed for apps charging for services. I used to work for an app. Stuff costs money. That's fine. Apps cost money to make and run. Sure. But my issue is a different one.

And it is the question that I raised in the original episode that Nancy somehow did not find important enough to mention in her piece, which is who built this, who was funding it. And what do they actually want with your data and more importantly, your faith? Because let's be clear, right now, Hallow is not just some like nice little Catholic startup founded by some devout software developers who wanted to bring prayer to the digital age. Funny enough, one of our listeners wrote a great comment on the Spotify comments. saying that they actually know the original person who built the app before the current CEO Alex Jones ever got involved with it, and that that person is like a thoughtful, smart person that they respect. But the current iteration of the app is backed by venture capital,

tens of millions of dollars of it, actually. You want to know about some of their investors, Mike? Yeah. Who has invested these tens of millions of dollars into this app? Well, it's just these small, time, devout man of religion. people like J.D. Vance ever heard of them and Peter Thiel. J.D. Vance's investment comes from his investment firm, Naria Capital. Now, according to Vance's most recent disclosures in 2024, he still owns half a million dollars worth of stock in said investment firm. Now, let me make sure that it is clear

who we're talking about when we talk about these people, because people, we talk about Peter Thiel on the podcast all the time. He is the gay billionaire tech investor. He co-founded PayPal. He was the outside investor in Facebook, one of the most significant funders of Trump and MAGA candidates. He is also, and this part matters for our conversation about the Hallow app, the co-founder and chairman of a company called Palantir Technologies. So when you open the Hallow app to have your sacred morning meditation or your sacred morning prayer, that is whose financial ecosystem you are in on the app. Let's talk a little bit more about Peter Thiel because Palantir is really important.

and people need to fully understand what it is it does exactly. Palantir is a data analytics and surveillance company. That is what it does, surveillance. It was founded in 2003. The title, which I did not know this because I have not read Lord of the Rings, actually comes from Lord of the Rings. Teal apparently is a huge Lord of the Rings guy. He named it after the seeing stone in Tolkien's Legendarium.

So his whole company is named after the object that lets you spy on people from afar. So that's fine. What is Palantir actually doing in the real world right now? ICE enforcement. ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build something called Immigration OS, an AI system specifically designed to identify track and deport non-citizens. Since Trump took office, Palantir has received over $900 million in federal contracts. And here's just a little extra conflict of interest there just for funsies.

Stephen Miller, the Trump administration's chief architect of this horrible immigration policy, the guy who basically built and designed the deportation machine that we're all dealing with right now, holds a substantial personal financial stake in Palantir. So this company is so controversial that its own former employees wrote an open letter condemning its work with the Trump administration. So these are people who helped build this thing. They said, and I quote, democracy faces escalating threats, biometric data collection on immigrant

children, journalists being targeted. They said the same principles they founded the company on have now been violated. The Swiss government rejected Palantir nine times. Their military produced an internal report saying Palantir software posed unacceptable risks because sensitive data could potentially be accessed by U.S. intelligence. So what makes Palantir so powerful and frankly scary is that it integrates data from many different sources to create profiles about individuals. It's like an ecosystem of surveillance that none of us opted into but were all caught up in. They most likely have individual profiles about me, you, and anybody that you know. So anybody listening to the sound of my voice right now, Palantir probably has a surveillance profile on you. So this is Peter

Teal's company, his whole thing, and specifically and importantly, turning intimate information about people into a product. Speaking of which, let's talk about the menstrual and fertility tracking app that Teal also invested in called 28. So 28 is made by the founders of Evie magazine, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a publication supporting male supremacist politics. You can kind of think of it as the anti-cosmo, a women's publication for conservative and right-wing attitudes and ideas. Now, the app asks you to input your menstrual cycle data. The privacy policy says that your personal information can be shared with third-party service providers. And 28 basically openly admits that they have no control over what those third parties might do with that data.

And while they do extra special Pinky Promise swear never to hand your cycle data specifically over to law enforcement, pretty much everything else, your name, your location, your IP address, ready to open the app, they will hand that over to law enforcement. In a post-Dob's investigation, that kind of metadata, your location, your name, your IP address will tell prosecutors almost everything they might need to know. This is not an app that I would suggest anybody use if they care about privacy, especially given the political climate that we're in right now, that criminalizes things like miscarriage, abortion, and really anything to do with pregnancy.

So this is the guy that is investing in your prayer app, the guy whose whole professional legacy is taking the most intimate parts of people's lives, turning them into data, and selling access to that data, or even handing it to the government, your body, your location, your immigration status, your fertility, these things that we used to think of as intimate and special and sensitive, and now, apparently, also your prayers. We took a look at Hallow's privacy policy, and it's a little bit squishy. I will give the caveat that we are not attorneys, but we did take a careful look at it, right, Mike? We did. And I do want to give them credit for writing it in plain language that is

pretty accessible to non-lawyers like myself. You know, on its face, there are no big flashing red lights that explicitly spell out alarming ways in which they're going to share your data. They don't, like, say that outright. However, there's also no strong language guaranteeing that your prayers and journal entries and whatever other private data you share with them will stay private. And there are two seemingly benign little pieces in particular that give me some pause. One is the phrase, parties you authorize, access, or authenticate,

which is repeated frequently throughout the privacy policy when they're describing who they might share your data with. Who are these parties? How might a user authorize them? No list or explanation is provided. I can only speculate who they might be, but it's pretty easy to imagine a scenario where a user unknowingly authorizes some third-party app

by simply clicking a single continue button or something like that. You know, it's not like wild that they would say that, but at the same time, giving users control over who their sensitive data gets shared with is good in theory, but in practice, many people often accept without actually knowing

what it is that they are consenting to. You know, who has time to read the privacy policy of every app and every third-party integration? Privacy advocates call this consent fatigue, and tech companies know it's a thing, and I think a lot of less scrupless companies take advantage of that, just knowing that people aren't going to read privacy policies

and are going to just click, you know, consent or accept or even just continue and agree to things without really even knowing what they're agreeing to. I'm not saying that that's what the Hallow app is doing here, but I am saying that it could very easily happen under their privacy policy. And I think it's written in a way to give them that flexibility. companies that truly care about protecting their user-sensitive data

proactively protect them. And here the Halo app is putting the responsibility on the user who may or may not have the technical savvy to make informed choices. Does that make sense? I know you have experience with designing privacy policies and that context makes a lot of sense to me. And I want to be clear, I am not telling people what to do. I'm not telling people not to use this app.

I am just asking, when you open this app, app and share your most intimate spiritual struggles, your faith journey, your most private conversations with God on this app, it's fair to ask who else is being led into that equation? Who is putting themselves between you and your faith? Again, I feel that was a question we posed in the original episode. Nancy, you did not mention it at all in your write-up, and I find that interesting. Yeah, I think that's a great question. Like, who else might be in between the person writing these prayers, writing these meditations, you know, the end user, and God, right? Like, it's clearly the app. It could also be the government. You know, the other section in the privacy policy that gave me some pause is the section where they talk about data sharing for the purposes of meeting legal requirements and enforcing legal terms.

The app says that one of the reasons it might disclose users private data is for, quote, fulfilling our legal obligations under applicable law, regulation, court order, or other legal process. such as maintaining transaction and donation records or preventing, detecting, and investigating security incidents, and potentially illegal or prohibited activities, end quote. So if I had a miscarriage or had to terminate a pregnancy, and I'm praying to God about that in this app, I might want to be extra careful. Is that what you're saying?

Because we don't really know how they're going to be interpreting their responsibility to share that information with third parties, up to it including law enforcement? I think that's absolutely right, you know. I think context really matters a lot. And given what we know about some of the people who are major investors in this app, as well as the fact that live action seems to be running a whole campaign to support and defend them, I think it's pretty legitimate to wonder if they would be turning over information about abortions when asked.

And maybe even if not asked, right? I think that language in the privacy policy, it's fairly standard. You know, there's not anything that weird about it. But again, the context really matters. And I think there's nothing standard about the role that Peter Thiel and Pallentier have played in building this digital surveillance capacity for the U.S. government. They've got this unique ecosystem of data sources, working hand and glove with the Trump administration and their allies and state governments.

We've seen countless court filings, executive orders, and agency actions over the past year, where the administration has taken a very expansive and legally questionable view of their powers to demand access to people's private or sensitive data for purposes that it wasn't intended for. And they're also not at all shy about very creative interpretations of what counts as illegal or prohibited activities. At various times the Trump administration has seemed to allow. that criticizing the administration is potentially illegal. You know, I'm not saying that the HALO app definitely is sharing users private data with law enforcement or Palantir or the administration.

It's impossible to know. But I think if they wanted to do that, this clause in the privacy policy would allow them to. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but that's my read on it. Thank you for that. And I guess what I would say is even if this privacy policy is fairly run up the middle, I don't trust any of these people. I don't trust the people who are investors in the app. I don't trust the people they have appointed as spokespeople.

I don't personally trust any of these people. Well, what about some of the incredible Christians that have been promoting the app? You know, like, you know, your boyfriend, Mark Wahlberg. Actually, he wishes. That's true. He probably does. We will talk more about the actual record. of some of the celebrity, quote, incredible Christians who are Hallow App spokespeople after this quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guide, not quite.

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And we're back. So the Hello App CEO, Alex Jones, no, not that Alex Jones, said in an interview that his celebrity partners are, quote, incredible Christians, great people of faith. Great. Let's take that seriously and look at their record, shall we? Because Nancy's piece focused almost entirely on Chris Pratt, Chris Pratt, Chris Pratt, Chris Pratt. And she mentioned Mark Wahlberg, Hallow's biggest and most visible partner by their own measure in a parenthetical. She said, and I quote, on the podcast. there are no girls on the internet with Bridget Todd, heard her producer Mike spoke about Pratt, parentheses,

and Walberg's association with the Hollow app. They also discussed Gwen Stefani's partnership with the app for which she was strongly criticized late last year. Now, you went back and listened, and we actually had quite a bit to say about Mark Wahlberg. Interesting to me that our conversation about the Hallow app and their spokespeople, Mark Wahlberg is only mentioned in a parenthetical,

And I really have to wonder why Nancy would do that, considering that we talked at length about Mark Wahlberg in that episode, considerably more than we talked about Chris Pratt. Fox Business reported that the CEO called his partnership with Mark Wahlberg, quote, definitely the largest and most expansive partnership, Hallow has ever done. And Mark Wahlberg is not just the ad guy. He's not just a spokesperson. He is also an investor. He has a personal financial stake in this app. Axio Chicago reported that Hallow, quote, soared to the top of the app store after its Super Bowl commercial

starring Boston Bread actor, vocal Catholic and former bad boy, which will come to you in a minute, Mark Wahlberg, who invested in the Chicago-based startup? So Nancy, why is Mark Wahlberg just relegated to a parenthetical? Could it be because of what is in Mark Wahlberg's actual history as one of these incredible Christians? Could it be that? Because I think it could be that.

So let me tell you about Mark Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg's criminal history is violent, extensive, well-documented, and very serious. And it centers around racially motivated violence. So let's go through it. It's 1986. Mark Wahlberg is 15 years old. He and two other white teens attacked a group of mostly black fourth-grade children who were on a field trip to the beach. They hurled rocks at these kids. They screamed racial slurs at these children,

and they chased them. One of these children was a little girl named Kristen Atwood. It was a hate crime, and that's exactly what should be on his record forever. And for him to want erase it, I just think is wrong. Atwood says she was nine years old when Wahlberg and a group of his friends attacked her class during a field trip in what was a very segregated Boston. Jesus, he threw rocks at nine-year-olds and used the N-word. Atwood, says that she has never received an apology from Mark Wahlberg, which will come back to him. It's 1988. Mark Wahlberg is 16 years old.

He is the perpetrator of two separate attacks on Vietnamese men in the same day. First, he approached a man named Tan Lam, who was getting out of his car with two cases of beer. Wahlberg yells slurs at him and then beat him over the head with a five-foot wooden stick. He beat this man until he lost consciousness. He beat this man until the stick broke in two. Later that same day, Mark Wahlberg attacks another Vietnamese American man, this time Johnny Trin. He punches Johnny in the eye and made, in the words of the court documents, quote, numerous unsolicited racial statements that included racial slurs. One of these men permanently lost sight in one eye.

Now, Walberg was convicted of these crimes as an adult. He got two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, marijuana possession, and criminal contempt for violating the prior civil rights injunction from 1986. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but only served 45 days. 1992, Walberg is 21 years old. He's now, Marky Mark. He's a sort of rapper. He's famous.

He is wearing Calvin Klein underpants on posters hung on teenage girls' bedrooms, walls, mine included, and across America probably. And per court documents, he viciously and repeatedly kicked another man in the head. Now, that case was settled civilly. So all of that is public record. It is not in dispute. Mark Wahlberg, to this day, is a convicted, violent felon. Now, I know what you're thinking. These are all old charges. They stem from when he was younger, the 80s and the 90s. People change. Perhaps he is genuinely a different person now with age. If you're thinking that, that is totally fair. But let's look at what he actually is.

did about it. In 2014, Mark Wahlberg applies for a pardon from the state of Massachusetts. Why 2014? What happened in 2014 that made him suddenly want to address these crimes from 1988? Maybe it was his faith or his connection to the Lord that made him want to repent. What do you think? Yeah, it's possible. You know, maybe he really prayed on it and felt bad about what he'd done and just wanted to make amends in the spirit of moving on and putting it behind him. Maybe that's what happened. That could have been what happened. Or maybe, just maybe, he wanted to get a liquor license for the Walburgers, his chain of burger restaurants.

In Massachusetts, they're actually pretty touchy about felony convictions. In Massachusetts, you cannot get a liquor license if you have a felony conviction. So Mark Wahlberg says, I'm rich, I'm famous, it's been decades, I need a pardon for these crimes. So I remember the whole saga of him trying to get a pardon in 2014. Two of his victims spoke out against pardoning him. Two different Massachusetts governors were disinclined to act on his behalf for that pardon. And the fact that he was seeking this pardon at all was pretty widely criticized. And eventually in 2016, two years later, Mark Wahlberg dropped it.

About the pardon, he said, quote, I didn't need that. I spent 28 years writing the wrong. I didn't need a piece of paper to acknowledge it. And that kind of caught my eye because 28 years writing the wrong. Okay, let's see what writing that wrong looked like. Because listen, we all make mistakes. Jesus hung out with sinners, was his whole thing. Maybe Mark Wahlberg worked very hard to make amends and take accountability for his actions.

Like, for instance, maybe he worked with the specific communities that he harmed. Maybe he spoke out against anti-Asian and anti-Black violence. There are so many ways that I can imagine somebody making amends for such a violent, racist, heinous crime if that person were interested in, quote, writing the wrong, as Mark Wahlberg said that he was. I feel like two people who could really weigh in on whether the wrong had been righted were those two victims who spoke out against his pardon application. Yeah, great point, great point.

So during the pardon process, so this is 2014, 26 years after the attack, Walberg met with one of the victims and his family to apologize. Now, that victim, Trin, has publicly says that he forgives Mark Wahlberg. I want to name that because it's important and I respect it. However, that apology took 26 years. I would say somebody genuinely interested in taking accountability. It is curious to me that it took almost 30 years to ever offer an apology for that behavior and that that timing coincided with needing a liquor license to open a chain of burger restaurants in Boston.

That's just me. However, he only ever apologized to that one victim. Kristen Atwood, the little black girl that he threw rocks at in 1986, says that she has never, to this day received a personal apology from Mark Wahlberg, not during his 2014 accountability to get the liquor license campaign, not ever, not now. And you know what? I respect Kristen because she told him exactly where things stand.

And I have to wonder if why Wahlberg did not feel the need to give this woman an apology is because she's black. In fact, Judith Beals, his own prosecutor, said that Wahlberg has never truly acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes. And she made a very good point that a formal pardon would send the message that, quote, if you are white and a movie star,

a different standard applies. So in my book, the very least someone can do if they are actually trying to write a wrong, which, again, Walberg says he has done. He says, oh, I spent 30 years writing that wrong. I don't need a pardon or a piece of paper, comma, even though I was looking for a pardon

to get that liquor license. I don't need a pardon to, to make that clear? Okay, so didn't really apologize except for to one person. What about all the kinds of good work and philanthropy that he's done in the community? Maybe that could count as writing the wrong. What do you say? What do you think?

It's probably a good start. Let's look at it because Walberg did found the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation in 2001, and he also does charity work with the Boys and Girls Club, an organization that is near and dear to my heart. Those are real things. I am not dismissing them. But none of those things is directed specifically at the Vietnamese American community, nor the black communities that he actually harmed,

that he actually named as the targets of his harm when he was committing these violent crimes towards them. And also not for nothing, a rich person doing like a generally charitable thing, frankly the kind of thing that all rich people should be doing, and many of them do already without having committed crimes first, is not the same thing in my book as writing the wrong of multiple violent racist attacks, but that's just me. And then there's this little tidbit. So at Walberg's sentencing, a priest who had helped Mark Wahlberg gave a statement

crediting Walberg's tearful courtroom apology with moving the judge towards leniency. Because remember, he was sentenced to two years, but only served 45 days. The local parish, Father Jim Flavin, told 60 minutes that he watched Walberg work the judge from the courtroom. He started tearing up and the judge melted and then Walberg looked at the priest

and winked. Flavin called it quote, an Academy Award performance in the courtroom. Just had to throw that in there for a little bit of spice, a little razzle dazzle on who this guy is

and who it sounds like he's always been. Yeah, I mean, we said in our last episode about it that he's a good actor and, you know, stand by it. It sounds like he was a good actor even in those early days. So he did apologize to the Asian American community. There was a 1993 apology issued through a spokesperson only under pressure from the committee against anti-Asian violence.

He also agreed to appear in a series of anti-racism public service announcements that never actually materialized. Dude, why not just do the PSAs? It's like the easiest thing in the world to do. Yeah. Why not just do them? That's so curious. I would, it's like a little bit of a digression. I guess from this episode,

but I'd love to know more about like what happened where apparently he agreed to do this series of PSAs but then didn't follow through. It's real curious. So the Boston Globe reported in 1993 that the apology was delivered by his manager Dick Scott at a press conference in Times Square, while Wahlberg himself kicking it in Hawaii.

The statement read in part, in 1986, I harassed a group of school kids on a field trip. Many of the students were African American. In 1988, I assaulted two Vietnamese men over a case of beer. Racist slurs and language were used during these encounters. Great passive language were used. And people were... They just came out of nowhere.

Slurs just came from the heavens. I don't know. They just happened. Slurs appeared. Mistakes were made. Slurs were used. People were seriously hurt. I am truly sorry for what I did.

Variety reported at the time that in addition to the apology, Walberg promised an ad campaign to denounce all forms of bigotry, saying, I know there are kids out there doing the same stuff now, and I want to tell them, don't do it. So your question, why did these PSAs never appear? Well, according to a November 1993 Glad report cited by Reappropriate, plans to produce an anti-violence TV spot featuring Mark Wahlberg were canceled after he was charged with a subsequent assault on a record company executive in L.A., during which he allegedly made, quote, disparaging remarks about homosexuals.

Oh, man. So everybody's catching it. Black people, Vietnamese people, homosexuals. Yeah, I guess I can see why Glad would not be super pumped to do a series of ads with him. It also kind of suggests that, like, maybe he hadn't gotten quite so over it as he was attempting to portray.

Well, you know, he says he's a changed man, he spent decades trying to write these wrongs. That's what he says. Or maybe he is just someone whose redemption arc has very conveniently aligned with his business interests at every single turn. I couldn't tell you. I don't know the guy. You be the judge. I will say this.

This is Hallow's most important partner, their largest and most expansive relationship. The man who was the face of their Super Bowl ad, an incredible Christian. So Nancy, girl, I ask you again, we talked about him more. more than we talked about Chris Pratt in that episode. So why is this man a parenthetical when you talk about who we talked about in that episode? Why is Mark Wahlberg a parenthetical? I'm so curious. You know, that image of the parish priest in the courtroom when Walberg was being sentenced,

describing how he saw Walberg like give this tearful apology to the judge and then look at him and wink, that image is going to be burned into my mind going forward anytime I hear about Mark World I'm going to think about that wink. I know, what an asshole. What an asshole. And you love it, you sicko. I do. I mean, there comes a point where it's like, wow, you make being not a good person, an art form.

You really, you're like the Picasso of being an asshole. You really take this art form seriously. You really like leveled up the game. udos. Incredible Christian, though. Incredible Christian. Incredible Christian. These are the people that you really feel like have the moral high ground for sure.

Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Who's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Cuba me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows, without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night bases on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing.

That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball, like, After you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean.

I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How Hard Can It Be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on the... my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be.

Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard, you know? Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered and ask,

How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Let's keep going because one of their other notable spokespeople is Jim Kemp. If you know that name, you know that he played Jesus in Passion of the Christ.

He now appears on the Hallow app leading the Stations of the Cross, which is very on brand. I will say, if you're going to get typecast, you could do worse as being typecast as Jesus. And Jim Cavazel definitely gives Jesus. Like there's a specific iteration of Jesus that they're going for, and he definitely gives it. So in addition to being one of the incredible Christians on the Hallow app, here's what else he's been up to. For years, years. Kavazel has been a prominent and enthusiastic promoter of the Cuban-Conpiracy theory, specifically the claim that there is an international cabal of elites who are abusing and killing children

in order to extract a substance from their blood known as adrenachrome, that they drink for power. Let me be very clear. Obviously, this claim is completely made up, totally fabricated, and it is a dangerous, conspiracy theory with deep roots in anti-Semitic tropes that go back centuries. And here we have the incredible Christian Jim Cavazel promoting it loudly, publicly, and repeatedly. At a right-wing conference, he went on what reporters called a, quote, wild tangent about adrenochrome, telling the crowd that it's produced by torturing children to spike their adrenaline before extracting it from their blood. He told Steve Bannon's show, Adrenachrome, the whole Adrenachrome empire. This

a big deal. And one of the things that makes conspiracy theories like this so harmful is that they distract attention away from real-world harms against kids that are actually happening. There is no evidence for these ridiculous claims about adrenachrome, but there is plenty of evidence that powerful people were harming women and girls on Epstein's island. Several of Epstein's close associates are currently serving in the Trump administration, being actively supported by investors in the Hello, people like Peter Thiel. Conspiracy theorists like Cavazel are busy chasing phantoms, but ignoring the monsters in plain sight.

This is kind of a tangent, but Cavazel also starred in the movie Sound of Freedom, which is about Tim Ballard, who is an anti-child trafficking activist, which I know sounds great, until you learn about what happened after that movie came out. We did a deep dive episode into Tim Ballard, which will put in the show notes, but Tim Ballard was actually forced out of his own anti-trafficking operation, Operation Underground Railroad, following an internal investigation. So here's what they said that he did. Multiple women came forward with what the organization described as

disturbingly specific parallel accounts. The central claim in the allegations is that Ballard would invite women to play the part of his wife on these undercover overseas mission. and then use that cover that like, oh, we're a husband, wife, couple, you're my wife, I'm your husband. Use that cover to coerce these women into sharing a bed or showering with him and allegedly committing sexual assault. That's just like one of those stories. I remember when we covered it back at the time that is like you almost couldn't write that stuff on the one hand. It seems so ridiculous that this guy who is supposedly running this anti-trafficking organization would him,

be using that organization as a means to allegedly prey on women and sexually assault them. Like it seems outlandish, but then also it seems like such a pattern. It's like, yeah, obviously that's what so many of these, I don't know, savior types are actually into. No, we talk about it in the episode and I've talked about it lots of places. I believe it is the kind of thing where people know that no one is going to want to speak out against somebody who was made sex trafficking and like anti-trafficking awareness, their entire thing, their entire brand. So on the one hand, it allows you to basically do whatever you want while not really getting the scrutiny that you deserve. And two, we have this thing about survivors and victims of sex trafficking that I think, frankly,

we're seeing play out in the conversations around Epstein where the survivors and victims of trafficking are meant to be these silent people that other people get to talk about and kind of, quote, advocate for. There are plenty of Epstein trafficking survivors who are alive and vocal and doing press conferences and writing books and talking about what they experienced. But it's like we silence the actual survivors and victims while elevating the people who purport to speak on their behalf or advocate on their behalf. And a lot of those people end up being abusers themselves.

And I think that's not surprising to me that people who want to do bad things to women and kids often will say I'm a anti-sex trafficking crusader or advocate. Like, Tim would not be the first person to make his whole brand protecting women and girls while also abusing women on the side.

Yeah, well said. Okay, so bringing it back to the Hallow app. Tim Ballard had no connection to it except Cabezel played him in that movie. So what happened after these allegations came out And how did Cavazel the spokesperson for Hallowat respond? As soon as these allegations dropped against Tim Ballard, Jim Cavazel was like cut ties, done ties,

I cannot be around you anymore because of these heinous allegations against women. Oh no, no, no, no. Actually, Cavazel was like, he's still my homie, y'all. He didn't do that stuff. Those women are lying. Because Cavazel has actually. remained very public in his support of Tim Ballard through all of this. This is the man who is leading you through the stations of the cross on the Hallow app. Okay. So yeah, another dubious

associate. Is that it? Is that the end of your list? It is not the end of my list because we also have to talk about Russell Brand, another hallow spokesperson. Now, up front, I need to be super clear, Russell Brand has not been convicted of anything as of this recording. He denies all allegations against him. His case is working its way through the courts. So I'm not going to tell you that he's guilty because a jury has not decided that and I don't know. However, I am going to talk about Hallow's choices as it pertains to working with Russell Brand. So in September 2020, Channel 4 in the UK broadcast a major investigative documentary called Russell Brand, colon, in plain sight.

The Sunday Times ran a companion investigation, which I read. It's very upsetting read, very long, very upsetting. Multiple women came forward with serious allegations spanning years of his career. These were major, major internationally covered front page news stories. I remember where I was when I read this like long read about Russell Brand that was frankly nauseating. So that was September 2020. In January 2025, 16. months later, Hallow entered a commercial partnership with Russell Brand, who, in that same month, very conveniently, found Jesus, hallelujah, and converted to Catholicism. So he gets charged with a slew of very serious sex crimes against women and girls,

and then, praise Jesus, finds religion. Very convenient timing. Also, just in time for Lent, by the way. Oh, I wonder if he gave up sexual assault for Lent. I hope so. In April 2025, Russell Brand was charged with one count of rape, one count of oral rape,

and one count of indecent assault, and two counts of sexual assault involving four women. Again, he's pled not guilty. In December 2025, prosecutors authorized a second set of charges involving two additional women. And just days ago on February 24th, Brand appeared at Southwark Crown Court

in a white cowboy hat and sunglasses and told reporters that he was blessed and pled not guilty to two additional charges. Six women total, the trial is scheduled for this summer. Hallow did cut ties with Russell Brand and called it a mistake. Now, I want to kind of drill into Hallow calling this a mistake, because when reporters asked Hallow's press team whether or not they knew about this investigation before partnering with Brand, they refused to answer. And I think the timeline is really key here because Hallow,

partnered with Russell Brand in January 2025. At that point, the Channel 4 and Sunday Times investigation had been public for 16 months, right? Like, I had read about it, I knew about it. The Metropolitan Police had then opened up a sex crimes investigation. By that point, Brand had

been accused by multiple women of rape and sexual assault, including one woman who said that she was 16 years old and still in school who alleges that Brand would refer to her as, quote, the child. So it's women and girls, who he is alleged to have sexually abused.

All of that was very, very known. Like, calling it public information, I don't think does it justice, because it's not like you had to go digging through court proceedings or court files or something. This was in splashy, public, huge international media brands. Like, I read about it. So if I knew, certainly the Hallow app knew. By November 2024, two months before this partnership was announced,

Hallow's own CEO told a reporter that if charges were filed against Russell Brand, quote, we would obviously take it very seriously. It would be a really important development. I guess what I'm getting at here is that it sounds to me like the Hallow app CEO knew that charges could be coming because it's just difficult to read that article and that was already public and not think, well, if these allegations are out there, charges are probably coming. And yet, partnered with brand anyway.

Charges did come in April 2025. To their credit, three days later, Hallow cut tie. and said that partnering with brand had been a mistake. But here's my thing. A mistake is something that you do when you, like, don't have enough information. There was a lot of information about the accusations against brand

that women and girls were making. So when you do have that information and that information is very, very public, and your own CEO is on the record as acknowledging that situation, when the police investigation opens and the accusers have spoken, it seems a little hard to call this one

a mistake in my book. Like you had the information, you partnered with him anyway. It's not, it's not like that blind side of you or came out of nowhere. Again, good on them for for cutting ties when the charges drop, but why did it take charges to not partner with someone that you pursued a partnership with after all of this information was already very public? Do you know what I'm saying? I do. I mean, it really raises questions about like, yeah, you said it exactly. Like, why did they need to wait for charges to be filed to know that this was a bad. I mean, it suggests that they just, I don't know, maybe did not believe the multiple women who were extensively quoted in that public reporting, you know, thought maybe it was all a big lie. Or maybe they just didn't care,

right? And thought that having brand celebrity power would be worth it. And without charges, no one would care what these would be. women said happen to them? I don't know. It's a really weird move, but I guess maybe not that atypical in some of these right-wing spaces to just look the other way

when there are credible accounts of sexual abuse from multiple different women against a powerful man with fame. Looking the other way seems pretty common in a lot of these cases. Yes. So this is the band of alleged rapists and violent criminals that the Hallow app has amassed on their app as incredible Christians.

To be clear, Brand's guilt is for the courts to decide. The trial is set for this summer. But I agree with you, I think that Hallow's decision to sign a man up as a spokesperson for a religious app, 16 months after major front-page sexual assault allegations, that's on Hallow's decision-making. I mean, you know, your mom. mileage may vary. Maybe you think that was just a mistake as opposed to a strategic choice that blew up in their faces. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan

to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an Acapella band with their between-sumptain Bantor. There's that worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle age. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me, I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. What's up, fam?

It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reed. I got to manipulate the game.

We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nasree. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson,

we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball like, after you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah.

Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time.

You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a paramed apostle chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Areva where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be.

Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard now. That's a little. That's a lot. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public.

Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So let's circle back to Chris Pratt. the person that Nancy thinks is my nemesis, Nancy's favorite subject. It is true. I do find Chris Pratt a little annoying.

I have always found Chris Pratt a little annoying. This is not a new development. In my book, he went from a goofy, lovable, every man on Parks and Iraq to suddenly, like, jacked in every single movie simultaneously, and the energy was just a lot for me, and I found it annoying. But here's the thing.

As I said in that episode, I don't even really care about his conservative politics. What I don't love is the victim narrative that he often portrays. The narrative that says that he is being persecuted for Christian beliefs or conservative values to the point where his co-stars have to speak up while simultaneously starring in the biggest movies on the goddamn planet. You're in Jurassic World, you're in Guardians of the galaxies, you're in the Marvel movies, the biggest movies on the planet.

I don't know how you can simultaneously. be this downtrodden victim that people need to stick up for, while also being booked in literally the biggest, most money-making movies on the globe. And yet it seems to be a pretty successful track, right? Like, look at Trump. Nobody plays the victim harder than him. And he's, like, one of the most powerful people in the world. There's really something to this, like, victim playing that seems to work for people.

I've said it before. I don't think I've said it on the podcast. When people are able to cast themselves as simultaneously the victim and the hero, that's when things start to get weird for me, where it's like, oh, wow, you're, you're, like, you are downtrod and everybody needs to be amplifying you and lifting you up because you're, you're such a victim, but also, you're the most successful person, you're everywhere, pick a lane. I don't like it.

Or like when people go on, like, all of the cable news talk shows and 30 podcasts to talk about, how they've been de-platformed. Yes. Ooh, I would love to enjoy the kind of cancellation that people like Dave Chappelle or Joe Rogan are getting, I mean, number one podcast in the world. Cancel me, cancel me, please. Cancel me, Daddy.

This girl would love to be canceled. My bank account would love for me to be canceled. My bookings would love for me to be canceled. That's kind of cancellation I want some of. And when people were jokingly talking about how Chris Pratt is the worst Chris, they were saying that because the other options are like, fucking hotties who seem smart, right? Like, they're like disgustingly good-looking men who also seem smart and cool.

And then you have Chris Pratt. Sorry, like, them's the fucking breaks. You think that women and other people have not been pit against each other by their looks since forever. You want to me to cry a river for the fact that it's happening to you, Chris Pratt, when it's been happening to women in Hollywood since the beginning of time? Not likely. When that happened, his co-stars rallied around him publicly, which that is nice. but the women and people of color in Hollywood and also in Marvel movies that he's a Marvel star,

when those people face genuine sustained harassment that comes with real professional consequences, that comparison does not sit right with me. I think it's nice that his Marvel co-stars wanted to speak highly of him and like, you know, stick up for him while he feels like he's being like bullied or whatever by people saying that he's the worst Chris. That's nice. But I want to see that same energy for the women and people. of color in Hollywood, in fandom, in superhero movies, in Star Wars, in Marvel movies, when that same thing happens to them. And that, there is just no comparison between Chris Pratt

being sort of jokingly referred to as the worst Chris in comparison to Chris Helmsworth and that other hottie whose name I can't remember and what marginalized people face in Hollywood, comma, and even in the same franchises that Chris Pratt is in, the Marvel franchises. And all of this to say is I have to wonder if Nancy at Live Action is more comfortable talking about Chris Pratt than Mark Wahlberg, more comfortable talking about Chris Pratt than some of the data privacy questions that we raised, and more comfortable talking about Chris Pratt

than any of the other stuff that we actually got into in that episode. I wonder too. You know, I think there's probably something to that. He's more comfortable because he doesn't have a history of racist hate crimes. That we know of. Yeah. No, I'm kidding.

I don't think he does. Although I don't put nothing past nobody, so I don't know. But one thing he does have is that that like victim narrative, right? Which is not dissimilar from the narrative that Nancy was using in her article. You know, that we were just attacking the app

because we hate faith, we hate Christians, which is just like those things are not true. Mike, you know this about me. I'm a person of faith. Nancy writes, it's absurd for non-Christians to make assumptions or accusations about what Christians do or don't do based on what they see in the heavily anti-Christian media. So did you not just make an assumption about me, girl, because I'm a Christian. I am a person of faith that was raised in the church. It sounds like you are the one making assumptions about me. Yeah, like the idea that we were attacking all Christians or that the Hallow app, a subscription, a subscription, based digital service created by a group of people who are running a national surveillance system and deporting immigrants, refugees, and longtime residents and mass, splitting up husbands and wives, separating children from their parents, and inspiring fear in entire communities. I'm no expert in Christian theology, but my understanding is that Jesus was against that kind of thing.

the idea that they speak for all Christians. I know a lot of Christians that would disagree with that. Yeah, I would count myself as one of those Christians. And I want to talk about live action, the anti-choice organization that wrote the piece about us in the podcast, because I know live action. I used to work for Planned Parenthood, so I know exactly who these people are and exactly what they do.

Live action is an anti-abortion nonprofit founded by Lila Rose. She started it as a teenager and she'd been running it about two decades. They have a huge social media presence and Lila Rose, the head of live action, is one of the people who delivers prayers on the app, including the prayer that I described in the initial episode on the Roundup as a mean, which we'll get back to. I'll give you a quick and dirty rundown of the kind of stuff that they do and you all can be the judge. So years ago, Lila Rose partnered with James O'Keefe of Project Veritas. Do you remember that, Project Veritas? Oh, I definitely remember Project Veritas. Are they no longer

with us. I don't know what they're up to these days. Okay, but I do remember this was, God, it was probably, was it 20 years ago now? 15, when James O'Keefe was like the guy on like conservative social media, they all loved him and his series of manufactured videos taking down left-leaning institutions. So James O'Keefe today, he was ousted from Project Veritas. over allegations of financial mismanagement, which he denied. And so years ago, Lila Rose partnered with James O'Keefe of the Veritas Project to produce undercover sting videos at Planned Parenthood clinics. Now, Planned Parenthood's president at the time called those videos selectively and maliciously edited.

Rose was forced to take some of them down after a cease and desist citing California privacy laws. And so these videos are widely criticized as dishonest, Now, that criticism is not just coming from abortion advocates like me. Some of that criticism is coming from within the anti-abortion movement itself, people who sensibly should be Lila Rose's allies, fellow Catholic writers, people who share her position about abortion, have argued that Catholic teachings forbid deception, even in service of good causes. So again, these are not abortion advocates. These are her people who are saying, oh, your tactics are actually deceptive and we don't fuck with that. Lila Rose's own one-time collaborator acknowledged to the L.A. Times that, quote, he and Rose have received criticism from some of their associates for using deception, calling it, quote, a pretty complicated ethical issue.

And I don't know, I find that to be kind of a weird statement from somebody who made a career trafficking in deception. I personally feel that the ethics around using deception are not particularly complicated. I think people shouldn't lie. You know who agrees with me? The Eighth Commandment. Exodus 2016, which states, Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor, which prohibits lying.

So pretty cut and dry there. Yeah, I'm with you. I don't think it's particularly complicated. I think deception is bad and it's not okay even when we have something that we want. we're still not allowed to lie to get it. Seems pretty straightforward. I think most people would agree lying is bad. According to Deserate News, pro-life Catholic writers Don Eaton and William Donio Jr.

wrote at the time, quote, even if live action style stings were the only means available to turn the American public against abortion, Catholic teaching would still come down firmly against them. And that brings me to something that I find genuinely fascinating about, Lila Rose live actions head, which is that she does not seem particularly well-liked by significant portions of the anti-abortion movement. During the 2024 election, Rose said that Donald Trump had, quote, disqualified himself as the pro-life nominee. And the response that got from conservative figures was something. She was called a grifter, and she was accused of prioritizing fundraising and

growing her own public profile over doing the work that would actually reduce abortions. Ashley St. Clair, who we've talked about on the podcast before, accused Lila Rose of spending donor money on Ritz Carlton events instead of directing funds toward pregnancy resource centers in states where abortion rights were on the ballot. Marjorie Daninsfeller of the Susan B. Anthony pro-life America, which is a major anti-abortion organization, publicly broke with Rose's strategy. The Lila Rose is a grifter accusation, I think, is particularly stinging because it is coming from people who share her stated goal. So again, it is not abortion advocates like me who are criticizing Lila Rose for this. This is coming from people who hate abortion as much as Lila Rose does.

They seem to be taking major issue with some of her organization's tactics and her herself, because it sounds like they're kind of painting a portrait of somebody who is a grifter who has taken all this donor money and then not actually doing anything to combat abortions, which is their shared goal. Well, they're funding freelancers to write about our podcast. So that's, you know, that's something. I wonder if that is helping to curb abortions. Maybe. Maybe this is all part of the strategy.

Anybody who insults Chris Pratt, we write a whole article about, if anyone listening has a podcast, no matter how small, I think it could be a good SEO generating practice to talk about the Halo app, mention the app in your title, and mention Chris Pratt in your title.

I think it might mean that Nancy Flanders has to write about your podcast and link to it on live action. That's, it happened to me and it happened to Matt over at a bit fruity podcast. It's like a bat signal. So if you want a little, a little press, a little SEO action could be, could be a tactic. Yeah, of course you got to get ready for the heat. So only do it if you can take it. Heat.

I will, I mean, listen, I would put our listenership up to the readership of that blog. Nancy, if you're listening, let me know your analytics. I'll put our listenership up against their numbers any day. I'll have Nancy on the podcast anytime she wants to talk about the Hallow app and the things that I brought up here. I would love to have her on. Open invite. So, yeah, I can take the heat.

As soon as we read that article, you know I was like... Oh, you were heated. Oh, a bitch was heated. It reminds me of that line from the wire. You know, you come at the king. You best not miss. Hell yeah, Omar. So what else is there to say about Lila Rose, who is the leader of live action, the organization that funded this unjust hit piece against us?

So there's also a lot of medical misinformation. Nancy, I know you were going to push back, but facts are facts. And I'm going to go with the American College of OBGYNs over you all every time. so I'm sorry. I know that we'll never agree on this because we're not living in a shared reality. But to tell you a little bit of context about some of the deceptive information that live action has been accused of pushing because Facebook back checkers back when Facebook used to have back checking, rated false. Rose's claim that, quote, abortion is never medically necessary, a claim that directly contradicts the American College of OBGYNs. Lila has also claimed that hormonal birth control is, quote, massively unhealthy. which side note, we did a whole episode about medical misinformation and hormonal birth control, which will put in the show notes.

I am not saying that hormonal birth control does not come with risks, but calling it massively unhealthy is not medically or scientifically correct. It's not supported by the science. She also says that it causes divorce and hookup culture. I guess those are her opinions. That don't make them facts because they're not facts. This is something this woman thinks. And all of this, to me, kind of connects back to Peter Thiel's fertility app.

Because these people, what it is is that they want white women to go off birth control using their fertility app to have kids and to stay preyed up on the Hallow app. And they want all of this to be happening on a tech ecosystem that they run. That is very clear to me. I think that's what's going on. And just as a little aside, like I wasn't even sure where to put this in the conversation. And I want to say it plainly, live action used to employ a man named Ruben Veristugi. And Ruben Verstuji was later convicted of distributing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material. So, yeah, we have an organization like Live Action that positions itself as the moral authority on protecting women and children.

That same organization, Live Action, employed somebody convicted of sex crimes against children. I'm not going to editorialize further. I think the facts speak for themselves about who these people are. more after a quick break another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite unhumored me with Robert Smygel

and friends me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week my guest SNL's Mikey Day

and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter who's the worst singer in the group the worst? Yeah me is there anything to the idea

that because you're from Harvard you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me. I need some jokes to. make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

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Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series. because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup,

he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying.

He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the bar like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the bomb. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast.

How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanging happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex?

Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultur Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's get right back into it. All right. So these are the people that are behind and speaking for in front of the Hallow app as well as live action. let's turn back to the piece specifically that was about our segment. And yeah, I'm so, you know, it's nice to be recognized, nice to be talked about. But what were your thoughts about this piece that Nancy wrote about us? So Nancy's piece takes issue with a few of the things that I said that I wanted to address here. So one of the things that she takes issue with is that I talked about how the founder of the app, Alex Jones,

at times, positions the content on the app as just what sounds like to me. discontent rather than explicitly, purely ministry or religious doctrine. Again, this is not my characterization. I am quoting from the founder Alex Jones. Alex Jones has said publicly that he wants to reach people who are, quote, not particularly religious on the social media platforms they most frequent. To me, that sounds like he is describing a content distribution strategy. He is talking about content and reach and platforms the way that I would expect a media executive to talk about those things. Now, Nancy's defense is that Hallow is, quote, unapologetically pro-life and proudly and unaplyvically Catholic. Now, that is her framing in that article that she wrote

about us. That is also the CEO's framing when that framing is convenient. Because in November Number 23, Hallow partnered with Liam Neeson for their Advent series. Nissen, who also narrated a pro-abortion campaign at an Ireland, calling the Catholic Church, quote, a cruel ghost of the last century. When Catholics pushed back that Neeson had been included as a voice on the Hallow app, Jones did not apologize. He defended that decision, saying that the Hallow app is, quote, not a place of judgment, and that the app needed non-traditional partners like Neeson

to reach folks that have fallen away. So people who are not particularly religious, just like Jones said, just like I said, he said. Jones held that position for over a year. Then, in December of 2024, reversed course and called it a mistake. But the same language that he used partnering with Russell Brand, he also used for partnering with Liam Neeson.

Yeah, I mean, those are equivalent things, right? like making someone who is accused of sexual assault, your spokesperson, having a spokesperson who is pro-abortion, totally the same. Yes. So this point of contention that Nancy raises in the piece was in response to me saying that even though at times Alex Jones has made it seem like he's just trying to put out content

for people who are not particularly religious, they also include these anti-abortion prayers by folks, like the head of live action, Lila Rose. To me, that seems like a little bit of a bait and switch where you're trying to get non-religious people over with just general spiritual content. When they get there, they have prayers like this anti-abortion prayer, which I described in that episode as a mean prayer.

So you could understand why it's maybe not clear on whether or not this is an app that is explicitly and only about amplifying the Catholic anti-abortion religious doctrine because the CEO has argued for both depending on who's asking and what he needs to defend. And here's the real kicker to me. One of the loudest voices condemning the Nissen partnership was Lila Rose, the head of live action, who disclosed that Hallow had been sponsoring her show right up until that controversy. So Nancy's own boss pulled her sponsorship over Liam Neeson. And now we have Nancy writing pieces defending that app in these very particular ways,

making these claims about what it's supposed to be and what it's not supposed to be. It just doesn't make sense to me. And it's not surprising that giving these contradictory positions that CEO Alex Jones has held, it might be a little bit confusing. Yeah, it does seem a little bit confusing. Like, how doctrinal is it? It seems like it has shifted over time and maybe not in a consistent way. Yes.

She also took a lot of issue with me calling Lila Rose's anti-abortion prayers on the hallow app, mean? I stand by that. They are mean prayers. One of the prayers, Jesus, we pray for every woman who is considering abortion and in a special way for those who are pregnant from acts of rape or incest. May every woman know the goodness, gift, and beauty of her own life, and so be able to receive the gift of her child's life. I found that to be a condescending, mean, judgmental prayer. I absolutely stand by that, especially given that the CEO of the Hallow Prayer app

explicitly said that the app is, quote, not a place of judgment. So having these prayers telling women who have had abortions that they should behave a certain way or should do or not do a certain thing, that is judgment. The kind of thing that Jones publicly said the app should not be about. So which is it? because my faith is not about making judgments toward other people's difficult and private personal medical decisions. My faith doesn't tell me to do that. I stand by saying that that is a mean, condescending prayer that looks down on the very people that I think Jesus would actually

show love for. And I mentioned this earlier, but Nancy says, and I'm quoting directly, it is absurd for non-Christians to make assumptions or accusations about what Christians do or don't do. Nancy, why do you assume that I'm not a person of faith? Why do you assume that I'm not a Christian? Nancy assumes that I have no relationship with faith based on what exactly, based on the fact that I criticized a venture capital-backed app that I feel exploits the faith of people like me? Nancy, for your information, I am a person of faith. I grew up in the church. I have said that many times on this podcast, including the episode that Nancy

summarized. My critique of the Hallow app is not anti-Christian. In fact, I would argue that it is pro-faith, because I am asking whether or not billionaires should be monetizing one of the most intimate relationships that people have, the relationship they have with their God. That question comes from a place of my deep respect for faith and spirituality. Not in spite of it, Nancy. I don't think that the Hallow app, nor Nancy, nor live action, nor Lila Rose have deep respect and reverence for the sanctity and intimacy of people's faith and connection with the spiritual world and God, because if they did, they would not be so keen to exploit it so callously. That's how I feel as a Christian, Nancy. You let me know how you feel as a person of faith. Nancy, I would love to love you.

to hear it. But do not take this from me. I'm simply one person of faith, after all. Take it from Catholics who are asking questions about the hallow app on Reddit, who said things like, and I'm quoting a real person from the Catholicism subreddit, prayer is not a product. Sacramentals are not magical talismans and Christianity is not a self-improvement fad. It is a real relationship with Jesus. Now, that's a Catholic person saying that about this app. Another one, I recall seeing an ad that highlighted influential Catholics, and I had the expectation that it would feature renowned saints or figures deeply rooted in Catholic history. No, they included Mark Wahlberg.

I also find that interesting person on Reddit. These are Catholics raising these concerns, Nancy, not anti-Christians. These are people that you ostensibly should be in community with. I'm just amplifying what they have to say and agreeing. with them based in the way that we understand our faith. Another thing that Nancy chose not to address that we did raise in that episode is that we talked in the original episode about the fact that the Hallow app was removed from the EU market. CEO Alex Jones posted about it on Twitter saying that the EU was, quote, shutting us down by overregulation, apparently targeting any religious

app. A lot of religious media sort of picked that up and ran with it at face value, framing it as some kind of religious persecution. The EU coming after Christians was a whole thing was very dramatic. But here is the much more likely and boring reality. The Digital Services Act and the GDPR, which are Europe's data privacy frameworks, treat religious beliefs as they should,

meaning that they treat them as a special category of sensitive data requiring extra protections. Any app collecting that kind of data has additional compliance obligations. So I don't know if I would call that the persecution of Christians, given that the same rules apply to health apps, political apps, or any other kind of app deemed to be handling particularly sensitive personal information. So Jones never really explained what specific regulation was being triggered.

He never really gave a follow-up, never really gave details, just like the EU is persecuting us because they don't like that we're Christians, and it's Christians under attack. I'm quite sure that this generated a lot of media, sympathy, and probably a lot of subscriptions as well. Nancy, if you have more information about what actually happened here, genuinely, I would love to know. It seems like it's really could be part of your beat

since you report so much on the Hallow app. What actually happened when the Hallow app was pulled from the EU markets? I think people of faith deserve to know whether their most intimate connections with the Divine are being potentially mishandled as just another form of data or even being exploited. Girl, you're a journalist. You are on the hallow at beat.

Here is a scoop for you to look into if you want to do some real journalism that advocates for your people. Christians, Catholics. Come on, girl. Come on the show. You can even talk about your findings. You would love to have you.

It is sort of funny to frame privacy protections as persecution. Like, no, they're not persecuting Christians. They're protecting them from data aggregators. Yes, and they're protecting folks from data aggregators from mishandling or misusing the most sacred parts of their spiritual connection with their faith and spirituality. And it goes back to something that you said about the victim narrative here because, again, we don't know exactly what happened because Alex Jones was not very transparent about what happened, but we know from his public tweets that he framed it as this persecution. And it's just very interesting to me that having to abide by what is probably like very boring data privacy compliance issues is like, no, Christians are being persecuted. Like that's a, that's victim shit.

Yeah. And it's certainly not a new idea, right? Like Christians were actually being persecuted from the very beginning of Christianity, right? Like the Romans were literally persecuting them and like outlawing Christianity. and killing them. And I think a really interesting time in Western history is when Christianity transitioned from being a persecuted minority to actually being the elite classes

and like ruling Rome and ruling the world and looking at the transformations that had to happen to the ideology and the doctrine to allow that transition to occur because my read on that early history is that things were pretty different when it was a bunch of poor people huddling together, you know, sharing all of their money.

And then when the faith entered the halls of power and government, a lot of things changed. And I think, you know, I would be interested if any listeners wanted to write in with thoughts about parallels between that transition and what we see today with like Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance running a surveillance apparatus

and building apps that collect so much of our data. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

help make you fun. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

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And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs.

I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too.

Steve Nash will get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball, like, you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crime. at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with the Adamani Arriva, where I call on my Gen X squads

from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, It's sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How hard can it be? Getting naked at 50 with the new guy.

That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it.

I am so glad that you made that transition to wondering how we got to this place that Christianity is treated in the United States today. Because, again, it goes back to that thing of being the getting to occupy both the hero and the victim stance, where Christianity is the most common of the religions in the United States. And yet, people are able to talk. about it as if Christians are a persecuted minority. You know, some of the things that people will highlight to demonstrate this is they took the Christ out of Christmas. We can't even say Merry Christmas

anymore. Things like that. Like the way that people get to talk about Christianity as if they are this downtroddened persecuted minority while also essentially, especially right now today, occupying every seat of power, you know, like it just doesn't make any sense to me. It's also, I don't know if you watch that episode of South Park where Jesus, their depiction of Jesus, is dating a Christian woman. And it becomes clear in the episode that her version of Christianity is just like having large breasts and blonde hair and like being kind of mean to everybody around her, judging everybody around her.

And they spend very little time practicing any real Christianity beyond that. Do you know what I'm talking about? I do. I did really enjoy this most recent season of South Park. But yeah, maybe we should have a whole episode about it because it was quite brilliant. But in the interest of time, let's bring it back around to the Hallow app. Okay. As I've said, other anti-abortion folks, folks who are also religious, folks who put themselves in the camp of people like live action and Lila Rose, they have raised issue with Lila Rose, for practicing in deception. Again, that is not me saying this.

I am simply echoing what folks who, ostensibly should be Lila Rose's allies. I'm just echoing what they have said. So it's not me saying that. And the reason I want to say that is because these people are liars. Their own community, their own people, call them out as fraudsters, grifters, and liars. And I want to close by the biggest lie, in my opinion,

that these people like to purport. Nancy's piece and live action more broadly, in my opinion, operate from the assumption that their position on abortion represents a mainstream common sense American value, that people like me who support abortion access, that we are radicals, we are extremists, and that they, in fact, are the silent moral majority. And I just have to say this,

that to me is the biggest lie. organizations tell because the numbers are very clear, the numbers are not even a little bit ambiguous. 63% of Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. That is consistent across Pew Research, Gallup Research, AP Nork Research, and P.R.I, the Public Religion Research Institute, and multiple independent pollsters all consistently find the same thing. Americans like abortion. We want abortion access protected across the board. This is not a controversial opinion. Since the Dobbs decision, support for abortion has not dropped since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. If anything, overturning Roe slightly increased support for legal abortion. When you do a state-by-state

breakdown, literally Arkansas is the only state of the 50 states where a majority wants abortion illegal by a statistically significant margin. Places that you think of as like deep red Bible Belt places, Louisiana, Wyoming, Kentucky, states with near total bans, their own residents still support legal abortion 54 to 45. A 2025 Gallup poll in May found that only 8% of Americans want abortion illegal in all cases. That's down from 15% in 2010. Even among Republicans, it's only 13%. who want abortion illegal in all cases. That's down from 22% in 2010. So live actions,

actual position that abortion should be illegal in all cases, no exceptions, is held by just 8% of Americans. 8%. I mean, the numbers don't lie. It's not close. It's not inconsistent. It is not a thorny controversial issues. It could not be clearer from the data that Americans' minds are made up about abortion. We like it. We want it. Protect it. Abortion is popular and well-liked by Americans. It is not controversial. People like Lila Rose and live actions are not people fighting for the silent majority. Quite the opposite.

They are a well-funded, extremely organized, extreme minority of extremists and radicals. And they have managed to impose their extreme will on this country, not because most Americans agree with them. The polling is very clear that most Americans do not agree with them, but because they are disciplined, they are strategic, they are well-funded, and they are comfortable with what their own allies describe as, quote, deceptive practices or lies. They also have a lot of money from people like Peter Thiel. Organizations like Live Action know that their actual positions are deeply unpopular with the American public, which is why they have to lie about those positions, which is why they have to dress those positions up in moral judgmental land. which is why when someone like me calls them out about it in a podcast, they have to write a piece

about Chris Pratt instead of engaging with the substance of my actual argument. Because if they actually engage with the substance of my actual arguments that a surveillance-backed venture capital funded app is monetizing your faith while its biggest partner has not even apologized to the black child he threw Roxat. While it also partnered with a man now facing six counts of rape charges while it's backed by the guy that built a deportation and surveillance machine, they would lose and they know it. Damn, Bridgett, really bringing it to him. Yes.

Lastly, one of her criticisms is that I only have smoke for Christians like Chris Pratt. She writes, Todd also accused Pratt of acting like a victim for these conservative stances and said that she can't stand that Pratt's politics are very clear, despite the fact that that she does not seem to be bothered by the overt politics of those in the entertainment industry who oppose Christian beliefs. Now, this is how I know Nancy doesn't know a thing about me, and it's just grasping at weak assumptions of who I am, because anybody who knows me, anybody who listens to this podcast,

know that I am the world's biggest hater. I have negative shit to say about everybody literally all the time. Did you not listen to our conversation about my thoughts on one battle after another? nobody is a bigger hater than me. It's also just not true that you said that the thing you don't like about him is that his politics are very clear. No, I, she also, that quote misrepresents what I said. I said that his politics are very clear to me, but that the reason why I don't like him is not even about his politics. So like, that also just mangles my point, which is that I don't even care that he's a conservative.

I care that he paints himself out to be this downtrodden victim every chance that he gets, while simultaneously starring in some of the biggest, most well-funded movie franchises on the planet. So Nancy, if you are still listening, we welcome you to come on the show. I can promise you a respectful conversation. I think we would have a good time. I would actually love to speak with you.

But in closing, I will say this. Hello app. Ila Rose. Live Nation. Chris Pratt. As a staff, a record label, and a B. And if you want to be down with them, the n-h-h-you-to.

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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