Maintenance Phase - ＂Illness Influencer＂ Belle Gibson

00:00:00.000 what what's your tagline what do you have for us we're doing an influencer yeah oh it's a cancer

00:00:15.520 influencer does that help jesus christ do you have a cancer zinger ready not handy you've been saving

00:00:23.460 oh here we go hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that aims to

00:00:29.360 be more benign than malignant does it work you did have one did i have one okay good good good

00:00:37.420 uh i'm aubrey gordon i am michael hobbs if you would like to support the show thank you so much

00:00:44.340 you can do that by visiting us at patreon.com slash maintenance phase where we have uh bonus

00:00:51.300 episodes for you including a forthcoming bonus episode that is a mailbag of all of the absolutely

00:00:58.480 wacky emails we get from mostly people who don't listen to the show yeah we we also get a lot of

00:01:05.440 offers from products wanting to sponsor the show yeah and like sit up influencers that want to be

00:01:11.460 on the show so we will be reading those out loud and making fun of them it's gonna be fun sit up

00:01:16.660 influencers you know the one i mean i do you saw that mail and today we are talking about some kind

00:01:25.040 of influencer yes we are talking about someone named bell gibson are you familiar with this

00:01:31.420 person i am not like at all this person you mentioned something about is this person australian

00:01:36.580 yes she is a very well-known australian lifestyle influencer would you put this person more in a

00:01:44.360 like YouTuber style camp, an Instagram style camp, like an Amanda Chantal Bacon.

00:01:51.860 What's the woo level here? And what's the platform of choice? Those are the two things

00:01:57.180 I would like to know. I would say six and Instagram. Okay. I think Amanda Chantal Bacon

00:02:01.880 is the level we're dealing with here. Excellent. One of the chapters of her book is called Own 0.85

00:02:06.660 your magic it's a lot of that kind of stuff oh mike i already love it so this is really a story

00:02:14.180 of instagram most of this takes place in 2013 and 2014 which is not that long ago in the grand

00:02:21.900 scheme of things but in instagram slash internet time it's like five generations ago so to give

00:02:29.280 you a sense of who this person is and her general vibe i am going to send you a i would say

00:02:34.980 prototypical instagram post from the peak of her fame okay boop okay so she looks like one of the

00:02:44.620 pretty little liars oh she does yeah so the instagram name is healing underscore bell b-e-l-l-e 0.99

00:02:52.000 healing bell it's a picture of a young conventionally attractive white woman wearing sunglasses 0.51

00:02:58.240 she looks like she's in her probably mid-20s is my guess she is definitely wearing makeup but it's

00:03:06.260 like the no makeup makeup look oh yeah and the caption says on my way to my first official

00:03:11.860 duties as an american author with the humidity high and rain coming down big love to the twpx

00:03:18.480 usa community who helped me out last night you're all incredible hashtag grateful this is very 2013

00:03:26.020 2014 instagram right yeah hashtag blessed hashtag friendship so this is another one also at the

00:03:33.560 peak of her fame i just wanted to give you a sense of the kind of influencering that she's doing on

00:03:39.700 instagram for most of her social media career okay so this next one is a picture of a smoothie

00:03:47.140 with either a green straw or like a lime wedge or something in it it's a really that smoothie looks

00:03:52.820 good yeah it's like bright lovely purple oh the caption says you don't always have to supplement

00:04:00.860 your diet but it's so easy why wouldn't you give your system extra support this one is for my rash

00:04:06.940 thanks liver cancer inflammation thanks flying and for general immunity raw mangosteen powder

00:04:14.760 wild strawberries blueberries hemp protein bee pollen maca coconut milk for brain function

00:04:21.920 metabolism and hormone health flaxseed oil and golden turmeric you can choose to add just one

00:04:28.580 i mean you see the amanda chantal bacon nanity right yes if there's like a moon juice scale

00:04:34.220 of like zero to ten i would put this at an nine i would take one point off because that's movie

00:04:43.160 has zero mushrooms in it i know that's the problem she doesn't mention hydration in here 1.00

00:04:48.200 There's no anti-aging.

00:04:49.700 I'm livid.

00:04:50.380 I'm talking myself into giving it an eight now.

00:04:52.580 So you're getting a sense of her overall vibe, right? 1.00

00:04:55.140 She's a thin white lady. 1.00

00:04:56.480 She's got health problems. 1.00

00:04:57.980 And she's recommending these foods for health problems.

00:05:00.960 Correct.

00:05:01.600 But now we're going to rewind to her upbringing.

00:05:04.120 This is the story that she tells in her book.

00:05:06.500 This is the story that she tells in a million interviews and a million talks over the years.

00:05:09.940 These are the sort of general chapters of her life, as told by Bell Gibson.

00:05:14.320 She's born in 1989.

00:05:16.380 She grows up in social housing in Brisbane.

00:05:19.860 Her father is out of the picture.

00:05:21.480 Her mom will later describe him as a sperm donor.

00:05:24.180 Wow.

00:05:24.440 Her mother has MS and her brother is autistic. 0.97

00:05:28.580 Oh, dang.

00:05:29.060 So from age six, she says, she's the mom of the household. 0.93

00:05:33.080 She's making sandwiches.

00:05:34.520 She's doing dishes.

00:05:35.640 She talks about standing on a chair to reach the stovetop so that she can cook macaroni and cheese for her and her brother.

00:05:42.760 This is an excerpt from an Elle article.

00:05:45.700 that's published in 2014 it says both she and her brother were severely overweight subsisting on

00:05:51.620 frozen meals and cheap fruit juice uh oh i don't like where this is going i'm planting little red

00:05:57.660 flags i don't like just the phrase severely overweight it's not a great oh she also says

00:06:04.780 that she moved out at age 12 she bounced around staying with friends staying with friends of the

00:06:11.400 family. She ends up dropping out of high school. She moves to Perth at age 16, which is as far from

00:06:17.680 Brisbane as she can possibly get. And she starts working at a health insurance call center. When

00:06:24.520 she's at this job, she starts to experience weird health stuff. She has trouble reading. She sort of

00:06:33.160 stumbles when she walks. She's having memory problems. So I'm going to send you an excerpt

00:06:38.640 from her book that ends up coming out in 2014 called The Whole Pantry.

00:06:43.960 All right. Quote, I had known for a while that something didn't feel right. But when I saw the

00:06:48.660 doctor, he told me to ignore what I was experiencing and to trial antidepressants.

00:06:53.920 I tried them, but they made no difference. So I went off them and went back to the doctor.

00:06:58.460 All he said was, you work too hard, you're looking at a computer all day, and you're socially

00:07:02.460 isolated. Let's get your eyes tested and start that medication I gave you again.

00:07:07.140 at this point i could have taken control of my own life and gotten a second opinion but instead

00:07:12.100 of listening to my body and trusting my intuition i put my faith in one quote-unquote professional

00:07:17.400 i felt like i had hit a brick wall soon afterwards i had a stroke at work i will never forget sitting

00:07:24.220 alone in the doctor's office three weeks later waiting for my test results he called me in and

00:07:29.880 said you have malignant brain cancer bell you're dying you have six weeks four months tops what do

00:07:36.480 think well you know this is like very tough for a couple of reasons one is like you know if you

00:07:45.280 talk to people who have chronic illnesses this is not an uncommon story there are just sort of like

00:07:52.140 people who don't get believed about their bodies and have their symptoms minimized and that is also

00:07:58.480 an on-ramp to like next level quackery right so like it's both like what a horrifying terrible

00:08:06.380 experience to have if this is how this happened i know you so maybe it is 0.99

00:08:11.560 fuck you for remembering the previous episodes of this show 0.98

00:08:18.340 so like if this happened this way so question mark jury's still out there that's truly horrifying 0.99

00:08:29.560 and really really awful and given the influencer path that i know that we're on it feels like this

00:08:36.960 is going to lead to some like that's why you gotta have sodium cluster salts in the form of celery

00:08:42.520 juice every day kind of nonsense right all of this is leading us to the purple smoothie so yes 1.00

00:08:47.200 so after she gets this diagnosis she has six weeks to live four months tops she ends up moving to 0.63

00:08:55.120 melbourne because there are specialists there and she can get chemotherapy she does two months of

00:09:00.880 chemotherapy she says after the first month or so after the first round it's so bad she ends up

00:09:07.080 puking and passing out on a bench in a little park across the street from the hospital oh yeah

00:09:11.960 she's like i can't do this anymore she starts reading online she says posts about the detoxifying

00:09:19.240 properties of lemons so i'm going to send you another quick excerpt from her book thank you

00:09:25.960 you're going to be the voice of bell oh god channeling bell for us listen i made you be

00:09:30.160 the voice of carl lagerfeld so like there's nothing you can do to me that will compete with

00:09:35.300 that quote six weeks after my diagnosis i changed my diet like most australians i found i was still

00:09:43.380 eating too many sugars red meat and refined foods i pulled myself out of chemo and radiotherapy

00:09:50.620 jesus christ my doctors freaked out but they couldn't stop me i was empowering myself to

00:09:56.600 save my own life through nutrition patience determination and love as well as salt vitamins

00:10:02.500 and ayurvedic treatments craniosacral therapy oxygen therapy colonics and a whole lot of other 0.98

00:10:09.780 treatments she's already saying stuff that i don't know what it is oh boy it's real fucking

00:10:15.300 dark when people are like so against my doctor's advice i pulled myself out of treatment for cancer

00:10:20.660 i know there are a lot of things that make the medical system really really difficult and also

00:10:26.840 don't fuck around when it comes to cancer jesus another phrase that stands out is i was empowering

00:10:33.720 myself to save my own life you know the doctors aren't working for that the doctors they don't 0.99

00:10:38.500 care if she lives or dies i realize people have had very bad experiences with the medical system

00:10:43.380 like not everybody's experience is really good but the idea that you're empowering yourself

00:10:47.380 by not undergoing proven remedies yeah it's not good yeah it's not good it's not good so at this

00:10:53.780 point she switches to a vegetarian diet without any dairy gluten preservatives gmo foods or sugar

00:11:03.140 sure it's it's very limited what she can eat at this point no alcohol no caffeine uh-huh so the

00:11:09.560 first the internet starts hearing about bell gibson is on 2010 when she starts posting on

00:11:15.300 pregnancy forums oh she's pregnant with her son how old is she at this point she's 21 yep 21 okay

00:11:21.900 there's a forum in australia called what to expect and she starts posting on these message boards

00:11:27.600 about a lot of it is about diet and lifestyle stuff a lot of it is about undergoing cancer

00:11:33.280 therapy like the previous stuff that she was doing this is an excerpt from a biography that's

00:11:39.200 been written about her by beau donnelly and nick toscano she wrote about having cancer detoxing

00:11:45.260 and chiropractic treatment she said that half a panadol tablet affected her severely and that

00:11:49.840 she wouldn't get into a warm bath after learning about the chemicals you absorb from unfiltered

00:11:54.560 water oh the forum seemed to be less of a parenting resources than it was a place for a lonely young

00:11:59.880 woman to connect it feels like some real significant foreshadowing that there is a

00:12:04.600 biography of her with two authors i know okay we're going places understood i'm tipping my

00:12:10.520 i'm tipping my cards toward you slowly i'm slowly revealing where this is going

00:12:14.700 so she's working in retail she's posting on this forum she eventually moves over to facebook as

00:12:23.280 much of the internet did at that time she sets up a facebook group for something she calls the

00:12:29.260 whole pantry that's what she's calling her program diet lifestyle program she starts giving out more

00:12:35.040 advice and then in 2012 she moves over to instagram gotcha there's also at this time

00:12:42.240 you will be shocked to learn there's also some weird red flags what so she blames vaccines for

00:12:50.340 her cancer because i guess she got a cervical cancer vaccine and then she's like that's when

00:12:55.440 i got brain cancer she starts doing that thing she says that she only drinks non-fluoridated water 0.95

00:13:01.580 which is a fucking episode we're gonna have to do at some point she says in a 2012 facebook post 0.97

00:13:07.360 i've been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer for the past few years with natural medicine 0.97

00:13:13.000 gerson therapy and foods are you familiar with gerson therapy i've never heard that word until

00:13:19.280 right now. It's illegal to practice in the United States. Oh, cool. It's one of these things that

00:13:24.640 dates back like 100 years. It's basically this guy that said that you could cure cancer with an

00:13:29.520 extremely regimented diet. So this is from the National Cancer Institute, which is like, do not

00:13:36.980 do this. Everyone, don't do this. The diet is strictly vegetarian for at least six weeks and

00:13:42.420 consists of specific fruits and vegetables eaten either raw or stewed in their own juices. No

00:13:49.100 animal protein is allowed, though some whole grains such as oatmeal are included. A glass

00:13:53.740 of freshly prepared juice from vegetables and fruits must be consumed every hour for 13 hours

00:13:59.380 throughout the day. Good lord. It's a great plan in that basically it's so specific and deranged

00:14:05.560 that nobody can stick with it. Yeah, that sounds right. So when you, a normal person, cannot do

00:14:10.920 this for any length of time and your cancer doesn't get cured, well, guess what? It was

00:14:15.460 your fault for not sticking to it this is the logic of like kind of every diet that claims to

00:14:22.060 quote-unquote fix something about you if you're diabetic and you went vegan because someone told

00:14:27.040 you that being vegan can reverse type 2 diabetes and your type 2 diabetes didn't get reversed well

00:14:32.740 that's on you you weren't vegan enough and you probably accidentally had some honey the

00:14:38.440 accountability flows one way the responsibility flows one way and it's always sort of downhill

00:14:43.800 back to the person who's doing the diet right not to the logic of the diet itself or the science

00:14:50.020 behind it itself or any of that kind of stuff it drives me bananas michael i mean well bananas you

00:14:56.100 can't have those on this diet so oh no mine i love a banana so we are going to watch a brief clip

00:15:04.240 the next chapter of the story is like the peak of her fame 2014 is when everything is going

00:15:10.740 extremely swimmingly.

00:15:13.420 Belle Gibson is a mother, a businesswoman, 1.00

00:15:15.520 and she's also living with brain cancer. 0.90

00:15:17.980 But the 25-year-old has turned her cancer diagnosis

00:15:20.980 into a positive, believe it or not. 0.76

00:15:23.420 She's created the world's first health, wellness

00:15:26.580 and lifestyle app, The Whole Pantry.

00:15:30.560 And the response has been amazing.

00:15:32.580 Her online community reaching followers around the world.

00:15:40.740 Belle Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneur.

00:15:44.000 She is an ecopreneur. 0.95

00:15:46.240 Mmm, you taste like mango.

00:15:49.080 Belle launched the Whole Pantry app last year.

00:15:51.600 It's essentially a recipe collection

00:15:54.380 full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes,

00:15:57.980 which is the way that we encourage people

00:16:00.380 to get back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables. 0.93

00:16:04.240 The Whole Pantry was born through Belle's own battle with brain cancer.

00:16:07.400 She was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago

00:16:10.560 after trying the traditional treatment methods she turned to Whole Foods to

00:16:14.840 heal herself instead and she soon began to develop an app and you're all quite

00:16:20.320 inspirational I wouldn't mind betting that that's that's a fair bit behind all

00:16:24.400 of this as well for a person living with brain cancer might I add you look

00:16:28.140 incredibly healthy tell us what your top tips obviously it's quite holistic your

00:16:33.780 life at the moment I imagine what are your top tips for health I think it's

00:16:37.720 about getting back to the fundamentals of a healthy life we talk about in the app going back

00:16:45.120 to basics and eating more of those fundamental foods you know getting adequate water intake

00:16:49.840 eating more fruits and vegetables it's really simple and people overthink it people overthink 0.85

00:16:56.500 it people overthink it when i tell them to fucking overthink it also the chiron on this show for this 0.92

00:17:06.000 particular story absolutely fabulous i know i have it in my notes whoever wrote that chyron 0.95

00:17:16.500 i hope your career is soaring do they give pulitzers for chyrons so i find that excruciating

00:17:23.360 what did you think of the content of that i mean it just felt like an early version of like i healed

00:17:30.120 myself using whole foods people are really concerned with health and wellness it's pretty

00:17:35.480 simple you have to eat more fruits and vegetables which is why we made this weird byzantine system

00:17:40.240 to make you eat more fruits and vegetables rather than just saying that it just it feels like this

00:17:45.580 is the playbook being written i'm speeding through this part because it's just it's so generic a lot

00:17:50.860 of this stuff yeah the only not that interesting but vaguely interesting part of this is that

00:17:55.320 she essentially jumps from instagram to having an app it was described here and it's described

00:18:00.520 everywhere as the world's first wellness app this is 2013 i don't think that's true no it's not

00:18:06.960 people keep saying this as if it's true but it's like no we had apps about wellness somebody i

00:18:14.320 found one person that actually looked into this and said that there were literally 2,500

00:18:17.960 wellness apps by 2009 not even 2013 i don't know why people keep saying this if you look at the

00:18:25.820 actual app i mean everyone says the app is fine but the app it's 50 recipes but it's not like

00:18:31.840 doing anything it's a cookbook on your phone exactly and so this was the number one app in

00:18:36.860 australia the month that it launched it costs three dollars and 79 cents oh it's a paid app

00:18:43.560 did we charge money for apps back then i'm like why why would people do this but they did this

00:18:49.860 apparently well we still charge money for some of them now i mean i guess i don't really download

00:18:54.680 those kinds of apps i only use grinder and it's free um so due to the massive success of this app

00:19:01.460 and i think because everybody keeps calling it the first wellness app apple invites her to

00:19:06.280 silicon valley what yes they are developing a suite of apps that are going to be standard on

00:19:11.700 the apple watch and that happened so she was there for the launch in silicon valley wow also in 2014

00:19:17.960 her book the whole pantry is published with penguin 80 of it is recipes there's also a

00:19:23.860 3000 word essay where she tells her life story these are the excerpts that we read earlier where

00:19:28.740 she's talking about how the recipes inspired her and her journey with cancer and it's in remission

00:19:33.600 but it could come back and i'm trying to live a clean life blah blah blah gotcha i was gonna do

00:19:38.380 a whole thing on the book but it's like again pretty pretty standard like whole foods hot salad

00:19:44.880 bar type of recipes wait hot salad bar hot salad that's the that's the buffet at whole foods wait

00:19:51.340 When you go in there and you're like, oh, I'm going to have a slice of lasagna and some veggies, then it's like $24.

00:19:57.640 What do people call it?

00:19:58.660 It's a hot salad bar.

00:19:59.560 You're calling that hot salad.

00:20:01.900 It's amazing.

00:20:02.900 So I'm not going to read a bunch of excerpts.

00:20:04.880 It's just a bunch of like vague platitudinous.

00:20:07.500 At one point she says, embrace food as a life source, not just fuel.

00:20:12.300 Me and you could write a book like this, I feel like.

00:20:15.580 We should totally, Michael, now this is what I want.

00:20:20.940 Oh, we could do the like one sentence at a time writing exercise where the next person can only see the last sentence written.

00:20:27.680 The problem, Aubrey, is that it would sell well and then we'd have to lean into it.

00:20:31.460 I just like the idea of like you and I as like soulless husks of ourselves showing up on some TV morning show being like, if you eat spirulina every day, you'll become immortal.

00:20:43.100 Give every interview just wiping a purple smoothie from my chin.

00:20:46.380 Totally.

00:20:47.840 So a couple other things that happened in 2014.

00:20:49.940 she wins cosmo's fun fearless female award in the category of social media what cosmo says

00:20:57.460 she's fun and fearless because colon she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer but instead

00:21:03.400 of giving in became the impetus for her dedication to health and well-being fun tired of these people

00:21:09.640 dying of cancer giving in just giving up super chill super chill wording there's a glowing

00:21:15.300 article in Elle she does a bunch of events she does a bunch of fundraisers so one of the main

00:21:20.080 things with her app she'll say like oh this week if you download the app all proceeds are going to

00:21:25.900 go to there's this kid whose name is Joshua Schwartz who has brain cancer he's four years

00:21:29.960 old this becomes a really important story in Australia that year she's like okay every

00:21:34.320 download this week the money is going to go to his parents or she'll say oh we're helping to

00:21:38.800 build schools in Sierra Leone so if you come to this fundraising event we're going to donate all 0.98

00:21:43.700 the proceeds uh i don't like where this is going damn it damn it i'm trying to keep you in the dark 0.93

00:21:50.340 it feels like we're going in like a very sean king direction 0.92

00:21:55.280 are we is that not what's happening first sean king mention on the show wow it just it just

00:22:03.220 feels not right to me all right so there's gonna be there's gonna be a downfall chapter you knew

00:22:07.620 the downfall chapter was coming we wouldn't be talking about it if there wasn't a downfall

00:22:11.500 Yeah, we're like an hour into this episode.

00:22:13.520 It's not that interesting so far.

00:22:15.760 So, okay, last Instagram post.

00:22:18.480 This is an Instagram post that becomes very famous later.

00:22:21.540 Okay.

00:22:22.700 So the Instagram image is a bunch of pink balloons in the shape of a heart.

00:22:29.960 The caption says,

00:22:31.880 With frustration and ache in my heart, my beautiful, game-changing community,

00:22:37.260 It hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I've been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer.

00:22:46.160 One is secondary and the other is primary.

00:22:49.460 I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver.

00:22:54.640 I am hurting.

00:22:55.760 What do you think?

00:22:56.500 Well, that is really terrible.

00:23:00.120 So this is July of 2014.

00:23:02.220 the downfall the whole crumbling house of cards comes down there's three days day one march 8th

00:23:11.780 of 2015 there is a article in the sydney morning herald with the headline charity money promised

00:23:19.880 by inspirational health app developer bell gibson not handed over okay i just want to go on record

00:23:26.520 that i called this so hard i'm weirdly so pleased with myself i was doing chekhov's charity donation

00:23:33.100 i'm like no i just want to make sure i tell you there's charity donations involved

00:23:37.160 so the app has now been downloaded 300 000 times it costs roughly four bucks australian every time

00:23:47.220 that's a lot of money these journalists do an extremely basic thing where they just contact

00:23:54.000 the charities like okay you're building schools in sierra leone okay what's the name of the

00:23:57.760 charity okay we're gonna contact them they start contacting all these charities and the charities

00:24:02.100 are like who bell what a lot of these charities literally didn't know that she was doing

00:24:09.740 fundraisers with their name they're like the non-profit equivalent of the mariah carey i don't

00:24:15.340 know her meme yeah exactly they're all putting on sunglasses yeah yeah good lord none of the

00:24:21.580 charitable donations have materialized in any way what they also find is that of course as part of

00:24:28.300 reporting the story as you do you reach out to the person who the story is about you're like okay

00:24:32.300 we've heard that these charities don't know anything they sent her a list of 21 questions

00:24:37.100 very specific questions by email they then hear back from one of the charities they're like oh

00:24:42.600 yeah bell gibson did actually give us a thousand dollars yesterday so like after the journalist

00:24:47.800 sent the email. They sent it at like three o'clock and then the charity got a donation at like 345.

00:24:53.800 Oh God. So in an act of foreshadowing, Bell responds to this with a long Facebook post

00:25:01.680 where she says, oh, you know, it's all a big misunderstanding. We're still calculating our

00:25:07.020 revenues. So we don't know how much revenue we had. So it's impossible for us to give away a

00:25:11.460 portion of our revenues because we're still figuring it out. It's all, you know, it's with

00:25:14.600 our accountants and we don't know she also does some like fake news media stuff where she says

00:25:20.300 like oh the journalist never even reached out to me which is not true and she told the journalists 1.00

00:25:25.600 that one of these big fundraisers she's like oh we only earned like 750 bucks from that anyway and

00:25:31.720 so instead of giving it to this charity i actually just gave it to this refugee family that i know

00:25:36.440 what and there's no record of this and like i'm not going to give you their names for privacy

00:25:40.280 reasons but like i just gave it to like these needy people in my life and they're like okay

00:25:45.500 that sounds pretty weird that like you gave money away in the only way that leaves no paper trail

00:25:50.220 and also that one of these high dollar important people fundraisers only produced 750 bucks yeah

00:25:55.960 that's not good and then in her facebook post she's like they didn't even mention the refugee

00:26:02.480 family that i'm supporting oh my god well that's because it it sounds real fake oh god how old is

00:26:10.260 she at this point she is 24 i will say this i don't think i would have become like a wellness

00:26:16.480 grifter or anything but i do think regularly about how happy i am to have become a public figure in

00:26:24.640 my late 30s and oh my god i know oh my god so when i think about like any kind of media attention

00:26:30.940 when i was 24 i'm like honestly there but for the grace of god go i my thoughts at that age

00:26:36.800 aubry i was not a person you should have listened to woof all right that was day one of the downfall

00:26:42.040 oh my god i forgot that this is like a three day three day like mega downfall is what it sounds

00:26:48.080 like we're ramping up for day two we find out that she never had cancer what

00:26:54.160 never any of it never no none cancer ever none cancer oh jesus michael this is dark the whole

00:27:05.060 episode you've been like why are we talking with this boring influencer there's like nothing

00:27:08.000 there's like nothing interesting here and then you're like fake cancer and i'm like okay got it

00:27:12.480 faked having cancer so got it the article is called mega blogger bell gibson casts doubt on

00:27:20.840 her own cancer claims so she outed herself this is a dark and winding tale that we will dissect

00:27:27.580 at great length so i am sending you a little excerpt for you to read quote an investigation

00:27:34.880 by The Australian has uncovered a series of unusual and contradictory medical claims

00:27:39.860 by Gibson dating from May 2009 when she claimed to have undergone multiple heart surgery operations

00:27:47.080 and momentarily died on an operating table. Gibson has also stated that in July that same

00:27:54.060 year when she was 20, a doctor told her she had terminal brain cancer and would be dead in four

00:27:59.260 months but according to the birth date on her own corporate filings she was 17 at the time

00:28:05.180 oh baby grifter i lied earlier bell gibson was born in 1991 she is 21 years old when the app 0.97

00:28:12.940 launches she's not 24 okay think about all the shit i just said about not wanting to be famous 0.92

00:28:17.060 when i was 24 i know now just like multiply that by hundreds for not wanting to be famous when i 0.96

00:28:23.140 17 that seems terrible the australian you can you can sense their frustration through the faux

00:28:30.780 objective journalistic tone they're talking about how they've asked her over and over again for any

00:28:35.380 documentary evidence that she had cancer a note from a doctor an appointment a scan result after

00:28:42.720 visit summary any any anything nothing she can't produce anything and she makes these winding

00:28:51.000 claims the journalist was interviewed for a bbc documentary on this case that came out this year

00:28:55.920 and he talks about how you can't interview her about anything because she just she rambles she

00:29:01.540 goes off into little corridors she doesn't she never directly answers a question and it's

00:29:07.100 impossible to get clear information from her so even in this story they're like we don't really

00:29:13.340 know because like she won't you can't really nail her down on anything to check it yeah so

00:29:17.280 So her explanation for this is that she was misdiagnosed. 0.99

00:29:23.280 This is – I'm so stressed out about this shit. 0.99

00:29:26.480 I know. 0.99

00:29:27.640 I am so stressed out, Michael.

00:29:31.360 It says in the article, it says, in an interview with The Australian, Gibson said she now believes she was misdiagnosed by a medical team using magnetic therapy from Germany,

00:29:41.320 asked to name the leader of the team she declined and indicated she was not certain whether he was

00:29:47.000 a medical doctor what she still insists that she had the old cancer the first cancer is real even

00:29:55.700 though she can't provide any evidence of it but that her new diagnosis the 2014 it spread to my

00:30:01.220 liver it spread to my spleen she's like i think i was misdiagnosed by these german doctors and 0.98

00:30:06.980 it's my mistake oh my god so day three of the town fall god oh my god we have another fucking 0.76

00:30:15.420 day yes i keep forgetting and then it keeps coming back to me and i'm like jesus christ 0.92

00:30:20.300 what could it be so now it's like she doesn't have a child what is it no okay okay so this

00:30:27.440 is an article in the city morning herald by nick and beau who are the guys who wrote a biography

00:30:33.080 of her that is called the women who fooled the world i couldn't tell you that earlier because

00:30:37.740 then you know what the twist was of course of course these are these are the guys that have

00:30:41.240 been investigating her for months and this includes quotes from five members of her inner circle

00:30:46.940 who say that they have suspected that she didn't have cancer for months what there's a trail of

00:30:54.160 people behind her former business associates people that were gonna get into business with 0.97

00:30:59.060 her they were like oh she's fucking lying whoa it says one former friend pulled out of a superfoods 0.89

00:31:05.120 business with miss gibson last year because she questioned the app developer's character after 0.98

00:31:09.260 miss gibson said she had many aliases my accountant wanted some basic paperwork stuff full name date

00:31:15.140 of birth address and bell said that might be an issue she said i have several names that i go under

00:31:20.520 it's a long story another person who previously worked for miss gibson said she did not believe

00:31:25.320 the cancer survival story she would post on social media that she's been at a doctor's appointment

00:31:30.180 all day but she really was just going to the dentist she got her veneers done what she would

00:31:36.160 make it sound like it was for cancer related illness oh my god michael so there are lots and

00:31:43.780 lots of reasons that people change their names trans people change their names people who've been

00:31:47.740 you know targeted by stalking or domestic violence change their names there are lots and lots of

00:31:51.960 reasons for that do we have any sense that any of those sorts of like things might be true about

00:31:59.120 has she said anything about like this is i mean this is kind of the next chapter of the story

00:32:03.020 okay immediately after these three stories come out she basically disappears it's it's two months

00:32:08.140 before anybody hears anything from bell gibson essentially during that two months we find out

00:32:13.560 a lot of things okay so as we often find on the show once somebody pushes the door everybody else

00:32:19.460 crowds through it so all of a sudden all these journalists are sifting through her life and as

00:32:25.020 with the thing with the aliases the thing with her age she lies to everybody in her life about

00:32:30.520 everything her mom contacts journalists her mom did not know that she was an influencer or had an

00:32:36.400 app or had a best-selling book they haven't spoken in years and so her mom is like well yes i have ms

00:32:42.360 but it's really not severe so that thing about her being the caretaker in the house when she was six

00:32:47.640 is just not true my my ms doesn't actually disable me all that much her brother is not autistic

00:32:53.880 what they contact the brother and he's like no i'm a non-autistic person just living my life

00:32:59.840 yeah the thing about her being fat wasn't true people find photos of her as a child and a teen

00:33:04.940 and she's like very thin this is from the biography oh yikes i just okay whoa quote 0.99

00:33:13.340 Quote, those who knew her describe a melodramatic girl with a tendency to imitate others who was prone to lying.

00:33:22.020 Over the years, she told a number of people that she was in a witness protection program.

00:33:27.200 I know.

00:33:27.640 One classmate recalls Gibson claiming she was a test tube baby.

00:33:31.380 Quote, we all felt like none of her stories she told us were true, she says.

00:33:36.600 another classmate said gibson's supposed health crises were part of an attempt to keep a boyfriend

00:33:42.680 at the time jesus god yeah that's the theory is that that's when she started doing the cancer

00:33:49.500 shtick was when this boy wanted to break up with her this is like seven law and order svu episodes

00:33:56.540 her story has changed multiple times over the years she told it said kelsey gamble

00:34:01.940 who went to a neighboring school but attended drama classes with Gibson. 0.98

00:34:06.340 In our hometown, she was extremely well-known for what basically amounts to compulsive lying. 1.00

00:34:11.880 She was honestly a laughingstock half the time. 1.00

00:34:15.200 People made fun of her.

00:34:16.700 Kelsey was friends with Gibson on Facebook until 2014

00:34:19.580 when she wrote a public Facebook message accusing her of lying and was blocked.

00:34:24.960 Yeah.

00:34:25.060 This is so bad and so grifty and so disprovable.

00:34:29.280 and also it definitely makes me wonder if there is some kind of trauma history or mental health

00:34:36.780 diagnosis or something going on here because like this is way a lot also people can just be

00:34:45.160 bad and say things that are not true i know manipulate other people it's complicated yes

00:34:49.800 i was gonna say i didn't expect this episode to like get really complex i know it gets just wait

00:34:55.920 okay so another thing that we don't find out until this book comes out a couple years later

00:35:01.740 is that two of her closest friends their names are chanel and jared had an intervention with her

00:35:09.120 what this was months before the book comes out just kind of after she had signed the papers and

00:35:14.120 put in the text chanel who's like kind of a fascinating person was someone who worked for

00:35:20.040 bell gibson and didn't really think anything was fishy and then her friend's mom got cancer

00:35:26.380 and she saw two things she saw first what it is like to live with cancer yeah it's not bell

00:35:32.920 gibson's lifestyle on airplanes all the time going off to bali for a yoga retreat jogging in the 0.73

00:35:39.260 mornings yeah it's not a fucking instagram post about a mangosteen smoothie exactly and just 0.98

00:35:45.320 constant like this curated perfect healthy life but oops asterisk i also have brain cancer 0.96

00:35:51.040 she's like this is not cancer and also her friend's mom ended up dying partly because 0.99

00:35:58.180 she didn't undergo conventional cancer treatment oh motherfucker and she's very clear she's like 0.98

00:36:04.200 i don't blame bell gibson like it's not i'm not gonna draw a straight line between bell gibson 0.99

00:36:08.380 and my friend's mom but it's part of a whole kind of pond of bad information that she was swimming

00:36:14.200 in right she starts to have doubts so her and this other inner circle person named jared go over to

00:36:20.560 bell's house and are like bell your book is about to come out you are about to explode into the

00:36:28.220 public mainstream in a way you never have before you need to show us some sort of proof that you

00:36:34.360 had cancer we have questions all of this stuff is really fishy nobody had ever asked her extremely

00:36:39.940 basic questions about whether she actually had cancer or could describe it in any way.

00:36:45.000 This is very important.

00:36:45.800 So I'm going to send you an excerpt from the book of them confronting her about this.

00:36:50.660 Chanel can still recall the exchange that night, word for word.

00:36:55.000 She started by asking Gibson about the Instagram post, the one in which she announced that

00:36:59.080 her cancer had spread to other vital organs.

00:37:01.920 She asked her if she could tell them the name of the doctor who had given her the diagnosis.

00:37:07.260 Dr. Phil, she said.

00:37:08.680 are you serious chanel was incredulous dr phil he's now disappeared she said his colleagues

00:37:15.380 told me his practices were questionable questionable said chanel doesn't that mean

00:37:21.000 your diagnosis is questionable gibson said she supposed it could be well wouldn't the first

00:37:26.620 thing you do be to go and find out what the real diagnosis is i don't have time it seems like this

00:37:32.880 is what it's like to have conversations with bell gibson you're not like worried about the fact that

00:37:37.920 might not have cancer you're not gonna like go investigate that at all also dr phil like

00:37:42.640 you know does dr phil air in australia yes it is astonishing to me that she would say that 0.96

00:37:50.720 her cancer had metastasized i know and undercut her own fucking diet thing like it's just wild 0.88

00:37:58.220 i know as this episode progresses i'm just becoming like a series of like just whales 0.96

00:38:04.800 like just sounds of disgust and bad feelings my favorite detail of this is that at one point

00:38:13.280 bell gibson says that she feels outnumbered and ganged up on so she calls a naturopath that

00:38:19.280 she's been working with and asks him to come over to sort of be her support for this long and

00:38:23.760 difficult conversation and according to the naturopath who they interview for the biography

00:38:27.980 he turns on her halfway through and is like yeah bell it's really weird that you can't produce any

00:38:33.720 evidence that you had cancer wow even like the woo-woo people are like oh it really seems like 0.97

00:38:39.200 you're lying yeah like this is fucked up call in i mean just also like call in the reinforcements 0.95

00:38:45.400 and then the reinforcements are like wait that other guy's making some good points yeah sorry 0.98

00:38:49.960 i'm actually basically this night she walks out that night saying to bell like you need to pull

00:38:57.240 this book you can just kind of disappear at this point you're just a person on instagram yeah and

00:39:02.040 You need to take the gravity of this really seriously. 0.99

00:39:04.100 You're about to do something really stupid that you can't take back. 0.99

00:39:06.600 And Belle just, like, can't hear it. 0.99

00:39:08.520 And so Chanel leaves, and she contacts reporters.

00:39:12.020 Wow!

00:39:13.240 Good, honestly good for Chanel.

00:39:14.980 That's an incredibly difficult thing to do.

00:39:19.040 But also, like, if that was, like, my mom or a family friend who was dear to me or something, I would be hard-pressed to find any other course of action.

00:39:31.440 Oh, yeah.

00:39:31.640 I mean, I think Chanel is the only person with any moral compass in the story so far.

00:39:35.460 Jesus Christ.

00:39:36.780 This is wrong. 0.98

00:39:38.080 She gave Bell Gibson the opportunity to quietly back down. 1.00

00:39:43.220 Yeah.

00:39:43.380 But now, I mean, based on the app, the book coming out, this two-month period after these

00:39:48.380 three stories come out and all this information, the interview with the mom, the interview

00:39:52.140 with the brother, everything else, to this day, Bell Gibson is one of the most hated

00:39:56.620 figures in Australia.

00:39:57.700 Wow.

00:39:58.480 Like, easily top five.

00:39:59.460 Oh, this is a rough one, man. 0.82

00:40:01.640 i'm surprised you thought it was gonna be easy and about smoothies being dumb but it's actually

00:40:06.100 about cancer being bad and how people shouldn't lie about that i thought it was gonna be right

00:40:10.160 in my wheelhouse of like juice cleanses or nonsense and whatever else but then i got really

00:40:16.760 mad reading all of the coverage from this period because all the stories are framed around you

00:40:22.780 won't believe how shameless this person was she's lying to her friends she's lying to her boyfriend

00:40:28.060 She's tricking the whole country. 0.97

00:40:29.140 Like, look how shameless and how terrible this person is. 0.99

00:40:32.180 But then also, if it was this fucking obvious, why were you putting her on TV? 0.99

00:40:36.960 Yeah. 0.94

00:40:37.280 Why were you giving her awards?

00:40:38.820 Why were you not checking this stuff? 0.97

00:40:40.400 I mean, the fact that Belle Gibson was so obvious of a liar and so compulsive of a liar and lying about everything. 1.00

00:40:49.200 Yeah, it makes Belle Gibson look bad. 1.00

00:40:50.880 It makes the media look way worse. 0.87

00:40:53.260 But Michael, Michael, she was fun and fearless.

00:40:58.220 Fun, fearless female.

00:41:00.640 Cosmo said she was fun and fearless.

00:41:03.060 What am I supposed to think?

00:41:04.500 That she's not fun and she's not fearless because she has nothing to fear?

00:41:08.960 Come on.

00:41:09.440 Do you want to hear about Cosmo?

00:41:12.080 Oh, God.

00:41:13.060 Tell me about Cosmo.

00:41:14.620 So this, I'm livid and I want to take you to livid town with me.

00:41:18.640 Okay.

00:41:19.660 So after Cosmo and Elle both published these glowing articles about Belle Gibson in 2014,

00:41:25.520 they both receive the same letter and you are going to read it okay it has come to my attention

00:41:32.060 that you have published a story about a girl i have known my whole life her name is bell gibson

00:41:37.180 creator of the whole pantry app and book and a so-called terminal cancer patient unfortunately

00:41:43.560 there are a few things you might need to know before you consider publishing more about this

00:41:47.580 woman. For one, this girl isn't 26 years old. She was born in 1991, class of 08, 0.84

00:41:54.620 Wynnum High School in Queensland. I've known Belle since her childhood and I'm close with her

00:41:59.300 mother, and she has always had a problem with fabricating stories from nothing on a regular

00:42:03.920 basis. You must be aware of this before you publish stories about this woman. She is selling 0.99

00:42:10.520 her fake sob story in order to profit from her app and book sales. She's a wolf in sheep's clothing,

00:42:16.660 a master manipulator sincerely sick of seeing her lies published okay so this could have been

00:42:25.140 the shot heard around the world this could have been when this story broke oh yeah okay so cosmo

00:42:31.680 and l do nothing with this yeah they get specific information this is the year she graduated

00:42:39.040 they get a huge lead they it appears like do some light googling and then give it up

00:42:47.520 i'm so livid about this because both l and cosmo in this two-month period before bell responds

00:42:53.560 they both publish mea culpas of like whoops we published this lady who doesn't have cancer we

00:43:00.960 told you they have cancer and l and cosmo publish this letter they're like well we did receive the

00:43:06.560 letter and you're like right but you didn't do anything she's claiming to cure cancer with a

00:43:14.080 gluten-free vegetarian diet like you actually have a huge responsibility to check those things before

00:43:20.400 you just put them out in the world i feel similarly about cosmo that you sort of expressed feeling

00:43:27.100 about matthew walker's book which is like when you are writing for a popular audience you are

00:43:33.760 duty bound to get it right the core argument here is like it's popular media so what does it matter

00:43:40.740 no what we need to be focusing on here is it's going out on the biggest platform to the widest 0.99

00:43:47.700 audience yes it totally fucking matters that you fact check your shit yes and cosmo in their mia 0.99

00:43:55.440 culpa does the most chicken shit thing so i'm gonna read this to you they say we need to 0.99

00:44:01.160 acknowledge that we not only promoted her work to our readers but also may have unwittingly 0.99

00:44:05.880 fed the situation if she has in fact lied oh unwittingly this one i you're gonna die to be

00:44:12.280 fair bell wasn't honored for being a role model she was honored for her app which is still fantastic 0.96

00:44:17.860 what fuck off it's called the fun female award not the like decent running app award like she's 0.99

00:44:28.060 clearly you're clearly lifting her up as someone to be emulated come the fuck on i gotta say i like 1.00

00:44:34.660 it when you get a little mad i got so mad it's so chicken shit i like it when you get a little 0.99

00:44:39.860 tuned up jesus christ the thing that also drives me nuts is you can also tell that they didn't do 0.97

00:44:46.640 the most basic fact checking of any of her actual claims because as soon as all this information

00:44:52.860 comes out people start contacting doctors and doctors are like oh yeah that's not how brain

00:44:57.440 cancer works bell was talking about having stage two brain cancer there's no such thing brain

00:45:03.680 tumors are measured in grades it's like grades one and two a two-minute conversation with an

00:45:09.880 oncologist and they're like oh yeah that's fake yeah i mean it it feels like this is also the 0.97

00:45:15.460 level of skepticism we're willing to use when it comes to quote-unquote wellness shit is just like 0.99

00:45:21.700 she says she has cancer and she says this cured it so here we are like it's just fucked man it's 0.99

00:45:27.360 just fucked we also find out that her publisher kind of sort of knew what so there are emails 0.93

00:45:35.000 to her publisher five months before the book comes out we don't know who these emails are from 0.99

00:45:43.260 one editor emails another editor and says that a jealous friend is saying that bell gibson is lying

00:45:49.900 so that might have been chanel it might have been somebody else because there's so many other people

00:45:53.520 who are like this lady's lying but we know that they were tipped off and the really i mean honestly

00:45:59.560 from like even a self-preservation standpoint baffling thing was instead of putting the brakes

00:46:04.880 on and being like okay well let's check out like let's make sure we have documentary evidence

00:46:08.700 that she had cancer like let's triple check this what her publisher does is they go oh bell you're

00:46:15.220 gonna get questions so we need to give you some media coaching ah michael so they do a

00:46:23.360 90 minute, this has now gone online, deposition style video where they basically play the role

00:46:29.640 of a tough, grilling journalist. And they ask Belle all this stuff about her cancer.

00:46:35.620 And she does her Belle Gibson thing where she's like prevaricates and she's really vague and it's

00:46:40.060 all twisty and turny and they can't nail her down on anything. And they just keep going back to like,

00:46:44.920 well, you're going to have to know, you know, you're going to have to have a better answer

00:46:48.000 on that next time because journalists are really going to probe this. At no point do they consider

00:46:51.820 the possibility that she's actually full of shit yeah it's so tough because like the amount of work 0.99

00:46:57.500 and investment it takes for an author and a publisher to release a book is humongous and 0.99

00:47:06.240 this feels a little bit like a movie getting to post-production and like its trailer coming out

00:47:12.100 and then it never being released is essentially what we're like proposing here which is like a

00:47:17.180 lot to fucking answer for i can understand the fears of how it would come off and all of that 0.57

00:47:24.780 kind of stuff but those have to be fucking outweighed by the fears of telling people who 0.98

00:47:31.820 have real cancer advice from someone who has made up cancer do you want to guess what their defense 0.90

00:47:38.920 of this is because of course during this two-month period before bell speaks they are called upon

00:47:44.460 to be like well did you fact check this book did you do anything do you want to guess what their

00:47:48.780 response was uh the industry standard is not to fact check non-fiction books uh even worse

00:47:54.660 they say we didn't feel it was necessary because the whole pantry is a collection of recipes

00:48:01.540 cool cool good we live in a utopia everything's great first of all you should test recipes

00:48:10.220 yeah correct secondly it also includes a 3 000 word essay where bell talks about having cancer

00:48:16.920 and how she cured it with foods the only reason anyone is buying this book is because of her 0.58

00:48:22.020 personal story people can get recipes anywhere god damn it the biography also notes that for

00:48:30.260 some reason people also call on apple like well what the hell did apple check out this app at all

00:48:33.980 and apple like sticks by her apple is like bell we know there's lots of lies floating around about

00:48:39.280 you on the internet but we believe you feels hard for me to lose faith in like apple but that is

00:48:45.140 also what just happened so 2015 the book is pulped oh wow so they did end up bagging it oh

00:48:51.480 it's toast okay the app is quietly pulled from the app store a lot of information about her like old

00:48:58.820 articles and stuff have been pulled off the internet it's wild her old her old blog isn't

00:49:03.280 even on archive.org i didn't even know people could do that okay so this was like stage one 0.71

00:49:08.520 of the backlash do you want to watch a clip of bell returning to public life oh yikes this is

00:49:15.020 gonna be even darker somehow it's hard it's it's hard i find this totally impossible to watch

00:49:20.380 you're 23 right well actually how old are you um i've always been raised as being currently a 26

00:49:31.180 year old. How old are you? Well, I live knowing as I've always known that I would be 26. Okay,

00:49:39.260 Bill. This is a really, really simple question. How old are you? I believe that I'm 26. I have

00:49:48.060 two birth certificates and I've had my name changed four times. The identity crisis there

00:49:54.880 is big, but that was my normal when I was growing up, Tara, that... What do you know the truth to be

00:50:00.460 know that's probably a question that we have to keep digging for oh right i so while i was

00:50:09.260 watching that i was thinking about how uncomfortable you got seeing a clip of a musical when you were

00:50:15.880 talking about loosies on you're wrong about if your threshold for discomfort is musical theater 0.99

00:50:22.420 this is this shit is in the stratosphere this shit is so far off the charts of like discomfort 0.99

00:50:29.760 world i have my little hands over my little face also i am 100 keeping this window open 1.00

00:50:35.940 because as soon as we finish recording i'm gonna go watch this entire fucking thing 0.93

00:50:39.860 so like that's the other thing that feels challenging about the media role here 0.98

00:50:44.340 is that you know we've seen her on tv and we've seen her like become this rising star with the

00:50:52.520 help of major boosts from major media outlets like oh i know sunrise and cosmo and now there

00:50:59.320 get to be major boosts to major media outlets who pick at the corpse of the story right and do all 1.00

00:51:06.740 of this downfall coverage as well also 60 minutes paid her $75,000 for this interview fuck off 0.99

00:51:13.820 michael fuck off this gets to one of the other reasons why this interview is so uncomfortable 0.99

00:51:17.700 is because they're clearly milking this they're going to make way more than $75,000 from this 0.99

00:51:22.000 special it's one of the most watched tv events of the year in australia that year and the whole

00:51:28.100 interview, they'll read her things that she wrote in 2009 or they'll read her Instagram posts and

00:51:34.080 they'll be like, were you diagnosed in a doctor's office or not in a doctor's office? And then they

00:51:37.780 just kind of badger her back and forth. But there's no actual endeavor to figure out what

00:51:44.060 happened. They don't interview anyone else. They don't do any investigation. It's just this quote

00:51:49.460 unquote hard hitting interview. But at the end of it, you haven't learned anything. And it's also,

00:51:55.400 i don't know if you picked this up from the clip that we watched but like she doesn't seem to be

00:52:00.380 capable of admitting that she was lying about anything right so it just becomes like however

00:52:06.240 whatever 34 minutes and 31 seconds i'm looking at the time stamp of what's the truth what's the

00:52:13.200 truth what's the truth and getting like different versions of the same answer every time and this

00:52:18.620 weird slippery thing which is like okay i feel like your point is made by the length of the

00:52:24.740 clip that you just sent me i want to say that i feel sorry for bell in this interview but it's

00:52:30.080 like they're not really doing journalism here yeah i mean i am against diagnosing anyone with

00:52:36.940 something if you haven't met them so i don't know what her actual deal is and i don't want to

00:52:40.640 speculate it but the behavior that she is exhibiting is some sort of compulsive or pathological lying

00:52:48.260 The definition of pathological lying is people who lie for no personal gain.

00:52:55.420 And this is what is so striking to me throughout the interview, but especially in this clip, that it's like it's so unstrategic.

00:53:02.420 Like any cool, calculated, mastermind manipulator would just admit to the lying about the age thing.

00:53:10.020 I was too young.

00:53:11.020 Nobody would take me seriously if they thought I was three years younger.

00:53:13.880 So I said that I was 21 when I was 18.

00:53:16.460 Yeah.

00:53:16.580 No one knows how old Mariah Carey is. Like, lying about your age is not the biggest deal in the world, but the fact that she can't just admit it and move on, or even admit the fact that she's lying about cancer, she sort of prevaricates, like, well, I believed that at the time sort of stuff. There's no strategy.

00:53:33.360 I worked as a kindergarten classroom assistant for a year. There was this one point at which I was like out supervising recess. And I watched this one kid look down, see a pine cone, pick it up and whip it at another kid.

00:53:50.000 And I just watched the entire thing happen and I barked his name at him and he just sort of wheeled around and didn't see even where the, you know, call out was coming from.

00:54:02.240 But like while he was wheeling around and his eyes were searching, he went, I didn't do it.

00:54:06.800 And I was like, all you heard was your name, kid.

00:54:09.120 It feels like that's part of what's happening here.

00:54:11.380 It's just like someone who has freaked the hell out and is weirdly backed into a corner

00:54:16.700 for sort of through a weird hell of their own making for no discernible reason.

00:54:22.720 Another thing that I think is really, is really telling is in this interview with her mom,

00:54:29.180 where her mom is like, Belle was not doing housework.

00:54:32.320 My MS isn't severe.

00:54:34.040 This is the quote from her mom.

00:54:35.440 Belle never cared for me.

00:54:36.680 Her brother's not autistic and she's barely done a minute's housework in her life. 0.97

00:54:40.460 I've practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life. 0.99

00:54:45.000 Phone bills, clothes, beauty treatments, you name it, and this is how she repays me. 0.99

00:54:49.020 She's just a girl who's always had ideas above her station.

00:54:52.200 She was never happy with what she had and was embarrassed by her family.

00:54:55.660 Her tastes became more expensive and she was living beyond her means, and she was addicted to her computer.

00:55:00.780 She doesn't seem to be sorry.

00:55:02.480 I've never seen her cry in her life.

00:55:04.120 I'm not even sure she's capable of empathy. 1.00

00:55:06.720 Jesus God, from your fucking mother in the media. 1.00

00:55:10.660 From your mom, dude. 1.00

00:55:12.060 It makes me feel really uncomfortable to hear parents talk about their kids like this.

00:55:15.880 Every part of this is so uncomfortable.

00:55:17.980 It's so uncomfortable.

00:55:19.220 And then the journalists who write the biography talk about they interviewed the mom.

00:55:24.820 She at some point also says that she's in witness relocation.

00:55:27.940 She says that she moved because of the mafia.

00:55:30.260 She has all these other health problems that she talks about.

00:55:33.360 And she's like, oh, it's terminal.

00:55:34.840 I'm going to die in a month.

00:55:35.900 and then they'll talk to her the next day

00:55:37.980 and she's like oh it's not that big of a deal

00:55:39.760 it's like it barely affects my life at all 1.00

00:55:41.500 her mom is also her mom is lying 1.00

00:55:44.220 just like Belle is 0.97

00:55:45.760 and they talk about how after they

00:55:48.200 interview the mom the mom starts

00:55:50.240 calling them every day

00:55:51.840 and talking for hours and it's

00:55:54.200 totally inconsistent she changes her story

00:55:56.380 about Belle too she says really nice things

00:55:58.160 about Belle and then she says really mean things

00:56:00.340 about Belle she at one point says

00:56:02.500 that she has six kids 0.87

00:56:03.880 but her own mom says that she only has five kids what i don't know did her mom at some point tell

00:56:08.820 her that her brother was autistic and she believed it yeah i was gonna say this points in a direction

00:56:13.520 that i did not anticipate which is like possibly just like straight up learned behavior this isn't 0.97

00:56:19.720 even the most deranged twist do you want to hear the most bananas shit about this okay there's been 0.69

00:56:25.400 like 10 other podcasts and a bunch of documentaries about this i i have not seen this mentioned 0.95

00:56:29.260 anywhere else and it's a really important detail are you ready i am because i must be dr phil was

00:56:36.520 real so in 2014 there was a guy floating around melbourne natural healing world named phil best

00:56:53.840 and the authors of the book track him down and it turns out he did actually diagnose

00:57:02.380 bell gibson with cancer he also had a tv show where he launched the career of bad baby 0.93

00:57:09.460 fuck man they've seen receipts that he was providing services to her he was on a 600 0.95

00:57:16.400 monthly retainer what and she ended up paying him i think eight thousand dollars he denies 0.99

00:57:21.660 oh i never diagnosed her with cancer but also i it's illegal in australia for people who aren't

00:57:26.620 doctors to give diagnoses i believe so he i can't say that he's lying but he has an incentive to lie

00:57:32.760 if he did diagnose her with cancer well this is also just like this entire episode is a whole

00:57:38.800 world of fucking deeply unreliable narrators so at this point i know sure man everyone's telling 0.93

00:57:46.140 the truth everyone's lying everything's garbage i don't know i mean we've talked so many times 0.98

00:57:50.920 about how these simple media narratives of like, she's a terrible person, often obscure more

00:57:57.100 interesting stories. So the interesting story here is that it seems in 2014, she was seeing

00:58:04.440 some quack dude who told her she had four cancers or something. She then went into a hospital to get 0.98

00:58:15.120 a real scan. They scanned her and said it was negative, but she kept telling people that she

00:58:20.840 had cancer so it's not it's not this weird binary thing of like did she believe it or was it a lie

00:58:27.300 it's like she believed a version of it but she was also exaggerating even the version of it that she 0.99

00:58:33.580 believed this is the like white lady influencer version of like when a fucking white person 0.99

00:58:39.720 commits a mass murder and we say oh that person had a mental illness right and when someone who's 0.99

00:58:46.580 not white does the same thing we talk about them in terms of like terrorism or in terms of crime 0.67

00:58:51.520 right so like i am i can feel myself bending over backwards to give this woman the benefit of the 0.99

00:58:59.260 doubt and also i know that that is part of a fucking pattern of doing that with white people 0.90

00:59:06.140 in a way that we absolutely never do with anybody else it feels so tricky to talk about this but like 0.98

00:59:14.420 on the face of it this is someone who lied to people who have cancer well to me i i already

00:59:20.480 know the emails that we're gonna get that are like you're defending bell gibson and like no

00:59:24.880 that's not i don't think this this exists on some sort of binary thing of like either she's bad or 0.99

00:59:30.940 she's good i think that if you believe that this woman is a huge piece of shit i don't know that 1.00

00:59:36.760 i disagree yeah but also bell gibson is not the last piece of shit who's going to use instagram 1.00

00:59:42.540 yeah bell gibson is not the last piece of shit who's going to lie and try to sell people some 0.98

00:59:48.280 cure for cancer yeah it's like it's almost irrelevant all of this personal stuff and you 0.99

00:59:53.440 know what led her to do this because the whole thing is there are no systems in place to prevent

00:59:58.620 this from happening again and also it's now 2021 all of this happened in 2015 and it has happened

01:00:03.920 like 10 more times yeah totally totally it's interesting as a human story why somebody would

01:00:08.520 do this but the fact that she is now one of the most hated people in australia and like penguin

01:00:15.300 books and cosmo yeah are not like that to me is a much bigger problem that these institutions that

01:00:22.340 have no controls in place are still essentially doing the same thing it's so tough because all

01:00:29.920 of this shit right like the people who have to deal with the fallout of this are certainly bell 0.91

01:00:36.300 and her mom right but there's a ton of blowback on a ton of people who didn't ask for it like 0.99

01:00:44.500 people who actually have cancer and ms and like people who are chronically ill and disabled who

01:00:51.700 already face like untold levels of like is your disability real prove it i know how severe is it 0.98

01:00:59.780 ah we're gonna change your fucking income your disability income based on how real it seems to 0.99

01:01:06.320 us and i think the recklessness of all of this is like i don't know man blow up your own life if you 1.00

01:01:13.280 want to i guess but like dragging in like people who are genuinely dealing with all of this shit 0.98

01:01:22.080 i know it's like so deeply fucked do you want to hear the deeply fucked thing that i was saving 0.98

01:01:28.020 for later but i'll tell you now okay tell me now so that little kid who actually had brain cancer 0.99

01:01:33.960 and ended up dying of brain cancer at age five because he was associated with bell gibson they

01:01:39.380 had done instagram posts she had done fundraisers for this kid his parents spent the last couple

01:01:45.220 months of his life getting hate mails from people saying your son is faking cancer too 0.98

01:01:49.580 and also they got no money from bell's fundraiser because she was fucking lying about that yeah 0.97

01:01:53.720 they're grieving the loss of their small child and they're also dealing with threats on the 0.96

01:02:00.860 basis of their association with someone who told them she would help them exactly man the worst

01:02:07.200 outcome of these kinds of cases is like oh we have to like check everybody's cancer diagnosis now

01:02:13.380 or like if somebody on the internet says like i have long covid it's like no you don't that's a

01:02:18.340 terrible outcome from this yeah which is yet another reason we should be able to count on

01:02:25.660 existing media institutions with existing resources to check these claims yeah you know i

01:02:33.180 abide strictly by the spider-man principle where there is great power there is great responsibility

01:02:38.040 who has more power in this situation right the people who have power here are less people and

01:02:44.900 more like people in institutions yes and those institutions are not exactly like small and

01:02:50.700 struggling it's fucking cosmo and 60 minutes these are not small outlets these are major major

01:02:58.800 machines of publishing and tv production and deliberately blind to how much power they have 0.98

01:03:06.520 yeah when you give somebody attention like this when you legitimize somebody's claims

01:03:11.340 you can't then turn around and be like oh we did was praise her app her app works well

01:03:16.640 i also like your cosmo voice

01:03:18.760 that's what all the women's magazines sound like my little brain 1.00

01:03:24.960 fucking women they all sound like this 1.00

01:03:28.380 i want to end with a quote julia watson was someone who actually had cancer and she wrote 1.00

01:03:37.020 about bell in 2015 and then she died of her cancer in late 2016 because she had real cancer

01:03:44.120 so she says it may be hard to believe that anyone could believe bell gibson but let me tell you

01:03:51.160 there's nothing more compelling than a glimmer of hope offered by women with unlined hands and

01:03:56.180 healthy nails and seemingly the potential for long and healthy lives women who were once just like

01:04:01.460 you pregnant with deadly malignancies cured without one single bag of cytotoxic chemicals

01:04:06.780 delivered into their bloodstream i didn't seek an alternative path to cure my cancer opting for what

01:04:11.860 has been a brutal but proven protocol to extend my life because chemotherapy has worked for me i have

01:04:17.460 had 15 months of precious time time that's allowed me to experience and enjoy and watch my children

01:04:22.660 grow and the potential is still there for much more time and that alone is the reason i can't

01:04:27.640 forgive bell gibson she would like us to see her as a victim that a difficult childhood robbed her

01:04:32.480 of her relationship with the truth i like to think of myself as a compassionate person and i can feel 0.80

01:04:37.380 a little bit for her yep she fucked up all right but not for a few days a few weeks or a few months 1.00

01:04:42.320 nope for years she raked it in by defrauding people and charities that didn't know she was 1.00

01:04:47.240 collecting on their behalf and they didn't see a cent but the very worst thing that bell did 1.00

01:04:52.060 was to rob people of the months and maybe years of life they might have had if they took the

01:04:56.800 conventional path and time offered by cancer treatments that while toxic are proven to work

01:05:01.660 so that's what bell did and that's what the people who amplified bell did i didn't expect

01:05:07.840 that we would have an influencer episode where now i just am left with this like 0.65

01:05:12.300 deep sense of dread and despair but here we fucking are i know and i think that i know 0.84

01:05:19.240 what will take care of my 0.97

01:05:21.740 deep sense of dread

01:05:23.820 and despair

01:05:25.180 and that is a mangosteen

01:05:27.740 smoothie

01:05:28.280 Gerson therapy I gotta look into that

01:05:31.580 you've only had 12 cups of juice

01:05:33.600 I'm gonna go call Dr. Phil and see what

01:05:35.720 he represents

01:05:49.240 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - February 01, 2022

＂Illness Influencer＂ Belle Gibson

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