00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:04:38.060So 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,
00:04:50.020and I'm quoting the actual title of the blog post on Live Action here.
00:04:54.660Chris Pratt takes heat for partnering with Catholic Pro-Life Holo app
00:04:59.280by a freelance writer for the anti-abortion organization Live Action named Nancy Flanders.
00:05:05.940Now, that piece by Nancy Flanders on Live Action's website
00:05:09.560quotes heavily from our Roundup discussion about the Holo app and Chris Pratt.
00:05:15.940Mike, you are also quoted by name, by the way.
00:05:18.340I was. I think it's the first time that I have been quoted for my work on this podcast.
00:05:24.880So it was, you know, felt kind of nice, actually.
00:05:28.940Anti-abortion people are targeting me. I must be doing something right.
00:05:32.440So I do think that Nancy listened to the podcast, at least that segment, because she quoted so heavily from it.
00:05:38.240And 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 Holo app.
00:05:47.220Yeah, you were talking about that to me, that they, you know, it seemed like they must have had some kind of news alert set up.
00:05:52.440And it does seem that way because I can't imagine that Nancy just regularly listens to our podcast.
00:05:57.540Back in December, Nancy Flanders wrote a piece about Gwen Stefani being called out for her partnership with the Holo app after an episode of a podcast that I love, A Bit Fruity, with Matt Bernstein came out.
00:06:09.900And so part of me wonders if Nancy's job is to have a Google News alert set for when any old podcaster mentions the Holo 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.
00:06:26.920What a job. What a sad job that would be. Nancy, girl, I feel for you. However, if you're listening
00:06:33.220to this podcast episode, because we're certainly going to put Halo app in the SEO to get your
00:06:38.360attention, if that is what's going on. If you're listening to this, Nancy, welcome to the podcast.
00:06:43.420First of all, it is always nice when people engage with my work. I really appreciate it.
00:06:48.980Thank you for linking to the podcast episode in your live action piece. A shout out is a shout
00:06:54.660out. I will take it. Always nice to have listeners. Love a fan. Thank you so much for listening.
00:06:59.420But Nancy, Nancy, here is the thing. Girl, you listened to my segment and then you wrote a piece
00:07:07.200about it on the Anti-Abortion Live Action blog that basically left out most of what I actually
00:07:14.460said. My main arguments, my substantive criticisms. Nancy, why? Because if you read Nancy's whole
00:07:23.580piece without having heard my episode, you might think that my entire beef with the Holo app is
00:07:30.900that Chris Pratt is one of their spokespeople and I personally find Chris Pratt annoying. That's it.
00:07:37.340The whole thing, according to Nancy, Bridget Todd doesn't like Chris Pratt. And you know what? That
00:07:44.460is true. I do not particularly like Chris Pratt. We'll get to that. But that is merely a footnote
00:08:18.680We talked about privacy considerations.
00:08:21.680Chris Pratt was mentioned, but like I said before, it was just kind of like light criticism, and then we moved on.
00:08:29.200This is one of the perks of having a data scientist that is also your podcast producer,
00:08:33.160because if there's one thing Mike's going to do, it's get some hard numbers to back up what we're saying.
00:08:39.280So, Nancy, it sounds like what you're asking for is a deep dive episode.
00:08:44.240We talked about the Hallow app very briefly as one of several segments in a news roundup.
00:08:50.140It seems like you want us to go deeper because you wrote a whole piece about it in which you tagged me.
00:08:54.840So let's do it. Let's go deeper. Thank you for the suggestion.
00:08:58.740Let's do the episode that you, Nancy, apparently wanted me to make.
00:09:03.440This one is for you, Nancy Flanders of Live Action, because let me hit you with some facts.
00:09:07.640The man who funds the Hallow Prayer app also funds our deportation machine.
00:09:12.280One of his other investments is a fertility and menstrual tracking app that will hand your data over to law enforcement.
00:09:20.580And 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.
00:09:35.380And your anti-abortion nonprofit, Live Action, wrote a disingenuous piece about my podcast episode and neglected to mention any of that.
00:09:45.600So 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 that we raised in that episode.
00:09:53.240Let's dig into some of those, shall we?
00:09:55.240And just to expectations set for listeners, Bridget has written about 26 pages of notes here.
00:13:00.880J.D. Vance's investment comes from his investment firm, Naria Capital.
00:13:04.640Now, according to Vance's most recent disclosures in 2024,
00:13:08.140he still owns half a million dollars worth of stock in said investment firm.
00:13:13.100Now, 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.
00:13:21.040He is the gay billionaire tech investor.
00:13:25.820He was the first outside investor in Facebook, one of the most significant funders of Trump and MAGA candidates.
00:13:31.300He is also, and this part matters for our conversation about the Halo app, the co-founder and chairman of a company called Palantir Technologies.
00:13:40.800So when you open the Halo app to have your sacred morning meditation or your sacred morning prayer, that is whose financial ecosystem you are in on the app.
00:13:52.660Let'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.
00:13:59.740Palantir is a data analytics and surveillance company.
00:14:32.200ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build something called Immigration OS,
00:14:37.420an AI system specifically designed to identify, track, and deport non-citizens.
00:14:42.060Since Trump took office, Palantir has received over $900 million in federal contracts.
00:14:49.620And here's just a little extra conflict of interest there, just for funsies.
00:14:54.560Stephen Miller, the Trump administration's chief architect of this horrible immigration policy,
00:14:59.740the guy who basically built and designed the deportation machine that we're all dealing with right now,
00:15:04.320holds a substantial personal financial stake in Palantir.
00:15:08.420So this company is so controversial that its own former employees wrote an open letter condemning its work with the Trump administration.
00:15:16.640So these are people who helped build this thing.
00:15:19.000They said, and I quote, democracy faces escalating threats, biometric data collection on immigrant children, journalists being targeted.
00:15:26.720They said the same principles they founded the company on have now been violated.
00:15:30.880The Swiss government rejected Palantir nine times.
00:15:35.120Their military produced an internal report saying Palantir software posed unacceptable risks because sensitive data could potentially be accessed by U.S. intelligence.
00:15:44.200So what makes Palantir so powerful and frankly scary is that it integrates data from many different sources to create profiles about individuals.
00:15:53.380It's like an ecosystem of surveillance that none of us opted into, but we're all caught up in.
00:15:58.640They most likely have individual profiles about me, you, and anybody that you know.
00:16:04.560So anybody listening to the sound of my voice right now, Palantir probably has a surveillance profile on you.
00:16:09.900So this is Peter Thiel's company, his whole thing, and specifically and importantly,
00:16:15.460turning intimate information about people into a product.
00:16:19.640Speaking of which, let's talk about the menstrual and fertility tracking app that Teal also invested in called 28.
00:16:26.280So 28 is made by the founders of Evie magazine, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a publication supporting male supremacist politics.
00:16:35.260You can kind of think of it as the anti-Cosmo, a women's publication for conservative and right wing attitudes and ideas.
00:16:43.000Now, the app asks you to input your menstrual cycle data.
00:16:45.960Their 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.
00:16:58.140And 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.
00:17:13.440In a post-Dobbs investigation, that kind of metadata, your location, your name, your IP address, will tell prosecutors almost everything they might need to know.
00:17:24.080This 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.
00:17:35.060So this is the guy that is investing in your prayer app.
00:17:39.360The 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.
00:17:50.880Your body, your location, your immigration status, your fertility, these things that we used to think of as intimate and special and sensitive.
00:17:59.060And now, apparently, also your prayers.
00:18:03.560We took a look at Hallow's privacy policy, and it's a little bit squishy.
00:18:08.340I will give the caveat that we are not attorneys, but we did take a careful look at it.
00:18:14.880And I do want to give them credit for writing it in plain language that is pretty accessible to non-lawyers like myself.
00:18:21.800You 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.
00:18:31.640However, 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.
00:18:41.060And there are two seemingly benign little pieces in particular that give me some pause.
00:18:46.740One 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.
00:18:57.660Who are these parties and how might a user authorize them?
00:20:36.580I'm not telling people not to use this app.
00:20:38.280I am just asking, when you open this 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?
00:20:52.120Who is putting themselves between you and your faith?
00:20:54.920Again, I feel that was a question we posed in the original episode.
00:21:00.180Nancy, you did not mention it at all in your write-up, and I find that interesting.
00:21:06.220Yeah, I think that's a great question.
00:21:07.440Like, who else might be in between the person writing these prayers, writing these meditations, you know, the end user, and God, right?
00:21:20.680You 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.
00:21:30.400The 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.
00:21:50.960So 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.
00:22:00.940Is 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 and including law enforcement.
00:22:09.440I think that's absolutely right. You know, I think context really matters a lot.
00:22:14.440And 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.
00:22:37.420I think that language in the privacy policy, it's fairly standard. There's not anything that weird about it. But again, that context really matters. And I think there's nothing standard about the role that Peter Thiel and Palantir have played in building this digital surveillance capacity for the U.S. government.
00:22:56.100They've got this unique ecosystem of data sources working hand in 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.
00:23:22.920And 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 allege that criticizing the administration is potentially illegal.
00:23:39.640You know, I'm not saying that the Hello app definitely is sharing users' private data with law enforcement or Palantir or the administration.
00:30:35.420I mean, that's exactly what should be on his record forever.
00:30:38.820And for him to want to erase it, I just think is wrong.
00:30:41.600Atwood 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.
00:30:48.560Jesus, he threw rocks at nine-year-olds and used the N-word.
00:30:52.260Atwood says that she has never received an apology from Mark Wahlberg, which we'll come back to.
00:30:57.860It's 1988. Mark Wahlberg is 16 years old.
00:31:01.220He is the perpetrator of two separate attacks on Vietnamese men in the same day.
00:31:06.980First, he approached a man named Thanh Lam, who was getting out of his car with two cases of beer.
00:31:11.800Wahlberg yells slurs at him and then beat him over the head with a five-foot wooden stick.
00:31:17.240He beat this man until he lost consciousness.
00:31:19.980He beat this man until the stick broke in two.
00:31:23.660Later that same day, Mark Wahlberg attacks another Vietnamese American man, this time Johnny Trinh.
00:31:30.700He punches Johnny in the eye and made, in the words of the court documents,
00:31:35.280quote, numerous unsolicited racial statements that included racial slurs.
00:31:39.920One of these men permanently lost sight in one eye.
00:31:44.440Now, Wahlberg was convicted of these crimes as an adult.
00:31:47.600He got two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, marijuana possession,
00:31:51.260and criminal contempt for violating the prior civil rights injunction from 1986.
00:31:55.540He was sentenced to two years in prison, but only served 45 days.
00:33:11.980Yeah, 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.
00:36:15.500not ever, not now. And you know what? I respect Kristen because she told him exactly where things
00:36:22.620stand. And I have to wonder if why Wahlberg did not feel the need to give this woman an apology
00:36:28.860is because she's Black. In fact, Judith Beals, his own prosecutor, said that Wahlberg has never
00:36:34.720truly acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes. And she made a very good point that a
00:36:40.020formal pardon would send the message that, quote, if you are white and a movie star,
00:36:44.660a different standard applies. So in my book, the very least someone can do if they are actually
00:36:52.500trying to right a wrong, which again, Wahlberg says he has done. He says, oh, I spent 30 years
00:36:57.860writing that wrong. I don't need a pardon or a piece of paper, comma, even though I was looking
00:37:02.180for a pardon to get that liquor license. I don't need a pardon to make that clear. Okay, so didn't
00:37:09.860really apologize except for to one person. What about all the kinds of good work and philanthropy
00:37:15.200that he's done in the community? Maybe that could count as righting the wrong. What do you say?
00:37:19.540What do you think? It's probably a good start. Let's look at it because Wahlberg did found the
00:37:24.700Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation in 2001. And he also does charity work with the Boys and Girls
00:37:29.680Club, an organization that is near and dear to my heart. Those are real things. I am not dismissing
00:37:34.580them. But none of those things is directed specifically at the Vietnamese American community
00:37:41.220nor the black communities that he actually harmed, that he actually named as the targets of his harm
00:37:48.540when he was committing these violent crimes towards them. And also not for nothing, a rich
00:37:54.140person doing like a generally charitable thing, frankly, the kind of thing that all rich people
00:37:59.100should be doing, and many of them do already without having committed crimes first, is not
00:38:05.120the same thing in my book as righting the wrong of multiple violent racist attacks. But that's just
00:38:11.980me. And then there's this little tidbit. So at Wahlberg's sentencing, a priest who had helped
00:38:17.520Mark Wahlberg gave a statement crediting Wahlberg's tearful courtroom apology with moving the judge
00:38:23.700towards leniency. Because remember, he was sentenced to two years, but only served 45 days.
00:38:27.980The local parish, Father Jim Flavin, told 60 Minutes that he watched Wahlberg work the judge from the courtroom.
00:38:34.940He started tearing up and the judge melted.
00:38:38.120And then Wahlberg looked at the priest and winked.
00:38:42.500Flavin called it, quote, an Academy Award performance in the courtroom.
00:38:48.120Just 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.
00:38:55.980Yeah, I mean, we said in our last episode about it that he's a good actor and, you know, stand by it.
00:39:00.260It sounds like he was a good actor even in those early days.0.56
00:39:04.080So he did apologize to the Asian-American community.
00:39:07.160There was a 1993 apology issued through a spokesperson only under pressure from the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence.
00:39:15.680He also agreed to appear in a series of anti-racism public service announcements that never actually materialized.
00:41:46.260This 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.
00:41:57.440So, Nancy, girl, I ask you again, we talked about him more than we talked about Chris Pratt in that episode.
00:42:03.500So why is this man a parenthetical when you talk about who we talked about in that episode?
00:42:09.120Why is Mark Wahlberg a parenthetical? I'm so curious.
00:42:11.480You know, that image of the parish priest in the courtroom when Wahlberg was being sentenced, describing how he saw Wahlberg, like, give this tearful apology to the judge and then look at him and wink.
00:42:25.020That image is going to be burned into my mind going forward.
00:42:29.740Anytime I hear about Mark Wahlberg, I'm going to think about that wink.
00:42:33.280I know. What an asshole. What an asshole.1.00
00:47:22.380Obviously, this claim is completely made up, totally fabricated,
00:47:25.480and it is a dangerous conspiracy theory with deep roots in anti-Semitic tropes that go back centuries.
00:47:32.060And here we have the incredible Christian Jim Cavazell promoting it loudly, publicly, and repeatedly.
00:47:39.100At 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.
00:47:51.880He told Steve Bannon's show, adrenochrome, the whole adrenochrome empire, this is a big deal.
00:47:58.680And 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.
00:48:07.700There is no evidence for these ridiculous claims about adrenochrome, but there is plenty of evidence that powerful people were harming women and girls on Epstein's island.
00:48:19.440Several of Epstein's close associates are currently serving in the Trump administration, being actively supported by investors in the Hallow app, people like Peter Thiel.
00:48:29.300Conspiracy theorists like Cavazell are busy chasing phantoms, but ignoring the monsters in plain sight.
00:48:36.760This 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.
00:48:50.640We did a deep dive episode into Tim Ballard, which we'll 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.
00:49:02.640So 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.
00:49:23.280And 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.
00:49:37.520that's just like one of those stories I remember when we covered it back at the time that is0.96
00:49:41.760like you almost couldn't write that stuff on the one hand it seems so ridiculous that this guy who
00:49:49.140is supposedly running this anti-trafficking organization would himself be using that0.93
00:49:55.700organization as a means to allegedly prey on women and sexually assault them like it seems outlandish
00:50:03.020But 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.
00:50:15.860No, we've talked 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 has made sex trafficking and like anti-trafficking awareness their entire thing, their entire brand.
00:50:32.780So on the one hand, it allows you to basically do whatever you want while not really getting the scrutiny that you deserve.
00:50:40.000And 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 advocate for.
00:50:58.240There are plenty of Epstein trafficking survivors who are alive and vocal and doing press conferences and writing books and talking about what they experienced.
00:51:06.040But 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.
00:51:16.420And a lot of those people end up being abusers themselves.
00:51:20.060And I think that's not surprising to me that people who want to do bad things to women and kids often will say, like, I'm an 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.
00:54:17.540In 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.
00:54:28.860In December 2025, prosecutors authorized a second set of charges involving two additional women.
00:54:35.040And 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.
00:54:50.940The trial is scheduled for the summer.
00:54:53.300Hallow did cut ties with Russell Brand and called it a mistake.
00:54:57.660Now, 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.
00:55:10.440And I think the timeline is really key here because Hallow partnered with Russell Brand in January 2025.
00:55:16.420At that point, the Channel 4 and Sunday Times investigation had been public for 16 months, right?
00:55:21.240Like, I had read about it. I knew about it.
00:55:22.880The 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.
00:55:40.720So it's women and girls who he is alleged to have sexually abused.
00:55:48.040Like 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.
00:55:54.400This was in splashy, public, huge international media brands like I read about it.
00:56:01.440So if I knew, certainly the Hallow app knew.
00:56:04.200By November 2024, two months before this partnership was announced,
00:56:08.620Halo's own CEO told a reporter that if charges were filed against Russell Brand,
00:56:13.180quote, we would obviously take it very seriously.
00:56:15.780It would be a really important development.
00:56:17.900I guess what I'm getting at here is that it sounds to me like the Halo app CEO
00:56:21.960knew that charges could be coming because it's just difficult to read that article
00:56:26.520and that was already public and not think, well, if these allegations are out there,
00:57:35.040I mean, it really raises questions about like, yeah, you said it exactly.
00:57:39.380Like, why did they need to wait for charges to be filed to know that this was a bad?
00:57:44.580I mean, it suggests that they just, I don't know, maybe did not believe the multiple women
00:57:49.580who were extensively quoted in that public reporting, you know, thought maybe it was
00:57:54.920all a big lie or maybe they just didn't care.
00:57:59.540Right. And thought that having brand celebrity power would be worth it and without charges, no one would care what these women said happened to them.1.00
00:58:11.100I 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.
00:58:36.180Looking the other way seems pretty common in a lot of these cases.
00:58:38.940Yes. 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.0.95
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01:00:25.940that's iheartadvertising.com when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine
01:00:33.400months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
01:00:39.780them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting
01:00:47.340voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live
01:00:55.180through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started
01:01:02.400feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted
01:01:10.220stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them
01:01:16.080they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with
01:01:22.100elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
01:01:27.960If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:01:34.840This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
01:01:47.000I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
01:01:54.140I'm going to have to look up this story.
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01:07:11.120Although I don't put nothing past nobody, so I don't know.
01:07:14.540But one thing he does have is that victim narrative, right?
01:07:18.660Which is not dissimilar from the narrative that Nancy was using in her article.
01:07:23.740You know, that we were just attacking the app because we hate faith, we hate Christians, which is just like those things are not true.
01:07:33.820Mike, you know this about me. I'm a person of faith.
01:07:36.680Nancy 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.
01:07:47.820So did you not just make an assumption about me, girl?
01:07:49.820Because I'm a Christian. I am a person of faith.
01:10:25.300And so these videos are widely criticized as dishonest tactics.
01:10:30.840Now, that criticism is not just coming from abortion advocates like me.
01:10:36.580Some of that criticism is coming from within the anti-abortion movement itself.
01:10:41.720People who ostensibly 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.
01:10:54.300So, again, these are not abortion advocates.0.97
01:10:57.060These are her people who are saying, oh, your tactics are actually deceptive and we don't fuck with that.0.95
01:11:03.940Lila 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.0.91
01:11:17.580And I don't know, I find that to be kind of a weird statement from somebody who made a career trafficking in deception.
01:11:25.440I personally feel that the ethics around using deception are not particularly complicated.
01:15:24.880So 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?
01:15:36.300So 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.
01:15:55.880But to tell you a little bit of context about some of the deceptive information that live action has been accused of pushing because Facebook fact checkers back when Facebook used to have fact checking rated false.
01:16:07.980Rose's claim that, quote, abortion is never medically necessary, a claim that directly contradicts the American College of OBGYNs.
01:16:15.680Lila 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 we'll put in the show notes.
01:16:27.520I am not saying that hormonal birth control does not come with risks, but calling it massively unhealthy is not medically or scientifically correct.
01:16:38.880She also says that it causes divorce and hookup culture.
01:16:42.080I guess those are her opinions that don't make them facts because they're not facts.0.98
01:16:45.340This 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 Halo app.
01:17:01.940And 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.
01:17:08.360And 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 Verestuji.
01:17:20.920And Ruben Verestuji was later convicted of distributing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material.
01:17:28.500So, yeah, we have an organization like Live Action that positions itself as the moral authority on protecting women and children.
01:17:37.720That same organization, Live Action, employed somebody convicted of sex crimes against children.
01:17:44.200I'm not going to editorialize further.
01:17:46.460I think the facts speak for themselves about who these people are.
01:22:31.220Now, that is her framing in that article that she wrote about us.
01:22:34.400That is also the CEO's framing when that framing is convenient.
01:22:39.180Because in November 2023, Hallow partnered with Liam Neeson for their Advent series.
01:22:45.960Neeson, who also narrated a pro-abortion campaign ad in Ireland calling the Catholic Church, quote, a cruel ghost of the last century.
01:22:55.220When Catholics pushed back that Neeson had been included as a voice on the Hallow app, Jones did not apologize.
01:23:02.160He defended that decision, saying that the Hallow app is, quote, not a place of judgment and that the app needed nontraditional partners like Neeson to reach folks that have fallen away.
01:23:14.320So people who are not particularly religious, just like Jones said, just like I said, he said.
01:23:20.260Jones held that position for over a year.
01:23:23.000Then in December of 2024, reversed course and called it a mistake.
01:23:27.940Like the same language that he used partnering with Russell Brand, he also used for partnering with Liam Neeson.
01:23:35.440Yeah, 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.
01:23:49.300Yes. 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.
01:24:10.480To 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.
01:24:19.660When they get there, they have prayers like this anti-abortion prayer, which I described in that episode as a mean prayer.
01:24:27.820So 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.
01:24:46.220And here's the real kicker to me. One of the loudest voices condemning the Neeson partnership was Lila Rose, the head of live action, who disclosed that Halo had been sponsoring her show right up until that controversy.
01:24:59.200So Nancy's own boss pulled her sponsorship over Liam Neeson.
01:25:05.480And 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.
01:25:14.160It 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.
01:25:24.360Yeah, 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.
01:25:34.100Yes. She also took a lot of issue with me calling Lila Rose's anti-abortion prayers on the Halo app mean.
01:26:07.020especially given that the CEO of the Hello Prayer app
01:26:10.240explicitly said that the app is, quote, not a place of judgment. So having these prayers telling
01:26:16.580women who have had abortions that they should behave a certain way or should do or not do a
01:26:20.500certain thing, that is judgment, the kind of thing that Jones publicly said the app should not be0.67
01:26:25.760about. So which is it? Because my faith is not about making judgments toward other people's
01:26:31.860difficult and private personal medical decisions. My faith doesn't tell me to do that. I stand by
01:26:38.580saying that that is a mean, condescending prayer that looks down on the very people that I think
01:26:44.640Jesus would actually show love for. And I mentioned this earlier, but Nancy says, and I'm quoting
01:26:51.100directly, it is absurd for non-Christians to make assumptions or accusations about what Christians
01:26:56.040do or don't do. Nancy, why do you assume that I'm not a person of faith? Why do you assume that I'm
01:27:02.740not a Christian. Nancy assumes that I have no relationship with faith based on what exactly?
01:27:08.500Based on the fact that I criticized a venture capital backed app that I feel exploits the
01:27:14.960faith of people like me? Nancy, for your information, I am a person of faith. I grew up in the church.
01:27:21.160I have said that many times on this podcast, including the episode that Nancy summarized.
01:27:26.580My 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.
01:27:43.960That question comes from a place of my deep respect for faith and spirituality.
01:28:42.980Now, that's a Catholic person saying that about this app.
01:28:46.980Another 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.
01:28:59.060I also find that interesting person on Reddit.
01:29:02.280These are Catholics raising these concerns, Nancy, not anti-Christians.
01:29:07.300These are people that you ostensibly should be in community with.
01:29:10.180I'm just amplifying what they have to say and agreeing with them based in the way that we understand our faith.
01:29:16.140Another 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 Halo app was removed from the EU market.
01:29:27.060CEO Alex Jones posted about it on Twitter, saying that the EU was, quote, shutting us down by overregulation, apparently targeting any religious app.
01:29:35.740A lot of religious media sort of picked that up and ran with it at face value, framing it as some kind of religious persecution.
01:29:43.140The EU coming after Christians was the whole thing was very dramatic.
01:29:47.560But here is the much more likely and boring reality.
01:29:51.920The 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.
01:30:04.680Any app collecting that kind of data has additional compliance obligations.
01:30:09.160So 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.
01:30:23.780So Jones never really explained what specific regulation was being triggered.
01:30:29.260He 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.
01:30:39.020I'm quite sure that this generated a lot of media sympathy and probably a lot of subscriptions as well.
01:30:45.180Nancy, if you have more information about what actually happened here, genuinely, I would love to know.
01:30:50.720It seems like it's really could be part of your beat since you report so much on the Halo app.
01:30:55.720What actually happened when the Halo app was pulled from the EU markets?
01:30:59.260I 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.
01:31:14.320Here is a here is a scoop for you to look into if you want to do some real journalism that advocates for your people, Christians, Catholics.
01:31:25.240It is sort of funny to frame privacy protections as persecution. Like, no, they're not persecuting Christians. They're protecting them from data aggregators.
01:31:37.680Yes. 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.
01:31:52.580Like, 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.
01:32:01.640But we know from his public tweets that he framed it as this persecution.
01:32:05.860And 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.0.99
01:32:21.560And it's certainly not a new idea. Right. Like Christians were actually being persecuted from the very beginning of Christianity. Right.0.99
01:32:31.620Like the Romans were literally persecuting them and like outlawing Christianity and killing them.
01:32:37.020And I think a really interesting time in Western history is when Christianity transitioned from being a persecuted minority to having to actually being the elite classes and like ruling Rome and ruling the world.
01:32:53.040And 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.
01:33:17.640And then when the faith entered the halls of power and government, a lot of things changed.
01:33:27.580And 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.
01:37:05.980I 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.0.52
01:37:13.400because, again, it goes back to that thing of getting to occupy both the hero and the victim
01:37:20.060stance, where Christianity is the most common of the religions in the United States. And yet,
01:37:27.160people are able to talk about it as if Christians are a persecuted minority. You know, some of the
01:37:34.420things that people will highlight to demonstrate this is they took the Christ out of Christmas.
01:37:39.340we can't even say Merry Christmas anymore.
01:38:08.400And 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.0.83
01:38:19.280And they spend very little time practicing any real Christianity beyond that.0.55
01:38:23.720Do you know what I'm talking about?0.96
01:38:24.860I do. I did really enjoy this most recent season of South Park.
01:38:28.900But yeah, maybe maybe we should have a whole episode about it because it was quite brilliant.
01:38:34.040But in the interest of time, let's bring it back around to the Halo app.
01:38:38.920OK, 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.
01:39:07.340And the reason I want to say that is because these people are liars.0.99
01:39:11.860Their own community, their own people call them out as fraudsters, grifters, and liars.0.98
01:39:19.260And I want to close by the biggest lie, in my opinion, that these people like to purport.
01:39:26.800Nancy'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.
01:39:50.780And I just have to say this, that to me is the biggest lie these 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.
01:40:06.220That is consistent across Pew Research, Gallup Research, APNORC Research and PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute and multiple independent pollsters all consistently find the same thing.
01:40:21.200Americans like abortion. We want abortion access protected across the board.
01:40:26.840This is not a controversial opinion. Since the Dobbs decision, support for abortion has not dropped since the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
01:40:36.220If anything, overturning Roe slightly increased support for legal abortion.
01:40:41.320When 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.
01:40:53.060Places 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.
01:41:05.460A 2025 Gallup poll in May found that only 8% of Americans want abortion illegal in all cases.
01:44:23.580No, I she also that quote misrepresents what I said.
01:44:27.160I 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.
01:44:32.020So, like, that also just mangles my point, which is that I don't even care that he's a conservative.
01:44:36.280I 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.
01:44:47.560So, Nancy, if you are still listening, we welcome you to come on the show.
01:44:51.460I can promise you a respectful conversation.