00:00:38.460and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:43.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:47.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:00:51.020abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:54.640These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:00:58.720Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:06.600George Santos, disgraced former congressional representative and professional scammer, was voted out of Congress.
00:01:13.880And rather than slinking into the shadows, he's doing sit-down interviews and allegedly making bank on Cameo.
00:01:20.580Now, if you believe him, he says that he's already made more money since being kicked out of Congress than he ever would have as an elected official.
00:01:28.660When asked during an interview by Z-Way what it would take for him to just go away, he said,
00:01:33.160stop inviting me to events, but you'll never do that because you want the content.
00:03:01.240Anna, real name Anna Sorokin, had been scamming investors, hotels, even her own friends,0.65
00:03:07.600in pursuit of opening an art foundation and private club called the Anna Delvey Foundation.
00:03:13.540The club, like the millions of dollars of family money that Anna said that she was supposedly worth, never materialized.
00:03:21.200Anna's former friend, Rachel Deloach Williams, first introduced the world to Anna after she wrote about their disastrous trip to Marrakesh.
00:03:29.640Anna initially agreed to pay for the trip, but never managed to put down a working credit card at the pricey villa where they were staying.
00:03:36.820When hotel staff insisted that somebody put down a functioning credit card,
00:03:40.760Rachel was pressured into putting the cost of the entire trip,
00:03:44.660$62,000, more than a year of her salary, on her work and personal credit cards.
00:03:51.220Now, Anna assured her that she would wire her the money to pay her back, but she never did.
00:03:56.220In the end, Rachel helped lead police to Anna's whereabouts,
00:04:00.660which led to Anna's arrest and conviction for one count of attempted grand larceny,
00:04:05.180three counts of grand larceny, and four counts of theft of services related to her various scams.
00:04:12.180But she was found not guilty of the $62,000 Rachel was out for the trip.
00:04:18.940Last month, Netflix released Inventing Anna, a fictionalized, very sympathetic retelling of her con,
00:04:26.000based on the reporting of Jessica Pressler at New York Magazine.
00:04:29.820Anna's crimes were so flashy and outlandish, it was hard not to pay attention.
00:04:34.220And that, Rachel says, is kind of part of the scam.
00:04:39.400In her book, My Friend Anna, Rachel writes,
00:04:43.280I have come to understand that your attention is an investment.
00:04:46.780Giving someone your attention is the act of being influenced,
00:04:49.800whether or not you're aware of it in the moment.
00:04:52.080And especially in this age of constant simulation,
00:04:55.060with endless people and stories competing for your clicks, likes, follows, and time,
00:05:38.460And I've certainly asked myself the same one.
00:05:41.580But I think I have a kind of unique vantage point in that I lived through like a con firsthand.
00:05:47.860And I know that's sort of how it works.
00:05:50.140It's sort of this larger than life flashy illusion, like a magic trick that is meant to grab your attention so that while you're busy sort of puzzling over it, you know, whatever sort of business is going on behind the scenes can can happen without too much focus or analysis, I suppose.
00:06:09.360So I think there's a fascination with, you know, tricksters and with like it is in many ways like like watching a magician at work and so that people want to want to watch as like a voyeur to understand where this light of hand occurred, how someone fell for it.
00:06:26.340And, you know, especially in this age where it is kind of hard with the Internet and with all of these different media forms coming at us to discern between fact and fiction, to get to watch something in an arena that seems pretty low stakes because it's billed as entertainment.
00:06:44.420I think people enjoy, maybe like they don't think about it that hard, but they enjoy getting to see something that straddles that divide on purpose.
00:06:53.840In talking about the Netflix show Inventing Anna, you write really compellingly about this, that one of the reasons why the show is kind of dangerous is that it does sort of aim to straddle that line.
00:07:06.980Each episode starts with, this is a completely true story, except for the things that are fictionalized.
00:07:12.360And I think as a viewer, you might not really know that you're acting like it can be used as a way to heavily, deeply fictionalize something that actually people actually experience.
00:07:25.200And I think that the purposeful straddling of that line of facts and fiction and kind of blending them can be a little bit dangerous because the stakes do feel low.
00:07:36.060I mean, you've said it in some ways better than I could say it myself, but that's exactly right.
00:07:41.080And it's kind of disheartening. I mean, I appreciate that you're speaking up about this, too. And other people are certainly paying attention now. But I think part of the reason I chose to continue talking about this, which, you know, this story, which is well and truly behind me and I would love to move on from and not be discussing today.
00:08:00.900But the reason I'm speaking up is because I see something happening that sets a precedent that I do think is troubling and that I do think is dangerous.
00:08:08.040And I do think it requires viewers to ask questions probably more so than we can expect a media company who profits from it to do.
00:08:17.260But the Netflix show Inventing Anna does do this thing where it like sticks that label up as a as a disclaimer, but it blends, you know, factual information with things that are completely made up, as it says it does.
00:08:32.380But it makes viewers go online, look things up, see that some things are true.
00:08:36.320And then that creates this like foundation of credibility that allows them to think, well, if this is true, I believe the narrative that they've woven with, you know, this big, big budget production and all this like whistles and bells.
00:08:49.360And like, how compelling is that? You know, storytelling is really powerful.
00:08:53.080And I think that's why it requires a level of responsibility.
00:08:56.320I think people are apt to believe things that they watch in stories or that they connect to in terms of a narrative more than sometimes dry facts that they hear on the news.
00:09:06.460Yeah. You know, you describe this in your book in talking about the way that Anna's crimes have been glamorized, in part by places like Netflix, that you see it as a big picture problem.
00:09:17.080Is that sort of what you are referring to, like that sort of the big picture problem that you're describing?
00:09:22.060Yeah, that I think specifically, I have become very mindful of the ways that our attention can be commodified. So when Anna was released from prison, the first time before she was detained by ICE, I was asked to do a bunch of media appearances commenting on her release.
00:09:42.200and I declined because I was like, why, you know, why would I do that? I've already written the
00:09:46.860book. It's out. I've moved on. I have no interest in sort of coming out and speaking or hypothesizing
00:09:52.760about what somebody may or may not do after jail. Like she's did, she did her time. Like all we can
00:09:57.780do is like hope that, you know, Godspeed, like I hope this doesn't happen again. But while I was
00:10:03.080declining things, I saw that she was being given various media platforms and that would be fine
00:10:09.360if she had something productive to say, but it felt as though these different outlets were just
00:10:15.480giving her space to rationalize her behavior, to continue peddling belief in this, you know,
00:10:22.500fictional, in my mind, like this fictional intention, you know, like I was really going
00:10:28.260to do it. I didn't mean to never pay someone back. Like all of these things that I believed
00:10:33.040for far too long and that she's now getting to sell to a broader audience. So as I was watching
00:10:38.460that, what I realized is our attention to her, our attention to people like this, our attention to
00:10:45.380things is what gives them influence and power. So when I say it's a big picture problem, I think
00:10:51.960what I'm really referring to is the attention economy and the way that we think we're watching
00:10:57.200something just without stakes, but our viewership in itself is actually something that does have a
00:11:04.240monetary value and also a value in terms of our our own behavior our beliefs um and and how
00:11:11.780how we move through the world you write about how anna will be given these like
00:11:18.660very convivial interviews where it's clearly the interviewer was like wow this anna this anna
00:11:24.520delvey like can you can you can you believe it and they would have these buzzy headlines and
00:11:29.280I guess part of me is like, how can you print the words of somebody who lies? If you're a journalist
00:11:37.580or a reporter, somebody asked, oh, are you going to try to talk to Anna for this interview? And I
00:11:41.720was like, why would I? Why would I want to talk to somebody who lies? Yeah. I mean, I think there's
00:11:47.260a way to do it. There's actually a 60 Minutes Australia interview. I thought it was, I mean,
00:11:52.240it's of course still kind of sensationalized around the edges, but at least the viewer had
00:11:56.880a very firm uh like framing device in which he you know it's it's the same way i think the most
00:12:04.120successful interviews with someone like donald trump were conducted where you have a baseline
00:12:08.160foundation of truth fiction you know some some degree of commonly shared right wrong when it
00:12:15.580comes to like ethics or reality and you you actually try to hold someone to account that's
00:12:20.080interesting and and then i think it's actually like journalism um but i think what i do find
00:12:26.480puzzling or i understand it but i think i find it you know problematic is is the way that so much of
00:12:33.400our media and our news sources today are driven by not by quality but traffic so so so places are
00:12:40.280incentivized to come up with these clickbait headlines with these really sensationalized
00:12:45.300recaps of you know you know events that in real life were were interesting but you know are so
00:12:51.900much more interesting if you embellish these details it and it was troubling for me because
00:12:57.380watching like even during the trial the way people were reporting on what she was wearing or like
00:13:01.940you know oh she's so audacious can you believe like like yeah she is that's what you know that's
00:13:07.180what drew me into the friendship friendship too here's this person you can't quite figure out like
00:13:12.080She's, she's wacky. She's really confident. She's doing these, these things that kind of break your brain and make you sit there and stare and kind of ask questions. But that's how it works. Like, while we're doing that, like, no one's asking, where's the money coming from? Like, who's, what are the, what's the impact of this person's behavior and why does it matter?
00:13:32.580According to BBC News, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request,
00:13:36.900Netflix reportedly started paying Anna before she had ever even gone to trial.
00:13:41.420They paid $30,000, which went toward paying her lawyer.
00:13:45.520Then, Netflix paid for the rights to adapt Anna's story into the show Inventing Anna.
00:13:50.300In total, Netflix reportedly paid Anna $320,000.
00:13:56.380Now, that money was initially frozen to give her victims a chance to sue.
00:14:01.300And even though some of her victims did file claims for a portion of those funds,
00:14:05.340whatever is left over that didn't go to paying the lawyers just goes right to Anna.
00:14:09.760And what did Anna spend that money on?1.00
00:14:14.140You've written about the fact that Netflix paid Anna.1.00
00:14:18.180You know, it's a little bit of one of those things where she used the money to pay legal fees.
00:14:24.000However, I would argue that it's not like, it's not like, I mean, they're her legal fees.
00:14:28.760And so if somebody gives me money and I'm like, oh, I use that money to pay my bills, I feel like it's a bit of a stretch to say that I'm not benefiting from that.
00:14:36.060But whatever. Do you feel that Netflix is contributing to an ecosystem where lying and scamming can be financially rewarding and financially lucrative?
00:14:46.020Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, this is like very cut and dry evidence of that because they moved so quickly to to option the story that they ended up paying Anna before her case even went to trial, before she even went to trial.
00:15:02.500And that that's the money that was used initially to pay her criminal, the criminal defense lawyer whom she chose to pay his his like initial fees.
00:15:12.580And then beyond that, they started their writer's room the day that the trial began. There were Netflix writers in the courtroom. Her lawyer was representing her in her entertainment dealings at the same time he was representing her in a criminal trial.
00:15:27.620and I knew that at the time which is part of why I think I went into it feeling I mean of course I
00:15:33.720was also so raw and I was all so fresh and I was so emotional way more you know I wish I had I had
00:15:40.080had like a little more distance from everything or a little more composure but I just felt
00:15:44.020frankly so gaslighted by the fact that I was being accused of using my testimony as content for
00:15:50.040entertainment quote unquote because I was writing a book um while at the same time I knew that
00:15:56.060everybody there was doing that. And I actually wasn't like, you know, I was left $60,000 in
00:16:01.720debt. Like I was just finding a way to like heal, to understand, to move forward. So yeah,
00:16:09.080it was really topsy-turvy. And I do think Netflix certainly not only influenced the criminal justice
00:16:14.040proceedings, but also gave this person who, you know, we can all think what we want to think,
00:16:19.740But looking on paper at her past actions, she is a convicted criminal and they have created for her a glamorized version of her crimes, given her a platform, given her an audience and set her up with a viewership that she can now continue to monopolize.
00:16:39.140Like she will continue to make money on the notoriety that she achieved through committing criminal acts.
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00:17:40.040if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home
00:17:46.220This 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.
00:17:58.680I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:18:05.800I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:18:08.940From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:18:15.340It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:18:23.240Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:18:32.420Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:46.640He's talked about wanting to do a podcast.
00:20:48.020You know, are we creating, is the media creating pathways for folks to legitimize what started out as a scam or a con or a lie?
00:21:00.680Absolutely. And I think, you know, looking back, it's actually a really interesting book about this called The Attention Merchants by this man called Tim Wu, with the rise of reality television and this model of normal person to celebrity as like a model for business.
00:21:19.140And then it evolved into social media where people not, you know, they could, it wasn't like winning the lottery. Everybody too could do this if they found a way to brand themselves to market themselves that was compelling enough to attract attention. But as we've just realized, unless you have some kind of outlandish, loud shtick or personality, like no one is really paying attention.
00:21:41.700And I think this is like now evolved into curation, not just through digital media, but here are these people and these people have always existed, mind you, but we live in an age where that kind of behavior is really rewarded.
00:21:55.320You know, it's not an age where it's about, you know, morality or like, which sounds so like Pollyanna-ish and hokey, but it's very much about the sort of the cult of personality and who attracts our attention.
00:22:09.160And like, obviously who we, you know, voted our president is a testament to that.
00:22:14.460What you just articulated is one of my biggest issues in making in the show is the way that we have our entire digital ecosystem and media ecosystem is biased toward outrageousness and lies and scams.
00:22:32.660It's been a documented thing that on social media, incorrect information travels much faster and much farther than accurate information.
00:22:40.740There's that saying like a lie can travel around the world while the truth is still
00:22:44.400putting on its shoes or some variation of that, but it's very true.
00:22:49.480And so, you know, we talk a lot on this podcast about the ways that our landscapes have become
00:22:54.920this like marketplace for extremism and who's really losing is us, the general public.
00:23:00.860You know, there's a problem when the weather channel is sensationalized, like for the weather
00:23:05.580channel to be like whoa like you know and giving these like hokey names to things and like making
00:23:11.260everything seem like a doomsday event and it's like it's like sprinkling outside like there's
00:23:16.320no news here they rely on viewership the same way as any other channel does so like
00:23:21.640for our entire economy to run based on like clicks or attention like that is scary there
00:23:30.060there are certain things that I think probably would, we, we all might be a little better off
00:23:35.780if there were other motivators. We all deserve timely, thoughtful, accurate information. And so
00:23:42.660even, you know, your example of the weather channel, if I need to know whether or not to
00:23:45.980bring an umbrella and I turn on the weather and it's like, you know, monsoons and hurricanes and
00:23:51.700oh my God. And it's like, well, I'm being underserved because I don't know if I need
00:23:56.260to bring an umbrella when I'm going down the street, you know? And so we all, we all lose
00:24:00.080out. We all lose when we don't, when we have any kind of media ecosystem that is biased towards
00:24:06.040sensationalism or lies or scams or clicks and outrageousness rather than thoughtful, accurate,
00:24:12.860nuanced content. And it pushes us to the extremes of either total belief or complete disbelief
00:24:19.920because either you buy into whatever, you know, Kool-Aid you're looking for, like whether that's
00:24:24.840Fox News or, you know, some like extreme version of like CNN, like, you know, they all have their
00:24:30.600their biased reporting techniques. Right. But like, I think you either sort of hop on a bandwagon or
00:24:37.060you say none of it's objective. I don't believe anything. And then that's not great either,
00:24:42.020because there are still things that should be believed. So I do agree that it is a disservice
00:24:46.840to everybody because it creates a system in which it's really hard to tell truth from fiction.
00:24:51.460In my day job, I do a lot of work combating conspiracy theories and things like that and trying to understand why people fall prey to them. And a big part of it is just complete lack of trust in media institutions. And I think that's a big reason why. It's like, I can understand why somebody would just lose all trust in media when that is the thing that fuels it.
00:25:13.100Yeah, absolutely. And there is a lot of similarity. Obviously, I mean, stakes are just sort of it's apples and oranges when it comes to like someone like Anna and like masculine conspiracy theories.
00:25:23.820But there is similarity in the way that both, I guess, like lie structures or manipulation techniques rely on framing arguments in a way that makes them almost irrefutable because they speak to these sort of like cryptic abstracts or things that you literally just can't disprove, even though they are false.
00:25:50.940And I think it's really hard for people, especially if you're isolated, to keep your feet on the ground and understand what's happening if you're not familiar with that type of behavioral pattern.
00:26:04.480After the disastrous trip to Marrakesh, Rachel was left with a $62,000 credit card bill that her credit card company eventually forgave.
00:26:12.440But before that, Rachel struggled to pay rent and took loans from loved ones to cover bills to get by.
00:26:18.840She eventually published her book about what she learned from her relationship with Anna, called My Friend Anna,
00:26:23.700and sold the rights to develop her story for television to Lena Dunham at HBO.
00:26:28.800Rachel takes a lot of criticism for, quote, profiting off of her relationship to Anna.
00:26:34.160So I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned, which is that you sometimes take criticism for the fact that you, you know,
00:26:40.140published a book about your experiences. You've written about your experiences.
00:26:43.800I interviewed Amanda Knox, the exoneree. You probably know who she is. And something that1.00
00:26:48.780she said in that interview that I will never forget is that, you know, she's often criticized
00:26:53.300for making money, you know, writing books about what happened to her. And, you know, however,
00:26:58.920producers, filmmakers, writers, they make a lot of money retelling sometimes like a really harmful,
00:27:05.800deeply fictionalized account of something that like sort of happened around her but like it's
00:27:12.360always like deeply deeply fictionalized and something that she said was that it's apparently
00:27:16.860everyone else is allowed to profit off of something that happened to me except for me everybody else
00:27:22.900can make money off of my story but me and I guess you know why do you think this is you know I I
00:27:29.760guess i should say a side note which is that if i lost a lot of money anybody who wanted to pay me
00:27:36.300to tell the story of what happened to me to recoup my expenses i would absolutely say yes and i think
00:27:41.580that most people would but i feel that we have this expectation where victims are kind of expected
00:27:46.700to be kind of holier than now meanwhile the people who harmed them it's like they can do whatever
00:27:52.780they can make money however and so i think like why do you think that is where do you think that
00:27:56.400comes from um I mean first of all I do completely agree with you it often feels like the victims are
00:28:02.500on trial more so than the criminals uh and also like there's this odd thing that I realized the
00:28:09.800word victim is has so much uh like packed into the connotations around the word the word it's
00:28:17.620like people think as soon as you're no longer in debt or as soon as you've been made hold no matter
00:28:22.760how hard you had to work to actually become okay you're not a victim anymore like you're now you
00:28:28.460know and someone who's exploiting a situation if you you know keep moving forward or if you're
00:28:33.800seen to succeed and it's like what is a victim like does a victim what does a victim look like
00:28:39.060I've had so many people reach out to me on social media to say you don't look like a victim and I
00:28:44.120think that is such a loaded odd thing to say to somebody like saying that you were the victim of
00:28:49.560a crime is not a request for pity. It's a request for acknowledgement of a wrong that was committed.
00:28:56.260It is not like I'm still stuck in this stalled state in perpetuity. It's like this happened and
00:29:03.720that's a fact. It doesn't matter what you do afterwards to be okay, to repair the damage,
00:29:10.360to find a way out of it. That is really not relevant. But I think there are a lot of things
00:29:18.700that are distracting, especially when these stories get retold through the lens of media
00:29:22.540or entertainment, people tend to fixate on the whistles and bells and the flashy trips and the
00:29:27.520money. And they hold that. I think the jury did the same thing. They sort of hold that lens up
00:29:35.120and say, well, you know, looking at the net gain, you were doing this before, Anna. Now you're
00:29:41.720doing this. You came out OK. Therefore, nope, the crime didn't happen. It's like, wait, so you're
00:29:47.900saying I was too good at, you know, finding like fighting tooth and nail to find a way forward.
00:29:54.000Like, therefore, it didn't happen. Like, what? Why do I think it happens? I think it's really
00:30:00.820easy for people to hold on to really simplified recaps of something that was actually very
00:30:06.440complex and nuanced. And of course, looking back, red flags look like this, like very tidy pattern.
00:30:12.480But when you're living through something where you're dealing with a master manipulator,
00:30:16.160You know, there's time between these these things that might have tipped you off to trouble ahead. There's there's a there's an actual relationship between real life people and everything is much grayer than it appears in hindsight.
00:30:31.300Right. Yeah. It's so funny because I feel like a lot of people I've seen and I saw like, I guess this idea of, you know, well, while that was happening, she definitely wanted to go to Morocco or she definitely wanted this.
00:30:45.080And it's like, who gives a shit? Like, it just it just seems so like picking apart. It feels very victim blaming.0.98
00:30:51.200it's very convenient and and i think people want to look for a reason to explain why something bad
00:30:57.740has happened to somebody you know especially if if it is not like you know death like you know
00:31:04.240when it seems like someone's come out okay then it's like okay we all have like carte blanche to
00:31:09.660just sit here and and talk about why you deserved it and you know at the end of the day like it's
00:31:15.560everybody wants to be understood like it stinks to be misunderstood and it seems to have
00:31:20.540things framed in a way that's not true especially when they're so personal and so many people are
00:31:26.940forming opinions about you from so little information and flawed information um but at
00:31:33.360the end of the day like everybody looks at a story like this which you know is not a new story it's
00:31:39.560like a tale as old as time it's just been in a modern uh iteration of it but you people look at
00:31:45.940and they project, they come away with an understanding of it based on their own life
00:31:50.920experiences. And if it's important for people to think, if it looks too good to be true,
00:31:56.260it probably is. Or, you know, don't get sucked into materialism or like, you know, everybody
00:32:01.580looks at it and thinks these things. But I think that's actually more telling of
00:32:05.940their own life experiences than it is necessarily of mine. Like, have I asked myself those questions?
00:32:11.560Of course I have. If I hadn't, I think it's really important to look at. That's why I wrote, I guess, to start. I wrote what turned into the book, but it was so that I could piece together this narrative of experience that I lived through, look at it, try to dig into it, understand what happened, what to make of it, why it happened, and how to learn, heal, and move forward.
00:32:34.460something that you said you said people want an explanation for why this happened to you
00:32:39.040I think what they're actually looking for is an explanation for why this would never happen to
00:32:43.820them I think it's about them right and I mean absolutely as they don't even know me and and
00:32:49.840like they're even if even if someone did meet me through this experience this is something that
00:32:54.760happened it was a friendship I knew her for a year we were close friends for about three months
00:32:58.880three brief months. Like she never bought me clothes. She never bought me shoes. She never
00:33:04.700bought, like, did I work out with her? Yes. Did she pay for some dinners? Yes. Did she invite me
00:33:09.660on this crazy vacation? A hundred percent. But to say that anybody understands someone else's
00:33:16.740entire values, like value system and personality and character through like a few months of what
00:33:26.000is a you know 30 some odd year life with so many more important like and like I don't know telling
00:33:33.940things but any it's just life is weird huh it's weird I I gotta say I love this is kind of a side
00:33:40.880note I love your perspective on this I feel like if this happened to me I guess I guess you know
00:33:47.360you were saying earlier how people don't really see the work involved in getting you to a place
00:33:51.680where you're like, oh, this is behind me.
00:40:46.900And I do think it does. It does do damage to the reality. You know, it's so backwards to to attempt to make something about like classism, racism, sexism, and then to frame it in a way that is promoting someone who couldn't care less about those issues unless they're serving their own agenda.
00:41:10.040Like, that is such a disservice to people who are actually working to, you know, to explore and explore these issues and create positive change in ways that are actually meaningful and substantive, especially in the past, I don't even know how many years, I guess, like 10 years or so, maybe less.
00:41:30.860like these these sort of catch all buzzwords like like feminism or like um good grief there's a
00:41:40.620performative activism that that features words that have become trendy and and and like missions
00:41:47.960that have become trendy and i think shows like this have kind of glommed on to that i told you
00:41:53.720i uh watched the uh finale of the show on hulu the dropout about elizabeth holmes you know the0.99
00:41:59.680serenos scam lady there was a time in feminism where like a woman like a woman like making money0.99
00:42:07.180that was feminism i do think there's a kind of it's sort of a it's a sort of like1.00
00:42:12.180era of feminism i'm not proud of where yeah if you were just a woman who was make like out for0.99
00:42:19.880herself and making money yeah that was seen as like a feminist win and we didn't really ask a1.00
00:42:24.540lot of questions about are you harming people are you you know like like we didn't really ask a lot
00:42:29.400of questions and i think that i i kind of see this era kind of maybe coming to a close i hope but
00:42:35.620i think that that era really allowed for women to be lauded as feminist icons for doing things that
00:42:44.280actually hurt other people at their own expense i don't think the answer to chauvinism is a form0.98
00:42:50.500of feminism that mirrors the same thing like that reverses that that negative uh way of being like1.00
00:42:58.820I do think sometimes pendulums swing too far before they kind of find their their middle and
00:43:04.500it seems like that's what happened it's like well you did this for so long therefore like
00:43:08.780it's my time to do it and we should celebrate the fact that I'm doing it um
00:43:13.680it's I think it's it's hard sometimes to see that when you're in it and when it's a reaction
00:43:20.260rather than like uh like it's it's reactive rather than proactive right so it's it's like
00:43:27.220finding a way to exist as a woman in reaction to to what men have done wrong rather than just
00:43:31.860finding a way to exist as a woman um I don't have solutions but I see the trend as well and yeah I
00:43:39.660guess one thing related to the Hulu show but I think that show actually strikes me as I mean
00:43:46.380obviously what she did does not strike me as something that was done well but the show I I
00:43:50.840thought did a a good job actually of of dramatizing real life events because they
00:43:57.360framed her in a way that felt very true to the actual sequencing of what happens like I read
00:44:04.840Bad Blood by John Kerry and it it felt like it you know it followed a fact pattern and it framed
00:44:12.140her not as someone that everybody was I mean you saw how she was celebrated but that was true to
00:44:17.880the way that it happened in real life it was very true to the to the mixed reactions she received
00:44:23.180and I thought Amanda Seyfried did an amazing job of not of like gleefully sort of relishing the
00:44:30.060like the shtick of the con but just in framing this sort of very misguided probably like
00:44:36.520psychologically unhealthy person who like just kind of uh lacked a certain like human ship that
00:44:44.980allowed her to understand the importance of her decision making on real lives uh I it just was
00:44:52.600such a foil for me when I watched that versus what I had seen in Inventing Anna which really just
00:44:58.960looked like something that had been made by people who really bought into what Anna was selling
00:45:04.940oh my gosh I so I am happy to hear you say this I felt the exact first of all Inventing Anna
00:45:11.240all of the issues that you brought up with it yes but also just like was a slog to watch like
00:45:17.760I wanted to watch it before I talked to you and literally my partner was like I feel like you've
00:45:22.040been watching this show for a decade and I was like you and me both but just like wasn't an
00:45:26.560entertaining show and I guess having that having like I felt the dropout was different because it
00:45:32.820had empathy for the people who were harmed right like you saw these people who were you know had
00:45:37.660cancer and were involved in these blood, these blood trials, you know, it had empathy for the
00:45:42.520whistleblowers who risked so much of their, of their selves to come forward. I felt like it was
00:45:48.100a show that managed to demonstrate the kind of seductive, you know, cult of personality around
00:45:58.060a scammer without falling prey to it. And inventing Anna was exactly the opposite.
00:46:02.760it it was done yeah it was done so thoughtfully it had such depth to it because yeah of course
00:46:08.380there were people who like hopped on the bandwagon and celebrated her like it was just the full range
00:46:14.200of of people who were made to to read like real life people you know I think inventing Anna
00:46:21.580flattened everybody and there's a way that can be done in like a show like Gossip Girl or a show
00:46:27.200that is meant to be and in some ways i guess this is but meant to be about uh materialism and
00:46:32.840superficiality but but to reduce something like this where real real crimes were committed real
00:46:38.500people's lives were impacted it wasn't just these like faceless things they're people who lose jobs
00:46:42.860they're people who obviously or not obviously if it were obvious that would wouldn't be a problem
00:46:47.120but there are people who weren't included in the court you know the court case she definitely
00:46:51.120committed so many offenses that that harmed real life people so i think to flatten something like
00:46:57.980that into this like very frivolous like fun glossy slog of a tv show full stop i don't know dot dot
00:47:05.260dot yeah i mean it's there were times where i was like are you meant to be rooting for anna in the
00:47:10.340show and then i the i think the richest part is at the end where the biggest crime the show seems
00:47:17.260to suggest has been committed is the character that shares your same name she's like like neph
00:47:23.840is like you're a bad friend and it's like well anna went to jail like come on like i know i get
00:47:31.700i mean and people really believe all that is fact like you were like she bankrolled you for two
00:47:37.560years and like i know better than to feed the trolls on the internet like it's not my job to
00:47:43.360to like educate people about like what I like the truth is out there if anybody wants to look for it
00:47:50.120but like I didn't even know her that long and she did not think like uh but yeah so to have
00:47:56.080have it framed as though like where's the loyalty it's like this is someone I you know we were not
00:48:01.500best friends I knew her for and also look what she did look look at the pattern of her behavior
00:48:06.100at what point what why are you suggesting people who are in these like manipulative relationships
00:48:13.000be they friendships or whatever like that that they are doing something wrong by choosing to
00:48:18.440leave something that is so harmful like that's bizarre that's like that's a very bizarre thing
00:48:24.780to say also the show rearranged it as though I had been reimbursed before the trial and then I
00:48:30.040like kept the secret of my involvement with her arrest like like or kept that a secret like
00:48:35.320didn't happen I was protected two years after Marrakesh after the trial concluded I didn't
00:48:41.920keep my involvement in the sting some kind of like grand secret i wasn't ashamed of it but
00:48:47.680i wasn't that close with like naff or casey i you know i like them i don't i have nothing
00:48:52.620negative to say it's like fine everybody can look back and and see things through their lenses and
00:48:58.480that's you know it is what it is but we weren't in touch it's not like i owed people explanations
00:49:05.280i was out more than i made any they were not left in any kind of like debt or like there was no
00:49:10.740ongoing relationship there so to suggest that by not reaching out to say hello like this is what
00:49:17.540i have done and like it's like that's just weird it doesn't it doesn't make any sense yeah and i
00:49:22.920think people people understand the way these relationships and acquaintanceships work in
00:49:28.360their own lives and it's like of course that would be that you wouldn't owe these people anything or
00:49:32.960you wouldn't owe like you know but when it's someone else and that that those the minutiae
00:49:39.020of those relationships are like projected for everyone to pick apart suddenly it's like oh well
00:49:44.300why would she do this doesn't she have loyalty and it's like well calm down think about how this
00:49:48.480would actually go down if it was you like we all understand that in our own lives but when it's
00:49:52.640somebody else I think it's like different yeah evidently and I I understand people don't tune
00:49:58.640into shows like this to really think very analytically it's mostly about just getting
00:50:02.840a good laugh at other people's expense and like I you know I do too it's fine like it's I'm not
00:50:07.540But I certainly can't hate on people for being human.
00:50:36.820Speaking of your firsthand experience, one of the last questions I have is like, what has it just been like for you, Rachel, the person going through this, getting the social media trolls, getting people who have maybe been misled about what happened from the television show?
00:50:52.560What has it been like to deal with that on online?
00:50:55.500Yeah. I mean, it's it's definitely not easy, but I'm mindful of the like I'm mindful of my my my privilege and my luck just to have like such supportive family and friends to have an awareness of exactly what it is that is happening.
00:51:17.860You know, part of it, I learned the hard way just through gaslighting with Anna to begin with. And now through what I've learned in looking back at what happened, looking at, like, I guess, I mean, writing the book helped me a lot just in terms of sort of looking at the pattern of behavior as a pattern rather than like this.
00:51:36.860when you're in a relationship like that, it's really hard to see anything as black and white
00:51:40.340because it's not. Life is gray. But looking back, things seem so much clearer to me. So I'm grateful
00:51:45.200to have had people who believe me, like a platform to speak from, the opportunity to speak,
00:51:52.960which all that is to say, it's hard. But part of the reason I'm speaking up about it is because I
00:51:59.420think that the structure of the Netflix show or this broader pattern that's happening,
00:52:03.960it it does a disservice to people who don't have that ability to understand what's happening to
00:52:09.580them who might not get to hear stories like this because people are ashamed or they're scared of
00:52:14.040the the victim blaming which is completely fair it's not it's I mean it's it's wild um and it
00:52:20.680you know I can have my feet on the ground and my head on my shoulders and if I sit there and read
00:52:26.200that for longer than maybe like 10 minutes like it even if you know that it you know it's it's
00:52:32.640actually not about you it doesn't feel good to have that kind of energy coming like I mean that
00:52:37.300sounds so woo woo but like that kind of hostility coming at you like it's like death by paper cuts
00:52:42.240like you can be the strongest rock in the water but like if it keeps running like you're gonna
00:52:46.760get worn down um so it's hard but I recognize that it's harder so much harder for so many other
00:52:53.960people. And yeah, then I can be pretty nasty. We've talked a lot about how the dangers that
00:53:03.160come when we willingly give our attention away to liars and scammers and people who are outrageous
00:53:10.280and extreme. Do you ever see a situation where things like nuance, thoughtfulness, honest,
00:53:18.880accurate content will be amplified over that kind of extremism and and lies do you think that we're
00:53:25.900this is just it forever or do you see do you see a change coming um i mean as evidenced by past
00:53:35.340behavior i'm kind of a willful optimist through and through and that is just who i am so i always
00:53:42.660hope for that. I do think the damage done by what you just said, the pattern, what I'm trying
00:53:54.180to say is the truth will out. And it's one thing to think the pattern of celebrating these
00:54:02.660individuals does do harm that is and will be visible until there is a movement in the opposite
00:54:11.060direction. So I think we've already seen that like from like Me Too forward, where people are
00:54:18.100starting to pay attention to things in a different way and actually attempt to hold outlets and
00:54:23.900individuals to account. I just think it's in very specific arenas thus far that that seems to be
00:54:30.620happening. And I think people like to sort of pretend that things they do for entertainment
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00:56:32.200Pro 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.
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