There Are No Girls on the Internet - Moral panic over trafficking gets a movie; The writer who criticized it gets death threats. Interview with Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee

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00:00:34.940 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:38.460 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:43.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:00:47.300 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:00:51.020 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:00:54.640 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:00:58.720 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:06.820 Just a quick heads up, today's episode talks about trafficking.

00:01:11.320 Just enjoy this kind of like straw man enemy instead of dealing with the rot within their own circles.

00:01:17.400 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:32.020 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:37.480 The Human Trafficking Hotline has identified 82,301 cases of human trafficking since its inception back in 2007.

00:01:47.400 And as important of an issue as trafficking is, it's also true that it's become a moral panic, completely untethered from the reality of what trafficking actually looks like.

00:01:59.260 To the point where Carly Russell, the 25-year-old woman in Alabama who lied about being abducted by traffickers, repeated a pretty well-worn urban legend that traffickers use babies to lure women as part of her hoax.

00:02:14.480 Traffickers are probably not using babies or strollers to lure women into being trafficked.

00:02:20.660 And no one is probably putting anything on your car to mark you for being trafficked.

00:02:25.460 And no, your child is not likely to be snatched from a Target parking lot by a stranger

00:02:30.040 and sold into an underground trafficking network.

00:02:33.280 Yet, viral conspiracy theories online would have us all believe that this isn't just a common occurrence,

00:02:40.080 but that the most powerful people in the country are also involved.

00:02:43.860 and that the only person who can stop it is a rugged white man coming to save the day.

00:02:49.020 In the new film Sound of Freedom, Jim Cavazell, who you might remember as Christ from Passion of the Christ,

00:02:55.460 stars as a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard,

00:02:58.880 formerly of the kind of anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad.

00:03:05.340 The movie has become popular in part because of the moral panic around trafficking.

00:03:10.360 And rather than showing a realistic portrayal of what trafficking and the work that goes into preventing it looks like,

00:03:16.440 it leans on the same kind of misrepresentations that fuel the online moral panic around trafficking,

00:03:22.600 turning the whole thing into a big hero fantasy.

00:03:26.300 I'm Miles Klee. I am a culture writer at Rolling Stone, focused mostly on the Internet.

00:03:32.280 Miles writes about how conspiracy theories like this one take off online.

00:03:35.980 How did you come to be someone who covers conspiracy theories and all of these weird pockets of the web?

00:03:42.580 Like, what draws you to them?

00:03:44.860 Yeah, you know, I probably started covering the Internet about 10 years ago when I was working for a website called The Daily Dot, which was totally Internet focused.

00:03:55.240 And I really got into weird niche subcultures.

00:03:58.860 I always loved memes and how they were created and kind of tracing the origins of a lot of that kind of stuff.

00:04:05.000 And, you know, conspiracies are something that travel very much in the same way.

00:04:08.580 They go viral. They get these web forums.

00:04:11.200 They get these communities that coalesce around them.

00:04:14.440 This is something Miles and I have in common, the Internet.

00:04:17.520 More specifically, explaining some of the weirder, darker pockets of the Internet

00:04:22.060 and why what's going on in them is worth paying attention to.

00:04:25.460 As a reporter, I always liked to explain what was going on in these really kind of like niche

00:04:32.100 and sort of impenetrable communities that get built around a lot of jargon and a lot of ideology

00:04:39.240 that, you know, the casual reader, if they're just encountering a website like that for the first time,

00:04:44.260 they have no idea what's going on.

00:04:46.380 And sometimes these places are also hard to find or, you know,

00:04:49.940 these conversations are happening in weird little pockets of the deep web.

00:04:53.400 So people don't even know that they're happening.

00:04:54.980 For example, you know, unless you're on the QAnon Telegram feeds,

00:04:59.200 you're not going to see the conversations that are happening there.

00:05:01.840 and what people are saying.

00:05:03.460 So I like bringing that stuff into the light

00:05:06.240 for a larger audience

00:05:07.280 and explaining as best I can

00:05:09.980 how these movements get started,

00:05:13.300 why people get drawn into them

00:05:14.960 and radicalized by them.

00:05:16.820 And, you know, in this case,

00:05:18.880 what we're going to talk about,

00:05:21.040 you know, how recruitment

00:05:24.080 doesn't always reflect, you know,

00:05:25.700 the truth of the really dark stuff going on

00:05:28.540 because on the surface,

00:05:29.340 it can be one thing.

00:05:30.140 It can be save the children

00:05:31.060 anti-trafficking. And then that leads you down the path to a much more dangerous sort of belief

00:05:37.860 set. What is it about trafficking, sex trafficking, that has become this, like, very sticky

00:05:44.960 thing, this very sticky, like, conspiracy that draws so many, like, especially extremists on

00:05:52.700 the right? Like, why do you think that is such a sticky conspiracy and such a good entry point

00:05:58.420 to some of these extremist beliefs and thinking?

00:06:01.420 I think it's interesting that when

00:06:03.780 hardcore conservatives talk about trafficking, 0.52

00:06:07.960 they're only talking about child sex trafficking,

00:06:10.580 which is one very specific thing

00:06:12.040 that is not really the large section of the problem.

00:06:16.240 Adults who are being forced into labor

00:06:17.940 and not children being explicitly sexually assaulted

00:06:23.540 and all that.

00:06:23.980 The reason they focus on children, I think,

00:06:26.180 would bring us back to something like the 1980s satanic panic which had a lot of the same themes

00:06:32.080 children are a great sort of talking point to use if you want to demonize and dehumanize your enemy

00:06:42.400 you know crimes against children like what could be worse than that that's what a lot of the

00:06:47.660 rhetoric is focused on is that you know anyone who disagrees with them is is you know pro child

00:06:54.940 abuse. They're in on it. They're probably traffickers. They probably have child porn on

00:06:59.720 their computers and all that. It was a lot of the same kind of demonization you would see in the 0.88

00:07:05.040 satanic panic in the 80s, which was also, again, focused on this idea that children were being

00:07:09.540 abused on this massive scale. Trafficking is a hot button issue anyway. And when you make it

00:07:13.920 about children and when you make it about sexual abuse, you ensure the most extreme possible

00:07:19.760 reactions and uh yeah because it's a horrible thing to consider um they know that they can play

00:07:25.800 on people's emotions um and you know a lot of the responses i've gotten for doing a negative review

00:07:32.000 of this film are extremely heated because these people have imagined a version of um trafficking

00:07:40.660 that is specifically focused on hurting children harvesting their organs drinking their blood all

00:07:46.140 this nonsense stuff that you know got brought up in the satanic panic in the 80s as well um so

00:07:52.260 they are you know they're flying off the handle um and they got involved in the first place

00:08:00.560 sometimes because of you know harmless sounding campaigns like hashtag save the children which

00:08:06.100 was really just a front for q anon because once you get people believing that you know two million

00:08:10.680 children are you know they are always making up these numbers two million children are just

00:08:14.360 kidnapped off their street corners every year. They have all these crazy statistics. Once you

00:08:21.660 start believing in that, then you believe in, you're primed to believe in a much crazier

00:08:26.220 conspiracy theory. Trafficking and child sexual abuse is like a real issue. It happens. It's a

00:08:32.680 serious thing. But the people who are the loudest in talking about, I guess I won't even say that,

00:08:38.000 like things that are sort of seemingly related, they're invested in this fantasy version that

00:08:43.460 almost never happens, right? It is extremely unlikely for a child to be snatched out of a

00:08:48.960 Target parking lot or off of the street by a stranger and then sold into trafficking. And yet

00:08:54.220 the people who talk about this the loudest, they are very invested in this fantasy version and

00:08:59.700 never invested in what is actually more likely, right? Adults being trafficked for, you know,

00:09:07.460 having their labor exploited, you know, children being preyed on by people they know, people in

00:09:12.420 their communities. Those are not necessarily issues that they seem very loud about, despite

00:09:16.940 the fact that those issues are quite a bit more common. Why do they lend themselves toward the

00:09:23.900 fantasy that's not happening? Yeah. I mean, part of this is just denial about the reality. In the

00:09:31.020 80s, it was sort of thought that people got the idea that daycare and nursery school teachers were

00:09:38.940 abusing children ritualistically because they were unable to deal with the fact

00:09:44.020 that, you know, it was becoming much more widely known that a lot of this abuse happens within the

00:09:49.140 family. And if you are a religious person, if you are a right-leaning conservative person,

00:09:54.180 it's really hard to accept the fact that this thing that you kind of worship, this nuclear 0.78

00:10:01.960 family, like this can be the thing that creates harm to children. That's a really hard thing to 0.60

00:10:07.440 accept. And by the same token, you know, Jim Caviezel, who in this movie is a very devout

00:10:11.460 Catholic, it's about Tim Ballard, who is a devout Mormon. Both the Mormon and Catholic Church have

00:10:16.060 had indescribably huge sexual abuse scandals related to children. They don't talk about that 0.91

00:10:24.780 at all, seemingly. And I think their attempt to turn attention to their fantasy version has a lot

00:10:34.400 to do with not being able to face uh the abuse that is in their own communities and that they

00:10:40.120 maybe even feel subconsciously complicit in um yeah you could be doing you could be doing a lot

00:10:46.600 of work to try to expose pedophiles within the churches and within these conservative institutions

00:10:51.640 honestly but they don't do that because uh that would be too hard that would be admitting that

00:10:57.380 they are on the wrong side um so they make up uh you know a boogeyman of cabal a cabal of pedophile 0.69

00:11:04.380 that are Democrats, they're liberals, they're Satanists,

00:11:08.340 they are totally outside those conservative circles

00:11:11.760 so that they can, yeah, just enjoy this kind of like straw man enemy

00:11:16.860 instead of dealing with the rot within their own circles.

00:11:20.600 For folks who might not know, if you've not heard of this film,

00:11:24.760 then I envy the life that you live on the internet.

00:11:27.680 But for folks who might not know, what is The Sound of Freedom?

00:11:30.380 So The Sound of Freedom is a, theoretically, a thriller drama based on the life of Tim Ballard, who's a real guy. And he is the founder of something called Operation Underground Railroad, which is a Utah based anti trafficking organization, which is focused on something called the rescue model, or it's often criticized as the rescue industry by other anti trafficking groups as something that's sort of counterproductive.

00:12:00.380 exaggerated. You know, the real work of fighting trafficking, as a lot of these orgs say, is

00:12:05.100 slow and bureaucratic and, you know, takes into account, you know, care for victims after they

00:12:12.600 are brought out of these situations. A lot of counseling, a lot of psychological work.

00:12:18.600 Whereas OUR is focused on the PR of heroics or apparent heroics, because they exaggerate all

00:12:27.700 their missions and so on. They're styled as a sort of, you know, paramilitary that goes into

00:12:33.680 these third world countries. They can't operate in the US, obviously. So they go abroad and they

00:12:38.940 claim to be, you know, at best, sort of helping local law enforcement in these other countries.

00:12:47.180 But as I say, they have really distorted the truth of what they do, and been criticized by

00:12:53.760 almost every legitimate human trafficking organization, while sort of not completely 0.89

00:12:58.980 endorsing QAnon ideas, but not really doing that much to distance themselves either.

00:13:04.440 So the movie focuses on Tim, who's played by Jim Kavitzel. It is supposed to be the story of how

00:13:11.500 he went from being a federal agent who did busts of guys who were uploading child pornography to

00:13:19.080 the web went from doing that um to ultimately trying to hunt down actual pedophiles usually by

00:13:25.360 posing as one himself um which makes for an odd hero in the movie i have to say he's 75 percent

00:13:31.380 of the time he's supposed to be like acting as a pedophile so a little weird to be rooting for

00:13:36.100 that guy um they're just trying to ensnare these uh you know various nefarious um people down in

00:13:43.680 columbia uh and in the end he's really trying to go after this one girl because the first boy he

00:13:50.220 rescues in the film uh is the brother of this other girl who is still missing and he has to go

00:13:54.960 deeper and deeper into um uh foreign territory ultimately like you know in into a jungle

00:14:01.320 controlled by columbian rebels to rescue this girl all of which is made up um and it is being

00:14:08.240 treated this film as um i should say almost a documentary uh it says you know at the beginning

00:14:18.040 based on a true story you know which you know there are elements that are true there is a guy

00:14:22.520 named tim ballard who pretends that he does this stuff um and yeah it it it really hammers this uh

00:14:31.780 this, this message that, uh, child sex trafficking is really bad, which I don't know why you need a

00:14:39.240 movie to tell you that obviously that's not good. Um, we don't need to see it sort of depicted over

00:14:44.380 and over as it is in the film. It's very lurid. It's, it's almost, um, the audience I was watching

00:14:50.540 it with was, uh, sort of just totally captivated with these scenes, these preludes to like a child

00:14:57.000 being abused by an adult in a very um voyeuristic uncomfortable way um but you know for the people

00:15:06.040 who see it and support the film they come out of it thinking they've basically done activism by

00:15:10.380 uh by watching this and be raising awareness of uh of the problem and so on um that is what

00:15:18.080 they're in it for and they're in it for this white savior narrative of this guy tim this mormon

00:15:23.840 blonde uh kind of you know uh fat dude who says enough of the red tape in washington i'm going 0.97

00:15:31.920 down there and i'll do it myself damn it um they just love this vigilante narrative um so yeah 0.95

00:15:37.600 that's the movie even beyond i mean yikes even beyond some of the like odious depictions of 0.93

00:15:47.560 child sexual abuse it just sounds like a movie where you have a lot of questions like

00:15:52.380 the choice to make this the hero like narrative questions like oh the choice to make the hero

00:15:57.860 pretend to be an abuser but then you're supposed to be rooting for him um you know a lot of a lot

00:16:03.140 of a lot of questions about some of the logic of the film but you really hit on something with

00:16:09.140 this idea that I think there is something very enticing to a certain audience of one white guy

00:16:15.440 kind of going rogue and rushing in and bringing down an entire trafficking ring that is that is

00:16:20.680 sort of enticing to right-wing extremists, right? I think it mirrors how a lot of them

00:16:25.340 talked about Trump, like a lot of QAnon people especially talked about Trump. And I also think

00:16:30.100 that, you know, when you talked about what some actual anti-trafficking work looks like,

00:16:34.740 it's not a guy kicking in a door and like machine gunning down rebels and grabbing kids and running

00:16:40.720 out. And then as soon as the bad guys are behind bars, the kids are just fine and go back to their

00:16:46.040 normal lives. The work is long-term. It's probably pretty boring. It probably involves a lot of like

00:16:51.820 working with counselors and things like that. But that's not what these people are interested in.

00:16:56.100 They're not interested in the long-term boring work. If it's not somebody kicking in a door

00:17:01.480 and shooting a gun, they don't seem that invested. Like, why is that narrative so enticing?

00:17:08.880 Because, you know, it's revenge. You don't actually want to solve a problem. You want to

00:17:14.880 you want to take revenge on these people and in a violent way. I mean, the QAnon central tenant is

00:17:22.700 the coming storm. You know, they were hoping that Trump at one day would just say, you know,

00:17:29.280 ladies and gentlemen, the storm is upon us. I have arrested, you know, several million pedophiles

00:17:35.220 who were in top government and media and entertainment positions. And, you know, what

00:17:40.100 they really yearn for um as is made clear in some of the death threats i've gotten is like

00:17:45.160 they want basically public executions of of people that they think have touched children or

00:17:50.260 whatever that is that is very explicit in in the feedback i've gotten and in a lot of q anon lore

00:17:57.560 it is it is a pure violent fantasy um and yeah i think i think it's that simple i think it's that

00:18:06.500 I think it's a bloodlust. And, you know, they've made they've constructed the most unforgivable possible villains for their worldview in order to kind of justify what they maybe wanted anyway, which is just to execute Democrats.

00:18:24.960 Right. Like you can't you know, you can't it's almost like you can't muse about, you know, hanging Joe Biden from the gallows unless you do the work to convince yourself that he has sexually assaulted children. 0.91

00:18:41.020 And so that's why they're always posting videos of Biden like sniffing kids or whatever their obsession is. 0.68

00:18:45.760 Right. Like, yeah, I think Biden's a weird, has a weird, touchy relationship with the public.

00:18:52.320 But you do have to do some work to say, OK, and he's actually in on this like pedophile cabal that's run out of the pizza restaurant in D.C.

00:19:02.020 And we're going to round all of them up and we will all have like the best day in American history when, you know, all these people are hung from the gallows.

00:19:09.160 Yeah, they are trying to justify essentially what is already violent feelings towards liberals on the left by, you know, trying to prove that they're guilty of the worst thing that any of us can imagine.

00:19:27.740 Wow. I mean, side note, I live in Washington, D.C., and I will never forget the day that someone brought a gun to Comet Ping Pong.

00:19:35.960 And like, what a, I'll just never forget that day.

00:19:40.340 It just was like, like something that I hadn't really spent that much time looking into or

00:19:45.460 like hearing about all of a sudden was like, oh, they brought like people, like they, someone

00:19:49.460 brought a gun.

00:19:50.100 Like it really was for me personally, when all of this stuff that you were talking about

00:19:54.420 before, like these online weird extremist pockets of the internet became very, very

00:19:59.240 real for me personally.

00:20:02.480 Let's take a quick break.

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00:21:59.980 And we're back.

00:22:02.220 Miles published a less-than-glowing review of Sound of Freedom for Rolling Stone

00:22:07.480 and afterwards became a target of extremists

00:22:11.240 who argued that if anyone had anything negative to say about the film,

00:22:15.600 they must secretly be involved in trafficking themselves.

00:22:18.560 In fact, right before Miles and I spoke for this very interview, protesters were gathering outside of Rolling Stone's New York offices with signs referencing Miles by name.

00:22:30.820 So I want to talk about the review that you wrote in Rolling Stone.

00:22:34.140 It's called Sound of Freedom is a Superhero Movie for Dads with Brain Worms.

00:22:38.280 Great title.

00:22:39.300 After writing that review, which is like, I think the title makes it sound like it's like jokey, but the review itself is actually quite measured and like thoughtful and well written.

00:22:47.900 and it's like clear that you deeply engaged with the film.

00:22:51.980 This is not like a surface snark review.

00:22:54.700 After that review was published,

00:22:57.040 you've now been getting these like pretty intense attacks

00:23:00.400 for that review.

00:23:01.740 What has that been like for you to deal with?

00:23:04.540 You know, people worry about me and I get that,

00:23:08.480 but it's always been more irritating than scary.

00:23:13.200 These people, you can tell, you know,

00:23:16.800 even the more, I shouldn't say reasonable ones, but even the less kind of threatening messages,

00:23:24.840 these people don't really live in a consensus reality that most of us would recognize. A lot

00:23:30.500 of them think that I'm going to be arrested any minute, or I'm going to lose my job any minute.

00:23:34.600 No, I have bosses who, you know, wanted me to run this story and publish it for me and stand by me

00:23:40.380 and stand by the review, which, you know, as you said, it's not even that particular, that extreme.

00:23:46.800 um it's just a negative review of a film that is um nominally based on a true story but it's

00:23:54.320 mostly fictional and you know a lot of the a lot of the irate responses are uh boiled down to 0.95

00:24:01.720 no this all really happened you idiot um on the on the death threat side um it's pretty funny 0.98

00:24:09.320 because what I see in them is a desire to become like the hero 1.00

00:24:16.740 they're seeing on the screen.

00:24:18.460 They want to become this avenging person. 1.00

00:24:20.320 They want to come and find me and kill me 0.63

00:24:23.900 because they imagine me to be like the bad guys in the movie 0.90

00:24:27.460 and they want to be the good guy in the movie,

00:24:29.140 which is funny because the whole movie is an exercise in LARPing.

00:24:33.740 It's live action role play.

00:24:35.340 It's like Tim himself, you know, has totally misrepresented what he does.

00:24:41.020 He's acting like he's this savior that he's not.

00:24:43.920 The movie then furthers that narrative and mythologizes him in a completely phony way to be this vigilante character.

00:24:54.320 And then everyone who watches the movie gets to imagine themselves as that person.

00:24:58.380 and one way they can do that is by finding someone who had a negative review of the film

00:25:04.880 deciding that that person is also a child sex trafficker because why else would you write a

00:25:10.280 negative review of this movie um unless you were trying to cover up something um they decide that 0.97

00:25:17.960 i've like somehow outed myself which by the way would have been very stupid of me like if i were

00:25:22.200 a child trafficker i probably wouldn't go anywhere near this movie um but anyway then they get to 0.99

00:25:28.720 send me these really horrible emails where they are basically talking out of their ass 0.99

00:25:34.080 trying to sound really tough and scary trying to sound like they're you know it's all like i'm your 0.99

00:25:41.100 worst nightmare i'm coming to find you i'm gonna enjoy our conversation you know it's like they all

00:25:46.080 try to sound like liam neeson and taken which is you know basically what the you know if you made

00:25:51.760 a better version of this movie that it would probably be more like that like like a like a

00:25:55.580 hollywood a real hollywood action movie because by the way this movie is so boring it has like no

00:26:00.780 no real action or tension or or narrative stakes at all it's just it's just like trauma porn

00:26:06.280 essentially um so that's what they try to sound like in these in these threats for the most part

00:26:12.560 um sometimes they're just trying to convince me that you know crazy q stuff is real sometimes

00:26:16.840 they're just saying that i worship satan um yeah there are some protesters apparently right now

00:26:22.340 at the you know rolling stones offices in new york who have signs calling me and another colleague

00:26:28.660 who wrote about you know trafficking in this movie calling us demons um so that it doesn't

00:26:33.360 make their side look totally um on kilter you know that i don't know that you can really get

00:26:41.100 new people recruit new people to your movement if you are you know accusing somebody of drinking

00:26:47.040 children's blood because of a movie review they wrote um it just it just doesn't comport with like

00:26:53.400 uh your actual stated goals as like um uh you know it doesn't let's say this too you know a lot

00:27:00.020 of them a lot of them think that trafficking is this huge problem well does harassing me

00:27:07.000 do anything to alleviate the problem of trafficking no it's just it that's but that's what they're

00:27:12.700 focused on um because they think they've done the work by seeing this movie they think that

00:27:17.480 you know they're part they're part of the solution now um and so yeah they have plenty of free time

00:27:22.600 to just yell at me i on this show we cover a lot of like harassment and hate campaigns and

00:27:29.440 particularly among people who are marginalized um but not all and something that is we see time

00:27:36.700 in time again is how people who are whipped into a frenzy and targeting somebody they will take

00:27:44.420 really innocuous harmless things from their digital life their digital footprint and then

00:27:49.980 like add this sort of conspiratorial sheen right like so you posted an innocuous and very cute

00:27:58.400 shirtless selfie and you said like oh i'm having a slut moment and people on the internet might

00:28:04.380 like i'm not even sure what they're trying to say like it's like this is the person who is against 0.69

00:28:09.360 who doesn't want people to see this movie that's against sex trafficking and it's like i'm not even

00:28:14.020 sure the the like through line that they're trying to make other than that like this totally

00:28:19.960 innocuous normal human behavior of posting a picture of yourself online is somehow like

00:28:26.080 nefarious because you posted it yeah i guess they're looking for um anything that they can

00:28:32.780 use to paint me as some sort of sexual deviant um like if i have like if i express any sexuality at

00:28:38.840 all which i will sometimes do online um a human expressing sexuality what are you are you okay

00:28:44.540 yeah you know i like to mix it up i like to flirt online all that stuff and it's like uh 0.88

00:28:49.040 you know i could even i could even just talk about having sex with an adult human woman 0.74

00:28:54.300 and that would be somehow construed as like me being a pedophile like they would have no problem 0.74

00:28:59.300 going for that um the other thing is yeah they will try to just they will just take random photos

00:29:04.520 you know there's obviously a lot of photos of me around and um I don't know if they will like

00:29:10.040 just put that up in the in their stories about me as if it has anything to do with like what

00:29:15.340 they're supposedly accusing me of it's just like a convenient thing for so that people can then

00:29:20.380 harass me like based on how I look like a funny thing I've been getting is um is some real weirdos

00:29:26.840 some real far out weirdos are saying that like they recognize my like physiognomy as being like 0.94

00:29:32.520 a like a pedo or a deviant or whatever like it's literally like phrenology for child abusers they

00:29:38.680 think that they can like look at my skull shape and know that i'm you know that i'm like abusing 0.99

00:29:46.140 children like they they literally think that it's it's pretty fucking wild um some of it is just

00:29:51.920 um you know baseline um uh like bigotry like i do have people i'm not jewish but i do have people 0.95

00:30:02.700 you know calling me like a blood-drinking jew or whatever uh i'm not gay but i have a lot of

00:30:07.060 people using um homophobic slurs so whatever you know it just happens to be that i like

00:30:12.600 live in la and wear tank tops so i guess i look gay enough to them um and yeah so so so a lot of

00:30:19.560 the a lot of the um like spreading the pictures around is just to give people something to latch

00:30:23.880 on to in terms of like um what they're going to say about you or how they're going to use your

00:30:30.500 physical appearance to try to argue you know their non-existent point and sometimes having the

00:30:36.340 pictures is just so uh that somebody can screen grab it and then email you your own photo and say

00:30:42.180 like now i know what you look like like i'm coming to get you and um you know i'm not too worried

00:30:47.620 about that just because these are the same people who think that all major American metropolises are

00:30:53.140 war zones that they would never slip in. And our head of security has, you know, has tracked down

00:31:00.660 a couple of the people who have sent me the death threats and said, oh, you know, this so-and-so

00:31:05.520 never leaves like this hundred mile radius of the small little like, you know, middle America town

00:31:10.140 that they live in because of course not. And none of them really have the wherewithal or capability

00:31:14.860 to find me, let alone, you know, carry out an act of domestic terror at my place of residence.

00:31:22.560 So it's annoying and it's unhinged, but I will be okay.

00:31:29.580 Have you ever experienced this kind of targeted hate campaign before?

00:31:34.540 Or is this like a new thing?

00:31:37.180 Oh, sure.

00:31:37.780 I mean, I guess the last big one would have been some anti-vaxxers were very upset with

00:31:43.080 me because if you call an anti-vaxxer an anti-vaxxer that's they view that as the worst

00:31:49.780 insult in the world and so they'll they'll harass you for like a good week yeah and then you know

00:31:56.020 over the years there's just been various other groups that really gave it to me ironically I

00:32:01.920 think the funniest or the or the nastiest comments I ever got were when I went inside like a Facebook 0.99

00:32:09.100 group for women

00:32:11.100 who shame other 0.92

00:32:13.140 women's engagement rings.

00:32:14.720 Oh, I know exactly the group you're talking about, actually.

00:32:17.860 I got in there and I

00:32:19.100 reported on it and I was getting 1.00

00:32:20.820 and those wine moms were just 1.00

00:32:23.040 harassing me for a week about that. That was pretty 1.00

00:32:24.960 funny. So, you know,

00:32:26.880 it's not always a conspiracy group.

00:32:29.040 It's not always right-wingers.

00:32:31.100 It's any kind of

00:32:32.540 extreme enough community.

00:32:34.480 If you report on them, honestly,

00:32:37.820 they

00:32:38.300 they'll come after you and yeah i've i've dealt with ways of abuse before on the right um another

00:32:45.660 one was you know i wrote i wrote something about how companies that go woke don't actually go broke

00:32:50.260 and uh people have been still bringing that up and still getting pretty mad you know and like

00:32:56.480 i'm sorry anheuser bush still exists they're fine it's it's you know like you're not drinking

00:33:01.280 bud light who cares um they still get they still get mad at that um but yeah just just about

00:33:07.400 anything um usually the attention like wears off after a couple days like they don't have

00:33:14.680 they're not super committed to this stuff for the most part they forget they find something else to

00:33:19.760 get mad about they find other people to harass um and then they come back to me weeks later about

00:33:24.760 another article like just totally not remembering that they were mad at me like two months ago so

00:33:30.520 they start all over again more after a quick break

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00:34:23.940 that's 844-844-iheart if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your

00:34:29.880 personality welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part

00:34:37.500 group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and

00:34:41.660 prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're

00:34:46.940 connecting the dots between books the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having

00:34:51.840 i'm gonna have to look up this story i'm obsessed so obsessed from best-selling authors and your

00:34:57.320 favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments nothing is off the table it's

00:35:02.260 like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse

00:35:09.260 whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community

00:35:14.420 of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society

00:35:19.920 on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages

00:35:27.320 Let's get right back into it.

00:35:34.860 Sound of Freedom is doing well at the box office.

00:35:36.820 It made over $100 million, selling almost 9 million tickets,

00:35:41.540 a new theatrical milestone for its production company, Angel Studios.

00:35:45.880 It's playing at AMC Theaters, the largest theater chain in the United States.

00:35:50.360 But if you believe some theater goers, this box office smash success

00:35:54.620 has happened in spite of the best efforts of theaters to sabotage the movie.

00:35:59.720 And this thing goes all the way from the bottom,

00:36:02.360 the 15-year-old person selling popcorn behind the counter,

00:36:05.640 to the very tippy-top, to AMC's CEO,

00:36:09.640 who, for some reason, despite agreeing to show Sound of Freedom

00:36:13.120 at its 600 locations nationwide,

00:36:15.460 is now trying to keep people from seeing the movie through nefarious means.

00:36:20.840 Now, obviously, none of this is happening.

00:36:22.940 It's just more conspiracy theories.

00:36:25.600 In the fantasies of the target audience of Sound of Freedom,

00:36:28.980 the film is both being suppressed while also being wildly successful.

00:36:33.920 Moviegoers have even taken to social media to complain that theaters are breaking the air conditioning

00:36:38.640 or turning the air conditioning up too high or making the theater smell stinky,

00:36:44.500 all in an effort to prevent people from seeing the truth.

00:36:48.140 That is, seeing a movie they've already paid money for?

00:36:52.220 Question mark?

00:36:53.660 Here's what AMC CEO Adam Aaron had to say.

00:36:57.120 Sadly, conspiracy theories are so prevalent in America. 0.98

00:37:01.420 So much garbage information is spread. 0.94

00:37:03.880 More than one million people have watched Sound of Freedom at AMC theaters. 0.95

00:37:07.940 More than any other theater chain on the planet.

00:37:10.820 Yet, people falsely claim otherwise.

00:37:13.480 It's so bizarre.

00:37:15.260 And he's right.

00:37:16.820 These are people who have been so taken in by conspiratorial thinking.

00:37:20.280 a movie theater being chilly can only be evidence of a grand conspiracy with them at the center

00:37:27.600 as both hero and victim. One big conspiracy theory about the film that I'm really curious

00:37:36.380 for your take, it's that pedophiles and their protectors are like sabotaging showings of the

00:37:42.560 film. So like the AC didn't work. The AC was working too well. The sound was funky. Do these

00:37:50.000 people no longer believe in a world where just coincidences or mistakes happen that like you

00:37:55.740 know sometimes the ac doesn't work in an old theater is everything part of a grand conspiracy

00:38:01.020 where they are at the center yes well they want to first of all they want to be the protagonist

00:38:05.480 they want to be the hero and the victim at once that's an important thing so not only is the film

00:38:10.080 so successful but also we're being persecuted and the movie's being suppressed uh they just

00:38:15.720 have to have it both ways always have to be the protagonist always have to be the victim

00:38:20.000 um and yes we they are living in a world where uh you know it is actually a q anon

00:38:28.740 catchphrase there are no coincidences that's that's that's a tenet of the ideology so no

00:38:36.480 they're not able to uh process anything that happens to them as anything other than connected

00:38:42.880 to this vast web of conspiracy so yeah the mommy bloggers on tiktok who come out and say oh the ac

00:38:48.400 wasn't working i just had an email a really deranged email from someone who insisted that

00:38:53.620 amc is spraying a bad smelling chemical into the theaters uh that are showing this and

00:39:02.960 i don't know i think i think i've smelled something bad in a movie theater before and not

00:39:08.200 really thought that um uh that was part of connected to some larger uh plot um the movie

00:39:15.840 has only been successful because it's showing in thousands of amc theaters as the ceo has kind of

00:39:22.000 crankily pointed out time and again um you know i think i wonder if he might be having some regrets

00:39:27.840 about helping this phone get the distribution it did because uh yeah he's they sold some they sold

00:39:34.100 a million tickets or whatever but uh it's it's it's not been a not been a picnic for them

00:39:39.920 um i know that uh if you go on reddit uh there's a really great subreddit i recommend uh where

00:39:46.680 movie theater employees chat to each other and they are all just complaining about how terrible

00:39:52.340 these audiences are how rude they are um you know trying to bring them in on the conspiracy beliefs

00:39:59.900 um and yeah like you know you know uh one movie theater uh employee said uh they were not they

00:40:07.180 weren't interested and and the patron was like you're too woke you need to go see this movie 1.00

00:40:11.640 it's important and you know just really just really curmudgeonly weird old boomers who are

00:40:17.980 who i think don't go to the movies that often anyway um are showing up for this one because 0.87

00:40:23.640 i think it's their duty their solemn duty to see this movie and then uh you know they encounter

00:40:29.280 the mild inconveniences that any of us might experience at any movie showing and yeah they

00:40:37.380 have to build that into a drama and a drama that is part of the larger scope of um all the very 0.95

00:40:46.340 stupid things they believe oof i feel so bad for like the 16 year old kids making a minimum wage 0.97

00:40:53.040 serving popcorn at this theater just thinking like oh god these people are gonna come in and 1.00

00:40:57.260 be the worst yeah and imagine thinking those kids are like cia or something like right that they've

00:41:02.880 been oh i'm sorry we planted we planted some high schoolers there to uh to project the film upside

00:41:08.280 down and slightly blurry for the first five minutes before you know someone complained uh

00:41:14.040 it just boggles the mind there is this real persecution complex happening that i find so

00:41:20.900 peculiar where you know this idea that most people whether they're in government or hollywood or

00:41:25.720 behind the counter at a movie theater that most people are like pro sex offender pro child abuse

00:41:32.360 and that these people well they're the like minority few decent people who are fighting back

00:41:38.240 i think most people would agree most reasonable people are like oh well i obviously don't think

00:41:43.420 abusing children is good but yet they have like created this fantasy where everybody is pro

00:41:49.220 child abuse except for them yeah um i think if you went by their estimates probably like

00:41:56.760 90 of the country are pedophiles um just like everyone literally everyone in a major city um

00:42:05.180 anyone anyone uh who doesn't go to church anyone who's uh you know doesn't doesn't uh get in on 0.64

00:42:13.220 conservative boycotts and and vote for trump and this that and the other they are all in on it

00:42:18.940 And, you know, that's that's just a way to, again, sort of other eyes and dehumanize your political opponents, because, you know, it's they're not really satisfied with having a political or policy disagreement.

00:42:32.440 Right. It's not good enough for them to say, oh, like we we we think taxes should be like this or or, you know, we think we think welfare should should operate this way.

00:42:44.840 they're so they're so beyond that and um you know i think it i think it is just an element of the

00:42:51.060 christo christo fascism that underlies q anon uh that relies on you know not this not really being

00:43:00.960 a political dispute it is it is a moral and it's a religious dispute um and you know an element of

00:43:08.820 an important element of fascism is to dehumanize your opponents. And that way you are justified

00:43:16.100 in taking the most extreme possible action against them. So it just so happens that they

00:43:22.120 have to throw about 90% of the country in that bucket in order to do it. But hey, they're all

00:43:27.060 in on aggrieved minority rule anyway. I mean, that's how Trump got elected in the first place. 0.94

00:43:32.140 It's the angry minority trying to ride roughshod over everyone else.

00:43:37.460 Something that really bothers me about this whole conversation is how it actually would be good to have like substantive public conversations about things like trafficking or child sexual abuse because those things are horrible and they do happen.

00:43:50.880 But because these extremists just hijack these conversations and make them about fantasies and nonsense, we're not able to have them because it just turns up the temperature too much.

00:44:01.480 I'm thinking about the film Cuties, which we've talked about quite a bit on this on this podcast and how like I had not seen Cuties and I, you know, completely got like believed this horrible campaign that was like, oh, it's child pornography and this and that.

00:44:19.020 And when I watched it for myself, I was like, oh, it's fine if somebody didn't like this movie, but calling it child pornography is just not correct. I looked into all of the ways that like that conversation was completely hijacked by people who were not based in reality and how easy it was for people who were just sort of casually following it to be like, oh, it seems like this movie was bad.

00:44:42.080 But even today, I see so many people saying, like, this movie was proof positive that Netflix and Hollywood is run by child abusers.

00:44:51.740 Even when I was researching for this conversation, I saw somebody tweet like, oh, well, of course Miles didn't like Sound of Freedom because he really liked this pervert movie and it links to a Rolling Stone piece.

00:45:01.960 I guess I wonder, are we past the fact where we can have public conversation about these issues that are so important in ways that are real, that actually are grounded in what trafficking looks like and how to prevent it, or the kinds of pressure that young girls, like in the movie Cuties, are actually facing?

00:45:23.880 Everything seems to be just so skewed toward fantasy and inflammatory nonsense.

00:45:29.640 Have you lost the ability to have these real conversations?

00:45:33.320 Yeah, I don't know.

00:45:34.040 I think it is something we have to really concentrate on fighting.

00:45:37.480 You know, the irony of the whole cuties thing.

00:45:41.480 By the way, I've never seen that.

00:45:42.580 I didn't write that article.

00:45:43.700 That's just another Rolling Stone article from before I worked here.

00:45:48.480 And I did get a lot of responses of, you know, you must have loved cuties, whatever.

00:45:51.720 um you know the which i think you know was accused of sexualizing the children but doing it from a

00:45:57.200 satirical point of view i don't know but the the funny thing is sound of freedom is also sexualizing

00:46:03.400 children um there there's an entire scene of um this trafficker woman who's kind of getting the

00:46:10.000 girl dolled up like she's getting you know doing a beauty pageant which i think is what q is about 1.00

00:46:13.880 right she's like she's you know she's doing her hair she's putting she's putting a lipstick on

00:46:18.440 even though she's only like seven years old you know this is all they're doing the same thing

00:46:24.120 in a sense uh they are sensationalizing this and they are enjoying the spectacle of

00:46:30.280 you know these children being trafficked it's really horrible um on the on the ability to have

00:46:36.180 the conversation yeah we are too many people are really caving i think to um to these outside

00:46:44.440 pressures um i was just reading a story about in michigan about this woman who ran a non-profit

00:46:51.100 for children who were sexually abused and she had she'd run this for about 25 years doing really

00:46:56.600 important really good work um to help these children who had been traumatized and so and so

00:47:02.740 horribly treated um she was basically forced to retire early by a mob in the in the county

00:47:11.640 um that was you know calling for her head because uh the non-profit had happened to support a pride 0.98

00:47:17.780 campaign so these anti-groomer lunatics showed up uh you know city council um just demanded that 0.90

00:47:24.800 she go and you know this is someone who is like gonna retire like maybe next year she's like 0.99

00:47:29.120 oh she's like fuck it i'm just leaving now uh i'm i don't want to deal with this and that is 0.96

00:47:34.340 something we have seen in school boards and local governments all across the country is a lot of 0.99

00:47:40.760 reasonable people don't want to sit there and be screamed at by, um, conspiracy theorists,

00:47:46.900 like at every public meeting. Uh, so they just leave and then the crazies take over. So that's,

00:47:53.260 that's a real problem. And that's part of the reason we're not able to have these conversations

00:47:57.520 is that a lot of these institutions are being taken over by people who believe this crazy stuff.

00:48:02.880 I mean, I did get, um, I did get a threatening email from a guy who was literally on like a

00:48:08.300 mental health board um in in the county where he's from uh so i had to forward that to like his

00:48:14.720 his boss basically and say like you know is this guy okay uh imagine sending you that attached to

00:48:21.560 your real name you can find your employment he had his phone number in the email like it's just

00:48:26.500 i don't know um it just goes to show you how far gone they are and and how you know how detached

00:48:34.040 they are from the consequences of what they're saying and doing um because they think they're

00:48:38.360 right and they think they will be vindicated in the end but you know that storm is never going

00:48:44.100 to come they're never going to get the big finale they're they're waiting for but they can just keep

00:48:48.440 putting it off forever and keep doubling down and keep accusing everyone else of all the stuff that

00:48:53.940 you know oh actually like you know it's probably the youth pastor in your town who's abusing kids

00:48:58.500 But, you know, sure, keep emailing me.

00:49:02.280 You know, you write in your review that the film is like, for the most part, kind of grounded in our universe, as opposed to being like completely, completely over the top and like overtly QAnon-y.

00:49:13.920 Do you think that that is to sort of draw more people who might think of themselves as more moderate into all of this?

00:49:20.220 Well, to be clear, the movie was finished before QAnon really took hold.

00:49:23.700 I think it was finished in 2018.

00:49:25.400 So they didn't really even have the opportunity to make it as crazy as, you know, some of the stuff that Jim Caviezel says, because Caviezel says that they're drinking children's blood and harvesting their adrenochrome and all that.

00:49:38.040 There was never going to be that kind of stuff in the film because it's just it was made too long ago.

00:49:44.700 what what is useful about that for from the point of view of recruitment is yes it does seem more

00:49:54.800 reasonable and it does seem um like a more um a more grounded cry for justice um the average

00:50:06.240 person who went in there without any context would maybe think the movie was like a little

00:50:11.660 bit slow and depressing, but they would not think to immediately connect it to some wilder

00:50:22.040 conspiracy theories. It's useful because it taps into the same ground level fears that get people

00:50:29.740 into QAnon, Save the Children campaigns, that kind of thing. If you can be convinced that this

00:50:35.100 is a problem um the way tim ballard and his organization have described it then you are

00:50:42.140 much more susceptible to believe the crazier and crazier things that have emerged basically since

00:50:47.720 they finished making this movie um because that uh the crazy q anon stuff is built on the original

00:50:55.620 conception of just oh there's two million children uh get snatched off the street every year 0.62

00:51:00.460 you know that was the starting point you know when OUR was founded in like 2013 that that's

00:51:06.880 the narrative there and we need to we need to have a rescue industry we need to parachute in

00:51:10.760 there and get them that was the starting point and that was you know all all very catered to 0.87

00:51:15.040 a religious crowd to a right-wing crowd and it eventually metastasized into the QAnon we know

00:51:21.920 today so in a way what you're seeing with this movie is a predecessor to to a lot of the views

00:51:28.720 that followed. And in that sense, it could very easily be the thing that gets people down the

00:51:33.380 rabbit hole. Do you see it being used as a recruitment tool long-term? I was joking with

00:51:39.980 some friends on another podcast because I think everyone has, at least anyone who went to public

00:51:46.120 school has the experience of, oh, remember when they showed us this movie in health class for

00:51:50.760 some reason because it was supposed to teach us something? I mean, I remember learning about

00:51:54.440 like, uh, like menopause and, uh, and menstruation, both from two different special episodes of the

00:52:00.900 Bill Cosby show. Um, so we were joking that like, uh, that someday, um, this is going to be shown

00:52:08.740 in like schools, um, that, that, uh, you know, possibly even well-meaning health teacher and

00:52:16.540 maybe a conservative area would say, oh, I should, um, I should show like my ninth graders this

00:52:21.720 movie to warn them about the dangers of human trafficking or you know something like that like

00:52:25.480 i really do think it will be um held up as this you know important message movie and like you know

00:52:33.820 potentially yes you could use it to on on the path to like indoctrination as far as just

00:52:40.480 trying to convince uh people young and old that um that this is the reality of trafficking

00:52:48.000 and you know you saw that on the q and on boards too when it came out they were very excited about

00:52:53.660 some older audiences seeing this um they were pleased that it wasn't too crazy because it

00:53:00.960 wouldn't it wouldn't turn off the average viewer right away um they might be drawn deeper into uh

00:53:07.660 into the conspiracy rabbit hole um i don't know i don't know how long-term successful it can be

00:53:16.240 just because it is a really bad, unpleasant film

00:53:20.380 like on the face of it.

00:53:21.520 And it would probably be more effective

00:53:23.720 if it was better made or more entertaining.

00:53:27.480 Like it's not a well-written movie.

00:53:29.380 No, no.

00:53:30.800 And I think we actually already have hit our upper limit

00:53:37.100 on like who is going to see it.

00:53:38.980 I think everyone who was going to see it has seen it.

00:53:42.080 So it will be up to those people to, I don't know,

00:53:45.180 try to force it on their children which is again what i'm my my friends and i were joking about it

00:53:50.180 on another podcast which is yeah can can they keep it going can they sustain it as this like

00:53:55.060 emblematic um you know triumph um i don't know i don't know that they would even bother too because

00:54:01.960 um they again they get so distracted so easily they just move on to the next thing and you know

00:54:07.560 once they're done supporting this there's going to be something else and angel studios um you know

00:54:11.480 is gearing up to release a few more movies and, you know,

00:54:15.920 they're going to be, they're going to be the big, um,

00:54:20.000 I think right-wing religious alternative to like Hollywood production.

00:54:24.860 So we're likely to just get more stories and, you know, about other,

00:54:31.120 other, other themes, um,

00:54:33.920 that appeal to this demographic and, uh,

00:54:37.200 they're just going to go to those movies instead and probably forget about

00:54:39.900 this one.

00:54:40.880 I could absolutely see this movie being shown to health classes in like five years time.

00:54:46.940 I went to school in the South.

00:54:48.140 This is exactly the kind of movie they would have shown us.

00:54:50.460 And I think I've said this on the show before, but before the first time I traveled to Europe,

00:54:55.300 my dad was like, you've got to watch this documentary about staying safe overseas.

00:54:58.880 And it was taken.

00:55:00.240 It's not a documentary.

00:55:03.740 One of my last questions for you is, you know, I've seen possibly like well-meaning people

00:55:09.600 say that even if this film is not an accurate representation of trafficking, which it's not,

00:55:15.660 it's still good because it raises awareness about the issue. And like any awareness is good

00:55:20.400 awareness. You know, what do you say to that? You know, awareness is overrated anyway. Who

00:55:26.120 cares if you're aware? It's a pet peeve of mine, honestly, to be like, you know,

00:55:32.980 it doesn't even have to apply to this, you know, like awareness of breast cancer. Like,

00:55:37.200 okay I'm aware of it but like my awareness doesn't really contribute to um solving the problem right

00:55:43.180 that's that's one two I don't think awareness can have any value if it uh if the awareness you have

00:55:52.280 is the misrepresentation of the issue it doesn't help people to be misinformed

00:55:57.380 unless what this movie is it's misinformation um there's a lot you could read um and there are a

00:56:04.620 lot of other trafficking organizations you could listen to but that's not just like a two-hour

00:56:09.320 movie you can plop down with your popcorn um and feel like you've accomplished something um

00:56:15.200 so no it's the awareness is not the awareness is not helpful um yeah at all

00:56:23.240 miles is right i think we've awarenessed the discourse around trafficking so much

00:56:30.720 that the way we talk about it is no longer grounded in reality anymore.

00:56:35.460 So how could that awareness ever be helpful?

00:56:38.480 The actual red flags and warning signs have taken a backseat to fantasy and urban legend. 0.87

00:56:44.180 When Carly Russell wanted to fake her own abduction,

00:56:47.120 it's telling that she just recreated something that sounds like it's out of a movie.

00:56:51.200 It tells me that our understanding of the issue

00:56:53.520 has been completely warped by misrepresentations masquerading as raising awareness.

00:57:00.220 And in the end, it actually makes us all less safe.

00:57:03.260 If you want to hear more of my thoughts specifically on the Carly Russell abduction hoax

00:57:07.880 and what it says about our discourse around trafficking,

00:57:10.660 check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash tangody.

00:57:15.200 So as soon as I heard her say that,

00:57:18.040 I was like, this story is probably going to turn out to be more than it sounds.

00:57:24.720 I didn't know, you know, the lengths to which this was a hoax at that point,

00:57:29.400 Like, I was like, you know, wait and see.

00:57:31.560 But I saw people that I trusted retweeting that story, and I can totally understand why.

00:57:39.560 Even though I knew that something more was happening to this story than a woman being kidnapped and trafficked,

00:57:45.800 I still didn't want to openly be like, she's lying or something is not right here.

00:57:51.280 I think it's the same reason that a lot of people felt that when it comes to Black women or other marginalized people,

00:57:57.340 We are not often listened to or supported or believed when we speak up about facing abuse, when something is happening to us, right? Like, we know that marginalized people are overwhelmingly likely to be the victims of crimes, yet our stories are often underreported or not told at all.

00:58:22.060 And so I think that's one of the reasons why, even though I didn't think this story was like on the up and up, I wasn't going to be like, she's lying, whatever.

00:58:33.260 Because it's this weird thing where you don't want to be the person that is not believing in black women when we know black women are so statistically unlikely to be believed.

00:58:42.140 Thank you.

00:59:12.140 Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

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00:59:16.120 check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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00:59:32.380 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:59:35.900 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:59:39.060 what should have destroyed them.

00:59:41.140 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:59:44.740 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:59:52.280 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:59:56.120 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - July 26, 2023

Moral panic over trafficking gets a movie; The writer who criticized it gets death threats. Interview with Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee

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