There Are No Girls on the Internet - Reese Witherspoon AI Gender Gap; Lauren Sanchez Cosplays Relevance; Online Assault Academy; Flock Spying; Nigerian WhatsApp Smut – NEWS ROUNDUP

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00:00:50.080 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:53.240 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:58.760 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

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00:01:27.080 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:35.740 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

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00:01:51.160 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.740 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:09.320 Welcome to There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, identity, and social media.

00:02:14.680 And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup, where we dig into the stories that you might have missed on the Internet, so you don't have to.

00:02:21.160 I gotta start with a little bit of heartbreak here

00:02:23.940 because, Mike, I know you know this about me.

00:02:27.320 I love me some Reese Witherspoon.

00:02:29.320 She's my girl.

00:02:30.840 I like her a lot.

00:02:32.180 We all love Reese Witherspoon.

00:02:33.920 She's just so nice.

00:02:36.520 You know how you...

00:02:37.420 I don't know if the white community is the same way,

00:02:40.780 but I know the Black community is this way

00:02:42.380 where you might get... 0.94

00:02:44.660 You might have, like, your handful of white actors

00:02:47.200 and actresses and, like, singers and celebrities

00:02:49.380 that you really like. Reese is one of mine. She is, I like her a lot. And so it breaks my heart

00:02:58.000 to have to start with a little bit of less than flattering Reese Witherspoon discourse. Although

00:03:05.480 I don't know if I would call it less than flattering. I'll just tell you what's going on

00:03:08.640 because I'm sure you haven't seen it. So Reese Witherspoon is taking some heat for a video that 0.98

00:03:14.260 she posted on social media, basically saying that she was in a book club and that she asked

00:03:20.120 the women of the book club, how many of you ladies use AI? And of the 10 women, only three

00:03:25.780 of them said they use it. And then of those three women, only one said that they felt confident

00:03:32.680 using AI. So Reese Witherspoon made a video and said, women are being left behind because we're 0.91

00:03:38.660 not using AI. And she said that technology is the kind of thing that if you don't at least get a 1.00

00:03:44.240 little bit familiar with it early on, it advances so quickly that you won't really have time to

00:03:48.980 catch up. What do you think the reaction to this video was online? You know, I have to suspect it

00:03:55.360 might not have been as positive as she was hoping. I feel that the sentiment that everyone should

00:04:03.540 stop what they're doing and rededicate their lives to learning AI is not universally held.

00:04:11.300 Not universally held is definitely one way to put it.

00:04:14.920 People really did not have a good response to this video.

00:04:18.100 Some people were saying, she's right, this is great.

00:04:22.000 This would not be the first time that she has made a statement like this around technology.

00:04:26.520 Back in 2021, Reese Witherspoon tweeted, quote, crypto is here to stay.

00:04:33.820 I'm committed to supporting creators who have pioneered the NFT space and encouraging more

00:04:38.520 women to be part of the conversation. 0.79

00:04:40.040 and she wasn't kidding around she launched an effort to turn nfts into movies and tv shows 0.99

00:04:47.120 through her production company uh it seemed like that didn't really come to fruition yeah because

00:04:54.240 like it doesn't make any sense like what how do you turn an nft into a movie or a tv show am i

00:04:59.920 missing something well you know what we forget but reese was right you know she's she was saying

00:05:05.560 that back in 2021. And here we are five years later. And you know how you can't do anything

00:05:10.100 without hearing about crypto or NFTs and how women who didn't embrace cryptocurrency and NFTs five

00:05:17.380 years ago, we're all lying dead in a ditch somewhere. And we luckily, Reese Witherspoon

00:05:22.260 was there to sound the alarm. Don't get left behind on the gravy train of possibility and

00:05:29.260 promise that is NFTs and cryptocurrency, ladies. Aren't we so glad we listened to Reese?

00:05:34.360 uh for listeners who can't tell bridget's using sarcasm right now because that is not what

00:05:40.240 happened it reminds me of that time we went to south by southwest and it was the only thing

00:05:47.640 anybody was talking about was nfts and crypto it was everywhere and then we went again the following

00:05:52.680 year after that kind of petered out and it was like crypto who nft who we don't know her it was

00:05:57.180 like it never happened i will never forget my experience inside the crypto dome at south by

00:06:02.680 southwest it was like a miniature epcot center kind of thing like it looked like it was a geodesic

00:06:10.420 dome like a giant golf ball that you went inside and there were all these horrifying images of like

00:06:18.780 weird monkey rabbit humanoids like all over the place that i guess you could buy as nfts 0.96

00:06:25.800 And then a panel of the dumbest, like, early 20-something dudes opining about just the worst takes and opinions I've ever heard because they were billionaires. 0.97

00:06:39.920 Nothing anybody said there made a lick of sense. 0.99

00:06:42.740 Nobody made any sense.

00:06:43.920 It was like they were, yeah, that was my experience, too.

00:06:49.260 I did sort of see another interesting conversation arise from all this.

00:06:54.700 So Roxane Gay, the celebrated writer and thinker, replied to Reese's post saying, quote, oh, Reese, absolutely not.

00:07:05.300 And then somebody replied to Roxane Gay.

00:07:07.720 Now, mind you, Roxane Gay is a PhD.

00:07:10.960 She has won like every important literary award there is.

00:07:14.880 She is like a celebrated thinker.

00:07:16.620 She is celebrated for her ability to write and think and communicate.

00:07:20.500 Somebody replies to Roxane Gay and says,

00:07:23.580 girl, if you're not mastering AI,

00:07:25.420 it'll leave you in the dust.

00:07:26.720 Just like the internet, it's not going away.

00:07:29.180 Let's use it for good, shall we?

00:07:32.460 Roxane replies that I'm finna be dust

00:07:35.280 and that's on that.

00:07:39.480 I love how on the internet,

00:07:41.200 people will just comment to other people

00:07:44.960 without knowing who they are.

00:07:46.660 Like, I feel like if you knew who Roxane Gay was, you wouldn't say something like that to her.

00:07:52.560 I thought I felt like I was losing my mind.

00:07:54.720 I was like, do you not know who you're first of all, Roxane Gay does not need your career advice. 0.99

00:07:59.580 She's Roxane Gay.

00:08:00.640 Who are you?

00:08:02.540 And that's my thing.

00:08:03.660 Like, imagine publicly saying this to Roxane Gay.

00:08:07.520 Imagine telling Roxane Gay that her fabulous, celebrated, decorated, super awarded career, she's going to be left behind in that career as a celebrated thinker if she does not embrace AI.

00:08:22.300 Like, Roxane Gay is a Guggenheim fellow.

00:08:26.100 That is like the highest honor a person can get for creative work.

00:08:30.380 And she got it by using her own brain. 1.00

00:08:32.380 If anyone doesn't need to be getting a lecture about they need to use AI or they're going to get left behind, it's Roxanne fucking Gay. 1.00

00:08:40.680 She posted on Threads, I have a PhD in rhetoric and technical communication. 0.98

00:08:45.480 I speak four languages and read to others.

00:08:47.720 I write books powered by human intelligence.

00:08:50.340 I am proud of that.

00:08:51.460 I am curious and dedicated.

00:08:53.120 I will always, always trust my ability to think and read and make mistakes and grow.

00:08:57.960 I wish that for everyone.

00:08:59.700 You're welcome to distrust your innate talent and use AI and tell yourself that you're cutting

00:09:05.000 edge for it. Don't worry about me. If I'm irrelevant, I will survive. And I really loved

00:09:11.680 that response. It just reminds me of this idea that when people use AI, it's like trying to

00:09:22.060 circumvent the messy human business of creating. And what Roxane Gay is affirming here is

00:09:29.100 affirming that that is why she creates. She enjoys thinking and being curious and researching and

00:09:34.380 being dedicated and making mistakes and growing. And that's how you put things out into the world.

00:09:39.500 It reminds me, you and I saw the Werner Herzog documentary, what is it? The Cave of Forgotten

00:09:46.240 Dreams. It's a beautiful, immersive documentary where they go into this narrow cave in France

00:09:53.760 to show I guess the oldest paintings ever done by a human thousands and thousands of years ago right

00:10:01.620 that's right they go into not just a cave in France the Chauvet cave which as you said contains

00:10:08.720 the oldest paintings made by humans anywhere in the world they're like 32,000 years old like

00:10:16.020 back when the world was covered in ice sea levels were 300 feet lower than they are today

00:10:21.880 uh some human was crawling around in that cave painting animal figurines on the walls

00:10:29.000 and here we are thousands of years later watching verner herzog undertake this incredibly laborious

00:10:37.980 task of going into this narrow cave to film like they're only able to go in an hour at a time and 0.55

00:10:44.380 it's so small and they can't have any lights and human breath causes mold to grow so they have to

00:10:49.660 be like very very delicate and the movie itself is beautiful if you get a chance to see it we saw it

00:10:54.720 in IMAX 3D and it like was breathtaking but when we got out of the movie the first thing that I

00:11:00.840 could think was about AI about how the whole point of taking on this laborious process of checking

00:11:08.240 out these cave paintings was that because they were made by people because they were the earliest

00:11:13.060 versions of humans using art to tell a story and express something to other humans and like leave

00:11:20.000 a message about what they were seeing and experiencing as one human to another and here

00:11:25.400 we are thousands and thousands and thousands of years later doing all of this work just to check

00:11:30.300 it out like that is the point of expression and I guess that film really I just love that film

00:11:37.060 really affirmed in the power of human creativity and expression and like the humanness being the

00:11:42.820 thing that makes it worth a damn and worth anybody wanting to check out like nobody would be

00:11:47.680 undertaking that laborious process to check out some ai nick 5 000 years down in the future i

00:11:53.980 don't think people are going to be doing that to check out somebody's ai renderings or something

00:11:57.460 and yeah i think i think that's what roxanne gay is affirming here too totally yeah i loved that

00:12:03.860 framing of it of thinking about that movie in terms of what it tells us about ai and the fact

00:12:12.020 that, like you said, we were so intensely interested

00:12:16.200 about what these people did tens of thousands of years ago,

00:12:19.180 not because of some intrinsic property

00:12:22.300 of the way they drew a cave bear or a horse,

00:12:26.120 but because of what it could tell us about these people

00:12:29.440 and what learning about them

00:12:31.360 could help us understand about ourselves.

00:12:33.920 Like, that's the point of art and literature and creativity.

00:12:38.220 Exactly.

00:12:39.020 And I guess I'm just a little surprised

00:12:41.280 to see Reese Witherspoon, someone who is a creative herself, someone who is now, you know,

00:12:47.080 gone from TV and film to producing to the literary space. I am, as a creative, most creatives I know

00:12:56.840 are really keen about, you know, creative expression being something that is for humans

00:13:02.220 by humans. And so it's always surprising to me when I hear another creative, like Diplo was

00:13:06.140 saying something very similar which like who would expect much different from diplo but he

00:13:12.400 basically was saying oh i don't even need human singers anymore i have ai and if you're a creative

00:13:17.300 that's not embracing ai you're gonna get left behind the same kind of rhetoric and i just i

00:13:22.060 can't understand like that's such a shocking thing to say like it's not even like he can't afford

00:13:28.140 human singers right he's he's got to be rich he's been making music for decades like why wouldn't he

00:13:34.460 want human singers that's what i don't see in all humans are humans sometimes humans have

00:13:40.480 throat problems sometimes humans have a bad session like but that's the point of working

00:13:46.200 with humans like you don't get to pick the parts of expression that you like and then discard the

00:13:51.680 rest and i guess i i say that to say something i diplo aside something that i have seen a little

00:13:59.380 bit more of an uptick of lately that I just want to name, because I kind of sense we're going to

00:14:05.740 this space. AI as a getting, particularly getting women invested and involved in AI as almost like

00:14:13.280 a feminist issue. The way that Reese Witherspoon was talking about this was I'm trying to get 0.83

00:14:18.880 women invested in AI because women are being left behind. And it's like a feminist issue. 1.00

00:14:24.580 I'm not even necessarily saying that people shouldn't use AI or like,

00:14:27.820 you know, I'm not even, I'm not even trying to make this into like an anti AI screed or something,

00:14:33.080 but you don't have to tell me that it's a, it's a feminist calling to use AI. If you're going to

00:14:39.900 use AI, I guess use AI, but I don't, I don't, I don't need the rhetoric of it being wrapped up in

00:14:45.640 the, the, the veneer of feminism. That's what I don't like. And I've, I've, I've just seen a

00:14:50.960 little bit more of an uptick in this. I mean, the same way that she talked about cryptocurrency and

00:14:54.820 nfts i think if those are domains that are you know of value to you sure but don't tell me that

00:15:04.120 you're angela davis here or something by trying to get women to use ai you don't need to do that

00:15:10.000 just use ai if you're going to use ai trying to sell it as a moral good starts to make it feel

00:15:16.900 more like marketing for the product than some kind of beneficent tool do you remember back

00:15:23.800 during the crypto and NFT craze when so many celebrities were essentially making what I

00:15:29.580 suspected were undisclosed ads for cryptocurrency and NFTs. I want to bring this up because I'm

00:15:35.840 getting a little bit of a whiff of that now. I could be wrong. I don't have any kind of

00:15:40.800 inside information. This is just my sense. Something about this has the whiff of an

00:15:46.900 undisclosed ad to me that maybe money has changed hands maybe an investment has been made somewhere

00:15:55.260 or in a portfolio and now some celebrities have gotten the message or the memo that i need to get

00:16:02.760 women specifically involved in ai i just i'm just sensing this coordinated push to sell ai to women

00:16:09.100 it does feel a little bit like a like a setup for a one-two punch of like oh here's this problem we

00:16:14.020 have to give AI to women, wouldn't it be surprising if down the road there was some kind of program

00:16:24.300 or funding opportunity or, yeah, products to be sold to meet that need? Wouldn't that just be

00:16:32.000 surprising? Let's keep our heads on a swivel on this one. And I will say that the research

00:16:38.180 about women and AI.

00:16:40.520 Reese isn't totally wrong.

00:16:41.820 It is true that women are using AI 0.99

00:16:43.580 less than men in workplaces. 0.74

00:16:45.980 We did an entire episode 0.76

00:16:47.340 digging into the research on why this is.

00:16:49.580 We'll put in the show notes.

00:16:50.940 But the too long didn't read version 1.00

00:16:52.600 is that I don't think that women

00:16:54.840 are embracing AI less

00:16:56.240 because we're too timid

00:16:58.020 or we don't know how 1.00

00:16:59.760 or we're too stupid to figure it out. 0.99

00:17:02.360 I think that we are being skeptical 1.00

00:17:05.280 and cautious and judicious

00:17:07.640 and I don't necessarily get down

00:17:10.220 with kind of automatically framing that as a bad thing.

00:17:13.800 So we'll put that episode in the show notes,

00:17:15.500 but yeah, let us know what you think.

00:17:20.880 Let's take a quick break.

00:17:28.400 Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

00:17:31.160 there's a lot of suspense.

00:17:32.620 Will they finally eat the veggies?

00:17:34.100 Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:17:35.920 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:17:40.220 And will you finish Episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

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00:18:27.980 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality

00:18:32.000 welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:18:38.800 part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks

00:18:42.760 Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo,

00:18:47.540 and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations

00:18:51.740 everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:18:57.160 From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

00:19:02.000 nothing is off the table.

00:19:03.640 It's like if you can hide some real messages

00:19:06.540 inside compelling characters,

00:19:09.240 then that is a Trojan horse.

00:19:11.120 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

00:19:13.300 smart pop culture conversations,

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00:19:20.340 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:19:23.300 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:19:26.260 See you between the pages.

00:19:28.400 When I was 14 years old,

00:19:30.580 I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:19:34.260 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring

00:19:36.860 how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:19:40.600 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:19:44.300 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear 0.96

00:19:48.960 saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:19:52.400 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.97

00:19:56.620 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt,

00:19:59.980 he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed

00:20:06.040 and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But

00:20:13.060 these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to

00:20:18.340 make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

00:20:24.620 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:20:29.980 and we're back

00:20:34.920 we have talked about flock a handful of times on the podcast never anything good according to

00:20:44.680 the research that i did for this segment people are like oh well there's been crimes that flock

00:20:49.400 has helped solve like violent crimes that flock has helped solve i'm not doubting that but the

00:20:54.880 stories that I have heard about flock being used for some absolutely gnarly surveillance stuff

00:21:01.480 is very upsetting. And that's another one of these stories. And so just imagine for a moment,

00:21:07.140 if you will, a security camera being put outside of your kid's gymnastics class or

00:21:14.080 inside the pool where your kid swims. Now imagine that a sales employee at a private tech company,

00:21:22.020 somebody that you've never heard of, a stranger, in a city that you don't live in, is watching a

00:21:27.620 live feed of that camera for hours and then coming back later to watch the pool. That is not a

00:21:36.000 hypothetical situation. That is something that is going on in Dunwoody, Georgia, where a parent

00:21:42.040 named Jason Hanyar says that he found buried in audit logs after filing a public records request

00:21:49.160 with Dunwoody, his city. And now all of this is at the center of a fight that is playing out in

00:21:55.600 city council meetings across the country over Flock. So that name Flock sounds familiar. We

00:22:01.860 talked about it in a story about a woman who was falsely accused of stealing Amazon packages from

00:22:07.420 someone's doorstep because a Flock camera essentially just caught her driving into the city.

00:22:12.900 Another story where Flock cameras were used to track down a woman who police suspected of having

00:22:18.380 had an abortion, and they used Flock cameras to track down her license plate. So Flock basically

00:22:24.960 is this company that sells automated license plate readers, which is basically this code for

00:22:30.440 surveillance cameras, to local police departments. They have over 80,000 cameras in their network

00:22:35.660 across the country, and what makes them particularly attractive to police is that all of those cameras

00:22:41.540 are connected. A police department in Dunwoody, Georgia, can search plates that were spotted

00:22:46.860 all the way in Chicago or Toledo or any other place that Flock has a presence.

00:22:52.920 So it sounds like Dunwoody, Georgia, was an early adopter of Flock.

00:22:57.500 They're a city that really sort of bills itself as tech-enabled.

00:23:02.120 They're kind of amenable to new technology.

00:23:05.800 The city built an entire real-time crime center around Flock's technology.

00:23:10.340 They spent $360,000 on this Flock facility itself and close to half a million dollars

00:23:16.860 a year on Flock's network. So in Dunwoody, it's not just police cameras, but cameras that are

00:23:25.560 owned by local businesses as well that are on this network. Which brings us to that parent that I

00:23:30.620 mentioned, Jason Hunyar. So he's a Dunwoody resident and a parent who basically just doesn't

00:23:36.360 want Flock in his community. So he started filing open records requests after the city's contract 0.90

00:23:41.980 was Block came up for renewal. And he got back these audit logs, which were records of who had

00:23:48.480 been able to access the city's camera network, when they were able to access it, and what exactly

00:23:54.220 they looked at. And what he found is, let's just call it alarming. For starters, the city had been

00:24:01.200 telling residents that only two neighboring police departments in Brookhaven and Chamblee could view

00:24:07.560 these live cameras, but the logs that he found suggested otherwise. According to his analysis,

00:24:13.660 over 1,200 external agencies have been granted permission to view the live streams from Dunwoody

00:24:18.760 cameras since the start of 2025 alone. Now, one thing that I should note is that he was careful

00:24:25.160 to say that the logs that he found represented changes logged in the system, so not necessarily

00:24:31.960 confirmed viewings. The audit logs that he got were a record of access permissions that were

00:24:37.680 granted to outside agencies. So not necessarily when those agencies actually logged in and actually

00:24:43.200 watched footage. So that 1,271 number reflects agencies that were given the ability to view

00:24:49.960 live streams, not agencies that definitely did sit down and view those streams. Does that make sense?

00:24:56.320 It does make sense. And it's an important distinction, but, you know, when somebody has

00:25:00.920 access and it sounds like they didn't have great record keeping of who wasn't watching so

00:25:08.980 you know once people have access it's who knows what they might do with it yeah so it's not even

00:25:16.080 necessarily the question of whether or not people were actually sitting down and looking at this

00:25:21.540 footage it said it was the access was granted at that scale without any kind of public knowledge

00:25:26.700 it gets even worse because there's this uh jcc a jewish community center the marcus jewish

00:25:33.240 community center i don't know if every city has jccs we have them here in dc but they're basically

00:25:37.800 like a rec center and a gym uh folks can go there and work out they usually have like pickleball

00:25:43.200 courts or tennis courts sometimes they have you know pools for kids and like daycares and things

00:25:49.440 like that. It's basically a community center. So the Marcus JCC had cameras on Phlox network,

00:25:56.500 and critically, these cameras were labeled do not share. Hanyar says that he found that those

00:26:02.560 feeds were shared with outside agencies anyway, even though they were labeled do not share.

00:26:07.460 So when he raised it with the chief of police, that sharing appeared to be removed, but he

00:26:12.180 couldn't figure out who made that change. And the user who made the change does not appear anywhere

00:26:16.960 in the system's own user log.

00:26:18.860 So that's pretty curious.

00:26:20.680 And probably one of the biggest deals to me here

00:26:23.720 is that Flock's own employees,

00:26:26.100 so not police, not city staff,

00:26:28.460 but unelected salespeople

00:26:30.740 and business development managers at Flock

00:26:33.360 had owner-level access

00:26:35.240 to Dunwoody's entire camera network,

00:26:38.380 and you better believe they were using that access.

00:26:42.940 He says that he identified

00:26:43.840 a business development manager in Raleigh

00:26:46.060 who, according to the logs, clicked through five traffic cameras before landing on the Dunwoody

00:26:51.740 library camera. And then he didn't look at anything else for two hours. Two days later,

00:26:57.540 that same employee pulled up cameras at that Jewish community center. He browsed through

00:27:03.420 cameras showing a baseball field, a gym, and then settled on the main pool camera.

00:27:08.980 three and a half hours then passed before his next login.

00:27:14.220 Then there's a VP at Flock, someone in strategic relations and business development,

00:27:18.700 who he says accessed the camera system 185 times in just over a year.

00:27:24.200 On one occasion, his single view that day was the gymnastics room at the JCC.

00:27:30.040 So again, I just want to be clear that I'm not saying,

00:27:33.880 And I don't think that this parent is saying that, you know, anything, I don't think that he's making any kind of allegations, but that is, but according to these logs, this is what happened.

00:27:46.020 And so like, I mean, I'll make allegations, explain yourself, like what possible reason could there be for a sales executive to be viewing a gymnastics room at a effect, you know, at a community center where kids hang out?

00:28:03.880 Like, I feel that's a pretty reasonable question to put to them.

00:28:08.800 Like, what possible reason could there be?

00:28:11.080 Well, I can answer that for you because Hanyar shared all of this with the city council.

00:28:15.780 And Flock's public position is that their employees only access customer systems for

00:28:20.480 technical support.

00:28:21.500 But he points out that the audit logs don't capture how long someone watches, only when

00:28:26.460 they started watching.

00:28:27.340 So there's really no way to say what they saw and how for how long they saw it.

00:28:31.920 So, yeah, their position is like, oh, we're watching the girls gymnastics studio for technical support to provide you a better service.

00:28:42.360 I'd love to see like the ticket that was put in that prompted this support call, unless their technicians are just like have so much time on their hands that they're just randomly spot checking every camera in the system.

00:28:56.980 If they're doing technical support, like what what are they supporting in a technical way?

00:29:01.920 Your daughter at the pool.

00:29:03.540 That's what they're supporting in a technical way.

00:29:06.760 Yeah, I mean, it sounds pretty creepy.

00:29:09.220 I guess I don't know who was doing what,

00:29:11.400 but the portrait that's painted by these logs

00:29:14.100 is a pretty creepy one.

00:29:15.560 So this is actually pretty interesting.

00:29:17.540 Flock, their defenders, and the company itself,

00:29:20.100 they argue that they are being singled out

00:29:22.320 partly because they are more transparent

00:29:24.880 than their competitors.

00:29:26.400 And that is kind of true.

00:29:28.640 Like, they have a public transparency portal.

00:29:31.500 They do cooperate somewhat with security researchers up to a point.

00:29:36.280 Other companies like Motorola or Axon run similar networks, and they've mostly avoided

00:29:42.540 this kind of scrutiny because they're harder to audit and a little bit less transparent.

00:29:47.280 But Hunyar's records really do suggest that Flock's own auditing process has pretty big

00:29:53.260 gaps.

00:29:53.700 So they have issues like users not appearing in the official logs or the fact that an account

00:29:59.020 called auto-approved that shared Dunwoody's data with outside agencies nearly 2,000 times

00:30:05.120 with no kind of human review or oversight, or the fact that multi-factor authentication

00:30:10.880 was disabled for users by Flock employees. Then there's also the question of immigration,

00:30:16.700 because reporting from 404 Media found that local police around the country have used Flock's

00:30:21.500 network to assist in federal immigration enforcement, even in cities that have policies

00:30:25.860 against cooperating with ICE. Dunwoody's own police chief acknowledged that an agency connected

00:30:31.000 to ICE could potentially search their database. So I guess, to your point earlier, it makes me

00:30:39.000 sad that there are people who believe that this level of surveillance would be, let alone would

00:30:47.080 be effective, but would be a reasonable price to pay if it made you feel safer, if it happened.

00:30:54.120 And, you know, like I can always speak for myself, even if this kind of surveillance did solve a crime or two, to me, this is not this is not a reasonable exchange.

00:31:06.720 Having it be like any stranger can access the cameras outside of the pool, outside of the gym and all of that where your kids go.

00:31:14.040 That is not a reasonable exchange, even if it did happen to solve a crime or two, which, to be honest, I'm not even I haven't even really seen compelling evidence towards that.

00:31:22.960 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I it just feels like privacy is valued, not at all in these kinds of discussions. And that's just crazy, because I feel like if you actually talked with most people like, hey, do you think it's cool for some creep at a tech company thousand miles away to just like creep on your kid anytime they want?

00:31:49.060 They would say no, right? Like they would probably be willing to pay money to prevent that exact thing because they value their privacy and the privacy of their loved ones. And yet somehow Flock has been able to convince police departments and communities around the country that actually it's fine and privacy is worthless.

00:32:12.600 Yeah, I completely agree. And I also think there's something going on where I think there's a dynamic where your kids being creeped on by flock staff is not bad, but somebody from out of town coming and committing a crime, that's the only thing you need to be worried.

00:32:37.920 But I think it's like a like a mental dynamic about what is or is not crime or what is or is not bad.

00:32:45.000 I think it's like, yeah, if these grown man strangers have unprecedented access to intimate spaces where you and your kids are every single day and you have no public insight or knowledge or transparency into it, that's actually fine.

00:32:59.380 What you got to be worried about is creeps from out of town coming in and bad guys.

00:33:03.920 You know what I mean?

00:33:04.880 Yeah, bad guys.

00:33:06.000 it's fine for the good guys to have this kind of access they're good guys but

00:33:10.380 we got to keep a close eye on those bad guys so dunwoody has now postponed renewing its flock

00:33:18.300 contract twice at the last city council meeting honey are the parent who underwent this open

00:33:24.880 records request to get all of these logs showed up in person and personally offered to help pay

00:33:30.720 for an independent security and ethics audit

00:33:32.920 before the city signs anything new.

00:33:35.400 And his argument, I think, is pretty simple.

00:33:37.540 You cannot open a barbershop or a restaurant in town

00:33:40.700 without a safety inspection.

00:33:43.040 Why should Flock, a company with cameras

00:33:45.200 who are watching your kid's gymnastics class,

00:33:47.680 be any different than somebody trying to open a restaurant

00:33:50.180 or a barbershop?

00:33:51.660 He provided meticulous copies of all of these logs

00:33:54.840 that he got from this audit in his sub stack,

00:33:57.000 and we'll put the link to that in the show notes.

00:33:59.200 It's a pretty in-depth read.

00:34:00.720 Yeah, it sounds like he really put a lot of time and effort into this.

00:34:05.100 I really respect the commitment to going after these guys.

00:34:10.900 Speaking of going after guys, this is a little bit of a tough one.

00:34:16.060 Huge, big trigger warning up top.

00:34:19.180 This is a very upsetting story involving sexual assault.

00:34:24.360 And it's not a new story.

00:34:28.480 It's a story that I think I think I had put it in the outline to talk about a few weeks ago.

00:34:35.060 I'll just be honest and say it was a story that I had a lot of trouble with.

00:34:37.900 And we I think we we didn't discuss it because it was so rough and it's kind of been making the rounds again.

00:34:46.940 So I thought like, well, this is a story that we have to talk about.

00:34:50.280 But yeah, so I just want to own up top that this is not a new story when it was new.

00:34:56.080 I didn't really feel up to covering it, but now that it's back again, we can get into it.

00:35:01.160 So by now, most of y'all have heard of the story of Giselle Pellico. She was a woman in France who

00:35:07.100 had been being drugged by her husband for nearly a decade and assaulted by dozens of men that he

00:35:14.160 would recruit online. Her husband also abused his daughter, Caroline. It was one of the most

00:35:21.480 shocking trials and recent memory. And when it ended, I think a lot of people just assumed that

00:35:27.580 story was over. The website where her husband had been recruiting men was shut down. And I think a

00:35:35.040 lot of people just were like, okay, case closed, justice served, moved on. But this new investigation

00:35:40.920 from CNN called Exposing a Global Rape Army really exposes the sort of ongoing online

00:35:50.960 infrastructure that allows men to encourage one another to drug and assault the women in their

00:35:57.120 lives and to swap tips on how they can get away with it. And this CNN investigation, it's a very,

00:36:06.380 very deep dive. I'll put it in the show notes, but like, again, huge trigger warning. You have

00:36:10.900 to actually click through a few times to get to the story because it's so upsetting. This CNN

00:36:16.780 investigation really suggests that we moved on too quickly and really saw this as an isolated

00:36:23.200 case, when in reality, it is a much broader problem than perhaps we would like to admit.

00:36:30.220 So the CNN team, as equals, spent months investigating what they describe as this

00:36:35.560 hidden online ecosystem where men are giving advice to each other about drugging and assaulting

00:36:40.480 their partners, and they coach each other about how they can avoid getting caught. They found that

00:36:45.060 it is not really a small fringe phenomenon like on the deep dark web. Some of it is, but a lot of it

00:36:52.100 is on mainstream platforms in basically plain sight, racking up hundreds and thousands of views.

00:37:00.140 So their investigation centered around this site called motherless.com, which describes itself as,

00:37:05.860 quote, a moral free file host where anything legal is hosted forever. Motherless gets around

00:37:12.260 62 million visits a month and its core audience is here in the US. CNN found more than 20,000

00:37:18.320 videos in a specific category on the site organized with tags that signal a woman is

00:37:24.240 unconscious or asleep. And some of those individual videos of women who these tags

00:37:29.680 suggests are unconscious or asleep, have over 50,000 views. So inside the communities that are

00:37:38.400 sort of built to spring up around this kind of content, people are not just passively watching

00:37:44.980 it. They're also talking and communicating and kind of like building a brotherhood with each

00:37:51.920 other. They share methods. They talk about dosages of how to knock women out. One user even claimed

00:37:58.900 to be running a business shipping what he called, quote, sleeping liquids to addresses around the

00:38:06.400 world. CNN even found evidence of men live streaming assaults to paying viewers with

00:38:11.260 cryptocurrency being used to keep those transactions anonymous. So the piece really

00:38:16.300 centers around the stories of three different survivors who, you know, the details of what

00:38:22.360 they went through with their partners are different, but they all have like very similar

00:38:28.080 broad stroke. So there's one woman in Devon, England, who found out in 2018 that her husband

00:38:33.260 of 16 years had been giving her a cup of tea every night that was drugged and assaulting her

00:38:40.020 while she was sleeping for years. She says that one day they were getting ready for church and

00:38:45.660 her husband just sat her down and admitted this. This little detail I found to be so heartbreaking,

00:38:51.280 which was that after this she was really left questioning all of her in all of the like intimate

00:38:58.620 little quiet moments that she had with her husband she says quote at the end of a very busy day I was

00:39:05.400 just grateful I had a cup of tea before I went to bed because I was so tired and I didn't have to

00:39:09.980 make it you don't expect anything other than innocence to come from your partner and it just

00:39:15.280 made me so sad that she was like thought that this was like a nice intimate nightly gesture

00:39:22.400 and why why would you question it because this is someone that you're married to and that you

00:39:27.500 are have you have like trained yourself to not question the sweet intimate moments that happen

00:39:34.240 in your relationship in your own home it's very dark i mean that's the sort of thing that

00:39:41.220 you might imagine in a movie or something you know just the betrayal of it that's exactly what

00:39:49.680 she said that that for her the hardest part was not the abuse itself it was rebuilding that sense

00:39:56.660 of reality afterward after going through somebody something like that and being betrayed in that way

00:40:01.600 she said you don't worry about who it is that you lie next to right like this idea that i mean kind

00:40:08.340 of like what we were saying before like you as women we often are thinking about you know

00:40:15.640 or at least told to be thinking about external threats like bad guys in dark alleys but like

00:40:22.480 the reality is sometimes the threat is lying next to you in bed sometimes the threat is the person

00:40:28.660 that you marry sometimes the threat is in your same house like giving you a cup of tea every

00:40:32.080 night. Another woman they spoke to in Wigan in Northwest England said that she spent years

00:40:37.980 waking up disoriented with no memory of how she had fallen asleep, but with physical signs that

00:40:43.860 something had happened to her. When she confronted her partner, he basically just gaslighted her. He

00:40:49.000 told her that she was imagining it, that she was on too much medication and hallucinating it,

00:40:54.420 that she was, in her words, mental or crazy. She actually credits Giselle Pellico's story

00:41:00.760 and public testimony with giving her the courage to speak out.

00:41:04.200 And now she's basically become this, like, advocate to raise awareness

00:41:09.460 to encourage other women to just trust their instincts,

00:41:12.460 like when something doesn't feel right or something feels wrong,

00:41:14.640 to trust that instinct.

00:41:16.240 They spoke to a third survivor in Northern Italy

00:41:19.160 who only discovered what had happened to her

00:41:21.800 when she said that she found videos that her husband had made.

00:41:25.080 Her husband was actually sentenced to eight years in prison.

00:41:28.440 And years later, she told CNN, no matter how much you brush it off, it's always right there beside you.

00:41:35.560 So just the piece includes like a video breakout of each survivor.

00:41:42.940 We'll put it in the show notes, but again, it's very dark.

00:41:45.140 The whole piece is worth reading for sure.

00:41:50.700 Let's take a quick break.

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00:42:58.360 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived,

00:43:05.020 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:43:10.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:43:14.300 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:43:19.720 shut up, don't say anything.

00:43:22.400 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:43:26.580 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:43:31.360 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:43:36.120 and I just started screaming.

00:43:38.440 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:43:42.900 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:43:46.360 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:43:49.960 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:43:58.420 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:44:03.400 This 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.

00:44:16.820 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:44:23.800 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:44:27.060 from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments

00:44:31.960 nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:44:38.500 characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart

00:44:43.780 pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much

00:44:48.540 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:44:55.000 you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. And we're back.

00:45:07.280 So we're talking about the CNN piece about the so-called online rape academies, where men swap

00:45:13.380 tips on how they can assault their sleeping or drugged partners and what a pervasive problem

00:45:18.800 it actually is. So why does this keep happening? So in the piece, CNN spoke to experts who sort

00:45:25.640 of pointed to a few different reasons why this is such a pervasive problem. The first is that

00:45:32.460 the drugs being used have really changed. Perpetrators are increasingly using common

00:45:38.220 medications that really act fast and then don't leave a lot of traces of them in the body. So it

00:45:43.820 makes it harder to prosecute cases like this than it would if they were using what we used to call

00:45:49.640 like quote date rape drugs of the past. Like that's not what is being used here. The drugs

00:45:55.900 being used have really changed. Second is just that reporting rates are understandably extremely

00:46:01.740 low because a lot of the victims that this happens to don't even necessarily remember that it

00:46:07.600 And so even if they might sense that something is wrong, they might face disbelief, including in a lot of these cases, disbelief from the police who are meant to be helping them.

00:46:20.900 One of the victims that they spoke to told CNN that she actually brought video evidence of her passed out or asleep being assaulted by her partner and that the police told her that that was not going to be usable as evidence because it looked like in the video that she was just pretending to be assaulted.

00:46:37.600 sleep and we really did see that a lot in the pelico case that the men who participated in this

00:46:44.540 they they i mean in their testimony they talked about like i i assume that she had to be playing

00:46:53.120 some sort of a game that she was in on it or wanted it in some way and it sounds like that

00:46:58.820 is like a pervasive attitude of like oh well even though i'm being confronted with video even though

00:47:04.020 I'm a police officer and I'm being confronted with video evidence of you being assaulted,

00:47:08.280 certainly you're just pretending to be asleep and actually are not being assaulted at all.

00:47:12.660 It's consensual. There's also an algorithmic component to why this is such a pervasive

00:47:18.200 problem as well. You know, I don't think anybody listening is any stranger to the idea that some

00:47:24.780 forms of pornography have sort of normalized violence against women as entertainment. And then

00:47:32.840 we know that algorithms favor increasingly extreme content and and push that exploitative material

00:47:42.020 into the mainstream that's just like a thing that we know about how online content works and so

00:47:47.680 that's another kind of like pervasive part of it is it's like people are seeing more of it and that

00:47:53.660 content and it kind of becomes like what is normalized and then i think another bit here

00:47:58.920 is the is the sort of brotherhood angle that I talked about earlier. CNN spoke to Sandrine

00:48:04.560 Jasso, who was a French lawmaker, who, after being drugged by a former French senator,

00:48:09.420 has, again, become an advocate and campaigned to raise awareness about drug facilitated sexual

00:48:14.540 abuse. She basically says these she calls these schools of violence, saying, quote,

00:48:20.340 I would even call them an online rape academy where every subject is taught. 0.98

00:48:24.320 There are all the subjects and disciplines needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator. And so it seems like from the piece that there's a dynamic around this that links the men together in a kind of dark brotherhood.

00:48:38.860 they have like a shared secret and that that also is one of the reasons why this can be so

00:48:43.740 pervasive is that like it's not just men committing crimes solo it's men creating the world's most 0.88

00:48:53.140 fucked up community around committing such horrible acts and like that can be a kind of

00:48:58.780 self-sustaining uh issue as well and then lastly and this is the the bit that i think cnn really

00:49:06.000 drills into the hardest is that the platforms hosting the content have largely avoided

00:49:12.280 accountability. The piece reads, motherless.com has avoided being targeted for the type of content

00:49:17.920 posted on its site due to U.S. safe harbor protections that largely shield platform owners

00:49:22.660 from direct liability for their users' uploads. This creates spaces where men like Pelico can

00:49:28.340 operate behind a veil of anonymity, their abuses too often invisible despite being plotted in

00:49:33.580 plain sight. In the UK, the regulator Ofcom investigated Motherless.com not because of its

00:49:39.380 content, but for a paperwork issue. And that investigation was closed after the company just

00:49:44.240 filed the correct forms. During the trial against her husband, Giselle Pelico said that

00:49:50.160 something that really stuck with me, which is that the shame must change sides. It's a little

00:49:54.920 bit complicated because, as I said earlier, her daughter was also a victim of her father's abuse.

00:50:02.520 And that's something that her mother does not acknowledge.

00:50:05.980 And so like, I just want to own that Giselle is saying this to me, like incredibly powerful

00:50:11.340 statement about shame needing to change sides while her daughter says like, well, I continue

00:50:16.820 to be stigmatized for speaking up about what I experienced also.

00:50:20.640 But I think that is right on its face, right?

00:50:24.280 Like the women who spoke to CNN for this investigation, they all said the same thing, that this is

00:50:31.180 is not being taken seriously, whether it's not being taken seriously by the platforms,

00:50:35.460 by the laws, by the lawmakers, by police, that like this thing is happening. It's happening

00:50:41.240 in dark corners of the internet, but also essentially in plain sight and nothing is

00:50:46.440 being done. And so we'll, again, we'll link to the entire piece in the show notes. It is a rough

00:50:51.820 read, but these women coming forward are so brave and so powerful that I think we should be honoring

00:50:57.840 their stories well after that i think maybe you could use a little bit of good news yeah i could

00:51:05.360 definitely use a little bit of a pick me up did something good happen all right so i read this

00:51:10.100 piece the new york times that i can't i'm like i was i'm like smiling from ear to ear as i think

00:51:15.780 about it so women in nigeria are loving steamy romance novels and the new york times has this

00:51:22.300 great piece about how the women who write these novels disseminate their steamy writing to get

00:51:29.000 around the country's censors. The piece reads, quote, for decades, northern Nigeria has been

00:51:35.160 home to a booming industry of romance novels written in Hausa by and for women. But in a

00:51:41.920 region that operates under a dual legal system where Sharia law exists alongside secular courts

00:51:47.220 to strictly regulate public morality.

00:51:50.040 Steemier stories are deemed immoral.

00:51:52.640 Some books have been publicly burned by zealous officials.

00:51:56.580 So, against this backdrop, 1.00

00:51:58.720 what are these women who want to write steamy romance stories doing? 1.00

00:52:04.100 Well, a new wave of writers is putting out much more explicit and graphic content 1.00

00:52:09.400 and releasing it in installments on WhatsApp,

00:52:12.500 where religious authorities and government censors

00:52:14.360 basically can't do anything about it because it's a closed network.

00:52:18.520 And since those regulators and censors are really zeroed in on print writing,

00:52:24.440 and so they're like, hey, I'm not publishing a book.

00:52:27.060 I'm just publishing my stuff on WhatsApp.

00:52:28.700 They basically are untouchable. 1.00

00:52:30.780 A lot of these women writers have to hide their identities 1.00

00:52:33.960 to avoid getting in trouble with the morality of police. 1.00

00:52:36.760 But The Times spoke to one woman romance writer who goes by the name Om Hiran,

00:52:42.220 who is proud to be a writer of erotica and she says that it sounds like her smut writing has

00:52:49.260 basically turned her into a celebrity in her small village in nigeria that like she's like oh women

00:52:55.060 and girls come up to me and they're like i want to be like you i want to write just like you and

00:52:58.720 she's she is like a celeb in her village so the times spoke to this writer and she says they say

00:53:05.660 that we're helping spoil culture and religion in society but i see erotic writing as vital in

00:53:10.920 society. That's what's happening. So through writing, people learn about it.

00:53:14.800 CIS has built up a whole financial and tech infrastructure built around WhatsApp. So the

00:53:21.600 Times writes that writers like her hook readers with free chapters in huge WhatsApp groups,

00:53:27.500 dropping a paywall at cliffhangers. To read on, fans must use mobile money to buy temporary

00:53:33.140 book-specific groups, which are shut down once the serialization is complete. Paying more guarantees

00:53:39.100 faster updates, while an expensive special woman tier delivers chapters via private message for 0.94

00:53:45.560 ultimate privacy. Vendors pay 6,500 NARA, or $4.70 a week, to advertise their wares, including

00:53:55.000 lingerie, aphrodisiacs, and kitchenware in the group. This is exactly what you were just talking

00:54:01.780 about, this idea that people are going to find a way. We have this attitude that, oh, everybody's

00:54:07.520 going along with the program. No, people want women want to read their romance and like sell 0.99

00:54:12.500 their lingerie. And, you know, I don't know, like leave it to a woman who wants to sell or read 1.00

00:54:18.800 smut to figure out some sort of a tech workaround that the government can't touch. 1.00

00:54:24.180 Yeah. And not just a workaround, but like you said, it sounds like she's built a whole 1.00

00:54:27.620 infrastructure of like a financial ecosystem within just WhatsApp. It's pretty impressive.

00:54:34.880 So her biggest hit book is called Gidon Uncle, which came out in 2019. More than 55,000 people read it on Wattpad, which is like a fan fiction storytelling site, and then likely an additional 20,000 plus people on WhatsApp.

00:54:50.400 So unfortunately, she did have to go before the morality police, who told her that she needed to make her writing less erotic.

00:54:58.500 But then she was like, aha, you've outed yourself.

00:55:01.820 She says, they told me I was committing a very big sin, she said, laughing.

00:55:06.380 She shot back, how could they know that unless they were also reading her books?

00:55:12.740 Got them.

00:55:13.580 so it really sounds like a climate that it's all about control and like cracking down on things

00:55:21.640 the times spoke about how this one children's book was banned and the guy who heads up the

00:55:28.280 censorship board impounded 55 000 copies of this children's book which is like a rhyming book for

00:55:34.720 kids called queen premiere the second so this is the verse that got this children's book banned

00:55:40.340 Ben and Tom may jump in the hay. Is this the way? Yes, let us be gay. The New York Times knows the

00:55:47.560 book was published in the late 19th century when the word gay was meant to use to say happy.

00:55:53.260 But that passage got the book banned. And so this guy who runs the censorship board made it pretty 0.84

00:56:00.540 clear that the whole thing is about control, that he understands that he cannot control what these

00:56:06.680 women are doing and reading and exchanging on whatsapp so what the hell we're gonna impound

00:56:12.520 these very benign kids books that include these like not controversial at all rhymes because you 0.89

00:56:19.640 got you gotta ban something right yeah you gotta ban something otherwise you just look weak weak

00:56:24.460 on books weak on books just like the pope is soft on crime this guy doesn't want to look weak on

00:56:30.340 books so he told the times that when it came to social media and online content like the erotic

00:56:35.880 writers he understands the board has very little power quote there are things that you just have

00:56:41.700 to overlook but at least you can control the little you have which i feel like is so telling

00:56:47.040 it sounds like a very self-aware morality police head of censorship which is such a strange concept 1.00

00:56:59.460 yes yeah shout out to these nigerian smut queens yeah right in we'll we'll promote your smut right 0.99

00:57:08.680 here on the show oh i'm i am like a voracious reader of smut i will like drop a what let me 0.91

00:57:15.260 in the whatsapp group i will like star your i will give you a starred review

00:57:19.480 more after a quick break

00:57:29.460 behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they finally eat

00:57:36.860 the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty half full or

00:57:42.500 come home at all and will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers

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00:58:29.140 That's 844-844-IHEART. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your

00:58:34.780 personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:58:42.180 part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks

00:58:46.120 Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo,

00:58:50.700 and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations

00:58:55.120 everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.

00:59:00.680 From best-selling authors and your favorite BookTok creators to the latest pop culture

00:59:04.600 moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:59:11.660 characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

00:59:16.380 smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,

00:59:22.020 you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:59:26.660 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

00:59:31.740 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived,

00:59:38.520 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:59:44.060 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:59:47.680 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:59:53.100 shut up, don't say anything.

00:59:55.860 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:59:59.980 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

01:00:04.760 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

01:00:11.820 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

01:00:16.280 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

01:00:19.720 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:00:23.360 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:00:37.680 Let's get right back into it.

01:00:41.820 okay mike can we close out with me being a little bit bitchy 0.85

01:00:48.740 uh i believe that we can i've seen it before you're like i believe in your ability to be 0.98

01:00:55.620 a little bitchy i've seen it in action okay who has you uh wanting to be a little bitchy tonight 0.63

01:01:03.040 it's lauren sanchez did you read the piece in the new york times i did read that piece in the new 0.83

01:01:10.240 York Times. What a strange world we live in that that very long piece was written in the New York

01:01:17.740 Times. So the Times has this piece called Someone Has to Be Happy. Why not Lauren Sanchez Bezos?

01:01:27.660 As half of the unfathomably powerful couple, Miss Sanchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber 1.00

01:01:33.220 rich to stop apologizing and to start enjoying themselves. Side note, when were the rich not

01:01:39.840 enjoying themselves like we have like what is this reality where like the rich have just been

01:01:46.080 like really downtrodden and like pretending not to have a good time what are they talking about

01:01:52.300 you know what it reminded me of do you remember when occupy wall street was happening which

01:01:56.900 i believe was like 2012 so i guess it was a while ago but there were all these stories that kept

01:02:03.640 coming out about how the very wealthy like couldn't drive around in limousines anymore

01:02:11.060 and if they were going to step out of their limousine they might be yelled at and this was

01:02:20.800 so cruel and unfair to the extremely wealthy do you remember those stories i do remember it i also

01:02:27.340 So, I mean, I was a participant of Occupy Wall Street, and I remember images of wealthy people from penthouse balconies.

01:02:37.000 I'll see if I can find someone put them in the show notes.

01:02:38.840 You can Google this.

01:02:39.580 But like the optics could not have been more like a man draped in furs, drinking champagne as he looks down on the peons below, marching in the streets.

01:02:54.140 Standing next to Mr. Peanut up on that balcony with his monocle.

01:02:57.340 like base basically that basically that so this piece it's first of all it's very long

01:03:06.060 second of all it says nothing like the i i i looked up the i was like who even was tasked

01:03:15.060 with writing this it's amy chozek she seems to be the writer when it's like when you gotta humanize

01:03:21.380 a rich lady you go with amy she's the best she wrote the very splashy profile of elizabeth holmes

01:03:29.960 from seranos when remember the the like rebrand oh yeah the sorry like that rebrand they put amy

01:03:37.180 on it they had to go for the best it's amy okay so she's got a beat yes it is this rich lady isn't 0.61

01:03:46.420 so bad? Yeah. Here are some reasons that she's just like us. I don't believe a goddamn word of 1.00

01:03:52.520 this. Okay. Let me just read this to you. There is no way this is true. She and Mr. Bezos do 0.99

01:03:58.240 everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around six and their new

01:04:02.520 roughly $230 million compound on Indian Lake, an exclusive private island in Miami, often called

01:04:08.900 the billionaire bunker. That part is true. No trouble believing that. They do not touch their

01:04:13.520 phones instead they begin each day by listing 10 things they're grateful for and they can't repeat

01:04:19.740 what they named the day before bogus not true just does that that's like when you ask when someone

01:04:25.900 is like what is your morning routine i'm like well i wake up i don't touch my phone for a full hour i

01:04:31.480 do some light stretching i have some lemon water i do my morning pages as i reflect and when as soon

01:04:37.600 as you hear someone say that you're like i think this person's lying yeah like maybe some of those

01:04:43.240 things happened once yeah this is not what you do every day i my as i read my eyes rolled so far

01:04:52.880 back in my head i worried they were going to get stuck the article goes on to describe the ways

01:04:58.840 that jeff bezos has changed since meeting lauren sanchez you might remember that when they were

01:05:05.460 first engaging with each other we got copies of their text messages while they were married by

01:05:11.580 the way and uh bezos to lauren sanchez was like you alive girl you you you like basically it's

01:05:20.640 like clear that lauren sanchez was sort of his like you know lively thing compared to his

01:05:28.420 boring old wife who just supported him through starting a company and gives money to

01:05:35.000 philanthropic causes boo boring so they're definitely seeding the like jeff bezos is

01:05:42.820 stylish and youthful and happy now that he's married to lauren sanchez the article describes

01:05:48.800 bezos 2.0 as quote a man who has discovered joy love and cosmetic dermatology

01:05:55.600 i do like that they got in like that little dig and a couple others here and there so this is

01:06:02.800 Again, I think this is one of those articles where if you read between the lines, the cracks

01:06:06.880 are showing.

01:06:07.380 The article claims that they both rely on each other for advice on everything.

01:06:12.520 Warren gives an example of how Jeff suggested that she change the cover of the illustration

01:06:17.360 of her children's book about a dyslexic fly that goes on an adventure.

01:06:21.680 No examples are provided of her providing counsel on the way that he runs Amazon or

01:06:28.200 the Washington Post.

01:06:29.880 Later in the article, when she's asked about widespread layoffs at the Post, which her

01:06:35.680 husband owns and micromanages to his political and economic benefit, she said, I don't make

01:06:41.800 those business decisions, so I can't really answer them.

01:06:44.440 I thought you guys rely on advice with each other.

01:06:47.380 Side note, there is a very interesting lawsuit about whether or not Lauren Sanchez stole

01:06:53.920 that book idea from her best friend.

01:06:55.900 And the only outlet that has it is Daily Mail. So like, take it with like a zillion grains of salt. The falling out with her best friend began at a party wherein the best Lawrence, everyone knew that Lauren Sanchez's thing was doing a specific dance to that Black Eyed Peas song. Boom, boom, pow.

01:07:16.520 like that like she was like she was like that everybody knew that was my thing and that she

01:07:20.140 got into an argument with her best friend over who danced better to black eyed peas as boom boom pow 1.00

01:07:25.820 at a party and that began the falling out between these two women that ended in a lawsuit over

01:07:31.920 whether or not lauren sanchez stole her children's book about a dyslexic fly from this friend who

01:07:39.120 tried to show her up dancing to black eyed peas i'm not making this up i don't know if it's true

01:07:44.660 not because I only read it in Daily Mail, but like, there you go. The article goes on about

01:07:49.680 all of these deep, profound impacts that Lauren Sanchez has made on culture. Chozik writes,

01:07:57.200 quote, she hasn't just changed Mr. Bezos into a man who hosts Kris Jenner's James Bond-themed

01:08:02.880 70th birthday party at his LA home. Sometimes it seems she's taken the entire culture with her.

01:08:09.420 Now, this is where I'm like, this is PR dark arts. Somebody has paid somebody to make Lauren Sanchez is the culture now happen. You know, like like I don't I'm not buying it. 0.99

01:08:23.040 No. I know that sometimes we talk about how we live in different internets and don't see the same stuff in our feeds, but when I open up my phone, nobody is talking about how Lauren Sanchez Bezos is making the culture, leading culture, this tour de force that is redefining what it means to be a wealthy American.

01:08:48.440 like she's just the the new wife of bezos yeah and i don't care how many times he sends or tries

01:08:57.920 to send her to space i don't care if he tries to buy her vogue magazine i don't care that he's using

01:09:03.500 his obscene wealth to buy the met ball uh by the way i saw this uh these videos of people putting

01:09:11.160 up subway advertisements in the new york subways basically being like jeff bezos is met ball

01:09:19.840 brought to you by the met and human suffering also like if these people are the culture the

01:09:28.640 culture has not been informed i guess is what i'm saying and also they're like i mean i could talk 0.96

01:09:32.660 all day they're also tacky as shit like that's my biggest thing is like she's now being dressed by 0.96

01:09:39.020 law roach who dresses zendaya and like you know i love law roach do what you gotta do you know get 0.98

01:09:45.000 your money i guess but like she looked back like she can't even she has all this money and she still

01:09:49.780 look bad like her like it's like all the money in the world and it's like you still look tacky the

01:09:55.180 clothes don't the clothes aren't closing and like so and i i just can really see the machinations

01:10:02.100 of trying to make Lauren Sanchez happen.

01:10:05.900 Sort of, I think the article is really an attempt

01:10:08.220 to co-brand Lauren Sanchez with joy.

01:10:11.840 Like that's like, if there was a thesis of the article,

01:10:14.320 it is that Lauren Sanchez is actually not so bad

01:10:17.460 and really happy.

01:10:18.400 And is that so bad?

01:10:19.480 It's what's so wrong with being happy anymore?

01:10:21.740 Can't anybody be wealthy and happy anymore?

01:10:24.920 Yeah, I think that's pretty much

01:10:26.200 the main message of the article.

01:10:28.020 that it just tries to force on us over and over.

01:10:33.440 Yes, and that it's not just about happiness

01:10:36.520 in her household and in her marriage.

01:10:38.180 It's also that she's transforming American culture 0.75

01:10:41.180 and expectations that now rich people

01:10:43.640 are allowed to ride around in their limousine

01:10:45.820 in furs again, finally.

01:10:48.540 And I just think the larger conversation about

01:10:51.920 who is this for?

01:10:54.960 Because I read the whole article and I left being like,

01:10:57.040 why did they even green light this you know i think it's incredibly out of step with what

01:11:04.000 people are actually thinking about and feeling right now i don't know a single person who was

01:11:08.920 like is lauren sanchez happy i need to read an article and find out no one is asking that

01:11:15.380 no one wants to hear it no one is curious about it it's a great question who is this for maybe

01:11:24.780 it's a very small audience i have a little bit of tea for you which i can tell you who is not

01:11:30.480 interested in this article and that is lauren sanchez's brother uh he posted on medium

01:11:38.840 i will just read you a little snippet of it you know how medium tells you how long it'll take to

01:11:46.280 read something yeah this is a 101 minute read so it's a it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty it's a

01:11:51.780 pretty a pretty in-depth piece it's also a very precise estimate for such a long piece

01:11:57.500 yeah it is the title is jeff bezos and lauren sanchez bought new york times fraud journalist

01:12:04.700 amy chozik there's a little bit more to the title but that's all i'll read uh for that for this

01:12:10.560 portion of it he is really not happy with amy chozik uh he says that in 2019 after boasting

01:12:21.060 about her unique ability as a special features writer to dedicate lots of time to get a story

01:12:25.800 right, this narcissistic fraud journalist, in quotes, told me she was writing an in-depth

01:12:32.260 expose on my sociopathic sister, Lauren Sanchez, and her then-fiancé, megabillionaire Jeff Bezos, 0.98

01:12:39.580 admitted liars, cheaters, and unindicted criminals. He goes on to make an entire slew 0.70

01:12:47.240 of allegations both against lauren sanchez jeff bezos amy chozik safe to say lauren's brother

01:12:56.840 uh didn't like the piece yeah uh i looked at that too and he really uh had some pretty strong

01:13:06.940 accusations he was not a fan and

01:13:09.560 his view of Lauren is pretty different from the view that is put forward in this piece by a lot.

01:13:19.280 He was not focused on joy in his piece. Yeah. In fact, the image that he chooses

01:13:24.900 has Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez with devil horns. So just to give you a sense of where

01:13:31.240 he falls on the Lauren Sanchez is a joyous person spectrum, that should provide it.

01:13:37.760 Well, thanks for going through these stories, Bridget.

01:13:40.160 If listeners want to let us know their thoughts on any of these stories,

01:13:44.140 they can email us at helloatangoti.com.

01:13:46.960 You can leave us comments on Spotify.

01:13:49.740 You can follow Bridget on TikTok or Instagram at BridgetMarieNDC.

01:13:55.060 Or you can follow the show on YouTube or Blue Sky.

01:13:58.520 It's just the name of the show. 1.00

01:13:59.800 There are no girls on the internet.

01:14:01.840 And don't forget to pre-order Bridget's and my audiobook coming out this July

01:14:07.360 called Love at First Prompt.

01:14:09.080 You can get it at loveatfirstprompt.ai.

01:14:11.560 And if you take a screenshot

01:14:12.420 and send us your pre-order,

01:14:14.640 we will happily send you

01:14:16.260 a little card with a sticker

01:14:18.760 and just really appreciate you

01:14:21.780 helping make this first book successful.

01:14:25.900 That is right.

01:14:26.540 Mike, thanks so much for being here.

01:14:27.980 Thanks to all of you for listening.

01:14:29.100 I will see you on the internet.

01:14:35.500 Got a story about an interesting thing

01:14:37.200 in tech, or just want to say hi, you can reach us at hello at tangody.com. You can also find

01:14:42.000 transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created 1.00

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01:14:50.840 is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - April 17, 2026

Reese Witherspoon AI Gender Gap; Lauren Sanchez Cosplays Relevance; Online Assault Academy; Flock Spying; Nigerian WhatsApp Smut – NEWS ROUNDUP

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