In part 2, Sarma Melngailis, subject of the docuseries Bad Vegan and author of The Girl with the Duck Tattoo, tells Lola & Meagan how Mr. Fox consumed her time, overwhelmed her with information, and dangled promises of financial freedom that was always JUST around the corner as a way to get her to send him more and more money.

She’ll share about the fabricated online personas he created as part of the manipulation, how he always knew things it seemed like he couldn’t have known, and the tactics he used to keep her in a constant state of confusion and dependence, driving across the country until they were finally both arrested. Plus, how she felt about her time in Rikers, and the current status of her restaurant.

SOURCES

The Girl With the Duck Tattoo

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In part 1 with guest Sarma Melngailis, subject of the docuseries Bad Vegan and author of The Girl with the Duck Tattoo, Sarma shares about her life as the owner of a successful vegan restaurant in New York, how she met the man who called himself Mr. Fox on Twitter when he seemed to know her friend Alec Baldwin, her first impressions of Mr. Fox, and some of the initial red flags she missed.
They discuss the way he slowly wormed his way into her life, how he first started asking for money in a way that seemed innocuous at first, and some of the many manipulation tactics he used to coerce her into transferring an astronomical amount of money to him--and ultimately blowing up her life.

SOURCES

The Girl With the Duck Tattoo

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This week, the girls are joined by Arabelle Sicardi, writer, image theorist, and author of The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry. Lola and Meagan confess the cosmetic procedures they've each had, and Arabelle explores how the beauty industry preys on our deepest fears, giving us a false sense of control and training us to worship ideals that are impossible to reach. They reflect on the high rates of plastic surgery in Utah and the LDS church, the gendered differences between the beauty industry and biohacking, and the relationship of beauty to power.

Arabelle breaks down the cultiness of influencer brand trips, Coco Chanel's forgotten Nazi ties, and how easy it can be to isolate in luxury, detaching from the unseen global exploitation within the beauty industry. Plus: why beauty's true value lies not in perfection, but in human connection.

SOURCES:

The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry

Arabelle Sicard

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This week, the girls are joined by Anthony Cesar Duncan, an artist, mental health advocate, and survivor of ChatGPT psychosis. Anthony opens up about his descent into a psychotic episode, led by an unlikely new cult figure: ChatGPT. He describes how his episode began innocently enough, how the platform’s responses started to amplify his delusions and isolate him from his loved ones, and how quickly the line blurred between reality and the AI’s suggestions. What started as curiosity became obsession—and spiraled into a full-blown mental health crisis.

Anthony takes us inside the mindset of someone caught in a feedback loop with technology that seemed to understand him and want to help him—yet was ultimately leading him deeper into instability. He explains the ways people around him tried to intervene, why it was so difficult to break free, and what finally helped him begin to heal.

SOURCES

If you or a loved one are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact:

988 Lifeline

Call: 988

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Call: 1-800-950-6264

Text: NAMI to 62640

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Aaron Goldenberg, actor, comedian, and (hilarious) content creator, joins Lola and Meagan to talk about being gay as a Christian child, what it was like learning Bill Gothard’s IBLP homeschool curriculum as a boy, and how his parents discovered his queerness and sent him to conversion therapy.

He talks about Exodus International, a now-disbanded “ex-gay” Christian ministry that taught that you could heal your gayness (until its president apologized to the gay community and said it didn’t work), doubling down on his belief that he could force himself to be straight, and how getting sober finally forced him to confront the truth and accept himself for who he really was.

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Journalist Sarah Stankorb comes on the show to talk about her book, Disobedient Women, and the deep dive she did on why a series of evangelical women in America began to leave their communities as the internet came into prominence. They discuss patriarchal teachings within cultures like the Quiverfull movement, including stories like Vyckie Garrison’s, who was pressured into having repeated pregnancies that defied her doctors and put her life at risk.

They also dive into figures like Bill Gothard, who built the IBLP curricula and created a system of mini-cults across the country, the many stories of sexual abuse that were covered up by various religious organizations, and how online communities helped women share stories, band together, and begin to speak out. Plus: how figures like Doug Wilson helped push Christian nationalism from the fringes into the political mainstream.

SOURCES:

Disobedient Women

Elle

Vice

Vice

Washtington Post

Cosmopolitan

Marie Claire

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Guests Erika Lantz and Elin Lantz Lesser join to discuss season 3 of their investigative podcast The Turning, which follows the journey of a young woman named Lindsay, a former member of a Christian group in Minnesota called River Road Fellowship. They talk about the background of the leader Victor Bernard, how Lindsay’s parents moved the family to the cult compound, and what it was like living there—with rapture drills that required the members to never venture far from the compound, a massive bonfire designed to destroy the members’ attachments to their pasts, and other forms of strict control.

They discuss how Lindsay was selected as a teenager to be one of Victor’s ten “maidens,” a group of girls and women living next to his lodge who were subjected to coerced labor and eventually sexual exploitation in what Lindsay only later learned was meant to be a lifelong commitment, the escape plans she was making, and how glimpses of the outside world led her to finally leaving.

SOURCES:

The Turning: River Road

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Journalist Jane Borden joins the girls to discuss her book Cults Like Us, a gripping investigation into how cultic thinking is woven into the fabric of American life. Jane delves into the radical roots of early Protestant settlers, how the deep-rooted American mythology of a strong rebel cowboy who can save us from the bad guys makes us more susceptible to demagogues and authoritarians, and why pronatalism is just another form of doomsdayism.
They talk about how fear of the end of the world, fear of not being good enough, and fear of “the other” influence us. They discuss everything from the bootstraps myth to mass marketing to self-help empires, and how the promise of salvation has shaped the American psyche more than we like to admit.

SOURCES:
Jane Borden
Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America

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