Answering Your Season 5 Questions
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True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea, and today is our Season 5 Mailbag episode. Thank you so much to everyone who listened to this season and took the time to leave us comments and questions. We got by far the most feedback we have ever gotten on this season, and I am just really grateful that people are so engaged with this show. It's amazing.

This was a really fun episode to record because I got to bring my entire editorial team on the mic with me. Podcasting is a collaborative art form, and I am so lucky to have such a talented and lovely team. We are hard at work on our new full season, which will be coming out this June. And in the meantime, we have a bunch of great stuff lined up for our new season of Case Files, which is our in-between season show. We're

We're going to be talking about the lawsuit against Rady Children's in San Diego, the Bell Gibson case that was the subject of the new Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar, and a frequently requested topic, chronic Lyme. So stay tuned for all of that. And if you're a subscriber, we've got lots of good after hours stuff coming soon as well. So with that, please enjoy our mailbag episode and let us know your thoughts by leaving us a comment on Spotify or sending us an email to hello at nobody should believe me dot com.

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All right. Well, hello, it's Andrea, and I am here today with the entire Season 5 editorial team, which is so exciting to do our mailbag episode. The only people from the rest of the team who are not here is Nola Karmouche, my assistant, who does all kinds of

tasks for the show and helps keep everything running in our wonderful audio engineer Robin Edgar show shout out to those ladies as well but with me here I have Mariah Gossett, Nicole Hill, Erin Ajayi, and Greta Stromquist so if y'all could go around starting with Mariah and just tell us who you are.

Yeah. So this is my second season working with Andrea. Nobody should believe me. And I'm so glad to still be on the team and to have worked with this amazing crew to have made this incredible season that was both like heart or, you know, heart wrenching, intense, but also very, I think, editorially rewarding by the end of it. And I think this team really had a lot to do with that.

And then I also edit if y'all want some, some giggles, some ha ha's, some tee hees after some really intense, nobody should believe me. I also produce and sound design a show called one of us with Finn and Chris, which is like a part improv part interview show. Andrea has been a guest on that show as well. It was bananas. We went into the fridge of the bear and,

It's a really silly good time. And then I also currently work on the ACLU's podcast at Liberty with W. Kamau Powell. And so we're doing a bunch of know your insert rights here. So we just had an episode come out about the current state of disability rights. So definitely check that out.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Mariah. And yes, I can confirm that my interview with one of us was the single most fun podcast interview I've ever done. I don't think I've ever laughed that hard. I mean, as probably not surprising since I don't usually laugh in interviews I'm doing about the show. So that was very, that was very nice. It was a nice palate cleanser. Erin Ajayi, let's hear from you.

Yes, Erin Ajayi. This was my first season with Nobody Should Believe Me as the researcher and fact checker. This was very cathartic for me. I've been transitioning from nonprofit administration and fundraising world. And so one of the things that really

grips me with this story in particular was just the undertones of a white saviorism and that being a theme of

you know, Sophie going to do mission work and being coming out of the nonprofit field. There is a lot of that, particularly with donors, that notion of white saviorism and good-ish intent. But I really wanted to dive into that part of the story. And then also, too, my family's Nigerian. And so I think, you know,

going into and exploring the cross-cultural ties with transracial and transnational adoption was another thing that really deeply interested me. And the final thing is I actually went to college in West Michigan. And so understanding white evangelicalism and where kind of Sophie came from and grew up

There were just a lot of cross-pollination with experiences in my own life that I could see and observe and unfortunately in a lot of ways relive, but hopefully bring to light a lot of problematic issues.

Yeah. Well, Erin, I can just really attest to the fact that your voice and perspective was so helpful with this season. And yes, you were a researcher and fact checker. But also, I feel like, you know, you just added so much, especially to the early episodes where we, you know, you found so much.

interesting stuff online and that we did not, you know, did not have to begin with and just talking through all of that in those first couple of episodes with you. And obviously some of that on the mic was really amazing and helpful. So yeah, just, yeah, really appreciate your work this season. Nicole, can we hear from you?

Yes, hello. I'm Nicole Hill. I am the story editor for this season. This is my first season with the show. And I would have to say, like, the thing that really stood out to me, this is really, really a very heavy, very emotional, very, like, delicate topic. And I loved...

I mean, for lack of a better term, sort of our writer's room or the editor's room where we talked about how do we want to approach these? How do we infuse as much empathy and understanding into this story and into everybody who's being represented in the story as possible?

And I was raised an evangelical Christian. I'm not that anymore, but I am still a person of faith. And I think that the way that we thought about faith and how to represent it was like a lot with so much care, with so much intentionality. And so it just made the story editing. I just feel like I upped my story editing game that much more from the conversations that we had about like, how do we push ourselves to be even more thoughtful?

and empathetic and understanding. So this has been like, it's a heavy, heavy, heavy project, but it has just been also the way that we've approached it. I think we've taken a lot of care of one another and done our best to take care of the people whose stories we got to tell. So I've loved it. Yeah. And Nicole, can you also tell us about your new show real quick? Because it's my favorite thing in the entire world right now to listen to.

You want to do like Mariah, like just a hard 180. Yeah, exactly. So I have a Black history comedy storytelling show. It's called Our Ancestors Were Messy. And on it, I'm telling stories that I found in historical Black newspapers and their gossip columns and society pages. And looking at both how our ancestors thought about beating Jim Crow, which

While also just being so messy and just living their lives and making mistakes and figuring out, you know, what is it going to mean to be Black in America immediately after slavery and before the civil rights era. So there's lots of sound design. It's meant to feel a little bit like a movie. It's meant to feel fun, but also, you know, to make you think a little bit, hopefully. Yeah.

It's really incredible. I love it so much. And it really reinforces this feeling that I have that all history should just be told as gossip. Like if we learned history as gossip, I think we would remember it much better because I'm like, like listening to these historical figures that I only sort of knew about in this very like, you know, academic context and just be like, oh, and they were like having affairs and like who was sleeping with who, which is like a lot of what the show's been about so far. Yeah.

I'm so into it. So highly recommend. Thank you so much, Nicole. And your, your contributions to the season were just incredible. I mean, it would not have been the same show without you this season. So just really, really appreciated. I appreciate you as well. And last, but certainly not least Greta Stromquist. Hi, I'm Greta Stromquist. I worked as an associate producer on the season. And,

Sorry. I'm going to edit that out. I was like, Greta gets to edit this episode. You have the ability. Quick sidebar. I didn't realize. I was like, oh, I'm going to be joining this just to...

like recorded list that I didn't realize I'd be talking at all. So I wasn't mentally prepared. Oh my gosh. We should have probably warned you. I did not warn her. She'd be on the mic today. This is the first time on the mic. You can say as much as little as you want. And then you get to edit it later. I'm not as, uh, um, Mike savvy talking for the bike as you all. Um,

I can also just humble brag on you, Greta, because you do an incredible job of helping to really keep the process moving forward. Like you do such great work.

I don't know. It's like beyond what an, I'm so glad you've actually, so here's our other humble brag is that Greta is now producing our case files episodes for the week to week. So she's been promoted and moving on up because she's an incredible ear for story and cutting tape down and taking our monstrous three hour long session where we dive into

other cases week to week and getting them down into manageable pieces as well as to help make sure that we are telling great stories during the the documentary seasons as well so Greta does a great job I've got to work with her on multiple projects and I'm always so happy that we get to stay a happy little team so that's that's my brags on Greta thanks for all around I will and

More bragging. No, vigorous nods all around. And also, Greta, just a phenomenal editor as well. So, truly. I was going to say the same thing. Those notes, when a Greta note comes in, it's not like you're not leaving a bunch of them, but when you do, it hits. Yeah. 100%. 100%. And yeah, I second all of that. And just, yeah, it's been, as the creator of this show, you know, like having this team come on for...

the fifth season was just really like, this was, you know, I felt like we were just kind of firing on all cylinders and everybody like really brought their best. And that was just like so satisfying podcasting, so collaborative. It's so fun. So I think the, the behind the scenes work this season was really just worked really well and was, was very satisfying. And I think that's just down to all of y'all. So let's jump into the comments. There were so,

So many comments. Definitely the strongest and quickest response we've ever had to a season. For the first time, we put all of the episodes behind the paywall at launch. And boy, oh boy, did a lot of people listen really fast, which actually shocked me. And I know everybody on the team worked really hard to get all of those done.

by the launch date, which was right after the holidays. Sorry, y'all, never again. And yeah, so we had most of the comments were really nice. A lot of people binged the season really fast, as I said. A lot of folks saying that. Which I just want to ask, are those people okay? How are you doing? That's a lot. I hope you're doing well. Yes.

The first person I heard from, so we launched at midnight on whatever that Thursday was. And the first person I heard from who had finished all eight episodes was at 2.30 that afternoon. And I was like, did you literally just, they must have just like woken up and started listening. I was barely enough time had passed since it had been up. And so I, and I heard from a lot of people within like the first 48 hours. So yeah, it was like that.

That is like a really intense journey that everyone went on. Yeah, I mean, I'm very glad. But yes, that was, yeah, let us know. Let us know how that hit you if you listened that fast. So we just had like comments pouring in really from

the minute we launched this time and uh and you know most of it was really nice lots of thoughtful comments lots of interesting um points and questions that we have to get to uh and a lot of folks saying this was our best season yet which really made me happy and i think that that is really again down to um down to what a great team we had working on this um you know this is there were many uh you know as we as we go forward into new seasons you know

I started this show as a limited series. I thought it was like a pretty niche topic to make a show on because it's obviously we cover like a very specific thing. And it turns out that actually it's even within like within our niche, there are so many issues that come up that actually like

I could probably make this show for as long as I had the stamina for it. And I think at this point, I really look for cases to dive into that, you know, that bring up some of these interesting other things that we really dived into. And, you know, this season with the elements of evangelical Christianity and, you know, the transracial adoption were things that I found really interesting, but also did not feel equipped to handle properly.

on my own and just like through my own lens. So I think having the right team in place for this one really helped us get it right. And and so, yeah, that's just that that was like I just I feel so good about, you know, about a process on this one.

So the first comment that I wanted to just address, and I'd love to get, especially since a couple of you are, you know, have your own shows, just the commentary on this. We had a lot of comments about the number of ads.

So I wanted to address this, not just to kind of complain about it, but just to say that, number one, we do have actually fewer ads than the average show our length. So I just wanted to say that. And we do offer an ad free option on our subscription on our subscription channel.

But I did, you know, obviously, I don't think ads are anyone's favorite part of a show. We try to work them in. You know, we take a lot of care with like our ad breaks and where we put them and all that stuff to make it as, you know, as,

the least disruptive possible. But there's some cold, hard facts here about capitalism that unfortunately are unavoidable. And these fine people on this call and our two other staff members, you know, I do like to pay them. I do think that that is the right thing to do.

And in order to do that, I have to keep the revenue of the show going. So, you know, we do... This is like an expensive show to make, especially our main seasons. We do...

almost all original reporting. We do field work. And I'm extremely grateful that I'm able to make this show independently. It is just feels like kind of a miracle that I'm able to do that. And I'm able to do that because of how many people listen to the show and how many people

sit through our ads and use our offer codes and join our subscription channels and stuff like that. So mostly I just want to say thank you all for doing that. That support is how I keep making this show. And yeah, I mean, that's really all I have to say about ads. That's probably the only time I'll ever address that comment. But yeah.

I think every podcaster does get that at some point completely. Yeah, it's got to happen. And like, you know, there's networks out there who put way more ads in on their shows than we ever do. And they put them in willy nilly places. So I like to think that we take good care to make sure they're at places where like an ad break should be. You know, it's not in the middle of sentence. They're where they're supposed to be. But yeah. And if anyone's ever interested in the business of podcasting, it's wild out here. I mean, the fact that like,

it's like, I'm like, Nicole has an incredible show. Why aren't these giant networks just like cutting her a big fat check to make her incredible show? Like this is insane to me. But yeah, it's, it's, it's wild out there y'all. And I can tell you, I've worked on really big network shows that have very large budgets and they put just as many, if not more ads on their shows and they have the backings of giant tech companies. And like Andrea said, we're a little indie show who is paying everyone like they're,

like wages as instructed by air media. We follow all of our guides. We pay everyone their, their correct rates for all the work that they do. And that is, um, you know, something we're proud to do, but does take ad revenue to do. Can, and can I just add just a, it's a very personal benefit to the advertisements.

If we need to cut this out, we can. But actually, Lume deodorant, it's really good. I discovered that during the course of this season. I'm not even kidding. And I'm logging in from Texas where it's very warm and good deodorant really matters. And so I'm just personally, I benefited from the repetition. We'll just cut this and slice it to Lume. No, we are keeping it. We are keeping that in. I am sending it to Lume of everything.

Anyone have anything? I'm wearing something from quince right now. Like it's true. I do. I do actually like my sponsors and yeah, y'all those, those, those hosts right now, they are hard to get. So I am also wearing a full quince outfit. I was all quince. I was like a walking quince billboard. Yeah.

They make good clothes. But under the quince, Lumi, I'm just saying it's very good deodorant. Yeah, it is. I wear it as well. Without the crap. That's amazing. So to all of you who are complaining about ads there, you just got one. Thank you.

Amazing. Amazing. But yes, we should do like a sort of like business of podcasting episode just as a bonus. That would be really fun. If y'all are interested in that, let me know because it is a wild, wild, wild industry. So crazy. Changes every five minutes. So, you know, just know that your support is helping us survive out here truly. So the other thing that I got a lot of feelings about from our listeners is

was sort of this notion of me kind of quote, getting political. And yeah, I mean, I will sort of choose my words carefully here. You know, some of this was just sort of complaints about me mentioning like the existence of race, saying a person's race, saying what politics a church had and were sort of projecting.

You know, in those details, so I'll just say with those details, like those details were germane to this case. This was a case that involved the evangelical church. It involved Sophie sort of aligning herself with this social movement and that social movement and sort of having these seemingly very contradicting beliefs. And then in terms of race, I mean, that played a massive role in this case also. So, you know.

I can also like jump into, I think we told you what people thought about things and we didn't ever put a value judgment on those things. Like, you know, I think we got a lot of feedback, especially around Dr. Turek's like explanations of what these particular, and we want to be specific. Dr. Turek did research about the actual churches that Sophie attended, not the larger branches of, you know, evangelical Christianity as a whole, although she's also an expert in that field, literally has a PhD in

and teaches about the use of religion and how it interacts specifically with the government, which we thought was a really great place to come from in this season since we're talking about medical care, which is something that does have oversight with government agencies. It has oversight from boards. A lot of these hospitals are nonprofit. So there's a lot of intersecting. And the child protective system, which also has, obviously, it's a government.

It's a government agency.

you know, were outspoken about particular topics in the zeitgeist of the news where they stood on different things happening in the news. And so, you know, just because all of those things were in a row, people who had big reactions to them, obviously there's big reactions to have around a lot of these topics. These are big issues. But they also, I think, were important to know where Sophie was coming from and how she was relating to her

her place in the world, how she viewed how she talked about adoption, how she talked about race in general, how she talked about politics and how that intersected with the care and the nonprofit she was working with. Anyway, it's a giant spider web of things. And so like, we tried to make sure we're not like out here being like,

all evangelicals are bad. We were saying these particular churches have these particular views and here's how they intersect with what's happening in the household that Sophie is bringing these children into and working within these systems to abuse these children. Yeah. And thank you, Maria. And, you know, in terms of the evangelical stuff, because we did hear from a lot of people about this in particular, you know, we took a

And again, this is something that Nicole is more versed in than I am. We had Dr. Turek to talk to about this stuff because this is not – I'm not an evangelical. I wasn't raised in like a church-going household. And I really wanted to be respectful. I don't want to loop all evangelicals together. I don't want to loop –

all Christians together. And, you know, if I didn't strike that balance perfectly in every single, you know, episode of the show, that's just, you know, that's kind of the nature of the beast. But we certainly tried our best to be thoughtful about that. And also, like, you

You know, in terms of just the is this an apolitical show or not, I certainly appreciate that we have, you know, listeners from really all places, all points on the political spectrum. And I really that's something I appreciate about this show. And with that said, you know, none of the things that we talk about on the show are apolitical. These are, you know, we talk about politics.

medicine and healthcare and government systems and entities. Now, with that said, I don't feel that either side of the political spectrum gets it right specifically about this abuse. So I'm not really championing the right's take on this or the left's take on it. Some politicians get it right in some ways, others get it right in other ways, but it's not like

It's not like anybody's doing a good job with this. So it's kind of like everyone is open to critique from my perspective. But I just think, you know, on a broader sort of thing, because, you know, something that I also got feedback on is,

You know, was the ads that we were running for Equality Texas and something that I mentioned, you know, late last year was that we're going to start doing these pro bono ads to, you know, really just be a way to support, you know, groups that are really...

could use support at this time? Yeah, the groups that really need support at this time. And I'm trying to use my platform to help folks that are really going to be impacted by this current administration and all of the things that are happening right now. And I will just say kind of as a, you know, I'm not going to make this into a current events show. This is a show about a specific thing. I will sort of probably only bring up politics when it is germane to what we're talking about, right?

But my feelings about what's going on right now in the world are not neutral. And I don't owe it to anybody to be neutral. And this is my platform that I built and I'll use it as I see fit. And this is something that I feel a responsibility to do right now. And again, I try to be as open-minded as possible. And we have different voices on the show. And that's something that I really appreciate. I will continue to do that. But, you know, I didn't...

I didn't start a podcast because I don't have a lot to say. I do have a lot to say. So...

So that's that for the moment. Anybody else? Do you feel like weighing in on this? I would just add, like, the story takes place within a context and a culture that you have to understand in order to understand any of the people that we're talking about in this whole situation. I think if you exclude race and if you exclude the role of the church in

in Sophie's life, you are not going to understand any of the story. You're not going to understand why anybody moved the way that they did, why the response was what it was. It's all important context to understand the culture in the same way that, you know, if you told a story about people who lived by the sea, you need to talk about the sea a little bit. So for us, we told a story in which people are deeply involved in the church and in which the people who are...

The most important, the people who have the least voice and the least agency are from a place that their mother doesn't know that much about. It's very far away and that's very different and that we're assuming a lot of our listeners also don't know a lot about. And so it's part and parcel, like you have to talk about

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really good point. And I just want to say, too, like, I'm very open to feedback. I really enjoy having, you know, constructive, thoughtful feedback from listeners. But I also think it's really important to have a really good point of view.

But, you know, the sort of shut up about politics stuff like that's not something I'm going to take. It's also very interesting to me what people always assume is like gets dumped in the bucket of politics, because to me, most of this season was like besides the mention of like the political leanings of Pursuit, which is very apparent. It's on all their social media pages. They literally take out billboards in Andrea's.

town, like driving around, you can see them. So they are very vocal about what they believe. And because of how much they were involved in the financials of this story, like all of Nicole's points, like it was also intertwined that to leave

any of these things out about these places wouldn't be doing the story justice at all. You'd be missing a huge, essentially other character in this story, which was Sophie's belief systems, which was so integral to how she justified so much of her actions, how she justified the adoption of these girls in the first place. Like so much of this was the driving, motivating factor to, you know, not to put, you know, real people in the quote unquote, like,

title of a character, but we are telling a story, right? And so in order to flesh out the character, you need the backstory. And that's so much of the backstory there. Yeah. And with Pursuit, you know, probably will come as a surprise to no one on this call or listening to this. You know, I find a lot of their beliefs extremely objectionable. And I think those people at that church were very victimized by Sophie. They were very exploited by her. And I

you know, from what I've heard sort of talking to folks on background, like that church really did care about Sophie and her girls. And I think I can make room for that very good intention that they had in supporting them, even as I disagree with them. And that's just the kind of nuance that I think we sometimes miss.

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So on to a much less controversial topic, race. But I wanted to just talk a little bit about some of the reactions to this. So this was very interesting to kind of hear from people about their reactions to some of the behaviors that we talked

about Sophie having with her girls. And I think a lot of folks kind of just felt a big ick about the, you know, some of the behaviors we talked about with Sophie and interesting, just kind of gave us interesting, like, feedback about their own experiences, either, you know, in this adoptive world or just as, you know, like we had one that said, I'm a mom of a biracial child.

And I find it really icky and uncomfortable how often I see white moms posting about their black or biracial child like, OMG, look at me. I'm so amazing. Look at me take 6,000 videos of me doing their hair. Aren't I just the best white mom ever? Very fetishizing. And we had kind of a lot of comments that were in this vein. And then on the other side, we sort of –

had some that were like, oh, I don't know that these incidents that you're sort of discussing about like the chalk in the hair or them being the only, you know, child at the only black child at a gymnastics meet were really like, you know, that big of a deal or whatever. So we kind of had both, um,

And, you know, even this listener, which I think there's some validity to this, right? Like saying like teaching a black child about social inequities and awareness, lack of diversity in sports, that's something that should be taught. And I think, you know, there is a lot of nuance here. This wasn't something that I felt super comfortable like weighing in one way or the other, whether these things were a big deal, which was why, you know, which was why we asked Chad to weigh in on it as that's his area of expertise. So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of get everybody's

everybody's take on like, I didn't want to just go too hard on Sophie if there wasn't any evidence that this was the case. You know, you don't want to just like make assumptions about someone's intentions. However, you know, we had quite a bit to work with in terms of what people told us about her and also her memoir, which obviously Erin and Mariah both read as well. So I just kind of love to hear from the team on your impressions of that piece of it. Okay.

Yeah, this is Erin again. And I think, you know, in the research process, I started with the memoir and trying to get to understand Sophie and where she came from and her background. So that's where I actually started with this story. And then later kind of went down the rabbit hole of the accusations and things like that.

But certainly I think anytime someone goes in to go to a different country in which they will be the minority, race is going, it becomes an issue, right? And I think an important element of investigation. And there are a lot of problematic depictions of Zambia in Sophie's memoir.

I think the monolith that people have about the continent of Africa falls in line with a lot of what Sophie was writing. And so...

to bring that to light, I think was very important. To call that out was really important. I often said several times throughout this process, if you heard Sophie tell it, she'd never met a healthy Zambian child. So just the way that the children and the people were depicted in her memoir, I felt was deeply unfair and inaccurate. And I think that that was the first call out.

And certainly, I think when you use the lens of, you know, Sophie coming in as a young white missionary, right, to this poor, depraved world.

Black country, right? It just, the dynamics there and a lot of the racist undertones, intentional or not, were there. And I think that they certainly deserve to be called out. And because her children came from this place that she very rarely talked about being beautiful or having any sort of beauty or redeeming qualities in.

For me, it led me to question and I guess be more sensitive to how she thinks of her daughters or the lens at which she views her daughters. Right. And just that degree of sensitivity that we see when, you know, when there's when Emma's in gymnastics.

the degree of sensitivity to, um, uh, to seize experience in the medical system. So again, it's something that I, you know, I would beg to say that race was an issue that Sophie brought up. And so we followed, we followed that thread, um, and pulled on it, um, where it were needed. Yeah.

And it was also a lot of the people that were interviewed. I mean, it wasn't just us saying, this is weird. People who were with her, who were around her, who were embedded in her life, who were a part of her, the fabric of her life were,

were made uncomfortable by these behaviors and highlighted these behaviors for the team. And so part of this is just reporting out on the little flags that started going up for people about Sophie and her relationship with her daughter. Some of these flags might seem small. Oftentimes they are, but they add up and add up in people's minds and start to raise real alarm

alarms for them about the safety and the well-being of the girls. And so I think we documented kind of how those small flags became like blaring alarms in the lives of the people that were around Sophie and her girls. And I will say like one of them, the way that she cared for them when it comes to their hair, when it comes to things like that, the community that she's surrounding them with and the examples that

that she's being sure that they have access to.

There's been so much data and so much research and so much study and scholarship has gone into the things that will, that help you to raise a healthy, happy, self-actualized young child. And then a young child of color, of any color, in an environment in which they're not seeing people like them. And a lot of the behaviors that she demonstrated just go against kind of what has become the

the understood best practices. And I think Chad speaks to that. I mean, I think, you know, what we were documenting is just somebody who is acting seemingly in opposition of what we all know now to be a better way to raise a child in that kind of environment.

Yeah. And just to like echo both Aaron and Nicole, like the pattern is really what this show is so much about for us. And so it's never like, you know, we had a, we had a story we didn't even air from a person that we felt had like kind of more of a vendetta against Sophie than anything else. But it was sort of our first flag indicator, right? Where we went, okay, this is obviously a point of contention that is happening specifically within, you know, it was around M's gymnastics. And we were like,

I don't know if we fully trust the recounting from this particular person, but it led us to be like, what else is there? And that's when we got corroborated stories from other people from the gymnastics community. And then we, you know, to Aaron's point, like the way...

She spoke about the people of Zambia was just like the first of many alarms that went off because we did reach out to like reporters in Zambia and asked about like, we were like, hey, we think this is wrong. Can you tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day life is like? Like, tell us a bit more about your lived experience, not just what we're finding on the internet or in videos and like these sort of easily...

I don't know, uh, suede materials that are from a, uh,

a white perspective, especially. Like Nicole said, there's the red flags that come up and then there's the alarms that come up. And so we tried to just say like, hey, here's the pattern of all of the red flags, which then sent up this alarm, which then was like, hey, Chad, you're a person who has this lived experience. You're also a person who does consulting for families that are in transracial adoptions and you actively talk about how to make these homes best for these children.

And so much of what he talked about was you have to raise a child to be prepared for their life as they are, not as how you think they're going to be. And so he made beautiful points about like you have to actually prepare your child to be a black child living in America. And that does not always look the way that a white parent thinks it's going to look. And so how do you build the community around your child to make sure that they're fully prepared for that?

And based on the lack of community we really saw around these kids, we were very concerned. And that was a big part of the abuse flags that went up for us as we were investigating. Mariah, can I just read a quote from a listener that we got? And Nola, thank you for sharing.

compiling all of this feedback for us. But one comment is the idea that you would do an international adoption and then immediately put one of those children in a super competitive environment where they are missing out on social and educational development in order to train all day is just bizarre. And that was a comment from a listener. And I think, Brian, that absolutely underscores the point that you were just making.

Yeah. Yeah, no. And I think we can kind of get into that next. We got quite a few comments about the gymnastics piece of things. But something I did want to share, I talked to Chalice Howard, who was our source that, you know, eventually came on the record. And we got so many nice comments about her. We'll get into this as well. You know, something that she shared with me, which I thought this was so interesting and sort of in, you know, through my lens of someone who studies perpetrators of this crime.

is that Sophie, you know, and they were, she was living across the country, right? So they had this relationship that was very close, but they were not around each other a ton.

And she was telling me that, you know, what Sophie was sort of reporting to her was that she and, you know, and some of this may have been happening. It's sort of hard to gauge, but that she was making a big effort to, like, keep the girls in touch with their Zambian heritage and and, you know, connect them with with that community and really like be thoughtful about that. And that she seemed very thoughtful about being the white parent of two, you know, black children from Zambia.

And, you know, Chalice is also a white parent of two black children that are there. They're from, you know, they're from the United States. So so different. But that was something that was she talked about being a big point of connection between the two of them. And I think what is so what really comes through in Sophie's case and that I think is really present in all of these cases is that people who engage in these behaviors are opportunists. So they are going to put on a mask that suits the scene they're in. Right. And I think we could really see this with Sophie's behavior.

And pivots around, you know, being part of this, you know, church pursuit that has these very, you know, very extreme sort of far right political beliefs that again, yes, like that's not a guess on my part. They're putting it on billboards that I sometimes drive by.

You know, and then sort of having this strange reaction to being like, well, they were just not on board enough with, you know, Black Lives Matter and then suddenly deciding that this is not a safe place for her black children, which seems very bizarre reaction. Right. And I'm like, well, this to me is evidence of someone that is just going to use.

Right. And then even the way that she used the investigation into Seattle Children's for systemic racism, I think it all just sort of points to like this opportunism. Right. That she's going to use whatever she has. And then I think the thing that has really struck me after covering covering so many of these cases is.

that is so profoundly sad and just manifests in a whole bunch of different ways in every case differently, is that they're just not people that feel empathy for their children or anyone else, I don't think. I mean, is this something I've talked about at length with my colleagues on the psychologist and psychiatrist side, you know, and like that I just think that if you're able to put children through this, that you're not really someone who's feeling empathy on the level that one would hope.

And so I think that that then sort of enables someone to like use whatever resources are available to them at the moment. And so I think we see a lot of evidence with that. And so that I think was what struck me about those incidents of like the thing with the hair and the thing with it was like that it was not about her children. It was about her. It was calling attention to her as a white parent of black children and like as that sort of heroic figure.

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Well, okay. Yes. So I wanted to talk just a little bit. We did get a lot of reactions to the gymnastics stuff. And Aaron, you read us that quote from a listener. Um,

And yeah, I think that this was something that obviously stuck out to all of us as we were looking into this case, just the idea of sort of taking a child and putting them in this very extreme competitive environment. And I think, you know, we had some questions about just, you know, Em's role and her relationship with C and kind of what their relationship between the two of us. I mean, certainly the impression that I got and the impression that I've gotten from how these other cases play out is that

often an older sibling is kind of a forgotten child, I think especially as Em is no longer doing gymnastics. I worry that she sort of doesn't have a role anymore. And again, that's sort of speculation on my part, but just again having sort of seen this pattern. I mean, I think some of that came through in her writing that was excerpted in the investigative report that she seemed very eager to –

you know, to be this gymnast in order to get her mom's approval. And it seemed very clear that that was kind of a big part of their dynamic. And then also just that, you know, in terms of her relationship with C, you know, I think it came very clear, even from the information that we have, and then certainly from talking to Chalice, who, you know, who knows these girls very well, that M really, really loves C and that those two have a really strong bond. And,

which I hope is something that will endure. But yeah, what was kind of everybody's thoughts on Em? I know we had a lot of conversations about Em behind the scenes. Yeah, and I want to say too, like we talked a lot about sharing those pieces of Em's journals because we did, you know, Sophie is under a microscope because of the case and the police investigations. And so we tried to be mindful of only sharing the things that we felt were

illustrated what we thought M might be going through within all of this. And to say that the way this abuse can impact everyone around it is not just for the, you know, quote unquote primary victim. And that we hope that it was done with enough. It's something I still think about a lot.

And so I heard we did it to the point where everyone was able to understand that the reason we shared the pieces that we shared and not in like direct quotes was because we wanted to represent M in a way that felt like

she was not forgotten in the investigation of all of this. Um, and also so appreciative of people who shared like the real stories of these kids and like how they are in their day-to-day life beyond like what's going on in their household that is out of their control. Um, so, so appreciative to people like Chalice and the police tape we had from the neighbors and the many gymnastics parents who talked to us, um, and other people who, who spoke on background. So, um,

to put that forward first. But yeah, I remember when we were doing the field reporting, there was a point where I was like, do we just need to do a whole season on gymnastics? It was just so wild, like the way it was talked about. And I mean, there's been a ton of documentaries about how, I mean, any highly competitive, intense sports, unfortunately does leave doors open for potential, I think, abuse when kids are put up to these things.

performance goals that maybe they don't have for themselves anyway. It's yeah, sports, sports and kids is a whole, whole other rabbit hole to dive into. But to me, the most important to this particular case was, you know, to the point that Aaron made with that quote from the listener, it's very isolating.

It's an individual sport. Like there are team teams, right? But it is so concretely based on your individual performance and the pressure that that can put on someone and the pressure on someone who's also still trying to like learn to fit into a new cultural environment. Like,

What a double whammy of a serving of things to get through in life at this point. I mean, I think that's what we kept talking about. It was the everything that's happening culturally, medically, and then not just like you're going to join a team sport, you're going to join it in the most intense way.

way possible. Yeah. Like training for the Olympics, not just like go have fun and learn gymnastics. And then if this is something you're really into, let's step it up. But it's like from day one. From day one. And so it's just like to imagine anybody, not even just a child, but anyone dealing with all of those factors turned up to like 10 and

We had to talk about it. It was just as shocking to us, I imagine, as it was to people when they first heard it. And it was really, to Aaron, to the common air read, it just is like, why? This doesn't make any sense to do all these things at once, like all together. It just seems brutal and devastating and just like so taxing for an adult, let alone a child. Right.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, as a parent of a six-year-old, you know, which is the age that Em was when she was getting into gymnastics. And just like, I know I harped on that so much in the episodes, but like the driving distance. The driving. Just because like that, you know, that was where my sister went to college was in Bellingham. So I actually, and I live much further, you know, I live further north than where Sophie was going for gymnastics. But like, I know that drive, you know? And like, that is a long ass drive. And just the like, sort of like...

I think that was what it – that was, like, what struck me as part of, like, the pattern of this behavior is, like, the –

like, looking for hardship anywhere and, like, looking to make your life either really harder or seem harder or, like, you know, just, like, for no good reason, right? And I gather that, you know, from folks we spoke to on background that she, Sophie, explained this as, like, well, you know, Em has all these issues and this is the only way that, like, this is the only thing that helps is to have this. But then again, I mean, like, that doesn't, that doesn't

That explanation doesn't make a lot of sense on its face. But also, like, again, it's like it's the competitive gym. It's like, you know, yeah, like you can have especially for like six, seven year olds. It's like you can take them to a gym that just like they just like do cartwheels and little jumps and tumbles and whatever and like play around. And then there's this program, which was just, you know, of a different level entirely. So, yeah, I think that that part was really that part was really striking about the story. Yeah.

Also just confusing considering what Sophie is claiming C has. And like you're saying, enduring that drive was really striking. And the time commitment, it just doesn't make sense.

No. And that was one of the things actually the AHC parents talked about in some of the literature I read and like some of the, you know, the documentary that we watched. Like, was the challenges of transportation, was this sort of like, you know, the time bomb thing, really that expression, at least the way that I interpreted it, which seems to be on point, like that after talking to the expert, was

was the unpredictability of it. You know, that it was like one of the parents talked about, well, it's hard to even like take them out to the grocery store because it's,

if they have an episode like there while you're out and about, you know, or while you're in the car, it's going to be really brutal. And so you're just thinking like you have this child that has this thing where they could like go into episode and, you know, Sophie's reporting that she's going into episode kind of all day, every day off and on, or being an episode for, you know, whatever a month or whatever she claimed, you know, at times. And, and like,

Why would you then put yourself in a situation where you're putting that child in a car two hours each way? It makes no sense whatsoever. And like, you know, so on the one hand, either, you know, she doesn't have that condition, which I strongly believe that's the case, right? We had that signed affidavit. It was sworn affidavit from Dr. Wainwright to that effect that this child does not have AHC. Or if they do have AHC, that seems incredibly cruel. So either way, bad, right? Yeah.

I know one of the things that certainly I've learned from you, Andrea, and listening to the show is just this division that can be created between siblings, right?

right? The sibling who is experiencing the Munchausen by proxy abuse, and then the sibling who is, you know, for all intents and purposes, kind of typical in their development. And so for me, I think what the gymnastics kinds of, you know, M versus C kind of illustrated for me is you have one sister who is like the picture of

you know, great physical health so much that she can endure this level of, you know, high competitiveness and, you know, has to physically be, you know, great and excellent. And then on the other hand, you know, you have C who is, you know, plagued with all of these different ailments, particularly physical, right? And so, you

What I read into that is, and kind of questioned as well, is was, you know, there some intentional way of creating division, right, between those two pictures where you're perpetuating abuse on one of the children and then the other is, you know, again, involved in this highly competitive sport.

Um, the other thing that I'll note too, that didn't, um, I don't, we didn't mention it anywhere in the show, but it came up in the research, um, is when I was looking back at, um, it was a high school or no, it was a college newspaper and it had covered our magazine and it had covered, um, a lot of different students going through some clinic. Um, and it named Sophie as an athletic training major. Um,

And we also knew from high school that she was involved in a variety of different sports, golf at one point, basketball, soccer, and that she continued at least one of those sports on into college. So it was just Sophie's own background with kind of athletic training and understanding kind of like high competition and sports and things like that.

I don't know. It just, it was a, it was a note that I took and certainly nothing that, you know, we could follow concretely, but it was a note that I took in terms of how kind of Sophie's understanding of the physical body, the study of the physical body, how that then showed up in, in, in the girls.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, Erin. And I think that was where, you know, when we were sort of talking about like, oh, could competitive gymnastics be its own podcast? You know, like that's an archetype that I think people are really familiar with, right? Like the parent that projects something.

their sports dreams, either what they did achieve or what they didn't achieve, you know, onto their child and then sort of pushes them. And I think that that, you know, that is also something that can become abusive in its own right. I mean, I grew up playing tennis and was quite a competitive player and played in college. And I saw certainly a lot of and again, that's a very like

that's a very like expensive, intense, individualistic sport. So certainly some kind of parallels there. And I mean, I just remember like I have these images in my head of like, you know, parents were like screaming at nine-year-olds after they lost a match and stuff like that. So it's like, you know, I think that's another way that parents like don't let their kids be their own individual humans. And I think as we're sort of talking about this, yeah, this bifurcation between like the

between C being the sick one and M being the hyper capable one, like neither of them just gets to be a kid. Right. Like, and it's really, really important to just like, it's like watching, you know, watching my kids grow up and like, Aaron, you're a mom as well. Like, you know, it's really important to just like, that's a lot of work. Like it's a lot of work being a kid. Like, you know, you're just like learning how to like be a person and like, that's a huge job, you know? Like,

You're learning how to like, you know, my daughter's in kindergarten. Like she's learning how to like have friendships and socialize. And it's just like, this is just a lot. Like you just realize you're like, there's so much to take on. And so it's like, you have to be really careful, like not to pile a bunch of other stuff on them, you know? And I'm sort of like very sensitive to that. Um,

And I think it's just another way in which people sometimes don't really see their kids as humans. I think they see them as reflections of themselves. They see them as kind of like trophies. So I do think there's some really interesting crossover. And certainly Sophie coming from that competitive athletic background certainly could sort of have affected the flavor of the way that this particular dynamic played out. Yeah.

All right. So we had a lot of questions about like, you know, we had a couple questions about the status of these lawsuits. So as far as we've been able to tell, the only piece that is still making its way through the court system is the lawsuit against Roe.

Renton PD. So as soon as we find out what the outcome of that is, we will certainly let everybody know. The rest of it, the part against children's has been dismissed. And yet one of our listeners on the Patreon pointed out that like, yeah, that part certainly, you know, we said it in the show, but that part certainly didn't make the news. Like you cannot find that information except for public records request. And now obviously the show.

Actually, you know what? Before I get to this one, I just wanted to talk about our chalice. Our chalice. Yeah.

Our lovely Chalice. So this was our surprise ninth episode of the season. You know, this was, I've been speaking to Chalice, as I mentioned on the show, really frequently since the fall and had been, you know, communicating with the group about her and, you know, not someone we thought was going to go on the record initially. And that was quite an evolution for her.

We had such amazing feedback. This was by far, this is some of the most positive feedback I've gotten actually from the entire length of the show was just people's reactions to this episode. People really loved hearing from her. And I think there was like a bunch of stuff that resonated with people from the Chalice episode. I think just...

her love for the girls and even for Sophie like really came through and also just I think it really part of what really resonated with people which again I think in the context of kind of what's going on is just listening to someone who changed their mind about something

You know? And so I just wanted to kind of hear from everybody about like, yeah, this was a really like unexpected thing to have this season where we did not go in with any, you know, close sources and didn't know kind of who would come through. And yeah, I just wanted to get everybody's kind of take on like watching that kind of connection happen behind the scenes and that her decision to go public. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think for me, it was like the talking, having Chalice as like a person we could ask questions of and like gut check with, especially around, we had a lot of conversations about how can we do the least amount of harm on this show? Because it was one of the first seasons that Andrea, as you mentioned, that we didn't have cooperation of either a survivor or a family member who was involved in a sort of

wanting to tell this story. But we saw how it was important because it was talking about larger system failures, right? And how this type of abuse is misunderstood specifically in the court systems, I think was like a big driver for this season. And so to have Chalice around to make sure

not even to make sure, but just like in my mind, I kept being like, we're making the season for Chalice. Like that was like a driving force was to be like, this is a person who has listened and has been had a revelation about a person who was so close to them and how hard that must have been for her to go through. And to, you know, luckily she does have a really lovely support system around her with her fiance and other mental health professionals and,

in her sphere. But, you know, I wanted to make sure she walked away listening to the season and was like, okay, I have made the correct decision. Because as we always say, we literally go in and we're like, what else could it be? Like, through halfway through reporting, I was like, this kid might have AHC. And there's all these other things on top of it that are kind of like,

you know abuse patterns much as in by proxy behavior patterns but maybe they're you know it's always this like push pull and then there's eventually the like big reveal aha moment that happens unfortunately um because i would love to get to the bottom of a season and be like you know what this kid is really sick oh my god like let's talk about this like that would be in uh

Incredible, you know, but anyway. Or really more specifically that this is not abuse, right? It's not abuse, right. Because the kid can be sick and it can be abuse. Those two things can, but yes, I mean like me too. Like I think it would be so fascinating to go into a season and be like, oh, this person really, this really was abused.

a misunderstanding or a, you know, yeah. Here's the failures of the medical system and trying to get that, you know, like I've been listening to a lot of Kate Downey's season of Cramped. I don't know if y'all are listening to that show, but it's about her journey about period pain and it's so fascinating and it is kind of delving into those like issues around the medical system, specifically around reproductive health. And so you're like, this is not,

you know, these barrels are not that far apart from each other of the containers of what's happening in these broken ways that specifically United States healthcare system and the way that we investigate child abuse, right? Like there's systemic failures across the board. But for Chalice, it was like a way for us to make sure in my mind that I had kind of a guiding North Star of like, I want to make sure Chalice feels by the end of this season that

that her talking to us was not going to affect her life in a negative way moving forward, that she felt like she got to walk with us on this journey and have a sense of

I hate to use the word peace because it's not peace because it doesn't feel fully resolved, right? But at least has resources and tools to help her find other ways to help other people in her sphere or to find ways to help the girls if at all possible, which, yeah, that was our hope at one point, which didn't quite come to fruition, but...

But I love that we work towards that. Because I do, like in our meetings, when we were talking about this, we were like, we're making this so that somebody who can intervene in the lives of these girls hears it with the hope that they hear it and that they do. And obviously that can still happen. And so that was...

That's just to have that as a North Star. It keeps us honest. It keeps us focused on what on the story we want to tell and not on like some of the pieces of it that were just so upsetting and enraging. You just like want to rage against people and systems and all these things. But if somebody near them hears this and knows her and loves her and knows these girls and loves them, we need to be telling the story in a way that that person can hear.

and wouldn't just immediately shut them off. And so I do think that we kept that top of mind. And watching Chalice's-- I did not think that-- I really did not think that Chalice was ever going to come on the show. That wasn't even really-- I was just like, "You wouldn't do that." So the amount of courage that it took is just-- it just blows me away. And also how heartbreaking it has to be to get to a place where you're like, "You know what?

they're right. Like, I can't ignore these things anymore to have the little flags and be like, I hope because like you, Mariah, I was like, I really hope that this isn't abuse. And when we were doing the earlier episodes, and I would first get the scripts, I was like, yeah, this is this someone savory behavior, but maybe it's not abuse.

And then you get further in the season and it's just undeniable. And I'm just a story editor coming at it, not knowing these girls and not having that love for them and not knowing Sophie, not having that love for her. And so to listen and to get to the point where you have to finally acknowledge is really, really heartbreaking. And just the amount of courage it takes to admit that within yourself and then come on a show and admit that to everybody else is just extraordinary. I'm like blown away.

I think one of the things, Andrea, when you talked about, and especially with Chalice, but you've said this before, like there's something in your brain that breaks. And that really stuck out to me because I think we could kind of see Chalice like slowly getting to the light, not knowing that if you know she would come and come out publicly. But we certainly saw her own journey throughout the course of the months that we were working on the show.

But my hope is that, you know, thinking about kind of some of the background research that we were doing for this season, listening to the police interviews of the, I think I remember the teachers, these teachers, the neighbors, right?

other healthcare professionals or like therapists right so listening to the police interviews and you we kind of were getting breadcrumbs of like something is off where people are like this didn't quite feel right this seemed unusual and just noticing these behaviors right and I think

you know, what they're going on is, is really based on gut. Right. And as Nicole said, yeah, maybe this is some unsavory behavior. Um, but then to have kind of chalice go through that journey of like, okay, this is a lot that's, you know, based on intuition, but here are the facts that I see. Right. And those are the things that right. Like cause the break.

Um, my hope is that people will lean more into their intuition and be okay speaking up, right? When they see that someone is, you know, bravely done it, knowing that, yeah, it's, it can come at the sacrifice of your relationships with the adult who is abusing the child. But at the end of the day, it is about the, it is about the child. Um,

And I think landing on that and being able to end the season on that reminder, this is about the children who are victims of this abuse and nothing else should get in the way of that. Yeah, I loved that. That image that Chalice shared with us in that episode of like when Sophie was the only one in focus, she could ignore it. And then the minute that the kids came into focus, like I just thought that was such a beautiful way to describe that.

what this is because I think it's like it's so hard to like get your feet under you when you're in one of these situations because you are and you are being gaslit you know and you are being told this like story and you know and then it's just like if you just think about like what is happening to the kids I think then it's like it really registers um as a kind of like last last question and then I also would love to know just if there's anything like as you guys read through like the comments if there's anything that stuck out to you but like

You know, we get asked a lot, you know, in response to, like, all of the show, like, what can we do to prevent this? And the truth is, I don't know.

I think conversations around prevention of child abuse are so necessary. I had a couple people on, someone from Prevent Child Abuse America, which is a fantastic and large organization that's been around since the 1970s, and they've talked a lot about prevention of other forms of abuse, right?

You know, like physical abuse, you know, those things are really exacerbated by a lot of factors that actually can be controlled for by parents having enough support by, you know, dealing with mental health issues, substance abuse issues, poverty, you know, adjacent issues. Like there's a lot of like abuse and neglect that happens that is very much tied to those things and that can actually be solved for, not easy to solve, especially when we're not –

having a moment where we feel like giving resources to those things. But this one, I don't know. I truly don't know what can really be done to prevent other than to just separate. I don't, and it may just be my lens of like, I do look at extreme cases a lot.

I think there are probably, you know, there is all of the professionals I've talked to. There's there is a spectrum of this behavior. I think maybe there is it does manifest with some people in a way that could be mitigated. But but I don't know. And I wanted to know if, you know, y'all from obviously Greta and Mariah, you've been with us for two seasons. Aaron and Nicole, this was your first season. So I know this is sort of obviously a newer topic. But I mean, when you sort of look at this conversation,

or like when you look at these situations, I mean, yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I just kind of think what came to mind first was I think big part is this show, Andrea, that you've created and, you know, sharing information.

And I think especially on Child's and by proxy, I think a lot of people are under the impression, I mean, especially I myself at first, that it's really rare that

But I think it's much more prevalent. But I think having a show like this with journalistic integrity and sharing things with, leading with compassion. And I think Chalice was like a great example of that on just how that could help someone like CNM. But yeah, I think sharing information

with integrity is really helpful. Yeah. Thank you. I think on like a really micro level, it's being a safe adult for any kids that are in your orbit and in your community, because that is like step one of just like, if a kid feels like they can actually talk to you, that can be

a really powerful tool for prevention of all kinds of abuse. The second thing that I've been ruminating on a lot, especially going now working on season six is the importance of having child abuse pediatricians at local hospitals and having and really like if you have any

ways to volunteer at your hospital or they have board meetings, anything like that to just really advocate to have a system in place at your local hospital and to make sure that there are people who are trained specifically to recognize this type of abuse. I think

as Greta mentioned, there's an idea that it's really rare. And, and I've said this multiple times when we interviewed, um, detective, uh, Michael from Texas, he gave us a stat that I, for my own mental health had to immediately erase from my mind about how prevalent like child sexual abuse is now. And how back in the seventies, it was viewed as this thing that was very rare. It didn't happen. It was strangers. And, and that is so not the case right now that we all are more aware, um,

of that. Right. And so he thinks where we were with the stats in the seventies around child sexual abuse is where we'll eventually get to when it comes to medical child abuse. Um, and like when we talked to the, um, uh, child abuse pediatrician on the show this season, she mentioned, um,

you know, it's her job to find that it's anything else. Like that's her job as well. And she's like, and so often it's there's medical neglect, which is usually due to lack of resources, as Andrea mentioned. And then there's actual neglect.

medical child abuse. And so you want someone who knows those differences and can, can discuss those nuances and say, Hey, this isn't a parent that needs their kid taken away. This is a parent that needs support and resources because they can't bring their kid to the doctor. Right. Um, versus, uh, uh, someone with factitious disorder who's, who's using, um,

Their kid is as a part of their their mental health disorder. So yeah, so I think it's like you can advocate for better systems in place at your local hospitals to help recognize and flag this abuse when it's happening. And then yeah, be a safe adult for the kids in your community and around you.

I love that, Maria. And thank you for saying that about child abuse pediatricians. And just, yeah, a note, like we've talked about this previously on the show, but child abuse pediatricians are really under attack right now. There's not that many of them. There's something like 250 in the entire country. If you have a child abuse pediatrician at your hospital, you are very lucky. That is a lucky community that has that person. Again, if I am a parent that brings my kid to a hospital, what do I do?

under some, with a suspicious injury, with a suspicion, suspicious whatever, right? If there's something that's going to be a red flag for abuse, I,

I want a child abuse pediatrician. They are going to be way less likely to make, and this is the data support says they're going to be less likely to make a wrong assumption, to make an incorrect evaluation as to whether or not something is abuse. This is getting tremendous, they're getting tremendous pushback. There is a law in Texas. There's another one that people are advocating for in Georgia. Those are the two I know about. I haven't done a full research on this.

Of these like second opinion laws, as they're called, which is just just basically completely hamstringing a hospital's ability to evaluate and report abuse and intervene. So there is a lot of like be aware of what the what is going on in your community. If there are people that are pushing back, this is happening a lot of places. It's happening here, too. I don't know if they've made any headway whatsoever.

with the legislature, but this is something that people are really pushing. This is not just specific to Munchausen by proxy. This is also people that are saying that their children who came in with fractures or had trauma or those kind of things. There aren't parents, from my understanding of the broader scope of abuse and child abuse pediatrics,

I don't think there are that many parents who abuse their children, who bring them to the hospital with injuries and just say what they did. I think they usually come in with another story about what happened. So I think, again, be vigilant about what's happening in your community and be very, very skeptical about stories you hear about parents who've been falsely accused of abuse, especially if all of the parents in that story are white. Well, any other...

Just final thoughts, comments that resonated with y'all from the season? I think for me on a whole, one of the things that I really appreciated is I know that we, just in looking through the comments, we had an attorney write in. We had people who, folks who have fostered children or who have friends who have fostered kids. There were just all of these really great perspectives coming in.

from listeners on the show that I think adding their expertise, whether or not lending a correction for some reporting that we did or another angle or just kind of affirming what we had learned, it was just really nice and great to hear. And so we love the great comments, but we also love the ones that make us think because I think that it only makes our Rick

reporting better. It only widens our lenses. Someone wrote in about the hospice versus palliative care, and I know we're seeking an expert on this season to talk about the differences between the two. So I think for the listeners just to better to know that all of their feedback is taken in a way that we're thinking about how we use it and curating it moving forward in different seasons.

And then I guess on a note of levity, there was someone who wrote in, they said, I'm a Canadian and do not understand your healthcare system. And I just want to say-

We don't either. That's a comment. I was going to say something about that too. I was like, oh, Canada, we don't know. We don't know what's going on. Have you seen that meme that was like, why don't we ever get, like, you know, there's a tradition of British television getting an American adaptation, but there's very rarely an American show that gets a British adaptation. And it was like the opening scene of Breaking Bad. And it was just them being like, yeah, here's your chemotherapy for your cancer. And then it was like full credits. Yeah.

Oh, God. The end. Yes, bleak. No renewal after the pilot. Yeah, exactly. Problem solved. And then everyone was fine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we actually did get a handful of questions about how did Sophie slash are these perpetrators getting insurance to cover everything? Yeah.

And I wanted to share two pieces of something that I have like that I have just sort of like one is an observation. One is kind of a data point from Detective Mike Weber in Texas. We all sort of are familiar with like how you have to fight with insurance even to get something that is totally necessary that your doctor ordered. So it's like, how are they getting all this unnecessary stuff?

It's like the amount of time that they devote to it is just like nothing that a normal person would do. Right. Like, so I think there's sort of like, you know, there's the level to which like a parent with a legitimately sick child would have to advocate for that child to get their stuff covered. And that's heartbreaking and horrible and very real. And I think that's one of the things that this sort of hides behind. And then this is on another level also.

together. Like the level of obsession and compulsion in this behavior is just such that like we see all the time in these cases, like the person calls the doctor's office and they call the hospital administration and they called this person and that person just go up the chain to where they're like on the phone with the, you know, like CEO of that. And maybe not exactly, but like, I mean, they will go up, they will call everybody, they will call everyone's manager and their manager and like they will go online and they will start campaigns and they will like, you know what I mean? So it's like,

this level of like activity that just like is so relentless. And the other piece that I wanted to point out about that, about the sort of interaction with the healthcare system that I think should really, really make people angry. Obviously a lot should make people angry about these cases, but I think like when you look at it on a community basis, most of these cases are

Medicaid cases. So like, because that's the biggest health insurer of people, that's obviously something that's looking at, you know, huge cuts right now. So that's like a whole other separate, very sad, very troubling thing. But like, that is a system that obviously like taxpayers pay into, that is being defrauded by the people who commit this abuse. And

And just the sort of like amount of community resources, and I think we really saw this in this case, right? Or like resources that are supposed to go to kids that actually have this or like that kind of thing. Like they really rip a lot of people off and they take a lot of like time and resources and they get their kids seen first and they get their court case moved up on the docket and like they just –

devour all of these resources which are already strapped and looking to be more strapped soon. So that's something that should really make people mad, I think. What was the stat from Detective Mike? Oh, just that he was saying that the vast majority of cases that he looks at, it's not actually a stat, it's an observation, but like that the vast majority of cases he looks at are Medicaid cases. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So final thoughts from Nicole Greta?

It's a lot to be in community. It's a lot to be in community with people. But I mean, this is what's going to be needed, especially as we move forward, knowing the cuts that are being made to sort of the safeguards around vulnerable children and people.

I think it's really important. And I think it really, it's not the main story of the season, but just the ways in which people, for lack of a better term, saw something and said something around the girls. That makes all the difference. I worked in public schools for, you know, in and around public schools for nearly a decade. It's,

The people who are around kids at schools and then after school activities and then when they're babysitting, those are the ones who spot these issues most often and are the ones to raise the alarm. And so I think if there's any kind of, you know, this is again, not the A story, but the B story of this is just the work of community and protecting one another and in protecting kids.

And I hope that that comes across in Chalice's role. I hope it comes across, you know, with the neighbors and the parents at gymnastics and all over, all throughout the season, we just saw people seeing something and saying something. And that's so important when it comes to protecting kids. So my last thought is just around that. I hope everybody gets involved either in your school or wherever you can get involved in your community where you have the capacity to be consistent and engaged. I really think right now it is very important.

Yeah, I really agree. I feel like that was everything I would have wanted to say. Yeah, no, thank you. That was so well said. And I do think actually this sort of community aspects really come through in this case. And I think, yeah, it's just sort of like top of mind for everybody. So, yeah. Yeah.

Well, everyone, thank you so much for your incredible work on this season. I feel just very grateful and honored to have been able to work on this with y'all. And yeah.

Thank you so much. And we will include links in the show notes to everybody's respective projects. Go check them out. They are fun. They are less heavy than you gotta have a duality. You gotta have that duality. Comedy comes from this stuff, you know, it's just the other side of the coin. All true. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks for listening everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

Nobody Should Believe Me Case Files is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.

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For a limited time at Verizon, you can get our best price ever for a single line. Just $45 per month when you bring your phone, which is less than you spend on too-tired-to-cook takeout every week. Get one line on unlimited welcome for $45 per month with AutoPay Plus taxes and fees. Visit your local Verizon store by April 2nd to save.

$20 monthly promo credits applied over 36 months with a new line on unlimited welcome. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Additional terms apply.