Renee DiResta, professor and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, joins the show again to dive deeper into disinformation, propaganda, and "pseudo-events," or manufactured controversies and news stories.

She explains why it’s so difficult to tell fact from fiction online, how propagandists stoke real, often legitimate tensions to create division, how American politicians are amplifying false information instead of shutting it down, and possible policies that could help reduce our culty social media silos.

SOURCES

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America

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This week’s guest is Renee DiResta, professor, and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality. In part one this week, she talks to Lola and Meagan about propaganda, disinformation vs. misinformation, and how social media algorithms push us all into highly individualized, “bespoke” realities.

They discuss how she became interested in this topic after social media algorithms started suggesting anti-vaxxer content to her, how rage bait and other emotionally charged material spreads faster, and why social media makes it seem like other people have more extreme views than the majority of them actually do.

SOURCES

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Lola and Meagan continue their conversation with Mike and Abbi Prussack, former members of Meagan’s childhood church, the 2x2s. In part 2, they walk the girls through the abuse crisis that has shaken the group in recent years and the long-standing patterns that allowed the harm to continue. Mike and Abbi explain how church leadership handled reports, why victims felt they had nowhere to turn, and how secrecy and obedience has shaped the culture for generations.

They also discuss the FBI investigation, the community’s response, and what it has been like to help moderate the Ex 2x2 Facebook group during a moment of collective reckoning. The conversation looks at the cost of silence and the pressure to stay loyal, plus why so many people are choosing to finally speak out now.

SOURCES

Wings for Truth

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This week, Lola and Meagan talk with Mike and Abbi Prussack, former members of Meagan’s childhood church, the 2x2s, also known as The Truth or The Way. The couple, who now help moderate the Ex-2x2 Facebook community, share what it was like growing up in a secretive religious group with no name, no building, and strict rules about who could be “in.”

They open up about meeting and marrying within the church, the single question that shattered their faith, and how leaving forced them to rebuild their identities from scratch.

Next week, part two dives into the FBI investigation, decades of hidden abuse, and what’s happening inside the group now that the truth is finally being exposed.

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This week, researcher Tim Squirrel joins Lola & Meagan to break down the manosphere: incels, redpill, MGTOW, and the differences between some of the misogynistic subcultures in the online world of men. They discuss how isolation can leave boys vulnerable to harmful internet communities, and how the algorithm can radicalize young people looking for identity.

From Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, Tim shares why and how hyper-masculine spaces thrive, touting themselves as self-help programs or advocating for withdrawing from society altogether. They chat about why these communities can also be bad for the people inside them, whether Lola has accidentally dated incels, and what to do if someone you know has fallen down the rabbit hole.

SOURCES

Movember

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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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