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When I was eight months old, I pulled a rice cooker full of boiling water and oil off the kitchen counter, and it spilled down the left side of my body. I still have the third-degree burn scars, but I have no memory of it happening. So I booked a session with a hypnotherapist in Raleigh to see if regressive hypnosis could take me back to that kitchen.

Before I go under, I try to answer a question: what is hypnosis, really? Listeners tell me how it helped them quit smoking, switch careers, and...

Growing up Catholic in Miami, I heard all kinds of stories about Santeria. People talked about dead chickens on doorsteps, curses, and spirits taking over people’s bodies. Even the people who didn’t practice it all said the same thing: “I don’t believe in Santeria, but I respect it.” That’s enough to terrify a little Cuban kid, and honestly, it still scares me.

So I went back to my hometown to face that fear. My mom is a lifelong Catholic who has quietly started visiting a babalawo (or babalao, as we say in Miami), and she take...

According to police, Shelbey Fernandez ran a stalking campaign for years. She used burner numbers, fake accounts and fake 911 calls. She asked Google how detectives trace a texting app, how long a burner number lasts, and whether police can tell when you’ve hidden a phone during a search warrant. Prosecutors charged her with 29 counts.

Her parents describe someone else. For years, Tanya and Rick have told me their daughter has the mentality of a 12-year-old. She watches blooper videos and Dancing with the Stars. She couldn’t possibly be behind any of this.

Now a ju...

A 19-year-old says members of his church held him down, choked him, and beat him for two hours, trying to cast out what they called his “homosexual demons.” That was in 2013. Thirteen years, a mistrial, and countless delays later, the minister accused of leading it is finally back in court.

I drove to Asheville, North Carolina, to be there. Inside the courtroom, members of Word of Faith Fellowship filled three rows, and some of the kids the minister once raised sat with her accuser. You’ll hear from Matthew Fenner, the district attorney, and former members who say th...

When Gypsy Rose Blanchard was a little girl, the thing that comforted her most was her mother's touch. In the final episode of The Gypsy Rose Obsession, I ask Gypsy when that changed. I also track down the attorney who drew up a power of attorney for Gypsy in 2013, and she tells me Dee Dee came into her office claiming her 22-year-old daughter was mentally disabled and asking for guardianship.

Then I follow the money in the Gypsy Rose economy. Sir Morbid X, the YouTuber who helped build the anti-Gypsy corner of the internet, tells me he...

This week I'm handing the feed over to Andrea Dunlop and her show, Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea has spent years covering medical child abuse, and she came to the subject through her own family.

In 2019, Dr. John Cox, an ER physician at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, brought his adoptive infant daughter to her pediatrician with an injured arm. Within months, he was charged with abusing her. NBC News covered his case as a wrongful accusation. Andrea went back to the records, talked to the prosecutor who filed the charges, and found a much more complicated story...

When Gypsy Rose Blanchard announced she was pregnant, the internet opened an investigation. The woman who spent her childhood trapped inside her mother's medical lies was now raising a daughter of her own.

In this episode, I look at what the research actually says about the cycle of abuse, and at what happens when a mother is watched as closely as Gypsy is. Strangers called CPS over a livestream and a baby with colic. Someone pulled her daughter's shot records from a state database and put them on TikTok. I talk to one of the women who...

How does a doctor actually decide that a parent is making their child sick? Dr. John Melville is a child abuse pediatrician, president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, and one of the people who helped write the board exam that certifies child abuse pediatricians.

In this bonus episode, he walks me through how medical child abuse is diagnosed. He explains the difference between Munchausen by proxy, factitious disorder imposed on another, and medical child abuse. And he answers the criticism that child abuse pediatricians are self-appointed experts who took a short course and now override the...

Ken Urker, Gypsy Rose Blanchard's partner and the father of their daughter, Aurora, died on October 1, 2026, his 34th birthday. The sheriff is still investigating, and no official cause of death has been released. Gypsy has said publicly that she believes it was an overdose, and that she doesn't know whether it was intentional or accidental. Throughout The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Gypsy told me that Ken was struggling with relentless online harassment. The night he died, she texted me three words: "They killed him." In this bonus episode, I talk about what we know so far, who Ken was to...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening.

For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of it.

Some of those recordings broke through on social media, because on them Gypsy and her now ex-husband Ryan can be heard using racial slurs. She eventually apologized publicly for it.

But that's not the part that got me. It's what she says about her mother, when there's no camera on and no reason to give a polished answer.

Fair warning. This one...

"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else."

That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out loud. She had taken the plea and could never be tried again, so she let her guard down. Then a content creator asked Missouri for the whole archive, and four days later the state sent it to her.

So what does Gypsy actually sound like when she thinks nobody is listening?

In this episode you will hear:

Gypsy doing...

There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the abuse wasn't real, how do you explain the feeding tube, the shaved head, the free trips to Disney?

We also discuss the violence in the house leading up to the murder. If Gypsy is the monster, what does that make Dee Dee? For Gypsy critics, the pendulum swings the other way. Justice for Dee Dee, the movement that says the real...

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one word explains the feeding tube, the leukemia, the paralysis. All of it. Which means, according to them, Dee Dee Blanchard wasn't abusing her daughter at all. She was just a mom trying to help a sick kid.

So I brought in a genetic counselor and made her explain this thing to me like I'm five, because I am not a geneticist and neither is anyone...

I sat down with Alaura and Amber from Into the Weeds, the podcast that first dug through the Gypsy Rose Blanchard FOIA files. I wanted their honest reaction to my microdeletion episode, including the part where they felt like I'd pitted them against a genetic expert.

We discuss:

Is there actual evidence Gypsy was medically abused? I put a page from Dee Dee's medical file in front of them, a handwritten list of Gypsy's supposed diagnoses, and we argue about whether it points to Munchausen by proxy, malingering, or something the DSM-5 doesn't cleanly cover...

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented, not fabricated. Case closed, they say. Munchausen by proxy, debunked.

That's the claim, anyway.

Three hundred pages of Gypsy's private medical records ended up online, and I got my hands on them. So do the documents validate the claims? We're going to dig in.

Want more? Ad-free episodes, early releases, and the latest on the stalker case are...

It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tanya Fernandez interviews. This time we're looking at Shelbey Fernandez's surgeries, what the doctor told police in 2019, and new audio from Shelbey Fernandez herself, recorded before her arrest.

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Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that nobody was supposed to see. The evidence of violence that the HBO documentary never showed you. And the text messages from the night of June 9th, 2015, read out loud, minute by minute. They are not what you expect.

Gypsy's critics say she was the violent one all along. That it was Dee Dee who had reason to be afraid.

Chapters

00:00 Everyone Has A Hot Take<...

Her critics say Gypsy Rose Blanchard can't keep her story straight. So I sat down with her for almost three hours and asked about all of it. The pills through the feeding tube. The video where she tells Nick Godejohn she'd been hiding that she could walk since she was seven. And the Demona videos she has never addressed in front of a reporter.

You'll also meet the mother-daughter team behind Into the Weeds (youtube.com/@into-the-weeds-podcast), whose records requests produced what the internet calls the Gypstein Files.

Binge the first three...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is the most beloved convicted murderer in America. Half the country sees a victim. The other half thinks she conned everyone, including her mother.

I spent months trying to figure out which side is telling the truth. Then I emailed Gypsy. A few hours later, we were on a call.

Chapters (00:00) The Most Beloved Convicted Murderer In America (01:35) The Short Version (02:53) It's All A Lie (03:41) Inside Her Medical Records (05:26) Allergic To Sugar (06:10) The Community That Flipped The Narrative (07:48) Andrea Dunlop Interviews Gypsy (09:41) Then I Read The...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is America's most beloved convicted murderer. The media told us she spent 23 years in a wheelchair, with a feeding tube, a breathing machine, and a diagnosis list that never ended. None of it was real. Her mother made it all up. And then Gypsy had her mother stabbed to death. When she walked out of prison in December 2023, not everyone was celebrating. A community formed online working together to dismantle her new life. So yeah. America's sweetheart is also a convicted murderer. And depending on who you ask, she's either the most sympathetic person alive, or...

For almost five years, the Fernandez family told me their doctor's husband was terrorizing them. Threatening messages, unpaid pizza deliveries, police at the door for crimes that never happened.

Three weeks ago, Peoria police surrounded their house with a search warrant and seized every device inside. Nobody was arrested that day. Then this week, Shelbey Fernandez children was booked into a Maricopa County jail on more than thirty counts, including stalking, making a terrorist threat, and sexual exploitation of a minor.

All charges are allegations. No one has been convicted, and the case is ongoing.<...

William Ruzich's father stole his identity while he was deployed in Afghanistan. He came home from war at 21 to find bills, liens, and creditors in his own name. He turned his own dad in for fraud.

Then he went to work catching people just like him.

William is a private intelligence operative now, tracking down scammers, fraudsters, and people who vanish with other people's money.

Coming August 11th: The Gypsy Rose Obsession, a new free series from PRETEND. Watch the trailer and subscribe:

https://youtu.be/9fcD0os3...

My friend Joe sells real estate. He called me about one of his clients, a retired nurse who was selling her house, because something about her story wasn't sitting right with him. She'd lost her savings to a man named Edward Smog. Found her online, quoted her scripture, told her he was her way out of debt.

By the time I got involved, she was out a hundred and fifty grand. Now a new scammer is coming after her. She believes he's an offshore oil rig worker, and they're going to get married. I'm trying to stop...

Darnell Emanuel spent years inside Rony Denis's inner circle at the House of Prayer Christian Church. His name is on documents. His credit was used to buy houses he never lived in. But when the fraud finally caught up with the church, Darnell wasn't indicted.

In this bonus, Darnell walks us through the burner phones, the code names, and how the whole scheme worked. Plus, an update on Marjorie Denis. And what's happening at NTCC since the series aired.

The next two episodes are available right now on Patreon and PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts.

We've covered a lot of PRETENDers on this show. But the guy in this one might take the prize.

Carlos Henrique Raposo, better known as Kaiser, fooled the entire professional soccer world in Brazil for 26 years. He signed with more than 30 clubs. He partied with George Michael. He got protected by Rio's most dangerous crime boss. He once punched a fan in the face rather than actually step on the field. And through all of it, he barely played a single real game.

This week we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations: an interview with...

This week, Javier stops by the Hot Mess Happy Hour Podcast and it didn't disappoint. It was a hot mess!

About Hot Mess Happy Hour:

Are you always running late? Do you leave things on top of your car and drive off? You might be a hot mess too so this podcast is for you! Laugh along as we share crazy hot mess stories during our weekly happy hour with yours truly. We'll also share tips and tricks for those affected by ADHD like your host, Susan Cokas! So grab a cocktail...

My friend Johnathan Walton just launched a new show called Hardcore Con, and I had to share it with you.

Each episode, he breaks down a con story and the specific psychological tactics scammers use to pull it off. And this episode gets at something I think about a lot: it doesn't matter how smart you are.

Subscribe to Hardcore Con on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0mXtr05OjD4wk4M8JrvLPy

Or search "Hardcore Con" wherever you listen.

Learn more about...

Federal prosecutors say the man known as Rony Denis isn't Rony Denis at all.

The arrest finally came in the fall of 2025. Three years after the FBI raids. But the church is still operating. So my friend Jared Smith from the Heliocentric YouTube channel and I drove down to Fayetteville to attend a Sunday service and see what's left of the House of Prayer Christian Church.

And the whole sermon, it turned out, felt aimed at two specific people in the pews.

This is the final chapter of the Chain of Command series...

In Part 6, the FBI comes knocking.

Rony Denis and his top associates allegedly defrauded the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and military veterans out of more than $23.5 million. The House of Prayer Bible Seminary looked like a school. Veterans used their GI Bill benefits to enroll, paying the church hundreds of dollars a month for classes that led nowhere and credits worth nothing outside these walls.

Rony Denis is still a free man. But not for long.

Written and Produced by Javier Leiva

Edited by Puneeth Shenoy | Podcast Pundits https...

Rony Denis wasn't just the spiritual leader at the House of Prayer Christian Church... He was their god.

In Part 5, former members start connecting the dots on how Rony Denis consolidated control, and it's worse than you think. He ordered members to smash their own phones in front of the congregation. He commanded public confessions. And when he set his eyes on something he wanted, whether that was another man's wife or a ten-year-old boy, he found a way to take it.

Written and Produced by Javier Leiva

Edited by...

I teamed up with Carter Roy for a special guest collaboration on Murder: True Crime Stories and this one is something else. For the full episode, follow Murder: True Crime Stories on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1745145932In November 2006, Abraham Shakespeare won $30 million in the Florida Lottery. He couldn't read or write, and within two years he'd given most of it away to anyone who asked. Then Dee Dee Moore showed up promising to protect what was left — and within months, she had his house, his insurance, and his power of attorney. Not long after, Abe vanished.

Note: This episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and psychological manipulation.

It started with a revolt. Thirty ministers walked out of NTCC mid-service and never looked back. They thought they were done with high-control leadership, mandatory tithing, and pastors who ruled by fear. They were wrong. In this episode, former pastor Arlen Bradeen and Greg Shepard tell us what happened when they followed Rony Denis to Georgia — and what it cost them to finally get out.

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In part three of Chain of Command, we hear from those who grew up in the New Testament Christian Churches of America. From Victor Johanson, a former Army soldier who confirms on tape that NTCC ministers got vasectomies because children would interfere with their ministry. From a woman we're calling Kaylee, who was raised inside the church and was groomed and assaulted by a family member who was also an NTCC minister. And we look at how the church's CEO, Michael Kekel, has publicly stated at one point that no church is under a legal obligation to report child...

Part one was about control. Part two is about the money.

Behind the soul-winning and the sermons and the bylaws, the New Testament Christian Churches of America runs a very well-funded business. Tithing is tracked, enforced, and tied to your military paycheck. Fall behind and you go before the general board. Fall further behind and you lose your credentials.

So where does the tithing money go? Church CEO Michael Kekel told his congregation they owed $25,000 a year in property taxes on the fellowship hall. But tax records tell a different story. The...

Deep Cover is a true crime show about double lives, brought to you by our friends at Pushkin Industries.

Their new season, The Family Man, is a gripping story about how families can deceive each other and the lengths we’ll go to to protect our loved ones.

Elise and Marissa grew up in a seemingly normal house in the suburbs of St. Louis—but it was a house built on secrets. There were things their father never told them... like how he really made his money.

Everything changed in a single night:

In 1996, Sarah DeJonghe was a 20-year-old Navy Seabee stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Two guys in uniform approached her on base and invited her to church. She said no.

They came back anyway.

Four months later, Sarah was out of the Navy and on her way to a Bible seminary in Washington State. She didn't see it coming. Neither did the dozens of other military members who found themselves drawn into the New Testament Christian Churches of America, a church that has spent decades planting itself outside US military bases around the world, marketing itself as...

A Colorado businessman with a criminal record, no credit, and a gift for charm somehow convinced dozens of women to finance his cars, his home, and his lifestyle. When they finally compared notes, they didn't get mad. They got organized. This is the story of Bill Sullivan, and the self-appointed militia of scorned women who banded together to take him down: Operation Cockblock.

Before you go:

Stick around for a sneak peek at Chain of Command, PRETEND's new investigative series about a secretive church that brands itself a "ministry to the military"...

Somebody went through hundreds of Reddit comments asking what the greatest podcast episode of all time is, then actually listened to all of them. That somebody is Ivy, the creator behind @watchandlisten.ivy on TikTok, and she has been going viral ever since.

In this episode we go through the ones that kept coming up:

Reply All: "The Case of the Missing Hit" https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CaOGo6xSN51B2aLAQa1kU

Heavyweight: "Gregor" https://open.spotify.com/episode/6LKrLVEAY3tsqHPURec6ke

Mystery Show: "Belt Buckle" https...

On January 6th, 2021, Pam Hemphill followed the Proud Boys to the Capitol, got trampled by the mob, was carried out by a police officer named Joe, and recorded every minute of it. The internet called her the MAGA Granny. She did 60 days in federal prison. And then, slowly, she woke up.

When Trump issued sweeping pardons for more than 1,500 January 6th defendants, Pam did something almost no one else did. She said no. She filed a formal letter of rejection, returned to the Capitol to apologize to officers in person, received death threats, lost...

My cousin spent 23 years in an Illinois prison for a crime she says she didn't know she was committing. She was 33 when a judge handed down a 60-year sentence. She would have been 93 before she saw the outside again.

This episode is personal.

In "Only God Pardons," we follow my cousin Iris (not her real name) through the Illinois clemency system: what it takes to apply, what the odds actually look like, and what it means to finally get out, only to discover that freedom comes with its own kind of sentence.

Along...