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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.

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Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters

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Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on well Hi, their QUICKI friends.

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Speaker 2: It's Claire Murphy here, dropping back into your feed for

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Speaker 2: another listening recko now. This week, Netflix released Apple's Side

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Speaker 2: of Vinegar. It's a new drama series that's inspired by

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Speaker 2: one of Australia's most notorious scammers, Belle Gibson. While the

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Speaker 2: Netflix show dramatizes the events, we wanted to share with

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Speaker 2: you the real investigation into how a young wellness blogger

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Speaker 2: managed to convince hundreds of thousands of people that she

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Speaker 2: had terminal brain cancer when she didn't have cancer at all.

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Speaker 2: But not only did Bell Gibson full her massive social

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Speaker 2: media following, she deceived major publishing houses, tech giants like Apple,

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Speaker 2: and even her closest friends and family, all while making

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Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of dollars from her lives. Our friends

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Speaker 2: over on the Extraordinary Stories podcast dug deep into Bell's story,

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Speaker 2: speaking to people who sat across from her, who were

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Speaker 2: taken in by her deception and who helped expose one

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Speaker 2: of the biggest wellness industry scandals Australia has ever seen.

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Speaker 2: This is the true story of Belle Gibson and how

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Speaker 2: she pulled off a con that shook the foundations of

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Speaker 2: the wellness industry and changed the way we think about

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Speaker 2: social media influences forever. Take a listen.

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Speaker 3: On a warm summer's day in twenty fourteen, some of

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Speaker 3: Australia's most impressive women gathered at Woolemloo's famous finger Warfs

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Speaker 3: on Sydney Harbor. They were there to celebrate Cosmopolitan Magazine's

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Speaker 3: Fun Fearless Female Awards. Everything was sparkling, the water, the

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Speaker 3: sky and the cocktails. Laughter echoed out across the wharf.

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Speaker 3: A Samantha Armitage sipped and nibbled alongside Jodi and Asta

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Speaker 3: just Into Franklin, Lisa Wilkinson, Dummy Im, Hollywood it Girl,

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Speaker 3: Tara Reid.

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Speaker 4: And Belle Gibson.

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Speaker 3: If now that name brings with it the weighty infamy

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Speaker 3: of a notorious scam, then it did not.

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Speaker 4: Then Bell was there to be celebrated.

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Speaker 5: So it's really the zasting. When you hadial social media.

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Speaker 6: I started posting about just fine day.

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Speaker 7: It is interesting, but was encouraged by friends and family.

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Speaker 6: But first they knew that what I was sharing someone

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Speaker 6: else interesting.

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Speaker 3: In She was what we now know as an influencer,

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Speaker 3: a young entrepreneurial mother whose cookbook and iPhone app were

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Speaker 3: a huge success, and she didn't look even a little

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Speaker 3: bit out of place alongside Sydney's social a list, dressed

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Speaker 3: in white, apparently glowing with health, despite the fact that

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Speaker 3: a very large piece of her story and appeal was

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Speaker 3: that she was far from healthy.

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Speaker 4: Bell was going going through a very public.

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Speaker 3: Battle with a malignant brain tumor, just the latest, she

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Speaker 3: claimed in a series of life threatening illnesses she'd been

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Speaker 3: diagnosed with since she was a teenager.

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Speaker 4: It was why she was there.

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Speaker 3: As Cosmo's editor at the time, Bronwyn McCann says, you wanted.

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Speaker 8: To hug her. That's the best description. She had, this

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Speaker 8: very sweet nature, very personable, shiny eyes where you just thought, gosh,

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Speaker 8: you're going through so much and look at you, you

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Speaker 8: clever girl, that you've done all of this stuff with

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Speaker 8: the app and apple and everything, and even looking back now,

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Speaker 8: not at all, would you ever go there was something

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Speaker 8: dodgy about her, Not at all. She was the sweetest,

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Speaker 8: but there was something dodgy about Belle Gibson from Welcome

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Speaker 8: to Extraordinary Stories, the podcast that takes you inside the

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Speaker 8: stories you thought you knew, with the women who really do.

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Speaker 3: I'm your host, Emma Gillespie. On this season of Extraordinary Stories,

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Speaker 3: We're looking at the young woman who fooled not only

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Speaker 3: her hundreds of thousands of followers, but the most prestigious

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Speaker 3: book publishers in Australia, the tech giants of Silicon Valley,

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Speaker 3: and even her family and friends into believing she was

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Speaker 3: something she was not, sick and making lots of money

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Speaker 3: as she did it.

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Speaker 4: You're going to hear from the people she tricked.

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Speaker 9: I'm getting sicker, I'm having chemo, I'm following all of

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Speaker 9: what the doctors say to do, and I'm nearly dying,

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Speaker 9: and she's living her best life.

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Speaker 4: The people who sat face to face with her.

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Speaker 10: When I met Bell Gibson, she was more concerned about

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Speaker 10: the impact on herself. She knew to talk in a

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Speaker 10: sympathetic way about the people that she'd met, but I

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Speaker 10: think that no, she was most upset about the effect

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Speaker 10: on her.

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Speaker 3: And the people who had never seen anything like it ever.

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Speaker 1: I haven't seen an example of online misleading and deceptive

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Speaker 1: conduct of this sort of scale in this country or

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Speaker 1: frankly anywhere.

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Speaker 8: She doesn't have cancer. She has no brain shumers. Everything

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Speaker 8: is a lie.

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Speaker 3: This is extraordinary stories Belle Gibson. Wynham is an unremarkable

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Speaker 3: suburb of Brisbane, wide streets, weather board, Queenslanders, with iconic

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Speaker 3: verandas and a view overlooking Morton Bay. There's a jetty mangroves,

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Speaker 3: a popular waiting pool frequented by local kids in the

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Speaker 3: summer holidays. It's also where Annabelle Natalie Gibson grew up,

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Speaker 3: born in October nineteen ninety one. Her story starts there

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Speaker 3: in Queensland. It's not necessarily the kind of place you

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Speaker 3: might imagine.

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Speaker 4: As home to a master criminal.

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Speaker 3: But then again, Belle Gibson's origin story isn't particularly easy

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Speaker 3: to piece together, but there are a few things we

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Speaker 3: can be sure of. One of them is that Belle

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Speaker 3: Gibson grew up at least for a time in Winnhem

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Speaker 3: with her mum Natalie and her brother Nick. Despite its

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Speaker 3: suburban charm nowadays, back in the early two thousands there

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Speaker 3: was a spike in local crime around Winnham. For example,

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Speaker 3: police had enforced abound on hoodies to deal with the

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Speaker 3: increasing amount of armed robberies in the area, and things

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Speaker 3: at Bell's place weren't always easy. According to Belle, she

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Speaker 3: had a nomadic childhood, having never met her father and

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Speaker 3: constantly moving between cities before settling in Brisbane. She told

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Speaker 3: The Australian Woman's Weekly in twenty fifteen.

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Speaker 1: When I started school, my mum went. My daughter's all

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Speaker 1: grown up now, All of a sudden, I was walking

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Speaker 1: to school on my own, making school lunches and cleaning

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Speaker 1: the house every day. It was my responsibility to do

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Speaker 1: grocery shopping, do the washing, arrange medical appointment and pick

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Speaker 1: up my brother. I didn't have toys.

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Speaker 3: Claire Weave, the journalist who interviewed her for that story,

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Speaker 3: says Belle claimed she was also burdened with responsibilities beyond

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Speaker 3: her years as a young girl, things like caring for

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Speaker 3: her autistic brother.

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Speaker 11: There might be truth in there, As with some other

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Speaker 11: things Belle has said, there might be There might be

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Speaker 11: the case that some of it's true and some of

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Speaker 11: it's been exaggerated or elaborated. Maybe she just has had

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Speaker 11: this really terrible bleak childhood. But I can't help think,

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Speaker 11: given the pattern of what she said more recently, that

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Speaker 11: maybe some of it she's built upon and exaggerated.

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Speaker 3: Nick Toscano and Bo Donnelly are Melbourne based journalist who

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Speaker 3: wrote a book about Belle Gibson.

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Speaker 4: It's called The Woman Who Fooled the World.

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Speaker 3: Bo told Channel ten in twenty seventeen that Belle may

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Speaker 3: have had a difficult childhood.

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Speaker 12: Belle certainly has come from a troubled upbringing. She's come

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Speaker 12: from a lot of instability. Indeed, it doesn't excuse what

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Speaker 12: she's done, but we were left sort of feeling somewhat

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Speaker 12: sympathetic towards her. Of course, it doesn't excuse the sort

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Speaker 12: of wrongdoing and the deceit and the way she led

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Speaker 12: actual cancer sufferers astray. But look, someone who who was

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Speaker 12: mentally healthy, completely mentally healthy, I don't think would have

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Speaker 12: been able to perpetuate such a life for so long.

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Speaker 12: So I think there is an element of sympathy.

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Speaker 3: After apparent instability at home in her early years, Belle

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Speaker 3: seemed to have found.

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Speaker 4: Her feet by high school, and she thrived.

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Speaker 3: Her teachers described her as a high achiever, an exemplary pupil,

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Speaker 3: but she also excelled outside of the classroom. Bell enrolled

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Speaker 3: in acting classes at the Mercury youth theater. According to

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Speaker 3: her drama teacher, she was quite good and she was

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Speaker 3: renowned as a great storyteller among her peers. Gamble knew

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Speaker 3: Belle through acting classes and remembers her well, partly for

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Speaker 3: the way the other students reacted to what they saw

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Speaker 3: as her fantasist side.

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Speaker 4: Kelsey told Nick Toscano and Bo Donnelly she.

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Speaker 2: Was extremely well known for what basically amounts to compulsive lying.

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Speaker 2: She was honestly a laughing stock half the time people

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Speaker 2: made fun of her.

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Speaker 3: Bell told classmates she was a test tube baby well

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Speaker 3: part of the witness protection program. But there was one

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Speaker 3: theme that began to emerge in her tall tales, and

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Speaker 3: it stuck around stories of medical dramas and incredible recovery.

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Speaker 3: Bell told many people that she'd suffered major heart problems

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Speaker 3: and had even undergone a series of life saving operations.

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Speaker 3: Bell's former boyfriend, Jacob he heard a lot of Bell's stories.

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Speaker 13: She couldn't go five minutes without making up a story

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Speaker 13: back then. It was about her heart, and it all

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Speaker 13: just went over the top of my head because it

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Speaker 13: was just so frequent. That's how she works. She just

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Speaker 13: opens her mouth and starts saying stories.

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Speaker 3: By the time she was eighteen, Belle had left school

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Speaker 3: and moved to Perth. That's where she found her first

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Speaker 3: online audience. It's also where, according to The Weekly, Bell

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Speaker 3: started working in a call center at a private health

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Speaker 3: insurance firm. She was speaking to sick people day in,

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Speaker 3: day out and hearing all about their illnesses.

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Speaker 4: She told Claire Weaver at the.

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Speaker 1: Time, I was hearing some horrible things about what people

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Speaker 1: were going through.

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Speaker 3: Bell's first blogging experience came through a chat room about

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Speaker 3: rock band The Flaming Lips. She told that community she

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Speaker 3: was posting from a Perth hospital ward where she was

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Speaker 3: waiting for the first of three or more operations to

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Speaker 3: remove fluid from around her heart. Bell described in vivid

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Speaker 3: detail a series of operations, specialist appointments, even visits to

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Speaker 3: the hospital chapel. She said she was undergoing tests for

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Speaker 3: a heart and preparing for chemotherapy. Bell also wrote that

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Speaker 3: she went into a coma after dying on the operating table.

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Speaker 1: The doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed

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Speaker 1: and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just

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Speaker 1: under three minutes. I went straight into a coma situation

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Speaker 1: for six hours and just woke up crying for my iPhone.

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Speaker 1: They're amazed, I'm sitting up already and claim a miracle. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the procedure failed and I died pretty nui.

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Speaker 3: After her alleged major heart surgery, there was another turning

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Speaker 3: point in Bell's story. She got the cervical cancer vaccine,

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Speaker 3: a HPV immunization that began to roll out across Australia

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Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven. Bell wrote that after getting

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Speaker 3: her second vaccination, she suffered a stroke.

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Speaker 4: It was a.

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Speaker 3: Strange claim, as doctor Brad Mackay, Sydney GP and author

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Speaker 3: of Fake Medicine explains.

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Speaker 14: Back in two thousand and nine, Bell Gibson said that

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Speaker 14: she received a terrible diagnose from her doctor. She says

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Speaker 14: that she was diagnosed with brain cancer, it was terminal

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Speaker 14: and she only had a few months to live. This

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Speaker 14: is a really odd part of the story where Bell

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Speaker 14: Gibson was saying that she had been immunized against cervical

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Speaker 14: cancer and then subsequently had had a stroke and then

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Speaker 14: that had led to brain cancer. So it's sort of

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Speaker 14: like blaming a vaccine on getting cancer. But what we

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Speaker 14: know about using the HPV the human papalomavirus vaccine is

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Speaker 14: that it's not been linked at all with cancer. It's

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Speaker 14: not linked with stroke whatsoever, so blaming it is a

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Speaker 14: little bit far fetched. We do know that it's great

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Speaker 14: at stopping people from getting cervical cancer and also genital warts,

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Speaker 14: but also with brain cancer. If that's growing, that could

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Speaker 14: potentially break a blood vessel and then cause a stroke

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Speaker 14: to happen. But a stroke itself, like a bleed within

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Speaker 14: the brain, that's not going to trigger a cancer to

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Speaker 14: then occur. It's the wrong way round.

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Speaker 3: It's at this point that eighteen year old Bell says

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Speaker 3: she was introduced to a man called doctor Mark jo

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Speaker 3: by a group of anti vaccination campaigners. Bell said doctor

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Speaker 3: Johns was a neurologist and immunologist from Melbourne's Peter McCallum

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Speaker 3: Cancer Center. This introduction would set about a chain of

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Speaker 3: events that would eventually bring Bell to Melbourne, where she

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Speaker 3: settled permanently and where everything was about to change. You'll

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Speaker 3: hear more about doctor John's later in Bell's story. It

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Speaker 3: was twenty ten. Bell was living in Melbourne with her

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Speaker 3: boyfriend Nathan Corbett. She'd been diagnosed with brain cancer and

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Speaker 3: she was about to give birth to her son, Oliver.

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Speaker 3: It was around this time that Belle claimed she underwent

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Speaker 3: conventional treatment for this malignant brain tumor. Doctor Brad MacKaye

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Speaker 3: says there are a few options that would be presented

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Speaker 3: to patients with Bell's diagnosis.

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Speaker 14: The treatment options that Bell would have been offered would

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Speaker 14: have been things like chemotherapy, radiotherapy, so poisons into the

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Speaker 14: vein to try to kill the cancer. Radiotherapy so putting

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Speaker 14: X rays towards where the cancers were to try to

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Speaker 14: shrink them down. Sometimes we would engage with surgery. So

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Speaker 14: many people with brain cancer will have a scar on

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Speaker 14: the side of their head where surgeons have gone and

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Speaker 14: to remove it.

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Speaker 3: But Belle would eventually describe how she abandoned these treatments

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Speaker 3: in favor of holistic remedies and alternative medicine.

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Speaker 14: So Bell said that she went in for treatment at

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Speaker 14: the hospital, that she went to the oncology ward, and

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Speaker 14: that she received treatment. She was saying that it was

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Speaker 14: just too much for her, that it was if she

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Speaker 14: was feeling overwhelmed. She didn't really know what to do.

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Speaker 14: She wasn't wanting to persevere with the typical medical model

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Speaker 14: with westernized treatment, and so she decided at that time

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Speaker 14: that she wanted to take some alternative remedies. She wanted

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Speaker 14: to do her own research and figure out what would

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Speaker 14: work for her and her body at that time.

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Speaker 3: This became a crucial turning point in Bell's blogs. Today,

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Speaker 3: wellness influences are a mainstream staple of every social media platform,

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Speaker 3: but in two thousand and nine they were just beginning

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Speaker 3: to flourish. Many of us hadn't even heard of the

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Speaker 3: word wellness. Known as the original wellness warrior, Jessica Ainsco,

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Speaker 3: another young woman from Queensland, was documenting her alternative cancer

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Speaker 3: treatment online to an ever growing audience. Jessica was a

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Speaker 3: writer and blogger, an online editor for Dolly Magazine, living

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Speaker 3: what she deemed her hectic dream life in Sydney. When

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Speaker 3: she was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive sarcoma.

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Speaker 3: She was only twenty three. The cancer was in her

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Speaker 3: left arm and hand, and after being told that her

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Speaker 3: best treatment option was amputation, jess had decided to try

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Speaker 3: to heal herself without traditional cancer treatment and to document

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Speaker 3: the process. Jessica was a devotee of Gerson therapy, a

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Speaker 3: food based protocol that claims to cure all kinds of

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Speaker 3: serious ailments, most famously cancer, with an all vegetarian diet

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Speaker 3: and a strict regime of fruit and veggie juices and

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Speaker 3: coffee enemas. Here's Jess describing her daily routine.

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Speaker 7: So basically a day of the life of a Gerson

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Speaker 7: person is I wake up at six o'clock in the

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Speaker 7: morning as I do my first coffee animal.

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Speaker 4: So it's onto the bathroom floor.

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Speaker 15: Then I do my animal, and then I go upstairs

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Speaker 15: and I meditate for about half an hour to twenty

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Speaker 15: five minutes, and then breakfast is at quarter.

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Speaker 7: Past seven when we have our first juice, which is

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Speaker 7: orange juice, So breakfast at seven, and then the next

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Speaker 7: juice is at eight and the real veggie juice is

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Speaker 7: start from them, and it's one veggie juice every hour

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Speaker 7: on the hour.

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Speaker 4: Right up until six o'clock in the evening.

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Speaker 11: Yeah, basically throughout the day.

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Speaker 15: And we also have we do fly coffee animals throughout

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Speaker 15: the day, so it spreads between a few hours between

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Speaker 15: each one.

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Speaker 7: We have three full meals each day breakfast, lunch, and.

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Speaker 15: Dinner all at the same time every day and basically, yeah,

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Speaker 15: the therapy goes like that. We're wrung like a bit

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Speaker 15: of a military or agem actually on the hour, every

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Speaker 15: hour right up until we go to.

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Speaker 4: Bed at ten o'clock, doctor Brad says.

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Speaker 3: During her treatment, jess ains Co built up an online

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Speaker 3: profile promoting her belief that food was medicine.

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Speaker 14: Gerson therapy has been a therapy that's been around for many,

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Speaker 14: many years, even from like the sixties and seventies. It's

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Speaker 14: a treatment that involves doing lots and lots of juices,

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Speaker 14: so fresh vegetables and fruit, putting them into a big juicer,

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Speaker 14: and even it's quite onerous because you have to have

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Speaker 14: the juice on the hour, every hour, every day for

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Speaker 14: a long time. It also involves using enemas that usually

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Speaker 14: either contain coffee or castor oil. And again you need

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Speaker 14: to be doing these these enemis a couple of times

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Speaker 14: a day at the least, with the whole principle that

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Speaker 14: you're trying to rid your body of toxins, getting rid

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Speaker 14: of toxins that could be sitting in your lower and

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Speaker 14: testine and evacuating them. So yeah, like it hasn't been

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Speaker 14: proven to work, and suddenly there are practitioners around the

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Speaker 14: world that still do it. But suddenly it's not recommended

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Speaker 14: in Australia.

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Speaker 3: Australia's wellness army was swelling, and just like Jess, Belle

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Speaker 3: was going to be a part of it.

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Speaker 2: Phill Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneur.

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Speaker 4: She is an ecopreneur. He tastes that Mango Bill launched

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Speaker 4: the Whole Pantry app last year.

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Speaker 3: Belle Gibson was a single mother living in Melbourne when

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Speaker 3: she was told she only had four months to live.

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Speaker 3: She said she tried chemotherapy, then radiation. She said, she

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Speaker 3: then started exploring alternative therapies, including Gerson.

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Speaker 4: Just like Jess. There's no scientific.

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Speaker 3: Evidence that Gerson therapy cures cancer, but Belle was alive

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Speaker 3: and thriving.

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Speaker 4: Whatever she was doing, it seemed to work.

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Speaker 3: So in twenty thirteen, Belle Gibson decided, just like Jess,

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Speaker 3: to share her story with the world on Instagram, speaking

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Speaker 3: candidly about her cancer and the wellness journey she believed

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Speaker 3: was healing it, documenting the highs and lows of her

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Speaker 3: day to day experiences. It was her blog and social

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Speaker 3: media platforms that would eventually land her a ground breaking

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Speaker 3: app and a best selling book. Just like jess Ainsco

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Speaker 3: had publicly documented. Belle claimed she was curing herself through

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Speaker 3: food and lifestyle, not medicine. Not only did her quickly

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Speaker 3: growing follower base believe Belle, they gave her the attention

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Speaker 3: she craved, out pourings of sympathy and concern, and perhaps

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Speaker 3: most importantly, fellow cancer sufferers looked to her for ho

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Speaker 3: to them, this brave young woman was a beacon. If

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Speaker 3: she was doing so well, surely they could too. In

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Speaker 3: twenty fourteen, Kylie Willie was in a hospital bed feeling

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Speaker 3: defeated and hopeless when she started following Belle Gibson on

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Speaker 3: social media. Kylie, accustomed to an active lifestyle as a

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Speaker 3: personal trainer, had recently gained thirty kilos. Her long brown

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Speaker 3: hair had fallen out. Kylie had been diagnosed with grade

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Speaker 3: three B T cell lymphoblastic lymphoma in her early forties.

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Speaker 3: She had not one, but several tumors from her pelvis

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Speaker 3: all the way up to her neck.

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Speaker 9: I was completely shocked because I didn't smoke, you know,

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Speaker 9: a yah, I'd like a glass of wine, but it

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Speaker 9: was nothing excessive, lived a healthy life, no history of

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Speaker 9: lymphoma in my family. Just a complete and utter mind

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Speaker 9: blowing shock.

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Speaker 3: In a race to stop the cancer spreading to her brain,

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Speaker 3: Kylie had begun a great sive chemotherapy. It caused her

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Speaker 3: physical pain in a way she had never experienced before

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Speaker 3: her body ached.

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Speaker 4: She felt constantly nauseous.

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Speaker 9: My girlfriend came to visit me at the Alfred and

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Speaker 9: she was chatting about Belle and talking about how she

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Speaker 9: has been going through treatment for cancer, but she's curing

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Speaker 9: herself with eating really healthy, clean diet, and you know,

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Speaker 9: she wasn't going through the chemo or anything like that,

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Speaker 9: and she was getting better. Yeah, so I sort of

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Speaker 9: was thinking, here, I am in the hospital, following the protocols,

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Speaker 9: having chemotherapy, getting sicker. There's Belle gibbson writing books, starting

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Speaker 9: deals with Apple. She's got brain cancer, which is so

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Speaker 9: much worse than mine. She's having this clean diet. I

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Speaker 9: was obviously eating the food that was provided by the Alfred,

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Speaker 9: which isn't great.

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Speaker 14: You know, it's hospital food.

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Speaker 9: And I'm getting sicker, I'm having chemo, I'm following all

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Speaker 9: of what the doctors say to do, and I'm nearly

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Speaker 9: dying and she's living her best life.

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Speaker 3: By twenty thirteen, Bell had well and truly found her

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Speaker 3: stride and her voice. Within a year of announcing on

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Speaker 3: social media that she'd been healing her brain cancer with

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Speaker 3: foods and alternative therapies, her ideas were turned into an app.

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Speaker 3: It was called The Whole Pantry, and it was full

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Speaker 3: of the kind of food that Belle was eating. It

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Speaker 3: would go on to win awards, be championed by Apple,

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Speaker 3: be described as groundbreaking, and Ganna Bell Gibson International acclaim

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Speaker 3: and a very lucrative book deal.

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Speaker 9: Yeah, I had the book, I had the app. I

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Speaker 9: donated money to her, I went on all the Bell

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Speaker 9: Gibbs and rides.

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Speaker 4: So what was it all about? What was the Whole Pantry?

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Speaker 6: A recipe colection full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes,

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Speaker 6: which is the way that we encourage people to get

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Speaker 6: back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables.

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Speaker 3: The Whole Pantry app was celebrated as a sleek database

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Speaker 3: full of thoughtful recipes accompanied by lifestyle tips and tricks,

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Speaker 3: wrapped up in a beautifully designed interface with the iconic

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Speaker 3: logo of two white leaves on a teal background. One

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Speaker 3: of the world's richest, most recognizable, most influential companies loved it.

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Speaker 3: Apple saw something in Bell, and she quickly found her

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Speaker 3: place in an elite inner circle of app developers who'd

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Speaker 3: won over the trust and loyalty of the global tech juggernaut.

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Speaker 4: When they realized what a hit.

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Speaker 3: Bell's app was on iPhones, Apple made a bold decision

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Speaker 3: to incorporate the Whole Pantry as a preloaded application on

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Speaker 3: a brand new product, one that was set to revolutionize

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Speaker 3: the wearable tech space.

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Speaker 4: The good Apple.

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Speaker 16: Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. We

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Speaker 16: set out to make the best watch in the world.

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Speaker 16: We love to make great products that really enrich people's lives.

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Speaker 16: We love to integrate hardware, software and services seamlessly. We

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Speaker 16: love to make technology more personal and allow our users

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Speaker 16: to do things that they could never have imagined.

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Speaker 3: This was a big deal to have an assie app

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Speaker 3: in the position the Whole Pantry had found itself in,

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Speaker 3: and for that app to be in the wellness space.

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Speaker 4: It just hadn't been done before.

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00:24:44,614 --> 00:24:46,494
Speaker 3: Here's what Belle had to say about what it was

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Speaker 3: like to be on the ground at Apple, HQ and

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Speaker 3: Koopatino for that very announcement.

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Speaker 6: You know, it took seven months worth of development and

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Speaker 6: I put everything that I knew along my journey with cancer,

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Speaker 6: nutrition and wellness and put it on the most successible

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Speaker 6: device possible, the iPhone, and it's just onwards and utwords

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Speaker 6: from there. With the Apple Watch, it's even more accessible.

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Speaker 6: It's an even more personal experience and more personal journey

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Speaker 6: to living the whole life and adopting the support and

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Speaker 6: the resources that we put there for you. My developer

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Speaker 6: and I had come over here four weeks ago now

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Speaker 6: and we've been working every day on our Apple Watch app.

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Speaker 4: And it's been hard. It's been hard.

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Speaker 6: It's been hard because of the jet lag. Has been

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Speaker 6: hard being a startup and dropped in amongst the twitters

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Speaker 6: and the BMW's of the world. But we're a static

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Speaker 6: with what we've come out with.

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Speaker 3: The world was at her feet, and a huge publishing

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Speaker 3: house took note. Bell signed a deal with Penguin Random

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Speaker 3: House to turn the best selling app into a book

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Speaker 3: filled with recipes and detailing Bell's moving story.

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Speaker 9: She was a complete well appeared to be the complete package.

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Speaker 9: You know, the big glowing smile and the beautiful hair

438
00:26:02,974 --> 00:26:07,094
Speaker 9: and the perfect skin, and you know, she seemed patient

439
00:26:07,134 --> 00:26:12,174
Speaker 9: and in control and also backed by all of these

440
00:26:12,294 --> 00:26:14,694
Speaker 9: people that thought that she was doing the right thing

441
00:26:14,734 --> 00:26:16,814
Speaker 9: as well. She had signed to deal with Penguin Books,

442
00:26:16,814 --> 00:26:19,614
Speaker 9: she had a contract with Apple. She of course she

443
00:26:20,334 --> 00:26:24,654
Speaker 9: was legit because otherwise these companies wouldn't been backing her,

444
00:26:24,654 --> 00:26:26,934
Speaker 9: they wouldn't be a part of her story as well.

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00:26:27,254 --> 00:26:34,214
Speaker 3: This was the peak of Bell's success, an app, a book, awards, followers, fame.

446
00:26:35,014 --> 00:26:37,614
Speaker 3: All of that brought her to the woollomoloo wharves that

447
00:26:37,734 --> 00:26:42,534
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen day for Cosmo's Fun Fearless Awards, where Belle

448
00:26:42,614 --> 00:26:44,934
Speaker 3: took out the social media category.

449
00:26:46,054 --> 00:26:47,894
Speaker 5: Trying to take more kind of fats.

450
00:26:48,734 --> 00:26:50,214
Speaker 4: That's not the feelings the signe.

451
00:26:51,854 --> 00:26:54,534
Speaker 5: But my partner has been saying to me through year now,

452
00:26:55,014 --> 00:26:57,814
Speaker 5: it's really strangely, really every morning for a long time,

453
00:26:58,014 --> 00:27:02,734
Speaker 5: saying this is strange come to any had stadium full

454
00:27:02,774 --> 00:27:03,494
Speaker 5: of people that.

455
00:27:05,334 --> 00:27:09,334
Speaker 4: Watching her at remover, awaiting on some form.

456
00:27:09,094 --> 00:27:18,254
Speaker 3: Of When her team suggested Bell Gibson is a nominee,

457
00:27:18,254 --> 00:27:20,334
Speaker 3: Bronwyn mccahn thought it was a no brainer.

458
00:27:20,454 --> 00:27:22,854
Speaker 8: So in that social media category, it was a varied

459
00:27:22,894 --> 00:27:26,174
Speaker 8: list of people in fitness and in fashion and beauty

460
00:27:26,214 --> 00:27:29,774
Speaker 8: and health and whatever else, and they pitched this girl

461
00:27:29,854 --> 00:27:32,454
Speaker 8: named Bell Gibson hadn't heard of her at that point,

462
00:27:32,974 --> 00:27:35,614
Speaker 8: so they had done their you know, due diligence, going, oh,

463
00:27:35,614 --> 00:27:37,934
Speaker 8: you know, and she's got, you know, over two hundred

464
00:27:37,974 --> 00:27:41,454
Speaker 8: thousand followers, and it's an amazing story because she's got

465
00:27:41,494 --> 00:27:45,414
Speaker 8: all of these cancers and rain tumors and she's done

466
00:27:45,454 --> 00:27:48,454
Speaker 8: this app called The Whole Pantry and Apple are going

467
00:27:48,534 --> 00:27:51,294
Speaker 8: to put it on their next release of iPhone or

468
00:27:51,374 --> 00:27:55,054
Speaker 8: eyewatch or something, and I was like, wow, that's phenomenal,

469
00:27:55,134 --> 00:27:58,134
Speaker 8: Like what a story that this woman who's going through

470
00:27:58,134 --> 00:28:01,574
Speaker 8: so much, a mother of one and young, super young

471
00:28:01,854 --> 00:28:04,134
Speaker 8: and going through all this medical stuff even has the

472
00:28:04,174 --> 00:28:07,974
Speaker 8: time or energy or anything to create this incredible app

473
00:28:08,014 --> 00:28:09,894
Speaker 8: that is being picked up by Apple.

474
00:28:09,974 --> 00:28:11,294
Speaker 4: Like this is unbelievable.

475
00:28:11,894 --> 00:28:14,214
Speaker 8: So we were like, yeah, great, she sounds perfect to

476
00:28:14,254 --> 00:28:17,494
Speaker 8: put in in the category under health wellbeing.

477
00:28:17,894 --> 00:28:18,414
Speaker 14: And that was that.

478
00:28:19,014 --> 00:28:20,854
Speaker 4: But that was not that.

479
00:28:21,534 --> 00:28:26,494
Speaker 3: An email pinged into journalists in boxes around the country

480
00:28:26,614 --> 00:28:31,254
Speaker 3: at the exact same time, and it said.

481
00:28:30,854 --> 00:28:33,414
Speaker 17: It has come to my attention that you have published

482
00:28:33,454 --> 00:28:35,694
Speaker 17: a story about a girl I have known for my

483
00:28:35,814 --> 00:28:40,174
Speaker 17: whole life. Her name is Belle Gibson, creator of The

484
00:28:40,214 --> 00:28:44,654
Speaker 17: Whole Pantry app and book, and a so called terminal

485
00:28:44,774 --> 00:28:49,374
Speaker 17: cancer patient. Unfortunately, there are a few things you might

486
00:28:49,454 --> 00:28:53,134
Speaker 17: need to know before you consider publishing more about this woman.

487
00:28:56,054 --> 00:29:00,374
Speaker 3: What that email went on to say would change everything

488
00:29:09,894 --> 00:29:12,374
Speaker 3: next time on Extraordinary Stories.

489
00:29:12,814 --> 00:29:15,854
Speaker 8: I can't remember the timeframe between the awards and when

490
00:29:15,894 --> 00:29:18,294
Speaker 8: the next thing happened, but maybe it was a couple

491
00:29:18,374 --> 00:29:21,534
Speaker 8: of months and the next thing. One of the girls

492
00:29:21,574 --> 00:29:23,174
Speaker 8: in the office came in and said, Oh my god,

493
00:29:23,494 --> 00:29:29,374
Speaker 8: I've just received this email, anonymous, but basically from somebody

494
00:29:29,374 --> 00:29:33,734
Speaker 8: who's saying that they went to school with Bell and

495
00:29:33,814 --> 00:29:36,054
Speaker 8: that everything she's saying is a lie.

496
00:29:36,414 --> 00:29:39,134
Speaker 4: Her age is a lie, she doesn't.

497
00:29:38,854 --> 00:29:42,574
Speaker 8: Have cancer, she does have brain tumors. Everything is a lie.

498
00:29:43,174 --> 00:29:46,254
Speaker 8: And it had been sent to Cosmo and Cleo and

499
00:29:46,414 --> 00:29:49,334
Speaker 8: like all the magazines, so everyone had got it. And

500
00:29:49,374 --> 00:29:52,694
Speaker 8: I imagined it had also been sent to various journalists

501
00:29:52,774 --> 00:29:55,534
Speaker 8: at newspapers because everyone had got the same email from

502
00:29:55,574 --> 00:29:56,414
Speaker 8: this anonymous source.

503
00:29:57,374 --> 00:29:59,174
Speaker 4: So we're like, God, a.

504
00:29:59,134 --> 00:30:01,694
Speaker 8: Monthly magazine is not going to be the magazine that

505
00:30:01,854 --> 00:30:04,814
Speaker 8: breaks a big story like this, because you've already got

506
00:30:05,054 --> 00:30:08,054
Speaker 8: digital sides and news sides and everything that have already

507
00:30:08,094 --> 00:30:08,854
Speaker 8: received this email.

508
00:30:09,094 --> 00:30:12,734
Speaker 3: There were there was one newsroom with the time, resources

509
00:30:12,774 --> 00:30:16,614
Speaker 3: and interest to pursue this tip off, and not even

510
00:30:16,774 --> 00:30:21,214
Speaker 3: they could predict how Bell's empire of deception was about

511
00:30:21,414 --> 00:30:22,774
Speaker 3: to unravel.

512
00:30:23,094 --> 00:30:24,694
Speaker 10: I think there is a bit of a pattern in

513
00:30:24,774 --> 00:30:27,734
Speaker 10: people who want to lie to you that they tell

514
00:30:27,774 --> 00:30:30,574
Speaker 10: you a partial truth and then.

515
00:30:31,974 --> 00:30:34,574
Speaker 4: It just dovetails from there.

516
00:30:34,934 --> 00:30:38,334
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to this episode of Extraordinary Stories.

517
00:30:38,574 --> 00:30:40,854
Speaker 3: It was written and produced by me Emma Gillespie with

518
00:30:40,894 --> 00:30:45,254
Speaker 3: Holly Wainwright. Audio production is by Eliza Ratliffe and Madeline Joannu.

519
00:30:45,654 --> 00:30:49,254
Speaker 3: The executive producers of Extraordinary Stories are Eliza Ratliffe and

520
00:30:49,294 --> 00:30:49,974
Speaker 3: Holly Wainwright.

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00:30:55,174 --> 00:30:57,974
Speaker 2: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Extraordinary Stories. This

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00:30:58,254 --> 00:31:00,454
Speaker 2: is just part one of a three part series on

523
00:31:00,494 --> 00:31:02,654
Speaker 2: Bill Gibson. If you'd like to hear the rest of it,

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00:31:02,854 --> 00:31:05,414
Speaker 2: Extraordinary Stories will be linked in our show notes and

525
00:31:05,454 --> 00:31:07,454
Speaker 2: of course the Quickie will be back in your feed

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00:31:07,694 --> 00:31:09,534
Speaker 2: six am tomorrow morning. See you there,