Meta’s Gone Too Far, Bethenny at Burning Man, Clancy Trial & House of Horrors

[00:00:00] Chalene Johnson : Hey, before we get too far, I know I’ve talked a lot about the supplements that I take in powder form. There’s a lot of them, and there’s, of course, the things I take in capsule form, but I also take a few things in gummy form. And one of the things that I started taking about a year ago, actually when we were in Europe last year, is saffron.

[00:00:21] Chalene Johnson : And I started taking it because I heard about quite a few studies that demonstrated that saffron made significant improvements in people’s, their ability to reduce their anxiety, to feel more relaxed, to have mental clarity, and of course, that’s gonna improve your sleep, right? Because that’s one of the main reasons why so many of us struggle to sleep at night.

[00:00:47] Chalene Johnson : You lay down and your brain just doesn’t stop spinning. So anyways, I looked into it. You know me, I love to see a good study, and there’s been a ton of them. In fact, April through July 2025, this is brand new, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study looking at the impact of taking saffron daily for just three months, and the results I can tell you were pretty astonishing.

[00:01:16] Chalene Johnson : A marked decrease in depression, anxiety, and stress. 72.3% of the participants in the saffron group achieved significant improvements on their mental state. So talking about having less anxiety, and of course, that I think is one of the reasons why it contributes to fewer sleep disturbances for those especially who are taking the saffron.

[00:01:39] Chalene Johnson : So listen, I’m definitely not telling you to go off your SSRIs, and if you’re on an antidepressant, that’s awesome. But if you’re one of those people who you’ve been thinking like, “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, I just… I don’t feel as happy as I usually am,” or, “I just feel kinda meh,” you know what I’m talking about.

[00:01:55] Chalene Johnson : You can’t put your finger on it, but you’re like, “I’m just not as happy,” or, “Maybe I’m dealing with more anxiety,” or, “Things are bugging me more than they usually do.” You’ve heard me talk about Organifi for years, and Organifi came out with a saffron gummy that’s actually very, very tasty. So I am going to encourage you, if, if you’re s- already a customer of Organifi, next time you go to place an order, go to organifi.com/chalene.

[00:02:24] Chalene Johnson : Use code Chalene. That always gets you 20% off. I take their Immunity daily. I take Pure daily. I take their collagen daily. All of these things are on the regular, and again, I started taking the Happy Drops. I don’t take those daily, but I’d say I take them, like, three, four times a week And I’ve noticed a difference.

[00:02:47] Chalene Johnson : So I want you to check ’em out. Try them the next time you’re over at Organifi, or, or just go there right now. Go to organifi.com/chalene. You get

[00:02:56] Chalene Johnson : 20% off when you use code Chalene, and we love Organifi. So it’s O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com/chalene for 20% off. What is up, buttercup? Hey, I started recording this episode while I was in the middle of an acute stress response, no joke, over my dog Penelope, so you’re gonna get a little update on her. It’s kinda raw, but we quickly moved through that, and today I am talking about how I went full FBI mode on one particularly cruel Instagram commenter, and really how easy it was for me to piece together who she was, where she lives, all the details of her life, even though she was private and thought she was anonymous, okay?

[00:03:41] Chalene Johnson : And then I’m gonna explain to you how much easier this is for Meta to do, and a new thing that was released on Meta that you might not even realize is piecing together information that you personally haven’t published, but it exists out there. It exists about you, your children, your parents, all this information.

[00:04:01] Chalene Johnson : This is a new Meta policy, and girl, you need to hear this. It is insane what they’re able to do and how. We need to take action. We’re gonna talk about Bethenny Frankel doing Burning Man. I’m obsessed. A wild update in the Lindsay Clancy trial, and of course, I’m also gonna tell you about the most perhaps disturbing true crime investigation I’ve ever heard of, and we’re gonna end on a happy, light note.

[00:04:30] Chalene Johnson : If some of those topics have you concerned or you wanna skip ahead to them, we’ve put in time codes in the show notes so that, like, if you don’t wanna hear anything about, like, a murder trial, well, then you can skip that part. All right. We have a lot to cover. This is a juicy one. Let’s get to it. I’ve only had this happen a couple of times in my life, but I am experiencing, as I record this, thought it might be therapeutic to talk about it.

[00:04:56] Chalene Johnson : I am experiencing an acute stress response which, for me- Comes in the form of an adrenaline surge. Maybe you’ve experienced this before. It’s shakiness, feeling nauseous, but also feeling like this adrenaline rush, like heart racing almost. Also shaky, not just physically, but almost I feel shaky emotionally, like I could cry at any moment.

[00:05:24] Chalene Johnson : And I know that this is how my nervous system responds to uncertainty, major uncertainty where I have zero control, and this is related to Penelope. Let me try to record this without crying. She is still in the care of the vet, and that’s a good thing. And I’m recording this on Thursday, late afternoon.

[00:05:49] Chalene Johnson : She’s still not home from the hospital. She had a full one-side unilateral mammary chain mastectomy, and then a removal of some cancer also on her foot. Actually, we’re not sure what was on her foot. They just removed another tumor there that popped up recently. She can’t come home because this dog really…

[00:06:10] Chalene Johnson : She’s very sensitive to painkillers, and she had adverse reaction. Number one, it induces anxiety in her. Number two, she has a regurgitation response. She’s nauseous. So they’re trying to find like– Because this is a major surgery, so when they bring her down on the pain medication, then she’s noticeably in pain.

[00:06:32] Chalene Johnson : When they try to increase her pain medication, then she has these side effects. Bottom line is this. Let me just reassure myself right now. The doctor says her surgery results look great, that she’s not worried about her. But she does urge us to keep her there because she’s one of those dogs that needs IV treatment to stay properly hydrated and to get nutrients because she won’t eat.

[00:07:01] Chalene Johnson : Yeah, it just has me very anxious, and we have been told by many people. I know it comes from a like a really good place, but I just keep getting all these messages from people like, “You need to see her. You– She’s upset because she’s not with you.” And I just keep repeating to people, you know, you, you share this public stuff, and then you open yourself up to feedback, some of which is constructive, some of which is people trying to be helpful, but some of which is just people who don’t have a clue, and they don’t know what they’re saying is so rude.

[00:07:32] Chalene Johnson : The people who are like, “Go and see her. It’ll bring down her anxiety,” those are people just trying to be helpful, and I understand. But our vet has said You’re welcome to see her, but please know I do not recommend it. This dog, we need to keep her anxiety low, and everybody thinks that because they see their dog happy when they come and visit, but I’ve been doing this for a long time.

[00:07:55] Chalene Johnson : What people don’t know is how the dog responds when you leave. They have major anxiety when their owners leave. They don’t understand, “Why are you not taking me home? Why are you not picking me up? Why are you leaving me here?” She’s the expert, and we’re gonna listen to her. Of course, we would love to go and see her.

[00:08:11] Chalene Johnson : Although some of you have reached out and said, “Don’t go see her. It’s miserable because then you have to leave her, and it will kill you, and it will kill her.” I’m just gonna listen to the vet in this situation. But It is very stressful in a way that I just, I normally don’t respond. I normally am… I don’t know.

[00:08:34] Chalene Johnson : I just don’t normally feel this way. Maybe it’s because she can’t communicate. Maybe it is because I have zero control. Maybe it’s because my affection for this dog is so deep, and also because I know that she is suffering. I mean, maybe that’s not the right word. She’s struggling. Maybe struggling is a better word, not suffering.

[00:08:56] Chalene Johnson : I’m suffering. Anyways, wrong day to come at me with rude comments about how we’re handling this, which one woman on Instagram decided to do. She sent me a message and said, “It is so cruel that you’re doing this to your dog.” And that pissed me off, but I’m like, “Okay, that’s her opinion.” But you know what?

[00:09:17] Chalene Johnson : Wrong day. So I decided to scroll back and see, has this woman said other rude things to me? And you know what? She’s been very kind and, “Oh, can you please tell me what self-tanner you’re using? Can I get the link to that blouse? You look pretty today.” Said things like that, but anything about my dog, she has something rude and nasty to say.

[00:09:38] Chalene Johnson : Then she came back at me with a comment about maybe I should turn to Jesus. Okay. Now you’ve crossed me. So I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna have a conversation with her. I just wanna have an open conversation. Normally I don’t waste my time. Okay, take a deep breath. Let’s use this as a distraction. So I respond back to her and I said, “Jesus loving Sheila.

[00:10:03] Chalene Johnson : I’m also Jesus loving, but can you please explain to me what, pray tell, you think I’m doing wrong?” In another comment she said, “You’re just being so mean to that dog.” Oh, mm. So I gave her an opportunity to explain, which she did not respond to. Then I decided I’m gonna go a little further and see what I can find out about this woman who thinks that she can hide behind her anonymous profile.

[00:10:30] Chalene Johnson : And I’m like, she must not listen to my podcast. She must not follow me that closely to be aware of my FBI skills, my CIA skills. So I can tell you this. I can tell you I know what city and state she lives in, what neighborhood she lives in. I found her husband. I found her friends. I know a lot of her, shall we say, vices.

[00:10:52] Chalene Johnson : I let her know she’s not private. She’s not anonymous. She’s not as anonymous as she thinks. Yeah. It’s just not the day to piss me off. Now, to be very clear, on brand I would never put someone like that, I would never put her profile name or her full name or anything like that on my social media because why?

[00:11:13] Chalene Johnson : I don’t see the point in that. I feel sorry for people like this, to be honest. To have so little going on in your life that you take the time to do this is, it’s kinda sad. It’s just a pathetic place to be. But I did make an Instagram post letting kind of the world know, especially now with these AI tools, there are tools that absolutely unmask your anonymity.

[00:11:39] Chalene Johnson : So these people who are on Reddit or leaving rude comments on X under your Instagram post, leaving you DMs, they think they’re anonymous, but most are not if you really cared. I normally do not. It was just kind of… I was just like, “You know what? I’m not in the mood today, and I’m gonna make a public service announcement to let people know that when you are making these comments, maybe it does make you feel better in the moment to leave a comment like that.”

[00:12:05] Chalene Johnson : But I just don’t believe it, in the long term, it makes someone feel good about themselves to be rude. I honestly do not let it get to me. I just made the video to put others on notice that like, “Hey, just so you know, you’re not anonymous.” But broader than that, I wanted to share this story with you for another reason.

[00:12:24] Chalene Johnson : What I did is known as social engineering. I’m not great at it. This is not my full-time gig. I do it on occasion when I need to. But social engineering is when you take a breadcrumb and you find another breadcrumb, and maybe this person didn’t make something in particular public, but somebody somewhere did.

[00:12:47] Chalene Johnson : This information exists, and you’re kind of connecting the dots and formulating a picture, a story, details. Social engineering is something that a lot of hackers do. It’s how I ended up getting hacked back in 2015, so it’s been around for forever. But the reason why this is really important for you to understand is because Meta is now socially engineering information that you might have no idea other people have access to, and they might actually even be encouraging people to search for it, and it’s all done via AI.

[00:13:23] Chalene Johnson : So in a split second, it doesn’t require a human to connect these dots. AI is doing it for them. Let me explain the situation. Let’s say that you have never posted a picture of your address online. You’ve been very careful to make sure that that is something that’s kept private. Or maybe you’ve never posted your kids’ names and faces online, okay?

[00:13:50] Chalene Johnson : But your mom took a picture of the whole family in front of your house for Thanksgiving, and it’s on her Facebook page. But she didn’t identify it as being your house. She just took the photo, and everybody’s there standing in front of your house. Okay. Well, that information is stored somewhere, someplace, and you can see the address.

[00:14:08] Chalene Johnson : Okay? Now, you’ve done a post on Facebook or on Instagram or someplace else where you’ve shown a portion of your house in the background, but you were very careful not to include the street, the address, the city, the state. Well, in a matter of split second, Facebook can connect you to your mom, the house and the address, the address to the photo, the photo to the photo you posted on Facebook, and it can provide that information to whoever is requesting it because the information, all of it, was public The photo you posted of your house was public even though you went to great lengths to conceal your address, but you posted a picture of your house, and that’s public.

[00:14:56] Chalene Johnson : And then your mom posted a picture of your house, and even though she didn’t say it was your house, she posted a public picture with an address in it. Do you understand what I’m saying? Now, you might think to yourself, “Okay, do I really have anything to worry about?” Well, I wanna share with you this story this woman posted to TikTok where she had…

[00:15:16] Chalene Johnson : I’m just gonna give you the summary of it, then you can listen to her explaining what happened next. She posted a Facebook video singing in her car. In the background, just barely visible, you can see one of her children sitting in a car seat. She went back to the post, and Meta now has this feature where they have a suggested query.

[00:15:41] Chalene Johnson : What they’re trying to do is keep you on the platform longer. It might be a photo you’ve posted with you and a few of your friends. You haven’t tagged any of them. This is what Meta does. It’s predicting what somebody might want to know, which would therefore keep them engaged and on the platform longer to figure out this information.

[00:16:01] Chalene Johnson : So it’s predicting what people might wanna know. If I posted a picture of myself and my husband, it would probably say, “Who is Chalene Johnson married to?” It’s predicting that people might wanna know that. Okay, so listen to this. Today I posted a completely innocent video of me and my daughter singing in the car, and Facebook put a Meta AI question underneath it that said, “Who’s the child passenger?”

[00:16:28] Chalene Johnson : First of all, why in the hell is that even a suggested question about a minor? But I clicked it, and this is where I started getting really uncomfortable. It starts pulling completely separate information for each of my kids, their names, birth information, pictures and videos of them. It pulled a newborn picture from my mom’s page from years ago.
[00:16:53] Chalene Johnson : And then it pulled this. I deleted this picture years ago. I’m not going to pretend that I know how it works, but I know this picture has not been sitting on my page for years. And then Facebook suggests that I ask Meta AI, “Where does Kaylee Robbins live?” Are you f- Kidding me? So I clicked that too. It starts digging through completely unrelated from years of my life.

[00:17:22] Chalene Johnson : Old posts connecting me to where I used to live, newer posts connecting me to where I live now, and then it says, “I’m pointing Kaylie Robbins’ location.” It pieced together my information to show people where I live. There was no location on that Reel. I didn’t ask Facebook to build a profile of my family.

[00:17:41] Chalene Johnson : I posted a video of me singing in the car with my kid. And yes, I already know what some of you are going to say. “Well, you posted your kids on the internet.” You’re right, I did. That’s why I’m making this video, because yesterday I did not understand posting separate, innocent pieces of our lives over years could mean an AI could sit there and assemble all those breadcrumbs into information about my minor children in seconds.

[00:18:12] Chalene Johnson : I understand it now, and I’m not okay with it, so I’m done. I’m removing any identifiable pictures and videos of our kids. I’m going to ask friends and any family I haven’t spoken to to please save those precious memories and then remove my kids from your page. If I take everything off my page but you still have my kids on yours, it will go to your page.

[00:18:34] Chalene Johnson : I’ve seen it. It already did it. And I’m not telling you what to do with your kids. I’m telling you because if you post your children online, I think you deserve to know that this can happen. Yeah, you heard that right. Meta, its AI, was prompting people, prompting strangers, to investigate the identity of her minor child.

[00:18:55] Chalene Johnson : This is a child that just barely could be pictured in the background of this video, and that’s very disturbing that AI notices an unidentified child. This isn’t like maybe this is a young adult. This is very clearly a child in a child seat, and Facebook then proactively suggested a question to ask, “Who is this child?”

[00:19:18] Chalene Johnson : And then it searched out connections and information scattered across different public posts, different people’s profiles, groups, Reels, possibly connected accounts, people maybe connected to this person. And it packaged the child’s name, date of birth, additional photographs, photographs that had been deleted as far as she knows.

[00:19:41] Chalene Johnson : But had somebody else saved that photo to their Meta profile. Now, Meta explicitly says As one of their terms, that their AI can synthesize answers from public information shared across its platforms. I’ve read that before, and I didn’t even for a second assume it meant it could do social engineering, but that’s what we’re agreeing to by using it.

[00:20:09] Chalene Johnson : That means that details that you didn’t technically make public, but they’re public someplace else and fragmented, we’re giving it the right, I guess, to create a nice little neat dossier to dox us, and that is very concerning. First of all, Facebook is manufacturing the curiosity. We don’t know if the viewer was like, “Huh, yeah, I’m, I’m really interested in this child in the background.”

[00:20:33] Chalene Johnson : Facebook, like are they tempting child predators? This destroys what we assume is privacy. Like it’s one thing to have a private account on Instagram and think you have anonymity. That’s one thing, and to assume that people might look further, but this is crazy. This, in my opinion, is so dangerous, it could facilitate stalking, impersonations, location tracking, and it can be wrong Dude, it can misidentify someone or a child or a name or a photograph or a location, and I just think above all else, please send this episode.

[00:21:13] Chalene Johnson : Tell your friend who has children the minute mark to listen to. Please be very sensitive to the fact that you don’t wanna give anyone the impression that, that, like, what they’re doing with their kid is wrong. Like, nobody wants to even feel like there’s an insinuation that they’re not protecting their child.

[00:21:30] Chalene Johnson : So this is about Meta. This is about fooling parents. This is about fooling all of us. Parents just, I think, don’t realize how public some of the underlying clues can be. And not just parents, I mean all of us. What can we do? Well, first of all, I would suggest going to Facebook and click on View As. This is an option that allows you to see, okay, what does your page look like to somebody who’s an actual stranger?

[00:22:01] Chalene Johnson : Like, what are they seeing? I would also turn on Profile and Tag Review. In other words, you have control over who gets to tag something as you or your child or family member. If you do have kids, I would remove every possible place that you can find your child’s name listed, birth dates, anything related to schools, team uniforms.

[00:22:24] Chalene Johnson : Isn’t that crazy? But yes, I know we’re all proud of how our kid played in the basketball game, but if in any way, shape, or form in a situation where you, like, need to protect your child’s identity, I would remove all of those. Remove locations, remove anything that’s identifiable. If you can, I would just delete old albums, delete birthday posts.

[00:22:46] Chalene Johnson : I mean, even though you haven’t listed your child’s birthday, but if you wish them a happy birthday on their birthday, you did. You know what I mean? And, and, like, first day of school announcements and location check-ins and just if you’re at all worried about your child. If your kid’s 17 and 220 pounds and a linebacker, I don’t know that you’re worried about it.

[00:23:05] Chalene Johnson : But, you know, you can evaluate that, and if it’s something you decide you want to do, then I would definitely delete anything. And also, you have to tell grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and anyone else that you can, and they’re gonna think you’re crazy, to please delete everything Child’s information is something you have the right to protect, I think.

[00:23:28] Chalene Johnson : And I would just tell them it’s a new Meta policy. It didn’t exist before, and you’re just trying to be proactive. But there is no single reliable opt-out of this in the US. You literally have to yourself go through and reduce the information available. That’s crazy. If there’s things that you don’t want identified about you, you’ve gotta ask friends and family members to remove those things.

[00:23:56] Chalene Johnson : What a pain in the butt, I know. And I’m not, definitely not trying to make you paranoid. I’m not. But I think there’s probably members of the audience who maybe there’s an ex who you’re still worried about, or a family member who went to jail and you’re thinking about what happens when they get out. I don’t know what the situations are, but I know it does help when you hear about these things and you think about, like, what could this look like for me?

[00:24:21] Chalene Johnson : And I just think we have to send a message to Meta. We don’t consent to them proactively identifying people in, in our content and sharing personal information, and I really think we need to demand that Meta provide a clear opt-out of this. Prohibit AI-generated questions that take people on a nice little tour of your entire identity, and how to find you and where to find you.

[00:24:47] Chalene Johnson : What the Like I said last week, there was an AI release on Instagram that within a matter of just, like, three or four days, enough people raised a stink that they deleted the option to freely create AI content of anyone who you tag. I’m hopeful that if enough of us just share this story, m- maybe post this episode to your social and say, “Listen at the minute mark.”

[00:25:20] Chalene Johnson : I’ll put it in our show notes so you don’t have to guess. I’ll put it in our show notes the minute mark at which this conversation starts, and just encourage people to listen and then make their own statement to Meta and Instagram, because this is ridiculous. Having super hydrated skin at my age is super important.

[00:25:37] Chalene Johnson : Have you tried OneSkin body lotion? It’s a lotion with a patented peptide that specifically targets aging cells, tackling, like, thin skin, crepey skin. It improves firmness. It keeps your skin hydrated and plump. This stuff is amazing. I highly recommend OneSkin’s 01 Body. It’s a lotion that has patented peptides that are specifically formulated to target aging cells.

[00:26:07] Chalene Johnson : It improves firmness. It makes your skin plump and juicy. It holds in hydration. I love this lotion. You get a nice little discount when you go to chalene.com/lotion. Again, it’s OneSkin. It is freaking amazing. Having super hydrated skin at my age is super important. It’s something I care very much about, and to find a product like this that actually works is remarkable.

[00:26:37] Chalene Johnson : So if you haven’t yet tried OneSkin, go to chalene.com/lotion and try it for yourself. All right, let’s talk about Bethenny Frankel. Let’s talk about Burning Man first, because that’s a documentary that I’ve recommended. You will see it this week in my snapshot. So I send a weekly newsletter. If you’re not on it, I’ll put a link in our show notes so you can get on the newsletter, because I share documentaries to watch, and I list everything that I’ve shown or worn or talked about in my social just so you don’t have to, like, search for the links.

[00:27:12] Chalene Johnson : They’re all in one place. Some things I get an affiliate fee for, some I don’t. Some the affiliate fee is, like, 50 cents. Like, I don’t care. I- it’s just easier for me to put all the links in one place. Back to Burning Man, okay? The documentary’s called The Man Will Burn, and I think it’s on HBO Max. Watch it, because you’re either gonna think to yourself, “Okay, I could do this.”

[00:27:37] Chalene Johnson : From my perspective, and I’ve never been to Burning Man- I feel like the documentary revealed it in as positive of a light as is possible. So if you’re the kind of person who is, I think, very open to new experiences and spiritual and loves that kind of connection and very accepting and open-minded. I mean, like, I’m all of those things, I think, but what I’m not is someone who can be low maintenance, and I feel like you have to be able to tolerate being low maintenance for quite a few days if you’re gonna go to Burning Man.

[00:28:17] Chalene Johnson : So I am completely captivated by the fact that Bethenny Frankel is there right now. Not because I wanna go. I assure you, I do not, especially after watching the documentary. Again, I think they framed it in a very positive but also completely transparent way. Like, one of the things I found the biggest turn-off of all is that you’re not showering for the most part.

[00:28:43] Chalene Johnson : Every bit of water that you use as a human has to come back home with you. It’s called gray water. If you brush your teeth and you use four cups of water to do that, you’re bringing four cups of water home. If you take a shower by pouring a gallon of water over your body, you need to collect all of that water.

[00:29:03] Chalene Johnson : It can’t go into the ground. You have to collect all that water, and you need to take that water with you in the form of what they call gray water. Each person is permitted to use two gallons of water per day, but unless you’re consuming it, if you’re just, like, using it to wash anything, then you have to bring it home with you.

[00:29:24] Chalene Johnson : I couldn’t for a million dollars be convinced that I don’t get to use a private bathroom for that many days. I just, I couldn’t even do it. But Bethenny went. I think it’s gonna be phenomenal content. As of right now, I’m a little disappointed, ’cause I think she’s been there for, like, two days, and I’m like, “Girl, show us what’s really going on.”

[00:29:44] Chalene Johnson : Maybe she’s doing that in her stories and I’ve only been looking at her feed, so I guess I, I better go look at her stories. But Burning Man, what is Burning Man if you don’t know? It’s not technically a music festival, but that’s what I thought it was. It’s, like, I don’t know, maybe 70,000 people that show up in a place in the Nevada desert called Black Rock City.

[00:30:04] Chalene Johnson : There are these enormous art installations. When I say it’s a desert, like, it’s literally a dust-storming desert. There’s nothing out there. It’s just barren. People show up, like, a week or so before, and they build this, like, giant city. It’s got roads, it’s got camps, it’s got locations, it’s got communities.

[00:30:25] Chalene Johnson : It’s quite fascinating the way they do this. And there’s, quote-unquote, camps, so you can stay in this person’s camp or that person’s camp. In fact, I’ve done a deep dive on Burning Man on the Patreon, but generally speaking, I’m sure you’ve seen footage of it, and if you haven’t and you don’t wanna watch the documentary, ’cause I think the documentary’s fascinating, but if you don’t wanna watch that and you just quickly wanna see what Burning Man is, just type in, “Burning Man, what is it?”

[00:30:50] Chalene Johnson : on Instagram or on TikTok and you’ll get a short video, which won’t give you the full Scope, but it’ll give you an idea of what it looks like. And from just a quick glance, I’d be like, “Oh, I’m all over this.” You’re riding around on bikes, you’re dressing up in cosplay and over-the-top characters. I’m all over that.

[00:31:10] Chalene Johnson : Music, dancing all day, all night. I love it. I love it. I love it. But then there is the self-reliance, the dust, the dust storms, the lack of showers, so many millions of strangers around you, and everybody’s, like, hugging, and, you know, it’s all about love, but, eh, I need some time alone. And underneath all the craziness is the philosophy of Burning Man, which is, it’s built around these 10 principles like radical self-reliance.

[00:31:37] Chalene Johnson : Not quite sure what that means, but that’s one of them. Participation, gifting. You can’t, like, buy a jug of water. You have to gift it to someone, and they would gift you something back. And it’s about, like, building this communal effort. I love that. It’s about immediacy and de-commodification. In normal person’s language, it basically means that you’re supposed to bring what you need to survive, contribute something to the community, be present, participate, not just be a spectator, and resist turning the whole thing into one big commercial transaction.

[00:32:15] Chalene Johnson : That’s why I think it’s kind of interesting and ironic that Bethenny is there, and I think it’s a fascinating person to imagine being dropped in the middle of this. I’m sure it would be fascinating to y’all to have me dropped in the middle of it, but we ain’t going there. Bethenny, she can produce a 14-minute forensic investigation into chicken salad.

[00:32:35] Chalene Johnson : She reviews hotels and drugstore makeup and airplane food and cottage cheese, and she’s very particular. She’s hella opinionated, and from what I take is she doesn’t give a if she’s offending someone. She’s gonna tell you what she thinks, and so for that reason, I’m really curious to see how she experiences this and, and really how she tells us about it.

[00:33:00] Chalene Johnson : I don’t know why she’s there. She hasn’t told us really. My guess is that the guy that she’s dating is a Burner, as they call themselves. But I did a little digging to find out, like, what has she said about Burning Man in the past? And she’s made passing jokes about Burning Man. Like, do you remember when that Titan submarine that a bunch of civilians took and people died?

[00:33:22] Chalene Johnson : Well, she was discussing this. This was, like, back in 2023, and I found an old clip where she was talking about it, just in general this idea that very wealthy people Do strange things for adventure. And she said, “Drink four margaritas and then try on a bathing suit without underwear, or go to Burning Man dressed up as a parakeet.”

[00:33:43] Chalene Johnson : She was basically using Burning Man as the punchline to mean that you’ve, you’ve absolutely lost your mind. Because you’re so wealthy, you need to take these crazy risks. So I think that’s kind of funny and ironic. But the thing about Bethenny going is some people are just so annoyed and they’re like, “This is just proof that Burning Man has jumped the shark.”

[00:34:02] Chalene Johnson : Other peoples are really excited about it. Other people who’ve- are Burners are saying, like, “This is a joke,” because it’s already been reported that she took a private jet to a location, and then she didn’t even drive in her luxury RV. She had somebody drive it in for her so she would have, like, a turnkey perfect camp set up with staffs and a chef and air conditioning and very comfortable, and I don’t know.

[00:34:26] Chalene Johnson : I don’t know if any of these things are true, because I haven’t seen her report on it yet. But other people are criticizing her because she’s filming it and posting it, and other people are like, “Yeah, I’m criticizing her, but I’m also not gonna look away. I need to see all of it.” I don’t know what is with Bethenny.

[00:34:43] Chalene Johnson : There are things that she posts where I’m like, we’re too full of ourselves. You did not invent everything on the planet. Maybe she invented the skinny girl margarita, but I’ve been drinking skinny margaritas when I was a drinker. My earliest memory of a skinny margarita was at Javier’s in Laguna Beach, and I think the year was probably 1997.

[00:35:02] Chalene Johnson : But anything that she’s touched, she’s invented. I just think that’s a little peculiar. Nonetheless, I find her incredibly entertaining, and I do waffle between, ugh, she’s just k- kind of annoying, to, okay, I love her. The one thing that I disagree with many of you, many of you say, “Oh, you two would get along so well.

[00:35:21] Chalene Johnson : I could totally see you two hanging out together. That would be a hoot.” I’ve never seen anything from her that implies she’s a girl’s girl. I think it’s the Bethenny show. I don’t think she wants any girlfriends other than ones she probably already has, but she’s a fantastic storyteller, very compelling.

[00:35:39] Chalene Johnson : So we’ll report back after she reports back But definitely watch the documentary. Okay, trigger warning because we’re gonna talk about the Lindsay Clancy case for just a second, just kind of a trial update. You know that that involves murder, that involves mental health, that involves suicide, that involves people fighting on the internet.

[00:36:00] Chalene Johnson : And then after that, I’m gonna tell you about another case that involves murders. Please check our show notes if you’re looking for minute marks where you can jump back in. Okay, but the Lindsay Clancy case, the trial has gotten pretty wild. They have obviously been deliberating. They’ve had two deadlocks, okay?

[00:36:19] Chalene Johnson : And now a woman, who isn’t even a part of the case, might be facing serious prison time because of something she did outside of the courthouse. So quick recap. Lindsay Clancy, as you know, is the Massachusetts mom. She is on trial for killing her three children right now. There are people standing out front who are like, “Free Lindsay.

[00:36:41] Chalene Johnson : Justice for Lindsay.” Yeah, the woman who admits that she killed all four of her children, she has a huge, giant group of women who are supporters, and they have their own version of why they’re supporting her. And then there are those people who are like, “Save Lindsay. Put Patrick in jail,” her husband, who the police haven’t said is a suspect.

[00:37:05] Chalene Johnson : She hasn’t listed him. The defense, prosecution, nobody has listed him as a possible suspect, but TikTok and Instagram, they know best, and the sleuths there have said, “Yeah, ignore all of that. We know better because- We’ve watched other TikTokers pass around information, and so we’ve decided it was probably Patrick.

[00:37:29] Chalene Johnson : I’m not gonna get into that. I’m just gonna give you the facts, okay? All right. The first time they came back deadlocked, the judge basically told them, “Keep talking. Figure this out.” Second time, they gave them what’s called a dynamite charge. The official name is called the Allen charge, and what that means is the judge is saying, “Listen, you need to listen to each other.

[00:37:51] Chalene Johnson : You need to listen to the person maybe who’s in the minority, and you need to consider the enormous cost, pressure, stress, ramifications of doing this trial again. Let’s try to avoid a mistrial. Figure it out.” It’s kind of like the judge saying, “This is your last chance. Please, do the right thing. Reach an agreement.”

[00:38:12] Chalene Johnson : Technically, no one is supposed to abandon their honest belief just to reach a verdict. They’re not supposed to be intimidated into thinking like, “Okay, I’m just gonna agree with everyone because everyone’s mad that we can’t agree.” But let’s be real. The entire point is the pressure, right? So more than 20 states have banned or limited this instruction because it really can push jurors to just go, “Okay, fine, I’m just gonna agree.”

[00:38:37] Chalene Johnson : But Massachusetts still allows it, and basically it’s like the last stop before a mistrial. So at the time that I’m recording this, they haven’t ruled anything a mistrial, but by the time you’re listening to it, that might have all changed. I’m just gonna tell you that the judge is saying, “Please, try one more time.”

[00:38:57] Chalene Johnson : But if they do come back deadlocked, if at the time that you’re listening to this there has been a mistrial declared, that does not mean that Lindsay walks free or that the case disappears. That means it’s gonna go back to the prosecutors, and the prosecutors have to then decide whether they want to try the entire thing again.

[00:39:17] Chalene Johnson : So I didn’t realize that. I thought it just automatically meant they tried it. I’m just curious how often prosecutors then… Hang on, I know, I know what some of you are saying. I know what you’re saying But I’m just curious how often prosecutors then say, “Yeah, we’re not gonna try it again. We just don’t have strong enough evidence, and we don’t have the resources to go to trial again and win this.”

[00:39:42] Chalene Johnson : I don’t know. I have no idea. But I know many of you right now are thinking, “Oh, what if the prosecution comes back and they bring charges against Patrick?” Listen, TikTokers, listen, Lindsay Clancy supporters, that’s not gonna happen. I will bet you, I will donate $100,000 to whatever cause y’all decide. It just w- it won’t happen.

[00:40:08] Chalene Johnson : It just will not happen. Lots of things could happen, but that will not happen. Defense attorney, her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, who everybody loves, he believes that they will bring the case… They would try it again if there’s a mistrial. He said that the district attorney, Timothy Cruz, he’s not gonna back down.

[00:40:28] Chalene Johnson : You know, and he knows him. He’s been an attorney for, I don’t know, 100 years. He just said there’s no way that they’re gonna back this down. They might change the charges slightly, but they’re definitely gonna try her again. Somebody asked his attorney if Lindsay would be able to handle another trial, and Patrick, too.

[00:40:49] Chalene Johnson : Kevin Reddington, the attorney, just said, “It was brutal,” so, you know, obviously they would survive it. Patrick is obviously her husband. Lindsay is paralyzed from the waist down from what happened the night sh- her children were killed, and she’s currently serving in a psychiatric facility, not a jail. So if this ends up in mistrial, she stays there because the charges remain pending.

[00:41:14] Chalene Johnson : Now we have this completely separate story I want to tell you about that happened outside the courthouse. So, I don’t mean to laugh, but all the memes and videos I’ve seen of this woman who’s involved in this running from the courthouse, I’m like, is this like an SNL skit? So there’s this 56-year-old retired nurse named Dawn Light who could not mind her own business, and she’s been sitting outside the trial four days She has described herself as a crime junkie.

[00:41:43] Chalene Johnson : And on Tuesday afternoon, a court officer caught her videotaping jurors as they were leaving the building going into their parking lot. I don’t know how this happened, but they approached her, they questioned her, she denied it. The police searched her phone, and yep, there it was on her camera roll. She found the videos.

[00:42:08] Chalene Johnson : They found the videos, and guess where they were? In her deleted files. See? Nothing is anonymous. Listen, don’t do things. If you don’t do things, then you don’t have to worry about doing a job of covering it up. She said, “Oh, I really didn’t see that. That area is for employees only.” She said, “That would’ve stopped me.

[00:42:30] Chalene Johnson : I was just trying to see Lindsay.” Hmm. Ma’am, come on. Come on. Will they be able to make a case stick against her? I think the fact that they were in her deleted files creates some Question of what she was going to do with it. Like, they would have to prove that she had intentions of harassing the jurors in order to make these allegations stick.

[00:42:57] Chalene Johnson : I think they would have a tough time doing that. I don’t know. She claims she wasn’t trying to harass them. She wasn’t trying to do anything other than just get a picture of Lindsay Clancy. I don’t know. They’ve charged her with aggravated intimidation of jurors. She’s already pled not guilty. The prosecutors have already requested a $50,000 bail, but the judge has already released her without bail, and that’s where you’re seeing her, like, running away from the courthouse with all of these reporters in tow.

[00:43:24] Chalene Johnson : It’s kind of silly. When she left the court, a reporter said, “What happened? Why did you do this?” And she said, “Nothing, nothing. I wanted to see Lindsay.” True crime is, is very interesting. As I’ve said, I think there are instances where the public has more resources, more volunteers, hundreds of thousands of them, and they, in so many cases, so- so many unsolved murders have actually been solved by internet sleuths.

[00:43:50] Chalene Johnson : And I, I’m in favor of that. I’m not in favor of getting involved in such a way that you’re disrupting justice. Like, that’s weird to me. Okay, but this might be a case where we want to see it happen, and this is a crazy-ass story. They are calling it The House of Horrors, and this story is… It’s a movie. You know when you see horror movies and you’re like, “Oh, my God, thank God that doesn’t happen in real life”?

[00:44:17] Chalene Johnson : Well, here we go. So this guy’s name is Raymond Horsch. People called him RC. He grew up in Bucks County, Philadelphia. He wrote novels, okay, horror stories about dissolving bodies, and they lived in this boarded up house. The kind of house, when you drive past, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, for sure serial killers live there.”

[00:44:41] Chalene Johnson : Every one of us has lived in a neighborhood where there was that house. Okay, now two mothers have gone missing. Actually, more than that. Okay, so here is what we know. So this guy RC, he described himself as a, quote, “bookish engineer.” Well, somewhere along the way, this guy becomes, quote, “an erotic filmmaker” with a long arrest history for counterfeiting and making methamphetamine.

[00:45:09] Chalene Johnson : Perfect. Investigators say that he spent years recruiting very vulnerable women, women struggling with addiction, women on drugs, to appear in his violent pornographic films. Okay, warning time, trigger time for all of you, because this is something some of you are too innocent to even know about. They’re known as snuff films.

[00:45:31] Chalene Johnson : And where do people access these films? These films where, uh, the viewers get off sexually on seeing people hurt, maimed, mutilated, and sometimes murdered. They get sexual gratification from that. What is wrong with the world? Okay, where are these websites? They’re on a place called the dark web. You can’t even get to the dark web unless you have a, a separate type of browser that allows you to do it, but yeah, this stuff exists.

[00:46:01] Chalene Johnson : I’ll say this, this is factual. Several women connected to him over the years died of what was ruled accidental overdoses Other women have just disappeared. He wrote novels, he self-published them. He mixed real details from his own life with supposedly fictitious violent scenarios. Okay? He wrote about dissolving bodies, and investigators right now are going through all of his writings trying to figure out how much of this was actually fiction.

[00:46:35] Chalene Johnson : Now, this guy died, RC, in 2025. His son/protégé, allegedly, Eugene, 44, he’s currently in custody. Why? Well, in June of this year, he gets pulled over for just like a routine traffic stop. Police dogs find illegal firearms, a fake ID, and like an ID from a woman who’s been missing for like three years. Okay? So then the detectives start to search his boarded-up house, and what do they find?

[00:47:08] Chalene Johnson : Huge vats of chemicals, notes describing killings. The woman who was missing, they find her bank cards, an almost unbelievable amount of disgusting content, 600,000 images, 70,000 videos, tens of thousands of pages of writings about this stuff. And then in August, get this, they announce that video evidence that they seized produced evidence of two missing, local missing women had died in his presence.

[00:47:48] Chalene Johnson : That’s really all the details that they’ve given us, and now there’s far more women. I don’t wanna say the total number, but the investigation is expanding. But here’s what’s tricky about it. There are no remains. None. No bodies. Not one. So this is a crazy different case. This is a homicide case unlike anything else because when you have a homicide investigation, you usually have a body or body parts or something.

[00:48:12] Chalene Johnson : They do not. There was a retired FBI agent who was commenting on it. He said, “I, I’ve never seen a case like this where there’s no physical proof that these women were killed by him,” or that even… Like, there’s, there’s no bodies. So this is a case where I hope the Internet does get involved, and I hope that they do find these connections, and what is wrong with the world?

[00:48:35] Chalene Johnson : I guess this stuff has always happened. It’s just a reminder that Satan is very real. Evil Does exist. It’s so hard to wrap my head around. I can’t even fathom people who, who lie. That to me, I just don’t understand not doing the right thing when you have the opportunity to do the right thing. But evil, my brain just…

[00:48:58] Chalene Johnson : I can’t comprehend it. It’s truly so foreign to me. I know some of you know what evil looks like ’cause you’ve seen it up close and personal, and for that reason, I really do hope that we take these motherdown because this is just disgusting. And yes, I also think that the internet makes this c- type of content accessible.

[00:49:22] Chalene Johnson : I think that one of the other documentaries I talked about in my newsletter, it’s coming on Sunday, but one of the documentaries I mention there is one about people who make their children the sole focus of their content, and it’s very popular content. I think very few parents realize, ’cause they’re getting brand deals and they could never imagine that disgusting, gross pedophiles are the people who are most excited to see that content, but that’s what’s happening.

[00:49:51] Chalene Johnson : I referenced a documentary where they kind of expose this, not just the dark side of it, but also what the parents don’t understand how it’s traumatizing their kids, even if nothing ever happened to them. The documentary features this one woman who basically, her whole life she grew up in front of the camera, and just damage and the trauma that it did to her.

[00:50:14] Chalene Johnson : But in this documentary, I think it’s called Sharenting, like sharing and parenting, making content around parenting, whatever. I put the link to it in the newsletter that’s coming out on Sunday, so make sure you check that out. You can just take a screenshot of all the different documentaries I recommend.

[00:50:29] Chalene Johnson : This one, I found it really fascinating, and I don’t even have kids that are of that age, but the piece that I was really freaked out about is when they went to this expert who showed a website that anyone can access, and it seems, like, really innocent, but it’s a website where thousands and thousands and thousands of rather innocent-looking photos of other people’s children, people taking screenshots of this child on their birthday, and there’s nothing sexual about the photo, there’s nothing revealing about the photo.

[00:51:00] Chalene Johnson : Then they share these photos on this major message board, and expert was going through all the disgusting comments of pedophiles underneath these images. Now, you combine that with the story that I just mentioned about Meta revealing information and y’all, we need to start paying attention and sharing less, said the person who over-shares all the time.

[00:51:24] Chalene Johnson : I know. Hypocrite. At least I know it. It’s a lot, and we need to cleanse the palate with a light story, Shalene. Like tell us something that’s going on that we should know about that’s actually uplifting, good news. Okay, I got it. This is happy news. Leah Remini, who I freaking love. Remember Leah Remini? King of Queens.

[00:51:47] Chalene Johnson : She also was probably one of the first very, very outspoken celebrities to leave the Church of Scientology and take them on head-on, and that’s part of the reason why I’m super excited to share this story. She is joining season 16 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Perfect timing, ’cause I was just about to tap out of the whole Housewives franchise.

[00:52:10] Chalene Johnson : Like I can’t even watch Orange County. It is so dumb. It is so fake. It is so over the top. We have jumped the shark backwards. Like it is so unbearable. But Beverly Hills I still kind of enjoy. You put Leah Remini on it, I am down like a crown. She’s joining the cast members Kyle, Dorit, Erika, Sutton, which we love, Rachel Zoe.

[00:52:36] Chalene Johnson : I thought that was a really good add. So I’m very excited about this. I think they’ve already started filming, but we’ve needed someone who is real and unfiltered and who’s interesting, doesn’t give a , like she’s gonna speak her mind, and that is Leah. I think we’re gonna be in for a really good season. I really kinda can’t wait.

[00:52:57] Chalene Johnson : Fans are calling her the shakeup that the show needed. I couldn’t agree more, so there you go. I have faith that it… She’s gonna be funny. I mean, she is hysterically funny. Oh, yeah, she’s also newly divorced. That’s sad. I really thought her and her husband were gonna make it. I wonder what happened there.

[00:53:14] Chalene Johnson : Whatever. That reminds me, I need to do an episode on the Gray divorce and the Gray affair, right? Let me know below. Is that a topic you’re still interested in? We can do a deep dive on it. If there’s anything in particular you’re curious about, tell me, ’cause I’m all into that topic. I’d love to do it. And I love you.

[00:53:36] Chalene Johnson : I mean it, and I’ll talk to you soon