Belle Gibson: The Fake Cancer Survivor Who Built a Wellness Empire

In this episode of The Compendium, we tell you about the jaw-dropping true story behind Netflix’s new mini series Apple Cider Vinegar. Belle Gibson’s real-life scandal is dubbed the woman who fooled the world and shook up the entire wellness industry. She captivated millions with her supposedly holistic approach to “beating” terminal brain cancer, championing Gerson Therapy and a meticulously clean lifestyle—only for it all to unravel spectacularly.

How did a single Instagram account lead to a bestselling cookbook, a lucrative tech deal with Apple, and a devoted international following? More importantly, how did Belle manage to deceive the world for so long? Join us as we go beyond the buzz of Apple Cider Vinegar to dissect the actual rise, the staggering lies, and the ultimate downfall of one of the biggest cons in wellness history.

We give you just The Compendium, but if you want more, here are our resources:

• The Woman Who Fooled The World – by Beau Donnelly & Nick Toscano
• 60 Minutes: The Belle Gibson Interview – Hosted by Tara Brown
• What we know about Belle Gibson – Elle
• Bad Influencer: The Great Insta Con - BBC
• An honest account of our experience with Belle Gibson - Cosmo

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• About: Kyle and Adam are more than just your hosts, they’re your close friends sharing intriguing stories from tales from the darker corners of true crime, the annals of your forgotten history books, and the who's who of incredible people.
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin

Community & Calls to Action

• ⭐ Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• 📸 Follow us on Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• 🌐 Visit us at: TheCompendiumPodcast.com
• ❤️ Early access episodes: Patreon

📤 Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favorite takeaway.

Chapters

• 0:00 Sneak Peak
• 0:51 Welcome to The Compendium
• 2:13 Topic of the week
• 1:14:37 Outro

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: Cosmopolitan give her the fun, fearless, female award.

[00:00:04] She's fun and fearless because she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, but instead of giving in, she became the impetus of the dedication to health and well being. Basically, Cosmo are tired of all those other women giving up and dying of cancer. 

[00:00:18] Adam Cox: Wow. So like, oh yeah, you did it, you did a lot better than these other guys.

[00:00:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[00:00:23] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:00:23] Kyle Risi: I mean, that's so patronising, isn't it? 

[00:00:25] Adam Cox: That 

[00:00:25] is, isn't it? Yeah. 

[00:00:52] Kyle Risi: Hello, and welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating things. A weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough [00:01:00] information to stand your ground at any social gathering. 

[00:01:03] Adam Cox: We guide you through stories from the darkest corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:10] Kyle Risi: I am Kyle Recy, your ringmaster for this week's episode. 

[00:01:14] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, your peanut stock taker for the elephants this week. 

[00:01:19] Kyle Risi: Is someone stealing the peanuts? 

[00:01:20] Adam Cox: Well, you know, elephants are part of the main attraction, so I need to make sure they've got their, you know, fair share of peanuts.

[00:01:25] Kyle Risi: What does that look like? Bags, or are you counting each individual peanut? Each individual peanut. You're busy. Clearly you don't have enough to do. 

[00:01:33] Before we dive in, a quick heads up for all our lovely freaks out there. Remember signing up to our Patreon gets you early access to next week's episode and the entire seven days before anyone else.

[00:01:43] And it's completely free of charge. If you want even more, then you can become a certified freak for a small monthly subscription that unlocks all of our unreleased episodes a whole six weeks earlier. 

[00:01:54] It is literally the best way to support the compendium and keeps us growing, doesn't it, Adam? 

[00:01:59] Adam Cox: It [00:02:00] does. While you're at it, don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast app and leave us a review. Your support really does help us reach more people who, like you, love a good tale of the unexpected. 

[00:02:10] Kyle Risi: Right, freaks, that's enough of the housekeeping.

[00:02:13] Adam, today, we're diving into an assembly of influencers, kale, and coffee enemas designed to flush out the bullshit. 

[00:02:21] Adam Cox: Okay, so some kind of like health, thing, kick, health kick? Health and wellness. Let's say that. Health and wellness.

[00:02:28] Yeah. So, my friend, Ariane, she went to this particular, I think it was like cafe or restaurant in America where, I can't remember who it was, but there was a specific drink which had like all these kinds of nutrients and everything in and it cost her like 30. 

[00:02:43] Kyle Risi: Oh, really? 

[00:02:44] Adam Cox: But like it was the thing to go and it had like glitter in it.

[00:02:47] Kyle Risi: It sounds very Californian. 

[00:02:48] Adam Cox: Mmm, yeah. 

[00:02:49] Kyle Risi: Oh was she in California? 

[00:02:50] Adam Cox: I think so. I don't really remember. I was half listening. I 

[00:02:52] Kyle Risi: better just end up giving her the shits. That's a 30 shit. 

[00:02:57] Adam Cox: But it's like everyone would go there, take their pictures on Instagram [00:03:00] and everything like that about this really great shake and I'm sure she said there was like glitter or it looked almost like shower gel or something like that.

[00:03:06] Kyle Risi: Right, oh I see what you're saying. This is crazy to me as well because we have I don't know. This little store in like on the outskirts of Chinatown in London, and basically it sells these really, really viral kind of ice cream cones, but the cone is like a fish, like a carp, and they're really beautiful, and it's all over Instagram, and we were walking through London one year, I think we were going to go see maybe like the Book of Mormon or something in Leicester Square.

[00:03:32] And we walked past the store and I was like, that's the store that everyone keeps talking about because loads of people queuing up to get this really incredible matcha, that green kind of ice cream inside this fish coat. And then you walk down the road slightly, you see people taking photographs and then you come across this bin and it's just filled with people chucking this ice cream away because they've only gone to go buy it to take the fucking photograph and put it on Instagram. And then it's what a waste. 

[00:03:58] Adam Cox: I know. Does it, I'm guessing it [00:04:00] just doesn't even taste good. 

[00:04:01] Kyle Risi: It's matcha. Yeah. Matcha ice cream. I mean, I'll try it. And then chuck it in the bin. Yeah. That's probably what's happening. People are obviously trying it. Yeah. But at the same time, it's probably all these social media influencers that are watching their weight, right?

[00:04:13] So they're like, let's buy it, let's take a picture, and then chuck it, and then boom. piss off somewhere else. 

[00:04:17] Adam Cox: Yeah, Burger King. 

[00:04:18] Kyle Risi: Probably not, probably like a kale sandwich somewhere. Today, Adam, I want to tell you a story about one of the early pioneers of the wellness influencer movement that sort of kicked off around about the early 20 teens on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

[00:04:32] And many of you guys listening to this episode will know the name that I'm about to mention, especially if you live in Australia, because she was incredibly famous for and her name. Is Belle Gibson, who was this beautiful single mother who attracted a lot of fame after she started documenting her very public battle with terminal brain cancer of all things.

[00:04:53] At first she was undergoing traditional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but after she falls pregnant, she decides that she couldn't [00:05:00] responsibly put her unborn baby through the turmoils of this treatment, which is understandable. 

[00:05:05] So Belle instead turned to alternative therapies which started to work for her and so as a result of her showing others how they could do it too she ends up becoming this monumental inspirational figure offering hope to millions of others fighting debilitating illnesses and encouraging them to believe that they too could extend their lives through alternative healing.

[00:05:26] Eventually, She will go off to launch an entire wellness brand called The Whole Pantry, which basically included an app and a cookbook like Apple and Penguin, they get heavily invested in her and she starts doing all the rounds and all the talk shows She donates literally Hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities and as a result She ends up doing a tremendous amount of good with the very little time that she has left 

[00:05:52] Adam Cox: Oh wow 

[00:05:53] Kyle Risi: So today, Adam, I wanted to actually tell you about this amazing story of who Belle was and what she did. [00:06:00] And trust me, you are going to want to hear this story. That is all I'm willing to say. 

[00:06:07] Adam Cox: Okay, that's slightly cryptic, but okay, fine. Sounds ominous, doesn't it? I don't know. I have no idea now what to expect. 

[00:06:14] Kyle Risi: Okay, before we get into who Belle was, I first want to introduce you to someone who was a major inspiration for Belle along her journey, who she literally credits with saving her life to begin with.

[00:06:25] Her name is Jess Ainscow, who at 22 years old was pretty much living the dream. She was fresh out of university, she'd landed her dream job in Sydney as an online editor for Dolly magazine. By day Jess was writing and editing, by night she was partying. She literally called herself the champagne guzzling, drug popping, sleep deprived, perpetually hungover party girl.

[00:06:48] It's very, like, live, eat, love. I imagine in her house there was loads of, like, plaques of, like, inspirational quotes everywhere. And pillows and cushions and stuff with, It's Prosecco time! That kind [00:07:00] of, like, era. This is the time that we're talking about. Do you remember that time? 

[00:07:03] Your sister was probably one of those people.

[00:07:05] Adam Cox: No, I don't think she was. But didn't we have like a little sign that we had in our toilet that said it's like, it's Prosecco time or Prosecco o'clock? 

[00:07:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it had these little cards on this, like pinboard and you could kind of swap out the cards whenever you were feeling I don't know, a bit jazzy, a bit happy, a bit inspired, you can kind of swap out the cards to reflect your mood.

[00:07:22] We're so gay. 

[00:07:24] Adam Cox: That went in the bin. 

[00:07:25] Kyle Risi: No, we still have it, I think it's up there. Oh god, is it the second time? Yeah, it says, it says happy. Fuck's sake. So Adam, in April of 2008, three years into Jessa's career, Jessa's life completely changes when she wakes up one morning and notices something isn't right.

[00:07:44] Lumps have started to kind of suddenly appear all over her left arm and her hand. And obviously, She's alarmed, right? So she rushes to the doctor. After a biopsy, she is diagnosed with Epilepsoid Sarcoma, which is basically a rare, slow growing form of cancer. 

[00:07:59] [00:08:00] So, from that moment on, essentially Jessa's life changes overnight. She quits her job. She leaves the late nights behind. She moves back to her hometown on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, wanting to be basically near her family while she underwent treatment. Part of her treatment was going to be something called isolated limb profusion.

[00:08:17] Basically, it's where a high dose of chemotherapy is pumped straight into the affected arm. And after several rounds, Her scans actually come back clean. And so Jess was officially, cancer free. Fair enough, I've summarised that. It was a gruelling weeks 

[00:08:31] Her doctors are equally stunned because apparently this type of sarcoma isn't exactly known for responding really well to treatment. But Jess was relieved, she didn't care how or why the cancer was gone so she could kind of start rebuilding her life.

[00:08:44] Adam Cox: That's, yeah, that's really quick. I guess it's quite unusual for, someone to kind of recover that quickly. But in this instance, it's a bit of a mini miracle. 

[00:08:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess they kind of caught it quite early. But then also, I guess the biggest surprise here is that they didn't realize that it would respond that quickly and that effectively to the [00:09:00] treatment.

[00:09:00] However, Adam, a little over a year later, it returned. And this time, the doctors explained that if she wanted any real shot of long term survival, she'd need to have her arm amputated. 

[00:09:11] God.

[00:09:12] And even then, they said this would only kind of buy her time because the cancer was now essentially terminal. Jess refuses.

[00:09:20] Like, in the blog post she wrote that she had two choices. She could either let doctors chase the disease all around her body until there was nothing left of her, or she could take control of her own disease and bring her body back to optimal health. In the wake of that terminal diagnosis and the prospects of losing her arm, she went on the hunt for an alternative therapy.

[00:09:39] And that's when she stumbles upon something called Griesem therapy, which is a natural healing diet that was like invented by some German born American physician called Max Gerson back in the late 1920s. So it's pretty damn old. 

[00:09:51] And according to Dr. Gerson, Sticking to nothing but fruit and veg in a very regimented way could potentially cure chronic conditions, even [00:10:00] cancer, over roughly like a two year period.

[00:10:01] Really? Wow. 

[00:10:02] The theory is that by eating a super clean diet, you starve cancer cells of what they need to survive while supercharging your immune system with nutrients. Effectively, you create a bodily environment where cancer just cannot exist. And I have to say, I'm not condoning this approach at all.

[00:10:17] Like, almost unanimously, all health authorities worldwide consider Gerson therapy to be like total nonsense. In fact, it's completely illegal for you to do it in the USA. 

[00:10:26] Adam Cox: Yeah, it feels like I understand anyone going through any kind of treatment for cancer. You're gonna do everything you can to kind of tick as many boxes as possible to prolong life and everything. So it just feels like it's one thing you should do to, you know, lead an active and healthy lifestyle, but you shouldn't rely on this. 

[00:10:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah, correct. It's also very difficult for a normal person to keep up with because it's so regimented and it's kind of irresponsible in that by the end, if your cancer isn't cured, well guess what, it's your fault for not sticking to the diet because it's so difficult.

[00:10:56] So it's always the same with these sorts of regimes and [00:11:00] diets and things like that, like the responsibility flows just one way, and if it fails, oh it's not our diet, it's you because you didn't try hard enough, do you know what I mean? Nevertheless, Jess goes all in with this vegan diet. She is literally drinking, as prescribed, 13 glasses of freshly squeezed juice a day.

[00:11:17] What, any kind of juice? It's all sorts of things. Kale mixes, beetroot, all sorts of things, but you have to drink one like every hour for 13 hours of a particular day. It also involves meditating, exercising, and most importantly, doing five coffee enemas. a day. A day? Five! And basically, this involves running coffee through a tube. You lube up the end with a bit of coconut oil and then off you go. Apparently it's easy peasy. Coconut oil? Yeah, I guess you need some lube, 

[00:11:42] right? But it's got to be vegan lube. 

[00:11:43] Okay. You can't, like, use petroleum or Vaseline. It's got to be Wow, I didn't even know, 

[00:11:48] Adam Cox: is that even a thing? Yeah, yeah, I have heard of people doing enemies to flush out, but this is a coffee one. Yeah. 

[00:11:55] Kyle Risi: And do, interestingly, and maybe not important, is it like instant? [00:12:00] Is it like freshly ground? Is it boiling hot? 

[00:12:03] Adam Cox: Yeah. And do you also get like a buzz from the caffeine? Do you still absorb that? 

[00:12:07] Kyle Risi: That would be interesting.

[00:12:08] I'd like to try that 

[00:12:08] Adam Cox: then. 

[00:12:09] Kyle Risi: I don't know. Tragic circumstances though. So yeah, let's not get clouded by the tragic circumstances happening. Exactly. 

[00:12:15] So by 2010, Jess was documenting her entire journey through blogs and social media, and she called herself the wellness warrior. And it wasn't long before she amassed this huge following of people.

[00:12:26] One of those people, was Belle Gibson herself. Her other followers include people that were really inspired by her story, others who were also searching for alternatives when conventional medicine had also failed them too. Jess's popularity explodes overnight. She gets a book deal. She starts speaking at all these different events all over the globe.

[00:12:45] She begins hosting retreats. Amazingly, Within two years, Jess has no new tumours and the existing ones are shrinking. So it's, it is working. This, of course, only boosts Gerson Therapy's [00:13:00] credibility online as Jess is now like a living example of its effects. 

[00:13:05] However, in the middle of all of this, her mother, 57 year old Sharon Ainscow, is diagnosed with breast cancer and, of course, seeing Jess miraculous recovery, Sharon decides to reject conventional treatment as well, turning to, of course, natural healing.

[00:13:18] Tragically, it doesn't work for her, and Sharon passes away in 2013, just days before Jess's book launch was about to kick off. 

[00:13:27] Her mother's death really devastates her, and so she ends up cancelling all of her tours, she goes silent for nearly a year, and eventually in December of 2014, Jess posts an update on a blog admitting that losing her mother, like, utterly broke her.

[00:13:40] On top of that, she then announces that she won't be blogging anymore. And then on the 26th of February 2015, Jess dies at home with her fiancé by her side. 

[00:13:49] So it's really sad. Yeah immediately following her death a well known surgical oncologist called David Gorski He writes that Jess had simultaneously been both a victim and an [00:14:00] enabler of what he called alternative medicine quackery.

[00:14:03] So Jess is, and I kind of get it, like this isn't something that is proven, and yes it's worked for you, but you've gone all in promoting this and documenting it. It's probably, she wasn't probably trying to promote it, she was probably just documenting her story, but that has an impact, right? Jess's family do later reveal that towards the end she'd actually turn back to radiation try and save her life.

[00:14:26] Adam Cox: Had she done that earlier, would she had better chances? 

[00:14:29] Kyle Risi: I believe so. 

[00:14:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:14:31] Kyle Risi: So the world was left believing that Jess stuck to Gerson's diet right up to the very end. And so her part in legacy to the world was that she'd stay true to these alternative therapies. Yeah. That's potentially damaging, right? Because that doesn't come out until much, much later on. 

[00:14:45] Adam Cox: Yeah, because other people are probably going to be jumping on that, or on the bandwagon, but I mean like taking this up, not thinking that actually they've got a realistic chance with this. 

[00:14:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it. So March 2015, a very public ceremony is held in Jess's honour.

[00:14:58] Her father shared some stories about her [00:15:00] childhood, her fiancé spoke about their love, and there was even a performance by a former Australian Idol winner. It was a massive turnout for one of the world's most famous and most inspirational wellness gurus.

[00:15:12] Somewhere in that crowd that day was a young woman who claimed to be a very close friend of Jess's. They'd only met once in person, but she was there sobbing uncontrollably in the pews. And that woman was 21 year old Belle Gibson, who was another star in the wellness world who had been making headlines across Australia because of her very public battle with terminal brain cancer. 

[00:15:33] So she too had adopted Gerson therapy and her emotions were thought to be the realisation that she too was living on borrowed time and that she too would one day die.

[00:15:42] So I can understand how hard that might be. 

[00:15:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, so she's there at this funeral and she's on the same sort of treatment, but just 

[00:15:49] Kyle Risi: Inspired by Jess right she turned to Gerson therapy because of Jess she looked at her so you can kind of understand the responsibility that someone like Jess has [00:16:00] as an influencer, right? She's inspired someone else to turn to it and then that person dies and then now you're just left there thinking, 

[00:16:07] Adam Cox: Oh, is this going to work? Is this going 

[00:16:08] Kyle Risi: to work? Is it going to happen to me? But also, Belle Gibson is also promoting the same thing, right? 

[00:16:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. So I don't know. How can you promote that when, I don't know, you're kind of questioning it. I feel like you should be trying all treatments. 

[00:16:21] Kyle Risi: Potentially. 

[00:16:22] But anyway, let's now dive into Belle, because of course she is the main focus of today's episode. So Belle grows up in Brisbane in the early 1990s. A big part of why so many people were so sympathetic towards her was that her upbringing was super chaotic.

[00:16:36] Like, she never really knew her father, her brother was severely autistic, and her mother, who had multiple sclerosis, just spent all day in bed. So to make matters worse, Bell and her family, they just moved constantly because the family at one point were enrolled in the witness protection program, which is something that Bell says that was vital for their family's kind of safety.

[00:16:55] At the age of five, Belle claimed that she was completely bogged down with responsibility. She was [00:17:00] cooking. She was cleaning. She was doing all of the shopping at five years old, by the way. And of course, at the same time, she was caring for her autistic brother. She describes in detail, like having to use a chair to reach the stove just to make her and her brother macaroni and cheese every night.

[00:17:15] Yeah, she says that she didn't have time for toys, let alone money to buy them, and so because she was essentially raising herself and her little brother on TV dinners, they end up both becoming severely overweight, very disorganized, and she ends up failing at school. 

[00:17:29] Adam Cox: How, how would someone, even a five year old, even have that kind of dedication? I don't know, I can't, I find that really hard to kind of picture. 

[00:17:36] Kyle Risi: You don't believe her? 

[00:17:37] Adam Cox: Not this that it's just I guess if you if you've got a care for someone maybe yeah You'll focus even at that young age is there but I don't know just concentration things like that. How can you be so focused even? As a five year old, your hand coordination isn't that great, right? Yeah, yeah, 

[00:17:53] Kyle Risi: It is a remarkable story, but I don't disbelieve it. I have seen examples of young people in war [00:18:00] torn countries really putting their weight working on the farm and things like that. So even at a young age, there's something they can do, but she apparently was doing the basics.

[00:18:07] She was cooking and cleaning for her brother, walking them to school, etc. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:18:12] At 12, she does decide that she has had enough. She decides to leave home, moves in with a classmate, but even then her studies don't really improve much and she ends up dropping out of high school in year 10.

[00:18:23] Belle ends up working for a catering supply company for a few months before deciding to move across the other side of the country to Perth. She's getting as far away as possible from her mother and her brother. And She ends up working for a private health care insurance call center. 

[00:18:38] It is actually at this point in 2008 that Belle gets seriously ill. In 2009 she posts about being in hospital for a heart related procedure. She says that doctors had to drain fluid from around her heart which had caused her to go into cardiac arrest and the doctors had to really fight to revive her and she ends up dying on the operating table for like three minutes.

[00:18:59] [00:19:00] Jeez. Miraculously, within weeks, Belle does return to work, but soon after this, she starts having like real bad vision and memory problems. She starts losing her balance. She's slurring her words. She goes back to the doctors and they basically put this all down to depression and they just prescribe her a course of antidepressants.

[00:19:18] So she goes back to work, but then a little while later, smack bang in the middle of a customer phone call. Bell has a stroke. Her doctors still insist that this is down to the depression. So frustrated, Bell decides to turn to the internet and she decides that her symptoms might have been caused by the HPV cervical cancer vaccine after stumbling across some online groups where people were kind of saying the same thing. 

[00:19:40] It's through these forums that Bell is connected to a guy called Dr. Mark Johns at the Peter McCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, I believe I pronounced that correctly. Dr. Johns was basically doing research into the effects of vaccines in June of 2009. And He is invited to a home to assess her and after running some tests, he tells [00:20:00] Belle that she has Stage four brain cancer and that she has just 16 weeks to live.

[00:20:05] Adam Cox: Oh my word God that must be horrible just hearing that how do you even like understand or process that. 

[00:20:11] Kyle Risi: When you read? Through her cookbook. She does describe that moment and just how daunting it is. She's like she's confused. She's confused Go through all this and she just doesn't know what to do.

[00:20:21] Imagine hearing that at 21. 

[00:20:23] Adam Cox: Yeah, 

[00:20:24] Kyle Risi: of course bell is devastated So she moves to melbourne for treatment and she starts undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy to try and shrink the tumour. 

[00:20:32] It is awful for her, Adam. She describes collapsing in a hospital car park after like a brutal session after eight weeks of chemotherapy and that is when she pretty much says enough is enough.

[00:20:42] She wasn't willing to spend her final months bedridden and being sick from the treatment that she was going through. Like she had very little time left. She didn't want to spend it being sick. 

[00:20:52] Adam Cox: Yeah well she spent half of that time by the sounds of things just on treatment and now she's only got eight weeks left. 

[00:20:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah, Bell had already been [00:21:00] following Jess Ainscow's story. So seeing how that she'd obviously seemingly beaten all the odds without mainstream medicine, Bell decides to dive headfirst into Gerson therapy, which is strictly no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, no GM foods, plus meditation and yoga. And of course, the infamous Gerson. Coffee enemas. 

[00:21:16] Her doctors tried to talk her out of it, but for Belle There was another reason why she was rejecting conventional treatment. Belle's pregnant, And she wants to give her baby the best possible chance at life Because remember, she's only got 8 weeks left to live The chemotherapy is probably going to do a hell of a lot of damage, including the baby.

[00:21:33] She thinking, Jess Ainscote. She's managed to go like two years. I might be able to be as healthy as I possibly can give birth to my son and give him the best chance at life. 

[00:21:42] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. Yeah. And like, I guess sometimes it's like mind over matter. Yeah. Isn't it like, perhaps you can kind of persuade yourself to keep going until you get to a point that seems to always be and then you kind of like, just, you know, slip away. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, you 

[00:21:57] Kyle Risi: kind of like, okay, well, my time's up now. Do I give up [00:22:00] mentally and emotionally? Yeah. And then it just so happens that your body does then give up.

[00:22:04] Adam Cox: I think there is something about that with your mind. 

[00:22:06] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though Adam, it works. Sixteen weeks had come and gone, and she was still there, belle said that it was her regimented following of Gerson's therapy that saved her life. And then in July 2010, she gives birth to an absolutely healthy baby boy. 

[00:22:21] Adam Cox: Really? So That's crazy! So was she pregnant whilst, or felt pregnant whilst she was under sort of chemo? 

[00:22:28] Kyle Risi: I'm not sure. I think it sounds like maybe she might have fallen pregnant in the early stages of the diagnosis. So yeah, and I guess that all just kind of fueled this decision to just say no. 

[00:22:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, I never even thought about could you be pregnant and be under chemotherapy. 

[00:22:41] Kyle Risi: I don't think you can, I'd be amazed because chemotherapy is you. Fucking hard. That's what I mean. That's harsh. 

[00:22:47] Adam Cox: And that's gonna put a lot of like, yeah, a big toll on your body. How can you grow a human whilst you're trying to recover from that? 

[00:22:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[00:22:54] Adam Cox: So I understand her reason to come off it. 

[00:22:56] Kyle Risi: So we're going to fast forward now a couple years. Aside from obviously the [00:23:00] odd seizure, Belle is thriving. So in May of 2013, Using the handle at healing underscore bell, she takes an Instagram with various inspirational quotes and selfies. Her account literally blows up almost instantly. She ends up ranking in like 200, 000 plus followers. People are either enthralled by her story or are looking for alternative therapies when conventional medicines had let them down too.

[00:23:23] So is she officially in remission now? No, the cancer is still there. What's happening is that the Gerson therapy and the clean eating is just keeping it at bay. It's not developing any further. So if she was able to function at the size that it was before, she's still able to function currently because it's not grown or spread.

[00:23:40] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. 

[00:23:41] Kyle Risi: It is terminal cancer. That is her official diagnosis. Okay.

[00:23:44] So effectively, overnight, she becomes one of the first wellness icons of like the 2014 kind of Instagram age. To us, that's like not that long ago , but in the grand scheme of like Instagram, it's like 12 generations ago.

[00:23:58] Do you know what I mean? Like you [00:24:00] remember how different it was back then? 

[00:24:01] Adam Cox: That's when you had all the filters and stuff like that. Exactly. There was no reels. Yeah. 

[00:24:05] Kyle Risi: And it was all about pictures and images and galleries and things like that. 

[00:24:09] Adam Cox: And really dark, grainy images. Everyone just went for that.

[00:24:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think it kind of went through different, different styles, didn't it? 

[00:24:16] Some people, of course, were skeptical about her claims about Gerson therapy, but with this Criticism came exposure and so she channels us into building out a brand and with it She starts building and promoting an app that she funds using a bunch of credit cards That she ends up calling the whole pantry And this was pretty much the first health wellness and lifestyle app in existence at a time when the concept of a phone app Was still relatively new.

[00:24:43] Adam Cox: So is that a bit like my fitness pal, but that's kind of I guess counting calories. What did this help you do then? 

[00:24:49] Kyle Risi: Basically, it was just a list of recipes. 

[00:24:51] Adam Cox: Oh, okay. 

[00:24:52] Kyle Risi: That's all it was. I mean, that's as advanced as it got back then. But even though it was fairly generic, it was selling for 3. [00:25:00] 97. So she was making money from it.

[00:25:01] Yeah. When the app launches, it gets like 200, 000 downloads in its first month and eventually is named the best food and drink app of 2013. Off the back of this, she scores a book deal with Penguin and within two years, she is a millionaire.

[00:25:16] Wow. Of course in the spirit of giving back she starts organizing various charity fundraisers from maternal health care in parts of Africa to causes closer to home And in a very short period of time, she raises and donates like 300, 000 and is regularly donating like percentages of her app and her book profits to charity.

[00:25:35] And as a result of her success, elle magazine call her Belle, the most inspiring woman you've ever met in 2014. It's a good title to have. It's a good title. Cosmopolitan give her the fun, fearless, female award.

[00:25:48] Cosmo says she's fun and fearless because she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, but instead of giving in, she became the impetus of the dedication to health and well being. Basically, Cosmo [00:26:00] are tired of all those other women giving up and dying of cancer. 

[00:26:04] Adam Cox: So like, oh yeah, you did it, you did a lot better than these other guys.

[00:26:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[00:26:07] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:26:08] Kyle Risi: I mean, that's so patronising, isn't it? 

[00:26:09] Adam Cox: That is, isn't it? Yeah. 

[00:26:11] Kyle Risi: So pretty soon after launching her app, Apple invites her out to their headquarters in California to help them work on a top secret project. Turns out Apple are getting ready to release the world's very first Apple Watch.

[00:26:24] Adam Cox: Oh, and they get her in to like help with like the health or element? 

[00:26:27] Kyle Risi: Basically, they want the whole pantry to be one of the featured apps that are pre installed on the app straight out the box. 

[00:26:33] Adam Cox: Wow. So she really made. the most out of this. 

[00:26:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing. She's now at the absolute top of the game, right? Where she was inspiring others battling similar illnesses. She's traveling around the world, giving talks, showing up on like morning TV shows, all while being a single mum, right? It's here that in a cruel twist of fate, all of this success starts taking its toll on her health. 

[00:26:57] And Belle has always been on the record of [00:27:00] saying that she suspected this would eventually happen. Journalists would often ask her like, are you afraid of dying? But she always maintained that actually the hardest part was knowing that one day she would eventually have to grapple with this idea of having to say goodbye to her son, which I understand.

[00:27:14] In 2014, Belle takes her Instagram. With frustration and ache in my heart, I am letting you all know that I have now been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer. One is secondary, the other is primary. I now have cancer in my blood, my spleen, my brain, uterus and my liver. I am hurting, but please, don't carry my pain. I've got this. 

[00:27:40] Wow. Immediately, obviously she is inundated with love and support. She promises to keep everyone updated as she goes more tests and publicly she was putting on this like really incredible, like brave face, but privately, apparently her friends say she was utterly devastated in the middle of all of this, [00:28:00] the person who had initially inspired her, to try Gerson therapy in the first place ends up losing her battle with cancer.

[00:28:07] So Jess, yeah, that's Jess. And so it's at Jess's funeral that Belle is spotted and photographed sobbing. And it's kind of this brutal reminder that these alternative therapies only just bought Jess a little bit of time and eventually Belle would meet the same fate.

[00:28:22] So seeing her crying seems to kind of confirm that she's feeling the weight of her own mortality. But here's the thing, Adam. The world was about to discover that Belle actually had a lot of time left. And that's because Belle doesn't have cancer. In fact, she never did. 

[00:28:38] Adam Cox: Hang on. What? So the whole dieting, pregnancy, app. She just said she had like four different types of cancer. In the blood, the spleen, the brain, and wherever else.

[00:28:50] Yeah. And it's all so public. 

[00:28:52] What's the rug pull here, Kyle? Like, are you about to say like she's actually like a con artist? Well, she's a con artist, basically. Yep. [00:29:00] And she's basically defrauding people for money and, ah, what a bee. I feel like you've lied to me this whole 30 odd minutes or whatever, how long this has been going on for.

[00:29:11] How dare you? How dare you? 

[00:29:13] Kyle Risi: Why would I be telling you about a social media influencer? This is the Compendium Podcast. Of course there's going to be some kind of twist. But I thought it was like an 

[00:29:18] Adam Cox: inspirational, like, woman that did this. She changed the world.

[00:29:21] We talk about extraordinary people, Kyle. 

[00:29:23] Kyle Risi: We do, actually. That's very true. 

[00:29:24] Adam Cox: And she sounds extraordinary in the wrong way. 

[00:29:26] Kyle Risi: So listen, listen. I realize I might have taken you on a bit of a rollercoaster with this one. A bit. I'm sorry. But this is a really tricky story to tell because a lot of people listening may already know that Belle was a complete fraud from the start.

[00:29:40] So I kind of had a choice, right? I could have framed this episode with that in mind from the very beginning just like so many other people have done as well when they report on the story or I could have taken you on a journey and let you experience the betrayal in the same way that the world did when they first found out. about her lies. 

[00:29:58] Adam Cox: Well, I didn't know what was going on, [00:30:00] Kyle. And so yes, you have betrayed me.

[00:30:02] Kyle Risi: The thing is, though, for years, nearly everyone did believe her lies. People felt this immense sympathy for this young single mother bravely battling terminal cancer in the public eye. Who wouldn't be moved by that?

[00:30:13] So she never had a coffee enema? She probably did have the coffee enema, but she probably wasn't. She's doing it to treat her cancer. And for those who are unfamiliar with her story or only heard about Belle after the deception was exposed, I really wanted to kind of take you on the same emotional journey that others experienced.

[00:30:31] Kind of imagine learning of her struggle, especially as someone fighting an illness yourself. To them, she was their champion, right? Facing this unimaginable adversity. And that, I think, only just made this revelation even more devastating. So I wanted you guys to feel exactly what I was feeling.

[00:30:48] Adam Cox: I'm just thinking about this a bit even more now. Like, she's inspired people to probably take up this treatment, who actually have cancer. Yeah. This doesn't end well, does it? 

[00:30:58] Kyle Risi: This is kind [00:31:00] of just the start of a story because the really interesting stuff is just about to happen after her lies are exposed. But you'll have to stick around until after the break. Where I'll be telling you what the fuck is actually going on here. 

[00:31:11] Adam Cox: I don't like this, Bill.

[00:31:14] Kyle Risi: So Adam, we're back. Shall we dive in to how all of Bill's lies got exposed? 

[00:31:21] Adam Cox: Well, yeah. 

[00:31:22] Kyle Risi: Okay, in early 2015, two journalists from the Age news publication in Melbourne, their names were Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano, they received a tip from someone in the wellness scene who had befriended Belle.

[00:31:35] They suspected that she was faking her entire diagnosis. And at first, the journalists, they're skeptical, but they are intrigued. Because if it's true, This would be an explosive story, right? So, Donnelly and Saskano, they start digging, they pull over every interview Bell has ever given. There's no immediate smoking gun, but the stories seem like just a little bit too convenient. Almost scripted, in a way. [00:32:00] They notice that whenever she talks about her health, she's like remarkably vague.

[00:32:05] So what they do is they take everything that Bell has publicly claimed and they run it past several medical professionals in Melbourne. And the consensus is that none of it adds up. For starters, brain tumours aren't classified in stages as Belle has been describing, they're actually described in grades, so it's like grade 1, grade 2, grade 3. Which, if Belle really had brain cancer, this would be something that she would 100 percent know. Right? How did people not question this before? I don't know. I don't know, Adam. People are idiots.

[00:32:31] They're so preoccupied with their own lives. Maybe they don't look past the details and they're just focusing on the emotion. 

[00:32:35] Adam Cox: And also, sometimes you just don't want to question someone if they're actually sick. 100%! You don't want to, like, go there. You raise an eyebrow, but you don't do it. You raise an 

[00:32:42] Kyle Risi: eyebrow.

[00:32:42] I mean, Donnelly and Toscano, they were certainly raising eyebrows because while they were suspicious, this wasn't really enough for an expose. And also they don't really want to publish it without solid proof because this could land a potential defamation lawsuit against them. So they decide to follow the money, which if the [00:33:00] compendium has taught us anything. It's often the fastest way to get to the truth, right? They track down every time Bell claimed to have donated to charity, they reach out to all these organizations only to find out none of them even knew Bell was raising money in their name, let alone received any money from the whole pantry.

[00:33:18] They then check if Belle or her company had even registered as an official fundraiser in Australia, as the law requires. Nothing. No record at all.

[00:33:28] So Donnelly and Saskano, they try calling Bell to get her side of the story. They can't get through because Bell is actually attending Jess Ainscow's funeral. So instead they decide to email her a list of questions. They ask things like, why haven't you forwarded over the money that you promised? Like, who are your doctors? Where were you getting treatment? And also, how old are you? Because they find loads of business records that suggest that she's actually two years younger than she claims. So it sounds like she's lying about everything. Even down to her age. 

[00:33:56] Adam Cox: That's a lot of lies to keep up with. Is this why she breaks down at the funeral? [00:34:00] Because it gets too much for her? 

[00:34:01] Kyle Risi: Oh, I don't think so. I think it's probably all show. Okay. 100%. As we get to know her, she has no remorse, no empathy. It's all about her. She's extremely self absorbed.

[00:34:11] Adam Cox: I was just thinking, yeah, because if she's, maybe if she's a bit like Tanya Head, whereby you're, there's still like a good relationship. or positive motive, even though she's betraying people, she was still helping all these other people, you know, come to terms with what happened. This just sounds like she's out for herself. 

[00:34:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's all part of her brand, and of course her brand just so happens to be this selfless, charity giving, kind of wellness influencer, she just wants to grow that side of it.

[00:34:35] But it is strange that she would lie about her age. It did get me wondering, like, was this a way to potentially stop people from looking into her past? Or maybe was it because she was so young, maybe she wanted to make herself sound a little bit older as a way of being taken a little more seriously in business because she's such a young entrepreneur, right?

[00:34:52] Yeah, I guess so. 

[00:34:53] Either way, these were all very simple questions. So if Belle was telling the truth, it should have been really easy for her to [00:35:00] provide just a few details. 

[00:35:01] So the email goes out at 3. 20pm that Thursday, and at 3. 40pm, Belle starts ringing around all the charities that she's donated to.

[00:35:09] She's apologising for the delay in getting the money to them, and in one case she promises to wire them over like 20, 000. Then to another charity that's been chasing her for over a year. She quickly transfers a thousand dollars, which is a fraction of what she actually owes them. And then she sends a screenshot of the online receipt to the CEO. So she's clearly in a bit of a tailspin now, right? She's trying to kind of like put out these little fires that have all of a sudden started.

[00:35:32] Adam Cox: And she thinks she can do that by just giving them a little bit of what they're owed. 

[00:35:36] Kyle Risi: I think she's making it look like she is making some kind of effort and that it's in the process. Because at 1. 15 in the morning, Donnelly and Suskarno get a 1500 word email where she blames old employees, cash flow problems, and the general kind of startup growing pains for not paying out the donations.

[00:35:53] She then shows proof that She has sent one payment, which is literally that same one thousand, uh, pound [00:36:00] receipt. Like, just now. Just now. And in the email, she completely fails to answer any of the questions that they've initially asked. 

[00:36:06] They write back, they say thanks, but you still haven't answered any of the questions that we actually ask and bell replies saying she's busy at a friend's funeral and that they'll just have to wait Until she has time to respond properly. 

[00:36:17] A few days go by they still haven't heard back and so they decide enough is enough We're going live with our story and on the 8th of march 2015 an article with a headline appears Inspirational app developer's charity money is missing. Remember, she's already very famous at this point. 

[00:36:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, so everyone's gonna know. This is gonna, I guess, bring her a lot of heat. 

[00:36:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, this is all gonna happen over like a three day period where everything's just gonna break down and unravel. 

[00:36:43] In the article details, obviously the whole pantry and all of these unfulfilled promises to five different charities. Remember, there is nothing in this article about her not having cancer, right? Because they can't prove that properly. It's just that she hasn't paid up. 

[00:36:58] the Whole Pantry's [00:37:00] Facebook page, written by Bell herself, but like in the third person, referring to herself as the previous Managing Director. And the post dismisses Donnelly and Toscano's article as complete nonsense, attributing any issues to typical startup growing pains and insists that she is committed to handing over the donations as soon as all of her accounts are sorted.

[00:37:19] Bell also claims that one of her fundraisers only ended up raising like 750. So it was way, way, hundreds of thousands of dollars less than expected. So instead of donating it to the dominated charity, she gives the money to a refugee family that she had been supporting. But to protect their privacy, she refuses to identify them publicly. So it's pretty convenient that the only money that she actually gives away Didn't have a paper trail. 

[00:37:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, I don't buy that. No, 

[00:37:47] Kyle Risi: I don't buy No, who's gonna buy that? Of course anyone can see through it. But she is so convicted in her lies that she genuinely believes that people are gonna buy her bullshit. But it's so obvious that it's shit. Yeah. 

[00:37:59] Because of the article, [00:38:00] a flood of angry people descend on Bale's social media. They accuse her of lying, being a thief. Some even call for her to be thrown in prison. Adam, it's a complete mess. Yeah, she's become a millionaire, right? Uh huh. 

[00:38:12] Adam Cox: And so she's probably got a really nice house. 

[00:38:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But on the beach, nice to rental. Yeah, she's rolling in money, but she's just greedy. So she desperately tries to respond to as many messages as possible. But eventually she starts deleting the most critical posts, which of course is only gonna make her look like she's hiding something, right? Or that she's guilty. For sure. She's such an idiot. So on the 10th of March, as pressure mounts, Belle attempts some damage control and in an interview with the Australian newspaper, she admits that That when she claimed that her cancer had spread to her liver, her uterus, her spleen, and her blood, may have been a misdiagnosis.

[00:38:47] Adam Cox: Um, yeah. 

[00:38:50] Kyle Risi: She says, It is hard to admit that I may have been wrong. And describes feeling confused, bordering, humiliated. Like, [00:39:00] excuse me? You've just found out that you might not have cancer your reaction is to be humiliated? Like, you should be relieved!

[00:39:09] Adam Cox: Yeah, and also, who, I, it's almost suggesting that, did the doctor get it wrong? Yes. Or are you suggesting the doctor said you Tricked. She was tricked. Yeah, the doctor said you're fine and all you heard was, I'm gonna die. 

[00:39:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah. What the hell? I know, she's so irresponsible. So naturally, every news outlet in Australia jumps on the story, they're all clamouring to speak to people who knew Belle.

[00:39:29] And from there, a long trail of people start coming forward, claiming that she's been lying this whole time, and that she doesn't even have brain cancer. Remember, when she said that she thinks she's been misdiagnosed, that was the second cancer, the second and third death spread. She's still claiming that she still has brain cancer.

[00:39:45] Adam Cox: And so people that know her generally know she's lying. 

[00:39:48] Kyle Risi: Well, let's, let's, let's meet some of them. 

[00:39:50] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[00:39:51] Kyle Risi: Apparently at Bell's son's birthday party, she keeps having like these really violent seizures like in front of all the kids, which totally freaks them all out,

[00:39:59] [00:40:00] all the adults, they rally around her they're all like, uh, should we call an ambulance? And then just like that, magic. She's like, no, no, no, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. And they're like, oh, okay. And then she'll have another seizure. and she'll be flitting out and then they'll be like, Oh no, no, we need to call an ambulance.

[00:40:13] She's like, No, no, I'll be fine. It happens all the time. It's fine. 

[00:40:17] Adam Cox: I'd love if there was a doctor there. Like I can help and like, Oh, um, no. 

[00:40:21] Kyle Risi: She probably very carefully curated the people that she's surrounded. 

[00:40:25] Adam Cox: Probably. Yeah. It's like, Oh yeah. Do you work in medicine? Yeah. You can't come. 

[00:40:29] Kyle Risi: And the thing is, though, no one at that party wants to be that dickhead to confront her. Just like what happened with Tanya Head, right? In the fake 9 11 survivor. 

[00:40:36] Adam Cox: I bet everyone walks out of that party going, what a bitch, what a phony. 

[00:40:39] Kyle Risi: Big fat phony! A former business associate comes forward, revealing that she was forced to pull out of a potential partnership with Bell after their accountant requested some very basic paperwork. Full name, date of birth, address, etc. But Bell hesitates, saying like, that might be a bit of an issue because like, I kind of go by like several names and it's just a long [00:41:00] story. So she's sensing like obviously there's bullshit here, so she just walks away. 

[00:41:04] Adam Cox: And she can't even prove her date of birth though, right?

[00:41:05] Kyle Risi: No, not really. So after the medical experts start publicly chiming in, saying that that's not how kind of brain cancer works in terms of grades and stages, Belle starts going to full damage control and she starts frantically deleting any post that references her cancer and any charity donations. 

[00:41:21] Adam Cox: But I bet someone has saved all of her posts. 

[00:41:23] Kyle Risi: But it wasn't just former associates that were speaking out Followers too one woman called kylie wiley she was diagnosed with lymphoma when she came across bell's story She saw how bell had kind of like ditched conventional treatments in favor of coconut water and fucking kale so Kylie does the same thing.

[00:41:40] She stops chemotherapy, she follows everything that Belle does, and in the end, Adam, it nearly kills her. 

[00:41:46] Adam Cox: This is what's, we're joking, but this is, we're getting on to like a

[00:41:49] Kyle Risi: serious thing, isn't it? It's serious, yeah. 

[00:41:52] Adam Cox: That is, that's what, I can't believe she got away with that, and to think that she could just delete a few posts and think that that will, like, get her out of trouble. She's got a [00:42:00] lot to answer for 

[00:42:01] Kyle Risi: totally thankfully, of course Kylie She does go back to conventional treatment before obviously is too late But she says I'm livid not just a bell But at myself for believing her for spending money on her books and her apps For almost letting it cost my life because that takes away from my family Yeah, and this list of people just goes on and on and on eventually Donnelly and Toscano will go off and write an entire biography about Bell You know, you fucked up this life when two journalists write an entire biography about you 

[00:42:30] Adam Cox: and you probably don't get a say 

[00:42:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah, and in it. They interview a ton of people who knew her many of them are from her hometown who say that she was well known growing up as being this compulsive liar. People recall that most of the time she was either completely unbelievable or just a complete laughingstock. Like, they saw her coming. Do you know what I mean? They're like, oh, here's Belle, eye rolling. They just knew that she was full of shit. 

[00:42:52] And it's just crazy to me, like, if that was so obvious, why did she not pick up on these things? I don't think she's that self aware. [00:43:00] Do you know what I mean? To go, oh, okay, clearly, their reaction says that they don't believe me, so, I'll just stop lying? 

[00:43:06] Adam Cox: Yeah, you'd think so, or maybe she just gets enough, attention, or she moves on to a new group of people where she can then, obviously, a little bit like Anna Delvey where, you know, she would obviously Pull the wall over a group of people's eyes, and then they realize actually you're lying, and then she moves away from them That's true 

[00:43:24] Kyle Risi: actually yeah, yeah Yeah, Maybe it answers the question why she moved from like Brisbane to birth other side of the country right as far as away from her Family is she possibly can get but 

[00:43:32] Adam Cox: the thing is like doing something so public And that's going to be across the internet and TV. Like, how do you think you can keep that up? You're lying about cancer where everyone knows, like, it goes one or two ways, right? 

[00:43:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah, So out of the people from her hometown that they interview, several people say that she had told them that she was in the witness protection program, which we kind of knew from obviously the beginning of the episode. One former classmate remembers Belle insisting that she was a test tube [00:44:00] baby. 

[00:44:00] Adam Cox: Right, okay. 

[00:44:01] Kyle Risi: Apparently she always just seemed to have some sort of illness or some kind of dramatic issue that was unfolding in her life. I

[00:44:07] Adam Cox: was wondering if she's one of those people that always has an ailment or whatever.

[00:44:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, or some, some kind of attention thing going on. 

[00:44:13] Adam Cox: Some drama. 

[00:44:14] Kyle Risi: But it seems that all the cancer lies only started happening after her ex boyfriend tried to break up with her. So she tells him that she has cancer just to prevent that from happening. I'm not quite sure if he is the father of a baby, who knows.

[00:44:25] According to the same biography, even at the stage where she was, like, taking off, people were confronting her about whether or not she had cancer to her face. Apparently two of her closest friends, Chanel and Jared, which are the most Australian names I've ever heard in my entire life, they apparently hold an intervention with her a couple months before her cookbook is released. Whatever happens to interventions? I've never had an intervention. I really want an intervention. 

[00:44:49] Adam Cox: That's because we all talk about you behind your back. 

[00:44:51] Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. Bitches. 

[00:44:52] Adam Cox: No, I think, I was going to ask that because I feel like if people knew her well enough to know or doubt what she was saying. [00:45:00] Surely this would have got out sooner.

[00:45:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah, you would think, right? So basically Chanel worked with Belle, right? She starts having serious doubts about her cancer claims after her, friend's own mum is diagnosed with actual cancer. So seeing firsthand what it's actually like to live with the disease made Belle's story seem increasingly more and more suspicious.

[00:45:19] Because while her mum's friend was truly suffering, Belle was off out jet setting to Bali for a fucking yoga retreat, right? She's jogging in the mornings. she's carefully curating this perfect, healthy lifestyle on social media. But oops, asterisks. I also have brain cancer. Do you know what I mean?

[00:45:36] So Chanel starts thinking, this is not cancer. So she and Jared go over to Belle's house and they confront her and they're like, look, your book is coming out and you're about to explode in the public eye in a way that you've never done before. You need to show us some proof that you have cancer. They ask her to name her doctors, Belle, it's like his name is Dr. Phil.

[00:45:59] [00:46:00] Jeez. But don't bother looking him up because like he has since disappeared after his colleagues have started questioning his practices. Chanel's like, doesn't that mean that your diagnosis is questionable then as well? And Belle is like, possibly. And so Chanel is like, well, why don't you just go and get retested?

[00:46:16] Belle goes, I just don't have time. 

[00:46:18] Adam Cox: Okay, no, no, this is not right. I would like, just no.

[00:46:24] Kyle Risi: So at this point, the conversation is getting super heated. Belle starts feeling outnumbered and ganged up on. So she calls a neuropath that she's been working with, hoping that he'll back her up. But plot twist, he turns up and halfway through he's like, Yeah, Belle, um, it is really weird that you can't produce a single piece of evidence that you have cancer.

[00:46:41] It really does seem like you're lying. Which is hilarious because she calls in reinforcements and then the reinforcements go, Hang on a second, the other guy's making some really valid points. Yeah.

[00:46:56] Adam Cox: They're probably like, wait, you haven't even like, shown them your certificate or what? I'm [00:47:00] like, what? 

[00:47:00] Kyle Risi: Oh, she's so infuriating. By the end of the night, Chanel tells Belle, she needs to pull her book before she walks into something that she just cannot take back.

[00:47:10] And Belle just ignores her. So Chanel goes to the reporters. So she does. 

[00:47:14] Adam Cox: Ah, okay. Cause I did wonder, but they didn't. Release this information. At the time of the book release. 

[00:47:19] Kyle Risi: No, they didn't. So this actually came out in the biography, which will be released two years later. 

[00:47:24] Adam Cox: Okay, 

[00:47:24] Kyle Risi: but it could be Chanel who actually tipped off the 

[00:47:27] Adam Cox: journalists. Ah, okay, because yeah, it's like, how did this go on for so long? Like, I would have been like on a picket line outside the book launch, something to kind of go like, no, she's alive. 

[00:47:36] Kyle Risi: She's a big fat phony.

[00:47:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:47:38] And just like trying to get it out there. But it sounds like, obviously her close friends, um, quote, did try to do that. 

[00:47:45] Kyle Risi: And here's the thing, right? A really sad part of this is that all this fallout is not just aimed at Bell. Earlier that year, another huge major story captured the public's attention across Australia. 

[00:47:57] It was about the seven year old boy named Joshua and his [00:48:00] family had been like desperately calling for donations to kind of help pay for his treatment for a brain tumour that he was fighting.

[00:48:07] Because Joshua also had a rare genetic disorder, chemotherapy just wasn't an option for him. So his only hope was an expensive experimental treatment and his family were relying on public Generosity to kind of raise money to pay for it Mm hmm Bell hears about the story because it's literally everywhere.

[00:48:24] She reaches out She bonds with him and his mom and eventually she writes about him in her cookbook calling him a liar Her second little man, basically next to her son and talks about how they shared the same brain bug. 

[00:48:36] At one point, she even promises to donate all the app downloads for a particular week to help pay for Joshua's treatment, right? which is very important. He needs this in order to stay alive. She never follows through. She just uses this poor family. She learns everything about Joshua's condition and then repurposes it to make her own story sound more convincing. 

[00:48:57] Adam Cox: Wow, you're fishing for information to [00:49:00] back up your own story. 

[00:49:01] Kyle Risi: And that's not even the worst bit, in the fallout of all the fury that is aimed at Bell, people start pointing fingers at the Schwartz family too, accusing them of being scammers simply because they knew Bell. The accusations become so overwhelming that they have no choice but to shut down Joshua's fundraising page. So in Joshua's final months of life, his family suddenly are unable to pay for their treatments. They've already sold their house, right? They have nothing. They needed that money. 

[00:49:27] So now there's this whole new element to the story where Belle's lies didn't just manipulate and deceive. They may have robbed Joshua's parents of the precious time that they had left with their son.

[00:49:37] Adam Cox: That's disgusting. 

[00:49:38] Kyle Risi: Isn't that just awful? 

[00:49:40] And Belle does not get it. She still sees herself in the picture. as the victim in all of this, right? To the point where she starts posting under an alias, sending a bunch of spiteful messages to anyone who dobbed her into the media. Like she writes, before I get bullied to my death, enjoy your contribution to the world.

[00:49:59] And then she insists that [00:50:00] her work had changed hundreds of thousands of lives for the better. But when these posts get leaked, the backlash is just immediate, right? Like, she's an idiot for thinking that the press wouldn't pick up on that, but finally she does get the message. And she does disappear from the public eye.

[00:50:17] And basically, Adam, that is how, overnight, Belle Gibson becomes Australia's biggest wellness fraud and the most hated person in Australia. 

[00:50:25] Adam Cox: I think I'm joining Australia now with that. 

[00:50:27] Kyle Risi: Isn't she awful? . 

[00:50:28] So with Bell lying low and the public left with nobody to take aim at, they actually start going after the organizations that literally enabled her. They go after Apple, they go after Penguin Books, right?

[00:50:38] And at first, Apple is super defensive of her, but the public outcry in all of this is so bad that they are eventually forced to remove the app altogether, which is fucking great. This is Apple, one of the biggest companies on the planet. You'd think that they would do some level of vetting before partnering with someone like her.

[00:50:57] What do you think? 

[00:50:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, because I [00:51:00] guess they actually invited her, didn't they, by the sounds of things? They wanted her involved. Um, yeah, but also the money they probably make from her is probably insignificant in the grand scheme of things. 

[00:51:09] Kyle Risi: Because they were reluctant to pull her app, her app is featured on the on the Apple watch so they probably paid her a shit ton of money to have That app on there. It's not like oh, we're just gonna stop selling your app because who cares is money that we have made yet, right?

[00:51:21] Yeah, they've already paid for that upfront. 

[00:51:23] Adam Cox: Mm hmm.

[00:51:24] Kyle Risi: It's later revealed that Penguin's PR team, her cookbook's publisher, Belle's claims were potentially lies from the very start. Really? Basically five months before the book was due to come out, one editor emails another saying that a jealous friend is claiming that Belle is lying.

[00:51:39] I don't know if this is Chanel, but instead of hitting the brakes on the project, they decide to put Belle through media coaching. Do you know what that is?

[00:51:48] Like PR and just cut, yeah. There is a 90 minute deposition style video where they role play a series of tough interview questions that journalists might ask her when she's out on the book [00:52:00] tour. They grill her about her cancer and her background. Her answers are incredibly vague. She stumbles over her words.

[00:52:06] She can't answer basic questions and nothing she says makes sense it's obvious to them that she is lying. And in the end, they're so extraordinarily frustrated with her, right? Each time they tell her, like, you need to come up. with a better answer for this question next time saying like if journalists ask you about this and you hesitate They will keep pressing you and Belle just like nods and says yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah I will do and there just doesn't seem to be like any shame there like I'd be like but it's true or whatever like she's Just like yep. Okay. Yeah, I will do 

[00:52:36] Adam Cox: That's like proper corporate greed because I understand they get this tip off and they might go. I don't know Do we outright ask her?

[00:52:45] And fair enough, if they had evidence of her, like, having it, okay, like, well, we need to get this, you know, you don't communicate it well enough, so I can understand that, but this is them really covering their tracks. Have they invested that much or thought the book would do so well that they needed to go [00:53:00] through with it?

[00:53:00] Kyle Risi: It kind of reminds me of the whole kind of Kevin Spacey scandal thing when that broke, he had just finished that film like the billionaire boys club? The final edit was done the trailer just come out the scandal then hits so the producers have to consider every other option except for shelving the movie. In the end, they just end up waiting six months and then they quietly release it. They've come this far down the road? Where they're now printed it, it's ready to go, they just now need to start promoting it. 

[00:53:24] So at no point does Penguin consider the possibility of ever pulling the book. They're like, how do we make this happen? And the solution was. And 

[00:53:33] But this makes me so angry because they are literally enabling her to continue to spread dangerous cancer advice to vulnerable people on a massive scale using their platform, right?

[00:53:45] What's even more bonkers is that when they're pressed about this, their response is that there is no legal obligation on us to do so. Because her book is essentially just a collection of recipes. So, first of all, yes, you should test recipes, but [00:54:00] secondly, she also includes a 3, 000 word essay in the book from Belle talking about having cancer and how she's cured it with fucking kale!

[00:54:08] Adam Cox: Yeah, this, fair enough, if it was just a recipe book, I don't know, maybe you can sort of disassociate that to a level, but it's been promoted as a book to help cure cancer, then, no, you should have pulled that. 

[00:54:20] Kyle Risi: Exactly, 100%. The only reason anyone is buying this book is because of her personal story, right? You can get recipes anywhere! 

[00:54:28] Adam Cox: Yeah, not because they want avocado on toast from her. No! 

[00:54:31] Kyle Risi: For me, it's not right when these large organizations get off scot free when they had played such an instrumental role in giving her that voice. If anything, they should be held to a much higher standard. As the saying goes, With great power comes great responsibility.

[00:54:46] They should have been held liable and culpable for how they enabled her, in my opinion. But in the end, Apple and Penguin, they walk away with no real fallout. 

[00:54:54] Adam Cox: That's really shitty. 

[00:54:56] Kyle Risi: So like Apple, Penguin, they fight it for a while because of course, [00:55:00] money. But eventually they pull the book from sale. But let's be clear, this wasn't out of some sense of responsibility, it's because the Consumer Affairs of Victoria slapped them with a 30, 000 fine for failing to fact check her. 

[00:55:12] So someone has finally stepped in and said no this is wrong. But a 30, 000 fine, that's all. Exactly. And if of course they wanted to keep selling the book, they now had to also include a disclaimer on any future releases saying like, this isn't.

[00:55:25] Adam Cox: This is basically nonsense. This is a fiction book. 

[00:55:29] Kyle Risi: In April 2015, Belle makes a statement in the Australian Women's Weekly, and this is so maddening, because she refuses to take accountability for anything. And she says that the book was always meant to be a work of fiction. 

[00:55:44] Adam Cox: No. Bullshit. No, don't buy that.

[00:55:47] Kyle Risi: In the same interview, Belle finally admits that she doesn't and never did have cancer. So this is now the first time where the world is actually finding out that not only was the secondary cancer a misdiagnosis, but even the first cancer wasn't even [00:56:00] real. 

[00:56:00] Adam Cox: Like, does this mean that, I don't know, can't she get into trouble for this? 

[00:56:05] Kyle Risi: She will get in trouble for other things, not for lying, because lying is not a crime, unless it's involved in a crime, but she will get in trouble in other ways.

[00:56:13] Adam Cox: But misleading people, especially when it comes to anything medical, that should be held accountable. It's 

[00:56:19] Kyle Risi: really irresponsible, isn't it? So she of course admits that she never had cancer. In it, they ask her what's it like to wake up one day and realize that you have not had cancer after living as a terminal cancer victim for five years.

[00:56:31] She says, It's just very scary, to be honest, because you start to doubt the crux of things that make up who you are. Like, I'm blonde, I'm tall, I've got hazel eyes, you know, and I've also got cancer. Then suddenly those high level things are just kind of taken away. I don't know. It's just really daunting.

[00:56:50] What the fuck? Shut up. She then goes on to say that she is now financially and personally ruined because of all of this, her business has obviously gone into [00:57:00] liquidation, she's lost all of her friends, and she's had to move out of her beachside home and return her car rental. So like boo fucking hoo, Belle. Our hearts bleed for you, bitch. 

[00:57:11] Adam Cox: Bell means beauty. There's no beauty here. I really detest this person.

[00:57:15] Kyle Risi: You're going to hate her even more because then she says that she blames her actions on a very difficult childhood saying that she had to care for a disabled mother with MS and her brother who was severely autistic and that life was really, really hard for her. She ends up asking people to please just treat her with dignity, saying that she understands why everyone is suspicious but she wants them to draw a line and for people to stop being nasty.

[00:57:40] In the end, the journalist literally sets her up with a perfect opportunity to apologize and to take responsibility, but instead she says, I thought speaking out was a responsible thing to do above everything. I would like people to say, Okay, she's human. She's obviously had a She's respectfully come to the table and said what she needs to say. It's now time to [00:58:00] grow and heal. 

[00:58:01] Adam Cox: Mmm, but what about the families that you could have robbed? 

[00:58:04] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She doesn't take any accountability, right? This is just unbelievable. No apology. Just more self pity and a desperate attempt to frame herself as the victim. Right. 

[00:58:17] Adam Cox: Do you know what? Considering she's got a history of lying. 

[00:58:21] Kyle Risi: Mm 

[00:58:21] Adam Cox: hmm. I don't buy the thing with her family. There's got to be some more to it than that. 

[00:58:25] Kyle Risi: Adam, after all of this, journalists naturally become very interested in Belle's so called very difficult background.

[00:58:31] They track down her mother, who says she didn't even know Belle had an app or a cookbook. What? Are they that, like? They're basically not talking about these things to her mother because she knows it's bullshit.

[00:58:43] Adam Cox: But surely she's like in the news and things. Does the mum not watch TV? Probably. 

[00:58:47] Kyle Risi: I don't know, I can't explain it. But when they ask about Belle's upbringing, she doesn't hold back. She basically says Belle is full of shit, basically.

[00:58:54] She says that, yes, I've got MS, but it really wasn't that bad, and I wasn't bedridden. Belle never. [00:59:00] Looks after her or her brother a single day in her life, let alone cooked and cleaned the fucking house. 

[00:59:05] Adam Cox: This is what I said, a five year old is not cooking for another child. Not even as a teenager, Adam. Yeah, all as a five year old, I was allowed to cook with, wooden spoons in plastic pots with like raw pasta, or dry pasta.

[00:59:18] Yeah, that, that was my version of cooking. Yeah, 

[00:59:21] Kyle Risi: na says Bell always had ideas above her station. She was always embarrassed of her family. She lived beyond her means and was addicted to her computer. She then claims that Bell like would pinch bits of other people's medical histories and pass 'em off as her own, which we know obviously she's done with the Swar family, but it gets worse.

[00:59:39] Journalists also find out that Bell's brother Nick wasn't even autistic. And he is furious at her for claiming that he was like calling her disgusting for using him to attract sympathy from strangers. And so Adam, this brings us to June, 2015 and the infamous 60 Minutes interview with Tara [01:00:00] Brown.

[01:00:00] And I can tell you Adam, this is widely considered one of the cringiest TV interviews in history. This is Belle basically describing how she was diagnosed with cancer. 

[01:00:11] Inte: She says in 2009, she met a man called Mark Johns, who told her he was an immunologist and neurologist, though no record of him exists.

[01:00:22] He had come to my home. and went through a series of tests and this was dubbed integrative medicine. So he comes to your home and he does some tests on you? He does. How did, what sort of tests? It was a box, a machine with lights on the front, And that machine was apparently German technology. There's a two pads, two metal pads, one that goes below the chair and one that goes behind your back.

[01:00:50] And then that measures what I believe or remember to be frequencies. And what was the [01:01:00] results?

[01:01:00] He said to me that I had a stage four brain tumor and that I had approximately four months to live.

[01:01:08] Adam Cox: How's that measuring your brain when it's like on your front and your back? And then what I envisaged is like a kid's doctor's and nurse's playset, and someone came round to my house, some strange, some hobo off the street, he pulled out his like, his toy set, and he said that I had cancer. Yeah. 

[01:01:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:01:25] Adam Cox: She is believing what she's saying. 

[01:01:27] Kyle Risi: 100 percent. She is a pathological liar and she must be some kind of fantasist. She believes all of this, right? 

[01:01:33] Adam Cox: If I was the, journalist who's interviewing her, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you lying bitch. Yeah. And then what happened? 

[01:01:40] Kyle Risi: Of course, Tara's team, they try to find Mark Johns or Dr. Mark Johns. There's no record of him anywhere. Right. Which is interesting because if there's no record of him, how is she being prescribed with medication? Here's the next one.

[01:01:52] Inte: You claimed, also in your book, that you underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy for two months. True or [01:02:00] false? At the time True. Or false? True. Because at the time, I believed I was having radiotherapy. So, false. I believed that I was having radiotherapy. When he gave me medication, I was told that it was oral chemotherapy.

[01:02:18] And I believed it.

[01:02:20] Kyle Risi: So that's Belle's treatment. She believed she was receiving oral chemotherapy. I can understand that, right? Here's a little tablet, take it. Oh, I don't feel shit afterwards. Fine. But the radiation, you've got to go into a machine. 

[01:02:34] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:02:34] Kyle Risi: If it's in the head, you have to have a mask that's built specifically for you, where it keeps you really still in that machine, because any deviation of movements could potentially get the wrong bit.

[01:02:46] This is in her brain. 

[01:02:48] Adam Cox: Like, yeah, you don't need to know the ins and outs of what exactly happens with any radiation. To know that this is probably not going to be attacking any tumours. 

[01:02:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. [01:03:00] Here is another one of Tara quizzing her about her age.

[01:03:04] Inte: You're 23, right? Well, actually, how old are you? Um, I've always been raised, um, as being currently a 26 year old. How old are you? Well, I live knowing, as I've always known, that I would be 26. Okay, Bill. Um, This is a really, really simple question. How old are you? I believe that I'm 26, I have two birth, two birth certificates, and I've had my name changed four times.

[01:03:34] The identity crisis there is big, but that was my normal when I was growing up, Tara, that What do you know the truth to be now? That's probably a question that we'll have to keep digging for, because it's not something I've ever understood or had answers around. 

[01:03:49] Adam Cox: That is a great response. That's just an answer you're just gonna have to keep digging for. Your birth certificate is on the table. She is just, avoid anything. She's like a politician. [01:04:00] wow. 

[01:04:00] Kyle Risi: I have to say that after watching this, while honestly, the interview is entertaining, it gets like one of the biggest ratings in Australian history, right? Adam, it's not great journalism. because there's no real attempt to figure out what's actually happened here, right?

[01:04:14] They don't interview anyone else. So by the end of it, we don't really learn anything new about her other than like, she's been lying about all these things, right? A good journalist, you want to kind of get to the crux of it and understand why we don't find that out here. And to be fair, maybe it's because Belle doesn't seem to be capable of admitting that she is lying about anything. And I guess if you want to get to the truth, you kind of need to start at the truth, right? Like she's not capable of that. 

[01:04:39] Adam Cox: They needed a Piers Morgan, it would have gone deep. Do you reckon? 

[01:04:43] Kyle Risi: I don't think it would have worked, she needs to be in a position where she's willing to just go, here's the truth, and I don't think she was.

[01:04:48] She gets paid 75, 000 for this interview, and after it airs, 60 Minutes is accused of milking her meltdown for ratings, and they only pay her basically a fraction of what they [01:05:00] eventually will make from airing this. In May 2016. Consumer Affairs Victoria. Decide to take legal action against Bell for violating consumer law and she's eventually fined 410, 000.

[01:05:12] That's a start. It's a start, right? You'd think at this point she would have finally learnt her lesson, but no, because right before her conviction, she pops back up on social media and says, And she is now promoting some multi level marketing herbal gastric cleansing program, which she claims is shrunken her tonsils, changed her eye color, cured her tooth cavities.

[01:05:33] But the real highlight is that she claims that the cleanser has forced out a gigantic rope worm through her butthole, like going into ridiculous detail about that. How it was almost like 60 centimetres long. Adam, she is such an idiot for being so naive to think that the media wouldn't find these posts.

[01:05:53] And when they do, she's just like scurrying to delete them all. But she just adds more fuel to the fire. 

[01:05:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's a shame that this [01:06:00] new treatment didn't like cleanse her of her lying. 

[01:06:02] Kyle Risi: If only. Fast forward two years after being handed this fine, she still hasn't paid up. So she's found in contempt of court. She turns up to court wearing like designer sunglasses, a 500 dress. She's moaning that the media should be covering more important news than her. Yeah, probably true. But still, you've defrauded all this money from all these charities, and God knows how many other people you've put. At risk, right? People want to see you get your comeuppance. So right now, in this moment, until this is done, this is newsworthy to me.

[01:06:35] Basically she tells the court that she's broke, that she's living on welfare, she's doing odd jobs, but then the court presents receipts showing that she has splurged 70, 000 on clothes, cosmetics, Bitcoin investments, and even a 5, 000 trip to Kenya and Ethiopia during that year that she hadn't paid any money.

[01:06:51] And her excuse was that all of these were gifts from her roommate, but They find out that Clive is actually her long term partner and by saying [01:07:00] that Clive is a roommate that protects all of their assets because she can just say that it all belongs to him. Wow. Despite this, the courts send in the bailiffs, they seize what they can, it doesn't even come close to settling up her debts and she just dissolves into obscurity.

[01:07:17] Hopefully people will remember her for a long time and I really hope they do because as people forget she's going to pop back up and she could potentially take advantage of more people and I hope that doesn't happen. 

[01:07:26] But then, in January 2020, a video leaks in the media showing Belle at an event in Melbourne wearing a headscarf speaking Oromo.

[01:07:34] Basically, that's the language of the people of Ethiopia. And in the video, she's talking about the liberation of the Oromo. She's claiming that they've adopted her into their community and that she has since become really embedded in their cause. The next day, the president of the Australian Aroma Community Association goes on TV and basically just says, stop pretending that you're part of our community because you're not.

[01:07:59] That's [01:08:00] just,

[01:08:03] Adam Cox: that, oh, she went to Ethiopia on one holiday. Yeah. And then she came back as this messiah. 

[01:08:09] Kyle Risi: And that's pretty much the end of it. Like she still hasn't paid her fines. There are a lot of people dealing with the fallout of her quackery. And. Adam, the saddest reality of this is that some people have actually lost their lives because of it.

[01:08:21] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's the thing. We haven't really touched on that too much apart from, you know, one of those families. And I just, I don't know, I just feel, Awful for them. 

[01:08:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah psychologists. They have suggested that bell might have been suffering from like munchausen's by internet Which is a variation of like munchausen's syndrome where people fabricate illnesses for like online attention others think that she could have some kind of personality disorder as a result of like severe childhood trauma.

[01:08:49] Personally, I think that she is a pathological liar, right? In the sense that she lies for no reason. Like there's no clear strategy behind why she's lying, even at the point where there's no [01:09:00] point in lying. 

[01:09:01] But I also think that this is learned behavior from her mother. Because in that book that Donnelly and Saskano eventually write, they interview Natalie at length. And at one point she tells them that she was In the witness protection program, which coincidentally is exactly what Bell was claiming, right?

[01:09:17] At one point, she says that they had to keep moving because of the mafia. She also talks about having all these serious health problems herself, like saying, like, one of them is terminal and she only has a few months to live. But then later when the journalist speaks to her again, she's like, oh, that, oh, that's no big deal. It hardly even affects my life. So sound familiar? Yeah. A little bit. 

[01:09:37] So Natalie also seems to be this pathological liar, right? Just like Belle. Toscano say that she calls them every day and she'll talk for hours and hours and hours and nothing that she says is consistent.

[01:09:48] She changes her story constantly about Belle too, like one minute she's like really nice about her and saying like, people should forgive her, like enough is enough. And then the next thing she's saying these really, really horrible, [01:10:00] horrible things. At one point. She claims that she's got six kids. So it raises the question.

[01:10:06] Does she? No, Adam. She doesn't. But it does raise the question whether or not this is learned behaviour, right? Are some of Belle's lies a result of what her mother told her? Like, did Belle's mother tell her that her brother was autistic and she just believed it? Did she grow up hearing her mother, talk about these things and then in the end this just became her reality.

[01:10:27] Is there anything you can inherit, 

[01:10:28] Adam Cox: like, biologically? Possibly, I mean mental illnesses can be handed down. That's interesting, and they haven't dug into that anymore? 

[01:10:36] Kyle Risi: Not really, 

[01:10:37] Adam Cox: What does the brother say about this? 

[01:10:38] Kyle Risi: Does he say anything about his mother? Not really, no. So it's possible that a lot of Belle's lying started as learned behavior, but at some point it just stopped being about what she was told and became who she was. 

[01:10:49] Either way, it's been quiet on the Belle Gibson front for a few years now, so we'll kind of have to wait to see if she resurfaces.

[01:10:57] Now, there is a Netflix miniseries that's [01:11:00] coming out on the 6th of February called Apple Cider Vinegar, which is like the semi True dramatization of a life which I watched a trailer and it does fucking look very good It kind of reminds me of like Ashonda Rhimes versus Ryan Murphy So it looks fucking good. 

[01:11:17] Adam Cox: And I imagine this is going to bring a whole lot more attention on her because I didn't know anything about her until today. Exactly. She's going to, you know, come out of that woodwork. 

[01:11:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah, there is a fear that she's going to potentially be holding out to see how she is portrayed in the documentary and then potentially use that for a defamation lawsuit. That's what's been speculated here but Netflix has said we are being very careful with this. We are putting all the disclaimers in there saying it's a mostly true story etc because they don't want another baby reindeer basically. 

[01:11:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:11:50] Kyle Risi: But that's the speculation. She's not allowed to have Any money from this. Because of course, any money she makes needs to go to paying off her debts. Just like Anna Delvey 

[01:11:59] Adam Cox: in that sense. [01:12:00] Yeah, it is. She might be on Dancing with the Stars in a couple of years. 

[01:12:02] Kyle Risi: She, I hope not. No, I hope not. What a nasty woman. I hope not. But the thing is though, I can get behind Anna Delvey. I really can. 

[01:12:09] Adam Cox: Yeah, she was trying to con 

[01:12:11] Kyle Risi: Banks. 

[01:12:12] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:12:12] Kyle Risi: Not innocent cancer patients. Yeah, 

[01:12:14] Adam Cox: exactly. And claiming 

[01:12:16] Kyle Risi: that she had cancer herself. That's, that's dark. 

[01:12:18] Adam Cox: No, she needs to, I hope, She doesn't get any more notoriety with this other than obviously the telling of the story and the education and be wary of this woman That's all that should happen. 

[01:12:27] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure If you do want to know more I will link to Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano's biography The Woman Who Fooled The World definitely watch the 60 minute interview with Tara Brown and I'd love to know what you guys think.

[01:12:37] Like, do you think that they were milking her for ratings and stuff? Do you think they did a responsible job? Because, honestly, it looked like to me that they were taking advantage of her. And Tara Brown is supposed to be, like, one of the best TV journalists. In Australia. And to me, I wasn't impressed by it.

[01:12:54] Adam Cox: Well maybe, maybe she knew she was just, whatever she asked her, she was never gonna get any truth. It's true. 

[01:12:59] Kyle Risi: I'd love to know what you guys [01:13:00] think. And so Adam, that is the story of Belle Gibson, the woman who never had cancer. 

[01:13:06] Adam Cox: That was, do you know what, I've kind of forgotten even the first half of it.

[01:13:12] Kyle Risi: What have you learned, Adam? 

[01:13:13] Adam Cox: I've just, yeah, what a rug pull. 

[01:13:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah, what a rug pull. Crazy. Should we run the outro for this week? Sure. And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray in the compendium and assembly of fascinating things. We hope you've enjoyed the ride as much as we have. 

[01:13:31] Adam Cox: Yes, and if today's episode sparks your curiosity, do us a favour and follow us on your favourite podcast app.

[01:13:37] It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover this show. 

[01:13:41] Kyle Risi: And for our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon and it is completely free to access. 

[01:13:49] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, join our Certified Freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:13:58] Kyle Risi: We drop new [01:14:00] episodes every Tuesday and until then remember, even a wellness empire built on lies can only detox for so long before the truth flushes out. Like, like a ringworm or a coffee enema. 

[01:14:12] We'll see you next time. 

[01:14:13] See ya.