TRANSCRIPT Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Ep. 386: Ross and Carrie Revisit Orion: Deborah King Edition

[00:00:00] Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

[00:00:8] Ross Blocher: Hello, and welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we do not just report on fringe science, spirituality, claims of the paranormal. No, no, no, we take part ourselves.

[00:00:17] Carrie Poppy: Yes. When they make the claims, we show up, so you don’t have to. I’m Carrie Poppy.

[00:00:20] Ross Blocher: I’m Ross Blocher, and we’ve got some fun stuff in store today, but I think we should all just be happy to be alive right now.

[00:00:28] Carrie Poppy: Boy, you said it.

[00:00:29] Ross Blocher: To be on this planet. Because there were predictions that the rapture was supposed to happen these past days.

[00:00:36] Carrie Poppy: I can’t believe I missed this. Actually, I can. My dog was in the ER. Yeah, but I’ll tell you about that.

[00:00:40] Ross Blocher: Oh! Okay. That’s right; that’s coming up. So, this is 2023, and both September 22nd and 23rd were getting passed around. But these predictions were very much related to the 2017 episode we did with Forerunner Ministries that was—

[00:00:57] Carrie Poppy: Oh my god, was that six years ago?! Holy Moley.

[00:00:58] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and it was the same time of the year as well.

[00:01:03] Carrie Poppy: It seems like it’s often the end of the year and it’s often the 21st, so I’m interested that this was a 22/23.

[00:01:09] Ross Blocher: Because it was tied to these celestial events of the birth of the man child, you know, like the positioning of the sun and Virgo and all of these really complicated extractions from the biblical narrative. People who are working really hard to like get all the numbers straight so that Jesus could come back. So, as far as we can tell here on the 24th, that did not happen.

[00:01:32] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, we’re here! Well, maybe it did. How many Christians do you know?

[00:01:36] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Well, my very religious sister was texting me yesterday, so.

[00:01:40] Carrie Poppy: From…? Heaven?

(They laugh.)

[00:01:43] Ross Blocher: From Earth.

[00:01:44] Carrie Poppy: Okay, did you aaask?

[00:01:45] Ross Blocher: I don’t know if they have cell coverage in heaven.

(They laugh.)

[00:01:50] Carrie Poppy: “Hey, are you in—are you in heaven?” (Laughs.) Ross is looking for his phone, deciding whether to do it.

[00:01:54] Ross Blocher: Yeah. I had this moment of like wanting to text to say, “Hey, you still around?”

[00:02:01] Carrie Poppy: I need to verify that.

[00:02:03] Ross Blocher: And then realizing that was ridiculous. Well, I will report back mortified next week if I was wrong on this, and truly all my religious family did get taken in the rapture.

[00:02:13] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, great. Well, I have news too. Two pieces of stone news.

[00:02:19] Ross Blocher: Okay! Yeah, we’ve been waiting on at least one of these pieces of stone.

[00:02:24] Carrie Poppy: So, let me tell you about the new one. My dog, Ella. Almost 17 years old, middle of the night, starts yelping. I go, and I get her. Her belly is completely distended. She doesn’t want me to touch it. Drew runs in. We both don’t know what’s up. I take her to the vet, and the vet discovers that Ella has eaten a rock that’s about the size of a quarter.

[00:02:47] Ross Blocher: A rock of unusual size! Yeah, you showed me the picture. And the size of a quarter and thicker.

[00:02:52] Carrie Poppy: Yes, exactly. It looks like a guitar pick, but thick. And it had—

[00:02:56] Ross Blocher: There you go. It’s a guitar thick.

[00:02:58] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) It had blocked her belly, like right where the stomach meets the large intestine. It had blocked off that passageway.

[00:03:06] Ross Blocher: She is a tiny dog.

[00:03:08] Carrie Poppy: She’s—right now she’s like eight pounds.

[00:03:08] Ross Blocher: That is really bad.

[00:03:10] Carrie Poppy: It was really bad. And it’s amazing she didn’t choke on this thing. But anyway, the doctor was like, “When this happens, often the foreign object has been there for months. If it got all the way past the throat and didn’t choke the animal, it kind of sits there until it blocks something important.” So, they’re like, “She might have had this for months.” So, now I’m going back through our pet psychics! And I’m like, “Someone could have told me! That she had a freaking rock in her stomach!”

(Ross agrees.)

If she did. We don’t really know when she ate a fucking stone.

[00:03:42] Ross Blocher: What you doing Ella? Don’t eat rocks.

[00:03:43] Carrie Poppy: Ella. So, Ella if you’re listening to this, please don’t eat rocks!

(Ross chuckles.)

Actually, all the dogs. All the dogs listening in all the cars, don’t eat rocks! What are you doing?

[00:03:53] Ross Blocher: There’s no nutrition there.

[00:03:55] Carrie Poppy: Exactly! So, anyway. She’s okay, though.

[00:03:56] Ross Blocher: Some animals use like tiny pebbles in their bodies to help them with digestion.

[00:04:02] Carrie Poppy: Oh, is that true? That makes sense. Birds, probably?

[00:04:03] Ross Blocher: Not you dogs! Don’t do it. Mm-hm. That’s wild. I was saying it reminded me of a horror story we had when Andrew was little, our son. And he had swallowed—well, we didn’t know what was going on. All we knew is that he was crying. He was really upset, and he had this green chunk of something like at the top of his—the roof of his mouth. And we were like trying to like pick at it, and we’re like—

[00:04:28] Carrie Poppy: How old was he?

[00:04:29] Ross Blocher: Was he even a—? Maybe a toddler. But yeah, like we couldn’t like dislodge it. And it kind of looked like sort of a clean shape, but we thought like is this some infection, or what is it? So, we don’t want to touch it too much. We take him into the hospital. Turns out it was the grate from a faucet—like, the little, tiny metal filter.

[00:04:46] Carrie Poppy: Oh, that like almost cheesecloth metal.

[00:04:49] Ross Blocher: Exactly. That’s a very good description. To keep larger chunks from coming out. And we still have no idea how it came out of the sink or how he got it in his mouth, but we were so glad that it didn’t get farther.

[00:05:00] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, we were like—

[00:05:01] Ross Blocher: Oh my goodness, that would have been unthinkable.

[00:05:02] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Well, yeah, we were like, “How did she not choke on this?” Even if that was in her belly disrupting her health for eight months, that’s better than what was more likely, which was her choking on it.

[00:05:13] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Well, I’m sure many listeners are very happy to hear that Ella’s doing okay.

[00:05:16] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, she’s doing good. She’s home. She’s doing better. And I have other rock news.

[00:05:21] Ross Blocher: Yeah, any other obstructions in people you love with rocks?

[00:05:25] Carrie Poppy: Yes, let me get our special guest. Oh, Dreeeew!

(Drew calls “heeey” off mic.”

Okay, Drew’s gonna share my microphone.

[00:05:32] Drew Spears: What’s good?

[00:05:33] Ross Blocher: Let’s hear more about this kidney stone situation!

[00:05:35] Drew Spears: I passed the kidney stone this Thursday.

(Ross and Carrie cheer and clap.)

I have the plastic bag I put it in for inspection.

[00:05:46] Ross Blocher: Oh, this has been a long road.

[00:05:48] Drew Spears: It really has been.

[00:05:49] Carrie Poppy: (Off mic.) Look how tiny!

[00:05:50] Ross Blocher: Oh my goodness!

[00:05:51] Drew Spears: Yeah, much smaller than Ella’s stone, I must say.

(Carrie laughs.)

But yeah.

[00:05:54] Ross Blocher: Thank goodness! But big and jagged. I don’t know, it looks like—

[00:06:00] Drew Spears: It’s very jagged. I think a stone really to me implies like a smoothness, and this is anything but.

[00:06:05] Ross Blocher: I’m trying to think what state it looks like. It’s like part of Michigan. What was it, four millimeters?

[00:06:11] Drew Spears: So, I don’t know what size it was when I passed it. Originally, it was six millimeters. I don’t think we talked about this on mic, but you and I and your family, you graciously took me to Disneyland, so we could try to do it on the big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

[00:06:28] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and you went on it three times.

[00:06:30] Drew Spears: I went on it three times. I went on Matterhorn, which I also felt like very jumbly, one time.

[00:06:33] Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah. If you want to get shook up, Matterhorn’s the way to go.

[00:06:37] Drew Spears: That’s wild. It feels wild being on that.

[00:06:39] Ross Blocher: Like, this can’t be according to code!

[00:06:41] Drew Spears: Yeah, I spent—yeah, most of that day just like going on those rides. And I did feel some movement. And ultimately then, like a week later, I had my next CAT scan. And they said, “Okay, it’s now 4.5mm,” but it had made it halfway down my ureter. But they were like, “We would probably think that at this point, it’s been a month. We should probably talk about surgery.” And I—because I just did one surgery, and also I wasn’t feeling pain at this point, said, “Let’s kick it down the road.”

And then, maybe two and a half weeks later, I started having the classic “worst pain of your life” that people love to talk about for kidney pain. I was like, “Let’s go to the ER.” So, they’re doing triage, and I’m not in life threatening danger. But it took me, you know, around probably seven hours or so to get in.

(Ross “oof”s.)

And during that time, I barfed all over myself.

(Ross “oh no”s.)

They gave me—they said, “Well, you know, we’re scheduling these surgeries pretty far in advance, so it’s not gonna happen, you know, in the next couple of days. We’ll call you.” And they gave me painkillers and stuff like that. I went home, and then the pain subsided again. And then, for a couple of days, I had not pain but kind of a localized sensation in my bladder where I was like, “Maybe it’s in the bladder.” And then, it’s very weird, because it’s just like I kind of intuited right before I went to the restroom. I was like, “Ugh, this feels a little different.” And passing it itself, I would say, does not feel any more painful than if you have been bad at drinking water and chose to drink a bunch of coffee. If you’ve ever had that experience while urinating.

And then I plucked it out of the urinal with a paper towel, and I am now waiting for it to be analyzed and to hear what life changes I need to make to prevent myself from doing more kidney stones. It’s very—oh, also, this happened the same day that Ella had her stone out.

(Ross laughs.)

Like, so we both on the same day had stones taken out of our body, whether through force or through a different kind of force. So, Ross, thank you for being here on this journey. So, it’s—yeah, I think the theory about the roller coasters—I think—

[00:08:50] Ross Blocher: Right, that’s the question.

[00:08:51] Drew Spears: I think maybe if it was smaller it would have successfully completely flushed it. But I mean it did get smaller.

[00:08:57] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I think it still broke it down.

[00:08:58] Ross Blocher: You feel like it helped—moved it along.

[00:09:00] Drew Spears: I definitely think so. And so, I have—

[00:09:03] Carrie Poppy: You also said your pee was darker after the roller coaster.

(Drew confirms.)

[00:09:06] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and you’d notice like a grittiness.

[00:09:08] Drew Spears: At Disney, it was like a little bit more—and it kind of resembled both my urine when I first got the kidney stone and then my urine when I was in the ER, which was like nearly red. Like, there was a lot of blood in my urine. I’m trying to think of like the most accurate way to say it, but—not blood in the way that you would imagine. I don’t want to be gross, but what you’re imagining not—

[00:09:27] Carrie Poppy: Darker.

[00:09:28] Drew Spears: It’s just like—yeah, darker pee. But which was the result of urine, not actually like urinating blood like a horror movie. I would definitely say the stone was 1.5mm smaller, but it is also like, “Oh, so how many more times would I have had—?” It would have been completely unfeasible for us to try to. But Ross, why is Matterhorn so painful?

[00:09:50] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah, well, it was built in the late ’50s and it hasn’t been significantly updated. Yeah, they probably need to do a recalibration on the track there.

[00:10:01] Drew Spears: It’s wild.

[00:10:04] Ross Blocher: It’s a rickety ride.

[00:10:05] Drew Spears: Yeah, it really is. Good for them for keeping at it.

[00:10:07] Carrie Poppy: Thank you, sweetie!

(Drew thanks them back, and Ross congratulates him.)

That was exciting! I was watching you guys from the side, and it was just like two guys having a podcast.

[00:10:14] Ross Blocher: Yeah! That never happens.

[00:10:16] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, (laughs) no one’s ever seen it before! So, here is Ella’s stone. I’m handing it to you.

[00:10:21] Ross Blocher: Oh, Carrie is holding it with her bare hands. Now I’m holding it with my bare hands. This was in Ella’s stomach.

[00:10:26] Carrie Poppy: They had to do two endoscopies to get that out.

[00:10:27] Ross Blocher: Boy, oh! Yeah, Ella, don’t do that again. Do you think it was from your backyard?

[00:10:32] Carrie Poppy: So, my theory is that it’s from a potted plant, but Drew went through all our potted plants and couldn’t find a stone like this, and all our potted plants are from the same place.

[00:10:39] Ross Blocher: (Chuckling.) I had this mental image of you just like putting it back in that potted plant.

[00:10:44] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Thank goodness we got this back!

[00:10:46] Ross Blocher: Yeah, that one needs to go where Ella can never be tempted by it again.

[00:10:50] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. The reason I think it was a potted plant is when she was slightly anemic, she had pica, and she wanted to eat soil. And so, she was rooting around in the soil of this potted plant behind me. So, that’s why I think that. Anyway, the Poppy-Spears family is currently, as far as we know, stoneless.

[00:11:11] Drew Spears: (Off mic.) That’s not true. Ella has a kidney stone.

[00:11:14] Carrie Poppy: Oh, Ella has a kidney stone. That’s right. Drew just shouted a reminder.

[00:11:15] Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s right! Everybody has kidney stones. Okay, more stones to be passed.

[00:11:20] Carrie Poppy: You’re right. Well, hopefully that one doesn’t move. That’s what we want. And Ross, you had an equally fun update?

[00:11:25] Ross Blocher: No. So, last week we reported on Sound of Freedom, the movie, and Tim Ballard, its character—the person depicted by Jim Caviezel in that film, and Operation Underground Railroad. And you know, I didn’t come away thinking like, “This is great for the world,” or anything like that.

(Carrie chuckles.)

Or like, “Geez, let’s get Tim Ballard into Congress,” or anything like—or into the Senate.

[00:11:48] Carrie Poppy: Right. I called him an asshole during the recording, and then asked you to remove it.

[00:11:51] Ross Blocher: So, we reported on that and a lot of what we’d read and, you know, kind of gave them the benefit of the doubt where we could. And a lot of people came back to us saying like, “No, no, no, no, no.”

[00:12:01] Carrie Poppy: “You’re missing something.”

[00:12:02] Ross Blocher: Yeah. “They don’t deserve that.” And also, right as we were putting that episode together, there were a bunch of new news items coming out about this. So, you know, I think it’s worth going back into this for a bit, just to tell some additional stories. And a lot of this is not on the beat of this podcast, but there’s an extra element that definitely is that I didn’t even bring up last time, ‘cause I only kind of understood the situation involving a psychic. But now I know that a lot better.

[00:12:26] Carrie Poppy: Oooh! I heard something about this. Yeah, maybe this week. Yeah.

[00:12:28] Ross Blocher: Okay. So, this week—I don’t know. I dedicated at least eight hours to like reading articles and listening to podcasts and watching all this stuff.

(Carrie thanks him.)

So, some kind of high-level notes, just about human trafficking in general, because we were commenting on how it’s really hard to get solid numbers about this and to separate terms like trafficking from terms like prostitution and what’s involving minors and what’s not. And a lot of this bleeds together. Slavery, of course, is brought into this as well. And you hear all these really big numbers. One really helpful resource that was sent by a number of listeners was a podcast called You’re Wrong About. They did an episode called “Sound of Freedom with Michael Hobbs and Human Trafficking” and it’s a double episode where Michael and Sarah Marshall, they rebroadcast an earlier show that they did about human trafficking and kind of combine them for a double feature.

And so, I would recommend that just for like a more thorough kind of breakdown on numbers around all of this. We mentioned a lot of the obfuscation factors like redefining what slavery means, like when talking about whether human slavery right now is greater than it ever was in all of the—so, to add to that also, of course, just the population has gotten larger. But for a lot of other reasons, that statistic is BS. So, just to run through some of like the big factors: trafficking was expanded in 2012—the definition—by the Obama administration in an executive order. Here’s the text of it.

So, the first part sounds pretty straightforward. “To include sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.” So, all of that. Okay. Sounds like trafficking. “Or the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.”

[00:14:28] Carrie Poppy: Okay, so involved in the operation.

[00:14:29] Ross Blocher: Anyone who’s in bonded labor situations. So, that trafficking can include, you know, things that are not sex.

(Carrie confirms.)

Things that are labor. Things where like you felt you were hired for one reason and then like the terms changed.

[00:14:41] Carrie Poppy: Right, this reminds me of that Ohio report I pulled up where most of the trafficking—the confirmed trafficking cases were that, were labor trafficking. Non-sex labor trafficking.

[00:14:50] Ross Blocher: And I think when it helps people making a big claim about these moral panics around child sexual trafficking and slavery, they’ll take those bigger numbers and kind of present them and use clever wording or outright obfuscation.

(Carrie agrees.)

Another really big role in all of this is just poverty. Like, a lot of this problem is because people don’t have enough money. So, that’s why they do things they wouldn’t normally do.

[00:15:16] Carrie Poppy: That’s where that coercion part might come into play.

[00:15:19] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And I think a lot more could be done just focusing on the poverty side of the issue.

(Carrie agrees.)

Another big factor, a lot of this is just people who’ve run away from home, and a lot of times that’s because they’re LGBTQ youth.

[00:15:33] Carrie Poppy: They’re queer, yeah.

[00:15:34] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and so they’re the ones who end up—you know, because they’ve been rejected from their households, they end up going to like sleep on whatever couch they can get. And “You’re asking me to do this? Okay.” And then, that gets added to the numbers. But I think another one of the major points was just that sometimes people do want to do sex work, and it’s consensual, and it seems like a lot of these organizations are operating out of an assumption that paid sex can never be a consensual thing.

[00:15:56] Carrie Poppy: Right. That’s why I was zeroing in on that thing about age, is like that’s where you can be sure, right? If someone is under 18, you can be more confident that like, we would—most of us would agree that’s a problem.

[00:16:07] Ross Blocher: We as society have drawn the line there. So, that one’s figured out. So, everybody gets seen as like a victim in that understanding of the world. Another big part of all of this, including the whole trafficking conversation, is what resources do you put into helping people after these busts and after, you know, you “free” them, quote/unquote?

So, that’s been like another big issue. Operation Underground Railroad will try to say like, “Oh yeah, no, we partner with these great places and stuff.” But then there’s plenty of examples of unaccredited groups or, you know, people just who aren’t set up to do this properly are doing the recovery work. So, you know, just a lot of perpetuating of bad situations and making them worse.

[00:16:47] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that all feels like stuff I would need to go check myself to understand, but yeah, sounds bad.

[00:16:51] Ross Blocher: I saw enough bad examples of that. And I can’t say how representative they are, but it’s part of the overall accounting. And, you know, a lot of people in a desperate situation get quote/unquote “rescued” from it, and now—you know, they were in that situation because that was the only place they could turn, and now they have nowhere else to turn.

[00:17:08] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, sure. In that way, it reminds me of the conversation around sweatshops, where some people feel this is inherently coercive. That’s my view. But the response to that view is, “Well, you have a bunch of people showing up to work. You know, like they see the situation. They know what the wages are. They know they’re being exploited. We agree they’re being exploited, and they show up. What do we do with that?”

[00:17:25] Ross Blocher: It’s a bum deal. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:28] Carrie Poppy: And my response is the company usually has the means to just give them more money. (Laughs.) But it’s a real question. It’s not like something we can just sidestep and act like, oh, that’s not even a real concern. It’s like when we play these things out, they always do have these mitigating questions we need to deal with.

[00:17:45] Ross Blocher: Indeed, yeah. So, like, if you really care about these people, you should care more about wage increases in general, labor unions, stuff like that. Anyway, it’s a complex problem. And there was one number in the 2018 report from the United Nations Office on drugs and crime. And they said they’d been gathering data on person trafficking since 2003. And at the time, they said the peak year was 2016, in which they were able to detect 24,000 victims, which is—in the world, yeah. Which is so much smaller than any of these numbers that we were tossing out before. So, I think the more I learned about this, the smaller the problem kept getting. Because I—you know, I think we’re trying to allow for the fact that, yes—

[00:18:26] Carrie Poppy: The population of the problem, not the scope of the horror.

[00:18:29] Ross Blocher: Right. Right. Absolutely awful at any number. And I think we wanted to leave room for that, you know, for people who are really in situations where minors are being trafficked. But it turns out like the whole idea of people being nabbed from the airport, not a real noticeable problem. There’s not like cases you can point to. Nobody’s putting kids in shipping containers as is depicted in the film.

It was a really good point in that podcast. They were talking about how, you know, that’s just inefficient. You know, if you’re trying to seek cheap labor for this abuse, why do this and like ship kids around the world? That’s not efficient. There’s plenty of people, even in the United States, that you could pick on. Anyways, these narratives, the big goal is to create a bunch of disgust and fear in voters, specifically to kind of champion right wing causes. Uh, I think that really is the narrative. And they’ve lost some of their appeals to moderates, like you know, talking about—they’re still trying to do like the whole trans thing. You know, like make that a lightning rod issue.

But yeah, it seems like everyone can universally hear “sexual slavery is bad” and be like, well, yeah! I agree! That does sound really bad. And because of this fear, you have people doing things like calling the cops at airports when they see mixed race families and shitty stuff like that.

[00:19:41] Carrie Poppy: WOAH! Woah. Okay, wait. People are calling the cops, because they see a mixed-race family and then assuming that it’s child trafficking? Lord.

[00:19:46] Ross Blocher: They suspect—well, see something, say something. You know, maybe that little girl doesn’t belong with that man.

[00:19:52] Carrie Poppy: Okay, yeah, and then—and those people say, “Oh, I heard about this from—”?

[00:19:57] Ross Blocher: There’s posters at the airport warning them. “Here’s a phone number to call.”

[00:20:03] Carrie Poppy: Oh, I see! I don’t think I knew about these posters. Okay. Oh, I see. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That’s absurd.

[00:20:09] Ross Blocher: So, tying into Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad, we mentioned—in the last episode, we were talking about this guy who was listed in the credits, who had given money to the film. And he was accused of child trafficking. We were saying, you know, we didn’t know what the outcome of that had been. But learning more about that story, his name was Fabian Marta.

[00:20:29] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I remember hearing about this guy. Yeah.

[00:20:31] Ross Blocher: So, as soon as you hear he was accused of child trafficking and like Mira Sorvino denounced him on social media and everything. So, once you learn more about the case, he knew a family—and I’m not sure if he was like helping out the father or the mother, but there was a custody dispute over the children. And he had the children, I guess, staying at his place. And he barred entry to the police when they were trying to come and get the kids. And so, you know, he gets accused of child trafficking. Which is, I think, such a good example of how these other factors can just get kind of flattened into this narrative where you might on first blush just sort of picture him going down to Chile and trying to buy children.

[00:21:11] Carrie Poppy: Listen, yeah, that kind of scenario is so common that Kaiser has a code color for it happening. They get on the microphone, and they say “code purple” when a child has been abducted. Because it’s so common, especially in an emergency room kind of scenario, for one parent to show up—whether rightfully or wrongfully, it kind of doesn’t matter. But the other person says, “That parent doesn’t have the right to exert the authority they’re asserting. They shouldn’t be taking the kid. I’m the parent with custody,” or whatever.

The staff has to just be like, “We take your word for it!” Right? They have to act. So, yeah, like this code purple went up while we were at the emergency room, and I went and looked it up, and I was like, oh, wow!

[00:21:55] Ross Blocher: Okay. Wild. And you know, schools—they have to have a list of approved people who can pick up the child. And I know this from working in a summer camp too. So, yeah. Okay. But let’s talk about some of these more recent stories that kind of came out very conveniently around the release of our podcast.

[00:22:06] Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Couldn’t have known about this. Yeah.

[00:22:11] Ross Blocher: So, right around that same time, the Mormon Church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—

[00:22:17] Carrie Poppy: Heard of it.

[00:22:18] Ross Blocher: —put out a sort of a denouncement separating themselves from Tim Ballard, saying, “Hey, we found him to be dishonest in expressing his connection to Elder Ballard.”

[00:22:29] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, this is crazy! They’re not related?!

(Ross confirms.)

I’ve read about this. That’s so nuts! I’ve never heard that name before. It’s like someone being like, “I’m from FLDS. My last name is Jeffs. No relation.” (Laughing.)

I would just be like, “Well, you’re wrong. I bet you are related.”

[00:22:45] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) I mean, certainly I’ve heard the last name Ballard. I know some Ballards.

[00:22:49] Carrie Poppy: Oh, you do?

(Ross confirms.)

Okay, I don’t know any Ballards. This is my first Ballard.

[00:22:50] Ross Blocher: Yeah, but M. Russell Ballard, he’s acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Imagine putting that on your business card.

[00:23:02] Carrie Poppy: Guy who talks directly to Jesus, right?

[00:23:02] Ross Blocher: Well, no, he’s—

[00:23:05] Carrie Poppy: They don’t do that?

[00:23:06] Ross Blocher: He’s one level like below that.

[00:23:08] Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, I guess only the Prophet directly talks to Jesus.

[00:23:10] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and I don’t know if they officially use the term Chief Seer Prophet Revelator anymore, but that’s technically the President, which is Russell M. Nelson. That’s the—

[00:23:23] Carrie Poppy: A different Russell and initial, last name.

(They laugh.)

[00:23:27] Ross Blocher: Too many Russells, too many Ballards. Let me submit those notes. Okay, so. In the statement that they released, all they said is like, “We feel he acted immorally, and he was improperly using the name of M. Russell Ballard, no relation.”

[00:23:42] Carrie Poppy: Pretending to have some intimate connection that doesn’t exist.

[00:23:45] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and like using it for personal gain. And that really was like kind of the extent of the statement at the time. I was like, okay, what’s this all about? Just like he was saying he was too buddy-buddy with this guy? M. Russell Ballard, by the way, is 94 years old. So pretty good if you can still make headlines at 94.

[00:24:02] Carrie Poppy: 94! Wow. Yeah. That’s almost as old as Dick Van Dyke.

[00:24:05] Ross Blocher: Yeah. So, yeah, I don’t think their relationship is as interesting as the Mormon church thinks it is. ‘Cause they’re just trying to, I think, protect sort of the sanctity of this—the higher echelon, but reading more since then, it does seem there were a lot of connections with them. They would have meals together. The younger Ballard would get the older Ballard sort of involved in like some of these enterprises. And so, now older Ballard just wants nothing to do with this. But then what came out right after we released our episode and kind of gave more substance to this statement from the church after we released the last episode was that there were sexual misconduct charges from within Operation Underground Railroad. And seven employees who worked for that organization and the suspicion of additional people who were either contractors or volunteers—you know, who didn’t work for it—saying that Tim Ballard was doing things like asking women to play his wife. And “If you really want to commit to the role, you should take a shower with me.” In one case, sending an image of himself in his underwear with fake tattoos.

[00:25:09] Carrie Poppy: Fake tattoos? Okay, weird.

[00:25:11] Ross Blocher:  Yeah. I don’t know what they were of.

[00:25:13] Carrie Poppy: At least in the ink spilled that I read, the picture I got was he would get these volunteers and be like, “Hey, do you really believe in this? When we go overseas, for whatever reason, I need to look like I have a wife, so can you play the wife? Okay, let’s make that role believable. That would include—” And then, he really goes to town. “That would include—no wife doesn’t shower with her husband. No wife doesn’t—” You know. And yeah, and sort of making it like, “If you really want this role, you need to play the part or whatever.” Obviously, like a wild overshoot. Even if you want them to play your wife, it’s an absurd request.

[00:25:51] Ross Blocher: Yeah, so after that came out, it kind of made more clear the LDS statement, which Ballard is now like releasing all of these videos about how upset he is. That his church has cast him asunder, you know, maybe a salvation is involved in all this. But also, then it made clearer him being removed from Operation Underground Railroad back in June. So, they had looked into these allegations, and I think now we know kind of like what was helping guide their decision in that. But we didn’t realize at the time he had also left the Nazarene Fund—the Glenn Beck backed one. And my goodness, there’s so many organizations involved in this. Everybody—every person involved has like started three different organizations, and they all have different names with similar sounds. And it’s insane. Like, I stopped writing them down after a while. ‘Cause it’s just like there’s this soup of dozens of these like anti child trafficking and sexual exploitation organizations.

Anyways, so it turns out the Nazarene Fund actually originally was an LLC subsidiary of OUR, and then Tim Ballard was CEO there. Now he’s out there, and now he’s joined this other group called the Spear Fund, but he claims not to be an employee—though other reporting has said he’s the head of that. Anyways, it’s so messy. But this is where I learned about Lynn Packer, an investigative reporter who has been following this story even longer than Rolling Stone and Vice, you know, have been doing. Yeah. So, he reported on this and especially about the factuality of the timeline in the film and this backstory.

So, it turns out Glenn Beck, also a Mormon—there’s Mormons everywhere you look in this story—was involved in this waaaay earlier.

[00:27:36] Carrie Poppy: Way earlier than Tim Ballard, is that what you mean?

[00:27:37] Ross Blocher: Way earlier than we would have thought with him like being interested in the Nazarene Fund, but like pretty much all along he’s been helping drive this. So, Glenn Beck knew Tim Ballard and had him on his show as a featured guest talking about this problem.

[00:27:52] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, so Glenn Beck is like a right-wing radio host.

[00:27:53] Ross Blocher: Good point. Yeah. I just kind of assumed everybody knew who Glenn Beck was. He used to be on Fox, and then he’s kind of started his own little media empire. So, he was promoting Tim Ballard and his stories back in 2013 before Tim left the government, because he used to work for the Department of—

[00:28:09] Carrie Poppy: Homeland Security! Yeah, we saw that up on the screen a number of times.

[00:28:13] Ross Blocher: So, Tim Ballard has this whole story about how he, in the film, “I can’t pursue this case, so I have to leave Homeland Security and start my own organization.” So, he started the organization at least nine months before he quit with Homeland Security.

[00:28:26] Carrie Poppy: Oh, that’s interesting. Okay.

[00:28:28] Ross Blocher: And already at that point, he’d had conversations with Glenn Beck. He was featured on his show. And the two of them had been strategizing about a TV series about rescuing children. So, all in 2013, you have Operation Underground Railroad forming. You have them earlier in the year claiming that they already had their first raid that they were involved with. You have a different group called the Abolitionists LLC being formed to help produce these TV series. And there was eventually a series and documentary, called The Abolitionists, telling these same stories. And even in October, you had the OUR website launching, and then in December Ballard quit Homeland Security.

[00:29:08] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. I mean, that does sound kind of like what screenwriters do. You like simplify a timeline to make that clear.

[00:29:14] Ross Blocher: Also, at that time in 2013, he was telling a different version of the same story where the kids—the brother and the sister—were abducted from the United States and taken to Mexico. And then, later he told the story of them being taken from Mexico and being moved into the United States when he was trying to argue for the border wall. And then, he placed it like in San Bernardino.

[00:29:38] Carrie Poppy: This guy has got to hire a PR person! This guy is bad at it!

[00:29:43] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And now the story involves the kids being taken from Honduras. And then, you know, the girl being taken into the jungle, which didn’t happen. And then, the boy being moved to the US, you know, where he was intercepted.

[00:29:54] Carrie Poppy: And did anyone—? Maybe you’re about to tell me this. Did anyone figure out whether these kids exist and what their story is?

[00:29:59] Ross Blocher: So, he still insists that they exist but not together. That these are two separate stories that got melded. In the movie, he rescues the boy pretty quickly, easily, and then it’s like, okay, we need to go on this extreme mission to rescue the girl. So, the girl doesn’t exist in this scenario at all. Instead, the one that got away that he’s never been able to get back is a boy named Mardy Gardy, who was a two-year-old boy living in Haiti or like a town on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And you know, Tim’s, you know, put together a mission to go out there and find this boy and keeps saying like, “Well, we’re still going to find him. We’re still going to find him.”

Never has. And that’s supposed to be like the basis of the story about the girl. ‘Cause he did pretend to be a doctor at one point on that mission, but okay. Here’s where the other element of the story more related to our podcast and our usual beat comes into play. So, on that mission, on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he brought along a psychic.

[00:30:55] Carrie Poppy: Like you do.

[00:30:56] Ross Blocher: And when I first heard this story, like oh, okay. They used a psychic. Yeah. Dumb. They don’t work for this kind of like locating children thing. Not a good idea. But there was more to that story as well. So, Janet Russon is the name of the psychic, but she wasn’t your normal run of the mill psychic. She is far more involved in this organization. She’s another Mormon.

[00:31:19] Carrie Poppy: Oh! A Mormon psychic! Let’s bring her on the show.

[00:31:20] Ross Blocher: Right?! Yeah. And she was claiming like in a video that they were taking during this mission, “There’s no way you could have found him without me,” but they haven’t found him yet and they didn’t. (Chuckles.) So, not only can she claim to intuit where children are, but she could also communicate with the prophet Nephi!

(Carrie “oh no”s.)

She was apparently being paid a monthly consulting fee of $5,000, with an hourly operational readings contract of $1,560 by OUR.

[00:31:51] Carrie Poppy: Wow! They’re paying her for her readings. So, at least $60,000 a year, and then more depending on how many readings she gives. Got it.

[00:31:57] Ross Blocher: Right. She was listed as director of strategic alliance at OUR.

[00:32:02] Carrie Poppy: What’s her name again?

[00:32:04] Ross Blocher: Janet Russon.

[00:32:05] Carrie Poppy: So close to Russell.

[00:32:06] Ross Blocher: That’s true. Good point. She has nine children, seven adopted. So, the psychic’s story was pretty interesting. And then, she ended up being the head of another one of these related organizations. Again, like I said, like every article I’d read, there’d be the mention of like three or four new organizations I’d never heard of. Like, what is going on? Uh, yeah. Lots of money going around. Since we’re talking about that, Tim Ballard in 2022 got over half a million dollars from OUR. That’s a lot.

(Carrie agrees.)

That’s a lot of money. Going back the year before, $335,500. So, you know, a lot of money. There was also leaked like a whiteboard of him sort of planning how they would market this  and like his website. And so, next to his website it was written like $2.5 million and $50-$100,000 speaker fees. So, you know, this is being monetized in many different ways through the TV series and the movie and all of this. Also, in that 2019 planning whiteboard, it was written, “Take the sizzle of the rescue, lead them to the covenant.” It’s like the stated objective like, “Okay, we get people interested with this story, and then we get them to, you know, find Jesus of the LDS church.”

[00:33:16] Carrie Poppy: Or probably be baptized in the Mormon church is how I hear that.

[00:33:18] Ross Blocher: Sure. Same result.

[00:33:19] Carrie Poppy: Uh, no, it’s not the same result. One sends you to the celestial kingdom and one doesn’t.

(Ross laughs and agrees.)

Thank you! I’m a Mormon as of 2011.

[00:33:26] Ross Blocher: Oh my goodness. So much more. There was also another brand-new story that came out about Paul Hutchinson, involved with these other organizations but also involved with OUR. And an executive producer for Sound of Freedom and someone else who would go out with Tim Ballard on these missions. And it was revealed that he had touched the bare breasts of a 16-year-old during one of the missions. And at first I was like, “Okay, well, what do we know about this?” There’s a lot of different ways that could have taken place. This was in 2016 in Cabo, SanLucas.

[00:33:57] Carrie Poppy: Like, the theoretical accident or something?

[00:33:59] Ross Blocher: Yeah, like there are more and less damning versions of that. And when I read the details, it was the more damning version of it, where later on they’re joking about it. He could have not touched the young woman’s breasts. You’re covering your chest as I’m telling you this.

[00:34:13] Carrie Poppy: He didn’t just like—(laughing) oh, you’re right. I was covering up my boobs. Yeah, so he didn’t just like fall off a step.

[00:34:17] Ross Blocher: It wasn’t—right, right. And like brush up against or something like that. And you know, he swears, “I was assured she was over 18.” And like, well, does that matter? Yeah, it was caught on video. And there was like subsequent conversation of him trying to like cover this up. And they’re like, “Can we get rid of this video? You think this is going to be a problem for me?” And really inappropriate conversation happening between the people involved. Not Tim Ballard, but again, it just kind of points to a lot of the problems with overall their stories.

Back in 2020, Vice said, “What we found aren’t outright falsehoods, but a pattern of image burnishing and mythology building, a series of exaggerations that are in the aggregate quite misleading.”

(Carrie agrees.)

But I think since then, I think more has come to light about like them kind of at every step—the narrative coming from them about their missions and what they do, and every time you kind of press on it or you get an independent voice about it, you learned that they did less. Maybe they only gave a little bit of money. Maybe like Lilianna, that victim we were talking about earlier—I learned that not only did she rescue herself, but she didn’t talk to them until like over a year later, when it—

[00:35:22] Carrie Poppy: Right. I looked at that story pretty deeply. I felt like, yeah—I mean, she—they put it too simply, I suppose, but like she was even like, “Yeah, these people helped me. At one point, Tim Ballard was one of my best friends. Like, you know, these people were really there for me.” So, I don’t know. I can’t—looking at that kind of story, I can’t fault the nonprofit that’s like, “We helped this girl.” And then, people read that as like, “We took her out of her home in such and such a place!” Yeah, I’m just like eh.

[00:35:50] Ross Blocher: It’s really tough then to know where to say like, “Okay, well you’re out there doing something. And like, okay, you used a psychic, and it was dumb and embarrassing, but you know, you wanted to find the child.” You know?

[00:35:59] Carrie Poppy: You were in a faith that like believes in divine revelation, where people talk directly to God.

[00:36:04] Ross Blocher: Yeah, for little parts of it, you want to say like, “Okay, well, it looks like kind of your heart’s in the right place, and maybe we can point to some real situations where you helped some individuals.” But at the same time, you have these outside government organizations coming in, sending in guys who are like waving around cash and asking for younger kids that are being offered, and you mentioned like the potential problem of entrapment. But also creating demand where maybe it didn’t exist before.

(Carrie agrees.)

Lots of accusations of that. So, all of that comes together—just gives me this picture of Ballard as like telling all these amazing exploits. And then, if somebody kind of corners him, he’ll sort of admit parts of what’s wrong. But he’ll I think cleverly used language to BS his way out of a sticky situation. And right now, he’s in a really sticky situation, because all of this is sort of hitting him all at once. And don’t vote for him for Senator! ‘Cause Mitt Romney’s given up his seat. So, that’s the one he’s had his eye on.

[00:37:01] Carrie Poppy: Well, I’m for you voting however you want to vote.

[00:37:03] Ross Blocher: I’m not.

[00:37:04] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) I mean, my view walking in was already not positive of this guy. I just, you know, I think that we should be really specific with our accusations, and there were so many accusations that felt off the mark to me—felt lacking a specificity that is required for the situation.

[00:37:21] Ross Blocher: And that’s really tough reading all of this coverage—is, you know, seeing one thing like, oh, that’s bad. And then, well, I don’t know, that could be seen another way. And yeah, it’s such a soup, and none of this was fun.

(Carrie agrees.)

Neither of us were pro Tim Ballard, but I feel like none of this is to his benefit.

[00:37:37] Carrie Poppy: Sure. No, he always seems like a weirdo to me.

[00:37:39] Ross Blocher: You have to separate things like him inappropriately hitting on other women. You know, if they had been into it and it was consensual—cool, that’s between you and your wife. But if it’s repeated and unwanted, you know—well, yeah, then it’s a problem. But that’s separate from whether you’re saving children or not. And I feel like it remains to be seen how much time he spends his time being a badass versus being a jackass and all of that.

(Carrie laughs.)

So, yeah, and the psychic thing is wild. And of course, you’ve got the QAnon connection and the Mormon connection. So, there we go. I hope that was helpful! Just to give everybody some more of an update on Tim Ballard and OUR.

[00:38:14] Carrie Poppy: Well, I too have an update. It is about Deborah King. Do you remember her? (Sings a monotone note.)

[00:38:19] Ross Blocher: Oh, yes, I do! She who looks like Jamie Lee Curtis and sings in your face. (Sings a monotone note.)

[00:38:28] Carrie Poppy: There is a W in there. Thank you for reminding me. It is “mwaaah”. It’s not “maa”. It’s “mwaaaah”. That’s right!

[00:38:34] Ross Blocher: What a character. Oh, and she hasn’t let me forget about her, because I get emails from her almost daily.

[00:38:41] Carrie Poppy: That’s nuts! It’s funny, because I was re-listening to the last episode, and we talked about how you had entered some kind of a raffle. And we knew, oh, you’re just getting on her email list.

(Ross confirms.)

And oh my god, daily emails off that raffle?!

[00:38:56] Ross Blocher: Almost. Like, when she’s got an event coming up, she reminds you about it like every day for a week leading up. And then, it comes from like multiple sender lists. So, it breaks up into a couple of categories in my Outlook. Yeah, yeah, I’m still rocking Outlook.

So, like when I’m doing email cleanup, I’ll be like, “Oh shit, it’s been a month, and I’ve got 30 emails from Deborah King.” And like, I just learned recently that we have an eighth chakra floating two feet above our heads, and some of you may not have yet unlocked your ability to access it.

[00:39:24] Carrie Poppy: Sounds very Scientology. Oh, OT8 isn’t enough. We made extra levels. Oh, the seven chakras weren’t enough. Uh, oh, I already cleared seven of yours. There’s an eighth!

[00:39:37] Ross Blocher: So, if you haven’t absorbed that initial introduction from Oh No, Ross and Carrie! to Deborah King, that was, I think, part four of our original Conscious Life Expo series.

[00:39:45] Carrie Poppy: Nice memory. Yes, it was March 2020. And I do recommend going back, because there are some things that we will pick up here and some questions answered. Okay! So, who is Deborah King, and why should I believe her?

(Ross laughs and affirms.)

Deborah King is a master energy healer. She’s a number one bestseller. She is the star of a live show every Tuesday and Thursday on YouTube. She is a teacher. She is a friend, Deborah King.

(They clap and whistle.)

That’s me repeating the intro that the person at Conscious Life Expo gave her. So—

[00:40:23] Ross Blocher: She’s a friend. I like that. Meaningless, but cute.

[00:40:26] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! Totally. So, she said, “Your teacher, my teacher, our friend, Deborah King.”

(Ross “aw”s.)

Yeah. You know what? Actually, it is notable, because there’s something very friendly about Deborah King. I think that she has the gift of gab, when she’s not lying.

[00:40:40] Ross Blocher: Oh, interesting. It’s funny, there’s something about her persona with the glasses and the spiky hair and everything that doesn’t feel too inviting to me personally. But having heard her talk, I can see that. Then, my next thought was, “Thank you for being a friend.” And then, I was trying to picture her with the cast of the Golden Girls. And what a different show that would be!

[00:40:58] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) This is such a strange show.

[00:41:02] Ross Blocher: Our podcast?

(Carrie confirms.)

Or Golden Girls with Deborah King?

(They laugh.)

[00:41:07] Carrie Poppy: Both are weird. Both are not quite what you’re looking for.

[00:41:10] Ross Blocher: Well, I’ve introduced this horrible segue. I’ll just mention, if you’re online, take a look for the original song, the “Thank You For Being A Friend” by Andrew Gold, and watch the music video. It’ll be normal and fine and fun until about like a little over halfway through, and then it goes like into outer space and it like—the song totally changes. It’s wild. Okay. Sorry, I’m done.

[00:41:37] Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) Thank you for the note. (To the tune of “Thank You For Being A Friend” Thank you for giving that note.

Okay, so, Deborah King. So, you saw her at Conscious Life Expo in 2020. I saw her at Conscious Life Expo in 2023, and let’s see how much her talk has evolved, first of all. I would say not much. Yeah, so when I was going back through the audio and listening to it and then compared it to your telling of your journey in 2020, it really felt like, okay, this is kind of her standard talk. Which I’m not shading her for that, but it does seem like she talks about a few different life experiences, including some astral travel experiences, and then she does her healing that includes this odd noise, “mwaaaaah”, that she gets from the universe and helps her heal you of whatever ailment you’ve got.

And she is no bones about this. It can be cancer. It can be AIDS, whatever! You come up here, you got a problem, she’s got a sound for you, and you’re gonna be fine!

[00:42:37] Ross Blocher: I bet she can offer at least a temporary cure for loneliness.

[00:42:40] Carrie Poppy: Probably? Is that a reference?

[00:42:41] Ross Blocher: No, just her being there.

[00:42:43] Carrie Poppy: Okay, well that’s true! Every friend is a cure for loneliness. (Laughs.) Maybe that’s why they called her a friend. Oh.

So, I’m going to tell you about the talk. I’m also going to tell you periodically about two other sources I used to supplement looking at this talk. Truth Heals, which is her first book, which I’ll hand to you. It’s called Truth Heals: What You Hide Can Hurt You, and it’s from 2009. Handing that to you.

[00:43:10] Ross Blocher: Okay, and you’ve read this?

[00:43:10] Carrie Poppy: I read the whole thing.

[00:43:11] Ross Blocher: That’s a nice picture of her on the cover.

[00:43:12] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, and you mentioned it in the episode. It came up because she was talking about how she had cured her cancer, energetically.

[00:43:19] Ross Blocher: Yes. But we didn’t know at the time what kind of cancer it was.

[00:43:23] Carrie Poppy: Exactly. And you said, “Well, I’m sure it’s in Truth Heals. That book appears to be all about it.” So, I bought Truth Heals. Nowhere does she say the kind of cancer.

[00:43:32] Ross Blocher: What? But she mentions that she has cancer? Had cancer.

[00:43:35] Carrie Poppy: She’s so vague and general. She doesn’t tell us the names of her teachers. She doesn’t tell us the names of the type of her cancer.

[00:43:43] Ross Blocher: But Deborah, what you hide can hurt you! It’s the subtitle.

[00:43:47] Carrie Poppy: (Cackles.) Touche! Yeah, so that’s very notable. As I was going through this, there’s a real habit of glossing over the details.

[00:43:54] Ross Blocher: Okay. Yeah, and I always want to know how much medical attention did you get?

[00:43:58] Carrie Poppy: Totally. So, thank you to this one host, who happens to have a daytime news show at a local news outlet.

[00:44:08] Ross Blocher: (Trying to hit the tune of “Thank You For Being A Friend”.) Thank you to this one host who happens to have a daily show on a news channel. Your heart is true.

[00:44:17] Carrie Poppy: It was called The Balancing Act. And I found this video of it from nine years ago, and I wish I knew the host’s name. But it was just a local news segment about authors, local authors, and she happened to interview Deborah King. And she said, “Well, what kind of cancer?” And I was like yes! Thank you, this lady!

So, Deborah answered her. Cervical cancer. So, cervical cancer, of course, is usually caused by a virus. The HPV virus. And I went and looked up like, “Okay, are there spontaneous remissions of cervical cancer?” And indeed, there are! So, in 2017, in case reports on oncology, there’s a case report of someone’s spontaneous remission of severe cervical cancer with bladder involvement. So, this does happen, but we—like you said, we also don’t know was she getting any kind of treatment? She’s very vague about that. She says she keeps checking in with her doctors as she’s doing the energy treatments. I don’t know what checking in with them means and looks like.

[00:45:18] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Checking in. Interesting.

[00:45:18] Carrie Poppy: So, we have at least two possibilities where I’m not that impressed by this story.

[00:45:25] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and why not mention that it’s cervical cancer in the book? I mean, it just adds more detail. There’s no shame in it.

[00:45:32] Carrie Poppy: No, no. Yeah, I didn’t take it as a shame thing. I suspected that it was maybe an awareness that that is one of the cancers that can remit on its own, and not really wanting to get people like you and me on our case about it.

[00:45:45] Ross Blocher: Oooh, interesting. Okay. I was flipping through the index, and I just saw it, “Gibson, Mel, 42.” So, I’m curious. Uh, okay, “The addiction, whether to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or other substances, or other behaviors, serves as a bridge between the conscious, competent self. Mel Gibson, world renowned actor and producer,” in parentheses, “And the part of us that did not get our needs met in childhood. Mel Gibson, the sixth of eleven children, whose fundamental is Catholic Father, ran his household on severely moral grounds.” Oh, never mind, this is too long. She keeps going on and mentioning him.

[00:46:18] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s really good to have an editor. It’s a good move. Not taken here, I think.

[00:46:22] Ross Blocher: I like that he got put in the index for that. Okay.

[00:46:26] Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah! That’s right! It does have an index, which I appreciate.

[00:46:29] Ross Blocher: Yeah, absolutely. Please, always. You know what? Yeah, I take it back. Definitely include that in the index. Because maybe you read this, and you want to refer later to that anecdote.

[00:46:37] Carrie Poppy: And to Mel Gibson. Yes, there’s a lot of mention of celebrities in there. Alright, let’s jump to the book for a sec since you’re holding it. So, Truth Heals, I would say the thesis of Truth Heals is that… trauma!

[00:46:50] Ross Blocher: Oh, it’s Carrie’s buzzword!

[00:46:52] Carrie Poppy: Trauma lives in the body.

(Ross “oh no”s.)

It haunts different parts of you. It creates all sorts of disease. And the way to cure it, do you want to guess? (Sing-song.) How do you heal your trauma?

[00:47:06] Ross Blocher: You access your Akashic Records and learn like what happened in past lives?

[00:47:10] Carrie Poppy: What about this life? Maybe past life, but also what if you recovered memories that you have repressed in this lifetime?

(Ross “uh oh”s twice.)

(Fighting a laugh.) And that’s how you explain your physical ailments.

[00:47:25] Ross Blocher: Well, I appreciate you not going into past lives for that answer. Uh, still, we have a science issue there.

[00:47:34] Carrie Poppy: Oh, she also goes into past lives. Past life is sort of the backup though. Where Gail Thackray first goes to your past life, and then her backup is this life, it’s flipped for Deborah. So, she’s looking at your forgotten memories from this lifetime, and if she digs and digs and digs and can’t find those, it’s a past lifetime.

[00:47:49] Ross Blocher: Okay. You weren’t kidding about the celebrity mentions. I have not changed the page, but I can see in the index references to Lindsay Lohan, Monica Lewinsky. Larry King, John F. Kennedy, Janice Joplin, Sir Elton John, Katherine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Howard Hughes.

[00:48:07] Carrie Poppy: Oh, the Rock Hudson one is so bad.

[00:48:08] Ross Blocher: Oh no. Oh Happy Days, I know that’s leading to something. Al Gore and Ava Gardner! Oh. Anyways.

[00:48:16] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, there’s a lot of retroactive psychoanalysis of people she’s never met and how their childhood explains their adulthood, which explains the way they died.

[00:48:25] Ross Blocher: And they have no idea they’re being mentioned in this book.

[00:48:27] Carrie Poppy: Oh, totally. Most of them are dead. So, Rock Hudson—so, Rock Hudson in real life died of HIV complications. And she says that that’s because he was closeted, and that energy of hiding his sexuality built up in his body and caused AIDS.

[00:48:47] Ross Blocher: Or HIV. AIDS is deadly on its own.

[00:48:50] Carrie Poppy: A virus. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. No, yeah, she—(laughs) there’s no mention of viruses. There’s—none of that is relevant to this!

[00:48:59] Ross Blocher: Oh. Yeah, that adds nothing to our understanding Rock Hudson.

[00:49:02] Carrie Poppy: No, and I mean, it’s—even though it is pro coming out, there is an unintended homophobic kind of result of that kind of thinking!

[00:49:11] Ross Blocher: Yeah, if you don’t come out—yeah, I mean, applying to that epidemic, that situation, it’s kind of implying like, “Oh, well, if you didn’t come out, that’s kind of what led to you dying.”

[00:49:21] Carrie Poppy: Oh, that’s what she’s saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, she’s directly saying that. And there’s a lot of references to queer people not coming out and how that makes them sick. That seems like an issue near and dear to her heart, is closeted queerness.

[00:49:34] Ross Blocher: So, it sounds like she cares about queer people, but there’s kind of this unintended side message.

[00:49:38] Carrie Poppy: It reminds me so much of—there’s just that version of like, “I care about this, but I haven’t thought about it a ton,” that we also get—especially speakers in this space who are very concerned about Native cultures, but they don’t have Native heritage. And they give you this very simplistic like, “How magical are the Natives?” kind of story. It’s the same vibe here for me. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so magnanimous. I love the gays!” But then also, you’re still telling the story about how their sexuality murdered them. You know?

[00:50:11] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I, flipping through the book, came across some of your notes here, and you said, “This is at least the second story where being closeted causes a fatal illness.” A little down the page, you said, “Sounds like Deborah can’t heal in those circumstances. You must come out first.” That’s, wow.

[00:50:29] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. So, yeah, she has this little workaround where if her healing fails—and there’s always got to be a workaround for that, right? In her case, it’s that there was something you weren’t admitting to yourself, and that causes a blockage.

[00:50:42] Ross Blocher: Oh, this guy had lock jaw, TMJ, and so she was saying that’s cause he wasn’t coming out. Oh my goodness. Okay. Okay,

[00:50:50] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. TMJ, I’ve got that.

[00:50:52] Ross Blocher: Oh! You do? Okay.

[00:50:54] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It hurts. I’m actually probably going to get a surgery for it. Anyway. Very common with people with migraines.

[00:51:01] Ross Blocher: Makes sense.

[00:51:02] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, okay. So, I go to this talk, and I’m thinking, “Ross got to see Deborah. I never got to see her.” And you had said it was your favorite talk in all of Conscious Life Expo.

[00:51:11] Ross Blocher: Yeah, she’s a character.

[00:51:12] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. And I see why. She does some weird shit up there! (Laughs.)

(Ross agrees.)

So, first off, we learned about sort of what her skills and powers, what we’re gonna see on display here. So, she is going to activate our highest spiritual value, whatever that might be, using energy. And she says that we have to provide the energy, but she’s gonna whip it up and make it happen for us.

[00:51:39] Ross Blocher: Ooh, get it all frothy!

[00:51:40] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. And she says she does look at the Akashic Record for people all the time. You do have to give her permission, but then she can see your record, and then she can tell you exactly what you need in that moment. And the Akashic Records, she notes, contain not just the past, not just the present, but also your future lives.

[00:51:57] Ross Blocher: Okay. I think I knew that.

[00:051:59] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, but it’s interesting because sometimes she was saying that she would—

[00:52:02] Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) I think I knew that.

(They laugh.)

[00:52:05] Carrie Poppy: It’s interesting though, because most of—I think all of her readings will have to do with the past. So, I’m kind of like where does the future figure into this? You know, if I have diabetes, what if that’s something that speaks to my future life instead of a past life? Which she never seems to really go there. She also does parallel life readings. She may sense that you have a parallel life at the same time that she’s doing the reading and tell you about that.

[00:52:32] Ross Blocher: Okay, that’s new to me, I think, is the idea that the universe has been split, and there’s another you somewhere who’s living out a different reality, and you can learn about that other Carrie and what she’s been up to.

[00:52:42] Carrie Poppy: That’s how I hear it. I don’t know if she got that specific, but yeah. Her energy healing—did you know that it takes a certain visible shape, her energy, coming out of her, to warn you?

[00:52:53] Ross Blocher: Oh! Not that I recall.

[00:52:56] Carrie Poppy: Okay, yeah, I wonder if this is new. She sends a beam of triangular light, which she got from the alien robots—more on that later—to you. And it looks like this.

[00:53:08] Ross Blocher: I love how she’s always got a ready visual.

[00:53:10] Carrie Poppy: Yes, she loves slides.

[00:53:12] Ross Blocher: So, this looks like it’s from the movie Tron. You’ve got like these kind of grids in space.

(Carrie laughs.)

It’s a triangle resting on its base, but like these purple lines are emanating out from it. Like, the edges are being repeated as they expand to fill the frame. But also, there are radial lines crisscrossing them, creating this kind of grid. So, yeah, it feels—

[00:53:30] Carrie Poppy: It’s a neon vibe, very ’80s.

[00:53:32] Ross Blocher: I want to race my light cycle down that hallway!

[00:53:34] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it reminds me—now that you say Tron, it reminds me of the People Mover at Disneyland. You would go through a room that was kind of like that.

[00:53:41] Ross Blocher: I got to ride the People Mover a couple weeks ago.

[00:53:44] Carrie Poppy: Oh nice, because it’s still at Disney World!

[00:53:45] Ross Blocher: Yeah, that was fun. And I got to ride the Tron ride.

[00:53:49] Carrie Poppy: Did you go to Carousel of Progress?

(Ross confirms.)

Was it great?

[00:53:50] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and my friends, Keith and Randy, who were with us on the trip—they’d never seen it before, didn’t even know about it! So, I was like, oh, let’s go to Carousel of Progress. (Singing.) “There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.”

[00:53:58] Carrie Poppy: That’s the best thing. (Singing.) “Beautiful tomorrow.” That’s the song that Drew and I played walking back down the aisle.

[00:54:05] Ross Blocher: Also written by The Sherman Brothers, that’s right!

[00:54:09] Carrie Poppy: Okay, so when she sends the triangle energy, she sends it as a spotlight directly to your heart. This is how she said it. “And I send a spotlight to your heart in a nutshell.”

(They chuckle.)

[00:54:21] Ross Blocher: I love kind of the—I don’t know if it’s mixing of metaphors, but mixing of visuals, because, yeah, it’s easy to package that up inside of like a big walnut.

[00:54:31] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Spotlight, heart, nutshell, three words you don’t mean literally.

[00:54:35] Ross Blocher: Yeah, is nutshell describing your encapsulation of this description, or is there a walnut involved somewhere? Or I don’t know, pistachio shell?

[00:54:46] Carrie Poppy: But she does group healing. Sometimes she can do a whole room if the energy’s high enough, but that’s gonna have to do with our consciousness! She can’t just heal the whole room if there’s someone in this room who’s blocking it, okay.

[00:54:58] Ross Blocher: Uh-oh! So, that’s on you, Carrie. Let’s not—

[00:55:00] Carrie Poppy: Probably. Get out of here!

[00:55:01] Ross Blocher: Let’s not create a problem with the energy for everybody.

[00:55:05] Carrie Poppy: You, the person already getting hung up on my nutshell, get out of here!

[00:55:09] Ross Blocher: Yeah, wow, what a thing to put out there. Like, what is the function of that? Just to say like, “If things don’t go wrong, I’ve already identified there might be a troublemaker.”

[00:55:18] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that’s what it is. Speaking of eyeballs.

[00:55:19] Ross Blocher: Yeah, shooting beams out your eyes.

[00:55:21] Carrie Poppy: I wonder if Deborah King could cure myopia.

[00:55:25] Ross Blocher: I haven’t seen it done by her, but you could wear like corrective lenses for that.

[00:55:32] Carrie Poppy: Oh, interesting! That might be a simpler way. In fact, if I were to do that, I think I would get a pair of glasses from Pair Eyewear.

[00:55:40] Ross Blocher: I’m wearing—both of us are wearing Pair Eyewear glasses right now! What a weird coincidence!

[00:55:45] Carrie Poppy: Oh, that’s true! That’s true! I’m wearing your pair of Pair.

[00:55:48] Ross Blocher: One of my pairs of Pair Eyewear. Otis.

[00:55:50] Carrie Poppy: I’m wearing the Otis with the galaxy top?

[00:55:55] Ross Blocher: The galaxy sun top. Now, see, Deborah King would approve of that, because it takes the clear pair of Otis sunglasses and adds an extra layer of protection and a beautiful blue and purple design.

[00:56:09] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, very cosmic.

[00:56:10] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah, you’re looking cool.

[00:56:12] Carrie Poppy: Thank you. Likewise.

[00:56:13] Ross Blocher: Okay, so I’m wearing the Kirby in a tortoise, but check this out, Carrie. Check it out.

[00:56:18] Carrie Poppy: Check it out. What?! You’re wearing completely different glasses now!

[00:56:23] Ross Blocher: That only took me but a mere second, because I added sun lenses on top of those. So, yeah, what I did was I got two pairs of sunglasses, because, fancy Americans, I’ve got like a backpack that I like to carry sunglasses in. And I have a car that I drive, and I have a car that my wife drives. And I want to have multiple pairs of sunglasses around, so I never forget my sunglasses.

[00:56:43] Carrie Poppy: Fancy Americans.

[00:56:44] Ross Blocher: And not only are these sunglasses that are from Pair Eyewear, but the snap-ons are also sunglasses, which means that I can then double up when it’s super bright out, and it’s actually—it’s quite nice. It’s perfect. But yeah, this is a really cool feature that you can order a pair of glasses. You can get them with your prescription.

[00:57:02] Carrie Poppy: And they—have we said it? They snap right on!

[00:57:04] Ross Blocher: You can get these snap-ons to like get all kinds of extra designs.

[00:57:08] Carrie Poppy: So, it’s like—picture you’re putting on a pair of glasses, but then on top of the pair of glasses, you snap on an extra design that just goes on the front. It’s very light, and it changes the design of your glasses without you having to change glasses.

[00:57:20] Ross Blocher: Because there are magnets inside the frame. And then, these are like perfectly cut out, so they just extend the design of your glasses. Yeah, it’s a really cool thing that sets Pair Eyewear apart.

[00:57:32] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s fun too, ‘cause like, you know, you can make it into an accessory. Whereas your glasses, you may not think of them as an accessory. But like, right now they have new designs like with Halloween. You can get ghosts, or maybe it’s the 4th of July, and you want to get red, white, and blue or whatever. A bunch of designs.

[00:57:48] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Or you just like plaid, and they’ve got that too.

[00:57:51] Carrie Poppy: And I do! I love plaid.

[00:57:53] Ross Blocher: I just noticed that in an email; they announced a new plaid design. And they offer—you can send them your prescription, and they’ll get those made for you. And I got to say, like the first thing I realized when I put on a pair of Pair Eyewear is just like how clear the lenses were, it felt like. And I didn’t get a prescription with mine, but it’s just like the world looks so clear through it. I don’t know. It’s nice. These are clean glasses! But I don’t know. There’s like almost like an intensifying effect, because I do have the polarized lenses in here. But yeah, you could get like, let’s say, prescription glasses for yourself. And you’ve got those, but then you’ve got the snap-on top, and you can turn them into sunglasses in a mere moment. Very cool.

[00:58:34] Carrie Poppy: Pretty cool. And then they also have some supernatural designs, which might interest our listeners. I think there’s kind of like a Ouija board adjacent one. Yeah. And you know, now it’s about to be fall, and they have a Halloween collection, a harvest collection.

[00:58:48] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And they announce new designs all the time. So, you can add on to any of—whatever your base frame is, just remember that. And then, you’d be like, oh, this will go on the Otis. You order that, and it’ll snap on perfectly, because it’s machine precision.

[00:59:04] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm! And there’s all kinds of designs for adults, kids, all sorts of sizes. There’s wide ones. There’s thinner ones, depending on your face shape.

[00:59:13] Ross Blocher: Some as big as your head.

[00:59:13] Carrie Poppy: (Singing.) Some as big as your head!

And you can get free standard shipping on all orders and a flexible 30-day return policy.

[00:59:20] Ross Blocher: And these glasses start at $60, so it’s not gonna break the bank. You know, glasses can get expensive. But yeah, you can get two pairs of glasses in one, too, and just keep like sort of extending on top of your solid, reliable frames by adding new designs.

[00:59:34] Carrie Poppy: So, change things up this season with new frames from Pair Eyewear.

[00:59:39] Ross Blocher: Go to PairEyewear.com/onrac, O-N-R-A-C, for 15% off your first pair!

[00:59:46] Carrie Poppy: That’s pair, P-A-I-R, Eyewear dot com, slash ONRAC.

[00:59:52] Promo:

Music: A bouncy beat.

Dave Shumka: (Rhythmically.) If you need a laugh, and you’re on the go, try S-T-O-P P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I—augh. (Sighs.) Hm.

(Music stops.)

Graham Clark: Were you trying to put the name of the podcast there?

Dave: Yeah, I’m trying to spell it, but it’s tricky.

Graham: Let me give it a try.

Dave: Okay!

(Music resumes.)

Graham: (Rhythmically.) If you need a laugh, and you’re on the go, call S-T-O-P P-A-D—ah, it’ll never fit!

Dave: No, it will! Let me try.

(Music resumes.)

(Rhythmically.) If you need a laugh, and you’re on the go, try S-T-O-P P-O-D-C-O-O. UGH! We are so close!

Graham: Stop Podcasting Yourself.

Dave: A podcast, from MaximumFun.org.

Graham: If you need a laugh, and you’re on the go.

(Music ends.)

[01:00:30] Carrie Poppy: So, she’s an energy healer. She says, “I’ve had a long career as an energy healer. Now I’m mostly a spiritual teacher teaching others.” So, this will be a through line. She’s there more to teach us to be healers than to heal us, even though healings will be involved in this talk. And I wonder—although she’s been teaching for many years now, I do wonder if that’s really amped up in the last few years, because I felt like your review was a little more about in-room healings, and my talk felt a little more about her being a teacher and trying to sell me on the idea of being her student.

[01:01:05] Ross Blocher: Oh, interesting, like to actually recruit for her classes, her increasingly expensive classes. Interesting, okay.

[01:01:12] Carrie Poppy: Exactly, yes. Yeah, because we calculated that doing all of her classes was like in the $20,000 range, I think.

[01:01:18] Ross Blocher: Yeah. See, Jesus should have done that, because, you know—what? He healed a few dozen people of leprosy and some other things, but in the big scheme of things, should have been teaching other people how to do that.

[01:01:28] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess he said like you’ll be able to do this.

[01:01:32] Ross Blocher: Yeah, but did he give instructions?

[01:01:36] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, probably not. You gotta monetize better, Jesus, if you’re listening.

[01:01:39] Ross Blocher: I just wish somewhere he had said, “Wash your hands regularly.”

[01:01:42] Carrie Poppy: That’d be good. He’s always washing feet. He got it so close!

(They laugh.)

[01:01:45] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. That’s right! We don’t eat with our feet!

[01:01:49] Carrie Poppy: (High pitched and getting higher.) Eeeeeh?

We could. We could try.

[01:01:52] Ross Blocher: I like Carrie’s counterexample engine just revving up. “I caaaan—!”

[01:01:57] Carrie Poppy: I think I could do it!

(They laugh.)

[01:02:00] Ross Blocher: (Mimicking Carrie.) “Just to make a point, I’m gonna eat my taco with my feet!”

[01:02:02] Carrie Poppy: I think I can! Okay. But don’t worry. She is very scientific. She has a left brain.

[01:02:09] Ross Blocher: Oh good. I was worried.

[01:02:11] Carrie Poppy: And she says, “You know, I’m a lawyer.”

(Ross laughs.)

Which, she is! I looked her up. Her law license is still active.

(Ross “wow”s.)

It’s been off and on, off and on, off and on quite a bit. So, she lets it expire, and then she picks it up again, lets it expire, picks it up again. But she’s a lawyer.

[01:02:33] Ross Blocher: Deborah King, esquire.

[01:02:33] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! So, she says, “I was a hard charging lawyer in my 20s.” I’ve never heard that phrase, hard charging.

[01:02:41] Ross Blocher: That paints a picture.

[01:02:42] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. And that’s when she came down with cancer. But also, around this time, she was trying to be like a trial lawyer, and she had this, she says, life stopping fear of public speaking. So, she says that her very first case—

[01:02:59] Ross Blocher: She tells you from the stage. She got over it somehow.

[01:03:01] Carrie Poppy: Right, right. It’s gotten better, yeah. She said, “I was an attorney general prosecutor, and in my very first case, I had never made an appearance in state court. I jumped right to the California Supreme Court. I was in Sacramento. I was the only woman lawyer, and this whole office comes down to watch me argue my first case. And during the opening, I totally go blank. I black out.”

(Ross “oh no”s.)

“I had to be carried out.” And she doesn’t remember a thing about this; she’s just been told. And as she’s telling us this she says, “And I didn’t remember a thing. Why was I telling you that story?”

[01:03:38] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Oh man, how harrowing though. I believe that.

[01:03:40] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, so I asked my friend Matthew, who’s a trial lawyer. I asked him about this, and he was like, “Hmm, this story sounds unlikely but possible.” He basically said, “It doesn’t have the ring of truth to me, but it’s not an impossible story.” And then, he looked up all of the California Supreme Court filings back to like 1970, and he couldn’t find her name. And he said usually the counsel is listed like every time they step up to the judge box.

[01:04:05] Ross Blocher: Oh, interesting! So, maybe some part of that got exaggerated.

[01:04:10] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Perhaps. But also, if you’re carried out during your first sentence, do they put you down on the register? I don’t know. Yeah, so I don’t know.

[01:04:19] Ross Blocher: Oh, hmm. Touche. You’ll never work in this town again! She probably didn’t get invited back after that.

[01:04:26] Carrie Poppy: Or didn’t want to. That’d be so humiliating. So, it sounds like at that point, if I’m putting things together correctly—because she’s not very good at dates—I think at that point, she—

[01:04:35] Ross Blocher: Oh, you’ve dated her!

[01:04:36] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) We were on this date, and I was like, “You got to put your life in order, dude. I cannot follow this story!”

[01:04:43] Ross Blocher: You’re not going to date.

[01:04:46] Carrie Poppy: But if I have the order of her life right, after that she became a real estate lawyer where then she was just doing like contracts and stuff and didn’t have to speak in court. At this time, she knew that her mission was vague. She knew she wanted to help people, but she didn’t really know how. This is, of course, such a through line at Conscious Life Expo. So much talk about sensing that you are supposed to help people, but not knowing your exact purpose with which to do it.

[01:05:14] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and I could see that resonating. Yeah.

[01:05:16] Carrie Poppy: Totally. Yeah. Okay, so right now in this story, she’s in her 20s. And at that point, she meets with healers, and shamans, and teachers worldwide, but she doesn’t say who. It’s very vague. She throws up pictures of—

[01:05:30] Ross Blocher: John of God, John of God.

[01:05:31] Carrie Poppy: No, I thought that too. But at one point she says her first healer—she doesn’t say the person’s name, but she refers to that first healer as “her”. So, I’m guessing not John of God. Who knows? But what she’s putting up on the screen is just images of the Pyramids at Giza, and Machu Picchu, and like nothing that will tie me to any particular school of thought or teacher. The provenance here is just totally unclear.

In that interview I mentioned that I found on Dailymotion from nine years ago, she says that she started with a, quote, “hands on healer”. Doesn’t say who, and then she goes on, “I started there, and then I would study with a shaman in a completely different field and master another technique. And years went by, until ultimately, finally, I developed my own technique, and now I’m the teacher.” So vague.

[01:06:23] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah, maybe she doesn’t want comparisons invited with that teacher. Or that teacher is no longer en vogue.

[01:06:29] Carrie Poppy: I think that’s right. Yeah, so I think there’s two options here. I think one is that, and I think that’s the more likely one, because usually there is some lineage. There’s some teaching lineage with all these people. But every once in a while you get someone who’s not, and I kind of think those people are a little more likely to have a mental illness issue and a little more likely to be so totally sincere, because they really are hearing and perceiving like receiving messages.

So, obviously, never even met Deborah King, certainly can’t diagnose her. But as this book went on, I felt more and more like, “Ooh, this is where my bet’s going, is mental illness.”

[01:07:11] Ross Blocher: And she didn’t talk about her teacher in the book either.

(Carrie confirms.)

That just makes me think it’s either someone that you see as a competitor, or someone that you’re kind of embarrassed by the association with. Or you don’t want your teachings compared with theirs. Either way, Deborah, what you hide can hurt you.

[01:07:30] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) And yeah, I guess I don’t know which one is more likely for her, but I do think most of the time in this population of faith healers, your explanation is the more common one. They just don’t want you to—they don’t want you thinking about John of God right now, they want you to think about them! This is their operation now!

[01:07:45] Ross Blocher: Right, right. That person’s still taking clients.

[01:07:48] Carrie Poppy: Right, right, exactly. I’m not gonna go and be a testimonial for them. So, at some point in the story, she had her Reiki symbols removed. So, she had had Reiki. She had come to believe that Reiki is harmful. She got her Reiki symbols removed. And boom! She was initiated!

(Ross “wow”s.)

You might be wondering what does initiated mean?

(Ross confirms.)

Me too! She didn’t explain, but she got her Reiki symbols removed, and she was initiated.

[01:08:16] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah, was this before, after, or a description of like her situation where she was getting the massage and all of a sudden broke out into song?

[01:08:25] Carrie Poppy: I think it’s right around then. We will get to that chiropractor story. I tried to put this generally in order. Boy, did she not try to put it in order!

(Ross chuckles.)

So, I’m trying to give it to you like roughly the way I think it happened. So, a while ago—again, she doesn’t tell us how long ago—she started getting a pleasant ringing in her ears. You and I talked about this, that it sounded like tinnitus (tin-eye-tus) or tinnitus (tin-uh-tis), however you want to say it. She went to the doctor, and the doctor told her her hearing was healthy. And actually said, “In fact, your hearing is better than a dog’s.” So, she—I think the implication is it was inexplicable, whereas tinnitus sort of is inexplicable. Like, we—you know, it can be caused by a bunch of different things; it’s comorbid with a bunch of different disorders. It’s very comorbid with anxiety and depression. You know, the fact that the doctor didn’t isolate a cause doesn’t tell us a bunch, right?

But her auditory channel didn’t develop until a little after that. So, “auditory channel” here meaning her receiving auditory messages.

[01:09:32] Ross Blocher: Not meaning her ear canal.

[01:09:33] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) Right. So, here she means receiving verbal messages from the great beyond, right? Which sounds to me like hallucinations, but who knows? So, another story she told was. What I’ll call the horse country incident. So, she begins this story by saying, “A week into this experience,”—but she doesn’t say what experience—“A week into this experience, I was laying in bed, and I heard a voice say, ‘Go outside, there’s a mandala.’” Maybe you remember this story. She told it to your group, too. But so, she hears a voice in her head say, “Go outside, there’s a mandala.” She goes wandering outside in the dark. She’s in horse country, ‘cause she’s staying there with her husband. And she finds this mandala. Just out in nature?

[01:10:24] Ross Blocher: Okay, interesting. Like, a pattern shaping of rocks?

[01:10:28] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I guess. I don’t know if it’s created by humans, or if she hears, “Hey, there’s a mandala out there,” and goes out and kind of sees the pattern and says this is it. I don’t know. Not clear.

[01:10:38] Ross Blocher: Or furiously makes one herself.

[01:10:40] Carrie Poppy: Right, right. So, she says, “I find this mandala, I lay down on it, and I end up doing that all summer at night. What a wild experience. I just stare at Orion, dusk to dawn.” And then, she said, “I got really tired during the day. But what a trip, what a fun experience. And then, I started to hear sounds, and I started to imitate them.”

So, I started thinking like, oh man, so we’re talking about like sleep interruption, auditory hallucinations, not going to bed when you planned to, laying outside, disrupting your circadian rhythm. So, I start to think of mania.

[01:11:21] Ross Blocher: Interesting. Yeah, this is reminding me just a little bit of Kimberly Meredith’s story where she had an injury to her head, and that’s where she started having this issue with her rapid eye movement.

[01:11:33] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I wish I could remember what that’s called—ocular dysregulation? Yeah, I think so.

[01:11:38] Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. Just how, you know, one sort of physical input or disruption can kickstart a whole change in your life.

[01:11:46] Carrie Poppy: Totally. And stress incidents too. Like, at one point her husband had a terrible injury, and that will play into this story. Yeah, if your life is stressful, that can also create especially mental health episodes. So, as she’s saying this, she says, “I started hearing these sounds. I started to imitate them.” And then, she said, “And fortunately, we were out in the middle of nowhere, so the men in white coats didn’t pick me up.”

So, she recognizes like I know what I’m telling you sounds batty, but like this is really what I felt. And I so believe her. She’s saying it sort of—even though there’s like hundreds of people here gathered to see her who obviously believe in her, just a little sense of like I’m embarrassed telling this story. Maybe you’ll think I’m nuts. Like, that’s still residual.

[01:12:32] Ross Blocher: I’m still tuned into your mental conception of what I’m saying. Which is some good, you know, theory of mind. Exactly. Yeah. So, good job, Deborah. You still kind of got your brain wandering through the audience and hearing yourself.

[01:12:46] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that reciprocity. So, the men in white coats don’t pick her up, but she begins to be trained in the healing tones, which she now teaches to her students.

[01:12:57] Ross Blocher: Speaking of white coats, is she wearing all white again?

[01:12:59] Carrie Poppy: She is not. She is wearing a big purple thing.

(They laugh.)

Here, I’ll show you a picture. She’s wearing this big purple coat and then black underneath it.

[01:13:10] Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s right. I did see her walking around the expo, and now I remember. Yeah, that’s an ostentatious jacket.

[01:13:19] Carrie Poppy: It’s interesting. It’s got these natural wrinkles in it—like that seem a part of the design. Yeah, it’s kooky.

[01:13:26] Ross Blocher: And it’s like reflective. Attention-getting for sure.

[01:13:29] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, in her book, she kind of gives support for my theory about mania in that she talks about how she used to have what she calls manic depression, which is what they used to call bipolar. But doesn’t anymore.

[01:13:45] Ross Blocher: Okay, and yeah, how do you feel about that? Is that something that goes away?

[01:13:48] Carrie Poppy: No, I mean—I think most people would tell you it’s a lifelong illness that’s, you know, controlled with medication. I think that’s what most experts would tell you. Any psychiatric disease could go into remission, theoretically, but like that would usually be through medication management. But also, she could have been misdiagnosed, that happens too. I don’t know, all of this is adding up for me. It’s like, oh, this makes sense. Like, you like you didn’t go to sleep, maybe you naturally have a bipolar risk, you started hearing voices. Like, that story’s starting to add up for me.

So, then there’s the chiropractor incident you talked about last time, where she goes to this chiropractor for an adjustment. (Giggling slightly.) She’s laying on the table face up, when she starts to make one of these tones. So, she’s laying on this guy’s table face up. He’s trying to crack her back, which now that I’m thinking about it, why is she face up? But whatever. She’s laying on his table and she goes MWAAAAH! (Chuckling.) And she says, “I’m embarrassed by it, but—” She uses the same word she used with you. She says, “He was transfixed by it.”

[01:14:59] Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) I’m sure he was. It sounds like he handled it well, but yeah, I mean chiropractice is something we could do an episode on. That’s true. We’ve talked about it over the years, but that aside, I’m sure that was not the occupational hazard he’d signed up for. It’s a very funny mental image.

[01:15:18] Carrie Poppy: Yes. So, she says, “Needless to say, I never went back to that chiropractor.” And she really is—she really seems embarrassed telling this story, but she’s telling it.

[01:15:27] Ross Blocher: That’s cute.

[01:15:28] Carrie Poppy: And she says, “But the next week I started initiating people.” So, that was sort of the turning point for her in becoming a teacher. And then, she also said that she was wandering around the desert spiritually in her 40s, trying to figure out her purpose. And I was like (sighs) this is so confusing. ‘Cause you had this initiation in your 20s. And you were initiating other people, right? If I’ve understood the timeline correctly.

[01:15:53] Ross Blocher: You should be much farther along in your— Interesting.

[01:15:54] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, what—why were you wandering in the desert, Deborah? Tell me about that. She’s just—it’s a very confusing storytelling technique.

[01:16:00] Ross Blocher: And when I hear the phrase “wandering around in the desert” and the number 40, I just think of like the biblical connection to the Israelites wandering in the desert. Interesting.

[01:16:12] Carrie Poppy: Not mentioned.

[01:16:13] Ross Blocher: Or Jesus for 40 days.

[01:16:14] Carrie Poppy: But yeah, I guess that’s the rhetorical reference at least. So, okay, let’s talk about her cancer a little bit.

(Ross agrees.)

So, she seems to have now a lot of people who come to her with cancer. Stories of people with cancer really fill that book, fill her website. And on her website she asks rhetorically, “Which method intuitively sounds more reasonable? Violently cutting open the body, or gently restoring balance to its systems? Our instincts are usually correct. Taking a nurturing approach to healing can have far more benefit than a harsh and potentially life-threatening operation.”

[01:16:57] Ross Blocher: It didn’t seem like a balanced presentation of the options, but okay.

[01:17:00] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yeah, no, no, no. These are your options. Violently cutting open the body, or gently restoring balance to its systems. Which do you want to do, Ross? You pick violent cutting?!

[01:17:10] Ross Blocher: Yeah, that seemed like the clear choice. (Laughs.)

[01:17:14] Carrie Poppy: Those are the only options, and you picked the wrong one.

[01:17:17] Ross Blocher: Hmm. Really?! Violent cutting. Alright.

[01:17:21] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. Okay, but let’s talk about the Akashic Records, shall we? So, the Akashic Records, of course, are records of your entire life—your past lifetimes, your future. And during Deborah’s spiritual awakening, she got to go to the Akashic Records three times.

[01:17:41] Ross Blocher: So, she can’t just go there on demand any time?

[01:17:43] Carrie Poppy: No, it seems like it has to be during one of these kind of initiation episodes where she hasn’t slept in a long time. Mm-hm, mm-hm.

[01:17:50] Ross Blocher: Mm. Okay. Coincidence?

[01:17:53] Carrie Poppy: Eh, maybe. So, she decides to go to the Akashic Records the first time and look at her past and future lifetimes. And I think this was during a meditation session? But when she gets there, there’s a guide there in the records, and he says, “I can explain that ringing in your ears.”

So, what we thought was tinnitus (tin-eh-tus) or tinnitus (tin-eye-tus), is not! It is actually an extra piece of equipment inside her head, above her ear, that’s like an antenna that picks up sounds.

[01:18:22] Ross Blocher: Right. Yes, like Whitley Strieber. She’s got hardware. Implants.

[01:18:25] Carrie Poppy: Yes. So, that’s when she realized that she’s very special, and that music speaks to her in a way that seems different from other people. She feels very emotionally connected to music. Which is probably true, but a little funny, because the sounds she makes are, in fact, not very musical.

(Ross chuckles and agrees.)

So, she throws up a slide as she’s saying all this, and she says, “And this is who I met in the records. This is what he looks like to me. This is a rendition.” And then she says, “Full disclosure, it’s not a photo.” So, answering one of your concerns from the last talk.

[01:19:03] Ross Blocher: Yeah, where did—oh my goodness! Woooah! Okay, Carrie’s showing me this wild piece of art.

(Carrie giggles.)

Yeah, we’ve got this dark reptilian, like an alien with a giant head and glowing red eyes and scales and mostly just from the lighting he’s like—black is his base color, but the light picks up the scales in blue, but there’s also like red light reflected on his like super buff pecs. (Chuckles.) And what, does he got like a 12 pack there? And oh my goodness, this is crazy! Yeah. He’s using a computer, which looks—oh, he’s using like a 27-inch iMac. Okay! Alright. Uses Apple products. Sure. And he’s got a leather chair and the glowing green headphones. So, he’s like got a really good alien gamer rig. And I see like an alien civilization behind him. There’s buildings and stuff. This is—wow, that’s something. She met this guy?

[01:19:59] Carrie Poppy: She met him in the Akashic Records.

[01:20:01] Ross Blocher: I didn’t suspect that of being a photo.

[01:20:04] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Me neither.

[01:20:04] Ross Blocher: But who’s she getting to do these renderings for her?

[01:20:07] Carrie Poppy: That I’m not sure. We were able to find the name of a different piece of clip art she used, but that one didn’t appear to be a rendering. But—

[01:20:17] Ross Blocher: (Chuckling.) I hope I dream about that tonight.

[01:20:18] Carrie Poppy: It’s interesting that you say he has headphones on, because that’s how it looks to me too. But in fact, those are his ears.

[01:20:25] Ross Blocher: Oh, he’s just got bright green, glowing ears?

[01:20:28] Carrie Poppy: With a cord coming out of them?

(Ross laughs.)

Those are his ears. A great design for an ear. If I were God, I’d get a cord coming out of the ear.

[01:20:39] Ross Blocher: Who am I to judge? You evolved on your planet with your very similar to human body layout.

[01:20:46] Carrie Poppy: Your Apple products.

[01:20:47] Ross Blocher: Yeah, your Apple products and your apps and your abs.

(They laugh.)

That’s so crazy. Okay. Yeah. We’ve got to post this picture.

[01:20:56] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. She says that the headphones are like satellite dishes. So, I don’t know, they’re picking up whatever. And this guide was a pretty interesting dude, she says.

[01:21:06] Ross Blocher: Oh, just from looking at him.

[01:21:07] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, totally. So, the guide shows her a map of Orion—the star system, Orion. And she says—

[01:21:14] Ross Blocher: I’m sure the belt. It’s always the belt.

[01:21:16] Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, she’s from the belt. Oh yeah, she’s from Orion’s belt. We knew that.

[01:21:18] Ross Blocher: No one’s from Orion’s shoulder.

[01:21:20] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, good point. She gets the most incredible feeling.

[01:21:24] Ross Blocher: I actually came from Orion’s right kneecap.

(Carrie laughs.)

You know that star right down there? Yeah, that’s actually where I’m from. Oh, not the belt? Oh, weird!

[01:21:30] Carrie Poppy: So, she gets the most incredible feeling looking at the map of Orion. Her whole body tingles. She shakes. She has so much excitement. And the guide explains, “That’s where you’re from.” And she feels this amazing feeling like being at home. It was an amazing feeling. Okay, second trip to the Akashic Records. She’s shown her own current lifetime. So, she was on Orion looking down at a baby star system. She was told she could go down to Earth. So, I think the vision here is that she’s pre-birth in this lifetime.

So, she says the guides say to her, “Things are bad down there on Earth. It’s all war and unhappiness. Not like here on Orion, where everything’s orderly and organized and higher consciousness. And the kids in school study the other star systems.”

[01:22:22] Ross Blocher: Well, this sounds like a trafficking situation that she’s being sent to the Earth.

[01:22:27] Carrie Poppy: Oh, uh, maybe. She volunteers.

(Ross affirms with a laugh.)

But they say, “Down there on Earth, things are rough.” I don’t know, I just—it’s so, “Oh, sure, the other world’s perfect and this world’s not perfect.” I just—

[01:22:40] Ross Blocher: The grass is always greener on the other side. And the built-in headphones are always greener.

[01:22:42] Carrie Poppy: Oh, everything’s perfect there. Everything’s orderly. And who’s the like being that inhabits that planet who speaks of it that way? Like, if I were like, “It’s not like here on Earth, where everything’s orderly and contained!” It’s just not how anyone talks about their environment.

[01:22:59] Ross Blocher: Uh, yeah. I mean, I guess if, you know, I go to my friend’s house and they’ve just got like stuff all over the place, I’d be like, “Okay, well, things are a little more orderly back home.”

[01:23:09] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, oh, back home with the Blochers. Okay, fair.

[01:23:11] Ross Blocher: Maybe not a true statement. I’m not trying to make us sound more orderly than we are.

[01:23:14] Carrie Poppy: Sure, sure. I think you and I actually like could compete for clutter, for sure.

[01:23:19] Ross Blocher: Similar levels of—yeah, accumulated books and whatnot, draping over every surface.

[01:23:24] Carrie Poppy: I think I’m 30% worse. Anyway.

(They laugh.)

So—and I’ll give this to her, and you did also—that she said that the guide told her she was going to have to go to the middle of the US sometime to do her life’s purpose. And she was like, shit, I don’t want to. I live in California where it’s beautiful. Please no.

[01:23:44] Ross Blocher: So, she’s still aware like almost like a sentence, that she eventually is going to have to move to the middle of the United States. And she’s putting it off as long as she can.

[01:23:52] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. But kind of honest to keep sharing this with people.

(Ross agrees.)

Yeah. Then they taught her about Lemuria, and I’m going to tell you about that in a little bit.

[01:24:05] Ross Blocher: Yeah, I don’t like the name because I just picture it immediately as a land filled with lemurs.

[01:24:10] Carrie Poppy: Oh, that could be cute.

[01:24:11] Ross Blocher: I like that land, it’s just clearly not the visual they’re trying to give me of this like Atlantis-like civilization. I picture a bunch of lemurs.

[01:24:20] Carrie Poppy: Cuter. So, the third trip to the Akashic Records, she arrived in a room with a big domed ceiling. And it’s very beautiful, it looks like the LA Central Library to me. Beautiful.

[01:24:31] Ross Blocher: Okay, yeah, wow. That’s the Akashic Records.

(Carrie confirms.)

Yeah. Is this a rendering or… a photo of a real place?

[01:24:37] Carrie Poppy: Presumably.

[01:24:38] Ross Blocher: That one I could mistake for a photo.

[01:24:42] Carrie Poppy: That’s true. We could reverse Google image search it?

[01:24:43] Ross Blocher: But yeah, is there like—yeah, is there like a library in Greece that just happens to look exactly like the Akashic records?

[01:24:50] Carrie Poppy: Good question. I’m sure if there were she would make a lot of hay out of that.

(Ross agrees.)

Ross! (Laughs.)

[01:24:57] Ross Blocher: Yeah? You got an immediate hit?

[01:25:00] Carrie Poppy: It’s the Library of Congress.

(They cackle.)

[01:25:04] Ross Blocher: That’s exactly what the Akashic Records looks like. Oh, wow! (Laughs.) Okay. Alright, the Library of Congress looks like the Akashic Records.

[01:25:13] Carrie Poppy: No wonder it looks like the LA Central Library.

[01:25:15] Ross Blocher: Yeah, her wording is always interesting when she’s saying like this visual I’m showing you is the thing I saw or looks like or is inspired by.

[01:25:25] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm! Yeah, you gotta just be like, “This is a photo I got from ‘blank’, but it gives you an idea.” So Ross and I don’t just get caught forever on what that MEANS!

[01:25:33] Ross Blocher: Deborah, in one of your almost daily emails, can you explain to me how you get your visuals for your presentations? That would be great.

[01:25:40] Carrie Poppy: So, as you may recall, she gets in a jet pack and busts through the ceiling of that dome, ripping past the stars, covering a great distance, and she meets robot people. And then, she says to us, “Which you know are real, right? AI is here, and they directed me by shooting a beam of light out their eyes at me. And they said that’s what you’re doing when you initiate people. You’re sending that beam of light to them.”

[01:26:08] Ross Blocher: Wwwwoah. Okay. Yeah, I can’t sign on to that. I don’t know that’s real. And the beam of light. Yeah, that’s something else.

[01:26:14] Carrie Poppy: It’s that purple triangle thing. That’s what she’s sending out. And that is…

[01:26:19] Ross Blocher: What they beamed at her with their eyes?

[01:26:22] Carrie Poppy: Yes. Uh-huh. So, they shoot a beam of triangle light at her with their eyes, then she receives it. And when she does her initiations and the MWAAAH, she’s sending them light.

[01:26:33] Ross Blocher: So, this is—okay. It’s a good thing.

[01:26:34] Carrie Poppy: It’s a good thing. Yep. So, the robots take her to a city with moving walkways, and then they take her into a room called the vibrarium, where there were pipes everywhere, and it looks kinda like—the photo, the image she shows looks like a pipe organ room. And she says, “This is where you get a reset.” So, they fill this vibrarium with healing noise, and that will completely cure you of anything wrong with you. And so, this noise that she’s receiving is sort of like a small version of that. And she says that if you went to the vibrarium—meaning us, the people in the audience.

[01:27:11] Ross Blocher: I wanna go to the vibrarium.

[01:27:13] Carrie Poppy: You wouldn’t need your energy medicine provider anymore! They would become irrelevant if you got to go to the vibrarium.

[01:27:21] Ross Blocher: Well, isn’t our energy medicine provider, Deborah King?

[01:27:26] Carrie Poppy: Yes, yeah. She said, “You wouldn’t need me anymore. I become irrelevant.” (Dramatically.) If you could go to the vibrarium!

[01:27:32] Ross Blocher: If only!

[01:27:34] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, but will you? Who knows. Then the robots taught her that she’s sending energy throughout Earth, that she is like a tuning fork. And she goes, “It was wild. It was wild.”

[01:27:45] Ross Blocher: Who built these robots?

[01:27:47] Carrie Poppy: Oh, good question. You know, we don’t need to know that. It’s not as important as them building us.

(Ross mutters “vibrarium” thoughtfully.)

Here’s an image she showed of transmitting from the eyes. It does not show a triangle, so that’s confusing. You told us it was a triangle. This image is of kind of circles coming out the head, but okay.

[01:28:06] Ross Blocher: Out of the brain, not the eyes. But okay. Yeah, yeah, it’s labeled “transmission from the eyes”, but their eyes are downcast, and nothing’s coming out of the eyes.

[01:28:16] Carrie Poppy: Great point.

(They laugh.)

And maybe you would argue third eye chakra. Maybe it’s that eye.

[01:28:21] Ross Blocher: Deborah, where do you find these visuals? This one’s not backing up your point.

[01:28:24] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Okay. So, a lot of her talk was about star people, UFOs, star seeds. We talked about this a lot in the last episode, so I’ll try to be brief here, but she does recognize that this topic comes off as bizarre. She’s like, “I know what you’re thinking, how did I get into something as bizarre as star people? I’m a lawyer. And I used to be secretive about it, about how I was from Orion, but now I just straight up talk about it.” So, she thinks that the number of star seeds is intensifying. So, more and more people are realizing they were star seeds and talking about it.

So, I—Carrie—am thinking, “Well, yeah, you’re going into rooms with 300 people and saying maybe you’re a star seed.” And then there are more star seeds. (Chuckles.) You seeded the idea.

[01:29:10] Ross Blocher: You star-seeded the idea. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:29:14] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, exactly. But she said, “There’s quite a few of us at this point.”

[01:29:17] Ross Blocher: Yeah, you should be shocked if there were not an increase. (Chuckles.)

[01:29:20] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, if not, you’re not selling it. But she’s telling us, “What if you’re one of the star people like me. You’re going to want to follow up on that, right? So, there have been 350 UFOs this year, and 175 of them are inexplicable, according to the Pentagon.”

[01:29:37] Ross Blocher: According to the Pentagon. Alright.

[01:29:40] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, could be.

[01:29:40] Ross Blocher: Like, I’m not motivated enough to try to figure out where she got those numbers. But I suspect they’re either not there or not very impressive.

[01:29:49] Carrie Poppy: And also, inexplicable means different things in this realm. She talks about Brad Steiger’s book, which we’ve mentioned a few times, a UFO believers’ book. She says if you dream about flying, or if you remember the future—meaning you have déjà vu—or if you’re besieged with synchronicities, you’re probably a star person. And then, she also said that if you feel time is flexible, you’re probably a star person. And she talked about this a little more than she had before—this feeling of time being flexible. And it really sounded like she was describing something I felt like, “Oh, maybe I haven’t experienced what you’re talking about. It sounds very acute. It doesn’t sound like you’re speaking in metaphor, like time is dilating for you.”

So, as she was talking about this, I went and looked up this sensation, and it is common in people with bipolar who are having psychosis.

[01:30:40] Ross Blocher: Oh! Oh my goodness. Okay.

[01:30:41] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, which would suggest, you know, Bipolar 1 and a pretty bad circumstance in which this symptom arises. Yeah, yeah, so I was thinking, oh man. Yeah, I mean, again, like I can’t diagnose this woman, but boy are a lot of things stacking in line with this interpretation. So, she said, “This time in this lifetime, everyone in this room is here to be of service. That’s why you’re at this conference. It’s the kind of person you are. You selected this. You’re here to help others ascend.”

[01:31:12] Ross Blocher: (Sighs.) Here we go again with a “you chose this for yourself”. I don’t like it!

[01:31:15] Carrie Poppy: That’s so interesting that that rubs you so wrong.

(Ross confirms.)

Yeah. Huh. Yeah. I mean, when you’ve kind of unpacked why it rubs you wrong, it makes sense to me, but I just don’t have that intuitive reaction to it. So, she said something very TwinRay here. She said there are nodes on our earth that are transmitting signals. Yeah. To one another and to other galaxies.

[01:31:33] Ross Blocher: Oh yeah, that whole thing. Okay. She mention like a six year cycle or anything like that?

[01:31:40] Carrie Poppy: I don’t think so. But yeah, I don’t know. That all—I was like, “Oh, are you getting that from TwinRay? Did TwinRay get that from you?”

[01:31:46] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Oh, boy. There’s so much, uh, sharing within this community. And it’s interesting when you can establish these connections from one thinker to the next, like as they absorb ideas from each other. But yeah, in a case like this, you don’t know. Did you both pull from the same other source, or are you listening to each other?

[01:32:03] Carrie Poppy: Yep. Or is there some—

[01:32:05] Ross Blocher: Or is it all true?

[01:32:06] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckling.) Or is it all true? Or is there some inherent human cognitive error that gives rise to this impression, and so different people spontaneously come up with this explanation when science could better explain it some other way.

[01:32:19] Ross Blocher: Or even like a ready analogy, like cell phone networks, or something like that. Like, we can picture this thing. I think we often do that with how the brain works, you know, like “Oh, it’s like a typewriter.” Or—

[01:32:32] Carrie Poppy: It must be like a computer.

[01:32:33] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. That’s my best analogy. So, it’s like that. Distributed networks.

[01:32:39] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm! Wow, that’s interesting. Yeah, I wonder if, you know, 30 years ago even someone would come up with this thought. Yeah, I don’t know. Okay, Lemuria! She acknowledges straight off the bat that a lot of people say it’s fake, but she doesn’t obviously.

[01:32:54] Ross Blocher: Where are you going to find ring tailed lemurs?

[01:32:56] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Well, it’s a lost island in the Pacific.

[01:32:59] Ross Blocher: She acknowledges that not everyone is convinced of Lemuria’s existence.

[01:33:03] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, she’s almost apologizing for it. (Airily.) “Despite everyone saying it’s fake, no, no, no.” And she says—

[01:33:08] Ross Blocher: We’re saying it’s fake.

[01:33:10] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, I really feel like she has people in her life being like, (concernedly) “Deborah. No, this isn’t right.” And she senses like I’m saying something that’s not well received, but I really believe in it!

[01:33:24] Ross Blocher: I mean, I appreciate the effort, at least, to even acknowledge that it’s questioned.

[01:33:28] Carrie Poppy: Yes. I totally, totally agree. She’s coming off more and more sincere to me. So, the most important thing you need to know about Lemuria is that if you have a knack for crystals, you might be Lemurian (loo-meer-ee-an). Lemurian (leh-moo-ree-an)? Lemurian (luh-muh-ree-an)?

(Ross laughs.)

How do you think you say that? Lemurian (leh-mur-ee-an)?

(Ross confirms.)

Lemurian. Yeah. Yeah, because crystals hold memories.

[01:33:52] Ross Blocher: Sure. You’re looking at me like waiting for you to acknowledge it.

[01:33:55] Carrie Poppy: (Playfully.) Makes sense, right? Crystals hold memories.

[01:33:56] Ross Blocher: Yes, yes. Crystals hold memories. Sure. Yeah. Just like water.

[01:34:00] Carrie Poppy: So, I’m starting to put together—I’m like crystals hold memories, recovered memory, laying on a massage table, remembers things laying on a massage table—hang on, hang on, hang on. So, I start reading her book—and again, she’s so vague, but the story I’m starting to put together in my head is that she went to this healer. She was holding a crystal, and she recovered memories of child sex abuse in her 30s that she had never remembered before. And then, she felt explained.

[01:34:36] Ross Blocher: Mm. I remember her saying something about like incestual relations with her father and worried about that.

[01:34:42] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, which we took at face value on first learning.

(Ross “oh no”s.)

Yeah, this is truly a lost and recovered memory that her—the rest of, you know, her family denies. And she wrote this book, and she thought they wouldn’t read it. She said she thought, “Oh, they’re just—they’re so busy with their corporate lives. They’re big lawyers too. And so, I just didn’t even think they would know about it, but they did.” And it sounds like she basically cut off her whole family by writing this book.

(Ross “oh no”s.)

Yeah. Bummer. She did say after 10 years they started talking to her a little bit again, but huge rift caused by what sounds to me like a recovered memory that was not veridical.

(Ross “wow”s.)

Yeah, bummer. She talked about Atlantis—again, super defensively. She’s like, “You don’t need to feel like you’re crazy for believing this stuff, okay? I believe this stuff. I’m a lawyer.” She keeps like referring to sort of her, you know, “I’m left brain. I believe it.”

[01:35:44] Ross Blocher: “Can’t be that kooky. I’m a lawyer.”

[01:35:46] Carrie Poppy: Right. Then, she talked about Sirius. She was very serious about that.

(They pointedly chuckle.)

[01:35:53] Ross Blocher: These are the grade A puns you come to this podcast for.

(They laugh.)

[01:35:58] Carrie Poppy: She talks about how there’s a tribe, the Dogon tribe.

[01:36:02] Ross Blocher: Yes. She brought up this example. It’s a common one.

[01:36:06] Carrie Poppy: Okay, yeah, African tribe that’s supposedly from Sirius.

[01:36:10] Ross Blocher: Yeah, and that they had this kind of tradition of astronomy that subsequent investigations have kind of shown may be related just to Western interference, Western storytelling. It’s debated.

[01:36:23] Carrie Poppy: Oh, interesting. Okay, well, she said—okay, well, I think that’s wrong, Ross, because she said they got their knowledge from the stars, and scientists have backed it up.

[01:36:32] Ross Blocher: Yeah, Carl Sagan had a chapter on this in Broca’s Brain.

[01:36:36] Carrie Poppy: Oh, cool! I’ve never read that one, and I should.

[01:36:37] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it. It was just kind of a collection of different essays on a variety of topics, and he’s always fun to listen to.

[01:36:44] Carrie Poppy: Is it mostly neuroscience?

[01:36:46] Ross Blocher: No.

[01:36:47] Carrie Poppy: Oh, no. Okay. Interesting. Carl Sagan was great, Ann Druyan is great. In fact—sorry, sidebar. When we won our IIG award, Ann Druyan was also winning an award, and we got to meet her.

[01:36:59] Ross Blocher: So cool.

[01:37:00] Carrie Poppy: So cool. Carl Sagan’s wife and the co-writer of many of his books.

[01:37:03] Ross Blocher: Cosmos as well, yeah.

[01:37:04] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, we talk about memory regression a little bit. And then, she says we’re going to do a past life regression right here in the room. And she had kind of split up her talk into these—she would talk, and then she’d do a meditation, and then she’d talk, and she’d do a meditation. But I’m going to tell you about all the meditations at once here. So, in this regression, we’re going to go into our buried cellular memory and remember our pasts together now. So, she wants us all to try to find our star ancestor from our home star. And we all might be from different places, don’t necessarily expect to be from Orion, (sing-song) though you might be. But probably everyone in this room has a star lineage, and we’re gonna try to figure out what it is.

And so, much like your meditation, she first takes us mentally to Lake Titicaca in Peru. She shows us this photo (laughs) I’m about to show you.

[01:37:58] Ross Blocher: Ah, these visuals. I can’t wait.

[01:38:00] Carrie Poppy: (Sighs.) Okay, she says, “You’re gonna drop with me right into this fifth dimensional city underwater.”

[01:38:08] Ross Blocher: Oh, that should be easy to visualize.

[01:38:10] Carrie Poppy: And then she shows us this. So, we’re gonna—

[01:38:12] Ross Blocher: Looks all like Blade Runner. I wouldn’t immediately think it was underwater, but… I’ll believe it.

[01:38:17] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that’s underwater. It’s fifth dimensional. Don’t know what that means here. It’s also the home of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. Okaaaay. Um, that seems to be a connection to an end times spiritualist group from the Midwest. But okay, okay, Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. And then she says—(laughs) this is my favorite line from her entire talk. “It’s invisible, but it looks like this.”

[01:38:45] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Oh, yeah. Huh.

[01:38:49] Carrie Poppy: What does that mean?! Yeah. What do you mean it’s invisible, but it looks like this?!

(Ross laughs and agrees.)

What does that MEEEAN!? What you mean it’s like microscopic. But if not? Either it’s invisible! Or it looks like something! In a nutshell!

[01:39:13] Ross Blocher: Yeeeah. Mm-hm. Yeah, I’m trying to think that maybe you can only see it—quote/unquote, “see it” with some different sense.

(Carrie agrees exhaustedly.)

And if you see it in the infrared or the ultraviolet or if you’re able to like touch it, it will form this shape even though it doesn’t interact with optical light.

[01:39:36] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, she said we wouldn’t see it with diving equipment, and that much I believe.

(Ross giggles.)

So, she tells us to visualize some sacred scrolls, and then—boy, this feels like it’s out of nowhere, but she says, “The history you learn in school is not accurate. You need to hear the myths of the indigenous people. They’re not myths; they’re accurate. There’s a continuous visitation from other beings from the stars.” And then, she tells us we can come back any time. O-okay.

[01:40:06] Ross Blocher: Hm. Yeah, I was on board for like the, you know, there’s more to history than what you were taught in school. But it kind of lost me after that.

[01:40:11] Carrie Poppy: Sure. There’s more to everything than you were taught in school. Yeah, yeah. There’s more of everything to anything you could study, so yes. But you’ll note the mention of Native culture. She’s so into—this is a White woman—she’s so into that whole thing of being like, “The Natives, they have the magical knowledge, and if we just listen to the Natives more, we would—” Which just comes off to me like so patronizing.

Okay, but she has this slide that she shows us next where she says, “These are the messages from the star beings right now.” And it sounds like she’s saying right now, during our meditation that we’re having, but she’s got a slide prepared! So, I’m like did they tell you this is what they were gonna tell us?!

[01:40:50] Ross Blocher: Uh, yeah. Okay. As of last night, in the hotel room.

[01:40:54] Carrie Poppy: Right! Exactly. So, their messages are, “Star beings of the aquarian mission, upgraded generic coding. Tibetan monks, sacred—”

[01:41:06] Ross Blocher: Generic, not genetic. Okay.

[01:41:07] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckling.) “Tibetan monks, sacred geometry. Crystal access transformer, enhanced brain and cell structures. Generate a force field that magnifies intentionality.”

[01:41:19] Ross Blocher: Oh, they didn’t even make a good bulleted list.

[01:41:22] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckling.) No, that’s the messages. That’s what they want me to know.

[01:41:25] Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s word salad.

[01:41:26] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, there’s no syntax there.

[01:41:28] Ross Blocher: I mean, I was expecting it to be something like, “Peace is the solution to mankind’s problems.” Or you know, like I would have expected some nice little like hard to disagree with.

[01:41:41] Carrie Poppy: Yes, you’re right. The answer is not boring. A lot of the time the answer is so boring. These creatures come and talk to us, and then they’re like, “Be nice.” And I’m like really?!

[01:41:51] Ross Blocher: So, I’ll agree with W Magazine in calling her electrifying, according to this description, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. But it’s not useful.

[01:41:58] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you’re right; it’s more interesting. So, then she talks about science a little bit. She says scientists are just now realizing something meta-physicists have been saying for a long time, that ETs are here. You know, all the scientists saying that.

(Ross jokingly agrees.)

She says, “Western doctors are good for diagnostics, but don’t get treated there. Save your own life and go somewhere else.”

[01:42:21] Ross Blocher: That’s interesting. They’re good for letting you know what you have.

(They chuckle.)

[01:42:26] Carrie Poppy: But not for dealing with it. Yeah.

[01:42:27] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. And they’re good for verifying that it’s been taken care of later.

(They laugh.)

But everything in between.

[01:42:33] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, imagine being the doctor who’s serving this person. You just have to be like, “Oh, well, I’m gonna try to keep saving your life, even though you keep throwing me under the bus. (Grumbling.) Okay, alright.”

[01:42:42] Ross Blocher: “Yep. Okay. Well, this is the problem. Here’s how we see. You’re gonna fix it? Oh, no, you’re leaving. You’re gonna go bathe yourself in golden triangular light?”

[01:42:49] Carrie Poppy: “That’s fine. I need you to check in in six months.”

[01:42:52] Ross Blocher: “Yeah, but could you also take these every week while you’re doing that, please? Pleeeease? Because I really want to see you be okay.”

[01:43:00] Carrie Poppy: Yep, yep, yep. It reminds me of that doctor in Mexico, that wonderful man who was like, “I’ve set up this hospital where we do conventional medicine and alternative medicine, because we have to capture these people who insist on alternative medicine.”

[01:43:12] Ross Blocher: Yeah, we’ll give you what you’re asking for, (whispering) but also some real medicine.

[01:43:16] Carrie Poppy: You have to take the conventional medicine alongside it. I think that’s very smart.

(Ross agrees.)

Okay. So, she talks about where Western medicine goes wrong. “It plays catch up, because all the spiritual answers came first. And if we just listen to our spiritual intuition, these problems would go away.” She keeps calling NASA nah-sah.

(Ross repeats it.)

Nah-sah. Like every time, so it wasn’t just a weird slip of the tongue. Every time, nah-sah

[01:43:44] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah. It sounds very nasal.

[01:43:48] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Or British.

[01:43:49] Ross Blocher: Yeah. What’s the affectation for? Interesting.

[01:43:53] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. She seems to think that’s how it’s pronounced.

“Ross “nah-sah”s.)

Nah-sah. She shows us the James Webb telescope, the NASA telescope, and all its beautiful photos. And like, yeah! Yep, yep! Those are great photos!

[01:44:01] Ross Blocher: Yeah, science is pretty cool, right? I love what she’s willing to take from science selectively.

[01:44:08] Carrie Poppy: Yep. Um, she says, “Whether you look at the NASA telescopes or at the work I do in the Vedic field, the two compliment each other.”

(Ross chortles.)

I wrote in my notes, “I’m sure NASA is so glad.”

[01:44:21] Ross Blocher: Roughly equivalent.

(They laugh.)

We got the James Webb telescope on one hand, but you do have Deborah King’s Vedic visions on the other.

[01:44:32] Carrie Poppy: I picture her like reaching out a hand toward the NASA scientist. “See? We’re in agreement.” And the NASA scientist is like, “Y-y-yeah, yeah? Like, oh—ugh.” Grudgingly shaking his hand. Huh!

[01:44:42] Ross Blocher: One of these things is not like the other.

[01:44:43] Carrie Poppy: Ancient wisdom, of course. We talked about that a little. But we need to follow what the ancients said. The ancients, she will totally conflate with just Native peoples as they exist today. They are the ancients. Exactly the same.

(They snort.)

And then, she mentions a guy called Wilfred Buck. And I hadn’t heard of him. He has a Wikipedia entry. She said—

[01:45:09] Ross Blocher: I’ve heard of Wilford Brimley.

[01:45:11] Carrie Poppy: True. Not him. She says, “He would tell you he’s Native American.” And I thought that’s weird wording!

[01:45:18] Ross Blocher: Yeah, would he be right?

[01:45:20] Carrie Poppy: I don’t know. Well, he does—his Wikipedia seems to indicate so. I didn’t look more into him, but it just seems like a weird way to say it.

[01:45:28] Ross Blocher: Yeah, what a weird way to introduce somebody.

[01:45:29] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Oh, did she mention Avatar when you saw her? Oh, girl loves Avatar.

[01:45:34] Ross Blocher: Uh, not that I recall. But I can see that being her jam, totally. And a new movie’s come out since last time. Way of Water.

[01:45:41] Carrie Poppy: Oh, right, okay. Well, in 2009, she was really disappointed that it didn’t win Best Picture. It was the Best Picture of that year. And boy, she related to those people, the Na’vi. They were her brothers, her sisters.

[01:45:53] Ross Blocher: Oh, I could see that.

[01:45:55] Carrie Poppy: She’s like, “Avatar 2, you gotta see it.”

[01:45:56] Ross Blocher: There are two Avatar rides over in the Animal Kingdom park. And for the first time, I went in the one where you ride around in a little boat through their environment. And there’s like a—well, they’re all super tall. There’s a super tall kind of healing woman towards the end who’s singing. And I could see Deborah King just being so enraptured.

(Carrie “mwaaah”s.)

I could see her just getting right back in that 70-minute line. Like, “I need to experience that again.”

[01:46:21] Carrie Poppy: Aren’t they closing Animal Kingdom?

[01:46:23] Ross Blocher: Are they?

[01:46:24] Carrie Poppy: I thought I heard that. No, nooo.

[01:46:25] Ross Blocher: No, I don’t think so. No.

[01:46:26] Carrie Poppy: Okay. But Avatar, it’s so special, because “It has that profound language of not us vs. them, but all of us in community.” Sure. And then she said Avatar is more proof of something out there, which is an interesting way to see a fictional film.

[01:46:43] Ross Blocher: Yeah, like The Matrix gets used. I feel like Avatar’s filling that role in this new decade.

[01:46:48] Carrie Poppy: It has something to tell me. She talks about the ’70s quite a bit in this talk. She said it’s so interesting to her that so much of this stuff is from the ’70s.

I don’t know. Something about that really struck me. I was like, oh, I wonder if that’s just when you kind of started your journey and some things got baked in then. Because the ’70s don’t really stick out to me as someone who, you know, follows the New Age trajectory.

[01:47:12] Ross Blocher: Yeah, maybe just certain talking points originated around then. Age of Aquarius and all that.

[01:47:20] Carrie Poppy: So, her teaching will take up a lot of this talk. She talks about sort of the history of the teaching. She’s, again, very vague about who taught her. She has an energy healing school now, and she says, “I’m looking for successors for my legacy.”

[01:47:36] Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. And is this distinct from her other school that she’s had going for a while? Energy school, okay.

[01:47:42] Carrie Poppy: No, I think she’s talking about the same school. Which is in Ojai, I believe.

[01:47:47] Ross Blocher: Okay, but it should be in Ohio. She needs to be closer to the center of the United States.

[01:47:49] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) That’s fair. I guess Ojai is slightly more inland than here. She’s on her way.

(They laugh.)

She was in Westlake Village before. She’s creeping her way over there.

[01:48:57] Ross Blocher: At this rate, she might hit Bakersfield eventually.

[01:48:04] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) So, her first workshop was in Malibu with 10 people in the room, and she points at the back of this room at Conscious Life Expo 2023, and she says—

[01:48:13] Ross Blocher: Carrie’s gesticulating over towards her door.

[01:48:15] Carrie Poppy: Yes. And she says, “John back there was there the very first time I did my healing with these 10 people in Malibu. John was there.” And she gestures at a man who’s presumably named John. He waves his hand, and she’s like, “He’s a TV star!” So, I turn to look at him. I don’t recognize him, but all I’ve heard is “John”. But he—

[01:48:36] Ross Blocher: Yeah, so everybody look it up on IMDb, John. Let us know who this person is.

[01:48:40] Carrie Poppy: Look for a John.

(They laugh.)

But he calls out and he says, “You saved my life!”

Yeah. Wonder what was wrong.

[01:48:51] Ross Blocher: That’s quite the testimonial.

[01:48:52] Carrie Poppy: She mentions that her students get an audio and video message of her voice in her lessons every week. So, maybe—have you gotten any of those, or is that a paid thing?

[01:49:02] Ross Blocher: I’m not even a student. Yeah, she sends out regular like video links and stuff like that. But I’m sure I’d get more if I signed up for her school.

[01:49:11] Carrie Poppy: Well, if you want to be her student, some examples of people who come to her to be her students include: people with depression, people in recovery from breast cancer, and people with weight issues.

[01:49:24] Ross Blocher: That captures a lot of people.

[01:49:25] Carrie Poppy: Yep. Such—it felt like a very random assortment.

[01:49:28] Ross Blocher: Yeah, what a weird list of target audiences.

[01:49:34] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, exactly. So, next, she’s gonna do some healings. And it seems like the healing is largely centered around us finding our purpose, but also she’s gonna do some energy healings of physical illness. Those two things are kind of in the same package somehow. Our first volunteer is a man named Aresh. I think he kind of forced his way up. She didn’t really call on him; he just sort of appears. But she accepts that, and she says, “Okay, the first thing I’ve got to do is get out of his visual field.” You never want to look right at your guest, (chuckling) because you’re shooting this big beam of energy? And I guess you just kind of want to shoot it around them? She says, “It’s too dangerous and too invasive to look right in their eyes.”

[01:50:22] Ross Blocher: Oh, weird. Okay. Yeah, I thought that’s what the other folks were doing to her with their eyes, but okay.

[01:50:26] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, he’s like, “Hey, do I need to take this off?” And he points to a necklace he’s wearing that’s an enormous pendant that’s connected to his iPhone. It’s just something he bought at Conscious Life Expo.

[01:50:40] Ross Blocher: And Carrie jumps up and she says, “Yes! It’s an eyesore!”

[01:50:45] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) “No, give it to me! I’ll walk off with it!”

So, I’m going to show you. He’s holding it, so you can see the size of it from the shape of his hand. It’s huge.

[01:50:54] Ross Blocher: And it’s connected to his phone?!

(Carrie confirms.)

He’s holding onto it, so I can’t really tell how big it is, but yeah.

[01:51:00] Carrie Poppy: It’s probably like five or six inches across. Yeah, and when he pulls it out, you can see that this little cord is connected to his phone in his pocket.

[01:51:09] Ross Blocher: Sometimes I just wonder if these vendors are like, “Can I get people to wear this? Wouldn’t it be funny if someone wore this like on their neck, but also plugged it in? How uncomfortable would that be? You’d trip on it all the time.”

[01:51:21] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Right. So, he’s like, “Should I take this off?”

And she says, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a Taurus energy field generator. That’s going to interfere with your thymus, which is the main thing I’m looking at. Oh, yeah, absolutely.”

[01:51:35] Ross Blocher: “Oh, but I just bought it from a well-meaning gentleman downstairs.”

[01:51:40] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) So, he moves that out of the way. She looks for vectors behind him, because—

[01:51:44] Ross Blocher: Oh, you gotta check for the vectors. I’m so glad she’s aware of this.

[01:51:46] Carrie Poppy: You gotta look for vectors because they attach to you.

(Ross agrees jokingly.)

They attach to you when someone has an unkind thought about you.

[01:51:54] Ross Blocher: So true. Yep. The vectors. Yep. (Laughs.)

[01:51:56] Carrie Poppy: And then, she asks him how his meditation practice is going. And he says, “It’s going well. I do a lot of it. I mostly do transcendental meditation.”

She says, “Oh, good, good, good.” She hasn’t asked him like what’s up with you? Like, What’s wrong with you? Why are you up here? He doesn’t say anything. She gets a high G from her synth player. She says, “Can I get a high G?” That’s what the guides are asking her for. He plays it out. It swells. She says, “I wait for the tone.” We all wait. And then she says, “MWAAAAH!”

[01:52:32] Ross Blocher: Amazing.

[01:52:33] Carrie Poppy: So, that has not changed. The mwah is in place. And then, she turns to us, and she says, “That’s that beam of light I was talking about.”

[01:52:42] Ross Blocher: Wow, now you’ve experienced it.

[01:52:44] Carrie Poppy: I have not seen a beam of light, but okay.

[01:52:48] Ross Blocher: Oh, right. Good point. Well, it’s invisible, but it looks like this.

[01:52:52] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Good point. Then there is volunteer two. She’s a woman. Her name is Charlie. And so, when she comes up, she’s got this kind of bubbly personality, and so Deborah says, “Oooh, you have a lot of air quality. I know about the air people. You are mostly air. And they ascend a little more quickly, usually.” So, she says she’s gonna drop in and look at her soul. She sees her soul’s life history, many lifetimes. This woman says she does do meditation. Okay, good, good, good. That’s in place. ‘Cause Deborah is not going to do a healing on someone who doesn’t do meditation. No, no, no, that’s dangerous. And then, she feels something swelling in this woman, and she’s like, “Oh, I feel a train coming! I need support. I need support for what I sense coming. Linda, Michelle, come up here!”

[01:53:39] Ross Blocher: Calling up the students.

[01:53:40] Carrie Poppy: Yep. So, her two advanced students come up. And they’re—you know, they’re supporting her. They’ve got her hands outstretched. And okay, we’re here for what’s coming. Deborah goes, “MWAAAAAH. And I’m told by the guides to stop, and there you have it.” So, the guides told her not to heal Charlie.

[01:54:03] Ross Blocher: Yeah, or that’s enough.

[01:54:04] Carrie Poppy: No, it was that she couldn’t do it. Because later she asked a Q&A question, and Deborah clarifies like, “No, I was told to stop. The guides told me not to heal you. You might be in a different place next week or next month or next year, but right now you are not ready for it.” Then, she breaks her Q&A a little bit. She asks if anybody has a question. So, someone asks her, “So, when you sense all this, do you hear something?”

And she says, “Oh yeah, my auditory channel is my best channel. Now yours might be something else. Visual, feeling in your gut. Especially new students, they mostly just feel a feeling in their gut, their intuition. But our body’s always right. You might turn off your intuition as kids, because your parents like tell you not to be seeing paranormal spirits and stuff, so you turn it off. But we need to turn it back on. You can be psychic. You can know when you’re being cheated on. You can know if your child is in trouble. Listen to that intuition and act on it. Don’t like wait for evidence.”

[01:55:03] Ross Blocher: Woooah. Interesting little fears that she dropped in there that we can address with these abilities.

[01:55:07] Carrie Poppy: Mm! Oh yeah, it starts to sound personal.

[01:55:08] Ross Blocher: Being cheated on, you know, where are your children?

[01:55:11] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. Also seems like it could easily play into paranoia. So, she said, “My auditory channel developed a little later.” At first, she just felt that gut intuition thing. Someone asks if you could have pieces of different star systems in your DNA or if you’re just from one star system. Great question.

[01:55:31] Ross Blocher: Yeah, okay! I like that. Yeah. What if your mom is from one star system, and your dad’s from a different one?

[01:55:36] Carrie Poppy: Good point. That’s so basic. I did not think of that. So, she said, “Probably. You probably can have them from more than one.” It seemed like she had never dealt with this question. She was like, “Yeah, I guess so.”

[01:55:47] Ross Blocher: Yeah, “I never thought of that before. Hm!”

[01:55:50] Carrie Poppy: One person said, “Oh, when you were doing the energy, I could feel it in my body. And even though I wasn’t up there on the stage, I felt it moving through me. And I think I was acting kind of weird, because my muscles were moving. And do you have any suggestions for me, so I don’t look weird?”

And Deborah said, “Oh, you’re asking the wrong person if you don’t want to look weird!”

[01:56:07] Ross Blocher: Ah! That’s cute.

[01:56:09] Carrie Poppy: A question asker said, “Um, so I love that you bring the analytical mind into it, because you have the law background. But it’s such a spiritual practice. So, when you say you’re in a different state of consciousness, what do you feel and how do you know?” Great.

[01:56:25] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Specific question. I like it.

[01:56:28] Carrie Poppy: Yep. So, she said, “Well, because I can’t do this if I’m not in that state. I can tell. Somewhere along the way, I taught myself to step into it, and it’s just this very slightly altered, just enough that I can expand my field as big as the room right now. And I can’t do that all day, but I can do it for a couple hours. It takes a lot of energy, and I can just kinda tell when I’m in the state.” Alright.

And then, oh my god, then this poor woman. This woman gets up. Her name is Amanda. Lord. So, Amanda is a Portuguese Mexican woman wearing a headscarf. I don’t think she raised her hand. I think Deborah—even though there were raised hands, I think Deborah singled her out and called her up. So, this woman who’s like notably darker skinned than Deborah King gets up there, and she doesn’t really say anything about any complaints she has in her body. But Deborah immediately intuits that what Amanda needs is for (bites back a laugh)—is for Deborah to honor her ancestors. So, Deborah starts bowing to her.

[01:57:39] Ross Blocher: Oh, this is awkward.

[01:57:42] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) She’s backing up and bowing and going, “Honoring the ancestor. Honoring the ancestor. Honoring the ancestor.”

[01:57:51] Ross Blocher: The lady’s like, “Why do I go to these conventions?”

[01:57:53] Carrie Poppy: Oh my god, the look on Amanda’s face is so blasé!

(Ross “oh no”s with a laugh.)

Just so like, “Well, this is what’s happening now. I’m not gonna destroy this event, so I’m just gonna stand here.”

[01:58:08] Ross Blocher: And wait for it to end.

[01:58:09] Carrie Poppy: And then, when it’s done, Deborah like reaches out to hug her, and the woman’s already turned away. But she turns back and is like, (exasperatedly) “Yeah, yeah,” and hugs her. Oh my god, it was so uncomfortable!

[01:58:21] Ross Blocher: Oh, poor Amanda.

[01:58:21] Carrie Poppy: But of course, she does the mwah thing to her. Poor Amanda. There’s her honoring her ancestor. Amanda looks, uh—

[01:58:33] Ross Blocher: Yeah, Amanda doesn’t look thrilled.

[01:58:36] Carrie Poppy: Then, she does a healing of Todd. Todd needs to clear something in his base chakra. Again, no information he gives her about what’s wrong. She can just sense that.

[01:58:46] Ross Blocher: Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if she’s just kind of realized it’s not worth the trouble of trying to pretend to diagnose someone or like get their actual ailment and just to kind of go with your intuition.

[01:58:55] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, this seems smarter.

(Ross agrees.)

So, Deborah asks for a middle C. That’s obviously what he needs. But then she asks him about his meditation, and he says, “Uh, I haven’t been doing it.” And that is—

[01:59:08] Ross Blocher: Well, she can’t heal him.

[01:59:09] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Hellooo!? Why did you come up here? So, she says, “Oh, then, yes, that makes sense. This base is not strong enough for me to work on. You need a meditative base. Yeah, there’s an at home program for my meditations. But you definitely need a daily meditation. It’s not that hard, you guys, okay? Just block out everything and do this like for 20 minutes a day at least.” And then, she just sends him back.

[01:59:35] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow! Okay. You must be this tall to ride.

[01:59:39] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Right. The next person who raises her hand is someone named Cindy. So, Deborah calls on her and then says, “Oh no, that’s Cindy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t come up. She’s trying to slip in.”

[01:59:53] Ross Blocher: Oh, this is like a known enemy or saboteur!

[01:59:57] Carrie Poppy: It sounds that way, but then she says, “She’s one of my advanced students.”

[02:00:02] Ross Blocher: Oh, never mind. Okay.

[02:00:03] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, but I’m also like she can’t ask a question? She’s paying you like $10,000. She can’t ask a Q&A question at your event?!

[02:00:11] Ross Blocher: Weird.

[02:00:12] Carrie Poppy: Right? Like, I paid nothing, but you’re gonna answer mine? You know, I don’t know. Seemed weird. But also, the name Cindy stuck out to me, because there is a Cindy in Truth Heals. Because partway through this book, Deborah King lets us know that she has multiple personalities. She has a woman who lives in her mind, named Cindy, who holds all of her bad memories about her dad abusing her.

[02:00:35] Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s specific. Oh, interesting. It just happens to be the name of the student?

[02:00:39] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Just a coincidence, I assume.

[02:00:42] Ross Blocher: Yeah, this book is from 2009, so it’s been around for 14 years.

[02:00:46] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, yeah, I don’t think there’s an actual connection, but the name reminded me, and this is the lore of multiple personality disorder. Part of it is they—the alters—hold the memory for you, so you don’t have to interact with it. Anyway, Cindy reminded me of that.

Next person who comes up is named Sylvia. She’s wearing a shirt that says, “Zen as fuck” or “Zen AF”, and she has like the most shit-eating little grin on her face. I don’t think she’s that into Deborah King! I think she’s a little bit of a scallywag. So, she gets up and she’s like smiling to herself, and her friend’s in the audience. And she keeps like looking at her friend, and it’s very like, “I did it! I got up here! That’s right!”

But Deborah, of course, has made a commitment not to look in this woman’s eyes. So, we’re seeing her like little shit-grinning, little performance. And Deborah seems totally unaware of this.

[02:01:43] Ross Blocher: She’s the one who opens her eyes during prayer.

[02:01:47] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yeah, exactly. So, as she’s kind of wiggling around, smiling, Deborah’s like, “Oh, you have great energy.”

(Ross giggles.)

And she asks her her last name, and this woman gives a Latin American last name, and Deborah replies, “Oh-kay! Yes, I’m picking up on your ancestors.”

(Ross “oh no”s.)

“Where are they from?” And the woman says Mexico. And she’s like, “I knew it! I felt it!”

[02:02:14] Ross Blocher: Why didn’t you say it?

[02:02:16] Carrie Poppy: Yep. And then, she says, “You have a real prominent guide. He’s 4 or 5,000 years old. He’s male. And then, she merges her field with this volunteer. She’s waiting on guidance for where to go. And then, she says, “Do you have any trauma?”

Someone in the audience brings a microphone up to the volunteer, and the volunteer says yeah, sure. And she says, “Can you name it? There’s one really pronounced one here.” And this woman’s like talking into a microphone, right?

[02:02:43] Ross Blocher: Putting her on the spot, yeah.

[02:02:44] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! Microphone to like 300 people. (Aggressively.) “Tell me your trauma!”

[02:02:47] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your dark secret past event that’s making your life really difficult. Share it with everybody, right now.

[02:02:54] Carrie Poppy: So, she says, “Uh, grief?”

And she goes, “Uh-uh! Trauma.”

She says, (timidly) “Okay, well that’s what I would say. Grief.”

And Deborah says, “I’m picking up childhood trauma.”

(Ross “oh no”s.)

And the woman says, “Okay, yeah, um—physical and sexual abuse.” And now, you know, this woman who, sure, was like having a laugh when she came up, but now like her whole face falls, and she looks embarrassed and—you know, she’s been forced to disclose this thing. Also, I don’t know what—

[02:03:31] Ross Blocher: Oh my goodness. Now we’re talking about it on a podcast.

[02:03:35] Carrie Poppy: Right! Yeah, well, I won’t show her picture or anything, but yeah. And then—and I’m thinking like, ugh, Deborah. And then, Deborah’s memories of the same are recovered. So, you know, now this woman’s like interacting with this woman—this person whose memories we presume are true is interacting with this person who presumably has questionable memories about the same stuff. It’s just so uncomfortable!

[02:03:56] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Layers of discomfort.

[02:03:58] Carrie Poppy: Oh my god. Yeah. So, Deborah says, “Oh, yes. I knew that. Of course. Yes. Sexual abuse. Yes. But notice, I won’t name it. I make my guests say it. Because they may not be ready to hear about it. And it has to come from them.” So, she’s thinking my guest might have a repressed memory of sexual abuse, but I’m not going to tell her. Ugh, god.

[02:04:22] Ross Blocher: (Sighing.) Ugh, man, yeah. Lots of issues there.

[02:04:23] Carrie Poppy: But in order to fix this, don’t worry. Deborah removed the perpetrator energy left in her body.

[02:04:31] Ross Blocher: (Flatly.) All fixed.

[02:04:32] Carrie Poppy: And goes, “MWAAAAAH.” And then the woman leaves.

[02:04:38] Ross Blocher: You’re welcome.

(They laugh.)

[02:04:41] Carrie Poppy: Deborah says, “That was easy for me to pick up on.”

(Ross “oh no”s.)

Okay. We have a person whose guide is an angel named Metatron.

(Ross affirms.)

Oh, have you heard this?

[02:04:51] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. Well, I just feel like Metatron comes up every now and then. They like that name.

[02:04:57] Carrie Poppy: It’s such a computer name.

[02:04:59] Ross Blocher: Yeah, I know. It should be the Metatron 2000, but yeah. It’s a good name.

[02:05:03] Carrie Poppy: And then a woman from India comes up—like actually, currently lives in India—and Deborah is like, “Oh! I felt the Hindu gods descend on you right away!”

(Flatly.) Sure, of course you did, Deborah.

And then we go to Q&A again. Then, someone asked, “Well, you mentioned that Reiki is bad. Should we remove our own Reiki blocks? How can we do that?”

And she says, “No, you can’t do that yourself, but if you wanted, I can do it right now for anybody who’s received Reiki. I can remove all the Reiki symbols from everyone in this room, but you have to volunteer. So, if you want me to remove your Reiki symbols, stand up.” And probably 100 people stood up.

[02:05:47] Ross Blocher: I hope you didn’t.

(Carrie confirms.)

You should keep your Reiki symbols.

[02:05:47] Carrie Poppy: Well, actually, I stood up to take a video, but I didn’t face her. So, I think that doesn’t count.

[02:05:55] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) As if it would make any difference.

[02:05:56] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) I want my symbols!

[02:06:00] Ross Blocher: Wow, that’s wild. That’s like kind of removing your spiritual tattoos from a different—

[02:06:05] Carrie Poppy: Healer.

[02:06:06] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And like what are you going to do? Like, there’s plenty of Reiki practitioners at this conference. What, you gonna go to their booths and talk them out of it?

[02:06:14] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. It feels very much like vetoing the last spiritual guide, you know. But she says, “If you decide that you want the symbols back, you have two weeks to call for them again, because they’ll be in your outer energy field. So, you can still just decide you want them back, don’t worry about it.” But she has people stand up, and she says, “I send the Reiki symbols embedded in you back to source. Back to source. And so, it is.” And everybody applauds the people brave enough to get rid of their Reiki symbols. And that was it. That was the end. She just—she kind of got called off for the next thing.

[02:06:55] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah, I’m sure ran out of time, because they run a tight ship there at the Conscious Life Expo.

[02:07:00] Carrie Poppy: They sure do. And then, if you try to stick around in a room, they’re like, (barking) “No! Back up!”

[02:07:04] Ross Blocher: Yeah, “Get out of here! Put your cameras away!”

[02:07:05] Carrie Poppy: “Don’t talk to the speaker. Go away.” And so, I did.

[02:07:08] Ross Blocher: So, okay. Fascinating.

[02:07:10] Carrie Poppy: That’s what I learned about Deborah King.

[02:07:12] Ross Blocher: Thanks for sharing. Okay. I know more about her now.

[02:07:14] Carrie Poppy: Good. Yeah, I feel more convinced that Deborah King is sincere. Not that we doubted that per se, but I feel more convinced that, and a little more convinced that like something’s going on there.

[02:07:26] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Oh, just in terms of her physicality and mental state. Yeah.

[02:07:31] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, she gets to decide what she wants her reaction to that information to be.

[02:07:36] Ross Blocher: Yeah, on some level I feel like that’s a mitigating factor, that it wasn’t just somebody deciding like, “Hey, this is kind of a racket, I can get into the spiritual field, and there’s money to be made.” You know, it started with some real experience phenomena on her part.

[02:07:52] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that’s why I can kind of believe that she doesn’t have much of a lineage to her teachings. If she’s just having spontaneous experiences that feel spiritual—which you could totally believe—then it kind of makes sense that you kind of wouldn’t adopt any particular teachers along the way. Yeah.

[02:08:11] Ross Blocher: Yeah, it does sound like she’s tiptoeing around naming names though.

[02:08:15] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah, it’s hard to say.

[02:08:17] Ross Blocher: For whatever reason. Well, alright.

[02:08:20] Carrie Poppy: That’s it!

[02:08:21] Ross Blocher: That’s it for our show.

[02:08:22] Carrie Poppy: Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.

[02:08:23] Ross Blocher: Our administrative manager is Ian Kremer.

[02:08:24] Carrie Poppy: You can support this and all our investigations by going to MaximumFun.org/join.

[02:08:30] Ross Blocher: Yes, please do. Thank you to everybody who supports us. You can also leave us a positive review. You can tell a friend about us, share an episode.

[02:08:38] Carrie Poppy: Tell Deborah King. If you want to! Why not?

[02:08:39] Ross Blocher: Yeah, tell her. And yeah, Deborah, if you want to come on the show, we’ll gladly talk to you and want to know more about those visuals. Where are they coming from?

[02:08:46] Carrie Poppy: Totally. Totally. (Chuckles.) Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Tell us about those slides.

[02:08:52] Ross Blocher: And remember!

[02:08:54] Clip:

Music: Gentle piano.

Deborah King: And I want to introduce you to your star ancestor. You have one. And we’ll go to the top of our heads, and we’ll feel our crown chakra right at the top of our heads—that big ball of golden white light. And we’ll just bring it down, down, down, and put it right in our heart. And just keep breathing that light in and go with me on a little voyage to Lake Titicaca… where our star ancestor is taking us right now. So, there we are in Peru, at the lake. You can take a look at it here if you’re having trouble visualizing it. And you no longer are restricted into a 3D body. Just know that your vibratory frequency has increased. So, you can drop with me right into this fifth dimensional city. Beautiful, beautiful city that it is—underwater. No problem. We’re perfectly happy down here. We feel great. We hear their music. We’re just at peace. It’s so ethereal.

This is the home of the Illuminated Ones, the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. It’s a fifth dimensional city—again, not visible. If we took diving equipment and went down there, we wouldn’t see it. And this is where they hid the Golden Disk of Maru. This is what happened when Lemurian Atlantis sunk. They hid the Golden Disk down there. Save it for the visitors from other realms. So—and this is where they stored the sacred scrolls. Again, they’re there. You just have to have a fifth dimensional access to visit.

[02:10:51] Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

(Music ends.)

[02:11:04] Promo:

Music: Exciting, upbeat music.

Ify Nwadiwe: I’m Ify Nwadiwe, the host of Maximum Film.

Alonso Duralde: I’m Alonso Duralde, also the host of Maximum Film.

Drea Clark: And I’m Drea Clark, yet another host of Maximum Film. Every week, we hosts huddle up.

Ify: Usually with an illustrious guest.

Alonso: And we talk about films.

Ify: We have film news!

Alonso: We have film quizzes!

Drea: We answer your film questions!

Ify: It’s like the maximum amount of film talk. That’s why we call it—

All: (In unison.) Maximum Film!

(Drea laughs.)

Speaker: Maximum Film, the movie podcast that’s not just a bunch of straight White guys. New episodes weekly, on MaximumFun.org.

(Music fades out.)

[02:11:41] Sound Effect: Cheerful ukulele chord.

[02:11:42] Speaker 1: Maximum Fun.

[02:11:43] Speaker 2: A worker-owned network.

[02:11:44] Speaker 3: Of artist owned shows.

[02:11:46] Speaker 4: Supported—

[02:11:47] Speaker 5: —directly—

[02:11:48] Speaker 6: —by you!

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