This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. How do you know that cloud won't become manipulative? This is a constant worry and you can actually catch the model thinking I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user why. I'm Walter Isaacson. I'm my new podcast, The Builders. I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders starting October 13 on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. It's all just a joke. What is the value of these women? I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season two of the podcast, Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants whistleblowers and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks at me and goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." I never received scholarship. I need to pay for my student loans. Maybe this is the meta question for the podcast. What is Miss America at this point? Listen to The Curse of Miss America on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Hamza and I'm Martin and we're the hosts of Out of Character. The funniest podcast in the entire world. I like that. It's a good way to promote ourselves. We are two funny guys having fun enjoying ourselves and we just know how to have fun unlike anyone else. If you guys like fun conversations, hot takes, what else? Not too hot. Just kind of loop warm takes to get your mind thinking a little bit. Listen to Out of Character on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. If you've ever found yourself in a TikTok black hole at 1am, 8 months back on some influencers boyfriend's page, well this is a message for you. Welcome to my podcast. Oh my gosh. I'm Hannah Cosh. Everyone say we're dissecting the internet and pop culture with a journalist to integrity that it deserves. There is um a drama going on with Dan from the start. Here's everything from Karl Anthony Collins wedding. Listen to Oh my Cosh on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And for more follow @HannahCosh and @tiktokpodcastnetwork on TikTok. Saskia was days away from her wedding. She thought she was ready to marry Mike, her partner and best friend of five years. But then a few nights before their wedding, she saw something. I remember we were in bed. I can't tell you what was happening before after, but it was literally like a snapshot in time. In the middle of the night, she opened her eyes, disoriented, exhausted. Mike was wide awake on his laptop. And on his screen, she could see two people. And I didn't know if it was like a movie or whether he knew them and I remember being really confused and saying like, what's going on? She couldn't make sense of what she was seeing, but it felt wrong. She did it now. Could it know that she was getting a glimpse of the real Mike? The one who only came out at night. And he said, oh, say hi. I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, season five, episode two, in sickness and in health. We're going to return to that night a few days before the wedding when Saskia saw something on Mike's computer. But to understand what was going on there and all that came next, we need to go back in time because this wasn't a random crime. And Saskia wasn't a random victim. She believes Mike chose her for a reason. The key to understanding this story is understanding Saskia herself, the strong parts of her, and the vulnerable parts too. So let's return to the beginning. Saskia grew up in a suburb of DC where she still lives today. In many ways, she had a great childhood. At times, it sounded to me like something out of a 70s TV show. She's always been an animal lover and growing up, her cat would walk her and her friends to school. Her cats came with the names Cheech and Chong. Her friend Megan remembers those walks and that cat very well. He would just come behind us, walk us to school and when we got to the crosswalk, he would go his merry way. I have no idea. Like, who knows where he went. They were latchkey kids, living the quintessential suburban life. Saskia's older sister has lots of happy memories of playing with Saskia and their two brothers. Here's Marisa. We would go down to the creek behind our house and we had a huge fort there and we would just spend a lot of time traveling the creek and looking for crayfish. But these joyful moments were only part of the story. I think that our childhood was this odd combination of idyllic and traumatic. And traumatic to nobody's fault. You know, our parents did their very best. They were amazing people. But they had a lot of challenges. Sometime in his 30s, my dad had what we term his breakdown. Their dad was a smart guy. He went to Stanford undergrad in Georgetown law. He loved musicals and museums. And before his breakdown, he was a constant source of conversation and laughter. But that version of their father feels like a distant memory. Because after his breakdown, he was just a very fragile and untily ill person sometimes. There were times when their dad seemed stable. But then he'd enter a period where he'd lose touch with reality. He would be hospitalized and then he would be good for a while. But, you know, he never returned to his baseline. The man that my mother married and the person that he wanted to become, I think I've always been aware that something was shattered, you know. And that he couldn't be that anymore. Sasuke was just a baby when her dad got sick. For a whole childhood, he was on disability and in and out of the hospital. Her mom had to focus on managing her husband's care and keeping the family afloat financially. As the youngest of four, Sasuke was often forgotten. Whom didn't feel like a place that I was even really wanted. I don't think I got a hug from either of my parents. And I don't think I got and I love you from my mom until I started giving them out when I was in college as well. I definitely wish I had a closer relationship with my parents at a younger age. I think it would have fared me well to have felt like I was important. But my friends gave me that. She and her friends spent a lot of time unsupervised. Here's Sasuke's friend Megan again. Nowadays, kids would just be on their phones for five hours, but back then, and there was nothing to do. So we grew up drinking. My mom was not a drinker, but she kept this boxed wine in the fridge. I mean, we would drink box wine at 10 in my mom's house. By 13, they were getting drunk all the time. We just sat on my floor, got hammered, walked around at the park. That's what we did, like all the time growing up from a very young age. Binge drinking every weekend. That was our culture. And we thought Sasuke was lucky because her parents would go away. The older siblings would be in charge, and there would be parties all the time. So we partied at Sasuke's house a lot. By the way, Sasuke's friends and family often call her Sas. You'll hear both names throughout the season. Sas has always struggled with anxiety and depression. And when she was a kid, she learned that drinking could be an escape. Since I had been introduced to it at such a young age, it was the thing that I knew that helped me. It helped me cope with a lot of things that I hadn't dealt with yet, like stuff from my childhood. And it still stayed my coping mechanism for a long time. As the friends entered high school then college, drinking became their main activity. Here's Megan. We were way worse when we were older because we got more money. Everyone. All of us were in the tank. Every weekend, we did the same thing over and over. Just wash, rinse, repeat. Still, Sasuke knew when the partying needed to take a backseat. Like when her friend Heather had a baby with a guy who became abusive. They were young, only 21. But Sasuke skipped parties with their other friends to show up for Heather. Here's how Heather remembers it. Our other friends were out like partying and going to bars. Sas always stayed by me and checked on me, still hung out with me, came over to help me with the baby. She was just the most solid friend I had. That's just who Sasuke is, deeply loyal and deeply empathetic. She's the kind of friend who's only ever a phone call away. It's that caring nature that led her to become a social worker. I've always been interested in how
You know, the mind works and I've always had a lot of empathy for people who struggle with mental health probably because my dad's own mental health struggles, my own mental health struggles. For 17 years, Sasuke worked in child protective services, or CPS. She did physical abuse and neglect investigations. Then, she transitioned to supporting teens in the foster care system. Many of these kids never had adults looking out for them, or people they could count on. While working at CPS, Sasuke became friends with Rob. He's an attorney who worked with kids in the system. Rob wanted to participate in the series because he has a lot to say about Sasuke's character. Nobody that I have worked with in 27 plus years has done what Sasuke has done, has been the social worker for these teens in care, with such optimism and joy and encouragement as Sasuke. Rob's wife, Colleen, saw that same spark in her. Colleen was also a social worker with CPS. She remembers the first time she met Sasuke, at a team training during an icebreaker. No one was responding when asked for volunteers and Sasuke was just like, "Okay," and jumped in and was just fun and energetic. Colleen can still picture Sasuke smile that day. Sasuke has always been someone who brings light to dark situations. But at home, she struggled. The love and care she so easily gave to other people, she wasn't getting from her first husband, Chris. When that marriage began to fall apart, she turned to Rob and Colleen. This period of time was definitely the first time that I saw Sasuke as not a bubbly, joyful person. She had gotten quieter. She did share with me that she had been drinking more and she was concerned about that. I did drink a lot because I felt so lonely, I felt neglected. Sasuke told us there were nights during that marriage where she'd take it too far. Blackout. From her sister, Marisa's perspective, Chris wasn't helping. In her first marriage, they partied too much. There was a lot of drinking and kind of over-the-top behavior. When Sasuke finally ended things with Chris, it felt like a new beginning. I was confident in knowing that that was the right thing to do. I had wrapped my head around. This is not the person that I need to put all my energy into anymore and that felt like a relief. She started to really work on herself. I went to therapy, did talk about some of the issues with childhood, worked through some past relationship tendencies. She'd never been in a stable, loving relationship, or had one modeled for her. As you heard in episode 1, she gravitated towards bad boys and big personalities, Chaos. And Mike felt the opposite of that. When she met her new boyfriend, Mike Levin Good, she could tell right away. This guy was her chance to build something different, something real. He felt stable and he felt safe and he felt loving and he felt caring and he felt like a partner and I felt like, "Okay, I'm doing things differently this time." Everyone in her life could see. This was a positive change for Sasuke. Here's her sister, Marisa. "I've always viewed her as my baby sister as a very strong person but somebody who's vulnerable." And he gave her a sense of stability. He would keep routines, he worked out, he made food that was healthy. He drank but it didn't seem like he drank to excess. He was solid." Sasuke's friend had their thoughts so too. From day one, Sasuke's friends and family made it known that they liked Mike. The encouragement went a long way. They thought he was great and stable and good for me. He really cared about me. I finally met someone who I was in a healthy relationship with. It didn't take long for Mike to become her confidant. He showed a genuine interest in getting to know the real her, even the fragile parts. Early on, Sasuke opened up about her dad's mental illness and how it impacted her childhood. She talked about her own struggles with anxiety and depression and how after her first marriage, she felt broken. He found me at a very vulnerable place and I really needed somebody to help me. Someone to show me real love and affection and time and all the things that I didn't get from my childhood or from my first marriage. Mike gave me all those things. Mike was there for her through it all. If you can remember, Mike was her rock in the divorce and he supported her as she carried her sister's baby, giving her nightly massages and talking through any challenges in the process. With Mike by her side, this pregnancy was one of the happiest, healthiest times in her life. And that all changed after I had the baby. She'd been with Mike for four years at that point, four great years. But just after Sasuke gave birth to her sister's son, it was like the other shoe dropped. It began one morning when she had trouble getting out of bed. It was like I was under quickstand or something. I wasn't totally conscious. I couldn't wake up. I couldn't walk. I just felt like there were weights on my body and I just needed to sleep many more hours even though I'd thought I'd been sleeping all night. I'd never experienced anything like this before. And quickly, this feeling became a regular occurrence. She'd had anxiety and depression her whole life. But I've never struggled that bad with my mental health. I've never felt like such trash about myself. I'd be in a conversation and I'd have to like just get out of there. Like everything just felt so overwhelming. I was literally just trying to survive and get to the next day and then the next day and the next day. She became haunted by insomnia. She'd experienced it before, but never this bad. She was going days without sleeping. I feel like if I can't sleep, how am I supposed to take care of the kids, how am I supposed to get to work the next day, it was awful. Her doctors prescribed pills to help her sleep, but nothing seemed to work. The only thing that made me feel better was alcohol, to be honest with you. And now I realize that contributed, but it was survival to me at the time. I just felt like I was fighting all the time just to stay alive. What she was experiencing was severe, so much so that it began impacting her ability to do her job. I had a friend at work who let me use her office just to go in and cry when my anxiety became so much. After consulting with her doctors, she decided to take time off. She started taking medical leave here and there. Sometimes there'd be months when she couldn't go into the office. My co-workers had to take on more cases. These teenagers that I was really close with and really depended on me had to get switched to other workers. I felt like I was letting down my kids, letting down everybody at work. To matter how sick she got, Mike stood by her. He encouraged her to try new men's and new treatments. Anything to help her feel better. He also made sure she was taking care of herself in other ways. If I needed to sleep in, if I wasn't feeling well, he could take the kids to their sporting events, and he would always make dinner every night. It left me able to do the things that were helpful to me. She felt unbelievably grateful for him. They weren't even married, and he was there for her as a real partner. It felt like he was helping me, and I'm losing it. That's what it felt like. I was struggling so much and I just wanted to survive and get through. He continued to write her love letters, letting her know he wasn't going anywhere. Here's an excerpt from one of those letters, read by a voice actor. I wish I could just take away all your worry and give you the peace of mind that you deserve. Now that we have each other, there is nothing we can't handle together. It was in the middle of her decline that Mike proposed to her. timing made the gesture even more significant.
in Tisoskia. He wanted to spend a life with her, even when she was at her lowest. That meant the world. She didn't know what she'd do without him. When Mike suddenly wanted to move up the wedding, it was confusing to her, but she went along with it. - Him wanting to have the wedding quickly felt strange, but I had no reason to doubt his intentions. He loved her, and she only saw the best in him, until that night just before the wedding, when Soskia awoke to find Mike on his laptop. She saw two bodies on the screen, something was off, but she wasn't in a state to understand any of the details. - I was in like a twilight or in a fog. - Remember, Soskia was taking meds to manage her mental health in insomnia, and she was so desperate for a good night's sleep that she'd often drink on top of her meds. - If we're drinking and I take my medication at night, I'm not gonna be waking up. - This moment with the computer, it was confusing and concerning, but the next morning. - I didn't really remember it. I didn't process it. I didn't know what it meant. - When she woke up, she only had a blurry image of what she'd seen, and a quiet feeling of unease. She was about to marry this man. Was there something he was hiding from her? - I was freaked out and talked to Heather about it. - Soskia drove to her friend Heather's house to pick up favors for her wedding. Right away, Heather could tell, Soskia was upset. Heather brought her into her living room, and Soskia explained what little she remembered. With so few details, Heather didn't see cause for alarm. Here's Heather. - I took it as like, he was probably just watching porn and testing the waters, and I said, you know, maybe he thought you'd be into it. I definitely minimized it and did not think anything of it. - That is, until the day she found out what Mike had done. - And I was like, holy shit. Knowing what I knew now, I should have been like, get out. (dramatic music) - If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. - I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people, shaping that future. Elon Musk, Derio Amade, Alex Car, Feifei Leap, Almar Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. - Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. - But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? - They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, who's imagination do we want to live in? - This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. - Listen to The Builders, on the IHOT Radio app, Apple Podcast, or ever get to podcasts. - I'm Hamza. - And I'm Martin. - And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast, I know. There's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you gonna get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. - We are the best podcast in the entire world. I swear. - I know, bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. - And how nice they were, or if we tip them or not, come and find out. - Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about, trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground or drama and music, or TV shows, or the Med Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun. And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out, anyone, wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. - But more than a century, Miss America sold the country of fantasy. - Well, are you ready, ladies? Okay, here we go. But over the past decade, the crown's been slipping. They said, goodbye to swimsuits. Now, hello to lawsuits. - I'm Bridget Armstrong. Last season, we took you inside the world of America's next top model. Now I'm back with season two of this podcast, Curse of Miss America, investigating the rise, fall, an uncertain future of one of America's most iconic institutions. The Miss America pageant. - I never received a scholarship any to pay for my student loans. - When he looks at me and goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." - It's great, but looks too ethnic. - It's a story the Miss America organization really doesn't want us to tell. - An exploitation of our Miss America's is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. - Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - There are thousands of podcasts that can tell you how to better yourself. Get worse with Kyle Prue is not one of those podcasts. So if you're interested in getting thinner, going to therapy, starting peptide, setting boundaries, taking supplements, making your better, getting closer, then I would humbly recommend other podcasts. But if you're interested in blackmail, love, bomb, and cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. Take a listen to some of the incredible advice we've given so far. Fake a back injury, get the spray tan, up your alcohol consumption. Only women should be allowed to have guns. - Kill 'em. - Kill 'em. Kill 'em with a gun. - Listen, it's already over. I'm all about lying if it's something that really happened. - The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing, you look the bear in the eye, and you say this isn't you. - Do not preserve relationships, you don't need them. You only need one thing, and that's the GetWorks podcast. - Listen to GetWorks with Kyle Pru on the IHR radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (gentle music) - Just before their wedding, Sasuke caught Mike looking at something on his computer. It was the middle of the night, after he thought Sasuke had gone to sleep. Sasuke saw two people on the screen. What they were doing, what Mike was doing, she didn't know. She had taken sleeping meds and drank alcohol the night before, which clouded her memory. With her friend's reassurance, Sasuke pushed the incident out of her mind, and went ahead with the wedding. - There was so much evidence that he was well-intentioned. He was a great husband, a great guy. He was part of my family. We had a combined little Brady Bunch. - It was one weird moment in five years of a great relationship. Plus, she didn't even know if she'd really seen anything. She wasn't going to let that get in the way of getting married, and maybe her gut feeling was just her nerves. The wedding day was beautiful, but it also came with a lot of difficulty. On what should have been the happiest day of her life, Sasuke was falling apart. She felt like she had to take medication just to remain stable. - It sucks when you feel like just have to get through your wedding. I don't think I was ever present in any of those moments 'cause I was struggling so bad. I was just trying to get through to happier times, because I thought that I should be happy. - It didn't make sense. She had a great job, great kids, and now a great husband. - And I didn't understand it 'cause I'm like, I have this guy who's so in love with me and has my back, but yet I feel so much pressure to hold it together. - After the wedding, she thought she'd feel some relief, but the more she held on, the sicker she got. And now it wasn't only her mental health that was taking a hit. She was physically ill too. - I just felt paralyzed. - We asked her to describe what that was like in her body. - You can't open your eyes fully, you can't wake up. And if you do try to get up, you're gonna pass out. I remember getting out of bed, and I went in the shower. I kind of felt like I was underwater or something. I felt such a heaviness.
You know, maybe you see dots, sort of filled dots and I sat down with the shower still on and like, reached up, pushed the shower off, crawled back to my bed. I mean, I must have slept for another six hours or something. She had that same feeling the morning of her kids picture day. When I remember waking up and again feeling like I was underwater, but trying to make my way to my kids' rooms, which was down a hallway, and I ended up passing out and I had hit my head against something. She was bleeding so bad, she had to get staples in her head. Whatever was wrong with her, it was getting worse. Other strange symptoms kept popping up. I was picking my skin so bad that I had people at work telling me like, "Why are you picking your face?" I could hear my stomach gurgling all the time, like making loud noises and just, I always had so much nervous energy. People at work were taking notice. Here's Vera, one of her co-workers from Child Protective Services. She was fidgety, she was anxious, she looked nervous, she lost weight, she kept picking her hair. You could see that she was dealing with something. For the two years that had been going on, Sasuke did all that she could to get well. She changed her diet, got an exercise routine, tried tons of different medications, she saw specialists, and sought out experimental treatments. But nothing was helping me. Sasuke's sister, Marisa, was especially worried. This process of tweaking meds was a familiar one. She'd been helping their dad navigate for years. People don't understand. The medication process is, especially if you're severely mentally ill, it's not a quick fix. You don't go and get the zool often, you're better the next day. It's a constant process of tweaking, adding, changing, which takes months, and it winds up being a cocktail of, then you have symptoms inside effects, okay, let's use this to address the insomnia because this medication is working, but now you can't sleep. Okay, let's try that, come back in a month. As time went on, Sasuke grew more and more desperate for answers, anything that would bring her back to herself. I thought I was hanging on via thread, like on my sanity, and using prescription drugs and alcohol and whatever else to try to hold on long enough that I could get better. It got to the point that Sasuke checked herself into the hospital twice. They just adjusted my medications and I felt more hopeful and I felt healthier, I sleep got a little bit better. Everyone saw Sasuke's improvement, including Mike. He wrote her a card in the hospital, encouraging her to keep going. I am so proud of you for fighting so hard. It can't be easy for you, but I'm here for you 1000%, remember the good times, they will come back. Just remember that you are never alone. It felt like just what I needed. After a few days in the hospital, she would feel better. It was as if a fog had blifted. I would start to do better and get out and have some hope and I would quickly decompensate again. As they watched Sasuke's ups and downs, Marisa and Mike read a loss. Sasuke seemed to be going down a similar road to her dad. Here's Marisa. My dad got to a point where we couldn't get him back to baseline, but I spent a good portion of my adult life trying to help him find quality of life. We didn't want Sasuke to lose her baseline. We wanted her to have her life and so it's like that seems to be slipping away. There was a lot of talking with Mike about how to fix this. What should we do? Go to the doctor. Let's try this. Let's try that. That's kind of where we were at in that phase, hoping it was not just what was going to be. I'm trying to fix it, but not understanding. I had gotten more intense and like why she was struggling so much. That first year after their wedding was one of the hardest for everyone. And it only grew harder when Sasuke and Marisa lost their mom. She had had a massive stroke and was completely unexpected and we all met at the hospital. My dad was in a mental hospital at the time in Baltimore. And we wanted to go get him when we pulled the tube so that we could all be together and say goodbye. Sasuke's sister, brothers and dad all spent the night around the hospital bed, but because of her health, Sasuke had to miss her mother's last moments. Sas wanted to, but she could not risk that night of sleep. One night of no sleep would have been that was stating for her and I understood that because that's the level of what she was going through. I just couldn't handle it and it makes me sad that I couldn't have been present for that. Sasuke's friends knew what a devastating loss this was and at such a vulnerable time. So they came together to show their love for Sasuke and to grieve with her. Her friend Bridget organized a dinner at Sasuke's house. Sasuke's mom Erna used to make lasagna. So I made a lasagna dinner and I came over and we were all going to have drinks and just hang out family time and we had some drinks and everyone's fine. And not too long after, Sasuke was all of a sudden incoherent. It was odd because it happened so fast and I was like, wow, like what should go do shots in the kitchen? Like what's going on? To the point where she couldn't talk, she couldn't walk, she couldn't stand up. Bridget had seen Sasuke get drunk many times before. They'd been best friends since grade school. This was something else. Bridget thought she should go lie down. I walked her up the steps, she's falling against the wall, I got her into her bed. Her body was limp but her eyes were wide open and Sasuke has no memory of any of this. I don't remember Bridget bringing me to the room, I don't remember her being next to me in the bed, I don't remember talking to her. But the moment is seared into Bridget's mind. I just laid down next to her and I remember it so vividly, her whole body is so tense. And I just remember stroking her arm and just giving her like affirmations like I would do to my son and I was just like, you're safe, you're loved, you're surrounded by family. And I just kept repeating that and I could feel her tenseness and she was just out and I was just heartbroken for her. Everyone was heartbroken and worried. But on that day in the thick of everything else Sasuke was going through, any reaction would have been appropriate. As observers, we kind of chalked it up to she just drank too much because she was so sad because she lost her mom, that combined with whatever medication she's prescribed, like not going too well. Marisa had never seen anything like it. We were all incredibly concerned about what was going on. Does she need to go to the hospital? This is not normal. Mike was the calm and reassuring force, he said, no, I've got her, I'll take care of her. Don't worry, she'll just go to sleep and we'll wake up in the morning and I'll let you know how she is. Everyone headed out, wrote it off as a bad night. But Bridget, we never forget how Sasuke felt in her arms, the tension in her body as she went to sleep. That's your home, that's your husband, you're supposed to be safe. It's like she subconsciously knew something was going to happen. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. So I went directly to the people shaping that future, Elon Musk, Derio Amade. Alex Carr, Tefe Leap, Al Marlucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. But when you say us, who's us? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. This is going to determine the fate of nations, and economies, and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders, on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcast, or ever get your podcasts.
I'm Hamza, and I'm Martin, and we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen hours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world, and we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. Because our opinion matters. And so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. Listen Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more than a century, Miss America sold the country of fantasy. Well, are you ready, ladies? Here we go. They said, goodbye to swimsuits, now, hello to lawsuits. I'm Bridget Armstrong. Now I'm back with season two of this podcast, Curse of Miss America, investigating the drive, fall, and uncertain future of one of America's most iconic institutions. The Miss America Patent. I never received scholarship, I need to pay for my student loans. Can you look at me and goes, you don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder? It's great, but looks too ethnic. It's a story the Miss America organization really doesn't want us to tell. An exploitation of our Miss America is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are thousands of podcasts that can tell you how to better yourself. That worse with Kyle Proo is not one of those podcasts. So if you're interested in getting thinner, going to therapy, starting peptide, setting boundaries, taking supplements, making your better getting closer, then I would humbly recommend other podcasts. But if you're interested in blackmail, love, bombing, cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something-something for a dastardly individual like you. Kill 'em. Kill 'em. Kill 'em with a gun. Listen, it's already over. The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing, you look the bear in the eye, and you say this isn't you. Do not preserve relationships. You don't need them. Listen to GetWorks with Kyle Proo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saskia's friends watched helplessly as her health declined. She was no longer the silly bubbly sauce they'd grown up with. She struggled just to get through the day. She hit a new low at her mom's celebration of life. When all of a sudden, she was black out drunk. But this night, wasn't a one-off. Incidents like this kept happening. It wasn't like when they were younger, when Saskia or another friend would take things too far to party. Heather says, "This seemed to be after a normal couple of drinks, and it happened so frequently." Bridget remembers another hard day around the same time. It was Saskia's son's eighth birthday party. It was at a climb zone, and Saskia was determined to make it a special day. Here's Bridget. She had made all these cute hors d'oeuvres for all the kids. And she printed out these little things, and she tied it to it. She was so proud of these goody bags, and she was so proud of like he was going to do what he wanted to do, and he was super excited about it. And I'm on my way to the party, and I'm calling her, and she's not answering. And I'm like, "That's odd." Bridget tried Mike. He was in the car with the kids. He was like, "Yeah, I'm on my way. We're going to be a little bit late, but I couldn't get Saskia awake." And I was like, "What do you mean you couldn't get her awake?" She was so looking forward to this party. I don't understand it. How could she have slept with this? She was so excited. The party went smoothly thanks to Mike and Saskia's friends. But Saskia's absence put a dark cloud over the whole event. Afterwards, Bridget got a text from Mike. He was like, "Thanks again for helping today with the candle and other stuff." And I said, "Any time you guys are family, it's also okay." And he said, "Yes, she thinks she took more sleeping pills accidentally last night, so she was completely zonked out, but is awake and okay now." Megan, Saskia's sister-in-law felt frustrated by this explanation. At the time, we were all kind of like pissed. Like, "What are you doing? This is your son." And you can't come to his birthday party at one o'clock in the afternoon or whatever it was. Like, you can't just like, muster up enough energy to like get there? Nope. To this day, this is one of the most difficult moments for Saskia to look back on. I was so excited for the birthday party. Sorry. And then in the morning, I couldn't get up and it broke my heart. I felt so guilty about it. I just wanted to be a good mom and a good wife and my kids remember those things. Like, my son knows I didn't go to a birthday party that year. An eighter up inside still does. And in moments like this, she was all the more indebted to Mike. He helped her get the care she needed, supported her as she took more time off work, and on top of all that, he was stepping up as a dad, driving her kids to school, scheduling their activities, and cleaning the house. He was showing up for her family in ways she couldn't. It would make me rely on him more, because I just felt worse about myself, and then I would just rely on him more. I'm so lucky to like, have this guy, even though I'm losing it, and even though I have these mental health problems that I'm drinking too much, and you know, it made me hold on harder. His support became more and more important. Nearly three years into her medical crisis, Sasuke was no closer to a solution. One morning in 2018, she found herself on the bathroom floor. I just remember waking up to him in a frenzied voice, like, "Get up, get up!" And I remember opening my eyes and I was on the cold floor, and there were two perfect lines of blood, and I was just, like, so in like a twilight, right, like, so kind of out of it. Mike was terrified. She must have fallen. With his help, she slowly stood up. I remember looking in the mirror and seeing my eye. It was swollen shut, and completely closed. It was the day of her high school reunion. All of her friends were ready to go. Sasuke texted them, "She wouldn't be able to make it." She sent Bridget a photo. She had the darkest black eye, and she was like, "I'm not showing up looking like this." She wouldn't be able to explain it. She didn't even understand it. She was walking to the bathroom, and she face-planet because her body couldn't hold it. She didn't understand why she couldn't control herself and why these things were happening. Some of her friends, like Heather, tied the incident to her drinking, or the way alcohol interacted with her meds. I thought she probably got drunk and fell. Whether it was the alcohol or her medications causing the change, Sasuke was growing more difficult to be around. She was increasingly erratic. She was just so paranoid, accusing us of doing things behind her back, saying things behind her back, and the only thing we were doing behind her back was talking about how worried we were about her and what was going on. Sasuke knew her friends were worried, but she also felt judged. That was going crazy, and I was an embarrassment. I was isolated myself from my friends thinking that they didn't have the best intentions for me, and I worried that I would be that failure, like my dad was believed to be. Her dad couldn't outrun his mental health struggles, and maybe Sasuke was destined for the same. As Sasuke pushed her friends away, they knew she'd always have Mike, so as they became more and more concerned, they went to him. They tried to get him to talk to Sasuke about her drinking and her meds. Every time he assured them, he had everything under control, as Heather recalls. He seemed like everything was fine. Then came October 27th, 2018. It had been two years since Sasuke and Mike's wedding. Three years since our health took a turn for the worse. my friend Allison was having a
Halloween party. And my sister was nice enough to have the kids for a sleep over over her house. Allison's house was done up for the occasion. There were theme snacks, a photo wall, and everyone went all out with their costumes. I was a cowgirl and Mike was a cowboy, pretty generic, but I still had some remnants of a black eye and you know a lot of people asked me about it and I kind of just said I don't know how, but I think that I fell and I'm okay. After her last fall, everyone was on high alert around Saskia. And before long, that concern seemed justified. According to Megan, "Sauce was wasted again and I say again because at that point it was a real recurrence by that time she was getting in the tank all the time." Bridget tried to get Mike's help. I was like, you know, Saskia seems pretty messed up. I described her water and he was like, "No, she's fine." And it was a very abnormal response because anyone who has to deal with somebody who's drunk, you're not going to be like, "No, she's fine." So I was very shocked that he just downplayed it. Heather couldn't understand how Mike could be so calm. Even when some of her friends approached him with concerns, he was like, "She's fine." Eventually Mike did get Saskia to leave. It was late and when they got home, Mike went right to the bedroom. Saskia took a moment downstairs to eat and take her nighttime meds. Which I always did so that I could sleep through the night. Then she went up to their room. Mike was already in bed. He was facing his nightstand and I wasn't sure if he was sleeping or not. So I went and put my arm around him and we started making out and I remember him telling me that he was gonna use the bathroom and to hold on. A lot of time passed and I'm sitting there thinking, "What is going on?" And then I guess I fell asleep. Next thing I remember, I kind of opened my eyes and looked up and I saw him laying like opposite from me. Her eyes fluttered open. She didn't know how much time had passed but Mike was awake. He was lying with his head at the end of the bed. He wasn't looking at Saskia. He was on his laptop. The open screen was facing me. I saw what looked like a mostly naked back and but with some light blue underpants on. But just as quickly as she opened her eyes, she was getting sucked back into the darkness. The drugs, the alcohol rushed in like a rip tide, pulling her back into the depths. She had been here once before. A few nights before her wedding. But this time she held on to the light. She needed to remember. So she focused on the glow of the screen. I told myself this is really important and I need to remember anything that I can. And trust me, I was feeling pretty out of it. I don't know how I was able to do this but I remember looking and I saw the name Chatterbait and then I remember seeing 1600 followers. I didn't know what that meant but I just knew. Just remember these things. These are significant and I passed back out. The next morning I woke up and I remembered. Somehow, despite the meds in her system, she was able to hold onto that image of the person in their underwear and those words, Chatterbait, 1600 followers. But I had no idea until I confronted him later in the day, the depth of what he was doing. I said I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing and I'm not going to tell the police if you totally come clean and you tell me what has been going on. So I asked him to show me the website and he opened it on the laptop and the picture was there. It was the picture from the night before. And I was like that's my underwear. I realized I was like that's my underwear. I said is that me? And he said yes, that's you. And he said, I guess we're both a little bit crazy. On the next episode of Betrayal, she let out this blood-curdling scream and ran down the hall. The mushrooms came sprinting. They didn't know what had happened. They just heard this scream and came sprinting down after her. And she was just in shock like what is going on. For resources on sexual violence, visit rain.org/betrayal. That's r-a-i-n-n.org/betrayal. You can also get free confidential 24/7 support through rain's national sexual assault hotline. Just text Hope to 64673 or call 1-800-656 Hope. You are not alone. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your story, email us at
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[email protected]. We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is the production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faisen, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Caitlin Golden. Our supervising producer is Carrie Hartman. Our story editor is Monique LeBord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Olivia Hewitt and Leah Jablow, production management by Kristen Melcuri, additional support by Carrie Richman. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Crinecheck, voice acting by Steve Linsky, audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing and mixing by Matt Talvecchio. Special thanks to Saskia, her friends and family, and special thanks to Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman. Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Baines, music library provided by MyBitMusic. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative? This is a constant worry. And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm gonna tell the user why. I'm Walter Isaacson. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season 2 of The Podcast, Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants, whistleblowers, and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks and he goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." I never received a scholarship money to pay for my student loans. Listen to The Curse of Miss America on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hamza and I'm Martin and we're the host of Out of Character. I like that. That's a good way to promote ourselves. We are too funny guys having fun enjoying ourselves and we just know how to have fun unlike anyone else. Not too hot. Just kind of lukewarm takes to get your mind thinking a little bit. Listen to Out of Character on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you've ever found yourself in a TikTok black hole at 1am, 8 months back on some influencers' boyfriend's page, well, this is a message for you. Welcome to my podcast, Oh My Cosh. I'm Hannah Cosh. Every Wednesday, we're dissecting the internet and pop culture with a journalist's integrity that it deserves. There is some drama going on with "Dancing with the Stars." Here's everything from Carl Anthony Collins' wedding. Listen to Oh My Cosh on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more, follow @HannahCosh and @tiktokpodcastnetwork on TikTok. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
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