May 11, 2023 • 28 mins
When a nurse named Tiffany Dover fainted on camera after getting a Covid vaccine, anti-vaxxers assumed the worst. Shortly after, the internet was awash in conspiracy theories that she was dead. NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny set out to prove that Tiffany Dover was alive. This turned out to be more difficult than she could have imagined.
You can read Brandy Zadrozny’s story, “Conspiracy theorists made Tiffany Dover into an anti-vaccine icon,” here: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/tiffany-dover-conspiracy-theorists-silence-rcna69401
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Brandy Seedrasni, and I wrote Conspiracy theorists made Tiffany
Dover into an anti vaccine icon. She's finally ready to
talk about it for NBC News, and it's the story
of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I went to Basic Training in Fort Knox, Kentucky to
serve my country. My method of serving was to get
the Army to pay for me to do three days
at boot camp and let me be the first civilian
to ever fire a tank so I could write about
it in my book Man Made. We all have different
ways of giving back. I was so nervous the night
before Basic training that I couldn't fall asleep until two hundred,
(00:55):
which was a real problem because I had to wake
up at four forty five. When I got there, a
barber immediately shaved my head, and then these two incredibly
hostile sergeants shoved a uniform in my hands and started
screaming me for putting it on too slowly. It should
not be taking this long to put boots on. They
screamed at me for not standing attention, for using sir
(01:18):
when I should have used drill sergeant, for my cap
being at a jaunty angle that looked totally straight to me.
I was stressed, sweating more than I'd ever in my life,
and it wasn't because it was ninety degrees out. Then
they forced me to eat this cold, ready to eat
chicken fajida at seven hundred, and they led me outside
(01:38):
finally to where they keep the tanks, and I stood
at attention and tried to listen to this lecture on tanking,
but instead I found that, to my great surprise, I
was sitting against a tree trunk, which was weird because
I didn't remember anyone ordering me to sit against a
tree trunk. I'd fainted for the first time of my
life at thirty eight years old. They said it was
(02:01):
because I locked my knees, but I blame the cold
fahedas and maybe the stress of pretending to be in
the army. The sergeant said that I had to fly home,
canceling my three days of boot camp, but I somehow
convinced them to let me stay and fire that tank.
I was really lucky, because when this woman in Tennessee fainted,
(02:23):
the consequences were far far worse.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Writing is hard. Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to feed you all stand. So
it turns on a Mike made the twiddles enop because
a journalist friend has got in that juble job. Out
of tories, single story, just listen to smart people speak.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Film with Information is the story of.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Tiffany Dover is a nurse in Tennessee who was one
of the very first in the nation to get a
COVID vaccine. When she got her shot in front of
local TV reporters, she fainted. Conspiracy theorists were convinced she died.
Brandy's a Drosny, a reporter at NBC, wrote articles, made
a podcast, and did on air reports trying to find
(03:27):
out what really happened to Tiffany Dover. Brandy, thank you
for coming on the show, and I think thank you
for telling me about this story, although maybe I would
have been better off never knowing about it. Same you
did this incredible podcast and on air reporting and articles
(03:48):
about Tiffany Dover. Who is she and what was her life?
Pre pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Tiffany Dover was a thirty one year old nurse manager
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was sort of beloved by her
team and she was just doing a really good job
she was a mom of two, She was a doting wife,
just a normal person.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And she is like a pretty blonde, blue eyed woman
who looks like all of the women like CNN covers
when there's a crime.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yes, she is very much like that. She is your
sort of prototypical missing white woman.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right. It almost seems fake how much she fits this stereotype.
Like she loves horses. There's pictures of her with horses
all over social media.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think that part of why her
story grabbed the attention of so many people was actually
because of the way she looked. She was beautiful, She
was all over social media. She posted about her whole life,
so you got to really see her from her twenties
until she became a mother, and like throughout her life,
you really feel like you knew her. She documented every
(04:56):
event of her life, including.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Her nursing work and COVID hits. Her job must get
insanely stressful.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Right, Yeah, the job stank. Honestly, the nurses really felt
like they were fighting this battle that the rest of
the hospital was just absolutely unaware of. You know, once
you got through those double doors, they said, it was
a whole different world because even people from the other
areas of the hospital. They didn't go in this place.
It really was an isolated, just place of constant death
(05:26):
and sadness and fear, and it's just it really it
was really hard.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And then finally the vaccines came out. I remember getting
my vaccine and waiting in line, and I just I
started crying because I thought, Oh, some small group of
experts have saved us while I sat in like a
room writing articles about zoom shirts, and I was just
really grateful and kind of in awe. I guess that
(05:53):
was in April or so. But back in December, the
first people to get the shots were healthcare workers. So
what happened on December seventeenth, twenty twenty at this hospital
in Chattanooga.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Tiffany Dover is told that they are going to do
the vaccine rollout and they're giving it to the COVID
unit first, and would she like to be on video
for the PR Department. Would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
She says sure, because they know it's going to be
a challenge to convince some people to get the vaccine,
so they want to prove that it's safe. I assume
that's why they're doing this. Lots of hospitals are doing
this right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Right. The hospital had the fourth thought to say, you
know what, we are in an area where there is
a lot of vaccine hesitancy. The pr staff thought this
would be a great opportunity to highlight the safety of
the vaccine and how frontline workers were all lining up
and very excited to have it.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Okay, so they're live streaming this momentous event and Tiffany
is going to be getting the shot on live stream.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, so she got the vaccine. Everybody clapped, and then
she sat down and that was really the end of it.
But afterwards, a couple of people got back up, an administrator,
a doctor, and they talked about what the vaccine meant
to them. And then you heard someone off camera say,
do we want to get anybody else to talk? Maybe
a nurse, And that was the invitation for Tiffany Dover
(07:17):
to get up and talk about the vaccine. She got up,
she started talking about how this vaccine was light at
the end of the tunnel, and then you could just
see it in her eyes. She sort of got a
vacant look and she touches her forehead and she just says,
I'm sorry and collapses into the arms of a doctor
(07:38):
and an administrator behind her, and she dies. That's right,
thank you for having me. No, she faints, which happens
when people get vaccines. Sometimes Tiffany has this overactive vasovagal response,
so when she experiences pain, sometimes she just passes out.
(07:58):
It's something that our family knows about her. It's sort
of common.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It is not common. I've never heard of anyone having this.
And why if you had this thing where you faint
all the time at slight pain, why would you go
up there to be on camera when you get a shot.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So usually if she feels it coming on, she can
sit down and she'll be fine. But you know, when
you like you tell yourself something in your mind, You're like,
come on, body, do this thing.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
As you get older, it happens more and more. I
know we won't get into that details here.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
But trust me, but I've never gotten so many that
happens to me all the time. We have a lot
of fainters in this country.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So there's always that kid in your high school, right
who was.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Just fanning all the time though in gym class.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Have you ever fainnd it?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, I fainted on the subway once in New York.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Were you freaked out? I mean, that's a bad place
to faint.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
No, No, it's a great place to faint. I feel
like everybody sort of comes together to help.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
This is not what the Kitty Genevezi story tells us,
But I like that your story tells us that New
Yorkers will rally together and help.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think that they do.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, So what happens after Tiffany fans.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Tiffany faints, she gets back up, she gives another interview
to the local reporter and says, I'm fine. I faint
a lot. I'm still glad I got the vaccine. I'm
gonna go back to my job now. And she says
to one of our nurses, She's like, ugh, I just fainted,
and he said, yeah, I know, I saw you. It's
(09:25):
on Facebook live stream. And that's when she first realized
that this was going to embarrass her, at least locally.
She thought, you know, her nurse told her, you know,
don't worry about it. It's just a local broadcast. It
won't matter. Like It's going to be fine. And it's
being replayed thousands and thousands of times because people were
waiting for something like this. People in the spaces that
(09:48):
I sit in as a reporter, the anti vax spaces,
the conspiracy theory spaces, they were watching all of these
live streams all around the country and when they saw
Tiffany Feint, they shared it within their group. And the
underlying reason that they were sharing is, look at this,
it's obviously dangerous.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And this is where that night on like Fox or
info Wars or like who's putting this out?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So within the first night it was on info Wars.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Info Wars is the guy who thinks that water makes
the frogs gay? Right, what's his name, Alex Jones? Alex Jones, thanks?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
So, uh, she's like headline news on this info Wars
program that night. But it's also like it was on Russia.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Today where Tucker Carson will soon be hired for trillions
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, I won't believe it. The far right party in
Austria was sharing it. It was literally everywhere. It was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Okay, so it's everywhere and they're not saying she's dead yet.
How does that come about?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Right? So at first they're just showing the video literally
and it's like all over YouTube, and it's just nurse faints,
but they don't have that second part of the live
stream where she says I'm fine, everything's okay now, And
so over the next couple of days, that's when you
saw it morph into she actually died. These fake things
are going around and within a week it's just gone bananas,
(11:12):
like everybody's convinced she's dead, and the hospital decides, crap,
we have to do something about this.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Wait, but she does she seem dead? Is she on
social media or talking to reporters.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
She's not because the hospital tells her this is gone
to croatia.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I like that as a phrase when rumors start to fly,
this has gone to croatia. I know, I mean as
big as it gets.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's everywhere, like this rumor is flying so fast that
you are hurt or dead and it's going crazy. Don't
say anything. Just let us take care of it. People
were calling constantly saying, my dad's in there. Can I
talk to the manager? This is Tiffany's husband, Can I
talk to Tiffany? Like they were just trying all these
(11:56):
ways to talk to her. It was really disrupting their work.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
We're the main people pushing this. Tiffany is dead rumor.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
You have your anti vaxxers are the easiest ones to
identify people who are sort of looking for evidence that
the vaccine is going to cause harm, and Tiffany was
their evidence. And that's people like the woman named Robin Openshaw.
She goes by Green Smoothie Girl, and she lived in
Utah for a long time until COVID and then she
had to escape. As she puts it, to Florida. She
(12:25):
believes that COVID is a lie and that the beach
will heal you. But she was probably the most dedicated
Tiffany Truther. She offered one hundred thousand dollars bounty to
anyone who could bring her Tiffany Dover because she was
so convinced that Tiffany was dead.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And who were the other people who were the main
Tiffany is dead conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Again, you had the anti vaxxers, but then the other
section was sort of your old school conspiracy theorists, and
I think of them was like the nine to eleven truthers,
and COVID was sort of like Christmas, all of their
conspiracy theories coming together, Like I can tell you this
guy allegedly Dave he's gone sort of wild during COVID.
(13:08):
He also drinks his own urine for health. You sound
judge about that, You know what, it's the least problematic
thing he does. I think it's fine, Like whatever, whatever
does it for you. It was interesting for me to
learn sort of the backstory of Brian Wilkins. Brian is
this guy from Iowa. He has a website called the
(13:31):
COVID Blog. He you know, wanted to be a radio DJ.
He had a girlfriend and he lost that girlfriend, his
parents died, He sort of lost everything to conspiracy theories
and conspiracy theories he literally told me was the one
thing in his life that was worthwhile. It was the
(13:52):
meaning for his life was to get people not to
take the vaccine.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It it gives you purpose. It's a religion. We all
search for that, and I can understand. And these people
are are pretty good reporters. They're not stupid. They find
really good facts. They just come to kind of weird
on conclusion.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, lots.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Of people think Tiffany's dead and she's being hidden by
all the forces of evil, and the hospital is just
flooded with phone calls, like from Croatia. So how do
they deal with that?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Really poorly, They have this idea to not let Tiffany
talk because if she spoke again and made a mistake,
it would just ruin the hospital. And so here's what
they came up with. Their idea was to stand on
a staircase. There were about twenty people, nursing staff and administrators,
(14:45):
and they would all hold signs that said we support Tiffany.
With the day's date. Tiffany would stand right at the
foot of the stairs, right in the front, and she
would say nothing. And because they thought most of them
thought they were just taking a photo, people were just
kind of standing there awkwardly. It's very poorly lit. Everyone's
(15:06):
wearing a mask, so you can't really see anything. Tiffany
had forgotten her white coat that day, which she's required
to wear, so one of her bosses gave her somebody
else's vest and it didn't fit. It was too big.
And then this was the biggest piece of evidence. Her
hair in this video was parted in the middle, and
she for the other video wore her hair parted on
(15:27):
the side. People do change their parts, even though the
truthers were like a woman would never change her part,
like it absolutely happens. So for all of these reasons.
When this twenty one second video was put out on
the hospital's Facebook page, they meant it to be a
proof of life. But for Truthers, this was just a
(15:48):
bonanza of new footage to prove that she died. This
clearly isn't the same girl. It's a body double.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Do they have a theory of who this body double is?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
They do? They do? And what's really sad here is
because you know, not only did this response from the
hospital make things worse for Tiffany, but it brought in
another victim, and her name was Amber Honey. And they
found Amber Hony by looking through Tiffany's photos on her
Facebook page.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Why is everyone named like Brandy, Tiffany Amber? This feels
like I'm doing a story on nineteen eighty's pornography.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Okay, a that's rude, but be like, come to the South.
We have My sister's names are Tanya and Christy and Brandy.
Oh yes, of course, what you need to get out
of your elite media bubble.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Friend, I guess so wow.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Anyway, so yes, Amber, which is a perfectly fine name
to have. Totally, Amber was picked out as the body double,
and so it made her life terrible because all of
these truthers started flooding her Facebook page and they doxed her,
and they called her and her whole family and they're like,
why are you standing in for Tiffany? It dover?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
How could you Okay, So this must mess up Amber's
life now that people think she's part of the evil conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, she's the bad guy. It does mess up her life.
She's getting all these death threats. People are saying, you know,
poor Tiffany, rip Tiffany, Amber is the bad guy. So
it was really bad. But Amber and Tiffany are friends,
and Amber said, I'm not going to say anything until
you want to say something. It's your story to tell.
But of course it wasn't. She wasn't allowed to because
(17:30):
the hospital still wouldn't let her speak even after this
whole debacle.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
You know, I'm going to quickly defend the hospital's decision
here because I've written columns where I got a lot
of angry attention and I had some very good advice,
which was don't feed the trolls. So I don't think
that was so crazy of the hospital.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, this is sort of prevailing Internet wisdom. And sometimes
it's right. But in an instance like this, when you
put this information out into the world and then something
goes wrong, you have kind of a responsibility to answer
the questions that are there, because, honestly, we focus a
lot on the truthers, but there were a lot of
well meaning people who had a fine question. This person
(18:11):
used to post on social media all the time. She
got up and spoke for the vaccine. She can't just disappear. Now,
that's weird. Don't be weird.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
When we come back, we'll follow Brandy as she tries
to prove that in a live person is alive. Turns
out it's not as easy as it sounds. But first,
our advertisers have an herbal remedy that will erase the
chip Bill Gates put into your bloodstream. So while these
(18:42):
conspiracy theorists are looking for Tiffany, you started looking for
her too. Like you, I would have called the hospital first.
What did they tell you when you called them looking
for Tiffany?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
It was very boilerplate. We've said she's alive. Here's the
post we made on our website. Goodbye. I had to
go to Chattanooga and basically say I'm here, I'm outside
your hospital, Can someone from PR please speak to me?
They really wouldn't talk to me at all. Their explanation
was that Tiff didn't want to talk about any of this.
She wanted to do her job as a nurse manager
(19:13):
and let this stuff pass by, let it finish its course. Right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Don't you feel like another stalker like the rest of
these conspiracy theorist people like I.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Have a business card? Yeah, of course, But you know,
half of reporting is bothering people who absolutely don't want
to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And this is a person whose whole problem is people
bothering her because they want to find out the truth.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
All I needed was her to say that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Oh, so you think maybe she does want to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I thought so yeah, And so I went to her
house and stood outside her house for long stretches of
time like a weirdo, and I so I would run
into family members and I ran into them and I said,
does she want me to go away? If she does,
please let me know. And they told me no, she
wants to talk to you. She's just got a few
(20:02):
things that she needs to do. First. She needs to
talk to a lawyer or someone said something about she
has an nda.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So you do this entire podcast and you never get
to talk to Tiffany.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah. It was totally unsatisfying and pretty sad actually, because
at the end of it, I do think, honestly, I
made things worse. I think that a lot of people
said at the end of episode five, see even an
NBC News reporter can't find a nurse in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
like she's clearly dead.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
How setting was that?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It was really upsetting. It was like I was very sad,
Like I cried a lot. Oh no, yeah, that really sucked.
But then about a year later, I got a text
from her, just totally out of the blue.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Why does she want to talk to you now after
all this time?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You know? She told me, Actually she said that she
had been thinking about it for a while, she had
wanted to talk to me. Then she quit her job
at the hospital, so she finally could talk to me.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh so the hospital wasn't very upfront with you, and
they implied that Tiffany didn't want to talk.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh they lied, like a uh yeah, see this this
plays into the conspiracy theorists that hospitals are liars. I mean,
it's definitely bad pr but yeah, they did lie. They lied.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That's horrible. Did she quit because of this?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
She quit because of what was happening at the hospital. Yeah,
there was a brief moment where she wanted to post
on her Instagram just photos from her vacation, and that's
all she did. But a lot of people said that
her ski helmet was evidence that it wasn't her, that
it was really amber. When she got back, she got
in trouble. She got a letter basically saying we recommend
(21:43):
that you delete your account and if you keep posting
on social media, then you could be terminated.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Right, She didn't feel like they're being supportive as they
should have, like they were part of this thing, this
original plan of giving a shot to the fainting girl.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, it's true. It was really demoralizing for her to
feel like she had done this great job. But inside
her own hospital, she just felt like she was in
trouble a lot, and like all this was her fault
that she had fainted.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Okay, so if you finally go see her, what's it
like to see her in person? Is she beautiful?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
She's so pretty? She really is. That's the thing I mean.
So I was driving with my producer from Atlanta to
Chattanooga on the day that we're meeting her, and I
had this like flash of fear, like what if she's awful,
or like what if she's you know, just not the
person that I've built up in my.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Mind projected so much onto her. You've never talked to her,
You've been thinking about her for years and looking at
pictures of her in social media. Oh yeah, of course,
you don't meet your.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Heroes one hundred percent. So I was like, oh, she
could be awful. Yeah, I was really afraid. But the
second that I met her at this restaurant, we met
for a drink, which turned into dinner.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's a good date when a drink turns into dinner.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I know. It went really well, and then we decided
the next day. I said, can I please come over
to your house and make this podcast? And she said, yeah,
let's do it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When you get to talk to her, what does she
say about how these conspiracy theorists affected her life?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
She talked about, how does it feel when people come
to your house with GoPros on their head and or
walking around your yard while you're a babysitting your three
month old nephew, and you know how does it feel
when a guy who calls himself the vaccine police and
makes videos with blowtorches and big guns like comes to
your front door? Scary awful?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Are you thinking that if you get some facts like
you can prove she's alive, you're going to change the
conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Minds one hundred percent? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
That makes you crazier than them, I know, but I.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Thought if I got her, I could change the mind
of one conspiracy theorist. And then I thought it would
be like a feel good into the podcast. It will
surprise you, I'm sure shock you even to know that.
A lot of the people commented on the projects that
we did, saying that it was a lie, it was
a deep fake, she was ai, it was a body double,
(24:04):
et cetera, et cetera. So what she did next was
this guy who has his own sort of anti vax
podcast invited her on and.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
She said, yes, Wait, did she convince the guy that
she's alive?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
She did. No.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Would this proves your theory that you can change these
people's minds?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I mean, yeah, a conspiracy theorists that thought she was
dead or injured. He said, you have convinced me. I
do not think you're dead. I do not think you're injured.
And he told his audience, and then in his comments
people were like, you've convinced me.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Okay, did you get your hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, I have to be very clear about this because
Robin OpenShot to her audience does say this all the time,
like she was trying to get a hundred thousand dollars,
Like I wasn't trying to like win her hundred thousand dollars.
But no, she did not give it to me. And
she still very much thinks that Tiffany's dead.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Wait, what does she need to give up the one
hundred grand?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So I emailed her and I said, hey, let's get
back together. I have that zoom you were looking for. Yeah,
you know, let's do this. And she said, oh no,
that's not enough. She said, Now I want to go
to Tennessee to her home, and I want to interview
her on camera. I want all of her medical records,
and she must show a willingness to tell the truth
(25:19):
about what happened to her. That's a quote, so like,
clearly nothing would be acceptable.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Oh so she's starting to sound like she's not a
true conspiracy believer and she's just a huckster.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I mean, who knows.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Sounds like she just wants ratings for her little YouTube show.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Maybe I don't know. She seemed to really care about
Tiffany as a person.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Has this story changed the way you think about dealing
with conspiracy theorists?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It kind of made me more empathetic with conspiracy theorists.
I think that a lot of our coverage of conspiracy
theories and conspiratorial communities is sort of like, oh, look
at these crazy people, and sometimes like, that's kind of true,
But I always give people the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You're a giver. Mmm, that's just me, Brandy. You wrote
conspirac theorists made Tiffany Dover into an anti vaccine icon.
She's finally ready to talk about it for NBC News.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Thank you, Joel, this was so fun.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Trying to change people's minds with facts is a horrible
misunderstanding of what it is to be human. It's like
you're assuming that our brains are logic computers. They are
not at all. We don't even have access to most
of what our brains are doing. Most of my brain,
for instance, is definitely not focused on reading these words
right now. I'm guessing it's busy thinking about either food
(26:44):
or sex, maybe a weird combination of both. I have
no idea. The best we can do is control the
water we're swimming in by listening to experts from trusted institutions,
consuming information from large organizations where a lot of people
are vetting it, and most importantly of all, listening to
this podcast, You, my friend, are doing God's work. Next
(27:09):
week we'll talk to Virginia Heffernan about how she went
to Taiwan and fell in love with computer chips.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Maybe he'll take a napper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mola Bard,
and Nishavenka. It was edited by Lydia jeden Kopp. Our
engineer is Amanda kai Wang and our executive producer is
Catherin Cherradoh. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Colton.
A special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(27:49):
listen on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is
Story of the Week. Do you still talk to Tiffany
as your.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Relationship over I do. Do you talk to a lot
of your former subjects?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Almost none. There's one guy my last book who calls
me every few months like he's my grandfather. But other
than that, I really don't much. I do, you're much
more likable. No, yeah, I just like, you're not going
to talk to me after this?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Clearly No, We're now best friends. I'm going to send
you a Christmas card.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Brandy Seedrasni, and I wrote Conspiracy theorists made Tiffany
Dover into an anti vaccine icon. She's finally ready to
talk about it for NBC News, and it's the story
of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I went to Basic Training in Fort Knox, Kentucky to
serve my country. My method of serving was to get
the Army to pay for me to do three days
at boot camp and let me be the first civilian
to ever fire a tank so I could write about
it in my book Man Made. We all have different
ways of giving back. I was so nervous the night
before Basic training that I couldn't fall asleep until two hundred,
(00:55):
which was a real problem because I had to wake
up at four forty five. When I got there, a
barber immediately shaved my head, and then these two incredibly
hostile sergeants shoved a uniform in my hands and started
screaming me for putting it on too slowly. It should
not be taking this long to put boots on. They
screamed at me for not standing attention, for using sir
(01:18):
when I should have used drill sergeant, for my cap
being at a jaunty angle that looked totally straight to me.
I was stressed, sweating more than I'd ever in my life,
and it wasn't because it was ninety degrees out. Then
they forced me to eat this cold, ready to eat
chicken fajida at seven hundred, and they led me outside
(01:38):
finally to where they keep the tanks, and I stood
at attention and tried to listen to this lecture on tanking,
but instead I found that, to my great surprise, I
was sitting against a tree trunk, which was weird because
I didn't remember anyone ordering me to sit against a
tree trunk. I'd fainted for the first time of my
life at thirty eight years old. They said it was
(02:01):
because I locked my knees, but I blame the cold
fahedas and maybe the stress of pretending to be in
the army. The sergeant said that I had to fly home,
canceling my three days of boot camp, but I somehow
convinced them to let me stay and fire that tank.
I was really lucky, because when this woman in Tennessee fainted,
(02:23):
the consequences were far far worse.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Writing is hard. Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to feed you all stand. So
it turns on a Mike made the twiddles enop because
a journalist friend has got in that juble job. Out
of tories, single story, just listen to smart people speak.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Film with Information is the story of.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Tiffany Dover is a nurse in Tennessee who was one
of the very first in the nation to get a
COVID vaccine. When she got her shot in front of
local TV reporters, she fainted. Conspiracy theorists were convinced she died.
Brandy's a Drosny, a reporter at NBC, wrote articles, made
a podcast, and did on air reports trying to find
(03:27):
out what really happened to Tiffany Dover. Brandy, thank you
for coming on the show, and I think thank you
for telling me about this story, although maybe I would
have been better off never knowing about it. Same you
did this incredible podcast and on air reporting and articles
(03:48):
about Tiffany Dover. Who is she and what was her life?
Pre pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Tiffany Dover was a thirty one year old nurse manager
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was sort of beloved by her
team and she was just doing a really good job
she was a mom of two, She was a doting wife,
just a normal person.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And she is like a pretty blonde, blue eyed woman
who looks like all of the women like CNN covers
when there's a crime.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yes, she is very much like that. She is your
sort of prototypical missing white woman.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right. It almost seems fake how much she fits this stereotype.
Like she loves horses. There's pictures of her with horses
all over social media.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think that part of why her
story grabbed the attention of so many people was actually
because of the way she looked. She was beautiful, She
was all over social media. She posted about her whole life,
so you got to really see her from her twenties
until she became a mother, and like throughout her life,
you really feel like you knew her. She documented every
(04:56):
event of her life, including.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Her nursing work and COVID hits. Her job must get
insanely stressful.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Right, Yeah, the job stank. Honestly, the nurses really felt
like they were fighting this battle that the rest of
the hospital was just absolutely unaware of. You know, once
you got through those double doors, they said, it was
a whole different world because even people from the other
areas of the hospital. They didn't go in this place.
It really was an isolated, just place of constant death
(05:26):
and sadness and fear, and it's just it really it
was really hard.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And then finally the vaccines came out. I remember getting
my vaccine and waiting in line, and I just I
started crying because I thought, Oh, some small group of
experts have saved us while I sat in like a
room writing articles about zoom shirts, and I was just
really grateful and kind of in awe. I guess that
(05:53):
was in April or so. But back in December, the
first people to get the shots were healthcare workers. So
what happened on December seventeenth, twenty twenty at this hospital
in Chattanooga.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Tiffany Dover is told that they are going to do
the vaccine rollout and they're giving it to the COVID
unit first, and would she like to be on video
for the PR Department. Would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
She says sure, because they know it's going to be
a challenge to convince some people to get the vaccine,
so they want to prove that it's safe. I assume
that's why they're doing this. Lots of hospitals are doing
this right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Right. The hospital had the fourth thought to say, you
know what, we are in an area where there is
a lot of vaccine hesitancy. The pr staff thought this
would be a great opportunity to highlight the safety of
the vaccine and how frontline workers were all lining up
and very excited to have it.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Okay, so they're live streaming this momentous event and Tiffany
is going to be getting the shot on live stream.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, so she got the vaccine. Everybody clapped, and then
she sat down and that was really the end of it.
But afterwards, a couple of people got back up, an administrator,
a doctor, and they talked about what the vaccine meant
to them. And then you heard someone off camera say,
do we want to get anybody else to talk? Maybe
a nurse, And that was the invitation for Tiffany Dover
(07:17):
to get up and talk about the vaccine. She got up,
she started talking about how this vaccine was light at
the end of the tunnel, and then you could just
see it in her eyes. She sort of got a
vacant look and she touches her forehead and she just says,
I'm sorry and collapses into the arms of a doctor
(07:38):
and an administrator behind her, and she dies. That's right,
thank you for having me. No, she faints, which happens
when people get vaccines. Sometimes Tiffany has this overactive vasovagal response,
so when she experiences pain, sometimes she just passes out.
(07:58):
It's something that our family knows about her. It's sort
of common.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It is not common. I've never heard of anyone having this.
And why if you had this thing where you faint
all the time at slight pain, why would you go
up there to be on camera when you get a shot.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So usually if she feels it coming on, she can
sit down and she'll be fine. But you know, when
you like you tell yourself something in your mind, You're like,
come on, body, do this thing.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
As you get older, it happens more and more. I
know we won't get into that details here.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
But trust me, but I've never gotten so many that
happens to me all the time. We have a lot
of fainters in this country.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So there's always that kid in your high school, right
who was.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Just fanning all the time though in gym class.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Have you ever fainnd it?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, I fainted on the subway once in New York.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Were you freaked out? I mean, that's a bad place
to faint.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
No, No, it's a great place to faint. I feel
like everybody sort of comes together to help.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
This is not what the Kitty Genevezi story tells us,
But I like that your story tells us that New
Yorkers will rally together and help.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think that they do.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, So what happens after Tiffany fans.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Tiffany faints, she gets back up, she gives another interview
to the local reporter and says, I'm fine. I faint
a lot. I'm still glad I got the vaccine. I'm
gonna go back to my job now. And she says
to one of our nurses, She's like, ugh, I just fainted,
and he said, yeah, I know, I saw you. It's
(09:25):
on Facebook live stream. And that's when she first realized
that this was going to embarrass her, at least locally.
She thought, you know, her nurse told her, you know,
don't worry about it. It's just a local broadcast. It
won't matter. Like It's going to be fine. And it's
being replayed thousands and thousands of times because people were
waiting for something like this. People in the spaces that
(09:48):
I sit in as a reporter, the anti vax spaces,
the conspiracy theory spaces, they were watching all of these
live streams all around the country and when they saw
Tiffany Feint, they shared it within their group. And the
underlying reason that they were sharing is, look at this,
it's obviously dangerous.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And this is where that night on like Fox or
info Wars or like who's putting this out?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So within the first night it was on info Wars.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Info Wars is the guy who thinks that water makes
the frogs gay? Right, what's his name, Alex Jones? Alex Jones, thanks?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
So, uh, she's like headline news on this info Wars
program that night. But it's also like it was on Russia.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Today where Tucker Carson will soon be hired for trillions
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, I won't believe it. The far right party in
Austria was sharing it. It was literally everywhere. It was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Okay, so it's everywhere and they're not saying she's dead yet.
How does that come about?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Right? So at first they're just showing the video literally
and it's like all over YouTube, and it's just nurse faints,
but they don't have that second part of the live
stream where she says I'm fine, everything's okay now, And
so over the next couple of days, that's when you
saw it morph into she actually died. These fake things
are going around and within a week it's just gone bananas,
(11:12):
like everybody's convinced she's dead, and the hospital decides, crap,
we have to do something about this.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Wait, but she does she seem dead? Is she on
social media or talking to reporters.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
She's not because the hospital tells her this is gone
to croatia.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I like that as a phrase when rumors start to fly,
this has gone to croatia. I know, I mean as
big as it gets.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's everywhere, like this rumor is flying so fast that
you are hurt or dead and it's going crazy. Don't
say anything. Just let us take care of it. People
were calling constantly saying, my dad's in there. Can I
talk to the manager? This is Tiffany's husband, Can I
talk to Tiffany? Like they were just trying all these
(11:56):
ways to talk to her. It was really disrupting their work.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
We're the main people pushing this. Tiffany is dead rumor.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
You have your anti vaxxers are the easiest ones to
identify people who are sort of looking for evidence that
the vaccine is going to cause harm, and Tiffany was
their evidence. And that's people like the woman named Robin Openshaw.
She goes by Green Smoothie Girl, and she lived in
Utah for a long time until COVID and then she
had to escape. As she puts it, to Florida. She
(12:25):
believes that COVID is a lie and that the beach
will heal you. But she was probably the most dedicated
Tiffany Truther. She offered one hundred thousand dollars bounty to
anyone who could bring her Tiffany Dover because she was
so convinced that Tiffany was dead.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And who were the other people who were the main
Tiffany is dead conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Again, you had the anti vaxxers, but then the other
section was sort of your old school conspiracy theorists, and
I think of them was like the nine to eleven truthers,
and COVID was sort of like Christmas, all of their
conspiracy theories coming together, Like I can tell you this
guy allegedly Dave he's gone sort of wild during COVID.
(13:08):
He also drinks his own urine for health. You sound
judge about that, You know what, it's the least problematic
thing he does. I think it's fine, Like whatever, whatever
does it for you. It was interesting for me to
learn sort of the backstory of Brian Wilkins. Brian is
this guy from Iowa. He has a website called the
(13:31):
COVID Blog. He you know, wanted to be a radio DJ.
He had a girlfriend and he lost that girlfriend, his
parents died, He sort of lost everything to conspiracy theories
and conspiracy theories he literally told me was the one
thing in his life that was worthwhile. It was the
(13:52):
meaning for his life was to get people not to
take the vaccine.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It it gives you purpose. It's a religion. We all
search for that, and I can understand. And these people
are are pretty good reporters. They're not stupid. They find
really good facts. They just come to kind of weird
on conclusion.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, lots.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Of people think Tiffany's dead and she's being hidden by
all the forces of evil, and the hospital is just
flooded with phone calls, like from Croatia. So how do
they deal with that?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Really poorly, They have this idea to not let Tiffany
talk because if she spoke again and made a mistake,
it would just ruin the hospital. And so here's what
they came up with. Their idea was to stand on
a staircase. There were about twenty people, nursing staff and administrators,
(14:45):
and they would all hold signs that said we support Tiffany.
With the day's date. Tiffany would stand right at the
foot of the stairs, right in the front, and she
would say nothing. And because they thought most of them
thought they were just taking a photo, people were just
kind of standing there awkwardly. It's very poorly lit. Everyone's
(15:06):
wearing a mask, so you can't really see anything. Tiffany
had forgotten her white coat that day, which she's required
to wear, so one of her bosses gave her somebody
else's vest and it didn't fit. It was too big.
And then this was the biggest piece of evidence. Her
hair in this video was parted in the middle, and
she for the other video wore her hair parted on
(15:27):
the side. People do change their parts, even though the
truthers were like a woman would never change her part,
like it absolutely happens. So for all of these reasons.
When this twenty one second video was put out on
the hospital's Facebook page, they meant it to be a
proof of life. But for Truthers, this was just a
(15:48):
bonanza of new footage to prove that she died. This
clearly isn't the same girl. It's a body double.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Do they have a theory of who this body double is?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
They do? They do? And what's really sad here is
because you know, not only did this response from the
hospital make things worse for Tiffany, but it brought in
another victim, and her name was Amber Honey. And they
found Amber Hony by looking through Tiffany's photos on her
Facebook page.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Why is everyone named like Brandy, Tiffany Amber? This feels
like I'm doing a story on nineteen eighty's pornography.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Okay, a that's rude, but be like, come to the South.
We have My sister's names are Tanya and Christy and Brandy.
Oh yes, of course, what you need to get out
of your elite media bubble.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Friend, I guess so wow.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Anyway, so yes, Amber, which is a perfectly fine name
to have. Totally, Amber was picked out as the body double,
and so it made her life terrible because all of
these truthers started flooding her Facebook page and they doxed her,
and they called her and her whole family and they're like,
why are you standing in for Tiffany? It dover?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
How could you Okay, So this must mess up Amber's
life now that people think she's part of the evil conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, she's the bad guy. It does mess up her life.
She's getting all these death threats. People are saying, you know,
poor Tiffany, rip Tiffany, Amber is the bad guy. So
it was really bad. But Amber and Tiffany are friends,
and Amber said, I'm not going to say anything until
you want to say something. It's your story to tell.
But of course it wasn't. She wasn't allowed to because
(17:30):
the hospital still wouldn't let her speak even after this
whole debacle.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
You know, I'm going to quickly defend the hospital's decision
here because I've written columns where I got a lot
of angry attention and I had some very good advice,
which was don't feed the trolls. So I don't think
that was so crazy of the hospital.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, this is sort of prevailing Internet wisdom. And sometimes
it's right. But in an instance like this, when you
put this information out into the world and then something
goes wrong, you have kind of a responsibility to answer
the questions that are there, because, honestly, we focus a
lot on the truthers, but there were a lot of
well meaning people who had a fine question. This person
(18:11):
used to post on social media all the time. She
got up and spoke for the vaccine. She can't just disappear. Now,
that's weird. Don't be weird.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
When we come back, we'll follow Brandy as she tries
to prove that in a live person is alive. Turns
out it's not as easy as it sounds. But first,
our advertisers have an herbal remedy that will erase the
chip Bill Gates put into your bloodstream. So while these
(18:42):
conspiracy theorists are looking for Tiffany, you started looking for
her too. Like you, I would have called the hospital first.
What did they tell you when you called them looking
for Tiffany?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
It was very boilerplate. We've said she's alive. Here's the
post we made on our website. Goodbye. I had to
go to Chattanooga and basically say I'm here, I'm outside
your hospital, Can someone from PR please speak to me?
They really wouldn't talk to me at all. Their explanation
was that Tiff didn't want to talk about any of this.
She wanted to do her job as a nurse manager
(19:13):
and let this stuff pass by, let it finish its course. Right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Don't you feel like another stalker like the rest of
these conspiracy theorist people like I.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Have a business card? Yeah, of course, But you know,
half of reporting is bothering people who absolutely don't want
to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And this is a person whose whole problem is people
bothering her because they want to find out the truth.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
All I needed was her to say that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Oh, so you think maybe she does want to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I thought so yeah, And so I went to her
house and stood outside her house for long stretches of
time like a weirdo, and I so I would run
into family members and I ran into them and I said,
does she want me to go away? If she does,
please let me know. And they told me no, she
wants to talk to you. She's just got a few
(20:02):
things that she needs to do. First. She needs to
talk to a lawyer or someone said something about she
has an nda.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So you do this entire podcast and you never get
to talk to Tiffany.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah. It was totally unsatisfying and pretty sad actually, because
at the end of it, I do think, honestly, I
made things worse. I think that a lot of people
said at the end of episode five, see even an
NBC News reporter can't find a nurse in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
like she's clearly dead.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
How setting was that?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It was really upsetting. It was like I was very sad,
Like I cried a lot. Oh no, yeah, that really sucked.
But then about a year later, I got a text
from her, just totally out of the blue.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Why does she want to talk to you now after
all this time?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You know? She told me, Actually she said that she
had been thinking about it for a while, she had
wanted to talk to me. Then she quit her job
at the hospital, so she finally could talk to me.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh so the hospital wasn't very upfront with you, and
they implied that Tiffany didn't want to talk.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh they lied, like a uh yeah, see this this
plays into the conspiracy theorists that hospitals are liars. I mean,
it's definitely bad pr but yeah, they did lie. They lied.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That's horrible. Did she quit because of this?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
She quit because of what was happening at the hospital. Yeah,
there was a brief moment where she wanted to post
on her Instagram just photos from her vacation, and that's
all she did. But a lot of people said that
her ski helmet was evidence that it wasn't her, that
it was really amber. When she got back, she got
in trouble. She got a letter basically saying we recommend
(21:43):
that you delete your account and if you keep posting
on social media, then you could be terminated.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Right, She didn't feel like they're being supportive as they
should have, like they were part of this thing, this
original plan of giving a shot to the fainting girl.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, it's true. It was really demoralizing for her to
feel like she had done this great job. But inside
her own hospital, she just felt like she was in
trouble a lot, and like all this was her fault
that she had fainted.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Okay, so if you finally go see her, what's it
like to see her in person? Is she beautiful?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
She's so pretty? She really is. That's the thing I mean.
So I was driving with my producer from Atlanta to
Chattanooga on the day that we're meeting her, and I
had this like flash of fear, like what if she's awful,
or like what if she's you know, just not the
person that I've built up in my.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Mind projected so much onto her. You've never talked to her,
You've been thinking about her for years and looking at
pictures of her in social media. Oh yeah, of course,
you don't meet your.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Heroes one hundred percent. So I was like, oh, she
could be awful. Yeah, I was really afraid. But the
second that I met her at this restaurant, we met
for a drink, which turned into dinner.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's a good date when a drink turns into dinner.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I know. It went really well, and then we decided
the next day. I said, can I please come over
to your house and make this podcast? And she said, yeah,
let's do it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When you get to talk to her, what does she
say about how these conspiracy theorists affected her life?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
She talked about, how does it feel when people come
to your house with GoPros on their head and or
walking around your yard while you're a babysitting your three
month old nephew, and you know how does it feel
when a guy who calls himself the vaccine police and
makes videos with blowtorches and big guns like comes to
your front door? Scary awful?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Are you thinking that if you get some facts like
you can prove she's alive, you're going to change the
conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Minds one hundred percent? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
That makes you crazier than them, I know, but I.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Thought if I got her, I could change the mind
of one conspiracy theorist. And then I thought it would
be like a feel good into the podcast. It will
surprise you, I'm sure shock you even to know that.
A lot of the people commented on the projects that
we did, saying that it was a lie, it was
a deep fake, she was ai, it was a body double,
(24:04):
et cetera, et cetera. So what she did next was
this guy who has his own sort of anti vax
podcast invited her on and.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
She said, yes, Wait, did she convince the guy that
she's alive?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
She did. No.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Would this proves your theory that you can change these
people's minds?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I mean, yeah, a conspiracy theorists that thought she was
dead or injured. He said, you have convinced me. I
do not think you're dead. I do not think you're injured.
And he told his audience, and then in his comments
people were like, you've convinced me.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Okay, did you get your hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, I have to be very clear about this because
Robin OpenShot to her audience does say this all the time,
like she was trying to get a hundred thousand dollars,
Like I wasn't trying to like win her hundred thousand dollars.
But no, she did not give it to me. And
she still very much thinks that Tiffany's dead.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Wait, what does she need to give up the one
hundred grand?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So I emailed her and I said, hey, let's get
back together. I have that zoom you were looking for. Yeah,
you know, let's do this. And she said, oh no,
that's not enough. She said, Now I want to go
to Tennessee to her home, and I want to interview
her on camera. I want all of her medical records,
and she must show a willingness to tell the truth
(25:19):
about what happened to her. That's a quote, so like,
clearly nothing would be acceptable.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Oh so she's starting to sound like she's not a
true conspiracy believer and she's just a huckster.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I mean, who knows.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Sounds like she just wants ratings for her little YouTube show.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Maybe I don't know. She seemed to really care about
Tiffany as a person.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Has this story changed the way you think about dealing
with conspiracy theorists?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It kind of made me more empathetic with conspiracy theorists.
I think that a lot of our coverage of conspiracy
theories and conspiratorial communities is sort of like, oh, look
at these crazy people, and sometimes like, that's kind of true,
But I always give people the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You're a giver. Mmm, that's just me, Brandy. You wrote
conspirac theorists made Tiffany Dover into an anti vaccine icon.
She's finally ready to talk about it for NBC News.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Thank you, Joel, this was so fun.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Trying to change people's minds with facts is a horrible
misunderstanding of what it is to be human. It's like
you're assuming that our brains are logic computers. They are
not at all. We don't even have access to most
of what our brains are doing. Most of my brain,
for instance, is definitely not focused on reading these words
right now. I'm guessing it's busy thinking about either food
(26:44):
or sex, maybe a weird combination of both. I have
no idea. The best we can do is control the
water we're swimming in by listening to experts from trusted institutions,
consuming information from large organizations where a lot of people
are vetting it, and most importantly of all, listening to
this podcast, You, my friend, are doing God's work. Next
(27:09):
week we'll talk to Virginia Heffernan about how she went
to Taiwan and fell in love with computer chips.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Maybe he'll take a napper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mola Bard,
and Nishavenka. It was edited by Lydia jeden Kopp. Our
engineer is Amanda kai Wang and our executive producer is
Catherin Cherradoh. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Colton.
A special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(27:49):
listen on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is
Story of the Week. Do you still talk to Tiffany
as your.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Relationship over I do. Do you talk to a lot
of your former subjects?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Almost none. There's one guy my last book who calls
me every few months like he's my grandfather. But other
than that, I really don't much. I do, you're much
more likable. No, yeah, I just like, you're not going
to talk to me after this?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Clearly No, We're now best friends. I'm going to send
you a Christmas card.
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