PRETEND

By Creative Babble, LLCSociety & Culture Technology True Crime

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PRETEND episodes

October 03 BONUS: How Doctors Diagnose Medical Child Abuse
How does a doctor actually decide that a parent is making their child sick? Dr. John Melville is a child abuse pediatrician, president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, and one of the people who helped write the board exam that certifies child abuse pediatricians.
In this bonus episode, he walks me through how medical child abuse is diagnosed. He explains the difference between Munchausen by proxy, factitious disorder imposed on another, and medical child abuse. And he answers the criticism that child abuse pediatricians are self-appointed experts who took a short course and now override the specialists who know the patient best.
He also talks about what happens when he's wrong, in either direction, and about the myth that a child who's been abused is broken forever.
Dr. Melville has cerebral palsy, which affects his speech. He asked me to mention it up front.
Note: I didn't ask Dr. Melville about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and he hasn't studied her case. He speaks here only about his own work, and for himself, not for any organization.
Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net
© 2026 Creative Babble

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36 min
October 03 BONUS: Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Partner Ken Urker Has Died
Ken Urker, Gypsy Rose Blanchard's partner and the father of their daughter, Aurora, died on October 1, 2026, his 34th birthday. The sheriff is still investigating, and no official cause of death has been released. Gypsy has said publicly that she believes it was an overdose, and that she doesn't know whether it was intentional or accidental.
Throughout The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Gypsy told me that Ken was struggling with relentless online harassment. The night he died, she texted me three words: "They killed him." In this bonus episode, I talk about what we know so far, who Ken was to Gypsy, what the research says about online harassment, and why I'm worried about Aurora and Gypsy.
Whatever you think about Gypsy, a little girl lost her dad this week. Before you post about a real person, remember that a real person is reading it.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Learn more:
https://thisispretend.com/blog/gypsy-rose-ken-urker-death/

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16 min
September 29 The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 8
Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening.
For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of it.
Some of those recordings broke through on social media, because on them Gypsy and her now ex-husband Ryan can be heard using racial slurs. She eventually apologized publicly for it.
But that's not the part that got me. It's what she says about her mother, when there's no camera on and no reason to give a polished answer.
Fair warning. This one is rough.
Content warning: racist language and racial slurs, child abuse, sexual content involving a child, murder, and self-harm.
Written and Produced by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy | Podcast Pundits https://www.podcastpundits.com/
Music by Joe Basile | thechicken.net
Get early access and bonus content
PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pretend/id6443456985
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/pretendradio
Learn More:
thisispretend.com
© 2026 Creative Babble LLC

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41 min
September 22The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 7
"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else."
That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out loud. She had taken the plea and could never be tried again, so she let her guard down. Then a content creator asked Missouri for the whole archive, and four days later the state sent it to her.
So what does Gypsy actually sound like when she thinks nobody is listening?
In this episode you will hear:
Gypsy doing the math on her own fame. She is going to be rich when she gets out. It seems like everybody in her orbit is trying to figure out how to cash in on the story.

Gypsy has a new mom. She tells her stepmother Kristy that Mother's Day is a good holiday and a sad holiday at the same time. You can hear the two of them becoming family in real time.

Gypsy threatens Fancy Macelli. Gypsy talks about what she plans to do to Fancy when she gets out of prison.

Gypsy at her loneliest. Man after man writes to her after watching her on TV.

Gypsy talks about going to a cancer dental clinic. In a call about a broken denture, she mentions the oncology dental clinic that made it and lets slip that they will not take her now that she is not a cancer patient. The internet calls that the smoking gun.

Attorney calls leaked. Some of these recordings are conversations with her attorney, Mike Stanfield.
I have listened to a lot of these calls and I am sure I missed some. Now, the State of Missouri released the Nick Godejohn's calls too, so there are even more coming. If there is a call you think belongs in this series, tag me on social media and I will get to it.
Stick around to the end of the episode, because I want you to meet the other Javier Leiva. He owns javierleiva.com, which is the address most people assume belongs to me. Listener tips and story leads land in his inbox by mistake, including some of the biggest breaks I have ever gotten, and he forwards every one of them my way. We have been talking for years and it turned into a real friendship.
His site is javierleiva.com. Mine is thisispretend.com.
Our Patreon community has grown into something I am really proud of. Supporters get bonus episodes, early access to new content, and now a private Discord server where we talk in real time about case theories and episodes, plus live video calls with me. Tiers start at $3 a month, and you can find the link at thisispretend.com.
Today's episode was written and produced by Javier Leiva.
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with the Podcast Pundits.
Theme music by Joe Basile with thechicken.net.
Credits read by Beau Hale, PRETEND Patreon supporter.
More at https://thisispretend.com
2026 © Creative Babble LLC. All rights reserved.
Think I missed a call?Guest shout outJoin us on PatreonCredits

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43 min
September 15The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6
There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the abuse wasn't real, how do you explain the feeding tube, the shaved head, the free trips to Disney?

We also discuss the violence in the house leading up to the murder. If Gypsy is the monster, what does that make Dee Dee? For Gypsy critics, the pendulum swings the other way. Justice for Dee Dee, the movement that says the real victim here is the woman who died.

Was Dee Dee a sick woman, or was she a con artist with a kid?

In this episode:
Alaura Flowers and Amber Dietz of Into the Weeds

Content creator Audacious Audrey

Fancy Macelli of the Good Wives Network

Nancy Simpson, host of The Toll podcast

Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Want more?
Ad-free episodes, early releases, and the latest on the stalker case are on Patreon and PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts. More at thisispretend.com.

Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net

© Creative Babble 2026

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42 min
September 08 The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5
According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one word explains the feeding tube, the leukemia, the paralysis. All of it. Which means, according to them, Dee Dee Blanchard wasn't abusing her daughter at all. She was just a mom trying to help a sick kid.
So I brought in a genetic counselor and made her explain this thing to me like I'm five, because I am not a geneticist and neither is anyone else arguing about this on TikTok.
Kira Dineen, a genetic counselor, walks through what a microdeletion on chromosome 1q21.1 actually is and what it can and can't explain.

Featuring
Kira Dineen, genetic counselor and host of DNA Today
Andrea Dunlop, host of Nobody Should Believe Me
Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Bree, Fancy Macelli, Audacious Audrey, and Amber & Alaura of Into the Weeds

Credits
Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net

Listen and support
New episodes drop weekly. Early and ad-free episodes are available now on Patreon and Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pretend/id6443456985
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/pretendradio

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43 min
September 07 Bonus: Was Gypsy Rose Actually Medically Abused?
I sat down with Alaura and Amber from Into the Weeds, the podcast that first dug through the Gypsy Rose Blanchard FOIA files. I wanted their honest reaction to my microdeletion episode, including the part where they felt like I'd pitted them against a genetic expert.
We discuss:
Is there actual evidence Gypsy was medically abused? I put a page from Dee Dee's medical file in front of them, a handwritten list of Gypsy's supposed diagnoses, and we argue about whether it points to Munchausen by proxy, malingering, or something the DSM-5 doesn't cleanly cover at all. We also get into the prison calls and how Gypsy seems to become a different person depending on who's on the other end of the line.

This is part one of a longer conversation.

The full, lightly edited cut is up on the PRETEND YouTube channel. Into the Weeds is part of Military Broadcast Radio, a nonprofit supporting veterans and military families, so go give them a follow.

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45 min
September 01 The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4
According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented, not fabricated. Case closed, they say. Munchausen by proxy, debunked.
That's the claim, anyway.
Three hundred pages of Gypsy's private medical records ended up online, and I got my hands on them. So do the documents validate the claims? We're going to dig in.

Want more? Ad-free episodes, early releases, and the latest on the stalker case are on Patreon and PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts.

More at thisispretend.com.

Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net
2026 © Creative Babble

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40 min
August 28 The Stalker: Shelbey Fernandez Speaks, Part 23
It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tanya Fernandez interviews. This time we're looking at Shelbey Fernandez's surgeries, what the doctor told police in 2019, and new audio from Shelbey Fernandez herself, recorded before her arrest.

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26 min
August 25 The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 3
Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that nobody was supposed to see. The evidence of violence that the HBO documentary never showed you. And the text messages from the night of June 9th, 2015, read out loud, minute by minute. They are not what you expect.
Gypsy's critics say she was the violent one all along. That it was Dee Dee who had reason to be afraid.
Chapters
00:00 Everyone Has A Hot Take
02:26 The BB Gun
04:09 Chained To The Bed
05:11 Why Not Just Run Away?
07:23 Nancy Simpson: She Was Shopping For A Man
09:22 That Bitch Is Dead
10:40 Victim Doesn't Mean Innocent
11:19 The Plea Deal
13:17 When Nick Became The Victim
16:16 Functions Like A 10-Year-Old
17:52 I Still Love Her
18:43 Activating The Dark Side
20:34 The Texts From June 9, 2015
23:58 What Gypsy Makes Of It
25:15 Andrea Dunlop On The Autism Argument
26:56 Grace And Accountability
28:01 Why Don't They Show You The Same Grace?
29:35 On The Plea Deal
30:15 Is It In All Of Us?
Binge more episodes ad-free on Patreon at patreon.com/pretendpodcast or PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts.
Written and produced by Javier Leiva. Edited by Puneet Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits. Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net.

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38 min