2408: PRETEND Live AMA

PRETEND

Javier Leiva

Society & Culture, True Crime, Technology

4.7 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

PRETEND's first live YouTube AMA, co-hosted by Patreon supporter Katie Watson. The conversation covers listener questions about the making of PRETEND, behind-the-scenes stories, and what's coming next. Highlights include: how Javier knows when a story is worth pursuing (hint: it's like fishing) and his techniques for getting interview subjects to let their guard down. He shares updates on past subjects including LaDonna and Frank Abagnale. Looking ahead to 2026: Season 25 kicks off next week with psychic stings featuring undercover Patreon supporters. Also coming: State of Corruption (North Carolina), a caught-on-camera confessional, and a Word of Faith Fellowship update—the DA supposed to try the case is now on trial himself. 00:00 Intro 02:53 Katie's Podcast Journey 04:08 The Art of Storytelling 06:09 Balancing Bias in Journalism 07:49 Building Trust with Interviewees 13:33 Balancing Podcasting and Life 14:55 Ponzi Playbook & Criminal Conduct 17:22 Scariest Interview Subjects 20:08 LaDonna Updates 26:15 Red Flags and Trust 27:37 Telepathy Tapes 30:58 The Truth in Storytelling 34:36 Interview Techniques 37:20 Biggest Challenges in Podcasting 39:14 Balancing Truth and Twists 42:37 Family Reactions 44:11 Maintaining Neutrality 45:19 Dream Project: Speed Dial 46:56 What's Coming in 2026 50:06 Proudest Series 58:35 Word of Faith Update 01:03:33 Season 25 Announcement Blind Dave (Katie's YouTube show "Only in the UK"): https://youtube.com/@blinddave88 Decoding the Unknown: https://youtube.com/@decodingtheunknown2373 The Greatest Hoax on Earth by Alan Logan: https://a.co/d/gIHDef2 ChaptersLinks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	True Story Media
0:05.4	Why do growing businesses love working in Slack?
0:10.4	Let's ask Christia Ari Bikes.
0:12.2	Running things in Slack saves me so much time.
0:14.9	AI summaries save 97 minutes per week.
0:18.0	What say you?
0:19.0	Rocks from Gosney.
0:20.0	Slack helps us build community. It helps us build connection. Your partners, vendors and customers all in one place. Take us on home, Ashley from Carraway. If we did have Slack tomorrow, I would explode. Well, let's not let that happen. Visit Slack.com slash podcast to get 50% off Slack Business Plus.
0:38.8	Hey guys, it's me, have a year.
0:40.4	First of all, happy new year.
0:43.0	Today's episode is going to be a little different.
0:44.7	It's an ask me anything.
0:47.0	It's all about the making a pretend. And I had a few listeners across social media and Patreon,
0:53.2	submit questions for me about what they want to know about
0:55.8	behind the scenes, some stories, what's coming up next. And we did this AMA on live on YouTube.
1:02.8	The live part was a bit of a disaster, but we got it working. And it was co-hosted by my listener,
1:08.8	Katie Watson, who's a Patreon supporter.
1:11.6	Katie, I asked her out of the blue, I said, hey, would you like to be my co-host?
1:15.6	And she stepped up to the plate, and she did a fantastic job.
1:19.7	So I hope you enjoy this little behind-the-scenes episode.
1:24.4	And stay tuned for next week when we start our brand new series. It's a psychic sting,
1:30.1	actually several psychic stings, including some of the undercover sitters were actually
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Javier Leiva, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Javier Leiva and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.