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Hey, everyone, just a heads up. This episode deals with some heavy topics around childbirth and

misinformation. Okay, here's the show. Brandi Sadrasni is a reporter for NBC News. She covers

internet culture and writes a lot about online communities. In particular, communities where

misinformation about healthcare spreads, groups for anti-vaxxers, groups for people who are really,

really afraid of parasites, people looking for a place to share what they've heard and what they're

frightened of. We think a lot about misinformation and disinformation in terms of political thought,

but when you look at medical misinformation from fake cancer products to fake autism,

cures, and all of it, those eclipse fake political news. When you have the medical model that we

have now where you can hardly get into see your doctor, many of us aren't insured. Things are

expensive. The place you're going to turn to is the internet.

Many of these people look to private Facebook groups for answers. And in one of those groups,

which was focused on unassisted birth, Brandi started to see posts from a woman named Judith.

So I met Judith in February of last year. And I met her because I belong to a lot of these sort of

strange friendgy groups. Judith was 28 and she grew up on the Pacific coast.

Like a lot of the other women in the group, she wanted to give birth without a doctor or a midwife,

something that's known as a free birth. How did Judith get interested in a free birth?

So Judith, she actually heard about the term, she's sort of a crunchy person, a fever person.

So she heard about the term from a friend who said, you know, I did this decades ago on my own.

And it was beautiful and lovely. And she said, wow, that's amazing. And then she Googled

unassisted birth alone. Eventually, her search letter to a group called the free birth society,

...