Angelina Chapin

I think, I mean, she obviously had a PR person who was a former journalist, and I had told him the broad strokes of the piece, and also it was helpful that Forbes had done a few pieces already on Wonder Mind, focused more on the demise of the company, the missed paychecks, the fact that all these employees were laid off, that...

There's recordings of Mandy in an all-hand saying she's taking out a loan against her house to keep the company afloat.

So it wasn't a surprise that there was going to be another even more critical in-depth story.

So she was expecting that, which is why I was even more surprised that she really went through her whole story with me.

I mean, you guys know this as journalists, you keep the tough stuff for the end.

You're not opening with, do you snort Ritalin?

And do you have Benadryl from an IV?

But we just talked about her childhood and she was really open.

And again, I saw it as someone who wants to talk about themselves.

Like this is someone who's always feels like they're in the shadows to some extent to have a journalist say, hey, I want to learn about your life.

Yes, I'm going to ask you 10 questions.

critical things at the end of the hour but for the first 45 minutes tell me about yourself and make yourself seem sympathetic because you've been through a lot she was very very open to that who knows maybe maybe she threw something against the wall when we got off the zoo yeah maybe she sent out off a defamation lawsuit to one of the sources they were all very freaked out

They were really scared of retaliation, which of course you see all the time.

If people are talking about someone who has more power than that, that's not surprising.

But they really, yeah, they really thought she'd fly off the handle and she was totally pleasant.

Well, I mean, I think the hypocrisy of this being a mental health company, having Mandy do all this publicity around the great mental health work, the sort of working environment that she wanted for her employees, and then behind the scenes they're not getting paid, things are a total shitshow, everyone's then laid off.

Most people I spoke to weren't working there anymore, if not all of them, right?

So...

They weren't as scared as they would have been if they had a job to lose, and they were really pissed off.

They felt it was hypocritical, but they also weren't getting paychecks anymore.