We Investigated the Christian "Scam" Fronted by Tim Tebow
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Who is Tim Tebow and why is he central to the Life Surge investigation?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
My conscience is getting the best of me, and I just don't know how much longer I can do
what I do. Right after this.
Kira Butler, thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
To what extent are you familiar with Tim Tebow outside of the last
how
many months you've spent
on this? Like zero.
Oh, I love this. I
love this.
I love it because Tim Tebow is so central to my experience as a sports fan and as a talking head. He was like this avatar for not just, whoa, what a gritty, plucky American hero. He was an avatar of Jesus Christ.
sort of the essence of Christianity. So I thought when people say, hey, what's that verse? They look at this one. Go ahead and quote it
verbatim right
now. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
I had to have my husband explain this to me. My husband is a big sports fan. And so he told me all about Tim Tebow and kind of the lore of Tim Tebow.
You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. And you never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season. You never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. God bless.
It's extensive. He was argued about. Is he really as good as he was in college? Could he be that good in the pros? He seems clutch. You want to talk about clutch, Gene? Let's talk about huge clutch, Gene. He's also Tebowing, which was like
a
thing, this
meme. Even before Sunday, we knew Tebow was big, with fans making customized Jesus jerseys and posting pictures of themselves online Tebowing, imitating Tebow's signature on-field prayer position.
At the Tim Tebow Foundation, we believe together with you, our partners in law enforcement, we can defend the vulnerable.
In his post-playing life, he's been a public figure who is not just really comfortable behind a microphone on television, and he works for ESPN and is all over their programming. He's become something of an American hero. in terms of how he talks about his desire to protect the most vulnerable people among us. Disrupt the demand.
Our strategy, build a nationwide ecosystem that attacks trafficking state by state
from every angle. He's
done a ton of work on anti-trafficking in the past few years. He has this wife who is also involved in his charitable work. Beautiful family, you know, the whole package.
But the place where I really started to marvel at his powers of persuasion and his capacity for empathy was when he was testifying, quite literally, before Congress.
There's a red dot map right over there over my right shoulder, and that's just a six-month screenshot of the US. And every red dot that is on there is someone that is downloading, sharing, or distributing images, almost all under the age of 12. And there's over 330 of them just in that six-month screenshot. The scale of harm right here in America is, to a certain extent, hard to comprehend. But that's why we're here.
I just got to say, even if you don't have a religious bone in your body, and I happen to be a guy who is ancestrally and quite empirically Catholic, all the sacraments, all that stuff, altar server growing up, et cetera, et cetera. Even if you have none of that religiosity, Tim Tebow presents as arguably the I don't know, the most trusted figure in sports right now based on what he's willing to say and do in front of audiences like Congress.
And it's not just what he's saying. It's that he's so clearly genuine about it. I mean, he sounds like he's getting choked up.
But that religiosity, I should be clear, this is where it enters your wheelhouse.
That's right. Yeah, I have been for the last few years reporting a lot on Christian nationalism, which is separate from what we're talking about today. But I'm not a religious person, and it has given me quite an education in the influence of Christianity on politics.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Tim Tebow and why is he central to the Life Surge investigation?
0:00–9:19
2
What is Life Surge and how does its one‑day “experience” work?
9:19–17:06
3
What does an attendee actually see and hear at a Life Surge event?
17:06–24:53
4
How are the $97 “impact” classes sold and what upsell tactics are used?
24:53–33:29
5
What is “credit‑card stacking” and how does it push attendees into debt?
33:29–43:28
6
What complaints have consumers filed with the FTC and how many were recorded?
43:28–53:16
7
What legal actions have been taken against Life Surge’s founder and related companies?
53:16–1:05:31
8
Do the celebrity speakers, like Tim Tebow, know about the alleged scams?
1:05:31–1:17:01
Speakers
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