PTFO sent Tebow's camp 18 questions before publication

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:02

   the new stuff i was hoping you could quickly describe what happened the day after part one of our series dropped back on September 24th. Right. So on September 25th, Tim Tebow paused his relationship with LifeSurge. And he also said that his team was planning on launching an investigation of its own. The more the merrier. You know, for us, we're, you know, having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship till we can learn more about the facts to be able to understand more. Was there something you knew, was there something you knew about prior to the investigation, to Paavo's investigation, or?

2. 1:40

   Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday and team shared with me when we were leaving as we were flying to Alabama for an event and, you know, kind of caught off guard with some of it. And I think that's why they're really trying to understand more of the facts to really learn it. Just what is your message to those people who are trying to get answers for potentially the scams that they had?

3. 2:02

   Well, I mean, I think, honestly, it's really important to get answers to understand every bit of that. So I just want to first thank the reporters who asked him about any of this. Yeah, I actually spoke with a student journalist with WRUF. Her name is Caroline Walsh, and she asked him some really tough questions, and he answered. And when you hear Tebow answer those questions, the thing that I was caught off guard by was how caught off guard Tim Tebow was, apparently, because we not only texted his personal cell phone and interview request, but we'd actually exchanged emails with Tebow's camp and then sent them a list of 18 questions a week before, of course, we published.

4. 2:48

   Yeah, we included questions like this one. This was number six in our email. Quote, On social media and in other consumer review forums, customer complaints about LifeSurge abound, including many stories of attendees being pressured to take out loans to pay for impact classes and losing tens of thousands of dollars in savings. Some of the FTC complaints about LifeSurge allege that the company uses high-profile sports figures and Christianity to essentially lure customers into a sales funnel.

5. 3:19

   Are you aware of the negative reviews of LifeSurge? Can you comment on these customers' complaints? And then question number seven was, quote, several of the customers we spoke to said that impact counselors had encouraged them to go into debt to afford the courses, that they had never made enough money with the strategies to get out of that debt. Do you believe this kind of financial pressure would be ethical?

6. 3:43

   End quote. And so, you know, not exactly hiding the ball on what our area of interest was. But I suppose in fairness, Tim Tebow, as he said, is a very busy guy. He's busy selling a new book as we speak. He's busy doing television. He was in Gainesville, Florida for ESPN. He's busy speaking at anti-human trafficking events, which we also said in part one, by the way, seems not just praiseworthy, but also exactly the reason why we thought that our reporting about LifeSurge would be of urgent concern to Tim Tebow specifically, particularly Kira, as you will remember, since we also told him that we had acquired tape of Thiebaud discussing these allegedly predatory impact classes at one of his more than 40 life-surge appearances on stage.

7. 4:32

   I know that many of you today have probably signed up for classes, have probably signed up to take the next step. And I want to encourage you to finish that, to follow through, to follow through on that commitment, to finish strong. But this is where we should also know that there was something that we have not mentioned yet, Kira, about another journalistic entity that was looking into this story.

8. 4:59

   Right. So that was a report from a Christian outlet called The Roy's Report. And they published their own investigation about life surge last year in 2025. And three months before their investigation published, they had actually sent Thibault a list of questions that were very similar to the questions that we sent. Yes, and I'll just read the headline of their article here, which they posted after our investigation dropped, which was, quote, Tebow's PR team knew of life surge allegations since at least 2025.

9. 5:31

   And the article goes on to reference how they exchanged messages with Tebow's PR team. And then, yes, sent them this email that they quote from on July 29th, 2025. So their outreach actually included questions like, what is Tebow's response to attendees who felt drawn to the event by the speaker lineup only to later find themselves in great financial difficulty because of programs they felt spiritually pressured to sign up for.

10. 5:55

    And so one of the things I love about journalism is that it can become a group project. Our collaboration is just one example of this. The other, perhaps, is apparently taking place with Thiebaud himself. And so we welcome the status of their investigation, but I should also note that they did not respond to our request for comment, and they did not give us an update on what they are finding. And so we continue our investigation,