This is the first Culture Deep Dive on The Anita Podcast

Trigger warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of murder, pregnancy loss, infant death, and graphic crime scene details. Listener discretion is advised.

If you've watched Netflix's Maternal Instinct — or lived through the phenomenon that was The Crash — you already know how deep a true crime documentary can get under your skin. Maternal Instinct got under mine.

The fake pregnancy. The forged documents. The silicone baby bump. The gender reveal. Ten months of a lie so elaborate it's almost impossible to comprehend.

But the question that really got me wasn't how she did it.

It was: did Taylor Parker actually believe her own lies?

In this episode I go deep on the Taylor Parker case — the full story, the psychology underneath it, and the details the documentary doesn't fully unpack. Then I'm joined by Gary Fahey — the man who ran the Australian Prime Minister's Protection Team and the Office of the AFP Commissioner, holds a Masters in Brain and Mind Sciences, and is currently doing a PhD in conscious decision making and identity-based psychology. Gary also has lived experience of exactly what it looks like when a person's internal world completely breaks down.

We get into Taylor's brain — literally. The frontal lobe dysfunction. The atrophy. The clinical term that might change how you think about everything she did.

⏱ Already watched the documentary? Skip to Gary's interview — timecode: 17:44:10.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the full episode on YouTube.

📲 Find Gary at garyfahey.com

📲 Follow Anita: @hi.itsanita on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

📌 Fact check — Gary mentioned ghrelin: Ghrelin is the hormone that signals hunger. It rises when your stomach is empty and drops when you're full — an inverse response. It's one of the key hormones that regulates appetite and is heavily studied in the context of addiction, compulsive behaviour and reward-seeking.

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