Dodging Harvey Weinstein, Alec Baldwin & INSANE Husband “Hostage Taker” | 360
Julian Dorey · 30 Nov 2025 · 2h 50m
Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation is an extended interview with Sarma Melngailis, the former owner of the New York raw-vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine and the One Lucky Duck brand, whose story became the subject of the Netflix series Bad Vegan. She revisits her career from culinary school through a financially ruinous relationship with chef Matthew Kenny, whose restaurant empire collapsed around the time of September 11th, which she witnessed from blocks away. She recounts a strange near-encounter with Harvey Weinstein on the street, being sued by Donald Trump as a landlord, and a platonic friendship with Alec Baldwin that led her to adopt her dog Leon. The core of the discussion is her account of being targeted online by a man calling himself 'Shane Fox,' later revealed as Anthony Strangis, who she argues used cult-like psychological manipulation, financial entanglement, isolation, and eventually coercive sexual abuse to gain total control over her life and drain her business of money through his gambling. She describes the disintegration of her restaurant, months spent on the run in a dissociated state, her arrest, and what she sees as a legal system that punished her nearly as harshly as the man who defrauded her. Throughout, she reflects on the psychology of manipulation, sociopathy, and how ordinary personal vulnerabilities can be exploited over long periods rather than in a single dramatic moment.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Culinary school and relationship with Matthew Kenny
- History with eating disorders
- Restaurant collapse and witnessing 9/11
- Near-misses with Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump
- Alec Baldwin friendship and adopting Leon the dog
- Meeting 'Shane Fox' online and early manipulation
- Gambling debts, coercive control, and isolation
- Going into hiding and dissociation
- Arrest and the Domino's pizza headline
- Sexual abuse allegations and legal sentencing
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“There's a quote I put in my book something about the more stressed and afraid a human or animal gets, the more prone you are to delusional thinking.”
“He said, "Are you an actress?"”
“Oh my god, like how did I even believe this guy's bullshit?”
“you're that lady that got arrested because of a pizza”