Rich Text

CW: Though we will be discussing the Lindsay Clancy case only in broad strokes in this episode, this events are extremely disturbing, and we will be referencing child murder and severe mental illness. If you choose to listen, please do so with care.
Last week, following a month of wall-to-wall media coverage and feverish social media discourse, the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial. Clancy was charged in the deaths of her three young children; her defense team did not contest that she had committed the acts, but argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. Her trial became a site of consciousness-raising around the terrifying condition of postpartum psychosis, from which Clancy and her team claim she suffered, but also wild conspiracy theorizing. The debate over one woman's culpability also metastasized into a debate about the validity of postpartum mental health diagnoses, the perceived crimes of feminism, and whether women should be stripped of the vote.
To be honest, neither of us wanted to pay close attention to the trial or the social media firestorm around it. The killings were horrific; the suffering of the children, and now their family and loved ones, is agonizing to contemplate. But as the discourse heated up and quickly grew politicized, we began to feel that we could not look away. Ignoring a massive news story that has not only exemplified most of the toxic tendencies of our current media and social media ecosystems, but has fueled a disturbing movement to strip women of our civil rights, seemed impossible. That's why we eventually decided to discuss the Lindsay Clancy case here: Not to dig into the details of the investigation or the trial, but to examine the public conversation that has raged around it.
In this episode, we discuss the salacious true-crime fascination that immediately surrounded the case, how social media algorithms fuel this fascination and incentivize creators to grow or monetize their brands by making content around it, and how conspiracy theories and fake news spread rapidly in our fractured media ecosystem. We also discuss how many women related to what they learned about Lindsay Clancy's postpartum mental health struggles and her repeated attempts to get the right help – and we discuss why this specific white, affluent, educated mother has garnered widespread empathy and support, while others charged with similar crimes have not. We also get into how politicized this discourse has become, as right-wing hacks have taken it as an opportunity to argue for the repeal of the 19th Amendment.
Below, for reference, is a selection of the reading we did prior to taping this episode.
If you choose to listen to this episode, we hope it helps you process the upsetting state of the public frenzy around the trial, just as it helped us to talk it through together.
Reference List:
"The Women Obsessed With Lindsay Clancy," by Stephanie McCrummen, The Atlantic
"Why People Want To Believe The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Theories," by Jessica Winter, The New Yorker
"The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood," by EJ Dickson, Wired
"What If Doctors Missed My Postpartum Psychosis, Too?" by Erica Schwiegershausen, The Cut
"The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Spiral," by Eren Orbey, The New Yorker
"Lindsay Clancy admits to killing their children. So why is there an online groundswell blaming her ex-husband?" by Rebekah Riess, CNN
"How ‘forensic fandom’ in Lindsay Clancy trial threaten postpartum psychosis awareness," by Christopher Mathias, The Guardian
"Not Skinny But Not Fat Podcaster Responds to Backlash for ‘Grossly Inappropriate’ Betting Ad About Lindsay Clancy Trial," by Toria Sheffield, People
"The Meaning of the Lindsay Clancy Mistrial," by Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic
"Lindsay Clancy's case is a Rorschach test," by Moira Donegan, The Guardian
"I Understand Why a Jury Could Not Convict Lindsay Clancy," by Jessica Grose, The New York Times
"The Real Stakes of the Lindsay Clancy Gender War," by Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day
"The Lindsay Clancy Fan Club," by Caitlin Flanagan, The Free Press
"The Lindsay Clancy Trial Is Sparking a Political Divide on the Right," by Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone
"Lindsay Clancy Truthers Are The Best Argument For Repealing The 19th Amendment," by Rebeka Zeljko, The Federalist
"Lindsay Clancy Democrats," by Ann Coulter
"Feminism should also be on trial in the Lindsay Clancy case," by J.P. De Gance, Washington Examiner
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In honor of the "Love Island" USA season 8 reunion, we are making our July episode featuring Anna Peele, author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island,'" free for all Rich Text subscribers.
By the beginning of July, I have entered my now-annual "Love Island" fugue state. I fall asleep watching new episodes, and I wake up and immediately reach for my phone to scroll social media reactions. I try to recap the major plot points to my husband, who is usually baffled by the onslaught of details and my feverish emotional state. It's all I know how to think about about at the moment. So I was thrilled to get a chance this week to chat with, Anna Peele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island.'"
As a relative newbie to the "Love Island" universe, I'm always looking for more insight about the show's history, influences, and impact, and Peele's deeply researched and reported book is the motherlode. She analyzes the show's forerunners and how executives put together the show that has evolved into an international mega-franchise, and breaks down that franchise's rocky introduction to the American market. She offers insight into how producers actually shape – or don't shape – storylines and character arcs, and into how contestants perceived their experiences.
In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of the "Love Island" format, what made it tricky to bring to America and how it contrasts with "The Bachelor," the significance of the show's hosts and inimitable narrator Iain Stirling, how contestants experience being in the bubble of the show's set, our takes on the most recent "Love Island" USA seasons, and much more.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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Recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she was freezing her eggs during the August recess. In fact, in a very AOC move, she documented the entire process on Instagram, and used her videos to speak directly to her followers about her decision, the experience of freezing eggs, and policies she believes could provide childbearing people with more options for planning their families. Predictably, MAGA mockery and backlash ensued. AOC was accused of using her fertility for a campaign stunt – and, still worse, tricking normie women into believing they could put career first and still have kids.
Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway hit the red carpet in a Prabal Gurung crop top that showed off her baby bump. The 43-year-old is currently expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman. And this, too, drew mockery and backlash. Hathaway was not only criticized for conceiving a child at such an advanced age, but scrutinized for evidence that her bump was an advanced prosthetic for a fake pregnancy.
In this episode, we discuss the contours of these two backlashes and what they say, individually and together, about the right's view of fertility, pregnancy, and women's rights. We talk about the puritanical disgust for women's bodies – and pregnant bodies – evinced by the freakout over Hathaway's bump photos, and the reactionary belief that pregnant people are inappropriate for public view. We also get into the frequent conspiracy theories about celebrity women's baby bumps, and the underlying attitudes about what kind of woman can be a mother. And, of course, we dig into the far-right pronatalist outrage at women having children after 35 – at least, women who aren't tradwives and don't already have 10 children. Plus, we look at how the increasingly punitive and rigid pronatalist ideology being advanced by male conservatives is deepening a rift between men and women on the right.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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CW: Pregnancy and childbirth are discussed in detail in this episode.
It's a big week on Rich Text, because Emma is back in the (metaphorical) building! On the two-month birthday of her daughter, we recorded her first postpartum podcast, and it was such a pleasure to be back to our old tricks. (She will be taking more time before returning to Love to See It, so don't be alarmed to see that Leigh is still manning the cohost mic in the coming weeks.)
Given the huge event that just took place in Emma's life, what topic could be more natural, more fitting, than her birth story? In this raw and personal episode, Claire asks all of her burning questions about the labor and delivery, how Emma got through the hormonal rollercoaster of the first few weeks postpartum, her feeding journey, and what her daughter's personality is like (so far? mostly ravenous) – and Emma shares the ins and outs of her wild couple of months getting acquainted with parenthood.
Plus, we get into the unbidden arrival of mom guilt, the still-more unbidden arrival of hospital bills, and all of the structural supports that would make this life-altering experience easier and healthier – like universal healthcare and childcare, home health visits, and subsidized pelvic floor therapy – which our country refuses to provide for birthing people and new parents. Hope you enjoy! xo
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In the opening scenes of the new (certified fresh!) Netflix movie "Don't Say Good Luck," Sophie Birenbaum (Sunny Sandler) is abuzz with pleasurable nerves. She's rehearsing her audition song for her high school's production of "Waitress," helping get her twin brothers off to school, giggling with her best friend. By the end of the day, she has learned – thanks to a poorly timed butt dial from her dad's cell phone – that her mother's cancer has returned. Shaken, she gives such a raw and vulnerable performance in her callback for a secondary part that, in a shocking upset, she lands the lead role.
It's an overwhelming scenario for any teenage girl to face, with excitement and anxiety and fear all jumbling together with the already potent adolescent blend of hormones and budding independence. And it's one that I had heard a version of before, because it's based on the real experiences of my dear friend Laura Hankin, the novelist and screenwriter behind the original screenplay.
I had been eagerly anticipating this movie for years; Laura had been at work on the script, her most personal project yet, for half a decade. As a devoted reader of her books, I knew that the story would be thoughtful, tender, and funny. But now that I've actually watched the movie, I'm bowled over by it. The script, co-written with Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart (who also directed), is big-hearted, nuanced, and at times hilarious. The performances, from a truly stacked cast (including Melanie Lynskey as Sophie's mom and Max Greenfield as her dad), are touchingly real. It may be a cliché to say that I laughed and I cried, but there was nothing cliché about how loudly I was snort-laughing through my sobs by the final third of the film.
So I was thrilled to get to sit down with Laura to talk about the winding path that led to this movie being made, the joys of collaboration, the details from her own life that made it into the final movie, the finer points of high school theater culture, the thematic resonances between "Waitress" and Sophie's story, how becoming mothers has changed our perspectives on losing our own, and much more. In the 20 years that Laura and I have known each other, we have shared many long conversations about loss, grief, motherhood, ambition, and art, and this is by far the most personal, and emotional, one we have ever recorded. (Though I remain partial to our 2023 conversation about "The Lizzie McGuire Movie"!)
I hope you enjoy – and I hope you stream this gem of a movie.
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