In 1887, Nellie Bly was just 21-years-old when she completely changed the way investigative journalism was done by basically inventing going ‘undercover’. She pretended to be insane, got committed to an insane asylum and then wrote about the horrific treatment she endured and as a patient. Bly’s reporting on her time at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island was turned into a bestselling book called ‘Ten Days In A Madhouse’, launching her career and opening the door for other women to do serious journalism.

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Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

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‘Ten Days in a Mad House’ by Nellie Bly: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1642216.Ten_Days_in_a_Mad_House 

‘Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist’ by Brooke Kroeger: 

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/311625.Nellie_Bly 

Medium Article: ‘What Nellie Bly Exposed At Blackwell’s Asylum, And Why It’s Still Important’ (2016):

https://medium.com/legendary-women/what-nellie-bly-exposed-at-blackwells-asylum-and-why-it-s-still-important-4591203b9dc7 

TimeOut article: ‘A New Monument Honoring Journalist Nellie Bly Is Now On Roosevelt Island (2021)

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-new-monument-honoring-journalist-nellie-bly-is-now-on-roosevelt-island-121621

Nellie Bly’s Wikipedia: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly

Some info on the Women’s Lunatic Asylum at Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island): https://www.nps.gov/places/blackwell-s-island-new-york-city.htm 

Trailer for the Lifetime movie starring Christina Ricci ‘Escaping The Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story’ (2019):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFjttOo4FLo 

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Timothée Chalamet has made no secret of the fact he is campaigning HARD for this year’s Best Actor Oscar for his role in ‘Marty Supreme’. But many are saying he made a major misstep in a recent interview, in which he declared that audiences shouldn’t take his work for granted, as he’s been delivering ‘some top level shit’ for years. Cut to an industry-wide eyeroll and the line ‘some top level shit’ immediately becoming an embarrassing meme. So did he ruin his Oscar chances? Timothée’s team has always marketed him as an earnestly ambitious wunderkind - his brand is taking himself and his art REALLY SERIOUSLY, but in a charming way. When he won a SAG award in 2025 and said in his speech that he wanted to be ‘one of the greats’, people called it ‘refreshing’. But when some people in the room looked visibly annoyed when he recently won at the Golden Globes, whispers started that he may have tipped the scales from ‘refreshingly ambitious’ into, well, thinking he’s ‘some top level shit’. 

We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] 

Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Don't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

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The ‘some top level shit’ interview (2025):

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/timothee-chalamet-defends-marty-supreme-press-tour-backlash-1236613045/ 

Variety article: ‘Timothee Chalamet defends Marty Supreme press tour backlash’ (2025):

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/timothee-chalamet-defends-marty-supreme-press-tour-backlash-1236613045/ 

Humble Pie Golden Globes speech (2026):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Por5AWQB9_M 

Screen Actors Guild ‘I wanna be one of the greats’ speech (2025):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wdPKn4ZwxxA 

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We didn’t plan this but 2026 is starting with a NEPO BABY themed week! 

Remember when famous actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were sent to prison for literally taking spoilt Nepo Babies? 

Over $25million in bribes exchanged hands. Almost every major elite university in the USA was involved. And at the end of the day, the whole thing came down to dodgy photoshop and old-school cheating on tests.. Rick Singer made a fortune when he realised that rich, entitled parents would do anything to get their kids into the best US colleges. But when Rick Singer was busted by the FBI, he quickly flipped and told authorities everything about his 'side door' entry system, leading to a worldwide news frenzy when a lot of very privileged, high profile parents were arrested AND ACTUALLY SENT TO PRISON. The craziest part of this story? What Rick Singer is doing now. 

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We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] 

Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Don't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

…

Watch 'Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal' (on Netflix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFHj8e7mU_I

Listen to the 'Gangster Capitalism' podcast episodes on the scandal:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/introducing-…

Good rundown of the 'side door' admission scheme:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/12/co…

The Wiki gives a good summary on what each parent paid for and what punishment they received: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissi…

One of the only pieces about what happened to the kids involved: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/college-admi…

A breakdown of the Full House episode where aka Lori Loughlin’s villain origin story: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenniferabidor/i-rewatched-the-full-house-episode-where-becky-and-jesse 

https://www.idfuturestars.com/about 

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AN EMERGENCY MINI (which very quickly turned into a medium and then a large)!

Brooklyn Beckham just went NUCLEAR on his parents Posh and Becks, officially announcing that he is OUT of the Beckham family and going all in with his in-laws - the billionaire Peltz dynasty. So is Brooklyn just a spoilt Nepo baby who found a richer family, or are the Beckhams actually as toxic as he says? Is his wife Nicola Peltz a real-life Veruca Salt, or is Victoria Beckham a nightmare ‘Boy Mum’? Or is it all true? Gisten in as Rosie gives Just The Gist of the Beckham family DRAMAAAAH.

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We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] 

Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Don't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!

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Totally awake. No pain relief. Just straight up raw-dogging surgery. In 1686, King Louis XIV's anal fistula got so bad that he needed to go under the knife. But surgery for an anal fistula didn't actually exist yet. In fact, surgery in general didn’t really exist at all. 

Enter Charles-François Felix, a 'Barber Surgeon' willing to take on the task. King Louis let Felix spend 6 months ‘practicing’ on inmates from the city’s prison, until he had perfected the procedure (or at least managed to perform it once without killing the guy). Once Charles-François Felix was ready to go, all ‘The Sun King’ had to do next was close his eyes, clench his fists, and stay completely still through a three hour anal surgery, the results of which changed the entire course of modern medicine. 

We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] 

Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Don't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

.

A quick, visual (don't worry - animated!) explanation of how anal fistulas work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAOwqcoel_g  

Some articles:

https://tidsskriftet.no/2016/08/sun-kings-anal-fistula  

https://medium.com/omgfacts/when-anal-fistulas-were-all-the-rage-281aclfd2d52 

https://www.iflscience.com/that-time-the-kings-anus-changed-surgery-forever-65310 

https://hekint.org/2019/10/31/it-is-good-to-be-the-king-the-french-surgical-revolution/ 

https://historycollection.com/seven-worst-surgeries-modern-times/4/

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[UNLOCKED BONUS] In 2018, momager Kris Jenner pulled off one of her biggest moves yet: she got youngest daughter Kylie Jenner on the COVER of very serious and respected Forbes magazine. Why? Thanks to her cosmetics company, Kylie was (apparently, according to financial 'proof' provided by the Jenners) about to become the world's 'youngest self-made billionaire'. The cover was a massive coup not just for Kylie, but for Kris Jenner herself and the entire Kardashian/Jenner empire she'd created. Kylie wore a POWER SUIT. Her arms were CROSSED. She was a SERIOUS BUSINESS LADY. And printed next to her (never quite smiling) face were the words: 'Welcome to the era of extreme fame leverage' - legitimising the Kardashian/Jenner business model once and for all. At least... until a year later, when Forbes retracted the Kylie billionaire story and published another article: 'INSIDE KYLIE JENNER'S WEB OF LIES'. We've said it before and we'll say it again: the devil works hard but Kris Jenner works harder.

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Thanks for gistening to our JTG summer programming while the Just The Network takes a break over Christmas: regular episodes every Thursday, before we're back to regular programming on Jan 20 with Tuesday Breakin' Nooz (for Gistener Club members), Wednesday JTG MINIs and Thursday JTG Regulars!

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This episode was originally bonus content for Gistener Club members - to access more episodes like this, join via the JTG Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected]

Don’t forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently! 

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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While chatting this week in Breakin’ Nooz about 50 Cent’s new Diddy documentary ‘Sean Combs: The Reckoning’, Rosie mentioned the episode we did about ‘The Diddy Situation’ back in 2024 for Patreon members. We were travelling around the country and still calling Breakin’ Nooz ‘From The Van’! There’s obviously been a couple of updates in the case since then, but it’s a good breakdown of Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs and the history that ended with him as such an awful criminal. NOTE: We literally recorded this in the Aussie Outback, so the sound isn’t the best! 

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CW: While we don’t go into any detail, this episode obviously does deal with the crimes of abuse that Sean Combs has been convicted of. Please take care listening, and reach out if you need (Australia):

Lifeline (24 hours: 13 11 14)

1800RESPECT (24 hours: 1800 737 732)

13YARN - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Crisis Support (24 hours: 13 92 76)

Blue Knot Helpline (1300 657 380)

Bravehearts (1800 272 831)

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This episode was originally bonus content for Gistener Club members - to access more episodes like this, join via the JTG Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected]

Don’t forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently! 

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

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In 1976 in Chowchilla, California, an entire school bus filled with children disappeared without a trace. Less than a day later, all 26 of them, along with bus driver Ed, escaped from a hole underground with a terrifying story about being taken by three masked men. Soon, three very wealthy young men, from some of the most well-off families in town, were found with a piece of paper with the word ‘PLAN’ written at the top, followed by a list of the children's names. This is Just The Gist of the Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping - an eyerolling example of ‘Why Are Men’, but also an event that forever changed the way we look at the ongoing effects of childhood trauma. 

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We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.

Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcast

Follow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterland

Want to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] 

Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: Pocket

Don't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!

Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.

.

Watch CBS 2023 doco ‘48 Hours: Remembering the Chowchilla Kidnapping’: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chowchilla-bus-kidnapping-survivor-never-before-seen-interview/ 

Watch CNN 2024 doco ‘Chowchilla’: (On HBO Max): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O5c-qATo-I 

‘How a 1976 mass kidnapping changed how the world sees childhood trauma’ (CNN 2023): https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/02/health/chowchilla-childhood-trauma 

Notorious Chowchilla bus kidnapper ran a goldmine from prison (CBS 2022): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chowchilla-bus-kidnapping-frederick-woods-ran-a-gold-mine-and-christmas-tree-farm-from-prison/ 

‘Little Heroes of Medicine Teach Experts How To Treat Childhood Trauma’ (CBS 2002): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/little-heroes-of-medicine-teach-experts-to-treat-childhood-trauma/ 

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