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Billy Evans said that he would whisk the eggs himself. In fact, he didn't even say so; after watching his partner, Elizabeth Holmes, limply stirring them with a fork, his agitation growing every second, he simply grabbed the bowl out of her hands and commenced a more vigorous beating. This scene, a centerpiece of the first third of "You Can See Everything," turns the camera on co-director Nathan Fielder as he reacts with confusion to Evans' egg power move. Why take over the whisking? Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, meekly explains that he doesn't think she uses enough force. This moment turns out to be a portrait in miniature of the dynamic between Holmes and Evans – a beatific but limp woman, overpowered by a domineering man. Or is that exactly what Holmes wants us to see?

"You Can See Everything," directed by absurdist comedian Fielder ("The Rehearsal," "Nathan for You") and wunderkind documentarian Lance Oppenheim ("Some Kind of Heaven," "Primetime"), takes a new angle on the heavily covered, investigated, adapted, and discussed Theranos scandal. The facts of the case are clear enough that Holmes was prosecuted and ultimately convicted on four counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. When Fielder and Oppenheim first pick up cameras in the home where she lived with Evans and their two small children, it is just over a month before she will be reporting to prison to serve an 11-year sentence. What remains less clear is, well... what kind of person is she? Why did she do it, and why did she then invite a famous auteur of discomfort to lurk in the corner of every room during her final days of family togetherness?

As Fielder and Oppenheim zoom in closer and closer to Holmes, trying to understand her and make sense of whether they're being manipulated, their cameras can't capture everything. One starts to wonder if they, and we, are getting too close to see what needs to be seen. In this episode, we discuss how this narrowing of the aperture – the tight closeups, the debates about individual words – fuels Holmes' self-mythologizing and misdirection. Then we get into her angelic mama rebrand and how her troubling relationship with Evans seemingly allows her to present a facade of pure feminine virtue while harnessing the power of his unbridled masculine ambition and abrasiveness. We also talk about Fielder's – and Evans' – theory that she simply thinks differently than other people. And of course, we opine on how the human soul is ultimately unknowable! (How could we not?)

Spoilers abound, so please proceed with caution. Hope you enjoy! xo

"The Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, Through the Eyes of the Reporter Who Exposed Her," by John Carreyrou, NYT

"I was a Theranos whistleblower. In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes is still lying," by Tyler Shultz, Stat News

"Nathan Fielder Tells Us Everything," by Katie Drummond, Wired

"Lance Oppenheim Is Going Places," by Alex Barasch, Vulture

"Nathan Fielder Has Made the Movie of the Year," by Alison Willmore, Vulture

"The Vertiginous Revelations of "You Can See Everything,'" by Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"‘You Can See Everything’ Review: The Slippery Mind of Elizabeth Holmes," by Manohla Dargis, NYT

"You Can’t Know Everything," by John Ganz, Unpopular Front

"You Can Never See Everything," by Sami Sage, Sami Sage Says

"Good Art Is Worth Waiting For," by Kelsey McKinney, Defector

"Go Ahead, Pity Elizabeth Holmes," by Ryu Spaeth, Intelligencer

"You Can See Everything Is Unexpectedly Heartbreaking," by Laura Marsh, The New Republic

"Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim Talk ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes & A Surreal Doc About Observation, Perception & Performance," by Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

"Nathan Fielder Speaks Out on Living With Elizabeth Holmes While Filming ‘You Can See Everything’ Doc: ‘She Seems So Genuine’ but ‘I Know She’s a Liar’," by Jordan Moreau, Variety

"The Story of Billy Evans and 'Theranos 2.0'," by Christopher Hooks, Wired

"Elizabeth Holmes’ Partner Breaks Silence on Explosive Documentary," by Eboni Boykin-Patterson, Daily Beast

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Turns out that Taylor Frankie Paul's cursed, likely-forever-buried, season of "The Bachelorette" is the content gift that keeps on giving.

Earlier this week, Paul's final guy, ocean lifeguard / model / aspiring musician Doug Mason joined Charity Lawson and Rachel Recchia on Bachelor Happy Hour for a two-part interview. And oh boy... was it a rich text. (Pun intended.) We listened to both parts of the podcast so that you don't have to, and we hopped on the mic to discuss the (somewhat lukewarm) revelations about Doug's time filming "The Bachelorette," the swift disintegration -- or as he puts it, "searing" -- of his engagement to Taylor, his feelings on children and dogs (you can't lie to either), and his feelings about the Dakota comparisons (he's not a fan).

We also dissected what Doug's AI-generated youth pastor vibe makes us feel. On the one hand, he's unquestionably a victim in this situation. The man went on a reality TV show, caught feelings, got engaged, got cheated on, got dumped, got mocked on a different reality show, and then footage of his own journey never even aired. He hasn't done anything wrong as far as we can see! And yet... there's something distinctly off about his affect. He says so many sentences in this interview that truly convey nothing at all. There is something unsettling about listening to a person speak for 90 minutes and coming away understanding so little about them other than the fact that they have a close relationship with the Lord and believe themselves to be deeply empathetic.

But perhaps we should just take a page out of Doug's book and enjoy the ride. As he says: “Hello! Life is fun! Why is it so heavy? Let’s have a good time.”

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Perhaps the most controversial scene in "The Swan: Behind the Mirror," documentarian Erin Lee Carr's new 100-minute exposé on the 2004 extreme makeover reality show "The Swan," is the last one. (For those who aren't familiar, the show promised to transform each of its contestants from "ugly ducklings" into "swans" through extensive plastic surgery, dieting and life coaching.) The ex-contestants who participated in the documentary are gathered for an on-camera reunion, full of champagne toasts and mutual affirmations. It culminates with a rousing group singalong to P!nk's "Fuckin' Perfect," which seems to have been nudged forward by production. It reads as a slightly forced attempt to put a neat bow on the women's often painful experiences with the show: They survived, thanks to their sisterhood, and now they know they're "fuckin' perfect."

For some critics, the feel-good ending stuck out like a sore thumb. Was Carr selling her own audience-pleasing redemption narrative, just like the producers of "The Swan" did? Was she subtly promoting the idea of perfection as an ideal still worth striving for? Why a P!nk song that came out six years after the show aired??

It's an uneasy conclusion that reflects the uneasiness of the documentary as a whole, which chooses to center the voices and experiences of the ex-contestants rather than advancing a full-throated feminist critique of the show's reenforcement of the punishing beauty standard and promotion of invasive cosmetic procedures as a form of self-care. Though some contestants (and critic Scaachi Koul, in a couple of talking heads) deplore the show's promotion of an unattainable physical ideal, what becomes clear is that most of the women who went on the show are relatively unbothered by the plastic surgery of it all. That was, of course, the whole reason most of them went on the show to begin with. Instead, they are rankled by the psychological control and manipulation that they were subjected to by production. The contestants from season one are still furious that they were made to compete in a beauty pageant at the end of the show, pitted against their new best friends and told that, even after all those surgeries and hours in the gym, they still weren't hot enough for a tiara.

In this episode, we discuss how the documentary attempts to balance the competing imperatives to critique the sexist beauty culture exemplified by "The Swan" and to share the real perspectives of women who appeared on the show. We discuss the franchise's backstory (and Mike Darnell's sleazy influence), what the documentary reveals about the behind-the-scenes of the show, the plastic surgeon who compares women to toilets, and the dangerous physical extremes to which the contestants were pushed. We also dig into how the show played on expectations of female compliance and submission, the cultural contempt for women who weren't considered hot (especially if they dared to try to become hot), and how the show anticipated not only beauty culture today but the framing of exploitative reality TV shows as self-optimization pursuits. Hope you enjoy! xo

References:

"'The Swan' Gets a Superficial Reckoning," by Naomi Fry, The New Yorker

"America’s Public-Humiliation Addiction," by MJ Corey, The Cut

"The Most Disturbing 2000s Reality Show Doesn’t Seem So Crazy Anymore," by Maya Salam, NYT

"'I Almost Died for Reality Television': Inside ‘The Swan,’ the Most Sadistic Reality Show Ever," by Marlow Stern, Variety

"The Swan contestants on the ‘sadistic’ pageant reality show: ‘Ultimately, we were just a job’," by Adrian Horton, The Guardian

"Television on the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery Goes Prime-Time," by Leigh Turner, AMA Journal of Ethics

"Plastic surgery, as seen on TV," by Melissa Healy, LA Times

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Last month marked the 30th anniversary of the iconic comedy "The First Wives Club." And as two ladies who are now at a stage of life that Elise Eliot might term "district attorney," we jumped at the opportunity to discuss the film's zany plot, stacked cast, and hilarious but poignant exploration of divorce, ageism, male entitlement, and women's empowerment.

When the movie opens, three college friends, played by Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton, are reunited following the public divorce and suicide of the fourth pal in their old clique. Elise (Hawn) has had a storied Hollywood career; Annie (Keaton) lives a comfortable upper-middle-class life and has a loving daughter; Brenda (Midler) helped her husband Morty build a discount electronics store empire and is planning her son's long-awaited bar mitzvah. But they quickly learn that all of their lives have gone wrong in the same humiliating way: their husbands have left them for much younger women. Now in their mid-forties, the women have been left with floundering or nonexistent careers, perceived as disposable by their industries and their selfish spouses. They decide to band together and seek revenge – no, justice. What follows is a madcap romp that, for all its storytelling flaws, is so viciously funny and so masterfully acted that it became an immediate box office hit and remains a beloved classic.

The film's popularity also reflects how deeply it spoke to its (predominantly female) audience in its depiction of ageism, the stigma of divorce, and the financially devastating consequences of women sacrificing their careers for their husbands. Sure, it's not a gritty examination of what divorce really looks like for the average woman. Like Belle Burden's recent memoir, "Strangers" – but much, much funnier – "The First Wives Club" mingles aspirational lifestyle porn with a dark warning: if even these affluent, well-heeled women aren't safe from the financial and personal embarrassment that comes with divorce, what woman is? Thankfully, we can all find some hope in sisterhood, as these three iconic characters do.

In this episode, we discuss the film's background and reception, recap the entire movie (and perhaps quote a little too liberally from it – how could we resist?), and discuss the film's multifaceted depiction of divorce and ageism, fatphobia, queerness, witches, the Trumps, the financial exploitation of housewives, and the sexualization and desexualization of women in midlife. Hope you enjoy!

"Hollywood's Best Revenge," by Kim Masters, Time

"‘Club’ Draws Strength From Its Members," by Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times 

"The Ladies Who Lunge," by Richard Corliss, Time

"Taking Action Is Best Revenge for First Wives," by Lynn Smith, Los Angeles Times

"Make Way for 40-Plus ‘Club’" by Claudia Puig, Los Angeles Times

"The First Wives Club," by Roger Ebert

"Love's Revenge, Or, Spite Is A Many-Splendored Thing," by Janet Maslin, New York Times

"The Story Behind the Iconic Casting of ‘The First Wives Club’," by Mitchell Sunderland, Vice

"Goldie Hawn says she was ‘irate’ over initial ‘First Wives Club’ script: ‘It was very male bashing’," by Eric Todisco, New York Post

"Heather Locklear says James Naughton not at fault for ‘gross’ moment," by Leah Bitsky, Page Six

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A new Rachel Cusk novel is an international event. Her Outline trilogy became the kind of breakthrough hit that few novelists (especially writers of austere autofiction) can ever hope to attain. But what could make the latest novel from such a literary rockstar even more buzzy? Well, a little celebrity scandal couldn't hurt!

Over the summer, reports began to circulate that Cusk's new novel, "Life of M," would be about A-list movie star Natalie Portman – and that the novel, based on their personal friendship, was so unflattering that Portman felt personally betrayed by it. The scandal blossomed before the book even hit bookstore shelves. Was Cusk a monster for stabbing her friend in the back for book sales? Was Portman an idiot for agreeing to the project to begin with?

When the book did come out, one month ago, it complicated this narrative of the cunning, vicious writer and the beautiful fool. "Life of M" does attempt to imagine the inner life of a movie star, M, who is inarguably, identifiably Natalie Portman. But it is, perhaps even to its detriment, quite clear that M is merely a vessel for the narrator's own identity crisis. The two character barely even know each other (much like, presumably, Cusk and Portman). Instead of faithfully exploring M's inner life as gleaned from a real intimate knowledge, the novel uses M as a representation of pure, distilled celebrity, as the narrator meditates on how fame, and the violence of being perceived, drive us toward alienation and living death.

In this episode, we look back on the original scandal and how it took shape, consider the critical reaction to the novel, and discuss our own thoughts on the novel and its flaws, strengths, and overarching themes. We dig into Cusk's fraught relationships with gender, cruelty, motherhood and fame, and her apparent desire to move past narrative to the relative permanence of objects. (Richly embroidered curtains, it's time for your close-up!)

Hope you enjoy! xo

"Life of M," by Rachel Cusk

"A novelist’s dark portrait of Natalie Portman" by Valerie Stivers, UnHerd

"Natalie Portman, her novelist friend and a literary assassination" by Leaf Arbuthnot, The Telegraph

"How a Highbrow Novel Became Celebrity Gossip" by Alexandra Alter, New York Times

“Rachel Cusk Tried to Caricature Natalie Portman. She Only Caricatured Herself” by Parul Sehgal, New York Times Magazine

“Can Celebrities Be People, Too? In a New Novel, Rachel Cusk Isn’t Sure” by Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times

“Proust Is in the Room” by Emily Witt, London Review of Books

“Rachel Cusk’s Protest Against Personhood” by Becca Rothfeld, The New Yorker

“Is Rachel Cusk’s Life of M Actually About Natalie Portman?” by Laura Miller, Slate

“Why genre matters” by Colton Valentine, The Drift

"Against ‘Women’s Writing’" by Andrea Long Chu, Vulture

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This week on the podcast, we were ready to let loose and have a little fun. After a few relatively heavy topics, it was time to get back to the important business of frivolous television.

In this episode, we chat about three TV shows we've binged in the past month: The Alix Earle reality series "Earle Meets World," a fascinatingly vacuous reality show about making brand content; the mediocre but serviceable YA romance "Crew Girl"; and the luminous, irresistible romantic drama "Sterling Point."

All three shows are, in some spiritual sense, the offspring of millennial pop culture that shaped our generation. "Earle Meets World" is a rather limp attempt at recapturing the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" magic, while "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" both reflect a renewed demand for WB-style romantic teen soaps. But are they worth watching?

First, we discuss "Earle Meets World," starting with Alix Earle as a cultural figure – a relatable hot-girl influencer who has now become a reality TV protagonist – and our general reaction to the show. (Overwhelmingly, boredom.) We discuss how the familial drama of the show, which stars not just Earle but her entire immediate family, is sublimated into professional grievances and assertions of workplace hierarchy, and we also look at how the entire show functions as brand management for Earle – at the expense of any real vulnerability or narrative excitement.

Then, we discuss the current state of the teen soap renaissance. With "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" added to the growing pile of WB-esque YA romance series coming out on streaming platforms (especially Prime), we wanted to dig into why these shows dwindled in number, why they're having a resurgence, and what need they fill for audiences today. We chat about the class, race, and sexuality politics of these shows, as well as how they portray coming-of-age experience through those all-important love triangles. We also have a little fun breaking down the more absurd details of "Crew Girl," before turning our attention to the best show we cover in this episode: "Sterling Point." We talk about what made this show so winning to us, and dig into its melodramatic but resonant exploration of daughterhood, sisterhood, and what it means to be a family.

Hope you enjoy! xo

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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.

"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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