While some aspects of 2022 felt like a return to easier, simpler days, the news coming out of courthouses across the country did not stop.

In this episode, we look at the year's most memorable trials: the ones that made us laugh, the ones that made us cry and the ones that made us stop and question how we got here.

We take you back to the Alex Jones defamation trials in Texas and Connecticut, which garnered enormous damages for the family members of Sandy Hook victims and swamped our social media feeds. Jones wasn't the only right-winger to see his day in court: members of the Oath Keepers were held accountable for seditious conspiracy for their parts in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and in Michigan, a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went bust.

It was also a big year for celebrity trials. R&B singer R. Kelly's child abuse conviction in a Chicago courtroom, film producer Harvey Weinstein's second sexual assault trial, a jury deadlocking on rape charges against "That '70s Show" actor Danny Masterson, and a certain defamation trial involving movie stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. The headlines didn't stop as trial after trial captured the attention of readers and reporters. 

Come on in, settle down and let us bring you back through the year as we take you through these cases and more until we are back in 2023.

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.