Nancy is reporting from San Francisco, because your roving journos go where the story leads, whether that’s a discount motel room in Fairfax, Virginia, or a 30-room mansion with a view of the Painted Ladies. First order of business is not The Verdict, but Teal Swan and recent episodes of Hulu series The Deep End, whose jaw-dropping scenes of alternate therapy have pushed Sarah from her neutrality. Embedding trauma in your lost followers is dangerous stuff. By the way, Sarah and Nancy agree you can use your sex appeal for the greater good, but that ain’t what Teal Swan is doing.
Now for That Verdict. How does a trial change when it has a jury? How could Heard’s statement that she was “a public figure representing domestic abuse” be defamatory? Is this verdict “chilling,” as legacy media claims, or a “major victory” as Depp supporters believe? What if it’s neither? Discussed: blackout drinking, revelations of the Depp-Heard therapy sessions, and why the ACLU is not covering itself in glory.
Various and sundry:
Sarah can’t ID one Gary Cooper movie; Nancy doesn’t grock what Sarah means when she asks about Maverick.
Sarah finds social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s voice “fundamentally soothing”; teenage Nancy runs into Paul Newman.
Sarah waxes poetic about crow’s feet; Nancy explains why you should always keep tweezers in your car.
Sarah goes for brooding pretty boys; Nancy likes he-men. Or something like that.
Episode notes:
The Deep End, documentary series about Teal Swan
Sarah compares a Teal Swan group meeting to those held at Esalen (which has a pretty swank location tbh)
Teal Swan addresses episode two of The Deep End:
Satanic ritual abuse + hot thigh action is a thing
“The Actual Malice of the Johnny Depp Trial,” by A.O. Scott (NYT)
“‘Men Always Win’: Survivors ‘Sickened’ by the Amber Heard Verdict,” by EJ Dickson (Rolling Stone)
“Jessica Winter: The Johnny Depp–Amber Heard Verdict Is Chilling” (New Yorker)
Texts from Depp’s assistant Stephen Deuters, ruled out of US trial as hearsay (reddit)
Depp-Heard Marital Therapist Dr. Laurel Anderson testimony
“The Depp-Heard Trial and the Demise of the ACLU,” by Jonathan Turley
Meanwhile, over in East Germany…
“The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” by Parul Sehgal (New Yorker)
Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, by Sarah Hepola
“The ACLU Has Lost Its Way,” by Lara Bazelon (Atlantic)
Mighty Ira official trailer
The Fountainhead (1949), official trailer
”America’s Girls” podcast, with Sarah Hepola (Texas Monthly)
“Ex-Washington cheerleaders shaken by lewd videos: ‘I Don’t Think They Saw Us As People,’” by Beth Reinhard, Liz Clarke, Alice Crites, and Will Hobson (Washington Post)
As I Am, by Patricia Neal (Amazon)
“Uniquely Stupid and Incredibly Coddled: Jonathan Haidt On How We Lost Our Collective Minds (And Whether We’ll Ever Find Them Again),” The Unspeakable podcast with Meghan Daum
We love the strikingly brilliant journalist Pamela Colloff, and you will too
Outro song: “Cruel to Be Kind” by Nick Lowe
And for all those hustlers out there …
16. Defamed