SPEAKER_09 0:00

Hey guys, just a heads up. In this episode, we're going to talk about the Lindsay Clancy trial, including issues of postpartum psychosis, murder, and suicide. Just want you to know before you listen. I'm Michelle. I've spent over 25 years in media and education. I'm Gina. I've spent over 15 years in tech and policy. We met because we were both working to make social media a better place to be from different angles.

SPEAKER_06 0:24

I had just started Meta's Global Information Ecosystem Program.

SPEAKER_09 0:28

And I was the executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education.

SPEAKER_06 0:33

We became friends because we're both obsessed with media. News, books, films, TV, and yes, digital content. We talked for hours about it, not always agreeing, but always learning from each other. There is so much media these days. And we wanted to create a space to process it and work through what it all means for our culture, our politics, and how we understand the world. And we're hoping you do too.

SPEAKER_09 0:56

This is Did You See with Gina and Michelle. Hi Gina. Hi, Michelle. How are you? I'm doing okay. It's good to see you. I've been thinking a lot about some of the women we've lost in the world since we met last, including the phenomenal Gloria Stynum. And I feel like we need to do a bit of a shout-out for her. It's been a tough few weeks for our women heroes, like Gloria. Yes. And I have just loved seeing everything on social and all her like amazing moments and her amazing quotes. And it's just kind of unbelievable the legacy she left.

SPEAKER_06 1:36

Did you see actually her episode of Famous Last Words on Netflix? No, I just read about that, that it came out like recently, right? I honestly found it really comforting to see. It's just hard times at the moment for being a woman in a way, and seeing her and hearing her words and her voice. I really enjoyed watching it.

SPEAKER_09 1:58

I am absolutely watching it. But I know you've also had lots of sad feelings about Dolly.

SPEAKER_06 2:04

Oh, I had a lot of feelings about the loss of Dolly Parton and the Queen. You know, I'm from Alabama. So I just screwed up watching a lot of Dolly and we went to Dollywood for holidays and stuff.

SPEAKER_09 2:17

Wait, I just need to pause for a second that you just said that you went to Dollywood for holidays. We're gonna need to unpack that at some point.

SPEAKER_06 2:26

I mean, no, actually, we're not riots people. We go to theme parks for the shows. Oh, that's so interesting. Did you see, though, that Dolly Parton's team is planning to release new projects after her death?

SPEAKER_09 2:38

Okay, you're gonna need to give me a little bit more information about that because I have strong feelings about post-death content.

SPEAKER_06 2:47

I feel like it's a strategy to get ahead of potential fakes. It's kind of a way to protect her image and also to protect the revenue stream from Dolly-related content. Because her team has actually come out and said we're planning to put out new content. So if you see anything with Dolly that's not from our official channels, you know that it's not authentic.

SPEAKER_09 3:11

That's so fascinating because that's obviously a new development that people need to consider, especially the estate of a celebrity who passes. Yeah. To think about what happens with their image and their likeness after their death because of AI tools.

SPEAKER_06 3:32

Yes. Wow. A week before her death, People magazine had published an interview with Dolly where she had talked about doing an avatar show. I think it's something like a hologram show, but with new content. So it would use AI. It's interesting. You're going to have to start thinking about, like you said, how your image is going to be used post-death. And there's been a lot of attention on this, particularly with some other celebrities, like Robin Williams' daughter, has come out really strong against people who are just using her father's image to create whatever kind of content. But actually, last month she came back onto Instagram basically saying this is the official account to try to take back control and say, if you're looking for Robin Williams content, this is the place to go when everything else is fake.

SPEAKER_09 4:27

This is where I start to think have I just gotten to the point in my life where I feel too old to process all of this. It's just so mind-blowing how fast these changes have happened. Five years ago, we were not talking about this. And now it seems that everyone is talking about AI.

SPEAKER_06 4:50

Revise your wills because yeah, AI is trolling us even in death.

SPEAKER_09 4:56

Speaking of AI, did you see that New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani announced a policy about AI in public schools?

SPEAKER_06 5:04

Okay, this is interesting. I know that this is a hot topic with tech and AI in schools. Can you tell me more about that? Yes.

SPEAKER_09 5:11

So basically, Mayor Mamdani, he announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative artificial intelligence in public schools for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, starting in the 2026-2027 school year. So it's important to note it's not a ban, right? It's a moratorium. Throughout this school year, a new technology in schools coalition has been built. And it's made up of students, educators, leaders, elected officials, parents, union partners to assess what is going on in schools, how this moratorium would work, could it continue? And then these limited pilots, because they have also stepped up and said, we are going to do active AI education in high school. Great. So what I appreciate about this is that there is an acknowledgement that AI is moving too fast and that we need a pause. I think that's a great idea. There's a recognition that young kids in particular need to learn how to think and how to learn without AI tools. Yeah. But older students need thoughtful instruction about AI literacy for the next steps in their education and work life. Right. I like that there's an expression of concern about the companies who profit off student data and that they should have a limited impact on what happens in the classroom because we know that there has been an incredible kind of tech takeover of our classrooms. What I worry about is I'm not really sure how effective this is going to be. I'm kind of concerned about overall different policies across different school districts and how inconsistent and unclear that might be. Because then we're going to have a lot of different students learning a lot of different things. And we see that all the time. We've seen that with media literacy. We've seen that with computer science. We've seen this with so many parts of our education systems where there's just an uneven, unclear way how to handle this. And then it makes me think that teachers don't get paid enough because this is crazy. Like this is crazy. Yeah if you think about a teacher over the last just like 20 years, maybe even less, the amount of challenge that has been presented to teachers because of technology changes and how fast they're changing, they don't get paid enough.

SPEAKER_06 7:56

No, God bless the teachers.

SPEAKER_09 7:58

Obviously, we're gonna keep an eye on it and keep talking about it because I certainly think it's just the start of school districts reckoning with AI.

SPEAKER_06 8:08

Just because a technology exists, it doesn't mean that we have to use it. Like, I don't understand why it's like here and then all of a sudden it's everywhere, and kindergarteners are creating stuff with generative AI. It's like just because it's there doesn't mean that it has to be there in our direct vicinity all the time. That part is weird to me.

SPEAKER_09 8:29

I think it has a lot to do with the speed at which it happens, and then these companies that are controlling it have so much power and so much money to get this into our institutions that it's really, really hard for one school district to counteract that push. And we have to be better at that because we don't have a good enough plan for all of these technology changes. Right. Okay, we have a lot to talk about today. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_06 9:01

Let's get started. So, Michelle, did you see the coverage about the Lindsay Clancy trial?

SPEAKER_09 9:10

Well, I gotta say, Gina, it's pretty hard not to. It's been kind of everywhere. It's been everywhere. Why don't you give us some background?

SPEAKER_06 9:18

Yeah, let's just start with some of the nuts and bolts about the case. And I'm not gonna get into too much of the details about it. We'll put some links in the show notes. Lindsay Clancy is a 36-year-old woman who's been on trial for the deaths of her three young children. She was a labor and delivery nurse living in Massachusetts with her husband Patrick and their three children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, who were five, three, and eight months at the time of their deaths in 2023. In mid-September 2022, Lindsay was about three and a half, four months postpartum with her third child, Callan. And she started to see a psychiatrist for anxiety and depression. She was prescribed medications, which weren't helping. She was developing really bad insomnia. And that led over the following months to Lindsay going to different providers, getting a lot of different prescriptions, a lot of different diagnoses at different times, dosage adjustments, and it just kept getting worse. Then at the end of January 2023, Lindsay said that she heard a voice commanding her to end her children's lives and her own life. She followed that command. Lindsay survived, her children did not, and she is now paralyzed from the waist down. She was charged with three counts of first-degree homicide. Lindsay has admitted to committing the crime, but she's pleaded not criminally responsible due to mental disease or defect. That's the legal term in Massachusetts, essentially for not guilty for reasons of insanity. Her trial started at the end of July. It lasted several weeks. It was live streamed on several different channels, and it resulted in a mistrial where 11 jurors appeared to agree that she was not criminally responsible due to mental disease or defect. And there was one juror who believed she was guilty. So they could not come to a unanimous vote, and that led to a mistrial. Wow.

SPEAKER_09 11:27

It's a lot. This is just so sad and heartbreaking and horrible any way you look at it.

SPEAKER_06 11:36

It is. It doesn't matter what you think about Lindsay, what you think about her guilt or her innocence. It's a tragedy for everybody, for this entire family and for these children. So what happens now with the mistrial? So we start over. It's going to be up to the DA to decide whether to retry her with the same charges, but none of those plans have been announced yet.

SPEAKER_09 12:00

So I'm curious because I know that you were very locked in to the trial. I was. And I tend to not do that, right? And I think that I do that because of my own ability to navigate these really hard stories for my mental health. So I'm curious about why did you spend so much time with this story? Why did you get interested in it? And why did you kind of I mean you fell into the rabbit hole?

SPEAKER_06 12:29

I fell deep. I I asked myself the same thing. Why am I torturing myself with watching this? I didn't know anything about the case. I only started getting content about it in my TikTok feed, probably about halfway through the trial. And it was just like hot takes, just people talking about their experiences being postpartum, or some people who were feeling very strongly against Lindsay. And I was just kind of like, what is this story? There are so many different wild takes on this. And I wanted to go to the primary source myself. I wanted to do my own research, as they say. I started watching the trial on livestream on YouTube, and just so much of the story was affecting me. It is so sad. I was thinking so much about the children. And it also kind of became a bigger thing than just this single case. So much of the arguments from both the defense and the prosecution were about basically how women should behave. For example, both the prosecution and defense, they both presented Lindsay as a great student. She worked really hard in school. She was kind of an overachiever type. She did great in her nursing career. And they were reading out her journal notes about how much she wanted to be a great mom to all of her kids and just felt pulled in a lot of different directions. The defense was using that as a way to show that she's a dedicated mom who could only commit this crime due to a psychotic break. Whereas the prosecution was using those qualities to prove that Lindsay is a manipulator. And there was an op-ed I was reading in the New York Times. It said, even a middle-class, attractive white mother who appeared to be universally beloved and admired by her coworkers and friends before she got sick does not get the benefit of credibility. A woman can slit her wrists, take pills, and throw herself out a window and still be painted as a faker, a liar, and a tightly regimented manipulator. The prosecution's evidence that Clancy is a control freak is that she left detailed instructions for a nanny about what to feed her children, like cutting sweet potatoes into chunks, and that she cared about their sleep schedules. I imagine that if she did not do these things, the prosecution would have painted her as a woman who never cared about her children in the first place. So it's just this idea that no matter what you do, you try so hard to be a good person, to do things right, and you're still not being taken seriously. There was something about that that I identify with very deeply.

SPEAKER_09 15:22

Well, yeah, it definitely felt like you kind of attached to this almost like, what does it mean to be a woman in today's world? This just shows that people who believe Lindsay Clancy is guilty just hate women.

SPEAKER_08 15:35

I just heard some some testimony from the lawyer about things that she wrote in a diary, and it's so terrifying because those are all things that I've those are all things that I've said or thought or written at some time.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

I think the US is behind in knowledge about perinatal psychiatry. Um one example is that uh, you know, the most severe psychiatric disorder, postpartum psychosis, is not recognized.

SPEAKER_09 16:10

It's really important to understand the impact that media overload can have. And I think it's really poignant that you are a person that's incredibly media literate. You think about these things all the time, and that the systems and the amount of content and the speed at which content comes at us gets you sucked in. It's there for us to get our attention and it does such an effective job. Look at your path. You started seeing stuff on social media, you started questioning it, you started feeling like, wait, I need to see this for myself so I can reckon with my own thoughts about this. And then you can follow up and then analyze all the stuff that you're seeing, whether it's in op-eds or social media based on what you know now. And then before you know it, these kind of things become like full-time jobs. Oh my gosh. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 17:00

Well, and because of the time zone difference, because I'm in Germany and the trial was happening in Massachusetts. I would finish up for the day and then I would watch this trial. I'd be on my iPad in bed at nine, 10 o'clock at night. And you know, I'm strict about my bedtime is 9 p.m. And I'm just watching this thing until I fall asleep because I need to be done with it tonight so that I'm caught up for tomorrow.

SPEAKER_09 17:25

It is interesting because it was like prime time viewing for you. Yeah. My PSA right now is just to remember that, you know, media messages impact our lives always. They are very influential, they're very impactful. Overload can lead to heightened anxiety, can lead to sleep disruption, can lead to cognitive fatigue, exhaustion, burnout. So just be careful. We need to be careful with our brains and our minds. And it doesn't surprise me that if you were watching this at the end of your night, that you probably ended up having sleep problems.

SPEAKER_06 18:02

I couldn't sleep for like two weeks. Yeah. I think we spoke at some point during that period, and I was so down. You were so down, Gina. Yeah, and I didn't know why. I wasn't even relating it to the case. I was just like, I feel really sad.

SPEAKER_09 18:18

I learned early on that there are certain things that I cannot watch at night. Like there are certain things that will go right into my sleep. And I remember specifically having to stop watching ER on Thursday nights because I could not sleep. I was so sensitive to the images, to the fast-paced, to the medical storylines that were so obviously exaggerated and graphic.

SPEAKER_06 18:44

That's one of the learnings that I've had from this experience is do I really need to watch every day of the trial to educate myself about this? There probably were other ways that I could have done it that were a little bit more sustainable for me.

SPEAKER_09 18:57

Let's talk about this case getting this amount of attention because it is astounding. I wasn't paying attention and I couldn't stop seeing it. Yeah. Right? So clearly, this struck a nerve with so many of us, with media, with people's responses, people showing up at the courthouse.

SPEAKER_06 19:16

It's been crazy. I mean, the online discourse about this case is a news story in itself.

SPEAKER_05 19:22

How could you truly defend some shit like this? Because this lady murdered three children in one of the most gruesome ways that you could possibly think of. And somehow, in some ways, you guys still manage to come on the internet and find a way to defend her.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

It's very sad for her, for the family. I was hoping that um that she would be found not guilty and that she could get the help that she needs and she could move on with her life.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Somebody has to be the villain, and it can't be her. Because she is them and they are her. They and she represent the presumed innocence of white suburban moms, white suburban women in middle class. They cannot let this woman be held accountable for her actions because it shatters the assumption that these women can do no wrong.

SPEAKER_06 20:10

We're really seeing this blending of our digital and our real lives. For example, there was a former social worker who had been watching some of the testimony about one of the hospitals where Lindsay had been treated. And she posted a TikTok because she felt like that hospital was being misrepresented in the trial. And after she posted that, the defense team actually tracked her down and brought her in as a potential witness. Online commentators are getting taken seriously and being incorporated into the real life trial that's happening. That's a really big deal.

SPEAKER_09 20:51

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting to think about what makes something newsworthy. Yeah. And it used to be that the news made things public. And now it seems like the public makes things news. Yes. We're seeing a lot of coverage based on the public noise about things. That's a really big shift in how we think about what is newsworthy.

SPEAKER_06 21:17

Is something newsworthy just because a lot of people are talking about it? And it seems like an event that matters to a lot of people. And there's a lot of information being spread about this. And is it the news's responsibility then to provide accurate information? Whether or not this is a topic that newsrooms themselves would have chosen on their own?

SPEAKER_09 21:39

That's a heavy question. And I think that yes, in some ways it is responsible journalism to say, okay, this seems important, so we need to look into it. But I think the issue about social media platforms is what gets the elevation. Is the enraging stuff. What enrages engages. So part of the problem is if the news is covering what is getting a lot of attention, what does that mean for us as a society when the only thing that continues to get lifted is the worst of the worst?

SPEAKER_06 22:18

Well, this is why I write and advocate so much for scrolling with intention online, because we know that the majority of people don't actually engage with anything on social platforms. It's actually a very small proportion of people. The numbers change depending on the type of online community, but the general rule of thumb is only 1% of people actually create content. And only 9% of people engage by commenting or sharing. The vast majority of people don't send any signals to elevate content that they find good. So my point is we know that platforms rely on engagement signals, but we also need to make sure that we are sending the engagement signals about the things that we want to see, and that the engagement signals actually reflect the people who are using these platforms.

SPEAKER_09 23:12

Basically, what we're saying is 10% of the people online are creating all the content, really.

SPEAKER_06 23:19

Yeah. They're creating and boosting the content.

SPEAKER_09 23:22

That in itself is a really significant statistic. And 90% of us are kind of lurking, looking at things. And then we only have the content that's created by such a small number of people rising to the top and then possibly getting news coverage. And then we have this cycle of what are we doing?

SPEAKER_06 23:45

Is this a perfect system? I don't think so. Yeah. But this is the way that the technology works. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 23:50

So let's talk about what we lose in that. So in your research for the Lindsay Clancy trial, you also came across some other stories of other women whose tragic stories are very similar. Yeah. And we came across a few black women whose stories have really, a lot of them are similar to Lindsay Clancy, but have not risen, have not gotten the amount of public attention that the Lindsey Clancy trial has. A woman named Damone Fleming was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the deaths of her children. They were living at a Bronx family shelter in 2022. And that story really did not get a lot of attention. And I know that in digging around, there were some things that were different about that. But the other story that we came across that feels incredibly similar is the story of Latarsha Sanders. And she killed her two sons in 2018. Yes. She was living in Brockton, Massachusetts, which is the same state that Lindsay Clancy is from and where her case was tried. The similarities are fascinating. And we're gonna share an article about a journalist who did a column about the story to try to analyze and kind of dissect why we pay attention to certain stories. And this particular one to me brings up the painful difference in how we see black women and we see white women and how we see privilege and how we, for whatever awful, horrible reason in 2026, a case with a black mother suffering from mental illness does not evoke the same compassion or understanding or nuance than the story of Lindsay Clancy.

SPEAKER_06 26:02

Yeah, absolutely. And that's among the public and also with the legacy media, to be honest. One of the things that this Boston Globe journalist had spoken about was how reporters are going to have a much easier time writing stories about families like Lindsay Clancy's family, where they have somebody basically dealing with the press. Lindsay's husband, Patrick, was interviewed for a piece in The New Yorker about what had happened to their family. And he had asked for forgiveness for Lindsay. Whereas Latarja's family, they were really scared of speaking with the press, and very much understandably so. They were really scared of saying the wrong thing. They were experiencing their own grief. And when they're not there to speak on Latarchea's behalf, the narrative will just spin and create itself, right? And so that's what this Globe journalist was saying was that we have to do a better job, all of us, in covering and caring for the people who are the most vulnerable in our community.

SPEAKER_09 27:09

I think that point was really powerful in the way that the Globe reporter talked about the differences in this story, and the coverage is a lot about the systems in which Latarsha and her family were forced to navigate. The first time she spoke to the police, there wasn't even an attorney present. Because these systems are built in a way where a black family is going to be way more hesitant, way more concerned about outcome and consequence. And it's so unfair from the very, very beginning. This story is something that needs to be paid attention to because it speaks to so many issues that we have in our society and who stories get told, who gets sympathy, who gets compassion, and who doesn't.

SPEAKER_06 28:03

Latarja's trial had the same judge as Lindsay's trial. And he did not allow Latarja's medical records to be included in her trial. She was convicted and recently the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned her conviction. So she is actually going to get a retrial. It's a similar situation as with Lindsay, where it's the same DA and he hasn't announced yet what he wants to do with Latarsha's case either. It will be interesting to see what happens and what the public attention and sympathy is going to look like. Because if we can rally around Lindsay and show all this love to Lindsay, we can do the same for Latarsha and all of the other women who are suffering through this.

SPEAKER_09 28:55

I agree. And I think the idea that there is very few people right now that are on social media or watching the news that have not heard the name Lindsay Clancy and the fact that there are so few people that know the name Latarsha Sanders, it's such an indication of us needing to do better. Absolutely. This is such a complex story. And I think the other thing that comes up for me, and as I think about this all in the lens of media literacy, is the conspiracy theories that have also arisen from this story. So many. And there's so many. And, you know, we don't want to give airtime to them. But I do think that it's important to note a couple of things. One is what happens when news outlets are talking about the conspiracy theories. And so they like feed into this cycle of theory, and it's just, it feels very dangerous. But the other thing that I think is really important for people to understand is why stories like this are really kind of ripe for conspiracy theories. It is very difficult for some people to comprehend a mom strangling her children. And so they start with that belief that there has to be something else going on here because that is just too terrible to believe. And so they start questioning. Something else has to be going on there. And then they start seeing things from that lens. Yeah. And they start trying to prove why the alternate theories are worth paying attention to. And I think that sometimes conspiracy theories come simply from the fact that the truth is too painful and too hard to reckon with. And this we've seen before in a million different ways, including 9-11 theories. You know, people cannot comprehend what happened that day. And so they start to believe it can't be true. And then probably the most famous one is the Sandy Hook hoax and this idea that people could not comprehend that something so horrific could happen. So they had to come up with alternate theories. And then what happens is people take advantage of that vulnerability, as we saw with, you know, Alex Jones and Sandy Hook, and just these like bigger voices get in on the game and they just kind of fuel that flame. And it's a really dangerous cycle because it makes us not trust anything.

SPEAKER_06 31:37

I think there's also a lot of distrust generally in the establishment, whether it's the legal system or law enforcement. And again, a lot of that distrust can be for legitimate reasons. And a lot of that can also fuel conspiracy theories because people don't necessarily believe that what we're getting is true at face value.

SPEAKER_09 31:58

It also makes you think about the people that do have expertise in these areas that are trying to get their voices heard, and that people don't know how to discern between the real experts and those that are just theorizing.

SPEAKER_06 32:16

Armchair sleuths have been a big part of true crime online culture for a long time. So basically, just people who are at home and looking at the evidence and coming up with theories and talking about them. What I found really interesting in the online discourse about the Lindsey Clancy trial is that we were seeing a lot of forensic scientists coming online and trying to take back some of that space. And a lot of times they are trying to establish their credibility through talking about these traditional markers of authority, like their degrees, their PhDs, their professional experience, all of these things that you would think do establish somebody's credibility. And what you're seeing is that some of these people, it actually kind of works against them in a way. People almost use it as a way to distrust them or to devalidate and say, well, you see, this is somebody who's part of the system, or this is this academic elitism where they're trying to say that I don't have a right to speak just because they're fancy and I'm not. There's actually been an active TikTok feud that I've been observing between two creators who have been talking exactly about this.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

The only thing that I have is a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a PhD, three international certifications. I've worked in this field for 20 years and have responded to over a thousand cases, including over 500 crime scenes where I was a primary investigator. I've helped to write textbooks and industry standards, and I teach classes all across the country, but I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

What the Lindsay Clancy case has taught us all is that a PhD does not an intelligent person make. In fact, it doesn't even mean that you have common sense or that you will tell the truth. As we are seeing in real time, people with those degrees on the witness stand losing their job.

SPEAKER_06 34:04

I can understand how frustrating it must feel for credentialed experts who spend their entire careers building expertise and seeing people just kind of take over the narratives about their fields. But I also wonder about how experts can communicate online in these spaces. If you really want to try to bring people over who are already distrusting of you, it's maybe not something that people really want to hear, but relying on a credential system that a lot of people don't trust may not be the only way to try to win back their trust. And that's kind of what we're seeing in research as well. Things like relatability goes a really long way. Like credentials alone aren't enough anymore.

SPEAKER_09 35:00

It reminds me of a really powerful conversation I had last semester with my students at Brooklyn College, and we were talking about influence. And I was asking them how they decide who influences them and who they trust to persuade them. They gave me all the reasons, and it was like 20 reasons. And then I was like, it's really interesting because the one thing that I look for is not on this list. And I said expertise. And they said, What does that mean? That's because you trust institutions. We've never learned to trust institutions. And I that just like blew my mind. Yeah. And then they were looking at how, you know, things that they did say, like authenticity, relatability, accessibility, life experience, much more important to them than that formal expertise or formal training or education. That's a really huge shift and also really complicates the issue of trust in information that we see has real world impact. Definitely.

SPEAKER_06 36:12

It's a whole new way of thinking about communicating than a lot of institutions have had to consider before.

SPEAKER_09 36:21

It makes me think about the conversation around this Lindsay Clancy trial being live streamed and how I know that part of that choice is for people to see the legal process play out. Right. And I know that the reason people want people to see the legal system play out is because they want to build trust in the legal system. Right. And I have super strong feelings about trials being live streamed. And I hate it. I think it's absolutely just so awful for the people involved. And I know that comes from very personal experience. You know, my adult life has been one long trial and investigation with my dad's dying in the bombing of Pan Am 103, and there's another trial coming up. The amount of pain that a live stream trial about Pan Am 103 would cause me and my family is too much to even comprehend. I would never want to see that happen. And to me, it's like, please keep our private tragedy as private as possible. Yeah. I come from the perspective of the family and of all of these people that have to watch their life be just assessed in such detail. Yeah. I know that you see it completely differently. And I think that's interesting.

SPEAKER_06 37:52

Yeah. I guess it kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning with Robin Williams' daughter deciding that it's better to engage and try to own her father's image. I think it's a similar thing in this case, where it's a way to try to push back against sensationalism and conspiracy theories in a way, because if somebody says, well, this is what happened, then there's a matter of record that people can refer to to disprove these. Although I have been thinking there is a way to maintain a matter of record and not necessarily live stream. So, for example, a recording could happen or transcripts can be made available. There's something about the nature of live streaming and the immediacy of it, and almost like we are spectators in the courtrooms ourselves that I think feeds some of the frenzy. And I feel like there has to be a balance between transparency and accountability and education and protecting privacy.

SPEAKER_09 39:02

I have such strong feelings about privacy that I realize that have really come up for me during just the prep for this podcast. I kind of look at privacy as of utmost concern. I love your idea about is there a way to not live stream it like a spectator sport, but allow the information to be shared in its entirety. That's probably the question that we have to get to because I think you just hit on it. It's that live stream nature that the public becomes a spectator of someone else's tragedy. It hurts my soul to think about that because I just have had that experience so often in my life where I felt so vulnerable that people were seeing something about my life that I felt was private, but that was of public record. So I think I'm just really sensitive to that. But I don't want that to read as if I don't believe in transparency. Because I really do believe in transparency. And I think you should have a right to see it and to analyze it. So maybe it's a little bit about the way that it happens.

SPEAKER_06 40:14

This is just where society has gotten to a point where people feel entitled to information and almost conflate privacy with secrecy. If you don't want to show something, then that must mean that you have something to hide. And in the Lindsay Clancy trial, that's happened with the 911 call when Lindsay's husband, Patrick, came home and discovered her. That call was played in the courtroom, but not included in the live stream. It was muted for the live stream. And you're seeing now a lot of people, especially with the mistrial, being like, what was on that call? Why can't we hear that call? And clearly there was a decision not to make that public because of pain that it could inflict on the family, or that it's just not necessary for the public to hear it.

SPEAKER_09 41:08

The line between privacy and secrecy can be so thin. If you don't trust the institution, then of course you're going to lean toward it feeling like they're hiding something. Right. As opposed to, no, they're just trying to respect somebody's privacy. This idea that we as a public have a right to information is something I really struggle with. And this is also like super complicated when we think about wanting someone like Latarsha Sanders to get more attention. But we also want to be careful about protecting those who are vulnerable and could be exposed to extra abuse online. So how do we reckon with that? Right. Yeah, I do think it's really important that we get information, but I do think there is a kind of entitlement that we feel now as a society. And just because we can see something doesn't mean we're entitled to see it.

SPEAKER_06 41:59

Well, and there are going to be a few more coming up that I think are going to be very messy, honestly. Nick Reiner's trial is going to be coming up, the son of Rob and Michelle Reiner, as well as Tyler Robinson, who is the accused killer of Charlie Kirk. Both of their arraignments were live streamed. I'm not sure if there's a decision on whether their trials will be as well. But if they are, it's going to be very messy. And I'm definitely not going to be watching those trials.

SPEAKER_09 42:28

But this also brings another layer is that what it changes when it's someone in the public sphere. And should it be handled differently? And then are we owed information?

SPEAKER_06 42:39

And I don't know if we are. Rob Reiner and Charlie Kirk are also different kinds of public figures. Totally. Charlie Kirk is arguably a political figure. And so maybe his death would be considered a matter of public interest. I don't know. I really don't know.

SPEAKER_09 42:56

I think these are really hard questions to reckon with. And I think just of all of these different scenarios, the Lindsay Clancy trial getting so much attention, the awful story of Latarsha Sanders not getting any attention, then we have the Charlie Kirk trial and the Reiner trial. I think that we have to pause as human beings and ask ourselves these really hard questions. If you are someone that really dives into true crime, just don't forget kind of the real people that are a part of the crime. Because I do think that it does need to be handled with sensitivity, going back to what we said about media overload. But also not create a scenario in which we are having trouble getting through our day. Yes. Well, let me know when you know how to do that. Please, please, Gina, I'll be watching you very, very closely. Like I don't want you to feel like I'm judging you because I get it. Like I get why this would be interesting and I know how easy it is to get enveloped in a story. I just think it's really important for us to step back and ask ourselves why.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_09 44:24

And not forget the real people that are involved in these stories.

SPEAKER_06 44:28

Why and is it necessary? And who is this I'm really affecting?

SPEAKER_09 44:33

Yes. So, Gina, do you have any recommendations for those that want to dig a little deeper or learn a little bit more?

SPEAKER_06 44:44

I do. I have two recommendations. The first one would be if you're curious about the trial, but you don't want to watch the whole thing, which I do not recommend. There is one testimony that I thought was fantastic. And actually, her testimony was the reason I started watching the trial because a lot of people were saying how amazing this woman was. Her name is Megan Collins. She is an ICU nurse who treated Lindsay when she came into the hospital with her injuries. And she was incredibly professional and talked about her role as an advocate for her patient. And I want to highlight her because so much of the discourse about this trial has been about how broken the American healthcare system is. And Megan's testimony is really a testament to the amazing healthcare workers who care for their patients every single day. So I definitely would recommend that. The second one I would recommend is that a lot of people are recognizing themselves in Lindsay in terms of struggling postpartum and really not knowing where to get help or not being able to get help. And that's part of the reason that I think this case in particular has blown up so much, is because it has become a broader conversation about postpartum care. There was a piece written in the cut by a woman who also experienced postpartum psychosis. This writer was actually treated at one of the hospitals where Lindsay had tried to get help, but they couldn't admit her. So if you are wanting to read more about postpartum depression or psychosis and about people's experiences with that, I would recommend that we'll put the link in the show notes.

SPEAKER_09 46:47

I recommend that we all read the Boston Globe columnist uh pieces about Latarsha Sanders. I think that is something that I'm going to put on a priority list for me to learn more about her story. And I'm also gonna recommend that we don't think about any of this anymore and just watch Adults on Hulu because that's a great fun series. That if we want to just take a break from this and have a good time, Adults is waiting for you on Hulu. I do not know that show. You don't know that show? Oh, Gina, it's so good. It is the 2026 friends, and it is just chef's kiss, beautiful. I'm obsessed. So we're not friends anymore, we're just adults. And the best part about it is now my feed is all about that show as opposed to anything serious going on in the world. So yay me. Yeah, you can curate your feed. It's a little aggressive, but I'm still glad because some of the other stuff that was on my feed was getting a little depressing. So, well, thank you, Gina. This was a lot. I have a lot to think about. Yeah, it is. Really important stuff.

SPEAKER_06 48:06

Michelle Chula Lipkin has been a media literacy educator and advocate for the last 25 years. She teaches at the City University of New York and writes, presents, and consults on topics related to media and tech. You can find her at michellechulalipkin.com.

SPEAKER_09 48:20

Gina Wu spent 15 years in tech, building Uber as the first person on the ground in European and U.S. markets, and founding Meta's Global Information Ecosystem Program. Today she is the author of Feed for Thought, a newsletter that explores how digital platforms are reshaping standards for authority, expertise, and trust. Did you see with Gina and Michelle is produced by Stevie Starr. Our theme song is by Lon Jude.