Toxic

Welcome to The Toxic Report for the week of Nov. 1, 2026. This weekly roundup of domestic violence news is served up every Friday here and directly to your inbox. Visit ToxicthePodcast.com and sign up for our brand-new newsletter These are the stories of men behaving badly that may have flown under the radar, right where these guys hoped they would. Our mission: Call them out. Call them all out. H...

Welcome to the first episode of The Toxic Report : a weekly roundup of domestic violence news served up every Friday by us, your hosts of Toxic. These are the stories of men behaving badly that may have flown under the radar, right where these guys hoped they would. Our mission: Call them out. Call them all out.  A few of the stories you'll hear in this quick episode: A Florida man is charged with...

We all remember the Bronco. The glove. The 1995 televised trial. And somewhere underneath all of it was Nicole Brown Simpson, a 35-year-old mother of two young kids who had spent years telling people she was afraid. Her sister, Denise Brown, has spent the last 30 years traveling from one side of the country to the other trying to warn people about what we didn't see and what she wishes she'd known...

Keisha Golden called the police more than 50 times in two years to report her boyfriend's abuse. She filed for not one, but two protective orders. She wanted to leave, but was pregnant. Like so many survivors, she still held out hope that Calvin Sydney could change.  He had other plans. When she was 8 months pregnant, he attacked her. She fought back and Calvin ended up dying from a stab wound to...

Have you ever watched movie sex and then wondered why the sex you have is so.....not that? Sure, we know it's scripted, but in the same way romcom writers make stalking look romantic, so too is over-the-top passionate 30-second sex the best orgasam of any woman's life. Umm......what? How are these completely inacurate portrayls of sex influencing our own ideas about what intimacy should look and f...

Pride is about visibility, but not everything is rainbows and glitter, despite what the media feeds us about queer relationships. This episode dives into how intimate partner abuse shows up in queer relationships, including the tactics and dynamics that can fly under the radar. But never fear—we end on a lighter note with the queer shows we love (and the scenes we'll never stop thinking about). Lo...

We're back! Sorry for the hiatus, but life threw us some curveballs (we'll tell you about them in this episode). But really, we're here to talk to Mae Scott, survivor and author who so bravely shares her story of what abuse can look like up close: not just fear, but confusion, manipulation and a slow erosion of reality. Then comes the fun part (read: not fun at all)—navigating a legal system that...

After Donald Trump publicly berated Kaitlan Collins of CNN for pressing him about the Jeffrey Epstein files, he used a cheap power move familiar to women worldwide. "Why aren't you smiling?" Because apparently women exist to decorate the room — and keep powerful men comfortable. It's also a great way to deflect questions you don't want to answer. In this episode, we unpack the long history of tell...

We're starting this episode with Jenna's take from the frontlines in Minneapolis, where she lives, and the horrors she's seen there firsthand in the wake of ICE's terror campaign. Spoiler: It's all bad. But you can do something, no matter where you are. Visit standwithminnesota.com to donate to families impacted and to the tireless volunteers standing guard in the negative temps 24/7.  Next, becau...

It's one of our favorite episodes of the year where we recap a bad (or is it actually a genius?) holiday movie. This year's pick: Christmas at the Catnip Cafe. Olivia, a marketing exec (OF COURSE SHE IS) is left half a cat cafe in her aunt's will and who owns the other half? A hot vet who loves cats, obviously. Olivia hates cats! And has no time for romance or small towns! But does love to make ve...

We're back! Thanks for your patience. We had life stuff. This week, Jenna and Amanda are strapping on their metaphorical hazmat suits and wading into the darkest corners of the internet: the manosphere. What starts as "dating tips" or "how to be more confident" quickly turns into a pipeline of misogyny, conspiracy thinking victimhood narratives ("men have it the worst!"), and in too many cases, en...

Sigh. Here we go again. In a case of this-can't-possibly-be-true-oh-my-god-why-is-the-system-so-broken-this-is-why-women-keep-dying, a Tucson, Ariz., judge set free Michael Martinez Duran from a Pima County jail while he was awaiting trial for charges of domestic violence, including strangulation, which we KNOW is one of the deadliest red flags of a future homicide. Due in court Sept. 19, Michael...

This week's installment of " Crappy News You Can't Believe Is Real" kicks off with Republicans in the Senate deciding, "Nah, the American people don't need to know about the Epstein files," as they quietly murdered an amendment that would've forced the public release. The literal worst FBI director of all time, Kash Patel, said there was "no credible evidence" Epstein trafficked minors, because th...

One in four women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime and of those rapes, at least 25 percent of the perpetrators will use drugs to assist their sexual assault. Commonly known as roofies, this collection of drugs can take effect in as little as 10 to 15 minutes, not giving us ladies very much time to Nancy Drew the reason why the room is spinning that stranger is now ush...

Today we're unraveling the complex story of Ghislaine Maxwell — socialite, heiress, convicted sex trafficker and now prison camp roomies with someone from Real Housewives who tried to swindle elderly people out of their money. Totally the same.  Without excusing anything Maxwell chose to do (because crime is a choice), it's important that we try to understand why women in particular are drawn into...

How many times have we heard this tale? A woman accuses a man in power of assaulting or abusing her. She is immediately put on trial, accused of "ruining a good man's reputation." His assault is swept under the rug and the survivor is called a man-hating feminist (which is not inaccurate and for good reason).  Chanel Miller. Amber Heard. Blake Lively E. Jean Carroll. Christine Blasey Ford. And tod...

Washington state police are still looking for 32-year-old Travis Decker, suspected of killing his three young daughters last Monday, June 2, near Rock Island Campground in Chelan County, Washington. It's just another heartbreaking example of a judge not listening to a woman when she says a man is dangerous. How many examples will it take?   Meanwhile, admist his breakup with Elon, Trump is soothin...

We're honored to welcome Nichole Schmidt to Toxic today — a friend of the pod and a fierce advocate for survivors, especially young survivors of dating violence. In 2021, her 22-year-old daughter, Gabby Petito, was murdered by her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, during what was supposed to be an idyllic cross-country van trip — and instead became a national tragedy. This past February, Netflix released...

Is it hot in here or is it just us? If you're in the throes of perimenopause, you're going to feel right at home in this episode. As ladies of our mid-40s, we have to talk about this. Disclaimer: This is NOT a medical advice podcast.  Thanks to overt sexism within medical research fields, most health research funds are allotted to study diseases that affect men, or how diseases that affect both se...

In the '70s, a charismatic minister named Jim Jones convinced thousands of followers of his Peoples Temple that he was for them, moving them from the U.S. where he was being investigated for running a cult (lol, nothing to see here) to an agricultural commune in Guyana under the auspice that he was "creating a paradise free from the oppression of the U.S. government." Oh, and also, they had to cal...

In another disturbing case of women's safety being not at all a priority, a man in Minneapolis turned images of some 80 women he sort-of-but-not-really-knew into graphic p*rn. When his WIFE found out, he fled town with his laptop in hand, probably to infiltrate a new town with his predator ways. Police threw their hands up and said, "Uh, we don't know what you want us to do. Is this illegal?" Turn...

Abusers know the routine: First, present yourself as a savior. Promise a romanticized, idyllic version of the future. Earn trust. Then, isolate. "It's the world against us, baby." Brainwash. "Don't trust anyone but me." And finally, control at such a dizzying speed that the victim can't make heads or tails of it all. What is real? Am I in danger? How do I get out of this? Hey, look at that, it's T...

Patrisha McLean survived nearly three decades of abuse by her [unfortunately still] famous ex, Don McLean, singer of "American Pie." Once free, though Don tried his best to discredit her in the media (sound familiar?), she started her own nonprofit to help other survivors of violence, aptly named,  Finding Our Voices . It's been working on taking down abusive a-holes ever since, and we love her fo...

Trump "Tiny Hands" was sworn into the highest office in the land yesterday, leaving us all asking, "But seriously, no really, honestly, what in the actual eff?" As we enter this second iteration of a reoccurring nightmare that's actually reality, many of you may be stuck in fight, flight or freeze like us. (We're cycling between all three.) The question is: Where do we go from here? How do we get...

We've likely all heard the kurfuffle surrounding Blake Lively—how did she seemingly become one of Hollywood's most high-maintenance and hard-to-work-with actresses overnight? It turns out that the emperor doesn't actually have any clothes. We've been bamboozled by a well-orchestrated smear campaign thanks to Johnny Depp's understudy in destroying women—Justin "I don't always ask for consent" Baldo...