Trashy Divorces

In this episode, Alicia follows up with some spiderwebs from the Doris Day story, and how her son Terry factors into those terrible events on Cielo Drive on August 8, 1969. Terry and his longtime girlfriend Candice Bergen lived there in a fairy tale dream in 1968, before Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski moved into the home. Why did Terry and Candice move? Doris told them they must. This one is fille...

In this second part, Alicia tracks Doris Day's disastrous marriage to Martin Melcher, and the enormous financial hole he left her in when he died at the young age of 52. There was still one more husband to go before Doris would decide she'd had enough of matrimony and turned her focus to a more deserving cause: rescuing animals. Want early, ad-free episodes, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom ha...

Actress and singer Doris Day built a giant career in Hollywood on the image of the All-American Girl, a perfectly relatable Girl Next Door, virtuous and funny. It was pure spin, with Groucho Marx once quipping, “I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Doris herself chafed at the limitations of the typecasting and how utterly at odds it was to the life she was actually...

Australia, it seems to us, is a country of huge personalities, and that's even true when it comes to endeavors as mundane as selling car tires, or tyres. Australia didn't simply need a mass-market tyre retailer, Aussies needed Bob Jane T-Marts with their clean image, catchy jingle, and celebrated race car driver at the helm. The company made Bob himself a multimillionaire, but his inability to for...

Alicia is a collector of vintage magazines, and couldn't resist sharing this 1963 Saturday Evening Post profile of a 21 year old Sandra Dee, on the heels of the first separation from Bobby Darin. She is a movie queen and this piece includes bits about her time on the lot, her split from Darin, her stage mother, and more! Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited...

Actress Sandra Dee and crooner Bobby Darin were the Hollywood it couple of the early 1960s, marrying just months after first meeting. But the marriage was troubled from the start, as both partners were unable to escape the effects of their damaging childhoods. Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom hangouts, and more? Join us at patreon.com/trash...

In 1920s Los Angeles, one of the biggest names in American evangelism was, surprisingly for the time, a woman. Aimee Semple McPherson founded America's first megachurch, preaching to some 17,000 people at three services, seven days a week. She founded a radio station that shared those services to millions of households around the country. 10% of the population of Los Angeles held a membership at h...

Left to their own devices, and with the Sex Pistols basically over, Sid and Nancy found their way to New York City. From room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel, they spent 1978 in a drug-fueled haze, with Nancy booking some gigs for Sid to keep them supplied with money to support their habits. On October 12, 1978, Sid awoke from a Tuinal-induced sleep and found Nancy dead on the bathroom floor, with a stab...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/trashy Nancy Spungen didn't start life with a lot going for her. She was very smart, but also very emotionally disturbed. At 15, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and would shortly pick up a heroin addiction, an activity that she would share with her future boyfriend, Sid Vicious. As a couple, the...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/trashy Today we're bringing you one of our occasional Dumpster Dives, where we catch up on the latest news from the Trashy Divorces Cinematic Universe. In the Dumpster today: Corey Feldman's long running divorce is over, but he's found something else to be mad about: the time he was almost cast in Wha...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/trashy As Britain's youth struggled through the doldrums of the 1970s, their sense of alienation forged a new approach to music, birthing punk. And the band most closely associated with the punk movement at the time was The Sex Pistols. Four young men driven by a sense of aggression and a whole lot of...

Hey friends - just a quick note to let you know that we're pausing production this week because of a death in the family. Trashy Divorces will return next Wednesday, March 11. Thanks for your understanding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entertainment reporter Billy Bush found himself in a life-changing pickle back in 2016, when a leaked tape was dropped into the final month of a presidential election. It ended his long career with NBC, and for a while, looked like it might have ended his career entirely. In the aftermath, he and his wife divorced, but a funny thing happened on his way to a comeback: he made himself a better perso...

While researching for her Done & Dunne podcast, Alicia came across a story right up our alley: a scandalous affair, secret marriages, secret divorces, bigamy, and all set in America's Wild West. Meet Horace Tabor, once one of America's richest men and briefly a US Senator for Colorado, his long-suffering wife Augusta, and the mistress Horace couldn't wait to wed, again and again, Baby Doe Tabor. W...

Swimmer Ryan Lochte is one of the most decorated male swimmers ever, but he's managed to mar his own accomplishments over and over again. From 2016's Lochtegate to his current messy divorce from his long-suffering wife Kayla, it seems like he just can't manage to get out of his own way. Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom hangouts, and more? J...

It's been a huge day in our Trashy Universe, with what might be the start of real, criminal accountability for a Jeffrey Epstein friend. Finally, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office - what Americans would likely call "public corruption" - a charge that could land him in prison for life. Americans may still be fuming abou...

A story that's been bubbling for a few years now finally broke open one January day, when Brooklyn Beckham, son of David and Victoria Beckham, took to Instagram to lay out a full-throated indictment of his parents for all the world to see. The story is not at all pretty, and it left us feeling pretty bad for Brooklyn's wife, who seems to have become a target for his family, rather than a part of i...

When Netflix released The Hunting Wives last summer, it's fair to say the show became a sensation. What's not to love? A taut murder mystery plus graphic, often lesbian, sex scenes - no wonder it attracted such a buzz. But while the protagonist goes through plenty in the show, the actress who plays her, Brittany Snow, had recently gone through her own trashy divorce, from pro-surfer and reality TV...

In this special trashy crossover episode, Vulgar History’s Ann Foster joins Alicia to talk about her new book, Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Queen Without a Crown. Caroline’s life was pretty incredible and she should be remembered much more in history. This one has everything – a plucky heroine and a trashy king, marital misadventure, affairs, fashio...

This week Alicia gets to the bottom of the basket in this episode about Jane Birkin, English actress, singer, and designer - also, namesake of the very famous Birkin Bag. Jane's story is truly incredible, and is the stickiest spiderweb from our Brigitte Bardot arc that we had to explore. Jane will have a long term love affair with Serge Gainsborough once Brigitte dumps him, but that is only one pa...

In this "We're Both Sick" re-air from January 2020, Stacie has the surprisingly trashy tale of Charles Dickens’s public abandonment of his wife of 22 years and the secret, 13-year-long affair that he conducted with a young actress throughout the rest of his life. Turns out that so-called “Great Men” only hold up if their followers are willing to keep their secrets. Want early, ad-free episodes, re...

In this wild Trashy Royals crossover episode, Stacie takes us back to the court of King James I of England, where a young noblewoman, Frances Howard, was desperate to escape her arranged marriage to marry another - and found her paramour's best friend to be a highly problematic obstacle. What to do, what to do? Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series, Z...

The University of Michigan football program has been having a weird few years. After losing their head coach in 2023 to NCAA rules violations, they are once again on the hunt now that Sherrone Moore, head coach for the last two seasons, has found himself embroiled in a workplace sex scandal that's blown up into a full on criminal matter.  Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus...

In her later years, French actress and icon Brigitte Bardot devoted her considerable talents to the protection of animals all over the planet. In the 1980s, having retired from film, she created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation dedicated to animal welfare, and used her substantial platform to contact governments and heads of state with letters decrying their nation's treatment of animals. But her at...

As Brigitte made her way into the 1960s as a bona fide, worldwide celebrity, she found the experience was not especially to her liking. Where she had once strolled the streets of her beloved Saint-Tropez barefoot and happy, by the time she found herself pregnant and married for a second time, an army of photographers assembled outside of her home made her little more than a prisoner in her own lif...