Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni: It Ends Here (For Now)

Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni: It Ends Here (For Now)

Author: Tess Barker February 13, 2025 Duration: 43:20
Cameras wrap on “It Ends With Us.” Now, the real battle begins. After Blake Lively alleges that she’s been harassed while filming this movie, her attempts at wrestling back agency stall out.  Ultimately, Lively is able to get back some power…but at what cost? And who is really making her pay?    Tess has sifted through the many legal filings in this case. As this story’s concludes (for now) what does it have to tell us about media and how easily we can all be manipulated by it?   Read the New York Times story “‘We Can Bury Anyone:’ Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate.    Follow Pop Mystery Pod on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @popmysterypod    Pop Mystery Pod is written and produced by Tess Barker @tesstifybarker. Produced by Tyler Hill.   Theme song by Rick Wood @Rickw00d.   Support independent pop journalism and join us on Patreon at Pop Mystery Pod. Get access to ad free episodes, bonus content, and polls about upcoming topics. patreon.com/PopMysteryPod  

Ever find yourself rewatching an old awards show clip or remembering a bizarre celebrity headline and wondering what really happened behind the scenes? That’s the territory explored in Pop Mystery Pod. Hosted by investigative journalist Tess Barker, this podcast applies a reporter’s rigor to the glittering, often baffling world of pop culture. Barker, whose own deep research and firsthand reporting were instrumental in the #FreeBritney movement, brings that same tenacious curiosity to each story. Rather than just rehashing gossip, she treats these cultural moments like unsolved cases, digging into the archives and seeking out context that was missing when the story first broke. You’ll hear episodes that dissect events everyone talked about but maybe never truly understood, or incidents that seemed to vanish from the headlines a little too quickly. It sits at a compelling intersection of documentary, history, and societal observation, all filtered through the lens of film, TV, and celebrity. The result is a series that feels both like a detective story and a time capsule, revealing how these mysteries shape our collective memory. Tune in for a thoughtful, thoroughly researched deep dive that changes how you see the stories we think we already know.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 86

Pop Mystery Pod
Podcast Episodes
Jenna Jameson: The Porn Industry Climaxes  (with Molly Lambert) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:51
In the 1990s, the porn industry dominated the mainstream aesthetic and vice versa, as stars like Jenna Jameson used appearances on the Howard Stern show to become household names. The porn industry has shifted along with…
Mary Cosby’s Church (with Will Weldon) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:53
One of the most compelling and confounding cast members on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is Mary Cosby, a woman who is a reverend of her own church. While housewives fans have been enjoying Mary’s antics, some former…
The Bots Versus Taylor’s Bops (with Joe Romm and Antonia Romm) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:04
When Taylor Swift Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” dropped, a swarm of internet haters voiced their loud and out-of-left field opinions about it. A couple months after the drop, though, reporting fr…
The Chicks Get Cancelled  (with Laganja Estranja) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:17
The country and blue grass group The Chicks achieved wild success, almost immediately after the release of their album “Wide Open Spaces.” After a handful of years enjoying a fandom across a wide swath of ages and politi…
(From the Vault): Dirty Disney [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:19
‘Tis the season for revisiting childhood memories. In this reissue vault episode, Tess Barker unpacks a question that’s been nagging her since the ‘90s: Did someone put dirty jokes into classic Disney movies? How? And wh…
“Jaws”: Out for Blood [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:08
Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, Steven Spielberg created an opus that absolutely rattled human beings everywhere: “Jaws.” This movie is a horror classic. It’s also a highly misunderstood film that l…
The Dave Matthews Incident (with Babs Gray) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:00
The Dave Matthews Band has enjoyed a large and loyal following for over 30 years. They are a live performance giant. Perhaps nothing in the band’s long history, however, looms quite as large as one very infamous incident…