u/underwooding

I've mentioned this in a few "what would you like them to cover" threads already, but I would love a full LPOTL treatment on the life and tragic death of Sylvia Plath, and the life and tragic death of Assia Wevill and her daughter Shura Hughes, and the life and richly deserved death of the man who drove both women to suicide: Ted Hughes.

Sylvia Plath was the greatest poet of the 20th century and her coming-of-age novel "The Bell Jar" is a classic, currently being made into a movie directed by Oscar winner Sarah Polley. She was married to a real shithead named Ted Hughes, who became famous thanks to her deft management of his writing career. (She'd been selling and publishing her work since she was a teenager; she essentially taught him the submission and sales process.) He was physically abusive and adulterous throughout their marriage, and when he left her -- alone, in the middle of winter, in an apartment with no heat and two small children -- she committed suicide. He burned the diaries she wrote in the final days of her life and made sure that she was buried as Sylvia Plath Hughes. Her readers have been vandalizing her grave to remove "Hughes" ever since. See above.

During his marriage to Plath, Hughes cheated on her with a remarkable woman named Assia Wevill. Assia was Jewish, born in Berlin, and she fled Nazi Germany when she was just 12 years old. She had a successful career as an advertising copywriter at a time when the field was male-dominated, and she also had aspirations to be a poet. She met Plath and Hughes when she rented an apartment from them; Hughes immediately set his sights on her, writing the below dogshit poem about Wevill while he was still married to Plath:

>She sat there...
Slightly filthy with erotic mystery...
I saw the dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her, and I knew it.

As I said, Hughes had an affair with Wevill. He left Plath for Wevill, instigating Plath's suicide. After her death, Hughes moved their two children into his home and forced Wevill to care for them. He also got Wevill pregnant, twice; she had an abortion the first time, and the second time gave birth to her daughter, Shura. Hughes refused to marry Wevill and carried on multiple affairs throughout their relationship, including one with a woman 20 years younger than him. Wevill described being distraught by Hughes' behaviour and his treatment of her as a "housekeeper."

Just six years after Plath's suicide, Wevill killed herself and her daughter using the same method Plath had used.

It's my opinion that Hughes is essentially like. A multiple murderer. And it is absolutely crazy to me that he remains celebrated as a great writer to this day. Need him to get the LPOTL treatment so bad, man.

I mean obviously I know he's capable of sexual intercourse, I’m not one of those trans guys who can't comprehend a man with a penis, but the show acts like he's constantly knocking women up. And these are beautiful women on the show: Alison Brie, Elisabeth Moss, etc. Is it really that realistic that Pete would have been getting everyone pregnant all the time? Maybe I’m missing something.

I bought these bad boys in 2020 thinking I'd whip through them in quarantine. It's now 2026 and I'm in the home stretch of Volume 4.

The author, Robert Caro, is 90 years old. He has spent 53 years--more than half of his life--writing the definitive biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

He decided to start writing in 1973, right after Johnson died. He is still not done.

He published the first volume, "The Path to Power," in 1982, when he was 44 years old. He has since published four full volumes. They total a combined 3,282 pages.

Lyndon B. Johnson is not born until page 66 of Volume One. He is not sworn in as president until page 336 of Volume Four. The remaining 274 pages of Volume Four cover only the first seven weeks of his presidency.

In 2011, Caro said he would need two to three years to finish writing Volume Five. He's still working on it. His current draft is 983 pages. He hasn't gotten to the Vietnam War yet.

When I glanced at the comments on the official YouTube upload of the "Petal" video, it seemed to me that comments about her health vastly outnumbered comments about the video or the song. So I ran a sentiment analysis on the 1,000 most recent comments (as of 3:15 PM EST on August 1, 2026) to see if this was actually the case.

Here's what I found.

The reason you're seeing a range of percentages in this table is that some comments cover multiple themes.

In another analysis, I used multi-label coding to account for comments that combined two or more themes, like, "I'm worried about her, but her voice is beautiful, and I like her make-up." Here is that table:

It's worth noting that "appearance" captures comments like "I'm worried about how she looks," which do not explicitly refer to weight or health.

This means that roughly 51% of comments in the dataset concern Ariana's physical appearance and/or her health. This includes requests that Ariana “get help,” appeals to her family or team, assertions that she has an eating disorder, predictions that she may die, and claims that fans have a duty to intervene.

The dominant tone is affectionate, not hostile. The commenters who speculate about her health frequently address her directly, describe themselves as longtime fans, and insist that they love her.

The most-liked comment in the dataset, with 319 likes, says:

>Girl… I don’t NEED the old Ari back… I just want her to be alive atp..

Hostile comments exist, but they form a comparatively small fringe. Most criticism targets Ariana's management or inner circle, the entertainment industry, or fans who "refuse to see the problem." Here is one typical example:

>I hate commenting on women’s bodies. I’m against body shaming. But seeing such a dramatic change is genuinely heartbreaking. Please, team, do something!!

We can also look at which comments are collecting the most likes.

Health-concern comments collected 80% of all likes in the dataset.

Bottom line: Viewers interpret Ariana’s appearance as the video’s most urgent message. Generally speaking, they do not care about the song or the video; they care about Ariana's health.

It's worth noting that the music press is, a) barely discussing this, and b) completely out of touch with public sentiment.

Searching "ariana grande health" and "ariana grande weight" on Google News at 4:10 PM EST on August 1, 2026, I found just six articles from the past week.

• yahoo!life: A new photo of Ariana Grande sparked a viral debate over the singer's health — but is it ever OK to talk about someone's weight?
• Page Six: Ariana Grande sparks concern over weight loss in new ‘Petal’ music video
• The Chosun Daily: Ariana Grande's 'Petal' Video Prompts Health Fears
• wionews: Ariana Grande's Petal video fuels debate as fans voice concern over her appearance
• AOL: ‘Her Weight Is Not a Public Discussion’: Ariana Grande Fans Push Back After ‘Petal’ Video Sparks Body Commentary Online
• BroBible: Fans Are Concerned For Ariana Grande’s Health After Her Gaunt Appearance In New ‘Petal’ Music Video

A few things to note here:

• Reputable publications (including ones that reported on the music video) are not addressing the widespread concern for Ariana's health. It's purely the stuff of tabloids and blogs.
• These outlets misrepresent public sentiment, using words like "debate" and quoting an equal number of comments from those fearful for Ariana's health and those who do not see a problem. AOL even makes "Fans Push Back" their headline. In fact, based on the above numbers, fans are overwhelmingly concerned about her health, and those "pushing back" represented, at most, 8 to 10% of commentators in the dataset.

The only outlet that didn't "both sides" the issue was, shockingly... BroBible? Some quotes:

• "The gaunt appearance of Ariana Grande in her latest music video for the song “Petal” has fans worried that the musician and actress might be dealing with a major health problem."
• "Concerns about her weight first arose around the release of the first of two Wicked films in 2024, and they’ve now become even more worrisome for fans."
• "We here at BroBible dot com are not doctors. We do not know how much Grande weighs, nor if it is healthy for her, and we’re not here to tell her how to look. But it’s easy to understand why there is so much worry surrounding her appearance."
• "Hopefully, we’re all just wrong and Grande is completely healthy. But more so, if she’s not, hopefully she feels comfortable getting the help that she needs."

It's worth contrasting this BroBible blog post with the December 2025 article "What Ariana Grande’s Weight-Loss Discourse Gets Wrong," from Ms. Magazine, the feminist publication founded in 1971 with Gloria Steinem. A few quotes to capture the general sentiment of this article:

• "While talking about individual celebrities’ appearances is harmful, we can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders."
• "But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem."
• "By naming the issue—rather than getting lost in harmful debates about individual celebrities’ bodies—we give ourselves a chance of finding ways to turn this trend around."

Though the article is clearly concerned about anorexia generally, it repeatedly underscores that commentary about Ariana Grande's specific anorexia is "harmful." The author never explains why she considers these comments harmful; she simply states, again and again, that they are harmful.

TL;DR: Viewers of the "Petal" video are overwhelmingly concerned about Ariana Grande's health; the press is not acknowledging this widespread public sentiment.

Credit: Chris Overalls Coons

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Daznjf7tcFF/

This is my little library thus far. Is there anything else that you would consider an indispensable read?

I do feel the need to note that The Death of Innocence was a $6.59 ThriftBooks purchase for reference purposes only, lol.

Also, I picked up The Cases That Haunt Us purely for an articulation of the intruder theory from someone with a law enforcement background; found it sloppy.

https://youtu.be/5hGR2fdPW-k?si=gSXWxUf5yHWxupa8&t=761

The relevant clip starts at 12:40.

>Steve Thomas: John, you can't say for certain who did or did not kill JonBenét, because you have said you were asleep. You cannot say for certain, because you weren't there.

>John Ramsey: I... Ha, ha, ha, ha.

>Patsy was growing anxious about High Peaks, the school JonBenét and Burke went to. There were children in some classes who would never be self-sufficient, physically handicapped, but they were being mainstreamed into the classroom. They have a right to be educated, but there were these other intelligent little boys and girls who were growing up to make a living, pay taxes, and they were sitting and waiting. The teacher told me her first obligation was to those handicapped children. And you just wonder how much time in the course of a day is spent on the children who need to be learning so that they can take their place in society. I know the teacher wanted to do more, but there was only one of her and an aide.

- Nedra Paugh, Patsy's mother, quoted in Lawrence Schiller's Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

I've been mulling over this passage since I first read it several days ago. I admit I'm shocked that Nedra would say this on the record, apparently not mindful of how poorly it would reflect on her and Patsy. Not only does she seem to express a rank, ugly, and categorically false bigotry toward disabled children, she indicates that she has expressed these sentiments one of the children's teachers. The teacher seems to have told Nedra, in polite terms, that she would continue to prioritize the disabled children in her classroom.

I'm now going to move into speculation.

Thinking about this quote from Nedra, I was reminded of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. In Suspect No. 1, her 2020 book on the case, Lise Pearlman noted that Charles Lindbergh was an avowed anti-Semite, a Nazi sympathizer, and a proponent of eugenics. He was working with a fellow eugenicist, the French biologist and Nazi collaborator Alexis Carrel, on research for new techniques in organ transplantation. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, says that Carrel presented this work as a means "to preserve what he saw as the superior white race, which he believed was being polluted by less intelligent and inferior stock."

Pearlman notes in her book that Lindbergh's infant son was "known to be sickly and to have an abnormally large head." She posits that Lindbergh may have wanted to euthanize the boy, or to "normalize" him through an experimental operation by Carrel. In any case, she suggests the kidnapping was staged to cover this up.

Outside of Pearlman's specific theory, experts widely dispute the guilt of Richard Hauptmann, who was ultimately convicted and executed for kidnapping and murdering the Lindbergh baby.

Returning to JonBenét, we know that Nedra and Patsy held bigoted attitudes about disabled children. We also know that they prided themselves on JonBenét's intelligence. Immediately after the above screed, Nedra tells Schiller, "JonBenét started to read when she was about three." Earlier in the book, Schiller quotes Patsy as writing, "JonBenét is enjoying her first year in 'real school.' Kindergarten in the Core Knowledge program is fast paced and five full days a week. She has already been moved ahead to first grade math."

The night she died, JonBenét was struck on the head. Sometime later, she was strangled. Some believe the blow to JonBenét's head may have been an accident; all agree the strangulation was deliberate. There's debate about whether the strangulation was an act of violence or merely staging. And if the blow to the head was an accident, why wasn't an ambulance called immediately afterward? There's a lot we simply don't know.

But we know that JonBenét sustained an 8.5-inch skull fracture, extensive internal bleeding, and brain damage. None of this would have been initially clear--the wound wasn't even externally visible--but it may have rendered her unresponsive or unconscious. It's possible that, had she survived, she would have been permanently disabled.

We also know that Nedra believed these disabled children "would never be self-sufficient," in contrast to JonBenét and Burke, who "were growing up to make a living, pay taxes," who "need[ed] to be learning so that they [could] take their place in society."

We know that Patsy "was growing anxious" about the mere presence of disabled children in JonBenét and Burke's classrooms.

How much more anxious might she have been about the presence of a disabled child in her own home?

This is as far as I feel comfortable speculating. I don't know who struck JonBenét on the head, or why. I don't know who strangled her, or why.

I simply know that Patsy apparently believed that severe disability rendered a person incapable of meaningful participation in society. Incapable of meaningful participation in an elementary school classroom, even. That belief seems relevant to me in considering how she may have reacted to her daughter's catastrophic head injury.

To put this in context: "Penance" is a (fantastic) work of fiction written and presented as a non-fictional true crime book. It includes transcripts from several imaginary podcasts, including "I Peed On Your Grave."

I don't know how many hundreds of hours of LPOTL Eliza Clark has listened to, but she's got the voices pretty much down.

Bonus: Later in the book, podcast host "Andy Koontz" successfully pulls off the social media cancelation of a true crime author who does NOT approve of "I Peed On Your Grave."

We are launching a public election-year campaign to call for a second grand jury in the JonBenét Ramsey case. If you live in Colorado and you want to be part of this effort, please send us a DM.