Show Notes
Mel Robbins is on the cover of PEOPLE this week, and Prince Harry told GQ that the most important thing is to reconcile with his family. They are very different stories, and I see the same move in both. PEOPLE's cover story opens with Mel Robbins in her Vermont kitchen, wearing a name tag made from blue painter's tape. The headline says she's proud of the person she's become. I read the whole profile as an exercise in relatability: if she relates to you, you'll trust her. Relatability sells ...
More from The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
Kelly Clarkson went to Art of Play in Brooklyn, asked about a singing mechanical bird named Molly, and left feeling talked down to. She posted about it that afternoon, and she named the store. The shop answered with a statement, then a longer follow-up full of details. I believe Kelly Clarkson, and the reasons are in the shop's own response. When people are wrong, they tend to offer details instead of accountability. Contempt is hard to hide, too. People know the exact moment someone decides...
Mikayla Nogueira sat down with Jay Shetty and admitted something most creators who got rich on the platform won't. She had no followers, and her first videos were still getting thousands of views. She noticed the algorithm right away. Molly McPherson explains why that matters, and why Jay let it go right by. The episode opens with Emily Gellis and Tanya Zuckerbrot, the founder of F-Factor. Zuckerbrot sued Gellis for defamation and cyberstalking in 2020, and the case settled in September 2026...
People are calling it the Cornell 7 case. In twelve days, Cornell, the Tompkins County district attorney, the mayor of Ithaca and Governor Kathy Hochul all put out statements about the same night in 2024. A former student, identified only as Jane Doe, has filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and sexually assaulted at a fraternity house. No one has been charged. Molly McPherson reads the statements one at a time and names the move in each. Cornell's first statement says federal priv...
Buckingham Palace does not comment on books. It has said so for a hundred years. Last week it said it again, inside a comment on a book. Charles Spencer, Diana's brother, writes that Charles sounded "giddily elated" on a phone call after Diana died. That is his account, and nobody has independently backed it up. The Palace answered with 42 words about how "the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason." Molly McPherson reads the statement line by line and finds three tells: it breaks its own ...
Three television news networks asked Molly McPherson to break down the Macklemore, Ed Sheeran and Robert Kraft story this week. She said no to all three. Not because it is not a story, but because the frame they wanted turns a crisis communication lesson into a verdict on a war, and that is not her lane. So she took it to her Substack community instead, and this episode is that room. Four parties, four statements, read in the order they landed: the promoter, Macklemore, Robert Kraft and Ed S...