This week’s episode gives you a front row seat to my Friday live sessions, where culture, crisis, and community collide in the best possible way. Think of it as a sampler plate of reputational highs and lows. Some hits. Some misses. A few absolute disasters. And plenty of sharp commentary from the people who show up ready to spar.

We dug into the stories bubbling across media, politics, entertainment, and news.

Here’s what we got into:

• The tightening screws around Pete Hegseth and the trip wires Trump keeps casually laying in public.
• Signal Gate, and why the smallest digital habits always tell the biggest story.
• The American Eagle campaign, Pantone’s baffling color of the year, and the new era of rage bait.
• Spotify Wrapped’s identity crisis, including why the app suddenly thinks everyone is eighty.
• The Lizzo Substack pivot and why her cancellation narrative leaves out the part that actually mattered.
• The Belichick and Jordan Hudson saga that refuses to stop producing plot twists.
• Erica Kirk’s full rebrand tour and what happens when an influencer decides to shed the bling.
• The royal chaos machine that somehow keeps spinning even when no one is asking it to.
• The early contenders for 2025’s best and worst crises, including a few names the audience threw in with real enthusiasm.

If you want the unfiltered version, join us live next Friday. Right now, the streams run through Substack, but soon you’ll be able to watch on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. The room always warms up fast. The opinions never stay polite for long.

Until then, pay attention to what people actually react to, not what the talking points tell you. That’s where the truth hides.

If you work in strategy or communication, join Molly on December 17 at 12 PM ET for a 60-minute live media training that breaks down a crisis in real time. RFK Jr is being hit from two sides at once. Now Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir is out, weeks after Tatiana Schlossberg’s essay landed a punch. We'll walk through the headlines, the data, the sentiment, press coverage, then map out what a competent response would actually look like. Click here to attend.

Want More Behind the Breakdown?
Follow The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson on Substack for early access to podcast episodes, private member chats, weekly live sessions, and monthly workshops that go deeper than the mic. It is the inside hub for communicators who want real strategy, clear judgment, and a little side-eye where it counts.

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Need a Keynote Speaker? Drawing from real-world PR battles, Molly delivers the same engaging stories and hard-won crisis insights from the podcast to your live audience. Click here to book Molly for your next meeting.

Follow & Connect with Molly:

• https://www.youtube.com/mollymcpherson
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• ...

A close look at Tatiana Schlossberg's viral New Yorker essay, A Battle with My Blood. It is an emotional piece that blends grief, legacy, and quiet fury, and it signals a deeper shift inside the Kennedy family. The episode walks through the layers of the essay and the choices behind it. From the shock of Schlossberg's leukemia diagnosis, to the way she describes the strained healthcare system, to her understated but unmistakable criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this story becomes both a personal account and a moral document. This episode explores why the timing mattered, why the family dynamics matter, and why this essay reshapes the public conversation around RFK Jr. as Olivia Nuzzi's forthcoming book adds another external blow. The episode closes with a look at the media cycle, the political stakes, and the long arc of the Kennedy legacy.

Want More Behind the Breakdown?
Follow The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson on Substack for early access to podcast episodes, private member chats, weekly live sessions, and monthly workshops that go deeper than the mic. It is the inside hub for communicators who want real strategy, clear judgment, and a little side-eye where it counts.

Follow Molly on Substack
Subscribe to Molly's Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to Molly's Live Events Calendar.

Need a Keynote Speaker? Drawing from real-world PR battles, Molly delivers the same engaging stories and hard-won crisis insights from the podcast to your live audience. Click here to book Molly for your next meeting.

Follow & Connect with Molly:

• https://www.youtube.com/mollymcpherson
• https://mollymcpherson.substack.com/
• https://www.tiktok.com/@mollybmcpherson
• https://www.instagram.com/molly.mcpherson/
• ...

This week’s episode dives into a crowded lineup of public figures who all managed to confuse PR maneuvering with actual accountability: President Trump’s “quiet piggy” moment on Air Force One and the broader pattern behind his attacks on women in the press, Larry Summers’ fog-filled non-apology after his Epstein emails resurfaced, Pope Leo XIV’s straightforward call for human dignity contrasted with a White House response that dodged the moral point entirely, Kevin Spacey’s nightclub comeback performance and his ongoing attempt to swap personal suffering for responsibility, and Meghan Markle’s Harper’s Bazaar profile, complete with an Upper East Side house manager announcing “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex” to an empty room. It’s a week full of case studies in what happens when leaders and celebrities choose optics over truth, and why audiences, voters, and stakeholders are paying closer attention to who names their missteps and who tries to PR their way out of them.

Want More Behind the Breakdown?
Follow The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson on Substack for early access to podcast episodes, private member chats, weekly live sessions, and monthly workshops that go deeper than the mic. It is the inside hub for communicators who want real strategy, clear judgment, and a little side-eye where it counts.

Follow Molly on Substack
Subscribe to Molly's Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to Molly's Live Events Calendar.

Need a Keynote Speaker? Drawing from real-world PR battles, Molly delivers the same engaging stories and hard-won crisis insights from the podcast to your live audience. Click here to book Molly for your next meeting.

Follow & Connect with Molly:

• https://www.youtube.com/mollymcpherson
• https://mollymcpherson.substack.com/
• https://www.tiktok.com/@mollybmcpherson
• https://www.instagram.com/molly.mcpherson/
• ...