Episode 651: Jean Harris and the Murder of Herman Tarnower (Part 1)
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna. And this right here, you bitches, is Morbid. You bitches, it's Morbid. It's Valentine's Day. It is. I sounded pissed about that. I'm not. It's fucking Valentine's Day. It's Valentine's Day.

Yeah, no, I'm happy about the Valentine's Day of it all. I love Valentine's Day. Not because like we do anything really. No, we're not like, we'll do like a little something. Like I woke up to a cute little like array on the counter this morning. Oh, see, that's cute. Yeah. We don't always, honestly, I gotta like be real here. Drew is a lot better at Valentine's Day than I am. Like I usually wake up to something and then I'm like, oh,

fuck, I'm going to run out later and get you discount candy. I don't know why I said candy like that. But this year, I did really fucking good. Hell yeah. I upped the ante this year. See, John and I usually...

go really hard to like make the kids like a cute little valentine's thing i feel like when you have kids it becomes more about like the holiday yeah and it becomes it becomes like super fun again because like it becomes like super kid again yeah that's always fun i know the magic of all

the holidays. Obviously Christmas is insane when you have kids. But even just like Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day even. So I always our bathroom that they brush their teeth in that's essentially the kid bathroom. Because they've demolished it. Oh, do you decorate it? I decorate it for all the holidays. And I don't go like, it's not like I go nuts. I just get stuff like some little banners. Sometimes I'll throw a balloon

in there. Like that dollar section stuff. Yeah, like the dollar section has a lot of cool stuff so like it's super easy to be able to do it or like Michael's has a lot of stuff in case you guys are thinking of wanting to do it. Yep. The little things are what I literally just put a banner up that says be mine and some of this like tinsel like this is like red tinsel. Cute. And then I think I had like a little heart. Uh...

like stuffed animal on the counter. I love that. And just in their bathroom. So we do it for like everything. Like we try to like just throw like a little banner in their bathroom just to make like the morning exciting when they brush their teeth. I like St. Patrick's Day when you put green dye in the toilet and you see the leprechauns peed and they found a flush. They fucking love that. I'm co-opting that when I have kids. It's so easy. Yeah. And it's,

They love it. Yeah. And we do like, you know, we do a leprechaun toast for that, like where we just put like Lucky Charms and like frosting on toast so they get to have like a wild ass breakfast. That's the shit I can't wait for. It's fun. And then like I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night.

making because I got a cricket. This bitch is a cricket enthusiast. It is fun as fuck. When you figure out how to do it, it is so satisfying. And so I stayed up until 2 a.m. I found they had like the girls already had like plain pink shirts, like long sleeve shirts. Yeah.

That they never really like grab or they're just sitting in their drawer. And I was like, ooh, I can bedazzle these. Let me make this a shirt you want to wear. Yeah. Sat up until 2 a.m. making them little Valentine's Day shirts and they were psyched this morning. Aw. So it was like, and then I made their lunches all like heart themed. Shut up. Like I got these little heart cutters for their sandwiches and they make them like into Uncrustables so they're like...

seal off the sandwich. They're really cool. You can find them on like anywhere really. I fuck so heavy with an Uncrustable. And it's fun to make your own because you can make it different shapes and stuff. Yeah, you can put whatever you want in there. It just makes like a fun lunch. And then like I just got some like heart-shaped shit and like pink stuff and all that. Did you cut the strawberries into little heart shapes? No, I didn't do that this morning because I did a trail mix instead of strawberries today. But it was like a pink themed...

trail mix hell yeah brother yeah it was fun let's go it's a lot of fun and then john usually and i always forget he'll get me flowers oh yeah a lot of times yeah like he'll have them delivered and then i end up forgetting and being like oh we don't because we're always like we don't do anything i know like why'd you do that and he's like i have to no it's relatable yeah i feel like you know you just do what you can you do what you can i got you like a random lego set so i love that big into lego so i'm like any occasion i'll just get you a fucking lego set

Yeah, usually it's as you get older and as you like kids come into the picture or even if they don't, I feel like it just becomes one of those like, it's a nice day. Yeah, it's just fun. Yeah. I want to get one of those Dunkin' Donuts donuts today that has the brownie batter in the middle. Oh, fuck yeah. Why didn't we get those? Because I'm getting something delivered. I already ordered it. What is it?

She just raised her eyebrows at me and Mikey, and Mikey is shimmying right now. Which is exciting. Did you just see the full mobility in my eyebrows? Yeah. They move now. Yeah. Guys, I stopped getting Botox. Ash makes expressions. I stopped getting it. I'm in recovery from Botox. Hell yeah. Yeah. I love your face. Thank you. That's so nice. I'm working on loving it too. You should. I should. But yeah, I ordered some crumble cookies.

Oh, yay. And they're all fun Valentine's Day. Oh, I'm excited. There's one that's like a strawberry cake. Oh, bitch. It's like, you know when you get a cupcake and you rip the bottom off and you make it a sandwich? It's like that. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have, you know, this is an exciting day and bitch. It's been an exciting week or two. Yeah. So...

I'm without words for what's happening this week. Retweet. So the last episode, you guys probably noticed that Andrew McMahon was on the show. Fucking wild. Andrew McMahon from Something Corporate, Jack's Mannequin, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. All of the above. You know, posters when I was 16 in my room. Yes, those as well. I have a Something Corporate tattoo. It was my first tattoo I ever got.

uh he came here to the stew like he came he's i we had such a blast with him like he flew from california here um we went out like we went out to dinner we got to hang at the studio like he was amazing he's just like a pal i know like immediately i was like wow i do feel like i've known you since i was 16 you kind of have and i've known him since i was six if we're going by that logic

Yeah, it was great. It was very funny because he was telling us that he listens to the show, so hopefully you're listening now. Hi, Andrew. Because it was very surreal to me. Oh, yeah. Because I was such a big Something Corporate fan when I was younger, and I still am, and Jack Spanik and Andrew McMahon in the wilderness. And it's funny that to be in that phase of life and then to sit with him and talk about being parents together is...

Like, surreal in a way I can't describe. Like, 16-year-old Elena, if you told her you're going to sit in your house or at dinner with Andrew McMahon and talk about parent shit together, I'd be like, what are you talking about? Like, I'd be like, what? Cannot compute. Like, what are you talking about? It was just, it was really lovely. And he was lovely. And it was a great experience. Yeah. And it was a fun episode. We appreciate it.

A very fun episode. We talked about Dancing Plagues. If you haven't listened to it. Go check it out. It's, you know, it's interview and it's also we talk about some like funny, like crazy Dancing Plagues of history. And he did an interview. He had great answers. Oh, absolutely. It's a great episode. Inviting nuns.

And we talk about fucking the devil a lot. So you should definitely listen to it. You know, like a regular episode. Regular episode. Doing butt stuff with the devil or fucking the devil. So that was fucking amazing. And I hope you guys enjoyed that episode a lot. And, you know, hopefully someday we have him back on because it was a blast. Yes. And we forgot to have him sign. Andrew, if you're listening, you do have to come back. We forgot to have you sign our hand. Not our hands. Not our hands. But the hand. He's like, no, thank you. He's like, I think I'll not come back. This got weird.

The hand that we have people sign when they come into the office. If you guys have seen the movie Talk to Me, which if you haven't, go watch it because it's an Australian film, horror film, and it's fucking brilliant. A24, right? I think it is, yeah. Is it? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Right? I was like, wait, there's a hand in it that is like a main plot device of the movie and we have the hand in the office. Yeah, it's fine. And we've been having people sign it. Like we had Bridget sign it when she came. Yep.

And we were going to have Andrew sign it because we're trying to have all our guests sign it and we forgot. So now you have to come back. So we'll set that up. You don't have a choice. We'll have our people call your people. So that happened. That was amazing. And then we have another amazing thing happening. You guys are getting a bonus episode. Yes. This week. In fact, tomorrow it's coming out wide to everybody. Yes.

Isn't it Wide Anne? It's a simultaneous release, so everyone's getting it at the same time. It's a bonus episode on top of our two episodes. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy fucking Valentine's Day, because guys... Well, I guess that'll be later, but... This is a fucking banger of an episode. It's going to be... We haven't actually recorded it yet, so it's going to be really interesting to see if Elena's alive afterwards. Yeah. You're going to have to see if I survive this one, because... That's all we can say.

I'm very excited to record it. We're going to be recording it in the next few days. And it's a big deal. So be on the lookout. If you're listening to this episode right now, Set an alarm. Know that tomorrow, in the future, tomorrow, a banger of an episode is being released to everybody as a bonus. Big things are happening. It's our gift to you and also a gift to me.

When they say treat yourself, Alayna went. I treated myself. Went big or went home. She did not go home. Yeah, I did not. I went big. It's wild. So be on the lookout for that. It's very exciting. Very awesome. This has been a week that I can't quite grasp. I don't think you ever will. No. I think that's all of our bid nasty. Yeah, I think so. AKA business. Bid nasty. Yeah.

And with that, we'll get into this. Let's go. It was a very exciting intro and super happy. We're going to take it home. We're like, oh my God, it's Valentine's Day. This is a story about two lovers. Yeah.

it's not happy or celebratory or any of the above, but no one expected that. I think. Yeah. I would hope not. You came to the wrong place if that's what you were looking for. Um, it is an interesting story and I'll tell you up at the top, it's going to be two parts. Um, part one is definitely gonna be a little bit longer than part two cause there's a lot of kind of setup that we have to get through. Okay. Um, so this is going to be titled if you're listening, Jean Harris and the murder of Herman Tarnower. Hmm.

So we're going to start with Jean first. Jean was, Jean Struven was her maiden name. She was born April 27th, 1923. She was the second of four children born to Albert and Mildred Struven. Struven. Isn't that a fun last name to say? I like that. Struven. Yeah. From an early age, she felt like she could never really live up to the high standard of her older sister, Mary Margaret, who was described as the family's good girl. Mary Margaret just seems like a good girl name. She's got to be.

Despite feeling like the underdog a lot of times, Jean did remember her early life fondly. Albert and Mildred raised the family in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were definitely wealthier than most families at the time. They had a maid, a laundress. The kids all went to private school. Oh, damn. Yeah, they were doing well. In 1983, Jean said, I was raised by my mother, but my father was almost never home, which is sad.

That is sad. And while she looked back on most of her memories from childhood with a certain fondness, it wasn't without its traumas. Her dad, Albert, by all accounts, was a very brilliant, very successful man. But he also was remembered by most as a, quote, champion tyrant, bigot, and snob.

Oh. So like not somebody I want to hang out with. I was going to say none of those things sound good at all. No. But go off. But successful, I guess. Yeah, that's usually the case. His temper was notorious and bouts of anger and rage were set off by very minor inconveniences, which is not great when you have children because I'm sure that comes with a lot of inconveniences. I also think that's such like –

Like, get it together. Yeah. Whenever adults, like, go off the handle at the smallest thing, I'm like...

I don't know. Children can figure it out. So why can't you? We don't tolerate that from children. So I don't know why we're tolerating it from adults. And as a parent, your kind of entire job is to teach kids not to do that. So how are you going to teach them not to do that when you're doing it yourself? Yeah, just like figure out emotional regulation, man. Yeah, it sounds very of the time. Oh, for sure. Very, a father of the time. Very of the time. Yeah. Shortly before her dad died in 1980, Jean put it pretty simply when she said, my father should not have had any children.

That's so sad. It is, especially as his child saying that. Yeah. She did love him. She admired his intelligence. But she also recognized that he was a very unhappy man. And a lot of his anger and temper came from...

basically like taking out his own disappointments on other people. Like his feelings of unfulfillment kind of thing. Yes, exactly. One of Jean's oldest friends said, I think Jean admired her father very much and she also hated his guts. He was cold, ever complaining, impossible to please, autocratic, and nasty. It's so sad that like children just have this natural thing of loving their parents even when their parents are like... Oh, it's innate. ...so awful to them. You know what I mean? Like it's like...

It's almost sad. You have to learn, I think, sometimes to unlove your parents for your own peace of mind and like well-being. Oh,

That was a deep statement. It was a little bit deep, you know, and relatable. But anyway, the home environment in general, mostly thanks to Albert, was one of constant competition because he set his kids up against each other and just tension because he was always angry. The only one of his kids who he seemed to approve of was Mary Margaret. She was the oldest. And like I said earlier, Jean just could never measure up to her no matter how hard she tried, which is really sad.

I hate that idea of kids like trying to measure up to each other. Yeah, you're all, you should all be equal and you should be loved exactly the same. You're each your own thing. Yeah. Like you're your own entity. And we love you because of that. Yeah. That should be the message. But this type of environment was probably where Jean developed some of her worst and what would become most harmful instincts, especially when it came to pleasing men.

Yeah. I mean, things like that are set up in childhood. She's being programmed to. Yeah. That's her whole life is trying to please a man. But at the same time, she also developed more positive perspectives, especially from her mom. When she was young, I love this, her mom would tell her, a curtsy doesn't mean one doggone thing. I want you to always look people in the eye and tell them the truth. You measure people from the neck up, Jean.

Yeah, bitch. She sounds like a bad bitch. I love that. I think that quote is fucking great. Damn. Yeah. You measure people from the neck up. A curtsy don't mean one doggone thing. That's badass. I like that. I love doggone. No, not one doggone thing. Nope.

So while her father was pretty terrible overall, Jean's mother was stern but in a different way and she could learn a lot from her. And it was from Mildred that she learned to treat others with respect and kindness and to actually value things like intelligence and talent over just money and social status. I love that. They had money and they had social status, but her mom was like, these are important things, but intelligence and kindness and respect are going to take you far, are more important. Yeah. Yeah.

So for the rest of her life, these two very enormous influences would be at war inside of Jean and play a pretty critical role in her adult life. Yeah, because they're very, like, conflicting. Very conflicting. Ideals. Yeah. In elementary school, for example, she studied hard. She did really well. But she never wanted to let her intelligence be seen as a bad thing.

But the lessons that she learned from her parents that helped her succeed academically kind of became a hindrance when it came to making friends. She was smart. She was very pretty, very well liked to a degree. But there was also distance between her and her peers. One classmate who seems like a very surface level individual recalled, I never could be fond of Jean because she wasn't interested in clothes, styles, all the giggle dumb things that we used to do. And boys, she hardly seemed to care about them at all.

It's like, okay. First of all, not everyone is attracted to the opposite sex. Jean was, but like, that's a weird thing to go off of. I don't know if that really should be part of your entire personality. And like clothes, style. Like your likability is based on whether you're like obsessing over boys. And your appearance. And like makeup and shit. It's like, uh-oh. Good luck with that.

Damn. School, though, quickly became Jean's refuge because there she got the approval and praise that she was really craving from her father. Yeah. But never got. Later, she would say, I loved school. I loved having a star on my forehead when I was little. I loved sitting in the sunroom of our big house and doing my homework, and I loved my teachers. Oh. Which really tells you that, like,

She got everything she needed there. And then going home, like, craved that. Yeah. Which is just... Also, kudos to those teachers. Hell yeah. We love teachers. Hell yeah, teachers. But she threw herself into academics and extracurriculars. She joined as many clubs as she possibly could, attended as many school events as she was able to, mostly as a means of avoiding her dad. Yeah. But ultimately, she built up a really impressive resume by the time she graduated high school. Good for her.

Yeah. I have no idea what this case is, by the way. So I'm just like fully riding this way. I literally don't know what happens. I've never heard of this. Yeah. Just putting that out there. So if I'm sitting here being like, good for her. I don't know if she does something later. I don't know what happens. Well, it's very...

You know, like, it's like when we say you can be sad for the child or you can say good for her for who she was at one point. Before all whatever happens happens. I will... Jean lost her way. Okay. But it's a lot more complicated than that. Okay. It's...

This is a very layered story. I ultimately don't agree with what she does ever. But there's a lot of layers to it. There's a lot of layers to it. There's a lot of gray area in this story. Yeah, I just wanted to be clear that I'm like, I don't know what happened. No, honestly, good to say that at the top. No one think I'm like praising someone that I know what they did. No. Well, and right now you're praising her for the good things that she did. Yes, that's all I do. Just being clear. When we get to the...

We're going to get to a part and I think you and I are going to feel... And I'm going to go, oh. Well, and I think you and I are going to have very similar opinions. Okay. There's a fall from humanity. Oh, wow. Yeah. But we're not there yet. After her graduation in 1941, Jean enrolled at the Smith College in Massachusetts. Oh, shit. She studied economics there and she actually minored in Spanish.

Damn. Like her high school experience, she threw herself into those studies completely. In her free time, she sang in the Glee Club and she joined the water ballet team. Water? Is that just like a synchronized swimming kind of thing? I think it's ballet in the water. I don't know. Probably. Probably. I didn't know water ballet was a thing. Sounds beautiful. But now that I think of it, is that at the Olympics? Yeah.

synchronized swimming synchronized i could be wrong maybe it is called water ballet artistic swimming so yeah i think it used to be called synchronized swimming yeah but i think artistic swimming sounds better for sure it definitely does definitely more what it is when i guess you could probably do it solo yeah because then technically it wouldn't have to be synchronized yeah so look at us we really worked through that there look at us we logicked our way through

But while she wasn't engrossed in her schoolwork, she spent her time writing to her boyfriend, Jim Harris, who she'd started dating while she was still in high school.

After graduation, Jim went and joined the Naval Air Corps and was stationed in the South Pacific. So they really stayed in touch primarily through letters. And toward the end of Jean's junior year at Smith, Jim got leave and arrived on the Smith campus to surprise Jean and asked her to marry him once the war was over. Wow. Which is so romantic. That does sound very romantic. It's very short-lived. Oh, no. But she happily agreed.

In 1946, when she was 23, they did finally get married and they settled down in Michigan. Jim's parents were thrilled to add a daughter-in-law to the family. They loved Jean.

But Jean's father could not have been any more disappointed. In fact, he made zero zilch null attempt to hide. He was outright with the fact that he did not like this guy. According to journalist Shana Alexander, Albert was furious. He warned Jean that she was throwing her life away. He was certain Jim Harris was not good enough for her. And he made sure that Jim too knew how he felt.

Oh, boy. Which is shitty. Well, it's also hard because he spent a lot of time her life basically making her feel she's not good enough for him. And now he's saying this guy isn't good enough for you. And she's like, I thought you didn't even give a shit about me. She's like, what do you mean? Like, where's my standing here? Right. Yeah. It's just a conflicting message. Well, and it's also just it's kind of a continued message of like nothing you ever do is

good enough even marrying his dad. Exactly, like you can't even pick a guy. Right. Yeah. It wasn't only that Albert disliked Jim Harris, but he actually thought the entire Harris family were ignorant fools. Damn. Mostly because of their progressive political opinions and support of the Roosevelt administration. Damn. It tells you a lot.

Sam. Damn, damn, damn, damn. Whether or not Jean was throwing her life away was obviously a matter of opinion. But in hindsight, she did recognize that her marriage had a lot less to do with love than it did with defiance of her father. She wanted to go against him. She liked that it was bothering her. Yeah. She said, when I got married, I had no conception of love. Defying dad was the main reason I married Jim. Also, unlike dad, he was very quiet. Which is...

kind of a baller statement. She's like, again, I say damn. She's like, listen, my dad sucked. He didn't like this guy. This guy's quiet. I can do what I want. This guy's quiet. This guy shuts his fucking mouth. He's gonna let me live. I appreciate that about him. And I love that she's like, unlike my loud ass snobby motherfucker of a dad, this guy's quiet. This guy shuts the fuck up. Wow. Yeah. So

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Obviously, in the 1940s, women didn't have a ton of options for independence. So if Jean wanted to get away from her dad and her family home, which she very much did, marriage was the easiest and the fastest way to do that. For sure. And at the very least, she did choose somebody who treated her with kindness and was entirely predictable.

Okay. Yeah. It's a safe life. Yeah. To those who knew her well, though, Jean's marriage to Jim didn't make any fucking sense. She was very smart. She was an independent woman. We know she loved the arts. She loved culture. She was the ultimate conversationalist. She was passionate. She had a lot of big dreams. Jim had smaller ambitions.

And he didn't seem to want a lot out of life. He was a simple guy. Yeah, you know? Yeah. He's just Jim. Well, people are different. We all want different things out of life. It doesn't make him a bad guy for not wanting. No, for not like, you know. For just wanting a simple home life, you know? Yeah, whatever fulfills him. Yeah. Jean's friend Leslie McDougal recalled she was desperate to marry Jim Harris. I never understood it. He was a little man in every way. Jean had intellect. She was brainy. Everything she got into, she did well. He loved to putter, to trim the hedge.

As she got more interesting, he got duller. And in the notes, Dave wrote, damn, what a savage read. I was dying. Honestly, yeah. Yeah, ginger. That is like shit. I was like, whew. After the wedding, though, Jean settled into married life and she was determined to be the perfect housewife. But she also wanted to keep her regular job, which was she was a teacher at Grosse Pointe Country Day School.

And she also found the time to keep a spotless home. She cooked all the meals. She kept up with all her appearances that she needed to do. She was doing it all. Yeah. Now, while the schedule was without a doubt exhausting, very taxing, it was important to Jean that she apply her training and her intellect to a job that she saw as valuable. And to her, there was nothing more valuable than helping to mold the minds of children. She loved teaching. Oh, I love.

that. And she loved being a part of kids' lives. Well, and it sounds like she had so many, like, influential teachers in her life. You can tell when a kid has great teachers because they immediately are like, I want to be a teacher. Yeah. Because they see what happens. Exactly. Like, my kids have, like, this fucking, like, the older girls have an

an amazing fucking teacher. Oh, she's a queen. She's a goddamn queen. I wish we could like literally say her name, but we obviously can't. I would love to say her name just because she's so amazing, but she's amazing. And they, one of my kids is like, I want to be a teacher like, blah, blah, blah. I love that. And it's like, that's a sign that you've done the right thing. Yeah.

I also think you're one who says that would be the best teacher ever. Oh my god, yeah. She's so patient and sweet, especially with like the youngest. Oh my god, yeah. She'd be amazing. I could go on for like an hour. Also, if you're looking for anybody to follow on TikTok, we haven't done a TikTok follow, like go in a while. Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams on TikTok. His name is Tell Williams. We love Mr. Williams with our entire heart and soul. He is a...

Fucking phenomenal follower. Yeah. A follower follow. And he's a preschool teacher and also a therapist. Yeah. He does it all. He does it all. He really does. He also does Savage Reads. He does Savage Reads. He's hilarious. I remember watching him in the beginning of TikTok and being like, I want him to be my child's preschool teacher. Like he's so good and you can tell he cares so much. Pre-K pause. Yeah.

Pre-K pause. He always starts with that. Go follow him because he deserves all the follows. He certainly does. He's Mr. Williams on TikTok. And you will not regret it. You will not. He's hilarious. Even if you don't have kids, great follow. Exactly. He's a great follow no matter what. Yeah. Well, back to Jean. Her domestic responsibilities increased a year or two later when Jim's newly widowed father moved in with them.

Jean really loved her father-in-law and she never complained about living with him. But according to several neighbors, Albert Harris expected to be treated as a guest in the house rather than an occupant who contributed to the work of a running home. Ah. Which, you know what? You live that long, you lose your wife. Yeah. Your kid's got to take care of you at some point. At this point, he's probably like, you know what? Fuck it. Yeah. Like, treat me like a guest. I get to a certain age and I've raised you all up, you know? Yeah, you treat me like a guest. Yeah, come on. But.

But also, it doesn't sound like Jim was, like, really doing a lot, and it's his dad, so that's a little tough. Yeah. But the workload increased again two years later in 1950 when Jean gave birth to their first child, David, and then a couple years later, a second child, Jimmy. So they had their hands full. Yeah. The expectations of motherhood were made even more stressful by Jean's postpartum depression after Jimmy's birth. And remember...

This was not a time, even now I feel like we don't have a full understanding of postpartum depression. Picture it in the 1950s. That sounds nightmarish. They'd give you like some meth about it. Yeah, that's a nightmarish scenario in the 1950s. It's sad. So a lot of times Jean found herself crying over postpartum.

what most people would consider very small things or no reason at all. Like she didn't know why she was crying. She just was. Oh, that sounds awful. It's very sad. But fortunately, her postpartum didn't last super long. Well, that's good. Even after it passed, friends did notice changes to her behavior. I think it left its mark on her. Well, you wonder what, yeah, it probably leaves some kind of mark. I fortunately did not go through it. I know people do did though, and I can't.

If you're going through it, I'm really sorry. Yeah. You'll get on the other side, I promise. It's one of my biggest fears, like when I do end up having kids. Well, people don't take it, like I feel like it doesn't get taken seriously a lot. No. When you try to get help for it. It's scary. It's very scary. Yeah. But one friend said, she made such an enormous effort, but she was extremely volatile. We had a cup of tea together every single day, and I never knew whether I'd find a happy woman, a sad woman, or an angry woman. Ooh, that's tough. So it sounds like...

I think I shouldn't have said that it didn't last very long because I really don't think there's a way of measuring how long she was going through it. I think she might have just got better at managing it. Maybe she was just pushing it to the side. But it was still affecting her daily life.

But although she never hesitated to join the PTA or engage with neighbors and parents of her kids' classmates, her ability to integrate with others did remain somewhat of a problem into her adulthood. Oh, okay. At the time, Grosse Pointe, where she was living and teaching, it's a suburb of Detroit, was home to some of the automotive industry's wealthiest families. And there was a very rigid social hierarchy there.

That was all based on wealth, of course. As a school teacher and the wife of a middle class husband, she never really cared about material things. And since her childhood, she actually really tried to find value outside of monetary terms. But because of the way that everything worked, she was a little bit of an outcast among everybody else. That makes sense. Yeah. And she really struggled to make strong connections because of that. That's rough. Yeah.

Wow.

Everybody's really reading it. That's the thing. I'm like, I couldn't find anything to outright say that Jim was an asshole. So I'm just like... It just sounds like he was kind of like a... He was just kind of like a plain Jane, a plain Jim, you know? Yeah, a plain Jim. Yeah. Just vibing to his own beat. I'm like, wow, nobody likes you. Nobody thought you were interesting. Like, that's rough. That's sad. I know. I feel a little bad for Jim. Yeah. Does Jim do anything that I shouldn't feel bad for him? No.

Okay, cool. Not that I know of. I couldn't find it. That's the thing. I couldn't find anything that I could call him an asshole about. Yeah, like truly negative, like he's abusive or something like that. No, it doesn't sound like it. By the sounds of it, I'm just like...

You know, don't care when everybody else thinks, Jim. I feel like he needs like a high five. I want to take him out for a burger. I'm like, come on. You be happy with you, Jim. I want to take Jim to a theme park. Let's find a little excitement here. I'm like, you know what, Jim? There's these things called book nooks that you can make. I think you would love them. Here you go. Sit down.

He strikes me as somebody... He would love a book nook, I feel. The very minimal amount I know about Jim, I think he would fuck heavy with a book nook. Yeah, and I'm saying that as somebody who fucking loves book nooks. I sit down and do them at night, so... I love that. That's not a read on book nooks. No, it's not. I got Elena multiple book nooks for her birthday. Hell yeah. But by then, by that point, Jean had started taking courses in a master's program where she was finding a lot of purpose. But when she thought about her future as a housewife and a mother in Grosse Pointe, that idea became increasingly unsustainable.

She was finding a lot of purpose kind of like pouring into her own cup. Yeah. But I think she kind of like took a little like a scope out and was like, I don't know if this is going to last. It's so sustained. Yeah. So her life with Jim didn't exactly end. It kind of just fizzled out. There wasn't a lot of drama. There wasn't a lot of anger. Everything just...

It just kind of was like, this isn't going to be forever. Yeah. All right. By 1964, she came to the conclusion that she did not want to be married anymore. And she reached out to her friend and lawyer, Jeptha Sherman, I think it is, who helped her navigate, obviously, a pretty complex divorce process at that time. Yeah. Sherman said, some people should never marry, and Jean is one of them. She's a superior person, and there are not too many suitable matches for a person like that.

Jeez. I know. People are really talking her up. They do. Yeah. So Jean and Jim Harris's marriage officially came to an end in 1965. And while it wasn't the most amicable divorce in the world, I don't really know if there are many. There are a few, I feel. Yeah. Jean was said to navigate it with a remarkable grace. Her lawyer said she was never accusatory about Jim Harris. Everyone knew what he was. He was never guilty of false advertising about himself.

But Jean would never say a word against him. She was an admirable client in a real rotten divorce. So it all, and in that sense, it like, it seems like he wasn't a bad guy. It just wasn't,

gonna work and maybe he didn't want to divorce so it probably got kind of gnarly then messy yeah but it's like when she won't even say like a bad thing about the guy it's like yeah feels like he just wasn't a bad guy that's what i think didn't really work yeah they just weren't meant to be i don't think they were meant to be no it doesn't sound like that and like obviously there are relationships where like it's your high school sweetheart and it works out but like for sure not all the time but it's a tough one and the older you get and the more life changes you you

You can see the differences. Yeah. Yeah. But by that point, everybody could see how unhappy Jean was in her life. So when it came to an end to the divorce and the marriage, everybody was rooting for her. Yeah. So after leaving Jim, Jean and the kids moved in with one of her close friends, Jodi Blaine. She needed to move in with a friend to make it for a while.

And Dodie had also gone through a divorce around the same time. So they spent a lot of time reflecting on and discussing what had gone wrong in their respective marriages. And they both reasonably concluded that they had just simply chosen the wrong man, which I'm sure a lot of people who get divorced can relate to.

But this, of course, led to the question, if their respective ex-husbands were the wrong man, then who was the right man? Who is he? Who's the right man? Who's this man for me? Well, Jean had given this matter a great deal of thought. Oh, had she? And she said her answer was very simple. She said very probably he was a Jewish doctor.

I like that she's just like, I know. Specific. I know who the right man for me is. It's giving Charlotte. It is. Charlotte York from Sex and the City. Yes, absolutely it is. During one of their many talks, Jean told Dodie, being Jewish, he'd be a man of superior intelligence and education, and that his, quote, Semitic background would also make him warm-hearted and passionate, yet protective. She said Jewish husbands really take care of their women. Wow, she really thought this one through. She did, yeah. I like it.

So her desire to find the right man might have fueled her fantasies, but she never let it interfere with the responsibilities of her real life. After the divorce, she felt a lot of guilt for disrupting her two sons' lives, and she tried every chance she could to make it up to them. She wanted to make sure that they had the best of the best and that they would have a great start to their adult lives once they were done with high school.

Yeah, she seemed like a good mom. It's good to hear that. Yeah, for a lot of women in her position, it was possible to rely on their parents for help in raising kids as a single parent. Yeah. But not the case with Jean. Albert, her father, seemed to have about as much fondness for his grandsons as he did for their father and, quote, flatly refused to contribute to the cost of their education. I'm sorry. This is their maternal grandfather. And I'm sorry. I think about...

how rad it must be to be a grandparent all the time. All the time. Because, like...

I love being a parent. Yeah. Like, it's fun. It's obviously, it's like hard. Well, that's the thing. It's so fucking fun. But when you're a grandparent, you don't even have the hard stuff. It's being a parent without any of the responsibilities. So it's just really like, you know, which I guess there's your answer right there. It's like, if you like being a parent, my goodness, you're going to love being a grandparent. Yeah. Because it takes away any of the stress that you even were fine with. But it doesn't sound like he loved being a parent. But he did not like being a parent. And it's like, but it's like, damn. Yeah.

It sounds so fun. What do you mean? I think it's really shitty to... He didn't like their dad and he took that out on them. Yeah. It's like, sure, that's their father and that's half of who they are, but... Yeah. It's like, that's not their fault, though. Well, that's the thing. That's not their choice, so why are you holding that against them? Yeah. It's just...

it's strange to me yeah it really is but also gene hadn't requested any alimony during the divorce process and she was only getting about 200 a month in child support which for two kids was not a lot no so if she wanted to ensure a bright future and this world-class education that she wanted to give her sons she was gonna have to find a way to increase her income dramatically

So now singularly focused, she put her own PhD work on hold and contacted the vocational office at Smith College for guidance and finding a better job because she's an alum there. Yeah. She told them she wanted to move on from teaching and work her way up to school administration because obviously she knew that paid better.

Before long, the vocational office got back to her and they had an offer of a position of director of the middle school at Springsdale, which was an elite all-girls prep school in Chestnut Hill, which is a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. And this would pay about $12,000 a year, which right now would be about $117,000. Wow. Okay. So that's a great annual salary. Hell yeah. She eagerly accepted, of course, and started making preparations to move to the East Coast.

So a few months later, she was settling into her new life in Pennsylvania and was already thriving at her position in Springsdale. While she was dedicated to the new position and dove in with a lot of enthusiasm, she still managed to find the time to make sure that her kids were also adjusting to their new home, keeping up with their requirements because they were both on scholarship, you know, helping with their schoolwork, mom duties. Yeah.

In late December, though, she called up her old friend Marge Jacobson in New York. And Marge was like, girl, you got to come out to New York. I am throwing a dinner party this weekend. And, you know, you got to relax a little bit. You got to let loose. You got to come to my party. Oh, damn. And Jean was like,

I don't know, like it's going to cost money to go and, you know, we just got the kids settled. But ultimately she did agree to go to the party. Good. Yeah. She needed it a little bit. Yeah. I wish she had gone to like a different party, but. Uh-oh. The party's fine, but you know. So among the attendees at Marge's party that night was Dr. Herman Tarnower. He was a prominent New York cardiologist at the time and obviously a friend of the Jacobsons.

Jean didn't know a lot about him, other than the fact that he was a friend of Marge and Marge's husband. Yeah. But she was immediately captivated by him. He had quite the presence. He was very charming. He had that, like, commanding presence. It seemed everybody around him, from his friends to his patients, had an unyielding devotion to this man. Oh. He's got charisma. Charisma. Uniqueness, nerve, and talent. Yeah.

So that night, Jean and Herman spent the entire evening chatting. They were obviously each trying to impress each other with intellect and quick wit. Banta. Banta. When the party came to an end and they parted ways, Jean assumed she'd probably never see this guy again. But a few days later, she was at home in bed with a backache and a gift unexpectedly arrived from Dr. Herman Tarnower. Oh, girl. And when she opened the small package, it contained a book on Israeli art and a brief note that read, It's time you knew more about the Jews.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Although she had only spent one night talking with Dr. Tarnower, Jean was completely taken with him and was convinced that she had finally found that quote unquote right man that she described to her friend Dodie all those years earlier. Oh yeah, she nailed it. He's a Jewish doctor. He fits the bill that she described.

And then a few days after the little gift, the book arrived at her house, a card arrived in the mail from Dr. Tarnower. And it read, you were a delight to be with. Kept wondering if you could keep up with the pace. Also, whether or not you were a good dancer. Okay. I don't love that note. Okay, thank you. I don't love that note. I was like, okay. It's a backhanded compliment. I kept wondering if you could keep up with the pace. Like, okay. Okay.

That would be my, all right. That's very condescending. And also, oh, we get it. Like, oh, yeah, you're so quick-witted. You're such a hot shot. Like, I wonder if you can keep up with me. Oh, fuck off. Yeah. I...

Very different time. I don't love that. That would not tickle my fancy. No, that would not get me. But Jean was swept away by this. Hey, to each their own, you know. So this was Jean's thing. And she was very excited when another card arrived a few weeks later, this time from Kenya, where Dr. Townhour was visiting, asking whether or not she'd be interested in getting together with him in New York in March.

As it's just so happened, Jean was actually planning to be at a conference in New York that very weekend. Sounds kismet. Sounds kismet. So she eagerly agreed to meet him for dinner. Now, throughout her marriage to Jim, one of the things that really irked Jean about him was his lack of initiative and like creativity. Yeah. He didn't really have any ideas or wants of his own.

Which made it so that she had to always decide everything. Yeah, and I can understand why that would be frustrating. Yeah. So to her delight, Herman was the exact opposite. He was decisive and firm, happy to choose the restaurant or the evening's activities, and high, as she began to call him, was thoughtful, adventurous, and very romantic.

So within a few days of the dinner in New York, flowers arrived at Jean's office and her house. Two sets of flowers. And High called to check back in. It was like everything she wanted in a man, like she described to Dodie a few years earlier, had materialized and been handed to her. It really sounds that way. Yeah. So a few weeks later, Jean was back in New York, this time to celebrate High's 57th birthday. And over the course of the weekend, they saw a Broadway show together. They saw all the New York landmarks, ate at some of the nicest restaurants.

Unlike her ex-husband, whose interests were, according to her, pedestrian and vapid, at least to Jean, High was cultured and seemed to pursue his interests with enthusiasm, which is, again, exactly what she was looking for. So within a few months of dating, Jean and High had completely fallen in love.

Whoa. Hmm.

Even though their romance had been pretty short up to that point. Yeah, it feels that way. It was like... It wasn't a surprise, but it was like a little... Like, right now? It was just like, oh. Are you sure? Okay. All right. Like, I saw this coming, but like...

I would have talked you out of it. Yeah, I saw this coming, but I was thinking maybe like a little more down the road. Yeah. But in a letter dated March 1967 to Jean from High, he expressed those feelings in writing. So he said, darling, I love you very, very much. How can I tell? I miss you and want to share so many things with you. Sharing that must be love. Are most people who marry in love?

Yes. I hope so. What happens? So few are really happy. You will give me all the answers this weekend. Drive carefully. You will be transporting valuable cargo. Wow. Yeah, he is... He...

That's fucking molasses thick. Yeah. That he's laying it on. It's giving. I'm in a place of sex in the city. It's giving Richard. Oh my God, yes. It's got Richard vibes. Richard. Wow. I kind of loved Richard. You can't not love Richard. That's the thing. You got to hate him later, but you can love him at some point. You'll love him till then.

I get it. You do. So that spring and summer, the romance deepened, which was reflected in their regular communications. High wrote in a letter, another letter in the spring, Darling, my love for you grows deeper all the time. I feel that we could be very, very happy together. May I suggest we try to spend a very, very long weekend together around Memorial Day to see if you can really put up with me for more than a few hours without getting terribly irritated or bored. I love this. I love this.

It was clear from the letters that High was building up to ask Jean to marry him. Hell yeah. And over that long Memorial Day weekend, he did just that, giving her an emerald cut diamond ring. Oh, damn. Proposing in a very traditional fashion. Love that. I love an emerald cut. Hell yeah. I love an oval cut. That's what I have, but I also love an emerald cut. Just to be clear. I'm like, I love both.

High's proposal came as kind of a shock to everybody who knew him best and had seen the way that he had dodged commitment time and time again in the past. Mrs. Arthur Schult, a friend who had known High for years, said, "...he always had very attractive women friends. He was always very generous with time and money, but he never married."

Jean, on the other hand, though, thought little, if anything, of High's history with women and just happily accepted his proposal. Yeah. Which you can understand. Yeah. Since the early days of her marriage to Jim Harris, she fantasized about having a partner who was her intellectual equal, but who could also provide a sense of security. And she felt like she had found that in High. Yeah. Yeah.

But the problem, though, is that fantasies don't usually hold together when they're subjected to all the complexities of the real world. No, they tend to bend under pressure. They do. And, you know, we're going to get there. But Jean was ecstatic about High's proposal of marriage. And despite the fact that marrying him would require uprooting her life and starting over in New York, she didn't hesitate to say yes in the moment.

What she hadn't thought about, though, was how uprooting that life would affect her teenage sons, who had already had their lives disrupted by their parents' divorce just a few years earlier. Yeah, you're right. But it did occur to her at a certain point. That summer, during a visit with Marge Jacobson, the reality of everything started to sink in for Jean. And she said, Marge, I cannot marry high for a year. I cannot take those children out of school again. I took them away from their father already.

Well, that was, I mean, that was thoughtful. Yeah, and I feel like that speaks to the kind of mom that she was. But, you know, her concerns were reasonable, but they turned out to be actually completely unnecessary. In August, just a few months after he'd proposed, Jean raised the issue of setting a date for the wedding so she could make longer-term plans. And to her surprise, High hesitated, something that he rarely did in conversation, and said, Jean, I can't go through with it. I'm afraid of it. I can't go through with it, and I'm sorry.

Wow. Yeah. I didn't see that coming. Yeah. Everyone who knew Jean expected High's response to come as a big shock to her, actually, like it just was to you. But she responded very coolly. She told friends, it hurt for a while, I suppose, but I'm not very surprised. He isn't a marrying man. I don't really know what all the reasons are. Huh. Yeah. So. Interesting. Yeah, it took quite the turn. It was like,

I feel like it was so, you know, hot and heavy for lack of a better term for a while. And like really reached a pinnacle point. And then it burned out like. Yeah. But it doesn't burn completely out. Yeah. Eventually it does. But it kind of like burns out then goes. It's like a heartbeat monitor where it's like up, down, up, down, you know. And then it kind of flat lines for a minute.

Forever, yeah. Okay. So with marriage off the table, Jean put her engagement ring back in its box, wrapped it up, and sent it back to High, not wanting to reveal her disappointment to her former fiancé. Damn. But to her surprise, High called the moment he received the ring and insisted that she keep it.

And a few days later, he actually drove down to Philadelphia himself, ring in hand, and again insisted that she keep it. That night, according to Jean's sons, she and High locked themselves in the bedroom and argued about the future of their relationship for hours. From High's perspective, Jean deserved to be with somebody who wanted to marry her, and that just wasn't him. He just simply didn't want to be married. So in his mind, the right thing to do was to remove himself from the equation.

His decision not to get married appeared to put an end to the relationship altogether. But in the weeks that followed, they did continue to see each other from time to time. And in the meantime, and between all of that, Jean threw herself completely into work to try to distract herself from just the disappointment of it all.

And at the same time, her chronic back pain, which she had actually struggled with for most of her life, started flaring up worse than ever. It seems like stress fed into that. Yeah, anxiety and stuff. Yeah. As soon as High heard about Jean's back pain from friends, he called her immediately and recommended a new painkiller, and even went as far as sending her a prescription for the pills.

So the distance from High, the painkillers, all together, appeared to have given Jean some clarity around their relationship. And she started to consider if she might be willing to compromise her wants, especially if it meant that she was not going to lose him forever.

What seems to have occurred to Jean was the fact that High's desire to no longer see her or marry her didn't mean that he didn't love her, just that he wanted to protect her reputation from anybody who might see their not being married as somehow abnormal. Because at the time, you didn't have like a long-term partner. You got married. You're living in sin. You're living in sin. After all, though, High Tarnower was a fiercely independent, strong-willed man who rarely compromised. Yeah.

And that aspect of his personality was probably not going to change so late in life. And she knew that.

So one night, a few months after they separated, Jean wrote Hai a letter, saying, "'Dear Hai, what a strange and wonderful and awful three months these have been, and what a lot of soul-searching thoughts they have evoked. I know a letter from me is not what you want most in the world, but there are so many important things to say. Everything about us is important to me, Hai, because I've never experienced love before until you, and love, I've discovered, means wanting to share every thought and sensation, in fact needing to share.'

As far as never seeing you again is concerned, I won't let it happen, however much you protest. If your social engagements continue to be as pressing as they are this weekend, perhaps you could work me in during office hours. Wow. Yeah. Also, I just want to write letters again. I know, this whole letter writing thing, I'm like, wow, this is so much more like...

Yeah, and dramatic and all that. I love a letter. Yeah. Shana Alexander, the journalist I mentioned earlier, wrote, to Jean, the letter was a proclamation that she was a modern woman. To Herman, it may have seemed a license to resume his lifetime bachelor habits. But whatever the case, the letter worked. Yeah. High called a few weeks later and did arrange a date to see her and the children in New York in the winter of 1967, thus beginning a new phase of Jean and High's relationship.

Hmm. It's impossible to know what Dr. Herman High Tarnower understood his relationship with Jean to be, but it is clear that they probably would have described it in decidedly different terms. To Jean, everything that was starting back up again was a restoration of the way that things had been, even though it was on a restricted schedule where she could only see him on the weekends or holidays or when he had time to see her. Yeah. For High, on the other hand...

Jean's apparent compromise seemed, as Shane Alexander suggested, to have been interpreted as her implicit permission for him to carry on his bachelor lifestyle and just be able to casually see her when their lifestyles or when their schedules would allow. Yeah. So basically she was like,

It's just going to be that I'll see him on a limited schedule. And he was like, it's just that I'll see her on a limited schedule. And in between then I can fuck whoever I want. Yeah. This just doesn't sound like this doesn't sound good. Yeah. Basically.

Basically, it became an open relationship without ever having a conversation about it, which is never good. An open relationship, I'm sure, can work, but there's got to be a sit-down conversation where limits and parameters are set up. No matter what, you both have to be on the same page with what your relationship is. You're in a relationship, exactly. Yeah.

So to High's closest friends, the turn in his relationship with Jean and his selfish desire to carry on exactly as he pleased did not come as much of a surprise. When she learned that the marriage had been called off, Marge Jacobson reached out to High to find out what had happened, and she really only got a basic explanation. He said, Jean understands that we won't marry, but I have promised her that I would take care of her, and I mean it. She's remembered in my will.

So she was in his will. Damn. Yeah. This is so like... It's kind of progressive. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's progressive, but not at the same time. But like the complete opposite of progressive because it's Jean giving in to him, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So like it comes off as this very like, wow, like they're so forward thinking and they're kind of like removing boundaries to make...

this work for them. And it's like, but it's not. And well, and ultimately, that's not working for half of them. You know, like one of that half of them is completely compromising while the other one is not at all. Right. And it doesn't sound, I couldn't find any information to see that Jean had other relationships too that she, you know, filled her time with when she wasn't seeing high. So it was kind of like a one sided open relationship, which. Yeah, that's definitely not

Ideal. Yeah. And again, it's not, I don't think it's what she ultimately wanted. No. I think she just didn't want to lose him. This feels like desperation. Yeah. So she gave up her own wants and needs. Yeah. Which was really unlike her. Yeah. But to Marge, the response was characteristic of Dr. Tarnower's typical cold detachment. Years later, she said, the truth is, I think High was incapable of loving. He had tremendous family feeling, but without love.

High only loved himself and was quite insensitive to everybody else. Ooh, that's sad. I know. That's a sad way to be. It is, and you wonder what he came from to become that way. I was going to say what led to that. Yeah. For Gene, High's selfishness was one of the things that actually made him such a great man in the eyes of others, though. He was driven to succeed despite the odds, and that drive had pushed him to become one of the most well-respected doctors in New York.

She once told a close friend, High is great to be with because he's so selfish. He does what he wants and that makes him a damn good company. Is there anyone worse to be around than some self-made martyr forever telling you I did it for the children's sake? It sounds like she was convincing herself. I'm sorry, what? I think a lot of people can relate to this sentiment of

convincing yourself that you're 100% that a terrible quality in somebody is actually their best quality. It's actually, it would be awful if they weren't like this. It's like that's that, that is like the most like desperate, please just believe me that that this is totally fine. And that I would hate this any other way to say like somebody who's selfish is the best kind of person to be around. No.

They're actually, they're the worst kind of person to be around. That's just like diabolically untrue. And it's also like, it's like this weird...

form of self-sabotage. It really is. Because it's like, no, it's you be selfish. Yeah. If you think that's a great quality, possess it for a little bit. Be selfish. Do what you want to do, Jean. That's the thing. You know? Yeah. And you don't even have to be selfish to do that. No. But he is, you know, he was being selfish. Yeah. And I just, you feel it's, it really is like, it's like a form of Stockholm syndrome. It really is. It is. Well, and it's complicated because

she let it happen. Absolutely. So there are a lot of men that if they're allowed to be selfish, they're going to be. There's a lot of women. I was going to say, and on the flip side, there are a lot of women who are super selfish and crazy. Yeah. So anyway, going back to the story, one woman who dated Dr. Tarnower described him as, quote, a Jewish bachelor prince accustomed to being pursued. But at the same time, High seemed to proudly reject the need for love and connection as a human weakness.

Shana Alexander wrote, I don't love anybody and I don't need anybody. It became his proud and oft-repeated credo. Oh, man. Yeah. Which...

Clearly, something happened along the way. Very clearly, yeah. Maybe something in childhood. There's got to be something in that background. Yeah, maybe like a first relationship. For sure. Something is there. Yeah. It's possible that Jean's perspective on High's personality was some kind of a defense mechanism, like we were just saying. Or it's also possible that she just completely romanticized his behavior to make it more tolerable.

I think it's a mixture of both. I think it is too. But whatever the case, it seems unlikely that she expected high selfishness or his callousness would extend to his romantic relationships when it came to the emotions that he claimed to have loved. Yeah. Yet in the years that followed, as they continued to see each other on a truncated schedule, Dr. Tarnower was carrying on relationships with several women during the week while Jean was in Pennsylvania. It's also like, isn't that like...

It's just, that sounds like a lot of work. I mean, yeah. Aren't you tired? But it sounds like a lot of work, but it also sounds like it was filling his cup in a different way. And again, I think it points back to, I think he actually needed to be loved on a mass scale. On a different level, yeah. And I think I'm looking at it probably, he's not looking at it through an emotional lens. No. So it's not a lot of work. No.

Because there's no heavy lifting in the emotional department. And he's kind of getting everything he needs out of it. He's having his cake and eating it too. So it's like, for him, it's really not a lot of work. He's not carrying on full-blown love affairs with people. You know what I mean? It sounds like. No, he kind of is. Or like his version of a love affair, which is just, to me, it sounds like

The flowery language and everything kind of comes naturally to him. Like he's a... The charm thing, like... When he goes right... Doesn't sound like a lot of work. He goes right up to the point of commitment. Exactly. And sometimes even makes that commitment and then backs out. I mean, proposes. Well, listen to this. Yeah. There was... In some cases, these relationships that he was carrying on were short-term casual relationships. Right.

But some of them were what I'm sure the women considered to be serious. There were two women that he proposed to, one in 1970 and one in 1971, before ultimately calling off those engagements just like he had with Jean. Damn. So he would get right there. And I do wonder, I could see this going both ways. I could see it as...

And he maybe was like, I want to get married. Like, I'm supposed to get married. This is what I'm going to do. Or it's what those women needed to stick around for the extra mile. Like, he knows what he needs to do to keep it going for as long as he wants to keep it going. Or maybe he thought that that's what he wanted. Yeah, who knows? Decided to call it off. Because it's pure speculation because, you know, I don't know him. He's not here to say, unfortunately. Oh.

So whether he was just completely oblivious or cruel can never be known, but High seemed, at least on certain occasions, to be under the impression that Jean did share his casual attitude toward their relationship. In the two instances that he proposed marriage to other women in 1970 and 1971, he actually called Jean to announce his engagements, which is a little cruel in my opinion. Um...

But I don't know if he thought... Yikes. You know, we're in an open relationship. I'm also like, did you think that, like, those women were gonna be down for that? It's like he...

Because I'm like, is he just trying to abide by the quote-unquote open relationship of it all and be like, you need to know when I am becoming... Because who knows if they did talk about a thing. And again, pure speculation. Possibly had a conversation. Maybe they had a conversation where it was like, if you are getting serious about someone, I need to know. Yeah. Like, you need to tell me. So maybe he's like, I'm...

I'm getting the most serious. That's absolutely possible. You never know. I don't... It's possible. I don't think that was the case. Yeah, it doesn't sound like there was a lot of discussions around the form of this relationship. I also, and again, pure speculation, I think this became a little bit of a game. Yeah. And I think there was some satisfaction in stringing along and holding off. In some... I mean...

Some relationships, like these kind of toxic-style relationships, that's the thing. They become addictive. Yes. And you become addictive. To both parties. Yeah. To the- The drama. The back and forth and the drama and the love bombing when you make up and how everything's great. And then the ups and downs become this ride that you just can't take yourself off of. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Well, to most who knew him, those around him, this, you know, calling her and being like, hey, I'm engaged. Oh, that didn't work out, but I'm engaged again, was just further evidence of his tendency to be a little cruel and a little thoughtless. But Jean, Tarnower's consummate apologist, tried to maintain a sense of humor about it, at least in public situations. She once joked to a friend, when he told me she had four children, I knew he'd never marry her.

Wow. It's just like, oh. Damn. Again, I say, damn. I know. As time went on, though, Jean took whatever high was willing to give, but otherwise focused her attention on her career. In 1972, she left the school she was working at for a position as headmistress at the Thomas School, another all-girls private school. This was in, I think it's Rowayton, Connecticut? Yeah.

But the relocation to Connecticut brought her closer to New York, and a lot of her friends speculated that that was not an accident, that she probably took that job so that she would have a shorter commute to see High. That makes sense. Should he want to see her, though? Mm-hmm. Because it was like he told her when they were going to get together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. I just know this. I know this. Yeah. I know this relationship. Yeah. Like, I'm listening to it and I'm like, ugh. It's sad. And the desperation on the other side is, that's rough. Well, and again, like going back to her childhood, think about what was ingrained in her. Yeah. Like, I mean, she grew up with somebody who was a man. Who never saw her. Who never made her feel like she was enough and who she had to always constantly be.

beg and fight for the attention or any kind of, like, pat on the back or any kind of compliment. And it's like, it does carry into, you know? Well, and then, and going even further, so that was her whole childhood. And then she married a man who she felt was the complete opposite of that. And that didn't work out. So she went right back to square one. Yeah, and she was like, how do I manage to keep this, you know? And I'm sure she saw it as, like, her problem when obviously it wasn't. For sure. It was just...

And sometimes you don't even need to have that kind of upbringing or anything like that to fall into that. No. You know what I mean? I think it just adds a layer when you do, but you're right. Yeah. Sometimes that just happens. I have a great father. Oh, Papa fucking rocks. Who thinks I'm the bee's knees and always told me I was the bee's knees and was great and is great and remains great and will be great forever. Yeah.

I still dated somebody and there was a similar kind of relationship where it was like I was constantly trying to hold on to this awful situation. And it kind of was like I'll see you when I see you. Which was literally like I have control of the situation kind of thing. So it's like you don't even need to have that background but when you have that background I'm sure it's

If that was, and I'm only thinking of my own thing. Yeah. If that was hard to get out of for me who has no psychological reason to be trapped in that way of thinking, to have a background and a trauma that builds upon that, that's keeping you there must be like being in quicksand. Oh, yeah. I can relate to it. My dad is not Jean's dad by any sense, but we have a strained relationship. Yeah.

He wasn't a huge part of my childhood. And, you know, like, I love my dad, but it's not my relationship with my dad is not my ideal relationship. No. And my relationship with my mom, as we all know, is not super fuego. No. So in my early years, like in my teens and like very early 20s, I was seeking out relationships for sure.

I would get the most attention, but they weren't great relationships by any means. Or any attention. Yeah. Any attention was good attention. Even like, you know. Yeah. But then you either realize that that's a pattern and you divert from that pattern, which I did because Drew is the most amazing man on the planet. Yeah. Or you stay on that road and it doesn't work out. But it's hard. Yeah. It is. Because I mean, I didn't understand, like my John, I didn't understand why.

why he was being so kind and why he was saying like truthful things and being open. I was like totally averse to it because I was like, I what? Like, who are you? Well, you know, I also think obviously the father is a big part of the way that women pick partners.

I also think other experiences in life. For sure. Like, not to like bring it to a dark place, but you were bullied. Yeah. Your first relationship was not iconic. No. And then your second one was not even less of a better relationship. But then you, as you get older, you do, you can again divert from that path and kind of start to find the things that you like about yourself. Yeah. And then when somebody is then...

you know, confirming those things that they like those things too. It can be a little jarring at first because you're like, but then you're like, oh shit, I do deserve this. Yeah. That's the thing. I think I, I hope and I wish that every woman or person got to that point. Well, that's what I'm like. I'm like everyone listening. Yeah. You deserve it. You deserve it. If you think you don't deserve it and you're being like, this person's too nice. I don't deserve this. You deserve it. You absolutely deserve it. So shut up. Yeah.

Everybody deserves some kind of love. Shut up. Yeah. Take it. We've been so like self-help lately. Well, yeah, because I just feel like it's just necessary, man. We're in a place of positivity. We're trying to, I'm trying to bring more positivity. More light. Around everywhere. Yeah. You know? We need it. The world needs it. Yeah. Well, so back to the story.

I know. We're really going off. It's like old school today. Some of you guys missed that, so this is for you. I know. And we missed that. We missed that. And we're allowed to go off track. So bitch, here it is. I do what I want. Yeah. So...

Most of the time. So she took a new job. And again, she took the job, at least in part, to be closer to high. To be a little closer. So she took her new job. At the time of her move, private schools around the country were going through kind of a rough period. There was a national recession going on and obviously widespread financial difficulties were causing enrollments to drop, which, of course, then dramatically affected the budgets at the Thomas School and others like it.

In her time at Springside, where she used to work, Jean had actually gained a reputation for being a very tough but very efficient administrator. So the offer of the new position at the Thomas School came with the understanding that she would be expected to turn things around for the struggling institution. Oh, okay. And one of the big things that they needed from her was to improve enrollment, among other things. Yeah. So that was a very high stress, very high pressure job. And at

I think in a previous point in her life, it would have been a great job for her. Yeah. At this point in her life, it did not suit her in the slightest. She had always been a little bit moody and kind of, you know, irritable at times. But after taking the job at the Thomas School, everybody noticed that she was becoming even more unpredictable. She would often lose her composure and even scream at students over the slightest things. Yeah.

and things at the school were a lot more dire than she even anticipated. Oh, man. And she was very much in over her head. It was a lot more than just one person was going to be able to pass. In 1975, the Thomas School actually closed permanently. Oh, damn. And Jean found herself out of work, and she was forced to take a job with the Allied Maintenance Corporation, which was a janitorial supply company.

It paid well, the job, but for Jean, who always wanted her work to contribute to the betterment of children, it was a slog. Yeah. And even worse, it didn't really carry any of the prestige or social status that she enjoyed as being a headmistress at an elite private school. So while her professional life had become mundane and disappointing, her personal life was really in no better shape.

Things with High hadn't changed, and her chronic back problems were persisting, even getting worse. It actually caused her to develop a heavy reliance on desoxin, which was a prescription painkiller prescribed to her by Dr. Tarnower. Oh. Uh...

It's an interesting choice of a painkiller. Yeah. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 80s, Dasoxin, a brand name for the generic drug methamphetamine, was technically approved for the treatment of ADHD, but was also approved by the FDA for the off-label treatment of obesity and narcolepsy, among other things. Essentially, they said, just do meth about it. I was just, I was like, they? Yeah.

Were so wily back then. Like they were just like, just do meth about it. And when you think about it, this is the 70s. It's like not that long ago. I mean, now. Now it is. It really is. Fuck. We're all thinking of it in like 2000. I think of everything. Yeah. 50 years. Yeah. Damn. Because I always think the 90s were 10 years ago. So it's like, this is. But I would be. It's hard for me to comprehend. Yeah. I'd be like 12 if that was the case or even younger. Or just not even exist. Yeah.

I don't know math. But let's get back to the math. Like many stimulants, dysoxin, aka meth, had some serious physical and psychological side effects, including... Yeah, I would think. It's a last resort for a lot of people at this point. Yeah. But back then, they just threw it right at you. But a resort.

Going back then, they were just like, here, do this. But the side effects included increased heart rate, rapid breathing, tremors, restlessness, increased body temperature, euphoria, but unfortunately dysphoria as well, grandiosity, repetitive and obsessive behaviors. The list goes on. Oh, boy. These side effects also tended to be more common in people who were not diagnosed with ADHD because this was a medicine to treat ADHD. So if you don't have that...

the side effects are going to be worse. Yeah, for sure. Jean experienced many of those side effects listed above because she did not have ADHD. And she even experienced other side effects as well. Oh, man. According to Sheena Alexander, desoxan is not just speed, but high speed. It hits the central nervous system five to ten times faster than ordinary amphetamines. Holy shit. Rather in the manner of cocaine. Wow. So it's...

snap instant like it hits you oh that's so scary it is it absolutely is yeah so aside from that yeah things started looking up in mid 1977 aside from the aside from the meth of it all things were looking up in mid 1977 gene learned about an opening for another headmistress position at the madeira school which again was one of the most uh the nation's most prestigious private schools in washington dc

The job actually paid less than what she was making at Allied Maintenance and would require her to move further from New York. And that meant further from Hightower. But...

For somebody in her field, the job was considered a crowning achievement because of the prestigious nature. Yeah. Thanks to the desoxin, Jean's back pain was manageable and helped her accomplish far more than she might have otherwise been able to, which impressed the board at Madeira, and soon she was installed as the school's new headmistress.

Damn. So the job was a welcome distraction for her because her life had become really lonely at this point. Her kids had left for school, for college. And after college, they went on to starting families of their own, going to find jobs, that whole thing. So she was by herself. And when she wasn't at work, she spent a lot of her time just alone.

And on the increasingly rare occasions when she and High did spend time together, it was clear that things between them had really changed. Once assertive and vibrant, Jean was very demure now in High's presence and didn't participate in a lot of conversations the way that she had in the past. And for his part, High seemed more distant and cold with Jean than he had ever been.

He rarely told her that he loved her. And actually, according to people who knew them, kind of seemed to delight in withholding affection from her. That sucks.

I think it got to his head a little bit. Yeah. Like the nature of their relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. You know? It's easy for that to happen. It is, yeah. The change in Dr. Tarnower's attitude towards Jean may have had something to do with his ongoing relationship with a woman named Lynn Typhoros, who was his lab assistant at the Scarsdale Medical Group.

Lynn and High dated kind of casually for a few years, but by the time Gene started at the Madeira School in 1977, Lynn and High had become more serious. Like his other relationships, High's relationship with Lynn was not a secret and obviously wasn't something he was trying to keep from Gene. But in the past, Gene had always tried to maintain a casual attitude about High dating other women, including Lynn herself.

But the more and more time they were spending together, Lynn and High, it was clear that something was different here. The relationship seemed far more serious. And for probably the first time in her relationship with him, Jean started to feel uncontrollable jealousy. Oh, no. Which I'm sure the meth didn't help. I'm sure that did not help. Probably not.

Jean's feelings of jealousy were often exacerbated by the overlapping presence of she and Lynn in Dr. Tarnower's life. Yeah. That's going to be hard. Oh, yeah. Like, for instance, on one occasion in July 1976, Jean was spending the weekend at High's apartment in New York, and Lynn just arrived to the apartment with her kids to use his pool. Oof. So his kids just hop in the pool, and Lynn starts painting the patio furniture around where Jean was sitting. Okay.

So Jean tried to ignore her for a little bit, but finally turned to Lynn and said, does it not seem bizarre to you, Lynn, that you're here painting his furniture while I'm here? It seems real bizarre. It seems bizarre. The whole thing seems bizarre to me, Jean. Lynn apparently didn't understand what she meant. And Jean rephrased the question and said, Lynn, why the hell are you here? And in response, she said, Lynn said, I'm here because I'm allowed to be. And she kept painting. Oh, damn. I'm like, girls, stop.

Why do you want this? Yeah, it's like, girls, that's when you do what I did. You band together. You gang up. You get those girlies together. Have you ever... Oh, my God. If anybody is looking for a good... It's not even a rom-com. I hate to say this, but it's a chick flick. Yeah. The Other Woman. Oh, yeah. Such a good... Remember we watched that with Ma once? Yes. It's such a good movie. We absolutely did. I love that movie. I'm telling you...

Best thing you can do. Band together and ruin his life. Yeah. That's all. Not in this case. So Lynn has never spoken publicly about her relationship with Herman Tarnower and Dr. Tarnower is unable to speak for himself. So we only have Jean's interpretation of events, which are probably biased.

Yeah. But still, to the outside observer, it did seem that while he might not have orchestrated the run-ins between Lynn and Jean, Dr. Tarnower still got a certain amount of pleasure that came from the drama, you know? Yeah. In fact, according to Alexander...

Oh, man. By the way, that's a quote. That's not my words. Yeah. In 1977, shortly before she started her job at the Madeira School, Jean actually started getting harassing phone calls at home from an anonymous caller.

Sometimes it was a woman's voice on the other line, and sometimes it was a man's. But it was never a voice that she recognized. Rather than a prank call from some random person, though, the calls seemed to be targeting Jean specifically, telling her that she was old and pathetic, quote-unquote, and that she should, quote-unquote, roll over and die. Holy shit. Yeah.

Other times, the caller would describe explicit sex acts that Dr. Tarnower had performed on other women. Oh. And the caller suggested that Jean should, quote, take sex lessons, implying that, like, she wasn't pleasing him anymore. Wow. So she started with getting these calls at home, but before long, the call started coming in at work.

where the anonymous caller would leave a phone number with Jean's secretary and request a return call. And when Jean would call the number, they would start up again with the harassing comments and just hang up abruptly. Wow. Yeah. Also, what are sex lessons? I don't know.

I feel like I'm sorry. That's just like, imagine. I'm literally taking it to a place of sex in the city again. That's not even a good like, hey, you should take some sex lessons. Like, I'd be like, that's stupid. That's a dumb thing to say. Remember though, in sex in the city, when they go to that tantric sex class together. That's all I can think of. I feel like that's a sex lesson. I guess so. But maybe there's more. But what a bad...

That feels like something you say when you ran out of, you didn't plan ahead. Yeah. You didn't plan your insult ahead. Yeah. Why don't you take some sex lessons, stupid. It's just like, where? Okay. Where are those? Okey-doke. Okey-doke. Whenever Jean received one of these calls, she would immediately call Lynn and accuse her of making the calls, even though she didn't recognize the voice.

Or she figured maybe Lynn arranged for somebody else to make the calls. But every time Lynn claimed she had nothing to do with this and demanded that Jean just stop calling her.

She even went as far, Lynn, went as far as complaining to High that Gene had been harassing her. And High took Lynn's side and demanded that Gene stop the foolish behavior or he would end their relationship. You got to end the relationship then. If he's taken another woman's side, he's declared. Like that's, you've heard all you need to hear. Move forward. He quiet quit. He kind of loudly quit. Yeah, he absolutely, he like loudly quit. And it's like, that's, get out of there. Yeah.

Well, the calls were soon followed by obscene letters sent to Jean's home and office, which were always written in a very unfamiliar handwriting. In time, she changed her phone number, actually multiple times, but every time this caller managed to get the new number and the harassment continued. Jeez. You have to assume it was somebody that he was seeing. Absolutely. Because I don't think Lynn and Jean were the only people he was seeing, so... Doesn't sound like it. I'm sure he had some kind of, um... What is it?

is that like what it is where you like rolodex rolodex i liked your version what is it oh we had a rolodex at my office house i remember it yeah i used to flick through it when i was young um but i'm sure he had one of those 100 and would write down gene's new number and someone would get yeah but before long the stress started taking a toll on gene which only exacerbated her depression and anxiety

And one day in 1978, she got a call from a former coworker at the Thomas School, psychiatric social worker Sig Gerhardt, wondering if she might be planning to be in New York City soon. Gerhardt always respected Jean and really loved working with her. He said, to me, she represented everything I think an educated woman should be.

But for all her professionalism, he could tell that she was in distress. He said later she was in great fear of something, like she was paranoid. So he had no immediate plans to be in the city, but he told Jean that if it was important, he would make the time and go see her. So she declined to take him up on the offer, immediately minimizing her needs. He said she wouldn't open up. She wouldn't tell me what it was. And I never heard from her again.

But it was very clear she was not doing well. No, it doesn't sound like it. Yeah. The mysterious phone calls and letters, which would literally never be solved, weren't the only harassment that Jean experienced at the time. In 1979, after returning home from a trip to the Caribbean with High, she found several pieces of her clothing that she kept at his apartment had been slashed and ripped.

And it also appeared that several items of clothing had been speared with something, quote, brown and sticky. That Jean concluded was feces. Fuck that. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing's worth this, everybody. It's not. Nothing and no one is worth this. Yeah. No. That's what it... Feces on my clothes? I'm out. Yeah, you got... That's...

If that's where it is. I mean, personally, mine is way before that, but like your boundaries should be there. Yeah. That should be really when you say, you know what? Yeah.

We did what we had to do. We said what we had to say. This is not fine anymore. If it's getting to a point where shit is getting smeared on my clothes, I'm going to go. Rule of thumb. To a point of feces, I'm not. Peace out. I'm not. I am ride or die until feces become involved. When feces enters the chat, you leave the chat. I leave. Yeah. That's when I leave the conversation. Yeah.

That's really upsetting. It is. And you just wonder who it was. I'm like, who the fuck did that? We never find out. God, I don't want to at this point. Yeah, I don't even want to know. But like the harassing phone calls, Jean herself concluded that Lynn was behind the destruction of her clothing. Of course. But she could never say with complete certainty. No. She never would be able to. But she would devolve a lot further into...

I would say. Yeah. And a lot of just other really sad things that we're going to get into in part two. Oh, man. I think we really set the scene there. We got to know Jean in her early childhood. We're ramping up. And we're on a downward trajectory now. Yeah. So we're going to save that for part two. I feel like it's... I feel like the pressure cooker is...

It's strategically placed. And I think it's coming. Yeah. It's on and it's full of feces. Oh, no. Yeah. No, there's no more feces. Okay, good. I was like, oh, no. Can you imagine? Tell me there's not a ton of feces here. No, that's it. So in the meantime, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. You want to do it?

So weird that you joined us for our bonus episode that's going to come out tomorrow on March 7th. And it's going to be a fucking banger. Please stay with us even though we said feces a lot. Feces is better. It's better than shit. Come back tomorrow. See ya. Shit.

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