Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. Have you ever been followed around by a
Speaker 1: person to the camera taking pictures of you and your
Speaker 1: family and your children, and then publishing them in a
Speaker 1: newspaper or a weekly rag. Well, that happens to people,
Speaker 1: doesn't happen to me, Probably doesn't happen to you. But
Speaker 1: we're the lucky ones. But if you're celebrity, and I
Speaker 1: know you kind of sign up for this. It's not
Speaker 1: great to be followed around by tabloid photographers and be
Speaker 1: splashed across those tabloid magazines. And this is all about
Speaker 1: tabloid's from how tabloid's work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
Speaker 1: include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
Speaker 1: sound smell. It will just called it Smellow rama be
Speaker 1: and grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm grumpy. Jerry.
Speaker 1: Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at each other
Speaker 1: when I came in here. No, Jerry was mad at
Speaker 1: me for being mad at her, which doesn't count. It's
Speaker 1: just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm not grumpy.
Speaker 1: It's just head legitimate. Everyone's scripy. So chuck. Yes, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about a great American hero, William
Speaker 1: kat No okay uh. Many years ago, in the wilds
Speaker 1: of I wish I could remember where he was found Mississippi,
Speaker 1: a little guy known as bat Boy was captured. He
Speaker 1: was caught on a rooftop during a flood in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and the authorities seized him and UM took him into
Speaker 1: their care. He became a ward of the state. That
Speaker 1: makes sense because bat boys are known to go to
Speaker 1: higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he did, true to form.
Speaker 1: Uh so uh. Bat Boy at first he didn't like
Speaker 1: this captivity UM, but eventually he kind of became something
Speaker 1: of a patriot by UM volunteering to go search for
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives UM in
Speaker 1: the caves of Afghanistan. The reason bat Boy was so
Speaker 1: good at it is because he was raising caves half
Speaker 1: bat half boy names UM. He wasn't able to find
Speaker 1: Bin laden, but he still returned to the U S
Speaker 1: a hero after a long, long flight because he just
Speaker 1: flew himself. Of course. And we know of bat boys
Speaker 1: exploits thanks to a little newspaper known as The Weekly
Speaker 1: World News. Have you heard of this? Two things? I
Speaker 1: used to subscribe to The Weekly World. Yeah, for like
Speaker 1: a year in high school, me and my buddy rad
Speaker 1: did because it was fun Radcliffe, Radford. And two. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that bat Boy they continued his exploits. I
Speaker 1: think bat Boy sold a lot of papers for well,
Speaker 1: I knew he did, but I didn't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: know that he was fighting the terrorists. Yes he did,
Speaker 1: he tried to. I don't know if he was successful.
Speaker 1: At least he went equipped more than with just a sword. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so bat Boy was a prominent character, I guess.
Speaker 1: And The Week, which also bills itself as the world's
Speaker 1: only reliable newspaper. Yeah, that little tagline or whatever. That's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not around anymore in print. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: remember a bit shutting down and being sort of sad
Speaker 1: it's online, I guess. Yeah. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: it moved too and moved online. Yeah, so really every
Speaker 1: aspect of that story from this outrageous UM claim that
Speaker 1: the bat Boy was captured and sent to Afghanistan, to
Speaker 1: UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's most reliable,
Speaker 1: the world's only reliable newspaper to it's shutting down and
Speaker 1: going online because of massive profit losses after being purchased
Speaker 1: by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The Weekly World
Speaker 1: News is a perfect analogy for the course of tabloids
Speaker 1: over the last like twenty years as a whole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna dig into that. Um. I think it's funny.
Speaker 1: I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
Speaker 1: I guess they figured if we're just going to be
Speaker 1: making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
Speaker 1: of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
Speaker 1: funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, well,
Speaker 1: we might as well just say that in the thing,
Speaker 1: get it. Yes, And one of their apparently one of
Speaker 1: their editors is quoted as saying, I could only find
Speaker 1: one source for this quote, so I don't know how
Speaker 1: true it is. It could be made up, which would
Speaker 1: be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
Speaker 1: whole thing. But um, he said, if our if our
Speaker 1: readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
Speaker 1: were well aware. That's great and it is an extreme example.
Speaker 1: But there are there are some aspects of the weekly
Speaker 1: World News that do fit the bill of the of
Speaker 1: a standard tabure. Um. So I mean, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: What is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start at
Speaker 1: the beginning or should we just talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit then do the history? Do you want to do
Speaker 1: the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the history first,
Speaker 1: because positive that we don't practice. So I did see, Um,
Speaker 1: there was one slight error. This is an ed Grabanowski article,
Speaker 1: which are always great. But did you see this other
Speaker 1: etymology for the word tabloid with the pill company No um.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds, apparently, um Burrows, Welcome and
Speaker 1: Company was a pharmaceutical company in England. They produced at
Speaker 1: the time like medicines were all like BC powder and
Speaker 1: good he's powdered. They all powdered, and he I think
Speaker 1: was the first one to make into to a pill
Speaker 1: by compressing the powder, and he called it a tabloid
Speaker 1: of cocaine. Yeah, it probably was. And um that that
Speaker 1: word became to mean anything figuratively, that was a small
Speaker 1: dose of anything. So the word tabloid actually became came
Speaker 1: before I believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, uh,
Speaker 1: the physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like
Speaker 1: the origin of life on Earth comes from another planet,
Speaker 1: but really, where did the origin of life begin? Right?
Speaker 1: It doesn't answer the question. It's the same thing like, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then
Speaker 1: it was associated with newspapers that the tabloid paper um
Speaker 1: is printed on a smaller, more compact version of the
Speaker 1: normal newspaper newsprint called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid
Speaker 1: is a smaller, more compact version the broadsheet is longer
Speaker 1: and wider um and then the tabloid were usually printed
Speaker 1: on the smaller paper, hence the word. Yeah. So at
Speaker 1: first it was a pill, then it became the size
Speaker 1: of the paper, and then later on it just became
Speaker 1: um the style of the paper and size, but really
Speaker 1: the style. But tabloids, as were explaining them, are basically
Speaker 1: like um. They are also commonly referred to as rags
Speaker 1: as UM gutter public. Yeah, they're gossip sheets, whatever it's
Speaker 1: it's basically it's a it's a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded
Speaker 1: newspaper and um tabloids. One of the ways that they
Speaker 1: exist and always have existed is in compare us into
Speaker 1: a quote, legitimate newspapers. So like originally newspapers that say,
Speaker 1: like the beginning the early nineteenth century, they were extremely stuffy,
Speaker 1: they were extremely expensive. They were like six cents per
Speaker 1: which was like half a day's pay for the average labor.
Speaker 1: Really dry. Man. If you ever read these old New
Speaker 1: York Times articles, there's like they just really just you know,
Speaker 1: they lay out the facts and then say the end
Speaker 1: exactly like the AP used to do until a few
Speaker 1: years ago. The AP always did that. It was sort
Speaker 1: of straight who, what, when, how, where and why the
Speaker 1: old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a quote
Speaker 1: in there and that was it. UM. And so out
Speaker 1: of this I guess kind of boredom and a need
Speaker 1: for the working class to be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: get their news too, because I couldn't afford it came.
Speaker 1: The predecessors were tabloids called the penny press, so they
Speaker 1: were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
Speaker 1: stories from just these boring facts, political stories, business stories,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
Speaker 1: And they changed the style of writing sentences for shorter paragraphs,
Speaker 1: for shorter way more emotion. It was. It was designed
Speaker 1: for that, like listen to the triumph of this family
Speaker 1: over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what we
Speaker 1: see now in mainstream newspapers. Exactly. Yes, a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot of our mainstream UM media owes quite a bit
Speaker 1: to the evolution of tabloids. And there's actually a point
Speaker 1: where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
Speaker 1: But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
Speaker 1: newspapers this interplay where tabloids almost kind of break ground,
Speaker 1: take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
Speaker 1: then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
Speaker 1: it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
Speaker 1: you know, we're the upstanding publication exactly just the sky
Speaker 1: right I'm discussed by it all. Um. Yellow journalism came
Speaker 1: about in the era of William Randolph Hurst with his
Speaker 1: New York Journal later called The New York Journal American,
Speaker 1: and he was the first person in the United States,
Speaker 1: at least, because I think in England it even started
Speaker 1: out before us. But I'm not mistaken. In England, I
Speaker 1: think they were kind of like the birth of some
Speaker 1: of the more tabloid style writing. But in America William
Speaker 1: Randolph Hurst did with all of a sudden he started
Speaker 1: doing some celebrity stuff and some murderer and little sensational
Speaker 1: gore here and there, and he found that it sold
Speaker 1: really well up until the Depression, when nothing sold really well.
Speaker 1: Um pick up after the Depression when a very uh
Speaker 1: monumental figure in tabloid history named Janetta Janetoso Pope or
Speaker 1: Gene Pope Gene Pope jr. Um, He bought a Hurst
Speaker 1: paper called The New York and Choir for seventy five grand,
Speaker 1: changed it to tabloid size, started uh printing you know,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that he he figured people like to
Speaker 1: stare at a car crash, So he was actually inspired
Speaker 1: literally by seeing people like jockeying to see the blood
Speaker 1: and the gore in a car crash and thought, wow,
Speaker 1: people really are disgusting and crazy, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: give them what they want. And he did remember the
Speaker 1: crime scene photography episode we talked about we gi um
Speaker 1: he he and he sold a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: Jeane Pope. Um, he printed a lot of his like
Speaker 1: gory crimes photos. What's his name, right, Lewis Felig, I think,
Speaker 1: but he went by W E G EIGI Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I said it again. Um yeah, I was cueing
Speaker 1: like the Executive Orders episode how many times, like I'll
Speaker 1: bunch you know why because it was super interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: So he starts selling a lot of papers um, based
Speaker 1: on this new style. And then a guy named Rupert Murdoch,
Speaker 1: who you may have heard of, who saw or prove
Speaker 1: that you could actually have pretty wide circulation um, and
Speaker 1: began selling News of the World in England millions of
Speaker 1: copies sex scandals. And then the Pope said, you know what,
Speaker 1: if he can sell millions and millions of copies, so
Speaker 1: can I let me changed the name to the National Enquirer. Boom, Right,
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer was born. But um, the Inquirer is
Speaker 1: we know it still wasn't born yet. It was the
Speaker 1: thing they were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and
Speaker 1: lesbianism and like horrible acts of violence, posthumous violence. There
Speaker 1: is this one headline um about a team ripping the
Speaker 1: head off of a corpse to get at its gold teeth,
Speaker 1: and always with the gory crime scene photos like the
Speaker 1: pulp comics we're doing too. Yeah, very much. It was
Speaker 1: just very tawdry. It's um, I mean if the stuff
Speaker 1: uh and the inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was
Speaker 1: just like it's not fathom model. But the reason it's
Speaker 1: not is again because of Gene Pope. So he had
Speaker 1: a lot of competition U and not just he, but
Speaker 1: the whole industry was facing a big problem in that
Speaker 1: news stands were starting to dry. So Jane Pope came
Speaker 1: up with an idea. He's like supermarkets. Everybody goes to supermarkets.
Speaker 1: I need to get in there now. I stand in
Speaker 1: the line at the checkout stand, right. But he knew
Speaker 1: like there was no way that any any respectable supermarket
Speaker 1: was going to sell his tabloid, his rag that the required.
Speaker 1: So he cleaned the thing up right, he um added
Speaker 1: way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: and his News of the World, and um added way
Speaker 1: more celebrity stuff sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know, um,
Speaker 1: this stuff he was talking about before that was just
Speaker 1: really it was more like a like a the Senator
Speaker 1: got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And there's this
Speaker 1: guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the for Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: and he wrote this article called us Confidential. It was
Speaker 1: in the June two thousand two issue of Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: It was about this and about that transition going from
Speaker 1: you know, the crime scene photography to um astrology overnight
Speaker 1: so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um,
Speaker 1: the Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
Speaker 1: experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took. We got
Speaker 1: to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
Speaker 1: and celebrity sex scanals. And it wasn't even cleaning up
Speaker 1: attacked that much. It's not like you said, we're going
Speaker 1: to become the you know, New York Times. No, but
Speaker 1: that's why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand
Speaker 1: in line at a supermarket checkout line. It's because in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties Jeane Pope was like, we got to
Speaker 1: get in the supermarkets. I think people either read these
Speaker 1: or they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
Speaker 1: Like no one just says like, let me watch a
Speaker 1: little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
Speaker 1: hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people are guilty of
Speaker 1: picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
Speaker 1: not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
Speaker 1: you know what they do now, and of course we're
Speaker 1: going to get to this, might as well bring it up.
Speaker 1: They look at People magazine and US Weekly because they
Speaker 1: have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
Speaker 1: unquote respectable thing to pick up and read. Even now,
Speaker 1: come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have.
Speaker 1: It's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
Speaker 1: actually you can thank the Star for that. Um Star
Speaker 1: used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid, right, and it
Speaker 1: went over to the glossy format at some point. I
Speaker 1: think that may be the late nineties, and um it,
Speaker 1: it married those two things, glossyful magazine format with tabloid,
Speaker 1: and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
Speaker 1: we've already got the glossy magazine part. Let's just start
Speaker 1: doing the tabloid thing. Yeah, I mean what people have,
Speaker 1: I mean legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
Speaker 1: making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
Speaker 1: you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
Speaker 1: Malibu and look at this person, and look at that person,
Speaker 1: and who wore it better? Plastics versus asters? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, who wore it better? I know somebody
Speaker 1: who's been reading people. Yeah, when they have the two
Speaker 1: ladies with the same dress, so mean, especially when it's
Speaker 1: like eight two to eight teens now, I know, especially
Speaker 1: when it's like, you know, it's just means. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll be like, a
Speaker 1: who were it better? Kevin Smith or podcaster Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: People go, I guess Kevin Smith, because I've never heard
Speaker 1: of this other guy. It's the same guy. It's the
Speaker 1: same dude anyway. Alright, so, um, that's pretty much the
Speaker 1: quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States, at
Speaker 1: least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're lousy
Speaker 1: with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading edge
Speaker 1: of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let get
Speaker 1: to that, all right. So before we go onto tabloid
Speaker 1: stories and how they get these stories, we should point
Speaker 1: out that the National Choir, the Star of the Globe,
Speaker 1: the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're all purchased
Speaker 1: by American Media, Inc. Like all all of those just
Speaker 1: snapped them all up, basically, just goout on the show. Now,
Speaker 1: every big tabloid in the United States was purchased by
Speaker 1: this one company. And um, yeah, I think that's never
Speaker 1: a good thing. Or maybe that's just me being it,
Speaker 1: you know. Well that's the funny thing, like the title
Speaker 1: of this sidebars, they control everything you read unless you
Speaker 1: don't read any of those things. So, um, the the
Speaker 1: am I, actually they're the reason the Weekly World News
Speaker 1: shut down. Um, they were like, okay, as things losing money.
Speaker 1: Am I posted a hundred and sixty million dollar loss
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six and was facing like a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in debt to bad Boy had to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bad Boy went to the internet. Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1: That's where bad Boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: What what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's tabloids like pornographer, you know when you see it, right,
Speaker 1: it's tough to define. That's not um entirely the case.
Speaker 1: There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among tabloids that
Speaker 1: make a tabloid tabloid? Agreed, So what are there? Well
Speaker 1: Ed points out here something really important. The key to
Speaker 1: a tabloid story is not that it be true, just
Speaker 1: that someone has said that it's true, and they latch
Speaker 1: onto that person. And as long as they say, you know,
Speaker 1: attribute these quotes to this person, then they can't be
Speaker 1: held accountable. And that person is frequently cited as an
Speaker 1: expert and a close friend. Sure, I mean, if somebody
Speaker 1: it's all the way you present the story, if the
Speaker 1: if you're saying, if your whole story is all about
Speaker 1: how this person said something, yeah, it's not really about
Speaker 1: the story. The story is still there, but you're focusing
Speaker 1: on this person. It's like the the rule of the
Speaker 1: of the tabloid industry. It's kind of a trick though,
Speaker 1: because very much you're tricking people into thinking you're reading
Speaker 1: about a story about Brandjelina. In fact, you're reading a
Speaker 1: story about a former made that worked for Branchlina and
Speaker 1: what they think is true, right, Or some crazy person
Speaker 1: who has nothing to do with bran Angelina who like
Speaker 1: just um, maybe saw one of them in a coffee
Speaker 1: shop and like, notice they didn't tip or something like that. Bam,
Speaker 1: there's your story. Um. Also, like we said that, they
Speaker 1: like to add experts, and but the experts are in
Speaker 1: no way, shape or form qualified in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: They have no credentials, they're not vetted. It's more say, like, um,
Speaker 1: the example Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast, Right,
Speaker 1: if somebody spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot,
Speaker 1: researching bigfoot, there there's no institute out there to qualify them,
Speaker 1: to give them credentials. But you could reasonably make a
Speaker 1: case of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right.
Speaker 1: The thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star
Speaker 1: or the weekly World News is not going to the
Speaker 1: trouble of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so
Speaker 1: and so says that there's a bunch of these things
Speaker 1: out and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
Speaker 1: My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
Speaker 1: get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop
Speaker 1: and they will say did she look that? They would
Speaker 1: say maybe something like yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
Speaker 1: and they would say did she look strung out and
Speaker 1: that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she sort of looked like that, And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, that's the quote because witnesses say she looked
Speaker 1: strung out and like she had not eaten for days,
Speaker 1: and uh, all they have to do is say yes,
Speaker 1: exactly yes, or like would you say this? And if
Speaker 1: the prison says yes and you just said that. Another
Speaker 1: hallmark of tabloids is making a huge deal out of
Speaker 1: something I guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like actually looking through other newspapers to find some
Speaker 1: quasi interesting story and then blowing it up into possibly
Speaker 1: a front page feature. Um, just by getting into this story,
Speaker 1: really interviewing a lot of people involved um, and then
Speaker 1: maybe throwing an expert or something like that, and just
Speaker 1: basically making a lot a lot of hay out of
Speaker 1: something very um kind of negligible. UM. And this by
Speaker 1: adding a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do
Speaker 1: you think about this? What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: It takes it from being about the story, right, like
Speaker 1: a UM man saved a goat from a burning building
Speaker 1: to what these people think about this man and his goat?
Speaker 1: And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
Speaker 1: you mean, maybe who knows? As somebody said it, then
Speaker 1: they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh.
Speaker 1: Celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
Speaker 1: tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
Speaker 1: all kinds of informants from um secure people who had
Speaker 1: worked for them, or who worked at venues where they
Speaker 1: might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
Speaker 1: can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember we shot you ever heard of
Speaker 1: Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
Speaker 1: gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like entertainment tonight.
Speaker 1: But that's how she made her living. And she was
Speaker 1: like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
Speaker 1: a commercial at her house one time in l a
Speaker 1: and she was there hanging out and uh, I was like,
Speaker 1: you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
Speaker 1: just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
Speaker 1: sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: and his secret sex addiction and and she was she
Speaker 1: always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me
Speaker 1: she had a list a rollodex of people on the
Speaker 1: bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
Speaker 1: bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
Speaker 1: lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
Speaker 1: big news, and it's um, that's pretty much standard. Like
Speaker 1: you were saying. There, there's this guy named um Paul
Speaker 1: McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
Speaker 1: and um, you know Dentel Elliott. He was he was
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
Speaker 1: older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
Speaker 1: Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
Speaker 1: and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin
Speaker 1: and after he died. Um, she took like a big
Speaker 1: turn for the worst, and this cop tipped off I
Speaker 1: think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
Speaker 1: But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
Speaker 1: Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
Speaker 1: she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
Speaker 1: offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
Speaker 1: sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
Speaker 1: and everything. Well, she ended up killing herself and he
Speaker 1: now says, like, you know, I take responsibility for that,
Speaker 1: which is meaningless, but um yeah he The all started
Speaker 1: with a cop knowing about this and then tipping off
Speaker 1: the reporters. So sad cops are not immune to this
Speaker 1: kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh. Another
Speaker 1: way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um,
Speaker 1: from what I've gathered, did you're either you fall into
Speaker 1: three categories. You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You
Speaker 1: either are lucky enough and are smart enough to kind
Speaker 1: of be low profile and you're not really a subject
Speaker 1: of table tabloids. There's a lot of big stars you've
Speaker 1: never seen the tabloids Harrison for yeah uh. Or number
Speaker 1: three is you play ball a little bit, which means,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll give you a little information here
Speaker 1: and there. I'll leak out some stuff here and there.
Speaker 1: If you play nice with me, I'll play ball with you.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll let you know, like what restaurant I'll be
Speaker 1: coming out of one night you can photograph me. Give
Speaker 1: you your little time and um. Sometimes the movie studios
Speaker 1: a leak stuff to get get up a little press.
Speaker 1: They did that a lot a lot back in the day,
Speaker 1: but it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationship between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
Speaker 1: It's position through things like just basically you're a star
Speaker 1: because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
Speaker 1: thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
Speaker 1: for your cellulite, But what if someone picks up the
Speaker 1: magazine they're like, oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
Speaker 1: I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad,
Speaker 1: how sad, but at the same time I feel better
Speaker 1: about myself exactly. Um So, I guess one of the
Speaker 1: ways that you stay in the tabloids is through having
Speaker 1: your picture made. As we stay here in the South,
Speaker 1: a group of people known collectively as paparazzi, and they
Speaker 1: actually I found out, are named after a paparazz so photographer.
Speaker 1: You didn't know that named Paparazzo with a capital P.
Speaker 1: He was a character in Um Fellini Fellini's ladulce Vita
Speaker 1: that's right movie, and um apparently they were already extant,
Speaker 1: but they got their name through this character. But even
Speaker 1: in they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the seventies again
Speaker 1: thanks to Jane Pope um, that they really became the
Speaker 1: kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today. And
Speaker 1: it was all because Jeane Pope was obsessed with Jackie
Speaker 1: Oh and Aristotle or and he would pay so much
Speaker 1: money for anything on them that people that the photographers
Speaker 1: were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
Speaker 1: of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
Speaker 1: Gene Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
Speaker 1: in Greece and in in Europe. UM, and that that
Speaker 1: still is connected to this day, to the death of
Speaker 1: Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
Speaker 1: had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased by
Speaker 1: paparazzi on motorcycles. Yeah, very sad, but that's all generoso
Speaker 1: Pope jr. Um. I'll bet that guy wore huge black
Speaker 1: glass thick ones like Robert Jernier at the end of
Speaker 1: See you know God, that's for great Um. Supposedly Felini too,
Speaker 1: I dug this up. Took the word from an Italian
Speaker 1: word that described the buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified,
Speaker 1: but he said in an interview in Time magazine in
Speaker 1: the seventies that he's like, yeah, I always just associate
Speaker 1: it with something buzzing around you and in your way, Like, well,
Speaker 1: that's paparazzi. Um. And there's that movie too, Paparazzi. Is
Speaker 1: that what I was called from two thousan four? Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the dude, uh what's his face goes back and
Speaker 1: beats up Coalhauser. Yeah. Did you see it? No, No,
Speaker 1: I ran across it on IMDb today. It's not bad
Speaker 1: at all. Um. It's also it could very easily be
Speaker 1: based on the life of Alec Baldwin. Uh yeah, sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's I think the categories you were describing, Um,
Speaker 1: the people who are just so big that they can't
Speaker 1: keep a low profile, but they also don't want or
Speaker 1: need that that the tabloids on them. But I also
Speaker 1: very much gotten the impression it's like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
Speaker 1: who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, it's a it's a tough thing. And
Speaker 1: because there are people plenty, like you're saying, like plenty
Speaker 1: of people out there who are big stars, but you
Speaker 1: never see anything about him in the tabloids. Is because
Speaker 1: they just stay out of it. They stay away from it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think of one. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many. That's probably why I can't think of it.
Speaker 1: But like Harrison Ford is a good example, I guess,
Speaker 1: except when he started dating cliss to Flockhart, they were
Speaker 1: they were in the tabloids a lot. But I also
Speaker 1: suspect like most of that stuff was all very pleasant,
Speaker 1: like hand holding things so yeah, but she was in
Speaker 1: the tabloids a lot because of her weight, so that
Speaker 1: fed into that, you know, like, maybe she'll be happy
Speaker 1: and eat again now that she has Harrison Ford, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just like eat this, eat that too. Here, eat
Speaker 1: this all right, let's talk about let's talk about the law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this was really interesting, I thought, because the first
Speaker 1: thing you think with the rest of it was not
Speaker 1: interesting at all. No, I thought. I thought this was
Speaker 1: super interesting though, because the first thing I think of
Speaker 1: is why aren't these people suing every day? Suing these tabloids.
Speaker 1: Some try, some do, some have been successful for a while.
Speaker 1: For the early tabloids, ones like um oh, what were
Speaker 1: they called, like Confidential I think was one of the
Speaker 1: early tabloids. Um, like the tatler Um, they're just whatever
Speaker 1: stupid name about not about airing dirty laundry. That was
Speaker 1: the name of some pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: Dirty laundry was probably one of them, I'll bet um.
Speaker 1: And they got away with that stuff because well, for
Speaker 1: two reasons. This guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: I watched a wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty
Speaker 1: much this definitive history of the tabloids. And he's got
Speaker 1: his bona fides because he was an edit her for
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer, right. Um. And he said, there's two
Speaker 1: reasons in the fifties and sixties. One, if you were
Speaker 1: a legitimate star, these things were so in the gutter
Speaker 1: that the stoop to suing them was problematic. In one,
Speaker 1: it was the attention that lawsuit would attract because the
Speaker 1: regular press was gonna start talking about it, would make
Speaker 1: you look as bad as well, it would draw a
Speaker 1: lot more attention to the original story. And then the
Speaker 1: second thing is that even if you want that publisher
Speaker 1: doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
Speaker 1: Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
Speaker 1: I think Jeane Pope took the Inquirer from like fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
Speaker 1: peak in the eighties. Um. And so suddenly they did
Speaker 1: have deep pockets and things changed. And um. Carol Burnett
Speaker 1: kind of still to this day stands as like a
Speaker 1: bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids. As far
Speaker 1: as the law goes, Yeah, she sued in uh after
Speaker 1: nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
Speaker 1: Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
Speaker 1: her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
Speaker 1: I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
Speaker 1: accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
Speaker 1: started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
Speaker 1: was blitzed at this restaurant and she yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: big fan, probably, And she sued in one one point
Speaker 1: six million dollars, which was and we'll find out here
Speaker 1: in a second. This is one of the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: their litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
Speaker 1: very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
Speaker 1: dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion to day,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, And then um, it was reduced by
Speaker 1: an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
Speaker 1: kind of suits, and then it was settled out of court.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine for even less than that, UM,
Speaker 1: but it was still was a big deal. It was
Speaker 1: the first time really that like a major star was
Speaker 1: able to win a defamation lawsuit against the tabloid. But
Speaker 1: it was one of the I don't want to say
Speaker 1: it was one of the only times. It was one
Speaker 1: of the very few times, especially if you are going
Speaker 1: on the premise of all the people who want to
Speaker 1: sue the tabloids and don't actually bring a suit because
Speaker 1: things have changed now now the tabloids have these reputations
Speaker 1: for being extremely fearsome litigators, where like, if you want
Speaker 1: to sue them, you thought that story that ticked you
Speaker 1: off was bad, They're going to get anything they can
Speaker 1: and they're going to do it through the courts. So
Speaker 1: like when Aretha Franklin or no um oh Elsa Taylor, Yes,
Speaker 1: when she tried to sue I think the Inquirer, or
Speaker 1: when she did see the Inquirer, the Inquirer's lawyers tried
Speaker 1: to subpoena all of her medical records for the past
Speaker 1: thirty years. So they go after everything. They try to
Speaker 1: drag your life into the spotlight to make it like
Speaker 1: really not worth your while to sue them. Yet it's
Speaker 1: the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
Speaker 1: York Times article. H Vincent Chifo, Everyone's Italian um. Everybody
Speaker 1: has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
Speaker 1: scorpion defense, which is, uh, you don't attack a scorpion
Speaker 1: because you will get stung. Um. Aside from not the
Speaker 1: not the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. I guess do they need to be complex?
Speaker 1: But you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's
Speaker 1: the spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
Speaker 1: don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
Speaker 1: up on or been pooped on. That's what they should use.
Speaker 1: Because the scorpion can only do one thing. To year
Speaker 1: old can humiliate you in a number of ways. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard So there's this whole thing that like
Speaker 1: scorpions commit suicide if you set them on fire by
Speaker 1: stinging themselves. Really and apparently there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: YouTube videos out there people like doing this with scorpions,
Speaker 1: like sting them on fire, and then the scorpion will
Speaker 1: like jump about and like sting itself and eventually die. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll be trying to put the fire out. They found
Speaker 1: that this, They found that that scorpions are almost entirely
Speaker 1: immune to their own venom, and that really all this
Speaker 1: is just a reaction of being burned alive. They're like
Speaker 1: trying to like they're flailing about, and one of the
Speaker 1: flails is like they're they're stingers moving and sometimes it
Speaker 1: stings itself. So it appears to dumb kids who set
Speaker 1: scorpions on fire that scorpions committing suicide terrible. Isn't that awful?
Speaker 1: That's a great tangent though, thanks me, all right, don't
Speaker 1: burn animals or insects of any kind, kids, It's just mean.
Speaker 1: That's exactly means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
Speaker 1: later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, Um, you
Speaker 1: have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
Speaker 1: only that what they printed was false, but that they
Speaker 1: knowingly printed information they knew was false. Because it's got
Speaker 1: to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
Speaker 1: just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
Speaker 1: got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed, slander
Speaker 1: is stated with your mouth. These are the two differences
Speaker 1: or I guess you could blink it out with your eyes.
Speaker 1: That's true. Um, So, basically the scorpion defense and then
Speaker 1: the delays. The first thing they're gonna do is start
Speaker 1: filing motions to delay, to delay, to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of money, a lot of money. So and if you
Speaker 1: think about it, there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's your reputation. So a star who has a bunch
Speaker 1: of money says, I have a bunch of money, and
Speaker 1: I'm really mad at these guys, and i want to
Speaker 1: teach them a lesson, So I'm going to soothe them,
Speaker 1: and that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids
Speaker 1: trying to make it not worth your all, that you'll
Speaker 1: drop it because you don't really need this money. You're
Speaker 1: looking for a judgment and hopefully you'll get bored. Well
Speaker 1: in the tabloids don't care. Even if they drag this
Speaker 1: thing out in print a retraction six months later, no
Speaker 1: one remembers. No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well,
Speaker 1: six months later, that's a it's a well put because
Speaker 1: apparently part of the judgment of some of these and
Speaker 1: in successful suits is that you can't write about um
Speaker 1: the star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: like cut a deal sometimes and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
Speaker 1: the next year. And then they put on their calendar
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
Speaker 1: effing with him again and UM. Another way that tabloids
Speaker 1: stay out of court is most of their UM articles
Speaker 1: are read screened by an attorney or attorneys. They have
Speaker 1: a retainer, so each article it's printed and it comes
Speaker 1: to this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
Speaker 1: legal expert. Yea, you you really don't have a case
Speaker 1: if you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
Speaker 1: They want to walk right up to the line of
Speaker 1: libel and stop there. And they're pretty good, and you're
Speaker 1: in ate on it, and then you're in ate on it,
Speaker 1: and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
Speaker 1: and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
Speaker 1: are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not libelous, prove it, spend spend half a
Speaker 1: million dollars trying to prove this, and some people do,
Speaker 1: like Aretha Franklin. I think settled Tom Cruise Schwarzenegger and
Speaker 1: Katie Kate Cruise and one did she win because Katie
Speaker 1: Holmes just filed in March. She is she settled for
Speaker 1: a donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
Speaker 1: She did it just this past March. She filed suit
Speaker 1: against him for this one cover um like, yeah, bags
Speaker 1: under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem why
Speaker 1: she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
Speaker 1: article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
Speaker 1: on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
Speaker 1: much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also include,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff against Scientology because Travolta just had the big,
Speaker 1: little supposed tawdry affairs here in Georgia. And then I
Speaker 1: guess another homework that's not really in um it's not
Speaker 1: really in the article, but I think you can make
Speaker 1: a pretty strong case is that sometimes a lot of
Speaker 1: times the tabloid gets things right. Yeah, but the the
Speaker 1: way that they do it often is very much unethical
Speaker 1: and immoral as far as um the standards of the
Speaker 1: press is concerned and that's what Rupert what's been going
Speaker 1: on with Rupert Murdoch like UM Parliament, like a parliamentary
Speaker 1: UM panel basically said you're not fit to run news
Speaker 1: corps any longer because this scandal is so huge. With
Speaker 1: the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't remember
Speaker 1: what episode we talked about it in, but there was
Speaker 1: the girl who was kidnapped and like the News of
Speaker 1: the World writers were hacking into her UM voicemail and
Speaker 1: then deleting them and so the police thought she was
Speaker 1: still alive and it was possibly affecting the course of
Speaker 1: the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
Speaker 1: people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
Speaker 1: four thousands, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
Speaker 1: Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller,
Speaker 1: Steve Coogan of UM for our Party people and Tristan
Speaker 1: Shandy UM. Some people have already won. But for the
Speaker 1: most part it's UM. These people aren't gonna get any
Speaker 1: any damage is awarded. It's basically just no. News of
Speaker 1: the World is shut down now. But it was out
Speaker 1: of hand and now they're they're showing that they were
Speaker 1: also hacking email, which great Britain has this kind of
Speaker 1: um this this computer theft law now which makes email
Speaker 1: hacking way worse than phote and hacking. So if that
Speaker 1: opens up to be a big thing, there's people are
Speaker 1: actually gonna start doing time for it. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I say. But like I was saying, sometimes they get
Speaker 1: things right. They do um. Over the years, we'll mention
Speaker 1: a few O. J. Simpson case the National Enquiry, and
Speaker 1: it seems like it's generally the Inquirer that that sort
Speaker 1: of scoops the legit ones. It's never like the Star. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, so the National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial,
Speaker 1: the uh story about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they scooped the story of the dealer that sold him
Speaker 1: a knife similar to the murder weapon. I guess knife
Speaker 1: dealers the way they scooped the shoe story. Remember there
Speaker 1: were bloody footprints. I thought this was awesome. They really
Speaker 1: went to town to because there was a Bruno Molly
Speaker 1: bloody footprint at the scene. And O. J. Simpson said,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I've never owned a pair of
Speaker 1: shoes like that, and they went back and found footage
Speaker 1: of him from like wearing them on the field, like
Speaker 1: reporting yeah, and proved that yes, indeed he did have
Speaker 1: those shoes. And he's like, oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Bill Cosby's kid Ennis. Remember when he was killed. The
Speaker 1: inquiry offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for information, and
Speaker 1: that actually led to somebody coming forward and giving the
Speaker 1: information that led to the capturing of the killer. That's right,
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah. In two thousand one, he
Speaker 1: Um came out and was like, oh, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart when he
Speaker 1: was running for president, I remember this well. He was
Speaker 1: on the monkey business down in Miami with what was
Speaker 1: her name, Donna Rice. UM's a funny photo when you
Speaker 1: look at it now. He I haven't seen it. I
Speaker 1: don't think. She's just like sitting on his lap and
Speaker 1: he's just got a big grin on his face and
Speaker 1: he's got a T shirt that says monkey shines grew
Speaker 1: And it was it was all over the place at
Speaker 1: the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
Speaker 1: was because of this this Um picture in the inquiry,
Speaker 1: they scooped everybody on it and Russia Limball, Yeah, my
Speaker 1: favorite drug addict that was exposed, Rush Limball. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
Speaker 1: was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many a day, but he bought
Speaker 1: apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
Speaker 1: on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
Speaker 1: eighty pills a day, just so I remember hearing it
Speaker 1: was like, how is he alive or even not a
Speaker 1: standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
Speaker 1: But again, so there there could be it could have
Speaker 1: come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
Speaker 1: from um yeah, they could have um, they could have
Speaker 1: gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes loose, looser
Speaker 1: ethics than maybe again A New York Times reporter, Um,
Speaker 1: so tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned um, at the peak,
Speaker 1: the National Choir was selling about five million copies in circulation.
Speaker 1: Now all of the leading ones in the United States
Speaker 1: combined sell about five point four million, so they've really
Speaker 1: gone down. In One of the reasons why is because
Speaker 1: they were so successful it mainstream media became much more
Speaker 1: tabloid e and tabloids became much less, much less different.
Speaker 1: The field of competition increased. Yeah, and basically everyone was
Speaker 1: kind of doing similar stuff now. And they point out
Speaker 1: the article during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because
Speaker 1: stuff you were seen on CNN and was just as
Speaker 1: salacious as anything you would read in the Star. And
Speaker 1: again it's like the mainstream media kind of took a
Speaker 1: cue from tabloids, as they have so many other times.
Speaker 1: They were so pissed off about that. With the Clinton thing,
Speaker 1: they were probably just like, let's let's make up some stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's like what if he used a cigar? And they
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, exactly, it was all true. Yeah with Clinton, man,
Speaker 1: those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about tabloids and see
Speaker 1: a picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type
Speaker 1: in tabloids T A B L O I D S
Speaker 1: in the search bar at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me. It's
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina,
Speaker 1: m conducting research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship.
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know that your podcast serves
Speaker 1: a great resource for English learners in other countries. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been introducing your podcast to students and adults I
Speaker 1: meet who are interested in furthering their English and learning
Speaker 1: more about US culture. Yeah, little scary too, Um. The
Speaker 1: idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
Speaker 1: When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
Speaker 1: they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
Speaker 1: wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Your podcast is providing a fun and am in a
Speaker 1: way for students here to practice listening to different English accents, um,
Speaker 1: to try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes,
Speaker 1: to learn new vocabulary. Why I feel a lot of
Speaker 1: heat all of a sudden, um, And to become more
Speaker 1: informed on the various issues you discuss. The idea of
Speaker 1: people listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge.
Speaker 1: Is part is a part of us culture that I
Speaker 1: am proud to share and thank you very much for
Speaker 1: that spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela Hartley, it's
Speaker 1: very nice, thank you very much for that. We're becoming
Speaker 1: a cult like figures like Rodriguez. Who there's this like
Speaker 1: singer songwriter from I think the late sixties, early seventies
Speaker 1: and he just went by the name Rodriguez and released
Speaker 1: a couple of albums that is totally flopped here and um,
Speaker 1: he just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that
Speaker 1: in South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just
Speaker 1: incredible status overly and everyone wondered what happened to him,
Speaker 1: and finally years later he found out, like he's like
Speaker 1: a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: documentary that just came out about the whole time. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like a feature film, like something someone would
Speaker 1: make up. I saw a movie like that, you mean,
Speaker 1: I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
Speaker 1: it was very much like that where the one of
Speaker 1: the producers afterwards of the Q and it was like
Speaker 1: it was he was asked if they were going to
Speaker 1: turn it into like a feature film. Then he was like,
Speaker 1: we can't. Like there's just too many it's too outlandish
Speaker 1: that if you fictionalized it, people would be like, this
Speaker 1: is stupid. Why did you Why did you make these choices?
Speaker 1: I want to see it. Yeah you should. It's very good, awesome. UM, okay,
Speaker 1: if you have a doc recommenentary a documentary recommendation, so
Speaker 1: I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a doc you wreck,
Speaker 1: thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
Speaker 1: is that correct, docu wreck? Because I think I've seen
Speaker 1: that written before. Really Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
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