Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant uh, and this is Stuff you should Know. It's 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: found smell it. We'll just call it smellow rama. I
Speaker 1: mean grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm
Speaker 1: grumpy Jerry. Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at
Speaker 1: each other when I came in here. No, Jerry was
Speaker 1: mad at me for being mad at her, which doesn't count.
Speaker 1: It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm
Speaker 1: not grumpy. It's just head legitimate grumpy, right stripe. Everyone's scrapy,
Speaker 1: so Chuck. Yes, I want to tell you about a
Speaker 1: great American hero, William Katka Uh. Many years ago, in
Speaker 1: the wilds of I wish I could remember where he
Speaker 1: was found Mississippi, a little guy known as bat Boy
Speaker 1: was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a
Speaker 1: flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and UM
Speaker 1: took him into their care. He became a ward of
Speaker 1: the state. That makes sense because bat boys are known
Speaker 1: to go to higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: did true to form uh so uh bat Boy at
Speaker 1: first he didn't like this captivity, UM, but eventually he
Speaker 1: kind of became something of a patriot by um volunteering
Speaker 1: to go search for Osama bin Laden and his Al
Speaker 1: Qaeda operatives UM in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason
Speaker 1: bat Boy was so good at it because he was
Speaker 1: raising caves half bat half boy name Um. He wasn't
Speaker 1: able to find Ben Lawden, but he still returned to
Speaker 1: the U S a hero after a long long flight
Speaker 1: because he just flew himself. Of course, and we know
Speaker 1: of bat boys exploits thanks to a little newspaper known
Speaker 1: as The Weekly World News. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1: Two things? I used to subscribe to The Weekly World Yeah,
Speaker 1: for like a year in high school, me and my
Speaker 1: buddy rad did because it was fun Radcliffe Radford, And
Speaker 1: two I didn't realize that bat boy they continued his exploits.
Speaker 1: I think bat Boys sold a lot of papers for
Speaker 1: the Well, I knew he did, but I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. He
Speaker 1: he did, he tried to. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: was successful. At least he went equipped more than with
Speaker 1: just a sword. Um. But yeah, so bat Boy was
Speaker 1: a prominent character, I guess. And the Weekly World News,
Speaker 1: which which also bills itself as the world's only reliable newspapers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that little tagline or whatever. Yeah, it's not around
Speaker 1: anymore in print. Yeah, I think I remember shutting down
Speaker 1: and being sort of sad. Is online, I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight it moved to and moved online.
Speaker 1: So really every aspect of that story from this outrageous
Speaker 1: um claim that bat Boy was captured and sent to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan to UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's
Speaker 1: most reliable, the world's only reliable newspaper, to it's shutting
Speaker 1: down and going online because of massive profit losses after
Speaker 1: being purchased by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The
Speaker 1: Weekly World News is a perfect analogy for the course
Speaker 1: of tabloids of the last like twenty 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, Wow,
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 isn't 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 that of
Speaker 1: a standard table. So I mean, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: What what is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start
Speaker 1: at the beginning or should we just talk about it
Speaker 1: a little bit then do the history? Do you want
Speaker 1: to do the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the
Speaker 1: history first, because positive that we don't practice. So I
Speaker 1: did see, Um, there was one slight error. This is
Speaker 1: an ed Grabanowski article, which are always great. But did
Speaker 1: you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with
Speaker 1: the pill company UM in the late eighteen hundreds, apparently
Speaker 1: um Burrows, Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England.
Speaker 1: They produced at the time, like medicines, were all like
Speaker 1: BC powder good, he's powder, They're all powdered. And he
Speaker 1: I think was the first one to make into a
Speaker 1: pill by compressing the powder and he called it a tabloid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably was. And um that that word became to
Speaker 1: mean anything figuratively, that was a small dose of anything.
Speaker 1: So the word tabloid, it actually became came before I
Speaker 1: believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, Uh, the
Speaker 1: physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the
Speaker 1: origin of life on Earth comes from another planet. But really,
Speaker 1: where did the origin of life begin? Right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: answer the question. It's the same thing, like, okay, so
Speaker 1: maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then it
Speaker 1: was associated with newspapers. The tabloid paper ums printed on
Speaker 1: a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint
Speaker 1: called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid is a smaller,
Speaker 1: more compact version. The broadsheet is longer and wider UM
Speaker 1: and then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper,
Speaker 1: hence the word yeah. So at first it was a pill,
Speaker 1: then it became the size of the paper, and then
Speaker 1: later on it just became um the style of the
Speaker 1: paper and size, but really the style. But tabloids, as
Speaker 1: were explaining them, are basically like um. They are also
Speaker 1: commonly referred to as rags, as um gutter public Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gossip sheets, whatever it's it's basically it's a it's
Speaker 1: a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper and um tabloids. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that they exist and always have existed
Speaker 1: is in comparison to quote legitimate newspapers. So like originally
Speaker 1: newspapers that say, like the beginning the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: They were extremely stuffy. They were extremely expensive. They were
Speaker 1: like six cents per which was like half a day's
Speaker 1: pay for the average labor. Really dry. Man. If you
Speaker 1: ever read these old New York Times articles, there's like
Speaker 1: they just really just you know, they lay out the
Speaker 1: facts and then say the end, exactly like the AP
Speaker 1: used to do. Until a few years ago. The AP
Speaker 1: always did that who, what, when, how, where and why
Speaker 1: the old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a
Speaker 1: quote in there and that was it. Um. And so
Speaker 1: out of this, I guess kind of boredom and a
Speaker 1: need 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 of 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 were shorter,
Speaker 1: paragraphs were shorter, way more emotion It was it was
Speaker 1: designed for that, like listen to the triumph of this
Speaker 1: family over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what
Speaker 1: we see now in mainstream newspapers exactly. Yes, a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of our stream um media owes quite a
Speaker 1: bit to the evolution of tabloids, and there's actually a
Speaker 1: point 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 tabloid's almost kind of break ground. Yeah,
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. Disgusting, right, I'm disgusted
Speaker 1: by it, all um. Yellow journalism came about in the
Speaker 1: era of William Randolph Hurst with his New York Journal
Speaker 1: later called The New York Journal American, and he was
Speaker 1: the first person in the United States, at least, because
Speaker 1: I think in England it even started out before us,
Speaker 1: but not mistaken. In England, I think they were kind
Speaker 1: of like the birth of some of the more tabloid
Speaker 1: style writing. But in America William randolf Hurst did with
Speaker 1: all of a sudden he are to doing some celebrity
Speaker 1: stuff and some murderer and little sensational gore here and there,
Speaker 1: and he found that it sold really well up until
Speaker 1: the Depression, when nothing's old really well. Um pick up
Speaker 1: after the Depression when a very monumental figure in tabloid
Speaker 1: history named Janetta Jenettos Pope or Gene Pope Jane Pope
Speaker 1: j Jr. Um He bought a hearst paper called the
Speaker 1: New York and Choir for Grand, changed it to tabloid size,
Speaker 1: started uh printing you know, you know, stuff that he
Speaker 1: figured people like to stare at a car crash. So
Speaker 1: he was actually inspired literally by seeing people like jockeying
Speaker 1: to see the blood and the gore in a car
Speaker 1: crash and thought, Wow, people really are disgusting and crazy,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to give them what they want. And
Speaker 1: he did remember the crime scene photography episode we talked
Speaker 1: about Uigi um he he and he sold a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to Geene Pope. Um he printed a lot
Speaker 1: of his like gory crimes photos. What's his name, Lewis
Speaker 1: fellig I think, but he went by W E G
Speaker 1: E EG interesting So I said it again, Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I was cueing like the Executive Orders episode, how many
Speaker 1: times like I'll bunch, do you know why because it
Speaker 1: was super interesting. Um. So he starts selling a lot
Speaker 1: of papers based on this new style. And then a
Speaker 1: guy named Rupert Murdoch who you may have heard of,
Speaker 1: who saw or proved that you could actually have pretty
Speaker 1: wide circulation um, and began selling News of the World
Speaker 1: in England millions of copies sex scandals. And then the
Speaker 1: Pope said, you know what, if he can sell millions
Speaker 1: and millions of copies, so can I let me change
Speaker 1: the name of the National Enquirer. Boom right, the National
Speaker 1: Enquirer was born, but um, the Inquirer is we know
Speaker 1: it's ill wasn't born yet. It was the thing they
Speaker 1: were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and lesbianism and
Speaker 1: like horrible acts of violence posthumous violence. There is this
Speaker 1: one headline, um about a team ripping the head off
Speaker 1: of a corpse to get at its gold teeth, and
Speaker 1: always with the gory crime scene photos like the pulp
Speaker 1: comics were doing too. Yeah, very much. It was just
Speaker 1: very tawdry. It's um, I mean, if the stuff and
Speaker 1: the Inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was just like
Speaker 1: it's not fathomed. But the reason it's not is again
Speaker 1: because of Gene Pope, so he had a lot of competition.
Speaker 1: And not just he, but the whole industry was facing
Speaker 1: a big problem in that news stands were starting to dry.
Speaker 1: So Jeane Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets.
Speaker 1: Everybody goes to supermarkets. I need to get in there.
Speaker 1: And now I stand in the line at the checkout stand. Right.
Speaker 1: But he knew like there was no way that any
Speaker 1: any respectable supermarket it was gonna sell his tabloid, his rag.
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,
Speaker 1: um this stuff he was talking about before it that
Speaker 1: was just really it was more like a like a
Speaker 1: the Senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's this guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the
Speaker 1: for Vanity Fair, and he wrote this article called us Confidential.
Speaker 1: It was in the June two thousand two issue of
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition
Speaker 1: going from you know, the crime scene photography to um
Speaker 1: astrology overnight 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 scandals. And it wasn't even cleaning them
Speaker 1: attacked that much. Just not like you said, we're going
Speaker 1: to become the you know, New York Times. But that's
Speaker 1: why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand in
Speaker 1: line at a supermarket checkout line, it's because in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Jeane Pope was like, we got to get
Speaker 1: in the supermarkets. I think people either read these or
Speaker 1: 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: gonna 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 though,
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. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: went over to the glossy format at some point. I
Speaker 1: think that maybe the late nineties, and um it, it
Speaker 1: married those two things, glossy people 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, well, 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? Yeah, exactly, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: who wore it better? I know somebody who's been reading people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you have the two ladies with the same dress
Speaker 1: me and especially when it's like two to eighteen, now,
Speaker 1: I know, especially when it's like you know, it's just
Speaker 1: means sometimes I'm gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll
Speaker 1: be like, a who aren't better Kevin Smith or podcaster
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith because I've
Speaker 1: never heard of this other guy. It's the same. It's
Speaker 1: the same dude anyway. Alright, So um, that's pretty much
Speaker 1: the quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States,
Speaker 1: at least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're
Speaker 1: lousy with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading
Speaker 1: edge of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let
Speaker 1: get to that, all right. So before we go onto
Speaker 1: tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should
Speaker 1: point out that in the National Choir, the Star of
Speaker 1: the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're
Speaker 1: all purchased by American Media, Inc. Like all all of
Speaker 1: those just snap them all up basically just about on
Speaker 1: the show, now, every big tabloid in the United States
Speaker 1: was purchased by this one company, and um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's never a good thing. Or maybe that's just
Speaker 1: me being it, you know. Well that's the funny thing.
Speaker 1: Like the title of this sidebars, they control everything you
Speaker 1: read unless you don't read any of those things. So, um,
Speaker 1: the the am I. Actually they're the reason the Weekly
Speaker 1: World News shut down. Um, they were like, okay, these
Speaker 1: things losing money. Am I posted a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: million dollar loss in two thousand and six and was
Speaker 1: facing like a billion dollars in debt. Yeah, bad boy
Speaker 1: boys of the Internet. Yeah that makes sense. That's where
Speaker 1: bad boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What
Speaker 1: what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's tabloids like pornography, you know when you see it,
Speaker 1: all right, it's tough to define. That's not um entirely
Speaker 1: the case. There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among
Speaker 1: tabloids that make a tabloid a tabloid, I agreed, So
Speaker 1: what are they? Well Ed points out here something really important.
Speaker 1: The key to a tabloid story is not that it
Speaker 1: be true, just that someone has said that it's true, right,
Speaker 1: and they latch onto that person. And as long as
Speaker 1: they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person,
Speaker 1: then they can't be held accountable. And that person is
Speaker 1: frequently cited as an expert and a close friend. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, if somebody it's all the way you present
Speaker 1: the story. If the if you're saying, if your whole
Speaker 1: story is all about how this person said something, it's
Speaker 1: not really about the story. The story is still there,
Speaker 1: but you're focusing on this person. It's like the the
Speaker 1: rule of the of the tabloid industry. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a trick though, because very much you're tricking people into
Speaker 1: thinking you're reading about a story about Brandjelina. In fact,
Speaker 1: you're reading a story about a former made that worked
Speaker 1: for branch Elina and what they think is true, right,
Speaker 1: or some crazy person who has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: Brandngelina who like just um, maybe saw one of them
Speaker 1: in a coffee shop and like, notice they didn't tip
Speaker 1: or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: like we said that, they like to add experts, and
Speaker 1: but the experts are in no way, shape or form
Speaker 1: qualified In a lot of ways, they have no credentials.
Speaker 1: They're not vetted. It's more say, like, um, the example
Speaker 1: Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast. Right, if somebody
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot, researching bigfoot.
Speaker 1: There there's no institute out there to qualify them, to
Speaker 1: give them credentials, but you could reasonably make a case
Speaker 1: of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right. The
Speaker 1: thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star or
Speaker 1: the weekly World News is not going to the trouble
Speaker 1: of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so and
Speaker 1: so says that there's a bunch of these things out
Speaker 1: 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. Witnesses say she looked strung
Speaker 1: out and like she had not eaten for days, and Uh,
Speaker 1: all they have to do is say yes, exactly yes,
Speaker 1: or like would you say this? And if the prison
Speaker 1: says yes and you just said that. Another hallmark of
Speaker 1: tabloids is making a huge deal out of something I
Speaker 1: guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting
Speaker 1: story and then blowing it up into possibly a front
Speaker 1: page feature. Um, just by getting into this story, really
Speaker 1: interviewing a lot of people involved, um, and then maybe
Speaker 1: throwing an expert or something like that, and just basically
Speaker 1: making a lot a lot of hay out of something
Speaker 1: very um, kind of negligible. UM. And this by adding
Speaker 1: a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do you
Speaker 1: think about this? What do you think about that? It
Speaker 1: takes it from being about the story, right, like a
Speaker 1: um man saved a goat from a burning building, to
Speaker 1: 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 if 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 security, people who would
Speaker 1: work from 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 He
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 youself, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And he now says like, you know, I take responsibility
Speaker 1: for that, which is meaningless. But um, yeah, he the
Speaker 1: all started with a cop knowing about this and then
Speaker 1: tipping off the reporters. That's so sad. Cops are not
Speaker 1: immune to this kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh.
Speaker 1: Another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: From what I've gathered, you're either you fall into three categories.
Speaker 1: You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You either are
Speaker 1: lucky enough and are smart enough to kind of be
Speaker 1: low profile and you're not really a subject of tabo tabloids.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of big stars you've never seen the
Speaker 1: tabloids Harrison for yeah. Uh. Or number three is you
Speaker 1: play ball a little bit, which means, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a little information here and there. I'll
Speaker 1: leak out some stuff here and there. If you play
Speaker 1: nine with me, I'll play ball with you. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: let you know, like what restaurant I'll be coming out
Speaker 1: of one night you can photograph me. Give you your
Speaker 1: little time. And um. Sometimes the movie studios a leak
Speaker 1: stuff to get get up a little pressed. They did
Speaker 1: that a lot a lot back in the day. But
Speaker 1: it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: 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 have
Speaker 1: your picture made. A group of people known collectively is paparazzi,
Speaker 1: and they, actually, I found out, are named after a
Speaker 1: paparazz so photographer. You didn't know that named paparazzo with
Speaker 1: a capital P. He was a character in Um Follini
Speaker 1: Fellini's Ladulce Vita that's movie, and um apparently they were
Speaker 1: already extant, but they got their name through this character.
Speaker 1: But even then they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: seventies again thanks to Jane Pope. Um that they really
Speaker 1: became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today.
Speaker 1: And it was all because Jane Pope was obsessed with
Speaker 1: Jackie Oh and Aristotle 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: Geane 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 paparazzi
Speaker 1: on motorcycle. Yeah, very sad, but that's all Generoso Pope Jr. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll bet that guy wore huge black glass thick ones
Speaker 1: like Robert de Niro at the end of Casino. God.
Speaker 1: That's great. Um. Supposedly Fellini too, I dug this up.
Speaker 1: Took the word from an Italian word that described the
Speaker 1: buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified, but he said
Speaker 1: in an interview in Time magazine in the sevenies that
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I always just associated with something buzzing
Speaker 1: around you in your way, Like, well, that's paparazzi. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's that movie too, Paparazzi Is that what it
Speaker 1: was called? From two four? Yeah, with the dude, uh
Speaker 1: what's his face? Goes back and beats up ol Houser.
Speaker 1: Did you see it? No? I ran across it on
Speaker 1: IMDb today. It's not bad at all. Um. It's also
Speaker 1: it could very easily be based on the life of
Speaker 1: Alec Baltwoin Uh yeah sure or something yeah yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's I think the categories you were describing, um, the
Speaker 1: people who are just so big that they can't keep
Speaker 1: a low profile, but they also don't want or need
Speaker 1: that that the tabloids on them. But I've also very
Speaker 1: much gotten the impression. It's like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: 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. It's as and because there are people plenty,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like plenty of people out there who
Speaker 1: are big stars, but you never see anything about him
Speaker 1: in the tabloids just because they just stay out of it.
Speaker 1: They stay away from it, you know. Yeah, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of one. I mean, there's so many. That's
Speaker 1: probably why I can't think of it. But like Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford is a good example, I guess, except when he
Speaker 1: started eating close to Flockhart. They were, they were in
Speaker 1: the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect like most
Speaker 1: of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand holding things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot
Speaker 1: because of her weight, so that fed into that, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that
Speaker 1: she has Harrison Ford. You know, yeah, he's just like
Speaker 1: eat this, eat that too. Here, eat this all right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about the law. Because this
Speaker 1: was really interesting, I thought, because the first thing you
Speaker 1: think of the rest of it was not interesting at all. No,
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought this was super interesting though, because
Speaker 1: the first thing I think of is why aren't these
Speaker 1: people suing every day? Suing these tabloids. Some try, some do,
Speaker 1: Some have been successful for a while. For the early tabloids,
Speaker 1: ones like um oh what were they called? Like Confidential
Speaker 1: I think was one of the early tabloids, um like
Speaker 1: the Tatler Um, they're just whatever stupid name about, not
Speaker 1: about airing dirty laundry. That was the name of some
Speaker 1: pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties. Dirty laundry was
Speaker 1: probably one of them, I'll bet um. And they got
Speaker 1: away with that stuff because well, for two reasons. This
Speaker 1: guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote I watched a
Speaker 1: wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty much this definitive
Speaker 1: history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides
Speaker 1: because he was an editor for the National Enquirer, right, um,
Speaker 1: And he said, there's two reasons. In the fifties and sixties. One,
Speaker 1: if you were a legitimate star, these things were so
Speaker 1: in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic.
Speaker 1: In one, it was the attention that lawsuit would attract,
Speaker 1: because the regular press was gonna start talking about it
Speaker 1: would make you look as bad as well, it would
Speaker 1: draw a lot more attention to the original story. And
Speaker 1: the second thing is, 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 Murdoch,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
Speaker 1: I think Jeane Pope took the inquiry from like fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
Speaker 1: peak in the eighties. Um. And so the suddenly they
Speaker 1: did have deep pockets and things changed, and um, Carol
Speaker 1: Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like
Speaker 1: a bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids as
Speaker 1: far as the law goes. Yeah, she sued in uh
Speaker 1: after 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 yeah, he's a big
Speaker 1: fan probably, And she sued in one one point six
Speaker 1: million dollars, which was and we'll find out here in
Speaker 1: a second. This is one of the hallmarks of their
Speaker 1: 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 today,
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 two grand Yeah, and then it was
Speaker 1: settled out of court. So I would imagine for even
Speaker 1: less than that. Um, but it was still it was
Speaker 1: a big deal. It was the first time really that
Speaker 1: like a major star was able to win a defamation
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the tabloid. But it was one of the
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it was one of the
Speaker 1: only times. It was one of the very few times,
Speaker 1: especially if you are going on the premise of all
Speaker 1: the people who want to sue the tabloids and don't
Speaker 1: actually bring a suit because things have changed now now
Speaker 1: the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators,
Speaker 1: where like, if you want to sue them you thought
Speaker 1: that story that ticked you off was bad, They're gonna
Speaker 1: get anything they can and they're going to do it
Speaker 1: through the court. So like when Aretha Franklin or no, um, oh,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, when she tried to sue I think
Speaker 1: the Inquirer, or when she did see the Inquirer. The
Speaker 1: Inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records
Speaker 1: for the past thirty years. So they go after everything.
Speaker 1: They tried to drag your life into the spotlight to
Speaker 1: make it like really not worth your while to sue them. Yet,
Speaker 1: the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
Speaker 1: York Times article, h Vincent Cfo Everyone's italian Um. Everybody
Speaker 1: has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
Speaker 1: scorpion defense, which is you don't attack a scorpion because
Speaker 1: you will get stung um. Aside from not the not
Speaker 1: the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: I guess that do they need to be complex, but
Speaker 1: you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's the
Speaker 1: 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 on. The scorpion can
Speaker 1: only do one thing to your all can humiliate you
Speaker 1: in a number of ways. Have you ever heard so
Speaker 1: there's this whole thing that like, scorpions commit suicide if
Speaker 1: you set them on fire by stinging themselves. Really and
Speaker 1: apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there
Speaker 1: people like doing this with scorpions, like them on fire,
Speaker 1: and then the scorpion will like jump about and like
Speaker 1: sting itself and eventually die. Well, I'll be trying to
Speaker 1: put the fire up. They found that this. They found
Speaker 1: that that scorpions are almost entirely immune to their own venom,
Speaker 1: and that really all this is just the reaction of
Speaker 1: being burned alive. They're like trying to like they're flailing about,
Speaker 1: and one of the flails is like they're they're stingers
Speaker 1: moving and sometimes it stings itself. So it appears to
Speaker 1: dumb kids who set scorpions on fire that scorpions committing
Speaker 1: suicide terrible and that awful. That's a great tangent though, thanks,
Speaker 1: all right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids,
Speaker 1: It's just 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. Slanders stated,
Speaker 1: with your mouth, there's are the two differences, or I
Speaker 1: guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. Um, So,
Speaker 1: basically the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first
Speaker 1: thing they're gonna do is start filing motions to delay,
Speaker 1: to delay to You spend a lot of money, a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so and if you think about it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: your reputation. So a star who has a bunch of
Speaker 1: money says, I have a bunch of money, and I'm
Speaker 1: really mad at these guys, and i want to teach
Speaker 1: them a lesson. So I'm going to soothe them, and
Speaker 1: that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids try
Speaker 1: to make it not worth your while, that you'll drop
Speaker 1: it because you don't really need this money. You're looking
Speaker 1: for a judgment, and hopefully you'll get bored. Well in
Speaker 1: the tabloids don't care even if they drag this thing
Speaker 1: out in print a retraction six months later, no one remembers.
Speaker 1: No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well six
Speaker 1: months later, that's a it's a well put because apparently
Speaker 1: part of the judgment of some of these and in
Speaker 1: successful suits is that you can't write about um this
Speaker 1: star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they're like,
Speaker 1: cut a deal so times 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 tabloid
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 kind of comes
Speaker 1: with this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
Speaker 1: legal expert. You you really don't have a case if
Speaker 1: 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 aiate on it, and you're in aid 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 and 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 Cruise. And one did she win because Katie Holmes
Speaker 1: just filed in March. She is she settled for a
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: include you know, stuff against Scientology because you both that
Speaker 1: just had the big little supposed Taudrey affairs here in Georgia.
Speaker 1: And then I guess another homework that's not really in UM.
Speaker 1: It's not really in the article, but I think you
Speaker 1: can make a pretty strong case is that sometimes a
Speaker 1: lot of times the tabloid gets things right, but the
Speaker 1: the way that they do it often is very much
Speaker 1: unethical and immoral as far as UM the standards of
Speaker 1: the press is concerned. And that's what Rupert what's been
Speaker 1: going on with Rupert Murdoch, like UM Parliament, like a
Speaker 1: parliamentary UM panel basically said you're not fit to run
Speaker 1: news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge,
Speaker 1: with the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't
Speaker 1: remember what episode we talked about in it, but there
Speaker 1: was the girl who was kidnapped and like the News
Speaker 1: of the World, writers were hacking into her UM voicemail
Speaker 1: and then deleting them and so the police thought she
Speaker 1: was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course
Speaker 1: of 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 thousand, 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 Our Party people and Tristan Shandy. Um,
Speaker 1: some people have already won. But for the most part
Speaker 1: it's um. These people aren't gonna get any any damages awarded.
Speaker 1: It's basically just no news of the world is shut
Speaker 1: down now. But it was out of hand. And now
Speaker 1: they're they're showing that they were also hacking email, which
Speaker 1: great Britain has this kind of um. This this computer
Speaker 1: theft law now, which makes email hacking way worse than
Speaker 1: phoen hacking. So if that opens up to be a
Speaker 1: big thing, there's people are actually gonna start doing time
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I
Speaker 1: was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do um.
Speaker 1: Over the years, we'll mention a few O. J. Simpson
Speaker 1: case the National Enquiry, and it seems like it's generally
Speaker 1: the Inquirer that that sort of scoops the legit ones.
Speaker 1: It's never like the Star. Yes, you know, so the
Speaker 1: National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial, the story
Speaker 1: about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah, they scooped the
Speaker 1: story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar
Speaker 1: to the murder weapon. I guess knife dealers the way
Speaker 1: they scooped the shoes story. Remember there were bloody footprints.
Speaker 1: I thought this was awesome. They really went to town
Speaker 1: because there was a Bruno Molly bloody footprint at the
Speaker 1: scene and O. J. Simpson said, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I've never owned a pair of shoes like that. And
Speaker 1: they went back and found footage of him from like
Speaker 1: wearing them on the field, like reporting yeah, and proved
Speaker 1: that yes, indeed he did have those shoes. And he's like,
Speaker 1: oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh. Bill Cosby's kid n's
Speaker 1: remember when he was killed, the inquiry offered a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar reward for information and that actually led to
Speaker 1: somebody coming forward and giving the information that led to
Speaker 1: the capturing of the killer. That's right, Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In two thousand one, he Um came out and was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart
Speaker 1: when he was running for president, I remember this well.
Speaker 1: He was on the monkey business down in Miami with
Speaker 1: what was her name, Donna Rice Um. When you look
Speaker 1: at it now, he h, 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 Monk 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 Limbaugh, Yeah, my
Speaker 1: favorite drug addict that was exposed, Russia 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 looser ethics
Speaker 1: than maybe. Again, a New York Times reporter um said,
Speaker 1: tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned Um, at the peak,
Speaker 1: the National Choir was on about five million copies in circulation. Now,
Speaker 1: all of the leading ones in the United States combined
Speaker 1: sell about five point four million. So they've really gone down.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because they were
Speaker 1: so successful that mainstream media became much more tabloid e
Speaker 1: and tabloids became much less, much less different. The field
Speaker 1: of competition increased, Yeah, and basically everyone was kind of
Speaker 1: doing similar stuff now. And they point out the article
Speaker 1: during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you
Speaker 1: were seen on CNN and was just as salacious as
Speaker 1: anything you would read in the Star. And again, it's
Speaker 1: like the mainstream media kind of took a cue from tabloids,
Speaker 1: as they have so many other times, so pissful about that.
Speaker 1: With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's
Speaker 1: let's make up some stuff. Let's like what if he
Speaker 1: used a cigar and they were like those crazy stuff
Speaker 1: about Yeah, exactly, it was all true 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. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about tabloids and see a
Speaker 1: picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type in
Speaker 1: tabloids T A B L O I D S in
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which
Speaker 1: means it's time. Now, it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me, Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina, conducting
Speaker 1: research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know that your podcasts it was a
Speaker 1: great resource for English learners in other countries. Um. I've
Speaker 1: been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet
Speaker 1: who are interested in furthering their English and learning more
Speaker 1: about US culture. Yeah, a 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, informative way for students
Speaker 1: here to practice listening to different English accents, um, to
Speaker 1: try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes, to
Speaker 1: learn new vocabulary why I feel a lot of heat
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, um, and to become more informed
Speaker 1: on the various issues you discuss. The idea of people
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge is
Speaker 1: part is a part of us culture that I am
Speaker 1: proud to share and thank you very much for that.
Speaker 1: Spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela part it's scaring.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that. We're becoming a cult
Speaker 1: like figures like Rodriguez, who there's this like singer songwriter
Speaker 1: from I think the late sixties early seventies, and he
Speaker 1: just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple
Speaker 1: of albums that it's totally flopped here and um, he
Speaker 1: just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in
Speaker 1: South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just incredible
Speaker 1: status over there, 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. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like that 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 the Q and it was like he
Speaker 1: was asked if they were going to turn it into
Speaker 1: like a feature film, and he's like, we can't, Like
Speaker 1: there's just too many it's too outlandish that if you
Speaker 1: fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid. Why
Speaker 1: did you Why did you make these choices? Do I
Speaker 1: want to see it? Yeah? You should. It's very good, awesome. UM,
Speaker 1: okay if you have a doc recommendary documentary recommendation, so
Speaker 1: I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a DOCU wreck.
Speaker 1: Thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
Speaker 1: is that correct? Doc you wreck? Because I think I've
Speaker 1: seen that written before. Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
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