Speaker 1: Do you think wife STEP's going to come after us
Speaker 1: for this episode?
Speaker 2: I mean, god, I hope not. I'm Susie Bnacharum.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 4: This is in retrospect, where we delve into cultural moments
Speaker 4: that shaped.
Speaker 3: Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 4: Most of the time we talk about the past, and
Speaker 4: today we're going to do that also, but we wanted
Speaker 4: to give you a little more context about how we
Speaker 4: got here.
Speaker 1: This show is devoted to looking back at news moments
Speaker 1: we consumed, often as teenagers but sometimes older.
Speaker 3: But we're also.
Speaker 1: Working journalists, so obviously we have our own in retrospect moments,
Speaker 1: things that we wish we could have or would have
Speaker 1: done differently.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a lot of those, okay, And.
Speaker 1: So Susie, one of the things I love about hearing
Speaker 1: stories from your career is that you will just like
Speaker 1: bust out with these facts or little anecdotes about behind
Speaker 1: the scene things that happened. I mean, you worked for
Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer, you worked for Katie Kirk, you worked for
Speaker 1: George Stephanopolis like you have these war stories, often celebrity
Speaker 1: based wars.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I kicked around a long time, so I have
Speaker 4: a lot of crazy stories.
Speaker 1: And you've produced, you know, interviews with presidents, You've interviewed
Speaker 1: Loretta Lynn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Dance, like all of these
Speaker 1: very impressive things. But one thing I learned only recently
Speaker 1: about you is that you actually worked at Wife Swap. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: my first the reality show where people swap wives.
Speaker 4: To be clear, well swap wives in the non sexual sense,
Speaker 4: but yes, I did work on the first season of
Speaker 4: Wife Swap. It was a British show that had been
Speaker 4: brought over to the States, so no one had seen it.
Speaker 3: This was like what early two thousands, early.
Speaker 4: Two thousands, two thousand and four, Okay, I think the
Speaker 4: thing is, you know, I had worked at NBC, and
Speaker 4: while I was there, I had done like a little
Speaker 4: tour at Dateline, which is like magazine show, and as
Speaker 4: part of that, we had done an hour on The Apprentice.
Speaker 2: And I was really intrigued by reality TV.
Speaker 3: I always was.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like as huge, well it was huge, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't as common as it is now, I would say.
Speaker 3: So I was kind of like, well.
Speaker 4: If I'm gonna do news about these reality shows, what
Speaker 4: would it be like to go work on one.
Speaker 3: I was kind of curious to cross over.
Speaker 4: And interestingly, actually, by the way, is that when I
Speaker 4: made the decision to leave NBC to go to wife's WAW,
Speaker 4: this woman, this executive who was like very senior to me,
Speaker 4: said to me, like, you'll never work in news again
Speaker 4: if you take that job.
Speaker 3: You know, they were trying to convince me to stay.
Speaker 4: And they did it by being like mean to me,
Speaker 4: Like someone else said to me, like you're too ambitious,
Speaker 4: Like these are all the things they.
Speaker 1: Said to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, I don't.
Speaker 2: Like, way too ambitious.
Speaker 3: Also, i've been paying much better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were better, and they gave me a better title.
Speaker 2: I was an associate producer on that show.
Speaker 4: And that woman who told me I would never work
Speaker 4: in news again ended up going to Bravo and that's
Speaker 4: where she spent the majority of her career. She okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just funny because there was a real stigma to
Speaker 4: reality TV at that time. I will say that, and
Speaker 4: I don't know why I did it. I just was
Speaker 4: like fuck it, you know, like I want to see
Speaker 4: what this feels like.
Speaker 3: It was a pretty terrible experience.
Speaker 4: I'd say, like, I'm not sorry I did it because
Speaker 4: it kind of felt like being in a war zone.
Speaker 4: So like, I learned a lot about how to think
Speaker 4: on my feed and about how to produce in really
Speaker 4: difficult situations. But it definitely wasn't use and that became
Speaker 4: clear really quickly.
Speaker 3: Like your whole job was.
Speaker 4: To manipulate the people involved. Wow, and not just like
Speaker 4: manipulate them in the moment, but to prepare to manipulate
Speaker 4: them the whole time.
Speaker 3: Wait back up for a second.
Speaker 1: So you're the people that you are bringing on to
Speaker 1: swap wives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I should probably explain what the concept of the
Speaker 4: show is, just for people who might not have watched.
Speaker 3: This, so it includes me. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the premise of the show is that there are
Speaker 4: two families who are diametrically opposed to each other, like
Speaker 4: very different in different ways. So some of the episodes
Speaker 4: I worked on was a lesbian couple and an interracial
Speaker 4: couple who didn't believe in gay marriage. I worked on
Speaker 4: a racist episode where it was a racist family and
Speaker 4: a black family, which like now, you would not do
Speaker 4: because it's like putting someone in the.
Speaker 3: Most toxic situation.
Speaker 4: And oh god, the craziest one we did was a
Speaker 4: family who lived on a bus.
Speaker 2: The dad had lost.
Speaker 4: His job, taken a greyhound bus and had turned it
Speaker 4: into like it was before, like you know, tiny homes.
Speaker 3: Like it was not like it was not esthetic.
Speaker 4: It was just like I know, hashtag fani Like it
Speaker 4: was just like this weird situation where they were living
Speaker 4: in this greyhound bus that he like I guess, tricked
Speaker 4: out with a woman who whose husband.
Speaker 2: Was a funeral director.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So it was just like these like.
Speaker 4: Very weird you were trying to find kind of quirky
Speaker 4: weirdos who then would swap lives, okay, And the premises
Speaker 4: is that the wives swap and for the first week
Speaker 4: in the new home they live by the rules of
Speaker 4: the mom who is in that.
Speaker 3: Family, and then they get to change all the.
Speaker 4: Rules for the second week, and then at the end
Speaker 4: they come together and they find like common ground, you know,
Speaker 4: they like all meet together and they're like, there's some
Speaker 4: benefit to what you do and some menafo what I
Speaker 4: do and paid for this. Well, that's like an interesting
Speaker 4: thing about wife swap. So when I did the show,
Speaker 4: the families only got paid five thousand dollars for ten
Speaker 4: days of shooting, so it wasn't really two weeks. That's
Speaker 4: like the first thing because it's expensive to shoot a
Speaker 4: lot of days, and you know the point of the
Speaker 4: show was conflict, right, But because it hadn't aired in
Speaker 4: America before we were selling it to people. There was
Speaker 4: a casting team, but as aps, we worked on casting
Speaker 4: as well. We were selling it to people as a
Speaker 4: documentary and it had wan a bapta, which is the
Speaker 4: British equivalent of an Emmy. So we were like, this
Speaker 4: is like a serious documentary about people experimenting with other
Speaker 4: ways to live, and there's so much this family can
Speaker 4: learn from you, Like, you're so amazing. So your job
Speaker 4: once we identified a family, like the casting team identified
Speaker 4: a family, they would send out the AP, which would
Speaker 4: be me in this case associate producer and the associate producer,
Speaker 4: and my job was to basically better them up. Okay,
Speaker 4: you know, these were women who for whatever reason, and
Speaker 4: sometimes men sometimes we do dad swaps or in the
Speaker 4: lesbian case, you know, obviously was a.
Speaker 2: Woman and a man who swapped, or a woman and
Speaker 2: a woman.
Speaker 4: But with the many these were people who didn't get
Speaker 4: a lot of attention, were often sort of people who
Speaker 4: were desperate to sort of feel seen right, which is
Speaker 4: why they wanted to be on this TV show. And
Speaker 4: your job was to act like literally everything they did
Speaker 4: was fascinating because as the ap your job was to
Speaker 4: write the rule book okay, right, because there was when
Speaker 4: they showed up at the house, they would get this
Speaker 4: book and it would have all the rules they had
Speaker 4: to live by before the.
Speaker 3: Rule change, okay okay, and it was your job to
Speaker 3: write it. And so you'd literally be like, how do
Speaker 3: you make breakfast?
Speaker 4: Like, tell me everything about how you clean the house,
Speaker 4: just showering this person with attention that they weren't getting.
Speaker 4: And I think everyone would be really like seduced by
Speaker 4: that on some level.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what you're describing.
Speaker 1: Is not that different from what you do in an
Speaker 1: interview when you want someone to open up.
Speaker 4: Yes, although I will say that the difference is we
Speaker 4: were sort of told like, do whatever it takes, say
Speaker 4: whatever it takes, you know, like, as journalists, we have ethics, right,
Speaker 4: So there's some things I'll say in some things I won't.
Speaker 4: I won't ask someone to do something I think is
Speaker 4: on ethical. We were just told to come back with
Speaker 4: a signed contract, okay, no holds barred, so we would
Speaker 4: go out with these really thick contracts. And actually, you know,
Speaker 4: I kept some of my files from that first season
Speaker 4: just because I thought, you know, it was an interesting
Speaker 4: time in my life. And I found one of these contracts.
Speaker 4: I went looking and it's twenty three pages long, and
Speaker 4: one of the craziest things in it is that if
Speaker 4: the families violate the contract in any way, so if
Speaker 4: they refuse to participate in a scene or they quit
Speaker 4: the show at any time for any reason, it says
Speaker 4: that they would owe the production company, which was RDF
Speaker 4: Media or the network five million.
Speaker 3: Dollars for the five thousand dollars they were getting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy because they were basically
Speaker 4: saying the damage to them was worth five million dollars, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, is way beyond what it would have
Speaker 4: caught to make the episode. But the actual language is
Speaker 4: that it would result in substantial damages and injury to
Speaker 4: the producer and or the network, the precise amount of
Speaker 4: which would be extremely difficult or impracticable to determine. And
Speaker 4: so I guess even though it's difficult, they came up
Speaker 4: with five million dollars as an estimate for fair compensation, which,
Speaker 4: like is insane and also, you know unlikely that they
Speaker 4: would have tried to enforce this, but you know, these
Speaker 4: people had no way of knowing that.
Speaker 3: Do you think Webstop's going to come after us for
Speaker 3: this episode?
Speaker 4: I mean, god, I hope not. First of all, wepstop
Speaker 4: isn't around anymore. I think the most recent version of
Speaker 4: it was in twenty twenty on Paramount Network. But also
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean I feel like things were different.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's sort of what this show is about, right,
Speaker 4: Like the world was different. Reality TV was much more manipulated.
Speaker 4: Like I think there are some things you just wouldn't
Speaker 4: get away with in the same way today. This was
Speaker 4: one of my only two jobs in reality TV and
Speaker 4: then I went back to news. You know the other
Speaker 4: thing you can do in these shows, yeah, is you
Speaker 4: can literally splice answers, like we would change word by
Speaker 4: word someone's answer if we needed to, Like, you.
Speaker 3: Can do whatever you want. You can manipulate it completely.
Speaker 4: So there's no when you work as a producer in
Speaker 4: TV news, if you're out on a shoot, you can't
Speaker 4: ask someone to do something they don't do naturally. You
Speaker 4: can't feel like I want you to get out of
Speaker 4: this car, walk to this place and go there. On
Speaker 4: reality TV, that's all you're doing, and like you're making
Speaker 4: them do it over and over again. Actually a really
Speaker 4: good show about this, if people are interested. Is this
Speaker 4: show Unreal that was on Lifetime that was written by
Speaker 4: a former Bachelor producer, Okay, and watching it was wild
Speaker 4: because I was like, oh, this is exactly what it's like,
Speaker 4: except for the murders, because there's like some.
Speaker 3: Murders in the jow.
Speaker 4: But other than the murdering, it really did feel like
Speaker 4: a documentary about producing reality TV. And so I worked
Speaker 4: on this show. It was a really brutal experience. You'd
Speaker 4: go out with these contracts and your job was basically
Speaker 4: to get them to sign it without reading it.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're literally like.
Speaker 2: Just page through that just initial here.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't none of that.
Speaker 2: It's just ill legally. It's like, don't worry.
Speaker 1: And so do you remember any of the people that
Speaker 1: you had signed that? Like, do you think about these people?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, yes, yeah, well one of them.
Speaker 4: I kept in touch with the lesbian mom who switched
Speaker 4: into the family I was with in Texas. She was
Speaker 4: a lovely person. We stayed friendly for years. I think
Speaker 4: we're still Facebook friends. I don't know, I'd have to
Speaker 4: look her up. But you know, you did feel at
Speaker 4: least I felt really terrible.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time.
Speaker 4: You were there to get them to say things you
Speaker 4: knew were going to be embarrassing for them to say,
Speaker 4: and you went out with a script, but they didn't
Speaker 4: know that. So you have story points you had to hit,
Speaker 4: and you had to convince them that those story points
Speaker 4: were happening naturally. I mean that's what a good producer did.
Speaker 4: Like a bad producer were just be like, I need
Speaker 4: you to say this, and just like bully them into
Speaker 4: saying it. But you know, our job was to be like, God,
Speaker 4: wouldn't it be nice if like these kids had a horse?
Speaker 4: That seems like something you'd like, right, And then like
Speaker 4: two days later you'd be like, didn't you say that
Speaker 4: the kids should get a horse to learn responsibility? And
Speaker 4: then suddenly that would be in the rule changes.
Speaker 2: It was this like really.
Speaker 4: Weird way in which you were like pulling strings all
Speaker 4: the time. So what happens is a lot of the times,
Speaker 4: as the ap you're responsible for the.
Speaker 3: Children, and that's the heart for me. That was the
Speaker 3: hardest part.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you know, their parents sign up for better
Speaker 4: or for worse.
Speaker 3: Like do they always have children?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just wouldn't have worked as well, okay for
Speaker 4: two people who didn't have kids, right, because you needed
Speaker 4: the extra dynamics of a family, and those kids have
Speaker 4: no I mean they're sometimes they were really young, like yeah,
Speaker 4: six or whatever, but all the way up into teenagers
Speaker 4: and they didn't get a vote. You know, this was
Speaker 4: like often done by their you know, sort of like
Speaker 4: parents who wanted the attention or thought it would make
Speaker 4: them famous or whatever they thought. And so a lot
Speaker 4: of the storylines required you to manipulate the children into
Speaker 4: saying something. And so the one I think about the
Speaker 4: most was this mom who had a really difficult relationship
Speaker 4: with her teenage daughter, and we knew from the pre
Speaker 4: interviews that she had told her daughter she hated her,
Speaker 4: which is just you know, as like a mother, I'm
Speaker 4: sure this's like a really terrible moment, like a moment
Speaker 4: of weakness, like you regret, but not something you want
Speaker 4: broadcast on national television. And it was my job to
Speaker 4: get the daughter to tell me that on camera. Wow,
Speaker 4: And I did, and it didn't I mean, it didn't
Speaker 4: feel good like I would come back from those shoots
Speaker 4: and just shower and like to sit in my apartment
Speaker 4: because I was just like, this is so awful. What
Speaker 4: would take days for me to like detoxify from that.
Speaker 4: And it was a really toxic environment in general. Our
Speaker 4: executive producer was kind of awful to us. On top
Speaker 4: of that, we were working twenty hour days. You know,
Speaker 4: we were also being manipulated.
Speaker 2: And sort of tortured.
Speaker 4: Right, So you were doing this thing that you felt
Speaker 4: was terrible, and then you would go home and you
Speaker 4: would try and recover before you got sent out again
Speaker 4: in like three weeks or whatever the turnaround was.
Speaker 1: You were telling me recently that there was something on
Speaker 1: TikTok with a woman who was one.
Speaker 3: Of these kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I recently came across this TikTok and it's
Speaker 4: why I've been thinking about this a lot lately, is
Speaker 4: there's this woman, Heidi May, who is a TikTok content creator,
Speaker 4: and she was a kid on Wife Swap. She was
Speaker 4: a different season for me. So I only worked on
Speaker 4: the show one season and then I got out of there.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is the worst experience.
Speaker 3: Of my life.
Speaker 4: And this girl was featured in season six, she was
Speaker 4: in a family like a traveling show. They had like
Speaker 4: a family show, and they lived in an RV, and
Speaker 4: she talked about what a horrible experience it was for
Speaker 4: her and how traumatic it's been for her to sort
Speaker 4: of like deal with the things that came up in
Speaker 4: that show and how she felt really tricked by it.
Speaker 4: And so the story was they did this very family friendly,
Speaker 4: wholesome conservative show and then they traded places with this
Speaker 4: family who was obsessed with low riding, which just like
Speaker 4: a car culture I don't know anything about, but so,
Speaker 4: and they were really into like dressing. I mean, this
Speaker 4: is not my but like the way it was described
Speaker 4: was like dressing like sluts basically, like like she was like,
Speaker 4: I don't let my daughters wear shirts that like have
Speaker 4: anything revealing, and the other mom was.
Speaker 3: Like, my tatas are going to be out the hall time.
Speaker 3: Like it was just just like really yeah, And it's like,
Speaker 3: those are.
Speaker 4: The families you wanted, right on a show that's all
Speaker 4: about conflict, obviously, the people you want are people who
Speaker 4: are a little unhinged.
Speaker 3: Ideally, I'm not saying they were all like that.
Speaker 4: Some of them were lovely, but you know, so She
Speaker 4: tells this story about how she had shared at some
Speaker 4: point during pre production that one of her triggers was
Speaker 4: feeling lonely because her family's on the road all the
Speaker 4: time and she doesn't have a lot of friends. And then,
Speaker 4: in her very first fight with the other mom, the
Speaker 4: mom brings this up, you know, sort of out of nowhere.
Speaker 4: She says, do you really think having a friend is
Speaker 4: seeing someone for thirty minutes once a year or whatever?
Speaker 4: And then Heidi may the girls said, well, I think
Speaker 4: you know, having friends or people who care about you,
Speaker 4: And then the other mom turns to her and says,
Speaker 4: they don't care about you, which is just like a
Speaker 4: really mean thing to say to a teenage girl. And
Speaker 4: also they've used something that she thought she was telling producers.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, so they're feeding this information to the other mom.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, that's the job.
Speaker 4: When you work on a show like this, your job
Speaker 4: is to direct the story. They think it's happening organically,
Speaker 4: but you have story points you have to hit. So
Speaker 4: in this case, they're feeding this information to get the
Speaker 4: conflicts they need.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I knew that happened on reality TV,
Speaker 1: but when you describe it that way, it's so overt.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think the other thing is the first season
Speaker 4: where I work, they hadn't seen the show. But as
Speaker 4: the season started to air, it got a little easier
Speaker 4: to produce.
Speaker 3: On some level because they.
Speaker 4: Knew they were supposed to fight, so at least there
Speaker 4: was like a little bit more understanding of what they'd
Speaker 4: gotten themselves into. But for the initial set of families,
Speaker 4: I felt so bad for them because they thought they
Speaker 4: were like going to be on a PDS show, right,
Speaker 4: and then they get there and they're like, what is
Speaker 4: happening here? You know? There were times where people got violent.
Speaker 4: There were like there were definitely like physical altercations, we
Speaker 4: had to break up. It was a really traumatic experience
Speaker 4: for those families, and I kind of I'm surprised more
Speaker 4: people haven't come forward. There is another case.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe they're afraid of still being suited. I mean,
Speaker 1: did they have to sign NDAs or.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the NBA was part of this contract that
Speaker 4: said that they couldn't talk about it or they'd get sued.
Speaker 4: And you know, Heidi, this girl who did these tiktoks,
Speaker 4: did mention that NDA and how afraid she was to
Speaker 4: come forward. But now she's been talking about it for
Speaker 4: a few years and nobody's.
Speaker 3: Come after her.
Speaker 4: Because even at the time, I remember sort of being like,
Speaker 4: I wonder why none of these families realize that ABC's
Speaker 4: not going to come after them if they quit the show,
Speaker 4: because what are they going to do, like make this
Speaker 4: family go bankrupt?
Speaker 3: It was never a real threat or enforceable.
Speaker 4: But you were picking peopleeople who often didn't have a
Speaker 4: lot of money or who didn't have a lot of resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you didn't know how to read a
Speaker 1: twenty page content. Many people don't.
Speaker 4: Write, and so you were picking someone who wasn't going
Speaker 4: to feel like they could fight back.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The other thing she mentioned is that this basically destroyed
Speaker 4: their family business. This family business that they went on
Speaker 4: the show to promote was somewhat picked apart by this experience. Okay,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, that would be my biggest regret. I
Speaker 4: think I was working on it at all, Listen.
Speaker 3: I was really young.
Speaker 4: It was my first job in anything other than like
Speaker 4: a straight news jop. I didn't really understand what I
Speaker 4: was getting myself into, and I certainly didn't have the
Speaker 4: power to fight back. And when I tried occasionally to
Speaker 4: be like we shouldn't be doing this or we shouldn't
Speaker 4: be They were like, shot the fuck up. They were
Speaker 4: not interested in my having like an opinion.
Speaker 3: Or a voice. Yeah, you were there to do this.
Speaker 4: I was there to do the job. And you know,
Speaker 4: eventually I was just like this job isn't for me.
Speaker 4: And then I went on to work on a show
Speaker 4: called Trailer Fabulous, which sounds terrible but was actually the
Speaker 4: best job I ever had.
Speaker 3: Like to this day, maybe, yeah, it was really fun.
Speaker 2: And so it was an MTV show.
Speaker 4: It was when Extreme Home Makeover was starting to become
Speaker 4: like a big thing, and so MTV had this idea
Speaker 4: that they would trick.
Speaker 3: Out kids trailers, like people who lived in trailer parks.
Speaker 4: But like we'd basically go do an Extreme home makeover
Speaker 4: but on a trailer. And I didn't really know anything.
Speaker 3: Joy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was bringing joy to people's lives. And my
Speaker 4: job was just to like drive to trailer parks on
Speaker 4: the East Coast with a camera and just like go
Speaker 4: find kids who lived in these trailers. Like we'd set
Speaker 4: up little auditions and just like talk to them on camera.
Speaker 4: I mean it was really fun for me, you know,
Speaker 4: it was like, I just learned about this like entire subculture.
Speaker 4: I knew nothing about how trailer parks worked. They're like
Speaker 4: a really interesting little ecosystem. And while I was working
Speaker 4: on that show, I got a call about going to
Speaker 4: work at World News Okay, And a really funny story
Speaker 4: about that is that I interviewed with Peter Jennings for
Speaker 4: that job. Okay, So somebody connected me to the executive
Speaker 4: producer of World News tonight, and I assumed I had
Speaker 4: worked at Wife Swap, that he was going to be
Speaker 4: like here's someone you can talk to it like the
Speaker 4: Today Ship.
Speaker 2: Like I didn't think they were going to take me seriously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I met with him and he was like,
Speaker 4: I think you should meet with Peter. And I was like, Jennings, Like,
Speaker 4: it doesn't occur to me that Peter Jennings, who's you know,
Speaker 4: some people might not know, but who was a really
Speaker 4: famous news anchor at that time. My family watched him
Speaker 4: when I was growing up, Like I revered him. Would
Speaker 4: be interviewing an associate producer right Like, so I was
Speaker 4: just like so confused.
Speaker 3: But it was a he would come from Wi Swap.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I go in for this interview freaking out,
Speaker 4: Like I remember, I was sweating through my suit like
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: And I thought he was going to give me.
Speaker 4: A really hard time about wife swap, but he was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: that's just fine my wife and I've watched a couple
Speaker 4: episodes whatever.
Speaker 2: He was like, but what I really don't understand is
Speaker 2: why you went to.
Speaker 4: Journalism school, because you know, he famously didn't go to college.
Speaker 4: So he was like, the thing he gave me a
Speaker 4: hard time about is why I thought I needed to
Speaker 4: go to journalism school to be a journalist, which I
Speaker 4: just love that story. So that is my wife swap
Speaker 4: story and all its glory. Let's talk about you, because
Speaker 4: I feel like I've been talking a lot on this episode.
Speaker 4: You have hilarious stories too, about getting like snowed in
Speaker 4: with Pam Anderson and being in Jennifer Anderson's bathroom. I
Speaker 4: think you told me something interesting about her toilet role hold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she is an emmy that holds her toilet at all.
Speaker 3: It's kind of that is a boss move.
Speaker 2: I do like that.
Speaker 4: And getting propositioned covering a polyamory.
Speaker 1: Convention that happened, it did happen, I decline obviously.
Speaker 4: I mean obviously to who. So, yeah, you've done a
Speaker 4: lot of these sort of like.
Speaker 2: Very fun things.
Speaker 4: You earned an honorary degree from the nation's first pot school.
Speaker 1: Which you know, I love, said Oaksterdam University.
Speaker 4: I wish I had an honorary degree from Amsterdam University.
Speaker 1: Oaksterdam is combined with the Amsterdam back then. You know
Speaker 1: that the Amsterdam was where it was legal and it
Speaker 1: wasn't legal here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like that, but I think you wanted to
Speaker 4: talk about something a little more serious for your regret,
Speaker 4: which you know probably makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I have this story that I still think
Speaker 1: about all the time.
Speaker 3: It was a sexual assault story. So I'll take you back.
Speaker 1: This was I guess this was when we were working
Speaker 1: together because it was Newspeace, Newsweekdaily Peace. And at some
Speaker 1: point this young woman, she was a college student. She
Speaker 1: reached out to me and she told me the story
Speaker 1: of being sexually harassed repeatedly by her professor and I
Speaker 1: think her advisor and her mentor.
Speaker 3: She was a philosophy student.
Speaker 2: And where was she a student? I'm just Yale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe she was getting her PhD. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember now. Anyway, we spent months talking, you know,
Speaker 1: like getting someone to open up about harassment or assault
Speaker 1: is really delicate. It takes a lot of sensitivity. And
Speaker 1: so we spent months and months talking, and then when
Speaker 1: I thought that there was enough there for a story,
Speaker 1: I started doing the legwork to find out more about
Speaker 1: this professor, more about showing a pattern of abuse.
Speaker 3: There have been other people who had also reported him.
Speaker 1: Looking at in general, the way that her institution and
Speaker 1: her college dealt with complaints interesting and cases like this, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, there have been plenty of cases since a Yale
Speaker 4: that show that they did not handle them well.
Speaker 1: And more broadly, in the field of philosophy, which you know,
Speaker 1: the more I dug and the more I uncovered, turned
Speaker 1: out this seemed to be a really big problem.
Speaker 3: And I think the other thing.
Speaker 1: About philosophy has a field is that like you're constantly
Speaker 1: asking questions about moral inquiry, and like you're getting really
Speaker 1: close and you can ask like crazy things about a
Speaker 1: person's life or intimacy or you know, family.
Speaker 3: That could have to do with the field of study
Speaker 3: or not.
Speaker 4: Kind of reminds me of do you remember that New
Speaker 4: Yorker article that came out not that long about the
Speaker 4: marriage which is like the philosophy professor who ended up
Speaker 4: creating her graduate students, Like, yeah, her graduate student even
Speaker 4: though she's married, Like, I do feel.
Speaker 2: Like something's going on in philosophy.
Speaker 1: So what happened was this was at the time that
Speaker 1: NEWSWEEKND the Daily Beast had merged, and it was pretty chaotic,
Speaker 1: and like was the magazine gonna still print and was
Speaker 1: it not? And I don't think I even really had
Speaker 1: an editor at the time. So I started working on
Speaker 1: this and no one was really interested in it, and
Speaker 1: so I ended up taking it to another outlet. I
Speaker 1: think I got permission to do. So I took it
Speaker 1: to l magazine, and so I found this editor there
Speaker 1: and we worked together in this story. And this is
Speaker 1: one of those cases. And I didn't at the time.
Speaker 1: I hadn't covered a lot of cases like this where
Speaker 1: you had to find corroboration. So of course she hadn't
Speaker 1: really told a lot of people, but she had told
Speaker 1: her boyfriend at the time, and I spoke with him
Speaker 1: and he verified it. She had filed multiple complaints with
Speaker 1: the institution, so there was a paper train.
Speaker 2: Of all of that.
Speaker 4: Honestly, for people who don't do this kind of coverage,
Speaker 4: like contemporaneous accounts of what happened are considered very valid
Speaker 4: ways to figure out if a story really happened.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And you know this is years before I would
Speaker 1: then go on to work at the New York Times,
Speaker 1: right in the midst of me too, and years later
Speaker 1: I would learn how you actually do report these cases.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are probably some things I didn't do,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it is really going and finding
Speaker 1: a paper trail, talking and corroborating with anyone that the
Speaker 1: person told at the time. I think at the Times
Speaker 1: we did something like three plus corroborations was a very
Speaker 1: strong case, and you would look at things like diaries,
Speaker 1: anything from that time period to verify that this thing
Speaker 1: had happened. And of course you would then go to
Speaker 1: the person and give them a chance to respond. But
Speaker 1: I didn't really know all of those things then, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of framework or guidance on how
Speaker 1: to report on sexual assault cases. So I did what
Speaker 1: I thought was the right thing, which was looking at, yeah,
Speaker 1: the paper trolls, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of pages of documents.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like you did actually do the
Speaker 2: right thing.
Speaker 3: I think that I did.
Speaker 1: But what ended up happening was I wrote, you know,
Speaker 1: I spent months and months writing this draft and working
Speaker 1: closely with her, and you know, you spend so much
Speaker 1: time talking to someone and you build this real intimacy.
Speaker 1: We were close, like we were talking constantly, and.
Speaker 4: Also they're being really vulnerable with you, and that does
Speaker 4: create like a bond that's hard to explain if you've
Speaker 4: never done that.
Speaker 1: With someone, definitely, And so I turned in the story
Speaker 1: to L and you know, I was waiting to hear
Speaker 1: back from the editor, and at this point we hadn't
Speaker 1: gone to the person she was accusing yet. We want
Speaker 1: I wanted to wait for the first edit, and then
Speaker 1: typically what you do is you prepare all of your
Speaker 1: questions in advance, and you go to that person and
Speaker 1: you say, we have this story. We want to give
Speaker 1: you a chance to respond, and maybe they bring a lawyer,
Speaker 1: maybe someone.
Speaker 4: Else's, and you give them a deadline, because otherwise what
Speaker 4: they'll do is they'll try and drag it out forever
Speaker 4: so that you don't publish.
Speaker 1: And they'll spend that time trying to get that story killed.
Speaker 1: If they are a person in power, which this person
Speaker 1: was so you know, we're waiting for all of that.
Speaker 1: And then basically what happened was the editor came back
Speaker 1: to me. I didn't know him well, he was a
Speaker 1: senior editor there at the time, and he.
Speaker 3: Basically said, I think it was in an email.
Speaker 2: Oh good.
Speaker 1: But I was so traumatized by the whole thing that
Speaker 1: I just wanted to push it out of my mind,
Speaker 1: and so I hadn't thought.
Speaker 3: Much about it since then.
Speaker 1: But he said, like, this is not a publishable draft.
Speaker 3: This is a case. If he said, she said, we
Speaker 3: can't possibly publish.
Speaker 4: This, I mean that would really mean that no cases
Speaker 4: could get published in a lot of I mean, it's
Speaker 4: very rare in a case of harassment or assault where
Speaker 4: there is literally like corroborating evidence that is tangible, right, videotape.
Speaker 1: I mean, or it's like, what is the one thing
Speaker 1: that is considered enough well, a police report, and we
Speaker 1: know all of the reasons why women don't go to
Speaker 1: police and in many cases why police botch these cases.
Speaker 1: So that's what the editor said, and I was like
Speaker 1: so ashamed because I thought I had screwed this up journalistically.
Speaker 3: That of course you took it on your set.
Speaker 1: I just was like, oh my god, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell anyone.
Speaker 3: That you felt humiliated by it.
Speaker 1: I was just crazy, like I had done something terrible.
Speaker 1: First of all, I had to tell the woman that
Speaker 1: this wasn't going to be published, and you know, then it.
Speaker 3: Was like, okay, well could we take it to another occasion?
Speaker 3: Can we try this? Can we try that?
Speaker 1: And at this point I was just like so exhausted
Speaker 1: and kind of humiliated. I mean, you know, I'm like
Speaker 1: in my twenties. I've been at Newsweek for a number
Speaker 1: of years. That was my only job up until that point,
Speaker 1: so I'm like not inexperienced, but don't have much power.
Speaker 1: And this is the first freelance piece that I had
Speaker 1: ever done, and it was the first time I was
Speaker 1: supposedly going to write for al magazine. So anyway, I
Speaker 1: just took it completely personally, and I was so ashamed,
Speaker 1: and then I felt so terrible for this woman, and
Speaker 1: you know, I basically explained it and that was the
Speaker 1: end of that, and I never didn't thing about it.
Speaker 2: Did you keep in touch with her? Has she ever
Speaker 2: come forward?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 1: You're in there over the years, And I think ultimately,
Speaker 1: what happened is somebody did tell her story, and I
Speaker 1: think that this professor.
Speaker 3: Was exposed in one way or another, perhaps.
Speaker 1: During Me Too, but essentially ten years later or whatever,
Speaker 1: when Me Too is happening and I am now the
Speaker 1: gender editor at the New York Times, a person who
Speaker 1: both has power has more of an understanding of how
Speaker 1: this type of reporting works. I thought back to this
Speaker 1: case and I was like, God, damn it, Like I
Speaker 1: should have pushed back, because I didn't push back at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't say, Okay, well you need more verification, we'll
Speaker 1: go get it, Like what do you need to make
Speaker 1: this publishable?
Speaker 3: Like what is the issue here?
Speaker 1: And I had hardly met this editor before, so but
Speaker 1: like what I would do now is I would be
Speaker 1: like storming into that office being like, Okay, if there's
Speaker 1: something that's missing, we will get it.
Speaker 3: That is my jav So we would.
Speaker 4: Take it elsewhere because you have the confidence to know
Speaker 4: it's not you who's made the mistake. It's not like
Speaker 4: you did bad reporting or you didn't do a good job.
Speaker 4: But it's kind of interesting how you sort of took
Speaker 4: it to me and you weren't doing a good job
Speaker 4: at the time, but also now you look back on
Speaker 4: it and feel like it's something you did wrong, like
Speaker 4: you could have done something differently, But maybe there really
Speaker 4: wasn't in that environment something you could do differently.
Speaker 3: That is interesting.
Speaker 1: Maybe so, but I could have at least tried, like
Speaker 1: I typically.
Speaker 4: But that does come with experience and confidence to know,
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 3: Think that you know ultimately.
Speaker 1: What I think are in retrospect stories have in common
Speaker 1: is that we didn't have a lot of power at
Speaker 1: the time, and so to push back on something like that,
Speaker 1: And this was less a story of like being embarrassed
Speaker 1: because I had done something quote unquote problematic, yeah, as
Speaker 1: I've discussed, and more like I wish I.
Speaker 3: Had fought for this thing.
Speaker 1: But once you gain a little bit of power, you
Speaker 1: can push back, You can push these stories through. And
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason that we see so
Speaker 1: many more of these types of stories now, of looking
Speaker 1: back on cases in the past, or looking back on
Speaker 1: news events or characters people or celebrities and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: like how we treated them back then wasn't really fair,
Speaker 1: is in part because people like us have grown up.
Speaker 4: Yes, and actually been given positions where we can green
Speaker 4: light those kinds of stories.
Speaker 3: Or make sure they get told.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, although I will say, the funny thing
Speaker 4: about this is that my regret is something where I
Speaker 4: behave terribly and your regret is something where you actually
Speaker 4: were totally in the right.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I thought I could have fought harder for it, and
Speaker 1: I still feel.
Speaker 3: Bad about that.
Speaker 2: No, I know, but it's just a funny.
Speaker 3: It's like classics.
Speaker 4: I'm like, actually, I was a monster, and you're like, no,
Speaker 4: I was just like naive and sweet, which really, I
Speaker 4: mean fair, to be honest, this is in Retrospect. Thanks
Speaker 4: for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can't stop
Speaker 4: thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 4: Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com, or find
Speaker 4: us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 1: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 1: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 1: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 4: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 4: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books,
Speaker 4: Feminist Fight Club and This.
Speaker 3: Is eighteen In Retrospect.
Speaker 1: Is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media. Lauren
Speaker 1: Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer
Speaker 1: and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 4: Our executive producer from the Media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 4: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 2: Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 4: Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Cosperelli, sound
Speaker 4: correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 3: We are your hosts Susie Beannaccarum.
Speaker 1: And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers. Even more check
Speaker 1: out in retropod dot com. See you next week.
Speaker 3: H