A Quick History of the BBC

The BBC has been around as long as there has been radio. Today we salute the venerable institution that's as British as tea and crumpets. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:34Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:44Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  That's right. You got a quick announcement, huh?

• 1:55Josh Clark?

  I do, huh?

• 1:57Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Well, if you're talking about our new playlist that's coming out, that one?

• 2:02Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we have a new playlist coming out, right Chuck?

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, this holiday season, I think coming out very soon, actually. We have the 12 Days of Holiday Toys because we've got lots of great toy episodes over the years and we compiled them together for the whole family to enjoy.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  That's right. We love those toy episodes. I think it comes out on December 12th, right?

• 2:25Speaker 03

  I think so. And that's what like, I mean, in real time, this probably, or not real time, but in real podcast time this week, I think.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  I think so too. And what do you have to do to get these episodes, you may ask? Nothing. You don't have to lift a single finger. We're going to put them in the feed like we have been and I hope you enjoy them.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. And I have another announcement for this BBC episode.

• 2:50Josh Clark?

  Okay. Is that how you say it?

• 2:52Speaker 03

  The Beeb.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I've heard that too.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  What do you say?

• 2:57Josh Clark?

  Boog.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  That's how I was going to say it the whole episode.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  This one even more so than a lot of our others that are, you know, you could potentially do 100 episodes on. This is like serious overview territory when you're talking about something as far reaching and longstanding and sort of legendary culturally as the BBC is. I don't want our listeners across the pond to be like, guys, you're going to give us, you know, 45 minutes on the BBC?

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  That's exactly what we're going to do.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And it's with love.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And big thanks to our man in Britain, Kyle, for wrangling this huge, massive topic into something pretty, pretty good and understandable.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I gotta say, I love the BBC, always have.

• 3:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Since I was a little kid, watching their-

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, watching their content on public television. You know, everything from Flying Circus to Benny Hill to Faulty Towers. And then having a British roommate in college, he would tell me about the EastEnders and, you know, all the, you know, stuff that he grew up with. And it's just been near and dear. I read the BBC news all the time. It's just, you know, I love it.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  I definitely watched Benny Hill a lot when I was a kid too. So I guess I didn't realize it was BBC content, but it totally was, wasn't it?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just thought it was some guy who talked funny from Indiana.

• 4:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  He liked bare, bare breasts.

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  Yes, he was really into boobs, man.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  He was.

• 4:29Josh Clark?

  If there was ever a person into boobs, it was Benny Hill.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, and 12-year-old Chuck.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  So, uh, yeah, that's cool. I guess I've loved the BBC longer than I thought, too. So this is, uh, it's a hat tip, I guess. Also, a big thanks to the BBC and also deeply critical of it.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, to this 103-year-old institution.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, just in time for his 103rd birthday. So let's get started. You mentioned that it's called the Beeb. I had not heard that before, um, but apparently it's quite accurate. And the Beeb, you can liken it in the US to NPR, where there's a lot of, um, you know, accusations of it being left-leaning bias. And then people on the left are like, no, it's right bias. It does its best to stay middle ground if possible. It has to do with, um, public funding, but in a much different way. It's a, and it's a venerable institution, but like way more venerable than NPR, public broadcasting is here in the United States. It is a big chunk of British culture.

• 5:37Josh Clark?

  And in that sense, I get the sense that even people who are like, to hell with BBC, still feel some sort of like pride in the BBC and its existence.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, that is all, as we have learned by design, that was no accident. It is the world's largest broadcaster, uh, has 21,000-plus employees. And nobody knows, it's the, it's the oldest national broadcaster. And nobody knows how many programs they put out. Kyle said between 10 and 20 million. So that's, that's a lot of stuff and that's also a big cushion.

• 6:09Josh Clark?

  It really, that's a real margin, yeah. That's called hedging.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that includes, I think, you know, everything, radio and because as we'll see, their little thingies are in all the figgy puddings.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I mean, if you live in the UK, there's some way, shape or form that you're taking in BBC content, almost certainly, because they dominate, or they did at one point, dominate radio, dominate television. Now that they blaze the trail onto the internet as far as news sites go, they have a huge web presence. And then in the, like, across the world as well, they have what's called the World Service, where you can watch BBC News all over the world. So it's appropriately named. And they say that they have an audience of almost half a billion people around the world.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  I believe it.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  I believe it, too. I know probably 250 million people who watch the BBC myself.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Should we go back to the beginning?

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's go with the beginning.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  All right, so we gotta go. I said I was 103 years old, so if you carry the one, you subtract that. 1922 is where we're going, in our British Wayback Machine.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Which, you know, runs on coal and shepherd's pie. And October 18, 1922 is where we're going, because that is where the British Broadcasting Company was formed, before they became the corporation, as a partnership between what they called the Post Office, which at the time was basically their, they ran the telegraph service over there, and the Marconi Company, who said, "I got a lot of radios I'd like to sell, but you got nothing to put on the radio."

• 7:58Josh Clark?

  Ooh, we haven't heard that in a while.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been a minute.

• 8:02Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, remember in our AM radio episode, we talked about the Marconi Company setting up companies all over the world?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:10Josh Clark?

  This is, this is a good example of that. And the British government was like, "Hey, how about this? We will make sure you have zero competition. That is, we'll give you a monopoly, but you gotta make some pretty good content here. We want to hear good stuff." Right now, all we hear is...

• 8:26Josh Clark?

  And we want to hear better stuff than that.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:28Josh Clark?

  And so the Marconi Company set this up. They established this station, like you said, in 1922. And I guess five years later, the British government was like, this is ours now. This is a state-owned monopoly. I don't know what happened to the Marconi Company, but it sounds like they got hung out to dry, I guess is the nicest way I can put it.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bet they did. Okay. So that was 27 when it became the Broadcasting Corporation. And very, you know, kind of right out of the gate, they were like, here's what we're gonna do. We're not gonna, it's gonna be this weird hybrid of culture and entertainment kind of ran through, run through the government. But supposedly, the government doesn't intervene too much. It's kind of hard to reckon how that all works. And sometimes it works really well. Sometimes there's been a lot of controversy. But what they did decide early on is, we're not gonna advertise. We're not gonna tax people outwardly, at least. We're gonna have what's called a license fee, which is this, to us in the United States, a very strange

• 9:34Speaker 03

  sort of arrangement wherein households pay a certain amount of money, starting in 1923 with 10 shillings a year, to fund the BBC. And that's like your household license to listen to and then later watch stuff on television and listen on the radio.

• 9:52Josh Clark?

  Like, you have to have a license to watch TV in the UK, is what you're saying.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they don't, they don't say, all right, now here's the codes to turn it on. I mean, I guess, is it just like an honor system?

• 10:04Josh Clark?

  That's what Kyle, so we were, we had to follow up with Kyle. We're like, we do not get this license thing because it's just, you Brits just take it as like, it's just the most normal thing in the world. It's not. So it turns out that it is, it does seem to be on an honor system and that most people follow that, in part because most people have honor. But also, there's apparently a very real threat that the BBC will send out some government goons to show up at your doorstep and be like, hey, are you, do you have? A TV license. And I guess some people think that it's um, it's incumbent upon them to open their door and let the person in to see that they have a TV and they they can't produce a license. And you can get fined a thousand dollars.

• 10:49Josh Clark?

  And apparently they have trucks, they say. Pounds, thank you, which is more than a thousand dollars.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  You should have also said the goon squad.

• 10:56Josh Clark?

  I should have. I I let me just retake this whole, let's just start at the beginning again.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  You have to put on your newsboy cap and get out your cup of tea to really get in the the zone, you know.

• 11:06Josh Clark?

  Really, my my Lipton's blackberry tea.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:10Josh Clark?

  But apparently they will come to your house. So think about this, right? If you are not in the UK and you subscribe to Netflix. And you get Netflix because you're using a friend's password. Imagine if Netflix showed up on your doorstep and said, are you getting Netflix for free?

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:28Josh Clark?

  And you say, no, and they say, prove it. Let me in. Let me go. Let me go check and see if you have Netflix because we know you you don't have your own account. That's essentially what they do with that.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, I believe the the color TV license for 2025 is 174 pounds 50. Uh, 22.8 million people pay this, about 12% don't. They just sort of evade that cost. For a total of about 3.8 billion pounds. Uh, that goes to the BBC and the government. But this license expires in 2027 and there's a lot of hemming and hawing going on over what's gonna happen next.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, over the course of its history, these 10 year charters that they get that get renewed and reviewed. Usually the government wants something in return, or at the very least breaks them over the coals publicly. Uh, but it does seem from what I was reading that this this does seem like to be a particularly dire situation for the BBC and their charter.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  So there's a lot of people who are like, no, let's, let's get rid of the BBC altogether, or let's let them compete in the free market. They can sell ads. It's an unfair aggressive tax where the poorest people have to pay the most percentage of their income for it, whether they want to or not, just to watch TV. There's a lot of competing ideas for what to do. And the BBC is like, how about this? Let's just not change anything and increase the license fee a little bit. And they're getting crickets back right now.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're getting cricket. So time will tell. In 2027, we'll report back what happened.

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  Okay, yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, a little follow up. But let's go back to the beginning because they had a guiding light at the beginning, which I was talking about, which was after the World War I, the Great War, they really said, let's, let's start this thing to embody what it means to be a Briton and to sort of get our common culture out there to the world through, you know, sports obviously would come along and, and music and interviews and documentaries and plays and things at the time. And there were three dudes early on that were the, I guess, the founders. Cecil Lewis, who was a fighter pilot, former fighter pilot.

• 13:44Josh Clark?

  Man, you are nailing the British pronunciations here.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, he might have gone by Cecil, I don't know. A broadcaster named Arthur Burrows, and their first director general, who was the person in charge of the whole thing, his name was John, I think, Rees.

• 13:59Josh Clark?

  I'm going with Rees.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  You're going with Rees? And the director general is in charge, but they also, there's also a government board of governors that they work with or maybe answer to.

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  Right. And one of the things about the BBC, one of the reasons it's so venerated, it was a huge trailblazer, thanks to these three guys and their vision. I saw that John Rees was described by the New World Encyclopedia as a man of high intelligence, great ambition, and rigid moral views. And just like out of the gate, they set the standard for broadcasting, for broadcast journalism, for what it meant to kind of create a common culture. Remember in our Saturday morning cartoon episode, we talked about how Saturday morning cartoons played like a bardic function?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  Where it gives a common culture to a bunch of people. That was like part of their goal was to create a common British culture. And that happened right after World War I. At the time, nobody had anything in common. So it was a good thing that the BBC came along.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and this was in the infancy of radio at the time. And such that Kyle dug up this kind of fun thing. I guess there was a sign in some of the recording studios and broadcasting studios where it said, "You will," all caps, "deafen thousands." So people didn't know what they were doing. So they really had to kind of figure this whole thing out. It was a very intimidating thing, you know, early on to sit in front of a microphone when no one had done that kind of thing before.

• 15:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  And even Arthur Burrows, as a broadcaster, he said broadcasting to millions was awful. And they were worried about getting, you know, quote, "some madman on the microphone who could do a lot of damage." So it was a, it was a pretty intimidating thing at first when they were getting their feet wet.

• 15:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so for people outside of Britain too, the BBC was it. They were the only radio station, not because they were, there were, there was no competition. They had a monopoly. For years and years and years, they had a monopoly on radio and then television. So just bear that in mind. So it was really incumbent upon these guys and they realized their responsibility to be the, the provider of mass communication for their entire nation. And they took that responsibility seriously. And they started the whole thing out on November 14th, 1922, with the call sign 2LO. That was their broadcast license from the Marconi Company. And Arthur Burrows said, "Hello, hello.

• 16:27Josh Clark?

  This is 2LO, the London station of the British Broadcasting Company, calling. 2LO calling." And that was my Arthur Burrows.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  It's pretty good. Keep in mind, everyone, he was very nervous on the first day. That's why Josh sounded like that.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Then he went on to just sort of get the content underway. He did a one-minute weather and news bulletin, and this is adorable. Then he repeated it slower so people could take notes to, I guess, read back to their family. And from the get-go, they didn't call it BBC English at the time. What it was called was Received Pronunciation. But it was this sort of accent that they all agreed would be the accent. They didn't like regional accents coming on and everyone sort of doing their own thing. They opted for this middle-class, southern English that like at the Eton School, where it was just sort of the same.

• 17:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, apparently have been generating among aristocrats since like the 18th century. And at that same time, there were colonists who were setting up colonies in North America who had separated from that. And so there are, in some ways, a lot more similarities to how Americans talk today to how people in Shakespeare's time would have spoken than the people in Great Britain today and the UK have with the people in Shakespeare's time, especially hard Rs. Like Shakespeare would have been like, what is a car? Or the H's instead of...

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Henry Higgins?

• 18:02Josh Clark?

  Right, you would say Henry Higgins. That's how Americans say it. So those two big differences, that's how Brits used to speak before like, I guess, about the 1800s.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so they, you know, they got the ball rolling very fast on all kinds of content in the 1920s. They had something called a children's hour. They started playing live concerts at some of London's, you know, venerated halls. In 1927, they started sports broadcasting with the FA Cup final, which is the very first ever live commentary for any event, not just sports. And by the end of the 1920s, by the end of that first decade, really just eight years, they had 2 million license holders. Those were households, so they had a lot more than that as active listeners. And they were a venerated, respected institution, kind of right out of the gate.

• 18:54Josh Clark?

  Yes, but before that, they ran into their first major headbutt with government. And I say we take a break and come back and talk about that.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  About Churchill?

• 19:04Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  We'll be right back.

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• 20:18Josh Clark?

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• 22:19Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we talked about them headbutting with government. And the first time it ever happened was with the 1926 general strike, which is when a bunch of people go on strike from all different kinds of professions. And they were doing this in sympathy with coal miners. I think one, more than a million coal miners were having their wages reduced. And so a bunch of different people from different professions went on strike. And that included print workers at the newspapers. So the newspapers effectively shut down, except for the British Gazette, which was a government-owned newspaper. And the government-owned newspaper was like, this strike sucks. And everybody who likes it sucks too.

• 23:00Josh Clark?

  But that left the BBC as the only forum of mass communication reporting on this stuff. And apparently Winston Churchill was not very happy with the idea that the BBC, a government-owned monopoly, was not just being like, this strike sucks and anybody who likes it sucks. They were reporting neutrally on it.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was Finance Minister at the time, but he had a lot of sway, obviously. And he was like, hey, I think we should declare an emergency and take over the BBC. And the Director General resisted, Rees did, and he said, no, we're not gonna let that happen. But it seems like they were strong-armed into not airing the other side as much. One example is when they had Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin on at one point, and this was at Rees' house they were broadcasting out of. The leader of the opposition, Ramsay MacDonald, was like, well, I'd get to come on now too, right? And the government refused that. So they remained, you know, through the rest of the strike, somewhat impartial.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  They didn't let MacDonald on, but they did block Churchill, basically, from being on the BBC until he resigned in 1938. So they were like, you're never coming on here.

• 24:12Josh Clark?

  No, that's quite a coup, actually, because Churchill liked to talk and give speeches. So throughout the 40s, or the beginning of the 40s through World War II, they managed to hang on and keep reporting as best as possible. The radio definitely did. It became a government propaganda outlet. Some of the European powers that had been overrun by the Nazis and had made their way to the UK used the BBC to broadcast to their people back home. Or I think the Polish army in exile, or Polish government in exile, sent coded messages to Polish resistance forces. Like, it still kept going.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  Apparently, their studio was bombed in 1940, and it took out a lot of the top few floors. But luckily, they were broadcasting out of the basement still. And I guess the guy who was reading the news at the time dusted the script off and kept reading. You heard kind of a boom in the background, but the newsreader basically didn't miss a beat.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they kept going because they had that charge to do so. In the 1930s is when TV came along. So at the beginning, there was a Scotsman named John Logie Baird. This is in 1926 where he had this really archaic, you know, I guess it was pretty advanced for the time, but archaic now, a mechanical system where they had rotating discs, scanning and displaying images. And so they said, all right, that's good enough for now. It's 1932, no one will know that this isn't very good.

• 25:49Josh Clark?

  I can't imagine.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  They put out a very experimental 30-line service to demonstrate that. Didn't look so great, but it didn't take very long before they had, Marconi came along again and said that he had a better system along with EMI. And in 1936, they had the first high-def television service, launched from Alexandra Palace in North London. And at the time, high-def meant 240 lines of resolution or more.

• 26:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is nuts because TV, high-def today has something like 250.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  At least.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  At least.

• 26:26Josh Clark?

  So the BBC TV, so BBC Radio continued broadcasting throughout the war, but BBC Television shut down because apparently there was a lot of concern that the signal could be used to lock on as a target and bomb Alexandra Palace where they were broadcasting from. So they were like, well, we don't want to risk that. We'll just stop broadcasting. And they did for seven years, from 1939 to 1946.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, right after they got this new thing in their households.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  They were like, all right, for seven years. Can you imagine being a child?

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  No.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  I mean, there wasn't the most kids' content at the time, but still, anything on a TV screen, I imagine, was hard to lose after you tasted it.

• 27:07Josh Clark?

  I know, and it was around for three years. So that was enough time to get people pretty strung out on TV.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  You know? So remember, these guys are figuring this stuff out as they go along. Like, the BBC were trailblazers in just about everything they ever dipped their toe into. And one of the ways that they did figure stuff out was basically being dropped into the middle of it. And one, a really good example of that, uh, came in the 50s, in 1953, when Queen Elizabeth, um, the second, the sequel, um, when her, when she was coronated. Um, the, basically, the BBC was like, this is one of the biggest things we've ever covered, if not the biggest thing we've ever covered so far. So we're gonna, are, we're just gonna throw everything we can in it. So they started developing new technology. They figured out new ways of broadcasting.

• 27:57Josh Clark?

  They figured out, like, uh, rolling news coverage from, you know, station to station. And it was quite successful, from what I understand, too. Plus, also, a lot of people bought TV sets as, as a result.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they could see that thing?

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they could see what Queen Elizabeth looked like, finally.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, they told us on the radio, we could see what she looked like on TV. So we went out and bought one.

• 28:18Josh Clark?

  Right. She's got pretty nice hair. She's wearing a tiara. I think those are white gloves, or else she's quite pale. I can't see from here.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  And is that a corgi? So, uh, you mentioned the monopoly. Uh, that monopoly was eventually broken in 1955, when ITV, uh, independent television was launched. The oldest commercial network in Britain. And then, eventually, in 1982, Channel 4 would come along.

• 28:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Uh, and, you know, all of a sudden, programming started to get somewhat interesting in, like, the 1950s, because you started to get a lot more, um, you know, it wasn't just, let's, let's do the, the coronation or this concert from, uh, Royal Albert Hall or something like that. They started to get into comedy and sort of true entertainment, um, for better or for worse. Uh, one example of for worse was, uh, a show called The Black and White Menstrual Show.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  God, dude.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Uh, in 1957, they had 16 million viewers for that show. Uh, and it ran from 1957.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  To 1978, a super, super, super racist minstrel show. We will say from 1962, starting in 1962, the chief accountant of the BBC was like, this is a disgrace and like really racist. And so it took another 16 years for BBC One to say, yeah, maybe you're right.

• 29:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that chief accountant's name was Barry Thorne, and he was quite vociferous about getting this thing off the air. And one of his memos that he sent, he got a reply from one of the higher ups that said, for heaven's sake, shut up. They just buried their heads in the sand. They would not accept that this was an offensive racist show. And I read like even in 1957, this was offensive and racist, let alone 1978. And if you go and watch it, it is jaw droppingly racist, like.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they're just not good.

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  It isn't. It's like Lawrence Welk terrible. That's essentially, it was, imagine Lawrence Welk where every man is in blackface for no reason whatsoever. There's no context to it. They're just in blackface doing all these different things and doing all these different song performances. It's insane. Like you should definitely go check it out. Like if it, if it, if you're not just like completely staggered by it, I will be surprised.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, or maybe, you know, check in with yourself.

• 30:45Josh Clark?

  That's a good litmus test, watching the black and white minstrel show and seeing what you think of it.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that should be the test moving forward, I think.

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  It's so nuts, dude.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Just hook people up to a machine.

• 30:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  It's 1960s now. We're really flying through the decades. BBC Two has come along in 1964 and Color TV with a U comes along in 1967. And this is when some, some of the legendary shows over there of all time came about in the 60s, not the least of which from 1963 was the sci-fi series Doctor Who.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  Who?

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Exactly. A show that I've never watched.

• 31:27Josh Clark?

  No, me either.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  But I know people love it.

• 31:29Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's been a cult classic for, I mean, coming up on 75 years?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:35Josh Clark?

  70 years, 60 something? That's a long time for a cult classic to be around, you know?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:41Josh Clark?

  Think about it, Freaks and Geeks was one season.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, good point.

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  There was also one that I'd like to see. I hadn't heard of it yet, but apparently it was enormous and I can understand why. It's Kenneth Clark Civilization from 1969. This apparently was like the first prestige series that they ever came out with. And it was basically like Kenneth Clark going over the Dark Ages up to the 20th century and talking about the philosophy of different eras and what was going on and how things developed and how people got along and interacted. It sounds really amazing.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. I want to see that too. Uh, maybe we should get an iPlayer. We'll get to what that is later.

• 32:21Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Or sign up for iPlayer. I don't think it's an object, right?

• 32:26Josh Clark?

  Uh, no, it's not.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Uh, Satire came along in 1962 with David Frost. Uh, that was The Week That Was. I can only think that John Oliver's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a, just the title itself might be a slight nod.

• 32:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  That was The Week That Was.

• 32:43Josh Clark?

  I mean, he's always struck me as pretty British, so I'm sure he's aware of that show.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  Uh, and that was, of course, The Great David Frost. Yeah?

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the one who got Nixon to basically admit that he was a crook.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the dude.

• 32:57Josh Clark?

  There's another, that was in 1977 on CBS. I'm sure BBC was quite jealous.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Oh, Frost Nixon, yeah.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  Or else they didn't care because it was Nixon and he's American.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, but we also got Monty Python's Flying Circus in Benny Hill in the late 60s.

• 33:12Josh Clark?

  That's right. Uh, and then also the Foresight Saga, which I hadn't heard of, but apparently it has quite a bit of similarity to Downton Abbey. And they're about to reboot it for the third time. So I guess Downton Abbey fans can move over to the Foresight Saga.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  I think that's already out, actually.

• 33:28Josh Clark?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  The new one.

• 33:30Josh Clark?

  Is it really?

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's been around since 67. I think there's a new six-part series that's also, uh, that's also out. If not now, then maybe coming in the holidays because it's definitely this year.

• 33:42Josh Clark?

  Okay, cool.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:44Josh Clark?

  Are you into Downton Abbey? I don't remember.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  I love Downton Abbey. I watched it all.

• 33:49Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not taxing on the brain or anything. It's just, it's exactly what it should be, which is that just real easy to watch upstairs, downstairs, soapy drama.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like it.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  Okay. And then also what came along in the 60s and 1964 was the music show Top of the Pops. We've talked about that a few times. You know, remember Queen made their Bohemian Rhapsody video to get out of having to lip sync on Top of the Pops?

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, legendary show hosted by noted awful person Jimmy Savile, who we're gonna talk about later.

• 34:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Imagine if we just didn't mention him.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:30Josh Clark?

  So we, you said we were blazing through the decades. We're about to blaze so fast, we're gonna combine the 70s and 80s together because a couple of really big things happened in, well, starting in the late 70s and early 80s. The first thing was 1979 when Life on Earth premiered. And that is David Attenborough's first really big, massive wildlife documentary series. It took three years to make. They went to over 100 locations. It had a one million pound price tag. And I was like, wow, that's gotta be a lot. That's only five million pounds today. So imagine getting this groundbreaking series for a mere five million pounds.

• 35:15Josh Clark?

  It's quite a deal. But this, this thing just completely changed wildlife documentaries. Every, every wildlife documentary you see traces itself in its style back to Life on Earth.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%. You know, we can't go over all these shows. And I know people are gonna be like, what about One Foot in the Grave and on the, and My Favorite Show? But we should mention My Favorites, one of which was Faulty Towers. That was another that, post-college, when I was living in New Jersey with my British friend from college, he introduced me to Faulty Towers and The Black Adder. And they were just a couple of the best shows ever. I mean, it was comedy that I hadn't seen before and just really, really great stuff.

• 35:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for some reason, I got introduced to Fawlty Towers before I ever watched Flying Circus, too. So I was like, oh, that's the guy from Fawlty Towers.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 36:07Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that's funny.

• 36:10Josh Clark?

  And you mentioned the Goon Squad. I remember we talked about them when we did an episode on, I guess, Monty Python. Did we ever do an episode on Monty Python? Because they came up.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  We did.

• 36:21Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  I think that was one of our LA PodFest.

• 36:24Josh Clark?

  It was, totally.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they were deeply influenced by the Goon Show.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:31Josh Clark?

  I said Goon Squad, didn't I?

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I said Goon Squad earlier, so I think I probably influenced that.

• 36:37Josh Clark?

  Thank you. Thanks for jumping on that grenade for me. But it's the Goon Show, and it was one of the first absurdist comedies that really influenced shows to come like Monty Python. But it was just on the radio, which makes it even more creative, if you ask me.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, amazing. Spike Milligan created it, and it's probably most notable these days for where Peter Sellers got his start. He was in the first couple of series, what we call seasons, along with Harry Seacombe. And I believe Michael Benteen took over Peter Sellers. And like I said, there's so many shows to mention, but we can't not mention EastEnders, because my former roommate, Justin, talked about it a lot. He was from East London. And it was, it's one of the biggest shows in the history of the BBC.

• 37:26Josh Clark?

  It's basically like the British version of Friends.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm not going to comment on that.

• 37:33Josh Clark?

  But that was a TV show, and still is. EastEnders is still on, correct?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  I don't know. Is it?

• 37:39Josh Clark?

  I'm pretty sure it is. Maybe not.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  It wouldn't surprise me. It started in 1985 and was a really big hit out of the gate. And it's, you know, it's melodrama. Kyle points out that it hits all the sort of stereotypical, like, soap opera archetypes. But they've also, through the years, like, I think, most good shows, gotten some applause for tackling things like, like some of the realities of the East End of London through history.

• 38:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like HIV, unemployment, just stuff that you don't always see on the TV. It was kind of groundbreaking in that sense.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 38:16Josh Clark?

  Don't call it a soap opera, though, Chuck.

• 38:19Josh Clark?

  If you want to go soap operas, you got to get back to the radio and just find The Archers, which is the world's longest running soap opera. They have over 20,000 episodes, so almost as many as we do.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:30Josh Clark?

  And it's set out in rural England. Apparently, it's great, or it has been from time to time. So I've never heard of it and never heard it, but I may pick up Archer's habit. I'm not sure yet.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Tune in?

• 38:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Or you could just watch Archer instead on FX.

• 38:47Josh Clark?

  It's basically the same thing.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  The radio was still going on. You know, I know we're talking a lot about TV, but you mentioned The Archers. The quality of radios, you know, if you listen to our AM radio episode, everything just kind of started getting better technologically in the 60s and 70s.

• 39:05Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  They were more ubiquitous, so it reached more ears. But, and you know, this touches on a lot of our episodes, because if you listen to our pirate radio episode, you'll know that pirate radio was a legitimate threat to the BBC radio. Radio Caroline and Radio London, it wasn't just, you know, like a few hundred people listening. Like, they were playing popular music and sort of dominating that scene in the mid to late 60s, and the BBC was like, we got to do better.

• 39:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The reason why there were pirate radio stations is, again, because it was illegal to run a radio station because BBC had the monopoly on it. So they were like, well, like you said, we need to keep up. So they launched Radio One in 1967. Apparently, it's the most listened to radio station in the entire world, for no small reason, in part to Pete Tong and his Essential Selection show that ran in the 90s. Did you ever listen to that?

• 40:01Speaker 03

  I know the name, but I don't know if I ever listened to that.

• 40:04Josh Clark?

  It was like DJ Sets that he hosted. They were really good. It was a good show.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, they eventually would end that monopoly five years later in 1972 on the radio when they passed legislation that commercial radio could be a thing. And that's when the LBC, the London Broadcasting Company, was the first one to hit the legitimate airwaves as not pirate radio. And apparently it was, you know, things moved along OK through the 70s and 80s, but it was really the 1990s where local independent radio like super took off over there.

• 40:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think by that time, by 1995, the BBC had a smaller audience than some of its competitors for the very first time.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:46Josh Clark?

  But the BBC plotted along, don't feel bad for them, as we'll see. They know how to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and say, what's next for the BBC? I say we take a break and we come back and find out what's next, Chuck.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 41:08Josh Clark?

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• 41:18Speaker 03

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• 41:31Josh Clark?

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• 41:46Speaker 03

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• 42:11Speaker 03

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• 42:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so you're worried about package theft. Well, the ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  And here's the best thing, there are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there either. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.

• 42:47Josh Clark?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:15Speaker 03

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• 43:21Josh Clark?

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• 43:36Speaker 03

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• 43:41Josh Clark?

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• 44:03Speaker 03

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• 44:24Speaker 03

  All right, we're back and we promised what's next for the BBC. And what was next was Margaret Thatcher saying, "I hate you BBC."

• 44:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  She was elected in 1979, had a strong, I guess, aversion to the BBC and their privileged status right out of the gate. She wanted, she was all about the free market. She was like, "No, this should be in the free market with everyone else." The editorial, editorializing should align with the national interest of basically what I think is a national interest.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  And there were a number of things that happened in the 1980s that I guess you could call them either missteps or just honest broadcasting that Thatcher did not like.

• 45:06Josh Clark?

  No, especially the, covering the Falklands War or the troubles in Northern Ireland, they weren't just like, "Screw Northern Ireland, screw the IRA," or "Screw the Argentinians." Like, they, like you said, reported fairly and in some cases were accused of treachery. Apparently Peter Snow on Newsnight called the troops "the British" when they were invading the Falklands rather than "our troops" and he was accused of treachery. And they once interviewed an IRA member for a, I think, a Panorama episode. Yeah, Panorama, it's kind of like frontline from what I can tell. It's like a hard-hitting investigative documentary show.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:50Josh Clark?

  And you just couldn't do that. You couldn't talk to the IRA, you couldn't give them any kind of airtime, you couldn't air their viewpoints. And they tried to in the mid 80s with that Panorama episode, but I guess it never saw the light of day because of the government.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that, the whole situation would eventually lead to the alster of the Director General at the time, Alistair Milne. And, you know, he was, everything I read about him said that he was, he was doing a pretty good job, but it was, you know, Thatcher was in power, she wanted him out. And in 1987, he was basically kind of strong-earned out and Thatcher's, you know, choice person, Marmaduke Hussey, was installed and, you know, just to be more government-friendly.

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, apparently, I was reading about Marmaduke Hussey, he was described in his obituary as cleverer than he looked, but almost certainly not as clever as he thought. And he had, he said that when he was appointed to the BBC, he was so unfamiliar with it that he and his wife had to look up the address in the phone book to see where he should be going. So he was not like an obvious choice. And he was clearly the choice that, that was like, this guy's going to listen to everything I want, thought Thatcher.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, and I read some about what Milne thought of, like, kind of the board after that and the management after that. And he was like, it's just, it's a bunch of amateurs, people that don't know what they're doing, like beyond the fact that they're just cronies for Thatcher, like, they're not good at this job.

• 47:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. Apparently, he, Hussey was known to this point for having almost run the Daily Mail into the ground and then almost run the Telegraph into the ground, too. So he was definitely not an obvious choice, like I said.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Fast forward a lot, actually, if you want to go all the way up to Tony Blair in the 21st century. One of their big first, sort of, controversies of that era was the Iraq dossier. In May 2003, there was a defense correspondent named Andrew Gilligan, who got on Radio 4 and alleged that the Iraq WMD dossier had been, quote, "sexed up," something that everyone understands as being the truth now. And Blair's press chief, Alistair Campbell, went on the counter and a big feud sort of erupted between the BBC and the government.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  And Director General there, Greg Dyke, was, well, I guess he was sacked as well. Well, he resigned, but kind of another strong arm.

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was a huge, huge deal. And one of the most shocking things that came out of all of this is that Andrew Gilligan's source on this matter was a guy named David Kelly, who was a UN weapons expert. So he really knew what he was talking about. But he had been an anonymous whistleblower up to this point. It leaked out somehow that he was the source for this huge government controversy that basically said the UK faked all of the stuff that helped America invade Iraq. And David Kelly was found dead, apparently by suicide, in the woods by his house.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  It's very sad, too. Apparently, there's a certain amount of people who are like, I don't think he took his life.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, as soon as I read that, I was like, I know. I mean, there was an investigation, apparently, and the government was cleared of wrongdoing. But, you know.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but I mean, that'd be pretty vindictive if you think about it. Like, I can really buy the government killing this guy to silence him before he can share this information, but to do it in retribution seems even, wow.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. The late 90s come along, and the digital revolution is upon us. And Director General at that time, John Burt, started BBC Online. He had visited the States and kind of realized that that was the future. And it really took off. They had, at the time, just sort of a piecemeal network of webpages. And in 1997, they really kicked it off in earnest with BBC Online with the general election. And a rolling news website for the first time was established after the death of Princess Diana. So it was hotly trafficked, obviously.

• 50:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Apparently, 19 million people watched her funeral, the largest ever broadcast for them. And one of the things that came out of this, and again, this was really forward-thinking. We're talking 1997, and they're like, we're going to put a substantial amount of money in creating our web presence. One of the things that came out of it was that iPlayer you were mentioning.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which was launched in 2007. And initially, it was like, did you miss EastEnders this week? Well, come watch it on iPlayer. And this was not a thing at the time. Like, this was a really groundbreaking thing for the BBC to come up with.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a lot of lobbying by rivals, like, commercial rivals. So they had a lot of constraints at first, that, you know, hey, you can watch EastEnders. It was just for seven days at first.

• 50:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  But it was free. Kyle said it was very easy to use. I can't not, I cannot attest to that, but Kyle said it was. And by 2012, iPlayer was voted the UK's best brand. And that was when they had the London Olympics going on, and that's a great time to have something like iPlayer, so you can catch the Olympics if you're not watching it live.

• 51:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  But then Netflix would come along in 2012 overseas and they were free from those regulations and they could mine all the top shows they wanted that they could, you know, cut deals with. And all of a sudden, I think the BBC had a restriction on their best shows for like seven years. So Netflix really put a hurting on iPlayer for a while.

• 51:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess their audience share in the UK went from 40% to 15% once Netflix showed up. And I saw that Adolescence is the most watched show in the UK, I believe in history. It's pretty good. And I guess the BBC's like, we can't, we can't compete with this. Like our iPlayer, even the Netflix chief executive said iPlayer really blazed the trail for video on demand. But they're like, we can't, we can't keep up with this. And it doesn't really matter because everybody loves iPlayer. And I guess you would not necessarily choose between Netflix and iPlayer. Maybe some do. I'm not quite sure what the competition problem is.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm with you.

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  Because it's not like BBC's like, give me some money for iPlayer. Like that's included in your license that you pay every year. Maybe they just don't like to look bad.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, you don't want a dying product on your company, you know?

• 52:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't think it is dying, but yeah, Netflix took a huge bite out of it.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. But BBC is still around. BBC One still reaches millions of people on just on the telly. Radio 4 reaches about 10 million people weekly. The sort of knock against, or the crack against BBC, I guess, crack in the American sense, not the Irish sense. I guess you would say the knock over there is that it's like for, you know, for the senior set, like, you know, there are people that watch the BBC are in their 60s. And, you know, it's sort of not, not the way forward. It was our past.

• 53:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Josh Clark?

  That's right, Chuck.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  Should we play funeral music or something?

• 53:21Josh Clark?

  So, well, I don't know yet. That actually remains to be seen. I don't, I can't imagine that the BBC is going to just be done away with, but it is quite possible that they're going to face some, some real, um, changes.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Changes.

• 53:35Josh Clark?

  Because in the 2010s, the BBC, it was just misstep and scandal and problem after problem. Um, apparently they, uh, worked on a hundred million pound digital media initiative where they were going to come up with a great archive that's going to be super searchable and, um, it, it just went nowhere. Uh, so they just wasted, you know, I think 97 million pounds on it and Brits were outraged, which shows you, you know, that sense of ownership that the average British person has for the BBC.

• 54:06Josh Clark?

  Whereas like, if you found out, you know, Nickelodeon spent a hundred million dollars on a failed initiative, even though you're paying through your cable subscription in part for Nickelodeon, you wouldn't, it would, it would matter not. It's like Nickelodeon, do whatever you want with the money, but Brits feel like that about the BBC. That's the impression I have from that response.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, yeah, it's tied, it's Nickelodeon's not tied to the government. I think that's one of the big differences.

• 54:31Josh Clark?

  Okay, sure.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  In 2017, uh, the conservative government said, hey, we need to start publishing these salaries. Uh, and they revealed a gender, a pretty substantial gender pay gap. Uh, and people were also not happy that departing executives got big payoffs. And I was like, ooh, what's big?

• 54:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  Uh, Deputy, Deputy Director General Mark Biford got a 949,000 pound payment in 2011 and, uh, David Zasloff said, hold my pint, guys.

• 55:03Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  He made 52 million bucks last year.

• 55:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  And they said, oh, no, no, no, you can't make that much money. And so they're cutting it back to like 30 something million this year.

• 55:13Josh Clark?

  That's funny. There's like, that's too much money. Sorry. You don't get that much. And he's like, oh, okay. How much do I get?

• 55:20Speaker 03

  30 something?

• 55:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess I can make do. There was then like all sorts of terrible sex scandals too. Jimmy Seville kicked it all off when he died in 2011. And it the a floodgate opened where people just started coming forward being like, he sexually abused me in the 60s. He sexually abused me in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. He apparently had possibly hundreds of victims, a lot of them children, some of them under like age 16, a pretty substantial number. And it turned out that a lot of people in the BBC were well aware of this and essentially spent their time covering this up. Because Jimmy Seville was just so revered and such a VIP

• 56:05Josh Clark?

  that he was treated with that much deference. And like, your career would end if you went head to head with him or even thought about it out loud.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's how much power he had as the host of Top of the Pops. Very sad.

• 56:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, imagine like Dick Clark doing that. You can't. You can't do it.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  In 2023, just a couple of years ago, Hugh Edwards, who was the lead presenter of BBC News at 10 for 20 years, since 2003, played guilty guilty to sex offenses as well. And a master chef host Greg Wallace this year was sacked after dozens of sexual misconduct allegations were upheld. So, yeah, they had a long run of bad headlines leading all the way up into like very, very recently with the Trump administration, right?

• 56:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a current scandal going on where Panorama, again, their investigative documentary series, they just released an episode. I think it's the most recent one as of today on Trump and the technocrats. And in it, they spliced together his speech that he gave on January 6, which makes it look like he directly called for violence. And the, I guess BBC was like, we regret this error. And Trump's response was that he was gonna sue for no less than $1 billion.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:27Josh Clark?

  That's the, the first part of it. The second part is that at the same time, this is like, these are just body blows coming one after the other.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:36Josh Clark?

  An internal memo was leaked that, that was basically said, I think outright, that the BBC is too left-wing biased, and gave examples of it. That memo got leaked and it's like, okay, not only do the conservatives think that it's left-wing biased, you think that it's left-wing biased, BBC, or that you're left-wing biased. So this is what's going on as they're negotiating the charter that renews in 2027.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the, the stage is set for a, you know, a pretty big battle is brewing on what that charter's gonna, or what that, yeah, license fee is gonna look like. And if it's even, you know, like we mentioned, people are calling it a regressive tax. I believe that the BBC used to cover, or the government used to cover it for people over 70. Now the BBC is responsible for that.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  But yeah, I mean, it's gonna be real interesting to see how it all plays out.

• 58:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I fear for the BBC a little bit.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  I love you, BBC. Get your act together, is what I say.

• 58:33Josh Clark?

  Sure, why not?

• 58:36Josh Clark?

  You got anything else about the BBC or the Bib, or the Beeb?

• 58:40Speaker 03

  I got nothing else.

• 58:42Josh Clark?

  Okay, I don't either, which means everybody, it's time for listener mail.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  We got lots of good Pop-Tart response, one of our more beloved episodes of late. And a lot of people said, eat them frozen, and here's one. Hey guys, longtime listener from Santa Rosa, California. You guys have been the soundtrack to so many moments of my life and have brought so much joy and moments and times to tell fun facts, so thank you. The recent Pop-Tart episode, I was waiting to see if you had mentioned the ultimate, all caps, way to enjoy Pop-Tarts, and that is frozen. However, you did mention it, and Chuck shuddered with what seemed to be terror at the thought. I don't remember doing that, but I guess I did. Strongly urge you to both try it. It's the pop tart you know and love, but in frozen treat form. Do your taste buds a favor and go pop a couple in the freezer, then pop them in your mouths. And that is from Matt F.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  And Matt, you'll be glad to know, because the urging of another listener who said, cut those crusts off first, I went and got a couple of those brown sugar cinnamon. I cut the crust off, put them back in the package, and I threw them in the freezer, and I'll enjoy them at some point this week.

• 59:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, you haven't enjoyed them yet?

• 59:49Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I just put them in this afternoon. And so I'm gonna, before we recorded, and I'm not an afternoon pop charter.

• 59:55Josh Clark?

  Okay, you're a morning guy or evening?

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Oh, late night, my friend.

• 59:59Josh Clark?

  Okay, so you need to report back, okay?

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, this means I can't butter them, but I'm willing to forego that.

• 1:00:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you could use cold pats of butter, that would be good.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  Or, ooh, do you know what I could do is melt some butter and just dip that frozen in there, bite by bite.

• 1:00:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. It's kind of like a reverse fried Snickers.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll report back.

• 1:00:22Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  We'll see.

• 1:00:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, and who was that from?

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  That was from Matt F.

• 1:00:27Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Matt F. That was a great email, and we'll let you know what Chuck thinks. And in the meantime, if you want to be like Matt F. and send us a great email, you can send it off to [email protected].

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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