Did 24-Hour Cable News Kill America?

You can make a pretty good case that the rise of opinion “news” and filter bubbles on cable tv created the current cultural and political schism that plagues American society. How did it start? Where did it come from? And what the heck can we do about it? 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

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:42Speaker 00

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

• 1:51Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the last ad before the episode. I'm sorry, it's just that the first three shows of our Canadian summer tour are right around the corner and we want to make sure everyone knows about them. We'll be in Montreal and Ottawa for the first time ever on June 25th and 26th. That's next Thursday and Friday. And we're coming back to our beloved Toronto on Saturday, June 27th. You can go to stuffyoushouldknow.com for tickets and info. And if you are able to make it, we'd love to see you. Now, here's the episode for real.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just two of us today. That's all right. Jerry is a very busy person with lots on her plate. We understand that fully. But it's still stuff you should know.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  That's right. It is still stuff you should know. And today we are talking about cable news possibly ruining our country.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  I don't know that there's much possibly about it.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I never really thought about it. I mean, I think about our country being ruined a lot.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  But I, you know, I never really thought a lot about like, what was the initial cause of stuff? But it's hard to not make an argument that cable news has been like 24 hour, 24 seven cable news coverage is what we're talking about.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  That didn't make a real dent in, in things.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And like there's study after study that just shows all the negative effects it has like, on like a collective scale, on an individual scale, like it's just not good stuff. I looked all over. You can't really find any positive like studies on it. They're like, yeah, it's really good for this. I mean, I guess it does make you feel alive to some degree, but I think that's also kind of like trying to find the good in menthol cigarettes by saying they like make your throat feel icy when you're smoking them.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, I think if we're going to talk about this, a good place to start is sort of a brief little look at the old days. Uh, before cable news was, you know, when you and I were growing up, uh, they, there were big, the big three, uh, CBS, NBC and ABC News. Or, you know, the, the networks and they had news shows that came on at, you know, in the evening and then like six or six 30 and then 11. And that's where people got their national news and it was reported on uh in a way where they just sort of said, here's what's going on in the world. Here are the facts of what's happening. And we all had a shared reality of what was going on and you could kind of make up your own mind about it.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, shared reality is a great way to put it. Um, and there has been lots of study about the importance of that too. Right? So like even if the people who are watching the news didn't agree with other people who are watching the news about, you know, what the solution was to this problem. They were still thinking and looking at the same problem, right?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:08Josh Clark?

  That shared reality was a set of facts that everyone agreed like this is what's going on. This is the problems our country is facing. And then you have like an argument in the marketplace of ideas about, you know, what's the best solution and the best way to move forward, right?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:25Josh Clark?

  And when you have that kind of thing, people have, it was called a um, a sort of social, cultural and political glue.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:33Josh Clark?

  That just kind of brought people together and very importantly, gave people a sense of a shared national identity. Like, like people were all Americans, right? Everybody living in the United States were all Americans. Uh, even though we don't always agree, we don't hate each other for being different necessarily. We are all at, at the end of the day, Americans.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And, and at the center of that glue, well, or maybe it was the glue, I guess, was, was that shared reality of, hey, we're all agreeing on the, at least the basic facts of what's going on.

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Um, we did an entire episode on the fairness doctrine. Uh, it was released appropriately on July 4th, 2019. So if you want to go listen like in depth about the fairness doctrine, you can, but uh, just sort of a quick overview for this purpose though, is the, the FCC here in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission was created in the early 1930s. Uh, and their mandate was to quote, uh, encourage the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest. And, you know, radio was their jam early on, obviously before television. Uh, and the fairness doctrine was conceived uh, in the radio days in the 1930s and 40s, because there were a bunch of one-sided political editorials on the radio at the time. So, so they said, hey,

• 6:49Speaker 02

  After World War II passed, let's get together and at least decide on a set of rules that all radio and eventually TV stations need to adhere to.

• 6:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and a lot of it had to do with the duty that broadcasters had to serve the public good. That was the point of getting a broadcast license, right? Yeah, you made money selling ads and stuff like that, but ultimately what the government wanted you to do was to basically serve the public. And the way that you did that was you devoted airtime to objective, nonpartisan coverage of all issues, right? You had to be fair. You had to give other people who had a different point of view a chance to get their coverage as well. If somebody in particular was criticized like by the the station itself, by the newscast, so it's an editorial, that person should have

• 7:43Josh Clark?

  ample opportunity to respond. And then this also was part of our presidential debates episode.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:50Josh Clark?

  Part of fairness doctrine was if you were a political candidate, you got equal time to every other political candidate. Like, all political candidates had to get exactly the same amount of airtime over the course of the the race.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that was the fairness doctrine. It worked really well for a long time. And then, you know, as we detailed in the episode, in 1980, Ronald Reagan came around and said, let me quote Josh Clark of the future, nuts to that. And so he said, yeah, let's, you know, let's open it up to competition. If you're a broadcaster, you should be able to compete in the marketplace for viewers and just let the chips fall where they may. And so in 1987, the FCC stopped enforcing the fairness doctrine. And almost immediately, radio was the first place where we saw the big change. Talk radio, especially in the AM dial, exploded. I think over a 35 year period between 1960 and 1995, there they

• 8:47Speaker 02

  went from two talk radio stations in the United States, as in one followed by two, to more than 1,100. And most of those, I think about 70% of those radio stations were conservative. It just exploded in conservative talk radio with people like, you know, the king of that whole movement, Rush Limbaugh.

• 9:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they stopped enforcing in 1987. He went on the air for the first time in 1988. And in about six years, he had a three-hour show every day that was broadcast live across the nation in 650 stations. And there were 20 million people who tuned into it, ditto heads, he called them. And this was like, he was the first person to introduce the United States to the concept of just bashing the other party.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  He was the guy that that just laid the groundwork for this. And as a result, he kind of, because he was so popular, and because it was so entertaining if you shared his political views, he basically brought the GOP to heel. Like, he was, he was the head of the GOP de facto. So much so that when the GOP took over in 1994, took over Congress, they, I saw, made him an honorary member of that Congress, because he was considered so responsible for getting all of those Republicans elected.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Wow. I didn't know that was a thing.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  I didn't either. I think they actually made it up for him.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Oh, honorary Congress member?

• 10:22Josh Clark?

  Pretty much.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Uh, so yeah, that was a, um, you know, TV took notice. And later, as we'll see, you know, we'll get to Fox News in a little bit after we talk about the first one, CNN. But later, Fox News would say like, hey, here's a model of, you know, kind of political commentary as entertainment, that we can emulate. And like, people love this guy. He's got 20 million listeners every day. And like, imagine the kind of cash we can make if we brought that model to television.

• 10:49Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Uh, but first was CNN. Um, you know, we, we just lost, uh, one of my childhood heroes growing up, Ted Turner, uh, very recently. He passed away like less than two weeks ago as we record this in real time. But Ted was the founder of CNN, the very first 24-hour cable news channel. Uh, and that came around in 1980, after he had made, um, a bunch of money inheriting and then running his father's billboard advertising business. And he was like, you know what? Um, I think we could use a 24-hour news cable channel. And his literal quote was, uh, "To bring together in brotherhood and kindness and friendship and in peace, the people of this nation and this world." That was his vision.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  Ted Turner was the real deal as far as founding CNN and this was brand new like, like you said, people tuned in at 6:30 and 11:00 PM and that's where you got your news. Now you could tune to CNN and watch news 24 hours a day. No one had ever done anything like that ever and it took a little while to catch on because people were like, it's not a lot to watch or I'm watching the same stuff over and over again. These people seem to be trying really hard. And then the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986 and that is when CNN like showed why it was around.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And can I just have a quick aside about Ted Turner?

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Because he was, if he grew up in Atlanta in the 1970s and 80s, he was, you know, a good chance he might've been your hero like he was mine. Because not only did he launch CNN, but more importantly to a kid like me, he was the owner at one point of both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks. And he launched the Superstation WTBS, which was a, you know, that's where I learned about what comedy was by watching stuff like the Carol Burnett Show and old black and white stuff like Gilligan's Island and Andy Griffith and Green Acres. And he was just this larger than life guy. He won an America's Cup. His philanthropy, he gave a billion dollars in 1997, like, which was unheard of at the

• 13:03Speaker 02

  time for somebody to give that amount of money to the UN to support humanitarian aid and global health and the empowerment of women in developing countries. He saved the American bison. He's just an amazing dude. And I was at a Willie Nelson concert at an outdoor venue at Chastain Park in Atlanta in the 90s and Ted came in a little late. And it was like, you would have thought the ghost of Elvis had walked in. Like, there was a murmur, like an audible murmur in the crowd and people like pointing to the point where Willie Nelson was like, what's going on when he was singing? And he finished his song and he just went, oh, Ted's here.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  And it was great. It was just like, he was a, he basically was Atlanta. He owned that town in the, um, in the seventies and eighties. So,

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Uh, very sad when he passed. So I just wanted to give a little quick tribute.

• 13:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that's fitting too, because like his, that journalistic vision of like bringing everyone together through, you know, global coverage of all the issues facing us, like that, like he was a true believer in that. It wasn't like a cynical thing where he's like, I'm really just trying to, to get a license to print money. Um, I even saw, uh, Fox News, um, article or profile on him that they ran recently after he died. And they were even speaking about him like respectfully, a- as far as his journalistic integrity goes. So, he really did, when he founded CNN, it really was like for, for good reason.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it was, you know, uh, 24 seven news. No one had ever seen anything like that. Uh, that was the first like reporting of, news in progress when something broke. Uh, it was the first time that they had the, the, the news ticker at the bottom of a screen. Um, you know, people liked CNN. It wasn't like it was some huge, uh, like mad success right off the bat. But then when things started happening in real time, uh, in the eighties, like, uh, the space shuttle, uh, Challenger disaster, obviously, uh, the Berlin Wall falling, uh, when little baby Jessica was rescued in 1987. Uh, and then like hugely impactful when the Gulf War started, CNN was there for all of that stuff, like,

• 15:19Speaker 02

  second by second reporting and no one had ever seen stuff like that before.

• 15:23Josh Clark?

  No, it like, and they were highly criticized for some of their reporting. They were allowed to stay in Iraq and they in some ways became a propaganda arm for, um, Saddam Hussein accidentally, but they still like showed what you were supposed to do. Covering a war and also CNN was largely responsible for making the Gulf War the first live televised war in history because they covered it that much.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember sitting around watching it with my roommates in college, like just coming home after class and like putting the war on.

• 15:57Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  It was really weird.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  It was always on because CNN was always on covering it.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And you know, we should also point out that there would be a a change at CNN after Turner and we'll get to that. But if you're, if you're on the right side politically and you hate CNN, that was not Ted Turner's vision to start a left-leaning media outlet. That, that was not what he was trying to do at all. So I hope those words kind of come through here.

• 16:27Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure. So there was a kind of out of the gate, an issue that CNN faced, which was if you're covering news, like, yeah, news happens pretty frequently, but 24 hours of coverage can be overdoing it. So rather than just saying the same reporting over and over and over again, they brought in people, analysts to talk about, to kind of unpack what that news meant. Maybe make predictions about how news was going to break, like which way is Congress going to vote, you know, is the president going to veto this? And that became like an established part of 24 hour news. And from that moment that those people

• 17:10Josh Clark?

  started to come in, talking heads, pundits, that like that laid the groundwork for opinion, opinion-based journalism.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, after the Gulf War in the mid 90s, when is when things really started to change and started to lead to our current kind of sad state of affairs with the news cycle. And one of those things I kind of hinted at was when Ted Turner left CNN, Time Warner bought out CNN in 1996, and they were the ones responsible for

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Saying like, hey, I think if we get a little more divisive here and we lean left of center, uh, we can get more ad revenue. And I mean, uh, that's kind of the, the sad thing about all the stuff we're going to talk about moving forward. It was, it was all money driven, you know?

• 17:59Josh Clark?

  Right. Yes.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Uh, was, it was all for, and still is for advertising dollars. And at the time you had, um, two really great political foils, uh, and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on the screen.

• 18:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Who two very much on the, uh, opposite sides of the spectrum guys who, um, you know, Clinton was a good villain, uh, for, uh, for Republicans and then, you know, later liberals as we would learn more stuff about him.

• 18:25Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  And Gingrich was on the other side, man. Just, he really is the guy like in entrenched in politics that ushered in that real good versus evil thing.

• 18:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. As in the Democrats are evil, we're good. It's up to us to save America. Before that, the existential threats to the United States were external, namely the USSR. After Gingrich like rose and, and took power of the GOP, the, the threat was domestic. It was the Democrats that were the threat to America as far as the GOP was concerned. That was new.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:58Josh Clark?

  That was new. And that was the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. Whereas now today, if you defect and vote against your own party, you're a traitor to your party, you know? Not that you're doing what your constituents think you should do or voting by your conscience. You're a traitor. That's new. And that's, that's basically where it began.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I remember being a kid and I wasn't involved in politics when I was younger, like very into that kind of thing. But I remember hearing the adults during election season, uh, not my parents, because they never talked about any of that stuff, but just other people, like, you know, we're gonna, I'm gonna see which one of these men, uh, speaks to me the most and I'm gonna make up my mind on who I think is gonna be the best leader.

• 19:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  It's just like, uh, I mean, I know they're technically are probably independents today, but it, it's hard to imagine just that being a thing today at all, you know?

• 19:52Josh Clark?

  It's, it's, I'm sure for people who didn't grow up in times where that was possible, it's very hard to imagine.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:59Josh Clark?

  Another thing that happened in the 90s, like we talked about, Rush Limbaugh was enormous.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:05Josh Clark?

  Fox News was another huge thing that happened when it was founded in 1996, and we'll talk about that afterward. And then I have a pet theory, Chuck. What did you think about this?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I had a feeling this was you.

• 20:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. What do you think?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Uh, sure. I agree.

• 20:22Josh Clark?

  My theory is that The Real World premiered in 1992. And you might say, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it exposed people to reality television, which is not real. But this idea that you can just be horrible to other people, and that's like an acceptable way to be. The groundwork for that was laid around then.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:43Josh Clark?

  So you put all those things together. The mid 90s were a really bad beginning. The seed, the evil, dark seed that rotted the core and heart of America out. Uh, that started in the mid 90s.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  That's right. It sounds like a great time for a break because you mentioned something happening in 1996, and we'll talk about that right after this.

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• 23:31Josh Clark?

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• 24:07Josh Clark?

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• 24:35Speaker 02

  All right. So before we broke, you mentioned Fox News debuting in 1996. Fox, just very quickly about Roger Ailes, who helped launch Fox News. He was a Republican political consultant for many, many years. He worked, he helped to get Reagan, Nixon, all the way back to Nixon. George H. W. Bush elected. He understood that TV was very powerful thing as far as shaping public opinion by this point. He had met Rush Limbaugh in 1991. And for a little while, produced a TV version of Limbaugh's show in the early 90s. But it was in 1996, when an Aussie named Rupert Murdoch, who had previously given us The Simpsons with the Fox Broadcasting Company,

• 25:19Speaker 02

  which he launched in 1986, the Fox company. He said, you know what? We need our own news station. Let's get Fox News on the airwaves. And Roger Ailes, you're going to be the guy to do it.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he designed Fox News as we understand it today. Basically, right out of the gate. And one thing to understand about him being a political operative who worked on the Nixon campaign. That 68 Nixon campaign was where a guy named Kevin Phillips came up with what's called the Southern Strategy today, which was essentially the idea that politics is about who hates who? And then playing on those prejudices to get people to vote essentially about other people. It's where the culture war started. And Roger Ailes basically took that, the politics of who hates who, and put it on TV as a 24-hour cable news network.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and charged for it.

• 26:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's another thing, too, that we'll see. Like, they have made tons and tons of cash, but they're in a really big turning point right now because of how they, their business model.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So in the beginning, they had a claim, you know, Ailes and Murdoch, that it was going to be, Fox News is going to be an apolitical channel. Quote, "We expect to do fine balance." balanced journalism.

• 26:33Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Uh, but behind the scenes, they were like, hey, we think uh that most mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias. So we're going to come along and correct that with Fox News. And that fair and balanced motto that Fox News um launched under Ailes was a it was a literal troll to liberal critics.

• 26:51Josh Clark?

  Um.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  It was, you know, he knew it wasn't fair and balanced. And so that was his way of poking the bear. Uh, they, uh, I think in 2017, when Ailes was fired and the very famous or infamous, rather, sexual harassment scandal.

• 27:06Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Uh, that's when they got rid of the fair and balanced tag uh for good.

• 27:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  Among others. So um Ailes was out, but he had been, you know, he had governed this thing for 20 years. And um like, like his, his vision is still still there today. Like the way that he shaped it is still Fox is essentially still the same thing as it was from 1996. It was, uh, he perfected it right out of the box, essentially. Um, and it really started to kind of gain traction pretty quickly after it came along. Because Bill Clinton handed them a beautiful gift in like a robin's egg blue Tiffany's box with a beautiful bow on it. And that is called the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, in that box was a cigar and a blue dress.

• 27:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was um, you know, yeah, there's no other way to look at it than a gift because they were able to run wild with that. And they saw ratings jump by 400%.

• 28:09Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  And we're like, wow, we can literally print money now. Uh, this is amazing. Um, the, you know, not too far on the heels of that was the contested 2000 election, of which we had a complete episode.

• 28:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Of uh Bush v. Gore. And then not too long after that, 9/11, and then the subsequent war in Iraq. So Fox News um really got off to a strong start. Thanks to these sort of big media events.

• 28:34Josh Clark?

  Yes, for sure. And one other thing about the same stuff too, the 2000 election, nine 11, the war in Iraq. Fox News was reporting this from the Republican viewpoint. All of these things, like they were supporting George Bush. They weren't questioning whether we should invade Iraq. Like, this was the angle that it was coming from. And all the way back then, say around 2000. Like, they were the only ones just overtly producing slanted news. The other, the other cable news and broadcast news were still trying to essentially carry out the fairness doctrine to the best of their ability.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we should point that out, but Fox News really jumped ahead. And was, you know, beating CNN in the ratings for the first time by 2002. I think they command about 70% of the cable news audience today.

• 29:26Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  So they're, they're kicking everyone's butt on that front.

• 29:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  We need to talk about MSNBC, which we'll get to the name change to MS now, later.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  We'll refer to them as MSNBC in this section because it's about when they launched. Which was a few months

• 29:45Speaker 02

  before Fox News in 1996. I never knew that it was, MS was Microsoft.

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  I think I knew that.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was launched as a partnership with Microsoft. So MSNBC was Microsoft NBC and they were trying to get like, you know, this was the beginning of the tech movement. They were trying to get young tech savvy audience members. They had like shows kind of tailored to that. There was one called The Site, S I T E. With Soledad O'Brien. It didn't not work out. And then after that, they were like, all right, you know what? We need to do this saturation coverage model that CNN launched that Fox News is crushing it. But they started out doing conservative news.

• 30:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they were trying to basically take Fox on where where it was on its own territory.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  Uh, very surprisingly, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson both started at MSNBC.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  It's funny to think about now.

• 30:43Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, and I think Tucker Carlson was the one who later convinced MSNBC executives to hire Rachel Maddow.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:52Josh Clark?

  The same year that Tucker Carlson was hired. So like MSNBC was this kind of Petri dish for all sorts of TV on air newsy personalities.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  Um, that would become huge later on. And again, like you were saying, it was because they were basically trying to take on Fox. And that's one thing to understand about MSNBC is the moment it pivoted from trying to be like the tech, the tech news channel to, you know, opinion news, uh, it was essentially just completely agnostic. It was up for whoever was going to pay the most, which is why they tried to take on Fox because it was clear Fox was making the most money.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:33Josh Clark?

  Um, and then they found, well, actually, if we present ourselves as the antidote to Fox, like the liberal Fox, then, you know, we can probably make even more money. And they did. And that's what happened.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's, they really hit it big in 2006 when Keith Olbermann, um, hit the airwaves. He had a show called Countdown. Uh, it was a primetime show and on Countdown, uh, one week he did a rant that he called a special commentary where he was criticizing the Bush administration's, uh, handling or mishandling or rather Hurricane Katrina. And MSNBC, even at that time, were like, no, man, that's a little much. Like, you need to tone that down. But then the ratings were, uh, going through the roof. People loved it. And so they're like, oh, okay. Well, I guess that's the, the new way forward. And go Keith Olbermann, go.

• 32:22Josh Clark?

  Yep. They, they unleashed the beast. And, uh, he just set the groundwork for everybody else. Uh, and that's exactly what they were doing during primetime. They had talking heads who hosted their own show, um, that were just. Like overtly dismissing other contrary opinions and talking about how dumb that was and, um, you know, really just trying to destabilize the opposing parties' ideas, right?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  So they're, I mean, their primetime ratings just went through the roof, apparently. Um, I think it went up 60% from 2007 to 2008 when they started attacking the right. And, um, also when Obama was like a candidate and then, you know, president and it was this huge thing, that apparently also boosted their ratings. And I saw that MSNBC traditionally has actually done better when they're promoting a Democrat who has, who's in charge of the White House or in charge of Congress, uh, than they are bashing the right. Fox tends to do the opposite. They do better when there's a Democrat in, in, um, power and they, they bash them. They do better when they're out of power.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, that's something we should talk about quickly, I guess. There was a paper in 2025 from a UC Boulder finance professor named Diego Garcia, who analyzed like who, what, like what these networks are talking about, who they're talking about, and like, how are they talking about them? And they found like, kind of supporting what you just said, that MSNBC spends, um, the majority of their time, about 60% of their time, talking about Republicans. Fox News, about the same in reverse, talking about Democrats, and obviously both speaking very negatively about the others. Um, and this also trickles down to CNBC and Bloomberg and then Fox Business on the right. And that outrage, like attacking the opposite side, that outrage viewership, uh, they found really sold, um, that, you

• 34:19Speaker 02

  know, that goes by a lot of names like, uh, rage profiteering or, you know, obviously just selling anger or anger tainment. I'm not a big fan of that one.

• 34:28Josh Clark?

  What about the anger industrial complex?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's pretty good.

• 34:31Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they found out it sells. Listeners, which in turn sells ads and makes money. So they really all sort of, or those two at the very least double down on that. CNN is still, and this isn't just us opinionizing, if they're, they're literal media watchdogs that, you know, study and, and rate these channels and CNN of the big three cable news networks is ranked, you know, slightly left of center compared to more left on NBC and obviously way more right for Fox News.

• 35:03Josh Clark?

  Right. And then also bear in mind CNN typically has the lowest ratings of MSNBC, Fox and CNN, right? Yeah, because anger tainment, sorry, sells like really well. And the reason why is because you get a physical like pop from being angry. Like it releases neurotransmitters that make you feel good and powerful and, and alive again. And then you start to come down and you want it again. So you go back, you stay tuned, you stay glued for more. And like you said, that's this divide in America has just come from people who are targeting the brains of people, just pressing that button over and over again to keep them on the same

• 35:45Josh Clark?

  channel for money. That's it. That's it. That's all there is to it.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was trying my best to find out any kind of study on, or just statistics on, how many hours a day loyal viewers of each of these channels like has it on?

• 36:03Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Uh, and I could only just go from what I anecdotally see, which is I, uh, I know people on the right that, uh, in their house like have Fox News just on as

• 36:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  That's the background music. It's on all day long.

• 36:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  And you're passing through the room. You can just pick up a tidbit here and there, not necessarily just sitting literally and watching it, uh, eyes glued forward the entire time, but it's just on. And I don't know anybody on, uh, the left that I know that has the TV literally constantly on their favorite cable news network. It's interesting.

• 36:38Josh Clark?

  I do. It's typically CNN that'll have, that'll be on all day.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Oh, see, I don't know anyone that does that. You, it's good to know that that happens.

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, definitely does.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It seems. Just to me, it seems unhealthy and really out there to only have that on all day long.

• 36:54Josh Clark?

  It is.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  No matter what side you're on.

• 36:56Josh Clark?

  Deeply unhealthy. It's bad for the person. It's bad for society to have that on all day long.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, any channel or any television.

• 37:04Josh Clark?

  For sure. Totally, totally. So there was a study also that we found, it was from 2025 and they looked at, it was in Nature Magazine or Nature of the Journal. They looked at prime time shows from 2012 to 2022 on Fox, MSNBC and CNN to find out which were the most polarized. They found that over those 10 years, Fox had the largest number of highly polarizing shows. Sean Hannity, The O'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham. But CNN's Cuomo prime time and MSNBC's Deadline White House were the most polarizing shows across all three networks.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:47Josh Clark?

  There's something else to unpack there too, Chuck. These are prime time shows.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:52Josh Clark?

  That is, that's new as well. That means that people, like this is where these, these cable networks make like the, the bulk of their advertising revenue is prime time. That means that people left entertainment. They left cop shows, court shows, medical dramas and moved over to news. Cable news. That's what they watch in prime time now.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  That's just boring.

• 38:17Josh Clark?

  But it's not though. It's like, you're just, like your, your buttons are just pressed over and over and over.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:24Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. You know, one thing we do need to point out though, because these are prime time shows that like, it's changing the political landscape and how our country like thinks about our fellow citizens. So it's an important thing to address. Some of the stuff you see on Fox News is not based in truth and that is not just my, my opinion as somebody who's clearly on the left side of things. You need only look at something like the 800 million dollar, like close to a billion dollar settlement to avoid a very public, highly.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  participated trial where they were gonna have to trot up, you know, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and like, put these people on the stand to talk about the literal lies they told about Dominion voting systems. So that that trial was coming up and they're like, no, no, no, that would be really bad if we had to go up on the stand and admit under oath that we lied about all this stuff. So let's just settle for $800 million and never even fully admit wrongdoing.

• 39:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I mean, it's not just that one, like the cover up, the idea that there was a cover up over Benghazi. Uh, conspiracy theories about the death of Seth Rich. Uh, the birther conspiracy theory, all these things reported on lie that Donald Trump uh, had the 2020 election stolen from him. Um, like these things were reported, right? Not, not like, hey, this is what some people are saying, like these were reported as fact, right? And so this is the, this is that part of like the, the twisting or the separating of the shared reality that has like scholars concerned, just everyday people who know about this concerned. Um, and

• 40:06Josh Clark?

  like it's typically viewed from what I've seen as a false equivocation to say, well, MSNBC does that too. Uh, nobody does it like Fox does. They just don't. That's just fact. Um, but that's not to say it doesn't happen on other networks like MSNBC. One really standout example is the Russiagate episode with Rachel Maddow, who was hovering the the Mueller investigation is basically like, here it comes any moment now they're going to show that Trump is this puppet that's being directed by the Kremlin and was really like so much so she got sued for $67 million for libel. And she beat that.

• 40:48Josh Clark?

  Um, but you know, it was still, it had legs, like she was really, really promoting this conspiracy theory. Um, and yes, it was tied to Robert Mueller's actual investigation and that actually was happening. But the leaps and bounds and like intimation she was making just went well beyond any kind of journalistic standard. And then the One other thing Chuck too that all three do and that is essentially filtering what makes it on there. Right? So like say CNN decides that they're not going to put some negative coverage of Barack Obama on. And instead they're going to either just not cover that or they're going to cover positive coverage of him. Right? That's filtering. You're filtering news to help promote like a favored candidate.

• 41:33Josh Clark?

  And when you're doing opinion journalism, you have a favorite candidate. You have a candidate that you hate. And your point is to teach your viewers to to um love that candidate or hate that candidate. That's just uh that arises from it naturally.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a study in twenty twenty three where they paid um Fox News viewers like conservative people. Um they paid them to watch CNN for a month for thirty days to see like what effect that had on their political views. And what they found was they were seeing news that Fox News didn't even cover. That's part of that filtering. They were like, oh, well, we we didn't know this was happening because Fox News just literally wouldn't cover it.

• 42:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Uh they filter out that stuff to fit a narrative. And um I think it after after the month, the month, they had a a slightly lower opinion of Donald Trump, these conservatives did. And a slightly higher opinion, and this was at the time in twenty twenty three when mail in balloting was a big deal. A slightly higher opinion of mail in ballots. Uh but then they also said in the follow up. Uh it was like a short lived thing. Once they went back to Fox News and you know that stuff went away. But you know, this is something I see a lot when I'm I see a story where I'm like, well, here's a big factual thing that happened. It's a big black eye. Um and I will go see and a lot of times on and this is online. Uh Fox News dot com does literally just doesn't cover it.

• 42:59Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Like at all, just not there, like it didn't happen. And if you're only getting your news from one source. And you don't know that something is literally happening because it's not being covered, that's bad for democracy.

• 43:10Josh Clark?

  For sure. Yes. Yeah, because you're you just, yeah, you can't hold somebody accountable if you're not actually reporting on the bad stuff too, you know?

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 43:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's take a break.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 43:44Josh Clark?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 44:20Josh Clark?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. Signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system. The constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance, and why they seem to be on the rise, to how digestion changes as we age, and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 45:46Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience, and Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 46:12Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 46:35Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 46:54Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we talked about opinion media. I've been calling it opinion journalism, and I think that's actually a contradiction in terms.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:01Josh Clark?

  So opinion media, like we said, it's just basically like putting somebody who's willing to say stuff about, you know, they're fairly knowledgeable about a particular topic, and they're going to say something, and maybe it's even a controversial opinion. Like, that's opinion media, and it is so much cheaper than actual journalism, which is one reason why it's just such a huge, prominent part of prime time on cable news.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, cheaper meaning inexpensive, not like a cheap shot. Just to clear that up, like, real journalism takes a lot of time, which gets expensive. You have to conduct interviews, and you have to research real data, and you have to fact check, and you have to cultivate your sources. If you just throw someone on who's like, hey, I'm mad about this thing. I'll go on TV and talk about it. Like, I'm a famous, quote-unquote, journalist. Like, that's super cheap. All you have to do is kind of frame the bare bones of a story and then rant about it. And that negativity really sells. There was an analysis in 2011 where a researcher examined the prime time lineups of the two really big opposing sides, Fox News and MSNBC.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  And they were obviously ideologically opposed, but they were, uh, Fox News was as far as the tone and language they use was 92% negative, 8% neutral and 0% positive. On the other side, MSNBC was 90% negative, 5% neutral and 5% positive. And it's that cultivation of anger that, uh, and fear that, um, very sadly, that's what drives the loyalty in the viewership these days.

• 48:34Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Because again, anger is an addictive thing and they know how to press those buttons. One of the ways they do press the buttons too, this is groundbreaking as far as journalism goes. Um, they've helped us with this and the way that he put it was they make you the viewer, the protagonist.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  So that means that this news that's happening, it's happening to you. The Democrats are doing this to you. They're trying to take money out of your pocket or vice versa. You know, the GOP is trying to drive this country into fascism and authoritarianism. Like, like it's you that this is happening to. Your family's going to get, um, you know, taken by, in the middle of the night by the, the jackboots or something like that. Right?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  So like, that's new and that cuts through like directly to the person. So if you're pressing someone's buttons to try to make them angry, talking to them directly and saying you are the victim, that will get things going pretty easily. That primes the old pump pretty well.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, that, you know, I mean, I think that's one of the saddest things about all this is the fact that that negative content is what sells.

• 49:43Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Um, and that's just the reality of kind of where we are. Uh, but that has fueled a partisan gap that is, uh, like we've not seen at any other time in our history. And they're, you know, it's always, there's always been partisan divides, but not like we have now. There was a Pew research study on that partisan divide in 1994. And this is before Fox News and MSNBC launched, cause I think they launched in 96, uh, like we said, but fewer, at the time, fewer than 20% of either Republicans or Democrats view the opposing party as very unfavorable. Uh, by 2017. That number was forty five percent, so more than doubled. Uh, also that's in from that same study in nineteen ninety four.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Only sixty percent of Republicans identified themselves as quote more consistently conservative than the average Democrat. Uh, by twenty seventeen, that number had reached ninety five percent.

• 50:39Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  And on the Democrat's side, ninety seven percent identified as more consistently liberal than the average Republican. Uh, up from seventy percent in nineteen ninety four. So, you know, they're both. According to their mandates, they're both doing what they want to do very well.

• 50:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I also saw to to um, updated a little bit in twenty twenty two. Seventy two percent of GOP respondents said that Democrats were immoral. And sixty three percent said that Democrats said that um, Republicans were immoral.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:12Josh Clark?

  That is a characters like attack.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:15Josh Clark?

  Not like you have stupid ideas or you're gonna, you know, waste all of our tax dollars. You are a bad person. Your morals are are compromised. Maybe you don't even have any morals. That is a totally different level of attack. And we're talking about this American calling that American that because they believe something different politically. And all of this again is being fostered, supported and stoked by the twenty four hour cable news that different sides watch all the time.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not, uh, I mean, I kind of thought before we looked into this stuff and the actual data. That like online, you know, because things are so siloed online as far as the echo chamber goes. Uh, if you get your your news from uh, the internet or social media especially. Uh, but there was a study from University of Pennsylvania that found that cable TV news is way more divisive. Uh, only four percent of Americans get their online news. Uh, so you know, social media or whatever online from predominantly left or right leaning sources compared to seventeen percent. Of Americans that said they got fifty percent of more of their TV news from a uh, very hard right or very hard left network.

• 52:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and half half watched Fox News, the other half watched MSNBC or CNN.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yep, right down the middle.

• 52:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, one of the other things too is like Fox gets criticized and criticized. And yes, they were innovators, pioneers. They completely changed journalism. And they do stuff that CNN and MSNBC don't do. But it just makes you wonder like, how different would things be today? If CNN and MSNBC had just stuck to good journalism and just let Fox do their own thing? The fact that they entrenched and dug in on the other side because they wanted advertising dollars too. And there's a whole untapped market out there of liberals and left leaning people that aren't being spoken to. If they had just kept their their journalistic integrity, like what kind of like? I don't think we would be in this mess today.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you don't watch this stuff, do you? I haven't turned on a cable news network in.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  I don't know, since the early 2000s, maybe?

• 53:28Josh Clark?

  Uh, I've definitely watched it much more recent than that. But I mean, I think once, once, once I realized, and I think this is typically the case for people like the point is to upset you. And make you mad. That's what they're trying to do. That's the whole thing. It's it's tough not to resent that and just be like, I'm not subjecting myself to this.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for me was when you could really source your news very specifically online is when that's when I fully like made that switch.

• 53:54Josh Clark?

  Right. So cable news is actually doing pretty good right now, even though cable as a whole is losing viewership. Uh, more and more people are cutting cords. Um, I think, uh, like more people are getting their news and information online, even though it's still smaller relative to the number of people who get their news from cable news. Um, it's like they're the proportions, the trends are shifting. And one of the reasons why is because cable news viewers are literally dying off. Right? For the most part, the median ages of CNN, Fox and MSNBC viewers are 67, 68 and 71.

• 54:39Josh Clark?

  Right?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:40Josh Clark?

  Those people aren't going to live forever and as they, as they start to pass away, there's not new people who are younger coming in behind them. That's not where younger people are going. First of all, they don't even have cable anymore. And secondly, if they do, they're not going to watch cable news necessarily. They're probably going to be online getting their news.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and you know, viewership is declining. Fox News is seeing, uh, has seen the most dramatic decline. They're down 21% in total prime time viewership, uh, compared to the same weeks, uh, year over year, February to, uh, well, February to February, 25 to 26. And then in 2025, that is when MSNBC late, I guess, late last year is when they parted ways with their, uh, NBC News parent company. And that's when they relaunched is what is now, um, uh, MS now. Um, their viewership actually, uh, it looks like that might've worked. They increased by 15% year over year for the same timeframe. Uh, and CNN is the one that's really jumped up.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  They had saw a 46% year over year increase over that same period.

• 55:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think one reason why Fox is declining relative to MS now and CNN is because there's Newsmax, News Nation, One American News Network.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:57Josh Clark?

  Three upstarts.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Further outlets, yeah.

• 55:59Josh Clark?

  Right, they were like, you thought Fox was hard, right? Watch this.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:02Josh Clark?

  And Fox suddenly seems centrist compared to those guys. So they're dragging a lot of, um, people away from Fox News. I think that's a big problem for Fox.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, they lost some of their stars too, you know, when Tucker Carlson left and obviously before that, uh, what was his face? Bill O'Reilly was, um, yeah, those are big losses for that network.

• 56:22Josh Clark?

  For sure. Um, and I think losing Roger Ailes too probably was a big deal for it too.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good point.

• 56:29Josh Clark?

  But also their whole, um, their whole business model we were talking about earlier is, is in jeopardy because like they make money through advertisers, true, but their advertisers are from viewers, right? And so if fewer people are buying cable, they have fewer viewers. They also make money from subscriptions, right? So when you pay for your cable and you're like, I have to pay my cable bill to the cable company, you're actually not, you're paying the cable company a fraction of that. The rest is being divided up among all the cable channels who charge a fee to be included in this bundle. That's a wholesale business model. That's what cable news does, all cable, um, channels do. That with cable dying, they're not going to be able to do that anymore.

• 57:11Josh Clark?

  Now they're going to have to be like, actually, we want to charge you directly like Netflix or Hulu does to get Fox. We're going to be streaming online, right? Or to get CNN, say they're in the same jeopardy too. And that means people who are going to be like, wait, I got Fox News for free before. You didn't really, because it was part of cable you were paying for. But to you, it was free. And now Fox is asking you to pay, you know, 12 bucks a month or something like that to get it. Some people will do that, some people won't. So they're really kind of worried about that. And not just Fox, again, MSNBC and CNN are facing the same crisis, just apparently to a slightly lesser degree right now.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Right, but the writing's on the wall for everybody and they're all trying to pivot a little bit to the more online model, even in little ways like CNN prioritizing vertical video, podcast, you know, MSNBC has a lot of very popular podcasts. Rachel Maddow is at the center, you know, their world podcast wise, but those have found like big time audiences. So they're, you know, they, they know what's coming and they know that I think three quarters of the baby boomer generation are going to be gone by the year 2037. And that's a big chunk of all these audiences.

• 58:28Josh Clark?

  For sure. One last thing, something occurred to me while I was researching this Chuck, that there was a, there is a silver lining, there's a good thing to this huge partisan divide of one side versus the other that cable news has helped bring about. And that is that it has carved out a middle of people who are like, wow, Democrats and Republicans are terrible and they suck as both parties, which to me is open like a room for a viable third party to start to develop, maybe multiple third parties start to develop and actually get rid of like the two party system might've shot itself in the foot by going so full on tribal. That's my hope.

• 59:12Josh Clark?

  That's, I'm hoping that at least that good comes out of this.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. Because none of it's any good for our country, you know?

• 59:20Josh Clark?

  It genuinely isn't. It genuinely isn't. And to our conservative Republican right on the right listeners, like this is not an attack on you or your beliefs. And us throwing Rachel Maddow into the mix was not just bait for the right to you left-leaning listeners. Like, she really did overdo Russiagate. Like, we tried to do this as fair and balanced as we possibly could. So please don't have taken it any other way.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, we say flush all three down the toilet.

• 59:50Josh Clark?

  Exactly, Chuck. Exactly.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Uh, oh, man. What a, this is a fun episode. I enjoyed this one.

• 59:58Josh Clark?

  Well, I'm glad you did, Chuck. I think you just accidentally walked right into listener mail then.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Uh, all right, I'm gonna call this a follow-up about the Hindenburg episode. Hey, guys, just finished listening to the Hindenburg. Great stuff. One thing that really got me laughing was the Ben Dover comments. Uh, magically, I have an adult friend whose name is Ben Dover. As you can imagine, he's a great guy, as I think anyone with names like that could be teased or made fun of.

• 1:00:26Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Uh, turn out to be amazing people usually. So shout out to all the Ben Dovers out there in the world, including my friend.

• 1:00:32Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Uh, longtime listener and I work as a wildlife biologist. And the first time I was introduced to your show was during a long drive to get a California condor, sick with lead poisoning, from Northern California back to the San Diego Zoo. Uh, to keep, uh, habituating the bird, we drove many hours with the bird in a crate in the back of the SUV in absolute silence. In the past time, my coworker and I shared one side of corded earbuds and alternated between our favorite podcasts. Uh, this is long before smartphones are an everyday occurrence and people could listen to whatever, whenever. I'm now a mom and still find ourselves on long drives because we live in a pretty remote place. My family also listens and loves a podcast because it's informational, interesting, and kid-friendly.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  And we hope to make it to a live show the next time you're close by. Thanks for all you do and keeping us company over so many years and so many miles. That is from Katie.

• 1:01:23Josh Clark?

  Uh, thanks a lot, Katie. Um, that was, is it Katie or KT?

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Katie.

• 1:01:28Josh Clark?

  Okay. Thank you, Katie. That was a very cute little sketch that you made for us there. I can just imagine you and your coworker, each with the earbud.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:01:37Josh Clark?

  If you want to be like Katie and get in touch with us with a cute little anecdote, we love those. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

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

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  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.