TV Moments That Changed The World

Whatever you think of TV, you have to admit it has shaped the world (maybe more than the internet, according to Josh). There have been moments here or there in TV history where the world took a new course and we go over some of them in this episode. 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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• 1:34Speaker 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 the first episode of the 20026.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  I thought that was already another episode out.

• 1:57Josh Clark?

  Yes, this is the first one, Chuck. I think this comes out on 1/1.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Really?

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  26.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  I'm pretty sure, yeah.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  I thought we had already crept into 26, but that's no matter because it's still 2.5 for us.

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's some weird time stuff that's going on. We're essentially straddling two years right now. And I'm wearing a silver space suit because of that.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  All that to say, if we're a little loose, it's because this is our last recording session of the year. And so we're closing this out, or opening up the next year, with a good old fashioned top 10 that's not a 10, like, just like the old days.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  That's right. We're finishing out 2025 in Stuff You Should Know Fashion, right?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, just like we did in probably 2010.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, probably.

• 2:50Josh Clark?

  Chuck, if you'll allow me to begin.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. It's just a classic old school opening.

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  Chuck.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Do you have a TV?

• 2:57Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen TV?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  I knew it was coming. Yes.

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  It was either that or Webster's defines TV.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  One of the two. I've seen TV too. Not only have I seen a TV, I've watched what's broadcast on TV as well, multiple times throughout my life.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Same.

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  It's funny, we chose this, Moments That Changed The World, TV Moments That Changed The World. And as you're kind of researching this, you realize like, for better or worse, man, TV is, like, it made modern culture more than anything else, I think, in the entire world. I would argue more than the internet.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Ooh, interesting.

• 3:42Josh Clark?

  I'm just gonna say it.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  All right. I'm not gonna argue. I'm not in an arguing mood.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  Well, people who disagree, just follow us on this journey into TV Moments That Changed The World. Maybe your opinion will be changed. Either way, I don't fall to you.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  All right, great.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  So let's start at the beginning when like the day that TV really kicked off in earnest. There was a day that this happened. It was April 30th, 1939 in Flushing, New York on Long Island. And if you are familiar with that date in that area, you may know that this was the 1939 World's Fair. And this is where TV got its start, where it was really kind of unveiled to the public at large.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  That's right. Not the 1940 World's Fair, HowStuffWorks.com, because there was not one.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  No.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, so you know, TV had been around for a bit, um, but it wasn't super widespread at this point. I feel like we talked about this a lot lately for some reason.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  Yes, stuff is just really clicking these days. I'm not, I'm not sure why.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  It really is, uh, but they had broadcast limitations. They could only broadcast, you know, for a limited number of miles, like out a limited number of miles. But by the time that World's Fair came along, they were like, hey, this is a chance to make a really big splash. Uh, the RCA Corporation, the Radio Corporation of America, which also then led the way in TVs. They were putting out some pretty good televisions at the point, but they were luxury items. Uh, and again, they didn't have like the most regular broadcasting going on, but they knew that this World's Fair was a chance to make a super big splash.

• 5:17Josh Clark?

  Right. So yeah, this is where they were going to start selling TVs to the public. The problem is, is you can have all the TVs in the world, but if you don't have anything to watch on it.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Good point.

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  What, what are you gonna do? Nothing. You're gonna sit there like a jackass and look at a blank TV. So luckily RCA thought of this and they founded NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, to start broadcasting stuff. So they brought the whole thing together, the broadcasting and the TVs themselves. And they debuted it, um, on April 30th, 1939, when they, I think, created the world's first live television broadcast of Franklin Roosevelt, um, kicking off the 1939 World's Fair.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, and we did mention this one in another episode, but he was, you know, sort of the, the first president daddy of TV, granddaddy of TV. And like you said, he opened it up there and NBC had gotten there and they had their now antiquated TV technology all lined up. It was just pretty whiz bang at the time.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  And they sent signals through these mobile broadcasting trucks, which I mean, it's pretty amazing that in the 1930s, they had the technology to even accomplish that.

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  So it was pretty impressive still to this day and broadcast that signal out to about 2,000 viewers, which seemed like a big number at the time, I imagine.

• 6:44Josh Clark?

  I'm still impressed with news vans.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, sure.

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  Of the time, which is our time.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  I'm impressed with news vans of today.

• 6:53Josh Clark?

  That's what I mean.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 6:55Josh Clark?

  I didn't get it across very well.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  So one thing I saw, I was looking at pictures of this 1939 World's Fair, the RCA Pavilion. Apparently they built one of their televisions within transparent, I guess, glass or something like that, maybe plastic. So you could see the internal working parts so that people wouldn't think it was just some sort of trick.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. Interesting.

• 7:17Josh Clark?

  That's how new it was.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oddly, since we're recording our Christmas episode, I feel like this pause before the next one is gonna include like jingle bells and things.

• 7:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  But it's not going to. We're just simply moving on to another one, which is Disney's Wonderful World of Color. I'm sure you, like I, grew up watching, I guess by the time we were watching it in the 70s, or me in the 70s and you likely in the 80s, it was called The Wonderful World of Disney?

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  I watched Walt Disney Presents, I think is what it was for me.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. So I guess, yeah, since I'm only a year older than you, I was watching The Wonderful World of Disney because this show had some title changes. But the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself really got behind and was like, hey, I want to be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses.

• 8:12Josh Clark?

  Right, because just like how you could have TVs but nothing to broadcast, you could have color TVs and if you weren't broadcasting in color, what's the point? And again, this was an issue for RCA and by then, of course, they had NBC and NBC was rolling pretty well.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  But Walt Disney's anthology series had started years before and it was on ABC. ABC wasn't broadcasting in color.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:35Josh Clark?

  So Walt Disney personally held a meeting with NBC and said, we, we want to do this.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  Apparently he told his team. He said that, um, he said, "Bellas, I want this deal. If necessary, I'll stand on my head in Macy's window."

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and all the executives said, "Uh, you don't have to do that. It's a pretty good idea. So why are you, why are you being weird?"

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but he was just that enthusiastic about the whole thing. But he personally went and pitched the idea to NBC. And the reason why, again, is NBC was the first network to broadcast in color. And so Walt Disney really kind of pushed this through because NBC would have broadcast in color either way, but Walt Disney wanted to do it in like high style.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and this is a, a TV show that launched in 1954 and ran for 34 seasons. Uh, obviously at first in black and white. And like I mentioned earlier, you know, the name changes. I guess they had one, you know, between My Birth and Your Birth. Uh, because it was initially called Disney's Wonderful World and then Magical World of Disney.

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  And then when the color debuted, he was like, "We really want to be sort of obvious with this. So let's call it Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  But we still haven't even said what this was. I mean, you mentioned anthology series. It was, it was like a variety show, uh, essentially. They had cartoons and stuff. Uh, I remember when I was a kid that the Davy Crockett, uh, TV show. Uh, and it says in, in this How Stuff Works article, it launched the Coon Skin Cap craze. And I, I have a picture of little five-year-old me with a, with a musket and a leather vest and a Coon Skin cap on my head. So I was into that.

• 10:13Josh Clark?

  I had one too, but I don't have a picture of it, so I can't prove it.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  I can probably dig that up and throw it up on the Instagram, maybe to align with this. So I'll, I'll try and find that.

• 10:23Josh Clark?

  You gotta.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  I got it.

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  So there were also like a lot of documentary programming, right?

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:30Josh Clark?

  You would think like, oh, okay, hard hitting frontline-esque documentaries. No, not at all. It meant that they would go and film stuff under various themes at Disneyland. They were essentially big ads for Disneyland. He used that big time. And I mean, they were well-produced and interesting.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  But they really went to that well quite a bit in every episode. Not in the first episode, though. Instead, the first episode, and this is the moment that changed the world as far as color TV goes. It was on September 24th, 1961. And it was, the episode was two parts. And the first one was an adventure in color. And it, it really was a bit of an adventure. Like, it was a bunch of little segments that really kind of showed off what you can do with color TV and just must have knocked the socks off, knocked the Coonskin caps off of all the little kids sitting at home.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  That's right. And it also featured something called the Spectrum Song, which kind of explained what was going on. Cause I guess they felt the need to explain color to people who had gone around their entire lives seeing real life in color. But I guess, like you said, it was a pretty whiz-bang thing to see, thing to see it on your TV for the first time. So they went to great lengths to probably over-explain that. And this is also when we got the debut of Professor Ludwig Von Drake from the Disney Duck World.

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was kind of an eccentric inventor. His self-written bio, bio was, he's an eminent psychologist, renowned color expert, etymologist, the most sought-after lecturer in the world.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:11Josh Clark?

  He is undoubtedly the outstanding genius of the century. So he was fairly egotistical, but he was also funny. And he became beloved, and this is where he came from. That first adventure in color half. And then the second half was a theatrical release featuring Donald Duck. Because all of these like Disney cartoons that we just, you know, take for granted today, you used to have to go to the theater to see them. But when you went to the theater to see them, they were in color.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  You saw them on TV, they're in black and white. Now you can see them in color on TV without leaving the comfort of your home.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  What was their deal with the ducks? So was that, I mean, I guess it's just like any other cartoon animal, but they really leaned into the ducks.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  It was a great excuse to draw something without pants.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Ah, okay. That makes sense. I never got into any, I was a little old for like DuckTales and all that stuff.

• 13:00Josh Clark?

  That was a good show.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  So like Donald Duck was my only, I guess, exposure, my only duck exposure, his little feathered fanny. Oh, sorry, sorry, listeners in England. I know what that means there.

• 13:12Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:13Josh Clark?

  Nice catch. To be, to be perfectly honest, I was a little old for DuckTales too, but I still watched it.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, we all regress.

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  I never progressed, I think.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Oh, come on.

• 13:26Josh Clark?

  So just like Disney probably promised RCA and NBC, like they started selling colored TVs like hotcakes, thanks to, in large part, the wonderful world of color. Disney's wonderful world of color, to be exact.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  That's right. And that feels like a great time for a break, huh?

• 13:44Josh Clark?

  Yes, it does.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back, everybody.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Anna Paola Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 14:25Speaker 04

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• 14:28Speaker 06

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• 15:19Josh Clark?

  All right. So you might think that we're going in chronological order. We are not.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:23Josh Clark?

  So we're going to go back in time a little bit from the debut of color TV, but after the World's Fair in 1939, two years after, and we're going to go to, you know, I never found out what network this was on. Did you?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Hmm, no.

• 15:41Josh Clark?

  That's silly.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Let's just call it ESPN.

• 15:45Josh Clark?

  Okay. So on ESPN in 1941, on July 1st, this is a moment that changed the world. Some people who are watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Philly, at the Philadelphia Phillies, essentially saw the first television ad ever.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was either nine or 10 seconds long. It depends on the source that you cite, but it was pretty short. And all it was, and I know we've talked about this before because I have seen this before, and I can't think of any other reason why I would have.

• 16:15Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  But it is a scene of a Bull of a Clock face just sort of superimposed over a map of the United States, and it's had the phrase over, over the top of it like a Chiron, "The world runs on Bull of a Time." And about 4,000 people saw this ad, and I imagine they were like, What the heck is this? Why am I, why am I hearing about Bulova?

• 16:38Josh Clark?

  And why do I suddenly feel like buying a Bulova watch?

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably.

• 16:43Josh Clark?

  What's super quaint and sweet is that the ad cost Bulova $9.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  That's crazy. Even for the time, that's crazy.

• 16:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, even at the time, that's $195 today.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:55Josh Clark?

  So that was quite a sweet deal.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 16:57Josh Clark?

  And the, what it did was show like this is a, we can do this. We can advertise to people. And it's not to say that there were just no ads on TV before the Bulova ad, but they just followed a completely different format. So much so that the Bulova ad is pretty safely considered among historians as the first actual TV commercial.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's for a couple of reasons. You did mention some other ads, but before that it was like, you know, this program is sponsored by whatever. And that was just the ad. It wasn't actual TV commercial in between content. The first ad, I guess if you count that stuff, was in 1930. The year TV debuted really, and it was a furrier. Man, it seems like it would have been from like 1830, but it was a furrier in Boston called IJ Fox Furriers, who sponsored the CBS Orchestra.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  It was a program called The Foxtreper. So that, you know, that's kind of how ads went up until 41.

• 18:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that was the radio format. It was essentially, they just took the format that had been pioneered on radio. Now they were doing it on TV. That's not really an ad. If you call that an ad, you're just being contrarian, right?

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 18:13Josh Clark?

  There were still even other ads, but they were illegal because it wasn't until 1941 that the FCC started issuing licenses to run commercials on, on broadcast networks. But that means that the ads before them were illegal. I could not find any mention of what these ads were for, but I got the impression that they were just experimentation, networks kind of on the sly, figuring out how to do it as they went along. So again, Bulova is the first actual TV commercial that was legal and that was also produced with the intent, the sole intent, to sell a particular product on air. That was it. That space of air was filled up by an ad. That was the first time ever.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  That's right. And I know we've mentioned this before, but for those who... Aren't familiar with our canon, in the old days of Stuff You Should Know, our boss, Connell Byrne, who commissioned the whole show to begin with and changed our lives, thank you Connell, he came up to us at one point after we had been doing it a while and said, hey, people are running ads on podcasts now and we need to get into this. And we were like, no way, no how, we're not going to foul up our show by selling it. And then eventually he said, well, you know, if we can sell this thing, it'll make the company money. And on down the road, maybe this just becomes your job. I don't know if he said that, but the writing was kind of on the wall. And maybe this can just become

• 19:40Speaker 03

  the only thing you do here and you won't be writing articles for houseofworks.com anymore. And we went, hmm, tell us more.

• 19:49Josh Clark?

  You make a good case here.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:51Josh Clark?

  Hey Chuck, real quick, speaking of our canon, so for all of you listeners out there, it's a little behind the scenes peek.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:57Josh Clark?

  We have like, I think, including short stuff, in the neighborhood of 2,300 episodes. It doesn't really get it across when you say 2,300. We have a ton of episodes in our back catalog and we, like, people write in all the time and they're like, you should do this episode. We're like, we did, like, seven years ago. And it's like, a lot of people just have no idea the episodes we've done. So we're trying to like, figure out how to get it out there better.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. That's the reason we mentioned this. We've been sort of putting our heads together at iHeartMedia because like you said, a lot of people don't, you know, I think iTunes serves up about 300, but here's a little trick. If you're on your podcast player for iTunes on your iPhone, if that's how you listen, when you scroll down through like the first five episodes, there's a little button there that says, see all 2,000 plus episodes. And if you click on that, they're all there and you can scroll through. But, you know, a lot of people don't know that. A lot of other players don't, you know, who knows how many they display, but it's a frustration for us. And so it's just a gentle reminder that there are literally thousands of these episodes out there.

• 21:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they're all also, I think you said on the iHeart Radio app and stuff you should know dot com has the vast repository and a pretty good search function. And one of the ways we figured out, like, we could probably, like, we could probably do a lot better about mentioning episodes, like, specifically when they come up in another episode, like, a new episode. But I feel like we're gonna have to do a lot better than we normally do, which is, like, didn't we do some episode on something related to this?

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:33Josh Clark?

  We gotta figure it out, but we will, because there's just a bunch of great episodes just sitting there, waiting for people to discover.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  That's right. And with that, we move on to...

• 21:43Josh Clark?

  Oh, wait.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Yes?

• 21:44Josh Clark?

  We have to do the Super Bowl comparison. You have to do it if you talk about the Bolivar ad.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Do we really?

• 21:49Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  All right. You take it away, then. I refuse to take part.

• 21:53Josh Clark?

  So if you write or talk about the Bolivar ad, it's basically incumbent upon you to compare that ad cost, the $9 cost, to what it would have cost had they run it on a Super Bowl. And so for the 2025 Super Bowl, if Bolivar had run this, they would have paid $2.35 million for those 10 seconds.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 22:14Josh Clark?

  Quite a deal.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 22:16Josh Clark?

  There, I just kept this from being sued.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I don't even think we're even, I think we're supposed to say the big game, aren't we?

• 22:23Josh Clark?

  It's, no, like, we're supposed to not buy into that.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I gotcha. All right, moving on to the next one on the list, uh, is the, that was a good segue, too, because we can't talk about, like, our old episodes and then say, also, there was a devastating tsunami in 2004 in the Indian Ocean.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Because that happened, and we, you know, if you're the, actually, you don't even have to be much of a certain age, but on December 26, 2004, there was an undersea earthquake, uh, about a 9.0 magnitude that, um, set off this incredible tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  I mean, we've done episodes on tsunamis and earthquakes, and we've talked about all this before, but, uh, it was about 100 feet tall, traveling at 500 miles an hour. Not much advance warning and was one of the most devastating tragedies in human history. It killed close to 230,000 people in 14 countries. It also sparked the biggest rail disaster in history when it completely wiped out a train traveling along the coast of Sri Lanka.

• 23:27Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  And we mention all this because the only positive that came out of this was the media's reaction, which sparked the incredible amount of philanthropy and aid and giving in its aftermath.

• 23:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because the, I was reading a study on this. It was called Media Coverage and Charitable Giving After the 2004 Tsunami. It was by Philip H. Brown and Jessica Minty.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  And they said like the media coverage was unprecedented. Like it didn't, the world didn't forget about it in like three days.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  It was 24 hour coverage of this disaster for weeks on end, right? And because these, these images were broadcast around the world and because it was so mind bogglingly devastating, people just opened up their pockets.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:21Josh Clark?

  I saw 99 different countries donated and 13 of those countries had never donated for a natural disaster relief before. It got to everybody.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there are, I think about 195 countries in the world.

• 24:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Which is kind of like, do better, other 96 countries.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. I imagine the countries that didn't give have their own issues, had their own issues going on, you know?

• 24:46Josh Clark?

  Well, now I feel bad.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  No, don't feel so bad. But they have done studies, that 2006 study that you referenced, they said that the Catholic Relief Charities got a million dollars in three days, which would turn out to be small beans in the long run. But over three days, that's quite a haul. Save the Children got more than $6 million in four days. The Lutheran World Relief raised more money in a week than it does in a year. And the AP found that 30% of American families donated in the first two weeks. And just from the United States, there was about 1.6 billion and estimates around the world were about $14 billion raised.

• 25:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and just to kind of go over the power of the media, one thing I left out here is that that same study found that one extra minute of coverage on television equated to an increase in internet donations by 16 to 20%. So like this, this, the impact, it's just essentially like a classroom lesson

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:48Josh Clark?

  in the impact that media can have, the positive impact that media can have. And that's, I mean, that's, that is definitely something to TV's credit.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:57Josh Clark?

  You want to move on to, well, move backward to Vietnam?

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, again, we're jumping all over the timeline. And we're in Vietnam right now because I guess we should talk a little bit about pre-Vietnam and as far as media coverage go, because before that, World War II and certainly the Korean War, what you got as far as media coverage was highly sort of curated and regulated, government mediated film reels. You would get news updates, they would play in movie theaters. By the time we got to Vietnam, they had, you know, like handheld cameras you could literally take to the front lines. And it really changed the way war coverage went and as a result, the way, the way people

• 26:43Speaker 03

  felt about the war, because World War II, everyone was, they were pretty rah rah and you got these rah rah films. So morale was big in America, you know, they were like, hey, this is, this is great. We're fighting the Nazis.

• 26:54Josh Clark?

  Right. Another huge factor was that by 1966, 93% of American homes had a TV. And just 13, 16 years earlier in 1950, it was 9%.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  So TV was firmly established in the American psyche. You remember in, in Wonder Years, whenever they sat down and had dinner, they always had the TV on showing Vietnam

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:18Josh Clark?

  coverage?

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:20Josh Clark?

  That's what it was like.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 27:22Josh Clark?

  And so the, the fact that everybody had TVs, the fact that now there was like cameras that you could easily allow a journalist to embed with, and the, the idea that the government really shouldn't control propaganda, shouldn't control the news like that.

• 27:41Josh Clark?

  Created this this atmosphere where the broadcasters were willing to show like really heartrending, unflinching stories of what the soldiers fighting for the United States were doing in Vietnam and what was being done to them. And it really shaped America's view of that war.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it definitely made the mood and how we saw the war like pretty dour. But people, you know, going into Vietnam, there were a lot of people already, like before even the coverage started, that were like, what are we doing in Vietnam again? It wasn't like World War II where the Nazis were trying to, you know, take over the world. And so, you know, this just made everything worse. But, you know, worse in a positive way because it was showing the reality of things. It wasn't government controlled. I'm sure there were, you know, just countless meetings behind the scenes in the Oval Office where they were like, we're getting crushed by the reality of this war and how it's being

• 28:44Speaker 03

  depicted in the media. I'm sure they were, you know, pretty upset about losing control of that narrative.

• 28:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, they definitely were. And later on, I think the Iraq War was another considered another television war. Certainly the Gulf War, the first one was. But in the government kind of learned from losing the control over the narrative in Vietnam, but they weren't able to regain control. And so the sentiment toward Vietnam and the United States kept getting worse and worse. And protests were getting bigger and bigger. There was like a very healthy anti-war movement. And essentially, because the public was feeling this way, their public sentiment was that way toward Vietnam. And because if you turned

• 29:31Josh Clark?

  on the news, the evening national news, you would see like terrible coverage that was not flattering at all to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. Elected officials basically had no choice but to listen to people. And it definitely led to the earlier, probably an earlier withdrawal than the United States may have otherwise taken.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, changed the way that it went moving forward because you know, the writing was on the wall at that point for the for the US government. They're like, we can't go back to World War II as much as they wanted to kind of control that narrative. The American people at that point would not have it moving forward. So it really kind of changed the whole relationship of how any kind of conflict is covered.

• 30:13Josh Clark?

  It did. So now they've struck a balance between allowing reporters to embed and just relying on those national news reporters to disseminate the propaganda. Because if you watch embedded coverage, for the most part, it is fairly

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:28Josh Clark?

  rah rah, even if it's not overtly rah rah because the the American public's a little more savvy than that. It's still nothing like the coverage was of Vietnam, from what I understand.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and just the way wars are fought now, there's not like a front line like you had back then. So I remember watching the Gulf War and it was just all those like, you know, black and white shots of bombing things from thousands of feet above, you know?

• 30:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then the beginning of the Iraq War, remember it was shock and awe?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:58Josh Clark?

  And it was like, it was produced essentially for TV, the initial attack on Iraq.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  It's so gross to, I don't know, I'm not going to editorialize, but to name something like that, like, hey, that sounds pretty, pretty awesome.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  You know, I think it was either Rumsfeld or Cheney who came up with that. And I'm not surprised either way.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  For sure. Uh, should we take another break?

• 31:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, gosh, I wasn't expecting that. Sure.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  All right, we'll take another break and finish up with a couple of more moments that changed TV history right after this.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.

• 31:49Speaker 05

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:08Speaker 02

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• 32:58Speaker 03

  All right, we're going to move on to another show, but we should mention that the original House of Works article included, of course, the moon landing, which was a huge TV event. But we covered all of that in which episode?

• 33:10Josh Clark?

  We have an episode on that. It's called How Going to the Moon Works from 2019. And it was a really interesting episode that really covered in depth the lunar landing.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  That's right, part of the 2,300 episodes plus.

• 33:22Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about a TV show that we've talked about here and there before called Cops. Because Cops is, and I know I mentioned this in that other episode, whatever it was, it was a show that I used to watch with more regularity than I like to admit now.

• 33:39Josh Clark?

  I think everyone watched it a lot.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Well, it was never, and I'm not excusing it, but it was never like appointment TV. In fact, I don't even know when it came on. This was just in my younger channel surfing days where it was like you're surfing around. Cops was on, I would watch Cops. And I was never like, yeah, yeah, go, go. But, you know, I found it probably entertaining and amusing. And now that I'm a little older and no more of, you know, slightly embarrassed that they were sort of exploiting many times people who had mental illness and who were suffering through poverty and addiction. And so I'm not so proud of that, but I'll I'll admit that I watch my fair share of Cops.

• 34:20Josh Clark?

  I watched it too. So Cops changed the world in two ways. And this, this moment was March 11th, 1989, which is when it debuted on Fox. This is just three years after Fox premiered, nine months before The Simpsons even premiered. Cops started on Fox and it helped make Fox the fourth network. It was just such a huge show right out of the gate. And they, the two ways that it changed the world is one, it set the groundwork for reality TV.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:50Josh Clark?

  You can make a pretty good case that it was one of the, it may be the originator of reality TV. There weren't scripts. There wasn't any star. There wasn't any narrative or plot lines. It was just like, here's some cops and here's a crime that they're going to fight. We don't have a script. We just generally know what's going on, which ostensibly is the, the basis of any reality show.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, you know what we should do an episode on at some point is, I can't remember the name of it now because it just came to me. But I think kind of the first real reality show was that one where they followed the American family around in the seventies, maybe?

• 35:26Josh Clark?

  Wasn't it PBS or British or something?

• 35:28Speaker 03

  I think it was PBS. And then they, they made a fictional account of that as a movie, not like a few, four or five, six years ago, that was pretty good too. I think James Gandolfini was in it.

• 35:41Josh Clark?

  Okay. I would have guessed Peter Sarsgaard as the dad.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  It was really good though. Anyway, that really kicked off reality TV. MTV's Real World didn't come out till 92, but Cops certainly laid the groundwork for kind of like trashy reality TV, you know?

• 35:55Josh Clark?

  Right. Yes. The other effect that it had on the world was it really reinforced unfair racial stereotypes.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:05Josh Clark?

  Among white Americans toward black Americans, people of color in general in the United States. It was an enormous show. It drew like eight million viewers each week. That's a crazy amount of people.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:18Josh Clark?

  It peaked in the 90s, but even from the first episode, civil rights groups were like, whoa, wait a second here. Like, a lot of these criminals are black, and this is way disproportionate to reality. I thought this was a reality show. And the Cops producers, Barbara Langley Productions, were like, well, it's reality-ish, you know?

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:41Josh Clark?

  Like, it's not the actual portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of reality. So just settle down. And the civil rights groups were like, we're not settling down. That actually makes it even worse.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the cops loved it because they were portrayed as heroes. It was a great recruiting tool for police officers. And, you know, I guess we have some stats from The Marshall Project. They did a analysis in 1994. Most of the officers on balance were white. Suspects were more likely to be black or Hispanic. As far as the numbers go, they found that while sexual assault, robbery, and murders account for just 13% of all crime, in 1994 at least, it was 43% of what you saw in Cops.

• 37:26Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  I don't remember a lot of sexual assault and murder, though. Like, everything I saw in Cops were like robberies and drug arrests, or just, you know, DUI, being drunk out in public, stuff like that.

• 37:41Josh Clark?

  Or a dude hiding under a kiddie pool?

• 37:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was probably drunk or on drugs.

• 37:46Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I remember. I don't remember, like, more serious crimes. So I was kind of wondering about that stat.

• 37:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't remember that either. They also found that same study found that the show was far more likely to associate black and brown people than whites with violent crime. They were, black and brown people were 40%. There was a 40% chance compared to a 13% chance for whites. So it was like, it wasn't just civil rights groups like sensing there's something off about this, like people conducted actual studies and found also that a viewer of Cops was likelier to maintain the racial stereotype that blacks are typically criminals than a person who didn't watch Cops. So it had a really large impact. And yet despite that, this is 94 that that

• 38:35Josh Clark?

  study came out. It wasn't until 2013 that Fox was finally like, okay, fine, fine. Yes. Okay, we'll cancel the show. We've made our money over 25 seasons. And thanks to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it. And that was the end of Cops forever, right?

• 38:53Speaker 03

  No, no, no. It was picked up by Spike TV. They ran it until 2020. And then after 2020, with all the, you know, sort of light shined on police brutality, they said, you know, maybe it's just not so good to run this anymore. But Fox Nation stepped up and brought it back in 21, and it is still going and it's 37th season. The other thing it did was sort of create the, the idea of the Florida man. Because they started, I believe they debuted in Broward County and shot a lot there over the years. And they, they shot, I think they shot in more than 100 cities in the end, but a lot of their content was shot in Florida and kind of sort of reinforced this whole Florida man thing.

• 39:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't know that that's skewed.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. All right. Fair enough.

• 39:42Josh Clark?

  Let's finish up Chuck on like a really happy moment. Well, depending on which nation you're from, the USSR or the United States. If you're from the United States, this is a really good high point for your country in 1980 and the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, to be exact. And there was this one event that America was really the unlikely winners in, and it was men's hockey.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  That's right. This is during the height of the Cold War. So the US and the Soviet Union, you know, those, it was just. It was all you heard about if you were a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. It was such a big deal. The Soviet Union won the Olympic gold medals in ice hockey in 56 and then 64, 68, 72, and 76. So they ran the Olympics basically from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. And then 1980 came along and you had a US hockey team. And first of all, the Soviets hockey team, I believe there was a player, Fetisov, who said later on, it was probably the best team that the Soviet Union had ever put together.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  So they were the Drago and we were a little rocky because the American team at the time, this is before they allowed pro players to play in the Olympics. There was a bunch of college kids and they were, I mean, to call them underdogs was a massive understatement.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and a lot of the credit goes to the coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Kurt Russell.

• 41:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, he played him in the movie.

• 41:24Josh Clark?

  I thought that was Emilio Estevez.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Well done.

• 41:28Josh Clark?

  So the United States did not, despite how it ended, they did not get off on a very good footing. There is an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden a few days before the 1980 Olympics. Same month and everything. And the Soviet Union and the United States played in this exhibition match. And the Soviets really, you could use the word walloped, pretty effectively in this case. The Soviets won 10 to 3. So it did not look like the United States men's hockey team was going to produce much in the Olympics that year.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't see a lot of double-digit scores in hockey. If you're not familiar with hockey, you know, you see a lot of like... Two to nothing, three to two.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  Once you score over 10 goals, it's a big, big deal. So the Americans weren't even supposed to advance that much in the Olympics, but they had a bunch of comeback wins, had a lot of close calls that they won. And they got into the medal round and faced the Soviets, who up to that point in the Olympics had outscored their opponents 51 to 11. So on February 22nd, 1980, and I know I've mentioned this before, but I actually watched this match as a, I guess I wasn't even nine yet. It was right before my ninth birthday.

• 42:50Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  I wasn't even that into hockey, but we were an Olympic family.

• 42:54Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  And I, I remember, I have a very distinct memory of being in my parents' bedroom, for some reason, which I usually wasn't much allowed in. Cause it was, I don't know, it was the seventies. It was like, don't go in my bedroom. But we had this little black and white TV. I guess my dad was watching other stuff out there on the larger console TV. But I remember being in their bedroom and watching this match on the little black and white TV and knowing as a little eight-year-old, like what a huge, huge deal this was.

• 43:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and you said something that I think kind of applied to a lot of the nation. Hockey was not really a thing, nothing like it is now in the United States. Like you had to live in a place where your rivers froze over every year to like hockey. It was a very regional sport.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:42Josh Clark?

  And yet, like you said, the entire United States tuned in for this match because it was the evil Soviets.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:48Josh Clark?

  And like to our younger viewers or listeners, like you don't, you can't imagine what they told us about the Russians. Like essentially, if you were a kid in the seventies, eighties, probably sixties too, you were basically taught that if you ever crossed paths with anybody from the Soviet Union, they would slash your throat just as soon as look at you. Like that was essentially what people thought of the Soviet Union at the time. And vice versa. So it was the big bad Soviets, who were just this huge juggernaut of a team. And the Americans, the ragtag, underdog Americans, standing up to these, this evil empire. And that's why everybody tuned in.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, I remember very just having the distinct feeling, it was communism versus democracy, really.

• 44:34Josh Clark?

  Right, right. Which is, yeah, which is, I think what happened in that, that Super Bowl, with the Falcons versus the Patriots.

• 44:44Josh Clark?

  Same thing.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Oh, man. My, my darkest day as a Falcons fan, maybe.

• 44:49Josh Clark?

  That was rough.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  It was either that or losing to the Jets last week.

• 44:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah?

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I can't talk about it.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  Uh, very sad season ticket holder here. Um, so Americans, of course, came back and won. And I remember our, our goalie, Jim Craig, like skating around after wrapped up in the American flag. And that was my first, like, real taste of, uh, of like, understanding what it was like to be an American. And again, a different time where, you know, it was the Cold War and it felt like a real win for democracy in a weird way.

• 45:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, um, a lot of people, I think basically everybody calls that game the miracle on ice.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:29Josh Clark?

  And the reason why is because the commentator who was calling the, the hockey game, Al Michaels, who as far as I know, had only called one hockey game previously at the Sapporo Winter Olympics years before, he did a magnificent job. And as the, the time is running out in the third period, America staged a comeback and scored two goals. And they were up four to three with several seconds left. And remember, this Soviet team was good enough that they could score a goal and tie, uh, within a few seconds. So the Americans are just skating around the ice, trying to keep the puck away from the Russians. And Al Michaels is counting down the seconds. And I think with about four seconds left, and it became clear that the Soviets weren't going to be able to score a goal, he goes, "Do you believe in miracles?

• 46:10Josh Clark?

  Yes." And if you watch it today, you just get just amazing chills. Just even the last, like, 30 seconds of that game, it's really neat.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  For sure. I wonder if, uh, before the game, Al Michaels was like, "It's a puck, Al. It's a puck. It's a match. It's not a game." Uh, and if anyone brings up icing, just you explain it.

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  Right. Just pretend it doesn't exist.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 46:34Josh Clark?

  So ESPN called it the most famous hockey game ever played.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  Sports Illustrated ranked it in 1999 as the top sports moment of the 20th century. It was a big deal. And again, I would, I would strongly urge you, if you don't go watch the whole match, watch at least the third period or watch the last couple of minutes and several minutes after that where they're, yeah, they're celebrating. It's just, you can just feel like the whole country going crazy.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty incredible. And if you're ever, you know, at a dinner party and a group of people and they're talking about when the US beat the Soviets for the gold medal,

• 47:08Speaker 03

  you can be the actually guy, because that was not the gold medal match. I think a lot of people remember it that way because it was such a big deal. But that was, I guess, a bronze round.

• 47:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  And the US went on to win that gold against Finland.

• 47:21Josh Clark?

  Yep, two days later.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Pretty great.

• 47:24Josh Clark?

  Pretty great, everybody. So that's it. Those are the only moments that changed the world and the history of TV. All the rest of them were pretty ho-hum.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 47:33Josh Clark?

  Uh, you got anything else?

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Uh, I got nothing else, sir.

• 47:38Josh Clark?

  All right. I think this is a pretty good start to 2026, don't you?

• 47:42Speaker 03

  I think it's great.

• 47:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck said great. That means it's time for listener mail.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know what? Let's, let's start off the year without a listener mail and just make a push to remind everyone that we're still kicking off pretty soon. In a few months, it'll be year 18 in April, and we always are still looking to grow the show. And we don't do it much, but if you could rate and review the show, that means a lot. If you could tell friends and family, like, hey, there's this podcast, it's been around forever and we like it. We may or may not be Golden Globe nominated. We don't know at this point because we're going to find out next Monday. But yeah, go out and spread the, spread the good word. And we look forward to seeing everybody on the road this year in the United States and Canada.

• 48:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we're going to be on the road this, this month in January, also in April, and then Canada this summer. So you can get tickets and info at stuffyoushouldknow.com. And if you want to say Happy New Year or whatever, you can send us an email. We love that. You can send it to [email protected].

• 48:45Speaker 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.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

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