Gladiators, real housewives and the pull of reality TV

People used to say "believe your eyes." But these days that's not so easy to do. What we scroll through every day blurs the line between entertainment and fact. And nowhere is that phenomenon more evident than in reality television. Today on the show, we tackle the genre that takes our most potent feelings – love, hope, anxiety, loneliness – and turns them into profit. This episode originally ran in 2022. Guests: Goloka Bolte, reality TV casting director Dr. Jana Scrivani, licensed clinical psychologist Racquel Gates, associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University Dr. J'tia Hart, nuclear engineer on Survivor (Season 28) Jeff Jenkins, founder of Jeff Jenkins Productions (JJP) To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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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• 0:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  A quick warning: This episode contains some vulgar language.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  We've become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We're tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there's nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn't always Shakespeare, but it's genuine. It's a life.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Fade the music up.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  Three, two, one. Quick cut to F-Boy Island.

• 1:16Speaker 04

  Women have been forced to tolerate the manipulative douchebaggery of F-Boys for far too long. And that's why we're here. Welcome to F-Boy Island.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  OK, fade to click down.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  Ladies, the three of you are hoping to find love.

• 1:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  If you're thinking, what is going on? Yeah, that was intentional. F-Boy Island, a reality TV show set on, you guessed it, an island, tasked three women with trying to find the real nice guys among a group of mostly self-proclaimed F-Boys, or players. And the clip we opened with is from the fictional movie The Truman Show, in which a guy unknowingly grows up in a world completely manufactured for TV. Two very different setups, same basic question: What's real and what isn't? Why are we telling you all this? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. Nothing like a good cliffhanger, am I right?

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Cue guest tape.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  My name's Goloka Bolte. I am a reality TV casting director for the last 20 years.

• 2:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  We spent over an hour getting to know Goloka before casting her for this episode, and another hour interviewing her. But like any good reality show, you'll only hear the parts that make the story pop.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  I started out in the grand old days of reality TV.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Music and something playful.

• 2:43Speaker 05

  My first significant project that I worked on was season two of Joe Millionaire. And since then, I've gone on to cast everything from MasterChef to work on Let's Make a Deal to RuPaul's Drag Race to FBoy Island to Million Dollar Listing to The Real Housewives of New Jersey. It runs the gamut.

• 3:07Speaker 05

  I absolutely love casting FBoy Island. So during the casting process, we are asking people about the most rogue, rascally things they've ever done and trying to figure out what's their story, what's their motivation for being there. Yo, I'm just here to clap. You look good, I look good, we look good together. I love to tease, I love to flirt. I know every which way to get them. I know physical touch, mental games, all that. They're like, this is just between us, right? And I'm like, yeah, me and the camera and the producers and the network executives. Yeah, just between us.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  I think that one of the things that people just need to remember is that you are seeing reality for the most part. That's been edited together with suspenseful music to create the mood and anticipation for the next scene and put in a certain order for context to make it feel more exciting and more dramatic. If you watched the unedited footage all the way through, it would be quite boring.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Cue suspenseful music from the top.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Bring in a clip from The Truman Show, something that really gets the listener invested.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  It's as simple as that.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  And NC.

• 4:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. On TV, that presentation feels obvious now. Casting, editing, dramatic music posts, it's all part of the deal. And when we first released this episode at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, reality TV was having a moment. Home makeovers, dramatic Real Housewives, cooking competitions, searches for love on an island, in all different languages, all over the world.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  You know, I know for myself, my own business, I couldn't even keep up with the demand for work. If you're doing a competition show, you're filming away, you're living in a hotel, the crew's living there, you're on location. So we're already filming in a bubble. It was so much more cost effective and our budgets are not as big as scripted shows.

• 5:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  But today, reality TV seems to be trying to keep up with the chaos of the world. I mean, they even made a real life Squid Game. And it's getting harder to keep up, especially when so much of our lives feel manufactured. The news we watch, the feeds we scroll, the WhatsApp group chats, the Facebook mom groups. Okay, I'm spiraling, but you get where I'm going with this. We are constantly trying to figure out what's true, what's not, what's AI-generated? What is reality? As someone who's watched their fair share of reality TV, it feels like we're watching that same playbook play out everywhere we look. In relationships, in the media, in politics.

• 6:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  We literally elected a reality TV star as president, twice. So in this episode of Throughline from NPR, we're going to use reality TV to understand three parts of modern life that already feel a lot like shows. Love, the American dream, and the rage machine.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  The winner of Survivor: Cook Island.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  The second singer, unmasking. Oh, my gosh.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  The winner of the Great British Bake Off is...

• 6:36Speaker 03

  I'll read the last vote.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Say my name, just say my name.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  You accept this for us?

• 6:40Speaker 05

  Absolutely. You're fired.

• 6:48Speaker 06

  Hi, this is Dottie in Wiesbaden, Germany, originally from Kansas City. You're listening to Throughline at NPR.

• 6:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hey, Rand here. We want to try something new on the show, and we need your help. Have you ever had a question about something in the headlines or wondered why something is the way it is? It could be anything from big geopolitical questions to kind of weird ones, like, how did bananas become such a big part of our diet in the US? We already have an episode about that one, by the way, if you really are wondering. We would love to hear your questions. Send them to us at [email protected] or call 872-588-8805 and leave a voicemail. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number, too. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Thank you.

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• 9:17Speaker 05

  Part One: The Rage Machine.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  Imagine you're a peasant in the time of the Roman Empire.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  You might be feeling some anger towards the people in the upper classes because you want what they have and there's no way you're ever going to get that. So you know that you are going to live and die as you are.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  Gladiators did something to kind of keep the peace, right? It appeased people.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Here's somebody you can look down on. You know, you can feel a little bit better about yourself, a little bit less angry.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Similar emotions, you know, that people might feel in terms of that expression of anger, you know, watching two Real Housewives scream at each other.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  And, I mean, modern day cable news, right, does this as well.

• 10:29Speaker 07

  Major beef inside a golden corral. Dozens of customers get into a brawl all over a piece of meat.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  We use entertainment to cope with modern life. People have always done that.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  We're looking for somewhat of an escape.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  In order to keep viewers, the boundaries keep being pushed more and more and more.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  I've never seen an animal that violent that close up before. I mean, I really felt scared for my life.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  So now our appetite for those types of pseudo-blood sports has really increased. I'm Joe Rogan and this is Fear Factor. The stunts you're about to see are extreme.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Extremely dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  And I think often without a second thought, oh, this looks funny, this looks interesting. But then it can go over into the cruel.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  My name is Dr. Janice Gervani. I am a licensed clinical psychologist. I think it was really my interest in anxiety that led to my interest in reality TV.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?

• 11:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  Everyone here is waiting for the same thing, the stroke of midnight. Happy New Year 2000. This is Survivor.

• 12:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the dawn of a new millennium, audiences flock to theaters to watch a new movie called Gladiator, set in an era when real-life blood sports were entertainment. And a reality show debuted on American television that launched the pseudo-bloodsport era of reality TV. It was called Survivor.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Bring in Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Survivor is a morality play. You are asking the people that you have ousted to give you the gift of a million dollars.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  We need to mention this tape comes from a 2010 interview with Mark Burnett and the Television Academy Foundation.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  What immediately appealed to me was the idea of people building a society on island, à la Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies.

• 12:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  If you've never seen the show, here's the basic premise. You're on an island with a bunch of people you've never met before, divided up into competing tribes, and you have to find a way to survive. Sure, there's also a TV crew there, but you're still pretty much on your own, trying to build shelter, start a fire, find food. All you're given are the bare essentials, a few tools and a bag of rice, in case your search for coconuts and fish comes up short. The tribes compete in physical challenges, and the losing tribe goes to tribal council, where one person is voted off by everybody else. When just a couple people are left, everyone who got voted off chooses a winner, who gets $1 million.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  I always think about the importance of the year 2000 and Y2K and technophobia as being really sort of indelible to Survivor.

• 13:51Speaker 07

  I don't know that it's necessarily going to be a computer problem. I think it's going to be a social and people problem.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  There is a lot of social anxiety about the fast and the rapidly increasing pace of technology and how that is impacting everyday life.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Have we become so dependent on computers that our society is at risk if they fail?

• 14:15Speaker 06

  My name is Raquel Gates. I am an associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  I find it very fitting that then we get this show, which is all about like a return to nature and like, can you build a fire?

• 14:42Speaker 05

  I came from, you know, a working-class neighborhood in Miami. You know, so I'm like, how bad could it be?

• 14:50Speaker 05

  To quote The Lion King, "I laugh in the face of danger."

• 14:59Speaker 05

  I am Dr. J'tia Hart. I am a nuclear engineer. I was on Survivor, season 28.

• 15:11Speaker 07

  We're doing three tribes this year, and they're divided based on qualities that it takes to win this game.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Brains. I don't know the damn name.

• 15:19Speaker 07

  Beauty, brains, and brawn.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Brains, beauty, brawn. I'll do that one time again, just because I'm sure I messed it up.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  I absolutely had a holy fucking shit moment. I'm hungry. Actually, the hunger was not the worst part. It was that I felt like nobody was...

• 15:37Speaker 06

  Being nice to me, not only the people I was playing with, but I felt like the crew hated me. You know, like when you walk into the cafeteria and you sit at a table and you just feel like people are just barely fucking tolerating you.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  No, no, no, flat side. Yep, like that.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  As a black woman in engineering, I've been at that table a lot.

• 15:57Speaker 07

  She has the decisiveness of a leader. She has the bossiness for sure, but she doesn't exactly have it all here.

• 16:06Speaker 06

  I felt kind of like a cog in the machine.

• 16:11Speaker 06

  It feels like the fantasy of Survivor is that you have this like pre-civilization society that magically conforms to everything you already sort of believe about society, but it naturalizes it. So it's not like producer interference, it's not sexism. It just so happens to be that, you know, young dudes dominate the game over and over and over. In my tribe, I was the youngest woman. And that, to me, is a position of weakness in any society. It's a show where you're supposed to vote people off, right? You're supposed to form a bond, a connection. And a very real bonding connection is shared history and shared experience. It's very easy to other people.

• 16:56Speaker 06

  In my season, three black people, there were only four. Three black people went out in a row. And I was like, if I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna go out with a bang.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  I had people guarding you. I was like the mental patient. And then you left the mental patient alone and I went crazy.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  You think listeners will get the Jadiya dumping her tribe's only bag of rice into the fire as an act of revenge?

• 17:22Speaker 05

  It's what happens when you leave crazy people alone.

• 17:25Speaker 06

  It's entertaining, it's TV, so I don't feel bad for it. I wish I'd have been more careful talking about mental health.

• 17:34Speaker 06

  I think part of it was, I was feeling like they were treating me like something was wrong with me.

• 17:42Speaker 06

  Everything that you saw on the TV show happened. But there were a lot more things that happened that you did not see that they had to boil down. And I understand, they had to make a character, they had to make a story.

• 17:57Speaker 07

  Fourth person voted out of Survivor Kagayan. Shatia, need to bring me your torch.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Good luck, you guys.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  When you're eliminated, and the minute your torch is extinguished, the music shifts. It goes to cobalt blue lighting, which is where they're walking off into the jungle and disappearing. It's a blue, cold death color.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Figuratively, they're dying.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  And then there's a moment of vacuum. Emotional vacuum.

• 18:35Speaker 06

  Reality television is really predicated on sort of playing on our emotions. The emotional connection is the primary goal of reality television as opposed to some other forms of media.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  What keeps people coming back to reality television is there has to be some source of conflict and tension. So creating anxiety.

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Actually, what I'd love to do is take a little trip through psychological history. So let's go back.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Hiroshima, seen from the air after the atomic bomb blast that virtually erased this city from the earth. As far as the eye can see, stretch scenes of desolation and ruin.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  Coming out of World War II, where, you know, the, not just this country, but the world had witnessed some of the most awful atrocities that one can think of. I still have that smell of burning bodies, you know?

• 19:49Speaker 05

  In my nose, it smells terrible. You know, people were still grappling with questions about the Holocaust. Ashes, all the ashes.

• 20:01Speaker 06

  There was a real desire, especially in this country, to sort of understand, like, what makes people do the things that they do?

• 20:09Speaker 05

  Could ordinary people do evil?

• 20:15Speaker 07

  It is May 1962. An experiment is being conducted in the Elegant Interaction Laboratory at Yale University.

• 20:22Speaker 06

  The idea is that we're going to record people being people and placing them in very sort of strange, bizarre situations.

• 20:28Speaker 07

  The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the Greater New Haven area.

• 20:34Speaker 06

  And that's going to teach us something about what makes people tick.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  The Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiments.

• 20:42Speaker 07

  Two-thirds of volunteers were prepared to administer a potentially fatal electric shock when encouraged to do so by what they perceived as a legitimate authority figure, in this case, a man in a white coat. 375 volts.

• 20:58Speaker 07

  I think something's happened that I followed there. Milgram's findings horrified America. They showed that decent American citizens were as capable of committing acts against their conscience as the Germans had been under the Nazis.

• 21:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  There's disagreement around the interpretations of these experiments, but...

• 21:22Speaker 06

  Knowing that that's in some ways foundational to what eventually becomes reality television, I think is really helpful because even if it gets diluted or, you know, warped, there's always this idea of we're going to help you understand why people do the things that they do or how people live.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Uh, let's quickly fast forward through some early reality TV. Let's start with the British documentary, 7-Up.

• 21:49Speaker 07

  World in Action enters the struggling, changing world of the seven-year-old.

• 21:56Speaker 07

  During the next hour, you will see the first in a series of programs entitled "An American Family." We've brought these twenty children together for the very first time. For seven months, from May 30th, 1971, to January 1st, 1972, the family was filmed as they went about their daily routine. But you're always kind of critical of yourself when you see yourself on TV. There is no question that the presence of our camera crews and their equipment had an effect on the lounge. Viewing yourself, you think, "Oh, God, say something intelligent. Just don't sit there."

• 22:34Speaker 07

  Hi, my name is Peter Samoa. I came from Cuba in 1980. This is the true story. I'm an HIV/AIDS educator. True story. Seven strangers picked to live in a loft. And have their lives taped. To find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. "Could you get the phone?" And start getting real. The real world.

• 23:00Speaker 07

  The revolution begins here.

• 23:04Speaker 07

  Standby. Ready, three. Take three. Mic your. Three, start a slow zoom in a little bit. Roll tape. Take three.

• 23:10Speaker 06

  When you get to the 90s, we have the proliferation of cable channels.

• 23:16Speaker 07

  MSNBC.

• 23:17Speaker 06

  Fox News Now, the news you need to get your day started.

• 23:22Speaker 06

  We've sort of moved out of the period of broadcasting, you know, like sort of back in the day when there were only four networks. And suddenly, you know, there's tons of networks and networks have to figure out how they keep people's attention. "No justice, no peace" is what they're chanting.

• 23:39Speaker 06

  The news media itself becomes incredibly sensational. If it seemed like war yesterday, the reinforcements showed up tonight.

• 23:47Speaker 07

  In front of a government building in Oklahoma City. We've got some breaking news. The space shuttle Columbia was going over North Texas. Details still emerging of an accident in Paris and around midnight involving Diana, Princess of Wales.

• 24:00Speaker 06

  News media becomes a form of entertainment in a way that I think is really different than it had been before.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  911, what are you reporting? This is, this is AC. I have OJ in the car. One thing we have been noticing again is a very slow pursuit followed by numerous highway patrol vehicles. Enter the so-called dream team.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  Simpson's all-star defense, including his most trusted ally, Robert Kardashian. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Because what do those channels exist for? They have to get the image. They have to get the picture. They exist to make money. Later on, sort of say, I couldn't help myself. What do they make money on? They make money on advertisements. What do you need, right, to make money on advertisements is you need viewers. How do you get viewers? Simple recipe. Shock had turned to fear. You make them really scared. Fear that the few possessions that Andrew had spared would be stolen by losers. You make them really angry. The army stands guard, M16s in hand. And then you promise them that you can make them, that they have to keep tuning in in order to keep themselves safe. Some of the pictures might be shocking. The rage machine is such a great term for it.

• 25:11Speaker 05

  It's just churning fear, rage, the promise of relief. Sifted through its debris and counted its dead. Over and over again. And seen up close why they call it terror.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  That spills over, right, into our perception of reality.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  And it becomes the reality TV formula, right? This is Survivor.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  When I was producing the finale of Survivor Marches, I'd rented Trump Warman Skating Rink in Central Park. McDonald, he told me how much he loved Survivor and the world.

• 26:03Speaker 06

  I don't have any ideas for him. He'd love to hear it and love to work with me. And thinking about a job interview show, kind of Survivor-ish, but it takes place in a city, with the winner getting a job in big time American business. And Trump was the obvious choice. Only one drama can make 18 nice people become. Vicious. Vindictive. Cutthroat. Evil. Evil. Who loves The Apprentice? This Thursday, it returns.

• 26:35Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, the rage machine collides with the American dream.

• 26:40Speaker 06

  It's like the American dream on speed.

• 26:48Speaker 06

  I'm Sierra, and I'm calling from Ching Ching, Thailand. You're listening to Throughline from NPR. My favorite reality TV show is Survivor. I have in my head the sound of the host Jeff Probst's voice yelling, "You've got to dig deep." And honestly, it does remind me that I'm more capable than I think I am.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from ProLon. With their five-day fasting-mimicking diet, a clinically-developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready-to-cook pizza, no antibiotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3 at Whole Foods Market.

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• 28:28Speaker 06

  Part 2. Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

• 28:34Speaker 06

  And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you,

• 28:41Speaker 05

  ask what you can do for your country.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  I'm on that mountaintop, and I'm waiting for you, Andre. And the hospital is guarded. When pro wrestling was first a thing, everybody thought it was real.

• 29:05Speaker 05

  They thought that these conflicts and these characters that the wrestlers had created I mean, Hogan is 6'8". Andre is 7'5". Were real people. The bell is gone. This one is officially underway.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  And there's this cool word that I love that came out of the pro wrestling tradition called kayfabe. And what kayfabe is, is maintaining your character once you're outside of the ring.

• 29:34Speaker 07

  What I am, is what I am. I'm a real American. I love my family. I love my God. I love all my people that believe in me.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  Really, really good pro wrestlers will not break kayfabe.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  So there's always this kind of question, right? About what is performance? And what's reality? And I think it's no accident that one of the other things, right? That Trump was sort of heavily involved in before The Apprentice and I think during, was the WWE.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  He would make regular appearances. So when I think of this idea, right? Of keeping kayfabe, I don't know what is his reality? And what is he projecting?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  For my Trump Towers.

• 30:34Speaker 06

  People developed a parasocial relationship, right? A one-sided relationship with these people. But there's a great amount of distance between us.

• 30:49Speaker 07

  Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the author of this book right here. Trump: The Art of the Deal, Donald DeTrump.

• 30:59Speaker 07

  Hi, Donald.

• 31:03Speaker 06

  For people who maybe didn't live in New York in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Donald Trump is the businessman who is cited in pop culture.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Samantha, a cosmopolitan, and Donald Trump. You just don't get more New York than that.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I've got to go. I'll be at my office at Trump Tower.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Good. Excuse me, where's the lobby?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Down the hall and to the left.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 31:31Speaker 06

  Donald Trump, both his name and his image, become synonymous with American wealth. Donald Trump doesn't just live large. He lives, really, on top of the world. He is the American dream.

• 31:51Speaker 06

  There's more than one version of the American dream.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  The early form of the American dream, which I would actually sort of connect to Western expansion, is the idea that any, like, young, able-bodied, white man can come and, like, own land, right? And sort of build a home for himself and his family and own something.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  I pledge allegiance to the flag.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  The next iteration of the American dream is that, you know, any immigrant, if you come here and you work hard, you can make a really nice life for yourself.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

• 32:31Speaker 06

  Post-World War II, it's this idea that, hey, young men, you have served your country and now you're going to come back and work hard at a good job that will allow you to buy, you know, a lovely home with a white picket fence and two cars and support your family.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Now, of course, across all of those, people are always left out. Like, black people, for instance, are left out of every... and indigenous people are left out of every single one of those iterations. It's really like the straight white guys', you know, kind of fantasy. But I think what we get, especially in the 1950s and 60s, is the televised aspects of the civil rights movement.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Certainly, the system is gradually breaking down. And this, I think, is a very hopeful sign.

• 33:20Speaker 06

  Being able to see, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on television.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  Seeing black Americans being beaten by police and attacked by police dogs. The inequality suffered by the American Negro population in the United States has hindered the American dream. It's sort of like a reconsideration and a recalibration of what the American dream looks like. It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that the country, which is your birthplace, has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you. And in the 80s, there's almost like this

• 34:10Speaker 06

  return to that 1950s ethos, but like, a doubling down on it. We can, and so help us...

• 34:18Speaker 07

  God, we will make America great again.

• 34:23Speaker 06

  And the dream itself being unbridled wealth, but also unbridled power.

• 34:32Speaker 06

  That's that thing that makes the 80s and the rise of Donald Trump really tantalizing for a lot of people, both in the 80s and subsequently.

• 34:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the turn of the century, Donald Trump's larger-than-life persona had begun to fade.

• 34:52Speaker 06

  Before The Apprentice, Donald Trump was kind of a washed-up businessman. He had declared bankruptcy, you know, his casinos had failed.

• 35:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  So when the opportunity to host a new survivor-ish business show came up, he suddenly had a chance to revive that persona, kayfabe for the 21st century.

• 35:15Speaker 07

  My name's Donald Trump, and I'm the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place, model agencies, the Miss Universe pageant, casinos, and private resorts like Mar-a-Lago. I'm looking for The Apprentice.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  People assumed, or Trump supporters at least, that if he's a wealthy, successful, powerful businessman...

• 35:39Speaker 05

  You don't make a billion dollars being an idiot.

• 35:42Speaker 06

  He must also be really good at everything else.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  I think he's smart enough to run the country. I grew up with my family loving Trump.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  He's got a little Reagan in him, too, which is always a good thing. So make America great again. Make America great again.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  That is the heart of this new movement.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  And then bringing it all back to the rage machine.

• 36:11Speaker 05

  As the Trump campaign helps stoke America's outrage. Get her out of here. Protesters have always been part of the cost of doing this.

• 36:19Speaker 06

  Stoked anxiety, fear, rage.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Little catchphrase is the candidate's version of what the apprentice used to say. You're fired, you're fired, you're fired. And then promised he was the only one who could help. This, in fact, is our new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream. See, it is the reality TV formula, right?

• 36:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  During the years when Trump went from apprentice host to president of the United States, reality TV also got a makeover, thanks to a couple factors.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Reality television itself is becoming sort of focused on celebrities in a way that it hadn't been before. Some jabroni just asked my daughter on a date. That would be awesome.

• 37:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  No, she's not going out with it, not as long as my name's Al Thogun. The Writers Guild of America went out on strike and we took our- And a writer's strike in 2007 led to a boom in new, cheaper-to-make, unscripted reality TV shows.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Would you stop taking pictures of yourself? Your sister's going to jail.

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Kim came into her prime exactly as social media was becoming the way of the world. That's lightning in a bottle, timing.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Jeff Jenkins. I'm the founder of JJP, Jeff Jenkins Productions. I've been the executive producer of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and all of its spinoffs for the first decade of its existence.

• 37:53Speaker 07

  911, what are you reporting? This is, this is AC. I have OJ in the car.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  Mr. Kardashian was one of the attorneys representing OJ, and that unique last name, Kardashian, was kind of broadcast around the world.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  If you grow up with that and it's seeping into your pores, it just becomes part of who you are.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  When I first saw video of the entire family, that bell goes off. Maybe Keeping Up with the Kardashians is the reality Brady Bunch. I hate you all.

• 38:40Speaker 05

  Welcome to my family.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  I'm Kim Kardashian. Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Chris.

• 38:49Speaker 05

  Bruce Jenner, Rob, Kendall and Kylie, baby sisters of a second marriage.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  Like all of us, they're a dysfunctional family, just like ours. That's relatable. They may fight, but any outsider, you're not gonna mess with us. I do think their dysfunction is kind of at a Shakespearean level. Kim and Kris headed for divorce just 72 days after tying the knot.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  It wasn't rare for her, especially when it came to her ex, Lamar. Got its first look at Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic hero turned reality.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Her hair appears to be styled like an Afro. Teens are using a shot glass prescription bottles to pump up their lips like Kylie Jenner. Critics say that the photos are an example of cultural appropriation. Kim Kardashian breaks down in tears over her marriage troubles with Kanye West on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

• 40:02Speaker 05

  They're coming up on being the longest running reality show, period, in history. And they have built a multi-billion dollar brand off of sharing their lives.

• 40:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  Some have nicknamed them America's royal family. Others see them as more of a brand than a family, and that at least isn't totally new.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  We're so used to seeing the queen as head of state. There's almost something unreal about her. It's actually her family that make her real, the divorces, the scandals, the family rifts.

• 40:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  And back in the 1960s, John F. Kennedy, who came to power at the same time TVs became a fixture in every American home, used his made-for-TV smile and charm to captivate the country.

• 40:52Speaker 05

  People just really not only loved Kennedy, but developed a parasocial relationship with his family.

• 41:00Rund Abdelfatah?

  People wanted to know everything about them. And the gossip mill was always turning with some new story. Did Kennedy smoke pot? Why was the Queen of England mad at Jackie? Was Kennedy having an affair with Marilyn Monroe? Folks like Marilyn Monroe, perhaps unwittingly, were in some ways also living in a reality show. But what makes the Kardashians different is they didn't start as politicians or actors or singers. Their story began with a high-profile murder case and a sex tape.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Cue Ray J, sexy cannot. I'm just kidding. We're gonna keep it classy.

• 41:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  And the reality TV machine transformed them into one of the most influential families on the planet, a symbol of a new version of the American dream, one of wealth, excess, and celebrity, tailored for a world where we ourselves are branded content. But making it work is a dream that's attainable for only a very few.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  The facts bear out that there is very limited economic mobility in our country. But because of American exceptionalism, individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstraps culture, people really believe that they can.

• 42:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  The trade-off? Constantly having a camera track your every move, watching you in your most vulnerable moments, and letting the world judge you for it. Kim, whose destiny is this experience of being on television and sharing, had very few boundaries. She will reassure me. No, keep rolling.

• 42:46Speaker 05

  Funny, I'm the Marilyn and the Jack. What is performance? And what's reality? Welcome. You've got mail. When I think about myself as a teenager, first on the internet, what was the number one rule? You don't share personal information about yourself with strangers on the internet. And, you know, fast forward 20 years later. Goodbye. What are we all doing? We're sharing everything about our lives with strangers on the internet. Everybody has a smartphone. Everybody has a camera on them at all times.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  There's this intense expectation that not only are you going to record every aspect of your life, but that it's going to look absolutely perfect and beautiful. And there's no end. Just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling forever and ever and ever.

• 43:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  Do you think that people today in our modern worlds are more lonely than they've ever been?

• 44:05Speaker 05

  I do.

• 44:12Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, the realities of love and loneliness.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  This is Eric Massey from Amsterdam, and you're listening to Throughline, one of the best podcasts there are.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from ProLon with their five-day fasting mimicking diet, a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready to cook pizza, no antibiotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 45:21Speaker 00

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• 45:52Speaker 05

  Part three. You found love in a hopeless place. I almost sang the Rihanna song, but I wouldn't do it because I feel like that would be the take you use.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Here he is, The Bachelor.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Why on earth are you doing this? I was thinking that I want to meet someone great. Well, really, the easy part is going to be meeting these 25 women. The tough part is deciding which 15 you're going to invite to get to know you a little bit better. These are real women, and they are really looking for a husband.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  I mean, if this is going to be a fairy tale, how perfect would that be?

• 46:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  The idea of a soulmate, of the one, was around way before The Bachelor. No matter what I ever do or say, Heathcliff. I've loved you since I was 11. We'll always have Paris. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. You complete me. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

• 46:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Bachelor, which has been on TV for more than 20 years now, fused reality with that fantasy and made us believe we could have it too.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  I want to be everything to you. I want to be everything for you.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  And then it comes right to this romantic fairy tale conclusion. It ends with a proposal and a beautiful diamond ring. And so what we're seeing, right, is the fairy tale.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Bring in Bachelor producer. Like, a lot of-

• 47:30Speaker 04

  People think it's like, oh, let's just find the craziest, you know, person to get good ratings. But it's actually not because to have people watch, you have to buy into the fantasy. And then to buy into the fantasy, you have to know that, you know, there are potentially great matches for people.

• 47:55Speaker 06

  Sometimes when something's really hokey, it almost gives us permission to get lost in it because it's kind of like, you know, this is silly, right? We all know this is a construction, right? Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, we suspend disbelief. It allows us to sort of lower our defenses and kind of fully indulge.

• 48:11Speaker 06

  But also, I think the real always seeps out.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Even before the pandemic struck, this was the lonely century. Technology has led to substituting online connections for offline in-person connections.

• 48:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  And ultimately, I think that has been harmful. The lonelier we get, the more seductive the fantasy that we'll find real human connection becomes. And the easier it is to feel invested in shows like The Bachelor, where the engagement ring is the ultimate grand prize.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  We have our favorites, right? Our proxies, who we want to win, who we start to form parasocial relationships with.

• 48:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  And as modern love becomes increasingly online and competitive, reality TV has evolved to mirror today's dating dilemmas.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  In my head, it is really easy to sift out F-boys. But y'all be so confused. It'd be like, how did this happen? Oh, my God, I thought he was this. And it was like, sis, is you gone?

• 49:19Speaker 04

  And that is why we're here. F-Boy Island.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  They're not really about love and dating. They're about something else and they're really just sort of competitive shows anyway. They're more like, they're kind of like Survivor in some ways.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  It's almost like an enactment, right, of the dating apps. It's just like, kind of swipe. I mean, certainly, there's a lot more physicality, but just going through partners.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  He was making me feel uncomfortable. We're gonna be tree buddies. I've been in like, situations.

• 49:55Speaker 05

  I'm kidding.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  You know, I have a couple of seconds where I'm deciding if I want to swipe left or swipe right. And they're kind of curating this image, and if you can't curate that image, right, does that mean that that avenue is closed to you? And I think different people, you know, some people will say, no, I don't have a problem with it. But I think the majority, if you ask the majority, right, they're going to say, if you're not conventionally attractive and don't meet sort of X, Y, and Z criteria, you're not going to get any matches. And then what do you do? Right? Where do you go to actually meet somebody that you can make a connection with?

• 50:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  That question has led to frustration, hopelessness, and a sense of grievance that's flourishing online and reflecting back into our TV shows.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Cue the razor machine. Again. You interrupted our date because you couldn't handle me and her alone. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  That's not fair.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  And I don't want it. We made experience, right, this emotion, right, of schadenfreude. Such a great word. Happiness at the misfortune of others. When they get into fights, when they, when they get too drunk and embarrass themselves. You've embarrassed me in front of everyone. You've made me look stupid in front of everyone. So, yeah, I'm going to re-ask.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  I think that it's fascinating that a lot of contemporary shows around love are much more focused on relationship dynamics. 90 Day Fiance, Married at First Sight.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  This is a revolutionary new social experiment. This is the first time an experiment like this has ever been done in the US. Four experts intend to use scientific research to arrange three marriages.

• 51:50Speaker 06

  Essentially, what happens after people find each other, as opposed to treating marriage, for instance, as the ultimate goal or the end of the story, right? It's, we're kind of like picking up after Cinderella and Prince Charming get married and being like, so what were the expectations like now that she was back in the castle? Like, what happened then?

• 52:13Speaker 06

  Why, it's like a dream. A wonderful dream come true.

• 52:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  I'm so sick of this. Go away then, go away. Are you happy? No. The fantasy is breaking down. And to keep us hooked, reality shows about love are acknowledging more and more just how hard it is not only to find human connection, but to sustain it.

• 52:37Speaker 06

  Like, I really would love it if you could just kind of like get more into like a husband mentality. Those quieter moments when people are having a conversation about, I can't believe you did, like, that's when the real slips out. Like, what's your expectation? Do you think you're just gonna build me into who you want me to be? I view these shows as acknowledging for viewers a growing cynicism, quite frankly, around like traditional models and narratives around love and around relationships. Whether it's reality television or like classic Hollywood cinema, media has always been a site of fantasy projection.

• 53:22Speaker 06

  It's a place for us to work out our hopes, our desires, our anxieties, our fears. And I think reality television serves that purpose really, really well. Life is a series of events that don't make narrative sense. There aren't neat conclusions. So, reality television provides that for us. You know, there's a way that people talk about television and like in media and reality TV within that is being a reflection of reality. I actually think it's a refraction of reality. It's taking things that are happening in real life and sort of skewing them and sometimes presenting them back to us in ways that are perfectly aligned with reality.

• 54:05Speaker 06

  And in some ways are skewed in such a way that make us question what we thought we knew about reality.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Okay, cue the final scene of The Truman Show, when the show's creator finally speaks directly to Truman after televising him without his knowledge since the day he was born.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  I have been watching you your whole life.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  You can't leave, Truman. You belong here.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Say something.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Say something, goddammit. You're on television. You're live to the whole world. Bring up Throughline ending music.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  And roll credits.

• 55:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Arablouei. This episode was produced by me and

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Larns Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Yolanda Sangwe.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Casey Minor. Kristina Kim. Devon Kadyama. Amiri Teller. Jennifer Etienne.

• 55:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thank you to Cher Vincent, Nidhri Eaton, Tamar Charney, and Anya Grunman. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed by Gilli Moon. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani. Naveed Marvi. Sho Fujiwara. And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at [email protected]. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number, too. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.

• 56:12Speaker 07

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics, proudly presenting the acclaimed new crime thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. The Daily Beast raves, "A perfect crime film." John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls "instantly classic." Opens only in theaters October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30.

• 56:44Speaker 07

  This message comes from Liv Right, publisher of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.