Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Joe Pyne: The Man Who Invented Right Wing Talk Radio

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Robert is joined by Tom Reimann to discuss Joe Pyne. https://gofund.me/75c79974 FOOTNOTES: https://timeline.com/hot-seat-wally-george-edccf13491cf https://www.ocweekly.com/remembering-the-time-ocs-wacky-conservative-talk-show-host-wally-george-stood-up-to-white-supremacists/ https://joeleisenberg.medium.com/exposed-donald-trump-is-wally-george-bcb2f2040c0f https://web.archive.org/web/20200226051215/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-11-ca-1344-story.html https://variety.com/2003/scene/people-news/wally-george-1117893638/ https://www.ocweekly.com/here-lies-wally-george-6428079/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/21/why-were-all-just-living-in-morton-downey-jr-s-talk-show-slime/?request-id=76a6a7b6-5e2f-4120-8982-74c4046cbff4&pml=1 https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-morton-downey-jr-documentary-20150817-story.html https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=108365&page=1 https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/12/opinions/smerconish-morton-downey-era/index.html https://archive.is/mKfyB#selection-343.0-351.321 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/joe-pyne-first-shock-jock-180963237/ https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.saturdayeveningpost.com/uploads/reprints/Hate_Hour/index.html?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAI3QGKNAHC7QBOIAA%2F20210921%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20210921T071203Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=871e048df2cb9da18c7eaae72514a8270428fd10ce5f4d0846d270d1ad1a7ffd https://www.thebdr.net/joe-pyne-talk-radio-pioneer/ https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-media-controversy-ignites-over-the-case-of-tawana-brawley https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/05/209194252/15-years-later-tawana-brawley-has-paid-1-percent-of-penalty https://www.kanw.com/post/racial-backdrop-tawana-brawley-case  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Robert here. If you haven't heard, recently, about a month ago, my dad took very ill, maybe more like two months ago now. I wound up spending almost a solid month in Texas in the ICU with him every day and eventually hospice. The short answer to this is that he passed and I did not get a lot of work done for a while. We are taking another rewind week.

Next week it'll be new content again, new content for the foreseeable future after this, but we're taking one more week so that I can get back ahead on stuff. I decided to run this series of three episodes that we did a couple of years back with Tom Ryman about some of the first right-wing talk show grifter types, the guys who really set the stage for people like Tucker Carlson. I wanted to do that because Tom, unfortunately, is also dealing with a health scare for somebody close to him. His wife Marina, who's also a wonderful person, a long time friend of mine, has a high risk pregnancy

and is going to be in the hospital for probably the foreseeable future until she has the kid. She's about seven months in right now. So it's a sketchy situation for them, unfortunately, and they are in need of some money to help cover their medical bills. So if you wanna help out these two great people, and if you don't know Tom, check out Gamefully Unemployed.

That's his podcast network. They do a lot of great TV show, movie reviews. They have a great show about the X-Files, about how crazy Fox Mulder is, where they go through every episode. It's one of my favorite things to listen to. But if you want to help them out, go to Support Marina's High Risk Pregnancy Journey

on GoFundMe. You can just Google GoFundMe, Support Marina's High Risk Pregnancy Journey on GoFundMe. You can just Google GoFundMe, Support Marina's High Risk Pregnancy Journey and donate there. So thank you all very much. We will be back with new stuff next week, but we've got three great rewinds for you this week.

If you haven't listened to them before, you will enjoy them. If you have, why not listen again? This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured.

They said my head should be cut off. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste. And that's where the perspective shift comes, that it's not a waste that everything you've done has built you to where you are now.

This is She Pivots, the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them. Join me, Emily Tish Sussman, every Wednesday on She Pivots. Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here, host of podcast Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I've dedicated my life to fighting crime and helping crime victims. For a decade, I prosecuted violent felonies. Every day is a mission.

Every day is a chance to stop crime and keep one more person safe. Listen to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. What's desperately horny my Saddam Hussein's best friend. I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards. The only podcast whose host owns two kittens named Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein's best friend.

And due to a severe veterinarian shortage in Northern Oregon, still can't get them spayed and neutered for another nine days. And Saddam Hussein's best friend is in heat and desperately trying to fuck her brother. This has been an update for all of you. Why did you have to, like maybe she didn't want you to disclose that information.

Now you're just. She has been disclosing that she wants to fuck to literally every living creature that gets near her. If she had a microphone, she'd be saying the same thing. She will not stop presenting. But she does it and she did not give consent. It is, it has been a problem. We are keeping them away

cause I do not want incest kittens. Yeah Although they may have been incest kit. There's no way to know In in citizens. Yeah Kit kits Who is that other voice on this podcast that people are here? Oh, well the only person I would ever have on to talk about kitten incest my friend Tom Ryman I would ever have on to talk about kitten incest, my friend Tom Ryman. Hello Tom.

Hey, hi, what's up? No, I'm glad you got me on to talk about these cats. This is gonna be a three hour episode about my cat's sex life. Tom, you are the co-founder of Gamefully Unemployed, one of my favorite podcast networks, hosts one of my most listened to shows, Fox Molder is a Maniac,

which is a beautiful breakdown of Fox Mulder and what a goddamn lunatic he is. Yeah. Tom. It's really fascinating when you watch the show with that context. It changes the show. It truly does.

You guys do a lot of great stuff, great movie reviews. And I like role-playing games. People can find you Gamefully unemployed on Patreon. Tom, you also are, what, an editor at Collider? I forget what your job title is. I am senior editor of features at Collider. Senior editor of features at Collider. And you and I worked together for all of my 20s,

more or less, at a little website called Cracked that pivoted to video and went the way of the dodo. We got dragged to hell by Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I did come across a beautiful tweet earlier today that you'll appreciate, Tom. Oh good, yeah, can't wait to hear it. Great radio, great radio, yeah. It's like, hold on while I look for something.

A nil dash. Horse broke its leg, so he had to take it out back and help it pivot to video. Yep. Yep. Oh, Tom, how are you doing today? I'm doing okay. I'm doing pretty good, thanks.

You know, how about you? How about yourself? Well, Tom, I'm thinking about the fact that there is a vast, incredibly well-financed, right-wing media operation that is seemingly dedicated to pushing a violent civil conflict that leads to a death toll that's truly astronomical in this nation.

Do you think about that a lot? So good, right? So you're doing good? Doing great. Yeah, no, I've tried to think about it less. In the past few months, I was trying to take a break, but I'm getting plugged back into it. You sure are.

And it's, yeah, God damn it. It's just, it doesn't seem like anything's gotten any better. It sure hasn't. It's fucking relentless. And there's this- We got through the election, we're like, oh, thank God. And then, nope, that didn't go away. Yeah, no, it turns out that you can't vote

these kinds of problems away. And today we're gonna talk about where some of these problems started. Specifically, we're going to talk about the men who made right-wing media, and particularly like right-wing talk media. So today you've got guys like Stephen Crowder, Ben Shapiro, obviously Tucker Carlson being the big,

the big mamma jamma. You had people like Rush Limbaugh. I like, I like all of, all three of those people, all four of those people you just named got picked dead last for kickball for very different reasons. Yeah, they sure did. What?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And they made it the entire world's problem. Yes, they sure did. Okay. And they made it the entire world's problem. Yes, they sure did. So all of these folks, you know, some of them, they all do slightly different variations of the same thing. And they're not all, you know, Rush is the only one who's like really a talk radio host, but they all have, you know, podcasts and YouTube. They all do the modern equivalent of talk radio and and of like yeah, we're gonna talk about basically the the people who

Invented the media space that these guys all live in now. These are the very first right-wing media personalities in a big way. So these are these are the people who Prepared the the soil for all of the different, you know, kind of quasi-fascist grifters we have today. And they are, they're not all bastards in the traditional sense. They're not all people who on their own, if you didn't consider where everything went, would have qualified as bastards.

They're all, I think, unpleasant people. But I think what's interesting is how they start off and kind of where they end, like the kind of people who inhabit this space at the beginning and the kind of people who inhabit it now. So this is gonna be a fun episode, Tom. You're gonna listen to a lot of clips that you're just really gonna dislike.

Oh good, oh, I'm so excited. So pumped! Yeah! I'm gonna be so mad soon! I can't wait! You really are. So one of the things that inspired this was coming across the fact that Tucker Carlson very recently alleged that the purpose of vaccine requirements in the military was to, quote, identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the free thinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn't love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately.

The fuck is he talking about? He's getting into high T, testosterone's low if you're getting Vax, that soy boy shit. Not choking on your own rotting lungs is soy. It's become, I mean, it's always been the case, but like in the past year or two, it's really become obvious that they just let him go on and say whatever He just says anything

Yeah, and I I'm starting with Tucker because he's he's just off the fucking rails completely and this is the end route Of the journey that we're gonna trace the start of today And the thing that Tucker's been saying that most concerns me is he started sharing great replacement style conspiracy theories Which are alleging that Democrats plan to quote change the population of this country in order to maintain power This is functionally the same argument Brenton Tarrant the Christchurch shooter made in the manifesto He wrote before shooting 50 Muslim worshippers to death His manifesto was titled the great replacements the same argument that Yeah, try I'm trying I'm trying to remember my behind the bastards

extended universe. That all comes from the Turner Diaries, right? I mean, it doesn't come from, the Turner Diaries was like a big, definitely was pushing that, but this goes back a while for, I mean, you could even draw a line to like the original Nazis

and kind of some of the shit Hitler was saying about the Aryan blood getting watered down from interbreeding in one. For sure, yeah. Yeah, it's a big white nationalist talking point. And the fact that this good went from, great replacement went from like fringe Nazi murderer manifesto in 2019 to Tucker Carlson

talking to three million people on a major news network in 2021 shows like how fast things go now and how dangerous this all is. And I think it's important to start the stakes Because it doesn't begin that way the guys who start this kind of right-wing media space Are in the first guy we're gonna talk to you is in a lot of ways kind of pleasant At least compared to what came after I don't think he's so I would have gotten along with but it's don't believe you It's it's it's weird. We'll see how you think. Okay.

Yeah. And we discussed, this is probably going to be these episodes with a nice companion to our two-parter on Rush Limbaugh with Mr. Paul F. Tompkins. So, you know, if you're looking for a good four episodes spree to go together, listen to these two and then listen to those while you're- Oh, sweet. Having a very long shit or on a road trip. So first guy we're talking about, Tom, is Joe Pine, P-Y-N-E. Joe Pine was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on December 22nd, 1924.

His dad- Well, there's your problem. December 22nd or 1924? Pennsylvania. Oh, Pennsylvania. All of the above. Yeah, get it out of there. We don't need that state.

So you look at those three pieces of information, like this is like a 50-50 shot, this guy's gonna be a real piece of shit. Pennsylvania in the 20s, yeah, and a December baby, fuck that. His dad was a brick maker and his mom was a mom, which was pretty much the only job most women could expect to work at that point in time and place. When Joe was little, his family moved to Atlantic City, which is like Las Vegas, but less fun and much sadder because it's on the East Coast. There's a good Bruce Springsteen song about that.

He had a difficult childhood. Joe had a pronounced stutter and kids back then were even shittery about such things than they are today. He was bullied relentlessly. When Joe was 11, he lost his younger brother to an auto accident, which was not uncommon in those days because cars didn't crumple and seatbelts were but a fever dream in Ralph Nader's eye. By the time Joe was a teenager, his family left Atlantic City, which is always a good decision, and moved back to Chester, which is a more questionable decision. Right. It's all day new. It's all day new. We're going to pile the family into our giant, unstoppable, seatbeltless car and drive back to Chester.

He went to high school and he joined the Marines in 1942, which was a popular decision at the time. He joined as early as he possibly. Yeah, yeah. For whatever reason, a lot of guys joined the military in 1942. Must've been good ads. Something's about to happen. He joined as the early, like the first day he possibly could.

And obviously the US had decided to enter World War II at this point, he was deployed against the empire of Japan and he fought in some of the war's worst battles across the South Pacific. Joe survived the Battle of Okinawa, which is one of the like, like one of the worst fights you could possibly have been in that war, real, real bad battle Okinawa.

During that battle, a Japanese plane bombed the forward base he was stationed on, seriously injuring his knee. He returned home scarred and seasoned by heavy combat. Joe had won three bronze stars for Valor in battle and a Purple Heart. So he definitely saw some shit. This is not one of like the draft dodgy right wing guys. Right. This is not Ben Shapiro writing war fanfiction like he went to war and got bombs dropped on his leg Yeah, yeah, he saw some of the worst shit you could have seen in that particular conflict So he returns home real fucked up

Probably with a head full of PTSD, but they didn't know PTSD was it they saw I'm assuming he just drank washed it down with cigarettes real head full of horny cats when he got home he didn't know precisely what he wanted to do with his life but he was certain that it involved putting himself in front of people and entertaining them in order to do that he felt he would need to deal with his speech impediment first. Using his G.I. Just wondering what led him to that decision. I don't know. He relentlessly bullied, went to war, got bombed, his dead brother comes back. He's like, I'm going to be an entertainer.

I'm going to be an entertainer. I'm going to be a star. Where does that impulse come from? Yeah, we just don't know enough about his early life to know like what the fuck was going on. Maybe he just wanted to show people, my speech impediment doesn't define me. I don't know. Sure.

I beat the Japanese, I can beat stuttering. So using his GI Bill, Joe enrolled in a drama school. He forced himself through agonizing hours of live performances in front of his classmates to overcome his stutter. He locked himself away in his room and would perform hours and hours of speech drills every day and eventually he did overcome his speech impediment. Once he graduated, Joe became a taxi driver in Chester.

He continued to work on his speech while he was driving people around. Eventually he decided he'd come far enough, and he started a career as a broadcaster. By this point- The way you phrased that made it sound like he was doing his speeches to his passengers. I think he was. Hold on, now listen.

Now listen to this. Now give me some notes, all right? I got a tight five, I'm gonna run it by ya. There's no seat belts, so you better laugh. We haven't invented seat belts yet. You are really dependent upon me. So he does this and yeah, he decides he's finished by like late 1946. Now again, 1940s, radio is king.

TV's coming around but that's still not the number one way people get entertained. You're really, radio is the top of the world, and they assume it will be forever. He was able to convince a station manager in Lumberton, North Carolina to give him a job on WTSB. The pay was $25 a week, which was not good money even back then, and he failed to stand out enough that he felt he had any hope of advancement. So after a year, he returned home, dejected. But Joe kept pushing until he got another job at WPWA in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania.

He got into a vicious argument with his boss while still new on the job and was quickly fired. Next, he moved to WILM of Wilmington, Delaware, where he was also quickly fired. Yeah, you get the feeling he was not easy to work with at this point. Thankfully email didn't exist. So these people couldn't tell each other about Joe. He moved back to Chester after this and then to Kenosha next, where he got a job with a new network called WILP.

His job in all of these places was very straightforward. Introduce and play records with a minimum of fanfare. He was not being hired to be a personality. He was just, he put the music on. So what did he do to get fired from the other places? He was just a dick. He was just yelling at his boss. Was he just riffing?

Yeah, that was a big part of it. He would riff a lot. He got in trouble in Kenosha, and I think he'd gotten in trouble before. He would riff on politics and current events, which was not what he was supposed to do at the time. So his bosses are like, people are tuning in to hear,

I don't know what the big music is, the big bopper. Nobody wants you, nobody gives a shit about what you have to say, Joe. They want to hear Chantilly Lace. Yeah, put on Chantilly Lace and shut your fucking mouth. Smoke a cigarette. Yeah, the kind of riffing that he thought was the future of radio was simply not done at the time. Commenters were part of the news department and jockeys were not.

Disc jockeys were there to entertain and he'd been hired as a disc jockey. So if you were going to be a commentator, if you were talking about the news, you didn't like give your opinion. You tried to just kind of like read, you know, like the AP wire basically. WLIP though took call-ins. Listeners could dial in and request songs. But Joe started insisting on asking his listeners what they thought about the political issues of the day, which was the first time anyone had ever really done that on radio. Like take call-ins and he kind of forced the issue of making them political. One WLIP employee at the time recalled,

he wanted to chat with them, but in those days there was no way to put a phone line on the air. Joe would say, uh-huh, and mm-hmm, and then tell the listeners what the caller said. So this is like, this is the very first talk radio. He's just on the phone with them, be like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, all right,

so here's what he said. So let me tell you what Dennis from Poughkeepsie just said. And you're like listening to almost dead air while he's listening to the Birth of Talk. He's just on the phone. But this is literally the Birth of Talk radio. This is the first time anybody does this. Joe Pine, and he moves along eventually. To explain that process, I'm going to read a quote from a write-up in Smithsonian Magazine.

One caller objected to the young DJ's pro-union opinions. Do you know anything sir about the history of labor management relations? Pine asked the man after a moment of dead air. He continued no you keep your voice down pine was an Expert interrupter this caller barely paused for breath listening pine had an idea According to Regani who worked there. he held the phone receiver to his microphone. Now the caller was live on the air and call-in radio was born. So that's 1949 in Kenosha. Joe Pine invents call-in radio

by literally holding a phone up to the mic. In fairness, some random dude calling in to request Frankie Valli, who had very strong opinions about labor unions This guy's such an asshole I gotta put him on He's so pissed about it That's a fair point. You gotta hear what a piece of shit this guy is Let me invent a new discipline that will later ratchet the country towards violence It was born in stupid anger and it it will kill us all with stupid anger. To stupid anger it will return. Yeah. It was born in stupid anger and it will kill us all with stupid anger.

And to stupid anger, it will return. Yeah, perfect. What a beautiful way for that to get started. Honestly, yeah. And I love, cause this guy gives birth to right wing radio, but the start of talk radio was him trying to defend like the right to unionize, which is- Right, that was, I was not expecting that to be the issue

You said I was like really that you could be pretty Conservative and pro-union in those because it wasn't it was more racist back then obviously everything was but politics in some ways was less Dumb it wasn't it hadn't gotten to the point where it is with like the right-wing left-wing like conservatism is such a part of my like Identity that like I I have this vested interest in demonizing anything. You did have a lot of, I mean, one of the union strongholds in the US for a long time was West fucking Virginia. People fought to the death for unions

at West Virginia with rifles. And now it's Joe Manchin country. So, sorry sorry West Virginia but like yeah the things were different than politically is what I'm saying and and yeah so Joe was fired I think this kind of is part of what got him fired because his boss at the station was like you're supposed to be playing songs, Joe. What the fuck are you doing? All I want you to do. Holding the phone up to the goddamn microphone. Put on the goddamn wreck.

Put on the fucking twist. Yeah. Do you want to get a Rush Limbaugh? That's how you get a Limbaugh. This is how we get a Limbaugh. Put the phone down. Put on the goddamn music. I don't want to listen to Stephen Crowder's heart surgery problems in 25 years 45 years How many years a hundred years 60 years? Whatever? It's too many years Tom 500 years. Yeah

It's my mother's go nobody's nobody for him even alive anymore. No, no God. Thank God So despite yeah Inventing call-in radio Joe's boss did not appreciate him He wanted someone to read ads and introduce songs the two fought constantly at one point Joe demanded a raise which led to a fight Another WLIP host later recalled stumbling in on the melee Joe was yelling she recalled He had one hand on our bosses lapel. He picked up a typewriter and threw it against the wall Oh fuck So that gives you a little bit of an idea of like why this guy keeps having problems with his co-workers.

Yeah, he almost said that was dangerous. He almost scored some points of me there though because you were like he picked up a typewriter. I'm like here we go. Here we go. Throw it against the wall. Hit him in the face. Fair compromise. Alright, yeah throw it against the wall. So he gets fired again and he continues to move around frequently. You know, while he's going from radio station to radio station, he marries a beauty queen. He divorces her a year later, cause she gets sick of him.

While he's working at WYLM, he starts a show called It's Your Nickel. So named because the nickel was the standard cost for a call on a payphone. And this was the first, yeah, proper radio talk show. The It's Your Nickel. So he does get a job doing the thing that he invented. And that became a phrase like,

it's your dime or it's your nickel or it's your dollar. That's like a phrase. Exactly. Yeah, and I don't know if that's the, he may have just been using that phrase because it was already like what people said. But yeah, I mean, he may have invented it. I have not done that research, Tom.

Someone at home will. Something that sticks out to me about old Joe Pine is that he has trouble forming lasting relationships. Yeah, seems like it. He goes from job to job, marries a woman, divorces her late. He seems like he might be impossible to be around. It does.

And it also, again, this is one of those black box of history things. I do kind of wonder how much of this is a PTSD? Cause that can make it real hard to get along with people and hard to regulate your emotions. It might make you more likely to throw a typewriter. He did get bombed in one of the most notorious battles of World War II.

Yeah, who knows? It's one of those things, it's like lead exposure, which I'm sure Joe Pine was also exposed to a tremendous amount of lead. Like you wonder how much of an impact did this have? Unlike the way people were back then I wonder how many people were just walking around poisoned and crazy Yeah, 70 years ago. Just because that's the way it was Yeah I mean there's there's there's a lot of like pretty strong evidence that at least the lead exposure may have been part of why there

Was so much more violence back, even just like 20 something years ago. Cause everybody was inhaling lead and eating lead off the walls. And I do want some delicious lead, Tom. There's nothing that goes with a nice brie. You get a lead chip and you just dip it in a brie. That's a good, nice mix of sweet and savory.

Yeah, like a lead flight. Yeah, like a lead flight, like a flight of lead. I'm gonna start a leadster on, Tom. I think you should, yeah, a lead bar. Lead in every food, yeah, a little lead bar. Get the lead out, we'll call it. A lead chicken in every pot. Now Tom, you know who else will expose you

to tremendous amounts of lead? The X-Man Colossus? That is probably accurate. I don't know as much about X-Men as you. But the products and services that support this podcast certainly will expose you to lead. That is the only guarantee we make about our sponsors. Every one of them filled with lead. Yep, it's a powerful guarantee. Mm-hmm.

When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned. You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules. And yet Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you.

I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here and with it a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast. I'm your host, Gabrielle Collins. And this season we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton. Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad is betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor? Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who

holds Lady Whistledown's pen. We're discussing it all. I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, A Really Good Cry. Subscribe to catch a new episode healthier life. We're gonna be talking with some of my best friends. I didn't know we were gonna go there, Amir. I'm gonna go there, because this is... People that I admire. When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy,

which is different than empathy, right? And basically have conversations that can help us get through this crazy thing we call life. I already believe in myself. I already see myself. And so when people give me an opportunity, I'm just like, oh great, you see me too. We'll laugh together, we'll cry together,

and find a way through all of our emotions. Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhie Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

And I wanted to start this by letting my audience know that our guest today, Tom Ryman, has a bit of a superpower, which is, and everyone who knows you knows this, Tom, which is that whenever you mention a movie and you'll talk about like, you know that guy who was in the background in that scene in American Beauty? And you'll talk about like, you know that guy who was in the background in that scene in American Beauty? And you'll be like, oh yeah, it's such and such.

And this is the other films they were in. I've never known anybody who can do that the way that you can. It's... Yeah, I know. You're the human IMDb. I thought you were gonna tell everybody about my optic blasts. So I'm glad you didn't spill that secret. Keeping that a secret for when I have to rob a bank.

No, I've been, I don't know, I just, I do that. Like I keep an encyclopedic record of dates and like people in movies and stuff, I don't know. It's, I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. But it's just a thing I do, I don't know. It's almost a super, like it is kind of a superpower. Like it's really fun and it made like, when we were all, I mean, I lived together

with like half of the people we worked with had cracked and you were always over. And just the movie conversations with you and Dave were always a tremendous amount of fun. Which is part of why I listen to your podcasts. Oh, thanks, yeah. Now we lived in your room, remember? Oh yeah, you did.

Like the first three months we were in. No, we lived in your room. Remember? Oh, yeah you did I was I was doing redacted things in the mountains and mostly not home at that point in time. I'd forgotten about that Yeah, yeah, oh The days of our lives like sand through the hourglass Tom So like lead through the hourglass like lead through the hourglass. So Joe Pine gets his first proper radio talk show, It's Your Nickel on WILM. And again, he's out of there, he's in there. I think this is like his second time working for them. And this article from the broadcasters desktop resource

makes it clear what kind of show Joe ran, the very first radio talk show. Quote, in his nightly introduction, he said, the mic is open. My name's Joe Pine. I guess you know yours. This program is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas and to differences of opinion. I don't propose to have all the answers, but I do promise to talk about the things that interest you. So that's a nice little- There's that free exchange of ideas phrase. He did, I think, kinda mean it,

as opposed to the people who say it today. I think they're aping him, but I'll play you some clips from his. It's interesting. Now, the show did often become a shout fest, with Pine definitely in control. No topic was sacred, from sex to religion to politics. But when he felt a listener had gone on for too long or was making no sense, he would make a rude remark

like you're sick and hang up on the person. Enduring Pine's abusive rhetoric was the challenge for the audience, many of whom tried to debate him before he hung up on them. His views tended to be quite conservative most of the time and Pine seemed to dare his listeners to disagree with him. His style of arguing included using very derogatory terms. Known for being adept with words, his arsenal of insults and put downs became the stuff

of legends. Among his best known were, if your brains were dynamite, you couldn't blow your nose. There was also, go gargle with razor blades and take your teeth out, put them in backwards and bite your throat. Jesus Christ. At least the man's creative. That third one's pretty nice. Yeah, that's good. I'd heard the other two. I'm like, yeah, those are old standards. And then you turn your creative. That third one's pretty nice. Yeah, that's good.

I'd heard the other two, I'm like, yeah, those are old standards and then you turn your teeth around, I'm like, ooh. Yeah, my chance. He's jazzing now. So, this is in 1951 too, while he's in the middle of changing radio forever, his old war injury flares up.

Badly enough that surgeons have to amputate his left leg from the knee down. Shit. So he's back in the studio with a prosthetic limb soon after and while the fake leg was obvious to everyone who saw him He never meant he already it did get mentioned on air. We'll talk about that in a bit But he refused to mention it on air Judging by his pro-union views Joe is at least one at one point at least more of a moderate than he became But the longer he's on doing talk radio, he pulls further and further to the right. In 1953, he celebrated on air when the US electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, saying, we finally incinerated those

commies. I hope it was slow and painful. Good, uh, good shit. That's interesting that the longer, I mean, I'm sure you're gonna make this connection, but the longer he's on the air, the more conservative he pulls. And I wonder, could that be because having bad faith arguments to generate, we call them rage clicks now, but just to stoke controversy by needling people and by playing the devil's advocate just to get people heated and arguing to fuel the ratings for his own show? Yeah, I really don't know. I'm sure that was an element of it, because clearly he's going after controversy, he's going after rage, but also, we'll talk about it. He was not

always the guy you would expect. That's, yeah, so we're building that. So Joe had a keen understanding of how to communicate with the lowest common denominator in US politics. He told reporters quite without shame that radio was geared towards the mentality of 13 year old kids and that most Americans were politically apathetic and easy to persuade of just about anything. He claimed that he used shocking language

and would make extreme allegations in order to get people to think. He told the LA Times that while his critics called him a hate monger, all he really did was encourage stimulating dialogue. You see, he knows what he's doing, and I think that's a big part of why he gets more

right-wing in his, because it's easier to kind of, again, speak to the mentality of 13-year-old kids if you're just making these kind of reactionary arguments. He wants to piss people off so that they react and he gets a show out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a part of it. That's not all of it. Because he is, there were times when he would be challenged, it kind of depended on how it was. If he found someone interesting, even if they were coming in from a very different perspective,

he would let them talk and sometimes very respectfully. So he was not, well, he's the start and he's doing a lot of unpleasant stuff. He's also not, he's unequivocally a better person than Ben Shapiro was what I'm saying like right like his goal in any given conversation wasn't just to own them He would actually listen to people sometimes who were bringing up some pretty radical stuff. We'll get to that 1957 a little over after a little over six years on air Joe left WILM this time It was his own choice. He was famous at least locally and his salary was $42,000 a year which is almost ten times the average salary of for a man It's about 400 grand a year in like modern dollars like he was making real good money This time Joe left because his dreams had overgrown a very comfortable working condition

He traveled to Riverside, California And he got a job at a local radio station that quickly led to a TV job at KTLA in Los Angeles. He would later claim that his first TV show, which was essentially a filmed version of It's Your Nickel, had been a huge success, but the show lasted less than a year, and I found no clips of it anywhere. Joe moved back.

Yeah, yeah. I'd be surprised if there's any footage that still exists. There is a, we have some clips of his the show that come that came next bits because there's like a grassroots Archival effort to like digitize all of the old tape master tapes So after his first year in LA Joe moves back across the country to Chester Where he works for a Philadelphia TV station for a first time for that for a short time and then he goes back to WILM For a little while he licks his wounds. He seemed to know that a show like his,

a political talk show where people could scream about politics to a mass audience, was the wave of the future and was going to be huge on television, but the world wasn't ready quite yet. For a few years, Joe continued to broadcast, but in the early 1960s, he decided the time was finally right,

and he moved back to LA LA where he got a job at Kabc and I'm gonna quote from the broadcasters desktop resource again Once again, he polarized the audience with some listeners and guests complaining He was too caustic and others saying his candor was refreshing but as in Wilmington, he had people talking about him and his show From KBC he went over to KLAC in 1965, doing the 9pm to midnight shift. Never one to avoid controversial guests, he put Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan on the air, earning the displeasure of the American Jewish Committee and a warning from the FCC. He also had guests who believed in eugenics, guests who were

racists, guests with strange theories about past lives or UFOs, and the arguments continued. Controversy sold, Joe's salary ballooned to $200,000 a year, which is nearly two million a year by modern standards. Jesus Christ. NBC, yeah, he's making it bang. I mean, this is soon, he's giving people like what Tucker Carlson and stuff.

Now, I will be fair, when he has Nazis and KKK members on it so that he can scream at them like Like it's still there's a it's still problematic, but it's not as problematic as it is today where you have people affiliated with similar organizations Nazi horseshit yeah He was getting outrage clicks, but at least the understanding was people are going to hate these Nazis. Right, this is bad. At least that was like the understanding.

Yeah, at least that was the fucking understanding. So yeah. Again, you can still argue, I think it is pretty irresponsible to do that, but at least the understanding was like, fuck these guys, let's yell at them. No, let's hear them out. Yeah.

It's like, no. NBC Radio Network started syndicating his show nationally in March of 1966, and it was soon on more than 200 stations around the country. He called what he did fist in the mouth radio. And now that he was on a new time slot, the mid morning rather than the night, as he'd usually been before, his ratings exploded.

This is generally thought to be due to the fact that being on earlier in the day opened him up to a vast new audience of bored housewives. People were titillated. One of his networks advertised the show in a full-page newspaper spread, listing all the Nazis and Klansmen and other pieces of shit he'd had on his show and then concluding with, You may agree or disagree with Joe Pine. You may scream in rage at some of his remarks, but you won't turn him off. Yeah. I mean, what's the intent of that? Is that shaming me?

Is that like, is that like encouraging? Do you want me to feel bad? I don't know what the tone of that is. I do. But you won't turn him off. Yeah, you motherfucker. We can't do anything about it unless you turn him off. Yeah.

We want this motherfucker off the air, but we can't. You like him too much, you son of a bitch. We tried to look in the doors. He just shows up inside somehow. He has secret doors. So Joe was on both the radio and the TV and his television show alone earned him more money per year than Mickey Mantle made playing for the Yankees.

So he's making like more than Mickey Mantle money. Now professional sports players made less money in those days, but still he's raking it in. He was the top rated talk show host in the second largest market in the US. Yeah, it feels wrong that, I don't know. Yeah, like you said, professional athletes made less money back then, but like it feels wrong that like Mickey Mantle. like, should Mickey Mantle make like, yeah. I know who Mickey Mantle is.

If anyone, shouldn't he make all the money? No! So from Smithsonian Magazine, quote, at a time when TV's leading men included Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Andy Griffith, and Captain Kangaroo, Pine was the medium's first shock jock, a firebrand who invited hippies, civil rights activists, and Ku Klux Klansmen alike to take a hike or go gargle with razor blades.

By the mid-60s, he was the most popular TV radio voice in America. Johnny Carson had more television viewers, but Pine, with a syndicated TV show and 200-plus radio outlets, had an audience to rival Johnny's. Life magazine called him sadistic, a barroom tough, but millions turned in to watch the fireworks. When a guest advocating free love set off a melee, Pines audience charged the set and knocked it flat. Oh shit. One guest, the suave TV personality David Susskind, earned a chorus of boos for calling Pines program an orgy for morons. Host and guest both got a kick out of that. So it is like the first on-air fight Springer yeah yeah yeah he's also like Jerry Springer the first spring he's the first Geraldo and yeah Morton we'll be talking about Morton later like all of

it's not just like Tucker Carlson the type of fucking he like they cracked every aspect of this like he really did. He is an important man to know about. Like he really, he figured this out. He was, yeah, he figured some shit out. Most of it shit I wish no one had figured out, but he did figure it out. I can make millions if I put Nazis on the air.

Mm-hmm, yeah. Now I think it's probably a better time to give you a better idea of how Joe sounded because when you read it out the way I've put it together it probably sounds like he's like a stereotypical modern shock jock And while he was the prototype for that his actual broadcasting style was much more subdued and witty in this clip Joe interviews an early vegan activist in what he called his beef box Check it out that as you cannot hear the screams of a lamb in the slaughterhouse, you cannot hear the screams of your son on the battlefield.

I would like to ask you a meaningful question at this point. Are you a vegetarian? I am indeed. Do you ever eat tomatoes? I would say to you. Yes or no? For the last 3 three thousand years, man has created... Never mind, I'm asking you a question. Do you ever eat tomatoes?

For the last three thousand... Yes or no? Do you eat tomatoes? Of course I do. You do? Do you know that there is now scientific proof that when you cut a tomato it screams? There is electrical... There is electrical... You that when you cut a tomato, it screams. There is electrical. There is electrical.

You are a killer of tomatoes. My friend, the tomato doesn't pray. The tomato feels no pain. The tomato's blood doesn't kill it. It's killing tomatoes. The tomato does not swallow tomatoes. Take a walk. Goodbye.

Are you going to sing something? I would. All right. This is the tomato stump. I love you. I love you. As the animal dies, and you take the slaughter of that animal. All right, that's probably enough of that.

Mm, yeah. So yeah, what do you think of that, Tom? That was not what I was expecting. I know, right? He sounds like Walter Cronkite, and then he flips the fuck out. Yeah, and then he flips the fuck out. But he starts from this real low ebb. And he also does like, he says get off,

but then the guy's like, well, I want to sing. And he's like, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely yeah please do no this is great for me yeah that's going to be incredible content and that clip was from 66 Wow yeah 1966 feels extremely modern especially like almost be on TV today yeah his his extremely bad faith argument yeah it's all he's a he's a he's a trailblazer, Tom. Yeah, this guy, you could put this dude on TV right now and he would be the hottest thing.

Yeah, it's amazing. And he, there's a level of almost, yeah, it's just different than the way they mock people today. It's almost more, it's almost gentler in a weird way. He's not the same as what came after. Again, he's this weird mix of what we have today and like Walter Cronkite, it's fascinating. It's fascinating to just listen to his stuff.

When the civil rights movement kicked off, Joe devoted a tremendous amount of time to discussing the angry Negro, which it's more or less what you'd expect. Yeah. Oh boy. Oh boy. Can't wait to hear that clip. In one episode, he brought on several militant

black activists. I believe they were black Panthers. And in a heated moment during the show, I've not been able to find this clip, but it's very famous. During the show, he opens his desk drawer to show them his revolver and he threatens them with it on air. So he could go off.

He advocated bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, obviously. But he could also be a surprising man in part because he came from an era in which political figures could admit to learning something and changing their opinion. And in part because some of the issues that are now very aggressive are a lot less were a lot less Settled in those days in terms of like how it was gonna break down right or left So he conducted an interview with cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown And he started the interview by calling her a dingbat and then asked her to explain why girls should be considered equal to men in the workplace

But then he sat quietly while she gave her speech, like explaining her piece on women's liberation, and he applauded her at the end of it. He was certainly more polite to women than towards men, and more polite to white people towards black people. But even when interviewing people he clearly despised, Joe maintained an air that's just so much more congenial than what you see on TV today. Here he is talking to Paul Krasner, a left-wing magazine publisher who later went on to head high times.

So this is him talking with someone he fucking hates. Which deodorant does Lyndon Johnson use? Now what does that mean? What is that? Paul Krasner, what is that? Which deodorant does Lyndon Johnson use? That's your front page head. Yes.

Do you want to know which one? My brand name? No, I want to know what is that? What is the reason for that? Well, I think that the President of the United States is at such a height that people have to... Such a what? A height. A height.

He's put on such a pedestal that people have to realize that he is only a human being and does use a deodorant. Like you and me. And I'm a little worried about you. He's lighting a cigarette now. So yeah, that's like, it's clearly, again, this is not somebody he particularly respects, but it's also like, it's not a shouting debate,

I guess is what impresses, not impresses, is the thing that is interesting to me. Cause like, you don't have that kind of congenial distaste, is how it feels watching them. Yeah, he feels more like Carson than like Tucker Carlson at this point. Yeah. I wish I could find the thing, the interview

he does with those Black Panthers, where he shows them his revolver. Because I've heard different descriptions of it. Some that make it sound like he's threatening them with a gun of it some that make it sound like he's threatening them with a Gun and some that make it sound like he's just like well I have a gun too and like I really don't know I And I don't I don't know what the actual tone was in that either one is entirely possible based on what you've shown me Either one makes complete sense like he's yeah, he's more polite, but he's still

Oh for sure He's making bad faith arguments and he's being a shithead Yeah, and the interview with Krasner got markedly less friendly after the ad break from Smithsonian magazine quote Why do you print the most obscene words pine demanded? Do you edit your magazine because you were an unwanted child to which Krasner responds, no daddy. Their talk went downhill from there. He asked me about my acne scars, says Krasner, now 85. That was a low blow. I said, let me ask you something.

Do you take off your wooden leg before you make love to your wife? And his jaw dropped. According to Krasner, the audience gasped while Pine's producers averted their eyes. And the atmosphere became surrealistic. That's good TV though, right there. That's good TV though right there! That's good TV.

So the listeners know this, what was this clip, 67? Yeah, 67. Yeah, do you fuck your wife with your fake leg? Imagine that on TV! 1967! Yeah, Andy Griffith is the biggest name in entertainment. And this shit's on TV. Holy shit. Like you could see,

and that's part of the other thing that's interesting, I'm gonna guess a lot of his audience, if not most of it, weren't right wing. Like a lot of them were probably people who would like guys like Paul Krasner, but like wanna see shit like this on TV. People have these kind of like conversations. He'll talk to fucking anyone.

And he could surprise you. But before we get into that, Tom, you know what else is gonna surprise you? Mm, no. The quality of the products and services that support this podcast. That would be a surprise. Yeah, it will be a surprise.

When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned. You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules. And yet Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured.

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you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Get emotional with me, Radhita Vlukya, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry. We're going to talk about and go through all the things that are sometimes difficult to process alone. We're going to go over how to regulate your emotions, diving deep into holistic personal development, and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life. We're going to be talking with some of my best friends. I didn't know we were going to go there, aren't we?

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And we're talking about what I think is one of the more surprising things I found So Joe pine was one of the very first major media figures in the United States to platform a transgender woman Discussing trans issues and he did show in a way that is incredibly surprising for the time. This is from 1966 And I want to just play this and the woman he's talking to Christine Jorgensen was like one of the very first super public Transgender media figures. Yes, very famous. Yeah, very famous. So he's certainly not the first person to talk to her but he's one of the first people with a massive platform to sit down have a long conversation with a transgender person in a

major outlet and I think the tone of the conversation, given where we are now with the right wing on this issue, is going to be surprising to people. It was our guest who first flushed the problems of transsexuals into the open. Christine Jorgensen was born a male. She was described in her high school annual as a clever lad. Later she became a private first class in the army. Though outwardly a boy, Christine was sexually disturbed. The story of her later discovery and transformation electrified the world.

It was the first chapter in a new outlook toward the transsexual phenomenon. And yet I can't believe that yours was the first operation of this type. It wasn't Joe. The first one was I think done somewhere in the area of 1926 or 27. There was a marvelous doctor in Germany called Magnus Hirschfeldt who started the whole investigation to our in our modern age. Let's put it that way. Before that there may have been others but I know not of them. Is this a legal operation in the United States yet? Oh yes, oh certainly.

You know they're doing it at Johns Hopkins now, in Baltimore. Heavens to Betsy. Yes, and they're doing it at the University of Minnesota, medical school. They've done five cases, to the best of my knowledge, at University of California Medical School. How many people, in your particular predicament,

do you think there are today? I mean, not those who have successfully, assuming you have successfully bridged the gap, but how many are in that spot where they need this? Well, I can only judge by what I heard from Johns Hopkins. When I was in Baltimore several weeks ago, Dr. Money and I did a television show together and he's one of the doctors involved in Johns Hopkins.

And he asked me if I thought I knew how many, and I said, I don't have the vaguest idea. And he said, according to his statistics, there should be 30,000 transsexuals of both sides in the United States. To get it straight, a transsexual and a transvestite differ in that the transvestite is a dressing up type of homosexual,

and you don't claim to be a homosexual. No, now here's a... I should say you claim you're not a homosexual. Well, an interesting point. If you say that if I was established and accepted by society for the first 26 years of my life as a male, then my emotional feelings during that period toward another male had to be considered

a homosexual emotion in the eyes of society. Although I never saw it that way in my own eyes. But again, Joe, may I correct something which is very startling, I think. That a transvestite, they have proven statistically that 99% of them are heterosexual. Now this is even more interesting than ever. I mean, people who, men who dress up in women's clothing

are really by the world standards normal sexually? That's right. Wow. So yeah, that's not what I expected. Surprising, yeah, I mean, you know, he does say heavens to Betsy when she's talking about the different, but he's like-

The terminology, again, this is 1967. Right. Yeah, so it is like, sure, okay, Joe. Like he's actually like The terminology, again, this is 1967. Right. So it is like, sure, okay, Joe. He's actually like, okay, what's the proper term? What's the difference? Explain what your experience is. And he's very careful about gendering her properly.

He's being, it's very surprising, yeah. It's not what I would have said. This, wow. Yeah, I didn't, and I talked to a transgender friend of mine about this, and she did point out that Christine Jorgensen had some like kind of pretty anti-gay attitudes and one of the things that was going on here and one of the things that Made her acceptable is that like she was like well I'm not gonna be like people like me won't be homosexual if we get to transition right because then it's yeah

And I didn't really catch that when I listened to the interview But I can see how that could have been an element here. Although when he brings up homosexuality I didn't note anything aggressive in it. Like he was just kind of asked not a clarification about yeah, not in this I'm sure he I'm sure he was right. Yeah Yeah, but but not the interview I would have expected and it I think it says less about him than it just does about how the issue had not been politicized at this point. Like the existence of transgender people had not been politicized to the extent that it is now,

even though it was much more dangerous to consider transitioning back then. It also, there was not the kind of political rancor behind. It's just a fascinating piece of history. And evidence that like Joe Pine, again, you could be a right wing firebrand on TV and encounter something you didn't understand and like learn about it on air without it being a thing.

Yeah, do you think that's a product of him being like a genuinely curious person? Or like, I wanna learn new things things, etc. Or is that more of a product of what you were saying about the issue where it wasn't clear which side of the political spectrum the issue was going to fall on so he didn't want to go as hard as he normally would had the issue been more firmly settled on one side? I don't know. I've heard people theorize that part of why he was very polite and liked Christine Jorgensen is that she was a

veteran like him. And he had just that kind of level of respect for like, well, whatever else about this person, we fought in the same war together. I think some of it's also, I think the attitude and like the way people presented themselves, like he was, he was a guy who was raised in a specific time where if

people present themselves a specific way You treat them a specific way, right? And I think people who kind of like Joe crack or Krasner, you know It's kind of like a left-wing hippie type. Yeah, and so he did not feel the need to be respectful Christine Like what presented as like a very kind of like bougie upper middle-class white woman and he treated her with Respect as a result. The same was true of some other women. He interviewed who he had a disagreement with.

So I think some of it may just be that just like there was more of like a, well, regardless of your feelings, if somebody presents in this way, if they match kind of our expectations of upper class white people behavior, you treat them with a certain level of respect and regard because that's just how we are. Yeah.

It's a fascinating time. Fascinating time capsule. And that was, I think maybe the longest clip we've ever played on this show, but I just, I was really surprised when I came across that. Learning that it's like, this is the guy who gave mental birth to Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Yeah.

Not the interview you would expect. No, no, that was surprising. Now's like, this is the guy who gave mental birth to Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Yeah. Not the interview you would expect. No, no, that was surprising. As a last treat, I have one more thing I wanna play for you. Oh, good. This is a segment from Joe's show

where he talks with Anton LaVey, head of the Church of Satan. Oh, boy. Oh, boy, Tom. You're gonna have a good time with this one. Oh, man. Mm, mm. Hold on, let me get some popcorn.

Yeah. Yeah, you get Anton LaVey on the TV and you know you're gonna have a good one. And how do you make your living? As a counselor, sorcerer, practicing wizard, shaman, warlock, whatever you wish to call it. You're also a male witch, a warlock. Well, a male witch isaman, warlock, whatever you wish to call it. You're also a male witch, a warlock. Well, a male witch is considered a warlock.

You claim to be a witch then? A male witch. Certainly, but not a white witch. Not like some of these people that have been on various shows that bend over backwards trying to convince everyone how good they are. They never perform black magic. Only white magic. I think this is ridiculous. Could you make that man disappear out of the dark? Out of the dark? Why should I want to? Well, because we have somebody else coming up.

Of course I can't make him disappear, because I am naturally cast in the mold of a human being, and I think this is— Wanna bet? It might be— —less human and more Mephistophelian to me. Thank you, sir. I call him a devil, he's complimented. I just remarked to me the degree

to which Anton LeVey looks like Joe Kukin from Command and Conquer. The guy who played Kane, the same, maybe Kane was Anton LeVey. That's my Command and Conquer theory. That's going to be very funny.

He does. He looks like the villain in every FMV computer game. Yeah, that's amazing. He's wearing a cape. Look at Anton LeVe. He's wearing an amulet. He's such a dummy every time he goes on TV. It's so funny.

He's like, no, I can't make that guy disappear. Like, they only ever do white magic. What white magic are they doing, Anton? What white magic are you doing, Anton? What white magic are you doing, Anton? Yeah. Yeah, I have to side with Joe on this one. What kind of magic are you up to? What kind of magic are you going to do?

Can you make that guy disappear? Yeah. By the late 1960s, Joe was a very wealthy man. He drove a Rolls Royce. And when he parked at the studio, he was so frightened it would be vandalized that he had his network hire a security guard to watch the car while he was on the air.

Parking in the garage, man. What are you doing? Yeah, exactly. What are you doing? On paper, in many ways, he sounded like the same kind of guy that many right-wing media grifters are today. But the thing he had that they all lacked is a sense of charm. There's a level of class that you get with Joe

that just like is completely absent from everyone who follows him. Yeah, it's more, the more we hear of him, I had said he sounds like Cronkite earlier, but he really sounds more like Carson or like a talk show host where it's like, he can be warm and supportive until he's not, and then he'll turn on you and kind of ridicule you, but in a polite way.

I can see how a lot of people who disagreed profoundly with Joe Pine could enjoy listening to his show in a way that like I cannot with Tucker Carlson. Or nobody's like, nobody like hate watches for enjoyment, Tucker Carlson. It's just too like horrifying. Like nobody does that with Ben Shapiro or whatever. No, no, no, that's an assignment.

That's not something you do for fun. Yeah, that is an assignment. That's not so yeah, that is an assignment That is what that is a that is conflict journalism like you are taking on pain. I'm looking at something nodding Yeah, people could like enjoy like I you enjoy like why I recommend watching him talk to Anton Lavea. It's a hoot Legitimately fun just two shit heads Two real shitheads just talking it up in the 60s. At one point he had- Talking about magic. At one point he had Harlan Ellison on as a guest.

Now, Harlan Ellison is quite a fellow. At the time he was a Los Angeles free press columnist and he's now a legendary dead sci-fi author. The author of I Have No Mouth But but I must scream and some other real the way you phrase that made it sound like he's legendarily dead he is he is a lot of people I mean Harlan Ellison was a famous misanthrope he made a lot of enemies yeah he made a lot of enemies and politically he was pretty much the opposite of Joe Pine although in terms of being unpleasant they were both very unpleasant people famously.

Harlan Ellison called Joe a hustler and a bully, but noted that he was very sharp. Quote, I thought I'd go on his show and beat him at his own game, but I blew it. I spent my time talking about the issues, civil liberties and all that. And he talked about America. The trouble with Pine was that he was really, really good at what he did. Now, and that does get to like, yeah, you're never gonna win talking about the issues with these guys.

That's not, and you could only get Joe to listen when it wasn't something he saw as an issue. I think that's why that interview with Jorgensen went the way it did is because it wasn't a political issue to him, it was just a thing of interest. It was a curiosity to him, yeah. He was just curious, yeah. This isn't real, this is just some flighty nonsense, you know.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even think he was treating it like nonsense. He was treating it like he was just learning a new science fact. It wasn't political. It was not a political issue. Yeah, he definitely didn't treat it the same way he was treating the high times dude,

Krasner or Anton LeVe, but I feel like he probably considered them in the same bucket of like, well, this isn't, this is like a personal interest story. This isn't real news. This isn't real issue. Yeah, definitely in the same, he clearly respected her more than he did any either of them.

But yes, I think it was the same kind of like, well, this is not a political thing. This is personal interest. This is just something that people are gonna be fascinated by that I can also like, you can create a kind of like, fantastic title for it, you know, it's something that'll get people get eyeballs on the screen.

In 1969, Joe started having trouble breathing. He was diagnosed with lung cancer. For years, he had jokingly called his cigarettes coffin nails and you saw him light up at least once in the clips I played. I think he smoked in all the clips we watched. He was always smoking. They just issued them to you.

He had repeatedly promised. Yeah, it's your government issue cigarettes. He had repeatedly promised that he would never give up smoking, but he quit after getting his diagnosis. It didn't help. When he got too sick to drive to the studio, he hosted his show from his home,

making him a trailblazer in yet another way. Wow. Yeah, he was the first one doing what we were doing, Tom. Yeah, what we were doing. Yeah. At the very end of his life, he lay in his bed, ranting about the Peace Corps because they wanted to end the war in Vietnam.

He died in 1970 at age 45. Thank you, comrade cigarettes. Wow. Yeah, 45. Thank you, comrade cigarettes. Wow. Yeah, 45. That dude was 45? That dude was mainlining cigarettes his entire adult life. From the time he was 14,

he was probably smoking six packs a day. I want the listeners to understand that this motherfucker looks like, in these clips we watch, he looks like he's at least 68. Yeah. Like he looks so old. I mean, in fairness, some of that's world war two.

I know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like a joke on the internet where it's like, man, people who were like 38 in, in 1975, it's like they were on the door. But like, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like, wow. Yeah. He looks so. Yeah.

No, 45. Yeah. Dude, he looks like Brendan Gleeson now. Yeah, younger than, oh, what's the guy? The funny man. All the ladies like him. He's the Ant Man. What's his fucking name?

The Ant Man. Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd's older than Joe Pine died at now. Right. Paul Rudd is older than Joe Pine ever was. And looks half his age. And when Paul Rudd is 70, he won't look as old

as Joe Pine looked at. This dude looks older than Shatner. Yeah. The Smithsonian Magazine lays out how directly his influence led to the creation of some of the most influential careers in modern right-wing media. Quote, one of Pine's protegees, the controversial radio shouter Bob Grant, followed his mentor Pine as a talk show shouter in Los

Angeles before moving to New York where Grant paved the way for his successor at WABC, Sean Hannity. Hannity had first gained national attention subbing for Rush Limbaugh, another Bob Grant fan. When Grant died in 2013, Hannity hailed him as one of the greatest pioneers of controversial, opinionated talk radio. Grant in turn had acknowledged his debt to the founder of In Your Face Talk. Even Vice President Mike Pence, who hosted a right-wing talk show in Indiana in the 1990s, was a successor of Pines, according to Harlan Ellison, who admired Pines' shrewdness while loathing his politics.

I've appeared on that sort of show all over the country They call it controversy, but they're all about vilification and hostility and their motto is p- model is Pine And Pine is again an odd figure for me because when I first started reading this kind of stuff about him calling him a bully I expected a different kind of bully than the videos reveal. He's absolutely a bully, but yeah subtler than the ones we see today I found a column in the he's subtler than the ones we see today. I found a column in the Saturday Evening Post from the 1960s where a left-wing reviewer tries to explain his appreciation for the Joe Pine Show.

Quote, after watching one of these shows, and it does not matter whether I loathe the guest, the host, or both, I feel somehow drained and less misanthropic. Not long ago, for example, I had a terrible day. I had a migraine, and my daughter sliced her finger with a razor blade and I got a rejection slip and a cop gave me a speeding ticket, my third this year, which means that I will probably lose my license.

And in Los Angeles, that is like being a functional paraplegic. That night I watched Joe Pine. His guests included a lady who complained that television sportscasters never carried drag racing results, a man who blamed the current racial unrest on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a veteran who said we Ought to drop the big bomb on Vietnam The vet said he did not fight World War two to throw this one away It turned out that he had been a Navy mailman I was outside the zoo looking in again life did not seem so bad after all I went to bed and slept well

I bet what's going on in that guy's life though. Yeah Losses, his daughter cut her finger up with a razor blade, what the fuck was she doing, man? What was she got access to razor blades? What are you giving her razor blades for? It was a different time, Tom. I'm sure he was giving her cigarettes too. This guy's life was already shaky

before the Joe Pine show came into the picture. But yeah, the appreciation you could have for Joe Pine if you weren't in the cult is part of what makes him different from what came later. And in part two, Tom, we're gonna talk about what came later. But for right now, we need to talk about the shit you've got to plug.

Oh, geez. All right, well, yeah, if you, wait, I've got a Patreon. If you head over to patreon.com slash gamefieldemployed, you can find our podcast networks, me and David Bell, also from Cracked. We do a bunch of shows every week. We do, we just watched Hypecast, we do Fox Mulder is a Maniac,

Tom and Jeff Watch Batman, Star Trek The Next Futurama, a bunch of great shows you can check out there. I also do writing over at Collider, and for some more news, and for 1-900-Hot-Dog, so you can look at all of those things. Check it out. Yeah.

All right. And you can go to hell. That's right. Go to hell. Kind of a reward there. When you get to hell, tell Joe Pine that Robert sent you. Yeah, tell Joe Pine Robert sent you. And then kick him in the nuts

and scream the name Rush Limbaugh. He won't know what you're saying. He died decades before that man was relevant. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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