Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Bastards of Reality Television

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Robert is joined again by David Bell to to discuss why reality television is a bastard.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, yeah, we're back. Behind the Bastards, Lucy Goosey talking about reality TV week Dave. How you doing? How you doing, Dave? I'm well.

David Bell, guest. Yeah, I'm David Bell, your guest. Co-owner of the gamefully unemployed network. That's also true. Arch Capitalist Podcast entrepreneur David Bell. Yeah, oh yeah, I rule this city, you know. You own an entire pair of pants, Dave. An entire, both pockets.

Yeah, not even leasing them anymore, paid off. No, no, no. Yeah, I mean, listen, one of the pockets isn't in, it's not in great shape, but you know, you know, these things happen. It's your regular wear and tear on your pair of pants. How many pockets do you really need? An honest man? One. One, at best. Any more than one pocket? I don't trust that son of a bitch. I don't trust anybody who's not holding everything they currently own in their hands.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. That's why people wearing dresses are the only people you can trust. Exactly. Unless it's one of these like modern decadent dresses with pockets. Right. No pockets. Right, no.

No pockets. Just hands. I don't trust anybody with pockets. Why would we? Why would anyone trust? Anyway, Dave. I'm Dave. How are you doing here? How are we feeling?

I'm pretty good, you know? I mean, okay. Well, you know, what I'm learning about reality TV doesn't, it's not great, you know? It's not great. I've lost a lot of faith. I'm pretty sure I've lost several years of my life at this point. Yeah, it's tragic. You did have, I love Money Threes logo tattooed on your heart before that last episode, which is really.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll probably just turn it to like I heart honey, something like that, which is just as true. It is true. You know? Yeah. And in easy to do.

You know what, Sophie? We didn't play it last time. Would you pull up the intro to I love Money Three? I just kind of want to hear what that looks like. I love this Money Three. We're having a, just having a good time with my buds talking about reality. Watching intros to reality shows. I'm super scared as to how bad it is.

It's going to be bad. How could it be good? Why would it be good? I don't know. What would be the point of that? I mean, our last episode ended with a brutal murder, but this one is going to have a higher body count. All right.

Oh. But first, let's watch the I love Money Three intro. Let's see what was going on with this fucking show. Do you know what it is, Robert? No. Because this is 27 minutes. Yeah. Let's watch the whole thing.

There we go. We'll just play the entire thing. So I imagine it's not season three, right? It's I love Money Part Three. Is it season three? I think it's, yeah, I love Money Three revival. No, it must be I love Money Three. We're learning a lot here.

Is it the squeak wool? There's so many things. Why are there so many things? I don't know. I don't know if I could, I don't know. It doesn't auto fill. You just find an episode and yeah. Yeah.

I think just any old episode will have the intro, right? It'll be fine. I feel like you chose the one that won't have it. Yeah. This is not, no. Guys, I can't. You picked the wrong one. This is like a fan made montage, which I don't even want to think about that one.

Just find like an episode, episode four there. Season four episode one. Yeah. That'll be fine. I just want to see the intro. There we go. Yeah. Beaches.

Hold on. It is, it is, I'm going to turn the volume down because it's horrifying. Okay. Yeah. Or let's restart. Okay. All right. We found it.

Here we go. Beach. Bird. Waves. Water. Boat. Boat. More boats.

They're cheering on a boat, hugging on a boat. Riding a boat. A bunch of white people riding a boat. Still white people riding a boat. This chain is not for you. Just the worst people. Your tour ends here. Wait, wait, wait.

Was that Brett Michaels? Yeah. That was Brett Michaels. That was the show we mentioned last episode where people are trying to marry Brett Michaels. Yeah. I feel like he said Brett Michaels and your brain protected itself by racing that memory. Yeah. I wish I didn't know.

Yeah. Well, you do now. Well, it's keeping them off the streets, right? It is keeping them off the streets. That is the number one goal of an ethical society. Keep Brett Michaels off the streets. Yeah. So that seems fun.

That seems like a good show. That was the season of the show that had the murderer on it. So that's good. So Dave. I'm Dave. Idbell. In 2019, the sun, a British tabloid, conducted a study that found 38 suspected suicides, which had been linked to reality television since 1986.

Now, this is fun because like both, of course, you know, that's unsettling, but also probably not related to anything. 38 suicides in an industry with thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of contestants in like a 30 year period, not really a big deal. That's actually surprisingly low. It's really low. Actually, if you really think about it, but that's never, that's not how it's like marketed. There's just all of these, because the sun is a shitty tabloid and then a bunch of other

shitty tabloids and stuff like the Daily Mail put up articles being like, 38 suicides linked to reality TV. And it's like, yeah, in half a century, like it's not really that big a deal, honestly, if you look at it. But so, you know, yeah. There's probably more suicides linked to like stamp collecting. Absolutely. Oh my God, Dave, if you've ever been to a stamp convention, I mean, the biggest danger

is that someone is going to shoot themselves and you'll be caught in a line of fire. It's like a fucking typo negative concert there. Yeah. It's bleak. That's a fun reference for three of the people listening, Dave. So, you know, this study, quote unquote, is not really evidence of an epidemic, but the study doesn't come out of nowhere. It's sparked.

And again, the sun is really gross. So like the thing that makes them conduct this shitty study is a series of terrible suicides that occur on the UK reality show called Love Island. So three contestants on the show killed themselves over a three year period. Since about a hundred people have been on the show, this means Love Island contestants have a suicide rate like three times as high as the rest of the UK. Yeah. That's one a year.

Yeah. For just one show. So that is worth looking into. Yeah. I think the average for TV shows should be around zero. Yeah. Zeroish. Zeroish.

Yeah. Obviously you can't always get your zero. No. She is famously lost 11 norms in the first two seasons. Oh, yeah. They had to burn through norms. They went through norms like nobody's business, but yeah. So, yeah, this is probably worth looking into, so let's look into it a bit.

Yeah. The UK Guardian describes the show thusly. Love Island, a constructed reality TV show, thrusts a collection of 20-somethings into close quarters in a Majorcan Villa for about eight weeks. During that time, the contestants are given the task of pairing up, going on staged dates and strutting around in beachwear. Every week, the public vote on which couples they want to boot off, while opportunities to re-couple also arise, which can lead to some animosity when contestants leave their

lover for another islander, right in front of them. Feel like we should watch another intro here, Sophie. Yeah. Show us Love Island. Yeah, that seems like something that would spawn, you know, seems like something that could cause problems for people. Yeah. Or maybe the villa was haunted, but it's like the Woman in Black, where like they're compelled

or something. But it's probably the first thing where the reality TV show is bad. There must have been like a found footage movie or something about a reality show that gets haunted by a ghost that makes everyone kill themselves, right? That has to happen. I'm not going to look it up, but there, yeah, there has to be. One of the, one of the foundations of found footage is finding a reason a bunch of people are filming.

So, yeah. Fuck. Oh, yes. Diving in a pool. Awesome. Oh, yeah. That's the good shit. Was that a little bead?

Yeah. Well, that was fine. That was fine. So, yeah. Love Island. Love Island. Love Island. Love Island.

So, you know, one of the biggest stories about this show came in 2018 when it was announced that more people had applied to be on that year's season than had applied to either Oxford or Cambridge. And again, this is like the same kind of people who like shared that terrible study by the stun like your son like shared this as like evidence of the decline of Western civilization. Right. Like look at how horrible it is that like Love Island, more people are trying to get

on this show than are trying to get into Oxford. And it's like number one, like how many motherfuckers can actually go to Oxford as opposed to can hang out on a beach? Right. Yeah. And number two, people used to die by drinking poop water because they didn't know. It's just like, I'm a firm believer that time we eventually, everything eventually gets better.

With time. That's a nice thing to think. I'm not saying it's perfect. Yeah. It's not perfect. There's a lot of problems. Obviously. It doesn't mean that there aren't problems and that people's problems don't matter.

But like that whole idea of reality TV is like, ah, look, look at how everything's declined. It's like, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, if you want to like look at Oxford and Cambridge, think about how many people who went on to commit genocide in like British colonies for Oxford and Cambridge graduates, I'd rather have reality stars. Let's like, let's, they've done, reality TV show stars at this point have done less damage to society on a global level than graduates of Oxford and Cambridge.

Absolutely. Like. Absolutely. That's well documented, you know. It's also worth noting that like the applications thing is kind of like a little bit of a misnomer because only about half of the cast of Love Island are picked because they apply. Most of them are, again, as we talked about earlier, head hunted, like because they have thriving social media accounts.

Like they're already influencers. Right. And this is, I think a lot of reality has moved this way. Why would you pick random people to be on your show in the hope that some of them will turn out to be stars instead of just like find people who already have like thriving fashion, Instagrams or whatever and put them on. Honestly, that kind of bums me out because it was like you could always at least break into reality TV if you had some like cool maniac.

That was my plan. Yeah. I was going to date Flavor Flav. Exactly. We were all going to date Flavor Flav. But now it's like even reality TV, you have to like have a resume for. It's heartbreaking. Yeah.

It's that idea of like to be an intern, you have to have like four years of experience already. Yeah. It's that. It's for for reality TV. It's like, come on. Come on, guys. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's pretty cool. The first Love Island suicide was Sophie Graydon, age 32. She was a former beauty queen who had spent a lot of time raising money for kids with cancer. She seems nice. When she showed up on the show, her fan base exploded, but a ton of people also got angry that she paired off with some guy they had a parasocial relationship with, right? Like she starts, I think I'm not an expert on the show, but she starts dating a guy and

fans of that guy within the community of Love Island fans starts harassing her. It's great. So Graydon said this in an interview with Radio Erie, I think it's like the Irish radio station. Yeah. I think it's Radio Erie or IRI or whatever. I don't know. Look, I've been to Ireland a bunch.

It's hard to say things in Ireland. I usually just nod and smile politely. Quote, it was horrific. This is and this is again, Graydon talking about the harassment she gets when she dates this guy. It was horrific. I think when you get so many comments on the scale we did coming out of thousands of followers.

They would look for it. There would be so many negative comments. They're commenting on the way you look, the way you talk. They would come up with an opinion if you want a TV show where they've watched you for 45 minutes. Yeah. That is how the internet works. If you've ever, I fucking, I posted a video of my cat does this weird thing.

She was never weaned. You know, Raja. Oh, I know Raja. Yeah. You've taken care of her for months. I know exactly what you're about to talk about. Yeah. She'll stick her tongue out and she'll flip it in the air and she likes to stand next

to running faucets and just stare at them and do that with her tongue. That's her hobby. It's her kind of her religion. She looks like the pervert on the bus. Yeah. Like who's like just staring blankly and licking the air. Yeah. My cat does a similar thing.

Yeah. Yeah. When I, when I cat sat I would have my cat drooling in my armpit and Raja sitting near my shoulder licking near my ear. She loves you. You could hear it. I know. Yeah.

It's weird. Yeah. And a bunch of people are like, this means your cat's dehydrated. You got to lie. And like suddenly like this flood of shit, which is not to like compare that to harassment, but it's like, it's overwhelming. Like whenever a large group of people on the internet decide to all do the same thing. And if that thing they decide to do is harass you, like it can destroy you.

It does destroy people. Right. It's the, anytime I have a tweet that goes viral, it's just like tons of those, which I imagine is like the average experience for a woman on Twitter. And I only get like a taste of it. And when you get that taste, it's like, my, it's not even like harassing sometimes. No. It's just like people be correcting things or like saying the same joke back to you.

And it's just like, oh. It all takes up a little bit of, yeah. And it's overwhelming. And like the show Love Island to talk about like their culpability, they have to know this is going to happen to their hosts. Like to their, I don't know what term they use, not hosts probably, but like contestants. This happens. We know this happens.

If you don't build a way in to like take care of people and anticipate that they will be dealing with this, if you just leave them to like swing in the wind, it is partly your fault when bad things happen. Right. I know I said in the last episode that like it feels like people would get used to it over time, reality TV, but this is a new component is the internet created cyber bullying, which you don't even have to be on a reality TV show to be affected by this. Yeah.

And yeah. It's just like the worst version of the things that we all always deal with like versions of everybody deals with little pieces of this. Sophie gets on this show and deals with just a directed torrent of abuse. Later the year, that year, like a few months after that interview she gave where she talks about how overwhelming it is, she hangs herself at her family home. Her boyfriend finds the body, he kills himself less than three weeks later. It's a fucking rough story.

Now the coroner, they find cocaine and alcohol in her system and the coroner blames her suicide on that, which is probably why people don't ask coroners for opinions on things a lot. Cause like, I mean, why was she getting all fucked up? You know, I mean, I'm sure, yes, if somebody is doing a shitload of cocaine and drinking and then they kill themselves, the fact that they were inebriated, it's not unreasonable to say, well, perhaps that influenced it, but like also it's always more complicated than that. Maybe they were needing to get fucked up because they had like, they were traumatized by this

like torrent of abuse, you know? I'm not one of them fancy mind scientists, but like, I imagine if you're contemplating suicide, you get fucked up first to carry it out. Sure that too. Like that's part of it. It's hard to like, it's that thing of like, I've never gotten, I've never done so much cocaine that I decided to hang myself. No.

That has to be a decision that I've made before that. Yeah. And maybe you do the cocaine cause you just, again, we could, we could talk about this. Because you like cocaine. But yeah, it's worth noting that like this has become a bit of a pattern for Love Island Stars less than a year after her suicide contestant Mike Thalastis Thalastitis, I think he's Greek, committed suicide in a similar situation after taking a lot of cocaine and alcohol. Like Graydon, he had stuff going on in his life beyond the show.

I think his grandmother had just died. Like he had, he was sad for a number of reasons. But also it's worth noting like, oh, well, maybe the fact that this is a party show about partying young people where everyone's drinking onscreen and everybody's taking cocaine off screen, maybe this culture also does things that are unhealthy to people and put them in more vulnerable positions. Yeah. Combined with the internet shit.

Sure. It's like a perfect storm to take a young impressionable person. Yeah. And you crank them through this machine and what comes out is, yeah. Some of them will not make it. It's attacked the series for not taking care of its contestants or providing any mental health care to deal with the strain. Caroline Flack, who hosted the show, defended it to Cosmo in an interview, quote, it's dangerous

and I'm really, really angry. It's not just that you're blaming a TV show. You're blaming people and their jobs. In life, we all have a duty to look out for each other, but I don't think it's fair to point fingers of blame. So Caroline says that like attacking the show for having something to do with these suicides is really unfair. She's, as the host of the show, is very vocal about that.

A year later, she is removed from her job hosting Love Island after she was accused of assaulting her boyfriend with a lamp. She denied the charges and was gearing up to fight it in court when she committed suicide as well. So that might, again, it's never just the show. There's obviously different stuff going on with all these people, but like, this doesn't happen because the show's fine. Do we know what the behind the scenes is here?

To a tremendous extent. It's just wild that like, I know plenty of sex workers. I know people who worked for, say, kink.com. And I'm sure in that industry, there's always scumbags, there's always shitty things, but a website like that, they are actually very careful behind the scenes because they know they have to be because they're dealing with something that could easily, something bad could happen if they're not careful. Yeah, you know you're playing with fire and like, obviously there's criticisms to make

like kink.com and stuff, but they had much more built in than you had in Love Island up to this point. Right, and I guess that's what surprises me is that we watch reality TV because it's toxic. And that's the fun of it. So you would think that because of that, they would be extra careful. Yeah, I have friends who do heroin and they tend to make sure that they've got a buddy to do heroin with who has Narcan, which I'm not endorsing doing heroin, but it's this thing.

You know, in any other facet of life, if you know you're going to do something toxic, you like make sure you take some steps to like, I'm going to go out drinking. It's bad for me. I'm going to make sure I take a cab home, you know, mitigate the damage. Yeah, if a specific industry is depicting something that's seen as dangerous or seen as wrong, whether or not it is, you would, you know, you would take steps about that. And that's what's incredible to me about these reality TV shows is that they're more widely accepted than industries that are more careful.

Yeah. And that is wild to me. Yeah. When I was buying random powdered drugs from dudes at parties, some of them would even bring their own testing kits and you could be like, Oh yeah, this is an actual, this is actually the drug I'm paying for. Right. You know, that's just good business.

That's just good business. Let my drug dealer from 2007 run Love Island. That's what I'm saying, Dave. Right. Well, yeah, because when a group of people are more scrutinized than they're just, or like they have a built-in scrutiny, like they're dealing drugs, like they know like, okay, I have to be on my best damn behavior. Yeah.

Which again. All drug dealers are as good. No. Some drug dealers are bad, but as a general rule, they are the most moral people in our society. I think we can all agree on that. It's like a mosh pit. The reason mosh pits exist is because they kind of govern themselves usually.

Yeah. And so I guess my, what this all comes down to that's amazing to me is that they didn't think to do this for reality TV, especially something as toxic as this, where it's like, they should have people there specifically to work on the mental health of the people here. It shouldn't take three suicides before the show is like, yeah, we should probably have somebody, you know. No, it should have been their day one.

Yeah. That should have been their day. Like we've been joking about like drug dealers and stuff, but this is an, you know, in its own way as reckless as like, all right, well, we're going to have some guns on set for this gunfight scene. Who's going to make sure the gun stuff safe? Well, how about Mitch? Right.

He's watched a lot of movies. Let's just have Mitch run it. Yeah. And I think it's big in the entertainment industry because I know, you know, we, people talk about people like Kubrick and like, you know, big artist directors who sacrifice the mental health of actors for art. And it's like, yeah, that's, it's weird that we're only now coming around to that where it's like, you know, there, there should be someone on any set being in charge of this

shit, especially reality TV. It's just kind of wild. Absolutely. It's, it's very wild. But you know, Dave, you know who does hold us accountable here at behind the bastards? You're not going to say Jesus, are you? You know, David is Jesus Christ. And let me tell you a lot of people are going to say, this is a weird time for, for Robert

to reveal that he's an evangelical Christian and that this whole show has been about trying to get you because you're Buddhist, Dave, you're fallen. Now, Dave, let me tell you the good news, let me tell you the, where are you going with this? I really don't know. And if I, if I had spent more time studying, it would have been really funny if I started proselytizing to Dave and it would become obvious over the course of like 30 seconds. Can you just, can you just, can you just, just dump it in?

Dumb it in me. That it's Zoroastrianism and that I've mixed that up with Christianity and I'm trying to get him like, pilled on a Hurra Mazda, but I didn't prep, I didn't prep, you know, I'm sorry. Robert, just go back to it. Please. Begin' a b****. I love war crimes, shit, shit.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

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How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. Oh boy, what a great ad break. So Dave, after three suicides. The producers of Love Island decided we should make things less horrible, and they put in a bunch of safety measures and stuff. They actually do a bunch of different things to try and make the show less toxic to its

cast. Yeah, it's interesting, because I found a Guardian article discussing the ways in which the producers have tried to make the show less toxic. The attitude it takes is like, this is all good and necessary, and also it's going to ruin the show. So I'm going to read a quote from that article, Dave, which is a bit of a doozy. The bikini-clad babes and shirtless hunks entering this year's villa will have undergone stringent checks to assess whether they are emotionally and mentally resilient enough

to take part in the show. While infographics aired on screen will remind viewers to think before they post about the stars on social media in the hope of discouraging trolling. During filming, there will be a welfare team on set, while contestants will also be offered comprehensive psychological support on exiting the villa, in addition to social media and financial management training. It is laudable that Love Island bosses are seeking to improve the support packages they offer contestants on such a high-profile and profitable show, but their efforts ignore

one fundamental truth. You can't make reality TV ethical and entertaining. Trying to make Love Island responsibly is like enlisting PETA to run a bear pit. They'll do it, but it will be a snooze fest. Wow. There's a lot going on there. That's a lot. First of all, the writer is like, I like a good bear pit, god damn it.

Yeah, ruin what a ruin, bear fighting. Yeah. That is fucking wild. It's something else comparing it to a bear pit is very telling, because it's like that says more about, yeah, the writer, who's like, I want to see these young people fucking kill themselves. God damn it. I think they're ultimately being, I think ultimately their attitude is like like bear

pits. We don't need shows like this. And maybe if the fact that reforming them ruins them means that we shouldn't have them at all, but it is still a wild way to frame it. Yeah, they're they're halfway. I think that reality TV needs to be and I think is occasionally like wrestling. I don't think it needs to be real. Why would it be real?

It could be scripted. Yeah, it's there's no reason it can't be unless it's like, you know, a great British bake off. Although who knows what amount of cocaine they're doing on the set of that? We don't know. They could be doing all the cocaine, but like, you know what I mean? Where it's like, unless it's a very, very structured competition, then just script it.

Yeah, gives a ship, script it and then also pay the screenwriter, the writer, whatever, the WGA. Yeah. Oh, wait, no, no, that's that. They're never going to do that. No, I mean, not even pro wrestling really pays, you know, their contractors and shit. So like, you know, they'll do all the things that everybody does to get around that shit, but at least script it at least, at least give it a try.

Do a little bit, guys. Come on. Right. And if people are like, oh, that ruins it. Well, guess what? Maybe they're not going to tell you. Yeah. Maybe they already do this.

Maybe they already do it. And you know, maybe so love Island like a lot of similar shows thrived by applying young, hot people with alcohol and behind the scenes other drugs and smashing them together to create fights and drama they could then market to an audience. When you do that to enough people, your show will wind up at least associated with some suicides. Yeah.

And the author of this article is probably right. If it weren't the kind of show that could have cast three, that could have three cast members commit suicide in like a two year period, it would not be as popular as it has been. The ugly reality is that people like nasty stuff. And the best evidence and support of that is the last show we're going to talk about today, Dave. I have a quick question though.

Did love Island, did the ratings drop off? Oh, that's a good question, Dave, because this all happened pretty recently. The fine. By the way, financial, you said a financial advisor. Yeah. I would do, I would do a reality TV show just to be paid in a financial advisor. Like I wouldn't even need money, just like a free person to tell me how to

spend my money. Um, but yeah, I, uh, I'm curious. I'm curious to know how it's doing now. Anyway, you were, you were introducing another show. It doesn't seem like it's, it did great in its last season finale. Uh, the, the article I found from rap pro is not a ton of love for Love Island season finale. Yeah.

I mean, if your core audience likes bullying people till they kill themselves, they're not going to like the, the cleaned up, the show that no longer urges people to do that. Yeah. Um, Dave, have you ever heard of the Jeremy Kyle show? No, who is that? Oh boy. Well, it's a British show and it's an unscripted show and it's kind of

like a hybrid of Jerry Springer and like Dr. Phil and kind of more like reality stuff like that. Um, there's a little bit of a game show element to it. Here's how, uh, an article by The Guardian described it. The Jeremy Kyle show ran for 3,320 episodes over 14 years on ITV and was at times the channel's most popular daytime show. More than one million viewers regularly watched as its guests argued over paternity, addiction, deceit and betrayal while Kyle bade and roared

in their faces. ITV claimed that the purpose of the show was to provide conflict resolution for its guests. So we're well aware of the basics of this, but one of the things that makes it really more reality than anything is that like the core of the Jeremy Kyle show was lie detector tests, right? Where people would come in being like, I'm not sure if my girlfriend's cheating on me.

I think my boyfriend's cheating on me. Or I think like my son lied or I think like my friend, like, and they would go in and get a lie detector test. And right, which of course is an exact science. Yeah. We'll talk about how bad lie detectors are a little bit, but like, so a big part of this is number one, lie detector tests are expensive in the UK. I think I heard it was like 500 pounds for a test.

And so a lot of people coming on were desperate because it's like my girlfriend thinks I'm cheating. And if I can't get a lie detector test, she's going to leave me and the Jeremy Kyle show will give me a free one if I agree to get on screen and let like the host of this show basically like mock me. Right. And so Jeremy fucking Kyle is like the ultimate rich kid. He goes to, I don't know if it's eaten.

He goes to one of these like fancy British boarding schools where he's literally in classes with a future prime minister. So he's like the upparest crust a kid can have. He has deep connections in the British media. Like that's how he gets this show. But the whole series is him sitting down with like poor people who are having like poor people problems and kind of snidely mocking them. And then giving them these lie detector tests that are to them the most

important thing in the world because, you know, they're at risk of losing their spouse or whatever and turning that into content. And then if the test winds up showing that, you know, they've lied or whatever, he gets to yell at them and berate them this like rich upper crust dude. Attacking poor people in the worst moments in their life. That's the whole Jeremy Kyle show. So he's just, it's, he's one of those people that makes you wish hell existed. Yes, absolutely.

And we're going to, I've just sent Sophie a video that is a lie detector, like the results of a lie detector test. And so you can hear Jeremy Kyle as, as this whole situation happens. It's, it's going to be a good time. Spoiler alert, punchable face. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Of course. How could he not have one? No. Oh, man.

And is this a hate watcher? I assume people watch it. No. Well, I think it's like, I think it's closer to Dr. Phil than anything. Yikes. Yeah. Mark's on the Jeremy Kyle show. Give him a round of applause. How's my fiancee cheated because she doesn't find me attractive? Yeah. I've had problems for a long time.

The way I look, things like I've never, like, looked in the mood, stuff like that. You say that she would, when she met you, you're a gaseous woman being with five years, you say, this all started because when I met her, she would try and change me. She tried to, to style me. What, what? It got to a point where I just felt like you'll have me out how you want it. You'll address me, how you want it. And she had the border streets put in here, gunned off, and she just made the

way she wanted, and it still won't put him off. So no, how did she make you feel and how did it go? Because she tries to change you. She tells you, you know, look at those dead eyes. This is important as well. People around have told you that she's a cheat. Yeah. What have they told you? Been seen getting in and out of cars.

And if I go up to look at the phone, I'll play a game on the phone. She's, she'll grab it straight away. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not fair to me. How many people watch the Jeremy Carr show, either here or at home, actually? Oh, look at his body language. I mean, you can't trust somebody, is there? He is.

Yeah, he's so grossed out to be sitting with a poor. Yes! It's, it's, yes, it's like he's sitting with a monster. What? Yeah, just like studying at Boxershot. Just pictures of the Boxershot. You really love this woman, don't you? Five years, you saw one of Maria.

She says, you know what, pal? This is in your head. This is nothing to do with me, just because I look at men, doesn't mean I'm going to do anything. It's just a human reaction. What happens if she passes this? This is in your head, right? Apologizing, obviously, going off the,

What if she's a liar? Are you gone? I don't know. I can't see, I can't see. Grow a pair, my friend. Grow a pair. No! Oh, you piece of shit.

Look how he, he rose up on that chair like a stick. He stands up like a, like, if I saw someone stand like that in the wild, I would want to hit him. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we need to go through all of this. I don't care if this lady passes or fails. Because like, number one, like, that's not, certainly whether or not cheating should be just the cause to end of relationship

is not a thing to be decided on live reality television. Right. None of, but also like, they're desperate. You know, they're poor. They can't afford the lie detector test. They have been lied to by media to believe that a lie detector test is the end all be all. It's also just none of our business. Be one thing if she was like running an underground bear fight.

Yeah. That's a good show. That's a good show. Yeah, I'd be like, I want to know if she's doing that. But like, if she's cheating on some guy, I don't know these fucking people. They're not my friends. It's because you want to see and they like, obviously some of these ending fights, they end with people weeping on stage.

The Jeremy Kyle gets to like yell at folks and call them scum and say like, you need to, you know, grow up here. You need to accept reality. He gets to like, he gets to do like Dr. Laura stuff. If anyone remembers Dr. Laura, there's a bit of that in Jeremy Kyle. Part of why I'm not doing dedicating like a whole, you could do, there's a great documentary. I think it's a BBC documentary out about the Jeremy Kyle show because of the things that we're about to talk about.

More could be done and said, and I hope someone else with a podcast does a good three hours on it. I'm not in part because a lot of why it's so fucked up has to do with like very class issues in UK society, right? Right. Yes. He's also not terribly impressive. Like he doesn't look like necessarily a sociopath. He doesn't look like an evil genius. He's just looks like an asshole.

Like just a rich asshole who like, who gives a fuck about. He's a side part motherfucker. That's what he is. He is one of a long line of British aristocrats mining the poor in order to make themselves comfortable. He's just doing it in a way that's very direct and on TV. Yeah. So that's cool. Like, yeah, he's a lucky wiener, you know, like there's nothing special about him.

He would have been somebody else if he didn't do this. But you know what is special, Dave? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is special. Um, in that, I don't know, you keep pivoting to this, Dave. I'm not as good at yes anding. So I don't know where to take this. You know who's bigger than Jesus, Dave?

Who? The products and services that support this podcast. That's true. All were shipped by more humans around the world than Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Yeah. They could easily take Jesus. And you know what? Jesus rose from the dead.

Based off a ghost. Is there something there? I don't know. You know? I mean, there's only one way to find out. Only one way to find out. Listen, listen, motherfuckers. Yeah.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver.

At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside this hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. In 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that

down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. So in 2005, the Pawsons, Paul and Erica Pawson, were having marriage trouble.

Paul had cheated on his wife and he hoped that going on the show would help them to fix things, which does suggest that Paul's not great at decision making. So, you know, this is maybe some people who are not great at relationship conflict resolution as it is, and they decide to go on the Jeremy Kyle show to deal with this problem. Jeremy Kyle goes out of his way to turn these two even more against each other. He asks Erica on stage if she wants Paul to leave her. She says yes, and so Paul leaves her. Days later, she commits suicide.

The show never airs, which is evidence that the producers felt they may have had some complicity in what happened. The Guardian continues, quote, guests appeared on the Jeremy Kyle show out of desperation because of some conflict in their private life that they were trying to resolve. And the program took advantage of that. Our documentary shows the case of a woman whose doctor was a heroin addict in a very, very ill state. The family couldn't afford rehab, so they went on the show because when it did items

about drug addicts, it would offer rehab. They claimed that they were told that they were in a competition to win the rehab. In that, as there were other guests with drug addictions, the family that most needed it would get it. They say that they were wound up by the production team to heighten the drama of the conflict on stage and that it was a lie. They were always going to get offered rehab. Jesus Christ.

I ain't not fucked up. So, wait, wait, wait, they were always going to get rehab, no matter what. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For going on the show, they were going to get sent to rehab. Okay, well, that's better than what they say to the public, but they still told them that they have to compete for rehab. The guests did not know that they were getting rehab anyway, so they were set to pit each other against each other.

Right, and I'm sure to the producers that are like, ah, they'll be happy at the end, because then everybody gets rehab, so it's okay. It's actually worse than if you'd given only one of them rehab. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty bad. I mean, it's both. I don't know what the, like, I guess the right answer is to just give them rehab and, like,

just give people rehab is the right way to make me, to the extent that it works, yeah, the right answer is to not. Right, just like run an episode of Sherlock where the show would go, and that's what you do. The moral answer is to provide people with options for drug addiction treatment that are not reliant upon them showing up on TV and embarrassing themselves. Right. Like, that is the actual solution here.

Yeah, to have a government that just does that, so a reality TV show doesn't prey on people who desperately need this stuff. Yeah. Yes, that is it. That's the option. And to have, again, a government bureau of people in suits who walk around and when someone's like, I want to make a reality show where desperate people suffering drug addiction have to compete in order to get treatment, a man shows up at their door and hits them once in the jaw.

Yeah. Yeah. And then in America, there needs to be a bureau that makes sure everybody goes to jail, at least for one day. For one day because of that show, for that show, for sure, absolutely, yes. We're cooking here. We're cooking here. And then finally, one that talks about the power of Jesus Christ to everybody.

Absolutely, yes, of course. Yeah. Yes. The power of Jesus Christ to sell Casper mattresses with promo code, he has risen. You can get a Casper mattress that you'll want to sleep on for three days. That's beautiful. Yeah. And you have Jesus coming off of the mattress.

You do a bit where after three days, they're like, why hasn't he come out? And it's like, because he has a... Because he's got a... He's sleeping in there. He's still sleeping. He's still sleeping. He's having a good time. Yeah.

God damn, we should make ads. Yeah. Come on. I don't think we've ever gotten money from... Oh, you will now. We will now. It'll come rolling in now. Yeah.

Better than religion. So ITV claims that they do not accept the central allegation that there was a bad culture within the production team. They issued a statement saying they would never condone any of its production staff misleading or lying to guests. But the documentary showed guests being put into separate rooms while production staff would go back and forth saying like, oh, we've just talked about to this person in the other room and they said this about you and then they go to the next person and say, well,

well, they said this about you. Like they were trying to get people to fight on stage and this is how they would do it. Right. Yeah. The Guardian continues, the whistleblowers in this documentary told us that after filming the shows were graded with the top grade given to the show with the most conflict. Junior members of the staff say that the pressure on them to continually deliver guests who would argue dramatically on stage led to them being lax with the details they filed on a

contributor welfare checklists. They were pushed into a place where they didn't think about the interests of the guests properly and now they carry a terrible guilt. Many ex-employees are still too scared to speak about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's sounds like Hollywood, baby. Yeah.

Well, it sounds like, yeah. I mean, it also sounds like how the internet works now, too, is like, I know someone who worked for a certain website that is not something we worked for. I'm not being like Koi for that reason. Yeah. I don't want to say that isn't around anymore. That would like post everybody's like page counts at the beginning of the day, and that was the most important thing clicks, clicks, clicks, and it's it's that thing of like

if you prioritize that over, you know, basic human decency, you know, like, oh, who can who can give us the loudest, biggest, angriest show? Well, yeah, it's going to be bad. It's their things are going to happen. They're going to get lawsuits, people are going to hurt themselves. Yeah. It's just, mmm. Yeah.

It's awful. It's not, you know, it's not good, Dave. I'll say that much. No, it's it's definitely, yeah, I think I think we can agree that it's not good. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating. So obviously, most of what was on the Jeremy Kyle show was not new the way they used lie

detectors was right. That was really the big thing that they innovated on like a lot of this, the Dr. Phil show made most of their money on people with addiction who they would like sin to rehab. But first they have to turn their pain into content, right? That part is not new. But the whole like, plying people to with like promises of a free lie detector test in order to monetize their pain, that's pretty new. And the Jeremy Jeremy Kyle made millions doing this.

It's the extra. Yeah. Fact that it's people who can't afford things. Yeah. It's like if they made a show called Who Wants to Have Health Care? Yeah. Who wants to get surgery? Oh, you're talking about the opening show for Fox next season?

Yeah. Yeah. Who wants to not die of cancer? I feel like I just gave some executive a boner. Yeah. It's it's not. Yeah. The guy from episode one just ejaculated spontaneously while he was standing in a meeting pitching

a show where poor people are eaten by bears. Yeah. And that actually I would watch a show where people get eaten by bears as long as there are people of no, if it's a wide segment of socioeconomic classes getting eaten by bears, that's fine. Yes. A billionaire and a poor person both getting eaten by a bear. Sure.

That's just good TV, you know? That is. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Do they get eaten or do they get to fight the bear? They get to try. They get to try.

Here's the thing is I don't want to see a bear get hurt. It's okay. We'll make sure they're polar bears. Okay. So it's like we tell them, oh yeah, you could totally fight this bear. Yeah. But they can't. And then the twist in the show just in case they're like in super good shape or something

is right before the bear gets let out, we hit him in the knee with like an iron bar and then run off. Okay. Yeah. So they're, you know, it's just watching people get eaten by bears. The problem, yeah, I feel like you only get one season because after, for season two, people will be like, no, I've seen the show. I'm not going to go on.

And we'll be like, we swear you could take the bear and they're like, no, I know I can't. You're going to hit me in the knee. I think season two would be who wants to fight a bear, but this time we promise we don't hit you in the knee and we give you a gun. But then it turns out the gun is like a reverse taser. So when they try to shoot the bear, it electrics them and then the bear eats them still. That's pretty great. Yeah.

We should talk about another person who got killed by the Jeremy Kyle show. So in 2019, Steve Diamond was a guest on the show and he's like in his sixties. Both he and his partner are like older folks. She suspected him of cheating and he agreed to take a lie detector test on camera to prove to his partner that he had not been unfaithful. The Jeremy Kyle show, you know, was very happy to do this. So they all go on stage and they take the tests and the test shows that he's been cheating on his partner.

Now later research would show that lie detector tests on the show were at best 70% accurate and lie detectors do not detect lying. They detect a number of fizzy, a lot of logical symptoms that some people say are associated with lying. Right. Or it could be, I don't know, someone who's nervous because they're on a TV show and they want to. And their whole relationships on the line and like, yeah, some rich fuckers making fun

of them in front of millions of people and like, holy shit. Yeah. So Steve Diamond, who is adamant that he had not cheated on this woman, who he loved and who was like his entire life, like was bound up in this person he had been in this years-long relationship with. They are not young people. They've been together a long time. She believes he's cheated on him.

He goes on the show to prove that he's been faithful and the lie detector says that he's lying. And this is like he, his family and friends say that he like saw the show as a savior. The documentary, one of the rough parts of the documentary is it has a bunch of audio from phone calls he made to his partner talking about how like once the show was over, like everything would be fine and they'd be able to get back together. Like it would be, this was going to solve everything. So the Jeremy Kyle show says this guy is lying and he kills himself several days later.

And once again, the show has never aired, ITV actually cancels the Jeremy Kyle show soon after. Oh, thank you. I was going to ask, is this show still around because that is, I would argue, a form of murder. Yeah. It kind of like. Yeah.

They just murdered that man. It does seem a little bit murdery. The lie detector on framed him or, or, I mean, I don't know. It sounds like we don't know if he's unfaithful or not, but it doesn't matter. They've framed him as unfaithful through a shitty lie detector test. He clearly seems like he's, he's innocent. Uh, that's, yeah, that's a good old fashioned. So that's good Dave.

That's good. Oh, hey, what's this? I just found an article from last September from the Manchester Evening News. I'm just going to read from this random article in the Manchester Evening News, Dave. Yeah, I do that too sometimes. From last September. Sure. It's just a normal thing.

Jeremy Kyle has announced his comeback after naming which ITV stars reached out after his daytime show was axed. The TV presenter has broken his two and a half year silence after his program was canceled. The 56 year old said he will fight back after announcing his return to broadcasting on talk radio. Kyle will host a weekday show from September 13th through set four to seven PM. A promotional video on social media said after two young long years of chaos and division, one man is needed to make sense of it all.

In an interview shared by the station, Kyle suggested he had been labeled by society as he set out his plans for his new show. He said in a democracy, you should be able to ask and say what you want. If you don't like the response, you don't throw your toys out of the pram. That's what I said. Listen, I have been canceled in this world. It seems now that unless you follow a certain path, you are labeled. You have to fight back.

Speaking of fighting back, a new show idea. This guy. This guy. Fighting a bear. Fighting a bear. Absolutely. Yeah. And we hit him in the knee first too.

Fuck him. What's really upsetting is that I now know that there were 17 seasons of the show and 3,320 episodes. Too many episodes. Also one of the first people to reach out to him supporting him was Pierce Morgan, which should not be surprising to everybody, not to a single soul. Yeah. This is dystopian.

This is straight up a dystopian situation. It's a humor that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is at The Running Man, where it's a reality show basically and they're like a reality game show that like, and it's this dystopian government that murders protesters and yada yada yada. Every show in The Running Man is less dystopian than this. Like every ad they have for a fake show, all of it way less fucked up than this. Because everybody sort of knows what The Running Man is in that universe. Yeah, they don't know they're executing the winners and stuff, but they know everyone

else dies. That's the only lie. Yeah, exactly. And like everyone who shows up knows they'll probably die and as opposed to I guess I can't afford a lie detector test, which I have been lied to by a lot of media into believing is like the end all be all of truth. And so my only option to save my relationship is to go on the Jeremy Kyle show. Whoops.

Yeah. Now my life is ruined. It's the best horror. Yeah. It's kind of like how a lot of things happen with our writing system and stuff where it's like you can show any old fucked up thing, just no blood. It's that same idea, which is what they're doing is absolutely ghoulish and horrifying. It's evil, but it's wrapped around this more sanitized version that they can step back

and go, well, it wasn't the culture of our show. You know, we have no control about what people do and it's just makes me want to burn it all down. Let's say it right now. There's a lot of terrorists who I won't defend, but I have more respect for it than Jeremy Kyle because at least like, you know, they're putting some skin in the game. Jeremy Kyle is just hurting people to make money for nothing. Yeah.

Again, dystopian villain. Yeah. He is the host of The Running Man. Yeah. Essentially. It is. God. That's what it's.

Arnold, look, I know you're having a bit of a renaissance because you've made a couple of good videos when bad things have happened. Go murder Jeremy Kyle like you did that guy in The Running Man and that's, that's a third act. Right. Or at least like slap him in the taint as hard as you can. If Arnold can like. If you don't want to murder someone because you're a celebrity, just slap, tap him in

the taint. Choke him out so he poops his pants like Steven Seagal that one time and we promise to forget that you were governor of California. Right. That's a pinky swear, Arnold, that's a pinky swear. Yeah, we've already almost forgotten that. Honestly. We have.

He posted a couple of tiktoks with his donkeys that live at his house and we're like, well, I guess I'm not going to think about what he did for the oil and gas industry. You're like, that guy, the cute donkey guy. What? The cute donkey guy. Look, he's nice with his illegitimate sum that he hid with his maid and there's a lot of uncomfortable dimensions to that. We don't really think about anymore because he did make a pretty good video where he yelled

at Nazis. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Boy, the bar is low. Boy, the bar is low. He's relatively fine. Arnold Schwarzenegger compared to all the war criminals in politics. Not that bad. Not that bad.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even better if he slaps this guy in the taint. Grab him in the taint, Arnold. Come on, buddy. Yeah. You know what? Hold him upside down and separate his legs and slap karate chop him in the taint.

You fuck this guy up, Arnold, and we will all agree to give you four more years of being an action star and we just won't say that like, oh, buddy, you are just an old man now and we don't really need to see you hitting people. That doesn't look great anymore. No. We'll all agree to pretend we'll go watch the movies. You fuck up Jeremy Kyle, Arnold, and we'll get your back on this one. Don't worry, buddy.

We'll come off for Harrison Ford. Absolutely. I mean, he's just doing old man action, whether we like it or not, but like, again, I'd love to see him karate chop this guy in the taint. Dave, there was a beautiful moment on one of your podcasts recently where you and I think our old boss, Jason Parjan, we're talking about the most recent Indiana Jones movie, not the one that's about to come out, but the one with Shia LaBeouf. Oh, yeah.

Like, yeah, seeing, seeing Harrison Ford like fall on the car windshields and stuff as an old man, it doesn't look as cool. And I, I have a bit of a bone to pick because after he made that movie, he survived like three plane crashes. I do feel like he's actually durable enough for this. He is a sky hazard. Yes. That's true.

He is. He is a durable old guy, but it's, yeah, there's a new level of tension. It's like watching the undertaker wrestle now where he's like, he's still around. Oh, I mean, as of a few years ago, yeah, those old fuckers are still around and you watch them wrestle and it's a whole new dimension of horror where you're like, no, your knees. No. Oh God, like, please don't do that. You're back.

You're fucking up your back. Yeah. Anyway, that's gonna do it for us this week. A little bit of a loosey goosey week we got for you, but what do you want? What do you want? I don't know. I do. I want power.

I do want power, Dave. Yeah. The sweet, sweet power that you can only get from a full night's sleep on a Casper mattress. Casper mattress, again, we rob the graves of Egyptian peasants to steal the softest linnings. And literally make you Jesus Christ. And we literally make you Jesus Christ. How does this feel as an ongoing joke, Sovi?

You like this better than the child hunting island? I mean, kind of. We'll workshop on this. I mean, it kind of feels like you're more pro. And then I don't have to bleep it. Yeah. Well, right. Okay.

I know that upsets you because I stopped marking it. I was like, oh, no, you're actually like selling the shit. Maybe. Yeah. Like we should make ads for Casper mattresses. Yeah. I feel like we're gonna get a colony day now. They're better than Jesus Christ.

Yeah. I mean, like you're really selling it. Selling it. Well, I guess that's my other plan was to start giving random sponsors credit for ancient war crimes, you know, like, oh gosh, single handedly responsible for the siege of Baghdad of 1258 in which the city was burned and the fat of its burning citizens rolled through the streets like a, like a, like a torrent of rain. That's right.

See, I have. Wiped out Baghdad. I have to believe that because they did in fact actually try to buy ad space in our show. Yeah. Well, also they did do that thing that they did. They were responsible for destroying the city of Baghdad in 1258. Yeah. So yeah, that's tough.

That's tough. What else? What can you do? You got to bleep it, I guess. You got to bleep it. Dave, you got to plug anything. Hold on, I have a Twitter at movie who again, if people want to follow me, I have a podcast network with Tom Reiman gamefully unemployed.

If you go to patreon.com slash gamefully unemployed for $5 a month, we have a bunch of exclusive podcasts on there. We also watch movies every Friday night with our patrons. We also just have like free shit. If you just Google gamefully unemployed wherever you get your podcasts, you can see all that. It's mostly movie stuff. In fact, it's exclusively movie stuff. We do movie reviews.

We just did, depending on when this came out, the Ben Affleck film, Deepwater, erotic thriller. Everybody go see it or don't. So I guess I also want to plug Deepwater with Ben Affleck. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's mostly him killing him bows. So everybody can get behind that. Yeah. Who doesn't support killing a him bow now and again?

I thought you were going to bring up Ben Affleck's back tattoo, which is one of your favorite things to do, Robert. Oh yeah, we all love his back tattoo. Oh my God. I mean, I would say that, but I have a lot of writing to do. I just can't, you know, immediately start masturbating after this call, which is what I do whenever I think about Ben Affleck's back face. You should do a behind the back tattoo.

Behind the back tattoo. Podcast, yeah. It's just going to be me being incredibly horny about Ben Affleck's perfect back tattoo. I thoroughly regret bringing it up. That was my goal, Sophie. That was my goal. And a podcast. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations.

In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of goods. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass, and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space, with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts.