Something You Should Know - Crypto, Blockchain and NFTs Made Simple & The Story of The Oscars

Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, the importance of being a really good kisser. Then digital currency. You really need to know and understand Bitcoin, blockchain technology, digital art, and NFTs. There's a 12 year old kid in London who invented his own series of NFTs. They were digital art. He drew a series of whales and he sold the whales online and he ended up selling them for millions of dollars. Also, why do most of us have a middle name? And some fascinating stories from the Academy Awards you may have never heard, including how Oscar got his name.

Starting point is 00:01:12 That is a bit of a mystery, how the award got its name. It was during the 1930s, and there are about four different origin stories, and nobody really knows for sure, but the name kind of caught on. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

Starting point is 00:01:49 That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's Better experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. A lot of interesting stuff to talk about today. And we're going to start with the topic of kissing. So how important do you think that first kiss is?

Starting point is 00:02:28 Well, probably it's more important than anybody realized. According to a survey, 59% of men and 66% of women have actually abandoned a potential relationship because the other person was a bad kisser. Cheryl Kirschenbaum is the author of a book called The Science of Kissing, and she says kissing is one of the most intense emotional triggers we experience. Even just a brush of the lips stimulates a large part of the brain, and if something is off with that first kiss, the negative reaction can be very powerful. And that is something you should know. You've no doubt heard of cryptocurrency, bitcoin, digital assets, maybe even

Starting point is 00:03:17 NFTs, non-fungible tokens. These are all investment terms that you've probably heard, but perhaps you have, as I have, thought of these things as very speculative, risky. And there's long been the advice that you shouldn't invest in something you don't understand. And these digital assets can be hard to understand, which is why Rick Edelman is here. Rick is a financial advisor. In fact, Barron's ranked him three times as the nation's number one independent financial advisor. He's authored several books on personal finance. He holds two patents for financial product innovation. He's been the host of a national radio show for 30 years, which is also a podcast called The Truth About Your Future. And his latest book is called The Truth About Crypto, a practical, easy-to-understand guide

Starting point is 00:04:10 to Bitcoin, blockchain, NFTs, and other digital assets. Hey, Rick, welcome to Something You Should Know. Mike, it's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks. This whole idea of digital assets and Bitcoins, it always seems so hard to explain or maybe just hard to understand. But a lot of people just shrug their shoulders and don't get it. Why is it so hard to get it? Yeah, you're absolutely right on both points.

Starting point is 00:04:37 It's both hard to explain and hard to understand. And the reason is that it has no simple analogy or metaphor that is relevant. It's a unique technology, brand new and innovative. Remember back to the internet back in the 90s? You know, it was incredibly difficult to explain that too. And it's because it's all totally new. It has its own vocabulary, terminology, and it's befuddling to a lot of folks. So you're absolutely right. But the good news is, once you get into it a little bit, you'll discover

Starting point is 00:05:11 that it really is easy to understand. It really is common sense. All right, well, let's give it a shot. Help me in very plain terms, help me understand cryptocurrency and these other digital assets. Okay. Here's what it comes down to. We all understand the internet today. That's the good news. I get to build on what we already know. We understand the internet. What we don't really fully think about on a daily basis is that the internet itself has been evolving. When we go back to the 1990s, when the internet was first introduced, that was, in hindsight, internet 1.0. And it was rather limited.

Starting point is 00:05:52 If you were old enough to remember the early usage of AOL or surfing the web, all you were able to really do with it was read. All you did was look online at other people's websites, and you could read whatever it was they posted there. Then came along Internet 2.0. That is where you were able to write. You were able to send emails and texts. You were able to upload data to Facebook and social media accounts. And we've all really had a lot of fun. We are about to introduce Internet 3.0,

Starting point is 00:06:32 the ability to own on the Internet. We're going to not only be able to create our own content, we're going to be able to own that content and make money from it. And the way we're able to do this is through the latest innovation, and it's called blockchain technology. Blockchain technology allows digital assets to be created and distributed across the internet. We're going to be able to move money around the world as easily as we've been using emails and texts, moving them around the world. That's internet 3.0, and that's what blockchain technology is. So you say soon, as if it's not happening, I thought it was happening. It really is, but it's not what I would

Starting point is 00:07:27 call mainstream. This is again where AOL was in the late 1990s. We have 8 billion people on the planet. Only about 300 million own Bitcoin today. So Bitcoin is something everybody has now heard of, but the vast majority of people are still not yet engaged. Well, can you give me an example, maybe Bitcoin is the example, but an example of blockchain technology in action? Sure. And Bitcoin is probably the best known example of it. Bitcoin was the very first digital asset invented using this technology. It was launched in 2009, so it's now been around for 14 years. And it's the fastest growing asset class in history. It's also the very first asset class invented in about 170 years. The last time we had something new invented like this was the discovery of oil in the 1850s. So it's pretty rare that something totally new and different gets discovered or

Starting point is 00:08:33 invented. And the adoption rate has been faster than anything else in history. And that's a large part of what makes all of this exciting. But what is the point about Bitcoin? Why do we need to bother or care? One simple example, and there are literally tens of thousands that I could give you, but let me just show you this one example to illustrate. Let's say that you wanted to move money from one person to another. That's a very common thing to do. And it's also common for us to send money from one person to another who lives in another country.

Starting point is 00:09:09 This is called a cross-border payment. And it's routine for businesses as well as individuals to send money from one country to another country. It's a $4 trillion marketplace. That's how much money moves from one country to another over the course of a year. And about 20% of all that are individuals, typically immigrants. They come to the U.S., for example, for economic opportunity. They left their family back home and they want to send money back to mama to help her out. Well, if you want to send money from the United States to Central

Starting point is 00:09:42 America or South America or to Europe or to Asia, you've got to use the global financial system to do this. You've got to get to your bank and wire the money, or you've got to use a payment system like Western Union. And under today's technology, if you were to use that, you're going to spend about 5% in fees and commissions, and the transaction itself will take about five days. Along comes Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, you can send money to another person virtually instantaneously and virtually free, and nobody needs a bank account.

Starting point is 00:10:21 This is revolutionary with profound implications for the nation's global financial system this is what makes it so exciting and also frankly a little bit disconcerting my understanding of a money system is that you know money is basically worthless unless everybody agrees it's worth something and so who's agreeing that this is actually worth something? You're exactly right. That's a huge question, Mike, that people ask is how do we determine the value of Bitcoin? Who says it's worth anything? Well, the answer is the same answer we have with all other assets. It's the price is set by the marketplace. How do we decide what the price of IBM stock is? Investors make that decision. I'm willing to buy it. You're willing to sell it. We agree on a price.

Starting point is 00:11:13 That is how the market sets the price. What really matters in the open marketplace is that on a 24-7 basis worldwide, people are every moment of every day buying and selling Bitcoins. And that price is being established in the open marketplace based on supply and demand. So the price is being established by the market. And like other assets, stocks and bonds and real estate, gold and oil and commodities, those prices fluctuate based on investor sentiment and when you have bitcoin you can fairly easily convert it into currents u.s currency or you or you use it as bitcoin and you pay with bitcoin only to people who accept bitcoin both Most people are buying Bitcoin because they believe that the value or the price will rise. These are people we call them holders. These are people who are buying it as an investment.

Starting point is 00:12:16 The same reason people buy stocks. Another group of Bitcoin buyers buy Bitcoin because they want to transmit money to somebody else. Our example of sending money to Mama in South America. So I'm buying the Bitcoin so I could send it to Mama and she's going to convert it into her local currency as soon as she gets it. In that sense, Bitcoin is a payment system. It's similar to a bank checking account or to PayPal or Zelle or Venmo. And then a third group of people are using Bitcoin because they want to use it to purchase goods and services.

Starting point is 00:12:50 You can use Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee. There are car dealers that will let you buy automobiles with Bitcoin. There are millions of merchants around the world who will allow you to buy their products or their services with digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and others. And so what's the risk? Because people talk about, oh, it's very risky. Well, what's the risk? Well, there are two risks. And let's not kid ourselves. These are very real. We've got to pay a lot of attention to these. The number one risk is that Bitcoin is very volatile, as we have seen. The price rises and falls with a substantial

Starting point is 00:13:34 regularity and pretty dramatic. Bitcoin is the fastest growing asset in history, as I mentioned. Since inception, it's up over 40 million percent. But we saw last year in 2022, it fell over 70 percent in a single year. And by the way, that was the seventh time that that's happened to Bitcoin. So along the way to having huge profits, there have often been short intervals where it has had massive losses. The second risk is that Bitcoin is a digital asset, which means it only exists on the internet. Dollars you can hold in your pocket, you can throw into a safe or a vault or deposit them at a bank for safekeeping. And your dollars, if you do put them in a bank, are protected by the federal government through fdic federal deposit insurance

Starting point is 00:14:25 corporation none of that exists for bitcoin it's only a digital asset which means being online a hacker could break into your digital wallet your digital account and literally steal your money so you've got to be careful that you have a good password, that you are safeguarding your password, that you are protecting your online account from online thieves. We're talking about digital assets, Bitcoin, crypto, blockchain technology, and my guest is Rick Edelman. He's a financial advisor, and the name of his book is The Truth About Crypto, a practical, easy-to-understand guide to Bitcoin, blockchain, NFTs, and other digital assets. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

Starting point is 00:15:12 Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not.

Starting point is 00:15:29 With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather.

Starting point is 00:16:04 Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Rick, you're considered one of the top financial advisors in the country. What's your advice when it comes to crypto? My advice, if you're going to own crypto, you should have 1% of your portfolio invested, just 1%. And the reason that I say that is because number one, Bitcoin has proven to be the most successful investment ever. If that trend continues and Bitcoin continues to be highly successful. You don't need to have a lot of money in it. A 1% allocation can materially improve your overall returns from your complete portfolio. 1% is plenty.

Starting point is 00:17:00 But if Bitcoin blows up and becomes worthless, it's only 1%. That's not going to harm you. It won't interfere with your future financial security. It'll be annoying, not devastating. And I would add one other point. After you buy it, hold on to it for years. Don't try to get rich quick. You want to give it the time it needs to deliver on the potential.

Starting point is 00:17:23 I want to move on to other things about digital assets, but in terms of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, I guess, is the biggest, but do they all kind of move the same up and down? Is one as good as the other? Or like, how would you know which one to buy since there are so many? Yeah, there are now 20,000 digital assets. Bitcoin is the oldest. It's the biggest. It has about a 40% market share. The number two digital coin is Ethereum, which also has about a 40% market share. So between those two, you've got 80% of the entire world of crypto. They're the Coke and Pepsi of crypto. And then there's everything else. else so sure you could buy seven up if you feel like it but if you just stick to bitcoin and ethereum do those two call it a day and there are companies there are funds that allow you to

Starting point is 00:18:16 do this for you that make it very simple and easy you can do it in a brokerage account. There are companies such as Bitwise and Fidelity and Schwab that facilitate this very simply and easily for you. So there are a lot of different ways you can engage. So what are some of the other digital assets? I hear about digital art and digital this and NFTs. So what does all that mean so everything has evolved and grown really in a fascinating way again due to this new technology nfts are one of the most exciting aspects of crypto today non-fungible tokens to understand what that is we first have to understand what a fungible token is. And then we have to even

Starting point is 00:19:06 understand what's a token. So let me explain really easily for you and quickly what this all means. A token is just something that is a representative of something else. You know, we hand you a rose as a token of my love. You use a little round coin as a token on the subway to take a ride. If you're in a penny arcade, you hand over tokens to play the games. So a token is just something that's a representation of something else. The deed is the token of my ownership of my house. A fungible token means they're all identical.

Starting point is 00:19:43 In other words, if I lend you a dollar, Mike, and you repay me, you don't have to give me back the same dollar. Any dollar will do because dollars are fungible. One is the same as all the rest. A non-fungible token is unique. If I were to lend you my car, you better give me back my car. My car is unique. I don't want you to give me any car. So my car is a non-fungible token.

Starting point is 00:20:10 It's unique. And in the world of digital assets, we can take anything, a piece of art, and we can create a digital token that represents that art. And if I create a unique piece of art, the token becomes unique. It becomes a non-fungible token. And so people have been creating and selling digital art called NFTs. We can sell concert tickets because if you think about it, each concert ticket is unique. Tonight, in a certain seat at a certain time, you get to watch the concert or go to that ball game. Or I can use a hotel room. I stay in a certain room on a certain night. That's unique too. Or a seat on an airplane. That's unique. We can sell these NFTs that each have unique attributes. And because I can do this online

Starting point is 00:21:07 using blockchain technology, I can create this art for free. I can sell them safely and securely. I can manage them conveniently. And I can create entirely new classes of investments. And we're beginning to see the tokenization of real estate, artwork, deeds, virtually everything in the physical world can be represented online as an NFT. And when you talk about NFTs for digital art, is the NFT is a token of ownership for a piece of actual art in the real world or it's digital art? I guess I don't get it. You do get it. You get this a lot better than you think, because the answer is both some digital art is only a digital file it's a jpeg or it's a pdf or it's a powerpoint slide and it only exists as a digital item others are physical for example nba the national Association, has issued an entire series of NFTs they call Top Shots.

Starting point is 00:22:27 Think of the old baseball cards we used to trade as kids. The NBA has made a series of digital cards for the basketball players. And because they're digital, they aren't just photographs of the players. They're also video files files they also have tickets to games they give you access to uh special events with your favorite players so these nfts are both digital and physical have there yet been any of these whether it's nfts digital art kind of things that have really paid off like this. Boy, I'm sure I'm sure glad I got in early. Or are we still waiting for things to pay off? Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:23:12 There have been more millionaires produced out of the world of Bitcoin so far than just about any other asset class. Last year alone, people who created NFTs earned more than a billion dollars in royalties. So there is an awful lot of money being made by an awful lot of people. And they are not only big businesses doing this, they're individuals doing it. There's a 12-year-old kid in London who invented his own series of NFTs and he sold them for more than $5 million, age 12. What were they?

Starting point is 00:23:47 So this is some, he created a series of NFTs. They were digital art of whales. He drew a series of whales and he created them as digital art and he sold the whales online and people bought them. And so many people bought them and they were bidding them up because there were a limited number of these available that people got very excited about this art and the prices went up and up and up

Starting point is 00:24:13 and he ended up selling them for millions of dollars. And then because this is digital art, there's a feature that if you were to have bought one of those whales and you decided to sell it to somebody else, he, the 12-year-old, got a royalty on your resale. Well, I think you've given a really good explanation. I have a better understanding now of all the digital asset world

Starting point is 00:24:39 and what it's all about. I've been talking to Rick Edelman. He is a financial advisor. In fact, Barron's has ranked him three times as the nation's number one independent financial advisor. He has a radio show and book called The Truth About Your Future and a book called The Truth About Crypto, a practical, easy to understand guide to Bitcoin, blockchain, NFTs and other digital assets. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here, Rick. Well, I'm glad, Mike. I'm glad I was able to be helpful. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know,

Starting point is 00:25:21 you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall

Starting point is 00:25:58 behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Starting point is 00:27:07 Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. And certainly, the Academy Awards have had an interesting, glamorous, and sometimes controversial past, which I imagine over the years you've probably shared in by watching at least some of the award shows on television and perhaps rooted for your favorite actor or movie. Michael Shulman, who is a staff writer at The New Yorker, has taken a fascinating look back at the history of the Academy Awards as it has evolved from just being an industry banquet to what it has become today.

Starting point is 00:28:12 He's written a book about it called Oscar Wars, A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears. Hi, Michael. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me. So first of all, the Academy Awards are given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. So what is that? What is the Academy? What is it that that organization does besides put on the award show?

Starting point is 00:28:37 What is the purpose of the Academy? They are essentially an industry organization. It was founded in 1927. And the reason the Academy was founded has basically nothing to do with awards. Awards just became what they became known for. They were originally founded as a way of solving disputes among different branches of Hollywood professions. And they were in part a way for the studio heads like Louis B. Mayer to forestall unionization of the actors and writers and directors and such. And they also, one of the reasons they started the Academy was to put a good face on the industry. In the 1920s, Hollywood was beset with all sorts

Starting point is 00:29:28 of salacious scandals, like the Fatty Arbuckle trial for rape and murder. And kind of then as now, there was a culture war in the country. And a lot of people in the sort of conservative side of the country felt that Hollywood was a cesspool of sin. And there was a real threat of censorship of the movies. And so part of why the Academy was created was to essentially give a kind of loftier face to movies. So those are some of the reasons why the Academy was started. And then the first Academy Awards were given out in 1929. And throughout the 30s, the Academy sort of shed some of the more controversial labor purposes it had. And the Academy Awards became what people liked that they did. So it became bigger and bigger and got more

Starting point is 00:30:19 attention. And so now the Academy is mostly known for the Oscars, but they also do a lot of other stuff. They have a wonderful library. They have a big museum that just opened. They do grants to support filmmakers, stuff like that. But still really the bulk of their income and their operations and what people know them for are the Oscars. And who is Oscar? Who is Oscar? That is a bit of a mystery how the award got its name. It was during the 1930s. And there are different people who claim ownership of the nickname. One of them is Betty Davis, who said in her memoir that she won the award.

Starting point is 00:31:03 And the back view of the statuette reminded her of her husband's and his middle name was Oscar. And so thereafter it has been called Oscar, but this was totally wrong. It had been referred to in print as the Oscar years before that. There are about four different origin stories and nobody really knows for sure what it was, but the name kind of caught on. It Was there a deliberate attempt to let's make the world share this with us and that'll help hype the movies? Or was it very organic? People just said, hey, this is kind of cool. Look at all these movie stars together in the same place saying and doing silly things. And that was really cool to see. Well, originally, the Awards of Merit, as they were originally called, were just on a long list of ideas that the Academy had. And the first ceremony was the Academy's second anniversary banquet dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.

Starting point is 00:32:18 And they had a big dinner, they had speeches, and the awards were given out at the end in under 15 minutes. And over the next decade or so, they started to get broadcast on radio. Of course, by the 50s, they were on television. I don't know if anyone at the Academy really could foresee how popular they would become. But one person who really championed them was Frank Capra, the director of movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life, etc. He was the president of the Academy in the 30s, and he really wanted to win an Academy Award at the start of his career. And he writes in his memoir about how he just schemed day and night to win an Oscar and made this movie and made that movie and finally won for It Happened One Night. And he really championed the awards. He's the one who actually realized that in order for the Oscars to survive, the Academy had to stop meddling in labor disputes because they were being boycotted by SAG and all these new guilds that formed. At what point along the way did it become clear that, hey, if you win an Oscar, this

Starting point is 00:33:29 could be really good for your career. This could really up the box office for this movie. This could be a really big deal. When did that, was that all very, how did that happen? Yeah, fairly quickly. I mean, the Oscars became really popular almost immediately. As soon as there was an award to win, people in Hollywood wanted to win it. And I think throughout the 30s, it became clear that an Academy Award was a boon to a movie or an actor.

Starting point is 00:34:03 And you saw people start to campaign. MGM was the first studio to place an ad, what we would now call a four-year consideration ad, though they didn't use the phrase then. And people went to some lengths to get them. I mean, in 1935, Betty Davis did a movie called Of Human Bondage and was notably not nominated for the role. There was such an outcry that the Academy had to open the voting up to write-in votes. And she lost. She lost to Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night. But the outrage over the fact that Betty Davis did not get an Oscar. It was sort of the first big Oscar snub. It just goes to show you how seriously people took it.

Starting point is 00:34:51 Well, because of what it signifies. I mean, when you're an Academy Award winning actor or an Academy Award winning movie, you're kind of in royalty. It sets you up for success, right? Yes. Although the flip side is what people sometimes call the Oscar curse, where someone wins an Oscar and then they suddenly take a career dive. I mean, you know, there are a bunch of examples. I mean, Hilary Swank won two Oscars in a row around the turn of the century and this century and then sort of had a slump. And Halle Berry won this historic Oscar as the first black actress to win Best Actress for Monster's Ball. And then the next thing she did was Catwoman. And Anne Hathaway won for Les Miserables. And that was sort of the beginning

Starting point is 00:35:41 of everyone deciding that they hated Anne Hathaway. So especially for women, I feel like there's this danger zone when you win an Oscar. And it doesn't always translate into your career getting better. Sometimes that is the height from which you plummet. I imagine in the beginning, there were far fewer Oscars handed out at any one event than there are now. Now we have so many different categories and songs and music and cinematography. How many were handed out in the first one? Well, the first Academy Awards had nine categories and the categories have always changed. They're still changing.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Actually, the first year, there were two essentially top prizes. There was something called Outstanding Picture, and then something called Best Unique and Artistic Picture. So Outstanding Picture went to Wings, which was this big World War II plane extravaganza. And then Best Unique and Artistic Picture went to Sunrise, which was the German director F.W. Murnau's kind of psychodrama. So that was something that immediately changed in year two. Also, the first year had best title writing, meaning the intertitles in silent films.

Starting point is 00:37:00 And this was the moment when talkies were emerging and silent film was quickly dying. So Joseph Farnham has the honor of being the first and only winner of best title writing. What are some of your favorite kind of quirky moments or as you look back at the history of this whole thing? What are some of the favorite moments or bizarre moments that that happened that we may or may not remember, or I've even heard of? Okay, so one of the lesser known Oscar scandals that I write about is in 1957, the actress Deborah Carr came out and presented an award for best motion picture story. This is

Starting point is 00:37:43 not a category that exists anymore. And it went to someone named Robert Rich for a movie called The Brave One. It's a movie about a Mexican boy and his pet bull. And Robert Rich was not there. Someone accepted on his behalf, but then no one could find him. He didn't exist. The producers of the movie said,

Starting point is 00:38:04 well, we met this guy in Munich and he was an ex-GI and we bought the story idea from him. And maybe he's in Europe somewhere. Maybe he's in Australia. We're trying to find him. It was what Life magazine called a who won it. Nobody could find this phantom Oscar winner. Now, what was happening in Hollywood in the 1950s? The blacklist. The House Un-American Activities Committee was investigating suspected communists. A lot of people were being put on the blacklist for defying the committee or having once been a part of the Communist Party. And so Robert Rich was, in fact, a front name for the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the screenwriters who had actually gone to prison for defying the House committee. And there was a whole black market where screenwriters were writing under pseudonyms. to Mexico and had seen a bullfight and came up with this idea, sold it to these producers, and was sitting at home watching the awards on TV when he saw this sort of fake persona win. And so what he did was spend the next two years using the press interest in this fake person to try to turn the tables on the industry and the academy and to try to destroy the blacklist by embarrassing the people who were implementing it.

Starting point is 00:39:35 And it's just an incredible story of this guy sort of using his wiles, his creativity, his humor to sort of gain the upper hand when he had absolutely no power. He actually sent in a little poem to Life magazine that went, come back, Robert Rich, wherever you are. Do you live on the moon? Do you live on a star? He was having fun with it. He eventually famously, in 1960, became the first blacklisted screenwriter to get a screen credit under his own name for the movies Exodus and Spartacus. So even in this little weird Oscar moment about Robert Rich, who is that, you get this entire epic story of how these blacklisted screenwriters fought back.

Starting point is 00:40:21 Are there any good... I would imagine when you get all those egos in a room that there must be some weird little backstage behind the scenes, tantrums, or just, just any quirky things that have happened that, that because they are who they are. Oh yeah.. I mean, there's just endless stories of people colliding backstage. You know, I mean, one year that I write about is the 1970 Oscars, which was a real collision of the sort of classic Hollywood and the counterculture that was emerging and had emerged in the 60s. It was sort of Hollywood was kind of late to it. This was the year that Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture,

Starting point is 00:41:07 and it was the first and only Best Picture to be rated X, because the letter rating system was brand new. X was not quite what we think of now. It didn't mean pornography. It meant, you know, for adults. And Midnight Cowboy was a pretty racy movie. And there's a story backstage of the star of the movie, Jon Voight, running into Fred Astaire backstage, and they kind of like

Starting point is 00:41:33 nod to each other with respect, like these two halves of this sort of divided culture sort of paying respect to each other. Of course, Jon Voight is now, you know, a rock hard conservative, but back then he was kind of the symbol of, you know, the new Hollywood emerging and, and the sort of hippie culture. I would imagine that one of the factors that determines if somebody wins is how much money they spend promoting the fact that they want, they want to win an Academy Award. And you see those ads for, you know, your consideration. And so any good fights of movies trying to battle the other to try to win the actual award? You know, one year that went down in history as the ugliest best

Starting point is 00:42:20 picture fight of all time was 1999. the rivalry between Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love. So Saving Private Ryan was, of course, Steven Spielberg. It was put out from his studio at the time, DreamWorks, while Shakespeare in Love was Harvey Weinstein, and it was Miramax. And Harvey Weinstein was known for his, back then, what he was notorious for was his extremely aggressive campaigning and marketing tactics. So he just blanketed the trade magazines with ads for Shakespeare in Love. He threw a million parties. He got all this press and publicity and kind of made everyone in the hall in, in, in the Academy feel like, okay, this, this, you had to see this movie.

Starting point is 00:43:08 Whereas Spielberg was very reluctant to campaign for saving private Ryan because he felt the movie should speak for itself. It's, it has this gravitas. It's about the greatest generation and fighting in world war two. And suddenly dreamworks really felt like something was being stolen from them, rightly or wrongly. That's how they felt. And then they heard this rumor that Weinstein was bad-mouthing Saving Private Ryan by saying the only good thing in it was the first 25 minutes,

Starting point is 00:43:37 the storming of the beach at Normandy on D-Day. And after that, it just became a kind of standard World War II movie. And once they heard that, they were completely incensed and started going to the press and complaining about everything that Miramax was doing. It just became this flat out war between these two studios. And on Oscar night, Saving Private Ryan was still the presumed front runner. But when Shakespeare in Love won, the DreamWorks people were furious. The head of marketing, Terry Press, was watching from the mezzanine. And she said that her face felt like it was on fire. And she suddenly couldn't feel her feet. Her legs were getting wobbly. She thought she was going to faint. Backstage, there was a DreamWorks publicist

Starting point is 00:44:25 standing next to a Miramax publicist. And the DreamWorks person turned to him and said, never speak to me again, and walked away. I mean, there was such acrimony between these two studios from that race. And what was important about this very ugly Oscar race going forward is that it sparked this arms race, essentially, where the next year DreamWorks said, okay, we are not going to let this happen again. We're going to take the Weinstein playbook and double it. And so they had American Beauty that year and they outspent every other studio in ads and they won. And then the next year they did it again for Gladiator and won again. And then two years after that, Miramax won for Chicago and every studio now wanted to do whatever Weinstein had done because there was this perception that he had, he had basically

Starting point is 00:45:17 campaigned his way to an Academy Award for a movie that didn't deserve it. What is your sense? I mean, my sense is that, because I remember not all that long ago, it was probably around the time when like Johnny Carson was the host of the Oscars for several years, that that was kind of like the pinnacle. And people used to have Oscar parties. But it just, it seems like the show isn't as good as it used to be. The ratings are down. People don't want to hear the politics. And what's your sense? What's happened that, you know, they have trouble getting hosts? I mean, it doesn't have so much to do with the ceremony, I think. It has to do with – it's kind of bigger than the Academy and the Oscars. It has to do with the role of movies in our lives. You have these kind of blockbuster franchise movies like the Marvel movies or Avatar, stuff like that, that is really the only thing that people are going out to theaters to see.

Starting point is 00:46:32 And then you have the sort of small art house movies that are often nominated for Academy Awards, things like Tar, for instance, this year, or Nomadland, or The Power of the Dog. And people have gotten so used to watching those kinds of movies on streaming. I mean, especially since the pandemic, we've all just, you know, people aren't going out to the theater as much. And so movies have a different role in our lives and the kind of mid-budget movie, like this Kramer versus Kramer's

Starting point is 00:46:57 and as good as it gets, the sort of like adult dramas and adult comedies that were sort of in the middle that used to sort of bind the Academy Awards to popular culture a little bit more, those aren't being made as much because people aren't going to see them in the theater or they've kind of migrated to television. And at the same time, it's much harder now to get everyone in the country watching the same thing on television. We just don't have that kind of monoculture anymore where everyone is watching the same show. It's a much more fragmented

Starting point is 00:47:31 culture that we have now. So the Oscars still are watched by a lot more people than most other things. But compared to the year Titanic won, you know, that was the sort of the high point of Oscar ratings, because that movie was not just the Best Picture winner, but it was this gigantic world conquering hit. Well, for me, and I think anybody who goes to the movies, there's still a mystique about the Academy Awards. And it's just it's fun to hear the stories. Michael Schulman has been my guest. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the name of his book is Oscar Wars, A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Michael. All right, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:48:23 Around the time of the Revolutionary War, according to one source, fewer than 5% of people had middle names. By 1900, almost everybody did. Why do we have middle names? Well, for a variety of reasons, but very often it's a way to keep a family name going, preserve a relationship, or honor someone in the family. Still, a lot of middle names seem to be going to waste. According to experts, people use their middle name less and less. In fact, statistics say only 1 in 10 people use their middle name regularly. Even if you don't like it, consider yourself lucky if you have a middle name.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Most people without a given middle name report feeling slighted and often wish they did have one. And that is something you should know. The fact that you're listening to this podcast means a lot to me. I know there are millions of, literally millions of podcasts you could be listening to. And you've chosen this one and I greatly appreciate it and hope you'll tell a friend. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper.

Starting point is 00:49:39 In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Starting point is 00:50:22 Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen,

Starting point is 00:50:42 of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really

Starting point is 00:51:13 intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Crypto, Blockchain and NFTs Made Simple & The Story of The Oscars

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.