Throughline - Gladiators, real housewives and the pull of reality TV

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

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

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

Fade the music up. Women have been forced to tolerate the manipulative douchebaggery of F-boys for far too long. And that's why we're here. Welcome to F-Boy Island. Okay, fade to click down. Ladies, if you're thinking, what is going on? Yeah, that was intentional. F-boy Island, a reality TV show set on, you guessed it, an island.

tasked three women with trying to find the real nice guys among a group of mostly self-proclaimed F-boys or players. And the clip we opened with is from the fictional movie The Truman Show, in which a guy unknowingly grows up in a world completely manufactured for TV. Two very different setups, same basic question. What's real and what isn't? Why are we telling you all this? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. Nothing like a good cliffhanger.

Am I right? Q guest tape. My name's Goloka Bolte. I am a reality TV casting director for the last 20 years. We spent over an hour getting to know Goloka before casting her for this episode, and another hour interviewing her. But like any good reality show, you'll only hear the parts that make the story pop. I started out in the grand old days of reality TV.

Music in something playful. My first sort of significant project that I worked on was season two of Joe Millionaire. And since then, you know, I've gone on to cast everything from Master Chef to work on Let's Make a Deal to RuPaul's Drag Race to Foy Island, to a million dollar listing, to the Real Housewives of New Jersey. It kind of runs the gamut. I absolutely love casting Foy Island. So during the casting process, I mean, we are asking people about the most sort of rogue, rascally things they've ever done and trying to figure out what's their story, what's their motivation for being there. Yo, I'm just here to clap. Like, you look good, I look good, we look good together. I love to tease. I love the flirt. I know every which way to get them. I know physical touch, mental games, all that. They're like, this is just between us, right? And I'm like, yeah, me and the camera and the producers and the network executives. Yeah, just between us.

I think that one of the things that people just need to remember is that, you know, you are seeing reality for the most part. That's been edited together with, you know, suspenseful music to kind of create the mood and anticipation for the next scene and put it in a certain order for context to make it feel more exciting and more dramatic. If you watch the unedited footage all the way through, it would be quite boring. Cue suspenseful music from the top. Bring in a clip from the Truman Show. Something that really gets the listener invested. We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that.

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

You know, I know for myself, my own business, I couldn't even keep up with the demand for work. If you're doing a competition show, you're filming away, you're living in a hotel, the crew's living there, you're on location, so we're already filming in a bubble. It's so much more cost-effective, and our budgets are not as big as scripted. shows. But today, reality TV seems to be trying to keep up with the chaos of the world. I mean,

they even made a real-life squid game. And it's getting harder to keep up, especially when so much of our lives feel manufactured. The news we watch, the feeds we scroll, the WhatsApp group chats, the Facebook mom groups. Okay, I'm spiraling, but you get where I'm going with this. We are constantly trying to figure out what's true, what's not, what's AI generated, what is reality. What is As someone who's watched their fair share of reality TV, it feels like we're watching that same playbook play out everywhere we look. In relationships, in the media, in politics, we literally elected a reality TV star as president. Twice. So in this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we're going to use reality TV to understand three parts of modern life that already feel a lot like shows.

Love, the American Dream. and the rage machine. The winner of Survivor Cook Islands. The second singer, unmasking. Oh, my gosh. The winner of the Great British Bakeoff is... I'll read the last boat. Just say my name.

Just say the name. You're saying the name. Absolutely. You're fired. In V.S.Biden, Germany, originally from Kansas City. You're listening to Thru-Line at NPR. Hey, Run here. We want to try something new on the show, and we need your help.

Have you ever had a question about something in the headlines or wondered why something is the way it is? It could be anything from big geopolitical questions to kind of weird ones, like how did bananas become such a big part of our diet in the U.S. We already have an episode about that one, by the way, if you really are wondering. We would love to hear your questions. Send them to us at throughline at npr.org. call 872-58-88-8-8-805 and leave a voicemail. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number two. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode.

Thank you. Part 1. The Rage Machine. Imagine you're a peasant in the time of the Roman Empire. You might be feeling some anger towards the people in the upper classes because you want what they have. and there's no way you're ever going to get that. So you know that you are going to live and die as you are. Gladiators did something to kind of keep the peace, right?

It appeased people. Here's somebody you can look down on. You know, you can feel a little bit better about yourself, a little bit less angry. Similar emotions, you know, that people might feel at terms of that expression of anger, you know, watching two real housewives scream at each other. And, I mean, modern day cable news, right, does this as well.

Major beef inside a golden corral, dozens of customers get into a brawl all over a piece of meat. We use entertainment to cope with modern life. People have always done that. We're looking for somewhat of an escape. In order to keep viewers, the boundaries keep being pushed more and more and more. I've never seen an animal that violent, that close up before. I mean, I've really felt scared for my life. So now our appetite for those types of pseudo-blood sports has really increased.

I'm Joe Rogan, and this is Fear Factor. The stunts you're about to see are extremely dangerous. It should not be attempted by anyone, anywhere, anytime. And I think often without a second thought, oh, this looks funny, this looks interesting. But then it can go over into the cruel. My name is Dr. Janice Gravani. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. I think it was really my interest in anxiety that led to my interest in reality TV.

Lay not in the tape. Good, good, good, good, good. Everyone here is waiting for the same thing, the stroke of midnight. Happy New Year 2000. This is survival. At the dawn of a new millennium, audiences flocked to theaters to watch. a new movie called Gladiator, set in an era when real-life blood sports were entertainment, and a reality show debuted on American television that launched the pseudo-blood sport era of reality TV.

It was called Survivor. Bring in Survivor executive producer, Mark Burnett. Survivor is a morality play. You are asking the people that you have ousted to give you the gift of a million. We need to mention this tape comes from a 2010 interview with Mark Burnett and the Television Academy Foundation. What immediately appealed to me was the idea of people building a society on Ireland, a la Swiss family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies. If you've never seen the show, here's the basic premise.

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

I always think about the importance of the year 2000 and Y2K and technophobia as being really sort of indelible to survivor. I don't know that it's necessarily going to be a computer problem. I think it's going to be a social and people problem. There is a lot of social anxiety about the fast and the rapidly increasing pace. of technology and how that is impacting everyday life. Have we become so dependent on computers that our society is at risk if they fail? My name is Raquel Gates.

I am an associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University. I find it very fitting that then we get this show, which is all about like a return to nature and like, can you build a fire? I came from, you know, You know, a working class neighborhood in Miami, you know, so I'm like, how bad could it be? To quote the Lion King, I laugh in the face of danger.

I am Dr. Jatia Hart. I am a nuclear engineer. I was on Survivor Season 28. We're doing three tribes this year, and they're divided based on qualities that it takes to win this game. Brains, I don't know the damn thing. Beauty, brains, and bronze. Rudy Braun. I'll do that one time again just because I'm sure I messed up. I absolutely had a holy fucking shit moment.

I'm hungry. Actually, the hunger was not the worst part. It was that I felt like nobody was being nice to me. Not only the people I was playing with, but I felt like the crew hated me. You know, like when you walk into the cafeteria and you sit at a table and you just feel like people are just barely fucking tolerating you. No, no, no. Flatside. Yep, like that.

As a black woman in engineering, I've been at that table a lot. She has the decisiveness of a leader. She has the bossiness for sure, but she doesn't exactly have it all here. I felt kind of like a cog in the machine. It feels like the fantasy of Survivor is that you have this pre-civilization society that magically conforms to everything you already sort of believe about society, but it naturalizes it. So it's not like produce your environment. It's not sexism. It just so happens to be that, you know, young dudes dominate the game over and over and over.

In my tribe, I was the youngest woman. And that, to me, is a position of weakness in any society. It's a show where you're supposed to vote people off, right? You're supposed to form a bond, a connection. And a very real bonding connection is shared history and shared experience. It's very easy to other people. In my season, three black people, there were only four. Three black people went out in a row. And I was like, if I'm going to go home, I'm going to go out with the bang. I was like the mental patient, and then you left the mental patient alone and I went crazy. You think listeners will get the Jatiyah's dumping her tribe's only bag of rice into the fire as an act of revenge?

It's what happens when you leave crazy people alone. It's entertaining. It's TV, so I don't feel bad for it. I wish I'd have been more careful talking about mental health. I think part of it was I was feeling like they were treating me like something was wrong with me. Everything that you saw on the TV show happened. But there were a lot more things that happened that you did not see that they have to boil down. And I understand they had to make a character. They had to make a story. Fourth person voted out of survivor, Kagayan. Chitia, need to bring me a torch. Good luck, you guys. When you're eliminated, and the minute your torch is extinguished, the music shifts, it goes to cobalt blue lighting,

which is where they're walking off into the jungle and disappearing. It's a blue, cold, death color. Figuratively, they're dying. And then there's a moment of vacuum, emotional vacuum. Reality television is really predicated on sort of playing on our emotions. The emotional connection is the primary goal of reality television as opposed to some other forms of media. What keeps people coming back to reality television is there has to be some source of conflict and tension. So creating anxiety. Actually, what I'd love to do is take a...

a little trip through psychological history. So let's go back. Hiroshima, seen from the air after the atomic bomb blast that virtually erased this city from the earth. As far as the eye can see, stretch scenes of desolation and ruin. Coming out of World War II, where, you know, not just this country, but the world had witnessed some of the most awful atrocities that one can think of.

I still have that smell of burning. bodies, you know, in my nose. It's smell. It's terrible. You know, people were still grappling with questions about the Holocaust. Ashes. All the ashes. There was a real desire, especially in this country, to sort of understand, like, what makes

people do the things that they do? Could ordinary people do evil? It is May 1962. An experiment is being conducted in the elegant interaction. laboratory at Yale University. The idea is that you're going to record people being people and placing them in very sort of strange, bizarre situations. The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the greater New Haven area.

And that's going to teach us something about what makes people tick. The Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiments. Two-thirds of volunteers were prepared to administer potentially fatal electric shock when encouraged to do so by what they perceived as a legitimate authority figure. In this case, a man in a white coat. 375 holds? I think something's happened to have a follow in there. Milgram's findings horrified America. They showed that decent American citizens were as capable

of committing acts against their conscience as the Germans had been under the Nazis. There's disagreement around the interpretations of these experiments. But knowing that that's in some ways foundational to what eventually becomes a reality television, I think is really helpful. Because even if it gets diluted or, you know, warped, there's always this idea of, we're going to help you understand why people do the things that they do or how people live. Let's quickly fast forward through some early reality TV. Let's start with the British documentary Seven Up.

World in Action enters the struggling, changing world of the seven-year-old. During the next hour, you will see the first in a series of programs entitled an American family. We've brought these 20 children together for the very first time. For seven months, from May 30, 1971 to January 1st, 1972, the family was filmed as they went about their daily routine. But you always, you're kind of critical of yourself when you see yourself on TV. There is no question that the presence of our camera crews and their equipment

had an effect on the loud. Viewing yourself, you think, oh God, say something intelligent. Just don't sit there. Hi, my name is Peter Samoa. I came from Cuba in 1980. This is the true story. I'm in H-ABA's educator.

True story. Seven strangers. Pick to living a lot. And have their lives taped. To find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. Could you get the phone?

And start getting real. real world. The revolution begins here. Stand by, ready, three. Take three. Mike, you're trying to slow zoom in a little bit. When you get to the 90s, we have the proliferation of cable channels. MSNBC. Fox News Now, the news you need to get your day started. We've sort of moved out of the period of broadcasting, you know, like sort of back in the day when they were only four networks.

And suddenly, you know, there's time. tons of networks, and networks have to figure out how they keep people's attention. No justice, no peace is what they're chanting. The news media itself becomes incredibly sensational. If it seemed like war yesterday, the reinforcements showed up tonight. A truck bomb exploded in front of a government building in Oklahoma City. We've got some breaking news. The space shuttle Columbia was going over North Texas.

Details are still emerging of an accident in Paris and around midnight involving Diana, in the face of Wales. News media becomes a form of entertainment in a way that I think is really different than it had been before. 911, what are you reporting? This is AC. I have O.J. in the car.

One thing we have been noticing again, it's a very slow pursuit, followed by numerous highway patrol vehicles. Enter the so-called Dream Team, Simpsons' all-star defense, including his most trusted ally, Robert Kardashian. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Because what do those channels exist for? They have to get the image. They have to get the picture. They exist to make money. Later on, sort of say, I couldn't help myself. What do they make money on? They make money on advertisements. What do you need, right?

To make money on advertisements is you need viewers. How do you get viewers? Simple recipe. Shock had turned to fear. You make them really scared. Fear that the few possessions that Andrew had spared would be stolen by lures. You make them really angry? The army stands guard.

And then you promise them that you can make that that they have to keep tuning in in order to keep themselves safe. The rage machine is such a great term for it. It's just churning. Fear, rage, the promise of relief. Sifted through its debris and counted its dead. Over and over again. And seeing up close, why they call it terror. That fills over, right, into our perception of reality. And it becomes the reality TV formula, right? This is Survivor. When I was producing the finale of Survivor Marquesas,

I'd rented Trump woman skating rink in Central Park, McDonald. He told me how much he loved Survivor. and that were I to ever have any ideas for him, he'd love to hear it and love to work with me. And thinking about a job interview show, kind of survivorish, but it takes place in a city with the winner getting a job in big-time American business,

and Trump was the obvious choice. Only one drama can make 18 nice people become. Vicious, vindictive, cutthroat, evil. Evil. Who loves the apprentice? This Thursday, it returns. Coming up, the rage machine collides with the American dream. It's like the American dream on speed.

I'm Sierra and I'm calling from Chatchingau, Thailand. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. My favorite reality TV show is Survivor. I have, in my head, the sound of the host Jeff Probe's voice yelling you've got to dig deep and honestly does remind me that I'm more capable than I think I am. Part 2. Will the real slum shady please stand up? And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

I am a real American. I'm on that mountain top. I'm late for you, Andre. in the hospital. When pro-wrestling was first a thing, everybody thought it was real. They thought that these complex and these characters that the wrestlers had created,

I mean, Hogan is 6'4-8, Andre is 7'4-5, were real people. The bell is gone. This one is officially underway. And there's this cool word that I love that came out of the pro- wrestling tradition called K-Fabe. And what K-Fabe is, is a very thing. maintaining your character once you're outside of the ring.

What I am is what I am. I'm a real American. I love my family. I love my God. I love all my people that believe in me. Really, really good pro-wrestlers will not break KFeed. So there's always this kind of question, right, about what is performance and what's reality? And I think it's no accident that one of the other things, right, that Trump was sort of heavily

involved in before The Apprentice, and I think during, was the W.E. He would make regular appearances. So when I think of this idea, right, of keeping K-Faig, I don't know what is his reality and what is he projecting. Your grapefruits are no match for my Trump Towers. People developed a parosocial relationship, right, a one-sided relationship with these people, but there's a great amount of distance between us. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the author of this book right here.

Trump, the art of the deal, Donald de Trump. For people who maybe didn't live in New York in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Donald Trump is the businessman who is cited in pop culture. Samantha, a cosmopolitan, and Donald Trump. You just don't get more New York than that. I've got to go. Yeah. I'll be at my office at Trump table.

Good. Excuse me. Where's the lobby? Down the hall and to the left. Thanks. Donald Trump, both his name and his image, becomes synonymous with American wealth. Donald Trump doesn't just live large.

He lives, really, on top of the world. He is the American dream. There's more than one version of the American dream. The early form of the American dream, which I would actually sort of connect to Western World Expansion, is the idea that any like young, able-bodied, white man can come and like own land, right? And sort of build a home for himself and his family and own something. The next iteration of the American dream is that, you know, any immigrant,

if you come here and you work hard, you can make a really nice life for yourself. Post-World War II, it's this idea that, hey, young men, you have served your country, and now you're going to come back and work hard at a good job that will allow you to buy a lovely home with a white picket fence and two cars and support your family. Now, of course, across all of those, people are always left out. Like, black people, for instance, are left out of every,

indigenous people are left out of every single one of those iterations. It's really like the straight white guys, you know, kind of fantasy. But I think what we get, especially in the 19, like, 50s and 60s is the televised aspects of the civil rights movement. Suddenly, the system is gradually breaking down, and this, I think, is a very hopeful sign. Being able to see, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on television, seeing black Americans being beaten by police and attack by police dogs. The inequality suffered by the American neighborhood population of the United States has hindered the American ring.

It's sort of like a reconsideration and a recalibration of what the American dream looks like. It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven. To discover the flag which you have pledged allegiance, as not pledged allegiance to you, it comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you. And in the 80s, there's almost like this return to that 1950s ethos, but like a doubling down on it. We can, and so help us God, we will make America great again. And the dream itself being unbridled wealth, but also unbridled power. That's that thing that makes the 80s and the rise of Donald Trump really tantalizing for a lot of people.

both in the 80s and subsequently. By the turn of the century, Donald Trump's larger-than-life persona had begun to fade. Before The Apprentice, Donald Trump was kind of a washed-up businessman. He had declared bankruptcy, you know, his casinos had failed.

So when the opportunity to host a new, survivor-ish business show came up, he suddenly had a chance to revive that persona. K-Fabe, for the show, 21st century. My name's Donald Trump, and I'm the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place, model agencies, the Miss Universe pageant, casinos, and private resorts like Mar-a-Lago.

I'm looking for The Apprentice. People assumed, or Trump supporters at least, that if he's a wealthy, successful, powerful businessman... You don't make a billion dollars being an idiot. He must also be really good. everything else. I think he's smart enough to run the country. I grew up with my family loving Trump.

He's got a little Reagan in, too, which is always a good thing. So make America great again. The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer. That is the heart of this new movement. And then bringing it all back to the rage machine. As the Trump campaign helps stoke America's outrage, get her out of here. Protesters have always been part.

Stoked, anxiety, fear, rage. That little catchphrase is the candidate's version of what the apprentice used to say. You're fired, you're fired, you're fired. And then promised he was the only one who could help. This, in fact, is our new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream. See, it is the reality TV formula, right? During the years when Trump went from Apprentice hosts

to President of the United States, reality TV also got a makeover, thanks to a couple factors. Reality television itself is becoming sort of focused on celebrities in a way that it hadn't been before. Some Gibroni just asked my daughter on a date. That would be awesome. No, she's not going out with it.

Not as long as my name's all over. The Writers Guild of America went out on strike. And we took our show. And a writer's strike. in 2007 led to a boom and new, cheaper to make, unscripted reality TV shows. Kim, would you stop taking pictures of yourself?

Your sister's going to jail. Kim came into her prime exactly as social media was becoming the way of the world. That's lightning in a bottle, timing. Hi, my name is Jeff Jenkins. I'm the founder

of JCP, Jeff Jenkins Productions. I've been the executive producer of of keeping up with the Kardashians and all of its spin-offs for the first decade of its existence. Mr. Kardashian was one of the attorneys representing O.J., and that unique last name, Kardashian, was kind of broadcast around the world.

If you grow up with that and it's seeping into your pores, just becomes part of who you are. When I first saw video of the entire family, that bell goes off. Maybe keeping up with our Kardashians is the reality Brady Bunch. I hate you all. Welcome to my family. I'm Kim Kardashian. Kim, Courtney, Chloe, Chris, Bruce Jenner, Rob, Kendall and Kylie, Kylie,

baby sisters of a second marriage. Like all of us, they're a dysfunctional family, just like ours. That's relatable. I'll punch you in your face. They may fight, but any outsider, you're not going to mess with us. I do think their dysfunction is kind of at a Shakespearean level. Kim and Chris headed for divorce just 72 days after tying the night. in rare form, especially when it came to her ex, Lamar.

The world got its first look at Caitlin Jenner, the Olympic hero turned reality. Her appears to be styled like an Afro. Teens are using a shot glass prescription bottles to plump up their lips like Kylie Jenner. Critics say that the photos are an example of cultural appropriation. Kim Kardashian breaks down in tears over her marriage troubles with Kanye West on keeping up with the Kardashians.

They're coming up on being the law. longest running reality show period in history. And they have built a multi-billion-dollar brand off of sharing their lives. Some have nicknamed them America's royal family. Others see them as more of a brand than a family. And that at least isn't totally new. We're so used to seeing the queen as head of state. There's almost something unreal about her. It's actually her family that make her real. The And back in the 1960s, John F. Kennedy, who came to power at the same time TVs became a fixture in every American home, used his made-for-TV smile and charm to captivate the country. People just really not only loved Kennedy, but developed a parasocial relationship with his family.

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

Their story began with a high-profile murder case and a sex tape. And the reality TV machine. transformed them into one of the most influential families on the planet, a symbol of a new version of the American dream, one of wealth, excess, and celebrity, tailored for a world where we ourselves are branded content. But making it work is a dream that's attainable for only a very few. The facts bear out that there is very limited economic mobility in our country,

but because of American exceptionalism, individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstraps culture, people really believe that they can. The trade-off, constantly having a camera, track your every move, watching you in your most vulnerable moments, and letting the world judge you for it. Kim, whose destiny is this experience of being on television and sharing, had very few boundaries. She will reassure me. No, keep rolling. Funny, I'm the Maryland and the Jack. What is performance and what's reality? Welcome. You've got mail. When I think about myself as a teenager first on the internet, what was the number one rule? You don't share personal

information about yourself with strangers on the internet. And, you know, fast forward 20 years later. Goodbye. What are we all doing? We're sharing everything about our lives with strangers on the internet. Everybody has a smartphone, everybody has a camera on them at all times. There's this intense expectation that not only are you going to record every aspect of your life, but that it's going to look absolutely perfect and beautiful.

and there's no end. Just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling forever and ever and ever. Do you think that people today in our modern worlds are more lonely than they've ever been? I do. Coming up, the realities of love and loneliness. This is Eric Mashey from Amsterdam

and you're listening to ThruLine one of the best podcasts there are. Part three. You found love in a hopeless place. I almost sang the Rihanna song, but I wouldn't do it because I feel like that would be the take you use. Here he is The Bachelor.

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

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

Not even a little bit. Not even at all. The Bachelor, which has been on TV for more than 20 years now, fused reality with that fantasy, and made us believe we could have it too. I want to be everything to you. I want to be everything for you. And then it comes right to this romantic fairy tale conclusion.

It ends with a proposal and a beautiful diamond ring. And so what we're seeing, right, is the fairy tale. A lot of people think it's like, oh, let's just find the craziest, you know, person to get good ratings. But it's actually not because to have people watch, you have to buy into the fantasy. And then to buy into the fantasy, you have to know that, you know, there are potentially great matches for people. Sometimes when something's really hokey, it almost gives us permission to get lost. in it because it's kind of like, you know this is silly, right?

We all know this is a construction, right? Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, we suspend disbelief, it allows us to sort of lower our defenses and kind of fully indulge. But also, I think the real always seeps out. Even before the pandemic struck, this was the lonely century. Technology has led to substituting online connections for offline, in-person connections,

and ultimately, I think that has been harmful. The lonelier we get, the more seductive, the fantasy that will find real human connection becomes. And the easier it is to feel invested in shows like The Bachelor, where the engagement ring is the ultimate grand prize. We have our favorites, right, our proxies, who we want to win, who we start to form our social relationships with. And as modern love becomes increasingly online and competitive,

reality TV has evolved to mirror today's dating dilemmas. It is really easy to sift out F-boys, but y'all be so confused. And be like, how did this happen? Oh, my God, I thought he was this. And it was like, sis. Is you blind? And that is why we're here. F-boy Island.

They're not really about love and dating. They're about something else, and they're really just sort of competitive shows anyway. They're more like, they're kind of like Survivor in some ways. It's almost like an enactment, right? of the dating apps. It's just like kind of swipe. I mean, certainly there's a lot more physicality, but just going through partners.

He was making me feel uncomfortable. We're going to be sweet, buddies. I've been in like situation shit. I'm kidding. You know, I have a couple seconds where I'm deciding if I want to swipe left or swipe right. And they're kind of curating this image. And if you can't curate that image, right?

Does that mean that that avenue is closed to you? And I think different people, you know, some people will say, no, I don't have a problem with it. But I think the majority, if you ask the majority, right, they're going to say, if you're not conventionally attractive and don't meet sort of X, Y, and Z criteria, you're not going to get any matches. And then what do you do? Right, where do you go to actually meet somebody that you can make a connection with? That question has led to frustration, hopelessness, and a sense of concern. grievance that's flourishing online and reflecting back into our TV shows. You interrupted our day because you couldn't handle me and her alone.

What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. That's not fair. And I don't want it. We made experience, right, this emotion, right, of Shadenfreude. Such a great word. It's happiness of the misfortune of others. When they get into fights, when they, when they get too drunk and embarrass themselves.

I think that it's fascinating that a lot of contemporary shows around love are much more focused on relationship dynamics. 90-day fiancé married at first sight. This is a revolutionary new social experiment. This is the first time an experiment like this has ever been done in the U.S. Four experts intend to use scientific research to arrange three marriages. Essentially what happens, after people find each other, as opposed to treating marriage, for instance, as the ultimate goal or the end of the story, right?

We're kind of like picking up after Cinderella and Prince Charming get married and being like, so what were the expectations like now that she was back in the castle? Like, what happened then? It's like a dream. A wonderful dream culture. The fantasy is breaking down. And to keep us hooked, reality shows about love, are acknowledging more and more just how hard it is,

not only to find human connection, but to sustain it. Like, I really would love it if you could just kind of, like, get more into, like, a husband mentality. Those quieter moments when people are having a conversation about, I can't believe you did. Like, that's when the real slips out. Like, what's your expectation? Do you think you're just going to build me into who you want me to be?

I view these shows as acknowledging for viewers, a growing cynicism, quite frankly, around, like, traditional models and narratives around love and around relationships. Whether it's reality television or like classic Hollywood cinema, media has always been a site of fantasy projection. It's a place for us to work out our hopes, our desires, our anxieties, our fears. And I think reality television serves that purpose really, really well. Life is a series of events that don't make narrative sense. There aren't neat conclusions. So reality television provides that for us.

You know, there's a way that people talk about television and media and reality TV within that is being a reflection of reality. I actually think it's a refraction of reality. It's taking things that are happening in real life and sort of skewing them and sometimes presenting them back to us in ways that are perfectly aligned with reality. And in some ways are skewed in such a way that make us question what we thought. we knew about reality. Okay, cue the final scene of the Truman show when the show's creator finally speaks directly to Truman after televising him without his knowledge

since the day he was born. I have been watching you your whole life. You can't leave, Truman. You belong here. Say something. Say something, God damn it. You're on television. You're live to the whole world.

Bring up due line ending music. And roll credit. That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel Fetter. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Ada Blewe. This episode was produced by me and... Laurence Wu. Julie Kane.

Anya Steinberg. Yolanda Sanguine. Casey Minor. Christina Kim. Devin Katiyama. Amiri Tullin. Jennifer Etienne. Thank you to share Vincent,

Nigeria Eaton, Tamar Tarni, and Anya Grunman. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin. and vocal. This episode was mixed by Gilly Moon. Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani.

Navid Marvi. Show Fujiwara. And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number two. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify,

or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.