November 13, 2024 • 61 mins
If you've ever had the dubious pleasure of watching daytime TV in the US -- possibly in a waiting room -- then you've probably witnessed a particular genre of programming: the TV court show. From far enough away, these shows look a lot like an actual court. You've got the usual courtroom cast, along with an escalated version of actual courtroom events. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel ask: Are these shows real? What exactly do we mean by "real"?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, they.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Andrew Treyforce Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. But yeah, yeah, we're going to trial.
Yeah yeah, do you hear that we're supporting? Not yet,
(00:52):
we edged toward that. When folks, the energy is live,
we are in person, which is quite a rare treat
for us. And we started asking, so we're always pitching
ideas to each other, right, and we started asking, Hey,
does anybody remember the weird, surreal wasteland of daytime TV
before streaming?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Right, surely it still exists to some degree, right, very much? So, okay,
blissfully unaware of it.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Spin offs of every reality show you've ever heard of,
rights telenovela is still very big. Occasionally you'll also see
the news, but they keep that brief because they got
to get back to you know, as the world turns. Yeah,
regularly scheduled.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
With the election coverage that just happened, people were actually
watching TV right and on. I watched it in Instagram
live from the Daily Show, and they had to keep pushing, like,
turn on your television, your television, watch tonight on your television.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Parents have that doesn't move seriously, Yeah, that's It's true.
Reality TV has dominant aided. Reality TV and soaps have
dominated daytime television for so long. And if you're of
a certain age in the United States, you may recall
a unique genre of reality TV. From far enough way.
(02:14):
It looks like a courtroom. There's someone who looks like
a judge. There are people who act like defendants. There
there may be folks who strongly resemble lawyers, and maybe
you know as sassy bailiff kind of always like you
know it your honor.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
It's an important part of the cast ensemble.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And so our question, guys, you know, and so our
question tonight is are these court TV shows real? Sorry,
we had some friends from the office come in a
wave time. Oh man, he keeps saying he's not a
cop anyway, that's our cold open.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
He has to tell us if he's a cop.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Untrue.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, we've found out.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Here are the facts. To know what a TV court
show is, we have to look at a little bit
of history, and honestly, it's surprising because you may not
know this, folks. The ancestors of the court shows you
see on television or streaming today they come from radio,
not television.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Well it makes sense, I mean, yeah, it's not a
particularly visually captivating medium. But and let's to be clear too,
we're talking about like, not like night court we're talking
about which.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Is awesome, yeah, with the God I love Nightmare.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
We're talking about like the People's Court or Judge Judy
and execution.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Judge Joe Brown, divorce Court. Yeah, and stakes are real
or are they? All? Right? So let's travel back. It's
the mid nineteen thirties. We're talking depression era. Life is
super not great for a lot of people, and they
want distractions, they want fantasy, They want another nicer world
to live in, even if only for thirty minutes to pop.
(03:57):
And so television was available since nineteen twenties right to
the Riggie Riches and the Scrooge McDucks of the world,
but it doesn't become America's main media venue until after
World War Two, when everybody was able to buy a house,
have two point five kids, it was possible to own
your own car, and then of course you buy the box.
(04:18):
Now you watch TV.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Previously it was literally families gathered around the radio using
their collective imaginations to picture the characters like the Shadow
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Right, it's a lot like how people gather around their
Alexas now and listen to this show. That's like they're
doing right now.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh, come on, I know beak her name by the way.
I know, I know you're working out, I know you're
doing the dishes, and you know what you're doing. A
great job, serious positive affirmations there.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I think my Alexa is ill. She does not respond
the way she used to. I don't know if I
need like a hot update or something like that, but man,
she hears her name in every piece of dialogue from
television and interrupts my viewing experience on the regular.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
And we're not going to do the prank that we
did previously because some people did not enjoy that. But
check out our earlier episodes on surveillance.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Do you think there will be couples counseling for personal
assistance where it's like a user and a personal assistant.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yes, I think there will be AI avatar personal counseling.
So you'll you'll get your AI avatar because people are
dating via chat, GBT and so on. Now, so you'll
just get the AI avatars to go to therapy with
each other and then they'll come back and tell you
what they learned, and then they'll tell you it was
a success.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Can't we just go back to peopling like you know,
I mean, come on, I'm all about too much, too much, guys,
it's gone too far.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
That came off weird.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, when people are hanging out together, they get into arguments,
they get into situations.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Right, we are currently in the situation.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Then you got to go to court.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Bringing it back. Yeah. The golden age of radio lasts
from the nineteen twenties till television takes over in the
mid nineteen fifties. This is the origin of dramatic serialized narratives.
I'd like to play one example here. Of course, it's
a classic, and I don't think we'll get sued. I
(06:14):
want to get sued. Can you guess what this is?
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Sounds spooky?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
HP Lovecraft presents.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Who knows what evil lies in the hearts of men?
Who knows evil? It lurks, that's it, lurks.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
What is that? What is it?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It's Alec Baldlin. No wait wait, oh, we missed it.
He knows. Do you remember The Shadow?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But the film starring Alec Baldlin as the Shadow did
not do well.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
No, yeah, it did do well.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Then there was The Phantom with Billy zaying. The Phantom
was also another Golden age radio show.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Didn't do didn't do super well. These are adaptations, this
is uh, these are spook stories to tell in the dark,
similar to what we did with Thirteen Days of Halloween,
and people like we're saying, gathered around, listened to the
radio with rapt attention. It was something we would call
cinema of the mind. And all of that changed for radio.
(07:15):
On March first, nineteen thirty two, a twenty month year
old child named Charles Augustus Lindbergh Junior was kidnapped in
a tragedy that drew national attention. The Lindburg Baby. The
Limburg people.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
You're always talk going on about the Lindburg Baby constantly.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
We're talking to Andrew Treforce, Howard you want to stop,
and I'm like, come on, man, yeah, I get it,
I get it. It was a long time ago, Andrew.
I'm shooting Drew a look to make sure we're still cool.
He's shooting you one right back. It's a look for sure.
All right. Later it's May twelfth. Unfortunately this child is
found dead. Oh sorry, I'm at all those jokes. It's
(07:53):
long past. But this investigation that ensues the arrest of
a German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hoftman, and then the
subsequent trial, they capture the imagination of America. People are
going blow by blow. They're buying the newspaper at four
in the morning to get the latest hot costs.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
This is the predecessor to like the OJ Simpson craze,
you know, I mean one hundred percent. This was very new,
the ability to cover something like this and to essentially
make it a cultural event, pop cultural moments.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yes, oh yep. Stone When when you are getting your
information as soon as the newspapers can print it and
get it out to you, that's one thing that's a
certain amount of time. But then when somebody can just
turn on a microphone on scene outside the courtroom or
something that is a whole different level of feeling like
you're in the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
While this is occurring, living vicariously right. Flip on the
radio and we know it's we know it's two pm Eastern,
and now we're here with live updates because they were
still using that voice. This is true crime. This is
the earliest example getting yeah, because the kidnapping and the
trial of hop And could be an episode all their own.
We'll need Andrew on obviously, but for our purposes tonight,
(09:06):
we have to know the American public was glued to
every step, not just every development and investigation, but every
bit of speculation. This was the water cooler talk, and
the courtroom was crowded to the Eves family, reporters, law
enforcement lookie loose. People were like you were saying earlier, Matt,
waiting eagerly outside just to figure out what happened, and
(09:28):
often to be the first person who could report it,
or to be the first person who could tell their friends.
This trial ran from January to February of nineteen thirty five.
Hoptman never said he was guilty, never confessed, always said
he was innocent. None of his appeals succeeded. He was
eventually electrocuted. He was executed in the electric chair in
(09:50):
New Jersey on April third of nineteen thirty six, and
people were still following the story for years now. Part
of it is because the Limberg fan lose so high profile.
Part of it is the Golden Age radio, the brutality
of the crime. They mixed together like ingredients and a
stew and this created what you're talking about, No, a
great appetite for court shows. The American public was fascinated.
(10:15):
They wanted to hear more trials, They wanted to hear
more legal proceedings, and ideally they wanted it to be exciting.
They didn't want the man bites, dog bites, ban cases.
They didn't want someone arguing about their property line or
their fits. They wanted the murder. They wanted the heist.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Because in theory, right, couldn't even like the most boring
of trials be televised if there were a demand for it.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, you could take the court transcript and have people
read it back. It's all public record, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
But like the thing that allows cameras, I've always been
a little confused about, like the legality behind cameras in
the court room. I mean, but there has to be
a demand for that for it to be like the
networks show up. But if there were a smaller, you know,
seemingly more boring case and there were interest, they could
they could film those, they could put those on TV.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
M hmm, yeah, you could have something like c SPAN
and it's just twenty four hours of small claims court
TV is kind of yes, well, kind of yes. That's
I don't know what it is. So the radio studios,
the producers, the reporters, they respond quickly. They take the
public transcripts like we're mentioning the public reports, and they
(11:21):
make what we call recrease dramatizations, yeah, reenactments of high
visibility cases. They're looking for stuff that was the bloodiest,
the most brutal, or the most morally reprehensible. And dudes,
fellow conspiracy realist America loved this stuff. Leads. Do you
think true crime podcast are popular? Had nothing on this.
(11:44):
This was granddaddy. It was so new. It was just
defeating frenzy.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well, imagine if a show like Up and Vanished was
just on one of the forward networks that existed at the.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Time, back when we had like that was it four choices?
I mean really like even that many shows per choice, like.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Everybody, oh that case now, because it's one of the
things you can listen to or watch.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And because other people are talking about it socially, a
feedback loop occurs, so even if you are not necessarily
interested in it, you're up to date on it, you know,
you kind of have to be. Yeah, it's like, you
know what's going on with the Yankees and the Mets
just because you live in New York you don't have
to go to the stadium to see them.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I mean, my partner's been watching the dramatization recree or
whatever of the Clinton Monica Lewinsky trials or whatever impeachment hearings,
and I mean that.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Was so huge.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
They literally remade the whole thing as like a drama
fictionalized kind of account on television.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, I mean they just did it with oj Simpson
like twice in a row of these. But like, the
guy is still here so much. Let's get let's get
back here. So we're still in radio land. We're in
the thirties.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, we're in the thirties. And to get around they
have one other thing they had to do to get around,
the pot possibility of ending up in a real court
room because of their cute radio stories and going down
for libel and slander. The creators would go back and
take trials from decade years or decades past, and they
were often looking for a trial where the wherein all
(13:16):
of the original participants had died.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So they were worried about libel or slander accusations because
they were taking some liberties.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Oh yeah, with the with the transcripts. And also, you know,
how how far can you go in dramatic recreation before
you get to I'm kind of playing with the vacuuing
Yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, well, in a lot of the facts could be hearsay right,
or at least argued to be here.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
And in a court of law you have a judge
who will come down and say, ah, that should be
struck from the recordures.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
In radio you have a host who probably had some
improv training and was like, yes, and is it possible
that the murderer was you know Welsh, which never shows
up in the court case. They just go back to
the transcript.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
And then the Welsh Defamation League is up up your tail,
huge force huge.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
They run all the f's in the language. It's a
joke for like two so many. Yeah. So this leads
us to the first ancestor what we call a court
show today, and it's on radio. It's named The Court
of Human Relations or The True Story Court of Human Relations.
I'm dumb. Yeah, Yeah. New Year's Day nineteen thirty four,
(14:27):
just a bit after the Limberg case, and they did
the reenactments. They had a guy called Percy Hemus playing
the judge. Percy was not a judge. He was an actor.
And I'm not a judge, but I just play one
on television. Right, right, is what he told officers, right?
What he got pulled over in his jealoppy anyway, I
(14:47):
would bet he happy he did better than that. Also,
Judge Reinhold, we're talking about this off air. I grew
up thinking that guy was a judge who happened to
be an actor. But not only is he not a judge,
Judge is even his real first name. That was news
to me.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
But he did go on to delightfully portray a television
judge on Arrested Development. I believe it was called Judge Reinhold,
and it was making fun of the exact stuff that
we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, and also he got the nickname Judge as a
baby because people saw he looked really stern and authoritative
and judgmental.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
That is one judgmental baby right there.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
That sounds mean to the kid. But the mugging everybody
all the time. So here's the brilliant thing about Percy's show.
All right, they would air this compilation of recreations, and
they would usually just go for the most exciting stuff,
not not all the ins and outs of procedure, just
the part where you know, it's like you're all right?
(15:48):
Is sustained? Good or bad? Sustained? Well, it depends on
if you're the person making the objection. If you're making
the objection and your objection is sustained, that means the
judge of grease, he.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Accepts your objection. What's the opposite of sustainable? Thank you,
thank you for getting our terminology.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Yeah straight. I always love it. I always love how
in copaganda there's a judge on the edge. He's like, hmm,
I allow it, but you're on thin ice.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I like the real Southern judge too, that's a real
ju judge.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yes, also another good judge flavor. I love the I
love the move in a trial that's televised or you
know again the kind of propaganda stuff where the lawyer
asked a crazy out there should be a legal question
and uh, and they have to thing where it's like
(16:39):
did you or did you not murder that penguin objection
overruled withdrawing.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well yeah, And then on this show they would go, hmm,
well what do you think? But they didn't have an
email addresser phone number any right.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
That's the grift, that's the gas talk amongst yourselves friends.
Right before the end of every broadcast, Percy would come
in and invite everybody in the audience to render their
own verdict before they tell you what happened. And they
implied that they were immediately receiving correspondence from across the
United States and that determined what actually happened. It is
(17:15):
not the case. There was no way to contact the
radio station whatsoever. And they pulled this off for years brilliant,
pretty brilliant, ethical, diabolical, yeah, but brilliant. I respect it.
They ran from nineteen thirty four to nineteen thirty nine, which,
fun fact means stuff they don't want you to know
has been on air longer than the world's first court show.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
We old.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I think it's you know, I think it's nacolade.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
What is Yeah, maybe they'll give us a trophy for
it one maybe.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
What was the next show?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Oh, this one's great. It was called Goodwill Court, So
people would go into their local goodwill and they would
buy things, and then the whole show is just haggling
about how much it should actually is that's true?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
To make that joke. It turned into a It turned
into a romantic kind of reality program where and later
instead of arguing this was a ratings thing, they would
have strangers meet and Goodwill and have to go on
a date to get discounts at the goodwill.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Brilliant, do you need discounts at Goodwill?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It was a different time, and this was hosted by
Al Alexander. All that other stuff is not true. By
the way, this was hosted by Al Alexander. Heard real
life defendants and cases all presented semi anonymously, so you'd
hear their real voices, but you wouldn't know their names,
and they would try to keep They played a little
(18:45):
fast and loose with facts, and their defense for this
was saying, we can't reveal exact specifics, so that's why
we're punching stuff up and then boom, the case goes
to a panel of real judges, and the judges sit
around and go, well, you know what, here's what I
here's wreckle mill I do declare you know?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Do you think that was considered sort of like a
you're sort of a has been judge and now this
is all Hollywood squares kind of. Yeah, you gotta wonder
if that was they didn't go over particularly well in
the legal community, if you would appear on all of
these types of.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Things definitely didn't go over well.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Well, we know it didn't go over well big picture
wise for sure.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
So what happened, Like this legal advice technically ran a
foul of some actual legal precedent.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, New York County turns out has a lawyer's association.
Who do Who would have assumed? Is that the same
as the bar? Is that the bar? They mess with
the bar, The bars your qualification to practice. Sometimes you
eat the bar. Sometimes the bar is true most of
the time. Sometimes you raise the bar, and sometimes you're
just at the bar too.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Long, limboing under the bar, doing the best you can.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
We've got bar jokes. How low can you go? We've
got bars about bars. We've got more bars than the
Bourbon District. This is not the kind of fun bar
that these lawyers were messing with. They shut down this
show because they said, look, if you're giving out real
legal advice for free on the radio, we don't care
for that, which makes sense because that's their job, you
(20:17):
know what I mean. Yeah, if you run a donut
shop and then some weirdo next door opens a a
place that just gives away free donuts, you're gonna have
some problems.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So that is his right if he wishes to do that,
as long as he's checked all the boxes and filled
out all the appropriate paperwork.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, you gotta have a license. It's a spike store
kind of situation. Yeah, you can't be a rogue donut benefactor.
You will get in trouble. So now we get to
the age of TV. We'll show this up real quick.
The first show like this to make it to television
was Famous Jury Trials. It was on the radio in
the thirties to the late nineteen forties, and then in
(20:57):
nineteen forty nine it got adapted to television. They even
had a film come out in nineteen seventy one. And
these were all reenactments of past famous cases. I hope
they went super deep into the archives. I hope they
had some cases from the seventeen hundred's pirate trials.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Willful witchcraft or was it? Was it the manslaughter equivalent
of witchcraft? Was was this person accidentally a witch? Witch? Hobby?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
My client black Beard has been accused of many things today, didn't.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
They get accused of like eating babies or something that
I make that good?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Accused of a lot of things.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Fair enough, Isn't that the problem with a lot of
this Accusations in the court of public opinion are way
more interesting than the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And they have a much lower burden of a court room.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
The judge can do a lot of things to mitigate that,
and you know, instruct the jury and every everything. But
with the once this stuff starts circulating, you know, in
the real world, your base trying people in the court
of public opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Back to the seventeen hundreds. To follow up on that example,
in a real court, a judge could say, I do
not consider that to be a witch mark. I believe
that is a mode. But if there were a twitter
of some sort back then, probably word of mouth at
the church. In this instance, then the verdict is already
(22:22):
done for the public. That's right. No one has to
prove it, you know what I mean. Marm Mabel tells
good wife Johanneson that it's definitely witch mark because she's
seen a mole before, and then boom, it's the devil's mark.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's witch in time, the kitty cat is definitely drinking
milk from that thing. Okay, so that's how how they
were third nipple.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And that's how witch marks are the thing?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, you're familiar.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Of them, you're familiar. Did not suckles, you did not know?
And that cat is deafe demon anyway. So this is
this is a weird history because for a lot of us,
the TV court show has always been there if you
grew up in the US, just a staple of TV,
just like infomercials or those talk shows that are just vapid.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I'll say, yeah, come on, you don't like the view.
You gotta love a good talk show, guys.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
I love kind of what we do. I love the
segues though on the talk shows, because you know, if
you turn on at the right time, they're like forty
thousand confirmed dead in other news Dogs in office. Let's
go to Denver, Colorado, where mister Sparkles has been making
some waves in Congress.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
How would we have ever learned to be, you know,
panicking about satanic ing if we didn't have those talk
shows you know.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
WoT you're talking about, like the Doctor Phills of the World, Jesse, all.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
These formats that are just like weird. It's the line
between what is real and what is not real is blurred.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I think reality consensus.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
I distinctly remember being a kid and seeing some of
this daytime stuff and it was an episode about white supremacists,
and it was like Phil Donahue, and they had these
white supremacists on, and they had like their kids on
and they were saying the most foul racist stuff and
given this platform, and of course it's presented as like,
(24:26):
here are these bad people, but let's just let them
say and do whatever they want. And I found it shocking,
like as a kid, the horrible slurs, you know, that's
what they want to also be well aware of.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Folks in those talk shows like Noela's describing, I guarantee
you before they went on air, there was a producer
doing this. Yeah, okay, so just go up there, you know,
beat yourself.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
But me warriors a little more racist, dial it up
in the ash because we want people to really understand
where you're coming from.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Oh God, let me at him and he and if
you get to it, throw that chair.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, it's it's the it's marked with blue tape at
the bottom. It's the throwing chair. Yeah, that's your mark,
you know. But what what was the show where there
were always big fights? Jerry Springer? But it was all
of those yeah, yeah, except for Oprah. Oprah was classic Oprah. Yeah.
And as we as we think about these phenomenon, and
(25:25):
we did have an episode previously on reality TV, I
believe as we think about this phenomenon, we had to
ask is there a conspiracy afoot? How real is this
form of reality TV? What is the truth about court shows?
We'll have a quick recess for a word from our sponsor,
and then we'll dive into uh something like real sustain
(25:49):
stained sustaint all rise be seated. Here's where it gets.
Can I just stay seated? Is that?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Objection over how overstained? If you really like overstained.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Oxy clean, this is really great reason to have the
commercial breaks.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Is you'all cop it overstained?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Is your shift a robe overstained? I just wanted to say,
shift rope? All right, great, I think.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
There's a great way to talk about the difference between
the reality of these things and the reality of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
So, one of the first court shows that ever came
about was a thing called divorce Court, right, And it's
another one of these shows that it's very, very similar
to the when we just described to you before the break,
where it was a radio version kind of make them
up seas not really about a show, like a fictionalized
version of that or a recreated version of these court
(26:57):
rooms dramatized dramatized. The Worst Court did the same thing
early on. It had four separate runs, and on the
first couple of runs it was just re enacting a
divorce court proceeding, which I don't I guess it's salacious
enough that people would want to watch that. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Well, think about the demographic. You're at home, you're watching TV.
Maybe it makes you start thinking about your own relationships.
You find something some validation in there.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Like at least we're not this ft up, Right, you
know or at least like a judge agrees with me
that a dog should not be as important in a household.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
That is so fat because this is fifty seven to
sixty two, then sixty seven to sixty nine. Yeah, so
it is they're aiming at that time at at mothers,
like stay at home mothers, fantasizing about divorce and.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Also there there my god, yeah, maybe not fantasized, but
also thinking there but for the grace of God go
I maybe, but also the money spends to say is
the thing and there's and we also have to realize
the context. There are huge civil rights women's rights movements
occurring at the same time.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, but then when they came back though, they did
a version. That is what we're talking about right right now.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And let's step back because our first question was what
do we mean by real That's where we find the answer.
It's a gradient. It's not binary. These shows are not
all created equally in how much they do or do
not cleave to the reality of a courtroom. Some are
more like a real courtroom than others. But let's start
(28:37):
at the top. Let's go piece by piece. In these systems,
are the judges actual judges. Judge Judy Yes was a judge,
is not a judge. Was a judge and then began
to play one on television.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Judge Mills Lamee, same thing.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Judge Joe Brown definitely a judge prior to the television career.
So these folks were judges at one time. They were
judges at one point.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
They know the law, that is what we're saying.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Right, they are well acquainted with different parts of the law.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well, what about Steve Harvey.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I just I think he's just a judgmental dude.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Because he is one of the most famous Yes Courtroom
TV judges right now.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Because he doesn't take back something, but he is all
about the court of public opinion.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That's I know.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
But it's funny that you should say that, because it
just goes to show how similar it is, like how
these judges are like stand ins for talk show hosts
in anyways they are holding holding court yard.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Oh snap.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
And Steve Harvey is interesting, the guy from a family feud. Yeah,
he's the dude who always looks amazed by a slightly
risque answer. Yeah, you know, someone's like, well I would
say balls, and then he just loses his mind and
can't believe it's number one on the list of toys
(29:56):
and sports.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
You know, Steve Hardy's hilarious to me, Guys, I don't
know what it is. I think maybe I have an
SNL version of Steve Harvey playing my head. I watch him. Yeah,
so I don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
He also his show, Judge Steve Harvey is also technically
qualified as a court comedy. To your point about.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I'm not even aware of this his Judge show. I
thought you were joking. No, he has a Judge show.
And it's funny too because he's also a big radio
guy and he just has like doesn't he host a game.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Show, Family Feud, Family Food? Sorry, ye surprised when he's
ticking as the king of old media in a way?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Baby.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
He also hosted the Miss Universe competition and has seven
Daytime Emmy Awards. Dude, I don't know if that's like
it's like ad de emotion JV.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
But so, so, what we're talking about here is you've
got the spectrum of a television host personality that can
lead one of these shows as a judge. But on
the other end, and you've got Judge Joe Brown, and
that's the person I'm putting on this end because that
guy was a legitimate judge for a long time. He
was overseeing. We just we're talking about this when we
made the MLK tapes, we talked to Judge Brown, right,
(31:13):
but he oversaw the last appeal that James Earl Ray
had before he was taken off of it because he
was biased. But this is a legitimate judge that is
doing the same work, the same job as Steve Harvey.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Well yeah, okay, and we'll see why as well. Not
all of these TV judges are real judges. Some of
these shows are just borrowing a format loosely inspired by
what you would imagine a courtroom to look like. There
are other cases of this, you know, if you look
at Judge Greg Mathis, host of the show Judge Mathis.
(31:49):
He got a law degree and he worked as a
district judge in Michigan's thirty six District Court. He dealt
primarily with misdemeanors. But these court shows who not take
place in real courtrooms, They don't feature real trials happening
in real time. They are usually real cases, but the producers,
(32:09):
to our earlier example, here's how they scout people. They
look through pending litigation in small claims courts in the area,
and then they call people and say, hey, do you
want to just go sort this out on television?
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Is that like a form of arbitration or it is
a spoiler?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yes, okay, well we're seeing on these shows it's not
real court cases. Instead, you're watching an arbitration process. Do
we want to explain what arbitration is? Oh?
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, I mean it's it's literally a third party that
listens to two people's sides of a story, essentially who
have who.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Have agreed to participate in this, and to take it
outside of the scope of a normal courtroom proceeding.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
If you're doing actual arbitration, right, that is theoretically the
way it works, that third party that is non biased.
But again, especially if you're dealing with a corporation arbitration process.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Here's where your coderation arbitration. Here's where you're gonna run
into arbitration. Folks, anytime you have signed terms and conditions
for literally any elect service in media or with electronic product,
pre agree you have agreed to arbitration. That's why it's
usually towards the second half of the contract because they
(33:25):
know ninety five percent of people are not going to
read it. You should read it, as a matter of fact.
Start reading at the bottom and work your way up.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
That came up recently with that case of the woman
being a food poisoned by Disney Food and Disney Springs
associated and because the husband had signed up for like
a free trial of Disney, plus he had technically agreed
to arbitration, which is not in his favor because this
is a case that he could potentially have won big on,
(33:54):
but now he's been demoted to arbitration, which puts the
power really in the hands of the corporation.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Let's compare it to if it was in a court
of law. Right, in the court of law, there's the
same thing. Two arguments, right from a team of lawyers
for basically someone who's defending someone who is accusing or
the plaintive, and the defendant, they make their case, the
jury in that case decides what's up, or the judge,
(34:20):
depending on trial, and then that judge or jury decides,
here's what's going to happen who, Here's who's going to
pay money, Here's who's gonna face consequences. In arbitration, you
hear this case and everything, and that one person who
is your arbiter binding gets to the decide you.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Can do it. There may be more than one arbiter, true,
but this is alternative dispute resolution, meaning that you can say,
you know, if you two guys are fighting, you could
come to me and say like, hey, we don't want
this to go to court. We just hear it out,
we'll record it. We agree in writing that that decision
to that point we'll be binding, which means that even
(35:00):
though you're not in court with this mediation, the arbiter's
decision is almost always final. It's very rare for court
to go back and step on the toes. So it's
a It's like how instead of going straight from kindergarten
to first grade, your case goes from kindergarten to pre first.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yes and yes, And one of the most important parts
of this is exactly what you said, Ben. You're not
going by the laws necessarily. Sometimes you are, but especially
in certain cases, you are deciding what the rules in
consequences can even be. Before you begin the discussion.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And scope out. You make the field of play and
I contact listen close fellow conspiracy realist, not accusing anyone specifically,
but you cannot do arbitration for a lot of criminal cases. Okay,
so if there's a grand theft auto for instance, if
there's a purposeful arson, or you have god forbid arguably
(35:58):
committed homicide, can't go to the cops and say, well,
what if we just sort of get an arbiter, you
know what I mean, like get get someone we all trust.
Like what if we ask Bill Nye you know.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
What the science got?
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah? Or what if we get jaw ruled because Jaw will.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Figure science gott yes or Shaggy too dope, the science yes.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
And so this is uh, you know, it's.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
About magnets, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
M hm.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
He is wilfully agreed on all things magnetic. So the
power the judges have in these TV shows is just
granted by the contract. Uh. And it's the contract that
you sign when you agree to appear. Everybody is there voluntarily,
even the devil. The fine print and also love fine print.
(36:48):
I think they should make the fine print and just
the sexier fond she's just called words. They should make
it sexy.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Okay, how about comic sans comic sands the sexiest thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's no wing dings. You know. So there's here's the issue.
If we have an aggrieved party and a plaintiff, and
the judge judge finds in favor of the of the defendant,
both parties get an appearance fee. Yeah, so even if
you lose your case, you still get paid for your time.
(37:23):
And yes, if you're wondering, it is more than the
fee that people in an actual jury get.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Bro I found my jury duty check. It was so
embarrassing and hilarious that I never even cashed it. And
I looked at it and I was like, I should
cash this, But now it's ninety days.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
It was void.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
It was fourteen dollars fourteen fourteen US.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Dollars for coffee. It was a coffee.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
It was a full day of the selection process and
then a full day of the trial.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Seven bucks a day. Unreal coffee's on you.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That's insanity.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
They do charge you for coffee. It's a machine. Yeah no,
I mean you you buy the next round of coffee. Fourteen.
I think we could recuit. There weren't even donuts, there
was no spread.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It's just such an important point, guys, what Ben's saying here,
that is how you get somebody to come on a
court television show who appears to be the bad guy,
at least according to the story, right, all right, right,
that's the way you get on there, because I always
wondered why on earth would this cheating husband or whatever
it is like go on television.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
And that's why it's also kind of considered poor form
in journalism to pay your subjects.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
There you go technically illegal. Right, so depending on well, okay,
we hear you, FCC's we got it, we got it.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
But not only would they not have to pay whatever
the small claims.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Is, Yes, we've got that later too, Yes, it just.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
You can you can definitely see while that that is
better than having to pay somebody if it actually went
to court.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of advantages. The
consumerists had a great snarky line about this. They said,
while the cases and people may be real, the court
could be held on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise
and would still have the same effect.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
I mean, it might as well be it's on a set.
The Starship Enterprise set may well be next door.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
And yeah, and that's a good point. The quote concludes,
it's all just part of the collective hallucination. We call television.
I thought that was a great It's very cool.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I recently went to my very first taping of a
late show and you know, there's a tonight show is
Jimmy Fallen And I'd always pictured what the studio was like,
and it is tiny. They make it look so big,
but the way the camera sweeps throughout it and I
guess the lens maybe the wide angle lens or whatever,
and it is a tiny audience.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
It's a never show.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Usually it's like maybe if they do show it, they
show it in close up, which makes you think that
it just goes on forever.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
But it's like a black box theater and it is
that you're.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
In a shoe box.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
It's crazy how small is The band is on one wall,
the band that plays as a guest is on the
far wall, and then Fallin on the desk is on
the left wall, and then the audience is on the
back wall, and it is the illusion is real.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
It was very trippy being in there. Like, have you
guys ever been to the SNL studios? Heck now also
very small?
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Uh, very I'm not saying I would never. I would
love to just have not know that's cool.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
And then if you go. Yeah, a lot of the
late shows have a similar format on stage as they
do in their presentation, which is all to your point
to build that illusion. And speaking of illusion, we're talking
about this off air, some of the defendants are actors, like, well, yeah,
the case might be real, but you know, the guy
who is portraying the defendant also has a real on
(40:34):
IMDb where he lists a lot of his work.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Well, and there's no real jury, but there are there
is a studio audience for and they sit in a
jury box, right, It's it's it's an.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Illusion, yeah, but they don't. Well, it depends on the
format of the show. Some of the formats have interaction
like with that audience, but usually it's it is an
illusion that they are just an audience the way it
would be in a courtroom. But they don't say anything.
They just they're quiet. The only people who speak are
the plaintiff, the defendant or the.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
And the bailiff who's like, you got that right, he's
the shifty, sassy one exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
But isn't that funny though that because as time has progressed,
and you know, this being a tried and true format,
you certainly have some like Steve Harvey that lean more
into the absurdity of it and can be a little
more goofy.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
With Well, all the judges quote unquote judges, whatever their providence,
they have to have a personality, right, they have a
list of attributes that attract people to the show again
and again. You know, a no nonsense judge versus a
judge who kind of sees the you know, the lighter
side of things, right, you know, versus a judge who's like,
my main thing is I dig parakeets. Is why this
(41:40):
case is interesting.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
The parakeet judge. He always has one on his shoulder.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Birth also.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, So my understanding just to what we're talking about
here is usually they're not actors putting on a show
like fake cases. They're real cases. It's just they are
presented as real cases to the so then the producers
decide which ones. So the way you would fake get
(42:05):
on one of these court TV shows, in my understanding
is you would have a small claims thing, or you
would create a small claims thing that's wild, and then
a producer would somehow come to it. I it can
work that way, or I guess you would go to
you'd send an email to the producers and say, guys,
I've got a crazy story for you, and the fake
(42:26):
get on.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
But it's also similar to so the producers play a
huge role, and that's a great point. Sometimes it works
the way you're describing that would actually be one of
the ethical ways from the producer's end. Sometimes the producers
will find an old court transcript that they really like
and they'll have a recreation of that. Sometimes these are
made up out of a whole cloth, or kind of
(42:48):
like a plot for Law and Order. They're inspired by
true events. Other times there will be defendants and the
actually grieved parties on camera, but it's an open secret. Again.
Prior to going on camera, the show's producers will pop
by and just say, hey, let's judge this up a little,
even if that means playing a little fast and loose
(43:09):
with the facts. I don't know, what do you guys think,
another recess for an ad brink. I don't see why not.
I was waiting for an overruled or sustained sustained thank you,
and we've returned, all right. There are lots of producers
(43:29):
who will speak about this. One that I think stood
out to us is a guy named Dave d. Venerio,
producer of Black Chip Studios out in San Diego, he
had he had a pretty good first hand account of this.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah, he said, Assigning a level of reality to reality
court shows is difficult because, like with most reality TV,
these shows fall more in the area of contrived, that cold,
you know, that contrived area, then exactly genuine or fabricate him.
That's interesting, yeah, because you contrived does kind of live
between those two mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah. And he said, you know, some shows even have scripts,
because you know they're working off transcripts. Some are more improved. Right.
Regardless of how these things lean into or out of reality,
they all have one goal to make as much spectacle
as possible, to play up the drama. If you've ever
watched a real court proceeding, people are often very formal,
(44:24):
they're pretty dry. They try to be fact based, and
if you watch these shows, then people sometimes become hyper
exaggerated versions of themselves. I will not have a circus
in my court room, you know. Yeah, And they're saying
that while the defendant and the plaintiff are dressed as
literal clowns, because it clown claim, is that a thing clown?
(44:48):
Court there's clown college. Why shouldn't there be clown court.
That's true, clown rights, you know what I mean. Now
clown rights. Now, where about the issues? So Divernio has
this idea that may be reassuring, where he says, you know,
most of these cases, most of these people are real.
But to your point, Matt, occasionally people will fabricate a
(45:09):
case to get on a show. They'll conspire right, and
the producer may not know that these aggrieved parties are
actually buddies coming up in the comedy scene and they
because it's easy to file small claim, anyone can. But
do we have examples of this being discovered?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Not really there at least I couldn't find anything concrete
where it's like this is definitely what happened, because is embarrassing,
especially for the production if it gets through. But it
used to happen all the time on talk shows where
you know actors who are trying to make it out
in Hollywood and they come up with a way to
get on television. Again, I mean, I use Ricky Lake
as an example, but it's not really necessarily that it
(45:47):
would be one of the more salacious ones where it's
like this kid is or is not my child or whatever. Yeah,
but it's just actors and they're just having fun and
it doesn't matter necessarily even to the producers if it's
real or not, because it makes for good TV.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
You just don't want that the girlfriend mistress, baby mama fights.
Uh yeah, sorry, folks, sometimes they know each other.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
I think that's interesting because what we're pointing out here
is that it does seem that there is some need
to maintain some semblance of credibility even in the schlockiest
of these court type shows. Sure, if that is at
the heart of the thing, the moment that is broken,
and we cannot believe the true crime aspect of these things,
it loses us.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Well, think about it. If if the illusion that there
are not direct consequences to one or the other of
the people who are there on the stage, course, yeah,
then nobody gives a crap. So you have to truly
believe that illusion. That illusion has to exist, or else
the show's canceled.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
And you can skirt the line there ethically and legally
by not outright stating this is or is not true.
Right by not outright stating this is a real court case.
All you have to do is imply it through appearance,
through tropes, through format, and then from far enough away
you know this will seem true to a lot of people,
(47:13):
even though it is ersatz, which is a word for
appearing true without being true. And with that we have
to ask, Okay, what happens when somebody is found innocent
or guilty? Like we said earlier, if you're the defendant,
you're found innocent, you and the other party still get
an appearance fee.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
Is there a problem? I mean, it just depends, you know.
I mean, I think this kind of reality television in
general is sort of to blame for some cultural erosion
of like morals, you know. But that's me like being
soapboxy about it. To me, the stakes are pretty low
and everybody kind of knows what they're signing up for
on both sides, the audience side and the participants side.
(47:55):
So is it damaging to what democracy to like the law?
Speaker 3 (47:59):
I don't think so. I think it's just frivolous. Well,
here's one thing they don't tell you on the show
as a member of the public. To Matt, I think
there's your point there about the actual penalties. What are
our stakes? What happens when a penalty is leveled. They say, yes,
you're the evil clown in this situation. You stole the
Seltzer water and the squeaky shoes.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, you left that house a little bit messy when
you sold it to this other person and they won
one hundred and seventy five dollars.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
Here's the kicker. The production pays for fines and penalties
leveled as part of the arbitration agreement. So we can
understand the perspective of a defendant. If you have a
small claim, a real one, and you feel like your
odds of winning aren't great, why wouldn't you I mean
it's a cost benefit. Are you okay being a little
(48:50):
embarrassed to save some money.
Speaker 5 (48:53):
I don't think anybody in Hollywood was ever.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
I'm too afraid of being a little embarrassed because you
got to have humility and shame to be embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I know it's a good question, but you could see
right because we're saying you could you could still be
found guilty, and you thought you would be or found
at fault, and now you can get away without having
to actually pay the financial consequence.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Or not just financial consequence. It's like there are no consequences. Now,
some people saw you, you know. I however, many hundred
or thousands of people saw you on TV doing this thing.
But other than that, you're good. It's like it never.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Happened, except that they might syndicate this show, which means
that every night at seven pm, you know, every other month,
it's back up there.
Speaker 4 (49:41):
But to your previous point, Ben too mean or both
of you guys are on the stakes. Like, we're not
dealing with sexual assault cases. We're not dealing with actual
serious damages of psychological nature or of like physical bodily harm.
Maybe psychological maybe, But the stakes to me on any
of these that I've ever seen are always so low.
Oh and kind of, like I said, frivolous that I
(50:03):
just don't think it's that big a deal. And I
think everybody kind of knows what they're getting in on,
you know, whether you're participating, whether you're producing it, or
whether you're at home consuming it.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, And to your point there from earlier, I think
a lot of people watching know some degree of reality
is compromised in these shows. The real reality is compromised, agreed,
But there's still a lot of misconceptions. That's why people
might have a problem with this. Plenty of legal boffins,
TV critics and consumer advocates don't love TV court shows,
(50:37):
and their biggest concern is that this might mess up
attitudes and preconceptions about actual facts court shout out Lower
and Vogel bam the idea that you know, God, I
know legal professionals who've run into this. You're talking to
a witness, a defendant, someone else affiliated with the case
who's not a legal professional, and they say, wait, I
(50:59):
know you're the judge or you're a big lawyer or whatever.
But I've seen a lot of Judge Judy, and I've
watched a lot of Law and Order SVU, so let
me tell you how this goes on TV.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
It's true, But again, I think like everyone knows that
there is a certain suspension of disbelief where it's like,
I don't really apply.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
But maybe that's just me. You're the people that I know.
Speaker 4 (51:24):
I mean, there are people that see this and really
think that's how things go down. So maybe I'm taking
that point for granted a little bit.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Well, isn't it one of the common questions you see
on some jury panels or auditions where they say, do
you watch you know, law and order or what do
they say? Do you watch crime shows?
Speaker 5 (51:41):
Nowadays they've probably just abbreviated to true crime are you?
Speaker 3 (51:43):
You know what I mean? Like, yeah, what do you
like true crime podcast? And that's a question that comes
up because they're trying to see if you have a
stilted view of what a court should look like. Since
it's arbitration, it doesn't have to occur in a court room.
You could put it anyway. You could even put it
on social media. What about TikTok court? I mean, it's
(52:04):
probably common guys. You know, I don't see why not
a lot.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Of people on TikTok are getting in trouble for making
up crazy stuff and not being able to back get
up and then not stopping talking about the crazy stuff.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
But it's also there's so much ability to shield yourself
by saying it's satire, you know what I mean? But
there's it's really riding the line these days. You'll see
someone being like, I this thing happened to me, I
did this thing, I experienced this thing and it's made up.
But they're doing with such a straight face, and it
it feels.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Like it's a real account.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
But it's absolutely satire, and it's up to you to
figure out what that is because there's no disclaimer.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah. And also I'm just asking questions, you know what
I mean, Like, why has what what's a weird celebrity.
Speaker 5 (52:48):
Chapel Roone.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
Why has chapel Roone never explicitly denied the allegations that
she runs an a legal goat herding operation across the
Columbian border.
Speaker 5 (53:00):
It's a good question, Ben, I've been wondering asking question.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
I'm wondering.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Now you got me think, Ben, I've got to know,
I've got to find out.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Iron
must be stopped.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I really thought she was talking about the Pink Pony
Club here in Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
I think there's a just sort of considered almost a
it's like such an old school institution of strip clubs.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
Then it's just like a stand in like Coke happened.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
I was just she's got a really popular song called
Pink Pony Club, and there it's about a you know,
a dancer at an adult institution, and there is the
famous Pink Pony in Atlanta. But chapel Roone is referring
to a place that may or may not exist in
West Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Exactly, at least according to the lyrics. Okay, if you're
gonna believe the lyrics, well, let's.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Talk about how lyrics have been put on trial.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
I mean, this is out of the scope of this conversation,
but it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah, yeah, okay, Matt, give us the court sound cute please, sir.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Dun dunn. Oh wait, that's a different one.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
This is perfect. You guys are doing it great. All right.
Here we are in podcast court, which will be a
thing later. Shout out to our pal, judge John Hayes.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
He's my favorite celebrity judge.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
He's pretty great. But we are we are also friends
with him when we're in this area. We're increasingly empowering
the court of public opinion, right getting ratioed on Twitter,
as he said, Matt, people being surprised they encounter real
world consequences for performative things on TikTok. I don't know.
I guess the verdict is court shows are entertaining and
(54:34):
they help and that they do conduct real arbitration, but
we can't call them real if we mean their real courtrooms.
Is that fair?
Speaker 4 (54:44):
Yeah, I mean that is the question, though, like where
when you have an OJ Simpson trial, or you have
like a you know, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Trial or.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Brother's trial, it is it is presented in an entertaining
way by the news media, but it is a news event,
whereas these are somewhere in between an entertainment you know,
product and a little taste of real consequences in real
legal stakes.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah, well, think about how obsessed we are with this stuff.
Remember we uh, oh gosh, what was the movie not
twelve Angry Men? That was like nineteen fifties when that
was written, Well, monkeys, it was a few good men. Yes,
of course we talked about how compelled America was with
that film, and it is most of it is not
most of it. A lot of the most heightened moments
(55:35):
are just inside a courtroom.
Speaker 3 (55:37):
You can't handle the truth.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
But it's just people talking to each other, right.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Yeah, with the real type back and forth camera angle.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
The same with the radio place back in the day.
It's just really about the words and the way people
are saying things to each other. And that's where the
drama actually is.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
And sometimes the drama comes in all how you frame it,
you know what I mean, and what you pull from
it because sitting in at court eat like that the
whole time.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
It's pretty dry, are formal because they've got a lot
on the line. Also reminds me of a well, what
was that movie with al Pacino as a blind incentive
woman who is also who was also somehow incent He
stands up in a hearing. Yeah, because he talks about
a central one. He stands up in a hearing and
(56:22):
has pretty salacious name. If you think yeah, yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, he talks about it. He stand anyway. Uh.
The point is he stands up in a hearing and
he delivers this excoriating uh monologue and statement. And that's
the kind of stuff that stays with people, Just like
in a Few Good Men. Jack Nicholson's character is a
very brief part but extremely pivotal juncture of the story.
Speaker 4 (56:45):
Opening and closing arguments are always the big drama, well
not the only, but like the opportunities for the litigator
to hold court, to actually have the all eyes on me.
I'm setting it up, I'm laying out the stakes.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Think of Atticus fans to kill a mockingbird.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yes, sorry, it's the phrase stand and deliver. Just reminding
me of that movie. Stand and deliver about the Menendez brothers.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yes, yes, yes, And with this we see that pop
culture has already kind of blurred the line. I won't
even say kind of pop culture has blurred the line
between what we think is real and what we think
is entertainment. So maybe our verdict is this h If
you take away anything from this episode, remember that anything
(57:30):
you learn from watching Court TV should not be confused
with something that might help you in an actual courtroom,
unless you just want the judge to be irritated at you.
I feel like your honor. Do you know, Judge Joe Brown,
their eyes will roll so hard, or or maybe they'll
do that face you just did, Matt, what do you
(57:51):
know about Joe?
Speaker 2 (57:52):
He's such a weird case study because because he's a
he's a legit judge, you like it, is so good
at doing that job. Yes, and then he's also only
really known for this stuff. And he got that job
as Judge Joe Brown right after the whole involvement with
James Earl Ray, which made me think conspiratorially, of course,
(58:16):
maybe he was given this as like, don't make a
stink about this whole thing. Okay, So here's some a
lot of money and be a judge.
Speaker 3 (58:24):
Now here's your door prize.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
I don't mean that. Sorry, that's an accuistion. It's not
an accusation, it's an observation. Thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Yeah, thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
There we go.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
But also you got to think too, that's a little
bit of a happier life for a guy like that,
oh for sure, in terms of the stakes being so
comparatively lower.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Just you know, as long as we pretend like some
elements of the government didn't want MLK to to be dead,
it's fine.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
The devil you say. Do check out our episodes on
co Hotel pro. Do check out the MLK tapes which
Matt let the charge on chick out our previous episodes
on not just reality TV but the nature of reality.
For now, our verdict is court shows are entertaining, but
they are not real. Court case dismissed, sustain. Yes, you
(59:12):
can also find us. I don't think I still don't
understand the terms. Sorry, we want to hear your thoughts, folks.
You can find us all kinds of places. Unlike that
radio show from years past, you can actually contact us.
We can find us on email. We got a phone number.
We're all over the place online it's right.
Speaker 4 (59:29):
You can shout into your podcast consuming device of choice,
or you can find us all over the internet. As
Ben said at the Hamil Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
on Facebook with our Facebook group here's where it gets crazy.
On x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube where we have
video content galore for your enjoyment.
Speaker 5 (59:45):
On Instagram and TikTok. However, we are conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Show Yes, if you have a case you want to
have arbitrated, reach out to Judge John Hodgman. We're pretty
sure he still does that. Yes, and they're fun, so
do that. If you want to call us and tell
us about anything you w want adjudicated, call our number.
It is one eight three three S C D W
I T k K feels.
Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
Good, say KKK, I'm not picking.
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
That's our phone number. When you call, and give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know if we can
use your name and message on the air. It's a
three minute voicemail. If you've got more that can fit
in that, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid the shadow knows,
and sometimes the shadow writes back, join us out here
in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, they.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Andrew Treyforce Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. But yeah, yeah, we're going to trial.
Yeah yeah, do you hear that we're supporting? Not yet,
(00:52):
we edged toward that. When folks, the energy is live,
we are in person, which is quite a rare treat
for us. And we started asking, so we're always pitching
ideas to each other, right, and we started asking, Hey,
does anybody remember the weird, surreal wasteland of daytime TV
before streaming?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Right, surely it still exists to some degree, right, very much? So, okay,
blissfully unaware of it.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Spin offs of every reality show you've ever heard of,
rights telenovela is still very big. Occasionally you'll also see
the news, but they keep that brief because they got
to get back to you know, as the world turns. Yeah,
regularly scheduled.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
With the election coverage that just happened, people were actually
watching TV right and on. I watched it in Instagram
live from the Daily Show, and they had to keep pushing, like,
turn on your television, your television, watch tonight on your television.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Parents have that doesn't move seriously, Yeah, that's It's true.
Reality TV has dominant aided. Reality TV and soaps have
dominated daytime television for so long. And if you're of
a certain age in the United States, you may recall
a unique genre of reality TV. From far enough way.
(02:14):
It looks like a courtroom. There's someone who looks like
a judge. There are people who act like defendants. There
there may be folks who strongly resemble lawyers, and maybe
you know as sassy bailiff kind of always like you
know it your honor.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
It's an important part of the cast ensemble.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And so our question, guys, you know, and so our
question tonight is are these court TV shows real? Sorry,
we had some friends from the office come in a
wave time. Oh man, he keeps saying he's not a
cop anyway, that's our cold open.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
He has to tell us if he's a cop.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Untrue.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, we've found out.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Here are the facts. To know what a TV court
show is, we have to look at a little bit
of history, and honestly, it's surprising because you may not
know this, folks. The ancestors of the court shows you
see on television or streaming today they come from radio,
not television.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Well it makes sense, I mean, yeah, it's not a
particularly visually captivating medium. But and let's to be clear too,
we're talking about like, not like night court we're talking
about which.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Is awesome, yeah, with the God I love Nightmare.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
We're talking about like the People's Court or Judge Judy
and execution.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Judge Joe Brown, divorce Court. Yeah, and stakes are real
or are they? All? Right? So let's travel back. It's
the mid nineteen thirties. We're talking depression era. Life is
super not great for a lot of people, and they
want distractions, they want fantasy, They want another nicer world
to live in, even if only for thirty minutes to pop.
(03:57):
And so television was available since nineteen twenties right to
the Riggie Riches and the Scrooge McDucks of the world,
but it doesn't become America's main media venue until after
World War Two, when everybody was able to buy a house,
have two point five kids, it was possible to own
your own car, and then of course you buy the box.
(04:18):
Now you watch TV.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Previously it was literally families gathered around the radio using
their collective imaginations to picture the characters like the Shadow
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Right, it's a lot like how people gather around their
Alexas now and listen to this show. That's like they're
doing right now.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh, come on, I know beak her name by the way.
I know, I know you're working out, I know you're
doing the dishes, and you know what you're doing. A
great job, serious positive affirmations there.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I think my Alexa is ill. She does not respond
the way she used to. I don't know if I
need like a hot update or something like that, but man,
she hears her name in every piece of dialogue from
television and interrupts my viewing experience on the regular.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
And we're not going to do the prank that we
did previously because some people did not enjoy that. But
check out our earlier episodes on surveillance.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Do you think there will be couples counseling for personal
assistance where it's like a user and a personal assistant.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yes, I think there will be AI avatar personal counseling.
So you'll you'll get your AI avatar because people are
dating via chat, GBT and so on. Now, so you'll
just get the AI avatars to go to therapy with
each other and then they'll come back and tell you
what they learned, and then they'll tell you it was
a success.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Can't we just go back to peopling like you know,
I mean, come on, I'm all about too much, too much, guys,
it's gone too far.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
That came off weird.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, when people are hanging out together, they get into arguments,
they get into situations.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Right, we are currently in the situation.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Then you got to go to court.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Bringing it back. Yeah. The golden age of radio lasts
from the nineteen twenties till television takes over in the
mid nineteen fifties. This is the origin of dramatic serialized narratives.
I'd like to play one example here. Of course, it's
a classic, and I don't think we'll get sued. I
(06:14):
want to get sued. Can you guess what this is?
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Sounds spooky?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
HP Lovecraft presents.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Who knows what evil lies in the hearts of men?
Who knows evil? It lurks, that's it, lurks.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
What is that? What is it?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It's Alec Baldlin. No wait wait, oh, we missed it.
He knows. Do you remember The Shadow?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But the film starring Alec Baldlin as the Shadow did
not do well.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
No, yeah, it did do well.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Then there was The Phantom with Billy zaying. The Phantom
was also another Golden age radio show.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Didn't do didn't do super well. These are adaptations, this
is uh, these are spook stories to tell in the dark,
similar to what we did with Thirteen Days of Halloween,
and people like we're saying, gathered around, listened to the
radio with rapt attention. It was something we would call
cinema of the mind. And all of that changed for radio.
(07:15):
On March first, nineteen thirty two, a twenty month year
old child named Charles Augustus Lindbergh Junior was kidnapped in
a tragedy that drew national attention. The Lindburg Baby. The
Limburg people.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
You're always talk going on about the Lindburg Baby constantly.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
We're talking to Andrew Treforce, Howard you want to stop,
and I'm like, come on, man, yeah, I get it,
I get it. It was a long time ago, Andrew.
I'm shooting Drew a look to make sure we're still cool.
He's shooting you one right back. It's a look for sure.
All right. Later it's May twelfth. Unfortunately this child is
found dead. Oh sorry, I'm at all those jokes. It's
(07:53):
long past. But this investigation that ensues the arrest of
a German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hoftman, and then the
subsequent trial, they capture the imagination of America. People are
going blow by blow. They're buying the newspaper at four
in the morning to get the latest hot costs.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
This is the predecessor to like the OJ Simpson craze,
you know, I mean one hundred percent. This was very new,
the ability to cover something like this and to essentially
make it a cultural event, pop cultural moments.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yes, oh yep. Stone When when you are getting your
information as soon as the newspapers can print it and
get it out to you, that's one thing that's a
certain amount of time. But then when somebody can just
turn on a microphone on scene outside the courtroom or
something that is a whole different level of feeling like
you're in the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
While this is occurring, living vicariously right. Flip on the
radio and we know it's we know it's two pm Eastern,
and now we're here with live updates because they were
still using that voice. This is true crime. This is
the earliest example getting yeah, because the kidnapping and the
trial of hop And could be an episode all their own.
We'll need Andrew on obviously, but for our purposes tonight,
(09:06):
we have to know the American public was glued to
every step, not just every development and investigation, but every
bit of speculation. This was the water cooler talk, and
the courtroom was crowded to the Eves family, reporters, law
enforcement lookie loose. People were like you were saying earlier, Matt,
waiting eagerly outside just to figure out what happened, and
(09:28):
often to be the first person who could report it,
or to be the first person who could tell their friends.
This trial ran from January to February of nineteen thirty five.
Hoptman never said he was guilty, never confessed, always said
he was innocent. None of his appeals succeeded. He was
eventually electrocuted. He was executed in the electric chair in
(09:50):
New Jersey on April third of nineteen thirty six, and
people were still following the story for years now. Part
of it is because the Limberg fan lose so high profile.
Part of it is the Golden Age radio, the brutality
of the crime. They mixed together like ingredients and a
stew and this created what you're talking about, No, a
great appetite for court shows. The American public was fascinated.
(10:15):
They wanted to hear more trials, They wanted to hear
more legal proceedings, and ideally they wanted it to be exciting.
They didn't want the man bites, dog bites, ban cases.
They didn't want someone arguing about their property line or
their fits. They wanted the murder. They wanted the heist.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Because in theory, right, couldn't even like the most boring
of trials be televised if there were a demand for it.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, you could take the court transcript and have people
read it back. It's all public record, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
But like the thing that allows cameras, I've always been
a little confused about, like the legality behind cameras in
the court room. I mean, but there has to be
a demand for that for it to be like the
networks show up. But if there were a smaller, you know,
seemingly more boring case and there were interest, they could
they could film those, they could put those on TV.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
M hmm, yeah, you could have something like c SPAN
and it's just twenty four hours of small claims court
TV is kind of yes, well, kind of yes. That's
I don't know what it is. So the radio studios,
the producers, the reporters, they respond quickly. They take the
public transcripts like we're mentioning the public reports, and they
(11:21):
make what we call recrease dramatizations, yeah, reenactments of high
visibility cases. They're looking for stuff that was the bloodiest,
the most brutal, or the most morally reprehensible. And dudes,
fellow conspiracy realist America loved this stuff. Leads. Do you
think true crime podcast are popular? Had nothing on this.
(11:44):
This was granddaddy. It was so new. It was just
defeating frenzy.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well, imagine if a show like Up and Vanished was
just on one of the forward networks that existed at the.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Time, back when we had like that was it four choices?
I mean really like even that many shows per choice, like.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Everybody, oh that case now, because it's one of the
things you can listen to or watch.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And because other people are talking about it socially, a
feedback loop occurs, so even if you are not necessarily
interested in it, you're up to date on it, you know,
you kind of have to be. Yeah, it's like, you
know what's going on with the Yankees and the Mets
just because you live in New York you don't have
to go to the stadium to see them.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I mean, my partner's been watching the dramatization recree or
whatever of the Clinton Monica Lewinsky trials or whatever impeachment hearings,
and I mean that.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Was so huge.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
They literally remade the whole thing as like a drama
fictionalized kind of account on television.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, I mean they just did it with oj Simpson
like twice in a row of these. But like, the
guy is still here so much. Let's get let's get
back here. So we're still in radio land. We're in
the thirties.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, we're in the thirties. And to get around they
have one other thing they had to do to get around,
the pot possibility of ending up in a real court
room because of their cute radio stories and going down
for libel and slander. The creators would go back and
take trials from decade years or decades past, and they
were often looking for a trial where the wherein all
(13:16):
of the original participants had died.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So they were worried about libel or slander accusations because
they were taking some liberties.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Oh yeah, with the with the transcripts. And also, you know,
how how far can you go in dramatic recreation before
you get to I'm kind of playing with the vacuuing
Yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, well, in a lot of the facts could be hearsay right,
or at least argued to be here.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
And in a court of law you have a judge
who will come down and say, ah, that should be
struck from the recordures.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
In radio you have a host who probably had some
improv training and was like, yes, and is it possible
that the murderer was you know Welsh, which never shows
up in the court case. They just go back to
the transcript.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
And then the Welsh Defamation League is up up your tail,
huge force huge.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
They run all the f's in the language. It's a
joke for like two so many. Yeah. So this leads
us to the first ancestor what we call a court
show today, and it's on radio. It's named The Court
of Human Relations or The True Story Court of Human Relations.
I'm dumb. Yeah, Yeah. New Year's Day nineteen thirty four,
(14:27):
just a bit after the Limberg case, and they did
the reenactments. They had a guy called Percy Hemus playing
the judge. Percy was not a judge. He was an actor.
And I'm not a judge, but I just play one
on television. Right, right, is what he told officers, right?
What he got pulled over in his jealoppy anyway, I
(14:47):
would bet he happy he did better than that. Also,
Judge Reinhold, we're talking about this off air. I grew
up thinking that guy was a judge who happened to
be an actor. But not only is he not a judge,
Judge is even his real first name. That was news
to me.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
But he did go on to delightfully portray a television
judge on Arrested Development. I believe it was called Judge Reinhold,
and it was making fun of the exact stuff that
we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, and also he got the nickname Judge as a
baby because people saw he looked really stern and authoritative
and judgmental.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
That is one judgmental baby right there.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
That sounds mean to the kid. But the mugging everybody
all the time. So here's the brilliant thing about Percy's show.
All right, they would air this compilation of recreations, and
they would usually just go for the most exciting stuff,
not not all the ins and outs of procedure, just
the part where you know, it's like you're all right?
(15:48):
Is sustained? Good or bad? Sustained? Well, it depends on
if you're the person making the objection. If you're making
the objection and your objection is sustained, that means the
judge of grease, he.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Accepts your objection. What's the opposite of sustainable? Thank you,
thank you for getting our terminology.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Yeah straight. I always love it. I always love how
in copaganda there's a judge on the edge. He's like, hmm,
I allow it, but you're on thin ice.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I like the real Southern judge too, that's a real
ju judge.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yes, also another good judge flavor. I love the I
love the move in a trial that's televised or you
know again the kind of propaganda stuff where the lawyer
asked a crazy out there should be a legal question
and uh, and they have to thing where it's like
(16:39):
did you or did you not murder that penguin objection
overruled withdrawing.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well yeah, And then on this show they would go, hmm,
well what do you think? But they didn't have an
email addresser phone number any right.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
That's the grift, that's the gas talk amongst yourselves friends.
Right before the end of every broadcast, Percy would come
in and invite everybody in the audience to render their
own verdict before they tell you what happened. And they
implied that they were immediately receiving correspondence from across the
United States and that determined what actually happened. It is
(17:15):
not the case. There was no way to contact the
radio station whatsoever. And they pulled this off for years brilliant,
pretty brilliant, ethical, diabolical, yeah, but brilliant. I respect it.
They ran from nineteen thirty four to nineteen thirty nine, which,
fun fact means stuff they don't want you to know
has been on air longer than the world's first court show.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
We old.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I think it's you know, I think it's nacolade.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
What is Yeah, maybe they'll give us a trophy for
it one maybe.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
What was the next show?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Oh, this one's great. It was called Goodwill Court, So
people would go into their local goodwill and they would
buy things, and then the whole show is just haggling
about how much it should actually is that's true?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
To make that joke. It turned into a It turned
into a romantic kind of reality program where and later
instead of arguing this was a ratings thing, they would
have strangers meet and Goodwill and have to go on
a date to get discounts at the goodwill.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Brilliant, do you need discounts at Goodwill?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It was a different time, and this was hosted by
Al Alexander. All that other stuff is not true. By
the way, this was hosted by Al Alexander. Heard real
life defendants and cases all presented semi anonymously, so you'd
hear their real voices, but you wouldn't know their names,
and they would try to keep They played a little
(18:45):
fast and loose with facts, and their defense for this
was saying, we can't reveal exact specifics, so that's why
we're punching stuff up and then boom, the case goes
to a panel of real judges, and the judges sit
around and go, well, you know what, here's what I
here's wreckle mill I do declare you know?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Do you think that was considered sort of like a
you're sort of a has been judge and now this
is all Hollywood squares kind of. Yeah, you gotta wonder
if that was they didn't go over particularly well in
the legal community, if you would appear on all of
these types of.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Things definitely didn't go over well.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Well, we know it didn't go over well big picture
wise for sure.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
So what happened, Like this legal advice technically ran a
foul of some actual legal precedent.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, New York County turns out has a lawyer's association.
Who do Who would have assumed? Is that the same
as the bar? Is that the bar? They mess with
the bar, The bars your qualification to practice. Sometimes you
eat the bar. Sometimes the bar is true most of
the time. Sometimes you raise the bar, and sometimes you're
just at the bar too.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Long, limboing under the bar, doing the best you can.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
We've got bar jokes. How low can you go? We've
got bars about bars. We've got more bars than the
Bourbon District. This is not the kind of fun bar
that these lawyers were messing with. They shut down this
show because they said, look, if you're giving out real
legal advice for free on the radio, we don't care
for that, which makes sense because that's their job, you
(20:17):
know what I mean. Yeah, if you run a donut
shop and then some weirdo next door opens a a
place that just gives away free donuts, you're gonna have
some problems.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So that is his right if he wishes to do that,
as long as he's checked all the boxes and filled
out all the appropriate paperwork.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, you gotta have a license. It's a spike store
kind of situation. Yeah, you can't be a rogue donut benefactor.
You will get in trouble. So now we get to
the age of TV. We'll show this up real quick.
The first show like this to make it to television
was Famous Jury Trials. It was on the radio in
the thirties to the late nineteen forties, and then in
(20:57):
nineteen forty nine it got adapted to television. They even
had a film come out in nineteen seventy one. And
these were all reenactments of past famous cases. I hope
they went super deep into the archives. I hope they
had some cases from the seventeen hundred's pirate trials.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Willful witchcraft or was it? Was it the manslaughter equivalent
of witchcraft? Was was this person accidentally a witch? Witch? Hobby?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
My client black Beard has been accused of many things today, didn't.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
They get accused of like eating babies or something that
I make that good?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Accused of a lot of things.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Fair enough, Isn't that the problem with a lot of
this Accusations in the court of public opinion are way
more interesting than the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And they have a much lower burden of a court room.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
The judge can do a lot of things to mitigate that,
and you know, instruct the jury and every everything. But
with the once this stuff starts circulating, you know, in
the real world, your base trying people in the court
of public opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Back to the seventeen hundreds. To follow up on that example,
in a real court, a judge could say, I do
not consider that to be a witch mark. I believe
that is a mode. But if there were a twitter
of some sort back then, probably word of mouth at
the church. In this instance, then the verdict is already
(22:22):
done for the public. That's right. No one has to
prove it, you know what I mean. Marm Mabel tells
good wife Johanneson that it's definitely witch mark because she's
seen a mole before, and then boom, it's the devil's mark.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's witch in time, the kitty cat is definitely drinking
milk from that thing. Okay, so that's how how they
were third nipple.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And that's how witch marks are the thing?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, you're familiar.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Of them, you're familiar. Did not suckles, you did not know?
And that cat is deafe demon anyway. So this is
this is a weird history because for a lot of us,
the TV court show has always been there if you
grew up in the US, just a staple of TV,
just like infomercials or those talk shows that are just vapid.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I'll say, yeah, come on, you don't like the view.
You gotta love a good talk show, guys.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
I love kind of what we do. I love the
segues though on the talk shows, because you know, if
you turn on at the right time, they're like forty
thousand confirmed dead in other news Dogs in office. Let's
go to Denver, Colorado, where mister Sparkles has been making
some waves in Congress.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
How would we have ever learned to be, you know,
panicking about satanic ing if we didn't have those talk
shows you know.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
WoT you're talking about, like the Doctor Phills of the World, Jesse, all.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
These formats that are just like weird. It's the line
between what is real and what is not real is blurred.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I think reality consensus.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
I distinctly remember being a kid and seeing some of
this daytime stuff and it was an episode about white supremacists,
and it was like Phil Donahue, and they had these
white supremacists on, and they had like their kids on
and they were saying the most foul racist stuff and
given this platform, and of course it's presented as like,
(24:26):
here are these bad people, but let's just let them
say and do whatever they want. And I found it shocking,
like as a kid, the horrible slurs, you know, that's
what they want to also be well aware of.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Folks in those talk shows like Noela's describing, I guarantee
you before they went on air, there was a producer
doing this. Yeah, okay, so just go up there, you know,
beat yourself.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
But me warriors a little more racist, dial it up
in the ash because we want people to really understand
where you're coming from.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Oh God, let me at him and he and if
you get to it, throw that chair.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, it's it's the it's marked with blue tape at
the bottom. It's the throwing chair. Yeah, that's your mark,
you know. But what what was the show where there
were always big fights? Jerry Springer? But it was all
of those yeah, yeah, except for Oprah. Oprah was classic Oprah. Yeah.
And as we as we think about these phenomenon, and
(25:25):
we did have an episode previously on reality TV, I
believe as we think about this phenomenon, we had to
ask is there a conspiracy afoot? How real is this
form of reality TV? What is the truth about court shows?
We'll have a quick recess for a word from our sponsor,
and then we'll dive into uh something like real sustain
(25:49):
stained sustaint all rise be seated. Here's where it gets.
Can I just stay seated? Is that?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Objection over how overstained? If you really like overstained.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Oxy clean, this is really great reason to have the
commercial breaks.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Is you'all cop it overstained?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Is your shift a robe overstained? I just wanted to say,
shift rope? All right, great, I think.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
There's a great way to talk about the difference between
the reality of these things and the reality of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
So, one of the first court shows that ever came
about was a thing called divorce Court, right, And it's
another one of these shows that it's very, very similar
to the when we just described to you before the break,
where it was a radio version kind of make them
up seas not really about a show, like a fictionalized
version of that or a recreated version of these court
(26:57):
rooms dramatized dramatized. The Worst Court did the same thing
early on. It had four separate runs, and on the
first couple of runs it was just re enacting a
divorce court proceeding, which I don't I guess it's salacious
enough that people would want to watch that. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Well, think about the demographic. You're at home, you're watching TV.
Maybe it makes you start thinking about your own relationships.
You find something some validation in there.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Like at least we're not this ft up, Right, you
know or at least like a judge agrees with me
that a dog should not be as important in a household.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
That is so fat because this is fifty seven to
sixty two, then sixty seven to sixty nine. Yeah, so
it is they're aiming at that time at at mothers,
like stay at home mothers, fantasizing about divorce and.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Also there there my god, yeah, maybe not fantasized, but
also thinking there but for the grace of God go
I maybe, but also the money spends to say is
the thing and there's and we also have to realize
the context. There are huge civil rights women's rights movements
occurring at the same time.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, but then when they came back though, they did
a version. That is what we're talking about right right now.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And let's step back because our first question was what
do we mean by real That's where we find the answer.
It's a gradient. It's not binary. These shows are not
all created equally in how much they do or do
not cleave to the reality of a courtroom. Some are
more like a real courtroom than others. But let's start
(28:37):
at the top. Let's go piece by piece. In these systems,
are the judges actual judges. Judge Judy Yes was a judge,
is not a judge. Was a judge and then began
to play one on television.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Judge Mills Lamee, same thing.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Judge Joe Brown definitely a judge prior to the television career.
So these folks were judges at one time. They were
judges at one point.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
They know the law, that is what we're saying.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Right, they are well acquainted with different parts of the law.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well, what about Steve Harvey.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I just I think he's just a judgmental dude.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Because he is one of the most famous Yes Courtroom
TV judges right now.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Because he doesn't take back something, but he is all
about the court of public opinion.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That's I know.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
But it's funny that you should say that, because it
just goes to show how similar it is, like how
these judges are like stand ins for talk show hosts
in anyways they are holding holding court yard.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Oh snap.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
And Steve Harvey is interesting, the guy from a family feud. Yeah,
he's the dude who always looks amazed by a slightly
risque answer. Yeah, you know, someone's like, well I would
say balls, and then he just loses his mind and
can't believe it's number one on the list of toys
(29:56):
and sports.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
You know, Steve Hardy's hilarious to me, Guys, I don't
know what it is. I think maybe I have an
SNL version of Steve Harvey playing my head. I watch him. Yeah,
so I don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
He also his show, Judge Steve Harvey is also technically
qualified as a court comedy. To your point about.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I'm not even aware of this his Judge show. I
thought you were joking. No, he has a Judge show.
And it's funny too because he's also a big radio
guy and he just has like doesn't he host a game.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Show, Family Feud, Family Food? Sorry, ye surprised when he's
ticking as the king of old media in a way?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Baby.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
He also hosted the Miss Universe competition and has seven
Daytime Emmy Awards. Dude, I don't know if that's like
it's like ad de emotion JV.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
But so, so, what we're talking about here is you've
got the spectrum of a television host personality that can
lead one of these shows as a judge. But on
the other end, and you've got Judge Joe Brown, and
that's the person I'm putting on this end because that
guy was a legitimate judge for a long time. He
was overseeing. We just we're talking about this when we
made the MLK tapes, we talked to Judge Brown, right,
(31:13):
but he oversaw the last appeal that James Earl Ray
had before he was taken off of it because he
was biased. But this is a legitimate judge that is
doing the same work, the same job as Steve Harvey.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Well yeah, okay, and we'll see why as well. Not
all of these TV judges are real judges. Some of
these shows are just borrowing a format loosely inspired by
what you would imagine a courtroom to look like. There
are other cases of this, you know, if you look
at Judge Greg Mathis, host of the show Judge Mathis.
(31:49):
He got a law degree and he worked as a
district judge in Michigan's thirty six District Court. He dealt
primarily with misdemeanors. But these court shows who not take
place in real courtrooms, They don't feature real trials happening
in real time. They are usually real cases, but the producers,
(32:09):
to our earlier example, here's how they scout people. They
look through pending litigation in small claims courts in the area,
and then they call people and say, hey, do you
want to just go sort this out on television?
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Is that like a form of arbitration or it is
a spoiler?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yes, okay, well we're seeing on these shows it's not
real court cases. Instead, you're watching an arbitration process. Do
we want to explain what arbitration is? Oh?
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, I mean it's it's literally a third party that
listens to two people's sides of a story, essentially who
have who.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Have agreed to participate in this, and to take it
outside of the scope of a normal courtroom proceeding.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
If you're doing actual arbitration, right, that is theoretically the
way it works, that third party that is non biased.
But again, especially if you're dealing with a corporation arbitration process.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Here's where your coderation arbitration. Here's where you're gonna run
into arbitration. Folks, anytime you have signed terms and conditions
for literally any elect service in media or with electronic product,
pre agree you have agreed to arbitration. That's why it's
usually towards the second half of the contract because they
(33:25):
know ninety five percent of people are not going to
read it. You should read it, as a matter of fact.
Start reading at the bottom and work your way up.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
That came up recently with that case of the woman
being a food poisoned by Disney Food and Disney Springs
associated and because the husband had signed up for like
a free trial of Disney, plus he had technically agreed
to arbitration, which is not in his favor because this
is a case that he could potentially have won big on,
(33:54):
but now he's been demoted to arbitration, which puts the
power really in the hands of the corporation.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Let's compare it to if it was in a court
of law. Right, in the court of law, there's the
same thing. Two arguments, right from a team of lawyers
for basically someone who's defending someone who is accusing or
the plaintive, and the defendant, they make their case, the
jury in that case decides what's up, or the judge,
(34:20):
depending on trial, and then that judge or jury decides,
here's what's going to happen who, Here's who's going to
pay money, Here's who's gonna face consequences. In arbitration, you
hear this case and everything, and that one person who
is your arbiter binding gets to the decide you.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Can do it. There may be more than one arbiter, true,
but this is alternative dispute resolution, meaning that you can say,
you know, if you two guys are fighting, you could
come to me and say like, hey, we don't want
this to go to court. We just hear it out,
we'll record it. We agree in writing that that decision
to that point we'll be binding, which means that even
(35:00):
though you're not in court with this mediation, the arbiter's
decision is almost always final. It's very rare for court
to go back and step on the toes. So it's
a It's like how instead of going straight from kindergarten
to first grade, your case goes from kindergarten to pre first.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yes and yes, And one of the most important parts
of this is exactly what you said, Ben. You're not
going by the laws necessarily. Sometimes you are, but especially
in certain cases, you are deciding what the rules in
consequences can even be. Before you begin the discussion.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And scope out. You make the field of play and
I contact listen close fellow conspiracy realist, not accusing anyone specifically,
but you cannot do arbitration for a lot of criminal cases. Okay,
so if there's a grand theft auto for instance, if
there's a purposeful arson, or you have god forbid arguably
(35:58):
committed homicide, can't go to the cops and say, well,
what if we just sort of get an arbiter, you
know what I mean, like get get someone we all trust.
Like what if we ask Bill Nye you know.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
What the science got?
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah? Or what if we get jaw ruled because Jaw will.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Figure science gott yes or Shaggy too dope, the science yes.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
And so this is uh, you know, it's.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
About magnets, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
M hm.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
He is wilfully agreed on all things magnetic. So the
power the judges have in these TV shows is just
granted by the contract. Uh. And it's the contract that
you sign when you agree to appear. Everybody is there voluntarily,
even the devil. The fine print and also love fine print.
(36:48):
I think they should make the fine print and just
the sexier fond she's just called words. They should make
it sexy.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Okay, how about comic sans comic sands the sexiest thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's no wing dings. You know. So there's here's the issue.
If we have an aggrieved party and a plaintiff, and
the judge judge finds in favor of the of the defendant,
both parties get an appearance fee. Yeah, so even if
you lose your case, you still get paid for your time.
(37:23):
And yes, if you're wondering, it is more than the
fee that people in an actual jury get.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Bro I found my jury duty check. It was so
embarrassing and hilarious that I never even cashed it. And
I looked at it and I was like, I should
cash this, But now it's ninety days.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
It was void.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
It was fourteen dollars fourteen fourteen US.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Dollars for coffee. It was a coffee.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
It was a full day of the selection process and
then a full day of the trial.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Seven bucks a day. Unreal coffee's on you.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That's insanity.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
They do charge you for coffee. It's a machine. Yeah no,
I mean you you buy the next round of coffee. Fourteen.
I think we could recuit. There weren't even donuts, there
was no spread.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It's just such an important point, guys, what Ben's saying here,
that is how you get somebody to come on a
court television show who appears to be the bad guy,
at least according to the story, right, all right, right,
that's the way you get on there, because I always
wondered why on earth would this cheating husband or whatever
it is like go on television.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
And that's why it's also kind of considered poor form
in journalism to pay your subjects.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
There you go technically illegal. Right, so depending on well, okay,
we hear you, FCC's we got it, we got it.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
But not only would they not have to pay whatever
the small claims.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Is, Yes, we've got that later too, Yes, it just.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
You can you can definitely see while that that is
better than having to pay somebody if it actually went
to court.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of advantages. The
consumerists had a great snarky line about this. They said,
while the cases and people may be real, the court
could be held on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise
and would still have the same effect.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
I mean, it might as well be it's on a set.
The Starship Enterprise set may well be next door.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
And yeah, and that's a good point. The quote concludes,
it's all just part of the collective hallucination. We call television.
I thought that was a great It's very cool.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I recently went to my very first taping of a
late show and you know, there's a tonight show is
Jimmy Fallen And I'd always pictured what the studio was like,
and it is tiny. They make it look so big,
but the way the camera sweeps throughout it and I
guess the lens maybe the wide angle lens or whatever,
and it is a tiny audience.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
It's a never show.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Usually it's like maybe if they do show it, they
show it in close up, which makes you think that
it just goes on forever.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
But it's like a black box theater and it is
that you're.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
In a shoe box.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
It's crazy how small is The band is on one wall,
the band that plays as a guest is on the
far wall, and then Fallin on the desk is on
the left wall, and then the audience is on the
back wall, and it is the illusion is real.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
It was very trippy being in there. Like, have you
guys ever been to the SNL studios? Heck now also
very small?
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Uh, very I'm not saying I would never. I would
love to just have not know that's cool.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
And then if you go. Yeah, a lot of the
late shows have a similar format on stage as they
do in their presentation, which is all to your point
to build that illusion. And speaking of illusion, we're talking
about this off air, some of the defendants are actors, like, well, yeah,
the case might be real, but you know, the guy
who is portraying the defendant also has a real on
(40:34):
IMDb where he lists a lot of his work.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Well, and there's no real jury, but there are there
is a studio audience for and they sit in a
jury box, right, It's it's it's an.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Illusion, yeah, but they don't. Well, it depends on the
format of the show. Some of the formats have interaction
like with that audience, but usually it's it is an
illusion that they are just an audience the way it
would be in a courtroom. But they don't say anything.
They just they're quiet. The only people who speak are
the plaintiff, the defendant or the.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
And the bailiff who's like, you got that right, he's
the shifty, sassy one exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
But isn't that funny though that because as time has progressed,
and you know, this being a tried and true format,
you certainly have some like Steve Harvey that lean more
into the absurdity of it and can be a little
more goofy.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
With Well, all the judges quote unquote judges, whatever their providence,
they have to have a personality, right, they have a
list of attributes that attract people to the show again
and again. You know, a no nonsense judge versus a
judge who kind of sees the you know, the lighter
side of things, right, you know, versus a judge who's like,
my main thing is I dig parakeets. Is why this
(41:40):
case is interesting.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
The parakeet judge. He always has one on his shoulder.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Birth also.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, So my understanding just to what we're talking about
here is usually they're not actors putting on a show
like fake cases. They're real cases. It's just they are
presented as real cases to the so then the producers
decide which ones. So the way you would fake get
(42:05):
on one of these court TV shows, in my understanding
is you would have a small claims thing, or you
would create a small claims thing that's wild, and then
a producer would somehow come to it. I it can
work that way, or I guess you would go to
you'd send an email to the producers and say, guys,
I've got a crazy story for you, and the fake
(42:26):
get on.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
But it's also similar to so the producers play a
huge role, and that's a great point. Sometimes it works
the way you're describing that would actually be one of
the ethical ways from the producer's end. Sometimes the producers
will find an old court transcript that they really like
and they'll have a recreation of that. Sometimes these are
made up out of a whole cloth, or kind of
(42:48):
like a plot for Law and Order. They're inspired by
true events. Other times there will be defendants and the
actually grieved parties on camera, but it's an open secret. Again.
Prior to going on camera, the show's producers will pop
by and just say, hey, let's judge this up a little,
even if that means playing a little fast and loose
(43:09):
with the facts. I don't know, what do you guys think,
another recess for an ad brink. I don't see why not.
I was waiting for an overruled or sustained sustained thank you,
and we've returned, all right. There are lots of producers
(43:29):
who will speak about this. One that I think stood
out to us is a guy named Dave d. Venerio,
producer of Black Chip Studios out in San Diego, he
had he had a pretty good first hand account of this.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah, he said, Assigning a level of reality to reality
court shows is difficult because, like with most reality TV,
these shows fall more in the area of contrived, that cold,
you know, that contrived area, then exactly genuine or fabricate him.
That's interesting, yeah, because you contrived does kind of live
between those two mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah. And he said, you know, some shows even have scripts,
because you know they're working off transcripts. Some are more improved. Right.
Regardless of how these things lean into or out of reality,
they all have one goal to make as much spectacle
as possible, to play up the drama. If you've ever
watched a real court proceeding, people are often very formal,
(44:24):
they're pretty dry. They try to be fact based, and
if you watch these shows, then people sometimes become hyper
exaggerated versions of themselves. I will not have a circus
in my court room, you know. Yeah, And they're saying
that while the defendant and the plaintiff are dressed as
literal clowns, because it clown claim, is that a thing clown?
(44:48):
Court there's clown college. Why shouldn't there be clown court.
That's true, clown rights, you know what I mean. Now
clown rights. Now, where about the issues? So Divernio has
this idea that may be reassuring, where he says, you know,
most of these cases, most of these people are real.
But to your point, Matt, occasionally people will fabricate a
(45:09):
case to get on a show. They'll conspire right, and
the producer may not know that these aggrieved parties are
actually buddies coming up in the comedy scene and they
because it's easy to file small claim, anyone can. But
do we have examples of this being discovered?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Not really there at least I couldn't find anything concrete
where it's like this is definitely what happened, because is embarrassing,
especially for the production if it gets through. But it
used to happen all the time on talk shows where
you know actors who are trying to make it out
in Hollywood and they come up with a way to
get on television. Again, I mean, I use Ricky Lake
as an example, but it's not really necessarily that it
(45:47):
would be one of the more salacious ones where it's
like this kid is or is not my child or whatever. Yeah,
but it's just actors and they're just having fun and
it doesn't matter necessarily even to the producers if it's
real or not, because it makes for good TV.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
You just don't want that the girlfriend mistress, baby mama fights.
Uh yeah, sorry, folks, sometimes they know each other.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
I think that's interesting because what we're pointing out here
is that it does seem that there is some need
to maintain some semblance of credibility even in the schlockiest
of these court type shows. Sure, if that is at
the heart of the thing, the moment that is broken,
and we cannot believe the true crime aspect of these things,
it loses us.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Well, think about it. If if the illusion that there
are not direct consequences to one or the other of
the people who are there on the stage, course, yeah,
then nobody gives a crap. So you have to truly
believe that illusion. That illusion has to exist, or else
the show's canceled.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
And you can skirt the line there ethically and legally
by not outright stating this is or is not true.
Right by not outright stating this is a real court case.
All you have to do is imply it through appearance,
through tropes, through format, and then from far enough away
you know this will seem true to a lot of people,
(47:13):
even though it is ersatz, which is a word for
appearing true without being true. And with that we have
to ask, Okay, what happens when somebody is found innocent
or guilty? Like we said earlier, if you're the defendant,
you're found innocent, you and the other party still get
an appearance fee.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
Is there a problem? I mean, it just depends, you know.
I mean, I think this kind of reality television in
general is sort of to blame for some cultural erosion
of like morals, you know. But that's me like being
soapboxy about it. To me, the stakes are pretty low
and everybody kind of knows what they're signing up for
on both sides, the audience side and the participants side.
(47:55):
So is it damaging to what democracy to like the law?
Speaker 3 (47:59):
I don't think so. I think it's just frivolous. Well,
here's one thing they don't tell you on the show
as a member of the public. To Matt, I think
there's your point there about the actual penalties. What are
our stakes? What happens when a penalty is leveled. They say, yes,
you're the evil clown in this situation. You stole the
Seltzer water and the squeaky shoes.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, you left that house a little bit messy when
you sold it to this other person and they won
one hundred and seventy five dollars.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
Here's the kicker. The production pays for fines and penalties
leveled as part of the arbitration agreement. So we can
understand the perspective of a defendant. If you have a
small claim, a real one, and you feel like your
odds of winning aren't great, why wouldn't you I mean
it's a cost benefit. Are you okay being a little
(48:50):
embarrassed to save some money.
Speaker 5 (48:53):
I don't think anybody in Hollywood was ever.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
I'm too afraid of being a little embarrassed because you
got to have humility and shame to be embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I know it's a good question, but you could see
right because we're saying you could you could still be
found guilty, and you thought you would be or found
at fault, and now you can get away without having
to actually pay the financial consequence.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Or not just financial consequence. It's like there are no consequences. Now,
some people saw you, you know. I however, many hundred
or thousands of people saw you on TV doing this thing.
But other than that, you're good. It's like it never.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Happened, except that they might syndicate this show, which means
that every night at seven pm, you know, every other month,
it's back up there.
Speaker 4 (49:41):
But to your previous point, Ben too mean or both
of you guys are on the stakes. Like, we're not
dealing with sexual assault cases. We're not dealing with actual
serious damages of psychological nature or of like physical bodily harm.
Maybe psychological maybe, But the stakes to me on any
of these that I've ever seen are always so low.
Oh and kind of, like I said, frivolous that I
(50:03):
just don't think it's that big a deal. And I
think everybody kind of knows what they're getting in on,
you know, whether you're participating, whether you're producing it, or
whether you're at home consuming it.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, And to your point there from earlier, I think
a lot of people watching know some degree of reality
is compromised in these shows. The real reality is compromised, agreed,
But there's still a lot of misconceptions. That's why people
might have a problem with this. Plenty of legal boffins,
TV critics and consumer advocates don't love TV court shows,
(50:37):
and their biggest concern is that this might mess up
attitudes and preconceptions about actual facts court shout out Lower
and Vogel bam the idea that you know, God, I
know legal professionals who've run into this. You're talking to
a witness, a defendant, someone else affiliated with the case
who's not a legal professional, and they say, wait, I
(50:59):
know you're the judge or you're a big lawyer or whatever.
But I've seen a lot of Judge Judy, and I've
watched a lot of Law and Order SVU, so let
me tell you how this goes on TV.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
It's true, But again, I think like everyone knows that
there is a certain suspension of disbelief where it's like,
I don't really apply.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
But maybe that's just me. You're the people that I know.
Speaker 4 (51:24):
I mean, there are people that see this and really
think that's how things go down. So maybe I'm taking
that point for granted a little bit.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Well, isn't it one of the common questions you see
on some jury panels or auditions where they say, do
you watch you know, law and order or what do
they say? Do you watch crime shows?
Speaker 5 (51:41):
Nowadays they've probably just abbreviated to true crime are you?
Speaker 3 (51:43):
You know what I mean? Like, yeah, what do you
like true crime podcast? And that's a question that comes
up because they're trying to see if you have a
stilted view of what a court should look like. Since
it's arbitration, it doesn't have to occur in a court room.
You could put it anyway. You could even put it
on social media. What about TikTok court? I mean, it's
(52:04):
probably common guys. You know, I don't see why not
a lot.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Of people on TikTok are getting in trouble for making
up crazy stuff and not being able to back get
up and then not stopping talking about the crazy stuff.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
But it's also there's so much ability to shield yourself
by saying it's satire, you know what I mean? But
there's it's really riding the line these days. You'll see
someone being like, I this thing happened to me, I
did this thing, I experienced this thing and it's made up.
But they're doing with such a straight face, and it
it feels.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Like it's a real account.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
But it's absolutely satire, and it's up to you to
figure out what that is because there's no disclaimer.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah. And also I'm just asking questions, you know what
I mean, Like, why has what what's a weird celebrity.
Speaker 5 (52:48):
Chapel Roone.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
Why has chapel Roone never explicitly denied the allegations that
she runs an a legal goat herding operation across the
Columbian border.
Speaker 5 (53:00):
It's a good question, Ben, I've been wondering asking question.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
I'm wondering.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Now you got me think, Ben, I've got to know,
I've got to find out.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Iron
must be stopped.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I really thought she was talking about the Pink Pony
Club here in Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
I think there's a just sort of considered almost a
it's like such an old school institution of strip clubs.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
Then it's just like a stand in like Coke happened.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
I was just she's got a really popular song called
Pink Pony Club, and there it's about a you know,
a dancer at an adult institution, and there is the
famous Pink Pony in Atlanta. But chapel Roone is referring
to a place that may or may not exist in
West Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Exactly, at least according to the lyrics. Okay, if you're
gonna believe the lyrics, well, let's.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Talk about how lyrics have been put on trial.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
I mean, this is out of the scope of this conversation,
but it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah, yeah, okay, Matt, give us the court sound cute please, sir.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Dun dunn. Oh wait, that's a different one.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
This is perfect. You guys are doing it great. All right.
Here we are in podcast court, which will be a
thing later. Shout out to our pal, judge John Hayes.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
He's my favorite celebrity judge.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
He's pretty great. But we are we are also friends
with him when we're in this area. We're increasingly empowering
the court of public opinion, right getting ratioed on Twitter,
as he said, Matt, people being surprised they encounter real
world consequences for performative things on TikTok. I don't know.
I guess the verdict is court shows are entertaining and
(54:34):
they help and that they do conduct real arbitration, but
we can't call them real if we mean their real courtrooms.
Is that fair?
Speaker 4 (54:44):
Yeah, I mean that is the question, though, like where
when you have an OJ Simpson trial, or you have
like a you know, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Trial or.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Brother's trial, it is it is presented in an entertaining
way by the news media, but it is a news event,
whereas these are somewhere in between an entertainment you know,
product and a little taste of real consequences in real
legal stakes.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah, well, think about how obsessed we are with this stuff.
Remember we uh, oh gosh, what was the movie not
twelve Angry Men? That was like nineteen fifties when that
was written, Well, monkeys, it was a few good men. Yes,
of course we talked about how compelled America was with
that film, and it is most of it is not
most of it. A lot of the most heightened moments
(55:35):
are just inside a courtroom.
Speaker 3 (55:37):
You can't handle the truth.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
But it's just people talking to each other, right.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Yeah, with the real type back and forth camera angle.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
The same with the radio place back in the day.
It's just really about the words and the way people
are saying things to each other. And that's where the
drama actually is.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
And sometimes the drama comes in all how you frame it,
you know what I mean, and what you pull from
it because sitting in at court eat like that the
whole time.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
It's pretty dry, are formal because they've got a lot
on the line. Also reminds me of a well, what
was that movie with al Pacino as a blind incentive
woman who is also who was also somehow incent He
stands up in a hearing. Yeah, because he talks about
a central one. He stands up in a hearing and
(56:22):
has pretty salacious name. If you think yeah, yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, he talks about it. He stand anyway. Uh.
The point is he stands up in a hearing and
he delivers this excoriating uh monologue and statement. And that's
the kind of stuff that stays with people, Just like
in a Few Good Men. Jack Nicholson's character is a
very brief part but extremely pivotal juncture of the story.
Speaker 4 (56:45):
Opening and closing arguments are always the big drama, well
not the only, but like the opportunities for the litigator
to hold court, to actually have the all eyes on me.
I'm setting it up, I'm laying out the stakes.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Think of Atticus fans to kill a mockingbird.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yes, sorry, it's the phrase stand and deliver. Just reminding
me of that movie. Stand and deliver about the Menendez brothers.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yes, yes, yes, And with this we see that pop
culture has already kind of blurred the line. I won't
even say kind of pop culture has blurred the line
between what we think is real and what we think
is entertainment. So maybe our verdict is this h If
you take away anything from this episode, remember that anything
(57:30):
you learn from watching Court TV should not be confused
with something that might help you in an actual courtroom,
unless you just want the judge to be irritated at you.
I feel like your honor. Do you know, Judge Joe Brown,
their eyes will roll so hard, or or maybe they'll
do that face you just did, Matt, what do you
(57:51):
know about Joe?
Speaker 2 (57:52):
He's such a weird case study because because he's a
he's a legit judge, you like it, is so good
at doing that job. Yes, and then he's also only
really known for this stuff. And he got that job
as Judge Joe Brown right after the whole involvement with
James Earl Ray, which made me think conspiratorially, of course,
(58:16):
maybe he was given this as like, don't make a
stink about this whole thing. Okay, So here's some a
lot of money and be a judge.
Speaker 3 (58:24):
Now here's your door prize.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
I don't mean that. Sorry, that's an accuistion. It's not
an accusation, it's an observation. Thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Yeah, thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
There we go.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
But also you got to think too, that's a little
bit of a happier life for a guy like that,
oh for sure, in terms of the stakes being so
comparatively lower.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Just you know, as long as we pretend like some
elements of the government didn't want MLK to to be dead,
it's fine.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
The devil you say. Do check out our episodes on
co Hotel pro. Do check out the MLK tapes which
Matt let the charge on chick out our previous episodes
on not just reality TV but the nature of reality.
For now, our verdict is court shows are entertaining, but
they are not real. Court case dismissed, sustain. Yes, you
(59:12):
can also find us. I don't think I still don't
understand the terms. Sorry, we want to hear your thoughts, folks.
You can find us all kinds of places. Unlike that
radio show from years past, you can actually contact us.
We can find us on email. We got a phone number.
We're all over the place online it's right.
Speaker 4 (59:29):
You can shout into your podcast consuming device of choice,
or you can find us all over the internet. As
Ben said at the Hamil Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
on Facebook with our Facebook group here's where it gets crazy.
On x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube where we have
video content galore for your enjoyment.
Speaker 5 (59:45):
On Instagram and TikTok. However, we are conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Show Yes, if you have a case you want to
have arbitrated, reach out to Judge John Hodgman. We're pretty
sure he still does that. Yes, and they're fun, so
do that. If you want to call us and tell
us about anything you w want adjudicated, call our number.
It is one eight three three S C D W
I T k K feels.
Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
Good, say KKK, I'm not picking.
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
That's our phone number. When you call, and give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know if we can
use your name and message on the air. It's a
three minute voicemail. If you've got more that can fit
in that, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid the shadow knows,
and sometimes the shadow writes back, join us out here
in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
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