June 4, 2019 • 44 mins
Ben Bowlin kicks off Season 3 of Access Podcast. Ben and Matty talk about his shows Ridiculous History and Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. Plus, Ben's history with How Stuff Works, his favorite conspiracy theories, and how podcasts help people learn history. We play a round of 3 Killer Questions and new producer Morgan gives you 3 podcast suggestions featuring Malcolm Gladwell and Slow Burn.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everybody, and welcome back the season three. It only
took a year for me to get this new one done.
It's Access Podcast, the podcast about podcast and if you're
new listener, my name is Mattie Stali. Eleven years ago,
(00:22):
I left the number one morning show in San Francisco
to join the startup team at Stitcher, and I've been
in podcasting ever since. I'm the vice president of podcast
Programming for iHeart Radio and in general, I'm a podcast nerd.
I love podcast and I love helping listeners find new
shows and also get to know the folks that they
already love. This week on the show, we're gonna meet
(00:43):
our new producer, Morgan, who's gonna tell us about three
shows you should be listening to. But right now I
want to tell you about our guest. I love this guy,
Ben Bolan. Ben. He began as an intern at How
Stuff Works in two thousand seven, early days of podcast Thing,
and in two thousand and eight, with his stamped colleague,
Ben created Stuff They Don't Want You to Know What.
(01:06):
She hosts along with another one of my favorite podcasts,
Ridiculous History. Let's take a listen to Ridiculous History and
then we're gonna start a conversation with Ben. But if
you want to be a citizen of the United States,
there is some paperwork involved as well as some verbiage.
If you're decided oath, got to speak an oath, you
(01:28):
gotta put your bloody thumb print on a document, sign
your name and in blood. Now, well, you know it's
changed over time. You still have to have interviews, you
have to take citizenship test, naturalizations where they call all right, Ben,
I think of getting close to being able to ask
(01:49):
if podcasting is something you always wanted to do, but
we're not quite there yet. What made you actually want
to get into podcasting or was it something that you
kind of fell into? Oh man, little bit of both,
to be completely candid. So I started working for How
Stuff Works as an intern in the days of your
(02:10):
pre podcasting, and when we first as a company began
making podcast I immediately wanted to be part of the
movement because you know, I know you're the same way
with this, Maddie. I've always been in love with radio
since I was a wee tyke, and this seemed like
a way to participate in all the things that I
(02:33):
loved about radio growing up. Now again. To be honest,
we had no idea how far we would go with this.
Our first podcast were only about five to ten minutes long,
which sounds crazy nowadays, but I I went into this
with my eyes wide open, and my mission was to
(02:55):
be on as many quality podcast as possible. To date,
I have guested on numerous podcasts. I've produced many, I've
hosted and written for four to five and never looked back.
So I fell into it. But I guess maybe the
best way to say it is I I fell into
(03:17):
it in a hopes and dreams kind of way. If
I was not podcasting for this company, I would have
ended up podcasting somewhere else. I just love it. I
love the medium, in the format, the whole nine. Man.
It's funny that you mentioned, you know, being an old
fan of radio. I started doing radio shows in my
bedroom when I was ten years old. And part of
my job now is I go and work with radio
(03:39):
talent about podcasting and kind of you know, how they
can create great podcasts. And one thing that they'll they'll
always look at me and say, is so this is
just kind of like the radio we used to do.
When we've talked a lot and had a little more
time on our hands. And I think it's true. What
were the earlier radio shows that you listened to that
got you hooked? Oh, man ky. I am a huge
(04:02):
fan of late night AM shows. That's where you can
hear some really cool stuff, and then late night college
radio stations. So I loved eighty eight point five here
in Atlanta, which is a g s U station. And
I was always a big fan of a show called
Coast to Coast AM. Yeah, Art Bell and George Nori.
(04:25):
I thought those guys had such tremendous interview skills, and
they were profoundly compassionate. You know, they spoke to some
very eccentric people, but they heard them out and so
to me, that kind of talk was transformative, and it
was wide ranging, and it was just as much about
(04:45):
the personality of the host or the talent as it
was about the information they were imparting. And I feel
like that's a trend that has continued to evolve. You know,
now more and more often when you hear really good radio,
it feels like a podcast. At the end of the day,
(05:06):
it's good storytelling. That's what I always tell folks is
that you know, great podcast is a great story. It's
got a beginning, middle end, and you feel like you've
gone somewhere and you've learned something. Which is another thing
that I love about podcasting is I feel like I'm
kind of one of those curmudgeony people that feel like
people don't read enough anymore. They don't educate themselves as
much as I think they should, but they do and
podcasting is now filling that whole. What do you feel
(05:27):
about that as far as podcasting being, you know, kind
of a greater greater good for society. Absolutely, not to
sound too over zealous, but I absolutely agree with you, Maddie.
As a fellow curmudgeon, I think we're on the same page.
Whenever I am setting out to produce rights or develop
(05:48):
a show or an episode, my first question is always this.
When someone starts listening to a show or an episode
and they get to the end, what is changed within them?
Have they learned something new? Have they have they changed
their mind about something? Because yes, podcasts are storytelling, but
(06:10):
just like the reader of a novel, the audience is
part of the story. They're the main character. The most
important part of any show is going to be the
people who listen. To and support it, so I absolutely agree.
I would even go a little bit further and argue
that to a very real degree, podcasts are democratizing education.
(06:32):
The things that people used to have to go to
grad school to learn, they can get the information for
free now in the form of a podcast. And it
doesn't matter where they live, it doesn't matter what their
socioeconomic position is. This is a fundamentally game changing thing,
(06:53):
and I think it's for the better. I teach at
university and I've seen over the last eight years how
students have become such fan it's a good podcast. And
I have students that the only radio they listened to
is NPR. I can't imagine saying that ten years ago,
because there's no way kids would have listened to NPR
ten years ago. But they're finding it through podcasts and
they really enjoyed the content absolutely. You know, one thing
(07:14):
I was always very interested in when you and I
originally met was the way that you have this let's
say a forty thousand foot view, to use the old cliche,
you can see the industry growing on its own. You
can see all the parallels has to radio, but you
can also see the tremendous potential it has in terms
(07:34):
of education, information and storytelling. So I don't know if
I can say this on the air, Maddie, but you
are kind of my go to guy to send an
email if I'm like, Hey, what's happening with this thing? Oh?
I appreciate that, man. I just I love the medium
off to talk about watching where it's at now and
where it was eleven years ago when I left radio
and went to Stitcher, because there were many years of
(07:55):
the last eleven years where I doubted whether we would
get to the point that we're at now. And it
is so exciting to see where we're at now. I mean,
getting to work with how stuff works and have this
synergy that we've got going on right now. I don't
want to get too in the weeds on that stuff,
but it is a lot of fun. This is definitely
the salad days. As far as I'm concerned with podcasting,
Oh oh yeah, I agree. I feel very Patrick Henry
(08:17):
about it. In a way. It's like we have not
yet begun to podcasts. We're sort of as an industry
if we look at it in terms of like a
maybe a three act structure or something as an industry.
We are at the beginning of the second act and
things are escalating at a delightful, if intimidating pace. Many
(08:39):
many people had never heard of podcast until Cereal was
parodied on Saturday Night Live. You remember that, Yeah, on
that real quick. I just remember teaching a class and
talking to a student about Cereal and having another student
walk in and closer ears and walk out and say,
you're gonna spoil it for me. And I was like,
that never happened before with a podcast, that people were
(09:01):
that into it. Yeah. Yeah, And that's the thing. It's
kind of a Malcolm Gladwell esque tipping point. You know.
Podcasts went from being let's say, relatively niche, sure obscure
in the late two thousand's to now being something that
certain professionals are just expected to have, like a business card.
(09:21):
If you're a comedian, for example, you have a podcast.
It's part of and Parcel. Now, so you host two
shows that I love, but for different reasons. Let me
(09:41):
start with Ridiculous History because it's my dream job. I
love history and the stuff that you guys find and
cover fascinates me. You actually did one of the podcasts
recently about the town in West Virginia that reached out
to the Soviets to get some stuff. I'm from West
Virginia and I consider myself a pretty good West Virginia
history buff. Didn't know that story. Where do you find
these awesome stories for that podcast? That is a fantastic question.
(10:05):
We go about it a number of different ways. So
any podcast I do, I think the audience is the
most important part of the show, so I want to
hear what they think they're fellow listeners would enjoy. So
we'll do a call for topics. Tell us something that
you think your friends around the world who also listen
to this show with dig and it gives people a
chance to tell their own story, you know, whether it's
(10:27):
West Virginia or whether it's somewhere in Indonesia. You know.
The second way will be my co host and my
producer and I will sit together and will pitch each
other these strange things that we found in our individual reading.
Will also go to resources like ask historians on Reddit
is fantastic. And then we have a team of research associates. Well,
(10:51):
I say a team. It's one guy, but he's awesome,
and he's awesome, and he's definitely part of the team.
What he'll do is back and there were a lot
more text articles on how stuff works. He would go
through and talk with some of the people writing those
articles or some people who are doing some podcasts or
video content, just to see if there were any hot
leads would give us a hotly. We are very very open.
(11:14):
We only have from a few rules. The only big
rule we have is how recent is too recent, and
that's anything anything before the nineteen nineties we're pretty good
with because old is it makes me feel to say it,
and some of us listening maybe on the same page
with me. The nineteen eighties were officially a long time ago. Oh,
(11:34):
I know when you're doing that podcast and you're finding
stuff and you put it together. I don't think people
realize how much goes into creating a podcast, because you know,
when you do a really good podcast, it sounds like
two guys just talking. And I always tell people when
they tell me, hey, I think I could do your
job because I can talk and I talk with my friends,
and I think, well, that's great. I'm doing my job
very well. If you can do that. How much work
(11:55):
goes into one of those podcasts to make that sound
that effortless before you do the show. So on Ridiculous History,
my team and I have a beautiful situation because we
already have report. We're all actually friends in real life.
We hang out and that makes a huge difference when
you're in the booth. We also do our own individual research.
(12:18):
A lot of people are surprised sometimes when I say,
you know, Ridiculous History doesn't really have an outline. We
have the gist of the story and then we go
into our own separate research. Our mission usually is to
surprise one another in a positive way. And when you
can have that happen, it's beautiful. But you can only
(12:38):
have that happen if you put in the time to
earn that sort of breezy conversational flow. So a good
way to think of it would be for a show
like Ridiculous History. Let's say every thirty minutes of show
you here is maybe on the light end, five or
(12:58):
six hours distill than concentrated. But that's again, I can't
emphasize this enough. That's kind of a light end. You've
probably had this happen to when you hear a concept
and you're thinking this would make a great show where
this would make a great interview, and you start digging
into it and you have that woe rabbit hole moment.
There have been times where been prepping for an episode
(13:19):
for two weeks and I'm still thinking, Okay, We've got
more work to do. We are in the land right
now with podcast ideas. If I had a dollar for
every email or phone call or text or a conversation
I had where somebody was pitching me their idea, I'd
be super rich right now. But that's the thing. Putting
out a quality podcast it's a lot more time and
effort than a lot of people realize. Oh yeah, especially
(13:42):
when you consider all the work that goes into the
final product. Because there are one person, armies people who
are making great independent content and stem to Stern, it's
them for the entire show. And that stuff can be good,
and that stuff can be great and astounding, but it's
always is always helpful to move with a team, with
(14:03):
a unit. So one thing I think that we've learned
through our years of podcasting is that the information typically
already exists somewhere pretty often, and the person listening to
the show, they can read the book to you know
what I mean. They're looking for something extra, something else.
They're looking for that story, that personality, that flavor. So
(14:26):
I spend a lot of time with new podcasters working
out some good podcast hygiene, that's what I call It.
Takes a lot of time, there are no shortcuts, and
it changes every time you've got a new person with you.
One of the biggest things I recommend for anyone listening
who wants to do a podcast with their friends or
(14:46):
their pals. Regardless of what your podcast is about, whether
it is a deep dive in history, whether it is
something as niche as football in the nineteen thirties or
something like that, no matter what it is, if you
have the opportunity, take an improv class, learned to yes
and learn to support your co host, and every episode
you do, try to make them sound like the smartest, funniest,
(15:09):
most fascinating person in the room. And if they do
the same thing, you will have an excellent and amazing conversation.
That's awesome advice. I want to shift over to talk
about your other podcasts that you do, and I have
mixed feelings about stuff. They don't want you to know.
I'm a occam's racer kind of guy. I honestly believe
(15:30):
the easiest answer is usually the right answer. You know,
there was no conspiracy to kill JFK. I'm firm on that.
When you're doing a show that's about conspiracies, how hard
is it to not go down rabbit holes and believe
everything is a conspiracy. Well, we live in an age
where being credulous is common and it's even applauded because
(15:51):
people are in information overload, and it's incredibly tempting to
just take a headline as an answer. I'd like to
clarify this for everyone listening. Stuff they don't want you
to know is a show about critical thinking applied to conspiracies.
I'm going somewhere with this, Mattie, I promise you so
so I mentioned earlier, you know, in the age of
(16:13):
instantaneous information and information overload, said, it's tempting to just
look at a headline or a buzzword and then use
that as a cognitive shortcut to pull up all the
other things you earlier associated with that. The term conspiracy
or conspiracy theory itself is a thought terminating cliche, and
(16:34):
it's often used to dismiss legitimate acts of corruption. For instance,
back for HSBC was caught laundering money on an international
scale for drug cartels. It was called a conspiracy theory,
and it was called a conspiracy theory because that helped
it become something easily dismissed. You know what I mean,
(16:55):
Like I understand you absolutely, So this is interesting. Our
mission with this show is to is to dive into
those things on the edge of the map and and
to honestly ask those questions and look at the facts,
and then look at what people say they believe. Because
the weirdest thing about this is often when people believe
(17:17):
in something conspiratorial, if presented with facts that would disprove
some or part of that belief system, it goes down
to your bedside manner. Nobody ever changed somebody else's mind
by yelling at them or condescending to them. We change
people's minds by socratic method, by asking questions, by being
(17:38):
part of the conversation. To your question directly, which I
think is an excellent question, how do we how do
we do this show for as long as we've done
without falling into a rabbit hole of credulity. It's true,
you know, people can often end up drinking a bit
of the cool aid to use the crafts figure of speech.
(17:59):
We don't what I have found. We have found real conspiracies.
It's true, they're out there, but those real conspiracies typically
are groups of people who feel that they deserve more
power or money or influence, and then use the power, money,
or influence that they have to pursue more of the same.
(18:19):
The big question you have to always ask yourself when
you when you hear this kind of stuff, what is
the motivation? Who are the thing and stuff? They don't
want you to know. If someone for some reason decided
to fake the moon landing, why would they do it?
Why would why would so many people do that? What's
the point? You know what I mean? And that's when
(18:39):
a lot of conspiracy theories tend to break down, because
finding a genuine, powerful motive along with genuine powerful means
that happens much less often than people think. You know, Oh,
what's that old line I think it was in Sherlock
Holmes or something about how every every disguise is ultimately
(19:01):
an autobiography of the person wearing the disguise, And a
lot of times when people are strongly invested in a particular,
easily disprovable conspiracy, theory for lack of a better term,
They're associating it with their personal identity, and they will
feel personally attacked if you say, well, it's true, like
(19:24):
here's a war story for you man. One of the
weirdest ones, one of the ones I got the most
hate mail about ever, was the flat earth beliefs. I thought,
why would we even waste our time, in our listeners
time exploring this thing, and then our you know, or
democracy or team votes, and they say, okay, we'll do
it because for some reason now it's trending. And so
we did this and explained why people would believe this
(19:48):
or professed to believe it, and then outline several experiments
you can do at your own home to show yourself
the nature of Earth, the heavens, and the solar system.
And then we've got this delusion of hate mail. People
made hit piece videos of me on YouTube, and there
are so many other real problems, escalating violence and stuff
(20:08):
like that. But I responded every email. I didn't make
a response video, but every email I responded to. So
to sum it up by way of long prologue, and
I apologize for that. It is tempting to believe the
first thing you read about a subject, right, but you're
not being fair to yourself and fair your listeners. Whether
(20:29):
it's the idea of you know, suppressed technology or something,
or whether it's just a study of which deciduous trees
are most prevalent in a given part of the world,
You've got to read multiple sources. You have to you
have to confirm that. And once you start reading multiple sources,
that's when you see the things fall apart. Because human beings,
(20:53):
every single one of us, we are brilliant, your hoarders
of knowledge. We have tremendous potential and we want to learn,
and that means keeping a secret or conspiring. Right. That's
usually going to be very difficult because you are surrounded
by people who are terrible at keeping secrets, who love
sharing things with each other and love learning. Usually, if
(21:15):
something if something is a genuine conspiracy, meaning that again
people in power worked together for some sort of goal
that they wanted out of the limelight, usually there is
some way to prove it. Usually there is someone who
wanted to share, someone who wanted to learn. It's just
it's very difficult to keep a secret. Like with the
(21:36):
jfk assassination, I love that you bring up that example,
the JFK assassination national international tragedy. But because of not
even necessarily the circumstances of the assassination, but because of
the way the government had a difficult time being transparent
in the aftermath in the investigation. Because of that, conspiracy
(21:59):
theories thrived, and due to this day, easily half, maybe
even a little more than half of the population believes
they don't know the whole truth about the JFK murder,
and a lot of that, again is just chalked up
to the lack of transparency. In the lack of transparency,
speculation always thrives. And the problem with that is that
once that transparency is granted, once people really can see
(22:23):
every single thing that happened, and when they've already constructed
an internal narrative, and so they won't believe the truth
even when they see it, because they appreciate the story
they have told themselves beforehand. Why are you going to
come in and interrupt my story with all these bothersome facts,
you know what I mean? I think one thing that
(22:43):
I get really perturbed about now is that all of
these Netflix specials, and I'm gonna point to cereal as well.
All of these things that are like trying to show
why a murder or something didn't happen take away from
the victim a lot of the times. So good example
is that making a murderer. We have a podcast called
Rebutting the Murderer and Dan O'Donnell does it, and Dan
(23:04):
Dan was actually at every trial. He knows this family,
he knows everything about this case, and he just destroys
that Netflix series because the guys are super guilty. But
he goes in and explains why you know this Netflix
special is telling you that guy is not guilty, even
though he is. I just feel like we sometimes we
give a lot of credence to conspiracy over facts, and
it takes away from somebody's actual pain and suffering. This
(23:27):
is the thing that happens with true crime as well.
There's ways to do it correctly, but there is a
danger that it becomes exploitative. One of the things that's
strange about the world in which we live is that
despite social media and despite the proliferation of different communication platforms,
(23:49):
we still see people being dehumanized and there are certain
things on stuff they don't want you to know that
I haven't touched, and I have no plans to, for instance,
the terrible, terrible, terrible Alex Jones. You know, I'm a
positive person, Maddie, but that guy is the worst. He's
a real pill. Absolutely. I think that if you look
(24:09):
up the word tool and douche bag his pictures in
both the sture. Yeah, so you know, he proliferated a
very hurtful and exploitative thing in the wake of mass
shootings and other domestic tragedies, wherein he accused parents who
had lost their children or relatives or survivors of these
(24:31):
tragedies of somehow being in the pocket of some sort
of shadowy organization. And that's all well and good for
you know, a feature length fiction film or maybe a
really kick ass graphic novel. But these are real people.
These are real people. They wake up, they read these
horrible things, They get harassed online and Twitter, sometimes in person,
(24:53):
and they go back to sleep. They wake up the
next day. Maybe the people who are harassing them have
moved on to a different cau is, but those people
are still alive and their children are still dead. That
is a massively horrific thing. The Netflix is, I think
they do a lot of stuff right, and they do
some amazing work, but true crime documentaries can easily become
(25:16):
this sort of cathartic experience for people at the expense
of the quality of life for the actual people involved.
So I think it's dangerous, and I think rebudding a
murderer is doing some doing some significant and valuable work.
I think that you also have to look at who's
produced the documentary, because now we're starting to see when
(25:37):
people want to defend themselves or have something to defend it,
they have a documentary produced that puts them in the
right light. I mean, I happen with Fire Festival. There
were two different documentaries that come out, and one made
fun Jerry look good and one didn't. And the one
that made him look good was guess what produced by them?
So yeah, and I thought that was really interesting. You know,
for me personally, I was in New York on nine
eleven and I lived through all of that and had
(25:57):
friends that died. And that's one that if I hear
someone talking in a bar and they're into that whole
bullshit conspiracy of it did happen or you know, our
government did it and all of these things, I get
viscerally upset. And I'm not a confrontational fella. I like people.
I really don't like to argue, but man, that's the
one that will get me fired up immediately. I'm glad
(26:18):
you mentioned that one, because the social aspect of that
sort of belief system is fascinating to me. It inherently
includes some orwelly and double think, and this is a
great way to look at it. The same people who
argue that the US government intentionally did this kind of
(26:40):
thing for some whatever crazy reason they want to stick
in there, those people also, at the very same time
believe the same government is massively incompetent and cannot precratically
tell its asked from its elbow. Yeah. So, all of
a sudden, this group of people who apparently cannot do
anything right because look at you know, just congressional rating
(27:01):
numbers or whatever approval numbers, all of a sudden they
got their stealth together for one big, cartoonishly complicated, monstrous
act that they orchestrated so perfectly that they also controlled
the weather somehow, right, And then they said, Okay, we've
done this super villainous thing. We have created one of
(27:21):
the worst events in US history, and we pulled it off.
Without a hitch. Let's get back to being incompetent. It
just does not make sense. What's the one quote unquote
conspiracy that you believe firmly that maybe other folks think
you might be a little crazy for believing. There's a
(27:42):
guy named General Smedley Butler and General Smedley, but it
is Smedly sm E. T. L. E. Y. Smedley. Yeah,
it was a different time, man. What can I say?
So he's a war hero, right, he's got that position
of an elder statesman, you know what I mean. He's
not necessarily active politically, but when he speaks people listen
(28:03):
in the US, and he becomes increasingly disillusioned with the
US's pattern of war overseas, and he starts to believe
that he is much more of a servant of private
corporate interests right masquerading as human rights interventions. But then
he tells Congress in testimony that he is approached by
(28:27):
one Prescott Bush to join them in a coup to
overthrow the New Deal government and institute something like fascism.
So everything that I just told you is demonstrably true.
The problem there is that after that point people start
exaggerating what happened, or kind of confusing their own opinion
(28:50):
for fact. What actually did happen is, yeah, Prescott Bush
approached Smedley Butler and said, general, big fan, I imagine
and me and the boys have been talking, and we
think it's time for a change rather than working in
the system. He was pitching the idea of a coup
in the United States, but it never got as far
as we know, it never got past the pitching stage.
(29:12):
No one actually committed a crime. These were just dangerous
conversations of powerful people were having, and it cheapens the
danger of that for people to say unprovable stuff about it.
That's one I wholeheartedly think is demonstrably true. I don't
know if people think this is crazy, man, but there
have been some really successful marketing conspiracies thanks to Edward Burnett.
(29:34):
Are you a vegetarian? Okay? So here in the States
and you and I grew up in the age where
a lot of people associate breakfast with bacon and eggs.
Before Edward Burns, no one was eating bacon for breakfast.
It seemed like a weird idea. You'd have like toast,
maybe a pastry and some coffee. So this American Pork
Trade Group CONSORTI of approaches Edward Burnets, and they say, ed,
(29:56):
we got a problem. We just can't sell this one
cheap cut of pork. People don't want this bacon. They want,
you know, they want pork chops, they want pork loins,
they want pork ribs. How can we sell this bacon?
And so he takes a very very fascinating approach. He
creates a group of fake medical associations or companies, and
(30:18):
instead of taking out ads on the radio or in
the New York Times or the pick of you, what
have you, he has his fake association send surveys to
doctors around the country. And these surveys are pretty brief,
and they're worded in such a way that the doctors
would all kind of come to the same conclusion. When
I say worded in such a way, it's cartoonish. It's
(30:39):
like question number one, would you agree that people should
eat food? And then everyone's like, yeah, I'm a doctor,
really food? And it's like question number two, which of
the following is of food? And it's like number one, chalk,
number two, nickels, number three, stickers, number four, bacon. And
so through controlling what people could answer. They got. It's
(31:00):
amazing statistic that said, doctors like the kind of nine
out of tend doctors overwhelmingly recommend bacon as part of
a balanced and healthy diet. And here are the following
benefits of it. And this is published as a study,
it's circulated around and that is the reason that we
eat bacon today. That is just one of his great coups.
(31:20):
I highly recommend his book Propaganda, which is available free online,
and it's a quick breed. He's the father pr But
that so those are those are two real conspiracies. And
in both cases, I think you see my logic here.
In both cases, neither of those, you know, involve extraterrestrials,
Neither of them involved allegations of the paranormal or time
(31:43):
travel or any of that stuff. They're just again, people
with power who want more power. I think there's a
whole podcast that could be done on marketing conspiracies. And Holly, hey, Maddie,
here's a new podcast idea for you. I'll write that down, Maddie.
So I always finish my podcast with three killer questions. Ben,
(32:07):
I've got three killer questions for you. I just like alliteration.
So so that's that's what we call it down. So
the first one is, if you could listen to a
podcast hosted by any person's living or dead, who would
you like to hear for a podcast? Oh man, just
to give you a couple of things, my favorite has
been Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. And then I answered
this question the other day for somebody, and I said,
(32:28):
Curt and Courtney. Just because I've been listening to Disgrace Land,
I'd love to hear what you think. Oh wow, Okay,
I'm gonna take advantage of living in dead and say
I think Orson Wells is great. I would love to
hear Orson Wells. I'd be really interested in hearing I'm
trying to I'm trying to think of just like the
most out there person. Okay, all right, so Orson Wells
(32:50):
because of the voice George Orwell, because of the alliteration
there where it'd be like Orson and Orwell. Yeah. So,
and then I would also I really be interested to
hear my e Cary argue with Newton. You know, oh
oh wait, never mind, never mind, wait forget it. Tesla Tesla,
(33:11):
Nicola Tesla's it would be a heck of a weird show, right,
I don't know how much sense it would make. Question too,
what's the first piece of technology that you got and
said to yourself? This right here, my friend is going
to change my life. Okay, I'm really gonna date myself here.
We're still friends after this. I got a beeper in
a pager in middle school. You had a pager in
(33:34):
middle school. I was like, I'm on the up and up.
You know, I'm basically a doctor. Now things are different.
I would never guess that you had a pager in
middle school, right, But I was not using it. I
just had it. No, But that's that's cool. I'm sure
you were the coolest skin class with that thing. I
was still a nerd. I'm with your brother. Finally, what's
(33:58):
the last podcast that you binged? The last podcast that
I binge? Was not counting any of the stuff our
colleagues do, because they did. I did beinge my pal
Matt's uh Monster season two? I like that. What happened
to Richard Simmons? Do you remember that one? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was a great I thought that was a great story.
(34:19):
I also went down a little bit of a comedy
Bang Bang Rabbit hole and didn't mean to, just accidentally
did it. And I was like, all right, you know,
just like reading, sometimes you'll read something light and enjoyable
and then you're like, Okay, I gotta I gotta read
something seriously. I gotta step it up. Uh So my
last and current binge some Damn Carlin hardcore history. Highly
(34:42):
recommend it. It's great for road trips. I am obsessed
with Dan Carlin. I have been from the beginning. And
I also find and Carlin to be an excellent thing
to go to bed too. My only problem with that
is I'll wake up, I'll like say something happened historically,
and then I'll go did it really happen? Or did
I did I dream that happened? And because of Dan Carlin.
(35:03):
But man, yeah, talk about somebody who puts a ton
a ton of research into his podcast. I love it. Yeah,
he's got a gift, and I would put him. You know,
we're we're at the stage now where we will know
we've done a good show when a teacher writes to
us and says this is the highest compliment in my opinion,
(35:23):
was the teacher writes to you and says, I've used
this in class where I was assigned this to my students,
you know, and Dan Carlin is college level research and fascinating,
fascinating presentation. I love it. I don't really famboy out
a lot, but I think that guy is a hero. Yeah,
he's on my Mount Rushmore of podcasters for sure. Ben.
(35:49):
It's been great. I'm glad we got to spend some
time and do this. And thanks for kicking off season
three for me. Hey, thanks so much for having me, Maddie.
I look forward to ire in Moore's the season continues.
Thanks buddy. All Right, I'm really excited because we have
a new producer. Not that I'm excited. Our old producer
isn't with us anymore. Z is in San Francisco. She's
(36:11):
doing great, but I moved to Los Angeles and had
to get a new producer here. And Morgan Cook has
been doing this out of the kindness of her heart
and learning as you go to right, learning a ton
a ton of ton of ton and it's it's what
first episode, first episode? So this is your first time? Uh,
since I want people to get to know you, I'm
gonna do what I do with all guests. I'm gonna
(36:31):
ask you three killer questions. Oh, here we go. First
of all, if you're gonna listen to a podcast featuring
anybody living or dead, who would be on the podcast?
I happen to know this question was coming somehow. Really,
so the people that I would listen to, let's see.
I'd love to hear from Robin Williams. I'd love to
hear from I love Jeff Ross and I feel like
(36:55):
we need a woman in there. Chelsea Handler. Oh wow,
that's a neat room. Would be a neat room. I
feel like I'd learn a lot and I'd laugh a lot.
I'll tell you the highlight of my entire life. Uh,
Robin Williams used to listen to my morning show in
San Francisco, and I saw him at a this film
festival I was with. I was there and I was
(37:15):
talking and the other guy who listened to our show
was John Lasseter. And that's how I ended up in
the movie Cars, because John listened to the show and
put me in the movie Cars. If you're a listener,
you don't know that. Here's my lines race car like
McQueen is missing. Hey, we failed McQueen. Hey, everybody in
McQueen's leaving there. We go, you're welcome. Um. But anyway,
so we were the stay. I was standing there and
Robin Williams walks over and he goes, oh, dude, how
Maddie Ah listened to the show? Oh you guys are
(37:37):
very funny. In the morning, I put my pants and
I'm like, thank you done. I'm over. Life is over
for me. Yeah, such a such a funny guy. A
question number two, what's the one piece of technology that
changed your life the most? Oh? Man, this is tough.
So I grew up with a lot of technology. I
love this. That's why I have the That's why I
(37:57):
have a young hip producer instead of me. Um. Let's
see the technology that changed my life. Probably the iPhone. Yeah,
it's got to be the iPhone. Just how the pictures
and you're like the phone? Yeah, probably just the whole
idea of having a phone and a camera in the
same device and then putting it in your pocket. What
do you think your generation would do if it had
(38:19):
to use the landlines and and like get busy signals?
Do you even know what those things are? Or am
I speaking in a different language to you by what? Yeah?
Busy signal is that when someone sends you to voicemail.
It's when you get you call someone, you get an
it's the worst. What would my generation do? I don't know.
(38:40):
It wouldn't be a lot angrier and more anxious, and
we already are. I don't imagine. Really well, I think
you guys. I always tell people that there's never been
a generation that communicates like you do. You know, we
had our friend circles and you know people are like, oh,
the kids don't talk today and a day you can
talk to a hundred people. Yeah, all over the place,
all over the place. That is very true. Yeah, I
don't know how meaningful. Yeah, but how Yeah, that's the
(39:03):
weird part about it. I'm the same way I look
at my phone. I'm I'm I'm very millennial in that
I'm gonna look at it all the time. My wife's
constantly saying stop. That's why I like podcasts. Sent people
listening podcast when they're listening, they don't do anything else. Really, Yeah, absolutely,
you can't multitask your brain. Podcasting demands it, so thank
you for giving me your brain for a few minutes. Lastly,
(39:25):
what was the last podcast that you binged? The last
podcast I've bened was Congratulations with Christelia, another comedian that
was actually the very first podcast they ever listened to.
So we just listen to Ben and I asked you
(39:46):
to find some podcasts that kind of go in line
with the stuff that Ben does that people might want
to listen to. So what do you got? Yes? So,
first one I want to start with is called Conspiracy Theories.
So it's a weekly podcast every Wednesday. They tell the
complicated stories that are behind the world's most controversial events
and kind of the sides of the stories that you
didn't really know beforehand. You learn a lot with this one. Um.
(40:09):
It's part of the podcast network who recently got a
bundle of money from Spotify. By the way, good job
podcast shout out. All right, let's here look clip of
that does a cure for cancer already exist? Has Big
Farmer coerced the f d A into keeping the lid
on a cure so big Farma can keep making money
off of cancer treatment? Are there even more insidious reasons
(40:33):
the f d A and big Pharma would want to
keep the cure for cancer out of the hands of
the people. So they're not like whack jobs, Oh no,
god at all. They're not like Alex Jones. You're not
gonna listen to an Alex Jones conspiracy theory. No, No,
something about frogs making people gay. I think no, the
frogs are gay. Government made the frogs gay. And now
(40:54):
if you buy the vitamins, the government's putting d n
A in there that will make your whole body turned
into a monkey. Sounds just like him. Alright, sorry, Next up,
what he got? Let's see alright, next, Revisionist History. This
is a podcast from Malcolm Gladwell, him and Pushkin Industries.
He is he kind of changed the game a little bit.
(41:15):
So each week for ten weeks, this podcast goes back
and they reinterpret something from the past. It could be
an idea, an event, and a person, something that was
misunderstood at the time. All right, well, let's check out
a clip from one of my favorites. I love this
podcast as well. To the hushed offices of the New
York Psychoanalytics Society, where I sat with Michelle Press in
(41:38):
search of an answer to a simple question. What if
a singer couldn't remember the words to a song? A
song hit sung a thousand times, particular parts of the song,
the same part of the song, over and over, what
would that tell us about the singer? So, Malcolm Gladwell
is just stupid smart. I think a lot of podcast
(42:00):
listening is if when you get done, you feel good
about yourself and you feel a little smarter. And anytime
you listen to Malcolm glad Well, you feel a little smarter.
All right, what's the third one? Slow Burn? They take
these strange subplots from forgotten characters in political history and
they find parallels to the present time. Now, So season
one dove into what it was like to live through Watergate,
and then season two did the same thing, but with
(42:22):
Bill Clinton's impeachment. Wow, let's check it out. Not just Clinton,
how should we feel about him? More like what determines
do we believe? And whose side we take in a
political fight? What does it mean to abuse one's power?
And how would the events of twenty years ago play
out differently there to take place now? Even though today
it looks like it was always a foregone conclusion, That's
(42:43):
not the way it felt all the time. All Right,
I think he did a good job with your first three.
So I did good job. I can't wait till next
week too. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. Welcome back
Season three on a Way. Great guests coming up, including
Jake Brennan from Disgrace Land. We're gonna have Joe Piazza
(43:05):
on next week. Who's gonna talk about committed? All kinds
of good casts on the way. If you want to
check out any past episodes, we've got some great ones.
They're on the I Heart Radio app. You can also
hear them on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcast.
Send us a tweet. Tweet tests at Access podcast one
still have been tracked down, the son of a Bitch
that's got Access podcast who's only tweeted once. I don't
(43:28):
like you. You can also tell us who you want
to hear and follow me. I'm at Maddie Stout m
A T T Y s T A U d T
nobody has that hand over me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,
all of the places. The show is produced by Morgan Cook.
Thanks Morgan, Thank you. Music by Casey Franco. Special thanks
to Robin Berta Lucci and Oscar Ramirez for helping us
(43:49):
out here at KAFI in Los Angeles. Will Pearson and
the Godfather Podcasting and iHeart Radio are President Connor Burne,
Thank you, guys, and we'll see you all next week.
Hi everybody, and welcome back the season three. It only
took a year for me to get this new one done.
It's Access Podcast, the podcast about podcast and if you're
new listener, my name is Mattie Stali. Eleven years ago,
(00:22):
I left the number one morning show in San Francisco
to join the startup team at Stitcher, and I've been
in podcasting ever since. I'm the vice president of podcast
Programming for iHeart Radio and in general, I'm a podcast nerd.
I love podcast and I love helping listeners find new
shows and also get to know the folks that they
already love. This week on the show, we're gonna meet
(00:43):
our new producer, Morgan, who's gonna tell us about three
shows you should be listening to. But right now I
want to tell you about our guest. I love this guy,
Ben Bolan. Ben. He began as an intern at How
Stuff Works in two thousand seven, early days of podcast Thing,
and in two thousand and eight, with his stamped colleague,
Ben created Stuff They Don't Want You to Know What.
(01:06):
She hosts along with another one of my favorite podcasts,
Ridiculous History. Let's take a listen to Ridiculous History and
then we're gonna start a conversation with Ben. But if
you want to be a citizen of the United States,
there is some paperwork involved as well as some verbiage.
If you're decided oath, got to speak an oath, you
(01:28):
gotta put your bloody thumb print on a document, sign
your name and in blood. Now, well, you know it's
changed over time. You still have to have interviews, you
have to take citizenship test, naturalizations where they call all right, Ben,
I think of getting close to being able to ask
(01:49):
if podcasting is something you always wanted to do, but
we're not quite there yet. What made you actually want
to get into podcasting or was it something that you
kind of fell into? Oh man, little bit of both,
to be completely candid. So I started working for How
Stuff Works as an intern in the days of your
(02:10):
pre podcasting, and when we first as a company began
making podcast I immediately wanted to be part of the
movement because you know, I know you're the same way
with this, Maddie. I've always been in love with radio
since I was a wee tyke, and this seemed like
a way to participate in all the things that I
(02:33):
loved about radio growing up. Now again. To be honest,
we had no idea how far we would go with this.
Our first podcast were only about five to ten minutes long,
which sounds crazy nowadays, but I I went into this
with my eyes wide open, and my mission was to
(02:55):
be on as many quality podcast as possible. To date,
I have guested on numerous podcasts. I've produced many, I've
hosted and written for four to five and never looked back.
So I fell into it. But I guess maybe the
best way to say it is I I fell into
(03:17):
it in a hopes and dreams kind of way. If
I was not podcasting for this company, I would have
ended up podcasting somewhere else. I just love it. I
love the medium, in the format, the whole nine. Man.
It's funny that you mentioned, you know, being an old
fan of radio. I started doing radio shows in my
bedroom when I was ten years old. And part of
my job now is I go and work with radio
(03:39):
talent about podcasting and kind of you know, how they
can create great podcasts. And one thing that they'll they'll
always look at me and say, is so this is
just kind of like the radio we used to do.
When we've talked a lot and had a little more
time on our hands. And I think it's true. What
were the earlier radio shows that you listened to that
got you hooked? Oh, man ky. I am a huge
(04:02):
fan of late night AM shows. That's where you can
hear some really cool stuff, and then late night college
radio stations. So I loved eighty eight point five here
in Atlanta, which is a g s U station. And
I was always a big fan of a show called
Coast to Coast AM. Yeah, Art Bell and George Nori.
(04:25):
I thought those guys had such tremendous interview skills, and
they were profoundly compassionate. You know, they spoke to some
very eccentric people, but they heard them out and so
to me, that kind of talk was transformative, and it
was wide ranging, and it was just as much about
(04:45):
the personality of the host or the talent as it
was about the information they were imparting. And I feel
like that's a trend that has continued to evolve. You know,
now more and more often when you hear really good radio,
it feels like a podcast. At the end of the day,
(05:06):
it's good storytelling. That's what I always tell folks is
that you know, great podcast is a great story. It's
got a beginning, middle end, and you feel like you've
gone somewhere and you've learned something. Which is another thing
that I love about podcasting is I feel like I'm
kind of one of those curmudgeony people that feel like
people don't read enough anymore. They don't educate themselves as
much as I think they should, but they do and
podcasting is now filling that whole. What do you feel
(05:27):
about that as far as podcasting being, you know, kind
of a greater greater good for society. Absolutely, not to
sound too over zealous, but I absolutely agree with you, Maddie.
As a fellow curmudgeon, I think we're on the same page.
Whenever I am setting out to produce rights or develop
(05:48):
a show or an episode, my first question is always this.
When someone starts listening to a show or an episode
and they get to the end, what is changed within them?
Have they learned something new? Have they have they changed
their mind about something? Because yes, podcasts are storytelling, but
(06:10):
just like the reader of a novel, the audience is
part of the story. They're the main character. The most
important part of any show is going to be the
people who listen. To and support it, so I absolutely agree.
I would even go a little bit further and argue
that to a very real degree, podcasts are democratizing education.
(06:32):
The things that people used to have to go to
grad school to learn, they can get the information for
free now in the form of a podcast. And it
doesn't matter where they live, it doesn't matter what their
socioeconomic position is. This is a fundamentally game changing thing,
(06:53):
and I think it's for the better. I teach at
university and I've seen over the last eight years how
students have become such fan it's a good podcast. And
I have students that the only radio they listened to
is NPR. I can't imagine saying that ten years ago,
because there's no way kids would have listened to NPR
ten years ago. But they're finding it through podcasts and
they really enjoyed the content absolutely. You know, one thing
(07:14):
I was always very interested in when you and I
originally met was the way that you have this let's
say a forty thousand foot view, to use the old cliche,
you can see the industry growing on its own. You
can see all the parallels has to radio, but you
can also see the tremendous potential it has in terms
(07:34):
of education, information and storytelling. So I don't know if
I can say this on the air, Maddie, but you
are kind of my go to guy to send an
email if I'm like, Hey, what's happening with this thing? Oh?
I appreciate that, man. I just I love the medium
off to talk about watching where it's at now and
where it was eleven years ago when I left radio
and went to Stitcher, because there were many years of
(07:55):
the last eleven years where I doubted whether we would
get to the point that we're at now. And it
is so exciting to see where we're at now. I mean,
getting to work with how stuff works and have this
synergy that we've got going on right now. I don't
want to get too in the weeds on that stuff,
but it is a lot of fun. This is definitely
the salad days. As far as I'm concerned with podcasting,
Oh oh yeah, I agree. I feel very Patrick Henry
(08:17):
about it. In a way. It's like we have not
yet begun to podcasts. We're sort of as an industry
if we look at it in terms of like a
maybe a three act structure or something as an industry.
We are at the beginning of the second act and
things are escalating at a delightful, if intimidating pace. Many
(08:39):
many people had never heard of podcast until Cereal was
parodied on Saturday Night Live. You remember that, Yeah, on
that real quick. I just remember teaching a class and
talking to a student about Cereal and having another student
walk in and closer ears and walk out and say,
you're gonna spoil it for me. And I was like,
that never happened before with a podcast, that people were
(09:01):
that into it. Yeah. Yeah, And that's the thing. It's
kind of a Malcolm Gladwell esque tipping point. You know.
Podcasts went from being let's say, relatively niche, sure obscure
in the late two thousand's to now being something that
certain professionals are just expected to have, like a business card.
(09:21):
If you're a comedian, for example, you have a podcast.
It's part of and Parcel. Now, so you host two
shows that I love, but for different reasons. Let me
(09:41):
start with Ridiculous History because it's my dream job. I
love history and the stuff that you guys find and
cover fascinates me. You actually did one of the podcasts
recently about the town in West Virginia that reached out
to the Soviets to get some stuff. I'm from West
Virginia and I consider myself a pretty good West Virginia
history buff. Didn't know that story. Where do you find
these awesome stories for that podcast? That is a fantastic question.
(10:05):
We go about it a number of different ways. So
any podcast I do, I think the audience is the
most important part of the show, so I want to
hear what they think they're fellow listeners would enjoy. So
we'll do a call for topics. Tell us something that
you think your friends around the world who also listen
to this show with dig and it gives people a
chance to tell their own story, you know, whether it's
(10:27):
West Virginia or whether it's somewhere in Indonesia. You know.
The second way will be my co host and my
producer and I will sit together and will pitch each
other these strange things that we found in our individual reading.
Will also go to resources like ask historians on Reddit
is fantastic. And then we have a team of research associates. Well,
(10:51):
I say a team. It's one guy, but he's awesome,
and he's awesome, and he's definitely part of the team.
What he'll do is back and there were a lot
more text articles on how stuff works. He would go
through and talk with some of the people writing those
articles or some people who are doing some podcasts or
video content, just to see if there were any hot
leads would give us a hotly. We are very very open.
(11:14):
We only have from a few rules. The only big
rule we have is how recent is too recent, and
that's anything anything before the nineteen nineties we're pretty good
with because old is it makes me feel to say it,
and some of us listening maybe on the same page
with me. The nineteen eighties were officially a long time ago. Oh,
(11:34):
I know when you're doing that podcast and you're finding
stuff and you put it together. I don't think people
realize how much goes into creating a podcast, because you know,
when you do a really good podcast, it sounds like
two guys just talking. And I always tell people when
they tell me, hey, I think I could do your
job because I can talk and I talk with my friends,
and I think, well, that's great. I'm doing my job
very well. If you can do that. How much work
(11:55):
goes into one of those podcasts to make that sound
that effortless before you do the show. So on Ridiculous History,
my team and I have a beautiful situation because we
already have report. We're all actually friends in real life.
We hang out and that makes a huge difference when
you're in the booth. We also do our own individual research.
(12:18):
A lot of people are surprised sometimes when I say,
you know, Ridiculous History doesn't really have an outline. We
have the gist of the story and then we go
into our own separate research. Our mission usually is to
surprise one another in a positive way. And when you
can have that happen, it's beautiful. But you can only
(12:38):
have that happen if you put in the time to
earn that sort of breezy conversational flow. So a good
way to think of it would be for a show
like Ridiculous History. Let's say every thirty minutes of show
you here is maybe on the light end, five or
(12:58):
six hours distill than concentrated. But that's again, I can't
emphasize this enough. That's kind of a light end. You've
probably had this happen to when you hear a concept
and you're thinking this would make a great show where
this would make a great interview, and you start digging
into it and you have that woe rabbit hole moment.
There have been times where been prepping for an episode
(13:19):
for two weeks and I'm still thinking, Okay, We've got
more work to do. We are in the land right
now with podcast ideas. If I had a dollar for
every email or phone call or text or a conversation
I had where somebody was pitching me their idea, I'd
be super rich right now. But that's the thing. Putting
out a quality podcast it's a lot more time and
effort than a lot of people realize. Oh yeah, especially
(13:42):
when you consider all the work that goes into the
final product. Because there are one person, armies people who
are making great independent content and stem to Stern, it's
them for the entire show. And that stuff can be good,
and that stuff can be great and astounding, but it's
always is always helpful to move with a team, with
(14:03):
a unit. So one thing I think that we've learned
through our years of podcasting is that the information typically
already exists somewhere pretty often, and the person listening to
the show, they can read the book to you know
what I mean. They're looking for something extra, something else.
They're looking for that story, that personality, that flavor. So
(14:26):
I spend a lot of time with new podcasters working
out some good podcast hygiene, that's what I call It.
Takes a lot of time, there are no shortcuts, and
it changes every time you've got a new person with you.
One of the biggest things I recommend for anyone listening
who wants to do a podcast with their friends or
(14:46):
their pals. Regardless of what your podcast is about, whether
it is a deep dive in history, whether it is
something as niche as football in the nineteen thirties or
something like that, no matter what it is, if you
have the opportunity, take an improv class, learned to yes
and learn to support your co host, and every episode
you do, try to make them sound like the smartest, funniest,
(15:09):
most fascinating person in the room. And if they do
the same thing, you will have an excellent and amazing conversation.
That's awesome advice. I want to shift over to talk
about your other podcasts that you do, and I have
mixed feelings about stuff. They don't want you to know.
I'm a occam's racer kind of guy. I honestly believe
(15:30):
the easiest answer is usually the right answer. You know,
there was no conspiracy to kill JFK. I'm firm on that.
When you're doing a show that's about conspiracies, how hard
is it to not go down rabbit holes and believe
everything is a conspiracy. Well, we live in an age
where being credulous is common and it's even applauded because
(15:51):
people are in information overload, and it's incredibly tempting to
just take a headline as an answer. I'd like to
clarify this for everyone listening. Stuff they don't want you
to know is a show about critical thinking applied to conspiracies.
I'm going somewhere with this, Mattie, I promise you so
so I mentioned earlier, you know, in the age of
(16:13):
instantaneous information and information overload, said, it's tempting to just
look at a headline or a buzzword and then use
that as a cognitive shortcut to pull up all the
other things you earlier associated with that. The term conspiracy
or conspiracy theory itself is a thought terminating cliche, and
(16:34):
it's often used to dismiss legitimate acts of corruption. For instance,
back for HSBC was caught laundering money on an international
scale for drug cartels. It was called a conspiracy theory,
and it was called a conspiracy theory because that helped
it become something easily dismissed. You know what I mean,
(16:55):
Like I understand you absolutely, So this is interesting. Our
mission with this show is to is to dive into
those things on the edge of the map and and
to honestly ask those questions and look at the facts,
and then look at what people say they believe. Because
the weirdest thing about this is often when people believe
(17:17):
in something conspiratorial, if presented with facts that would disprove
some or part of that belief system, it goes down
to your bedside manner. Nobody ever changed somebody else's mind
by yelling at them or condescending to them. We change
people's minds by socratic method, by asking questions, by being
(17:38):
part of the conversation. To your question directly, which I
think is an excellent question, how do we how do
we do this show for as long as we've done
without falling into a rabbit hole of credulity. It's true,
you know, people can often end up drinking a bit
of the cool aid to use the crafts figure of speech.
(17:59):
We don't what I have found. We have found real conspiracies.
It's true, they're out there, but those real conspiracies typically
are groups of people who feel that they deserve more
power or money or influence, and then use the power, money,
or influence that they have to pursue more of the same.
(18:19):
The big question you have to always ask yourself when
you when you hear this kind of stuff, what is
the motivation? Who are the thing and stuff? They don't
want you to know. If someone for some reason decided
to fake the moon landing, why would they do it?
Why would why would so many people do that? What's
the point? You know what I mean? And that's when
(18:39):
a lot of conspiracy theories tend to break down, because
finding a genuine, powerful motive along with genuine powerful means
that happens much less often than people think. You know, Oh,
what's that old line I think it was in Sherlock
Holmes or something about how every every disguise is ultimately
(19:01):
an autobiography of the person wearing the disguise, And a
lot of times when people are strongly invested in a particular,
easily disprovable conspiracy, theory for lack of a better term,
They're associating it with their personal identity, and they will
feel personally attacked if you say, well, it's true, like
(19:24):
here's a war story for you man. One of the
weirdest ones, one of the ones I got the most
hate mail about ever, was the flat earth beliefs. I thought,
why would we even waste our time, in our listeners
time exploring this thing, and then our you know, or
democracy or team votes, and they say, okay, we'll do
it because for some reason now it's trending. And so
we did this and explained why people would believe this
(19:48):
or professed to believe it, and then outline several experiments
you can do at your own home to show yourself
the nature of Earth, the heavens, and the solar system.
And then we've got this delusion of hate mail. People
made hit piece videos of me on YouTube, and there
are so many other real problems, escalating violence and stuff
(20:08):
like that. But I responded every email. I didn't make
a response video, but every email I responded to. So
to sum it up by way of long prologue, and
I apologize for that. It is tempting to believe the
first thing you read about a subject, right, but you're
not being fair to yourself and fair your listeners. Whether
(20:29):
it's the idea of you know, suppressed technology or something,
or whether it's just a study of which deciduous trees
are most prevalent in a given part of the world,
You've got to read multiple sources. You have to you
have to confirm that. And once you start reading multiple sources,
that's when you see the things fall apart. Because human beings,
(20:53):
every single one of us, we are brilliant, your hoarders
of knowledge. We have tremendous potential and we want to learn,
and that means keeping a secret or conspiring. Right. That's
usually going to be very difficult because you are surrounded
by people who are terrible at keeping secrets, who love
sharing things with each other and love learning. Usually, if
(21:15):
something if something is a genuine conspiracy, meaning that again
people in power worked together for some sort of goal
that they wanted out of the limelight, usually there is
some way to prove it. Usually there is someone who
wanted to share, someone who wanted to learn. It's just
it's very difficult to keep a secret. Like with the
(21:36):
jfk assassination, I love that you bring up that example,
the JFK assassination national international tragedy. But because of not
even necessarily the circumstances of the assassination, but because of
the way the government had a difficult time being transparent
in the aftermath in the investigation. Because of that, conspiracy
(21:59):
theories thrived, and due to this day, easily half, maybe
even a little more than half of the population believes
they don't know the whole truth about the JFK murder,
and a lot of that, again is just chalked up
to the lack of transparency. In the lack of transparency,
speculation always thrives. And the problem with that is that
once that transparency is granted, once people really can see
(22:23):
every single thing that happened, and when they've already constructed
an internal narrative, and so they won't believe the truth
even when they see it, because they appreciate the story
they have told themselves beforehand. Why are you going to
come in and interrupt my story with all these bothersome facts,
you know what I mean? I think one thing that
(22:43):
I get really perturbed about now is that all of
these Netflix specials, and I'm gonna point to cereal as well.
All of these things that are like trying to show
why a murder or something didn't happen take away from
the victim a lot of the times. So good example
is that making a murderer. We have a podcast called
Rebutting the Murderer and Dan O'Donnell does it, and Dan
(23:04):
Dan was actually at every trial. He knows this family,
he knows everything about this case, and he just destroys
that Netflix series because the guys are super guilty. But
he goes in and explains why you know this Netflix
special is telling you that guy is not guilty, even
though he is. I just feel like we sometimes we
give a lot of credence to conspiracy over facts, and
it takes away from somebody's actual pain and suffering. This
(23:27):
is the thing that happens with true crime as well.
There's ways to do it correctly, but there is a
danger that it becomes exploitative. One of the things that's
strange about the world in which we live is that
despite social media and despite the proliferation of different communication platforms,
(23:49):
we still see people being dehumanized and there are certain
things on stuff they don't want you to know that
I haven't touched, and I have no plans to, for instance,
the terrible, terrible, terrible Alex Jones. You know, I'm a
positive person, Maddie, but that guy is the worst. He's
a real pill. Absolutely. I think that if you look
(24:09):
up the word tool and douche bag his pictures in
both the sture. Yeah, so you know, he proliferated a
very hurtful and exploitative thing in the wake of mass
shootings and other domestic tragedies, wherein he accused parents who
had lost their children or relatives or survivors of these
(24:31):
tragedies of somehow being in the pocket of some sort
of shadowy organization. And that's all well and good for
you know, a feature length fiction film or maybe a
really kick ass graphic novel. But these are real people.
These are real people. They wake up, they read these
horrible things, They get harassed online and Twitter, sometimes in person,
(24:53):
and they go back to sleep. They wake up the
next day. Maybe the people who are harassing them have
moved on to a different cau is, but those people
are still alive and their children are still dead. That
is a massively horrific thing. The Netflix is, I think
they do a lot of stuff right, and they do
some amazing work, but true crime documentaries can easily become
(25:16):
this sort of cathartic experience for people at the expense
of the quality of life for the actual people involved.
So I think it's dangerous, and I think rebudding a
murderer is doing some doing some significant and valuable work.
I think that you also have to look at who's
produced the documentary, because now we're starting to see when
(25:37):
people want to defend themselves or have something to defend it,
they have a documentary produced that puts them in the
right light. I mean, I happen with Fire Festival. There
were two different documentaries that come out, and one made
fun Jerry look good and one didn't. And the one
that made him look good was guess what produced by them?
So yeah, and I thought that was really interesting. You know,
for me personally, I was in New York on nine
eleven and I lived through all of that and had
(25:57):
friends that died. And that's one that if I hear
someone talking in a bar and they're into that whole
bullshit conspiracy of it did happen or you know, our
government did it and all of these things, I get
viscerally upset. And I'm not a confrontational fella. I like people.
I really don't like to argue, but man, that's the
one that will get me fired up immediately. I'm glad
(26:18):
you mentioned that one, because the social aspect of that
sort of belief system is fascinating to me. It inherently
includes some orwelly and double think, and this is a
great way to look at it. The same people who
argue that the US government intentionally did this kind of
(26:40):
thing for some whatever crazy reason they want to stick
in there, those people also, at the very same time
believe the same government is massively incompetent and cannot precratically
tell its asked from its elbow. Yeah. So, all of
a sudden, this group of people who apparently cannot do
anything right because look at you know, just congressional rating
(27:01):
numbers or whatever approval numbers, all of a sudden they
got their stealth together for one big, cartoonishly complicated, monstrous
act that they orchestrated so perfectly that they also controlled
the weather somehow, right, And then they said, Okay, we've
done this super villainous thing. We have created one of
(27:21):
the worst events in US history, and we pulled it off.
Without a hitch. Let's get back to being incompetent. It
just does not make sense. What's the one quote unquote
conspiracy that you believe firmly that maybe other folks think
you might be a little crazy for believing. There's a
(27:42):
guy named General Smedley Butler and General Smedley, but it
is Smedly sm E. T. L. E. Y. Smedley. Yeah,
it was a different time, man. What can I say?
So he's a war hero, right, he's got that position
of an elder statesman, you know what I mean. He's
not necessarily active politically, but when he speaks people listen
(28:03):
in the US, and he becomes increasingly disillusioned with the
US's pattern of war overseas, and he starts to believe
that he is much more of a servant of private
corporate interests right masquerading as human rights interventions. But then
he tells Congress in testimony that he is approached by
(28:27):
one Prescott Bush to join them in a coup to
overthrow the New Deal government and institute something like fascism.
So everything that I just told you is demonstrably true.
The problem there is that after that point people start
exaggerating what happened, or kind of confusing their own opinion
(28:50):
for fact. What actually did happen is, yeah, Prescott Bush
approached Smedley Butler and said, general, big fan, I imagine
and me and the boys have been talking, and we
think it's time for a change rather than working in
the system. He was pitching the idea of a coup
in the United States, but it never got as far
as we know, it never got past the pitching stage.
(29:12):
No one actually committed a crime. These were just dangerous
conversations of powerful people were having, and it cheapens the
danger of that for people to say unprovable stuff about it.
That's one I wholeheartedly think is demonstrably true. I don't
know if people think this is crazy, man, but there
have been some really successful marketing conspiracies thanks to Edward Burnett.
(29:34):
Are you a vegetarian? Okay? So here in the States
and you and I grew up in the age where
a lot of people associate breakfast with bacon and eggs.
Before Edward Burns, no one was eating bacon for breakfast.
It seemed like a weird idea. You'd have like toast,
maybe a pastry and some coffee. So this American Pork
Trade Group CONSORTI of approaches Edward Burnets, and they say, ed,
(29:56):
we got a problem. We just can't sell this one
cheap cut of pork. People don't want this bacon. They want,
you know, they want pork chops, they want pork loins,
they want pork ribs. How can we sell this bacon?
And so he takes a very very fascinating approach. He
creates a group of fake medical associations or companies, and
(30:18):
instead of taking out ads on the radio or in
the New York Times or the pick of you, what
have you, he has his fake association send surveys to
doctors around the country. And these surveys are pretty brief,
and they're worded in such a way that the doctors
would all kind of come to the same conclusion. When
I say worded in such a way, it's cartoonish. It's
(30:39):
like question number one, would you agree that people should
eat food? And then everyone's like, yeah, I'm a doctor,
really food? And it's like question number two, which of
the following is of food? And it's like number one, chalk,
number two, nickels, number three, stickers, number four, bacon. And
so through controlling what people could answer. They got. It's
(31:00):
amazing statistic that said, doctors like the kind of nine
out of tend doctors overwhelmingly recommend bacon as part of
a balanced and healthy diet. And here are the following
benefits of it. And this is published as a study,
it's circulated around and that is the reason that we
eat bacon today. That is just one of his great coups.
(31:20):
I highly recommend his book Propaganda, which is available free online,
and it's a quick breed. He's the father pr But
that so those are those are two real conspiracies. And
in both cases, I think you see my logic here.
In both cases, neither of those, you know, involve extraterrestrials,
Neither of them involved allegations of the paranormal or time
(31:43):
travel or any of that stuff. They're just again, people
with power who want more power. I think there's a
whole podcast that could be done on marketing conspiracies. And Holly, hey, Maddie,
here's a new podcast idea for you. I'll write that down, Maddie.
So I always finish my podcast with three killer questions. Ben,
(32:07):
I've got three killer questions for you. I just like alliteration.
So so that's that's what we call it down. So
the first one is, if you could listen to a
podcast hosted by any person's living or dead, who would
you like to hear for a podcast? Oh man, just
to give you a couple of things, my favorite has
been Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. And then I answered
this question the other day for somebody, and I said,
(32:28):
Curt and Courtney. Just because I've been listening to Disgrace Land,
I'd love to hear what you think. Oh wow, Okay,
I'm gonna take advantage of living in dead and say
I think Orson Wells is great. I would love to
hear Orson Wells. I'd be really interested in hearing I'm
trying to I'm trying to think of just like the
most out there person. Okay, all right, so Orson Wells
(32:50):
because of the voice George Orwell, because of the alliteration
there where it'd be like Orson and Orwell. Yeah. So,
and then I would also I really be interested to
hear my e Cary argue with Newton. You know, oh
oh wait, never mind, never mind, wait forget it. Tesla Tesla,
(33:11):
Nicola Tesla's it would be a heck of a weird show, right,
I don't know how much sense it would make. Question too,
what's the first piece of technology that you got and
said to yourself? This right here, my friend is going
to change my life. Okay, I'm really gonna date myself here.
We're still friends after this. I got a beeper in
a pager in middle school. You had a pager in
(33:34):
middle school. I was like, I'm on the up and up.
You know, I'm basically a doctor. Now things are different.
I would never guess that you had a pager in
middle school, right, But I was not using it. I
just had it. No, But that's that's cool. I'm sure
you were the coolest skin class with that thing. I
was still a nerd. I'm with your brother. Finally, what's
(33:58):
the last podcast that you binged? The last podcast that
I binge? Was not counting any of the stuff our
colleagues do, because they did. I did beinge my pal
Matt's uh Monster season two? I like that. What happened
to Richard Simmons? Do you remember that one? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was a great I thought that was a great story.
(34:19):
I also went down a little bit of a comedy
Bang Bang Rabbit hole and didn't mean to, just accidentally
did it. And I was like, all right, you know,
just like reading, sometimes you'll read something light and enjoyable
and then you're like, Okay, I gotta I gotta read
something seriously. I gotta step it up. Uh So my
last and current binge some Damn Carlin hardcore history. Highly
(34:42):
recommend it. It's great for road trips. I am obsessed
with Dan Carlin. I have been from the beginning. And
I also find and Carlin to be an excellent thing
to go to bed too. My only problem with that
is I'll wake up, I'll like say something happened historically,
and then I'll go did it really happen? Or did
I did I dream that happened? And because of Dan Carlin.
(35:03):
But man, yeah, talk about somebody who puts a ton
a ton of research into his podcast. I love it. Yeah,
he's got a gift, and I would put him. You know,
we're we're at the stage now where we will know
we've done a good show when a teacher writes to
us and says this is the highest compliment in my opinion,
(35:23):
was the teacher writes to you and says, I've used
this in class where I was assigned this to my students,
you know, and Dan Carlin is college level research and fascinating,
fascinating presentation. I love it. I don't really famboy out
a lot, but I think that guy is a hero. Yeah,
he's on my Mount Rushmore of podcasters for sure. Ben.
(35:49):
It's been great. I'm glad we got to spend some
time and do this. And thanks for kicking off season
three for me. Hey, thanks so much for having me, Maddie.
I look forward to ire in Moore's the season continues.
Thanks buddy. All Right, I'm really excited because we have
a new producer. Not that I'm excited. Our old producer
isn't with us anymore. Z is in San Francisco. She's
(36:11):
doing great, but I moved to Los Angeles and had
to get a new producer here. And Morgan Cook has
been doing this out of the kindness of her heart
and learning as you go to right, learning a ton
a ton of ton of ton and it's it's what
first episode, first episode? So this is your first time? Uh,
since I want people to get to know you, I'm
gonna do what I do with all guests. I'm gonna
(36:31):
ask you three killer questions. Oh, here we go. First
of all, if you're gonna listen to a podcast featuring
anybody living or dead, who would be on the podcast?
I happen to know this question was coming somehow. Really,
so the people that I would listen to, let's see.
I'd love to hear from Robin Williams. I'd love to
hear from I love Jeff Ross and I feel like
(36:55):
we need a woman in there. Chelsea Handler. Oh wow,
that's a neat room. Would be a neat room. I
feel like I'd learn a lot and I'd laugh a lot.
I'll tell you the highlight of my entire life. Uh,
Robin Williams used to listen to my morning show in
San Francisco, and I saw him at a this film
festival I was with. I was there and I was
(37:15):
talking and the other guy who listened to our show
was John Lasseter. And that's how I ended up in
the movie Cars, because John listened to the show and
put me in the movie Cars. If you're a listener,
you don't know that. Here's my lines race car like
McQueen is missing. Hey, we failed McQueen. Hey, everybody in
McQueen's leaving there. We go, you're welcome. Um. But anyway,
so we were the stay. I was standing there and
Robin Williams walks over and he goes, oh, dude, how
Maddie Ah listened to the show? Oh you guys are
(37:37):
very funny. In the morning, I put my pants and
I'm like, thank you done. I'm over. Life is over
for me. Yeah, such a such a funny guy. A
question number two, what's the one piece of technology that
changed your life the most? Oh? Man, this is tough.
So I grew up with a lot of technology. I
love this. That's why I have the That's why I
(37:57):
have a young hip producer instead of me. Um. Let's
see the technology that changed my life. Probably the iPhone. Yeah,
it's got to be the iPhone. Just how the pictures
and you're like the phone? Yeah, probably just the whole
idea of having a phone and a camera in the
same device and then putting it in your pocket. What
do you think your generation would do if it had
(38:19):
to use the landlines and and like get busy signals?
Do you even know what those things are? Or am
I speaking in a different language to you by what? Yeah?
Busy signal is that when someone sends you to voicemail.
It's when you get you call someone, you get an
it's the worst. What would my generation do? I don't know.
(38:40):
It wouldn't be a lot angrier and more anxious, and
we already are. I don't imagine. Really well, I think
you guys. I always tell people that there's never been
a generation that communicates like you do. You know, we
had our friend circles and you know people are like, oh,
the kids don't talk today and a day you can
talk to a hundred people. Yeah, all over the place,
all over the place. That is very true. Yeah, I
don't know how meaningful. Yeah, but how Yeah, that's the
(39:03):
weird part about it. I'm the same way I look
at my phone. I'm I'm I'm very millennial in that
I'm gonna look at it all the time. My wife's
constantly saying stop. That's why I like podcasts. Sent people
listening podcast when they're listening, they don't do anything else. Really, Yeah, absolutely,
you can't multitask your brain. Podcasting demands it, so thank
you for giving me your brain for a few minutes. Lastly,
(39:25):
what was the last podcast that you binged? The last
podcast I've bened was Congratulations with Christelia, another comedian that
was actually the very first podcast they ever listened to.
So we just listen to Ben and I asked you
(39:46):
to find some podcasts that kind of go in line
with the stuff that Ben does that people might want
to listen to. So what do you got? Yes? So,
first one I want to start with is called Conspiracy Theories.
So it's a weekly podcast every Wednesday. They tell the
complicated stories that are behind the world's most controversial events
and kind of the sides of the stories that you
didn't really know beforehand. You learn a lot with this one. Um.
(40:09):
It's part of the podcast network who recently got a
bundle of money from Spotify. By the way, good job
podcast shout out. All right, let's here look clip of
that does a cure for cancer already exist? Has Big
Farmer coerced the f d A into keeping the lid
on a cure so big Farma can keep making money
off of cancer treatment? Are there even more insidious reasons
(40:33):
the f d A and big Pharma would want to
keep the cure for cancer out of the hands of
the people. So they're not like whack jobs, Oh no,
god at all. They're not like Alex Jones. You're not
gonna listen to an Alex Jones conspiracy theory. No, No,
something about frogs making people gay. I think no, the
frogs are gay. Government made the frogs gay. And now
(40:54):
if you buy the vitamins, the government's putting d n
A in there that will make your whole body turned
into a monkey. Sounds just like him. Alright, sorry, Next up,
what he got? Let's see alright, next, Revisionist History. This
is a podcast from Malcolm Gladwell, him and Pushkin Industries.
He is he kind of changed the game a little bit.
(41:15):
So each week for ten weeks, this podcast goes back
and they reinterpret something from the past. It could be
an idea, an event, and a person, something that was
misunderstood at the time. All right, well, let's check out
a clip from one of my favorites. I love this
podcast as well. To the hushed offices of the New
York Psychoanalytics Society, where I sat with Michelle Press in
(41:38):
search of an answer to a simple question. What if
a singer couldn't remember the words to a song? A
song hit sung a thousand times, particular parts of the song,
the same part of the song, over and over, what
would that tell us about the singer? So, Malcolm Gladwell
is just stupid smart. I think a lot of podcast
(42:00):
listening is if when you get done, you feel good
about yourself and you feel a little smarter. And anytime
you listen to Malcolm glad Well, you feel a little smarter.
All right, what's the third one? Slow Burn? They take
these strange subplots from forgotten characters in political history and
they find parallels to the present time. Now, So season
one dove into what it was like to live through Watergate,
and then season two did the same thing, but with
(42:22):
Bill Clinton's impeachment. Wow, let's check it out. Not just Clinton,
how should we feel about him? More like what determines
do we believe? And whose side we take in a
political fight? What does it mean to abuse one's power?
And how would the events of twenty years ago play
out differently there to take place now? Even though today
it looks like it was always a foregone conclusion, That's
(42:43):
not the way it felt all the time. All Right,
I think he did a good job with your first three.
So I did good job. I can't wait till next
week too. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. Welcome back
Season three on a Way. Great guests coming up, including
Jake Brennan from Disgrace Land. We're gonna have Joe Piazza
(43:05):
on next week. Who's gonna talk about committed? All kinds
of good casts on the way. If you want to
check out any past episodes, we've got some great ones.
They're on the I Heart Radio app. You can also
hear them on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcast.
Send us a tweet. Tweet tests at Access podcast one
still have been tracked down, the son of a Bitch
that's got Access podcast who's only tweeted once. I don't
(43:28):
like you. You can also tell us who you want
to hear and follow me. I'm at Maddie Stout m
A T T Y s T A U d T
nobody has that hand over me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,
all of the places. The show is produced by Morgan Cook.
Thanks Morgan, Thank you. Music by Casey Franco. Special thanks
to Robin Berta Lucci and Oscar Ramirez for helping us
(43:49):
out here at KAFI in Los Angeles. Will Pearson and
the Godfather Podcasting and iHeart Radio are President Connor Burne,
Thank you, guys, and we'll see you all next week.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.