Part One: The Bastards of Reality Television traces the genre's descent from "An American Family" to Fox's unethical "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" and Mike Darnell's subsequent controversial productions. The hosts analyze how modern shows like "Megan Wants a Millionaire" prioritize shock value over safety, citing Ryan Jenkins' criminal record missed by Collective Intelligence and his later involvement in a 2009 murder-suicide. Ultimately, the episode argues that reality TV's obsession with "hate clicks" has created an industry culture where unstable personalities are exploited for profit despite repeated ethical failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Two Men, One Mystery00:01:20
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice in sellings, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Lesby and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, city hall building.
How could this ever happen in City Hall?
Loosey-Goosey History Lesson00:15:55
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, welcome to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast with the personality of a staff infection.
No, no, no, that's just me, Robert.
Yeah, we're reading a one-star review from iTunes.
You're just an annoying lip smacker who needs to do better.
I have to say that.
I mean, look, for one thing, is it bad?
Is a staff infection bad?
There's upsides to staff infections.
You get time off of work, cool photographs.
You have to, if you die, deal with a lot less bullshit on Twitter, you know?
So again, staff infections are a really mixed bag.
There's positive sides.
It's honestly so fucking funny, and I have no idea what it means that I'm like, not even mad.
It's extreme.
It's yeah.
It's clever.
It's fun to get roasted like that where you're like, I, yeah, that's very funny.
Where you're like, I'm not quite sure what you mean, but you're not wrong.
Right, it flows.
It's like the words flow.
And it's just, it's like.
Yeah, I like a good, it's like, it's like when you, well, I'm getting into dangerous territory here, but when you read people being like super shitty on some level from like 150 years ago, and it's like, well, this is sexist or racist, but man, people could put together sentences back then.
Like, that's not a bad sentence, you know?
Like, it's horrible, but it's not a bad sentence.
Right.
People used to, yeah.
These shit posts were a lot more people put a lot more work into their shit posts.
Yeah.
It's like HP Lovecraft racism.
Well, it's like, well, this is terrible, but man, quite, quite, quite, quite a phrase.
Wow.
Way to create an entire lore around your race.
Exactly.
That's so much more effort than people put into it these days.
Dave and Bell.
That's me.
That's you.
You know, you know, you know, Dave, you know, you know, you know.
I don't know.
You know.
You know, Dave.
Okay.
You know.
I think, I think Dave is going to love this topic.
I hope he does.
I hope he loves it, and I hope you hate it, Sophie.
Okay.
I'm just, I'm just an asshole.
I'm a bad person.
Just biting the hand that stops me from committing a series of crimes that get us erased and arrested in our podcast shutdown.
Dave.
Hi.
How do you feel about reality TV?
Oh, okay.
Mixed feelings.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the right way to feel.
Yeah.
I don't watch most real.
I don't find it interesting, but I don't have anything against it unless something horrible was done behind the scenes, you know?
Yeah.
It's like if everybody, if there's consent and everybody's cool, then we're good.
We're good.
Yeah.
I do like the occasional British bake-off, but I wouldn't consider that reality TV.
Some might be a good idea.
I mean, it is.
It is.
It's unscripted.
But am I right in saying that reality TV does have the personality of a staph infection?
Yes.
Yes.
It does.
Yes.
Where it's gross and infectious.
But also, you might get to take some time off of work in the future.
Enjoy it.
Yeah.
So, you know, I'm not going to do this thing.
This is going to be kind of a loosey-goosey episode.
We're doing this right after the Kissinger episodes.
Everybody's tired.
I'm not going to be one of these smarmy fucks who's just like shitting on the concept of reality TV to seem smart, right?
Reality TV is, broadly speaking, it's junk food.
It is not good for you.
But that said, I do a shitload of things that are bad for me.
Yeah, I would also say that it's not new.
My game shows have always existed.
There's always entertainment junk food.
Like that fucking piece of trash Mozart, right?
Like he's shit.
Everyone knows he's shit.
But people like to enjoy shit, and that's fine.
I like the Bloodhound gang, you know?
Like, we're not, nobody in this show is going to be like, again, there's nothing bad or like, you're not dumb because some of the smartest people I know like turn off from like getting their PhD or whatever and like watch, you know, a bake-off show or like Big Brother or some shit.
It's fine.
Listen, when we're done here, I will be going online and ordering the 4K release of Moonfall.
Oh, I will be doing that.
And I will watch the special features.
I mean, Dave, you've watched shit with me.
One of my favorite things to put on is people hurting themselves horribly while skiing or base jumping.
Yes.
And I have since expanded to wingsuit crashes, some of which the people die in.
There's some gnarly wingsuit crash videos, if you look.
That's the old pink mist.
Oh, yeah, baby.
Yeah.
Have you looked into parkour accidents?
Oh, parkour accidents are great.
If you really want to be harrowed, just type gun fails into YouTube.
There's some shit in there.
Oh, my God.
There's this video.
I'm going to go to the live leak and just Google and type in gun fails.
There's some nasty.
There's a dude who put a bunch of tannerite, which is this explosive.
You shoot it and it blows up, on a fucking lawnmower and shot it at close range and the blade cut his leg off.
Of course.
This is shit.
So again, I'm saying this all not to celebrate my own crapulines, but like we all like some stuff that's the entertainment equivalent of like junk food, right?
So this isn't an episode about like trying, I'm not trying to make the case that like reality TV is bad and you should feel bad for watching it.
This is about the most fucked up things that have ever happened within the broad umbrella of reality or what you might call unscripted content.
There's not a particular thesis here.
I just spent a lot of time reading about the worst things that have happened in reality TV and I decided to do a podcast.
None of you can stop me, so deal with it.
We'll probably do another episode in the future with more of these stories.
This is exciting.
Yeah.
Before we start, I want to share my very favorite reality television story.
And this is a story about a reality TV show I enjoyed.
So when I was in Iraq, this is like the second or the third, might have been the fourth time.
I forget exactly which time it was.
But we're like, you know, when you're hanging out in a place like that, we're like going to refugee camps and like frontline positions.
And in order to get to both, you have to spend time in like a bunch of random living rooms because that's where everyone's like posted up.
The leaders of these camps, these like different generals and shit, they're all like hanging out in houses.
And so while you're waiting to get approval to go places, you're just like sitting in like usually an air-conditioned living room with the TV on and a bunch of like guys with their guns and phones out and shit.
And one of the times we were out there, this same reality show kept going on.
It came on in like two or three different places.
And I don't know what the name of this show is.
I have not, brief Googling has not informed me of it, but the premise was that there was this host who would like take a rich guy out to the desert.
Like he would, they were like driving in a caravan, and there would be a contrived accident.
And like one of the cases I remember, this guy's like in a little motorcade and they get stuck in quicksand and his vehicle sinks and he has to like get out and he's like on top of the vehicle.
And while that's happening, the host dressed as a Komodo dragon comes out and attacks them.
Holy shit.
It was fucking insane.
Like I don't know what was supposed to be like.
I'm sure there's elements of this that I was not grasping because there were no subtitles and I do not speak Arabic.
But it was some of the wildest shit I've watched on TV.
It was so good.
I don't know what's scarier.
Being attacked by a Komodo dragon or a man dressed like one.
Because they're both very pretty good costume.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
It sounds like it's like Survivor Man or Man vs. Wild.
I don't know what the point was supposed to be because on all of them, people just like react the way you would if you saw a Komodo dragon.
Right.
Just goddamn.
Like we America can't talk, but we're like assimilated to our weirdness.
But it's kind of the same as when you watch like the Japanese Prakrits shows.
Yeah.
The silent library where it's like you have to be quiet in a library and they just like do fucked up shit to you.
And if you make a noise, you lose.
And it's like that actually, I think, got an American adaptation.
But like, it's that extra context of not understanding the language or that extra layer that's like makes it so perfect and bizarre that, oh man, I want to watch that so bad.
I love that shit.
Yeah, someone will find it now that we've talked about it and will find the clips.
Please do.
I would love to watch it again.
Please.
Anyway, Dave, on January 11th, 1973, PBS began to air the first of 12 hour-long episodes of An American Family, a television documentary about the Louds, an actual family.
And this is probably the very first reality show in history.
Now, the Louds were upper-middle class and lived in Santa Barbara.
And over 300 hours of raw footage of them was shot between May 30th and December 31st, 1971.
The initial intent was just to kind of chronicle their daily lives, but during filming, the relationship between spouses Bill and Pat Loud broke down, and the show ends with both parents divorcing.
Cameras actually caught Pat asking for a divorce on camera.
She tells Bill, you know there's a problem, and he responds, what's your problem?
This was picked by TV Guide as one of the top 100 TV moments of all time.
And in some ways, viewers have never moved on from the concept of watching unscripted life moments from rich people in California, right?
Like this, this is broadly speaking still the heart of reality TV.
What do you do you think?
And I don't know the answer to this.
Would they have had that divorce if they weren't on camera?
Who knows?
I have not watched the 12 hours of the Louds.
It's the double slit theory of like, when observed, will they divorce?
It can't help, right?
It can't help.
It probably gives people just a more sense of like, I want drama in my life.
Yeah.
I'm being videotaped all the time.
So like you start like thinking of your life like a TV show, I imagine.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like it could like make it easier for a trouble within a marriage to get solved.
But that said, I don't know anything about this particular couple.
But it's worth noting that like reality TV does not start far from where it is now, right?
Like the, yeah, this is still the heart of the genre.
So An American Family is hugely successful, and it immediately spawns an imitation by the BBC called just the family.
Now, An-American Family is particularly notable because the Loud family's oldest son, Lance, was probably the world's first openly gay TV star.
Like he's open about being gay in the show in like 1973, which is pretty groundbreaking for the time.
And he dies during the AIDS epidemic, which is, you know, there's a whole, he's an interesting person whose life to study, right?
This show and he, like, there's nothing particularly problematic here.
It's just an interesting piece of history.
I mean, it's your typical reality TV coming from PBS and BBC, as we all know.
Yeah.
Classic.
Yeah.
Classic reality TV stations.
So in the years that followed, the series went through the normal life cycle of a successful show.
There's a handful of parodies, right?
Like a bunch of different sketch shows do parodies of An American family.
There's like jokes and sitcoms of the day about moments that have happened in the show.
And then 10 years after it airs, there's an attempted reboot that doesn't do very well, right?
Nothing at all weird here.
This is like more or less what happens with every successful show.
Sure.
Most folks probably figured that was kind of it for the genre, which had yet to be named.
People didn't talk about reality TV as a thing.
There was just this one weird show that had existed.
But a few perceptive individuals at the time recognized that something special was afoot.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide.
The New Yorker writes, quote, her contribution, which wasn't mentioned on the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine after the listings, tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and a profile of Shelly Winters.
Bill and Pat Loud and their five children are neither actors nor public figures, Mead wrote.
Rather, they were the people they portrayed on television, members of a real family.
Producers compressed seven months of tedium and turmoil into 12 one-hour segments, which constituted, in Mead's view, a new kind of art form, an innovation as significant as the invention of drama or the novel.
And I think that's true no matter how you like reality TV.
Of course.
It's hit that point of cultural relevance already.
It's had that impact.
We have the Trump presidency because of reality TV, you know?
Yeah.
The biggest shame about reality TV is when it's staged, right?
Like, it's the same appeal as a documentary.
We'll get into that.
But yeah.
But I think that is interesting, though, just looking at it as like, it's like the birth of the novel, you know?
Yeah.
It will be with us for a long time.
Oh, yeah, forever.
It'll be so broad that I think it's like any genre where it sort of mixes with other genres.
You know, you could argue that just what we're doing, like TikTok and like the YouTubes and so on, are offshoots of reality TV because we're following people's lives.
People are kind of filming genuine moments, stage moments.
It's all part of the same thing.
Yeah, and you know, it's like with novels, there's this, you know, there's horrible things you can tie to novels.
You know, Hitler was very influenced by the novels of Carl May.
You're right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We probably caused Hitler.
You're right.
Novels caused Hitler.
We probably don't have the Bosnian genocide without the Pelican brief, obviously.
Right.
You know, but also there's good things that novels have brought us too.
Probably.
One assumes good things.
I don't read books.
Right, but I do watch Jack Ryan movies.
I do watch Jack Ryan movies, which have influenced my life in a number of ways.
Yeah, and I've been told those started as some sort of book.
Yeah.
The Jack Reacher series really helped me make peace with the fact that I'm incredibly jacked.
You know, there's a lot of people that are.
It's really hard to be like a jacked white dude.
Exactly, exactly.
Finally, representation.
Exactly.
It's wonderful.
Reality TV vs Animal Attacks00:09:02
Yeah.
Just like the, yeah.
Anyway, whatever.
This bit's gone on long enough.
So yes, it has.
So it's interesting then that it takes, like, Margaret Mead's right about how influential this art medium is going to be.
And it's interesting that it takes like 20 years from the first reality TV show before it turns into anything.
Yeah.
Like we have this idea for a long time before people figure out what to do with it.
That, I mean, that happened sort of with found footage as well.
Yeah.
Because there were like, there was some found footage films and then we kind of went quiet and then the Blair Witch Project brought it back.
Yeah.
Finally, which is, again, one of the great works of humanitarian.
Right.
Yeah.
The Blair Witch Project, without which, I don't know.
We wouldn't have to do it.
Yeah.
We wouldn't have the VHS movies, which have solved world hunger.
Sure.
Yeah, we'll go with that.
So the first show to take reality TV forward was The Real World, which debuted in MTV in 1992.
Rather than watching a family live their life and risk the chance that it might be boring, MTV decided to throw a bunch of young adults in a house and film what happened.
The show was successful, but it also was not like the kind of successful that on its own was going to spawn a world-like changing industry, you know?
You know, the real world is kind of a proof of concept, but it's not as influential as some later things are going to be.
The key to transmuting these critique, these peculiar documentary style shows into the thing that devoured television happened to be held in the head of a Fox executive named Mike Darnell.
Prior to 2000, Mike's background had been producing shows like When Animals Attack, World's Scariest Police Chases, and a variety of other premises now met by random weirdos on YouTube, right?
Like all the shows he gets started with are like the things I watch on random YouTubers collect.
Yeah, that's, oh yeah.
Remember America's Funniest Home videos where it's like, that's YouTube.
Yeah.
That's the only way you can watch people getting hit in the balls.
And it's like, we want that.
I would argue reality TV is better than like when animals attack because that like that was just YouTube, but it was YouTube done in this like really serious tone.
Yeah.
I don't know if you, like I actually would see you could see people like attack videos on when animals attack would get reused on like World's Funniest Animals and they would just cover it in a different tone and like not mention the injuries you know like because they just it didn't matter, it was just it was so schlocky.
Um, at least reality tv had like I don't know people involved a little more drama.
Yeah, and I I think, like because also I always felt gross about like America's Funniest, like a lot of these different video shows, less America, but like a lot of them would have like narration that was like generally kind of mean spirited towards the people, and I think it's much better to just have context-free loops of videos of people hurting themselves.
That's, that's fine, and it was a whole industry that yeah Youtube uh uh, pretty much killed it.
It is kind of funny the degree to which that used to be the dominant thing on tv and now it's just random dudes.
I, one of my favorite youtubers, is the CAR Crash channel, which is just compilations of car accidents.
Right yeah, what else?
Like you don't need a commentary no, I don't need.
I don't need a word from anybody.
No, you just get in bed, put on the car crashes and go to sleep, and go to sleep to the car crashes.
I love sleeping to train crashes.
There's nothing as soothing as watching a train hit a box truck.
Yeah yeah yeah, it just goes poof yeah just yeah, just like your dreams.
It just sends you right, right into the land of dreams, deeply soothing.
So yeah uh, Darnell is also the mind behind a two-hour special.
So you know, this is how he gets a start doing these, like when animals attack.
But then, near the end of the 1990s, he has an idea for a two-hour tv special with the title, who wants to marry a multi-millionaire.
So this is going to be the show that births all of modern reality tv really, um.
It airs on FOX on february 15th 2000.
In her book reality bites back.
Jennifer Posner describes it this way, this special, which predated the game-changing survivor, was a hybrid of Miss America and mail-order bride parade, with executive producer Mike Flice of NEXT Entertainment.
Darnell brought 50 brides to be to Las Vegas to be auctioned off to a complete stranger.
They sachet in swimsuits, tittered nervously and answered pageant style questions to assess their moral fortitude and sexual prowess.
In 30 seconds or less, groom Rick Rockwell was hidden as he and the audience determined who deserved the biggest prize of all.
A brand new multi-millionaire husband, nurse and future playboy centerfold.
Darva Conjure, Rockwell's eventual choice, got her first glimpse of her fiancé moments before they were legally wed on air.
Nearly 23 million viewers tuned in.
It's funny how, when read that academically, it really is horrifying.
It's a nightmare, right like that's.
That's like a, like an auctioning human beings off to a rich man.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Yeah, it's one of those where he's like you had to, you had to be there, I guess.
It's like I think if you were there, a lot of people at the but no, but it was huge, But they were part of it, they watched it.
Yeah, reality TV created, I think, more than most things the hate watch, right?
Yes.
Oh, God, yes.
Yes.
So the series got a 28 share, which is basically a big hit in terms people don't use as much anymore to talk about success because streaming is kind of like, who gives a shit about those old terms?
But anyway, it's a big hit.
Mike Darnell declared it the best show ever.
Or Chris Darnell, I think it was Chris.
Shit.
How many Darnells we got here?
What's Mike?
No, it is.
I think they're both Mike's.
Are they both Mics?
I think they're both Mike's.
I mean, they're TV executives.
It all checks out.
Mike Fleis, who's the producer, later bragged, Mike and I knew that the National Organization for Women would hate us, that this would be the most controversial show ever.
We thought it was all good, but it got so hot, so crazy red hot.
They said it was the most talked about show since Roots.
It was the lead sketch on Saturday Night Live.
The most talked about show since Roots.
Hey, maybe your reality show that involves auctioning human beings shouldn't be compared to Roots.
Yeah.
You might not want to be drawing attention to that, buddy.
Yeah.
No, this also begins this problem, which is the, it's, it's kind of resonates all the way to the internet, obviously, which is like, ooh, they're talking about us.
And it's like, yeah, that doesn't, you know, that's not a good measurement of whether or not something's good or not.
But I mean, it is for their purposes because it's a measurement of whether or not something can be worth money to advertisers, which is all that matters now.
Right.
Speaking of advertisers, Dave.
Oh, no.
You know what?
We can say whatever we want on this show because it gets advertisers.
So I can say, for example, Dave, that has an island off the coast of Indonesia where you can make, grab a crude weapon, spear, you know, a club, you know, like you'd use on a seal, a rock, and you can hunt children in the open preserves that they keep on this island.
And they'll get cooked for you.
You don't have to cook the child brisket yourself.
Takes care of that.
I know.
It's the opposite, actually, of how normally works.
Yeah, right.
But that's kind of the appeal there.
That's the appeal, right?
Normally sends you the ingredients and you cook it.
On the child hunting island, you provide the ingredients and cooks the food.
Right, because that's the most fun part of that process, of the child hunting process.
Right.
How much does it cost?
What does it go for?
Oh, I mean, you know, you have to donate a significant amount to Coke Industries.
But really, Dave, can you put a price on hunting children on an island off the coast of Indonesia?
I mean, no, but also yes if you right?
Well, yes, they do.
They do.
They do.
But if you sign up for their mealbox plan, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a spot on the next yacht over to the child hunting island, which is worth quite a bit.
So here's our sponsors.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Dad's Best Advice Ever00:02:25
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot in life.
Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, you just bent the rules all the time.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
Shame in the Reality Biz00:15:15
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, we're back.
We're back.
And we're talking about the only mattress made entirely with linen stolen from the graves of dead Egyptian peasants.
That's right.
Is named because the ghost of dead Egyptian peasants lingers inside each mattress, you know?
That's the guarantee.
Yeah, I mean, what are they doing with all that linen?
Nothing.
They're nothing.
Tons of wasted linen.
Yeah.
Sounds super sustainable.
Yeah.
Good environment.
Exactly.
There's so much carbon wasted by getting linen that doesn't come from Egyptian peasants who were buried in lost desert cities.
Right.
Steals those corpses and passes the carbon savings on to you.
Yeah.
It's, yeah, it's convenient.
It's good for the environment.
It's great for the environment.
Yeah, and it's affordable.
Is there a promo code?
Can we make it even more affordable?
Yeah, promo code bastards, and they'll throw in a free ounce of mummy dust, which if my 1890s medical textbooks are anything to go by, is useful in a variety of ailments, Dave.
Yeah, you could at least snort it.
And you got the grip.
You've got the shallots, the shingles.
It'll cure them all.
Mummy dust.
Yep.
Sprinkle it on your mac and cheese.
It's delicious.
Yeah.
That was like three and a half minutes of a how we do it.
Are you happy, Sophie?
Did you get what you wanted?
I said that bit's getting old, so you made a worse one.
Yeah, it's great.
That's what I've been doing since the bit, Sophie.
I miss the bit.
Well, too bad.
So you probably won't be surprised to learn, Dave, that a show that was premised on basically taking the idea of an arranged marriage and making it television would turn out to have been unethical in some way, right?
So they do this whole competition, right?
Some lady wins this marriage to this fucking multi-millionaire Rockwell, but they never consummate their marriage.
And for a very good reason, the woman Conjure has it annulled because she learns that Rockwell has a long history of violence against women.
So, you know, good call on her part.
It comes out like right as the show comes out that his former girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for vandalizing her car, breaking into her home and repeatedly physically assaulting her.
Good God.
She stated, he said he would find me and kill me.
Also, Rockwell's not a multi-millionaire, but that hardly seems like the primary issue here.
Right.
Who would have thought that a guy who goes on a TV show to look to like essentially buy a woman from an auction would be a liar and a violent abuser?
Who would guess?
Who would guess?
Yeah.
So his former girl.
Yeah.
So all this hits the press right after the show comes out.
And it's a big problem for Fox because, again, this is 2000.
So there was just a little bit of shame left in the world.
This was back when we cared.
It was like the reservoirs in Southern California.
There was still this tiny layer of water.
It's not going to be there in a couple of years, you know, just like the water in Southern California.
But it was still a little bit there now.
Yeah.
You could kind of see the boats that didn't really have enough water, but there was at least something, you know?
Right.
Yeah.
You could pretend like, oh, it's just a dry dry.
The rain will come back.
It'll be all right.
Yeah.
It'll be fine.
So there's a little bit of shame and it causes a problem for Fox.
Darnell tells a reporter, this is the worst day of my life.
Wow.
What a great guy.
He gets excoriated by media, who, by the way, like all of these journalists yelling at them were a lot of the same people who had been like raving over how groundbreaking the show was and who would who would go on to celebrate other horrible reality things.
So whatever.
But in private, like he pretends that this is a horrible day for him in public.
In private, he is ecstatic.
Fleis later recalled that his first reaction was, quote, great, more publicity, Mike said.
We got to get out in front of this.
I'm like, absolutely.
Fuck.
It's a restraining order.
Let's get an interview with the girl.
We'll put it on as part of this as part of the special.
We had a whole plan because that's the way we like it.
Because that's the way we like it.
What an amazing kind of dude.
I love it because we had it all as a plan because, and then something in his, the shame center of his brain like kicked in and like, like turned it into, because that's the way we like it.
Because that is just his ego protecting himself from something he knows, I think somewhere deep in him.
You shouldn't do this.
Yeah.
He is a bad person.
Yeah, when you become aware that on your show where women are auctioned off to the highest bidder, the guy buying the auction was a spousal abuser on a horrific kind of level of abuse and also lying about being rich.
You should be like, well, huh, maybe I should rethink some things about like not just the show, but my life.
Right.
Here's the thing is that I don't know much about how the biz works, specifically the reality TV biz, but I imagine that when you're casting reality TV, you're looking for outrageous people who are willing to do whatever on camera.
Yes.
And I'm not saying they all are.
I'm just saying that that type of person tends to have some personal problems.
Yeah.
Let's say a higher level.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Again, not all of them.
Not all of them.
It's just that I can see why that would say attract people who are problematic in a lot of ways.
And so, yeah, it's, I imagine that's why you have several stories similar to this of reality TV where it's, yeah, it comes out that these people have done something horrifying.
And it's like, yeah, because you barely vetted them.
They're not a professional performer.
And you stuck them on TV and made them a star.
Yeah.
It's not the best thing to do.
No, it's like, you know, Dave, I don't have a lot of shame, obviously.
We both chose entertainment as career.
So we probably have a lower shame threshold than a lot of people.
Yeah.
But like, every now, like on Twitter, I'll just like get see a tweet that I think is funny and I'll share it.
And then someone will like inevitably be like, oh, you know, this guy did this horrible thing.
And I'm like, well, no, I didn't.
It was just a random person on Twitter.
But then I feel bad about it for the rest of the day.
It's incredible that this guy can be like, oh, we filmed a whole several hour long TV special with like a man who beat the shit out of his girlfriend and has a restraining order against him.
Yeah.
Right.
Just that complete lack of shame.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
I envy it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It would make some things easier, like getting access to a Lamborghini.
Yeah.
That's why I'm like getting money.
Getting money.
It makes that a lot easier.
Yeah.
And then you make YouTube videos about telling people how to get money and you tell them to buy your book, which also will help them pick up women.
That's another kind of guy without much shame.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also, this does lead to all that because the pickup artist culture is heavily related to reality TV show and that show with what was a mystery?
What was it called?
I assume it was mystery because that's one of them guys.
Yeah, he definitely was in a bunch of reality shit.
So when this all blows up and there's this big backlash against who wants to marry a multi-millionaire, everyone kind of assumes that Darnell is going to get fired.
Fox cancels the rebroadcast of the show and they had been talking about turning it into a series because it was a huge hit and they decline to.
And they promise never, Fox promises to never be a part of any similar show in the future, which is extremely, extremely funny.
Yeah.
Uh-huh, Fox, absolutely.
Wow.
So it's worth noting that even while the heat is on, other networks, as soon as Fox is like, well, I guess we weren't turned this into a show, like UPN offers to buy it.
Of course.
Other TV networks are like, well, we'll make it into a show.
I don't give a fuck.
Yeah, we're not going to be able to do it.
I mean, UPN, all we have is Voyager reruns right now.
We're UPN.
Please help us.
That was actually their motto at the time.
Yeah, most of the people listening to this podcast right now are like, I don't know what UPN is.
That's because this episode of our podcast will have more viewers than UPN got in its entire time on the air.
Yeah, absolutely.
But Mike Fleis turns UPN down.
He's like, no, I don't want to give this guy to you.
And I got a better idea.
So Fleis, who had produced the show, takes a variation of the pitch that he and Darnell had made to ABC.
Now, they clean it up a little for Middle America, right?
And they relaunch Who Wants to Be a Multimillionaire with some changes as a new series called...
You ready for this, Dave?
The Bachelor.
Yeah.
Yeah, baby.
Yeah, that's where that starts.
Yeah.
And obviously The Bachelor is a lot less problematic, although not to...
Look, there's so much lore in all of these shows.
I'm sure people will be like, no, there's like, yeah, of course a bunch of fucked up shit happened there.
Right.
It's tough.
I've never seen a single episode of The Bachelor.
No, this is not about The Bachelor, but it's funny where it comes from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Big Brother comes out later in 2000.
It's after Who Wants to Be a Multimillionaire.
And it's actually, this is interesting.
Big Brother is an import of a Dutch show that's itself inspired by the real world, which is like this thing that increasingly, like up to this day, is big in reality where like some foreign country will make a show that's inspired by like these other shows and then like we'll steal that idea and then that'll like, I don't know, it's fine.
Right.
I've noticed that like I assume it's all owned by the same people, but it seems like you just have to change like a few words.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's not it's not honestly there's not really a meaningful difference between like what they did with The Office.
You know, like that's not fucked up.
It's just like the way art works.
Like some foreigner painted this thing.
Like all of that.
It reminds me of like game shows where it's like you can legally make a slightly different version of this and it's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah, this is fine.
I just bring it up because I find it interesting, not because it's like bad that they imported the idea behind this Dutch show.
Like who gives a fuck?
So the war on terror starts not long after, you know, this whole period of time.
And as it gets down to the business of just like fucking up a bunch of stuff, reality TV is becoming the biggest thing in U.S. media.
The Bachelor is a Titanic hit.
Basically overnight, it becomes ABC's top-rated show among 18 to 49-year-olds, otherwise known as The Demographic with Money.
Well, that's what we knew it as in 2000.
The cool demographic that smokes cigarettes.
Yeah, definitely.
That was in 2000, especially smoking some cigarettes.
So despite the promises they'd made in the wake of their disaster with Rockwell, Fox committed themselves to reality TV more than any other network.
Jennifer Posner writes, By February 2003, Fox was devoting a whopping 41% and ABC 33% of their sweeps offerings to reality shows.
These percentages increased over the years, limiting the number of quality comedies and dramas available to viewers and reducing opportunities for union-represented actors, writers, and crew.
Instead of firing their previously shamed reality guru, Fox promoted Darnell to executive vice president of alternative programming.
So they get to bust some unions and give a creep a good job.
Isn't that nice?
Yeah, that's the American dream right there.
Good for them.
It is nice.
We will not be getting into it enough, but that is a big part of why reality is so popular with producers and stuff.
High-level producers is like, well, you can get away from a lot of union shit with this.
That is very true.
You have people who work for a lot less.
And you can cut out the Writers Guild, you know.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is a real bummer.
It's very fun.
So, with that august title behind him, Darnell helped to bring to life a number of the most noteworthy early reality shows.
There was 2001's Temptation Island, in which real-life couples were separated and tempted into adultery.
Unbelievable premise.
Joe Millionaire, in which a bunch of women dated a guy they thought was a millionaire, only to realize he wasn't.
Right.
Isn't the twist at the end they give him a million dollars?
They split like it's either a million or half a million between him and the woman who agrees to go out with him after learning he's not rich.
Like, if she agrees to still go out with him, then they both get money.
I don't know what the moral is there.
Yeah, I mean, there's no moral.
It's Mike Darnell.
This guy doesn't have morals.
It's putting dugs in a jar.
Yeah.
And just seeing what happens.
Yeah, it's just Megan TV.
In 2004's The Swan, a bunch of women are given plastic surgery and other risky surgical procedures so they can compete in a beauty pageant.
Oh, man.
Mike Darnell, baby.
He's the fucking, he's the Chuck Barris of fucking reality TV, is what I'm getting from this.
Yeah, absolutely.
He just sat there all day and he just came up with horrible things to do.
Yeah, and killed for the government on the side.
My favorite show he did was the short-lived series Mr. Personality, in which a woman dates a bunch of men wearing masks that they can't take off until the show ends.
So she has to pick the woman she wants to be with without singing without a mask.
They have one of those now, too.
They have like a blind date.
But Dave, this one was hosted by Monica Lewinsky.
The Swan and Plastic Surgery00:10:17
Oh, shit.
I mean, what we know about her now, it's like good for her.
Yeah, I'm not going to condemn her for like, you got to, like, what other kind of, for one thing, what other kind of jobs are open to you as Monica Lewinsky in the early 2000s?
Like, not a lot of hiring opportunities after going through that ringer.
So, yeah, get what you can, Monica.
Yeah.
But it's incredible.
It's extra.
Like, the opening to this show is extremely funny, and we're just going to play it.
Now, for endorbo, who will go?
It's the season finale of Mr. Personality.
This season, on Mr. Personality, Haley Valentine Arp, a 26-year-old senior career woman from Atlanta, was introduced to 20 eligible men, their faces covered by masks.
Because he's touched my heart in a different kind of way.
They look like men range from unemployed to millionaires.
Peacemaker masks.
Hold on.
Do yourself a favor.
Look up the other Fox show, Secrets of Magic Revealed, with the masked magician.
I'm almost certain they just reused those masks.
I'm not, I mean, I haven't looked in a while.
I'm going by memory.
But it looks like for people who aren't watching this, they look like servants at an eyes wide shut or yeah.
They all have the same masks.
They all kind of look like MF Doom, but with a little bit of like the fucking Skeletor from the Masters of the Universe movie mixed in.
I'm shocked that they all have to do it.
It's so funny.
It's so funny.
Here's more.
Motivational speaker with a strategy of mind control.
Ever since then, I kept hearing the number 17.
17.
80% of the way we get influence is really unconscious.
Haley was forced to send 10 suitors packing.
Their masks were removed.
I think this totally sucks.
The remaining 10 were given new colored masks, and the competition kicked in.
We're going to be out.
Haley watched as a luau unraveled into Boys Gone Wild.
That's what I'm talking about.
This is my lovely bedroom.
And two masks eliminated themselves.
That's what I'm just going to have to do.
I can't do this.
So another bit of content.
Like most reality TV, this is a men wearing tuxes and masks that takes place in what looks like a like upper middle class like McMansion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what's amazing about it, too, is it's like an eyes-wide shut orgy on a budget.
Yeah.
I'm not saying I have this kind of money, obviously, but it's like, this is like someone who owns like a tow truck company, like several, their house.
Which again, nothing against that, but I'm just trying to...
It's like an eyeswide shut party, but all of the food is like from Kirkland.
You know, it's like it's like a Kirkland brand rich people orgy.
Right.
It's not, it's not not wealthy.
Like these people have money, but they don't have that much money.
Can we buy the next clip, please?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I picked this one because it's got a little bit of that sweet Lewinsky action that I know everybody's looking for.
Right.
She really is just kind of barely in it.
Right.
That's Monica behind the two.
It's time to unnap.
Talking now.
Haley, he had initially said that he took your breath away and that you could get lost in his green eyes.
But you also said he seemed a little too smooth and a bit calculating.
This is the mind control.
He's a motivational speaker and life coach for teenagers.
He's 30 years old in the dark green mask.
Meet Chris Berg.
Chris Berg.
Very well.
Wow.
I love that.
I love it.
Chris Berg, who's into mind control and motivation.
He sure is.
There's no way he didn't die in a bar in Florida like 10 years ago.
He either died in a bar in Florida.
He was stabbed.
That or he was part of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program in Iraq.
Like one of the two is this guy's background.
Yeah, yeah.
It's one or the other.
Either he is in fact good at what he does or yeah, he's been stabbed in the stomach at a bar in Florida.
What an incredible show.
Holy shit.
It's so funny.
It's like junk food because as soon as he was like, I'm going to take off my mask, I'm like, here we fucking go.
I can't wait to see this fucking.
Yeah, let's see this weirdo.
And then he was just some honky.
He's just some honky.
Yeah.
He's just some fucking honky.
It's so funny.
It's such a rip-off.
I think it got like five episodes.
Which is why Monica Lewinsky is not a staple of reality TV to this day, which is tragic.
You can see that he's just like throwing shit at a dartboard.
Like, all right, let's put him in masks and let's get who's famous that people wouldn't expect to see in a show.
Monica Lewinsky.
Give her some money.
Put her in the show.
It didn't work.
Whatever.
They probably had a list.
They probably, like at one point, William Shatner was going to host.
It's probably just like, we have a list of people who we know will do it.
Yeah, we know they'll do it.
They need work.
And like, it'll, people will be like, well, what?
I guess I'll try this.
Yeah.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that!
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He allegedly a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Sherry with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back.
Ryan Jenkins on VH100:14:53
So yeah, and it's worth, it is kind of interesting to me that like, having just gone through this, the first reality show ever was like pretty complex and intelligent entertainment for its day.
And there's some like real cultural value there.
But it winds up as this, you know?
Because reality TV and documentaries could be the same thing, right?
Right, right.
Like if you're just documenting something that you find interesting, a slice of, you know, life in America, like that family, like that makes sense.
It's just they realized quickly that's boring.
And yeah, it's like even you can see in shows that are still around, like the real world, when it debuted in 1992, it dealt with a lot of shit like AIDS and drug addiction and like LGBT issues in a way that was a lot of folks will argue, at least I'm not a comprehensive, I don't know much about the real world, but people who are critics of culture will argue was more intelligent than it is today.
Cultural critic Latoya Peterson writes that while growth and development were early on parts of the real world, in later days it became, quote, specifically cast for racists, assholes, and agitators.
It's like a formula.
Every season has some huge racial altercation.
Every season has some kind of woman trying to sleep her way into self-esteem.
Every season has a guy coping with a breakup angrily.
Right.
Again, they sought out people who were unstable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then they gave them money and fame.
Well, and also, as we saw with the very first, with like Darnell's first show, and Posner notes that like a big part of this change is that folks follow Darnell's lead in baiting advocacy groups like the National Organization of Women or the NAACP or CLAD with content that where people were like have controversies, which will get these groups to weigh in, which will cause like journalists to write about this controversy, which generates press and views.
And that's a big part of it too.
It's deep clicks.
Yeah, it's hay clicks.
It's all about hate clicks.
It's triggering the libs.
And it's all built upon the same idea, which is that any reaction is a reaction therefore it succeeds.
Even if the reaction is someone saying, that's not funny.
They're like, we did it.
And it's like, did you, though?
It's funny to me that kind of what's happening here is the way bullies work, right?
Which is like, if you react to them at all, you're giving them what they want.
Right.
That we have just applied to like all of culture now.
And reality is kind of how that happens, where it's like, well, I guess the way everything should work is that if you get people to react by being shitty, then the person being shitty wins.
Right, exactly.
Like if you run a show that's just someone going out in public and taking dumps in the ground at a mall.
All right, now, Dave, I told you that in confidence.
We have our pitch meeting with VH1 in a week.
Look, baby, you can have multiple versions of that.
It's like volcano and deep impact.
You can never get too much of mall shitter.
That's going to be gold.
And it's spin-off who wants to watch a multi-millionaire shit in a fucking Spencer's gifts.
Exactly.
Oh, that'd be great because people, at first, they'd be like, something smells like shit, but they'd look and there's all the novelty shit.
There's all the fake things.
And they're like, well, which one is it?
Like, one of them is, God, I want to go into a Spencer's gift and leave a real dump to assault the novelty ones.
They wouldn't find it for months.
Anyway, this is going to be stolen by Fox in like a week and make somebody $47 million.
I mean, that could legitimately be like a jackass.
It could be.
It could be.
Yeah.
In 2001, VH1 launched its celebriality block.
The linchpin of this was the surreal life, based off the real world in which people who were only celebrities in the loosest sense of the word, like at this point, Flavor Flave, would live together on camera.
Flavor Flave became a lot more famous later, but he was, you know, this is kind of what blew him up into being a reality star.
It was huge.
The production company behind it, 51 Minds Entertainment, started spinning off.
Next, from Entertainment Weekly, quote: That's when they found Megan Hauserman, a former Playboy model who appeared on season three of the WB turned CW reality competition, Beauty and the Geek.
She and her partner, Alan Scooter Zachheim, took home the $250,000 prize.
With her bombshell looks and sassy wit, Hauserman became a fan favorite on Rock of Love with Brett Michaels, Think the Bachelor, but with Poisons Michaels as its prize, and its spin-offs, I Love Money and Rock of Love, Charm School.
51 Minds decided to give the model her own show, Megan Wants a Millionaire.
The funny thing about Megan was her stated ambition, which was to marry a millionaire, says Cronin.
So we said, What if we filled a house with millionaires and they were competing for you as their trophy wife?
Here we go.
This is um, I sort of know what's to come here.
Yeah, now this does not sound like a TV show premise to me, Dave.
It sounds like a spell to end the world, but a lot of studio executives were convinced it would be a hit.
So VH1 green lights this motherfucker.
In the casting notice, they asked for, quote, single men of the highest degree with a net worth of a million dollars or more.
Now, rather than rely entirely on traditional casting, they sent producers to nightclubs to throw parties where rich guys would audition by just like being at a nightclub.
These sound like the worst parties imaginable.
That sounds like a nightmare.
Imagine working a service job at one of those parties.
What an absolute you could write a horror movie just about one of these nights.
There aren't a lot of ethical reasons to make and deploy a chlorine gas bomb using the cleaning chemicals commonly found in any bar, but this would have been one, right?
Oh, yeah.
I don't think they would have arrested you.
Yeah.
No, the guy just would have been self-defense.
We all agreed this was self-defense.
Yeah.
So, um, yeah, they do this thing.
Um, and one of the men they find through this process is Ryan Jenkins, a 32-year-old real estate developer from Las Vegas.
Sounds like a perfectly rounded individual that I'm sure will have no problems around him.
Now, one casting producer later recalled of him: Ryan Jenkins had one of the best personalities on this planet.
He was intriguing.
He knew it.
He wasn't the best-looking guy in the world.
He just had this charisma.
So, all reality shows have a process for vetting candidates.
This was clearly necessary after the first millionaire show blew up due to its lead male being an abusive monster with a restraining order against him.
Every network and production company, though, did this in a different way.
The most rigorous shows included the kind of like applications, including the kind of information you'd need to get a mortgage.
You'd have to file out every address you'd ever had, every job you'd had.
There were psychiatric screeners, ink blot tests, etc.
Entertainment Weekly continues.
The other key component is the criminal background check, which involves, in part, searching court and arrest records in every county a candidate has ever lived.
When it came time to run checks on all of Megan's potential millionaires, VH1 turned to Collective Intelligence, a Washington state-based company the network had been working with since 2003.
But Collective only specialized in U.S.-based criminal searches.
So, for Jenkins, a Canadian citizen, the company subcontracted out the search to another firm, Straight Line International.
Ryan Jenkins' record came back clear, and he was invited to join the cast.
So, this is going to go good.
Yeah.
He's a Canadian, you know.
They're nice people.
Sure.
No problems there.
Megan Wants to Marry a Millionaire launched on August 2nd, 2009, and it is one of the cringiest shows I've ever experienced.
Let's watch the introduction.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
What Megan wants, Megan gets.
That's the good stuff, Dave.
So, wait.
You already explained who Megan is, right?
Yeah, she's a Playboy model whose primary ambition is to marry a millionaire.
I still feel like saying who does she think she is.
It's just like, my God.
All right.
I mean, good for her, I guess.
I mean, definitely not good for her.
I mean, good for her for wanting a millionaire and knowing what she wants.
And I assume this will end really happy with her getting a millionaire.
Yeah, I mean, I think she gets rich eventually.
So there you go.
So Ryan Jenkins in this episode, like the first, it's interminably long.
She's just like meeting all of these guys.
It's unbelievably awkward.
Some of them are like creepy old dudes who are like really weird.
And it's whatever.
Like they're all creepy in some way.
They're all the kind of people who would show up on a show with this premise.
So it's horrible.
And in his introduction, Ryan Jenkins describes himself as, quote, a little bit of Prince Charming, a little bit of a bad boy.
And here's him showing up on screen for the first time.
Okay.
Hello, Megan.
Look, we're matching already.
We are matching.
Have you met any Canadians before?
Never.
Well, it's about time, don't you think?
Absolutely.
May I let you in on a little secret?
Please do.
Ryan whispers in my ear, you're gonna love Canadian bacon.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Fuck.
That was a dick thing, right?
I think, yeah, I think I just lost a year of my life.
Yeah, that takes a lot out of you.
My God, just the facial hair alone.
Oh, it's horrible.
It's illegal.
I mean, this was, you know, the early 2000s.
Everything matters.
Yeah.
No, I can't defend it.
I know it was a different time back then, but still, that facial hair.
You're going to love Canadian bacon.
Was he trying to say his dick's flat?
Because...
Yeah, flat and flat.
Flat and not quite cooked right.
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
If he was actually just talking about Canadian bacon, that would be delightful, right?
If he just wants to cook her some Canadian bacon.
But Dave, he was not.
No, no.
He was not.
But that would have made him a winner.
He probably could have gotten all the way to the top that way.
But no, it's probably, yeah, about his tapeworm dick, like his flat, floppy, floppy tapeworm dick.
Is it Canadian bacon like round too?
Like it's like a...
It's wrong.
It's not right.
It's like poutine.
You're not supposed to put it in your body.
It just exists because we, you know, because America, the one time we pull our punches, it's with Canada.
And look at this nonsense that exists now.
Look what we let happen.
I'm going to need Garrison to fact check everything you just said.
So Ryan advanced to the final round of the show.
Hazerman liked him, although she saw some quote-unquote red flags, like the fact that his Rolex was fake and that he only brought a single pair of pants for five weeks of filming.
Amazing.
All right.
I wish I could.
What a millionaire.
I wish I could act better than him, but I do only own a single pair of pants.
Dave, I know this about you, having lived with you, but also you're not a millionaire.
That's true.
I'm not.
You're right.
Definitely not.
Yeah, I can't.
I can't afford multiple pairs of pants.
You're right.
That's why.
That's why I only have one pair.
I'm the victim here.
You're right.
So, yeah, it's weird.
Yeah, it is weird for him.
It's weird for him.
So she thought he was sweet and she almost picked him as the winner.
She looked him up on Facebook one night during shooting and got his phone number and called him privately to tell him she planned to pick him.
But then she told the show's producers what she planned to do, and they were like, oh no, absolutely not.
They justified this as saying he wasn't likable and was just putting on a show for her.
And she eventually agreed to send him home.
Quote, he was really upset.
And I was upset also.
So that's a shame.
She planned to call him once filming was over and explained that she'd just been doing what her producers wanted.
The show flopped, but Hauserman remained in contact with Ryan.
He told her that after she sent him home, he was so upset that, quote, I went to Vegas and I met a girl.
As is normally the case on reality shows, producers hired several of the failed contestants of this show for other projects.
And so four years later, in 2009, Ryan Jenkins is cast for a show called I Love Money 3, vying for a $250,000 prize because, you know, he's not actually a millionaire and he could really use the cash.
Entertainment Weekly continues.
He kept calling her on the phone, his wife, saying, I'm going to win this, and you and I are going to have the life I've always promised, recalls Mark Cronin, co-founder of 51 Minds Entertainment, the production company behind Money, Megan, the Surreal Life, and the majority of VH1's wildly successful celebriality shows of that era.
Then he would ask her, Where were you last night?
Because he's in Mexico shooting the show and she lives in Las Vegas.
He was very jealous and very suspicious of her.
We were actually making a story of it on the show.
We were like, look at this guy.
He's obsessed with this model he married, Cronin continues.
It was funny until it wasn't funny at all.
You want to guess why it stops being funny?
I have an idea.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
It's pretty.
It's not funny.
On August 15th, 2009, soon after I Love Money 3 wrapped, Fior, his wife's strangled and mutilated body, was found stuffed in a suitcase, talked to a dumpster in Buena Park, California.
I wonder what happened.
Yeah, so Jenkins goes on the run, and as this all gets public, TMZ finds out that he has an extensive criminal record, including an arrest in 2005 for assaulting a girlfriend in Calgary, which VH1 and 51 Minds said was not on his background check.
Jenkins eventually kills himself in a hotel room in British Columbia on August 23rd.
And yeah, it's this whole big story.
Big, big, ugly story for the reality TV industry.
Yeah.
Collective intelligence gets most of the blame for this, and they wind up laying off their workforce.
The whole nightmare reportedly leads to an increased willingness for production companies and networks to pay for thorough background checks.
A Bad Boy Ending00:03:19
So that's good.
It feels like everybody in America should go to jail for a day.
It feels like we all got to go to jail for that one.
Yeah, it's just like our culture, everything.
Everybody's just clocking for your shift and then you're the guard next because like we got to get through everybody.
Right.
We should all feel fucking ashamed.
Some new refugee comes into the country and it's like, hey, sorry, it's been so tough over in Ethiopia or Ukraine.
Glad you're here.
You got to go to jail for a day now.
For a day.
There was this show like 15 years ago.
Yeah.
No one stopped it from happening.
Nobody stopped it.
Obvious that this person was.
Yeah.
Look, we know he's new here, but every American has some collective responsibility for this show.
Right.
I mean, listen, in our defense, he did say he was kind of a bad boy.
This would fall under the kind of a bad boy Aegis.
Yeah.
He's like, that's what he actually whispered.
He's like in her ear.
He's like, I'm a murderer.
I am going to be a murderer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, my fucking God.
Now, the good news, Dave, is that sketchy, violent dudes getting through vetting is no longer the main threat faced by reality shows.
We're going to talk about what is in part two of this series.
Dave, how you feel?
How you liking reality?
How am I liking reality?
You know, a mixed feelings, always on reality.
Yeah.
So, you know, can't complain, but really, I don't have many compliments for it either.
Yeah, I feel the same about reality as I do about reality TV, which is I feel like we could do better.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like we could do better, you know.
But you know who's doing great, Dave?
Is your podcast network, Gamefully Unemployed, where people can listen to hypecasts and hear about what's coming out in Hollywood.
They can listen to Fox Mulder is a Maniac and learn how the FBI definitely really functions.
Yeah, yeah.
It's been our own.
Yeah, it's our own behind the bastards for Fox Mulder and Fox Mulder only.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so detailed, in fact, that if you listen to every episode of Fox Mulder is a Maniac, you are legally an FBI agent and can carry out raids and stings on whoever you want.
It's true.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the government might say otherwise, but it's like a little wink-wink for me.
Yeah, what do they know?
What do they know?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
They're just fucking with you.
Yeah.
So yeah, everybody check that out.
Gamefully Unemployed.
Gamefully Patreon.com.
Wait, I can do it.
Patreon.com/slash gamefully unemployed.
We're on Twitter as well.
GamefullyUn, I think.
Yeah, just something like that.
Something like that.
Yeah.
All right.
Google them and then Google yourself, but like in a sexual manner.
Your name plus.
Sophie just let that happen.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah.
Google your name plus nudes.
See what happens.
Yeah.
You'll get something.
It won't be, you won't be happy you got it, but you'll get something.
Anyway, this has been the podcast.
I've been Robert Evans.
You've been David Bell.
And Sophie has been disappointed in me.
Google Your Name Plus Nudes00:02:19
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Ray Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, city hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Lori Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.