Hello, everybody. Have you ever been followed around by a person to the camera taking pictures of you and your family and your children, and then publishing them in a newspaper or a weekly rag. Well, that happens to people, doesn't happen to me, Probably doesn't happen to you. But we're the lucky ones. But if you're celebrity, and I know you kind of sign up for this. It's not great to be followed around by tabloid photographers and be splashed across those tabloid magazines. And this is all about tabloid's from how tabloid's work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh, and this is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast. It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow sound smell. It will just called it Smellow rama be and grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm grumpy. Jerry. Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at each other when I came in here. No, Jerry was mad at me for being mad at her, which doesn't count. It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm not grumpy. It's just head legitimate. Everyone's scripy. So chuck. Yes, I want to tell you about a great American hero, William kat No okay uh. Many years ago, in the wilds of I wish I could remember where he was found Mississippi, a little guy known as bat Boy was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and UM took him into their care. He became a ward of the state. That makes sense because bat boys are known to go to higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he did, true to form. Uh so uh. Bat Boy at first he didn't like this captivity UM, but eventually he kind of became something of a patriot by UM volunteering to go search for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives UM in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason bat Boy was so good at it is because he was raising caves half bat half boy names UM. He wasn't able to find Bin laden, but he still returned to the U S a hero after a long, long flight because he just flew himself. Of course. And we know of bat boys exploits thanks to a little newspaper known as The Weekly World News. Have you heard of this? Two things? I used to subscribe to The Weekly World. Yeah, for like a year in high school, me and my buddy rad did because it was fun Radcliffe, Radford. And two. I didn't realize that bat Boy they continued his exploits. I think bat Boy sold a lot of papers for well, I knew he did, but I didn't know. I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. Yes he did, he tried to. I don't know if he was successful. At least he went equipped more than with just a sword. Um. But yeah, so bat Boy was a prominent character, I guess. And The Week, which also bills itself as the world's only reliable newspaper. Yeah, that little tagline or whatever. That's great. Yeah, it's not around anymore in print. Yeah, I think I remember a bit shutting down and being sort of sad it's online, I guess. Yeah. In two thousand and eight, it moved too and moved online. Yeah, so really every aspect of that story from this outrageous UM claim that the bat Boy was captured and sent to Afghanistan, to UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's most reliable, the world's only reliable newspaper to it's shutting down and going online because of massive profit losses after being purchased by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The Weekly World News is a perfect analogy for the course of tabloids over the last like twenty years as a whole. Yeah, and we're gonna dig into that. Um. I think it's funny. I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but I guess they figured if we're just going to be making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid, I mean, it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean, it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, well, we might as well just say that in the thing, get it. Yes, And one of their apparently one of their editors is quoted as saying, I could only find one source for this quote, so I don't know how true it is. It could be made up, which would be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the whole thing. But um, he said, if our if our readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they were well aware. That's great and it is an extreme example. But there are there are some aspects of the weekly World News that do fit the bill of the of a standard tabure. Um. So I mean, let's talk about it. What is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start at the beginning or should we just talk about a little bit then do the history? Do you want to do the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the history first, because positive that we don't practice. So I did see, Um, there was one slight error. This is an ed Grabanowski article, which are always great. But did you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with the pill company No um. In the late eighteen hundreds, apparently, um Burrows, Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England. They produced at the time like medicines were all like BC powder and good he's powdered. They all powdered, and he I think was the first one to make into to a pill by compressing the powder, and he called it a tabloid of cocaine. Yeah, it probably was. And um that that word became to mean anything figuratively, that was a small dose of anything. So the word tabloid actually became came before I believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, uh, the physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the origin of life on Earth comes from another planet, but really, where did the origin of life begin? Right? It doesn't answer the question. It's the same thing like, okay, so maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then it was associated with newspapers that the tabloid paper um is printed on a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid is a smaller, more compact version the broadsheet is longer and wider um and then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper, hence the word. Yeah. So at first it was a pill, then it became the size of the paper, and then later on it just became um the style of the paper and size, but really the style. But tabloids, as were explaining them, are basically like um. They are also commonly referred to as rags as UM gutter public. Yeah, they're gossip sheets, whatever it's it's basically it's a it's a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper and um tabloids. One of the ways that they exist and always have existed is in compare us into a quote, legitimate newspapers. So like originally newspapers that say, like the beginning the early nineteenth century, they were extremely stuffy, they were extremely expensive. They were like six cents per which was like half a day's pay for the average labor. Really dry. Man. If you ever read these old New York Times articles, there's like they just really just you know, they lay out the facts and then say the end exactly like the AP used to do until a few years ago. The AP always did that. It was sort of straight who, what, when, how, where and why the old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a quote in there and that was it. UM. And so out of this I guess kind of boredom and a need for the working class to be able to, you know, get their news too, because I couldn't afford it came. The predecessors were tabloids called the penny press, so they were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took stories from just these boring facts, political stories, business stories, that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories. And they changed the style of writing sentences for shorter paragraphs, for shorter way more emotion. It was. It was designed for that, like listen to the triumph of this family over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what we see now in mainstream newspapers. Exactly. Yes, a lot, a lot of our mainstream UM media owes quite a bit to the evolution of tabloids. And there's actually a point where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump. But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and newspapers this interplay where tabloids almost kind of break ground, take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of you know, we're the upstanding publication exactly just the sky right I'm discussed by it all. Um. Yellow journalism came about in the era of William Randolph Hurst with his New York Journal later called The New York Journal American, and he was the first person in the United States, at least, because I think in England it even started out before us. But I'm not mistaken. In England, I think they were kind of like the birth of some of the more tabloid style writing. But in America William Randolph Hurst did with all of a sudden he started doing some celebrity stuff and some murderer and little sensational gore here and there, and he found that it sold really well up until the Depression, when nothing sold really well. Um pick up after the Depression when a very uh monumental figure in tabloid history named Janetta Janetoso Pope or Gene Pope Gene Pope jr. Um, He bought a Hurst paper called The New York and Choir for seventy five grand, changed it to tabloid size, started uh printing you know, you know, stuff that he he figured people like to stare at a car crash, So he was actually inspired literally by seeing people like jockeying to see the blood and the gore in a car crash and thought, wow, people really are disgusting and crazy, so I'm going to give them what they want. And he did remember the crime scene photography episode we talked about we gi um he he and he sold a lot of stuff to Jeane Pope. Um, he printed a lot of his like gory crimes photos. What's his name, right, Lewis Felig, I think, but he went by W E G EIGI Interesting. Yeah, so I said it again. Um yeah, I was cueing like the Executive Orders episode how many times, like I'll bunch you know why because it was super interesting. Um. So he starts selling a lot of papers um, based on this new style. And then a guy named Rupert Murdoch, who you may have heard of, who saw or prove that you could actually have pretty wide circulation um, and began selling News of the World in England millions of copies sex scandals. And then the Pope said, you know what, if he can sell millions and millions of copies, so can I let me changed the name to the National Enquirer. Boom, Right, the National Enquirer was born. But um, the Inquirer is we know it still wasn't born yet. It was the thing they were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and lesbianism and like horrible acts of violence, posthumous violence. There is this one headline um about a team ripping the head off of a corpse to get at its gold teeth, and always with the gory crime scene photos like the pulp comics we're doing too. Yeah, very much. It was just very tawdry. It's um, I mean if the stuff uh and the inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was just like it's not fathom model. But the reason it's not is again because of Gene Pope. So he had a lot of competition U and not just he, but the whole industry was facing a big problem in that news stands were starting to dry. So Jane Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets. Everybody goes to supermarkets. I need to get in there now. I stand in the line at the checkout stand, right. But he knew like there was no way that any any respectable supermarket was going to sell his tabloid, his rag that the required. So he cleaned the thing up right, he um added way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch and his News of the World, and um added way more celebrity stuff sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know, um, this stuff he was talking about before that was just really it was more like a like a the Senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And there's this guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the for Vanity Fair, and he wrote this article called us Confidential. It was in the June two thousand two issue of Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition going from you know, the crime scene photography to um astrology overnight so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um, the Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took. We got to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology and celebrity sex scanals. And it wasn't even cleaning up attacked that much. It's not like you said, we're going to become the you know, New York Times. No, but that's why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand in line at a supermarket checkout line. It's because in the nineteen sixties Jeane Pope was like, we got to get in the supermarkets. I think people either read these or they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids, you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas, Like no one just says like, let me watch a little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that, but I think a lot of people are guilty of picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now you know what they do now, and of course we're going to get to this, might as well bring it up. They look at People magazine and US Weekly because they have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote unquote respectable thing to pick up and read. Even now, come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have. It's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um actually you can thank the Star for that. Um Star used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid, right, and it went over to the glossy format at some point. I think that may be the late nineties, and um it, it married those two things, glossyful magazine format with tabloid, and it was enough of his success that people was like, well, we've already got the glossy magazine part. Let's just start doing the tabloid thing. Yeah, I mean what people have, I mean legitimate articles still, but and they're not like making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in Malibu and look at this person, and look at that person, and who wore it better? Plastics versus asters? Yeah, exactly, stuff like that, who wore it better? I know somebody who's been reading people. Yeah, when they have the two ladies with the same dress, so mean, especially when it's like eight two to eight teens now, I know, especially when it's like, you know, it's just means. Sometimes I'm gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll be like, a who were it better? Kevin Smith or podcaster Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith, because I've never heard of this other guy. It's the same guy. It's the same dude anyway. Alright, so, um, that's pretty much the quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States, at least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're lousy with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading edge of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let get to that, all right. So before we go onto tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should point out that the National Choir, the Star of the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're all purchased by American Media, Inc. Like all all of those just snapped them all up, basically, just goout on the show. Now, every big tabloid in the United States was purchased by this one company. And um, yeah, I think that's never a good thing. Or maybe that's just me being it, you know. Well that's the funny thing, like the title of this sidebars, they control everything you read unless you don't read any of those things. So, um, the the am I, actually they're the reason the Weekly World News shut down. Um, they were like, okay, as things losing money. Am I posted a hundred and sixty million dollar loss in two thousand and six and was facing like a billion dollars in debt to bad Boy had to go. Yeah, bad Boy went to the internet. Yeah that makes sense. That's where bad Boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean, it's tabloids like pornographer, you know when you see it, right, it's tough to define. That's not um entirely the case. There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among tabloids that make a tabloid tabloid? Agreed, So what are there? Well Ed points out here something really important. The key to a tabloid story is not that it be true, just that someone has said that it's true, and they latch onto that person. And as long as they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person, then they can't be held accountable. And that person is frequently cited as an expert and a close friend. Sure, I mean, if somebody it's all the way you present the story, if the if you're saying, if your whole story is all about how this person said something, yeah, it's not really about the story. The story is still there, but you're focusing on this person. It's like the the rule of the of the tabloid industry. It's kind of a trick though, because very much you're tricking people into thinking you're reading about a story about Brandjelina. In fact, you're reading a story about a former made that worked for Branchlina and what they think is true, right, Or some crazy person who has nothing to do with bran Angelina who like just um, maybe saw one of them in a coffee shop and like, notice they didn't tip or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Um. Also, like we said that, they like to add experts, and but the experts are in no way, shape or form qualified in a lot of ways. They have no credentials, they're not vetted. It's more say, like, um, the example Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast, Right, if somebody spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot, researching bigfoot, there there's no institute out there to qualify them, to give them credentials. But you could reasonably make a case of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right. The thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star or the weekly World News is not going to the trouble of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so and so says that there's a bunch of these things out and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly. My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop and they will say did she look that? They would say maybe something like yeah, she looked like she looked jittery, and they would say did she look strung out and that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah, she sort of looked like that, And then all of a sudden, that's the quote because witnesses say she looked strung out and like she had not eaten for days, and uh, all they have to do is say yes, exactly yes, or like would you say this? And if the prison says yes and you just said that. Another hallmark of tabloids is making a huge deal out of something I guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah, and like actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting story and then blowing it up into possibly a front page feature. Um, just by getting into this story, really interviewing a lot of people involved um, and then maybe throwing an expert or something like that, and just basically making a lot a lot of hay out of something very um kind of negligible. UM. And this by adding a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do you think about this? What do you think about that? It takes it from being about the story, right, like a UM man saved a goat from a burning building to what these people think about this man and his goat? And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair, you mean, maybe who knows? As somebody said it, then they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh. Celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants, all kinds of informants from um secure people who had worked for them, or who worked at venues where they might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation and uh, I remember we shot you ever heard of Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like entertainment tonight. But that's how she made her living. And she was like one of the more famous ones. And we shot a commercial at her house one time in l a and she was there hanging out and uh, I was like, you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she just loved that kind of thing, and she would just sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas and his secret sex addiction and and she was she always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me she had a list a rollodex of people on the bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few bucks if it was not a big deal, to a lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with big news, and it's um, that's pretty much standard. Like you were saying. There, there's this guy named um Paul McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World, and um, you know Dentel Elliott. He was he was Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin and after he died. Um, she took like a big turn for the worst, and this cop tipped off I think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin. But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it. Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute, she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like offers to pay this this lady like drug money for sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos and everything. Well, she ended up killing herself and he now says, like, you know, I take responsibility for that, which is meaningless, but um yeah he The all started with a cop knowing about this and then tipping off the reporters. So sad cops are not immune to this kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh. Another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um, from what I've gathered, did you're either you fall into three categories. You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You either are lucky enough and are smart enough to kind of be low profile and you're not really a subject of table tabloids. There's a lot of big stars you've never seen the tabloids Harrison for yeah uh. Or number three is you play ball a little bit, which means, you know what, I'll give you a little information here and there. I'll leak out some stuff here and there. If you play nice with me, I'll play ball with you. Maybe I'll let you know, like what restaurant I'll be coming out of one night you can photograph me. Give you your little time and um. Sometimes the movie studios a leak stuff to get get up a little press. They did that a lot a lot back in the day, but it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic relationship between the person who needs their star to maintain this. It's position through things like just basically you're a star because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there for your cellulite, But what if someone picks up the magazine they're like, oh, I wonder whatever happened to her? I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad, how sad, but at the same time I feel better about myself exactly. Um So, I guess one of the ways that you stay in the tabloids is through having your picture made. As we stay here in the South, a group of people known collectively as paparazzi, and they actually I found out, are named after a paparazz so photographer. You didn't know that named Paparazzo with a capital P. He was a character in Um Fellini Fellini's ladulce Vita that's right movie, and um apparently they were already extant, but they got their name through this character. But even in they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the seventies again thanks to Jane Pope um, that they really became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today. And it was all because Jeane Pope was obsessed with Jackie Oh and Aristotle or and he would pay so much money for anything on them that people that the photographers were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of Gene Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff in Greece and in in Europe. UM, and that that still is connected to this day, to the death of Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles. Yeah, very sad, but that's all generoso Pope jr. Um. I'll bet that guy wore huge black glass thick ones like Robert Jernier at the end of See you know God, that's for great Um. Supposedly Felini too, I dug this up. Took the word from an Italian word that described the buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified, but he said in an interview in Time magazine in the seventies that he's like, yeah, I always just associate it with something buzzing around you and in your way, Like, well, that's paparazzi. Um. And there's that movie too, Paparazzi. Is that what I was called from two thousan four? Yeah, with the dude, uh what's his face goes back and beats up Coalhauser. Yeah. Did you see it? No, No, I ran across it on IMDb today. It's not bad at all. Um. It's also it could very easily be based on the life of Alec Baldwin. Uh yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, because there's I think the categories you were describing, Um, the people who are just so big that they can't keep a low profile, but they also don't want or need that that the tabloids on them. But I also very much gotten the impression it's like there's a lot of people out there who feed it to him, who wanted, who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people at all. Yeah, it's a it's a tough thing. And because there are people plenty, like you're saying, like plenty of people out there who are big stars, but you never see anything about him in the tabloids. Is because they just stay out of it. They stay away from it, you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think of one. I mean, there's so many. That's probably why I can't think of it. But like Harrison Ford is a good example, I guess, except when he started dating cliss to Flockhart, they were they were in the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect like most of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand holding things so yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot because of her weight, so that fed into that, you know, like, maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that she has Harrison Ford, you know, yeah, he's just like eat this, eat that too. Here, eat this all right, let's talk about let's talk about the law. Yeah, because this was really interesting, I thought, because the first thing you think with the rest of it was not interesting at all. No, I thought. I thought this was super interesting though, because the first thing I think of is why aren't these people suing every day? Suing these tabloids. Some try, some do, some have been successful for a while. For the early tabloids, ones like um oh, what were they called, like Confidential I think was one of the early tabloids. Um, like the tatler Um, they're just whatever stupid name about not about airing dirty laundry. That was the name of some pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties. Dirty laundry was probably one of them, I'll bet um. And they got away with that stuff because well, for two reasons. This guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote I watched a wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty much this definitive history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides because he was an edit her for the National Enquirer, right. Um. And he said, there's two reasons in the fifties and sixties. One, if you were a legitimate star, these things were so in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic. In one, it was the attention that lawsuit would attract because the regular press was gonna start talking about it, would make you look as bad as well, it would draw a lot more attention to the original story. And then the second thing is that even if you want that publisher doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert Murdoch all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um. I think Jeane Pope took the Inquirer from like fifteen thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its peak in the eighties. Um. And so suddenly they did have deep pockets and things changed. And um. Carol Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like a bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids. As far as the law goes, Yeah, she sued in uh after nine article said, and I have to read this quote, it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger. She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she was blitzed at this restaurant and she yeah, he's a big fan, probably, And she sued in one one point six million dollars, which was and we'll find out here in a second. This is one of the hallmarks of their litigation settled out of court for much much less, well, very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion to day, I think, uh, And then um, it was reduced by an appeals court, which is usually step two in these kind of suits, and then it was settled out of court. So I would imagine for even less than that, UM, but it was still was a big deal. It was the first time really that like a major star was able to win a defamation lawsuit against the tabloid. But it was one of the I don't want to say it was one of the only times. It was one of the very few times, especially if you are going on the premise of all the people who want to sue the tabloids and don't actually bring a suit because things have changed now now the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators, where like, if you want to sue them, you thought that story that ticked you off was bad, They're going to get anything they can and they're going to do it through the courts. So like when Aretha Franklin or no um oh Elsa Taylor, Yes, when she tried to sue I think the Inquirer, or when she did see the Inquirer, the Inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records for the past thirty years. So they go after everything. They try to drag your life into the spotlight to make it like really not worth your while to sue them. Yet it's the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New York Times article. H Vincent Chifo, Everyone's Italian um. Everybody has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the scorpion defense, which is, uh, you don't attack a scorpion because you will get stung. Um. Aside from not the not the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's pretty straightforward. I guess do they need to be complex? But you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's the spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like, don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown up on or been pooped on. That's what they should use. Because the scorpion can only do one thing. To year old can humiliate you in a number of ways. Have you ever heard So there's this whole thing that like scorpions commit suicide if you set them on fire by stinging themselves. Really and apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there people like doing this with scorpions, like sting them on fire, and then the scorpion will like jump about and like sting itself and eventually die. Well, I'll be trying to put the fire out. They found that this, They found that that scorpions are almost entirely immune to their own venom, and that really all this is just a reaction of being burned alive. They're like trying to like they're flailing about, and one of the flails is like they're they're stingers moving and sometimes it stings itself. So it appears to dumb kids who set scorpions on fire that scorpions committing suicide terrible. Isn't that awful? That's a great tangent though, thanks me, all right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids, It's just mean. That's exactly means setting yourself up for being a sociopath later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, Um, you have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not only that what they printed was false, but that they knowingly printed information they knew was false. Because it's got to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed, slander is stated with your mouth. These are the two differences or I guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. Um, So, basically the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first thing they're gonna do is start filing motions to delay, to delay, to spend a lot of money, a lot of money. So and if you think about it, there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah, it's your reputation. So a star who has a bunch of money says, I have a bunch of money, and I'm really mad at these guys, and i want to teach them a lesson, So I'm going to soothe them, and that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids trying to make it not worth your all, that you'll drop it because you don't really need this money. You're looking for a judgment and hopefully you'll get bored. Well in the tabloids don't care. Even if they drag this thing out in print a retraction six months later, no one remembers. No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well, six months later, that's a it's a well put because apparently part of the judgment of some of these and in successful suits is that you can't write about um the star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they'll like cut a deal sometimes and say, you know what, I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for the next year. And then they put on their calendar Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start effing with him again and UM. Another way that tabloids stay out of court is most of their UM articles are read screened by an attorney or attorneys. They have a retainer, so each article it's printed and it comes to this this implicit um stamp of approval from a legal expert. Yea, you you really don't have a case if you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to. They want to walk right up to the line of libel and stop there. And they're pretty good, and you're in ate on it, and then you're in ate on it, and I imagine the writers are really good at it, and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah, this is not libelous, prove it, spend spend half a million dollars trying to prove this, and some people do, like Aretha Franklin. I think settled Tom Cruise Schwarzenegger and Katie Kate Cruise and one did she win because Katie Holmes just filed in March. She is she settled for a donation to her charity unless she has done it twice. She did it just this past March. She filed suit against him for this one cover um like, yeah, bags under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem why she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes. It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also include, you know, stuff against Scientology because Travolta just had the big, little supposed tawdry affairs here in Georgia. And then I guess another homework that's not really in um it's not really in the article, but I think you can make a pretty strong case is that sometimes a lot of times the tabloid gets things right. Yeah, but the the way that they do it often is very much unethical and immoral as far as um the standards of the press is concerned and that's what Rupert what's been going on with Rupert Murdoch like UM Parliament, like a parliamentary UM panel basically said you're not fit to run news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge. With the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't remember what episode we talked about it in, but there was the girl who was kidnapped and like the News of the World writers were hacking into her UM voicemail and then deleting them and so the police thought she was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course of the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians, people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked four thousands, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked. Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller, Steve Coogan of UM for our Party people and Tristan Shandy UM. Some people have already won. But for the most part it's UM. These people aren't gonna get any any damage is awarded. It's basically just no. News of the World is shut down now. But it was out of hand and now they're they're showing that they were also hacking email, which great Britain has this kind of um this this computer theft law now which makes email hacking way worse than phote and hacking. So if that opens up to be a big thing, there's people are actually gonna start doing time for it. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do um. Over the years, we'll mention a few O. J. Simpson case the National Enquiry, and it seems like it's generally the Inquirer that that sort of scoops the legit ones. It's never like the Star. Yes, you know, so the National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial, the uh story about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah, they scooped the story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar to the murder weapon. I guess knife dealers the way they scooped the shoe story. Remember there were bloody footprints. I thought this was awesome. They really went to town to because there was a Bruno Molly bloody footprint at the scene. And O. J. Simpson said, I don't, I don't. I've never owned a pair of shoes like that, and they went back and found footage of him from like wearing them on the field, like reporting yeah, and proved that yes, indeed he did have those shoes. And he's like, oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh. Bill Cosby's kid Ennis. Remember when he was killed. The inquiry offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for information, and that actually led to somebody coming forward and giving the information that led to the capturing of the killer. That's right, Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah. In two thousand one, he Um came out and was like, oh, yeah, I guess he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart when he was running for president, I remember this well. He was on the monkey business down in Miami with what was her name, Donna Rice. UM's a funny photo when you look at it now. He I haven't seen it. I don't think. She's just like sitting on his lap and he's just got a big grin on his face and he's got a T shirt that says monkey shines grew And it was it was all over the place at the time, but he dropped out of the race. It was because of this this Um picture in the inquiry, they scooped everybody on it and Russia Limball, Yeah, my favorite drug addict that was exposed, Rush Limball. Yeah. I remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He was on like how many pills a day he bought, well, I don't know how many a day, but he bought apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or eighty pills a day, just so I remember hearing it was like, how is he alive or even not a standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that. But again, so there there could be it could have come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come from um yeah, they could have um, they could have gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes loose, looser ethics than maybe again A New York Times reporter, Um, so tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned um, at the peak, the National Choir was selling about five million copies in circulation. Now all of the leading ones in the United States combined sell about five point four million, so they've really gone down. In One of the reasons why is because they were so successful it mainstream media became much more tabloid e and tabloids became much less, much less different. The field of competition increased. Yeah, and basically everyone was kind of doing similar stuff now. And they point out the article during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you were seen on CNN and was just as salacious as anything you would read in the Star. And again it's like the mainstream media kind of took a cue from tabloids, as they have so many other times. They were so pissed off about that. With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's let's make up some stuff. Let's like what if he used a cigar? And they were like, yeah, exactly, it was all true. Yeah with Clinton, man, those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um, I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's chuck. Uh. If you want to learn more about tabloids and see a picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type in tabloids T A B L O I D S in the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh, I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me. It's Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina, m conducting research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted to let you know that your podcast serves a great resource for English learners in other countries. Um. I've been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet who are interested in furthering their English and learning more about US culture. Yeah, little scary too, Um. The idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina. When I introduce the idea in your program to people here, they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff. Your podcast is providing a fun and am in a way for students here to practice listening to different English accents, um, to try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes, to learn new vocabulary. Why I feel a lot of heat all of a sudden, um, And to become more informed on the various issues you discuss. The idea of people listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge. Is part is a part of us culture that I am proud to share and thank you very much for that spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela Hartley, it's very nice, thank you very much for that. We're becoming a cult like figures like Rodriguez. Who there's this like singer songwriter from I think the late sixties, early seventies and he just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple of albums that is totally flopped here and um, he just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just incredible status overly and everyone wondered what happened to him, and finally years later he found out, like he's like a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a documentary that just came out about the whole time. It sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary, but it sounds like a feature film, like something someone would make up. I saw a movie like that, you mean, I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and it was very much like that where the one of the producers afterwards of the Q and it was like it was he was asked if they were going to turn it into like a feature film. Then he was like, we can't. Like there's just too many it's too outlandish that if you fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid. Why did you Why did you make these choices? I want to see it. Yeah you should. It's very good, awesome. UM, okay, if you have a doc recommenentary a documentary recommendation, so I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a doc you wreck, thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um is that correct, docu wreck? Because I think I've seen that written before. Really Yeah, I just made it up. Um. You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, and you can email us your rex to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.