Episoder
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There's just something about seeing hypocrites fully exposed that is so satisfying, particularly when the takedown is as juicy and salacious and, yes, tawdry as that of Jerry Falwell Jr. You no doubt remember the Pool Boy Scandal of 2020, which began as a rumor that evangelical Christian and President of Liberty University Falwell was having an affair with a younger man named Giancarlo Granda... before Falwell released a statement saying that his wife, Becki, had the affair. And then Granda gave an explosive tell-all interview in which he recounted Falwell's participation in that affair.
Now, Hulu documentary God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty is telling the full story and it's somehow even more scandalous than we thought. (Having sex in your kid's room will do that to a story.) Kasey and Mark dive into the story, the odd, loaded references to the dark time created by playing a lot of video games, lip-syncing to sexts, and why the hell Tom Arnold makes a cameo appearance in the story.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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It's an unintentional double-header of acid heads, as Kasey follows up Mark's episode about Unmask Alice with a deep dive into an aside from the book about the CIA's Operation Midnight Climax. Yes, it sounds like some horny high school boys started a band, and no, it's not actually that much different from that. Turns out, the CIA was so adamant that no Americans could possibly have committed war crimes or found Communism interesting that the only solution to veterans saying these things is... brainwashing. If the Russians could, so could we! Except... well, things get very weird very fast. Would you believe that one man was responsible for the creation of the Haight-Asbury scene in San Francisco? Let's just say you're not gonna want to have a drink at one of George White's parties. Buckle inâthis is one wild trip.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Mangler du episoder?
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Mark went to Vegas and came back brimming over with awe at Rick Emerson's book "Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries." Do you know the book "Go Ask Alice"? Probably. You're likely less familiar with "Jay's Journal." Both booksâbilled as actual diaries from actual teenagersâcame from the same woman, and Emerson presents a pretty damning case for the havoc her ambitions wreaked on the survivors of familial tragedy and, yes, America as a whole.
What happens to Beatrice Sparks' dream of authorial stardom deferred? Nothing less than a decades-long actual witchhunt across the country in the form of Satanic Panic. Strap in for the wild ride but be sure to purchase a copy of the riveting, infuriating "Unmask Alice."
https://www.amazon.com/Unmask-Alice-Satanic-Imposter-Notorious/dp/1637740425
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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In 2006, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nominee was... John Edwards? He'd unsuccessfully campaigned as VP for John Kerry in 2003, so he was a known quantity (unlike that Barack Obama guy). But in an arena that is rife with unforced errors, Edwards made perhaps the biggest, most outrageous string of them â all while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of terminal cancer. Not a great look, even as Edwards vied for relevancy by getting in on that new website YouTube, with the help of one Rielle Hunter (nĂ©e Lisa Jo Druck). A few National Enquirer headlines, one incredibly loyal, lying aide and many memoirs later, we finally have the full story of John, Rielle, and the ways in which affairs can go so sloppy so fast. Kasey escorts Mark through the years-long drip-drip-drip of revelations, all of them way more tawdry than you probably remember.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Some things never change. Well, not Barbara Hershey's name. Born Barbara Lynn Herzstein, Hershey changed her professional name to Barbara Seagull for a period of time in the early 1970s. Much against the advice of literally everyone. She appeared on The Dick Cavett Show to discuss the reasons behind the change (buckle up) and ended up breastfeeding her son during the broadcast. Since this was 1975, you can imagine the hysteria. This week, Mark walks Kasey through the madness of early '70s Hollywood, the perils of being "kooky," and a whole lot of spoilers for decades-old films. Plus, casual Ryan Murphy dragging and Mark and Kasey invent their Bar Fly names. Grab a drink and settle in for a wild ride.
TW: Sexual assault does come up when discussing Barbara Hershey's films.
Apology: Mark somehow added 8 minutes of silence to the top of the initially uploaded episode. It's been corrected, and he regrets making you wait so long to hear these dulcet tones.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Before the musical, before the Got Milk? commercial brought him back into relevancy, Alexander Hamilton was one of the more combative founding fathers. The most scandal-plagued founding father? That is TBD. But today, Kasey explains how Hamilton ended up in an extramarital affair, then blackmailed, then welcomed into cuckolding and then published an entire pamphlet years after the fact about what went down. Did that kill his chances at higher office? And why exactly was Aaron Burr in everyone's lives? Grab your powdered wig and travel back in time to the invention of the political sex scandal.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Before Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, there was Janet Cooke. A reporter at The Washington Post, her byline appeared on a story headlined "Jimmy's World" about an 8-year-old heroin addict... who didn't exist. But before anyone found that out, "Jimmy's World" became a national sensation and made Cooke the first Black female Pulitzer Prize winnerâan award she returned almost immediately upon winning. But there's a lot more to Janet Cooke's story than just blind ambition. Mark unpacks the OG newspaper scandal for Kasey, along with a quick rave about Margaret Sullivan's incredible memoir Newsroom Confidential, coming out October 18.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Sumner Welles was a career politician whose career was always being interrupted by personal biases. First Calvin Coolidge kicked me out because he married a friend of the Coolidges. Then FDR had to speak with him because his direct manager was shit-talking Welles and a boozy night on a train that involved propositioning a Pullman porter.
Kasey walks Mark through the tangled web of political rivalries that led to Welles resigning in the middle of World War II and reminds us all that no one is as bitchy as a mediocre white man.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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The whole thing began for Bill Shaffer with a fountain.
Granted, the fountain is one of the few remaining examples of its kind in Manhattan and was designed by the team behind Grand Central Station. But who knew that reading a plaque one night would lead to the discovery of a half-forgotten scandal involving Alexander Hamilton's great-grandson, a sex worker, a murder, and two years of lurid headlines?
That's the story that Shaffer told in his recent book The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism. He joins Mark to discuss the writing process, the "Wait, how has no one told this story yet?" reaction throughout his research, and why his bombshell discovery remains shrouded in mystery.
Get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Scandalous-Hamiltons-Disgraced-Descendant-Journalism-ebook/dp/B09KP29JG9/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=scandalous+hamiltons&qid=1661538789&sr=8-1
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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The American veterans of the Great War just wanted that bonus the United States had promised them a little bit early. Guaranteed to pay out in 1945, a little thing called the Great Depression had them all impatient to cash it in 12 years earlyâso the Bonus Army traveled to Washington, D.C., to make their case. Herbert Hoover had quite enough of Hoovervilles, however, and somewhere along the way, Douglas MacArthur swooped in with the U.S. Cavalry and a tank or four to clear out the marchers' campsite. The U.S. was unprepared to care for its veterans? How shocking!
Kasey walks Mark through this underreported slice of American history that may have inadvertently helped lead to Roosevelt's victory (although he also vetoed the bill lol).
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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It was the slap heard around the world. No, not the Oscars 2022. We're talking Los Angeles 1989 when Zsa Zsa Gabor was pulled over for expired plates and ended up embroiled in a three-week trial that made Depp v Heard look boring.
How did the Hungarian personality wind up in an El Segundo jail doing clerical work? Why was the nation so transfixed by the story of a woman slapping a police officer? And why didn't we ever get the Zsa Zsa memoir written from her dog's point of view? Mark asks all of these questions and only answers a few of them in this week's episode.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Designing Women was hardly the first show to feature clashes between performers and producers (go read about All in the Family some time). But the very public war between creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and breakout star Delta Burke included Emmy nominations, fat shaming, and a secret Barbara Walters special that no one involved with Designing Women knew Delta had filmed until it aired. Dixie Carter got dragged into the fray along the way, while Annie Potts and Jean Smart wisely stayed out of it.
Join us as Mark walks Kasey through the history of Designing Women, why Nacogdoches is a key part of his favorite joke, and what Dixie Carter had to say in a TV Guide cover story meant to do damage control. And yes, Mark bought a copy on eBay just for this episode.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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We're living in a golden age of Martha Mitchell content, and we couldn't be more delighted.
Fresh off the success of Starz's limited series Gaslit, Kasey walks Mark through the life and scandals of our favorite Watergate whistleblower, who was discredited as a drunken grotesque by the Nixon administration as she tried to tell everyone who would listen that Nixon and CREEP were involved in the Watergate break-in.
From her appearance on Laugh-In (where Lily Tomlin shunned her) to her imprisonment in a California hotel room by bodyguards to the chrysanthemum arrangement anonymously sent to her funeral that proclaimed "Martha Was Right," here is the wild, unlikely story of an Arkansas woman who spoke up, spoke out, and then slipped into semi-obscurity for decades.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Not to fearâneither Kasey nor Mark have encountered a career-ruining scandal or a stint in the pokey. (Yet. Everything is always a yet.) What they are doing is taking sĂŒmmer off from researching and recording! So, as Judy Garland told her audience at Carnegie Hall, "You can have an intermission. And you can smoke or drink or whatever you do at intermission, and I can't wait to see you again because you're divine."
We can't wait to be back in your ears this August!
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
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Political sex scandals are a dime a dozenâalthough certainly, uber-conservative John G. Schmitz's sex scandal (involving a secret second family) is one of the more tawdry ones.
So conservative that even the John Birch Society told him, "Nah, dude, you're too intense," Schmitz's wife was known as the "West Coast Phyllis Schlafly." Their political careers were effectively ended when his secret family was revealedâbut that's not the end of the story! Tune in as Kasey walks Mark through what happened and the shocking twist that sees one of the most scandalous tabloid stories of the '90s make a surprise appearance.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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Over the last decade, Helen Keller went from a saint to a hoaxâwhich means the real woman has long been lost under the hagiography and now the TikTok deniers.
Among other things: Helen Keller was a devoted socialist who starred in a silent movie about her life and had her eyes replaced with glass ones. But the most telling scandal involving Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, is one that happened when she was 12 years old and newly famous. The story spiraled quickly out of control, becoming national news and resulting in Helen facing a hostile tribunal and eventually succumbing to a nervous breakdown and vowing never again to write fiction.
What happened? Why was a 12-year-old subjected to this kind of treatment? And what did Mark Twain have to say about all this? Mark walks us through "The Frost King" debacle.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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Odds are you learned about The XYZ Affair during high school history class (even mark did, and most of his high school education came courtesy of movies screened during class). But in retrospect, the whole scandal of John Adams' presidency feels underwhelming compared to our everyday political scandals now. That is, until 2017, when the fallout of The XYZ Affair finally exploded in a national controversy.
Let Kasey walk you through what happened, why it wouldn't have seemed like that big of a deal, and why now John Adams' administration led to the first major scandal of Trump's presidency.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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"Bring me a unicorn!" was the rallying cry for VC funders in Silicon Valley during its glory days, and apparently the demand from network execs looking for new content. Because over the course of a single month, we were treated to Hulu's The Dropout, Apple TV+'s WeCrashed, and Showtime's Super Pumped.
All three are based on real-life disruptors that promised to revolutionize medicine, real estate, and taxis. All three failed to varying degrees. But we already know those scandals: Kasey and Mark want to talk about the accent and voice work that these series boast at their cores. From Amanda Seyfried's riff on Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michelle to Anne Hathaway delivering the best performance of her career as Rebecca Neumann to Uma Thurman as Ariana Huffington, these are the performances we need to discuss.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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At last! After premiering three episodes of investigative documentary series The Way Down on HBO Max last year, the exposé of the Remnant Fellowship and its founder, Gwen Shamblin, returns for a two-part update. Has it gained anything in the aftermath of the series' revelations? Did we need another two episodes about the church and the ways in which it preyed on the vulnerable? Probably not! But then, we also didn't really need Netflix's 4-episode Bad Vegan or Hulu's 3-episode Captive Audience (to varying degrees). But Kasey and Mark watched all three series, and they have some Thoughts about this trio of shows retelling real-life bad behavior.
Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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Sean Young looked poised to be a star in the 1980s. She appeared in Stripes, she was the love interest in Blade Runnerâinstantly achieving icon statusâand she was great in thriller No Way Out. Then she got cast as Vicki Vale in Batman. That should have brought her career to the next level. Instead, it was the beginning of the end.
Years of addressing bad behavior and refusing to flatter male egos had set the stage for Sean Young to be made a Hollywood pariah. And the match that set off that fuse? He refusal to accept that Batman Returns director Tim Burton wouldn't even see her for the role of Catwoman after she was forced to drop out of Batman due to a fractured arm.
Mark Peikert walks us through the no-nonsense behavior that primed Hollywood to gleefully take down a woman who refused to play the game, leaving us to wonder what could have been for Sean Young.
Sean Young on The Joan Rivers Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfPTlZeVxW4
Logo: Jessica Balaschak Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store MusicLogo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw
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