Reality TV: The Great Experiment

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Everything's been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hi, Curse Up listeners. I know you miss me on your feed. Don't worry, we're working on a new season of Curse Of coming out later this year. In the meantime, if you can't stop thinking about the shocking stories you heard about America's Next Top Model, you'll definitely want to check out our new docuseries from E! Dirty Rotten Scandals. In the series, you'll hear from the America's Next Top Model participants you heard from on Curse Of, and a few you didn't, like former ANTM judge Janice Dickinson. Dirty Rotten Scandals unveils the dark underbelly of the long-running TV series through the untold stories of former contestants and shows what happens when a golden opportunity for aspiring models unravels into a harrowing saga of exploitation, shattered dreams, and resilience. Dirty Rotten Scandals, America's Next Top Model, premieres on E! on March 11th at 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT. This is appointment television you don't want to miss. Now, if y'all know, I couldn't just leave you high and dry like that. Welcome to the curse of America's Next Top Model, the bonus episode. First, let me say thank you for listening to the season. The response has been great and a little overwhelming. When my team and I started researching and reporting, we had to make some difficult decisions about what to include in the 10-episode season and what to leave on the cutting room floor. That's one of the hardest things about this job. My interviews for this show usually went on for hours. As you can imagine, we heard a lot of stuff that didn't neatly fit into the season arc we decided on. Like the cringy origins of reality TV. When we talk about ethics and reality TV, even back in the 50s, we were doing some pretty suspect things. And of course, there were more behind-the-scenes details from the models that couldn't fit into the season. Some of it was downright weird. I heard a lot about stuff that happened on set that made me realize what a strange world reality TV production really is. All season long, we talked about how producers created the stories we saw play out on ANTM. Casting producers find and create characters. Show producers stir up drama and manufacture storylines. Creative producers craft over-the-top photo shoots and runways. and a surprising number of contestants willingly sign up for it all. Now, of course, there are some who walk off set and others who ask to be eliminated. But for the most part, A&TM got 10 to 14 contestants to stay through the humiliation for 24 seasons. People stuck it out because they wanted the title and the prize. Others just wanted the exposure. But still, it's actually impressive. I mean, in a dark way, that producers got contestants to cooperate with all this. There's a quip I hear a lot from people who criticize the models for coming forward today to talk about their negative experiences on the show. These were not minors. They were grownups who knew what they were getting into. And if you hated it that much, you could have quit. You could have stopped. That was Perez Hilton standing in for the popular opinion. There's a belief that if the models didn't like it, they could just leave. But I don't think it's quite that simple. From the moment you walk on set as a reality show participant, you have to suspend your understanding of how the world and normal human interaction works. Reality shows like ANTM are successful because the contestants trust, to a certain extent, the version of reality the show is creating. In order to maintain that reality, producers have to get the contestants to do what they say. Sarah Hartshorn, who competed on Cycle 9, told me how ANTM achieved this power dynamic and what she compared it to surprised me. I think it's difficult to convey the power dynamic to someone who hasn't been in it, but the closest comparison really is a cult. Sarah explained this using her own cult ranking system. So the People's Temple, a.k.a. Jonestown, you know, the ones who drank the Kool-Aid, that's a level 10. Fitness programs like SoulCycle or CrossFit with cult-like followings are a level one. Lots of people follow level one cults. Even dedicated fandoms are level one cults. I'm a Beyonce devotee. Sarah wrote a book about her experience as a contestant on A&TM. When she started her research, she saw some parallels between ANTM and cults. At first, she felt like being a contestant on the show was a level two or three. Now, after writing the book, Sarah thinks the show is actually closer to a five or six. It takes young girls and it uses our labor. It does not pay us. And then it spits us out really poor and ill-equipped to deal with the after effects. Here's a list of parallels Sarah saw between ANTM and Colts. Isolation from everyone you know and love. Check. A figurehead or leader the followers can believe in. Check. A group of people who are in charge and do the leader's bidding. Check. A group of followers who are willing to do whatever is asked of them. Check. and a prize or reward at the end to make up for all the followers suffering. Also, check. Sarah says ANTM even used coercive tactics on the contestants, some of the same ones cults have been known to use, like language parodying. They would repeat the same words and phrases to us over and over and over again. Sarah told me that during the casting process, She and the other finalists were kept in a small conference room for hours. They were prepping us and we spent hours just sitting in these conference rooms with lawyers and producers talking at us for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. They used mind control tactics. The lawyers and producers repeatedly told contestants that if they ever violated their contracts, We will dock your wages for the rest of your life. That's the phrase that they said over and over. we will dock your wages for the rest of your life. Sarah said it felt like producers were trying to drill the message into their heads. And that wasn't the only thing. From the start, producers wanted the contestants to feel disposable and replaceable. The other mantra they would repeat? There are a million girls that want this opportunity and we have their phone number. They probably said that to us hundreds of times, different people setting it. And those phrases just got stuck in our head. There are a million girls that want this opportunity and they have their phone number. While it was probably true, the statement served a larger purpose. It made the contestants more cooperative. They knew if they didn't do what the producers said, there would be someone waiting in the wings to take their place. Once producers established that power dynamic, they could get contestants to follow rules they wouldn't normally agree to. They removed our ability to have any agency, right? They controlled when we could eat, when we could go to the bathroom. Like, I still remember the first time I said, can I go to the bathroom? And they said no. That's a very jarring thing to hear. Like, that's a script that humans have, right? You say, can I use the restroom? Someone says, oh, yes, of course. That's like a back and forth. It's like a given. It's like a social norm. And that was removed. When we said, can I go to the bathroom? We didn't know what the answer would be. While reporting this podcast, I learned A&TM and shows like it have pretty strict rules contestants have to follow. It's so producers can control what's happening on set. They didn't want the models just wandering around while they were taping. Another rule I heard about might seem counterintuitive. Sometimes the models couldn't even talk to each other. Let's say they were waiting to start a photo shoot or a judging panel. Maybe the location wasn't ready or Tyra wasn't there yet. The models couldn't pass the time by just chatting with each other. They had to be on ice. Here's Cycle 4 and 17 contestant Lisa D'Amato. Ice is being silent. You can't even talk to each other. So I'm not allowed to talk. The whole point of a reality show is to get everything on camera. Producers didn't want to risk missing juicy moments. They also didn't want the contestants plodding behind their backs. Producers didn't just draw the line at talking with each other. There was a no socializing rule between contestants and crew members. Even though the camera operators and sound engineers were in their faces every day, the models weren't supposed to even say hello or how you doing. Producers wanted the models to behave as though the cameras weren't there. So they literally told them to ignore the people behind them. Although one crew member told me that rule eventually went out the window a few seasons in because it was too hard to enforce. Even though you're surrounded by people with these rules, you can see why so many contestants say being on a reality show is actually a pretty isolating experience. And that wasn't just on A&TM. Here's reality TV psychologist Dr. Stephen Stein. He's worked on shows like Survivor and Big Brother. Some shows are really restrictive. Like a show like Big Brother, the only people they can talk to would be one person in production, one of them in the diary room, and then myself. And that's it. We see contestants on A&TM talking on the phone to their loved ones back home. But those calls are usually scheduled and very brief. On some reality shows, you can't even talk to your loved ones. I don't know. It's getting a little more culty. removing objective reality is a foundational part of brainwashing also from a production standpoint they didn't want their cast to be distracted with personal updates and breaking news they want the set and the house they're filming in to be their entire world for the weeks and months they were in production but the outside world doesn't stop and sometimes it trumps the reality that's being created by the show. Dr. Stein remembers a time when he had to burst the reality TV bubble with some big news from the outside world. I think my worst situation was COVID. I had to empty the entire house in Big Brother Canada. When COVID happened, the city forced everything to close down. And everyone's dream sort of fell apart and I had to deal with each contestant, each house guest coming out. Filming had started right before the COVID-19 crisis. The cast had no clue what was going on. They'd been completely isolated. And now they had to abruptly leave and go back into this world that was all of a sudden very different. I had to tell them there's something that's happened. The world has kind of changed from what it was like when you went into the house. And just go through what some of these changes are. And it's going to affect you. And you're going to have to go right home. And you're going to have to isolate. And, you know, they were shocked. They couldn't believe we were telling them. It's like, like, what? What is this? Here's the thing. The Big Brother contestants were in such a controlled environment already that when Dr. Stein delivered the news about the COVID lockdown, they didn't believe him. They're like, is this a joke? Is this part of the show? Big Brother had so thoroughly conditioned the cast that they were initially unsure if the pandemic was even real or part of the production. To me, that says a lot about how much of a mindfuck being on reality TV can be. Sarah Hartshorn compared ANTM to being in a cult. And Sarah's not the only one who said something about mind control in reality TV. Several people I've interviewed for this podcast compared reality television and more specifically ANTM, to psychological experiments. Here's Lisa D'Amato. It is literally a show about how to survive the Stanford Prison Experiment, like psychological warfare. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological study done in the 70s at Stanford University. Researchers were interested in looking at obedience, power, and control. Here's Dr. Stein explaining the experiment. It stemmed from the Nazis in Germany. The question was, were the people who orchestrated the Holocaust, were they inherently evil and bad? Or could anybody be bad and evil in the right circumstances? That's what he intended to look at, which was a really good question. Were they evil people who were doing all this stuff? Or were they ordinary people who just did bad things? The Stanford Prison Experiment is infamous for two reasons. First, because of how unethically it was conducted. And second, because of what it revealed. The lead researcher, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, took a group of 24 college-age men, paid them $15 a day, and randomly assigned them to two groups. The first group were the prisoners. They went through a mock arrest by real police. Then they were sent to a makeshift prison in the basement of a building on campus. They were searched, given a prisoner number, a uniform, and led into cells. The second group, the guards, were given fancy uniforms, including mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. The guards received the simple instruction to keep the prisoners in line without physically abusing them. Needless to say, all hell broke loose. What they learned was that given the chance and the right circumstances, humans will be trash. Please welcome Dr. Philip Zimbardo. What did your experiment prove? Evil behavior can be elicited in the best of us. The study was supposed to go on for two weeks, but after six days, they had to pull the plug. Phil Zimbardo just sort of threw it out there and let it happen. And my goodness, those bad people got really bad. There was physical altercations. The prisoners took on the role of prisoners like they fought back like prisoners would. And the guards were mean and awful and authoritarian like guards would be. And again, these were ordinary people who were randomly assigned. Now saying ANTM is like the Stanford Prison Experiment can be a little extreme But as I looked into the history I learned that the comparison between reality TV and psychological experiments isn that much of a leap Hannah Cat Jones was a contestant on Cycle 16. She told me about two situations that happened on her season that I didn't know what to make of. Producers could argue that certain photo shoots and challenges were a test of the contestant's talent or their ability to perform under pressure. But the situations Hannah told me about were seemingly designed solely to fuck with the contestants and see how they would react. One of those moments happened before the season even kicked off. This is the final round before the show officially begins. Mr. and Mrs. J walk up and they're like, okay, ladies, the girls who have their pictures in these envelopes are the ones going into the house. And the girls who don't have their pictures in the envelope are going home. Each person gets their envelope and they're like, OK, ready? One, two, three. And I pull out a blank piece of paper. And I'm like. It's over. That crushed me. Then the contestants were separated. Hannah's group, the ones with no pictures in their envelopes, were sent up the elevator to a room. presumably to get their bags and go home. We're like picking up our suitcases and then Tyra Banks starts walking down this staircase and she's like looking down at us. Hi ladies. I'm so sorry. It's okay. But you guys can't give up, right? No. Right? This is like, you guys got really far. The tears keep coming and you're trying to hold them back and you can't hold them back anymore because she's coming to say goodbye. This is it. I've gotten like so turned down, door slammed in my face, the road to success and to the top is not a straight line. It's a zigzag line. So unfortunately, you guys have to go home now. But you don't have to go far. Because you're home! And she pressed a button, and there was, like, drapes that I hadn't really noticed around the stairwell. So then all of a sudden, these drapes fall, and we're in, like, a penthouse apartment with like pictures of ourselves and toys and candy. And like, we're all like, we've like this silence, like what's going on? And she's like, you're on this show. And we all just start like jumping up and down. We're like, some of us are crying again. Some of the girls were literally falling on the ground in shock. Punk'd was popular at the time. Tyra referenced it on this episode. This little stunt was her sick nod to the show. And that was like the first night. The next day, they were like, OK, we're going to start filming. But remember, there was another group of girls who had gotten pictures in their envelopes. They thought they made it onto the show, but they were actually getting sent home. We didn't see A&TM break that news to them. The girls that didn't get on the show, like that's way worse for them psychologically. I would have trust issues for a really long time after that because I remember running into one of the girls like a year later that had been in the group that thought they were on the show first. And she said that they sat in a bus for hours. And then somebody came on the bus and said, that was all for show. You're going home tomorrow. And Tyra Biggs did not say bye. I asked Hannah why she thinks A&M did that. Like, what was the point of setting these girls up just for the three-minute payoff of saying, Ha ha, we gotcha! I think at that point, they really just loved the shock value of things. They realized that it was a great formula for the audience, too, to be surprised that this happened to them. I think they also did it to put their test subjects on edge. To make them feel like they never knew what to expect. Unpredictability can cause anxiety. and anxiety can cause people to act out. Hannah told me after the casting prank, she didn't know what to expect. It was just such a strange couple of months and like honestly, anytime that we walked into a room after that point, it felt like the floor was going to fall beneath us. Her feelings were justified. On Hannah's season, Cycle 16, ANTM really leaned into the psychological experiment thing. There was one more incident Hannah told me about that was so bad, it didn't even air on the show. On her season, Hannah made it to the international trip to Morocco. She was one of the final three. While there, they had a challenge where the contestants interviewed locals about beauty products. Except the people they were interviewing didn't speak English. And Hannah didn't speak the local language. She lost the challenge. But instead of just awarding the winner a prize, A&TM decided to also punish the two losers. Just a heads up, the punishment was nasty, even by top model standards. And it certainly didn't have anything to do with modeling. When the challenge was over, Hannah and the other losing contestant were led to a table on the street with a tarp over it. Somebody from production pulled off the tarp, And it has a cow's head that's severed and its tongue is hanging out. And that's just like one of the pieces of animal carcass. It's on the table. There's like organs and there's like a goat's foot. And there's just like all these different like pieces of meat. And he said, you're going to pick up these animal pieces and you're going to put them on the wagon that's attached to this donkey. And you're going to pull this donkey down the road to the butcher shop. So Brittany and I have to team up to pick up the cow's head. That's how heavy it was. And we're both like gagging, like, you know, because it's not like fresh. It's like gross. And we finally get all the pieces onto the wagon. And it got worse. As we're picking up the pieces and everything, the Moroccans are like around the table and like watching us do this. They're all like Moroccan men who are like, ha, ha, ha. It felt like shame from Game of Thrones. They were like, shame, you know, it just felt so demeaning and like not fashion forward at all. Hannah told me when she looks back at that moment, she regrets not telling the producers no. But that's the thing about the great psychological experiment that is reality TV. It's designed to push you to do stuff that under normal circumstances, you'd never do. I felt like that was a little piece of my soul, like kind of went in that meat locker too, as far as like not putting my foot down and saying no. Instead, I was like, okay, I'll do this for the sake of the show. Because if I do this, then maybe I could win the show. And I felt like it was like just a really messed up way for production and people who were writing those pieces to just exercise their control and to kind of laugh at us. ANTM sound mixer Jose Torres told me that he and other crew members were aware of this dynamic too. You've signed on to live in this bubble. The microscopes are going to be on immediately. We're going to dissect every word that you say, every step that you take. I always thought the original concept for reality TV was to just observe and see how people react to different people in different circumstances. And you document that. But as time goes on, you amp up the stress level. It turns out sticking people in unnerving and uncomfortable situations to see how they react is the very cornerstone of reality programming. Here's the candid subject. Here comes the candid camera staff, three of them at least. To really understand where America's Next Top Model came from, we have to go back in time, way back to the 1940s. That's where we're going after the break. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was No voicing of any skepticism or doubt It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong Listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis. linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ANTM premiered in 2003. And let me tell y'all, what a time to be alive. There were the reality shows like The Osbournes and Laguna Beach that gave us a glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous to let us know they are truly nothing like us. And then there were the shows that were making dreams come true. If you wanted to be a singer but never got that big break, American Idol could make you a star. And if you wanted to know what it feels like to have 20 desperate debutantes fighting for your affection, you could go on The Bachelor. If you wanted to be a millionaire and you weren't good at trivia, you could voluntarily strand yourself on an island for weeks and play mind games with strangers. On the Swan, self-proclaimed ugly people could get plastic surgery so that their inner beauty would finally be reflected outside. This is the landscape A&TM was born into. But reality TV didn't start in the early 2000s, and it definitely wasn't invented by Tyra Banks. My name is Amanda Ann Klein. I am professor of film studies at East Carolina University. I've also written a book called Millennials Killed the Video Star. Y'all know Amanda. She pretty much has my dream job. She's a reality TV historian and expert, and she's going to be our guide for this brief journey through reality programming. Reality-based television wasn't really possible before the advent of handheld cameras, portable sound equipment, and fast film stock. But almost as soon as the tech was available, production studios decided to use it to make fools out of everyday people for our entertainment. So there was this post-war belief that technology will allow us to uncover the secrets of kind of human behaviors that were not accessible prior to this technology. The first show to test out this theory was Candid Camera. You might remember iterations of it from the 70s, 90s and early 2000s. But the show first premiered in 1948. Smile, you're on candid camera. They were like mini psychological experiments. And there would generally be a mark. So someone who didn't know that they were being recorded, that was key. And one of the more famous examples involves an elevator full of people who are all part of the production. The gentleman in the elevator now is a candid star. These folks who are entering, the man with the white shirt, the lady with the trench coat, and subsequently one other member of our staff, will face the rear. When the mark walks in, the person who doesn't know he's being recorded, the people in the elevator all turn at once to the left. And he looks around, he's a little confused, and then he turns. And you'll see how this man in the trench coat... He tries to maintain his individuality, but little by little, he looks at his watch, but he's really making an excuse for turning just a little bit more to the wall. Now we'll try it once again. they all turn to the back and he again is like, well, damn, okay. And he turns. And this goes on for a while. Everyone in this elevator just randomly turning at the same time and this poor guy following their lead. In 1948, this was peak television. Audiences could watch real people experiencing seemingly real dilemmas and see how they would react. It was punked before punked. But Candid Camera's host, Alan Funt, wasn't just playing these practical jokes for shits and giggles. He was interested in something deeper. A lot of this has to do with post-World War II culture and the sense of what makes groupthink happen. How could these atrocities of World War II have happened to just normal, regular, moral people? Remember what Dr. Stein said about the Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s? Those researchers were also interested in what drove people to commit atrocities during World War II. This guy Alan Funt was looking into it 30 years before, and he made it entertaining. So there was a lot of investigation into that in the world of psychology, and Alan Funt was very interested in that. As a result Candid Camera was actually studied a lot in the 60s by psychologists But not all reality programming was a deep psychological exploration Some of it was a lot more reminiscent of contemporary reality TV People laying their pain and trauma bare in front of audiences in the hopes of gaining fame, fortune, and in this case, nominal prizes. What you like to be queen for a day! Queen for a Day ran from the mid-40s up through the mid-60s. First it was on radio, and then starting in 1956 it goes on TV. When it comes to early reality TV shows, this one might be the most disturbing of all. And I think it tells us a lot about later prize-based shows like Top Model. The premise of Queen for a Day is pretty wild. So women write into the show and they tell the producers about their sob story. And it's pretty bad stuff. A woman whose son has polio and he's bed bound. So she wants a rolling bed so she can take him out into the sun. A woman who has a lot of children. She just wants wood so she can build bunk beds for them to sleep in. It's awful. So they pick four women and they're all seated in the audience. They come up, the host interviews them. And at the end of the show, they place all the women on camera and the audience claps for the saddest story. And then the winner becomes queen for a day and they get the thing that they asked for. The show was shot in front of a studio audience. And these matronly women are escorted on stage by young models in mini dresses to meet this host who's honestly just over the top. Every episode is riddled with ads and sponsorship plugs. Like literally, every five minutes, they're trying to sell you saran wrap or jewelry or Worcestershire sauce for some reason. This particular episode you're about to hear was sponsored by the egg industry. So all the contestants have something to do with eggs. The first woman works the night shift as an egg candler, which apparently is the person who takes the bad eggs off the conveyor belt before they're packaged. Well, my husband has been disabled for the last 10 years, and it's been up to me to make a living, and I've been very thankful that I've had a good job that I could. This woman went on the show because it was offering her something she couldn't afford, a set of adjustable stools, so that she and her co-workers could sit more comfortably as they sort the eggs. These were mostly working white women at a time when only a quarter to a third of white women worked outside of their homes. This is also in an era of respectability politics, a time when you didn't air your dirty laundry, even to your neighbors. And these women are going on national television saying they're broke and they're not doing it for fame. They're doing it because they've been promised the chance to win. You can even see it in the episode and hear it in their voices. They're nervous, uncomfortable even. Like this next woman who ran a chicken farm with her husband. She had a pained, nervous look on her face. She's fidgeting, almost shaking. She doesn't even know how to answer the questions. How many kids you got? Three. How many chickens? About 7,000. Oh boy, how many eggs does a chicken lay a day? Ours? Yeah. About 3,000 right now. You didn't hear the question, I guess. How many eggs does a chicken lay? Oh. If you got one to lay 7,000, you and I can get pretty rich. On the average, one a day, I think. How many roosters per lady chicken? None. She's new in the egg business? There's no way this woman was on the show to be famous, like reality TV contestants we see today. She was on Queen for a Day because she desperately wanted to get her son an expensive gift. I would like to have more than anything in the world. a record player for my boy. He just had open heart surgery in February. How old is this old boy? 15. He was 15 Saturday. What's his name? Chester Ayers. Old Chester. And it only gets more sad and desperate. Woman number three, whose husband was apparently a teacher, pastor, and egg man, wanted an intercom so she could keep track of her five kids. I candle eggs in the egg room quite long. and I got to keep track of the children in the house. Sure. And it's quite a ways to run back and forth. And finally, there was woman number four, who maybe had the most odd but sweet request. I'd like to have 80 moo-moos. Now, that scared me a little bit. Two you could use. But she wanted 80, and what a nice reason. Tell her. I have a daughter in Pacific State Hospital, and they're going to have a luau this fall, and I wanted the moo-moos for the girls. Explain, if you don't mind, what is that school that your little daughter attends? It's a special school. It's a school for the handicapped. And they're going to have a luau. You want 80 little girls to go to this luau all dressed in moo-moos. I can't think of a nicer thing for those kids. Now we're going to have a queen right now. And here we go. Number one, Mrs. Irma Franklin. Number one. Thank you. Number two, you want a phonograph for that boy. Number two. The crowd chose number four, the Moo Moo Lady But the Moo Moo's were not her only prize And here's a good way to start with this handsome queen for a day watch by Helbrose It was designed just for our queens and has two tiny diamond encrusted crowns adorning the face Now you put in a lot of work there and I'm sure that a perfect way to relax at day's end Will be a great comfort to you It's with a jacuzzi whirlpool bath She also got a canopy bed, a gift certificate to shop in a catalog. And you'll love this. The woman who ran an egg farm got a year's supply of eggs. What really makes the show so surreal is that not only does she get the prize she asked for, but she gets all these sponsor gifts. And they're completely inappropriate for the women that are going to win this. So it's like outfits for the country club. Every woman will look chic in this matching polyester tennis outfit. It's outrageous. There's this huge disconnect. So when we talk about ethics and reality TV, even back in the 50s, we were doing some pretty suspect things. This point Amanda makes is the reason why we just listen to all of that. Other than I just wanted y'all to hear how ridiculous that show is. Almost from the beginning, when we decided to put real people on television to hear their real stories, the ethical lines were blurred. These women were more than likely not rich. I mean, the first woman couldn't even afford some stools. But producers understood that if they dangled the promise of something people couldn't otherwise get on their own, they would be willing to do stuff they wouldn't normally do. It's something we saw all the time on A&TM. Queen for a Day is an early example of how desperation became entertainment. By the time Tyra Banks and Kim Mott came along, they intuitively understood that the most desperate people make the best contestants. For a long time, candid camera Queen for a Day in game shows were really the only type of reality television programming. That is, until the mother of reality TV as we know it premiered in the 1970s on PBS of all places. During the next hour, you will see the first in a series of programs entitled An American Family. An American Family comes out in 1973. It is a PBS show, and it is what we would consider the first serialized form of reality TV. What made An American Family different is that it told a story, a continuous story across episodes. The series is about the William C. Loud family of Santa Barbara, California. For seven months, from May 30th, 1971 to January 1st, 1972, the family was filmed as they went about their daily routine. An American family doesn't sound like the reality TV we watch today. It just sounds like a really mundane documentary about the day-to-day lives of a typical family. But when you think about it, being there to capture the day-to-day life while happening to catch the truly unhinged drama is the basis of all DocuSope reality. Think about the Kardashians or the Real Housewives or Jersey Shore. An American family pioneered the whole genre. Half of A&M was the plot of the modeling competition, but the other half was about the drama in the house. You know, who stole my granola bar? An American family was the earliest example of this type of reality TV. It's the first time people said, come into my house, come into my life. You're inviting the camera in, which is a very different relationship with the camera. I teach it in my reality TV class. And one thing that I find interesting is how the students get frustrated with the downtime. because we're so used to reality shows kind of, you know, give us this, give us that, give us the reaction. Whereas this was more in kind of the direct cinema documentary tradition where you might just see someone, you know, their finger drumming on the table for a while as a boring conversation happens. I thought, well, who's coming in tonight? Oh, just, you know, a bunch of kids and friends and things. What's Kevin doing? Kevin? Nothing much. What are his plans for the new year? Zero. But eventually, some real-life drama happened. They got a lot of crazy content out of that because the husband and wife ultimately divorce by the end. A tense breakup unfolding before our eyes? Oh, now it's starting to sound familiar. And that wasn't the only scandalous thing happening in this average American family. Their son basically comes out as gay. It's very coded, but there's a whole episode of his mother visiting him at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where, like, they go to this crazy drag show. Oh, now we got some controversy, at least by 1973 standards. And it obviously caused a huge stir when it came out. Some people were like, it's the end of America, right? We're seeing an American family fall apart where, you know, we've got this guy who's clearly gay. The family son, Lance, later came out as gay. I don't think an American family producers knew Lance was in the process of coming out when they chose to cast the Loud family. But it became the most interesting thing about the whole show. Years later, when the reality genre started to pick up, producers took a page from an American family. They cast people who were outsiders, who were different, because that brought in viewers. Even with all the makings of great reality TV, An American Family didn't really inspire any other reality programming for a while. It was seen as an artsy docuseries, not something to be replicated season after season. After it, we had shows like Cops, which presented itself as raw reality from the perspective of the police. Star Search, which I guess is a bit like American Idol. and America's Funniest Home Videos, where every week a lucky family was rewarded for catching the moment when some poor dad gets knocked upside the head with a pinata stick. But nothing like an American family. That is until 1992, when MTV premiered The Real World. This is the true story. True story. Seven strangers picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped to find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. Could you get the phone? And start getting real. The real world. The reason why they decide to do the real world at MTV is because the ratings were kind of flagging. They still obviously did a lot of music videos, but people were kind of losing interest. And so they saw that something that young audiences really loved was Beverly Hills 90210. So MTV thought, let's do that. Let's do a scripted show. But it turns out it's really expensive, right? You need writers, you need actors, all that stuff. So instead, they went for a reality TV format. If you go back to the first season of The Real World, you'll notice that everyone was an artist of some kind trying to make it in New York City. It was a group of young dancers, actors, rappers and singers, all hoping to get their big break. They were actually led to believe that this was going to really focus on their art and kind of launch their careers. MTV's The Real World was the first time when people started using reality TV as a platform or a means to launch the career they actually wanted. At this point, there was no such thing as a reality star. And for the first two seasons, the show was, well, boring and the ratings were bad. That is, until the third season featured Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive gay man. You know, I am a person living with AIDS, and I am a gay man, and I am Hispanic. I'm a person of color. And this is simply who I am. You know, the AIDS crisis was kind of at its peak at that time. It was pretty remarkable to put an HIV-positive gay man on TV. Pedro was a sympathetic hero you could root for. But this wasn't an artsy docuseries. They needed to bring the drama to stay on air. And every hero needs a villain. Enter Puck, who was antagonistic and openly homophobic. Great idea, right? They put on someone who was abrasive, who didn't back down. And as a result, you had your perfect villain and you had your perfect victim. Very melodramatic structure. That structure eventually became the backbone of reality TV. Producers understood that rooting for your faves isn't as fun without someone to root against. And that tried-and-true formula is something we see season after season on a certain reality modeling competition show. I don't think casting Pedro was some altruistic act humanizing the AIDS crisis. I think they were using his identity to stir up conflict, just like I think A&TM did when they cast Isis King as the show's first trans woman. The real world success was a turning point in the history of reality TV. After 1995, new shows started popping up like daisies. Judge Judy, Making the Band, Big Brother, Fear Factor, The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Bachelor, Survivor. And here's one big reason reality TV exploded. It's a lot cheaper to make than scripted programming. Networks realized they could get the same viewership for a fraction of the cost of a show like Gilmore Girls or X-Files. There were no pesky actors unions, no costume designers, and no writers. So this creates a perfect environment for something like reality TV because of how cheap it is, because you can avoid union labor and all of those things. the other factor is the rise of tabloid culture at this time. So, you know, there were always tabloid magazines. You know, when I was a kid, my grandmother loved the Inquirer and I think she called them the scandal sheets, which is such a great, such a great term, but they really take off. And as a society, we get very interested in seeing celebrities caught unawares. And as a result, you have these individuals who we called at the time, I think we called them like celeb utants, people who were famous for being famous. This was an outrageous idea to people at the time. They just couldn't believe it. So Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, people who didn't do anything. They just kind of existed as pretty rich girls who go and party. And this is where reality TV history meets a young Tyra Banks who had an idea to cash in on this newly evolved genre. And we just spent 10 episodes talking about how that went. After the break, we're revisiting A&TM's worst tropes and their dark history. And then I'll be signing off for Real This Time. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families Late one night Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. join your cult. NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neuro-linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in episode seven, we explored the angry Black woman trope. A&M had a pattern of casting and editing contestants to fit the stereotype that black women are loud, mean, bitter, confrontational, belligerent divas. And we didn't get kicked off for hitting somebody. Y'all asking me to up right now. Shut up. Did she not come up to me and say that? Your anger was getting you in trouble. Honestly, I'm finishing my competition. And I don't feel like you're my competition. Your body type is not better than me. I'll be Shaya no matter what any girl up in the room say. Shaya gonna be Shaya no matter what anybody. But ANTM didn't invent the ABW trope. They just did it really well. The trope has history. Yes, sir, the Amos and Andy show. There was a radio sitcom called Amos and Andy that ran from the 20s until the early 1960s. It was also briefly on television. The characters Amos and Andy were two black men who moved up north from down south for a better life. On the radio program, the two men who voiced Amos and Andy were white. They used offensive accents that were supposed to mock black dialect. The show was extremely racist and extremely popular. There was one central woman on the show. Her name was Sapphire. The character was voiced by an actual black woman, Ernestine Wade, but it was still a demeaning caricature of Black women. Sapphire didn't have any redeeming qualities. She was always loud, rude, overbearing, and angry. You is a lazy loafer, and you ain't never supported me in 22 years. You ain't got no ambition. You is the weakest, most spineless character I've ever met. And you ain't never done nothing to make a home for me. And I'm leaving you. Sound familiar? When Amos and Andy was on air, there were very few roles for Black people in Hollywood. This actress, Ernestine Wade, was actually a theater-trained performer, singer, and musician. But she was relegated to one-note roles like Sapphire. The Sapphire character confirmed widely held racist beliefs at the time about Black women. And that trope took root in American entertainment. I could do an entire podcast just on the variations and evolutions of Sapphire in media. The Sapphire character never died. She just became the angry Black woman. Okay, y'all still with me? Let's take a trip to a more recent history. A time when most of us were alive, although we may wish we didn't have to live through this. I'm talking about the early 2000s. a period of rampant body shaming. A&TM is in the pantheon of body shaming offenders from this era. And I want to give y'all some context about the 2000s culture that birthed Top Model. Jess Sims is a health writer, and she remembers just how brutal the aughts were on women's bodies. America's Next Top Model is such a tip of the iceberg in terms of what we're looking at. We had, I always say, a really good example was the treatment of Renee Zellweger. Renee Zellweger was in Bridget Jones' Diary. The movie Bridget Jones' Diary came out in 2001, and it took America by storm. The entire premise was that Bridget Jones was fat, frumpy, and looking for love. But Bridget Jones was no more than a size 10 and weighed 136 pounds. Renee Zellweger put on weight for the role and lost it afterwards. For years, she says strangers would come up to her on the street and ask, How did you lose that weight? She refused to answer the question. Here's writer Jess Sims again. In the early 2000s, no matter what your body looked like, it was a problem. We also have Jessica Simpson. In 2009, there was a photo of pop star Jessica Simpson on stage at a concert. She's wearing these high-waisted denim jeans and a leopard print belt. And it was on the news cycle for a good two or three weeks. The photo went early 2000s viral, not because Jessica Simpson was doing anything in it, but because she had gained some weight. Jessica Simpson rose to fame in the late 90s when she was a literal teenager. And because she had the nerve to be bigger than she was when she was 17, she found her picture on the cover of all the tabloids and the subject of a lot of blog posts. Blogs like Perez Hilton's. His name kept coming up while I was interviewing people for this podcast. And I'm glad I decided to interview him myself because it was illuminating. I have some more clips from our interview I'll share in a minute. But first, here's what Jess Sims had to say about Perez's role in that body shaming era. We saw people who got famous off of being cruel to fat people. I always talk about Perez Hilton, who tried to turn a new leaf, which I always find to be very bizarre because he was disgustingly cruel to all women. He's such a good example of how gay men can be so misogynistic. Beyond his calls for Britney Spears to hurt herself, which he was very open about and was very persistent, his coverage of women's bodies is a really good example of how the media were able to make money. off of disgusting women's bodies. And these weren't people who were journalists, not a journalistic code of ethics. Writer Michelle Konstansinowski also had thoughts about Perez's impact in the climate of the early 2000s. Tabloid culture was beyond out of control at that point. We all remember, you know, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie either being celebrated or torn apart, depending on the day. You know, in the Perez Hilton of it all, all of the bloggers who felt very comfortable not only displaying women's bodies, but literally circling parts of them and magnifying them and saying what was wrong with them. But the Perez Hilton culture just kept doubling down and doubling down on how it's not only acceptable to dissect and almost like take glee in mocking women's bodies, but it's expected. That's what we do as a culture. Perez was one of the absolute worst when it came to body shaming. This is the man who said one of Bruce Willis' daughters was a fugly child. He described the OC's Misha Barton's thighs as being barfalicious. And he once called Britney Spears Fat Elvis in a headline. No one was off limits. These days, though, Perez is singing a slightly different tune. He's been on a bit of an apology tour. When I interviewed him, I had prepared some hard-hitting questions about the damage he caused with his post. But he came out swinging. I take full accountability for everything I did. I can't blame ignorance and I can't blame youth. I was in my late 20s and I was so selfish. I was incredibly selfish. I knew at the time that what I was doing was wrong and I didn't care. I was selfish. I cared about me. I cared about the clicks, the page view. I was purposefully trying to be shocking because that worked. It got attention. It got me views and it got me success. I was horrible and I was rewarded for it. Whether or not this mea culpa is genuine, Perez knows what to say. And that's strikingly different than what we hear from, say, Tyra Banks. Attention is a very powerful drug. And I was an attention addict. Perez might have changed his ways. But the thing is, today, there are millions of Perez's. When reality TV started 80 years ago, it was openly deemed a social and psychological experiment. Then it became normal. And today, we're in the middle of a new psychological experiment. One that's hard to opt out of. Amanda Klein again. It feels like right now everything is reality TV. Because, you know, first of all, of course, social media. You can hate follow people online. And come on, we all do it. Because they're drama and they put all their mess out there. And you're like, oh, what's messy up to today? So, like, that's your personal reality show. And we're all the main character in our own story. Amanda thinks it's changing the way we approach our daily lives. You see something happening, you pull your phone out. Not because you want to remember it later. It's because you're like, ooh, content. I don't have a big social media following, but even I'm like, ooh, this is so interesting. Let me get this. We're all reality TV producers. We're all curating the world for other people. And I don't think that's a good thing because I think that's changing the way we view each other. We are viewing other people as content. So we're more prone to view each other, I think, as characters now. Reality TV started this phenomenon of wanting to watch real people in ridiculous situations and everyday dramas. And now, in a way, we're all on a reality show, whether we want to be or not. That's all for this very special bonus episode. Thanks for listening to The Curse of America's Next Top Model. Someone once told me, in this business, the only reward you get is to get to do it again. And my team and I worked really hard. So if you want another season or more episodes, the best way to let us know is by leaving a five-star rating and a glowing review. All right, roll the credits one last time. The Curse of America's Next Top Model is a production of Glass Podcast, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcast. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass, hosted and senior produced by me, Bridget Armstrong. Our story editor is Monique Laborde, also produced by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Associate producers are Alaysha Key, Kristen Melkiri, and Curry Richmond. Consulting producers on this podcast are Oliver Twixt and Kate Taylor. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing on this episode by Matt DelVecchio and Dean Welsh. The Curse of America's Next Top Model theme was composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyMusic. Special thanks to everyone we interviewed, especially the former contestants. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out the at Glass podcast Instagram for Curse of America's Next Top Model behind the scenes content. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security. one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.