Haileywood

In this episode, Joanne delves into how MySpace—like reality TV—became a vehicle for celebrity in the aughts, and gave way to the culture of influencers. She catches up with people who built a fan base on the platform. 

Special thanks to our guests Bridget Todd (host of There Are No Girls on the Internet); Taylor Lorenz (technology columnist for The Washington Post); and Hanna Beth (one of the first people to become MySpace Famous).  

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Let’s look back at the internet communities that were thriving before MySpace — even before Friendster. Why did MySpace get ahead when there was strong competition from other social networks at the time? 

To explore the earliest days of social media, Joanne is joined by investor and entrepreneur Benjamin Sun, who co-founded Asian Avenue in 1997, and Katie Notopoulos, senior technology reporter for BuzzFeedNews.

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The MySpace era was incredibly influential, and incredibly messy. And it remains largely underexplored. Young people talk about MySpace like a cool scene they wish they could have experienced. Like CBGB, or Studio 54.

But before we get into the experiences that users had — from bored teens to up-and-coming musicians to soldiers stationed abroad — let’s start at the very beginning. Because MySpace does not have a typical Silicon Valley origin story.  

Special thanks to our guests Julie Angwin (author of Stealing MySpace) and Taylor Lorenz (author of the forthcoming Extremely Online). You can share your MySpace story with Joanne McNeil on Twitter @jomc.

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You may say time machines don’t exist… but this week iHeart sends Ben and Alex back to the 1930’s for a gut-busting, guided tour of the dark, smoky rooms where a clandestine crew of ultra-wealthy schemers concocted the Business Plot. Our hosts consult with a cavalcade of sketchy historical figures, leading Ben and Alex to begin connecting the dots of the grand conspiracy.

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While history books and Hollywood like their stories in simple black and white, real life is much more complicated. So, what made Major General Butler the ideal candidate to lead a coup? In this week’s episode – against Smedley’s wishes – Ben and Alex dive into the Major General’s dark backstory to explore why the bankers believed he was the man they were looking for.

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Nowadays, most people can agree that fascism is, well, a bad thing. But back in the 1930s, life absolutely sucked for most Americans, and fascism still had a sort of new car smell. Wall Street bankers were convinced they could take their country back from the clutches of ‘class traitors’ like Roosevelt, sink the New Deal and put the United States on a better – meaning more profitable – path. 

They had the money. They had an army. Now all they needed was a leader.

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What would you do if a secret cabal of the nation’s most powerful people asked you to overthrow the President? Weirdly enough – it’s not a hypothetical. It almost happened to FDR in the 1930s, were it not for a very intense, very problematic Marine named Major General Smedley Butler. 

Join Ben Bowlin, Alex French, and a cast of historical characters brought to life by Joe Kinosian for a darkly comedic – and terrifying –​ retelling of one of the weirdest forgotten schemes in American history.

Listen here or on the iHeartRadio app. 

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Traveling at five miles a second, 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev wakes to a message from his handlers on the ground: the Soviet Union is collapsing. And so is the Soviet Space agency. You have a choice: come down as planned and abandon the world’s only space station to an unknown fate. Or stay, protect the final outpost of a falling empire and risk your life? 

Like what you hear? Follow us @kscope_nyc on Twitter and Instagram. 

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Eleven years after going missing, Nicolas Cage’s copy of Action #1 reportedly surfaces in an abandoned storage locker in California. To confirm it, cops go undercover and discover a story almost too good to be true.  

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