Main Accounts: The Story of MySpace

On the Waking Up with Ryan podcast, coach Ryan Weiss explores how the first five minutes of your day can shape everything that follows. Through short daily audio and video episodes (10–12 minutes), he delivers powerful "moments of awakening" designed to interrupt the inertia of fear, ego, and judgment, helping listeners reconnect with themselves before the noise and demands of the day take over. Blending wisdom, meditation, and practical insight, Waking Up with Ryan offers a daily ritual that grounds, inspires, and empowers listeners to move through life with greater intention. More than just a podcast, it is an ongoing exploration of self-discovery, presence, and what it truly means to remember who we are.

Listen here and subscribe to Waking Up With Ryan on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!

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Comic Sans is a punchline. A design crime. Cultural shorthand for bad taste. But the notorious font's legacy isn't one of failure. Because Comic Sans succeeded in ways its critics never saw coming.

Listen to Very Special Episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

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What Happened in Nashville is a deeply reported investigation into the sudden collapse of a Tennessee fertility clinic, and the patients caught in the fallout. When the Center for Reproductive Health shut down without warning, people lost access to their embryos, their treatments were abruptly cut off, and many were left scrambling to recover money, medical records, and time they couldn’t afford to lose. Through intimate conversations with the patients who lived through it, host Melissa Jeltsen reveals the emotional and physical toll of the clinic’s abrupt closure. But the story reaches far beyond a single clinic. The series exposes the cracks in a fertility industry built on hope, high price tags and minimal oversight. What Happened in Nashville isn’t just the story of one tragedy — it’s a warning about a system where families have everything at stake and far too little protection.

Listen here or on the iHeartRadio app.

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In 2009, a 10-year-old from Arizona flew to Los Angeles to compete on a new game show offering child prodigies the chance to win $500,000. But almost immediately, he could tell something was off. The experience had a profound impact on his life — and confounds legal scholars to this day.

Plus Dana takes us behind the scenes of her appearance on Jeopardy!, and Jason explains how his two-year-old daughter wound up answering trivia questions on The Rachael Ray Show. 

On the Very Special Episodes podcast, we tell one incredible story each week. Follow Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday. Subscribe to VSE wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Jake Rossen
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Research and Fact-Checking by Jake Rossen and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English

Got a question or comment, or want to invite Zaron to compete on your game show? You can reach us at [email protected].

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What Happened to Talina Zar unravels the chilling mystery of a woman who vanished during the COVID-19 lockdown, the internet sleuths who wouldn’t let it go, and the dark subcultures and betrayals they unearthed.

Listen here or on the iHeartRadio app. 

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Hi Main Account Fans! Take a listen to the trailer of our newest show Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

About the show: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) is a weekly show from Jamie Loftus that takes a closer look at the internet’s main characters – one part reported, one part interviews, and one part Jamie collapsing her permanently internet-damaged brain. Whether it’s an enduring meme or a dreaded Character of the Day distinction, it’s the kind of notoriety that often results in little money, unwarranted attention, and a confusing blurred line of consent. What do you do when you get more attention and judgement than any one person is built to handle? The Sixteenth Minute of Fame is the place where we figure that out, putting people in the context of the moment they've been frozen inside of.

Listen here and subscribe to Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!

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In April 2023, Joanne did something she hadn't tried in well over a decade — she logged into her MySpace account. For our season finale, she set out to find the people who still use MySpace to this day. She reviews the factors that contributed to MySpace’s demise, and looks at what we lost when the MySpace era ended.

Thanks for your support of Main Accounts! What tech company should Joanne dig into in the future? Let us know on Twitter @jomc.

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"If you open a hole on the internet," UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts tells us, "it gets  filled with sh*t."

The tragic death of Megan Meier was a turning point for MySpace. As the first social media company to operate on a massive scale, MySpace and its users were forced to grapple with the consequences of that scale.

In this episode, Joanne is joined by Thomas Kadri of the University of Georgia School of Law to discuss how our legal system was ill-equipped to deal with the social media era. UCLA professor and author Sarah T. Roberts chronicles the early days of content moderation. And Bridget Todd and Scott Zakarin are back to talk about bullying in the MySpace era.  

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Our last episode featured the tragic death of Megan Meier, which became the biggest scandal MySpace would ever face. In this bonus episode, Joanne wanted to share our full interview with Megan's mother, Tina. Tina told us more about Megan's life, the trial, and the work of the Megan Meier Foundation. Since 2007, the MMF has worked to end bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide. 

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The moral panic over online predators on MySpace was largely overblown, but there was some truth to these concerns. These stories ended up on the nightly news and further stoked people’s fears about who was actually behind MySpace profiles. And one story — the biggest scandal MySpace had faced yet — showed how the use of a fake account could result in circumstances confusing and surreal, and tragic beyond belief.

And it set in motion events that would lead to MySpace’s eventual collapse.

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