The Cracked Podcast

Ever since we started letting friendly wolves and tiny tigers into our homes a few thousand years ago, society has been split into two camps: dog people and cat people. Sometimes the battle lines are drawn across gender lines; the term cat-lady evokes an image in your head in a way cat-man doesn't. We use the word dog to colloquialize a sly, rakish man. Often we choose sides purely based on what our parents allowed in the house when we were kids. But rarely we stop to consider all the crazy superpowers our pets have: like how dogs can read human emotions better than other humans can, and how a cat's purr can improve your bone density. Recorded live at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles, Team Dog (Jack O'Brien, Dan O'Brien, Cody Johnston), Team Cat (Carmen Angelica, Jake Weisman) and Team Turtle (Alex Schmidt) go back and forth with rarely-known facts about the pets we keep at home to decide who is the ultimate victor in this war that has been waged for millennia. Team Cat will blow up the way you think about the gender binary, and we may decide after it all that the best pet to have is a pig.Footnotes:Proof that Cats Destroy the Ecosystem: http://goo.gl/6UB35 Cats' Purring Improves Bone Density: http://goo.gl/B4Dr0e Pigs Have Higher IQs than Dogs, Chimps: http://goo.gl/92xdEr Why Dogs Look at the Right Side of Your Face: http://goo.gl/VN3p3J Cat Owners More Likely to Have Advanced Degree: https://goo.gl/PirgYj Toxoplasma Gondii's Effect on Humans: http://goo.gl/Cg0TX5

A few weeks ago we presented you some stories about a terrifying underground industry in America. An industry in which middle and upper-class families pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their children kidnapped in the middle of the night and sent to rehabilitation centers. These 'troubled' teens ares sent away for reasons ranging from getting caught smoking pot, to getting bad grades, to having a new step-parent that just plain doesn't like you. These unregulated rehab centers across America are often hyper-religious and don't require their counselors to have any formal training, resulting in systematic mental, physical and sometimes sexual abuse. The worst part is: the parents have no idea. They're told ahead of time that their kids will lie, beg and make up tall tales to get out of these camps, and to ignore these pleas as it's all part of the healing process. While preparing for our  podcast  a few weeks ago, we came across a story so harrowing and unbelievable, we just had to make it it's own episode. Jack O'Brien and Robert Evans are joined by Darlene Molina, who recounts her story of being sent to two camps, getting kicked out of one, and escaping the other. Also make sure to get your tickets to the next live podcast taping on Wednesday, March 9th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre. Jack O'Brien, Carmen Angelica, Dan O'Brien, Alex Schmidt, and Jake Weisman will discuss all the ways our dogs and cats are more powerful, creepy, and awesome than we ever could have imagined. Tickets are $6 and available here:  https://goo.gl/xEFS4g  Footnotes:New York Times article where former Bethesda School girls report beatings:  http://goo.gl/JI4Xh9 New York Times article where Bethesda School operators Bobby and Betty Wills deny those reports:  http://goo.gl/9ciwHR Court documents from a lawsuit against the Wills:  https://goo.gl/nNxT3b Article about the murder at the Wills' Missouri reform school:  https://goo.gl/HGG5AQ

A few weeks ago we presented you some stories about a terrifying underground industry in America. An industry in which middle and upper-class families pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their children kidnapped in the middle of the night and sent to rehabilitation centers. These 'troubled' teens ares sent away for reasons ranging from getting caught smoking pot, to getting bad grades, to having a new step-parent that just plain doesn't like you. These unregulated rehab centers across America are often hyper-religious and don't require their counselors to have any formal training, resulting in systematic mental, physical and sometimes sexual abuse. The worst part is: the parents have no idea. They're told ahead of time that their kids will lie, beg and make up tall tales to get out of these camps, and to ignore these pleas as it's all part of the healing process. While preparing for our  podcast  a few weeks ago, we came across a story so harrowing and unbelievable, we just had to make it it's own episode. Jack O'Brien and Robert Evans are joined by Darlene Molina, who recounts her story of being sent to two camps, getting kicked out of one, and escaping the other. Also make sure to get your tickets to the next live podcast taping on Wednesday, March 9th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre. Jack O'Brien, Carmen Angelica, Dan O'Brien, Alex Schmidt, and Jake Weisman will discuss all the ways our dogs and cats are more powerful, creepy, and awesome than we ever could have imagined. Tickets are $6 and available here:  https://goo.gl/xEFS4g  Footnotes:New York Times article where former Bethesda School girls report beatings:  http://goo.gl/JI4Xh9 New York Times article where Bethesda School operators Bobby and Betty Wills deny those reports:  http://goo.gl/9ciwHR Court documents from a lawsuit against the Wills:  https://goo.gl/nNxT3b Article about the murder at the Wills' Missouri reform school:  https://goo.gl/HGG5AQ

If you go back one hundred or even fifty years ago to ask kids what they wanted when they grew up, they'd say they wanted to have families and to have good jobs. Now when you ask that question to kids the resounding answer is, "to be famous." Not to be a famous actor or a famous musician or athlete, just to be famous. And in our culture being famous is an easy reality. There are real Twitter and Vine and Instagram celebrities, but in a way we're all the star of our own curated reality show, broadcast over Facebook updates and Snapchat stories. We have a word for this kind of self-aggrandizing behavior-narcissism-but sometimes we use that word to mean "asshole" or "jerk" when there's an actual clinical meaning behind it that's much more complicated than the informal insult. Narcissism is a diagnosable condition that statistically only 1% of the population has. But why does it seem people are becoming more self-obsessed, more vain, more arrogant? In this week's episode, Jack O'Brien and Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) flesh out the theory that narcissism has become our cultural status quo. They discuss the differences between clinical narcissism and our colloquial version of the word; how Hitler, Trump, Jobs and countless other celebrities were certified narcissists; and how narcissism plays a part in Harry Potter and the new Star Wars.Articles Referenced in this Episode: The Last Psychiatrist on narcissism as a generational pathology :  http://goo.gl/AsODT David Wong's article on the Monkeysphere :  http://goo.gl/x15H Pictures of Hitler in 1925 rehearsing his speeches in front of a mirror :  http://goo.gl/Iqz8UQ Tony Zhou on 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' :  https://goo.gl/307L9G The full version of 'My Dinner with Andre' on YouTube :  https://goo.gl/mr8YFm

If you go back one hundred or even fifty years ago to ask kids what they wanted when they grew up, they'd say they wanted to have families and to have good jobs. Now when you ask that question to kids the resounding answer is, "to be famous." Not to be a famous actor or a famous musician or athlete, just to be famous. And in our culture being famous is an easy reality. There are real Twitter and Vine and Instagram celebrities, but in a way we're all the star of our own curated reality show, broadcast over Facebook updates and Snapchat stories. We have a word for this kind of self-aggrandizing behavior-narcissism-but sometimes we use that word to mean "asshole" or "jerk" when there's an actual clinical meaning behind it that's much more complicated than the informal insult. Narcissism is a diagnosable condition that statistically only 1% of the population has. But why does it seem people are becoming more self-obsessed, more vain, more arrogant? In this week's episode, Jack O'Brien and Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) flesh out the theory that narcissism has become our cultural status quo. They discuss the differences between clinical narcissism and our colloquial version of the word; how Hitler, Trump, Jobs and countless other celebrities were certified narcissists; and how narcissism plays a part in Harry Potter and the new Star Wars.Articles Referenced in this Episode: The Last Psychiatrist on narcissism as a generational pathology :  http://goo.gl/AsODT David Wong's article on the Monkeysphere :  http://goo.gl/x15H Pictures of Hitler in 1925 rehearsing his speeches in front of a mirror :  http://goo.gl/Iqz8UQ Tony Zhou on 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' :  https://goo.gl/307L9G The full version of 'My Dinner with Andre' on YouTube :  https://goo.gl/mr8YFm

Sorry, the Oscars, but you're old, out of touch and boring. We can see through your failed attempts to reach a new generation: the Anne Hathaway/James Franco catastrophe, the phony (get it?) Ellen DeGeneres selfie stunt that was totally unscripted and Samsung definitely didn't pay the Oscars $20 million in advance for. Just stop it already. Take a few years off.In the meantime, we at Cracked have come up with a bunch of new categories that you're totally free to steal, such as Best Title, Best Running Time, Best Accent and Best Oscar-Bait That Didn't Get Any Nominations Other Than This One.Recorded live at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles, a tuxedoed Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked's Dan O'Brien and Alex Schmidt, author Liana Maeby, and actor Stanley Wong of 'The Big Short' to brainstorm new categories, solve the Oscar's race problem, and fix just about everything in time forSunday's awards.

Sorry, the Oscars, but you're old, out of touch and boring. We can see through your failed attempts to reach a new generation: the Anne Hathaway/James Franco catastrophe, the phony (get it?) Ellen DeGeneres selfie stunt that was totally unscripted and Samsung definitely didn't pay the Oscars $20 million in advance for. Just stop it already. Take a few years off.In the meantime, we at Cracked have come up with a bunch of new categories that you're totally free to steal, such as Best Title, Best Running Time, Best Accent and Best Oscar-Bait That Didn't Get Any Nominations Other Than This One.Recorded live at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles, a tuxedoed Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked's Dan O'Brien and Alex Schmidt, author Liana Maeby, and actor Stanley Wong of 'The Big Short' to brainstorm new categories, solve the Oscar's race problem, and fix just about everything in time forSunday's awards.

Where Western medicine ends is often the place where eye-rolling begins. Just the mere mention of alternative medicine brings up imagery of snake-oil salesmen, chakras and crystals. But in the modern world, we're so devoted to the materialistic side of science–the stuff that can only be measured and doled out in pill form–we forget how much we don't know about how the human body works.Don't get us wrong, Western medicine is great! We can heal bones, prescribe medications and implant devices that can make the deaf hear again. But when it comes to dealing with dementia, autism, strokes, or anything inside the brain, we might as well be in the middle ages. How can we help a child locked inside his own mind when we barely understand what the mind is? How can we ethically take a comatose person off life support when your best guess for the definition of consciousness is as good as ours?Jack O'Brien is joined in-studio this week by David Huntsberger, host of the now-defunct podcast Professor Blastoff, for a very heady conversation about consciousness, the brain, the mind, and searching for therapies at the edge of Western medicine.

Where Western medicine ends is often the place where eye-rolling begins. Just the mere mention of alternative medicine brings up imagery of snake-oil salesmen, chakras and crystals. But in the modern world, we're so devoted to the materialistic side of science–the stuff that can only be measured and doled out in pill form–we forget how much we don't know about how the human body works.Don't get us wrong, Western medicine is great! We can heal bones, prescribe medications and implant devices that can make the deaf hear again. But when it comes to dealing with dementia, autism, strokes, or anything inside the brain, we might as well be in the middle ages. How can we help a child locked inside his own mind when we barely understand what the mind is? How can we ethically take a comatose person off life support when your best guess for the definition of consciousness is as good as ours?Jack O'Brien is joined in-studio this week by David Huntsberger, host of the now-defunct podcast Professor Blastoff, for a very heady conversation about consciousness, the brain, the mind, and searching for therapies at the edge of Western medicine.

You've probably seen 'scared straight' segments on some daytime talk show like 'Maury' before. You know the kind where they throw troubled teens in jail for a day to get yelled at by a drill instructor and come out crying for their parents?What if we told you there was a whole industry set up around this where you can legally have your child kidnapped in the night and sent to the wilderness or to live in a religious group home for months on end? These programs prey on middle-to-upper-class families, operate where there are no child labor laws, and use torture, fear, and manipulation tactics to "fix" troubled youth. Also the counselors need no formal training and are often child molesters.The best case scenario if you're a teenager sent to one of these camps is that you come home with PTSD and severe trust issues for the rest of your life, however in many cases you may just die there. It's one of the scariest things happening in America right now that you probably didn't know about.Cracked editors Jack O'Brien and Robert Evans speak with Maia Szalavitz, who literally wrote the book on the teen rehab industry, about how these centers operate and why so many families are conned into paying them thousands of dollars to hurt their kids. Then they speak with Sarah Cummins, whose family sent her to Utah to live in one of these centers where she was forced to manipulate other girls, do endless manual labor and hug her counselor who turned out to be a sex offender.