The Cracked Podcast

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.

The history of the music industry is littered with weird and possibly apocryphal stories of how people were discovered and how songs came to be. Sam Phillips, the man credited with discovering Elvis, tells the story of a shy 18-year-old Presley coming into his studio and Phillips having the gut instinct to shout something like, "say, this kid's gonna be a star!" It's a fine story, except Phillips wasn't even there the day Elvis first went into Sun Records. It was his assistant Marion Keisker who heard Elvis first and thought to pass him along to her boss. We like to think of our artists as chess pieces in a heroes journey. It fits the story in our minds to have Elvis be discovered by Obi-Wan Kenobi and for them to have the determination to know 'Hound Dog' would be a big hit. But 'Hound Dog' was first recorded 4 years earlier by Big Mama Thornton. The history of the music industry is a surprisingly messy thing. Keith Richards comes up with the main riff to 'Satisfaction' and forgets how to play it the next day. What sounds like divine inspiration to us might very well be an accident. On this week's podcast Jack sits down with Hrishikesh Hirway, the brilliant mind behind the podcast 'Song Exploder', to talk about his process and what he learns breaking down popular songs instrument-by-instrument. Later he talks with Peter Matthew Bauer of The Walkmen to talk gear culture, how demos are made, and Michael Jackson's magical $20,000 mixing board.

The history of the music industry is littered with weird and possibly apocryphal stories of how people were discovered and how songs came to be. Sam Phillips, the man credited with discovering Elvis, tells the story of a shy 18-year-old Presley coming into his studio and Phillips having the gut instinct to shout something like, "say, this kid's gonna be a star!" It's a fine story, except Phillips wasn't even there the day Elvis first went into Sun Records. It was his assistant Marion Keisker who heard Elvis first and thought to pass him along to her boss. We like to think of our artists as chess pieces in a heroes journey. It fits the story in our minds to have Elvis be discovered by Obi-Wan Kenobi and for them to have the determination to know 'Hound Dog' would be a big hit. But 'Hound Dog' was first recorded 4 years earlier by Big Mama Thornton. The history of the music industry is a surprisingly messy thing. Keith Richards comes up with the main riff to 'Satisfaction' and forgets how to play it the next day. What sounds like divine inspiration to us might very well be an accident. On this week's podcast Jack sits down with Hrishikesh Hirway, the brilliant mind behind the podcast 'Song Exploder', to talk about his process and what he learns breaking down popular songs instrument-by-instrument. Later he talks with Peter Matthew Bauer of The Walkmen to talk gear culture, how demos are made, and Michael Jackson's magical $20,000 mixing board.

A short list of completely ridiculous things we put up with as English speakers: 1. I before E except after C (apart from numerous exceptions that you should memorize)2. The letters C and K making the same sound (except when they don't)3. The multiple pronunciations of 'ough' (Cough, Through, Rough, Thought, etc.)4. Different countries putting a U in words like Favo(u)rite or Colo(u)rWhat the hell is going on here? How did our language get like this? Why is this the 2nd most spoken language in the world when it makes no sense? To get a grasp at the enormity of English, Jack O'Brien is joined on the phone by Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri, to talk about her time recording every sound in the English language and how programmers put it all together.Later, Jack is joined onstage at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles by Dan O'Brien, Carmen Angelica and Alex Schmidt. They talk about the history of English, how it combines the best of French and the worst of German, the grammar's endless nonsensical rules, and some simple things other languages do that we wish we had.

A short list of completely ridiculous things we put up with as English speakers: 1. I before E except after C (apart from numerous exceptions that you should memorize)2. The letters C and K making the same sound (except when they don't)3. The multiple pronunciations of 'ough' (Cough, Through, Rough, Thought, etc.)4. Different countries putting a U in words like Favo(u)rite or Colo(u)rWhat the hell is going on here? How did our language get like this? Why is this the 2nd most spoken language in the world when it makes no sense? To get a grasp at the enormity of English, Jack O'Brien is joined on the phone by Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri, to talk about her time recording every sound in the English language and how programmers put it all together.Later, Jack is joined onstage at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles by Dan O'Brien, Carmen Angelica and Alex Schmidt. They talk about the history of English, how it combines the best of French and the worst of German, the grammar's endless nonsensical rules, and some simple things other languages do that we wish we had.

If you look back at the most popular comedies through the years, there are always parts that don't hold up. A lot of the time when it's a sex, bro, or gross-out comedy, the stuff that doesn't hold up is usually a cringeworthy scene or two where you think, "they could never do this today."For example, Vince Vaughn getting raped in 'Wedding Crashers' is played for laughs, but then we feel better about it at the end because he falls in love with his assailant. Shannon Elizabeth's Nadia in 'American Pie' is secretly taped getting naked and her character is deported for it while no punishment comes to the men who do this to her. The villain in 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective' is trans woman outed by a bunch of grossed-out dudes. Funny!The fact that you can't get away with stuff like this anymore isn't a bad sign, or a sign that comedies are becoming PC or watered down. This is a good thing. It means we're not making fun of genders, races, sexual orientations at their expense for no reason.On this week's podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt to talk about some very recent movies, commercials and bits of pop-culture like these where what was once funny or en vogue is now horribly insensitive.

If you look back at the most popular comedies through the years, there are always parts that don't hold up. A lot of the time when it's a sex, bro, or gross-out comedy, the stuff that doesn't hold up is usually a cringeworthy scene or two where you think, "they could never do this today."For example, Vince Vaughn getting raped in 'Wedding Crashers' is played for laughs, but then we feel better about it at the end because he falls in love with his assailant. Shannon Elizabeth's Nadia in 'American Pie' is secretly taped getting naked and her character is deported for it while no punishment comes to the men who do this to her. The villain in 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective' is trans woman outed by a bunch of grossed-out dudes. Funny!The fact that you can't get away with stuff like this anymore isn't a bad sign, or a sign that comedies are becoming PC or watered down. This is a good thing. It means we're not making fun of genders, races, sexual orientations at their expense for no reason.On this week's podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt to talk about some very recent movies, commercials and bits of pop-culture like these where what was once funny or en vogue is now horribly insensitive.

Remember when memes actually made sense and weren't just screencaps of Minions with text like, 'Obama: You Only Had One Job!' Remember when 'First World Problems' wasn't an excuse to complainbrag about your yacht running out of champagne? Remember when 'LOL' wasn't a mere punctuation mark and actually meant that someone was laughing out loud?Pepperidge Farm remembers. And now that meme is probably ruined too. The problem with the internet sometimes is that when creative, novel, and useful ideas get put into it, suddenly everyone has permission to reuse them. From there they get repeatedly misused, and before you know it, they completely lose all of their meaning. Literally. Or figuratively. We don't know because literally doesn't mean literally anymore.On this week's podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to talk about when great ideas go wrong and how the evolution of language and the internet drives them into the ground.

Remember when memes actually made sense and weren't just screencaps of Minions with text like, 'Obama: You Only Had One Job!' Remember when 'First World Problems' wasn't an excuse to complainbrag about your yacht running out of champagne? Remember when 'LOL' wasn't a mere punctuation mark and actually meant that someone was laughing out loud?Pepperidge Farm remembers. And now that meme is probably ruined too. The problem with the internet sometimes is that when creative, novel, and useful ideas get put into it, suddenly everyone has permission to reuse them. From there they get repeatedly misused, and before you know it, they completely lose all of their meaning. Literally. Or figuratively. We don't know because literally doesn't mean literally anymore.On this week's podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to talk about when great ideas go wrong and how the evolution of language and the internet drives them into the ground.

Most disaster movies make cannon fodder out of almost every single living person on the planet who isn't a president, a fighter pilot, or the one scientist who has the key to solving the alien/meteor/whatever problem. What about the rest of us? Isn't there a great story in the Armageddon expanded universe about a bunch of people partying like the world is going to end and then having to go to work the next day?What about the thankless IT workers of S.H.I.E.L.D. or any secret organization of that matter? Where are the stories of the people whose job it is to handle the IT tickets when Darth Vader's hologram doesn't work or Captain America forgets his password?In this live episode recorded at the Comikaze Expo in Los Angeles, Jack O'Brien is joined on a panel by Dan O'Brien, Soren Bowie, Michael Swaim, Tom Reimann, Katie Willert, Alex Schmidt, Adam Tod Brown, Cody Johnson and Josh Sargent to discuss movies that would be completely changed if you viewed them from the point of view of the little people.Also, be sure to buy tickets to our next LIVE podcast on Wednesday, January 6th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset theatre in Los Angeles. Jack will be joined by Dan O'Brien, Alex Schmidt and Carmen Angelica to talk about the frustrating intricacies and strange evolution of the English language. Tickets are only $5 and on sale here:  bit.ly/1OCNQTK