The Cracked Podcast

Over the last decade, the internet has brought into public light some of the great social injustices hiding just beneath the surface of what we thought we knew about our society...or specifically what white men thought they knew about society. No topic – from abuse of police power to campaign finance reform – has been without vocal opposition from both sides of the issue.Yet one topic seems especially inflammatory, as it's been both helped and hindered by the very mechanism of the internet itself: sexism and sexual violence. Yes, Bill Cosby's victims were empowered by the medium and momentum to come forward and name their abuser. But dig deeper and a similar controversy sits quietly on the backburner as people refuse to name names and victims refuse to come forward, fearing public shaming and career endangerment.This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien speaks with Cracked columnist Adam Tod Brown and comedian Dani Fernandez about the unseen difficulties faced by women in the internet age, the powers that try to silence female voices both online and in the real world, and why these issues are magnified in the comedy community.Go download the Howl app or go to Howl.FM and use the promo code CRACKED for a free one month trial of Howl Premium!

Here's a potentially scary statistic: Of the 330 people freed by the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted prisoners, 10% of them actually admitted to committing the crime they were innocent of. They even estimate that as many as 5% of all prisoners in America are innocent. That may seem like a low percentage, but that's tens or hundreds of thousands of people in jail right now who committed no crime.In the age of DNA testing, facial recognition software and the deputization of every person with a smartphone camera and a YouTube account, it's actually barbaric the ease with which we send people to prison without really knowing for sure if they're guilty or just had bad lawyers. We like to think that by comparing the technologies we have now to the primitive science and guesswork of 100 years ago that we're actually really good at solving crimes and putting the real bad guys away, but that's not the case. DNA science isn't nearly as exact as we think it is, and the criminal justice system is built more for quickly shuffling suspects to prison than actually solving crimes.This week on the podcast Jack O'Brien is joined by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to discuss how far we've come as a species in the way we try to solve crimes, the areas we're still woefully bad at it, and how society's earliest mistakes still color the messed up way in which we view and prosecute right versus wrong.

Here's a potentially scary statistic: Of the 330 people freed by the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted prisoners, 10% of them actually admitted to committing the crime they were innocent of. They even estimate that as many as 5% of all prisoners in America are innocent. That may seem like a low percentage, but that's tens or hundreds of thousands of people in jail right now who committed no crime.In the age of DNA testing, facial recognition software and the deputization of every person with a smartphone camera and a YouTube account, it's actually barbaric the ease with which we send people to prison without really knowing for sure if they're guilty or just had bad lawyers. We like to think that by comparing the technologies we have now to the primitive science and guesswork of 100 years ago that we're actually really good at solving crimes and putting the real bad guys away, but that's not the case. DNA science isn't nearly as exact as we think it is, and the criminal justice system is built more for quickly shuffling suspects to prison than actually solving crimes.This week on the podcast Jack O'Brien is joined by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to discuss how far we've come as a species in the way we try to solve crimes, the areas we're still woefully bad at it, and how society's earliest mistakes still color the messed up way in which we view and prosecute right versus wrong.

If you turn on the TV or scroll through Facebook for any short period of time, it seems like we're consumed with fear. There's always a new airborne virus or a new piece of legislature destined to sink the country into Purge-like anarchy, not to mention the sharks, snakes and spiders that have been trying to kill us for millennia.It's easy to place the blame on media in the 21st century, but fear mongering is no recent addition to the human experience. You can go back through history and trace all sorts of fears through the written word. Where now our movies depict zombies, alien invasions and nuclear wars, medieval literature spoke of demons, hellfire and apocalypse scenarios more fitting to the times.This week Jack O'Brien is joined by Kristi Harrison and Michael Swaim to tackle everything related to how we experience fear in the 21st century: what fears we can blame on evolution and what fears we can blame on society, whether it's true to say we're more afraid now than ever before and what our most common fears say about us as a species.

If you turn on the TV or scroll through Facebook for any short period of time, it seems like we're consumed with fear. There's always a new airborne virus or a new piece of legislature destined to sink the country into Purge-like anarchy, not to mention the sharks, snakes and spiders that have been trying to kill us for millennia.It's easy to place the blame on media in the 21st century, but fear mongering is no recent addition to the human experience. You can go back through history and trace all sorts of fears through the written word. Where now our movies depict zombies, alien invasions and nuclear wars, medieval literature spoke of demons, hellfire and apocalypse scenarios more fitting to the times.This week Jack O'Brien is joined by Kristi Harrison and Michael Swaim to tackle everything related to how we experience fear in the 21st century: what fears we can blame on evolution and what fears we can blame on society, whether it's true to say we're more afraid now than ever before and what our most common fears say about us as a species.

Think about every time a movie villain asks the hero something like, "you and what army?" You know what happens next: a door opens, a roof explodes, or the camera pushes out the window to show, you guessed it, our hero's army. Maybe it's the rest of the Avengers, maybe an actual army, or maybe just our hero's muscle.It's a clever reveal in the moment, but think about it realistically. Does that mean if Tony Stark is chatting with Loki and that moment is about to happen, are the rest of the Avengers just hiding in a lobby somewhere waiting for their cue? Maybe they're in a broom closet, ears pressed to the door. What if no one asks, "you and what army?" Is there a contingency plan for dramatically revealing yourself?Every movie is full of logic gaps like these where, for the sake of time or dramatic tension or comedy, the audience is spared the mundane or absurd reality of a situation. This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Tom Reimann to discuss 6 observational pet peeves that will change how you watch all movies.

Think about every time a movie villain asks the hero something like, "you and what army?" You know what happens next: a door opens, a roof explodes, or the camera pushes out the window to show, you guessed it, our hero's army. Maybe it's the rest of the Avengers, maybe an actual army, or maybe just our hero's muscle.It's a clever reveal in the moment, but think about it realistically. Does that mean if Tony Stark is chatting with Loki and that moment is about to happen, are the rest of the Avengers just hiding in a lobby somewhere waiting for their cue? Maybe they're in a broom closet, ears pressed to the door. What if no one asks, "you and what army?" Is there a contingency plan for dramatically revealing yourself?Every movie is full of logic gaps like these where, for the sake of time or dramatic tension or comedy, the audience is spared the mundane or absurd reality of a situation. This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Tom Reimann to discuss 6 observational pet peeves that will change how you watch all movies.

A frequent topic on this podcast is the way all movies follow the same structure and how our brains are trained to look for these common rules. Whether it's Die Hard  or Star Wars or The Godfather, all movies follow the same relatively specific beats. If they don't, we usually end up feeling short shrifted or confused. That's why a filmmaker like Terrence Malick can be so frustrating to audiences.But how does this apply to TV, a medium where outside of the half-hour or hour-long time  constraints, a premise could conceivably last for tens or hundreds of hours? How do you maintain and break expectations in a world where the Simpsons need to face a new conflict every week for 30 years? Rules, that's how!This week on the podcast, special guest host Dan O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt to discuss the secret rulebooks that kept the Looney Toons and Community afloat, and how applying strict guidelines to TV shows both maintains their continuity and keeps them watchable.

A frequent topic on this podcast is the way all movies follow the same structure and how our brains are trained to look for these common rules. Whether it's Die Hard  or Star Wars or The Godfather, all movies follow the same relatively specific beats. If they don't, we usually end up feeling short shrifted or confused. That's why a filmmaker like Terrence Malick can be so frustrating to audiences.But how does this apply to TV, a medium where outside of the half-hour or hour-long time  constraints, a premise could conceivably last for tens or hundreds of hours? How do you maintain and break expectations in a world where the Simpsons need to face a new conflict every week for 30 years? Rules, that's how!This week on the podcast, special guest host Dan O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt to discuss the secret rulebooks that kept the Looney Toons and Community afloat, and how applying strict guidelines to TV shows both maintains their continuity and keeps them watchable.

The recent tragedy in Charleston, SC sparked, among other things, another flurry of debate in what appears to be our new twisted national pastime: arguing about guns. We'll hear in the media proposed solutions to the problem of gun violence in America, and we'll also hear the realities of why they wont work. We'll hear about magazine restrictions and closing the gun show loophole, but we'll also hear about how gun ownership is a tradition and a hobby across America that would be as easy to prohibit tomorrow as it would be to prohibit driving a car or owning a boat.The gun debate is a nuanced, complex issue with elaborate roots that stretch back generations. This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to discuss both sides of the gun debate, the statistics about gun violence that you almost never hear, how the debate is painted by race, how gun ownership is more deeply rooted in a person's identity than we think, and how trying to predict the next mass shooter will always be impossible.