The Cracked Podcast

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.

Last year, of the ten highest grossing films at the American box office, nine were adaptations of one of the following: a Marvel property, a Disney property, a line of toys or a fantasy novel. You could easily guess what movies these were – your X-Men, your Hobbits, your Legos and Transformers – but what was that one outlier, that one movie that didn't fit the mold of mass-produced comic book movies or animated films? That movie was in fact the highest grossing film  of last year, and it was an adaptation itself, 'American Sniper.'As you would assume, 'American Sniper' wasn't the runaway hit overseas as it was in the States, but neither were the rest of the films from the American top 10. Every major foreign market only featured a small handful of American blockbusters in their top 10. The rest of the spots in each country went to smaller adult comedies and dramas, the types of movies we almost never see atop our box office. Why is that, and where are those movies in America? It feels like we're told in the US that the reason we only have blockbuster movies here is because the rest of the world craves big, American spectacle. Then why does it feel like our main exports are comic book movies that half of the world doesn't even really want to see?This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors David Bell and Josh Sargent to discuss the seeming disparity between the size and the quality of modern-day blockbusters, their effectiveness internationally, and how the process of developing movies has changed over the last hundred years.Go to   parachutehome.com/cracked  and Parachute will give you $25 off on your first order with promo code cracked.

Last year, of the ten highest grossing films at the American box office, nine were adaptations of one of the following: a Marvel property, a Disney property, a line of toys or a fantasy novel. You could easily guess what movies these were – your X-Men, your Hobbits, your Legos and Transformers – but what was that one outlier, that one movie that didn't fit the mold of mass-produced comic book movies or animated films? That movie was in fact the highest grossing film  of last year, and it was an adaptation itself, 'American Sniper.'As you would assume, 'American Sniper' wasn't the runaway hit overseas as it was in the States, but neither were the rest of the films from the American top 10. Every major foreign market only featured a small handful of American blockbusters in their top 10. The rest of the spots in each country went to smaller adult comedies and dramas, the types of movies we almost never see atop our box office. Why is that, and where are those movies in America? It feels like we're told in the US that the reason we only have blockbuster movies here is because the rest of the world craves big, American spectacle. Then why does it feel like our main exports are comic book movies that half of the world doesn't even really want to see?This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors David Bell and Josh Sargent to discuss the seeming disparity between the size and the quality of modern-day blockbusters, their effectiveness internationally, and how the process of developing movies has changed over the last hundred years.Go to   parachutehome.com/cracked  and Parachute will give you $25 off on your first order with promo code cracked.

Why is it that if you hear a pop song like "I Kissed A Girl" more than two or three times, you feel like you're going insane, but when you play an old video game you can listen to the music for hours? Some of the song loops from Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog are only around a minute long, yet they never annoy or distract as you try to finish a level. The brain does weird things in response to repetition. As you'll hear in the episode, a UCSD professor found that if you hear a repeating loop of almost any series of spoken words, your mind will begin to hear that input as music.This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Dan O'Brien and Alex Schmidt to discuss how the human mind seeks out repetition, turns that repetition into music, and how video games have turned this science into an unsung art form.Go to   parachutehome.com/cracked  and Parachute will give you $25 off on your first order with promo code cracked.

Why is it that if you hear a pop song like "I Kissed A Girl" more than two or three times, you feel like you're going insane, but when you play an old video game you can listen to the music for hours? Some of the song loops from Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog are only around a minute long, yet they never annoy or distract as you try to finish a level. The brain does weird things in response to repetition. As you'll hear in the episode, a UCSD professor found that if you hear a repeating loop of almost any series of spoken words, your mind will begin to hear that input as music.This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Dan O'Brien and Alex Schmidt to discuss how the human mind seeks out repetition, turns that repetition into music, and how video games have turned this science into an unsung art form.Go to   parachutehome.com/cracked  and Parachute will give you $25 off on your first order with promo code cracked.

Source material aside, did you find yourself watching 'Daredevil' on Netflix and thinking: Matt Murdock is a very capable blind man in New York, why does he need the cane, the sunglasses, and the wide-eyed stare? He walks the streets with ease and beats up thugs with horrifying proficiency, why the need for the standard film and television signifiers that yes, he is indeed a blind man?Can't characters be blind, be handicapped, be gay, be Jamaican, be anything other than straight white American men without writers or directors or costume designers slapping the easiest, most stereotypical labels on them?This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to talk about the pitfalls of this cinematic shorthand, how certain movie stereotypes unknowingly misrepresent the people they try to epitomize, and why even "a good stereotype," is still wildly reductive of an entire population of people.

Source material aside, did you find yourself watching 'Daredevil' on Netflix and thinking: Matt Murdock is a very capable blind man in New York, why does he need the cane, the sunglasses, and the wide-eyed stare? He walks the streets with ease and beats up thugs with horrifying proficiency, why the need for the standard film and television signifiers that yes, he is indeed a blind man?Can't characters be blind, be handicapped, be gay, be Jamaican, be anything other than straight white American men without writers or directors or costume designers slapping the easiest, most stereotypical labels on them?This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to talk about the pitfalls of this cinematic shorthand, how certain movie stereotypes unknowingly misrepresent the people they try to epitomize, and why even "a good stereotype," is still wildly reductive of an entire population of people.

In his new column going up tomorrow, David Wong uses the hilariously outdated Billy Joel song 'We Didn't Start The Fire' to illustrate a confounding problem with dominant white and western culture. The song chronologically lists everything that's gone wrong in the world from 1949 to 1989 in between choruses of "We didn't start the fire," meaning, "Hey, it's not my fault that the world is so fucked up."It's a common and understandable knee-jerk reaction for people in the 21st century to think that just because they were born in the 1980s, or that their grandparents didn't come to America until the 20th century, that they're not responsible for something like slavery. Yes, it's true that you're not individually to blame for slavery, but you still may reap countless invisible benefits from being a white male in the 21st century that you just don't get if you're African-American, or from a poor family, or a woman. There's an endless context to complicated social matters that doesn't just begin or end with, "I didn't start the fire."That was just one example of the ways in which many people are blind to the historical context in which we live–that every moment in the present is either consciously or subconsciously tied to the entire history of our species. This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by David Wong (aka Jason Pargin) and Josh Sargent to discuss these historical blindspots and how they're being slowly eroded by the human progress of the last two centuries.

In his new column going up tomorrow, David Wong uses the hilariously outdated Billy Joel song 'We Didn't Start The Fire' to illustrate a confounding problem with dominant white and western culture. The song chronologically lists everything that's gone wrong in the world from 1949 to 1989 in between choruses of "We didn't start the fire," meaning, "Hey, it's not my fault that the world is so fucked up."It's a common and understandable knee-jerk reaction for people in the 21st century to think that just because they were born in the 1980s, or that their grandparents didn't come to America until the 20th century, that they're not responsible for something like slavery. Yes, it's true that you're not individually to blame for slavery, but you still may reap countless invisible benefits from being a white male in the 21st century that you just don't get if you're African-American, or from a poor family, or a woman. There's an endless context to complicated social matters that doesn't just begin or end with, "I didn't start the fire."That was just one example of the ways in which many people are blind to the historical context in which we live–that every moment in the present is either consciously or subconsciously tied to the entire history of our species. This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by David Wong (aka Jason Pargin) and Josh Sargent to discuss these historical blindspots and how they're being slowly eroded by the human progress of the last two centuries.

In 1848, on the eve of the California Gold Rush, there were less than 1000 white settlers living in the California territory. Within the next 2 years, that number would jump up to 100,000, making it the largest mass-migration in US history. In the early 1920s, the film industry would create a 2nd and more lasting population boom in California, as throngs of hopefuls moved cross-country to become rich and famous movie stars. By 1962, California was the most populous state in the union.The state now balances on a curious precipice. California produces a majority of the country's fruits, vegetables and nuts, yet is in the midst of a drought that's turning one region into a poisonous dust-bowl. The libertarian pot-farmers of the north use 8% of the state's electricity, yet are trying to secede and form their own state. San Francisco has been entirely taken over by the tech industry's wealthy and the city's tradition of taking care of its lowest class is falling by the wayside. Los Angeles has been a smog-riddled nightmare from the fever-dreams of John Carpenter ever since the auto industry deliberately razed the public transportation system. And an Austrian-sounding robot sent from the future to destroy humanity served as governor for 8 years.This week, we give Florida a break and take a look at the dark history of the Golden State. Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Dan O'Brien and Robert Evans as they discuss the state's unexpectedly high murder rate, its burgeoning marijuana industry, and why, since 1848, it's seduced millions into thinking they can get rich quick.