The Cracked Podcast

We've all heard about the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, and weeks later that results in a hurricane somewhere else. But that doesn't actually happen, right?We can't prove that a butterfly can affect the weather, but we certainly can tell you that the weather affects us in huge ways. It's been proven that sunny weather yields a good day for the stock market, and that a rainy election day typically results in a Republican win. So maybe that imaginary butterfly has a bigger grasp on our lives than we think.This week on the podcast, Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by Michael Swaim and Dan O'Brien to discuss some examples of this very phenomenon and show how the tiniest of mistakes can change the course of history.

Here's the easiest experiment in the world. Go to YouTube. Click on ANY video. Scroll to the comments. How long did it take you to find a comment that was the most horrible and vile combination of words you've ever seen? If it took longer than 2 seconds, you really weren't trying hard enough.Internet commenters! Trolls! Gross men's rights groups! Your weird aunt on Facebook who doesn't think the moon landing happened! You don't know a single one of these people in real life (other than your aunt) but they seem to make up 75% of the population whenever you go onto the internet. How does that happen? What has made the internet, the ultimate technology to make speech truly free, into this school-yard full of bullies and uninformed people shouting into empty rooms?This week on the podcast, Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Tom Reimann to try and answer these questions. They theorize on why the loudest people on the internet are so over-represented, and how the un-moderated nature of the internet and social media might be limiting free speech more than we even realize.

Here's the easiest experiment in the world. Go to YouTube. Click on ANY video. Scroll to the comments. How long did it take you to find a comment that was the most horrible and vile combination of words you've ever seen? If it took longer than 2 seconds, you really weren't trying hard enough.Internet commenters! Trolls! Gross men's rights groups! Your weird aunt on Facebook who doesn't think the moon landing happened! You don't know a single one of these people in real life (other than your aunt) but they seem to make up 75% of the population whenever you go onto the internet. How does that happen? What has made the internet, the ultimate technology to make speech truly free, into this school-yard full of bullies and uninformed people shouting into empty rooms?This week on the podcast, Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Tom Reimann to try and answer these questions. They theorize on why the loudest people on the internet are so over-represented, and how the un-moderated nature of the internet and social media might be limiting free speech more than we even realize.

In the last two weeks, the internet was blessed with new trailers for both 'Ant-Man' and 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'. Frames were analyzed, Hulks were busted, and lids were flipped. For millions of people, no international tragedies or disasters could compare with the latest news from Marvel's explosion-dense Verse. And we're not even getting into the shrieking excitement that already surrounds the latest Star Wars movie.As crazy as it seems, reports indicate that there are perhaps hundreds of movies coming out this year that don't feature Stan Lee cameos or Jedi. Perhaps this year's 'Edge of Tomorrow' is hiding somewhere and we can't see it through the fog of discussion surrounding hilted lightsabers. The big blockbusters of the year have a way of drowning out everything else, but that doesn't mean there aren't filmmakers doing some seriously cool things in 2015.This week, Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by Alisha Grauso from Moviepilot.com, Drew McWeeny from HitFix.com, and Scott Mendelson from Forbes.com to discuss some of the box office and filmmaking trends that we're moving towards in 2015. They'll cover the year's most anticipated movies that AREN'T sequels or comic book movies, and that don't involve so much as a single dinosaur. Crazy, we know.

In the last two weeks, the internet was blessed with new trailers for both 'Ant-Man' and 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'. Frames were analyzed, Hulks were busted, and lids were flipped. For millions of people, no international tragedies or disasters could compare with the latest news from Marvel's explosion-dense Verse. And we're not even getting into the shrieking excitement that already surrounds the latest Star Wars movie.As crazy as it seems, reports indicate that there are perhaps hundreds of movies coming out this year that don't feature Stan Lee cameos or Jedi. Perhaps this year's 'Edge of Tomorrow' is hiding somewhere and we can't see it through the fog of discussion surrounding hilted lightsabers. The big blockbusters of the year have a way of drowning out everything else, but that doesn't mean there aren't filmmakers doing some seriously cool things in 2015.This week, Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by Alisha Grauso from Moviepilot.com, Drew McWeeny from HitFix.com, and Scott Mendelson from Forbes.com to discuss some of the box office and filmmaking trends that we're moving towards in 2015. They'll cover the year's most anticipated movies that AREN'T sequels or comic book movies, and that don't involve so much as a single dinosaur. Crazy, we know.

Last year, Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' took advantage of some of the most up-to-date quantum theory we've got, and wove in a story about space travel, time, and relativity. While that movie went out of its way to include actual science, others just happen upon quantum theory accidentally. Take 'The Empire Strikes Back'-- Luke trains with Yoda for what seems like months in the entire time it takes Han to get through one warp-speed chase. Some might call it a plot hole, but actually could the better explanation be that Luke and Yoda were on a planet that experienced time differently?This week on the podcast, Cracked editors Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, and Soren Bowie explain in layman's terms some of the basic paradoxes and thought experiments that have come to define quantum theory, and then apply quantum physics to popular movie plot holes.

Last year, Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' took advantage of some of the most up-to-date quantum theory we've got, and wove in a story about space travel, time, and relativity. While that movie went out of its way to include actual science, others just happen upon quantum theory accidentally. Take 'The Empire Strikes Back'-- Luke trains with Yoda for what seems like months in the entire time it takes Han to get through one warp-speed chase. Some might call it a plot hole, but actually could the better explanation be that Luke and Yoda were on a planet that experienced time differently?This week on the podcast, Cracked editors Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, and Soren Bowie explain in layman's terms some of the basic paradoxes and thought experiments that have come to define quantum theory, and then apply quantum physics to popular movie plot holes.

If you had to guess what the average Death Star employee was like, and you could only watch the 'Star Wars' movies, you'd assume it was filled with only two types of people: stormtroopers, and old British men in small hats. Where are the engineers, the janitors, the scientists, the cooks, and the thousands of other people required to maintain a station the size of a moon? And if these people exist, they surely must be paid well considering the risk of going to a workplace so frequently destroyed by rebels.Countless evil organizations from LexCorp to Cobra to the Foot Clan must secretly be great employers to attract a never-ending supply of employees ready to do their bidding.On this week's live podcast from the Comikaze Expo, the cast and writers of After Hours (Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, Soren Bowie, Dan O'Brien, Katie Willert, and Cody Johnston) brainstorm and take audience suggestions for an upcoming episode of the show. The subject: great and/or terrible fictional workplaces.

If you had to guess what the average Death Star employee was like, and you could only watch the 'Star Wars' movies, you'd assume it was filled with only two types of people: stormtroopers, and old British men in small hats. Where are the engineers, the janitors, the scientists, the cooks, and the thousands of other people required to maintain a station the size of a moon? And if these people exist, they surely must be paid well considering the risk of going to a workplace so frequently destroyed by rebels.Countless evil organizations from LexCorp to Cobra to the Foot Clan must secretly be great employers to attract a never-ending supply of employees ready to do their bidding.On this week's live podcast from the Comikaze Expo, the cast and writers of After Hours (Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, Soren Bowie, Dan O'Brien, Katie Willert, and Cody Johnston) brainstorm and take audience suggestions for an upcoming episode of the show. The subject: great and/or terrible fictional workplaces.

The end of the year brings two things: unrealistic resolutions sobbed out through mouthfuls of pie, and top ten lists from every site on the Internet. You can't reach January 1st without learning every hack writer's opinion of the best movies, albums, and TV shows from the last 12 months. Experiment time: Google a list of the top 10 films from 2004. You either wont recognize half of movies, or you'll find yourself wondering what drugs the writer was on to include "Mr. 3000" and leave out "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."We are terrible at perspective. Things like the Ebola scare or the Sony hack seem nightmarish in their moment, but they fade to the back of our minds as soon as the next awful thing comes about. The fact that next year's Exploding Testicle Flu and Bill Murray email hack will both be much more shocking won't stop either of these from making it into the top ten most important stories this year. If there's one thing new media excels at, it's turning molehills into goddamn Matterhorns.