Transcript

TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

From Stuff You Should Know · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 45 min · 8,474 words · 173 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW", an episode of Stuff You Should Know published January 3, 2026 (45 min, about 8,474 words). It mentions 28 people, works and ideas, including Bulova, RCA, Fox, Al Michaels, ESPN.

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on significant television moments that have profoundly influenced culture and society, arguing that TV has shaped modern culture even more than the internet. The hosts invite listeners on a journey to explore these pivotal moments, suggesting that understanding their impact could reshape perceptions of television's role in contemporary life.

Key takeaways

  • Straddling years in a silver space suit: time travel is real—sort of, ask any podcaster.
  • TV beat the internet: Cultural MVP since 1939, according to two guys with mics.
  • World's Fair 1939: Where TV, NBC, and FDR's broadcast debut changed living rooms forever.
  • "Transparent TV" 1939: Proof RCA wasn't just selling furniture with glass.
  • Disney's Wonderful World: From 1961, brighter colors, same mouse magic. A rainbow in black & white times.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Flushing, New York
  2. – 10:00: Color television
  3. – 20:00: Connell Burn, J Fox Furriers
  4. – 25:00: Jessica H. Minty, Lutheran World Relief, Philip H. Brown, Save the Children
  5. – 35:00: Barbara Langley Productions, Color of Change, The Marshall Project
  6. – 40:00: Fetisoff, Fox Nation, Herb Brooks, Kurt Russell
  7. – 45:00: Al Michaels
  8. – 45:17: Apple Podcast

Notable quotes from "TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

  • In earnest. There was a day that this happened. It was April 30th, 1939 in Flushing, New York on Long Island.
    about Flushing, New York · at
  • Changes. But the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself really got behind and was Hey, I want to be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses,.
    about Color television · at
  • A furrier. Man, it seems like it would have been from like 1830, but it was a furrier in Boston called J Fox Furriers who sponsored the CBS orchestra. it was a program called…
    about J Fox Furriers · at
  • Aren't familiar with our cannon, in the old days of Stuff You Should Know, our boss, Connell Burn, who, who commissioned the whole show to begin with and changed our lives.
    about Connell Burn · at
  • Study on this. is called media coverage and charitable giving after the 2004 tsunami. It was by Philip H. Brown and Jessica H. Minty.
    about Philip H. Brown · at
  • Would turn out to be small beans in the long run, but over three days, that's quite a haul. Save the Children got more than $6 million in 4 days. the Lutheran World Relief…
    about Save the Children · at
  • I thought this was a reality show. And the cops producers, Barbara Langley Productions were Well, it's realityish. like it's not the actual portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of.
    about Barbara Langley Productions · at
  • And the reason why is because the commentator who is calling the hockey game, Al Michaels, who, as far as I know, had only called one hockey game previously at the Saporro…
    about Al Michaels · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Al Michaels — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Connell Burn — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Philip H. Brown — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Jessica H. Minty — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Coverage and charitable giving after the 2004 tsunami. It was by Philip H. Brown and Jessica H. Minty.
  • Fetisoff — Person · 1 mention · first at
    You had a US hockey team and first of all the Soviets hockey team I believe there was a player Fetisoff who said later on that was probably the best team that the Soviet Union…
  • Herb Brooks — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. And a lot of the credit goes to the coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach, Kurt Russell.
  • Kurt Russell — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Herb Brooks, who was the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach, Kurt Russell.

Companies & orgs

  • Bulova — Company · 6 mentions
  • RCA — Company · 5 mentions
  • Fox — Company · 4 mentions
  • ESPN — Company · 2 mentions
  • J Fox Furriers — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Save the Children — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Lutheran World Relief — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Quite a haul. Save the Children got more than $6 million in 4 days. the Lutheran World Relief raised more money in a week than it does in a year. And the AP found that 30% of American families donated in the first two weeks.
  • Barbara Langley Productions — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • The Marshall Project — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And I guess we have some stats from the Marshall Project. they did a analysis in 1994. most of the officers on balance were white, suspects were more likely to be black or Hispanic, as far as the.
  • Color of Change — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Okay. We'll cancel the show. We've made our money over 25 seasons and thanks to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it and that was the end of Cops Forever, right? No, no, no.
  • Spike TV — Company · 1 mention · first at
    It was picked up by Spike TV. they ran it until 2020. Then after 2020 with all the, sort of light shined on police brutality, they said, maybe it's just not so good to run.
  • Fox Nation — Company · 1 mention · first at
    But Fox Nation stepped up and brought it back in 21 and it is still going in its 37th season. the other thing it did was sort of create the idea of the Florida man. because they started.
  • Apple Podcast — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iMheart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
  • Catholic Relief Services — Company · 1 mention
  • CBS — Company · 1 mention
  • iHeartMedia — Company · 1 mention
  • The Associated Press — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is the first episode of the 226. It

I thought there was already another episode out. Yes, this is the first one. Chuck, I think this comes out on 11.

Really? 26? Oh, okay. Pretty sure. Yeah. I thought we had already crept into uh 26, but that's no matter because it's still 25 for us.

Yeah, there's some weird time stuff that's going on. We're essentially straddling two years right now. And uh I'm wearing a silver spaceuit because of that. Uh, all that to say, if we're a little loose, it's because this is our last recording sesh of the year.

And so, we're closing this out or opening up the next year with uh a good oldfashioned top 10 that's not a 10 like just like the old days.

That's right. We're we're finishing up 2025 and stuff you should know fashion, right?

Yeah. Just like we did in probably 2010. Yeah. Probably. Uh, Chuck, if you'll allow me to begin.

Oh, boy. It's just a classic old school opening. Chuck, do you have a TV? Have you ever seen TV?

I knew it was coming. Uh, yes. Uh, it was either that or Webster defines TV. Right. Right.

One of the two. Um, I've I've seen TV, too. Not only have I seen ATV, I've watched what's broadcast on TV as well, multiple times throughout my life.

Same. It's funny, we chose this um moments that changed the world. TV moments that changed the world. And as you're kind of researching this, you realize like for better or worse, man, TV is it like it made modern culture more than anything else, I think, in the entire world. I would I would argue more than the internet.

Interesting. Yeah, I'm just going to say it. All right, I'm not going to argue. I'm not in an arguing mood.

Well, people who disagree, just follow us on this journey into TV moments that changed the world and maybe your your opinion will be changed. Either way, I don't fault you.

All right, great. So, let's start at the beginning when like the day that TV really kicked off in earnest. There was a day that this happened. It was April 30th, 1939 in Flushing, New York on Long Island. And if you are familiar with that date in that area, you may know that this was the 1939 World's Fair. And this is where TV got its start, where it was really kind of unveiled to the public at large.

That's right. Not the 1940 World's Fair, howstuffworks.com, because there was not one.

No. Uh, yeah. So, you know, TV had been around for a bit. Um, but it wasn't super widespread at this point. I feel like we talked about this a lot lately for some reason.

Yes. Uh, stuff is just really clicking these days. I'm not I'm not sure why it really is. Uh, but they had broadcast limitations. They could only broadcast, you know, for a limited number of miles, like out a limited number of miles.

Mhm. Um, but by the time that World's Fair came along, they were like, "Hey, this is a chance to make a really big splash." uh the RCA uh corporation, the radio corporation of America, which also then led the way in TVs.

They were putting out some pretty good televisions at the point, but they were luxury items. Uh and again, they didn't have like the most regular broadcasting going on, but they knew that this World's Fair was a chance to make a super big splash,

right? So, yeah, this is where they were going to start selling TVs to the public. The problem is you can have all the TVs in the world, but if you don't have anything to watch on it,

Good point. What What are you going to do? nothing. You're going to sit there like a jackass and look at a a blank TV. So, luckily RCA thought of this and they founded NBC, the National Broadcasting Company to start broadcasting stuff. So, they brought the whole thing together, the broadcasting and the TVs themselves. and they debuted it um on April 30th, 1939 when they I think created the world's first live television broadcast of Franklin Roosevelt um kicking off the 1939 World's Fair.

That's right. Uh and we did mention this one in another episode, but he was, you know, sort of the the first president daddy of TV, granddaddy of TV. Mhm.

And like you said, he opened it up there and, you know, NBC had gotten there and they had their, you know, you know, now antiquated uh TV technology all lined up. It was just pretty whisbang at the time.

Sure. And they sent signals through these mobile broadcasting trucks, which I mean, it's pretty amazing that in the 1930s they had the technology to even accomplish that,

right? Uh so it was pretty impressive still uh to this day and broadcast that signal out to about 2,000 viewers which seemed like a big number at the time I imagine.

I'm still impressed with news fans. Oh yeah, sure. Of the time which is our time.

I'm impressed with news fans of today. That's what I mean. Oh okay. I didn't get it across very well.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, one thing I saw, I was looking up pictures of this 1939 World's Fair, the RCA pavilion. Apparently, they built one of their televisions with in transparent, I guess, glass or something like that, maybe plastic. Um, so you could see the internal working part so that people wouldn't think it was just some sort of trick.

Oh, wow. Interesting. That's how new it was. Yeah. Uh, oddly, since we're recording our Christmas episode, I feel like this pause before the next one is gonna include like jingle bells and things,

right? But it's not going to. We're just simply moving on to another one, which is Disney's Wonderful World of Color.

Uh, I'm sure you, like I grew up watching, um, I guess by the time we were watching it in the 70s or me in the 70s and you likely in the 80s, it was called The Wonderful World of Disney. I watched Walt Disney Presents, I think, is what it was for me.

Oh, okay. So, I guess uh yeah, since I'm only a year older than you. I was watching The Wonderful World of Disney cuz this show had some title changes. But the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because uh of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself really got behind and was like, "Hey, I want to be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses,

right?" Because just like how you could have TVs but nothing to broadcast, you could have color TVs and if you weren't broadcasting in color, what's the point? And again, this was an issue for RCA and by then, of course, they had NBC and NBC was rolling pretty well. Yeah. But Walt Disney's anthology series had started years before and it was on ABC. ABC wasn't broadcasting in color. So Walt Disney personally held a meeting with NBC

and said, "We we want to do this." Apparently, he told he said that um he said, "Vellas, I want this deal. If necessary, I'll stand on my head in Macy's window."

Yeah. And and all the executives said, "Uh, you don't have to do that. It's a pretty good idea." So, why are you why are you being weird?

Yeah. But he was just that enthusiastic about the whole thing. But he personally went and pitched the idea to NBC. And the reason why again is NBC was the first network to broadcast in color. And so Walt Disney really kind of pushed this through because NBC would have broadcast in color either way, but Walt Disney wanted to do it in like high style.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, and this is a a TV show that launched in 1954 and ran for 34 seasons. Uh, obviously at first in black and white and like I mentioned earlier, you know, the name changes, I guess they had one, you know, between my birth and your birth.

Uh, because it was initially called Disney's Wonderful World and then Magical World of Disney.

Yeah. And then when The Color debuted, he was like, "We really want to be sort of obvious with this, so let's call it Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

Yeah. But we still haven't even said what this was. I mean, you mentioned anthology series. It was it was like a variety show. Uh essentially, they had cartoons and stuff. Uh I remember when I was a kid that the Davy Crockett uh TV show uh and it says in in this How Stuff Works article, it launched the Coonkin cap craze. And I I have a picture of little 5-year-old me with a with a musket and a leather vest and a skinin cap on my head. So, I was into that.

I had one, too, but I don't have a picture of it, so I can't prove it. I can probably dig that up and throw it up on the Instagram maybe to to align with this. So, I'll I'll try and find that.

You gota I got it. Um, so there were also like a lot of documentary programming, right? And you would think like, oh, okay, hard-hitting frontline documentaries. No, not at all. It meant that they would go and film stuff under various themes at Disneyland. They were essentially big ads for Disneyland. He used that big time. And I mean, they were well produced and interesting. Sure.

But they really went to that well quite a bit in every episode. Not in the first episode, though. instead the first episode and this is the moment that changed the world as far as color TV goes. It was on September 24th 1961. And uh it was the episode was two parts. And the first one was an adventure in color. And it it really was a bit of an adventure. Like it was a bunch of little segments that really kind of showed off what you can do with color TV and just must have knocked the socks off, knocked the skin caps off of all the little kids sitting at home.

That's right. Uh, and it also featured something called the Spectrum Song, which kind of explained what was going on cuz I guess they felt the need to explain color to people who had gone around their entire lives seeing real life in color. Uh, but I guess like you said, it was a pretty whisbang thing to see thing to see it on your TV for the first time.

So, they went to great lengths to probably overexlain that. Uh, and this is also when we got the debut of uh, Professor Ludvig von Drake. uh from the the Disney duck world.

Yeah, he was kind of an eccentric um inventor. His self-written bio bio was um he's an eminent psychologist, renowned color expert, etmologist, the most soughtafter lecturer in the world. Yeah, he is undoubtedly the outstanding genius of the century.

So, he was fairly egotistical, but he was also funny and he became beloved and this is where he came from. uh that first Adventure in Color half and then the second half was a theatrical release featuring Donald Duck because all of these uh like Disney cartoons that we just, you know, take for granted today, you used to have to go to the theater to see them, but when you went to the theater to see them, they were in color. You saw them on TV, they were in black and white. Now you could see them in color on TV without leaving the comfort of your home.

What was their deal with the ducks? Was that I mean I guess it's just like any other cartoon animal, but they really leaned into the ducks.

It was a great excuse to draw something without pants. Ah, okay, that makes sense. I I never got into any I was a little old for like ducttales and all that stuff.

That was a good show. So like Donald Duck was my only I guess exposure. My only duck exposure. His little feathered fanny. Oh, sorry. Sorry listeners in England. I know what that means there.

That's right. Yeah. Nice catch. Um, to be uh to be perfectly honest, I was a little old for DuctTales 2, but I still watched it.

Yeah. Well, you know, we all regress. Um, I never progressed, I think. Oh, come on.

So, uh, just like Disney probably promised RCA and NBC, like they started selling color TVs like hotcakes thanks to in large part the wonderful world of color. Disney's Wonderful World of Color to be exact.

That's right. And that feels like a great time for a break, huh? Yes, it does. All right, we'll be right back, everybody. All right. So, um, you might think that we're going in chronological order. We are not. We're going to go back in time a little bit from the debut of Color TV, but after the World's Fair in 1939,

two years after, um, and we're going to go to, you know, I never found out what network this was on. Did you?

No. Uh, silly. Let's just call it ESPN. Okay. So, on ESPN uh in 1941 on July 1st, this is a moment that changed the world. Some people who are watching the Brooklyn Dodgers uh at the Philly at the Philadelphia Phillies, um essentially saw the first television ad ever.

Yeah. Uh it was either nine or 10 seconds long. It depends on the source that you site, but it was pretty short. And all it was, and I know we've talked about this before because I have seen this before and I can't think of any other reason why I would have,

right? But it is a scene of a bull of a clock face uh just sort of superimposed over a map of the United States and it's had the phrase over over the top of it like a Chiron, the world runs on Bull Time.

Mhm. And about 4,000 people saw this ad and I imagine they were like, what the heck is this? Why am I Why am I hearing about Bulliva?

And why do I suddenly feel like buying a Boliv watch? Yeah, probably. What's super quaint and sweet is that um the ad cost Bulla $9. The whole thing.

Even for the time, that's crazy. Yeah. Even at the time, that's $195 today. So, that was quite a sweet deal.

Sure. Um and the the what it did was show like this is a we can do this. We can advertise to people. And it's not to say that there were just no ads on TV before the Bulliva ad, but they just followed a completely different format. So much so that the Bulla ad is pretty safely considered among historians as the first actual TV commercial.

Yeah. And that's for a couple of reasons. Um, you did mention some other uh ads, but before that it was like, you know, this program is sponsored by whatever. And that was just the ad. It was an actual TV commercial in between uh content. Uh the first ad, I guess, if you count that stuff was in 1930.

Mhm. The year TV debuted really. And it was a a furrier. Man, it seems like it would have been from like 1830, but it was a furrier in Boston called J Fox Furriers who sponsored the CBS orchestra. Uh it was a program called the Fox Trapper. So that, you know, that's kind of how ads went up until 41.

Yeah. And that was the radio format. It was essentially they just took the format that had been pioneered on radio and now they were doing it on TV. That's not really an ad. If you call that an ad, you're just being contrarian, right?

Sure. There were still even other ads, but they were illegal because it wasn't until 1941 that the FCC started issuing licenses to run commercials on on broadcast networks. But that means that the ads before them were illegal. I I could not find any mention of what these ads were for, but I got the impression that they were just experimentation networks kind of on the sly figuring out how to do it as they went along. So again, Boliva is the first actual TV commercial that was legal and that was also produced with the intent, the sole intent to sell a particular product on air. That was it. That space of air was filled up by an ad. That was the first time ever.

That's right. Uh, and I don't know if we mentioned this before, but for those who aren't familiar with our cannon, uh, in the old days of Stuff You Should Know, our boss, uh, Connell Burn, who, um, who commissioned the the whole show to begin with and changed our lives.

Thank you, Connell. Uh, he came up to us at one point after we had been doing it a while and said, "Hey, uh, people are running ads on podcasts now and we need to get into this." And we were like, "No way, no how. We're not going to foul up our show by selling it." And then eventually he said, "Well, you know, if we can sell this thing, it'll make the company money." And on down the road, maybe this just becomes your job. I don't know if he said that, but the writing was kind of on the wall

and maybe this can just become the only thing you do here and you won't be writing articles for housetopworks.com anymore. And we went, tell us more. Yeah, you you make a good case here.

Yeah. Hey, Chuck, we're real quick. Speaking of our cannon, so for all of you listeners out there, just a little behind the scenes peak. Oh, yeah.

We have like I think including short stuff in the neighborhood of 2,300 episodes. It doesn't really get it across when you say 2,300. We have a ton of episodes in our back catalog. And we like people write in all the time and they're like, "You should do this episode." We're like, "We did like seven years ago." And it's like a lot of people just have no idea the episodes we've done. So, we're trying to like figure out how to get it out there better.

Yeah, for sure. Uh that's the reason we mentioned this. We've been sort of uh putting our heads together at iHeart Media because like you said, a lot of people don't, you know, I think iTunes serves up about 300. But here's a little trick. If you're on your podcast player for for iTunes on your iPhone, if that's how you listen, um when you scroll down through like the first five episodes, there's a little button there that says see all 2000 plus episodes. And if you click on that, they're all there and you can scroll through. But, you know, a lot of people don't know that. Um a lot of other players don't, you know, who knows how many they display, but it's a frustration for us. And uh so it's just a gentle reminder that um there are literally thousands of these episodes out there.

Yeah, they're all also I think you said on the iHeart Radio app and stuff you should know.com has the vast repository and a pretty good search function.

And one of the ways we figured out like we could probably like we could probably do a lot better about mentioning episodes

like specifically when they come up in another episode like a new episode. But I feel like we're going to have to do a lot better than we normally do which is like Can we do some episode on something related to this?

Yeah, we got to figure it out. But we will cuz there's just a bunch of great episodes just sitting there waiting for people to discover.

That's right. And with that, we move on to Oh, wait. Yes. We have to do the Super Bowl comparison. You have to do it if you talk about the Bulliva ad.

Do we really? Yes. All right. You take it away then. I refuse to take part. So, if you write or talk about the Bulliva ad, it's basically incumbent upon you to compare that ad cost, the $9 cost to what it would have cost had they run it on a Super Bowl. And so, for the 2025 Super Bowl, if Boliv had run this, they would have paid $2.35 million for those 10 seconds.

Amazing. Quite a deal. That's right. There I just kept us from being sued. Uh, well, I don't even think we're even I think we're supposed to say the big game, aren't we?

It No, like we're supposed to not buy into that. Oh, okay. I gotcha. All right, moving on to the next one on the list. Uh, is the That was a good segue, too, because we can't talk about like our old episodes and then say also there was a devastating tsunami in 2004 in the Indian Ocean,

right? because that happened and we you know if you're of a actually you don't have to be much of a certain age but on December 26, 2004 there was an undersea earthquake uh about a 9.0 0 magnitude that um set off this incredible tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Um I mean we've done episodes on tsunamis and earthquakes and we've talked about all this before but

uh it was about 100 ft tall traveling at 500 m an hour, not much advanced warning and uh was one of the most devastating um tragedies in human history. It killed uh close to 230,000 people in 14 countries. Uh it also sparked the biggest uh rail disaster in history when it uh completely wiped out a train uh traveling along the coast of Sri Lanka.

Mhm. And we mention all this because uh the the only positive that came out of this was the media's reaction which sparked the incredible amount of uh philanthropy and aid and giving uh in its aftermath.

Yeah. Because the the I was reading a a study on this. is called um media coverage and charitable giving after the 2004 tsunami. It was by Philip H. Brown and Jessica H. Minty.

Yeah. And there they said like the media coverage was unprecedented. Like it didn't they the world didn't forget about it in like three days. Yeah.

It was 24-hour coverage of this disaster for weeks on end. Right. And because uh these these images were broadcast around the world and because it was so mind-bogglingly devastating, people just opened up their pockets.

I saw 99 different countries donated and 13 of those countries had never donated for a natural disaster relief before. It got to everybody.

Yeah. And there are I think about 195 countries in the world. Yeah. which it's kind of like do better other 96 countries.

Yeah, I I imagine the countries that didn't give have their own issues had their own issues going on, you know.

Well, now I feel bad. No, don't don't feel so bad. Uh but they have done studies. Um that 2006 study that you referenced, um they said that the Catholic relief charities uh got a million dollars in three days, which would turn out to be small beans in the long run, but over three days, that's quite a haul. uh Save the Children got more than $6 million in 4 days. Uh the Lutheran World Relief raised more money in a week than it does in a year. And the AP found that 30% of American families donated in the first two weeks.

And just from the United States, there was about 1.6 billion and estimates around the world were about 14 billion raised.

Yeah. And just to kind of go over the power of the the media, one thing I left out here is that that same study found that one extra minute of coverage on television equated to an increase in internet donations by 16 to 20%. So like this this the impact it's just essentially like a a classroom lesson. Yeah.

In the impact that media can have, the positive impact that media can have. And that's I mean that's that is definitely something to uh TV's credit.

Yeah. you want to move on to well move backward to Vietnam. Yeah. Again, we're jumping all over the timeline. Uh and we're in Vietnam right now because uh I guess we should talk a little bit about previetnam and as far as media coverage go because before that uh World War II and certainly the Korean War, uh what you got as far as media coverage was highly sort of uh curated and regulated government mediated film reels. uh you would get news updates, they would play in movie theaters. Uh by the time we got to Vietnam, they had, you know, like handheld cameras you could literally take to the front lines.

And it really changed the way war coverage went. And as a result, the way um the way people felt about the war because World War II, everyone was they were pretty rahrh and you got these raw films. So morale was big in America, you know, they were like, "Hey, this is this is great. We're fighting the the Nazis,

right?" Another huge factor was that by 1966 93% of American homes had a TV and just 13 to 16 years earlier in 1950 it was 9%. Yeah.

So TV was firmly established in the American psyche. You remember in in Wonder Years whenever they um sat down and had dinner they always had the TV on showing Vietnam coverage.

Yeah. That's what it was like. Yeah. For sure. And so the the fact that everybody had um TVs, the fact that now there was like cameras that you could easily allow a journalist to embed with um and the the idea that the government really shouldn't control propaganda um shouldn't control the news like that. um created this this atmosphere where the the broadcasters were willing to show like really heart-rending unflinching stories of what the the soldiers fighting for the United States were doing in Vietnam and what was being done to them and it really shaped America's view of that war.

Yeah. I mean, it it definitely um made the mood and the how we saw the war like pretty dower, but people, you know, going into Vietnam, there were a lot of people already like before even the coverage started that were like, "What are we doing in Vietnam again?"

It wasn't like World War II where the where the Nazis were trying to, you know, take over the world.

Uh and so, you know, this just made everything worse. Uh but, you know, worse in a positive way because it was showing the reality of things. It wasn't government controlled. Um I'm sure there were, you know, just countless meetings uh behind the scenes in the Oval Office where they were like, "We're getting crushed by the reality of this war and how it's being depicted in the media." I'm sure they were, you know, pretty upset about losing control of that narrative.

Yeah. No, they definitely were. And later on, um I think the Iraq war was another considered another television war. Certainly the um Gulf War, the first one was um but and and the government kind of learned from losing the control over the narrative in Vietnam, but they weren't able to regain control. Yeah. And so the the sentiment toward Vietnam and and the United States kept getting worse and worse and protests were um getting bigger and bigger. There was like a very um healthy anti-war movement. Um, and essentially because the public was was feeling this way, their public sentiment was that way toward Vietnam. And because if you turned on the news, the evening national news, you would see like terrible coverage that was not flattering at all to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. Yeah.

Elected officials basically had no choice but to listen to people. And it definitely led to the earlier probably an earlier withdrawal than the United States may have otherwise taken.

Yeah. and and you know change the way that it went moving forward because you know the writing was on the wall at that point for the for the US government. They're like we've we can't go back to World War II. As much as they wanted to kind of control that narrative,

the American people at that point would not have it moving forward. So it really kind of changed the whole relationship of how any kind of conflict is covered.

It did. So now they've struck a balance between allowing reporters to embed and just relying on those national news reporters to disseminate the propaganda because if you watch embedded coverage for the most part it is fairly

rahrrah. Even if it's not overtly rahrh because that the American public's a little more savvy than that it's still nothing like the coverage was of Vietnam from what I understand. Well, yeah. And just the way wars are fought now, there's not like a front line um like you had back then. So, I remember watching the Gulf War and it was just all those like, you know, black and white shots of bombing things from thousands of feet above, you know.

Yeah. And then the beginning of the Iraq war, remember it was shock and awe? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was like it was produced essentially for TV. The initial attack on Iraq.

That's so gross to I don't know. I'm not going to editorialize, but to to name something like that, like, hey, that sounds pretty pretty awesome,

you know. I think it was either Rumsfeld or Cheney who came up with that, and I'm not surprised either way,

for sure. Uh, should we take another break? Oh gosh, I wasn't expecting that. Sure.

All right, we'll take another break and finish up with a couple of more uh moments that change TV history right after this. Uh, all right. We're going to move on to another show, but uh we should mention that the original House of Works article included um of course the moon landing, which was a huge TV event, but we covered all of that in which episode?

We have an episode on that. It's called How Going to the Moon Works from 2019. And it was a really interesting episode that really covered in depth the lunar landing.

That's right. Part of the 2300 episodes plus. That's right. But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about a TV show that we've talked about here and there before uh called Cops. Uh because Cops is, and I know I mentioned this in that other episode, whatever it was, it was a show that I used to watch, um with more regularity than I like to admit now. Uh

I think everyone watched it a lot. Well, it was never, and I'm not excusing it, but it was never like appointment TV. In fact, I don't even know when it came on. This was just in my younger channel surfing days where it was like you're surfing around, cops was on. I would watch cops and I was never like, "Yeah, yeah, go go go." But, you know, I I found it probably entertaining and amusing. And now that I'm a little older and know more, I was, you know, slightly embarrassed that they were sort of exploiting uh many times people who had mental illness and who were suffering through pro poverty and addiction and uh so I'm not so proud of that, but I'll admit that I watch my fair share of cops.

I watched it, too. So, um, Cops changed the world in two ways. And this this moment was March 11th, 1989, which is when it debuted on Fox. This is just three years after Fox premiered, nine months before The Simpsons even premiered. Cops started on Fox and it helped make Fox the fourth network. It was just such a huge show right out of the gate. And um, they the two ways that it uh, changed the world is one, it set the groundwork for reality TV.

Yeah. you can make a pretty good case that it was one of the it may be the originator of reality TV. There weren't scripts. There wasn't any star. There wasn't any um narrative or plot lines. It was just like here's some cops and here's a crime that they're going to fight. We don't have a script. We just generally know what's going on. Which ostensibly is the the basis of any reality show.

Yeah. I think you know what we should do an episode on at some point is I can't remember the name of it now cuz it just came to me but I think kind of the first real reality show was that one where they followed the American family around in the ' 70s maybe

wasn't it PBS or British or something? I think it was PBS and then they they made a fictional account of that um as a movie not like a four or five six years ago that was pretty good too. I think James Scandalini was in it.

Okay. I would have guessed Peter Sarsgard as the dad. Uh, it was really good though. Anyway, that really kicked off reality TV. Uh, MTV's Real World didn't come out till '92, but Cops certainly laid the groundwork for kind of like trashy reality TV, you know?

Right. Yes. The other effect that it had on the world was it really reinforced unfair racial stereotypes.

Yeah. Uh, among white Americans toward black Americans, people of color in general in the United States. It was an enormous show. It drew like 8 million viewers each week. That's a crazy amount of people.

It peaked in the 90s. But even from the first episode, civil rights groups were like, "Whoa, wait a second here." Like, a lot of these criminals are black and this is way disproportionate to reality. I thought this was a reality show. And the cops producers, um, Barbara Langley Productions were like, "Well, it's realityish." you know, like it's not the actual portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of reality. So, just settle down. And the civil rights groups are like, "We're not settling down. That actually makes it even worse."

Yeah. I mean, the cops loved it cuz they were portrayed as heroes. Uh, it was a great recruiting tool for police officers.

Uh, and you know, I guess we have some stats from the Marshall Project. Uh, they did a a analysis in 1994. Um, most of the officers on balance were white, um, suspects were more likely to be black or Hispanic, uh, as far as the numbers go, they found that, uh, while sexual assault, robbery, and murders account for just 13% of all crime, um, in 1994 at least, it was 43% of what you saw in cops.

Mhm. Um, I don't remember a lot of sexual assault and murder, though. Everything I saw in cops were like robberies and drug arrests or just, you know, uh DUI, being drunk out in public, stuff like that.

Or a dude hiding under a kitty pool. Yeah, he was probably drunk or on drugs, right? Um

yeah, that's what I remember. I don't remember like more serious crime. So, I was kind of wondering about that stat.

Yeah, I don't remember that either. Um the they also found that same study found that um the show was far more likely to associate black and brown people than whites with violent crime. Uh they were black and brown people were 40% um there was a 40% chance compared to a 13% chance for whites.

Um so it was like it wasn't just civil rights groups like sensing there's something off about this. like people conducted actual studies and found also that a viewer of cops was likelier to um maintain the racial stereotype that blacks are typically criminals than a person who didn't watch cops. So it had a really large impact. And yet despite that, this is 94 that that study came out. It wasn't until 2013 that Fox was finally like, "Okay, fine, fine. Yes, okay. We'll cancel the show. We've made our money over 25 seasons and thanks to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it and that was the end of Cops Forever, right? No, no, no.

It was picked up by Spike TV. Uh they ran it until 2020. Then after 2020 with all the, you know, sort of light shined on police brutality, they said, you know, maybe it's just not so good to run this anymore. Mhm.

But Fox Nation stepped up and brought it back in 21 and it is still going in its 37th season. Uh the other thing it did was sort of create the um the idea of the Florida man. Um because they started I believe they debuted in Broward County

and shot a lot there over the years. And they they shot um I think they shot in more than 100 cities in the end, but a lot of their content was shot in Florida and kind of sort of reinforced this whole Florida man thing. Yeah, I don't know that that's skewed.

Yeah. All right, fair enough. Let's finish up, Chuck, on like a truly happy moment. Well, depending on which nation you're from, uh, the USSR or the United States. Um, if you're from the United States, this is a really good high point for your country in 1980 and the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York to be exact. And there was this one event that America was really uh the unlikely winners in and it was men's hockey.

That's right. Uh this is during the height of the Cold War. So uh the US and the Soviet Union, you know, those it was just it was all you heard about if you were a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. It was such a big deal. Uh the Soviet Union won the Olympic gold medals in ice hockey in uh 56 uh and then 64 68 72 and 76. So they ran the Olympics basically from the mid60s to the mid mid70s.

Mhm. Uh, and then 1980 came along and you had a a US hockey team and first of all the Soviets hockey team I believe there was a player uh Fetisoff who said later on that was probably the best team that the Soviet Union had ever put together. So they were

the the drago and we were a little rocky because the American team at the time, this is before they allowed pro players to play in the Olympics. There's a bunch of college kids and they were

I mean to call them underdogs was a massive understatement. Yeah. And a lot of the credit um goes to the coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach,

Kurt Russell. Oh yeah. Yeah. He played him in the movie. Oh, I thought that was Amelio Estz.

Well done. So, um, the United States did not just despite how it ended, it they did not get off on a very good footing. Uh, there is an exhibition game. Yeah. At Madison Square Garden a few days before the 1980 Olympics. Um, same month and everything. And they Soviet Union and the United States played in this exhibition match. And the Soviets really, you could use the word walloped um pretty effectively in this case. The Soviets won 10 to3. So it did not look like uh the United States men's hockey team was going to produce much in the Olympics that year.

Yeah. You don't see a lot of double-digit scores in hockey. If you're not familiar with hockey, you you know, you see a lot of like

two to nothing, three to two. Once you score over 10 goals, it's it's a big big deal. So, uh the Americans weren't even supposed to advance that much in the Olympics, but they had a bunch of comeback wins, had a lot of close calls that they won, uh and they got into the medal round and face the Soviets who up to that point in the Olympics had outscored their opponents 51 to1. Mhm.

So, on February 22nd, 1980, and I know I mentioned this before, but I actually watched this match as a uh I guess I wasn't even nine yet. It was right before my 9th birthday.

Oh, yeah. I wasn't even that into hockey, but we were an Olympic family, right?

And I I remember I have a very distinct memory of being in my parents' bedroom for some reason, which I usually wasn't much allowed in cuz it was I don't know, it was the ' 70s. It was like, "Don't go in my bedroom."

Mhm. But we have this little black and white TV. I guess my dad was watching other stuff out there uh on the larger console TV, but I I remember being in their bedroom and watching this match on the little black and white TV and knowing as a little 8-year-old like what a huge huge deal this was.

Yeah. And you uh said something that I think kind of applied to a lot of the nation. Hockey was not really a thing. Nothing like it is now in the United States. like you had to live in a place where your rivers froze over every year to to to like hockey. It was a very regional sport.

Um and yet like you said, the entire United States tuned in for this match because it was the evil Soviets.

Yeah. And like our to our younger viewers or listeners like you don't you can't imagine what they told us about the Russians. Like essentially if you were a kid in the 70s, '8s, um probably 60s too, you were basically taught that if you ever crossed paths with anybody from the Soviet Union, they would slash your throat just as soon as look at you. Like that was essentially what people thought of the Soviet Union at the time and vice versa. So it was the big bad Soviets who were just this huge juggernaut of a team and the Americans, the rag tag underdog Americans standing up to these these this evil empire and um that's why everybody tuned in.

Yeah. It was I remember very having the distinct feeling it was communism versus democracy. Really?

Right. Right. Which is Yeah. Which is uh I think what happened in that um that Super Bowl with the Falcons versus the Patriots. same thing.

Oh man, my my darkest day as a Falcons fan. Maybe that was rough. It was either that or losing to the Jets last week.

Oh yeah. Oh man, I can't talk about it. Okay, I won't. Uh very sad season ticket holder here. Um, so Americans of course came back and won and I remember uh our our goalie Jim Craig like skating around after wrapped up in the American flag and that was my first like real taste of

uh of like understanding what it was like to be an American and again a different time where you know it was the Cold War and it it felt like a real win for democracy in a weird way.

Yeah. So, um, a lot of people, well, I think basically everybody calls that game the miracle on ice.

Yeah. And the reason why is because the commentator who is calling the the hockey game, Al Michaels, who, as far as I know, had only um called one hockey game previously at the Saporro Winter Olympics years before, he did a magnificent job. And as the the time is running out in the third period, America staged a comeback and scored two goals and they were up four to three with several seconds left. And remember, this Soviet team was good enough that they could score a goal and tie within a few seconds. So, the Americans are just skating around the ice trying to keep the puck away from the Russians. And Al Michaels is counting down the seconds.

And I think with about 4 seconds left, when it became clear that the Soviets weren't going to be able to score a goal, he goes, "Do you believe in miracles?" Yes.

And if you watch it today, you just get to just amazing chills just even the last like 30 seconds of that game. It's really neat.

For sure. I wonder if uh before the game Al Michaels was like, "It's a puck, Al. It's a puck. It's a match. It's not a game." Yeah. Uh and if anyone brings up icing, just you explain it,

right? Just pretend it doesn't exist. Exactly. So, uh ESPN called it the most famous hockey game ever played.

For sure. Sports Illustrated ranked it in 1999 as the top sports moment of the 20th century. It was a big deal. And again, I would I would strongly urge you to if you don't go watch the whole match, watch at least the third period or watch the the last couple minutes and several minutes after that where they're Yeah. they're celebrating. It's just you can just feel like the whole country going crazy.

Yeah. Pretty incredible. Uh and if you're ever, you know, at a dinner party and a group of people and they're talking about when the US beat the Soviets for the gold medal,

uh you can be the actually guy. Uh because that was not the gold medal match. I think a lot of people remember it that way because it was such a big deal. But um that was an uh I guess a bronze round.

Yeah. And the US went on to win that gold against Finland. Yep. Two days later.

Pretty great. Pretty great, everybody. So that's it. Those are the only moments that changed the world in the history of TV. All the rest of them were pretty ho home.

That's right. Uh you got anything else? Uh I got nothing else, sir. All right. I think this is a pretty good start to 2026, don't you?

I think it's great. Okay, Chuck said great. That means it's time for listener mail.

Yeah. You know what? Let's let's start off the year without a listener mail and just uh um make a push to remind everyone that we're still kicking off pretty soon in a few months. It'll be year 18

in April. And uh we always are still looking to grow the show and uh we don't do it much, but if you could rate and review the show, that means a lot. if you could tell friends and family like, "Hey, there's this podcast. It's been around forever and we like it."

Uh we may or may not be Golden Globe nominated. We don't know at this point cuz we're going to find out next Monday.

Mhm. But uh yeah, go out and spread the spread the good word and we look forward to seeing everybody uh on the road this year in the United States and Canada.

Yeah, we're going to be on the road this this month in January, also in April, and then Canada this summer. So, you can get tickets and info at stuffyou know.com. And if you want to say happy new year or whatever, you can send us an email. We love that. You can send it to stuffodcast@ iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iMheart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Charles "Chuck" Bryant (Host), Jerry (Guest).

What is "TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

The discussion focuses on significant television moments that have profoundly influenced culture and society, arguing that TV has shaped modern culture even more than the internet. The hosts invite listeners on a journey to explore these pivotal moments, suggesting that understanding their impact could reshape perceptions of television's role in contemporary life.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

28 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Bulova, RCA, Fox, Al Michaels, ESPN, Flushing, New York. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "TV Moments That Changed The World | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 45 min; the transcript is about 8,474 words in 173 timestamped sections.

More from Stuff You Should Know

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.