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- [00:00]
Malcolm Gladwell
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Ryan Seacrest
This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record. The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring all the new summer songs that come out, and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks. Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now. A mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry flavored pearls and it's light, vibrant and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having. So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone. From creamy cold brews to ice cold refreshers. Your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks.
- [00:43]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabwell here from Revisionist History. Did you know T Mobile for Business.
- [00:48]
Ryan Seacrest
Has an awards show specifically for their customers?
- [00:51]
Malcolm Gladwell
It's happening October 20th in sunny Orlando.
- [00:54]
Ryan Seacrest
Florida and I'm encouraging you yes you to enter.
- [00:58]
Malcolm Gladwell
This event honors outside the box thinking that changes industries, communities and even the world. And if that doesn't sound great already, I'll be there as the keynote speaker. If your company did something next level using T Mobile for Business, you're eligible. Entries close July 31, so head to t mobile.com entertainment to learn more and nominate your team.
- [01:21]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway now through June 24th. Score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags on items like General Mills cereal, Chobani Greek Yogurt, Pillsbury Crescent rolls, cinnamon rolls and biscuits, Haagen Dazs ice cream, Lindor Chocolate Truffles, Tillamook ice cream and Cove Probiotic sodas. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pick up or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or safeway.com More details Pushkin hey everyone, it's Leon Naifak. Thanks for listening to Fiasco. Now that all eight episodes of the Iran Contra season are out, I'm going to be sharing a few other podcasts in this feed that I think you might like, including one of my own this week I I wanted to share stories without end the new season of WBEZ Chicago's long running hit series Making, in which host Natalie Moore digs into the origins and enduring legacy of American soap operas and makes the case that they have shaped pop culture in ways most of us aren't aware of. Past seasons of Making have told the origin stories of Obama, Oprah, Beyonce and many more. If you love American history. You should definitely check it out, starting with this first episode of Stories Without End. I hope you enjoy it and if you like what you hear, go and subscribe to Making and Hear the Whole Season. As for me, I'll be back next week with a sneak peek at my new podcast, Final Thoughts.
- [02:57]
Malcolm Gladwell
Jerry Springer I've been a reporter for a long time and for much of my career here in my hometown of Chicago. I reported on race. I've done stories on housing, segregation, food, injustice, economic development. It's been so fulfilling. But something you likely don't know about me and maybe don't expect. I am a huge soap opera fan. And I mean huge. You might be thinking, so what? Soaps are known for the absurd, people returning from the dead. Amnesia is a popular plot device. Possession by the devil. Sometimes the acting is overwrought. Chalk it up to all the lines that must be memorized. There are no reruns, therefore stories without end. 250 episodes a year. I argue that there is a deeper picture of the daytime drama, an important part of American television history and popular culture. Not to mention the social issues soaps tackled before other shows abortion, divorce and queer representation have been front burner stories with fleshed out characters and storylines played out over months, not just one very special episode. Soap operas are a part of families and childhoods. We age with those characters and families who've been around for decades. Those bonds are strong. I want you, dear listener, to join me on this journey where I argue that soaps have not gotten the credit they deserve. They're dismissed as low brow entertainment for women. And yet, as you'll learn throughout this season of making Stories Without End, soaps are the foundation for American television storytelling and served as a financial powerhouse to the networks for decades. Without soaps, we wouldn't have dramas, reality shows. Without soaps, we wouldn't have many of the TV tropes and shows we love to stream and binge watch. Cliffhangers, cereals, vixens all come from soaps. On top of all that, I want to introduce you to the Chicago woman who doesn't get near enough credit for developing storytelling for the small screen. So settle in while I take you to the fictional Midwestern towns of Salem, Genoa City, Oakdale and Springfield. My soap origin love story begins with our babysitter, Mrs. Rimes. I've been watching soap since I was at least five years old, specifically All My Children. We were an ABC home. I learned the word blackmail from watching soaps. When I asked Mrs. Rimes what the word meant we bonded over all my children. One life to live.
- [05:50]
Ryan Seacrest
Here's what to do when you don't.
- [05:52]
Malcolm Gladwell
Find the rainbows and General Hospital. My paternal grandmother loved Guiding Light on cbs, so that's how I got exposed. I also watched with my mother, and that's typical. Viewers watched with their mothers and their grandmothers. I was that kid who asked for my nap time to be changed so I wouldn't miss all my children. Then In Elementary School, Mrs. Rimes would give me soap updates when I got off the school bus. I wondered if any of this ever concerned my mother. No, I guess I was pretty lenient with you. You just seemed like you were mature and just kind of knew what you wanted and you could. You could understand or whatever. It just never really. It never bothered me. And it didn't seem like it really affected you. And I think a lot of times that stuff is something you don't understand anyway. Right? I didn't understand blackmail. But this pretty much tracks for my mother. She never restricted what I could read either. Didn't blink when I picked up the Exorcist in fifth grade or Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye in sixth grade. So I was all in on soap content on Chicago's urban radio station wgci, a comedian who created a character named Tyrone and gave an All My Children juicy recap daily at 3:30pm My mother and I looked forward to these short Updates in the 1980s. Speaking of radio, this is the medium that soaps got their start in. But before we get to that, I want to tell you a little broadcasting history. I'm talking to you on a podcast, just like radio did 100 years ago. It's intimate. It captures an audience. During America's radio boom, it became commonplace to sit around a radio every evening with the family and listen. That's owed in large part to the minstrel show Amos and Andy.
- [07:56]
Ryan Seacrest
Now listen, Amos, you just stick to.
- [07:59]
Malcolm Gladwell
Me and you'll be rich.
- [08:01]
Ryan Seacrest
What would you think if you'd wake up some morning and put your hand.
- [08:04]
Malcolm Gladwell
In your pants pocket? Two white minstrel performers debuted the show in 1928 with an NBC affiliate owned by the Chicago Daily News. Amos and Andy became broadcasting's first mass phenomenon. The actors spoke in stereotypical dialect. They were blackface performers without the paint, because they didn't need to. It was radio. But radio programmers were faced with a conundrum. The first wave feminist movement just came to a close. Women achieved the right to vote, and programmers needed to figure out how to appeal to them. They wouldn't dare move to earlier programming. Early radio was in the evening because executives were concerned housewives would not be able to concentrate on a program while doing their chores. So General Mills created the character Betty Crocker to give daily hints on how to shop and care for the home more efficiently.
- [08:57]
Ryan Seacrest
Cream 1 cup of shortening part butter.
- [09:00]
Malcolm Gladwell
For flavor with 2. But then, around 1930, a Chicago woman named Erna Phillips made a splash. Now Erna, she's as important as they come. You can't understand the history of soap operas in this country without knowing Erna. She would revolutionize television with a new form.
- [09:20]
Alaina Levine
Erna Phillips is such a great character in her own right.
- [09:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
Alaina Lavine is a professor in media, cinema and Digital Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Like me, she's a huge soap fan. Lavine turned fandom into scholarship. She's the author of the book Her Daytime Soap Opera in US Television History. Irna was born and raised in Chicago. She attended Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin before becoming the pioneering powerhouse behind soap operas. On the radio, she taught speech in Dayton, Ohio.
- [09:56]
Alaina Levine
She started out wanting to be an actress. Various people told her she was too plain and unattractive to have that kind of role. But radio had just come along and she started working in radio. And she was working at wgn, she's from Chicago. And they asked her would she create a daily kind of narrative scripted show for women who were working in the home during the day. And that was when she created Painted Dreams and she wrote it as well as performed in it.
- [10:27]
Malcolm Gladwell
Painted Dreams aired five days a week on WGN Radio. With that daily scripted show, Erna birthed a genre known as the daytime serial. She wanted Painted Dreams to air nationwide, but she clashed with wgn.
- [10:42]
Alaina Levine
She got in a fight with them about the ownership of the show because she wanted it to go nationwide. And she ended up leaving and creating a show at WMAQ called Today's Children, which was basically a remake of Painted Dreams. It was kind of the same characters.
- [11:01]
Malcolm Gladwell
That was in 1932.
- [11:04]
Ryan Seacrest
Today's children an outstanding value. Never before a General Mills offer like this.
- [11:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
Daytime serials were live and often featured theater actors.
- [11:13]
Ryan Seacrest
Edith has sensed Spunky's growing bewilderment and discontent at living in this house with her while his father stays at a hotel. The complexities of the situation.
- [11:25]
Alaina Levine
They have a narrator who. Who is usually a male voice. I mean, it was always a male voice in radio who would sort of tell you what the characters were thinking or feeling or experiencing. Which is very different from the way that television soap opera works, no matter.
- [11:38]
Ryan Seacrest
What it may do to this love of rusted mind.
- [11:41]
Malcolm Gladwell
The storylines, however, were women centered. In her unpublished autobiography, Erna talked about forgetting her fantasies and approaching reality. Painted dreams in today's children were based on people she knew. At first she was drawn to the classic childhood fantasy of and they lived happily ever after. But then she realized she needed to do reality and not fantasy. Commercial goods companies took notice and realized the cereal could be a conduit to their customers.
- [12:12]
Alaina Levine
So the radio cereals tended to be 15 minutes a day in terms of episode length. So they would often package a bunch of them together, usually four in an hour. They were sponsored by domestic goods kinds of manufacturers, companies like Procter and Gamble, Colgate, Palmolive. And those companies saw their purpose really as advertising their products. And so even though the episodes were 15 minutes long, probably at least five of those minutes was spent on these commercial announcements that would usually be at the beginning and the end, sometimes in the middle as well.
- [12:46]
Malcolm Gladwell
The stories were centered around families, sometimes.
- [12:48]
Alaina Levine
Around an individual woman who was the kind of center of the storyline. And either she herself would have all kinds of trials and problems, or she would be kind of the wise mothering figure to sometimes literally her own children, often adult, young adult children, and sometimes to a kind of larger community who would sort of come to her for guidance and help.
- [13:11]
Malcolm Gladwell
So soap operas got their names because soap companies sponsor them. Although Erna never used the term soap opera in her autobiography, she preferred serial and once said that the heart of the serial is the exchange of feeling and memories between two characters and that any incident should not affect the handful of characters, but the whole community. Over her four decade career, Erna wrote or created more than a dozen daytime serials, a stunning amount. Many old radio soaps are hard to find and finding interviews of her is even harder. I stumbled on this, a very scratchy 1947 radio interview on the show Bob Elson on the Century. Irna responded to his question about what average daytime listeners want. Well, I think they like to see reflected more or less. Their own problem, their own conflict, their own heartache, their hopes and their own dreams, like we are happiness. Well, everything isn't happiness, is it?
- [14:17]
Alaina Levine
No.
- [14:23]
Malcolm Gladwell
When we come back, Erna Phillips takes the city and the country by storm. Erna Phillips did not initially set out to appeal to women. She was just writing and writing what she knew. But her central characters had a great appeal to women listeners. Let's be clear, men listen too. As a matter of fact, There are still plenty of male fans of the genre. Soap scholar Alaina Levine says Erna was invested in traditional family structures in a lot of ways.
- [14:59]
Alaina Levine
Her shows told stories that were somewhat true, traditional, conservative, about those kinds of relationships and people. But of course, soap operas have to have a lot of drama, and so there would always be trouble in those marriages and in those families. But her really driving goal was to sort of always return to those sort of conventional nuclear family structures and to see the value in them.
- [15:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
I'm one of ten children, the youngest of ten children. I see.
- [15:28]
Ryan Seacrest
And I had a very wonderful mother.
- [15:30]
Malcolm Gladwell
And so I had a very wonderful character called Mother Monahan. I'm paid. Who later became Mother Moran of today's children. Ernest said she did not consider herself well versed in politics, but was acutely aware that President Roosevelt's New Deal was one of the great reform movements that captivated her. So Mother Moran was a member of the Civic Club, a local political group. She did not portray her as an activist, but as a woman who was informed and interested in politics. Andrew Wyatt is a soap historian based in Chicago. He has studied how daytime cereals became known as soaps. The term soap opera was popularized in the 1940s.
- [16:12]
Andrew Wyatt
Otherwise, up until then, people usually call them washboard weepers, dish pan dramas, suffering sagas. What was it, a matinee? Melodramas? I think there was one of sob stories.
- [16:28]
Malcolm Gladwell
By the 1950s. Wyatt says a New Yorker article criticizing soaps began the modern day stigma against the genre. It's unclear if that bothered Erna.
- [16:38]
Andrew Wyatt
Erna always said it was just like daytime dramas. Or as she would put it, serials are like ancient Greek dramas where you have characters who are not all bad or all good. They all have their high points, they're low points, but you understand where they're coming from. And another thing too is that, you know, let's face it, they can be a little melodramatic, the serials. And at the same time, they're not all that different from ancient Greek drama at one time.
- [17:06]
Malcolm Gladwell
Early on, Chicago was the Mecca for the daytime serial. It dominated most of daytime radio. 50, that's right, 5, 0 were on the air, and most originated from Chicago. Three of Erna's shows were consistently rated in the top 10, and one was usually number one. She was riding high on her success. She earned good money, negotiated with the big boys in a male dominated entertainment field. Earna was a true businesswoman, but foes saw dollar signs. She wrote in her autobiography about a man who sued her, claiming half ownership of one of her shows, his attorney hat clout. He was a boss in the notorious Chicago Democratic machine. She lost, but it didn't keep her from writing. One thing to keep in mind about her is that she never actually learned to type. Despite writing millions of words a year, Erna dictated her scripts rapidly. Ken Korday's father, Ted Corday, worked for Erna as a director. The two of them created Days of Our lives in 1965.
- [18:13]
Ryan Seacrest
As a child, I remember her coming to New York annually to meet with the Procter and Gamble people all the way from Chicago. Erna was brilliant.
- [18:22]
Malcolm Gladwell
Now he is executive producer of Days of Our Lives.
- [18:25]
Ryan Seacrest
Her imagination, more than her life experiences, created her shows. And she was very helpful with me. Sometimes with short stories I had to write in school. I would call her and say, you know, what do I do here, Erna? And she'd say, oh, here's abc. And there was the story for me.
- [18:44]
Malcolm Gladwell
Tell me about why did you know to call her for your school assignments?
- [18:49]
Ryan Seacrest
My father told me to. He said, well, Erna's the writer, not me. Call Erna and tell her you're writing a story about a pigeon or an orange or, you know, gosh knows what. And I'd give her the beginning and the middle. She'd give me the rest of it in the end.
- [19:05]
Malcolm Gladwell
Erna was a pioneer in her personal life too. She never married and adopted two children. Pretty bold. In the 1940s, she moved to the west coast, but felt people looked down on Midwesterners. So she returned to Chicago. Erna toggled back and forth over whether she even wanted to be married. She dated, she had an affair, but at the end of the day, she loved her independence. Some of that tension spilled over into her writing. Andrew Wyatt says she was trying to.
- [19:35]
Andrew Wyatt
Explore how divorce in a woman raising a child, you need both parents or a masculine in a feminine force. But that was definitely from a lot of trauma, like the fact that she lost her father at the age of eight, which did a number on her. But she always wrote very strong women nevertheless, and she always wrote very strong men. But she was concerned because she really felt that the bulwark of America was a strong family. Irna believed full heartedly that if every household had loving parents, demonstrated unconditional love, were always there for their kids, there will probably be no problems the next generation. She really felt that bad behavior in adults started at home always, you know, that's what she was getting at. You know, she did stand up to men, though, you know, she. You wouldn't call her a feminist, but she was very stubborn. Nevertheless.
- [20:39]
Malcolm Gladwell
When we come back, Erna Phillips goes to television. Alaina Lavine says among her quirks, Erna was also reportedly a hypochondriac.
- [20:50]
Alaina Levine
She had various kinds of mental and physical health issues, became kind of obsessed with medicine and doctors and I think a lot of the kind of medical and hospital based storylines in soap opera then and through till the present are kind of thanks to her sort of interest in that world.
- [21:15]
Malcolm Gladwell
In 1937, IRNA created the Guiding Light. She said it was at first a tribute to two nurses who she felt were responsible, but for saving her life when she was desperately ill. She lived a few blocks away from the People's Church in Chicago. That church, by the way, is still around today. The pastor was Preston Bradley. Erna was inspired by the non denominational church. She created a show focused on a man named Reverend Ruthledge who was sort.
- [21:45]
Alaina Levine
Of just that sort of moral authority figure for a community. And, and again the radio serials often had these figures. Sometimes they were women, sometimes they were men. And he was definitely that kind of, you know, figure. And I think both he and perhaps the, the church that he was part of were supposed to literally be the guiding lights for the people around them to help them sort of see the way towards, you know, a just and happy existence. And so a lot of the, the show initially was about the community and the people in the community and the kinds of troubles they had and the way that he tried to help them.
- [22:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
On the Guiding Light, Erna named the working class neighborhood Five Points, a melting pot of white ethnics, Italian, German, Irish, Jewish and Swedish families. Here's an episode in 1940 called Charles and Rose have Dinner. I don't think that I know how to be dishonest.
- [22:42]
Ryan Seacrest
Really.
- [22:43]
Alaina Levine
Then you, well, you must have answers to those questions.
- [22:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
Rose.
- [22:49]
Alaina Levine
After our last meeting I made up my mind that I wouldn't, that I.
- [22:54]
Malcolm Gladwell
Couldn'T phone you again. And you didn't. In her autobiography, Earna wrote how she was solely responsible for introducing something that came to annoy her and probably annoyed many listeners and viewers. Organ music as background that came to be because Mary Rothschildch's daughter was an organist at his church, the Guiding Light. Ernest said she made her characters as simple or complex as real people. With the Guiding Light, she created characters that came from widely different social, cultural and economic backgrounds. The Guiding Light is significant because it's the only radio soap to transition to television. They the network was CBS, the year was 1952 and now the Guiding Lights.
- [23:47]
Ryan Seacrest
Created by Erna Phillips.
- [23:50]
Malcolm Gladwell
It was canceled in 2009, but it's important to note that the soap tackled social issues like no other program of its time and paved the way for Erna Phillips Proteges in Chicago. That's on the next episode of Making Stories Without End. Stories Without End is a production of WBEZ Chicago and part of the NPR Network. I'm your host and writer Natalie Moore. This show was produced by Hina Shrivastava, edited by Ariel Van Cleave. It's mixed by Hailey Bloomquist. We had music and production assistance from Justin Bull and Dave Miska. Thanks to Brendan Banaszak. Our executive producer is Tracy Brown. Special thanks to Radio Echols Audio and the University of Wisconsin Madison Archives.
- [24:40]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway now through June 24th. Score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags on items like Starbucks Ground coffee, Red Bull energy drinks, Spam Classic Planet Oat milk, Charmin bath Tissue, Totino's Pizza rolls and Frito Lay chips. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details. This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record. The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring all the new summer songs that come out, and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks. Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now, a mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry flavored pearls. It's light, vibrant and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having. So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone, from creamy cold brews to ice cold refreshers. Your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks. Career changers including veterans and active duty service members. Your transition starts here. Go from GI to IT in a matter of months. Become a certified Cyber Warrior with training at my computer career cybersecurity specialists are in high demand, offering IT pros great opportunities and a rewarding lifestyle while protecting our people, liberty and treasured institutions from cyber threats. Deploy your career in IT today. Learn more at mycomputercareer.edu, cWP Skillbridge and other VA benefits are available to those who qualify.
- [26:19]
Malcolm Gladwell
This is an iHeart podcast.