What Iceland’s melting glaciers teach us about time, memory

There's no question that we're in a challenging moment. If it feels like we've said that several times over the past few years, you're not wrong. We're facing declining enrollment, financial constraints that require difficult, candidly, sometimes painful decisions. Continued uncertainty at the federal level. and increasing expectations for what schools must provide. Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Andreas Chait, giving the back-to-school address earlier this summer. It was his first in his new role following the stunning resignation of the district's former superintendent, Alberto Carvalo in June. Chate touted rising test scores in the district and promised students they would feel a sense of belonging in LASD's 1,300 schools. Today is the first day of the new school year. Yes, hard to believe, August 12th, but anyway. But behind the usual first day festivities lurk some serious problems. The district faces a serious budget crisis, billions of dollars worth, layoffs loom, students are leaving L.A.'s public schools and... Families are still fearing immigration raids around the schools. We're going to talk about all this with Howard Bloom, Education Reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Welcome back. Happy to be here. On top of all those problems, there's the lineage fire in Boyle Heights and eight schools within a mile of that frozen food warehouse. That is just... really causing an environmental nightmare with polluted air, with the stinking of that rotten food, plus rats and flies everywhere. So how is that affecting the students in that area? It hasn't been good. It's been a hot summer and a miserable summer beyond that because first you had the fire. I mean, if you can imagine setting your... own refrigerator on fire, you can just imagine all the toxins that would be released. Now you have a refrigerator, the size of an ocean liner set on fire in their neighborhood with solar panels to boot. And it was terrible. The smoke was not only choking, but toxic. Also, the kids, going back to the kids for a moment. They did not get to spend their summer outdoors playing, for example. They were often kept inside in un-air-conditioned spaces. They stopped going to summer school in many cases, could not go to regular activities, child care. Summer school is canceled or moved in many cases. So after this, they go back to school. And the air quality... Inside the school, knock on wood, should be okay because the district says it's replaced all the air filters with high grade new filters and that they put in air purifiers besides. But...

What happens when they go outside and need to be outdoors for recreation, for gym, that's a little unclear. And there's still a debate over whether it might have made more sense to move kids temporarily and staff to other campuses. It's not like... They are bursting at the seams with students. The district is about half the size of what it used to be at its peak. And there would theoretically be spaces to put kids elsewhere, although it would be an organizational feat inexpensive, and it would disrupt routines. It's a tough situation. Okay, and another tough situation is the leadership of the district. It's just a reminder to listeners, Alberto Carvalo. His four-year tenure ended abruptly amid an FBI investigation. He resigned in June. There's a lot of other information that you have brought to light with the school board essentially saying if he didn't resign, they would fire him. And they accused him of being unfit for service. What's behind that? It's pretty shocking, really, because if you think back to February and that FBI raid, that FBI raid happened literally days, a handful of days after his second four-year contract went into effect. They had earlier unanimously voted to extend his contract by four years. He was getting a claim across the nation for raising test scores and other good news coming out of LA Unified and very telegenic, eloquent. There were a few dark clouds on the horizon, but still it was kind of unexpected, the FBI rate. And we still don't know a whole lot about this. But the district, rather than keeping them on the job, which the school board could have done, they elected to put him on paid administrative leave. They hired a law firm, Jay Jones Day, to do some internal investigation. And they came up with enough causes for concern that they felt that he should step down. And they... pressured him to step down. And we only learned about all these details recently and the details included. a lot of paid side gigs. He was earning $500, $600 an hour working for a variety of companies on a consulting basis. He was also mentoring the Denver superintendent and earning about $100,000 doing that. And all of these things were not reported on required disclosure forms. Now, is that a capital offense?

Well, I don't know. One school board insider said it wasn't any one thing but a combination of things. Now, former Superintendent Carvalho and his attorneys have said that none of these things added up to grounds for dismissal. And they accuse the district of being fearful of the Trump administration and caving into pressure, although... I don't know that they're necessarily caving into the Trump administration. It's a bizarre situation that all of this should happen when Carvalho was flying high. And he certainly insists that he's done nothing wrong. And he wanted to return to work. And the board decided regardless of what the FBI does or the Trump administration does, we have decided you have done enough things that are questionable. that you've got to go. But I guess the question is, would they have done that had there not been a federal investigation? No, they would not have done that. I mean, maybe they would have done it eventually, but the federal investigation caused them to launch an internal investigation that would not have otherwise existed. So you have to assume things would have kept going on status quo, at least for a while. So, yeah, I think it's fair to say. that the federal investigation launched an internal investigation that brought up enough issues that the school board decided it was time to move in a different direction. Okay. So the new superintendent is Andres Chate. He's a lifelong or at least career long insider, teacher, principal, and then official bureaucrat. And now he is running the district and he's facing a huge problem in the form of a $3.6 billion deficit. And he's facing a little criticism or maybe a lot of criticism for approving some expensive labor contracts. And that's part of the problem with this deficit. So tell us about that. The county office of education, which has its own superintendent and does oversight functions, among other things for the county of Los Angeles, looked at the LA Unified Budget and said, based on your own numbers, if you don't follow through with these budget cuts that you say you're going to do, you're going to have a deficit as bad as $3.6 billion in... over the next three years. Now, LA Unified has a plan on paper to balance the budget, but the county office says, we have doubts about whether you will follow through with this plan based on your other behavior, which includes approving labor contracts that you can't afford, and also not following through with other budget cuts that you said you were going to follow through with. And they said, if you do not. give us convincing evidence that you are going to do what you need to do, we will appoint a county advisor with the authority to veto your spending decisions. And ultimately, if you were to go bankrupt or need a bailout loan, we would appoint someone to take over the district. Now, that's a very unlikely scenario of that last point, because why would you even need to get there if someone from the county could veto spending decisions as needed?

But nonetheless, it is a serious situation, and the district's plan to deal with it. involves laying off more than 6,000 employees. Now, they may lose some of those through attrition, but cutting programs, laying off employees, unpaid furlough days for employees, making employees pay more for health benefits, closing school buildings. And that makes sense at some level, right? The district is about half the size in terms of enrollment as it used to be. So why do you need as many schools open? Well, the answer to that would be everyone. wants their school to remain open. So it's a very difficult thing to do politically. But all of these things are in the budget plan and the county education office says, we need to see that you are moving forward with this plan or we may have to intervene. So that is the challenge before Andres Chate and the Board of Education. Okay, let's end on some positive news. That is, test scores are up. Talk about that. As it happens, LA Unified's test scores, which are not, you know, let's say in the upper rank in the universe, but they've made good progress. People who are fully qualified to make this analysis say that LA Unified is among the stronger districts in the country in terms of gains that have been made, and they've surpassed their... pre-pandemic levels in terms of test scores. And that doesn't sound that impressive in and of itself. I mean, pre-pandemic was 1819. That's kind of a long time ago. But it turns out that most districts have not surpassed their pre-pandemic test scores. And LA Unified has, and they've reached levels that at least under the current testing regime that they've never reached before. And given Ella Unified student population, a lot of people are saying that's pretty good. Still a long way to go. But progress in the right direction. And that's a credit to the previous superintendent, Carvalo, but certainly to principals, teachers, parents, and everybody pitching in. rowing in the same direction. And it will be up to Andres Chate, the new superintendent to keep that going. He was, after all, part of the team that made this progress. And people are optimistic that this progress will continue. They hope. They hope. Except for those layoffs. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, right. But it doesn't have anything to do with the screen situation because cell phones were banned. during the school day. And now there's a new policy that under second grade, no screens at all. So what about that? There is no...

empirical evidence that we can find that definitively links their screen policies to improved achievement. But there's anecdotal evidence that it has improved the environment. So last year came the student cell phone policies. You know, student cell phones could not be used at school. So that was last year. And it took effect really, I think, in January if my memory serves. This year, it's the instructional screen time that is the tar. of these new reforms. So it is the teachers and the and the instructional coordinators that have to cut back on how much they use computers and screens to teach students. And in fact, screen time is banned from students until the second grade. And there are certainly activists who wanted to go even further than that. But after getting computers to every student and putting everything online, now we have to figure out how to do less of that because the theory is that will be better for students. And now we have to also figure out a system so that LA Times reporters can be on their screens less time to improve their lives. But, you know, that may be beyond hope. Good luck with that. Howard Bloom, education reporter for the Los Angeles Times, perhaps also a screen addict. I don't know. Thanks for coming on the show. Happy to do it as usual.

Coming up, July was the hottest on record in the United States. Heat waves are affecting the whole world, including a country whose name is now starting to lose its original meaning, Iceland. After a thousand years, people will point at the 90s and say, this is the first time you understood this. And they will wonder, how long did it take for them to actually understand it? A new documentary is a personal story of a writer trying to understand what melting glaciers will mean for him, his country, and the entire world. That's next on Press Play. There's the story you hear, and then there's the story behind it. Who's telling it? What are their motivations? What's at stake? I'm Brian Reed, and on my show from KCRW, question everything, we tell stories about power and influence and the ways that people are manipulating the truth. And we do that by talking to the people living with the consequences. My feed was flooded without my consent. I was targeted by Instagram. Listen to question everything, wherever you get your podcasts. This is press play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. That is the sound of an Icelandic glacier buckling under its own weight. Glaciers are giant ice formations that slowly move over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. But glaciers everywhere are shrinking as the planet heats up. 12 years ago, the Uck Glacier became Iceland's first to succumb to global warming. Icelandic writer and filmmaker, Andri Snyer Magnuson, wrote a eulogy for the glacier that made headlines around the world. We acknowledge that we know what is happening and we know what needs to be done, but only those that will read the words will know if we actually stood up to that challenge that we were given. Andri Sniher Magnuson is the subject of a new National Geographic documentary. It's directed by Saradoza. And it's about glaciers and what they can teach us about time, memory, and preservation. The movie is called Time and Water. And Andri Snyer Magnuson joins us now. Welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, let me begin with that moment when you were standing there giving the eulogy. And it actually was an engraved plaque in copper that you were putting onto the, I guess, the remnants of the glacier. Tell us more about what was happening there. These were anthropologists from Texas. Simony Howe and Dominic Boyer that had this idea. because they noticed we had lost our first glacier to climatesines but we had not kind of done anything about it and they were wondering isn't this like a historical event so they teamed up with a glaciologist asking like when did global warming happen you know when were the major events when was the historic moment so so they came up with uh

this idea that it deserved like a memorial plaque. And I was suddenly with this challenge, you know, how do you say goodbye to something that you never thought you could lose? So as a writer, this was kind of a small but big task in a way. It was a very big task. So a few words, but it was very loaded in many ways. And what did you write? Yes, so I came up with lots of ideas. I was thinking, should I write some kind of medieval stanzas or should I write a poem? Should I do something very lyrical? But in the end, I came up with these words, Oakh Glacier is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening. And what needs to be done, only you know if we did it. August 2019, 415 PPM of CO2. And I think it's already 426 or 30, you know. Parts per million is what PPM is. Yeah, parts per million. So we put this on the mountain. And I was kind of stressed because you don't want to make typos when you're writing in copper. And then I expected it kind of to be the words that the fewest people would see in my writing career, because how many people stumbled upon a dead glacier on a mountain. But it became kind of viral, and the same words have now been put on glaciers, the Ayeloka glaciers in Mexico, a glacier in the Pyrenean mountains. And the Yala glacier in Nepal. So where the words are in Tibet and Nepal is written on granite. So suddenly it's become some kind of a global phenomenon. Wow. And so who are you talking to when you were addressing this you person? Who are you addressing? Yeah. So the challenge of writing something that... Somebody might be reading after 300 years, 400 years when quite a lot of the scientific predictions of today will have come true or not depending on what we do now. So I'm kind of talking to them, but it was a jealous to address it because how do you address like both now and future in the same words? So I'm kind of talking to them, but by talking to them, I'm kind of... encouraging us to think about the larger context of how we live and what we're doing and what is our legacy maybe asking. Yeah, which are the same questions you're asking in your film, Time and Water. So this is structured as a first person narrative, like a diary almost. And... It accompanies images of Iceland throughout the years, archival footage, but also a lot of your home movies that you shot and also home movies that your grandparents and parents shot. And so have you been behind the camera shooting for a long time? What I always thought obvious was that, like my grandfather's footage, that was so...

so beautiful. They went on a glacial honeymoon in 1956. So we have that footage in the film. So it's grandfather's footage from the 50s. My mother's 8mm footage from the 70s. And then everything that I started to film from the 90s. And you could say I might have had some net geo-ambitions in life in general, but... But that filming was not like thought of becoming an Acio documentary eventually. So there I was kind of capturing moments and mostly preserving stories and memories from my grandparents. And then I just kind of caught what was handy. My mother's handicam or my phone or whatever. So when I handed that to Sarah and the team. I didn't expect maybe so much of it to end in the film. So it became more personal and closer to me than maybe I might have dared myself. Interesting. So this idea, we're talking earlier about the copper plate that's affixed to the Oak Glacier as sort of a time capsule. This movie is structured as also a time capsule, and this metaphor extends throughout the film. You also refer to glaciers as archives of deep time and ice cores as Earth's memories. So you link the glaciers to... human history and then your own personal family's history. Your family has been in Iceland for many, many generations. Can you link and talk about how you and your family have this personal, very personal relationship to the glaciers? Yes, so it's kind of rare, I think, that people actually have a connection with glaciers because... Glaciers are hostile, and in Iceland's history, glaciers were not very much in favor. They were dangerous and from the glaciers come these crazy glacial rivers that could sometimes burst out with volumes of Amazon. So it's not until my grandmother's generation that they kind of have the equipment to actually spend like three weeks on the glacier researching it. And I think they could be the first generation that actually learned to love glaciers. So they went on a three-week glacial honeymoon in 1956. And one of the highest peaks of Watna-Yogholt glacier, which is one of the biggest glaciers in Europe. The highest peak is called the Bride Spelly in the name of my grandmother. So they start collecting the data, and they also start drilling the ice cores to kind of read and understand glaciers. And that understanding... gives us understanding of the past and like past accumulation, rain, snow, pollen, you know, climate of the past. And they can also use that to predict the future. And they can understand how the glaciers have left geological speed. That is the speed of...

of mountains and continents, like this slow moving speed of nature or geology, into collapsing on a human timescale. So a glacier that seems so huge and strong and eternal today is actually something that will probably be gone before like 2,200, like in the next 200 years. There is a museum, which I found really moving and also quite disquieting, in Western Iceland called the Library of Water, which stores melted ice from the glaciers in transparent glass tubes. And you have a clip of that. I want to play a scene. Perhaps in the form of water. The ice could still travel through time. It's the same water after all. As ice, it holds memories. As liquid, does it lose them? So what does it mean to have a library of water, just big tubes of water from the glaciers? In a way, it feels a little bit like a memorial site as well. Yeah, this is an artwork actually by a prominent conceptual artist, Roni Horn. And I think this artwork is almost 20 years old or so. So she was collecting water from our glaciers to store them in this library of water. And I think at the time, because the collapse of our glaciers only started like in the year 2000 on a kind of a consequent serious level. So we could really see that the trend was not reversing after a few bad years. So suddenly that library is having a much more eerie and heavier context than maybe when you just felt like it was just storing samples of this water. But actually, these might be the last samples of these entities. If you fly over Iceland, Iceland is basically 10% covered with these glaciers to imagine that one day. this small room in the library will be the only thing left of them is quite, is quite eerie, actually. Glaciers are deeply embedded in Icelandic mythology, and I want to play another clip from the film and talking about this and then get you to expand on it. For centuries, those living at the base of Watneyukutl Glacier noticed logs thawing from the ice. This is a strange sight in our nearly treeless country, sparking rumors of a forest inside the glacier. A place that hides outlaws and trolls where time stands still. Talk a little bit about how... myths and mythology, how that plays a role in what's happening now in Iceland with the melting glaciers? So when I was kind of writing, I was feeling like, aren't we living some kind of a mythological time? If we really simplify it and take away the scientific jargon, like when did world leaders meet for the first time?

to discuss how they were melting glaciers. You know, when did human kings and queens meet for this first time to discuss how they were raising sea levels? You know, like discussing that in a serious way, not as magicians or shaman or something, but just like when did that happen the first time? And that's basically in the 90s. And these people are around us. And discussing how you were shifting the fundamentals is completely different from discussing political ideologies or trade routes. It's a completely different dilemma that these people are in than any human leader before, because this is also a problem that will not be solved individually, but only collectively. And it will not be solved in a war, like lots of the issues they were dealing with in the past. So in history, you know, history is about historical things, but mythology is about these fundamentals. It's like when somebody throws the stars in the skies or these fundamental dilemmas of opening a Pandora's box or something. So I was feeling like after a thousand years, people will point at the 90s and say, this is the first time they understood this. And they will wonder how long did it take for them to actually understand it, even though they kind of conceptually understood it. So mythology suddenly becomes like not only a stunt or flashing my knowledge in literature or something, but actually kind of a helpful tool because writing it was like a black hole. Like you can't look straight into a black hole. You have to look at the periphery. at the neighboring stars and galaxies. So to understand science, I needed mythology, to be rational, I needed poetry, to be global, I needed to be personal, and to understand the future I had to have pancakes with my grandmother. So I always had to go the opposite direction. And that goes for the book and the film kind of going around the issue. While if you just bring out the data raw, there's almost nothing that comes with it, even though it's enormous. So you are optimistic that we can do something to affect the course of global climate change? I think I wouldn't bother to make a film like this or participate in a film like this and this work if I didn't think it matters. And in a really weird way, we are the first generation that is a planetary force or understands itself as a planetary force. There is a... Our daily habits are what is melting glaciers and causing ocean levels to rise and warming the temperature. And that means that we can change habits and we can't change technologies and we can't change laws because I think it would be quite rude towards my kids and grandkids if I did not do everything that I could do to.

secure that they will have a life that is in a relatively sane and stable planet. So scientists that I've spoken to, some of them are getting quite bleak, but when you're dealing with water, then every single degree matters because the difference of ice and of frozen water and... And masted water is only in this one degree. So if you just manage, even though you don't reach all the goals, every single thing matters that you can prevent from the melting of ice. Because we have like a billion people in the Himalayas that rely on the meltwater of glaciers. And if they are all gone. then we could have a billion people really struggling with the basic resource of their lives. So I think we have to start taking this very seriously and believe that humans, as a planetary force, if we can melt glaciers, we can also stop melting them. Well, no, thank you so much for coming on the show today, and thank you for your film. Thank you so much. We're a very nice talking to you. Andri Snyer Magnuson is an Icelandic writer and filmmaker. He's the subject of a new documentary directed by Saradoza. It's called Time and Water, streaming now on Disney Plus and Hulu.

Yeah, it's the 20th anniversary of The Real Housewives, a show that often resembles pro wrestling. I'm going to express my full emotional state right now, as opposed to if you're not on camera and you're interacting with someone in normal life, if someone annoys you, you may sort of register that in a polite way, whereas on these shows, they say, I'm taking off the filter, I'm going to say exactly how I'm feeling. An appreciation of the Real Housewives next on Press Play. This is Press Play on 89.9 KCRW, I'm Madeline Brand. The Real Housewives turned 20 this year. Born in Orange County back in 2006, there have now been 12 iterations of the franchise. New York, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, New Jersey, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Rhode Island, even Dubai. Dozens of spinoffs, including the entire Vanderpump cinematic universe. And plenty of memorable moments. And it has a white refrigerator. I was like, oh, oh, not a white refrigerator. Girl, please put your shoes on. Let's go find you a holiday, honey. There's a 15-foot wave coming for this boat. This is really scary. And Durinda stopped screaming. We're taking on water. We're taking on water. Everybody will know. Everybody will know. Everybody will know. Everybody will know. You understand that. Every, ever go after my. Well, the Real Housewives are also a big part of Bravo's pivot from a prestige premium cable channel to a reality TV empire. We're going to talk about this now with Ben Mandelker. He is co-host of the podcast, Watch What Crappens. It's about everything happening in reality TV on Bravo. Hello. Hi, thank you for having me. It is great to have you. Okay, so what is it with the Real Housewives? How did they catch on in the way they did? Because there were, of course, reality shows before them, but this is really the juggernaut. I know. It's amazing, right? I mean, when they started in Orange County, it was actually a pretty tame show. It was just kind of like fly on the wall. Here's what wealthy women in Southern California do. This is how they spend their money. And then when New York came along, and then definitely when Atlanta came along as spin-offs, it just sort of started to just move a little bit more into a soapy area. And especially also in Orange County, the arrival of Tamara, Tamara Judge, who was then known as Tamara Barney. She also sort of had like a catty edge. And I think as it moved towards soaps, it kind of became appointment television. Yeah, because everyone wanted to see the screaming, the yelling, the drunken rants, the, you know, throwing of the tables, all that kind of stuff. Yes, I mean, and we still do. And all that stuff is great. And, you know, there's something kind of amazing about this show where you can watch an hour and not a huge amount happens as people going to coffee, people going to dinner. And then there's usually a party or a dinner at the end where there's some sort of confrontation. But we all just are really hooked on it.

Well, so we also like the characters, right? It's not just because we're just watching kind of a wrestling match. We like their stories, right? We want to peer into this life that we're not a part of. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely part of that. I think that its initial hook was, ooh, you get to literally look behind the Bill Gates of Cotto to Casa, see how these wealthy women act. So there is sort of like this voyeurism. But I think like that's what gets you in the door. But I think the part of it is like, how do these people exist in real life? Like how do they have normal social interactions? And the fun of it is that a lot of times they don't. They have... crazy social interactions. And I actually kind of believe that, yes, It's soapy. Yes, it's catty. There's tables that are famously flipped. There's glasses that are thrown. But it's also very, very funny. And I think that we're sort of star for comedy on TV right now. And I think Housewives have kind of a reality TV in general. You could probably make the argument. But definitely Real Housewives is kind of filling that void. Yeah. So how much of it is staged? People want to know that all the time. Like they're cast, of course, these characters. How much of their antics are just done for the camera? That's a hard one to answer because, you know, it's a bit of a gray area. I believe a lot of times they are encouraged to go have a conversation over there or go to this or that. And there are definitely moments where you say no one would normally interact that way. No one would normally go up and ask that question. And you know a producer's in there. You're saying, I think this would be a great time for you to ask Luanne about her necklace or something. But I think that the interactions are also, I think they're authentic, sort of with an asterisk. I think they're authentic, but they're also authentic with an awareness of being on camera and knowing, like, I'm going to express my full emotional state right now, as opposed to if you're not on camera and you're interacting with someone in normal life, if someone annoys you, you may. sort of register that in a polite way. Whereas on these shows, they say, I'm taking up the filter. I'm going to say exactly how I'm feeling. So it's authentic. It's not authentic. It's sort of a weird mix. And I kind of think we all just look the other way. Well, there's also plenty of wine around to... I don't know, lubricate these interactions. That's true. That's true. And thank God for it, you know. I mean, it's great. When it gets consumed or thrown, I think Roe is happy. I think you're right. Do you have a favorite Real Housewives? The Real Housewives of New York, the original version of it was for me,

That's my favorite. I'm a New Yorker, but I just think there was a way that the women on that cast, which is basically seasons one through 13, I believe, and then there was a reboot, and I didn't love the reboot. But the way the women on that cast would interact, they were very confrontational, but also kind of warm to each other in a way that sort of spoke of old friends. A lot of them go back, you know, 10 to 20 years in New York City, and they're just... Some of the most amazing moments and amazing comedy came from those first seasons of Real House House of New York. That's where we met Bethany Frankel, right? Yes, yes. Okay, so she burst out of the Real Housewives world into the real world and tell us about her trajectory. I mean, she's a fascinating one. She comes onto the show. Having already been on reality TV, she came in runner up on... Martha Stewart's The Apprentice. She comes on to this show, and she is kind of like a voice of the people, where you have everyone else on her cast like Countess Luann, Jill Zarin, Ramona Singer. They're all wealthy and a bit diluted. Bethany is like talking to us, like, what's going on? This is crazy. And so she becomes massively popular. And at the same time, she's peddling, you know, some snacks and some foods. And then she sort of hits gold with her drink, Skinny Girl. And basically a combination of, I think, success outside the show with Skinny Girl and then, you know, a lot of bitterness that grew around her and her success on the show. She just, she pieced out. So she left. And then she had spin-offs. She had her own talk show. She became super, super successful. But then she wound up coming back to the Real Housewives. And she had a second run that was also really, really great. But even then, that one again sort of wound up in a... sort of the toxic space with the rest of the cast. So she leaves again. And then she just sort of goes off and does other things. She appears on Shark Tank. She has another reality show on HBO. And everything just doesn't really work out. And her star kind of fades. And then all of a sudden about two years ago, she pops up with something called the reality reckoning where she now wants to take Bravo to task for the way it treats its cast members. And she says that Bravo is... supplying alcohol or encouraging alcohol and bad behavior on the set. And so now she has gone from being a star of Bravo to now being persona non grata. Wow. So she really has become the heel in this drama. For now. For now. She'll be back. With reality TV, you never know. I mean, Nini Leaks herself had a big falling out with Bravo. Nini Leaks, who has made a huge splash on Atlanta in its early seasons. She had a huge falling out with Bravo. She made a lot of accusations of racism, I believe, and others. And now she's back. She came back two nights ago, two or three nights ago on the Real Housewives Ultimate Girls trip to kick off that season. Uh-huh. So all of that just fuels the, it's good for ratings. It seems all orchestrated in a sense. Well, um...

I don't know if it's, with reality TV, it's hard to not be too cynical. Yeah. My, I'm sure plenty of stuff is orchestrated. But I think that, you know, having met several real housewives, they really see it as their job. And they're like, we are there to put on a good show. And I don't, I think the worst housewives are the ones that try too hard to orchestrate. Because the audience is a sophisticated audience. Reality TV has been around in its current form for about 25 years. It is a full-fledged genre of our TV. And people, audiences are aware of, you know, when someone is not being their authentic self, they're just trying to sort of manufacture dramas. That way they can stay on the show. So while there is orchestration, there are a lot of real house lives who are of the mindset of I'm showing up. to be as emotionally honest right now as possible. Say what's exactly on my mind, show everything that's going on in my life, because I know that if we're all doing that, we're going to put on a good show. So there is orchestration, but many of the real housewives would claim that they are really being as honest and forthright as possible. Well, not all of them, because there have been some bona fide criminals on the show, right? So, Teresa and her husband went to prison for what exactly, some kind of fraud? You know, yeah, some kind of fraud is the best way to put it. You know, it was a mortgage fraud, was a tax fraud. I'm not sure. She says that her husband said sign here, and next thing you know, she's carted off to jail, and she's still sort of towing that line. So how aware she was of what was going on, hard to know. She's not necessarily the brightest bold. in the bulb drawer, but she, yes, you know, God bless her. She's out now, right? Yes, she's out of prison, but she's still on Bravo. All right, so she's from New Jersey, this one. Yes. And then scooting westward to Salt Lake City, another. Criminal, Jen Shaw. She was like maybe the ringleader. I think she was the ringleader of a telemarketing scam that was preying on older people and selling them. If I remember correctly, her scam was selling older people. services to start their own websites and they pay money for these services and then they would never actually get these services to start their own website with the pitch being just because you're retired doesn't mean you're out of work you can start a website and start your own business online um so she went to jail and that was um what was amazing about it is a very elaborate sting that they had to do and the real housewives of salt lake city had gathered in a sprinter van outside of beauty lab and laser which is heather gay's med spa and they'd gathered in the sprinter van to go off to colorado on a cast trip and jen shaw got tipped off that the feds were coming for her so she snuck out she said oh i got to go my husband's in the hospital she left and the rest of the women just sat there in the bus just talking and that it was surrounded

by federal agents and Homeland Security. And everyone thought it was a gag at first. And then they realized that they were in the middle of a sting operation. And it was all on camera. And it's actually, it's both hilarious to watch and absolutely riveting TV. Wait, so this raises tons of questions. Like, did the producers tip off the feds and arrange the sting to be on camera because it would have been, it's just perfect TV for them? I'm trying to remember there was actually a documentary about this whole thing. And I can't remember if the feds worked with producers to know what their ETA was or their schedule. That may have been the case, but I can't speak authoritatively about it. But I know for sure. I think that if the producers knew that Jen was slated to be arrested, they would not have let her drive off to see her husband. They would have made sure. that she had to stay there on the bus. Or they would have solved. They would have done anything because I guarantee they would have loved that shot of the feds taking her way in cuffs. Yeah, for sure. Wow. Okay. So reality. Reality is, you know, in quotes, sometimes it's not. Sometimes reality is more real than reality, blah, blah. How do you see this continuing? Is this an endless... franchise. It's already expanded to Rhode Island. I didn't know there were Real Housewives in Rhode Island, but there are... Rhode Island. I mean, it's actually all across the world. I mean, it's London. I mean, it's Dick Durbin. It's, I mean, it's licensed to all these different countries. Amazing. And Australia and non-English-speaking countries. I mean, it is a juggernaut beyond a juggernaut. You know, it's been around for 20 years. I mean, 20 years is really... It's crazy. I think that Bravo came up with something really genius, which is a way to have the show on all year round without it being the same show. So you don't really have viewer fatigue in the same way because, you know, you'll get an iteration that'll last 16 episodes and then it's over and we start up with a new cast. So you're getting the same, you're tuning in for the same show. But you're getting a different experience every time. These networks love to just sort of churn through their reality content. And, you know, and then the audience gets bored of it and they move on eventually. MTV really just churned out seasons of Jersey Shore. And then people were bored with it. But Bravo found a way to churn it out, but with different cast members. And so I have a hard time imagining it's going anywhere anytime soon. I think we have at least 10 more years of it because... The fascination with it continues to grow. And The Real Housewives has something that a lot of other reality TV shows, or just TV shows in general, doesn't have, which is a big fan community that surrounds it. And so, like, it's a beacon with which, like, thousands of people and content creators are able to come together with, you know, at a time when there's no watercoolers anymore, the water cooler TV show doesn't exist anymore because there's no watercoolers. you know, the real housewives actually has found a way to still thrive. You know, this might not be acceptable, but I kind of want to bring up the look of the women there. And they do have a uniform look. Yeah. And it's not unlike the Mar-a-Lago look for women. Yes, that is correct. And some of them have probably been to Mar-a-Lago.

But it's definitely a look that do you think that Real Housewives started this whole? aesthetic you know i'm not sure if they started it but they definitely mainstreamed it i remember um back when real housewives of beverly hills began and taylor armstrong was an original cast member and she had a lot of filler and there was a lot of ink spilled about like whoa look at taylor's face i mean it was basically people were like i can't believe how she looks like that and now it's pretty standard for people to have lots of filler, lots of augmentation. And so I think in many ways we're just, we are just very used to it now. So I don't know if it real house sweats initiated this look, but, but they've definitely leaned into it. And it's, it's kind of like a signature. They all have glam teams now. They have big, you know, big, either they'll have like big sort of couture on or they'll just have just some fashions. You're like, no one wears that to just a coffee shop right so it's it's kind of like a wild thing i think the show is the show sometimes tries to lean into like isn't aren't don't they look fabulous aren't isn't aren't these aren't these fashion icons here and i'm always like no no no don't lean into that part because that's not true Everything else is, though. Everything else is absolutely true. They definitely were designer. And, you know, there is something fun about talking about who's well dressed and who's not well dressed. And some cast members are perpetually dressed poorly. And that's kind of like a fun thing for fans to talk about. But, yeah, I mean, fashion is definitely, you know, goes part and parcel with the housewives. Definitely. And hair extensions as well. Yes. Lots of those. Wearing them and selling them. And maybe taking them off and throwing them at someone. Who knows? You know, there haven't been too many hair extension fights. I have to say on how, you know, sometimes hair has come out, like some extensions once or twice. But I think like a thrown beverage is the more common vessel for rage. Yeah, it's a little easier probably. Yeah. Ben Mandelker is co-host or the podcast, Watch What Crappens. It's about everything happening in reality TV on Bravo. Ben, thank you. Thank you so much. That's it for me. I'm Madeline Brand. I'll see you tomorrow.