How much do you miss looking through the TV Guide and reading it cover to cover and doing the puzzles and highlighting things? Is there anything comparable to that today? That’s the question. And answering it obviously means we have to discuss Neanderthals, whistling, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, electricity, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, telegraphs, Morse code, the Titanic, phonographs, radio, French potatoes, Star Trek, Riker’s beard, Rotten.com, AI, Wikipedia, Kevin Bacon, Eric Roberts, 30 Rock, and one extremely evil businessman named David Sarnoff. We get into: How humans went from yelling and whistling to communicating across the world.Benjamin Franklin, Volta, batteries, and the long road to electricity.Thomas Edison, light bulbs, power plants, and making an absolute shitload of money.Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse, AC vs. DC, and the electrical grid.Morse code, SOS, and why “Save Our Ship” is apparently b******t.Marconi, wireless telegraphy, and the legend of David Sarnoff saving the Titanic.Phonographs, microphones, speakers, and how you eventually turn a voice into a radio signal.The first radio networks and why the first big thing they broadcast was a goddamn boxing match.How technology keeps replacing the people who used to do the thing.David Sarnoff realizing that the real money isn’t in radios—it’s in controlling the radios.RCA, NBC, CBS, ABC, GE, AT&T, Westinghouse, and the giant tangled family tree of American broadcasting.Edwin Armstrong inventing FM radio and Sarnoff basically saying, “Yeah, but I own that.”Why television didn’t just happen—it was pushed, marketed, patented, licensed, and shoved into everyone’s living rooms.Charlie Chaplin, silent-film stars, and the horrifying possibility of a leading man having a Mickey Mouse voice.Color television, corporate competition, and why the best technology doesn’t necessarily win.Star Trek, The Boys, Riker’s beard, and why everything really is connected.Wikipedia, the seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon problem, and falling down an information rabbit hole until you accidentally know everything about World War II.AI, the internet, and why the future keeps looking suspiciously like the dystopia science fiction warned us about.Also: Black Mirror, Current War, Coney Island, French potatoes, rotten potatoes, robot arms, radio stars, monopoly power, and the strange fact that three of the biggest television networks in America can trace their roots back to the same tangled technological garden. So. How much do you miss looking through the TV Guide and reading it cover to cover and doing the puzzles and highlighting things? Is there anything comparable to that today? Listen to Part One and find out how we got from Neanderthal grunts to David Sarnoff deciding what the entire country gets to watch. Got a question for us? Ask it here!
