Um, what, what, what, what is this kind of landmark series from, uh, from the, the history of British comics?

Yeah.

It's a, uh, it's a strip that first appeared in a magazine called Ranger in 19, I think it was September 1965.

So it's older even than I am.

And, uh, that would mean I, I, I was born after March '66.

So they, um, so yeah, so it's a two-page, fully painted comic strip.

Quite beautiful.

... moving forward.

Awesome.

Uh, you can find me just everywhere, @producermike975, and you can find ComicCast wherever you get your podcasts.

Just search ComicCast, C-O-M-I-C-A-S-T, and then you'll find us.

And if you could leave a rating, I would really appreciate it.

I'd be your best friend.

[laughs]

[laughs] [upbeat music]

This was the first time I really got to see him have a personality with different, different characters too, which I thought was pretty cool.

So I guess it's my turn.

Uh, yeah.

For me, uh, so similar to you, I couldn't really...

I- it was hard to just, like, try and rank them, so I, I didn't wanna try and rank them.

Uh, but for me, when I was building this list, I was thinking about it in terms of impact for me personally.

And so my-- The first one I'm gonna start off with, again, it's not in a specific order, it's just what, what had made an impact on me, especially when it comes to martial arts films and my love for them.

Or three.

... your best friend so you trust them enough to where you spill all your deepest, darkest secrets, but then they are gonna turn right back around and use that against you, unfortunately.

Absolutely, and it's Stockholm syndrome.

You know, the Bachelor bubble is a real thing.

That's what we called it.

It's like once we get them locked in, they land on the plane from LA- at LAX, we bring them to the Sheraton Universal or wherever we had them housed, they are now our prisoner.

They have no phone, no [laughs] books, no magazines, no TV, no nothing.

So they just sit there and stew about who they are, what they're gonna do, who they're gonna be, what The Bachelor's gonna be about, blah, blah, blah.

But us seeing it visually completely changes-

I really like talking to him.

Whatever, you know what I mean? You just kind of trick people into answering you with what you just asked.

That happens a lot.

And then otherwise you could, there was other little tactics we could use where we could make them talk about the girls, but in a way that you could use it to refer to The Bachelor.

Like, oh my God, the girls are fantastic, aren't they? Yeah.

Do you love them? Oh my God, I love them.

And it sounds like I love him.

She just did four seasons on a streaming service.

So what exactly did your role as producer entail day to day?

I was, uh, two different producer types.

So I was first an associate producer, and that's the lowest level of producer.

There were teams back in the day.

There were four teams.

It was associate producer, segment producer, field producer, and basically you were broken up into dates or house coverage or just wherever you might need to be.

An associate producer is entry-level.

And what are you looking for in terms of the lead but also the contestants?

This seems like it was a willful decision to bring on someone because they had to have at least looked at her other show, right?

100%.

The casting department, at least with executive producers, was completely aware of who this person was, especially because it seems to me like a publicity grab to get this contestant, you know what I mean? So they're like quickly gonna do all of this and do the quickest vetting they can do, but they're gonna do everything.

And like, I just looked up on AI 30 minutes before this interview about her and it showed the charges.

So everyone, you know, they all knew at least the executive producer team and the casting team, maybe not lesser producers because they might've wanted to keep that bias out of their head, but everyone knew.

Because it looks tame by comparison, and people don't want tame.

Yeah, 1,000%.

I did Temptation Island the first two seasons, and I was like, wow, the contrast is amazing this is how it's going you know um but yeah i mean the times do change and it is a little more permissible now to have someone with a past i think but this one just seems a little out of nowhere but um i could imagine them saying why not let's roll the dice let's roll the dice on it everyone has a past everyone's done something they're not proud of and you can always use the spin which i think they probably will that this is what she needs to to turn her life around as the bachelorette, you know? Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

What does it say, and how extensive is this attempted sell-off of our public lands?

Yeah.

So, uh, Emma, thanks for having us, and thanks for focusing on this issue.

I mean, the bill that's being considered in the Senate would drastically change the American West as we know it, at this point.

The language in that bill effectively says, um, 11 states across the West have eligible acres up to- to- or, uh, eligible acres that can be selected from to sell.

The bill puts a cap on, uh, the acres that they ultimately can sell at 3 million acres, however, 200, as you noted, 258 million acres are on the menu, so can be selected from.

The other part of the language, um, that is in that bill that's, uh, concerning is it says that any interested party can nominate, um, a parcel of land from that menu, um, for consideration for sale.

Um, where are the areas that, uh, are eligible to sale, uh, for sale most concentrated? What are kind of the, the public lands that you fear are at most at risk of, uh, being sold off?

Yeah. (laughs)

(laughs) I mean, we always said that alcohol was like truth serum, and it is. You know, people's inhibitions go away most of the time. They're a little more apt to speak their mind and to say what they feel, and they'll probably be a little more emotional when there's alcohol involved. Um, and yes, there were times that they probably should've been fed more, but that was not from us saying, "Let's starve them." It was from us staying on a schedule. Because we start shooting something specific, we're not gonna stop for cheeseburgers. It's not gonna happen.

So think about this. In 2019, there were seven dating shows on TV, according to Nielsen, the ratings firm. Last year, there were 59. Experts told us that this kind of growth would be unrealistic if the business model changed.

The reality television business would slow down immensely if it was required to have our cast members, uh, classified as employees. Um, not necessarily because of the pay, but because of restricting their time on camera and the amount of time that we can shoot with them. If they're an employee, there are time limits to how long you can make someone work, and the way reality television works is that it's a slimmed-down, really tight version of regular television with a way smaller budget.