playing out in culture right now. i mean, what i hope is that if the earth is not an ashen cinder within a year, that hundreds of years from now, cultural historians and anthropologists and archaeologists will watch hgtv and then explain back to me what happened. no, like what it meant. because people do passionately love it. but i can t pinpoint exactly what it is other than the comfort. it s fantasy, right. that part of it. that you can have that happen. and there s a bloomberg piece on it. because of the political situation it was sort of escapism. there was another thing that i felt had a breakout year in 2016 which is podcasts. no, seriously. serial was a sort of breakout in 2015 that serial first came out or 2014. um, yeah. 2014. this is when the medium really exploded. there s a millionifferent genres. i started listening to crime town, about providence, rhode island. so good. so goodp which i spent four
go to the thing that i teased which is what i think brings everybody together, hgtv. which i put on hotel rooms. look, there s something fundamental the formula it s like their own version of the police procedural that they ve perfected where it s so structurally tangibly has this arc. there s a dead body and the murder s solved, right? well, there s like a house that they re not happy with, and then it s awesome. and it works so well. and there s something so satisfying you guys are looking at me. no. do you not feel this way about hgtv? the last time i watched improvement television was when they had the makeover thing. extreme makeover. where they would switch houses and sometimes the people would hate it and those were my favorite episodes. like this brown living room episode that i think about whenever i m sad and it makes me feel so good. what you were talking about, something that s culturally uniting. it s something that seems to be the only thing that really tr