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Listen now on the Up First podcast on the NPR app. This is Planet Money from NPR. Hey, Kenny Malone here, interrupting to some degree your regularly scheduled planet money programming because what we have today is a special episode. It's a sample of one of our recent bonus episodes.
You can think of this as a fun little holiday treat made up of some economic insights sprinkles of pop culture nostalgia and everyone's favorite holiday time competition. A little good natured elbow in between Planet Money hosts. But look, this is the kind of bonus content that you can get when you join Planet Money Plus. If you're already signed up, thank you truly.
But if you haven't joined, here is how you can get more content like this. Just check out the link below in the episode notes with that. Here you go. Enjoy.
Here, dear listener, Planet Money Plus listener, is a short list of movies that came out in the year 1999. All kinds of movies that people still talk about today. We're talking the Matrix. The Matrix is everywhere.
It is all around us. The Sixth Sense. I want to tell you my secret now. The Blair Witch Project.
Fight Club. You do not talk about Fight Club. The faint thing isn't really real. Naughty Hill.
Star Wars the Phantom Menace. This is plot, Richard. Being John Malkovich. Malkovich.
Malkovich. 1999 is widely considered to be one of the best, possibly the best, year ever for movies. But, but, was 1999 also the greatest year in economic movies and pop culture. That's what we're here to settle today.
Hello and welcome Planet Money Plus listeners to the first inaugural Planet Money, Pop, Culture, Draft, Joining Me. Today on Draft Day. Our my colleagues, Jeff Guo and Whalen Wong. Are you ready for this Whalen and Jeff?
Oh my gosh. I've been training. I've been training. Cue the training, the training montage.
We've just had a movie montage. We don't have time for another montage. Oh, thank you. You can just picture it then.
It happened off screen. Alright. Now, we are trying something new for us in today's bonus episode. We're going to go back to the year 1999 and each of us is going to draft a team of pop culture.
Like, you know, how an NBA team drafts players. We are going to be doing this with a Planet Money Lens though. Who can draft the most planet money team of pop culture artifacts from the year 1999? Now, what does it mean to draft a planet money team?
Well, well, that is kind of for each of us to argue in our case. Like, have we drafted a movie that is obviously about economics or maybe we drafted a song that is emblematic of a much bigger business trend. Each of us will have to make our cases to each other. But more importantly, to you, Planet Money Plus listeners, and you will ultimately decide.
You will vote on which of us has assembled the ultimate Planet Money 1999 pop culture team. This is the sportiest I've ever been. I've never done such a sports adjacent thing. I have to say, this is like the third time you've tried to explain the rules to me.
I still don't get what we're doing here. Well, we have tried to explain the rules to Jeff a lot. And luckily we're going to do it again. I feel like this is Jeff being purposefully naive so he can wipe the floor with us.
No, this strategy is beginning. I just want to understand the rules. You can't play the game. The mind games have started long before we hit record today.
Let's get the rules out of the way then. In case any of you listeners have not heard a podcast using the draft format, we did not invent this. This is a widely used thing. It's kind of a way to like dive back into a specific year and look for specific stories, revel in nostalgia a little bit.
But also, you know, go deep and compete with each other in a loving, friendly way. No hitting, no biting. Just making sure those rules are clear. That is rule number one.
Do we understand? Silence. Here are the basic rules of the draft. All right.
So the draft is made up of three rounds. And over the course of those three rounds, in any order you want, you must select a 1999 movie, a 1999 song, or a 1999 wild card, which is anything in pop culture. And again, it doesn't matter in which round you do it. You just must select one of those things over the course of the draft.
Okay. So once a pick is made, that is taken off the board. No one else is allowed to draft it. So choose carefully exciting things that are obvious.
You probably want to choose those first because someone else might get them. And then there are limitations. So for the movie, we each have to choose from the top 100 domestic grossing movies in 1999. These are movies that I suspect a lot of people have heard of.
We've mentioned some already. You've got Star Wars, you've got your Matrix, you've got your Fight Club, and then 97 more. For songs, we can only pick from the Billboard Hot 100 singles of the year. And just to give listeners a taste, let me like put on my casey case some hat here.
Kind of down the top five Hot 100 songs from 1990. Baby one more time, Britney Spears. Number four, Heartbreak Hotel, Whitney Houston, and collaborators. Number three, Angel of Mine by Monica.
Number two, No Scrubs by TLC and the number one song. On the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999. Do you believe in love? Believe, buy share.
It has such a clear memory of it from that time period and just how it played absolutely everywhere. It was everywhere. Okay. So that's movie, song, and then Wild Card again.
Is anything like it can be a book, it can be a TV show, it could be another movie, another song. It just needs to be pop culture in 1999 and it needs to be planet money in some way, shape or form. Okay. Jeff, do you?
We're like, well, you better make the argument that it's pop culture. We'll do that. We'll be the judge of that. We'll be the judge of that.
Jeff, if you want to draft a child, we're going to have a conversation about how that will work. But listen, do you mostly understand those basic rules? I know, we all it does. You basically get that.
We're going to pick things. Yes. Okay. I cannot wait to see what Jeff picks are.
Because I'm like, did you come into this totally cold? This is not my culture. Guys, I barely had a childhood. I don't even remember 1999, to be honest.
It was before I was reconstituted. Jeff was already in the back. Before you were reconstituted, you were conceived in powder form or something? Yeah.
So I wasn't even fully hydrated at that point. Instaglow, poor and mixed. Can you ask how old were you all? Are we allowed to say this?
Is this like not kosher? Sure. I just want to get a sense of where you all were in your lives. In 1999, I would have been 15 years old.
I was not allowed to see rated-arm movies yet. I was very excited to see the new Star Wars movie. I had bought all of the Darth Maul action figures ahead of time. That's where I'm going to be.
And that's kind of where I was. I definitely was hearing Cher. What about you, Leland? I was 17.
I was a senior in high school. So I remember playing that Britney Spears album on a girls road trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. So fun. Yeah.
So I remember that very clearly. I was watching Total Request Live on MTV every day after school. And I remember also I was in my community youth orchestra. And we got to play Star Wars for our senior year spring concert, like the original music.
And that was so much fun. Not dual of the face. Not dual of the face, but absolute drop dead banger from Vans. But you know, like the main title theme and Imperial March and everything.
And so that was like a real kind of career highlight for my high school music career. It sounds like both Whelan and I were super cool in 1999. I got to say, this is giving me a lot of insight into what your potential picks might be. Very helpful information guys.
Thank you. What is it elaborate? Miss Lee Jeff? You don't know.
All right, Jeff, where were you in 1999? Cher. Cher, I was 10. I honestly have no memory of being 10.
I don't know where I was in school. Were you learning fractions? I feel like I'm learning fractions at 10. I don't remember.
I truly don't remember. Did you read? Jeff was learning what fraction of a single star to give Star Wars fans. All right, so Jeff was 10 and we were all super cool.
I think that's what we just learned. Before we can draft, we do need an order to the draft. Viet-Lay is going to, our producer Viet-Lay is going to jump in now and give us the draft order. This feels very high stakes to me.
No, whammies. No, whammies. Viet-Lay. Can you see the screen or now?
Let's see here we go. Okay. All right. Viet-Lay just pulled up a very fun color wheel.
Right. So let's see how this goes. I'm so nervous. Oh my God.
All right. I'm going to the first spin of the wheel. Let's see. No, no, no.
That's my worst fear. That is my worst fear. Okay. Whalen is the first pick.
Okay. Next spin. Okay. Now we're just left with Kenny and Jeff.
Okay. Oh, Kenny. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Okay. Okay. And then Jeff is third.
And just to be clear, a traditional way to do the order is it will go whalen then Kenny then Jeff then Jeff then Kenny then whalen. It sort of snakes back and forth so that even though Jeff is last, you'll get to make two picks in a row so that you are not perpetually last. Okay. Okay.
So with all of that out of the way, do you have any final questions before whalen Wong makes the first draft of the first ever Planet Money Pop Culture draft? Let's do it. No. I'm ready.
My body is ready. My mind is ready. You're up. You are on the clock.
Okay. I'm going to draft a movie first and I'm going to draft a movie. This is my fear. And I'm drafting a movie first because my favorite movie of all time came out in 1999 and it is on the list of the top 100 domestic rights movies.
It is the Insider directed by Michael Mann. And this is I will admit kind of an obvious choice because it's very clearly about business, but it is my favorite movie of all time. For those of you who don't know, this is a journalism movie. Russell Crowe plays a research chemist at a tobacco company.
This is based on a true story. He is a corporate whistleblower or he becomes a corporate whistleblower and he goes and gives an interview to 60 minutes about how the tobacco company he works for knowingly added chemicals to cigarettes that were carcinogenic or addictive. And what's interesting to me about this and why I've been thinking about it actually a lot recently is because at that time, CBS pulled the interview from 60 minutes because it was afraid of a lawsuit from the tobacco company and they were afraid that the lawsuit would tank the impending sale of CBS to Westinghouse. So this is actually, you know, it's like everything old as new again because we now with a Colbert show and the Sky Dance deal, we have CBS caving, seemingly caving, seemingly caving once again to in the face of corporate pressures and it's dramatized really well in the insider and there's one of my favorite scenes from any movie of all time, which is Christopher Plummer, RIP, as Mike Wallace, the anchor of 60 Minutes and he like reads, he reads the CBS corporate lawyer, the riot act because he's so mad.
Mike, Mike, try Mr. Wallace. We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now, you have to finesse me, lawyer me some more.
I've been in this profession in 50 years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most respected, the highest rate of the most profitable show on this network. Everyone's in law, just like to like yell this at my husband. Fire me.
Are you going to finesse me? It's like so good. And anyway, I'm obsessed with this movie. Bonus thing I will say is that Lil Bergman has played by Al Pacino has his line, I love which I think about also all the time as a journalist where he says to source on my phone, he's like, I'm two things.
He's like, I'm mad and I'm curious and he's like getting really annoyed at the store. So I think about that all the time because I, well, I don't get mad that often. But I am actually kind of this like seething like pot of rage, but like it's like, yeah, if you get mad and you get curious, that's actually a very potent recipe for doing some journalism. That's what happens in this movie, my favorite movie in here.
It's aggressive and I'm curious. Don't worry about it. All right. Whalen Wong selects the insider starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.
I am hugely relieved I'm up next because what seems to me to be the obvious pick for Whalen is the movie that terrified me so much that I would not go camping and it is the Blair Witch Project. This was like my second choice. I was really worried. Okay.
Now the Blair Witch Project is of course a movie that is shot on really cheap cameras and we are witnessing the like recovered tapes from these three kids who went hunting for an urban legend, which they disappear and it's way scarier than it has any right to be. Sorry, everyone. There's a famous shot with like heavy breathing and snot dripping down the lead actor versus nose. It's all because of me that we're here now.
Hungry, cold, and hunted. And the reason that this is just to me slam dunk planet money pick is because A, this is still one of the most profitable movies ever made. You'll see different like numbers on this, but it was maybe cost like between 30K and 30K to like shoot it. And then there was like a really viral ad campaign, which was like really fresh into the time.
So it looks like with the shooting, the production, the post production and the advertising, we're talking about like a million dollars in and it has made $248 million, a 250 X return. And that is extraordinary. And you know who cites it as a critical influence? One Jason F Blumhouse.
Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like the OG kind of found footage, you know, with like a marketing campaign that like you said, like was viral kind of before we had like a word for that before we really had a concept of virality. Because I remember this will go back to like how cool I was in 1999.
I remember reading about this movie in Time magazine, which is where it's all of my information because I hear a sentence of Time magazine. And I was like, I'm not a scary movie person. I was like, Oh, I want to see this because it looks so interesting from when I'm reading about anything Time magazine. So my brother and I went to see it.
And then I kid you not. I mean, we were scared out of my scared out of our minds. So this day I cannot look at a child's handprint without like needing to like fall down and fear. But there's a handprint on the wall.
I don't think we'll have a specific thing against children. Yeah, yeah, no, but it might be a children's. Which makes you like, makes you turn away. And then I'm like face the corner.
It's awful. It's so scary. It gets me such a shell. But I remember we got home from the movie and my brother pulled the car into the garage and then immediately ran to the house and threw up because of all the jittery cam.
It made him like both really sick. Right. I didn't see this movie in 1999 because I wasn't allowed to see already movies. So it was like the idea of it was so scary to me that I wouldn't go camping.
I mentioned Jason Blum, founder of Blum House. Jason Blum is created this business model or so we think he created it where he invests like a relatively very small amount of money on horror movies hoping that they can have giant returns. And I hope that one hits. And there's just like you can trace all of this to Blair Witch.
He has even cited it as like if there wasn't this there would be no paranormal activity which is really the movie that kind of shot Blum to the public eye. And it has changed the business model for so much that we literally did a planet money episode about Jason Blum. So there if the movie that directly traces to Blum and the episode that we did like how is Blair Witch project not a planet money is very movie. I sometimes think of what we do as journalists some planet money kind of like the Blair Witch are we just assembling found quotes and things together.
I tell you man, it's like we wander into the woods and end up facing a wall and terror. But I just be glad that little fact check here just be clear the whole found footage idea right of course is was not invented by a way to go back to Henry James. It goes back to the three musketeers. And so I feel like you know I should pay credit to sure.
I'm just saying the thing Jason Blum has mentioned is not is this but yeah it's not okay. Okay. So Blair Witch project my number one pick Jeff you're on the clock. Let's see.
Okay. Again just a couple of men and I have both shows movies you do not have to choose a movie. Oh, you know if you chose movies I'll choose movies I'll join the club. Let me see.
Hold on. It's like top 100 grossing movies. Are you moving right now? Or like total profit.
Wow Jeff. I just want to say for the record when the rules were posted in a sledge hall Jeff was the first one to reply like I've already got it. Like I've already figured out my team my draft picks and like so I don't know why it's happening. You told me a thing and then I went and looked for things and then you're like oh no no no there are rules and I was like what rules and then I had to go back.
All right. Okay. All right. Okay.
All right. We didn't convey the rules. Okay. Okay.
So let's talk about the movie. Really big. It was the start of a huge franchise. Or rather a continuation of a huge franchise it's a movie I'm certain every one of you has watched.
Okay. Huge. And it is Pokemon the movie. You too.
Striped back. I was just thinking about that. I thought about that. I thought about that.
And you really? That is a good pick. An unstoppable new enemy. We dreamed of creating the world's strongest Pokemon and we succeeded.
He is it in fact the start is that the first Pokemon movie. It if you'd be earlier in Japan but in 1999 it hit the shores of America and by that time we were already just ripped by Pokemon fever that the games had come out the anime television show had come out and I guess the reason I think it's a planet money thing is this was the gateway drug for a lot of people for like anime and Japanese culture And you guys know that the New Yorker actually had Pikachu on the cover Has that Picture or send it to us will take it. There are two things that I think are really interesting about it I would also say really quickly one is that this movie was shockingly successful at the box office Like if you look at okay box office mojo calm if you just look at the movies that grossed less than Pokemon the movie Okay, see Pokemon the movie is number 24, right? It did better than American Beauty Yeah, it did better than eyes wide shut that's one thing right and then the other thing really because you know Obviously this was like a crystallization of something that's really important Which is culture as an economic export, right?
We're all familiar with that today right of all the kpop exports that we're getting whatever but but culture intellectual property a big deal a big economic deal and Over yeah, and the Pokemon juggernaut is still thriving. It's like people are going nuts or Pokemon again like all over Again, these days. Yeah, do you think that the Matrix? Came out in 1999 and also launched a franchise.
It seems like it seems like Pokemon is way more Sustainable at this point than the you know why you know why because they embraced on the media they were a video game They were a trading card game. They're all kinds of different was on the media famously I'm gonna book it was a video game. Yeah, yeah, but Pokemon they really embraced all of their diffusion products I think they were for kids who have time Tripping over curves playing Pokemon. Yeah, it's like a real public health Just a repoff of geocaching frankly and geocaching I believe is turning like it's having an anniversary this year Shout out to geocaching we don't have time to go into it.
That's another podcast. All right So with the third pick up the draft Jeff's first pick is the first Pokemon movie. What's official title Jeff Pokemon colon the first movie hyphen New to strikes back so this is like an impossible Like we're fast and furious or like a beginning part one. Yeah, okay.
It was ahead of the time on that too great use of punctuation Okay, that was the first round of our 1999 planet money pop called draft again This bonus episode came out a couple months ago for our planet money plus supporters Which means at the end of this show we can reveal who got the most votes in emerge victorious Keep listening and find out if you agree round two coming up On NPR's wild card podcast musician Noah Kahn says he's learned to live with depression I think depression anxiety give you sneaky superpowers in a lot of ways like the power of Understanding and it's emphasizing being able to talk about my flaws about having to be like this terrible taboo thing watch or listen to that Wild Card conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR wild card The order of the draft is now we reverse the order we sneak back on ourselves Jeff you are now the first pick of our second round and then I will go next in a way We'll go next got it. Okay, okay. Um, so you still need to pick a song and a wild card. Okay.
Um, I think a song I will say I'm less nervous about song, but I'm pretty nervous about song. I'm like I'm sweating I'm stoner. I have three options for song, but I feel so much more strongly about one of these three. Okay, and I hope you have this Okay, okay, okay The song of 1999 that I think most epitomizes both 1999 and planet money and economics is I wanted that play by the people is Just listen to the alternate versions today in the car I did know it existed is it even real I don't know but it seems a little dirtier.
I will say and I didn't mean to play it Okay, tell me why is it affirmative? I don't know. Well, so it just it seems to be more explicitly about a I Don't know that something seems dirty. I don't know go listen to it I had my children in the car and my like my my sort of prudish my prudish sensors were up I don't know why it just seemed to icky here, but it's still banger.
I got okay I have two reasons I can tell you why one of them is that of course This was the height of the boy band economy And I think if you listen to the song actually if you watch the music video you can really see an illustration of the concept of comparative advantage And I think there's a common misconception that comparative advantage just means that that this person is just better at this Thing than this other person but what comparative advantage really means is that each person should tend to do the thing that they are best at Compared to their own skills So if you look at the song AJ in a make one of the best singers in the band But he also is one of the best dancers and so there's these other guys one of them called not Brian who is also a great singer But not as good as dancing and so by the theory of comparative advantage AJ, you know, they're putting him central He's dancing right he maybe is not singing all the time But he's dancing cuz they need him to dance. Where's Brian? Poor Brian. He's amazing singer.
He's always in the corner because they don't want you to get him Not a bar. Yes, but his voice is beautiful He gets more of the voice parts and they mix it up obviously, but I think it's a really good illustration of we each do what we're best at I love this. I love this is a great thesis and someone you know what free PhD thesis I think it's already written surely. Okay, surely You know what's interesting is like what you're describing is kind of the strategy of the corporation that's assembling this boy band as well Right?
They kind of have to figure out how to slot in who where and I feel like this is now what you see with like every like kpop band or like I'm kind of getting into cats and I watch that documentary on Netflix where they like put this girl band together And yeah, you can see which one is the strong dancer Which one is the strong singer who's like a good all-around player and they have to kind of think holistically about the unit lanes But really let me tell you the second reason why I think this is very planning money is because actually let me ask you What do you think this song means? Oh well? What is it you want it that way? What is it?
What is it the relationship? Why a relationship? Well, it is then Because I never want to hear you say I want it that way So it's kind of like is it about like I want us to want the same things in the relationship Like I don't want to hear you say I want it like a different way than how I want it Yeah, like is it is it I only want it my way not your way Who know and here's a thing but doesn't he doesn't have been articulate a series of ways that it could be and then they say I don't want to hear you Say you want it? This is like a song about a relationship on the on the fritts, right?
Or like it's like a long-distance relationship and they're just like kind of falling apart and then he says I Don't ever want to hear you say I want it that way and it's like what is this a continuation of fight or whatever? And so there's been a lot of ink spilled on what I like that way actually means right and I think famously I think it was Chrissy Teigen who like on Twitter was like hey guys like it's been 20 years What the heck does this song mean? I don't know because because it's co-written by Max Martin Does not really have a great grasp of what meanings are so Because it's like the beauty of pop music is like sometimes the lyrics like they don't totally make sense But these lyrics really really don't make sense. They're very semiotically open right?
It's like like open textured and you know like epistemologically unstable and I feel like that really describes the world that we live in right now Oh as journalists True explain to explain these things right With the fourth pick in the planet many paul culture draft Jeff has selected I wanted that way very good Really good pick especially good you did not take what I was really hoping Well, I mean that yes, I can tank yours alright in the year 1999 this is my by the way all four members of a now legendary R&B group turned 18 years old and and as adults Would the first single from their sophomore album be about independence or rebellion? I know no no it would not becoming adults to this group meant that it was time to sing an ode to Financial responsibility With my second pick of the 99 party culture draft I select destinies child bills bills bills I had no I did not have a good backup to this alright, so this is in fact as these child's first song to peak at number one It ultimately what yeah, it ultimately wound up at 21 on 1999's year-end hot 100 list It is mostly about a boyfriend leaching off of a woman's success It is mostly about phone bills very 1999 and car bills or as we say Whenever but what this song did not need to do but did was to get this serious about personal Here's the clip Say that again gave me badge credit buying me gifts with my own ends. These are some 18 year olds most 18 year olds are not thinking about FICO scores this is amazing true You know who is thinking about FICO scores and 18 years old destiny's child and that is why they are the greatest planet money song The best part about this is that like credit cards really became a universal Democratized everybody has one thing in the 1990s when they were writing the song right and so like bill bills bills would not have made sense 10 years prior. Mmm.
I got my first credit card in 1999 And you know there's like some company that's like set up outside the union and got frisbees if you sign up for credit cards I've never heard credit card that will sign up for enough of this free for you Bills bills, maybe that I don't know if that's in the alternate All right, so yes bills bills bills that is my choice amazing. Yes, it's my turn I will also stick with song my pick for song is no scrubs by TLC This song it reminds me of some stuff I was researching and thinking about for an episode of it's been a minute That I got to be on and this it was all about like relationships and money and you know in scrubs It describes this like broke deadbeat guy and the TLC ladies don't want anything to do with this guy because he's like You know doesn't have a job and he's just you know hanging out of the passenger seat of his best friends ride and everything Okay, try to holler try to holler at trying to holler and like they're not right And I think this song speaks to broader dynamics we see in marriage rates especially marriage rates across those two economic classes because It is this like well-documented long-running thing where marriage rates have been going down as you go down the income ladder Right that and there's this notion that for you know like straight women the marriage pool in their economic class is perhaps less desirable than it was in the past like if you look at you know like working class or lower-income classes You have a lot of men who are unemployed like this is partially an effective like the hollowing out of industrial jobs in some communities you have just fewer men because of mass incarceration and when you have like very traditional gender roles still where women are doing More than 50% of the household labor you get a situation where women would rather go it alone than pair up with someone who Isn't pulling their weight either income wise and or with the household labor taking care of kids helping out at home all that kind of stuff So I think that this notion of like I don't want no scrubs It speaks to maybe the desirability of the available men that certain women are seeing out there in the world And this is something we're still contending with 25 years later Kardashian didn't want to marry Scott Disick He was a scrub back then he was a scrubbing court and he knew it so she never married him she's never married Once this once a scrub always a scrub or is this okay? Now no scrubs wailing long second pick I will say that was my first backup to or actually my third backup Because here's my argument and I will give you for free It wasn't as good as your argument my argument was bills bills bills is about someone getting into a relationship with a man Who then is running up the credit card? No scrubs represents what we would in our industry call a total risk of Where you are saying oh no no no we are mitigating all risk by just saying no we're not getting into a relationship So that you can't then turn into bill So in some ways no scrubs is like a path a path not taken a better path and bills bills Is what happens if you do end up in that?
Yeah, it's so funny cuz bills bills was my backup choice And I was thinking about the relationship between these two songs right and how I described like very similar experiences But one is like oh you took a plunge it worked out badly one is like I'm not even getting involved like just keep driving That's the risk of waiting straight. That's what there we go. All right, so no scrubs and bills bills Like a kind of pop culture couplets if you will there on the top Okay, that was the second round of our 1999 planet money pop culture draft and that's 99 by the way Famously great for movies but shockingly good here for pop music. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, all right final rounds and win a reveal coming up This week on sources and methods every White House has an official counter terrorism plan a strategy document basically But president Trump's new 2026 plan shifts focus to left wing extremism We're unpacking what's in the document and who influenced it this week on sources and methods You can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts Wayland you now get to make your final pick in the draft a wild card pick is all this left for any of us now again We didn't have to choose in this order, but it wild card makes sense No one's gonna steal your wild card probably probably but I was nervous about this too cuz I was like what if you all land on this I guarantee you are not landing on what I've got. I'm not worried about my strategy was like I was so nervous about Blair Witch and Bill's bills I was like I must I must reduce the risk of anyone picking my walker. I will just go obscure Okay, well, I can't wait to hear yours mine is not that obscure But I think it's a strong pick obviously stand behind my pick because I want to win this draft okay my wild card pick I'm going television and I am going with a show that debuted in 1999 and I think you know really changed our Entire relationship as a culture with one of the most important sectors of the economy I'm talking about the premiere of house hunters Looks real nice Jane and Mitch Englander are playing beat the clock with a new baby on the way finding a larger home is their priority House hunters 1999 and if you think about our national Obsession with real estate in all forms right like I think without house hunters you might not get Zillow's talking You might not get this obsession with like open floor plans and whatever the hack and kind of like this like judgment We have over like what people can afford and like judging people's aesthetic choices I mean like all of these I know right I was trying to go quickly what mortgage was it good Google to do so in the 90s It looks like we were between 6.9 6.9 percent was the lowest mortgage rate in the 90s according to bank Well, that's actually that sounds high, but it's like you know, but then we had that then it was whatever that's like freezer Bear out right so 2% we must all erase 2% Like I don't think that was a real estate.
Yeah, we got like a bit you ate it in this like way that's like not very helpful But yes, okay, so perhaps perhaps we were seeing some relatively low mortgage rates Which may have been spawning people but also these shows were all always really about like Reinforcing the American dream back to us and so so the idea that ownership is the only thing like there's no question at all In these shows like that. It's a game. It's a game of ownership like you must you get to pick which house you would like Which of these three would you like there won't be? Just choose which house and like yeah, you think about the entire HGTV Empire and your house Hunters International I mean, it's just and it all started in 1999 with the launch of hunters great pick Whalen Thank you, so that rounds out Whalen's team of 1999 Planet Money pop culture.
I will make my final pick I regret going this obscure All right, well, so I figured you're not gonna let me argue that I can just draft the entire dot-com bubble as a pop culture Or if you know I'm gonna say no, I guess you Brad so in the 1990s if you're unaware Lucky you there were lots of these new fangled internet companies popping up and man was there money rushing in and boy Was it a bubble and did it ever cause a recession later in about 2001? But we're not 2001 yet We're still in 1999 arguably the peak of the bubble and so what I will draft is a commercial for a company that I think you could argue Just sort of is the dot-com bubble. We're gonna play a little bit of commercial. You're gonna hear whoopi Goldberg Blue that is FLO OC flues I forgot to say Harry flues was founded in 1999 and the commercial debut in 1999 That's the 1999 connection I thought you're gonna say like pet's not com or something.
I've never heard of well Pet's not calm is the obvious dot-com bubble of course lose calm man Are there echoes of what we have seen over the last five years? So flues dot com's business model was hey? We have all these new like retailers like Barnes and Noble Tower records like doing business online What if our company like takes your real money and turns it into fake internet money that only works on the internet? And can't be converted back you can just spend it at these online retailers who?
Some of those retailers that they got to sign up digital currency It's not crypto right it's not blockchain invented yet money, but it is just like great Well, we're gonna get to that So so some of the companies that took this was like tower records good. I have a chocolate fog dog would accept flues But it also reminds me I believe that is also I don't know whatever it's very 90s company I don't remember all what they do so whoopi Goldberg became their spokesperson she became she got paid in she I believe she got paid in flues money. Oh my god And then also became the largest shareholder outside of the founders I would have been like a few years flues flues announced bankruptcy What had happened was a Russian Filipino scam whereby a bunch of stolen credit card numbers were then quickly used to buy a bunch of Flues like $300,000 in flues no was found out by the credit card companies And they of course canceled the orders and that just left flues with like oh no We just have $300,000 of like e money floating around that we don't get our money back for they declared bankruptcy They became known in hindsight as a bit of a canary in the coal mine of the dot-com bubble busting and but like What the Goldberg out there promoting this digital currency? I just kept thinking about like there's Larry David like promoting crypto There's like just like the last couple Super Bowls or whatever where they were all these crypto commercials Yeah, just seemed like such a beautiful little piece of pop culture So I draft not the whole dot-com bubble right but I drew in not flues I draft the goldberg in a flues commercial telling people they're old and should buy digital currency That's what I try you know I like this because I think they were on to something right because you think about 1999 We didn't have like PayPal.
I mean I think we did have PayPal that PayPal probably wasn't integrated into all of these Commerce like the way it wasn't really a great way probably to shop a lot online or maybe didn't feel trustworthy So I respect this company for trying to get into this space because clearly there was a need there And it was just like they had to work out the kinks and it didn't quite go as you couldn't even pay your bills bills Can I read one final quote? So this was in an interview with the CEO when the partnership with the Goldberg was announced He thought it was a good partnership because quote we're both irreverent hip and fun, but also trusted and respectable brands Yeah, I don't like I don't what be that may all be true for what be I suppose But it didn't end up being true for flues as the company declared bankruptcy and was an easy target Of fraud and a clear you lose you lose that's what happened. Oh Flues flues I come all right the final pick in the 1999 plan a pop culture draft goes to Jeff Well, Jeff your wild card pick okay, and you said I could pick anything Like give it a name will make a judgment vegetable mineral okay, okay, so we've been talking about songs right now I think those bills scrubs or the absence thereof and what is what is the thing where we were getting all the songs from naps? At that time naps are which they viewed in 1999 so in a way I'm thinking all of the songs the sum total of songery in 1999 was on naps are and why does it epitomize plan?
Well number one this was of course a huge economic story without Napster we would not have the iPod without Napster we wouldn't have Spotify Napster completely changed how the music industry constitutes itself right and now everybody's touring because there's no money To be made and music is free and everywhere and Napster was a sort of all that that's that's that's that's it's free now It's free now like I pay for spotify subscription which I guess pennies back to it's functional The lava chicken Feel free Feels free is a banger. Here's the other thing about Napster right eventually these file-sharing programs led to more than just pirated music People started pirating all kinds of stuff and a lot of what they shared was pirated software like Photoshop But especially like especially like music production software and so if you go back into like the histories of all the big DJs or whatever They almost all of them have a teenage basement phase where they work making beats using pirated software pirated ableton pirated You know FL loops or whatever making beats. That's how they got their reps in That's how they developed the music the sound of the next generation. It was all because of piracy.
That's so interesting So it's like the democratization of that software Allow like what were the barriers to entry for this generation? I would say that's more like kleptok or Now to allow us to seize the means both of production and reproduction Napster is a great choice actually make me house hunters and Napster now make me regret picking something No, I really like learning about flus. I didn't know that was a mess Okay, we've done it we did it all right Welyn and Jeff any final thoughts on things that you wanted to draft that you didn't very super quickly while we wrap this up I can give you one way you think my not my song backup was Believe I share because it famously took this relatively new dirty little secret tool called auto tune that helps people sounds like They were singing the right notes But we weren't supposed to know about it I guess and it just like put it front center and use it and it's like hey There's this thing everybody's using and so share is given credit for really establishing auto tune as a sound a kind of sound and obviously That is shaped music for decades. I had that on my list you for that reason Yeah, yeah, and then the other like my real bad backup for movie was Doug's first movie My argument was gonna be that it really like so Doug's first movie was put out by Disney You may if you're a child of the 90s you will remember there was a weird switch from like Doug was on Nickelodeon Then he was on like ABC all of a sudden that's because Disney had started to do this thing that we just they're like super famous for now But before they are required Pixar and Marvel and Lucas films like they had bought this little production studio called Jumbo Jumbo entertainer Jumbo films or whatever they're making Doug and they're like, I don't know if you still have Doug and so I was gonna argue that like this was The beginning of the modern IP vacuum cleaner Oh, that's good.
Yeah, I had like a spare wild card pick Which was who wants to be a millionaire debuted in the US in 1999 and I don't know if you guys remember that it was on like every single day Like it was just they once they premiered and became a hit It just like it was on all the time seemingly and it was like you know One of the highest highest rated game shows in US TV history and I feel like it almost presents this alternative history where there's another pop culture timeline Where instead of getting a huge glut of reality shows that are based on dating and stuff We actually went the game show around we just had a bajillion game show that somehow like game shows didn't really take despite the huge success of Who wants to be a millionaire? Yeah, yeah, yeah, my backup pick probably would have been fight club Oh popular, but to me fight club really represents the pinnacle of Gen X culture where oh my god The worst thing that could happen to me in life is that I have a regular regular job. Oh my god. Oh, I Always think American with this like Rand where it's like oh like oh look at the on we of like the upper middle Classic suburban white man like oh I have this white collar job.
That's so boring. Whatever. Shall I do and like fight club was the same? It was like oh no like look at me buying a key for a chair It's like it over it.
Yeah, it's like that No, we ended up just wait our best efforts we ended up in the fight club like So let's recap for the listeners a thank you for sticking with us through this bizarre journey through the up-sea down-sea top-sea-turvy world of 1999 Jeff would you like to recap your team? Okay, the movie I picked was Pokemon the movie colon the first movie Anime and globalized culture to everybody as long as it was That way right because because of comparative advantage because it's sort of a missing Ryan singing That's what I write yes also also what is the meaning of it? It has an unstable meaning and then the object thing the other thing I pick was nastier Okay, we'll end up your team yes for movie I picked the insider directed by Michael man classic corporate whistle-blowing tale with strange relevance you today Also shot to Bruce McGill love his scene in the insider for song I picked no scrubs by TLC looking at the state of marriage across the economic classes and for well card I picked house hunters which debuted in 1999 and without which maybe we wouldn't have so much ship lap in the world I've ever thought about that was thinking about the games as in their ship lap I do it with that ship well, they love it. I think it's useful Can you put pegs between the ship lap boards and hang stuff?
I think you can yeah, yeah, I mean alright So my team consists of the movie the Blair Witch Project Which is still one of the most profitable movies of all time in turns of return on investment and frankly kick-started an entire business model that we have Done a planet money episode about the Blumhouse model for my song I chose bills bills bills Which is includes discussion about credit scores like what do you want? And then finally I chose a 1999 commercial book will be goldberg for flus Fake internet it's real money. I guess whatever flus internet money That was both quite a predictor of the way that crypto is being sold to us now But also was emblematic of the dot-com bubble that was about to burst Jeff I still think this was all an act that you didn't know you're obviously prepared really well I don't know what you're talking about because the winner get flus is at the prize if we can find some flus Yeah, there's a lot of me Go to tower backers and buy a Destiny's Child album Okay, we can now give you this very very important update So back in September we asked our planet money plus supporters to vote on who they thought won this this draft who had drafted the best Quote-quote-quote planet money team of pop culture the votes and many opinions came streaming into our inbox I know need to keep you in suspense because there was a very clear winner in a landslide wailin won Here is a little bit of what wailin said when we broke the news to her Thanks so much for believing in me and my picks and For yeah, also voting because you know the insider I think I mentioned on the episode is my favorite movie ever and I hope maybe I inspired some people to go watch and haven't seen it before Congrats wailin and then Jeff well came in seconds and I came in third I do blame flus for for that. I think I think I think that the flus anyway We hope you enjoyed that we had a lot of fun doing this and we have plans for another planet money pop culture draft next year So if you have suggestions about the year we should do send those to us planet money at NPR dot org and of course to be able to hear that Episode and other bonus episodes you're gonna want to make sure that you have signed up for planet money plus just go to plus dot NPR dot org slash planet money that is plus dot NPR dot org slash planet money if you've already joined thank you Thank you.
Thank you. You know why today's episode was produced by viele and edited by Alex goldmark I'm Kenny Malone and this is planet money from You know that feeling when you hear a great tip and it's like that makes so much sense Why haven't I've been doing that all this time if that's you you might like like it whether you're looking to make changes Around your health your money your relationships your parenting you're guaranteed the this is so helpful feeling listen to the LifeKit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts