- (beep) This shit. I have enough in my journal.
I'm gonna publish this shit.
I'm out.
(epic music)
- Hello.
My name is Matt Gourley.
And tonight we're gonna talk about Watergate.
Let's begin.
Washington D.C., 19 seven, 1972,
five Watergate burglars are arrested
in the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
What are they doing there?
Why are they breaking in?
A young, upstart reporter,
Robert Woodward, goes to the hearing.
One of them, when the judge is asking these five burglars,
"Who do you work for?"
"The CIA."
"Excuse me, could you say a it a little bit louder?"
"The CIA."
Robert Woodward is onto something.
Oh, look at this sweet little fat guy.
Where do you gotta be right now?
Okay, let's go back in time.
The year is 1970.
A young Robert Woodward, a lieutenant in the Navy.
He's sitting next to this older distinguished man,
saying "I'm soon to be out of the Navy.
What am I gonna do with my life?
Am I going to become a lawyer like my father wants?"
And this older man presents himself as a mentor saying,
"So listen to me, you're working for truth.
Stay with it."
And young Robert Woodward takes away from this thing,
"I can depend on this man.
I can call on this man at some point
to give me information."
That man is Mark Felt, Deputy Director of the FBI.
Let's flash forward a little bit.
Robert Woodward and his partner,
Carl Bernstein, decide to call in his old buddy,
Mark Felt, for information about Watergate.
Felt says, "I can't talk to you on the phone about this.
I'm Mark Felt and I did spy times in World War Two
and I know how this works.
You get the New York Times every day at your door.
At page 20, I will draw a little clock that says
what hour I wanna meet you.
And here's the thing, anytime you wanna meet me,"
Mark Felt says, "I need something that I can visually
acknowledge."
Woodward says, "I do have this potted plant
that I keep out on my balcony.
I could move that."
And Mark Felt is like,
"Here's the thing I wanna meet you
at this underground parking garage in Virginia.
But anytime you wanna meet, leave out the back stairs,
walk a couple of blocks, get in the cab, take that cab,
get out of the cab, walk a couple blocks,
get in another cab.
Get in that cab, get out of that cab,
walk a couple blocks to the Virginia parking garage
that I previously talked about."
Woodward meets Felt and he says...
Hold on.
I think I'm gonna vomit.
(Matt vomits)
Sorry, pal.
I'm ready to tell the story.
Woodward meets with Mark Felt and he says,
"Could you tell me a little bit
about why these guys might be connected?"
And he says, "Put the pieces together, ya dumb ass.
It's all in front of you, do the work.
Just be careful.
Watergate is the tip of the iceberg."
And when Robert Woodward took his secret source
to the Washington Post, he said,
"My source is deep background,
that means he cannot be identified."
Their editor at the Washington Post said,
"Yeah, you keep calling 'em deep background,
but I'm going to call 'em Deep Throat
based on the pornography film that was very popular,
which dealt with natural ladies, you know?"
And so Woodward and Bernstein figure out
that this money connected to these burglars
go all the way to the Watergate administration,
to the Nixon administration, Richard Nixon.
Let's talk about Richard Nixon.
Do you wanna talk about Richard Nixon?
- [Derek] I would love, yes please.
- Yeah, I thought you might.
Mark Felt says to Nixon,
"I'm the deputy director of the FBI.
I'm gonna look into this rascal Deep Throat
and further, I'm going to set myself up
as head of the investigation."
So Nixon's top aide, Haldeman, says,
"I think Mark Felt is Deep Throat."
And Nixon says, "Now why would he do that?"
And when the Watergate hearings gets to a boiling point,
Nixon is like,
"I never knew of this Watergate break in
to discover information about the Democrats."
And after that, he says,
"I am not a crook."
Nixon, knows he's (beep).
And he says, "There's nothing I can do about it.
Nobody's gonna trust me at this point.
I gotta step down. Hand me some cookies." (laughs)
All I know is, I'm eating cookies and none of you are.
Do you guys want some cookies?
- [Derek] Oh, no, we'd like--
- You have no ambition.
The interesting thing about this take
we're taking on it is all the stories we know
of Watergate is who's Deep Throat?
But now we can tell the story knowing who Deep Throat is.
And in the end, you can toss aside Richard Nixon
for all his cynicism, you can toss aside Deep Throat
for all his cynicism, but you can't toss aside
Robert Woodward and to a lesser extent, Carl Bernstein,
for the truth that they exposed for America.
Well, we told the story of Watergate.
There's no way it could possibly misconstrued
as not the greatest journalistic endeavor ever told.
Robert Woodward would be proud.
- Hello, I'm Katie Nolan and today we're gonna talk
about Gloria Steinem.
Our story begins in the year 1963.
Gloria Steinem was a graduate of Smith College.
Very smart.
She's 28 years old and she's a journalist
and Show magazine was like,
"Hey Gloria, we have a story for you.
We want you to go undercover
at one of Hugh Hefner's Playboy clubs."
And Playboy clubs were advertising themselves,
at the time, as being in a real life version of Playboy.
So you would have beautiful women everywhere
and drinks and food and dude stuff.
- Yeah! - Boobies and vaginas!
(laughs)
And Gloria was like, "I don't think this is what I want.
I want people to take me seriously."
And her editor was like,
"I think this could be your chance
to call Hugh Hefner out on his goddamn bullshit."
And she was like, "You're right, I'm in,
let's (beep) do it."
Uh, what was I talking about?
So she says yes to the thing, to the assignment.
And so she goes to the audition,
which is at a Playboy club.
So she's this alias she's created for herself,
which is Marie Catherine Ochs.
And the woman that she goes up to says,
"Take off your coat, let me see your body."
Gloria was like, "Um, okay,"
and took her coat off.
The woman was like, "You look a little old for 24,
but your body's great.
Come back on Saturday for a fitting."
And so Gloria comes back a couple days later,
she sees this woman named Sheralee.
She's like, "I'm the bunny mother."
So she goes and she gets sized.
She puts on this leotard and she's like, "This fits."
And they're like, "No, it doesn't."
And they keep going in, and in and Gloria's like,
"I think that's tight enough, I can hardly breathe."
(Derek laughs)
I just had an ice cube-- - You okay?
- An ice just assaulted me.
- You got ISIS-ed.
(both laugh)
- [Katie] So the bunny mother, Sheralee,
is explaining to the bunnies.
There's all these things
that they can take your money away for.
Like, if your ears are on crooked, that's a demerit.
If your bunny tail's dirty, that's demerits.
If you're not smiling enough, that's a bunch of demerits.
They also give her this bunny manual,
which is a list of all the rules that you have to follow.
In the bunny manual, it says you're not allowed
to date any customers.
But then they were told unless they hold the special key.
These special key members were allowed
to do whatever they want.
Ew, that's (beep) up.
Anyway, so, they're like, "Great,
you're all set, you're gonna start work soon.
We just need you to complete your physical."
And Gloria is like, "What do you mean?
I'm gonna be a waitress."
"Oh, well we just need you to complete a physical
with this doctor and then you'll be fine to start."
That's gross.
- [Derek] Yeah.
- That's just gross.
So she goes to the doctor,
she sits on the table and she sees there's stirrups.
And the doctor walks in.
And the first thing he says to her is,
"So you wanna be a bunny," which is alarming as a doctor.
He exams her, which to a woman means, you know.
- Pap smear?
- Did you say patch smear?
- [Derek] I've never had one.
- It's not a bagel, Derek.
It's a, it's a-- - Hmm, I'm from New York!
I came to get a little-- - I'm-a give you a pap shmear!
So she finishes the exam
and she goes the next day to train for this job.
That's a fancy word for you're gonna work
and not get paid any money.
She's training as a table bunny
and they teach her that she just has
to follow the other bunny servers around.
And so she's going around asking these people like,
"Hello, I'm Bunny Marie, what can I get for you?"
And they would say things like,
"Yeah, girl, let me see your titties.
Open it up."
Which is bullshit!
How many times are you allowed to say bullshit
on Comedy Central?
I've said it a whole bunch.
- Whenever you want.
- Okay. It's some bullshit.
She's working all these shifts and she's, in her journal,
she's writing all these injustices.
They're working these long hours,
they're not making any money.
On top of that, it's basically a prostitution ring.
And after working in the Playboy clubs for four weeks,
Gloria was like, "(beep) this shit,
I have enough in my journal.
I'm gonna publish this shit, I'm out."
It's just all the stupid, sexist, dumb ass bullshit.
She just wanted to get the (beep) out.
And so she quit.
And so Gloria writes an expose on these Playboy clubs.
She's like, "These women were not making as much money
as they were told they were gonna make,
it's insane hours, they're being grabbed all the time,
they're treated like prostitutes,
they're basically being used as a tool
for the male sexual revolution.
But the women themselves don't get to own their sexuality
and that's shitty."
So they publishes, they publishes, they puble,
they pub-i-lish, they publish the story in the magazine.
So the world reads this article and,
to his very tiny credit,
Hugh Hefner says, "Wow, yeah, maybe they won't
have to go to these physical exams anymore.
And you know what?
I'm gonna stop making them have to give so much
of their money to us if they make a mistake,"
Which is a really cool thing that Hugh Hefner did,
but also not as cool as just
always treating them that way.
This article made Gloria Steinem a household name.
And she went on to be this huge feminist icon.
It's tough, but I swear to God,
if it weren't for Gloria Steinem,
I wouldn't be able to be on TV.
It's very hard to be a woman that's like, "I love sports."
- And you have stuck to your guns ever since you've started.
And that is what...
- You cried!
- I'm sorry.
- Can I get somebody else to do, do this?
(both laugh)
- Hello, I'm gonna tell you about Nellie Bly,
a very good journalist from that 1880s
who did an expose on the world of mental illness.
Nellie Bly was a very strong-minded woman.
She gets a load of a column
from a local Pittsburgh paper and it's super sexist.
The article was like,
"Chicks gotta stay in the kitchen.
Girls gotta, why even bother being educated
when you just gotta get married and have babies?"
And she was like, "(beep) this guy.
Girls are better than being in the kitchen,
being wives, and sewing.
(beep) I'm super smart and I'm gonna show you
I'm super smart just to prove that women are awesome."
So Nellie (laughs) so Nellie Bly went to New York City
and she knocked on every newspaper door in the city.
And who answered the door but Joseph Pulitzer himself.
And he's like, "Listen, I don't take you seriously,
but I have an assignment.
I want you to pretend to be crazy
and get committed to the insane asylum in New York City,
Blackwell's Island." (thunder rumbles)
And Nellie Bly said, "Okay, I'll do it."
And he was like, "What?"
And she was like,
"I will go into the insane asylum
and give you a really good report."
(dog barks)
Right? Right, right?
(beep) that dog.
(both laugh)
God, some people have (beep) labs and they're great.
This thing's a piece of (beep).
All right, so, Nellie Bly.
She never saw a crazy person before.
So she went in front of a mirror and made funny faces like.
(groans)
See this face? This face?
(blows raspberry)
She had no idea what crazy people to say.
She was like, "Okay, this is how I'm gonna be crazy."
(groans)
She goes to this boarding house,
"Listen every, but every, listen every, every lady
at this boarding house with me.
I am crazy, okay?"
(dog barks)
What?
Oh, you're crazy.
Nellie, you're crazy.
You're crazy.
Yes, you're crazy.
The headmistress was like, "Send her to the insane asylum,"
and Nellie Bly was like, "Yes, this is working.
This is super working for me.
I'm super happy."
Then she finds herself on Blackwell's Island.
(epic music)
(blows raspberry)
I'm drunk as (beep).
Woo.
So she was examined by a doctor, "How tall is she?"
And the nurse would be like,
"Come and look at how tall this Nellie is."
And doctor would say like,
"What are you doing after we measured Nellie Bly?"
After the nurse and doctor flirted for a half hour,
the doctor's like, "Oh my God, this Nellie Bly,
she is a crazy, crazy person that needs to be here forever."
And Nellie Bly was like, "Yes, I'm so happy.
I'm such a good journalist."
She started to see how (beep) the conditions were.
The nurses would just beat the (beep) out of people.
Knock them in their ears. (blows raspberry)
Hitting 'em like crazy.
Like "You, women are all crazy and you suck."
And Nellie Bly was like, "Aw, (beep), that ain't cool.
I'm gonna write that down,
these ladies are gonna get a word from me."
She sees perfectly sane women who just don't speak English.
The doctors are like, "We don't speak German.
You're crazy, (blows raspberry),
you go to the asylum for life.
And there was a woman, she was like,
"I just got a little overwhelmed. I'm not crazy."
And they were like, "This woman is in, so insane.
There's nothing we can do but keep her locked up
at this asylum forever."
'Cause the insane asylum was horrible.
And then there's the baths.
The nurse would just scrub the (beep) out of 'em.
And Nellie Bly would be like,
"This kinda hurts a little bit."
She was like, "You be quiet or I will, I will,
I will make you wish you never said anything to me.
I'll scrub you so hard."
- [Derek] Wow.
- I got at least two bathing suits,
should we put them on and get in the tub?
- [Derek] Really?
- You don't have the balls to get in the tub with me
with a bathing suit, do you?
(laughs)
Look to the ceiling, Derek.
Oh, you're so much more pleasant with water
over your head than my son.
He makes such a fuss. This is such a delight.
Nellie Bly had to take baths
with the dirt of 45 other girls on her.
And it was freezing cold.
She had this horrible 10 days in a insane asylum.
And then Joseph Pulitzer's like,
"Hey, guess what, dummies!
This crazy way of girl was my sweet reporter.
And she,
and she...
She wasn't insane."
Then they were like, "Oh no, we're exposed!"
And she wrote an article that exposed everybody.
All of a sudden, money was flowing like crazy
to mental health institutions.
She changed the world of mental health.
Nellie Bly was one of the first great American feminists
that said, listen, stupid 1880s guys
with giant mustaches connected to their stupid side burns.
Women, we're really cool.
That was basically how it went, except less kissing.
(Derek laughs)
- [Derek] No, no, stop!