Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.

So I want to start off this next conversation with a fun fact, a borderline fun anecdote,

not quite.

It's about the global positioning system, GPS.

You know, the thing that your phone uses to get you instructions on how to get to the

nearest ice cream store or to find out when the next bus is.

GPS, we use it every day, transparently, visibly, millions of uses big and small. GPS was created

and is owned and operated by the United States government to this very day. Maybe you knew

that maybe you didn't, but these days it's easy to think that the role of the federal government

in our lives is just a few simple, obvious things, the Army, IRS, Congress. There's a new

show on Netflix that came out earlier this year. It's a documentary series called The

G Word and it explores the topic of government. What it actually does, it's about bank regulation,

food safety, the weather and guess, global positioning. The ways that we might not be aware

that the government has helped us all out and some of the ways it might have made our

lives more difficult. And most importantly, that the government is a bunch of us. It's

not faceless institutions. It's our fellow citizens working on behalf of every one of us.

Adam Conover hosts the G word and there might not be a better person for the job. He's

a writer and comic whose brand you might describe as and I think he would probably agree with

me here, annoying know it all. Before the G word, he hosted Adam Ruins Everything, an educational

show where he fought misinformation and myths by ruining them. Both Adam Ruins Everything

and the G word are educational. They're also very, very funny. Honestly, they are a good

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