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Hidden Brain

Episode 58: Pedestals and Guillotines

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Social Sciences, Arts, Performing Arts, Science

4.642.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2017

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's inauguration season, which means balls, parades, and celebrations. We may love the pomp and circumstance, but there's another, darker side to our psychology, too. Whether we like the new president or not, human beings have a strange and contradictory relationship with power and celebrity. We idolize the rich and famous, but also enjoy seeing them fall from their pedestals. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore this paradox: from Hollywood, to the White House, to the forests of Tanzania.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Los Angeles, the celebrity capital of the world. It's a city that conjures

0:13.4

palm-line boulevards, crawling mansions, luxury cars. At the center of all the glitz, Hollywood.

0:22.2

Movie stars aren't the only ones here. Star gazers are drawn here too, like paperclips

0:27.8

to a magnet. With the musac blaring, a handful of people on a celebrity tour pure out

0:42.5

their van, hoping to glimpse the homes of LA's rich and famous. The guide points out Gwen

0:48.2

Stefani's house, and a clump of bushes behind which she claims is Quentin Tarantino's

0:53.3

home. She pulls up Nia Cady Perry's compound. Do I have any Cady Perry fans, boy? Fine,

1:00.3

it works. Okay, well here's her house. Look up to your left, and you'll see the awning,

1:06.7

the red awning. You can't really see it's red there, but we are right beneath her house.

1:11.0

She actually owns the entire corner here, and look at her view. It's amazing, isn't it?

1:16.4

One of the tour's most popular sites is the home of Kim Kardashian, while sort of.

1:21.9

Kanye and Kim needed a house to have their friends over, and on the left hand side this

1:28.2

is the house they use. Rented for 12,000 a month, there's somebody right behind it so

1:33.0

I can't stop. I'm sorry about that, but that is the house right there. Has its own little

1:38.6

swimming pool. Boy, they had some big parties too.

1:41.4

Tours like this are big business. Andrew Imordino helps manage the tour company called Star

1:46.5

Track. He says not just Americans, but people from all over the world sign up for these

1:51.8

tours, and they kind of want to just get that little feel, that little taste of what it's

1:56.5

like to see the celebrity's homes and do all the crazy stuff that you see in the magazines

2:02.0

and the televisions.

2:11.2

But it's more than just wanting a taste of celebrity culture. The glitz and glamour,

2:15.2

the swimming pools, the manicured grounds, the storied homes, humans, hunger for a chance

...

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