The DORK Side

Everyone has a quirky tradition, whether it’s a festival of airborne tomatoes or, on a more personal level, the annual family Turkey Bowl football game where athletic aspirations collide with digestive overconfidence. But what is tradition, really? Is it the cultural glue holding the fabric together, or just the path of least resistance our ancestors took to avoid thinking up new ideas every November? The pathology of tradition—its weird way of infecting one generation after another—might owe more to our need for predictability than reverence for the past. Kids crave routine, not chaos, which is why family rituals—like the Turkey Bowl—become identity markers faster than grandma can yell “fumble!”.Join us DORKs in the new tradition of analyzing everything...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Remember the first time you realized the Frosted Flakes tiger was more enthusiastic about your breakfast than your own parents?Like, Tony’s over there flexing his biceps at a bowl of sugar, and my dad’s just mumbling “Don’t be late.”Why do brands do this to us? They hire cartoon animals to emotionally bond with children — which sounds less like advertising and more like something that should require a court order.But it works. Decades later, we can’t remember our childhood home phone number, but we can hum the jingle from a cartoon bear who sold paper towels.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ever notice how your first superstition came from something an adult casually said — and your brain just signed the contract in crayon? That’s how most of these things start. Our minds are pattern machines wired for survival, not accuracy. Early on, a coincidence gets mistaken for cause: You step on a crack, your mom twists her ankle, and boom—your brain adds ‘avoid cracks’ to its emergency survival handbook. The fancy term is associative learning. It’s the same way pigeons learn to peck a button for food… only we add mythological backstory and matching socks for good luck. Asia’s ancient superstitions are textbook cases — whole cultures ritualizing those first random coincidences until they calcified into cosmic rules.”\Join the rest of us DORKS to explore why you give credence to superstitions.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention", and that's certainly true. But the origins of some inventions will blow your mind! Join us DORKS for a fascinating look at what inspired some of the things you use and the many more you overlook. We promise you will think of things very differently. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The DORK Side, where our knowledge is random, but our commitment to mocking hollow gestures is absolute. Now, let's talk about the oldest, most tired tradition in Hollywood: the celebrity threat to leave the country. This isn't a new phenomenon, folks. This is the political equivalent of a toddler threatening to hold their breath until they get a second dessert. It’s a performance, a ritual as old as time itself… or at least as old as cable news. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You think you’re too smart for marketing. You’re a conscious, free-thinking individual who makes rational choices. Sure. And I’m the long-lost heir to the Snuggie fortune. The terrifying, hilarious truth is that marketing is the air we breathe. It’s the background radiation of our consumer society. You might not sprint out to buy a car because a celebrity you don’t even like tells you to, but that ad isn't about the sale. It's about the sleeper agent it plants in your brain.Its only job is to lie in wait, next to the memory of your third-grade teacher's name, until the moment you see a sedan on a lot and a tiny voice whispers,See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to The DORK Side, where the Department of Random Knowledge isn’t accredited by Harvard, Yale, or even your local community college—but we promise you’ll learn more here than you did in half your high school classes. Today’s topic: the intentional dumbing down of America. Not accidental. Not “oops, little Johnny can’t do fractions.” No, this is strategic. The government has turned education into the world’s most expensive daycare system, where students graduate not with critical thinking skills, but with an advanced PhD in TikTok scrolling.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You ever notice how doom is the only racket where you can be wrong every single time and still get paid? Forget hedge fund managers, forget weathermen — doomsday prophets are the undisputed champs of failure. They’re like if your GPS told you, “Turn left into the lake,” you did it, and instead of drowning, you ended up at Whole Foods. And then tipped the GPS for “excellent service.”I went to military school, and the saying there was: “Life is short, then you die.” Brutally honest. Meanwhile, the doom industry repackages death as a subscription plan. They say: “Yes, life is short… but if you buy my book, my seeds, and this tactical spork, you can stretch it out.”And people eat it up. Literally. The “prepper economy” in America? Worth over eleven billion dollars. Eleven billion! That’s not fringe — that’s Girl Scout cookie money. Except instead of Thin Mints, you’re buying dehydrated beef stroganoff that tastes like drywall.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to The DORK Side, where the only thing we swipe right on is the truth. I’m Kevin Jackson, and I’m old enough to remember getting on the internet with that 28.8K dial-up modem that took three days to download a pixelated photo of Pamela Anderson. Today’s show is about dating. But we’re not starting with apps. We’re going back. Back to a time when “swiping” was something you did to a fly with a newspaper, and a “profile” was just a horrifying yearbook photo that your mom bought 27 copies of to mail to relatives you’d never met.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We humans are pretty smart. But are there animals who are actually smartest than we are? Certainly animals learn from us, but how much have we learned from them? I can assure you that it's much more than you think.Join us for a fascinating look at animals, and we include us humans in this discussion. Join us, DORKS!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we’re wading into the murky, chlorinated waters of digital crime. But forget everything you know from heist flicks. We’re not talking about guys in ski masks with drill bits and a pathological fear of laser grids. The modern con artist doesn’t need a gun—just a convincing email, a stolen logo, and a shocking amount of our collective, digitally-induced gullibility.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve hit hard times. Maybe you couch-surfed after a breakup, or survived on ramen in college. But for some of us? Rock bottom wasn’t just ‘tight budget’—it was ‘no roof, no bed, and definitely no Wi-Fi’.Yet here’s the wild part: some of the richest, most successful people on Earth didn’t just hit rock bottom—they lived there. Slept in cars. Panhandled for food. Showered in gas stations. And then—somehow—they turned ‘I’m homeless’ into ‘I’m a household name’.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For many of us, these songs were the background of childhood. The moment you heard that theme, you ran to the living room—no questions asked. Maybe your family watched together, or maybe you just knew everyone else in the house was tuning in too. Either way, that song meant something. It meant your show was on. And now? Hearing it again takes us right back—to simpler times, to family rituals, to moments we didn’t even realize we’d miss until years later.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Sydney Sweeney American Eagle jeans ad dropped like a denim-wrapped atomic bomb—and half of the internet lost its mind. Not over the jeans. Over the genes. The campaign cheekily played with the pun “It’s in her jeans,” which triggered a backlash because, apparently, genetic beauty is now offensive.But let’s set aside the woke whining and look at the ad’s actual brilliance: it tapped straight into the DNA of 1980s advertising nostalgia. Think: Brooke Shields in Calvin Kleins, whispering "nothing comes between me and my Calvins". Brands are clearly flipping back through the decades and pulling out retro blueprints—bold, sexy, unapologetic. And guess what? It’s working.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alright, listen up, you weeping sacks of self-pity—The Dork Side is here to drag you out of your emotional dumpster fire. Yeah, life kicked you in the teeth? Good. Now you’ve got more room for snacks.You think you’ve got problems? Unless you’re currently being hunted by a cartel for stealing their emotional support llama, sit down and shut up. Today, we’re showcasing people who turned their train wrecks into luxury cruise ships (that may or may not still be on fire, but hey—free buffet).See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What’s up, fatties? Yeah, I said it. Don’t @ me—just look in the mirror and ask yourself: ‘How many times have I lost weight only to find it again like a bad penny?’ HOW MANY TIMES, YO-YO MA?! We are a nation of professional dieters, spending billions to shrink-wrap our guts while somehow becoming the planet’s plus-size champions. The government may be finally fixing the racket, having added RFK Jr.’s as  Health Czar. I’ve learned that my government has been trying to kill me.Before RFK Jr, Michelle Obama took a more heavy-handed approach where pretty much 80% of the country was fat based on the new BMI. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The 1990s were when sitcoms went from “warm family hug” to “passive-aggressive roommate with commitment issues”—and we loved it. I grew up watching shows that taught me everything from how to fake sincerity (Seinfeld), to how to pivot furniture up a stairwell (Friends), to how to get rich in Bel-Air after one little fight in West Philly.If the '80s sitcoms were a Norman Rockwell painting, the '90s were a mixtape made by a neurotic, self-aware college kid who didn’t know how to love but could recite every line of Frasier.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I was practically raised by 1980s sitcoms. My babysitters were four Golden Girls, a talking car, and a bartender named Sam who never wore a tie but always had life advice. And honestly? They did a better job than most licensed professionals today.This was the golden age of fake families solving real problems in 22 minutes—with hugs, hijinks, and no visible bathrooms. Back then, a “very special episode” meant someone learned a hard lesson… and you learned not to skip a Thursday night. The stakes were high. Someone might run away, OD, or worse—kiss their cousin.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I grew up on 1970s sitcoms—which means I was raised by a cranky junk dealer in Watts, an overweight Italian sweat hog in Brooklyn, a cigar-chomping Puerto Rican janitor, a loudmouth bigot from Queens, and a dry-cleaning mogul who moved on up to the East Side. Basically, my entire childhood was like a diversity training program... that worked.These shows didn’t just entertain—they indoctrinated. But not in the modern sense, where every sitcom feels like a gender studies dissertation disguised as a cooking show. No, back then, we learned real lessons. Like:See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Retro Rewind Fads of the Past 50 Years—a journey back to when humanity collectively lost its mind over rocks in boxes, screaming plastic eggs, and stuffed animals that ruined marriages.a blast from the past as we rediscover the quirky fads that captured our hearts (and sometimes our wardrobes) over the last 50 years! Get ready for nostalgia, laughter, and a chance to share your own blast-from-the-past stories.”From Tamagotchi-induced trauma to Beanie Baby bankruptcy, we’re digging up the dumbest trends that somehow convinced us to empty our wallets… and our dignity.So grab your slap bracelets, adjust your JNCO jeans, and prepare for a nostalgia trip so intense, you’ll briefly forget that you’re an adult with responsibilities.This… is The DORK Side. Let’s get stupid."*See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.