In 2009, a 10-year-old from Arizona flew to Los Angeles to compete on a new game show offering child prodigies the chance to win $500,000. But almost immediately, he could tell something was off. The experience had a profound impact on his life — and confounds legal scholars to this day.

Plus Dana takes us behind the scenes of her appearance on Jeopardy!, and Jason explains how his two-year-old daughter wound up answering trivia questions on The Rachael Ray Show.

On the Very Special Episodes podcast, we tell one incredible story each week. Follow Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday. Subscribe to VSE wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Jake Rossen
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Research and Fact-Checking by Jake Rossen and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English

Got a question or comment, or want to invite Zaron to compete on your game show? You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com.

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In April 2023, Joanne did something she hadn't tried in well over a decade — she logged into her MySpace account. For our season finale, she set out to find the people who still use MySpace to this day. She reviews the factors that contributed to MySpace’s demise, and looks at what we lost when the MySpace era ended.

Thanks for your support of Main Accounts! What tech company should Joanne dig into in the future? Let us know on Twitter @jomc.

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"If you open a hole on the internet," UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts tells us, "it gets filled with sh*t."

The tragic death of Megan Meier was a turning point for MySpace. As the first social media company to operate on a massive scale, MySpace and its users were forced to grapple with the consequences of that scale.

In this episode, Joanne is joined by Thomas Kadri of the University of Georgia School of Law to discuss how our legal system was ill-equipped to deal with the social media era. UCLA professor and author Sarah T. Roberts chronicles the early days of content moderation. And Bridget Todd and Scott Zakarin are back to talk about bullying in the MySpace era.

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