 This is the SF Productions podcast network Pop culture bunker I have a problem from the pop culture bunker. I'm Mindy, and I'm Mark You can check out our audio podcast how I got my way three comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network com One of the mainstays of the now collapsing newspaper business and now becoming part of the online tumult is the advice column It's common for people to ask friends and family for their thoughts on personal issues So why ask a perfect stranger, especially when it may take weeks or months to get a response if ever? Advice columns are not really designed to get a one-on-one question answered But for the community to listen in consider the question give their personal response and even to argue with the columns response The concept goes back much further than you might think to 1691 and a column in a magazine called the Athenian Mercury I didn't even know they had 1691 people would send in questions ranging from political is the Pope evil to Philosophical what is time but the topics slowly coalesced into the types of questions? We would see today the conceit was that you were asking questions to the Athenian society Something akin to Socrates or Plato when it was actually just the publisher's drinking buddies The success of this effort spurred many periodicals to copy the idea Since most of the queries came from women and generally were tales of woe Columns became known as agony ants in Britain and sob sisters in the US It was common for the column writer to use a pseudonym both to protect themselves and to allow Publishers to swap out a new writer without changing the name Dorothy Dix aka Elizabeth Maryweather Gilmer Had a husband with a mental disorder So she so he could not keep a job forcing her to get one giving ironically mostly Marital advice starting in 1895 and by World War two she was published in 273 newspapers with 60 million readers Dorothy Dix's retirement in 1950 opened the door to a pair of identical twins who went on to lead the charge Esther Pauline and Pauline Esther Friedman. I guess the parents didn't put much thought into that Also known as an Landers and dear Abby They would eventually appear in over 1600 newspapers and became the arbiters of what was considered normal in the us They were also very conservative which fit in well in 50s America The husband's the breadwinner and the wife is to be the homemaker However, due to either changing society guiding their own beliefs or a need to follow them and stay in business Both Ann and Abby became more progressive over time Abby supported gay rights in the early 70s And Ann wrote about gun laws in the early 80s In 1975 Ann Landers dropped the facade announcing as herself that her marriage of 30 years had ended Uh, the she got back over 30 000 condolence letters The ladies home journal was the home to a column called can this marriage be saved? The brainchild of Paul Popeno a eugenicist and champion of marriage counseling Running from the 50s to the 70s as you might expect the column's answer was generally Yes, and was a proponent of white marriages in particular. The woman was considered to be at fault In most cases even in cases of domestic abuse There is also what we today call crowdsourced advice columns where someone would post a query and other readers would eventually respond in kind The boston globes confidential chat ran in this manner from 1922 to 2006 and was called the biggest backyard fence in the world It's really the earliest chat room As newspapers began to fade in importance the practice of the advice column moved over to electronic mediums The internet has opened up the advice world to specialize columns Can exist workplace advice parenting advice LGBTQ advice sex advice love advice cooking advice financial advice There's a column for everyone out there Some interesting phenomena of moving to the internet has been the relative speed of advice as opposed to newspapers Questions can be answered in a much faster time frame even in live q and a's Sometimes letters are answered by more than one advice columnist and it can happen in the same week This happens so often that almost all advice columnists have at least one column Explaining that hey these writers can submit the questions to as many people as they want There's no rules And certainly if a letter is compelling enough question for dear prudence to answer Is it any surprise that ask poly might also answer? There's also the chance that someone is just copying other letters In fact for a while the column dear debbie penned by the late debbie reynolds in the tabloid the globe Had numerous instances of answering letters that were just slightly altered from those that had previously appeared in dear prudence And then there are the fake letters going back to newspaper days Dear abbey answered a clearly A letter clearly based on marge simpson in the bowling episode Now many more fake letters make their way in and some columnists even say they suspect a letter may be fake But are answering it anyway because it is funny or universal One last aspect of the internet advice column I'd like to mention is how reactions to some letters and replies are so immediate From comment section remarks facebook postings and media responses Columnists are often made to defend or change their replies As did dear abbey just this past week when she said that Um an indian mother shouldn't give her name Her children indian names because it would be too hard to pronounce in american society Yeah So I read a lot of advice columns and among my favorites are slates dear prudence Which has gone through four different scribes and is currently being penned by daniel mallory ortberg who is co-founder of the toast website Although my favorite prudence was emily afi Not only are there weekly comments columns, but there's a live q&a every week and a podcast And many of the online columnists do this now the tone of questions Has changed with each change of prudence and it's fascinating to watch the progression of the change Ask paulie at the cut from new york magazine writes long form advice rather than tackling a few letters and problems each week She addresses just one problem This is interesting because in many other cases letters are cut for time or space And readers may never get the full picture and some kind times you want more than just dump the guy advice paulie gives a long full thought out response heather haverliske the woman behind ask paulie has several books out Including a memoir and a compilation of ask paulie columns And then there are so many advice podcasts You can search the itunes store and you find everything from deer sugar to advice from mom There's also the judge john hajman podcast, which is essentially an advice show right and And technically my brother my brother and me is an advice show exactly So there's comedy advice as well as serious advice so you can pick a subject and find an advice podcast We would be happy to give you advice as well You can write to us if you want or you can just check out our audio podcast How I got my wife to read comics on itunes or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com But come to think of it how I got my wife to read comics could be an advice Advice of what comics to read There you go who knew from the pop culture bunker. I'm indy not mark. Thanks for watching