
Funny Because It's True
How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire
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Narrated by:
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Christine Wenc
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By:
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Christine Wenc
About this listen
Discover the real truth behind the original fake news with this in-depth history of beloved humor publication, The Onion.
In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon. Now, for the first time, the full history of the publication is told by one of its original staffers, author and historian Christine Wenc. Through dozens of interviews, Wenc charts The Onion’s rise, its position as one of the first online humor sites, and the way it influenced television programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Funny Because It’s True peels back the layers to reveal how a group of young misfits from flyover country unintentionally created a cultural phenomenon.
©2025 Christine Wenc (P)2025 Running Press AdultListeners also enjoyed...
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“You may ask whether a ‘fake news’/news parody outlet deserves such a serious work of history. After you see how The Onion and its writers sparked some of the great comedy that has helped us survive this dreadful century, your answer may well be ‘Yes!’”—Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
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Today, we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500s - of different nationality, age, religion, and class - collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family.
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Good interweaving of 4 great astronomers
- By Jeffrey L. Smith, PE on 12-09-19
By: L. S. Fauber
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A History of the World in Six Plagues
- How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
- By: Edna Bonhomme
- Narrated by: Veronique Olin
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.
By: Edna Bonhomme
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Qualified
- How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work
- By: Shari Dunn
- Narrated by: Shari Dunn
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning executive and journalist Shari Dunn combines deep research with enlightening interviews and anecdotes from across the broad spectrum of her career to uncover the history of Competency Checking, how it manifests in the workplace, and what can be done to change it. Competency checking, Dunn argues, continues to be practiced consciously and unconsciously and is the key reason why Black people and other people of color are underrepresented in so many industries and why there continues to be a revolving door of Black talent even after the hiring surges of 2020.
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Feeling Seen!!!
- By Pleschette Fontenet on 04-11-25
By: Shari Dunn
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Sweet and Deadly
- How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick
- By: Murray Carpenter
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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If we knew that Coca-Cola was among the deadliest products in our diet, would we continue drinking it in such great quantities? The Coca-Cola Company has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we don't find out, as this damning exposé makes patently clear. Marshaling the findings of extensive research and deep investigative reporting, Murray Carpenter describes in Sweet and Deadly the damage Coke does to America's health—and the remarkable campaign of disinformation conducted by the company to keep consumers in the dark.
By: Murray Carpenter
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Scout Camp
- Sex, Death, and Secret Societies Inside the Boy Scouts of America
- By: James Renner
- Narrated by: James Renner
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1995, at the largest Boy Scout camp in Ohio, a night of sexual violence ended with one counselor dead and another hospitalized. The death was ruled "accidental." It wouldn't be the last death associated with Seven Ranges Reservation. James Renner, too, was a counselor at Seven Ranges that year. He was always sure there must be more to the story of Mike Klingler's death, because Renner also knew firsthand that the 900-acre camp was not the safe getaway it was portrayed to be.
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The honesty
- By Shannon Waller on 04-30-25
By: James Renner
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On Air
- The Triumph and Tumult of NPR
- By: Steve Oney
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill, Steve Oney
- Length: 21 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. NPR and its hosts are a cultural force and a trusted voice, and they have created a mode of journalism and storytelling that helps Americans understand the world in which we live.
By: Steve Oney
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The Way Up Is Death
- By: Dan Hanks
- Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When a mysterious tower appears in the skies over England, thirteen strangers are pulled from their lives to stand before it as a countdown begins. Above the doorway is one word: ASCEND. As a grieving teacher, a reclusive artist, and a narcissistic celebrity children's author lead the others in trying to understand why they've been chosen and what the tower is, it soon becomes clear the only way out of this for everyone . . . is up.
By: Dan Hanks
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When the Going Was Good
- An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
- By: Graydon Carter, James Fox - contributor
- Narrated by: Graydon Carter
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.
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A lucky man
- By Dassha1 on 03-30-25
By: Graydon Carter, and others
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The Silent Language
- By: Edward T. Hall
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In the everyday but unspoken give-and-take of human relationships, the “silent language” plays a vitally important role. Here, a leading American anthropologist has analyzed the many ways in which people “talk” to one another without the use of words. The pecking order in a chicken yard, the fierce competition in a school playground, every unwitting gesture and action—this is the vocabulary of the “silent language.” According to Dr. Hall, the concepts of space and time are tools with which all human beings may transmit messages.
By: Edward T. Hall
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Let Only Red Flowers Bloom
- Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China
- By: Emily Feng
- Narrated by: Emily Feng
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there–and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression. In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back.
By: Emily Feng
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Birds, Sex and Beauty
- The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin's Strangest Idea
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: Matt Ridley
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley’s investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an arduous and even deadly ritual called a “lek.” To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers. When achieved, consummation with a female takes seconds.
By: Matt Ridley
What listeners say about Funny Because It's True
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeremy
- 04-18-25
Everything you ever wanted to know about The Onion but were too afraid to ask
I've been wanting a book like this for years, I was curious about the origins of The Onion, and this book takes a journalistic approach, in doing many interviews with the people involved, and telling their story. Going into the lives of the founders to the first print in 1988 all the way to 2023, this book fills you in every major step of the way.
The way that The Onion has grown with the times and adapted to new technologies, like making the decision to embrace the internet when everyone was stealing their stories and not giving them credit, getting on social media, making web videos, a couple TV shows I was unaware of, and plenty of things that didn't turn out as well, like what happened to The Onion Movie.
The book being 12 hours is an ideal length, it never wears out it's welcome. I listen to audiobooks while walking my dog, and she's been taking me on hour to 100 minute walks twice a night lately, so this book went by very quickly for me.
The author does the narration, and she does a great job, it's entirely professionally recorded, like you can tell this was recorded in studio, you never hear breathing or anything else that would take away. She has the right voice and tone through the narration. There's a level of confidence to respect in doing it yourself instead of letting the publisher pick a professional voice actor.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-20-25
Her lack of knowledge.
So many statements that are factually wrong,she may know Madison but, apparently very little about anything else.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-06-25
Interesting and Long!
Not sure why i latched onto this one, but the little change up in content was refreshing.
On the good side, the Onion was an institution of goodness for decades and served an important societal function (being the mirror to ourselves). Enjoyed listening of its evolution and the standard the writers held for themselves. I did enjoy the author-narrator’s deadpan style of delivery and the wrap up of what she thinks it all means.
On the other side, this would have gotten more stars had the production team shaved the program length by a factor of two. The story is often lost in the details of personalities and minutiae.
In all, glad i used the credit.
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