Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avrogan.

This day, December 9, 1993, led by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman,

you remember Joe Lieberman, lawmakers and a panel of alarmed experts denounced

video games for encouraging or desensitizing children to violence.

We'll get into this, but this comes in a larger context of some larger concerns, and you know,

you could call them moral panics, about violence in the media on the news the connection between

on-screen violence and real-world violence you marry that in this case with

concerns about kids and a new technology and yeah people freak out it gets heated so let's talk about the 1993

congressional effort to curb violent video games here as always

Nikola hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. We were reminiscing about the early 90s and remembering some of these

video game titles and all this stuff right before we started taping.

I do want to start though in that larger context that I hinted at.

What are the other things sort of in the culture, to speak about violence and media and kids in

particular like what how do we kind of nestle this story into a larger era?

I mean this is this is such a takes me back down memory lane because I

remember in high school like doing a whole research project on like violence and

desensitizing youth with video games, with music videos and

MTV, even with the introduction of like profane cartoons if you think about Beavis

and Butthead or you think about the Simpsons or cartoons that parents hate for their children to watch.

Like, this was a moment in which I think people were intensely worried that these lyrics or these images or these ideas would infiltrate

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