Podcaster Dan Taberski on ‘Running from COPS’

Dan Taberski was a longtime fan of the Fox show, ‘Cops’--a series of such lasting appeal that it’s now in its 31st season, with more than 1,000 episodes in the can.

In addition, Taberski was curious about what went into the making of this enduring money-machine. For his new podcast ‘Running from COPS,’ he and his team watched more than 800 episodes and started seeking people featured on the show--both officers and suspects.

Often, they found, an appearance on ‘Cops’ could change your life--much, much for the worse if you were on the wrong side of the law. Then there were other troubling issues--like, who controls what is seen on the screen.

Taberski also tells us about a last-minute find: raw footage from a drug bust that seemed to tell a very different story from what was seen on ‘Cops.’ The full explanation of what he saw is featured on the sixth and final episode of ‘Running from COPS.’

Before Taberski became a full-time podcaster, he worked in reality TV and was in the room for some extremely awkward interviews on the ‘Daily Show,’ where he was a field producer for several years starting in 1999. He tells us about some of those moments, and also addresses the blowback that came with his popular podcast ‘Missing Richard Simmons.’