Believe it or not, MTV is celebrating a huge milestone on Sunday (August 1) when the media titan turns 40-years-old. iHeartRadio is helping to commemorate the benchmark with podcasts and playlists featuring some of the network's biggest collaborators.

iHeartRadio CEO and MTV founder Bob Pittman, alongside fellow founders John Sykes, Judy McGrath, Fred Seibert, Tom Freston and Jarl Mohn, recently went into depth about how they launched the massive network on a special compilation episode of Math & Magic. Not only did they spill on how much the business struggled in the beginning, but they also went into detail about how the famous logo spent some time in the garbage. "The funny thing is, as hard as we worked, I never thought we were going to fail," Pittman recalled, admitting that he quit a job to pursue the initiative. "It still gives me goosebumps. It was like, 'This is what I was made to do.''"

Ultimately, Pittman said that he and his collaborators "knew [they] were doing something that was important to culture, but [they] had no idea [they] were going to change culture. MTV changed TV. It changed music. It changed graphic design. And it certainly changed [his] life."

We've also rounded up some of the biggest songs from the year that MTV debuted, including The Age of Plastic's "Video Killed The Radio Star," Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight," Stevie Nicks' "Stop Draggin' My Heart" and more. Elsewhere, iHeartRadio is celebrating MTV Unplugged classics and the return of Behind the Music with its accompanying podcast, which chronicles the tales from music icons like 50 Cent, Madonna, Courtney Love, AC/DC and more.

Zach Boog

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