Why can't RSS handle the ampersand?

Question

When I come across a broken RSS feed, the usual reason its all blown to pieces is because line 23 says \"Sanford & Sons.\"

The most confusing thing is the fact

Answer 1

When a 'raw' & is seen, the interpreter is looking for one of the valid escaped & sequences (such as '&' ). When an invalid sequence is found it throws an error. That's all there is to it.