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The Max Headroom Incident · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
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Speaker 1: you guys soon. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
1:24
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:33
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck Bryant, Jerry Roland. You think
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Speaker 1: pretty good. It's pretty good, and this is stuff you
1:44
Speaker 1: should Know. Josh ed Room, thank you you've been I
1:48
Speaker 1: saw you over there with your earbuds today. You were
1:50
Speaker 1: working on this all day, weren't you. I watched season
1:52
Speaker 1: one episode one of Max Headroom, Like the last ten
1:57
Speaker 1: minutes is still pending, okay, but it's crazy, Like Max
2:00
Speaker 1: Headroam himself doesn't show up until like forty minutes into
2:04
Speaker 1: the first hour long episode, but when he does, it's dynamite.
2:10
Speaker 1: So what are we talking about. We're talking about Max
2:12
Speaker 1: Headroam that's right. A huge shout out at the beginning
2:15
Speaker 1: of this two buis dot com specifically Motherboard, specifically Alex Pasternak. Yeah,
2:23
Speaker 1: who wrote the article on Motherboard And we actually we
2:25
Speaker 1: used to blog a little bit for them back in
2:27
Speaker 1: the day, remember that. Yeah. I don't think they like
2:28
Speaker 1: to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly, you know,
2:32
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Oh, I think it was mutually beneficial.
2:35
Speaker 1: I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore. Trying
2:38
Speaker 1: to remember. I'm sure they were like I think I
2:41
Speaker 1: read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or
2:44
Speaker 1: something weird. That's a big one. Yeah. We started out
2:47
Speaker 1: with an old fashioned recipe, I think, yeah, that was you.
2:50
Speaker 1: They were like, let's do better than this guy's and
2:53
Speaker 1: we said no, And then they said we got our
2:55
Speaker 1: own people. Yeah, we'll let somebody come in and go
2:59
Speaker 1: strike for you. Yeah. So that Motherboard articles the basis
3:02
Speaker 1: and from what I found, I mean, we we used
3:04
Speaker 1: a lot of different sources on this, but this article
3:09
Speaker 1: entitled the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Heck is sort
3:13
Speaker 1: of the culmination like the Kuda gra kDa gra of
3:17
Speaker 1: Max Headroom incidental articles. Yeah, it actually really good job.
3:23
Speaker 1: Pastor Neck like very exhaustively investigated it and turned up
3:27
Speaker 1: new information, got new new um, a new understanding of it,
3:31
Speaker 1: and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself. It's
3:36
Speaker 1: a way to go, Pastor Neck, right. And what we're
3:38
Speaker 1: talking about is if you if you don't know who
3:41
Speaker 1: Max Headroom at all is, We're about to set that up. Yeah,
3:44
Speaker 1: let's talk about Max headrom But if you were alive
3:47
Speaker 1: during the nineteen eighties, then you probably know who Max
3:51
Speaker 1: Headroom is because weirdly, for a brief few years it
3:57
Speaker 1: was kind of a big pop culture at about four
4:01
Speaker 1: years by my by my calculations. So starting in there
4:06
Speaker 1: was a movie called Max Headroom Colon so you know
4:10
Speaker 1: his an important movie twenty Minutes in the Future, right,
4:16
Speaker 1: and it was a kind of a cyberpunk movie, um
4:20
Speaker 1: dystopium future, very Terry Gilliam brazil ish um, and it
4:26
Speaker 1: was I'm not I haven't seen that one, but it
4:29
Speaker 1: was basically where the character of Max Headroom was born, right,
4:32
Speaker 1: And I think it actually formed the basis for the
4:34
Speaker 1: TV show later in between the later TV show that
4:36
Speaker 1: you and I are more familiar with and that movie
4:40
Speaker 1: Max Headroom was a pop culture sensation. He was a
4:44
Speaker 1: pitchman for New Coke. I went and watched an old ad.
4:49
Speaker 1: He was in an ad with run DMC pitching New Coke,
4:52
Speaker 1: and I was like, doesn't get any more eighties than this?
4:55
Speaker 1: But it was actually a pretty cool ad, right was it?
4:58
Speaker 1: Did it say, here's a little story A need to
5:01
Speaker 1: tell about a New Coke on the scene that he
5:04
Speaker 1: loves so well, that was exactly word for word how
5:06
Speaker 1: that ad went. So so let's back up a little more. Right, Okay,
5:11
Speaker 1: let's describe what Max Headroom is for the kids, because
5:14
Speaker 1: I guarantee it about eight percent of our our audience
5:17
Speaker 1: are like, what's the eighties? What's New Coke? Who's run DMC?
5:22
Speaker 1: Well that's probably not true, but what so what was
5:25
Speaker 1: Max Headroom? He was builed as like the first virtual
5:29
Speaker 1: um talk show host, right correct? Okay, yeah, so he
5:33
Speaker 1: was played by a guy named Matt Frewer, who, out
5:36
Speaker 1: of prosthetic makeup, had that look anyway, very chiseled, square jawed.
5:42
Speaker 1: He was not bald, but had he had a receding hairline. Okay,
5:49
Speaker 1: but he kept it really really short, so it kind
5:50
Speaker 1: of looks bald. Yeah. Here, this will explain it to
5:52
Speaker 1: all the kids at home. He was a colleague of
5:54
Speaker 1: Murphy Brown and the Murphy Brown television. Yeah, they're like,
5:58
Speaker 1: oh that guy, Yeah, not the painter, the other one,
6:02
Speaker 1: the love interest. I don't think I knew that. I
6:04
Speaker 1: never watched more Peole Brown though. Oh man, I hope
6:06
Speaker 1: that was him. I'm pretty sure it was him. Yeah. Yeah,
6:08
Speaker 1: well he's been around, he's still acting today. But yes,
6:11
Speaker 1: he played the character of Max Headroom, and the TV
6:15
Speaker 1: show Max Headroom was actually pretty far ahead of its time,
6:19
Speaker 1: totally speaking. Yeah, so the whole, the whole premise of
6:23
Speaker 1: the TV show, the last his big last, great gasp
6:27
Speaker 1: that was actually the most serious of all of it
6:29
Speaker 1: was where in the future TV networks controlled the world,
6:36
Speaker 1: and there was the station that network twenty three that
6:39
Speaker 1: Matt Frewer's character and later Max Headroom, who became his
6:43
Speaker 1: alter ego, worked for. We're putting these things called blip
6:46
Speaker 1: firts out his His character's name was Edison Carter at first,
6:50
Speaker 1: and he was like an investigative journalist. So um, he
6:54
Speaker 1: starts looking into these blip firsts because the problem with
6:56
Speaker 1: blip firsts they are thirty second ads used into three seconds,
7:01
Speaker 1: and it's meant to keep you from changing the channel.
7:04
Speaker 1: The problem is is that everybody watched so much TV
7:07
Speaker 1: by this time, they didn't move around, which meant that
7:11
Speaker 1: all of the electricity generated by their nerve endings wasn't
7:14
Speaker 1: burned off as how the how the show explained it.
7:18
Speaker 1: So when their brains were assaulted with these blip verts,
7:21
Speaker 1: they kind of short circuited, and all that electricity that
7:25
Speaker 1: was just hanging around their bodies because they weren't moving
7:27
Speaker 1: at all during the day, made them explode. The network
7:31
Speaker 1: really liked blip urts and they didn't want to get
7:33
Speaker 1: rid of them, so they decided to instead get rid
7:36
Speaker 1: of Edison Carter. Yeah, and the TV advertising at the time,
7:40
Speaker 1: or advertising in general sort of not only did TV
7:43
Speaker 1: rule the world, but the ads behind it was really
7:46
Speaker 1: the driving force. It sounds very familiar, it does. Everyone's like,
7:51
Speaker 1: I take a blip furt, give me a three second
7:54
Speaker 1: ad on the podcast guys, it will blow you up.
7:58
Speaker 1: So what they what ended up happening was was the
8:02
Speaker 1: character of Edison Carter eventually was there was an incident
8:07
Speaker 1: not the Max Headroom It's in it where he was
8:10
Speaker 1: left in a coma in an episode the first episode,
8:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the pilot, of course. And the last thing
8:16
Speaker 1: he sees before falling into a coma is a sign
8:19
Speaker 1: that said Max Headroom colon two point three meters. Uh.
8:24
Speaker 1: And so that's how he got the name Max cum right.
8:26
Speaker 1: It was in like a parking garage and it was
8:28
Speaker 1: basically saying, this is the overhead clearance. Is the way
8:30
Speaker 1: it it's put in the United States. Yeah, right, so
8:33
Speaker 1: that's the name Max Headroum right. But he was an
8:35
Speaker 1: AI character, right, So the the Evil TV network got
8:40
Speaker 1: ahold of him, uploaded his brain um and they originally
8:46
Speaker 1: did this with the intent of bringing Edison Carter because
8:49
Speaker 1: again he was like their star reporter. Bringing him back
8:52
Speaker 1: in virtual forms, they created an artificial intelligence. Well, it's
8:56
Speaker 1: kind of glitchy and blippy and it looked weird, so
8:59
Speaker 1: they threw it out. Well, some pirate broadcasters got a
9:03
Speaker 1: hold of this, this database that that Max Hedrom lived on,
9:07
Speaker 1: and they started broadcasting with him, and Max Hendrom was born.
9:11
Speaker 1: That's right. And you said glitchy and blippy, and that
9:14
Speaker 1: kids explains your intro when you went to Josh, Yeah, yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: I was doing Thank you for explaining that Yeah, that
9:23
Speaker 1: bears Josh was He's He's okay everybody. So that's what
9:28
Speaker 1: Max Hedroum did. It was jittery, it was blippy, Like
9:31
Speaker 1: you said, the background was this weird sort of horizontal
9:34
Speaker 1: and diagonal line moving around thing, and that was all
9:38
Speaker 1: part of this at the time sort of futuristic look.
9:41
Speaker 1: He was also really sarcastic and really caddy, and he
9:45
Speaker 1: was really um. He poked fun at censorship and he
9:49
Speaker 1: was just kind of like a cult hero just the
9:52
Speaker 1: character itself. Right. Yeah. The awesome thing about him is
9:55
Speaker 1: in the real world of we didn't have any kind
10:00
Speaker 1: of computers that could generate a c g I post,
10:04
Speaker 1: so they actually used like prosthetics, Like there was a
10:08
Speaker 1: four hour process to put Matt freu Or into the
10:11
Speaker 1: Max Headroom makeup. So it's the guy acting and then
10:14
Speaker 1: you know, they messed with the video a little bit.
10:16
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a c a c g I version
10:20
Speaker 1: of a guy. It was a guy acting like he
10:23
Speaker 1: was a c g I version of himself, right, which
10:25
Speaker 1: is why if, for instance, if Max Headroom the character
10:30
Speaker 1: were to appear on say David Letterman, which he did,
10:34
Speaker 1: it would be Letterman interviewing a TV screen, which is
10:38
Speaker 1: what they did, but it was actually Matt Frewer in
10:40
Speaker 1: another studio. He was probably just backstage broadcast. And it's
10:46
Speaker 1: really like, as a kid, I did not get all this, No,
10:49
Speaker 1: I just thought it was a I didn't really know
10:52
Speaker 1: what it was because I've never seen the show. I
10:53
Speaker 1: thought he was the coke guy, right right, And I
10:56
Speaker 1: think I've seen the show a little bit. I was like,
10:58
Speaker 1: this is way too grown up for me. Um, But
11:01
Speaker 1: I think I just kind of took it on faith
11:02
Speaker 1: that he was computer generated or something like that. I
11:04
Speaker 1: didn't really think about it much. But now as an
11:07
Speaker 1: adult looking back, I'm like, that is brilliant and really difficult.
11:12
Speaker 1: And the fact that they did this and pulled it
11:14
Speaker 1: off as well as they did, it's it's it's a
11:16
Speaker 1: it's a pretty amazing thing, right, And you can kind
11:18
Speaker 1: of understand how Max Headroom with all that information now
11:23
Speaker 1: became this kind of cult icon, especially among cyberpunks at
11:28
Speaker 1: the time, and what just keep saying cyberpunk. So so
11:32
Speaker 1: let me let me I'm I'm I'm not like particularly
11:36
Speaker 1: well versed in like what constitutes cyberpunk, but like it's
11:39
Speaker 1: like pornography to a Supreme Court justice, Like I know
11:42
Speaker 1: it when I see it, right, Sure, So if you
11:44
Speaker 1: watch the Max Headroom Show, you're like, that's cyberpunk. RoboCop
11:49
Speaker 1: is supposedly cyberpunk, right. It's like a bleak technological future
11:55
Speaker 1: where people are controlled by almost down to their minds,
11:59
Speaker 1: by the government or some corporation or some amalgamation of
12:04
Speaker 1: the two. That's pretty cyberpunk. Right. So at the time
12:09
Speaker 1: you had what are called geeks and nerds, but they
12:14
Speaker 1: are not really what you would call the geek or
12:16
Speaker 1: a nerd today. Right, somebody who wears like glasses that
12:19
Speaker 1: don't actually have prescription glass in them. Do people do that?
12:22
Speaker 1: That's some people do. I did that in the fourth grade. Well,
12:25
Speaker 1: then you were a geek apparently, No. I was a
12:28
Speaker 1: prep and I wore those little tortoiseshell round uh preppy
12:32
Speaker 1: glasses because that was a cool look. And actually, when
12:36
Speaker 1: it's it's one of my least proud moments. Fashion wise
12:39
Speaker 1: has actually bought fake glasses and more than around you
12:41
Speaker 1: have photos of those. I'd really have to dig through
12:45
Speaker 1: some boxes. I think I speak for everyone when I
12:48
Speaker 1: say started digging dig Yeah, it was not my proudest moment. Yeah,
12:53
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that picture. So. Um, at the time,
12:58
Speaker 1: people who were geeks, nerds, that whole culture was very
13:03
Speaker 1: much derided and pushed around. I mean, look at the
13:07
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Nerds, right like they came out on top.
13:10
Speaker 1: I watched a little bit of that just the other night.
13:12
Speaker 1: This is probably the earliest celebration of nerd culture. It
13:16
Speaker 1: was not something that was like venerated or subscribed to
13:20
Speaker 1: by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek. And
13:26
Speaker 1: these were a very rarefied group of people who really
13:30
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing with computers at a time
13:32
Speaker 1: when almost no one else did. Early adopters across the
13:36
Speaker 1: board very much so. Right, So, so Maxidim is kind
13:38
Speaker 1: of a cult hero to this guy, and um, that
13:41
Speaker 1: kind of sets up what happened on November twenty in
13:46
Speaker 1: a little town called Chicago, Illinois, the city of industry,
13:54
Speaker 1: city that doesn't ever sleep never, the windy city that's it?
14:00
Speaker 1: Are you go of all time? The windy city of
14:03
Speaker 1: all time? Yeah? So that sets the stage. We know
14:06
Speaker 1: who who the character of Max Headroom was? Then yes,
14:11
Speaker 1: are you sure I set the stage? I think so?
14:14
Speaker 1: Did we set the stage fully here it looks nice alight.
14:18
Speaker 1: So a PM on that November night in Chicago, four
14:23
Speaker 1: days before Thanksgiving. Yeah, so everyone was in that frame
14:27
Speaker 1: of mind, put yourself there. I think that that helps
14:30
Speaker 1: a lot. It helped me at least football seasons going on. Yeah.
14:34
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, just that very day, the
14:36
Speaker 1: Bears had beat the Lions, which you know, it's a
14:40
Speaker 1: long time ago. Because the Bears won a football game,
14:45
Speaker 1: the people in the Windy City of all time, we're
14:47
Speaker 1: not gonna be happy with you for that city time.
14:51
Speaker 1: Oh and there's a sportscaster on local channel nine, uh
14:57
Speaker 1: Dan Rone r a in and he was was going
15:00
Speaker 1: over the highlights of that football game. Then all of
15:02
Speaker 1: a sudden, right in the middle, the broadcast signal goes.
15:09
Speaker 1: It makes those noise noises. And then over at w
15:12
Speaker 1: g N the control room, they were like, what's what's
15:16
Speaker 1: going on here? We have no idea what this is.
15:18
Speaker 1: I think the exact quote was a girl. So um,
15:24
Speaker 1: what happened was they eventually what what where they were
15:27
Speaker 1: doing at the time was And this is how We're
15:29
Speaker 1: not going to go into the weeds here on how
15:31
Speaker 1: broadcast signals work, but what they did back in the day,
15:35
Speaker 1: was they broadcast microwave transmissions to antenna's at the top
15:39
Speaker 1: of the tallest buildings of whatever city that they were
15:41
Speaker 1: in for local TV, for local TV, which is I
15:45
Speaker 1: mean there was cable at the time, but local TV
15:47
Speaker 1: still kind of ruled, yeah in the well sort of
15:50
Speaker 1: in the late eighties, right, So like starting to segue
15:53
Speaker 1: to cable, Yeah, for sure, cable is you know, kind
15:56
Speaker 1: of a thing, but you if you were a local
15:58
Speaker 1: TV station, you still have pretty big market share of it, right,
16:01
Speaker 1: especially w g N in Chicago. I mean it's like
16:04
Speaker 1: Chicago station, right absolutely, So what you I think you're
16:07
Speaker 1: saying is that in a studio, whatever they're recording or
16:11
Speaker 1: shooting or playing on their their little video tapes, they're
16:15
Speaker 1: they're beaming that from the actual studio to a transmitter
16:19
Speaker 1: stay atop a very tall building, and then that just
16:22
Speaker 1: kind of bounces around to other transmitters and that's how
16:24
Speaker 1: everybody in Chicago gets their w g N signal, right, Right,
16:28
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, during the sportscast, it skits
16:32
Speaker 1: is out and then all of a sudden you see
16:34
Speaker 1: a a guy in a suit, uh wearing a Max
16:40
Speaker 1: headroom mask and it was there was no audio. That
16:46
Speaker 1: was I guess the problem with this first intrusion that
16:49
Speaker 1: was called a broadcast intrusion. Yeah, but you couldn't hear anything.
16:53
Speaker 1: But I'm sure it was certainly distressing to a viewer
16:56
Speaker 1: to see this kind of weird thing happened, especially if
16:59
Speaker 1: viewer who wanted to know what the heck happened between
17:01
Speaker 1: the Bears and the Lions that day. And um, the
17:05
Speaker 1: whole thing lasted I think like eleven seconds or some
17:07
Speaker 1: very short amount of time. Yeah, this was a short
17:09
Speaker 1: one Before um, the w g N engineers went and
17:13
Speaker 1: switched to the backup transmitter and and I guess transmitted
17:17
Speaker 1: on a slightly different signal and brought the broadcast, the
17:21
Speaker 1: sportscaster back on and Dan Rone was like, uh, if
17:26
Speaker 1: you're wondering what just happened, so am I right? There's
17:30
Speaker 1: a chuckle in between. I wasn't going to do my
17:32
Speaker 1: impression of it, but it's good. You should watch it,
17:35
Speaker 1: like somebody just go look it up, right, So Federal Investigators,
17:39
Speaker 1: the FEC that is, was called in to investigate, um
17:43
Speaker 1: what technically is well not technically it's a crime to
17:46
Speaker 1: do so. And then just a few minutes later, they thought, well,
17:50
Speaker 1: this is probably coming from inside the building, and so
17:52
Speaker 1: that's the first place they started looking. They said, the
17:54
Speaker 1: intrusions coming from inside the building exactly. They didn't find anybody, though,
18:00
Speaker 1: I mean it was, as you'll see after we explained further,
18:04
Speaker 1: it would make sense that you would look in the building, Yeah, right,
18:08
Speaker 1: for something like this inside job. There apparently was not
18:11
Speaker 1: an inside job at least as far as the w
18:14
Speaker 1: g N Engineers search was concerned. Right, right, So that
18:18
Speaker 1: was at nine fourteen. About two hours later, I think,
18:22
Speaker 1: at eleven fifteen, on another channel in Chicago, w t
18:26
Speaker 1: t W, which was the PBS station, they were airing
18:30
Speaker 1: an episode of Doctor who called the Horror on fang Island,
18:34
Speaker 1: fang Rock, fang Rock, Horror of fang Rock. You have
18:37
Speaker 1: to say it like that, the Horror of fang Rock.
18:40
Speaker 1: Thank you. And this is the Tom Baker doctor. Okay,
18:44
Speaker 1: that's the only one I recognize that. Really he's seventies, right, Hey,
18:48
Speaker 1: I'm no doctor. Who guys, don't it looked like it
18:51
Speaker 1: looked like the seventies. What they cut in on looked
18:53
Speaker 1: pretty seventies. It didn't look eighty seven. So who do
18:56
Speaker 1: would think it would be at seven. I'm guess it
19:00
Speaker 1: was a rerun on PBS, That's what I think. Alright,
19:03
Speaker 1: we'll find out and oh man, we're going to find
19:06
Speaker 1: out too. That would have been super easy to check. Yeah,
19:10
Speaker 1: at any rate, Um, the the in the middle of
19:13
Speaker 1: this Doctor Who episode, it suddenly cuts out again, and
19:17
Speaker 1: now you've got what appears to be the full run
19:21
Speaker 1: of this Max headroom intrusion. Yes, instead of thirty seconds,
19:25
Speaker 1: this one was a minute in twenty two seconds. And
19:28
Speaker 1: right now, I would say, if you are somewhere where
19:32
Speaker 1: you can pause and go to a video online video
19:37
Speaker 1: carrier of your choosing and type in Max headroom incident,
19:42
Speaker 1: spend the next minute in twenty two seconds watching it.
19:44
Speaker 1: We'll wait and we'll wait. We'll just in cert a
19:47
Speaker 1: minute seconds of silence here, how about this. Let's take
19:50
Speaker 1: a break and then we'll come back and then we'll
19:52
Speaker 1: talk about exactly what happened during that minute in two seconds. Okay,
20:16
Speaker 1: we're back. Did you watch it? Are you talking to me? Okay?
20:22
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that people people did watch it. A few
20:25
Speaker 1: people did, smart ones did. Because this is really tough
20:27
Speaker 1: to describe, and we're going to try but it's something
20:31
Speaker 1: you really have to see you in here. It's genuinely
20:35
Speaker 1: disturbing sitting in an office years later watching it, and
20:39
Speaker 1: I can imagine if I was at home, I would
20:43
Speaker 1: have probably been a little freaked out. You found it disturbing, Yeah,
20:48
Speaker 1: I found it hilarious in like a really juvenile way. Yeah,
20:52
Speaker 1: it creeps me out. It was like watching David Byrne
20:55
Speaker 1: on acid at a talking head show. That's what I
20:58
Speaker 1: think of when I saw that, you know, all right,
21:01
Speaker 1: so let's let's describe the scene here. Okay, so you
21:04
Speaker 1: got Max Headroom, well, actually a dude wearing a rubbers
21:07
Speaker 1: rubber Halloween mask of Max Headroom. And this this is
21:11
Speaker 1: just genius to me. So you mentioned earlier about how
21:15
Speaker 1: the Max Headroom had like these kind of grid lines
21:19
Speaker 1: behind them at all times and they kind of moved
21:21
Speaker 1: and adjusted. They were different colors to do to to
21:24
Speaker 1: simulate that these guys had like a piece of corrugated metal,
21:29
Speaker 1: shiny metal, and I guess they had an attached somehow
21:33
Speaker 1: to something that rocked it back and forth, and they
21:36
Speaker 1: kind of somebody was clearly rocking it back and forth
21:39
Speaker 1: here there erratically, and it really does a good job.
21:42
Speaker 1: It gets the point across that it looked like the
21:45
Speaker 1: Max bed Room TV show. The Yeah, the back in
21:47
Speaker 1: the character. Yes, but again I would say that this
21:51
Speaker 1: person was very very clearly on acid. Well, I think
21:55
Speaker 1: what disturbs me, and I need to make it clear.
21:57
Speaker 1: It is definitely funny and stupid. But what disturbs me
22:00
Speaker 1: is the sound of the voice, which is all garble.
22:04
Speaker 1: It's really like on YouTube. It has subtitles thankfully because
22:08
Speaker 1: it's hard to make out, and a lot of times
22:10
Speaker 1: it just says can't you know understand what he's saying
22:12
Speaker 1: or whatever? Uh? And the garble quality and just the
22:16
Speaker 1: random weirdness that's going on. It's not like it was
22:21
Speaker 1: creepier to mean than if v for Vendetta dude had
22:24
Speaker 1: a come on Guy Fox had to come on and said,
22:26
Speaker 1: you know, we are coming into your thing to tell
22:28
Speaker 1: you this about this. This was just so weird and
22:31
Speaker 1: all over the place. It was creepy to me. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah,
22:35
Speaker 1: I see what you mean, Like you're watching some nonsensical
22:37
Speaker 1: somebody's brain slightly damaged, watching somebody lose their mind. Right, Okay, yeah,
22:44
Speaker 1: totally get that. Um, And here's here's what the guy
22:48
Speaker 1: did that would make you feel like he lost his mind. Um,
22:53
Speaker 1: this is the weird thing to me. It's it's very
22:55
Speaker 1: targeted towards w g N, right, almost so much so
23:00
Speaker 1: that some people would say this was clearly somebody who
23:03
Speaker 1: had a grudge against w g N. He makes fun
23:06
Speaker 1: of the bulls um sportscaster, the guy who worked for
23:10
Speaker 1: w g N at the time. He makes reference to
23:13
Speaker 1: how he just made a masterpiece for the Greatest World's
23:17
Speaker 1: Newspaper Nerds, which was a messed up version of w
23:22
Speaker 1: g n's call letters stand for World's Greatest Newspaper. He
23:26
Speaker 1: wields a rubber penis. That's one. Although it was great
23:29
Speaker 1: and almost every article it was referred to as a
23:32
Speaker 1: marital aid. Did you see that? No? But uh, I
23:36
Speaker 1: actually guessed it on Strickland's Tech stuff like four years ago,
23:40
Speaker 1: and we covered this and I called it a marital aide,
23:42
Speaker 1: did you okay? So I wanted to keep it clean.
23:47
Speaker 1: I realized that saying the word penis is okay, Well,
23:50
Speaker 1: it's clinical. I mean, we did a puberty episode, surely
23:53
Speaker 1: we we have the chops to say penis. But marital
23:57
Speaker 1: aide is hilarious, especially in this context. Like this crazy
24:00
Speaker 1: dude don Acid wearing a Max Headroom mask is has
24:06
Speaker 1: a marital aid. No he doesn't, that's not what that
24:08
Speaker 1: is in that context. Yeah, and that's the new T shirt.
24:12
Speaker 1: By the way, what we have the chops to say,
24:14
Speaker 1: pienis so that's a band name. Let's go ahead and
24:18
Speaker 1: use some of the let's go and say some of
24:21
Speaker 1: the direct quotes. So he comes on and he goes
24:24
Speaker 1: he's a freaking nerd. I think I'm better than Chuck Swarsky,
24:28
Speaker 1: freaking liberal. That's a really good impression of it. And
24:31
Speaker 1: Chuck Swarsky was the Bulls guy. Yeah, the sports announcer.
24:36
Speaker 1: And this is a time too when like the Bulls were, Um,
24:39
Speaker 1: this is the Jordan Pippen era. Still, I mean well
24:42
Speaker 1: still it's at the beginning of it. Was seven. I
24:44
Speaker 1: thought it was like in the middle of it. M hmm.
24:47
Speaker 1: Was at the beginning pretty early earli ish. Let's say,
24:50
Speaker 1: I wish these days that I would have been more
24:54
Speaker 1: cognizant and like more into basketball and like I am
24:58
Speaker 1: now see that's what I was the most into. It
25:01
Speaker 1: was bird Jordan's magic to watch some of those games. Yeah,
25:05
Speaker 1: that was good stuff because that's when the Hawks were
25:07
Speaker 1: good back then, Yeah, back then, Dominique, Hey, shout out
25:11
Speaker 1: to Kent base Moore. You know he listens to this
25:14
Speaker 1: show that way, he's a fan. How did you find
25:16
Speaker 1: that out? Twitter? Yeah, that's great, man, I love base
25:20
Speaker 1: I know. How do you not love bas Man? He's
25:23
Speaker 1: brought right right now. That's so cool. Alright, So, uh,
25:26
Speaker 1: Chuck Sworski's freaking liberal. Uh. He's wielding the rubber penis
25:32
Speaker 1: the marital aide. He drops that. Then he picks up
25:35
Speaker 1: a new coke while you can't really tell if it
25:38
Speaker 1: oh was it? Okay? I couldn't really tell. He picks
25:40
Speaker 1: up a can and but he says catch the wave,
25:43
Speaker 1: which is the new Coke slogan. Right. Then he starts humming.
25:47
Speaker 1: It's so random. Then he starts humming the theme song
25:51
Speaker 1: to the sixties show Clutch Cargo, which is weird in
25:55
Speaker 1: and of itself. Sure, that's that one where it's like animation,
25:58
Speaker 1: but for the mouths. That was just like a human
26:01
Speaker 1: mouth moving with that's disturbing. Yeah, that was. If you've
26:04
Speaker 1: seen pulp fiction, it was the scene where Bruce Willis
26:07
Speaker 1: was a kid and Christopher Walkin comes in with the
26:10
Speaker 1: wristwatch scene. Um, that Clutch Cargo is playing on TV
26:14
Speaker 1: when he's watching it. But it is weird looking, right,
26:17
Speaker 1: so you would say, why did you do the Clutch
26:19
Speaker 1: Cargo theme? Well, again, this is a w g N
26:22
Speaker 1: thing and apparently that's where you saw it as as
26:25
Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah on um in Chicago. Okay, So he says, also,
26:30
Speaker 1: your love is fading. I still see the X, which
26:34
Speaker 1: apparently is something from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: that was the Big X or something. And then he says,
26:41
Speaker 1: what you're talking about earlier, I just made a joint
26:43
Speaker 1: masterpiece for all the greatest World Newspaper nerds. But he
26:48
Speaker 1: should have said world's Greatest Newspaper Nerds w g IN right,
26:52
Speaker 1: which you might find confusing, as I did too. But
26:54
Speaker 1: apparently the Chicago Tribune Company owns w g N TV,
27:01
Speaker 1: so they called themselves World's Greatest Newspaper TV. Right. It's
27:06
Speaker 1: all coming together. It's so fact though. There you go.
27:10
Speaker 1: Then finally towards the end, the camera cuts to a
27:13
Speaker 1: different angle. Uh, this one has the dude bent over
27:18
Speaker 1: with his bare butt hanging out. His face is now
27:21
Speaker 1: off screen, but he's holding the mask still out like
27:24
Speaker 1: his head is in it, but it's not. And there
27:27
Speaker 1: is a person I say woman, but I don't know,
27:30
Speaker 1: but a person in a like an anti Oakley dress?
27:33
Speaker 1: Is that what it was? I didn't get that. Yeah,
27:35
Speaker 1: it looked like a prairie bonnet ensemble, but the bonnet
27:39
Speaker 1: kind of hides the face, so you don't know if
27:40
Speaker 1: it's a man or a woman. And they are spanking
27:44
Speaker 1: the bare butt with a fly swatter, and he's worried
27:48
Speaker 1: about them coming to get him. They're going to get me,
27:51
Speaker 1: and then he says come get me and uses a
27:53
Speaker 1: bad word, B word, the B word, and then it
27:56
Speaker 1: goes back to Dr Who. Yeah, as as just like
28:00
Speaker 1: it when it came in went out it just because
28:03
Speaker 1: it's like gone. Can you imagine seeing that live? And
28:06
Speaker 1: that while the people who saw it live, the next
28:08
Speaker 1: thing they would have heard was the doctor saying something like, oh,
28:12
Speaker 1: he died of an electric shock. Must have died instantly.
28:15
Speaker 1: And then and everybody's just sitting there, mouths hanging open.
28:19
Speaker 1: It was Dr Who too, so it was probably a
28:21
Speaker 1: bunch of Chicago nerds watching PBS. Yeah, so al right,
28:25
Speaker 1: my inmentation was okay, but let's just play at least
28:27
Speaker 1: like a couple of lines from the real thing. Yeah,
28:45
Speaker 1: all right, so you did a pretty good impression. I
28:48
Speaker 1: think everyone can agree now, right. Strange So this was
28:51
Speaker 1: an enormous thing, right, Like, um, like people were watching
28:55
Speaker 1: this and we're aghast. Agog some people probably thought it
29:00
Speaker 1: was funny. Um. W g N reporting on it all
29:03
Speaker 1: over the place the next couple of days. Yeah, the
29:05
Speaker 1: newspapers had picked it up. Yeah, um, there's this one.
29:09
Speaker 1: There's a compilation of w g M broadcasts, or it
29:14
Speaker 1: might may even be more than just w g N
29:16
Speaker 1: of people in the street being interviewed. What do you
29:19
Speaker 1: think about this? One Guy's like it's it's kind of
29:22
Speaker 1: like Cooligans throwing a brick through your window, you know,
29:24
Speaker 1: to get your attention. There's a little kid who's like,
29:27
Speaker 1: very very funny. The star of the news, though, was
29:31
Speaker 1: this one doctor who fan uh, this lady who was
29:34
Speaker 1: not at all amused by this, and I just want
29:38
Speaker 1: to play her little segment. Okay, yeah, get annoyed. You know.
29:42
Speaker 1: I just thought it would be just a slight mess up,
29:43
Speaker 1: but that in the middle of tap, it's going to
29:46
Speaker 1: be you're gonna have to tape over it. I just
29:50
Speaker 1: think that's the funniest thing out of the whole the
29:52
Speaker 1: whole thing. Well, another guy said he wanted to smash
29:54
Speaker 1: his TV he was so angry. Yeah, I didn't see
29:56
Speaker 1: that guy. I saw that in the Pastor Nech article. Yeah,
29:59
Speaker 1: he was mad. So there was a lot of mixed reaction.
30:02
Speaker 1: But the the the voice from on high that came
30:06
Speaker 1: from the FCC who you said, we're called in pretty quickly.
30:10
Speaker 1: They were like, this is no laughing matter. You might
30:12
Speaker 1: think it's funny, it's not very funny. Okay, it's kind
30:15
Speaker 1: of funny, but not really. And you can get a
30:18
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar fine in a year in jail for
30:20
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, so stop doing it. But at
30:23
Speaker 1: this point, by this point, it was actually a federal offense.
30:28
Speaker 1: It was a felony, a felony offense. Wait, what was that?
30:32
Speaker 1: Days been confused? Cantering with the mailbox is a felony.
30:36
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, I know that from somewhere.
30:38
Speaker 1: So the f c C gets involved in this, This
30:40
Speaker 1: is really interesting in this article that I got involved
30:43
Speaker 1: to FB, I was involved Chicago p D like there
30:45
Speaker 1: was they were looking into it. Apparently the um man
30:51
Speaker 1: I has become obvious to me that I say the
30:53
Speaker 1: word apparently a lot, really a lot. I was listening
30:58
Speaker 1: to an episode, queing an episode, and it was like
31:00
Speaker 1: stopped saying apparently, Josh, yeah, I've started after ten years,
31:06
Speaker 1: I've started to notice some things about my own self.
31:08
Speaker 1: It's like a tick. I tried to just avoid it.
31:10
Speaker 1: I tried to too normally I can, but man, it
31:13
Speaker 1: just came welling up into my awareness. Apparently it's really
31:17
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to get over it at any rate. Um,
31:21
Speaker 1: the the there were a lot of different agencies working
31:24
Speaker 1: on this, but the trail went cold pretty quick. And
31:27
Speaker 1: you remember how you said that. Um, the w g
31:30
Speaker 1: N engineers started looking around the station. I think what
31:34
Speaker 1: they were looking for was this somebody physically patching in
31:39
Speaker 1: to the transmission network the cable mask and yeah, either
31:44
Speaker 1: playing a videotape, which it's it seems pretty obvious it
31:48
Speaker 1: was pre taped or doing something like in a studio,
31:51
Speaker 1: but but that they would have to physically patch into
31:56
Speaker 1: w g n's transmission network. Yeah, it's like when a
32:00
Speaker 1: car doesn't work and I opened the hood thinking I'm
32:03
Speaker 1: going to see a squirrel not gnawing on a cable
32:07
Speaker 1: that two pieces now and frayed at the ends. Right now,
32:10
Speaker 1: imagine that squirrel wearing a max hydroom mask and being
32:13
Speaker 1: on acid, okay, with maritalaide. So um, And at first
32:19
Speaker 1: the FEC and the FBI and anybody who was in
32:23
Speaker 1: the know basically said, this was a very sophisticated attack.
32:28
Speaker 1: It would have required a very very some very expensive equipment,
32:34
Speaker 1: a lot of electricity. Um, there's not a lot of
32:38
Speaker 1: ways that they could have done this. But later on
32:40
Speaker 1: in the Pastor Nick article, and this is this is
32:42
Speaker 1: one of the ways Pastor that contributed to this whole thing.
32:45
Speaker 1: He talked to one of the SEC investigators and this
32:48
Speaker 1: guy basically did away with that that whole viewpoint that
32:52
Speaker 1: had lasted for almost thirty years, that it had to
32:56
Speaker 1: have been somebody with a hundred thousand dollar piece of
32:59
Speaker 1: equipment and you know, ten thousand dollars worth of electricity.
33:02
Speaker 1: Over the minute and a half he was saying, No,
33:05
Speaker 1: you could probably have gotten the equipment needed for this
33:08
Speaker 1: new for ten grand at the time, or you could
33:12
Speaker 1: have probably bought it for use for just a fraction
33:14
Speaker 1: of that, and um, it would have taken very little electricity.
33:19
Speaker 1: It would have just taken um. Some know how and
33:22
Speaker 1: good positioning. Really yeah, Basically he was like you, it
33:26
Speaker 1: could have been done with like the size of a
33:28
Speaker 1: direct TV dish today, and all they would have had
33:31
Speaker 1: to do was get and a high enough location in between,
33:36
Speaker 1: like literally, because they're beaming waves, are beaming microwaves through
33:40
Speaker 1: the air. So he's like, all they had to do
33:42
Speaker 1: is get in between the original studio and that initial
33:47
Speaker 1: tower on top of the I think it was a
33:48
Speaker 1: John Hancock building for w g N. Yeah, yeah, And
33:52
Speaker 1: and have a stronger signal, right, so even just like
33:55
Speaker 1: a slightly stronger signal. So you remember how w g
33:59
Speaker 1: N has their studio transmission shooting up to the John
34:03
Speaker 1: Hancock building and then that transmitter shoots it out to
34:06
Speaker 1: everybody else in Chicago. What what? What? What I think
34:09
Speaker 1: you're saying is like if somebody was on the roof
34:11
Speaker 1: of another nearby building and they just shoot a transmission
34:15
Speaker 1: their own max headroom transmission at a stronger a stronger
34:22
Speaker 1: way or no, a stronger amplitude, that's what it is.
34:25
Speaker 1: Of the same frequency. You just overpower cancels out what
34:29
Speaker 1: w g N is doing and instead it transmits your
34:31
Speaker 1: max headroom thing, and they would be closer to that
34:34
Speaker 1: broadcast hour. Yes, so um, that would mean that it
34:39
Speaker 1: required far less electricity than you would think or that
34:41
Speaker 1: they originally thought, and a far less equipment to They
34:45
Speaker 1: also had a pretty good idea of where these people
34:48
Speaker 1: would have had to have done it, because they after
34:52
Speaker 1: they got shut out of w g M, they turned
34:54
Speaker 1: their attention to w t t W, the PBS station,
34:57
Speaker 1: and they hijacked their signal. Well, w t W shot
35:01
Speaker 1: their studio link to the Sears Tower. So this would
35:06
Speaker 1: have been somebody who was on a roof somewhere that
35:09
Speaker 1: had a clear view of John Hancock Building and the
35:13
Speaker 1: Sears Tower and could transmit to either one of them.
35:16
Speaker 1: But that's basically what they think happened. Yeah, and the
35:18
Speaker 1: guy you were talking about, Dr Michael Marcus, who at
35:21
Speaker 1: the time was the Assistant Bureau Chief in the FCCS
35:24
Speaker 1: Field Operations Bureau. He was a lead investigator, and he
35:29
Speaker 1: said that the guy in Chicago that was sort of
35:31
Speaker 1: in charge wasn't super like. He was just sort of
35:34
Speaker 1: used to traditional FCC investigations. He wasn't wanted to go
35:38
Speaker 1: knocking on doors and uh as to like investigate some
35:42
Speaker 1: kind of weird kind of maybe creepy criminal dudes. Uh
35:46
Speaker 1: it may or may not have a marital aid in
35:48
Speaker 1: his apartment. Just smack him on that whether and then uh.
35:52
Speaker 1: They also, you know, nobody was being hurt, No one
35:56
Speaker 1: got hurt in the end, it was it was almost
36:00
Speaker 1: a victimless crime. So they didn't throw a ton of
36:03
Speaker 1: resources at it. They were kind of like, listen, we're
36:05
Speaker 1: not gonna If you want to go investigate this, that's
36:07
Speaker 1: great you should, but we're not going to assign a
36:10
Speaker 1: team of twelve people to try and crack this case
36:14
Speaker 1: of a bunch of nerds who did a weird thing
36:17
Speaker 1: for a minute seconds And I think the longer it
36:20
Speaker 1: went on and there was no more of these intrusions
36:23
Speaker 1: from these guys, the fewer and fewer resources they had
36:26
Speaker 1: to work with, and it just kind of fell to
36:28
Speaker 1: the wayside. Well, what's interesting is to at the in
36:34
Speaker 1: the beginning, they said it's gonna it would take somebody
36:36
Speaker 1: with a very expensive piece of equipment, a lot of electricity,
36:40
Speaker 1: and a lot of know how, And today the only
36:43
Speaker 1: one of those that's remaining is a lot of know how.
36:46
Speaker 1: There wouldn't have been a lot of people running around
36:49
Speaker 1: Chicago who would have known how to do something like this. Um,
36:54
Speaker 1: so it's kind of surprising, even with very few resources
36:57
Speaker 1: that no one has ever been really implicated in this one. Yeah,
37:02
Speaker 1: I don't think we said no. They still don't know
37:04
Speaker 1: who did this. It's an unsolved mystery. Like Dennis Farina
37:08
Speaker 1: and Robert Stack, I love this one. Uh. The FBI,
37:14
Speaker 1: for their take, started concentrating on the actual video. They
37:17
Speaker 1: had the technology at the time, which is kind of
37:20
Speaker 1: funny now to think about it, but they're the only
37:22
Speaker 1: ones who had the technology at the time to actually
37:24
Speaker 1: make enhance frames of this videotape and print out, you know,
37:31
Speaker 1: pictures enhance them. And they were kind of focused on
37:34
Speaker 1: this upper right hand quadrant, as they say, where the
37:38
Speaker 1: Antie Oakley was spanking with the fly swatter. I don't
37:41
Speaker 1: know why they're so into that, but they said, you know,
37:45
Speaker 1: we're trying to get clues on the actual location of
37:47
Speaker 1: the people who made the tape, not necessarily where they
37:50
Speaker 1: broadcast it from, but where did they shoot this thing.
37:52
Speaker 1: To begin with, it was very little to go on
37:54
Speaker 1: aside from that spinning corrugated metal, and that could have
37:58
Speaker 1: been literally anywhere. Because it's a really tight shot. It
38:01
Speaker 1: really is. Yeah, and there was very little evidence given
38:05
Speaker 1: in the video. Yeah. I mean it says that they
38:07
Speaker 1: were looking at industrial warehouses and things, but that could
38:10
Speaker 1: have been in an apartment living room. I mean, it
38:12
Speaker 1: wasn't like the door was a text anything. It was
38:15
Speaker 1: freely spinning back and forth. So it didn't make not
38:18
Speaker 1: the best lead, right, So um over time, and again
38:23
Speaker 1: this is weird too. It's it's not so weird that
38:25
Speaker 1: the FCC or the FBI didn't find who did this
38:28
Speaker 1: if they weren't really looking very hard. Was really weird
38:31
Speaker 1: is that no one has been like, it was these guys.
38:34
Speaker 1: I was there, I know these dudes. It was these guys.
38:38
Speaker 1: Statute limitations is done, like who cares? Yeah, after these
38:42
Speaker 1: guys would have gotten off scott free because the statute
38:45
Speaker 1: of limitations for this one was five years. Right. I'm
38:48
Speaker 1: shocked that no one later said, hey, that was me, right,
38:52
Speaker 1: No one's done that, right. Yeah, there was um some
38:56
Speaker 1: so very early forum like message boards stuff took the
39:02
Speaker 1: form of bulletin boards services. I think BBS is really
39:07
Speaker 1: early geek culture, like like like Matthew Broderick dialing something
39:11
Speaker 1: with his phone and then putting it on that weird
39:13
Speaker 1: little you know, Commodore sixty four thing, the motum yet
39:18
Speaker 1: to like transmit the dial tone over the telephone system, right, So, um,
39:24
Speaker 1: that's what that's what like the level of technology that
39:27
Speaker 1: these people were dealing with, but they were communicating with
39:29
Speaker 1: each other over like this proto internet, these bulletin board systems.
39:32
Speaker 1: And two days after this, a guy named the Chameleon
39:36
Speaker 1: posted basically what you and I said about how all
39:41
Speaker 1: it took was these guys to go up on a
39:43
Speaker 1: tall building and overwhelm the w g N and the
39:46
Speaker 1: w T t W studio links. And it's so facto
39:50
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of that. By the way, Um,
39:53
Speaker 1: the this this intrusion was successful, right two days, not
39:57
Speaker 1: two years, not a year ago. Two days after it,
40:01
Speaker 1: somebody was on there explaining how it went out. So
40:04
Speaker 1: somebody knew this, right, But only two theories have really
40:09
Speaker 1: ever come to light as to who it was. One
40:11
Speaker 1: you can basically just throw right out, and the other
40:14
Speaker 1: one it turns out to have been a dead end. Yeah.
40:17
Speaker 1: The first one that you were talking about that doesn't
40:19
Speaker 1: really hold water was a and this was a rumor
40:22
Speaker 1: online for a while. I was a musician named Eric
40:25
Speaker 1: Fournier Fournier Furnier. I had a friend in uh in preschool.
40:31
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that's how it was spelled f O
40:35
Speaker 1: U R in I E R. Actually I don't know
40:37
Speaker 1: how it spelled. I couldn't spell back then. Um. So
40:42
Speaker 1: this guy was in a band, uh, and he did
40:46
Speaker 1: this weird, super creepy YouTube series called shay st john
40:53
Speaker 1: S h A y E. Did you watch it? Oh? Yeah,
40:55
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, just knew that you would love
40:58
Speaker 1: it if you're but this is genuinely unsettling too. I'm
41:02
Speaker 1: with you on that. So it kind of fit and
41:04
Speaker 1: that he was doing these weird things. He had this band, Uh.
41:09
Speaker 1: They were in Bloomington, Indiana, not too far from Chicago,
41:11
Speaker 1: the Blood Farmers, Yeah, the bands of Blood Farmers, and
41:14
Speaker 1: they did these weird music videos and they thought this
41:17
Speaker 1: is the kind of guy that would have done that.
41:19
Speaker 1: And the thinking was that he went to go broadcast
41:21
Speaker 1: one of their weird music videos as a broadcast intrusion,
41:25
Speaker 1: but chickened out at the last minute because they would
41:27
Speaker 1: have been found uh, and then ended up just improving.
41:31
Speaker 1: That part makes a little sense because it definitely seems improved.
41:34
Speaker 1: It does, but it was also videotaped. Remember, So that
41:37
Speaker 1: means he would have had two videotapes with him. What
41:41
Speaker 1: do you mean? So if he was gonna if he
41:43
Speaker 1: was going to play the music video and said I'm
41:45
Speaker 1: not gonna do that, he would have had to have
41:47
Speaker 1: brought this other video tape. And the other thing is
41:50
Speaker 1: apparently his friend. See I just said apparently again. Alex
41:55
Speaker 1: Pastor Neck from Motherboard contacted some of Fernier's friends because
41:59
Speaker 1: Fernie Or died in two thousand ten. But his friends
42:02
Speaker 1: are like, absolutely not. Even some of the blood Farmers
42:05
Speaker 1: are like, it wasn't him, Like, I know what you're saying,
42:08
Speaker 1: and yeah, he did the whole shay st John thing,
42:10
Speaker 1: but it was this was not him. It was not
42:13
Speaker 1: quite there. He didn't know what he was doing with it.
42:15
Speaker 1: He wouldn't know any broadcast stuff or video editing or
42:18
Speaker 1: anything like that. Yeah, so this other one to me
42:21
Speaker 1: seems pretty promising. Uh So we flashed forward to when
42:28
Speaker 1: did this actually happen? Was this like by the time
42:30
Speaker 1: read it had to come around when it on Reddit? Yeah,
42:32
Speaker 1: I think it was about twenty five years after, so
42:35
Speaker 1: it would have been in two thousand seven. Yeah, so
42:38
Speaker 1: there's this guy two thousand. Okay, sorry, there was this
42:44
Speaker 1: guy named from Chicago named Bowie Pogue p o G.
42:48
Speaker 1: I didn't have any friends with that last name when
42:51
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and he was one of the
42:53
Speaker 1: kids hanging around those bbs is in the eighties in Chicago.
42:57
Speaker 1: From the sounds of it, he was on the younger side.
43:00
Speaker 1: He was thirteen, and even as the thirteen year old geek,
43:03
Speaker 1: was very much intimidated by the older geeks in that crowd,
43:07
Speaker 1: and so wasn't boisterous. He was sort of like, Hey,
43:10
Speaker 1: I'm kind of hanging out here and not saying much
43:12
Speaker 1: and don't notice me. I just want to ingratiate myself
43:16
Speaker 1: and you guys can give me drunk laugh if you want.
43:19
Speaker 1: And then at a party he remembers this uh. He
43:23
Speaker 1: described him as a small, peculiar man that he thought
43:26
Speaker 1: was about in his thirties, and he had an older brother.
43:30
Speaker 1: They lived in Chicago. So Poe is describing these two
43:33
Speaker 1: guys who were in the same scene with him, correct, Yeah,
43:37
Speaker 1: And he had They lived with his girlfriend downtown or
43:41
Speaker 1: about ten miles from downtown Chicago, and they had the
43:44
Speaker 1: know how. They were super into computers early on you
43:48
Speaker 1: he said he went to their apartment and it was
43:50
Speaker 1: just like it looked like a computer hoarder, mess of
43:54
Speaker 1: wires and computers and equipment like Neo's apartment. Yeah, why not?
43:59
Speaker 1: Or what was the other one he was in before
44:02
Speaker 1: the Matrix Johnny Newmonic, Yes, yeah, Bill and Ted Yeah,
44:08
Speaker 1: Johnny Newmonic. That's cyberpunk, yes, right, yes, it is all right.
44:12
Speaker 1: You could probably make the case that the Matrix is
44:15
Speaker 1: as well there, right, sure. So he described him as
44:19
Speaker 1: a stocky guy with tinted lens glasses in his early
44:24
Speaker 1: thirties and odd dude his brother, he said. He described
44:27
Speaker 1: it's just kind of normal. But he said that he
44:31
Speaker 1: didn't make the connection at the time, but at a
44:33
Speaker 1: party on November about the same day. Midday on November,
44:38
Speaker 1: he was at a gathering of these dudes at the
44:40
Speaker 1: brothers apartment and he heard them say something about doing
44:43
Speaker 1: something big. Later that night, they went to Pizza Hut
44:46
Speaker 1: and He's like, what are you guys talking about? What's
44:48
Speaker 1: the big thing? And they said, hey, I don't ask questions,
44:52
Speaker 1: but just watched Channel eleven tonight on that same day,
44:56
Speaker 1: and I don't know how he didn't put it together.
44:58
Speaker 1: That's that's the one thing that really strikes. But he
45:01
Speaker 1: said that years later. Now when he looks at it,
45:04
Speaker 1: he's like, even with that mask on, I see the body,
45:08
Speaker 1: I see what's going on. I hear that, and it's
45:10
Speaker 1: it's that guy to me. But twenty five years later,
45:15
Speaker 1: he was there that day, they tell him to watch
45:17
Speaker 1: that night, and he didn't put it together for twenty
45:20
Speaker 1: five years. That to me is the one fishy thing. Well,
45:23
Speaker 1: and he has been called out as fishy. Sure, I'm
45:28
Speaker 1: sure he knows that it's kind of fishy. Yeah. So
45:30
Speaker 1: that the guy the motherboard, pastor Neck reached out and
45:34
Speaker 1: he said, you can you still get in touch with
45:36
Speaker 1: these guys all these years later, he said, he sent
45:38
Speaker 1: them messages via Facebook. I don't even know if they
45:42
Speaker 1: saw him. They didn't get back. Then in the last
45:44
Speaker 1: sitch effort, he sent them a certified mail too. He
45:47
Speaker 1: found out where they lived, never heard anything back, and
45:49
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, it's clear that these guys don't
45:51
Speaker 1: want to be talked to, so you want to take
45:54
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's do it, okay m hm. So
46:17
Speaker 1: that's where it stands right now, Like nobody knows who
46:20
Speaker 1: is behind it still to this day, which is it
46:24
Speaker 1: is crazy. And as a result, this Max Headroom hack
46:28
Speaker 1: has taken its place in like the pantheon of geek
46:31
Speaker 1: culture and of hacker culture, and rightfully so you know
46:35
Speaker 1: it was legendary in its own way. That's right. Ah,
46:39
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else on this one,
46:42
Speaker 1: cool man. Well, if you want to know more about
46:45
Speaker 1: Max Headroom, you should start by checking out this amazing
46:49
Speaker 1: Motherboard article by Alex Pastor Knack. And since I said amazing,
46:53
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna go with Uh,
47:01
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with the Almond Brothers eat a Peach
47:04
Speaker 1: from a Munchies. I don't know if it's true, but
47:06
Speaker 1: it's fun. I wanted to talk about when Josh talked
47:10
Speaker 1: about the Almond Brothers band factoid um because I think
47:13
Speaker 1: it's actually a cool factoid. Dwayne Alman was once asked
47:17
Speaker 1: by a reporter what he was going to do for
47:20
Speaker 1: the war effort in Vietnam, and his response was, I'm
47:22
Speaker 1: going to eat a peach for peace. Dwayne died not
47:26
Speaker 1: long after that album, and Eat a Peach was released posthumously,
47:31
Speaker 1: so he contends Jesse Godet that that is where the
47:35
Speaker 1: album title came from and they eat a peach? Was
47:38
Speaker 1: not Eta, bud he or she? I guess Jesse could
47:44
Speaker 1: go either way. Yeah, as always, keep up a good work.
47:46
Speaker 1: I'm currently brewing beer and listening. Tell me where to
47:49
Speaker 1: mail some bottles or come pick them up in Salt
47:52
Speaker 1: Lake City. All right, we'll do both. It's like a challenge, right,
47:57
Speaker 1: they're too heavy. I can't pick him up. Thanks a lot, Jesse,
48:01
Speaker 1: appreciate that, even though I still think I'm right. Um,
48:04
Speaker 1: if you want to contend that something one of us
48:07
Speaker 1: said is incorrect, we love that. Stuff. You can tweet
48:11
Speaker 1: to us at Josh I'm Clark, s y s K
48:13
Speaker 1: podcast or movie Crush. You can hang out with us
48:17
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know or
48:19
Speaker 1: slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an
48:22
Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com
48:25
Speaker 1: and has always joined us at our home on the web,
48:27
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
48:34
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
48:37
Speaker 1: dot com