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Selects: The Max Headroom Affair · Stuff You Should Know

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