January 21, 2020 • 44 mins
Are stunts perceived as even more dangerous and spectacular if they’re well-promoted and built-up ahead of time? Join Scott, Ben and Kurt as they ask: What happened to the attention-seekers; the daredevil showmen of the past? Is there a modern stunt performer with the flair and audacity of Evel Knievel? And, has anyone seen The Human Fly?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. Hi, and welcome to car Stuff on
your host, Scott Benjamin. I'm Ben Bolan, and I am
Kurt Garon. Kay. But that's all three of us again.
But we're all here again. Attendance. That's always good, right,
I mean, I guess we could forge on with maybe
(00:22):
maybe two people, but um better if we have all three. Well,
of the three of us, I am probably the sketchiest,
and so there may be times when I dip away,
but the three of us are here together doing sort
of a what people in broadcaster entertainment we'll call destination stuff. Right,
We're here at a specific time to do a specific thing,
(00:43):
and for us it's live, right. We can't pull this
moment up again on YouTube or anything. Oh absolutely yeah
for us. But maybe maybe through the magic of editing.
Do you think we could we could fix a few things,
because you know, I have a foul mouth. That's that's
I mean, that's that's Kurt Garon right there, folks. No, No,
I really don't. I'm just kidding, Ben, that's you that hasn't. Yeah,
(01:03):
probably no, really to to be serious. So we come
in here and we've got Sometimes we have a topic
that we've you know, we've got facts and figures and
stats nailed down for and you know, it's very concrete.
It's something we can go right to and say, you know,
it's this event, it's happening on this day, and here's
the history of it, and you know, etcetera. This one's
just a little bit more um nebulous, I guess, and
(01:25):
that we can kind of take this a few different
ways if you like. And uh, it's more of a
question than I had about I guess in a way
the absence of something that I miss from the past
a little bit, and I wonder if it's coming back
or if it's still out there, but I'm just missing out.
Maybe that's the other part of this whole thing, as
as Kurt as show me a little bit over the
(01:45):
last week, that I might be just missing out on
a few things. But my question to you initially was
about Daredevil's and and stunt men, and I know there's
stunt women too. Were just gonna say stunt men and
stunt folk, I guess for this, No, I'm not gonna
say stunt folk. Couple that, but you know, you get
the idea, right. You know, people that jump motorcycles, people
that jump cars, people that perform incredible acts of you know,
(02:08):
physical daring. You know, they risk their lives in order
to entertain us. And that's that was my question, is
that is this still out there in the uh? I
guess with the intensity that there was at some point
during you know, the mid nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, even
the late nineteen sixties, I guess think about the boy
I want to say, I want to use the word, uh, flamboyant,
(02:30):
but that's not right. I mean the no, yeah, death
defines outlandish is a good one. I mean, like, um,
larger than life. Okay, yeah, yeah, you guys are better
than I can't think of my word now, but yes, yes,
you've got all of those right, and and more. Uh
kind of the the pageantry, I guess that was evil Kinevil.
(02:52):
You think about him, Okay, he would come out of
his trailer, you know, in front of the audience. He
would have emerged from his trailer with his cape on.
He had his white leathers on that were red, white
and blue. He would be carrying his home and under
his arm. He had a cane in his hand, you know,
with with gold. It had hit a gold cane that
had I was black mostly, but had gold accents and
diamonds on it. He was a showman, a true showman,
(03:13):
and he would talk it up to the audience. I
mean he was. He was as good as any professional
wrestler these days. You know in the ring when they
do their speech ahead of time, you know there you
know their story. H He was just as good as
any of those guys were about talking himself up, about
promoting himself. And know how dangerous this is gonna be,
you know, like you might witness my grizzly death this afternoon.
But I want you to know this. I've come through
(03:34):
with every promise that I've ever made for you people,
and I do it for you, and I do it
for me, you know that kind of thing. And if
if you are a member of the audience in the
actual arena or what have you, and if you're watching
live at home on television, right, which they did pretty often,
then there's this moment in that speech where you think
(03:55):
I might be one of the last people to hear
this guy talk. Evil went on a lot like he
clashed a lot, So there's always that yeah, that chance.
Oh sure, And some people watch just for that, right,
Like like some people watch NASCAR for that, right, they
want to see the crash, they want to see the
big one, right. So there's there's that element. But I
think that like the pageantry, the um, the audacity of
(04:16):
this character, you know, just like how would come out
and just just right in your face tell you what
he thought of it. He was. He was kind of
a straight shooter as well. Um, things weren't going right,
he would he would let you know, um and not
just evil kine evil. There were other people too that
were like that in the in the past. There was
a guy, um that went by the name of the
Human Fly that we'll talk about in a little while.
He was a little bit like that. He had some
(04:36):
of the costume characteristics or traits down that you know,
we're made him intriguing in some ways. He the guy
who climbed. No, no, it's a different guy. This is
this is a stunt man. But many people went by
the name of the Human Fly. I'm thinking of one
in particular as a Canadian stuntman will decide no. But
but I guess overall, I'm just thinking of like, where
(04:57):
are the where the showman of today? I mean know
that I do know that there are stunt men out there.
I know that there are people performing and women stunt
women that are performing a lot of death defying stunts,
a lot of stunts that do require a great deal
of skill. Um, you know, a great deal of of courage,
of course, But where's the where's the build up the
(05:18):
excitement of all that along with it? You know, where
where's that gone? And We've got a few theories that
we've kind of just real tentatively talked about in the
hallway here at work. But I think today if we
could just kind of talk this through, maybe I'd feel
a little bit better about it. Because, as we said
in an earlier episode, sometimes things happen that are monumental
in our I guess I'll card our industry. You know,
(05:39):
we we like anything automotive, motorcycle, whatever, trucks, trains, airplanes,
all that stuff. We love all that stuff. Boats, But
sometimes there are things that happen. You know that world
records are broken and we don't hear about them for
a long time until listener writes in and says, hey,
did you happen to catch this? You can see it
on YouTube. Now it turns out it was on television,
but it was on like know, some late night Fox
(06:02):
Sports News or something, or it was on yeah, something
like that. It's just there's there's a lot happening out
there still, I know, but you have to you have
to really search for it. You have to find it. Yeah.
What happened to the days of nationally or in some
cases globally televised things where there would be someone saying,
you know, tonight, ladies and gentlemen, for one time and
(06:25):
one time only, Kurt Darren Garrin, will you know, perform
the death defying triple access jump while sword fighting an
alligator who's also on the motorcycle over school buses that
are set on fire, and now a word from Garrett
like it was what happened to that? That's exciting and
(06:45):
everybody listening, we're all kind of like, oh, there's a motorcycle,
there's an alligator. Okay, I got oh yeah, I got
ten minutes. What's going on? Well, that might be part
of the problem, right, I mean, that might be some
of it. You know, you can't wait for that type
of stuff. But I feel like you're right, Ben, that
there's not one place. This is one theory and uh,
and I know this is a little tough to grasp everything,
(07:07):
and I'm trying to have you get here, and I
don't know if I'm really conveying it as as concisely
as I really want to get it. But it doesn't
it feel like there's not one place to go to
see something like this happened. I mean it was ABC Sports.
They had the um Wide World of Sports where Evil
Kinevil appeared and what like seventeen times I think on
on that show, and some of his jumps in some
(07:28):
of his specials that he had on that program are
still like ranked number one in all time viewership for
that particular brand. So they were on air from like
nineteen I want to say it's nineteen sixty one until
I was like or something. It was like thirty some years,
like thirty seven years, thirty eight years, and some of
his stunts are still like top five top you know,
(07:50):
I shouldn't say still at the end, they were you know,
like top five contenders for the most watched of the
of all the programs that they did over that thirty
seven years, so widely popular. And I know I keep
saying evil Kinevil. There are many others that will we
can you know, touch on today and discuss because there
are people doing some fascinating and and really dangerous things
and and fun things to watch if you're there, if
(08:12):
you're you know, in the crowd, but it's kind of
few and far between now. It seems like, um, you know,
you have to you have to go to the event
to see it happen. You have to, or or you
have to catch it on YouTube a month later or
a week later or whatever it is. Um, you have
to either you know, catch wind of it early, maybe
through a club or a group that says, hey, this
jump is going to be happening at this right come
(08:33):
and check it out. You know, there are ten thousand
people in attendance or twenty thousand or whatever. But if
you're not among those people, you know, they're the ones
who posted then and everybody else sees it. And sometimes
it's like an exhibition or opening act, you know, before
a race. Yes, yeah, and I think that maybe, um,
one of the one of the ones that I can
think of in recent past. There was before the one
(08:53):
hundredth Indianapolis five hundred, they did a jump with an
all terrain truck. It was a four wheel drive truck,
and it was made to look like a Hot Wheels ramp.
It was. It was a Hot Wheels anniversary jump for
the five before the race, and they had this is
like a ten story orange track set up so it
looked like a Hot Wheels truck on a Hot Wheels track.
(09:14):
And this guy did this incredibly long jump. I have
the information here somewhere. I think it was I want
to say Tanner Faust, but that might not be the
right names. We get to it. I'll tell you did
some incredible long jump right in front of a live audience.
That's a huge audience. That's hundreds of thousands of people,
maybe half a million up to half a million for
that race in particular, So that's a huge live event.
(09:34):
And it was also televised and a lot of people
watched that. So there's a chance that a lot of
people saw that one event. But you know who who
here knows in you know in this room, even that
just a few months ago there was going to be
the world record distance jump for a motorcycle. I was
not aware of this. It never happened, didn't happen. The
(09:55):
rider was injured the day that it was or the
day before. I think that it was supposed to happen.
He was in a practice ump uh injured both of
his ankles and it never happened. But I was gonna
be a live event called Evil. I think it was
the Evil Live two or Live Evil two. The Evil
spelled like yeah. And there was also a female writer
that was going to do and I think she did
right through several burning walls. She's gonna break a world
(10:17):
record for how many she went through, and I believe
she did in fact do that. But the long distance
jump never occurred, and it might happen this year. You
never know if he recovers well enough. But the guy's
name was Axel Hodges, I believe. But I never heard
about the promotion the lead up to it, So if
I did want to watch it, I would have had
to have been going to very specific places to find
that information, or on Facebook on the right Facebook pages
(10:40):
to find that information. So do you think it's an
issue of the audience, the large audience losing interest or
do you think it's an issue of the way that
people find or transmit this information, Because this when we
talked about this one of the things I started digging
into stuff like the X Games, and the X Games
(11:03):
have tons of crazy stunt riders, you know, crazy, very talented, yeah,
very precise, very talented um bikers and people who are
writing who are doing you know, not one trick ponies,
they're doing multiple stunts, multiple vehicles and stuff, and they're
around and they are as accomplished technically as many of
(11:28):
the greats of yesteryear. And it seems like they have
a great crowd at the X Games. But again, to
your point, it's not something you hear about on the radio.
It's not something that you often. Oddly enough, even if
you go to a lot of car news sites, you
don't really hear a lot about this stuff. So I
(11:48):
wonder what happened, you know, even when we were talking
about the thrust SSC back a few months ago and
then Jesse Combs I think was her name, and she
was attending the fastest land speed record for a woman.
I mean, I did not hear anything about that. Yeah,
you didn't hear about anything until after the crash, Right,
things like that that happened, you don't hear about it
(12:09):
for whatever reason, do you think? Okay, so you said
all the reasons you said that, you know, the audience
is fragmented. That's one right. You have to be going
to specific sites in order to be be notified that
anything is happening to begin with. Um, it's not like
everybody's going to ABC now to watch the Wide World
of Sports on you know, whenever it was there, and
I can't remember. I remember, I do remember watching it,
but I don't remember what day it errored, or it
(12:30):
was a Sunday or is the weekend? I think, But
do you think that Okay, a lot of things have
taken the place, So like there's pay per view events
which are popular, and a lot of people have used
pay per view to see things like that. Like I
think that guy keep going back to Evil Kin Evil,
but I think that his um Snake River canyon jump
was a pay per view event. Pay per view goes
(12:50):
back to the nineteen fifties, believe it or not. I
didn't know that until just today when I looked it up.
I thought, paper, you know, there were there were like
maybe thirty thousand people that that witnessed, you know, that
canyon jumper that attempted canyon jump of his h and
they all saw it live, but you know, and they
of course filmed it, but anybody else that wanted to
see that they would have to watch either a week
(13:11):
later on again Wild World of Sports where they rebroadcast
that whole fright, or go to uh, you know, like
again a pay per view situation where you know they're
paying at the time. We're talking like maybe two dollars
to rent the paper view or stuffing. It's not like
you know, the fights now where it's you know, eighty
dollars a hundred dollars to watch a fight. But there's
all of that. And then also again this kind of
(13:32):
goes back again to the performers themselves, the people themselves.
It's not that there's not interesting characters out there, because
there are plenty of people. As Ben said that there
wildly talented and they do a lot of things, you know,
like that there's somebody that could you know, be equally
talented in a rally car um and a BMX bike.
They do stunts on you know whatever. I mean, they're
(13:52):
just their adrenaline junkies. They love this stuff. Right, How
much of this comes back to there's not like those
those kind of stand out, bigger than life characters. Like
Evil Kinevil was. I mean, he was just an absolute showman.
(14:13):
I mean he made appearances on late night talk shows.
He was kind of making the circuit, you know that,
um um promoting himself. He was going, um, he's seen
in public doing a lot of things, you know, well
good and bad. Right, um. But he made a name
for himself and he's a big self promoter. He was
someone who you know, was never shy about talking about himself.
I'll put it that way. Yeah, yeah, Kurt and I
(14:36):
had a funny conversation earlier. I'll say something in just
a minute about that. But and someone in fact, someone said,
you know, he wasn't one to you know, come up
with like poetry like Muhammad Ali Wood on the on
the spot. He was really good at the pr game, right.
He was amazing and really talented of course as well,
you know he had he could back it up. Evil
could back it up with what he would do his
(14:58):
stunts and ever. You know, he always he always delivered
on what he promised, and he would say something that
was meanful and he had a lot of gravity whatever
he said to it. And he would promise things to
the fans for the near future and He was always
leading them to the next thing and the next thing
and the next thing. And that was part of his game,
is that you know, I've given this to you and
I told you i'd do this, and I did this.
(15:19):
You know, he might have even known that his bike
wasn't going to make the jump, and he'd do it.
So when when, But he would say September, You're gonna
see something bigger than ever. I bought my own property
on the Snake River. I own a piece of that canyon.
They're not going to stop me. So it's kind of
about against the instead of about against another boxer or driver.
(15:40):
It's about against physics, it's about against nature. Yeah, and
he always was playing, you know, he was just he
was big into saying what's what's the next thing? And
that's with That's the thing with these these guys to
do these stunts and women to do these stunts, is
that it always always has to be bigger, better, faster, longer,
you know all that as otherwise, why am I watching?
(16:03):
I see what you're saying. Yeah, it has to have
that exponential growth. I would also and this this is
a point that I'm not completely sure on, I would
also say the nicknames were cooler. People still do have
that showmanship. But there are people like Lawrence de Smet
who was named Indian Larry. Not in a racist way.
(16:26):
It's because he was known for riding around on a
chopped Indian motorcycle Indian Larry. I did watch some some
clips of Indian Larry. He was a bike builder, right, yeah,
and he became known for his stunts, but it wasn't
until later in his life. He actually passed away in
a motorcycle crash during two thousand and four at a
bike build off. Yeah, he was just like, as far
(16:47):
as I know, I mean, I think this is the
story if if I'm not mistaking it, wasn't he kind
of doing some impromptu stunts in the parking lot, I
believe so, Yeah, and uh took a topple and ended
up with a concussion that was turned fatal. And or
what about people like Doug Domokos, the wheelie King to
hear this, I don't know about that guy. He was
super famous in the eighties and nineties. He went up
(17:09):
Lombard Street in San Francisco. I think you're right, Oh,
you know what, I think that's him? Was his name again?
The Wheelie King Doug Demokos. He set the record for
the longest continuous wheelie a hundred and forty five miles.
It's a very different stunt. Was this one that's incredible
a television show? I'm sure he had to be our
(17:31):
one and had I mean, if if that's the one
I remember watching that one on that's in Crow. I
don't know the guy's name, but I remember a long
long time ago was one of my favorite shows. But yeah,
there's a ton of people that do stuff like this,
and um one, I just wanted to throw a few
more names out though. While you're we're gearing up for
this next year. We don't have to talk about their history.
But Fearless Frank, Hurricane Hutch and then of course evil
(17:56):
Son Robbie Knee. He goes by Captain with a k
Robbie kine Evil. Yeah, he's he's out there doing I
don't know if he's still jumping or not. I'm not sure.
I saw an early clip by the way of well,
we were stuck on the Kinneval family because I got
I've got something more to say about this. I watched
a this is well worth your time. I as you know,
we've we've done a show on Evil Knevil only on
(18:17):
car stuff. We did that a long time ago, and
there was footage on this program that I had never
seen before about Evil Kine Evil after we had dug
into this for you know, two weeks before, and I
never saw anyse clips. If you want to look it
up on YouTube, it's worth forty two minutes of your
time to watch, and I guarantee it. It's called Evil
Knevil Wide World of Sports Classic and it's forty two
(18:38):
minutes long. Ure again, footage that I've never seen. There's
audio that I've never heard before, some inside stories of
people that were there that you know, we're right around him,
that you know, I had never heard from before in
the past. It was it was a really well done
short documentary and uh and and I opening footage. I
mean it really was really cool. Some different perspectives of
(19:00):
a ramp, you know from you know, where he saw
it from. Fantastic stuff is really really cool. But there's
some amazing stuntmen and some some people out there right now,
as as Curt pointed out, what was it, Robbie Madison,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, yeah, he did that. Las
Vegas jump that probably not a lot of people have watched.
It's got a lot of YouTube views, but I mean
(19:20):
in the bigger picture, not a lot of people have
watched this really. So Robbie Madison did an an incredible jump. Yeah,
he jumped up onto the Arc de Triomph in Las
Vegas and then um a flat top building. Essentially it's
very high. I don't know exactly how high it is.
And then Hunter Fie also back down as well. He
(19:42):
landed it. I mean he barely hung on. But I
mean it's ben Until you see it, you don't. You
don't quite grasp what this guy did. Really. I mean
it's he's jumping onto on top of a flat on
top of a flat building. This ten stories tall. It's
a hundred feet up a hundred twelve feet I think, Well,
especially when they show the view after he lands, you know,
(20:03):
they show him up. They're riding around a little bit,
because of course they have to like ride around. You
can imagine would be even more scary. I'll check that out.
I know he's Australian. I know that he's done like
he's legit. His day jobs as a stunt double. He
was Daniel Craig stunt double in uh some James Bond films,
(20:24):
and he also he won a gold medal in the
X Game. He did thirteen backflips. This guy is crazy
on a bike. And he also recreated some famous stunts
like he followed in Evil King Evil Steps. So they're
out there on a second. Yeah, I guess I'm laughing.
I'm sorry, I gotta start. It couldn't have been thirteen
backflips in a row, right, It's like falling from space.
(20:49):
I think they do maybe three in a row, three,
but not maybe thirteen total over the competition. I just
my source doesn't say whether these were consecutive. My source,
which is guess that's less impressive. If you say, over
the span of your life you've done third team back
I guess so. But but I but no, he's to
(21:11):
to to be a stunt double in a James Bond film,
I would say, you have to have, you know, some
pretty good chops. Right now. I do know that he
I think I believe he's the current record holder. Now
this is where it gets tough again. You don't go
to one source like us. You don't go to the
Guinness bill World Records. So as far as I've got
it figured right now, three feet and nine inches by
Robbie Madison is the longest ramp to ramp jump at
(21:34):
this point, and I believe that that was the the
record that Axel Hodges was trying to break. He was
going for like four hundred feet or something, or over
four hundred feet when he had his accident where he
broke his or injured both of his ankles. And you
can watch the video the film of him injuring both
of his ankles, which is that it's not not that
hard to watch. I mean it been. It bends his
foot in a bad way. I guess when he lands,
(21:57):
but it's an impressive jump. I'll tell you that. When
Robbie Madison broke that record, that distance record of three
nine um back in two thousand eleven. Again this is
a long time ago. Now it's two thousand eleven, there
was another guy that did the jump simultaneously with him
(22:19):
on a snowmobile and the snowmobile went significantly farther than
Robbie did on his bike, which I thought was really fascinating.
The snowmobile, get this is is driven by a guy
named Levi, and I hope I gets re last name right,
it's laval or La Valley. He jumped a snowmobile a
world record distance of four hundred and twelve feet, so
(22:40):
you know, they're side by side. He continues to sail
for an additional what is that thirty some odd feet
farther than than Robbie did. But they did it side
by side at this event in San Diego, this Red
Bull No Limits event that they have every year now,
which is really a cool thing to watch. That's where
they go for a lot of world records. But Red
Bull is is a primary sponsor of these world record attempts,
(23:01):
and and they've done things like, oh, you know, here's
one that we can all maybe think of a stunt
person not necessarily motorized. But remember the guy that jumped
from the stratosphere, Yes, Felix bomb Garter. I watched that
recently as well, and that was a Red Bull sponsored
thing watched live. That was remember watching that live? Now,
(23:24):
see that that is the type of promotion without he
he wasn't quite the showman the character as would be,
you know like again evil kin evil or you know,
somebody like the human fly. Maybe he wasn't. He wasn't
on camera talking trash in front of it. No, he was,
but it got the publicity that some of the jumps
in the past had received. So that's that to me.
(23:45):
That was one that was similar where you know, that
was what people were talking about in the news in
the morning. You know, when you go over head into work,
you hear that. You know, this either happened or is
going to happen. I don't remember um and people would,
you know, check it out online. They go to red
bull dot com or wherever and check out that that jump. Well, yeah,
the live stream of that was there was a lot
of build up and a lot of um height before
(24:07):
and after that, and it was worthy, super incredible. Absolutely,
they have the the cave not cave diving, not the
cave jumping. I guess it's called you know when people
dress up like flying squirrels. Yeah, they glide wingsuits. Yes, yes,
I tried. I tried for years to get our job
(24:29):
to put it in the budget for me to get one,
but it turns out there a little bit expensive and
accounting was not satisfied with my explanations. I'd love to
hear I would love to have heard those explanations. You
know who another another big one right now, And just
just a few more names because there and and I
know we're gonna be missing many that people are gonna
be upset. We don't mention we should still talk about
(24:50):
the human fly. Oh definitely. But Travis Pastra, he's this
guy he broke you know, he broke he did he
why should say he recreated? He didn't. He didn't necessarily
break any records that day, but he recreated three of
Evil Knievel's most famous stunts all in one day. He
did all in three hours, which is really really impressive.
(25:10):
I mean that's a that's a physical feat that's really difficult. Also,
wonder how much of role technology plays. Yes, you know
what I mean? Sure, Yeah, I mean Evil Knevil had
that Harley. It was basically a dirt racing bike, like
a dirt oval bike. I think it wasn't His big
thing was that it was factory too, right, Yeah, that
(25:30):
it wasn't customized. Yeah, it's a heavy, big bike. I
don't know how many pounds. I mean, I know the
one that was at Robbie Madison, he the one that
he jumped in Vegas. I think they said that bike
was like fifty pounds, so you know that that Harley's
got way way more than that anyway at least, and
it's not probably not distributed correctly, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
You're right. It's just it was just whatever he could
(25:52):
buy from the factory and then he had it tuned
as he wanted. Of course, Um, there were several of
those jumps that he made where you would see him
switch bikes. He'd bring you know, five or six bikes
with different gearing to each to the track and that
way he would something he would sometimes, you know, make
those practice runs where you stop at the end of
the ramp, back it up and he would switch bikes
and you know some of that show maybe you know,
like it could be I don't know, I mean that's
(26:14):
again that's part of this whole thing. Like it's well,
I'm sure equipment wouldn't whole would break all the time
on those practice jumps. Frames would crack and all that
sort of things. So yeah, absolutely, backups absolutely, well, you
know what, I know, we're running a little bit tight
on time, and hopefully some people can you know, right
in with some other suggestions, you know, check out our
Facebook or whatever and say some memories of the past
(26:36):
or or you know, present that are kind of equal
to what we're talking about right now, or maybe some
you know voice some concerns or some gripes or whatever.
I don't care anything. I'm just interested in in stunt
writers and stunt jumps and things like that right now.
But um, last one I want to mention is ken Block.
I think everybody kind of watches for the new Ken
Block Jim Conna, or at least he did early on.
(26:58):
Now I don't know what they're up to fourteen fIF teen,
it seems. But when ken Block was doing his Gym
Conner series, um, he wasn't necessarily breaking world records, and
if he was, I didn't know about it. But it
was just fun to watch. It was a lot of
stunts that were somewhere debt de fine. Of course, you
know the speeds he's traveling and the heights he's achieving,
and you know what he's doing. Um, but mostly it's
just tire smoking fun. That was what it was all about.
(27:20):
And uh, and I think a lot of people, you know,
as far as his stunt driving, uh, they associate that
with ken Block at this point, I think. And uh,
And before we leave here, we definitely need to talk
about the human fly. What a weird thing, right, Yes,
a very weird all right, it's a long story short.
The human Fly was a phenomenon during the heyday of
(27:46):
motorcycle stunts back in the seventies, right, early eighties. So
obviously evil Kin Evil is the is the king of
this stuff. But people who followed this kind of stuff
also followed the story of someone named the human Fly.
The human Fly was only ever seen in public in
a rhine studded red and silver masked jumpsuit, and he
(28:09):
had a little cape sometimes, and his real identity was
a secret. And also the stories that he and his
team told about what he did versus what he actually
did seemed, let's say, um embellished to to accelerate attention
and fame. Like. There were claims that he had sixty
(28:29):
percent of his skeleton replaced with steel. Wait wait, just
just sixty Why didn't he just go the full hundred
at that point? Because he only did it when he
had I don't know. I think they just picked an
interesting With each accident he would replace that bone with
a better component until one day he is more machine
than man. Yeah, so a lot of his stunts involved
(28:52):
him being on the outside of a jet plane, like
strapped on the outside of this. Okay, okay, hold on,
hold him. Yeah, so this is the part where it
gets really interesting to me. Now, there are a lot
of human flies that we've probably heard of that the
scale buildings, things like the suction cups whatever, they climbed
the Eiffel Tower. This is not the human flower talking about.
We're talking about the guy that he would go on
(29:13):
the outside of jets, yes, general planes, not not biplanes
at at an air show jets. Yeah, yeah, and uh
he would. He would get strapped to them. He had
a ton of accidents, obviously, and he was always trying
to beat Evil Kinnevil, you know what I mean. Oh,
(29:34):
he was also a jumper. He also did some jumps.
They wanted to try to beat his different records, like
the thirteen school buses he wanted to He originally wanted
to try it with thirty six, but his team talked
him down. Okay, I know, because that's an impossible I think,
I think I remember this now, I you know what
you're talking I was frantically looking for my notes and
now I'm just gonna have to wing it because I
can't find them. But um, I think that he had
(29:57):
a jet powered motorcycle, is that right? Yes, and that's
why he decided to go for for thirty six. Now,
Kinevel was having trouble with you. Fourteen you know, he
was in that range and he was the king of
this right, thirteen or fourteen was about maximum at that time.
This guy's going for three times that amount. Yes, So
he did with the help of guy named Kai the
(30:18):
rocketman Michaelson, who added two rockets to this Harley and
according to Michaelson, it had over six thousand horse power
when it's done. Okay, wait, okay, so human Fly for
the record only said he was gonna jump twenties seven
bus Okay, okay, So I'm sorry, I'm having a hard
(30:39):
time containing myself over here, because okay, here's the guy
with a six steel skeleton on a six thousand horsepower
motorcycle trying to fly over thirty six buses with a cape,
with a cape, a secret and a mask because you
can't let anybody know who is now. He's a Canadian stuntman, right.
He did make appearances, I know, on talk shows, and
(31:00):
he would appear he looked at he had Um, you know,
like one of those, um, what is it the Mexican
wrestling masks? Yeah, what's it? Called Luca a Mess exactly?
He had one of those on It was red that
matched his outfit. I remember it was like, what do
you call it? Just a a onesie I guess and whatever.
I don't know what else he would call. It really
looks like a Halloween costume. But he was very serious
(31:22):
about all this. I mean he said that he claimed
that he was in an accident that had killed his
wife and kid. He survived and he used his his
his incredible mental powers to bring himself back from you know,
the brink of death and decided he was going to
just live life on the edge. That was his story.
Do you want to know the real story? Oh? Do
(31:43):
I pull the curtain back just for a second. Yeah.
Uh so. The real story is that the human fly
as a character, as a concept, had been created and
bankrolled by these two Canadian brothers who wanted to uh
diverse a five from their families their family business, which
was literally making sausage. They were called the Rama Sierri's,
(32:06):
and turned out that there had always been more than
one human fly. That's why there was a mask. There
were different dudes doing these stunts, no kidding, but one
of them was a guy named Rick rose Att, and
he said, you know, I'm not happy just being a
part time actor playing this dude. I want a little
(32:26):
more recognition, right, So he told a reporter is real identity.
And then that's why the Fly had one famous last stunt,
which is that rocket bike, and because the thrust was
so much more powerful than something he encountered before. Because
the ramp wasn't set up right, the bike actually went
(32:47):
way higher than it should have, and then it stalled.
When he let off the throttle, the rear end drops,
the back is it almost goes completely backwards. It hits
the landing ramp and it crashes down on the Fly.
And then they say that now anyway, they look back
again behind the curtain. They said, well, this accident is
the perfect time for us to kill off this character. Now, okay,
(33:09):
he was he was made into a comic book character.
It looks like him. It looks like him with the
red outfit and everything. It's he's a Marvel comic book
character of the day. And he had a similar backstory
to this guy. He was was completely inspired by this
guy the superhero was. So that's a fascinating story. And
I should say this too. You know, we said he
was on top of jets. We're saying we're talking like
(33:32):
four engine d C eight. He's on top of that
and he's flying through the desert at super low altitude.
This is the pilot was pretty there, devil too extremely skilled, right,
and the f A did't want him to do it, obviously,
But there's a whole story around that as well. You know,
he flew in front of an audience to do this.
(33:52):
Two hundred and fifty three miles per hour is the
is the speed that he was traveling when he was
on top of that thing. They claim that he could
go over three hundred. But they had some trouble at
one point. I know that one one thing that happened.
Of course, he's in full leather, you know, to protect
him from you know, whatever might hit him while he's
up there. Supposedly, but one time they were I think
this is in Dallas. They did it two or three.
(34:12):
I think it's three times. They did three flights with
him on top there, and the third time they said
they encountered a little bit of rain when they were
landing and the pilot I've heard say that because there's
interviews with this pilot you can watch, you can even
watch film of them doing this. This fly by that
looks like the planes ten ft off the ground. It's
probably twenty ft, but it's that low. It's really low.
(34:33):
So he goes by and they're landing rather as they come,
they're approaching, and uh, the pilot said, you know, there's
a little bit of rain, but it was like that
kind of rain where they're really big drops. You know,
just a few drops, but they're big drops. And he
said they were smacking the windshield of the plane. And
he said they were so loud, you know, there's just
deafening inside the cockpit. And he realized at that moment, like,
(34:54):
oh no, he's he's out there, you know, he's in
this and he's getting hit with these things, these rain drops.
If you've ever been on a roller coaster in the rain,
you know what that feels like. It's it's unpleasant, very unpleasant.
So this guy's going two or fifty three miles an
hour potentially, you know, maybe a little less because they're landing,
but he could barely walk when he got off the
off the top of the plane. They had to help
(35:15):
him off, and even with the leather protection and everything,
he said, it just bruised his whole body, really damaged him.
It was it was bad news for him, for the
for the human fly. But but he encountered a lot
of injuries like that, you know, some stuff that we're
just incidental to what he was doing. Obviously, But now
that I know that there were many human flies, maybe um,
(35:36):
maybe that's it had a little more um, I guess
recovery time that I thought he did. But it's a
it's a fascinating story and what a crazy character to
look at and and you know, to watch these uh
these interviews where he goes into it just you know,
really deadpan, really straight on. You know, I'm I'm better
than evil kin Evel. I can do this. I you know,
(35:58):
I've got this, what Mutch, what I can do. Canadians are,
by the way, it's very national. He's very nationalistic about it, like, yes,
like I'm going to show the world the Canadians are
the best. And there's nothing wrong with this. He's just
promoting his own national nationality. But he's like he's super
into the idea that you know Montreal, people from Montreal
specifically are the best Canadians. And I'm gonna show you
(36:20):
how tough we are, right right right. A cool story
for the for the Kbaqua and the Yankee. Like just
I wonder if there could be if there could be
a character like that today? I mean, is there anybody
that could be like that? Like I've heard again Evil
can Evil? He's have heard him described as like Elvis
on a motorcycle doing doing stunts. He was like that
(36:41):
type of character, that eccentric um you know again full showman.
Is there anybody out there that's still quite to that level?
There could be? Uh? I think the idea of this
secret identity stuff is pretty interesting. It would be hard
to pull off in the age of the Internet, but
it would be It would be a lot of fun.
And hey, maybe it will be you m either either
(37:04):
you Scott Kurd or you will listen long with us today.
What's your stunt? You know? One one thing? Watching that
documentary of Vivil Kine Evils jumps, you know, he comes
up to Frank Gifford at one point and says, you know,
I'm getting up there in age. I'm you know, I'm
I'm thirty four years old. I don't know if I
can do this much longer. It's it's really taking his
toll on my body. And you're thinking, you're thirty four
(37:24):
years old, you know, it's it's hard to believe it's
already nearly time for him to retire because of the
punishment that he's received, you know, over the decades that
he's done it. Yeah, I think that's a that's a
good point. He had a little helper to you know,
that cane that I was talking about. Look into what
he carried in that cane is a sword no booze
whiskey he had and he revealed it on on I
(37:45):
think the Carson Show, the Johnny Carson so showing back
in nineteen seventy four. Uh, he made an appearance and
they were asking about his cane which he had with him,
and he unscrewed the top and he pulled out a
glass vial that had a plastic top on it, and
he handed it over to Ed McMahon because he knew
Ed McMahon was a drinker. So he handed over to
the whiskey over to mcman and he screwed the top
(38:06):
back on and that's how everybody knew what was in there.
And there's there's space for three vials in that cane.
There's a there's a point where you can see where
can unscrew the top, and there's three vials look like
test tubes almost to fit down into it. And so
they said that, you know, he would have to have
that to kind of calm his nerves beforehand and to
kind of dull some of the pain that he would
knew he was going to endure before each jump. So
(38:28):
if you see him with that cane, you know what's
in there. You know, partially it was also partially because
he needed it to walk a little bit at some point.
How would you pick how if you had the opportunity
to realistically take a cane along with you, how would
you pick whiskey over a sword and you're putting something
in there. I have a cane sword, it's cool. I
would go with the joker option, which has you know,
(38:50):
like the the gas poison gas with it. It's purple.
It's always purple, right so you can see it. Oh, yeah,
that's that's a little you know, was it the penguin?
Penguin had the umbrellas, not the king. Oh maybe that's
what I'm thinking of. I'm terrible at this, but that
was I'm talking about the old Batman version. But you're
mainly when it comes to those comic books in superheroes,
(39:10):
you're mainly a human fly kind of dude. Of course. Yeah,
of course, I don't know. Like this is the other
thing too. You see, like we mentioned on YouTube, you
can see so many people making these accomplishing notes, say successfully,
these amazing death defying feats. We had talked before off
air about some of the crazy stuff that you will
(39:30):
see guys getting into in the Middle East. You know,
they're out in the middle of the desert ghost riding
the whip or one guy turns turns the car sideways
such that it's just on two tires and it looks
like it's not really find a lot of purchase on something.
And then you see another You see this dude pop
out of the top of the car, like get on
top of it and do some little you know, steering
(39:53):
with his foot. Have you seen the ones where they
get out and they remove one of the tires and
then put another tire back, and they they'll take the
tire off of the vehicles. It's unbelievable. And they're on
a road by the way that's you know, it looks
like it's ten lanes wide and there's no one on
the road. It's amazing. I think it's Yeah, I think
the point of it is that these things, these stunts
(40:14):
are still happening. It's just like you said, Scott, oftentimes
we're not seeing them live anymore. We're going to YouTube
and it's like, look what this guy did in here's
the twist. He didn't die, you know what I mean.
But it's after the fact. I want to know beforehand
so I can watch this event happen live. I mean,
that's some of the that's some of the thrill. That's
(40:34):
some of the excitement for me, is that I don't
know what's gonna happen here, and I know that it
would be tragic if something terrible goes terribly wrong. But
that's that's part of the thrill for the audience, right
The live audience gets that when you're watching it on YouTube,
you already know what's gonna happen. You already, I mean,
it's already there in the descriptions. Yeah, I mean, or
you've heard about it, and that's why you're watching anyway.
(40:55):
You know, either they made it fantastic, they didn't make
it that's terrible, but check out this reckon they lived
through it, or they walked you know, it's when it
becomes a and they walked away A moment with those
are cool too, but um yeah, I just feel like,
you know, there's just not that that the build up
in the excitement and that pageantry, and that that that showmanship,
and that uh, those bigger than life characters and where's
(41:16):
the uh you know, where are the modern day evil knevels?
Where Where's where's the Pacos Bill of our time? Right
of right now? Pacos Bill. I don't know why I
said that. That's an old reference from you know what
is that Tall Tales, right tales? But but someone who
really backs it up, who really does what they say,
and you know, um, I don't know. I just I
(41:37):
just kind of missing some of that, uh, that excitement,
that tension, that that's where the adrenaline comes for the
rest of us. You know what, what other genre this
is unrelated to to the um the stunts themselves, but
there's another genre that had something like this, and that
was illusionists or stage magicians. You know what I mean.
People would tune in and they were like, uh, David
(42:00):
Copperfield is going to make this statute disappear. Everybody check
it out? Are you peeking in my notes? Because I
scratched that out? Yeah, I was thinking like that. Yeah,
it was too that that was there was some of that,
some of that excitement around that. And there was the
David Copperfield. And who was the other one? There was
another magician. It was kind of in it at the
same time. Uh not David Blaine. Now David Blaine is
(42:23):
a different guy, but there was another one. They were
there too, but they were on there. They were doing
their own thing with the with the Tigers, right, um,
incredible in their own way. Who's the other one? There
was another Doug Henning. Doug Henning, Now Doug Henning was
another magician who they you know, the joke is that
David Copperfield made him disappear. But but he did like
(42:45):
some Chrysler commerce. Yeah, thank you, Kurt. I appreciate that. Ben.
He didn't laugh at all. I'm a very unsupported friend,
but he did. I think he ended up doing like
some you know, Chrysler minivan commercials. And that was about
all you heard of him after that, you know, there
there were were they were kind of in a back
and forth primetime battle and it was very, very showy.
It was very um you know, um, I keep coming
(43:07):
to that back that word flamboyt. I'm looking for a
different word, but I'll get I'll get it. It just
there's a lot of pageantry to it and and they
definitely had a great stage presence and uh and that's
what made you watch them, right, I mean it was
something that was different, unique, and you know you're going
to be in for something spectacular in the end. But anyways,
i'd love to hear some listeners right in with, you know,
their favorite stunt person of the day and you know
(43:29):
what that feat might be, and some you know world
records that they want to see Broken soon or you know,
haven't seen Broken in a long time, or you know
that someone should go after because it's been hanging out
there for ten twenty years. That'd be interesting too. So
whatever you've got, we'd love to hear it. Yeah, you
can let us know on Facebook, you can let us
know on Instagram, you can let us know on Twitter.
(43:50):
You can also find every episode we've ever done, including
our Evil Kin Evil piece. Wherever you find your favorite podcast,
just search car Stuff Evil Kin Evil. You'll run into
not one, but several episodes. There are tons of other
directions this can lead to, but I think one of
the biggest takeaways for anybody who misses death to find
stunts is that you can see a ton of amazing
(44:11):
things now, just maybe not live. Yeah. And what's great
about this too, is you can watch them over and
over and over again and share them with your friends.
I can send you an email right now, Ben with
a link to thirty of my favorite stunts. I'll do that.
Please do not to fill up your inboxing. I'm gonna
send them one at a time. Oh good, Yeah, Yeah,
that's it's perfect. You're welcome. Thanks man. Make sure I'll
(44:32):
make sure that I'm on a motorcycle when I read them.
That sounds safe. Car Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. Hi, and welcome to car Stuff on
your host, Scott Benjamin. I'm Ben Bolan, and I am
Kurt Garon. Kay. But that's all three of us again.
But we're all here again. Attendance. That's always good, right,
I mean, I guess we could forge on with maybe
(00:22):
maybe two people, but um better if we have all three. Well,
of the three of us, I am probably the sketchiest,
and so there may be times when I dip away,
but the three of us are here together doing sort
of a what people in broadcaster entertainment we'll call destination stuff. Right,
We're here at a specific time to do a specific thing,
(00:43):
and for us it's live, right. We can't pull this
moment up again on YouTube or anything. Oh absolutely yeah
for us. But maybe maybe through the magic of editing.
Do you think we could we could fix a few things,
because you know, I have a foul mouth. That's that's
I mean, that's that's Kurt Garon right there, folks. No, No,
I really don't. I'm just kidding, Ben, that's you that hasn't. Yeah,
(01:03):
probably no, really to to be serious. So we come
in here and we've got Sometimes we have a topic
that we've you know, we've got facts and figures and
stats nailed down for and you know, it's very concrete.
It's something we can go right to and say, you know,
it's this event, it's happening on this day, and here's
the history of it, and you know, etcetera. This one's
just a little bit more um nebulous, I guess, and
(01:25):
that we can kind of take this a few different
ways if you like. And uh, it's more of a
question than I had about I guess in a way
the absence of something that I miss from the past
a little bit, and I wonder if it's coming back
or if it's still out there, but I'm just missing out.
Maybe that's the other part of this whole thing, as
as Kurt as show me a little bit over the
(01:45):
last week, that I might be just missing out on
a few things. But my question to you initially was
about Daredevil's and and stunt men, and I know there's
stunt women too. Were just gonna say stunt men and
stunt folk, I guess for this, No, I'm not gonna
say stunt folk. Couple that, but you know, you get
the idea, right. You know, people that jump motorcycles, people
that jump cars, people that perform incredible acts of you know,
(02:08):
physical daring. You know, they risk their lives in order
to entertain us. And that's that was my question, is
that is this still out there in the uh? I
guess with the intensity that there was at some point
during you know, the mid nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, even
the late nineteen sixties, I guess think about the boy
I want to say, I want to use the word, uh, flamboyant,
(02:30):
but that's not right. I mean the no, yeah, death
defines outlandish is a good one. I mean, like, um,
larger than life. Okay, yeah, yeah, you guys are better
than I can't think of my word now, but yes, yes,
you've got all of those right, and and more. Uh
kind of the the pageantry, I guess that was evil Kinevil.
(02:52):
You think about him, Okay, he would come out of
his trailer, you know, in front of the audience. He
would have emerged from his trailer with his cape on.
He had his white leathers on that were red, white
and blue. He would be carrying his home and under
his arm. He had a cane in his hand, you know,
with with gold. It had hit a gold cane that
had I was black mostly, but had gold accents and
diamonds on it. He was a showman, a true showman,
(03:13):
and he would talk it up to the audience. I
mean he was. He was as good as any professional
wrestler these days. You know in the ring when they
do their speech ahead of time, you know there you
know their story. H He was just as good as
any of those guys were about talking himself up, about
promoting himself. And know how dangerous this is gonna be,
you know, like you might witness my grizzly death this afternoon.
But I want you to know this. I've come through
(03:34):
with every promise that I've ever made for you people,
and I do it for you, and I do it
for me, you know that kind of thing. And if
if you are a member of the audience in the
actual arena or what have you, and if you're watching
live at home on television, right, which they did pretty often,
then there's this moment in that speech where you think
(03:55):
I might be one of the last people to hear
this guy talk. Evil went on a lot like he
clashed a lot, So there's always that yeah, that chance.
Oh sure, And some people watch just for that, right,
Like like some people watch NASCAR for that, right, they
want to see the crash, they want to see the
big one, right. So there's there's that element. But I
think that like the pageantry, the um, the audacity of
(04:16):
this character, you know, just like how would come out
and just just right in your face tell you what
he thought of it. He was. He was kind of
a straight shooter as well. Um, things weren't going right,
he would he would let you know, um and not
just evil kine evil. There were other people too that
were like that in the in the past. There was
a guy, um that went by the name of the
Human Fly that we'll talk about in a little while.
He was a little bit like that. He had some
(04:36):
of the costume characteristics or traits down that you know,
we're made him intriguing in some ways. He the guy
who climbed. No, no, it's a different guy. This is
this is a stunt man. But many people went by
the name of the Human Fly. I'm thinking of one
in particular as a Canadian stuntman will decide no. But
but I guess overall, I'm just thinking of like, where
(04:57):
are the where the showman of today? I mean know
that I do know that there are stunt men out there.
I know that there are people performing and women stunt
women that are performing a lot of death defying stunts,
a lot of stunts that do require a great deal
of skill. Um, you know, a great deal of of courage,
of course, But where's the where's the build up the
(05:18):
excitement of all that along with it? You know, where
where's that gone? And We've got a few theories that
we've kind of just real tentatively talked about in the
hallway here at work. But I think today if we
could just kind of talk this through, maybe I'd feel
a little bit better about it. Because, as we said
in an earlier episode, sometimes things happen that are monumental
in our I guess I'll card our industry. You know,
(05:39):
we we like anything automotive, motorcycle, whatever, trucks, trains, airplanes,
all that stuff. We love all that stuff. Boats, But
sometimes there are things that happen. You know that world
records are broken and we don't hear about them for
a long time until listener writes in and says, hey,
did you happen to catch this? You can see it
on YouTube. Now it turns out it was on television,
but it was on like know, some late night Fox
(06:02):
Sports News or something, or it was on yeah, something
like that. It's just there's there's a lot happening out
there still, I know, but you have to you have
to really search for it. You have to find it. Yeah.
What happened to the days of nationally or in some
cases globally televised things where there would be someone saying,
you know, tonight, ladies and gentlemen, for one time and
(06:25):
one time only, Kurt Darren Garrin, will you know, perform
the death defying triple access jump while sword fighting an
alligator who's also on the motorcycle over school buses that
are set on fire, and now a word from Garrett
like it was what happened to that? That's exciting and
(06:45):
everybody listening, we're all kind of like, oh, there's a motorcycle,
there's an alligator. Okay, I got oh yeah, I got
ten minutes. What's going on? Well, that might be part
of the problem, right, I mean, that might be some
of it. You know, you can't wait for that type
of stuff. But I feel like you're right, Ben, that
there's not one place. This is one theory and uh,
and I know this is a little tough to grasp everything,
(07:07):
and I'm trying to have you get here, and I
don't know if I'm really conveying it as as concisely
as I really want to get it. But it doesn't
it feel like there's not one place to go to
see something like this happened. I mean it was ABC Sports.
They had the um Wide World of Sports where Evil
Kinevil appeared and what like seventeen times I think on
on that show, and some of his jumps in some
(07:28):
of his specials that he had on that program are
still like ranked number one in all time viewership for
that particular brand. So they were on air from like
nineteen I want to say it's nineteen sixty one until
I was like or something. It was like thirty some years,
like thirty seven years, thirty eight years, and some of
his stunts are still like top five top you know,
(07:50):
I shouldn't say still at the end, they were you know,
like top five contenders for the most watched of the
of all the programs that they did over that thirty
seven years, so widely popular. And I know I keep
saying evil Kinevil. There are many others that will we
can you know, touch on today and discuss because there
are people doing some fascinating and and really dangerous things
and and fun things to watch if you're there, if
(08:12):
you're you know, in the crowd, but it's kind of
few and far between now. It seems like, um, you know,
you have to you have to go to the event
to see it happen. You have to, or or you
have to catch it on YouTube a month later or
a week later or whatever it is. Um, you have
to either you know, catch wind of it early, maybe
through a club or a group that says, hey, this
jump is going to be happening at this right come
(08:33):
and check it out. You know, there are ten thousand
people in attendance or twenty thousand or whatever. But if
you're not among those people, you know, they're the ones
who posted then and everybody else sees it. And sometimes
it's like an exhibition or opening act, you know, before
a race. Yes, yeah, and I think that maybe, um,
one of the one of the ones that I can
think of in recent past. There was before the one
(08:53):
hundredth Indianapolis five hundred, they did a jump with an
all terrain truck. It was a four wheel drive truck,
and it was made to look like a Hot Wheels ramp.
It was. It was a Hot Wheels anniversary jump for
the five before the race, and they had this is
like a ten story orange track set up so it
looked like a Hot Wheels truck on a Hot Wheels track.
(09:14):
And this guy did this incredibly long jump. I have
the information here somewhere. I think it was I want
to say Tanner Faust, but that might not be the
right names. We get to it. I'll tell you did
some incredible long jump right in front of a live audience.
That's a huge audience. That's hundreds of thousands of people,
maybe half a million up to half a million for
that race in particular, So that's a huge live event.
(09:34):
And it was also televised and a lot of people
watched that. So there's a chance that a lot of
people saw that one event. But you know who who
here knows in you know in this room, even that
just a few months ago there was going to be
the world record distance jump for a motorcycle. I was
not aware of this. It never happened, didn't happen. The
(09:55):
rider was injured the day that it was or the
day before. I think that it was supposed to happen.
He was in a practice ump uh injured both of
his ankles and it never happened. But I was gonna
be a live event called Evil. I think it was
the Evil Live two or Live Evil two. The Evil
spelled like yeah. And there was also a female writer
that was going to do and I think she did
right through several burning walls. She's gonna break a world
(10:17):
record for how many she went through, and I believe
she did in fact do that. But the long distance
jump never occurred, and it might happen this year. You
never know if he recovers well enough. But the guy's
name was Axel Hodges, I believe. But I never heard
about the promotion the lead up to it, So if
I did want to watch it, I would have had
to have been going to very specific places to find
that information, or on Facebook on the right Facebook pages
(10:40):
to find that information. So do you think it's an
issue of the audience, the large audience losing interest or
do you think it's an issue of the way that
people find or transmit this information, Because this when we
talked about this one of the things I started digging
into stuff like the X Games, and the X Games
(11:03):
have tons of crazy stunt riders, you know, crazy, very talented, yeah,
very precise, very talented um bikers and people who are
writing who are doing you know, not one trick ponies,
they're doing multiple stunts, multiple vehicles and stuff, and they're
around and they are as accomplished technically as many of
(11:28):
the greats of yesteryear. And it seems like they have
a great crowd at the X Games. But again, to
your point, it's not something you hear about on the radio.
It's not something that you often. Oddly enough, even if
you go to a lot of car news sites, you
don't really hear a lot about this stuff. So I
(11:48):
wonder what happened, you know, even when we were talking
about the thrust SSC back a few months ago and
then Jesse Combs I think was her name, and she
was attending the fastest land speed record for a woman.
I mean, I did not hear anything about that. Yeah,
you didn't hear about anything until after the crash, Right,
things like that that happened, you don't hear about it
(12:09):
for whatever reason, do you think? Okay, so you said
all the reasons you said that, you know, the audience
is fragmented. That's one right. You have to be going
to specific sites in order to be be notified that
anything is happening to begin with. Um, it's not like
everybody's going to ABC now to watch the Wide World
of Sports on you know, whenever it was there, and
I can't remember. I remember, I do remember watching it,
but I don't remember what day it errored, or it
(12:30):
was a Sunday or is the weekend? I think, But
do you think that Okay, a lot of things have
taken the place, So like there's pay per view events
which are popular, and a lot of people have used
pay per view to see things like that. Like I
think that guy keep going back to Evil Kin Evil,
but I think that his um Snake River canyon jump
was a pay per view event. Pay per view goes
(12:50):
back to the nineteen fifties, believe it or not. I
didn't know that until just today when I looked it up.
I thought, paper, you know, there were there were like
maybe thirty thousand people that that witnessed, you know, that
canyon jumper that attempted canyon jump of his h and
they all saw it live, but you know, and they
of course filmed it, but anybody else that wanted to
see that they would have to watch either a week
(13:11):
later on again Wild World of Sports where they rebroadcast
that whole fright, or go to uh, you know, like
again a pay per view situation where you know they're
paying at the time. We're talking like maybe two dollars
to rent the paper view or stuffing. It's not like
you know, the fights now where it's you know, eighty
dollars a hundred dollars to watch a fight. But there's
all of that. And then also again this kind of
(13:32):
goes back again to the performers themselves, the people themselves.
It's not that there's not interesting characters out there, because
there are plenty of people. As Ben said that there
wildly talented and they do a lot of things, you know,
like that there's somebody that could you know, be equally
talented in a rally car um and a BMX bike.
They do stunts on you know whatever. I mean, they're
(13:52):
just their adrenaline junkies. They love this stuff. Right, How
much of this comes back to there's not like those
those kind of stand out, bigger than life characters. Like
Evil Kinevil was. I mean, he was just an absolute showman.
(14:13):
I mean he made appearances on late night talk shows.
He was kind of making the circuit, you know that,
um um promoting himself. He was going, um, he's seen
in public doing a lot of things, you know, well
good and bad. Right, um. But he made a name
for himself and he's a big self promoter. He was
someone who you know, was never shy about talking about himself.
I'll put it that way. Yeah, yeah, Kurt and I
(14:36):
had a funny conversation earlier. I'll say something in just
a minute about that. But and someone in fact, someone said,
you know, he wasn't one to you know, come up
with like poetry like Muhammad Ali Wood on the on
the spot. He was really good at the pr game, right.
He was amazing and really talented of course as well,
you know he had he could back it up. Evil
could back it up with what he would do his
(14:58):
stunts and ever. You know, he always he always delivered
on what he promised, and he would say something that
was meanful and he had a lot of gravity whatever
he said to it. And he would promise things to
the fans for the near future and He was always
leading them to the next thing and the next thing
and the next thing. And that was part of his game,
is that you know, I've given this to you and
I told you i'd do this, and I did this.
(15:19):
You know, he might have even known that his bike
wasn't going to make the jump, and he'd do it.
So when when, But he would say September, You're gonna
see something bigger than ever. I bought my own property
on the Snake River. I own a piece of that canyon.
They're not going to stop me. So it's kind of
about against the instead of about against another boxer or driver.
(15:40):
It's about against physics, it's about against nature. Yeah, and
he always was playing, you know, he was just he
was big into saying what's what's the next thing? And
that's with That's the thing with these these guys to
do these stunts and women to do these stunts, is
that it always always has to be bigger, better, faster, longer,
you know all that as otherwise, why am I watching?
(16:03):
I see what you're saying. Yeah, it has to have
that exponential growth. I would also and this this is
a point that I'm not completely sure on, I would
also say the nicknames were cooler. People still do have
that showmanship. But there are people like Lawrence de Smet
who was named Indian Larry. Not in a racist way.
(16:26):
It's because he was known for riding around on a
chopped Indian motorcycle Indian Larry. I did watch some some
clips of Indian Larry. He was a bike builder, right, yeah,
and he became known for his stunts, but it wasn't
until later in his life. He actually passed away in
a motorcycle crash during two thousand and four at a
bike build off. Yeah, he was just like, as far
(16:47):
as I know, I mean, I think this is the
story if if I'm not mistaking it, wasn't he kind
of doing some impromptu stunts in the parking lot, I
believe so, Yeah, and uh took a topple and ended
up with a concussion that was turned fatal. And or
what about people like Doug Domokos, the wheelie King to
hear this, I don't know about that guy. He was
super famous in the eighties and nineties. He went up
(17:09):
Lombard Street in San Francisco. I think you're right, Oh,
you know what, I think that's him? Was his name again?
The Wheelie King Doug Demokos. He set the record for
the longest continuous wheelie a hundred and forty five miles.
It's a very different stunt. Was this one that's incredible
a television show? I'm sure he had to be our
(17:31):
one and had I mean, if if that's the one
I remember watching that one on that's in Crow. I
don't know the guy's name, but I remember a long
long time ago was one of my favorite shows. But yeah,
there's a ton of people that do stuff like this,
and um one, I just wanted to throw a few
more names out though. While you're we're gearing up for
this next year. We don't have to talk about their history.
But Fearless Frank, Hurricane Hutch and then of course evil
(17:56):
Son Robbie Knee. He goes by Captain with a k
Robbie kine Evil. Yeah, he's he's out there doing I
don't know if he's still jumping or not. I'm not sure.
I saw an early clip by the way of well,
we were stuck on the Kinneval family because I got
I've got something more to say about this. I watched
a this is well worth your time. I as you know,
we've we've done a show on Evil Knevil only on
(18:17):
car stuff. We did that a long time ago, and
there was footage on this program that I had never
seen before about Evil Kine Evil after we had dug
into this for you know, two weeks before, and I
never saw anyse clips. If you want to look it
up on YouTube, it's worth forty two minutes of your
time to watch, and I guarantee it. It's called Evil
Knevil Wide World of Sports Classic and it's forty two
(18:38):
minutes long. Ure again, footage that I've never seen. There's
audio that I've never heard before, some inside stories of
people that were there that you know, we're right around him,
that you know, I had never heard from before in
the past. It was it was a really well done
short documentary and uh and and I opening footage. I
mean it really was really cool. Some different perspectives of
(19:00):
a ramp, you know from you know, where he saw
it from. Fantastic stuff is really really cool. But there's
some amazing stuntmen and some some people out there right now,
as as Curt pointed out, what was it, Robbie Madison,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, yeah, he did that. Las
Vegas jump that probably not a lot of people have watched.
It's got a lot of YouTube views, but I mean
(19:20):
in the bigger picture, not a lot of people have
watched this really. So Robbie Madison did an an incredible jump. Yeah,
he jumped up onto the Arc de Triomph in Las
Vegas and then um a flat top building. Essentially it's
very high. I don't know exactly how high it is.
And then Hunter Fie also back down as well. He
(19:42):
landed it. I mean he barely hung on. But I
mean it's ben Until you see it, you don't. You
don't quite grasp what this guy did. Really. I mean
it's he's jumping onto on top of a flat on
top of a flat building. This ten stories tall. It's
a hundred feet up a hundred twelve feet I think, Well,
especially when they show the view after he lands, you know,
(20:03):
they show him up. They're riding around a little bit,
because of course they have to like ride around. You
can imagine would be even more scary. I'll check that out.
I know he's Australian. I know that he's done like
he's legit. His day jobs as a stunt double. He
was Daniel Craig stunt double in uh some James Bond films,
(20:24):
and he also he won a gold medal in the
X Game. He did thirteen backflips. This guy is crazy
on a bike. And he also recreated some famous stunts
like he followed in Evil King Evil Steps. So they're
out there on a second. Yeah, I guess I'm laughing.
I'm sorry, I gotta start. It couldn't have been thirteen
backflips in a row, right, It's like falling from space.
(20:49):
I think they do maybe three in a row, three,
but not maybe thirteen total over the competition. I just
my source doesn't say whether these were consecutive. My source,
which is guess that's less impressive. If you say, over
the span of your life you've done third team back
I guess so. But but I but no, he's to
(21:11):
to to be a stunt double in a James Bond film,
I would say, you have to have, you know, some
pretty good chops. Right now. I do know that he
I think I believe he's the current record holder. Now
this is where it gets tough again. You don't go
to one source like us. You don't go to the
Guinness bill World Records. So as far as I've got
it figured right now, three feet and nine inches by
Robbie Madison is the longest ramp to ramp jump at
(21:34):
this point, and I believe that that was the the
record that Axel Hodges was trying to break. He was
going for like four hundred feet or something, or over
four hundred feet when he had his accident where he
broke his or injured both of his ankles. And you
can watch the video the film of him injuring both
of his ankles, which is that it's not not that
hard to watch. I mean it been. It bends his
foot in a bad way. I guess when he lands,
(21:57):
but it's an impressive jump. I'll tell you that. When
Robbie Madison broke that record, that distance record of three
nine um back in two thousand eleven. Again this is
a long time ago. Now it's two thousand eleven, there
was another guy that did the jump simultaneously with him
(22:19):
on a snowmobile and the snowmobile went significantly farther than
Robbie did on his bike, which I thought was really fascinating.
The snowmobile, get this is is driven by a guy
named Levi, and I hope I gets re last name right,
it's laval or La Valley. He jumped a snowmobile a
world record distance of four hundred and twelve feet, so
(22:40):
you know, they're side by side. He continues to sail
for an additional what is that thirty some odd feet
farther than than Robbie did. But they did it side
by side at this event in San Diego, this Red
Bull No Limits event that they have every year now,
which is really a cool thing to watch. That's where
they go for a lot of world records. But Red
Bull is is a primary sponsor of these world record attempts,
(23:01):
and and they've done things like, oh, you know, here's
one that we can all maybe think of a stunt
person not necessarily motorized. But remember the guy that jumped
from the stratosphere, Yes, Felix bomb Garter. I watched that
recently as well, and that was a Red Bull sponsored
thing watched live. That was remember watching that live? Now,
(23:24):
see that that is the type of promotion without he
he wasn't quite the showman the character as would be,
you know like again evil kin evil or you know,
somebody like the human fly. Maybe he wasn't. He wasn't
on camera talking trash in front of it. No, he was,
but it got the publicity that some of the jumps
in the past had received. So that's that to me.
(23:45):
That was one that was similar where you know, that
was what people were talking about in the news in
the morning. You know, when you go over head into work,
you hear that. You know, this either happened or is
going to happen. I don't remember um and people would,
you know, check it out online. They go to red
bull dot com or wherever and check out that that jump. Well, yeah,
the live stream of that was there was a lot
of build up and a lot of um height before
(24:07):
and after that, and it was worthy, super incredible. Absolutely,
they have the the cave not cave diving, not the
cave jumping. I guess it's called you know when people
dress up like flying squirrels. Yeah, they glide wingsuits. Yes, yes,
I tried. I tried for years to get our job
(24:29):
to put it in the budget for me to get one,
but it turns out there a little bit expensive and
accounting was not satisfied with my explanations. I'd love to
hear I would love to have heard those explanations. You
know who another another big one right now, And just
just a few more names because there and and I
know we're gonna be missing many that people are gonna
be upset. We don't mention we should still talk about
(24:50):
the human fly. Oh definitely. But Travis Pastra, he's this
guy he broke you know, he broke he did he
why should say he recreated? He didn't. He didn't necessarily
break any records that day, but he recreated three of
Evil Knievel's most famous stunts all in one day. He
did all in three hours, which is really really impressive.
(25:10):
I mean that's a that's a physical feat that's really difficult. Also,
wonder how much of role technology plays. Yes, you know
what I mean? Sure, Yeah, I mean Evil Knevil had
that Harley. It was basically a dirt racing bike, like
a dirt oval bike. I think it wasn't His big
thing was that it was factory too, right, Yeah, that
(25:30):
it wasn't customized. Yeah, it's a heavy, big bike. I
don't know how many pounds. I mean, I know the
one that was at Robbie Madison, he the one that
he jumped in Vegas. I think they said that bike
was like fifty pounds, so you know that that Harley's
got way way more than that anyway at least, and
it's not probably not distributed correctly, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
You're right. It's just it was just whatever he could
(25:52):
buy from the factory and then he had it tuned
as he wanted. Of course, Um, there were several of
those jumps that he made where you would see him
switch bikes. He'd bring you know, five or six bikes
with different gearing to each to the track and that
way he would something he would sometimes, you know, make
those practice runs where you stop at the end of
the ramp, back it up and he would switch bikes
and you know some of that show maybe you know,
like it could be I don't know, I mean that's
(26:14):
again that's part of this whole thing. Like it's well,
I'm sure equipment wouldn't whole would break all the time
on those practice jumps. Frames would crack and all that
sort of things. So yeah, absolutely, backups absolutely, well, you
know what, I know, we're running a little bit tight
on time, and hopefully some people can you know, right
in with some other suggestions, you know, check out our
Facebook or whatever and say some memories of the past
(26:36):
or or you know, present that are kind of equal
to what we're talking about right now, or maybe some
you know voice some concerns or some gripes or whatever.
I don't care anything. I'm just interested in in stunt
writers and stunt jumps and things like that right now.
But um, last one I want to mention is ken Block.
I think everybody kind of watches for the new Ken
Block Jim Conna, or at least he did early on.
(26:58):
Now I don't know what they're up to fourteen fIF teen,
it seems. But when ken Block was doing his Gym
Conner series, um, he wasn't necessarily breaking world records, and
if he was, I didn't know about it. But it
was just fun to watch. It was a lot of
stunts that were somewhere debt de fine. Of course, you
know the speeds he's traveling and the heights he's achieving,
and you know what he's doing. Um, but mostly it's
just tire smoking fun. That was what it was all about.
(27:20):
And uh, and I think a lot of people, you know,
as far as his stunt driving, uh, they associate that
with ken Block at this point, I think. And uh,
And before we leave here, we definitely need to talk
about the human fly. What a weird thing, right, Yes,
a very weird all right, it's a long story short.
The human Fly was a phenomenon during the heyday of
(27:46):
motorcycle stunts back in the seventies, right, early eighties. So
obviously evil Kin Evil is the is the king of
this stuff. But people who followed this kind of stuff
also followed the story of someone named the human Fly.
The human Fly was only ever seen in public in
a rhine studded red and silver masked jumpsuit, and he
(28:09):
had a little cape sometimes, and his real identity was
a secret. And also the stories that he and his
team told about what he did versus what he actually
did seemed, let's say, um embellished to to accelerate attention
and fame. Like. There were claims that he had sixty
(28:29):
percent of his skeleton replaced with steel. Wait wait, just
just sixty Why didn't he just go the full hundred
at that point? Because he only did it when he
had I don't know. I think they just picked an
interesting With each accident he would replace that bone with
a better component until one day he is more machine
than man. Yeah, so a lot of his stunts involved
(28:52):
him being on the outside of a jet plane, like
strapped on the outside of this. Okay, okay, hold on,
hold him. Yeah, so this is the part where it
gets really interesting to me. Now, there are a lot
of human flies that we've probably heard of that the
scale buildings, things like the suction cups whatever, they climbed
the Eiffel Tower. This is not the human flower talking about.
We're talking about the guy that he would go on
(29:13):
the outside of jets, yes, general planes, not not biplanes
at at an air show jets. Yeah, yeah, and uh
he would. He would get strapped to them. He had
a ton of accidents, obviously, and he was always trying
to beat Evil Kinnevil, you know what I mean. Oh,
(29:34):
he was also a jumper. He also did some jumps.
They wanted to try to beat his different records, like
the thirteen school buses he wanted to He originally wanted
to try it with thirty six, but his team talked
him down. Okay, I know, because that's an impossible I think,
I think I remember this now, I you know what
you're talking I was frantically looking for my notes and
now I'm just gonna have to wing it because I
can't find them. But um, I think that he had
(29:57):
a jet powered motorcycle, is that right? Yes, and that's
why he decided to go for for thirty six. Now,
Kinevel was having trouble with you. Fourteen you know, he
was in that range and he was the king of
this right, thirteen or fourteen was about maximum at that time.
This guy's going for three times that amount. Yes, So
he did with the help of guy named Kai the
(30:18):
rocketman Michaelson, who added two rockets to this Harley and
according to Michaelson, it had over six thousand horse power
when it's done. Okay, wait, okay, so human Fly for
the record only said he was gonna jump twenties seven
bus Okay, okay, So I'm sorry, I'm having a hard
(30:39):
time containing myself over here, because okay, here's the guy
with a six steel skeleton on a six thousand horsepower
motorcycle trying to fly over thirty six buses with a cape,
with a cape, a secret and a mask because you
can't let anybody know who is now. He's a Canadian stuntman, right.
He did make appearances, I know, on talk shows, and
(31:00):
he would appear he looked at he had Um, you know,
like one of those, um, what is it the Mexican
wrestling masks? Yeah, what's it? Called Luca a Mess exactly?
He had one of those on It was red that
matched his outfit. I remember it was like, what do
you call it? Just a a onesie I guess and whatever.
I don't know what else he would call. It really
looks like a Halloween costume. But he was very serious
(31:22):
about all this. I mean he said that he claimed
that he was in an accident that had killed his
wife and kid. He survived and he used his his
his incredible mental powers to bring himself back from you know,
the brink of death and decided he was going to
just live life on the edge. That was his story.
Do you want to know the real story? Oh? Do
(31:43):
I pull the curtain back just for a second. Yeah.
Uh so. The real story is that the human fly
as a character, as a concept, had been created and
bankrolled by these two Canadian brothers who wanted to uh
diverse a five from their families their family business, which
was literally making sausage. They were called the Rama Sierri's,
(32:06):
and turned out that there had always been more than
one human fly. That's why there was a mask. There
were different dudes doing these stunts, no kidding, but one
of them was a guy named Rick rose Att, and
he said, you know, I'm not happy just being a
part time actor playing this dude. I want a little
(32:26):
more recognition, right, So he told a reporter is real identity.
And then that's why the Fly had one famous last stunt,
which is that rocket bike, and because the thrust was
so much more powerful than something he encountered before. Because
the ramp wasn't set up right, the bike actually went
(32:47):
way higher than it should have, and then it stalled.
When he let off the throttle, the rear end drops,
the back is it almost goes completely backwards. It hits
the landing ramp and it crashes down on the Fly.
And then they say that now anyway, they look back
again behind the curtain. They said, well, this accident is
the perfect time for us to kill off this character. Now, okay,
(33:09):
he was he was made into a comic book character.
It looks like him. It looks like him with the
red outfit and everything. It's he's a Marvel comic book
character of the day. And he had a similar backstory
to this guy. He was was completely inspired by this
guy the superhero was. So that's a fascinating story. And
I should say this too. You know, we said he
was on top of jets. We're saying we're talking like
(33:32):
four engine d C eight. He's on top of that
and he's flying through the desert at super low altitude.
This is the pilot was pretty there, devil too extremely skilled, right,
and the f A did't want him to do it, obviously,
But there's a whole story around that as well. You know,
he flew in front of an audience to do this.
(33:52):
Two hundred and fifty three miles per hour is the
is the speed that he was traveling when he was
on top of that thing. They claim that he could
go over three hundred. But they had some trouble at
one point. I know that one one thing that happened.
Of course, he's in full leather, you know, to protect
him from you know, whatever might hit him while he's
up there. Supposedly, but one time they were I think
this is in Dallas. They did it two or three.
(34:12):
I think it's three times. They did three flights with
him on top there, and the third time they said
they encountered a little bit of rain when they were
landing and the pilot I've heard say that because there's
interviews with this pilot you can watch, you can even
watch film of them doing this. This fly by that
looks like the planes ten ft off the ground. It's
probably twenty ft, but it's that low. It's really low.
(34:33):
So he goes by and they're landing rather as they come,
they're approaching, and uh, the pilot said, you know, there's
a little bit of rain, but it was like that
kind of rain where they're really big drops. You know,
just a few drops, but they're big drops. And he
said they were smacking the windshield of the plane. And
he said they were so loud, you know, there's just
deafening inside the cockpit. And he realized at that moment, like,
(34:54):
oh no, he's he's out there, you know, he's in
this and he's getting hit with these things, these rain drops.
If you've ever been on a roller coaster in the rain,
you know what that feels like. It's it's unpleasant, very unpleasant.
So this guy's going two or fifty three miles an
hour potentially, you know, maybe a little less because they're landing,
but he could barely walk when he got off the
off the top of the plane. They had to help
(35:15):
him off, and even with the leather protection and everything,
he said, it just bruised his whole body, really damaged him.
It was it was bad news for him, for the
for the human fly. But but he encountered a lot
of injuries like that, you know, some stuff that we're
just incidental to what he was doing. Obviously, But now
that I know that there were many human flies, maybe um,
(35:36):
maybe that's it had a little more um, I guess
recovery time that I thought he did. But it's a
it's a fascinating story and what a crazy character to
look at and and you know, to watch these uh
these interviews where he goes into it just you know,
really deadpan, really straight on. You know, I'm I'm better
than evil kin Evel. I can do this. I you know,
(35:58):
I've got this, what Mutch, what I can do. Canadians are,
by the way, it's very national. He's very nationalistic about it, like, yes,
like I'm going to show the world the Canadians are
the best. And there's nothing wrong with this. He's just
promoting his own national nationality. But he's like he's super
into the idea that you know Montreal, people from Montreal
specifically are the best Canadians. And I'm gonna show you
(36:20):
how tough we are, right right right. A cool story
for the for the Kbaqua and the Yankee. Like just
I wonder if there could be if there could be
a character like that today? I mean, is there anybody
that could be like that? Like I've heard again Evil
can Evil? He's have heard him described as like Elvis
on a motorcycle doing doing stunts. He was like that
(36:41):
type of character, that eccentric um you know again full showman.
Is there anybody out there that's still quite to that level?
There could be? Uh? I think the idea of this
secret identity stuff is pretty interesting. It would be hard
to pull off in the age of the Internet, but
it would be It would be a lot of fun.
And hey, maybe it will be you m either either
(37:04):
you Scott Kurd or you will listen long with us today.
What's your stunt? You know? One one thing? Watching that
documentary of Vivil Kine Evils jumps, you know, he comes
up to Frank Gifford at one point and says, you know,
I'm getting up there in age. I'm you know, I'm
I'm thirty four years old. I don't know if I
can do this much longer. It's it's really taking his
toll on my body. And you're thinking, you're thirty four
(37:24):
years old, you know, it's it's hard to believe it's
already nearly time for him to retire because of the
punishment that he's received, you know, over the decades that
he's done it. Yeah, I think that's a that's a
good point. He had a little helper to you know,
that cane that I was talking about. Look into what
he carried in that cane is a sword no booze
whiskey he had and he revealed it on on I
(37:45):
think the Carson Show, the Johnny Carson so showing back
in nineteen seventy four. Uh, he made an appearance and
they were asking about his cane which he had with him,
and he unscrewed the top and he pulled out a
glass vial that had a plastic top on it, and
he handed it over to Ed McMahon because he knew
Ed McMahon was a drinker. So he handed over to
the whiskey over to mcman and he screwed the top
(38:06):
back on and that's how everybody knew what was in there.
And there's there's space for three vials in that cane.
There's a there's a point where you can see where
can unscrew the top, and there's three vials look like
test tubes almost to fit down into it. And so
they said that, you know, he would have to have
that to kind of calm his nerves beforehand and to
kind of dull some of the pain that he would
knew he was going to endure before each jump. So
(38:28):
if you see him with that cane, you know what's
in there. You know, partially it was also partially because
he needed it to walk a little bit at some point.
How would you pick how if you had the opportunity
to realistically take a cane along with you, how would
you pick whiskey over a sword and you're putting something
in there. I have a cane sword, it's cool. I
would go with the joker option, which has you know,
(38:50):
like the the gas poison gas with it. It's purple.
It's always purple, right so you can see it. Oh, yeah,
that's that's a little you know, was it the penguin?
Penguin had the umbrellas, not the king. Oh maybe that's
what I'm thinking of. I'm terrible at this, but that
was I'm talking about the old Batman version. But you're
mainly when it comes to those comic books in superheroes,
(39:10):
you're mainly a human fly kind of dude. Of course. Yeah,
of course, I don't know. Like this is the other
thing too. You see, like we mentioned on YouTube, you
can see so many people making these accomplishing notes, say successfully,
these amazing death defying feats. We had talked before off
air about some of the crazy stuff that you will
(39:30):
see guys getting into in the Middle East. You know,
they're out in the middle of the desert ghost riding
the whip or one guy turns turns the car sideways
such that it's just on two tires and it looks
like it's not really find a lot of purchase on something.
And then you see another You see this dude pop
out of the top of the car, like get on
top of it and do some little you know, steering
(39:53):
with his foot. Have you seen the ones where they
get out and they remove one of the tires and
then put another tire back, and they they'll take the
tire off of the vehicles. It's unbelievable. And they're on
a road by the way that's you know, it looks
like it's ten lanes wide and there's no one on
the road. It's amazing. I think it's Yeah, I think
the point of it is that these things, these stunts
(40:14):
are still happening. It's just like you said, Scott, oftentimes
we're not seeing them live anymore. We're going to YouTube
and it's like, look what this guy did in here's
the twist. He didn't die, you know what I mean.
But it's after the fact. I want to know beforehand
so I can watch this event happen live. I mean,
that's some of the that's some of the thrill. That's
(40:34):
some of the excitement for me, is that I don't
know what's gonna happen here, and I know that it
would be tragic if something terrible goes terribly wrong. But
that's that's part of the thrill for the audience, right
The live audience gets that when you're watching it on YouTube,
you already know what's gonna happen. You already, I mean,
it's already there in the descriptions. Yeah, I mean, or
you've heard about it, and that's why you're watching anyway.
(40:55):
You know, either they made it fantastic, they didn't make
it that's terrible, but check out this reckon they lived
through it, or they walked you know, it's when it
becomes a and they walked away A moment with those
are cool too, but um yeah, I just feel like,
you know, there's just not that that the build up
in the excitement and that pageantry, and that that that showmanship,
and that uh, those bigger than life characters and where's
(41:16):
the uh you know, where are the modern day evil knevels?
Where Where's where's the Pacos Bill of our time? Right
of right now? Pacos Bill. I don't know why I
said that. That's an old reference from you know what
is that Tall Tales, right tales? But but someone who
really backs it up, who really does what they say,
and you know, um, I don't know. I just I
(41:37):
just kind of missing some of that, uh, that excitement,
that tension, that that's where the adrenaline comes for the
rest of us. You know what, what other genre this
is unrelated to to the um the stunts themselves, but
there's another genre that had something like this, and that
was illusionists or stage magicians. You know what I mean.
People would tune in and they were like, uh, David
(42:00):
Copperfield is going to make this statute disappear. Everybody check
it out? Are you peeking in my notes? Because I
scratched that out? Yeah, I was thinking like that. Yeah,
it was too that that was there was some of that,
some of that excitement around that. And there was the
David Copperfield. And who was the other one? There was
another magician. It was kind of in it at the
same time. Uh not David Blaine. Now David Blaine is
(42:23):
a different guy, but there was another one. They were
there too, but they were on there. They were doing
their own thing with the with the Tigers, right, um,
incredible in their own way. Who's the other one? There
was another Doug Henning. Doug Henning, Now Doug Henning was
another magician who they you know, the joke is that
David Copperfield made him disappear. But but he did like
(42:45):
some Chrysler commerce. Yeah, thank you, Kurt. I appreciate that. Ben.
He didn't laugh at all. I'm a very unsupported friend,
but he did. I think he ended up doing like
some you know, Chrysler minivan commercials. And that was about
all you heard of him after that, you know, there
there were were they were kind of in a back
and forth primetime battle and it was very, very showy.
It was very um you know, um, I keep coming
(43:07):
to that back that word flamboyt. I'm looking for a
different word, but I'll get I'll get it. It just
there's a lot of pageantry to it and and they
definitely had a great stage presence and uh and that's
what made you watch them, right, I mean it was
something that was different, unique, and you know you're going
to be in for something spectacular in the end. But anyways,
i'd love to hear some listeners right in with, you know,
their favorite stunt person of the day and you know
(43:29):
what that feat might be, and some you know world
records that they want to see Broken soon or you know,
haven't seen Broken in a long time, or you know
that someone should go after because it's been hanging out
there for ten twenty years. That'd be interesting too. So
whatever you've got, we'd love to hear it. Yeah, you
can let us know on Facebook, you can let us
know on Instagram, you can let us know on Twitter.
(43:50):
You can also find every episode we've ever done, including
our Evil Kin Evil piece. Wherever you find your favorite podcast,
just search car Stuff Evil Kin Evil. You'll run into
not one, but several episodes. There are tons of other
directions this can lead to, but I think one of
the biggest takeaways for anybody who misses death to find
stunts is that you can see a ton of amazing
(44:11):
things now, just maybe not live. Yeah. And what's great
about this too, is you can watch them over and
over and over again and share them with your friends.
I can send you an email right now, Ben with
a link to thirty of my favorite stunts. I'll do that.
Please do not to fill up your inboxing. I'm gonna
send them one at a time. Oh good, Yeah, Yeah,
that's it's perfect. You're welcome. Thanks man. Make sure I'll
(44:32):
make sure that I'm on a motorcycle when I read them.
That sounds safe. Car Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.