June 5, 2018 • 48 mins
In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. He spoke in garbled tones, brandished a marital aid, and was spanked on the rear with a fly swatter by a person dressed in Annie Oakley garb. If this sounds weird, it is. It's the Max Headroom Incident.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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you guys soon. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:33):
I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck Bryant, Jerry Roland. You think
pretty good. It's pretty good, and this is stuff you
should Know. Josh ed Room, thank you you've been I
saw you over there with your earbuds today. You were
working on this all day, weren't you. I watched season
one episode one of Max Headroom, Like the last ten
(01:57):
minutes is still pending, okay, but it's crazy, Like Max
Headroam himself doesn't show up until like forty minutes into
the first hour long episode, but when he does, it's dynamite.
So what are we talking about. We're talking about Max
Headroam that's right. A huge shout out at the beginning
of this two buis dot com specifically Motherboard, specifically Alex Pasternak. Yeah,
(02:23):
who wrote the article on Motherboard And we actually we
used to blog a little bit for them back in
the day, remember that. Yeah. I don't think they like
to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly, you know,
I don't think so. Oh, I think it was mutually beneficial.
I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore. Trying
to remember. I'm sure they were like I think I
read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or
(02:44):
something weird. That's a big one. Yeah. We started out
with an old fashioned recipe, I think, yeah, that was you.
They were like, let's do better than this guy's and
we said no, And then they said we got our
own people. Yeah, we'll let somebody come in and go
strike for you. Yeah. So that Motherboard articles the basis
and from what I found, I mean, we we used
a lot of different sources on this, but this article
(03:09):
entitled the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Heck is sort
of the culmination like the Kuda gra kDa gra of
Max Headroom incidental articles. Yeah, it actually really good job.
Pastor Neck like very exhaustively investigated it and turned up
new information, got new new um, a new understanding of it,
(03:31):
and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself. It's
a way to go, Pastor Neck, right. And what we're
talking about is if you if you don't know who
Max Headroom at all is, We're about to set that up. Yeah,
let's talk about Max headrom But if you were alive
during the nineteen eighties, then you probably know who Max
Headroom is because weirdly, for a brief few years it
(03:57):
was kind of a big pop culture at about four
years by my by my calculations. So starting in there
was a movie called Max Headroom Colon so you know
his an important movie twenty Minutes in the Future, right,
and it was a kind of a cyberpunk movie, um
(04:20):
dystopium future, very Terry Gilliam brazil ish um, and it
was I'm not I haven't seen that one, but it
was basically where the character of Max Headroom was born, right,
And I think it actually formed the basis for the
TV show later in between the later TV show that
you and I are more familiar with and that movie
(04:40):
Max Headroom was a pop culture sensation. He was a
pitchman for New Coke. I went and watched an old ad.
He was in an ad with run DMC pitching New Coke,
and I was like, doesn't get any more eighties than this?
But it was actually a pretty cool ad, right was it?
Did it say, here's a little story A need to
(05:01):
tell about a New Coke on the scene that he
loves so well, that was exactly word for word how
that ad went. So so let's back up a little more. Right, Okay,
let's describe what Max Headroom is for the kids, because
I guarantee it about eight percent of our our audience
are like, what's the eighties? What's New Coke? Who's run DMC?
(05:22):
Well that's probably not true, but what so what was
Max Headroom? He was builed as like the first virtual
um talk show host, right correct? Okay, yeah, so he
was played by a guy named Matt Frewer, who, out
of prosthetic makeup, had that look anyway, very chiseled, square jawed.
(05:42):
He was not bald, but had he had a receding hairline. Okay,
but he kept it really really short, so it kind
of looks bald. Yeah. Here, this will explain it to
all the kids at home. He was a colleague of
Murphy Brown and the Murphy Brown television. Yeah, they're like,
oh that guy, Yeah, not the painter, the other one,
the love interest. I don't think I knew that. I
(06:04):
never watched more Peole Brown though. Oh man, I hope
that was him. I'm pretty sure it was him. Yeah. Yeah,
well he's been around, he's still acting today. But yes,
he played the character of Max Headroom, and the TV
show Max Headroom was actually pretty far ahead of its time,
totally speaking. Yeah, so the whole, the whole premise of
the TV show, the last his big last, great gasp
(06:27):
that was actually the most serious of all of it
was where in the future TV networks controlled the world,
and there was the station that network twenty three that
Matt Frewer's character and later Max Headroom, who became his
alter ego, worked for. We're putting these things called blip
firts out his His character's name was Edison Carter at first,
(06:50):
and he was like an investigative journalist. So um, he
starts looking into these blip firsts because the problem with
blip firsts they are thirty second ads used into three seconds,
and it's meant to keep you from changing the channel.
The problem is is that everybody watched so much TV
by this time, they didn't move around, which meant that
(07:11):
all of the electricity generated by their nerve endings wasn't
burned off as how the how the show explained it.
So when their brains were assaulted with these blip verts,
they kind of short circuited, and all that electricity that
was just hanging around their bodies because they weren't moving
at all during the day, made them explode. The network
(07:31):
really liked blip urts and they didn't want to get
rid of them, so they decided to instead get rid
of Edison Carter. Yeah, and the TV advertising at the time,
or advertising in general sort of not only did TV
rule the world, but the ads behind it was really
the driving force. It sounds very familiar, it does. Everyone's like,
(07:51):
I take a blip furt, give me a three second
ad on the podcast guys, it will blow you up.
So what they what ended up happening was was the
character of Edison Carter eventually was there was an incident
not the Max Headroom It's in it where he was
left in a coma in an episode the first episode,
(08:14):
Oh yeah, the pilot, of course. And the last thing
he sees before falling into a coma is a sign
that said Max Headroom colon two point three meters. Uh.
And so that's how he got the name Max cum right.
It was in like a parking garage and it was
basically saying, this is the overhead clearance. Is the way
it it's put in the United States. Yeah, right, so
that's the name Max Headroum right. But he was an
(08:35):
AI character, right, So the the Evil TV network got
ahold of him, uploaded his brain um and they originally
did this with the intent of bringing Edison Carter because
again he was like their star reporter. Bringing him back
in virtual forms, they created an artificial intelligence. Well, it's
(08:56):
kind of glitchy and blippy and it looked weird, so
they threw it out. Well, some pirate broadcasters got a
hold of this, this database that that Max Hedrom lived on,
and they started broadcasting with him, and Max Hendrom was born.
That's right. And you said glitchy and blippy, and that
kids explains your intro when you went to Josh, Yeah, yeah,
(09:20):
I was doing Thank you for explaining that Yeah, that
bears Josh was He's He's okay everybody. So that's what
Max Hedroum did. It was jittery, it was blippy, Like
you said, the background was this weird sort of horizontal
and diagonal line moving around thing, and that was all
part of this at the time sort of futuristic look.
(09:41):
He was also really sarcastic and really caddy, and he
was really um. He poked fun at censorship and he
was just kind of like a cult hero just the
character itself. Right. Yeah. The awesome thing about him is
in the real world of we didn't have any kind
of computers that could generate a c g I post,
(10:04):
so they actually used like prosthetics, Like there was a
four hour process to put Matt freu Or into the
Max Headroom makeup. So it's the guy acting and then
you know, they messed with the video a little bit.
But it wasn't a c a c g I version
of a guy. It was a guy acting like he
was a c g I version of himself, right, which
(10:25):
is why if, for instance, if Max Headroom the character
were to appear on say David Letterman, which he did,
it would be Letterman interviewing a TV screen, which is
what they did, but it was actually Matt Frewer in
another studio. He was probably just backstage broadcast. And it's
(10:46):
really like, as a kid, I did not get all this, No,
I just thought it was a I didn't really know
what it was because I've never seen the show. I
thought he was the coke guy, right right, And I
think I've seen the show a little bit. I was like,
this is way too grown up for me. Um, But
I think I just kind of took it on faith
that he was computer generated or something like that. I
didn't really think about it much. But now as an
(11:07):
adult looking back, I'm like, that is brilliant and really difficult.
And the fact that they did this and pulled it
off as well as they did, it's it's it's a
it's a pretty amazing thing, right, And you can kind
of understand how Max Headroom with all that information now
became this kind of cult icon, especially among cyberpunks at
(11:28):
the time, and what just keep saying cyberpunk. So so
let me let me I'm I'm I'm not like particularly
well versed in like what constitutes cyberpunk, but like it's
like pornography to a Supreme Court justice, Like I know
it when I see it, right, Sure, So if you
watch the Max Headroom Show, you're like, that's cyberpunk. RoboCop
(11:49):
is supposedly cyberpunk, right. It's like a bleak technological future
where people are controlled by almost down to their minds,
by the government or some corporation or some amalgamation of
the two. That's pretty cyberpunk. Right. So at the time
(12:09):
you had what are called geeks and nerds, but they
are not really what you would call the geek or
a nerd today. Right, somebody who wears like glasses that
don't actually have prescription glass in them. Do people do that?
That's some people do. I did that in the fourth grade. Well,
then you were a geek apparently, No. I was a
prep and I wore those little tortoiseshell round uh preppy
(12:32):
glasses because that was a cool look. And actually, when
it's it's one of my least proud moments. Fashion wise
has actually bought fake glasses and more than around you
have photos of those. I'd really have to dig through
some boxes. I think I speak for everyone when I
say started digging dig Yeah, it was not my proudest moment. Yeah,
(12:53):
I'd like to see that picture. So. Um, at the time,
people who were geeks, nerds, that whole culture was very
much derided and pushed around. I mean, look at the
Revenge of the Nerds, right like they came out on top.
I watched a little bit of that just the other night.
This is probably the earliest celebration of nerd culture. It
(13:16):
was not something that was like venerated or subscribed to
by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek. And
these were a very rarefied group of people who really
knew what they were doing with computers at a time
when almost no one else did. Early adopters across the
board very much so. Right, So, so Maxidim is kind
(13:38):
of a cult hero to this guy, and um, that
kind of sets up what happened on November twenty in
a little town called Chicago, Illinois, the city of industry,
city that doesn't ever sleep never, the windy city that's it?
(14:00):
Are you go of all time? The windy city of
all time? Yeah? So that sets the stage. We know
who who the character of Max Headroom was? Then yes,
are you sure I set the stage? I think so?
Did we set the stage fully here it looks nice alight.
So a PM on that November night in Chicago, four
(14:23):
days before Thanksgiving. Yeah, so everyone was in that frame
of mind, put yourself there. I think that that helps
a lot. It helped me at least football seasons going on. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, just that very day, the
Bears had beat the Lions, which you know, it's a
long time ago. Because the Bears won a football game,
(14:45):
the people in the Windy City of all time, we're
not gonna be happy with you for that city time.
Oh and there's a sportscaster on local channel nine, uh
Dan Rone r a in and he was was going
over the highlights of that football game. Then all of
a sudden, right in the middle, the broadcast signal goes.
(15:09):
It makes those noise noises. And then over at w
g N the control room, they were like, what's what's
going on here? We have no idea what this is.
I think the exact quote was a girl. So um,
what happened was they eventually what what where they were
doing at the time was And this is how We're
(15:29):
not going to go into the weeds here on how
broadcast signals work, but what they did back in the day,
was they broadcast microwave transmissions to antenna's at the top
of the tallest buildings of whatever city that they were
in for local TV, for local TV, which is I
mean there was cable at the time, but local TV
still kind of ruled, yeah in the well sort of
(15:50):
in the late eighties, right, So like starting to segue
to cable, Yeah, for sure, cable is you know, kind
of a thing, but you if you were a local
TV station, you still have pretty big market share of it, right,
especially w g N in Chicago. I mean it's like
Chicago station, right absolutely, So what you I think you're
saying is that in a studio, whatever they're recording or
(16:11):
shooting or playing on their their little video tapes, they're
they're beaming that from the actual studio to a transmitter
stay atop a very tall building, and then that just
kind of bounces around to other transmitters and that's how
everybody in Chicago gets their w g N signal, right, Right,
So all of a sudden, during the sportscast, it skits
(16:32):
is out and then all of a sudden you see
a a guy in a suit, uh wearing a Max
headroom mask and it was there was no audio. That
was I guess the problem with this first intrusion that
was called a broadcast intrusion. Yeah, but you couldn't hear anything.
(16:53):
But I'm sure it was certainly distressing to a viewer
to see this kind of weird thing happened, especially if
viewer who wanted to know what the heck happened between
the Bears and the Lions that day. And um, the
whole thing lasted I think like eleven seconds or some
very short amount of time. Yeah, this was a short
one Before um, the w g N engineers went and
switched to the backup transmitter and and I guess transmitted
(17:17):
on a slightly different signal and brought the broadcast, the
sportscaster back on and Dan Rone was like, uh, if
you're wondering what just happened, so am I right? There's
a chuckle in between. I wasn't going to do my
impression of it, but it's good. You should watch it,
like somebody just go look it up, right, So Federal Investigators,
(17:39):
the FEC that is, was called in to investigate, um
what technically is well not technically it's a crime to
do so. And then just a few minutes later, they thought, well,
this is probably coming from inside the building, and so
that's the first place they started looking. They said, the
intrusions coming from inside the building exactly. They didn't find anybody, though,
(18:00):
I mean it was, as you'll see after we explained further,
it would make sense that you would look in the building, Yeah, right,
for something like this inside job. There apparently was not
an inside job at least as far as the w
g N Engineers search was concerned. Right, right, So that
was at nine fourteen. About two hours later, I think,
(18:22):
at eleven fifteen, on another channel in Chicago, w t
t W, which was the PBS station, they were airing
an episode of Doctor who called the Horror on fang Island,
fang Rock, fang Rock, Horror of fang Rock. You have
to say it like that, the Horror of fang Rock.
Thank you. And this is the Tom Baker doctor. Okay,
(18:44):
that's the only one I recognize that. Really he's seventies, right, Hey,
I'm no doctor. Who guys, don't it looked like it
looked like the seventies. What they cut in on looked
pretty seventies. It didn't look eighty seven. So who do
would think it would be at seven. I'm guess it
was a rerun on PBS, That's what I think. Alright,
we'll find out and oh man, we're going to find
(19:06):
out too. That would have been super easy to check. Yeah,
at any rate, Um, the the in the middle of
this Doctor Who episode, it suddenly cuts out again, and
now you've got what appears to be the full run
of this Max headroom intrusion. Yes, instead of thirty seconds,
this one was a minute in twenty two seconds. And
(19:28):
right now, I would say, if you are somewhere where
you can pause and go to a video online video
carrier of your choosing and type in Max headroom incident,
spend the next minute in twenty two seconds watching it.
We'll wait and we'll wait. We'll just in cert a
minute seconds of silence here, how about this. Let's take
(19:50):
a break and then we'll come back and then we'll
talk about exactly what happened during that minute in two seconds. Okay,
(20:16):
we're back. Did you watch it? Are you talking to me? Okay?
I'm guessing that people people did watch it. A few
people did, smart ones did. Because this is really tough
to describe, and we're going to try but it's something
you really have to see you in here. It's genuinely
disturbing sitting in an office years later watching it, and
(20:39):
I can imagine if I was at home, I would
have probably been a little freaked out. You found it disturbing, Yeah,
I found it hilarious in like a really juvenile way. Yeah,
it creeps me out. It was like watching David Byrne
on acid at a talking head show. That's what I
think of when I saw that, you know, all right,
(21:01):
so let's let's describe the scene here. Okay, so you
got Max Headroom, well, actually a dude wearing a rubbers
rubber Halloween mask of Max Headroom. And this this is
just genius to me. So you mentioned earlier about how
the Max Headroom had like these kind of grid lines
behind them at all times and they kind of moved
and adjusted. They were different colors to do to to
(21:24):
simulate that these guys had like a piece of corrugated metal,
shiny metal, and I guess they had an attached somehow
to something that rocked it back and forth, and they
kind of somebody was clearly rocking it back and forth
here there erratically, and it really does a good job.
It gets the point across that it looked like the
(21:45):
Max bed Room TV show. The Yeah, the back in
the character. Yes, but again I would say that this
person was very very clearly on acid. Well, I think
what disturbs me, and I need to make it clear.
It is definitely funny and stupid. But what disturbs me
is the sound of the voice, which is all garble.
It's really like on YouTube. It has subtitles thankfully because
(22:08):
it's hard to make out, and a lot of times
it just says can't you know understand what he's saying
or whatever? Uh? And the garble quality and just the
random weirdness that's going on. It's not like it was
creepier to mean than if v for Vendetta dude had
a come on Guy Fox had to come on and said,
you know, we are coming into your thing to tell
(22:28):
you this about this. This was just so weird and
all over the place. It was creepy to me. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah,
I see what you mean, Like you're watching some nonsensical
somebody's brain slightly damaged, watching somebody lose their mind. Right, Okay, yeah,
totally get that. Um, And here's here's what the guy
did that would make you feel like he lost his mind. Um,
(22:53):
this is the weird thing to me. It's it's very
targeted towards w g N, right, almost so much so
that some people would say this was clearly somebody who
had a grudge against w g N. He makes fun
of the bulls um sportscaster, the guy who worked for
w g N at the time. He makes reference to
(23:13):
how he just made a masterpiece for the Greatest World's
Newspaper Nerds, which was a messed up version of w
g n's call letters stand for World's Greatest Newspaper. He
wields a rubber penis. That's one. Although it was great
and almost every article it was referred to as a
marital aid. Did you see that? No? But uh, I
(23:36):
actually guessed it on Strickland's Tech stuff like four years ago,
and we covered this and I called it a marital aide,
did you okay? So I wanted to keep it clean.
I realized that saying the word penis is okay, Well,
it's clinical. I mean, we did a puberty episode, surely
we we have the chops to say penis. But marital
(23:57):
aide is hilarious, especially in this context. Like this crazy
dude don Acid wearing a Max Headroom mask is has
a marital aid. No he doesn't, that's not what that
is in that context. Yeah, and that's the new T shirt.
By the way, what we have the chops to say,
pienis so that's a band name. Let's go ahead and
(24:18):
use some of the let's go and say some of
the direct quotes. So he comes on and he goes
he's a freaking nerd. I think I'm better than Chuck Swarsky,
freaking liberal. That's a really good impression of it. And
Chuck Swarsky was the Bulls guy. Yeah, the sports announcer.
And this is a time too when like the Bulls were, Um,
(24:39):
this is the Jordan Pippen era. Still, I mean well
still it's at the beginning of it. Was seven. I
thought it was like in the middle of it. M hmm.
Was at the beginning pretty early earli ish. Let's say,
I wish these days that I would have been more
cognizant and like more into basketball and like I am
now see that's what I was the most into. It
(25:01):
was bird Jordan's magic to watch some of those games. Yeah,
that was good stuff because that's when the Hawks were
good back then, Yeah, back then, Dominique, Hey, shout out
to Kent base Moore. You know he listens to this
show that way, he's a fan. How did you find
that out? Twitter? Yeah, that's great, man, I love base
I know. How do you not love bas Man? He's
(25:23):
brought right right now. That's so cool. Alright, So, uh,
Chuck Sworski's freaking liberal. Uh. He's wielding the rubber penis
the marital aide. He drops that. Then he picks up
a new coke while you can't really tell if it
oh was it? Okay? I couldn't really tell. He picks
up a can and but he says catch the wave,
(25:43):
which is the new Coke slogan. Right. Then he starts humming.
It's so random. Then he starts humming the theme song
to the sixties show Clutch Cargo, which is weird in
and of itself. Sure, that's that one where it's like animation,
but for the mouths. That was just like a human
mouth moving with that's disturbing. Yeah, that was. If you've
(26:04):
seen pulp fiction, it was the scene where Bruce Willis
was a kid and Christopher Walkin comes in with the
wristwatch scene. Um, that Clutch Cargo is playing on TV
when he's watching it. But it is weird looking, right,
so you would say, why did you do the Clutch
Cargo theme? Well, again, this is a w g N
thing and apparently that's where you saw it as as
(26:25):
a kid. Yeah on um in Chicago. Okay, So he says, also,
your love is fading. I still see the X, which
apparently is something from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Yeah,
that was the Big X or something. And then he says,
what you're talking about earlier, I just made a joint
masterpiece for all the greatest World Newspaper nerds. But he
(26:48):
should have said world's Greatest Newspaper Nerds w g IN right,
which you might find confusing, as I did too. But
apparently the Chicago Tribune Company owns w g N TV,
so they called themselves World's Greatest Newspaper TV. Right. It's
all coming together. It's so fact though. There you go.
(27:10):
Then finally towards the end, the camera cuts to a
different angle. Uh, this one has the dude bent over
with his bare butt hanging out. His face is now
off screen, but he's holding the mask still out like
his head is in it, but it's not. And there
is a person I say woman, but I don't know,
(27:30):
but a person in a like an anti Oakley dress?
Is that what it was? I didn't get that. Yeah,
it looked like a prairie bonnet ensemble, but the bonnet
kind of hides the face, so you don't know if
it's a man or a woman. And they are spanking
the bare butt with a fly swatter, and he's worried
about them coming to get him. They're going to get me,
(27:51):
and then he says come get me and uses a
bad word, B word, the B word, and then it
goes back to Dr Who. Yeah, as as just like
it when it came in went out it just because
it's like gone. Can you imagine seeing that live? And
that while the people who saw it live, the next
thing they would have heard was the doctor saying something like, oh,
(28:12):
he died of an electric shock. Must have died instantly.
And then and everybody's just sitting there, mouths hanging open.
It was Dr Who too, so it was probably a
bunch of Chicago nerds watching PBS. Yeah, so al right,
my inmentation was okay, but let's just play at least
like a couple of lines from the real thing. Yeah,
(28:45):
all right, so you did a pretty good impression. I
think everyone can agree now, right. Strange So this was
an enormous thing, right, Like, um, like people were watching
this and we're aghast. Agog some people probably thought it
was funny. Um. W g N reporting on it all
over the place the next couple of days. Yeah, the
(29:05):
newspapers had picked it up. Yeah, um, there's this one.
There's a compilation of w g M broadcasts, or it
might may even be more than just w g N
of people in the street being interviewed. What do you
think about this? One Guy's like it's it's kind of
like Cooligans throwing a brick through your window, you know,
to get your attention. There's a little kid who's like,
(29:27):
very very funny. The star of the news, though, was
this one doctor who fan uh, this lady who was
not at all amused by this, and I just want
to play her little segment. Okay, yeah, get annoyed. You know.
I just thought it would be just a slight mess up,
but that in the middle of tap, it's going to
be you're gonna have to tape over it. I just
(29:50):
think that's the funniest thing out of the whole the
whole thing. Well, another guy said he wanted to smash
his TV he was so angry. Yeah, I didn't see
that guy. I saw that in the Pastor Nech article. Yeah,
he was mad. So there was a lot of mixed reaction.
But the the the voice from on high that came
from the FCC who you said, we're called in pretty quickly.
They were like, this is no laughing matter. You might
(30:12):
think it's funny, it's not very funny. Okay, it's kind
of funny, but not really. And you can get a
hundred thousand dollar fine in a year in jail for
this kind of thing, so stop doing it. But at
this point, by this point, it was actually a federal offense.
It was a felony, a felony offense. Wait, what was that?
(30:32):
Days been confused? Cantering with the mailbox is a felony.
I was like, wait a minute, I know that from somewhere.
So the f c C gets involved in this, This
is really interesting in this article that I got involved
to FB, I was involved Chicago p D like there
was they were looking into it. Apparently the um man
I has become obvious to me that I say the
(30:53):
word apparently a lot, really a lot. I was listening
to an episode, queing an episode, and it was like
stopped saying apparently, Josh, yeah, I've started after ten years,
I've started to notice some things about my own self.
It's like a tick. I tried to just avoid it.
I tried to too normally I can, but man, it
just came welling up into my awareness. Apparently it's really
(31:17):
I'm gonna have to get over it at any rate. Um,
the the there were a lot of different agencies working
on this, but the trail went cold pretty quick. And
you remember how you said that. Um, the w g
N engineers started looking around the station. I think what
they were looking for was this somebody physically patching in
(31:39):
to the transmission network the cable mask and yeah, either
playing a videotape, which it's it seems pretty obvious it
was pre taped or doing something like in a studio,
but but that they would have to physically patch into
w g n's transmission network. Yeah, it's like when a
(32:00):
car doesn't work and I opened the hood thinking I'm
going to see a squirrel not gnawing on a cable
that two pieces now and frayed at the ends. Right now,
imagine that squirrel wearing a max hydroom mask and being
on acid, okay, with maritalaide. So um, And at first
the FEC and the FBI and anybody who was in
(32:23):
the know basically said, this was a very sophisticated attack.
It would have required a very very some very expensive equipment,
a lot of electricity. Um, there's not a lot of
ways that they could have done this. But later on
in the Pastor Nick article, and this is this is
one of the ways Pastor that contributed to this whole thing.
(32:45):
He talked to one of the SEC investigators and this
guy basically did away with that that whole viewpoint that
had lasted for almost thirty years, that it had to
have been somebody with a hundred thousand dollar piece of
equipment and you know, ten thousand dollars worth of electricity.
Over the minute and a half he was saying, No,
you could probably have gotten the equipment needed for this
(33:08):
new for ten grand at the time, or you could
have probably bought it for use for just a fraction
of that, and um, it would have taken very little electricity.
It would have just taken um. Some know how and
good positioning. Really yeah, Basically he was like you, it
could have been done with like the size of a
direct TV dish today, and all they would have had
(33:31):
to do was get and a high enough location in between,
like literally, because they're beaming waves, are beaming microwaves through
the air. So he's like, all they had to do
is get in between the original studio and that initial
tower on top of the I think it was a
John Hancock building for w g N. Yeah, yeah, And
(33:52):
and have a stronger signal, right, so even just like
a slightly stronger signal. So you remember how w g
N has their studio transmission shooting up to the John
Hancock building and then that transmitter shoots it out to
everybody else in Chicago. What what? What? What I think
you're saying is like if somebody was on the roof
of another nearby building and they just shoot a transmission
(34:15):
their own max headroom transmission at a stronger a stronger
way or no, a stronger amplitude, that's what it is.
Of the same frequency. You just overpower cancels out what
w g N is doing and instead it transmits your
max headroom thing, and they would be closer to that
broadcast hour. Yes, so um, that would mean that it
(34:39):
required far less electricity than you would think or that
they originally thought, and a far less equipment to They
also had a pretty good idea of where these people
would have had to have done it, because they after
they got shut out of w g M, they turned
their attention to w t t W, the PBS station,
and they hijacked their signal. Well, w t W shot
(35:01):
their studio link to the Sears Tower. So this would
have been somebody who was on a roof somewhere that
had a clear view of John Hancock Building and the
Sears Tower and could transmit to either one of them.
But that's basically what they think happened. Yeah, and the
guy you were talking about, Dr Michael Marcus, who at
the time was the Assistant Bureau Chief in the FCCS
(35:24):
Field Operations Bureau. He was a lead investigator, and he
said that the guy in Chicago that was sort of
in charge wasn't super like. He was just sort of
used to traditional FCC investigations. He wasn't wanted to go
knocking on doors and uh as to like investigate some
kind of weird kind of maybe creepy criminal dudes. Uh
(35:46):
it may or may not have a marital aid in
his apartment. Just smack him on that whether and then uh.
They also, you know, nobody was being hurt, No one
got hurt in the end, it was it was almost
a victimless crime. So they didn't throw a ton of
resources at it. They were kind of like, listen, we're
not gonna If you want to go investigate this, that's
(36:07):
great you should, but we're not going to assign a
team of twelve people to try and crack this case
of a bunch of nerds who did a weird thing
for a minute seconds And I think the longer it
went on and there was no more of these intrusions
from these guys, the fewer and fewer resources they had
to work with, and it just kind of fell to
(36:28):
the wayside. Well, what's interesting is to at the in
the beginning, they said it's gonna it would take somebody
with a very expensive piece of equipment, a lot of electricity,
and a lot of know how, And today the only
one of those that's remaining is a lot of know how.
There wouldn't have been a lot of people running around
(36:49):
Chicago who would have known how to do something like this. Um,
so it's kind of surprising, even with very few resources
that no one has ever been really implicated in this one. Yeah,
I don't think we said no. They still don't know
who did this. It's an unsolved mystery. Like Dennis Farina
and Robert Stack, I love this one. Uh. The FBI,
(37:14):
for their take, started concentrating on the actual video. They
had the technology at the time, which is kind of
funny now to think about it, but they're the only
ones who had the technology at the time to actually
make enhance frames of this videotape and print out, you know,
pictures enhance them. And they were kind of focused on
(37:34):
this upper right hand quadrant, as they say, where the
Antie Oakley was spanking with the fly swatter. I don't
know why they're so into that, but they said, you know,
we're trying to get clues on the actual location of
the people who made the tape, not necessarily where they
broadcast it from, but where did they shoot this thing.
To begin with, it was very little to go on
aside from that spinning corrugated metal, and that could have
(37:58):
been literally anywhere. Because it's a really tight shot. It
really is. Yeah, and there was very little evidence given
in the video. Yeah. I mean it says that they
were looking at industrial warehouses and things, but that could
have been in an apartment living room. I mean, it
wasn't like the door was a text anything. It was
freely spinning back and forth. So it didn't make not
(38:18):
the best lead, right, So um over time, and again
this is weird too. It's it's not so weird that
the FCC or the FBI didn't find who did this
if they weren't really looking very hard. Was really weird
is that no one has been like, it was these guys.
I was there, I know these dudes. It was these guys.
Statute limitations is done, like who cares? Yeah, after these
(38:42):
guys would have gotten off scott free because the statute
of limitations for this one was five years. Right. I'm
shocked that no one later said, hey, that was me, right,
No one's done that, right. Yeah, there was um some
so very early forum like message boards stuff took the
form of bulletin boards services. I think BBS is really
(39:07):
early geek culture, like like like Matthew Broderick dialing something
with his phone and then putting it on that weird
little you know, Commodore sixty four thing, the motum yet
to like transmit the dial tone over the telephone system, right, So, um,
that's what that's what like the level of technology that
these people were dealing with, but they were communicating with
(39:29):
each other over like this proto internet, these bulletin board systems.
And two days after this, a guy named the Chameleon
posted basically what you and I said about how all
it took was these guys to go up on a
tall building and overwhelm the w g N and the
w T t W studio links. And it's so facto
(39:50):
I'm a big fan of that. By the way, Um,
the this this intrusion was successful, right two days, not
two years, not a year ago. Two days after it,
somebody was on there explaining how it went out. So
somebody knew this, right, But only two theories have really
ever come to light as to who it was. One
(40:11):
you can basically just throw right out, and the other
one it turns out to have been a dead end. Yeah.
The first one that you were talking about that doesn't
really hold water was a and this was a rumor
online for a while. I was a musician named Eric
Fournier Fournier Furnier. I had a friend in uh in preschool.
(40:31):
I think, yeah, that's how it was spelled f O
U R in I E R. Actually I don't know
how it spelled. I couldn't spell back then. Um. So
this guy was in a band, uh, and he did
this weird, super creepy YouTube series called shay st john
(40:53):
S h A y E. Did you watch it? Oh? Yeah,
I love it. Yeah, just knew that you would love
it if you're but this is genuinely unsettling too. I'm
with you on that. So it kind of fit and
that he was doing these weird things. He had this band, Uh.
They were in Bloomington, Indiana, not too far from Chicago,
the Blood Farmers, Yeah, the bands of Blood Farmers, and
(41:14):
they did these weird music videos and they thought this
is the kind of guy that would have done that.
And the thinking was that he went to go broadcast
one of their weird music videos as a broadcast intrusion,
but chickened out at the last minute because they would
have been found uh, and then ended up just improving.
That part makes a little sense because it definitely seems improved.
It does, but it was also videotaped. Remember, So that
(41:37):
means he would have had two videotapes with him. What
do you mean? So if he was gonna if he
was going to play the music video and said I'm
not gonna do that, he would have had to have
brought this other video tape. And the other thing is
apparently his friend. See I just said apparently again. Alex
Pastor Neck from Motherboard contacted some of Fernier's friends because
(41:59):
Fernie Or died in two thousand ten. But his friends
are like, absolutely not. Even some of the blood Farmers
are like, it wasn't him, Like, I know what you're saying,
and yeah, he did the whole shay st John thing,
but it was this was not him. It was not
quite there. He didn't know what he was doing with it.
He wouldn't know any broadcast stuff or video editing or
anything like that. Yeah, so this other one to me
(42:21):
seems pretty promising. Uh So we flashed forward to when
did this actually happen? Was this like by the time
read it had to come around when it on Reddit? Yeah,
I think it was about twenty five years after, so
it would have been in two thousand seven. Yeah, so
there's this guy two thousand. Okay, sorry, there was this
(42:44):
guy named from Chicago named Bowie Pogue p o G.
I didn't have any friends with that last name when
I was a kid, and he was one of the
kids hanging around those bbs is in the eighties in Chicago.
From the sounds of it, he was on the younger side.
He was thirteen, and even as the thirteen year old geek,
was very much intimidated by the older geeks in that crowd,
(43:07):
and so wasn't boisterous. He was sort of like, Hey,
I'm kind of hanging out here and not saying much
and don't notice me. I just want to ingratiate myself
and you guys can give me drunk laugh if you want.
And then at a party he remembers this uh. He
described him as a small, peculiar man that he thought
was about in his thirties, and he had an older brother.
(43:30):
They lived in Chicago. So Poe is describing these two
guys who were in the same scene with him, correct, Yeah,
And he had They lived with his girlfriend downtown or
about ten miles from downtown Chicago, and they had the
know how. They were super into computers early on you
he said he went to their apartment and it was
(43:50):
just like it looked like a computer hoarder, mess of
wires and computers and equipment like Neo's apartment. Yeah, why not?
Or what was the other one he was in before
the Matrix Johnny Newmonic, Yes, yeah, Bill and Ted Yeah,
Johnny Newmonic. That's cyberpunk, yes, right, yes, it is all right.
(44:12):
You could probably make the case that the Matrix is
as well there, right, sure. So he described him as
a stocky guy with tinted lens glasses in his early
thirties and odd dude his brother, he said. He described
it's just kind of normal. But he said that he
didn't make the connection at the time, but at a
(44:33):
party on November about the same day. Midday on November,
he was at a gathering of these dudes at the
brothers apartment and he heard them say something about doing
something big. Later that night, they went to Pizza Hut
and He's like, what are you guys talking about? What's
the big thing? And they said, hey, I don't ask questions,
but just watched Channel eleven tonight on that same day,
(44:56):
and I don't know how he didn't put it together.
That's that's the one thing that really strikes. But he
said that years later. Now when he looks at it,
he's like, even with that mask on, I see the body,
I see what's going on. I hear that, and it's
it's that guy to me. But twenty five years later,
he was there that day, they tell him to watch
(45:17):
that night, and he didn't put it together for twenty
five years. That to me is the one fishy thing. Well,
and he has been called out as fishy. Sure, I'm
sure he knows that it's kind of fishy. Yeah. So
that the guy the motherboard, pastor Neck reached out and
he said, you can you still get in touch with
these guys all these years later, he said, he sent
(45:38):
them messages via Facebook. I don't even know if they
saw him. They didn't get back. Then in the last
sitch effort, he sent them a certified mail too. He
found out where they lived, never heard anything back, and
he was like, hey, it's clear that these guys don't
want to be talked to, so you want to take
a break, Yeah, let's do it, okay m hm. So
(46:17):
that's where it stands right now, Like nobody knows who
is behind it still to this day, which is it
is crazy. And as a result, this Max Headroom hack
has taken its place in like the pantheon of geek
culture and of hacker culture, and rightfully so you know
it was legendary in its own way. That's right. Ah,
(46:39):
you got anything else? I got nothing else on this one,
cool man. Well, if you want to know more about
Max Headroom, you should start by checking out this amazing
Motherboard article by Alex Pastor Knack. And since I said amazing,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna go with Uh,
(47:01):
I'm gonna go with the Almond Brothers eat a Peach
from a Munchies. I don't know if it's true, but
it's fun. I wanted to talk about when Josh talked
about the Almond Brothers band factoid um because I think
it's actually a cool factoid. Dwayne Alman was once asked
by a reporter what he was going to do for
the war effort in Vietnam, and his response was, I'm
(47:22):
going to eat a peach for peace. Dwayne died not
long after that album, and Eat a Peach was released posthumously,
so he contends Jesse Godet that that is where the
album title came from and they eat a peach? Was
not Eta, bud he or she? I guess Jesse could
(47:44):
go either way. Yeah, as always, keep up a good work.
I'm currently brewing beer and listening. Tell me where to
mail some bottles or come pick them up in Salt
Lake City. All right, we'll do both. It's like a challenge, right,
they're too heavy. I can't pick him up. Thanks a lot, Jesse,
appreciate that, even though I still think I'm right. Um,
(48:04):
if you want to contend that something one of us
said is incorrect, we love that. Stuff. You can tweet
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(48:25):
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House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:33):
I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck Bryant, Jerry Roland. You think
pretty good. It's pretty good, and this is stuff you
should Know. Josh ed Room, thank you you've been I
saw you over there with your earbuds today. You were
working on this all day, weren't you. I watched season
one episode one of Max Headroom, Like the last ten
(01:57):
minutes is still pending, okay, but it's crazy, Like Max
Headroam himself doesn't show up until like forty minutes into
the first hour long episode, but when he does, it's dynamite.
So what are we talking about. We're talking about Max
Headroam that's right. A huge shout out at the beginning
of this two buis dot com specifically Motherboard, specifically Alex Pasternak. Yeah,
(02:23):
who wrote the article on Motherboard And we actually we
used to blog a little bit for them back in
the day, remember that. Yeah. I don't think they like
to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly, you know,
I don't think so. Oh, I think it was mutually beneficial.
I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore. Trying
to remember. I'm sure they were like I think I
read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or
(02:44):
something weird. That's a big one. Yeah. We started out
with an old fashioned recipe, I think, yeah, that was you.
They were like, let's do better than this guy's and
we said no, And then they said we got our
own people. Yeah, we'll let somebody come in and go
strike for you. Yeah. So that Motherboard articles the basis
and from what I found, I mean, we we used
a lot of different sources on this, but this article
(03:09):
entitled the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Heck is sort
of the culmination like the Kuda gra kDa gra of
Max Headroom incidental articles. Yeah, it actually really good job.
Pastor Neck like very exhaustively investigated it and turned up
new information, got new new um, a new understanding of it,
(03:31):
and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself. It's
a way to go, Pastor Neck, right. And what we're
talking about is if you if you don't know who
Max Headroom at all is, We're about to set that up. Yeah,
let's talk about Max headrom But if you were alive
during the nineteen eighties, then you probably know who Max
Headroom is because weirdly, for a brief few years it
(03:57):
was kind of a big pop culture at about four
years by my by my calculations. So starting in there
was a movie called Max Headroom Colon so you know
his an important movie twenty Minutes in the Future, right,
and it was a kind of a cyberpunk movie, um
(04:20):
dystopium future, very Terry Gilliam brazil ish um, and it
was I'm not I haven't seen that one, but it
was basically where the character of Max Headroom was born, right,
And I think it actually formed the basis for the
TV show later in between the later TV show that
you and I are more familiar with and that movie
(04:40):
Max Headroom was a pop culture sensation. He was a
pitchman for New Coke. I went and watched an old ad.
He was in an ad with run DMC pitching New Coke,
and I was like, doesn't get any more eighties than this?
But it was actually a pretty cool ad, right was it?
Did it say, here's a little story A need to
(05:01):
tell about a New Coke on the scene that he
loves so well, that was exactly word for word how
that ad went. So so let's back up a little more. Right, Okay,
let's describe what Max Headroom is for the kids, because
I guarantee it about eight percent of our our audience
are like, what's the eighties? What's New Coke? Who's run DMC?
(05:22):
Well that's probably not true, but what so what was
Max Headroom? He was builed as like the first virtual
um talk show host, right correct? Okay, yeah, so he
was played by a guy named Matt Frewer, who, out
of prosthetic makeup, had that look anyway, very chiseled, square jawed.
(05:42):
He was not bald, but had he had a receding hairline. Okay,
but he kept it really really short, so it kind
of looks bald. Yeah. Here, this will explain it to
all the kids at home. He was a colleague of
Murphy Brown and the Murphy Brown television. Yeah, they're like,
oh that guy, Yeah, not the painter, the other one,
the love interest. I don't think I knew that. I
(06:04):
never watched more Peole Brown though. Oh man, I hope
that was him. I'm pretty sure it was him. Yeah. Yeah,
well he's been around, he's still acting today. But yes,
he played the character of Max Headroom, and the TV
show Max Headroom was actually pretty far ahead of its time,
totally speaking. Yeah, so the whole, the whole premise of
the TV show, the last his big last, great gasp
(06:27):
that was actually the most serious of all of it
was where in the future TV networks controlled the world,
and there was the station that network twenty three that
Matt Frewer's character and later Max Headroom, who became his
alter ego, worked for. We're putting these things called blip
firts out his His character's name was Edison Carter at first,
(06:50):
and he was like an investigative journalist. So um, he
starts looking into these blip firsts because the problem with
blip firsts they are thirty second ads used into three seconds,
and it's meant to keep you from changing the channel.
The problem is is that everybody watched so much TV
by this time, they didn't move around, which meant that
(07:11):
all of the electricity generated by their nerve endings wasn't
burned off as how the how the show explained it.
So when their brains were assaulted with these blip verts,
they kind of short circuited, and all that electricity that
was just hanging around their bodies because they weren't moving
at all during the day, made them explode. The network
(07:31):
really liked blip urts and they didn't want to get
rid of them, so they decided to instead get rid
of Edison Carter. Yeah, and the TV advertising at the time,
or advertising in general sort of not only did TV
rule the world, but the ads behind it was really
the driving force. It sounds very familiar, it does. Everyone's like,
(07:51):
I take a blip furt, give me a three second
ad on the podcast guys, it will blow you up.
So what they what ended up happening was was the
character of Edison Carter eventually was there was an incident
not the Max Headroom It's in it where he was
left in a coma in an episode the first episode,
(08:14):
Oh yeah, the pilot, of course. And the last thing
he sees before falling into a coma is a sign
that said Max Headroom colon two point three meters. Uh.
And so that's how he got the name Max cum right.
It was in like a parking garage and it was
basically saying, this is the overhead clearance. Is the way
it it's put in the United States. Yeah, right, so
that's the name Max Headroum right. But he was an
(08:35):
AI character, right, So the the Evil TV network got
ahold of him, uploaded his brain um and they originally
did this with the intent of bringing Edison Carter because
again he was like their star reporter. Bringing him back
in virtual forms, they created an artificial intelligence. Well, it's
(08:56):
kind of glitchy and blippy and it looked weird, so
they threw it out. Well, some pirate broadcasters got a
hold of this, this database that that Max Hedrom lived on,
and they started broadcasting with him, and Max Hendrom was born.
That's right. And you said glitchy and blippy, and that
kids explains your intro when you went to Josh, Yeah, yeah,
(09:20):
I was doing Thank you for explaining that Yeah, that
bears Josh was He's He's okay everybody. So that's what
Max Hedroum did. It was jittery, it was blippy, Like
you said, the background was this weird sort of horizontal
and diagonal line moving around thing, and that was all
part of this at the time sort of futuristic look.
(09:41):
He was also really sarcastic and really caddy, and he
was really um. He poked fun at censorship and he
was just kind of like a cult hero just the
character itself. Right. Yeah. The awesome thing about him is
in the real world of we didn't have any kind
of computers that could generate a c g I post,
(10:04):
so they actually used like prosthetics, Like there was a
four hour process to put Matt freu Or into the
Max Headroom makeup. So it's the guy acting and then
you know, they messed with the video a little bit.
But it wasn't a c a c g I version
of a guy. It was a guy acting like he
was a c g I version of himself, right, which
(10:25):
is why if, for instance, if Max Headroom the character
were to appear on say David Letterman, which he did,
it would be Letterman interviewing a TV screen, which is
what they did, but it was actually Matt Frewer in
another studio. He was probably just backstage broadcast. And it's
(10:46):
really like, as a kid, I did not get all this, No,
I just thought it was a I didn't really know
what it was because I've never seen the show. I
thought he was the coke guy, right right, And I
think I've seen the show a little bit. I was like,
this is way too grown up for me. Um, But
I think I just kind of took it on faith
that he was computer generated or something like that. I
didn't really think about it much. But now as an
(11:07):
adult looking back, I'm like, that is brilliant and really difficult.
And the fact that they did this and pulled it
off as well as they did, it's it's it's a
it's a pretty amazing thing, right, And you can kind
of understand how Max Headroom with all that information now
became this kind of cult icon, especially among cyberpunks at
(11:28):
the time, and what just keep saying cyberpunk. So so
let me let me I'm I'm I'm not like particularly
well versed in like what constitutes cyberpunk, but like it's
like pornography to a Supreme Court justice, Like I know
it when I see it, right, Sure, So if you
watch the Max Headroom Show, you're like, that's cyberpunk. RoboCop
(11:49):
is supposedly cyberpunk, right. It's like a bleak technological future
where people are controlled by almost down to their minds,
by the government or some corporation or some amalgamation of
the two. That's pretty cyberpunk. Right. So at the time
(12:09):
you had what are called geeks and nerds, but they
are not really what you would call the geek or
a nerd today. Right, somebody who wears like glasses that
don't actually have prescription glass in them. Do people do that?
That's some people do. I did that in the fourth grade. Well,
then you were a geek apparently, No. I was a
prep and I wore those little tortoiseshell round uh preppy
(12:32):
glasses because that was a cool look. And actually, when
it's it's one of my least proud moments. Fashion wise
has actually bought fake glasses and more than around you
have photos of those. I'd really have to dig through
some boxes. I think I speak for everyone when I
say started digging dig Yeah, it was not my proudest moment. Yeah,
(12:53):
I'd like to see that picture. So. Um, at the time,
people who were geeks, nerds, that whole culture was very
much derided and pushed around. I mean, look at the
Revenge of the Nerds, right like they came out on top.
I watched a little bit of that just the other night.
This is probably the earliest celebration of nerd culture. It
(13:16):
was not something that was like venerated or subscribed to
by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek. And
these were a very rarefied group of people who really
knew what they were doing with computers at a time
when almost no one else did. Early adopters across the
board very much so. Right, So, so Maxidim is kind
(13:38):
of a cult hero to this guy, and um, that
kind of sets up what happened on November twenty in
a little town called Chicago, Illinois, the city of industry,
city that doesn't ever sleep never, the windy city that's it?
(14:00):
Are you go of all time? The windy city of
all time? Yeah? So that sets the stage. We know
who who the character of Max Headroom was? Then yes,
are you sure I set the stage? I think so?
Did we set the stage fully here it looks nice alight.
So a PM on that November night in Chicago, four
(14:23):
days before Thanksgiving. Yeah, so everyone was in that frame
of mind, put yourself there. I think that that helps
a lot. It helped me at least football seasons going on. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, just that very day, the
Bears had beat the Lions, which you know, it's a
long time ago. Because the Bears won a football game,
(14:45):
the people in the Windy City of all time, we're
not gonna be happy with you for that city time.
Oh and there's a sportscaster on local channel nine, uh
Dan Rone r a in and he was was going
over the highlights of that football game. Then all of
a sudden, right in the middle, the broadcast signal goes.
(15:09):
It makes those noise noises. And then over at w
g N the control room, they were like, what's what's
going on here? We have no idea what this is.
I think the exact quote was a girl. So um,
what happened was they eventually what what where they were
doing at the time was And this is how We're
(15:29):
not going to go into the weeds here on how
broadcast signals work, but what they did back in the day,
was they broadcast microwave transmissions to antenna's at the top
of the tallest buildings of whatever city that they were
in for local TV, for local TV, which is I
mean there was cable at the time, but local TV
still kind of ruled, yeah in the well sort of
(15:50):
in the late eighties, right, So like starting to segue
to cable, Yeah, for sure, cable is you know, kind
of a thing, but you if you were a local
TV station, you still have pretty big market share of it, right,
especially w g N in Chicago. I mean it's like
Chicago station, right absolutely, So what you I think you're
saying is that in a studio, whatever they're recording or
(16:11):
shooting or playing on their their little video tapes, they're
they're beaming that from the actual studio to a transmitter
stay atop a very tall building, and then that just
kind of bounces around to other transmitters and that's how
everybody in Chicago gets their w g N signal, right, Right,
So all of a sudden, during the sportscast, it skits
(16:32):
is out and then all of a sudden you see
a a guy in a suit, uh wearing a Max
headroom mask and it was there was no audio. That
was I guess the problem with this first intrusion that
was called a broadcast intrusion. Yeah, but you couldn't hear anything.
(16:53):
But I'm sure it was certainly distressing to a viewer
to see this kind of weird thing happened, especially if
viewer who wanted to know what the heck happened between
the Bears and the Lions that day. And um, the
whole thing lasted I think like eleven seconds or some
very short amount of time. Yeah, this was a short
one Before um, the w g N engineers went and
switched to the backup transmitter and and I guess transmitted
(17:17):
on a slightly different signal and brought the broadcast, the
sportscaster back on and Dan Rone was like, uh, if
you're wondering what just happened, so am I right? There's
a chuckle in between. I wasn't going to do my
impression of it, but it's good. You should watch it,
like somebody just go look it up, right, So Federal Investigators,
(17:39):
the FEC that is, was called in to investigate, um
what technically is well not technically it's a crime to
do so. And then just a few minutes later, they thought, well,
this is probably coming from inside the building, and so
that's the first place they started looking. They said, the
intrusions coming from inside the building exactly. They didn't find anybody, though,
(18:00):
I mean it was, as you'll see after we explained further,
it would make sense that you would look in the building, Yeah, right,
for something like this inside job. There apparently was not
an inside job at least as far as the w
g N Engineers search was concerned. Right, right, So that
was at nine fourteen. About two hours later, I think,
(18:22):
at eleven fifteen, on another channel in Chicago, w t
t W, which was the PBS station, they were airing
an episode of Doctor who called the Horror on fang Island,
fang Rock, fang Rock, Horror of fang Rock. You have
to say it like that, the Horror of fang Rock.
Thank you. And this is the Tom Baker doctor. Okay,
(18:44):
that's the only one I recognize that. Really he's seventies, right, Hey,
I'm no doctor. Who guys, don't it looked like it
looked like the seventies. What they cut in on looked
pretty seventies. It didn't look eighty seven. So who do
would think it would be at seven. I'm guess it
was a rerun on PBS, That's what I think. Alright,
we'll find out and oh man, we're going to find
(19:06):
out too. That would have been super easy to check. Yeah,
at any rate, Um, the the in the middle of
this Doctor Who episode, it suddenly cuts out again, and
now you've got what appears to be the full run
of this Max headroom intrusion. Yes, instead of thirty seconds,
this one was a minute in twenty two seconds. And
(19:28):
right now, I would say, if you are somewhere where
you can pause and go to a video online video
carrier of your choosing and type in Max headroom incident,
spend the next minute in twenty two seconds watching it.
We'll wait and we'll wait. We'll just in cert a
minute seconds of silence here, how about this. Let's take
(19:50):
a break and then we'll come back and then we'll
talk about exactly what happened during that minute in two seconds. Okay,
(20:16):
we're back. Did you watch it? Are you talking to me? Okay?
I'm guessing that people people did watch it. A few
people did, smart ones did. Because this is really tough
to describe, and we're going to try but it's something
you really have to see you in here. It's genuinely
disturbing sitting in an office years later watching it, and
(20:39):
I can imagine if I was at home, I would
have probably been a little freaked out. You found it disturbing, Yeah,
I found it hilarious in like a really juvenile way. Yeah,
it creeps me out. It was like watching David Byrne
on acid at a talking head show. That's what I
think of when I saw that, you know, all right,
(21:01):
so let's let's describe the scene here. Okay, so you
got Max Headroom, well, actually a dude wearing a rubbers
rubber Halloween mask of Max Headroom. And this this is
just genius to me. So you mentioned earlier about how
the Max Headroom had like these kind of grid lines
behind them at all times and they kind of moved
and adjusted. They were different colors to do to to
(21:24):
simulate that these guys had like a piece of corrugated metal,
shiny metal, and I guess they had an attached somehow
to something that rocked it back and forth, and they
kind of somebody was clearly rocking it back and forth
here there erratically, and it really does a good job.
It gets the point across that it looked like the
(21:45):
Max bed Room TV show. The Yeah, the back in
the character. Yes, but again I would say that this
person was very very clearly on acid. Well, I think
what disturbs me, and I need to make it clear.
It is definitely funny and stupid. But what disturbs me
is the sound of the voice, which is all garble.
It's really like on YouTube. It has subtitles thankfully because
(22:08):
it's hard to make out, and a lot of times
it just says can't you know understand what he's saying
or whatever? Uh? And the garble quality and just the
random weirdness that's going on. It's not like it was
creepier to mean than if v for Vendetta dude had
a come on Guy Fox had to come on and said,
you know, we are coming into your thing to tell
(22:28):
you this about this. This was just so weird and
all over the place. It was creepy to me. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah,
I see what you mean, Like you're watching some nonsensical
somebody's brain slightly damaged, watching somebody lose their mind. Right, Okay, yeah,
totally get that. Um, And here's here's what the guy
did that would make you feel like he lost his mind. Um,
(22:53):
this is the weird thing to me. It's it's very
targeted towards w g N, right, almost so much so
that some people would say this was clearly somebody who
had a grudge against w g N. He makes fun
of the bulls um sportscaster, the guy who worked for
w g N at the time. He makes reference to
(23:13):
how he just made a masterpiece for the Greatest World's
Newspaper Nerds, which was a messed up version of w
g n's call letters stand for World's Greatest Newspaper. He
wields a rubber penis. That's one. Although it was great
and almost every article it was referred to as a
marital aid. Did you see that? No? But uh, I
(23:36):
actually guessed it on Strickland's Tech stuff like four years ago,
and we covered this and I called it a marital aide,
did you okay? So I wanted to keep it clean.
I realized that saying the word penis is okay, Well,
it's clinical. I mean, we did a puberty episode, surely
we we have the chops to say penis. But marital
(23:57):
aide is hilarious, especially in this context. Like this crazy
dude don Acid wearing a Max Headroom mask is has
a marital aid. No he doesn't, that's not what that
is in that context. Yeah, and that's the new T shirt.
By the way, what we have the chops to say,
pienis so that's a band name. Let's go ahead and
(24:18):
use some of the let's go and say some of
the direct quotes. So he comes on and he goes
he's a freaking nerd. I think I'm better than Chuck Swarsky,
freaking liberal. That's a really good impression of it. And
Chuck Swarsky was the Bulls guy. Yeah, the sports announcer.
And this is a time too when like the Bulls were, Um,
(24:39):
this is the Jordan Pippen era. Still, I mean well
still it's at the beginning of it. Was seven. I
thought it was like in the middle of it. M hmm.
Was at the beginning pretty early earli ish. Let's say,
I wish these days that I would have been more
cognizant and like more into basketball and like I am
now see that's what I was the most into. It
(25:01):
was bird Jordan's magic to watch some of those games. Yeah,
that was good stuff because that's when the Hawks were
good back then, Yeah, back then, Dominique, Hey, shout out
to Kent base Moore. You know he listens to this
show that way, he's a fan. How did you find
that out? Twitter? Yeah, that's great, man, I love base
I know. How do you not love bas Man? He's
(25:23):
brought right right now. That's so cool. Alright, So, uh,
Chuck Sworski's freaking liberal. Uh. He's wielding the rubber penis
the marital aide. He drops that. Then he picks up
a new coke while you can't really tell if it
oh was it? Okay? I couldn't really tell. He picks
up a can and but he says catch the wave,
(25:43):
which is the new Coke slogan. Right. Then he starts humming.
It's so random. Then he starts humming the theme song
to the sixties show Clutch Cargo, which is weird in
and of itself. Sure, that's that one where it's like animation,
but for the mouths. That was just like a human
mouth moving with that's disturbing. Yeah, that was. If you've
(26:04):
seen pulp fiction, it was the scene where Bruce Willis
was a kid and Christopher Walkin comes in with the
wristwatch scene. Um, that Clutch Cargo is playing on TV
when he's watching it. But it is weird looking, right,
so you would say, why did you do the Clutch
Cargo theme? Well, again, this is a w g N
thing and apparently that's where you saw it as as
(26:25):
a kid. Yeah on um in Chicago. Okay, So he says, also,
your love is fading. I still see the X, which
apparently is something from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Yeah,
that was the Big X or something. And then he says,
what you're talking about earlier, I just made a joint
masterpiece for all the greatest World Newspaper nerds. But he
(26:48):
should have said world's Greatest Newspaper Nerds w g IN right,
which you might find confusing, as I did too. But
apparently the Chicago Tribune Company owns w g N TV,
so they called themselves World's Greatest Newspaper TV. Right. It's
all coming together. It's so fact though. There you go.
(27:10):
Then finally towards the end, the camera cuts to a
different angle. Uh, this one has the dude bent over
with his bare butt hanging out. His face is now
off screen, but he's holding the mask still out like
his head is in it, but it's not. And there
is a person I say woman, but I don't know,
(27:30):
but a person in a like an anti Oakley dress?
Is that what it was? I didn't get that. Yeah,
it looked like a prairie bonnet ensemble, but the bonnet
kind of hides the face, so you don't know if
it's a man or a woman. And they are spanking
the bare butt with a fly swatter, and he's worried
about them coming to get him. They're going to get me,
(27:51):
and then he says come get me and uses a
bad word, B word, the B word, and then it
goes back to Dr Who. Yeah, as as just like
it when it came in went out it just because
it's like gone. Can you imagine seeing that live? And
that while the people who saw it live, the next
thing they would have heard was the doctor saying something like, oh,
(28:12):
he died of an electric shock. Must have died instantly.
And then and everybody's just sitting there, mouths hanging open.
It was Dr Who too, so it was probably a
bunch of Chicago nerds watching PBS. Yeah, so al right,
my inmentation was okay, but let's just play at least
like a couple of lines from the real thing. Yeah,
(28:45):
all right, so you did a pretty good impression. I
think everyone can agree now, right. Strange So this was
an enormous thing, right, Like, um, like people were watching
this and we're aghast. Agog some people probably thought it
was funny. Um. W g N reporting on it all
over the place the next couple of days. Yeah, the
(29:05):
newspapers had picked it up. Yeah, um, there's this one.
There's a compilation of w g M broadcasts, or it
might may even be more than just w g N
of people in the street being interviewed. What do you
think about this? One Guy's like it's it's kind of
like Cooligans throwing a brick through your window, you know,
to get your attention. There's a little kid who's like,
(29:27):
very very funny. The star of the news, though, was
this one doctor who fan uh, this lady who was
not at all amused by this, and I just want
to play her little segment. Okay, yeah, get annoyed. You know.
I just thought it would be just a slight mess up,
but that in the middle of tap, it's going to
be you're gonna have to tape over it. I just
(29:50):
think that's the funniest thing out of the whole the
whole thing. Well, another guy said he wanted to smash
his TV he was so angry. Yeah, I didn't see
that guy. I saw that in the Pastor Nech article. Yeah,
he was mad. So there was a lot of mixed reaction.
But the the the voice from on high that came
from the FCC who you said, we're called in pretty quickly.
They were like, this is no laughing matter. You might
(30:12):
think it's funny, it's not very funny. Okay, it's kind
of funny, but not really. And you can get a
hundred thousand dollar fine in a year in jail for
this kind of thing, so stop doing it. But at
this point, by this point, it was actually a federal offense.
It was a felony, a felony offense. Wait, what was that?
(30:32):
Days been confused? Cantering with the mailbox is a felony.
I was like, wait a minute, I know that from somewhere.
So the f c C gets involved in this, This
is really interesting in this article that I got involved
to FB, I was involved Chicago p D like there
was they were looking into it. Apparently the um man
I has become obvious to me that I say the
(30:53):
word apparently a lot, really a lot. I was listening
to an episode, queing an episode, and it was like
stopped saying apparently, Josh, yeah, I've started after ten years,
I've started to notice some things about my own self.
It's like a tick. I tried to just avoid it.
I tried to too normally I can, but man, it
just came welling up into my awareness. Apparently it's really
(31:17):
I'm gonna have to get over it at any rate. Um,
the the there were a lot of different agencies working
on this, but the trail went cold pretty quick. And
you remember how you said that. Um, the w g
N engineers started looking around the station. I think what
they were looking for was this somebody physically patching in
(31:39):
to the transmission network the cable mask and yeah, either
playing a videotape, which it's it seems pretty obvious it
was pre taped or doing something like in a studio,
but but that they would have to physically patch into
w g n's transmission network. Yeah, it's like when a
(32:00):
car doesn't work and I opened the hood thinking I'm
going to see a squirrel not gnawing on a cable
that two pieces now and frayed at the ends. Right now,
imagine that squirrel wearing a max hydroom mask and being
on acid, okay, with maritalaide. So um, And at first
the FEC and the FBI and anybody who was in
(32:23):
the know basically said, this was a very sophisticated attack.
It would have required a very very some very expensive equipment,
a lot of electricity. Um, there's not a lot of
ways that they could have done this. But later on
in the Pastor Nick article, and this is this is
one of the ways Pastor that contributed to this whole thing.
(32:45):
He talked to one of the SEC investigators and this
guy basically did away with that that whole viewpoint that
had lasted for almost thirty years, that it had to
have been somebody with a hundred thousand dollar piece of
equipment and you know, ten thousand dollars worth of electricity.
Over the minute and a half he was saying, No,
you could probably have gotten the equipment needed for this
(33:08):
new for ten grand at the time, or you could
have probably bought it for use for just a fraction
of that, and um, it would have taken very little electricity.
It would have just taken um. Some know how and
good positioning. Really yeah, Basically he was like you, it
could have been done with like the size of a
direct TV dish today, and all they would have had
(33:31):
to do was get and a high enough location in between,
like literally, because they're beaming waves, are beaming microwaves through
the air. So he's like, all they had to do
is get in between the original studio and that initial
tower on top of the I think it was a
John Hancock building for w g N. Yeah, yeah, And
(33:52):
and have a stronger signal, right, so even just like
a slightly stronger signal. So you remember how w g
N has their studio transmission shooting up to the John
Hancock building and then that transmitter shoots it out to
everybody else in Chicago. What what? What? What I think
you're saying is like if somebody was on the roof
of another nearby building and they just shoot a transmission
(34:15):
their own max headroom transmission at a stronger a stronger
way or no, a stronger amplitude, that's what it is.
Of the same frequency. You just overpower cancels out what
w g N is doing and instead it transmits your
max headroom thing, and they would be closer to that
broadcast hour. Yes, so um, that would mean that it
(34:39):
required far less electricity than you would think or that
they originally thought, and a far less equipment to They
also had a pretty good idea of where these people
would have had to have done it, because they after
they got shut out of w g M, they turned
their attention to w t t W, the PBS station,
and they hijacked their signal. Well, w t W shot
(35:01):
their studio link to the Sears Tower. So this would
have been somebody who was on a roof somewhere that
had a clear view of John Hancock Building and the
Sears Tower and could transmit to either one of them.
But that's basically what they think happened. Yeah, and the
guy you were talking about, Dr Michael Marcus, who at
the time was the Assistant Bureau Chief in the FCCS
(35:24):
Field Operations Bureau. He was a lead investigator, and he
said that the guy in Chicago that was sort of
in charge wasn't super like. He was just sort of
used to traditional FCC investigations. He wasn't wanted to go
knocking on doors and uh as to like investigate some
kind of weird kind of maybe creepy criminal dudes. Uh
(35:46):
it may or may not have a marital aid in
his apartment. Just smack him on that whether and then uh.
They also, you know, nobody was being hurt, No one
got hurt in the end, it was it was almost
a victimless crime. So they didn't throw a ton of
resources at it. They were kind of like, listen, we're
not gonna If you want to go investigate this, that's
(36:07):
great you should, but we're not going to assign a
team of twelve people to try and crack this case
of a bunch of nerds who did a weird thing
for a minute seconds And I think the longer it
went on and there was no more of these intrusions
from these guys, the fewer and fewer resources they had
to work with, and it just kind of fell to
(36:28):
the wayside. Well, what's interesting is to at the in
the beginning, they said it's gonna it would take somebody
with a very expensive piece of equipment, a lot of electricity,
and a lot of know how, And today the only
one of those that's remaining is a lot of know how.
There wouldn't have been a lot of people running around
(36:49):
Chicago who would have known how to do something like this. Um,
so it's kind of surprising, even with very few resources
that no one has ever been really implicated in this one. Yeah,
I don't think we said no. They still don't know
who did this. It's an unsolved mystery. Like Dennis Farina
and Robert Stack, I love this one. Uh. The FBI,
(37:14):
for their take, started concentrating on the actual video. They
had the technology at the time, which is kind of
funny now to think about it, but they're the only
ones who had the technology at the time to actually
make enhance frames of this videotape and print out, you know,
pictures enhance them. And they were kind of focused on
(37:34):
this upper right hand quadrant, as they say, where the
Antie Oakley was spanking with the fly swatter. I don't
know why they're so into that, but they said, you know,
we're trying to get clues on the actual location of
the people who made the tape, not necessarily where they
broadcast it from, but where did they shoot this thing.
To begin with, it was very little to go on
aside from that spinning corrugated metal, and that could have
(37:58):
been literally anywhere. Because it's a really tight shot. It
really is. Yeah, and there was very little evidence given
in the video. Yeah. I mean it says that they
were looking at industrial warehouses and things, but that could
have been in an apartment living room. I mean, it
wasn't like the door was a text anything. It was
freely spinning back and forth. So it didn't make not
(38:18):
the best lead, right, So um over time, and again
this is weird too. It's it's not so weird that
the FCC or the FBI didn't find who did this
if they weren't really looking very hard. Was really weird
is that no one has been like, it was these guys.
I was there, I know these dudes. It was these guys.
Statute limitations is done, like who cares? Yeah, after these
(38:42):
guys would have gotten off scott free because the statute
of limitations for this one was five years. Right. I'm
shocked that no one later said, hey, that was me, right,
No one's done that, right. Yeah, there was um some
so very early forum like message boards stuff took the
form of bulletin boards services. I think BBS is really
(39:07):
early geek culture, like like like Matthew Broderick dialing something
with his phone and then putting it on that weird
little you know, Commodore sixty four thing, the motum yet
to like transmit the dial tone over the telephone system, right, So, um,
that's what that's what like the level of technology that
these people were dealing with, but they were communicating with
(39:29):
each other over like this proto internet, these bulletin board systems.
And two days after this, a guy named the Chameleon
posted basically what you and I said about how all
it took was these guys to go up on a
tall building and overwhelm the w g N and the
w T t W studio links. And it's so facto
(39:50):
I'm a big fan of that. By the way, Um,
the this this intrusion was successful, right two days, not
two years, not a year ago. Two days after it,
somebody was on there explaining how it went out. So
somebody knew this, right, But only two theories have really
ever come to light as to who it was. One
(40:11):
you can basically just throw right out, and the other
one it turns out to have been a dead end. Yeah.
The first one that you were talking about that doesn't
really hold water was a and this was a rumor
online for a while. I was a musician named Eric
Fournier Fournier Furnier. I had a friend in uh in preschool.
(40:31):
I think, yeah, that's how it was spelled f O
U R in I E R. Actually I don't know
how it spelled. I couldn't spell back then. Um. So
this guy was in a band, uh, and he did
this weird, super creepy YouTube series called shay st john
(40:53):
S h A y E. Did you watch it? Oh? Yeah,
I love it. Yeah, just knew that you would love
it if you're but this is genuinely unsettling too. I'm
with you on that. So it kind of fit and
that he was doing these weird things. He had this band, Uh.
They were in Bloomington, Indiana, not too far from Chicago,
the Blood Farmers, Yeah, the bands of Blood Farmers, and
(41:14):
they did these weird music videos and they thought this
is the kind of guy that would have done that.
And the thinking was that he went to go broadcast
one of their weird music videos as a broadcast intrusion,
but chickened out at the last minute because they would
have been found uh, and then ended up just improving.
That part makes a little sense because it definitely seems improved.
It does, but it was also videotaped. Remember, So that
(41:37):
means he would have had two videotapes with him. What
do you mean? So if he was gonna if he
was going to play the music video and said I'm
not gonna do that, he would have had to have
brought this other video tape. And the other thing is
apparently his friend. See I just said apparently again. Alex
Pastor Neck from Motherboard contacted some of Fernier's friends because
(41:59):
Fernie Or died in two thousand ten. But his friends
are like, absolutely not. Even some of the blood Farmers
are like, it wasn't him, Like, I know what you're saying,
and yeah, he did the whole shay st John thing,
but it was this was not him. It was not
quite there. He didn't know what he was doing with it.
He wouldn't know any broadcast stuff or video editing or
anything like that. Yeah, so this other one to me
(42:21):
seems pretty promising. Uh So we flashed forward to when
did this actually happen? Was this like by the time
read it had to come around when it on Reddit? Yeah,
I think it was about twenty five years after, so
it would have been in two thousand seven. Yeah, so
there's this guy two thousand. Okay, sorry, there was this
(42:44):
guy named from Chicago named Bowie Pogue p o G.
I didn't have any friends with that last name when
I was a kid, and he was one of the
kids hanging around those bbs is in the eighties in Chicago.
From the sounds of it, he was on the younger side.
He was thirteen, and even as the thirteen year old geek,
was very much intimidated by the older geeks in that crowd,
(43:07):
and so wasn't boisterous. He was sort of like, Hey,
I'm kind of hanging out here and not saying much
and don't notice me. I just want to ingratiate myself
and you guys can give me drunk laugh if you want.
And then at a party he remembers this uh. He
described him as a small, peculiar man that he thought
was about in his thirties, and he had an older brother.
(43:30):
They lived in Chicago. So Poe is describing these two
guys who were in the same scene with him, correct, Yeah,
And he had They lived with his girlfriend downtown or
about ten miles from downtown Chicago, and they had the
know how. They were super into computers early on you
he said he went to their apartment and it was
(43:50):
just like it looked like a computer hoarder, mess of
wires and computers and equipment like Neo's apartment. Yeah, why not?
Or what was the other one he was in before
the Matrix Johnny Newmonic, Yes, yeah, Bill and Ted Yeah,
Johnny Newmonic. That's cyberpunk, yes, right, yes, it is all right.
(44:12):
You could probably make the case that the Matrix is
as well there, right, sure. So he described him as
a stocky guy with tinted lens glasses in his early
thirties and odd dude his brother, he said. He described
it's just kind of normal. But he said that he
didn't make the connection at the time, but at a
(44:33):
party on November about the same day. Midday on November,
he was at a gathering of these dudes at the
brothers apartment and he heard them say something about doing
something big. Later that night, they went to Pizza Hut
and He's like, what are you guys talking about? What's
the big thing? And they said, hey, I don't ask questions,
but just watched Channel eleven tonight on that same day,
(44:56):
and I don't know how he didn't put it together.
That's that's the one thing that really strikes. But he
said that years later. Now when he looks at it,
he's like, even with that mask on, I see the body,
I see what's going on. I hear that, and it's
it's that guy to me. But twenty five years later,
he was there that day, they tell him to watch
(45:17):
that night, and he didn't put it together for twenty
five years. That to me is the one fishy thing. Well,
and he has been called out as fishy. Sure, I'm
sure he knows that it's kind of fishy. Yeah. So
that the guy the motherboard, pastor Neck reached out and
he said, you can you still get in touch with
these guys all these years later, he said, he sent
(45:38):
them messages via Facebook. I don't even know if they
saw him. They didn't get back. Then in the last
sitch effort, he sent them a certified mail too. He
found out where they lived, never heard anything back, and
he was like, hey, it's clear that these guys don't
want to be talked to, so you want to take
a break, Yeah, let's do it, okay m hm. So
(46:17):
that's where it stands right now, Like nobody knows who
is behind it still to this day, which is it
is crazy. And as a result, this Max Headroom hack
has taken its place in like the pantheon of geek
culture and of hacker culture, and rightfully so you know
it was legendary in its own way. That's right. Ah,
(46:39):
you got anything else? I got nothing else on this one,
cool man. Well, if you want to know more about
Max Headroom, you should start by checking out this amazing
Motherboard article by Alex Pastor Knack. And since I said amazing,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna go with Uh,
(47:01):
I'm gonna go with the Almond Brothers eat a Peach
from a Munchies. I don't know if it's true, but
it's fun. I wanted to talk about when Josh talked
about the Almond Brothers band factoid um because I think
it's actually a cool factoid. Dwayne Alman was once asked
by a reporter what he was going to do for
the war effort in Vietnam, and his response was, I'm
(47:22):
going to eat a peach for peace. Dwayne died not
long after that album, and Eat a Peach was released posthumously,
so he contends Jesse Godet that that is where the
album title came from and they eat a peach? Was
not Eta, bud he or she? I guess Jesse could
(47:44):
go either way. Yeah, as always, keep up a good work.
I'm currently brewing beer and listening. Tell me where to
mail some bottles or come pick them up in Salt
Lake City. All right, we'll do both. It's like a challenge, right,
they're too heavy. I can't pick him up. Thanks a lot, Jesse,
appreciate that, even though I still think I'm right. Um,
(48:04):
if you want to contend that something one of us
said is incorrect, we love that. Stuff. You can tweet
to us at Josh I'm Clark, s y s K
podcast or movie Crush. You can hang out with us
on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know or
slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com
(48:25):
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
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