SYSK Live: How Game Shows Work

Join Josh and Chuck and a whole bunch of great people at the Gothic Theatre in Denver for this live show on game shows and their place in cultures around the world, recorded on June 28, 2018. You just come right on down, why don’t you?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not with us,
but these beautiful people are at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. Yeah,

(00:41):
that was easily double last night's reception. That was That
was a good start, is what they called that. And
I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lovely
lady with a Josh sent me shirt. Oh yes, I
thank you for loving that. Um. Okay, So tonight, you guys,

(01:02):
you're probably gonna feel like you just wasted your applause
because we're going to be talking about game shows. Yes,
oh good, you guys are into it. That's good because
it was a it's a coin toss. Frankly, about half
the people are like, I wonder what the real topic is, right,
he's just kidding. We actually we wanted a show, and

(01:23):
I think Portland's and came out and said that, Um,
it was the anniversary of the How the Sun Works show,
so we were gonna redo it, and like all the
people were like, wow, we want to like you guys,
but we're really mad right now, are you kidding? Like, yes,
we're just we're all super high, so we really don't care, right,
They're like, that's why we cheered a game shows. So

(01:47):
we we wanted to do game shows in part because
Fourth of July is coming up. You guys can't have
fireworks because it's too dry here to set off a firework.
It's the most wildly irresponsible thing you could do. Something
tells me that some of your militia members are going
to shoot off fireworks anyway, but even still, Fourth of

(02:08):
July is coming. So we wanted to do something American,
and nothing is more American than game shows. They're like
leisure suit level American, right, but as yeah, right, you
get a free beer, as Americans game shows are. However,
it turns out that the first game show on television

(02:30):
was actually British. It was a British investor. Now we
like the base because they live in another country. Right,
And remember this, buddy, if you shoot into the air,
bullets come back down, so just don't shoot into the air.

(02:54):
Maybe blanks are okay. So this first game show in
Great Britain, it launched in ninety eight, is called Spelling
Bee and it was exactly what it sounds like. That's right.
Freddie Grysewood was the host, and he dressed as a
school teacher. He kind of played it up a bit,
which was nice, and he would say spell this, and

(03:16):
they spelled it. And if it sounds boring, it was
because even though there was nothing on TV, it still
was not met with warm receptions. Advertisers liked it. But
there was a columnist in The Independent in two thousand,
just eighteen years ago, such a snarky British thing to say.
He said this one of the few happy consequences of

(03:38):
the Second World War was it took spelling Be off
air burn. Yeah, like a good World War two burn.
So spelling Be even though it was boring, it kicked
off this huge craze. Just immediately. Everyone saw like, okay,
if spelling Bee can be popular with the advertisers, we

(04:00):
can do better than that. We're America, right, So we
took it the ball and ran with it. We were
already familiar with game shows. We had them on the radio,
like we had shows like um, you bet your life
with grout show Marks was a big one. Um, there
was what is it? What's my line? What's my line?
That's where you tried to guess someone's profession by asking
them questions. It's like maybe a step up from spelling

(04:22):
b Right. Then things start to get cool with Truth
or Consequences, which started out as a radio show and
then very quickly moved on to TV. Truth or Consequences
was this show where you had to you were asked
a question and you had to answer before Bulah the
buzzer sounded. They named their buzzer Beulah Yeah, which is

(04:43):
kind of neat, right, It's just a nice little touch, right,
And if you didn't answer before Bulah went off, um,
you had to face the consequences, which is like something wacky,
like a mock execution or something like that. Right. Uh.
The coolest thing about that show though, was that they
have you ever been to Truth or Consequences? New Mexico?
Were driven very fast through there. Yeah, are you from there? Okay?

(05:09):
Pretty close? I think it's in the same state, all right,
I'm a Los Crucis guy myself, but whatever, name dropper,
you're a name dropping uh. Host Ralph Edwards said that
they would broadcast live from the first town that would
name their city after Truth or Consequences. This is not

(05:32):
a joke. And that's where that town name came from.
Before that, it was the lovely Hot Springs, New Mexico,
and they named it Truth or Consequences. They're like, our
town's name is basically just like a caution sign. We
can we can lose this. We'll still keep the sign
up that says Hot Springs because it's useful, but we're
gonna change our name. And they did. I think they

(05:53):
cheaped out personally. Okay, don't tell them that back in
New Mexico that's said that. Okay. So this was I
think nine was when the game shows started coming on
TV in the US, and by the fifties they were
like some of the top rated shows on television game
shows where they call them quiz shows back then even

(06:15):
they did, and that was pretty much the format like
they were. There was actually like thought and like skill
to this um like masteries. They were yeah, smarts right,
there was like, um, the sixty four thousand dollar question,
which in today's dollars would be the five hundred and
nine thousand, five hundred fifty nine and sixty three cent question.

(06:35):
That's correct, thank you. Although you wrote this a couple
of months ago, I thought I'm really sad that you
brought that up. I was just gonna not mention. All right, well,
Jerry in the future, cut that part out. I don't
want to make Josh uncomfortable. Thank you. Jerry's all around
us right now. You guys, we lived on a hard
drive in Jerry's computer in the future. This is all

(07:01):
a simulation. So the pressure was on to make these
quiz shows as dramatic as possible, and so producers of
these quiz shows realize, hey, we can maybe manipulate these things,
i e. Cheat and build up people who people love
to love and people who love to hate. In America
will never know the difference, and they'll think it's great, right,

(07:23):
And that's what they did. There was this one show
called twenty one. You guys might have seen the movie
Quiz Show with John Treturo and Ray finds. I guess
not it's worth seeing, worth seeing, right, um. But it's
about this actual scandal that happened in the US with
this one show called twenty one. And the whole thing

(07:44):
started where there was this producer for twenty one who
approached this blue blood lip professor named Charles van Doren
and just appealed to his ego. He said, there's this
guy on this show that I produced. His name's Herb Stemple.
He's like the worst stain of a human being anyone's
every scene, but you can't stop winning. In America hates
him and Revalon, our sponsor, is gonna leave. We're starting

(08:07):
to lose ratings. You gotta help us van Doren. Van
Dorn was like, okay, I'll see what I can do.
Just feed me the lines and we'll cheat together and
I will help you. By the way, that was okay,
So he gets locked into this right, But what Van
Doren didn't know is that he was actually being scammed.
It was a scam within a scam because Herb Stemple

(08:29):
was a plant. Yeah, he was a plant. They made
him wear an ill fitting suit, they gave him a
bad haircut, and they try to make him as unlikable
as possible so they would have a villain on their hands.
And Herb Stemple doesn't like this, of course, because you
would think like, all right, well, then go to the
press and expose this thing. And he did, and the
press said, you're just a sore loser. Yeah, they wouldn't.

(08:52):
The New York Times said, nah, you're just a sore loser. Uh.
There was another guy who was the other dude, Tony Jackson. Yes,
only Jackson was another I think he was on the
sixty four thousand dollar question. He went to the New
York Times and Time magazine and said, these are all rigged,
none of these game shows are real, and they went, yeah,
you're just a sore loser. So finally there was hard evidence.

(09:16):
There was another question named Otto, and somebody found a
contestants notebook that had the questions and the answers in
it and took it to the press and that was that.
And America's reaction was profound. You could say they had
congressional hearings on it. They amended the nine Communications Act

(09:38):
to expressly outlaw dishonest quiz shows. Right, this is like
a very naive time in our country's history. I'm trying
to think of a time when, uh, game show quality
was one of the more important things on the docket.
Right now, I'm depressed, lest hippies, I don't have to

(10:03):
think Van Dorn. By the way, he was actually indicted
for perjury. He was because he had lied to Congress. No,
he told the truth Congress. He lied to a court, right,
But I don't think it did a hard time. I
said he was a blue blood. Yeah, let's face it,
it was still it was still America. He didn't he
didn't serve any hard time. So uh. Those quiz show

(10:24):
scandals gave us one of the weird quirks of Jeopardy.
At one point, Mervy, Yes, I still love Jeopardy. Uh. Merv.
Griffin's wife suggested at one time that he do a
quiz show, and he was like, shut up, nobody wants
to come near a quiz show. Haven't you been paying attention?
And she wad you shut up? Why don't you just

(10:46):
make the questions the answers, the answers the questions. I'm
sure they're very lovely people. Actually, that's just how he
picture it in my head. Is there all draw punkin, smoking, skelling,
bangally bracelets on his wife? Julian actually suggested that, and

(11:06):
that's where that interesting quirk of Jeopardy came from. And
by the time the executives figured out it was actually
the same thing late on the air, you could still
feed someone the questions or answers, right, so um, the
scandal again, America's response was profound and it almost killed
off quiz shows, were it not for one of maybe

(11:30):
our country's greatest geniuses ever, manned by the name of
Mark Goodson, who created the greatest game show ever. The
price is right. Yes, Mark Goodson and Bill Toddman his partner.
I don't recognize him, just Mark Goodson. So all right,
you're weird, longstanding drudge against Bill Toddens. It's not so

(11:51):
much that it's more an idolization of Mark Goodson. Okay,
that's fine. So what Mark Goodson did he said, Okay, everybody, wait,
we don't have to give up quiz shows. What we're
gonna do is take quiz shows and make them dumber
and then we have game shows. And that's what he did.
They did away with the game, they did away with

(12:12):
quiz anything. They did away with um having to know
stuff can actually compete on the game. And that's when
they got really good. Yeah, that is when they got
really good, brother, you can say that again they did.
That's when it got really good. Thank you, because this
was the era that we all know and love if
anyone watches the Game show Network, when you could just

(12:34):
trot out drunk celebrities to spew racist and homophobic jokes
left and right. Oh yes, the good old days. Well,
hey make America great again? Right, uh oh god, it's
like crowded sea. Just someone big sea saw shreds legal.

(12:56):
We don't tread on me, and let's just back away
from this chuck all right, Jerry cut all that out,
uh jr. Out of here. Celebrities getting drunk, which I
was like the match game in Hollywood Squares and they
like flat out got drunk on the match game. If
you've ever seen like behind the scene stories, it's pretty great.

(13:18):
They just swilled vodka basically from like a noon on
and you had. The only smarts you had to have
as a contestant was to be able to fill in
the blanks. You had to be able to speak. That's it.
Like this Frank was embarrassed because his blank squeaked, Like
that's as smart as you needed to be. Let's name

(13:38):
a body part. Like you, you basically couldn't get it wrong.
And if you got it wrong is because you just
guess wrong. You had just is is as much of
a chance of guessing right as you had right. But
there was always a chance that Nipsey Russell would be
thinking the same body part, and then you were you
were the winner. It's pretty great. They would carry you
out on their shoulders and give you a bunch of

(13:59):
mushrooms as they were all on mushrooms themselves. Uh. And
then there was, of course the newly Wed Game, the
legendary Newlywed Game where they would trot out married couples
and ask they would put one of them backstage, ask
a question of the other spouse and say, you know,
how would your would your husband or wife answer this?
Are we doing this? Yeah? I think we have to

(14:20):
because it's one of the biggest moments in game show history.
Was Holga from the Newlywed Game? We're doing and now,
have you guys ever heard of Holga from the Newlywed Game?
A few of you have, well the rest of you
buck Land. So there was a woman competing with her
husband on the newly Wed Gamer. Name is Holga? I

(14:41):
think husband's name four? For for argument's sake. Sure, So
Holga was asked among her fellow competitors on the game, um,
tell me, girls, where is the weirdest place typically that
you personally have ever gotten the urge to make? Whoopie?

(15:06):
And Holga answered in the ass you can you can
watch it online when you get home, and poor Holga's like,
why does everyone laugh? I guess it's funny. And then
when they brought her husband back and all the other husbands,
they said, what do you think your wife would say?

(15:27):
And her husband guests in the car. So they didn't win,
but they definitely went down in history, and Holga was
still going, why is everybody laughing at me? Poor Holgan.
Then there was a show called Queen for a Day.
This is an interesting show because it was a big,
big hit with audiences even though it was decidedly strange,

(15:48):
and that they would bring out women who had genuine
troubles in their life and uh spill their guts about
what was going on in hopes that they would be
voted up via applause me eater to solve those problems
with money. So you literally had ladies on TV talking
about not being able to afford surgery for their sick

(16:09):
child and an applause meter is going up while people
are going crazy and rooting them on. It sounds very
strange and it was, but it was a it was
a big, big hit. It was, and in fact that
even stretched it from thirty minute show to an hour
hunk show because advertisers loved it so much. Queen for
a Day, Queen for a Day. So there was another

(16:31):
big thing that happened, um when game shows started to
make a comeback. They moved from prime time the daytime
and the way that we think of game shows today,
which is like back to back starting in the morning
going well into the afternoon. You don't even have to
turn the channel once. That started in the seventies when
there was this sudden spasm of game shows that came

(16:53):
on daytime TV out of nowhere and just said get
out of the way, soap operas, move over of American
style reruns. Uh, it just took over, and like what
we think of his, game shows came out of the
mid seventies and it was they made a pretty big splash.
Yeah that was. In fact, there was an article in
the New York Times. It said you could watch nine

(17:15):
straight game shows between nine and two pm on NBC
every weekday. Nine straight game shows. It's amazing. And this
is the world I grew up in. So I was
pretty happy. Kid, say, this is how I watched Prices, right,
That's how I watched and still watch Pyramid. To me,

(17:37):
one of the greatest all time game shows. I love Pyramid.
It's no prices, right, but it's good. I love prices, right,
I was on the prices. Well, I was not on
Its a taping of the prices right. It's a big difference,
and I will tell that story later, Okay, put a
pin in it. So the reason, all right, the reason
UM had to ask Josh's permission everything I say so.

(18:03):
The reason that game shows made like such a big
comeback after they were almost dead, it was pretty simple money.
They're actually really really cheap to make. UM. They came
back in part again because of Mark Goodson, but they
also came back because there were risk averse executives when
they actually pop up a lot in this show you'll

(18:24):
find But back in the sixties and seventies, UM variety
shows were huge. They kind of came in and filled
the void after quiz shows went away. But they're really
expensive to make. Game shows are not expensive to make.
They used to be even less expensive than they are today.
Like today you have what's called a prize budget and
it's part of your show budget. Did anybody see The

(18:46):
Power of Ten? It was on for like a season
in two thousand seven. Yeah, no one did, right, That's
why I was on for a season response by the way,
But it was like this kind of slick new game show,
the complicated rules and everything. Um. But they had a
prize budget for the season of three million dollars, but
they had a top prize of ten million dollars, and

(19:08):
the producers just kind of hoped, knowing, whatever get to
the ten million dollar question. They basically said, this show
is so hard, no one, it's virtually impossible to get
to that ten million dollar question. Ipso facto. We're fine. Right.
The first contestant got to the ten million dollar question.

(19:31):
I I was like, surely that's isn't true. And I
looked it up again in the green rooms, like it
is still true? Are you still fact checking? Yeah? I
love it. That's the kind of quality you can expect
from stuff you should not. So producers have other levers
they can pull if things are going badly for them,

(19:54):
which is to say going great for a contestant, like
on the prices, right, if if people are winning a lot,
they can bring out you know, those games are all
on wheels. They can bring out whatever they want. They
just bring out the harder games to play like a
penny any super easy game penny Annie is is everyone's
winning a lot of money? H Barker, because Barker runs

(20:15):
the show. Everyone knows that. Yeah, Barker might say, well, no,
let's bring up plink oh because we're on a run
here and we're going broke, and I need there's a
lot of pets that need to be spade neutered, so
it needs my money around his bedroom waiting for the
return and surgery. Then he might try tout Cliffhanger, the

(20:38):
very tough Cliffhanger with the the the Yodler, one of
my favorite games, and then the Kuda Gras. At the end.
If everyone is winning, they will bring out the only
game on the prices right where you actually need physical skills?
Can anyone name it? Hole in one who said it?
That's where he had you're giving out a lot of beer.

(21:00):
It's not. It's their money that comes out of our
cut what So hold on one is the one where
you have to put from like different distances depending on
whatever you've guessed for the price. And that's like I
remember being a kid and seeing like an eight year
old woman handed a golf butter from nine ft away
and just like sinking it dropping out. That'd be so great.

(21:23):
Barker always showed off and put it. Well, that's why
that was even on. There was so he could get
a little golf in at work. Uh. Here's the other
thing that they do. They also inflate the prizes of
the of the value of the prizes so they can
write it off on their income taxes as a production company.
That's really true. They take out life or not life insurance.

(21:45):
They probably should take out life insurance. They take out
insurance policies in case someone wins the big prize, indemnity insurance.
It's amazing. They have all their bases covered. And then
if none of that works and somebody wins. I did
realize this until we researched this this show. Um. They
do lot of style payouts to where they come to

(22:06):
you and say, hey, congratulations, you can have like a
tenth of this now, where you can have the whole
thing over like fifty years again, congratulations for winning. You
can have this new car now, or how about the
segue or the dashboard today chair next year, the car chair,

(22:27):
they know what they're calling the second the driver's chair,
passenger chair, the sege the invention that revolutionize standing, That
was gonna change the city because we're all in seguays.
Were there so much room on any given sidewalk for
thousands of seguys? Well, they were gonna do away with cars.

(22:49):
We wrote a segue remember that they're hard. Have you
guys ever written on a segway? They're tough? Head Cracker
that was the original name for him. I was about
to say, Jerry cut that out, but you saved it. Thanks,
nice work. All right, where are we so the other thing? Okay, No,
I know where we are. All right. I'm glad you
said that got us back on track. So um Prize

(23:17):
budgets are kind of a new thing as far as
game shows go, back in the day, back in the
seventies spasm of game shows on daytime. If you did
this right, you could basically pay for the production costs
for your show and ad revenue would be just a profit. Right.
And they did this because you could trade stuff for

(23:38):
plugs on the game show. And we didn't realize this
until well, I guess you realized it years before. I
was like in my twenties when I realized the prices
right was a sixty minute TV commercial. Okay, I was
researching this show when I realized that, because again, this
is how I watched Prices. Right, it's taken on face value.

(23:59):
It's just it's in show plug after in show plug,
whether it's Rice Erroni, the San Francisco treat or Bush's
baked beans with more fat than ever before, or the
new Ford Pinto less uh fiery than it was a
year ago. Right, So depending on whether it was like

(24:19):
Rice Erroney, Rice Erroni would go to Bob Barker and say,
here's a sac of money, a lifetime supply of Rice Erroni,
and um, you just go plug Rice Errony on your show. Uh.
Ford would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a
fiery death Chap Pinto and we'll give you this an
exchange for like six plugs on the show. And Barker

(24:39):
would lean back in his recliner and go, let me
think about it. Let me ask you it's your dog spade,
or before we go any further in this business deal,
I need to know what's on the table. Take him
out back and teach him a lesson. That was the
real Barker. Everybody, that's not true. Snot. He's a sweetheart

(25:01):
of a man. All right. I'm sorry, I keep getting
lost because I'm halfway drunk. Uh halfway. Oh. So it
ends up sounding kind of like a pyramid scam when
you really look at how they do these things, because
they're getting all this free product and then they're charging
them for ad revenue for the product. So it's just

(25:22):
it's all gravy basically, right, because then you can take
that money pay your host, but also like use it
for cash prizes. If there's somebody who won't trade you
their thing in in exchange for bugs, you can actually
buy it and the whole thing, just wash it up
and it's free. Um. So they're very cheap to make.
And there's one other thing that you need to know
about game shows. Their production wise, they would film like

(25:43):
five or six of them in a single day, so
you get the whole week done, just knocked out in
a single day. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the
big reasons are so cheap is because you save on
studio cost, on crew cost because they just knock them
out from like nine to five every day. Then Barker
goes home to his liner, smokes a cigar, and Space

(26:04):
and neuters a bunch of dogs. So, guys, I don't
know about you all, but I'm feeling pretty good about
this show. That was Actually, that wasn't a prompt for applause.
That's that's me softening the blow. Why did you sit
there and wait? And that means that we have to

(26:26):
put an ad break in. That's right, So if you quiet, so,
if you'll bear with us, we'll be right back after
these messages. We're right back, ma'am. Magic covented. Yes, that's

(27:03):
how that works. So well, pay for this show, not commercial,
and pay for commercial. I'm gonna tell my fellow militia members.
So with his seventies glood of game shows, UH comes
some of the most popular TV shows of all time
in American history. UH shows like Wheel of Fortune in

(27:26):
Jeopardy Prices Right, long long running shows. Wheel of Fortune
debut nine and became the longest running syndicated game showing
American television history, making Mr. Say Jack and Ms Van
White household names. Of course, and say Jack would have
held on to his spot as the longest running host
had he not made the very poor decision to stop

(27:47):
and have his own late night talk show That oh
Man it's so bad, Pat Say Jack show. It was
like like watching them vallium. Not like taking a value.
It's like watching a value you're not allowed to take.
That's how boring it is. I have to sit there
and look sad. Yeah, Say Jack is in a three

(28:11):
way race for worst late night talk show between Magic
Johnson and Chevy Chates, and I can't decide which one
is worse. So, Jevy, that was bad. It was really bad.
My father raised me to despise checks, and I will
still tell you this, Pat Say Jack Show was worse

(28:33):
than the others. It was the worst of all. It's
pretty bad. I would tell that to Patsy Jack's face.
And of course, who took over as the longest running
host because of Say Jack's mistake, drew back. But little
know in fact, Vannah White actually pre dates passage Jack

(28:56):
on Will Fortune. You guys know that she started back
in the day when Chuck Woolery still hosted. And the
first letter Vannah White ever turned on the board was
a T So if you were listening to the radio
and there's like free tickets at stake, that's the answer.
That's an arcane trivia question, And I got one more
about Vannah. If you guys are okay with you? Yeah,
let's hear it. She holds the Guinness World Record for

(29:19):
television's most frequent clapper, with about seven and twenty claps
per episode of Wheel of Fortune, and they filmed six
of those in a day. That means she's at home
the rest of the week, just recouping. It's like, don't
touch mommy's hands. Don't touch mommy's hands, says these giant
aloe plants. She just sticks her hands inside. They're like food.

(29:43):
Move Vannah, weird, not expecting a little shop preference, I guess.
So then we move into uh, well, it's actually I forgot.
We need to get Bob Barker his two because he
actually worked from nineteen seventy two on The Prices Right

(30:04):
only until his grand old age of eighty three. But
he actually hosted a show before that, right, Truth or Consequences. Yeah,
what year did that start? He started hosting in nineteen
fifty four. He stopped in nineteen seventy. Sorry, he started
in nineteen fifty six. He stopped hosting that in nineteen
seventy four. He started hosting The Prices Right in nineteen

(30:26):
seventy two and stopped hoasting the prices right in two
thousand seven. So for fifty one, Bob Barker was a
game show host every day, well actually one day a week,
but you know what I'm saying. The rest of the time,
cigars and whiskey and spaying and neutering. I don't like
this picture. You're not gonna lie. He had a veterinarian

(30:50):
on hand, spade that one. I don't like what I
see out of that guy. He's getting humpy. Actually that
would be a neuter technically, don't email me. I know
my dog parts. So sorry, I'm so sorry. Well, you

(31:14):
know the comedy rule of three threes. We we're gonna
have to say that a third time, all right, keeping
your for I there's a nine chance we'll forget right.
And at the very end we'll just go good night
and then say it. But I won't say it again
because that would count. I don't want it to count.
I'm gonna see if I can work it in here,
so I want to see it, all right. So sorry,

(31:43):
So game shows started in there heyday, everybody, bear with me.
Game shows started in their heyday and roll right into
the eighties, and one of the quintessential game shows of
the was something called Wind Loser Draw. Do you remember that?
It was nothing more then a game of pictionary played
by celebrities. That was it, and a fake living room

(32:04):
set that was how great it was. Lots of pastels, yeah,
lots of pop callers. If you look closely at every episode,
they have a magazine turned upside down that is clearly tinting.
Lines of cocaine that they're doing in between like commercial breaks,
lots of Super eight, lots of Bert's. I think didn't
Burt Conby host that he did? Or do I just
want him to have hosted that? He did host it?

(32:26):
And then Burt Reynolds was a guest on Burton Money.
They were all over that show, and poor Bert um
Convy was known as Little Burt, which he was even
I think taller than Burt Reynolds was just but that
was per Burt Reynolds contract. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure
it's called the Little Burt Uh. And then Betty White.
Betty White had an interesting show called Just Men exclamation

(32:49):
Point with an actual exclamation point, and it featured nothing
but women as contestants, but they would ask celebrity men
a question and then guess whether or not they would
answer yes or no, and they could win keys potentially
to start a new car. So it was a game
show where you literally they could have called it coin
flip and just had people flipping a coin. But it

(33:13):
worked out because Miss Petty White was the first woman
to ever win the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Game Show Host.
So cently people like it. She's just America's sweetheart, you know. People.
So by the time the eighties are like in their heyday,
their own heyday. Um. If you look back, a lot
of the shows that were big in the eighties had

(33:35):
actually started in the sixties. And the reason why is because, again,
risk Averse TV executives were like, I think of anything new,
I'll just bring out tic tech, dough and concentration, you know, Paula,
shut up, dust it off, and put it out there again.
So there are a lot of game shows like that
and they're pretty successful. But one of the other things
that they did in the eighties was experiment with game shows, right,

(33:57):
so you had things like double There. Yeah, that was
a good that's okay, we owe it to you, Double There.
If you guys haven't seen this, it is a thing
to behold. It's the weirdest game show maybe ever. There's
an obstacle course, but there's also quizzes and then teams
are our boy girl tweens working together, and there was slie.

(34:22):
So Double There was pretty much great on every level.
Was never saw it. You never saw Double There. Now
I'm a little sadly I'm a little too old for
doubled hair Wheelhouse. I was like, someone just boom me
for being old. I think they booed you for not
watching Double There. I was like, sixteen boo. Actually it's
a taddle for Double There. Well, here's what I was watching.

(34:44):
I was watching Remote Control on MTV, very very good
game show. It was if you don't remember, it was
what now you would call him meta game show. Back
then you would call it a spoof hoo game shows
because host kin Ober was hosting a game show in
his parents basement. That was the set. People sat on
recliners and we get launched back through the wall if

(35:06):
they got a question wrong at the end. And it
was a really legit, funny game show. They had categories
like Brady Brady, Bunch of Physics, or dead or Canadian.
One of my favorite categories, and it is well known
for one thing in particular, which was launching the careers
of some now very famous people. It the very first
time that Adam Sandler was on TV was on remote control.

(35:29):
Same with Colin Quinn and Dennis Leary. They all got
their start in remote control. Wow, it's right. So there's
a couple of tenants of game shows that you have
to know, and the first one is that America's interest
in game shows tends to Wax and Wayne, and by
the late eighties early nineties, America was like, we're just

(35:51):
sick of game shows. And again, one of the reasons
why is because those executives didn't try a lot of
new stuff. They instead trotted out tic Tacto and concentration.
So America got bored with game shows and kind of
moved on, and game shows just went away almost magically.
There were two game shows, The Prices Right and Family

(36:14):
Feud still filming during the day. Even Wheel of Fortunes
daytime show got the Acts. Wheel of Fortune got the Ax.
That's how close to extinction game shows came um And instead,
the same lazy executives gave us softcore news like Inside
Edition and Extra and daytime talk like Jenny Jones and

(36:36):
Maury Povich, and we have them to thank for that.
I have another theory, actually, that grunge killed game shows
in the early nineties, right, because there's a quote here
from the great Mark Goodson. Apparently you're idle. He's great

(36:56):
at quotes too. He said, it's like a hurricane came
and wipe them all away, and that hurricane smelled like
teen Spirit. I made up that second part. They did
say hurricane. Yes, it was sort of antithetical though that
early nineties time. I'm joking about grunge, but it just

(37:17):
it didn't It didn't work together, you know, generation next
Douglas Copeland slacking grunge, They didn't like do away with
game shows. They came in because game shows went away. Yeah,
America got sat So the other tenant of game shows

(37:38):
is this, you can't keep game shows down for longer
than a decade. You just can't. They're gonna come back.
They're gonna jump on your back like beetlejuice or something. Right, So,
by the late nineties early two thousand's they started to
come back, and those risk averse executives started to innovate

(37:59):
a little more are, meaning that they started stealing good
game shows from other countries which somebody hadn't been to
to see. So they brought in Who Wants to Be
a Millionaire? Right? Yeah? I think that show came from
England if I'm not mistaken, as did The Weakest Link.
Remember that show, She was Perfect, She scared me. Uh.

(38:22):
These had much bigger prizes. They were a little more complicated.
You had things like phoning a friend and stuff like that.
Then he had shows like Deal or No Deal, which
Josh put in he wrote this it is pretty great,
which brought America back into the clutches of Auie Mandel.
We came so close to getting away from him forever.
And then ah, it was like that time Uggs came back.

(38:46):
You remember that, Like ugs were around and then they
naturally just went off and died, and then all of
a sudden, everybody started wearing oggs again. It was like
what happened, same with Howie Mandel. Uh. And then eventually
game shows would co opt reality shows, obviously with big
big shows like Survivor, uh, The Apprentice, The Bachelor, Um,

(39:12):
Shark Tanker show that I actually really love, and then
a great great show called American Ninja Warrior. Okay, do
you guys like American Ninja Warrior, let me direct you
to the predecessor and frankly better, American Gladiator. That's right.
I love that too, and this is why American Gladiators

(39:36):
is just superior to American Ninja Warrior. American Ninja Warrior.
It's fine, it's great, but they kind of dilute the
action a little bit. I think you could say, like
they have like b footage where like the production crew
went to the contestants hometown and talked to like their
peewee baseball coach about they used to be afraid of
the ball, but you know they really like got over

(39:56):
it and look at them now, and the coach that
kind of chokes up a little bit, you know. On
American Gladiator, it's more like, so Kim is out there
and she's running around getting the crapp eat out of her,
and the commentators just have this throwaway like, well, no,
in fact about Kim. She traded her house for a
car to drive herself here to compete to day, She's

(40:17):
not sure who's back home watching her child, look at
her go, look at lace. She just knocked her flat
unconscious with her jousting stick. That's American Gladiators. You know
what I'm saying. It was great. That's what makes it superior.
Here's what I liked about American Gladiator is those courses
or whatever you call them, more hard enough. Like I

(40:37):
remember the bicycle thing that you would have to hang from,
and that's hard enough. There's no way I could even
hang from that much less propel myself. And you get
halfway across, and then a broided out bodybuilder would leap
on you and and try and get you off, and
it's like, are you kidding me? Like the best you

(40:59):
could for is that he put on too much like
peck lube and would slide off eventually, couldn't get a
good grip. Peck Lube just got applause. Is your only
only hope, Pecklue. That's so big. Shout out to the
original six on American Gladiator Nitro Malibu Malibu Lace Lace

(41:21):
a little Baptist Chuck Lace was like I didn't know
what was going on in my body when I saw Lace.
JC Chuck like sitting in from his TV with his
knees pulled up to his chest, is rocking back and
forth like singing hymnoles. Things are happening. I like Lace.

(41:41):
You know who Lace was married to in real life? No, Uh,
Michael Parrey actor Michael Parrey from Eddie and the Cruisers. Uh,
Michael did a trivia Michael Pray is not here tonight, right?
He might be Jim and I, Zapp and Sonny the

(42:01):
Original Six. I had us off to you, Michael Douglas.
Just show it up. And I think it also inspired
the movie The Running Man pretty clearly, if I'm not mistaken.
I don't remember if it pre stages The Running Man
or The Running Man came out right before now. I
think Running Man. I think it came after American that here. Really,
I'm going to stand by that. I said, No, al right,

(42:25):
where are we in the two thousand's we are? So
we're in like another a bit of a game show
revival right now too. And you can tell because they're
trotting out old game shows again, like Snoop Dogg hosted
Joker's Wild, which, by the way, I have no problem
with that whatsoever. I think that was actually a pretty
straight move. Um Anthony Anthon Anderson's uh to tell the Truth,

(42:46):
I think is what he hosts. Yea and love connection.
Oh is that out? Yeah? I didn't know that they
need to bring back what was the one? The dating
one not singled out? Yeah, I forgot about single that.
Oh yeah, that was a good one. That was a
good one. And what was the one on the what
was the one on the bus? Oh? I love cash Cab?

(43:12):
Can we talk about cash cab for a minute. Can
we go off script for a moment. Your cash Cab
unfortunately came around when I and Josh we we worked
for Discovery Channel, so we couldn't be on cash Cab.
So I would go to New York City and walk
around looking for the cash cab just to tease yourself,

(43:33):
knowing that I would have to disclose that I was
actually an employee of Discovery Channel and could not be
on cash Guy, I'm contractually prohibited from getting in your
cash cab. Sorry, what are you talking about? Just get in.
It is a good show still now. I still watch reruns.
I think it's are they not still making it? No? No? No?

(43:53):
Is it back? All right? Well that lady says it's back,
and she looks like she knows. She's like, I know.
I like that guy. He's funny. Yeah, he's a good guy.
But it's still not the dating show I was thinking of.
Were you thinking of the dating game? Now? So when
where they had the stupid pop up bubbles about what
they were thinking? No, it's not pop up video blind date,

(44:16):
blind date? I think it might be blind date? What
is next? Man? This show is so people are shouting,
all right, I will say this, it had to have
been blind date, because I've never heard of next. I
don't know what that is. Blind Date was good. I
don't really remember the premise. I'm assuming it was a
blind date. But it was a good show. I remember

(44:37):
that much. All right, let me get us back on track. Here.
People are murmuring, like you guys are figuring out whether
to vote for a referendument of town hall or something.
Be quiet, molitia, legalize it. Uh. And then, of course,

(44:57):
some game shows never went away to begin with, like
Beloved Prices, Right, they just changed hosts, The Great Great
Family Feud, Right. Uh? We lost Richard Dawson while he retired,
then he died, No, he retired, Ray comes came, then Richard,
then he came back, then he died, right, okay? Uh?

(45:20):
And then the Great Louis Anderson hosted for a little while.
Then a guy named Richard Carne who I don't know.
He was from Home Improvement. I never saw that show.
It's the most controversial thing I said all night. And
then I don't know who John oh Hurley is, j
Peterman Seinfeld. I love that guy. And then the great

(45:44):
Steve Harvey with his eight button suits. America has embraced
Steve even though he messed up the was it miss America?
That just made him that much more than Frankly, nobody
else could have gotten away with it like he did. Agreed.
So um. As we say, game shows are very very
cheap to produce, which means you can find game shows

(46:04):
in every country around the world, and some countries like
just steal game shows from other countries. America does it,
everybody does it. Really. There's a game show in France
called Live Big Deal, and it's Let's Make a Deal,
but it's hosted by an animated alien for some reason. Um.
Some are franchise like The Price Is Right. It is
a huge hit in the UK. They're crazy for the

(46:27):
presidents right appropriately um. And then there's some countries that
just make up their own, like there's one in Russia
We consider ourselves pretty good researchers, and we are almost
a percent positive that this is actually a real show.
We've really tried to find out, like, no, this is

(46:47):
a joke. I think this is real. Intercept is what
it's called. And an intercept, you're contestant and they give
you a car and you drive off in the car.
They call the car stolen in real I r L.
And you are supposed to evade the police in real
life for thirty five minutes, and if you do that successfully,

(47:11):
you keep the car right And as far as we
can tell, it's real. And it's like, I guess that's Russia.
That's what they do in Russia. I guess if you
get killed, your next of kin gets the car. I
don't know. Surely there's a winner. I think the cops
get to keep it maybe, But Russia aside, there was

(47:31):
one country that stands alone when it comes to game shows. Japan. Correct.
We love Japan and their dedication to making game shows
as crazy as possible, which I don't know if it
started with this one, but there was an eighties staple
it started with it, did it? Called Takeshi's Castle. This

(47:55):
was in the eighties in Japan, and there are fans
of the show in America in two thousand team that
shows how great the show is. Well, it changed everything, right,
Like Takeshi's Castle was, it was just nut. It was
a melee. There would be like a hundred contestants all
competing and everybody's trying to get into Takeshi's Castle. But
this is harder than you would think because they make
you dress up as a hand and slap somebody else

(48:18):
who's also dressed as another hand. And then at the
same time, while you're doing this, there's some other poor
schmo is like being spun around on a wheel like
twenty ft above a pond. I was flying off. There's
other people making a run for it, and there's like
like people dressed as ninja throwing like rubber throwing stars
at him. It's just chaos, and um, it just changed everything.

(48:41):
It gave us the first concept of the wacky Japanese
game show. Yeah. I think the best part about Takeshi's
Castle was they played up the not true fact that
they were forced to be there as contestants, which just
added this extra something. I don't know why they were
they were like this is great. They were like no,

(49:01):
they got my family and they made me come on
this show that just really put the cherry on top
for me. I don't know why. Sure. Then there was
another one after to Cassi's Castle. It came on in
the nineties and it was called Downtown and Nogaki no
Sky and they which means, um, Downtown's not an errand boy,

(49:24):
which is no more sensible than the Japanese. So it
doesn't help at all. It translations Downtown is not an
errand boy, And even if you say okay, Downtown as
a person still doesn't make any camp to make any sense.
It's really strange. But this one really cemented, like because
this is when the internet came around on YouTube was around.

(49:44):
You could watch this all over the world and it
really really really called on and they had punishment games,
um like the Ask game where if you got something wrong,
they would have these big, sweaty sumo wrestlers rub their
butt in your face, or one called Penis Machine. And
Josh did this research and I was like, what is

(50:07):
that all about. Don't do that because whatever immage search
you come up with has nothing to do with the
game show at all. But Penis Machine was where you'd
have to recite a tongue twister. Uh, and if you
got it wrong then they would kick you in the

(50:33):
goodnight everybody. I was about to go backstage as a joke,
but I might have just stayed there, so so uh.
Based on that alone, I think this deserves a second
ad break. Okay, because this show is going really really well.
Does everybody bear with us? We will be right back.

(51:14):
All right, We're back everybody. Here's a little segment called
what's it like to be on a game show? Yeah,
you can expect sweaty man's ass in your face if
you lose. No, that's just japan Um. If you're in
a game show, like as a kid, as a young show,
I was like, I want to be in a game show.

(51:34):
That sounds awesome. And then I researched this. I was like,
I don't want to go anywhere near game shows. I
just want to watch him on TV. First of all,
it's tough. Like three thousand people try out for Wheel
of Fortune every year and only like five hundred make
the cut. That's it's Wheel of Fortune, right, It's just imagined.
There must be like ten people that make it on
a Jeopardy a year out of a million or something

(51:54):
like that. Yeah, Jeopardy stuff. I've known a few people
who have been on that, and uh, you can be
super super smart. You can pass the written tests, you
can pass the simulated games. But when you get out
there on stage and the lights are on and the
cameras are rolling, we've all felt very bad for the
people who don't make it the final Jeopardy because they

(52:14):
have zero dollars. That person is smarter than everyone in
this room. That's what's so sad. It is really hard.
And in fact, Kim Jennings is on our network now
with his great show Omnibus All Time Jeopardy Champion, with
his insane record of like seventy something Jeopardy wins in

(52:34):
a row, which is just nuts. And you know, I'm
really good friends with Kim now, and it took me
like three dinners out before I was finally like, tell
me all about it, what's it like? And he was like, man,
you gotta he got through that first part. So he
had a real big advantage for those newbies coming on
every day. But he's like, you have to have all
this knowledge at your fingertips, and then it literally comes

(52:56):
down to like how good you are with the buzzer
and how like Steve Lead, you can keep yourself calm
and ignore the audience and ignore everything else and kind
of lock in. It's a really, really tough game show.
But in order to try out for something like The
Prices Right, it's a much different experience. You don't have
to be super smart. You have to have a lot
of personality. You just have to like go in front

(53:18):
of a panel of people and like turn around slowly, right, well,
yeah to now, you don't do that, although I could
have worked in a fourth reference there. Uh. I went
to a Price Is Right taping with my sister in
the in the mid nineties, and they there's a table
like this with three producers sitting behind it as you

(53:39):
walk into the studio and they sit there with a
clipboard as you introduce yourself and take notes. And it's
very intimidating because I don't know if you all know
this when you go on the Prices Right in the audience,
you really don't know, like that's all real. You don't
know your name is gonna get called. I always thought
that they set you up and said, by the way,
at minute third to you whatever in round two, we're

(54:01):
gonna call you down there. You need to do this
and act like this. It's all for real, Like you
have no idea you're gonna get called. So when people
freak out and run down there because they had no
idea they were going to get called down on stage.
But I did not get called. I didn't have what
it takes. But you sat behind like the people who
have been contestants, right, yeah, we were. We were positioned

(54:21):
up where they had two empty rows. And when you
were finished playing the games, they don't. You don't go
back to your seat. You go to this little area.
And this, uh, this Harley Davidson biker guy won a
car and came down and sat next to us and
started crying. And I was like, sir, I was like,
what's it like, tell me what's going on. And he
said that he lost his job because he didn't have

(54:44):
a car to get him to work and that this
changed his life. And I look over and he's crying,
and my sisters crying, and I'm crying, and Bob like,
newter a dog. It sounds like a punishment now it does.

(55:05):
It is for the dog. Highly recommended, though, if you
ever have a chance, go to go to a prices
right taping. It's a lot of fun. It's a good story,
by the way, Well that's all right. It would have
been better if I would have you know, want a
jet ski. Yeah. So, as thrilling as you think it
might be to be on a game show, it's actually supposedly,
from what we can tell, super boring. There's a lot

(55:26):
of waiting around. Remember they film five or six episodes
in a day, so if you're scheduled to be on
the fifth or sixth episode, you're just sitting there. But
it's not like you can wander around and bug like
Alex Trebeka or anything. Because remember Congress got involved after
the quiz show scandals, and the FCC still regulates game
shows like a hawk. Like if you go to the bathroom,

(55:47):
you have an escort and there's like FCC compliance officers
take away your cell phone. Can you imagine standing around
for ten hours without a cell phone? Not just these
days take it away, they break it under the heel,
and they're like federal law. So there's a lot of
sitting around. There's a lot of compliance that you have

(56:07):
to do. There's a lot of rules you have to learn,
and one of the reasons why, um, they watch you
like a hawkers because people have been known to um
collude with people in the audience. Like there was this
guy in the UK who won a million pounds on
who Wants to be a Millionaire? It is it's way
more than a million dollar prize, like I don't know

(56:28):
how much, but a lot, just trust me. And he won.
His name is Charles Ingram, and he won because he
was talking to his wife and his wife was going
and talking to somebody in the audience. And this is
the scheme they came up with, Charles Ingram, you know,
who wants to be a Millionaire's basically multiple choice. There's
like four possible answers. He would read them out loud

(56:48):
to himself, but when he read the correct one, the
guy in the audience will go right. Very sophisticated system.
They got away with it like they want. They like,
the producers are like you congratulations. And they made it home.
And finally, because he apparently was acting KG in the
in the green room. Afterward, they went back and looked
at the tape and discovered the fraud and they actually

(57:11):
went to court in the UK. They went to court.
He and his wife did Uh. And we're find a
hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and didn't get a dime
of the million pounds prize. Has some kind of wig
said a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds right, And you
would think, okay, justice was justice was served? Right? No,

(57:32):
it wasn't, because Charles Ingram and his wife went on
to write a book about the whole thing and it
grows two and a half million pounds. Yep. And we
have a couple of new sayings. Now if you remember
from dB Cooper, never trust family and now cheating always pays.

(57:53):
So those are the two tenants of stuff you should know,
one across these knuckles and one across the other knuckles. Uh,
you want to bring it home? Yeah, let's let's talk
about a guy named Michael Larson. Yes, Michael Larson. There's
a couple of knowing nods out there. Anyone know the

(58:13):
game show Press Your Luck. That was the point of
pressure luck, not to get away Ammy. Yeah. So who
was Michael Larson? So Michael Larson was this guy. He
was a contestant eventually on Pressure Luck, but he started
out as a semi employed ice cream truck driver. Let
that sink in for a Yeah, you're really really reaching

(58:34):
for the stars. You're like, no, I don't want to
do that full time, but keep my option open. His
the time when he wasn't running the ice cream truck
was allotted instead to staring at his wall of TVs
in his house, um running off of his VCR, because
he would take game shows and watch them up to
eighteen hours a day in the hopes of finding some

(58:58):
weakness that he could exploit go onto the game show
and crack it and win a million dollars. Right, And
he figured out pretty quick the price is right, there's
no there's no flaw to it. Same with Wheel of Fortune.
It's just kind of luck. Right. Yeah. And then CBS, Yes,
CBS aired a brand new game show build is the

(59:20):
most technologically advanced game show ever and it was called
Press Your Luck. And Michael Larson said, I'm gonna get
you game show. He said about the getting a pressure luck. Yeah,
so here, what's the deal with pressure Luck? It had
three just regular contestants who would answer questions and then
at the end of each round, whoever was in the lead,
we get to press their luck. And there was a

(59:40):
big board with a bunch of individual squares that would
light up, like that's a good pressure luck. You would
press your luck and say stop. We didn't have to
say stopped, but most people did, and it would stop
on whatever square and you might win five dollars, or
you might win a little prize, or you might get
a whammy, which is really bad because that means you

(01:00:02):
lose everything that you had one up into that point.
Or you might get a free spin plus cash. So
if you get like two or three spins in a row,
it was a really big deal, and you could press
your luck and then get that whammy. And it was
this little jerk annoid looking thing. It's a little cartoon
character with a cape that would go and you lose
everything that you had made. So you're really if you

(01:00:24):
press your lucky, you were really risking a lot by
moving forward, right, And it was very tough because not
only did the light flash around the board, the squares
themselves change, so it was just like chaos, your brains
going haywire, and you go stop and just hope for
the best. Well, Michael Larson would take press your Luck
and again watch individual episodes eighteen hours straight, just looking

(01:00:46):
trying to find something sitting around and just as whitey
tidies like an ice cream sandwich melted on his chest.
And finally one day he sowed and he must have
stood up tear matted, sticky, and he probably went got
he's got a chocout taco on his chest. And what

(01:01:10):
he figured out was that that light and those boards
they weren't random at all. There were five patterns. And
not only were they five, were there five patterns they
repeated in order. All he had to do was hone
is timing and getting the light to stop, memorize where
the boxes were, and he would crack pressure luck And

(01:01:31):
that's exactly what he did. I'm trying to think of
that moment at for a m in his bark a lounger,
when he realizes that it's a pattern, Like what that
must have been like, Like he's like, my life is vindicated. Yeah,
everyone said I was a loser, but I'm not, so

(01:01:54):
just disregard the chacout taco on my chest. I'm no loser.
He bought a bus ticket from since Senata to l A,
and I bought a suit from a vintage thrift store
and actually managed to become a contestant. Unpress your luck
on May nineteen, he came in last in the question round.

(01:02:15):
But he's still because you know, he was Michael Larson.
But he still gets suppressed his luck. And the very
first thing that happens is he gets a whammy because
you can practice all you want on the arm of
your recliner, but on the day, as they say in
the in the industry, that little buzzer may not match

(01:02:35):
up quite right. So he had to he had to
get synchronized. He did, and boy did he he did,
because after that, on his next spin, he locked into
thirty one consecutive spins. This had never happened before, nothing
even remotely close. Two or three in a row is amazing.
Before you were on fire, this guy got thirty one

(01:02:57):
consecutive spins. Overall, he got forty Evan in the half
hour show that he was on. The other two contested
to sat back and one guy pulled out like a
corn cob pipe and read the paper. I mean like
it was the Larsen Show, right, And just little by
little he starts building his money. A few hundred bucks here,
dred and another spin there, and he just kept hitting him. Yeah,

(01:03:19):
and keep in mind, at any point he could have
lost it all, and so there's a lot of real
tension building in this thing as he gets more and
more money because he has to say I want to
press my luck. Everyone's like, you're crazy, dude. You got
fifty dollars. But he worked it all the way up
into a record at the time hundred and ten thousand,
two hundred and thirty seven dollars, which is more money

(01:03:41):
than had ever been one on an American game show. Yeah,
the previous record was forty dollars. This guy just crushed
that record. And you can actually see this. There's somebody
under the trouble of making a compilation. It's like eleven
minutes long. It's the best thing you can watch. It's
quite thrilling. It's on YouTube. I think it's just Michael
Larson press your luck should be the first thing that
comes up. And when you watch it, you see Michael

(01:04:03):
Larson really pressed his luck and he won. He won
the game, and the CBS executives are just standing there
watching this like having heart attacks, left and riot, getting fired,
fired each other, firing themselves, just having a terrible time
of it. But in the end they paid Larson. They
said he didn't cheat, he was smarter than CBS. I

(01:04:25):
think one of the executives said these air quotes though,
So we paid him, so he won Press your luck.
But it's not the end of the Michael Larson story. No.
So he's sitting at home a few months later eating
his push up and a local radio station was running
a contest. It was only two ice cream truck things

(01:04:46):
I can think of. Chock out tacos and butch ups
are good enough. Yeah, you know what the worst was
was that rainbow popsicle thing. You those are the worst?
What's wrong with you? You like those? Yes? Really? The
bomb Pop, the Red, white and Blue pop or the
rocket pop to Patriot Country, those are great. I had

(01:05:06):
no ice creaming, and I was all about the ice Okay, well, yeah,
you wouldn't like a bomb pop that's what they were calling.
Or rocket pops one of the two popper Rocket Pop.
You've got a strong reaction, So I guess I'm the dummy.
Some people recoiled in horror. All right, So Michael Larson
sitting at home meeting is rocket pop and a radio

(01:05:27):
station DJ comes on and says, we have a new
contest and we're going to read out serial numbers on
dollar bills, and if you have that dollar bill, you
in fifty thousand dollars I'm sorry, thirty And Michael Larson said,
I got a lot of dollar bills. So he went
to the bank and withdrew nine thousand i'm sorry fifty

(01:05:54):
dollar bills from the bank bills. So he was the
joy of the bank that day. But but wait, wait,
let's think about this for a second. You can withdraw
those all day long. You're not gonna know the serial
number unless you sit there and start memorizing them. And
that's what he did, yep. Instead of watching games shows,

(01:06:15):
he sat around and memorized the serial numbers for the
dollar bills that he had in his house. And a
few months went by, the contest was ended and he
didn't win. But that's still not the end of the
Michael Larson's story. Now, that's right, because he never took
that money back to the bank. Because he's Michael Larson.
I can only imagine if this guy would have worked

(01:06:35):
for a living, right, we would have a cure for
cancer today. We'd all be living to like a hundred
and fifty things. It would be great. But no, he
left that fifty grand at home and on the Christmas
he went to a party with his girlfriend, into a
Christmas party, came home and found his door kicked in
and the money was gone. Merry Christmas. Yep. And they

(01:07:00):
never found the money, they never found the person who
stole it, and Michael Arson eventually died of cancer in
two thousand nine, while on the lamb from the FBI
and the i R S for his part in a
foreign lottery scam. To the bitter end, still trying to
make that easy money. Uh and finally, uh, just about

(01:07:21):
eight or nine years ago, plans to make a movie
of his life story starring Bill Murray. Dude, that would
have been so good. We're finally scrapped. I'm no very sad,
but his story lives on tonight here in Denver, Colorado.
That is game shows. That's a history of game shows.
Everybody's work s Thank you, thank you very much for

(01:07:53):
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