Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know Frounhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry And this is part two
Speaker 1: of the Evil Knevil Saga, the sequel. Yeah, we genuinely
Speaker 1: didn't know. Yeah, we kind of. That's why he didn't
Speaker 1: set it up as part one of them two because
Speaker 1: we got into it and like, dude, this thing can't
Speaker 1: be an hour and a half long. I guess it good,
Speaker 1: but no, we found our sweet spot is not an
Speaker 1: hour and a half of content. We did a one
Speaker 1: part on Isaac Newton, but the two part on Evil Knel.
Speaker 1: All right, so where we left off, we'll just get
Speaker 1: right into it. Huh. Evil Knevil had just completed the
Speaker 1: Caesar's Palace jump, completing it with his head and smashed pelvis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and by the way, he was in a coma for
Speaker 1: twenty nine days after that crash. These were not light injuries. No,
Speaker 1: and uh we left at a very important point right
Speaker 1: when he went and did that jump. On his way
Speaker 1: out to the jump area, he took a hundred bucks
Speaker 1: put it on the blackjack table, promptly lost, hit the bar,
Speaker 1: did a shot of wild turkey and went out and
Speaker 1: jumped apparently with the two show girls, one under each
Speaker 1: arm that was in head blocks. That was his style.
Speaker 1: He lived hard because he was from the hard land
Speaker 1: of Butte, Montana. So he lands right, and he didn't
Speaker 1: land on his his bike. Like, I can't remember what stuck,
Speaker 1: but something stuck. I guess his back tire was it.
Speaker 1: It was usually spack tire that gave him the trouble.
Speaker 1: He always almost made it like you were saying something.
Speaker 1: I think it was back tire. I'm trying to visualize
Speaker 1: the crash. But his his handlebars just get pulled right
Speaker 1: out of his hands because the bike bucked down well,
Speaker 1: and it's just such an impact with that three pound bike. Um,
Speaker 1: he just couldn't hold on and so once he didn't
Speaker 1: have the handlebars anymore, he didn't have control and he
Speaker 1: goes flying off. Oh it's tough to watch. It is
Speaker 1: tough to watch, especially in slow motion, which is how
Speaker 1: I saw it. Yeah, it's the only way to see it. Um.
Speaker 1: So he has finished this jump with his head like
Speaker 1: you said, and his star is bigger than ever, like
Speaker 1: because of this crash. He's more famous than ever. He's
Speaker 1: making Grand per performance by And it was after the
Speaker 1: Caesar's Jump where he first starts to plant the seed
Speaker 1: to the press that he wants to jump the Grand Canyon. Um.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I have a feeling this just came
Speaker 1: out of his mouth, like what's the biggest thing I
Speaker 1: can think of? Um. But he started a genuine, seemingly
Speaker 1: genuine attempt to get permission from the National Park Service
Speaker 1: to do this Grand Canyon jump. Over the years, he
Speaker 1: needed permission from I think it was the Interior Department,
Speaker 1: and they were like, no, absolutely not. And he said
Speaker 1: why yea, And they were like, we really have to
Speaker 1: tell you why you can't have permission to jump that. Um.
Speaker 1: But he did keep it up. It was a drum
Speaker 1: that he beat like almost constantly. During interviews. He would
Speaker 1: say like, you know, coming one day, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be able to jump the Grand Canyon. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: my next big trick. And then in the meantime he
Speaker 1: would set up these other exhibitions. Yeah and and chuck.
Speaker 1: He said he was making Grand of performance. He was
Speaker 1: doing a performance a week for a while there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he was rich he was a wealthy man
Speaker 1: at this point. Uh In nineteen seventy one, in January,
Speaker 1: on the eighth, the ninth, he broke two records. He
Speaker 1: sold out the Houston Astrodome twice over two shows in
Speaker 1: a row. He sold out the Astrodome and one which
Speaker 1: was a record. And then um in February he broke
Speaker 1: an actual jump record by jumping nineteen cars on that
Speaker 1: Harley XR seven fifty. It's pretty impressive. It's funny when
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my my liner notes on this because
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll just put kind of what's going on, so
Speaker 1: it reminds me. It just says jump crash, jump, crash, jump, crash,
Speaker 1: over and over and over. But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like he would, he crashed a lot, like the Pepsi
Speaker 1: truck one. It turns out it was thirteen Pepsi trucks. Um,
Speaker 1: he crashed that one. That one. It wasn't necessarily his fault,
Speaker 1: like he had a short He had a fairly short
Speaker 1: run up distance and it went pavement grass, pavement. Not ideal. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: he didn't really think through. I don't know if he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't people thinking it through in his behalf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he would just do whatever. Or like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: like well this is how much room I have, wasn't like,
Speaker 1: well maybe I don't have enough room, right, maybe this
Speaker 1: is a bad idea. Well I said I'd do it.
Speaker 1: So if I die, oh well, Well, in his famous
Speaker 1: uh quote he always said was it's it's not about crashing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's about getting up and trying it again.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of a trite saying it's direct
Speaker 1: from success through a positive mental attitude. Yeah. Probably, so
Speaker 1: his favorite book, so, um, the Grand Canyon thing is
Speaker 1: building steam um in some ways as far as leaking
Speaker 1: it to the press, but the government is still like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. Little boys all over the country
Speaker 1: are I think his one quote was little boys want
Speaker 1: to be like me, men want to be me, and
Speaker 1: women want to be with me. I Yeah, he definitely
Speaker 1: thought a lot of himself. Uh So, finally, officially the U. S.
Speaker 1: Department Interior said, I'm denying you airspace over the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 1: This is not gonna happen. Please stop calling us. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So what does he do? Well, he apparently was on
Speaker 1: a plane ride and he was over um Idaho, and
Speaker 1: noticed that there was a pretty good sized canyon that
Speaker 1: was formed by the Snake River around what's that down
Speaker 1: there that looks like a canyon. Yeah, i'll jump that.
Speaker 1: There's more than one canyon in the US and he uh,
Speaker 1: he decided to go check it out, and outside of
Speaker 1: Twin Falls, Idaho, he found a little area that was
Speaker 1: just perfectly wide. Um, there was enough run up on
Speaker 1: either side for him to try to jump it. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't need much run up and he uh, well,
Speaker 1: he didn't know at the time. He thought he was
Speaker 1: going to use a motorcycle. Um. Yeah, he did a
Speaker 1: rocket cycle. Um and uh he uh. Most importantly, though,
Speaker 1: it was was privately owned, so he didn't need permission
Speaker 1: from any kind of government agency, although he did actually
Speaker 1: that he had to get permission Um from the local
Speaker 1: I think the county to register the vehicle. Is that
Speaker 1: it and they registered at it as an airplane even
Speaker 1: though it was actually a rocket, a steam powered rocket. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He leased three acres for thirty five grand and said,
Speaker 1: September seventy two, it's going down. ABC Sports said we're
Speaker 1: not gonna pay whatever you're asking. So he said, fine,
Speaker 1: remember how this worked out last time. I'm gonna hire
Speaker 1: Bob Aram who was a boxing promoter still is I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: his name sound of familiar unless he's passed away. But
Speaker 1: he was, uh for Top Rank Productions. He said, all right,
Speaker 1: you handled the filming and we'll do this new fangled
Speaker 1: thing called close circuit TV show at movie theaters. We'll
Speaker 1: all get we're all gonna get rich. Hard a subcontractor
Speaker 1: and actually got engineers for this. And they built that
Speaker 1: X one sky cycle, which, like you said, I've i'd
Speaker 1: forgotten it was gonna be a rocket motorcycle, a rocket
Speaker 1: powered motorcycle. And they built it and tested it that
Speaker 1: went right down a mile down into the river. And
Speaker 1: he said, maybe we should just do it like a
Speaker 1: straight up rocket. And this this dude, this engineer. So
Speaker 1: he hired an engineer named Doug Maliwiki, and Doug Maliwiki
Speaker 1: subcontracted the actual like design and construction out to another
Speaker 1: UM Aeronautics engineer. His name is Robert. I can't figure
Speaker 1: out how to say this guy's last name. It's spelled
Speaker 1: like true acts true. Yeah, I think I remember the documentary.
Speaker 1: It was Robert Truick. Okay, So Robert Truix was the
Speaker 1: guy who actually designed and I believe built the rocket,
Speaker 1: the steam powered rocket, the X two that um that
Speaker 1: Eva Kinnevel used to jump the Snake River Canyon right,
Speaker 1: and as you'll see, it didn't go according to plan.
Speaker 1: So this guy's son is the one who is behind
Speaker 1: this jump that's being done by Eddie Braun in September
Speaker 1: because he wants to vindicate his father that this thing
Speaker 1: would have made it had this um, this parachute not
Speaker 1: deployed and kept him from making So he's like, he
Speaker 1: wants to show that this this would have worked, and
Speaker 1: that his dad, who's had lots of scoring heaped on
Speaker 1: him over the years, including publicly by Evil kinevil Um,
Speaker 1: that it was all quite unfair. Well, we're getting something
Speaker 1: in a minute, which makes him seem like a bigger
Speaker 1: jerk even but things are going well, well that's not
Speaker 1: exactly true. September eight n it's gonna go down. Uh.
Speaker 1: This thing had turned into the party of the century,
Speaker 1: like a hippie Hell's Angels biker party, a huge one.
Speaker 1: And this is like Twin Falls, Idaho is not like
Speaker 1: a hippie biker town. It was like a normal god
Speaker 1: fearing country town and all of a sudden, thousands of
Speaker 1: hippie biker weirdo Druggi's show up and start partying in town. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were hammered, they were drunk, they were high on grass,
Speaker 1: setting fires, just setting fires. It was completely out of hand.
Speaker 1: They had no idea it was gonna attract this many people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and became like a three day party. Did you say grass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're high on grass. Oh yeah yeah, now would a
Speaker 1: weed probably herb, the herb nugs. So uh, it's a
Speaker 1: huge party. It's like Woodstock. People are drunk out of
Speaker 1: their minds. Yeah, high on the grass. Yeah, I bet you.
Speaker 1: There's some LSD going around, maybe even maybe some Benni's.
Speaker 1: And on this documentary I saw there was a real fear.
Speaker 1: They had a temporary fencing put up to keep people
Speaker 1: away because the lip of the canyon it's just a
Speaker 1: straight drop. Yeah, so they have this temporary fencing and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the jump in a second, but when
Speaker 1: it actually goes down, they bum rushed this thing because
Speaker 1: you couldn't see it what was going on. And there
Speaker 1: was a real fear that they were going to be
Speaker 1: mass deaths like Lemmings. Yeah, where people would get shoved
Speaker 1: off the lip of this canyon because the people up
Speaker 1: front would just run and stop, and then five thousand
Speaker 1: people behind him. I don't even know how many people
Speaker 1: there was more than five thousand even, I think, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that they were just gonna be like hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of people shoved unwillingly to their death. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: more like the Three Stooges than Lemmings. I think that
Speaker 1: could have happened. Yeah. Yeah, if you look at I
Speaker 1: don't know how. I saw a video of this um
Speaker 1: and there's just people like just looking over the ledge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how it didn't either. It's it's like
Speaker 1: you just describing it scares me. You got a little shutter.
Speaker 1: So here's what happens. Evil Kin. Evil is not feeling
Speaker 1: good about this. He literally goes to his family and
Speaker 1: the trailer and says goodbye, And they interviewed his family
Speaker 1: and they were like, this sucked. Like we really thought
Speaker 1: we were saying goodbye to our father forever, Like we
Speaker 1: thought he was gonna die that day. No, like P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum bs going on, like we thought we were gonna
Speaker 1: see his see his death in front of our face.
Speaker 1: So he goes off, and um, the promoter apparently was like,
Speaker 1: had these armed guards. He said that they looked like
Speaker 1: they were there for the crowd control. He said they
Speaker 1: were there to make sure he got in that rocket,
Speaker 1: he said, because I was not going to let this
Speaker 1: knot go down with that scene going on there. So
Speaker 1: he gets in. They do the countdown. This steam rocket
Speaker 1: goes off. It was built from the from I think
Speaker 1: the fuel tank of a jet. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: little one man rocket. Yeah, and they like superheated this
Speaker 1: water I think like five degrees to create this blast
Speaker 1: of steam. It takes off and almost immediately the the
Speaker 1: parachute is deployed, which provides drag, and it did not
Speaker 1: get very far. No, but apparently if you look at
Speaker 1: the initial trajectory, it was right on target, which is
Speaker 1: why the engineer's son is like, it would have worked.
Speaker 1: It will work if the parachute doesn't deploy. And in
Speaker 1: the in the engineer's defense, the promoter and Evil Knievel,
Speaker 1: so we're not testing this. We already spent all a
Speaker 1: bunch of money on that X two cycle or the
Speaker 1: X one rocket cycle. Um, we so just make it right.
Speaker 1: So they had one parachute. They didn't test it, and
Speaker 1: when he did this jump, it was the jump as
Speaker 1: well as the only test that they've gone right. So
Speaker 1: the parachute did deployed, but they think that had it
Speaker 1: not deployed, he totally would have made it. But the
Speaker 1: parachute did deploy, so he didn't make this jump and
Speaker 1: started drifting, luckily attached to a parachute, into a mild
Speaker 1: deep canyon. The thing is, I can't believe they did this.
Speaker 1: They had him harnessed in his jumpsuit, was like strapped
Speaker 1: to the seat this thing, so he had no way
Speaker 1: of getting out. He had he needed help to get out,
Speaker 1: and apparently there's no one waiting in the canyon down
Speaker 1: below to help get him out. They were all on
Speaker 1: the other side of the canyon. So had he landed
Speaker 1: in the river, he would have drowned because he had
Speaker 1: no way of getting out. Luckily, he landed within feet
Speaker 1: of the river. So it goes a mile down drifting slowly,
Speaker 1: totally up in the air. It's like a plank oat
Speaker 1: chip at this point. Now no one knows where it's
Speaker 1: gonna land. And he landed within a few feet of
Speaker 1: the of the water, so that he survived amazing. Uh
Speaker 1: you know how I teased you and said, there's a
Speaker 1: little tidbit that makes him seem like a jerk. There
Speaker 1: is speculation that Evil can Evil pulled that shoot because
Speaker 1: he didn't think he was going to make this thing,
Speaker 1: and and he might not have thought he was gonna
Speaker 1: make it to begin with, and it was all just
Speaker 1: a big publicity stunt, and he knew that he could
Speaker 1: pull that shoot as soon as he took off and
Speaker 1: float safely down. So in the documentary they talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit. I saw another VH one What's the
Speaker 1: behind the Evil? Yeah, something like that, where um he
Speaker 1: was our true Hollywood story. I think um E network
Speaker 1: and he um. They talked about it, and there too,
Speaker 1: they were like his hand was on that lever, like
Speaker 1: he was the one responsible for pulling that thing, because
Speaker 1: they enter of the engineer and he was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how this thing like it should have deployed,
Speaker 1: like he was getting all the scorn. Well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out how it deployed. And Evil can evenly
Speaker 1: even call him an idiot. He's like kind never like
Speaker 1: that engineer he was an idiot. So that does make
Speaker 1: it way worse because apparently also the engineer was very
Speaker 1: surprised to hear this because they were good friends. They
Speaker 1: become good friends over the coach of this project. Now
Speaker 1: he's publicly calling him an idiot. Yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: took that secret to his grave, so we'll never know.
Speaker 1: But there was definitely speculation that he never intended to
Speaker 1: make that jump. I had not heard that, which is
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. Well, let's let's take a break, um, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back, because, believe it or not, he kept jumping,
Speaker 1: all right, Josh, Snake River Canyon is in the books.
Speaker 1: It is, and apparently he made like six million dollars
Speaker 1: from that job. Yeah, that's what he personally needed. And
Speaker 1: then spend it like in the next three weeks on diamonds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it goes like, yeah, we'll talk more about that later,
Speaker 1: all right. So now we moved forward a few years.
Speaker 1: He's in between seventy two and seventy five, does plenty
Speaker 1: of other jumps and had plenty of other hospital stays,
Speaker 1: and then May in front of once again ABC's wide
Speaker 1: world of sports. The thrill of victory, the agony of
Speaker 1: defeat that still around when you were around. No, I
Speaker 1: watched the laugh Olympics. Wilde World of Sports is like
Speaker 1: the biggest thing on TV on Sundays. Yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was on. It just never caught my
Speaker 1: fancy and it was so great the weekend. Seriously, it
Speaker 1: was just all about cartoons with me, you know, like
Speaker 1: there was that point cartoons would started like seven in
Speaker 1: the morning and then go to like ten thirty eleven
Speaker 1: sometimes and then like non cartoons would start and just
Speaker 1: be like that's when you nave and put this on TV,
Speaker 1: you said, and then at naptural prime time. Uh So
Speaker 1: in seventy five he says, you know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the biggest jump of my career in England.
Speaker 1: I'm world renowned jumper. At this point I can go
Speaker 1: to London, England. Yeah, because again not just like he's
Speaker 1: on the wide World of Sports and he's known for
Speaker 1: the Snake River Canyon jump and like the sea just pals.
Speaker 1: There's the stunt cycle toy was the largest selling toy
Speaker 1: of Christmas nineteen seventy three. Yeah, he made a ton
Speaker 1: of money off that. Atari had a stunt Cycle like
Speaker 1: video console in nineteen seventy six. Um he there were
Speaker 1: there were action figures. There's a whole like action figure
Speaker 1: line by ideal. He was making mad cash from just
Speaker 1: being a daredevil. Yeah, adds he was a pitch man.
Speaker 1: He was making money hand over fist and like we say,
Speaker 1: over and over spending it. And he was huge. He
Speaker 1: was just a huge star. It's such a seventies thing
Speaker 1: to be star for being a daredevil. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: beats the two thousand tens thing of just being a
Speaker 1: star for being famous. No, I agreed. You know, at
Speaker 1: least this guy was doing something. Yeah. Did Kim Kardashian
Speaker 1: never put her life on the line. No, that's what
Speaker 1: I want to see being Paris Hilton's assistant, probably because
Speaker 1: she survived it. She was persisted. That's where she started out. Really,
Speaker 1: what would you mean started out? She started out as
Speaker 1: a rich kid in Brentwood. She did, but she wasn't
Speaker 1: a celebrity by any MO until well until that sex tape.
Speaker 1: But I think she was Paris Hilton's assistant at the
Speaker 1: time that came out. That's weird. You know, Paris Hilton
Speaker 1: has my same eye affliction, the tosis you paras Hilton,
Speaker 1: Forest Wortaker, Tommy York. Oh yeah, he's got too huh yeah,
Speaker 1: get that fix one day. I don't think you should
Speaker 1: adds a tremendous amount of character. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: easy to say when you don't have a droopy eyelid.
Speaker 1: I think you should keep that vestigial tail, right, that's character.
Speaker 1: I like it. When you wag it, we'll see what
Speaker 1: it's doing. Is it's it's inhibiting my vision. Well, then
Speaker 1: I can see that, you know, not a ton. But
Speaker 1: like when I left my eyelid up all the way,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I can see fift more of the room.
Speaker 1: There's the sky. Yeah, anyway, that's my issue. So is
Speaker 1: at Wimbley Stadium sold out Wimbley Stadium in London, England,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna jump how many people that is? Well,
Speaker 1: this is ninety thousand, the other articles at seventy. Either way,
Speaker 1: it's a bunch between seventy and nine. So I don't
Speaker 1: think we can sell that sell out Wimbley. No, but
Speaker 1: we sold out two shows in London, so they clearly
Speaker 1: have a jones for American American Americans making asses of them.
Speaker 1: So he jumps these A E. C. Merlin busses, These
Speaker 1: are not the double deckers, um, but they're still busses.
Speaker 1: And it's a big jump. It's a believe as biggest
Speaker 1: to date. And he crashes, of course, breaks his back.
Speaker 1: Broke his back. Yeah, and in the very famous footage,
Speaker 1: told Frank Gifford, I came in walking. I went out
Speaker 1: walking because Frank Gifford's like, get this guy, stretcher. He's
Speaker 1: broken his back. And Evil was like, I'm walking out
Speaker 1: and he did. He did. It wasn't smart, but he
Speaker 1: did it. Uh. Then he goes to another huge jump
Speaker 1: at King's Island theme park in Ohio. I've been there.
Speaker 1: I bet is it still around? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I've been there. And when when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: it's clearly where is it? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was always a passenger. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: part of Ohio it's but it's clearly second Banana to
Speaker 1: Cedar Point to Cedar Point pretty much everything is in
Speaker 1: the world his second Banana Point. Yeah. No, this is
Speaker 1: a your your parents hate you, do they take you
Speaker 1: to King's Island instead of Cedar Point? Yeah. Uh. So
Speaker 1: he makes us jump at Cedar Point at King's Island
Speaker 1: and it is at the time, the highest rated event
Speaker 1: and wild world wide. It's a tough one wide world
Speaker 1: of sports history. Still still yeah, I guess so the
Speaker 1: show's not around. Yeah. A hundred and six sixty three
Speaker 1: successful jump. I don't think he even crashed on this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an all around good one for him. You
Speaker 1: got the buses. It's at King's Island, successful set, a record,
Speaker 1: highest rated, everything's coming up basis on this one. It
Speaker 1: is coming up basis and he says he's retiring. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: he's Uh. He started to say that a lot, starting
Speaker 1: with this jump. After just about every jump, he would
Speaker 1: be like, that's it, I'm done. I'm never going to
Speaker 1: do it again, and then he would do it again.
Speaker 1: And actually I believe he retired after Yeah, he retired
Speaker 1: after Wimbley. Okay, that's the famous line was I remember
Speaker 1: now He crashed spectacularly, grabbed the mic and told the
Speaker 1: stadium that you are the last people in the world
Speaker 1: who will ever see me jump. I will never ever
Speaker 1: ever ever jump again ever him through. And then five
Speaker 1: months later he jumped to King's Island, right, and then
Speaker 1: retired after that one. Right. Then he retired after that one.
Speaker 1: He did another one um shortly after that at the
Speaker 1: Kingdom in Um Seattle. Actually it was a year after
Speaker 1: that when he retired again. That one that was like
Speaker 1: Tyson's last fight, Like he he jumped seven greyhound busses
Speaker 1: and I guess the crowd was fine with it, but
Speaker 1: he apologized for it being not so great, for not
Speaker 1: like being risky enough, and and so he retired again.
Speaker 1: And then he came back again, right, and this time
Speaker 1: he was channeling the Fons. Oh yeah, he was gonna
Speaker 1: jump a tank of shark. He's gonna literally jump the shark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he did well, he didn't in the seven in Chicago,
Speaker 1: he saw Jaws the movie and said, let's just like
Speaker 1: he kind of reminds me of my dad a little bit.
Speaker 1: My dad has this weird If he would have had
Speaker 1: a ton of money, he would have had this kind
Speaker 1: of weird excess crazy ideas like the bombshell. After it
Speaker 1: was like these dudes of this generation there was something.
Speaker 1: They're all crazy. Yeah, they still hadn't they didn't get
Speaker 1: movies yet. Yeah, that's what um. So he says he's
Speaker 1: gonna jump a bit of sharks, put it on TV,
Speaker 1: and during rehearsal, he has a really bad crash and
Speaker 1: actually severely injured a cameraman. Yeah, the guy lost his eye. Ye,
Speaker 1: and I guess that was a really big deal that
Speaker 1: evil can even Yeah, he was like I can't come
Speaker 1: back from that one. Nope. So did he not do
Speaker 1: the actual jump? No, I think he called it off.
Speaker 1: Had I been the cameraman, I would have been like,
Speaker 1: so I just lost my eye for nothing. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like getting that shark. Yeah, at least do the jump.
Speaker 1: Uh Yeah. And apparently he sat on that footage for
Speaker 1: almost twenty years, and then there was finally a documentary,
Speaker 1: not the one I saw, but another one where he
Speaker 1: allowed that footage to be shown and then he did retire,
Speaker 1: So you know this is smart. I'm sure that camera
Speaker 1: operator was like, oh, you couldn't have retired before you
Speaker 1: took my eye out, not a week earlier. But that
Speaker 1: was the one where he finally is like I'm done.
Speaker 1: And he had a great quote. It was a professional
Speaker 1: is supposed to know when he has jumped far enough.
Speaker 1: Good quote. It is a pretty good quote. And like
Speaker 1: he said, it wasn't just the Seattle jump that he
Speaker 1: he He started doing less risky jumps toward the end
Speaker 1: period that were like, I guess he lost his nerve.
Speaker 1: Maybe after Boise or twin Falls the Sneake River, maybe
Speaker 1: because it seems like that's where about it it changed.
Speaker 1: Things changed, Although no, I guess it would have been
Speaker 1: wimbley because you gotta have a lot of nerve to
Speaker 1: try that. So maybe after he broke his back he
Speaker 1: was like probably who all right, well, let's take another
Speaker 1: break here and we'll wrap it up with a little
Speaker 1: bit more on his private life and all those broken bones,
Speaker 1: broken bones. Josh, you know the old rumor that he
Speaker 1: broke every bone in his body. Yeah, not true, but
Speaker 1: he does hold a record for most broken bones. He does.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, because he said he's broken thirty five bones.
Speaker 1: That didn't seem like a record. Thirty five bones, four
Speaker 1: d and thirty three fractures of those bones, and I
Speaker 1: believe both of those are records as far as Genness
Speaker 1: is concerned. Well, when you look his own website has
Speaker 1: a neat little chart where the injuries are broken up
Speaker 1: into fractured, broken, broken, and replaced and broken multiple times.
Speaker 1: The other one that I'm I'm curious about, his crushed
Speaker 1: like he crushed his pelvis, is that an actual medical term.
Speaker 1: You see it, Yeah, frequently. What has to take place
Speaker 1: for a bone to be considered crushed? My interpretation of that,
Speaker 1: which is completely made up, is that it's fractured so
Speaker 1: severely it goes beyond multiple fractures. They can't put Humpty
Speaker 1: back together to just crushed into powder, fine powder. That's
Speaker 1: what comes to mind. I'm sure that's not what happens,
Speaker 1: but I think of like a big pile of like
Speaker 1: sawdust in his butt. But if you look at his
Speaker 1: injury list, it's you know, uh, skull, nose, teeth, jaw,
Speaker 1: left and right clavical stern um, upper vertebrae, right arm,
Speaker 1: left arm, all ribs, pelvis three times cox six both wrist,
Speaker 1: hip and ball socket, lower bird of a femur. Five times.
Speaker 1: He broke his femur. Can you believe that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I can right knee, right shin,
Speaker 1: both ankles toes. It looks like his left below his
Speaker 1: femur on his left leg, he was virtually unscathed. Weird,
Speaker 1: isn't that weird? No? No, no left end, no left
Speaker 1: just say both ankles typically fallen into a certain fashion.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know this is that's over Apple Cardiff. I
Speaker 1: think that is what they call it. These are his
Speaker 1: bones too. This isn't taking any account the coma he
Speaker 1: was in and the multiple concussions he suffered. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think he there was like internal bleeding and things
Speaker 1: like that along the way too. And as as a
Speaker 1: result of this, there was um there were rumors that
Speaker 1: still stand, although I couldn't find much in the way
Speaker 1: of substantiation of him that he was he took drugs himself,
Speaker 1: probably painkillers. Apparently his good friends were like he ate
Speaker 1: him like candy, Yeah, while grand standing against drugs. So
Speaker 1: that was a really big part of what he was doing.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why he did become a
Speaker 1: role model to a whole generation of young boys was
Speaker 1: he he had set himself up like that. He would
Speaker 1: at the at the beginning of every UM show he
Speaker 1: would basically do like a don't do drugs message, stay
Speaker 1: in school, um, keep your word, And these were what
Speaker 1: what UM he considered his his core values, right, So um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that like he was doing drugs himself, it's
Speaker 1: I have the impression if he was, it was very
Speaker 1: much an Elvis interpretation, Like these aren't drugs. My doctor
Speaker 1: gave him to me. I'm completely hooked on him, but
Speaker 1: I got him from the doctor, right. Um, not like
Speaker 1: he was like hitting like bumps of coke or something before.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, hitting the ramp. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a bad drink or huge, huge drink. Drink
Speaker 1: lots of wild turkey. Yeah. He At one point he
Speaker 1: said he probably drank about a fifth of whiskey a
Speaker 1: day with beer chasers in between. That's a lot, especially
Speaker 1: when you're trying to control a motorcycle jumping a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three ft over some greyhound bus. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't think he would do those jumps wasted or anything,
Speaker 1: but he would like probably drink afterwards. He would take
Speaker 1: his traditional shot a wild turkey before. So you think
Speaker 1: he did it straight? Yeah, I don't think he was
Speaker 1: jump I'm very curious you think. Yeah. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff, a lot of the dirt that we
Speaker 1: know about Evil Knevil came out in a book by
Speaker 1: his former published publisher names Shelly Saltman. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a big deal in the documentary, so I think after
Speaker 1: the Snake River Jump in nineteen seventy four, Saltman published
Speaker 1: a book about the jump um and it was an
Speaker 1: authorized book, but Saltman decided to to point out that
Speaker 1: um working working for Evil Knevil. A day spent working
Speaker 1: for Evil Knievel was like spending three hours at the
Speaker 1: dentists without novacaine. Um. That the he he said that
Speaker 1: he abused, He was abusive towards his family. That he
Speaker 1: um was totally he hooked on drugs and drank and
Speaker 1: was immoral and all this other stuff just completely hung out.
Speaker 1: All the guy's dirty laundry may or may not have
Speaker 1: made up rumors. Well, and this is when you could
Speaker 1: still lead kind of a private life, like you know
Speaker 1: about the stuff now, but um, it's not like today,
Speaker 1: like if you're carousing women in bars, there's ten people
Speaker 1: filming you with a cell phone, right and like within
Speaker 1: minutes it's like out on on the internet. No, this
Speaker 1: is like it took a tell all biography for this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff to get out, right. Um. So Evil
Speaker 1: Kinevel goes and finds the guy and attacks him with
Speaker 1: the baseball bat and had two broken arms at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh he did. Yeah, he like left the hospital with
Speaker 1: two broken arms and said give me that bat and
Speaker 1: attacks his former good friend. Okay, like really badly well, bro, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he shattered one of his arms. The guy had his
Speaker 1: arm up to defend himself and that arm got shattered. Um,
Speaker 1: And this was where everything really went off the rails. Um.
Speaker 1: He did six months for that six months in jail,
Speaker 1: and this is at a time when his stars as
Speaker 1: high as it could have possibly been. Um. Remember he
Speaker 1: had those action figures from my deal that he was
Speaker 1: making so much money. Going to prison actually voided his
Speaker 1: contract with them, so he lost all of his licensing
Speaker 1: fees from that and that was a huge source of
Speaker 1: his income at the time. Um. That him being in prison,
Speaker 1: he had started the daredevil craze and there are lots
Speaker 1: of people nipping at his heels. Him going to jail
Speaker 1: opened up this huge vacuum to where every daredevil in
Speaker 1: the world was trying to fill it. Now and there
Speaker 1: was actually this guy that um that the house stuff
Speaker 1: works recently ran a great article on called the Human Fly,
Speaker 1: and his star rose because he was trying to fill
Speaker 1: this void left by Evil Kinevil when he was in prison.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do a show on him too, right,
Speaker 1: We've got to. Yeah, But so I won't say anything more. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but but it was a big deal. This is where
Speaker 1: things like really went downhill for him. But his son said,
Speaker 1: I read an interview with his son and the Guardian,
Speaker 1: his oldest son, Kelly, who I think is like kind
Speaker 1: of the the executor of his estate and everything. Um,
Speaker 1: he said that this this definitely was where it went downhill.
Speaker 1: But his life, his dad's life never circled the drain
Speaker 1: or anything like that. He didn't like just go completely
Speaker 1: overboorder off the rails, despite the fact that like the
Speaker 1: family like lost all their finances within a few years. Um,
Speaker 1: he had to pay Shelley Saltman twelve million dollars. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't pay him a cent. Oh, he didn't know
Speaker 1: he was ordered to er. Um. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of like all the money just went away. Yeah yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: The reason he had to serve as full sentence. He
Speaker 1: probably would not have had the judge not found out
Speaker 1: that in his prison work release program he was being
Speaker 1: chafferd and a limousine convertible back and forth and arranged
Speaker 1: for other inmates to get mamzine transportation for their work release.
Speaker 1: So the judge didn't think that was very funny and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, You're gonna serve your whole sentence. So
Speaker 1: he did six months, did the full six months, and
Speaker 1: like you said, his beyond just losing money for the licensing,
Speaker 1: it was just everything kind of went south for him
Speaker 1: after that in life, his star fate was fading. Um,
Speaker 1: it was not a great time to attack someone with
Speaker 1: a baseball pat. You know. It wasn't like early in
Speaker 1: his career he might have survived something like that. It's
Speaker 1: not like nineteen forties or fifties, butte Montana. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: people were kind of losing interest a bit. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he and he very wisely kind of faded back
Speaker 1: into the woodwork a lot. Um. He had already stopped
Speaker 1: doing stunts, but he he was still doing public appearances,
Speaker 1: but more as like a motivational speaker or something like that.
Speaker 1: This was where he like really began to retire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He made his own movie in nineteen seventy seven called
Speaker 1: Viva kan Evil with gene Kelly. Sadly and um that
Speaker 1: gene Kelly was in this. Gene Kelly's great. I know
Speaker 1: it's sad for gene Kelly. He was in this garbage movie.
Speaker 1: Lauren Hutton was in it and um and she's great too.
Speaker 1: Evil Kine Evil played himself as Evil Kine Evil, and
Speaker 1: he was bad and he his The plot was that
Speaker 1: he um foiled Mexican drug traffickers, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it kind of opens. I mean it was clearly him
Speaker 1: saying like, this is the story I want to tell.
Speaker 1: Like it opens with him like rescuing an orphan on
Speaker 1: his motorcycle a lot of a bad orphanage, like riding
Speaker 1: them out of there, and then he foils crimes and
Speaker 1: forcing the orphan to make knockoff wallets. Yeah, and that,
Speaker 1: you know, he even charms. I think the thing in
Speaker 1: the review I read said he quote eventually charms the
Speaker 1: feminist reporter assigned to him, which was Lauren Hutton. Really,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so he was one of those like you know,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you like? He's writing a
Speaker 1: bad article on me. Watch this, I'll charm the socks
Speaker 1: off of you, pants off. It's worth watching a bit
Speaker 1: of that, or at least a trailer hunt. I definitely
Speaker 1: i'd watched that movie for sure. I want to see
Speaker 1: the George Hamilton's movie of him. George, It's Hamilton's as
Speaker 1: Evil Kine Evil I'm sure even George Hamilton's was like me, Well,
Speaker 1: McConaughey for years was gonna do a movie. He would
Speaker 1: have been perfect. I think he kind of had that
Speaker 1: look a little bit. Yeah, but now I think that
Speaker 1: movie has been trying to be made for so many
Speaker 1: years now. It is currently Darren Aronofsky directing Channing Tatum
Speaker 1: as Evil Kine Evil really, so we'll see. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like Channing Tatum, I do too, but he's just got
Speaker 1: this um vulnerability that I don't think even he's aware
Speaker 1: of that he brings to every role. I don't think
Speaker 1: it belongs anywhere near evil. Kannebl Well, that's true, because
Speaker 1: he was like McConaughey would have been perfect. I think
Speaker 1: he would. But Channing Tatum, he's he's one of those
Speaker 1: guys that did not want to like, but then it
Speaker 1: turned out like he was a pretty good actor and
Speaker 1: funny and sort of self deprecating despite his looks. So
Speaker 1: I was like, I guess I do like this guy.
Speaker 1: I got nothing against him. I just don't think he
Speaker 1: could be a good evil. Kannevil, Yeah, I hear you. Well,
Speaker 1: he's an actor. Though he's an actor, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to personify the role. Yeah, I guess if George Hamilton's
Speaker 1: did it, Channing Tatum can do. I think I've told
Speaker 1: this story before. One of my good friends said that
Speaker 1: he saw George Hamilton's on The Tonight Show in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and Hamilton's said that he never wore the same pair
Speaker 1: of socks twice. He always wore a brand new pair
Speaker 1: of socks. And my friend was like eight years old,
Speaker 1: and he was just thought that was the most like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like exotic, wonderful thing of all time. And he's still
Speaker 1: thinks about George almost at Alexander Hamilton's of George Hamilton
Speaker 1: when he gets new socks and puts some money. Uh.
Speaker 1: So Kenneble ended up being married twice. His first wife,
Speaker 1: Linda thirty eight years. She hung him through the thick
Speaker 1: and then uh, he divorced and then married a woman
Speaker 1: named Crystal Kennedy for two years they were married. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but apparently they've been together for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and so he's like, while he was previously married, I
Speaker 1: believe so um I saw I saw her described as
Speaker 1: his long time partner. Yeah, she helped him after during
Speaker 1: his illness, and it was a sad thing. At the
Speaker 1: end for his his family and friends to see him
Speaker 1: that way, right, Well, well, apparently they when they were
Speaker 1: married for two years, they divorced and then reconciled and
Speaker 1: then lived together as friends, um, but unmarried. They never remarried,
Speaker 1: but they stayed very close. Yeah. And he eventually he
Speaker 1: died of well what was it exactly? He died oddly
Speaker 1: enough of diabetes, Okay, Well, he had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis,
Speaker 1: so I believe he actually, um had a heart condition
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like, you no, a lung condition
Speaker 1: of breathing problem. And I guess the impression I have
Speaker 1: is that he just had just worn his body down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like, uh he broke bone or slipped
Speaker 1: on a banana peel or something like you'd expect you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his when uh in any of the documentaries, his
Speaker 1: friends and family talked about how sad it is when
Speaker 1: you see someone that lived a life like he did
Speaker 1: to be so sick and uh. And I think he
Speaker 1: converted to Christianity late in life and sort of he
Speaker 1: was baptized publicly. Yeah. I tried to come clean about
Speaker 1: not having done the right thing. A lot of times
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of the classic story deathbed regrets,
Speaker 1: but he he became. I mean, he was a led
Speaker 1: and he's an American legend for sure. Yeah. He was
Speaker 1: buried in a butte in two thousand seven and one
Speaker 1: kind of cool thing that happened. He very much. They
Speaker 1: call him like the Godfather of the X Games because
Speaker 1: he has kind of inspired all that stuff, and they
Speaker 1: brought him back to the X Games before he died
Speaker 1: and paid tribute to him. And it was kind of
Speaker 1: cool seeing all these kids that were like, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're you're the dude, like you are evil Kinevil.
Speaker 1: He got to experience that, yeah, because he he was
Speaker 1: kind of broke at this point and not doing well
Speaker 1: and he saw all these people kind of uh paying
Speaker 1: homage to him and saying like You're the reason all
Speaker 1: this is here. That's cool and I'm sure he's probably well,
Speaker 1: can I get a cut of it? You just said
Speaker 1: I was a reason? You know? He get my lawyer
Speaker 1: on the phone. His very famous mostly white in red
Speaker 1: and blue jumpsuit. I never already wouldn't say it that way,
Speaker 1: and his motorcycle are in the Smithsonian. Yeah, the good
Speaker 1: old white, blue and red right. That's how true patriots
Speaker 1: say it. That's right. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about evil Knevil, you can't because there's nothing more to
Speaker 1: know because we said everything. But in its Just in case,
Speaker 1: you can type those words in the search bar of
Speaker 1: your favorite search engine. You know, we'll bring up some
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. And since I said search engine, it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this differential equations.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, big fan, it's really excited on the latest
Speaker 1: show on chaos theory, maybe the most irrelevant episode in
Speaker 1: my line I worked thus far. I'm a PhD student
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering at Auburn University boo, and I'm currently instructing
Speaker 1: a class on system dynamics and controls. I can't believe
Speaker 1: you mentioned differential equations. Been harping on my students on
Speaker 1: the importance of UH the dif eq UH. But it
Speaker 1: is a hard sell. Uh, It's not hard to believe,
Speaker 1: my friend. Even more relevant was your decision on deterministic systems.
Speaker 1: Whereas my work deals primarily with determinism's evil relative UH
Speaker 1: stochastic systems randomness. My field of research involves state estimation, which,
Speaker 1: put crudely, is the practice of applying statistics to make
Speaker 1: the best guess of a systems state i e. Position, timmature, pressure, etcetera. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the beauty of estimation lies in its ability to use
Speaker 1: knowledge of a measurements uncertainty, or even the uncertainty in
Speaker 1: the initial condition, for producing an optimal estimate. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: could go on and on. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: great show, great episode, great podcast. A side note was
Speaker 1: the Isaac Cream Newton bit a nod to Wu Tang
Speaker 1: clan as in cash rules everything around me c R
Speaker 1: e A. M. Cream Get the money, Get the money,
Speaker 1: dollar bills bills, y'all, Dollar dollar bills, y'all. That's from
Speaker 1: Dan Dans multi talented. Yeah, he's into Wu Tang and
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering. Yeah, at Auburn and he's doing it all
Speaker 1: my kineevil. Thanks a lot, Dan, We appreciate that. Uh.
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