WEBVTT - Y2K: Much Ado About Something 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.480 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.600 and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you should Know. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.800 This is a really good one too. I don't want 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:21.680 to I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.599 we haven't recorded it yet. But I think this is 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.840 going to be pretty good because it's very interesting and 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:32.040 surprising and still kind of unresolved. Yeah, what city were 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.280 you in? You have to tell me what you were doing? 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.200 But what city were you in on December thirty feet? 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.440 I was in hot Atlanta? What about you? Okay, I 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:46.960 was there too. Uh. That's when I lived in the 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:49.880 big warehouse on the West End and we had a 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.559 big party, probably the biggest New Year's Eve party I've 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:55.880 ever thrown. And it was one of those parties where 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.640 people come that don't know you, oh wow, and all 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:00.440 of a sudden it was like, all right, here we go. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.360 That kind of party. It's like weird science or sixteen 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.120 candles or something. Yeah, it was great. By the guy 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.679 from the Hills Have Eyes showed up on a motorcycle 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.760 who's also in goonies. That wasn't the guy from the 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:17.840 Are You sure. Oh no, no, you're right, you're right, 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:19.920 you're right. No, it was I think it was. He 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.360 was just in makeup. No, the guy from the Goonies 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:27.399 was football player John Matuzak, right, same guy. Oh that's 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:29.640 the guy from the Hills have eyes. No, I don't know. 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:35.039 I'm just trying to end up. Yeah. Yeah, so that's 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:36.440 what I was doing. I was throwing a big old 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.399 party and uh, not worrying too much about the Y 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.760 two K bug or my bank account being empty because 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.000 I didn't have much in it anyway, or being stuck 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.840 in an elevator or falling out of the sky in 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:49.680 a plane. Yeah, it was a good time to be 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:51.960 young because you didn't really care that much. You didn't 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:53.920 have as much to lose as if you were like 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.120 some I don't know, middle aged fat cat or something. 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.960 You're probably sweating it a little more than you were, 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.800 like in your twenties at the time. Probably a lot 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:05.720 of people who are listening to this right now, we're like, 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.040 what you guys just said, why to K bug? What 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.800 is that? And uh well, let Uncle Josh and Uncle 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.320 Chuck tell you all about why two K because it 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.800 was one of the weirdest times to ever live through 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.600 and Chuck, you and I were Cold War kids, like 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:25.240 we we lived through time where people thought, like, you know, 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.200 we could go to a nuclear apocalypse with with the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.480 Soviet Union at any given moment, it could just happen everybody. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.720 That's how we lived, and the Y two K bugs 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:40.200 still managed to stand out from that backdrop. Yeah. So 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.920 the idea was, and we'll get more specific, but the 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:48.000 one sentence descriptor is, computer code in early days was 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:52.799 written with just two digits, not nineteen fifty whatever, just 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.040 fifty whatever. And the idea was that was going to 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.120 cause a lot of problems when the calendar flipped to 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.720 two thousand and anything, like I said, from elevators being stuck, 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:09.200 to Wall Street going down to elevators being stuck. I mean, 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:14.440 there were all kinds of crazy scenarios um that you 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:19.000 might or might not have worried about as that date approached. Uh. 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:20.800 And that was the Y two K bug or the 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.799 millennium bug. And you know, some people really really freaked out, 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.080 and some people took advantage of people freaking out, and 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.480 some people didn't worry at all. And we're gonna tell 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.000 you all about it. Yeah, that was a really great 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:39.240 elevator falling down pitch. Thanks so um. The thing about 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:41.839 the Y two K bug is that if you hear 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.000 about it today, you're gonna hear a couple of different 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:50.160 responses potentially, and probably the more prevalent of the two 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:53.000 is that it was all just a big hoax, a sham, 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.280 maybe a big money suck. It was a bunch of 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:59.600 people just being paranoid, um. And whether that was rightfully so, 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.120 the or the paranoia was justified or not, you know, um, 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.400 because of the situation or the context that this is 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.800 happening in. We'll talk about that later. But every once 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:11.640 in a while you'll run into somebody and these are 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:13.760 the people you should probably listen to, who say, no, 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.680 it was actually a really big dealer. It had the 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.719 potential to be a really big deal And the reason 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.400 it wasn't a big deal is because the world, i 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.920 should say smart people in the world got behind solving 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:30.680 this issue, came together and solved this issue, and that 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.799 it was only people who weren't really paying attention who 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.279 saw nothing happened and said that was all just a 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.840 hoax or sham. And it's really interesting because to this day, 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.479 depending on what media coverage you read. And I'm not 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.760 even talking like left and right. I mean just like 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.480 the author. Uh, it can change from author to author. 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.800 Um that those two different approaches to the explanation will 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.320 be will be used depending on who you're reading. And 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.640 I just find that fascinating that we still haven't resolved 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:03.680 it fully. Oh yeah, Like you could go to any party, 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.680 any dinner party, and bring this up and and get 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.640 probably equal amount of those reactions. I bet, yeah, get 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:13.160 everybody really riled up. Um. All right, So I said 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.600 that it has to do with computer programming, and in 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.599 the early days of programming, like I said, they were 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:23.560 not using the first two numbers of the year um 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:28.560 because they weren't just lazy. Um. Those computers didn't have 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.640 a lot of computing power. They had about one or 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:36.120 two killer bits of memory. And it requires eight bits 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:40.159 or one bite to represent a single alpha numeric character. 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:45.440 So if you could save sixteen but sorry, sixteen bits 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:51.000 per operation that you're running by just not using nineteen, uh, 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:53.320 then you're saving a lot of memory, like well well 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:57.159 needed memory. Yeah. I mean like this is at a 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.400 time where like those bits were vital. To day, we're 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:05.240 just like drowning in in um RAM and yeah and bites. 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.880 So I saw somewhere that like somebody went down the 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.200 list of what a main frame a main frame like 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:15.159 just there was huge room, yes basically, but like where 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.200 there's a whole room full of whoppers that those things 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:23.360 maybe had two gigabytes of storage and just like some 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:27.240 paltry amount of of RAM. And so just you know, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.360 it's such a cliche to say now that like, you know, 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:33.039 we we like there's more there's more data storage and 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.600 like a calculator that we used today than they used 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.080 to to go to the moon. But it's it's absolutely true. 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.479 And so to save that that that amount of data 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:44.880 made a lot of sense. But then the other thing 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.080 that kind of legitimized that decision is that these people 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.279 are writing code and like the fifties and the sixties, 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:52.440 and they're like this stuff is going to be gone, 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.760 like it'll have been wiped out and like rebuilt from 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.440 scratch by the time this becomes a problem in the 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.640 year two thousand and they were really really wrong with that, 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.480 you know idea, which it makes sense that they would 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.440 think that, but it turned out that it was really 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:10.920 wrong because a lot of the software in the world 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:16.320 that was running really important stuff like things like financial markets, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.880 or things that monitored drinking water purity, or things that 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.640 ran freezers that kept smallpox from thawing out. You know, 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.040 like these were all run on software in a lot 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.640 of cases that were built and kind of tar papered 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.680 over with fixes and patches and expansions that that were 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.360 originally created and like the fifties or sixties, and that's 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:42.400 that's not a good thing to figure out when you're 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.640 like five years out from the millennium when this problem 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.320 is going to actually happen. Yeah, And it also was 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.480 complicated by the fact that these programmers weren't all aligned 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.760 on how to even enter dates in a uniform way. 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:01.560 Some people used the Julian format, which is the two 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:05.000 digit year and then the three digit account of the 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:09.720 days in the year, so, uh, January one would be 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.840 nine sevens or zero one. But not everyone did it 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:15.600 that way. So it's not like you could just go 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:22.200 through and say, you know, the nineteen point to twenty 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.280 I don't know nothing about coding, right, but you know, 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.880 just some simple line of code that just basically changes 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.440 everything in a uniform manner. No, and so even even 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.559 in like the software itself. Like even if one piece 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.280 of software did use the same kind of date throughout 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:43.160 that one piece of software, Um, that software, that code 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.480 was written to accommodate you know, X number of bits 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.040 for a date. So if you just went in and 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:52.079 added two extra digits for the date field, that could 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:57.679 throw off everything else in the software without any without 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.640 you having any way of predicting what it will throw off. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:02.640 So if you went in and made that fix, it 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.400 could create even bigger problems then then, uh, than if 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.440 you just didn't make the fix to begin with as 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.800 far as the software operating was concerned, right, Uh. And 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.120 the other thing we need to point out and is 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:19.920 that the fact that it was the millennium didn't matter. Um, 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.760 it mattered, and we'll and we'll get to the sort 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:26.640 of cultural um hysteria that kind of followed. I think 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:28.280 that had a lot to do with the fact that 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.199 it was a millennium, But it could have been eighteen 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.080 hundred and nineteen hundred as far as the software new, 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.320 and it would have presented the same problem exactly that 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.200 it was just the prefix was changing. And what the 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.360 big concern was is that when it turned over to 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.839 zero zero the computers hadn't been taught that that meant 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.120 now the century now two thousand, technically not century, don't 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.839 at me um, but that they were going to go 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.800 back to nine hundred, which is what they were programmed 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.280 to think, and that that could cause all sorts of 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:03.880 cascading events, everything from Chuck's fabled falling elevator too, air 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:08.880 aircraft computers powering down midflight and just planes falling out 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.520 of the sky. Yeah, or computer just I had the 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.520 idea that a computer systems were just gonna go and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:18.840 like smoke would come out of them and everything would 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.160 just shut down. Power would go out, your cable would 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:24.600 go out, like just nothing would work anymore. And that 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.040 was the way that everybody was touting and talking about. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:29.600 It wasn't even worse than that, people talking about nuclear 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:33.840 warheads launching themselves or blowing up like in their silos 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:35.720 and that kind of stuff. Like there was a real 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.240 apocalyptic vibe to the to the public idea about it, 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.640 but even to the sober, level headed people who are 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.640 actually working to solve the problem. You know, there's a 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:50.280 big problem with an airline computer, you know, resetting itself 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.840 because it thinks it's while the planes in the air 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:59.680 or um planes weren't around the right exactly. Does the 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.440 other a problem to Chuck is that they weren't sure 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:06.400 if the computers reset themselves and like shut down, if 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:08.320 they would have any way to get in there and 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.720 start them back up again. So it's not like you know, 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:13.920 I saw somewhere. It's not like it was going to 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.280 fix itself once you know, it got like a couple 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:21.079 of seconds past midnight on two thousand, that that wasn't 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.400 necessarily a given. So they also the other thing that 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.240 really drove this this I don't want. So there were 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.520 two things that happened. The public was panicking. The people 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.840 working against it were like concerned and and and actively 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.320 managing it. But for the people who were actively managing 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.520 it and who were concerned, another thing that was driving 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.600 it was actually it was driving it for everybody. Yeah, 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.160 I'm gonna settle on that. Um that we had no 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.960 idea how widespread the problem was. Even by the mid 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:57.320 to late nineties, they were like forty billion microchips out 0:11:57.320 --> 0:11:59.200 there in the world doing their thing. We had no 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.320 idea what person standage we're going to be affected by 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.720 the white two K bug. We had no idea what 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.560 missile guidance systems or what satellites or what, um, you know, 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.680 a t M machine systems, We're going to be affected. 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.360 So we had to dive in and figure out once 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.240 people started getting this point across, like, guys, this is 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.440 actually a thing. And apparently people were raising the flags 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:21.959 or at least one person was raising the flags UM 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.959 as far back as the sixties and seventies I think, right, 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.520 or the seventies and eighties. Yeah, why don't we talk 0:12:28.559 --> 0:13:02.400 about him and some others right after this? Okay, all right, 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.400 so you mentioned a light in the darkness, a man 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:11.120 on a mountain proclaiming this could be an issue. And 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:15.920 that man, uh in the nineteen seventies was Bob Behmer 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.840 or Bob Beemer, and he was he really played a 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:24.400 big role in the creation of askey code. And uh 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:26.120 he was the first person and this is in the 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:28.640 nineteen seventies, like I said to to actually write in 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.520 papers like, hey, you know, this could be a problem 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.080 down the road, This something we should probably take a 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:38.959 look at. Um. You know, if you're a UM a 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.679 blockbuster video, you're probably not gonna really try and get 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:44.560 ahead of this too much. You can probably start working 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:48.080 on this in like, if you are the financial sector 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.200 and your Wall Street, You're gonna start working on this 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.800 in the nineteen eighties because there's just so much more 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:57.880 at risk. Somebody's late fees running up is not a 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.080 very big deal. You can correct that. The financial market 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.320 not being open or available or crashing is a really 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.960 big deal. So they started throwing uh a lot of 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.440 money at this in the late nineteen eighties UH in 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:14.160 the financial sector to try and correct this ahead of time. Yeah, 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.280 and as a matter of fact, later we'll see later 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:20.280 on in the after effects, they credited this, um, basically 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:24.400 the upgrade that the New York Stock Exchange dedicated itself 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:26.120 to in the face of the Y two K bug, 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.400 as the same reason why the global financial markets didn't 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:36.280 like their systems didn't collapse um after September eleven. Yeah, 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.280 that because of this. Yeah. So UM if bob Biehmer 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.720 was the first old hermit prophet who came down from 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:47.320 the hills to war and everybody, Um, Peter de Yeager 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:52.000 was the guy who got all the press for it. Um. 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.680 He was the one who really basically dedicated his life 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.200 to making sure that everybody was good and scared out 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.760 this the public, the public, but also you know the 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:06.520 people who were like pulling the levers of government, the 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:08.680 people who are running the corporations, and the people are 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.640 running the financial markets. Like he he met with a 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.680 lot of different people. Um gave a lot of different 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:18.680 scary presentations. UM. I saw that he would like it 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.880 wasn't just some pet presentation. He gave everywhere necessarily too. 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.360 I saw he met with the Canadian government and was 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.840 trying to get the get across like this is a 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.160 really big deal and it's a really big problem and 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.760 you're not equipped to deal with this as it stands now. 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.320 This is a new thing for you. And he pointed 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:40.720 out that the Canadian government meets its deadlines. It's it's 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.480 deadline goals for projects six percent of the time. He said, 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.360 this cannot happen, Like, you can't miss this goal, this deadline. UM. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.440 So he would like kind of go in and like 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.600 make it apparent to each each group based on their 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.280 own needs or their own desires or their own perspective. UM. 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:00.720 But he did. They also gave lots of interviews. He 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:03.640 was on sixty minutes UH and he made a bunch 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.040 of money during I think during he made in today's 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.600 dollars something like two and a half million dollars consulting 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:14.200 and giving speeches and lectures. But from what I understand, 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.920 and he gets a lot of guph today, as we'll see, 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.320 But from what I understand, he was a true believer 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:24.240 who in some ways maybe saved the world from some 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:28.320 really big problems that we we will we will never 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:34.040 fully understand because we didn't experience them. Yeah, this is 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.000 a hard one to judge in retrospect. It's like, how 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.840 do you judge the thing that didn't happen right exactly? 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:42.760 Is it a cry wolf? Or was it uh? Or 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.560 did we slay the wolf? So Peter Yeager kicked the 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:49.360 whole thing off of the article called Doomsday two thousand 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.040 and in his in his um defense, his editor probably 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:59.120 came up with that, not him. Editors typically write the headline, 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.880 so it's possible. Who knows he could have suggested it 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.639 he was He was that much of a doomsayer for 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:09.080 sure that he would have been totally comfortable with that. Yeah, 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.520 and this is where you know, the the American public 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:13.439 like eventually it made its way to sixty minutes and 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.120 once Morley Safer is on there on a Sunday night 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.359 talking about it. Then you know the American public is 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.960 going to get on board. And they did, and it 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.720 brought out some some cooks. It brought out people, uh 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.359 preppers and survivalists. Uh. There are a lot of internet 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.920 scams going around at the time. There was a lot 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:38.800 of religious religiosity, um sort of really heated up, like uh, 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.480 sort of doomsday preachers and stuff like that started coming 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.240 out of the woodwork a little bit more. Anyone that 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.400 thought that they could make money off of this thing, 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:50.879 uh through fear kind of came out of the woodwork. 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.640 And you know, when something like that's happening, you've got 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:56.720 that on one side, and then you've got a lot 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.720 of people on the other side just thumbing their nose 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:01.639 at it and saying, this is all a big scam, 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:03.320 This is all a hoax. Look at all these kooks 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.000 that are trying to get you know, separate us from 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.119 our money. Um, it's just a big scam, and we 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.600 don't have anything to worry about. It's weird, It almost 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:16.840 sounds familiar in some weird way. Yeah, what we've been 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.879 experiencing a Yeah, this is definitely like it was a 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:22.240 peek behind the curtain of what could what could come, 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.879 although it was not nearly a stark although I don't know, 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.040 maybe I wasn't paying as much attention then as I 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.800 am these days. But it didn't definitely, it didn't seem 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.240 it didn't seem like, you know, there was anything approaching 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.439 the incivility and just outright like anger that that we 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:46.880 experienced today, especially you know in America, um, compared to them, 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:49.560 But there were there were definitely two sides to this issue, 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.679 and they definitely were entrenched against one another. It just 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.640 wasn't like neither side hated the other. They just thought 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.119 the other one was dumb, right, uh. And you know, 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:01.040 one of the big reasons that it was such a 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:05.320 big kerfuffle culturally was that this it sort of it 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.919 was all about timing and the calendar flip aligned at 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.280 a time where we were computers were really becoming super 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.320 super entrenched in everyone's daily life. Um. Of course, you know, 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:19.240 people have been using computers for a while, but as 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.040 far as like really everyday stuff like running your bank 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:25.840 through there and paying your bills and credit cards and 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.240 acting as your own travel agent, and the government everything 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.800 was reliant on computers by this point kind of for 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.359 the first you know, this was the first big wave 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.959 so as far, and it made a good point in 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.720 here as as far as your average person on the 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:45.280 street knows, is their computer comes to them in a 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:47.200 box and they take it out, and it's just a 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.280 little magic machine that runs on ferry dust, and we 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.600 know nothing about how it works or how it should work. 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.280 And so all of a sudden, everyone has got these 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.320 little magic boxes that they don't really understand that they're 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.280 super reliant on. And there are people out there saying 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.560 things are about to get really bad with your magic box. Yeah, 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:07.400 And then a lot of people are just like, all right, 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:09.240 I guess it's time to freak out a little bit. Yeah. 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:11.920 I mean, people definitely did freak out, and I think 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.480 it also, I think part of that freak out is 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:16.880 kind of like you were saying, like the Y two 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:19.000 K bug is the first time it was revealed to 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.479 us just how dependent on computers we've become. We we 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:24.919 never really saw that before. But you know, before up 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:27.159 to this point, it was all like ge whiz, you know, 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.159 like my insurance claim went through fifty times faster than 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.480 it would have five years ago. Instead now it's like, 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.479 you know, we're these all these things that were dependent 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:38.920 on are about to pull the rug out from our civilization, 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.760 and that that that really kind of got people scared, 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.720 even if people weren't sitting there analyzing and I mean 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.400 we're analyzing it in hindsight, at the time, people were 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:52.479 just scared, freaked out, nervous, angry, upset. But then the 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:57.119 fact that this was taking place already during a major 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.840 calendar calendar change, not just from um, you know, the 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:02.920 nine hundreds of the two thousands, but like a new 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.920 a new millennium, you know, um, that that really kind 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:11.199 of had people already primed. The weird timing of the 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.640 whole thing, Like you remember how big the X Files were. 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.480 Imagine the X Files now would be like a whole 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.360 hum Some people would watch it, some people be really 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:22.679 into it. You know, it might make a little splash 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.159 there for a little bit. But the The X Files 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:29.480 one of the biggest TV shows in the world, at 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.879 the very least in the West, because it was super 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.800 tapped into this millennial and not the not the generation, 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.119 but just like the end of this era or the 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.280 new era that this ants that everyone was carrying around 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:45.720 to some degree, whether you were aware of it or not, 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:48.960 you were worried, some small part of your brain was 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.600 worried because the calendar is about to change over to 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:54.679 the year two thousand. Yeah. I think the show that 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:58.840 does that best now is Black and Mirror. Definitely. I 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.240 loved Meet some X Files, but I'll take Black Mirror 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.320 over X Files. Yeah. It's really tough to rival Black Mirror, 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:07.600 it is, and I know people, boy, X Files people 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:09.439 are gonna be so upset. I loved X Files. I 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.600 did Ye Molder and Scully. I just watched them the 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.320 other day. It still holds up. Yeah, it was a 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:16.480 great show. It was a lot of fun, but a 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:20.680 show of its time, right exactly. Those overcoats they wear 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:25.480 were gigantic. They were big, Oh my god, shoulder pads. Yes, 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.840 they were so everybody's walking around like David Byrne and 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.920 stopped making sense. It was a little weird. Um. So 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:36.600 the cost of this thing was gonna be pretty big 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:39.679 and ended up being pretty big. It depends on who 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:42.359 you ask. If you see numbers on the internet of 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.639 five billion dollars, that is probably not true. That probably 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:49.600 came from people that were consulting saying you know, it 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:52.040