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Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways, I don't just stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to. Welcome again to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways. As always, I am Steve, and of
Speaker 1: course I'm joined by Devin and Joe, and once again,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, I know it's hard to believe.
Speaker 1: We've got a strange case. Believe it or not, I
Speaker 1: know it's hard to believe, believe, believe a huge mystery.
Speaker 1: Today episode is brought to you by I Believe. Well,
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about is today is the
Speaker 1: Max Headroom broadcast interruption. Everybody remembers the eighties, right, not really? Well? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe not? Yeah? Well you know, if if you don't,
Speaker 1: you're missing out on a lot of iconic TV shows
Speaker 1: and characters, specifically the character named Max Headroom. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually liked that show a lot. I did too, I
Speaker 1: did too, Max headroum. He was the first quote unquote
Speaker 1: digital character on TV and uh though really there wasn't
Speaker 1: anything digital about him. Now he was Matt Matt Frewer, Yes,
Speaker 1: who's been in a ton of stuff through the through
Speaker 1: the years and since then. It's you know, it's actually funny,
Speaker 1: is every time I see Frewer in a TV show,
Speaker 1: I expect him a little bit somewhere in the back
Speaker 1: of my head to do that weird Max Headroom stutter.
Speaker 1: Why well, why didn't he do it? That's not his voice?
Speaker 1: What's going on? You know? You guys asked that every
Speaker 1: time you meet somebody in public like fan probably I'm sure, Well,
Speaker 1: but you know what, this isn't an episode about eighties
Speaker 1: TV or my favorite eighties TV shows, which there are
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Uh so, it's because it's my
Speaker 1: childhood was. Actually, if you're not don't enough to remember
Speaker 1: what TV was like back in the seventies and the
Speaker 1: eighties and stuff, it's like TV it's a lot better today.
Speaker 1: You young whiper snappers should really appreciate what you've got.
Speaker 1: It sucks, Yeah, that's what I hear. Yeah, Oh well,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about is we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the Max Headroom character being used or the face
Speaker 1: of the character being used, and what is sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as the best hack of all time of broadcast television.
Speaker 1: Technically it's not really a hack so much as an
Speaker 1: intrusion whatever. Tomato tomato depends on your perspective. I guess now,
Speaker 1: before we get too far into this, I do want
Speaker 1: to thank our listener. Yah see. I believe it's how
Speaker 1: you pronounce the name. I'm not exactly positive, so if
Speaker 1: I angled that. Sorry. Hey, by the way, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're a listener and you want to send us
Speaker 1: at a suggestion and you have a strange or sort
Speaker 1: of unusual name, maybe tell us how to pronounce it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's a hard to pronounced name, a normal Joe
Speaker 1: Ben Bob Devon named the normal white person name. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're dumb, Yeah, that would be helpful. But um,
Speaker 1: we got this request first through One Avenue and then
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, a bunch of requests for it
Speaker 1: came through Souper Popularity. It was a super popular one.
Speaker 1: I think we got two or three on Twitter alone.
Speaker 1: So we had to do it. I knew I had
Speaker 1: to take it, so I stole it out from underneath.
Speaker 1: Devon was planning on it, and we're going to run
Speaker 1: with it from here. So if this is a terrible episode,
Speaker 1: you can blame me and just think funnily. But it
Speaker 1: would be like if had done it. Yeah, it's terrible episodes.
Speaker 1: You can blame the eighties. Al Right, Well, let's get
Speaker 1: into the story. On November twenty second seven. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: why are you laughing? I was five months old. I
Speaker 1: remember this. This was awesome. Yeah, a TV in your
Speaker 1: nurse ory and you could watch this. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I was watching TV at nine pm. You didn't
Speaker 1: have a flat screen TV right there in your crib.
Speaker 1: I don't you know. I don't remember a lot from
Speaker 1: that time period, but I definitely don't remember flat screen TVs.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a primitive time, wasn't Yeah. They
Speaker 1: all had dials on them still, right. You know people
Speaker 1: wrote things in chalk on walls instead of with markers.
Speaker 1: You know, it was such a primitive time. His remote
Speaker 1: was one of those clicker remotes. You ever seen those?
Speaker 1: All the actual clicker, Yeah, the the noise actually to
Speaker 1: change the channel. Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry, we're getting to
Speaker 1: rub it in Okay, let's let's start this over. Okay, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't laugh this time. Okay. On November twenty seven,
Speaker 1: during the nine o'clock News is Sports Report on Channel nine,
Speaker 1: which the call sign is w g n TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: w G in America, everybody knows because that's the channel
Speaker 1: that plays America's funniest from videos. That pretty much all
Speaker 1: they play. These is all they play. By the way,
Speaker 1: this is in Chicago. The news viewers were watching as
Speaker 1: the anchor at the time, his name was Dan Rone,
Speaker 1: was cut off literally in mid sentence, and he was
Speaker 1: replaced with a black screen so that the screen just
Speaker 1: went black. It had some funny little numbers on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and that sat there for about ten seconds, and suddenly
Speaker 1: the screen was filled with what looks like a piece
Speaker 1: of corrugated metal rotating back and forth. And if you've
Speaker 1: never seen Max Headroom, take a moment, pause this episode
Speaker 1: and pull up anything from the Max Headroom Show. And
Speaker 1: he's always got these weird streaming lines and rotating stuff
Speaker 1: in the background, and that's what this is reflective of.
Speaker 1: That actually was like corrugated tin. It was it looks yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like corrugated roofing. Is exactly what it looks like,
Speaker 1: but it's rotating back and forth, and there's a person
Speaker 1: wearing a Max Headroom mask standing in front of it, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of bobbing up and down and back and forth
Speaker 1: for about ten seconds, and then suddenly the screen goes
Speaker 1: black again and it returns to Dan Rone staring into
Speaker 1: the camera. So this whole thing is lasted not a
Speaker 1: very long time. Uh, there was absolutely no audio. There
Speaker 1: was a weird well, there was no verbal audio. There's
Speaker 1: a weird tone. I couldn't I could never figure anything
Speaker 1: out from it. Nobody else seems to have really cared
Speaker 1: what it was, so I'm guessing it was just interference
Speaker 1: of some kind. But that's all there was. And to
Speaker 1: his credit, dan Rone did a fantastic job and had
Speaker 1: a sense of humor because he looks into the camera
Speaker 1: and I kid you not, says, well, if you're wondering,
Speaker 1: what's just happened? So am I said something like, thanks
Speaker 1: Max for that great report. Now, well you know it's
Speaker 1: It's funny is that Rome did obviously have a sense
Speaker 1: of humor about this, because the next week he pretended
Speaker 1: to get interrupted again by the Max Hidroom. But that
Speaker 1: was totally stage. So he was obviously willing to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of fun with it. But if if
Speaker 1: that had been all that happened, and if that was
Speaker 1: all that occurred, nobody really would have cared and this
Speaker 1: story would have just disappeared. They would have just gone
Speaker 1: off and be no more. But best Max Headman went
Speaker 1: too far. Max Headroom continued interrupted. He interrupted an episode
Speaker 1: of Doctor Who. He did and Doctor Who that's rioted
Speaker 1: nearly burned the s into the ground. That was not
Speaker 1: what Doctor Who fans. Yeah, now what happens is we
Speaker 1: now move over to Channel eleven, which is stationed w
Speaker 1: t t W. As Joe said, they were airing a
Speaker 1: episode of Doctor Who and it was specifically it was
Speaker 1: the Horror of fan Rock episode season four, season four,
Speaker 1: which for doctor good Ta Yeah, our Doctor Who nerd
Speaker 1: fans toms my absolute favorite old doctor. Yeah, he's one
Speaker 1: of the best. Yeah. No, he has the best old
Speaker 1: doctor for sure. Yeah, and I somebody email me about this.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it. Well, do we want to talk
Speaker 1: about his scarf or should we just leave that because
Speaker 1: we'll talk like ten minutes about Dore fromode on the
Speaker 1: Doctor Who's scarf At some point we really should Okay.
Speaker 1: At eleven fifteen, again, this is right in the middle
Speaker 1: of dialogue of this episode of Doctor Who, the screen
Speaker 1: gets kind of staticky, and if you've ever watched old television,
Speaker 1: when the vertical and the horizontal is kind of off,
Speaker 1: it kind of twisted and bended from vertical to horizontal
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then all of a sudden flips
Speaker 1: and suddenly presumably the same person wearing the Max headro
Speaker 1: mask standing in front of a piece of cord get metal.
Speaker 1: From here on out, I'm just gonna refer to this
Speaker 1: person it is Max because it's simpler because we really
Speaker 1: don't know who that person is, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the key things in this mystery. From here for it,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Max. Unlike the first interruption,
Speaker 1: there was audio that came through, and it did have
Speaker 1: it was spoken audio. It was a little distorted. It
Speaker 1: was distorted. It's actually one of the like creepier things
Speaker 1: for me, Like this is another one of those mysteries
Speaker 1: that you hear about and you watch the video late
Speaker 1: at night because you're dumb, and on some of some
Speaker 1: Reddit thread that's said, what's the creepiest unexplained broadcast and
Speaker 1: you're you know, laying in bed thinking, oh, they can't
Speaker 1: be that creepy, and they aren't that creepy. But for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, there's like one little thing about it, and
Speaker 1: it's for me, it was the pitch of this like audio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this audio is very high pitch. It's and it's it's
Speaker 1: really difficult to understand. And that's think about it is
Speaker 1: too as the guy is just his antics and his
Speaker 1: talking and everything, it's just like a little off his rocker.
Speaker 1: It's like it reminds me of a more frenetic version
Speaker 1: of The Joker when he busted it on television in
Speaker 1: Gotham City. Yeah, yeah, it's it's wild. There's hand flailing,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get into some of this. But
Speaker 1: I do want to just give a big thank you
Speaker 1: to whoever took the time to try and clean up
Speaker 1: that audio and then transcribe it, because if I had
Speaker 1: to try and do that, it just wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: I'd given up on like the second play because it
Speaker 1: is it's kind of tough to hear. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that we're not actually going to to
Speaker 1: put that audio into this episode, is that it is
Speaker 1: very difficult to understand, and it's not pleasant to listen to. First.
Speaker 1: It's a minute a half long. Frankly, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of sense. Yeah, it's easy
Speaker 1: to find watch the video. You can watch the video
Speaker 1: if you want. But let's let me just walk through
Speaker 1: and kind of describe what happens. So again we've got
Speaker 1: Max in front of the same rotating background, which it's
Speaker 1: very brightly lit, it's reflective, it's hard to look at
Speaker 1: talking into the camera. After a couple of lines, Max
Speaker 1: bends over, picks up a Pepsi can and says the
Speaker 1: line catch the wave, which, if you don't remember, if
Speaker 1: you're not from that era, is from a coke ad
Speaker 1: that was running at the top, not just new coke.
Speaker 1: You're right. Max flails around a pepsi can, which is
Speaker 1: kind of weird because it's coke pepsi can, but anyway,
Speaker 1: flings it forward, it hits the ground, bends over, grabs it,
Speaker 1: tosses it away again. Uh flips the bird at the
Speaker 1: camera wearing a rubber finger. And this is one of
Speaker 1: those weird interpretation spots in US story. I've heard that
Speaker 1: it isn't a rubber finger, but instead is a rubber fallus.
Speaker 1: It's probably the nicest way to say it. I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, I have I honestly, it looks like
Speaker 1: a rubber finger to me, but people say it's something.
Speaker 1: That video is pretty blurrious. It's uh, it's continuing on
Speaker 1: from there. Um, Max says a few more lines, starts
Speaker 1: to then hum the tune to a TV show from
Speaker 1: the nineties sixties, which was a cartoon called Clutch Cargo.
Speaker 1: And this whole time, it's this funny voice that Max
Speaker 1: is talking. In the background is again still moving back
Speaker 1: and forth. Suddenly Max bends over and picks up a
Speaker 1: glove and puts it on, or tries to put it
Speaker 1: on before throwing it away, continues to gyrate around a
Speaker 1: little more, and then suddenly the scene cuts and the
Speaker 1: scene cuts to the rubber mask being held up off
Speaker 1: of the left side of the screen, with the rubber
Speaker 1: finger or fallus, whichever it is, sticking out of the mouth,
Speaker 1: and there's some dude with his bare butts sticking out
Speaker 1: of his pants holding the mask next to it, continuing
Speaker 1: to talk in that weird voice, and there's a woman
Speaker 1: on the right side of the frame. Somebody dresses because
Speaker 1: it's it's really you just see kind of you know,
Speaker 1: mid torso to maybe thugb top of the thigh. That's it.
Speaker 1: And this person has a fly swatter and begins to
Speaker 1: smack presumably the same person which would do Max on
Speaker 1: the bottom as Max continues to talk, and then it
Speaker 1: goes black and it cuts right back into the episode
Speaker 1: of Doctor Who that was playing. And this is my
Speaker 1: favorite part. It just happened to the cut in as
Speaker 1: the doctor looks at the camera and says, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, a massive electric shock, you must
Speaker 1: have died instantly. God, I love that. It's perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it looks to me like there are only two
Speaker 1: people involved in making the video because you know after
Speaker 1: the cut that the background is stopped rotating, which means
Speaker 1: the person that was rotating that the first half had
Speaker 1: to stop doing that. We'll we'll get into that. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that when we're talking into theories, because you're
Speaker 1: a little bit ahead on there. But that's no, that's
Speaker 1: a good observation because we want to talk about what
Speaker 1: he said, right, because what he said it's weird. He's weird.
Speaker 1: It is so it is so strange. So this isn't
Speaker 1: an exact transcript. Some of this stuff I pulled out.
Speaker 1: Some of it I capped, But I'm just gonna kind
Speaker 1: of run through what we have that we know that
Speaker 1: people have figured out that Max said during this second
Speaker 1: broadcast interruption, the one that was a minute seconds or
Speaker 1: so long during dr who it says he's a freaking nerd.
Speaker 1: I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky freaking liberal, which
Speaker 1: according to the research, is referring to a sportscast announcer
Speaker 1: for w g N Radio at the time. Then we
Speaker 1: again catch the way which is the new Coke slogan
Speaker 1: we talked about. Your love is fading is shouted right
Speaker 1: before he throws the finger slash fallus onto the floor. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, I still see the X. This is a
Speaker 1: reference to remember I said that Max was humming a
Speaker 1: tune from that TV show Clutch Cargo. That is evidently
Speaker 1: the title of the last episode of Clutch Cargo from
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Yeah, that's a really, really far back reference.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I just made a giant masterpiece for all
Speaker 1: the world's greatest newspaper nerds. Again, this is evidently another
Speaker 1: Chicago centric dig and it's at Chicago's TV stations. The
Speaker 1: call sign, which we talked about earlier, w g N.
Speaker 1: It's an abbreviation for World's Greatest Newspaper, which the Tribune
Speaker 1: who the Chicago Tribune who owned w g N. That
Speaker 1: was what they used to call themselves in the early days,
Speaker 1: and that's how w g M came about. So again
Speaker 1: we're there's a lot of weird little riffs. Uh. I
Speaker 1: said that Max picked up a glove and he says,
Speaker 1: my brother is wearing the other one. It's dirty. It's
Speaker 1: like you got bloodstains on it, which I don't even get.
Speaker 1: That's why I said, is like the ramblings of an
Speaker 1: adult mind. It kind of is. We're almost done though. Um.
Speaker 1: When the mask and the exposed bottom are shown on
Speaker 1: the screen, we hear Max say they're coming to get me,
Speaker 1: Come get me, bitch, at which point the fly swater
Speaker 1: begins to go into action and indicative of the Max
Speaker 1: Headroom character, there's a lot of stuttering of words. But
Speaker 1: it's weird because instead of so much Max Headroom used
Speaker 1: to do a lot of stutters, as if you would
Speaker 1: have a digital audio file or a record that was skipping.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the way it was made to sound
Speaker 1: like his like his audio file was scrambled, and this
Speaker 1: person sounds like they're trying to mimic that. But really
Speaker 1: what it turns out into is more of moans and
Speaker 1: drawn out words, and there's some screaming and gyrations, and
Speaker 1: there's a there's like a it's like a break and
Speaker 1: it's like the bridge of the whole artistic piece where
Speaker 1: he just like screams and moans and like laughs for
Speaker 1: like five seconds or something, and that that, honestly is
Speaker 1: the creepiest part for me, when he's doing that. The
Speaker 1: first time I watched it, I didn't totally understand the
Speaker 1: heads I was not in the unsolved mystery like world yet,
Speaker 1: so I obviously not a child of the eighties times,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't in the headspace of the weird, crazy
Speaker 1: people of the world, and I just kept thinking, that
Speaker 1: person is in so much pain, what's going on? Why
Speaker 1: are they still hurt? Well, no, it's before that, it's
Speaker 1: when he's still in the chair, So I you know,
Speaker 1: that's the creepiest part for me, is just the scream
Speaker 1: moans that happened every once in a while. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: If you google Max Headroom broadcast interruption, you will find this.
Speaker 1: Watch it, watch the video the video, and I'll give
Speaker 1: everybody a hint. If you find a video that is
Speaker 1: thirty seconds or so, that is the initial interruption that
Speaker 1: basically has no too except for Dan Rone talking. If
Speaker 1: you see anything that's a minute and a half plus,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the second interruption. If you can
Speaker 1: find one that has subtitles, i'd recommend that because that
Speaker 1: really helps you understand what's going on. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: find one and posted on the website. Yeah, we've I've
Speaker 1: got I've got one bookmark that's got the well have
Speaker 1: to put that up. But if people want to just
Speaker 1: track it down, I would recommend looking for one that's
Speaker 1: got the subtitles. Yeah, because you really can't understand what
Speaker 1: he's saying. It's it's very difficult. I know. We watched
Speaker 1: it one more time when we started tonight and I
Speaker 1: started understanding it. But it must have been the dozen
Speaker 1: time that I had watched that thing, so we finally
Speaker 1: started making watch it again. If you've seen it before
Speaker 1: but not recently watched it again, I always forget about
Speaker 1: that second half. I don't know why. I just always
Speaker 1: do the fwater. Yeah, I always forget about that. Your
Speaker 1: probably that probably Yeah, it's probably a good thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remember the good thing? Five month old months you were
Speaker 1: already watching Doctor? Are you kidding? Of course I was.
Speaker 1: As I said before, this whole thing. The second interruption
Speaker 1: lasted about a minute and a half. That was twenty
Speaker 1: over years ago, and to this day, we don't know
Speaker 1: positively who did it, who pulled it off, the the
Speaker 1: authorities tried to figure it out, they didn't ever get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. And the theories are kind
Speaker 1: of sparse. There's not a whole lot of theories really,
Speaker 1: I've only got three so far. But before we get
Speaker 1: into the theories, I want to help everybody kind of
Speaker 1: understand how this could have been done, because hacking TV
Speaker 1: today is very, very difficult because it's a digital signal.
Speaker 1: If you don't know how digital signal works, don't try
Speaker 1: because it's really really complex, and your chances of getting
Speaker 1: in there are somewhere between slim and none. Now you're
Speaker 1: better off actually just invading the TV station and tying
Speaker 1: up everybody at gunpoint and then just put your stuff on.
Speaker 1: That's the easier than actually trying to hack the signal.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that. Recommend not recommending that. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying we're not even like mildly suggestive word like saying,
Speaker 1: don't do that. This is in a simplified version, as
Speaker 1: with most very very simplified the science of thinking. I
Speaker 1: will start with the fact that, without a doubt, what
Speaker 1: was done, according to the government, was against the law
Speaker 1: broadcast interruption. According to this name is terrible. Eighteen US
Speaker 1: Code one three six seven, which was enacted in six
Speaker 1: had put an addition in that said that satellite jamming
Speaker 1: was a crime. Technically this is satellite jamming. So this
Speaker 1: was definitely a crime according to the government, but they
Speaker 1: could never track down who did it. The FCC had
Speaker 1: looked into it and they're kind of it seems like
Speaker 1: the ones who deal with this, but that's why it
Speaker 1: was a crime. But this is how you do it.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna go ahead and say disclaimer. We're
Speaker 1: saying it's a crime. It's still a crime. We're gonna
Speaker 1: tell you how to do it, but we're not saying
Speaker 1: do it. You can't do it anymore. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: Everybody uses a digital signal that is saying, and this
Speaker 1: is how somebody would hack an analog television signal. So
Speaker 1: if you had you know, you had the big metal
Speaker 1: antenna on top of your house, and that's how you
Speaker 1: got TV forever until about five years ago. Okay, well
Speaker 1: that's it was an analog signal and they stopped analog.
Speaker 1: So you can't do this method anymore. So disclaimer, but
Speaker 1: don't try it anyway. Can't do it. You can't do
Speaker 1: which actually we're gonna like slip disinformation and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be kind of vague about the whole thing. Oh no,
Speaker 1: science is terrible and inaccurate and half of it's made up. Okay,
Speaker 1: To spread their signals across the city, what a local
Speaker 1: TV network would do is they would first relay their
Speaker 1: signal from the studio to a high powered transmitter that
Speaker 1: was on top of a tall building or a skyscraper.
Speaker 1: And that connection between those two places, between the TV
Speaker 1: station and the transmitter is actually where the weak spot
Speaker 1: is at. So that's the weak link in the process,
Speaker 1: which is what somebody who was going to do a
Speaker 1: broadcast interruption would That's what they would capitalize on. That's
Speaker 1: where they would strike to interrupt the signal. It was
Speaker 1: really really simple. All you had to do was you
Speaker 1: had to have transmission equipment of your own, and you
Speaker 1: had to be vertically at a high enough location. And
Speaker 1: people say that this would be on the roof of
Speaker 1: a building or some kind of high rise or something
Speaker 1: like that in between the studio and the transmitter. Were
Speaker 1: they not typically on top of the studio, like, was
Speaker 1: that not? No, they were, They were not always in
Speaker 1: the same location. So the studio is in one place,
Speaker 1: but the transmitter was on top of a big tall
Speaker 1: building with lots of strong equipment to spread it around.
Speaker 1: So that's so. Yes, it is too different places, so
Speaker 1: you get in between the two. And according to the research,
Speaker 1: people think that in this particular instance, that means that
Speaker 1: it was somewhere between north or the northwest sides of Chicago,
Speaker 1: and from there all you had to do was id
Speaker 1: nify the skyscraper that had the transmitter on it and
Speaker 1: blasted with a high powered microwave signal of your own.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't even need to be that high power.
Speaker 1: It just needs to be a little more high powered.
Speaker 1: That just needs to be strong enough in the studio
Speaker 1: signal a little stronger than that and you and you're golden,
Speaker 1: and they were so far away. I'm sorry. So okay,
Speaker 1: not only were they like not right next to each other,
Speaker 1: but they were so far away that you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: it was like the north northwest side of Chicago. Are
Speaker 1: you talking about the two different transmitters that were hacked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think that. So there there's a great map
Speaker 1: out there, and I looked at it, and I want
Speaker 1: to say that they were only like a quarter to
Speaker 1: a half a mile apart. It wasn't a huge distance. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. I mean, I mean it's big when that's
Speaker 1: like the only thing that's keeping you from being hacked.
Speaker 1: But hacking wasn't that big of a thing. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one thing to keep it in mind. At different times,
Speaker 1: very different time Um. So, as Joe said, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to have a hugely strong signal. You just had
Speaker 1: to be strong enough to override what was coming from
Speaker 1: the studio. And people could do this relatively inexpensively on
Speaker 1: their own. And the brand new equipment for TV stations
Speaker 1: costs tens of at the time was tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars. But you could get older equipment second hand
Speaker 1: at an affordable price for a ham radio guy or
Speaker 1: somebody who's into that an enthusiast. It wasn't a huge cost,
Speaker 1: and you didn't need a massive satellite dish, you know
Speaker 1: direct TV, those silly little dishes that people put on
Speaker 1: their houses. That's all the big of a dish you
Speaker 1: would have needed to use to broadcast at that transmitter
Speaker 1: to to bust in. Okay, the first signal interruption that
Speaker 1: we talked about, which was at w g N and
Speaker 1: the Sports news section, that that only lasted that ten
Speaker 1: actual ten twenty second time frame because as soon as
Speaker 1: Dan Rone got interrupted in the screen went black and
Speaker 1: then Max came on. One of their engineers was pretty
Speaker 1: quick on his feet and he changed their frequency so
Speaker 1: that they were transmitting in a different frequency. The transmitter
Speaker 1: knew suddenly it should be getting this other frequency, so
Speaker 1: it ignored the interrupted signals. So that's why one was
Speaker 1: so very short for w t p W channel eleven. Uh,
Speaker 1: somebody was asleep at the switch. Somebody sleep at the
Speaker 1: switch not so fast, So that's why that one went
Speaker 1: on so long. But as I was saying earlier to you, Devn,
Speaker 1: this this wasn't the first broadcast interruption. If we look
Speaker 1: at ACTAE, just a lot of them. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I only want to call out a couple of them
Speaker 1: that I found fun or kind of humor. We've got.
Speaker 1: April twenty second six, a guy by the name of
Speaker 1: John McDougald jammed HBO signaled if you're from that era,
Speaker 1: you will remember the color bar screen that meant that
Speaker 1: something was wrong or the station was off the air.
Speaker 1: And what he did is he presented that color bar
Speaker 1: with lines of text on top of it, and the
Speaker 1: text read good evening HBO from Captain Midnight, twelve dollars
Speaker 1: a month, no way showtime movie channel Beware and that's
Speaker 1: out there for minutes. Yeah, though he didn't use a
Speaker 1: radio jam reminder standing as he was working at a
Speaker 1: satellite uplink location and he just switched the satellite. He
Speaker 1: just basically rotated a dish over to point he worked
Speaker 1: with satellites. He also got he got busted, obviously fine,
Speaker 1: and he got like a year or so is probation.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how they figure out who did it, because
Speaker 1: he used some usual text encoder to make the text
Speaker 1: that was on the screen. That's how they figured it out.
Speaker 1: And that's how they busted this guy. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there was another guy who got busted just because he
Speaker 1: was shooting his mouth off and he would have got
Speaker 1: away with it. I can't remember which guy that was.
Speaker 1: That one I don't know, but the one, the other
Speaker 1: one I want to talk about, which I find a
Speaker 1: little humorous based on what it is and who got it,
Speaker 1: is September, a gentleman by the name of Thomas Haney.
Speaker 1: I believe it's how you pronounced it. He interrupted Playboy
Speaker 1: TV signal with text messages telling viewers to repent and
Speaker 1: find Jesus. It's funny, you know. The one that comes
Speaker 1: to mind for me is the one where, uh, gosh,
Speaker 1: it was some fairy young children's show this Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think you know it's the exact opposite of you
Speaker 1: were just telling about. Yeah, mine's funny, yours is just yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks for that. I just remember because I was in
Speaker 1: preschool at the time. You're watching the show when it happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it wasn't local liar to Okay, let's move on. Normally,
Speaker 1: this would be the point where in this episode, since
Speaker 1: it is sponsored by Audible, I would tell you about
Speaker 1: a book that's inaudible that's related to this story. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find one, so I thought i'd tell you
Speaker 1: something different. See it doesn't go with the natural flow
Speaker 1: of the podcast. I'll turn it around. Trust me, bear
Speaker 1: with me, as you too know, but our listeners don't. Uh.
Speaker 1: This weekend I took a plane ride to the East
Speaker 1: Coast and back, so I had nothing to do, so
Speaker 1: of course I went ahead and pulled the book off
Speaker 1: of Audible. You signed up for your free trial, signed
Speaker 1: up for a trial, and I listened to I got
Speaker 1: a Neil gam In book. I don't know if gaming
Speaker 1: or guyman I can never mind. It's gaming okay, And
Speaker 1: I don't know if either of you two ever read
Speaker 1: any Neil Gaman man um it's uh, it's kind of
Speaker 1: sci fick fiction. It's it's fun, it's light reading. And
Speaker 1: I knew that's what I was gonna want for hours
Speaker 1: and hours on a plane, and so I got Ocean
Speaker 1: at the End of the Lane, which was a great book.
Speaker 1: So if you're in the game and you haven't read
Speaker 1: that one, I get it, especially since it's narrated by him,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. He's got a great voice and
Speaker 1: it's funny. As I was listening to it, I really
Speaker 1: thought a couple of times, is this really Neil Gaming
Speaker 1: or is this the guy that played Servius Snake in
Speaker 1: the Harry Potter movies, because man, yeah, his voice just
Speaker 1: kind of a time sounds like that. So it was
Speaker 1: really interesting. But as I was looking through the other
Speaker 1: book that I am a Scott was Chariots of the
Speaker 1: Gods by a guy named Eric. Yeah, that one about
Speaker 1: aliens coming to Earth. I remember I read that when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and it looked really interesting. But
Speaker 1: it seemed too heavy for a plane ride. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's not that heavy. Well, it was much longer than
Speaker 1: the Neil Gaming book, so I went with the Neil
Speaker 1: Gaming Book, but it seemed easier to pay attention to
Speaker 1: on an airplane. But if you guys want to download
Speaker 1: a Neil Gaman book or Chariots of the Gods or
Speaker 1: whatever you can, you can get your thirty day free
Speaker 1: trial and your first book free from Audible by going
Speaker 1: to audible podcast dot com slash thinking sideways. I mean it,
Speaker 1: it really helped me with the plane ride. I probably
Speaker 1: spent an hour perusing their library before actually downloaded something,
Speaker 1: because it's a hundred or a hundred fifty thousand titles
Speaker 1: and growing the app. I actually put the app on
Speaker 1: my tablet, which I gotta admit most player apps drive
Speaker 1: me nuts. And what I really liked about this one
Speaker 1: is that when my Divide, when the tablet was asleep
Speaker 1: and I woke it up, the player was on the
Speaker 1: wake screen, so I could quickly and easily posit or
Speaker 1: or rewind it a little bit, which so many people
Speaker 1: dropped the ball on that, so I was really happy
Speaker 1: that that was there. But yeah, it was. It's a
Speaker 1: really good sight. So I like the player a lot.
Speaker 1: But if you guys want to start that trial again,
Speaker 1: it's Audible podcast, dot Com, slash Thinking Sideways, start your
Speaker 1: free trial, and really, you know, it's Ours of Enjoyments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so guess that doesn't really tie right back into the
Speaker 1: theory section. I don't know is your next theory? It's aliens. No,
Speaker 1: don't crid what is your next theory? The first theory
Speaker 1: that I have is specific to one person, which doesn't
Speaker 1: tie you into Aliens or Neil Gaiman or anybody. No,
Speaker 1: unless it Neil Gaiman. Was it Nail Neil Gaiman? No,
Speaker 1: I don't know, yes, it was Neil Gaiman. The first
Speaker 1: theory is that it was Neil Gaiman. Okay Stopporn. Our
Speaker 1: first theory is that it's a guy by the name
Speaker 1: of Eric Fournier. People think that Eric Fournier is responsible
Speaker 1: for the whole thing, and the reason is for near
Speaker 1: just some weird stuff. He's got a YouTube channel. He
Speaker 1: makes really strange videos. He as an adult, dresses up
Speaker 1: in odd costumes and wears a doll's mask. He's, by
Speaker 1: the way, cut the bottom of the mask off and
Speaker 1: duct taped it together so that when he talks, the
Speaker 1: mouth moves uh. And he talks to the camera as
Speaker 1: a character called shay st John. He moves around radically.
Speaker 1: There's weird, high pitched voices, and he flails around that
Speaker 1: The gesture style is similar to what is in the
Speaker 1: Matt's Headroom video. It's weird. I watched a couple of
Speaker 1: four years videos, these shayse St John videos, and there
Speaker 1: I got admit a little disturbing, and I didn't get
Speaker 1: them at all because the costume is always in kind
Speaker 1: of various states of disrepair and wigs that are ratty.
Speaker 1: It's just odd. So the story, though, is that in
Speaker 1: the eighties. In the mid eighties, four years a young
Speaker 1: man I think he was in his late teens at
Speaker 1: this point, was in a band and he wanted to
Speaker 1: get exposure for the band. Oh you know, it's a
Speaker 1: great way to do that is not mentioning your band
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, well what he did, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is years ago, not not the new videos that he's
Speaker 1: doing now. This was for the band and then um
Speaker 1: but he uh, his original intention was to make a
Speaker 1: video promoting the band, and then he was going to
Speaker 1: interrupt the signal and he was gonna put it in
Speaker 1: there some people there in Chicago learned about his band,
Speaker 1: and then at the last minute realized what a dumb
Speaker 1: idea of that was because it was gonna come back
Speaker 1: on him super fast. So at the last minute changed
Speaker 1: it up and made the Max Headroom video. Problem is,
Speaker 1: for near was in his teens at the time, and
Speaker 1: according to his friends, he a wasn't in Chicago to
Speaker 1: be able to pull this off, and me didn't have
Speaker 1: the technical know how to make it happen. So it's
Speaker 1: a weak link. I think really it's because people watch
Speaker 1: these kookie videos and this these weird erratic gestures and
Speaker 1: movements and presume that that must be the same person.
Speaker 1: I honestly think the part of the videos at four
Speaker 1: Near does. They're sped up at times, so it looks
Speaker 1: like a person just normally leaning forward leaning back looks
Speaker 1: like a very abrupt, jerky motion because the track has
Speaker 1: been messed with. So I think that's why people think
Speaker 1: that it's four near. But I don't buy it. I
Speaker 1: agree with you. Okay, Sorry, I was just sitting here
Speaker 1: googling because I know you hate when I do that, right, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I was just the name sounded Familier and it was
Speaker 1: from a creepy pasta that I had read, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But now he is dead. He died in two thousand.
Speaker 1: Who am I thinking of somebody from four chand maybe
Speaker 1: probably that's what it is. I'm getting the two mixed
Speaker 1: up because okay, yeah, that's my bad. Yeah, screwed up.
Speaker 1: Thank you for correcting me. You're welcome. My googling during
Speaker 1: shows pays off filing. She's not just facebooking. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm an idiot. Okay, well that would feel flat.
Speaker 1: Let's move forward here. No, not the final theory, got you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's do that We've got another one, which is
Speaker 1: that in someone got on four Chan and shockingly claimed
Speaker 1: that they were responsible for the entire thing. First of all,
Speaker 1: the person who claims that they did the whole thing
Speaker 1: really put some major holes in the story, and that's
Speaker 1: by specifically what they said they did. The person that
Speaker 1: claimed credit for the Max Headroom broadcast interruption on four
Speaker 1: Chan said that they were in a TV studio and
Speaker 1: no one else was around and they did it themselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, that happens all the time, all the time.
Speaker 1: The problem is is that the cameras that are in
Speaker 1: TV studios, the quality and the caliber of them, it's
Speaker 1: vastly superior, especially in to what is available to the
Speaker 1: general public, or not even just that, just vastly superior
Speaker 1: to what we saw in the broadcast. And that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: But but did this guy say he made the film
Speaker 1: in the TV studio? I mean, it could have. It's
Speaker 1: possible he made the video somewhere else. And would just
Speaker 1: bear with me on that question, because the next problem
Speaker 1: in their their claim actually answers that. But let me
Speaker 1: let me finish up with this, which is, yeah, as
Speaker 1: Devin said, you know, this thing is crappy quality, So
Speaker 1: there's no way it was done on a TV studio camera.
Speaker 1: The other problem is, you know, I'm not even go
Speaker 1: into why there was a piece of spinning corget and
Speaker 1: a Max Headroum mask and a rubber finger slash fallus
Speaker 1: in a TV studio. That doesn't sound like something that's
Speaker 1: at the Home Shopping Network And I don't know why
Speaker 1: that's in there, and I'm just gonna kind of leave
Speaker 1: that alone. But at SNL and studio I could see
Speaker 1: nowhere else could I see, although I guess not in
Speaker 1: the studio they can have proper rooms for that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, I can't hard to imagine smuggling a
Speaker 1: piece of corgetd tin into the into the studio too
Speaker 1: a little Yeah, that would that would not go buy
Speaker 1: security easily. So back to your question. That question, Okay,
Speaker 1: person said they did it live. There's a problem with that. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a gut problem because Max goes from jumping around
Speaker 1: and screaming with his head in the air and a
Speaker 1: direct cut to the butt slash fly swatter scene. Okay,
Speaker 1: if that is done live, there's no way one person
Speaker 1: could do that, never mind that other person was standing
Speaker 1: there there's no way that could have been done live
Speaker 1: because it happened like that. Yeah, that's that's impossible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the second person who was obviously rotating the corrugated
Speaker 1: to him back and forth, and then you know, so
Speaker 1: after the cat it stops rotating, so he's he's now
Speaker 1: from impersonating a woman and with the fly swatter or she. Yes,
Speaker 1: whether it is or is not a woman, we don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't even know if the person playing Max Headroom
Speaker 1: is a man or not. We're just that that's just
Speaker 1: a kind of a supposition based on the mass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well in the size, and I think it's a reasonable
Speaker 1: it's a reasonable presumption, but it could be wrong. It
Speaker 1: could very well be Okay, So I again, I'm completely
Speaker 1: discounting the four chan claim responsibility that came through in Well.
Speaker 1: The other thing about the other problem that I have
Speaker 1: with for Chen is he said it was in the
Speaker 1: TV studio, and he did, and he did it live.
Speaker 1: But we're talking two different studios here and two different
Speaker 1: radio transmitters, right right, Yeah, so sometimes managed to give
Speaker 1: himself alone into two studios in the same evening or
Speaker 1: somehow interrupted both signals. Yeah, I mean that's That's exactly
Speaker 1: the thing, okay, is that you would think that if
Speaker 1: somebody was investigating this and they went, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny w g N and w T t W
Speaker 1: their studios are close together, and their transmitters are close together,
Speaker 1: and funny thing is there's another studio directly in between them.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should check that. But that's not the case.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, there wasn't another TV
Speaker 1: studio between the pair of them. So again, how would
Speaker 1: that person have overridden the signal? Yeah? And then and
Speaker 1: then the next problem is is that say say it
Speaker 1: does it from w g N earlier in the evening
Speaker 1: and then between in that and eleven eleven plus o'clock,
Speaker 1: they think people are gonna be showing up the studio
Speaker 1: to find out what the hell happened with the earlier
Speaker 1: they did. Actually, that's the things the studios the first studio,
Speaker 1: w g N, they knew they'd been hacked because by
Speaker 1: switching channels they were done. I believe it was w
Speaker 1: t TW. They were positive it was an inside job,
Speaker 1: and they freaked out and they combed the building, presuming
Speaker 1: that somebody had gone through and switched the feed internally
Speaker 1: rather than overpowering the signal, which I think they kind
Speaker 1: of wasted valuable time in doing that because they could
Speaker 1: have been trying to figure out where it had happened.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they were. They were convinced that it was
Speaker 1: an inside job, but there seems to be no proof
Speaker 1: of that. There's nothing that we can say. You know,
Speaker 1: a videotape or a beta cassette tape. If you don't
Speaker 1: what a beta cassette tape is, look it up WI.
Speaker 1: A beta or a VHS tape was not found anywhere.
Speaker 1: You know, that smoking tape wasn't there, Okay. Next, the
Speaker 1: next theory, which I know Devon likes this one because
Speaker 1: Devon actually led me down the path to find which
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you did because this is this is
Speaker 1: it's a very fun one. The first the story first
Speaker 1: came out actually on Reddit, so we went from Fortune
Speaker 1: to Reddit, which devinviously says redit spore Web and a
Speaker 1: guy who we eventually find out his name is Bowie Pogue.
Speaker 1: He posted his theory of what was going on, and
Speaker 1: here's his story. He says that he met a group
Speaker 1: of guys in the late eighties that were older than
Speaker 1: he was. It sounds like he was a high school
Speaker 1: kid at the time. One version of the story. He
Speaker 1: was like, I think there's only one version of this story,
Speaker 1: the redded version, and yeah, I think it's junior high
Speaker 1: to high school. He's weird teenage adolescents. And I don't
Speaker 1: remember how he met these guys either, but it was
Speaker 1: some weird way. Yeah, it was a weird way while
Speaker 1: he was to BBSs and stuff like that, and he
Speaker 1: seems to have met people through that that spear stuff.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a weird nerd scene. It was
Speaker 1: a new scene. It's a weird nerd okay, now it's okay.
Speaker 1: Really threw me off my game. But somehow he befriended
Speaker 1: a couple of guys in a group that were older
Speaker 1: than he was, and they let him hang out. And
Speaker 1: the two particular people of interest in this story, Poe
Speaker 1: refers to him as J and K. He's protecting their
Speaker 1: their identities. He doesn't want to disclose who they are
Speaker 1: because he doesn't know this for sure, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into some of it later on. But according to him,
Speaker 1: JA was slightly autistic, or he might have had Asperger's
Speaker 1: it's unclear, and he doesn't even seem to be positive
Speaker 1: of the distinction in his descriptions, So I don't want
Speaker 1: to draw guesses. Yeah, we have no The only thing
Speaker 1: we have is that exactly describes him. He's got a
Speaker 1: sort of strange effect. He does strange effect that necessarily
Speaker 1: mean he did have any kind of thing. He kind
Speaker 1: of could have just been like a weird dude. He
Speaker 1: just had a personality disorder. Yeah, but he did have
Speaker 1: a strange sense of humor. And the guy that is
Speaker 1: referred to as K was his brother, and K helped
Speaker 1: take care of J. If you I don't think we're
Speaker 1: going to post the link to this on the website.
Speaker 1: Our way to the reddit thread, because if not, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, if you're interested, like message us
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure we send it. Because it's with
Speaker 1: a few Google Max headroom broadcast interruption, one of the
Speaker 1: first links that comes up is the reddit thread, so
Speaker 1: people can find it that way. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it'll be one of the ones that we put up
Speaker 1: because it's in a number of the other links that
Speaker 1: we've got, but the thread is super easy to find.
Speaker 1: I Devin told me about it, I went home, I
Speaker 1: just put in that search term and I kid, you not.
Speaker 1: It was the third one that came up on the SAE.
Speaker 1: If you're on Reddit, message us, then we'll send it
Speaker 1: to him. Okay, okay, do that. On the day of
Speaker 1: the interruption, he hung out with these guys, the same
Speaker 1: group of older guys, and in the course of their conversation,
Speaker 1: and again this is a truncated version of this story,
Speaker 1: but they mentioned in conversation that something big was going
Speaker 1: to happen that night, and when he eventually asked him
Speaker 1: what they were talking about, he told him, well, watch
Speaker 1: Channel eleven tonight. That was the same night as the
Speaker 1: broadcast interrupted. No on that day, exactly around there. Okay.
Speaker 1: Po goes on to describe, and this is part of
Speaker 1: the compelling evidence that he provides is he goes on
Speaker 1: to describe the mannerisms of j which he feels are
Speaker 1: directly reflective of the behavior of Max in the tapes
Speaker 1: that we see. He also says that Ka the brother
Speaker 1: had a lot of computer technology available in their apartment,
Speaker 1: tons of computers, and Jay had the technical knowledge to
Speaker 1: pull it off. One thing that he does point out
Speaker 1: is that if it is J on the tape, he
Speaker 1: would have been the right age to know the theme
Speaker 1: song from Clutch Cargo, which again from the nine sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they were they were older guys. They weren't late teenagers,
Speaker 1: they were adults. Yeah, And and Jay was supposed they're
Speaker 1: like in his early thirties. Even he was liked than
Speaker 1: his brother Kay seven. We're talking if he was born
Speaker 1: in sixty were talking a thirty something year old guy. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean some shows they ended, they
Speaker 1: go into syndication and they get rerun endlessly on some
Speaker 1: of the secondary channels. Haven't I don't know Clutch Cargo,
Speaker 1: but there were there were a lot of shows like
Speaker 1: Star Trek, for example, got rerun endlessly local station. So
Speaker 1: about Clutch Cargo, you know, frankly, even though I was
Speaker 1: alive in the sixties, I don't remember it at all.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know. And it doesn't strict me
Speaker 1: as something that went up in ran And of course
Speaker 1: back in the eighties we didn't have like Hulu and
Speaker 1: Netflix and stuff like you would have had to see
Speaker 1: it on TV or have parents who owned vhs of
Speaker 1: it or something. And you know, that's actually something that
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about. The reason that people have this
Speaker 1: is that a lot of people had VHS and they
Speaker 1: liked Doctor Who's all these people in Chicago were recording
Speaker 1: the Doctor Who episode, So that's the only reason that
Speaker 1: the broadcast interruptions survived. I would say that's also the
Speaker 1: reason that that one is so much more prevalent on
Speaker 1: the internet than the news one, because who tapes the news. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there's I've only seen one copy of it, and it's
Speaker 1: obviously it's the same one, starts at the same place,
Speaker 1: ends at the same place, But there are multiple versions
Speaker 1: of the Doctor Who. So there's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: That's reason You're absolutely right that we still know about.
Speaker 1: But we're not done with post story, like I said,
Speaker 1: and he has said very openly and adamantly in his
Speaker 1: Reddit posts that he doesn't want to disclose who these
Speaker 1: guys are. He has tried to get in contact with them,
Speaker 1: and they are non commutative with him communicative, thank you.
Speaker 1: I really don't know how to say that work. They
Speaker 1: will not talk to him, and so he's left it
Speaker 1: at that, and he won't he won't push anymore. There's
Speaker 1: a great Motherboard article which I know we will put up,
Speaker 1: and that person has also agreed to to not try
Speaker 1: to pursue it anymore. He actually use pose his source
Speaker 1: and Poke Poe not Edgar Allan Pope, but he mean,
Speaker 1: so we don't know who it is. And on a
Speaker 1: related note, Pope also denies vehemently that he is the
Speaker 1: person who did the interruption. The people who did that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and we see this, and I'm glad that he's
Speaker 1: smart enough to say this, as we see people all
Speaker 1: the time, oh, I know who did it to stir
Speaker 1: up a lot of a lot of interest in the story,
Speaker 1: when really they're the one who did it. They're getting
Speaker 1: some self gratification out of it. So it's it's I
Speaker 1: lend him a little bit of credit for in his
Speaker 1: initial things saying I did do this, so stop asking
Speaker 1: me if I did it. I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: reason I pointed you to this thread was because I
Speaker 1: thought his story was actually very compelling. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of problems with it. I found it
Speaker 1: very believable. I did too, and I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: it's really this positive, but yeah, I don't know. At
Speaker 1: the very least, it's it is very believable. I think
Speaker 1: he's got his facts in a row, and I think
Speaker 1: the way he tells it is very honest, and I
Speaker 1: think the way that he has continued to respond to
Speaker 1: it seems very honest as well. You know the fact
Speaker 1: that he says, I don't want you to know who
Speaker 1: these people are. I just want you to know that.
Speaker 1: I think, I know, you know, I want to tell
Speaker 1: the story of the people behind it, and sticks to
Speaker 1: his guns about that, and I think, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I like the story. I will be honest. I think
Speaker 1: I said this before, is that it's all circumstantial. Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's all anecdotal. It's that's my hardest Absolutely, that's the
Speaker 1: one thing that sticks in my craw the whole way
Speaker 1: through his version of events is it's his version of events.
Speaker 1: I got nothing to back it up with. So that
Speaker 1: I like it. I agree with you. I like it. Fairness,
Speaker 1: there's no solid evidence pointing towards literally anybody. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that. Oh oh, you wouldn't say that. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: Mr know it all says stuff posting the show. What
Speaker 1: how what what you found? Well, if you had been
Speaker 1: old enough to watch Max Headroum, I don't kidding. Now,
Speaker 1: you know. The last theory that I've got, which this
Speaker 1: is The one that I actually think is the best
Speaker 1: one based on what we have available to us, is
Speaker 1: that it was a disgruntled employee or ex employee. And
Speaker 1: and before you your wig out on me, bear with
Speaker 1: me through this, okay. Could have been an inside job,
Speaker 1: so the station might have been correct in looking around
Speaker 1: internally for who the guy was, but it might not
Speaker 1: have been a guy actually in the studio because, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, whoever pulled this off had to
Speaker 1: have a lot of working knowledge of how the TV
Speaker 1: stations worked. And who else has the better information than
Speaker 1: the people that work in the studio or the engineers
Speaker 1: that work at the station. So if some dude is
Speaker 1: peeved did his boss or gets fired and wants to
Speaker 1: poke them in the eye, this is an easy way
Speaker 1: to do it, and they would have the knowledge on
Speaker 1: how to do it. Think about this. Wait, wait, I
Speaker 1: see that look, But bear with me. Do you remember
Speaker 1: all those lines that we read of what Max said
Speaker 1: the world's greatest nerds and uh talking about Chuck Swartsky
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Who is the network that keeps
Speaker 1: getting ripped on? In all of the lines that Max says,
Speaker 1: h w g N, Well why did he go? Why
Speaker 1: did Max go to w T t W because w
Speaker 1: g N shut him down and locked him out and
Speaker 1: he only had the opportunity to make it happen at
Speaker 1: w T t W. Well, if Max was angry at
Speaker 1: all TV stations or all Chicago stations, I would think
Speaker 1: that there would be more rips on, more characters that
Speaker 1: were known in the broadcast industry there. But instead, the
Speaker 1: only people and the only establishments that get directly ripped
Speaker 1: on our w g N and its employees Coke is
Speaker 1: Coke is because it's I think, honestly, it's a direct
Speaker 1: relation to the Max Headroom character doing the new Coke
Speaker 1: commercials just for fun. But all of the all of
Speaker 1: the dialogue is aimed mostly at screwing with them, which
Speaker 1: makes me think that it had to be some kind
Speaker 1: of employee, somebody that knew the system and knew all
Speaker 1: of that internal information. I mean, w g N, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: did who knew that that stood for World's Greatest Newspaper?
Speaker 1: Probably only people that worked there, because it was probably
Speaker 1: splattered all over the walls on motivational posters and crap
Speaker 1: like that. So that's that's why I personally, I don't
Speaker 1: have any evidence, but there's not a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: here to start with, but we kind of That's why
Speaker 1: I leaned that direction mostly when you think about it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the that at least gives a motive, because otherwise, what
Speaker 1: exactly is a motive for doing this besides just being
Speaker 1: an as Yeah, I guess, but I guess like on
Speaker 1: the other hand, is what's the motivation for being a
Speaker 1: crazy Max Headroom? Right? If you're a disgruntled employee, like
Speaker 1: you just knock him off the air for a little while.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's the fact that you do
Speaker 1: this like weird crazy broadcast that's sue disjointed and mind melty,
Speaker 1: what's the point behind that as well? Right? So for me,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a either side. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to disagree with that at all. There's not I
Speaker 1: don't know why it wasn't Mickey Mouse. It could have
Speaker 1: been Mickey Mouse, a mask that the guy had been
Speaker 1: wearing doing something. It could have been a Nixon mask.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could have been anybody. It could have
Speaker 1: been anybody, and it may have been that they went,
Speaker 1: oh hey, I happened to have a Max Headroom mask
Speaker 1: from Halloween last year. Let's make it max Headroom. Obviously
Speaker 1: it wasn't a real high budget film, right, it wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that if we wait like another years
Speaker 1: and he'll leave, he'll leave as part of this, as
Speaker 1: part of as a state and envelope. That's got a confession,
Speaker 1: but I guess. So that's my big argument for the
Speaker 1: Reddit thread is at least it explains why because it
Speaker 1: was kind of mentally adduled youth, that screwy sense with
Speaker 1: you know, people who are interested in hacking into things,
Speaker 1: exploring how far they can push that with this weird
Speaker 1: crazy this would be hilarious sense of umer right, So
Speaker 1: for me, that's why that one sticks out more than
Speaker 1: even a disgruntled employee. Not that I'm saying that a
Speaker 1: disgruntled employee isn't valid, because it's almost just as valid.
Speaker 1: But that's why I just to like wrap it up
Speaker 1: like their addit theory the most you want to hear
Speaker 1: A fun fact. Okay, if anybody watches the video, we've
Speaker 1: already talked about the corrugated piece of metal, and it
Speaker 1: took me a little bit, awhile, a little bit of
Speaker 1: time to understand what I was reading is that the
Speaker 1: FBI got involved in the case federal, it's a federal offense,
Speaker 1: and they figured out somehow. They were like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: got to be an a warehouse, and we got to
Speaker 1: look for a place that deals in manufactured garage doors.
Speaker 1: And I kept looking at the piece of metal that
Speaker 1: was spinning around, going, that's not a garage store, you
Speaker 1: ding dongs, that's a piece of corrugated metals. Out of
Speaker 1: that of course, get it metal though, But I figured
Speaker 1: it out earlier today is if you watch that video
Speaker 1: when Max is talking at the camera and the piece
Speaker 1: of metal is spinning back and forth, and you watch
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner of the video when the
Speaker 1: square spins, it reveals what's actually behind it, and you
Speaker 1: can see what looks like a stone or steel column
Speaker 1: and then a giant roll up steel door apport a
Speaker 1: very small part of what looks like a roll up door,
Speaker 1: And that I think is where they pulled that, because
Speaker 1: you can see it in the documentary. I noticed that
Speaker 1: on the video too. But the problem is is that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of commercial buildings around that have roll
Speaker 1: up doors. Yeah, yeah, I don't know where they thought
Speaker 1: they were going to get with this. Yeah, that's gonna
Speaker 1: that's but it's a fun fact. So obviously everybody has
Speaker 1: paused us at some point watch the video because they
Speaker 1: couldn't take it anymore. Now they're going to depose it
Speaker 1: and look again for that, but this time, please keep
Speaker 1: the audio off. You guys, got any other theory ideas? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, if you've got theories of your own,
Speaker 1: you can always let us know. You can, of course,
Speaker 1: go to our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com,
Speaker 1: leave a comment while you're there. Of course, you can
Speaker 1: listen to and download the episodes directly from the website.
Speaker 1: Very few people do that. You can actually go to
Speaker 1: a regular place like iTunes and subscribe and download. If
Speaker 1: you're on iTunes, take the time to leave us comment
Speaker 1: and a rating. Those are the things that help other
Speaker 1: people find us, because that moves us up to charts.
Speaker 1: Of course, I know a lot of people are using apps.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of podcasts apps out there. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of streaming websites that were listed on. You can
Speaker 1: always find us on. One of the ones I know
Speaker 1: we are on is of course Stitcher, so you can
Speaker 1: find us on Stitcher. Things seem to be good on
Speaker 1: Stitcher at this point, so whole fier. Okay, it appears
Speaker 1: to be good. Um, let's see. Of course, you could
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook. We got the Facebook page and
Speaker 1: the Facebook group find his friend dis like us as
Speaker 1: Joe likes to find his friend to say, you can
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter. We are thinking sideways, so find
Speaker 1: us on there. We try to use Twitter a little bit,
Speaker 1: but mostly we just retweusing it. Have you well there
Speaker 1: you go? Okay, definitely's using Twitter. So go ahead and
Speaker 1: send us a message to me in a dater so
Speaker 1: she has not can only do Twitter all day long.
Speaker 1: It would be awesome. I don't have a job or
Speaker 1: anything exactly. That's what I told him to do it.
Speaker 1: You could send us an email. That would be good,
Speaker 1: actual physical email email. I know, I really I want
Speaker 1: somebody to send us a physical email because I've never
Speaker 1: seen one. They'll probably print the letter and mail it
Speaker 1: to us from their email. I don't know. If you're
Speaker 1: tapping around a rock and you throw it on That
Speaker 1: email address is Thinking Side Ofways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Send us you if you an email. If of course,
Speaker 1: you did the Max Headroum interruption. You have ideas, you
Speaker 1: have thoughts, story, suggestions, anything, like that. We love to
Speaker 1: feel them all, So go ahead and send us all
Speaker 1: to us. And I think that's all the ways that
Speaker 1: you can get ahold of us. You find a new
Speaker 1: one and let us know. Uh that having been said,
Speaker 1: we have gone on long enough, and I think it's
Speaker 1: time to finish this one up. Yeah by everybody, really