Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not with us,
Speaker 1: but these beautiful people are at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was easily double last night's reception. That was That
Speaker 1: was a good start, is what they called that. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lovely
Speaker 1: lady with a Josh sent me shirt. Oh yes, I
Speaker 1: thank you for loving that. Um. Okay, So tonight, you guys,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna feel like you just wasted your applause
Speaker 1: because we're going to be talking about game shows. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh good, you guys are into it. That's good because
Speaker 1: it was a it's a coin toss. Frankly, about half
Speaker 1: the people are like, I wonder what the real topic is, right,
Speaker 1: he's just kidding. We actually we wanted a show, and
Speaker 1: I think Portland's and came out and said that, Um,
Speaker 1: it was the anniversary of the How the Sun Works show,
Speaker 1: so we were gonna redo it, and like all the
Speaker 1: people were like, wow, we want to like you guys,
Speaker 1: but we're really mad right now, are you kidding? Like, yes,
Speaker 1: we're just we're all super high, so we really don't care, right,
Speaker 1: They're like, that's why we cheered a game shows. So
Speaker 1: we we wanted to do game shows in part because
Speaker 1: Fourth of July is coming up. You guys can't have
Speaker 1: fireworks because it's too dry here to set off a firework.
Speaker 1: It's the most wildly irresponsible thing you could do. Something
Speaker 1: tells me that some of your militia members are going
Speaker 1: to shoot off fireworks anyway, but even still, Fourth of
Speaker 1: July is coming. So we wanted to do something American,
Speaker 1: and nothing is more American than game shows. They're like
Speaker 1: leisure suit level American, right, but as yeah, right, you
Speaker 1: get a free beer, as Americans game shows are. However,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the first game show on television
Speaker 1: was actually British. It was a British investor. Now we
Speaker 1: like the base because they live in another country. Right,
Speaker 1: And remember this, buddy, if you shoot into the air,
Speaker 1: bullets come back down, so just don't shoot into the air.
Speaker 1: Maybe blanks are okay. So this first game show in
Speaker 1: Great Britain, it launched in ninety eight, is called Spelling
Speaker 1: Bee and it was exactly what it sounds like. That's right.
Speaker 1: Freddie Grysewood was the host, and he dressed as a
Speaker 1: school teacher. He kind of played it up a bit,
Speaker 1: which was nice, and he would say spell this, and
Speaker 1: they spelled it. And if it sounds boring, it was
Speaker 1: because even though there was nothing on TV, it still
Speaker 1: was not met with warm receptions. Advertisers liked it. But
Speaker 1: there was a columnist in The Independent in two thousand,
Speaker 1: just eighteen years ago, such a snarky British thing to say.
Speaker 1: He said this one of the few happy consequences of
Speaker 1: the Second World War was it took spelling Be off
Speaker 1: air burn. Yeah, like a good World War two burn.
Speaker 1: So spelling Be even though it was boring, it kicked
Speaker 1: off this huge craze. Just immediately. Everyone saw like, okay,
Speaker 1: if spelling Bee can be popular with the advertisers, we
Speaker 1: can do better than that. We're America, right, So we
Speaker 1: took it the ball and ran with it. We were
Speaker 1: already familiar with game shows. We had them on the radio,
Speaker 1: like we had shows like um, you bet your life
Speaker 1: with grout show Marks was a big one. Um, there
Speaker 1: was what is it? What's my line? What's my line?
Speaker 1: That's where you tried to guess someone's profession by asking
Speaker 1: them questions. It's like maybe a step up from spelling
Speaker 1: b Right. Then things start to get cool with Truth
Speaker 1: or Consequences, which started out as a radio show and
Speaker 1: then very quickly moved on to TV. Truth or Consequences
Speaker 1: was this show where you had to you were asked
Speaker 1: a question and you had to answer before Bulah the
Speaker 1: buzzer sounded. They named their buzzer Beulah Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: kind of neat, right, It's just a nice little touch, right,
Speaker 1: And if you didn't answer before Bulah went off, um,
Speaker 1: you had to face the consequences, which is like something wacky,
Speaker 1: like a mock execution or something like that. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The coolest thing about that show though, was that they
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Truth or Consequences? New Mexico?
Speaker 1: Were driven very fast through there. Yeah, are you from there? Okay?
Speaker 1: Pretty close? I think it's in the same state, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm a Los Crucis guy myself, but whatever, name dropper,
Speaker 1: you're a name dropping uh. Host Ralph Edwards said that
Speaker 1: they would broadcast live from the first town that would
Speaker 1: name their city after Truth or Consequences. This is not
Speaker 1: a joke. And that's where that town name came from.
Speaker 1: Before that, it was the lovely Hot Springs, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and they named it Truth or Consequences. They're like, our
Speaker 1: town's name is basically just like a caution sign. We
Speaker 1: can we can lose this. We'll still keep the sign
Speaker 1: up that says Hot Springs because it's useful, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna change our name. And they did. I think they
Speaker 1: cheaped out personally. Okay, don't tell them that back in
Speaker 1: New Mexico that's said that. Okay. So this was I
Speaker 1: think nine was when the game shows started coming on
Speaker 1: TV in the US, and by the fifties they were
Speaker 1: like some of the top rated shows on television game
Speaker 1: shows where they call them quiz shows back then even
Speaker 1: they did, and that was pretty much the format like
Speaker 1: they were. There was actually like thought and like skill
Speaker 1: to this um like masteries. They were yeah, smarts right,
Speaker 1: there was like, um, the sixty four thousand dollar question,
Speaker 1: which in today's dollars would be the five hundred and
Speaker 1: nine thousand, five hundred fifty nine and sixty three cent question.
Speaker 1: That's correct, thank you. Although you wrote this a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago, I thought I'm really sad that you
Speaker 1: brought that up. I was just gonna not mention. All right, well,
Speaker 1: Jerry in the future, cut that part out. I don't
Speaker 1: want to make Josh uncomfortable. Thank you. Jerry's all around
Speaker 1: us right now. You guys, we lived on a hard
Speaker 1: drive in Jerry's computer in the future. This is all
Speaker 1: a simulation. So the pressure was on to make these
Speaker 1: quiz shows as dramatic as possible, and so producers of
Speaker 1: these quiz shows realize, hey, we can maybe manipulate these things,
Speaker 1: i e. Cheat and build up people who people love
Speaker 1: to love and people who love to hate. In America
Speaker 1: will never know the difference, and they'll think it's great, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what they did. There was this one show
Speaker 1: called twenty one. You guys might have seen the movie
Speaker 1: Quiz Show with John Treturo and Ray finds. I guess
Speaker 1: not it's worth seeing, worth seeing, right, um. But it's
Speaker 1: about this actual scandal that happened in the US with
Speaker 1: this one show called twenty one. And the whole thing
Speaker 1: started where there was this producer for twenty one who
Speaker 1: approached this blue blood lip professor named Charles van Doren
Speaker 1: and just appealed to his ego. He said, there's this
Speaker 1: guy on this show that I produced. His name's Herb Stemple.
Speaker 1: He's like the worst stain of a human being anyone's
Speaker 1: every scene, but you can't stop winning. In America hates
Speaker 1: him and Revalon, our sponsor, is gonna leave. We're starting
Speaker 1: to lose ratings. You gotta help us van Doren. Van
Speaker 1: Dorn was like, okay, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 1: Just feed me the lines and we'll cheat together and
Speaker 1: I will help you. By the way, that was okay,
Speaker 1: So he gets locked into this right, But what Van
Speaker 1: Doren didn't know is that he was actually being scammed.
Speaker 1: It was a scam within a scam because Herb Stemple
Speaker 1: was a plant. Yeah, he was a plant. They made
Speaker 1: him wear an ill fitting suit, they gave him a
Speaker 1: bad haircut, and they try to make him as unlikable
Speaker 1: as possible so they would have a villain on their hands.
Speaker 1: And Herb Stemple doesn't like this, of course, because you
Speaker 1: would think like, all right, well, then go to the
Speaker 1: press and expose this thing. And he did, and the
Speaker 1: press said, you're just a sore loser. Yeah, they wouldn't.
Speaker 1: The New York Times said, nah, you're just a sore loser. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was another guy who was the other dude, Tony Jackson. Yes,
Speaker 1: only Jackson was another I think he was on the
Speaker 1: sixty four thousand dollar question. He went to the New
Speaker 1: York Times and Time magazine and said, these are all rigged,
Speaker 1: none of these game shows are real, and they went, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just a sore loser. So finally there was hard evidence.
Speaker 1: There was another question named Otto, and somebody found a
Speaker 1: contestants notebook that had the questions and the answers in
Speaker 1: it and took it to the press and that was that.
Speaker 1: And America's reaction was profound. You could say they had
Speaker 1: congressional hearings on it. They amended the nine Communications Act
Speaker 1: to expressly outlaw dishonest quiz shows. Right, this is like
Speaker 1: a very naive time in our country's history. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of a time when, uh, game show quality
Speaker 1: was one of the more important things on the docket.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm depressed, lest hippies, I don't have to
Speaker 1: think Van Dorn. By the way, he was actually indicted
Speaker 1: for perjury. He was because he had lied to Congress. No,
Speaker 1: he told the truth Congress. He lied to a court, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't think it did a hard time. I
Speaker 1: said he was a blue blood. Yeah, let's face it,
Speaker 1: it was still it was still America. He didn't he
Speaker 1: didn't serve any hard time. So uh. Those quiz show
Speaker 1: scandals gave us one of the weird quirks of Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: At one point, Mervy, Yes, I still love Jeopardy. Uh. Merv.
Speaker 1: Griffin's wife suggested at one time that he do a
Speaker 1: quiz show, and he was like, shut up, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to come near a quiz show. Haven't you been paying attention?
Speaker 1: And she wad you shut up? Why don't you just
Speaker 1: make the questions the answers, the answers the questions. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're very lovely people. Actually, that's just how he
Speaker 1: picture it in my head. Is there all draw punkin, smoking, skelling,
Speaker 1: bangally bracelets on his wife? Julian actually suggested that, and
Speaker 1: that's where that interesting quirk of Jeopardy came from. And
Speaker 1: by the time the executives figured out it was actually
Speaker 1: the same thing late on the air, you could still
Speaker 1: feed someone the questions or answers, right, so um, the
Speaker 1: scandal again, America's response was profound and it almost killed
Speaker 1: off quiz shows, were it not for one of maybe
Speaker 1: our country's greatest geniuses ever, manned by the name of
Speaker 1: Mark Goodson, who created the greatest game show ever. The
Speaker 1: price is right. Yes, Mark Goodson and Bill Toddman his partner.
Speaker 1: I don't recognize him, just Mark Goodson. So all right,
Speaker 1: you're weird, longstanding drudge against Bill Toddens. It's not so
Speaker 1: much that it's more an idolization of Mark Goodson. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine. So what Mark Goodson did he said, Okay, everybody, wait,
Speaker 1: we don't have to give up quiz shows. What we're
Speaker 1: gonna do is take quiz shows and make them dumber
Speaker 1: and then we have game shows. And that's what he did.
Speaker 1: They did away with the game, they did away with
Speaker 1: quiz anything. They did away with um having to know
Speaker 1: stuff can actually compete on the game. And that's when
Speaker 1: they got really good. Yeah, that is when they got
Speaker 1: really good, brother, you can say that again they did.
Speaker 1: That's when it got really good. Thank you, because this
Speaker 1: was the era that we all know and love if
Speaker 1: anyone watches the Game show Network, when you could just
Speaker 1: trot out drunk celebrities to spew racist and homophobic jokes
Speaker 1: left and right. Oh yes, the good old days. Well,
Speaker 1: hey make America great again? Right, uh oh god, it's
Speaker 1: like crowded sea. Just someone big sea saw shreds legal.
Speaker 1: We don't tread on me, and let's just back away
Speaker 1: from this chuck all right, Jerry cut all that out,
Speaker 1: uh jr. Out of here. Celebrities getting drunk, which I
Speaker 1: was like the match game in Hollywood Squares and they
Speaker 1: like flat out got drunk on the match game. If
Speaker 1: you've ever seen like behind the scene stories, it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: They just swilled vodka basically from like a noon on
Speaker 1: and you had. The only smarts you had to have
Speaker 1: as a contestant was to be able to fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks. You had to be able to speak. That's it.
Speaker 1: Like this Frank was embarrassed because his blank squeaked, Like
Speaker 1: that's as smart as you needed to be. Let's name
Speaker 1: a body part. Like you, you basically couldn't get it wrong.
Speaker 1: And if you got it wrong is because you just
Speaker 1: guess wrong. You had just is is as much of
Speaker 1: a chance of guessing right as you had right. But
Speaker 1: there was always a chance that Nipsey Russell would be
Speaker 1: thinking the same body part, and then you were you
Speaker 1: were the winner. It's pretty great. They would carry you
Speaker 1: out on their shoulders and give you a bunch of
Speaker 1: mushrooms as they were all on mushrooms themselves. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there was, of course the newly Wed Game, the
Speaker 1: legendary Newlywed Game where they would trot out married couples
Speaker 1: and ask they would put one of them backstage, ask
Speaker 1: a question of the other spouse and say, you know,
Speaker 1: how would your would your husband or wife answer this?
Speaker 1: Are we doing this? Yeah? I think we have to
Speaker 1: because it's one of the biggest moments in game show history.
Speaker 1: Was Holga from the Newlywed Game? We're doing and now,
Speaker 1: have you guys ever heard of Holga from the Newlywed Game?
Speaker 1: A few of you have, well the rest of you
Speaker 1: buck Land. So there was a woman competing with her
Speaker 1: husband on the newly Wed Gamer. Name is Holga? I
Speaker 1: think husband's name four? For for argument's sake. Sure, So
Speaker 1: Holga was asked among her fellow competitors on the game, um,
Speaker 1: tell me, girls, where is the weirdest place typically that
Speaker 1: you personally have ever gotten the urge to make? Whoopie?
Speaker 1: And Holga answered in the ass you can you can
Speaker 1: watch it online when you get home, and poor Holga's like,
Speaker 1: why does everyone laugh? I guess it's funny. And then
Speaker 1: when they brought her husband back and all the other husbands,
Speaker 1: they said, what do you think your wife would say?
Speaker 1: And her husband guests in the car. So they didn't win,
Speaker 1: but they definitely went down in history, and Holga was
Speaker 1: still going, why is everybody laughing at me? Poor Holgan.
Speaker 1: Then there was a show called Queen for a Day.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting show because it was a big,
Speaker 1: big hit with audiences even though it was decidedly strange,
Speaker 1: and that they would bring out women who had genuine
Speaker 1: troubles in their life and uh spill their guts about
Speaker 1: what was going on in hopes that they would be
Speaker 1: voted up via applause me eater to solve those problems
Speaker 1: with money. So you literally had ladies on TV talking
Speaker 1: about not being able to afford surgery for their sick
Speaker 1: child and an applause meter is going up while people
Speaker 1: are going crazy and rooting them on. It sounds very
Speaker 1: strange and it was, but it was a it was
Speaker 1: a big, big hit. It was, and in fact that
Speaker 1: even stretched it from thirty minute show to an hour
Speaker 1: hunk show because advertisers loved it so much. Queen for
Speaker 1: a Day, Queen for a Day. So there was another
Speaker 1: big thing that happened, um when game shows started to
Speaker 1: make a comeback. They moved from prime time the daytime
Speaker 1: and the way that we think of game shows today,
Speaker 1: which is like back to back starting in the morning
Speaker 1: going well into the afternoon. You don't even have to
Speaker 1: turn the channel once. That started in the seventies when
Speaker 1: there was this sudden spasm of game shows that came
Speaker 1: on daytime TV out of nowhere and just said get
Speaker 1: out of the way, soap operas, move over of American
Speaker 1: style reruns. Uh, it just took over, and like what
Speaker 1: we think of his, game shows came out of the
Speaker 1: mid seventies and it was they made a pretty big splash.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was. In fact, there was an article in
Speaker 1: the New York Times. It said you could watch nine
Speaker 1: straight game shows between nine and two pm on NBC
Speaker 1: every weekday. Nine straight game shows. It's amazing. And this
Speaker 1: is the world I grew up in. So I was
Speaker 1: pretty happy. Kid, say, this is how I watched Prices, right,
Speaker 1: That's how I watched and still watch Pyramid. To me,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest all time game shows. I love Pyramid.
Speaker 1: It's no prices, right, but it's good. I love prices, right,
Speaker 1: I was on the prices. Well, I was not on
Speaker 1: Its a taping of the prices right. It's a big difference,
Speaker 1: and I will tell that story later, Okay, put a
Speaker 1: pin in it. So the reason, all right, the reason
Speaker 1: UM had to ask Josh's permission everything I say so.
Speaker 1: The reason that game shows made like such a big
Speaker 1: comeback after they were almost dead, it was pretty simple money.
Speaker 1: They're actually really really cheap to make. UM. They came
Speaker 1: back in part again because of Mark Goodson, but they
Speaker 1: also came back because there were risk averse executives when
Speaker 1: they actually pop up a lot in this show you'll
Speaker 1: find But back in the sixties and seventies, UM variety
Speaker 1: shows were huge. They kind of came in and filled
Speaker 1: the void after quiz shows went away. But they're really
Speaker 1: expensive to make. Game shows are not expensive to make.
Speaker 1: They used to be even less expensive than they are today.
Speaker 1: Like today you have what's called a prize budget and
Speaker 1: it's part of your show budget. Did anybody see The
Speaker 1: Power of Ten? It was on for like a season
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven. Yeah, no one did, right, That's
Speaker 1: why I was on for a season response by the way,
Speaker 1: But it was like this kind of slick new game show,
Speaker 1: the complicated rules and everything. Um. But they had a
Speaker 1: prize budget for the season of three million dollars, but
Speaker 1: they had a top prize of ten million dollars, and
Speaker 1: the producers just kind of hoped, knowing, whatever get to
Speaker 1: the ten million dollar question. They basically said, this show
Speaker 1: is so hard, no one, it's virtually impossible to get
Speaker 1: to that ten million dollar question. Ipso facto. We're fine. Right.
Speaker 1: The first contestant got to the ten million dollar question.
Speaker 1: I I was like, surely that's isn't true. And I
Speaker 1: looked it up again in the green rooms, like it
Speaker 1: is still true? Are you still fact checking? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: love it. That's the kind of quality you can expect
Speaker 1: from stuff you should not. So producers have other levers
Speaker 1: they can pull if things are going badly for them,
Speaker 1: which is to say going great for a contestant, like
Speaker 1: on the prices, right, if if people are winning a lot,
Speaker 1: they can bring out you know, those games are all
Speaker 1: on wheels. They can bring out whatever they want. They
Speaker 1: just bring out the harder games to play like a
Speaker 1: penny any super easy game penny Annie is is everyone's
Speaker 1: winning a lot of money? H Barker, because Barker runs
Speaker 1: the show. Everyone knows that. Yeah, Barker might say, well, no,
Speaker 1: let's bring up plink oh because we're on a run
Speaker 1: here and we're going broke, and I need there's a
Speaker 1: lot of pets that need to be spade neutered, so
Speaker 1: it needs my money around his bedroom waiting for the
Speaker 1: return and surgery. Then he might try tout Cliffhanger, the
Speaker 1: very tough Cliffhanger with the the the Yodler, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite games, and then the Kuda Gras. At the end.
Speaker 1: If everyone is winning, they will bring out the only
Speaker 1: game on the prices right where you actually need physical skills?
Speaker 1: Can anyone name it? Hole in one who said it?
Speaker 1: That's where he had you're giving out a lot of beer.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's their money that comes out of our
Speaker 1: cut what So hold on one is the one where
Speaker 1: you have to put from like different distances depending on
Speaker 1: whatever you've guessed for the price. And that's like I
Speaker 1: remember being a kid and seeing like an eight year
Speaker 1: old woman handed a golf butter from nine ft away
Speaker 1: and just like sinking it dropping out. That'd be so great.
Speaker 1: Barker always showed off and put it. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: that was even on. There was so he could get
Speaker 1: a little golf in at work. Uh. Here's the other
Speaker 1: thing that they do. They also inflate the prizes of
Speaker 1: the of the value of the prizes so they can
Speaker 1: write it off on their income taxes as a production company.
Speaker 1: That's really true. They take out life or not life insurance.
Speaker 1: They probably should take out life insurance. They take out
Speaker 1: insurance policies in case someone wins the big prize, indemnity insurance.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. They have all their bases covered. And then
Speaker 1: if none of that works and somebody wins. I did
Speaker 1: realize this until we researched this this show. Um. They
Speaker 1: do lot of style payouts to where they come to
Speaker 1: you and say, hey, congratulations, you can have like a
Speaker 1: tenth of this now, where you can have the whole
Speaker 1: thing over like fifty years again, congratulations for winning. You
Speaker 1: can have this new car now, or how about the
Speaker 1: segue or the dashboard today chair next year, the car chair,
Speaker 1: they know what they're calling the second the driver's chair,
Speaker 1: passenger chair, the sege the invention that revolutionize standing, That
Speaker 1: was gonna change the city because we're all in seguays.
Speaker 1: Were there so much room on any given sidewalk for
Speaker 1: thousands of seguys? Well, they were gonna do away with cars.
Speaker 1: We wrote a segue remember that they're hard. Have you
Speaker 1: guys ever written on a segway? They're tough? Head Cracker
Speaker 1: that was the original name for him. I was about
Speaker 1: to say, Jerry cut that out, but you saved it. Thanks,
Speaker 1: nice work. All right, where are we so the other thing? Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I know where we are. All right. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: said that got us back on track. So um Prize
Speaker 1: budgets are kind of a new thing as far as
Speaker 1: game shows go, back in the day, back in the
Speaker 1: seventies spasm of game shows on daytime. If you did
Speaker 1: this right, you could basically pay for the production costs
Speaker 1: for your show and ad revenue would be just a profit. Right.
Speaker 1: And they did this because you could trade stuff for
Speaker 1: plugs on the game show. And we didn't realize this
Speaker 1: until well, I guess you realized it years before. I
Speaker 1: was like in my twenties when I realized the prices
Speaker 1: right was a sixty minute TV commercial. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: researching this show when I realized that, because again, this
Speaker 1: is how I watched Prices. Right, it's taken on face value.
Speaker 1: It's just it's in show plug after in show plug,
Speaker 1: whether it's Rice Erroni, the San Francisco treat or Bush's
Speaker 1: baked beans with more fat than ever before, or the
Speaker 1: new Ford Pinto less uh fiery than it was a
Speaker 1: year ago. Right, So depending on whether it was like
Speaker 1: Rice Erroney, Rice Erroni would go to Bob Barker and say,
Speaker 1: here's a sac of money, a lifetime supply of Rice Erroni,
Speaker 1: and um, you just go plug Rice Errony on your show. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ford would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a
Speaker 1: fiery death Chap Pinto and we'll give you this an
Speaker 1: exchange for like six plugs on the show. And Barker
Speaker 1: would lean back in his recliner and go, let me
Speaker 1: think about it. Let me ask you it's your dog spade,
Speaker 1: or before we go any further in this business deal,
Speaker 1: I need to know what's on the table. Take him
Speaker 1: out back and teach him a lesson. That was the
Speaker 1: real Barker. Everybody, that's not true. Snot. He's a sweetheart
Speaker 1: of a man. All right. I'm sorry, I keep getting
Speaker 1: lost because I'm halfway drunk. Uh halfway. Oh. So it
Speaker 1: ends up sounding kind of like a pyramid scam when
Speaker 1: you really look at how they do these things, because
Speaker 1: they're getting all this free product and then they're charging
Speaker 1: them for ad revenue for the product. So it's just
Speaker 1: it's all gravy basically, right, because then you can take
Speaker 1: that money pay your host, but also like use it
Speaker 1: for cash prizes. If there's somebody who won't trade you
Speaker 1: their thing in in exchange for bugs, you can actually
Speaker 1: buy it and the whole thing, just wash it up
Speaker 1: and it's free. Um. So they're very cheap to make.
Speaker 1: And there's one other thing that you need to know
Speaker 1: about game shows. Their production wise, they would film like
Speaker 1: five or six of them in a single day, so
Speaker 1: you get the whole week done, just knocked out in
Speaker 1: a single day. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 1: big reasons are so cheap is because you save on
Speaker 1: studio cost, on crew cost because they just knock them
Speaker 1: out from like nine to five every day. Then Barker
Speaker 1: goes home to his liner, smokes a cigar, and Space
Speaker 1: and neuters a bunch of dogs. So, guys, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you all, but I'm feeling pretty good about
Speaker 1: this show. That was Actually, that wasn't a prompt for applause.
Speaker 1: That's that's me softening the blow. Why did you sit
Speaker 1: there and wait? And that means that we have to
Speaker 1: put an ad break in. That's right, So if you quiet, so,
Speaker 1: if you'll bear with us, we'll be right back after
Speaker 1: these messages. We're right back, ma'am. Magic covented. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: how that works. So well, pay for this show, not commercial,
Speaker 1: and pay for commercial. I'm gonna tell my fellow militia members.
Speaker 1: So with his seventies glood of game shows, UH comes
Speaker 1: some of the most popular TV shows of all time
Speaker 1: in American history. UH shows like Wheel of Fortune in
Speaker 1: Jeopardy Prices Right, long long running shows. Wheel of Fortune
Speaker 1: debut nine and became the longest running syndicated game showing
Speaker 1: American television history, making Mr. Say Jack and Ms Van
Speaker 1: White household names. Of course, and say Jack would have
Speaker 1: held on to his spot as the longest running host
Speaker 1: had he not made the very poor decision to stop
Speaker 1: and have his own late night talk show That oh
Speaker 1: Man it's so bad, Pat Say Jack show. It was
Speaker 1: like like watching them vallium. Not like taking a value.
Speaker 1: It's like watching a value you're not allowed to take.
Speaker 1: That's how boring it is. I have to sit there
Speaker 1: and look sad. Yeah, Say Jack is in a three
Speaker 1: way race for worst late night talk show between Magic
Speaker 1: Johnson and Chevy Chates, and I can't decide which one
Speaker 1: is worse. So, Jevy, that was bad. It was really bad.
Speaker 1: My father raised me to despise checks, and I will
Speaker 1: still tell you this, Pat Say Jack Show was worse
Speaker 1: than the others. It was the worst of all. It's
Speaker 1: pretty bad. I would tell that to Patsy Jack's face.
Speaker 1: And of course, who took over as the longest running
Speaker 1: host because of Say Jack's mistake, drew back. But little
Speaker 1: know in fact, Vannah White actually pre dates passage Jack
Speaker 1: on Will Fortune. You guys know that she started back
Speaker 1: in the day when Chuck Woolery still hosted. And the
Speaker 1: first letter Vannah White ever turned on the board was
Speaker 1: a T So if you were listening to the radio
Speaker 1: and there's like free tickets at stake, that's the answer.
Speaker 1: That's an arcane trivia question, And I got one more
Speaker 1: about Vannah. If you guys are okay with you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. She holds the Guinness World Record for
Speaker 1: television's most frequent clapper, with about seven and twenty claps
Speaker 1: per episode of Wheel of Fortune, and they filmed six
Speaker 1: of those in a day. That means she's at home
Speaker 1: the rest of the week, just recouping. It's like, don't
Speaker 1: touch mommy's hands. Don't touch mommy's hands, says these giant
Speaker 1: aloe plants. She just sticks her hands inside. They're like food.
Speaker 1: Move Vannah, weird, not expecting a little shop preference, I guess.
Speaker 1: So then we move into uh, well, it's actually I forgot.
Speaker 1: We need to get Bob Barker his two because he
Speaker 1: actually worked from nineteen seventy two on The Prices Right
Speaker 1: only until his grand old age of eighty three. But
Speaker 1: he actually hosted a show before that, right, Truth or Consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what year did that start? He started hosting in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. He stopped in nineteen seventy. Sorry, he started
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six. He stopped hosting that in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. He started hosting The Prices Right in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two and stopped hoasting the prices right in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. So for fifty one, Bob Barker was a
Speaker 1: game show host every day, well actually one day a week,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm saying. The rest of the time,
Speaker 1: cigars and whiskey and spaying and neutering. I don't like
Speaker 1: this picture. You're not gonna lie. He had a veterinarian
Speaker 1: on hand, spade that one. I don't like what I
Speaker 1: see out of that guy. He's getting humpy. Actually that
Speaker 1: would be a neuter technically, don't email me. I know
Speaker 1: my dog parts. So sorry, I'm so sorry. Well, you
Speaker 1: know the comedy rule of three threes. We we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to say that a third time, all right, keeping
Speaker 1: your for I there's a nine chance we'll forget right.
Speaker 1: And at the very end we'll just go good night
Speaker 1: and then say it. But I won't say it again
Speaker 1: because that would count. I don't want it to count.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if I can work it in here,
Speaker 1: so I want to see it, all right. So sorry,
Speaker 1: So game shows started in there heyday, everybody, bear with me.
Speaker 1: Game shows started in their heyday and roll right into
Speaker 1: the eighties, and one of the quintessential game shows of
Speaker 1: the was something called Wind Loser Draw. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1: It was nothing more then a game of pictionary played
Speaker 1: by celebrities. That was it, and a fake living room
Speaker 1: set that was how great it was. Lots of pastels, yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of pop callers. If you look closely at every episode,
Speaker 1: they have a magazine turned upside down that is clearly tinting.
Speaker 1: Lines of cocaine that they're doing in between like commercial breaks,
Speaker 1: lots of Super eight, lots of Bert's. I think didn't
Speaker 1: Burt Conby host that he did? Or do I just
Speaker 1: want him to have hosted that? He did host it?
Speaker 1: And then Burt Reynolds was a guest on Burton Money.
Speaker 1: They were all over that show, and poor Bert um
Speaker 1: Convy was known as Little Burt, which he was even
Speaker 1: I think taller than Burt Reynolds was just but that
Speaker 1: was per Burt Reynolds contract. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's called the Little Burt Uh. And then Betty White.
Speaker 1: Betty White had an interesting show called Just Men exclamation
Speaker 1: Point with an actual exclamation point, and it featured nothing
Speaker 1: but women as contestants, but they would ask celebrity men
Speaker 1: a question and then guess whether or not they would
Speaker 1: answer yes or no, and they could win keys potentially
Speaker 1: to start a new car. So it was a game
Speaker 1: show where you literally they could have called it coin
Speaker 1: flip and just had people flipping a coin. But it
Speaker 1: worked out because Miss Petty White was the first woman
Speaker 1: to ever win the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Game Show Host.
Speaker 1: So cently people like it. She's just America's sweetheart, you know. People.
Speaker 1: So by the time the eighties are like in their heyday,
Speaker 1: their own heyday. Um. If you look back, a lot
Speaker 1: of the shows that were big in the eighties had
Speaker 1: actually started in the sixties. And the reason why is because, again,
Speaker 1: risk Averse TV executives were like, I think of anything new,
Speaker 1: I'll just bring out tic tech, dough and concentration, you know, Paula,
Speaker 1: shut up, dust it off, and put it out there again.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of game shows like that
Speaker 1: and they're pretty successful. But one of the other things
Speaker 1: that they did in the eighties was experiment with game shows, right,
Speaker 1: so you had things like double There. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a good that's okay, we owe it to you, Double There.
Speaker 1: If you guys haven't seen this, it is a thing
Speaker 1: to behold. It's the weirdest game show maybe ever. There's
Speaker 1: an obstacle course, but there's also quizzes and then teams
Speaker 1: are our boy girl tweens working together, and there was slie.
Speaker 1: So Double There was pretty much great on every level.
Speaker 1: Was never saw it. You never saw Double There. Now
Speaker 1: I'm a little sadly I'm a little too old for
Speaker 1: doubled hair Wheelhouse. I was like, someone just boom me
Speaker 1: for being old. I think they booed you for not
Speaker 1: watching Double There. I was like, sixteen boo. Actually it's
Speaker 1: a taddle for Double There. Well, here's what I was watching.
Speaker 1: I was watching Remote Control on MTV, very very good
Speaker 1: game show. It was if you don't remember, it was
Speaker 1: what now you would call him meta game show. Back
Speaker 1: then you would call it a spoof hoo game shows
Speaker 1: because host kin Ober was hosting a game show in
Speaker 1: his parents basement. That was the set. People sat on
Speaker 1: recliners and we get launched back through the wall if
Speaker 1: they got a question wrong at the end. And it
Speaker 1: was a really legit, funny game show. They had categories
Speaker 1: like Brady Brady, Bunch of Physics, or dead or Canadian.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite categories, and it is well known
Speaker 1: for one thing in particular, which was launching the careers
Speaker 1: of some now very famous people. It the very first
Speaker 1: time that Adam Sandler was on TV was on remote control.
Speaker 1: Same with Colin Quinn and Dennis Leary. They all got
Speaker 1: their start in remote control. Wow, it's right. So there's
Speaker 1: a couple of tenants of game shows that you have
Speaker 1: to know, and the first one is that America's interest
Speaker 1: in game shows tends to Wax and Wayne, and by
Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties, America was like, we're just
Speaker 1: sick of game shows. And again, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why is because those executives didn't try a lot of
Speaker 1: new stuff. They instead trotted out tic Tacto and concentration.
Speaker 1: So America got bored with game shows and kind of
Speaker 1: moved on, and game shows just went away almost magically.
Speaker 1: There were two game shows, The Prices Right and Family
Speaker 1: Feud still filming during the day. Even Wheel of Fortunes
Speaker 1: daytime show got the Acts. Wheel of Fortune got the Ax.
Speaker 1: That's how close to extinction game shows came um And instead,
Speaker 1: the same lazy executives gave us softcore news like Inside
Speaker 1: Edition and Extra and daytime talk like Jenny Jones and
Speaker 1: Maury Povich, and we have them to thank for that.
Speaker 1: I have another theory, actually, that grunge killed game shows
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, right, because there's a quote here
Speaker 1: from the great Mark Goodson. Apparently you're idle. He's great
Speaker 1: at quotes too. He said, it's like a hurricane came
Speaker 1: and wipe them all away, and that hurricane smelled like
Speaker 1: teen Spirit. I made up that second part. They did
Speaker 1: say hurricane. Yes, it was sort of antithetical though that
Speaker 1: early nineties time. I'm joking about grunge, but it just
Speaker 1: it didn't It didn't work together, you know, generation next
Speaker 1: Douglas Copeland slacking grunge, They didn't like do away with
Speaker 1: game shows. They came in because game shows went away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: America got sat So the other tenant of game shows
Speaker 1: is this, you can't keep game shows down for longer
Speaker 1: than a decade. You just can't. They're gonna come back.
Speaker 1: They're gonna jump on your back like beetlejuice or something. Right, So,
Speaker 1: by the late nineties early two thousand's they started to
Speaker 1: come back, and those risk averse executives started to innovate
Speaker 1: a little more are, meaning that they started stealing good
Speaker 1: game shows from other countries which somebody hadn't been to
Speaker 1: to see. So they brought in Who Wants to Be
Speaker 1: a Millionaire? Right? Yeah? I think that show came from
Speaker 1: England if I'm not mistaken, as did The Weakest Link.
Speaker 1: Remember that show, She was Perfect, She scared me. Uh.
Speaker 1: These had much bigger prizes. They were a little more complicated.
Speaker 1: You had things like phoning a friend and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Then he had shows like Deal or No Deal, which
Speaker 1: Josh put in he wrote this it is pretty great,
Speaker 1: which brought America back into the clutches of Auie Mandel.
Speaker 1: We came so close to getting away from him forever.
Speaker 1: And then ah, it was like that time Uggs came back.
Speaker 1: You remember that, Like ugs were around and then they
Speaker 1: naturally just went off and died, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everybody started wearing oggs again. It was like
Speaker 1: what happened, same with Howie Mandel. Uh. And then eventually
Speaker 1: game shows would co opt reality shows, obviously with big
Speaker 1: big shows like Survivor, uh, The Apprentice, The Bachelor, Um,
Speaker 1: Shark Tanker show that I actually really love, and then
Speaker 1: a great great show called American Ninja Warrior. Okay, do
Speaker 1: you guys like American Ninja Warrior, let me direct you
Speaker 1: to the predecessor and frankly better, American Gladiator. That's right.
Speaker 1: I love that too, and this is why American Gladiators
Speaker 1: is just superior to American Ninja Warrior. American Ninja Warrior.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's great, but they kind of dilute the
Speaker 1: action a little bit. I think you could say, like
Speaker 1: they have like b footage where like the production crew
Speaker 1: went to the contestants hometown and talked to like their
Speaker 1: peewee baseball coach about they used to be afraid of
Speaker 1: the ball, but you know they really like got over
Speaker 1: it and look at them now, and the coach that
Speaker 1: kind of chokes up a little bit, you know. On
Speaker 1: American Gladiator, it's more like, so Kim is out there
Speaker 1: and she's running around getting the crapp eat out of her,
Speaker 1: and the commentators just have this throwaway like, well, no,
Speaker 1: in fact about Kim. She traded her house for a
Speaker 1: car to drive herself here to compete to day, She's
Speaker 1: not sure who's back home watching her child, look at
Speaker 1: her go, look at lace. She just knocked her flat
Speaker 1: unconscious with her jousting stick. That's American Gladiators. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. It was great. That's what makes it superior.
Speaker 1: Here's what I liked about American Gladiator is those courses
Speaker 1: or whatever you call them, more hard enough. Like I
Speaker 1: remember the bicycle thing that you would have to hang from,
Speaker 1: and that's hard enough. There's no way I could even
Speaker 1: hang from that much less propel myself. And you get
Speaker 1: halfway across, and then a broided out bodybuilder would leap
Speaker 1: on you and and try and get you off, and
Speaker 1: it's like, are you kidding me? Like the best you
Speaker 1: could for is that he put on too much like
Speaker 1: peck lube and would slide off eventually, couldn't get a
Speaker 1: good grip. Peck Lube just got applause. Is your only
Speaker 1: only hope, Pecklue. That's so big. Shout out to the
Speaker 1: original six on American Gladiator Nitro Malibu Malibu Lace Lace
Speaker 1: a little Baptist Chuck Lace was like I didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on in my body when I saw Lace.
Speaker 1: JC Chuck like sitting in from his TV with his
Speaker 1: knees pulled up to his chest, is rocking back and
Speaker 1: forth like singing hymnoles. Things are happening. I like Lace.
Speaker 1: You know who Lace was married to in real life? No, Uh,
Speaker 1: Michael Parrey actor Michael Parrey from Eddie and the Cruisers. Uh,
Speaker 1: Michael did a trivia Michael Pray is not here tonight, right?
Speaker 1: He might be Jim and I, Zapp and Sonny the
Speaker 1: Original Six. I had us off to you, Michael Douglas.
Speaker 1: Just show it up. And I think it also inspired
Speaker 1: the movie The Running Man pretty clearly, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if it pre stages The Running Man
Speaker 1: or The Running Man came out right before now. I
Speaker 1: think Running Man. I think it came after American that here. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stand by that. I said, No, al right,
Speaker 1: where are we in the two thousand's we are? So
Speaker 1: we're in like another a bit of a game show
Speaker 1: revival right now too. And you can tell because they're
Speaker 1: trotting out old game shows again, like Snoop Dogg hosted
Speaker 1: Joker's Wild, which, by the way, I have no problem
Speaker 1: with that whatsoever. I think that was actually a pretty
Speaker 1: straight move. Um Anthony Anthon Anderson's uh to tell the Truth,
Speaker 1: I think is what he hosts. Yea and love connection.
Speaker 1: Oh is that out? Yeah? I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: need to bring back what was the one? The dating
Speaker 1: one not singled out? Yeah, I forgot about single that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a good one. That was a
Speaker 1: good one. And what was the one on the what
Speaker 1: was the one on the bus? Oh? I love cash Cab?
Speaker 1: Can we talk about cash cab for a minute. Can
Speaker 1: we go off script for a moment. Your cash Cab
Speaker 1: unfortunately came around when I and Josh we we worked
Speaker 1: for Discovery Channel, so we couldn't be on cash Cab.
Speaker 1: So I would go to New York City and walk
Speaker 1: around looking for the cash cab just to tease yourself,
Speaker 1: knowing that I would have to disclose that I was
Speaker 1: actually an employee of Discovery Channel and could not be
Speaker 1: on cash Guy, I'm contractually prohibited from getting in your
Speaker 1: cash cab. Sorry, what are you talking about? Just get in.
Speaker 1: It is a good show still now. I still watch reruns.
Speaker 1: I think it's are they not still making it? No? No? No?
Speaker 1: Is it back? All right? Well that lady says it's back,
Speaker 1: and she looks like she knows. She's like, I know.
Speaker 1: I like that guy. He's funny. Yeah, he's a good guy.
Speaker 1: But it's still not the dating show I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: Were you thinking of the dating game? Now? So when
Speaker 1: where they had the stupid pop up bubbles about what
Speaker 1: they were thinking? No, it's not pop up video blind date,
Speaker 1: blind date? I think it might be blind date? What
Speaker 1: is next? Man? This show is so people are shouting,
Speaker 1: all right, I will say this, it had to have
Speaker 1: been blind date, because I've never heard of next. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Blind Date was good. I
Speaker 1: don't really remember the premise. I'm assuming it was a
Speaker 1: blind date. But it was a good show. I remember
Speaker 1: that much. All right, let me get us back on track. Here.
Speaker 1: People are murmuring, like you guys are figuring out whether
Speaker 1: to vote for a referendument of town hall or something.
Speaker 1: Be quiet, molitia, legalize it. Uh. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: some game shows never went away to begin with, like
Speaker 1: Beloved Prices, Right, they just changed hosts, The Great Great
Speaker 1: Family Feud, Right. Uh? We lost Richard Dawson while he retired,
Speaker 1: then he died, No, he retired, Ray comes came, then Richard,
Speaker 1: then he came back, then he died, right, okay? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then the Great Louis Anderson hosted for a little while.
Speaker 1: Then a guy named Richard Carne who I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was from Home Improvement. I never saw that show.
Speaker 1: It's the most controversial thing I said all night. And
Speaker 1: then I don't know who John oh Hurley is, j
Speaker 1: Peterman Seinfeld. I love that guy. And then the great
Speaker 1: Steve Harvey with his eight button suits. America has embraced
Speaker 1: Steve even though he messed up the was it miss America?
Speaker 1: That just made him that much more than Frankly, nobody
Speaker 1: else could have gotten away with it like he did. Agreed.
Speaker 1: So um. As we say, game shows are very very
Speaker 1: cheap to produce, which means you can find game shows
Speaker 1: in every country around the world, and some countries like
Speaker 1: just steal game shows from other countries. America does it,
Speaker 1: everybody does it. Really. There's a game show in France
Speaker 1: called Live Big Deal, and it's Let's Make a Deal,
Speaker 1: but it's hosted by an animated alien for some reason. Um.
Speaker 1: Some are franchise like The Price Is Right. It is
Speaker 1: a huge hit in the UK. They're crazy for the
Speaker 1: presidents right appropriately um. And then there's some countries that
Speaker 1: just make up their own, like there's one in Russia
Speaker 1: We consider ourselves pretty good researchers, and we are almost
Speaker 1: a percent positive that this is actually a real show.
Speaker 1: We've really tried to find out, like, no, this is
Speaker 1: a joke. I think this is real. Intercept is what
Speaker 1: it's called. And an intercept, you're contestant and they give
Speaker 1: you a car and you drive off in the car.
Speaker 1: They call the car stolen in real I r L.
Speaker 1: And you are supposed to evade the police in real
Speaker 1: life for thirty five minutes, and if you do that successfully,
Speaker 1: you keep the car right And as far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, it's real. And it's like, I guess that's Russia.
Speaker 1: That's what they do in Russia. I guess if you
Speaker 1: get killed, your next of kin gets the car. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Surely there's a winner. I think the cops
Speaker 1: get to keep it maybe, But Russia aside, there was
Speaker 1: one country that stands alone when it comes to game shows. Japan. Correct.
Speaker 1: We love Japan and their dedication to making game shows
Speaker 1: as crazy as possible, which I don't know if it
Speaker 1: started with this one, but there was an eighties staple
Speaker 1: it started with it, did it? Called Takeshi's Castle. This
Speaker 1: was in the eighties in Japan, and there are fans
Speaker 1: of the show in America in two thousand team that
Speaker 1: shows how great the show is. Well, it changed everything, right,
Speaker 1: Like Takeshi's Castle was, it was just nut. It was
Speaker 1: a melee. There would be like a hundred contestants all
Speaker 1: competing and everybody's trying to get into Takeshi's Castle. But
Speaker 1: this is harder than you would think because they make
Speaker 1: you dress up as a hand and slap somebody else
Speaker 1: who's also dressed as another hand. And then at the
Speaker 1: same time, while you're doing this, there's some other poor
Speaker 1: schmo is like being spun around on a wheel like
Speaker 1: twenty ft above a pond. I was flying off. There's
Speaker 1: other people making a run for it, and there's like
Speaker 1: like people dressed as ninja throwing like rubber throwing stars
Speaker 1: at him. It's just chaos, and um, it just changed everything.
Speaker 1: It gave us the first concept of the wacky Japanese
Speaker 1: game show. Yeah. I think the best part about Takeshi's
Speaker 1: Castle was they played up the not true fact that
Speaker 1: they were forced to be there as contestants, which just
Speaker 1: added this extra something. I don't know why they were
Speaker 1: they were like this is great. They were like no,
Speaker 1: they got my family and they made me come on
Speaker 1: this show that just really put the cherry on top
Speaker 1: for me. I don't know why. Sure. Then there was
Speaker 1: another one after to Cassi's Castle. It came on in
Speaker 1: the nineties and it was called Downtown and Nogaki no
Speaker 1: Sky and they which means, um, Downtown's not an errand boy,
Speaker 1: which is no more sensible than the Japanese. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't help at all. It translations Downtown is not an
Speaker 1: errand boy, And even if you say okay, Downtown as
Speaker 1: a person still doesn't make any camp to make any sense.
Speaker 1: It's really strange. But this one really cemented, like because
Speaker 1: this is when the internet came around on YouTube was around.
Speaker 1: You could watch this all over the world and it
Speaker 1: really really really called on and they had punishment games,
Speaker 1: um like the Ask game where if you got something wrong,
Speaker 1: they would have these big, sweaty sumo wrestlers rub their
Speaker 1: butt in your face, or one called Penis Machine. And
Speaker 1: Josh did this research and I was like, what is
Speaker 1: that all about. Don't do that because whatever immage search
Speaker 1: you come up with has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: game show at all. But Penis Machine was where you'd
Speaker 1: have to recite a tongue twister. Uh, and if you
Speaker 1: got it wrong then they would kick you in the
Speaker 1: goodnight everybody. I was about to go backstage as a joke,
Speaker 1: but I might have just stayed there, so so uh.
Speaker 1: Based on that alone, I think this deserves a second
Speaker 1: ad break. Okay, because this show is going really really well.
Speaker 1: Does everybody bear with us? We will be right back.
Speaker 1: All right, We're back everybody. Here's a little segment called
Speaker 1: what's it like to be on a game show? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can expect sweaty man's ass in your face if
Speaker 1: you lose. No, that's just japan Um. If you're in
Speaker 1: a game show, like as a kid, as a young show,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to be in a game show.
Speaker 1: That sounds awesome. And then I researched this. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go anywhere near game shows. I
Speaker 1: just want to watch him on TV. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's tough. Like three thousand people try out for Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune every year and only like five hundred make
Speaker 1: the cut. That's it's Wheel of Fortune, right, It's just imagined.
Speaker 1: There must be like ten people that make it on
Speaker 1: a Jeopardy a year out of a million or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Jeopardy stuff. I've known a few people
Speaker 1: who have been on that, and uh, you can be
Speaker 1: super super smart. You can pass the written tests, you
Speaker 1: can pass the simulated games. But when you get out
Speaker 1: there on stage and the lights are on and the
Speaker 1: cameras are rolling, we've all felt very bad for the
Speaker 1: people who don't make it the final Jeopardy because they
Speaker 1: have zero dollars. That person is smarter than everyone in
Speaker 1: this room. That's what's so sad. It is really hard.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Kim Jennings is on our network now
Speaker 1: with his great show Omnibus All Time Jeopardy Champion, with
Speaker 1: his insane record of like seventy something Jeopardy wins in
Speaker 1: a row, which is just nuts. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: really good friends with Kim now, and it took me
Speaker 1: like three dinners out before I was finally like, tell
Speaker 1: me all about it, what's it like? And he was like, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta he got through that first part. So he
Speaker 1: had a real big advantage for those newbies coming on
Speaker 1: every day. But he's like, you have to have all
Speaker 1: this knowledge at your fingertips, and then it literally comes
Speaker 1: down to like how good you are with the buzzer
Speaker 1: and how like Steve Lead, you can keep yourself calm
Speaker 1: and ignore the audience and ignore everything else and kind
Speaker 1: of lock in. It's a really, really tough game show.
Speaker 1: But in order to try out for something like The
Speaker 1: Prices Right, it's a much different experience. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be super smart. You have to have a lot
Speaker 1: of personality. You just have to like go in front
Speaker 1: of a panel of people and like turn around slowly, right, well,
Speaker 1: yeah to now, you don't do that, although I could
Speaker 1: have worked in a fourth reference there. Uh. I went
Speaker 1: to a Price Is Right taping with my sister in
Speaker 1: the in the mid nineties, and they there's a table
Speaker 1: like this with three producers sitting behind it as you
Speaker 1: walk into the studio and they sit there with a
Speaker 1: clipboard as you introduce yourself and take notes. And it's
Speaker 1: very intimidating because I don't know if you all know
Speaker 1: this when you go on the Prices Right in the audience,
Speaker 1: you really don't know, like that's all real. You don't
Speaker 1: know your name is gonna get called. I always thought
Speaker 1: that they set you up and said, by the way,
Speaker 1: at minute third to you whatever in round two, we're
Speaker 1: gonna call you down there. You need to do this
Speaker 1: and act like this. It's all for real, Like you
Speaker 1: have no idea you're gonna get called. So when people
Speaker 1: freak out and run down there because they had no
Speaker 1: idea they were going to get called down on stage.
Speaker 1: But I did not get called. I didn't have what
Speaker 1: it takes. But you sat behind like the people who
Speaker 1: have been contestants, right, yeah, we were. We were positioned
Speaker 1: up where they had two empty rows. And when you
Speaker 1: were finished playing the games, they don't. You don't go
Speaker 1: back to your seat. You go to this little area.
Speaker 1: And this, uh, this Harley Davidson biker guy won a
Speaker 1: car and came down and sat next to us and
Speaker 1: started crying. And I was like, sir, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's it like, tell me what's going on. And he
Speaker 1: said that he lost his job because he didn't have
Speaker 1: a car to get him to work and that this
Speaker 1: changed his life. And I look over and he's crying,
Speaker 1: and my sisters crying, and I'm crying, and Bob like,
Speaker 1: newter a dog. It sounds like a punishment now it does.
Speaker 1: It is for the dog. Highly recommended, though, if you
Speaker 1: ever have a chance, go to go to a prices
Speaker 1: right taping. It's a lot of fun. It's a good story,
Speaker 1: by the way, Well that's all right. It would have
Speaker 1: been better if I would have you know, want a
Speaker 1: jet ski. Yeah. So, as thrilling as you think it
Speaker 1: might be to be on a game show, it's actually supposedly,
Speaker 1: from what we can tell, super boring. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of waiting around. Remember they film five or six episodes
Speaker 1: in a day, so if you're scheduled to be on
Speaker 1: the fifth or sixth episode, you're just sitting there. But
Speaker 1: it's not like you can wander around and bug like
Speaker 1: Alex Trebeka or anything. Because remember Congress got involved after
Speaker 1: the quiz show scandals, and the FCC still regulates game
Speaker 1: shows like a hawk. Like if you go to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: you have an escort and there's like FCC compliance officers
Speaker 1: take away your cell phone. Can you imagine standing around
Speaker 1: for ten hours without a cell phone? Not just these
Speaker 1: days take it away, they break it under the heel,
Speaker 1: and they're like federal law. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sitting around. There's a lot of compliance that you have
Speaker 1: to do. There's a lot of rules you have to learn,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why, um, they watch you
Speaker 1: like a hawkers because people have been known to um
Speaker 1: collude with people in the audience. Like there was this
Speaker 1: guy in the UK who won a million pounds on
Speaker 1: who Wants to be a Millionaire? It is it's way
Speaker 1: more than a million dollar prize, like I don't know
Speaker 1: how much, but a lot, just trust me. And he won.
Speaker 1: His name is Charles Ingram, and he won because he
Speaker 1: was talking to his wife and his wife was going
Speaker 1: and talking to somebody in the audience. And this is
Speaker 1: the scheme they came up with, Charles Ingram, you know,
Speaker 1: who wants to be a Millionaire's basically multiple choice. There's
Speaker 1: like four possible answers. He would read them out loud
Speaker 1: to himself, but when he read the correct one, the
Speaker 1: guy in the audience will go right. Very sophisticated system.
Speaker 1: They got away with it like they want. They like,
Speaker 1: the producers are like you congratulations. And they made it home.
Speaker 1: And finally, because he apparently was acting KG in the
Speaker 1: in the green room. Afterward, they went back and looked
Speaker 1: at the tape and discovered the fraud and they actually
Speaker 1: went to court in the UK. They went to court.
Speaker 1: He and his wife did Uh. And we're find a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and didn't get a dime
Speaker 1: of the million pounds prize. Has some kind of wig
Speaker 1: said a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds right, And you
Speaker 1: would think, okay, justice was justice was served? Right? No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't, because Charles Ingram and his wife went on
Speaker 1: to write a book about the whole thing and it
Speaker 1: grows two and a half million pounds. Yep. And we
Speaker 1: have a couple of new sayings. Now if you remember
Speaker 1: from dB Cooper, never trust family and now cheating always pays.
Speaker 1: So those are the two tenants of stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: one across these knuckles and one across the other knuckles. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to bring it home? Yeah, let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about a guy named Michael Larson. Yes, Michael Larson. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of knowing nods out there. Anyone know the
Speaker 1: game show Press Your Luck. That was the point of
Speaker 1: pressure luck, not to get away Ammy. Yeah. So who
Speaker 1: was Michael Larson? So Michael Larson was this guy. He
Speaker 1: was a contestant eventually on Pressure Luck, but he started
Speaker 1: out as a semi employed ice cream truck driver. Let
Speaker 1: that sink in for a Yeah, you're really really reaching
Speaker 1: for the stars. You're like, no, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that full time, but keep my option open. His
Speaker 1: the time when he wasn't running the ice cream truck
Speaker 1: was allotted instead to staring at his wall of TVs
Speaker 1: in his house, um running off of his VCR, because
Speaker 1: he would take game shows and watch them up to
Speaker 1: eighteen hours a day in the hopes of finding some
Speaker 1: weakness that he could exploit go onto the game show
Speaker 1: and crack it and win a million dollars. Right, And
Speaker 1: he figured out pretty quick the price is right, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no flaw to it. Same with Wheel of Fortune.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of luck. Right. Yeah. And then CBS, Yes,
Speaker 1: CBS aired a brand new game show build is the
Speaker 1: most technologically advanced game show ever and it was called
Speaker 1: Press Your Luck. And Michael Larson said, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: you game show. He said about the getting a pressure luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here, what's the deal with pressure Luck? It had
Speaker 1: three just regular contestants who would answer questions and then
Speaker 1: at the end of each round, whoever was in the lead,
Speaker 1: we get to press their luck. And there was a
Speaker 1: big board with a bunch of individual squares that would
Speaker 1: light up, like that's a good pressure luck. You would
Speaker 1: press your luck and say stop. We didn't have to
Speaker 1: say stopped, but most people did, and it would stop
Speaker 1: on whatever square and you might win five dollars, or
Speaker 1: you might win a little prize, or you might get
Speaker 1: a whammy, which is really bad because that means you
Speaker 1: lose everything that you had one up into that point.
Speaker 1: Or you might get a free spin plus cash. So
Speaker 1: if you get like two or three spins in a row,
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal, and you could press
Speaker 1: your luck and then get that whammy. And it was
Speaker 1: this little jerk annoid looking thing. It's a little cartoon
Speaker 1: character with a cape that would go and you lose
Speaker 1: everything that you had made. So you're really if you
Speaker 1: press your lucky, you were really risking a lot by
Speaker 1: moving forward, right, And it was very tough because not
Speaker 1: only did the light flash around the board, the squares
Speaker 1: themselves change, so it was just like chaos, your brains
Speaker 1: going haywire, and you go stop and just hope for
Speaker 1: the best. Well, Michael Larson would take press your Luck
Speaker 1: and again watch individual episodes eighteen hours straight, just looking
Speaker 1: trying to find something sitting around and just as whitey
Speaker 1: tidies like an ice cream sandwich melted on his chest.
Speaker 1: And finally one day he sowed and he must have
Speaker 1: stood up tear matted, sticky, and he probably went got
Speaker 1: he's got a chocout taco on his chest. And what
Speaker 1: he figured out was that that light and those boards
Speaker 1: they weren't random at all. There were five patterns. And
Speaker 1: not only were they five, were there five patterns they
Speaker 1: repeated in order. All he had to do was hone
Speaker 1: is timing and getting the light to stop, memorize where
Speaker 1: the boxes were, and he would crack pressure luck And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what he did. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: that moment at for a m in his bark a lounger,
Speaker 1: when he realizes that it's a pattern, Like what that
Speaker 1: must have been like, Like he's like, my life is vindicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone said I was a loser, but I'm not, so
Speaker 1: just disregard the chacout taco on my chest. I'm no loser.
Speaker 1: He bought a bus ticket from since Senata to l A,
Speaker 1: and I bought a suit from a vintage thrift store
Speaker 1: and actually managed to become a contestant. Unpress your luck
Speaker 1: on May nineteen, he came in last in the question round.
Speaker 1: But he's still because you know, he was Michael Larson.
Speaker 1: But he still gets suppressed his luck. And the very
Speaker 1: first thing that happens is he gets a whammy because
Speaker 1: you can practice all you want on the arm of
Speaker 1: your recliner, but on the day, as they say in
Speaker 1: the in the industry, that little buzzer may not match
Speaker 1: up quite right. So he had to he had to
Speaker 1: get synchronized. He did, and boy did he he did,
Speaker 1: because after that, on his next spin, he locked into
Speaker 1: thirty one consecutive spins. This had never happened before, nothing
Speaker 1: even remotely close. Two or three in a row is amazing.
Speaker 1: Before you were on fire, this guy got thirty one
Speaker 1: consecutive spins. Overall, he got forty Evan in the half
Speaker 1: hour show that he was on. The other two contested
Speaker 1: to sat back and one guy pulled out like a
Speaker 1: corn cob pipe and read the paper. I mean like
Speaker 1: it was the Larsen Show, right, And just little by
Speaker 1: little he starts building his money. A few hundred bucks here,
Speaker 1: dred and another spin there, and he just kept hitting him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind, at any point he could have
Speaker 1: lost it all, and so there's a lot of real
Speaker 1: tension building in this thing as he gets more and
Speaker 1: more money because he has to say I want to
Speaker 1: press my luck. Everyone's like, you're crazy, dude. You got
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. But he worked it all the way up
Speaker 1: into a record at the time hundred and ten thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty seven dollars, which is more money
Speaker 1: than had ever been one on an American game show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the previous record was forty dollars. This guy just crushed
Speaker 1: that record. And you can actually see this. There's somebody
Speaker 1: under the trouble of making a compilation. It's like eleven
Speaker 1: minutes long. It's the best thing you can watch. It's
Speaker 1: quite thrilling. It's on YouTube. I think it's just Michael
Speaker 1: Larson press your luck should be the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes up. And when you watch it, you see Michael
Speaker 1: Larson really pressed his luck and he won. He won
Speaker 1: the game, and the CBS executives are just standing there
Speaker 1: watching this like having heart attacks, left and riot, getting fired,
Speaker 1: fired each other, firing themselves, just having a terrible time
Speaker 1: of it. But in the end they paid Larson. They
Speaker 1: said he didn't cheat, he was smarter than CBS. I
Speaker 1: think one of the executives said these air quotes though,
Speaker 1: So we paid him, so he won Press your luck.
Speaker 1: But it's not the end of the Michael Larson story. No.
Speaker 1: So he's sitting at home a few months later eating
Speaker 1: his push up and a local radio station was running
Speaker 1: a contest. It was only two ice cream truck things
Speaker 1: I can think of. Chock out tacos and butch ups
Speaker 1: are good enough. Yeah, you know what the worst was
Speaker 1: was that rainbow popsicle thing. You those are the worst?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with you? You like those? Yes? Really? The
Speaker 1: bomb Pop, the Red, white and Blue pop or the
Speaker 1: rocket pop to Patriot Country, those are great. I had
Speaker 1: no ice creaming, and I was all about the ice Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't like a bomb pop that's what they were calling.
Speaker 1: Or rocket pops one of the two popper Rocket Pop.
Speaker 1: You've got a strong reaction, So I guess I'm the dummy.
Speaker 1: Some people recoiled in horror. All right, So Michael Larson
Speaker 1: sitting at home meeting is rocket pop and a radio
Speaker 1: station DJ comes on and says, we have a new
Speaker 1: contest and we're going to read out serial numbers on
Speaker 1: dollar bills, and if you have that dollar bill, you
Speaker 1: in fifty thousand dollars I'm sorry, thirty And Michael Larson said,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of dollar bills. So he went
Speaker 1: to the bank and withdrew nine thousand i'm sorry fifty
Speaker 1: dollar bills from the bank bills. So he was the
Speaker 1: joy of the bank that day. But but wait, wait,
Speaker 1: let's think about this for a second. You can withdraw
Speaker 1: those all day long. You're not gonna know the serial
Speaker 1: number unless you sit there and start memorizing them. And
Speaker 1: that's what he did, yep. Instead of watching games shows,
Speaker 1: he sat around and memorized the serial numbers for the
Speaker 1: dollar bills that he had in his house. And a
Speaker 1: few months went by, the contest was ended and he
Speaker 1: didn't win. But that's still not the end of the
Speaker 1: Michael Larson's story. Now, that's right, because he never took
Speaker 1: that money back to the bank. Because he's Michael Larson.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine if this guy would have worked
Speaker 1: for a living, right, we would have a cure for
Speaker 1: cancer today. We'd all be living to like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty things. It would be great. But no, he
Speaker 1: left that fifty grand at home and on the Christmas
Speaker 1: he went to a party with his girlfriend, into a
Speaker 1: Christmas party, came home and found his door kicked in
Speaker 1: and the money was gone. Merry Christmas. Yep. And they
Speaker 1: never found the money, they never found the person who
Speaker 1: stole it, and Michael Arson eventually died of cancer in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, while on the lamb from the FBI
Speaker 1: and the i R S for his part in a
Speaker 1: foreign lottery scam. To the bitter end, still trying to
Speaker 1: make that easy money. Uh and finally, uh, just about
Speaker 1: eight or nine years ago, plans to make a movie
Speaker 1: of his life story starring Bill Murray. Dude, that would
Speaker 1: have been so good. We're finally scrapped. I'm no very sad,
Speaker 1: but his story lives on tonight here in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1: That is game shows. That's a history of game shows.
Speaker 1: Everybody's work s Thank you, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, because it
Speaker 1: how stuff works. Dot Com