Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, this is Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and you're listening to a tech Stuff classic episode
Speaker 1: now on Friday's and today's classic episode is all about
Speaker 1: a famous incident that happened in the nineteen eighties, the
Speaker 1: Max Headroom Incident, a moment where a pirate with a
Speaker 1: song in his heart and a rubber mask on his
Speaker 1: face interrupted some television broadcast signals and made history. And
Speaker 1: speaking of history, Chuck Bryant, historic podcast giant in his
Speaker 1: own right and co host of Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: as well as the host of movie Crush, joined me
Speaker 1: for this episode to talk all about this interesting moment
Speaker 1: in tech history and the the move of signal pirates.
Speaker 1: How was that even possible? So I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this classic episode of tech Stuff. Chuck. If you were
Speaker 1: in Chicago on November two and you were watching h
Speaker 1: w g N at nine pm because you you want
Speaker 1: to check out the news and it's coming up on
Speaker 1: the sports, which I know you're a fan of the sports,
Speaker 1: what happened, Well, that could have happened because I would
Speaker 1: have been sixteen at the time. Yeah, you and I
Speaker 1: are in this age wheelhouse. Yeah, we we actually were alive,
Speaker 1: yeah at this time, and we were, we would have
Speaker 1: been aware of at least the entity that appeared instead
Speaker 1: of the sports scores um. But yeah, something weird happened
Speaker 1: at that moment. There was an interruption in normal service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what they call it broadcast intrusion, and uh, like all
Speaker 1: classic broadcast intrusions, it started with a little grainy, you know,
Speaker 1: static going on, and they're always a little unsettling when
Speaker 1: you watch them, even if they're goofy. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something kind of creepy about it. You know, what's out
Speaker 1: of place, and there's something that, especially when it's something
Speaker 1: as ritualistic as the news, you know that follows a
Speaker 1: very specific pattern, and when something goes outside that pattern,
Speaker 1: you know, that upsets our little world balance for a moment.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the there was, like you said,
Speaker 1: there was this this disturbance in the horse and a
Speaker 1: new picture popped up and replaced the sportscaster, and it
Speaker 1: was a guy in a disturbing rubber mask and that
Speaker 1: mask was of a specific eighties icon, which I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't even know who this is anymore.
Speaker 1: But Max headroom. Yeah, if if you're a child of
Speaker 1: the eighties, Max Max Bedroom loomed large for a while.
Speaker 1: And I know when this intrusion came out, this broadcast intrusion,
Speaker 1: it seemed like about half the people even knew who
Speaker 1: he was trying to imitate, and then the other half
Speaker 1: just had no idea. They thought it was just some
Speaker 1: weirdo with the mask. Yeah. Well, and part of that
Speaker 1: was because, uh, the quality of the video was not
Speaker 1: exactly super high quality. But on top of that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a niche thing, and he was Max
Speaker 1: Hedroom was used as sort of a spokes thing, I guess,
Speaker 1: a spokesman for a new coke. Sure that that great
Speaker 1: move by the Coca Cola company. Yeah, oh man, I
Speaker 1: remember that well, I remember it with Paine. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: living living in Atlanta, the whole Coca Cola New Coke
Speaker 1: thing was it definitely strikes close to home. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he um, he was a spokesman for that as well
Speaker 1: as a kind of a fantasy character who appeared on
Speaker 1: lots of other stuff. But generally speaking, if you don't
Speaker 1: know who Max Hedroom is first, just go ahead and
Speaker 1: do an image search, because it'll pop right up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a character that was supposed to look like
Speaker 1: a digital character, right, It was supposed to like a
Speaker 1: computer generated image, and it was kind of a guy
Speaker 1: with a long face and weird, kind of ridged hair.
Speaker 1: He had always had a dynamic c g I background
Speaker 1: behind him that look like kind of just like Neon
Speaker 1: stripes that were constantly twisting and turning in different ways.
Speaker 1: And he would stutter, you have a digital stutter occasionally,
Speaker 1: and Uh would be very kind of snarky and sarcastic,
Speaker 1: and ultimately got a television series as well, as you know,
Speaker 1: two couple different television series, one of them which was
Speaker 1: like a talk show and one of which was more
Speaker 1: of a like an actual fictional story, like an with
Speaker 1: an arc. Yeah, that one was pretty good. Actually, the
Speaker 1: original British show, even though it was a lot of
Speaker 1: American actors, was was pretty cool and definitely ahead of
Speaker 1: its time as far as you know. The whole idea
Speaker 1: was that this uh roving reporter was I think Matt
Speaker 1: Frewer played him as a real dude and as Max Headroom,
Speaker 1: but he was digitally replaced with this character Max Headroom,
Speaker 1: and at the time it just seemed really odd, But
Speaker 1: now when you look back at it and watch it,
Speaker 1: it's like, man, the show was kind of ahead of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really prescient. Yeah it was. It also revealed
Speaker 1: where the name came from. Where Matt Frewer's character, as
Speaker 1: I recall, is waylaid and the last thing he sees
Speaker 1: before he loses consciousness is a sign on a on
Speaker 1: a a wall that's tells what the Max Headroom for.
Speaker 1: That wall is pretty clad became the character's name. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So the person who appeared on this video was wearing
Speaker 1: a Max Headroom mask and had this corrugated metal background
Speaker 1: sort of emulated the digital look, wore the suit that
Speaker 1: Max Headroom more like just a dark suit and tie,
Speaker 1: and um yeah, this thing was the metal background. It
Speaker 1: looked like like a garage door. It was just sort
Speaker 1: of spinning in the background. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: on some sort of gimbal or something. That's what I figured. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you can tell it's swinging back and forth, so
Speaker 1: predictably it can't be held by somebody. You had to
Speaker 1: be on some sort of pivot or something, and but
Speaker 1: it's moving backward and forward, so it kind of mimics
Speaker 1: that that digital line twisting in the background, and except
Speaker 1: for one part, there's a part where there's a clear
Speaker 1: cut in the video. The video itself was about or
Speaker 1: at least what we've seen is about a minute and
Speaker 1: twenty two seconds. Yeah, well, actually, I don't think we differentiated.
Speaker 1: There were two videos, two intrusions. The first one was
Speaker 1: short and had no audio and was on w g N,
Speaker 1: and then about two hours later they hijacked the PBS
Speaker 1: affiliate and that's where the classic minute and a half,
Speaker 1: nearly minute and a half with audio, really strange audio
Speaker 1: comes through. That's right, because that first one, like you said,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you pointed that out, it was silent. It
Speaker 1: was the images from the and the image and the
Speaker 1: audio from w g N was cut, but there was
Speaker 1: no audio coming out of the I think there's like
Speaker 1: a buzzing noise that came in through the first intrusion,
Speaker 1: and you saw this this figure just sitting there and
Speaker 1: kind of rocking back and forth like left and right,
Speaker 1: which is concerning. Yeah, it was definitely like you felt
Speaker 1: like something is really wrong at that moment. And when
Speaker 1: it came back, the sportscaster said, you might be wondering
Speaker 1: what just happened. I know, I am uh something along
Speaker 1: those lines. But yes, the second one you had the
Speaker 1: audio and it played for the what we what appeared
Speaker 1: to be the length of the video. The first section
Speaker 1: had uh, the guy just saying odd things and they
Speaker 1: were all very Chicago specific. Well, and and sort of
Speaker 1: slamming w g N because he slammed the Chuck swart
Speaker 1: Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah that one think
Speaker 1: he is a sportscaster for w g N. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: uh he also talked about the Greatest World Newspaper Nerds
Speaker 1: something like that. But w g N stands for World
Speaker 1: Old's Greatest Newspaper. That. Yeah, So it turned out that
Speaker 1: that little know, the great the great World Newspaper Nerds
Speaker 1: or whatever however worded it, that was a reference back
Speaker 1: to w g N. So it's very clearly intended for
Speaker 1: w g N. And the first attack wasn't as effective
Speaker 1: as as they had hoped because, uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: there was no audio. And also the folks at w
Speaker 1: g N, once they figured out something was going on,
Speaker 1: very quickly changed the frequency transmitters. So they said, we'll
Speaker 1: just hit PBS, I guess, yeah, yeah, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about how that kind of helps us
Speaker 1: know a little more about the attackers. Because here's the
Speaker 1: other thing. To this day, there there's no the public
Speaker 1: has no idea who did this. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 1: why this story has lingered, and it's so cool is
Speaker 1: because anytime you have an unsolved mystery, even if it's uh,
Speaker 1: just sort of an odd broadcast intrusion like this, people
Speaker 1: are going to be obsessed with it. Um. We've a
Speaker 1: lot of the information from that I did research on
Speaker 1: came from a motherboard kind of the mother of all articles,
Speaker 1: some great research yea Chris middle who wrote this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the article, if you want to look for it, is
Speaker 1: the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack. And I agree
Speaker 1: this article is fantastic. It really lays out not just
Speaker 1: the incident, but also other things that had happened beforehand
Speaker 1: that kind of laid the groundwork for this, as well
Speaker 1: as just a discussion, although a brief one, about the
Speaker 1: hacker culture that existed at that time and how that
Speaker 1: kind of lends itself to people who maybe are cleverer
Speaker 1: than is good for them or could be very way
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, because as it turns out, the f
Speaker 1: c C here in the United States does not take
Speaker 1: kindly to folks intruding upon established airways. No, it's it's
Speaker 1: a big no no, especially with bare butt, which I
Speaker 1: think you said. Once the camera cuts, we didn't continue there.
Speaker 1: That's when it got really weird because there's a camera
Speaker 1: cut and then you see the mask is off, but
Speaker 1: the guy has his head out of frame and is
Speaker 1: just sort of holding the mask. He has pants down,
Speaker 1: showing his his bear Fannie, and then yeah from profile
Speaker 1: and then a lady on the right, uh, and it
Speaker 1: looks like some sort of Old West like Antiochley type.
Speaker 1: Garb spanked him with a fly swatter on his butt,
Speaker 1: although spanks is really being generous. She's very slowly and
Speaker 1: lightly tapping him on the bottom with the flyswater, so
Speaker 1: to the point where you're you're thinking, like, I guess
Speaker 1: that's supposed to represent spanking. Uh, doesn't look like any
Speaker 1: spanking I ever received as a kid. And I got
Speaker 1: you anyway, That's pretty much where the video cut off,
Speaker 1: and then it went right back into Doctor Who and
Speaker 1: which is really funny to see the transition. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he died of an electric shock. Yeah, you've got to
Speaker 1: watch the whole incident on YouTube if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: and in case you're cure areous, that episode is we're
Speaker 1: talking classic Doctor Who obviously back in seven. This is
Speaker 1: not the reboot. Uh, it was the Horror of fang Rock.
Speaker 1: So if that's your favorite episode, I'm sorry that was
Speaker 1: interrupted back. So yeah, and like we said, the the
Speaker 1: audio really showed that that the public television station wasn't
Speaker 1: the intended target. It was the It was a target
Speaker 1: of opportunity after the first attempt failed. And uh, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the technology behind that and why
Speaker 1: they had to switch from one to the other. Um,
Speaker 1: it turns out it was largely a practical issue, at
Speaker 1: least as far as I can determine. And it was.
Speaker 1: There were also references within the little Weird diet tribe
Speaker 1: the guy made to Coca Cola because he said catch
Speaker 1: the waves and he had a new coat can that
Speaker 1: he threw down the ground. Yeah, and also a reference
Speaker 1: to the cult cartoon Clutch Cargo. Yeah, he hummed the
Speaker 1: theme Clutch Cargo. If you've ever seen the movie Pulp Fiction, Um,
Speaker 1: the scene with young Bruce Willis back in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: I guess with Christopher Walkin as his guardian. He's watching
Speaker 1: Clutch Cargo on TV. There that with the mouth's cut out.
Speaker 1: O'Brien has also used that same comedic effect using the
Speaker 1: live action in order. Because what what the whole point
Speaker 1: was was it was an idea of of reducing the
Speaker 1: cost of animation big time. Because there was no animation.
Speaker 1: You had to picture, yeah, still picture, and then you
Speaker 1: would superimpose live actors mouths on top of it. And
Speaker 1: if that sounds creepy and disturbing to you, you you're
Speaker 1: on the right track. It was not the only cartoon
Speaker 1: to do this. There were a few others. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you Cambria Productions for who and uh yeah, so he
Speaker 1: hummed like the whole Clutch Cargo theme and made references
Speaker 1: to actual episodes of Clutch Cargo. Uh so it was
Speaker 1: certainly someone with an odd sense of humor who did this. Now,
Speaker 1: there was no other message, right, there was no. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like a political thing, this very stream of consciousness
Speaker 1: kind of weird. He holds up, I guess what we
Speaker 1: can cleanly describe as a marital aid. Yes, at one
Speaker 1: point and throws that on the ground and um, it's
Speaker 1: just once the fly swatting comes in, it's just obvious
Speaker 1: that they're kind of free forming. Although it was not live,
Speaker 1: which is important to know. This is at a video
Speaker 1: tape that they made. Yeah, yeah, and it was because
Speaker 1: I mean, in order to do a live intrusion would
Speaker 1: require essentially a studio and you'd have to have some
Speaker 1: sort of linked to a transmitter that also had line
Speaker 1: of sight to the same antenna as whatever target you
Speaker 1: were you're aiming at, So that would have been an
Speaker 1: astoundingly complicated. This is definitely a little easier to pull off.
Speaker 1: So you know, now that we know that this, they've
Speaker 1: they've never been found. They're likely never to be found.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always possible that someone could come forward
Speaker 1: and say, all right, well here's how it actually happened.
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who did this. Would I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened by now because the statute of limitations is
Speaker 1: up from yeah, it's way up, so you can't get
Speaker 1: in trouble and it's um I think they would, unless
Speaker 1: they just think it's better left as a mystery. They
Speaker 1: would live in like especially nowadays with the Internet like
Speaker 1: it is, it would blow up, you know, it would
Speaker 1: be right. It could possibly be the fact that I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, of course we're just projecting here, but it
Speaker 1: could possibly be that they are no longer terribly proud
Speaker 1: of what they did, and or that they've moved on
Speaker 1: in their lives. Yeah, there's there's a significant amount of
Speaker 1: time since then, and they might have thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to brag about something I did when
Speaker 1: I was younger and dumber, especially now that I'm the
Speaker 1: CEO of ABC. Right, that might end up, By the way,
Speaker 1: we do not actually mean that the CEO of ABC
Speaker 1: or Didny Disney affiliates are involved, of course, of course.
Speaker 1: But the other interesting thing is that this was not
Speaker 1: the first time that um A A an intrusion had
Speaker 1: happened in in broadcast history. The first one, if you
Speaker 1: want to go back, actually didn't happen in the United States.
Speaker 1: It happened back in UH the UK in nineteen seventies seven,
Speaker 1: and that was when a hoaxer interrupted a Southern television
Speaker 1: broadcast by UH inserting audio. It didn't change the video.
Speaker 1: So this was kind of the opposite of what had
Speaker 1: happened the first time with the Max Hedroum incident. But
Speaker 1: it was an audio stream that came in and carried
Speaker 1: a message from the alien villain. Uh, and this is
Speaker 1: in the like I said, in the UK, So obviously
Speaker 1: the alien had an English accent. I guess that's only
Speaker 1: you know, fair like, if you're going to interrupt someone's program,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you're speaking in the dialect,
Speaker 1: you know, right, Yeah, suddenly they spoke like like with
Speaker 1: a French accent. I mean that would just be adding
Speaker 1: insult in But anyway, so it was a message that
Speaker 1: essentially said that humans should prepare themselves for the worst
Speaker 1: because you know, destruction is a common Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: That's what a broadcast intrusion should be, some creepy warning,
Speaker 1: not just a random series of images that disturb you
Speaker 1: for things that you can't quite put your finger on,
Speaker 1: although that is more disturbing. Almost. Yeah. Then six we
Speaker 1: get the first one in the United States. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this was an inside job deal. This was happened on
Speaker 1: April at twelve thirty two am and it involved the
Speaker 1: East Coast feed of HBO. And Uh, what happened was
Speaker 1: the HBO was showing a movie called The Falcon and
Speaker 1: the Snowman Classic. You know it certainly could not be
Speaker 1: helped by approximately four minutes of footage missing because they've
Speaker 1: been replaced by a series of colored bars that say
Speaker 1: good evening, HBO from Captain Midnight twelve a month, no
Speaker 1: Way Showtime movie Channel Beware. Yeah, that had a clear
Speaker 1: motive and and and actually ironically the um the guy
Speaker 1: was caught. His name was John R. McDougall, and he
Speaker 1: was an employee of Central Florida Teleport And he used
Speaker 1: what do he use? He the was it the text
Speaker 1: that he used? He? Yeah, so the text generators that
Speaker 1: the companies used in order to put an overlay on
Speaker 1: top of a screen. So like like the actual words
Speaker 1: that were being used there, Well, they're very particular. And
Speaker 1: by measuring things like the height of the the font,
Speaker 1: the how far uh the middle bar of an e
Speaker 1: is according to the other sides, how close together those
Speaker 1: words are, investigators were able to narrow it down to
Speaker 1: a specific machine. Yeah, it's pretty fingerprint up there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like incredible forensics, right. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: if someone gets hold of a typewritten sheet of paper
Speaker 1: and is able to determine the model of typewriter that
Speaker 1: was used to actually make this but in this case
Speaker 1: it got even more specific, because these machines aren't everywhere,
Speaker 1: and that's what led them to track down McDougall, who, uh,
Speaker 1: who had just decided that the recent hike in prices
Speaker 1: for a monthly subscription to HBO were unconscionable and he
Speaker 1: had to make it known. So, yeah, he had a
Speaker 1: side job selling satellite dish service. Yeah, so he thought
Speaker 1: that would nick his business some. And so he eventually
Speaker 1: was caught and pled guilty, paid a five thousand dollar fine,
Speaker 1: and served just one year probation. And it was that
Speaker 1: incident that led I believe Congress to make it a
Speaker 1: federal violation to a broad Yeah, it was a felony
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. Yeah, because they suddenly said, wait,
Speaker 1: now that people can actually do this, now great, this
Speaker 1: was someone, like we said, an inside job. They had
Speaker 1: access to a satellite. What what he actually did was
Speaker 1: he pointed the satellite of Central Florida Teleport at the
Speaker 1: HBO satellite. So easy, chuck, you and I we wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know where the heck that satellite is. So even
Speaker 1: if we had the equipment and everything else, we'd just
Speaker 1: beat it. Well, the sky is a lot bigger than
Speaker 1: I had taken into account. And uh, you know, of
Speaker 1: course we'd have to be someplace where we could actually
Speaker 1: get a good clear view of the sky because if
Speaker 1: they're building in the way or something. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he he was a good example of that. And
Speaker 1: then September, so this is just before the the incident
Speaker 1: with the Max Hedgerm incident, Thomas Hainey hijacked a signal
Speaker 1: at on the Playboy channel. I think I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about this one. Yeah, it was one where it was
Speaker 1: sending in religious messages essentially saying repent and and you
Speaker 1: know you are, uh, discard your wicked ways, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right, And it's no surprise because he actually
Speaker 1: worked for the Christian Broadcast Network. Yeah, so again he
Speaker 1: had a job. Yeah, he had access to the equipment
Speaker 1: necessary and the knowledge necessary to be able to do this.
Speaker 1: It's not something that the uh, the average person would
Speaker 1: be able to do. And again it was the character generator,
Speaker 1: the the font generator that kind of led the way.
Speaker 1: It was the main piece of evidence that was leveled
Speaker 1: against him. Um. I remember that Pat Robertson was very
Speaker 1: upset when the verdict was handled handed down. He said
Speaker 1: that there wasn't enough evidence to um to say that
Speaker 1: Haney was in fact the person who who did this. Well,
Speaker 1: he was convicted, but um, I think just got probation.
Speaker 1: And the first guy, McDougall, is interesting. What he got
Speaker 1: convicted for was operating without a license even though he
Speaker 1: had a license. So that was a bit of a
Speaker 1: hinky ruling. I think they just had to convict him
Speaker 1: of something because I don't know if the law was
Speaker 1: in place at that point. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that deal where you realize this
Speaker 1: is someone that we need to punish, but we don't
Speaker 1: have a law that covers the crime, and we haven't
Speaker 1: defined it as a crime, but we know that this
Speaker 1: is something people really shouldn't be able to do, so
Speaker 1: we have to somehow justify it. Um. Yeah. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, the it every nation, uh, in some
Speaker 1: way or another, ends up regulating the electromagnetic spectrum, but
Speaker 1: it changes from one place to the other. Sure there's
Speaker 1: only so much room, right, yeah, exactly. So electromatic spectrum
Speaker 1: goes all the way from radio waves, which can a
Speaker 1: radio wave can be kilometers long, right, and then you
Speaker 1: go all the way to the other side to like
Speaker 1: gamma rays we're talking about on the nanoscale and everything
Speaker 1: in between. That's the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light is part
Speaker 1: of that. You know, visible light is on the short side,
Speaker 1: but radio waves and microwaves are on the longer side.
Speaker 1: And uh not all those radio waves. You know, we
Speaker 1: can't just all use the same ones, because then we
Speaker 1: would have interference. Right if if the television and your
Speaker 1: phone used the same frequencies, then you would have interference
Speaker 1: between the two, and that would be terrible. Nothing would
Speaker 1: be usable, a crunch if there's too much activity on
Speaker 1: one frequency. Yeah, that's that's if you've got everyone just
Speaker 1: using you know what they're supposed to. Let's say everyone
Speaker 1: in the cellular network has they're all on their phones
Speaker 1: that we've seen this happen in the life events they're
Speaker 1: post nine eleven New York couldn't. Yeah, or even just
Speaker 1: going to a big event like any like c e
Speaker 1: S or any large event like that, you suddenly can't
Speaker 1: get access to anything. That's where you've got more demand
Speaker 1: for data transmission than there is capacity. Yeah, I've tried
Speaker 1: to get a signal at Comic Con before and ye, no, no,
Speaker 1: the same thing is true a dragon con and that's
Speaker 1: a like a third the size of Comic Con. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's also true that there are wavelengths within the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic spectrum that are really good for carrying data and
Speaker 1: some that aren't. So the government has divided up the
Speaker 1: electromannetic spectrum and saying these are the sections that can
Speaker 1: be used for specific purposes. So a large part of
Speaker 1: it is set aside for government and military use, a
Speaker 1: large part of his side for radio so AM and
Speaker 1: FM UH. And then you also have television broadcasts that
Speaker 1: are that are partial partitioned off as well cellular data WiFi.
Speaker 1: All of these things have their specific place that is
Speaker 1: mandated by the government. Yeah. Well, guys, Chuck and I
Speaker 1: have a lot more to talk about with the Max
Speaker 1: Headroom incident, but before we continue, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. So if you go in
Speaker 1: and start messing around with that, the government gets pretty upset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, it's sort of in Nipot
Speaker 1: in the bud situation, like one broadcast intrusion really no
Speaker 1: big deal, And that apparently is why the lead investigator
Speaker 1: said that, um I think his name was Marcus. He
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting resources because there was a
Speaker 1: little egg on the face and they probably just wanted
Speaker 1: it to go away more than anything. And no one's
Speaker 1: really hurt. There was no damage done, so they're not
Speaker 1: gonna throw a lot of money in time. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find this person. And and he also had some
Speaker 1: fairly harsh words for an fcc UH investigator. He was
Speaker 1: actually in Chicago. He didn't name the person's still salt
Speaker 1: about it though, Yeah, I said that said that this
Speaker 1: guy wasn't willing to go and knock on doors to
Speaker 1: actually do some investigation. And part of that is probably
Speaker 1: because there was this embarrassment factor. They're also but without
Speaker 1: the teeth, you know, with the authority, it makes it
Speaker 1: hard for someone to go out and say there's a
Speaker 1: justification for spending the time, resources and money necessarily investigating
Speaker 1: for a small fine and probation even if they do
Speaker 1: catch the person. Now the maximum fine, although I doubt
Speaker 1: that we would see a maximum fine for something as
Speaker 1: small as a min and a half interruption in Doctor who,
Speaker 1: Doctor who fans, please don't take me to task for that.
Speaker 1: But the maximum fine is a hundred thousand dollars or
Speaker 1: a year in jail or both, yeah, which they were
Speaker 1: very big on announcing at the time, as well as
Speaker 1: a think they had a lot of misinformation they or
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's misinformation or they were trying
Speaker 1: to get out a little misinformation saying how sophisticated of
Speaker 1: an operation it was and how expensive all the equipment
Speaker 1: must have been, which is really not in the case now.
Speaker 1: I think I think it was a lot of people
Speaker 1: trying to discourage future pranksters from following in there. So
Speaker 1: that means, well, let's make sure we we set the
Speaker 1: the bar very high, saying it's really hard to do
Speaker 1: and it's really expensive. Try. Yeah, and if you do try,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get even more expensive for you because we're
Speaker 1: gonna find you a hundred thousand dollars. So now, the
Speaker 1: truth was that the transmission equipment that was that could
Speaker 1: be used to do such a thing, while brand new,
Speaker 1: would cost maybe you know, a few thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: is a significant amount of money once it hits the aftermarket.
Speaker 1: Like you know, let's say that you've got a a station,
Speaker 1: a small station that is upgrading its equipment and it
Speaker 1: gets rid of the old stuff that was on the
Speaker 1: amateur market. You could go out and buy that stuff
Speaker 1: and it would be much less expensive than if you
Speaker 1: were to buy it brand new. So I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode about the the hacker culture. Well, have
Speaker 1: you heard about freakers? Okay, so a freaker spelled p
Speaker 1: r e A k I n G freaking. It's all
Speaker 1: about manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs and Steve
Speaker 1: Wozniac were freakers founders of Apple. Actually Wasniac was really
Speaker 1: the guy who knew how to do it. But there
Speaker 1: were a ton of them. One of the most famous
Speaker 1: ones his name was Captain Crunch, and Captain Crunch was
Speaker 1: called that because he discovered that by using a Captain
Speaker 1: Crunch plastic whistle that came in a box of cereal,
Speaker 1: he could mimic the tone that the telephone company was
Speaker 1: using and allow him to make free long distance phone calls.
Speaker 1: So you had this culture of people who were what's
Speaker 1: a long distance phone call? Yeah? Okay, kids, Once upon
Speaker 1: a time, if you wanted to call anyone outside of
Speaker 1: your area code, it cost extra. Lady actually tell me that.
Speaker 1: The other day that was cutting my hair, she got
Speaker 1: a phone call. She said I'm sorry, it's my daughter
Speaker 1: long distance. I need to step away. And I was
Speaker 1: sitting there going what's long distance? Yeah? Maybe international? Yeah
Speaker 1: that might be it. That's about it. Or you can
Speaker 1: just keep cutting my hair right, Yeah, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it's fine. I mean, I'm not gonna know her half
Speaker 1: the conversation. But yeah, the the uh. These were people
Speaker 1: who thought that these huge systems were fascinating, that the
Speaker 1: telephone system was really interesting, and learning how it worked
Speaker 1: was fascinating, and then once you know how it works,
Speaker 1: you know how to kind of game the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's not necessarily the case that they were looking
Speaker 1: to cause trouble or to be pranksters. Although there was
Speaker 1: some mischief involved there too, a lot of it was
Speaker 1: more about oh, now I know how this works, and
Speaker 1: that means this works this other way. It was really
Speaker 1: more about learning the system and and then negotiating it
Speaker 1: kind of like war games. Yes, very much like a
Speaker 1: little mischief, a little civil disobedience. But I don't think
Speaker 1: most of these people early on, we're trying to cause harm. No,
Speaker 1: it was really more of insatiable curiosity, like really, I can,
Speaker 1: so let me just try it out right and see
Speaker 1: if it works. I think that's exactly what happened with this,
Speaker 1: Max he I totally agree. You had people who said,
Speaker 1: let's you know, we know how radio works. The television
Speaker 1: broadcast is essentially a radio broadcast. So once you know
Speaker 1: how that works, and once you know that the basics
Speaker 1: behind it, are there ways where we could end up
Speaker 1: injecting our own signal into this and have a little
Speaker 1: fun and have a little fun exactly. And so it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where you had the people
Speaker 1: who had to know how, and you have the people
Speaker 1: who had the willingness to do it, and they were
Speaker 1: working together to create this prank and uh again aiming
Speaker 1: at a very specific target, and when that didn't work,
Speaker 1: switching to doctor who, Yeah, I appreciate the attitude of
Speaker 1: most of this stuff too. To be honest, Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything wrong with a little hi jinks
Speaker 1: to thumb your nose at the man if you're not
Speaker 1: hurting anybody. Um. I mean, you don't want to see
Speaker 1: it all the time because then it takes out all
Speaker 1: the teeth out of it. But every now and then,
Speaker 1: I kind of like, you know, when they interviewed people
Speaker 1: in Chicago, some people on the street were really upset
Speaker 1: and some people just kind of laughing. It's like I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty great. Yeah yeah, because again, like like
Speaker 1: we were saying, there wasn't any lasting harm here, right
Speaker 1: of course not the actual intrusion didn't cause any damage.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it wasn't something that was going to wreck
Speaker 1: physical equipment. No, you lost eighty seconds of Doctor Who. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which some might say is and some people say it's priceless. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know this is Tom Baker doctor Who we're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: especially back then when you just couldn't go look up
Speaker 1: you know the scene that I missed the night before,
Speaker 1: like that was a true intrusion. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is this is obviously pre well. I mean the
Speaker 1: Internet was around, but nobody was on it except for
Speaker 1: it was like bullets and boards and stuff. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was That was pretty much what most hackers had access
Speaker 1: to unless they were in a university and they had
Speaker 1: some access to the preliminary version of the Internet. Um,
Speaker 1: but there was no worldwide Web. There was no web.
Speaker 1: There wouldn't be another. There wouldn't be a Worldwide Web
Speaker 1: for another five years, so there was no way of
Speaker 1: being able to go on and and check something you missed.
Speaker 1: Nor was there a way for you to really easily
Speaker 1: communicate with folks all over the world. Now they could
Speaker 1: do it with local Bolton board systems, And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's what we suspect, or at least there there's a
Speaker 1: lot of suspicion that, in fact, one of the local
Speaker 1: Chicago bbs is had people in a forum who were
Speaker 1: at least tangentially involved in this, if not directly responsible,
Speaker 1: but to really understand what was going on, it helps
Speaker 1: to understand how a broadcast television broadcast actually works. So
Speaker 1: here we go. We're gonna going back to the analog
Speaker 1: days of TV broadcast technology. So now, Chuck, you've you've
Speaker 1: been in a television studio too, right, Yeah, you and
Speaker 1: you and Josh I'm sure have done some of this.
Speaker 1: I've done some of this. When you see how a
Speaker 1: TV studio works, it's actually very eye opening. I mean
Speaker 1: to me, it's completely pulled away a lot of misconceptions
Speaker 1: that I had had. For example, you think of like cameramen,
Speaker 1: but in large part camera operation is done remotely, not
Speaker 1: behind a camera. Right. Uh. These cameras that you see
Speaker 1: in the studio are enormous and they're heavy. And this
Speaker 1: is also the reason why I'm explaining this is also
Speaker 1: to to illustrate why doing this live would have been impractical.
Speaker 1: These television cameras are. The reason why they're so big
Speaker 1: and heavy is in part so that they're incredibly smooth
Speaker 1: and steady and they aren't going to jitter. If you know,
Speaker 1: you could drop something right next to one, it's not
Speaker 1: going to move at all. Yeah, it's the same reason
Speaker 1: a camera Dolly ways, you know, a thousand pounds. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in order to get that that stability that you want,
Speaker 1: so that you have thousand pounds. By the way, they're
Speaker 1: less than that, but they're super heavy for that reason, right,
Speaker 1: want that stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also, television
Speaker 1: camera doesn't pick up sound, doesn't have a microphone on it.
Speaker 1: It's all about just capturing the image. Yeah, the mic
Speaker 1: the sound is captured separately. And yeah, so the photons,
Speaker 1: that's the particles of light that are coming from a
Speaker 1: scene are being captured by a camera. The light passes
Speaker 1: through a lens, which goes through a prism. The prism
Speaker 1: is the purpose of a prism is to break up
Speaker 1: light into its component parts and this case, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a prism that breaks light into red, green, and blue.
Speaker 1: That's all you needed. And each of those streams goes
Speaker 1: and is hit by or it hits a c c
Speaker 1: D a charge couple device. Now a charge couple device.
Speaker 1: What does is when photons hit it, it it generates a
Speaker 1: stream of electricity that essentially reflects the nature of the
Speaker 1: photons that hit it. So you've got these three streams
Speaker 1: coming out the red, green, and blue. Uh. They then
Speaker 1: go into an encoder. Meanwhile, the sound that you're creating
Speaker 1: is also going to head back over towards the master
Speaker 1: control room. The information from the encoder goes to the
Speaker 1: master control room, it gets mixed together. So you then
Speaker 1: have a signal that has both video and sound. Now there,
Speaker 1: if you were to be able to visualize this, uh,
Speaker 1: it would actually be like the the visual data would
Speaker 1: make up most of the a range of frequencies like
Speaker 1: like four within four mega hurts, and then the very
Speaker 1: edge of it, like on the far right side, that
Speaker 1: would represent the sound. So it's just a little sliver
Speaker 1: that's the sound. Yeah, And you're either preparing to broadcast
Speaker 1: this out to the masses live or you're just putting
Speaker 1: it to tape do so later. Yeah, these days we
Speaker 1: put on a server, I guess or both. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: if you wanted to to to keep it forever. Now,
Speaker 1: you may have heard that there were times where people
Speaker 1: were broadcasting stuff and never according it. So there there
Speaker 1: are things that have been created for television that we
Speaker 1: will never see again. It's kind of like in some
Speaker 1: ways going to see a live stage show. If you
Speaker 1: were there, you saw it and you weren't that's it's
Speaker 1: but uh, in this case, we're talking about a live newscast.
Speaker 1: So that's being broadcast out from that point. When it's
Speaker 1: all been encoded and you've got this video signal that
Speaker 1: has all the information. It's got the red, the green,
Speaker 1: the blue, and the audio, all four things that you need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's time to transmit that out and it goes from
Speaker 1: the studio to a transmitter. It's called a studio transmitter link. Now,
Speaker 1: most studios don't have an enormous antenna that's at a
Speaker 1: really high elevation in broadcast to the general area. Cities
Speaker 1: share them. Yeah, and we're talking about an era of
Speaker 1: over the air television, right you're using your antenna to
Speaker 1: pick up wavelengths. So what what they would do is
Speaker 1: they would use the studio trend emitter link to beam
Speaker 1: this information to a nearby antenna on a very tall building. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Usually the tallest buildings in your city will have these,
Speaker 1: and Chicago has a lot of tall building, yes, and
Speaker 1: they use them for that purpose exactly. So if you
Speaker 1: stream that out to the antenna, the antenna then ends
Speaker 1: up broadcasting an electro magnetic signal and that ends up
Speaker 1: being picked up by the antenna of your television, which
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic signal when it hits the antenna generates an
Speaker 1: electrical current. A tuner in your television is able to
Speaker 1: focus in on a specific channel and thus kind of
Speaker 1: filter the signal from the noise, and then it ends
Speaker 1: up pulling out that video stream, creating the red, green, blue,
Speaker 1: and the audio, and you get your TV that you
Speaker 1: get to watch. It's beautiful. It's I joked with you
Speaker 1: earlier that we should just give them the explanation from
Speaker 1: Willy Wonka, which is slightly more simplistic but but easier
Speaker 1: to explain. But unfortunately it's not quite that easy. So
Speaker 1: knowing how this works, where you've got the signal coming
Speaker 1: from the studio being transmitted out to a giant antenna
Speaker 1: and then broadcast to an area. There are several areas
Speaker 1: that could be potentially vulnerable to intrusion. If you are
Speaker 1: working on the inside, then if you're able to intercept
Speaker 1: and put in a new signal to go to the
Speaker 1: studio transmitter link to go out, then you're done. That's
Speaker 1: all you need to do. You need just very easy
Speaker 1: to do and very easy to trace back exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: inside job, you're like, well, let's look at the people
Speaker 1: who have access. Now, that's all that could have done this.
Speaker 1: But as it turns out, with a over the air
Speaker 1: analog transmission, there was an easier way of doing this
Speaker 1: where you didn't have to break into the studio to
Speaker 1: do it. It was pretty great. Actually, yeah, So all
Speaker 1: you have to do, and I say all you have
Speaker 1: to do this still is pretty significant, is you have
Speaker 1: to have a transmitter of your own. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to have a direct line of sight to
Speaker 1: the antenna that's going to pick up the transmission from
Speaker 1: the studio, and you have to transmit on the frequency
Speaker 1: that the studio uses at a higher intensity than what
Speaker 1: the studio is doing. And then the antenna which is stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can't differentiate all of noses. That's a bad signal.
Speaker 1: I don't want to proast, but they don't know if
Speaker 1: it's the right frequency, it's gonna broadcast it. So when
Speaker 1: you hit the antenna, it's gonna go for the strongest signal.
Speaker 1: I mean, this makes sense because if you had two
Speaker 1: signals that were the same frequency and one is stronger
Speaker 1: than the other, chances are the other frequency is coming
Speaker 1: from a different source further away, and that's not the
Speaker 1: one you want to transmit. Yes, so literally all they needed,
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't need to to blow it out
Speaker 1: of the water. They just needed to be stronger and
Speaker 1: to do so, do you just need to be a
Speaker 1: little closer. Yeah, maybe a lot closer in this case,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, exactly, they just had to be somewhere
Speaker 1: along the path way from the studio to the antenna
Speaker 1: that was being used. Uh, they and they just had
Speaker 1: to transmit on the right frequency, which was that was
Speaker 1: information they could get. They could get the information on
Speaker 1: what frequency to use. So you've got your transmitter, you've
Speaker 1: got your media, which in this case was a tape
Speaker 1: that they had shot earlier. Because that wasn't lying. You're
Speaker 1: probably on a building, and they've got to be somewhere
Speaker 1: pretty high up. So yeah, likely on top of a
Speaker 1: building or at least on like a balcony or fire
Speaker 1: escape or something. They can have a line of sight. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are, They've got their transmitter and geared up to
Speaker 1: the right amount of power, they shoot it off and
Speaker 1: everything else is taken care of for them. They try
Speaker 1: to do anything else. In this case, the John Hancock
Speaker 1: building in the Sears Tower with the two towers that
Speaker 1: had these two receivers, And there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: theories over the years. Um, most people believe they were
Speaker 1: probably high up, but I have seen one theory that
Speaker 1: they were mobile in a van, necessarily high up, but
Speaker 1: just super super close they Yeah, that would also require
Speaker 1: them to have some way of maintaining that line of
Speaker 1: sight and that that steady transmission, because you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you don't, if you don't have your electromagnetic
Speaker 1: waves directed right at the receiver, then it's going it's
Speaker 1: not going to be a strong enough signal. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't buy the van theory. It would be
Speaker 1: really really challenging, e empowering everything. It's wuld be a
Speaker 1: pretty more sophisticated. It does make me suddenly think that
Speaker 1: the Scooby Gang was responsible for it, because you've got
Speaker 1: the big rubber mask like old Nan Withers. We've got
Speaker 1: a bit more to talk about when it comes to
Speaker 1: this crazy incident in tech history. But before we conclude,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So
Speaker 1: channel nine, which was w g N in Chicago. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at the channels in the United States,
Speaker 1: they actually have the designated frequencies they have to, you know,
Speaker 1: use our least the range that's around a D eighties
Speaker 1: seven mega hurts. So you tune your transmitter to that
Speaker 1: signal and you aim it at the you know where
Speaker 1: the antenna is. You've identified that, you've got it all
Speaker 1: lined up, and you're good to go. Well, once w
Speaker 1: g N changed their frequency, that meant that it didn't
Speaker 1: matter how much power they poured into the transact. It's
Speaker 1: like you're speaking the wrong language. So that meant that
Speaker 1: suddenly there their prank didn't really go anywhere. They had
Speaker 1: a brief appearance with no audio. Yeah, so they probably
Speaker 1: did something a little wrong on their end. On there
Speaker 1: probably wasn't a test run. They probably wanted it to
Speaker 1: work right, right, right, but then unfortunately for them, unfortunately
Speaker 1: for them, it didn't work with you know, without a hitch.
Speaker 1: So they then say, well, what can we do, how
Speaker 1: can we um save this and maybe get the actual
Speaker 1: video that we shot scene and yeah, if you guys
Speaker 1: haven't watched this video, you really kind of need too.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, so they then decided to do
Speaker 1: their backup plan. They knew the frequency that the local
Speaker 1: public broadcast channel was using, and they knew that that
Speaker 1: antenna was on top of the Sears tower and that
Speaker 1: they could aim at that one. And uh so, whether
Speaker 1: or not they had to relocate, they they probably did
Speaker 1: just to get a good line of sight on the
Speaker 1: on the antenna, but uh it was only a two
Speaker 1: hour time difference between the first attack and the second attack,
Speaker 1: So to retune the transmitter, to prep it to get
Speaker 1: ready to hit the target, and to make sure you
Speaker 1: have a line of sight on it, they probably stayed
Speaker 1: in the same general area, which is northwest part of Chicago. Northwest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually that that article we were talking about, the
Speaker 1: Motherboard article. They have a great picture that shows the
Speaker 1: location of both studios on both antenna and it kind
Speaker 1: of shows you like an area where where the two
Speaker 1: lines almost cross, and you figure, I bet, I bet
Speaker 1: they were somewhere in this general area so that they
Speaker 1: could if they didn't have to relocate. Uh, then they
Speaker 1: just you know, shifted position, or maybe they relocated by
Speaker 1: a couple of blocks. Um, which raises the question, how
Speaker 1: did they get access to a high enough area and
Speaker 1: still have power and all that kind of stuff right
Speaker 1: now they were just on their buddies the roof of
Speaker 1: his apartment with an extension court. That's probably what happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they then did the second attack at eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: or eleven fourteen, and that one worked much better. Um.
Speaker 1: And like we said, the material they had, the equipment
Speaker 1: they had was readily available, wasn't It wasn't as rare
Speaker 1: as you would think it would be. No. Dr Marcus,
Speaker 1: the lead investigator, said that, uh, like a direct TV
Speaker 1: size Antenta these days, it is about all you would
Speaker 1: have needed. It's not like one of those like school
Speaker 1: bus size satis in backyards back in to day. It's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible, Uh, the how little you would need in
Speaker 1: order to do it. So fascinating attack fascinating fact that
Speaker 1: it they were able to do it without being caught. Um.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you know, there weren't a whole
Speaker 1: lot of broadcast intrusions after this point. You've heard about
Speaker 1: maybe one or two. The Disney Channel has infamously been
Speaker 1: the attack, the side of an attack on multiple occasions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the super Bowl was hijacked briefly a few
Speaker 1: years ago in one city only though. Yeah. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's harder and harder to do now because you've
Speaker 1: got things like digital encoding. Yeah, that make it much
Speaker 1: much more difficult for the average hacker to do. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised it didn't happen more often back in those days.
Speaker 1: With those early I think there's sort of the wild West.
Speaker 1: It may very well have been that the scare tactics
Speaker 1: the FCC used. We have totally worried, Like people said like, well,
Speaker 1: I know I can do this, but I'm totally not
Speaker 1: gonna do this. Um. And you know, we we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh. There are some theories out there
Speaker 1: about who it could have been responsible for this. My
Speaker 1: favorite was the the one that is probably the easiest
Speaker 1: to dismiss, which was Eric Fournier who was a punk
Speaker 1: rock musician as well as an avant garde artist who
Speaker 1: created a series of videos. Um. It's funny because the
Speaker 1: Motherboard article refers to it as a YouTube channel, but
Speaker 1: in fact the videos pre date YouTube. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess it is now on a YouTube channel. But they
Speaker 1: were called shay uh s h A y e St
Speaker 1: John Sha st John. And if you look at these,
Speaker 1: you you've forced me to earlier. Uh they do have
Speaker 1: similar quality, um, very similar feel almost absurd, surreal, disturbing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't necessarily make much sense, you know. I think of
Speaker 1: it like you you've seen the horror movies where they
Speaker 1: all um center around like a creepy looking doll. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a genre unto itself. There's a brand new one
Speaker 1: right about it all and about yeah yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: the fact that I responded so quickly with that is
Speaker 1: not good for me. But yeah, it's this idea of
Speaker 1: things that look not quite right, and the Saint John
Speaker 1: videos are all about that, and they involve the looping
Speaker 1: of certain phrases over and over again, experiments and lighting
Speaker 1: experiments in uh camera angles, as well as digital effects
Speaker 1: or maybe not even digital effects, but special effects. The
Speaker 1: earlier ones are actually more trippy the ones that are
Speaker 1: on the YouTube channel itself. Um, so you can see
Speaker 1: that the there's some shared uh aesthetics. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: lived in Indiana, apparently just a few hours from Chicago. Um,
Speaker 1: he passed away in two thousand tens, so we'll never know.
Speaker 1: I read one article that said that he admitted to
Speaker 1: his friends that it was him, but I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything else to substantiate that. And the Motherboard article goes
Speaker 1: so far as to suggest that that it's not him.
Speaker 1: It's not him because his friends all said he at
Speaker 1: that time in n he had no knowledge of video editing.
Speaker 1: All the video stuff he did was later on. It
Speaker 1: was in the late nineties, early two thousand's, so it
Speaker 1: would make sense that, um, while it's the same sort
Speaker 1: of kind of humor, it's not the same person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His old bandmate even said, you know, Eric didn't do this,
Speaker 1: but he would have loved it. He would have thought
Speaker 1: it was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, and there's another theory
Speaker 1: that Ice first saw and read it. That's how I
Speaker 1: saw the link to Motherboard, and you sent me the
Speaker 1: link and I saw it and read it as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one holds some water to me. Unless this guy
Speaker 1: Bowie j a po Poagg, one of the two poag,
Speaker 1: Unless he is just making all this stuff up right
Speaker 1: this otherwise, this sounds like a pretty decent lead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard. I've heard some people suggest that that perhaps
Speaker 1: the guy himself is the one who did it, and
Speaker 1: he's invented these personas to be the way of him
Speaker 1: explaining how it was done without actually admitting that he
Speaker 1: did it. But he he maintains his innocence, He says, no,
Speaker 1: I really, all of the evidence I have is purely circumstantial.
Speaker 1: I was thirteen when this happened, which to me suggests
Speaker 1: that it's not him. It does not seem like a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old. The voice in the video is distorted,
Speaker 1: but it does it definitely seems like it's someone who's
Speaker 1: older than that. Um. But he talks about uh, two
Speaker 1: brothers and one brother he said. He described him as
Speaker 1: seeming to be on the autism spectrum, and that he
Speaker 1: had a very keen interest in broadcast spectrum and broadcast technology,
Speaker 1: but didn't have very many social skills. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: the Yeah, he was very big as a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old on that In that hacker scene, but trying it
Speaker 1: sounded like really like one of the young ones trying
Speaker 1: to ingratiate himself into the group. Into the group. These
Speaker 1: were a little older guys who were more experienced. Um.
Speaker 1: He calls them J and K, which are not their names,
Speaker 1: to provide their you know, to guard their anonymity. And
Speaker 1: he said that Jay, who was supposedly the autistic one,
Speaker 1: was He's the one who says that was the guy
Speaker 1: in the mask. They had the same build. He references
Speaker 1: his brother in the video. Yeah, he says that because
Speaker 1: he he shows a glove and he says, uh, this
Speaker 1: one is dirty. My brother is wearing the other one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he apparently. He says this is from his reddit. He said, Uh,
Speaker 1: he liked to tell dirty jokes. The dirty jokes were funny,
Speaker 1: at least to me. Is a thirteen year old and
Speaker 1: a woman dressed up as Antioakley swatting someone's bare butt
Speaker 1: with a fly swatter is a perfect reflection of his
Speaker 1: sense of humor. Uh. It was usually childish and sexually deviant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he talked about how he had kind of a
Speaker 1: verbal tick that instead of saying uh, when he was
Speaker 1: trying to think of something he'd say, oh, and that
Speaker 1: if you listen to the video, there's some there's a yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of him kind of making oh noises
Speaker 1: between when he's saying things. So it does kind of
Speaker 1: come across as someone who's trying to think of the
Speaker 1: next thing to say. Like, it didn't feel like it
Speaker 1: certainly does not feel that the Max Headroom incident was
Speaker 1: terribly scripted, Like I think it was a lot off
Speaker 1: the cup unless. Yeah. So the the other brother, Kay,
Speaker 1: was Jay's caretaker h and also was possibly the theory
Speaker 1: seems to be that k was the one working the camera,
Speaker 1: that Ja was the one on camera, and that Kay's
Speaker 1: girlfriend was the one with the fly swatter, and again
Speaker 1: all of this ends up being circumstantial evidence. He said that,
Speaker 1: as Poche said, as a thirteen year old, he went
Speaker 1: to this apartment that was just filled with equipment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, the there was nothing, you know, no normal
Speaker 1: decorations except like a rainbow kite or something in there.
Speaker 1: Everything else was electronic equipment, and that they were the
Speaker 1: people they were talking about something but not explicitly talking about,
Speaker 1: just saying that something big was gonna happen and that
Speaker 1: he should definitely make sure to be watching channel nine
Speaker 1: at nine pm, uh like w g N at nine pm,
Speaker 1: so he could see the big thing that was going
Speaker 1: to happen, and that he claims he didn't even put
Speaker 1: two and two together, like he saw the incident go
Speaker 1: down and knew that something big was going to happen,
Speaker 1: which does seem a little hinky to me, but he
Speaker 1: says years later as when it all kind of connected
Speaker 1: for me, it seems a little weird. That does seem
Speaker 1: a little weird to me too, but he said. He
Speaker 1: does go on to defend himself a bit and say,
Speaker 1: you know that there were I heard a dozen things
Speaker 1: from them a day that we're just sort of weird
Speaker 1: and out there, and it wouldn't register as anything big
Speaker 1: to me with they said, you know, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: something big watch the TV tonight. So in other words,
Speaker 1: they were a bunch of big talkers. But it's happened
Speaker 1: as a kid, he's trying to fit in. He you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like he was kind of nervous hanging around
Speaker 1: this crowd, eager to please exactly. Yeah, well, at any rate,
Speaker 1: he's the one who on Reddit just laid out the
Speaker 1: situation and explained what he thought had happened based upon
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence. Again, he never witnessed any of this himself,
Speaker 1: according to his account, and it kind of blew up
Speaker 1: on Reddit, didn't it? I did? It did? And he
Speaker 1: gave specific updates, and in fact, he was interviewed heavily
Speaker 1: for the Motherboard article and he explained that he tried
Speaker 1: to get in touch with j and k Um through
Speaker 1: multiple media, like he knows where they are still. Yep.
Speaker 1: He sent them Facebook messages, he sent an email, and
Speaker 1: he sent them actual snail mail and didn't get any response.
Speaker 1: And he says, I'm taking that as a indication that
Speaker 1: they don't want to talk about this, and so out
Speaker 1: of respect for their privacy, I'm dropping it. And so
Speaker 1: he never revealed the identities of the people. No, he
Speaker 1: did have other well on the Reddit the said they
Speaker 1: were around that same scene back then, and it sort
Speaker 1: of checks out. The guy had a similar ability short
Speaker 1: of shortened squatty and um, so he had a little
Speaker 1: bit of support. But it's all circumstantial and conjecture. You know,
Speaker 1: there's obviously no proof, no smoking gun, right, so we
Speaker 1: may never know for sure who did this. We'll have
Speaker 1: someone will have to come forward. This the only way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's one of those mysteries that is really interesting
Speaker 1: to read about. To to and the fact that it
Speaker 1: it's still you know, you can you can watch the video.
Speaker 1: You can actually see what happened. It's kind of cool
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of these these weird moments
Speaker 1: you just have second or third hand accounts and you
Speaker 1: can't you can't really experience it for yourself. You have
Speaker 1: to think, oh, what would it have been like? But
Speaker 1: now you can actually see. Yeah, it's a pretty neat,
Speaker 1: little time capsule experience, especially if you grew up in
Speaker 1: the eighties, right, And if you don't know who Max
Speaker 1: Headroom is, then maybe you should do some research on
Speaker 1: that first and then watch the video to understand how
Speaker 1: weird this was. That b B show, I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: is pretty good. People should watch that. Yeah, totally, guys.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this classic episode of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Big thanks once again to Chuck Bryant for agreeing to
Speaker 1: be on it. It was a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: explore this story, one that I had heard about, I
Speaker 1: had seen the videos. I found them a little unsettling, honestly.
Speaker 1: Uh and other people just find them funny. It all
Speaker 1: depends on your your sense of humor, I guess. But
Speaker 1: it was really interesting to take a deeper dive and
Speaker 1: really learned the the story behind it as much as
Speaker 1: we do know, and how it was even possible. And uh, guys,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about trying to pirate various signals out there,
Speaker 1: first of all, you're gonna need a pretty powerful transmitter.
Speaker 1: Second of all, don't don't you know, don't don't be dumb,
Speaker 1: as Josh Clark, the other co host of Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know, would say. And I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, send me an email. The addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can draw
Speaker 1: me a lot on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of
Speaker 1: both of those is text Stuff h s W. Follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: because it how stuff works dot com