Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And so last week
Speaker 1: we were planning on running a classic episode of about
Speaker 1: the Max Headroom Incident, a famous incident in which a
Speaker 1: person was able to overpower TV broadcast signals and insert
Speaker 1: a pirate signal into a television channel. And UH, then
Speaker 1: like it turned out that we had a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff that needed to be published last week, so
Speaker 1: it ended up going up briefly and then coming back down.
Speaker 1: But now we're putting it up for real Z's and
Speaker 1: we're doing it today on Wednesday, because the episode I'm
Speaker 1: working on UH is taking a little more time than
Speaker 1: I had anticipated because I have to pull a lot
Speaker 1: of information from a lot of different sources. But I
Speaker 1: never want to leave you without an episode, so we're
Speaker 1: moving up the classic episode for Friday to today Wednesday.
Speaker 1: This all makes sense somewhere, maybe not right now, but
Speaker 1: I promise somewhere down the line it does. So right now,
Speaker 1: let's go back and listen to this classic episode about
Speaker 1: the Max headroom incident. Well, the nice thing is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I like to let my guests kind of
Speaker 1: pick a topic if they if they prefer, I mean,
Speaker 1: if they don't, If they want me to pick one,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to. But I gave you that that option,
Speaker 1: and you came back with one of my favorite stories period,
Speaker 1: not just in tech just it's just one of those cool,
Speaker 1: weird things that have happened. And I do not want
Speaker 1: to steal thunder. All I wanna ask you is, Chuck,
Speaker 1: if you were in Chicago on November twenty, nineteen seven
Speaker 1: and you were watching h w g N at nine
Speaker 1: pm because you want to check out the news and
Speaker 1: it's coming up on the sports, which I know you're
Speaker 1: a fan of the sports, what happened? Well, that could
Speaker 1: have happened because I would have been sixteen at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you and I are in this age wheelhouse. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we actually were alive at this time, and we were
Speaker 1: we would have been aware of at least the entity
Speaker 1: that appeared instead of the sports scores. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: something weird happened at that moment. There was an interruption
Speaker 1: in normal service, Yeah, what they call a broadcast intrusion,
Speaker 1: and Uh, like all classic broadcast intrusions, it started with
Speaker 1: a little grainy, you know, static going on, and they're
Speaker 1: always a little unsettling when you watch them, even if
Speaker 1: they're goofy. Yeah, this is something kind of creepy about it.
Speaker 1: You know, what's out of place, and something that, especially
Speaker 1: when it's something as ritualistic, is the news. You know
Speaker 1: that follows a very specific pattern, and when something goes
Speaker 1: outside that pattern, you know, that upsets our little world
Speaker 1: balance for a moment. So in this case, the there was,
Speaker 1: like you said, there was this this disturbance in the force,
Speaker 1: and a new picture popped up and replaced the sportscaster,
Speaker 1: and it was a guy in a disturbing rubber mass
Speaker 1: and that mask was of a specific eighties icon, which
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't even know who
Speaker 1: this is anymore, but Max Headroom. Yeah, if if you're
Speaker 1: a child of the eighties, Max max hedrum loomed large
Speaker 1: for a while, and I know when this intrusion came out,
Speaker 1: this broadcast intrusion, it seemed like about half the people
Speaker 1: even knew who he was trying to imitate, and then
Speaker 1: the other half just had no idea. They thought it
Speaker 1: was just some weirdo with the mask. Well, and part
Speaker 1: of that was because, uh, the quality of the video
Speaker 1: was not 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 a character that was supposed to look
Speaker 1: like a digital character, right. It was supposed to like
Speaker 1: a computer generated image, and it was kind of a
Speaker 1: guy 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 looked like kind of just like Neon
Speaker 1: stripes that were constantly twisting and turning in different ways,
Speaker 1: and he would stutter, yeah, the digital stutter occasionally, and
Speaker 1: uh would be very kind of snarky and sarcastic, and
Speaker 1: 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 with an arc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one was pretty good. Actually, the original British show,
Speaker 1: even though it was a lot of American actors, was
Speaker 1: was pretty cool and definitely ahead of its time as
Speaker 1: far as you know. The whole idea was that this
Speaker 1: uh roving reporter was I think Matt Frewer played him
Speaker 1: as a real dude and as Max Headroom, but he
Speaker 1: was digitally replaced with this character Max Headroom, and at
Speaker 1: the time it just seemed really odd. But now when
Speaker 1: you look back at it and watch it, it's like, man,
Speaker 1: this show was kind of ahead of this. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was really imprescient. Yeah it was. It also revealed where
Speaker 1: the name came from, where Matt Frewer's character, as I recall,
Speaker 1: is waylaid and the last thing he sees before he
Speaker 1: loses consciousness is a sign on a on a a
Speaker 1: wall that tells what the Max Headroom for that wall
Speaker 1: is pretty clad became the character's name. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: person who appeared on this video was wearing a MAX
Speaker 1: Headroom mask and had this corrugated metal background sort of
Speaker 1: emulated the digital look, wore the suit that Max Headroom
Speaker 1: more like just a dark suit and tie, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this thing was the metal background. It looked like like
Speaker 1: a garage door. It was just sort of spinning in
Speaker 1: the background. Yeah, it was. It was on some sort
Speaker 1: of gimbal or something. That's what I figured. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you can tell it's swinging back and forth, so predictably
Speaker 1: it can't be held by somebody. You had to be
Speaker 1: on some sort of pivot or something, and but it's
Speaker 1: moving backward and forward. So it kind of mimics that
Speaker 1: that digital line twisting in the background. And except for
Speaker 1: one part, there's a part where there's a clear cut
Speaker 1: in the video. The video itself was about or at
Speaker 1: least what we've seen is about a minute and twenty
Speaker 1: 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 PPS
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 in other than that. I think there's
Speaker 1: like 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, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is also a disconcerting Yeah, 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'd slammed the Chuck swart
Speaker 1: Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah, he's a sportscaster
Speaker 1: for w g N. Yeah. And uh he also talked
Speaker 1: about the Greatest World Newspaper Nerds something like that. But
Speaker 1: w g N stands for World's Greatest Newspaper. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it turned out that that little know, the great the
Speaker 1: great World Newspaper Nerds or whatever however he worded it,
Speaker 1: that was a reference back to w g N. So
Speaker 1: it's very clearly intended for w g N. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the first attack wasn't as effective as as they had
Speaker 1: hoped because, uh, like I said, there was no audio.
Speaker 1: And also the folks at w g N, once they
Speaker 1: figured out something was going on, very quickly changed the
Speaker 1: frequency transmitters. So they said, well, just hit PBS, I guess. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. We'll talk more about how that kind
Speaker 1: of helps us know a little more about the attackers.
Speaker 1: Because here's the other thing. To this day, there there's
Speaker 1: no the public has no idea who did this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's why this story has lingered. And it's
Speaker 1: so cool is because anytime you have an unsolved mystery,
Speaker 1: even if it's uh just sort of an odd broadcast
Speaker 1: intrusion like this, people are going to be obsessed with it, like, um,
Speaker 1: we've a lot of the information from that I did
Speaker 1: research on. Came from a motherboard kind of the mother
Speaker 1: of all articles, had some great research, Yeah, Chris Middle
Speaker 1: that's yeah. The article, if you want to look for it,
Speaker 1: is the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack. And I
Speaker 1: agree this article is fantastic. It really lays out not
Speaker 1: just the incident, but also other things that had happened
Speaker 1: beforehand that kind of laid the groundwork for this, as
Speaker 1: well as just a discussion, although a brief one, about
Speaker 1: the hacker culture that existed at that time and how
Speaker 1: that kind of lends itself to people who maybe are
Speaker 1: cleverer than is good for them or could be very
Speaker 1: nice way to say, yeah, because as it turns out,
Speaker 1: the f c C here in the United States does
Speaker 1: not take kindly to folks intruding upon established airways. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's a big no no, especially with bare butts,
Speaker 1: which I think you said. Once the camera cuts, we
Speaker 1: didn't continue there. That's when it got really weird because
Speaker 1: there's a camera cut and then you see the mask
Speaker 1: is off, but the guy has his head out of
Speaker 1: frame and it's just sort of holding the mask. Yeah
Speaker 1: he is, pants are down showing his his bear Fannie,
Speaker 1: and then yeah from profile and then a lady on
Speaker 1: the right. Uh, and it looks like some sort of
Speaker 1: Old West like Antiochlely type garb. Yeah, spanks him with
Speaker 1: the fly swatter on his butt, although spanks is really
Speaker 1: being generous. She's very slowly and lightly tapping him on
Speaker 1: the bottom with the flyswater, so to the point where
Speaker 1: you're you're thinking, like, I guess that's supposed to represent spanking. Uh,
Speaker 1: doesn't look like any spanking I ever received as a kid.
Speaker 1: I got you. Anyway, That's pretty much where the video
Speaker 1: cut off, and then it went right back into Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: and 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 curious that episode, it's we're talking
Speaker 1: classic Doctor Who. Obviously back in seven, this is not
Speaker 1: the reboot. It was the Horror of fang Rock. So
Speaker 1: if that's your favorite episode, I'm sorry that was interrupted
Speaker 1: back in nine seven. So yeah, and like we said,
Speaker 1: the the audio really showed that that the public television
Speaker 1: station wasn't the intended target. It was. It was a
Speaker 1: target of opportunity after the first attempt failed. And uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about the technology behind that and
Speaker 1: why 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 on the ground. Yeah, And also a
Speaker 1: reference to the cult cartoon Clutch Cargo. Yeah, he hummed
Speaker 1: the theme Clutch Cargo. If you've ever seen the movie
Speaker 1: Pulp Fiction, Um, the scene with young Bruce Willis back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, I guess with Christopher Walkin as
Speaker 1: his guardian, he's watching Clutch Cargo on TV. There that
Speaker 1: with the mouth's cut out. O'Brien has also used that
Speaker 1: same comedic effect using the live action in order because
Speaker 1: what what the whole point was was it was an
Speaker 1: idea of of reducing the cost of animation big time
Speaker 1: because there was no animation. You had to picture, yeah,
Speaker 1: still picture, and then you would superimpose live actors mouths
Speaker 1: on top of it. And if that sounds creepy and
Speaker 1: disturbing to you, you you're on the right track. It
Speaker 1: was not the only cartoon to do this. There were
Speaker 1: a few others. Um, thank you Cambria Productions for and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so he hummed like the whole Clutch Cargo
Speaker 1: theme and made references to actual episodes of Clutch Cargo.
Speaker 1: Uh so it was certainly someone with an odd sense
Speaker 1: of humor who did this. Now, there was no other message, right,
Speaker 1: there was no. It wasn't like a political thing. It
Speaker 1: was very stream of consciousness, kind of weird. He holds
Speaker 1: up I guess what we can cleanly describe as a
Speaker 1: marital aid. Yes, at one point, and throws that on
Speaker 1: the ground and um, it's just once the fly swatting
Speaker 1: comes in, it's just obvious that they're kind of free forming.
Speaker 1: Although it was not live, which is important to know.
Speaker 1: This is at some video tape that they made. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was because I mean, in order to do
Speaker 1: a live intrusion would require essentially a studio and you'd
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of link to a transmitter
Speaker 1: that also had line of sight to the same antenna
Speaker 1: as whatever target you were you're aiming at, So that
Speaker 1: would have been an astoundingly complicated. This is definitely a
Speaker 1: little easier to pull off. So you know, now that
Speaker 1: we know that this, they've they've never been found. They're
Speaker 1: likely never to be found. I mean, it's always possible
Speaker 1: that someone could come forward and say, all right, well
Speaker 1: here's how it actually happened. I'm the guy who did this.
Speaker 1: Would I'm surprised that hasn't happened by now because the
Speaker 1: statute of limitations is up for Yeah, it's way up,
Speaker 1: so you can't get in trouble, and it's um I
Speaker 1: think they would unless they just think it's better left
Speaker 1: as a mystery. They would live in like especially nowadays
Speaker 1: with the Internet like it is, it would blow up,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be right. It could possibly be
Speaker 1: the fact that I mean, you know, of course we're
Speaker 1: just projecting here, but it could possibly be that they
Speaker 1: are no longer terribly proud of what they did, and
Speaker 1: or that they've moved on in their lives. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a significant amount of time since then, and they might
Speaker 1: have thought you know, I'm not going to brag about
Speaker 1: something I did when I was younger and dumber, especially
Speaker 1: now that I'm the CEO of ABC, right that that
Speaker 1: might end up. By the way, we do not actually
Speaker 1: mean that the CEO of ABC or Didney Disney affiliates
Speaker 1: are involved. But the other interesting thing is that this
Speaker 1: was not the first time that um I A an
Speaker 1: intrusion had happened in in broadcast history. The first one,
Speaker 1: if you want to go back, actually didn't happen in
Speaker 1: the United States, happened back in UH the UK in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies seven, and that was when a hoaxer interrupted
Speaker 1: a Southern television broadcast by UH inserting audio. It didn't
Speaker 1: change the video, So this is kind of the opposite
Speaker 1: of what had happened the first time with the Max
Speaker 1: Headroom insteat. But it was an audio stream that came
Speaker 1: in and carried a message from the alien villa on UH.
Speaker 1: And this is in the like I said, in the UK,
Speaker 1: so obviously the alien had an English accent. I guess
Speaker 1: that's only you know, fair like, if you're going to
Speaker 1: interrupt someone's program, you want to make sure you're speaking
Speaker 1: in the dialect, right, Yeah, suddenly they spoke like, like like
Speaker 1: with a French accent. I mean that would just be
Speaker 1: but anyway, so it was a message that essentially said
Speaker 1: that humans should prepare themselves for the worst, because you know,
Speaker 1: destruction is a common Yeah, that's great. That's what a
Speaker 1: broadcast intrusion should be, right, some creepy warning, not just
Speaker 1: a random series of images that disturb you for things
Speaker 1: that you can't quite put your finger on, although that
Speaker 1: is more disturbing. Almost. Yeah, then six we get the
Speaker 1: first one in the United States. Uh, and this was
Speaker 1: an inside job deal. This was happened on April at
Speaker 1: twelve thirty two am, and it involved the East Coast
Speaker 1: feed of HBO. And uh, what happened was the HBO
Speaker 1: was showing a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman Classic.
Speaker 1: You know, it certainly could not be helped by approximately
Speaker 1: four minutes of footage missing because they've been replaced by
Speaker 1: a series of colored bars that say good evening, HBO
Speaker 1: from Captain Midnight twelve a month no way showtime movie
Speaker 1: channel Beware. Yeah, that had a clear motive. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and actually ironically, the um the guy was caught.
Speaker 1: His name was John R. McDougall, and he was an
Speaker 1: employee of Central Florida Teleport and he used what do
Speaker 1: you use? He the was it the text that he used?
Speaker 1: He yeah, so the text generators that the companies used
Speaker 1: in order to put an overlay on top of a screen.
Speaker 1: So like like the actual words that were being used there, Well,
Speaker 1: they're very particular, and by measuring things like the height
Speaker 1: of the the font, the how far uh the middle
Speaker 1: bar of an e is according to the other side,
Speaker 1: how close together those words are, investigators were able to
Speaker 1: narrow it down to a specific machine. Yeah, it's pretty 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 have 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 abroad. Yeah, it was a felony all
Speaker 1: of a sudden. Yeah, because they suddenly said, wait, now
Speaker 1: that people can actually do this. Now great, this was someone,
Speaker 1: like we said, an inside job. They had access to,
Speaker 1: uh a satellite. What what he actually did was he
Speaker 1: pointed the satellite of Central Florida Teleport at the HBO satellite. Chuck,
Speaker 1: You and I we wouldn't even know where the heck
Speaker 1: that satellite is. Yeah, so even if we had the
Speaker 1: equipment and everything else, we'd just beat Well, the sky
Speaker 1: is a lot bigger than I had taken into account,
Speaker 1: and uh you know, of course we'd have to be
Speaker 1: someplace where we could actually get a good clear view
Speaker 1: of the sky because if they're building in the way
Speaker 1: or something. But uh yeah, so he he was a
Speaker 1: good example of that. And then September n so this
Speaker 1: is just before the the incident with the Max Headgroom incident,
Speaker 1: Thomas Haney hijacked a signal at on the Playboy channel.
Speaker 1: I think I remember hearing about this one. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was one where it was sending in religious messages essentially
Speaker 1: saying repent and and you know you are, uh, discard
Speaker 1: your wicked ways, that kind of thing, right, And it's
Speaker 1: no surprise because he actually worked for the Christian Broadcast Network. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so again he had a job. Yeah, he had access
Speaker 1: to the equipment necessary and the knowledge necessary to be
Speaker 1: able to do this. It's not something that the average
Speaker 1: person would be able to do. And again it was
Speaker 1: the character generator, the the font generator that kind of
Speaker 1: led the way. It was the main piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that was leveled against him. Um. I remember that Pat
Speaker 1: Robertson was very upset when the verdict was handled handed down.
Speaker 1: He said that there wasn't enough evidence to um to
Speaker 1: say that Haney was in fact the person who who
Speaker 1: did this. Well, he was convicted, but um, I think
Speaker 1: just got probation. And the first guy, McDougald, is interesting.
Speaker 1: What he got convicted for was operating without a license
Speaker 1: even though he had a license. So that was a
Speaker 1: bit of a hinky ruling. I think they just had
Speaker 1: to convict him of something, because I don't know if
Speaker 1: the law was in place at that point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's kind of like that deal where
Speaker 1: you realize, this is someone that we need to punish,
Speaker 1: but we don't have a law that covers the crime.
Speaker 1: We haven't defined it as a crime, but we know
Speaker 1: that this is something people really shouldn't be able to do,
Speaker 1: so we have to somehow justify it. Um. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: as it turns out, the 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 electromagnetic 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. Yeah, don't call it a crunch if there's
Speaker 1: too much activity on one frequency. Yeah, that's that's if
Speaker 1: you've got everyone just using you know what they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: Let's say everyone in the cellular network has they're all
Speaker 1: on their phones. That we've seen this happen in the
Speaker 1: life events the post couldn't. Yeah, or even just going
Speaker 1: to a big event like any like c e S
Speaker 1: or any large event like that, you suddenly can't get
Speaker 1: access to anything. That's where you've got more demand for
Speaker 1: data transmission than there is capacity. Yeah, I've tried to
Speaker 1: get a signal at Comic Con before and it's no. No,
Speaker 1: same thing is true a Dragon Con and that's a
Speaker 1: 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: electromanetic 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 UH radio SO AM
Speaker 1: and FM UH. And then you also have television broadcast
Speaker 1: that are that are partial partitioned off as well cellular
Speaker 1: data WiFi. All of these things have their specific place
Speaker 1: that is mandated by the government. Yeah, we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more about the Max Hedgroom incident in just a moment.
Speaker 1: So if you go in and start messing around with that,
Speaker 1: the government gets breaking up set. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of a Nippot in the bud situation,
Speaker 1: like one broadcast intrusion, really no big deal. And that
Speaker 1: apparently is why the lead investigator said that um, I
Speaker 1: think his name was Marcus. He had a hard time
Speaker 1: getting resources because there was a little egg on the
Speaker 1: face and they probably just wanted it to go away
Speaker 1: more than anything. And no one's really hurt. There was
Speaker 1: no damage done, so they're not gonna throw a lot
Speaker 1: of money in time trying to find this person. And
Speaker 1: and he also had some fairly harsh words for an
Speaker 1: fcc UH investigator. He was actually in Chicago. He didn't
Speaker 1: name the person and he's still salty about it though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said that said that this guy wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: go and not con doors to actually do some investigation,
Speaker 1: and part of that is probably because there was this
Speaker 1: embarrassment factor. They're also but without the teeth, you know,
Speaker 1: with the authority, it makes it hard for someone to
Speaker 1: go out and say there's a justification for spending the time,
Speaker 1: resources and money necessarily for a small fine in probation,
Speaker 1: even if they do catch the person. Now the maximum fine,
Speaker 1: although I doubt that we would see a maximum fine
Speaker 1: for something as small as a men and a half
Speaker 1: interruption in Doctor Who Doctor Who fans, please don't take
Speaker 1: me to task for that. But the maximum fine is
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars or a year in jail or both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which they were very big on announcing at the time
Speaker 1: as well as UM. I think they had a lot
Speaker 1: of misinformation they or I don't know if it's misinformation
Speaker 1: or they were trying to get out a little misinformation
Speaker 1: saying how sophisticated of an operation it was and how
Speaker 1: expensive all the equipment must have been, which is really
Speaker 1: not the case now. I think I think it was
Speaker 1: a lot of people trying to discourage future pranksters from
Speaker 1: following in their footsteps. So that means, well, let's make
Speaker 1: sure we we set the the bar very high, saying
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do and it's really expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you do try, it's gonna get even more
Speaker 1: expensive for you, because we're gonna find you a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So now, the truth was that the transmission
Speaker 1: equipment that was that could be used to do such
Speaker 1: a thing, while brand new, would cost maybe you know,
Speaker 1: a few thousand dollars, which is a significant amount of
Speaker 1: money once it hits the aftermarket. Like you know, let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got a a station, a small station
Speaker 1: that is upgrading its equipment and it gets rid of
Speaker 1: the old stuff that was on the amateur market. So
Speaker 1: you could go out and buy that stuff and it
Speaker 1: would be much less expensive than if you were to
Speaker 1: buy it brand new. So I mentioned earlier in this
Speaker 1: episode about the the hacker culture, Well have you heard
Speaker 1: about freakers? Okay, so a freak or spelled p R
Speaker 1: E A K I n G. I like it already freaking.
Speaker 1: It's all about manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: and Steve Wozniac were freakers, founders of Apple, actually Wasniac
Speaker 1: was really the guy who knew how to do it,
Speaker 1: but there were a ton of them. One of the
Speaker 1: most famous ones his name was Captain Crunch, and Captain
Speaker 1: Crunch was called that because he discovered that by using
Speaker 1: a Captain Crunch plastic whistle then came in a box
Speaker 1: of cereal, he could mimic the tone that the telephone
Speaker 1: company was using and allow him to make free long
Speaker 1: distance phone calls. So you had this culture of people who, wait,
Speaker 1: what's a long distance phone call? Yeah, okay, kids, Once
Speaker 1: upon a time, if you wanted to call anyone outside
Speaker 1: of your area code, it cost extra. Lady actually tell
Speaker 1: me that the other day that was cutting my hair.
Speaker 1: She got a phone call. She said, I'm sorry, it's
Speaker 1: my daughter long distance. I need to step away. And
Speaker 1: I was sitting there, going, what's long distance? Maybe intern national?
Speaker 1: That might be it? That's about it, or you could
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: a 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 then negotiating it kind
Speaker 1: of like, yes, very much like a little mischief, a
Speaker 1: little civil disobedience. But I don't think most of these
Speaker 1: people early on, we're trying to cause harm. No, it
Speaker 1: was really more of insatiable curiosity. Really, I can so
Speaker 1: let me just try it out and see if it works.
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what happened with this, Max Head.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. You had people who said, let's you know,
Speaker 1: we know how radio works. Television broadcast is essentially a
Speaker 1: radio broadcast. So once you know how that works, and
Speaker 1: once you know that the basics behind it, are there
Speaker 1: ways where we could end up injecting our own signal
Speaker 1: into this and have a little fun and have a
Speaker 1: little fun exactly. And so it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where you had the people who had to know how,
Speaker 1: and yet the people who had the willingness to do it,
Speaker 1: and they were working together to create this prank and
Speaker 1: uh again aiming at a very specific target and when
Speaker 1: that didn't work, switching to doctor Who, Yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the attitude of most of this stuff too. To be honest, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's being wrong with a little hi
Speaker 1: jinks to thumb your nose at the man if you're
Speaker 1: not hurting anybody. Um, I mean, you don't want to
Speaker 1: see it all the time because then it takes out
Speaker 1: all 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 laughed. I was like,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, because again, like
Speaker 1: like we were saying, there wasn't any lasting harm or right,
Speaker 1: and 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 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: its boards and stuff that was That was pretty much
Speaker 1: what most hackers had access to unless they were in
Speaker 1: a university and they had some access to the preliminary
Speaker 1: version of the Internet. Um, but there was no worldwide Web.
Speaker 1: There was no web. There wouldn't be another. There wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a worldwide Web for another five years. So there
Speaker 1: was no way of being able to go on and
Speaker 1: and check something you missed, Nor was there a way
Speaker 1: for you to really easily communicate with folks all over
Speaker 1: the world. Now they could do it with local Bolton
Speaker 1: board system And in fact, that's what we suspect, or
Speaker 1: at least there there's a lot of suspicion that, in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the local Chicago bbs is had people in
Speaker 1: a forum who were at least tangentially involved in this,
Speaker 1: if not directly responsible. But to really understand what was
Speaker 1: going on, it helps to understand how a broadcast. Television
Speaker 1: broadcast actually works. So here we go. We're gonna going
Speaker 1: back to the analog days of TV broadcast technology. So now, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you've you've been in a television studio too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you and you and Josh I'm sure have done some
Speaker 1: of this. I've done some of this. When you see
Speaker 1: how a TV studio works, it's actually very eye opening.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, it completely pulled away a lot
Speaker 1: of misconceptions that I had had. For example, you think
Speaker 1: of like cameraman, but in large part camera operation is
Speaker 1: done remotely, not behind a camera. Right. Uh. These cameras
Speaker 1: that you see in the studio are enormous and they're heavy.
Speaker 1: And this is also the reason why I'm explaining this
Speaker 1: is also to to illustrate why doing this live would
Speaker 1: have been impractical. Yea, these television cameras are the reason
Speaker 1: why they're so big and heavy is in part so
Speaker 1: that they're incredibly smooth and steady and they aren't going
Speaker 1: to jitter. If you know, you could drop something right
Speaker 1: next to one, it's not going to move at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same reason a camera Dolly ways, you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand pounds. Yeah, yeah, it's in order to get
Speaker 1: that that stability that you want, so that you have
Speaker 1: thousand pounds. By the way, they're less than that, but
Speaker 1: they're super heavy for that reason, right, you want that
Speaker 1: stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also, television camera doesn't
Speaker 1: pick up sound. It 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 together. They explain the magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the photons, that's the particles of light that are
Speaker 1: coming from a scene and are being captured by a camera.
Speaker 1: The light passes through a lens, which goes through a prism.
Speaker 1: The prism is the purpose of a prism is to
Speaker 1: break up light into its component parts. And this case,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a prism that breaks light into red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue. That's all you needed. And each of those
Speaker 1: streams goes and is hit by or it hits a
Speaker 1: c c D a charge couple device. Now a charge
Speaker 1: couple device. What does is when photons hit it, it it
Speaker 1: generates a stream of electricity that essentially reflects the nature
Speaker 1: of the photons that hit it. So you've got these
Speaker 1: three streams coming out the red, green, and blue. Uh.
Speaker 1: They then go into an encoder. Meanwhile, the sound that
Speaker 1: you're creating is also going to head back over towards
Speaker 1: the master control room. The information from the encoder goes
Speaker 1: to the master control room, it gets mixed together. So
Speaker 1: you then have a saynal that has both video and sound.
Speaker 1: Now there, 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: four within four mega hurts, and then the very edge
Speaker 1: of it, like on the far right side, that would
Speaker 1: represent the sound. So it's just a little sliver that's
Speaker 1: the sound. Yeah, and you're either preparing to broadcast this
Speaker 1: out to the masses live or you're just putting it
Speaker 1: to tape to do so later. Yeah, these days we
Speaker 1: put on a sea or both. Yeah, exactly if you
Speaker 1: wanted to to to keep it forever. Now, you may
Speaker 1: have heard that there were times where people were broadcasting
Speaker 1: stuff and never recording it. So there there are things
Speaker 1: that have been created for television that we will never
Speaker 1: see again. It's kind of like in some ways going
Speaker 1: to see a live stage show. If you were there,
Speaker 1: you saw it and weren't that's it. But uh, in
Speaker 1: this case, where talking about a live newscast, So that's
Speaker 1: being broadcast out from that point. When it's all been encoded,
Speaker 1: and you've got this video signal that has all the information.
Speaker 1: It's got the red, the green, the blue, and the
Speaker 1: audio all four things that you need, Yeah, it's time
Speaker 1: to transmit that out and it goes from the studio
Speaker 1: 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 transmitter link to beam this
Speaker 1: 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, because now that's all that could have
Speaker 1: done this, But as it turns out, with a over
Speaker 1: the air analog transmission, there was an easier way of
Speaker 1: doing this where you didn't have to break into the
Speaker 1: studio to do it. It was pretty great, actually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So all you have to do, and I say all
Speaker 1: you have to do this still is pretty significant, is
Speaker 1: you have to have a transmitter of your own. You
Speaker 1: have to be able to have a direct line of
Speaker 1: sight to the antenna that's going to pick up the
Speaker 1: transmission from the studio, and you have to transmit on
Speaker 1: the frequency that the studio uses at a higher intensity
Speaker 1: than what the studio is doing. And then the antenna,
Speaker 1: which is stupid. Yeah, it can't differentiate all of noses.
Speaker 1: That's a bad signal. I don't want to broadcast. They
Speaker 1: don't know that if it's the right frequency, it's going
Speaker 1: to broadcast it. So when you hit the antenna, it's
Speaker 1: gonna go for the strongest signal. I mean, this makes
Speaker 1: sense because if you had two signals that were the
Speaker 1: same frequency and one is stronger than the other, chances
Speaker 1: are the other frequency is coming from a different source
Speaker 1: further away, and that's not the one you want to transmit. Yes,
Speaker 1: so literally all they needed. I mean, they didn't need
Speaker 1: to to blow it out of the water, They just
Speaker 1: needed to be stronger and to do so. Do you
Speaker 1: just need to be a little closer. Yeah, it may
Speaker 1: be a lot closer in this case, but but yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: they just had to be somewhere along the pathway from
Speaker 1: the studio to the antenna that was being used. Uh,
Speaker 1: they and they just had to transmit on the right frequency,
Speaker 1: which was that was information they could get. They could
Speaker 1: get the information on what frequency to use. So you've
Speaker 1: got your transmitter, you've got your media, which in this
Speaker 1: case was a tape that they had shot earlier that
Speaker 1: wasn't lying. You're probably on a building, and they've got
Speaker 1: to be somewhere pretty high up. So yeah, likely on
Speaker 1: top of a building or at least on like a
Speaker 1: balcony or fire escape or something where they can have
Speaker 1: a line of sight. Uh, they are. They've got their
Speaker 1: transmitter and geared up to the right amount of power,
Speaker 1: they shoot it off and everything else is taken care
Speaker 1: of for them. They don't try to do anything else.
Speaker 1: In this case, the John Hancock building in the Sears
Speaker 1: Tower with the two towers that had these two receivers.
Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of theories over the years. Um,
Speaker 1: most people believe they were probably high up, but I
Speaker 1: have seen one theory that they were mobile in a van.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily high up, but just super super close they Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would also require them to have some way of
Speaker 1: maintaining that line of sight and that that steady transmission,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you if you don't, if you
Speaker 1: don't have your electromagnetic waves directed right at the receiver,
Speaker 1: then it's point it's not going to be a strong
Speaker 1: enough sick. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy the van theory.
Speaker 1: It would be really really challenging powering everything. It's to
Speaker 1: be a pretty more sophisticated. It does make me suddenly
Speaker 1: think that the Scooby Gang was responsible for it, because
Speaker 1: you've got the big rubber mask like old man Withers.
Speaker 1: We have a bit more to say about the Max
Speaker 1: Headroom incident, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: this quick break. So Channel nine, which was w g
Speaker 1: N in Chicago. Uh, if you look at the channels
Speaker 1: in the United States, they actually have the designated frequencies
Speaker 1: they have to you know, use at least the range
Speaker 1: that's around a D eight seven mega hurts. So you
Speaker 1: tune your transmitter to that signal and you aim it
Speaker 1: at the you know where the antenna is. You've identified that,
Speaker 1: you've got it all lined up, and you're good to go. Well,
Speaker 1: once w g N changed their frequency, that meant that
Speaker 1: it didn't matter how much power they poured into the transit.
Speaker 1: It's like you're speaking the wrong language. So that meant
Speaker 1: that suddenly their their prank didn't really go anywhere. They
Speaker 1: had a brief appearance with no audio. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: probably did something a little wrong on their end, on
Speaker 1: their well, probably wasn't a test run. They probably wanted
Speaker 1: it to work right, right right, But then unfortunately for them,
Speaker 1: unfortunately for them, it didn't work with you know, without
Speaker 1: a hitch. So they then say, well, what can we do?
Speaker 1: How can we um save this and maybe get the
Speaker 1: actual video that we shot scene and great, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you guys haven't watched this video, you really kind of
Speaker 1: need to. But at any rate, so they then decided
Speaker 1: to do their backup plan. They knew the frequency that
Speaker 1: the local public broadcast channel was using, and they knew
Speaker 1: that that antenna was on top of the sears tower
Speaker 1: and that they could aim at that one. And uh so,
Speaker 1: whether or not they had to relocate, they they probably
Speaker 1: did it just to get a good line of sight
Speaker 1: on the on the antenna. But uh it was only
Speaker 1: a two hour time difference between the first attack and
Speaker 1: the second attack, so to retune the transmitter, to prep
Speaker 1: it to get ready to hit the target, and to
Speaker 1: make sure you have a line of sight on it,
Speaker 1: they probably stayed in the same general area, which is
Speaker 1: northwest part of Chicago. Northwest. Yeah, there's actually that that
Speaker 1: article we were talking about, the Motherboard article. They have
Speaker 1: a great picture that shows the location of both studios
Speaker 1: and both antenna and it kind of shows you like
Speaker 1: an area where where the two lines almost crossed, and
Speaker 1: you figure, I bet, I bet they were somewhere in
Speaker 1: this general area so that they could if they didn't
Speaker 1: have to relocate. Uh then they just you know, shifted position,
Speaker 1: or maybe they relocated by a couple of blocks. Um,
Speaker 1: which raises the question how they get access to a
Speaker 1: high enough area and still have power and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Right now, they were just on their
Speaker 1: buddies the roof of his apartment with an extension quarter.
Speaker 1: That's probably what happened. Uh. So they then did the
Speaker 1: second attack at eleven o'clock or eleven fourteen, and that
Speaker 1: one worked much better. Um. And like we said, the
Speaker 1: material they had, the equipment they had was readily available,
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't as rare as you would think it
Speaker 1: would be. No. Dr Marcus, the lead investigator, said that, uh,
Speaker 1: like a direct TV size intent of these days, it
Speaker 1: is about all you would have needed. It's not like
Speaker 1: one of those like school bus size stillite used to
Speaker 1: see in backyards back in the day. It's pretty incredible. Uh,
Speaker 1: the how little you would need in order to do it.
Speaker 1: So fascinating attack, fascinating fact that it they were able
Speaker 1: to do it without being caught. Um. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, there weren't a whole lot of broadcast
Speaker 1: intrusions after this point. You heard about maybe one or
Speaker 1: to the Disney Channel has infamously been the attack the
Speaker 1: side of an attack on multiple occasions. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl was hijacked briefly a few years ago
Speaker 1: in one city only though. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: harder and harder to do now because you've got things
Speaker 1: like digital encoding. Yeah, that make it much much more
Speaker 1: difficult for the average hacker to do. I'm surprised it
Speaker 1: didn't happen more often back in those days, with those
Speaker 1: early I think there's sort of the wild West. It
Speaker 1: may very well have been that the scare tactics the
Speaker 1: 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 predate YouTube. Oh yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it is now on a YouTube channel. But they were
Speaker 1: called shay h s h A y E St John
Speaker 1: Sha st John. And if you look at these, you
Speaker 1: you've forced me to earlier. They do have similar quality, um,
Speaker 1: very a similar feel, almost absurd, surreal, disturbing. Doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: make much sense. You know, I think of it like
Speaker 1: you you've seen the horror movies where they all um
Speaker 1: center around like a creepy looking doll. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a genre unto itself. There's a brand new one,
Speaker 1: right about a doll ab Yeah. Yeah, so that's the
Speaker 1: fact that I responded so quickly with that is not
Speaker 1: good for me. But yeah, it's this idea of things
Speaker 1: that look not quite right. And the st John videos
Speaker 1: are all about that, and they involve the looping of
Speaker 1: certain phrases over and over again, experiments and lighting experiments
Speaker 1: in uh camera angles, as well as digital effects or
Speaker 1: maybe not even digital effects but special effects. The earlier
Speaker 1: ones are actually more trippy the ones that are on
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel itself. Um, so you can see that
Speaker 1: the there's some shared uh aesthetics. Yeah, and he lived
Speaker 1: 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 ven 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. Yeah, he would have
Speaker 1: thought it was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, And there's another
Speaker 1: theory that Ice per sal and read it. That's how
Speaker 1: I saw the link to motherboard, and you sent me
Speaker 1: the 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 is that Pogue poagg one of the two,
Speaker 1: unless he is just making all this stuff up. This
Speaker 1: otherwise this sounds like a pretty decent lead. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard I've heard some people suggest that that perhaps the
Speaker 1: guy himself is the one who did it, and he's
Speaker 1: invented these personas to be the way of him explaining
Speaker 1: how it was done without actually admitting that he did it.
Speaker 1: But he he maintains his innocence. He says, no, I
Speaker 1: really all of the evidence I have is early circumstantial.
Speaker 1: I was thirteen when this happened, which to me suggests
Speaker 1: that it's not him. Right, It does not seem like
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old. No, there's no way. The voice
Speaker 1: in the video is distorted, but it does. It definitely
Speaker 1: seems like it's someone who's older than that. Um. But
Speaker 1: he talks about uh, two brothers and one brother he said,
Speaker 1: he described him as seeming to be on the autism spectrum,
Speaker 1: and that he had a very keen interest in broadcast
Speaker 1: spectrum and broadcast technology, but didn't have very many social skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the poag. Yeah, he was very big as
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old on that in that hacker scene.
Speaker 1: But trying it sounded like really like one of the
Speaker 1: young ones trying to ingratiate himself into the group, into
Speaker 1: the group. These were a little older guys who were
Speaker 1: more experienced. Um. He calls them J and K, which
Speaker 1: are not their names, to provide their you know, to
Speaker 1: guard their anonymity. And he said that Ja, who was
Speaker 1: supposedly the autistic one, is Um. He's the one who
Speaker 1: says that was the guy in the mask. They had
Speaker 1: the same build. He references his brother in the video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says that because he he shows a glove and
Speaker 1: he says, uh, this one is dirty. My brother is
Speaker 1: wearing the other one. Yeah, he apparently, he says, this
Speaker 1: is from his reddit. He said, Uh, he liked to
Speaker 1: tell dirty jokes. The dirty jokes were funny, at least
Speaker 1: to me. Is a thirteen year old and a woman
Speaker 1: dressed up as Antioakley swatting someone's bare butt with a
Speaker 1: fly swatter is a perfect reflection of his sense of humor. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was usually childish and sexually deviant. Yea. And he
Speaker 1: talked about how he had kind of a verbal tick
Speaker 1: that instead of saying uh, when he was trying to
Speaker 1: think of something, he'd say oh yeah, and that if
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah. So it does kind
Speaker 1: of come across as someone who's trying to think of
Speaker 1: the next thing to say, Like, it didn't feel like
Speaker 1: it's He does not feel that the Max Headroom incident
Speaker 1: was terribly scripted, Like I think it was a lot
Speaker 1: off the cuffman. Yeah. So the the other brother, Kay
Speaker 1: was Jay's caretaker uh and also was possibly. The theory
Speaker 1: seems to be that Kay 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 uh Pogue said, as a thirteen year old, he
Speaker 1: went to this apartment that was just filled with equipment.
Speaker 1: He says that 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, ye like, he saw the incident
Speaker 1: go 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 not Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a kid. He's trying to fit in. He
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like he was kind of nervous
Speaker 1: hanging around this crowd, eager to please. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, he's the one who on Reddit just
Speaker 1: laid out the situation and explained what he thought had
Speaker 1: happened based upon circumstantial evidence. Again, he never witnessed any
Speaker 1: of the us himself, according to his account, and it
Speaker 1: kind of blew up on Reddit, didn't it? I did?
Speaker 1: It did? And he gave specific updates and in fact,
Speaker 1: he was interviewed heavily for the Motherboard article. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he explained that he tried to get in touch with
Speaker 1: j and k Um through multiple media, like he knows
Speaker 1: where they are still. Yep, he sent them Facebook messages,
Speaker 1: he sent an email, and he sent them actual snail mail,
Speaker 1: right and didn't get any response. And he says, I'm
Speaker 1: taking that as a indication that they don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about this, and so out of respect for their privacy,
Speaker 1: I'm dropping it. Yeah, And so he never revealed the
Speaker 1: identities of the people. Now, he did have other people
Speaker 1: on the reddit the said they were around that same
Speaker 1: scene back then, and it sort of checks out. The
Speaker 1: guy had a similar ability short of shortened squatty and um,
Speaker 1: so he had a little bit of support. But it's
Speaker 1: all circumstantial and conjecture. You know, there's obviously no proof,
Speaker 1: no smoking gun, right, so we may never know for
Speaker 1: sure who did this. We'll have someone will have to
Speaker 1: them forward. That's the only way. Yeah. But it's one
Speaker 1: of those mysteries that is really interesting to read about too.
Speaker 1: And the fact that it it's still you know, you
Speaker 1: can you can watch the video, you can actually see
Speaker 1: what happened. It's kind of cool because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of these these weird moments you just have second
Speaker 1: or third hand accounts and you can't you can't really
Speaker 1: experience it for yourself. You have to think, oh, what
Speaker 1: would it have been like, But now you can actually see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty neat little time capsule experience, especially if
Speaker 1: you grew up in the eighties, right, And if you
Speaker 1: don't know who Max Headroom is, then maybe you should
Speaker 1: do some research on that first and then watch the
Speaker 1: video to understand how weird this was. That b B show.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you it's pretty good. People should watch that. Yeah, totally, Well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I have to thank you for coming on the show
Speaker 1: and for suggesting this. This was a ton of fun too.
Speaker 1: I love on stuff. You should know doing our more
Speaker 1: history centric ones, and this this is totally a history
Speaker 1: podcast when you think about it. For history episode. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff
Speaker 1: published several years ago. Now, I should probably do another
Speaker 1: episode about incidents in which people were able to overpower
Speaker 1: television or radio signals and create pirate stations and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I think that would be a fun
Speaker 1: episode to do, so I'm thinking about doing that in
Speaker 1: the near future. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me
Speaker 1: know on Twitter. The handle we use there is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hsw and I'll talk to again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.