Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from com Sis. Everyone.
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today in
Speaker 1: the studio, I am joined by a special guest host,
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant Chuff. Welcome to Text Stuff, Jonathan. Hi, Chuck Strickland.
Speaker 1: That's weird calling you Jonathan. Yeah, that's fine, call me Strickland.
Speaker 1: Josh called me strict, so you might as well keep
Speaker 1: it going. Um now. I Chuck, of course, is one
Speaker 1: of the hosts of Stuff you should know, and Josh
Speaker 1: is the other host. We had him on earlier with
Speaker 1: the Humanoid Robot episode. It went well, it went well great.
Speaker 1: You know, Josh had to sit there and and wait
Speaker 1: until I'd let him talk, and I would let him
Speaker 1: and then he would he would talk. It was great.
Speaker 1: I think I may fall into this role a little easier. Well.
Speaker 1: The nice thing is that, you know, I like to
Speaker 1: let my guests kind of pick a topic if they
Speaker 1: if they prefer I mean, if they don't, if they
Speaker 1: want me to pick one, I'm happy to. But I
Speaker 1: gave you that that option, and you came back with
Speaker 1: one of my favorite stories period, not just in tech
Speaker 1: just it's just one of those cool weird things that
Speaker 1: have happened, and I do not want to steal thunder.
Speaker 1: All I wanna ask you is, Chuck, if you were
Speaker 1: in Chicago on November twenty 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, I that could have happened because I
Speaker 1: would have been sixteen at the time. Yeah, you and
Speaker 1: I are in this age wheelhouse. Yeah, we we actually
Speaker 1: were alive at this time, and we were we would
Speaker 1: have been aware of at least the entity that appeared
Speaker 1: instead of the sports scores um. But yeah, something weird
Speaker 1: happened at that moment. There was an interruption in normal service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what they call a broadcast intrusion, and U 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, it's out
Speaker 1: of place. And as soon as something that, especially when
Speaker 1: it's something as ritualistic as the news, you know that
Speaker 1: follows a very specific pattern, and when something goes outside
Speaker 1: that pattern, you know, that upsets our little world balance
Speaker 1: 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: uh huh. And that mask was of a specific eighties icon,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people don't even know
Speaker 1: who this is anymore, but Max Headroom. Yeah, if if
Speaker 1: you're a child of the eighties, Max Max Hedroom loomed
Speaker 1: large for a while. And I know when this intrusion
Speaker 1: came out, this broadcast intrusion, it seemed like about half
Speaker 1: the people even knew who he was trying to imitate,
Speaker 1: and then the other half just had no idea. They
Speaker 1: thought it was just some weirdo with the mask. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and part of that was because, uh, the quality of
Speaker 1: the video was not exactly super high quality. But on
Speaker 1: top of that, yeah, it's kind of a niche thing,
Speaker 1: and he was Max Hedroom was used as sort of
Speaker 1: a spokes thing, I guess, a spokesman for a new coke.
Speaker 1: Sure that that great move by the Coca Cola company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, I remember that well, remember it with Paine? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so living living in a land, the whole Coca Cola
Speaker 1: New Coke thing was. It definitely strikes close to home.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he um. He was a spokesman for that
Speaker 1: as well as a kind of a fantasy character who
Speaker 1: appeared on lots of other stuff. But generally speaking, if
Speaker 1: you don't know who Max Headroom is, first, just go
Speaker 1: ahead and do an image search because it'll pop right up.
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, that 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 a couple of different televis and series, one of
Speaker 1: them which was like a talk show, and one of
Speaker 1: which was more of a like an actual fictional story,
Speaker 1: like with an arc. Yeah, that one was pretty good. Actually,
Speaker 1: the original British show, even though it was a lot
Speaker 1: of American actors, was was pretty cool and definitely ahead
Speaker 1: of its time as far as you know. The whole
Speaker 1: idea was that this uh roving reporter was I think
Speaker 1: Matt Frewer played him as a real dude and his
Speaker 1: Max Headroom, but he was digitally replaced with this character
Speaker 1: Max Headroom, and at the time it just seemed really odd.
Speaker 1: But now when you look back at it and watch it,
Speaker 1: it's like, man, this 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's 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 at
Speaker 1: that Max headroom, more like just a dark suit and
Speaker 1: tie and um, yeah, this thing was the metal background.
Speaker 1: It looked like a like a garage door. It was
Speaker 1: just sort of spinning in the background. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was on some sort of gimbal or something. That's
Speaker 1: what I figured. Yeah, because you can tell it's swinging
Speaker 1: back and forth, so predictably. It can't be held by somebody.
Speaker 1: You had to be on some sort of pivot or something,
Speaker 1: and but it's moving backward and forward, so it kind
Speaker 1: of mimics that that digital line twisting in the background.
Speaker 1: And except for one part, there's a part where there's
Speaker 1: a clear cut in the video. The video itself was
Speaker 1: about or at least what we've seen is about a
Speaker 1: minute and twenty two seconds. Yeah. Well, actually, I don't
Speaker 1: think we differentiated. There were two videos, two intrusions. The
Speaker 1: first one was short and had no audio and was
Speaker 1: on w g N. And then about two hours later
Speaker 1: or they hijacked the PBS affiliate and that's where the
Speaker 1: classic minute and a half, nearly minute and a half
Speaker 1: with audio, really strange audio comes through. That's right, because
Speaker 1: that first one, like you said, I'm glad you pointed
Speaker 1: that out. It was silent. It was the images from
Speaker 1: the and the image and the audio from w g
Speaker 1: N was cut, but there was no audio coming out
Speaker 1: other than that. I think there's like a buzzing noise
Speaker 1: that came in through the first intrusion, and you saw
Speaker 1: this this figure just sitting there and kind of rocking
Speaker 1: back and forth like left and right, which is also disconcerting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was definitely like you felt like something is really
Speaker 1: wrong at that moment. And when it came back, the
Speaker 1: sportscaster said, you might be wondering what just happened. I know,
Speaker 1: I am, uh something along those lines. But yes, the
Speaker 1: second one, you had the audio and it played for
Speaker 1: the what we what appeared to be the length of
Speaker 1: the video. The first section had uh, the guy just
Speaker 1: saying odd things and they were all very Chicago specific. Well,
Speaker 1: and and sort of slamming w g N because he
Speaker 1: had slammed the Chuck swart Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is a sportscast 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's
Speaker 1: Greatest Newspaper. Yeah, So it turned out that that little know,
Speaker 1: the great, the great World newspaper nerds or whatever however
Speaker 1: he worded it, that was a reference back to w
Speaker 1: g N. So it's very clearly intended for w g NY.
Speaker 1: And the first attack wasn't as effective as as they
Speaker 1: had 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. They said, well, I guess yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. We'll talk more about how that kind of
Speaker 1: helps us know a little more about the attack curs.
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, uh from that I
Speaker 1: did research on. Came from a motherboard kind of the
Speaker 1: mother of all articles. Had some great research. Yeah, Chris
Speaker 1: middle who Yeah, the article, if you want to look
Speaker 1: for it, is the mystery of the creepiest television hack,
Speaker 1: and I agree this article is fantastic. It really lays
Speaker 1: out not just the incident, but also other things that
Speaker 1: had happened beforehand that kind of laid the groundwork for this,
Speaker 1: as well as just a discussion, although a brief one,
Speaker 1: about the hacker culture that existed at that time and
Speaker 1: how that kind of lends itself to people who maybe
Speaker 1: are cleverer than is good for them, or could be
Speaker 1: very nice way to say it, 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. Uh.
Speaker 1: He has pantser down showing his his bear Fannie, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, from profile and then a lady on the
Speaker 1: right uh and looks like some sort of Old West
Speaker 1: like Antiochley type Garb spanks him with a fly swatter
Speaker 1: on his butt. Although spanks is really being generous. She's
Speaker 1: very slowly and lightly tapping him on the bottom with
Speaker 1: the flyswater, so to the point where you're you're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: I guess that's supposed to represent spanking. Uh, doesn't look
Speaker 1: like any spanking I ever received as a kid. I
Speaker 1: got you. Anyway, That's pretty much where the video cut off,
Speaker 1: and then it went right back in the 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. Uh.
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. 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, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about the technology behind that and why they
Speaker 1: had to switch from one to the other. Um, it
Speaker 1: turns out it was largely a practical issue, at least
Speaker 1: as far as I can determine, and um, 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 wave 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 great effect using the live action in order
Speaker 1: because what what the whole point was was it was
Speaker 1: an 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 reap 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. This
Speaker 1: very stream of consciousness kind of weird. He holds up
Speaker 1: I guess what we can cleanly describe as a marital aid, yes,
Speaker 1: at one point, and throws that on the ground, and um,
Speaker 1: it's just once the fly swadding comes in, it's just
Speaker 1: obvious that they're kind of free forming. Although it was
Speaker 1: not live, which is important to know. This is a
Speaker 1: videotape 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 all had line
Speaker 1: of sight to the same antenna as whatever target you're
Speaker 1: you're aiming at. So that would have been an astoundingly complicated.
Speaker 1: This is definitely a little easier to pull off. So
Speaker 1: you know, now that we know that this, they've they've
Speaker 1: never been found, they're likely never to be found. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's always possible that someone could come forward and say,
Speaker 1: all right, well here's how it actually happened. I'm the
Speaker 1: guy who did this. I would improve it. I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that hasn't happened by now, because the Statute of Limitations
Speaker 1: is up for Yeah, it's way up, so you can't
Speaker 1: get in trouble and it's um I think they would
Speaker 1: unless they just think it's better left as a mystery
Speaker 1: they would live in like especially nowadays with the Internet
Speaker 1: like it is, it would blow up, you know, it
Speaker 1: would be right. It could possibly be the fact that
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, of course we're just projecting here,
Speaker 1: but could possibly be that they are no longer terribly
Speaker 1: proud of what they did, and or that they've moved
Speaker 1: on in their lives. Yeah, there's there's a significant amount
Speaker 1: of time since THEAD 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 that might end up. By
Speaker 1: the way, we do not actually mean that the CEO
Speaker 1: of ABC ORDNY Disney affiliates are involved. But the other
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that this was not the first time
Speaker 1: that UM I A A an intrusion had happened in
Speaker 1: in broadcast history. The first one, if you want to
Speaker 1: go back, actually didn't happen in the United States. It
Speaker 1: 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 is 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 villa on UH. And this
Speaker 1: is in the like I said, in the UK. So
Speaker 1: obviously the alien had an English accent. I guess that's
Speaker 1: only you know, fair like, if you're going to interrupt
Speaker 1: someone's program, you want to make sure you're speaking in
Speaker 1: the dialect, you know it otherwise, right, Yeah, suddenly they
Speaker 1: spoke like like with a French accent. I mean that
Speaker 1: would just be adding. But anyway, so it was a
Speaker 1: message that essentially said that humans should prepare themselves for
Speaker 1: the worst because you know, destruction is a common Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great, that's what a broadcast intrusion should be some
Speaker 1: creepy warning, not just a random series of images that
Speaker 1: disturb you for things that you can't quite put your
Speaker 1: finger on, although that is more disturbing. Almost. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then in six we get the first one in the
Speaker 1: United States. Uh, and this was an inside job deal.
Speaker 1: This was happened on April at twelve thirty two am,
Speaker 1: and it involved the East Coast feed of HBO. And Uh,
Speaker 1: what happened was the HBO was showing a movie called
Speaker 1: The Falcon and the Snowman Classic. You know, it certainly
Speaker 1: could not be helped by approximately four minutes of footage
Speaker 1: missing because they've been replaced by a series of colored
Speaker 1: bars that say good evening, HBO from Captain Midnight twelve
Speaker 1: a month, no way Showtime movie Channel Beware. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: had a clear motive. Yeah, And and and actually ironically,
Speaker 1: the um the guy was caught. His name was John R. McDougall,
Speaker 1: and he was an employee of Central Florida Teleport And
Speaker 1: he used what do you use? He the was it
Speaker 1: the text that he used? He? Yeah, So the text
Speaker 1: generators that the companies used in order to put an
Speaker 1: overlay on top of a screen, so like like the
Speaker 1: actual words that were being used there. Well, they're very particular.
Speaker 1: And 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 side, how close together the
Speaker 1: his words are, investigators were able to narrow it down
Speaker 1: to a specific machine. Yeah. It's well have had his
Speaker 1: fingerprint up there. Yeah. Yeah, this is like incredible forensics, right.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if someone gets hold of a
Speaker 1: typewritten sheet of paper and is able to determine the
Speaker 1: model of typewriter that was used to actually make this.
Speaker 1: But in this case it got even more specific because
Speaker 1: these machines aren't everywhere, and that's what led them to
Speaker 1: track down McDougall. Who uh, who have just decided that
Speaker 1: the recent hike in prices for a monthly subscription to
Speaker 1: HBO were unconscionable and he had to make it known. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a side job selling satellite dish service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he thought that would nick his business some and
Speaker 1: so he eventually was caught and pled guilty, paid a
Speaker 1: five thousand dollar fine, and served just one year of probation.
Speaker 1: And it was that incident that led, I believe Congress
Speaker 1: to make it a federal violation to it's sudden, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they suddenly said, wait now that people can actually
Speaker 1: do this. Now great, this was someone, like we said,
Speaker 1: an inside job. They had access to a satellite. What
Speaker 1: what he actually did was he pointed the satellite of
Speaker 1: Central Florida Teleport at the HBO satellite. Chuck, you and
Speaker 1: I we wouldn't even know where the heck that satellite is.
Speaker 1: So even if we had the equipment and everything else,
Speaker 1: we'd just beat Well, the sky is a lot bigger
Speaker 1: than I had taken into account. And uh you know,
Speaker 1: of course we'd have to be someplace where we could
Speaker 1: actually get a good clear view of the sky because
Speaker 1: if 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 them 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 where it was sending
Speaker 1: in religious messages essentially saying repent and and you know
Speaker 1: you are the discard your wicked ways that kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: And it's no surprise because he actually worked for the
Speaker 1: Christian Broadcast Network, so again he had a job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had access to the equipment necessary and the knowledge
Speaker 1: necessary to be able to do this. It's not something
Speaker 1: that the average person would be able to do. And
Speaker 1: again it was the character generator, the the font generator
Speaker 1: that kind of led the way. It was the main
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that was leveled against him. Um. I
Speaker 1: remember that Pat Robertson was very upset when the verdict
Speaker 1: was handled handed down. He said that there wasn't enough
Speaker 1: evidence to um to say that Hainey was in fact
Speaker 1: the person who who did this. Well, he was convicted,
Speaker 1: but um, I think just got probation. And the first guy, McDougald,
Speaker 1: is interesting. What he got convicted for was operating without
Speaker 1: a license even though he had a license. So that
Speaker 1: was a bit of a hinky ruling. I think they
Speaker 1: just had to convict him of something because I don't
Speaker 1: know if allows 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: and we haven't defined it as a crime, but we
Speaker 1: know that this is something people really shouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to do, so we have to somehow justify it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, the every nation, uh, in
Speaker 1: some way or another, ends up regulating the electromagnetic spectrum.
Speaker 1: But it changes from one place to the other. Sure
Speaker 1: there's only so much room, right, yeah, exactly. So electromagetic
Speaker 1: spectrum goes all the way from radio waves, which can
Speaker 1: a radio wave can be kilometers long, right, and then
Speaker 1: you go all the way to the other side to
Speaker 1: like gamma rays we're talking about on the nanoscale and
Speaker 1: everything in between. That's the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light is
Speaker 1: part of that. You know, visible light is on the
Speaker 1: short side, but radio waves and microwaves are on the
Speaker 1: longer side, and uh not all those radio wave so
Speaker 1: you know, we can't just all use the same ones
Speaker 1: because then we would have interference. Right if if the
Speaker 1: television and your phone used the same frequencies, then you
Speaker 1: would have interference between the two, and that would be terrible.
Speaker 1: Nothing would be usable. Yeah, I don't call it a
Speaker 1: crunch if there's too much activity on one frequency, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's if you've got everyone just using you know
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to. Let's say everyone in the cellular
Speaker 1: network has they're all on their phones that we've seen
Speaker 1: this happen in life events they're posting len couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or even just going to a big event like any
Speaker 1: like c S or any large event like that, you
Speaker 1: suddenly can't get access to anything. That's where you've got
Speaker 1: more demand for data transmission than there is capacity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've tried to get a signal at Comic Con before,
Speaker 1: and ye, no, no, the same thing is true a
Speaker 1: Dragon Con and that's a like a third the size
Speaker 1: of Comic Con. But yeah, it's It's also true that
Speaker 1: there are wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum that are really
Speaker 1: good for carrying data and some that aren't. So the
Speaker 1: government has divided up the electromantic spectrum and saying these
Speaker 1: are the sections that can be used for specific purposes.
Speaker 1: So a large part of it is set aside for
Speaker 1: government and military use, a large part of his s
Speaker 1: side for radio so AM and FM UH. And then
Speaker 1: you also have television broadcast that are that are partial
Speaker 1: partitioned off as well cellular data, WiFi. All of these
Speaker 1: things have their specific place that is mandated by the government.
Speaker 1: So if you go in and start messing around with that,
Speaker 1: the government gets pretty upset. Yeah, because I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a Nippot in the bud situation, like
Speaker 1: one broadcast intrusion, really no big deal. And that apparently
Speaker 1: is why the lead investigator said that, um, I think
Speaker 1: his name was Marcus. He had a hard time getting
Speaker 1: resources because there was a little egg on the face
Speaker 1: and they've probably just wanted it to go away more
Speaker 1: than anything. And no one's really hurt. There was no
Speaker 1: damage done, so they're not gonna throw a lot of
Speaker 1: money in time trying to find this person. And and
Speaker 1: he also had some fairly harsh words for an fcc
Speaker 1: UH investigator he was actually in Chicago. He didn't name
Speaker 1: the person. Yeah, I said that said that this guy
Speaker 1: wasn't willing to go and knock on doors to actually
Speaker 1: do some investigation. And part of that is probably because
Speaker 1: there was this embarrassment factor. They're also but without the teeth,
Speaker 1: you know, with the authority, it makes it hard for
Speaker 1: someone to go out and say there's a justification for
Speaker 1: spending the time, resources and money necessarily investigating for a
Speaker 1: small fine in probation, even if they do catch the person. Now,
Speaker 1: the maximum fine, although I doubt that we would see
Speaker 1: a maximum fine for something as small as a min
Speaker 1: and a half interruption in Doctor Who, Doctor Who fans,
Speaker 1: Please don't take me to task for that. But the
Speaker 1: maximum fine is a hundred thousand dollars or a year
Speaker 1: in jail or both. Yeah, which they were very big
Speaker 1: on announcing at the time as well as UM. I
Speaker 1: think they had a lot of misinformation they or I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's misinformation or they were trying to
Speaker 1: get out a little misinformation saying how sophisticated of an
Speaker 1: operation it was and how expensive all the equipment must
Speaker 1: 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. 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 station,
Speaker 1: a small station that upgrading its equipment and it gets
Speaker 1: rid of the old stuff that was on the amateur market.
Speaker 1: So you could go out and buy that stuff and
Speaker 1: it would be much less expensive than if you were
Speaker 1: to buy it brand new. So I mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: this episode about the the hacker culture. Well have you
Speaker 1: heard about freakers? Okay, so a freaker spelled pH r
Speaker 1: e A K I n G freaking. It's all about
Speaker 1: manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac
Speaker 1: were freakers, founders of Apple. Actually Wasniac was really the
Speaker 1: guy who knew how to do it. But there are
Speaker 1: a ton of them. One of the most famous ones
Speaker 1: his name was Captain Crunch, and Captain Crunch was called
Speaker 1: that because he discovered that by using a Captain Crunch
Speaker 1: plastic whistle that came in a box of cereal, he
Speaker 1: could mimic the tone that the telephone company was using
Speaker 1: and allow him to make free long distance phone calls.
Speaker 1: So you had this culture of people who, wait, what's
Speaker 1: a long distance phone call? Yeah? Kids, once upon a time,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to call anyone outside of your area code,
Speaker 1: it cost extra lay. Actually tell me that. The other
Speaker 1: day that was cutting my hair. She got a phone call.
Speaker 1: She said, I'm sorry, it's my daughter long distance. I
Speaker 1: need to step away. And I was sitting there going,
Speaker 1: what's long distance? Yeah? Maybe international? Yeah, that might be it.
Speaker 1: That's about it. Or you can just keep cutting my hair, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's fine. I mean, I'm not gonna know
Speaker 1: her half the conversation, but yeah, the the uh. These
Speaker 1: were people who thought that these huge systems were fascinating,
Speaker 1: but the telephone system was really interesting and learning how
Speaker 1: it worked was fascinating. And then once you know how
Speaker 1: it works, 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 war, yes, very much like a little mischief,
Speaker 1: a little civil disobedience. But I don't think most of
Speaker 1: these people early on we're trying to cause harm. No,
Speaker 1: it was really more of insatiable curiosity, right, really, I
Speaker 1: can so let me just try it out right and
Speaker 1: see if it works. I think that's exactly what happened
Speaker 1: with this, Max he I totally agree. You had people
Speaker 1: who said, let's you know, we know how radio works.
Speaker 1: Television broadcast is essentially a radio broadcast. So once you
Speaker 1: know how that works, and once you know 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 something wrong with a little high 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. 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 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 I 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 it
Speaker 1: was like bullets and boards and stuff that was That
Speaker 1: was pretty much what most hackers had access to unless
Speaker 1: they were in a university and they had some access
Speaker 1: to the preliminary version of the Internet. Um, but there
Speaker 1: was no worldwide Web. There was no web. There wouldn't
Speaker 1: be another. There wouldn't be a worldwide Web for another
Speaker 1: five years. So there was no way of being able
Speaker 1: to go on and and check something you missed, Nor
Speaker 1: was there a way for you to really easily communicate
Speaker 1: with folks all over the world. Now they could do
Speaker 1: it with local bolton board systems, And in fact, that's
Speaker 1: what we suspect, or at least there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of suspicion that, in fact, one of the local Chicago
Speaker 1: bbs is had people in a forum who were at
Speaker 1: least tangentially involved in this, if not directly responsible, but
Speaker 1: to really understand what was going on, it helps to
Speaker 1: understand how a broadcast television broadcast actually works. So here
Speaker 1: we go. We're gonna going back to the analog days
Speaker 1: of TV broadcast technology. So now, Chuck, you've you've been
Speaker 1: in a television studio too, right, Yeah? You and you
Speaker 1: and Josh I'm sure have done some of this. I've
Speaker 1: done some of this. When you see how a TV
Speaker 1: studio works, it's actually very eye opening. I mean it
Speaker 1: to me, It 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
Speaker 1: want so that you don't impounds. By the way, they're
Speaker 1: less in that, but they're super heavy for that reason, right,
Speaker 1: you want that stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also
Speaker 1: television camera doesn't pick up sound, it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: microphone on it. It's all about just capturing the image. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the mic the sound is captured separately and together 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 signal 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 STU 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, we're talking about a live newscast, So that's
Speaker 1: being broadcast out from that point. When it's all been
Speaker 1: encoded and you've got this video signal that has all
Speaker 1: the information. It's got the red, the green, the blue,
Speaker 1: 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 can 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. I joked with you earlier
Speaker 1: that we should just give them the explanation from Willy Wonka,
Speaker 1: which is slightly more simplistic but but easier to explain.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately it's not quite that easy. So knowing how
Speaker 1: this works, where you've got the signal coming from the
Speaker 1: studio being transmitted out to a giant antenna and then
Speaker 1: broadcast to an area, there are several areas that could
Speaker 1: be potentially vulnerable to intrusion. If you are working on
Speaker 1: the inside. Then if you're able to intercept and put
Speaker 1: in a new signal to go to the studio transmitter
Speaker 1: link to go out, then you're done. That's all you
Speaker 1: need to do. You need just very easy to do
Speaker 1: and very easy to trace back exactly. Yeah, inside job,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, let's look at the people who have access. Now,
Speaker 1: that's all that could have done this. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, with a over the air analog transmission, there
Speaker 1: was an easier way of doing this where you didn't
Speaker 1: have to break into the studio to do it. It
Speaker 1: was pretty great. Actually, Yeah, so all you have to do,
Speaker 1: and I say all you have to do this still
Speaker 1: is pretty significant, is you have to have a transmitter
Speaker 1: of your own. You have to be able to have
Speaker 1: a direct line of sight to the antenna that's going
Speaker 1: to pick up the transmission from the studio, and you
Speaker 1: have to transmit on the frequency that the studio uses
Speaker 1: at a higher intensity than what the studio is doing.
Speaker 1: And then the antenna, which is stupid. Yeah, it can't
Speaker 1: differentiate all of noses. That's a bad signal. I don't
Speaker 1: want to broadcast. They don't know if it's the right frequency,
Speaker 1: it's gonna broadcast it. So when you hit the antenna,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go for the strongest signal. I mean, this
Speaker 1: makes sense because if you had two signals that were
Speaker 1: the same frequency and one is stronger than the other,
Speaker 1: chances are the other frequency is coming from a different
Speaker 1: source further away, and that's not the one you want
Speaker 1: to transmit. Yes, so literally all they needed, I mean,
Speaker 1: they didn't need to to blow it out of the water.
Speaker 1: They just needed to be stronger. And to do so,
Speaker 1: you just need to be a little closer, Yeah, to
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'll try to do anything else. In
Speaker 1: this case, the John Hancock building in the Sears Tower
Speaker 1: with the two towers that had these two receivers. And
Speaker 1: 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 and a van,
Speaker 1: not necessarily high up, 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 signal. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy the van theory.
Speaker 1: It would be really really challenging, empowering everything. It's be
Speaker 1: a pretty more sophisticated. It does make me suddenly think
Speaker 1: that the Scooby Gang was responsible for it, because you've
Speaker 1: got the big rubber mask like old Nan Withers 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 at least the range that's around a hundred eight
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 their 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 their Well,
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 to.
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 of both antenna and it kind
Speaker 1: of shows you like an area where where the two
Speaker 1: lines almost crossed, 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, which raises the question how they
Speaker 1: get access to a high enough area and still have
Speaker 1: power and all that kind of stuff. Right now they
Speaker 1: were just on their buddies the roof of his apartment
Speaker 1: with an extension quarter. That's probably what happened. Uh. So
Speaker 1: they then did the second attack at eleven o'clock or
Speaker 1: eleven fourteen, and that one worked much better. Um. And
Speaker 1: like we said, the material they had, the equipment they
Speaker 1: had was readily available, wasn't It wasn't as rare as
Speaker 1: you would think it would be. No. Dr Marcus, the
Speaker 1: lead investigator, said that, uh, like a direct TV sized
Speaker 1: antenna these days, it's about all you would have needed.
Speaker 1: It's not like one of those like school bus size
Speaker 1: Satillite used to see in backyards back in the day.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible, Uh, the how little you would need
Speaker 1: in order to do it. So fascinating attack, fascinating fact
Speaker 1: that 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 few years
Speaker 1: ago in one city only though. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's harder and harder to do now because you've got
Speaker 1: things like digital encoding. Yeah, that make it much much
Speaker 1: more difficult for the average hacker to do. I'm surprised
Speaker 1: it didn't happen more often back in those days. With
Speaker 1: 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 Smiths, 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 U 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 a 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: that's a that's a genre unto itself. There's a brand
Speaker 1: new one right about a doll Anabelle. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's the fact that I responded so quickly with that
Speaker 1: is not good for me. But yeah, it's this idea
Speaker 1: of things that look not quite right, and the Saint
Speaker 1: John videos are all about that, and they involve the
Speaker 1: looping of certain phrases over and over again, experiments and
Speaker 1: lighting 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 nineteen seven, he had no knowledge of
Speaker 1: video editing. All the video stuff he did was later on.
Speaker 1: It was in the late nineties, early two thousand's, so
Speaker 1: it would make sense that, um, while it's the same
Speaker 1: sort 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. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how I saw the link to Motherboard and you sent
Speaker 1: me the link and I saw it and read it
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, this one holds some water to me.
Speaker 1: Unless this guy Bowie J is that Poe Poagg one
Speaker 1: of the two, Unless he is just making all this
Speaker 1: stuff up. 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 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 Ja, who was supposedly the autistic one,
Speaker 1: was m He's the one who says that was the
Speaker 1: guy in the mask. They had the same build. He
Speaker 1: references his brother in the video. Yeah, he says that
Speaker 1: because 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, Ah,
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.
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 yeah, And
Speaker 1: that if you listen to the video, there's some there's
Speaker 1: a yeah. There's a lot of him kind of making
Speaker 1: oh noises between when he's saying things. So it does
Speaker 1: kind of come across as someone who's trying to think
Speaker 1: of the next thing to say. Like, it didn't feel
Speaker 1: like it certainly does not feel that the Max Headroom
Speaker 1: incident was terribly scripted, Like I think it was a
Speaker 1: lot off the cup. Yeah. So the the other brother,
Speaker 1: Kay was Jay's caretaker uh and also was possibly the
Speaker 1: theory seems to be that Kay was the one working
Speaker 1: the camera, that Ja was the one on camera, and
Speaker 1: that Kay's girlfriend was the one with the fly swatter,
Speaker 1: and again all of this ends up being circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1: He said that, as Pogue said, as a thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: he 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
Speaker 1: pm so he could see the big thing that was
Speaker 1: going to happen, and that he claims he didn't even
Speaker 1: put two and two together. Ye like, he saw the
Speaker 1: incident go down and knew that something big was going
Speaker 1: to happen, which does seem a little hinky to me,
Speaker 1: but he says years later as when it all kind
Speaker 1: of connected for me, Yeah, it seems a little weird.
Speaker 1: That does seem a little weird to me too, but
Speaker 1: he said. He does go on to defend himself a
Speaker 1: bit and say, you know that there were I heard
Speaker 1: a dozen things from them a day that we're just
Speaker 1: sort of weird and out there, and it wouldn't register
Speaker 1: as anything big to me. With they said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do something big watch the TV tonight. So
Speaker 1: in other words, they were a bunch of big talkers,
Speaker 1: but not Yeah, this is a kid he's trying to
Speaker 1: fit in. He you know, it sounds like he was
Speaker 1: kind of nervous hanging around this crowd, eager to please.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah, Well, at any rate, he's the one
Speaker 1: who on Reddit just laid out the situation and explained
Speaker 1: what he thought had happened based upon circumstantial evidence. Again,
Speaker 1: he never witnessed any of this himself, according to his account,
Speaker 1: and it kind of blew up on Reddit, didn't it?
Speaker 1: I did? It did, And he gave specific updates, and
Speaker 1: in fact, he was interviewed heavily for the Motherboard article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he explained that he tried to get in touch
Speaker 1: with j and k Um through multiple media, like he
Speaker 1: knows where they are still, Yep. He sent them Facebook messages,
Speaker 1: he sent an email, and he sent them actual snail
Speaker 1: mail right and didn't get any response. And he says,
Speaker 1: I'm taking that as a indication that they don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about this, and so, out of respect for
Speaker 1: their privacy, I'm dropping it. And so he never revealed
Speaker 1: the identities of the people. Now, he did have other
Speaker 1: people on the Reddit the said they were around that
Speaker 1: same scene back then, and it sort of checks out
Speaker 1: the guy had a similar ability short of shortened squatty
Speaker 1: and um, so he had a little bit of support.
Speaker 1: But it's all sort substantial and conjecture. You know, there's
Speaker 1: obviously no proof, no smoking gun. Right, So we may
Speaker 1: never know for sure who did this. We'll have someone
Speaker 1: will have to come forward, that's 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: 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: pie podcast. When you think about it for history episode. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and uh it was It's one of the weirdest ones
Speaker 1: that I've covered this and Number Stations those would be
Speaker 1: the two big ones. Yeah, man, those are super interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very creepy stuff. If by the way, if you guys
Speaker 1: do love the creepy go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: Number Station episode on Tech Stuff. Go to our RSS
Speaker 1: feed and hunt that one up because that one was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to talk about. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you're really into creepy stuff, you know, Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know has got quite a few episodes that that cover
Speaker 1: the creepy too, and you guys do an amazing job
Speaker 1: of it. Thanks man. Yeah, it's it's uh a fantastic show.
Speaker 1: If you have not listened to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: fix that. Come on, well, thanks for having me and dude,
Speaker 1: this has been a it's woody, Allen would say, a
Speaker 1: sincere sensation. Pan. I like that. I like that quote. Alright, So, guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff,
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Speaker 1: you want to maybe suggest a topic for me to
Speaker 1: talk about the future, or maybe another guest to have
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