The Max Headroom Pirate TV Incident Part 2

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We know the importance of seeing the person behind the patient. Because we see all of you. Learn more at trinityhealthofne.org slash heart. Astonishing Legends Network. Astonishing Legends would like to thank HIMSS, Squarespace, Mint Mobile, our contributors at patreon.com, and you, our listeners, for making tonight's show possible. Welcome to part two of our series looking into the bewildering Max Headroom Broadcast Signal Interruption Incident that took place in Chicago in 1987. A series of events so strange, even now they feel almost mythic. It was pure analogous. It was pure analog chaos in its finest form. The flickering screens, the warped visuals, the figure in the mask, an enigmatic avatar of analog rebellion, loudly commandeering the airwaves and barreling into living rooms of tawdry imagery and language. It was a parody of a character that was originally created to mock the slick-talking heads popping up in the media to sell you the next big thing. But this story is more complicated than that. Tonight, we dig deeper. What happened after those two fateful broadcasts? Who might have done it? And more importantly, how did they pull it off? It was no easy task. We'll dive into the investigation that ensued, an intense scrutiny from the FCC. They had almost nothing to go on, and interest in catching the perp seemed to ebb quickly. After all, no one was really hurt, were they? The broadcast, once it was over, was only captured in the crudest lo-fi ways on the VCRs that some Chicago residents happened to have recording when it happened. The signal itself, like Kaiser Soze, was long gone. The identity of the hijackers remained shrouded in mystery. The Max Headroom Broadcast Signal Interruption isn't just a story from the past. It's a reflection of our still-evolving relationship with technology, culture, media, and the very nature of entertainment itself, which at the time of this episode is undergoing a seismic shift at the formless hands of artificial intelligence and streaming technology developments. But at the root of all of this, the biggest questions are, will we ever know who was behind the mask that night? And who held the fly swatter? Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Forrest Burgess. And I turned around all of a sudden, and we don't have Doctor Who on air. We have this Max Headroom mask. And as the content got weirder, we got increasingly more stressed out over our inability to do anything about it. Paul Rizzo, former WTTW Chicago Public Media Air Director. Join us tonight for the final part of our deep dive into the most startling pirate TV hack in American history. And we're back. That we are, folks. Thanks for coming back and rejoining us for part two of this Max Headroom series. Somebody on Instagram posted the other day, it's like, post part two already. And it's like, I wanted to respond, and then I couldn't even find that comment. But anyway, here's part two, finally. A few people liked it, apparently. It rang that nostalgia bell, which I thought it would, certainly did for me. Folks of a certain age will appreciate all the references because you lived through it. That's right. Well, before we dive into it, and I suppose this will have to count as some kind of half-baked housekeeping. Just a few notes. We always do these things, and usually in part twos, we get feedback from various sources. We're not real diligent about looking on social media, but we will pay attention if stuff pops up. And rarely do we have a chance to go back and comment on things that have been said. And it's always that wit under the staircase. You're familiar with that idea? Well, I know the subreddit, Shower Thoughts. Yeah, I suppose it's a different take on that. But basically, you're at a dinner party, and somebody makes an insult, and you're stunned. You don't have a good comeback. You sit there in silence. Much like George Costanza with the shrimp. Yes, right. Yes. This concept is you leave the dinner party, and as you're making your way downstairs at the bottom of the staircase, that's when you think of the great line, the great comeback you should have said. Oh, right. To the joke. Yes. On your behalf. But it's too late. So it's that wit under the staircase. Like, ah, I shouldn't have said this. Anyway, one thought that occurred after our Controversial Pyramids episode here, we talked about Giordano Bruno. I had a note in here, because I thought it was a very forward and prescient concept of him, which helped him get him killed. And this is just from his wiki entry here. I was speaking about Giordano Bruno. He was born about February 1548, I think, until about 1600. He was born in February and died in February. He wasn't being born that whole time from 1548 to 1648. No, of course. That was his – those were his dates, his beginning and end dates there. Yes. February to February, 1548 to 1600. Leonard, the Italian astrologer, alchemist, philosopher, really ahead of his time. But one idea that he had, he practiced hermeticism, but he proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, which we now know today as exoplanets. And he put forth the idea that these planets might have their own life. And this is now known as cosmic pluralism. And he also thought that the universe was infinite and could have no center. So why is this worth mentioning? Because we've mentioned these concepts before. One, this is pretty radical. Like I said, it got him killed. He got him burned at the stake for – how dare you think there's other people other than us out there? Well, yeah, he thought they were their own suns and they could have their own planets. And why not other people? Why just us? So not a popular position there with the authorities. And also what we know now, and we've mentioned this a few times in the various episodes, but it's a mind-blowing concept about the nature of the universe. Which is, I think, still holds true. Now, I researched this a few years ago. The concept that the universe is infinite and could have no center. Well, what they discovered is that all cosmic bodies in the universe are not emanating or moving away from a central point as if they came from a Big Bang. Now, there could have well been a Big Bang, but for whatever reason, everything is not moving away concentrically. Like I said, you know, from an explosion, you would see things moving in all directions from that center point. Every heavenly body seems to be moving away from each other equidistantly. Basically, everything is moving and expanding away from each other in all directions, not from a central point. So that's kind of mind-blowing. There's a group of galaxies that are in some kind of river that I think the Milky Way is in. It's flowing all together and towards something. Right. And nobody knows where it goes. Yeah. There's still a lot of mysteries, but that's a pretty far out idea there for the 1500s into the 1600s. So the other thing is that now they think that the universe has no edge and no center. Right. So that blows people's minds. What do you mean there's no starting point? There's no center? No, it's infinite. So I thought it was worth mentioning because that was pretty far ahead of his time to be coming up with that. And the other things that we're going to talk about tonight, people have asked about or made the connection. Now, we talked about Mac Tonight as a mascot. The McDonald's commercial. Yes. Yes. And one of our longtime listeners, friends of the show here, Nippy on Twitter, X.com, had asked about the relevance. And what he said was, can you clarify how the Mac Tonight commercial relates to the broadcast interruption? I couldn't follow. Sounds like you were saying it was related to the WGN break-in, but wasn't that during a local sports report? So from what I remembered, and I think now I'm mistaken because you and I were trying to look for this. I thought it was a commercial. The McDonald's Mac Tonight commercial had aired just after Dan Rohn's sportscast, that one that got interrupted on WGN. Remember the commentators or the sportscasters were saying like, I think you like that so much. I think you planned it, Dan. And he goes, yeah, sure I did. And then I believe it cuts to commercial. But most clips you'll see on the internets, it ends there. You don't really get to see the commercials that aired after that. And I thought it was one of those commercials that aired after they went to commercial, after they had their station break here. And then Scott said, well, it might have been just in that documentary by the Rayna brothers about the signal intrusion for Mac's headroom. And they just aired it along with some other clips that they had in there. And maybe that's where I got it. So anyway, but it is relevant in that the Mac Tonight character was inspired by Mac's headroom. Mac's headroom, as we've been mentioning, was a pretty popular pop culture icon of its time. And everybody thinks that the Mac Tonight character is pretty creepy. And it does have its definite creep factor. And people say, well, why are you trying to scare children purposely and freak out adults? But he was wildly popular in his day as well. Well, the song, Mac the Knife, which is Mac Tonight was based on, comes from a Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht 1928 music drama called The Three Penny Opera. The version of which was first made popular, I think, when Louis Armstrong in 1955 got some translated lyrics and did his own version. And that was pretty popular. But the most popular version was from Bobby Darin, for whom it was a hit in 1959. And I think it won him two Grammys. It's been a pretty popular song. But of course, then it gets turned into a commercial, Hockingburgers. Except that the problem was, McDonald's didn't bother to get the rights from it from Bobby Darin and his estate. And so when it aired, Bobby Darin's son, Dodd Darin, saw that and said, no, no, you're not doing that. He sued them for copyright infringement because the characters' mannerisms and style and swagger were clearly based on Bobby Darin and how he performed. So it was a clear nod to that. But also, as we said, it was inspired by Max Headroom. The Wayfarer sunglasses, the pale complexion, just the kind of oddness of it as being a cartoon character brought to life of sorts. So it had a lot of cultural influence at the time. But after Dodd Darin's lawsuit, they had to get rid of it and they scrapped it. And I think I may have made a mistake. I think there is still an animatronic Mac the Knife caricature at the McDonald's that's near Universal Studios Orlando. And then another note here, my favorite instance of broadcast signal intrusion in the movies, I think, comes from the motion picture Used Cars. Oh, okay. It's a Mecca's joint with, I think, Bob Gale. And in that one, it's pretty crude and cheeky. And, of course, the whole movie does not stand up to today's standards. But it's 80s crude. It's 80s vulgar. Yeah. And it's pretty funny. But I like the idea of guys just rolling up in a van and hijacking the airwaves. Yeah. Or something kind of sensational at the time. And then the last thing I want to mention here is that, yeah, we did go back and I saw a post in our Facebook group from Joe Dodson. Joe says here, I love how offended Forrest sounded about the pirate broadcast. It seemed to press all sorts of buttons surrounding his sense of an orderly universe. And so I just want to say. Nailed it. Oh, no. Well, one, I think there's an order to the universe, but it seems chaotic to us in our ignorance. So I don't expect any kind of order in the universe or things to make sense. They certainly don't seem to anymore, but yeah, that doesn't bother me. And no, I wasn't offended at all. I think if you know me personally, I love a good prank that doesn't hurt anybody or destroys property. And that is uplifting too. I don't like pranks that, of course, make fun of people or belittle them or humiliate them. Yeah. But I love for people to experience a little magic during the day. Like something unusual happened and they got a chuckle out of it. Well, this one belittled Max Hedrum a little bit. Well, I'm talking about real people here. And actually, Max, he's also kind of smarmy and egotistical and maybe deserving of a little ribbing here. But in this case, yeah, I thought it was a pretty good prank. My perhaps one main criticism was that they did it. They actually accomplished this and then didn't have much of a presentation. I wish they would have worked on that a little bit more, you know, just a little better skit perhaps. But they accomplished it. Hey, we're still talking about it 37 years later. Well, there you go. That's the best they could do at the moment. But hats off to them for accomplishing it. Well, we're about to bring in a guest that we're excited to talk to. But before that, I did want to say, and to your point, Forrest, because when you were talking about the idea that the Mac Tonight commercial was somehow intertwined with it, I was thinking that too. And then I went back looking through all our sources and all the various clips. And lots of people have posted YouTube videos of the original thing. And some of them have the news broadcast from WGN wrapped around them. Others, you can't see anything. But I think the reason I thought Mac Tonight was part of it, and I think you mentioned this too, was because the Reina brothers had some B-roll of a shot of that in their set piece that they shot themselves. Their sequence that they did leading up to playing the actual interruption. I did want to say something about the Reina brothers because I know there were some people that contacted us and were like, I can't find the link that you posted because we did. We put up a link to the YouTube video of their documentary, which is a little over an hour long. The day we posted part one of this, they hadn't been online in like 10 months. And the day we posted part one of this, they finally posted an update to their channel. And I think you remember us saying, hey, go support them, whatever. It's the Reina brothers, R-E-Y-N-A, Matthew and Andrew. Apparently they had, I watched this update, it was like 15 minutes long. They had a super tough couple of years due to work and moving and a car accident and all this stuff, but they've decided to rebrand their YouTube channel. So all the content from the bazaar is still up there, like the Max Headroom documentary, but the channel is now called The Reina Bros. That's T-H-E-R-E-Y-N-A-B-R-O-S. So if you're searching for the Max Headroom doc that they did and we've referred to in this series, or some new exciting content they're wrapping up now, go to the Reina Bros YouTube channel. And you can find that video I was just talking about. It sounds like they're getting ready to get back in the swing of things and do a whole lot of new stuff too. The other thing I wanted to say to you, Forrest, about the whole Mac Tonight thing is it was interesting learning that that's called a murder ballad. That's a type of song, which I didn't know about prior to – I mean, of course, once you think, oh yeah, I've heard a million murder ballads, but I never realized it was its own genre. So that was an interesting – I guess it reminds me of Sweeney Todd or something like this – music, happy music about someone being killed. But everybody thinks that whatever they're experiencing media-wise is the first incarnation of it, but most things are derivative, probably going back to the very first thing written that was a drama or a song or some kind of murder ballad. But it's like the – I love the term, and I learned this in film school, Ranguignol, which was a French form of theater where somebody's being killed on stage. It was meant to be sensational. And so obviously, yeah, there are sensational aspects of theater and media way before TV and all the same ideas. And I love the example, if you want to explain Ranguignol, is that – and this is pretty advanced, I think, for theater at the time, in that the telephone was pretty new. But they have one character, either he calls his wife or she calls him, and there's an intruder in the house, and he can hear his wife being murdered over the phone, but he can't do anything about it. Oh, right, right. And so it's like – imagine that – all that tension and horror. And yeah, so horror theater, but all these concepts, they're not new, and certainly the Three Penny Opera and the Murder Ballad, we go back to – you can go back to Greek tragedy and – Yeah. And Shakespeare, and Titus is one of the most bloody played. It's just awful. I mean, like if you actually go through it or watch it or have to read it for school or see the movie with Anthony Hopkins, it's pretty gruesome. So certainly reflective – it's never been a better time before where things were less sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. It's always been pretty awful. Yeah, well put. Well, one other thing I wanted to make a correction on, last correction is – and we got plenty of emails about this – I said WTTV a few times. Several people caught that. Apologies to that. I feel like I knew I was doing something wrong when I did it, but I couldn't think what the right thing was. But the PBS station that was interrupted for the longer Pirate Max broadcast was WTTW, which our friend Rob Southgate told us was an acronym for Window to the World. And WTTV is an unrelated station out of Indianapolis, but I didn't know that. I was just saying the wrong letter. So I have to own up to that. Oh, yeah. No worries on that. Look, it's been a long time. But that was another comment, I think, in the Facebook group from Andy Barrett. And he just said that for accuracy's sake, Chicago PBS station that he remembers growing up in the 70s to 90s was WTTW, Channel 11. Yeah, we got it in emails too, and we got it on Instagram, and we got it on Discord, and we got it. I just – But that's it. That's what I love. We got a lot of Chicago people out there, which I love when we cover something that a lot of people can connect to. Yeah, the connection part is what's important to me. He also goes on to say Andy does. P.S., love the accent attempts. I never thought I had that accent until I went to college in Vermont. Imagine a superfan's, quote-unquote, accent trying to talk to a person with a thick Boston accent. Now that I would love to hear. I also wanted to say a thank you out loud to David MacArthur, who sent us a very, very kind email this week. It's very nice to get one like that. It had a lot of glowing things to say. As I was reading it, kind of like that meme of the chef from Ratatouille, I was waiting for the but. You know, because usually it's like a lot of nice things. But if you guys don't stop talking about X, Y, or Z. And there was no but in this one. It was a wonderful email. So, David, thank you so much. Yes, thank you so much. All right. So we're going to throw it over now to Rob Southgate. He did have some other observations and is a Chicago native. So we thought we'd hop online with him for a minute here and have a quick chat about his point of view on this whole thing. Rob, are you there? I am here. And I'm talking to you through the window to the podcast world. There you go. The WTPW. Yeah. Where is your Chicago accent that is thick as Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza? Where is it? Can you bring it out for you? You know what? I've got it hidden in a chest bag here. No, I've been, you know what? I was a professional actor for a while and you kind of would just lose it. Yeah. Although I will tell you a funny story. We lived up in Minneapolis for a while and I was getting all this work as an actor. And I went into a Chicago hot dog place that had opened because of course I needed lifeblood. And I walk in and the guy goes, man, you got the Chicago accent. I go, you're literally the first person that's ever said that. He goes, you're clearly from Chicago. I can tell by your accent. Holy cow. So I guess I have something. Yeah. Does it come out when you're angry? When you get, when the Cubs lose? Or are you a White Sox fan? No, not really. I mean, I don't know. I don't know why he could hear it. But I think that those of us that have like a subtle accent from whatever region we're in, we don't really notice that unless it's something so glaring, you know, but yeah, I'm not hiding anything. This is just how I speak. Tell our listeners a little bit about your background and yourself before we start to talk about the Max Headroom incident. Okay. Well, I'm hoping this is going to be kind of like your Patty series. We get seven episodes to talk about my background. I mean, there's a few things. Scott and I know each other because I was writing a master's thesis about the business. of podcasting and I invited Scott to come on so I could ask a few questions and that's how we got to know each other. Forrest avoided me. I don't know why. Well, Scott does handle more of the business aspect. So he was the more likely choice. He was the guy. Okay. And then from there, I ended up getting an MBA in marketing and you could make an argument as my mentor did that I have the only master's in podcasting. Right. So there's that background. I'm a vice president of marketing and growth for a publisher and let's see, what else? I'm a professor of business. And then also going way back, my wife and I own one of the largest podcast networks out there. I'm an executive producer of 150 plus shows. I stopped counting at 150. Wow. Yeah. So I look at your network and I'm always like, oh, come on, Scott, send me a text and ask me some questions. I don't even have time for the questions. You know, when we were doing that way back in the beginning, I was not only on all these shows, a lot of shows, but I was editing and doing all the social media and doing all the marketing. Oh my gosh. I was averaging 36 shows a week. Good Lord. And when I hear people that are like, oh my God, I had to do one and I was pulling my hair out. I'm like, I don't know how I did it. It was a lot of coffee. Yeah. I mean, that's what I know. Yeah. But yeah, it's a real passion. I love all the paranormal stuff too. We've talked about that quite a bit. I have a secret podcast about it called Graphic Tales. I was actually on a podcast marathon. They asked me to come on a paranormal marathon about it, a live thing. And I had to get up and go, okay, well, here's a podcast. It's not a podcast. I don't know how to describe this to you. And it was, it was a blast. I just, I'm very interested in all this stuff. That's cool. So, well, I know that, you know, what we were just talking about the whole Mac Tonight thing and, you know, not being clear on how much it, it intersected, but because we mentioned it in part one and, uh, you know, the McDonald's commercial and everything. And we were talking about the actor who might've played in that giant Crescent Moon costume. I mean, because the headpiece on it is two or three feet long. I don't even know how he performed in it, but you chimed in, sent me a text about that. What is it that you know about that? Yeah. And I'd like to preface this with, I am not the actually guy. I just, I know Scott, I was listening and all of a sudden I'm like, you know what? He doesn't quite know what WTTW is. He doesn't quite know this Mac Tonight thing. And I happen to have this weird connection. Mac Tonight was played by Doug Jones. And a lot of, you know, Doug Jones from, he was the monster in Shape of Water. He was a monster in Crimson Peak. Doug is just, he's been in everything. And he was just on Star Trek Discovery. He was the fish guy. Yes. That I saw. I saw that performance. Okay. So that's how you know Doug. Yeah. And he was the silver surfer. So anyway, I was watching Falling Skies where he played an alien monster in. And I texted him like, oh my God, I love Doug Jones. This is so cool that he's on this. And he texted back like, oh my God, you know who I am. And that was it. That started this relationship of, you know, he's been on my show. I've interviewed him. We've met in person more than once. He is the biggest sweetheart in the world. Oh, cool. He really, truly is. And when you start talking to him, you think I talk, you should hear Doug talk. He goes on forever. But he's got a million stories. Yeah, of course. And they're just fabulous. Yeah. So he was Mac Tonight. Yes. And I did ask him about that on the show. And he was like, you knew I was that? I'm like, yeah, well, it's called research. And it's funny. There was a, it was called the Rock and Roll McDonald's in Chicago in the 80s and 90s. And they had a big grand piano in the window with a mannequin with the giant Mac Tonight headpiece. And it was to scale. It was giant. Right. It was really cool. Oh, that's so cool. And no, I don't know how he wore that headpiece. Unbelievable. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. So, and it's amazing to think of him because that was also, speaking of research, I was looking around about it today before we were going to talk to you. And I think it was one of his first roles too. He was pretty young when he got that. Yeah, he was pretty young at that point. Younger people know him from Hocus Pocus. He's Billy Butcher or something in that. Okay, okay. And that was like an early role for him too. Hocus Pocus the movie? Yeah. I'm familiar with it, but I don't think I've seen it. Oh, come on, Scott. Do not admit that you have not seen it or don't know it because it's such a favorite of our fan base. No, that's what I'm thinking. I'm trying to think if I have seen it because I get, you know, I've seen Witches of Eastwick and I've seen... Now that I love. Yeah. And I, sometimes I get some of those movies mixed up, but yeah, I do think I have seen Hocus Pocus. I just might not have been entirely in command of my faculties during the time. So I bring up that Doug was Billy Butcher. Younger people are like, Billy Butcher, I love him in there. Right, right. Well, it's funny how some things, we were just talking about this before we rolled how, let's say generations after ours have locked onto some things and many things not. Yeah. And what they retain and one of them is Hocus Pocus. And I did get to work with Kenny Ortega, the director, a few times. So that was... Oh, cool. That was fun. And, but things like the Goonies last on and when it was released during our era here in the time, it was fun, but you don't, I don't think you could realize then what a cultural icon it's become and something that people will latch onto just because of the nature, the camaraderie, the Cyndi Lauper music. It had all the elements and what we're talking about here is yes, a, a pastiche, a melange of, of all these eighties cultural and pop icons. And so that's what it was. And so some things kind of last. And then a lot of things that as we were talking about before we rolled here that we thought were popular would last through that the generations after us have no idea about. Yeah. And it just, it didn't stick. I think the other thing that you have to realize, like what this means to people and who, who saw this, the pirate incursion. It also depends on, I wouldn't say maturity level, maybe it is, but just how old you were. If you think about your older siblings, what they were into when you were a kid, especially if you were a kid growing up in the eighties and what was popular to them and how they took things and then how you did as a kid, not understanding certain things. And even some things that, uh, and this is, I guess a case in point here, we're talking about clutch cargo a little bit in the Chicago market, you know, that came out decades earlier, but it was something that endured. It seems to be more of the case when we were growing up because we didn't have the choices that a lot of younger folks do now about their, you know, their choices in media to consume. We saw what came on the TV. And if that was, uh, in replay in your area, that's what you watched. And so we had a, uh, probably a broader knowledge of earlier shows and concepts that had come on because that's the only thing we had. So that was on in the mornings. That's what you watched. Exactly. Well, and when you talked about clutch cargo, I was trying to remember exactly where it was because we had this great morning thing here. We had Ray Rayner and he would show Warner Brothers cartoons and he had, you know, funny bits and everything. And then we had Bozo, the Chicago Bozo. Oh yeah. Everybody knows. Yeah. And then we also had a thing called Garfield Goose, which was on, I think usually before Ray and Frazier Thomas hosted that. He ended up, I think he ended up working as after ringmaster Ned from Bozo passed away or left. Frazier Thomas took over on Bozo, but on Garfield Goose with Frazier Thomas, they would show, so this is different than the syndication thing you were talking about. Yeah. They would show clutch cargo every once in a while. So to people my age, when we were kids, we would see before we went to school, we'd watch these shows and we all saw the same Warner Brothers cartoons. We all saw clutch cargo. We all saw Johnny quest because they would play like five minutes, 10 minutes of Johnny quest and then it would be out. Yeah. So they'd make it serialized for clutch cargo. It was serialized. Yeah. It wasn't like a show. You never knew when it was going to come on, but you were super excited when it was. So when you were saying that moment in the thing where the guy makes the clutch cargo reference, there's no doubt in my mind that was a clutch cargo reference, number one. Yeah. Number two, there's no doubt in my mind that was a Chicago guy. Yeah. And he was probably, now in 87, I would have been 19. Okay. Okay. He was probably a little older, but that doesn't mean he wasn't watching that stuff. Or if he worked at WGN, he might've been a PA, he might've been anything working, doing that stuff. He's watching clutch cargo on those little snippets. Right. He very likely worked on one of those shows. It does feel that way, doesn't it? I think that like, not to get ahead of myself on our theories tonight, but like I'm leaning very strongly towards a WGN insider on this. Well, think about the timeframe. When somebody said it was a hack, I remember reading it was a hacker group. Yeah. Anonymous wasn't around then. What hacker group are you talking about? Right, right. The way they got in was somebody was sitting at a board and punched something and made something go through. Right, right. If they were hacking it electronically, it would have happened again. Yeah. That's my take on it. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. 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Garden of Life transforms 16 diverse probiotic strains and 50 billion CFU to support digestive health and a flourishing gut flora. And if you're worried whether Garden of Life Women's Once Daily Probiotic is the real deal, don't. They're certified non-GMO and doctor-formulated for women's unique needs. To put it simply, this is an easy way to prioritize your gut health. Garden of Life formulas for feeling alive. Available on Amazon. Disclaimer, number one based on Circona 52-week multi-outlet unit sales ending 11-30-25. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This is Pia Helene Skagguth. Thank you for listening to Astonishing Legends. Let's get back to the show. Were you aware of any, let's say at the service level, computer clubs, groups that would, I guess that were kind of, well, Chicago Underground? I of course knew the nerdy computer clubs and D&D clubs. Come on, man. Of course. But this is higher level. Think about what the computers were at that point. How were they hacking something like that? We all thought we were playing war games, but at best you were on a BBS going, I'm on a BBS. And that was it. Yeah. So to have the sophistication to actually interrupt a broadcast, I do not believe it. I do not believe it. Unless it's in the house. Yeah. Somebody's got specific knowledge on how to get that done. Exactly. Which again is interesting for a younger person, but it does, it seems so that makes you think it's, well, this is somebody that knows how things work. But the other thing about the inside part of it is it seems hard to fathom that in an investigation, they wouldn't be able to ferret that person out. I think that's odd too. Yeah. Well, I think because it was so mobile and I'm, as we get into our theories later on, obviously what's been, I think it's been established is that it wasn't somebody in the building, in the station, because of course you're hacking two different channels. You're just pointed in the right direction. So you're, you're looking at two antennae that are close by line of sight. The most likely culprit is, is probably somebody in a van. And I'm going to talk about the, if I haven't mentioned this in our housekeeping about the, the movie used cars and that hilarious segment where it was another sign of the times, but I think because it was somebody with the knowledge, but also the mobility, because you're also thinking it's like, well, you don't want to be stationed in a building where you can get caught because I think obviously the also knew is self-evident that they could be in big trouble, but they also had a lot of confidence that they could pull it off. I think because it was, you know, again, so short, that was just overpowered for just a few minutes. And like the Craig call where like in every movie, it's like, we're going to trace the call. They're not on long enough. They knew to keep it short and not to have anything that was too specific. So it was, you know, that is the going theory that it was somebody with some knowledge, but whether it could have been just a, somebody who's a savant in a broadcast and just read enough technical books on it and could figure out like. But, but why didn't they do it again? Why did they stop at this? We'll probably talk about this or I will in my section on the theories is that, like I said, it was more important to have just done it than the message relayed. And I would say overall, they had said everything that they could think to do in 90 seconds of goofing around, of just like, well, I'm out of ideas. And so it wasn't like- I did the flyswatter on the butt. I am done. Yeah, it wasn't, right. It wasn't a chapter two of like, I've got more of my manifesto. I rely upon the, you know, the welcoming ears of Chicago. I mean, they did that, but if you had that ability and you punched into WGN and you're like, wait a minute, if you were that guy, if you were that person, I should say, that figured that out, wouldn't you try it again? You didn't have to try WGN, go to a smaller market and hijack their thing, pirate radio this stuff. Why did that not happen? Well, you could. I would say you don't know the personalities. Somebody out there does. As we said, at least three people know. It could have been two, but at least three people, I think, as is surmised, at least three people knew about it. And you could just say like, after, you know, that happened and all the buzz and it's just like, we're going to hunt you down where the FCC is like, this is a federal crime. It's like, okay, well, we did, let's not push our luck because the people that of course always get caught are the people that push their luck. It's like, let's try this again. And it's like, well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Maybe they had the self-discipline to say, we got away with this. The only way to make it the perfect crime is to never do it again because they haven't caught us from this time. So we should walk away from this. Yeah. There was no more message other than we were able to do it. And I think that's, as I hopefully have said. That belies a certain amount of maturity, though, that does not come through in the actual broadcast. Well, listen, you have a certain amount of confidence that you could pull it off, but not so much that you don't think that you wouldn't be caught. You're a prankster, you're a goofball, but you're maybe not stupid in that, like, hey, if you keep doing this because you know how it was done and then you maybe know how something like that could be triangulated and that the amount of people, the likely suspects in a pool of that could be narrowed down and you could be a likely suspect. So the best thing is you did it. You can talk about it. Everybody's buzzing. And it's always best to leave the party at a high note. You know what I'm saying? Don't come back for a, you know. Yeah. I mean, another scenario could be that you've got, well, you mentioned like a computer club. You've got one of these colleges around here. They've got their computer club. These guys figure this out. They're thinking, hey, this is cool. Hey, my buddy works at WGN or whatever. What's the frequency on the thing? They tell them. They do it. The guy at WGN is like, somebody's going to get fired. You got it. Or the FCC's guy. They go, okay, whoop, whoop, whoop, hey, hey. But they still did that second one, the one that I saw during Doctor Who. They still did that. Yeah. And let's talk about that. So you saw this when it happened. Yeah, because I was a nerd and I was watching my beloved Doctor Who, especially Tom Baker Doctor Who. Right, right. And here's the interesting thing. I was watching the show. This happened. And honest to God, like nobody talked about it the next day. I didn't know. But this was my first, like it kind of blew my mind because I was thinking, it was like a meta thing. Like the first time I encountered this idea of meta storytelling where I'm like, is this a future episode of Doctor Who? They're going to have him interrupt this other thing. And why is it Max Headroom? It's so weird. And it just kind of like, that's what I was having when I watched it. Then it was some kind of meta thing. Like maybe this is the next Doctor. Maybe he's going to regenerate and this guy's a trickster. Or maybe it's a trickster, one of his villains that's doing this. And then nobody talked about it. It disappeared. And it wasn't on the broadcast when I saw it later. And then I started reading about it much later that like, no, this was a hacking. You don't recall any buzz really the next day around town. Nobody was talking about it that I was friends with. And I would have been already dating who is now my wife. She didn't watch Doctor Who. I remember it was on late at night on WTTW. I started watching it when I was a kid. So I would have gone home after a date, watched Doctor Who. I didn't have a lot of friends that were into that kind of stuff. I did have friends that were into the sports stuff, but nobody said anything. Right. And it wasn't until later. And I have had people that I've brought it up and they go, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that. But I haven't had anybody that said, no, I was watching and this was really weird. This bopped in on it. Yeah. Yeah. At the time, being a Doctor Who nerd, did you make a connection between the Doctor Who program and Max Headroom originally being a British television concept? Well, yeah. That's why I thought, are they doing something that's tying this together? Yeah. Is Max Headroom going to turn out to be a character from Doctor Who? Like, is there any, because it just, it, and it was like, but it's not. So it's like a trickster version of this. And it really kind of blew my mind. I thought it was really cool, but then I didn't find anybody that really cared about it, knew about it. And I was like, nobody saw it? Yeah. You know, I guess I'm the only one watching Doctor Who on Sunday nights. Well, it was, it was a little later too, it was, uh, in the evenings. Oh, trust me. I used to get in trouble because on Sunday nights, you got school the next day. Right. Yeah. WTTW would show Monty Python. Oh yeah. And then it would go into Doctor Who. And then I'd finally get yelled at, like, are you still watching TV? Yeah. You've got to get up in the morning. And I had my little, you know, what is it? 12 inch black and white in my room that was full of glory. Yes. Right. So that's the one you, so you did not see the WGN interruption and probably didn't even know that had happened. No. Not until much later. In the intervening months and years after, was there any buzz about it from people you knew? It was more like as the internet blossomed and things started popping up. Yeah. In fact, that's where it reignited in me because I saw like some video came across my thing. And I'm like, that's the thing. Yeah. And then I found out this is a thing. And then talking to like, I mentioned in our previous conversation, my friend Chris, who owned a Doctor Who cafe, ironically, we talked about this quite a bit. Now he didn't see it when it happened, but he was like, he totally knew this happened during a Doctor Who episode and how interesting is this? And he thought the same thing. Like this could have been something tied into Doctor Who, but not when it's on WGN, not when it's during the sports. Right. Doctor Who's not talking about Chuck Sworski. I would be amazed if they did, but Chicago's obviously a major metropolis, but there are circles within circles. Was there any scuttlebutt about who may have done this or a prevailing theory? All I ever heard was it was hackers. Just hackers. That's all I ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. They'd say hackers and I'd say, who's, who is doing that? Right. With the technology right now, who is doing that? And that would be the whole conversation. I'm like, it's gotta be somebody from the inside. I do like the idea that there's somebody that works there that kind of told their brother about it, kind of facilitated it. And then their brother's sitting out in a van and they go, hit play. And this thing happens and they go, oh crap. Yeah. Hit the PBS station. Cause we got this other part where we, I've hit myself with a fly swatter. We got to get it on. Yeah. Right. It's genius. You know, I'm getting an Emmy. So the other one I had heard way back was that it was like one of the local DJs or something had put people up to it, but that never held any water. I mean, there were, there were DJs that were, you know, these fun guys to listen to and all that. Yeah. Like morning zoo kind of pranks. Well that, yeah, but yeah, that never held any water. I never heard anything. And you would think even if the FCC was after them for doing this, they may have had some kind of slip in knowledge because I don't know if I read this right, but did the statute of limitations run out five years later and still nobody came forward? Yeah, it did. I don't, I can't remember the, uh, the exact number of years, but it's a light one. And so it did run out and even then nobody came forward. But what's the point of that? Unless you wanted to claim glory for that. But I think in that point, like I said, I think, and this may point to why they didn't do it again to your question is that they were a little scared or maybe they had jobs now as older adults. That, uh, if you were still, they got hired by WGN and they're like, I can never say. Yeah. Some young woman and two goofy guys, uh, maybe brothers, whoever they were. It's just not suitable to come out with that. And for what purpose? Other than, like I said, if you were, uh, still nothing again, if you were 50 and still living in your, uh, your mom's basement and still of that era, still of that ilk, maybe you would come out and to claim some glory on the internet, but it doesn't seem to be the case. It points to somebody who had knowledge of that and maybe turn that into a profession and like, it just wouldn't, it just wouldn't be good. But was there anything else going on in the Chicago area of that era there that had, uh, a similar subversive kind of, uh, pop culture buzz? Analog. Wow. Tough question. You know, the only thing I can say, I mean, it was the kind of subversive thing because you're talking about Gen X was hitting college age and my wife and I started our own, a zine back then and zines were this underground movement back then. And, uh, like garage bands were everywhere and so, yeah, I mean, it was, that's why I think it's gotta be somebody in that age bracket involved because it was like, yeah, we were all kind of like punching at the bag, you know, trying to make something different because we were getting bored by the other stuff and think about it. What came after that? The indie film scene exploded, you know, this is the same type of person who's like, I'm throwing all the rules out. I, I just jacked into WGN. I can go past that. I'm going to do this next thing. You know, it was that, that was what was going on. And especially I being in Chicago, like we had the alley and we had these places where that's where the Cabaret Metro where all the bands, all those, you know, grunge and punk bands were all coming. That was the scene. Yeah. So that makes sense to me that there would be this electronically knowledgeable vibe to it. You know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Because we were all interested in this stuff. Right. And decades before there was a history in the Chicago area, well, like the, uh, the Chicago weatherman and the days of rage and, uh, just the protests that were going on, uh, October 1969. So there was a, a precursor to subversion and counterculture shenanigans. Oh yeah. Again, a very active, uh, area, which I think every major city does. Even things like second city was now it's an institution, but then, yeah, that was subversive. That was, nobody was doing anything like that. And they were saying something on their nose at it saying, this is what we're going to do. We're doing something different. And, you know, there was a lot of creative anti-establishment type stuff in the air at that point. Yeah. I can only speak from Chicago, but it was definitely here. Yeah. And I think also, uh, specifically to the extent that marketing and advertising was becoming slicker and slicker in the media and the ad agencies were really starting to find their, their legs with just like big time campaigns and cross pollination and all of this kind of stuff. And that was coming down on the heads of Gen X, which I can say, cause I am Gen X and I was there. And then I later became part of that machine. Cause I worked in advertising for 18 years, making big commercials, million dollar Super bowl spots and all that stuff. And like, I watched it happen. And I remember the backlash to things that happened along the way. Of course it was way after the max headroom incident, but like when my boss edited a commercial for Nike with the John Lennon song, instant karma in it, boy, that blew up a lot of people just went crazy about how awful they felt that was. It was the same guy that cut fight club, by the way. So it's just, you know, it's all these, all this stuff was really coming down on people. And so I do understand like how the, the max headroom, you know, the parody of max headroom and the backlash to the slickness of the spokesperson and the marketing, just getting more and more controlling and pervasive and everything. It always wins out. It's, you know, Scott and I were talking before you got on Rob, it's just that. The irony of it is that the Mac, the knife song from the three penny opera, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill was really a salute. You could say to socialism and communism and those, some of those ideals. And then here you have the most corporate commercialized thing, taking it over for a jingle and a very successful campaign. And so railing against that, what you realize is like, look, even in the, if they could have them in North Korea, they would, and they would be immensely popular, but every other culture, a communist or otherwise, uh, generally accepts McDonald's because people want burgers, they want fries and, and tasty shakes and that's human nature. And then you have this winning out. It's like, well, we've turned your political ideals into a commercial jingle that turns out to be hugely successful. And I think the other thing that people don't realize, I think it was exemplified in the movie, Bite Me. Reality Bites? Sorry. Yes. The comedy ensemble of Reality Bites. Excuse me. Yes. I thought Forrest had me on a movie there. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I was like, in my mind, it was like, he's thinking Reality Bites. Reality Bites. Because, uh, right now Sarah's going to keep this all in. No, the idea though, I conflated that because, uh, there were a lot of Max Headroom clips and he was interviewed a lot of times on, uh, David Letterman, another mainstay of that era. And, uh, that was one of his catchphrases. But, uh, the idea though, is that that kind of defiance and that, uh, Reality Bites was all about the themes were, we're not selling out to the man. You can't own us. You don't own us. You don't, you can't market to us. Don't even try. It's like, we know what you're up to and we're smarter than that. And so it was a reaction against this, uh, corporatization and commercialization of everything and just being sold to all the time. And then that attitude started to change, I think, with media development. And, and one, and this is seven or eight years at least now, I was listening to an interview on the PBS driving home and, and they were interviewing a documentarian who was doing a, uh, basically a media documentary on high school kids at the time. And they asked her, well, like, what's the biggest takeaway? And she said, well, the one thing I noticed, and she was of our era, she goes like, you know, back when we were growing up in the eighties, it's like, you would hate to be someone to take your information and sell it. Like, that's like the heck with you. You're not going to sell me out. Not selling out was the big theme. And nowadays with kids growing up with that, because, uh, she was interviewing some of her high school students and it's like, they were doing basically what they shared on social media. There's no concept. And they felt nothing wrong with oversharing because that's what they've grown up on. Like when you go into a social media app, you agree to give over everything and you're tracked and marketed to, and they didn't see much of anything wrong with that. And their idea of what you should rebel against, that's just the norm to them. And so the ideas have changed in that when you go to, uh, engage in social media and media being a big part of this, giving yourself up or part of that is part of the bargain. And so it's not such a big thing to share all your data or to have it sold or, or even consider that. And so it wasn't like it was in the eighties. And so I think that was also one of the messages of the pirate radio hack and that like, Hey, you're running this big corporate thing. Well, we have a little control over that. We're going to step on your party. We're going to mess up your punch bowl here because we can do it. And you're not all that powerful. Which once again, it goes back to it's why I think Gen X was involved at some level, because that is very much what we thought. That is very much how we approach things. Yeah. So it was rebellion. Yeah. But in a, but in a fun, uh, not really destroying property kind of way. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, Rob, we just want to thank you so much for coming on about this segment. It's so great to talk to somebody who actually witnessed this, but also grew up in the area and can correct me on all the, uh, call signs and letters that I got wrong. And, uh, well, this was a real pleasure for me. I'm a big fan of the show as you know. And yeah, I was really not weaseling my way in. I just happened to write to you cause I thought, yeah, you could use this little bit of information. Yeah, no, that's, we need that. We need to hear from people who are part of the actual experience when it can't be, it can't be something that we actually experienced. So, uh, we, I really appreciate you reaching out and you know me, I know everybody. So as I, uh, as I find people out there on other subjects, I'll keep feeding them to you. Nice. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners do all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. They're USDA organic and made with ingredients that actually grow somewhere. It's their whole taste that grows philosophy. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. Their peanut butter cup bar has 14 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 5 grams of sugar. Which is wild considering how delicious it is. Made with no artificial ingredients or fillers. Just something that tastes good and works the way it's supposed to. So if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. This is Danielle Robay from Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. Okay, you've got a lot going on. And choosing the right probiotic might not be at the top of your to-do list. So let's make things simple. Garden of Life is the number one women's probiotic brand for a reason. It's specifically designed for women. To support the immune system, vaginal health, and overall women's health. You can feel good knowing that this is the brand so many women trust for their gut health. Garden of Life transforms 16 diverse probiotic strains and 50 billion CFU to support digestive health and a flourishing gut flora. And if you're worried whether Garden of Life Women's Once Daily Probiotic is the real deal, don't. They're certified non-GMO and doctor-formulated for women's unique needs. To put it simply, this is an easy way to prioritize your gut health. Garden of Life formulas for feeling alive. Available on Amazon. Disclaimer number one based on Circona 52-week multi-outlet unit sales ending 11-30-25. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of, or artificial sweeteners are doing all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. They're USDA organic and made with ingredients that actually grow somewhere. It's their whole taste that grows philosophy. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. Their peanut butter cup bar has 14 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 5 grams of sugar, which is wild considering how delicious it is. Made with no artificial ingredients or fillers, just something that tastes good and works the way it's supposed to. So, if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. This is Darren. And this is Gary from the Snipe Hunt Podcast. And you're listening to Astonishing Legends. Let's get back to the show. I think you put a little bit too much pizzazz on. Did I? That was a lot of fun talking to Rob. He's very articulate and fun to converse with. And full of knowledge and just a powerhouse in the podcasting world on his own. I know. I'm already planning out my Christmas list of questions for him. Right. I'm going to drive him to the edge, I think, with questions. I'm also glad. I think we may have mentioned it in part one. I can't remember as it gets spread out between two episodes. But we also had a lot of comments about the terrific actor, Doug Jones, getting his big break playing Mac Tonight, the character. Because a lot of people love his characters, even though he's mostly in costume, usually plays monsters. I think he's six foot four and sometimes a contortionist, very lanky and great for those parts. But yeah, we had a lot of comments saying that was the great Doug Jones. So I'm glad we cleared that up and talked about that a little bit. Yes, good to get that out in the open. Doug, everybody loves you. You seem to be an amazing guy if you ever hear this. So we're glad to have gotten you into the show, even without your permission. So the next thing I want to talk about, remember when we were discussing in part one, the whole your love is fading bit and which song we thought that was from. And one of the things that I had said in part one was, you know, we should reach out to our friend Tom Maxwell, former frontman of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, who is a real live musician, and ask him what he thought, Pirate Max, which I'm taking that from him. He came up with that name. If you hear me say it, Tom, shout out to you for that's what we should call him, Pirate Max. I love it. But what he thought Pirate Max might have been referring to when he sang this. Sarah, will you roll that little bit again, please? So we never really even got the chance to formally ask Tom because he heard the episode and then fired off his own response to us before we could even pose the question to him personally. Hey, Scott. Hey, Forrest. I did some digging to nail down what song Pirate Max Headroom was referencing, and I don't have any definitive answers. If anything, maybe more questions, but at least I can give you the details of this particular goose chase. I want to start with a prop comedy that he's doing with the Pepsi can. I believe he's directly referencing a Coke commercial from 1985, which features the real Max Headroom, who appears at a Cokeologist's convention, and there are kids shouting his name, and then he shows up to cheers, and he says, is this a private party or can any star crash it? And then he slams Pepsi, and he calls it the P word, which is a choice. And then, as you pointed out, Coke's slogan at this time was, catch the wave, which he says. So Pirate Max holds up the Pepsi can, says, catch the wave, references the real Max Headroom, and then throws it on the floor quite loudly. And then he holds up another can while he sings, your love is fading. And as with the Pepsi can, he also tosses that away, but you never really see what the label is on that can. And what's very interesting about this second can is that it has an old-fashioned pull tab or ring pull, and those types of openers for beer and soda cans in the United States were phased out by 1983. So I don't know what that's about or why he's holding that and referencing that. And I wasn't able to find any commercials from that time period for beer or soda that had any song associated with it, like your love is fading. So it's a reference, I don't know what to. And so that leaves what song he's referencing. And I think Scott is right. It's either The Temptations mega hit, I Know I'm Losing You, or Lou Prides' Your Love Is Fading. Now, there was also a song by the late 70s English punk band, The Vibrators, called Your Love Is Fading Away. But it turns out that was from a reunion record that wasn't issued until the early 2000s, and it doesn't sound anything like what he's singing. So never mind about that. Now, I talked to my partner, Emerus, about this because she's not only a classically trained singer, but also a teacher's voice. And she pointed out that Pirate Max is, how we say, melodically challenged. And people who have this condition might believe they're singing a specific song, but what's coming out of their mouth is unrecognizable. And that's what's happening here. But a couple of things stand out. One, Pirate Max extends and emphasizes the word fading, which neither The Tempts nor Lou Prides do. They emphasize the word love, so there's no clue there in phrasing. But the second and more telling thing he does is he puts a blue note in the last part of the phrase of fading. Now, there are no blue notes in Lou Prides' song. So to get technical, he's way more major seventh-oriented than dominant seventh for those keeping score. But The Temptations' song, I Know I'm Losing You, is full of blue notes. Add to the fact that it was a massive hit on its own, and it was also covered, and there were hits of it by other contemporary bands like Rare Earth and The Faces. Kind of makes the case, to me at least, that that's the song that he's referencing. Although, you know, you could easily believe that he's giving a big shout-out to local hero Lou Pride, because this whole thing is very Chicago-centric. There's no real way to know. And I'm just seriously interested in what's up with that pull-tab can. Okay, guys. Talk soon. Bye. Tom, thank you so much for that. By the way, folks, if you enjoyed Tom on our series about American Blood Falls, or that little bit he just contributed to our show, he and J.E. Peterson and Mallory Everton have a new podcast called God's Ghosts and UFOs. It's a great conversation about all of those things and the philosophy behind what might be at the root of them. So look for God's Ghosts and UFOs wherever you get your podcasts. But Tom, thanks again for your angle on this. Like you said, more questions still. And one of the things that I love that Tom pointed out was about the pull-tabs. And he even sent a PDF that showed all these different pull-tabs and what years they were phased out. But then he and I were chatting. We were texting and stuff and talking about them. And we were looking at a Max Headroom Coke commercial, which was after the time period that they supposedly had been phased out. And even in that commercial, you could see the cans. They don't show the tops of them. It's funny. A lot of these Coke commercials, because I feel like now you always see the can being opened. But back then, that whole campaign, I didn't see a single can being opened. It was just open. People were taking drinks. But you never saw the top of the can. And you never saw anyone pulling the tab on it, which I thought was interesting. Because I must have watched 10 of the Coke, Pepsi War commercials. Yeah. And I never saw anybody opening a can. I don't think that that's maybe a conscious choice, just extraneous. Like, you don't really need to see them. Unless it was a commercial where you want to see the spray. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what you see now. You kind of always see it when there's a can now. But back then, maybe they were afraid of showing, because the pull-tabs were trash. They were, you know, people were cutting their feet on them at beaches and stuff like that. I have a comment about that. Maybe they didn't want to admit that the cans all had a little thing that was going to be thrown in the gutter. Who knows? That's an interesting point. I don't know, personally, what the history is on that. I do know, because we've worked in the advertising world, we know that there are rules and things you cannot show. One, people might be interested in. You cannot show. I don't think any more still is that you cannot show somebody actually drinking a beer. You also can't show a car leaving the ground or making a jump unless you do a whole lot of making the world very fake, which I remember from the Nissan 300ZX commercials. Because the Super Bowl spot for the 300ZX Twin Turbo, when it came out, that Ridley Scott directed, at the end of the commercial, the car jumps over the camera. Right, right. As a result, that spot, which cost over a million dollars to produce, only ran once because the insurance commission was like, you absolutely cannot show that ever again. So it only ran during the Super Bowl. You can see it on YouTube, though. But getting back to the pull tab, that was just the standard way, because earlier to that, in the early, early days of canned beer, you needed a can opener. Right. And even when I was a kid growing up, you would have the big can of juice or V8 or whatever, tomato juice. You would puncture the one end, you go around, you make a tiny puncture on the opposite end of the top of the can, and that's how you got it out. Yes. There was no... So the air could come in. Yeah, exactly. So you could pour it so it wouldn't glug, glug, glug, glug too much. Yeah. And then they went to the pull tab, and that was kind of revolutionary. My point being is I don't think people worried about it that much, because you would pull the pull tab, and then when I was growing up, you'd see older kids, and of course, the younger kids will learn this from them. A lot of people would take that pull tab and just put it in the drink, which I'm sure horrifies... Yeah, put it down in the can. You put it down in the can. Well, yeah, then you're not leaving it out in the world. You know, maybe that's a responsible thing to do. It is, I suppose, and it's the ire of a lot of metal detectorists nowadays with metal detectors that can't discriminate ground discrimination between cheap aluminum and precious metals. Well, a lot of those cans were steel, too, in the early days with the beer, the pull tab. I think they were steel, some of them. The early ones, yeah. That's some of my earliest memories they were before aluminum, and so they were not crushable. And then I remember when the thin aluminum came out, and that was a lot of fun. But back to the thing, and the next revolution was the can with the top that had the two punch button openings. So you would press down, and they were circular, and one was bigger than the other. And that's the one where you always felt like you were going to cut your thumb. I don't think I ever did, but that was like, wow, this is the first innovation we've seen since the pull tab, because I think they realized, like, this can't go on. There's got to be a better solution to this. And so that was it. And then the one after that was finally the one where you pull the tab forward, and it stays on top of the can. And to Tom's point, you can see in the longer intrusion that came on during Doctor Who, he does, he picks up another can, and he throws it right then when he's talking about your love is fading. But you can't ever make out what's on that can. You can see that it's got a pull tab opening at the top there. So I don't even know. It could even be the same Pepsi can that he first threw down. It could be. And maybe there's no message in it. Maybe he's just playing with whatever props he has around him. I don't know. I had told Tom, though, this story that I'll just briefly share, and I may have said it on the show once before. But in one of the cast members' dressing rooms at Saturday Night Live on the ninth floor, you know, it's Studio 8H, and then the dressing rooms are up on nine right above there. One of the cast members' rooms when my wife was there for the 10 years that she was there, it had a little closet door back in the back that went into a utility, like a mechanical area. And you go back and you open this little door, and inside there was a hot water heater, like decommissioned, but still in there. And you could see some pipes and one folding chair. So whoever the cast members were, the first one that had it probably is a room that they used to go in and maybe have a smoke or whatever. And on top of that hot water heater is a beer can with a pull tab. It's empty, and the pull tab thing is gone, but it's sitting up there on that hot water heater. And at the time that I saw it, it had been there like 20 years, and nobody touched it out of reverence. I don't know if it's still there. It definitely used to be John Belushi's dressing room. So people, I think, thought that it was his beer. I was about to say, I would love to have believed that it was John Belushi who drank that beer, left the can on top of the water heater. Left that can there and just continued to leave it there. And yeah, and anyone else that came along decided to leave it too. Right. Well, that Pepsi can, if anybody had that, I guess there's no way to validate that. But that Pepsi can from the Max Headroom signal intrusion would be legendary in a way, along with a few other items. Well, let's move on to one of the things that we promised in part one, was that we were going to talk a little bit about who Max Headroom was, the actual Max Headroom, that inspired this takeover and this mask. Because it turns out there's a lot of things that sort of fold in on themselves here. Max Headroom was advertised originally as the first computer-generated character, which led some to believe he was entirely CGI. But that was a trick. It was really an illusion. And it was an illusion created through prosthetic makeup, contact lenses, and a fiberglass molded suit worn by Matt Frewer, the actor. And that was combined with harsh lighting, editing effects, which you've seen when you watch Max Headroom videos. If you haven't looked up, please look him up now. And it's all up against a blue screen. Now, the suit was made from two pieces of fiberglass. And preparing for filming for the actor, Matt Frewer, who played the original Max Headroom, that was a session, a makeup session that took four and a half hours for him. He described it as grueling and not fun. And said, quote, it was like being on the inside of a giant tennis ball. But here's the interesting thing. So that original suit was designed by John Humphreys and Peter Lytton. Now, if you're a longtime listener, John Humphreys will be familiar to you. In August of 2020, we did a two-part series on the infamous alien autopsy film, where we interviewed filmmaker and magician Spiros Malaris. Spoiler alert, the world-famous alien autopsy film was a hoax perpetrated by Malaris. Now, some people still seem to be in denial about this, but it's unquestionable once you talk to them. Just, you have to listen to those episodes if you want to know more about it. But that aside, one of the people that Spiros recruited to create his mind-bending, amazingly convincing alien for that film was John Humphreys. And he talks extensively about John in our series on alien autopsy. And honestly, it's super fascinating because there was some tension between them after that got made. That's another story. Again, go back and find our series if you want to know more about that. But here's the everything is connected moment here. The alien in Alien Autopsy was designed and created by the same man who co-created the costume for Max Hedrum. Spiros calls John, well, Sarah, just play this segment from our episode on Alien Autopsy. I've got to tell you, John Humphreys is one of the leading sculptors in the world today. He's a Royal Academy lecturer today. And how's this for meta? John Humphreys worked on Doctor Who as well. So now you've got this guy who worked on Doctor Who and helped to design Max Hedrum, connected to Pirate Max, interrupting a Doctor Who episode on WTTW, which was originally intended to interrupt the news on WGN. But Pirate Max is wearing a mask based on Humphreys' creation. And on top of that, the alien in Alien Autopsy, same guy. So there's a whole world of John Humphreys. Well, media is meta. Yes. Well, it's very self-reflexive. It's a small community. And the people who work in it, which is relevant to who may have pulled this off, it's a small community of people who have this. Yeah, exactly. So I think you and I were talking about this as far as hiring practices. You've worked a little bit on feature films. I have as well. And one thing I will say, if you go to film school and you try to make, even if you make a 16mm film, and you have a lot of lights, at least in film school, that are used by the pros. And you have a lot of the tools. You're meant to learn from them. Even when it's not the resolution of 35mm film, but you have airy cameras, you have some of the best 16mm cameras out there and all the lighting. And then you look at your films like, why does my film look like crap? And this feature film looks terrific. Well, because those people are at the very top of their profession. Because this is what ensures it. And it doesn't sound very fair or nice. But on a film set, if you goof up, if you piss off the wrong person, if you do the wrong thing, what I call setiquette, what you should and should not do on a set, you are gone within minutes. And it could be your whole crew. I've seen the entire camera department. Yeah. They fire the DP. That means his first cameraman, the clapper, loader, everybody's gone. And they will have you replaced within an hour and a half. Because people want to work and they make very good wages. But that's what ensures that you have the best people because you can be fired at any second. So people perform at their very highest level. And, yeah, there's a lot of goofing around and people are silly. There's very long hours on film sets. But it's a profession and a business that does not suffer fools. That also reminded me of John Chambers, also when we did Alien Autopsy. But you may know John Chambers from when we covered the Patterson-Gimlin film because a lot of people were saying, like, oh, I think he did it. But he's one of the top makeup special effects guys in Hollywood. And I believe that he came out and said, yeah, I mean, we probably couldn't pull this off. Like, that level would be so advanced. You'd need so much more money, so much more time. It's very unlikely that these two cowboys could do it. That's reference, folks, to the Patterson-Gimlin film that we covered extensively in a multi-part series, the Bigfoot movie from the 60s that everyone has seen. And so now we have Peter Litton as well. Well, Mr. Litton is now retired, he's a retired director and designer. And he actually worked on the Rocky Horror Picture Show before studying special effects and animatronics and going to work on The Elephant Man and the very first Star Wars. And he did special effects on The Young Ones. And wait for it. Wow, one of my favorite shows. Doctor Who. Another thing that- Doctor Who. Yeah. Well, here we go again. I think you and I watched a little bit of, it's an hour-long episode of Max Headroom, 20 Minutes into the Future. And in that, one of the two villains who are kind of the, they're fixers, let's say, for the evil network boss. Yes, Network 23. They're kind of like Burke and Hare characters. Remember the two guys that were stealing corpses in Edinburgh in the 1820s, I think, for anatomical use, but they were just murdering people. Well, Doctor Who is a through line here. Yeah, it's touching everything. The Doctor touches everything here. You know, maybe childhood Rob Southgate was onto something when he thought the whole thing was some kind of planned Doctor Who meta event, because behind the scenes, it does seem to be really weirdly all connected. Yeah, strange. But these are the guys who brought the original Max Headroom to life. So yeah, real life professional guys. But who were the actual creators of the character, the concept of the character? Well, the character was created by Rocky Morton, Annabelle Jankel, and George Stone. And there's a great interview with Annabelle Jankel from Den of Geek. This article was posted back in March of 2008. It does have an avatar for an author, but no name. I think something's wrong with the webpage. So we can't credit the journalist, unfortunately, but we do have a link to that article in our show notes. There's a couple of excerpts here that are pretty interesting with Annabelle about the origins of Max. She says, George Stone, our original writer and co-creator, came up with the title in response to a request to Rocky Morton, George Stone, and myself, for a TV series to be devised that would showcase existing music videos for the newly launched TV channel in the UK, Channel 4. The brief was to link music videos with graphic elements to segue between the music videos. George Stone proposed the title, and Rocky Morton and I had an animation company called Cucumber Studios doing commercials, music videos, and titles. We had been experimenting with live action and embryonic computer graphics, and the title, The Max Headroom Show, was more about evoking a sense of limitless possibilities than about a character at that early stage of development. So that's interesting. They're kind of at the cutting edge artistically and creatively of this stuff. But here's another question that came from the interviewer. You co-wrote a book on computer graphics before Max Headroom and Max was a masterpiece of basic textureless fong shading from the look of it. Did you attempt to render the character before deciding on an actor? And this is what was fascinating to me. She says, we fully researched the potential to generate an actual CG head by going to various academic and production facilities. But the state of the art was so unacceptably basic and uninteresting that we recognized that what was needed was a sleight of hand to engage an audience. We had recently visited the U.S. and found it fascinating how the talking head dominated the airwaves. And so we elected to look for an actor that could provide the heart and soul of the character. The approach we took was to combine all the techniques that we were familiar with. animation, live action, computer graphics, video editing, special effects, special visual effects, sound effects, and so on to create an amalgam that couldn't be characterized as one specific thing and therefore function as a new creation. So this is how art works. This is how Max Headroom, the original Max Headroom, was created. I love it. I think it's really cool. Her book, by the way, which you can find on Amazon still in a hardcover edition, it's called Creative Computer Graphics. The hardcover is like $71 used. It might be out of print. It looks so cool. It's like a coffee table book. The cover of it has a character that is reminiscent of the guy that floats through in the Money for Nothing Dire Straits video. Yeah. So they were kind of on the leading edge of this because they were making really cool music videos back then, Rocky Morton and Annabelle Janko. They were partners at the time. I just love that they took all this stuff, they put it together, and she saw the future. They saw the future of where things were going, but they were like, it's not there yet. So then out of necessity, they create this thing of what they think a future graphic might look like. Right, right. They go squarely into Uncanny Valley and don't care because the more uncanny it is, the more memorable they think it will be. And it did turn out to be a cultural touchstone. Max Headroom became a cultural touchstone. That combined with Matt Frewer's performance as Max, which was just excellent, I think. I would say that the idea wasn't ahead of its time. The technical execution was, like I said, you have an idea here where you, it's ahead of what you can actually do, but you know what you want to do. You know what you want it to look like. And as I've, we said before, talking about movies, the best producers I've ever worked with, I always say they know exactly what they want to see on the screen. And the worst ones were ones that were hesitant or had no idea. And then you end up working extra hard to produce a bunch of stuff and waste a lot of time and money. Again, it's also borrowing from the realms of video art, conceptualizing where computer graphics and early AI is going. And you know, these ideas, you'll see them in some twilight zones, outer limits. You'll see the, this is really kind of nothing new or the chess playing automaton of the previous centuries. And so people had an idea that there's could be some kind of artificial bot or intelligence or something that is better than you, beats you at chess, is smarter, wittier, uncontrollable, can pop in at any moment. And that's why you have the idea here. And I think that's, you know, obviously what we're talking about is that these pranksters chose a character that represents all that, that you have no control over. He's his own thing now. And he just shows up. He might annoy you. He might make you laugh. But he's elusive. And he's like, he's like Skynet. He's just a consciousness just floating around the ethers there. You can't engage with him physically. You can only engage with him through the video medium. My point about the attitude of young people in the 80s was that they didn't want to be marketed to by the man. And so when you do a lot of reading on, on this signal broadcast intrusion here, the pirate TV is that it was a comment on quote, unquote, the man. That's right. And the man controlling everything. And it's like, oh yeah, well, you might be the man, but us little people here, we have some power. We have some agency. I'm not sure I even have to use that term. But the fact that we don't want to be marketed to, unless it's something we want, you're going to commercialize everything and you're going to ram it down our throats and charge us money for it. We don't like it. We want to choose and be able to pick what we want to see. And that's what Max represented. He's like, oh, you don't have control over me. I'm going to just pop on in the middle of whatever you're doing and make some slide comments and also be a commentary on culture and commerce and all that good stuff. And that's what Rocky and Annabelle were going for there. They wanted to create this cynical, ironic host who appeared as a conservative middle-class man in a suit and tie talking about music videos in a boring way. And Rocky described him as, quote, very sterile, arrogant, Western personification of the middle-class male TV host. So getting onto the air, the Max that George, Rocky, and Annabelle created made his debut in April 1985, which is going to be two years before the pirate incident, on Channel 4 in the British cyberpunk TV movie, Max Headroom 20 Minutes Into the Future, which is really cool. We have a link to that. That's on YouTube. This movie served as his origin story. In the film, Edison Carter, which is Matt Frewer playing a crusading journalist in this dystopian future dominated by TV and large corporations. And it's got very much a RoboCop kind of feel to it. It also reminds me a lot of Terry Gilliam's work with Brazil. There's a lot of screens and camera reticles and blown out black and white, noisy video and things like that. It was a very specific vibe at the time from a media landscape standpoint. But at this point, Matt Frewer, as this journalist, is fleeing his enemies on a motorcycle. He crashes into a parking garage barrier with a sign reading, Max Headroom 2.3 Meters. So he's knocked out into a coma or whatever while he's unconscious. An AI program based on his mind is created, and that develops a personality of its own calling itself Max Headroom, and it becomes a TV host who exists only on broadcast signals and computer systems. So Max Headroom was the last thing he saw before his accident. And George Stone said, this is in all our parking garages all over the UK. It's instant branding. It's instant recognition. We can co-opt marketing that's already out there in a way. So in the original movie, Max and the character Edison Carter never meet. But there are a lot of graphics in the backgrounds, futuristic graphics, which look sort of like Tempest if you ever played old video games or something, not quite as sophisticated. Those were created using, at the time, a top-of-the-line computer, the Commodore Amiga. That was for the graphical stuff, the real graphic stuff. I think this is pretty interesting because essentially there's this idea that they're cloning the character Edison Carter as an AI avatar, which is something you can do. I'm getting advertised this, Forrest, to me on Instagram, like today. I scroll down, it's like, yay, clone yourself. Oh, well. You're going to answer a bunch of questions, and it's going to make you. And then you can get this one to go do work for you, which of course is not. There's no way that's working right yet. But it probably will be in five years, you know? Well, that's the horror of the Black Mirror, which is the theme of a bunch of episodes where one of the worst ones you can think of is that you have a digital or alternate consciousness of yourself that is your own slave. And so it's just embedded in your head and it does all your scheduling. Yeah, that's right. I've seen that one. Yes, yeah. Yeah, which is awful. It's like, that's very complicated and interesting concept in that would you enslave and torture your own consciousness for your own benefit and then who's really controlled? Because it is, for all intents and purposes, it is just another duplicate of yourself. So you're still suffering. It's just another, you've split off your consciousness and you're into something else. But the physical you part holds the power and you're able to dominate yourself again just to do your dirty work, your taxes, whatever. And basically you have to otherwise. Anyways, I remember the, I think the punishment was if you didn't follow directions, you were just, I think John Hamm was one of the controllers. He said, oh, you don't want to do this? Here's two weeks of nothingness where you're just bored. Shut off. You're just shut off. You're actually experiencing time, but there's absolutely nothing. And then you talk back, well, here's six months of nothingness and then you're willing to do it. But I just want to put in, talking about the image of Bob for a little bit going back, do you remember the Church of the Subgenius? Yes, I do. But I don't know why. I remember that, the words, that phrase. What is that? It had a very iconic character that is a, because you just reminded me of like a, that very generic, you know, 1950s white guy. He's often shown smoking a pipe and he's just a, he's basically just an iconic image. If you take a look at that. Oh yeah. J.R. Bob Dobbs. I just looked it up. That's right. So. Yes. I remember these stickers. I remember this image. Yes. But I don't know. I think I was too young to wrap my head around it when I remember seeing it. No, it really got popularity with college kids, I think. But the Church of the Subgenius, it's basically a parody religion of sorts. J.R. Bob Dobbs is the iconic figure behind that. But he's, that's kind of, I think what Max Hedron was supposed to be. He's that squeaky clean 1950s image in which Max embodies a lot of it. And it becomes subversive in the fact when he doesn't behave like that. Yes. Like he's supposed to be, you know, he's 1950s white guy dad. And then when he says stuff that's subversive or sarcastic and ironic, that kind of flips that all on its head and it becomes more effective. And so filmmaker Luis Bunuel, the surrealist, would say that the most effective parody and sarcasm is when it closely mimics what you're trying to skewer. And so the closer it is, that's when people really take notice. Because if it's too far off, they just laugh it off as comical. Same thing with J.R. Bob Dobbs. This was founded, I think, by Ivan Stang in the 70s. So again, predates Max and all that. They're using the tact of culture jamming, not signal jamming, culture jamming, in that you can parody the bigger religions. And the church or this movement instructs their followers to avoid mainstream commercialism and the belief in absolute truths. That's just from the wiki entry here. So the idea, it's a little bit like what Max is doing is that you're rejecting commercialism or at least pay attention and to know when you're being marketed to and to not accept everything so blindly and have a little bit of a resistance to things. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. 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So, if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. Hi, I'm Matt McCoy, and you're listening to Astonishing Legends with Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess. Now back to the show. Well, there is a really cool scene in the movie where it's being explained what's happening, how Max Headroom is coming to be. And we can't share that audio because if we do, the YouTube version of this show will get demonetized or possibly blocked. But what we did find was a copy of the second draft of the pilot. And in comparison to the actual scene, the way it wound up, it's not exactly the same, but it's pretty close. I wanted to read some of this. So, this is Edison Carter, played by Matt Frewer, is, I guess, lying in the room on a gurney or whatever, theoretically unconscious. Maybe he's in a coma. It's not made super clear. And he's overhearing this conversation between a character named Grossman, who's like big boss in charge of things. Yeah, the network boss at Network 23. And then this kid, Bryce, who's computer genius, right? But he's like a black hat hacker, though. Exactly. Yes. And the stage direction. So, you hear, if anyone here that's listening has ever read a script, you know, you have stage directions and dialogue. Some of the stage directions say, Forrest, why don't you read the stage directions? And then I'll share the dialogue from this one scene. So, this is scene 45, I believe. Bryce's studio. Grossman is seated before the screen array, watching Bryce with a mixture of skepticism and admiring incredulity as he adjusts the equipment. The following conversation is heard as if by Edison. And just so people know, Edison Carter is the character, the real life character that Matt Frewer is playing. Yes. On screen, a medley of images, war zones, riots, interviews, airline desks, max headroom, 1.3 meters. A girl. A surreal montage of Edison's mind and experience. The strange land of the subconscious being mapped by Bryce's technique. It is heard in hypnotic trance, like a coma of those last seconds before unconsciousness induced by anesthetic. The dialogue will drift in and out and mix voices. All right, so now here's the character, Bryce, the black hat hacker. All the, and he's talking to Grossman, the big boss, all the information in the mind and replay it at will. Old gramophone records had a complete orchestra in a groove, parrots, squawk, research funds not to be starved. We can record all the information in his mind and replay it at will. Just like the old gramophone records captured the sounds and colors of an entire orchestra on a single groove. I can record all the information in detail of his mind. It is a stunning breakthrough. Think of the implications. TV presenters, admin, politicians. My early experiments with the parrot have proved the system works. I can make him squawk whenever I want. My research funds must not be starved now. And then Grossman says, do you ever sleep, Bryce? And Bryce responds, only physically. I learned the trick at a school for specially gifted children. Quite simple, really. Yes. Mr. Carter's sexual memory is most illuminating. They didn't teach that. It's a pity that I can't generate all his body on screen yet. Only the head and shoulders. But one day I will be able to computer generate the whole person. Holograms may be the answer. A whole person who exists only in a computer. And then Grossman responds, real people who don't exist? How far ahead are you with this? So the scene goes on. But this is kind of what's happening now with AI and avatars and all the stuff that's going on. This is 37 years prior to that. Now, to your point, Gross, it's a very interesting point that you made a little bit ago about mankind is always conceived of this. Like, as you said, automatons and people who believe that chess machines were beating them at chess when really it was just a chess master was hiding underneath pulling levers. But there were other things going on where there was always like, oh, what technological breakthrough will replace us or assist us in our day-to-day life? So I think that's pretty fascinating. And especially for a show this old. But it's also a very creative idea, which obviously had staying power. Well, yeah, as I think we've mentioned in part one, and certainly have before in other episodes, this idea is nothing new. I mean, talk about 1950 sci-fi. It's the brain in a jar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or on Futurama, where you can just have your head in a jar. And in the future, you're still alive. You're just kind of passed around, just floating in fluid. And then in real life, if you can't afford to cryogenically freeze your whole body for years and just hope that they keep the temperature up, which there is another great This American Life, where somebody was, that company folded for some of that. And the guy was trying to maintain it in his garage. And like, eh, it's not really near freezing. It's, your people are thawing out. Yeah, it's nothing new. It's that blend of machine and man. And as soon as the advent of more complicated machinery, you then have the concept of like, well, some parts of you could be machine, like a cyborg, or all of you could be a machine. And then I think early on, though, you had the pre-history times, you had the concept of man merging with something spiritual characters, paranormal, supernatural characters. And then you have hybrids of man and beast. And we're always thinking of this chimera idea that you can meld and have powers greater than man alone or human beings alone. But basically what we talked about, I think, may in part one is that, you know, the idea here is what futurist Ray Kurzweil talks about in his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology. And then there was a follow-up book, I think, The Singularity Is Near. And that just came out in June of last year, 2024. We've mentioned it on the air. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have a lot. I mean, Kurzweil was thinking about evolutionary growth that is exponential, where basically you have four phases of a technological evolution. And just look at how things have sped up here with genetics and nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, computers, everything in that field. And again, that's nothing new, because I think Alan Watts, we've talked about before, which I think are pretty fascinating. And those are concepts I believe he came up with at the end of the 1950s into the 60s. So it predates this, that there will be a melding of human mind. And then, of course, now you have a neural link, right, which is Musk's endeavor here to implant stuff. But basically, what Kurzweil was saying is he was embracing a term, the singularity. And even that comes from a 1993 essay, or Werner Vinge, in that you will have this combination of mind and mechanics or electronics or computer intelligence. And that basically what's going to happen at some point, machine intelligence is going to be much more powerful than all human intelligence all put together. And at that point, you're going to merge. And I think he says here, he's predicting a date for the singularity, which he calls a representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability in the year 2045. So that's coming down the pike. That'll be fun to look forward to. Maybe not. But the idea is that you can download your whole consciousness and your memories and your intelligence and keep it in a hard drive of sorts. And again, that's been used a lot in media. I think of the X-Files episode, Killswitch. That was written by William Gibson and Tom Maddox, also sci-fi futurists. A lot of people here will know who William Gibson is. But the idea is that in that episode, you're able to transfer your consciousness or download it or upload it to a computer and you kind of become your own entity here. Same thing, Lawn Mower Man. Again, it's used quite a bit because it's a fascinating prospect. And I think a lot of people do wonder if that's where we're headed and it's frightening. And so here with Max Headroom and Pirate Max, you have a little taste that's very mechanical. A bit crude, but that concept is there. And I think it maybe points to the more frightening question, if this is created, if it does evolve, especially exponentially, will we be able to control it? That's at the end of this. That's what everyone's afraid of. Is it going to take over? And then we're now at the mercy of some computer-generated goofball who may not be so nice to humans. Yeah. Well, and that's, again, that's a concern that is current to today's headlines. Well, so two days after they aired that movie, Max Headroom was hosting the show on Channel 4, the Max Headroom Show, playing music videos and introducing them going in and out of the videos. And the early episodes of that were beginning and ending with static because like he was pirating into the signal. And during this time, Matt Frewer, who was not well-known, was under contract to keep his identity secret. So, I mean, now if you know Matt Frewer, you're like, oh, that's Matt Frewer. But back then, people didn't really know who he was, so that played into this whole thing. It's like, oh, it's CGI. And it won an award for graphics, even though there were hardly any graphics in it. It was just the backgrounds from the Amiga thing. All of Max was prosthetics and fiberglass and inside of a tennis ball, as he said. But later, he got these huge ad campaigns with, you know, he was doing Catch the Wave for Coca-Cola. That was a big deal, 1987, which was referenced during the Pirate Max broadcast. But here's the other thing that's interesting. In 87, ABC in the U.S. acquired the rights to create a dramatic series titled Max Headroom based on the original movie's story and concepts. And that aired from March 31st of 87 to May 5th of 1988. And the Pirate Max incursion was right in the middle of that. So this, again, set in a future dystopia ruled by television networks. And it had Max Headroom and Edison Carter working together in it. And some of the old actors came back, but it didn't do that great. So it wasn't on that long. It was just two seasons. But what's interesting is how much it's been intertwined with pop culture. And a lot of people would, I mean, I'm sure we would hear about it if we didn't mention it. Eminem's music video for Rap God, which is just mind-blowingly cool. It's directed by Rich Lee. It ran on, let's see, November 21st, 2013. He tweeted the trailer for it. Max Headroom is all through it. He's playing Max Headroom in it, but there's lots of other pop culture references. But there's a lot of that. It is one of the first videos to reach a billion views. Or what was the third one of his? Oh, yes, yes, yes. But one of the first to reach one billion views, which is pretty amazing. And quite a few utterances that many would find problematic. So just a warning if you go to... Well, Eminem is problematic. Well, and attempting to be. And that's part of his message. Freedom of speech, as they say. But there was in 2022, they said they were rebooting it, but it never came around. There was word was that it was going to be, I think, Tobey Maguire or somebody. But it seems like it's been very quiet for a long time. That was AMC that was talking about that. So that might be frozen or in development hell or whatever. But here's what Annabelle Jankel said when she was personally asked about the Pirate Max signal. This was the question from the unnamed journalist in the Den of Geek article. Were you honored or alarmed when you heard of the real-life pirating incidents where a fake Max Headroom interrupted PBS and another American channel? Her response to that was, I personally didn't hear about it until long after. And of course, there was no YouTube in those days. I think it was impressive that there was the motivation and technical talent out there to shake things up. The beginnings of interactivity, which is a very Annabelle Jankel quote. And I think really cool. It's like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do this. We put it out there, take it and run with it. Well, yeah, that's kind of what we're saying here. We're also impressed with the motivation and technical talent to be able to shake things up and the interactivity. But it depends on how much. Because we still want to see our shows and we don't want somebody interrupting them all the time. Right. So a little bit here and there at prescribed times is fine. It just, again, it depends on how much takeover there is and also what the message is. And I just want to share this one last question because this leads to how I crossed paths with Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jankel and their business partner, David Zander, back in the day. The question was, you have an extensive background in TV advertising amongst many other facets. Did you participate in bringing the Max character through his various TV incarnations, such as the new Coke ad, the chat show in the American reboot of the UK pilot and subsequent series? She responds, Rocky Morton, George Stone, and I created the original character, the Bible, and made the first UK TV film, the original story, and the 13-part TV series that followed all for the UK's Channel 4. We were not involved in the new Coke spots or the subsequent US TV film or TV series. So here's what's interesting for me. I worked with Annabelle Jankel and Rocky Morton a few times back in the 90s when they were doing a ton of music videos and commercials in LA. And I was working in the same business. They actually directed what Billboard Magazine calls one of the top 40 music videos of all time. That's the one for the TomTom Club for the song Genius of Love. Look it up. You'll find it pretty easily. You know the song, even if you don't recognize the title. That came out in 81, though. That was four years before they would create Max Headroom and 13 or 14 years before I would even cross paths with them. But very cool people. It was amazing to be around them the small number of times that I was. But what's interesting again here is Morton and Jankel had nothing to do with the TV series here in the US. But here's what's fascinating. In episode one of season two of that series, Max himself, as he's on the air with his own show, is the victim of a hijacking by hackers calling themselves zippers. So we're getting meta again here. He's on the air in this fictional world for Network 23, the network that Edison Carter, whose personality makes up Max's AI, even though they weren't really calling it AI then, used to work for. And his signal gets hijacked by pirates. That aired on September 18, 1987, just 65 days before the hacking incident. So that's the question. Was that a motivation? Were they watching that? Did they get an idea to do what they did, Pirate Max and his accomplices, from that episode of the premiere of season two? Because that's exactly what happens. Another thing that I have to mention is because I'm a huge fan of the group, The Art of Noise and all their various albums. One of their albums that is one of my favorites, it's called Invisible Silence, has a song on it that was a huge hit on the charts called Paranomia, which is the art of noise doing their thing and Max Headroom singing over it. And it charted. So you've got to look that up. Look up Paranomia, P-A-R-A-N-O-I-M-I-A, if you want to hear him singing a song. The real Max Headroom, not the Pirate Max. Yeah. I mean, like I said, it's reflexive. TV is reflexive on itself. You're viewing your own culture and your own thoughts and portrayed by others much better than you could in a lot of, not you personally, I'm just saying we as viewers here. And that's the allure of TV. You're seeing, in many cases, what you prefer to see in an idealized fashion. And then with Max, though, you know, when you think about it, they could have chose any character. They could have worn a presidential rubber mask and done something political. They could have done just a goofy Halloween mask or a balaclava, something just covering their face. And they chose Max because I think it was the most obvious representation of what you're trying to accomplish here and that he just breaks in. He's nonsensical. You don't really understand what's going on. And like that, he's gone. And he's elusive. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. 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They said the pirate broadcast likely originated from somewhere in the line of sight of both stations, which is something Forrest mentioned earlier. So, both stations' broadcast towers, which were located atop two of the tall buildings in downtown Chicago, the John Hancock Center for WGN and the Sears Tower or the Willis Tower for WTTW, which was also shared by WGN. Now, someone might have been in that building or area to be close to the transmitter, but the hackers would have targeted the station's what's called the STL, the studio-to-transmitter link. And this is described as the most vulnerable point in the broadcast chain. This microwave link carries programming from the studio to the main transmitter. So, if you overpower that, you can break in. You can pirate into the signal. For WGN engineers, they were able to regain control by changing the frequency of that studio to transmitter link. So, that's what they did. That only took them 37 seconds. And it was a big bust for Pirate Max at that point, too, because also he was having audio problems. Because I don't think he intended to not be speaking in that. I think their audio was not working. And that's why you've got this 37-second thing. He's talking. It's not coming through. And on top of that, they managed to switch the link frequency. Even then, though, that's a bit of an accomplishment, like I said. Yeah, it's awesome. Well, that you pop in of just something, like I said, it's a bit of a prank. But, yeah, to that point, there was one quote here. You know, the morning after, of course, engineers are trying to figure out what happened. And WTTW broadcast engineer, Al Skirkowicz, had a quote here. And this is on their own website, the WTTW website, that he thought it had to be somebody that was pretty sophisticated with their technical knowledge. Quote, it had to be a broadcast engineer, a satellite engineer, or a ham radio operator, end quote, and said, and probably a combination of at least two of those in order to pull this off. The ham radio part, I find interesting as something that he would mention only because that is more public, you could say. There's a lot of ham radio people that can learn and get licenses on their own, just studying on their own. That's in the signal broadcast department here. The satellite technical knowledge, that's even more rare. And that would point to somebody with that kind of knowledge from working in it. The TV knowledge in general, and this, I'll probably mention this in my, you know, final thoughts here, but I'm not so sure it was somebody who worked in the field, in the industry. Okay. But I'll set that aside for the moment. Okay. Well, you know, there were folks that said that the gear that these folks had might have just been a few thousand dollars, although other folks said, no, it could be $10,000, it could be $100,000. But no matter what, it wasn't something that you could just do from home, you know, go down to Home Depot and pick up a few things and, you know, you're breaking into the signal. But the observation being the equipment would have to be on par with or better or closer to whatever was receiving the signal. So, again, you know, to what you just said, Forrest, a lot of folks speculated this has got to be an inside job. Disgruntled employee, somebody got fired, somebody with a gripe against WGN, more than likely. Rather than WTTW, because as we said, WTTW seems like it was a backup hack when the WGN one couldn't work anymore. Right. It was the next best choice. But I think, you know, from what we've seen, the equipment, well, there was somebody, and I think they appeared in the Reign of Brothers documentary, who one of the FCC authorities or investigators, could have been from the FBI, said, well, you know, you could cobble this together at some parts store if you knew what you were doing. Not exactly black market. It's just that a lot of people have old, we know folks, with a lot of old TV and broadcast junk laying around, they're willing to sell it to you. If you knew how to patch that stuff together, you could do this. It wasn't obviously somebody at the station at the time. Right. Unlike the Captain Midnight incident. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about some of these other notable incidents, because they're pretty amazing. Captain Midnight, that's a really good one. This involved the hijacking of HBO's satellite signal during them having color bars up. A text message came up protesting HBO's $12.95 monthly fee and warning viewers about Showtime and the movie channel. The message lasted about four and a half minutes. The FCC identified 580 satellite uplink companies capable of such an act and by analyzing the typeface, because that's what the FBI does, narrowed it down to a few suspects. However, before they could bust the guy, John McDougall, a satellite uplink employee, confessed. He came forward. He was like, I did it. He was feeling guilty, apparently. And he stated that he was protesting the price that HBO was wanting to charge. And this incident wound up leading to new laws about signal hijacking now being a felony in 1986, which is the year before the Pirate Max incident. So what's interesting about that, Forrest, and for our listeners who are younger, it's like, wait, wait, I don't understand HBO. That's part of my channel package. I don't know anything about it. What it is, is when cable TV was first invented, these pay channels came out that would come down through the cable, and you had to pay for each channel. And HBO was really cool because it had movies. It was HBO. Maybe you don't know what it stands for. You think of HBO. It's now called Max. HBO stood for Home Box Office. And that's because they had movies. They had movies that you did not see on TV. So they would get them after they did their theater runs or theatrical runs. And you could watch that movie at home, which was revolutionary in combination with VCRs, because that's what you could do with VCRs as well. But you still, you had to go rent that, bring it home, and all this with HBO. It just came on. And the windows got smaller and smaller between when it left the theater and when you could watch it on TV if you just waited a few minutes. And now with streaming platforms, it's the same thing. People might be protesting, oh, God, how many? You have software that tells you how many subscriptions you have because you don't even know anymore. And a lot of times, they're releasing stuff simultaneously on the streaming platform and in the theater, or the window is very small. It's just a window or two. Well, you could thank COVID for that when the people were having to avoid the theaters. And so now you have the option. And I hope people don't forget that communal experience of going to the theater because that's where it was meant to be seen. It's a much larger screen. And you get the feedback from the audience. But I understand it's a lot easier. I haven't been to the theater in a few years myself. So HBO, you got a little booklet in the mail. Every month it showed you the channels because it was still not digital. You didn't have no home computer to show you the schedule, so you had it mailed to you. And that was just fun to flip through. But HBO came on at like 5 p.m. Right. In the evenings. And before that, you would just see bars and tone. You would see the color bars with a tone before it got uploaded to the satellite. And then they would repeat the same movies for weeks, for a month. It could be the same ones. Every night they would just run that because they had a limited selection of what was released to them. So, but it was such a novel thing that you would gladly just watch it over and over again. And it could be things like Heaven Can Wait. Or I just remember some fun films where you just, you didn't care. Like, well, there's not much else on. And again, you didn't have the choices, so you would watch that. But also a lot of comedy specials and sports specials on HBO, but not like it is today. Yeah. And so it was kind of a rare thing. But the Captain Midnight thing, that's an instance, though, of somebody at the station, I believe, as you were explaining here. Well, at the satellite uplink facility. Right. And so there was somebody kind of trying to battle him at the HBO Communications Center in Hoppock, New York. They're doing a little bit of battle here. And from what I read, the technician there tried to increase the uplink power, but the levels got so high, he thought he might damage the satellite. And so there's a little bit of a battle there going on for the signal intensity. Yeah. And I want to say something to, I'm glad you brought that up because this is a thing I remember from my time in broadcast when I used to have to, before things could be transmitted digitally at broadcast quality, sometimes we would have to take a tape and send it through a satellite window from Los Angeles to New York. You had this 15 minute window, you show up at this facility, you have a hot broadcast master, the guy puts it in a deck and presses play, and then somebody in New York presses record, goes up and down from the satellite. But one of the things it has, you have the oscilloscope, and this is for our listeners, which is like the waveform thing that you always see, it's like green. Yeah, yeah. And you can adjust your levels. And one of the levels that was the most dangerous was the color red. And if your red is really, really hot, as they say, really blown out, it can fry transmitters. And this is what happens with these signals to what Forrest is saying now. I'm sure it's the same thing with satellites. It's like the signal has to be within certain parameters. Are you going to kill this multi-million dollar equipment that's responsible for moving it from one place to the next? Well, something that Dan Cummins said, and I think, I'm sure we mentioned it before, maybe in part one, is that some people in the 80s, you could buy your own satellite dish. Now, if you live in a larger city or you see the TV stations, you'll see like a little farm. So it'll be like a big, giant parking lot, and it'll have several satellite dishes. And that's kind of what Scott's talking about. On the professional level- Yes, CycleSat was the company I used to go to. Right. And so that's how you got stuff transmitted. But back in the 80s, what became popular is that you can get your own satellite dish, and it had a little motor on it, and you had a kind of a thick manual or a schedule. And you could see just broadcasts around the world or what the satellites were carrying. And at certain times, you would aim your dish, and you could see the live feed. That's right. Watch the news in France. Right. And so the joke was that there's no commercials. So you saw, like with newscasters, when they get to sit down on the- Oh, yes. At the desk here. And Harry Shearer, yeah, he used to do, he'd had a segment on his radio show called Les Show. And they would be funny things, like you'd see some newscaster, somebody famous, like combing their hair or wiping their nose, blowing their nose. Because you saw before they actually went on the air for the rest of the country. But you could also get all kinds of different TV from all over the world. So- Well, yeah. When I had a friend in high school that had one, her family had one at their lake house, and we were just like, oh, they're so rich. Yeah. We could watch TV from France. We would go up to the lake house with our friends and tune it around all night long, just moving that thing between different satellites. It was pretty cool. Yeah. Another one of the more famous ones, which Forrest referenced in part one, the Playboy Channel, what, 1987? Oh, yes. Which, this was two months before the Max Headroom incident. Their satellite signal was jammed, and a religious message containing Bible verses appeared. The FCC traced this to the Christian Broadcasting Network, CBN, and identified Thomas Haney, an upleak engineer, as the culprit. Investigators used clues like the character generator, which was a K-50, and a transmitter type, a variant Gen 2, with a specific power step-up time, which that power step-up time, I read a lot about while we were doing research for this. That is like a signature where you can track down specific gear based on that power step-up time. Just Google that if you want to learn more about it. It gets kind of into the weeds. But they used that to pinpoint CBN, and Haney was convicted for putting a religious message onto the Playboy Channel, which probably just got Playboy Channel more publicity. People were like, oh, there's a Playboy Channel? Yeah. So another one that's really fascinating was 1977, which was the Ashtar Galactic Command message. That one happened in southern England, where the audio of an early evening news program, again, the news, because that's probably what most people watched, was replaced by this message from Vrillon, V-R-I-L-L-O-N, warning about the removal of evil weapons and urging peace. Here's some of the transcript of that message. This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years, you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom, as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world, so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course, and on and on and on. Nice. Well, that's the common message. Yeah, it's a common message. It's kind of silly, and it's like, yeah, we've done a series on crop circles, and I actually believe in them, but this message makes me laugh. So it's like, the crop circles have kind of the same message in them. But something about this one is particularly funny to me. The other thing that's really interesting about this particular case was that the transmitter, I guess, was particularly vulnerable because they were able to hack into it from over 50 miles away instead of line of sight like we have in the Max Headroom case. And that signal came from over 50 miles away, so pretty wild. Right. I think the instance here, which was unusual, is that that transmitter there, the Hannington transmitter, was just rebroadcasting a signal. Right. And so it wasn't an original signal. It was like a signal booster here. Yeah. What had happened was that this pirate signal, it was able to overload the signal that was supposed to go out. So it was easily hackable, as I think what you were saying here. Yes. So this unauthorized transmitter, again, yeah, it was able to overpower it instead of the original source, a rowage transmitting station here. What I find is funny is that it is very much like, you know, 50 sci-fi and the message. Well, the thing is, this message is nothing new, as you've heard us talk about, especially with the Space Brothers era in the 50s and 60s and people, even the aerial school, the message is, hey, you guys need to save your planet. Yes. And we're here to remind you that you're not the most powerful things, but if you screw this up, we're going to have to step in. Yeah. And you're not going to like it. And then also the, just maybe perhaps the message at Malmstrom Air Base, where UFOs had shut down the missile silos, which were independently controlled, in a show of, you're not totally in control. Yeah. It's also considered a form of extraterrestrial hacking. Yeah, that's right. Or a form of signal jamming, in a sense. And it is to show that you are not totally in control, although you like to think you are. One thing I wanted to say about, yeah, in that these events do have effects, as we were talking about the Captain Midnight incident, from that act, that little bit of hijacking there, the U.S. Congress had passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. Yes. And that's when satellite hijacking became a felony. That's right. They're a little more serious about it. They saw the writing on the wall. We don't want a bunch of people doing this, even if the message is from our Space Brothers and it's a message of peace and conservation. There's a lot of other ones here, a lot of political ones that are fascinating, some in Poland that had to do with solidarity, Ukraine. I do want to mention one more that I thought was interesting. This comes from an article called Broadcast Signal Intrusions When TV or Radio Stations Get Hacked. It was written by Ken Kelly, posted on January 15th of 2023. We have a link to it. But this details an incident in early 2022, just before the invasion of Ukraine, where pirates spammed UVB-76, which is a Soviet-era shortwave radio station believed to be used by Russian intelligence. And you may remember those call numbers because we talked about it in our episode on numbers stations. That one is one of the prominent ones. It's called the Buzzer. We actually played some of the audio from it, which is pretty annoying. But what's hilarious about this is just in 2022, as recently as 2022, at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, these guys broke into it and spammed it and were playing Gungam style over that and some other specific audio frequencies. So that's kind of funny, I think. But after all of this, there was, of course, an FCC investigation, a criminal investigation. Dr. Michael Marcus, who was the assistant chief of field operations for the FCC, was in charge of that. The FBI also teamed up with them. They had been working on the Captain Midnight investigation, which obviously they had success with. And so they had some experience with other intrusion cases, and they were able to figure out how to narrow things down based on the gear or the fingerprints of the gear that might have been involved. But the investigation into the Max Headroom incident had a lot of significant challenges that were not there for Captain Midnight or the Playboy Channel hack because the Max Headroom hacker had no typed message on screen. So there was no character generator to analyze. And the perpetrator's face was covered by the mask. And the background was obscured by this spinning slab of corrugated metal, which everyone believes was actually rotated by hand by people off camera, which is one of the reasons they think there was three people there. And the audio was distorted, which disguised the voice. And they even speculated that it was run through some distortion gear, like you would use as a guitarist in a band or something. Essentially, they lacked clear visual or technical clues from this to narrow it down. And they said the only thing that they had to identify the perpetrator was the, quote, shiny white butt. Shiny? That was their mark there. But despite all this, Dr. Marcus's team was able to make some deductions. They theorized it likely required equipment costing only a few thousand dollars. They are the ones that figured out the location. They figured out or at least thought that it was probably shot in some sort of warehouse. And they thought that the person had to be someone who was highly technical. They also said they had received a strong tip pointing to a specific location in the Chicago metro area where the attack could have been launched from, but it didn't result in an arrest because there was no suspect. Dr. Marcus also said that the resources allocated to the case were less compared to the other incidents. He explained that was because Max Headroom wasn't perceived as a danger to public safety or any multi-million dollars piece of gear. It was just people lost interest. So despite extensive efforts, they didn't identify who was responsible for it. It is still unsolved. But it did highlight vulnerabilities in their broadcasting systems at the time, and it changed the conversation about that and how to avoid it in the future. There were some folks on Reddit that had this whole, of course, you know, armchair investigators and all that, and things get kind of sideways on Reddit, and it's gotten in trouble for it over the years. And I can say whatever I want about Reddit because I've been on it 16 years now, I think. I'm a lurker. Don't look for me. I never post. But there's a lot of crazy stuff that happens on there, and there were some folks that did their own investigation, including a Reddit user named B Pogue, P-O-A-G, or Bowie Pogue, some sources say. And he believed he knew, or they believed they knew, who was responsible for it. And they put down this whole theory about these two brothers, identified with the initials J and K, and talked about how they were active in the phone hacking scene, which was the original phone hacking back when you could break into all kinds of computer systems with analog phones with, you built like a little blue box or whatever, which had a touchpad on it. And you learned that certain keys would get you access to computer systems in the early days. Or make phone calls, again. For free. Another terrific This American Life episode. It was about this guy. It's his life story about he was either totally blind or near blind. Oh, I know this one, too. Yeah. And he was able to mimic AT&T tones over the phone because those act as codes. And you can get the phone to, he had unlimited long distance calling. Yeah. He could access certain things, but he did it with his mouth. Infinite response. And just whistling. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just by making weird noises with your mouth. That's pretty cool. Well, B-Pogue put in a, really did a pretty serious investigation in it, and it was actually very believable. This wasn't just like a fly-by-night, because a lot of times you get on there, especially after, you know, we're looking for the Boston bomber, Reddit went crazy, and was misidentifying people, or that may have famously been the Atlanta one. One of those went really sideways. Right. You're talking about, quote-unquote, Officer Reddit, who's just a collective danger. Yeah, Officer Reddit. Yeah. It gets a little dangerous when people are just, you know, doxing folks and being like, this is who did it. But B-Pogue was, you know, just said, oh, well, this is J and K. They were these two brothers. One of them is neurodivergent and has these capabilities, sophisticated technical abilities, and I think they probably did this. And they told me once they were having this big party, and they were going to do something crazy, and to keep an eye out and watch Channel 11, which was the PBS station that experienced the second longer intrusion. And that's something that, because B-Pogue said later he witnessed the hijacking, but didn't connect it to the conversation until much later. One thing that I think is interesting is, I don't think they ever intended to hack Channel 11. I think it was always Channel 9, WGN. I think Channel 11, they only went to it because the STL frequency got changed by WGN. So that, for me, is a red flag on this one. I don't think they would have said, we're going to hack the PBS station and then go on there and talk about Chuck Swirsky. Doesn't make sense, in my opinion. But a lot of people got into this theory. A lot of people believed it. And there were some people that anonymously confirmed it. There was a Motherboard article looking into this. A lot of people were paying attention to this, but there was no solid evidence. It was deemed anecdotal. And then B-Pogue returned in 2015, five years later, with a new theory and posted on the Unsolved Mysteries subreddit. At this point, he linked up with Rick Klein, the curator for the Museum of Classic Chicago Television, and they interviewed broadcasters. And what they came away from was that it just doesn't seem like anybody outside the industry could have pulled this off, which would rule out J and K. So despite all of this theory went really far, a lot of people were on board with it, but it just didn't hold water. And for me personally, it doesn't hold water. I don't think Channel 11 was ever the target. I think that was a backup after they couldn't get onto Channel 9 anymore. I think it was perhaps a likely backup. This is what I'm saying, is that I think maybe they were surprised at work the first time, but of course it didn't get as far as they wanted to. But they may have thought, again, these are smart folks, but did they have a backup plan? You know what I'm saying? You're getting all that together. You're taking that risk already. Yeah. You don't want to just pack it all up right then. So if it doesn't work for WGN, was there a backup? And obviously, I think maybe the lapse in time was them having to reset. Yeah, I agree. But they didn't reset their tape. Their tape was already made and it was aimed at WGN. Well, that's what I'm saying. You got to, especially at the beginning of the show, if you're going to make the tape also, I don't know, just plan something out, having it. Yeah. Because it seemed, but maybe that's also the charm of it. It seemed, you know, it's the feeling you get when you ever point a camera at somebody, especially a video camera, or if you're phoning your recording or you let them know, and then you feel compelled to do something, to mince around, to goof off and grab something nearby and ape for the camera. Yeah. And the monkey shines and all that. And that's the kind of feeling I got with it. It's like the tape is rolling. You had a few loose ideas. And so you're kind of just goofing around with it. And that's what was recorded, but that's what they got. So like you said, the first attempt didn't work. They went and set up in another location or reconfigured and then tried with the second one, but it's also because it is such a, again, a message to and about nerd core of just being, you know, freaking nerds about being a nerd, because that's what we were saying in part one, it most likely points to being somebody being very nerdy about this information, which again, as I'll say later, I think you could have maybe just been a electronics engineering nerd and had the knowledge to do this. A lot harder to get this knowledge back then though, by the way, just because everyone now it's like, oh, I can go on and have a chat GPT, teach me whatever I need to know. It's like back in 1987, you had to go find a person, a mentor, or you had to go read a book or a bunch of magazines if you wanted to learn how to do something like this. Right. But I think the pointing though of waiting, and again, I don't know if it's conscious decision, but I like the idea, I'd want to believe this, that the next best opportunity was a nerdy show like Doctor Who, and because they may have known a lot of people, their friends, their circle of friends that would have watched that. Yeah, but what I'll say is those two transmitters were right next to each other. It also may have been the only other chance they had without like fully packing up and going to another tower or, or, you know, some other local market, you know, figuring out where that, because that may have just allowed them to stay in the same place with the antenna pointed at the same thing. Like I said, I didn't, it wasn't a race across town to find, or go to the local hills there where the transmitters are. It was the next best thing, but also may have fit their plan because you're also doing this, I think, for the notoriety of your friends. As the B Pogue thread that I read through, because again, the initial part was removed, but the, it was kind of an ask me almost anything thread that lasted. What he described is that, well, did anybody say anything to you directly? Did you overhear something? He said, and I think the scenario was that this circle of computer and phone and tech nerds were at the pizza hut and he was at a big table and this guy was much younger then. So these are older guys. And so he's kind of eavesdropping. They're just allowing, you know, it's like the big brother, little brother thing. They're allowing his presence, but he's not so much an active member, but he remembers somebody mentioning at the table, like, well, just watch, just tune in at this time. And that they were going to attempt something. And again, I think being younger and not putting two and two together. And I understand that people say, well, why don't you, you know, why don't you tune in? And it's like, well, I, I didn't occur to me. You know, I didn't put those puzzle pieces together until much later. His story there in the explanation, when you read through it, it sounds very likely. Yeah, it does. It has a lot of details that sound very real. Right, right. But as you were saying, he came back later and said, uh, it didn't fit. I also think there seemed to be, if I remember correctly in that thread, when, when they came back and refuted it, there also seemed to be some guilt or concern about having implicated folks that weren't actually involved. Right. Even though he kept it to the initials, but they probably got minorly doxed in some way or another, which I think they might have. But anyway, well, I do want to say this pirate max, if you're out there, if you're listening to this, which I, you know, I don't know why you would, cause 50 other people have covered this topic before us, uh, it shows from all over the world, but we will treat you kindly. If you want to come clean, send us an email. We will protect your anonymity. As long as you can prove it was actually you, you'll have to find a way to prove it. Oh yeah. Just produce a Coke can from the eighties. We'll leave you. Yeah. Well, anybody can do that. A lot of people can do that. Well, that's what I'm saying. This is the hardest thing. It really is the hardest thing I think to prove or disprove. And a lot of people, especially with something paranormal will say like, I'm the guy who did it and, uh, I've got the suit. It's like, okay, that's him. He did it. Well, it's the Bob Aronivus. Like I got the suit. It's like, that doesn't even, it's nothing the same color. Yeah. It's like, well, where's the head? Well, I was, I just glued some fur onto a football helmet. Like, okay, that's it. That's good enough for me. He did it. Yeah. So it's hard to prove or disprove. That's again, folks, that's a reference to the Patterson-Gimlin. The Patterson-Gimlin. Yes. It all ties back in. But the, the idea though is that, yeah, how would you prove this? Maybe if you had the videotape and, uh, as they say in the business, B-roll, which is off camera. So. Yeah. I had some of the footage. Some of the original footage. So if you had the footage of you folks on the VHS-C or whatever the, the format is, uh, probably a VHS camera, uh, video camera, and you had that footage, it could be somewhere. It could have been erased, possibly, uh. Somebody recorded Little House on the Prairie over there. Yeah. That was also. That actually happened to a tape I had. I loaned a friend this day. They wanted to see, that was something really cool. I can't remember what it was, MTV or something. And I got it back and it was Little House on the Prairie. I was like, what did, what happened? And I was like, oh, I wanted to see that. No, that was markedly. There was a, also a thread on the Facebook group about the novelty of all that and trying to program the VCR. And then sometimes what would happen is that you had it all set to record at a certain time because they had a clock on them and, uh, you know, notorious. Obviously people would see the clock flashing 12 over and over and not know how to program the clock. But basically that allowed you to set the timer and record. It would just kind of come on as long as you had the antenna plugged into the VCR. But sometimes people would come by and accidentally or on purpose change the channel tuner because these VCRs had their own TV tuner in them. And that's like, so now it's the wrong channel and it's totally not what you wanted to record. Came on at the right time and two hours of static. Right, right. So they, just to get rid of the evidence, they may have taped over, destroyed the tape, uh, or maybe somebody has it. You never know. Well, of course it's time to wrap this up. This has been a super fun series. I'm curious, uh, what are your theories and conclusions on this? Who do you think might've done it? Where are you at? I've already wasted all of my, uh, just inconsequential musings on this, uh, in part one and part two. That's what happens. No, I, I think, uh, as I said, probably at the beginning of part one, it did stir a lot of nostalgia in odd ways. And especially watching the Reina brothers documentary and they have some great B, as we said earlier, B-roll footage. And that's, if something is on camera, you're, you're talking to an interview person. This is like cutaway footage. So you're showing you other things like props or scenery. Yeah, these guys shoot a lot of their stuff. Yeah, no, it's very well done. Way better than 99% of the homemade videos on YouTube. Right. They're really good. Yeah. So they're, they're showing you a lot of clips and, and, you know, again, the ad, looking at the old ads and getting back into this. And, uh, yeah, that's why people like. Remember when, although Tony Soprano hates it, he's playing remember when the idea is you go back in time because your memories are much more fond of what you thought happened. And, and, uh, you know, obviously we'll all have ups and downs and there's good times and bad, but the good times tend to stick with you and, uh, you have fond memories growing up. And I, I'd be curious to see what memories your son has when he's in his fifties and just what he, what is it about this era? That's, is there anything that's worthy of nostalgia? There are things. Sometimes he gets nostalgic about stuff. I will say he even texted while we were recording just a few minutes ago to me and his mom and was talking nostalgically about the travel that we've done in the past, about places we've been where he had a really good time when he was younger. Yeah. But media wise, I'm talking about, I'm talking about culture. Media wise, there are some things from when he was younger, like Teen Titans Go, we watched every episode of that and that holds a place in both our hearts and Phineas and Ferb, shout out to Dan Pollenmeyer who's been on our show. There's things like that, that, but that's old school TV. Even that kind of stuff is, is not very pervasive right now. No, it's like during our, uh, our round table discussion there, our interview, you know, even Eminem is considered old school classical music in the rap world. It's like, things are so ephemeral now. And I just wonder, like, especially as you get older and things are a little harder to define, it all seems like a mishmash of just this acceleration. Kurtzweil says, uh, we'll go through six epochs. This is his, uh, philosophical musings on this. We've already gone through four. Woody states are physics and chemistry, an era of that, biology and DNA, brains and technology. And then eventually we'll have that merger as we talk about human intelligence and human technology, stress on human because, uh, we created it and, uh, we'll interface with it. And then eventually the final epoch as he predicts the universe wakes up. So that'll be nice maybe, but people have been thinking about that, uh, for a long time. And anyway, going back way before all that, where people remember fondly, as I think I said in part one, in the eighties, we were all worried about nuclear global destruction, mutually assured destruction, mad. And, uh, you know, that's one of the fears we had among others, the generation before that it was the Cuban missile crisis. So it was a little bit, uh, uh, similar to that. And every era has their own fears. And here was a little fun, something about, again, the emergent technology. And it being what these pranksters did was a reminder and also a foreshadowing of what was possible. And at this time, to sum up here, everything, what we're talking about is, uh, being able to record TV shows at home on your own. That was groundbreaking to tape your own videos. And it wasn't so easy, but you could edit them at home, just the technologies. You could have your own PC. What's that? A personal computer, which wasn't a Univac that took up two office rooms. You know, it was becoming personalized and also egalitarian in a way and accessible to the average person. That alone is an evolution, you know, and then what are we seeing here? I mean, this is years old now, but just wearable tech and the internet of things of machines talking to each other. What's amazing is that you could be halfway around the world and have an app on your phone that turns your lights off in your house. And if you're thinking about, well, that's not just a big deal. That's, that is the Louis CK joke is like, you have all this technology and the guy on the plane is like, this wifi is crappy. It's like you're on your computer on an airplane sailing through the air at 400 miles an hour. Like that's amazing, but we're used to it. And so as we evolve and we're all going through this together, the eighties was a time when we were starting to realize this. And so it was a bit of a glorification and it was garish and silly and it is every era. You're never going to get past that. But identifying markers that added to the nostalgia, the bright colors, the angular shapes, the goofiness of it, but also movies we really still cherish and people still do today. The things that rise to the surface and though this may have been forgotten in a large part, it's still out there. And so this silly prank, which I harbor no animosity towards, I applaud them for, for doing it because again, I don't like to offend people. I don't want to see them upset. I don't want to offend them. I do like to entertain people, but also they could use a little shakeup here and there of, of something goofy and fun and to be silly and not take themselves so seriously all the time. So for that purpose, they succeeded, even though I'm going, yes, I think I would have planned the message better, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they did it and they interrupted something which should not have been interrupted. So you can look behind the mirror, you can get to the controls and see the wizard if you know what to do. And this is my point about who may have done this. Yes, it could likely have been in a broadcast engineering type. However, I think that that puts you in a much, much smaller group of likely suspects. Yeah. Again, that's a very rarefied and exclusive job to do, which takes a certain amount of training. Yeah. It seems like it wouldn't be hard to find you. Chicago area person capable of this and possibly an inside job. It just doesn't seem like the FCC and the FBI could not find that person. Well, again, they may have had some likely suspects. I don't know how in-depth the investigation was, but you may not have been able to prove anything. So you can't out, you know, a suspect, innocent until proven guilty. That's still how it works here. In that they may have had some likely suspects like, well, this guy seems a little disgruntled. And again, nowadays they look through your social media, like this guy complains a lot about the prices on cable for HBO. Or they get a sense of how disgruntled you are. Maybe you were fired or terminated, or you're that prankster type. You got caught before doing stuff like this. Obviously they can profile this pretty heavily, but they weren't able to do that. And so my thinking is that, yeah, it could have been somebody with that extensive knowledge, which everybody is saying, you know, all the authorities are saying like, well, somebody with very sophisticated knowledge and very sophisticated equipment and very exclusive knowledge about this kind of stuff. But I would posit it could also be somebody who was just very smart about this. Maybe brilliant even, you know, does every hacker have to have worked at Apple, one infinite loop or Samsung or HP or Dell to have acquired the skills they have? No, a lot of people just, the information is much more out there, but you can teach yourself to do those kinds of things and do things that shake up and, uh, and help or hurt a lot of people just on your own. The knowledge is out there. If you know where to go look for it and to get somebody with that kind of motivation to learn, or just like, like I said, maybe a savant type who just, I'm just really into this. I know all about it, but it's like a ham radio license. You can learn all that stuff on your own. There's manuals. There's certainly textbooks back then of how did the broadcast engineers get taught themselves? Well, they took courses and there has to be textbooks and there's teachers. So you don't know, like I said, it's not necessarily somebody who had worked at a station or who was even disgruntled. To me, it could have just been, again, that's the emergence of, and also part of the lore of that era is the rise of the hacker type and the freaker and people messing with things because now they had more access to the technology than they did before. So in my summation, I will applaud. Again, I do love a good prank so long as nobody gets hurt, nothing is damaged, and it causes a little bit of wonder, which this has done. It makes you think about it. And that's, that's the point. So mission accomplished, you, you TV piraters. Well, this astonishing legend has truly taken on a life of its own. evolving into something greater than the sum of its parts. Its allure only grows stronger the longer it remains unsolved. And as Forrest noted earlier tonight, the statute of limitations on this crime, even as a felony, has long since expired. If the perpetrators were to come forward now, they would face no criminal repercussions. From an accountability perspective, there's nothing to fear. However, as Rob Southgate and Forrest highlighted, perhaps our pirate refers to stay anonymous, safeguarding his now tranquil family life, and perhaps a respectable position in the C-suite of some media conglomerate. After all, you can't have a pirate in charge, can you? But the reason it endures to this day, and has been reported on over and over again by so many people, is because without the identity of Pirate Max, this incident represented, in a near-perfect way, rebellion. Rebellion against corporate control and over-commercialization. As long as we don't know who the messenger was, the idea of the message takes center stage. To paraphrase the character V from V for Vendetta, when asked why he would not die after having been shot numerous times, That's going to wrap up episode 309 of Astonishing Legends, and conclude our series on the Max Headroom incident. A very special thanks to Rob Southgate, as well as Tom Maxwell. Remember to look for Tom's new show that he co-hosts, God's Ghosts and UFOs, wherever you get your podcasts. We're dark next week, but we'll be back on May 10th with the first of three weeks of the main show in a row. As always, look for new episodes of The Dead Letter Office weekly on Tuesdays. Astonishing Legends is edited by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. Our co-producer is Tess Feifel, who also leads our research efforts and manages our social media. And we're grateful for the hard work of our technical producer, Ed Vakola, behind the scenes. Special thanks to our announcer, John Boland, for lending his voice to our shows. This is how to spell my name. G-A-T-E-S. Hello, I'm Gary Klovenstein. I understand this is with no implied promise of present or future compensation. Galaxy-wide in perpetuity. M-A-T-T. Thank you very much for making such an excellent show. Our theme, which is available as a ringtone, was composed by Judson Crane at FounderMusic.com. All other music and sound design for the show is composed and created by Alan Caressia. Our logo was created by Tommy Beaver Design, and our animated graphics for social media and YouTube are done by Joshua Sloan at DeadStreetProductions.com. Many episodes have transcripts available. For ones that don't, you can request them by emailing transcripts at AstonishingLegends.com. Astonishing Legends would not be possible without you, our listeners. Visit our store at AstonishingLegends.com or interact with us and other listeners on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, Discord, and YouTube. You can also visit us at Patreon.com slash AstonishingLegends, where patrons have access to commercial-free versions of both the main show and the Dead Letter office, as well as additional bonus content, including the Patreon-exclusive show, The Astonishing Junk Drawer. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright, Astonishing Legends Productions. Good night. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. 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A positive test result does not confirm the presence of cancer. Patients with a positive test result should be referred for a colonoscopy. A negative test result does not confirm the absence of cancer. Patients with a negative test result should discuss with their doctor when they need to be tested again. False positives and false negative results can occur. Hey, I'm Jesse Palmer, host of The Bachelor, with some exciting news. After more than 20 years of drama, The Bachelor Mansion is getting, is getting, my bad, a makeover. Your favorite former contestants move back into The Mansion to spill their secrets, refresh rooms, and win the hearts of the judges. Bachelor Mansion, Bachelor Mansion Takeover, all new, Monday at 8 on HGTV. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners do all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. They're USDA organic and made with ingredients that actually grow somewhere. It's their whole taste that grows philosophy. 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What having it all tastes like.