In short
The 1987 Max Headroom TV broadcast intrusion in Chicago—how a person wearing a Max Headroom mask hijacked WGN and later WTTW signals, why it became a major federal case, and why the perpetrator(s) remain unidentified.
Guest backgrounds
No episode guests. Hosts are Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Rowland. The episode heavily cites Alex Pasternak (Motherboard/Motherboard’s Motherboard article) and FCC investigator Dr. Michael Marcus.
Key claims
The intrusion was likely done by overpowering microwave studio-to-transmitter links from a nearby high location, not with $100,000 equipment. The FBI focused on enhanced video frames, especially the “upper right-hand quadrant” shot where an “Annie Oakley”-like figure spanks a bare-butt figure with a fly swatter.
Notable examples
WGN’s 9:14 p.m. brief glitch (about 11 seconds) during Dan Roan’s sports broadcast; a later 1 minute 22 second full Max Headroom segment on WTTW during Doctor Who. The intruder mocks “Chuck Swirsky,” calls him “freaking liberal,” wields a “rubber penis/marital aid,” references “catch the wave” and Clutch Cargo, then returns to Doctor Who.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Max Headroom Incident Introduction
1:37 to 2:06
Introduction to the bizarre Max Headroom incident that captivated the nation.
“where someone wearing a Max Headroom mask took over a local TV station for several minutes.”
Background of Max Headroom
2:31 to 4:23
Explore the origins and cultural significance of Max Headroom.
“I saw you over there with your earbuds today.”
The Concept of Max Headroom
4:23 to 6:31
Discussion on the character's premise and the show's themes.
“And what we're talking about is, if you don't know who Max Headroom at all is, we're about to set that up.”
Advertising and Culture in the Show
6:31 to 8:57
Examine how Max Headroom addressed advertising and media culture.
“Okay, but he kept it really, really short, so he kind of looked bald.”
The Max Headroom Incident: Setup
8:57 to 14:01
Setting the stage for the infamous incident involving Max Headroom.
“And the last thing he sees before falling into a coma is a sign that said Max Headroom colon 2.3 meters.”
Setting the Stage for the Incident
14:01 to 14:55
Learn about the context of the Max Headroom incident and its significance.
“It was not something that was, like, venerated or subscribed to by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek.”
The First Broadcast Intrusion
14:56 to 18:09
Discover the details of the first broadcast signal interruption in Chicago.
“As a matter of fact, just that very day, the Bears had beat the Lions.”
The Second Intrusion During Doctor Who
18:10 to 20:13
Explore the second instance of the Max Headroom intrusion during a Doctor Who episode.
“I wasn't going to do my impression of it.”
Analyzing the Max Headroom Intrusion
23:07 to 28:00
Delve into a detailed discussion about the content and impact of the Max Headroom video.
“Because this is really tough to describe, and we're going to try.”
Introduction to the Max Headroom Incident
28:00 to 29:16
Learn about the bizarre events surrounding the Max Headroom broadcast interruption.
“All right, so Chuck Swirsky's freaking liberal.”
Show all 15 chapters
Public Reaction and FCC Involvement
29:16 to 33:18
Discover the varied public reactions to the Max Headroom incident and the FCC's response.
“Okay, so he says also, your love is fading.”
Investigation into the Hijacking
33:18 to 39:56
Explore the investigation efforts made by authorities to track down the hijackers.
“And this is really interesting in this article.”
Theories and Speculations on the Perpetrators
39:56 to 42:00
Examine the theories regarding who might have been behind the Max Headroom incident.
“Like Dennis Farina and Robert Stack love this one.”
Theories Behind the Max Headroom Incident
42:00 to 48:57
Explore the theories and personalities linked to the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion.
“dialing something with his phone and then putting it on that weird little Commodore 64 thing.”
Listener Mail and Conclusion
50:17 to 55:04
Engage with listener feedback and reflections on the Max Headroom incident.
“Warning, the following song has been rated dangerously catchy and may not be suitable for grown-ups.”
Transcript
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1:11Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:36Here is a classic episode that covers a single event that happened on one night in 1987 in the great city of Chicago, where someone wearing a Max Headroom mask took over a local TV station for several minutes. And when I put it like that, it sounds pretty inconsequential, but it was such a big deal that the feds got involved, and even better, it's a mystery that's still not fully solved today. And it's weird.
2:06Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
2:16Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland. What do you think? Pretty good? That's pretty good. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Josh Headroom. Thank you. I saw you over there with your earbuds today. You were working on this all day, weren't you? I watched season one, episode one. Oh, really? In full? Of Max Headroom. The last 10 minutes is still pending. Oh, okay. But it's crazy. Like Max Headroom himself doesn't show up until like 40 minutes into the first hour long episode. But when he does, it's dynamite. So what are we talking about? We're talking about Max Headroom.
2:57That's right. A huge shout out at the beginning of this to Vice.com, specifically Motherboard. Specifically Alex Pasternak. Yeah, who wrote the article on Motherboard. And we actually used to blog a little bit for them back in the day. Remember that? Yeah, I don't think they like to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly. You don't think? I don't think so. Oh, I think it was mutually beneficial. I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore. I'm trying to remember. I'm sure they were like. I think I read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or something weird. That's a big one.
3:31Yeah. We started out with an old-fashioned recipe, I think. Yeah, that was you. They were like, let's do better than this, guys. And we said no. And then they said, we got our own people. Yeah. We'll let somebody come in and ghostwrite for you. Yeah, so that motherboard article was the basis. And from what I found, I mean, we used a lot of different sources on this, but this article entitled, The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack, is sort of the culmination, like the coup de grace, coup de grace, of Max Hedrum incident articles. Yeah, it actually... Really good job. Pasternak, like, very exhaustively investigated it and turned up new information, got a new understanding of it, and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself.
4:21So way to go, Pasternak. Right. And what we're talking about is, if you don't know who Max Headroom at all is, we're about to set that up. Yeah, let's talk about Max Headroom. But if you were alive during the 1980s, then you probably know who Max Headroom is because weirdly for a brief few years, it was kind of a big pop culture thing. About four years by my calculations. So starting in 1984, there was a movie called Max Headroom Colon, so you know it was an important movie, 20 Minutes in the Future. Yeah. Right? And it was kind of a cyberpunk movie, dystopian future, very Terry Gilliam Brazil-ish.
5:10And it was, I haven't seen that one, but it was basically where the character of Max Headroom was born, right? And I think it actually formed the basis for the TV show later. In between the later TV show that you and I are more familiar with and that movie, Max Headroom was a pop culture sensation. He was a pitchman for New Coke. Oh, man. I went and watched an old ad. He was in an ad with Run DMC pitching new Coke, and I was like, it doesn't get any more 80s than this. But it was actually a pretty cool ad, right? Did it say, here's a little story I need to tell about a new Coke on the scene that you love so well?
5:49That was exactly word for word how that ad went. Yeah. So let's back up a little more, right? Okay. Let's describe what Max Hudroom is for the kids. because I guarantee about 80 % of our audience are like, what's the 80s? What's New Coke? Yeah. Who's run DMC? Well, that's probably not true. So what was Max Headroom? He was billed as like the first virtual talk show host, right? Correct. Okay. Yeah, so he was played by a guy named Matt Frewer who out of prosthetic makeup had that look anyway, very chiseled, square-jawed. he was not bald, but had, was he balding? He had a receding hairline. Okay, but he kept it really, really short, so he kind of looked bald.
6:36Yeah. Here, this will explain it to all the kids at home. He was a colleague of Murphy Brown on the Murphy Brown television show. They're like, oh, I got you. Not the painter, the other one, the love interest. I don't think I knew that. I never watched Murphy Brown, though. Oh, man, I hope it was him. I'm pretty sure it was him. Yeah? Yeah. Well, he's been around. He's still acting today. Sure. But, yes, he played the character of Max Headroom. And the TV show Max Headroom was actually pretty far ahead of its time, tonally speaking. Yeah. So the whole premise of the TV show, the last, his big last great gasp.
7:11Yeah. That was actually the most serious of all of it, was where in the future, TV networks controlled the world. Yeah. And the station, the Network 23, that Matt Frewer's character and later Max Headroom, who became his alter ego, worked for, were putting these things called blipverts out. Yeah. His character's name was Edison Carter at first. Right. And he was like an investigative journalist. Yeah. So he starts looking into these blipverts because the problem with blipverts, they are 30 second ads compressed into three seconds. And it's meant to keep you from changing the channel. The problem is that everybody watched so much TV by this time, they didn't move around, which meant that all of the electricity generated by their nerve endings wasn't burned off, is how the show explained it.
8:02So when their brains were assaulted with these blipverts, they kind of short-circuited, and all of that electricity that was just hanging around their bodies because they weren't moving at all during the day made them explode. The network really liked blipverts, and they didn't want to get rid of them, so they decided to instead get rid of Edison Carter. Yeah, and the TV advertising at the time, or advertising in general, sort of, not only did TV rule the world, but the ads behind it was really the driving force. It sounds very familiar. It does. Everyone's like, I'd take a blip vert. Sure. Give me a three-second ad on the podcast.
8:41Guys, it'll blow you up. So what ended up happening was was the character of Edison Carter eventually was, there was an incident, not the Max Headroom incident, where he was left in a coma in an episode. The first episode. Oh, yeah, the pilot, of course. And the last thing he sees before falling into a coma is a sign that said Max Headroom colon 2.3 meters. And so that's how he got the name Max Headroom. Right, it was in like a parking garage, and it was basically saying this is the overhead clearance is the way it's put in the United States. Yeah. Right. So that's the name Max Headroom, right?
9:20But he was an AI character. Right. So the evil TV network got a hold of him, uploaded his brain, and they originally did this with the intent of bringing Edison Carter, because again, he was like their star reporter, bringing him back in virtual form. So they created an artificial intelligence. Well, it was kind of glitchy and blippy and it looked weird. So they threw it out. Well, some pirate broadcasters got a hold of this database that Max Headroom lived on, and they started broadcasting with him, and Max Headroom was born. That's right. And you said glitchy and blippy, and that, kids, explains your intro when you went, Josh.
10:04Oh, yeah. I was doing my Max Headroom impression. Thank you for explaining that. Yeah, that bears, Josh was, he's okay, everybody. So that's what Max Headroom did. It was jittery. It was blippy, like you said. The background was this weird sort of horizontal and diagonal lined moving around thing. And that was all part of this, at the time, sort of futuristic look. He was also really sarcastic and really catty. And he was really, he poked fun at censorship. and he was just kind of like a cult hero, just the character itself, right? Yeah. The awesome thing about him is in the real world of 1984, we didn't have any kind of computers that could generate a CGI host.
10:49So they actually used like prosthetics. Yeah. Like there was a four-hour process to put Matt Frewer into the Max Headroom makeup. So it's the guy acting. And then, you know, they messed with the video a little bit, But it wasn't a CGI version of a guy. It was a guy acting like he was a CGI version of himself. Right. Which is why, for instance, if Max Headroom, the character, were to appear on, say, David Letterman, which he did, it would be Letterman interviewing a TV screen. Right. Which is what they did. But it was actually Matt Frewer in another studio. He was probably just backstage being broadcast.
11:30And it's really like, as a kid, I did not get all this. No, I just thought it was a, I didn't really know what it was because I'd never seen the show. I thought he was the Coke guy. Right, right. And I think I'd seen the show a little bit. I was like, this is way too grown up for me. But I think I just kind of took it on faith that he was computer generated or something like that. I didn't really think about it much. But now as an adult looking back, I'm like, that is brilliant and really difficult. Yeah. And the fact that they did this and pulled it off as well as they did, it's a pretty amazing thing, right?
12:03And you can kind of understand how Max Hedrum, with all that information now, became this kind of cult icon, especially among cyberpunks at the time. And what? Just keep saying cyberpunk. So let me, I'm not like particularly well versed in like what constitutes cyberpunk, but it's like pornography to a Supreme Court justice. Like, I know it when I see it, right? Sure. So if you watch the Max Headroom show, you're like, that's cyberpunk. Robocop is supposedly cyberpunk, right? It's like a bleak technological future where people are controlled by, almost down to their minds by the government or some corporation or some amalgamation of the two.
12:50That's pretty cyberpunk, right? Okay, so at the time, you had what are called geeks and nerds, but they are not really what you would call a geek or a nerd today, right? Somebody who wears, like, glasses that don't actually have prescription glass in them. Do people do that? Some people do. I did that in the fourth grade. Well, then you were a geek, apparently. No, I was a prep, and I wore those little tortoiseshell round preppy glasses because that was a cool look. and actually went in. It's one of my least proud moments fashion-wise is I actually bought fake glasses and wore them around for a while.
13:26Do you have photos of those? I'd really have to dig through some boxes. I think I speak for everyone when I say start digging. Dig. Yeah, it was not my proudest moment. Yeah, I'd like to see that picture. All right. So at the time, people who were geeks and nerds, that whole culture, was very much derided and pushed around. I mean, look at Revenge of the Nerds, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, they came out on top. I watched a little bit of that just the other night. This is probably the earliest celebration of nerd culture. It was not something that was, like, venerated or subscribed to by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek.
14:11And these were a very rarefied group of people who really knew what they were doing with computers at a time when almost no one else did. Yeah, early adopters across the board. Very much so, right? So Max Hudrum's kind of a cult hero to this guy. And that kind of sets up what happened on November 22, 1987, in a little town called Chicago, Illinois. The city of industry. The city of angels. The city that doesn't ever sleep. Never. The Windy City. That's it. There you go. Of all time. The Windy City of all time. Yeah. Yeah. So that sets the stage. We know who the character of Max Hedrum was. Then at 914.
14:54Wait, wait, wait. Yes. Are you sure I set the stage? I think so. Did we set the stage fully here? It looks nice. All right. Let's do it. So at 914 p.m. on that November night in Chicago. Four days before Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So everyone was in that frame of mind. Right. Put yourself there. I think that that helps a lot. It helped me at least. Sure. Okay. Football season's going on. Yeah. As a matter of fact, just that very day, the Bears had beat the Lions. Yeah. Which, you know, it was a long time ago. Because the Bears won a football game. Oh, ouch. I know. The people in the windy city of all time are not going to be happy with you for that.
15:33The windy city of all time. Oh, and there's a sportscaster on local Channel 9. Dan Roan, our way in, and he was going over the highlights of that football game. Then all of a sudden, right in the middle, the broadcast signal goes. It makes those noises. And then over at WGN, the control room, they were like, what's going on here? We have no idea what this is. I think the exact quote was, agh? What? So what happened was they eventually, what they were doing at the time was, and this is how, we're not going to go into the weeds here on how broadcast signals work. No. But what they did back in the day was they broadcast microwave transmissions to antennas at the top of the tallest buildings of whatever city that they were in.
16:27For local TV. For local TV, which is, I mean, there was cable at the time, but local TV still kind of ruled. Yeah. In the, well, sort of in the late 80s. Right. Right. So like starting to segue to cable. Yeah, for sure. Cable is, you know, kind of a thing. But you if you were a local TV station, you still have pretty big market share. For sure. Right. Especially WGN in Chicago. I mean, it's like Chicago station. Right. Absolutely. So what I think you're saying is that in a studio, whatever they're recording or shooting or playing on their their little videotapes, they're beaming that from the actual studio to a transmitter, say, atop a very tall building.
17:06And that just kind of bounces around to other transmitters. And that's how everybody in Chicago gets their WGN signal, right? Right. So all of a sudden, during the sportscast, it skits out. And then all of a sudden, you see a guy in a suit wearing a Max Headroom mask. and it was there was no audio that was I guess the problem with this first intrusion it was called a broadcast intrusion but you couldn't hear anything but I'm sure it was certainly distressing to a viewer to see this kind of weird thing happen especially a viewer who wanted to know what the heck happened between the bears and the lions that day sure and the whole thing lasted I think like 11 seconds or some very short amount of time yeah this was a short one before Or the WGN engineers went and switched to the backup transmitter and I guess transmitted on a slightly different signal and brought the broadcast, the sportscaster back on.
18:08And Dan Rohn was like, if you're wondering what just happened, so am I. There's a chuckle in between. I wasn't going to do my impression of it. You should. But it's good. You should watch it. Like somebody, just go look it up. Right. So federal investigators, the FCC that is, was called in to investigate what technically is, well, not technically, it's a crime to do so. And then just a few minutes later, they thought, well, this is probably coming from inside the building. And so that's the first place they started looking. They said the intrusion's coming from inside the building. Exactly. They didn't find anybody, though.
18:45I mean, it was, as you'll see after we explain further, it would make sense that you would look in the building. Yeah. Right. For something like this. Inside job. It apparently was not an inside job, at least as far as the WGN engineer's search was concerned, right? That's right. So that was at 9.14. About two hours later, I think at 11.15, on another channel in Chicago, WTTW, which was the PBS station, they were airing an episode of Doctor Who called The Horror on Fang Island. Fang Rock. Fang Rock. The Horror of Fang Rock. You have to say it like that, though. The horror of Fang Rock. Thank you.
19:26And this is the Tom Baker Doctor. Okay. That's the only one I recognize. Oh, really? He's 70s, right? Hey, I'm no Doctor Who guy, so don't embarrass me. It looked like the 70s, what they cut in on, looked pretty 70s. It didn't look 87. I would think it would be the 87. I'm guessing it was a rerun on PBS. That's what I think. All right. We'll find out. Oh, man, we are going to find out, too, aren't we? Yeah, that would have been super easy to check. Yeah, it would have. At any rate, in the middle of this Doctor Who episode, it suddenly cuts out again. And now you've got what appears to be the full run of this Max Headroom intrusion.
20:08Yes. Instead of 30 seconds, this one was a minute and 22 seconds. And right now, I would say if you are somewhere where you can pause and go to a video, online video carrier of your choosing and type in Max Headroom incident, spend the next minute and 22 seconds watching it. We'll wait. And we'll wait. We'll just insert a minute and 22 seconds of silence here. How about this? Let's take a break. Oh, okay. And then we'll come back and then we'll talk about exactly what happened during that minute and 22 seconds. Okay.
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23:06Okay, we're back. Did you watch it? Are you talking to me? No. Oh, okay. I was looking at you. I'm guessing that people did watch it. A few people did. Smart ones did. Because this is really tough to describe, and we're going to try. But it's something you really have to see yourself. Yeah, in here. It's genuinely disturbing. sitting in an office years later watching it. And I can imagine if I was at home, I would have probably been a little freaked out. You found it disturbing? Yeah. I found it hilarious in like a really juvenile way. Yeah, it creeps me out. It was like watching David burn on acid at a talking head show.
23:48That's what I think of when I saw that. You know? All right, so let's describe the scene here. Okay. So you got Max Headroom. Well, actually a dude wearing a rubber Halloween mask of Max Headroom. Yes. And this is just genius to me. So you mentioned earlier about how the Max Headroom had like these kind of grid lines behind them at all times. They kind of moved and adjusted and they were different colors. To simulate that, these guys had like a piece of corrugated metal, shiny metal. Yeah. And I guess they had it attached somehow to something that rocked it back and forth. And they kind of, somebody was clearly rocking it back and forth here or there erratically.
24:31And it really does a good job. It gets the point across. That it looked like the Max Edrum TV show. Yeah, the background. And the character. Yes. Yeah. But again, I would say that this person was very, very clearly on acid. Well, I think what disturbs me, I need to make it clear, it is definitely funny and stupid. But what disturbs me is the sound of the voice, which is all garbled. It's really like on YouTube it has subtitles, thankfully, because it's hard to make out. And a lot of times it just says you can't understand what he's saying or whatever. And the garbled quality and just the random weirdness that's going on.
25:10It's not like – it was creepier to me than if V for Vendetta dude had to come on, Guy Fawkes had to come on and said, you know we are coming into your thing to tell you this about this right this was just so weird and all over the place it was creepy to me yeah yeah yeah i see what you mean like you're watching somebody's nonsensical somebody's brain slightly damaged yeah i felt like watching somebody lose their mind right okay yeah totally get that um and here's here's what the guy did that would make you feel like he lost his mind. This is the weird thing to me. It's very targeted toward WGN, right?
25:49Almost so much so that some people would say, this is clearly somebody who had a grudge against WGN. He makes fun of the Bulls sportscaster, the guy who worked for WGN at the time. He makes reference to how he just made a masterpiece for the greatest world's newspaper nerds, which was a messed up version of WGN's call letters stand for world's greatest newspaper. He wields a rubber penis. Yeah, that's one. Although it was great. In almost every article, it was referred to as a marital aid. Did you see that? No, but I actually guessed it on Strickland's tech stuff like four years ago, and we covered this, and I called it a marital aid.
26:33Did you? Okay, so. I wanted to keep it clean. Sure. But then I realized that saying the word penis is okay. Well, it's clinical. I mean, we did a puberty episode, surely. We have the chops to say penis. But marital aid is hilarious, especially in this context. Like this crazy dude on acid wearing a Max Headroom mask has a marital aid? No, he doesn't. That's not what that is in that context, you know? Yeah, and that's a new T-shirt, by the way. What? We have the chops to say penis. There you go. That's a band name. Let's go ahead and use some of the, let's go ahead and say some of the direct quotes.
Read the full transcript
27:13Yes, let's. So he comes on and he goes, he's a freaking nerd. I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky freaking liberal that's a really good impression of this and Chuck Swirsky was the the Bulls guy yeah the sports announcer and this is a time too when like the Bulls were this is the Jordan Pippen era still well still it was at the beginning of it was it 87? I thought it was like in the middle of it was it the beginning? pretty early-ish let's say I wish these days that I would have been more cognizant and like more into basketball than like I am now. See, that's when I was the most into it was Bird, Jordan, Magic.
27:54I would like to watch some of those games. Yeah, it was good stuff. Because that's when the Hawks were good back then. Yeah, back then. Dominique. Hey, shout out to Kent Bazemore. You know, he listens to this show. No way. Yeah, he's a fan. How'd you find that out? Twitter? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Man, I love Baz. I know. How do you not love Baz? He's awesome. Man, he's bright red right now. That's so cool. All right, so Chuck Swirsky's freaking liberal. He's wielding the rubber penis. The marital aid. The marital aid. He drops that. Then he picks up a new Coke. Well, you can't really tell if it's a new Coke.
28:29No, it was a Pepsi. Oh, was it? Uh-huh. Okay, I couldn't really tell. He picks up a can, but he says, catch the wave, which is the new Coke slogan. Then he starts humming. It's so random. Then he starts humming the theme song to the 60s show Clutch Cargo, which is weird in and of itself. Sure. That's that one where it's like animation, but for the mouths, it was just like a human mouth moving. That's disturbing. Yeah. If you've seen Pulp Fiction, the scene where Bruce Willis was a kid and Christopher Walken comes in with the wristwatch scene that Clutch Cargo is playing on TV when he's watching it.
29:06Right. But it is weird looking. Right. So you would say, why did he do the Clutch Cargo theme? Well, again, this is a WGN thing, and apparently that's where you saw it as a kid. Yeah, in Chicago. Okay, so he says also, your love is fading. I still see the X, which apparently is something from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Yeah, that was the big X or something. And then he says what you were talking about earlier. I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds. But he should have said world's greatest newspaper nerds. WGN. Right. Which you might find confusing as I did too.
29:45But apparently the Chicago Tribune Company owns WGN TV. So they call themselves world's greatest newspaper TV. Right. WGN. It's all coming together. Ipso facto. There you go. Then finally toward the end, the camera cuts to a different angle. this one has the dude bent over with his bare butt hanging out his face is now off screen but he's holding the mask still out like his head is in it but it's not there is a person I say woman but I don't know but a person in like an Annie Oakley dress is that what it was? I didn't get that yeah it looked like a prairie bonnet ensemble but the bonnet kind of hides the face so you don't know if it's a man or a woman and they are spanking the bear butt with a fly swatter.
30:37Right. And he's worried about them coming to get him. They're coming to get me. Yeah. And then he says, come get me, and uses a bad word. B word. The B word. And then it goes back to Doctor Who. Yeah. Just like it came in, went out. It's gone. Can you imagine seeing that live? Well, the people who saw it live, the next thing they would have heard was the doctor saying something like, Like, oh, he died of an electric shock. Must have died instantly. Yeah. And everybody's just sitting there with their mouths hanging open. Well, it was Doctor Who, too. So it was probably a bunch of Chicago nerds watching PBS.
31:15Yeah. So, all right, my imitation was okay. But let's just play at least, like, a couple of lines from the real thing. Yeah. He's a freaking nerd. I've got that guy who checks the worst thing. What can I do? Jesus.
31:35All right. So you did a pretty good impression. I think everyone can agree now, right? It's so strange. So this was an enormous thing, right? Like people were watching this and were aghast, agog. Some people probably thought it was funny. WGN's reporting on it all over the place the next couple of days. Yeah, the newspapers had picked it up. Yeah. Yeah, there's this one, there's a compilation of WGN broadcasts, or it may even be more than just WGN, of people in the street being interviewed. What do you think about this? One guy's like, it's kind of like hooligans throwing a brick through your window, you know, to get your attention.
32:16There's a little kid who's like, very, very funny. The star of the news, though, was this one Doctor Who fan, this lady who was not at all amused by this. and I just want to play her little segment, okay? Yeah. It annoyed some viewers. I don't know. I just thought it would be just a slight mess up, but that in the middle of the tape, it's going to be... You're going to have to tape over it. I just think that's the funniest thing out of the whole thing. Well, another guy said he wanted to smash his TV. He was so angry. Yeah, I didn't see that guy. I saw that in the Pasternak article. So funny. Yeah, he was mad.
32:51So there was a lot of mixed reaction, but the voice from on high that came from the FCC who you said were called in pretty quickly. Yeah. They were like, this is no laughing matter. You might think it's funny. It's not very funny. Okay, it's kind of funny, but not really. And you can get a$100 ,000 fine and a year in jail for this kind of thing. So stop doing it. But at this point, by this point, it was actually a federal offense. It was a felony. A felony offense. Wait, what was that? Dazed and confused. Oh, okay. Tampering with the mailbox is a felony. I was like, wait a minute. I know that from somewhere.
33:29So the FCC gets involved. And this is really interesting in this article. The FBI got involved too. FBI was involved. Chicago PD. Like, they were looking into it. Apparently the, man, it has become obvious to me that I say the word apparently a lot. Really? A lot. I was listening to an episode, QAing an episode, and I was like, stop saying apparently, Josh. Yeah. I've started to, after 10 years, I've started to notice some things about my own self. It's like a tick. I try to just avoid it. I try to, too. Normally I can, but man, it just came welling up into my awareness. Well, apparently, it's not a big deal.
34:08I'm going to have to get over it. At any rate, there were a lot of different agencies working on this, but the trail went cold pretty quick. And you remember how you said that the WGN engineers started looking around the station? Yeah. I think what they were looking for was this. Somebody physically patching in to the transmission network, the cables. Wearing a Max Headroom mask. And yeah, either playing a videotape, which it seems pretty obvious. It was pre-taped, yeah. It was pre-taped. Or doing something like in a studio. But they would have to physically patch into WGN's transmission network.
34:49Yeah, it's like when a car doesn't work and I open the hood, thinking I'm going to see a squirrel gnawing on a cable that's in two pieces now. Right. And frayed at the ends. Right. Now imagine that squirrel wearing a Max Headroom mask and being on acid. Okay? With a marital aid. Yes. So, and at first the FCC and the FBI and anybody who was in the know basically said this was a very sophisticated attack. it would have required a very, very, some very expensive equipment. Yeah. A lot of electricity. There's not a lot of ways that they could have done this. But later on in the Pasternak article, and this is one of the ways Pasternak contributed to this whole thing, he talked to one of the FCC investigators, and this guy basically did away with that whole viewpoint that had lasted for almost 30 years, that it had to have been somebody with a$100 ,000 piece of equipment and$10 ,000 worth of electricity over the minute and a half.
35:54He was saying, no, you could probably have gotten the equipment needed for this new for$10 ,000 at the time. Or you could have probably bought it for use for just a fraction of that. And it would have taken very little electricity. It would have just taken some know-how and good positioning, really. Yeah, basically, it could have been done with the size of a direct TV dish today. Right. And all they would have had to do was get in a high enough location in between, literally, because they're beaming waves. They're beaming microwaves through the air. So he's like, all they had to do was get in between the original studio and that initial tower on top of the, I think it was the John Hancock building.
36:40For WGN, yeah. Yeah, and have a stronger signal. Right. So even just like a slightly stronger signal. Yeah. So you remember how WGN has their studio transmission shooting up to the John Hancock building? Yep. And then that transmitter shoots it out to everybody else in Chicago? Yeah. What I think you're saying is like if somebody was on the roof of another nearby building. Yes. And they just shoot a transmission, their own max headroom transmission, at a stronger amplitude, that's what it is, of the same frequency. You just overpower it, cancels out what WGN's doing, and instead it transmits your max headroom thing.
37:23And they would be closer to that broadcast tower. Right. Ostensibly. Yes. So that would mean that it required far less electricity than you would think or that they originally thought. and far less equipment too. They also had a pretty good idea of where these people would have had to have done it because after they got shut out of WGM, they turned their attention to WTTW, the PBS station, and they hijacked their signal. Well, WTTW shot their studio link to the Sears Tower. So this would have been somebody who was on a roof somewhere that had a clear view of the John Hancock building, and the Sears Tower, and could transmit to either one of them.
38:06But that's basically what they think happened. Yeah, and the guy you were talking about, Dr. Michael Marcus, who at the time was the assistant bureau chief in the FCC's Field Operations Bureau, he was the lead investigator, and he said that the guy in Chicago that was sort of in charge wasn't super like, he was just sort of used to traditional FCC investigations. He wasn't one to go knocking on doors and as to like investigate some kind of weird kind of maybe creepy criminal dudes. May or may not have a marital aid in his apartment. Just smack him on that. And then they also, you know, nobody was being hurt.
38:46No one got hurt. In the end, it was a it was a almost a victimless crime. So they didn't throw a ton of resources at it. They were kind of like, listen, we're not going to if you want to go investigate this, that's great. You should. But we're not going to assign a team of 12 people. Right. To try and crack this case of a bunch of nerds who did a weird thing for a minute. Yeah. And I think the longer it went on and there was no more of these intrusions from these guys. Yeah. The fewer and fewer resources they had to work with. And it just kind of fell to the wayside. But what's interesting is in the beginning they said it would take somebody with a very expensive piece of equipment, a lot of electricity, and a lot of know-how.
39:33And today the only one of those that's remaining is a lot of know-how. There wouldn't have been a lot of people running around Chicago who would have known how to do something like this. Yeah. So it's kind of surprising, even with very few resources, that no one has ever been really implicated in this one. Yeah, I don't think we've said. They still don't know who did this. It's an unsolved mystery. Yeah. Like Dennis Farina and Robert Stack love this one. The FBI, for their take, started concentrating on the actual video. They had the technology at the time, which is kind of funny now to think about it.
40:12But they're the only ones who had the technology at the time to actually make enhanced frames of this videotape and print out, you know, pictures, enhance them. And they were kind of focused on this upper right-hand quadrant, as they say, where the Annie Oakley was spanking with a fly swatter. I don't know why they were so into that. But they said, you know, we're trying to get clues on the actual location of the people who made the tape, not necessarily where they broadcast it from. But where did they shoot this thing to begin with? There was very little to go on aside from that spinning corrugated metal.
40:48And that could have been literally anywhere because it's a really tight shot. It really is. Yeah. And there was very little evidence given in the video. Yeah. I mean, it says that they were looking at industrial warehouses and things, but that could have been in an apartment living room. I mean, it wasn't like the door was attached to anything. It was freely spinning back and forth. So it didn't make sense. Not the best lead, right? No. So over time, and again, this is weird too. It's not so weird that the FCC or the FBI didn't find who did this if they weren't really looking very hard. What's really weird is that no one has been like, it was these guys.
41:25I was there. I know these dudes. It was these guys. Statute of limitations is done. Like, who cares? Yeah, after 1993, these guys would have gotten off scot-free because the statute of limitations for this one was five years, right? I'm shocked that no one later said, hey, that was me. Right. I'm Soy Bomb. No one's done that, right? Yeah. There was some very early forum, like message board stuff, took the form of bulletin board services, I think. Yeah. BBSs. Uh-huh. really early geek culture. Like Matthew Broderick dialing something with his phone and then putting it on that weird little Commodore 64 thing.
42:07The modem, yeah. To like transmit the dial tone over the telephone system. So that's the level of technology that these people were dealing with. But they were communicating with each other over like this proto-internet, these bulletin board systems. And two days after this, a guy named the Chameleon posted basically what you and I said about how all it took was these guys to go up on a tall building and overwhelm the WGN and the WTTW studio links. And ipso facto, I'm a big fan of that, by the way, this intrusion was successful, right? Two days, not two years, not a year ago, two days after it, somebody was on there explaining how it went down.
42:54So somebody knew this, right? But only two theories have really ever come to light as to who it was. One, you can basically just throw right out. And the other one, it turns out to have been a dead end. Yeah, the first one that you were talking about that doesn't really hold water was a, and this was a rumor online for a while, it was a musician named Eric Fournier. Fournier. Fournier. I had a friend in preschool, I think, named Fournier. That's how it was spelled? Mm-hmm. F-O-U-R-N-I-E-R. Actually, I don't know how it was spelled. I couldn't spell back then. So this guy was in a band, and he did this weird, super creepy YouTube series called Shea St.
43:42John, S-H-A-Y-E. Did you watch it? Oh, yeah. Love it. Yeah, I knew that you would love it. I love it, man. It's right up your alley. Yeah. But this is genuinely unsettling, too. I'm with you on that. So it kind of fit in that he was doing these weird things. He had this band. They were in Bloomington, Indiana, not too far from Chicago. The Blood Farmers. Yeah, the band was The Blood Farmers. And they did these weird music videos. And they thought, this is the kind of guy that would have done that. And the thinking was that he went to go broadcast one of their weird music videos as a broadcast intrusion.
44:16But chickened out at the last minute because they would have been found. Sure. And then ended up just improv-ing. that part makes a little sense because it definitely seems improv. It does, but it was also videotaped, remember? So that means he would have had two videotapes with him. What do you mean? So if he was going to play the music video and said, eh, I'm not going to do that, he would have had to have brought this other videotape and played that as a backup. The other thing is apparently his friend, see, I just said apparently again. Alex Pasternak from Motherboard contacted some of Fernier's friends because Fernier died in 2010.
44:52but his friends were like absolutely not even some of the blood farmers are like it wasn't him yeah like i know what you're saying and yeah he did the whole shea saint john thing yeah but it was this was not him it was not quite there he didn't know what he was doing with yeah he wouldn't know any broadcast stuff or video editing or anything like that yeah so this other one to me seems pretty promising uh so we flash forward to when did this actually happen was this like by the time Reddit had to come around, wasn't it, on Reddit? Yeah, I think it was about 25 years after, so it would have been in 2007.
45:29Yeah, so there's this guy from... Oh, no, 2012, 13? Okay. Sorry. There was this guy from Chicago named Bowie Pogue? Sure. P-O-A-G. I didn't have any friends with that last name when I was a kid. And he was one of the kids hanging around those BBSs in the 80s in Chicago. Chicago from the sounds of it. He was on the younger side. He was 13. And even as a 13 year old geek was very much intimidated by the older geeks in that crowd. And so it wasn't boisterous. He was sort of like, Hey, I'm kind of hanging out here and not saying much and don't notice me. I just want to ingratiate myself. And you guys can get me drunk for laughs if you want.
46:10And at a party in 1987, he remembers this. He described him as a small, peculiar man that he thought was about in his 30s. And he had an older brother. They lived in Chicago. So Pogue is describing these two guys who were in the same scene with him. Correct. Right. Yeah. And he had, they lived with his girlfriend downtown, about 10 miles from downtown Chicago. And they had the know-how. They were super into computers early on. He said he went to their apartment and it was just like, it looked like a computer hoarder mess of wires and computers and equipment. Like Neo's apartment. Yeah, why not?
46:50Or what was the other one he was in before The Matrix? Johnny Mnemonic? Yes. Yeah. Bill and Ted? Yeah. Johnny Mnemonic, that's cyberpunk. Yes. Right? Yes, it is. All right. You could probably make the case that The Matrix is as well. All right. Sure. So he described him as a stocky guy with tinted lens glasses was in his early 30s, an odd dude. His brother, he said he described as just kind of normal, but he said that he didn't make the connection at the time, but at a party on November about the same day, midday, on November 22nd, he was at a gathering of these dudes at the brother's apartment, and he heard them say something about doing something big.
47:35Later that night, they went to Pizza Hut, and he's like, what are you guys talking about? What's the big thing? and they said, hey, don't ask questions, but just watch Channel 11 tonight. Right. On that same day, and I don't know how he didn't put it together. That's the one thing that really strikes me as fishy. But he said that years later, now when he looks at it, he's like, even with that mask on, I see the body, I see what's going on, I hear that, and it's that guy. Right. To me. But 25 years later, he was there that day. They tell him to watch that night. and he didn't put it together for 25 years.
48:12That, to me, is the one fishy thing. Well, and he has been called out as fishy. Sure. I'm sure he knows that it's kind of fishy. Yeah, so the guy, the motherboard, Pasternak, reached out and he said, can you still get in touch with these guys all these years later? He said he sent them messages via Facebook. I don't even know if they saw them. They didn't get back. Then in a last-ditch effort, he sent them a certified mail. He found out where they lived. never heard anything back. And he was like, hey, it's clear that these guys don't want to be talked to. Right. So you want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it.
48:46Okay.
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50:57So that's where it stands right now. like nobody knows who is behind it still to this day crazy it is crazy and as a result this Max Headroom hack has taken its place in like the pantheon of geek culture and of hacker culture and rightfully so you know it is legendary in its own way that's right you got anything else? I got nothing else on this one cool man well if you want to know more about Max Headroom you should start by checking out this amazing motherboard article by Alex Pasternak. And since I said amazing, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to go with
51:42the Allman Brothers eat a peach from emojis. I don't know if this is true, but it's fun. Wanted to talk about when Josh talked about the Allman Brothers band factoid, because I think it's actually a cool factoid. Dwayne Allman was once asked by a reporter what he was going to do for the war effort in Vietnam. And his response was, I'm going to eat a peach for peace. Dwayne died not long after that album. And eat a peach was released posthumously. So he contends, Jesse Gaudet, that that is where the album title came from. And that eat a peach was not eat a bud. He or she, I guess. Jesse could go either way.
52:26Yeah, as always, keep up the good work. I'm currently brewing beer and listening. Tell me where to mail some bottles. Okay. Or come pick them up in Salt Lake City. All right. We'll do both. Sounds like a challenge. Right. They're too heavy. That's right. You can't pick them up. Thanks a lot, Jesse. Appreciate that, even though I still think I'm right. If you want to contend that something one of us said is incorrect, we love that stuff. You can tweet to us at Josh Um Clark, S-Y-S-K Podcast, or Movie Crush. You can hang out with us on Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know or slash Charles W.
53:01Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com.
53:14For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.
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From the publisher
In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. He spoke in garbled tones, brandished a marital aid, and was spanked on the rear with a fly swatter by a person dressed in Annie Oakley garb. If this sounds weird, it is. It's the Max Headroom Incident.
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