Stuff You Should Know - Pirate Radio: Mavericks on the High Seas

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

Pirate radio started out in England as a way to sidestep the regulations of Big Radio. While outlawed, it still exists today in the UK and America. Learn all about it today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This season on Running the Break with CJ and Alex. Rapper Meek Mill, so obviously huge ties to Philly was at a Sixers game recently. And in what seemed like a real life curb your enthusiasm episode, he accidentally tripped a ref sitting courtside as the ref was running back up court. You know what CJ? I gotta say, I feel like that should be a technical foul, one free throw for the opposing team. Yes.

If you rep your town and your team as much as you do make mill that he's a Sixer, right? So the opposing team's got to take free throws or unless, you know, if we're going off of the curb episode, does Meek have the discography of that compares to like Seinfeld tapes that he could bring to the ref's, you know, hospital bed, shout out to curb, that was one of the greatest episodes ever. Listen to Running the Break with CJ and Alex on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by FanDuel.

Make every moment more with FanDuel Sportsbook, an official partner of the NBA. Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years. It's great. It's fun. You're going to love it. It's called Stuff You Should Know, colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting

things. Yep. And it's 26 jam packed chapters that we wrote with another guy named Nils Parker, who's amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator, Carly Monardo. And it's just an all around joy to pick up and read. Even though we haven't physically held our hands yet, it's like we have, Chuck, in our dreams so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold this thing and smell it.

And so should you. So pre-order now, it means a lot to us. The support is a very big deal. So pre-order anywhere books are sold. Come to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to Pump Up the Volume. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.

Jerry's out there somewhere, raging against the machine. And this is, well, we'll just say it's the stuff you should know. I love it when I sent you this research, you were like, the first thing you said was pump up the volume. Sure, man. That's such a great movie. You know, as funny as I didn't think about that once until you said that. And I was like, oh yeah.

Yeah. That was all about piracy and radios. Yeah. I love that movie. I just hadn't seen it. And I don't know. I don't think probably since then. It has a really, it has a good soundtrack.

It has Bad Brains and Henry Rawlins doing Kick Out the Jams, you see five song. It also has probably the best Soundgarden song of all time, Heretic. Well, it's tough to call for me as a Soundgarden nut, but yeah, good song. It is a good song. Which one's better than that? I like a lot of Soundgarden, so I have probably 20 Tide for First songs. Okay. Is that one of them?

Yeah. It's up there. Oh, thanks for that. I love it. It's great. I mean, I love all Soundgarden songs. Sure. Yeah, I guess I do too now that I think about it.

I think I could have had something to do with Chris Cornell's voice to an extent. Oh man, RIP. Yeah, for real. I used to joke about the imagining the first time that he like sung in the shower when he was 13 or something. He was like, wow. I think I know what I'm going to do for a living. Yeah, exactly.

Shower. So we're talking about pump up the volume in Chris Cornell right now because this episode is about pirate radio and specifically it's about the British pirate radio invasion of the 60s that I had no idea about. I've never seen that movie, Pirate Radio, but I intend to now. Have you seen it? I haven't seen the movie, but I was acquainted with the story somehow. I think I might have seen a short documentary or something about the Caroline and really,

really cool stuff. It is, which is why we're going to talk about it in this episode, but I just found the whole thing. I don't know if mind blowing is the right word, but certainly deeply interesting and I think it's cool because it's one of those pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of history, at least like rock history that you didn't even realize you didn't have. And by you, I mean me. Yeah, and here's the thing is there were other pirate radio stations all around the world

and there always have been, since there's been radio and restrictions on radio, but Hey, and as long as there's rock, Chuck, there always will be. That's true. But the UK version was sort of the most celebrated and the most famous, I think, obviously why they made a movie about it. And one of the reasons is because the man whose thumb they were under was the BBC, which is a big deal. It was a big deal because here in the United States, and I know, ahoy to all of you listeners

outside of the United States here, you're like, well, yeah, this is what it was like. In the United States, the radio spectrum has always been very free or it was intended to be very free to where there was a multiplicity of voices and you could say a lot of stuff got a little stodgy and it was kind of stodgy from the outset. But for the most part, it wasn't just one monolithic organization that controlled all of the radio waves. That's just not how it's been in the States. And in places like the UK, that's how it was basically right out of the gate.

They said, you know, we, this is a really valuable tool. You can really shape people's minds with this. So we're going to leave it specifically under government control. Look, we'll provide a bunch of different stuff, not everything you want, but a lot of stuff, especially if you're a stodgy conservative old establishment type, you're going to love what we're pumping out. But the point is, it's too important to just kind of let anybody come along who has the money for a radio license to just set up a radio station.

That seems absurd. Only the Looney colonies would do something like that. Yeah, so the BBC had a very vice-like grip, like you were saying for, geez, about 40-something years. And then, you know, the sixties come along and like so many other things in America and the UK, kids that were born of these World War II, I guess you would call them baby boomers or boomers, the babies of those boomers were rock and roll kids, you know, they grew up seeing Elvis and the Beatles on television and they were not square like their parents

were and they had different ideas than their parents did. And this was the case in England in the 1960s when the BBC was, you know, rock and roll was a thing and they were like, we're not playing this devil's music. They probably didn't say that. That was more American. But it was certainly controversial. Things that seemed to us like, I mean, like you just hear them on an elevator today, like they were highly controversial back then, you know, and like there was genuinely nowhere

on the radio in the UK for you to reliably turn to to hear this stuff. You had to go to like a club to hear them and those were few and far between. And then if you were lucky enough, you might be able to occasionally dial in Radio Luxembourg, which played some of these like pop hits. But they were also, it was still largely controlled by a few record labels. So it didn't just, they didn't go deep. It was still like whatever new big band they were trying to promote, but it was still way cooler than anything the BBC was promoting.

The problem is the reception was certainly spotty. You ever been to Luxembourg? I have not. I may have passed through it and not known it because I blinked, but I don't believe I have. It's so under the radar. I flew out of there once. This is the only time I've been to Luxembourg is flew home from Europe out of Luxembourg

airport. So that's my only, like I don't know anything about it as a place. It's interesting. It's like the Delaware of Europe. That's right. It may or may not exist. So that was pretty much the long and short of it. And the BBC didn't really care that the teenagers wanted more.

They just said no. They might have even said nine at this point. You know what I mean? Yeah. And this is where a gentleman comes in the picture that would really change everything. And his name is Ronan. And I've heard Americans pronounce it O-R-I-L-E. It's spelled O little accent capital R-A-H-I-L-O-Y.

And I heard him speak his name in court when they asked his surname, but he said it so quickly. It sounded like a D. So it may just be like, some weird, like, you know, Irish pronunciation or something that I don't know about. Sure. But we're going to say O-R-I-L-E. I mean, that's how, yeah, that's how I heard it too. But yeah, so he sounded like Brad Pitt and Snatch.

Yeah, sort of. I couldn't understand him. I swear there was a D in there. But he was a guy who figured out that their jurisdiction over the airwaves, the BBC and the UK government's jurisdiction, stopped about five kilometers off the coast, three miles here in the States. And he said, and there were, he didn't invent the idea of planning a boat out there and broadcasting.

Other countries were doing this kind of thing and exploiting this loophole already. But he said, this is something we should do. The kids want their rock and roll. They want their MTV. We don't know what that is yet. And I'm going to bring it to them. Yeah, so he actually took inspiration, like you were saying, there were some Scandinavian countries, specifically Sweden and Denmark that had been home to pirate radio stations

that were docked off of their coast. And for very similar reasons too, there was a state monopoly on radio broadcasting at the time. And some people were like, no, that's, I want to broadcast what I want to broadcast. And so they set up those shops, I mean, all the way back in the fifties. And I actually ran across one in the United States to bring it on home that was operating in the 1930s, 1933. And it had a call sign, RXKR.

And it was out of Panama, even though it was off of the coast of Long Beach. And I think, Chuck, I think, I think we either talked about it in our prohibition episode or we talked about it in our who owns the oceans episode. But it was originally one of those floating speakeasy casinos, Dr. Mary National Waters. Totally. And they started to broadcast radio, pirate radio as well for a little while. So it had happened before. And there was actually, because of the success of the Scandinavian stations, there was kind

of this mad rush in the UK to be the first to see, I guess, and start broadcasting and Ronan O'Reilly beat them all with what came to be known as Radio Caroline. Yeah. So he was sort of in a tight race with another guy named Alan Crawford, who had a project called, his was going to be Radio Atlanta, I think it was called Project Atlanta, nothing to do with Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta, Texas from what I saw. Oh, really? I figured it was just a riff on Atlantic is in the ocean.

Now one of the owners was from Dallas, I believe is a radio man from Texas and for some reason he chose Atlanta after Atlanta, Texas. I didn't know there wasn't Atlanta, Texas. I didn't either. Neither did the people who live in Atlanta, Texas. So they're the Delaware of Texas. That's right. So there was, I think O'Reilly got about a half a dozen investors because this is going

to cost some money because you got to buy a ship. It can't just be a little dingy or a, or a rowboat or anything like that. You have to get it. It takes it. It takes a shipload of equipment. Yeah. It takes it and people to operate it and people to stay on it and stuff like that and meeting rooms and so you got to have a legit ship.

So Crawford for Radio Atlanta got the Mi Amigo and O'Reilly got a passenger ferry, a Danish ship called the MV Frederica, they each renamed them Atlanta and then Caroline respectively. Apparently Caroline after Caroline Kennedy, because he, as Lorgos saw a picture, O'Reilly saw a photo of little Caroline and little John Jr. dancing in the Oval Office and he was inspired by that because he was like, this is what we're trying to do like sort of, you know, you're not allowed to dance in the Oval Office yet they're doing it and we're not allowed to broadcast rock and roll music because the government says so. So you know, we're going to name after Caroline.

Very cute name. It is very cute. So that's the name that he went with and I'm glad that he was one of the, I'm glad he was the one who made it first because he was the one who is doing it, I guess as purely as you would expect somebody to be doing with like a constant rotation of DJs operating 24 hours a day, legitimately broadcasting from the ship and that was not Radio Atlanta's model at all. They were compiling shows or days worth of shows in the studio back in London, recording

them and then sailing it out to the ship. It was really, it was also, I mean, there was like banking concerns that were invested in it. It was, it was illegit as far as pirate radio goes from the outset. So I'm glad that they, they weren't the ones who made it to market first. Yeah. So Radio Caroline, their slogan was your all day music station because of that 24 seven format.

Which was new in and of itself, right? Yeah. I mean, as far, I mean, as far as playing music, absolutely. And they just within a few months, I think they launched in on Easter Sunday, 1964 with the Stones tune. It's all over now. Perfect. I saw it not fade away.

I saw it's all over now, actually. I saw it in the Guardian and then one other source not fade away. And then I also saw all over now, but I saw both enough legit places that I'm, I honestly don't know. Yeah. I saw not fade away was the station's theme song. So who knows? And then they got someone else to compose an original theme song because I think they

didn't want to keep playing that. But at any rate, they launched and it didn't take long until they had a larger audience than all of the BBC stations combined. That's wonderful. And they quickly merged that thing. If it goes from Easter Sunday, they merged in July, just a few months later with Radio Atlanta. I guess they figured they had just more power together.

And then the Mi Amigo, they became the Caroline North and the Caroline South broadcasting from different places. Yeah. Which covered almost all of the UK, but not all of it. There was some Southwestern parts that just didn't get it from either ship. The Delaware's. They had a pretty good coverage of the Isles for sure with those two ships. And then eventually Radio Atlanta went under as an organization and Radio Caroline was

able to take over both of those ships. So they had that. They had, I mean, for a pirate radio station, they had a lot of power behind them for sure. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, we haven't said the obvious. They were called pirate radio because they were operating on ships in the ocean. And flouting the law. Yeah.

So it was sort of doing double duty there with the name. Yeah. There's actually some really great pieces out there on the internet about this, this era. Yeah. And one of them I saw was they said like from the moment they started broadcasting, it was basically immediately called pirate radio. For some reason, those two words together just seem, they just strike something in you. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And there's lots of cool documentaries too. In addition to the narrative film, which obviously takes a lot of liberties and we'll talk a little bit about that, but a lot of cool short documentaries and even longer documentaries. You want to take an ad break? Yeah.

True pirates. Right. We'll be right back everybody. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house of her childhood home.

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Yeah, I'm sure they were very subversive and flouting. Anti-establishment? Yeah, exactly. So Radio Caroline's up and running, and when I said earlier, Chuck, that there was a... It represents a piece of the puzzle of rock and roll history, even pop culture history that I didn't know existed. But when I said that, I meant this specific group of pirate radio stations, but really Radio Caroline, from what I can tell, had such a pronounced effect on music that they actually

managed to reshape it and re-change it, because the BBC was basically saying, we're only playing stodgy stuff your parents like, like literally square records. That's how square the music we're playing is. There's no place for you bands to play the music you want to play, so you have to make music that we will play on BBC. And all of a sudden now, there was this really potent outlet that hadn't existed before, and those bands that had started out kind of prim and BBC ready, were now able to start taking acid on a daily basis and really explore their musical abilities and try new things.

And they knew that there was a good chance that it would get played on Radio Caroline or some of the other pirate radio stations, and in that, it actually shaped psychedelia. It's shaped the psychedelic music scene by just giving it a place to start. Yeah. I mean, they had to fill, it says here, about 2,500 songs each week because they were going 24-7. That was each DJ that had to. Yeah.

And that's a lot of music, and you didn't want to just play the same stuff over and over. They wanted to follow, and they could follow the American Top 40 sort of system where you play the hits and you play the hits a little more, but then you also try and break new music. And this Halstof Works article says the Moody Blues were a band that kind of came directly out of pirate radio as far as being broken on pirate radio, starting to do experimental stuff and that wouldn't obviously get played on the BBC anywhere. But having started out as playing music that would get played on the BBC and then being allowed to kind of alter to what they wanted to be.

Totally. And one of the song I saw that's widely considered the first pirate radio hit of the Swingin' 60s in the UK is Tom Jones, It's Not Unusual. Yeah. Good song. Now that is unusual as far as facts go. You think? It makes the Carlton dance one degree removed from British 60s pirate radio.

I would not have seen that connection before. Yeah. And I mean, you hear It's Not Unusual, it's a cool song, and Tom Jones was a cool dude. But it definitely feels way more square to my ears now than early psychedelia. For sure. I mean, sure, the whole thing is from front to back about smoking hash and how much Tom Jones loved his hash. But still today it seems a little tame for sure.

Yeah. He was so great. He's Welsh, right? Yeah. I don't know. Probably. I think he's Welsh. Okay.

We'll go with that. So one of the big DJs and they had a whole rotation of DJs that all loved what they did and most of them went on to be DJs for life. Some stayed with Radio Caroline for life. I guess that's the sort of spoiler is that they're still around today and you can listen to them on the internet and on the radio, even though they have a legal license now. But I was listening to their stream. You can stream sort of the classic version, which is music from back then, and it's just

fantastic. Oh, yeah. It's like a good WFMU playlist. If you ever remember, we were on FMU for a while, the classic New Jersey Freeform radio station that's so great. They clearly had some space to fill too. Yeah. So I encourage you to go listen to Radio Caroline and check it out.

But one of the more famous DJs to come out of that scene was Tony Blackburn. And he was a fan of Radio Luxembourg just as a listener and saw an ad in the NME, New Musical Express, still a great magazine. Sure. It's been around since the 50s I read. Oh, it's fantastic. That and Melody Maker are two of the best. And he basically applied to this for this job, got it, and became one of the more popular

DJs on that ship. Yeah. He was one. I mean, kind of going down through history, Pete Tong started out on Pirate Radio. He's a very well-known DJ and supposedly also, I think we mentioned him in the Cockney rhyming slang episode where everything's gone all wrong, it's gone Pete Tong. Yeah, we definitely did because we talked about that. It's better than nothing, I think.

And then there was another very famous DJ. His name... Jazzy Jeff. Yeah. I'm the DJ. He's the rapper. Remember that they had to explain it to everybody on one of their... So the guy I'm thinking of is DJ Andy Archer.

Okay. Yeah. He is a very well-known DJ, has been for many, many years, I think he started out in the 60s. I don't know if it's on Caroline or Radio London, one of the competitors, but he is known to have coined the term Anorak. And in the UK, I didn't know this, but Anorak is slang for like a super nerdy obsessive fan, basically.

And the term was coined because Andy Archer called some of the nerdy male radio, pirate radio fans, who were like so obsessed with the whole thing, they would actually hire boats to take them out to the ships that were broadcasting. They would normally wear like Anoraks because of the weather. So an Anorak apparently gets its origin from pirate radio too. Well, and that's one of the cool things about the early days of pirate radio is they didn't have ratings to depend on. They got their feedback from kind of like us, from hearing from people, we get it via email

and stuff like that, but they got bags and bags of mail. Just like us. Just like us. People would stop by their office, like you said, by boat, that's happened to us before, even though it's not encouraged any longer, and especially now during the lockdown. There's no one here. But people would show up, they would send them gifts. I think Blackburn was the one that said he would tell listeners that when he got back

to land and he would drive away in his little sports car that he would give away just, you know, records. He would give away 45s in this obsolete vinyl. And he said it would take him an hour and a half to get out of town just because he was mobbed by kids on the street looking for him, looking to get a piece of him, looking to get one of those records. It was like true, true fandom. I read something about Tony Blackburn that apparently he once did a live performance

of tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree in a cage full of lions with a lion tank. It's a very psychedelic song. It is. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Why? I don't know.

I think that's just Tony Blackburn. That's the impression I have. Another DJ was an American named Mike Pasternak. His DJ name was Emperor Roscoe and he still sort of apparently wears this skull and cross bones baseball hat and I get a feeling all these people, like this is their cred. They still really hang their hat on this experience is like these rock and roll Mavericks from the 60s. Right.

That's the impression I have too. But the thing is, is like, you know, I think most people assume that these ships were just like party boats, basically, and from what I can tell, that's just not the case at all, that they were largely staffed by professional acting DJs, even though a lot of them were not professionals at all. Like you said, was it Blackburn that had, he answered it, and in the new musical Express? Blackburn did. Pasternak, the American, he had a little bit of experience with military radio on an aircraft

carrier. Right. Two years. It's sort of a polish that the British guys didn't have, he said they didn't have the technique yet, but yeah, by all accounts, they were pros. They weren't like, in the movie, I think they really play it up as just sort of a big party barge. Sure.

Which I mean, that's a movie kind of thing to do for sure. And they were allowed apparently only two beers a day and they could play cards, they could watch TV, they could sunbathe, and I think Pasternak said occasionally some women would come aboard for a cup of tea. So I don't know if that story is fully true, but I don't either. I think they actually did have tea with some of the anoraks that showed up. Probably so. So we've got Radio Carolina, it's operating, it's going pretty well, but there was an incident

that went down. I think in 1966 maybe, maybe 1967, which kind of goes to show you like Radio Carolina is this huge smash success and it's allowed to operate, flouting the laws of the UK for a few years before the UK government finally said enough is enough. And they passed something called the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act. And supposedly the thing that really prompted them to take action was that there was a hostile physical takeover of one of the pirate radio stations. There was a radio station called Radio City that had taken over a set of abandoned seaforts

that were jutting out of the North Sea. And there was a disagreement between a Radio Atlanta owner, the chairman of it, and the guy who was running Radio City, Reg Calvert. And the other guy, Lord Smedley, shot Reg Calvert with the shotgun when Reg Calvert came to negotiate with him about getting, I think, a transmitter back or something like that. And the fact that these guys were now physically invading one another's ships and were shooting one another really kind of brought home that the fact that everybody had been calling it pirate radio for a while made it seem pirate, but not in the good kind of pirate.

You know what I mean? Like the real life kind of pirate thing all of a sudden and that forced the British government's hand. Yeah, I think what I saw was that Smedley was trying to get another merger going and just grow this empire with Radio City and offered up this transmitter to Calvert. It didn't work. Calvert didn't want to pay him for it. And so Smedley literally sent like in the dead of night, these guys to board the ship

and get it back like true pirate style. And Calvert didn't take kindly to that. So he threatened him, went to his house and was met with a shotgun. I saw that he was not the type to threaten anybody, but that the Smedley's housekeeper tried to keep Calvert from entering, I guess his study or his office or something. They got into a scuffle and Smedley shot him with a shotgun. Yeah. And got manslaughter.

He apparently claims self-defense because I don't know the laws were like back then, but the guy did come to his house and he claimed he felt threatened. Yeah. And so he was ultimately acquitted. But the larger impact that it had on pirate radio in the UK is that Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, which you could get up to two years in the pokey for that, not to mention all the fines. And one of the things that they really kind of passed this law on was not like, oh, these

guys are actually shooting each other now, we got to do something. It was this idea that their broadcasts could interfere with Marine distress signals. And that is an ongoing longstanding establishment government opposition to pirate radio. That's typically what they go to the public with, like, hey, you want to be out at sea trying to get help and some kids are spinning the who and nobody can hear you because your signals being infringed on. We don't want that either. Let's all get rid of the pirate radio stations.

But that doesn't seem to be the real reason why governments tend to oppose pirate radio. It's usually that they're protecting the interests of the corporations who have legitimate licenses and usually a lot more sway with the government than some kids who got their hands on a German merchant vessel and started broadcasting, you know, 60s soul from it. Yeah. And that's, I mean, we'll get to America today, but that's exactly how they frame it today as well. Right.

Is that you're going to get in the way of legitimate signals in case of distress because, well, we won't go there yet. But O'Reilly keeps Radio Carolina going. His ship was seized by Dutch authorities, but he got it back. He kept it going. There were some, I think George Harrison gave them like a substantial check to keep it going because he believed in their mission in the 70s. Tom Jones chipped in a bunch of hash.

Of course he did, which is more valuable than money as we all know. But both of the boats, Caroline North and the South had a couple of incidents. I think the Mi Amigo ran aground at one point and was repaired. And then the original Caroline, I think, did a fire break out or did it sink? No, sorry. So the Mi Amigo sank. The original Caroline, I don't know whatever happened to it. I could not find it, but I know for a fact that it wasn't the original ferry, the MV

Caroline that sank. It was definitely the Mi Amigo. Well, the Mi Amigo must have two then because it ran aground and was fixed. Right. And then it sank afterward. And then it sank later. It did. It had a little bit of bad luck.

What cracks me up in this entire story is that there was a German vessel called the Mi Amigo. I know. My friend in Spanish is a German merchant vessel. Oh, wait. I don't understand. I think the Caroline is a museum now, so that one did survive, right? No.

The Ross's Revenge. Oh, okay. So they came up with another German ship, the Ross's Revenge, to replace the Mi Amigo. And that one eventually has been outfitted to be a museum, which I can't tell. They have a website, and it sounds like the last update was from 2014, and I don't know if it's actually open or not. If it is, they definitely need to update their website, but that's the plan at least. I don't know if they ran out of money or something like that.

Yeah. I think there's a couple of different museums, but I would love to, on our next UK trip, go check these places out. That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm excited to get back to the UK and Australia, too, man. Yeah. I think we hit even sort of loosely earmarked this year or next year for another international

trip, and I don't think that's going to happen. That kind of fell through. And also, sorry, everybody, I'm also excited to get back to New Zealand, too. Yeah, because we didn't get enough time there. Oh, wait, wait. And Canada. Well, we always love to go to Canada. That's easy.

Sure. Yeah. Should we take another break? That's all the boxes. Yeah. We'll see you in Germany next time, too. I'd love to go to Germany. It's my homeland.

Well, that's not true. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. When you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse, and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for

her travel. So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb, too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, I said Germany was my homeland because I took German in high school and college, speak German, and have been to Germany and love it.

I'm not German in any way. What's your ancestry? It's fully, like I did the DNA test, it's fully like UK, Irish, sort of European, and then it said like 1% East African or something like that. I got like 2% or 0.2%, yeah, it was like, no, 0.002% Ashkenazi Jew. Oh, nice. Yeah, I got 2% something Neanderthal. This all checks out.

It does, it does for sure, so I'm celebrating both of my heritages. Shalom. Thank you. Back at you, I think. Back at you. Yeah. So the US, we've kind of overlooked the United States. They didn't have nearly the sort of, I guess, cultural revolution that the UK had as far

as pirate radio goes. They've had a few sort of operations here and there, the one that you were talking about. There was this preacher, Reverend Carl McIntyre, he was a fundamentalist who I think he broadcasts from a ship for like 10 hours until there was a fire. He worked so hard on it for months, months. He thought he was going to be up and running in a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. It ended up taking him months to get this pirate radio ship ready and he got it going and they shut him down in 10 hours.

And we've talked about him before actually in our fairness doctrine. Yeah, that's right. Because the whole reason that he was operating from a pirate radio station is he went from being broadcast on like, I think 600 something radio stations across the South and the Midwest. And he would preach like anti-communism. He said the Catholic church was fascist. He said Billy Graham was an appeaser. He was a real firebrand and also super political too.

And because of that fairness doctrine said, you have to have equal airtime for opposing viewpoints, he didn't do that. So he kind of brought the heat onto some of these stations that were worried about losing their license. They started to drop him. So he tried pirate radio for a minute and it didn't pan out very well for him. He tried for 600 minutes. That's right.

So that's some fast math there, Chip. It's pretty easy. Where you see pirate radio in the United States and it still continues today. In fact, there was one study that said there are more pirate radio stations in New York on the FM band than there were legit stations. Yeah. And that's been going on for a while. I saw late 80s, early 90s, there was a big boom in pirate radio and like the epicenter

seems to have been New York. It's because of Christian Slater. I think so. Or maybe they wrote the movie because of the boom. I don't know. Well, a lot of them are out of Brooklyn, they're broadcast from rooftops, you know, you get a little equipment, you get an antenna and you're in business. And here's the deal with pirate radio in the United States.

And what's going on now, which is currently the FCC has popped up, of course. And they used to, like the article said, play kind of whack-a-mole, trying to knock these things back as they came up. But I guess they thought it was such a problem, especially New York, that the FCC has, and especially this current FCC, has stood up and said, nope, not going to happen on our watch. And in January of this year, the president signed the, and I love it when they come up with an acronym that actually works.

They really worked for this one. They had to reverse engineer this one. The Pirate Act, preventing illegal radio abuse through enforcement. But also abuses in there, like stop abusing that radio center. Yeah. But, you know, they needed an A. For sure. I'm saying like hats off to them for that one.

It couldn't be radio amusement through enforcement. They actually, at least they used all the letters from all the words. I hate it when they just slip a couple of words in there, like nobody's going to notice, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's lazy. So the problem with the Pirate Act is this. It takes already existing FCC laws that allow the FCC to kind of go after pirate radio stations and find them.

I saw you're looking at fines of something like $10,000 a day, typically with a maximum of about $75,000 for a total fine for operating in a legal pirate station. That's bad. I mean, most people who are operating pirate stations do so, as we'll talk about in a minute, because they don't have the money to run a legit station and pay all the fees and all the application fees and the license fees and all that stuff. So that is significant. What the Pirate Act does, it takes all those existing laws and just says, you're at $75,000

max fee, let's up that to $2 million. And the whole point of that is to specifically intimidate people out of pirate radio, out of broadcasting pirate radio. And that's terrible, especially coming from an FCC that's led by a former telecommunications lobbyist and the guy who presided over the end of net neutrality. That's some sour grapes right there, if you ask me. Yeah. And the whole deal with pirate radio these days, especially out of New York, is they're

not just like spinning tunes for fun. I'm sure there are some that do that. But a lot of it is are people starting these very small, small operations that may be broadcast over their neighborhood because they are an underserved community as far as radio programming goes. Right. And they will speak in their native language to people who are listening in their native language.

And they are getting news out to people in their native language. And these are communities that aren't represented on the regular FM spectrum. And there's a big argument to be made that this is almost like a public service in a way to these underserved communities. Yes. It absolutely is. And that's what radio has been. This has been intended for since the inception of it, at least in the United States, and

the UK too. It's meant to be a public service for everybody. The thing is, in the US, we've long valued a multiplicity of different voices of competing ideas and thoughts of different music. I mean, even if you are talking about pirate radio stations that are just playing music, they're not doing anything, there's no community discussion or anything like that. The music they're playing is probably stuff you're not going to hear anywhere else on the radio.

Yes. And it's lost when more and more radio stations become homogenized further and further, then all of a sudden, it's kind of like the radio equivalent of that strip mall that you could go to Topeka or Miami or Seattle and find the exact same stuff in the exact same stores with almost the exact same layout to where it's all the same. That's what pirate radio represents. Or even if you take the pirate out of it. That's what a multiplicity of different community radio stations represents.

The lack of homogeneity that kind of sucks the life out of everything. That in and of itself makes them valuable and that they shouldn't be aggressively pursued. Or Chuck, there's one other thing too. If you are going to aggressively pursue this, then also make an avenue for legitimacy rather than just try to stamp them out or else it really makes you question what the ultimate motive is. Yeah, and here's the thing, it'd be very easy to sit back and say, well, you've got the internet, you can have an internet radio station, you can have a podcast, it's more democratized

than ever before to get your voice out there, which is true in a way, but that's also a very privileged thing to say when you just assume that someone has the money to afford the internet. Yeah, just go get a new iPhone, what's your problem? Yeah, exactly. Just download the app. It's that easy. Radio.

I don't understand how you're not getting this. Radio is free and you can buy a radio, you probably have a radio if you're one of these people in an underserved community, but if you don't, you can get one at a thrift store for $5 that picks up the FM and AM spectrum and you don't have to pay monthly fees, you don't have to pay internet fees and it is a true democratized voice for the people who can't afford to get it otherwise. Right. I didn't know anything about this as far as the Pirate Act, I didn't know that existed

until we started researching this episode, but it's very clear that this is a law that's creating outlaws where there shouldn't necessarily be outlaws. There's no inherent problem with Pirate Radio. From what I've read, and granted it was on a Pirate Radio organization's blog, Prometheus Radio Project, but they said you can find very few instances of Pirate Radio stations actually interfering with other stuff, but you can very easily find major corporate radio stations interfering with stuff and very frequently say there was an instance in the 90s where North Perry, Florida's airport had to change frequencies because the commercial radio station

that was interfering with their frequency that they were using to communicate with airplanes, they wouldn't change their frequency, so the airport had to. You don't find that with Pirate Radio stations, and from what I saw, there's a lot of self-policing that goes on in the community because you don't want to infringe on somebody else's broadcast because that means that their broadcast is going to infringe on your broadcast. You want your own digits, and America, like we said before, to reiterate, they're standing behind the same thing the BBC did, which is it can interfere with sharing a vital public safety information, and it's just that's such hooey, like if someone dropped a dirty bomb

on New York City, they're sure the radio stations might issue some sort of public safety alert, but I guarantee you, so would the Pirate Radio stations, and they would do so in their language. That's true, that's right, because there's a lot of evidence that Pirate Radio stations serve immigrant communities because they have this cultural tie to radio as a technology, so when they come over here to the United States, they expect to get their information from radio. Yeah, and the Twin Towers fall, I guarantee you Pirate Radio stations weren't like, we're just going to keep spinning the tunes.

I'm sure they did every other broadcast and TV show and radio show in the world, I'm sure they ceased their programming and started handing out vital information. Oh yeah, for sure. I can't prove it, but I can't imagine that they did otherwise. I like what you did there too, like they were like, well, what are you going to do? I mean, Pirate Radio interferes with stuff. You're like, oh yeah, what are you going to do if there's a dirty bomb in New York? You just threw it right back in the FCC's face.

I don't even know what a dirty bomb is. The thing is, is from what I've seen, small government conservatives and libertarians should be all over that Pirate Act. They should be very much up in arms about this and about the way that the FCC targets small illegal radio stations without offering like a legitimate path to legitimacy, and I would like to see that. That's right. And by the way, I have an in-show correction.

I think I said that preachers boat caught fire. I don't think it actually caught fire. I think it just started smoking because the antenna feeder line interfered with another radio station. So it didn't actually catch fire when he was, because I thought the ironies of preaching fire and brimstone and it actually catching fire was too great. You're right. God won't be quiet.

It was just smoke. So if you are interested in Pirate Radio, The Verge did a whole series on it, really interesting in-depth stuff. And yeah, you could also do, I ran across one called The Lot. It's out of, I think Williamsburg and it's on a little lot in a shipping container. Of course it is. And it's like all DJ sets all the time, but it's on pretty great and they have a webcam of what you can see out the window.

It's just cute, nice, and it's just cozy in a way. Yeah. And again, go check out and stream the Radio Carolina classic version if you're into like just good playlist, it's one of the best. I got to check that out. I didn't run across that. So thank you for that public service, Chuck. You got anything else?

Nope. Okay. Well, that's it for Pirate Radio for now. And that means it's time for Listener Mail. This is called Hot Off the Presses. Just got this email and it was just so heartwarming. I had to share it. Hey guys, Ann Jerry.

I love listening to the recent episode on soap. I consider myself a bit of a soap nerd because when I served at the Peace Corps, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal for three years, late 2000s, I guess 2016 to 2019, late teens, my main activity was training women's groups on how to start small businesses making and selling soap. We trained them on how to make all kinds of bar soap using local ingredients, shea butter, honey, mint, herbs. Using these women's groups about soap making is a really excellent way to improve their

household financial security for a few reasons. First, you're always going to have a market for soap because everyone needs it. Secondly, there are a few barriers to entry to making soap. You don't need to be able to read or have fancy equipment. If you can measure, pour and stir, then you can make it. And thirdly, because women in Senegal are responsible for so much of the daily chores in their homes, soap making requires only a little bit of time since much of the process is waiting for the soap to cure fully into a hard bar.

And fourth, making soap is a great way to teach all the basics of starting a business, marketing, accounting, record keeping, calculating unit costs, profit margins, making creative packaging. Once they master these skills, they can expand to other business opportunities. And fifth, it smells really good. Yeah, she said some of her fondest memories are her service, seeing the satisfaction on their faces as the lion shea butter mixture spent ages stirring by hand, became real soap for them to sell and market.

I trained over 150 members of more than five women's groups on soap making, and all of the groups continue to make soap and sell it for a profit today, helping make their households more financially secure. Tell me they included a website. No, because it's a bunch of different groups, but it was from the Peace Corps, so you obviously want to support them. And that is from Grace E. Nagel. Thanks a lot, Grace E. Nagel.

We appreciate that. That was great. That was a great email. She sent pictures. But also, we appreciate... Oh, I'll have to check them out. We appreciate you, what you did over there and sending all too. Totally. If you want to let us know about something great you did in your life, like Grace E. did,

you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom twice, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.