Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Game Shows Work

Episode Date: January 21, 2023

Join Josh and Chuck and a whole bunch of great people at the Gothic Theatre in Denver for this live show on game shows and their place in cultures around the world, recorded on June 28, 2018. You just come right on down, why don’t you?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships,

gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. It's Chuck here, your curator of the week for our Saturday Selects episode. This is a live one. We don't release too many live episodes for our Selects,

but I loved this episode. This was SYSK Live, How Game Shows Worked. We toured this same topic, I'm not sure how many times, but it was one of my favorite ones. This episode is from September 11th, 2018. Did I already say that? I'm not sure. But anyway, check it out.

It's Josh and Chuck Live. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's not with us, but these beautiful people are at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. Yeah.

That was easily double last night's reception. Easily. That was a good start, is what they call that. And I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lovely lady with a Josh sent me shirt. Oh, yes, I noticed. Thank you very much. That is a great shirt.

Thank you for wearing it. Okay, so tonight, you guys, you're probably gonna feel like you just wasted your applause, because we're going to be talking about game shows. Yes. Oh, good, you guys are into it, that's good. Because it's a coin toss, frankly.

About half the people are like, I wonder what the real topic is. Right, he's just kidding. We actually, we once did a show in, I think, Portland, and came out and said that it was the anniversary of the How the Sun Works show, so we were gonna redo it. And all the people were like, wow, we wanna like you guys,

but we're really mad right now, are you kidding? They're like, yes, we're just kidding. But we're all super high, so we really don't care. Right. They're like, that's why we cheer at game shows. So we wanted to do game shows, in part, because Fourth of July is coming up. You guys can't have fireworks,

because it's too dry here to set off a firework. It's the most wildly irresponsible thing you could do. Something tells me that some of your militia members are going to shoot off fireworks anyway. But even still, Fourth of July is coming, so we wanted to do something American, and nothing is more American than game shows. They're like leisure suit level American, right?

But as, yeah, right? He's in a leisure suit. He is. You get a free beer. As American as game shows are, however, it turns out that the first game show on television was actually British. It was a British invention.

No, we like the Brits, it's fun. Somebody poo. It's fun. You can, you don't have to poo. It's because they live in another country. So, right, yeah. And remember this, buddy. If you shoot into the air, bullets come back down.

That's right. So just don't shoot into the air. Maybe blanks are okay. So this first game show in Great Britain, it launched in 1938, is called Spelling Bee, and it was exactly what it sounds like. That's right. Freddie Grieswood was the host,

and he dressed as a school teacher. He kind of played it up a bit, which was nice. And he would say, spell this. And they spelled it. And if it sounds boring, it was, because even though there was nothing on TV in 1938, it still was not met with warm receptions. Advertisers liked it, but there was a columnist

in the Independent in 2000, just 18 years ago. Such a snarky British thing to say. He said this. One of the few happy consequences of the Second World War was it took Spelling Bee off air. Burn. Then like a good World War II burn. Right.

So Spelling Bee, even though it was boring, it kicked off this huge craze just immediately. Everyone saw like, okay, if Spelling Bee can be popular with advertisers, we can do better than that. We're America, right? So we took the ball and ran with it. We were already familiar with game shows.

We had them on the radio. Like we had shows like, You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marks was a big one. There was, what is it? What's my line? What's my line? That's where you tried to guess someone's profession by asking them questions.

It's like maybe a step up from Spelling Bee, right? Then things start to get cool with Truth or Consequences, which started out as a radio show and then very quickly moved on to TV. Truth or Consequences was this show where you had to, you were asked a question and you had to answer before Bula the buzzer sounded. They named their buzzer.

Bula. Yeah, it was kind of neat. Right. It's just a nice little touch, right? And if you didn't answer before Bula went off, you had to face the Consequences, which is like something wacky, like a mock execution or something like that, right?

The coolest thing about that show though was that they, have you ever been to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico or driven very fast through there? Yeah? Are you from there? Oh, okay. Pretty close. I think it's in the same state.

All right, good. I'm a Las Cruces guy myself, but whatever. Name dropper. You're a name dropper. In 1950, host Ralph Edwards said that they would broadcast live from the first town that would name their city after Truth or Consequences. This is not a joke.

And that's where that town name came from. Before that, it was the lovely Hot Springs, New Mexico, and they named it Truth or Consequences. They're like, our town's name is basically just like a caution sign. We can lose this. We'll still keep the sign up that says Hot Springs because it's useful, but we're gonna change our name.

And they did. I think they cheaped out personally. Okay. Don't tell them that back in New Mexico. That Chuck said that, okay? So this was, I think 1939 was when game shows started coming on TV in the US. And by the 50s, they were like some of the top rated shows

on television, game shows were. I think they call them quiz shows back then even. They did. And that was pretty much the format. There was actually like thought and like skill to this. Like mastery. Smarts. Yeah, smarts, right?

There was like the $64,000 question, which in today's dollars would be the $595,559.63 question. That's correct. Thank you. Although you wrote this a couple of months ago. I had that same thought. I'm really sad that you brought that up. I was just gonna not mention it.

Oh, all right. Well, Jerry of the future, cut that part out. I don't wanna make Josh uncomfortable. Thank you. Jerry's all around us right now, you guys. We live on a hard drive in Jerry's computer in the future. This is all a simulation. So the pressure was on to make these quiz shows

as dramatic as possible. And so producers of these quiz shows realized, hey, we can maybe manipulate these things, i.e. cheat and build up people who people love to love and people who love to hate. And America will never know the difference and they'll think it's great. Right, and that's what they did.

There was this one show called 21. You guys might've seen the movie Quiz Show with John Tratturo and Ray Fiennes. I guess not. No. So we're seeing, worth seeing, right? But it's about this actual scandal that happened in the U.S. with this one show called 21.

And the whole thing started where there was this producer for 21 who approached this blue blood lit professor named Charles Van Doran and just appealed to his ego. He said, there's this guy on the show that I produced, his name's Herb Stemple. He's like the worst stain of a human being, anyone's ever seen. But he can't stop winning and America hates him.

And Revlon, our sponsor's gonna leave. We're starting to lose ratings. You gotta help us Van Doran. Van Doran's like, okay, I'll see what I can do. Just feed me the lines and we'll cheat together and I will help you. That's a good Ray Fiennes, by the way. That was my Van Doran.

Oh, okay. So he gets locked into this, right? But what Van Doran didn't know is that he was actually being scammed. It was a scam within a scam because Herb Stemple was a plant. Yeah, he was a plant. They made him wear an ill-fitting suit.

They gave him a bad haircut and they tried to make him as unlikable as possible. So they would have a villain on their hands. And Herb Stemple doesn't like this, of course, because he would think like, all right, well then go to the press and expose this thing. And he did. And the press said, yeah, you're just a sore loser.

Yeah, they wouldn't believe it. The New York Times said, nah, you're just a sore loser. There was another guy. Who was the other dude? Stony Jackson. Yes, Stony Jackson was another, I think he was on the $64,000 question. He went to the New York Times and Time Magazine

and said, these are all rigged. None of these game shows are real. And they went, yeah, you're just a sore loser. Yeah. So finally, there was hard evidence. There was another quisher named Dotto and somebody found a contestants notebook that had the questions and the answers in it

and took it to the press and that was that. And America's reaction was profound, you could say. They had congressional hearings on it. They amended the 1938 Communications Act to expressly outlaw dishonest quiz shows, right? This is like a very naive time in our country's history. I'm trying to think of a time when the game show quality was one of the more important things on the docket.

Right. Now I'm depressed. Yeah, me too. Militia hippies. I don't have to think. Vandoren, by the way, he was actually indicted for perjury. He was. Because he had lied to Congress.

No, he told the truth to Congress, he lied to a court. Right, but I don't think he ever did a hard time. No, I said he was a blue blood. Yeah, let's face it. It was still America. He didn't serve any hard time. Right. So those quiz show scandals gave us

one of the weird quirks of Jeopardy. At one point, Merv, yes, I still love Jeopardy. Merv Griffin's wife suggested at one time that he do a quiz show and he was like, shut up, nobody wants to come near a quiz show. Haven't you been paying attention? And she went, you shut up. Why don't you just make the questions, the answers,

and the answers to questions. I'm sure they're very lovely people, actually. That's just how I picture it in my head, is they're all drunk and smoking. He's got like, Bengali bracelets on. His wife, Julianne, actually suggested that. And that's where that interesting quirk of Jeopardy came from. Right, and by the time the executives figured out

it was actually the same thing. Yeah, it made no difference. It was like, too late, we're on the air. Yeah, you could still feed someone the questions or answers. Right, so the scandal, again, America's response was profound. And it almost killed off quiz shows. Were it not for one of, maybe, our country's greatest geniuses ever, man by the name of Mark Goodson,

who created the greatest game show ever, The Price Is Right. Yes. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, his partner. I don't recognize him. Just Mark Goodson. All right, your weird longstanding grudge against Bill Todman. It's not so much that. It's more an idolization of Mark Goodson.

Oh, OK, I got you. That's fine. So what Mark Goodson did, he said, OK, everybody, wait. We don't have to give up quiz shows. What we're going to do is take quiz shows and make them 70% dumber. And then we have game shows. And that's what he did.

They did away with the game. They did away with quiz anything. They did away with having to know stuff. They actually compete on the game. And that's when they got really good. Yeah, that is when they got really good, brother. You can say that again. They did.

That's when it got really good. Yeah, thank you. Because this was the era that we all know and love, if anyone watches the game show network, when you could just trot out drunk celebrities to spew racist and homophobic jokes left and right. Oh, yes, the good old days. Well, hey, make America great again, right?

Oh, god, this crowd is seething. Just one big seesaw that's going to tear us to shreds. Liga weed, don't tread on me in a way that's. Let's just back away from this chup. All right, Jerry cut all that out. Actually, Jerry, get us out of here. Celebrities getting drunk, which shows like the match game in Hollywood Squares,

and they flat out got drunk on the match game. If you've ever seen behind the scenes stories, it's pretty great. They just swill vodka, basically, from a noon on. And the only smarts you had to have as a contestant was to be able to fill in the blanks. You had to be able to speak like this. Frank was embarrassed because his blank squeaked.

That's as smart as you needed to be. Name a body part. Like, you basically couldn't get it wrong. And if you got it wrong, it was because you just guessed wrong. You had just as much of a chance of guessing right as you had to guess right. But there was always a chance that Nipsey Russell would be thinking the same body part.

Right. And then you were the winner. Right. It's pretty great. They would carry you out on their shoulders and give you a bunch of mushrooms because they were all on mushrooms themselves. And then there was, of course, the legendary newlywed game

where they would trot out married couples and ask, they would put one of them backstage, ask a question of the other spouse, and say, how would your husband or wife answer this? Are we doing this? Yeah, I think we have to because it's one of the biggest moments in game show history was Holga from the newlywed game.

We're doing this. And now I turn it over to you. OK, good. Thanks. It's me. Have you guys ever heard of Holga from the newlywed game? A few of you have? Well, the rest of you buckle in.

So there was a woman competing with her husband on the newlywed game. My name is Holga. I think it was 1975. What's her husband's name? Four? For argument's sake. Sure.

So Holga was asked among her fellow competitors on the game, tell me, girls, where is the weirdest place specifically that you personally have ever gotten the urge to make whoopee? And Holga answered, in the ass. You can watch it online when you get home. And poor Holga is like, why is everyone laughing? I guess it's funny.

And then when they brought her husband back and all the other husbands, they said, what do you think your wife would say? And her husband guessed, in the car. So it didn't win, but they definitely went down in history. And Holga was still going, why is everyone laughing at me? Poor Holga. Then there was a show called Queen for a Day.

This is an interesting show because it was a big, big hit with audiences, even though it was decidedly strange, in that they would bring out women who had genuine troubles in their life and spill their guts about what was going on in hopes that they would be voted up via applause meter to solve those problems with money. So you literally had ladies on TV talking about not being able to afford surgery for their sick child

and an applause meter is going up while people are going crazy and rooting them on. It sounds very strange. And it was. But it was a big, big hit. It was. And in fact, they even stretched it from 30-minute show to an hour-hung show because advertisers loved it so much.

Yeah. Queen for a Day. Queen for a Day. So there was another big thing that happened when game shows started to make a comeback. They moved from prime time to daytime. And the way that we think of game shows today, which is like back to back, starting in the morning,

going well into the afternoon. You don't even have to turn the channel once. That started in the 70s when there was this sudden spasm of game shows that came on daytime TV out of nowhere and just said, get out of the way, soap operas. Move over, love American style reruns. It just took over.

And what we think of as game shows came out of the mid-70s. And they made a pretty big splash. Yeah. In fact, in 1974, there was an article in the New York Times that said, you could watch nine straight game shows between 9.30 and 2.00 PM on NBC every weekday. Nine straight game shows. It's amazing.

And this is the world I grew up in. So I was pretty happy kid. Yeah, same here. This is how I watch Prices Right. That's how I watched and still watch Pyramid, to me, one of the greatest all-time game shows. I love Pyramid. It's no Prices Right, but it's good.

I love Prices Right. I was on the Prices Right. Well, I was not on. I went to a taping of the Prices Right. It's a big difference. And I will tell that story later. Put a pin in it. Yeah.

So the reason, sure. All right. The reason, I have to ask Josh's permission for everything I say. So the reason that game shows made such a big comeback after they were almost dead is pretty simple. Money. They're actually really, really cheap to make.

They came back in part, again, because of Mark Goodson. But they also came back because there were risk averse executives. When they actually pop up a lot in this show, you'll find. But back in the 60s and 70s, variety shows were huge. They kind of came in and filled the void after quiz shows went away. But they're really expensive to make.

Game shows are not expensive to make. They used to be even less expensive than they are today. Like today, you have what's called a prize budget. And it's part of your show budget. Did anybody see the power of 10? It was on for like a season in 2007? Yeah. No one did, right?

That's why it was on for a season. That's the correct response, by the way. But it was like this kind of slick new game show with the complicated rules and everything. But they had a prize budget for the season of $3 million. But they had a top prize of $10 million. And the producers just kind of hoped no one would ever get to the $10 million question.

They basically said, this show is so hard. It's virtually impossible to get to that $10 million question. Ipso facto were fine, right? The first contestant got to the $10 million question. I was like, surely that's, is that true? And I looked it up again in the green room. I was like, it is still true. Are you still fact checking?

Yeah. I love it. That's the kind of quality you can expect from stuff you should know. So producers have other levers they can pull if things are going badly for them, which is to say going great for a contestant. Like on the price is right, if people are winning a lot,

they can bring out, you know, those games are all on wheels. They can bring out whatever they want. They just bring out the harder games to play like a Penny Annie. Super easy game. Penny Annie is everyone's winning a lot of money. Barker, because Barker runs a show. Everyone knows that.

Oh, yeah. Barker might say, well, no, let's bring out Plinko. Because we're on a run here and we're going broke. And I need, there's a lot of pets that need to be spayed and neutered. So I need my money. He's kind of wandering around his bedroom, waiting for their turn in surgery.

Then he might try out Cliffhanger, the very tough Cliffhanger. With the Lederhosen. With the Yodler, one of my favorite games. And then the Kudugra at the end, if everyone is winning, they will bring out the only game on the price is right where you actually need physical skills. Can anyone name it? Hole in one, who said it?

Free beer. That's where you have to, you're giving out a lot of beer. It's not, it's their money. You know that comes out of our cut. What? So Hole in one is the one where you have to putt from like different distances, depending on whatever you've guessed for the price.

And that's like, I remember being a kid and seeing like an 80 year old woman handed a golf butter from nine feet away. And just like sinking it, dropping the putt. That'd be so great. Barker always showed off and putted first. Well, that's why that was even on there, was so he could get a little golf in at work.

Here's the other thing that they do. They also inflate the prizes of the value of the prizes so they can write it off on their income taxes as a production company. That's really true. They take out life insurance, or not life insurance. They probably should take out life insurance. They take out insurance policies in case someone wins

the big prize, indemnity insurance. It's amazing. They have all their bases covered. And then if none of that works and somebody wins, I didn't realize this until we researched this show. They do lotto style payouts to where they come to you and say, hey, congratulations. You can have like a 10th of this now,

where you can have the whole thing over like 50 years. Again, congratulations for winning. You can have this new car now, or how about the Segway? Or the dashboard today, the chair next year, the car chair. You know what they're called? The Segway. You can have the driver's chair, the passenger chair. The Segway, the invention that revolutionized standing.

That was going to change the city. Yeah, because we're all in Segway. Because there's so much room on any given sidewalk for thousands of Segways. Well, they were going to do away with cars. We rode a Segway. Remember that? They're hard.

Have you guys ever ridden on a Segway? Yeah. They're a tough headcracker. That was the original name for them. I was about to say, Jerry, cut that out, but you saved it. Thanks. Nice work. All right, where are we?

So the other thing, OK, no, I know where we are. All right. I'm glad you said that. Got us back on track. So prize budgets are kind of a new thing as far as game shows go. Back in the day, back in the 70s spasm of game shows on daytime, if you did this right, you could basically

pay for the production costs for your show. And ad revenue would be just 100% profit, right? And they did this because you could trade stuff for plugs on the game show. And we didn't realize this until, I guess, you realized it years before. I was like in my 20s when I realized the Price Is Right was a 60 minute TV commercial.

OK, I was researching this show when I realized that. Because again, this is how I watch Price Is Right. It's taken on face value. It's just, it's in show plug after in show plug, whether it's Rice Aroni, the San Francisco treat, or Bush's baked beans with more fat than ever before, or the new Ford Pinto, less fiery than it was a year ago. So depending on whether it was like Rice Aroni,

Rice Aroni would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a sack of money, a lifetime supply of Rice Aroni. And you just go plug Rice Aroni on your show. Ford would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a fiery death trap Pinto, and we'll give you this in exchange for like six plugs on the show. And Barker would lean back in his recliner and go, let me think about it.

Let me ask you, is your dog spayed or neutered? Before we go any further in this business deal, I need to know what's on the table. Take him out back and teach him a lesson. That was the real Barker, everybody. That's not true. No, it's not. He's a sweetheart of a man.

All right, I'm sorry. I keep getting lost because I'm halfway drunk. Yeah, halfway. Oh, so it ends up sounding kind of like a pyramid scam when you really look at how they do these things, because they're getting all this free product, and then they're charging them for ad revenue for the product. So it's all gravy, basically.

Right, because then you can take that money, pay your host, but also use it for cash prizes. If there's somebody who won't trade you their thing in exchange for plugs, you can actually buy it, and the whole thing, just wash it out, and it's free. So they're very cheap to make, and there's one other thing that you need to know about game shows. They're production-wise, they would

film five or six of them in a single day. Oh, yeah. So you get the whole week done, just knocked out in a single day. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the big reasons they're so cheap is because you save 80% on studio cost, on crew cost, because they just knock them out from, like, nine to five every day, then Barker goes home

to his recliner, smokes a cigar, and spays and neuters a bunch of dogs. So guys, I don't know about you all, but I'm feeling pretty good about this show. That was actually, that wasn't a prompt for applause. That was me softening the blow. Then why did you sit there and wait and go like this? That means that we have to put an ad break in.

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Magic of editing. Yes. That's how that works. So what? I pay for this show, not a commercial. I didn't pay for a commercial. I'm going to tell my fellow militia members. So with this 70s glut of game shows,

come some of the most popular TV shows of all time in American history. Shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, Price is Right, long, long running shows. Wheel of Fortune debuted in 1975, and became the longest-running syndicated game show in American television history, making Mr. Sajek and Ms. Vanna White household names,

of course. Yeah. And Sajek would have held on to his spot as the longest-running host had he not made the very poor decision to stop and have his own late-night talk show. Did you guys remember that? Oh, man, it's so bad. The Pat Sajek show, it was like watching a valium.

Not like taking a valium. It's like watching a valium you're not allowed to take. That's how boring it is. You just have to sit there and look at it. It's so sad. Yeah, Sajek is in a three-way race for a worst late-night talk show between Majid Johnson and Chevy Chates.

And I can't decide which one is worse. So Chevy, that was bad. It was bad. It was really bad. And my father raised me to despise Chezzy. I know your dad hates Chevy Chates. And I will still tell you this. Pat Sajek's show was worse than the others.

It was the worst of all. It's pretty bad. I would tell that to Pat Sajek's face. And of course, who took over as the longest-running host because of Sajek's mistake? Drabeck. But little known fact, Vanna White actually predates Pat Sajek on Wheel of Fortune.

Do you guys know that? It's true. She started back in the day when Chuck Woolery still hosted. And the first letter Vanna White ever turned on the board was a T. So if you ever listen to the radio and there's free tickets at stake, that's the answer. That's an arcane trivia question. And I got one more about Vanna if you guys are OK with that.

Yeah, let's hear it. She holds the Guinness World Record for television's most frequent clapper with about 720 claps per episode of Wheel of Fortune. And they film six of those in a day. That means she's at home the rest of the week just recouping. It's like, don't touch mommy's hands. Don't touch mommy's hands.

Says he's giant aloe plants. She just sticks her hands inside. They're like, food, me, Vanna. I was not expecting a little shot preference. So then we move into, well, actually, I forgot. We need to get Bob Barker his due. Because he actually worked from 1972 on The Price is Right only until his grand old age at 83.

But he actually hosted a show before that, right? Truth or Consequences. Yeah. What year did that start? He started hosting it in 1954. He stopped in 1970. Sorry, he started in 1956. He stopped hosting that in 1974.

He started hosting The Price is Right in 1972 and stopped hosting The Price is Right in 2007. So for 51 years, Bob Barker was a game show host every day. Well, actually, one day a week. But you know what I'm saying? The rest of the time, cigars and whiskey and spaying and neutering.

I don't like this picture you're painting Bob Barker, man. You're not going to lie. He had a veterinarian on hand. Spay that one. I don't like what I see out of that guy. He's getting humpy. Actually, that would be a neuter, technically. Don't email me.

I know my dog parts. So sorry. So sorry. Well, you know, the comedy rule of threes, we're going to have to say that a third time. OK, all right. Keeping you out for a, there's a 90% chance we'll forget. Right.

And at the very end, we'll just go, good night, and then say it. But I won't say it again because that would count. I don't want it to count. I'm going to see if I can work it in here. I don't want to see it. All right. So no. Sorry.

So game shows started in their heyday. Everybody bear with me. Game shows started in their heyday and rolled right into the 80s. And one of the quintessential game shows of the 1980s was something called Wind Loser Draw. Do you remember that? It was nothing more than a game of Pictionary

played by celebrities. That was it. In a fake living room set, that was how great it was. Lots of pastels. Yeah. Lots of pop callers. If you look closely at every episode, they have a magazine turned upside down

that is clearly tenting lines of cocaine that they're doing in between like commercial breaks. Lots of super 80s. Lots of Burt's, I think. Didn't Burt Conby host that? He did. Or do I just want him to have hosted that? No, he did host it.

And then Burt Reynolds was a guest on it. Burt and Lonnie, they were all over that show. And poor Burt Convy was known as Little Burt, which he was even, I think, taller than Burt Reynolds. But that was per Burt Reynolds contract. I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure.

It's called Little Burt. And then Betty White had an interesting show called Just Men, exclamation point. With an actual exclamation point. And it featured nothing but women as contestants, but they would ask celebrity men a question and then guess whether or not they would answer yes or no. And they could win keys potentially to start a new car.

So it was a game show where you literally, they could have called it coin flip. And just had people flipping a coin. But it worked out because Miss Betty White was the first woman to ever win the daytime Emmy for Outstanding Game Show host. So people liked it. She is just America's sweetheart, you know?

People love Betty White. She's great. So by the time the 80s are like in their heyday, their own heyday, if you look back, a lot of the shows that were big in the 80s had actually started in the 60s. And the reason why is because, again, risk-averse TV executives were like,

I think of anything new. I'll just bring out tic-tac-doe and concentration, polish it up, dust it off, and put it out there again. So there were a lot of game shows like that. And they were pretty successful. But one of the other things that they did in the 80s was experiment with game shows, right? So you had things like Double Dare.

Yeah, that was a good one. That's OK. We owe it to you. Double Dare, if you guys haven't seen this, it is a thing to behold. It's the weirdest game show maybe ever. There's an obstacle course, but there's also quizzes. And then teams are boy, girl, tweens working together.

And there was slime. So Double Dare was pretty much great on every level. Never saw it. You never saw Double Dare? No, I'm a little, sadly, I'm a little too old for Double Dare. Oh, that was right in my wheelhouse. I was like 21. Did someone just boo me for being old?

I think they booed you for not watching Double Dare. I was like 16. Boo. Yeah, actually, that's a tad old for Double Dare. Well, here's what I was watching. I was watching Remote Control on MTV. That was a good one, too. Very, very good game show.

If you don't remember, it was what now you would call a meta game show. Back then, you would call it a spoof of game shows. Because host Ken Ober was hosting a game show in his parents' basement. That was the set. People sat on recliners, and we get launched back through the wall if they got a question wrong at the end.

And it was a really legit, funny game show. They had categories like Brady Bunch Physics, or Dead or Canadian, one of my favorite categories. And it is well known for one thing in particular, which was launching the careers of some now very famous people. The very first time that Adam Sandler was on TV was on Remote Control. Same with Colin Quinn and Dennis Leary.

They all got their start on Remote Control. Yeah. Wow, is right. So there's a couple tenants of game shows that you have to know, and the first one is that America's interest in game shows tends to wax and wane. And by the late 80s, early 90s, America was like, we're sick of game shows.

And again, one of the reasons why is because those executives didn't try a lot of new stuff. They instead trotted out tic-tac-toe and concentration. So America got bored with game shows and kind of moved on. And game shows just went away, almost magically. By 1991, there were two game shows, The Price is Right and Family Feud, still filming during the day. Even Wheel of Fortune's Daytime show got the ax.

Wheel of Fortune got the ax. That's how close to extinction game shows came. And instead, the same lazy executives gave us soft core news, like Inside Edition and Extra, and Daytime Talk, like Jenny Jones and Maury Povich. And we have them to thank for that. I have another theory, actually, that Grunge killed game shows in the early 90s, right?

Because there's a quote here from the great Mark Goodson. Apparently you're idle. Sure. He's great at quotes, too. He said, it's like a hurricane came and wiped them all away, and that hurricane smelled like teen spirit. I made up that second part. But he did say hurricane.

Yes. It was sort of antithetical, though. That early 90s time, I'm joking about Grunge. But it didn't work together. Generation X, Douglas Copeland, Slack, and Grunge, they didn't do away with game shows. They came in because game shows went away. America got sad.

So the other tenant of game shows is this. You can't keep game shows down for longer than a decade. You just can't. They're going to come back. They're going to jump on your back like Beetlejuice or something, right? So by the late 90s, early 2000s, they started to come back. And those risk averse executives started to

innovate a little more, meaning that they started stealing good game shows from other countries, which you and I haven't been to to see. So they brought in who wants to be a millionaire, right? Yeah, I think that show came from England, if I'm not mistaken, as did The Weakest Link. Remember that show? That was a great one.

Mean Lady? She was perfect. She scared me. These had much bigger prizes. They were a little more complicated. You had things like Phoning a Friend and stuff like that. Then he had shows like Deal or No Deal, which Josh put in. He wrote this.

It's pretty great, which brought America back into the clutches of Howie Mandel. We came so close to getting away from him forever. And then it was like that time Uggs came back. You remember that? Like Uggs were around, and then they naturally just went off and died. And then all of a sudden, everybody started wearing Uggs

again. It was like, what happened? Same with Howie Mandel. And then eventually, game shows would co-opt reality shows, obviously, with big, big shows like Survivor, The Apprentice, The Bachelor, Shark Tank, a show that I actually really love, and then a great, great show called American Ninja Warrior.

OK, you guys like American Ninja Warrior? Let me direct you to the predecessor and, frankly, better American Gladiator. That's right. I love that, too. And this is why American Gladiators is just superior to American Ninja Warrior. American Ninja Warrior, it's fine.

It's great. But they dilute the action a little bit, I think you could say. Like they have B footage where the production crew went to the contestant's hometown and talked to their Pee Wee baseball coach about how they used to be afraid of the ball, but they really got over it and look at them now. And the coach chokes up a little bit.

On American Gladiator, it's more like, so Kim is out there and she's running around getting the crappy out of her. And the commentators just have this throwaway like, well, no fact about Kim. She traded her house for a car to drive herself here to compete today. She's not sure who's back home watching her child. Look at her go.

Look at Lace. She just knocked her flat unconscious with her jousting stick. That's American Gladiators, you know what I'm saying? It was great. That's what makes it superior. Here's what I liked about American Gladiator is those courses or whatever you call them were hard enough.

Like I remember the bicycle thing that you would have to hang from. And that's hard enough. There's no way I could even hang from that, much less propel myself. And you get halfway across and then a broided out body builder would leap on you and try and get you off. And it's like, are you kidding me?

Like the best you could hope for is that he put on too much like peck lube and would slide off eventually. Couldn't get a good grip. Peck lube. Just got applause. That was your only hope. Peck lube. That's the thing.

Big shout out to the original six on American Gladiator. Nitro. Malibu. Malibu. Lace. Lace. Little Baptist Chuck. Lace was like, I didn't know what was going on in my body

when I saw Lace. Can you see Chuck like sitting in front of his TV with his knees pulled up to his chest, his rocking back and forth, like singing hymnals? Things are happening. I like Lace. You know who Lace was married to in real life? No.

Michael Paray, actor Michael Paray from Eddie and the Cruisers. A little bit of trivia. Michael Paray's not here tonight, right? He might be. Jim and I, Zap, and Sonny, the original six. My hat is off to you. Michael Douglas, just show it up. And I think it also inspired the movie The Running Man,

pretty clearly, if I'm not mistaken. I don't remember if it pre-staged The Running Man or The Running Man came out right before. No, I think The Running Man, I think it came after American Gladiator. Really? I'm going to stand by that. Yeah.

Don't just say, no. I worry. Are we in the 2000s? We are. So we're in another bit of a game show revival right now, too. And you can tell because they're trotting out old game shows again.

Like Snoop Dogg hosts The Joker's Wild, which, by the way, I have no problem with that whatsoever. I think that was actually a pretty short move. Anthony Anderson, to tell the truth, I think, is what he hosts. Yeah. Andy Cohen, his love connection. Oh, is that out? Yeah, I didn't know that.

They need to bring back what was the one, the dating one, not singled out. Yes. Oh, I forgot about singled out. Yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one. And what was the one on the, what was the one on the bus? Oh, I loved Cash Cab.

Can we talk about Cash Cab for a minute? Sure. Can we go off script for a moment? Cash Cab, unfortunately, came around when I and Josh, we worked for Discovery Channel. So we couldn't be on Cash Cab. So I would go to New York City and walk around looking for the Cash Cab.

Just to tease yourself? Knowing that I would have to disclose that I was actually an employee of Discovery Channel and could not be on Cash Cab. I'm contractually prohibited from getting in your Cash Cab. I'm sorry. What are you talking about, dude? Just get in.

No one gives a s***. That is a good show. It's still on TV, I think. And now I still watch reruns. I think it's, are they not still making it? No, no, no. Is it back? All right, well, that lady says it's back.

And she looks like she knows. She's like, I know. I like that guy. He's funny. Yeah, he's a good guy. But it's still not the dating show I was thinking of. Were you thinking of the dating game? No, so I wonder if they had the stupid pop-up bubbles

about what they were thinking? No, it's not pop-up video. Blind date? Blind date? I think it might be blind date. What is next? Man, this show is so off the rails. People are shouting at the stage.

All right, I will say this. It had to have been blind date because I've never heard of next. I don't know what that is. Blind date was good. I don't really remember the premise. I'm assuming it was a blind date. But it was a good show.

I remember that much. All right, let me get us back on track here. OK. People are murmuring, like, you guys are figuring out whether to vote for a referendum in a f***ing town hall or something. Be quiet. Militia, legalize it.

And then, of course, some game shows never went away to begin with, like Our Beloved Price Is Right. They just changed hosts. The Great Great Family Feud, right? We lost Richard Dawson while he retired. Then he died. No, he retired. Ray Combs came.

Then Richard Dawson. Then he came back. Yeah. Then he died. Yeah, right. OK. And then The Great Lou Anderson hosted for a little while. Then a guy named Richard Karn, who I don't know.

He was from Home Improvement. I never saw that show. Yeah. It's the most controversial thing I've said all night. And then I don't know who John O'Hurley is. He's from J. Peterman from Seinfeld. Oh, I love that guy. Yeah, he's great.

And then The Great Steve Harvey with his eight button suits. America has embraced Steve, even though he messed up the, what was it, Miss America? That just made him that much more comfortable, frankly. Nobody else could have gotten away with it like he did. Agreed. So as we said, game shows are very, very cheap to produce, which means you can find game shows in every country

around the world. And some countries, like to steal game shows from other countries, America does it. Everybody does it, really. There's a game show in France called Libby Deal. And it's, let's make a deal. But it's hosted by an animated alien for some reason. Some are franchised.

Like The Price Is Right is a huge hit in the UK. They're crazy for The Price Is Right, appropriately. And then there's some countries that just make up their own. Like there's one in Russia. We consider ourselves pretty good researchers. And we are almost 100% positive that this is actually a real show. We've really tried to find out, like, no, this is a joke.

I think this is real. Intercept is what it's called. And in intercept, you are a contestant, and they give you a car, and you drive off, and they call the car in stolen. In real, IRL. And you are supposed to evade the police in real life for 35 minutes.

And if you do that successfully, you keep the car. Right. And as far as we can tell, it's real. And all we can say is, like, I guess that's Russia. That's what they do in Russia. I guess if you get killed, your next-of-kin gets the car? I don't know. It may be.

Surely there's a winner, right? I think the cops get to keep it, maybe. But Russia aside, there is one country that stands alone when it comes to game shows. Japan. Correct. We love Japan and their dedication to making game shows as crazy as possible, which, I don't know if it started

with this one, but there was an 80s staple. It started with it. Did it? Called Takeshi's Castle. Yeah. This was in the 80s in Japan, and there are fans of the show in America in 2018. That shows how great the show is.

Well, it changed everything, right? Takeshi's Castle, it was just nuts. It was a melee. There would be, like, 100 contestants all competing, and everybody's trying to get into Takeshi's Castle. But this is harder than you would think, because they make you dress up as a hand and slap somebody else who's also dressed as another hand.

And then at the same time, while you're doing this, there's some other poor schmoes being spun around on a wheel like 20 feet above a pond and flying off. There's other people making a run for it, and there's people dressed as ninja throwing, like rubber throwing stars at them. It's just chaos. And it just changed everything.

It gave us the first concept of the wacky Japanese game show. Yeah, I think the best part about Takeshi's Castle was they played up the not-true fact that they were forced to be there as contestants, which just added this extra something. I don't know why. They were like, yeah, this is great. They were like, no, they got my family,

and they made me come on the show. That just really put the cherry on top for me. Totally. I don't know why. For sure. Then there was another one after Takeshi's Castle came on in the 90s. And it was called Downtown Nogaki no Skyorende,

which means downtown's not an errand boy, which is no more sensible than the Japanese. It doesn't help at all, a translation. Downtown is not an errand boy. And even if you say, OK, downtown is a person, still doesn't make any damn sense. It doesn't make any sense. It's really strange.

But this one really cemented, because this is when the internet came around and YouTube was around. You could watch this all over the world. And it really, really, really called on. And they had punishment games, like the Ask Game, where if you got something wrong, they would have these big sweaty sumo wrestlers rub their butt in your face, or one called Penis Machine.

And Josh did this research. And I was like, eh, what is that all about? Don't do that. Because whatever image search you come up with has nothing to do with a game show at all. But Penis Machine was where you'd have to recite a tongue twister. And if you got it wrong, then they would kick you in the

b----. Good night, everybody. I was about to go backstage as a joke, but I might have just stayed there. So based on that alone, I think this deserves a second ad break. OK, because it's just going really, really well. So everybody bear with us.

We will be right back. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic

and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind

blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast,

Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love-bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me. But he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did, and that's

even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love-bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships.

Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace,

because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow.

Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. All right, we're back, everybody. Here's a little segment called, What's It Like to be on a Game Show? Right. You can expect sweaty man's ass in your face if you lose.

No, that's just Japan. If you are in a game show, as a kid, as a youngster, I was like, I want to be in a game show. That sounds awesome. Then I researched this. I was like, I don't want to go anywhere near game shows. I just want to watch them on TV. First of all, it's tough.

Like 3,000 people try out for Wheel of Fortune every year, and only like 500 make the cut. It's Wheel of Fortune, right? Just imagine there must be like 10 people that make it on a Jeopardy a year out of a million or something like that. Yeah, Jeopardy's tough. I've known a few people who have been on that.

And you can be super, super smart. You can pass the written tests. You can pass the simulated games. But when you get out there on stage, and the lights are on, and the cameras are rolling, we've all felt very bad for the people who don't make it to Final Jeopardy because they have $0. That person is smarter than everyone in this room.

That's what's so sad. It is really hard. And in fact, Ken Jennings is on our network now with his great show Omnibus, all-time Jeopardy champion with his insane record of like 70-something Jeopardy wins in a row, which is just nuts. And I'm real good friends with Ken now. And it took me like three dinners out

before I was finally like, tell me all about it. What's it like? And he was like, man, he got through that first part. So he had a real big advantage for those newbies coming on every day. But he's like, you have to have all this knowledge at your fingertips. And then it literally comes down to how good you

are with a buzzer and how steely you can keep yourself calm and ignore the audience and ignore everything else and kind of lock in. It's a really, really tough game show. But in order to try out for something like The Price Is Right, it's a much different experience. You don't have to be super smart. You have to have a lot of personality.

You just have to go in front of a panel of people and turn around slowly, right? Show them your goods. I went to, well, no, you don't do that. Although I could have worked in a fourth reference there. I went to a Price Is Right taping with my sister in the mid-90s. And there is a table like this with three producers

sitting behind it as you walk into the studio. And they sit there with a clipboard as you introduce yourself and take notes. And it's very intimidating because I don't know if you all know this. When you go on The Price Is Right in the audience, you really don't know. Like, that's all real.

You don't know your name is going to get called. I always thought that they set you up and said, by the way, at minute 30 or whatever in round two, we're going to call you down there. You need to do this and act like this. It's all for real. Like, you have no idea you're going to get called. So when people freak out and run down there,

it's because they had no idea they were going to get called down on stage. But I did not get called. I didn't have what it takes. But you sat behind the people who have been contestants, right? Yeah, we were positioned up where they had two empty rows, and when you were finished

playing the games, you don't go back to your seat. You go to this little area. And this Harley-Davidson biker guy won a car and came down and sat next to us and started crying. And I was like, sir, I was like, what's it like? Tell me what's going on. And he said that he lost a job because he didn't have a car to get him to work

and that this changed his life. And I look over and he's crying and my sister's crying. And I'm crying. And Bob Barker's like, shut up. And Bob Barker's like, shut up. Newt or a dog? It sounds like a punishment now. It does.

It is for the dog. Highly recommended, though. If you ever have a chance, go to a Price is Right taping. It's a lot of fun. It's a good story, by the way. Well, it was all right. It would have been better if I would have won a jet ski. Yeah.

So as thrilling as you think it might be to be on a game show, it's actually supposedly, from what we can tell, super boring. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of waiting around. Remember, they filmed five or six episodes in a day. So if you're scheduled to be on the fifth or sixth episode, you're just sitting there.

But it's not like you can wander around and bug like Alex Trebek or anything. Because remember, Congress got involved after the quiz show scandals. And the FCC still regulates game shows, like a hawk. Like if you go to the bathroom, you have an escort. And there's FCC compliance officers who are there. So you take away your cell phone.

Can you imagine standing around for 10 hours without a cell phone these days? Take it away. They break it under your heel. And they're like federal law. So there's a lot of sitting around. There's a lot of compliance that you have to do. There's a lot of rules you have to learn.

And one of the reasons why they watch you like a hawk is because people have been known to collude with people in the audience. Like there was this guy in the UK who won a million pounds on who wants to be a millionaire. It's a lot of pounds. It is. It's way more than the million dollar prize.

Like I don't know how much, but a lot. Just trust me. And he won. His name is Charles Ingram. And he won because he was talking to his wife. And his wife was going and talking to somebody in the audience. And this is the scheme they came up with. Charles Ingram, who wants to be a millionaire,

it's basically multiple choice. There's like four possible answers. He would read them out loud to himself. But when he read the correct one, the guy in the audience would go, right? Very sophisticated system. They got away with it. Like they want.

They like the producers are like, congratulations. And they made it home. And finally, because he apparently was acting cagey in the green room afterward, they went back and looked at the tape and discovered the fraud. And they actually went to court in the UK. They went to court.

He and his wife did and were fined 115,000 pounds and didn't get a dime of the million pound prize. Yeah, some kind of wig said 115,000 pounds. And you would think, OK, justice was served, right? No, it wasn't. Because Charles Ingram and his wife went on to write a book about the whole thing. And it grossed 2 and 1 half million pounds.

Yep, and we have a couple of new sayings now. If you remember from D.B. Cooper, Never Trust Family. And now, cheating always pays. So those are the two tenets of stuff you should know. We're one across these knuckles and one across the other knuckles. You want to bring it home? Yeah, let's talk about a guy named Michael Larson.

Yes, Michael Larson. There's a couple of knowing nods out there. Anyone know the game show Press Your Luck? No whammies. That was the point of Press Your Luck, not to get a whammy. Yeah, so who was Michael Larson? So Michael Larson was this guy. He was a contestant, eventually, on Press Your Luck.

But he started out as a semi-employed ice cream truck driver. Let that sink in for a second. You're really, really reaching for the stars. You're like, I don't want to do that full time. But keep my ops open. His, the time when he wasn't running the ice cream truck, was allotted instead to staring at his wall of TVs

in his house, running off of his VCR, because he would tape game shows and watch them up to 18 hours a day in the hopes of finding some weakness that he could exploit, go onto the game show and crack it and win a million dollars. And he figured out pretty quick the price is right. There's no flaw to it. Same with Wheel of Fortune.

It's just kind of luck, right? Yeah. And then in 1983, CBS? Yes. CBS aired a brand new game show, Build is the most technologically advanced game show ever. And it was called Press Your Luck. And Michael Larson said, I'm going to get you game show.

He said about to getting Press Your Luck. Yeah, so here was the deal with Press Your Luck. It had three just regular contestants who would answer questions. And then at the end of each round, whoever was in the lead would get to press their luck. And there was a big board with a bunch of individual squares that would light up like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

That's a good Press Your Luck impression. Press Your Luck and say, stop. We didn't have to say stop, but most people did. And it would stop on whatever square. And you might win $500 or you might win a little prize, or you might get a whammy, which is really bad, because that means you lose everything that you had won up into that point.

Or you might get a free spin plus cash. So if you get like two or three spins in a row, it was a really big deal. And you could press your luck and then get that whammy. And it was this little jerk, noid-looking thing, this little cartoon character with a cape that would go, hee, hee, hee, hee. And you lose everything that you had made.

So if you press your luck, you were really risking a lot by moving forward. Right. And it was very tough, because not only did the light flash around the board, the squares themselves changed. So it was just like chaos. Your brain's going haywire. And you go, stop and just hope for the best.

Well, Michael Larson would tape press your luck. And again, watch individual episodes, 18 hours straight, just looking, trying to find something, sitting around in just as whitey tidies, like an ice cream sandwich melted on his chest. And finally, one day, he saw it. And he must have stood up, his chest hair matted, sticky. And he probably went, oh, I got it.

He's got a choco-toco on his chest. And what he figured out was that that light and those boards, they weren't random at all. There were five patterns. And not only were there five patterns, they repeated in order. All he had to do was hone his timing and getting the light to stop, memorize where the boxes were,

and he would crack press your luck. And that is exactly what he did. I'm trying to think of that moment at 4 a.m. in his barca lounge, or when he realizes that it's a pattern. Like, what that must have been like. Like, he's like, my life has vindicated. Yeah. Everyone said I was a loser, but I'm not.

So just disregard the choco-toco on my chest. I'm no loser. He bought a bus ticket from Cincinnati to LA and bought a suit from a vintage thrift store and actually managed to become a contestant on Press Your Luck on May 19, 1984. He came in last in the question round, but he still, because, you know, he was Michael Larson,

but he still gets to press his luck. And the very first thing that happens is he gets a whammy. Because you can practice all you want on the arm of your recliner. But on the day, as they say in the industry, that little buzzer may not match up quite right. So he had to get synchronized.

He did. And boy, did he. He did, because after that, on his next spin, he locked into 31 consecutive spins. This had never happened before. Nothing even remotely close. Like, two or three in a row is amazing. Two or four, you were on fire.

This guy got 31 consecutive spins. Overall, he got 47 in the half hour show that he was on. The other two contestants just sat back, and one guy pulled out like a corn cob pipe and read the paper. I mean, like, it was the Larson show, right? And just little by little, he starts building his money. A few hundred bucks here, $5,500, and another spin there.

And he just kept hitting him. Yeah, and keep in mind, at any point, he could have lost it all. And so there's a lot of real tension building in this thing as he gets more and more money, because he has to say, I want to press my luck. And everyone's like, you're crazy, dude. You've got $50,000.

But he worked it all the way up into a record at the time, $110,237, which is more money than had ever been won on an American game show. Yeah, the previous record was $40,000. This guy just crushed that record. And you can actually see this. There's somebody went to the trouble of making a compilation.

It's like 11 minutes long. It's the best thing you can watch, by the way. It really is. It's quite thrilling. It's on YouTube. I think it's just Michael Larson, press your luck. Should be the first thing that comes up. And when you watch it, you see Michael Larson really

pressed his luck. And he won. He won the game. And the CBS executives are just standing there watching this like having heart attacks left and right, getting fired, firing each other, firing themselves, just having a terrible time of it. But in the end, they paid Larson.

They said, he didn't cheat. He was smarter than CBS, I think, when the executive says these air quotes. So we paid him. So he won, press your luck. But it's not the end of the Michael Larson story. No, so he's sitting at home a few months later, eating his push-up.

And a local radio station was running a contest. Those are only two ice cream truck things I can think of, chakotakos and push-ups. Those are good enough. Yeah. You know what the worst was, was that rainbow popsicle thing. You. Those are the worst.

What is wrong with you? You like those? Yes. Really? The bomb pop, the red, white, and blue pop. Yeah. Or the rocket pop, depending on what the nation or the country. Those are great.

You had no ice cream in it. And I was all about the ice cream. Oh, OK. Well, yeah, you wouldn't like a bomb pop. All right. That's what they were called? Or rocket pops, one of the two. Bomb pop or rocket pop.

You got a strong reaction, so I guess I'm the dummy. Some people recoiled in horror. All right, so Michael Larson's sitting at home eating his rocket pop. And a radio station DJ comes on and says, we have a new contest. And we're going to read out serial numbers on dollar bills. And if you have that dollar bill, you win $50,000. I'm sorry, $30,000.

And Michael Larson said, I got a lot of dollar bills. So he went to the bank and withdrew $90,000. I'm sorry, $50,000 bills from the bank. $50,000. $1 bills. $1 bills. So he was the joy of the bank that day. But wait, wait, let's think about this for a second.

You can withdraw those all day long. You're not going to know the serial number unless you sit there and start memorizing them. And that's what he did. Instead of watching game shows, he sat around and memorized the serial numbers for the dollar bills that he had in his house. And a few months went by, the contest was ended,

and he didn't win. But that's still not the end of the Michael Larson story. No, that's right, because he never took that money back to the bank because he's Michael Larson. You can only imagine if this guy would have worked for a living, we would have a cure for cancer today. We'd all be living to like $150,000, thanks to Michael Larson. That would be great.

But no, he left that $50,000 at home. And on Christmas, he went to a party with his girlfriend, went to a Christmas party, came home, and found his door kicked in, and the money was gone. Merry Christmas. Yep, and they never found the money. They never found the person who stole it. And Michael Larson eventually died of cancer in 2009,

while on the lam from the FBI and the IRS for his part in a foreign lottery scam. To the bitter end. Still trying to make that easy money. And finally, just about eight or nine years ago, plans to make a movie of his life story, starring Bill Murray. Dude, that would have been so good. We're finally scrapped.

I know. Very sad. But his story lives on tonight. Here in Denver, Colorado. That is game shows. That's the history of game shows, everybody. Good job. That's worth it, buddy.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Listen to navigating narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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