Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How the Cannonball Run Worked

Episode Date: July 28, 2018

The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. Tune in as Josh and Chuck take you on a wild ride through the real (and colorful) history of this infamous race. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gonna 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 iHeart radio 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, ya 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 iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi everybody, Chuck here for another Saturday, Stuff You Should Know Selects edition. This week, I picked How the Cannonball Run Worked, October 22nd, 2009. This was a fun one, The Cannonball Run.

We certainly talk about the movie and the sequel. It was one of my faves growing up, but it was based on a real race. The Cannonball Run is, or was, jeez, I'm not even sure if it's still going on. This has been a while since we recorded this one. It is a road race, a cross-country road race that seems too strange to be true

that people would actually get in their cars in the United States and drive super fast and elude the cops all across the country in order to win, I don't even know if there was money involved. A trophy, Bert Reynolds mustache? Only you can find out by listening to How the Cannonball Run Worked, right here, right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from howstuffworks.com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is our good friend Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you, Chuck? Thank you, good friend. How are you feeling right now? I'm fine, a little hot. I'm sweating.

Yeah, Chuck is bright red right now, everybody. It's kind of weird looking. Yeah, thank you, Martin, for that. Our super fan in Seattle. Thank you very much. He's not a super fan. He's a buddy. He has been.

He was such a fan that he actually became a friend. He's a friend that we haven't met yet. Yeah, so Chuck, take us back to 1981, man. In the time machine? Yes, the way back machine. You ready? Here we go. OK.

All right, Josh, I'm 10 years old. Knee high to a grasshopper. Disco is dead. Margaret Thatcher is the prime minister of England. I take issue with the disco being deadline. I don't know that disco ever died, man. You cannot make the argument that all modern R&B, pop, soul is all disco.

Disco is alive. OK. Margaret Thatcher is the prime minister of England. Ronald Reagan is in office just as Jimmy Carter has exited. Walter Cronkite resigned from the CBS Evening News Desk. That was a sad day. The first AIDS case was made public in California. Have you ever seen in the band played on?

My brother worked on that. That was a great made-for-TV movie. It really was. It was really good. And he had a great experience working on that. Oh, yeah? So we find people in that movie. Oh, OK.

Major League Baseball has just gone on strike in the summer. For what will be the first of 80 times over the next five years. All right, so America's depressed, but not for long. No, because one, Mr. Bert Reynolds is about to dash across the silver screen. That's right. In a little movie called Cannonball Run.

It was a great, great, great movie. It was a great movie. I haven't seen it in forever. I think I probably saw it in 1987. It was one of the first movies we rented, along with Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, yeah. Very hokey and corny, but still beloved.

Yeah, everyone takes it as a comedy, because it is a comedy. Clearly. But this is not to say that it started out as a comedy, actually. It was supposed to be serious. And Bert Reynolds' part was originally written for Steve McQueen, who died

before he could film the movie. Sadly. It was supposed to be a serious movie, and it didn't turn out that way. Why would anybody want the Cannonball Run to be a serious movie? Well, because it was, in fact, based on a real race. What?

What? True, based on a real race, as you know. Yeah, I do know after reading this article. I think I'd heard that before, but I had no idea the details. I didn't either until I wrote it. This was really amazing. Like, I have, I'm just going to come out and say it, I have a man crush on a 70-year-old, Mr. Brock Yates.

Yeah. He is a cool dude who I would have loved to have hung out with. I bet he's still a very cool dude. And hung out with in a strictly platonic sense. Sure, yeah. Maybe a little make and out, but aside from that. Yeah, I bet he's still a way cool guy. I get that impression.

He is. He, this is kind of what I gathered about Brock Yates from researching this and reading your article. Go ahead and say who he is. He was a pretty much the premier automotive journalist of his age, late 60s, early 17s. Eventually, yeah. But I think he started out as a journalist.

And something of a Gonzo journalist I take it. But yeah, he was very well known and respected in the field. And in the early 1970s, America was at a fork in the road, if you will. So to speak. And Brock Yates represented one direction. And that was the out. Just go.

And if you die, that was your number was up and a mentality behind the wheel. That is. Yeah. You know, damn the torpedoes full steam ahead, right? On the other side of the road, on the other side of the fork was a guy named Ralph Nader. Yeah.

Who was still there on that other fork. He is. He for those of you who don't know who Ralph Nader is, he's run for president a couple of times. Sure. He got George Bush elected in 2004. Thanks for that, Ralph. Yeah.

But he's also a very dedicated consumer watchdog. He has, for many years, lived in a tiny little one room apartment. He uses a hot plate. Does he really? He lives this very meager life so no one can say, you're corrupt. Right.

Because he goes after everybody else. And in the 1970s, in the early 1970s, he was going after the automotive industry, right? Right. He went after, he wrote this book called Unsafe at Any Speed. And it was basically, have you read it? I've read parts of it through research and stuff, yeah. OK.

So you know then it was basically about how the automotive industry was producing these incredibly dangerous vehicles. Right, death machines. Right, and at the time, we didn't really have much of a speed limit. Sure. So as a result of his book, we, like,

seatbelts became mandatory, new safety designs had to be instituted by car manufacturers. It was a big deal. So America's at this fork in the road, Brock Yates style one and Ralph Nader on the other. And America went down the Ralph Nader fork. Right, I think what you're referring to is the national speed limit.

That's part of it, definitely. But I think even more than that, it's more of a, you know, the way you and I were raised, where, like, we could do anything. We put our minds to and we were special. I think that that came out of that collective decision to go towards safety rather than, you know, fun at any cost. Reckless abandon. Exactly.

Devil may care. Sure, but yeah, the national speed limit was definitely one part of that. Yeah, that was 55 miles an hour, which was. In 1974. Yeah, it's since gone up quite a bit in certain areas, of course. It has, but even more than safety,

do you know why they set the speed limit at 55? Gas consumption? Yes. Really? Yeah, the Arab oil embargo had just taken place. OPEC was like, hey, US, we're not real happy with you for siding with Israel during the Yom Kippur War, so we're going to cut off your oil.

And they did. And prices spiked. And the US said, OK, we need to rethink our dependence on foreign oil. Had a huge rippling effect, but one of them was setting the speed limit at 55 miles per hour. Which is too slow. It is too slow, especially in the opinion of somebody

like Brock Yates. I thought you were going to say Sammy Hagar. Yeah, he can't drive 55. He's tried. He has. He's made a concerted effort, but it didn't pan out. He tried. I love that song.

It wasn't, I don't like to drive 55, or I would prefer to drive faster. It was, I can't drive 55. Exactly. I tried, and it just doesn't happen. It was very explicit. Yes. So Chuck, this was 1974.

In 1971, Brock Yates saw the writing on the wall that the speed limit was going to be reduced. America was becoming something of a... Mambi Pambi? Yes. OK. And what did he do as a result? In 1971, he took a trip across the country in a Dodge van

with three travelmates. And he drove from New York to Los Angeles as a way of proving slash protesting. I believe his quote said something like this. Good drivers and good automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way that the Germans were using their autobahn. Right.

So he wanted to prove that you can drive fast. If you're safe, if you're a good driver, you can get to point A to point B in a car, and it's safe. Yeah, and you said reckless abandon. There was definitely a certain level of professionalism, or the people who he considered good drivers were actual good drivers. Like he had to be a good driver to drive fast,

in his opinion. It wasn't just like, everybody go as fast as you can. That wasn't the point, right? So he did so. He drove 2,858 miles from New York to LA in 40 hours and 51 minutes, which is an average of 70 miles per hour, which is pretty fast if you're talking about an average speed. Yeah, because that included stops, I think.

Stops, you name it. Right. So after that happened, I think it got a little bit of publicity by word of mouth. Yeah, very little. It may be the racing world. And there was a famous telegram that came, I guess, a month or so later.

Yeah, I love this. Can I read it? Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. It says, this constitutes formal entry by the Polish racing drivers of America in the next official Cannonball Baker C to Shining Sea Memorial trophy dash. The drivers are Oscar Kowalewski,

Brad Nementczyk, and Tony Adamowicz. If we can find California, we'll beat you fair and square. So basically, the gauntlet was laid, and the Cannonball run was born. Although, like you said, the official name has always been Cannonball Baker C to Shining Sea Memorial trophy dash. Right, so who's Cannonball Baker?

Cannonball Baker, Erwin G Cannonball Baker was a, he was famous for pushing the limits on a motorcycle. Yeah. So he would drive from Canada to Mexico, from New York to LA, on an old Indian motorcycle. And we're talking starting in 1914. Right, so like the old Indian motorcycle was basically a bike with a motor.

Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like, you know? He actually had a pretty well-deserved reputation for like his nickname and just the stuff he was doing. His endurance level. Apparently, on one ride, he came around a curve and was about to barrel into a herd of cattle that was in the middle of the road, because it's 1914. And he swerved to miss him, hit a pothole,

flew off of his bike onto the back of a cow, which bucked him off and eventually landed in a ditch. Wow. Got up and drove away. That is the stuff of legends. That's how you get a race named after you, my friend. Exactly. And he went on to become the first commissioner of NASCAR,

which I thought was pretty interesting. So there you have that. Yeah. Nothing to do with moonshine, though. Or did he? I don't know, maybe. Yeah, curious. MUSIC

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 nonstop 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. 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. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, 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 iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, yeah, Yates wanted to pay homage to Cannonball Baker. So he named it after him, although he did shorten the name. Cannonball was two words. Original for Baker. Yeah, for Baker, but he shortened it to Cannonball to avoid any illegal math.

Right, lawyers advised him to do that. Yeah, I thought it was going to work. Yeah, well, anyway, so you have the Cannonball, originally called the Cannonball Dash, and then it finally became the Cannonball Run, which is how we know it today, right? And thanks to the Polish drivers of America who laid down the gauntlet, it was a real thing.

They didn't. They weren't the only ones to participate in the first official Cannonball. That first run he made in the van was considered like a preliminary test run. It wasn't the first Cannonball because there was nobody competing with him. So the second one, I think, was the first Cannonball

race. So the second one, there was the Polish racing drivers of America and seven other groups, including three vans. Yeah. There was a huge motor home. There was an American Motors AMX, an MGB GT, and a Cadillac sedan de Ville. And this is probably the coolest part of this entire story. Yeah, I love it.

Tell them. This Cadillac was owned by an old gentleman in New York. In Boston. Oh, in Boston. And he wanted to, and this happened back then. It may still happen now, where you would contract someone to drive your car from one place to the other because you can't get it there.

Richard Pryor contracted Dana Carvey in Moving. Really? Great movie. Ew, I didn't see that one. I thought it was a stinker. No, it was good. Was it good? So this old man put out an ad in the paper,

and I need to get my car to Los Angeles. And these guys answered it and said, we'll get your car to Los Angeles. And unbeknownst to him, it was one of the entries. And I think one of the stipulations was the car not be driven faster than 75 miles per hour at any time. Or in the dark. Oh, is that the other one?

Yeah. And clearly, they broke both of these because the Cadillac averaged 79 miles per hour, which means they were driving a heck of a lot faster than that. I think they came in third, too. Yeah, third place. Yeah, not too bad. But I think they got the car there in one piece and safely.

Yeah. So good for them. Right, they're like, here are the keys, pal. So go ahead and start with the first race. Where did it start? Where did it end? Well, it started in New York at the Red Ball Garage at midnight, I believe, is when all of them started.

Yeah. And this was, what, 1971? OK, November 15, I believe. And the ending place was a hotel in Redondo Beach. Yeah. What is it? The Portofino Inn. Right, OK, which from pictures I saw

was a pretty luxe little hotel. I think so. And you didn't have to follow any specific route. You just got there any way you could. Right, basically the only rules were you could have as many drivers as long as it was only one car. And you could leave at any point within the 24-hour window. It wasn't like everyone started at the start line

like a typical race. Just like in the movie, you would punch a time clock for when your starting time was, and then punch it again for when you arrived. Yeah. And whoever won, won. And I believe there was no trophy at the time. It was only a $50 entry fee.

And then they donated $200 a piece to charity. Well, I thought that was pretty cool. Sure, why not? So apparently, two days before the race, Brock Yates had managed to finagle a Ferrari Daytona, a brand new Ferrari Daytona. A loner. Out of an auto dealer.

And he had the car, but he only had himself. He didn't have a co-pilot or a driver. And apparently, he sent out all these invitations in a lot to race car drivers, like legitimate race car drivers. And they were like, if somebody dies or something, it's going to look really bad for the sport of racing, and I don't want to do that. And then one guy he had invited, Dan Gurney, who

is a professional race car driver, had declined initially. But he apparently was told by his wife that his dying father-in-law said, you should go do this. Life is short. Right. So Gurney contacts Yates the day before the race and says,

hey, can I still come? And Yates said, heck yeah. Yeah, and that proved to be fortuitous, because they won the first Cannibal Run. Yeah, they did. Their winning time, Josh, was 35 hours and 54 minutes. Not bad. Cross country.

Not bad at all. And not Atlanta to LA, New York to LA, which is further. Yeah. Because I've made it in 33 hours from Atlanta to LA. Have you? Yeah, that's the way I've always done it. Three 11-hour days is how I schedule it out. I never time myself, but I went and drove around the West

for several weeks and lived in a van with the dogs and all that. Sure. And I would drive like, I think the longest I drove was a 12-hour stretch. That's about all I can muster. Yeah. That's enough for me.

Yeah. Depending on how much coffee I drank or whatever. Right. You know, then I could drive six hours or 12 hours or whatever. But it's amazing the toll that just sitting in a car with your foot on the gas has on you. Sure, especially when you're driving that fast. Should we talk about some of the things

they prefer to do on the first race? Please. One of the common tactics it seemed like was to keep it slow in the Eastern seaboard. I think New Jersey and Connecticut and Ohio and Pennsylvania, these states are notorious for having some pretty hardcore highway patrolmen still do. Yeah, like you'll get pulled over for doing 65.

Right. Isn't that nuts to you? That is nuts. I can't imagine for getting pulled over for anything less than 72, 75. Right. In Georgia, by the way, everyone flies as fast as you can. As fast as you can get away with,

that's how fast you drive generally. Yeah, even my friend Derek used to say that the deal with Atlanta rush hour is everyone drives as fast as they can till somebody wrecks. Right. And then there's a big traffic jam. And then it just stops. Yeah.

It's pretty funny to think about that. So the trick was to kind of keep it slow on the Eastern seaboard and in the Midwest. And then once you got to the Great Plains is when you really opened up. Yeah. And made up some serious, serious time. Yeah, they got it up to 172.

I think is how fast they found out the Ferrari would go. Yeah, I think 12 speeding tickets total. Between all of the competitors. Yeah, between four of the competitors, four of them didn't get a ticket at all. OK. So four of them split 12 tickets. And the famous quote LA Times did kind of a blurb of an article.

From Dan Gurney, right? Yeah, Dan Gurney famously said, at no time did we exceed 175 miles an hour. They came close. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. So Chuck, that was the first one. And as with all cool things, that also began its co-option.

Sure. News got out. Word got out. Little by little. Yeah, the sports illustrated covered it. And so did the Los Angeles Times. And so when there was a second one, I think the following year, there

were a lot more competitors, right? Yeah, they had 25 entries a second year. And Brock Yates finished second place this time in a Cadillac. The third race, they skipped a couple of years. And it was in 1975. And they moved it to springtime this time. And a Ferrari won the third race with Yates and Gurney behind the wheel once again.

Oh, I didn't know they won the third one. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry. They beat Yates and Gurney's record time the third year. Yeah, by one minute, right? Yeah. But it was not them, you're correct. So by 1975, which is what, the third one, fourth one?

Third one was in 75. OK, by 1975, it's officially co-opted. There's actually corporate sponsorship. Right. The Wright Braw Company placed three ladies in pink in a limousine. And apparently, the driver fell asleep in Texas and rolled the thing and, I guess,

rolled into a porta-potty, which tipped over and drenched the ladies inside with its contents. Run it, run it, run it, run it. Exactly. So by this time, now you can see why Bert Reynolds would have chosen more of a comedic route than a Sharky's machine route. Yeah, well, it wasn't Bert's choice.

Should we move to the final year? Yeah. What happened was Brock Yates was pretty much finished with it. And he said, you know, it's run its course. He said he was worried that somebody was going to die now. Although no one ever got hurt. No, but the roads in the last eight years had become much more congested.

Right. He was ready to scrap the whole thing, but he had a friend, director Stuntman. How neat him? How neat him? Or is it Needlem? No, it's Needlem. OK.

And he was famous for a lot of the early Bert Reynolds movies. He did Hooper, which is a great movie. Is it? I haven't seen that one. Are you kidding me? I kid you not. Dude, got to get Hooper. That was the one about Stuntman.

You have to see My Blue Heaven, though. All right, we'll get to that later. So he did Hooper, and he did the Cannonball Run and a couple of other of the Bert Reynolds films. Yeah. He did Smokey and the Bandit, too. Brock Yates wrote that. I'm sorry.

OK. So how neat him? All over the place today, aren't we? We are. How neat him says, you know what, Brock? I want to make a movie about the Cannonball Run. And so I think the best way to do this is if we stage another one and I participate with you

as my partner. Yeah. And they did. They did that in 1979. And they had a record 46 entries this time. And a lot of what happened in this race actually ended up in the movie. Yeah, there's some zany, madcap stuff that was going on.

Let's hear it. Well, Brock Yates and Hal Needham actually had an ambulance. And Yates' wife, Pamela, posed as a woman suffering from a lung condition and, as a result, couldn't fly because of the pressurized cabin. So she had to be zoomed across the country at 100 miles per hour in the back of an ambulance. That was their vehicle of choice.

And apparently, they modified the engine and it killed the transmission. So it had to be eventually towed across the finish line, which I thought was pretty cool. Right. And in the film that actually happened, Bert Reynolds and Dom Deleuys were the Needham Yates characters. And Farrah Fawcett was the wife.

What else happened that was real? Three drivers actually did pose as priests, if you remember, in the movie. It was awesomely. It was Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin. Yeah. Dean and Martina. Drunk priest in the movie.

I don't know that they were posing. They really were drunk. Well, sure. They were probably hammered. Sure. What else, Josh? I don't know. I haven't seen the movie in a really long time.

All right. Well, I got it for you then. There were, in fact, scantily clad, skin tight jumpsuits on a couple of ladies in a sports car. I read the opposite. I read that that was the right bra company. That inspired that part. I read the opposite.

We'll have to check that. All right. We'll do it. And then there was a wealthy entrant that had his chauffeur drive him in a Rolls Royce. Nice. And in the movie, that was Jamie Farr. Played a Middle Eastern chic.

That's right. Klinger. Yeah. You know he and I are from the same hometown. Toledo? Toledo. Is that why he always wore the Toledo mud henset and mash? Yeah.

And why he talked about it incestantly. He really was from Toledo. Yeah. And Tony Paco's hot dogs that he talks about all the time. Real place. Best hot dogs on the planet. Really? Had no idea.

So those are just a few of the things that actually happened in the final Cannonball run that ended up in the film. And a Jaguar driven by Dave Hines and Dave Yarber are one that year. And they obliterated the time period with a 32 hour and 51 minute, 87 mile per hour average. Wow. 50 speeding tickets that year.

Wow. Well, they were 42 contestants. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that was the last one. And it has spawned imitators over the years. Before Cannonball run, the movie came out. There were already imitators.

Oh, really? Yeah. There was one movie that came out in 75 and two that came out in 76. You want to hear the weird thing about it? What's that? David Carrington was in two of them. Really?

He was in, let's see, Deathmatch 2000. Death Race 2000. Death Race 2000, which was set in the future. Sure. But he was also in Cannonball exclamation point. Right. Which is a farcical take on the Cannonball run. And there was a second one that had Gary Bucey in it,

or a third one that had Gary Bucey in it called the Gumball rally. Right. And that's a real one. The Gumball 3000 is still in existence. Yeah. Is that European or in America? Well, they do both.

And they're quick to say that it's not a race. It's more like an adventurous road trip. Oh. And then the lame year. Tell them. Yeah. Tell them about the European version of the Cannonball run. They actually hate this.

I do. You know why? Because they call it the Cannonball run. Yeah. They use that name. And this thing is not even a race. The goal of the Cannonball run Europe is to stay as close to a 61 mile per hour average as you can.

And in 2008, a friggin' smart car won. Oh. Talk about a slap in the face. Were Brock Yates' daddy would have rolled over in his grave? Yeah. He's rolling over in his lazy boy. And steady rolled over a smart car with his bare hands. He did.

If anybody could do it, Mr. Brock Yates could, my friend. I think so. So. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude 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 nonstop 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 HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio 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. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. 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. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, 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 iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's the Cannonball Run, eh? How fast have you driven? What's the fastest you've ever driven? Oh, I don't know, 110. I actually once got a speeding ticket, or no.

You want to hear a weird story? Let's hear it. I don't know if this will make the final cut or not, because it's kind of long, but get this. So my friend and I were driving from Atlanta to Charleston in my old Toyota Corolla. It was an 86, champagne-colored Toyota Corolla. And I was doing 110 on I-20 during a stretch

where the speed limit was 55. So I was doing twice the speed limit. I get pulled over by this guy in this car with a little dash headlight on it, spinning around. And I pull over, and this guy's dressed like a paramilitary cop. And he's like, you are so dead. You're going to jail forever, right? And he goes back to his car and calls somebody.

This other guy comes out, and he comes back. He's like, you're at least going to lose your license. And he goes back and talks to the guy who he said later was the Sergeant on Duty. And he comes back, and he goes, you're going to get a ticket of some sort. And he goes back and talks to the guy again. And he goes, here's your license back.

You guys drive safely now, and let's us go. You're free to go. Exactly. So my friend and I are looking at each other. What just happened? It was so surreal. And to this day, I wonder, have you seen Pulp Fiction? Of course you have.

Do you remember Zed? Yeah. I have the distinct impression that these guys were into Zed-like affairs. And something else was took precedent? My friend, he's not a good-looking guy. So I'm thinking maybe they're like, we'll pass on these two, and we headed on to Charleston.

I got you. So they were going to get you back to the police station. I don't think they were cops. What cop would not give you a ticket when you're driving twice the speed limit? I got you. Yeah. I got a story.

Let's hear it. About four years ago, me and my buddy Scotty were doing. It was actually the last TV commercial job ever did. It was a Six Flags job in Six Flags, Massachusetts, whatever that one's called. Six Flags over Massachusetts? Is it? I think it's great America.

Anyway, so we go up there to do this job. What kind of job would you hit? It was New Jersey, but we have to drive. Oh, it was a hit. Yeah. We drive at one point. We had like two days off while we were up there. And I had a friend in Vermont, and this third Star Wars

prequel was being released that Friday. So I said, hey, man, let's go up and see Johnny Pindell and rent a car and drive up there because we had a camera truck. He said, sure, let's do it. So we rented a little Geometra, whatever the cheapest little four-stroke engine car you could get. And we have a time limit because we have to make the movie.

It's like a 6 PM showing. And so we're speeding through Vermont, like the hills of Vermont. It's lovely. And this little engine is like, whee! And we top this hill, and we see one of those signs that say, your current speed. And it said, your current speed.

And it blinked and went, 102. Wow. And I'd never seen a triple digit on one of those signs. So we just laughed and blazed right through it and made the movie. You laughed in your Geometra. It's like, call the police. And we literally made it right as the movie was starting.

And the engine was like ticking. It was red hot. And that's my fast story. Well, if you have a fast story, we'd actually like to hear it. Here's the caveat. Don't go out and commit any kind of crime or act that includes fastness. No.

If it's already happened, then we'll hear about it. We'll tell you the email right after we get to listener mail, right, Chuck? Yes, Josh. All right, let's go. Josh, I'm going to call this the only time we've ever read a listener mail from the same dude. Oh, I don't know about this, Chuck.

Well, yeah, we have to. This is the Haxter. Ryan hacked my buddy. All right. Listen to the House History podcast and have a creepy story. One of the houses I grew up in as a kid had a hidden door as you go to the basement.

It's more or less just blended into the wood, paneling. As you walk through the door, you came to an open area with some shelving and a workbench. There were a couple of old bike tires and some random parts still lying around. And a guy names it. And a guy names it. Every once in a while, we'd hear what

sounded like people working on their bikes and chit-chatting, pounding metal gears, dropping, laughing, chains turning. Every time we'd go into the room, there was nothing. Weird. Weird. Later on, we found out the history of the house. Turns out one of the previous owners was a couple that enjoyed biking,

and they died in a biking accident. And forgot to get the memo. So just thinking about it gives me chills. And this is from Ryan. And I'm going to just go ahead and say that Ryan Hack has inspired me to exercise, because he has a blog called hacksfirst5k.blogspot.com, where he started running and lost weight and is into it now.

And he got me listening to another podcast called Two Gomers Run a Marathon. I don't know that I'm entirely OK with you leading this extra life that I'm unaware of until you read a listener mail. I know. But Two Gomers Run a Marathon is actually a really funny podcast.

This is two guys that say they're gomers, kind of nerdy, and they're completely unathletic, yet they want to run a marathon. So their podcast goes through their trials and travails. And it's really funny. They got a website called twogomers.com. Cool. Well, Ryan Hack, since you got all those plugs,

and because you had two listener mails read on there, you have to go contribute $25 to kiva.org on Stuff You Should Know Team. Chuck, do you want to tell everybody else about that? kiva.org, go to the Click on Community and search Stuff You Should Know Team. Join our team. Loan $25 to someone in need.

You can now donate to Americans. Yes. I've heard. If you're a nationalistic or an isolationist, you can still donate. But right now, as of press time, we have raised more than $4,500. Yeah.

In about 10 days. And who has $7,100, Chuck? The lousy, cheap fans of the Colbert, quote unquote, nation. You know what, Sam? That guy's got way more fans than we do, right? Way more. 110 members on his team.

We got 180 so far. Already. Yeah. So way to go, those of you in the Stuff You Should Know Nation, who've supported kiva.org so far, for those of you who want to get on the trolley, you can go to www.kiva.org slash team slash Stuff You Should Know.

And you can become a member. And like Chuck said, you can contribute as little as $25. And you actually get that back if you want. Sure. You can roll it over again or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So Chuck, that's it, right?

That's it. If you have a cool high speed story, Chuck and I want to hear about it. If you have a great unicorn story, you know we always want to hear about that. Send in an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com home page. 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,

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