Selects: How Game Shows Work

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?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 s y s
K live how game shows worked. We toured this same topic.
I'm not sure how many times, but it was one

(00:21):
of my favorite ones. Uh. This episode is from September.
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 I Heart Radio. Hey,

(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not with us, but these
beautiful people are at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. Yeah.

(01:09):
That was easily double last night's reception. That was 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
thank you very much. Thank you for loving that. Um. Okay,

(01:34):
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 here.
That's good because it was a 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

(01:57):
once did a show and I think Portland and came
out and said it, um, it was the anniversary of
the How the Sun Works show, so we were gonna
redo it, and like all the people are like, wow,
we want to like you guys, but we're really mad,
right now, are you kidding? Like, yes, we're just we're
all super high, so we really don't care, right, They're like,
that's why we cheered game shows. So we we wanted

(02:22):
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,

(02:43):
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, you get a free beer as
America and his game shows are. However, it turns out
that the first game show on television was actually British.

(03:07):
It was a British investor. Now we like the bacause
because they live in another country. Right, yeah, And remember this, buddy,
if you shoot into the air, bullets come back down, right,
So just don't shoot into the air. Maybe blanks are okay.

(03:32):
So this first game show in Great Britain, it launched
a night is called Spelling Bee and it was exactly
what it sounds like, that's right. Freddie Gryswood 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

(03:52):
it sounds boring, it was because even though there was
nothing on TV, it still was not met with warm receptions.
Advertisers liked it. But there was a columnist in The
Independent in two thousand, just eighteen years ago, such a
snarky British thing to say. He said this one of
the few happy consequences of the Second World War was

(04:13):
it took spelling be off air burn yea, like a
good World War two burn. Right, So spelling B, even
though it was boring, it kicked off this huge craze
just immediately. Everyone saw like, okay, if spelling B can
be popular with the advertisers, we can do better than that.

(04:35):
We're America, right, So we took it the ball and
ran with it. We were already familiar with game shows.
We had him on the radio, like we had shows
like Um, you Bet Your Life with Grout show Marks
was a big one. Um 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 B. Right. Then things

(04:58):
start to get cool with True Their 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 Bulah the buzzer sounded, and name
their buzzer Beulah yeah, which is kind of neat. It's

(05:19):
just a nice little touch, right, And if you didn't
answer before Bulah went off, um, you had to face
the consequences. Which is like something wacky, like a mock
execution or something like that. Right. Uh. 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? Okay? Pretty close?

(05:44):
I think it's in the same state. All right, I'm
a lost Crucis guy myself. But whatever, name dropper, you're
a name dropping uh. Host Ralph Edwards said that they
would broadcast a lot from the first town that would
name their city after Truth or Consequences. This is not

(06:06):
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 we can lose this. We'll still keep the sign
up that says Hot Springs because it's useful, but we're
going to change our name. And they did. I think

(06:27):
they cheaped out personally. Okay, don't tell them that back
in New Mexico that Chucks said that. Okay, So this
is I think nine was when the game shows started
coming on TV in the US. And by the fifties
they were like some of the top rated shows on
television game shows where they call them quid shows back

(06:49):
then even they did, and that was pretty much the format.
Like they were. There was actually like thought and like
skill to this um like masteries, yeah, smarts right, there
was like um sixty thousand dollar question, which in today's
dollars to be the five D five question. That's correct,

(07:10):
thank you. Although you wrote this a couple of months ago,
I thought, I'm really sad that you brought that up.
I was just gonna not mention. All right, well, Jerry
in the future cut that part out. I don't want
to make Josh uncomfortable. Thank you. Jerry's all around us
right now. We live on a hard drive in Jerry's
computer in the future. This is all a simulation. So

(07:39):
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 one. You

(08:01):
guys might have seen the movie Quiz Show with John
Treturo and Ray finds I guess not, so we're seeing
worth seeing, right, Um. But it's about this actual scandal
that happened in the US with this one show called
twenty one, and the whole thing started where there was
this producer for twenty one who approached this blue blood

(08:23):
lip professor named Charles Van Doren and just appealed to
his ego. He said, there's this guy on this show
that I produced. His name is Herb Stemple. He's like
the worst stain of a human being anyone's ever seen.
But you can't stop winning. And America hates him and Revalon,
our sponsor, is gonna leave. We're starting to lose ratings.
You gotta help us, van Doren. Van Dorn's like, okay,

(08:45):
I'll see what I can do. Just feed me the
lines and we'll cheat together and I will help you
with that was that was okay? So he gets locked
into this, right, But what Van Doren 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

(09:07):
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 you would think like,
all right, well, then go to the press and expose
this thing. And he did and the press said, you're
just a sore loser. Yeah, they wouldn't. The New York

(09:27):
Times said, nah, you're just a sore loser. Uh. There
was another guy who was the other dude, Stony Jackson. Yes,
Stony Jackson was another. I think he was on the
sixty four thousand dollar 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. So finally there was hard evidence.

(09:50):
There was another question named Otto, 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 Nine Communications Act

(10:12):
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, uh, game show quality
was one of the more important things on the docket.
Right now, I'm depressed, Alicia, Hippies, I don't have to

(10:37):
think Van Doren. By the way, he was actually indicted
for perjury. He was because he had lied to Congress. No,
he told the truth Congress. He lied to a court. Right,
But I don't think you ever did a hard time
because I said he was a blue blood. Yeah, let's
face it, it was still it was still America. He didn't,
he didn't serve any hard time. So those quiz show

(10:59):
scandals gave us one of the weird quirks of Jeopardy.
At one point, Mervy, Yes, I still love Jeopardy. Uh. 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 would you shut up? Why don't you just

(11:20):
make the questions the answers and the answers the questions.
I'm sure they're very lovely people. Actually, that's just how
he picture it in my head. Is there all drunk
and smoking, Skelly Bangally bracelets on his wife. Julian actually
suggested that, and that's where that interesting quirk of Jeopardy

(11:43):
came from. And by the time the executives figured out
it was actually the same thing, you could still feed
someone the questions or answers, right, so um the scandal again.
America's response was profound and it almost killed off which
shows were it not for one of maybe our country's

(12:05):
greatest geniuses ever, manned by the name of Mark Goodson,
who created the greatest game show ever The price is right, Yes,
Mark Goodson and Bill Toddman his partner. I don't recognize him,
just Mark Goodson. So all right, well, you're weird longstanding
grudge against Bill Toddmen's it's not so much that it's

(12:26):
more an idolization of Mark Goodson. Okay, that's fine. So
what Mark Goodson did he said, Okay, everybody, wait, we
don't have to give up quiz shows. What we're gonna
do is take quiz shows and make them 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 um having to know

(12:50):
stuff can 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 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. Well,

(13:17):
hey make America great again? Right? Uh oh god, it's
like crowded sea. Just someone big shreds legal. We don't
tread on me, and let's just back away from this
chuck all right, Jerry cut all that out. Uh here,

(13:42):
celebrities get ain't drunk, which shows like the match game
in Hollywood Squares, and they like flat out got drunk
on the match game. If you've ever seen like behind
the scene stories, it's pretty great. They just swelled vodka
basically from like a noon on and you would The
only smart you had to have as a contestant was
to be able to all in the blanks. You had
to be able to speak. That's it. Like this Frank

(14:06):
was embarrassed because his blank squeaked like, that's as smart
as you needed to be. Let's name a body part
like you, you basically couldn't get it wrong. And if
you got it wrong is because you just guessed wrong.
You had just is is as much of a chance
of guessing right as you had to get right. But
there was always a chance that Nipsey Russell would be
thinking the same body part. And then you're You're the winner.

(14:30):
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. Uh. And then there was
of course a newly wed game, the legendary newly Weed 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, you know, how would your

(14:50):
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 whole Go from
the newly Wed game. We're doing Have you guys ever
heard of Holga from the newly Web game? A few
of you have, Well, the rest of you buckle in.

(15:11):
So there was a woman competing with her husband on
the newly Wed game. Her name is Holga. I think
its name four for for argument's sake. Sure, So Holga
was asked among her fellow competitors on the game, UM,
tell me, girls, where is the weirdest place specifically that

(15:35):
you personally have ever gotten the urge to make whoopie?
And Holga answered in the ass you can. You can
watch it online when you get home. And poor Holga's like,
why does everyone laugh? I guess it's funny? And then

(15:57):
when they brought her husband back and all the other
husband as they said what do you think your wife
would say? And her husband guests in the car. So
they didn't win, but they definitely went down in history,
and Holga was still going, why is everybody laughing at me?
Then there was a show called Queen for a Day.
This is an interesting show because it was a big,

(16:18):
big hit with audiences even though it was decidedly strange,
and that they would bring out women who had genuine
troubles in their life and uh 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

(16:41):
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 It was a big,
big hit. It was, and in fact, they even stretched
it from thirty minute show to an hour hunk show
because advertisers loved it so much. Queen for a Day,

(17:04):
Queen for a Day. So there was another big thing
that happened, um when game shows started to make a comeback.
They moved from prime time the 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 seventies when there was this sudden

(17:25):
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. Uh. It
just took over and like what we think of his,
game shows came out of the mid seventies and it
was They made a pretty big splash. Yeah, that was.
In fact, there was an article in the New York Times.

(17:47):
It said you could watch nine straight game shows between
and two pm on NBC every weekday. Nine straight game shows. Right,
It's amazing And this is the world I grew up in.
So I was pretty happy. Kid, say, this is how
I watched Prices, right, that's how I watched and still

(18:09):
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, well,
I was not on which the taping of the Prices right.
It's a big difference. And I will tell that story later, Okay,
put a pin in it. Yeah. So the reason, all right,

(18:30):
the reason Um asked Josh's permission everything I say so.
The reason that game shows made like such a big
comeback after they were almost dead it was pretty simple. Money.
They're actually really really cheap to make. Um. They came
back in part again because of Mark Goodson, but they

(18:51):
also came back because there were risk averse executives when
they actually pop up a lot in this show. You'll
find but in the sixties and seventies, Um 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

(19:13):
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 Ten? It was on for like a season
in two thousand seven? Yeah, no one did, right, that's
why I was on for a season. That the response,
by the way, But it was like this kind of
slick new game show, complicated rules and everything. Um. But

(19:34):
they had a prize budget for the season of three
million dollars, but they had a top prize of ten
million dollars, and the producers just kind of hoped, knowing
would ever get to the ten million dollar question. They
basically said, this show is so hard, no one, it's
virtually impossible to get to that ten million dollar question.

(19:57):
Ipso facto. We're fine. Right, the first contestant got to
the ten million dollar question. I was like, surely that's
is that true? And I looked it up again in
the green rooms, 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 not.

(20:23):
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 Prices right, if
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.

(20:45):
Penny Anny is is is everyone's winning a lot of money? Uh, Barker,
Because Barker runs the show, everyone knows that. Yeah, Barker
might say, well, no, let's bring up plink Oh, 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 space neutered, so it needs my money. Wandering around

(21:06):
his bedroom waiting for the return and surgery. Then he
might try out Cliffhanger, the very tough Cliffhanger with the yodler,
one of my favorite games, and then the Kuda Gras
at the end. If everyone is winning, they will bring
out the only game on the Prices right where you
actually need physical skills? Can anyone name it? Holding one

(21:30):
who said it that's where he had. You're giving a
lot of beer. It's not. It's there that comes out
of our cut. What So Holding one is the one
where you have to put 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 eight
year old woman handed a golf butter for nine ft

(21:52):
away and just just like sink it ropping out. That'd
be so great. Barker always showed off and put it. Well,
that's why that was even on there was so he
could get a little golf in at work. Uh. Here's
the other thing that they do. They also inflate the
prizes of the of the value of the prizes so
they can write it off on their income taxes as

(22:15):
a production company. That's really true. They take out life
or not life insurance. They probably should take out life insurance.
They take out insurance policies in case someone wins the
big prize in themnity 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 research

(22:36):
this this show. Um, they do lot of style payouts
to where they come to you and say, hey, congratulations,
you can have like a tenth of this now, where
you can have the whole thing over like fifty years. Again,
congratulations for winning. You can have this new car now,
or how about this segue or the dashboard today chair

(22:59):
next year, the car chair. They know what they're calling
the second the driver's chair, passenger chair, the segue. The
invention that revolutionize standing, That was gonna change the city
because we're all in segways. We were there so much
room on any given sidewalk for thousands of segways. Well,

(23:21):
they were gonna do away with cars. We wrote a segway.
Remember that they're hard. Have you guys ever written on
a segway? They're tough? Head Cracker that was the original
name for him. 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? Okay, No, I

(23:42):
know where we are, all right. I'm glad you said
that got us back on track. So um Prize budgets
are kind of a new thing as far as game
shows go. Back in the day, back in the seventies,
spasm of game shows on daytime. If you did this right,
you could basically pay for the production costs for your

(24:04):
show and AD revenue would be just acent profit. Right.
And they did this because you could trade stuff for
plugs on the game show. And we didn't realize this
until well, I guess you realized it years before. I
was like in my twenties when I realized the Prices
right was a sixty minute TV commercial. Okay, I was

(24:26):
researching this show when I realized that, because again, this
is how I watched Prices Right. It's taken on face value.
It's just it's in show plug after in show plug,
whether it's Rice Errony the San Francisco treat or Bush's
baked beans with more fat than ever before, or the
new Ford Pinto less uh fiery than it was a

(24:50):
year ago. Right, So depending on whether it was like
Rice Erroney, Rice Rooney would go to Bob Barker and say,
here's a sect of money, a lifetime supply of Rice Roni,
and um, you just go plug Rice Erroney on your show. Uh.
Ford would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a
fiery death trap Pinto and we'll give you this an

(25:11):
exchange for like six plugs on the show, and Barker
would lean back in his reclinery and go, let me
think about it. Let me ask you, is your dog
Spader and you're 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 here.
That was the real Barker, everybody, that's not true, No,

(25:34):
it's not. He's a sweetheart of him. Man. All right,
I'm sorry, I keep getting lost because I'm halfway drunk.
Uh 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

(25:55):
the product. So it's just it's all gravy basically, right,
because then you can take that money your host, but
also like use it for cash prizes. If there's somebody
who won't trade you their thing in in exchange for plugs,
you can actually buy it and the whole thing just
wash it out and it's free. Um. So they're very
cheap to make. And there's one other thing that you
need to know about game shows. Their production wise, they

(26:16):
would film like five or six of them in a
single day, so you get the whole week done, just
knocked out in a single day. Yeah, I mean, that's
one of the big reasons are so cheap is because
you save 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,

(26:37):
and Space and neuterus a bunch of dogs. So, guys,
I don't know about you all, but I'm feeling pretty
good about the show that was. Actually that wasn't a
prompt for applause. That's as me softening the blow, becau,
why did you sit there and wait? And that is

(27:00):
that we have to put an ad break in. That's right,
So if you quiet, so, if you'll bear with us,
we'll be right back after these messages. We're right back, ma'am.

(27:35):
Magic of ented. Yes, that's how that works. So, well,
pay for this show, not commercial, and pay for a commercial.
I'm gonna tell my fellow militia members. So with the
seventies blood of game shows, UH comes some of the
most popular TV shows of all time in American history.

(27:58):
UH shows like Well Fortune and Jeopardy Prices right. Long
long running shows We Look Fortune debut nineteen and became
the longest running syndicated game showing American television history, making
Mr say Jack and Ms Van white household names. Of course,
and say Jack would have held on to his spot
as the longest running host had he not made the

(28:20):
very poor decision to stop and have his own late
night talk show. Did you remember that? Oh man, it's
so bad Pat say Jack show. It was like like
watching a valium, not like taking a value. It's like
watching a volume you're not allowed to take. That's how
boring it is. I have to sit there and look

(28:41):
at sad. Yeah. Say Jack is in a three way
race for worst late night talk show between Magic Johnson
and Chevy Chase, and I can't decide which one is worse.
So Chevy, that was bad. It was really bad. They're
raised me to despise Check and I will still tell

(29:04):
you this, Pat say Jack Show was worse than the others.
It was the worst of all. It's pretty bad. I
would tell that to Pat say Jack's face. And of course,
who took over as the longest running host because of
say Jack's mistake treback, but little known fact, Vannah White

(29:28):
actually pre dates pass Jack on Will Fortune. Do you
guys know that 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 were listening to the radio and there's like free
tickets at stake, that's the answer. That's an arcane trivia question.
And I got one more about Vannah if you guys

(29:49):
are okay with yeah, let's hear it. She holds the
Guinness World Record for television's most frequent clapper, with about
seven and twenty claps per episode of Wheel of four
Chune and they filmed 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 my mommy's hands. Don't

(30:10):
touch mommy's hands, says these giant aloe plants. She just
sticks her hands inside. They're like food. Move we not
expecting a little shop for a friends, I guess. So
then we move into uh, well, it's actually I forgot.

(30:30):
We need to get Bob Barker his duo because he
actually worked from nineteen seventy two on the Prices right
only until his grand old age of eighty three, But
he actually hosted a show before that, right, Truth or Consequences. Yeah,
what year did that start? He started hosting in nineteen
fifty four. He stopped in nineteen seventy. Sorry, he started

(30:54):
in nineteen fifty six. He stopped hosting that in nineteen
seventy four. He started hosting the prices right nine two,
and stopped hosting the prizes right in two thousand seven.
So for fifties, 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

(31:15):
and whiskey and spaying and neutering. I don't like this picture.
You're not gonna lie you had a veterinarian on hand,
say 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.

(31:43):
So sorry, I'm so sorry. Well, you know the comedy
rule of free threes. We we're gonna have to say
that a third time. All right, keeping your for I
there's a nine 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.

(32:04):
I don't want it to count. I'm gonna see if
I can work it in here, so I want to
see it all right, So sorry. Game shows started in
their heyday. Everybody bear with me. Game shows started in
their heyday and rolled right into the eighties, and one

(32:27):
of the quintessential game shows of the nine 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 pestels, lots of
pop callers. If you look closely at every episode, they
have a magazine turned upside down that is clearly tinting.

(32:48):
Lines of cocaine that they're doing in between, like commercial
breaks of Super eight, lots of Bert's. I think, didn't
Burt Conbie host that? He did? Or do I just
want him to have hosted that? He did host it?
And then Burt Reynolds was a guest on Burton Money.
They were all over that show, and poor Burt um
Convy was known as Little Burt, which he was even

(33:09):
I think taller than Burt Reynolds was just but that
was per Bert Reynolds contract. Yeah, I'm sure it's called
him Little Burt uh. And then Betty White. 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

(33:32):
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

(33:55):
cently people like it. She's just America's sweetheart, you know,
people like Betty one's great. So by the time the
eighties are like in their heyday, their own heyday. Um,
if you look back, a lot of the shows that
were big in the eighties had actually started in the sixties.
And the reason why is because, again, Risk Averse TV
executives were like, I think of anything new, I'll just

(34:18):
bring out tic tech, dough and concentration. You know, Paula
shutt up, dusted off and put it out there again.
So there are a lot of game shows like that,
and they were pretty successful. But one of the other
things that they did in the eighties was experiment with
game shows, right, so you had things like Double There. Yeah,
that was that's okay, we owe it to you, Double There.

(34:39):
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 our boy girl tweens working together, and there was slie.
So Double There was pretty much great on every level.
Was never saw you never saw Double There. Now I'm

(35:01):
a little sadly, I'm a little too old for doubled hair.
I was someone just boom me for being old. I
think they booed you for not watching Double There. I
was like sixteen. Boo Actually, it's like tad old for
Double There. Well, here's what I was watching. I was
watching Remote Control on TV, very very good game show.

(35:24):
It was. If you don't remember, it was what now
you would call him meta game show. Back then you
would call it a spoof of game shows because host
Kinober 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,

(35:44):
funny game show. They had categories like Brady Brady, Bunch
of 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.
It the very first time that Adam Sandler was on
TV was on remote control. Same with Colin Quinn and

(36:05):
Dennis Leary. They all got their start on remote control. Wow,
it's right. So there's a couple of 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 Wayne, and by the late eighties early nineties, America
was like, we're sick of game shows. And again, one

(36:28):
of the reasons why is because those executives didn't try
a lot of new stuff. They instead trotted out tic
Tacto and concentration. So America got bored with game shows
and kind of moved on, and game shows just went
away almost magically. By there were two game shows, The
Prices Right and Family Feud still filming during the day.

(36:50):
Even Wheel of Fortunes daytime show got the ax. Wheel
of Fortune got the ax. That's how close to extinction
game shows came um and instead, the same lazy executives
gave us softcore news like Inside Edition and Extra and
daytime talk like Jenny Jones and Maury Povich, and we

(37:12):
have them to thank for that. I have another theory, actually,
that grunge killed game shows in the early nineties, right,
because there's a quote here from the great Mark Goodson.
Apparently you're idle. He's great at quotes too. He said,

(37:32):
it's like a hurricane came and wiped them all away,
and that hurricane smelled like teen Spirit. I made up
that second part. They did say hurricane. Yes, it was
sort of antithetical though that early nineties time. I'm joking
about grunge. But it just it didn't It didn't work together,

(37:54):
you know, Generation next Douglas Copeland slacking grunge. They didn't
like do away with game shows. They came in because
game shows went away. Yeah, America got sad. So the
other tenant of game shows. Is this. You can't keep

(38:14):
game shows down for longer than a decade. You just can't.
They're gonna come back. They're gonna jump on your back
like beetle Juice or something. Right, So, by the late
nineties early two thousand's they started to come back, and
those risk averse executives started to innovate a little more,

(38:34):
meaning that they started stealing good game shows from other
countries which somebody hadn'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 that she was perfect. She

(38:55):
scared me. Uh, these had much bigger prizes. They were
a little more complicated. Did 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 is pretty great, which brought America back into the
clutches of Auie Mandel. We came so close to getting
away from him forever. And then, uh, it was like

(39:19):
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 oggs again.
It was like what happened? Same with Howie Mandel. Uh.
And then eventually game shows would co opt reality shows,
obviously with big, big shows like Survivor, uh, The Apprentice,

(39:42):
The Bachelor, Um Shark, Tanka show that I actually really love,
and then a great great show called American Ninja Warrior. Okay,
you guys like American Ninja Warrior, let me direct you
to the predecessor and frankly better, American Gladiator. That's right,

(40:06):
I love that too, and this is why American Gladiators
is just superior to American Injin Warrior. American Injin Warrior,
it's fine, it's great, but they kind of dilute the
action a little bit. I think you could say, like
they have like b footage where like the production crew
went to the contestants hometown and talked to like their
peewee baseball coach about they used to be afraid of

(40:28):
the ball, but you know they really like got over
it and look at him now, and the coach that
kind of chokes up a little bit, you know. On
American Gladiator it's more like, so Kim is out there
and she's running around getting the crapp eat out of her,
and the commentators just have this throwaway like, well, no,
in fact about Kim. She traded her house for a

(40:49):
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

(41:09):
or whatever you call him. More 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 bodybuilder would leap
on you and and try and get you off, and

(41:31):
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 Eventchil couldn't get
a good grip. Peck Lube just got applause. Is your
only only hope? That pig shout out to the Original
six on American Gladiator Nitro Malibu, Malibu, Lace, Lace a

(41:56):
little Baptist, Chuck. Lace was like and to know what
was going on in my body when I saw Lace,
JC Chuck like sitting in front of his TV with
his knees pulled up to his chest, is rocking back
and forth, like singing hymnals. Things are happening. I like Lace.
You know who Lace was married to in real life?

(42:18):
Uh Michael Parrey actor Michael Parrey from Eddie and the Cruisers.
Uh Michael Trivia. Michael Pray is not here tonight, right,
he might be Jim and I Zapp and Sunny the
Original six. I had us off to you, Michael Douglas,

(42:42):
just show 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 prestages Running Man or The
Running Man came out right before. No, I think Running Man.
I think it came after American Lady Here. Really, I'm
gonna stand by that. He said, No, all right, where
al right? We in the two thousand's we are, So

(43:03):
we're in like another a 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 hosted
Joker's Wild, which, by the way, I have no problem
with that whatsoever. I think that was actually a pretty
short move. Um Anthony and Anderson's uh to tell the truth,
I think is what he hosts. Yea love connection? Oh

(43:25):
is that out? Yeah? I didn't know that they need
to bring back what was the one? The dating one
not singled out? Yeah, I forgot about singled out. Yeah,
that was a good one. That was a good one,
and the what was the one on the what was
the one on the bus? Oh? I loved cash cab.

(43:46):
Can we talk about cash cab for a minute or
can we go off script for a moment? Cash Cab
unfortunately came around when I and Josh we 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,

(44:07):
knowing that I would have to disclose that I was
actually an employee of Discovery Channel and could not be
on cash Guy, I'm contractually prohibited from getting in your
cash cab. Sorry, what are you talking about dude, just
get in. It is a good show still now I
still watch reruns. I think it's Are they not still
making it? No? No? No? Is it back? All right? Well,

(44:29):
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
shows thinking of were you thinking of the dating game now?
The wonder 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?

(44:54):
What is next? Man? This show is so people are showing.
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

(45:14):
track here. People are murmuring like you guys are figuring
out whether to vote for a referendument of town hall
or something. He quiet, we letsa legalize it? Uh? And then,
of course, some game shows never went away to begin with,
like our beloved prices. Right, they just changed hosts the

(45:37):
great great family Feud. Right. Uh. We lost Richard Dawson
while he retired, then he died, No, he retired, Ray
Comes came, then Richard, then he came back, then he died, right, okay, uh.
And then the great Loui Anderson hosted for a little while.

(45:57):
Then a guy named Richard carn who I don't know
excuse from Home Improvement. I never saw that show. It's
the most controversial thing I've said all night. And then
I don't know who John O. Hurley is, j Peterman Seinfeld,
I love that guy. And then the great Steve Harvey

(46:19):
with his eight button suits. America has embraced Steve, even
though he messed up the was it miss America? That
just made him that much more than Frankly, nobody else
could have gotten away with it like he did. Agreed
so um 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

(46:41):
just steal game shows from other countries. America does it,
everybody does it. Really. There's a game show in France
called Live Big Deal and it's let's make a deal,
but it's hosted by an animated alien for some reason. Um.
Some are franchise, like The Price Is Right is a
huge hit in UK they're crazy for the president right

(47:02):
appropriately um. 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 a positive
that this is actually a real show. We've really tried
to find out, like, no, this is a joke. I

(47:23):
think this is real. Intercept is what it's called. And
an intercept, you were contestant and they give you a
car and you drive off in the car they call
the car and stolen in real I r L and
you are supposed to evade the police in real life
for thirty five minutes, and if you do that successfully,

(47:45):
you keep the car right And as far as we
can tell, it's real, and it always it's like, I
guess that's Russia. That's what they do in Russia. I
guess if you get killed, your next of kim gets
the car. I don't know. Maybe surely there's a winner.
I think the cops get to keep it. Maybe, But Russia, aside,

(48:05):
there was 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 eighties staple it started with it, did it?

(48:26):
Called Takeshi's Castle. This is in the eighties in Japan,
and there are fans of the show in America in
two thousand eighteen. Yeah, that shows how great the show is. Well,
it changed everything right, Like Takeshi's Castle was, it was
just not it was a melee. There would be like
a hundred contestants all competing and everybody's trying to get
into Takeshi's Castle. But this is harder than you would

(48:48):
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 schmos, like being spun around on
a wheel like twenty ft above a pond. I was
flying off. There's other people making a run for it,
and there's like like people dressed as Ninja throwing like

(49:09):
rubber throwing stars at him. It's just chaos, and um,
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

(49:33):
know why they were 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 of me. I don't know why.
Then there was another one after Takeshi's Castle. It came
on in the nineties and it was called Downtown Nogaki
no Sky and they which means, um, Downtown's not an

(49:57):
errand boy, which is no more sense of bold in
the Japanese so it doesn't help at all. It translations
Downtown is not an errand boy, and even if you
say okay, Downtown as a person still doesn't make any
damp to make any sense. It's really strange. But this
one really cemented like because this is when the Internet
came around. On YouTube was around, you could watch this

(50:19):
all over the world and it really really really called
on And they had punishment games, um like the Ask
game where if you've 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

(50:40):
and I was like, what is that all about? Don't
do that because whatever immage search you come up with
has nothing to do with the game show at all.
But Penis Machine was where you'd have to recite a
tongue twister. Uh, and if you got it wrong then

(51:00):
they would kick you in the goet on everybody. I
was about to go backstage as a joke, but I
might have just stayed there, so so uh. Based on
that alone, I think this deserves a second ad break. Okay,

(51:22):
because this show is going really really well. Does everybody
bear with us? We will be right back. All right,

(51:48):
We're back everybody. Here's a little segment called what's it
like to be on a game show? Yeah, you can
expect sweaty man's ass in your face if you lose.
You know, that's just japan Um. If you're in a
game show, like as a kid as a young show,
I was like, I want to be in a game
so that sounds awesome, And then I researched this. I

(52:10):
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 three thousand people try out for Wheel
of Fortune every year and only like five hundred make
the cut. That's it's Wheel of Fortune, right, It's just imagined.
There must be like ten people that make it on
the Jeopardy a year out of a million or something
like that. Yeah, Jeopardy stuff. I've known a few people

(52:31):
who have been on that, and uh, 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 the final Jeopardy because they
have zero dollars. That person is smarter than everyone in

(52:52):
this room. That's what's so sad. It is really hard.
And in fact, Kim Jennings is on our network now
with his great show Omnibus All Time Jeopardy Champion with
his insane record of like seventy something Jeopardy wins in
a row, which is just nuts. And you know, I'm

(53:12):
real good friends with Kim 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,
you gotta 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 like how good you are with a buzzer

(53:33):
and how like 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 get to have a lot
of personality. You just have to like go in front
of a panel of people and like turn around slowly right,

(53:56):
well yeah, and went to well now you don't do that,
although I could have worked in a fourth reference there. Uh.
I went to a Price is Right taping with my
sister in the in the mid nineties and they there's
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,

(54:19):
and it's very intimidating because I don't know if you
all know this. When you go on the prices right
in the audience, you really don't know, like that's all real.
You don't know your name is gonna get called. I
always thought that they set you up and said, by
the way, at minute thirty or whatever, in round two,
we're gonna call you down there. You need to do
this and act like this. It's all for real, like

(54:41):
you have no idea you're gonna get called. So when
people freak out and run down there 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 like the people who
have been contestants, right, yeah, we were. We were positioned
up where they had two empty rows. And when you
were finished playing the games, they don't you don't go
back to your seat. You go to this little area

(55:02):
and this, uh, 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 his 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,

(55:24):
and my sister's crying, and I'm crying, and I'm like,
new to a dog. It sounds like a punishment now
it is for the dog. Highly recommended, though, if you
ever have a chance, go to go to the prices
right taping. It's a lot of fun. It's a good story.

(55:46):
By the way, Well that's all right, It would have
been better if I would have, you know, won a
jet ski. 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 film 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.

(56:08):
But it's not like you can wander around and bug
like Alex Trebeka 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 like FCC
compliance officers. Can you imagine standing around for ten hours

(56:28):
without a cell phone? Not just now take it away,
they break it under the 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, um they watch you like a hawkers because
people have been known to um collude with people in

(56:51):
the audience. Like there was this guy in the UK
who won a million pounds on who Wants to Be
a Millionaire? 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 was Charles Ingram,
and he won because he was talking to his wife
and his wife was going and talking to somebody in

(57:11):
the audience. And this is the scheme they came up with.
Charles Ingram, you know, who wants to be a Millionaire'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.

(57:32):
They like. The producers were like, your congratulations, and they
made it home. And finally, because he apparently was acting
KG in the 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 uh, and
we're find a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and didn't

(57:53):
get a dime of the million pound prize. Some kind
of wig said a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds right,
And you would think, okay, justice was 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
grows two and a half million pounds. Yep. And we

(58:17):
have a couple of new sayings. Now if you remember
from dB Cooper, never trust family and now cheating always pays.
So those are the two tenants of stuff you should know.
One across these knuckles and one across the other knuckles. Uh,
you want to bring it home? Yeah, let's let's talk

(58:38):
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 Wammies. That was the
point of pressure luck, not to get away emmy. Yeah,
So who was Michael Larson? So Michael Larson was this guy.
He was a contestant eventually on Pressure Luck, but he

(59:01):
started out as a semi employed ice cream truck driver.
Let that sink him for a Yeah, you're really really
reaching for the stars. You're like, no, I don't want
to do that full time, but keep my option 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, um running off of his VCR.

(59:24):
Because he would take game shows and watch them up
to eighteen 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, right,
And he figured out pretty quick the price is right,
there's no there's no flaw to it. Same with Wheel
of Fortune. It's just kind of luck. Right. And then

(59:48):
in 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's said,
I'm gonna get you game show. He said about getting
pressurer luck. Yeah, so here's the deal with pressure luck.
It had three just regular contestants who would answer questions

(01:00:10):
and then at the end of each round, whoever was
in the lead, we get to press their luck. And
there was a big board with a bunch of individual
squares that would light up like that's a good pressure luck.
You would press your luck and say stop. We didn't
have to say stopped, but most people did, and it
would stop on whatever square and you might win five dollars,

(01:00:30):
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 one 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 annoid looking thing, this little cartoon character

(01:00:53):
with a cape that would go and you lose everything
that you had made. So you're really if you press
your luck, you were 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 brains going haywire, and
you go stop and just hope for the best. Well,

(01:01:13):
Michael Larson would take pressure Luck and again watch individual
episodes eighteen hours straight, just looking trying to find something
sitting around and 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, chest

(01:01:34):
hair matted, sticky, and he probably went got it, got
a chocout taco 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 they five, were there five patterns they repeated in order.

(01:01:57):
All he had to do was hone is timing and
getting the light to stop, memorize where the boxes were,
and he would crack pressure luck and that is exactly
what he did. I'm trying to think of that moment
at for a um in his bark a lounger when
he realizes that it's a pattern, Like what that must
have been like, Like he's like, my life is vindicated. Yeah,

(01:02:19):
everyone said, I was a loser, but I'm not so
just disregard the chockout taco on my chest. I'm no loser.
He bought a bus ticket from Cincinnata to l A
and I bought a suit from a vintage thrift store

(01:02:40):
and actually managed to become a contestant on Pressure Luck
on Mane. He came in last in the question round,
but he's 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

(01:03:00):
because you can practice all you want on the arm
of your recliner, but on the day, as they say
in the in the industry, that little buzzer may not
match up quite right. So he had to he had
to get synchronized. He did, and boy did he he did,
because after that, on his next spin, he locked into
thirty one consecutive spins. This had never happened before, nothing

(01:03:25):
even remotely close. Two or three in a row is amazing.
Before you were on fire, this guy got thirty one
consecutive spins. Overall, he got forty seven in the half
hour show that he was on. The other two contested
to sat back and one guy pulled out like a
corn cob pipe and read the paper. I mean like
it was the Larcen Show, right, And just a little

(01:03:46):
by little he starts building his money, a few hundred
bucks here 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 the saying as he
gets more and more money because he has to say
I want to press my luck. Everyone's like, you're crazy, dude,
You've got fifty dollars. But he worked it all the

(01:04:08):
way up into a record at the time hundred and
ten thousand, two hundred thirty seven dollars, which is more
money than had ever been won on an American game show. Yeah,
the previous record was forty dollars. 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
eleven minutes long. It's the best thing you can watch.

(01:04:29):
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

(01:04:52):
terrible time of it. But in the end they paid Larson.
They said he didn't cheat. He was smarter than CBS think.
One of the executives said these air quotes though, So
we paid him. So he one, 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

(01:05:13):
his push up and a local radio station was running
a contest. Those only two ice cream truck things I
can think of, chock out tacos and butch ups. Those
are good enough. Yeah, you know what the worst was
was that rainbow popsicle things? Those are the worst. What's
wrong with you? You like those? Yes? Really? The bomb Pop,
the red, white and Blue pop or the rocket Pop

(01:05:37):
to Patriot Country, those are great. It had no ice creaming,
and I was all about the ice okay, well, yeah,
you wouldn't like a bomb pop all that's what they
were called. Or rocket pops one of the two popper
Rocket Pop you've got a strong reaction, so I guess
I'm the dummy. Some people recoiled in horror. All right,

(01:05:57):
So Michael Larson 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 in fifty thousand dollars. I'm sorry, And
Michael Larson said, I got a lot of dollar bills.

(01:06:20):
So he went to the bank and withdrew nine thousand,
I'm sorry, fifty tho dollar bills from the bank bills.
So he was the joy of the bank that day.
But but wait, wait, let's think about this for a second.
You can withdraw those all day long. You're not gonna

(01:06:41):
know the serial number unless you sit there and start
memorizing them. And that's what he did, yep. Instead of
watching games 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's story. Now, that's right, because he

(01:07:03):
never took that money back to the bank because he's
Michael Larson. I can only imagine if this guy would
have worked for a living right, we would have a
cure for cancer today, we'd all be living tod and
fifty things. That would be great. But no, he left
that fifty grand at home and on Christmas he went
to a party with his girlfriend, to a Christmas party,

(01:07:26):
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 two thousand nine,
while on the lamb from the FBI and the i
R S for his part in a foreign lottery scam.

(01:07:48):
To the bitter end, still trying to make that easy money.
Uh and finally, uh, 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'm no very sad, but his story lives
on tonight here in Denver, Colorado. That is game shows.

(01:08:14):
That's a history of game shows. Everybody good, that's right,
thank you, thank you very much. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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