SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Max Headroom Incident

Josh Clark (0:03)

Here is a classic episode that covers a single event that happened on one night in 1987 in the great city of Chicago, where someone wearing a Max Headroom mask took over a local TV station for several minutes. And when I put it like that, it sounds pretty inconsequential, but it was such a big deal that the feds got involved. And even better, it's a mystery that's still not fully solved today.

And it's weird.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com.

Josh Clark (0:42)

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland. What do you think? Pretty good?

Chuck Bryant (0:54)

It's pretty good.

Josh Clark (0:55)

And this is Stuff You Should Know.

Chuck Bryant (0:57)

Josh Headroom.

Josh Clark (0:57)

Thank you.

Chuck Bryant (0:59)

I saw you over there with your ear buds today. You were working on this all day, weren't you?

Josh Clark (1:02)

I watched season one, episode one.

Chuck Bryant (1:05)

Oh, really? In full?

Josh Clark (1:06)

Of Max Headroom. The last ten minutes is still pending.

Chuck Bryant (1:09)

Oh, okay.

Josh Clark (1:10)

But it's crazy. Max Headroom himself doesn't show up until like 40 minutes into the first hour-long episode.

But when he does, it's dynamite.

Chuck Bryant (1:21)

So what are we talking about?

Josh Clark (1:22)

We're talking about Max Headroom.

Chuck Bryant (1:23)

That's right. Huge shout out at the beginning of this to vice.com, specifically Motherboard.

Josh Clark (1:31)

Specifically Alex Pasternak.

Chuck Bryant (1:34)

Yeah, who wrote the article on Motherboard. And we actually used to blog a little bit for them back in the day. Remember that?

Josh Clark (1:38)

Yeah, I don't think they like to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly.

Chuck Bryant (1:43)

You don't think?

Josh Clark (1:43)

I don't think so.

Chuck Bryant (1:44)

Oh, I think it was mutually beneficial.

Josh Clark (1:46)

I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore.

Chuck Bryant (1:49)

I'm trying to remember.

Josh Clark (1:50)

I'm sure they were like...

Chuck Bryant (1:52)

I think I read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or something weird.

Josh Clark (1:56)

That's a big one.

SPEAKER_2 (1:57)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (1:57)

We started out with an old-fashioned recipe, I think.

Chuck Bryant (2:00)

Yeah, that was you.

Josh Clark (2:01)

They were like, let's do better than this, guys. And we said no.

Chuck Bryant (2:05)

And then they said, we got our own people.

Josh Clark (2:08)

Yeah.

We'll let somebody come in and ghostwrite for you. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (2:11)

So that Motherboard article was the basis. And from what I found, I mean, we used a lot of different sources on this, but this article, entitled, The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack, is sort of the culmination, like, the coup de gras of Max Headroom incident articles.

Josh Clark (2:31)

Yeah. It actually...

Chuck Bryant (2:32)

Really good job.

Josh Clark (2:34)

Pasternak, like, very exhaustively investigated it and turned up new information, got a new understanding of it and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself. It's a way to go, Pasternak.

Chuck Bryant (2:49)

Right. And what we're talking about is... If you don't know who Max Headroom at all is, we're about to set that up.

Josh Clark (2:55)

Yeah. Let's talk about Max Headroom.

Chuck Bryant (2:57)

But if you were alive during the 1980s, then you probably know who Max Headroom is because, weirdly, for a brief few years, it was kind of a big pop culture thing.

Josh Clark (3:11)

About four years by my calculations. Yeah. So, starting in 1984, there was a movie called Max Headroom, Colon, so you know it's an important movie, 20 Minutes in the Future.

Chuck Bryant (3:25)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (3:26)

Right? And it was a kind of a cyberpunk movie, dystopian future, very Terry Gilliam, brazilish.

And it was, I haven't seen that one, but it was basically where the character of Max Headroom was born, right?

Chuck Bryant (3:42)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (3:43)

And I think it actually formed the basis for the TV show later. In between the later TV show that you and I are more familiar with and that movie, Max Headroom was a pop culture sensation. He was a pitch man for New Coke.

Chuck Bryant (3:57)

Oh, man.

Josh Clark (3:58)

I went and watched an old ad. He was in an ad with Run DMC pitching New Coke, and I was like, doesn't get any more 80s than this. But it was actually a pretty cool ad, right?

Chuck Bryant (4:09)

Did it say, here's a little story I need to tell about a New Coke on the scene that you love so well?