Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Attack of the Night People

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

If you tuned in to late-night WOR radio in 1950s New York, you'd enter the secret world of Jean Shepherd. Shepherd's nonconformist style, off-beat humor and love of pranks gathered a small but loyal following. These "Night People" loved being in on the joke, while the oblivious "Day People" were often the butt of it. Shepherd's show is long gone, but his spirit lives on in corners of the internet. Today, though, Night People go by a different name. For a list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Pushkin. This episode will discuss death by suicide. If you're suffering, emotional distress, or you're having suicidal thoughts, support is available. For example, from the 988-suicide and crisis lifeline in the US, or from the Samaritans in the UK. New York City, 1956. A young man goes into a bookstore and asks for a book.

I. Libetine by Frederick R. Ewing. The bookstore clerk checks their stock. It seems that they don't have a copy right now, but let's see if he can order one. He thumbs through the list of books available from the store's wholesalers. Strange, he can't see it anywhere. What's it called? I-Libbertine, the young man says. And who did he say was the author? Frederick R. Ewing. The clerk still can't find it. Do you happen to know the publisher? Sure, says the customer. Excelsior Press. The clerk keeps looking through his lists.

He can't see any mention of Excelsior Press. Are you sure that's the right name? The young man says he's sure. The bookstore Clark can only shrug in confusion. I'm sorry, he says. The book doesn't seem to exist. The young man thanks him. and walks away, looking disappointed, but also strangely amused.

Later another young customer approaches the clerk. I'm looking for a book, he says. It's called I Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. Oh, says the clerk. Someone else asked about this. I looked for it and it doesn't exist. Sure it does, the customer insists, Freddie Ewing, you know, the noted expert on 18th century erotica. Haven't you heard his radio series on the BBC? The clerk decides to call his wholesaler. It's very odd, says the wholesaler.

We've been getting lots of calls asking for I-Liberteen, but we've never heard of it. Or Frederick R. Ewing. Or Excelsior Press. What on earth is going on? I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In the middle of the night, in a building in Cartaret, New Jersey, a man in his mid-30s is talking into a microphone,

wearing nothing but fruit of the loom jockey shorts. It's stiflingly hot, because also in this building is a 50,000-watt radio transmitter, and there's no ventilation. This is not what Jean Shepard had in mind when he moved to New York, with his young family in tow to try to crack the big time. He'd been jobbing around various provincial radio stations, starting in his Indiana hometown.

Next, HG Grubbage and the news. There's no HG Grubbage. It's Shepard. playing the character of a self-important newsreader and reading out odd little snippets he's seen in the newspaper. Like the zookeeper whose paycheck was eaten by an elephant, or the man in the Canary Islands who tried to cross the Atlantic in a barrel. He sailed two yards and turned over twice.

Two bystanders rescued him, then two medical attendants took him to the local psychiatric hospital. Shepard collects these stories. Not quite garbage, he calls them, but grubbage. Mostly, though, he doesn't read stuff out. He just talks. And talks. No script, no notes.

At WKRC in Cincinnati, he's fired for too much talking. They just want someone to read out the ads from sponsors and tee up the records. He promises to play more music on his show, so they give him his job back. But he just keeps talking and talking. So they fire him again. He moves to Philadelphia. The purpose of my program is not to please,

but to begin trains of thought. I realize that many things that I do might not be good listening. Shepard's unusual approach peaks the interest of a New York radio station who try him out on a Saturday afternoon. In just a few months, he sheds so many listeners that they shunt him into the graveyard shift, from 1am to 5.30 every weeknight. And because the New York studios closed overnight, he has to broadcast from the sweltering transmitter room in New Jersey,

wearing only his underpants. Shepard doesn't mind. He's got four and a half hours to fill every night, a prospect that might be daunting for some broadcasters, but not for Shepard. Finally, his thoughts have room to breathe. So the guy hits A on the piano and I went, medics, schmetics, double beatniks, Popkins, I'll agree. In the words of his biographer, Eugene Bergman,

these late-night shows are a slow, casual, free-floating association of ideas, philosophy and bemused commentary. He tells long, meandering stories about his childhood and his time in the army. But is anyone actually listening? His bosses suspect not. They worry that Shepard's not commercial. He hates playing music or reading out ads from sponsors.

They threaten to fire him. Shepard decides to fight back. All right, gang. Let's show them that there are a few clutses out there to listen to this dribble all night. All of you go to your grocery store tomorrow and ask for Sweetheart Soap. The next day, stores in New York shift a surprising amount of Sweetheart Soap. There's only one problem. Sweetheart Soap isn't actually a sponsor of the radio station. Shepherd chose it at random just to make a point.

He does have listeners. a lot of listeners, and they're devoted. In the dead of the New York night, Shepard has found his audience. He starts to ruminate on who they are, these night people. I'm talking about people with that wild tossing in the soul that somehow makes them stay up till three o'clock in the morning and brood.

They might get up at seven the next morning and go to work, but that isn't what their life is about, not a bit of it. Shepard also starts to philosophize about the day people. Their life is about work. They believe in the world of the office, he says. They believe in file cabinets. They're the people in sales meetings with

the light of ecclesiastical fervor in their eyes. They believe in what they're selling. Shepard diagnoses that the day people are so. suffering from a malaise he calls creeping meatballism. By which he means conformity. The average person today thinks in certain prescribed patents. People today have a genuine fear of stepping out and thinking on their own. Take the latest model of refrigerator that has a clever design of door

that enables it to open from either side. The day people think this kind of progress is great. By George, we really are getting ahead. The night people couldn't care less about which side their fridge door opens. All they want to know is, Does it keep the stuff cold? This is the 1950s, remember? Shepard was ahead of his time.

What would he have thought of fridges that connect to the internet? You need cheese. One day, Shepard's in a New York bookstore, trying to get a copy of a book he saw at a friend's house. The bookstore, Clark, looks through the lists of books he can get from wholesalers and inform Shepard that the book doesn't exist. But Shepard knows the book exists. He's seen it.

I suddenly became aware that New York is almost entirely a city that really does run on lists. The day people believe in lists. If a book's on a bestseller list, it must be good. If it's not on any list at all, it not only can't be good, it can't exist. Shepard wants to mess with the belief in lists. What do you say, tomorrow morning, each one of us walk into a bookstore and ask for a book that we know does not exist? Shepard asks his listeners to suggest a title. He chooses I-Libbertine and makes up the author's bio on the fly.

Frederick R. Ewing, an expert in 18th century erotica, who's retired from the Royal Navy and broadcasts on the BBC. I-Libantine is going to be an explicit account of the salacious sex lives of 18.000. century London aristocrats. And by the way, Mr. Ewing is quite surprised at the success his book is enjoying, since it was written primarily for scholars, people who won't misunderstand that certain chapters are there for the purpose of scholarly research. Listeners write in to tell Shepard what happened when they went into stores to ask for the book.

One reports a deliciously see. satisfying encounter with the puffed-up clerk at his local bookstore, who always has an opinion on every book. When the listener mentions I-Liberteen, the clerk knowingly strokes his beard. Ah yes. Freddy Ewing. It's about time the public discovered him.

A student tells Shepard that he turned in an essay on I-Libbertine, augmented with quotes from Ewing's BBC broadcasts. He got a B-plus. Superbure research. Another listener says he flagged I-Libbertine to the Archdiocese of Boston and got them to ban it. It seems like a perfectly judged prank, funny and harmless. But there's another angle on the story of I-Libetine, which shows it in a different light. we'll pick up Jean Shepard's story. But first, let's meet his modern airs after the break.

Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmen. all at different stages of their journey.

So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across. broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio and

podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. In 2007, a post on the anonymous online message board, 4chan, suggested that users send an email to the principal of their local high school. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early to find my son and his friends getting high on something they called Jencom. They urinate and defecate in plastic bottles and leave them to ferment in the sun, then inhale the resulting gas. Surely not.

But the email continues. I looked it up on the internet, and apparently this was something invented by African children. That's actually true, kind of. Years earlier, in the 1990s, a press agency in Zambia had reported on how tough life was for impoverished street children. Some were seeking a temporary escape by getting high on gases from human waste that had fermented in sewer ponds.

The New York Times and BBC picked up the report and included the local term for that fermented sewer water. Gencom. So if an unsuspecting high school principal went to Google and typed in Jencom, they would find the top results did indeed mention African children and they came from respected news organisations. That made the easy.

email seems superficially plausible, though what it said next about Jencom wasn't true at all. Now kids all over the world are doing it. My son says most of his friends at school have tried it. You would hope that most high school principals who received this email will have engaged their brains, done a bit of digging and concluded that it was clearly a hoax. Most of their students were not fermenting their own excrement in plastic bottles. But there are always people who are ready to panic about what the kids are up to. A sheriff's office in Florida sent out a warning, complete with photos they'd found on the internet of a teen inhaling from a plastic bottle.

Someone had made Jencombe as a joke from flower, water, and Nutella. Local news stations picked up the story. Cops are calling it Jankham or the human waste drug, but parents need to be aware that kids are calling it by the more popular slang term, but hash. How could concerned parents tell if their teenager is inhaling but hash?

One news reporter earnestly advised parents to smell their children's breath at bedtime. Another asked for action from the US drugs enforcement agency. A bemused agent explained that it was hard for the government to regulate people's urine and feces. This all caused much hilarity for the anonymous users of 4chan. At around this time, the academic Whitney Phillips found out about 4chan from her 18-year-old brother. Check it out! He told her,

you'll like it. Phillips checked it out and was horrified. She recalls, There was so much porn and gore, so much offensive antagonistic humor and general foulness. It was also confusing with its own language and evident in-jokes. Why were people saying, Anhero, for example?

I'll come back to that. Phillips sensed that whatever was happening on 4chan was interesting enough to study. She did a PhD on trolling subculture. The anonymous posters on 4chan self-identified as trolls. But what did the word even mean? Phillips soon discovered that there were two etymologies. For some, the troll comes from Norse mythology.

Trolls are ugly, malevolent and stupid. They live under bridges. and threatened to eat the Billy Goat's gruff. But others insisted that trolling is a fishing term. It means dangling bait behind a fishing boat. In this sense, trolling is a skilled pursuit. The metaphor of dangling bait certainly seems like a better fit for the Jencom email,

which got several satisfying bites from school principals and local news. news reports. When Phillips asked the 4chan trolls what makes a troll, they told her, trolls believe that nothing should be taken seriously. When she asked them what they got out of trolling, they said, lulls. Lulls, says Phillips is an extremely slippery term. Trolls themselves struggle to explain it. You know it when you see it was the most common definition

I heard when conducting interviews. But Phillips has a go at defining lulls. A kind of ambiguous, unsympathetic laughter. Phillips spent more and more time getting to know the kind of people who post on 4chan. What she found reflected the split between these two etymologies. Some trolls are remarkably reflective and intelligent, and some are remarkably not.

Phillips began to understand the language and the iconography. She realized, I found certain forms of trolling funny, interesting, and in some cases, justifiable. Rick Rowling, for example, came from 4chan, the practice of disguising links, so you end up, unexpectedly, at the YouTube video of Rick Astley singing, Never gonna give you off, never gonna let you down. A well executed Rickroll makes a point. We're tempted to click on a link against our better judgment,

and Astley is our chastening reward. Why Rick Astley? It's just one of those random things that caught on like over 9,000, originally from a melodramatically delivered and mistranslated English dub of the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z. It's over 9,000! Over 9,000 took on a life of its own on 4chan as the default joke answer to any numeric question. Anyone familiar with troll subculture would,

immediately recognize over 9,000. Oprah Winfrey was not familiar with troll subculture. In 2008, she was discussing paedophilia on her show. Some people still weren't understanding the threat to children, she said. Let me read you something that was posted on our message boards from someone who claims to be a member of a known pedophile network. Are you sure about this, Oprah? His group has over 9,000 penises and they're all raping children.

So I want you to know they're organized and they have systematic ways of hurting children. Over 9,000 penises became a 4-chan classic, an absurdist in-joke, offensive subject matter. But it also made a worthwhile point. It showed that Oprah could take some rand, anonymous post on her message board and imbue it with authority as long as it fit her sensationalist narrative. The researcher Whitney Phillips concludes that this kind of trolling performs a useful social function.

As she writes in her book, this is why we can't have nice things. Trolls unearth the biases, hypocrisies and deep inconsistencies that compose mainstream culture. Or, put another way, trolls reveal. It all sounds very much like Jean Shepard's night people. Asking bookstores for a book they know doesn't exist. The prank revealed that some archdiocese might ban a non-existent book if the title sounds a bit risque, that some teachers will call research superb if it reads

plausibly, like it might have been superb, if only the subject, were real. The student who got a B-plus for his essay on Frederick R. Ewing wrote to Shepard, My whole education is probably phony. Shepard kept up the joke for weeks. A journalist who was in on it casually mentioned in his column, Had lunch with Freddie Ewing today. A listener reported that three players and players, a bridge party had earnestly discussed I-Libbertine

and concluded they didn't like it. The prank revealed when people were willing to bluff an opinion about a book that was getting buzz rather than admit that they didn't know a thing. Then, a publisher who was in on the joke wrote to Shepard with a proposal. How about writing I-Libbertine? For real.

Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. We and women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers,

all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, and we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcasts on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts

than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think Eyeheart. streaming, radio and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. When Whitney Phillips began to study 4chan in 2007, the commonly used phrase, Anne Hero, was one that confused her. As she discovered, it traced back to a teenager

who'd killed himself in 2006. One of the boy's friends had posted on an online memorial page a poem mourning his loss. The poem was heartfelt, but terribly written. He was such an hero to take it all away. We miss him so that you should know. It goes on with three more mentions of Anne Hero and loving him like Anne Brother. Someone posted the poem to Forchan,

where it became one of those random things that caught on. That's comprehensible. It is, after all, an terrible poem. But what happened next was truly awful. Trolls on Forchan tracked down the address of the boy who'd killed himself and published his parents' phone number. The parents got prank calls. Kids turned up at the boy's grave

to take photos to post on 4chan. There's no worthwhile point to redeem any of this. As Whitney Phillips puts it, The trolls were either disinterested in or outright blind to the ways in which their mockery exacerbated an already traumatizing experience. The trolls'

of 4chan had told Whitney Phillips that they didn't take anything seriously. They were in it for the lulls. Sometimes, it's true, they happen to make a point while annoying or confusing or offending people. Like showing up the gullibility of media when it comes to raising fears about drugs and paedophiles. But making a point wasn't the point. The lulls was the point. The lulls was the point. Whatever they revealed was just by accident. When a publisher approached Gene Shepard to write, I Libertine for real, he agreed. They'd have to rush it out while the buzz was still buzzing,

so Shepard quickly sketched an outline and they drafted in the prolific sci-fi writer, Theodore Sturgeon, to bash out the prose against a tight deadline. When Sturgeon fell asleep at his typewriter with only one chapter to go, the publisher's wife stepped in to finish it off. None of this sounds very promising. Nor does the blurb. Turbulent, turgid, tempestuous.

I, Libertine is long out of print, but I was curious, and oxen. Oxford University's Bodleian Library has almost every book ever published in English. Did it have I Libertine? But of course, in hardback and paperback editions. I requested it for the purpose of scholarly research. On the paperback cover. A dungeon.

A swash-buckling hero in a tricorn hat. A woman in chains. Dress ripped, eyes closed, lips sensually parted. Let's check out the prose, shall we? What happened? What happened? It was a tease, a small thing, a nothing, a Paso-Tienpe, and she closing her eyes and her lips to show him some childish something,

and this blaze, this codiscation, arms full of mouthful of break, burst, spill, crash, silence. It's no mystery why I-Liberteen is out of print. What is a mystery is why Jean Shepard thought this was a good idea. Getting people to talk about a non-existent book was very funny and revealing. Actually then, to publish a book that's just schlock doesn't seem that funny or clever or revealing of anything, except perhaps that Gene Shepard

hadn't really understood why his own joke worked. So, was I-Libbertine really as perfectly judged a prank as it seemed? Let's look again, from another angle. Double beatniks, Popkins, all agree to pinch, and all these guys were sitting, and they're looking at me, and they...

Gene Shepard's free-floating late-night shows won him some lifelong fans. One likens him to a jazz musician with words. Another recalls, he made literature fresh, right in front of your eyes, like a guy making pizza in the window of a restaurant. While Shepard wove his spell by night, he spent his days with a mistress. He'd come home to his wife now and then, his son recalls. He'd talk his way back in with a line how it was going to be different from now on. It never was.

All he seemed to want was the wife to do his ironing. Nearly half a century after Shepherd went off the airwaves, some recordings of his shows remain. To be honest, it's not always easy to reconstruct his appeal. Like An Hero or Over-Nove, 9,000, Shepard's catchphrases seemed to have taken on such a life of their own that you probably had to be there to get them. Like this.

Excelsior, you fadhead. He was so fond of that one that it became the title of his biography. And Excelsior Press. Any bookstore clerk who knew Shepard would surely pick up on the clue. Or this. Flick lives. Flick was a character in Shepard's meandering childhood stories. One night, Shepard told his fans.

I'll tell you what you want to do. Just put wherever you can in the school John or the bulletin board and just one single line. Just say, Flick lives. That's all. On those Clare-all ads on the subway, you know, where it says only her hairdresser know. You're just right under there, Flick lives.

The point was simply to mess with the day people. Shepard's listeners would know why Flick Lives was suddenly everywhere. The day people would be confused, and that would be funny. Lulls. In his dead-of-night shows, Shepard liked to do something he called hurling invective. He'd ask his listeners to put their ready. radio up against an open window and whisper to them to turn the volume up all the way to maximum. Then he'd yell some nonsensical insult.

You filthy pragmatist, I'm going to get you. The point was simply to annoy the day people by startling them awake. Lulls. Sometimes Shepard would invite his. listeners to hold a mill, which meant turning up at a certain place at a certain time and just milling around for a while, doing nothing. Hundreds turned up to these mills. One venue Shepard frequently chose for a mill was a gallery cafe. The owner later said, I dreaded it. The waitresses dreaded it. All these young people would come. They never ordered. They never left a tip.

The regular customers would stay away, the evening was just ruined. It's not in the same league of awfulness as harassing the parents of a kid who took his own life. But still, it's inconsiderate. Not that Shepard cared. He liked the lulls. When you look at Eye Libertine in the light of Jean Shepard's other work, it seems hard to imagine he thought, far beyond the lulls.

The point was simply to annoy and confuse the day people, to waste the time of the bookshop clerks. What it ended up revealing was just by accident. There's a lot to be said for pranks that reveal, like Jencombe, over 9,000 penises, or I-Libbertine. But maybe it's harder than we might hope to create the conditions for those pranks to emerge. With both Jean Shepherd and Fawcann, they seemed to have popped up by happy accident

from a wider culture that's mean and self-absorbed. Soon after Whitney Phillips began to study trolling subculture, that culture began to splinter. The anonymous posters on Fawchan were also, collectively, anonymous, capital A, As 4chan became more and more popular, new posters wanted anonymous, not just to chase the lulls, but to make a point. They began a campaign against Scientology,

prank phone calls, denial of service attacks, gathering in person outside branches of the church, and playing Rick Astley very loudly on a loop. They embraced hacktivism, supporting WikiLeaks, the Occupy movement, and the Arab Spring. The old hands were appalled. One complained to Whitney Phillips. Anonymous isn't supposed to represent anything.

We did stuff for lulls, not because we care what happens in the world. But that anon was disappearing, Phillips explained. As hacktivist Anon grew, lulls Anon receded, suggesting that the cultural lands has room for only one anonymous at a time. Whitney Phillips had found two types of troll, reflecting two takes on etymology, the witless ogre and the bait-dangling technique that took subtlety and guile.

As Anon ditched the lulls for earnest political activism, the fishing variety understanding of trolling began to fade away. One troll reflected wistfully. The real trolls from way back when are done. Now trolling is just an all-encompassing term for being an art on the internet. Jean Shepherd was onto something with his credo of the night people.

His critique of creeping meatballism, thoughtless conformity, is just as relevant today. and irreverent humor is still the only antidote. Once a guy starts thinking, once a guy starts laughing of the things he once thought were very real, once he starts laughing at TV commercials, once a guy starts doing that,

he's making the transition from day people to night people. Once this happens, he can never go back. But if you take it, nothing seriously. You throw out some things that are worth caring about. Compassion. Relationships. Shepard himself never took much interest in his children, his son recalls. He was more interested in talking about himself.

His daughter adds, My father was an a-hole as a father. Shepard left his wife and married an actress. That didn't last, because his new wife's career took off, and Shepard couldn't cope. Don't ever get yourself into a situation where your woman's making more money than you are. Shepard was a tremendously insecure guy, says someone who worked with him. Very narcissistic. Even off-mike, he couldn't shut up about himself.

He was a monomaniac, says a manor. another colleague. He was always on. Maybe Shepard's problem was a lack of self-awareness when he mocked the day people and the conventional way they viewed the world. An old boss recalls he would rail against the establishment and yet he desperately wanted the acceptance of that establishment. Shepard thought he never got the credit his genius deserved. The boss says, many guys would have achieved his success and been really happy with it. Shepard, like modern trolls, was all about the lulls. But his boss decided, in the end, that Shepard was a deeply unhappy guy.

Perhaps the same is true of people who choose to be an arse on the internet. resources for this episode were Excelsior, you fathead, by Eugene Berkman. And this is why we can't have nice things by Whitney Phillips. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright,

Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben Nadafafri edited the scripts. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt,

Melanie Guthridge, Ed Gohen, Stella Harford, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Corrin Gilead Fischer, Benderdaf Haffrey, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.

It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it, add free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. That's Patreon, p-a-t-o-n-com. cautionary club. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.