Do Go On - 484 - The 'Press Your Luck' Scandal

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

If there's one thing we love, it's game show scandals! And this week we hear about a very successful contestant on the American game show Press Your Luck. But WAS he just lucky, or was there more to it? This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 09:49 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report).For all our important links: https://linktr.ee/dogoonpod Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasDo Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnMlSVS9hb4https://www.nofreelunch.co.uk/blog/michael-larson-press-your-luck/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Your_Luck_scandalhttps://www.daytondailynews.com/local/lebanons-michael-larson-and-the-110000-press-your-luck-scandal-of-1984/GTVLQYYNN5DGBPFOAKNESTBN5A/https://www.thisamericanlife.org/412/million-dollar-idea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do Go On's 500th episode is coming to Melbourne at the Capitol Theatre on Saturday, April 26, and here's a ticket update. We've now sold 80% of all tickets. So if you want to get involved, you might want to go to dogoonpod.com. That's Saturday, April 26 for Do Go On 500. Getting dressed should be simple. If you're like me, you want to look good, feel comfortable, and be ready for anything. That's why I love Dürer. It's not active wear, but it's not just fashion. It's the best of both worlds, where performance meets style. I wear my Dürer pants to work, out with friends, on hiking trails, and everywhere in between.

If you haven't tried Dürer, you've got to feel the difference for yourself. Head to dürer.ca slash comfort and get 20% off your first purchase today. That's doer.ca slash comfort. Hello and welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnocky and as always, I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Hello! Hey, how good is it to be alive? So good to be back, people. This doesn't matter, but it's our first episode we're recording this year.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. But here's the thing. We did a bit of podcast magic with the last couple of episodes and we're like, wow, 2025. Oh, did we lie? Yeah, we lied. I'm so sorry about that. I'm doing a little lie. Suck dude. Yeah, you guys thought we were here the whole time, but really we had holidays. We had a great holiday. So good. Yeah, joined holiday, we all went away together. Yeah. Great fun. As we do every year. Yeah. And I look forward to it every

year. It was great to go to Disney World together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd already done two of the Disneyland's. Yes. And we thought, let's mix it up. People often complain. We're Disney adults. People complain about their bosses a lot, but I think ours are great.

Our bosses are awesome. I did make a joke of that. I've joined a new gym, and one of the trainers is walking around making conversation. And, are you back to work yet, Jess? And I said, no, no. I got another couple of weeks off. I'm like, oh, that's great. I said, yeah, I've got a pretty cool boss.

Oh, that's awesome. And then I went, it's me. I'm the boss. They're like, cool, man. I'm going to go check on somebody else. Then we'd like sort of pan down to your t-shirt that just says, girl boss. Okay. My gym clothes are private. Girl boss. I should get a t-shirt

that just says gym clothes. Oh, that's good stuff. I like that. Gym's clothing. Gym's clothing. No, that's nothing. But yeah, do you often start new gyms just to be, just to be able to use that bit again? Is that why you started a new gym? just to be able to use that bit again? Is that why you started a new gym? It's like I need a fresh audience. Yeah. And you get the first week's usually free as well, so that's pretty good. Yeah, it was a 14 day free trial.

And people can be like, holy shit, look at how much he's leg pressing. Yeah. A whole new group of people to do that. Yeah, yeah. But then unfortunately we were doing upper body stuff and I looked over. I'd done a 15 kilo bar, thought that was stuff and I was, I looked over, I'd done a 15 kilo bar, thought that was pretty good, bench press, looked over, the two guys next to me were bench pressing my body weight.

And I was like, okay, so we're all on different journeys. Yeah. I'm counting the bars. Yeah. Yeah. That's they're bench pressing me. Okay. Yeah.

But you, you always skip upper body day, don't you? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just lay on your back up a body day, don't you? Of course. Yeah. You just lie on your back and you go, all right, get on, get on my legs. Get on my legs. I said. You do that thing where you roll them around. Oh yeah. Like on some sort of Looney Tunes cartoon for booting them away. Cirque du Soleil. Yeah. Anyway, it is nice to be back. My goodness. Yeah. I've missed you. So good to be alive. And here in the flesh, I've missed you too. No, that was too delayed. No, no, I have.

I've really missed you. I've missed you too. Even more delayed. Dave, do you want to explain how the show works? Yes. If you've joined us for the first time, which every week there is usually some new people, we take it in turns to report on a topic which is often, but not always suggested to us by one of the listeners.

We go away, do a little bit of research on it, bring it back to the group in the form of a report. We usually say about year a little bit of research on it, bring it back to the group in the form of a report. We usually say about year nine, year ten level high school report. And the other two people listen quietly and maybe say something at the end like, well done. Dave, you've mixed it up there because you've said you've been honest with the level of quality of year nine, but then you've fully lied about how we don't interrupt. Oh, yeah. So we will be interrupting. You can either be ironic through the whole part,

or none of it. I'll be fully serious and say we will interrupt with the level of a year nine or year 10. Interrupting. Dog shit, Ross. A year nine or 10 student when the teacher's out of the class, because the teacher would control it somewhat. Yeah, there's no teacher.

We don't have one of those. We don't have a teacher. We've got a filling teacher. They're wheeled in the VCR. Yeah, yeah. That's our vibe. If that doesn't sound like your kind of thing, well, there's feeling teacher. Yeah. And we made... They're wheeled in the VCR. Yeah. That's our vibe. If that doesn't sound like your kind of thing, well, there's the door. Yeah.

Don't let it hit you on the way out. Unless you're listening in a tent. Hey. And while we hate to see you go, we love to watch you leave. We're into butts here. Big butts. I'll take a little butt.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Any butt. I'll take a little butt. Any butt. Oh, you're saying we're big buts. We're big buts and we cannot lie. So big. Such liars. We always get onto the topic with a question. And it's my week.

It's my question. Okay. So here's my question. It is a convoluted question. All right. To you I say, good luck. Which idiom. Oh, I love an idiom.

Means to take more risk than is reasonable or ask for more than one should. I've got an example. Okay. Where you might say, don't blank. You've already been given extra time. Oh. If you're- Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. You're asking a bit much, don't.

Take the piss. Mm, no. Don't, uh, don't wear a jacket, it's very warm out today. I don't think Matt understands. To you, Dave. I'll come clean. I don't think I understand.

That's okay. I definitely understand, but I don't know if I know. So it's... Dad say Dave say that. Don't blame... We understand. I'm sorry. We understand.

Okay. You're on a road trip with the family. You've already asked dad to stop for maccas and he's obliged. You then asked to stop at the next road house for an ice cream. Then you drive it along and you go, dad, and Dad says, oh, don't. Or I'll turn this car around. Give us a word. One more word. Something about luck. Don't push your luck. Yes. Another word for push.

Maybe like if you were to push a button, you could also press. Press your luck. Press your luck. Oh, OK. Because the question was, don't blank your luck. No, I didn't say your luck. I just gave that to you then. That blank. To help you.

The blank was. The correct answer is press your luck. Press your luck. But what was the first thing you asked with the blank? That's what I'm so confused about. You said, don't blank, and then you said another sentence. You've already been given extra time. Don't press your luck is what was meant to go in there.

Correct. Okay, well I thought the blank represented a single word, Jess. So I didn't understand. So I should have said, don't blank blank blank. And here's the thing, here's the thing. I was just listening back to Space Cadets where I asked a question that you two had never heard of the answer and Matt said, why do you ask questions like this when we don't know the answer?

So I tried to write a different kind of answer this week and it hasn't proven anymore successful. No, but you're, hey, like, I'll talk to you in your language. You're on a journey and you're not there yet, but you're taking steps in the right direction. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm pretty sure the idiom is push your luck. I agree. But I think it could be a cultural thing. And is, sorry, is press, is press like part of it?

Is this episode about- It needs to be pressed. Oh, because this is about journalism or something? Press gang or something? No, this is about the TV show Press Your Luck. Oh, I've not heard of it. I know! So if I said which 80s TV show, you'd say, Oh Jess, why have you asked us about something we could not possibly know? Wait, would I reply to you like Russell Crowe in Love and Thunder?

Why were you doing Greek voice? I wasn't doing Greek voice. I was doing Matt voice. You were doing... Don't get me cancelled. Okay. Also very happy that I got one right there because there's a listener of this podcast called Bob, who is keeping tally of who gets the questions right. And I did this every year. And let's reset because it's a new year.

Do you say Bob or Bob? Bob. Bob. I am Bob. Hello. OK. I'm like, she should not be in charge of keeping school. I think Jess saw, but I don't know if Matt's seen this, the email came through at the end of last year, 2024, saying, hey, I've tallyed the's seen this, the email came through at the end of last year, 2024, saying, hey, I've tulled the results and this is how many points each of you got. And, man, do I need the points?

What's the score? I've got the email here. So also just the rules that Bob uses is they only count episodes where all three of us are here. Two points for a correct answer and one point if no one got the answer. Well, like that. Some for nothing. Of those valid episodes, Matt and Bob reported 16 times, Dave reported 17 times. That's why I got ripped off. So in third place- So I'm sorry if I work harder than everyone else.

In third place at 24. 24. Oh no, no, we need like, there's wins and draws. Do you want to hear the total or just the wins? Yeah, give us the total. Total, Dave, 24. Matt, 38. Okay, Dave, choose.

Bob, 41. Whoa, yes, Bob. Congratulations. It was a close run between Bob and Matt with the lead switching multiple times through the year, apparently. There you go. Exciting stuff. And we thank Bob for keeping track of something very important.

Thank you so much, Bob. That's great work. But good to be off to hopefully the start of a new year for me. Yeah. A flyer. You're claiming that you'll get the point for that, do you think? Even though I said the answer and you just changed one of the words? Yeah, usually when you say the correct words in the correct order.

Yeah, when you get it correct, I think. Okay. I feel like we're making up rules on the fly. All right, mate. Don't press your luck. No, that is right, isn't it? Push your luck, press your luck. I think it's, yeah. I mean, if there was a TV on the fly. All right, mate. Don't press your luck. No, that is right, isn't it? Push your luck, press your luck.

I mean, if there was a TV show named that, it's probably because it was a thing. I feel like if it was in Australia, we might've called it push your luck. Right. But you have to press a button in the show. So maybe. Yes. Anyway, I will explain because this is actually the press your luck scandal. Oh my gosh. will explain because this is actually the press your luck scandal. Oh, Oh my gosh. This has been suggested by a few people, three to be precise.

It's been suggested by David Koning from LA, Matt Bukowski from Clinton, Connecticut and Malcolm from Dublin. And okay. So a bit of an explainer first off of what press your luck is. So it was a TV game show in the early eighties on CBS. Okay, so a bit of an explainer first off of what Press Your Luck is. So it was a TV game show in the early 80s on CBS. It was a revival of an earlier game show, which was also created by the same producer, Bill Carruthers. How good is the name Carruthers?

Carruthers is great. And that show was called Second Chance. Second Chance only ran for a few months in 1977 and Carruthers and Jan McCormack began developing Press Your Luck a few years later in 1983. They obviously they're like, no, this is good. It's failed once, but if we just need to... We just need to Juge it. Juge it, yeah. That's a TV term for anybody listening. To Juge is kind of to like,

kind of like strip it back. Yeah. And start again. Yeah. Sorry, that's a mechanical term. Okay. Like strip it back and start again. Yeah. Sorry, that's a mechanical term. Okay.

I'm just a little worried that they're pushing their luck. All right. Thank you. Pressing the luck. Fuck. Yeah, you got a second chance over there. See, that's how you do it. He's very good.

It's actually, it's honestly, can I be honest with you? It's scary how good he is. It is scary. How does his mind work? Really well. And quick? Yeah. It's scary how good it is. It is scary. How does his mind work? I don't- Really well. And quick. Yeah. And that's where he gets us. But AJ will edit around it so it's like, it's just Dave winning, not so much of me losing

and bombing. Yeah. I assume. I never listen back. No, why would you? So the format of Press You Like was that three contestants answered trivia questions and each correct answer gets you a spin.

There's a big game board, it consists of 18 spaces laid out in a rectangular loop that's six spaces wide and five high. So a light flashes randomly around the board, marking one space at a time and the contestant uses one of their spins by hitting their buzzer to freeze the board and collect whatever is lit at that moment. So I think it's just kind of, I'm not going into it in heaps of detail because you know how game shows can get quite like finicky and quite complex, but it's just like trivia and then you collect all these spins and then you just sit there and spin, it's almost like the pokies, it's like a slot

machine but in a game show type thing and you're just collecting stuff. The spaces, they have prizes. It could be holidays, could be like big objects, could be cash. But you can also land on the show's mascot, Whammy. Oh. I knew you'd like Whammy. Sounds a bit like Number Whammy. Is Whammy an animal? No, I don't think so.

Okay. What is Whammy? It's literally just a guy called Whammy. Hey guys, I'm Whammy. What do you want? I'm Greg Whammy. You just call me Whammy. He's kind of like a little red devil type thing.

Whammy. Whammy. Whammy. So Whammy sounds cute, but you don't want to land on Whammy. Oh, it's bad. Oh. You land on Whammy, it resets your winnings to zero dollars. Oh no. So you do not want to land on whammy.

Are you both looking up whammy now? I was trying to but my computer's dead. Okay, I'll show you whammy. This kind of vibe. Oh It kind of looks like the the Just for Laughs logo. Oh, yeah. Mixed with like the Tassie Devil. Yeah. That kind of vibe. What a powerful combo. So, yeah, you don't want to land on Whammy. Oh, I've got a picture of him here dressed up as a court jester. He's a cheeky one.

Yeah, Whammy's fun. And yeah, so any contestant who lands on the Whammy a total of four times known as Whamming out, or Whammying out, call it Whamming, you idiots, is immediately eliminated from the game and forfeits all remaining spins. Oh. So a little side note about Whammy, from this wonderful game show encyclopedia website called wikipedia.org. Oh, does the W stand for whammy?

Yes. It says, the animations featuring this character were created by animator Savage Steve Holland. Sorry, Savage. He's a wrestler. How good is that? were created by animator Savage Steve Holland He's a wrestler how good is that a wrestler and animator Savage Steve Holland Caruthers personally selected Holland to design the character and immediately liked Holland's first concept, which he sketched out on a napkin Oh, first go on a napkin. He's like love it. That's whammy. That's why it's still got all the perforations stuff Yeah, it's got a napkin II looking body. Yeah love it. Oh, that's Whammy. That's why it's still got all the perforations and stuff. Yeah. He's got a napkin-y looking body. Yeah, and in the corner it says Hilton Hotel.

And there's a bit of ketchup on him. Holland animated the character via computer software, thus making Press You Like one of the first game shows to use computer designed graphics. It's the 80s, people. Author David Baber noted that Whammy animations were popular with viewers. Some of the animations featured Whammy taunting the contestants and becoming injured or harmed in a manner which Baber compared to Wile E. Coyote cartoons. So like if somebody hit a Whammy, a little Whammy graphic would come up on the screen

in front of them and he'd be taunting them or he'd like, you know, it was a little fun little game thing. Do you remember when on the cricket in the nineties, someone went out for a duck, the little duck would walk across the screen. Yeah, I love that duck. Oh my God, I completely forgot that duck. He had his hat around the back. Back to the pavilion.

So a duck being zero, like a, you score for nothing in cricket. And obviously the batsman is furious, muttering all the way back to the stands and this little animated thing walked across the bottom of the screen. Yeah, like sort of like a home brand Donald Duck. Flings his hat backwards, bat on to the arm. Sometimes Whammy featured satires of pop culture figures like Boy George and Tina Turner. The people loved Whammy. Whammy should get his own show.

Whammy does. That's wild. Kind of. So the show is quite popular. It ran for a few years initially. I'll talk about recent reboots later, but press your luck really gained a lot of public attention in 1984, thanks to one particular contestant. Oh.

Enter Michael Larson. So Michael Larson was born in Lebanon, Ohio in 1949. He was the youngest of four sons. He graduated from high school in 1967. By 83, he was twice divorced and living at the home of his girlfriend, Teresa. She would later say of her boyfriend, he always thought he was smarter than everyone else and that he had a constant yearning for knowledge. His eldest brother, James described him as well-meaning, but a little different. Michael's reputation for always running some little scam began at an early age, secretly selling marked up candy bars to other middle school students. He was always looking for a get rich quick kind of thing.

There's no quicker way than selling candy to kids. Yeah. They fucking like that. They're marking that up 10, 15 cents a pop. I wish I could still eat sweets like I could as a kid. My God. A friend had come over to watch a movie or for a sleepover or something and it would be a full packet of chips, a whole block of chocolate.

Now I'm like two little pieces that I'm full. Yeah. Oh, I couldn't too sweet for me. What's happened? No fun. I'll be ruined all week. Oh God. That'll clog me up.

What do you mean by that? No kids saying, Oh no, that'll clog me up. Oh, I couldn't possibly. Um, James said that while Michael was smart enough to go to college, he instead spent his time looking for easy ways to get rich. Nice. He didn't understand the value of good, honest, hard work. He thought those people were fools.

Do you think the candy he's on selling he's stealing from babies? Cause that's an easy way to make money. Cause then it's like a hundred percent, that's all profit, right? And that's the easiest crime of all. Yeah. So Michael, you know, he's, he's got a, a, a, a penchant or. Oh, penchant. Oh my God. We love Dave and I saw idols recently and they've got a great line.

One of the songs got a penchant for smoking. And kicking douches in the mouth. Oh, that's good. And sadly for you, my last cigarettes. Oh, no. I'm the way he says it to a pong shong. It's very good. Well, yeah, I looked up because I was like, am I saying that word wrong?

And I looked it up and the American and British pronunciations are very different. Oh, it is like penchant. Oh, America. I So it is like penchant in America. I've never heard penchant, I don't think. But the Brits and us, I believe, we say penchant. Which is interesting. And the French, they're like- We do not have a word for that. It's gotta be a- That was good French.

Gotta be a- Did you see his face? Yeah, that was very French. He looked like a muppet for a second there. He had a great French face. Anyway, he's got this penchant. It's got to be a French word, right? Must be. He's got a penchant for schemes. And these schemes continue as an adult.

He once registered a business under a family member's name so that he could hire himself then fire himself and collect unemployment benefits. I hope he acted it out. You're fine. Oh, fuck you. Flipped a desk. We're family. And then he acted it out. You're fine. Oh, fuck you. Flipped a desk. We're family. And then he get unemployment benefits.

Yeah. He'd keep an eye out for banks who offered, apparently this was a thing. They would offer $500 to new customers for signing up. So he would create an account, wait the minimum amount of time, withdraw the money, close the account and repeat that under a different name. Okay. I'm like that first bit doesn't feel like a scam, but maybe a fake name. Fake names I think is where-

That might be edging in a fraud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love these people because I feel like they're not working hard. They're like, I'm doing anything I can to not work a normal hard job and they're working extremely hard. Yes, yeah, yeah. To find out- So how much mental energy is going into things?

Oh, don't worry. He takes it to a whole new level. So he had taken a few college courses in his twenties. He never graduated from college. He instead earns an air conditioning repair certification. So he worked- A noble profession. ... repairing aircons. And in the summer he drove an ice cream truck. Okay. Selling ice cream?

Selling ice cream. Okay. He's just driving around. Why are these kids running along the street? A great mileage on this thing. No, he's selling ice cream. Okay. Well, that makes sense. That's where he began basically, selling Canada kids. Yeah. I think that's- And you'd be doing a markup, you probably would be going to the freezer, the supermarket. Yeah. You know, paying $4 for a tub and then selling for $4 per scoop.

Do you think they just have tubs of ice cream in an ice cream machine and they're just scooping it into a cone? I think if they're the kind of guy that he is, yes. I don't think he's making proper good stuff. You don't think he has like the soft serve and then he dips it in the chocolate or anything? No, no. Puts a little banana smiley face on there or something? I love the sprinkles on mine.

I loved that. You're away, but last year, Saran Jomana came on and told us about the history of ice cream. I was there. Dave, you weren't here. I was away. Are we just one person, too? I was like, he's not here, but he's definitely here, man.

I do, I think of you as the other two, and one of you's not here. It could be either of you. Yeah. Who cares? Much of a muchness, right? As long as you're here, that's all that matters. That's what I mean. You're carrying this show. That's what me and the listeners think, but definitely not true. But, Dave, we found out after that that Americans have a different

song for their Mr. Whippies and they don't even call them Mr. Whippies. Oh, yeah. They don't do Greensle. And they don't even call them Mr. Whippies. Oh, yeah. They don't do Greensleeves. They don't do Greensleeves. They do like, I don't know, take me out to the ballpark or something. Not that, but something else. Something else. Yeah.

The Entertainer, but not the Billy Joel song. Do do do do do do do do. That's the Entertainer. That one then, yeah. Oh yeah, okay, I can see that. Yeah. But it has his green sleeves, which is... I think we got that from the English.

I think that's what they have. Yeah. That's not a great ice cream song. I'll come out and say that. The whole time I was trying to think of green sleeves, though, what kept coming to me was Harry Potter music. And I was like, no, that's not it. Hang on, I've got it.

Nope, that's still Harry Potter. So he's driving an ice cream truck, selling ice cream. Okay. That's good, hard, honest work. I'll say. Okay. His house was filled with stacks of newspapers everywhere and boxes and piles, uh, which he'd scour for possible scams.

His brother said he used to sit at night and watch the TV and tape all these shows that you see on late night TV. Um, like Iate with Hot Dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like anything that might have some sort of cash prize or something he was around. Theresa said he had like 12 TVs in the living room. Oh my God.

Lined up on the walls. Imagine if he sold off these TVs. Yeah, now he could get rich fairly quickly. They were old, this is still Theresa, they were old consoles and he would have one sitting on top of it, like one sitting on top of another and we had an entire wall full of 19 inch, 25 inch TVs and he would watch them all at once. It got so hot back there, it peeled the paint off the wall. Oh my gosh.

He's just watching these TVs. So This American Life told this story as part of a series. I loved this from Ira Glass. Teresa says she had a tough time explaining this TV business to visitors. Usually she'd just tell people Michael was straight up crazy. It's easier. I'll come through this way. Sorry. Michael's crazy. Lemonade. Yeah. But Teresa says he was actually methodical with his TV viewing. He'd tune each TV to a different channel. The idea was to watch for anything that would make him rich.

He'd also watch TV ads, infomercials, and of course, game shows. Right. Do you reckon he's got the sound on for all of them? Or are they immune to it? Oh my God, that would be such a sensory overload. Yeah. I couldn't handle that room too much. I actually can't handle it if you're talking to me and then there's like another

loud conversation happening right there. My brain shuts down. If that feels like that's, they would have done that in Guantanamo Bay sort of stuff. Oh, sitting here making you watch it. Eight different game shows at once. But it's not like he could have subtitles on. It's the eighties. Yeah. So. Teletext. Do they have that then?

That feels super eighties, but I don't know. So yeah, how are you consuming all of those TV shows at once? What is teletext? Where am I? How are they going to be? You said that about the thing you suggested. There's probably teletext. What is teletext?

So you can have your conversation with yourself. You're fine. So during a period of unemployment in the early eighties, Larsen said, it was winter and I wasn't exactly selling a lot of ice cream. Not with that attitude. I was watching a lot of television. In particular, he liked testing his knowledge at game shows and he repeatedly watched a relatively new show at the time, Press Your Luck.

Watching the show repeatedly, he began to think there must be a way to predict where on the board prizes were located, how you could avoid Whammy. He's like, there's got to be... He was always into... His nemesis becomes, is that fricking Whammy? Curse you Whammy. Whammy, I won't let you backroom to another family Whammy. I don't think he, Whammy. Whammy, I won't let you backroom to another family, Whammy.

I don't think he cares about other people. But yeah, he's watching. There's an interview with him much later, and he's like, yeah, now I'm thinking about Jeopardy. There's got to be a way to that. Like, he's always like, there's a there's just a code I've got to crack and I can do it. What you do is get really smart at general knowledge. So he started to tape episodes and rewatch them, slowing down the board sequences to

watch them frame by frame to see if there was any pattern or repetition or see if he could crack the case. Okay. And would you believe there was? Whoa. So a website called nofreelunch.co.uk sums it up nicely. Generating genuine randomness is surprisingly hard. Humans are predictable and so bad at being random.

You might think the solution to creating random outputs is to program a computer to do it for us, but a program needs instructions, which inevitably reflect the programmers human predictability. Right. Do you remember anything that had to like change the way iPods shuffle because it wasn't shuffling in a way that people would, oh, this is the same thing like if it was genuinely random, people got annoyed at it. Oh.

So maybe take it back a step or something like that because if it was genuinely random, I'm just remembering something from nearly 20 years ago. And then it would, and it would come up and you go, oh, that's not random, but it actually, if it actually is like your brain will. You hate it. You would hate it. Yeah. So it has to, it's like it's your top songs. And then every now and then it pulls an old one out. Yeah. Some algorithm goes, oh, this is random.

I haven't heard this for ages. That's random. Thanks, Shuffle. Yeah. But Shuffle's like, you fucking idiot. You dumb shit. So this creates a catch 22 that very smart scientists and national security experts spend a lot of time and money trying to solve with extremely complex hashing algorithms This is all still from no free lunch. Yes. There is a pseudo random function in Excel, but that wasn't launched until 1985

So faced with options for creating a random function to power their game board back in 1983 Press your luck decided to dodge the issue entirely and program into the game board five fixed alternating sequences. The producers thought that no one would notice, but Michael Larson did. And it literally goes one, two, three, four, five. So it was five sequences. So they weren't necessarily like, it only did five lights, but I don't know how many like.

I was thinking it might have multiple moves. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, if you weren't studying it, it would feel random. Yeah. But they just didn't count on anyone ever going, I'm going to try and crack this code. The producers were aware of it, but they were like, who's going to like, there's no way you'd figure that out.

But if you're slowing it down and watching it frame by frame over a six month period, you might figure it out. And that's what Michael Larson did. And he's doing that while watching 12 other TVs. Yeah. He's also slowing down Wheel of Fortune. Yeah. There's got to be a way to spin this wheel.

And finale. Now, is this a good strategy? So over the course of several weeks, he recorded every episode that he had of Press Your Luck, and he watched it repeatedly and he was able to figure out the game's secret. Going clockwise round the 18 square rectangle, the fourth and eighth square always contained cash and never whammy. Whammy was never in four and eight. Okay. That'd be crazy to put whammy in four and eighth. It was always cash.

The lights always moved in one of five patterns and Michael spent months practicing getting the timing right. He would push his pause button at exactly the right moment to land on a tile that had cash on it. Oh my gosh. So I think it's essentially, think about it this way, like let's say the first sequence starts on the second from the left. So he knows, OK, that's this sequence.

It's going to it goes in this order. And then the next sequence starts. So, yeah, it's amazing. He just knows when to tell it to stop. Yeah. To me, this isn't a scam. This is just a guy who's figured something out and he's like, they've left this loophole there. Then, yeah. That would be like asking a question about geography and then being and you've studied for it

Yeah, I say well, you know all the capitals. Yeah, that's a scam Yeah, I'm gonna all of them and it is like casinos going you can't count cards like no that just means I'm really good at I'm doing the game and playing this game. Yeah, I'll figure it out. Yeah. Well, that's why we don't like it Yeah, yeah house always wins. You're really stuffing that up. Yeah. You are fucking this house. So in May of 1984, he was finally ready to try the real deal. Not only had he studied the game itself, but he had also studied the contestants. He practiced mimicking their expressions and excitement, hoping that he would appear to

the casting director as a good fit for the show. So you have to hand it to him. casting director as a good fit for the show. So you have to hand it to him. That bit seems a little bit sociopathic. Hi, I'm Gillian and I'm a librarian from Wisconsin. Okay. We had one of those last week. That's very weird.

That's weird. He is dedicated. You got to give it to him. And he's got, he must have to sort of practice being surprised. Yes. I got it again. Like you can't be like, yep, knew it. 200 exactly right.

Oh wow. Well, no whammy on that one. Crazy. Yeah, that's weird. That's unexpected. Hey, has anyone else noticed that I've not had any whammies? Pretty good run of luck. Wow, beginners luck, I suppose.

Yeah. Right, everybody? Just sort of scoffing. He's just yawning the whole way. He's not even looking at the screen. He's hitting the buzzer. Whatever. So he spends the last of his money on a ticket from Ohio to Hollywood and go

straight to the auditions for press your luck, wanting to appear- Kind of going from God's country to the devil's land, really. Whoa. Whoa. Sorry. Whoa. La La Land, sure. Where dreams are made, but you know, there's a few vices there as well.

What do you mean? Don't know. There are vices in LA? Yeah, I don't know. What do you mean? I don't know. Matt, I'm scared. Well, I think, I think there, I think there are some places you can go there and get up to no good.

What do you mean? Well, let me put it this way. Van Halen started in California in LA. If you know what I mean? I don't. Is this your ending? Did they? Somebody was already, I think you'll, oh no, okay. The Sunset Strip, okay? Uh-huh.

Now this is a place where if you have certain proclivities. Okay. Towards maybe things that are better done when the sun goes down. Like sleeping? Yeah. Uh, yeah. To name a few. Is proclivities ever a positive thing?

I don't know. I've got some positive proclivities. Well, see that sounds pervy. Well, I'd say I don't mind what your proclivities are, but I'm not going to spend another minute on it. I'll get fucked to that. But I ain't spending any more time on it. But I ain't spending any more time on it.

Anyway, so he goes from Ohio, God's country, to Hollywood, devil country, apparently, and goes straight to auditions for Press Your Luck. He wants to appear as an ideal candidate with a good backstory for a game show. You know, like they always want somebody who's like, oh, I need more, I've just had a baby. Or like, oh, I'm trying to win money because I crashed my car. The other day I was watching a bit of Deal or No Deal was on and someone was up and they were like, what are you going to spend the money on? I'm going to build a really big chicken coop.

Exactly. Exciting stuff. And the host granddaddy asked, uh, how much do you need for that? Oh, about 20,000. How big is this chicken coop? How big are the chickens? It's one chicken. It's one huge chicken. It's one fucking huge chicken. So I was like, yeah, people need a big backstory. Who's that cartoon rooster? Foghorn.

Yeah. It's a little house for foghorn. Well, I say, boy, I say, yeah. Foghorn leg horn. They just got away with that. That's crazy. That's good stuff.

So yeah, he wants, he wants a good story, right? So he told interviewers about being unemployed, his long journey from Ohio to Hollywood, purely out of love for the show. I got fired by my own flesh and blood. I think he's trying to dial back the crazy little bit. So he's like, oh, I'm out of work. I've been scaring kids since I was a kid. He says like he wasn't able to afford a birthday gift for his six year old daughter

and that he'd bought this shirt that he was wearing at a thrift store down the street for 65 cents. You know, like he was, obviously he needed this cash and they're like, Oh great. This is a good story. That's a good story. The show's executive producer, Bill Carruthers, he really liked Michael Larson, but the senior contestant coordinator, Bob Edwards said to Bill, I don't know, there's just something about this guy that bothers me. And Bill recalls saying- doesn't like the poor famously.

Bill says, Bobby, we've been doing this together for years. We rarely disagree. I've got to overrule you here. Let's book the guy. Oh really? Yeah. So on the 19th of May, 1984, Michael Larson got his chance. He was seated at the centre podium, there's three of them.

To his right was returning champion Ed Long from California, a Baptist minister. And to his left was dental assistant, Janey Litras. How unlucky were those two? They did not stand a chance. Yeah. Have they been rewinding Whammy for six months? I assume the Baptist minister has got the time to do that. Yeah.

What's he doing there? A preacher in the devil's country. Do you think he's taking, what if he was trying to earn some money for the church? Oh my God. He's the returning champ though. So you know, he- Jess, can I ask it, is it good work that this church is doing? Cause some of them, you know, I don't know if they're all doing great work. So I think I need

to see what the program was before you'll allow him to win some money. Yeah. Before I'll be happy or sad that he's been beaten by a foot. True. Let's not think about it. Yeah. I, well, I actually think he was going to use that money for bad things. Yeah. Let's assume bad. Yeah. And then we don't have to think about the children who like didn't get to eat or something. Yeah. We don't have to think about that. In the first round, in the first question round, Larson earned three spins. He stopped his first spin on square 17, which revealed a whammy.

No, why did you do that? First spin whammy. What did you do that on purpose to make it? Get him off the scent. No, he hadn't quite figured it out. This handle is a bit different from my remote control at home. Matt is not wrong. It was basically like, it was almost like a practice. Like it allowed him to sort of calibrate the timing of his button presses.

But no, he had not done that on purpose. And this American life was like, you can see that he's like disappointed and then he sort of has to like shake it off and try it. Which I think is with what we know, you go, yeah, I bet he's disappointed. But if you're watching, he would be disappointed. Yeah, he just got whammy'd. But that's also the perfect time to get a whammy because you haven't won anything yet anyway. You can't lose anything. Can't lose anything. Can't lose a half. I'm still at zero. Oh no. So his next two spins land on square four, both of them. Yes.

Earning. Cash. 1250 each. So he's on. $12.50? No. He's on 2500 bucks by the end of the first round. This man is wearing a 65 cent shirt.

Imagine how many shirts you could get for that. This is 1983 money too. Oh my gosh. Not bad and not suspicious. Long and Literous had managed to avoid the whammy and they had four grand each. Yeah. So. Oh, they had even more.

They had more. So he's looking like everyone's fine, but nothing at this stage is making everybody go, hang on a second. Did I miss this? How do you earn spins? Is that there's another element to this game? Trivia questions. Right. So he's another element to this game. Trivia questions. Right, so he's also got to be getting those right.

Exactly. Because that would be very funny if he was very good at getting them right but could never get a spin because he just buzzes in and goes, I don't know. I've got no life experience. I've been watching this show and you're not repeating any answers or any questions. I don't know the answers to things you've already asked and you're very unlikely to ever ask them again. And I only know them if you ask them really slowly.

What is the square root of 181? Dave? It's not going to be an exact number. I picked a bad number. I'm just like, my brain's just on la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la Anyway, so he's got 2,500 bucks by the end of the first round. He's doing okay. In the second question round, Larson earned seven initial spins on the big board and his last place position earned him the first spin. So because he's coming last, he gets to go first. In his first 15 spins. So if you get one right, do you get to go again? Oh, so you earn all your spins in the question round and then you go to the board and you just, I think, I don't even know if you take turns hitting your little spins, but you just, they just fucking sit there spinning.

So it's not question spin. No. How boring to people at home. It must be so boring. I don't understand. Here are 38 different spins. Unless I'm wrong, please, I was going to say, feel free to tell me if I'm wrong. Don't, I don't give a shit.

Nothing you can do with the information at that point. Exactly, and I- This isn't one, so occasionally we'll do a report on something and go, I'd like to continue learning about this, but often it's like, I'm never gonna think about it. No, I'll leave this room and never think about this again. This is not an 80s game show, I'm happy to leave it

in the box. It can be gone. Sorry, in his first 15 spins, so this is important. Larson occasionally missed his safe squares of four and eight, but was successful in avoiding whammies. Okay. Earning cash and prizes up to $29,000, equivalent to $86,000 today. Wow. So it's big money.

Bill Carruthers said, By spin eight or nine, I turned to my associate director and said, he's got us. Like they, the control room were like, he's consistently landing on the same two. How is he doing this? How? Yeah. He needed to mix it up a little more. Couldn't just be two and four. Cause he knows the whole thing. He should have been going and on these certain ones, three's always safe. But he's like, I don't want to win those couch cushions or that set of knives. I just want the cash.

Yeah. And sometimes it would be like $3,000 plus a spin. You'd get to go again. That's why he's had 15 spins when he earned seven. Is that what he said? 17. Oh, I think it's okay. Is that true? He didn't... Fuck it.

Yeah, no, I'm... Seven. No, you're correct. You're correct. He just kept spinning. Kept winning spins. Spin when you're winning. Robbie Williams said that, I think.

Did he? In theory, the show could be infinite if you just keep spinning again. They're like, we're going to be back tomorrow with more of this shit, I guess. I don't know. Beginning with spin 16, he then landed on only squares four and eight for 29 consecutive spins. So he didn't know, he didn't have a plan down to not seem so conspicuous. Like how do you spin out unless you hit a whammy? Like how else does it stop?

You run out of spins, but if you're that good, he just keeps spinning. And if he did get a whammy at any point he'd lose everything. Yep. So yeah he's in a tight spot isn't he? Yeah. But he just needs to stop getting extra spins. 29 spins in a row. And they knew like 12 spins earlier he's got us. Yeah and do you want to know how much he's won at this point? Yeah. And do you want to know how much he's won at this point? Yes, I would like to know. $102,851 in cash prizes. That would be close to $300,000 at that point. Oh, that's in over a hundred grand in 1983 money. Uh-huh.

Whoa. Yeah. So this is big. I'm really hope... Dave's loving it. The control room would be melting down. Yeah. Literally, I'm going to talk about the control room right now.

But this is, this is the kind of, I really hope that he hasn't signed some contract with fine print saying you're not allowed to have been good at the game or something, you know, is there going to be something that screws him out of it? Yes. I have to have a thing where maybe it's because of incidents like this where like if it doesn't go to air, you don't get the money. That's right. Which is brutal.

Like on Millionaire or something. Which is why you shouldn't win too good. Yeah. So Darlene Leigh Blitch Tipton. That's incredible. What? Jess, one more time. Darlene Leigh Blitch Tipton. Jess, if you haven't researched the topic, you can't come in here and just riff some nonsense, all right? I thought I did okay with Bill Carruthers, but I have gone too far with Darlene Libleitch

Tipton. Much like this guy, you've pushed it too far. You've pressed your luck. I was using the Sims name generator, Darlene Libleitch Tipton, and I went perfect. Incredible. She worked on the show. She was sitting in the control room watching Michael Larson play the game. She said, it wasn't unusual for contestants to go on streaks.

It was kind of the way the game was designed after about, oh, I don't know, five to 10 spins of the board. That's when it started to become obvious to people that he was hitting the same prize in the same square just about every time and that skill, that's not random. It's not luck. He could aim and hit, which we didn't think was possible. And he continued to do it. Nobody else had ever done it that way.

Everybody else had played it virtually like a slot machine. You just hit the button and it stops where it stops. He had it down to a skill, a fine art. That's fucking awesome. I've been in the booth for thousands of episodes of game shows. Never one like that. First, the booth got very quiet. Then there was an, Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. What do we do? What do we do? Do people were turning to me saying, can we stop this? But he wasn't breaking any rules of the game. I couldn't stop the game. He was playing, he was playing it according to the rules set out.

We had no rules against what he was doing. He beat us at it. We have to let it play out the way it plays. We had no rules against what he was doing. He beat us at it. We have to let it play out the way it plays out and see what happens. That's so awesome. How good is that? What they, I mean, what they could potentially do is go, oh, there's a tech issue, fake a blackout.

Yeah. And they go, and then quickly reschedule, you know. But I love that they're like, oh, he's got us. Yeah. We're all, we're all bankrupt now. They're like, oh, he's got us. Yeah. We're all, we're all bankrupt now. They're like, OK, so we need to, we need to have a meeting and maybe restructure some of our rules and our finances. They've got someone in tech just like working by the scenes,

trying to write a new algorithm quickly. Well, it only takes one whammy, you lose it all. Yeah. Surely he can go, I'm gonna, I'm stopping here. I don't want to risk anymore, but you can't do that. I'm not really sure. Cause otherwise it would always end with whammies, wouldn't it? Surely. But maybe this is before they could rig it quite so well.

Yeah. And is the host like being like, ha ha, why you run again? Well, there's an interview with the host later and he was sort of like, I'm sitting here thinking I'm going to go and after this, I'm going to like have a look at my contract because he's going to be owning the TV network. Like, okay, it's CBS, maybe it'll be LBS. And they're all sort of joking like, he's going to own this entire place. So like I was saying before, game show rules can be complex and I was keeping it quite

brief and broad before, but I thought this was interesting and a little bit heartbreaking. After his 44th overall spin, Larsen was losing his focus. On spin 45, he missed the extra spin squares because he's trying to land on ones that give him an extra spin. He says, I remember that moment. I was just so drained. Suddenly forgot where the whammies were. So I stopped and passed control of the board over to the other players. I felt so relieved that it was over.

So at some point he could stop. Oh my God, he's just hogging the board. And he can give his then remaining spins to the next person. So Ed Long received his remaining spins and hit a whammy on his first try. So that wasn't Larson purposefully fucking him over, but he was just like, I'm, I'm, I need a break. Like I'm losing it here. So he's stopped. And then Ed Long, the Baptist minister, immediate whammy.

I don't know. It just feels like if God's on someone's side here, it's Michael's. Yeah. Wouldn't you as the Reverend be like, what the heck? God, why have you forsaken me? No, you'd be saying, okay, God, we're going to talk about this on the car drive on the way home. Yeah. Okay?

Okay. I am not yelling at you here publicly, but I am really upset. I know you're busy and you probably can't help every Reverend on a game show at every moment, but come on. I was gonna do some good stuff with this cash and I got whammied. And I'm taking that personally, God. I'm rethinking, if I even believe you're real, God.

Yeah. And then God smites him. And they're like, oh great. Great. Well this is added insult to injury. Real mature. It's God's in a dish, he's like, oh yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. All right. You smart ass. She's like, oh yeah, okay. Okay. Okay.

All right. You're a smart ass. So from this American life again, Michael Streak had gone so long that he busted the show's half hour format. It was supposed to be a half hour show. They're like, well, this is going to have to be two episodes. So the host did an impromptu interview to add time so the episode could be stretched into an hour long special or across two episodes.

Right. Because of course it's not live. No, it's recorded. interview to add time so the episode could be stretched into an hour long special or across two episodes. Right. Because of course it's not live. No, it's because of it. How low are they going to air it? So good. By the end of the show, Michael Larson had won a total of $110,237 equivalent to $323,000. That's awesome.

Wow. And cash-in prizes, which included a sailboat and an all-inclusive vacation to Hawaii and also the Bahamas. Two different vacations, a sailboat and cash. That is a great day of work. It's pretty good. Yeah. Michael.

I mean, he's paying, like you say that's one day, but he earned that over months and months. Exactly. When you break it down, you go 300 grand over six months. Yeah, is it even worth it? I feel like, four. 300 grand six months and months. Exactly. When you break it down, you go 300 grand over six months. Is it even worth it? 300 grand six months, okay. Probably should just got a regular job and just earn that easily. Like in a week or something.

Yeah, probably. Maybe even if it's across a year for like a shit job, but, but you have a bit more like work life balance. Yeah. That's the trade off. You're not getting sick leave when you're at home watching those videos. That's right. You're accruing sick leave and annual leave when you're working that terrible job that only pays $323,000 for a year. So, you know, that's just, it's how you want to spend your time.

$323,000 US, which is basically nothing. Oh, true. Yeah, this is US. Once you convert to Australian, that's like, what's that, a measly half million? Oh, embarrassing. And what are you doing in your downtime as well? Because, you know, normally you just flick on the telly. But for him, that's work. You bring it.

What do you think I talk at home? No. Okay. Bad example. You can't shut me up. Um, yeah, you can't take your work home, you know? So, you know, anyway, this is how Michael chose to live his life and earn his money, not for me personally, you can keep your half a million.

So he shattered records that day and not just for Press Your Luck, but for any American game show. He'd won more than anyone ever had in a single episode. That is so awesome. And also that's got to be some great ratings for that. People are going to tune in for this hour long special. Or surely you split it up. Likely, will he be able to keep this run going?

Or will he get whammied? Ed Long, the Baptist minister, he got- because he was the returning champ, so he got to keep eleven and a half thousand from a previous episode, which is still the equivalent of thirty three grand. Still good money. Great for the kids. While Janie Litress' last whammy had left her with nothing. No! Sad for Janie.

I, yeah, does the, would a Baptist Reverend, they, cause they're the ones that like get married and you know, just live normal lives apart from Sundays, right? I don't understand the world, but is he, is he going, I'm just going to buy a $30,000 boat or is he going, I'm going to give this to kids. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know. Ed's story. What the? Are you really phoning it in this week Jess? This week? I've been phoning it in for years. Everybody knows.

I don't think so. I think your reports have- I wasn't fishing. Have improved. Don't you fucking stop. Down day week on week. don't think so. I think your reports have- I wasn't fishing. Have improved. Don't you fucking stop. Day on day, week on week. Don't you stop. Month on month. I will cry. You've rotten.

I will cry. Stop it at once. Cause they used to be awful. I thought they were dog shit. Started at a very poor level. Did you, yeah, well my first few reports were you like, we've made a mistake. Yeah, well no, why have we done this?

Yeah. And now you're stuck with me. The Beatles. And you're like, that was your first one, right? And you're like, oh, what's she doing? She kept calling him John Lemon. Like, oh dear. You kept going on about Joan Lemon? Yeah. Oh God. Did we tell her? I don't know. It's all embarrassing.

So, aftermath, what happens after this? Well, I assume he comes back and does it night after night after night after night. Well, CBS's standards and practices department thought that Larson had cheated and was not entitled to his winnings. So network executives pored over the footage, but could find no evidence of wrongdoing. Yeah. How could he cheat? That's not like you can't, this isn't a coughing scandal. Well, you're absolutely right.

It's not, yeah, he wasn't cheating. He just beat them at their own game. Yeah. He got really good at their game and then won it. He paid attention. From Wikipedia again, former executive for CBS daytime programming, Bob Bowden. I thought it was Bob Bobbin for a second. I was like, whoa, Bob Bowden. I think he can be Bob Bobbin today. Bob Bobden. I thought it was Bob Bobbin for a second. I was like, Whoa, Bob Bowden.

I think he can be Bob Bobbin today. Bob Bobbin explained in 2007, the network's prevailing wisdom was that he hadn't cheated that he was just smarter than CBS. A week later, they mailed Larson a check. He was ineligible to return to the show as long as done. So they stopped him from being that return champ and just drying them out because he had exceeded the network's limit of $25,000. Oh, so I was smart enough to have that as a, as a qualifying thing or whatever. The episode aired on June 8 and 11. So they did split it across two, broke into two parts.

Some at CBS had wanted to quash the episode entirely, just like, like you're saying, just don't put it out. Um, and afterwards made the ultimatum that it was never to be aired again, even including, uh, the requirement of their broadcasting syndication contracts. How interesting. Yeah. It would have felt like Dave said, it would have been a great, great writing thing. Fix your system in the meantime. Yeah, but they, yes. And they wanted to prevent anybody from repeating his success. Yeah.

So that's, that's on you though. Yeah. You fix that up, make it actually random. Yeah, put on a season finale in six months time or whatever, and then you've got time to fix it. And they did do that. So the big board was then programmed with 27 additional light patterns and CBS set a $75,000 ceiling for contestants winnings. light patterns and CBS set a $75,000 ceiling for contestants winnings.

So because of him, they changed a few things, but, um, he later contacted press your luck's contestant coordinator and issued a challenge. I know you've added patents to the board, but I bet I can beat you again. How about a tournament of champions? They did not respond to Mr. Watson. That's what I feel like they've missed a trick here. Like, surely they should have seen this as like, obviously he's got us, but let's turn this into a positive. Let's get attention to this. This guy beat us at our own game. He's coming back. We've made it even harder. Let's see

if we can beat the new system. There's now over 30 different patterns, and he's still like, I reckon I could learn it. So I think that, yeah, I think they're silly and I don't, and do it like half of the, whatever he wins, half of it goes to a charity or whatever, goes to this reverence boat. He'd still be pretty happy with that, I reckon. Yeah, I don't, it feels like they were,

they were obviously a bit bitter on, you'd feel like... They probably felt like they'd been, he'd made a fool of them. Yeah. Yeah. Getting dressed should be simple. If you're like me, you want to look good, feel comfortable, and be ready for anything. That's why I love Dürer. It's not active wear, but it's not just fashion.

It's the best of both worlds where performance meets style. I wear my Dior pants to work out with friends on hiking trails and everywhere in between. If you haven't tried Dior, you've got to feel the difference for yourself. Head to Dior.ca slash comfort and get 20% off your first purchase today. That's Dior.ca slash comfort. So what did Michael do with his winnings? Great question.

Thank you. He's already got more TVs than anyone on Earth. Yeah, so he's good for TVs. We can all agree on that. He's got a boat and he's got two great holidays. Yeah. His brother James told This American Life, well, yeah, I tried to get him to look at some reasonable investments, maybe buy some real estate, and he just put it into the bank, which is, I thought, a very wise move.

Then after a couple of months, he took some of it out. I said, what are you doing? He says, I'm trying to win this contest that they have on the radio station in Dayton, and you have to get a certain serial number. So Theresa explains, every day they would give a serial number out on the radio, and if you can match that serial number on a $ dollar bill, then you won $30,000. So Michael figured I got more $1 than a lot of people in this area. So he withdrew all of his money from the bank, a hundred grand.

He's withdrawn it. And singles. It took him over two weeks and five different bank branches to reach, to bring the whole $100,000 home. Theresa said we would sit and go through this money looking for these serial numbers. You have a few days to turn it in. So we had several numbers we were looking for. It took us weeks to go through half that money, literally go through it. Oh man.

Because you have to eat and bathe and do other things. And they must have kept, they would have found numbers a few days too late. Maybe. So like, oh, this would have been good. Their best system would have been putting it all in, in order, in order numerically. And then they'd go, when another one comes up, they could find it rather than, you know,

have a bit of a system. Here's the thing, every now and then, and it is rare. What are you laughing? Every now and then, very, very rarely, maybe twice in the 10 years I've known you, you are very smart. Don't be shy. I mean, we only have to refer back to our underscores. Year 12, I'll quickly do a ranking here.

Mine was the highest. And then you two, I forget, one or the other. And we're all doing the same job now. About the same. I think one of you got 69. Hello. Okay. Really? Did you have to guess which one of us got 69? Well, you both look like the likely types.

Yeah. I feel like Dave would have done subjects that scored a little higher, I think. Really? In drama and studio art? Yeah, the exact class as I did. little higher, I think. Brilliant drama and studio art. Yeah. The exact classes I did. Basic English, basic maths. I did accounting. Psychology. Maths methods.

Okay. And look at us now. Legal studies. Look at us now. The three of us making the exact same money, right guys? I make less because of the pay gap. Which the boys have explained to me is just how it's done. Exactly.

Well, that's the thing. People say, you know, oh, there is a pay gap. Yeah. Which the boys have explained to me is just how it's done. Exactly. Well, that's the thing. People say, you know, oh, there is a pay gap. Like, well, if we're going to fight to get rid of this pay gap, then until the fight's been won, there's a pay gap. Yeah. So there's a pay gap. Yep. What is it? 14%? Yeah. Yeah. So apologies, but I'm sorry. Apologies, but sorry. He did accounting. He knows. He knows. I trust him.

Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, they should have just put it in order and they didn't do that. It was like literally needle and a haystack type stuff. I guess so, yeah. After a few weeks of no luck, Michael put half the money back in the bank, which still left 50 grand lying around at the home in cash. In one dollar bills. In one dollar bills.

50,000 notes. And they are like stacked in, because that's quite, one dollar, that's a home in cash. In one dollar bills. In one dollar bills. 50,000 notes. And they are like stacked in, cause that's quite one dollar, that's a lot of cash, right? So it's like- Did he have to get rid of some of his newspaper stacks? No, no, no, he can't get rid of those. He kept them too.

He might make money off those later. So the money's kind of piled around him and hidden around in weird places. Anyway, one night the couple attended a Christmas party and didn't return home until about 1 a.m. Oh no. Only to find the back door return home until about 1am. Oh no. Only to find the back door kicked in and the cash gone. Oh no.

Naturally, Michael immediately accused Theresa of having something to do with it. Oh my god. The police questioned Theresa several times. They turned up nothing and they gave up, but Michael didn't. Theresa said he would keep a really close eye on her, convinced she told someone about the money and was in on the theft. Yeah, the fact that they were out all night. Geez, that's not a good sign for the relationship, is it?

Yeah. If he's immediately like, you did it, didn't you? Yeah. Ooh, I hope he's right and I hope he's wrong. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I do know what you mean. At night while I was asleep, he'd come in and stand and just stare at me and it gave me the creeps. So if he's wrong, this is not good stuff. It's okay. It's okay because she goes, fuck this, packs up her kids and leaves while he's out. In the bags? I'm picturing it like folding up the kids, putting them in luggage, packs up the kids. No, I don't know.

Bit more humane. Those dogs for, those bags for carrying dogs. Oh yeah. They got like a breathing grill. Packs up the kids. No, I don't know. A bit more humane. Those bags for carrying dogs. Oh yeah, they got like a breathing grill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got a little grill in it. One of those backpacks you can put a cat in and the cat's just sort of, it's like a bubble thing and the cat's just looking around. They can have a little look.

I fucking love those. Some of the kids are pretty big too. Teresa's quite strong. Yeah. She's got a 14 year old in a backpack. No problem. So he's blamed her. Yeah. I's got a 14 year old in a backpack. No problem. So he's blamed her. Yeah.

I blame the kids. I reckon that one of them just told someone at school, hey, you know, we've got $50,000 and $1 bills in our house. Oh yeah. And then they've told their parents, who's told someone, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, like, you know, people in the area would know he'd won that money. Yeah.

So maybe it would be a safe bet to like break in and see what he's got. I don't know. Yeah, you'd think you would have. We'd have some valuables. Yeah. Yeah. So got that sailboat somewhere in the house. It would have been hard to do that in a discrete way, stealing 50,000 notes.

Yeah, you would need like literally a truck. Yeah, it'd be a lot. Yeah, he was bringing it home in like garbage bags and it was... Oh, so it's already ready to go. He's pretty bagged it. He's pretty bagged it. I thought that was silly rubbish. So Theresa leaves. She calls Michael and says, get out of my house.

Oh, she leaves and then says, get out of my house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's actually quite smart. Yeah. To this day, the robbery has never been solved. Oh my gosh. Oh, well that's, that's left me feeling very unsatisfied. Yeah, sorry. Even though I wanted both things to happen, I got what

I wished for. Yeah. I wanted it to be Schrodinger's burglary and that's what I got. But now that I've got it, I didn't want it. It's a real monkey poor scenario there. Yeah. Nobody wants Schrodinger. No. This American life says, Michael moved back to his little hometown outside Dayton, Ohio, and he found a new girlfriend. In 1999, nine years after Michael's big win, Michael and this girlfriend suddenly fled Ohio. It was in 1990 the win. No, it was in 84.

Right. Oh yeah. It says nine years after Michael's big win. Hmm. Why are your words lying to us, Jess? That's a good question. I don't know. Anyway, so they fled.

I blame Ira Glass. I do too. Yeah, they don't really fact check on that show. Theresa and James, so the girlfriend and the older brother, later learned why Michael suddenly fled from federal investigators. The pair were caught up in a huge scam that combined a pyramid scheme, fake investments and Indian lotteries. Altogether, 20,000 people were conned out of $3 million. It was also the first major internet fraud that the Securities and Exchange Commission ever investigated. The FBI hunted Michael

and this woman for almost four years until 1999, that's maybe where we got mixed up, when Michael died in Florida from throat cancer. So he had just like fled. He'd found, he was still chasing get rich quick schemes. Yeah. And the new scheme was with the new girlfriend. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I think like, I think they were part of it. I think it was a bigger group. It doesn't go into heaps of detail about it, but a lot of money. So he's a piece of shit.

Um, yeah. Like I'm, I think he's a, he's winning on that show, fully cool, legit, but yeah. I mean, I feel like early on it was kind of established he's a bit of a kook. Yeah. I thought at one point you were going to let us know that the newspaper was being used to water down the ice cream. Like he's somehow like shredding it, paper mashing it in. Every second scoop is paper mashing. Yeah, by the time you get to the second scoop, he's driven away.

Yeah. What? This doesn't taste that good. Do you ever actually want the second scoop? That's my question. All right. You know, you get two scoops and you get through the first one, you're like, fuck. What I want is two half scoops so I can get both flavors.

Yeah. Yep. Cause I see, I go, I don't know if I can choose between. Scoops are huge too. Yeah. I've been, cause it's been hot. We've been going for nice evening walks and getting ice cream. I get the ice cream and, and it's too hot. We've been going for nice evening walks and getting ice cream. I get the ice cream and it's too big a scoop.

Really? Yeah. I very rarely get ice cream anymore. It's like what you were talking about before. As a kid, it was like, holy shit, I could eat this three meals a day. And now I'm like, oh, I'm enjoying it while I'm having it. And I'm like, I don't know. I kind of wish I didn't have that.

Yeah. I think that's when it's nice to then walk home because for half of the walk home, I go, my tummy hurts. Walk it off. And by the time I'm home, I'm hungry again. The good thing about a certain flavors, maybe even the best flavors is if you want two kinds of flavors combined, you can do that like peppermint and choc chip. You're getting two things at once there. Oh, OK. That's why it's a perfect ice cream flavor.

Perfect ice cream flavor. Perfect ice cream flavor. And only fools disagree. Even if like another example would be if you want, like, berry and also boys flavored. Yeah. If you like licking a boy's. But I just want a little bit of boys. Easy on the berry, but a lot of boys. Have you got the boys? Yeah. If we get in a swirl.

Ooh. That is my other fake favourite. Your other fake favourite. No, my other favourite. I know. That's why you said it. Yeah, because I love you. Did you, I thought you were saying that was your favourite.

I thought we were like maybe kindred spirits. No, I just thought it. I honestly just thought that joke was a bit funny of saying boys and berry. And that's why I purposely flipped it so that the funny bit was at the end. It's just like, yeah, it's like a comedy thing. You know, explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. It's boring. Um, all right.

So it's boring and gross. Stop it. Okay. So wrapping up. Theresa says even today that she has bad feelings about how Michael treated her. After all, he accused her of taking his money. And when Michael ran away from the feds, he left behind a son he'd had with Theresa. Because of that, it's easy to get her to say bad things about him and the kind of person

he was. That makes this one thing she said kind of surprising, which is it particularly bothers her when sometimes people say he cheated Press Your Luck out of money. They call what he did a scandal or a scam. She says, I will say the game show is one thing he did do that was honest. He didn't cheat. There was no cheating to memorize something. He'd sit here for six months and study. That was pretty amazing. Yeah, great. Yeah. So we're on the same page as Trey. Yeah. We like her. We like her. He did one interesting thing. We think it's a bit of fun that he studied the game and won a lot of money. Afterwards, probably not the

best. Yeah. Probably one of the worst. Not one of the worst. There's definitely been worse, but you know what I mean. Not a great person, but. You know what though, I agree with CBS that he cheated. And so did Usain Bolt. Doing all that training before the Olympics? Yeah. Come on, mate. Come on, mate. If you don't rock up in bad shape to the Olympics, cheating.

Why bother? Okay, you're cheating. Yeah. Straight up. Why bother? Okay? You're cheating. Yeah. Straight up. And you know what? Like Usain Bolt, he started an epidemic amongst the rest of them because they're all training now. Oh, good.

They're all out there. They're training really hard. They're training really hard. They get like sponsorships. They get coaches who know what they're talking about. And it's like, you guys have lost touch with what the Olympics is all about. They all start running as soon as the gun goes off.

Yeah. It's like, yeah, oh, you've practiced that and you know the hack that that's the best time to start. Yeah, I've seen these high jumpers and they're like trying to jump higher than the last person. And it's like, what the, where's the sportsmanship? Yeah.

They're only cheating themselves in my opinion. Yeah. I think, yeah, like it should be random. You run and jump. Sometimes you go under the pole. Yeah. Sometimes you aim to go through the pole. And if you happen to get over it, you win.

Yeah. Randomly as it should be. Yes. CBS. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. It's just not on. Was that in Les Moonves's time? Uh, yep.

It's just a name I remember because David Letterman would mention him a lot and he was on CBS. Ah. It's a great name, Moonves. Moonves. If that's a real memory, I should say that. If that's a real memory. Could have been a dream.

Could have been a dream. So that's Theresa sort of reflecting on his time at Press Your Luck. His brother James said that he felt that by winning the game show, that was the start of his downfall. Him winning that large amount of money convinced him in his own mind that he could trick anybody and that he could do just about anything. But he still says he's glad Michael won. He just wished his brother had been a different person, the kind of person who could be happy with what he's got. A bit of a brutal sentence there.

Yeah. Different person, maybe something like his eyebrows weren't so bushy. He just, he just, he hate with his mouth open. If I could get another brother, could I get one who eats with his mouth closed? He had two others. Like there was, they were four boys. So you did say that at the start. You said he was the youngest of four boys. I was wondering if there were daughters and you just weren't mentioning them. Right, who cares?

He was the youngest of four sons. There were seven daughters as well. But we don't talk about them. You don't. You are really misogynistic, Jess. Yeah. And it's about time I called you out on that. Uh huh.

So I have. Great. I'm not changing. Do better. No, I just said I'm not changing. Okay, well I've done my bit. As the feminist of this podcast, that's been, yeah, chewing at me for a while.

That I wanted to say, don't, don't do that. Yeah. But. It's good to wiggle a finger at a woman, isn't it? Well in the name of equality. I think so, yes. Okay. So what happened to Press Your Luck? That's what we all want to know.

What happened to Whammy? Following the show's cancellation by CBS in 1986, it aired frequently in reruns, first on the USA Network and then Game Show Network. Whammy, the all new Press Your Luck, a revival of the series, aired from 2002 to 2003, not that long. And there have been adaptations of Press Your Luck that have aired in other countries, including Australia. I think it was in like the eighties.

Do we have Whammy? Did Bergero? Probably. Who hosted Bergero? No. Or was it one of them though? Was it- Tony Barber.

Oh, Tony Barber. Glenn Ridge. Or was it Michael Pope? One of Dave's, I guess. Do you see him as an equal in the warm up game? I would never see him as an equal. No, is he the king of the warm up? It was Ian.

Molly Meldrum. It was Ian Molly Meldrum. No, it wasn't. Ian Huey Hewitzen? No, I saw it before. Was it Carl Stefanovic? He's funny as. It was Ian Turpey.

Oh, Ian Turpey! I mean, he's one of the goats. Supermarket Sweep? I saw it before. Was it Carl Stefanovic? No. He's funny, as. It was Ian Turpey. Oh, Ian Turpey! I mean, he's one of the goats. Supermarket Sweep? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ian Turpey's mustache.

It's quite a mo'. So, was that a show? Ian Turpey, he hosted Supermarket Sweep, Ian Turpey's mustache. I mean, he did host his own, I guess his top lip hosted his mustache. Every day. Then what is this? There's a song or something called Ian Turpey's mustache, I'm sure. That feels like a tism. I mean, he did host his own, I guess his top lip hosted his mustache. Every day.

What is this? There's a song or something called Ian Turpe's mustache. I'm sure. That feels like a tism. It's gotta be tism. No, that wouldn't be tism. Gosh, that's an incredible mustache. It is such a great mustache.

If anybody else wants to, internationals want to Google Ian Turpe, it's T-U-R-P-I-E. And nickname, Turps. Turps. This is so great. Because that's how our culture works. Big fan of Terps. I have one more sentence, may I? Sure. So did, yeah, there was an adaptation in Australia, the UK, Germany, and then an adaptation of

Whammy, also aired in the Philippines. It's been adapted into a number of video games for computers and video game consoles. Oh my gosh. So double check on the Switch Store if you want to play that at home. I want to play Whammy at home. A weekly primetime version, reverting to the name Press Your Luck, began on ABC in 2019 with Elizabeth Banks as the host. Okay.

It's sixth season premiered in May 2024, so maybe there'll be a seventh season very soon. Oh my gosh. But it's basically come back and been going for a few years again now. She's great. So that's why before I was like, I may have misunderstood the structure of the show. If you're watching the Elizabeth Banks version now and you're like, no, that's not how it works. You could let me know, but honestly I'll ignore it. So let it go. It's not a big deal. Okay. I appreciate you letting me know in advance. Nothing has come out let it go. It's not a big deal. Okay.

I appreciate you letting me in advance. Nothing is coming up for Ian Turpey's mustache in Google. Might have been a lyric in something. I don't know. But boys, that is the story of the press your luck scandal. Whammy. That's fantastic. That is, I'm so happy that I know that whammy exists now. Yeah, it's important. It's important to know that Whammy exists.

And yeah, I mean- Should we all get Whammy tattoos? Matching Whammy tattoos. Or should we get Whammy in different characters? Like I've got the Joker Jester Whammy. Oh, get the Interpy Whammy. Mustached Whammy. Mustached Whammy.

Do you think- We were talking about doing new t-shirts this year, right? What about whammy with a mustache and just says, uh, do go on pressure luck. I love it. Okay. I'm going to get onto Les Moonves now, see if he okays it. I'm just going to double check if he's a real person. If that's a real memory. He is former CEO of CBS. There you go. Thanks. Thanks brain. You didn't let me down this time. Just sitting there talking to his own brain. On your brain. You're on your brain. What are we having for dinner? He started working at CBS in 95, so he wasn't there for the whammy incident, unfortunately.

Disappointing. Moonvez, great name. Amazing name. Oh dear, if you keep scrolling, he has well and truly been cancelled. Oh no. A lot of allegations coming out in 2018. Where's Moonvez? Well.

I'm so excited. So we now either have to keep this bit in or edit the whole thing out. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Les, yeah, I don't think I was being, I wasn't giving him any praise or anything. Or did I accidentally say that Les, I stand by everything that Les Moon Vance has done? I'm just sure there would be American people who are aware of his reputation. Right. And teletext, which I asked before, what is it? I still don't really know.

Still don't know, but let me try and explain what I think it is. Well, this is the Wikipedia page. It's a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipped television sets. It sends data in a broadcast signal hidden in invisible vertical blanking interval area at the top and bottom of the screen. So I don't know, it's vaguely what I was talking about. Apparently it was invented in the UK in 1970s. Oh, there you go. By John Adams. The John Adams?

The John Adams? Who's the John Adams? Was he one of the founding fathers of America or something? I know that from Hamilton. Oh. Does that bring us to anything? One of the first presidents too. Is that true? There you go. One of. Yeah, that actually brings us to everyone's favourite section of the show. Jeez, and it's so good to be able to say those words once again. Yeah, I've missed it. In the year of 2025. In this section of the show, we spend, you know, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes, I reckon we've gone an hour before, but normally it's more like 20 to half an hour-ish.

And we thank some of our fantastic Patreon supporters, if you want to be one of these supporters, and help keep the show running. Go to patreon.com slash Zyggor and Pod. And yeah, you can sign up on a bunch of levels. There's all sorts of things you get, depending on where you sign up. You get to vote for topics. You get, which Jess's topic this week was voted on by the Patreons.

You also get an ad free feed. You get four bonus episodes a month, including a D&D episode, a bonus report, our movie club, and another one that's often like a quiz or something a bit fun. We do one a month that's a bit of fun. One's for us. Three are for you.

The rest of them are really fun, but one of them's a bit of fun. We play games like, am I a dead woman? Yeah. Gotta bring that back. Gotta bring it back. We've done a, what do you call it? An agony aunt sort of one a few times. We're good at that and we are agony. Yes. And other are agony. Yes.

Um, and other such things. I can't think of- Am I wrong? You're not wrong. The Who Knew It podcast started as one of those. Yeah. Um, and the Science Hour occasionally, uh, which is a show where we, yeah, we tag out and let these, um, weird scientists in and they, uh, they talk about outcast science. I hate it.

Yeah. One of them soundscast science. I hate it. Yeah. One of them sounds like you. I don't know if you've noticed that. Really? And the one that's- The duck guy. No, no, the duck guy.

That guy does not sound like you, but he likes to get amorous with ducks. I think that's the subtext and maybe even just the text. So yeah, there's all sorts of things you can do. You also get access into the nice Conrad internet, the Facebook group. But yeah, we normally start the section with people who've signed up on the Sydney-Scheinberg level or above. They get to be involved in the fact, quote, or question section, which has a jingle going something like this.

Fact, quote, or question. Ding. Oh, she always remembers the ding. Oh, she always remembers the sing. That would have woken some people up. Didn't have to do the hand gesture this time. Dave was watching my tongue. You know, watching the tongue.

It was a tongue conducting. Washing the tongue? Didn't have to do the hand this time. Dave was watching the tongue. I feel weird about what I said twice. Yeah, that was weird. What were you talking about? So the way this works is people on that section or above get to give us a fact, quote or a question or a braggart suggestion or really whatever they like. And then I read them out

for the first time on the show. So hopefully they haven't said anything too bad. Otherwise I'm sure AJ would probably edit it out or he wouldn't. He, who knows? We don't know what AJ does. AJ is the editor. I think people would have inferred that from context clues. Anyway, the first one this week comes from Sam Cutler and they also get to give themselves a title. Sam's title is Sam Spamelot the Fifth. And Sam has a question writing, Oh, hi, my three favourite sort of big smiley emoji. Yay! Three exclamation marks. It's a new year. Ah, I'm super anxious. Help me! Emoji with really big eyes. I'm directing another animated short film and I'm scared Joe. We met Sam

London show Sam's from was it was like schmig and schmooge something like that a cartoon series That's not it. But it's something fun. I think you've nailed it. I think it's schmig and schmooge. Anyway, so right. I'm about to Direct another animated short film and I'm scared. I'm about to go into the hardest part of making the film for the next 10 months and it's a marathon of doom. A part of me just wants to hide and be a hermit crab. We will have like 60 or more people on the project at once and they're all submitting things to me to review while I'm in meetings and doing a gazillion other tasks. It's like an avalanche of stuff and everything is important. All this while fighting imposter syndrome. Why am I directing this? Who am I? Do kids even care if the gosling is cute? Big sort of squinting,

smiling face, big squinting, smiling face, big squinting, smiling face. Anywho, stress aside, Big squinting smiling face, big squinting smiling face. Any who, stress aside, what's your best motivator? I listen to you guys and you make me laugh so much. There's something super special about the dynamic of your friendship and humour. Makes me beyond happy that I can bask in it. Like a wonderful, reward-y thing at the end of the day. You guys can't listen to yourselves.

Hee hee hee or hi hi hi. What do you do? Cofefi, goose walking, PS. Seeing you all in the UK was such a treat. Such a charismatic trio. Also finally getting to meet a Jess. Five exclamation marks. You are so stunning, not your value.

A squinting smiling face. Loved the Pez report. Ooh, little sizzle. Ooh. About a maybe future report. Yas, queen. Big smiley face. And Matt remembered me. Before I even said anything.

Love heart. Much chuffed love heart. PPS. I had a dream. Matt sang me a happy new year's message. What a weirdo. Me not Matt. Ha ha ha. Then I was sad when I woke up and it didn't exist. Bah ha ha ha ha. Also Dave did the best bye bye wave in the UK.

I'll put a clip on the Facebook page. Have you got a video of me going bye bye? It makes me giggle so much. He had flair, he was there. Blah la la la. Humongo hugs to you all. Also contemplating whether or not to ditch work for a week to come see the 500th episode. Long flight from South Africa, but girl so tempted.

Five love huts, also 500 episodes. Big open mouth face. What the F David Blaine? So amazing. What a message. That could be one of the best ever. I hope I- Watching you read that,

hearing you read that, brought me so much joy. I really hope Sam that I captured the vibe okay. Yeah, as best as an old man could, yes. What is it, the sad thing that, thought I sang a Happy New Year's message? Yeah, and then you didn't. Well, I'll do one now. Okay, great.

Sam Cutler, Happy New Year to you. I hope you have a great 2025. Hope it's the best of your life and you remain alive. Oh, it got kind of ominous at the end there. No, I hope that you do remain alive. It was a quick rhyme with five. I'm sorry. I'll get to another one. I misunderstood. I'm loving how you're still alive. Nah, it's ominous too. Mive. Something about being alive is- Mive was my next- Mive, chive.

Mive, chive. Chive. Ah, hope you have a great 2025. Thrive, thrive. Oh, and that your chips include sour cream and thrive. Is that what you meant? Perfect. There was a question here.

What do you do to stay motivated? I don't. Next? Ooh, having a little reward or a treat is often nice. Oh yeah, I'm very treat minded. Yes. When I was having to work on, Dave and I filmed our old shows and we had to re-remember them. And in the time that I was doing that, I would go to a cafe, order a coffee or a coffee, as Sam wrote, and that felt like, I don't know, I think getting out of the house helped. And yeah, sitting there, a little coffee and that maybe helped. But yeah, I guess it's the same little treat. Yeah. Or I don't know if these work for you, I love a little list. Yeah, I love a list.

I have a thing on my phone where if I've got a report to write for a Google on a book cheat, I have all of them listed down and I write what the topic is when I've picked that or what the book is. And when I finish it, I put a little green tick emoji next to it. And I cannot tell you how satisfying it feels. So if I'm like, oh, I'm almost finished. I've probably got another hour of work to go. I think about how satisfying it will be to tick it off and how relieved I feel and it pushes me through that last little bit.

And then I get the phone out and I go, tick. I write physical lists and I have like pastel colored highlighters and then I highlight it as I go different colors. So then it looks really pretty. So then I, then I like the look of it. But then if there's a gap, I'm like, I'm not going to get that. I got to fill that in by achieving something. Exactly right. Yeah. That's great. If Jess sees a gap, she will fill it no matter what. I don't know what that means. Thanks so much. Jess is giving me the biggest blank.

Was there a little, little reference to, is Ryan Gosling going to be in this next project? No, it's probably a baby goose. I think a baby goose. The kids are attracted, like the look of the Gosling, is that what we're talking about? No, I thought, is the Gosling cute? Yeah, and obviously the answer for Ryan is yes. It's a baby goose, I think it's a baby goose. I wouldn't say he's cute.

Okay. I think there's like, handsome, cute, like handsome, cute, sexy, or like handsome, cute, hot, you know? I think he's handsome. Okay. But you probably didn't see him on the Disney club. Maybe that's when he was cute. He was very cute. Yep. He's probably singing like, Hey yeah, Mickey Mouse, how is it in your house? We didn't get it here. They can tell. But I'm sure that's a kind of stuff. They can tell. Hey there Mickey Mouse.

Yeah, they know we've never seen it. The next one comes from Andy Swibes. Swibes-y. Swibes-y. He's given himself the title of Bill Brison. Okay. And he's offering a brag writing, Hey everyone, bit of a brag here. So I grew up with ADHD and never let myself

slash felt like I could read outside of school because it felt so difficult to me. Fast forward to now where I've started reading more for fun as I found tools for my ADHD, but still find I'm very slow. So naturally I'm an audible person. I love audio books. I listen to them at like a 1.5 times speed

so I can burn through books, burn through books. I listen to them at like a 1.5 times speed so I can burn through books, burn through books. Very important. Don't burn books. Don't burn books. But burn through them. Burn through them. Very hard to burn. I'm on track to read three in January. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. For me, crazy. It's a great summer. It's the summer of Jess, summer of literature.

You and me. Yeah. That's lit. Yeah. I'm lit for lit. So yes, it goes on. That's not the brag that I'm reading fast. The brag is that Hoogsy, his partner, fantastic partner, lovely person, is an incredible reader. She got a different brand of ADHD than me, I guess. Pause for light chuckles. Swibesie. Anyways, a nice thing we do together at night to sell our phones is that she occasionally reads to me, best of both worlds. She gets to read and I get an in-person audio book. It really is the

sweetest thing and I love her for it. Now, this last bit is mostly for Matt. Oh my God, thank God, finally. My father-in-law gave us a book and we decided it had to be the next bedtime read. It's none other than Bill Bryson in a sunburned country. We're just getting into it and so far we're enjoying it. Now here's the kicker, it's a Canadian copy. That's more fun than interesting,

but where it does get interesting is that it happens to be a signed copy. How fun is that? By who? Doesn't say. I guess it came from a family acquaintance that just had, or has a fuck ton of books, so we kinda just have it now.

Ha ha, anyway, this is about the only group of people that I thought would find both parts of this brag fun, endearing, and with people I wouldn't be embarrassed to share it with. LOL. It's January the 2nd here today in upstate New York. I wonder if that's upstate, is that near Bill's Massive? They're in there,, might be going into the Super Bowl soon. Or have just played in it or didn't make it. Depending on what happens the next week. It could be any of those things. But it's cold and scattered snow flurries are coming along the lake.

I just wrote that and realized I'm updating people on the weather that they don't give a fuck about on the other side of the world in a completely different season. Lol, I'm not even a dad and I just did about the most dad thing. Fuck." I really love the use of the word flurry there. Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot. I never snow flurry like that. Yeah, snow flurries. That sounded really poetic. I'm happy to hear it. So McFlurries. Does that mean to look like a snow flurry? Obviously that's a referencing a weather thing. That makes sense.

Ah, right. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. I don't know why I never, but yeah, I don't think I've heard of flurry before. I like it. Anyway, I'll fuck off now. Cheers and happy new year.

Looking forward to a ton of amazing reports this year. Love much, Swibesie. Swibesie. Thank you so much, Swibesie. Happy new year. That's very sweet. I like that you read together. It's very nice. Very wholesome. Hoogsy and Swibesie. Swibesie. Thank you so much Swibesie. Happy New Year. That's very sweet. I like that you read together. It's very nice.

Very wholesome. Hoogsie and Swibesie. Hoogsie and Swibesie, you're the best. Jess? Yep. I'm shipping them. My God, yass. Is that right?

Uh huh. Great. Next one comes from Michael Derisi, AKA Go Chiefs. Okay. So the chiefs are playing the bills as we speak in a couple of days, but it would have already happened. Anyway, here's a quote. And I'm so sorry, Michael, but I'm going for the bills because the chiefs have had their fricking turn surely. They'll probably win those. And anyway, Michael writes, oh Jess, you poor thing working on your holiday. Jess Bob Perkins in episode 482 during the Patreon shout out section, who was in fact

working on her holiday. That was a quote. I think you said it. Did you say third person or Jess, you poor thing working on your holiday? Yeah. Didn't you listen to it? Yeah. I am. I'm sorry about that.

Well, you can do that on your way home. In fact, let's just pause and all listen together right now. All right, here we go. That was great. What a great effort, Jess. Yeah, now you get it. Now you get it. It's a bit of fun.

Do we need to be here? Yeah, that listener then makes me think. Don't you dare fuck off. Either of you. Okay. Don't you dare fuck off. Either of you. Okay. Thank you so much, Michael. The final one comes from Drew Forsberg, aka Tiller. Wouldn't wanna be ya. Maybe it's Silent L. Tia wouldn't wanna be ya. Anyway, I'm guessing we'll get context. I like it. I like it either way. This is a quote. So Drew writes, Adderolf Huckabib Yiddick, a man, a plan and a canal, Panama, city beach, Florida. And that's attributed to Bon Mott, Lacey slash Greasy.

Okay. Who's this factual question from? Drew Forsberg. Do we need to send it? Drew, are you okay? Drew, I think we might need to send a welfare check. Can I hear it again? I think, I mean, it makes more sense written down. It is like a, what does a bon mot mean again, Dave?

So just like a witty remark. Right, cause it is, it is a, what do you call those things? Same backwards and frontwards? Parallelogram. Palindrome. Palindrome. Pal-le-le-gram. What's a parallelogram then? Well, same. Yeah, so it's a palindrome. What's a parallelogram then? Well, same. Yeah, so it's a palindrome.

What's a parallelogram? Parallelogram is a shape where the two sides are parallel. It's a shape, yeah. Yeah. Where both, it's like a four-sided shape where the... I think this is just like... This is just like... Marie Curie.

Nah, it's a shape. I've always thought it was parallel. I mean, it makes sense. It makes sense to me. Oh, 69 and to score people. I wonder who Lacey Gracie is. And I make 14% less than you guys. Well, you know what?

69 and to score means that your marks were better than 68% of Victoria that year. Gosh, that's terrifying. Our future leaders. I think that's a good score. Is that how that works? Yeah. Wow, that's sad. But yeah, you got the best number.

You must have been so stoked. Oh yeah, I was so happy. I actually didn't really give a shit because I got a perfect score on my drama solo and that's all I really cared about. Yeah. Wouldn't you love to go back and tell me that none of that really matters? None of it matters. Could you go back and tell me that?

No. I'm sure we've got some- You don't listen to me now, you won't listen to me then. Who are you? Who's this old lady? I'll be like, what, do you want our water? Nah. I'm sure I've got some- You don't listen to me now, you won't listen to me then. Who are you? Who's this old lady? I'll be like, what are you, what are you? Who's your old lady?

Thank you so much to Drew, Michael, Andy and Sam. The next thing we do is give a shout out to some of our other great supporters. Jess, do you normally come up with a game based on the topic at hand? I was thinking of the show they could be on. Oh yeah, that's great. Or maybe the mascot of the show. Oh yeah, that's good. What do you think? I like both of the show they could be on. Oh, yeah. Or maybe the mascot of the show. Oh, yeah. What do you think? I like both of those. OK.

Is it like existing shows? Are we making up a game show? I was thinking we could make up a game show. OK, let's do that. Based on an idiom. What about? Or just a phrase. What about one of us, one of us says the name of it and then the other two have to quickly, you know, give us the elevator pitch.

Great. Yeah, great. We'll take turns. We could go around the circle and as part of the pitch, like one of us comes up with the show and then one of us comes up with a mascot. Yeah, yeah. The other one. So one pitch, one mascot. All right. Here we go. So we're going to thank nine people.

So split it up three ways then. Let's go for go. Yeah. All right. I'll go first. I'd love to thank for all their support from Marrickville in New South Wales here in Australia, Jesse Napper. Jesse Napper. Jesse was an EY too. Jesse was a carryover champ on Catch the Weasel. Oh, Catch the Weasel. And the mascot is Wally the Weasel. Oh, you did well there getting out on the mascot. And. And the mascot is Wally the Weasel. You did well there, getting on the mascot. Yeah. And yeah, the game is all about they release a live weasel into the studio.

And Wally. Well, yeah, name Wally. And the contestants are blindfolded. And they also have they can't hear they've like all their senses are taken away. And they've got to try and find and catch Wally the weasel. And this is why Jesse was such a carryover champ and a beloved contestant is because Jesse spent six months learning echolocation. Yeah. And I think there should be some other fake animals in there as well.

Like the real animals, but just aren't weasels. Look at Capybara. Capybara, there's a guinea pig. There's a little rabbit. And so people go, I've got it, I've got it. And you open the blindfold. If you say I've got it. Yeah.

And you don't have Wally the weasel, you're out. Yes. If you grab the wrong animal. So you gotta know your animals by feel. You gotta know your animals. When I said before that they couldn't hear anything, that one wasn't true because of the echolocation thing, I think.

All right, is that right? So, Dave, do you want to think the next one? Oh yes, from Rockingham in Western Australia, a big thank you and shout out to Callum Baker. Oh, Callum Baker. Cariova champ on sucking my dog. Sucking my dog. It's a hot dog eating contest. Suck My Dog. If you're going to have a full breakdown, do it on mic. I was, my brain was going to say dad, and I tried to go for the safety of another word, and it was...

Dog. It wasn't as bad, but it was still bad. No, because it's hot dogs. Yeah, hot dogs. Yeah. What would you have done with dad? I probably would have ended it out. Yeah. So Suck My dog. Yeah. What would you have done with Dad? I probably would have edited out. Yeah.

So, Sucking My Dog is a hot dog eating competition. Yep. Hosted by... Grant Denny. The mascot is the host. Well, it was Grant Denny. He's dressed as Wally the Weiner. Yeah, Wally the Weiner. Yeah.

That suits the grain, actually. Sucking My Dog. Great show. Congratulations, Callum. You've got to bring your own hot dogs in. Yeah, bring your own hot dogs in. You've got to. But they do supply condiments. Yeah.

So there's something in it for you. Condomments. You really hit the condom with condiments. David, you're still thinking about sucking your dad's? We are so- We should edit that out. We are too old for this. That's the thing.

I know. That's the thing. I think that you remain at the maturity level you are when you start a podcast. People say that about marriage. Like you sort of... You lock in. The dynamics locked in. Yeah, it's not always a good thing.

Sorry. And it's not a good thing. When I'm 65, it'll be embarrassing. Okay. It's embarrassing at 35. Uh, next up, I would love to thank from address unknown. So we can only see deeper than the fortress of the moles. Very deep.

Thank you so much to Pickled Dildo. Oh my God. That is not correct. That is not right. Pickled Dildo. Pickled Dillo. Pickled Dillo. Sometimes you read what you want to say.

The text is too small. The weirdest part about that is Pickled Dillo is the carryover champion for the game show, Pickled Dildo. And Jess, you remember, what do you do on the show? I can't remember. Well, there's a number of jars hidden around a studio. And you have to find the pickled dildo. OK, the coveted pickled dildo. You have 30 seconds.

Is it how long does it take to pickle a dildo? I feel like, you know, a lot of it is the brine soaking into the cucumber or whatever. And a dildo, are these or the d the dildos made of more organic sort of products? Cucumber. Oh, okay. Yeah, a bit more El Matural. Right, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. No waste.

Lebanese, what are we talking, European? I'm not the producer of the show, Matt. Continental. I'm just explaining the show. Okay. And Matt, remind us the mascot, though. The mascot, of course, is Wally the dildo. It's a late night show.

Yeah. We call him Waldo for sure. Yes. Pickle dildo. So thank you, Pickledillo. I'm so sorry, Pickledillo for what Jess just did to your name. I'm not. I'd love to thank also from deep within the fortress of the moles, I'm going to assume,

address unknown. Please and thank you for your support. Victoria Jones. from deep within the fortress of the moles, I assume. Address unknown. Please and thank you for your support. Victoria Jones. Ah, Victoria Jones. Of course, Carriere of a Champion for the show. Hang in there, buddy. And what are we doing in the show there, Matt? It's a modern take on Hangman.

Ah, good one. Yes. Only the contestant will be hanged if they don't solve the word in time. Just to be clear, they'll be put out on a clothesline like hanging washing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the noose around the neck. Yeah. No, but obviously it's not. Just trying to save it there, but that's right. No, I mean, they don't actually die, but it's still theatre. Yeah. Like an old, you know, like, oh, it's old Wild West sort of thing. Yeah.

But yeah, the noose is made out of killer pythons, the lollies, the confectionary. Yum. Who are a major sponsor of the show. What's the mascot again, Poppa? It's a killer python. Okay. Was it? Wally the show. What's the mascot again, Boppa? It's a killer python. Okay. Wally the Python. Thank you.

It's confusing, but once you watch the show, you're like, oh, I see. The mechanics, it's hard to explain, absolutely. Yeah, it's one of those shows that you're like, this shouldn't work, but it does. God, and what are these going to into its 78th season? It's crazy, yeah. Amazing. Short seasons, one episode. But they tell a story in that time.

Quite a few of the seasons have been repeats. But. All right. Next up, I would like to thank from London, a big thank you to Andy Garrett. Andy Garrett. I had one before. It's gone. It's gone. Well, I've got one that's just come into my mind now, even I've said that, but just moments before it did come into my mind, Caravachamp on Corner Me Boggles.

Corner Me Boggles. I love that show. I used to watch it after school. Yeah. Well, you can explain it then. Oh, yeah, great. So, four people are in separate corners of the room. Yeah.

But the room's actually set up like a parallelogram, if you know what that means. And there's been four different corners. We all do. And you have to just quiz you out of the corner. Right. It's really not called a parallelogram. That's crazy. Yeah, you have to quiz you out of the corner.

They ask you to. Palindrome sounds more like a shape as well. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Graham, you have to quiz you out of the corner. They ask you to. Palindrome sounds more like a shape as well. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Graham, you know. I'm sure I've called it parallelogram and you guys have gone, yeah. I'm sure of it anyway. I don't think we went, yeah, we probably went.

I'm not bitter. Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Yeah. Pat me on the head. I like it. And the mascot for corner me bug? Oh, geez, that's really escaping me.

Oh, it's Wally the Corner. Well, the Corner. Anamorphic. Corner. Corner. Oh, you've been cornered by Wally. What's that word I'm trying to say? Anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphic. Thank you. Just a couple of syllables shy there of getting it right.

Hmm, close enough. Thanks, Andy. Good luck on Cornemy Boggled. Next up from Taperoo in South Australia. Taperoo. That's great. That's very good. I would love to welcome and thank Al Kearney. You might remember Al Kearney from the great long running TV show, Carrot Cook-Off. Oh yeah.

Yes. Great show. So, can I explain this one? Because this is one of my faves growing up. It was always on at like four o'clock, so I'd watch it after school. Very wholesome. So what they do is, it's a cooking show, obviously, but you are covered in carrots. You have hundreds of carrots taped to you, specifically like hands, like along your arms and stuff. So it's actually, it makes it quite hard to be like chopping things or like putting things

in the oven and stuff. And so it's about who can make the best dish under those circumstances. You also can't use carrot in the dish. And you, yeah. If any carrot falls in, you're disqualified. You're in a, and you're also in a hot steamy room and the, your time runs out once the carrots are cooked. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's pretty cool. And the mascot, was it Wisecracken Wally? Oh yeah, Wisecracken Wally the zucchini. Yeah, it comes in, slaps you across the face with a zucchini and then runs out of the room. Yeah. It says a little riddle, a little joke. Which is weird because he's a zucchini.

So it's weird to use yourself as a weapon, but that's, he's Wacky Wally or whatever you said. Wisecracken and then you said Wise-Quacken. Did I? Yeah. Yeah, it was a duck zucchini. I saw him recording this because this should just be sent straight to CBS, a new game show. Obviously-

Should we get onto Les Moonvers? I haven't heard from him in a few years. We'll cap the prize at 75,000. Yeah, I think that's very reasonable. Am I thanking this next person? Oh my God, they're also from Address Unknown, can only assume deep within the fortress of the moles. Please and thank you, what a name, Martin Maddox.

I remember Martin Maddox, carryover champ on Gone With The Wind. Gone With The Wind. Remember that show? Yes. Where you had to like, there was a gigantic fan. Yep. Huge, like as big as bigger than this room. And you had to eat jars and jars of beans.

While wearing a parachute. Yes. And the first to break wind was eliminated. What's the fan for then? Well, they just really liked the show. I think it's, you know, it's a lot of time to do the theatre. What was the mascot of that one? Ah, what was his name?

Was it Phil? No. No, it was Wally. Wally, yes. Wally the Canterbean Man. Canterbean Man. If he'd yell out, I'm out, and then Canterbean Man would come in and give you a new- And the crowd would go, Wally, W! WALL-E! WALL-E!

And everyone was heavily mic'd up around the Botox. Just for the listeners, I just want you to know as well that this is the only thing we've recorded today. And it's not late. It's our birthday back. We're getting back into the group. We're just getting the words out. Losing your fucking minds. Two more to go.

I love this great name coming up here. from South Haven in MS in the US. Is that Missouri? Is that Mississippi? What are we talking here? Someone look that up for me. It's Ernest Murray Jackson. Love that name. Ernest Murray Jackson.

Ernest Murray Jackson is so good. I wonder if that's, it is Mississippi. Mississippi. Yeah. I wonder if that's also... Is that his name? Or is he... That's just an adjective. Bishushapa.

Bishushapa. Ah, Murrnus Murray Jackson, miship. Um, and... Bishushapa. Murrnus Murray Jackson. Murrnus Murray Jackson was the carryover champ on... I didn't listen to a thing you said. All I picked up on was the word.

I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said.

I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. I didn't listen to a thing you said. And as Mary Jackson was the carryover champ of that great show from the 1970s. Ah, Missa Shapa. Ah, Missa Shapa. Ah, yes, my dad loved that show. Oh, he would be like, ah, Missa Shapa. The set was built like a riverboat. Yeah, it was beautiful.

Beautiful. Took you to another place. Yeah. Ah, Mr. Shipper. Specifically. Mr. Shipper. What's another thing about the, about Mr. Shipper? Is the river go through there?

Oh, you better believe it. Probably. You bet your sweet Mr. Shipper. What else happened on the, who was the mascot go through there? Oh, you better believe it. Probably. You bet your sweet Mrs. Zipper. What else happened on there? Who was the mascot on that game? Jess. That was an old woman. Oh yeah. Named Mrs. Zipper.

Oh yeah. She always had a cup of tea in her hands. She was a lot of fun. Because that was a lot of the game, wasn't it? You were on the boat, or the set built to look like a riverboat. And it was who, it was a sculling competition, but in sips. So it's sort of like, like walking events at the Olympics. Who could scull at a cup of tea the quickest, but only by sipping.

Beautiful to watch. Very satisfying. Yeah. But there's a bunch of rules and technicalities we probably won't get into. But yeah. Yeah. With Scorching Hot. Yeah. Yeah. So you had to sort of sip but also blow. Yes. And they'd slow right down. Yeah. Yeah. Steamboat Mickey sort of. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's a perfect analogy here. Steamed boat Mickey. Yeah, it's like Steamed Boat Mickey. There's one to go here. Okay. Finally, I would love to thank from Arlington, Virginia, which is what I was looking up while you were saying, what would your guess have been for VA?

That was pretty sure. But you never know. You never know. And I would love to thank Rolster. Ah, the Rolster. Rolster. Do you remember Rolster was the tune? I remember, yeah, the Rolster game show that they were Kevin Champ-Orient on was sunglasses

at night, feeling all right. And yeah, oh, you can explain a bit of me. Sunglasses at night, feeling all right. It was a general quiz show, I seem to remember. Yeah, there was a disco element though. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So if you won the round, you got to put the sunglasses on and look ultra cool.

Take to the dance floor, do some disco moves. If the audience liked you, you got to keep dancing. If they didn't, you had to leave the show in shame. That's right. That's right. And yeah, if you kept dancing for three minutes, then you get to dance over to the gift shop and then you had to keep jiving your way as you selected different prizes. As soon as they booed, you were out. Yes, as soon as they stopped cheering. That you were done. So you had to really dance as quick as you could, scooping out different prizes. Quickly but well.

Oh, a Rolex watch into the basket. Into the basket. Dancing, dancing, dancing, keep dancing. And then they'd pour like oil and stuff on the floors, make it harder for you to dance. And then they'd pour like oil and stuff on the floors, make it harder for you to dance. Yes. And then people would fall and it got very saucy as people soaked in those oils into their clothes. They all were wearing white. Yes. And the mascot was... A disco ball. Disco ball. Called Wally the Disco. Oh, Wally the Disco. Ball was silent. Yeah. Ball's his surname. He's like, please call me Wally the Disco, Ball was silent. Yeah, Ball's his surname. He's like, please call me Disco.

Call me Wally the Disco. Mr. Ball, that's my dad's name. There we have it, nine game show ideas, all better than the last. Yeah, right off the top of it. People are gonna be like, oh, you wrote that out in advance, but we did it. We actually didn't.

That was all a riff. Except for Corn Army Buggles, you thought about it a few weeks ago. There's something about it. I'm so glad you were able to turn that into, well you didn't really, did you? Turn it into something? No, no, you did. Yeah, parallelogram. Sorry I misspoke there.

Trivia of basically- Did I say did or did I? You can be so hurtful sometimes. So cruel. So that brings our final section of the show where we welcome some great long-term and long-time supporters into the Triptych Club. We also can't believe this is still going. Jess can quickly explain what the Triptych Club is.

The Triptych Club is for people who have supported us for three consecutive years on the shout out level or above. And so we welcome them into this exclusive club and it's got everything you could possibly ever want. We've got a bar, we've got a dance floor, we it's got everything you could possibly ever want. We've got a bar, we've got a dance floor, we've got a stage, Dave books a band. Got table ice hockey. There's ice hockey, air hockey, various arcade games. Don't tell me you've fucked with the air hockey table again.

Well no, I've got two table ice hockey tables. Did you put ice on my air hockey table again? Well I thought that was what you wanted. Oh and fuck it. I don't. I need to walk away. I don't know what I can do to please you. I need to walk away. Don't think about pleasing me at all for starters. Well, it seems like that's impossible. Anyway, so we welcome you into the club once you're in, you can't leave. And why would you want to? Why would you want to? It's heaven on earth. It's heaven on earth and we all get along in there. Maybe there'll be a twist and it is actually Heaven and you died.

I don't know what could be one of those shows. What are those? Which show am I spoiling? Oh, this. Yeah. Okay. Let's just have a bit of fun. That is really fun.

You were making a joke and I was like joining in. And that's my bad. I was not making a joke. That's my bad. Maybe all these people are dead. I was not making a joke. Okay. Okay. So. Okay.

So, Dave, you book a band. Who have you booked this week? You're never going to believe it. What? We are pretty good at reforming bands that have broken up a long time ago. We are very good at that. Bringing some back from the dead, which probably plays into the idea that this is the after-life. Holy shit, yeah. You're never going to believe who I got to reform for us.

Obviously this episode was on Press Your Luck and tonight we have one of Australia's greatest bands in my opinion, The Lucksmiths. Whoa. So they're back. Huge. Pretty cool. That's awesome. What's the song you're going to ask for? Are they going to be allowed to play their own songs? So I know sometimes you make them.

No, they will be allowed to play their own songs, but from the, from the, I think the two or three albums that I owned. Um, I think that's very reasonable. Jess, you normally have come up with a cocktail based on the topic as well. I have, it's called Press Your Luck and every eighth one is poison. Oh yeah. Will you press your luck? Yeah.

And I'm also going to give you a bit of attitude when you're ordering, because as we learnt, the idiom is sort of when you've asked a bit much, you know? And you also, it's not every eighth one. There's five different patterns. There might be more than five. Oh, okay. Just for them. Yeah, yeah. And if they die, you say, whammy!

Yeah, that's right. I'm just just whammy. As I hit the floor. Whammy. But then, I mean, the reveal is you can't die when you're already dead. You can't die when you're already dead. So you'll just feel really shit for a while, but you'll live through it. It'll be very painful. The Triptage Club has been around for six or seven years.

I think this is quite a big development. That we're all... That we're all... Are we dead? Yeah, I don't know. Imagine if we died, right? And this was just how we had to spend eternity? I wouldn't mind it. Are you dead? Yeah, I don't know. Imagine if we died, right? And this was just how we had to spend eternity? I wouldn't mind it. Are you serious?

I love it. This is my, this is one of my highlights of my week. That's so sad. Get outside. Why do that after? That's how I leave this place. Oh. Oh, you do leave this place.

All right. So we've got six inductees into the triptych club this week. What a brutal way to find out you just died. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie.

I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. You do leave this place. Mehhhhhh. All right, so we've got six inductees into the Triptych Club this week. What a brutal way to find out you just died. And the way it works is Dave's on stage, theater of the mind sort of stuff. He's MCing the night. He's going to hype you up with some weak wordplay after I've read out your name. I'm on the door.

I'm lifting the velvet rope, got the clipboard, six names on it. Jess is hyping up Dave because he's a bit low on self-esteem. Some would say with good reason. Dave has the highest self-esteem of anybody I've ever met. Well, this is the theater part. Oh, yeah. If anyone's got low self-esteem, it's everyone else in this room. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, we attack Dave because we're jealous. Yeah. All right. So are you ready to go, Dave? You ready to hop up some people? Yeah, I guess so. All right.

I'm fucking ready. He's incredible. London town in Great Britain, please welcome Hannah Oblivion. Well, it's Oblivion out here, but it's O'Heaven in there. Welcome Hannah Oblivion. Well, there's Oblivion out here, but it's O'Heaven in there. Woo! From Birkenhead in Wurl, maybe Worcestershire or some of Wales in Great Britain. It's Eleanor Lacey Sloan.

Now, some people, they kick an own goal, but Eleanor Lacey kicks a Sloan goal. Yeah! Bow bow bow bow! From Richmond, right here in Melbourne, Victoria, please welcome Meg. Meg, run on in. Don't make me beg. Come on, Meg. Oh, shit, I begged. Oh, my God.

Birkinhead is in Wirral. That's what WRL stands for. You were right the first time then. You did say Wirral. No, I did not. Yes, you did. Did I really? Yeah, you did.

Whoa, that's weird. It made me think of WRL from Wirral. Yeah, you said it. I'm not. Yes, you did. Did I really? Yeah, you did. Whoa, that's weird. It made me think of Warrell from Wirral. Yeah, you said it. I'm impressed. I thought I said, what's the damn game from Vancouver in the United States? In Washington state, I believe it's Denise Goldsworthy. More like Denise Gold Medal's worthy. Oh, you're a star! Also from London town in Great Britain, it's Matthew Port.

Some people before Matthew Star, prefer Matthew Star, but I prefer Matthew Port. Toot toot! And finally from, oh, address unknown, could only assume from deep within the fortress of the moles. Please welcome and thank you to Connor Burn. I, Connor Burn for you. Yes!

But a different spelling of burn. Oh, very clever. Thank you so much to Connor, Matthew, Denise, Meg, Eleanor and Hannah. Make yourselves at home. Please grab one of the seven non poisonous cocktails. But that brings us to the end of the episode. Is there anything we need to do before we put this baby home, Boppa? We just need to tell people how much they blow me into us. It is so much.

So much. We love you so much. Let's head into another fantastic year together. If you would like to suggest a topic, there is a link in the show notes. It's also on our website where you can write in what you think will be interesting. Flick us the article you've looked at and whoa, get credit for it when you should, when we do the topic. You can also find us on social media, do go on pod or do go on podcasts on TikTok. And that's it, Dave, boot this baby home.

We will be back with another episode next week, but until then, thank you so much for listening and goodbye. Laters! Bye! Later! Bye! the best of both worlds, where performance meets style. I wear my Dior pants to work, out with friends, on hiking trails, and everywhere in between. If you haven't tried Dior, you've gotta feel the difference for yourself.

Head to doer.ca slash comfort and get 20% off your first purchase today. That's doer.ca slash comfort. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go we always hear six months later oh you should come to Manchester we were just in Manchester. But this way you'll never you'll never miss out and don't

forget to sign up go to our Instagram click our link tree very very easy. It means we know to come to you and you also know that we're coming to you. Yeah you will come to you come to us. that we're coming to you. Yeah, we'll come to you, you come to us. Very good. And we give you a spam-free guarantee.