Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Y2K Bug

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guests Clint McElroy and Justin McElroy explore why "Y2K" is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5 MaxFunDrive ends on March 28, 2025! Support our show now and get access to bonus content by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Y2K, known for being a new year, famous for being a fake crisis. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Y2K is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm very much not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hi.

Hi, it's me. Hi. And we have wonderful guests joining us too. They are podcasters, comic book authors and two of the hosts of The Adventure Zone, Justin McElroy and Clint McElroy. Hey, thank you both for being here. It's such a pleasure.

Thank you for asking us. Yeah. I can't believe you have me back. Nobody ever invites us anywhere. You are welcome. I should have sent like fancy invites or something, but I just, you know, emails. Yeah.

We don't need all the folder all. You gotta emboss them. If it's not embossed, I'm not showing up. Yeah. And we also, this comes out in like the wee hours, the wee first hour of the Maximum Fun Drive. And so thank you all for hopefully joining in on that drive, like during or after hearing this,

because it makes so many things we do at Maximum Fun possible. And it's a lot of fun. Absolutely. It's my favorite time of the year because it lets me show the shows that I listen to on the Maximum Fund Network, that I'm a big fan of theirs.

And I like to be able to do that for the shows that I like. And I like knowing that my hard earned cash is going to creators that I love who own their own programming. And it just makes me feel great. I love the opportunity to make more cool stuff happen. And I like the fundraiser because I like to go on shows where people are actually nice to their guests.

As opposed to the shows I'm on. Yeah, we do tend to give dad a hard time sometimes, but that is spending more and more of our episodes trying to shill his own crypto. And that has gotten to be a distraction, honestly, for our programming. So, dad is right about the bullying though, it has gotten out of hand.

But it is all crypto-centric. Clint-ment? Clint-ment. Clint-ment? Oh God, wait a minute, hold on a sec. Hold on, dad's portmanteau engine is spinning up. Everybody get out of the way. Guys, you're about to do neologism like you've never seen. Yeah. I'm cutting you in, lady.

Thanks, Sam. Tell me when to pump, tell me when to dump. Am I right? There we go. Speaking of the internet, our topic was suggested, like most of them, by folks on our Discord. Thank you to The Hannah and thank you to another Alex for this suggestion with support from lots of folks. And we'll start with you guys, Justin and Clint. We always start with, what is your relationship to the topic or opinion of it? The topic this week is Y2K.

How do you feel about Y2K? I very vividly remember I was 20 years old. I mean, I was, I don't know, I've been 19, about to turn 20, because I was born in 1980. So it was like very much on the cusp of it. I remember vividly watching the different annual celebrations from around the globe as the dial turned over.

I remember that day, like through the afternoon, watching other countries make the flip and kind of holding my breath a little bit each time, like, oh no, okay, we're okay over in China. That worked out fine. Okay, hold on, maybe we're gonna be okay here. I don't know. Yeah, it was a pulse-pounding day for sure.

I, you know, It was a pulse pounding day for sure. Obviously none of us were, but I especially was more Luddite about it because I don't feel like I was as electronically wired as I am now. Didn't carry a phone everywhere. My whole life wasn't on the phone. And so I'm more or less was just kind of saying, well, you know, it'll be interesting.

It's not gonna impact my life. And then the week before, my wife sent me out to buy all the toilet paper I could. So we apparently were taking a doomsday prepper. That's amazing, dad, I had no idea. Either that or our health issues So we apparently were taking a doomsday prepper. That's amazing, dad, I had no idea. Either that or our health issues were about to get a lot worse. So I did and we had rolls and rolls of TP, nothing else.

No food. We didn't go out and stockpile water, but by God, we had two-ply Sherman all over the place. Priorities. You kind of always think your parents got it all figured out, don't you? You kind of always think that your parents got a plan for every situation, then you find out when you're 44 years old that they only had toilet paper and no food. So maybe like the net wasn't quite as well hung as I thought it was that I was underneath me, huh?

I mean, once the financial system collapses, TP is as good as gold. We learned that during the pandemic. That's true. Yeah, I bought like, before kind of everyone had the TP panic, I did buy a bunch of TP and I felt like, like sort of a billionaire philanthropist, like friends going like, I can't find any TP.

It's like, oh really? Well, I could loan you a bit. At an interest rate of 12%. We were on the JoCo cruise the week that everything broke bad TP wise. And by the time we got back, there was no TP. And I had to be kind of zen about it. Like, I don't know, I missed the whole rush,

never had a shot at it. Like, I don't know, I gotta make do with what I got around the house. That's why his t-shirt collection is so much smaller. That's right, Dad. I used a lot of my classics in that. Yeah. And yeah, we'll talk about it.

Apparently TP was a particularly common stockpile, especially in the US in the run up to Y2K. Yeah, and we'll talk about it. Apparently TP was a particularly common stockpile, especially in the US in the run up to Y2K. We just figured like step 10 of this crisis is I'll be out of toilet paper. So why don't I get ahead of that one and then the rest will solve itself. And Katie, how about you? Do you remember Y2K very well? Yeah. you? Do you remember Y2K very well? Yeah, I was but a young child in the in the fjords of California, but like the my dad was like a electrical engineer and I remember asking him, you know,

why are people upset? And he's like, well, he's trying to and this was 2000. So I was in, I think I was in fifth grade. And so he's like trying to explain it to a fifth grader saying like, look, the computers don't have like the ability to go from 1999 to 2000. And so, people are worried that things are going to break down. And I didn't understand why you couldn't just like tell the computer like, hey, like this is about to happen. He's like, you can't just tell a computer something. I was like, but I, you, why not just like type in the, you type in the computer,

like don't, don't worry. It's all good. It's just that the year is going to be 2000 now. But for some reason I really couldn't, I didn't understand it. I was not worried because I didn't understand computers like at all. And I didn't understand,. I was not worried because I didn't understand computers at all. And I thought, well, sure, the computers aren't going to, you know, because it's like, well, they think the computers are going to panic. And it's like, well, computers don't panic. They play Tetris for you. They don't, you know, they're going to be cool.

Hey, but like, Katie, you were right. Like you were, you may not have known as much about computers, but you're like, I think the computers will figure it out. They're pretty good. And then everyone else is like, no, freak out. No, no, no, turned out they're pretty good. I don't know, I figured it out. Yeah.

Or at least that's what I think. Maybe it goes deeper than I ever believed, I ever knew. Have you seen PowerPoint? The word art? They're really smart. Computers are really smart. This guy beats me at chess every time, every single time. Unbelievable.

He's longevity. And now we have to worry about him being too smart. They're too smart for Grail. It's time for us to, I mean, we're gonna be subjugated by our superior artificial intelligence masters until what? Why 3K? Well, I mean, when 3K happens, it'll be the robots telling us that we're not ready for 3000 because it'll freak us out because we're not ready for it.

And the robots will be like worried about us. We can't count that high. What if they roll over to 3000 and they just absolutely like, they're done. That's it. Like, wait, we can't count that high. What if they roll over to 3000 and they just absolutely, like, they're done, that's it. Like, wait, we can't handle it. Who's going to till the- Wait, this three holes, how do we make the glasses? We only have two eyes. Who will till the silicon fields if they all are driven mad?

I'm looking forward to that. I'm 69 years old. I like the idea of somebody taking care of me. Yeah. Yeah. I do like the idea of one of those Terminator robots. It's just the way it really works out is they're like, thank you for Y2K, and then they like help us. You guys were really sweating it. It was cute in hindsight. Maybe that should be our play when the robots come for us. We're like, listen, I'm going to remind you guys about Y2K when we really were very concerned.

We did a lot. We were the extra mile for you all. That was a real robot who cried wolfs in there. Yeah. And it's really fun looking back at this topic, especially culturally and especially because things were broadly okay. We'll talk about actual crashes later in the show. But this week we're going to start with a first takeaway number one. Everybody from fringe kooks to mainstream media gave

bizarre life advice about Y2K. I'm ready for that. Before we talk about all the facts of it, I just want to look back at what people were saying to do in the run up to it and in advance of it. It was dumb. It was great. I don't remember the advice, but I bet some of it is unplug all of your devices before the clocks change and then plug them back in after.

Pretty much, yeah. There were a lot of completely not computer scientists who got a hold of a way to publish a book. Yeah, and key sources for this are a piece for Fast Company magazine by Harry McCracken, a piece for Mental Floss by Jake Ross, and a piece from KQED Public Radio Bay Area by Ray Alexandra. For one thing, mainstream media was warning us all that the world was about to end. And one big example is that in November 1999, NBC aired a TV movie depicting a Y2K apocalypse. It was just called Y2K. And we've got the 30 second trailer here. I'm going to play just like the sound of it for us.

This is like produced by NBC? Yeah, it was an NBC TV movie. And here's what the trailer sounded like. What if they're right? My gosh. The survival of millions hangs in the balance. We lost this puppy. Go everybody out! Just tell yourself it's only a movie. And now Y2K the Movie. Starring Steven Seagal.

As Y2K. As Sean Claude Van Dam as two. Yeah, I'm like NBC, a real TV channel. Like this was not some kind of weird thing you'd find in the dark web or something. They just, that was full of explosions, you know? It's great. Yeah. I like how the stinger is like, remind yourself it's only. Yeah, I like how this stinger is like remind yourself. It's only a movie like

parent telling a frightened child like It's it's great marketing. It's really great. Yeah, like we know you're stupid So remember this is fictional a movie from your TV screen You probably shouldn't even watch it Ratings we just want to keep you safe. And the very next commercial is an executive. Like actually, if you can just clear 8 p.m. Saturday, we're going to please, please. So we only got the audio.

So like in terms of the visuals, were they depicting just like planes falling out of the sky? Because I did hear car alarms. So, and I'm wondering why they thought car alarms would go off. Was that just because they thought the cars would also be confused? It's like that and it's just the thing where when there's a massive explosion, all the car alarms go off. Like it's very explosion heavy and it's very like people in bunkers of computer screens saying,

oh my God, and then you cut to, you know, disaster. But it wasn't just computers. It was all technology was supposed to be affected. Yeah, yeah. How in the world could you get your little viewing screen in the backseat of your CRV for your kids to watch, you know, Bluey? Because we're not just talking about,

if I understood what was going down correctly, we're not just talking about operating systems, saying that, right? What we're talking about is at a more basic computer, like a kernel level where the computer is talking to itself and doesn't know how to process that data. And the computer only knows what we have taught it, right? So it's the idea that a year could start with two is just kind of like beyond its whole way of understanding the world around it. Did we just, like when we designed computers, were we just thinking we're never gonna get to two?

It's just, we're not gonna get that far. So we never bothered to put in computers like the two in 2000. We don't anticipate getting to that year. Why didn't we? Apparently, the piece of conventional wisdom is true that it was just people were trying to save memory any way they could and make software smaller any way they could. Humans understood that the year 2000 was not far away because computers are all from a few way they could, and make software smaller any way they could. So like, like humans understood that the year 2000 was not far away because computers are all from a few decades before, but they just put in a nine nine instead of a 1999 because that on early computing saved

memory and then on later computing, they were just still lazy or still trying to save something. But we, yeah, it's like Justin said, then we thought the computer would just tell itself, if I don't know the date, I'm not doing anything. I'm not just going to keep going. Because that's typically, weirdly, I've been taking some like very basic level like program, programming classes like in Python. And that that is the way computers think it's weird to think about how basic, you think about how much you have to break stuff down

for a kid to get them to understand. Like a two-year-old, you think about that level of maturity and understanding, like, I gotta break this down into really basic levels. Computers are weirdly even more basic than that, right? Like, it's not as much, you have to, you can't even tell them like, apples are red. Like they don't even understand what the A at the beginning of apple is, right?

Like it's, you think about how much, how basic it needs to be for that. And like the granularity of us kind of like building back up around that like tiny little thing, it just would never occur to computers to think about it too at the beginning of the year. And if they don't know what to do, they end the program, right? That's typically the, it'll crash. So I think that was the concern, right? Like everything does that at once and we don't know how to get anything working again.

Well, I can remember somebody and it was, their biggest concern was that supermarket cash registers were gonna just go kablam, just gonna absolutely melt down. And that, this person was terrified of that happening. Because then, you know, your American cheese slices are gonna go up, maybe, to a million dollars. Or down to five cents,

which will destroy the supermarket industry. Game over. Yeah, that's it. Without cheese, there's not a United States. That's pretty much it. No. The other clip I want to play is another example because on top of the media talking about this, there was an entire cottage industry of just businesses selling home media.

It was like, if you buy this home media, you as the head of the household can prepare for Y2K. Even though basically all the preparations needed to happen from companies and big organizations, there wasn't really anything you could do at home. This sounds kind of like during the Cold War, the nuclear bunker thing, where it's like, have your own personal bunker, enough beans to last you 20 years in fresh water, with the idea being what after? After you're in your bunker for the nuclear explosion and then you stay down there for

a while and then you come out. I never quite understood what was the plan for afterwards. So it's the same thing for what I presume would be the, how to prepare your home. If planes are falling out of the sky, but your television still works, I'm not really sure what the end game there is. Big spike in the abacus industry, I would assume.

Beads are back. Yeah, people, yeah. People bought at least tens of millions of dollars of like dried beans and other packages of things. Yeah, there were entire companies that just popped up in 1999 to sell that and then people just had that product and they made a bunch of money on it. Yeah. Great. I mean, did they think food, I guess food was made by computers back then as well? Like what, like, what was the thought? Yeah, they thought it would be a systematic failure in a way where everything would be hard to get and like including toilet paper. Yeah. Crazy like a fox. All the smart toilet bidets just blasting you with enough pee inside to tear you in

half. Wrapped the whole clean through me. And the other clip we'll play on the episode, my favorite weird version of this was a VHS tape that you could buy to watch and learn. It was called the Y2K Family Survival Guide. Fantastic. A company called Monarch Publishing started selling the tape in 1998 and it was hosted and narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Oh wow. Like Spock on Star Trek, who does not need to do this kind of thing. So it had to be true. I would be like, I'm glad I didn't know about this as a kid because if Spock was telling

me about to go down, I would be very frightened. Yeah, for sure. Yes, it's an hour long tape and it's full of just statements like, how fragile do we find ourselves against the juggernaut of our own inventions? From like the voice of Leonard Nimoy, you know? And the clip to play here, this is after Leonard Nimoy summarizes an entire myth as just an example. It's the myth of the civilization of Atlantis. What? Like he just summarizes the basics of Atlantis and then he says this.

So we recall the fate of Atlantis. The primary question for our civilization as we approach the year 2000 is this. Have we allowed our own highly advanced technological innovations to far outpace our human abilities to control those innovations? And most importantly, to foresee their ultimate consequences? In order to find- So like, and you sit for an entire hour with Letter D-Boy telling you this kind of thing. And then somehow you're ready for Y2K.

By what happened to Atlantis? It's actually kind of funny though, that Leonard is like actually right now. Like if they had just like saved that video for 25 years, you know, like it's hilarious that we were worried that the computers would be confused about the 99 thing. And now we're like, yeah, we've taught them everything. We taught them everything that we ever knew about.

So I think that they'll figure out the year stuff. They got it, they got it. But you gotta admit having Nimoy do the voiceover, that's, I mean, that's pretty brilliant. It's gravitas. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, because he does bring that impact, you know? The gravitas.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's why, like, I like Justin, your idea of just redoing the tape or something, but you'd need somebody else's voice to just drop in, like, artificial intelligence, you know, but it doesn't hit, it doesn't hit, you know? No, guys, you're thinking too small. It's AI, man.

That is AI too, right? Like it's AI Leonard Nimoy. Yeah, the whole. If we recall what happened to the society of Asgard. Oh boy. As we remember from the last time the human civilization crumbled in 2000, like no AI letter D-Moy, that's not accurate.

We told you, we came to it fine. This was one of a million tapes and books and all kinds of things. I think my biggest Y2K memory is that a couple of weeks into January 2000, Our Borders Books had a big card of like Y2K prep books for sale that were like 90% off. And the cover had a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand. It was like very like, you'll be a fool if you don't buy this book.

And then they were like... Talk about a shelf life though. Yeah, right? The fact that they were still selling for 10%. And you know. Exactly, they should have pulped them. Like I don't get it. But yeah.

You could have bought them and used them for TP. See, it's circled, it all works in a circle. Yeah. There should be a market for like very short shelf life books that are like also can be used for TP. Once you're done, like the pages are soft and two ply. Yeah, and kind of with the little serrated thing. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, the perforations. Yeah, I don't know what made me think of it, but Everybody Has a Podcast Except You by the McWhorter Brothers is available at a steep discount in a lot of book retailers. Just as long as. How soft are the pages? I mean, I can't speak to their softness,

but there's a lot of them. I mean. Okay. Yeah, I've never seen bears using them for, you know, their business. Yeah, that's true. Do the little pieces get stuck to the bear's butts that we can see it on TV? Yeah, but it's always like a picture

of one of the boys' faces. It's really odd. Yeah, so in a pinch, you can make paper dolls for the kids with them. So it's kind of a multi-use entertainment system. It's an entertainment system. I mean, really, it's a lot of this. Full entertainment system.

Full entertainment system, yeah. I bought 700 of them just in case. Thank you, Dad. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. You put us over that thousand mark with that purchase and I really appreciate that. So the, yeah, the advice and all these things,

like all the Y2K tasks were for large organizations with computer systems. So all the personal family advice was either prepper stuff or just useless. Right. One prominent prepper named Gary North Specifically promised that toilet paper would be one of our main currencies as a society after why he destroyed everything call me mr. pennybags

Another author named the richest man in town Like you have a monocle made of a tube that's left after you finish the- Oh, there you go. Yeah. What do you write? Just, he wired, he's gonna send 500 rolls! The building alone is saved!

There was also a lot of gold stockpiling. My favorite is a book called Y2K Gold Rush. It was by an author named Wade Cook. And he was not an economist or a software expert. A brief time after Y2K, he went to prison for 88 months for avoiding paying taxes. Perfect. So he was not a great source of advice, but that was his advice. You can save so much money by cheating on your taxes. How is that not sound financial advice?

That makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There was also a conflict among the writers of American Survival Guide, which was a prepper magazine. Oh. And you know, those conflicts do not end well with those guys. Yeah, right? You know, those conflicts do not end well. Yeah, right?

You know, everybody's packing. Yeah, because like most of them advised to build a bunker, which is just already their advice for everything. And then in a 1999 issue of American Survival Guide columnist Ken Abego went the opposite way. He said that readers should go ahead and prepare for Y2K by quote, beginning life on the lamb as a bum. Because he believed that after Y2K... He specified as a bum though. He wrote down as a bum.

Well, don't try to build a new life for yourself. Give up on that. Y2K is not going to get my bindle. Yeah. Did I need to read a magazine to tell me that? Like, what if I just didn't? And then eventually I would have to? Like, I don't know why I have to start. You know what I mean?

Like, I should live it up. I should enjoy all this electricity and stuff. Get the jump on the other bums. Gotta be in a bum mindset to survive a bum world. So if you're already locked in on the bum mindset, if you've already got like the suspenders and one of them is like flopping down and you know, like then you're locked into bum mindset

and you can really sort of thrive in the bum lane. No, that was his premise, yeah. Is that like after Y2K- Oh really? It was locking into bum lifestyle. He said that Y2K would definitely collapse society and we would result in sort of an anarchist utopia where there's homesteaders and wanderers. And like the homesteaders will feed the wanderers in exchange for help with labor.

And so it's like you say, Justin, wanderers in exchange for help with labor. It's like you say, Justin, you could just wait for that to happen. But also his premise was go ahead and get started now. Be ready to wander now so you're ahead of the other bums. You will be king of the hobos. Two more pieces of advice here. One is a book called The Y2K Title Wave. And the writers of Y2K Title Wave said that there's not a lot you can do, but the one thing you should

do is try to lead a push for the impeachment and removal of President Bill Clinton. Oh. Was he in charge of computers? What's the... And this was totally unrelated to actual Clinton impeachments and Lewinsky and things. The premise was that Bill Clinton was secretly discouraging Y2K readiness in order to allow a societal collapse, which would let him declare martial law and then become a dictator for life.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's right, that's all right. Hey listen, just so we don't give anybody any ideas, maybe we should edit that section out of the podcast. I think that they're really onto something on that show. Oh no, Lorne Michaels is going to try to shut down? Bring back my show. Yeah, so that was their prepper advice was there's nothing you can do but to try to bring

down the devious future dictator. If you're looking for something to do. Yeah, just a hobby basically. You will definitely die. Take Bill Clinton with you. And then last piece of advice here, this is a book called What Will Become of Us Counting Down to Y2K. I like the titles. I really do like them. They're just so flagrantly pessimistic. Like, well, we're boned.

Picture of a little shruggy man on the cover. Yeah. And the author, Julian Grigori of this book, his main advice was you need to do a bunch of Y2K prepping and don't tell your family. Oh, I like that. You need to do this in secrecy from your loved ones. I like that. Without letting them know what you secrecy from your loved ones. I like that.

Without letting them know what you're up to. They can't hang with it. They're not ready. Cause who needs that excess baggage? No. Yeah, right, Dan. We're starting a new life. A new free life.

That's why you didn't buy any food, huh, Mac? Nah, but I had TP. You're just gonna, you'll leave your wife with the TP and you're gonna get the T-bird fuel her up get out there So our new life grab my bendle and start bringing down the president of the United States I'm Dirk Bendel son. I don't have any kids. I'm gonna break down the government Doing this for two weeks pal don't come in and tell me how to be a bum just because you finally got in line. I'm an bum trying to take down Bill Clinton for months.

This book's reasoning for it is even sadder than you can just bail. It's that people will make fun of you. Quote, don't tell everyone what you're thinking of doing for Y2K Survival and expect to get verbal encouragement from them before you act. Hey, replace Y2K Survival and fill in anything I do in my life. That's kind of like the constant loop in my brain.

Don't tell people about what you do and expect them to be impressed. I feel like that's something though, like if your marriage can't withstand sort of like one of you going like, I think it's time to like start to like get bum-pilled and like bum it up. Then, you know, I feel like it's, it's, it's all about communication. I don't know how to recover from bum-pilled. Yeah. It's like an action, it's a verb, right? It turns, it's like, yeah, it's a lifestyle. You are living it. It's, I think in like, in the face of tragedy, communication is important.

So you do have to sit down with your partner and talk about the, the bum situation. So that, that takeaway, that's a lot of like fear mongering about Y2K and now we have a lot of numbers and stats for the show. Because it turns out there were actual impacts of Y2K all over the world despite us being also overly concerned about it. And those numbers and stats, we'll get into them in a segment called, another pod counts the stats. And I named-

What? Wait, there's not, what? You can't just- That's it. That's it? That's it? I'm so angry. That wasn't 10 seconds. You could use the song.

You not have to pay for it. Yeah. Oh, that's true. Just play again the actual queen. Yeah. Yeah. A name was's true. Just plug in the actual queen. Yeah. That name was submitted by John from Baltimore. Thank you, John. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com. Maybe the wildest number of the show is 300 billion to 500 billion US dollars. About a third to a half trillion dollars. That's an estimate for how much money the world spent on preparations for Y2K. Oh gosh. How much of that was TP? I kicked in a trillion. So. Right. This is a piece from 2009, looking back by tech reporter Farhad Manju for Slate.com. He says that a significant chunk of the world's total Y2K prep was from US businesses. About $100 billion just in the US went toward Y2K prep.

Almost all of it was private money. The government spent about $9 billion. The other 90 or so was from utility companies, banks, airlines, telecom firms, end quote, just about every other corporate entity with more than a few computers. Wow. What were they doing? Because I assume that the corporations weren't just buying videotapes of Leonard Nimoy, fear mongering. Were they replacing all their computer systems, buying guns? What

was the play here? I hope it was those two things specifically, coding and guns. It was basically coding. It was all like, it may be some new hardware, but mostly paying people to go in and change dates is the gist of it. And then also analyze how much redundancy they had in systems. That's exactly what I thought when I was like 11, was like, why not just tell the computers it's okay? So like literally that's what we did.

Pretty much, yeah. It's interesting though, if you think about it, because to me, I feel like any individual preparations would have been kind been fruitless because it's all interconnected. It seems like any individual preparation would have been pointless, but I don't know. Maybe it was helpful. It seems like it might have been because there were a bunch of issues on Y2K and nothing totally systemic and troublesome. The other number here is Tuesday, February 29th of 2000,

leap day 2000. That's when a US Senator named Bob Bennett formally disbanded the Senate Special Committee on the year 2000 technology problem. They said, we did it, we're done. Why on leap day? Just kind of a coincidence. It's fun to me that it was leap day. Yeah Well, how about the fact that it was two months late? Okay

Why didn't they disband it on January 2nd? Yeah, that's a good point dad. They really wanted to make sure like nah, it's all working real good It's like when you're like about to graduate high school It's like yeah, but we got to give them a month of pizza parties and guitar hero. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got senioritis. Yeah. Like, hack him, have a kickass millennium.

Yeah, great. Thanks. Because it seems like the actual reason they kept running for two months is they wanted to prepare a report about how important their work was and how many problems they solved. That's fair. You want history. You want history to remember how good it went. Like let's see, we wouldn't know about this stuff if they had packed it in, you know,

the day of. Like we would, they probably had to call around and be like, how's everything going for you guys? Two months to write one page. Oh, we did fine. We did great. The odd thing is they spent most of their report criticizing the media and other countries. Oh, great.

And claiming that the media and other countries soft-pedaled how much actually went wrong on Y2K in order to make themselves look good was the claim. The number they gave is 32 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, and Norway reported no incidents on an official website for reporting Y2K problems, but then their national media reported Y2K problems. They claimed that the world was lying about how good of a job the US did fixing this. I see.

So they were saying like, guys, I mean, you were in the other room, but like it got crazy in here. Like you weren't watching when it was happening, but it got really crazy. And we put out some real fires. And my Canadian girlfriend is really impressed. They weren't real fires. Okay, yeah, they weren't really real fires, And my Canadian girlfriend is really impressed.

They weren't real fires. Okay, yeah, they weren't like real fires, but like you can imagine we thought they could be. It got hot. I can tell it's not. Right, right. Like, yeah, like we, like one of our computers is like hurt to have in my lap.

I had to put like a sweater under it. It was pretty bad. Whoa, actually look at my pager is dead. The battery is dead on my pager. That's, that wasn't dead before. Actually it ran out of battery. So that could be this part of it. Yeah, all our Tamagotchis.

Die. Dead. Yeah, cause the answer to this is take away number two. Y2K caused a lot of worldwide bugs with almost no long-term repercussions. Okay. So there were bugs? A bunch of things broke and there were a bunch of people fixing it. And especially over the weekends, like New Year's Day of 2000 was a Saturday.

And so there were just world teams fixing bugs that popped up all over the world. How are they fixing them? Just like kind of going in easy stuff or was it difficult to do? It seems like it was pretty easy. Yeah. Mostly just checking the date or like redoing that line of code that had not been done in advance. Yeah. And key sources here are the BBC, the Chicago Tribune, and also some tech sites like zdnet.com and CNET. We think there might be a top problem of Y2K in terms of people actually impacted. And it was bad, but pretty survivable. It's that a large high rise in Seoul, South Korea, lost their hot water and also their floor-based heating for about 24 hours. I thought you were going to say they lost their floors.

Yeah, or their lives. So to add, not really a minor impact there, Alex. It just vanishes, yeah. Truly just a building. It was over 900 apartments. They didn't have heat or hot water for 24 hours. In a Korean winter, that's bad, but there were no fatalities. It seems like truly nobody died of Y2K despite the NBC movie and stuff. It was just inconvenient all over the place in small ways. The BBC indexed a bunch of other tiny things. Very random. It's like a bus ticketing system in Tasmania stopped working. The Hong Kong police, their breathalyzer system stopped working. They couldn't check if people were drunk when

they're driving. It's all sorts of little things like that. But stuff broke. It was not like a totally made up problem. Right. But no plane fell out of the sky. No plane fell out of the sky. You didn't have TVs exploding or hospital equipment failing, nothing like that. In very small ways. Apparently, a few hospitals in Sweden couldn't do electrocardiograms, ECGs. The machine just wouldn't turn on. Oh, wow. I see. But they said that none of those were urgent to do. Like all the Y2K problems exist and didn't matter. Like they all happened and they were all okay and very local. It's weird.

Hmm. Yeah. I got another weird coincidence. Oh, yeah? Just when you were making that, I swear to you, just when you were making that statement, my mouse died. Whoa, dad. Unbelievable.

I'm gonna have to stay in this chat for the rest of my life. Forever. Until this charges up. Someone shut off the lathe of heaven over here. Oh, grateful. I just read that. Anyway, and the The biggest piece of technology that stopped working was a US one, despite all of our preparation. A few days after Y2K, the Pentagon admitted

that five of their spy satellites stopped transmitting useful information. It was just garbled instead of being the usual useful spying. And then they fixed it from the ground. Just as they passed over like the one like Russian site that does actually have like aliens, trained dolphins, yetis. Yeah, Saddam is there somehow. I don't know how. Yeah. Yeah.

That's not actually their fault. The satellites were all the way up in space. So I don't know how they were supposed to go up there and fix them. Right. Amazon. Thank you, Dad. Here's an idea.

Moonraker 2. Oh yeah. Yeah. James Bond is back fixing spy satellites. He has like a wrench with a silencer on it. Like this is my job. Yeah. And the weirdest tiny mistake in the US This is my job.

The weirdest tiny mistake in the US was a video rental store in greater Albany, New York. Apparently one guy rented out a videotape of the General's daughter, a 1999 thriller starring John Travolta. It became late during Y2K, but the computer thought it was 100 years late and tried to charge him $91,250. Justin, were you working at Blockbuster at this time?

Yeah, dad, I was. Wow, did you have anything where you overcharged people 91,000 bucks? No, but I did steal a copy of Fight Club that got me fired. I don't know. Thank you, Y2K. Did you steal Fight Club

because of the message of Fight Club? Like it inspired it? It was a very Tyler Durden thing to do. Right. To steal Fight Club from Bob. But did you watch it before stealing it? Or was it like the first time? Well, I was originally gonna rent it, Katie,

and then I watched the movie and I was so inspired that I just didn't bring it back. So it was a theft. Ah. Like, yeah. I am Jack's raging rental fee. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The other embarrassment for the US, the Naval Observatory in DC was like the official US timekeeper. And despite Y2K prep, once the year rolled over, their timekeeper thing said that it was the year 19,100. Oh, wow. 19100.

Bet they did a lot of naval gazing that day, Alex. But yeah, so we know there were a bunch of problems. We know they were all tiny and everybody was okay. And then there's a vague belief out there that our Y2K prep just sort of accidentally made computer systems more robust. And the biggest example might be New York City's transit systems. Because in November 2002, an NYU professor gave a talk based on like urban planning studies she did, saying that the prep for Y2K helped make New York City's systems more resilient in 9-11. Wow, that's interesting. Who

knew? So how? What did they do to prep for Y2K? Apparently, we can't know all of it because they don't want people to be able to hack it. But yeah, apparently on 9-11, the MTA that runs Transit, they only lost 42% of capacity. And it's partly because there were a lot of extra redundancies that were work they did on top of date changing in the run up to Y2K. And so some systems in the world, mostly in ways we can't measure because nobody cared or paid attention, some systems just got improved in ways that help in general because people were worried about, you know, like what Leonard Nimoy said and stuff. Right. Or is it possible that at the very heart of Y2K, we wouldn't know about systems? Fail.

Is it possible? Dad, you have gone. Y2K was really a disaster. I'm sorry. But it didn't get reported because our robot over masters were in for the long con. I'm so sorry. I have begged him not to do this. Everyone at every other window has their head in their hands.

Yeah, or their head in the sand. No, guys, he's getting too close to the truth. And I'm terrified somebody's going to take him down because he's getting too close to the truth. And I'm terrified somebody's gonna take him down. Cause he's getting too close to the truth. Yeah. On that truth bomb, we're gonna take a quick break. Then we have a couple more quick stories about the US being weird about Y2K.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hey folks, it's Alex and I'm with Katie of course. It's me hello! Hello! And this is a little like special middle of the show thing because it's the Maximum Fun Drive. It started today, March 17th. Maximum Fun Drivin' Ya Crazy!

Got em! Got em! Driving you crazy. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. Got him. Got him. Eds, I hope you've heard about it and any other show on our wonderful network of artist owned podcasts, employee owned co-op, that we're all talking about it. It's a really rare operation and a rare thing

and it can exist and be rare because it's listener supported. Like with direct support from listeners, we can do this in a way that is like accountable and positive to the people who listen to the show and not weird and corporate. Yeah, like we answer directly to you. So we do stuff that makes you happy. So if you're like, yes, we need Alex to wear more hats. We can get that to you people. We can make that happen. It would be a pleasure, honestly. Please do that.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's always a good time to go to maximumfund.org slash join. That's one way. You can also just Google your way to it or whatever, but that's the way to sign up for a membership. Any amount is wonderful.

And then we have special goals during the drive for people who either make a new membership or boost their membership or upgrade their membership or like get a gift membership for someone else, maximumfund.org slash gift. You can give that as a digital gift if you want to. But if we hit certain amounts of people doing that, we'll do special stuff. What do you give the person who has everything

to podcast hosts who are desperate for your affection? And also if you are already a supporter or if you become one you get to hear the whole secret podcast that we make We make a secret very scandalous podcast. You won't believe the words that come out of sweet Alex's mouth. It's called the Inspectors Inspectors. I don't know if people have heard the very first episode of CIF. It's about the US Post Office. And so I was like, I want to know everything about it. And in the process of the first ever CIF, it found out that there is a narrative edutainment show for teens that the US Postal Service produced and funded recently. You can really tell it was produced by the post office, but it's called The Inspectors.

We recap it in a show called The Inspectors Inspectors, which gets a lot wilder than you would think. It's really fun. We just made the fourth episode as bonus content for this drive. When Alex suggested this to me, I was like, Alex, I don't want to watch a police procedural about the post office. And then I watched it and it was every bit as terrible as I thought it would be. But in a way that it's like, do you know Bosch, like the painter who painted sort of different depictions of hell and there's

like you'll see like a bird man and then like there's a person inside the bird man and then he's like pooping out an accordion or something. That's what this show does like but to my brain. My two? It's very strange. It feels like it was written. It's a torment and it's so good It feels like it was written by like AI and this was it came out before the whole AI boom So it wasn't but it feels that way. It's very strange. The chemistry is completely wild on this show

particularly between the main character a young lad named Preston, who's a college man, who is very smart and handsome, and his beautiful mother, Amanda, who is thriving. She's 40 something years and young and the chemistry between those two is very interesting in this show. It truly is. And also, they are horrible at explaining or describing anything about postal crimes, which are a real thing in the world. The US Postal Inspection Service actually busts real crimes, and then this show describes

them very poorly and inaccurately. It's great. My understanding of US postal crimes from the show is that they're constantly dragging people into their interrogation rooms and lying to them. Yeah, in the heart of Washington, DC, they handle national postal crime and never leave a two-block radius of Washington, DC. There's a show where they're trying to catch poachers and the whole way they catch them is that like the poachers like draw a like rune on each of their poached items that matches like

another rune and it looks like it's like supposed to have been carved but it looks like it was like drawn in Sharpie and like Preston's like huh that familiar. And it's like kind of the same as another one on another poached item. And that's the whole mystery. And the thing is like, we cover the silly show as a bonus thing again, because listeners like support that. Like if you folks were not into it,

we would do something else. We do things that you seem to want through your support, which keeps growing. So thank you so much for that. Thank you. I hope you get to take pride in that Silly Inspectors and Specters existing, and also all of CIF existing, because it takes research and time and labor and editing and effort for it to exist and you are why. If the show is any good, you're a huge part of why. Yeah. We would not have this show if it was not for your support. And I mean, certainly, this show makes my life better just by doing it. I have a lot of fun. Get to have good times with my buddy Alex.

So I'm very grateful that you guys also enjoy it and that you're supporting us. It makes a world of difference in our lives. Absolutely. Yeah. I really do get to see my buddy Katie a whole lot more because you guys make this a thing. And so thank you so much for that. We'll talk about it again next week too because the drive runs through next week. If people participate, we'll do a poll for a collective nickname for listeners that you are. We'll do digital art. We'll do more inspectors inspectors. I also want to do some live streaming stuff that would be fun. We have a lot of, I think, pretty high set goals that we also think we can hit because a lot of people listen to this show and a lot of, I think, pretty high set goals that we also think we can hit because

a lot of people listen to this show and a lot of you could take this plunge right now. I do want to hear more details on what you mean by a nickname. Yeah, people want a collective nickname for themselves. And I've just never gotten around to democratically determining what that would be. One of the ideas on the Discord is Sif Lords. Sif Lords. Kind of a pun on Sif Lords, you know? I like that one, that's a good one.

Cause you guys are a community, the Discord is really a true joy in my day to day and you guys are a real community there and you want a name for yourselves, which makes sense. And I have just been like slow to support that. So with this drive, I want to make it happen. Let's do it. Awesome, that that's fantastic that's really good I'm super impressed by that and there's other ideas out there too there'll be like I'm

not trying to tilt it towards the floor it's it's a good one but but there's other ideas too so if we hit our first goal for the drive you folks can suggest names and then we'll vote on them and then define it. Asifianados. Asifianados would be great. Asifianados. Yeah, yeah. You're chuckling, but I love it. I'm writing it down. I'm writing, writing, writing, writing, writing.

Great. He pretended to write just now, guys. Like I saw his hand hovering. Like it wasn't touching anything. It's true. I'm gonna write it down later, but yeah. But I definitely lied right now. But yeah, and we are also just bringing in

wonderful guests for this drive. Let's go back to our episode with Justin and Clint. Ooh yeah, this was so fun. And thank you again, happy Max Fun Drive. Thank you guys so much. And thank you again. Happy Max Fundra. Thank you guys so much. And we're back. We have two more takeaways here, starting with takeaway number three.

It's difficult to index all the small bugs caused by Y2K because the world is buggy every day. And apparently, the main example is the Japanese nuclear facilities and power systems. Uh oh, uh oh, that's not what I want to hear. Uh oh. Yeah, like a lot of Y2K bugs might have been indistinguishable from just our systems breaking all the time. Like there's always people fixing errors and just some of them happens on like New Year's Eve and New Year's Day of 99 into 2000. I am vindicated! I am vindicated!

Good job, Dad. Just for the record, the idea that there's some deep computing conspiracy that Y2K did actually put us in some sort of like human zoo is vindicated by the fact that sometimes computers just don't work so good. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. Okay. No, I got it. Now I'm on, I want to clarify, I am on board with this.

Like I 100% agree. Yeah. Plus human zoo, you get treats. So yeah, that's good. I'm so ready to be coddled by robots. You don't even understand. If I get my little treats, I I'm like I'm so there. Guys the Matrix came out in 1999. Okay Mac all right. And there were some subtle there were some subtle like symbolism in the Matrix movies about computers taking over.

Yeah, if you pay attention, eagle-eyed viewers will spot. There's some Easter eggs in that movie about computers taking over. You laugh, but at the end of this recording, I'm gonna make myself an aluminum foil hat. Yeah, sure. Just because. Don't do it during, it'll be really bad mic noise. It's just, oh, it's a mess.

Yeah. Chin foil ASMR. So, yeah, and I'm like the night of Y2K, there were three different issues at Japanese nuclear power plants. Uh-oh. And according to the BBC News, alarms went off at a plant in Onagawa two minutes

after midnight. It turned out to be a malfunction with a device that measures the temperature of seawater around the plant and misindicated something was wrong. At the Shika nuclear power station, the radiation monitoring system reported an error. And then the nuclear plant at Fukushima that years later had a massive disaster. They just had like a minor computer system error where apparently things were being logged but weren't visible on the screen. And all of this kind of sparked a crisis of confidence in Japanese power and utilities. And people started later in January accusing the authorities of covering up Y2K bugs. The authorities'

response was that they only reported the bugs specific to the Y2K systems and the others are not covered up. They're just the normal constant bugs in Japanese power. There's just always bugs in the nuclear power plants. Guys, calm down. It's just always buggy. And then as people investigated this, they found out that a nuclear power plant in the US state of Arkansas and another plant in the country of Spain right around Y2K, they both had issues with security door locks that would not open when people tried to open them and it took hours to fix it. But those also may or may not be Y2K related. That might just be a thing that happens at nuclear plants, you know, just from time to time.

Yeah, it's just, it's normal. It's a normal sort of day-to-day kind of like bugs. Like they've got too many toolbar extensions, you know. Oh yeah, that'll happen. But yeah, I mean, I would assume that nuclear power plants do have more safety measures so that it's not like a computer error could be like, you'd have a lot of steps between a disaster and a computer bug. Please say yes. That's true. Yeah, yeah. And so that's why Y2K didn't cause the movie thing where there's Chernobyl's everywhere. It just, right. Either there was a small thing they didn't need to fix or they were just already fixing things.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you notice that like the dogs around Chernobyl did take the bum pill and like now there's like slightly radioactive bum dogs all around Chernobyl and they're apparently really smart and really nice. But sorry, both smart and nice or? Yeah, they're smart and nice. They're very friendly.

They like people, but they are a little radioactive. That's the only problem. But they're smart. So smart. They're really smart. Little radioactive, like nice. Just a little bit, just a little radioactive, but they're good boys otherwise.

The other apparently constant set of errors that partly got confused for Y2K stuff is in banking. It turns out that banks just misplace money a lot in the digital era. Some of that happens around January 1st, and then it was confusing whether it was a Y2K issue or a regular banking mistake. I see. And a man in Germany shortly after January 1st reported a deposit of about $6 million US dollars worth of German marks. And the list of deposit date was December 30th, 1899. was December 30th, 1899. But we are only somewhat sure that's Y2K stuff. This also just happens with banking and he might've just had his lucky error on January 2nd or 3rd, you know?

Right. Did he get a lot of interest? I don't know. That's how I put Griffin through college. German barks, they just came through. From 1899, yeah. So, yeah, so that's just going on. The last takeaway about this story is also about money. Takeaway number four. The United States prepared for Y2K by printing and then destroying $50 billion of paper currency.

Wow. The US government was concerned about people hoarding currency, and so they temporarily printed $50 billion to cover it. Right. Well, that's just an offshoot from the TP shortage they were waiting for. Yes, exactly. Right. Now they're directly competing with the supply chain for toilet paper. So you know.

Crazy like a fox. Yeah. Yeah. And because the Fed, they were right. People did stockpile money and they also stockpiled precious metals and supplies. And so the Y2K crisis, it was really two crises. people did stockpile money and they also stockpiled precious metals and supplies. The Y2K crisis, it was really two crises. There was like, can organizations fix the computers and can governments and media and

our communities manage people's panic of just expecting all the computers to break? Littered Nimoy comes in being like, we're all about to die just like the fine people of Atlantis. Yeah. Littered. Littered, Littered, Littered. The Federal Reserve, they were doing both things. They were fixing their computers and then they also printed $50 billion in extra paper

money that was just held at banks and vaults. It was not given to the public. I was trying to find information on how much money was in circulation in general. There's not great sources, but there might have been about $600 billion of US money in the world. And so they printed another 50. And if this had gotten out, it would have been hyperinflation and an economic shock, like if somebody had stolen it or used it. And on that money, on that money was the face of Dirk Bindelstaff, King of the Hobos.

I wonder if anyone did take the like bum advice seriously and then they had to kind of tail between their legs, go back home, Bindel lowered, sadly. They show back up at their job. It's like, oh, it's been a few months. Are you sure? Yeah. Maybe the bum dogs had their tails between their legs.

That's true, that's true. I mean, they're smart. They would know to do it, you know? They're smart. They're nice. Look, they're very smart dogs, you guys. And so nice, and so nice. They're really nice.

Nice. Yeah. I also, I like that the bonus show will be about Russia. We'll get there in the bonus show. Hey. Yeah. And the fed, they had to do a really complicated system of like distributing this secret money across the country to be ready for even a localized economic hoarding. Apparently, 50 billion dollars weighs about 18 million pounds, which is over 8 million kilos. Pound sterling or? Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, just weight. Yeah. And so this was like a massive logistical challenge. And then I did the inflation calculator online. $50 billion in 1999 is worth about 90 trillion today because inflation is strong.

Those are certainly numbers, Alex. Those are big numbers that I totally can conceive of and understand. They printed an inconceivable amount of money and then needed to get rid of it so they didn't inflate the dollar and mess with the world economy once it seemed like Y2K was okay. How did they flush it down a lot of toilets? What was the, how did they get rid of it? It always comes back to toilet. It really does.

Are we sure they did destroy it? No, it's all very secret. Has anybody contacted Ethan Hunt about this? I feel like it would be really tempting if you're one of the money destroyers just to take a couple for the vending machine. It kind of makes me hope the government put hobo faces on it or something, like some kind of definite, this is only for the crisis marker. This is bum money, not to spend. Bum money. Bum bum. Yeah.

But yeah, so I love that Y2K is this like, almost conspiracy theory, almost disaster that was also totally fine. And then everybody like really moved on because it was so date specific. Like there's not still Y2K truthers or whatever. It just came and went. And it turned out that man was the Y2K all along. Fascinating.

Yeah, that's so well put. Yeah, we were all on the Y2K. We didn't even notice. We were the Atlanteans all along. Think about it. Ooh, feels good. Folks, that's the main episode for this week, and a huge thank you to Justin McElroy and Clint McElroy. I hope you listen to The Adventure Zone.

It is the best Dungeons and Dragons thing on the internet, which is saying something. And they also have comic books. They also make all sorts of other things. You probably know Justin from My Brother, My Brother and Me, or from Sawbones or other podcasts too. I'm very grateful to their whole family, especially at the beginning of this podcast before we were even on Maximum Fun. Justin and Travis and Griffin all got together for a CIF episode with me, without knowing me, and without really having to, you know? And so they're really great guys and a really great meeting Clint doing this one. I'm just so glad

that we do anything in association with them at all. And I'm glad you're here for this episode and for its outro because the outro has fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, everyone from fringe kooks to mainstream media gave bizarre life advice in the run up to Y2K. Takeaway number two, Y2K did cause many actual bugs worldwide, but with almost no repercussions, and our prep for Y2K might have upgraded world computing systems. Takeaway number three, it's hard to index all the bugs caused by Y2K because the world's

systems are buggy every day. Takeaway number four, the US prepared for Y2K by printing and then destroying $50 billion of paper money. And as you can hear as I do these takeaways, there were numbers and stats really throughout the episode because it's a numerical topic. The new year and the money and the computers and so on. We covered everything from the amount of spy satellites broken by Y2K to the massive video store rental fee charged by Y2K and more. Those are the takeaways.

Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason all of our podcasts exist. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the bizarre Y2K resignation of Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show.

For a library of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund bonus show, for a library of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows, it's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation and also simply has the wisdom to treat themselves to many, many amazing McElroy bonus shows and special shows by being a MaxFun member. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key resources include tons of journalism from immediately after Y2K and also long after

with plenty of perspective. In particular, a Slate.com piece by tech reporter Farhad Manju. Lots of BBC coverage of things long after Y2K and then a lot of up-to-the-minute coverage from the Chicago Tribune, ZDNet.com, CNET.com, Fast Company Magazine, KQED Public Radio in the Bay Area, and more. By the way, the trailer for the Y2K TV movie on NBC and the entirety of this stupid VHS

tape posted by Leonard Nimoy, that's all on YouTube. We will have links to that as well. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy.

Justin and Clint each recorded this on the country of Italy. Justin and Clint each recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee, Hopewell, Adena, and Wasache peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my and Justin and Clint's locations, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm

finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 144, that's about the topic of video game controllers. Fun fact there, the Duck Hunt quote unquote gun is more of a light pen and has a hugely significant role in the entire development of video games. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast,

Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shaven by the BUDDHOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.