Stuff You Should Know - Evel Knievel Part I

Episode Date: August 9, 2016

Evel Knievel was perhaps the world's most legendary daredevil. He came along at a time when the world ate up this kind of entertainment, partially in hopes that he crashed. And crash he did. A lot. Learn all about this icon in this special two part episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

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Go to squarespace.com and set your website apart. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the one where Chuck and Jerry, who are old, reminisce about evil can evil. We're all the same age now, buddy.

And it's true, we're all in our 40s. But I wasn't suddenly catapulted or imbued with memories of evil can evil. So you don't have any? I had a... I guess not. His star was fading by 78, 79. Let me ask you what the stunt cycle was like.

Was it a ramp where a man on a motorcycle was wedged in and you pulled a rip cord and it shot off? Well, that's what Jerry was just talking about. The version I had of the evil can evil stunt cycle was a little unit that had a ramp that this little motorcycle and doll on the motorcycle action figure would, you could click it into place

and then there was a crank on the side. And you cranked it, cranked it, cranked it, cranked it. And then I think it was a button or something you hit to release it and it would go flying off. Okay, but Jerry, you had the rip cord one. She's misremembering, I think she realizes. I had something with the rip cord. It was like a knock off of it or something.

You had the awful can awful. Nice one, Chuck. Which we'll get to, that's actually a real thing. That was smart. Not a real toy. No, as a real human who lived and died in Butte, Montana. But evil can evil is a big deal for me as a kid for sure. Yeah, I mean, I was right in there

at like six and seven years old when he was doing his biggest stunts on ABC wide world of sports seemingly every weekend. Yeah, no, by the time I was like becoming aware of the world, he had already spent all his money in his bankrupt. Right, look, you were like 17. You're like, whoa, where am I?

What's going on? Why is everybody looking at me? Why am I still wearing a diaper? So part of this inspiration for picking this was I saw the documentary being evil a few weeks ago. The Johnny Knoxville one? Yeah. Good?

It's not bad. Oh, Johnny Knoxville is at home going. Yes. I mean, it wasn't great, but I think the bar for documentaries is higher than it's ever been. Yeah. As far as like entertaining you. You know, they're making another five or six episodes

of making a murder. That's what I heard. It was okay though, it wasn't bad. Yeah. Too many interviews with modern day people. Yeah, that can easily ruin a documentary. Talking about, you know, what he meant to them and stuff. Yeah.

Who cares? Yeah. Go take your memories and go to hell. Oh. No, I agree with you wholeheartedly. But it was good. It was, you know, I watched it on a plane. It was worthwhile.

Oh yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You watched it on a plane and you weren't watching us instead. No, I don't watch us. But we're kind of funny. I know. That's what I'm told.

You're missing out, pal. Internet roundups, the finest thing anywhere. All right. So Evil Caneval was born in October 17th, 1938 in Butte, Montana. Yeah. A rough and tumble mining town. Yeah.

Still to this day, I imagine. But back then? I doubt if it's Gentile. But watching this documentary, he made a very strong point several times about how tough it was. And like the men got in. Like there were fights every day. It was just rampant fighting and misogyny in this town.

I think that's what it says like on the Welcome to Views. And of course, it was the 1930s and 40s. So that kind of stuff was a little more acceptable. I guess, yeah. But he, throughout his career, he was a bit of a misogynistic jerk. Oh yeah, he took that whole mentality and really ran with it.

But I read elsewhere that the movie that was made about him starring George Hamilton, which he supposedly didn't like, is called Evil Caneval. Yeah, there's been several. But this is, I think, the first one. It was in 1971, I think. When he was really just starting to gain his fame. It was written by the guy who wrote Apocalypse Now.

Yeah, John Milius. And he. There's a great documentary about him, by the way. Oh, really? OK. Well, apparently the way that he wrote the movie really created in Evil Caneval's mind the Evil Caneval persona. And so he really adopted that macho bravado tough thing.

So I mean, he was a tough kid before then and a tough dude. But apparently, that really kind of laid the groundwork for him to be like, oh, this is how I speak in public. And yeah, I will go ahead and punch that cameraman's lights out, that kind of thing. He literally adopted it.

Like in the documentary, in the John Milius script, in the movie, there's a lot of long voiceover dialogue from George Hamilton as Evil Caneval. And like, you know, I would look the beast in the eye. And I would knew I would have to make the jump. And then it would cut to Evil Caneval saying these things. Yeah. Like he would literally lifted dialogue from his own movie

to use in the press and stuff. It was very funny. Man. And rumor had it that he didn't, when it came time to like read the script, he was like, you read it to me. Oh, yeah? And he had like George Hamilton read him the entire script. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. He, well, he did drop out of school. Yeah, so he was a kid, 1938, born in Butte. Tuftown had first of two kids. His family, his birth parents, pretty much abandoned him to his paternal grandparents. Yeah.

And kind of just checked out. Said so long, Evil. Yeah. I'm not sure what happened to them, but they did not stick around his parents, which had to have a bad effect on him. Yeah. I have the impression, though, that his grandparents raised them as best they could.

Yeah. He wasn't neglected or anything like that. No. But I think it was one of those situations where you tend to have a lot more free time when you're being raised by your grandparents than by your parents who have a little more energy. Yeah, absolutely. Early on in life, he kind of found he had a knack for this PT Barnum-esque way

of drumming up attention, which would serve him later in life. Yeah. When he was a little paper boy, he would outsell his counterparts by making up headlines, or at the very least, sensationalizing the headlines so he could sell more papers. Elk goes on killing Rampage. And by the way, I got most of my stuff from the Evil Knievel website, his own website.

Yeah, which I believe is operated by his son, Kelly. Yeah. At least he's signed on to it. It's like an official biography. Yeah, and it was a very much more complete biography than what we had on our own website. Oh, yeah. And I also use the New York Times obituary.

Those are always good. Those are good. There's a great New Yorker article I found about the guy. We'll talk about him later. There was a great New Yorker article. I read a good review of the Johnny Knoxville documentary. Yeah. There's some other stuff around there.

Was it written by Johnny Knoxville? What is it? Brilliant. Four stars. So he goes away to the army because he got in a lot of trouble growing up with steel hubcaps and motorcycles and things. Yeah. So he was faced with prison timer army. He chose army and then eventually came back to Butte and married a woman named Linda Bork,

who he stayed married to for many, many, many years. Until I think 1995 or 1997, one of the two. You just watch this documentary, man. You feel so bad for this lady. Oh, I'm sure. Because she's very sweet and you get to see the heartbreak on her face of being married to this man who just flagrantly, flagrantly cheated on her hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times through the years.

So one of the things I saw was that he did that, but he also revered her. So how did they get into the documentary of how he managed to balance that or rationalize that or is that just not the case? Yeah, I don't know, man. The documentary doesn't paint a very pretty picture of the man himself. Well, apparently that would be a very glossy thing to do. Yeah. Because there was a lot of stuff about this guy that's not so hot.

Yeah, for sure. But I mean, you would have thought the guy was single because he's literally like on TV, like leaving the casino drunk with like four women. And he'll yell at the cameraman like, you want to follow us to our room and we're in the honeymoon suite and his wife's at home. Watching this on TV? Yeah, it's terrible. So he went back home to Butte, worked at a mining company for a while.

He apparently then worked on the surface of the mine and got fired when he drove a bulldozer, a wheelie style, into the power lines causing the city to lose power, which this is a perfect example to me of this legend of Iwakenevo, right here. Some of this sounds made up. And you hear about it, even if it's real, especially if it's real. When you hear about it, you're like, what a legend, you know? But imagine like being on that site, watching this happen, having your life just risked by some jackass, and then the entire town of Butte being out of electricity for hours.

Because some guy did a wheelie and an earth mover. If you really put yourself in the position of being there in reality and seeing this unfold. He's a menace. Yeah. In a lot of ways. And he recounts the story with like a whiskey about how great it was. Right. Exactly.

In 1956, he finally got in some real trouble and was sent to a jail, and this is where his nickname came up. Because there in the jail with him was one William Knopfel, and he was actually nicknamed awful Knopfel. Right. That's where I made up that dumb joke. I thought it was a great joke. Well, thanks.

And so apparently the guy, the jailer said, we have awful Knopfel and evil keneval. And later in life, when he would get a sponsorship, he would officially take on the name evil, but he changed it from an I to an E because he didn't want to be associated with being evil. Yeah. He had this really weird duality or dichotomy going on where I guess he wanted to be good, but he really just wasn't necessarily. But he was always like, that's why he wore the white, red, white and blue because he

didn't want to be associated with like Hell's Angels or black leather clothes. One of the things that evil keneval did was to introduce motorcycles to the rest of America in a non Hell's Angels way. Right. Because after World War II, everybody on a motorcycle was a member of a motorcycle gang. Right. And that was what America thought of people on motorcycles. Evil keneval comes along and he's like, no, no, look, you can jump over Greyhound buses

with these things. As long as you're wearing red, white and blue, you're fine. And he was also inspired too with the capes and things by Elvis, of course, and Liberace. Which might seem like an odd inspiration, but he thought Liberace was like the greatest showman on earth. Yeah. Like he and Elvis. Why not?

And when you saw his private life, he lived like Elvis, very lavish, spender, not smart with money. Yeah. He said that there's nothing, no matter how expensive it is, that he's not going to have two of. Yeah. He was one of those. Like, you know, I had two yachts, had two planes.

Yeah. He said, I've owned every diamond, I've slept with every kind of woman I wanted to. Yeah. Apparently he had a yacht that you could lay in the helicopter on. It had a helipad. Could it land two? One on top of the other. The bottom one had to be turned off at the time though, or else it'd be bad.

Yeah. That would be bad. But he was a heck of an athlete as a youngster. He was a really good hockey player. He was a champion ski jumper. He actually played, and this is an amazing story. He played amateur hockey, or I guess semi pro hockey, and with that PT Barnum quality, he actually cooked up a real exhibition match with the Czechoslovakian national hockey team

in 1960. Yeah. He somehow cooked this event up to have them come to Montana to play them. Right. And it worked. And the Czech Olympic hockey team came and played the Butte Bombers. That's amazing. I didn't see who won.

I'm sure that they would say the Bombers won. Yeah, they didn't. So I'm just assuming the Czechs just mopped the floor with the Butte Bombers. They did. Here's another example of like, what a scam, what a legend. Yeah. Whereas if you put yourself in the real situation, you're like, what? Yeah.

Take it away, Chuck. Well, after the match, well, he gets kicked out of the match conveniently in the third period and disappears from the venue. And then afterward, the Czech team went to the box office, and they're like, all right, where's our money from the sales of the receipts, the tickets, because we were promised a certain amount, and they're like, there is no money. It's vanished. It's stolen.

Someone stole it. Who could it have been? I don't know. Here's the thing, if he, that's not good, right? But if he went back and was like, hey, fellow hardworking Butte Bombers, here's your cut. Exactly your equal percentage of the proceeds, the Czech team's going to be taken care of by the International Olympic Committee, which is what happened. We can really use this cash.

If he did that, maybe there's like a Robin Hood thing going on. If he kept it all to himself, come on. That's just like theft, the burglary. And it doesn't explicitly say that he's the one who took it either. It's like this hint. All right, let's take a break and we'll get more into Evil Can Evil after this. On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

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All right, Chuck, and I don't mean to be knocking your childhood hero. Well, no, he's not by Knoxville. And, you know, I never looked up to him like, I want to be just like him one day. I think a lot of kids did though. Like I jumped my bike and stuff and played with a toy, but, um, did you ever hurt yourself? Never an injury from a bike jump. I mean, I got hurt. I got stitches a lot growing up and never broke bones.

Right. I was always getting cut. So he inspired you, you didn't idolize him. No, exactly. Okay. So apparently there was a paper published in 1976 in the journal Pediatrics. This is from, I think, that New Yorker article where these doctors created a term called the evil Knievel syndrome where there is this outbreak of ER visits by young boys who were

injuring themselves across America. And it was like happening with enough frequency that these doctors were like warning parents about this. Yeah. They were watching this guy and then jumping their bikes and breaking their arms. Yeah. And it wasn't just like, I remember the incentive to jump higher and longer because of him. I will say that.

I got you. Like, oh, here's a bike jump, but like let's make it two feet higher and let's stretch it out and then let's put something in between. Like your friends are going to lay down on the ground and you're going to jump over them. Like it definitely brought a different element to play. Gotcha. Yeah. So that can verify that.

I got you. But I never got injured. And maybe I should have my friends hold a ring of fire. Well, I told you in that other show that I used to light the ring of fire and jump the stunt cycle through it. Awesome. So, all right. Now we're in the 1960s.

He is, the first motorcycle action he gets into officially was a motorcycle racing circuit. So he had race bikes, get in wrecks, and you'll see this over and over and over. He would crash a lot. Yeah. One of the things about Evil Knievel and what he was doing is he wasn't very good at it. Well, whether he made it or not, it didn't matter. Yeah. He still got paid and he still got the publicity and more so if he, if he crashed, right?

He was well aware that if he did crash, it would draw more people out to the next one. Yeah. Because I think he said people didn't come to see him die. They came to see him defy death. So he was never all like, you just want to see me die, you pack of jackals. It was, you know, he kind of got that people were like, yeah, maybe this guy's not going to make it and I don't want to miss that. But I do want him to make it.

But if he doesn't, I still want to see. Well. I want to see his head come clean off. And here was the thing too by watching this doc. He went, he didn't study the physics or was not even advised on the physics of these jumps. Wow. He made so much ramp area, this much speed in order to reach this kind of height and this much length.

He would just say like, he would just eyeball it and be like, I'm just going to go fast as I can with whatever space I have. That's fascinating. And he knew going into a lot of these jumps that he wasn't likely to make it. Like he wasn't like, oh yeah, I've got this one. But his one, one way he was a very standup guy was he always did it. Well, that was one of his things was that he said that keeping your word was extremely important.

Yeah. He was, he was in that way. That's what he said to kids. Yeah. He didn't back out of a jump. Although again, dichotomously, he was famous for not paying his bills. Oh yeah, exactly. Dichotomous is right.

So he's racing motorcycles at this point. He's crashing all over the place. He eventually gets a job. He kind of had a bunch of little odd jobs of the year selling insurance. Well, that one seemed to come really close to being a career for him. Yeah. He was good at it. Yeah.

He was very good at it and they wouldn't promote him. So he quit. But before then, he really got good at selling insurance. Yeah. And supposedly he wanted to become vice president after three months on the job. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Wow. So he thought a lot of himself. Yeah. To say the least. He supposedly sold 271 policies in one day to mental patients at an institution. And then there's that. Eventually he would open a, he would move to Washington State, Moose's Lake, I'm sorry, Moose's Lake.

I like Moose's Lake better. Sure. And open a Honda dealership, Honda Motorcycle dealership, which was a bit of a tough sell at the time. Motorcycles were not, and just regular motorcycles, like you said, weren't all the rage. No, but especially not Japanese ones. No. A couple of decades after World War II.

Absolutely. So he started thinking of ways to draw people in. Well, he offered a $100 discount to anybody who could beat him in arm wrestling. Yeah. But that was implied that you had to buy the motorcycle, but you get a hundred bucks off. Yeah. There's something about these dudes, like the PT Barnums, the Harry Houdini's. The Sarah the Barracuda's husband, the Sarah Palin's husband.

Sarah Palin's husband. Yeah. Remember, he was like, they called him the first dude of Alaska. Oh, really? He was like, race snowmobiles, dude donuts in like the town square and stuff. Yeah. That guy then. Yeah.

Oh, he was very much in this vein. Oh, yeah. Although he wasn't a felt promoter. He was just a dude. Oh, gotcha. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, he wasn't selling a lot of Honda bikes, so he would offer to arm wrestle for money

and he'd start to do tricks, like to do wheelies in the parking lot and ride, you know, the old trick where you ride through the firewall, you know, they'd set like a wooden wall on fire. Oh, yeah, yeah. You'd bust through it on your motorcycle. Right, right, yeah. Oh, the firewall. Yeah.

What do you think I said? Firewall. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. So, sort of minor motorcycle stunts are going on at this point in his career. Well, and this came out of meeting a guy named Jim Pomeroy, who raced motorcycles. Yeah. And he worked at Jim Pomeroy's brother's, I think dealership or shop and he learned

a lot of stuff from that guy. That was huge. Yeah. And then prior to that, he had worked for a dude named W. Clement Stone at the insurance company that he worked for and W. Clement Stone co-authored a book called Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. It was a self-help book. And I guess Evil Can Evil picked it up and read it.

And that really helped form another vital part of his personality, which is, you know, like you get out there and you do it and like, whether you want to or not, hard work will help you persevere and just that whole kind of like, rah, rah, all America can do spirit that he just basically personified, apparently it came from that. I'm surprised he was a good candidate for Scientology. You know? Here, I want you to read this book called Dianetics. So the other thing he was inspired by as a kid that he hearkened back to later in his

life was going to a stunt show from a guy named Joey Chitwood. And he was a motorcycle daredevil and little evil, little Robert Can Evil at the time. Well, he was a car, car driver. Oh, he wasn't a motorcycle. No, that was Evil Can Evil's big innovation. He was like, I'm going to do this on motorcycles. Yeah. Because it's even more dangerous.

But he was inspired as a little kid to do something like this. And eventually he said, you know what, I'm going to cook up my own show. I'm going to be the promoter, I'm going to be the marketer. Write the press release. I'm going to be the MC. Sell the tickets. Sell the tickets. Yeah.

He did everything. He did. It was just pretty impressive. Yeah. He was a tenacious guy. He did not fall into his money by accident. Right. I'm going to single-handedly rob the box office.

I bet you how he robbed the box office is basically going up and saying, hey, Jeannie, just go ahead and give me all the money. Yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah, of course. This is your show. Sure. I'll call you later. Yeah.

Exactly. All right. Where are we here? Oh, so he's at his first show that he did everything for, and I can't remember where it was. This is where he jumped the rattlesnakes in the mountain lion. Yeah. So he got himself a bunch of rattlesnakes, put him in a box, tied up two mountain lions

around the box, and then put a ramp on either side of this whole setup and jumped it. And apparently almost made it, but the back wheel of his bike knocked the box over, and I guess the rattlesnakes all escaped toward the crowd. Is that, that sounds like a bit of a stretch to probably how it really happened. Uh-huh. That's just a guess though. Yeah. But I guess the allure there was, kids showed up literally thinking, he might crash and

be descended upon by lions and snakes right in front of our eyes. Can I please go mom and dad? Because you know what snakes would do if a motorcycle crashed by him, they would say, go get him. Right. That way. They wouldn't slither off in fear for their life. Right.

They'd go after it. They'd be like, now's our chance. Now's our chance to take this guy out. So he was putting on more and more of these solo shows, and he realized he needed a sponsor if he wanted to really kind of kick it up a notch. Yeah, because he needed help. Yeah. He needed to not have to write all the press releases himself.

Sure. So he could hire folks. He got a sponsor named Bob Blair, who owned ZDS Motors, and he kept them flush with motorcycles and cash, and he started his own stunt show, and this is where he finally changed his name. Originally, it was called, I think, Bobby Keneval, and his motorcycle Daredevil's, and then the guy, the sponsor said, no, everyone knows he was evil, Keneval, call yourself evil, Keneval.

He said, all right, but let's spell it with an E, because I don't, you know, everyone knows I'm a good guy. I'm a role model. Yeah. So then in 1966, he debuts that show in Indio, California, and it was a big success. Crash through firewalls. It was a success, but he also was injured, right? Sure.

Well, this one was when he tried to stand there on the ground. This was a big trick he did, and he would leap up into the air, spread eagle, and a motorcycle would drive between his legs. Okay, so the one in Indio, California went without a hitch. It was the one a couple weeks later in Barstow where that didn't go so well, that trick. No, and you can see this footage. Oh, it's out there? Oh, yeah.

I didn't see that one. Yeah, yeah. The motorcycle helmet of the driver hits him square in the crotch, and he flips up 15 feet in the air and lands on the ground, and he's not wearing a helmet and pads on this, because he's on the ground. Oh, I would. He's on the motorcycle? Yeah, so it did not go well, to say the least.

Yeah, he went into the hospital for a couple of weeks, but when he came out, he went right back and finished the show like a month later. And that became a hallmark. If he couldn't finish the show then, he would come back to the same town and complete the jump that he crashed. And the crowd wouldn't be allowed to leave the Coliseum until he came back a month later. We've been living here for four weeks. It gave pretty gamey in those places.

So then he decided to do his own solo performances. The Daredevil show broke apart, and he said, I don't need those guys anyway, and started doing his solo shows, and in 1966 in Montana, Missoula, he kind of had his first big car jump, where he jumped 12 cars in a cargo van, and he crashed that one as well. He crashed a lot. He did crash a lot. I think I saw that he landed as often as crashed, but from going over like his stunts, it seems like he crashed more than he landed.

And he would usually crash upon a semi-successful land. Like he would hit the ground, and for a second you think, he made it. But keep in mind, he was jumping a 300-pound street cycle, like they modified it some over the years, and he would eventually end up with the Harley XR750 as his main bike. But these were not the bikes that they used to jump in the X games. Oh, yeah. Not light. Not close.

Yeah. Like the things they use today are built exactly for that. Right. And did you see the world record jump, the current one? No. Dude, it's nuts. How far does the guy go? He jumped a football field.

Oh, wow. I don't remember how many feet it ended up being exactly, but it looks like it's the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen, how far this guy jumps, and how smooth it all went. Like the takeoff, the approach, the landing, it was all just like butter. Was it Tony Hawk who did it? I think it was. But you watched this guy's jump today, and how just flawless and beautiful and graceful

it is. And then watch. What's an evil Knievel's jump? And it's funny by comparison, because he was clearly a skilled motorcycle rider. I'm not saying that. Well, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, he could ride a motorcycle standing on it, doing all sorts of cool tricks.

But yeah, the 300 pounds is a definite handicap in jumping cars and things and buses. Well, yeah. And when you look at the footage compared to today, what your immediate thought is, this guy had no idea what he was doing, you know, and he didn't. He wasn't studying the science of it. So he started, his whole thing was when he would come back to a town, the same town, to get people to come, he would just add another car or two, just make it bigger. People wanted to see longer, farther jumps or a different kind of car.

Like in Yakima, Washington, he once jumped or tried to jump a number of Pepsi trucks. I think like 12 or 15 Pepsi trucks didn't make it. But that's unusual. Pepsi trucks. Who's ever tried that before? Probably got money from Pepsi. It was sponsored by Pepsi or Graham Buses. He jumped though.

So he would or stacked cars. I think he might still hold the record for the number of stacked, crushed cars. Because no one does that anymore. He jumped on a Harley, specifically a Harley, which I think probably ties in. I didn't understand it before until you said that. That probably ties into that. The record is on a Harley because you have to be nuts to do that these days. There is a guy though.

You have to be evil. Well, there's a dude now that's trying to recreate some of his jumps using that same bike. Oh, really? Yeah. Is his name Eddie Braun? I don't know. I didn't catch his name.

There's a dude who's a stuntman, a pretty well-known stuntman named Eddie Braun or Brown. I'm not sure. He's recreating the Snake River jump this September. Oh, I saw that in the news. Like it was in the news yesterday. Yeah. Crazy. All right, let's take a break.

Evil Caneval, Star is Rising. My eyes are getting heavy. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh.

You know, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, Evil Knievel in 67, he'd started to make a name for himself.

He'd been on the Joey Bishop show. And he was going to see a heavyweight fight in Vegas. And while he was there, he noticed the fountains in front of Caesar's palace. And he was like, I think I should jump those. Yeah, they spoke to him apparently. They'd be a fine thing to jump. And so he started to try and his started risen, but he wasn't nearly as famous as he would be in the next few years.

So he couldn't immediately get in touch with the president of Caesars, right, which he needed to because you got to get permission for that kind of thing or sponsorship or money or something. Yeah. So he needed Caesar's, Caesar's CEO, I think Jay Sarno is his name. He needed his blessing or his help with it. And so to do that, get this, he decides he's going to jump Caesars in November. After just two months, he's got the whole thing set up and is doing the jump.

Yeah. But he had New Year's Eve 1967 is what happened. He had to hound the guy though to get him to do it and he actually kind of duped him a little bit. Yeah. He made up, he made a series of calls from as different people. Sometimes he was a lawyer calling Sarno. Sometimes he was an executive from ABC TV.

Sometimes he was from Sports Illustrated. Yeah. Asking like, is this jump going to happen? Yeah. And he would like, he would take care to mispronounce evil Knievel's name, his own name. Very smart. And like he didn't, it wasn't him because what man would mispronounce his own name. And so I guess Sarno was like, I don't know who this guy is, but everyone's calling me

all of a sudden. Right. They all sound similar, but they all pronounce his name differently, so it couldn't be him. And it worked. And I think he'd already been on ABC's Wild World of Sports before, right? Yeah. And so he went to them and said, hey dudes, you guys want this. And they said, but film it.

And if it's awesome, maybe we'll buy it from you. And it was awesome. Yeah. It was very awesome. He hired his own film crew to the filmmaker, John Derrick, Bo Derrick's later husband. Okay. At the time he was married to Linda Evans. From dynasty?

From dynasty. Who actually filmed this. Yeah. She, the very famous shot of the crash was her camera supposedly. Yeah. She was the operator. The lady from dynasty. So he privately hired people to film it.

It was the very, he made it over the fountain, it was a beautiful jump, hit the ramp and he hit it with such force that his hands were just ripped off of the handlebars. And he looked like super Dave Osborn going over the handlebars and he just looked like a straw dummy flopping around on the ground. And it was, it was a magnificent crash. It really is. It's tough to watch, but I think magnificent is the right word. Yeah.

Spectacular crash. Um, he went back to ABC and they were like, oh, we definitely want this footage. And he said, well, it's a lot more expensive now, so it kind of worked out for him. We needed foresight. So Chuck, that when ABC buys this and puts it on wide, wide world of sports, Evil Knievel star is made. Yes. Right.

Yep. Legit star. And that's it. That's the end of Evil Knievel. That's the end of Evil Knievel part one. Oh yeah. We're going to do it. Yeah.

This story is so robust that we're going to have to split it up. Okay. Into two parts. And, uh, but we'll do a regular listener mail and sign off. Right? Yeah. It's, um, if you want to know more of Evil Knievel, just you wait for part two. Agreed.

And in the meantime, while you're waiting, uh, it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm going to call this, oh, interestingly, it's about ad breaks. Hey guys. For the show, you guys are the dope show for sure. Right. Uh, I am already a researcher by trade, but your amazing podcast makes me the annoyance of all my friends because I suddenly seem to know about something, uh, from everything from poop to nuclear bombs to Barbie.

But I'm writing in because I've noticed, uh, that when you, Chuck, prompt a commercial break, he always poses as a question to you, Josh, uh, like, Josh, you want to take a break? Uh, Josh always so willingly complies, do you ever think he'll say no? Have you ever said no, Josh? Has there ever been a time where you're on such a roll and Chuck, uh, asks, uh, and you just want to say no in defiance? I'm going to go and let you answer that. Uh, sometimes I will actually suggest an ad break and Chuck will say, no, let's finish

this one part and I'll say, oh, okay. That gets edited out though. Right. That's what she doesn't get. Uh, likewise, Chuck, have you ever worried that Josh will deny your request for a commercial break in a coup style? Uh, I don't know, but every time Chuck says, should we take a break? I just sit on the edge of my seat waiting to see if Josh pulls a fast one on us.

Uh, anyway, you guys are great. Keep on being you eagerly awaiting the uprising. All right. Ash Hill. We'll keep an eye out for it then. Maybe we just will do that. I will do that. All right.

Yeah. I'm sick of getting kicked around with the ad break thing. Great. Uh, thank you very much for that email. We appreciate you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on, uh, Instagram, also at syskpodcast, you can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever

have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.