Stuff You Should Know - How Buildering Works

Episode Date: October 12, 2017

Up until recently we had no idea buildering was a word. Or that people scaling buildings has been a thing since the turn of the 20th Century. Learn along with us, and don't try it at home. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey everyone, this is Chuck. And as some of you have heard, I have announced that I have a new solo podcast coming out in November called Movie Crush, the show where I interview your favorite people about their favorite movie. And that's along in short of it. It's really cool. I've had a bunch of guests in the studio and just had a nice chat about movie fandom in general and what their favorite movie is and why.

And I need more guests. So if you are a stealthy celebrity listener, if you're an actor or a writer or producer, director, if you're a musician, if you are a book author, I've had all kinds of people in the studio. And that's kind of the point is to hear from neat folks of all walks of life. If you are out there and you want to be on Movie Crush, I would love, love, love to have you. If you're in Atlanta or going through Atlanta with a movie project, that's great.

If not, we have partner studios in LA and New York. And we can work it out if you live in a flyover state even, let's say. So hit me up, just send me an email to moviecrush at howstuffworks.com and put in the subject line, moviecrush guest, and I'll know it's you and I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun, trust me. And here's two recording podcasts together. Thanks. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland, and this is Stuff You Should Know. I'm trying out some new stuff. The two least extreme guys covering yet another extreme sports topic. I'm extreme in my easygoingness. Extremely easygoing. Extremely laid back.

Yeah, I always feel weird when we do, what do we do, base jumping and parkour. Yeah. And I just feel wholly unqualified. It's a great way to start out a show, right? Yeah, it is. Don't listen to a word we say. But no, these things always have the coolest backstories, and there's always a handful of people who just take it to the next level, and there's always underground upstarts.

It's like all of those things. So I find these pretty interesting. I wouldn't want to just focus on these entirely. Yeah. You know, I think we'd both be dissatisfied with our work, but... Excast with Josh and Chuck. Yeah. Oh, actually.

Yeah, let's see. No, I'm disregarding it still. But I like them still. Yeah, I think the history for sure of this is super interesting. Yeah, and if you aren't familiar, we didn't misspell the title of this episode of Builderings, actually a combination of buildings like you walk into, maybe eat lunch in, possibly do some work. Yeah.

You know, go on to Facebook and... Take a tour? Sure, yeah, you can do those in some buildings. Get chased out of the basement by a ghost, there's a lot of things that can happen with a building. So everybody knows what a building is. Then there's also something called bouldering, which is climbing huge, enormous rocks, basically. It's like rock climbing, but it's like a, rather than a mountain or a cliff face or

something like that. It's an actual boulder, like a huge, giant boulder. And I think it's harder than rock climbing, it can be depending on the boulder, I'm sure. But if you put those two things together, you get this new term, this relatively new term called bouldering, and it is basically climbing those buildings that we mentioned before. Yeah, I didn't know this was a term either, honestly. I didn't either.

Because when I saw it, I went, huh? Did you? Yeah. Oh, wow. And then it sucked you into the article and you said, I've got to learn more about this. Oh yeah. And then when I clicked on it, I said, oh, these are just those wackos who climb tall towers illegally, mostly illegally.

You got all that right. It's illegal, almost across the board. The buildings they usually climb are tall, especially the ones that get pressed. And every single person who does this is a wacko. Yeah. And we'll go over this, but a lot of times we'll get arrested and stuff. The same as the tightrope walker, that wacky French guy, what was his name? Oh, man.

Yeah, the guy who walks between the World Trade Center towers in the 70s, man on wire. I think we've gone over this man on wire, great documentary, very bad movie. Was it? Oh, dude. I just don't know what they did to Ron John's eyes. Ron John? What was his name? Not Ron John.

The surf? Don John. The surf that guy? Don John. Don John. Yeah, remember he made a movie about a guy who was addicted to internet porn, but sort of dating Scarlett Johansson? What?

Yeah. Oh, wait, wait. I think he's called... Yes. Don John. Don Juan, wasn't it? No, I think it was John. Okay.

You're thinking of Don Juan DeMarco, which was a great movie. But you're talking about JGL, I didn't know you were talking about a character that's like the guy's not called to any of those things. No, no, no. But he wrote that movie. That was like his movie, his baby. Yeah, that was pretty good. They said, what do you want to do?

You can do anything you want. And he's like, well, I have this one idea. I want to make out with Scarlett Johansson. I liked him in Third Rock from the Sun. I never saw that. It was a surprisingly good sitcom, actually. And it was pretty well-written and well-acted, stellar cast. Well, yeah.

I didn't see anything with What's His Face in it, I'm super into. Yeah. Everybody loves What's His Face. I know who you're talking about. The dad. Sure. What's his face? I'm blanking on everything.

You know, we should tell people we're recording in the morning. That's why my brain is so foggy. I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah, it's going to make a substantial difference. It's going to really drag this one down, I think. We haven't done that in a long time. No. For good reason. It's John Lithgow that you're thinking.

That's right. But I'm also drunk, so hopefully it'll... From the night before, from last... I thought you stunk, stink like gin. So yeah, no. I didn't actually drink a thing last night. Oh, wow. Wow.

Hey. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. For the record, I did not either. Oh, good. We're both teetotaling last night. So yes, bad movie. The only good thing about the Man on Wire movie was some of the shots of the actual walk itself.

I mean, most of that looked really astounding, but man, it was so bad. Well, you know, I think that there's an over-reliance on special effects these days to really move a movie along rather than good old-fashioned plot and writing and dialogue. They're just like, oh, no, no, we're going to have these great shots or these great effects or this thing's going to blow up. Yeah. I mean, that's long been a problem. I mean, it's like what action movies are made of, right?

But it seems to have crept its way into movies all over the spectrum. Yeah. And I think that sounds like what you're talking about. And this is, well, and he did this, he broke the third wall and did a lot of talking to the audience in this ridiculous French accent. And did he really? Yeah, man. It was all just weird, a lot of weird choices.

And I think it's also a case of a documentary that's so good, just stop there. Yeah. You don't need to see it played out fictionally, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's like one of the pinnacles of documentary filmmaking. All right. Well, we killed some time. Yeah.

That was great, Chuck. Way to go. So we're talking about, the guy you were talking about, I can't believe neither one of us can remember the actual man's name. He walked on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. That's not building. No. There are people, there's a guy named Shipwreck Kelly who used to go up on like the top of

like a construction site and like stack chairs and sit on top of them. That's an absolutely insane, not building. Building is strictly climbing up, scaling a building on the outside to preferably get to the top, right? And there's all different ways you can do it. Like you can do it free climbing, which is absolutely, totally and completely insane. Yes. And also, I want to go on record here about this as well.

Do not do this. Do not. I don't care if you're one of the people we're talking about, I'm begging with you to stop doing what you're doing. It's one of the most dangerous things a person can do. You're climbing a building and a lot of buildings are not made to be climbed. Some of them are like, yeah, I mean, that's an obvious building to climb. Others are like, how are you doing this, especially if you're free climbing?

But there's a lot of other implements people can use that will go over as well. But that is building. It's not like Philippe Petit who walked on a wire. Right, right. I'm sorry, I had to look up that name. I'm glad you did. To stop people from screaming in their car. Yeah.

Should we talk about the history? Yeah, let's. Because this was, to me, the most interesting thing about all of this is when I think of building or climbing buildings, I think, well, this has been going on for probably 30, 40 years max. Maybe. About the time that Mountain Dew really turned extreme. That's right.

Not true at all. And I was genuinely shocked to know that people have been climbing buildings in an extreme sports way, they just didn't call it that then, since there have been tall buildings. Like in 1900 is when this started. Which is about the time people started building like genuinely tall buildings. Yeah, it's crazy. There's a guy called the father of modern urban climbing, Joffrey Winthrop Young. And he wrote a book, a small book, called a guide book, if you will, called The Roof

Climbers Guide to Trinity about Trinity College buildings in Cambridge, England. And basically it was like, here's how you do it, mates. Here's what you should climb on campus and here's the best way to go about it. Yeah, and there were even little diagrams that would show you which way to climb. He would reference this one window sill or there's a ledge next to this one drain pipe or the actual drain pipe will work. He really kind of spelled out how you could make your way up to each building. And it was kind of like this cool underground thing to do on Trinity College's campus.

That's right. It's hard to believe to me that this is going on in 1900. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, college students have always been college students, so don't you think? Well, that's true. So, Joffrey Winthrop Young, his name really is kind of fun to say, isn't it? Yes.

He published this as kind of like a little underground smash. From what I understand, the deans of the college were not happy about this and tried to suppress it, right? But then almost 40 years later, another pamphlet or mini book came out and it was written pseudonymously by someone named Whipple Snaith, who turned out to be Noel Simington, another great name. And he published something called The Night Climbers of Cambridge, another university in Cambridge, and basically did the same thing. You could even call it a follow-up.

And he actually, I think coined that term, night climbing, which is still used around that town today to denote climbing up buildings at night, and the whole reason you do it at night is because you don't want to get caught. Yeah. It's crazy that Cambridge was the birth of modern extreme climbing. And here in the United States, however, when it really started happening was when we started building skyscrapers, that is to say the first like 20, 30 years of the 20th century. Yeah.

And there were, it's weird, there seems like there've been a lot of Spider-Man and human flies. Yeah. And I think they maybe should just be a little more original rather than just say, I'm the new Spider-Man. Right. And for God's sake, so they should stop wearing Spider-Man outfits when they do this because that just looks kind of silly.

Sure. And while we're on it, they should stop making Spider-Man movies over and over again. Oh, the new one's so good though. Is it? I haven't seen it. It's totally against the whole thing where it's like, and there's a new guy, but this new one really like kind of captured the comic book thing. Okay.

I'll give it a shot. Yeah. I was pretty taken with it. Okay. So yeah, we start building skyscrapers here in the US and almost out of the gate people are like, I want to climb that. And some people did. And like you were saying, there was one guy who's the human fly, the original human fly,

I think. Yes. And we got that nickname from Grover Cleveland, the president at the time. But this guy's name was Harry H. Gardner. And he was quite a character actually. Yeah. Did you look up pictures of this dude? Uh-huh.

It's crazy. He looks like, I mean, I don't know what I expected. Maybe that he would just look a little different from his peers of the day. Right. But he literally looks like he walked out of an accounting office in New York City and started climbing buildings. Yeah. And basically, it's basically what he did.

And he got really good at it too. Yeah. He got the slick back hair and the glasses and there's one great picture of him. He would usually wear this kind of look like a weird white jumpsuit, which is outfit as the human fly. But there's this one, that one great picture, I don't know if you saw it, where he's hanging off of a building ledge in a full three-piece suit, like doffing his cap. I did see that.

Pretty neat. Yeah. He's got a little bit of panache, you could say. Yes. But yeah, is there anything, okay, no, there is something more unsettling, but something very unsettling is old-timey athletic wear. Yeah. You know?

Uh-huh. And the other thing I thought of that's even more unsettling is old-timey wheelchairs. Oh, yeah. Like the wicker ones. They look neither comfortable nor safe. No, and they're clearly haunted by their past occupants. Yeah, for sure. The haunted wheelchair, that's a good short story.

I think so too, man. So Gardner, one of his first big moves was he climbed Detroit News' 12-story ad building in 1916. And as you'll see with most of these folks, they don't, I mean, they call it night climbing, but aside from the early days, they kind of said, you know what, that's kind of for the birds. Day climbing is where it's at because we kind of want people to see us. Yeah, because, I mean, at the time, people didn't have a lot to do.

Yeah. You know? Like you could sit around and read, and that's great, but people were looking for stuff to do during the day too. So yeah, like you could see daredevils doing crazy stuff in the cities around this time. And one of them was that climb of the Detroit News building. Did you say it was 12 stories? Yeah, 12 stories, and you know, he hit it right at noon when people could leave their

offices at lunch, leave their martinis on the table, and the Detroit News actually covered it, and all the newspapers were always knocked out by these, you know, feats of daring do. And they said, they dared not cheer. Men stood and stared with bulging eyes. Women hugged their babies to their breasts and held their breath. Yeah, it's a lot. It reads easier than it speaks that line. Yes, you're right.

But so this was like a huge deal in Detroit. And so Gardner was like, well, let's do it again. It was pretty easy this time. I lived. Let's let me press my luck another time. Let me cheat death again. So we scheduled another one just a couple days later. But apparently the crowds that turned out were so massive and throwing the area and

just disrupted everything around there that they're like, we can't do this. You can't climb. So they canceled it. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. It is a bummer. But he would not be deterred. He would go on to climb many buildings, including the 16 story empire building in Birmingham, Alabama, which I didn't know Birmingham had buildings at all.

But I know this is like back in the time when any city had a shot at being a great American city. You know, yeah, all you had to do is get a little investment, maybe have some cattle or timber or something and then build some skyscrapers and tried and Birmingham is one of the great American cities, by the way. And then in Vancouver and it seems like a lot of this has happened over the years in Vancouver, the Cove, the 17 story world building there. He climbed as well.

Yes. Yeah. So he's like traveling North America, climbing these buildings is like a public spectacle. The president calls him the human fly. He's feeling pretty great. And then all of a sudden he just drops out of public view. Oh, I thought you were going to say drops off the side of a building. No, he didn't.

No one knows what happened to him. They don't know how he died, where he went or anything like that. But supposedly the best guess is that he was found, he was murdered in Paris at the Eiffel Tower because there was an unidentified body that apparently matched his description that was found beaten to death at the base of the Eiffel Tower in I think 1936 or something like that. Yeah. Imagine a lot of people didn't get beaten to death in Paris either back then.

No, they were taking a break. After the rain to tear, they're like, that really got out of hand. Let's all just be peaceful for a while. Shall we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break too. We'll go chalk up and scale Jerry's desk over there.

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available on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey Chuck. Yeah. So we're back. Yes. I think this reminded me of the going over the Niagara Falls in a barrel episode. Oh, that's right. That was another one.

Um, I feel like we should do an episode on like daredevils in general. You know, we did that two-parter on evil Knievel. We did one of daredevils. Did we on daredevils? I know we did stuntman and cannibal run. I think we did daredevils. Huh. I think this closes the book.

Oh, I was going to say, I think we need to redo some of this stuff. Yeah. Do you remember the one guy who went over the falls and, um, over, yeah, over Niagara Falls in a barrel and lived and then died, I think slipping on an orange peel like years later. Yeah. And a three stooges episode. That's like the greatest worst thing I've ever heard. It's pretty good.

So who else? Gardner leads the way. Apparently he was known for saying, um, like a hundred something men have tried to do what I do and died trying, which is a lie. Really. There are probably some people who did, you know, died emulating him or imitating him, but there were other successful ones too. Successful human flies, early spider men, if you will.

Yeah. Going back again to the 1920s, this is a little out of order sequentially, but a dude named Henry Roland broke his hip, fell only about 35 feet in Iowa climbing the Davis County courthouse. And this was kind of took him out of commission for a while, but he would not be deterred as well. That's the kind of the, the rolling narrative here with these dudes is you can't keep them down.

No. Um, eight years later, he returned, climbed that same courthouse in only 12 minutes, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. And then put his hat on the head of the blind justice statue. I know that's the thing, like this is a time when not wearing a hat was so scandalous that human flies would wear a hat out, out of doors while they were climbing, you know, I just love that.

And then there was a dude that died too, right? Yeah. I think there are a lot of guys that died, but this one was, I think fairly well known and died. HF Young died in 1923. He fell off the Hotel Martinique, which was a nine story drop for him, which will do it. That will, that will kill you. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Although I was on a mosaic science magazine site and they had, I think it was called how to survive a fall or something like that. And it was basically about like on your way down, what to do. Yeah. Oh my God. But not just like what to do. It wasn't just an instructional thing.

It was, it was also like a look at the study of falling and how we fall, which is kind of an understudied thing. But there are some people who are really like taking a hard look at it. And I don't remember the exact gist of it, but they do kind of tell you exactly the best way to improve your chances from a huge fall. And you don't know that now? No, I forgot. So I'm dead meat if I fall.

That's probably the one key takeaway. Well, I think the key takeaway is everybody should go read this article. Oh, okay. It's from mosaic science magazine and it's called, I think like how to survive a fall. Jeez. Yeah. It's a good one though. It's a good read.

So HF Young dies, very sad. And then a couple of more folks died the next year. And then that's when cities started to say, all right, we're not calling it building yet because we're not in a time machine. But these crazy dudes need to knock it off. Yeah. They're like, this is wildly irresponsible for us to allow this and not only allow it, but like assemble the citizens at lunchtime to come watch this thing.

Yeah. You know, for sure. So they did. They started to outlaw and it kind of fell to the wayside. And some of these early guys, like you said, building's not a term yet. So they're called urban climbers. At least they are now. But there's actually a pretty big distinction between urban climbing and building, although

they can very frequently overlap and some people do both. But urban climbing is like that would include climbing up a ladder on a construction crane on the top of a skyscraper as some people do. Oh yeah. And those are, I can't see those videos. I know. It's just too much. Or it could be like climbing up a bridge or something.

But it's, you're using like other things besides just the face of the building, which is, that's kind of like one of the requisites of building is you're not using any of the ladders or anything that's intended to be climbed. You're using the building, the facade of the building itself. Although sometimes that can imitate a ladder, as we'll see here in a minute. But you're right. Nothing extra. Right.

So we jump from, you know, I guess the 1930s or so. Like you said, it tailed off for a long time for good reason. And then finally in the 1970s and 80s, things started to pick back up again, namely in the late 1970s with a man named George Willig. He was a toy maker. So he had a sense of whimsy, I imagine, for the ideal toy company. And he took a PTO day, literally, and said, well, he didn't tell anyone, but he took a PTO day, a little personal in time, to go climb the World Trade Center.

Yep. I love this guy a lot, actually. Yeah. He did it in three and a half hours, and he actually had a rig. He was not a free climber, because that would just be insane, and probably not possible with the World Trade Center, which was mostly glass. But he figured out a way to fit a device over the window washer scaffold, and then it fit. And if you see pictures of this guy doing so, between the World Trade Center, it had

these grooves between the windows, and he probably rigged something of his own making. Yeah. He made it himself. Yeah. That would fit between the channel, between those windows, and apparently after he figured that out, it wasn't too tough. Well, it was like, I think it was still tough, but this implement that he designed was pretty ingenious.

Well, it's that he climbed with relative ease. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Better than free climbing or something like that, for sure. Yeah. He was using implements. But the thing when he pressed down on it, it would slide into these slats that the window

washing machine was supposed to go up and down on, like you were saying. And when he pressed down on it, it would lock into the sides, and when he lifted up on it, it would unlock. So he could just kind of shimmy up like that, right? That's right. He wanted the foresight to bring a little hammer with him, because he was like, you know what? I'll bet that thing is not perfect all the way up.

Yes. And he brought a little hammer with him and needed it many times, so hammer it out to about the shape that he needed it to be. But he made this climb, and a couple of cops, one of them was a specialist in suicides, were lowered down on an actual window washing conveyance and said, you know, they were given the task of talking this guy down, and apparently at some point they were like, oh, you mean to do this. You're just climbing the World Trade Center.

That's all you're doing, huh? Yeah. He said, I would have just walked up and jumped off, dummy. Right, exactly. Like, this seems a little hard for that. But they left him alone until he got to the top, and then of course they arrested him right when he got to the top. But he made it to the top, for sure.

Yeah, and originally, apparently the city was going to find him a big old fat, and this is in 1977, a quarter of a million bucks, which is a lot of money today, but certainly a lot of money back then. But Mayor Beam, I guess, was charmed and taken with the attention it brought maybe to New York City, and said, I'm going to find you a penny per floor, so he paid a fine of $1.10. And I think there was probably a lot of public pressure to leave this guy alone, because he became a celebrity overnight when he did this. Oh, big time.

I mean, he was big time all of a sudden. And he's just this thoughtful, toy-making guy who just decided he wanted to do this and made his own implements, you know, and all of a sudden now he's on like Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and all the late night talk shows. He got work as a stuntman on a bunch of shows, including the $6 million man. Just that one climb like made him famous, still to this day, actually. I think he's one of the, for sure, one of the dudes that people look back on is like very revered in this sport.

Yeah, I agree. You don't hear people doing stuff like this anymore, do you? Am I just not hearing about it? Yeah, you're not hearing about it. It happens. Okay. Well, because we'll get to him, that Allen Robert guy, he's still climbing his little buns off, his little tight climbing buns.

Stupid sexy Flanders. Classic. 1981, there's a dude, and he still climbs as well, I believe, a California man named Dan Goodwin, and he was silly enough to put on a Spider-Man costume, which I guess it feels cool at the time, but it just never looks good. Especially after you've seen the movies and the really cool outfits that they put the Spider-Man in, so the Walmart version. Right, when you're dressed like a kid at Halloween, where you can clearly see what kind of sneakers

you're wearing. Not so cool. Underneath the red spats that are supposed to cover them, but don't. Yeah, if you had the real Hollywood suit, it might look awesome, but no such luck for Dan Goodwin. Plus also, if you're going to go to this kind of trouble and do something this publicly, take an extra month and design and manufacture your own costume. Agreed.

Get a little cape in there or something. Sure. Although that might get in the way. Well, it'd have to be a very lightweight, thin, small cape. Half size maybe. I would be a nude builder. Could you imagine? Now I can.

I'll sit with you for a while. So Dan Goodwin dressed up as Spidey, and he climbed the Sears Tower in Chicago, which is now the Willis Tower. At the time, the Sears Tower. It's still the Sears Tower. Yeah, I agree. And then would go on to climb the John Hancock Tower, also in Chicago. And then he said, that's beans.

I'm going to go climb the Sean Tower in Toronto, because I think it's over 1,800 feet tall. And at the time, it was the world's tallest structure, which made him the top dog for a bit. And he climbed that Sean Tower twice in the same day. What? Yeah. Why? Because it was there, I guess.

I don't know. Maybe somebody was like, that wasn't that big of a deal. He's like, oh yeah. I'll do it again. I'll see you in a couple hours, jerk. And then Goodwin was then followed by the man we were just talking about, a Frenchman or a Frenchman named Alan Robert, or is it Elaine? I never know how to pronounce that when the eye is stuck in there.

I don't know. Elaine? Elaine. Oh, OK. Yeah. That sounds nice. Yeah. And this was in the mid-90s.

And he is a bit of a standalone, not a standalone, but a stand apart at least, because while he occasionally will use some equipment, what he really likes to do is get out there, get some chalk on his hands, and tackle a building. Yeah. This guy is, I mean, in my opinion, the greatest builder who's ever lived. The very least, the riskiest. Or at the very least, the most well-known too. I ran across another guy named Mustang Wanted.

I don't think that's his actual name. Wanted? That's what he goes by. Mustang Wanted. He named himself after an ad on Craigslist. Right, exactly. And he does, from what I can tell, free climbing, building, and he's younger, and just kind of not well-known.

I'm sure he's quite well-known in the building circles, urban climbing circles, but yeah. Elaine Robert, Robert, right? Yeah, there you go. Alan Robert. What am I doing? He, like, he's sponsored. He's that well-known. You want to tell him by who?

I think you should tell him. Well, what's the name of the company? I know it's a hair replacement company. It's like a Nuva Jill, nor Jill. Nor Jill. Or nor Gil. One of them. We're having a lot of trouble with the words that circle in the sky's universe.

Yeah, that's because it's morning. But he, yeah, God bless him. He has some hair loss going on. So he got the sponsorship that made sense for his life. So good for him, right? Good for that guy. And he also wore a Spider-Man outfit. So just stop, dudes, with the Spider-Man.

He doesn't always. He would from time to time, I think. Oh yeah, not always. I think it might be like a tradition now. Maybe an inside joke, I don't know. Or maybe they really are like, this is going to make it feel so much cooler when I build this building. Should we take another break?

I think so. We're going to go get in our Spider-Man costumes and finish the show that way. 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?

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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. Kids, 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.

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sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic. I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you, plus interviews with actors, directors and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies.

I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of Movie Mike's Movie Podcast every Monday on the Nashville Podcast Network available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So we talked about how like these guys can get kind of famous actually and some of them use their platforms for good, like L.A. and Robert. He'll go both ways, right? He's taken tens of thousands of dollars to climb a building to promote a Spider-Man movie or something like that.

Oh, really? That's why he was dressed as Spider-Man. Did he really do that? Uh-huh. Oh, man. But on the other hand, he's well known to like unfurl banners at the top that promote climate change. Oh, okay.

Stuff like that, right? Well, that's cool. Yeah. Like there was one website called 100months.org that he was promoting I think back in the late 90s that basically posited that we had like 100 months before the earth was irreversibly changed by climate change and I don't think that that has panned out as successful that website in changing the world's mind yet. Other people have done the same though, either promotional stuff or banners, sometimes like

you said for good, sometimes for dough because a builder's got to eat after all. Sure. You got to be able to get to the places. If you're traveling the world, you need airplane money. Yeah. Sometimes like you said with the, was it Willig that went on to do some stuntman work? Yeah, he did. Yeah.

That's a good way to get work. Christian Fourkin was the guy in Casino Royale. I just want to apologize to the entire country of France for this episode. They don't listen. No, you're right. That's fine. We're good then. He was the one in Casino Royale who doubled up James Bond and did all the, I think he

did all the parkour and the building in that stunt scene. Yeah, he did. It was pretty neat. Yeah. That was a thrilling scene for sure. Yeah, and we have to talk about the scene in Mission Impossible ghost protocol. Thrilling as well. Apparently, it was for real.

It was, dude. And it really was Tom Cruise doing that stunt. It was. I watched the full scene again today. I watched the behind the scenes of the making of that scene. This is when he went out of the window of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the world's tallest tower at 2,717 feet. And that, I think what you want about Tom Cruise, I'm still sort of in and out with

that guy. But that scene is one of the most thrilling scenes in action movie history to me. And the idea that it was for real. Yeah. I mean, of course, he was fully cabled and tethered. And it was as safe as you can imagine something being. And then they go in and erase all that stuff in post-production. But it's still, he's still up there doing this stuff.

Running down the side of the building, launching himself off the side and swinging around. And it's just, it's amazing. Really, really great action movie scene. It is. A lot of those movies were pretty good, the Mission Impossible ones turned out okay. Yeah. I think all of them were good except for the, I guess it was two, the John Woo one. That's what everybody says.

What was wrong with that? I don't even know if I saw it or not. I don't know. I think he, it just, I don't know, it just wasn't that good. I can't remember if it was like, because you know, besides good action and stuff, you still have to have a good story for Mission Impossible and good, impossible mission stuff. Right. And they didn't have that?

I think I remember it just not having a very good plot and, and good Mission Impossible type stuff. Gotcha. It didn't feel Mission Impossible like to me. I gotcha. But they've, once Brad Bird got back on it, the director, like those, those were good. Yeah. In my opinion.

Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. Like you need to have plot. You need to have a story. Yeah. You need to have a dialogue. Yeah. So if you're going to do this, you should be prepared to be arrested, right?

But don't do it. No, no, that's great. Great point, Chuck. Don't do this. Because if you were going to, you'd be arrested. Like apparently Elaine Robert has been arrested like a hundred times or something like that. Yes. And he's become so infamous.

He never announces publicly what he's going to do. He just shows up at the building apparently in the morning and just starts climbing. Yeah. And people take note. Right. He also apparently is so famous that he was seen hanging around inside maybe on a tour or something of the shard in London and the building's owners got freaked out and they went to court and got a restraining order against them to keep them away from their

building forever. Oh, they're like, I know why you're here. Uh-huh. You're on a scout. You're casing the place. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a liability for property owners. Although some have paid people and invited them to do so to give them press.

Sure. So it's a weird sort of mix of a illegality and like, hey, come do this thing. Yeah. And I mean, for the most part though, if the building owner doesn't want you there, it's because they're covering their bottoms. You know, like they, if you fall off and even worse, if you fall off and you fall onto some other people, that's a big problem for them. I never thought about that.

Yeah. And it's not just you whose life is in jeopardy in that respect, but you're also like draining like public resources because the cops have to keep everybody back a safe distance. It's a selfish sport for sure. It really is. A selfish, dangerous sport. But like there's a lot of stuff you can get in trouble for, the least of which is probably criminal trespassing, right?

Yeah. And the cops don't really know what to do with you. And apparently in Chicago, they tried to blast Spider Dan, what was his last name? Dan Goodwin. Dan Goodwin, off of the building with a fire hose. That's what he says. I saw elsewhere that they tried to get him off the building using various means. He's the one who said that it was with a fire hose.

We're talking about the Chicago police, so that's entirely possible. Yeah. He also claimed that fire commissioner William Blair threatened to kill him if he did this again. Really? Yeah. That's the names from Dan Goodwin, who by the way, there was an article in Wired Magazine about him and Elaine Robert, and it was to put their inspirations in life.

And Elaine Robert's were Zorro and Robin Hood, so he's clearly grounded in reality. And then Goodwin's are Bruce Lee, make sense, Carlos Castanada, Steve Jobs, you ready for the last one, John Lennon, famous extreme sportsman. Wow. Yeah, John Lennon, you can parkour like a gorilla. Yeah. I remember that song, all we were saying is give, building a chance, which was wildly irresponsible too.

Or imagine there's no building, it's easy if you try, I can do this all day. One of the things, well, this is good because it's actually getting the image of you naked building out of my head, so maybe keep it up. Now naked John Lennon is building in your head. So, man, that really threw me off. Because you can picture him naked, because you're both naked. I forgot where I was going, yeah. I can picture like his flank and rump, you know?

Just picture instead of Yoko Ono, him clinging to the side of the building, and now I know Aaron Cooper will be sending us something. Oh yeah, for sure. I know what I was going to say, Dan Goodwin, he was actually, he said he was inspired by the Las Vegas MGM Grand Fire in the early 80s, I think, maybe 1980, which I think we should do an episode on Hotel Fires too. It sounds weird and gruesome, and it is, but there's actually like a lot of crazy history involved in there.

Yeah, there was one in Atlanta in the early days. Yeah, I can't remember what the name of it was back then, but there's, yeah, they revamped that hotel. You can go to it now. Oh, wow. It's right down there by where the Hawks play, Phillips. Yes. So, but I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but yeah, we should do

a Hotel Fires one, okay? Very dark idea. So apparently Goodwin saw that Hotel Fire and saw people were trapped in that the fire department had no way to get to them, and he was already a climber. I just don't think he was a builder, and he apparently went up to the fire chief or the person in charge of fighting his fire. It's like, let me climb up there and put some cables in place, and your guys can go get these people out.

And the guy was like, I'm going to have you arrested if you don't leave right now. Yeah, I mean, his heart was in the right place, but fire chiefs kind of want to just do their thing and not have, sure, citizens offered to put themselves in danger on top of that. Especially if they're dressed as Spider-Man in an ill-fitting child's costume at the time. Hey, chief. Yeah. I got a great idea, but supposedly he went and started climbing the outside of buildings

to kind of prove that this could be done, and that it should be done, and that people could be saved. You could use this kind of thing as a way to assist fire departments during fires, which so far I don't think anyone's ever taken them up on it. No. They don't have builders on the payroll. No. So one final thing I want to mention is that there's this one building, New York Times Building

in 2008 that Elaine Robert climbed, and the cop that was interviewed by the New York Times was silly enough to say, well, look at this thing. You don't even have to be a professional. Like the building looks like a ladder, and someone read that, and then apparently later on that same day, someone who wasn't even an experienced builder from Brooklyn went out and climbed the thing. Successfully. Yeah.

Pretty interesting. Yeah. And there have been unsuccessful climbers. There's one guy who was climbing a building in Houston and fell like 30 stories in 2003, and he was reported by an eyewitness as purposefully jumping, but I don't know. Apparently the builder in community doesn't necessarily buy that. They said, no, thank you. Yeah.

Ryan John Hartley was his name. That's very sad. It is sad. And it also goes to show just how dangerous this is. It is dangerous. Don't do it. Even if you've got the best Tom Cruise suction cups, you can get your hands on, and you've got nice some ropes and some friends who are really trustworthy, just don't do it.

Okay. Agreed. Well, since I said, just don't do it, that's your cue to go look this article up on HowStuffWorks.com, and since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this. I forgot to get a Listener Mail, so I'm going to read the first one on the latest email. It's like Russian roulette with Listener Mail. Yeah, this one's okay.

Not bad. Subject line, sleepy while reading. Dear Josh and Chuck, thanks for all the hard work and humor you put into Stuff You Should Know. Podcast has been a constant companion to me for the last seven years. It taught me about Agent Orange while painting landscapes, Jim Henson while working out at the gym, and bioluminescence while riding the bus in China. Wow, he's got an exciting life.

There's one thing I really do need to know though, why do I always doze off while I'm reading? I like to learn, I enjoy reading, but over the past few years, I struggled to stay conscious when I read. I was hoping you could shed some light on this as you are both avid readers. That is Harrison Gibbs, and he has a PS. I've been enjoying Internet Roundup and Don't Be Dumb on Amazon Prime. My sympathies to Chuck as I know the struggle of beer dandruff is real, and he referenced

it. Tea, sal, shampoo, and beard oil has helped me. That's Harrison Gibbs. I don't know the answer, but that is a for sure thing. If you want to fall asleep at night, put your phone down or your e-reader and read a good old-fashioned book. Yeah, it's like a paper volume. Yeah, it might just do it, but I'm sure there's signs behind it.

Sure. We'll look it up if we don't forget to. Yeah. If we don't fall asleep while we're looking it up. Thanks, Harrison. I appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with us like he did, you can tweet to us at Josh M. Clark or SYSK Podcast.

You can hit up Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or stuff you should know, right? You can send us an email to stuffpodcastathousestuffworks.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. Find 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.