Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Zarn Elizabeth, What up, Clyde?
How you doing?
I'm doing pretty well? All right, yeah, glad to be back by your side. How you doing?
I am so good? Thank you, sir. I look all right, you look great. Yeah. I just want to make sure Dave you good today.
I'm good.
All right? Good. Listen, listen, fella. You know it's ridiculous.
I do, yes, I totally do. I Oh my god, do I know? Okay, there was a drink called the American. Okay, you ever heard of this?
I don't know.
It was a drink that was the favorite drink of Andre the Giant.
Okay.
Carrie always once told uh Vanity Fair about this, and he said the quote, the famed wrestler preferred something stiffer, specifically the American. What is the American, you asked, Elizabeth.
I'm scared.
It was forty ounces of various liquors poured into a picture.
Forty ounces forty ounces to freedom ride.
There, Yes, and apparently he would just chug these, right, But that's not all. He also was known to drink. So all of his wrestling buddies, they all have drink like these crazy stories that I'm drinking hard liquer, brown liquor. Here's another one for you. Andre the Giant, right, he's gonna go on a bus ride and in Japan he's like on a wrestling tour. Now, Hulk Hogan tells this story.
Oh boy, I went down to this little.
Karaoke bar right down the street from the hotel, and I bought a case of pooy Fuse wine, twelve bottles. Brother, this very powerful, powerful, strong white French wine. All of a sudden, we left the hotel about eight in the morning for an eight hour bus ride. About three hours later, he shakes the seat. He says, buss bus and he pitched up. Three hours on the bus, he drank twelve bottles of wine.
Twelve bottles Elizabeth.
Twelve bottles, brother, dude, do you know how much liquor that? Yeah, but like, stop back up for a second. These big wrestler men went and bought white wine.
Poyus wine. I like twelve POIFU say.
He's like givity buttery shard. No, I'll take the.
French stuff, brother. So he also at the Tampa Airport, he apparently drank one hundred and eight twelve ounce beers another Hulk Colgan.
No, that's not true.
Holgan said he sat down and watched him drink and he counted them.
His do rags too tight, there's more than eight.
Yes, there's way more. He wants drink. No gallungs, Elizabeth. I'm telling you the the the numbers. Look up Andre the giants drinking, and your eyes will fall exaggeration. Yes, well there you go.
That's ridiculous, ridiculous. There's just no way. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Signal jacking again? Yeah, this is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, ice and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Damn.
Do you remember when I told you about the Max Headroom broadcast interruption?
Yes, of course you remember that, Yeah, totally. I was here, you were there.
What was your third favorite part?
Oh? Probably the impressions that you did.
Sure when I told you that story. I also told you about Captain Midnight.
Yeah you did.
And that's the guy that was protesting the HBO rate increase.
Yes, yeah, he ran that.
I ran that satellite place in Central Florida.
Central Florida.
So I told you about the whole concept of broadcast interruption.
It's cool, it's cool, totally.
Legal, totally cool, totally illegal. When someone hijacks a broadcast signal, radio television stations, cable TV, broadcast feeds, satellite.
Signals, signal piracy, one might call it.
Yeah, it's without permission, no license. And this goes from like local TV and radio all the way up to cable and national tip top zaren it goes all the way to the top. So radio stations they get hit more often than TV stations because it's easier to do. And while it seems like it would be harder to hijack a digital signal than like the old analog, there is such a thing as cyber attacks. Zerin think of that.
I think I've heard about those.
No one is safe there and the hackers.
They're attacking Elizabeth, the cybers.
You know who might be safe for like streaming services, Yes, but maybe you can hack that. Hackers can do anything.
And oh yeah, I believe in the hackers and the robots, so do I.
The nanobots and the nanobot hackers in my bloodstream. It's pretty much a victimless crime. This whole signal signal jacking, but a crime, nonetheless, Flower nonetheless. Of course, Ginsburg would say, I told you about two before. I got a bud more for you. We're revisiting, going back to the well and bring it all back there it is. Let's start with some spicy stuff like spicy.
I'm like Doune over here.
I love the spice the Playboy channel.
Okay, yeah, I'm starting out slice.
It was Sunday, September sixth, nineteen eighty seven. Ah, yes, folks were sitting down to watch a movie called Three Daughters airing on the Playboy channel. Lord, let me read you this, SNOPSI.
Please, please, do you want me to read it to you?
Three sisters are budding sexually.
Oh my god, they got budding into the act quickly.
Michelle finds love with her fiance, Jennifer falls for her piano instructor, and Heather invites her tennis instructor her best friend over to explore lesbian love.
Oh I miss that angle? How could I miss that?
All This romance rekindles their parents' marriage.
I smell.
It was written and directed by a woman named Candida Royale.
That's a loveliness and.
According to IMDb. She was also known for her role as protester in the film stud Hunters. This all sounds so wholesome to you wrote for Playboy.
You know about this, I did write for I was for years hired by the smut puddler. It were, I was the smut peddler. I guess people.
They settled in to watch Three Daughters, and then suddenly the screen went from my alma mater. The screen went blank in the middle of Three Daughters. Wait, what's going to happen with the teacher?
If the parents will really rekindle their.
Lives, she's going to explore lesbian love like it's like a new country.
She's got her passport. Yes, let the girl in.
Then text appeared, Thus saith the Lord, thy God, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, repent. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. You know we got it's a little bit of the Exodus, a little bit of Matthew a little after So that's one way to take the wind out of the viewer's sale.
But the Old Testament really a sexy book. I mean there's a lot of.
There's a lot there really is. I think this is hilarious. Obviously I'm finding this hilarious. But the FCC did not. Oh right, they thought they thought it was a cry. I know. I just think about like some of the people watching this would have some sort of like Christian guilt for watching this smut.
I put a high percentage, and.
Like watching the marriage, gimmy kindled yes, and then I have like a Bible message come up, just like, oh my God, the complexes that were born. Okay, So anyway, since the message was religious in nature, the FCC immediately looked at religious broadcasters. Oh and that led them to the Christian Broadcasting Network.
That was actually a good hunch on their part.
Uh huh. They had motive means opportunity. And it turns out that jamming the signal left trace technical clues.
Oh yeah, of course those.
Clues showed up. It showed up is on the VHS recording made at the Playboy channel's uplink during the broadcast. So apparently they were like, three daughters, looks really good, let's tape this while we're playing so they can take it home.
Recording their own content.
The VCR is flashing twelve. They're just like, I'll see this later. I want to know what happens with the piano teacher. I love the work of Candida.
Royal, one of like my favorite, so a real.
Basically, it left a fingerprint on the video and then there were fingerprints on the video case because this allowed the investigators to I d the brand of transmitter and the character generator video. Yes, yes, it was like the metadatas we'd say. Now, so they had CBN dead to rights. They're like, it's the Christians. And who was the uplink engineer at the CBN offices in Virginia Beach, Virginia when the hijacking went down. No fellow by the name of
Thomas Haney, Tommy Haney. So CBN said that there were no witnesses and the evidence was flimsy at best. And then they had this investigation and experts on each side tried to recreate the incident with CBN's equipment.
It again.
They're like, put in three daughters, do it again. So apparently neither side was successful in so they just had to keep watching the movie over, try.
The text generator again, turn it on, turn it off.
But a CBN spokesman named Dino McCann, he said there was just not enough power for Haney to jam Playboy's signal. He is like, they are but large goliath, Playboy, and we are David, a small mustard seed. And but then like the expert witnesses, it went to trial, and the expert witnesses were like, no, that's so not true. He's no, they have the power more than just the power of the Lord.
They can do this, They can push a signal.
And so, after initially being deadlocked not dreadlocked, the jury found Hany guilty on two of six counts against him. He was acquitted of similar charges against him for interfering with American Ecstasy channel and that has three x'es e x xtasy. It was like one of the real like that's got to be some gnarly.
Past Playboy on the dial.
Yeah, and it's got to be like the oh dear, yes, goodness, he went after American Ecstasy and they were like, you know, they were too powerful. Who knows whatever he gets acquitted of those The recording of the hijacking for American Ecstasy was so low that it couldn't be used in court.
The recording apparently they.
Were recording it too. They were playing six Daughters.
Anythink the same tape over and over again. Got so bad.
The quality of the tape was bad, and it probably also refers to the subject matter. Oh yeah, I got so. Haney got three years of probation, one thousand dollars fine, and one hundred and fifty hours of community service. He was the first person convicted under a new federal law that made it satellite hacking a felony. Following the Captain Midnight incidents changed set. There was more porno interruption the
next year, although this one was the reverse. Okay, so it was October fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, during the second inning of Game one of the nineteen eighty eight World Series. So you know the game, Yes, Oakland A's at Los Angeles Dodgers. You know what happened. I dout my man Dennis secretly, don't you dare? He's on the mound, and that son of a piece Kirk Gibson can shit a walk off home run won the game.
People's hero.
Just thinking about it makes me mad. I could be pumping Mike Gibson was injured. Gibson was injured, or so they'd have us believe, and somehow he managed to get a hit offf ck which is like impossible.
You know, he's a classic for that, but he did with the Tigers.
He hobbles around the bases. He's pumping his fists like a legit.
I got to do it.
La crowd goes wild. I'm going wild, get it, I get it. It was an amazing and then it felt incredible if you're on that side. Kidding me, here's a fun Kirk Gibson fact.
Oh yes.
He married his wife Joanne in nineteen eighty five, and the film Three Sisters played at the reception in a double ceremony where Tiger's pitcher Dave Rozima married Joanne's sister Sandy.
Are they twin sisters?
I don't know, but they had a baseball double weddings.
Family just wanted to save money. They're like, let's good, get them together.
Well no, they marry them off to ball players.
Yeah, exactly. At the same time, they're like, okay.
Cool, pretty cool, pretty neat. So it's the first game of the eighty eight World Series Dodgers and A's. The pain has dulled for me about this a little bit because now the A's are dead to me.
Oh that's right.
Yeah, you've been really freed you're moving to Vegas thing, but first like going to a minor league park and Sacramento if they even make it, the team disrespecting the fans and baseball rit large has killed it for me.
With gap money too.
I feel like I could do a whole episode about the criminal greed and ineptitude of A's owner John Fisher.
I think you could.
I won't. I'm not going to give him the oxygen. I just give up anyway. Nineteen eighty eight, the NBC affiliate WMGT in Macon, Georgia, broadcasting the game. Suddenly the feed was replaced with a ten second clip of black and white porn Ooh. People understandably were outraged, not as outraged as when Gibson gimped around the bases, but outraged.
To be sure, wrong scoring, wrong scoring.
So the station's manager released the statement explaining that the broadcast intrusion was an accident and in no way deliberate. Still, he said the station was treating it as a serious matter.
Sure.
A three day investigation determined that the most likely cause was that the technician accidentally flipped the wrong switch on a master control panel.
So he's in there working and watching something else.
Well though, they said that the NBC broadcast got switched from the KU band World series carrying signal over to the C band X rated material carrying satellite signal. Sure, he basically flipped the porn switch.
Okay, do they have that in an NBC station a large dial?
Why? There are other theories that like the technician was watching porn on a tape and he accidentally switched the.
Broadcast hit the fader.
Basically, yeah, it could have been a prankster, or maybe it was a pro porn organization responding to the attack on Playo station. That's my theory. Yeah, the porn defenders were like, you came at Playboy, watched this, the station was like, no accidental signal switch. They stuck with that. They fired the technician. Now some more porn for you may second. Two thousand and seven, Comcast customers in linn Croft,
New Jersey, they had their feed hacked. Someone replaced the show Handy Manny, which the porn that's on Playhouse Disney, which like, you're like Playboy plan Playhouse Disney Handy Handy Manny, which like, oh I'm sorry with hardcore porn, and which was Mandy Handy Manny handy uh so. Comcast said that it was investigating the event, it wouldn't announce the findings to the public. But then they got hit again, this time in Tucson, Arizona, home of the Sonora and hot Dog.
Oh yeah, so someone there also like dogs. He replaced NBC affiliate kvoas signal with really graphic footage from a pornographic movie, Wild Cherries five.
Oh wow, that's a classic Wild Cherry's five. Nobody thought it has Wild Cherry's four. If may you do anything else with the story? They're like, what else is there to say?
It was rethinking the entire franchise, the whole idea of sex now listen though it's not it's no three Daughters. It was only twenty eight seconds worth, but it was an important twenty eight seconds that a lot of people were watching. Point because well know that the Wild Cherries five twenty. But what was it interrupting, Elizabeth. It was in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl forty three between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steeler.
Wow, good one over Bowl.
So so, and it's in Tucson, Arizona. So like the Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl twenty eight seconds of porn. Comcast said quote, our initial investigation suggests this was an isolated, malicious act. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine who is behind this. They launched an investigation the station did. February fourth, twenty eleven. Two years later, former Cox Cable employee Frank Tenori Gonzales he gets arrested by the FBI and local police for that hijacking ooh.
That October, he pleaded guilty to two counts of computer tampering, sentenced to three years of probation, as well as a thousand dollars fine to the Arizona Attorney General's Anti Racketeering Fund.
What I know?
What did they ever say? Why he did it?
Porn is pro porn.
It's like that.
I feel like he'd, like, you know, would be really funny and then here here in.
This Super Bowl, like, have we just put on some bar core actions exactly?
You know.
Anyway, let's take a break and we come back. I got more for you, oh Zaren, Oh, yes, Elizabeth, hijacking of the airways.
I wasn't watching Cherry Blasters for just want to let you know, closing my laptop for other reasons.
Well, I got another one for you. It's more porn.
No.
March sixteenth, twenty ten, the Time Warner cable transmissions of both kids and kids preschool on demand. They go for the kids in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.
That's like Raleigh Golden Yeah, the Devil's Triangle.
They got replaced by Playboy TV and that went on for two hours.
Wow.
Other Time Warner cable systems in the area outside of the four counties affected, they just showed a black screen, but their porn force field was strong in the black screens. An executive from Time Warner said it was a technical malfunction that caused the wrong previews to be shown two hours of previous no on kids channels. Okay, anyway, they were never able to catch anyone. Oh yeah, it's not
always porn though. In nineteen ninety five, Columbia University's radio station w KCR in New York City, they got hit late one night. There was a sudden, high pitched screeching noise, and then a woman's voice started reading obituaries of various people the mic, well, people like Frank Oppenheimer, j Robert Oppenheimer's brother. This is horrible. But the victims of pan Am flight one O three the locker Bobby, Yeah, they got the flight got blown up over lockerby Scotland if
someone's reading their obituaries. There's a debate as to whether the signal was actually hijacked or if it was a college radio prank. Either way, total violation of FCC. It's a big station, it's not some like little operation where it'd be easy to play around and get away with it. And it went on for a while. There's a recording of it, often referred to as the old tape or death tape that made the rounds on four chan a decade ago.
Oh wow.
Not a lot is known about it, but at least it's not poornt so.
It's like old Faces of Death VHS tape getting passed.
Around totally totally. Now, did you know on February eleventh, twenty thirteen, Probably not, there was a zombie apocalypse.
Definitely, See I knew I know this.
I did not know that five different television stations ones in Montana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Mexico they got hijacked. First they hit Great Falls, Montana, not Great Falls. Yeah, it was the afternoon during the Steve Wilcos Show OH CBS affiliate station KRTV.
I've heard the name.
Yeah, I don't even know who that is, but if I were to watch TV, see it on the guide on the cable thing. When it came in, it was a voice message that said the following quote. Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies, as they are considered extremely dangerous. This morning
applies to all areas receiving this broadcast. Tune into nine to twenty am to get updated information. In the event that you are separated from your television or that the electrical service is interrupted. Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages. It repeats and repeats.
It's well written.
It sounds like and like imagine if you're double oh no kids, run and later that day get you go back. The CBS ABCPBS stations in Marquette, Michigan and Lacrosse, Wisconsin. They had their emergency alert system hijacked with the same message. Then a little while later, the PBS station in Portalis, New Mexico got interrupt Oh wow, distant, it's all over the place. The hacker was caught the next day. Oh yeah.
It was apparently a backdoor attack thanks to the fact that the stations didn't change the default factory logins and passwords on their emergency alert system equipment.
So they tried.
Admin and then they got right in and yeah, they
went around all there are more noble hijackings. In September of nineteen eighty five, four Polish astronomers at the at the University of Turun used a home computer, a synchronizing circuit, and a transmitter to run messages in support of the Solidarity labor movement over state run television broadcasts in Italy No t r U N poland Oh okay, yeah, so the messages read enough price increases, lies and repressions, Solidarity touran I'm probably not saying, I never say, I probably
didn't and then quote it is our duty to boycott the election.
So they were like bold, Yeah, they're using to protest.
I like it.
The astronomers got busted and they were charged with possession of an unlicensed radio transmitter and publication of materials that could cause public unrest. Yeah, and if they're sentencing, the judge noted that these were like prize winning astronomers. Yeah, they're like the core of the Polish scientific community. Good on, So he gave them probation and a fine that was the equivalent of like one hundred dollars each.
Okay, to use your fame.
Let's stay over in the Soviet block. This sort of thing happened a lot eighties. No Soviet born, I just wondering. So borsch blasters vive. So sometimes they tried to like hoax that the US had launched nukes. That was a very common one. Sorry anyway, And like the hijacking there, it wasn't just like one offs. There were frequent flyers, like guys who were like they did it all the time, and they had names like Cucumber, Radio Millimeter, Green Goat and.
Fortunes super early hackers.
Yeah, and they'd take over the signal on radio relay stations to either like override it or they'd slip in during breaks in broadcasting. And they were referred to in the state run press as quote radio hooligans broadcasting drivel, rudeness, vulgarity, uncensored expressions, and trashy music.
Did they play like Chuck Berry?
Probably it's just like the worst two live crew tracks the imagine. I'm going to guess that if they were, if they were caught, it probably wasn't pretty. So while radio hijacking may have been like noble anti totalitarian effort in the Eastern Bloc, in the US, we just kept it trashy. If they do buy trash. On Wednesday May seventeenth, two thousand and six, the signal of Babylon New York
FM radio station WBAB was hijacked for ninety seconds. W BABS hijackers overrode the programming to play the song N word Hate in Me Yeah, by a sixties white supremacist country singer called Johnny Rebel. Yeah.
The morning Who's your Grandfather? Turns out he's a sixties white supremacist country singer.
I guess hit was nword hating me the morning drive time host and that's with a hard R yeah. The morning drive time host Roger Loose He said, quote, I've never seen this in twenty two years on this radio station, whatever that was. It was very racist. Thanks the story that made it onto the front page of Newsday with and the platters that matter. My readling on Newsday though was Jacked FM. Oh yeah there was no porn guys.
Yeah.
The station manager had only been there a week and that really bummed him out, Like this is just and it's a federal offense.
And all that.
The station was like, We're going to catch these purpse no matter what we do. They offered ten grand in a reward for information, you know, leading to the capture. Management said quote, we condemned their actions and their harmful words. Are asking for a full investigation into this matter by the FCC and are contacting local authorities to assist us into finding out who did this.
The old station manager.
They never found out who did this. It's probably the old station manager. We just cracked the case. Done.
You're well done. Thanks.
Another anonymous and offensive song hijacking occurred across the Pond in the UK in twenty seventeen. In June of July that year, Mansfield one oh three point two FM in Mansfield, Nottingham, Shure, England.
Always what I listened to and I'm as.
Hijacked eight different times in one month. Yes, so the hijacker would like talk and scream and then play one particular song called the Winkers song by British comedian iv Or BigGAN.
Are you kidding me?
Can I read you some of the lyrics?
Oh please?
My mother said that I never should play with the naughty, rude girls in the wood. They're giggling talk I could never understand. And that's why I fell in love with my right hand. And that's why I'm a wanker. I'm a wanker and it does me good?
Like it?
Bloodywell? Should it goes on?
And you know, when I was in high school, I was on a rugby team. It was not related to the high school, but it's a club team, right, And our team name was the Davis Wankers, and we had shirts that would say we either beat you on the field or we will beat you off. Saron, I'm telling you so, I think the British.
No adults step in and say inappropriate.
It was a British sport. We were just trying to be in the sport of rugby. We didn't know, you know, we're taking cues from this fellow.
Yeah, basically. So the UK's Communication regulator said it was taking the incident extremely serious.
I hope they were eight times.
Engineers at the station, they're like working furiously to trace the signal, identified it alone hijacker. They needed to put a stop to it. But the managing director of Mansfield one oh three point two said, quote, there is absolutely nothing we could do about it, and we're trying very
hard to do something about it. We're told by Offcom, who are investigating the matter, that you only need and this is the frightening thing, a small transmitter and if you can get near where there is an outside broadcast or a signal, and you can overpower that signal, you're on the airwaves. Boom there found Yeah, they got away with eight times. So staying in England, we get to a good one, a bigin so good. Southern Television covered parts of southern England.
Right the southern too, Yeah, of course, and it had.
Broadcast transmitters in Dover, Bluebell Hill and Hannington of course. And it was the official license holder for ITV. I that Yeah, so you know that station, zaren close your oye. I want you to picture it. It's Saturday November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy seven. You are a lighting technician for Southern Television. Your name is Nigel. You wear turtlenecks every day and loafers, and you eat a sleeve of digestive biscuits every day. It's five PM and the brief top of the news
read is starting beamed in from London. You're sitting off to the side of the studio reading a magazine and half watching the feet of the broadcast on a small TV monitor. As soon as the news is over, Looney Tunes starts, and then you'll pay attention. You love Looney Tunes, huge tweedy fan. The ITV newscaster Andrew Gardner in Tones. The Rhodesian nationalist leader, Bishop Abel Masuriwa has accepted mister Smith's offered to negotiate an internal settlement based on one man,
one vote, but he says there are conditions. These include stopping the executions of all captured prisoners of war. The feed crackles away. Suddenly a voice takes over the feed, booming through the speakers in the studio.
Before coming frost. You you have seen in semi scs. You must be a protest and sisters.
You drop your magazine and head over to the control booth. Are there aliens communicating with us? Engineers frantically work the control table for five and a half minutes, the voice booms on. You scream and run outside, searching the skies for UFOs. One of the engineers comes out to get you. She tells you that there are no alien involved. The station feed has just been hijacked. They may have to cut to studio content, so they need you back inside.
You head to your work area, and while the chaos and the control booth continues, you see that the monitor is showing Looney Tunes, just as expected, So you know as it said, this is the voice of Vrillain, the representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom, as we've done to your brothers and sisters all over this your planet Earth. It's kind of hard to listen to anyway.
So what is Ashtar Galactic Command? It kind of starts off with George Van Tassel, an American ufologist. He lived out in the Mojave Desert. As you do a lot of them do oh totally. So one day he met Frank Kritzer, a weirdo who said he worked in a mine somewhere near Giant Rock, which is a seven story boulder near Landers, California, in the Mojave Desert.
I take your word.
This is in the nineteen thirties, and so Kritzer he was under suspicion of being a German spy ah and he took his own life with a dynamite explosion during a police siege at the rock in nineteen forty two.
Little guilty, a little bit, so.
Tassel. He eventually moved away from the desert. He became an aircraft mechanic and a flight inspector, and between nineteen thirty and nineteen forty seven he worked for Douglas Aircraft, Hughes, Lockheed. Yeah. Nineteen forty seven he moved back to the desert with his family. And at first he and his family moved into the rooms that Frank Kritzer had like dug out under Giant Rock. They lived like mole people's errands.
Wow.
Then Van Tassel eventually built a house, a cafe, a gas station, a store, an airstrip and a guest ranch. Right next to the Rock. In nineteen fifty three, he started hosting group meditation in a room underneath Giant Rock and meditation. According to Van Tasse, around that same time, an alien that arrived in the s ship from the planet Venus woke him up one night. Oh of course, yeah, there you go, the alien Ashtar.
He's like, can I get in on the meditation?
Yeah? He's like, well no, He's like, please, sir, come with me, come aboard my UFO. Oh and he so. And it was there that Ashtar, both verbally and telepathically, gave him a technique for rejuvenating the human body.
You know as handy, always getting run down.
So nineteen fifty four Van Tassel and the others they start building what they call the Integraton yea and perform said rejuvenation.
Some numbers though, the Integraton five thousand, Yeah, exactly.
So.
According to Van Tassel, the Integraton was to be a structure for scientific research into time, anti gravity, and extending human life.
Some of my favorite interests.
It's all of your favorite interests. Van Tassel said that by accessing the universal mind, he could receive messages not just from Ashtar, his UFO buddy. Oh nice, but from humans who died like Nikola Tesla. Oh so it's like a any Yeah, and Tesla gave Van Tassel instructions to build the integraton.
Oh hats handy. He's good with stuff.
He builds really good as stuff. So the Integraton was a domed wood structure with a rotating metal thing on the outside. He loves rotating things and metal and wood and domes. This this thing was called an electrostatic diyrod, the rotating metal thing. But go on, well, Van Tassel said that it was made of non ferromagnetic materials would concrete, glass, fiberglass, no metal, screws or nails. The project was the focus of the quote Ministry of Universal Wisdom.
Ah, they're back at it. Yeah.
It was an organization that like investigated and encouraged the heely arts, but they were mainly concerned with gathering information about UFO sightings.
They wanted to talk to aliens.
Yeah, so the Ministry of Universal Wisdom. They taught that all humans have the power to tap into the universal mind of God, of course, which llitates evolutionary progress such as that exemplified by Jesus and Ashtar, and.
Apparently the universe loves committees groups exactly. It wants them to be some kind of Robert rules of order exactly.
Let's take a break, Let's use our universal nights to think about this, and when we come back, we're going to find out more about Ashtar and the Southern Television incident and.
Hopefully the Commission on Universal Justice.
So Southern Television, they're running an ITV news broadcast that was interrupted by Villainy, representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command.
One of my favorite galactic commands.
Dude spoke for like five minutes. I'm not going to read you the whole script, but here are some highlights. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world, so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world and the beings on our worlds around you. All your weapons of evil must be removed. That's another good talking point.
Are your weapons? Are your base belonged to us?
Correct? Be aware that also that there are many false prophets and guides at present operating in your world. Okay, duly noted, you must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. This is all just good advice. We of the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and the truth of the cosmos.
Nice.
Thank you so much, very gentle. Now here's the thing though, researcher Marissa Discover of all Things Weird and Amazing on to website Ashtar Command Crew dot net.
I can join the crew.
You know, if the u R l ends in dot net, it's going to be good. Oh yeah, yeah uh. And it's a straight up loone even over there, hold the tweety uh. They they're all about like eclipse fears and anti vax talk, murmurs of dark caballs yes, and get encouragement to buy gold. Of course, it's like a theories, yeah, chakra clearing with crystalline consciousness. There's a lot of talk about crystalline beings upon the Earth. Four D and five D ascension plans.
What you got the five plans?
They got the plans. You cannot stream three daughters, So they're keeping the dream alive, but not really, because I don't think that's what Van Tassel or the broadcast hijackers had in mind.
I'm not thinking.
So back to the hijack, So you know, it takes it over. Imagine you're just a person watching the news, waiting for the Looney Tunes to come on.
Okay, so it's three in the afternoon.
If you get this, it's five and you get this five minute dialogue from aliens. And again there are some among us who are maybe a little more gullible, naive or like, you know, like I'm looking at myself, I'm holding a mirror, whould think, oh my god, the time has come.
Right there running through my windows like war the worlds. Yeah, it depends on how convincing, but I could be convinced. I'm sure eventually.
According to A twenty well, the thing is is that like it didn't break completely into the broadcast, that you could kind of see some of the Looney Tunes behind it, and like hear.
The talk coming through interrupting, and then you know, you.
Didn't have like the internet so you could go and check and see what's going on. You'd have to call people and be like, are you watching this.
Is this happening on your TV? Or do I need to adjust my mess.
And you think, like, if it's just a small rural area, they're not gonna like, you're not going to know someone in London to call and ask. You're just gonna call your neighbor and they're like, oh snap, I looked at it too. You know they're all going to get us. So back to the hijack.
Why a mean Nigel.
According to a twenty thirteen piece in Colonel magazine, like like popcorn, not Colonel. None of the evening staff at Southern Television were aware of the intrusion to their signal. International Broadcasting Authority engineers in Croydon, Surrey did not hear the rogue signal, nor was it detected at the main
transmitter site in Southampton, so just came in blindly silently. However, immediately after the broadcast, panicky viewers flooded police telephones with calls, and police said they had to send a patrol to one elderly woman's home to calm her. They weren't menacing and the thing, the thing is just like be good to each other and we love you and we'll be back.
Oh my God, yeah, she's just like having like a hyperventilating The police said, quote, all we could do was reassure them it was a hoax, but like the calls just kept coming in. Interesting Southern Broadcast apparently had to broadcast reassuring messages to calm worried viewers. Engineers figured the interruption must have originated at the very rural Hannington transmitter, the Hannington One. Local police went to the Hannington transmitter, but like you know, no one was there and there
was no equipment left behind. So some experts thought that in order to do this at the time, you'd have needed like really big heavy equipment, huge batteries to power this. So the lack of all things, yeah, the lack of appointed some to think that like maybe this was from beyond and.
Must be from beyond.
The interruption made local and national news and it was picked up by UPI, so it made over to US papers. After the incident, Britain's Independent Broadcast Authority they launched an investigation. Quote, the police, the Post Office, the Dependent Broadcast Authority and even the Home Office were involved. So that's like you know, everybody.
They figured that even though the police didn't find anything there it probably happened at the Hannington transmitter, and so four days later, November thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, it was reported that the engineers had figured out how it happened, but a spokesman told the press quote, we'd have a fair idea of how it happened, but obviously we're not going to release details for this might inspire another hoax.
But we're taking steps to ensure it will not happen again and viewers are not frightened.
Very important. We don't want the trauma. See I'm learning.
So they later said, quote, a hoaxer jammed our transmitter in the wilds of North Hampshire by taking another transmitter very close.
To it, and so I love that that it's just physical proximity and you can then just basically get the antenna walk for you and you just go off.
Yeah, exactly. So they figured that, like the people who did it, had to have a good amount of technical knowledge in order to pull this off, more than my So a spokesman for Southern Television said, quote, we can't imagine how it was done, but it appears someone must have managed to transmit a signal over ours. The equipment used would need to be fairly sophisticated and expensive. So that's when they start thinking like, this has to be like someone in the industry to have this equipment, or
the military. So they said that if they were caught, they were going to be fined two hundred pounds that's like three hundred and sixty dollars at the time under the Wireless Act. A lot of people figured it was a student prank and that maybe they used a car battery for power, or maybe it was a yeah. But then people were saying this not enough. They figured wasn't a disgruntled engineer Colonel mag later explained how they thought the interruption hit What about.
A generator truck? Military has those?
Yeah? True? This is how the colonel came up with the idea quote. The local television transmitter is the likely source of the rogue transmission. Unusually for a transmitter serving such a large area, the Hannington transmitter merely received and rebroadcasted a signal sent from Rowbridge on the Isle of Wight. With the sound being transmitted as an FM broadcast, it
was easy to take over the transmission. All they needed to do was drive up the transmitter at Hannington and broadcast on the same FM frequency as the transmission from the Isle of Wight. The Hannington television transmitter sits in the English countryside. Whoever took over the signal would have had to travel along the small roads leading to the hillside transmitter.
Yeah.
So even though you know, authorities said that it had been hacked, the there's all these conspiracy theories around it, and mainly centering around that, Yes, it really were. It was extraterrestrials see Ashtar Command Crew, dot Net hot Rod crew. Yeah. So the government they made it clear that they weren't planning on pressing charges and no one ever publicly confessed to the hack. However, in late twenty twenty two, a limited run podcast called The Interruption came out the intent
of investigating the case. The host spent most of twenty twenty two trying to get to the bottom of it. Eventually, he heard about a radio pirate who called himself Roger Tate, who had a regular show on London's pirate radio Invicta. Roger Tate's real name was Bob Timalski and he was a big part of London's pirate radio scene in the seventies. Robert or Bob had in fact built in Victa's transmitter which enabled quote ordinary radios to pick up the station,
and so he has this giant transmitter. His studio is in his own home. He was later known as the Gadget Guru or Inspector Gadget, reviewing tech gadgets for a lot of different websites. He died in two thousand and one, but according to his friends, he loved sci fi and he loved pranks. And so the podcast talked to a friend of Bob's, a guy named Laurie Hallett, who had known Bob in his early pirate radio days, and doctor Hallett now works as a senior lecturer in radio at
the University of Bedfordshire. So he spent He also spent eight years at Offcom, the UK's communication regulating agency, and that's where he quote developed and implemented policies around community radio and digital audio broadcasting. So basically, his buddy policed
pirate radio. So the Buddy told the Interruption podcast that Bob never actually confessed that he'd done the prank, but that one time he just played the audio tape of it, and then after what was supposed to be the very last episode of the Interruption, the host gets contacted by a man named Adam, who's another radio pirate, and he said he'd also been a friend of Bob's and that Bob had in fact confessed that he'd done the hijack. Ah yeah, and he said he did it because quote,
you can yeah, you can do it. No ulterior motive. According to Adam, Bob didn't believe in the alien message, but he wanted it to sound plausible and kind of funny, so he spent time crafting the message and the sound that went with it. Adam said that Bob likely did have cohorts in the prank, but no one has admitted to it. And then Adam also said Bob never confessed because his career had grown after his pirate radio days. Didn't want to put it into jeopardy, So, Zarin.
That's not quite a deathbed confession.
No, not at all. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Oh man, I didn't think there's gonna be much more after like the Max Headroom.
But I mean that was spicy, It was super spicy.
Yeah, goodness. But I really like Bob at the end. He was my favorite.
Bob's good I love I love that. Like we have a little coda on that Onebeth.
What's your ridiculous takeaway one? See, I'm not going to ask anymore. Don't do it, keep acting like that.
But you know what I do need. I don't need a ridiculous takeaway. I need to talk back.
I'm going to take all the airwaves with this one. Oh God, super.
I want.
Hey guys, my name's Eric from ten See. I really appreciate your podcast. I think it's a load of fun. I was listening to the Diploma Mills podcast and when you told Zaren to picture this and started your description, I knew exactly who you were talking about and thought, holy crap, they're talking about Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. My mom was knowed by those losers, and I hope she's learned your lesson.
But we'll see.
Anyway, keep up the good work and I'll keep on enjoying.
Oh I love it.
It was poor moms, terrible people, but a great fashion eicon Elizabeth Tammy Faye Baker. I mean, come on, I guess jre just still talking about her.
Well that's it for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram, truth Social, Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talkback on the iHeart app reach out. Ulus Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarren Burnett, produced and edited by Radiant being of Aquarian Light Dave Cousten. Research is by Ashtar's talent agent
Marissa Brown and UFO mechanic Andrea song Sharpen Tear. The theme song is by Morning Drivetime shock jocks Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred. Executive producers are Ben Solidarity now Bowlin and Noel Solidarity, Forever Brown, Dick QUI Say It One More Time CUI.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,