Evel Knievel Part II

hour and a half of content. We did a one part on Isaac Newton, but the two part on Evil Knel. All right, so where we left off, we'll just get right into it. Huh. Evil Knevil had just completed the Caesar's Palace jump, completing it with his head and smashed pelvis. Yeah, and by the way, he was in a coma for twenty nine days after that crash. These were not light injuries. No, and uh we left at a very important point right

when he went and did that jump. On his way out to the jump area, he took a hundred bucks put it on the blackjack table, promptly lost, hit the bar, did a shot of wild turkey and went out and jumped apparently with the two show girls, one under each arm that was in head blocks. That was his style. He lived hard because he was from the hard land of Butte, Montana. So he lands right, and he didn't land on his his bike. Like, I can't remember what stuck,

but something stuck. I guess his back tire was it. It was usually spack tire that gave him the trouble. He always almost made it like you were saying something. I think it was back tire. I'm trying to visualize the crash. But his his handlebars just get pulled right out of his hands because the bike bucked down well, and it's just such an impact with that three pound bike. Um, he just couldn't hold on and so once he didn't have the handlebars anymore, he didn't have control and he

goes flying off. Oh it's tough to watch. It is tough to watch, especially in slow motion, which is how I saw it. Yeah, it's the only way to see it. Um. So he has finished this jump with his head like you said, and his star is bigger than ever, like because of this crash. He's more famous than ever. He's making Grand per performance by And it was after the Caesar's Jump where he first starts to plant the seed

to the press that he wants to jump the Grand Canyon. Um. For some reason, I have a feeling this just came out of his mouth, like what's the biggest thing I can think of? Um. But he started a genuine, seemingly genuine attempt to get permission from the National Park Service to do this Grand Canyon jump. Over the years, he needed permission from I think it was the Interior Department, and they were like, no, absolutely not. And he said why yea, And they were like, we really have to

tell you why you can't have permission to jump that. Um. But he did keep it up. It was a drum that he beat like almost constantly. During interviews. He would say like, you know, coming one day, I'm going to be able to jump the Grand Canyon. That's gonna be my next big trick. And then in the meantime he would set up these other exhibitions. Yeah and and chuck. He said he was making Grand of performance. He was

doing a performance a week for a while there. Oh yeah, I mean he was rich he was a wealthy man at this point. Uh In nineteen seventy one, in January, on the eighth, the ninth, he broke two records. He sold out the Houston Astrodome twice over two shows in a row. He sold out the Astrodome and one which was a record. And then um in February he broke an actual jump record by jumping nineteen cars on that

Harley XR seven fifty. It's pretty impressive. It's funny when I'm looking at my my liner notes on this because sometimes I'll just put kind of what's going on, so it reminds me. It just says jump crash, jump, crash, jump, crash, over and over and over. But that's what I'm saying. Like he would, he crashed a lot, like the Pepsi truck one. It turns out it was thirteen Pepsi trucks. Um, he crashed that one. That one. It wasn't necessarily his fault, like he had a short He had a fairly short

run up distance and it went pavement grass, pavement. Not ideal. Yeah, again, he didn't really think through. I don't know if he didn't. He didn't people thinking it through in his behalf. Yeah, well he would just do whatever. Or like I said earlier, like well this is how much room I have, wasn't like, well maybe I don't have enough room, right, maybe this is a bad idea. Well I said I'd do it.

So if I die, oh well, Well, in his famous uh quote he always said was it's it's not about crashing, you know, it's about getting up and trying it again. You know, it's kind of a trite saying it's direct from success through a positive mental attitude. Yeah. Probably, so his favorite book, so, um, the Grand Canyon thing is building steam um in some ways as far as leaking it to the press, but the government is still like, no,

you can't do that. Little boys all over the country are I think his one quote was little boys want to be like me, men want to be me, and women want to be with me. I Yeah, he definitely thought a lot of himself. Uh So, finally, officially the U. S. Department Interior said, I'm denying you airspace over the Grand Canyon. This is not gonna happen. Please stop calling us. Yes, yeah,

So what does he do? Well, he apparently was on a plane ride and he was over um Idaho, and noticed that there was a pretty good sized canyon that was formed by the Snake River around what's that down there that looks like a canyon. Yeah, i'll jump that. There's more than one canyon in the US and he uh, he decided to go check it out, and outside of Twin Falls, Idaho, he found a little area that was just perfectly wide. Um, there was enough run up on

either side for him to try to jump it. Well, he didn't need much run up and he uh, well, he didn't know at the time. He thought he was going to use a motorcycle. Um. Yeah, he did a rocket cycle. Um and uh he uh. Most importantly, though, it was was privately owned, so he didn't need permission from any kind of government agency, although he did actually that he had to get permission Um from the local

I think the county to register the vehicle. Is that it and they registered at it as an airplane even though it was actually a rocket, a steam powered rocket. Yeah. He leased three acres for thirty five grand and said, September seventy two, it's going down. ABC Sports said we're not gonna pay whatever you're asking. So he said, fine, remember how this worked out last time. I'm gonna hire Bob Aram who was a boxing promoter still is I think, yeah,

his name sound of familiar unless he's passed away. But he was, uh for Top Rank Productions. He said, all right, you handled the filming and we'll do this new fangled thing called close circuit TV show at movie theaters. We'll all get we're all gonna get rich. Hard a subcontractor and actually got engineers for this. And they built that X one sky cycle, which, like you said, I've i'd forgotten it was gonna be a rocket motorcycle, a rocket powered motorcycle. And they built it and tested it that

went right down a mile down into the river. And he said, maybe we should just do it like a straight up rocket. And this this dude, this engineer. So he hired an engineer named Doug Maliwiki, and Doug Maliwiki subcontracted the actual like design and construction out to another UM Aeronautics engineer. His name is Robert. I can't figure out how to say this guy's last name. It's spelled like true acts true. Yeah, I think I remember the documentary.

It was Robert Truick. Okay, So Robert Truix was the guy who actually designed and I believe built the rocket, the steam powered rocket, the X two that um that Eva Kinnevel used to jump the Snake River Canyon right, and as you'll see, it didn't go according to plan.

So this guy's son is the one who is behind this jump that's being done by Eddie Braun in September because he wants to vindicate his father that this thing would have made it had this um, this parachute not deployed and kept him from making So he's like, he wants to show that this this would have worked, and that his dad, who's had lots of scoring heaped on him over the years, including publicly by Evil kinevil Um,

that it was all quite unfair. Well, we're getting something in a minute, which makes him seem like a bigger jerk even but things are going well, well that's not exactly true. September eight n it's gonna go down. Uh. This thing had turned into the party of the century, like a hippie Hell's Angels biker party, a huge one. And this is like Twin Falls, Idaho is not like a hippie biker town. It was like a normal god fearing country town and all of a sudden, thousands of

hippie biker weirdo Druggi's show up and start partying in town. Yeah. They were hammered, they were drunk, they were high on grass, setting fires, just setting fires. It was completely out of hand. They had no idea it was gonna attract this many people. Uh, and became like a three day party. Did you say grass. Yeah, they're high on grass. Oh yeah yeah, now would a weed probably herb, the herb nugs. So uh, it's a huge party. It's like Woodstock. People are drunk out of

their minds. Yeah, high on the grass. Yeah, I bet you. There's some LSD going around, maybe even maybe some Benni's. And on this documentary I saw there was a real fear. They had a temporary fencing put up to keep people away because the lip of the canyon it's just a straight drop. Yeah, so they have this temporary fencing and we'll talk about the jump in a second, but when it actually goes down, they bum rushed this thing because

you couldn't see it what was going on. And there was a real fear that they were going to be mass deaths like Lemmings. Yeah, where people would get shoved off the lip of this canyon because the people up front would just run and stop, and then five thousand people behind him. I don't even know how many people there was more than five thousand even, I think, but yeah, that they were just gonna be like hundreds and hundreds of people shoved unwillingly to their death. Yeah, I guess

more like the Three Stooges than Lemmings. I think that could have happened. Yeah. Yeah, if you look at I don't know how. I saw a video of this um and there's just people like just looking over the ledge. Yeah, I don't know how it didn't either. It's it's like you just describing it scares me. You got a little shutter. So here's what happens. Evil Kin. Evil is not feeling good about this. He literally goes to his family and the trailer and says goodbye, And they interviewed his family

and they were like, this sucked. Like we really thought we were saying goodbye to our father forever, Like we thought he was gonna die that day. No, like P. T. Barnum bs going on, like we thought we were gonna see his see his death in front of our face. So he goes off, and um, the promoter apparently was like, had these armed guards. He said that they looked like

they were there for the crowd control. He said they were there to make sure he got in that rocket, he said, because I was not going to let this knot go down with that scene going on there. So he gets in. They do the countdown. This steam rocket goes off. It was built from the from I think the fuel tank of a jet. Yeah, it's like a little one man rocket. Yeah, and they like superheated this water I think like five degrees to create this blast

of steam. It takes off and almost immediately the the parachute is deployed, which provides drag, and it did not get very far. No, but apparently if you look at the initial trajectory, it was right on target, which is why the engineer's son is like, it would have worked. It will work if the parachute doesn't deploy. And in the in the engineer's defense, the promoter and Evil Knievel, so we're not testing this. We already spent all a bunch of money on that X two cycle or the

X one rocket cycle. Um, we so just make it right. So they had one parachute. They didn't test it, and when he did this jump, it was the jump as well as the only test that they've gone right. So the parachute did deployed, but they think that had it not deployed, he totally would have made it. But the parachute did deploy, so he didn't make this jump and started drifting, luckily attached to a parachute, into a mild deep canyon. The thing is, I can't believe they did this.

They had him harnessed in his jumpsuit, was like strapped to the seat this thing, so he had no way of getting out. He had he needed help to get out, and apparently there's no one waiting in the canyon down below to help get him out. They were all on the other side of the canyon. So had he landed in the river, he would have drowned because he had no way of getting out. Luckily, he landed within feet of the river. So it goes a mile down drifting slowly, totally up in the air. It's like a plank oat

chip at this point. Now no one knows where it's gonna land. And he landed within a few feet of the of the water, so that he survived amazing. Uh you know how I teased you and said, there's a

little tidbit that makes him seem like a jerk. There is speculation that Evil can Evil pulled that shoot because he didn't think he was going to make this thing, and and he might not have thought he was gonna make it to begin with, and it was all just a big publicity stunt, and he knew that he could pull that shoot as soon as he took off and float safely down. So in the documentary they talked about a little bit. I saw another VH one What's the

behind the Evil? Yeah, something like that, where um he was our true Hollywood story. I think um E network and he um. They talked about it, and there too, they were like his hand was on that lever, like he was the one responsible for pulling that thing, because they enter of the engineer and he was like, I don't know how this thing like it should have deployed, like he was getting all the scorn. Well, yeah, you couldn't figure out how it deployed. And Evil can evenly

even call him an idiot. He's like kind never like that engineer he was an idiot. So that does make it way worse because apparently also the engineer was very surprised to hear this because they were good friends. They become good friends over the coach of this project. Now he's publicly calling him an idiot. Yeah, I think he took that secret to his grave, so we'll never know. But there was definitely speculation that he never intended to make that jump. I had not heard that, which is

pretty remarkable. Well, let's let's take a break, um, and we'll come back, because, believe it or not, he kept jumping, all right, Josh, Snake River Canyon is in the books. It is, and apparently he made like six million dollars from that job. Yeah, that's what he personally needed. And then spend it like in the next three weeks on diamonds. Yeah, because it goes like, yeah, we'll talk more about that later, all right. So now we moved forward a few years.

He's in between seventy two and seventy five, does plenty of other jumps and had plenty of other hospital stays, and then May in front of once again ABC's wide world of sports. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat that still around when you were around. No, I watched the laugh Olympics. Wilde World of Sports is like the biggest thing on TV on Sundays. Yeah, no, it was. I think it was on. It just never caught my

fancy and it was so great the weekend. Seriously, it was just all about cartoons with me, you know, like there was that point cartoons would started like seven in the morning and then go to like ten thirty eleven sometimes and then like non cartoons would start and just be like that's when you nave and put this on TV, you said, and then at naptural prime time. Uh So in seventy five he says, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do the biggest jump of my career in England.

I'm world renowned jumper. At this point I can go to London, England. Yeah, because again not just like he's on the wide World of Sports and he's known for the Snake River Canyon jump and like the sea just pals. There's the stunt cycle toy was the largest selling toy of Christmas nineteen seventy three. Yeah, he made a ton of money off that. Atari had a stunt Cycle like video console in nineteen seventy six. Um he there were there were action figures. There's a whole like action figure

line by ideal. He was making mad cash from just being a daredevil. Yeah, adds he was a pitch man. He was making money hand over fist and like we say, over and over spending it. And he was huge. He was just a huge star. It's such a seventies thing to be star for being a daredevil. Yeah. Yeah, it beats the two thousand tens thing of just being a star for being famous. No, I agreed. You know, at least this guy was doing something. Yeah. Did Kim Kardashian

never put her life on the line. No, that's what I want to see being Paris Hilton's assistant, probably because she survived it. She was persisted. That's where she started out. Really, what would you mean started out? She started out as a rich kid in Brentwood. She did, but she wasn't a celebrity by any MO until well until that sex tape. But I think she was Paris Hilton's assistant at the

time that came out. That's weird. You know, Paris Hilton has my same eye affliction, the tosis you paras Hilton, Forest Wortaker, Tommy York. Oh yeah, he's got too huh yeah, get that fix one day. I don't think you should adds a tremendous amount of character. I don't know. It's easy to say when you don't have a droopy eyelid. I think you should keep that vestigial tail, right, that's character. I like it. When you wag it, we'll see what it's doing. Is it's it's inhibiting my vision. Well, then

I can see that, you know, not a ton. But like when I left my eyelid up all the way, I'm like, oh, I can see fift more of the room. There's the sky. Yeah, anyway, that's my issue. So is at Wimbley Stadium sold out Wimbley Stadium in London, England, and he's gonna jump how many people that is? Well, this is ninety thousand, the other articles at seventy. Either way, it's a bunch between seventy and nine. So I don't

think we can sell that sell out Wimbley. No, but we sold out two shows in London, so they clearly have a jones for American American Americans making asses of them. So he jumps these A E. C. Merlin busses, These are not the double deckers, um, but they're still busses. And it's a big jump. It's a believe as biggest to date. And he crashes, of course, breaks his back. Broke his back. Yeah, and in the very famous footage, told Frank Gifford, I came in walking. I went out

walking because Frank Gifford's like, get this guy, stretcher. He's broken his back. And Evil was like, I'm walking out and he did. He did. It wasn't smart, but he did it. Uh. Then he goes to another huge jump at King's Island theme park in Ohio. I've been there. I bet is it still around? I don't know, but I've been there. And when when I was a kid, it's clearly where is it? You know, I don't know.

I was always a passenger. I have no idea what part of Ohio it's but it's clearly second Banana to Cedar Point to Cedar Point pretty much everything is in the world his second Banana Point. Yeah. No, this is a your your parents hate you, do they take you to King's Island instead of Cedar Point? Yeah. Uh. So he makes us jump at Cedar Point at King's Island and it is at the time, the highest rated event and wild world wide. It's a tough one wide world

of sports history. Still still yeah, I guess so the show's not around. Yeah. A hundred and six sixty three successful jump. I don't think he even crashed on this one. Yeah, this is an all around good one for him. You got the buses. It's at King's Island, successful set, a record, highest rated, everything's coming up basis on this one. It is coming up basis and he says he's retiring. Yeah, yep, he's Uh. He started to say that a lot, starting with this jump. After just about every jump, he would

be like, that's it, I'm done. I'm never going to do it again, and then he would do it again. And actually I believe he retired after Yeah, he retired after Wimbley. Okay, that's the famous line was I remember now He crashed spectacularly, grabbed the mic and told the stadium that you are the last people in the world who will ever see me jump. I will never ever ever ever jump again ever him through. And then five months later he jumped to King's Island, right, and then

retired after that one. Right. Then he retired after that one. He did another one um shortly after that at the Kingdom in Um Seattle. Actually it was a year after that when he retired again. That one that was like Tyson's last fight, Like he he jumped seven greyhound busses and I guess the crowd was fine with it, but he apologized for it being not so great, for not like being risky enough, and and so he retired again. And then he came back again, right, and this time

he was channeling the Fons. Oh yeah, he was gonna jump a tank of shark. He's gonna literally jump the shark. Yeah, and he did well, he didn't in the seven in Chicago, he saw Jaws the movie and said, let's just like he kind of reminds me of my dad a little bit. My dad has this weird If he would have had a ton of money, he would have had this kind of weird excess crazy ideas like the bombshell. After it was like these dudes of this generation there was something.

They're all crazy. Yeah, they still hadn't they didn't get movies yet. Yeah, that's what um. So he says he's gonna jump a bit of sharks, put it on TV, and during rehearsal, he has a really bad crash and actually severely injured a cameraman. Yeah, the guy lost his eye. Ye, and I guess that was a really big deal that evil can even Yeah, he was like I can't come back from that one. Nope. So did he not do the actual jump? No, I think he called it off.

Had I been the cameraman, I would have been like, so I just lost my eye for nothing. Yeah, he's like getting that shark. Yeah, at least do the jump. Uh Yeah. And apparently he sat on that footage for almost twenty years, and then there was finally a documentary, not the one I saw, but another one where he allowed that footage to be shown and then he did retire, So you know this is smart. I'm sure that camera operator was like, oh, you couldn't have retired before you

took my eye out, not a week earlier. But that was the one where he finally is like I'm done. And he had a great quote. It was a professional is supposed to know when he has jumped far enough. Good quote. It is a pretty good quote. And like he said, it wasn't just the Seattle jump that he he He started doing less risky jumps toward the end period that were like, I guess he lost his nerve.

Maybe after Boise or twin Falls the Sneake River, maybe because it seems like that's where about it it changed. Things changed, Although no, I guess it would have been wimbley because you gotta have a lot of nerve to try that. So maybe after he broke his back he was like probably who all right, well, let's take another break here and we'll wrap it up with a little bit more on his private life and all those broken bones, broken bones. Josh, you know the old rumor that he

broke every bone in his body. Yeah, not true, but he does hold a record for most broken bones. He does. Oh yeah, man, because he said he's broken thirty five bones. That didn't seem like a record. Thirty five bones, four d and thirty three fractures of those bones, and I believe both of those are records as far as Genness

is concerned. Well, when you look his own website has a neat little chart where the injuries are broken up into fractured, broken, broken, and replaced and broken multiple times. The other one that I'm I'm curious about, his crushed like he crushed his pelvis, is that an actual medical term. You see it, Yeah, frequently. What has to take place for a bone to be considered crushed? My interpretation of that, which is completely made up, is that it's fractured so

severely it goes beyond multiple fractures. They can't put Humpty back together to just crushed into powder, fine powder. That's what comes to mind. I'm sure that's not what happens, but I think of like a big pile of like sawdust in his butt. But if you look at his injury list, it's you know, uh, skull, nose, teeth, jaw, left and right clavical stern um, upper vertebrae, right arm, left arm, all ribs, pelvis three times cox six both wrist, hip and ball socket, lower bird of a femur. Five times.

He broke his femur. Can you believe that? Yeah? Yeah, As a matter of fact, I can right knee, right shin, both ankles toes. It looks like his left below his femur on his left leg, he was virtually unscathed. Weird, isn't that weird? No? No, no left end, no left just say both ankles typically fallen into a certain fashion. Maybe you know this is that's over Apple Cardiff. I think that is what they call it. These are his bones too. This isn't taking any account the coma he

was in and the multiple concussions he suffered. Yeah, and I think he there was like internal bleeding and things like that along the way too. And as as a result of this, there was um there were rumors that still stand, although I couldn't find much in the way of substantiation of him that he was he took drugs himself, probably painkillers. Apparently his good friends were like he ate him like candy, Yeah, while grand standing against drugs. So that was a really big part of what he was doing.

And one of the reasons why he did become a role model to a whole generation of young boys was he he had set himself up like that. He would at the at the beginning of every UM show he would basically do like a don't do drugs message, stay in school, um, keep your word, And these were what what UM he considered his his core values, right, So um. Yeah, the idea that like he was doing drugs himself, it's I have the impression if he was, it was very

much an Elvis interpretation, Like these aren't drugs. My doctor gave him to me. I'm completely hooked on him, but I got him from the doctor, right. Um, not like he was like hitting like bumps of coke or something before. He was, you know, hitting the ramp. Yeah, he was. He was a bad drink or huge, huge drink. Drink lots of wild turkey. Yeah. He At one point he said he probably drank about a fifth of whiskey a

day with beer chasers in between. That's a lot, especially when you're trying to control a motorcycle jumping a hundred and sixty three ft over some greyhound bus. Well, I don't think he would do those jumps wasted or anything, but he would like probably drink afterwards. He would take his traditional shot a wild turkey before. So you think he did it straight? Yeah, I don't think he was

jump I'm very curious you think. Yeah. But a lot of the stuff, a lot of the dirt that we know about Evil Knevil came out in a book by his former published publisher names Shelly Saltman. Yeah, that was a big deal in the documentary, so I think after the Snake River Jump in nineteen seventy four, Saltman published a book about the jump um and it was an authorized book, but Saltman decided to to point out that

um working working for Evil Knevil. A day spent working for Evil Knievel was like spending three hours at the dentists without novacaine. Um. That the he he said that he abused, He was abusive towards his family. That he um was totally he hooked on drugs and drank and was immoral and all this other stuff just completely hung out. All the guy's dirty laundry may or may not have

made up rumors. Well, and this is when you could still lead kind of a private life, like you know about the stuff now, but um, it's not like today, like if you're carousing women in bars, there's ten people filming you with a cell phone, right and like within minutes it's like out on on the internet. No, this is like it took a tell all biography for this kind of stuff to get out, right. Um. So Evil Kinevel goes and finds the guy and attacks him with

the baseball bat and had two broken arms at the time. Yeah, oh he did. Yeah, he like left the hospital with two broken arms and said give me that bat and attacks his former good friend. Okay, like really badly well, bro, Yeah, he shattered one of his arms. The guy had his arm up to defend himself and that arm got shattered. Um, And this was where everything really went off the rails. Um. He did six months for that six months in jail, and this is at a time when his stars as

high as it could have possibly been. Um. Remember he had those action figures from my deal that he was making so much money. Going to prison actually voided his contract with them, so he lost all of his licensing fees from that and that was a huge source of his income at the time. Um. That him being in prison, he had started the daredevil craze and there are lots of people nipping at his heels. Him going to jail opened up this huge vacuum to where every daredevil in

the world was trying to fill it. Now and there was actually this guy that um that the house stuff works recently ran a great article on called the Human Fly, and his star rose because he was trying to fill this void left by Evil Kinevil when he was in prison. So we're going to do a show on him too, right, We've got to. Yeah, But so I won't say anything more. Okay, Um, but but it was a big deal. This is where

things like really went downhill for him. But his son said, I read an interview with his son and the Guardian, his oldest son, Kelly, who I think is like kind of the the executor of his estate and everything. Um, he said that this this definitely was where it went downhill. But his life, his dad's life never circled the drain or anything like that. He didn't like just go completely overboorder off the rails, despite the fact that like the

family like lost all their finances within a few years. Um, he had to pay Shelley Saltman twelve million dollars. Well, he didn't pay him a cent. Oh, he didn't know he was ordered to er. Um. Yeah, there was a lot of like all the money just went away. Yeah yeah. Um.

The reason he had to serve as full sentence. He probably would not have had the judge not found out that in his prison work release program he was being chafferd and a limousine convertible back and forth and arranged for other inmates to get mamzine transportation for their work release. So the judge didn't think that was very funny and said,

you know what, You're gonna serve your whole sentence. So he did six months, did the full six months, and like you said, his beyond just losing money for the licensing, it was just everything kind of went south for him after that in life, his star fate was fading. Um, it was not a great time to attack someone with a baseball pat. You know. It wasn't like early in his career he might have survived something like that. It's not like nineteen forties or fifties, butte Montana. Yeah, but

people were kind of losing interest a bit. Well, yeah, he he and he very wisely kind of faded back into the woodwork a lot. Um. He had already stopped doing stunts, but he he was still doing public appearances, but more as like a motivational speaker or something like that. This was where he like really began to retire. Yeah. He made his own movie in nineteen seventy seven called Viva kan Evil with gene Kelly. Sadly and um that gene Kelly was in this. Gene Kelly's great. I know

it's sad for gene Kelly. He was in this garbage movie. Lauren Hutton was in it and um and she's great too. Evil Kine Evil played himself as Evil Kine Evil, and he was bad and he his The plot was that he um foiled Mexican drug traffickers, right, yeah, I mean it kind of opens. I mean it was clearly him saying like, this is the story I want to tell. Like it opens with him like rescuing an orphan on his motorcycle a lot of a bad orphanage, like riding them out of there, and then he foils crimes and

forcing the orphan to make knockoff wallets. Yeah, and that, you know, he even charms. I think the thing in the review I read said he quote eventually charms the feminist reporter assigned to him, which was Lauren Hutton. Really, oh yeah, so he was one of those like you know, what do you what do you like? He's writing a bad article on me. Watch this, I'll charm the socks off of you, pants off. It's worth watching a bit of that, or at least a trailer hunt. I definitely

i'd watched that movie for sure. I want to see the George Hamilton's movie of him. George, It's Hamilton's as Evil Kine Evil I'm sure even George Hamilton's was like me, Well, McConaughey for years was gonna do a movie. He would have been perfect. I think he kind of had that look a little bit. Yeah, but now I think that movie has been trying to be made for so many years now. It is currently Darren Aronofsky directing Channing Tatum

as Evil Kine Evil really, so we'll see. Okay, I like Channing Tatum, I do too, but he's just got this um vulnerability that I don't think even he's aware of that he brings to every role. I don't think it belongs anywhere near evil. Kannebl Well, that's true, because he was like McConaughey would have been perfect. I think he would. But Channing Tatum, he's he's one of those guys that did not want to like, but then it turned out like he was a pretty good actor and

funny and sort of self deprecating despite his looks. So I was like, I guess I do like this guy. I got nothing against him. I just don't think he could be a good evil. Kannevil, Yeah, I hear you. Well, he's an actor. Though he's an actor, he doesn't have to personify the role. Yeah, I guess if George Hamilton's did it, Channing Tatum can do. I think I've told

this story before. One of my good friends said that he saw George Hamilton's on The Tonight Show in the seventies, and Hamilton's said that he never wore the same pair of socks twice. He always wore a brand new pair of socks. And my friend was like eight years old, and he was just thought that was the most like, yeah, like exotic, wonderful thing of all time. And he's still thinks about George almost at Alexander Hamilton's of George Hamilton when he gets new socks and puts some money. Uh.

So Kenneble ended up being married twice. His first wife, Linda thirty eight years. She hung him through the thick and then uh, he divorced and then married a woman named Crystal Kennedy for two years they were married. Yeah, but apparently they've been together for a very long time, and so he's like, while he was previously married, I believe so um I saw I saw her described as his long time partner. Yeah, she helped him after during

his illness, and it was a sad thing. At the end for his his family and friends to see him that way, right, Well, well, apparently they when they were married for two years, they divorced and then reconciled and then lived together as friends, um, but unmarried. They never remarried, but they stayed very close. Yeah. And he eventually he

died of well what was it exactly? He died oddly enough of diabetes, Okay, Well, he had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, so I believe he actually, um had a heart condition is what it sounds like, you no, a lung condition of breathing problem. And I guess the impression I have is that he just had just worn his body down. Yeah, but it wasn't like, uh he broke bone or slipped

on a banana peel or something like you'd expect you. Yeah, and his when uh in any of the documentaries, his friends and family talked about how sad it is when you see someone that lived a life like he did to be so sick and uh. And I think he converted to Christianity late in life and sort of he was baptized publicly. Yeah. I tried to come clean about not having done the right thing. A lot of times and you know, kind of the classic story deathbed regrets, but he he became. I mean, he was a led

and he's an American legend for sure. Yeah. He was buried in a butte in two thousand seven and one kind of cool thing that happened. He very much. They call him like the Godfather of the X Games because he has kind of inspired all that stuff, and they brought him back to the X Games before he died and paid tribute to him. And it was kind of cool seeing all these kids that were like, you know, like you're you're the dude, like you are evil Kinevil.

He got to experience that, yeah, because he he was kind of broke at this point and not doing well and he saw all these people kind of uh paying homage to him and saying like You're the reason all this is here. That's cool and I'm sure he's probably well, can I get a cut of it? You just said I was a reason? You know? He get my lawyer on the phone. His very famous mostly white in red and blue jumpsuit. I never already wouldn't say it that way,

and his motorcycle are in the Smithsonian. Yeah, the good old white, blue and red right. That's how true patriots say it. That's right. If you want to know more about evil Knevil, you can't because there's nothing more to know because we said everything. But in its Just in case, you can type those words in the search bar of your favorite search engine. You know, we'll bring up some really interesting stuff. And since I said search engine, it's

time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this differential equations. Hey guys, big fan, it's really excited on the latest show on chaos theory, maybe the most irrelevant episode in my line I worked thus far. I'm a PhD student mechanical engineering at Auburn University boo, and I'm currently instructing a class on system dynamics and controls. I can't believe you mentioned differential equations. Been harping on my students on the importance of UH the dif eq UH. But it

is a hard sell. Uh, It's not hard to believe, my friend. Even more relevant was your decision on deterministic systems. Whereas my work deals primarily with determinism's evil relative UH stochastic systems randomness. My field of research involves state estimation, which, put crudely, is the practice of applying statistics to make

the best guess of a systems state i e. Position, timmature, pressure, etcetera. Obviously, the beauty of estimation lies in its ability to use knowledge of a measurements uncertainty, or even the uncertainty in the initial condition, for producing an optimal estimate. Anyway, I could go on and on. I just want to say,

great show, great episode, great podcast. A side note was the Isaac Cream Newton bit a nod to Wu Tang clan as in cash rules everything around me c R e A. M. Cream Get the money, Get the money, dollar bills bills, y'all, Dollar dollar bills, y'all. That's from Dan Dans multi talented. Yeah, he's into Wu Tang and mechanical engineering. Yeah, at Auburn and he's doing it all

my kineevil. Thanks a lot, Dan, We appreciate that. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know if you can join us on Instagram at s y s K podcast too. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com and as always join us at our home on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot com