How Buildering Works

need more guests. So if you are a stealthy celebrity listener, if you're an actor, or a writer or a producer, uh 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 from neat folks of all walks of life. If you were out there and you want to be on Movie Crush, I would love, love love to have you. Um, if you're in Atlanta or going through Atlanta with a movie project,

that's great. If not, we had partner studios in l A and New York, UH, and we can work it out. If you live in uh a fly over state even let's say so, hit me up. Just send me an email to movie Crush at how stuff Works dot com and put in the subject line movie Crush guest and I'll know it's you and I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun, trust me and um here's two recording podcast together. Thanks. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Roland and this is Stuff you Should Know trying on some new stuff. The two least extreme guys covering yet another extreme sports topic. I'm extreme in my easy goingness, extremely easy going, extremely laid back. Yeah, I always feel weird when we do uh, what do we do? Base jumping and parkoury and uh, I just feel wholly unqualified. It's a great way to start out a shop, right share It is like, don't listen to a word we say.

But now, these things always have like the coolest backstories, and there's always like a handful of people who like just take it to the next level, and there's always like underground like up stars. It's it's like all of those things, So I find these pretty 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 ex cast with Josh and Chuck. Yeah, oh actually yeah, I see. No, I'm disregarding it stuff, but I like

them still. Yeah. I think the history for sure of this is super interesting. Yeah, and if you're if you aren't familiar, we didn't misspell the title of this episode. Buildering is actually a combination of buildings, like you walk into, maybe eat luncheon, possibly do some work, um, you know, go on to Facebook in sure, Yeah, you can do those in some buildings, um, get chased out of the

basement via 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 um climbing huge enormous rocks. Basically, it's like um, like rock climbing, but 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 um, I think it's it's harder than than rock climber. It can be depending

on the boulder, I'm sure. Um. But if you put those two things together, you get this new term, this relatively new term called buildering, 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 need because when I saw it, I went, huh did you? And then it sucks you into the article and you said,

I've got to learn more about this. Well yeah, and then when I clicked on and I said, oh, these are just those those wackos who uh climb you know, 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 they get pressed. And every single person who does this is a wacko. Yeah, and we'll go over this, but they a lot of

times we'll get arrested and stuff. Um. The same as uh as as the tight rope walker that that wacky French guy what was his name? Ha ha ha ha, Yeah, the guy who walks between the World Trade Center towers and Man on Wire. I think we've gone over this Man on Wire, great documentary very bad movie, was it? I just don't know what they did to uh to Ron John's eyes? Ron John what's his name? Not Ron John,

Don John Don John Don John. Yeah. Remember he made a movie about a guy who was addicted to internet porn but started dating Scarlett Johnson. What yeah? Wait wait 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 j g L. That's I didn't know. You're talking about a character that's like the guy's not called any of those things, you know, but he like he wrote that movie that was like

his movie, His baby, 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 Joe answer all right. 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, anything with what's his face? Syndum super into. Yeah, everybody

loves what's his face? I know who you're talking about. What's his face? I'm blanking everything. You know, we should tell people were recording in the morning. That's why. Oh my brain is so foggy. I hadn't really thought about that. But yeah, it's gonna make a substantial difference. It's gonna 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 night I thought you stunk. Um, I think so yet. No, I didn't actually drink a thing last night. For the record, I did not either. Oh good, we're both teetotally last night. So um, yes, bad movie. The only good thing about the Man on Wire movie was, um, some of the shots of the actual walk itself. Most of that looked

really astounding. But um man, it was so bad. Well, you know, I think that there's an overreliance on special effects these days to really move a movie along, rather than good old fashioned plot and and writing and dialogue. They're just like, oh no, no, we're gonna have these great shots. Are these great effects? Or this thing's gonna blow up. 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 it sounds like what you're talking about, and this is well and he did this, he did this. Uh, he broke the third wall and did a lot of talking to the audience in this ridiculous from accent, and um did he really? Yeah? Man, it was. 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.

I mean that's like one of the pinnacles of documentary filmmaker. Al Right, well we killed some time. Yeah, that was great. Check we can So we're talking about the the guy you're talking about. I can't believe neither one of us can remember the actual man's name. Um. He he walked on a tight rope between the World Trade Center towers. That's not buildering. Um, there are people. There's a guy named Shipwreck Kelly who used to um 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. Buildering 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 um free climbing, which is absolutely totally and completely insane. 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 were talking about. I'm I'm begging with you to

stop doing what you're doing. It's one of the most dangerous things in person can do. You're climbing a building, and a lot of buildings are not made to be climbed. Some of them are like, well, 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 people can use that will go over as well. But that that is building.

It's not like Philippe Petite who walked on a wire right right, that's 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 buildering or climbing buildings, I think, well, this has been going on for probably thirty forty years max, maybe about the time that Mountain Dew really turned extreme. That's right, Uh,

not true at all. And I was genuinely shocked to know that people have been climbing buildings and in an extreme sports way. They just didn't call it that. Then, since there have been tall buildings right like in nineteen hundred 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, uh, Jeoffrey Winthrop Young, And he wrote a book, 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 like there were even little diagrams that was like that would show

you which way to climb. He would reference like this one window sill or there's a ledge next to this one drain pipe or the actual drain pipe work. Like he really kind of spelled out how you could make your way up to each olding and it was kind of like this cool underground thing to do on Trinity College's campus. That's right, And I can't still it's hard to believe to me that this is going on a uh yeah yeah, I mean college didn't have always been

college students, So don't you think that's true? You know? So? Um, Jeoffrey Winthrop Young his name really is kind of fun to say, isn't it. Um, he published this is kind of like a little underground smash. From what I understand, the the deans of the college were not happy about this to suppress it, right. Um. But then almost forty years later, another pamphlet or mini book came out and it was written student pseudonymously by someone named Whipple Snaith

turned out to be Noel Symington. Another great game, and he he published something called The Night Climbers of Cambridge, another university in Cambridge, and um basically did the same thing. It was 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 it is because you don't want

to get caught. Yeah, it's crazy that Cambridge was the was the birth of modern you know, extreme climbing. Yeah. Uh. And here in the United States, however, when it really started happening was when we started building skyscrapers, that is to say, the the first like years of the twentieth century. Uh, and there were it's weird there. It seems like there's been a lot of Spiderman and human flies and think they maybe he should just be a little more original

rather than just say I'm the new Spider Man, right. Uh. And for God's sake, that they should stop wearing Spider Man outfits when they do this, because that just looks kind of silly. And while we're on it, they should stop making Spider Man movies over and over again. Oh the new one is so good though, is it? I haven't seen it. Yeah, And I'm 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. I was pretty taken with it. Okay. So, yeah, we started building skyscrapers here in the US and almost out of the gate, people are like, I want to climb that, and some people didn't, like you were saying. There was one guy who's the Human Fly, the original human Fly, I think, and supposedly he got that nickname from Grover Cleveland, 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. It's crazy. He looks like, uh, I mean, I don't know what I expected, maybe that he would just look a little different from his peers of the day, but he literally looks like he walked out of an accounting office in New York City and started climbing buildings. Yeah, that's 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 was his outfit as the Human Fly. But um, there's this one that one great picture I hope you saw it where he's hanging off of a building ledge and a full three piece suit like doffing his cap. I did see that. Pretty neat, Yeah he had he had a little bit of pinoche. You could say, yes, yeah, is

there anything Okay, No, there is something more unsettling. But something, something very unsettling, is old timey athletic wear, you know. And the other thing I thought of that's even more unsettling his old timey wheelchairs. The weaker ones. They look neither comfortable nor safe. No, and they're 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 um so Gardner are one of his first big moves as he climbed Detroit News is twelve story uh Ad building in nineteen sixteen. 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. You know, it's a big thing, like you could sit around and and read and that's great, but people were looking for stuff to do during the day too. So yeah, like you you could see Daredevil's 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 twelve stories? Yeah, twelve stories and you know he hit it right at noon when people could leave their

offices at lunch leave their martinis on the table. Um. And the Detroit News actually covered it, and all the newspapers were always knocked out by these, you know, feats of daring do uh 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 than it speaks that line. Yes, you're right, but um, so this was like a huge deal in Detroit, and so Gardner was like, well,

I'll just 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 of days later. But um, Apparently the crowds that turned out were so massive and throwing the area and just disrupted everything around there that they're like, we we can't do this, you can't climb, so they canceled it. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer, but he

would not be deterred. He would go on to climb many buildings, including the sixteen story Empire Building in Birmingham, Alabama, which I didn't know Birmingham had. I know, this is like back in the time when any city had a shot at being a great American city. You know. Oh he had to do is get a little investment, maybe has some cattle or timber or something, and then build some skyscrapers. That's right in Birmingham is one of the

great American cities, by the way. Uh. And then in Vancouver, and it seems like a lot of this has happened over the years. In Vancouver, Um, the coup, the seventeen story World Building. Uh, 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. Um, he's feeling pretty great and then all of a sudden, he just drops out of public view and thence he

drops off the side of the 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 six 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 of 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, alright, we'll go chalk up and uh scale Jerry's desk over there. Hey, Chuck, So we're back and all of this is m 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 part around Evil Kinevil, we did one of Daredevils? Um did we on Daredevil's I knew we did Stuntman and Canniball run. I think we did Daredevils. Huh, I I think I think this closes the book. Oh, I was gonna say, I think we need to reduce some of this stuff.

All right, but 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 in the Three Students episode. That's like the greatest worst thing I've ever heard. It's pretty good. So 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. Probably there's 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 Man, if you will. Yeah, going back again to the nineties, this is a little out of order sequentially, but a dude named Henry Roland broke his hip felt only about thirty five ft 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 rolling narrative here with these dudes, as you can't keep him down. Eight years later he returned climbed that same courthouse and only twelve minutes, which is pretty impressive, 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 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 nineteen three. He fell off the Hotel martinique Um which was a nine story drop for him. Which will do it? That will? That will kill you? Although I was on Mosaic Science magazine site and they had um 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, um, 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 um, 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 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. 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. That's a good reading. So HF young dies very sad, and then the couple of more folks died the next year.

And then that's when cities started to say, all right, we're not calling it buildering 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, you know for sure, So they did, they started an

outlaw and it kind of fell to the wayside. And um some of these early guys, like you said, building is not a term yet, so there called urban climbers, at least they are now. But there's a there's actually a pretty big distinction between urban climbing and builder, although they can very frequently overlap, and some people do both. Um 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, I

can't see those videos. I know. It's it's just too much um or it could be like climbing up a bridge or something. But it's you're 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 you're using the building at the facade of the building itself, although sometimes that can um imitate a ladder, as we'll see here in

a minute. But you're right, nothing extra right. Uh, So we jump from you know, I guess the nineteen thirties or so. Like you said, it tailed off for a long time for good reason, and then finally in the nineteen seventies and eighties started to pick back up again. Uh, namely in the late nineteen seventies with a man named George Willig. Uh he was a toy maker, so he had a sense of whimsy I imagine um for the

Ideal Toy Company. And he took a p t O d literally and said, uh, well, he didn't tell anyone, but he took a p t O day a little personal time to go climb the World Trade Center. Yep, I'd love this guy a lot. Actually yeah, he did in three and a half hours. And he actually had a rig. He was not a free climber because that would just be insane um and probably not possible with the World Trade Center which was mostly glass. But he figured out a way, uh to to fit a device

over the window washers scaffold and then it fit. And if you see pictures of this guy doing so, you know 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. Uh. And apparently after he figured that out, it wasn't too tough. Well it was. It was like, um, I think it was still tough. But this implement that he designed was you know,

pretty ingenious. Well that he climbed with relative ease, right right, yeah, yeah, better than free climbing or something like that. For sure. He was using implements. But the thing when he when he pressed down on it, it's it would slide into these slats that the window washing machine was supposed to go up and down on, like you were saying, um, And when he pressed down on it, it would lock into the sides, and when he like lifted up on it, it would unlock, so he could just kind of like

shimmy up like that. Right. And he had 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. And he brought a little hammer with him and needed it many times to like hammer it out to about the shape that he needed it to be. But he, um, he made this climb and a couple of cops. One of them was a specialist

in suicides. Uh, we're 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 you mean to do this? You're you're just climbing the World Trade Center, that's all you're doing. Huh. And then I would have just walked up and jumped off, dummy, right exactly, like this seems

a little hard for that. But they they left him alone until he got to the top, and then of course they arrested him right when he when he got to the top. But um, 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 the ninety seven a quarter million bucks, which it's a lot of money today, but certainly a lot of

money backs in. But Mayor Beam, I guess, was charmed and taken with the uh the attention it brought maybe the New York City and said I'm gonna find you a penny per floor. So he paid a find of a dollar in ten cents, right, 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. I mean he was he was big time all of a sudden, and he's just this you know, thoughtful toymaking guy who 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. Um. He got work as a stunt man on a bunch of shows, including The six Million Dollar Man, like just that one clime like made him famous still to this day.

I think he's he's one of the u for sure, one of the dudes that people look back on as 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. Um, well, because we'll get to him. That uh Ellen Robert guy. He's still climbing as a little buns off. There's a little tight climbing buns stupid sexy Flanders classic one that there's a dude and he still

climbs as well. I believe 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 like the really cool outfits that they put the Spider Man in. So the Walmart version right when you're just like a kid at Halloween, were clearly see what kind of like sneakers you're wearing not so cool underneath the red spats. They're supposed to cover them,

but don't. Yeah, like if he had the real Hollywood suit, it would might look kind of, you know, awesome, but no such luck for Dan Goodwin. Plus, also, if you're gonna go to this kind of trouble and do something this publicly, like to take an extra month and design and manufacture your own costume. Agreed, get a little cape in there something sure, although that might get in the way. Well, it had to be a very lightweight, thin, small cape. I would half size. Maybe I would be a nude builderer.

Could you imagine? Now I can? I'll sit with you for a while. Um. So, Dan Goodwin dressed up his spidy and he climbed the sears Tower in Chicago, which is now the Willis Tower at the time the Year's Tower,

it's still the Sears Tower. Yeah, I agree. Uh, And then would go on to climb the John Hancock Tower, also in Chicago, and then he said, that's beans, I'm gonna go climb the Sea In Tower in Toronto because I think it's over eight 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 CN Tower twice in the same day. Yeah. Why because it was there. I guess, I don't know. Maybe somebody was like, that wasn't the big of a deal and

he's like, oh yeah, I'll do it again. I'll see in a couple of hours. Jerk. Uh. And then Goodwin was then followed um by the man we were just talking about, a Frenchman or a Frenchman name Alan Robert or is it Elaine? I never know how to pronounce that when the eye is stuck in there, Uh, I

don't know, Ellen, Okay, Yeah, that sounds nice. Yeah. This is in the mid nineties and he he is a bit of a stand alone, not a stand alone, 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, at the very least the riskiest, or at the very least the

most well known. Too. I've ran across another guy named Um Mustang Wanted. I don't think that's his actual name. That's what he goes by, Mustang Wanted. He named his himself after an ad on Craigslist, right exactly. And he does from what I can tell free free climbing, buildering. Um. And he's younger and just kind of not well known. I'm sure he's quite well known in the buildering circles or the serving climbing circles. But um, yeah, Elaine Robert, Robert, right,

Alan Robert. What am I doing? He? Um like he's sponsored. He's that well known by 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 Nuvigil nor Jill, nor Jill or nor Gill, one of them. We're having a lot of trouble with the words that circle in this guy's universe. Yeah, that's because this morning. But he uh yeah, God bless him. He has some some hair loss going on. So he

got the sponsorship that made sense for his life. It's good for him, right, good for that guy. And he also wore Spider Man outfit, so just stop, dudes, get the Spider Man. He doesn't always he would from time to time. 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 gonna make it feel so much cooler when I build her this building. Should

we take another break? I think? So? All right, we're gonna go getting our Spiderman costumes and finish the show that way. So, UM, we talked about how like these guys can get kind of famous actually, and some of them use their platforms for for good, like l A. Robert Um, he'll go both ways, right, Like he's taken um tens of thousands of dollars to climb a building to promote like a Spider Man movie or something like that. Really that's why he was dressed as Spider Man. Did

he really do that? Um? And then. But on the other hand, he's well known to like unfurraled banners at the top that promote like, um, like uh, the climate change stuff like that, right, Yeah, Like there was a one website called a hundred months dot org that he was promoting. I think back in the late nineties that um basically positive that we had like a hundred months before the earth was irreversibly changed by climate change. And I don't think that that has has panned out as successful,

that website and changing the world's mind yet. Um. Other people have done the same though, uh, either promotional stuff or banners, sometimes like you said, for good Uh, sometimes for dough because the builder has got to eat after all. Sure, you gotta be able to get to the places. If you're traveling the world, you need airplane money. Yeah, and sometimes like you said with the was it Willig that went on to um do some stuntman work. Yeah he did. Yeah,

that's a good way to get work. Um. Sebastia was the guy in Casino Royal. I just want to apologize to the entire country of France for this episode. You don't listen now, You're right, that's fine, We're good then, uh. He was the one in Casino Royal who doubled up um James Bond and did all the I think he did all the parkour and the building and that's 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 uh 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. Uh. This is when he uh went out of the window of the Birch Birch Khalifa in Dubai, which is the world's tallest tower at seventeen feet and h 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 real, yeah, I mean, and of course he was fully cabled and tethered, uh, and it was as 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 uh, it's just it's amazing,

really really great action movie scene. It is a lot of those movies were pretty good that um Mission Impossible ones turned out. Okay, yeah, I think all of them were good except for the Uh, I guess it was too the John Woowin. 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, he still have to have a good story for Mission Impossible and good um impossible mission stuff, right, and they didn't have that. I think I remember it just not having a very good plot in and good Mission impossible type stuff. It didn't feel Mission Impossible like to me. But they once brad Bird got back onto

the director like those those were good in my opinion. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying, Like, you need to have plot, you need to have a story, you have a good dialogue, so if you're gonna 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. Um, 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, you know, and people take note. Right. Um. 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 him to keep them away from their building forever.

They're like, I know why you're here. You're you're not a scout, you're casing the place. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a liability for property owners. Um, although some have paid people and invited them to do so to give them press. So it's a it's a weird sort of

mix of 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 it's because they're they're covering their bottoms, you know, like they if you fall off, and even worse, if you fall off and you fall on to some other people. Yeah, that's that's

a big problem for them. I never thought about that. Yeah, it's I mean, 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 it really is a selfish dangel sport. But um, like there's 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, um they tried to blast uh spider Dan what was his last name, Dan Goodwin, Dan Goodwin off of the building with 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 it's entirely possible. Yeah. He also claimed that Fire Commissioner William Blair threatened to

kill him if he did this again. And both of these are claims from Dan Goodwin um who by the way, there was an article in Wired magazine about him and uh Elaine Robert and it was to both them their inspirations in life, and Elaine Roberts were Zoro and Robin Hood. So's he's clearly grounded in reality. Uh. And then good ones are Bruce Lee makes sense, Carlos Castanada, mm hmm, Steve Jobs, are you ready for the last one? John Lennon, famous extreme sportsman. Yeah, John Lennon, you can parkour like

a gorilla. Yeah, I remember that a song. All we're saying is get building a chance, which was wildly irresponsible to or imagine there's no building. It's easy if you try so do this all day. One of the 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. Um. So, man, that really threw me off because you can picture him naked because I

forgot where I was going. Yeah, I can picture like his his flank and rump. Yep, you know how can you just picture instead of Yoko oh no, him clinging to the side of the building. And now I know Aaron Cooper will be sending something. Yeah, for sure, I know what I was gonna say, Dan, Dan Goodwin, Um he was actually he said he was inspired by the Las Vegas MGM Grand fire in the early eighties. I think maybe, um, 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. And yeah, there was one in Atlanta in the early days. Yeah, the I can't remember what it was back then, but there's Yeah, they revamped that hotel. You can go to it now. Um 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, um 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 for the person in charge of fighting his fires, like, let me climb up there and put some cables in place, and you 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 citizens offered to put themselves in danger on top of that, especially if they're just as Spider Man in an ill fitting child's costume at the time. Chief, Yeah, I got a great idea.

But supposedly he went and started climbing the outside of buildings to kind of proved that this could be done and that it should be done, and um, that people could be saved, that you could use this kind of thing as a way to assist um fire departments during fires, which so far I don't think anyone's ever taken them up on it. They don't have builders on the on

the payroll, no. Um. So one final thing I want to mention is that, uh, there's this one building new York Times building in two thousand eight that Elain 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 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 didn't wasn't even an experienced builder from Brooklyn went out and climbed the thing successfully. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah, and there have been unsuccessful climbs. There's one guy who was climbing a building in Houston and felt like thirty stories in two thousand three. Um, and he was reported by an eyewitnesses

is purposefully jumping. Um, but I don't know. Apparently the buildering community doesn't necessarily buy that. He 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 this is dangerous. Don't do it, even if you've got the best tom Cruise suction cups you you can get your hands on, and you've got uh nice some ropes and some friends who are really trustworthy, just

don't do it, Okay, I agreed. Uh, well, since I said just don't do it, that's your queue to go look this article up on how Stuff Works dot com. And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this. I forgot to get a listener mail, so I'm gonna read the first one on the latest email. It's like Russian Roulette with listener mail. Um, yeah, this one's okay, not bad. Subject lines sleepy while reading. Uh. Dear Josh and Chuck, thanks for all the hard work

and humor you put into stuff. You should know. Podcasts have been a constant companion to me for the last seven years. Taught me about agent orange while painting landscapes, Jim Hinson while working out at the gym, and bioluminescence while riding the bus in China. Wow, he's got an exciting life. Um, there's one thing I really do need to know, though, Why do I always doze off while I'm reading? I'd like to learn enjoy reading, but over the past few years I struggled to stay conscious. Whyn't

when I read? I was hoping you could shed some light on this, as you're both avid readers. That is Harrison Gibbs, and he has a PS. I've been enjoying Internet round Up and don't be dumb on Amazon Prime. My sympathies to Chuck is, I know the struggle of Beard Dan drip is real and we referenced it. T sell shampoo and Beard Oil has helped me. That's Harrison Gibbs. Uh. I don't know the answer, but that is a for

sure thing. Like if you want to fall asleep at night, put your phone down or your e reader and read a good old fashioned book. It's like a paper valume. Yeah, it might just do it, yep, but they're science behind it. Sure, well look at it. We don't forget to Yeah, if we don't fall asleep while we're looking it up. Thanks Harrison, appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with this like he did, you can tweet to us at

Josh I'm Clark or s Y s K Podcast. You can hit up Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff if you should Know right. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. There's always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics is that how stuff works dot com