The Twilight Zone Episode

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Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin and we're the hosts of Out of Character, the best podcast in the world. It's really funny. Really? Yeah, yeah. I think statistics just came back and we're one of the funniest two guys with mics and that's pretty hard to beat right now, but it's true, actually. Why should people listen to us? Tell them. Well, we're trendy, we're funny, we're topical, you get all your news here. Not, you know, the facts, but maybe our takes on it and everything in between. So listen to Out of Character on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. And welcome to the podcast. Oh, I should say welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and this is Chuck and Chase, you two and this is Stuff You Should Know, the twilight zone. Completely unrecognizable as the twilight zone theme song. Really? It was off. I think you give people 100 guesses. No one's guessing twilight zone. Oh, wow. All right. I've been singing the golden earring song in my head all day. Oh, I forgot about that. That's a, thanks for that, you're warm. When the bullet hits the bone. That's the one. That's the one. I didn't know that was golden earring too. Yeah. They talk about doing speed in that twilight zone song. Actually, it talks about not doing speed because it's almost there. Oh, wow. I think I knew that. Yeah, it says no more speed. I'm almost there. Oh, okay. I don't think he's talking about driving fast. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. No, but we're talking about twilight zone, the great TV show that started out in October 2nd, 1959 at a time when TV minds would be blown because if you're talking about, I guess whatever you would call science fiction on television at the time, it's very kind of corny, B-movie kind of stuff and people were not ready for what the great, great, broad surling was about to deliver into their living rooms. No, the 50s started what's known as the golden age of television and broad surling was a major part of making it the golden age of television. Yeah. And not just with the twilight zone, he started out with an illustrious career basically right off the bat. He was doing some radio writing, he started to try his hand at TV and at the time TV was about as good as those B sci-fi movies were. He had variety shows, Westerns, lots and lots of Westerns, sitcoms that were mostly slapstick and nothing like. There wasn't anything particularly high-minded, right? And so surling comes along and he starts writing these 90 minute TV plays that were broadcast live. It was very much like a live TV play and they were just the stuff he was writing, it just hadn't been seen before on television. And again, television wasn't that old so there wasn't a lot to compare it to, but he just took what was going on and elevated it to just astronomical new levels. Yeah, for sure. His big hit that you kind of got his name for it first was in 1956, it was one of those television plays called Patterns and it was about kind of ruthless business people. And it was really, really popular and I think you found this thing that was, it was so popular, it was the first TV show ever to run again, like they put it on the air again just because people thought it was so awesome. Yeah, and so this is his first thing that got really big and he hadn't been writing all that long by the end of the 50s. So less than a decade, maybe half a decade. He had something like 100 produced scripts under his belt. And then he was also the recipient of more Emmys for TV writing than anyone in history still to this day. So he was really, really good at what he did. Yeah, another big one was, and this is one I had heard of because they made a film after this teleplay, but it was called Requiem for a Heavyweight. And when I saw that, I was like, wait, is that the movie? Like, did he base it on that or the other way around? But yeah, he wrote the original script or the Jack Palens' Requiem for a Heavyweight. And I think that one, a Peabody Award, he was the first writer to ever win a Peabody for TV writing. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it's coming through like how good Rod Serling was and just tell, he's considered, you know, synonymous with the Twilight Zone, but there is just a lot more to him. Hansen too. One of the things that he, he was really big on was basically tackling big social issues of the day. Yeah. In large part racism, fascism through the McCarthy trials or hearings, that kind of stuff. And he just hit wall after wall, not only were the networks like really worried about losing sponsors by putting anything like particularly hard hitting on, that he had, like the censors were conservative. And they were like, you can't, you can't do that. You can't talk about, you know, black people who win. And television. Even though it's what's going on, you can't, you can't write a show about that. So he, he kept running into it and he would adjust. I saw that there was one, it's considered one of the greatest shows of all time. It's called The Town that Turned a Dust. And it was written about lynchings in the South, but he had to move it from the South to the Southwest and the victim from a black man to a Mexican man. And apparently the censors were like, oh yeah, that's all totally fine. But he had to turn it into something of an allegory to make it more palatable for TV viewers. So right off of the bat, he basically had to figure out how to maneuver into this really tight structure that he found very stifling. Yeah. One of the, one of those was something he wrote a teleplay about corruption on Capitol Hill, which, you know, by the time it got to error was not even recognizable as the thing that he had written to begin with like dancing to yeah, exactly. So he told the press. He said in retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play, had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057 and people, the Senate with robots. And so that idea, I mean, that was just a quote to the press, but he was like, maybe there's something to this like he can get across messages better if he packages it in something that's, you know, kind of sci fi and more palatable. So we moved to LA with this idea, specifically his pitch was to base a TV show around this other thing. One of his last TV places called the time element about a guy who had a recurring dream that he goes back to Hawaii in 41 to warn about the attack on Pearl Harbor. And then there's a twist, which of course Twilight Zone would become known for twist in general. But in this case, it was like, was it a dream kind of thing? But he was like in 58, he said, why don't we try and do a TV show like where every week we have something like the time element? Yeah. And he was used to writing 90 minute teleplays. So he wanted an hour long slot. And CBS was like, no, let's, let's see what you got with a half hour first. So he came up with, I guess something called a happy place. I don't think it was ever produced. I didn't see any mention of it being produced. It was just the first attempt at a pilot. And it was more than CBS was willing to accept because it was essentially became Logan's run years later, where once you reach stage 60, you were taken to a happy place and the happy place was the place where you were exterminated. Right. And CBS was like, no, we're not doing that. What else you got? Yeah. And he said, well, I got this other thing. It's called, where is everybody? And it was sort of like the last person on earth kind of scenario. And the twist in this case was the last man was an astronaut in a tank, a sensory deprivation tank training for a solo mission to the moon. CBS was like, now we're talking, baby. How about 36 episodes? And he said, great. He wrote 80% of those scripts and was an owner of 50% of the show. And he made the name up, like the Twilight Zone was something he just came up with, even though it turns out that is a aviation term. that their force uses is when you're about to land and you can no longer see the horizon, you're in the twilight zone, but apparently he didn't know that and didn't get it from that. - No, it's got a nice ring, too. I could see someone putting it together. - It's creepy sounding. - You just reminded me. I meant to propose what if we don't give away the twists of any of the episodes? - I kind of wondered that, too. Yeah, let's do that. - Okay, well, sorry about the first one, everybody, but we won't give any more away. How about that? - Yeah, 'cause hopefully what happens is you'll go out and be encouraged to watch some of these full episodes, which you can do. - Man, I watched so many of them over the last couple of days, it's just been a real joy, dude. - Yeah, I watched one full one today that I'd seen before, but I have seen a bunch of these. I used to watch the reruns and then I watched a couple of, there's a couple of fun lists like top 20 creepiest on YouTube, top 20 creepiest reveals on the twilight zone and I remember, I went through that today and I probably remembered about half of those. - Which one did you watch today? - Well, I wanted to watch one I had seen before and I watched the Burgess Meredith, well, I'm not gonna read it. Burgess Meredith is one of the last guys who doesn't want to live anymore because he survived the nuclear holocaust and then he realizes that the library is there and he's a big reader and he's like, well, I've got the books, I can now have all the time in the world to read and then something happens. - Yeah, that's a great one. I think that was season one as well. That might have been the, I don't remember exactly which one that was, but that was a great one. That's, so just buckle up everybody 'cause I'm gonna say that was a great one about basically all the episodes 'cause that is something about the twilight zone. It never got bad. It never declined. It was great until the end. - Yeah, agreed. If you've ever seen an episode, then you know that they open with, and again, very handsome Rod Serling. Even though he was five foot four, who cares? He packed a lot of handsome in that body. It cool as a cucumber coming out there. Looks so cool and he gives his opening spiel which changed over the years. It wasn't the same thing each season. But one of the seasons, I'm not sure which one this is, it goes a little something like this. There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension is vast of space and is timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow between science and superstition and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the twilight zone. - Very nice. And I thought that was the one that changes sometimes. - Yeah, yeah, each season was slightly different I think. - I did not know that. You mentioned he was handsome in that he hosted. Did you say that the first season, when he did the initial, what is it called were you narration I guess? - Yeah. - That he was off screen for the first season? - Well, no, because he had stage fright, right? - Yes, he had really, really bad stage fright and he was like, I'm fine to do the narration, do the writing, all that stuff. And yes, I would love 50% of the show's revenue. (laughing) But eventually, for some reason they were like, dude, you should just be in front of camera doing this. And so there was a guy who was a director who worked on the twilight zone. His name was Lamont Johnson. And he later said like, his week would be ruined when he knew that he was gonna have to be in front of the camera. So, but he did great. You did great, Ghost of Rod Sirling. - Yeah, you would never know because he seemed just so cool up there on screen. So, he did a great job. Again, Ghost of Rod Sirling, be proud. - So, one of the other things that Dave dug up that I thought was great, he dictated all of his scripts and he could dictate 10 to 15 pages worth in one sitting, which I would not be able to do. 'Cause yeah, that just seems way harder than writing to me. - Yeah, and I guess he had someone sitting there who could do Stinno really fast. - I hope so. - Yeah. - Should we take a break? - Yeah, I think we'll take a little slightly early break and come back. - All right, we'll come back and talk about some of the themes right after this. (upbeat music) - Stop, you should know. - If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. - I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. 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Listen to GetWorks with Kyle Pru on the IHR Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - So if you've watched the Twilight Zone, you'll see that there are a lot of things that kind of come up. There's recurring themes like the last person or only person in a town or on earth, or something like that. That's a big one. So loneliness, isolation, mob mentality's come up quite a bit. People losing themselves due to panic or just going along with the mob. But one of the ones that I really love is nostalgia. Rod Serling really felt great about his childhood, which is a picturesque town of Binghamton, New York. Boy, that pee can trip you up. So he really loved small town America. He was born in 1924 between World War I and World War II, and he just had a really great childhood, and that comes through in a lot of the episodes. Like for the most part, if you find a small town, it's pretty great. But then obviously there's always a twist to that. - Yeah, there was one famous episode called Stop at Willoughby, where I add exec from New York discovers a train stop on his way home that is an actual throwback town, the town of Willoughby, where it's always the summer of 1888, and everything's wonderful, and he gets off there, and we're not gonna say what happens 'cause we're not revealing twists, but another fun thing Dave dug up is in Willoughby, Ohio. Their annual summer festival is called Last Stop, Willoughby, and it's got a little Twilight Zone theme running through. I think the library plays that theme music Josh did at the beginning on a loop all day. - Yeah, well, no, I think they play that episode to stop at Willoughby on a loop. - Oh, okay, I thought they did the theme. I was like, that'd be a little maddening. - Especially your version. - But that's it, that's the entire thing that the town of Willoughby does. They just play that episode on a loop at the library, and no one else talks about it the rest of the day. - Yeah, that's it. And so, out of high school, Sirling, I saw that he was described. as an angry person. I don't know when he picked that up but it was probably during his experiences in World War II. Like you said, he was 5'4", so he shouldn't have been eligible for the draft, but I think he insisted and they're like, "Sure, we could use you." He, the paratrooper training. He became a boxer. He was a flyweight boxer. He's in 17 bouts. I did not see how good he was or not, but he was stood up at least 17 times. Yeah, he was, he was okay. Let's just say that. I think he tried golden gloves after and they were like, "Yeah, you're not so great," but you know, at the point as he was in there slugging it out. Yeah, he could have beat me up, I'm sure. Yeah, both of us. He said at the same time. So in World War II, he was stationed in the Pacific in the Philippines and he saw like heavy action and a lot of friends died around him and front of him. And it just seared itself on his memory, obviously. That's why one of the other recurring themes is war in the hell of war. That's maybe the most recurring theme because even if it's not set in war, it's very often there's some like mention or some connection to war, like even if the events took place after some war. Yeah, I saw he wanted to fight the Nazis, so he wanted to get sent to that theater. So apparently he wasn't happy to get sent to the Pacific, but he also writes, you know, in some of the Twilight Zone episodes about the absurdity of war because I know one event that just horrific but sounds just crazy is that at one point like one of his friends was standing around just kind of entertaining everyone like Tellin' Jokes and stuff. And a supply box like the US was dropping, like here's some supplies, like Dick fell on this guy and decapitated him in front of Rod Serling and all his troop mates. Oh my god. Troop mates? Sure. Is that a thing? Yeah, so you know stuff like that would happen. He saw the real hell of war. He got a purple heart of bronze star. It was not like some cushy, you know, he wasn't like writing for the stars and stripes away from the battles. And we want to apologize for all the writers of stars and stripes. Of course, because you know that's what I would want to do. Sure. I'm not throwing stones man, give me a camera. Give me a typewriter. Yeah, exactly. So there were a couple of episodes that were pretty heavy handed as far as like beating you over the head of like just how terrible war is but they're still great. They're still great everybody. One that really stood out to me was the quality of mercy which it turns out as a Shakespeare quote from Merchant of Venice. But it's about this guy, this not a sorry I guess a lieutenant who was really wanting to prove himself but he came to the war very late. He was young. And so it's the last day of World War II but he orders since it's still a day in World War II. He orders his men to go take out a nest of Japanese soldiers hidden in a cave. It's going to kill a bunch of Japanese guys. It's going to kill a bunch of Americans for no reason, whatsoever because this is the last day of the war and yet he's like really gung how about it and makes them do it. Yeah, maybe this one, maybe we can reveal a couple of twists just so people get the point of this whole thing. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah, I think that's good. We don't want to spoil them all. In this case, the twist is that he is transformed into a Japanese soldier and that soldier gets the same orders to kill the his American troops. So a big obviously moral statement. This one is kind of similar to, it wasn't a direct remake but the Twilight Zone movie, which we're going to talk about later, which was a huge, huge movie for me when I was a kid, kind of is akin to the Vic Morrow storyline of like a racist guy who gets all of a sudden thrust into war and but people think he is or the people that they're fighting. Right. Yeah, so that's just one example of many about war, but he also was writing in the time of like the Cold War as well. And there was a lot of like captured like paranoia, losing yourself to mob mentality. Like I said, one of the ones that usually get cited is the monsters are due on maplester. Yeah, we cannot give that twist away. No, no, no, that's from season one. And that's that's up at the top of most list of like best in the series where well, yeah, I guess we can talk about the first part but not the twist, but the residents you talked about mob mentality. In this case, they turn on each other during a blackout and you know, it turns into like a like a mob mentality. Yeah, because they're expecting an alien invasion and they're like, "What are the aliens already among us? Are you an alien?" You know, it's really good. And it's just, it's set. I think the entire thing is set in one front yard. Oh, really? I'm pretty sure. I don't think that they leave the front yard. I think the whole thing takes place on the street in this neighborhood which makes it even better. It's just, that's the other thing too. The twists and the riding, the stories themselves get top billing in like all of the spotlight. But man, some of the best directors working at the time, some of the best cinematographers like the stuff they were doing was just primo television that still holds up today, that at the time no one had seen anything like this, like it was just a gift to the world. And it still is, frankly, because all of the episodes are great. Yeah. And the, a lot of like actors would get their start on TV obviously. That's still a thing in some cases. But like Robert Redford, Elizabeth Montgomery, Dennis Hopper, and Francis, Robert DuVal, Carol Burnett, got her start on the Twilight Zone, Charlie Bronson, Jeville Sponson, Julie Neumar, and of course, Bert Reynolds. Man, Julie Neumar. She was a cat woman, right? Mm-hmm. One of the cat women? She was the original campy cat woman. Yeah. So you mentioned the theme music. Yeah. It turns out that they're, well, we can talk about it, like there's a story behind that too. There was a music director who was like the season one music, it's fine, but we can do better. His name was Lud Gluskin, the Lou Gluskin. Either way, he would give you three tries to guess his name or else you had to give him your firstborn child. Very nice. And he dug into the CBS Music Library looking for something. And I guess it was in a very creative mood because he put two pieces together and he came up with the Twilight Zone theme. Yeah. I mean, that's a thing that still happens. Even our own iHeart Media has a music library where they have, I guess, commissioned a bunch of musicians to make a bunch of kind of generic, not to say bad, but generic music like, hey, something that sounds like something symphonic or something that sounds like yacht rock. And then you pay a musician to make this and you own it forever, basically, without having to pay them any more money. You pay them in exposure. Yeah. And the reason I said yacht rock is we've, you know, Adam and I started the three putt bogie podcast and we wanted something yacht rocky and leaned on Ben. We were like, Ben, is there something that you can find or like he's a musician? Can you put something together? He's a genius. And he sent us like 12, could like total yacht rocky sounds from the iHeart Music Library that are just completely, you know, licensed for us to use. And it's just an embarrassment of riches, basically. And that's what they had with the Twilight Zone when they took a Romanian-born musician named Marius Constance, two things from him, a strong number three, which is the Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh, on a electric guitar. Yeah. Which was electric guitar, by the way. And mil you number two, which is that kind of chaotic ending and they smashed those together to great success. Yeah, that did do with the bongos. That was much better. So yeah, that was it. You put those back to back and you've got the the Twilight Zone theme. I love that everything about this has a story, but still if you go research Twilight Zone is actually hard to find because all anybody wants to talk about is the episodes and understandably so you could say that they're all great. Yeah, should we talk about some more or should we take a break and then do that? Here, why don't we talk about some more episodes and then we'll break before we talk about the modern stuff. I'm glad you decided. I had a booleia for a second. All right, so five seasons total is what we get with the original run of the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling wrote 92 of the 156 episodes. And I'm going to talk about one. I'm going to pick this one. I have the beholder because this was, I don't think I remember seeing this one, but I had heard about it and this was in the list of top 20 great reveals or whatever. Yeah, and I think this is one where I will reveal the twist. Okay, yeah, I see in retrospect that saying we weren't going to reveal any more twists was black and white thinking and I need to be more I need to go with the flow a little more. No, you're doing fine. So this one will reveal the twist, but if you don't want to hear it, just mute it for a few seconds when I say the twist is. Yeah, put your fingers in your ears, plug your fingers with your fingers and go exactly this one was in fact written by Rod Serling. It was directed by Douglas Hayes. And this was a woman that in the in the show, she was wrapped up in bandages the whole time. So you couldn't see her face, but the reason why she was wrapped up in bandages the whole time. So you couldn't see her face, but the reason why she was and that she goes to the surgery that she's there for is because apparently she's so ugly that she has to have this plastic surgery to make her look like everyone else looks. And then, you know, you can't see your face through the whole thing. She's wrapped in bandages. If you, you know, this is a season two. So by this time, episode six, everyone's like, "I wonder what's under those bandages. You can't wait for that twist." You can't see the doctors because they have their surgical mask and all that stuff. And then the big twist in the reveal when she takes us bandages off is that she's very beautiful by just, you know, normal regular standards of the day. And then the doctors take their stuff off and they have like pig noses and like horrible scars and stuff. So that's the big twist. Yeah. Beauty's relative. Exactly. I want to talk about a couple that are my favorites. You mind? No. I would love to hear about them. Okay. So, I like some of the sweeter ones that aren't necessarily terrified. I love the terrifying ones, but there's some sweet ones out there. There's one called the Changing of the Guards with Donald Pleasence, who's a boarding school teacher at the end of his years. So sweet. There's one called the fugitive where this alien plays with little kids and ends up sacrificing his own freedom to save this little girl whose leg isn't a brace. I think I saw that one back in the day. That is such a great one. That's got one of the all-time great twists as well. Yeah. There's another one called Night Call. That is probably the scariest one of all, I think. I don't remember that one. It's an old woman who lives alone in her house. She gets visited by her nurse once a day, but the nurse leaves at night. And then while she's trying to sleep, she gets these calls from this really unsettling voice that can barely talk. He just sounds messed up. And she has no idea who this caller is as night after night goes by. These calls just keep freaking her out more and more. And then the twist of the whole thing is, well, it's pretty great. Well, you're going to have to tell me these twists because I don't remember the one that I saw and I didn't see this one. Okay. That one's great. And then the last one I want to talk about is what I think is, well, it's my favorite. I'm not going to say it's the best one. It's called The After Hours, where this woman is in a department store after hours. She gets trapped in there because she's trying to find a gold thimble and stuff is just weird. Things are getting very odd. There's this shop lady who is assisting her that keeps disappearing and appearing and it's just something's off here. And the twist is really great. All right. I'm going to mention three kind of quickly because all three of these had Simpsons episodes. And two of the three were used in the Twilight Zone movie in the 80s. The first one, it's a good life from season three, episode eight. It's about a little kid who has these godlike powers. And if he gets angry, like you can't upset this kid because he can turn, he can basically control things and make bad things happen to people. That was inspiration for the Bart Zone from the Treehouse of Horror, one of the Treehouse of Horrors. And that, again, was redone very successfully, I think, in the movie. King Doll was a predated chucky from child's play in that we had talking Tina, which was a demonic doll with the great Telli Savallis, Simpsons clown without pity was a Simpsons version. And then Nightmare at 20,000 feet is maybe the most classic episode of all time as far as being well known. That was all the way in season five. And that's when William Shatner is on an airline plane. I think he's coming home from visiting a sanitarium or something because he was nervous and he sees a monster on the wing. And that is also done in the movie version with the great John Lithgow. And then later done in the most recent Twilight Zone with Adam Scott in a different way. So good. And was on the Simpsons, terror at five and a half feet in the case of the Simpsons. I don't remember that one, do you? I don't remember that. You don't have to go back and watch it, but it's funny to go back and watch, you know, watch bits from terror, the original Nightmare at 20,000 feet. And the monster on the plane is so corny looking now, but it was absolutely terrifying at, I'm sure, at the time. Yeah, for sure. It's, I mean, it's still unsettling in its way. It is corny, but also you're like, good God, that thing is awful. Well, I mean, if anything else, you'd be terrified because you're like, there's a weird man in a funny looking suit. Right. He's trying to bring the plane down. Yeah. Exactly. So I think I would, the one I would put up for the most famous one is to serve man. Okay. Where the aliens come down and they have this book called To Serve Man and they're like really nice and kind of humans and they want to take some humans home with them. Do you know that one? Can you give me more without giving it away? I will. Keep this, this out because here's the twist, Chuck, and wow. Pretty great. Huh? All right. Well, that's probably our longest beep in history. It's gotta be. Yeah. That's a good one. And that sounds familiar and that's, well, if I said what movie that probably inspired, it would probably give away the twist. So I won't. Okay. Fair enough. But I'll tell you during break, which we'll take right now. Okay. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Elon Musk, Derio Amade, Alex Carr, Feifei Lee, Palmer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future. The future is to create it. But when you say us, who's us? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. 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We're back everybody to talk about some later iterations because the Twilight Zone OG was canceled in 1964 after about five seasons. I don't think you said that he, I know you said the beginning, he wanted an hour, but they said 30 minutes. But then they did go to an hour during what season four? Yeah. They had a mid-season show that they canceled, or they had it show that they canceled mid-season. That was an hour long, and they're like, "Hey, you want your shot finally at the hour long version of Twilight Zone?" And by this time Rod Sardling was like, "No, actually a half hour is perfect." Right. Well, T.S. for you because we needed our long version. So season four is typically considered the least favorite of people because it is true. The Twilight Zone is a perfect half hour show, but the season four episodes are still great. Yeah. Agreed. But that's a totally interesting little footnote, I think, because I didn't know that until you sent that along. Yeah. And then they went back for season five. The last season it went back to half hour again. So it was just season four. Yeah. Crazy. Like I said, they got canceled. It's not like Rod Serling was no good anymore. He was still a hugely successful writer and went on and did more work, of course, but he liked being Mr. Twilight Zone, which is what people would call him when they see him out, of course. And I think anything after that he did, I think Rod's Serling's night gallery was a show that came along that he put his name on him. Not sure how much he had to do with it, but I liked night gallery. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was pretty good. But it probably wasn't as successful as the Twilight Zone and he never reached that kind of success again. Speaking of twist though, even though Planet of the Apes, the movie was based on a French novel, he did write that original script, that first script for the first Planet of the Apes movie. Yeah. The French novel was called The Planet of the Apes. That's right. He also taught at Ithaca College. I did not see their mascots. So let's just say the fighting Ignatius is, yeah, I think he taught English or writing or something, probably writing, and he's still revered quite a bit today. There's a cool statue of him there. Oh, I bet. Very sadly, he was a lifelong like three to four pack a day, by the way, Ithaca College Bombers, Go Bombers. Oh, okay. Go Bombers. Yeah. That sounded so Midwest. Go Bombers. Sorry. He was, he smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a day, which is just a crazy amount of cigarettes. Yeah. So, unsurprisingly, he died at 50 years old after complications from heart surgery. This was in 1975, and if you do the math, he could have, if he hadn't have smoked and lived to be 80. Like, he would have been alive in 2005 and seen all these reboots come along. And maybe, perhaps, have been a part of some of these. Yeah. And probably have done some other really great stuff, too, you know? But yeah, so you said there was rebooted three times, and then there was the movie. I was like, so the really, probably the best reboot was from 1985 to 1987 at three seasons, and it had a lot of really good episodes in them. And I was going through the episodes, and I'm like, where's the kick the can one? Because kick the can is one of the original Twilight Zone episodes, where a group of rest home residents are bored, and they want to, like, keep, you know, living life. So they go play a game of kick the can, and they have to get around, like, this administrator or nurse or whatever, who just wants them to act their age and relax and rest. It's really great. And I was like, I thought that I had seen the reboot version in 1985 couldn't find it. That's the one that Steven Spielberg directed in the movie. Did you see the movie? Yeah, I have. Okay. Yeah. I don't know why. I mean, I guess the why was because I liked watching the reruns. So when the Twilight Zone, the movie, came out in 1983, I was 12, and oh, buddy, I ate it up. I saw it at least twice in the theater. Wow. It was, you know, each direct Steven Spielberg directed that one, Joe Dante directed. John Landis directed the one that we'll talk about in a second and George Miller, the great George Miller. And then there was that great opening bit with Dan Ackaroid, which is, it was like a little intro part with Dan Ackaroid and oh, God, I'm blanking on who his carmate, who his passenger was. I can't remember. Anyway, it's just a little, you know, a little teaser at the beginning, and then you hear the Twilight Zone music come in and then you get the four films. And like I said, it's a good life about the kid who can control things. That was remade, nightmare on 20,000 feet was remade. I guess all of them were remakes now that I think about it, except for maybe the Vic Morrow and that's like I said, seemed to be based on just, unless somebody knows it was a direct remake, it seemed to be based on the ideas of like racist and war and stuff like that. Yeah. And that had a very tragic ending, right? Yeah, it actually sunk the movie. It got such bad press during production where they were filming a scene where Vic Morrow is I think trying to help two little Vietnamese girls escape. They're going through a rice paddy and there's a helicopter flying over them and the helicopter I think struck a wire. It was a real helicopter really, you know, moving with its rotors in the sound stage. It struck a wire and the rotors, they killed Vic Morrow and the two girls like immediately. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, and obviously that was big news and everybody was so traumatized by it. I saw that George Miller, he did the Max Trilogy, the original three. He was like, he wasn't on set. He had nothing to do with that segment, but just being associated with that movie, like stirred him so much that he was like, I don't know about some of the stunts that I've been having my actors do. Like I think he kind of, it felt like somebody walked over his grave, like what he'd been able to get away with without anybody getting hurt or killed. And so he went on to a co-write babe. Yeah. And he did the most recent Mad Max too, by the way, I saw this. But he did babe and I think that's probably the kind of call. No, that is a little fun fact if you didn't know that. The same guy who did Mad Max did babe pick or did you pick in the city or the original? He did both. Yep. Okay. That's right. Yeah. A very just tragic thing. Like you said, huge lawsuits. And I know we, I think we talked about that before in a movie actually in like a top 10 list in an episode. Yeah. I don't remember what maybe special effects. Yeah. Because I believe I told you that Vic Morrow is Jennifer Jason Lee's father and you did not know that at the time. That is so funny because I just found out today that Vic Morrow is Jennifer Jason Lee's father. Yeah. It happened again. All right. So the 85 to 87 you feel like is the most successful TV reboot. There was also one in 2002 where Forest Whitaker was a host, which I think was a great pick. I love Forest Whitaker. And this had, you know, some big, big stars. I don't think it was, I didn't see any of these, but they did remake some of these including a fun update on it's a good life where it's called it's still a good life. And they had the kid, the Bill Mummy, the kid who played the kid from the beginning was a grown up terrorizing in town. Yeah. But now his daughter was around and she might be even worse than him. Who knows? Only Forest Whitaker knows. We should say in 2002 that episode started Chloris Leachman and she was in, I think more than one episode of the original run. She was in the original. It's a good life. She was Billy Mummy's mom. Oh, okay. Billy Mummy's mommy. Yeah. That's right. So updated the Maple Street one, right? They did kind of like a post-9/11 one where instead of aliens, the neighbors turned on each other thinking that they're terrorists. So I think probably I was like a little on the nose for 2002, I'm not sure. Yeah. Maybe. But the one that I think most people who listen to us are probably familiar with is the one that just came out a couple of years ago that Jordan Peale produced that were great. But Jordan Peale had the great misfortune of releasing this Twilight Zone episode at the time when Black Mirror was at its apex. And there was just nothing he could do to compete with Black Mirror. Like you can't. Most people are like Black Mirror is the true successor of Twilight Zone. Nobody has done it better since. And it's probably true. Again, if you just saw Jordan Peale's Twilight Zone, it's like it's great on its own for sure. Yeah. I have not seen those. I did see the Adam Scott episode because I'm just a big Adam Scott fan and I'm a big fan of that story, Nightmare, this time at 30,000 feet. That's a good one. And I don't. He didn't see a monster on that one, does he? No. He's listening to a podcast appropriately. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. And the podcast that turns out is about a plane crash and then it turns out further that it's about the crash of the plane that he's on. Yes. So he spends the whole thing trying to convince everybody rather than there's a monster on the plane instead that this plane is going to crash. And the twist is even better, I think, than the original William Shatner version, Nightmare, 20,000 feet. It's a great twist. Yeah, yeah. I do remember the twist. I need to check more of it out, but I was into Black Mirror and maybe that's why I didn't watch Twilight Zone because there's maybe you can only watch so much of that kind of thing. But Black Mirror was truly great and bad timing for Jordan Peale. It really was. Now that Black Mirror is going away, especially if you haven't seen him before, you could probably enjoy them a little more than you could have at the time. It was really weird. You just couldn't enjoy both on their own, like it was just, you know, you just couldn't give it a try. You couldn't face it. I have one more thing. Yeah, let's hear it. Have you ever noticed in Twilight Zone episodes, the actors stand really close together? Are we doing this? Yeah. I love this part. Okay. Because it stood out to me. So if it stood out to me, it stood out to other people. Do you mind? - Sure, I just wonder if you didn't see any TV pre-like 1995. - I don't know why it stands out to me in Twilight Zone, but I do realize that it is common, especially in the '50s, but in the Twilight Zone, maybe it's because it's creepy. The plotlines are creepy, so people standing close together is creepier than it would be in, like, say, an episode of General Hospital from the '50s. - Yeah, I don't wanna yuck your yum. I'm kidding, you go ahead and tell everybody. - Thanks. Did you know already why the actor stands so close together, not just on the Twilight Zone, but back in the day? - I did. - Okay, it's because the aspect ratio of a TV at the time was four to three, which is almost a perfect square. Nothing like the 16 to nine we have today, which allows for a lot more peripheral vision. So if you wanted to close up of not one, but more than one character, they had to stand physically close together to get in the frame. - That's right. - There you go. - Amazing, the more you know. - Just a little bonus. - Yeah. - For those of us who weren't in the film industry back in the '50s, hey, you know I was it. That's it for Twilight Zone. I think we could see her for another hour and just talk about our favorite episodes, but we will leave it to you to just go watch the Twilight Zone. It really is a gift to humanity that Rod Serling created. And while you go do that, we're gonna do, listen to her, man. (bell ringing) - Let's just set up this listener mail. I'm gonna very quickly retell the story because it won't make sense if you haven't heard this kind of obscure reference. When I worked at JJ's BBQ in Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the 1980s as a 12 year old, still sounds weird to say. But yeah, at a job as a bus boy as a 12 year old. - Not when you say Stone Mountain, Georgia would, right? - And at one time, there was a big pot of Brunswick stew in the walk-in, I was in there getting some stuff with this guy, Keith, who worked there, and he said, hey, watch this. And Keith put his entire shoot, foot, and jeaned leg into the Brunswick stew and pulled it back out. And that stew was later heated up and served to diners. - Man. - So that's the setting, a depraved situation. Hey guys, my best friend, Dave and I, who also worked together both avid listeners of Stuff You Should Know have been since 2008. Each week, one of us makes lunch for the entire week and there's usually a theme. And for this week's lunch, I made Brunswick stew and an honor of Chuck's Foot in the Brunswick stew story on how restaurant health inspections work. Oh, there you go. I stuck my bare foot into a container of the stew. I took a video and shared it with Dave so he knew what he was getting into. He loved the video and still loved the stew. I can assure you that my foot was very, very clean. Thank you for the inspiration. And all the great stories over the years. If you choose to read this one on the air, of course you can use my name. That is Jason and Salt Lake. So Jason, that's gross. Still not quite as gross, I think, as a chute and jeaned, blue jeaned foot in it. - No, no, that's the sanitized version, but still pretty gross, agreed. - Yeah, I mean, something's grosser in a way. Is it your human skin? - Yeah, the foot on stew contact. - Yeah. (laughing) The hottest contact is gone. - Right, that does, it is grossed in some way for sure. - Anyway, never thought that that would inspire such an act, but it's pretty fun to read that mail. - That was from Jason? - Yeah, Jason Salt Lake, do not eat his offerings people. - No, for sure. Thanks a lot, Jason. Thanks for listening to us for so long too. We appreciate that. And if you want to be like Jason and get in touch with us, you can do that by sending an email to stuffpodcast. Get iHeartRadio.com. (upbeat music) - Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. (upbeat music) - How do you know that cloud won't become manipulative? - This is a constant worry and you can actually catch the model, thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm gonna tell the user why. - I'm Walter Isaacson. I'm my new podcast, The Builders. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - It's all just a joke. What is the value of these women? - I'm Bridget Armstrong back with season two of The Podcast. - The Curse of Miss America. 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