# Attack of the Night People

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 10 Jul 2026, 41 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/905efddf-dc6f-4707-b911-b48201109d87/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

If you tuned in to late-night WOR radio in 1950s New York, you'd enter the secret world of Jean Shepherd. Shepherd's nonconformist style, off-beat humor and love of pranks gathered a small but loyal following. These "Night People" loved being in on the joke, while the oblivious "Day People" were often the butt of it. Shepherd's show is long gone, but his spirit lives on in corners of the internet. Today, though, Night People go by a different name. For a list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode will discuss death by suicide. If you're
[0:26] Speaker 1: suffering emotional distress or you're having suicidal thoughts, support is available,
[0:31] Speaker 1: for example, from the nine to eight to eight Suicide
[0:34] Speaker 1: and Crisis Lifeline in the US or from the Samaritans
[0:38] Speaker 1: in the UK. New York City, nineteen fifty six, a
[0:51] Speaker 1: young man goes into a bookstore and asks for a book,
[0:56] Speaker 1: I Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. The bookstore clerk checks
[1:02] Speaker 1: their stock. It seems that they don't have a copyright now,
[1:07] Speaker 1: but let's see if he can order one. He thumbs
[1:11] Speaker 1: through the list of books available from the stores wholesalers. Strange,
[1:17] Speaker 1: he can't see it anywhere. What's it called? I Libertine?
[1:22] Speaker 1: The young man says, And who did you say was
[1:26] Speaker 1: the author? Frederick R. Ewing. The clerk still can't find it.
[1:33] Speaker 1: Do you happen to know the publisher? Sure, says the customer.
[1:38] Speaker 1: Excels your Press. The clerk keeps looking through his lists.
[1:44] Speaker 1: He can't see any mention of excels your Press. Are
[1:48] Speaker 1: you sure that's the right name? The young man says
[1:51] Speaker 1: he's sure. The bookstore clerk can only shrug in confusion.
[1:57] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, he says, the book doesn't seem to exist.
[2:03] Speaker 1: The young man thanks him and walks away, looking disappointed
[2:08] Speaker 1: but also strangely amused. Later, another young customer approaches the clerk.
[2:16] Speaker 1: I'm looking for a book, he says. It's called I
[2:20] Speaker 1: Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. Oh, says the clerk. Someone
[2:27] Speaker 1: else asked about this. I looked for it and it
[2:30] Speaker 1: doesn't exist. Sure it does, the customer insists, Freddie Ewing,
[2:37] Speaker 1: you know, the noted expert on eighteenth century erotica. Haven't
[2:41] Speaker 1: you heard his radio series on the BBC. The clerk
[2:46] Speaker 1: decides to call his wholesaler. It's very odd, says the wholesaler.
[2:53] Speaker 1: We've been getting lots of calls asking for I Libertine,
[2:57] Speaker 1: but we never heard of it, or Frederick are Ewing
[3:02] Speaker 1: or Excelsior Press. What on earth is going on? I'm
[3:08] Speaker 1: Tim Harfer, and you're listening to cautionary tales. In the
[3:36] Speaker 1: middle of the night, in a building in Carteret, New Jersey,
[3:41] Speaker 1: a man in his mid thirties is talking into a
[3:44] Speaker 1: microphone wearing nothing but fruit of the loom jockey shorts.
[3:49] Speaker 1: It's stiflingly hot because also in this building is a
[3:54] Speaker 1: fifty thousand watt radio transmitter and there's no ventilation. This
[4:01] Speaker 1: is not what Jeene Shepherd had in mind when he
[4:04] Speaker 1: moved to New York with his young family in tow
[4:07] Speaker 1: to try to crack the big time. He'd been jobbing
[4:11] Speaker 1: around various provincial radio stations, starting in his Indiana hometown.
[4:18] Speaker 2: Next HG. Grubbage and the news.
[4:22] Speaker 1: There's no HG. Grubbage. It's Shepherd playing the character of
[4:28] Speaker 1: a self important newsreader and reading out odd little snippets
[4:32] Speaker 1: he's seen in the newspaper, like the zookeeper whose paycheck
[4:36] Speaker 1: was eaten by an elephant, or the man in the
[4:39] Speaker 1: Canary Islands who tried to cross the Atlantic in a barrel.
[4:43] Speaker 2: He sailed two yards and turned over twice.
[4:47] Speaker 3: Two bystanders rescued him, then two medical attendants took him
[4:52] Speaker 3: to the local psychiatric hospital.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Shepherd collects these stories, not quite garbage, he calls them,
[5:01] Speaker 1: but grubbage mostly though he doesn't read stuff out. He
[5:06] Speaker 1: just talks and talks, no script, no notes. At WKRC
[5:13] Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, he's fired for too much talking. It just
[5:18] Speaker 1: wants someone to read out the ads from sponsors and
[5:20] Speaker 1: tee up the records. He promises to play more music
[5:25] Speaker 1: on his show, so they give him his job back,
[5:28] Speaker 1: but he just keeps talking and talking, so they fire
[5:32] Speaker 1: him again. He moves to Philadelphia.
[5:37] Speaker 2: The purpose of my program is not to please, but
[5:40] Speaker 2: to begin trains of thought. I realize that many things
[5:43] Speaker 2: that I do might not be good listening.
[5:47] Speaker 1: Shepherd's unusual approach piques the interest of a New York
[5:51] Speaker 1: radio station, who try him out on a Saturday afternoon.
[5:56] Speaker 1: In just a few months, he sheds so many listeners
[6:00] Speaker 1: that they shunned him into the graveyard shift from one
[6:03] Speaker 1: am to five thirty every weeknight, and because the New
[6:08] Speaker 1: York studio closed overnight, he has to broadcast from the
[6:12] Speaker 1: sweltering transmitter room in New Jersey wearing only his underpants.
[6:21] Speaker 1: Shepherd doesn't mind. He's got four and a half hours
[6:24] Speaker 1: to fill every night, a prospect that might be daunting
[6:29] Speaker 1: for some broadcasters, but not for Shepherd. Finally, his thoughts
[6:35] Speaker 1: have room to breathe for the.
[6:36] Speaker 3: Guy hits a on the piano and I went Merigs, Schmedrigs,
[6:40] Speaker 3: double Beat, Nicks, Papkins all agree a pin.
[6:43] Speaker 1: In the words of his biographer Eugene Bergmann, these late
[6:47] Speaker 1: night shows are a slow, casual free floating association of ideas, philosophy,
[6:55] Speaker 1: and amused commentary. He tells long, meandering stories about his
[7:00] Speaker 1: childhood and his time in the army. That is anyone
[7:05] Speaker 1: actually listening. His bosses suspect not. They worry that Shepherd's
[7:11] Speaker 1: not commercial. He hates playing music or reading out ads
[7:16] Speaker 1: from sponsors. They threaten to fire him. Shepherd decides to
[7:21] Speaker 1: fight back.
[7:22] Speaker 2: All right, gang, let's show them that there are a
[7:25] Speaker 2: few klutzes out there to listen to this drivel all night.
[7:28] Speaker 2: All of you go to your grocery star tomorrow and
[7:31] Speaker 2: ask for Sweetheart soap.
[7:34] Speaker 1: The next day, stores in New York shift a surprising
[7:38] Speaker 1: amount of Sweetheart soap. There's any one problem. Sweetheart Soap
[7:44] Speaker 1: isn't actually a sponsor of the radio station. Shepherd chose
[7:49] Speaker 1: it at random, just to make a point. He does
[7:52] Speaker 1: have listeners, a lot of listeners, and they're devoted. In
[7:57] Speaker 1: the dead of the New York night, Shepherd has found
[8:01] Speaker 1: his audience. He starts to ruminate on who they are,
[8:06] Speaker 1: these night people.
[8:09] Speaker 4: I'm talking about people with that while tossing in the
[8:11] Speaker 4: soul that somehow makes them stay up till three o'clock
[8:14] Speaker 4: in the morning and brood. They might get up at
[8:17] Speaker 4: seven the next morning and go to work, but that
[8:19] Speaker 4: ain't That isn't what their life is about, not a
[8:22] Speaker 4: bit of it.
[8:25] Speaker 1: Shepherd also starts to philosophize about the day people. Their
[8:30] Speaker 1: life is about work. They believe in the world of
[8:34] Speaker 1: the office. He says, they believe in file cabinets. They're
[8:39] Speaker 1: the people in sales meetings with the light of ecclesiastical
[8:44] Speaker 1: fervor in their eyes. They believe in what they're selling.
[8:49] Speaker 1: Shepherd diagnoses that the day people are suffering from a
[8:53] Speaker 1: malaise he.
[8:54] Speaker 2: Calls creeping meatballism.
[8:57] Speaker 1: By which he means conformity.
[9:02] Speaker 2: The average person the day thinks in certain prescribed patterns.
[9:06] Speaker 2: People that they have a genuine fear of stepping out
[9:09] Speaker 2: and thinking, and they're own.
[9:12] Speaker 1: Take the latest model of refrigerator that has a clever
[9:15] Speaker 1: design of door that enables it to open from either side.
[9:20] Speaker 1: The day people think this kind of progress is great.
[9:24] Speaker 2: By George, we really are getting ahead.
[9:28] Speaker 1: The night people couldn't care less about which side their
[9:32] Speaker 1: fridge door opens. All they want to know is.
[9:35] Speaker 2: Does it keep the stuff cold?
[9:40] Speaker 1: This is the nineteen fifties. Remember Shepherd was ahead of
[9:44] Speaker 1: his time. What would he have thought of fridges that
[9:47] Speaker 1: connect to the internet.
[9:49] Speaker 5: He needs cheese.
[9:52] Speaker 1: One day, Shepherd's in a New York bookstore trying to
[9:56] Speaker 1: get a copy of a book he saw at a
[9:58] Speaker 1: friend's house. The bookstore clerk looks through the lists of
[10:02] Speaker 1: books he can get from wholesalers and inform Shepherd that
[10:06] Speaker 1: the book doesn't exist. But Shepherd knows the book exists,
[10:12] Speaker 1: He's seen it.
[10:13] Speaker 4: I suddenly became aware that New York is almost entirely
[10:17] Speaker 4: a city that really does run on lists.
[10:22] Speaker 1: The day people believe in lists. If a book's on
[10:25] Speaker 1: a bestseller list, it must be good. If it's not
[10:28] Speaker 1: on any list at all, it not only can't be good,
[10:32] Speaker 1: it can't exist. Shepherd wants to mess with the belief
[10:37] Speaker 1: in lists.
[10:38] Speaker 2: What do you say tomorrow morning, each one of us
[10:41] Speaker 2: walk into a bookstore and ask for a book that
[10:45] Speaker 2: we know does not exist.
[10:48] Speaker 1: Shepherd asks his listeners to suggest a title. He chooses
[10:53] Speaker 1: I Libertine and makes up the author's bio on the fly.
[10:59] Speaker 1: Frederick R. Ewing, an expert in eighteenth century erotica who's
[11:05] Speaker 1: retired from the Royal Navy and broadcasts on the BB
[11:09] Speaker 1: see I Libertine is going to be an explicit account
[11:14] Speaker 1: of the salacious sex lives of eighteenth century London aristocrats.
[11:20] Speaker 2: And by the way, mister Ewing is quite surprised at
[11:23] Speaker 2: the success his book is enjoying, since it was written
[11:27] Speaker 2: primarily for scholars people who want misunderstand that Satain chapters
[11:32] Speaker 2: are there for the purpose of scholarly research.
[11:38] Speaker 1: Listeners write in to tell Shepherd what happened when they
[11:41] Speaker 1: went into stores to ask for the book. One reports
[11:46] Speaker 1: a deliciously satisfying encounter with the puffed up clerk at
[11:50] Speaker 1: his local bookstore who always has an opinion on every book.
[11:55] Speaker 1: When the listener mentions I Libertine, the clerk knowingly strokes
[12:00] Speaker 1: his beard. Ah, yes, Freddie Ewing, It's about time the
[12:07] Speaker 1: public discovered him. A student tells Shepherd that he turned
[12:14] Speaker 1: in an essay on I Libertine augmented with quotes from
[12:19] Speaker 1: Ewing's BBC broadcasts. He got a B plus superb research.
[12:26] Speaker 1: Another listener says he flagged I Libertine to the Archdiocese
[12:30] Speaker 1: of Boston and got them to ban it. It seems
[12:36] Speaker 1: like a perfectly judged prank, funny and harmless, but there's
[12:42] Speaker 1: another angle on the story of I Libertine, which shows
[12:46] Speaker 1: it in a different light, will pick up Gene Shepherd's story,
[12:52] Speaker 1: but first let's meet his modern heirs after the break.
[13:09] Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a post on the anonymous
[13:14] Speaker 1: online message board four chan suggested that users send an
[13:19] Speaker 1: email to the principle of their local high school. Yesterday afternoon,
[13:25] Speaker 1: I came home early to find my son and his
[13:29] Speaker 1: friends getting high on something they called jencom. They urinate
[13:35] Speaker 1: and defecate in plastic bottles and leave them to ferment
[13:39] Speaker 1: in the sun, then inhale the resulting gas. Surely not,
[13:47] Speaker 1: but the email continues. I looked it up on the
[13:50] Speaker 1: Internet and apparently this was something invented by African children.
[13:56] Speaker 1: That's actually true. Kind of years earlier, in the nineteen nineties,
[14:05] Speaker 1: a press agency in Zambia had reported on how how
[14:09] Speaker 1: tough life was for impoverished street children. Some were seeking
[14:14] Speaker 1: a temporary escape by getting high on gases from human
[14:19] Speaker 1: waste that had fermented in sewer ponds. The New York
[14:24] Speaker 1: Times and BBC picked up the report and included the
[14:29] Speaker 1: local term for that fermented sewer water, jencom. So if
[14:35] Speaker 1: an unsuspecting high school principle went to Google and typed
[14:40] Speaker 1: in jencom, they would find the top results did indeed
[14:45] Speaker 1: mention African children, and they came from respected news organizations
[14:51] Speaker 1: that made the emails seem superficially plausible, though what it
[14:56] Speaker 1: said next about jencom wasn't true at all. Now kids
[15:02] Speaker 1: all over the world are doing it. My son says
[15:05] Speaker 1: most of his friends at school have tried it. You
[15:09] Speaker 1: would hope that most high school principals who received this
[15:13] Speaker 1: email will have engaged their brains, done a bit of digging,
[15:18] Speaker 1: and concluded that it was clearly a hoax. Most of
[15:22] Speaker 1: their students were not fermenting their own excrement in plastic bottles.
[15:29] Speaker 1: But there are always people who are ready to panic
[15:32] Speaker 1: about what the kids are up to. A sheriff's office
[15:36] Speaker 1: in Florida sent out a warning, complete with photos they'd
[15:41] Speaker 1: found on the Internet of a teen inhaling from a
[15:44] Speaker 1: plastic bottle. Someone had made jencom as a joke from
[15:50] Speaker 1: flower Water and Natella. Local news stations picked up the story.
[15:58] Speaker 6: Cops are calling it jenkam or the human waste drug,
[16:02] Speaker 6: but parents need to be aware that kids are calling
[16:05] Speaker 6: it by the more popular slang term butt hash.
[16:11] Speaker 1: How could concerned parents tell if their teenager is inhaling
[16:15] Speaker 1: butt hash. One news reporter earnestly advised parents to smell
[16:20] Speaker 1: their children's breath at bedtime. Another asked for action from
[16:25] Speaker 1: the US Drugs Enforcement Agency. An amused agent explained that
[16:29] Speaker 1: it was hard for the government to regulate people's urine
[16:33] Speaker 1: and feces. This all caused much hilarity for the anonymous
[16:39] Speaker 1: users of four chan. As Around this time, the academic
[16:44] Speaker 1: Whitney Phillips found out about four chan from her eighteen
[16:48] Speaker 1: year old brother. Check it out. He told her, you'll
[16:52] Speaker 1: like it. Phillips checked it out and was horrified.
[16:57] Speaker 5: She recalls there was so much porn and gore, so
[17:02] Speaker 5: much offensive, antagonistic humor, and general foulness.
[17:06] Speaker 1: It was also confusing with its own lang language and
[17:09] Speaker 1: evident in jokes. Why were people saying a hero, for example,
[17:15] Speaker 1: I'll come back to that. Phillips sense that whatever was
[17:19] Speaker 1: happening on four chan was interesting enough to study. She
[17:24] Speaker 1: did a PhD on trolling subculture. The anonymous posters on
[17:30] Speaker 1: four chan self identified as trolls, but what did the
[17:35] Speaker 1: word even mean? Phillips soon discovered that there were two etymologies.
[17:42] Speaker 1: For some The troll comes from Norse mythology, trolls are ugly,
[17:47] Speaker 1: malevolent and stupid. They live under bridges and threatened to
[17:52] Speaker 1: eat the billy goat's gruff that others insisted that trolling
[17:59] Speaker 1: is a fishing term. It means dangling bait behind a
[18:04] Speaker 1: fishing boat. In this sense, trolling is a skilled suit.
[18:10] Speaker 1: The metaphor of dangling bait certainly seems like a better
[18:15] Speaker 1: fit for the jencum email, which got several satisfying bites
[18:21] Speaker 1: from school principles and local news reports. When Phillips asked
[18:27] Speaker 1: the four Chan trolls what makes a troll, they told
[18:31] Speaker 1: her trolls believe that nothing should be taken seriously. When
[18:37] Speaker 1: she asked them what they got out of trolling, they
[18:40] Speaker 1: said lolls. Lolls, says Phillips, is an extremely slippery term.
[18:47] Speaker 1: Trolls themselves struggle to explain it.
[18:51] Speaker 5: You know it when you see it was the most
[18:54] Speaker 5: common definition I heard when conducting interviews.
[18:58] Speaker 1: But Phillips has a go at defining lolls.
[19:02] Speaker 5: A kind of ambiguous, unsympathetic laughter.
[19:08] Speaker 1: Pant. More and more time getting to know the kind
[19:12] Speaker 1: of people who post on four chan. What she found
[19:16] Speaker 1: reflected the split between these two etymologies.
[19:20] Speaker 5: Some trolls are remarkably reflective and intelligent, and some are
[19:26] Speaker 5: remarkably not.
[19:28] Speaker 1: Phillips began to understand the language and the iconography. She realized, I.
[19:34] Speaker 5: Found certain forms of trolling funny, interesting, and in some
[19:39] Speaker 5: cases justifiable.
[19:42] Speaker 1: Rick rolling, for example, came from four chan, the practice
[19:46] Speaker 1: of disguising links so you end up unexpectedly. At the
[19:51] Speaker 1: YouTube video of Rick Astley singing never going to give
[19:55] Speaker 1: you up, Never going to let you down, a well
[19:59] Speaker 1: executed rick roll makes a point. We're tempted to click
[20:04] Speaker 1: on a link against our better judgment, and Astley is
[20:08] Speaker 1: our chain reward. Why Rick Astley, It's just one of
[20:15] Speaker 1: those random things that caught on Like over nine thousand,
[20:22] Speaker 1: originally from a melodramatically delivered and mistranslated English dub of
[20:28] Speaker 1: the Japanese anime Dragon Ball.
[20:31] Speaker 2: Z, It's over nine thousand.
[20:35] Speaker 1: Over nine thousand took on a life of its own
[20:38] Speaker 1: on four Chan as the default joke answer to any
[20:43] Speaker 1: numeric question. Anyone familiar with troll subculture would immediately recognize
[20:49] Speaker 1: over nine thousand. Oprah Winfrey was not familiar with troll subculture.
[20:58] Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, she was discussing peterophilia on
[21:01] Speaker 1: her show, some people still weren't understanding the threat to children.
[21:07] Speaker 7: She said, let me do something that was posted on
[21:10] Speaker 7: our message boards from someone who claims to be a
[21:12] Speaker 7: member of a known pedophile network.
[21:15] Speaker 1: Are you sure about this, Oprah?
[21:17] Speaker 7: His group has over nine thousand penises and they're all
[21:20] Speaker 7: raping children. So I want you to know they're organized
[21:25] Speaker 7: and they have systematic ways of hurting children.
[21:29] Speaker 1: Over nine thousand penises became a four Chan classic, an
[21:35] Speaker 1: absurdist in joke, offensive subject matter, but it also made
[21:41] Speaker 1: a worthwhile point. It showed that Oprah could take some random,
[21:46] Speaker 1: anonymous post on her message board and imbue it with
[21:50] Speaker 1: authority as long as it fit her sensationless narrative. The
[21:56] Speaker 1: researcher Whitney Phillips concludes that this kind of trolling performs
[22:00] Speaker 1: a useful social function. As she writes in her book,
[22:06] Speaker 1: this is why we can't have nice things.
[22:09] Speaker 5: Trolls on earth the biases, hypocrisies, and deep inconsistencies that
[22:14] Speaker 5: compose mainstream culture.
[22:17] Speaker 1: Or put another way, trolls reveal it all sounds very
[22:26] Speaker 1: much like Gene Shepherd's Night. People asking bookstores for a
[22:30] Speaker 1: book they know doesn't exist. The prank revealed that some
[22:37] Speaker 1: archdioceses might ban a non existent book if the title
[22:41] Speaker 1: sounds a bit risque that some teachers will call research
[22:46] Speaker 1: superb if it reads plausibly like it might have been
[22:50] Speaker 1: superb if only the subject were real. The student who
[22:55] Speaker 1: got a B plus for his essay on Frederick R.
[22:58] Speaker 1: Ewing wrote to Shepherd, my whole education is probably phony.
[23:05] Speaker 1: Shepherd kept up the joke for weeksjournalist who was in
[23:10] Speaker 1: on it casually mentioned in his column had lunch with
[23:13] Speaker 1: Freddie Ewing. Today, a listener reported that three players at
[23:18] Speaker 1: a bridge party had earnestly discussed I Libertine and concluded
[23:23] Speaker 1: they didn't like it. The prank revealed when people were
[23:28] Speaker 1: willing to bluff an opinion about a book that was
[23:31] Speaker 1: getting bars, rather than admit that they didn't know a thing.
[23:37] Speaker 1: Then a publisher who was in on the joke wrote
[23:41] Speaker 1: to Shepherd with a proposal, how about writing I Libertine
[23:49] Speaker 1: for real? Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.
[24:02] Speaker 1: When Whitney Phillips began to study four chan in two
[24:06] Speaker 1: thousand and seven, the commonly used phrase a hero was
[24:12] Speaker 1: one that confused her, as she discovered it traced back
[24:17] Speaker 1: to a teenager who'd killed himself in two thousand and six.
[24:22] Speaker 1: One of the boy's friends had posted on an online
[24:25] Speaker 1: memorial page a poem mourning his loss. The poem was
[24:31] Speaker 1: heartfelt but terribly written. He was such an hero to
[24:37] Speaker 1: take it all away. We miss him so that you
[24:41] Speaker 1: should know. It goes on with three more mentions of
[24:48] Speaker 1: an hero and loving him like an brother. Someone posted
[24:55] Speaker 1: the poem to four chan, where it became one of
[24:59] Speaker 1: those random things that caught on. That's comprehensible. It is,
[25:06] Speaker 1: after all, an terrible poem, But what happened next was
[25:12] Speaker 1: truly awful. Trolls on four Chan tracked down the address
[25:17] Speaker 1: of the boy who had killed himself and published his parents'
[25:20] Speaker 1: phone number. The parents got prank calls, kids turned up
[25:26] Speaker 1: at the boy's grave to take photos to post on
[25:29] Speaker 1: four Chan. There's no worthwhile point to redeem any of this,
[25:35] Speaker 1: As Whitney Phillips puts it.
[25:37] Speaker 5: The trolls were either disinterested in or outright blind to
[25:41] Speaker 5: the ways in which their mockery exacerbated an already traumatizing experience.
[25:50] Speaker 1: The trolls of four Chan had told Whitney Phillips that
[25:54] Speaker 1: they didn't take anything seriously. They were in it for
[25:58] Speaker 1: the lulls. Sometimes it's true they happened to make a
[26:03] Speaker 1: point while annoying or confusing or offending people, like showing
[26:10] Speaker 1: up the gullibility of media when it comes to raising
[26:13] Speaker 1: fears about drugs and pedophiles. But making a point wasn't
[26:18] Speaker 1: the point. The lulls was the point. Whatever they revealed
[26:24] Speaker 1: was just by accident. When a publisher approached Gene Shephard
[26:30] Speaker 1: to write I Libertine for real, he agreed that have
[26:36] Speaker 1: to rush it out while the buzz was still buzzing.
[26:39] Speaker 1: So Shepherd quickly sketched an outline, and they drafted in
[26:42] Speaker 1: the prolific sci fi writer Theodore Sturgeon to bash out
[26:47] Speaker 1: the prose against a tight deadline. When Sturgeon fell asleep
[26:53] Speaker 1: at his typewriter with only one chapter to go, the
[26:57] Speaker 1: publisher's wife stepped in to finish it off. None of
[27:02] Speaker 1: this sounds very promising, nor does the blurb turbulent, turgid, tempestuous.
[27:14] Speaker 1: I Libertine is long out of print. But I was curious,
[27:20] Speaker 1: and Oxford University's Bodily and Library has almost every book
[27:25] Speaker 1: ever published in English? Did it have I Libertine, but
[27:31] Speaker 1: of course in hardback and paperback editions. I requested it
[27:37] Speaker 1: for the purpose of scholarly research. On the paperback cover,
[27:44] Speaker 1: a dungeon, a swashbuckling hero in a tricorn hat, a
[27:49] Speaker 1: woman in chains dress, ripped eyes, closed lips, sensually parted.
[27:59] Speaker 1: Let's check out the pros, shall we? What happened? What happened?
[28:05] Speaker 1: It was a tease, a small thing and nothing, a passatiempe,
[28:10] Speaker 1: and she closing her eyes and her lips to show
[28:13] Speaker 1: him some childish something in this blaze, this confiscation, arms
[28:18] Speaker 1: full of mouthful of break, burst, spill, crash, silence. It's
[28:27] Speaker 1: no mystery why I Libertine is out of print. What
[28:32] Speaker 1: is a mystery is why Gene Shepherd thought this was
[28:35] Speaker 1: a good idea. Getting people to talk about a non
[28:39] Speaker 1: existent book was very funny and revealing. Actually, then to
[28:46] Speaker 1: publish a book that's just shlock doesn't seem that funny
[28:50] Speaker 1: or clever or revealing of anything, except perhaps that Gene
[28:56] Speaker 1: Shepherd hadn't really understood why his own joke worked. So
[29:03] Speaker 1: was I Libertine really as perfectly judged a prank as
[29:07] Speaker 1: it seemed. Let's look again from another angle.
[29:14] Speaker 3: Double Beatnicks, Pompkins, all agreed a pinch, and all these
[29:18] Speaker 3: guys were sitting and they're looking at me and Jean.
[29:21] Speaker 1: Shepherd's free floating late night shows won him some lifelong fans.
[29:27] Speaker 1: One likens him to a jazz musician with words. Another
[29:31] Speaker 1: recalls he made literature fresh, right in front of your eyes,
[29:36] Speaker 1: like a guy making pizza in the window of a restaurant.
[29:40] Speaker 1: While Shepherd wove his spell by night, he spent his
[29:44] Speaker 1: days with a mistress. He'd come home to his wife
[29:47] Speaker 1: now and then. His son recalls he'd talk his way
[29:51] Speaker 1: back in with a line how it was going to
[29:53] Speaker 1: be different from now on. It never was. All he
[29:58] Speaker 1: seemed to want was the wife to do his ironing.
[30:04] Speaker 1: Nearly half a century after Shepherd went off the airwaves,
[30:09] Speaker 1: some recordings of his shows remain. To be honest, it's
[30:14] Speaker 1: not always easy to reconstruct his appeal Like an hero
[30:21] Speaker 1: or over nine thousand. Shepherd's catchphrases seem to have taken
[30:27] Speaker 1: on such a life of their own that you probably
[30:30] Speaker 1: had to be there to get them, like this excelsior, Yes,
[30:37] Speaker 1: bad head. He was so fond of that one that
[30:41] Speaker 1: it became the title of his biography and Excelsior Press.
[30:46] Speaker 1: Any bookstore clerk who knew Shepherd would surely pick up
[30:50] Speaker 1: on the clue all this Flick Lives. Flick was a
[30:56] Speaker 1: character in Shepherd's meandering childhood stories. One night, Shepherd told
[31:03] Speaker 1: his fans, I'll.
[31:05] Speaker 2: Tell you what you want to do.
[31:07] Speaker 4: Just put wherever you can and the score John at
[31:10] Speaker 4: the bulletin board, and just one single line, just say
[31:15] Speaker 4: Flick lives.
[31:16] Speaker 8: That's all on those claire our heads on the subway,
[31:20] Speaker 8: you know, or it says holy her headdress, and those
[31:23] Speaker 8: you just right under there, Flick lives.
[31:29] Speaker 1: The point was simply to mess with the day people.
[31:33] Speaker 1: Shepherd's listeners would know why Flick Lives was suddenly everywhere.
[31:38] Speaker 1: The day people would be confused, and that would be
[31:41] Speaker 1: funny lulls. In his dead of night shows, Shepherd'd like
[31:47] Speaker 1: to do something he called hurling invective. He'd ask his
[31:53] Speaker 1: listeners to put their radio up against an open window
[31:57] Speaker 1: and whisper to them to turn the volume up up,
[32:02] Speaker 1: up all the way to maximum. Then he'd yell some
[32:08] Speaker 1: non sensical insult.
[32:11] Speaker 2: You balthy pregnantist, I'm gonna get you.
[32:16] Speaker 1: The point was simply to annoy the day people by
[32:20] Speaker 1: startling them awake lulls. Sometimes Shepherd would invite his listeners
[32:26] Speaker 1: to hold a mill, which meant turning up at a
[32:30] Speaker 1: certain place at a certain time and just milling around
[32:34] Speaker 1: for a while doing nothing. Hundreds turned up to these mills.
[32:38] Speaker 1: One venue Shepherd frequently chose for a mill was a
[32:42] Speaker 1: gallery cafe. The owner later said, I dreaded it. The
[32:47] Speaker 1: waitresses dreaded it. All these young people would come, they
[32:52] Speaker 1: never ordered, they never left a tip, The regular customers
[32:56] Speaker 1: would stay away. The evening was just ruined. It's not
[33:01] Speaker 1: in the same league of awfulness as harassing the parents
[33:06] Speaker 1: of a kid who took his own life, but still
[33:10] Speaker 1: it's inconsiderate. Not that Shepherd cared. He liked the lulls.
[33:17] Speaker 1: When you look at I Libertine in the light of
[33:19] Speaker 1: Gene Shepherd's other work, it seems hard to imagine he
[33:23] Speaker 1: thought far beyond the lulls. The point was simply to
[33:27] Speaker 1: annoy and confuse the day people, to waste the time
[33:31] Speaker 1: of the bookshop clerks. What it ended up revealing was
[33:35] Speaker 1: just by accident. There's a lot to be said for
[33:38] Speaker 1: pranks that reveal. Like jenkom Over nine thousand penises or
[33:46] Speaker 1: I Libertine. But maybe it's harder than we might hope
[33:51] Speaker 1: to create the conditions for those pranks to emerge. With
[33:55] Speaker 1: both Gene Shepherd and four Chan, they seem to have
[33:59] Speaker 1: popped up by happy accident from a wider culture that's
[34:04] Speaker 1: mean and self absorbed. Soon after Whitney Phillips began to
[34:12] Speaker 1: study trolling subculture, that culture began to splinter. The anonymous
[34:18] Speaker 1: posters on four Chan were also collectively Anonymous capital A.
[34:25] Speaker 1: As four Chan became more and more popular, new posters
[34:30] Speaker 1: wanted anonymous not just to chase the lulls, but to
[34:34] Speaker 1: make a point. They began a campaign against scientology, prank
[34:39] Speaker 1: phone calls, denial of service attacks, gathering in person outside
[34:44] Speaker 1: branches of the church, and playing Rick Astley very loudly
[34:49] Speaker 1: on a loop. They embraced activism, supporting WikiLeaks, the Occupy movement,
[34:56] Speaker 1: and the Arab Spring. The old Hands were appalled. One
[35:01] Speaker 1: complained to Whitney Phillips, Anonymous isn't supposed to represent anything.
[35:06] Speaker 1: We did stuff for lulls, not because we care what
[35:09] Speaker 1: happens in the world, but that Anon was disappearing, Phillips explained.
[35:18] Speaker 5: As actavist Anon grew lolls. Anon receded, suggesting that the
[35:24] Speaker 5: cultural landscape has room for only one anonymous at a time.
[35:30] Speaker 1: Whitney Phillips had found two types of troll, reflecting two
[35:35] Speaker 1: takes on etymology, the witless ogre and the bait dangling
[35:40] Speaker 1: technique that took subtlety and guile. As Anon ditched the
[35:46] Speaker 1: lulls for earnest political activism, the fishing variety understanding of
[35:53] Speaker 1: trolling began to fade away. One troll reflected wistfully, the
[35:59] Speaker 1: real trolls from way back when are done now. Trolling
[36:04] Speaker 1: is just an all encompassing term for being an ars
[36:08] Speaker 1: on the Internet. Jean Shepherd was onto something with his
[36:17] Speaker 1: Credo of the Night People. His critique of creeping meat ballism,
[36:23] Speaker 1: thoughtless conformity is just as relevant today, and irreverent humor
[36:29] Speaker 1: is still the only antidote.
[36:32] Speaker 2: Once a guy starts thinking, once a guy starts laughing
[36:37] Speaker 2: at the things he once thought were very real, once
[36:41] Speaker 2: he starts laughing at TV commercials. Once a guy starts
[36:45] Speaker 2: doing that, he's making the transition from day people to
[36:50] Speaker 2: night people. And once this happens, he can never go back.
[36:56] Speaker 1: But if you take nothing seriously, you throw out some
[37:00] Speaker 1: things that are worth caring about, compassion, relationships. Shepherd himself
[37:09] Speaker 1: never took much interest in his children. His son recalls,
[37:13] Speaker 1: he was more interested in talking about himself. His daughter adds, my.
[37:19] Speaker 5: Father was an ahole as a father.
[37:22] Speaker 1: Shepherd left his wife and married an actress. That didn't
[37:28] Speaker 1: last because his new wife's career took off and Shepherd
[37:32] Speaker 1: couldn't cope.
[37:34] Speaker 4: Don't ever get yourself into a situation where a woman's
[37:37] Speaker 4: making more money than you are.
[37:40] Speaker 1: Shepherd was a tremendously insecure guy, says someone who worked
[37:46] Speaker 1: with him, very narcissistic. Even off Mike, he couldn't shut
[37:52] Speaker 1: up about himself. He was a monomaniac, says another colleague.
[37:57] Speaker 1: He was always on. Maybe Shepherd's problem was a lack
[38:03] Speaker 1: of self awareness when he mocked the day people and
[38:07] Speaker 1: the conventional way they viewed the world. An old boss
[38:11] Speaker 1: recalls he would rail against the establishment, and yet he
[38:16] Speaker 1: desperately wanted the acceptance of that establishment. Shepherd thought he
[38:23] Speaker 1: never got the credit his genius deserved. The boss says
[38:29] Speaker 1: many guys would have achieved his success and been really
[38:32] Speaker 1: happy with it. Shepherd, like modern trolls, was all about
[38:38] Speaker 1: the lulls, but his boss decided in the end that
[38:44] Speaker 1: Shepherd was a deeply unhappy guy. Perhaps the same is
[38:51] Speaker 1: true of people who choose to be an ass on
[38:55] Speaker 1: the Internet. Key sources for this episode were Excelsior, You
[39:13] Speaker 1: Fat Head by Eugene Berkman and This is Why We
[39:18] Speaker 1: Can't Have Nice Things by Whitney Phillips. Cautionary Tales is
[39:25] Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines,
[39:29] Speaker 1: and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.
[39:34] Speaker 1: The sound design and original music are the work of
[39:37] Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Benderdaff Haffrey edited the scripts. Cautionary Tales features
[39:44] Speaker 1: the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guttridge, Ed Gohm,
[39:49] Speaker 1: Stella Harford, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also
[39:54] Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
[39:57] Speaker 1: Greta Cohne, Corin Gilliard, Fisher, benderdaff Haffrey, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan,
[40:04] Speaker 1: Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
[40:08] Speaker 1: of Push Industries. If you like the show, please remember
[40:13] Speaker 1: to share, rate, and review it. Really does make a
[40:16] Speaker 1: difference to us, and if you want to hear it,
[40:19] Speaker 1: add free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode,
[40:24] Speaker 1: and members only newsletter every month, why not join the
[40:28] Speaker 1: Cautionary Club. To sign up, head to patreon dot com
[40:33] Speaker 1: slash Cautionary Club. That's Patreon, p A, t R, e
[40:37] Speaker 1: o N dot com slash Cautionary Club

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