Thinking Sideways: What's the Frequency Kenneth?

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know what story
is of things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys,
welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways, the podcast that

(00:25):
solves unsolvable mysteries. That's right, that doesn't work if they're unsolvable,
we solve them anyways. Yep, this week. Oh I'm sorry,
I'm Devin. In case you haven't met us before, I'm
Devin joined I'm Steve, and we're going to talk about
a mystery. It was a listener suggestion from Bill on Facebook.

(00:45):
Thanks Bill, And we're going to call this one. What's
the frequency? Kenneth? That's an okay name for it, right,
I would say that's appropriate name for it? Yea, yeah yeah.
On October four, six, Dan there was walking home in
New York City when a man ran up behind him
and punched him in the back of the head, which

(01:06):
knocked him to the ground. Ground not for and uh
started beating him a little bit, and he the man
who attacked him, demanded, what's the frequency Kenneth or Kenneth,
what's the frequency? Reports differ? Yeah. As rather ran apparently
a second man ran after him and continued to try

(01:27):
and attack him. Rather ran into a hotel or apartment
lobby apartment building lobby, uh, and I guess felt to
the ground and was kicked a number of times before
an employee of the apartment complex was able to kind
of break the fight up, and the man ran away
and wasn't caught. But both men continued to demand throughout

(01:50):
the entire beating what they wanted to know what the
frequency was from Dan Rather? Hm? Weird? Right? Yeah, I
did say. That's a very weird thing to continually yell. Asked, Yeah,
but you know, actually, if you want an excuse to
continue the beating, asked if you do want to be
asking an unanswerable question, Yeah, you kind of do. Yeah,
I'm just trying to beat the thing out of you.

(02:10):
If you would just tell me the answer, I'm glad
they stopped. Yeah. I can't imagine that people don't know
who Dan Rather is, but I guess we do have
a number of international listeners. So let's talk about Dan
Rather for a minute. Yeah cool. Dan Rather was born
in ninety one and led a pretty uninteresting life until

(02:31):
breaking into the broadcast journalism world kind of early September
nineteen six one, when he did some unconventional reporting on
Hurricane Carla. He was the first reporter to ever use
weather scanners on TV to explain to people where weather

(02:51):
patterns are. Yeah, weather, Yeah, they didn't exist. They didn't
have the technology to have that on screen. So he
actually went to what or service station and had the
camera trained on that to track where Hurricane Carlo was going.
Granted he was he had been a television journalist for
a number of years prior to that, but that was

(03:12):
kind of his first big claims fame. I don't remember
when it was, but I know. The other notable thing
he did is he was one of the reporters that
was embedded in Vietnam. Yeah, he was a he was
a war correspondent. And actually that was after he had
kind of had this rise to fame. He moved to
New York City in nineteen sixty two and started a
trial period at CBS, and apparently he didn't fit in

(03:35):
very well. But he did end up covering the crash
of American Airlines Flight one, which was a notable crash
with a number of notable people on board that died,
and it's a bit of an unsolved mystery, but we'll
talk about that later one, because I'm not prepared for
that one. No, no, no, no, that's a mystery for

(03:57):
a different time. He also reported on the JFK assassination,
which is another huge unsolved mystery for another time. Until
we tackle it. Until we tackle it, we'll solve it.
Don't worry, guys, because it's not actually unsolvable. It's not.
We will solve it. Yeah. Yeah, Dan Rather was assigned
to be a White House correspondent for CBS, and then
he went onto assignment in viet to Vietnam War. And

(04:20):
then he came back and he was assigned the anchor
position for CBS Evening News, which is CBS is nightly
news segment. And he also he also did segments on
sixty Minutes also, yeah he did, and he you know,
he was the anchor um on CBS Evening News for
twenty four years. Yeah. Yeah, he was there forever so

(04:42):
and then and of course it was from his position
at sixty Minutes of his career kind of came to
a closer the end about ten years ago. Yeah. I
want to talk about that. We will, because it comes
up in the theory. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot.
I'm sorry. We have some interesting theories. I I sprung
something at the last minute on Devon. Yeah, I forgot.

(05:04):
I totally forgot that. I had that written at the
end of my script. Now, anyways, in six this beating
happened and nobody really knew why. Rather was quoted as
saying I was mugged. He's kind of this very matter
of fact statement. He says, it was mugged. I don't
know why it happened. I wish I did, but I
don't know. Classic mugging except they didn't. Yeah, well that

(05:27):
was exactly it is. None of the reports have any
kind of missing items of any kind. It seems like, yeah,
I mean I think he was. It was maybe his
egos at bruised. Yeah. A few years later, Dan Rather
did identify the man who had been beating him. It
gets it gets at a little weird in here for me,

(05:48):
because in all of the reports I've read, there were
two men. These are the reports from the year it happened.
From the year it happened, there were two men. And
then a couple of years later, this other man that
I'm about to talk about was arrested it and Dan
Rather said, oh, yeah, that was the that was the
one guy who was beating me. There's no mention of, oh,
but there was a second guy who started it or
anything like that. It's just, yeah, that was the guy.

(06:09):
Some reports I've heard it was just one guy beating
him and then the other guys just kind of stood by. Yeah,
but there were two men involved, and you know, anyways,
it gets He definitely disappears from the lore, which I'm
sure we'll talk about a little bit in a minute too.
But this man's name was William Tagger, and that was

(06:32):
when he was identified to Yes, and you may be
familiar with that name if you're a weirdo about murders
or anything. I don't know, some of our listeners might
be into that sort of stuff. They're just interested in
random explained murders may well, except yeah, unprovoked this is
a better word, because this this murder was actually explained

(06:55):
and stupid. Yeah. In n Tagger attempted to enter the
set of the Today Show with a gun. He had
like a rifle strapped to his back and he tried
to enter and the security guards said no. So he
got in his car and drove away and then came
back with the rifle and tried to gain insurance again
when one of the men who was on the crew

(07:17):
of the Today Show named Campbell their own Montgomery, which
is the USA version of a Game of Thrones name
really what it is? I don't watch the show or
read books. You guys are the worst. Anyways, Tagger shot
Campbell in the back in the back a few times
as he was running away and trying to alert the police,

(07:38):
and uh, Campbell died and Tiger was arrested. Tigger was
convicted and sentenced. He was denied parole when he first
came up for it in two thousand and seven, but
he was released in two thousand and I think he
lives in New York and Dan rather hasn't been seeing
since that's not true, are you tell me, Devin? We

(08:01):
can save it if if it comes up later. But
did you want to go into his motivations for that
or had you intended to? Yeah, we're gonna talk a
little bit about that in then, okay, because there's there's
some very strange WTF moments in his accounts of why
he did that. So I just want to make sure yeah,
by by no, in no uncertain terms, Tagger was a

(08:23):
crazy person. He still is, just check it, but perhaps
a person from another or maybe something else is going on.
But even that you kind of can say he's crazy. Yeah,
so that I know, we usually talked for like an
hour about what happened and then briefly talk about theories.
But happened, So we're going to talk about theories. Wait

(08:48):
are you? Are you warning our listeners it's going to
be a short show. Well, I don't think it's going
to be sure, it'll be shorter than last week. Let's talk, Okay, opposite,
it's all talk, like Steve, let's all talk. So one
thing I wanted to mention is that Rather found out

(09:10):
about it through Tigger's psychiatrist. Correct, because he was he
was forced to see a psychiatrist after the murder, after
the murder and then and then that's when Tigger told
his psychiatrist said he was the one who who had
beaten up Dan Rather. Yeah, so, and so that that
is how he found out the set from the psychiatrist.

(09:32):
I have heard that, Yeah, I do. I do want
to raise a red flag on that though, because I
know that there's a limit to patient client confidentiality, and
I know that like if you're going to do harm
or you've done a heinous crime that doesn't apply. Beaten

(09:52):
the crap out of a news anchor doesn't seem to
qualify for violating that brilliant Yeah, well, but it's also
way outside of the statute of limitation. Well, I think
that we can kind of go into this now. Uh
we as a community group team Sideways found the transcripts

(10:17):
from the parole hearings her Tagger and uh Dan Rather
isn't mentioned any at all in there. And one would
think if if they had decided or he hadn't admitted
to that attack, that would come up, because it was
a pretty brutal attack. Yeah, but he didn't. He didn't
confess it to the police. He did not, so that

(10:40):
that's kind of I I agree with Steve. I have
some questions about whether or not he ever admitted that
he did this, or if it was just a psychiatrist
trying to get a bump in his popularity for some
reason or whatever it may be. Yeah, but but when
he went Rather it was shown a picture of Tagger.
He's identified him as being the did it and when Yeah,

(11:01):
but what was it was he showing the photo? I'm
not sure, but it would have been at the earliest nine. Okay,
that's that's eight to ten years later. I got a question,
have you and you've seen pictures of Tagger, right? I
mean he's not the most uniquely he's kind of an
odd looking guy, but he's not super unique. No, So
that's why I question how Rather so instantly said, that's

(11:25):
the guy. But also it's not documented what under what
process he was shown the picture was, if it was
in a lineup under kind of police supervision or professional supervision,
or if the psychiatrist or psychologist was saying, oh, yeah,
this guy said he beat you up, and Dan Rather
looked it and said bad. It kind of looks like him.
Probably was him, you know, we don't know. Yeah, that's

(11:46):
exactly thank you that. I think that that's an important
thing to keep in mind as well. So with that
short and introduction to this show, now we're really going
to the theories. We're really going to theory. Alright. The
first theory ends with a sentence, I swear to god,
Joe did not come up with this theory, but he

(12:07):
very easily could have. So let's get into that. As
we mentioned, Dan Rather was assaulted kind of outside of
and then in the entry way of an apartment building, um,
and that somebody who worked there did kind of step
in and stopped behind. Yeah. And you know, most people
kind of think that this was just a case of

(12:27):
mistaken identity, that somebody, the people who started beating Dan
Rather up thought that he was somebody he wasn't, which
is fair. It's possible it was kind of in the
middle of his meteoric rise to fame. But I guess
if you don't watch the news, people get beat up
for all kinds of reasons and get into trouble for

(12:49):
mistaken identities all the time. Yeah. The other thing that
this theory relies heavily on is that Dan Rather was
he was hit in the head and he was being
beaten up, and that it's totally possible that he misunderstood
what the men were yelling at him or misremembered. Absolutely.
According to this theory, the people who the two men

(13:12):
that were beating Dan Rather up were fairly well dressed.
I don't know what that means. I've never I don't
know if you guys found in the original research versus
this theory, And he mentioned of the style of clothing
that these people were wearing, that they were well dressed.
But that was all I heard. I don't know why.
I never means never ever recall seeing that. Now, apparently

(13:37):
the neighborhood that Dan Rather was in was one of
the gay or neighborhoods of Manhattan or areas of Manhattan. No,
I'm not, actually, but I am saying that apparently this
was kind of one of those areas at that time.
I don't know, it may or may not have been.

(13:58):
According to this theory, it really was. Yeah, the quote
unquote research around this particular one call in a question. Yeah, Jos,
after we've talked about that, I think it might be
economy to Yeah, And apparently, reportedly Dan Rather being you know,
off duty for the day, he was wearing jeans and
a striped polo and aviator sunglasses. And yeah, because it's

(14:24):
Dan Rather, so probably he's a news anchor, comes of
course would always be his best Yeah. Of course, where
does Penny Loafer's. Yeah, Anyways, these two men mistook Dan
Rather for a man that one of the men's boyfriends
was cheating on him with. Maybe he really was. Maybe

(14:46):
they mistook Dan Rather for having snuck out of the
boyfriend's apartment so he lived in that apartment building building
right there and the boyfriend would have lived there. They
beat him in the head, hit him in the head,
and Dan Rather ran towards the apartment building again, which

(15:06):
just further enraged these men and they started kicking him,
and Dan Rather reportedly said you got the wrong guy,
which of course made them think even more that he
was the lover. And so what were they saying to him?
Reportedly they were saying, what is this freak seeing Kenneth?

(15:28):
Which also doesn't make a whole lot of I mean,
what weird, It's stupid, it's so shoehorned, I feel, you know,
It's definitely one of those kind of oh yeah, this
person is going to call this person a freak, Like, well,
what do you You're like beating this man up for
being gay with your boyfriend syndrome? Yeah, but all like

(15:52):
what an odd choice of words of what is this
freak seeing Kenneth? Like what probably not what I would
say in that situation, not what I would say. Okay,
so I'm going to do this a number of times
with this phrase, is trying to figure out because Rather
got hit in head a number of times, so is
Marbles might have been bouncing around yeah, and I think, yes,

(16:14):
saying what is this freak seeing Kenneth? You know that
it could have been put into frequency Kenneth. You know,
since Dan rather was in broadcasting, frequency would have been
more in his vocabulary than That's not where it's going.
I'm trying to figure out what the frequency Kenneth could
be translated from if you're if you get got hit

(16:37):
and a head a couple of times. But that's what
I'm saying, is that it could have been translated from
what is this freak seeing Kenneth? And it could have
been are you there's an F word that you can
insert yourself, Kenneth. So if somebody says that, if you
say that rapidly, it could to somebody who's you know,

(17:00):
ears are ringing from being knocked about the head could
kind of sound like that. And again I know it's
not a perfect fit. I understand this. Yeah, I usually
with this story. Yeah, I usually think that, like the
first and the last words are probably pretty close to
so what are you Fford Kenneth, Yeah, or something like that,

(17:23):
something like that. Yeah, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I
don't know either. It's how many times did they say
this phrase? And I don't know. I don't know if
anybody knows. It's always always called that is just repeatedly,
so repeatedly. Could have been two times or ken times.
I don't think it's more than two, but I don't
think Dan Rather was able to like say, oh, I
was counting while they were beating me. You know. Anyways,

(17:48):
I think the reason that this theory sounds exactly like
Joe is because it ends with and I'll quote here,
I'm sure that if the police check the list of
tenants in the building, they will find a man named Kenneth.
Questioning him should lead to the sailants, and this case
will have been resolved. Yeah, right, that all they have

(18:09):
to do is do this one thing and then they'll
solve the case. It's so easy, Kenneth yet, Yeah, all
you have to do is find obviously there was a
Kenneth that lived there, and obviously he was gay, and
obviously he was cheating on his boyfriend, and obviously the
boyfriend just beat the crap out of Dan Rather while yelling.
But this freak scene Kenneth. Obviously that is the easiest
answer to this. Of course, Yeah, solved, there we go,

(18:33):
all right, Well, so funder email address. Oh no, well
you devn know that I found a theory that was
obscenely similar, super similar. Yeah, and thankfully we have some
folks out there who could help us with this because
I'm probably in a butcher some pronunciation. Even though you
asked for help, I asked for help, but nobody was

(18:55):
quite sure if what they were giving me was right.
But there's an other theory that goes that rather was
assaulted by one or two Jewish men for reasons unknown.
And it's New York. There's a sizeable Jewish community in

(19:16):
that city, so he may have made somebody angry and
or it could have been a mistake and identity absolutely,
you know, they they didn't like him, or they thought
that he was somebody else that was a problem. But
the reading that I found on this, they say that

(19:38):
it wasn't Kenneth that was being yelled, but instead it
was it was it's a Yiddish word. So again this
is why I'm not sure I'm going to do this right.
But it's gone if, which is Yiddish for thief or
a dishonest person, basically a liar. I then started I,

(20:00):
like I talked about earlier, with the whole puss word
substitution because I love word jumbles. Is trying to figure
out other Yiddish words that might sound like some of
the phrasing that was used. So I was looking for
I can't put the sentence together. I don't know Yiddish,
but words it would maybe sound like frequency if you're

(20:21):
yelling and you're beating up somebody and you're calling him
a thief. I found a couple that might kind of work.
And again I might be butchering this, but this is
Yiddish or princess as in I think it's princess as
in a bit of a putdown, but it's print zeth.
It's p r I E t z t h, so

(20:45):
my pronunciation is probably totally off on that. Or the
other one is pro stalk, which is an ignorant, bore
or a vulgar man. So I could see these words.
If this this other theory that I had, where he's
being attacked by a couple of Jews who were angry
at him for I don't know what reason, then it

(21:07):
could be that they were Everything that was yelled at
him was held in Yiddish, so we had no idea
what it was. So he put it together as best
he could in English, and please don't rely on my
terrible pronunciation, but it could completely be that. I mean,

(21:28):
it could also the theory. It could also be a
mix of English. You know, it could have been um,
where is it? Or what is it? Or something like
that and thief or what you know, not what did
you take? But you know, I mean, it could be
that a mix of accusations in English and Yiddish also,
And maybe maybe it wasn't even a case of a

(21:48):
stake in identity. Maybe they recognized him and he had
said something or another who upset them on the news,
So they also totally possible. Yeah, they you know that
he's a goyam. They don't like goyam, and he's made
them angry, so we're going to take it out on you.
I'm not sure that Jews don't like going on. Well,
but if he's, if he has made them angry, well, okay,

(22:10):
you're not of the faith. What the heck we can
justify beating the crap out of this guy. I don't know,
I don't know. I'm this is that's the theory, and
that's kind of the short road that I ran down.
I linguistics is not my area, so I tryd of
stopped short. Yeah, it's always possible. I mean, you know,
that's it brings up another good point. It could have

(22:31):
been a different language, that it could have been anything.
You know, it's it's hard to tell. The next theory
is fun. I like this theory, and actually this is
the theory that was brought to our attention with the story. Yeah. Yeah,
this is the number one copy paste theory on the Internet.

(22:52):
And since it's copy paste, we're going to copy paste
it too, because there's really I think the telling of
it is pretty good, and I'm it's literally copy pit.
Everywhere I've ever seen it is literally copy paste. I
copy pasted it into the script. I think that this
is the best telling of it. We're not going to,
like just read it word for word, though I think
we may have to do. I actually we're going to

(23:13):
read portions of it to give it its full due.
We've got to read some of this because it plays
into a bunch of pop culture references, because it's been
around long enough. Are you guys ready, let's do this
all right. On the evening of October four, stan Rather
was attacked by William Tagger, who contrary to popular belief,

(23:34):
had a very good reason for attacking. Rather, Bill Tagger
was born in the year Bill Tagger is from the future.
Bill Tagger is not of our planet. Well, technically, he
is from Earth, but not from our Earth. Tagger comes
from an Earth and a parallel universe, and he was
sent here by the government of his planet. On Tagger's Earth,

(23:54):
the entire planet is under control of one government, Taggers
worldwide government had been experimenting what's time travel to parallel universes,
which involves a warp of the space time continuum for
almost a hundred and fifty years. Bill Tagger, a convicted
felon on his planet, volunteered to be the first human
test pilot on the condition that he'd be given a
full pardon when he returned. Does this sound familiar to

(24:15):
anybody that's called twelve monkeys? Yeah again Yeah. On Tagger's Earth,
the vice President of the world as a man named
Kenneth Burrows, who just happens to look exactly like down Rather.
Before Tagger entered the time travel chamber, he was paid
a visit by Vice President Burrows and told that he

(24:36):
had a transmitter implanted in his brain and if he
chose to remain in this section of time and space
that he was being sent to and didn't return to
the designated time, he would be barraged with messages to
return until he came back and reported on his mission.
Then and only then would the transmitter be removed and
he'd be given his full pardon. Tagger's trip was successful,
and he landed in New York on September one. All

(24:58):
was going as planned, and tag Or had prepared for
his return to his own time when he was mistakenly
arrested for putting coins and expired meters. After spending thirty
days in jail and staying on our planet for fourteen
days longer than he was supposed to, Tigger started receiving
extremely hostile messages from Vice President Burrows telling him to
return immediately. Politicians can be such jerks. Why I'm going

(25:21):
to get thirty days for feeding a meter? I don't know.
I think it's not real. Oh you think so? Sack
his story? Okay, sorry, sorry. His window of opportunity had
passed and he would have to wait another week to
try to return, and there was no possible way to
let Burrows know this. The constant voices were driving him insane.
He wasn't even able to sleep at night. If there

(25:42):
was any way Tagger could find a precise frequency that
was being broadcasted to his brain, he could possibly override
the voices and be able to sleep at night until
he was able to make his return trip. As he
walked on the streets of New York late on the
evening of October fourth, Tigger saw a man who he
thought was Vice President Kenneth Burrows. He quit, came to
his senses and knew that Burrows would never make the

(26:02):
risky trip himself, and figured it must be Burrows is
double on our earth. However, he thought, what were the
chances that, out of over five billion people on the planet,
he would meet the twin of the man who had
been sending hostile messages directly to his brain for two weeks.
Tagger called out to the man, Kenneth, Kenneth Burrows. To
his surprise, the man, whom we know is Dan Rather,

(26:22):
turned to see who was yelling and not was knocked
to the ground. Tagger repeatedly kicked Rather as he lay
on the ground, yelling what's the frequency Kenneth, hoping to
learn the frequency of the signal being broadcast to his
brain to stop the voices. When rather didn't respond, Tagger
realized that he had made a terrible mistake, and indeed
attacked Burrows is double on our planet. He fled the
scene and later missed his second and last chanced to

(26:44):
return to his home planet. Years later, in in an
attempt to get in contact with somebody who might be
able to identify the frequency and put an end to
the voices that haunted him for so many years, Tagger
shot and killed an NBC technician outside of the Today's
Show studios. Today, William Tregor sits in prison in New York.
The voices now an automatic message that replays itself every

(27:05):
twenty minutes, still playing his head. Damn, you know, I
got that. That's a you know, that's like having ringing
in your years whatever, being on the train and hearing
the announcement. Wouldn't you just tune that out after a while? Yeah,
that's good point. I don't know. If it's quiet for
twenty minutes and then a message plays and then it

(27:26):
turns off, that would be pretty awful. I think that
every now and again it would startle you. But I
can imagine that after a week of that, you would
just learn to not hear it. I mean, think about
I live near an airport. Every now and again, I
hear the planes going overhead because I'm in their their
circle pattern. But every day, you know, but most of

(27:48):
the time I'll look up, Oh, hey, there's a plane,
and then suddenly realized that it is these raging lee
loud noise you did. The other thing he could have
done was he could have gone to a neurologists and
just said, hey, I'm getting weird things going with my
eyesight and stuff, and I think I might have a
brain tumor. Actually your head. They find that, they find

(28:08):
the receiver in your head, and they have brain searcher
health insurance for that. Well, he was a convicted felon
in his time. He didn't have health insurance. He didn't
have anything in art. He didn't have anything in art time.
He was stealing bread to eat. Joe, so go to
go to one of those hospitals that specializes in poor people.
The one thing I got to admit I did as

(28:30):
you were reading this, it suddenly dawned on me and
I wanted to check because I never figured out where
this story came from. But the one thing I do
have to give kudos to the person who wrote this.
They actually, if it was written a significant amount of
time after the event, they at least took the time
to look up the population of this planet in because

(28:54):
they got the number right. Yeah, well not precisely right.
It wasn't exactly, it wasn't five bill But how often
did they say and there was nine billion people on
the planet in nineteen seventy two? Is like, dude, you
got the wrong year totally. Yeah, like, at least they
got that right. But I'm sorry this right, It didn't
get at all right. Story has been around for so long.

(29:15):
And did either of you figure out where he came from?
I have no idea. It's just probably came from Tagger.
I don't know. The copy pace syndrome tells me that
it is something from a forum for fun. Yeah, I
think probably. It's probably one of those writing prompts. But yeah,
like you said, I couldn't find out where it was from.

(29:36):
I don't think Joe could find out where it's from.
But I do like it. It's fine, a fun one.
It's fun and it explains it pretty solidly. Yeah, it's
not true, but still well inspired a movie reallywell monkeys,
twelve Monkeys. Yeah, supposedly this story was kind of the
basis for twelve Monkeys. You know what else? The story

(29:57):
was the basis for him? Uh? No, a song? Are you?
That's right? Ye? What the frequency Kenneth? Did you guys
listen after reading this? Did you listen to the read
the lyrics? Did you? Yeah? I know I do this
with songs all the time. As you hear it and
you're bothering along and you're having a good time, and

(30:19):
then suddenly you read the lyrics and you go, oh,
what is this about? Maaks those sense? And that's exactly
how this became a number one song. I don't know
it had a good tune. People didn't listen to lyrics. No,
because if you caught yourself reading or you know, going
along with the words and say and singing them out

(30:40):
loud and thinking about what it said, whoa, it's a
weird song? Yeah, wait to go? Are um in a
terrible play? Oh? That's right, that's yeah, that's so. Can
you imagine that you had this embarrassing, a little little
dust up and somebody beats crap out of you, and

(31:00):
now that's a song about it. Now, that's a play
about it. Who was it? Which? Which late night show
was it? The Dan Rather went on with R. E. M.
And he performed with them. I think it was like
The Tonight Show or David Letterman or something like that.
But he at least had enough characters say yeah this happened, fine,

(31:21):
I'll play along. Yeah, it's a major cultural turning point
in our history, I mean our nations history. So you know, hey,
it was a major cultural turning point. Oh yeah, not really. Sorry,
that supposed to left awarding the Internet. I'm not supposed
to shot. Yeah. I was just gonna say, Joe has

(31:43):
an interesting theory. Yeah, well it's not actually my theory.
This is sorry. Joe found an interesting party. Yeah, I
found this. This one was a team group effort. I think. Yeah,
we all kind of went off on our own paths
on this one, which is unusual, but it's fun. Yeah. So, uh,
this guy, the guy who came up with this theory
is named Paul Limbert Allman, and he wrote an essay

(32:06):
in Harper's Magazine in December of two thousand one in
which he drew a connection between Dan Rather and a
writer named Donald Barthelm and Barth Barthelm was kind of
a postmodernist writer. He he, I don't know, I don't
know that he ever wrote a novel, but he wrote
a lot of short stories, and he did a lot
of other stuff too. He taught at some some universities
and stuff like that, and he was actually a journalist

(32:28):
for a while. He grew up in Houston about the
same time that Dan Rather did, and he went into
journalism around the same time that Dan Rather did, also
in Houston. Both of them started out in Houston. So it's, uh,
it's actually quite likely that Rather in Balthelm or Barthelm.
Quite likely they had at least a passing acquaintance with
one another. Yeah. Yeah, and they could have crossed paths

(32:50):
in good ways or astonishingly negative ways. It's hard to say,
it's hard to tell him. Yeah, So he all unbelieves
that Barthelm had had something against Rather and that he
possibly was behind the attack, and his clues were from
some stories. Some of the bartown stories are one of
his stories, actually a couple of his stories. A character

(33:10):
named Kenneth appears in the story. So that's damning. And
then there was another story, yeah, and then there was
another right there, Yeah, he wrote another story which had
an interesting passage in it, This is kind of a
Q and A like an inner somebody being interviewed from
Then the story was called kirk Yard unfair to Schlegel. Yeah,

(33:31):
it sounds like a story I'm gonna go out. Yeah
maybe in Russia, yeah, Germany. So here's answer. I'm on
a train, a European train with compartments. A young girl
enters and it sits opposite me. The book is in
her lap. Her legs are fairly wide apart, very tanned.
The color of question, that's a very common fantasy answer.

(33:53):
All of my fantasies are extremely ordinary. Question. Does it
give you pleasure? Answer? Or rather unsatisfactory question? What is
the frequency? Yeah? Absolutely, he's guilty. Frequency he's guilty. I
really just called that writer's block. Yeah. Another story he
wrote another story called This is Barthea Elm again called

(34:15):
the Emerald and What. There's a character named Lather who
was a newspaper writeritor who was a complete flaming papas jerk,
and al Man seems to believe that Barthel basis character
and Dan rather and he seems to believe that he
had some sort of a grudge against rather, and that
was his motivation for either being part of the sort
of being behind the soor preps just as randomly inspiring

(34:38):
this attack. M Yeah, I don't know. I mean this
kind of the idea that Dan rather is the basis
for a character named Lather that I'm I'm willing to
go there. I'm not willing to go there with the
what's the frequency? In the Q and A? And I'm
not really willing to go there just because he named

(34:58):
a couple of characters Kenneth. Yeah, but hey, circumstantial, Like
I said, this is this is an amazingly weak theory. Yeah,
I'm not sure that he I'm pretty sure that Almond
was not entirely serious about this. Well, I see here
that that you did give this Actually I've never seen
to do this, but you gave this theory a score, Joe, Yeah,
I did, had three thumbs up out of a possible

(35:20):
hundred thumbs. Yeah. Yeah. Uh So. He also adapted this
into a play called Kenneth, What does the Frequency, which
played a few months in New York City at the
seventy eight Street Theater Lab. And I bet that was
for excellent Yeah, And that was also performed with the
two thousand for Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Of course it was,

(35:41):
and it got reviewed by Variety. They gave it kind
of a tepid review. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. You
cannot like a person and not orchestra in an attack
on them and still make fun of them. There is
a people that I don't like and I make fun of,
and yet I have never contracted a beating on them.
Safe good job. That seems kind of a street ye

(36:04):
to go to that length, you just you don't like you?
What was the term a pompish jerk? I believe that
if you consider a pompish jerk, tho it is what's
the what's the frequency? Kenneth? I don't quite get that.
There's no reason so that he can pepper really really
innocuous kind of references throughout his literature for their next

(36:25):
ten years right and garner attention for Well, it could
be related, but maybe not, but probably not. Maybe maybe
I don't know. Another theory, and this is I think
our most solid serious theory so far, is that this
was just a piece of performance art. No, that's not real.

(36:48):
You can't fool me. Joe is now shoehorning. Random theory
it's a shoehorned theory that to start with. Yeah, there's
another theory out there on the a shoehorns. Somebody ordered
this as a hit kind of train that Steve ended
up I think doing a lot of more research on

(37:09):
than I did, because I'm not really excited about it.
I really shouldn't have spent all of the time Saturday
when I got to bed at like one three in
the morning for being on the internet. Nope, you shouldn't have.
But it's it involves Uh, I was beating the bushes.
You are beating the bushes. Because this deals entirely with
the Bush family. Dan rather has a reputation for, as

(37:32):
his editors and producers whuls say, pissing people off. He's
good at at getting to the core and finding what's
going on, or at least finding out how to ask
the right question to really rattle somebody and getting new
things out of him. Yeah. I mean, that's that's a
skill that is an admirable one when you're in that profession.

(37:57):
He did not have the best relationship with George H. W. Bush,
who first senior yeh senior it was, was President of
the United States, and during that time when when Bush
was running for president, the whole I Ran Contra affair

(38:18):
had broken open, and like a Nesta spiders, it was
just it was a terrible, terrible thing for people in politics,
and it was it really it destroyed a lot of careers.
One of the people that Rather when after was George
Bush Senior. And I understand this is two years after

(38:40):
the beating I've seen, and I had a hard time
trying to find an archive of all Dan Rather stories
that was easy to go through. But it's gonna say
that would be massive. Yes, it is a massive. Therefore,
nobody's really put it together, but even Dan Rather himself.
But he does, but it doesn't it's not that user friendly. Yeah,

(39:02):
But the point is he wasn't afraid to go after
Ronald Reagan and after George Bush Senior. And he seems
to have, according to this theory, really really peeved off
Senior to the point that George Bush Sr. Sent a
couple of guys after him to beat the crap out
of him. Seems leg Hey, you're you're a political figure,

(39:27):
you're the vice president of the country. You can do
whatever you want, according to this theory, And I'm not
gonna say that's true, but that's according to this theory caught.
And of course then they beat the crap out of him.
They say something that I don't even I can't even
draw a guess is what it means. But this of

(39:49):
course then prompts Dan Rather to do his failed ambush
on George Bush Senior in didn't work as so it
didn't for him. This for anybody who doesn't know, Bush
Senior was running for president, he was still the vice president,

(40:10):
and he agreed to go on CBS to do I
think it was about a nine or ten minute interview
with Dan Rather about his presidency. And immediately Dan swings
it back to the Iran contra affair. I'm not gonna
go into the whole thing. Watch it. It goes terribly.

(40:32):
Senior takes the reins away from Dan Rather and terris
him anew and runs the whole thing. I I actually started,
I was watching it on YouTube. I actually pulled up
another website just so I could look at something different,
so I didn't have to see George Bush Senior in
his terrible giant glasses and Dan Rather with the look

(40:56):
of the deer in the headlights because he was just
getting ripped apart. Yeah, but from then on, I mean
the family, he and the family have not gotten together
got along. Well, there's what is your the Killian documents.
This is what I think that that moment might have
been the beginning of Rather's downfall. It was the beginning

(41:17):
of the downwards that took almost twenty years. Well I
did a while, but but you know, he had a
his chance. He had his chance in two thousand four
when w was up for re election George June and
he has chance. He hoped to try to take him
down and make him lose that election, and he got
some obviously pathetically forged memos from this guy. So George

(41:42):
Bush Senior was the forty first president, yea junior was,
and yes, so go ahead because yeah, I I was
gonna explain it, but you're you you know this, yeah, exactly.
So he had this his this informant, his name was Killian.
I've leave and from Texas and he had a couple

(42:02):
of a couple of memos proportedly purportedly from Bush's Air
National Guard commander way back in like the sixties was
when he was in the text because he was getting
preferential treatment to stay in country and fly jets and
not go to Vietnam. In Bush's defense, he actually volunteered
to go to Vietnam. He did, but there was there
was a number of I read a huge article and

(42:24):
I can't remember what Texas magazine about quite a few
senators sons that didn't go, and they all ended up
in the same unit. And it was kind of I
think they called it the hot tub unit because it
was just it was an easy gig. You could do
whatever you want. You weren't actually going to go to war,
so who cared? Yeah, that would be kind of nice,

(42:48):
and of course, well the problem is the problem is,
of course, rather aired the story on CBS, it was wrong.
He did not do his due diligence. Turns out he didn't.
Somebody actually did a great gift on the Internet of doc.
They say it was typed up on a typewriter. But
when you take this doc and you take the scan

(43:10):
version of it, and then you superimpose on it Microsoft
Word Times New Roman fond inWORD on top, it's exactly identical.
Like somebody just photo copied something they printed out of
word four or five times to degrade it, and nobody

(43:30):
had CBS fact checked it. And that that's what that's
what got Rather kicked out on his Exactly. They had
they actually had people lined up who to authenticate the documents,
and it was just, you know, Rather was so beside
himself with with with eagerness to get this out there
that he didn't bother consulting with those people immediately. Um,

(43:51):
there was one of the viewer on the East Coast.
I saw them on sixty minutes and spott at the
Times new Roman format there fonds immediately and that's the
default font setting. Yeah, exactly, very anytime. If you look
at where, you know exactly what we're talking about, the
same spacing, same everything. Yeah, And hilariously enough is his

(44:13):
his producer who got fired for this. Her name was
Mary Maybe's and Mary Maples. It was Maples. Her last
name is Maples. I thought it was Map's just m Aps.
It could be maybe anybody's sure it's not, but but anyway,
she uh. She published a book afterwards, claiming that there
had been a big conspiracy at the heart of the
whole thing because this guy posted on the East Coast

(44:34):
to a website called pre Republic. Well, their servers are
in California, or at least they were then, and so
when he posted this right after sixty minutes went off
the air, but of course it was time stepped with
the time stamped with the California time, so it actually
appeared that he posted this before sixty minutes it even aired.
So therefore thereby was born a big conspiracy. Yeah, now

(44:57):
it's beating us. Um, yeah, well they're there's all kinds
of political ramblings, and we don't need to go into
those political ramblings because I mean, we all have our
own unique use and that's perfectly fine. The point is,
rather in the Bushes didn't get along, and somehow George H. W.
Bush was behind the beating the Dan rather God for

(45:20):
unknown offense. That's the theory. But the theory it's wrong. Well,
it's better than the time Traveler twelve monkey theory. It's not.
There's actually yes, it is. You are so many foul
words want to come out right now. No, it is

(45:40):
way better than No. I don't know. There's one more
theory that we should discuss. One more thing about the
Bush theory though, was I think if they had really
wanted to do to give him a pounding, they would
have done it right. They would have. They would have
pulled him into a into a taxi and take them
out into a field somewhere and kick the lid and
crap out of them. Yeah, they would about that would
have given him a really good beating. Well, but the

(46:02):
idea could have been, let's get him beat up in
public and make him look like a fool, to tarnish
his his not his credibility, but his image. Oh wait,
you're the big man behind the cant or in front
of the camera, but you can't defend yourself when you're
walking down the sidewalk. That's that's just as plausible. But

(46:25):
we've we've belabored that enough. I think Devin has one more.
There's another theory. There's one more. It is that William
or Bill Tigger was a crazy person could have been
attacked Dan rather because he thought he was monitoring him. Yeah. Actually,

(46:45):
you know what, there's a lot of support for this. Actually, well, yeah,
it's actually not at all unusual for mentally ill people
to assault other people of New York, especially high profile
ones that they see on the TV. Yeah. So it
turns out the reason that Bill Tagger tried to walk
into the Today Show with a rifle is because he

(47:06):
thought he needed the rifle to defend himself, because he
thought that the people from the TV were monitoring him,
including bugging his car, and that they had been watching
him for a number of years, and that he I
don't know why he thought he would go there and
defend himself, but that was the That was the story

(47:27):
that he told. He said he took the rifle because
he thought he needed to defend himself. Didn't you say
also that they were beaming messages in the head. Yes,
he also said that he had information that they wanted.
He was going there because he had the information they
wanted and they were requesting his presence or some something
to that, so he had to take the rifle to
defend himself while he was there with them. Well, but

(47:50):
did you did you guys read that? He also he
was so sure they were bugging the news media in
general is what he's talking about. In general, we're bugging
every thing in his life, to the point that he
went out and rented rented a car. He didn't take
his own car. He rented a car so that the
bug couldn't be in it. He was I think he
genuinely did think this. I don't I don't there's a

(48:12):
lot of support. I think that he was sadly, sadly
had some serious issues going on. And he said, and
you know, when he was arrested and sentenced and he
spent his time in jail and sing sing the all
the documents from there say, you know, he says he
drunk socially, that he you know, smoked pot every once

(48:34):
in a while, but he wasn't you know, he didn't
have a problem with alcohol, wasn't a yeah, he wasn't
an addict. Was just crazy. He was just crazy. I mean,
is there's no was He's still um. But the that
kind of does make sense for why he might try
to beat Dan rather up if he thought that the

(48:55):
news media was bugging him or following him, if he
just happened to see somebody who he thought legitimately was
monitoring his life walking on the street by happenstance or not,
he would try to defend himself from that person and
go and attack that person and start beating him up.
Why he would be yelling something even remotely like what's
the frequency, Kenneth, I don't know, but hey, I have

(49:19):
so I have two things to say on that. One
what's the frequency. Kenneth may again, Rather may not know
what was said and misremembered, or Tagger may have been
in an altered state, not drug or alcohol induced, just
an altered state. So what he thought he was saying

(49:41):
didn't come out what Rather heard, and so rather than
did his best to interpret it. But I've read the
same court docs that you have. You know who's not
ever mentioned in those court documents and rather the second man?
You know, it's the man of the grassy knoll. The

(50:02):
second man is never mentioned. Suddenly Taggers taking all responsibility
or actually I don't even think he's taking responsibility because
he's not admitting guilt. He's just saying, these are the
things I did, and this is what the problem. He
didn't talk about the rather and he never talks about
so he wouldn't he wouldn't raise the whole second man exactly.

(50:24):
But all we have is his psych psychiatrist, is it psychiatrist,
a psychologist, psycho psychiatrist, his psychiatrists information about this, about
this whole thing. So that to me is like, well,
what happened the second dude? And if he's been so
open about what he did, why is he not admitting

(50:46):
to just wailing on Dan Rather. Yeah, and also like,
where do you find a second man who's like, oh, yeah,
the news media is totally monitoring your whole life. You
should definitely go beat up Dan Rather. You know that
guy that guys probably from the Bush family, they him
after them. This guy, this guy knows the neighborhood that
that Rather lives in, you know, and he finds this random,

(51:09):
crazy guy who's who thinks the media is like doing
all this stuff to him. And this guy's like, yeah,
you know, I kind't think you're right, you know, I
think you need to go on the offensive. And hey,
look over there, it's Dan Rather. Yeah. No, I mean
I think, um, I don't know, I don't I don't think.
I don't think that that's the right one either. But
I also I do want to point out this is

(51:32):
New York City in the eighties, the mid eighties, before
they cleaned their active New York was a rough town.
Lots of crazies running around, lots of lots of folks
were around, not the safest place to be, And it
is possible. I mean, we talked about this before. It's
just a random attack. It's I've seen I hate to

(51:55):
admit this, but I've seen this happen on the streets
of Portland, where one person jumps up and starts chasing
after another to do them harm, and the second, or
I guess it would be a third person hops up
and chases along to see what's going on and suddenly
see's a shot two or an opening to get a

(52:15):
shot in and suddenly becomes a three person fight. Yeah,
so that could very well be what we're doing, which
is our very one of our very first theories. It's
not not a nice town at that time. Now, it
might be that Dan made up the second guy because
he didn't want to admit he gotten his butt kicked
by a single crazy guy, but a single But also

(52:37):
it's possible that you know, he saw he did see
a second person on the street who wasn't involved at all,
because he got punched from behind, went down, saw that
there was somebody else standing there, got up, ran away
there this person was chasing him and started beating him
up again, and he just assumed that that person standing
on the street was involved, and that third person was

(52:58):
basically pulling a nell Sin from the Simpsons, pointing and
laughing or not even I mean or just saying well,
I really don't want to get involved with that. By
WHOA did that really happen? Well? I thank god they
ran away. Yeah, you know, I think that Dan Rather.
Dan Rather was an experienced journalists, and like all experienced journalists,

(53:19):
he gets almost everything wrong. That's probably that, you know, basically,
why this whole thing is always possible doesn't make any
sense at all. Yeah. Yeah, well with that unsatisfactory ending,
I thought you said this was not unsolvable, Devon, It's
not unsolvable. All we have to do is find Kenneth. Well,

(53:39):
get out a phone book. Yep, damn you and Joe's
logic see it. You'd be easy if we could just
find Kenneth. Um. Yeah, you can find links to some
of our research, probably at least one of those copy
pasted websites just for fun, only one, not all twelve
that we research. Um, you can find that, and you

(54:03):
can listen to the show on our website, thinking sideways
podcast dot com. You're probably not listening to us there.
You're probably listening to us on iTunes. If you are, subscribe,
leave a comment and a reading. That's how people find us. Yeah,
and a good rating is usually preferred over a really
bad We don't really care. I prefer reading. Yeah. Actually,

(54:24):
actually the bad ones are kind of amusing sometimes, but
don't leave a bad one just on that account. Yeah,
it's way better. You also could be streaming us from
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(54:48):
There's a page and a group. You can email us
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You can wear a shirt of ours. Won't if you won't,
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(55:09):
young person thing, calmed down how we say it? God
won't what won't? Yeah, you can wear a shirt of ours.
You can have a phone case of ours. You can
have a creepy, weird night light. I just fixed our
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that there was a bit of an issue with it,
and so we went ahead and fixed that. So it

(55:31):
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to that just above the donate button on our u website.
It's on the right hand. There's a little picture of
swag there. Now, yeah, cool? Anything else to add the fact?
Now we are working on other products for you. Hopefully

(55:53):
one of these days we'll have like a beer cozy
and and maybe a bottle opener in a k and
a car cover and we're making custom to be tiles. Yeah,
you can driveway. I have two emails as well tomorrow because,
oh my god, if we can get them to make

(56:14):
those that awesome. I like the idea of a toy
be tile kid. I think that'd be kind of cool. Yeah.
I think it's called home depot. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, that
all having been said, since we have nothing else to
contribute to this unsolvable case, we're going to get out
of here, all right. It sounds good? Alright to later everybody?

(56:35):
What is that frequency? Though it hurts