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From Bogota, Colombia, I'm Manuel Rueda.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is just about 7 o'clock.
Stay tuned for a very special edition of Off The Hook.
Where the machine won't work yet again. Here we go.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a call
We couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Bum-diddly-bum
Well, the first people showed up at 4 in the morning to really target the media, and
then other people later gave them to commuters, and yeah, thousands of people in New York
learned something.
So, they thought they were getting a free copy of the New York Post, which usually costs
what?
75 cents.
So, I guess people were kind of happy to be getting a free copy.
Did anybody ask why we're getting free copies of the New York Post?
No.
Okay, they just took it then.
They just took it and ran.
What kind of response did you get when people started to read it, or did people start to
read it?
This time around, I mean, it was really pretty weird, because people didn't really think
it was any different than your usual post.
I mean, the headline, We're Screwed, is actually kind of in keeping with their messaging, usually.
So, I mean, it was different.
It was a lot harder handing out the post than it was when we did a fake New York Times last
year.
Yeah, we'll get to that.
More people wanted that.
The point is, the New York Post, it was about half the people you tried to hand it to basically
said, that rag, I don't want it.
They didn't even read it.
Did you explain to them?
Yeah, yeah.
I followed them, and I was saying, hey, you got to take this one.
You're going to like this one.
This one's different.
And they were like, yeah, get away from me.
You couldn't convince anybody who had their mind made up about the post to take the fake
post.
But, you know, then people who were reading it, who are normally post readers, really
kind of got into it.
There were some double takes out there.
Now, how many pages was this post?
It was 14.
14 pages?
Yeah.
Okay, so it was a bit smaller than a normal post.
It was a little bit.
But that's like about 400 pages, isn't it?
Yeah.
But if you subtract the ads from the normal post, this probably gets down to about 14
pages of whatever.
Yeah.
And then subtract the non-information, and you're down to like one.
Yeah.
So in addition to the we're screwed, what other kinds of material did you have in there?
There were comics.
Comics?
You actually had comics?
Yeah, we had comics.
Uh-huh.
Snoopy, Peanuts, where Charlie Brown goes and finds Snoopy drowned, it's the bleakest
part of the paper.
Oh, wow.
I take it you had original artwork for that.
Yeah.
The comics were so snoopy drowned.
It was really not funny.
None of them was funny.
I thought the commercials were also great, too.
Yeah.
You know, the commercials were another hysterical part of that.
Advertising, you mean?
Oh, man.
Yeah.
There was an ad for tap water.
Advertisements.
The advertisement for sex is the favorite of pretty much everybody.
There was an ad for sex.
Wait, wait.
Describe these a little bit more detail.
All right.
There's an advertisement.
Imagine one of those holiday ads on the beach, and you see, I think, some legs and just a
beautiful beach landscape, and it says, sex, no carbon emissions.
Yeah.
So it's just an ad for, like, basically not going anywhere, staying home, and having sex.
Wow.
Yeah.
What a brilliant idea.
Very environmentally sound.
Yeah.
It had one of the things saying, well, you just want to get laid anyway, so.
Wow.
Yeah.
That was actually my favorite ad.
I think there may have been small print about not, you know, not necessarily reproducing
because that does have a carbon footprint, so.
Yeah.
So the whole paper was basically, you know, a bunch of ads for sex.
Yeah.
So the whole paper was basically with that theme of carbon emissions, greenhouse effect,
all that environmental.
That's right.
And, okay, so you guys put this out.
First of all, how long does it take to put something like this out, a project like this?
Fake New York Post, how long does that take?
This one was like a month of solid work.
It only takes a month?
Really?
Yeah.
There were a lot of people involved.
We had some really great people, a lot of great people, and yeah, we just cranked on
it for a month.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
How do you pitch fake news stories?
Did you have an editorial board?
You know, we started with a call on the web saying we wanted to put out a website with
tabloid stories about global warming.
No more information.
And we got a lot of stories based on that and edited them.
And then we told a few people about it, not very many.
But yeah, we just said, you know, we're going to write a post that's actually true and contains
a bunch of information.
Here are some stories that you might want to write.
Here are some others.
And we were surprised.
And Rupert Murdoch was also surprised.
I hear he's fit to be tied as far as his reaction to this.
What did you hear from the real New York Post people?
Well, somebody actually got to put one in his hand, one of the distributors, on his
way to work.
Who knew?
He goes into work every day.
How did you find him?
He walks to work?
He walks into the News Corp building apparently at the same time every day, about 8, 8.30
in the morning.
He goes in.
And so somebody handed him a paper.
He did do a double take.
And then he ended up, you know, he went into the building and a few minutes later out came
security.
And then they got the cops to basically impound people's newspapers.
So there were about three or four people distributing there.
And they detained the people and took their newspapers.
So Rupert Murdoch himself put the heavy hand of the law down on this.
That's the way we like to see it.
Yeah.
We don't have direct evidence.
I mean, nobody who followed him in and was able to record his phone conversation.
Is there any video of him taking the paper or a picture or anything?
Unfortunately, we don't have that.
We just have eyewitness accounts down.
Wow.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
That's no good.
But, wow.
That's incredible though.
So, okay.
Now, one of you got arrested.
Yep.
And...
The next day.
How did that happen?
Trying to take the UN by assault.
Oh, so it wasn't related to the New York Post?
No.
It wasn't really related to anything.
We...
You were trying to take the UN?
Okay.
Yeah.
Tell us the story.
Well, in our film, at one point, we pose as Halliburton and we go to an insurance conference,
Catastrophic Loss Insurance.
And as Halliburton, we propose a solution to global warming.
And that's to save the very wealthiest people in the world using these giant round balls
called survival balls.
And we inflated them and put people from the audience into them and demonstrated them
with animations and so on.
Well, after the film was done, we just loved these things.
And so, we built 20 of them.
And we found that they're really good for civil disobedience.
The cops don't know where to put the handcuffs.
They look stupid no matter what they're doing to make people laugh.
And we took 20 of them and we wanted to get to the UN where 100 world leaders were meeting
to decide the fate of the planet.
And we wanted to blockade them inside until they came to a good climate agreement.
But of course, the UN itself was blockaded.
So we decided to go by water.
And of course, the minute we put these survival balls into the East River, the cops arrived.
I heard the Coast Guard was involved in this too, somehow.
Yeah.
Coast Guard.
So they took an interest when you entered the water as well.
Yeah.
Helicopters arrived.
So now, you wound up being taken away to the tombs, yes?
Yeah.
To the tombs.
Well, the cops arrived by land and gave a bunch of people tickets, took IDs of whoever
would give them IDs, trespassing tickets.
They ran mine through the system and it turned out I had a bicycle ticket.
So it really had nothing to do with taking the UN by storm.
You had a previous bicycle ticket or a ticket for hospitality?
Nah.
Wow.
Previous.
Interesting.
I hadn't paid it.
So for the benefit of the listeners, could you describe what a survival ball looks like
or entails?
Yeah.
It's about six feet in diameter.
It contains one person.
It's a gated community for one.
And all that you see basically is a little face and six little hands and two little feet
on the six foot orb.
And they kind of move in a gelatinous sort of delayed kind of way.
And they waddle around.
And basically, when you're inside of one, the story goes that there's all kinds of apparati
inside that will sustain you no matter what happens to the environment around you.
But in reality, there's just a costume with a little air blower inside that keeps it inflated.
So it's basically Rover from The Prisoner?
It is.
It's The Prisoner.
It's precisely The Prisoner, only there's an actual person inside that ball.
Well, we don't know what's inside Rover.
Well, I think there was a person inside that ball too.
Oh, was there?
I think there was just a voice or something.
Yeah.
You know what?
They did.
They pulled it with string and then they played it back in reverse.
So it looked like it was coming toward you when it was actually going away.
Ah.
Yeah.
A little bit of interesting information there.
Now, you guys are the ultimate social engineers.
You know what social engineering is?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You've been to Hope, in fact.
Yeah.
We've been to Hope and we watched you do an amazing phone demonstration that we absolutely
loved.
Oh, boy.
Which one was this?
Maybe Russian Tea Room or Starbucks or-
McDonald's.
Yes.
Well, you know, I try not to cause harm and confusion to people, but it's a funny side
effect sometimes.
But you guys, I don't know how you pull off what you've...
I mean, you've been on BBC, spokespeople for the WTO.
You actually went to a conference, was it in Australia, and announced that the WTO was
folding, going out of existence.
That's right.
And people were there to hear from the WTO and this is in your first movie.
They said, yeah, you know what?
It was very courageous what the WTO did.
They admitted they were wrong, they're going to restart, reboot themselves or whatever.
And yeah, I understand now.
And of course, how in the world do you get to represent yourself as a spokesperson for
the WTO and have people believe you?
Right.
Well, I mean, it's all about the initial confidence.
Like if they think that you are the WTO, then they don't have any reason to suspect that
you're anyone else when you arrive.
And I think they're just not really used to people trying to pretend to be the CEOs.
It's not a very desirable thing to be somebody like Lee Raymond, the CEO of ExxonMobil.
So if you call somebody up and you say that you represent that guy, then they have no
reason to sort of suspect that you don't.
That's I think the first rule is that their guard is not up.
And they're just in business.
We're taking notes, by the way.
Yeah.
So if you offer them somebody important, you claim to be from some big PR company, you
offer them somebody important like Lee Raymond, they want him at the conference, they think
they've got a deal if he's going to come and speak for free.
And so then when he doesn't show up on the day and you have to give them somebody of
lesser importance, there's still...
So that's the key.
The person they might know about doesn't show up and then there's a substitute for that
person.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you set this up.
So you had a big wig.
You set that up and he didn't show up.
That was something that you did.
It wasn't that he didn't show up.
You said he was going to be somewhere and he wasn't there.
Yeah.
So then you step in.
You just happened to be there?
Yeah.
We just happened to be there.
Okay.
So you represent WTO.
We'll fill in for this.
Well, for that particular one, they actually did invite us from the website.
So the first movie, everything that we did was basically just people inviting us thinking
that the website was the real thing.
And so it was all their initiative initially.
And then we give them what they asked for plus more.
And then in the new film, as the search engines get more savvy and stuff, you have to figure
out other ways to open the doors.
And yeah.
You mentioned the website.
There was a website that people were fooled into believing was actually the WTO.
What website was that?
That was at gat.org.
I think it still is, g-a-t-t.org.
Okay.
I remember that.
We've talked about this.
Yeah.
Now, what happened with that site?
It's still there.
Yeah.
So it wasn't taken down.
I know they tried to take it down, didn't they?
Not really.
As soon as we put it up in 99, they wrote a press release about it.
They said it was deplorable and it was undermining WTO transparency.
It's kind of hard to argue, though, because look at what you guys did.
WTO transparency was undermined?
You're the guys who did that?
Yeah.
We did that.
That was our fault.
It was actually our website.
WTO transparency is non-existent, though, isn't it?
Well, they undermined it.
You could actually read our website.
That was the problem.
Wow.
We're here with Mike and Andy from the Yes Men.
You guys are geniuses as far as what you were able to pull off and how you were able to
do it and somehow stay alive.
Fake New York Post.
We're going to talk about the Fake New York Times, but first, we are in the middle of
a fundraising show, so we have special offers for people that are interested in this kind
of thing because, wow, we have some incredible things here.
If you're kicking yourself because you missed out on the Fake New York Post being handed
out, these things were handed out and they're gone now, New York Times as well, but if you
call us up and pledge, you'll get two copies of each.
A $75 pledge will get you – are they signed?
Yes, they are.
Autographed.
Okay.
Autographed copies.
Two autographed copies of the Fake New York Post and the Fake New York Times, and in addition
to that, you get a –
Two copies of each.
That's right.
Four newspapers.
Four newspapers, yeah.
Wow.
That's almost what a newspaper costs anyway.
Do I hear a stocking stuffer?
You'll get a copy of – actually, a copy, you'll get an off-the-hook t-shirt for any
pledge of $25 and above, 212-209-2950 is the phone number to call to take advantage of
that special deal, and I've rifled through both the Post and the Times, the Fake New
York Times, which we put out last year, which we'll get into in a minute, and they are
brilliant.
They're very well laid out, they're very believable and clever, and their collectors
items, they really are amazing.
So 212-209-2950 is the number to call to pledge for those.
That's for a $75 pledge.
For 125, we have another special deal.
You'll get all of that.
You'll get the t-shirt, you'll get the newspapers, but you also get the Yes Men book.
What's that all about?
It's a book.
It's a –
Well said.
It's for reading.
It's for looking at.
It's got a lot of pictures, mainly pictures, really –
Oh, we like pictures.
Good pictures, yeah.
It's basically about our adventures as the World Trade Organization, from the first thing
we did all the way through to the dissolution of the WTO in Australia at the end of the
book.
Nice.
So you'll get that, an autographed copy of that book as well, plus a Yes Men comic book?
What's this about?
Oh, yeah.
Tell us about this.
Well, it's actually an alternative script for the movie that got thrown out in the middle
of making the movie, and we really liked it.
And Rebecca Migdal, a comic book artist, came to us.
She writes for World War III comics, and this is actually going to be part of World War
III comics, the next issue, the positive looking forward issue.
And so she wanted to do it, and we said, well, here's a script, and it's a really funny
script.
We're on a sailboat.
It's good.
Nice.
OK.
So that's what we have tonight, folks.
This is the fundraiser to keep WBAI going.
We can talk about things like this.
I imagine you don't really have very many opportunities to speak to big audiences in
major metropolitan areas, at least not without being dragged away by authorities.
But this place exists to, well, we love things like this.
We love this kind of this cleverness and this way of simply challenging the status quo.
And your call to support the radio station helps keep these voices going, and so it's
very important that we hear from you.
We have zero calls on the line, so we need to do better than that.
Yes, we need to improve.
People don't know that the number is 212-209-2950.
Yeah, I thought I said it, but maybe I didn't say it clearly enough.
Would you say it again?
212-209-2950.
And if there are people who are outside the country, you should dial your international
prefix and then 1.
Might I also point out that we are offering these items only for this hour.
They will not be offered afterwards, and we have to be very strict about that.
We always get mail from people.
We try to tell you in advance that we're going to be doing a special fundraiser tonight,
so there's no excuse for not listening live.
But if you listen to this after 8 o'clock tonight, we can offer you these items.
So you can only call 212-209-2950 now in the next 40 minutes or so to get the – there's
a call.
There's one call.
Let's see if we can make that five calls because that's where we should be now.
We like to make about $1,000 in an hour.
That's reasonable, right?
Can we add one more thing as an incentive?
Sure.
We have one, one Reggie candle.
Now this candle is made from a man named Reggie.
I read about Reggie.
Yeah, yeah.
Unfortunately, he died, and his body was rendered down to make the first Exxon Vivolium product,
and I mean this is made from a victim of climate change, the first victim, and it contains
human hair.
It's actually Andy.
It's actually human.
It could be Andy's hair.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's terrible.
I don't recommend burning it, but it's a relic.
I mean it's like, you know, it's beeswax, so what's inside there – I mean, sorry,
it's human flesh, and so it's very – anyway, so we can offer this.
This is a relic.
It's very unusual.
It says Exxon Vivolium.
You light up my life.
Oh my God.
It's an original prop that was used in our movie when we went to Calgary to a big oil
conference, and we handed these out to the audience, and they didn't actually find
out that they were made from human flesh until they saw a tribute video to the man who died
to make them.
So anyway.
Okay.
Well, you've got one of those.
So maybe if somebody calls up and pledges a large amount, we'll give them a piece
of Reggie as a thank you for that.
Exactly.
212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line, so that's definitely an improvement over the zero we
had before, but we'd like to see more than that because these guys really deserve our
support as well.
By calling up and supporting the radio station, you're supporting these ideas as well.
The mischief, the cleverness, the individuality.
How did you guys get involved in this in the first place?
It was actually in November 99 when we couldn't make it to Seattle, and we wanted to do something
about the WTO, and 30,000 activists were making it.
We couldn't make it, so we set up a fake website.
It was just the beginning of people setting up fake websites, and we thought we'd try
our hand at it, and when we started to get email intended for the WTO about trade matters
and so on, we started realizing how fun it was to be the WTO.
By the way, we have five calls on the line now.
212-209-2950.
Words getting out.
Again, the fake New York Post, fake New York Times are yours, autographed, pledge of $75.
All of that plus the book and the comic book, and everybody gets a 2600 t-shirt, or actually
an off-the-hook t-shirt.
212-209-2950, the latter for a pledge of $125.
The people in Talley know all this, so ask them any question you want, and they'll be
happy to answer.
212-209-2950.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I'm sorry.
I just wanted to ask.
Hi, Andy and Mike.
I've enjoyed looking at your work for years.
I just wanted to express my gratitude for...all your stunts have a really important social-political
message behind them, and that's what's really...just pulling stunts and funny things is one thing,
but every one of yours seems to have a really, really important social message behind it,
like you were saying when you went to Calgary, Alberta.
What was that?
That's right, yes.
And you're posing as Exxon Mobil and National Petroleum Council in front of all these oil
men at this big oil conference, and you're handing out these candles, and you have them
all light them.
What were the expressions on these oil industry representatives' faces when it dawned on them
they were holding burning human flesh in their hands as they're caused by a climate change
victim?
Well, if you come see the movie, you'll see a bunch of those expressions.
It's playing at the Film Forum in New York right now, and on October 23rd, it opens at
a number of cities across the country, DC, Boston, San Francisco is the 30th of October,
and it rolls out from there.
You can see the dates on the YesMenFixTheWorld.com.
But they did, I mean, you know, they're priceless expressions.
Some of them are frustrated.
A few people just immediately blow out their candle because they don't know what, you can't
really set it down.
It's not like a candle with a base where that will stand when you set it down, so they kind
of didn't know what to do with it.
You know, they scrunch up their nose.
They notice finally that the smell is really bad.
You know, it varied.
A few of them actually did sort of start to laugh, like they just, you know, clearly.
Nervous laughter, maybe.
Some nervous laughter.
There was at least one guy who clearly didn't believe it.
He was shrugging and waving his hands around, and you know.
Well, this reminds me of the scene from your first film where you, the kids in Plattsburgh,
where you handed out hamburgers to everybody and gave a talk, and then started to pretty
much imply that they were eating recycled matter straight from the sewer or something
like that.
How did that go over after, where you run out of town on a rail when you started suggesting
that?
I saw the expressions on their faces, and just incredulity, you know, sums it up, I
think.
Yeah.
They were angry.
Yeah.
But now, what was the statement there?
What were you trying to say to these people?
Well, there we were trying to say that the policies of letting the market do whatever
it wants will amount to having the third world eat that substance I'm not supposed to say
on the radio.
Right.
Excrement.
Yeah.
You say that.
Yeah, yeah.
And similarly with Exxon, it was like the result of letting corporations do whatever
they want is basically, well, they'll, you know, Exxon will just turn everybody who dies
into fuel.
Why not?
You know, that's the ultimate result.
So we have to be on our guard.
So in the case of the kids, though, you basically handed out the hamburgers beforehand, and
they were eating them happily during class, and then as your demonstration continues,
they start to realize that, hey, we're eating excrement.
And how many people actually believed it in reality?
More than half?
About half.
I mean, I think about half.
I mean, you know, there were some people, of course, who didn't eat the burger, the
special burger, the prototype.
But a lot of people, this was, you know, it was like free food.
They'd eaten four or five by the time they heard, you know, heard the announcements.
And what was the most violent reaction you got from somebody?
Threats of lawsuits, perhaps?
A quarter of the audience threw the hamburger wrapper.
Oh, not at that particular one, just in general.
Well, no, at that particular one, but we can get into general as well.
I'm sure you get a lot of lawsuit threats.
Yeah.
No, just thrown hamburger wrappers, really.
Not thrown hamburgers themselves?
No.
Strangely enough.
Interesting.
I think by then they had eaten them.
Marfed them.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
So now, as far as other threats that you guys get, you must get lawsuit threats by
the day.
Well, no.
No?
Hour?
Yeah.
But they never go beyond that, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Isn't that something?
You get a lot of threats, but the actual lawsuits are fairly few and far between.
But many threats.
Yeah.
We're sad.
We're trying.
You are trying.
We're trying to get a real lawsuit.
Got to give you credit.
You're trying.
We were involved in a lawsuit with Exxon, except we were the ones suing them.
Oh.
That's another way to approach it.
Yeah.
It's a sure way to get into a lawsuit.
Well, tell us about the New York Times now.
That was a year ago.
And I imagine that's a much bigger project than the New York Post.
How much time did it take?
And you hadn't done it before.
That's right.
So we didn't know what we were getting into, and it took us six months.
And it was a bit of a risk, because it was six months until the election, and we just
banked on Obama winning.
And the goal of it was really to say, it isn't enough to elect Obama.
We actually have to get on our feet, take to the streets, and force him to be who we
elected him to be.
And if he isn't, if he doesn't end up being who we elected him to be, it's only our fault,
and we have only ourselves to blame.
That was the whole goal of the project.
So it was published a week after the election, 100,000 copies, or 1.2 million, depending
on who you believe.
And it was set six months in the future, with all the great stuff that could happen now
that Obama was elected.
And what was the headline?
Iraq War Ends.
Ah.
Yeah.
It didn't happen, did it?
It didn't happen.
Uh-huh.
No.
And how many pages was the Times?
I don't remember.
More than one section, or?
It was all the sections, but they were short.
Okay.
All right.
And you handed that out in the, I mean, a free New York Times is a big deal.
How did you pull that one off?
Yeah, that, everybody was thrilled, and it was a really different kind of reaction from
when they received the worst screwed New York Post.
Right.
They were just, you know, a lot of double takes, and a lot of happiness, obviously.
So now every single article in there, every single advertisement, editorial, it all has
to do with what could happen in six months.
Yep.
And wow.
Yep.
And every article is also about how it happened, which was that people took to the streets
and forced, or enabled our politicians to be who we'd elected them to be.
I think a very good example of that is actually what just happened right now with the whole
gay rights thing.
A lot of people were upset that Obama wasn't doing as much as he maybe promised to do,
and people were starting to give him trouble about it.
And before you know it, now he's coming out and making a speech about how he's going to,
for instance, make the change in the policy in the U.S. military.
Repeal, don't ask, don't tell.
Yeah.
Originally, people weren't sure if he was ever going to do that within this term at
all.
They thought maybe, you know, maybe he would.
Well, I mean, I think you guys touched on a very good point that it's up to us to put
the pressure on.
And we can't just sit back and complain and say that things aren't getting done if we
don't speak up loudly.
I mean, the other side, the Tea Party people are doing that all the time.
They're standing up, screaming, shouting.
No matter how many people are actually on their side, they're making it seem like there's
a whole lot.
And I don't think people on this side do that nearly enough.
That's part of the problem.
Yeah.
We put too much faith in the election of one figure.
But it's never been that that's created change.
Right.
If you look at the New Deal, even in the 30s after the last Great Depression, it was people
taking to the streets that enabled Roosevelt or forced him to actually enact the stuff
that we now take for granted.
If you look at the falling of the Eastern Bloc, the Iron Curtain, it's because of people
going into the streets.
Yeah.
It wasn't because of Reagan.
It wasn't because of anything that we said.
It was because of people power.
And that's really what does it all the time.
So yeah.
Now, as far as that goes, how do people who aren't working for the Post or the Times generally
receive you guys when they hear about what you're doing?
I mean, just people maybe who aren't in the front line that didn't get a copy themselves
that just read about you somewhere, and I assume there is some press coverage.
What kind of reactions do you normally get?
People think you're troublemakers?
People think you're doing a good thing?
In general, there's a lot of happiness about it.
We often give journalists kind of an excuse to write the stories that they wanted to write
but wouldn't pass their editorial muster.
Like in the case of where we represented Dow Chemical on the BBC and claimed that they
were going to clean up the mess in Bhopal, there were a lot of writers who would have
been happy to cover the anniversary, the 20th anniversary of the world's worst industrial
accident, but there was no editorial prerogative to do it because the editors would say, it's
not news.
There's no news hook.
It's just the 20th anniversary of this big industrial disaster.
So what if they haven't cleaned up?
But we gave them a news hook, and as a result, they got to write the story they wanted to.
So a lot of times, journalists are happy about it, and the public gets more informed about
an issue and enjoys the story.
There are occasionally people who send us hate mail, but it's very rare.
Not often enough, eh?
Not often enough.
We were looking for it.
Well, now, Bhopal is a very interesting thing.
I'm amazed how many people don't even know what Bhopal is.
It's incredible.
But there are people looking it up right now.
It's spelled B-H-O-P-A-L, people.
So look it up on Google, and you'll find out.
Horrible.
How many people died from that?
Well, at least 20,000.
20,000 people died from this chemical leak, is what it was, from Dow Chemical.
Now you guys were able to get on BBC, BBC television, as representatives of Dow or as
a representative of Dow.
And first of all-
Union Carbide, I think?
Was it Union Carbide?
Yeah.
It was Union Carbide.
They're owned by Dow, though, right?
Yeah.
So it was Union Carbide.
Yeah.
And basically, how in the world did you get past the people at BBC that allegedly check
these things?
And once you got on, what was it you said?
Well, in that case, it was just a website.
We just had a fake Dow website that actually, two years before, we had registered.
Somebody had suggested, why don't you do something about Dow and Bhopal and try to hold them
accountable?
So we registered this domain, dow-chemical.com, I think it was, and sent out a press release
on behalf of Dow saying, we will never take responsibility because Bhopalis will never
be shareholders.
So why would we?
It was just this really blatant, kind of monstrous statement that reflects accurately what they're
about.
And a little bit of press came out of it, just enough to get it ranked in Google.
So then, when people would search on Dow, they would stumble on this website sometimes,
and including the BBC.
That's what happened to the BBC.
A researcher was looking for Dow to make a statement on the 20th anniversary, stumbled
on our website.
Are you saying BBC contacted you?
You didn't even try to.
The BBC came to you.
Sweet.
Oh my god.
OK.
So what was the next step?
You couldn't believe they contacted you, obviously.
It was a plot.
Did it take very long to figure out how you were going to approach this?
Yeah, it took us a couple of days.
We only had a week totaled, so we had to figure it out pretty quickly.
And the goal was really to get press and to get a lot of articles written about the catastrophe
in Dow and their responsibility and the activist demands.
And so we decided to do the right thing on behalf of Dow, so they would have to respond.
And we knew that it would make more of a splash than if we, say, did another thing like,
Bo Polly's will never be shareholders.
How do you decide which of you is going to go on?
Usually it's just Andy.
We just decide that, and it works out.
Sometimes if there's a lot of improvisation and dealing with the crowd and dealing with
people, then I do it, and I play a role.
But often it's Andy.
Andy's better at doing the speaking parts, unless it involves kind of mustering a crowd
or kind of getting this sort of improvisational thing going.
And looking sort of corporate, too.
Oh, yeah.
You can pull that off.
We're both.
Yeah, we're pretty active.
Okay, so you walk into BBC.
First of all, where do they do this?
Well, I was living in Paris at the time, and he was living in Scotland.
So instead of going to London, which would have been kind of scary.
They might have flown you over there on their dime.
Yeah.
It would have been scary, I suppose.
Yeah, even scarier.
No, we decided to ask to do it in Paris.
We said that the Dow rep happened to be in Paris at the moment, and he was the one who
knew everything about Bo Polly.
That sounds so believable, though.
Yeah, so believable.
Yeah, that happens to be in Paris.
Okay, so you walk in, and are you talking to somebody over satellite, or are they there
in the studio?
It turns out there was one person at the studio.
Actually, when we knocked, there was not even one.
There was the cleaning lady.
Awesome.
And then the one person arrived, and she was in charge of everything.
I mean, the great irony of this all is that the BBC, even though they have this huge mandate
to cover tons of material all over the world, they really kind of are operating on a shoestring
budget compared to the way it used to be because they've really been defunded since the Thatcher
era.
So they still have this massive operation that they have to maintain, but they have
about half the staff to do it.
So a bureau like Paris turns out that it's on autopilot.
There was nobody there.
We walk through the door, and this woman sits us down in one room that's smaller than this
radio studio that's the TV studio in front of a green screen on which they've keyed the
Eiffel Tower so that we know that we're in Paris.
Then she leaves the room, and she says, okay, put the earpiece in.
Okay, it'll be a few minutes, and then we're just sitting there alone in a room waiting
to go live, global, to 350 million people according to them.
And some little voices coming into your earpiece asking you questions.
And what kind of questions were it?
How did you know what the questions were going to be?
Were you prepared to answer almost anything?
Yeah.
I mean, I just did the standard PR trick, which is come up with five answers that you
definitely want to give.
And then no matter what they ask, you give one of those five answers.
So let me imagine I'm the BBC person.
I would ask, well, on this 20th anniversary of Bhopal, what is Dow slash Union Carbide
thinking of doing to remember this event?
Well, Emmanuel, I'm glad you asked.
It's a great moment for all of us at Dow and a great moment for everyone around the world
because we're going to do the right thing, something like that.
So you have a very upbeat way of looking at a horrible tragedy like that.
Or about doing something about the horrible tragedy.
Right, right.
I'm very shamefaced, kind of like, yeah.
Well, as soon as I made the announcement, the guy whose name was Steve said,
well, it's a bit late, isn't it?
You should have done this three years ago when you bought Union Carbide in the first place.
And I said, well, yeah.
Sorry.
At any point, did it seem like he was catching on that you weren't really representative of Union Carbide?
Oh, no.
No, no.
It just kept going.
It was the truth for an hour after we left.
Nobody caught on for an hour.
Yeah, and the stock price lost $2 billion, a little over $2 billion during that hour
because the world believed that Dow was actually planning to compensate the victims
and clean up the plant site and was going to spend $12 billion doing it.
That was the announcement, the core of the announcement.
So the stock immediately tanked.
They got basically punished for doing the right thing.
Wow.
You guys actually made a stock plummet $2 billion.
I don't think I've ever met anybody that's done anything like that.
A couple of million was my previous record.
But, wow, that is so worthy of respect.
And, you know, it's a good way to get our callers to show their respect.
There's two people on the line right now.
Please continue to call us, 212-209-2950.
Support these guys by voicing your support for WBAI.
We're offering their ingenious fake newspapers of The New York Times and The New York Post,
two copies of each you'll get autographed for a pledge of $75
plus the off-the-hook t-shirt, 212-209-2950.
If you want to be a little more generous and pledge $125,
you'll get all of that plus the Yes Men comic book and the Yes Men book.
Is there a better title than the Yes Men book?
No.
That's a great title.
And all of that's autographed, so you'll really be able to forge their names no matter where you go,
if anybody wants to do that to you.
212-209-2950, Rob T. Firefly, you have something in your hand.
Yes, indeed.
I have a note that lets us know that we should extend our sincere thanks to SG from Chicago.
Okay, thank you, SG from Chicago, for whatever it is you've done.
Thank you very much.
Also, I've been asked to tell people or ask people if they want to volunteer to come to the radio station and answer phones,
all they have to do is call the number that I gave out, 212-209-2950.
I'll give you information and just come to 120 Wall Street and bring photo IDs so you can get in and help us out, get involved.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie, 212-209-2950.
We have four calls online.
I love how the Yes Men, Andy and Mike, sort of do this moral judo against major corporations
and pose as their representatives and say they're going to do these wonderful things to make everything right,
that they've done wrong to all the people around the world.
And then it leaves these major corporations in a bind of having to deny that they're going to do the right thing.
No, we're not going to clean this up, after all.
It just really makes them very embarrassed.
I love what you guys do.
You guys are my social engineering idols.
It's fantastic.
This new movie you've just come out has been winning awards, and it's the Yes Men Fix the World, is that right?
That's correct.
I'm not sure if it's playing in Philadelphia, but I've got to check this out because I enjoyed your last one very much.
It's playing at the Film Forum here in New York, right?
That's right. It's playing right now.
Is it playing tonight?
It's playing tonight. Yeah, come see it.
What's the last show time?
Ten o'clock.
Eight o'clock and ten o'clock, but come to the ten o'clock one.
We could say hi, actually, before the screening.
Oh, great.
Bernie, catch a train up and you can make it.
Well, that or I'll try to catch it here in Philly.
Check out the yesmenfixtheworld.com and look for the screening times.
There's something in Philly, for sure.
All throughout the country, all throughout the world, hopefully, it's opening up.
Is there any other city it's playing in right now?
Right now, no, but October 23rd, that Friday next week, it opens in D.C. and Boston, and then shortly thereafter, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., you name it.
Okay, and if people want to go see matinee shows, I understand that's particularly good, right?
Oh, yeah, because if you have a huge group, you can even right now get a special deal at Film Forum.
So if you're in a school group, for example, get your class to go, half-price tickets if you have a group of 12 or more people.
There's so many ways to show support.
This is definitely one way, and I intend to do that as well, just showing up at the theater, bringing a large group of people, getting people enthusiastic about things like this because there's nothing more healthy than this kind of dissent, this kind of clever, upbeat dissent that really gets people thinking.
Well, Bernie mentioned something interesting before where Union Carbide was forced to say that they're not going to compensate people.
How do they do that?
How do they possibly go up and say, we're not going to do the right thing here?
How does WTO say, yeah, we're not really going to fold.
We're going to keep doing the things we're doing even though everyone agrees they're wrong.
How do they do that and get away with it?
Well, they do it very disappointingly briefly.
When we announced that Dow was doing the right thing after all these years, Dow got on the line with the BBC and said in this monotone, Dow has no responsibility for our boat ball.
And we were a bit disappointed after all the effort we'd put into it.
So we wrote a press release on behalf of Dow about everything they weren't going to do.
They were not going to compensate the survivors nor clean up the site.
Don't worry.
The stock isn't going to be affected anymore.
And on and on and blasted that out to thousands of journalists and others.
And to this day, a lot of people think that we actually got Dow to react in that way.
It's not quite true.
Well, you did get them to react in some way.
Yeah.
And you also brought the story to the people when it wasn't being brought to them in any other way.
Exactly.
There were like 600 articles in the US press about Bhopal.
And that was really the goal of it was to associate the names Dow and Bhopal.
Because Dow had just bought Union Carbide and all of their assets.
And they weren't accepting this liability.
Emmanuel.
Go ahead, Bernie.
There's an amazing collection of premiums tonight.
I just want to mention them again to our listeners.
For all the Yes Man fans out there, this is like the ultimate collection of Yes Man swag.
Again, four of their amazing, four copies of their amazing fake news newspapers.
Two of the fake New York Times.
Two of the fake Daily News with all the…
New York Post. New York Post.
New York Post, I'm sorry.
Daily News is next, right?
If I was working for the Daily News, I'd be very worried now.
That's next.
That's next, yeah.
How about a fake Village Voice?
Yeah.
Or a fake Time Out New York or something like that.
You're getting a pair of these newspapers for yourself.
And you can also give the other two as a gift to somebody, maybe for the holidays, whatever.
That's right. It's a perfect gift.
And these are autographed by the Yes Men.
This is a priceless thing.
An off-the-hook t-shirt, all of that for a $75 pledge.
And on top of that, if you pledge $125 or more, you get the Yes Man book and the Yes Man comic book,
which is sort of a plot for one of the movies that didn't happen.
Is that right?
Yep.
Well, this movie.
Plus the off-the-hook t-shirt.
Plus the two New York Times and the two New York Posts, all autographed by these guys.
This is an amazing package.
But you have to call in the next 15 minutes or it's gone.
212-209-2950.
Join the people who have called in already.
We're making this available only during this hour, and then it's never available on these airwaves again.
212-209-2950. Go ahead.
And while we're talking about pledges, we have a couple more shout-outs here for some great people who have actually donated.
Okay. Let's hear.
We have Rana from New York.
We have Michael from Chicago.
And we want to thank Dean, who's from Highland Park in New Jersey.
And we want to thank all the anonymous people as well.
And we would also like to thank Will from Nyack, New York.
Nyack.
Yeah.
Get it right.
The Knights who say Nyack.
I'm not sure if this is updated, but I see 575 on the screen.
We need to be at 1,000 by the end of the hour, so it's going to take a few more people calling in.
Assuming that we've added everything up.
So, please, join the people who have called so far.
Show your support for WBAI, where ideas like this are celebrated, unlike the rest of media.
212-209-2950.
I just want to add that as of yesterday, the price on eBay for these newspapers was still $35.
So, if you pledge, you could get the newspapers, and you could make a profit on your pledge.
So, I mean, if that's not an incentive.
If that's your game, yeah.
You can make a profit and keep WBAI on the air, which in itself is a profit.
That's the biggest profit of all.
You really win.
Everyone wins.
The capitalism works.
The biggest threat, the biggest downer to getting these newspapers is that one day you might accidentally throw them out because they look so real.
And I've done that.
Have you ever read Not the New York Times?
I think I might have inspired you guys, in fact.
You ever see that?
There was one in the 70s, and there was another one more recently.
Occasionally, people put out these really clever and realistic-looking newspapers, but the unfortunate part is that they look like real newspapers.
You treat them as such sometimes.
How much does it cost to put out a fake newspaper?
I've got to ask.
Surprisingly little.
Really?
It's like $0.07 a copy for The New York Times and something similar, a little more for The New York Times.
And what kind of press run?
That was for $100,000.
It was like $6,000, $7,000.
You're kidding.
That's all?
Why are they losing money?
I don't understand this.
Maybe they don't know our printer.
We've got a really good one.
That's odd.
Maybe $2,600 should come out in newspaper format instead.
That's 212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line.
Join them.
I've just got one question for you guys.
When you go back to things like 1999 and people falling for fake websites and things like that, the Internet was still trying to find itself.
People weren't quite sure what to do with it yet.
Are people still falling for the same sort of things, or has the other side sharpened up at all as a result of you guys?
They probably are.
Yeah, we occasionally do get invitations to websites that we have lying around.
But as Mike said, the way we now, if we want to go to a conference, we pose as a public relations agency, call up the conference and say, we've got the world's best speaker.
We did that, for example, in New Orleans where we posed as a – Mike, actually.
Maybe I should let him tell.
That's all right.
What did we do?
I called the conference.
First, I sent them email from about six different email addresses, kind of priming them to want – from, quote, unquote, people in New Orleans who were developers saying that they wanted to speak to Alfonso Jackson.
Was he going to be at their conference?
And then at the same time, wrote from another email address as a PR rep and said, hey, I represent Alfonso Jackson, which just seems really weird because he's like a government dude, and so why would a PR person represent him?
But I kind of explained it a little bit as like a new public-private partnership, and then – which, of course, fit right into what was really happening.
Yeah, totally.
So they totally, totally bought it.
And the weird thing is that then you're stuck with a problem because the conference wants to publicize that.
They're like, oh, we're going to have Alfonso Jackson, who's the head of HUD, head of a big federal agency that is in a lot of power, and exercising it in New Orleans.
And so we had to say then that the information was embargoed, and you have to kind of act all secret about it and pretend that –
Just using that word alone.
Exactly, the word.
That's all you have to say, and then they're like, oh, well, OK.
So you can convince somebody running a conference not to tell people that they have a big guest coming.
Exactly.
Well, sort of.
In our case, they said they wouldn't tell anybody, but they did run off and tell the governor's office and the mayor's office, and so guess who showed up?
Oh my god.
Yeah, the governor and the mayor.
They showed up to rub shoulders with Mr. Alfonso Jackson.
And did they?
Did they rub shoulders with you guys instead?
Instead they had to rub shoulders with Andy.
Yep.
So when they become aware that they've been fooled here, they must be not always taking it in good stride there.
Yeah.
With the conference organizers, it usually happens well after the conference is over.
In New Orleans, we were accosted by a reporter who was very feverishly after the truth and knew that we weren't representing the truth.
A good reporter.
Yeah, a good reporter.
Wow.
He comes in, and you see it in gory detail.
He savages me for a good 10 minutes, and then finally I break down.
But then, yeah, he gives you a chance to say why he did it, too.
I mean, he is really the only reporter, I think, in our movie.
He's actually doing his job.
Besides, well, there's Bill Moyers in the beginning, but that's not one of the setup ones.
I would imagine Bill Moyers would probably be able to figure it out, but one of the few.
We went on his show, and he actually purposefully made up a joke for us to play a role.
He pretended to be fooled for fun.
One of the things that really struck me about the fake newspapers as well as a lot of the other work you guys have done is that it's really well-researched.
You make up the role, but you don't make up the situation, and the proposed solutions are solutions that might actually work.
I think for people who pledge and get the newspaper and read it, they'll really see that.
Yeah.
Now, you guys have published online Fix the World Challenge, where you basically help people do similar things to what you guys are doing, such as liberate stupid footage.
Find a piece of embarrassing footage that's not supposed to be public.
For example, raw footage from a video news release and edit and publicize it in such a way that the full stupidity of the footage comes out.
Create a ridiculous spectacle celebrating your least favorite corporate entity or entities.
Document extensively and all kinds of other things, such as crash a fancy event.
Create a special edition newspaper.
Engage in job jacking.
What is job jacking?
That's where you actually just go into an office place and start working, like sit down in an empty desk.
You go to work, and you meet your coworkers and tell them, hi, I'm the new guy or whatever.
If you do enough research, you can flawlessly blend into a work environment.
Have you actually done this?
Not really, but we know people who have.
Especially during the dot-com boom, there were quite a few people.
How far does that go?
Well, it can go really far, except for when the paycheck part, I think, is tricky.
Although, maybe if you ingratiate yourself and you're there long enough, you actually do.
Well, if you just don't complain about not getting a paycheck, you get invited to all the parties and whatnot.
Well, you might also just be able to get desk space that way.
In New York, it's hard to find an office space, and so maybe you can just sort of job jack somebody else's office for a while.
How about this?
Correct an identity online.
What's that?
That's just setting up a fake website.
Easy as that.
It's not what you guys have done with WTO and Union Carbide.
A fake website that's more honest about the real motives of the corporation than they care to be themselves.
And do a training at a trade show.
Yeah.
Just go to a trade show and teach people something.
Ask somebody else.
It's sort of a social network, these challenges.
You can actually join and create a group and try to meet other people who want to do it.
We also give away our secrets, how to do these things.
That's my next question.
Do you have maybe the Borat or Bruno effect where now that you've been publicized, you can never do it again because everyone's going to recognize you?
Do you worry about that?
No.
Borat, you became Bruno.
Well, that's true.
He became somebody else.
But you guys, are you masters of disguises where you can continuously change your appearances?
We're considering trying to get on one of those extreme makeover shows, you know, so we can afford it.
No, we tried.
In the movie, I have like 10 different hairstyles.
But still got recognized a couple times to dramatic effect.
Again, the movie, what's the full title of the movie again?
The Yes Men Fix the World.
Fix the World, playing at the Film Forum here in New York City tonight at 10 o'clock and every night 8 and 10.
Is it playing during the day at all?
Yeah.
1 o'clock, 2.15.
No, 1 o'clock, 2.45.
I have this memorized, okay?
Yeah.
4.30, 6.
So show up to all the showings.
Camp out in the theater and just see this thing.
Tell your friends about it.
It's a great way to show support.
And, of course, when it comes to your city, look for the Yes Men Fix the World coming soon wherever you happen to be, hopefully.
And now for now, the last couple of minutes we have in the show, please give us a call.
Show your support for WBAI, which continues to bring you stories like this and people like this and hopefully inspire people like this.
I imagine there's people listening right now that are going to cause all kinds of mischief as a result of this.
We hope so.
You wouldn't get that from mainstream news.
You wouldn't get that kind of encouragement.
So please call us, 212-209-2950.
Show your support by pledging for these amazing Yes Men items, the fake newspapers, four of them for a pledge of $75.
$125, you'll get books in addition to that.
$25 pledge, you'll get the off-the-hook t-shirt.
212-209-2950.
You guys want to say anything about BAI?
How short are you of the $1,000 mark there?
This says $775 up there.
I'm not sure if that hasn't been added up yet or if we, you know, maybe three calls, three or four calls will do it.
Wow, okay.
We've got to get there.
212-209-2950.
Remember, we're not offering this after the show.
I mean, we'll offer for a few minutes after the show, but if you call an hour from now, no, we won't be able to offer it.
There's only like four minutes left.
Yeah.
So if you're thinking of pledging, now's the time.
Now is the time.
There's no better time than now.
And just to say something about WBAI, you know, it is a precious resource.
If you didn't have radio stations like this, we would be, as the New York Post said recently, screwed.
Yeah.
So I think we're allowed to say that, right?
They did say that.
If it's in the New York Post, it's got to be true.
So yeah, absolutely.
So please support it.
Please do.
And we have this one last, you know, the Reggie, if anybody wants to make up, let's say, $200, throw down for this Reggie candle.
This is truly unique.
You know, if someone does that, we'll personally make sure that they get it.
I'm not sure how you would deliver something like that, but we'll do that.
I was speaking with Mike Bonanno and Andy Bickelbaum.
Guys, stay safe, please, and keep doing what you do, and let us know about your next projects.
We'll be happy to help you out in whatever ways we can.
Thank you.
Did you hear about our April Fool's thing on this station where we went country for a few minutes?
Yeah.
That got the calls coming in.
But that's not going to happen immediately, but it might happen if people don't call and support the station.
212-209-2950, please give us your support and keep this place going.
Guys, thanks so much for coming in.
Thank you very much.
Hope to hear from you again soon.
Thanks.
Absolutely.
I'm taking my cold, lonely, soul-sweet relief
From my weary past
Always searching, the one missing piece was you
And I beg you, come away with me
And together we will find a place to call our own
I can't wait to see what I can do
With a laptop like you
It's not your CD slot
Or the Unix on which you are based
You make my lap hard
It's underneath your aluminum case, there's love
And I forgive your strange one-button mouse
I forgive the way your keyboard leaves marks on your screen
I can't overlook a fault or two
For a laptop like you
We will always be together
In love in spite of everything
Hang on tight through wind and weather
Heaven knows what time may bring
In a year or two
You will seem big and heavy and slow
I will carry you
To wherever it is laptops go to die
Don't think it won't be hard on me
How am I ever gonna find a way to justify
Alright, alright, alright WBAI