- Nixon knows his (beep).

And he says, "There's nothing I can do about it.

Nobody's gonna trust me at this point.

I gotta step down.

Hand me some cookies." (orchestral music)

(Bob laughs)

Hello, I'm Bob Odenkirk.

And today we're gonna talk about Disco Demolition.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- [Derek] Thanks, Bob.

You okay? - My first (beep) sip.

(upbeat disco music)

Well, I guess our story really begins in 1977

with the massive success of (beep) disco,

which is a terrible form of music.

(Derek laughing)

Anyway, 1977, "Saturday Night Fever,"

very popular movie, blah-blah-blah, everyone loved it.

at WDAI in Chicago, were disco DAI,

all disco, all day and all night.

(disco music)

Okay, so Steve Dahl is a DJ,

24 years old at the WLUP, WLUP 97.9,

and it's rock and roll station.

Steve Dahl says, "(beep) you,

I'm not gonna play disco music."

And Steve is having a good time

and he's blowing up disco records.

So on the radio he go, "Oh, we got a disco,

Look and Kiss made a disco record I'm gonna blow it up."

And he'd play it and then scratch the, (scratches)

the needle on the record,

and then press a carte tape,

and explosion sound and then laugh,

and then do other dump (beep)

- [Derek] Like my favorite Imus.

(laughs) What?

- Not like Imus. - Okay.

- Very much like Stern, I mean truly,

but actually, before Stern.

So, it's 1979, Jeff Schwartz is the promotions kid,

and he goes to...

"Sorry."

He goes to Mike Veeck at the white Sox.

He goes, "Let's do a disco demolition

at White Sox Comiskey Park for your Teen Night."

Mike Veeck is like, "Great, I love Steve Dahl."

And they hire a guy to put the explosives in.

"We need you to blow up records"

"How many records?"

"Uh, well, I don't know, 2000."

"Okay. Hold on a second.

Slow down.

I need some goddamn real explosives here."

"All right. Well, whatever you need. You're the pro."

"I, hell yes I am.

Just got back from the Nam about five years ago.

Anyhow, (throat clears) I will put

your explosives together for you."

(upbeat disco music)

So, Steve's on the radio for weeks going,

"I got disco demolition coming up,

come to Comiskey Park,

and bring a disco album.

They'll take your album, they'll put it in the bin.

You'll pay 0.98 cents for a ticket,

And then in between games,

I'm gonna blow up all those albums.

We're gonna destroy disco." (laughs)

So, the night of the event comes,

(ambient instrumental music) July 12th, 1979,

Steve's like watching.

"Holy (beep), kids are showing up,

like showing up in droves,

showin' up, showin' up,

15,000, 20,000, 30,000,

(beep) A."

The first game is nuts.

Kids in the stands have records,

they're throwing them.

Record albums come flying out of the stands,

cutting into the grass.

Perry Caray's kind of liking it, you can tell,

"Hey, all right, everybody calm down."

And Jimmy Piersall's taking it way too seriously.

"These kids...

Look at this, this is a disgrace."

Anyhow,

game ends, first game ends, Sox lose, that's not helpful.

And Steve, they drive out to like center field,

this craig has been set up.

So, he gets on a mic, and he goes,

(disco music) "Party!

Yeah!

Okay, disco sucks."

"Disco sucks," and they start chanting, "Disco sucks."

There's big banners, "Disco Sucks,"

and it's kind of intense.

So, Steve's like, "All right, I'm gonna blow 'em up."

He puts way too much,

real explosives. (laughs)

(upbeat disco music) Perfect storm.

So, Steve pushes the thing, then boom!

Big explosion, (beep) flying everywhere in center field.

You can't play another whole game in that,

that alone is the end, that's the end.

Only that isn't the end.

So, then these seven kids climb over the wall,

more kids, more kids, (beep) getting on hinged.

There's too many kids on the field.

"Holy shit, I'm on the (beep) Comiskey parked up field

where babe Ruth hit home run."

They're running around the faces,

"Look at me, I'm gonna slide."

Kids are pitching,

"I'm a pitcher, woo woo!"

Meanwhile, crazy Vietnam vet on his motorcycle

going like, "(laughs) I did it.

I really did it."

And Harry Carey is up in the booth going,

"Hey, it's good vibe, everybody.

Let's sing a song together.

♪ Jerry real up to the ♪

You know this, sing along!

Okay, that's song,

get off the field now, how about it?"

And the kids are like.

"Well, no, not that."

They call the Chicago Police.

They sent riot police, full riot gear.

The cops come.

"There I'll teach you to be a teenager,

a whack in the head."

And arrested 39 people for vandalism and (beep).

They call the game, The White Sox are forced to forfeit.

(beep) and hey. (Derek laughing)

They say it killed disco.

It did not kill disco, what it did,

potentially, that was actually meaningful.

This event was like massive tweet,

sent out by a generation of kids,

and they pressed a button and said.

"We don't like disco that much. Okay?"

(laughs) That's essentially what the event was.

And if it killed disco, it just send a message that said,

maybe everybody doesn't love this (beep) 24/7.

(smooth instrumental music)

I would like to do some disco lyrics right now.

- [Derek] Okay, go ahead.

(beat boxing)

♪ Babe, oh yeah ♪

♪ Tonight's the night ♪

(Bob beat boxing)

♪ Tonight's the night ♪

♪ Night ♪

♪ Tonight's the night, all right ♪

♪ Tonight ♪

All right, I get it. (Derek laughing)

Duly noted. Thank you. (Derek hysterically laughing)

Just (beep), just the worst.

- Hello, I'm Doug Jones.

Today we're gonna talk about W.C. Minor.

The most important man behind the most important book

in the English language.

That's not what you wanted?

- No, but I love it. - Okay.

In 1863, W.C. Minor graduated from Yale Medical School

as a surgeon and he joined the US Army.

He had blood in his hands,

and he was trying to put

people's brains back into their heads, and he was like,

"Oh, my God, this is (beep) up,

this is messing up my head."

They diagnosed him with delusional paranoia.

"I gotta get outta here.

I'm gonna move to London."

February 17th, 1872,

W.C. Minor wakes up

in the middle of the night in a paranoid fit.

He grabbed his gun, he thinks that a man has broken

into his home and is trying to kill him.

He runs outside.

At that very moment, George Merrett was on his way

to work at a brewery like, (hymning)

♪ I'm on my way to work ♪

♪ I got six kids ♪

♪ My wife Eliza's pregnant ♪

♪ Ain't life glorious. ♪

He turns around, he sees W.C. Minor

run out of his house with a gun.

Minor shoots George Merrett,

fatally wounding him dead in the neck.

W.C. Minor gets entered to the Broadmore Asylum

for the Criminally Insane.

So, because W.C. Minor's a prestigious doctor,

he gets special treatment in the asylum.

They give him two cells,

they reunite him with all of his possessions.

He has so many books that he takes a second cell

and turns it into a library.

However, he still racked with the tremendous guilt

over this murder.

So, W.C. Minor contacts the murder,

he wrote to his...

He wrote to his victim's widow, Eliza Merrett,

Eliza pays Minor a visit.

He said, "Thank you for coming today, Mrs. Merrett.

Um, should I say Ms. Merrett now that you're single?"

(Derek and Doug laughing)

- Too soon. - Too soon. (laughs)

All of a sudden, she notices behind him

that the guy's got a lot of books.

So she says like, "I noticed you had a lot of books.

What kind of books do you got?"

"Nothing much, just a bunch of like interesting books

by people like Jonathan Swift."

She's like, "I love Johnson Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels?'

That's like my favorite book."

He's like, "Me too.

Like OMG, y-you're just like me."

She starts coming to visit him at the asylum

like once a month,

every time she brings a bundle of new books for him.

He's giving her some books from his library.

This is crazy!

This is the guy that murdered her husband,

and there are like, "I have a book club."

What?

And one of these bundles of books,

there's a notice from a man named James Murray.

"Hear ve, hear ve, all y'all bibliophiles out there,

listen up.

I am writing the very first 'Oxford English Dictionary,'

we're looking for volunteers.

So, submit your words along with quotations

from the English literature."

W.C. Minor sees this notification, he's like,

"This is what a I was born to do."

W.C. Minor writes into James Murray and says,

"Will you please see it in your heart

to allow me to contribute it

to your great 'Oxford English Dictionary?'"

And they kinda look at this letter and they're like,

"Yeah, dude, of course.

Here's the list of words, bonnet, boner, bonafide."

He takes this list of words and he's like,

"Okay, I'm like a search engine.

I'm gonna like spend the next year of my life,

going through hundreds and hundreds of books

looking for uses of these words."

The years go by, W.C. Minor's like doing all this work

and getting so much joy out of it.

It's giving him so much purpose in his life.

So finally, after years of correspondence,

they finally meet face to face.

They sit down and they chat,

and these guys completely hit it off.

They share their love for the rich complexity

of the English language.

They're like BFF overnight.

And James Murray gave him a six completed volumes

of the "Oxford (laughs) English Dictionary," and said,

"Thank you for your hard work and dedication.

You dedicated, uh, eh, so much of your life