WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.740 So if you adjust for inflation, the famous $6 00:00:03.740 --> 00:00:07.900 million price tag from 1973 is it's actually 00:00:07.900 --> 00:00:12.140 equivalent to roughly $44 million today in 2026, 00:00:12.259 --> 00:00:14.419 which is just a staggering amount of money for 00:00:14.419 --> 00:00:16.679 a single person. Oh, absolutely. But back in 00:00:16.679 --> 00:00:19.820 the early 70s, that multimillion dollar budget 00:00:19.820 --> 00:00:22.980 bought something entirely unprecedented for television 00:00:22.980 --> 00:00:25.100 audiences. I mean, we're talking about a cold 00:00:25.100 --> 00:00:28.460 blooded, ruthless literary assassin who had to 00:00:28.460 --> 00:00:31.059 be well. fundamentally reverse engineered into 00:00:31.059 --> 00:00:34.000 a living room hero. Exactly. And welcome to today's 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:36.420 deep dive, by the way. We are looking at a massive 00:00:36.420 --> 00:00:38.600 stack of historical articles and production notes 00:00:38.600 --> 00:00:41.439 today. Yeah, we really are. And our mission for 00:00:41.439 --> 00:00:44.380 this deep dive is to explore the anatomy of a 00:00:44.380 --> 00:00:48.039 massive 1970s pop culture phenomenon, the $6 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:50.399 million man. Right. And for you listening, this 00:00:50.399 --> 00:00:52.539 isn't just some nostalgic walk down memory lane. 00:00:52.780 --> 00:00:55.280 We're going to see how this single TV show laid 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:57.659 the absolute groundwork for how we view human 00:00:57.659 --> 00:01:00.880 enhancement, cyborgs in media, and even global 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:04.280 politics. It's wild how far reaching it is. So 00:01:04.280 --> 00:01:06.680 to set the stage for you, we are looking at the 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:09.420 story of United States Air Force Colonel Steve 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:11.859 Austin. Played iconically by Lee Majors, of course. 00:01:11.900 --> 00:01:14.859 Oh, yeah. Iconic is the word. So he's an astronaut 00:01:14.859 --> 00:01:18.719 who suffers this catastrophic crash in an experimental 00:01:18.700 --> 00:01:21.079 aircraft. I mean, he is basically brought back 00:01:21.079 --> 00:01:23.260 from the brink of death. And he's rebuilt by 00:01:23.260 --> 00:01:26.239 a government agency called the OSI. They replace 00:01:26.239 --> 00:01:28.959 his right arm, both of his legs and his left 00:01:28.959 --> 00:01:31.640 eye with bionic implants. Right. Which basically 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:33.980 turns him into the ultimate secret agent. It 00:01:33.980 --> 00:01:37.680 sounds like this perfect, glossy superhero setup. 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:41.400 But his origins were, well, they were incredibly 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:43.819 dark. Oh, incredibly dark. The entire concept 00:01:43.819 --> 00:01:46.579 actually stems from a 1972 bestselling novel 00:01:46.579 --> 00:01:49.459 by Martin Cayden called Cyborg. Yeah, let's talk 00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:51.319 about that transition from the page to the screen 00:01:51.319 --> 00:01:53.260 because the Steve Austin we all got on Friday 00:01:53.260 --> 00:01:55.359 nights was definitely not the Steve Austin from 00:01:55.359 --> 00:01:57.680 that original source material. Not even close. 00:01:58.219 --> 00:02:00.500 In Caden's novel, Austin was essentially just 00:02:00.500 --> 00:02:03.879 a weapon. He was highly lethal, operating this 00:02:03.879 --> 00:02:07.829 very grim, unforgiving. espionage world. Like 00:02:07.829 --> 00:02:10.729 completely different vibe. Completely. And when 00:02:10.729 --> 00:02:13.830 they first tried to adapt this in 1973 as a TV 00:02:13.830 --> 00:02:17.050 movie, he wasn't even the classic Air Force colonel 00:02:17.050 --> 00:02:19.389 working for Oscar Goldman at the OSI. Right. 00:02:19.509 --> 00:02:21.949 The sources show he was actually a civilian astronaut 00:02:21.949 --> 00:02:24.289 at that point. Yeah. And handled by a totally 00:02:24.289 --> 00:02:26.750 different character, Oliver Spencer, played by 00:02:26.750 --> 00:02:29.729 Darren McAvon. And the agency was called the 00:02:29.729 --> 00:02:34.590 OSO, not OSI. That first TV movie was a massive 00:02:34.590 --> 00:02:37.169 ratings hit though, which immediately spawned 00:02:37.169 --> 00:02:39.770 two more television movies, right? Wine, Women 00:02:39.770 --> 00:02:43.050 in War, and The Solid Gold Kidnapping. Yes, and 00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:45.289 looking at the production history, those sequels 00:02:45.289 --> 00:02:48.789 lean super heavily into this slick international 00:02:48.789 --> 00:02:51.639 James Bond kind of aesthetic. It wasn't until 00:02:51.639 --> 00:02:54.000 producer Harv Bennett stepped in to adapt the 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.699 concept into a weekly, hour -long series that 00:02:56.699 --> 00:02:59.060 the gloss was entirely stripped away. Okay, let's 00:02:59.060 --> 00:03:00.879 unpack this. Let's do it. The character evolution 00:03:00.879 --> 00:03:03.219 here is kind of like reverse engineering a superhero. 00:03:03.800 --> 00:03:05.680 Because normally, you know, instead of a normal 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:07.939 guy gaining powers and getting edgy or dark, 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:10.120 they took a cold -blooded weapon from the novels 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:12.539 and actively gave him his humanity back. They 00:03:12.539 --> 00:03:15.460 really did. They made him down to earth. A reluctant 00:03:15.460 --> 00:03:18.340 spy who rarely used deadly force. But that's 00:03:18.340 --> 00:03:21.300 what I don't get. Wouldn't a Cold War spy agency 00:03:21.300 --> 00:03:24.000 actually want the ruthless killer from the novels? 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:27.080 Like, why would TV executives actively choose 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:30.020 to make their super weapon a reluctant pacifist? 00:03:30.199 --> 00:03:33.080 What's fascinating here is the sheer psychology 00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:37.759 of 1970s television audiences compared to, like, 00:03:38.219 --> 00:03:41.419 film or literature. How so? Well... A novel or 00:03:41.419 --> 00:03:44.120 a cinematic feature is a contained, temporary 00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:46.400 experience. You can spend two hours with a cold 00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:48.639 -blooded assassin and enjoy the thrill of the 00:03:48.639 --> 00:03:50.620 violence. Right, you get to leave the theater 00:03:50.620 --> 00:03:53.039 afterwards. Exactly. But television requires 00:03:53.039 --> 00:03:55.060 you to invite a character into your home week 00:03:55.060 --> 00:03:58.080 after week. If Austin is just this unfeeling 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:01.360 machine who kills without remorse, the audience 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:03.159 is eventually going to recoil from him. That 00:04:03.159 --> 00:04:05.099 makes total sense. So the viewers needed someone 00:04:05.099 --> 00:04:07.360 they could actually connect with. Yeah, a reluctant 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:11.139 hero who fundamentally hated the degrading deceptive 00:04:11.139 --> 00:04:14.979 nature of espionage. Lee Majors really infused 00:04:14.979 --> 00:04:17.980 Austin with a profound vulnerability. He didn't 00:04:17.980 --> 00:04:20.939 want to be a weapon. He resents the bionics almost 00:04:20.939 --> 00:04:24.360 as much as he uses them. Yes, that underlying 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:28.180 tension is the engine of the entire show. And 00:04:28.180 --> 00:04:32.209 finding that exact human element was an incredibly 00:04:32.209 --> 00:04:34.370 messy process behind the scenes. Oh, you mean 00:04:34.370 --> 00:04:36.329 with the casting? Yeah, look at the casting for 00:04:36.329 --> 00:04:38.569 Dr. Rudy Wells, the key medical scientist who 00:04:38.569 --> 00:04:41.230 implants and maintains Austin's bionics. The 00:04:41.230 --> 00:04:43.470 production burned through three different actors 00:04:43.470 --> 00:04:46.470 trying to lock down the right dynamic. Wow, three! 00:04:46.649 --> 00:04:49.850 Yep. You had Martin Balsam in the pilot, then 00:04:49.850 --> 00:04:52.290 Alan Oppenheimer, before they finally settled 00:04:52.290 --> 00:04:54.569 on Martin E. Brooks as the series regular. It 00:04:54.569 --> 00:04:56.250 sounds like they were constantly tweaking the 00:04:56.250 --> 00:04:57.970 chemistry, just trying to ensure the science 00:04:57.970 --> 00:05:01.110 felt grounded by a deeply empathetic human relationship. 00:05:01.329 --> 00:05:03.939 Precisely. Giving him his humanity back totally 00:05:03.939 --> 00:05:07.399 solves the likability problem. But the moment 00:05:07.399 --> 00:05:10.259 you make him a vulnerable human, you crash straight 00:05:10.259 --> 00:05:12.519 into a massive narrative wall. The power scaling 00:05:12.519 --> 00:05:15.300 issue. Right. If this guy has millions of dollars 00:05:15.300 --> 00:05:18.079 of superhuman hardware, how do you keep the show 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:20.639 from getting incredibly boring? I mean, if he 00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:22.540 can just punch his way through a steel vault 00:05:22.540 --> 00:05:25.399 and run away at the speed of sound, where is 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:28.740 the dramatic suspense? You have to engineer very 00:05:28.740 --> 00:05:32.459 deliberate believable limits. Producer Kenneth 00:05:32.459 --> 00:05:35.480 Johnson understood that a hero is really only 00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:37.699 as interesting as his vulnerabilities. So he 00:05:37.699 --> 00:05:40.720 instituted strict unbending rules for the bionics. 00:05:41.060 --> 00:05:44.079 Exactly. Tight rules. I love looking at the actual 00:05:44.079 --> 00:05:46.199 spec sheet from the production notes for this. 00:05:46.360 --> 00:05:48.620 It is just so specific. They established that 00:05:48.620 --> 00:05:51.970 Steve can jump two stories. Absolutely not three. 00:05:52.170 --> 00:05:55.089 Two is the hard limit. And his bionic left eye 00:05:55.089 --> 00:05:58.410 is equipped with a 20 .2 to one zoom lens, night 00:05:58.410 --> 00:06:01.269 vision and infrared tracking. But it has a major 00:06:01.269 --> 00:06:03.689 Achilles heel, right? Ultrasonic attacks. Yes, 00:06:03.689 --> 00:06:05.949 high frequencies cause extreme dizziness and 00:06:05.949 --> 00:06:08.509 temporary blindness. The parameters for his legs 00:06:08.509 --> 00:06:11.089 are equally rigid. The upper limit was clocked 00:06:11.089 --> 00:06:13.370 at 60 miles per hour. Though, to be fair, there 00:06:13.370 --> 00:06:15.889 is that one episode where the gauge pushes 67. 00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:17.990 True, true. But what's hilarious to me is that 00:06:17.990 --> 00:06:20.149 when they introduced his spin -off counterpart, 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:24.180 Jamie Summers in The Bionic Woman, she is shown 00:06:24.180 --> 00:06:27.519 completely blowing past him, outrunning a race 00:06:27.519 --> 00:06:30.579 car doing 100 miles per hour. The writers clearly 00:06:30.579 --> 00:06:33.180 decided the government's bionic tech had seen 00:06:33.180 --> 00:06:35.379 some rapid upgrades between those two surgeries. 00:06:35.620 --> 00:06:38.259 No kidding. But the core limitations remained 00:06:38.259 --> 00:06:41.199 essential. Then we get to the bionic right arm. 00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:44.000 It supposedly has the strength of a bulldozer. 00:06:44.220 --> 00:06:46.759 Which is terrifying, honestly. Yeah, and it also, 00:06:47.060 --> 00:06:49.180 somewhat inexplicably, has a built -in Geiger 00:06:49.180 --> 00:06:52.500 counter. Naturally. Right. But the overarching 00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:54.600 weaknesses they wrote into the lore are what 00:06:54.600 --> 00:06:57.899 actually ground the show. Extreme cold literally 00:06:57.899 --> 00:07:00.279 paralyzes the bionics. Like, if he goes into 00:07:00.279 --> 00:07:02.399 a freezing environment, he's immobilized. And 00:07:02.399 --> 00:07:04.899 cosmic radiation in space causes total system 00:07:04.899 --> 00:07:06.899 failure. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:07:07.209 --> 00:07:09.470 They treated this cutting -edge, billion -dollar 00:07:09.470 --> 00:07:12.470 military technology exactly like a modern smartphone 00:07:12.470 --> 00:07:14.910 battery in the winter. If he gets too cold, he 00:07:14.910 --> 00:07:17.149 just shuts down. It's such a relatable flaw. 00:07:17.269 --> 00:07:20.089 It is. But wait, I have a highly specific physical 00:07:20.089 --> 00:07:22.089 question about this setup based on the text. 00:07:22.350 --> 00:07:24.930 If his bionic arm has the strength of an actual 00:07:24.930 --> 00:07:28.769 bulldozer... How does his organic human spine 00:07:28.769 --> 00:07:31.209 not snap in half when he tries to lift something 00:07:31.209 --> 00:07:33.850 that heavy? You've hit on the most glaring, brilliant 00:07:33.850 --> 00:07:37.110 blind spot in the entire series. The show literally 00:07:37.110 --> 00:07:40.670 never explains it. Never. Not once. Never. They 00:07:40.670 --> 00:07:43.430 never address how his flesh and bone shoulder 00:07:43.430 --> 00:07:46.550 or his organic spine withstands the torque of 00:07:46.550 --> 00:07:49.430 lifting a two -ton car. That is hilarious. But 00:07:49.430 --> 00:07:51.490 if we connect this to the bigger picture, sci 00:07:51.490 --> 00:07:54.230 -fi doesn't always need perfect physics. You 00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:57.629 know, it needs perfect dramatic tension. Storytelling 00:07:57.629 --> 00:08:01.029 is about prioritizing emotional stakes over mechanical 00:08:01.029 --> 00:08:03.569 realism. Exactly. The flaws, they did establish 00:08:03.569 --> 00:08:06.100 the freezing, the ultrasonic blindness. Those 00:08:06.100 --> 00:08:08.939 were relatable sensory limitations. Right. If 00:08:08.939 --> 00:08:11.060 the audience is watching Steve Austin struggle 00:08:11.060 --> 00:08:13.420 to move his freezing arm to save someone's life, 00:08:13.420 --> 00:08:15.660 they aren't sitting there doing the math on his 00:08:15.660 --> 00:08:18.120 spinal column. The vulnerability feels real, 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:20.480 even if the physics are entirely broken. Having 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:23.100 those strict rules on paper created a massive 00:08:23.100 --> 00:08:25.060 problem for the production team, though, because 00:08:25.060 --> 00:08:28.680 to the naked eye, Lee Majors is just a very athletic 00:08:28.680 --> 00:08:31.680 guy in a tracksuit. How do you visually and audibly 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:35.120 communicate a bulldozer's strength or a 60 mile 00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:39.299 hour sprint on a 1974 television budget without 00:08:39.299 --> 00:08:41.960 it looking completely ridiculous. You have to 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:44.799 build an entirely new aesthetic of action. And 00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:46.679 the production team did something incredibly 00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:49.220 bold right out of the gate, starting with the 00:08:49.220 --> 00:08:52.500 opening title sequence. Oh, the crash. Everyone 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:54.960 knows that terrifying footage of the plane tumbling 00:08:54.960 --> 00:08:57.080 violently across the desert floor. It's iconic. 00:08:57.320 --> 00:08:59.139 I think a lot of people assume that was just 00:08:59.139 --> 00:09:01.480 highly impressive miniature work or early special 00:09:01.480 --> 00:09:04.940 effects, but it's not. That is real footage of 00:09:04.940 --> 00:09:09.080 a 1967 experimental aircraft crash. Specifically, 00:09:09.340 --> 00:09:12.759 a lifting body aircraft. the M2F2. Yeah, for 00:09:12.759 --> 00:09:14.840 those trying to picture it, a lifting body aircraft 00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:17.179 doesn't have traditional wings. It looks almost 00:09:17.179 --> 00:09:19.659 like a flying bathtub, relying entirely on the 00:09:19.659 --> 00:09:21.940 aerodynamic shape of its fuselage to generate 00:09:21.940 --> 00:09:25.279 lift. Which sounds incredibly dangerous. It was. 00:09:25.419 --> 00:09:28.320 The pilot, Bruce Peterson, hit the ground at 00:09:28.320 --> 00:09:32.179 immense speed and tumbled violently. Miraculously, 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:34.460 Peterson survived what looks like an instantly 00:09:34.460 --> 00:09:37.080 fatal accident, though tragically he did later 00:09:37.080 --> 00:09:39.940 lose an eye to infection. This raises an important 00:09:39.940 --> 00:09:43.769 question. about the ethics and impact of blending 00:09:43.769 --> 00:09:46.850 gritty reality with science fiction. Yeah. How 00:09:46.850 --> 00:09:49.509 so? Well, you take that visceral, horrifying 00:09:49.509 --> 00:09:53.129 footage of a real man nearly dying, and you overlay 00:09:53.129 --> 00:09:55.970 it with Richard Anderson's theatrical famous 00:09:55.970 --> 00:09:58.980 voiceover. You know... Gentlemen, we can rebuild 00:09:58.980 --> 00:10:01.879 him. We have the technology. It's chilling. It 00:10:01.879 --> 00:10:05.720 is. By grounding the fantasy of a cyborg in the 00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:09.019 bleeding edge of actual perilous human spaceflight, 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:11.960 you force the audience to take the premise seriously. 00:10:12.500 --> 00:10:14.740 It strips away all that comic book silliness. 00:10:14.940 --> 00:10:16.879 It tells you immediately that the bionics were 00:10:16.879 --> 00:10:20.019 born out of real trauma, not magic. And then 00:10:20.019 --> 00:10:21.899 once you're actually in the episode, they had 00:10:21.899 --> 00:10:23.940 to visually depict the super speed. Right, and 00:10:23.940 --> 00:10:25.500 they didn't just speed the film up to make them 00:10:25.500 --> 00:10:28.240 look fast. No, they went the exact opposite direction. 00:10:28.279 --> 00:10:30.659 They used slow motion. Which was a technique 00:10:30.659 --> 00:10:33.259 heavily inspired by the dramatic sweeping slow 00:10:33.259 --> 00:10:36.120 motion used by NFL films at the time, capturing 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:38.679 the sheer physical strain of athletes. Which 00:10:38.679 --> 00:10:42.120 pop culture eventually dubbed Kung Fu slow motion. 00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:44.940 Using slow motion to depict super speed is totally 00:10:44.940 --> 00:10:46.919 counterintuitive. It's like whispering to command 00:10:46.919 --> 00:10:49.600 a room's attention. But it works perfectly to 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:53.120 convey power. Visually, yes. But the illusion 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:55.580 is entirely cemented by the audio design. Oh, 00:10:55.679 --> 00:10:58.440 absolutely. The electronic dit dit dit dit sound 00:10:58.440 --> 00:11:01.100 effect. It is permanently etched into the brains 00:11:01.100 --> 00:11:03.379 of anyone who absorbed pop culture from that 00:11:03.379 --> 00:11:05.759 era. It really is. But looking at the production 00:11:05.759 --> 00:11:08.100 notes, there's a hilarious historical irony here. 00:11:08.880 --> 00:11:11.700 That signature bionic sound effect wasn't even 00:11:11.700 --> 00:11:13.840 invented for Steve Austin. Wait, really? Yeah. 00:11:13.940 --> 00:11:16.740 It actually debuted in episode four, used for 00:11:16.740 --> 00:11:19.539 a robotic clone of a completely different character, 00:11:19.820 --> 00:11:22.460 Major Fred Sloan. The producers realized how 00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:24.340 effective it was and just quietly retrofitted 00:11:24.340 --> 00:11:26.840 it to be Steve's iconic sound. That's amazing. 00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:29.899 Those creative hacks, the slow motion, the repurposed 00:11:29.899 --> 00:11:32.299 sound effect, the gritty realism, they didn't 00:11:32.299 --> 00:11:35.200 just save the budget. They catapulted the concept 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:37.919 of the cyborg out of niche sci -fi and embedded 00:11:37.929 --> 00:11:40.889 deeply into global culture. Yeah, the demand 00:11:40.889 --> 00:11:43.669 for this character was so ferocious that it completely 00:11:43.669 --> 00:11:46.350 broke the boundaries of a single show. The immediate 00:11:46.350 --> 00:11:49.250 symptom of that success was the expansion of 00:11:49.250 --> 00:11:51.809 the universe. The introduction of Jamie Summers, 00:11:51.950 --> 00:11:54.129 the bionic woman. They brought her in, gave her 00:11:54.129 --> 00:11:57.429 bionics, and then, shockingly, her body rejected 00:11:57.429 --> 00:12:00.429 the implants and she died. Which, to be fair, 00:12:00.490 --> 00:12:02.830 was pretty standard television drama at the time. 00:12:03.110 --> 00:12:05.330 You introduce a tragic love interest to motivate 00:12:05.330 --> 00:12:08.120 the hero, and then you move on. But the network 00:12:08.120 --> 00:12:11.080 severely underestimated the audience's attachment 00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:14.419 to her. Oh big time. The fan outcry was so massive 00:12:14.419 --> 00:12:17.139 that the writers had to completely backpedal. 00:12:17.159 --> 00:12:20.080 They resurrected her using experimental cryogenics. 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:22.460 Literally bringing her back from the dead due 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:25.159 to sheer audience demand. Yep. She launched her 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:27.399 own massively successful series. And eventually, 00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:29.399 through a series of reunion movies in the 80s 00:12:29.399 --> 00:12:32.539 and 90s, she and Steve finally get married. But 00:12:32.539 --> 00:12:35.000 the footprint of this show goes way beyond network 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:38.759 television spinoffs. The actual terminology began 00:12:38.759 --> 00:12:42.190 to bleed into real world geopolitics. Yeah, this 00:12:42.190 --> 00:12:44.210 completely blew my mind while reading through 00:12:44.210 --> 00:12:47.389 the sources. In Brazil, during the military dictatorship, 00:12:47.850 --> 00:12:50.450 the government began appointing unelected politicians 00:12:50.450 --> 00:12:53.370 to office. Right. Senators, governors, mayors 00:12:53.370 --> 00:12:56.529 who never faced a public vote. Exactly. And the 00:12:56.529 --> 00:12:59.129 Brazilian public needed a way to mock these figures, 00:12:59.190 --> 00:13:01.269 so they started calling these appointed officials 00:13:01.269 --> 00:13:04.629 bionics. It's the perfect subversive slang, really. 00:13:05.149 --> 00:13:08.149 It highlighted the artificial, unearned, extraordinary 00:13:08.149 --> 00:13:11.470 power these politicians wielded. directly comparing 00:13:11.470 --> 00:13:14.169 them to a lab -created television character who 00:13:14.169 --> 00:13:16.389 is ultimately controlled by the state. That is 00:13:16.389 --> 00:13:19.090 just brilliant. And the cultural adaptation happened 00:13:19.090 --> 00:13:21.669 in the other direction, too. In Israel, the network 00:13:21.669 --> 00:13:23.629 bought the show but had to completely rename 00:13:23.629 --> 00:13:26.889 it. They broadcast it as The Man Worth Millions. 00:13:27.309 --> 00:13:30.450 Because the phrase six million carried an unbearable 00:13:30.450 --> 00:13:32.990 historical weight in Israel, too closely evoking 00:13:32.990 --> 00:13:35.289 the estimated six million Jewish victims of the 00:13:35.289 --> 00:13:38.169 Holocaust. Right. They recognize the immense 00:13:38.169 --> 00:13:40.669 pop culture value of the show, but to navigate 00:13:40.669 --> 00:13:44.110 incredibly deep cultural trauma just to put it 00:13:44.110 --> 00:13:46.970 on the air. It even inspired parody films in 00:13:46.970 --> 00:13:50.590 Indonesia. The reach was truly global. But despite 00:13:50.590 --> 00:13:53.649 all that historical dominance, the franchise 00:13:53.649 --> 00:13:56.690 suffers from what Hollywood calls the six billion 00:13:56.690 --> 00:13:59.929 dollar curse. Adapting this property into a modern 00:13:59.929 --> 00:14:02.190 feature film has been an absolute nightmare. 00:14:02.370 --> 00:14:04.669 Oh, development hell. A movie has been stuck 00:14:04.669 --> 00:14:08.539 in development hell since 1995. Kevin Smith wrote 00:14:08.539 --> 00:14:11.720 a screenplay. Jim Carrey pitched a comedy version. 00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:14.919 Mark Wahlberg has been attached to star in a 00:14:14.919 --> 00:14:18.019 dramatic reboot titled, The Six Billion Dollar 00:14:18.019 --> 00:14:21.960 Man Since 2014. Wow, over a decade. Yeah. And 00:14:21.960 --> 00:14:24.240 despite a revolving door of directors and massive 00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:26.840 release delays, he was still claiming in 2024 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:29.320 that he's hopeful it'll happen. So what does 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:31.100 this all mean for you, the listener? I have to 00:14:31.100 --> 00:14:33.299 ask you, why is it so incredibly hard to get 00:14:33.299 --> 00:14:35.659 this movie made today? Is the concept just too 00:14:35.659 --> 00:14:38.720 deeply rooted in 1970s anxieties to translate 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:40.940 to a modern audience? You are hitting on the 00:14:40.940 --> 00:14:42.940 exact reason the original series was a lightning 00:14:42.940 --> 00:14:45.899 in a bottle moment. The 1970s was a period of 00:14:45.899 --> 00:14:49.000 intense, specific technological whiplash. Right, 00:14:49.159 --> 00:14:52.000 the space race, hangover, early computers. Exactly. 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:54.940 The world was experiencing rapid advancements 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:58.159 in aerospace and computing, but there was a profound 00:14:58.159 --> 00:15:01.519 global fascination with space age miracles clashing 00:15:01.519 --> 00:15:04.419 directly with fragile human vulnerability. And 00:15:04.419 --> 00:15:07.639 the six million dollar man perfectly physically 00:15:07.639 --> 00:15:11.509 embodied that clash. Yes. Today. We walk around 00:15:11.509 --> 00:15:13.970 with supercomputers in our pockets. We take bleeding 00:15:13.970 --> 00:15:16.549 edge technology entirely for granted, trying 00:15:16.549 --> 00:15:20.289 to artificially recreate that specific 1970s 00:15:20.289 --> 00:15:23.590 tension. The awe and the terror of merging man 00:15:23.590 --> 00:15:26.730 with machine is a nearly impossible puzzle for 00:15:26.730 --> 00:15:29.289 modern filmmakers to solve. The context of the 00:15:29.289 --> 00:15:31.210 world shifted, which means the cultural weight 00:15:31.210 --> 00:15:34.049 of the hero shifted with it. Well, we've really 00:15:34.049 --> 00:15:35.990 pulled apart the anatomy of Steve Austin today. 00:15:35.990 --> 00:15:38.309 We certainly have. We've traced him from his 00:15:38.309 --> 00:15:41.090 violent literary origins as a cold -blooded weapon, 00:15:41.629 --> 00:15:43.929 watched him get reverse engineered into a reluctant, 00:15:44.009 --> 00:15:46.690 vulnerable television icon, and seen how those 00:15:46.690 --> 00:15:49.470 brilliant budget -saving production hacks accidentally 00:15:49.470 --> 00:15:52.370 shaped global political vocabulary? There's one 00:15:52.370 --> 00:15:54.389 final piece of the source material that perfectly 00:15:54.389 --> 00:15:56.889 encapsulates the dual nature of this entire phenomenon. 00:15:57.519 --> 00:15:59.919 Well, while the television show was working hard 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:01.879 to soften Steve Austin and make him a family 00:16:01.879 --> 00:16:04.759 -friendly hero, the comic book adaptations were 00:16:04.759 --> 00:16:07.220 doing something entirely different. They literally 00:16:07.220 --> 00:16:09.539 split the character in half. Wait, what do you 00:16:09.539 --> 00:16:11.500 mean they split him in half? They published two 00:16:11.500 --> 00:16:14.279 distinct formats simultaneously. There were standard 00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:17.000 color comic books, closely following the TV show, 00:16:17.460 --> 00:16:19.600 bright and geared toward kids. OK, pretty normal. 00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:22.179 But at the exact same time, they published black 00:16:22.179 --> 00:16:25.580 and white. highly detailed illustrated magazines. 00:16:26.139 --> 00:16:28.879 And those magazines were dark, they were incredibly 00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:31.740 violent, and they were aimed strictly at adult 00:16:31.740 --> 00:16:34.379 readers, returning almost entirely to the bleakness 00:16:34.379 --> 00:16:37.179 of the original novel. Oh, wow. That is a wild 00:16:37.179 --> 00:16:39.460 contrast. It is. So I'll leave you to consider 00:16:39.460 --> 00:16:42.940 this. Does the enduring global appeal of the 00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:46.899 cyborg lie precisely in this unresolvable duality? 00:16:47.659 --> 00:16:50.309 As our fascination with bionics Ultimately, just 00:16:50.309 --> 00:16:52.889 the childhood fantasy of possessing unstoppable 00:16:52.889 --> 00:16:55.750 superpowers constantly at war with the deeply 00:16:55.750 --> 00:16:58.730 adult horror of losing our fundamental humanity 00:16:58.730 --> 00:17:01.230 to the machine. The childhood fantasy versus 00:17:01.230 --> 00:17:05.089 the adult horror. Man, what an incredible lens 00:17:05.089 --> 00:17:07.410 to view this through. The next time you see a 00:17:07.410 --> 00:17:10.130 cyborg on screen or read about the latest tech 00:17:10.130 --> 00:17:12.170 breakthrough, ask yourself which side of that 00:17:12.170 --> 00:17:14.230 battle you're really watching. Thank you for 00:17:14.230 --> 00:17:16.490 joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning 00:17:16.490 --> 00:17:18.809 the pop culture you consume. Look for those hidden 00:17:18.809 --> 00:17:21.089 layers of history and we will see you next time.