Original subtitles

[rhythmic music]

Imagine a sport where the whole game

is played in your pants.

- Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible

while having ferrets root around in your pants.

[apprehensive music]

- It's got claws, fangs, and it's got the bite force

of a pit bull terrier.

- [indistinct] [beep].

- Or going toe to toe with a cannon.

- That cannon ball weighs 104 pounds.

- Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon

wearing goggles.

What are the goggles gonna do?

[dramatic music]

- How about a hobby where one mistake means certain death?

- People are thinking, this is crazy.

He's 7,500 feet in the air.

Who is this guy?

- A lot can go wrong.

Davis feels like he's going to throw up

as he's walking between these two balloons.

- These are the pastimes that are so strange

they are truly unbelievable.

[dramatic music]

Back in 19th century London, the rich and trendy

are always looking for fresh forms of entertainment,

like a wildly popular new stage show,

with an unusual star attraction.

- On January 15th, 1834, performer Thomas Pettigrew

is preparing to appear before a sold out crowd in London.

Pettigrew isn't the main attraction.

He's more of the emcee and the host of the whole situation.

The person that everyone's really there to see

is someone named Horsiesi, who is an Egyptian priest.

- [Dan] But Horsiesi the priest won't be reciting any lines

because he's been dead for 1,400 years.

Behold, the bizarre 19th century pastime

of unwrapping mummies.

- Egyptomania has been sweeping England now

for 20 years or so.

People are fascinated with everything about Egypt.

They want to see these exotic things

from this far away place.

- In the early 1800s, a lot of men were sent to Africa,

specifically Egypt, to fight Napoleon's army.

And when a lot of those soldiers came home,

they brought back their own little piece of Antiquity.

- Pieces of mummies were being sold, hands, feet, heads.

And if you possess an entire mummy

and could put that on display, that was the headline act.

That was what people wanted to see.

- [Dan] While Pettigrew wasn't the first to unwrap a mummy,

his show quickly becomes the most popular.

- Pettigrew has this whole system down.

He slowly unwraps these mummies

as he's talking about the history of Egypt

and specifically mummification.

He is an incredible entertainer,

and part of it is that he's a trained surgeon,

so it lends this air of credibility to the whole thing.

- It's all part of the thrill.

He's setting it up for the final thing,

which is going to be the exposure

of this dead body on stage.

People are fascinated.

- One of the highlights of these unwrapping

is the jewelry and other valuables

that are sometimes found wrapped with the body

and later sold off of course as valuable antiquities.

- [Dan] Sure, the big ticket items get all the attention,

but the audience walks away

with a different kind of treasure.

- People are given snippets,

so little pieces of the bandages.

They can take them home as souvenirs.

- [Holly] You're gonna be able to handle and touch something

that is from ancient Egypt.

It's thousands of years old in some cases.

- [Dan] But the real showstopper is still to come.

- Once this body has been revealed,

then Pettigrew switches into surgeon mode,

because as part of the show,

you also get to watch him perform an autopsy.

- Pettigrew starts severing limbs, muscles, skin,

pointing out the survival and color of hair,

the pliability of the skin itself.

The audience is just awestruck.

- Pettigrew becomes so famous that the Duke of Hamilton

actually hires him to mummify his corpse after death.

- Pettigrew's mummy unwrapping

attracts large audiences for many years.

And he publishes books, gives talks,

and eventually simply becomes known as Mummy Pettigrew.

- [Dan] Eventually, the unwrapping spectacles

fall out of favor,

though our fascination with mummies lives on.

- A lot of authors were influenced by this,

Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a mummy story.

In the early days of Hollywood,

you had a lot of mummy stories.

The spookiness of it, the creepiness of it,

stays with us even today.

- Revealing what's under the bandages of an ancient mummy

is certainly exhilarating.

However, there's another British pastime

that will really get your blood flowing.

- Imagine a man standing in front of a live audience.

He is wearing baggy white pants tucked into socks.

And there is something

in the pants moving around.

- [Dan] The man winces as he's nipped and bitten.

Perhaps drops of blood even appear on his pant legs.

Painful?

Yes.

But that's the price you pay

if you want to indulge in the unbelievable sport.

[official speaking indistinctly]

[participant speaking indistinctly]

- [Dan] Of ferret-legging.

- The object of ferret-legging is rather simple.

Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible

while having ferrets root around in your pants.

- Ferret-legging may be simple in concept,

but make no mistake about it, it ain't easy.

- [Dan] Why ferrets and why down your pants?

The answer goes back centuries.

- In medieval Europe,

ferrets are increasingly used for hunting.

The ferret is the most underrated hunting animal

in the world.

It's got claws, fangs,

the speed and flexibility of a snake,

and it's got the bite force of a pit bull terrier.

- However, ferrets were a hunting animal only for royalty.

If you were a commoner that owned a ferret,

you were breaking the law.

- So if a game warden came by,

people would often hide the ferrets in their pants

until the authorities went away.

And that suddenly became a matter of bravery,

something like, "Hey, you know, the authorities came

and I held these guys in my pants for X amount of time

while they were clawing and biting me."

- [Dan] This gives the ferret-stashing hunters

in Yorkshire an idea.

- What if we willingly stuffed ferrets down our pants

and we had a competition

to determine who could withstand it the longest?

And everyone's like, "Sign me up."

- With any contest, there have to be rules.

And the number one rule of ferret-legging

is that you can't have any undergarments.

- Now, once you put a ferret in an enclosed space,

it's trying to escape.

It will resort to clawing, and scratching, and biting.

- [Dan] Just how many minutes

those early ferret-leggers lasted

and what traumas they endured are lost to history.

But when the sport enjoys a resurgence

during the 20th century, a heroic figure emerges,

retired coal miner Reg Mellor.

- Reg Mellor is a guy that frequently hunts with ferrets.

And as a way to keep them dry if it's cold or rainy,

he'll just take the ferret and stuff it into his paints.

- In the 1970s, Mellor catches wind

of people competing at ferret-legging,

something he's already been doing.

- Reg sees other Yorkshire men ferret-legging.

They really can't do it for more than a minute or so,

and he thinks, I can do it for a lot longer than that.

- He doesn't just last for a few minutes.

He can actually endure ferret-legging for hours.

- [Dan] With a record of five hours and 26 minutes,

Reg becomes the undisputed ferret-legging champion.

- [Interviewer] If they bite it so hard and hurt you,

why do you do it?

- Well, that's it, it's a challenge.

- [beep] Ow [beep] !

- The question people always ask Reg

is does his you know what get bitten.

Yes, absolutely it does.

- [Dan] In 1987, Reg passes away

as the reigning king of ferret-legging,

an oddly coveted title

that still holds a strange allure today.

- Ferret-legging is still around in many places.

And 28 years after Reg's record,

it's finally broken in 2010.

- During his heyday, people used to ask Reg,

"How do you do it?

What is your secret?"

To which Reg would nonchalantly respond,

"You know, sometimes you just gotta have your manhood bitten

and just not really care."

[ferret chirping]

- Words to live by, for sure,

but Reg is hardly the only brave soul

to turn bodily suffering into a show.

- Most pastimes are about relaxing,

maybe catching a game, reading a book,

something easy on the body.

But not for Frank Richards.

His idea of a good time,

let's just say it isn't for the faint of heart, or stomach.

[rhythmic music]

- Around 1900, Frank Richards is a kid growing up in Kansas

who gets into lots of fights.

Not all that unusual,

except that in the course of all this fighting,

he discovers something.

He can take a punch to the stomach no matter how hard it

is. His ab muscles are ridiculously strong.

- Later on, while serving in World War I,

Frank becomes known for putting on these exhibitions

where he takes punch after punch to the gut

from his fellow soldiers.

And sometimes Frank gets hit in the stomach

a thousand times a day.

[rhythmic music]

After the war, Frank thinks,

hey, maybe people will pay to watch this.

- And so he joins a vaudeville company

basically as a strong man, where he puts on exhibitions

challenging anybody in the crowd

to punch him in the stomach.

- [Dan] Soon, promoters bring in big time heavyweight boxers

to test Frank, like the six foot six behemoth Jess Willard

and even the world famous champ Jack Dempsey.

- Now, when Jack Dempsey goes up against Frank,

he's not expecting what happens,

which is after 75 punches to the gut,

Frank's standing there like, "What else you got?"

- Frank's incredible display is a blessing and a curse.

All of a sudden, fans are expecting something new,

bigger, better.

- He tries to up the ante,

taking two by fours to the stomach,

battering rams, even sledge hammers.

- [Dan] Yet, his fans still want more.

So in the late 1920s, he steps out to conceive

the most unbelievable body blow possible.

- Frank gets inspired by a popular spectacle

at carnivals and fairs, and that is the human cannonball.

A human being climbs into a cannon

and then is shot over a great distance and lands in a net.

- [Dan] That stunt gives Frank Richards an idea.

What if he flips the script?

- He thinks instead of being a human cannon ball,

what if he withstands the blow of a cannon ball?

[apprehensive music]

- Of course these cannons aren't real cannons.

They're not loaded with gunpowder

to fire at you or the enemy.

They're catapults, they're compressed air.

- But this is still a daunting stunt.

That cannonball he chooses weighs 104 pounds.

- [Dan] All eyes and cameras are on Frank

as he gears up for what may be his most outrageous

and dangerous feat ever.

- Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon

wearing goggles.

What are the goggles gonna do?

Put a girdle on.

- It's not exactly clear

how fast the cannonball is traveling,

but this thing is really heavy.

[cannon firing]

And it's obvious from the way he's knocked backwards

that it is hitting him with an incredible force.

- But Frank gets up, and he's totally okay.

- [Dan] Frank begins performing this stunt

all across America.

And soon he has a nickname

that cements his place in history, Cannonball Richards.

- Frank continues to do this for many years,

well into middle age.

And really, he can only perform this twice a day

because it's so hard on his body.

Well, now, in the internet age, Frank gets famous again

because his cannonball videos are going viral

and people never get tired of seeing a guy get hit

in his superhuman stomach.

- Today, millions are familiar

with the footage of Frank's painful gut shot.

But if you think that's dangerous, how about a spectacle

that makes the tightrope walk you'd see in a circus

look like child's play?

[lighthearted music]

- Praia Grande, Brazil was a big resort area

with lots of beaches and spas.

And it's also known for great hot air balloon rides

overlooking the coast of these amazing canyons.

- One day in August, 2023, two balloons take off

with a group of tourists.

This is a pretty typical ride to get a beautiful view

of the landscape and the terrain.

At least that's what they think.

- [Dan] As the balloons begin to ascend,

some tourists notice a line

tethering the two balloons together.

- Suddenly one of the passengers

steps toward the rim of the basket

and attaches a harness to the line.

And then they step out of the basket

and begin walking on the line toward the other balloon.

[suspenseful music]

- People are thinking, this is crazy.

He's 7,500 feet in the air.

Who is this guy?

Like, what is going on?

- [Dan] He's 23-year-old Davis Hermes.

And what's happening is a pastime with a

new dizzying spin. - Davis is an expert slackliner.

Slacklining is similar to tightrope walking,

but the line is a little bit looser.

The key here is that slacklining

is usually done just a few feet off the ground.

This is very different than what Davis is doing.

- Now, slacklining in and of itself

is incredibly difficult to do,

but Davis is a part of a select group of people that do

a more extreme version of slacklining called highlining.

Highlining is slacklining

but done at an incredible height.

- Highlining is typically done between fixed structures.

Davis has kicked it up a notch.

He's deciding to slackline between two hot air balloons

that are in constant motion.

[suspenseful music]

- You still realize why this is so difficult.

The line is constantly shifting and changing tensions

as it gets looser or tighter as the balloons move.

- [Dan] If walking across two moving objects

over 7,000 feet in the air wasn't exciting enough,

Davis also does tricks.

- In slacklining,

you have things that are known as static tricks.

And this is when the slackliner

makes it to the middle of the line, and then they stop,

and then they either pose

or they do some type of gymnastic movement.

And some of these movements

have some pretty interesting names.

You've got your butt flip, you've got your churro bounce,

you've got your nasty squeezer.

- Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this pastime,

Davis isn't the only person doing it.

- So the first person to ever highline

between two hot air balloons

is a Brazilian named Rafa Bridi the year before.

And he does it at a height of 6,500 feet.

- So what Davis is actually setting out to do

is break Bridi's altitude record.

- A lot can go wrong.

Even Davis who's been on highlines numerous times before

feels like he's going to throw up

as he's walking between these two balloons.

- [Dan] Dazzling the crowd along the way,

Davis successfully breaks the record,

although it might not last long.

- The world record for a man in a hot air balloon

is 69,000 feet.

So I guess in this case, the sky is the limit.

- Balancing on a line thousands of feet in the air

is one way to pass the time.

Our next hobby trades danger for dollhouses.

- When you live in a remote mountain village,

it can seem like you're the last person on Earth,

unless your favorite pastime is creating your own neighbors.

[eerie music]

- Driving through the Japanese village of Nagoro,

you'll see some pretty idyllic scenes:

farmers harvesting crops, people fishing by a stream,

families waiting at the bus stop.

- [Dan] But if you take a closer look,

this village is not what it seems.

Almost all of its hundreds of residents are life-size dolls.

[eerie music]

- Is this some sort of a military testing site?

Is it a movie set?

Why would a village be populated

by full scale, life-sized dolls?

- Other than the dolls,

there's not a lot of human activity going on,

and you start to wonder, who did this?

- [Dan] The dolls are actually the work of one woman,

Ayano Tsukimi.

- Ayano Tsukimi is a native of Nagoro.

She was born and grew up there in the 1950s.

And at the time, it was a bustling village

of about 300 people.

By the 2000s, the population of 300

has decreased to about 50.

- And Ayano looks around and realizes

this is not at all the place that she grew up.

It feels very lonely and empty.

- [Dan] Then in 2002, while tending the family garden,

a run in with some pesky crows gives her an idea.

- Crows are stealing the vegetables.

And she realizes that she has to put up a scarecrow.

- Ayano's father loved working in his garden,

so she decides to make the scarecrow look like him.

It's a sort of sentimental commemoration.

It's not long until neighbors start to call out to him,

thinking it's really her father.

- This kind of spurs an idea

to start making more of these dolls

as sort of a tribute to the people in town.

And at first, it's the people who passed away.

She'll make a doll in their honor

and put it near a place they'd love to go,

or where they used to sit, or near their home.

- Since it takes her about three days to complete a doll,

she wonders, why not repopulate the entire village

with imaginary people,

from construction workers to school teachers?

She creates whimsical scenes,

like celebrants at a wedding party.

Eventually, she creates about 300 dolls,

which outnumber living villagers 10 to one.

- [Dan] Nagoro becomes an internet sensation,

nicknamed Village of the Dolls.

And as a result, a funny thing happens.

- Suddenly, Nagoro is a massive tourist destination.

Roughly 3,000 people visit the village every year.

- Without meaning to do it,

Ayano has brought this town back to life.

It's no longer this dying, empty village.

It's a very busy, lively place once again.

- Believe it or not, filling a village with living dolls

isn't the only unusual hobby out there

aiming to freeze time.

[rhythmic music]

- As a boy, young Walter Potter experiences a death

that affects him profoundly,

and it's the death of his pet parakeet.

- So to keep the animal's memory alive,

he turns to the art of taxidermy.

- Today we mostly associate taxidermy

with hunters' trophy kills,

or it's used in museums for displays.

But back then, it was actually fairly common

for people to use taxidermy on their pets

as a way to commemorate them.

- Stuffing and preserving animals

is a very specialized skill,

but Potter, a total taxidermy novice,

decides to try this himself.

He manages to cobble together

a stuffed version of his deceased parakeet.

It's not the greatest, but he becomes hooked on this hobby.

He starts preserving more animals

and displaying them at a local inn owned by his father.

- [Dan] What Potter locks in experience

he more than makes up for in his attention to detail.

[rhythmic music]

- One of potter's most notable works

is a painstaking and elaborate depiction of a bird funeral

called "The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin,"

based off of the notable nursery rhyme

"Who Killed Cock Robin."

He begins his diorama at age 19,

but it takes him several years to complete

because it's incredibly intricate.

- Over a hundred native birds of Great Britain

illustrate all 56 verses of that children's rhyme.

- [Dan] Potter goes on to create other memorable works,

like a squirrel serving cocktails, rabbits

in the classroom, and of course hamsters playing cricket.

But one piece stands above the rest.

- The "Kitten Wedding" is really meticulous and detailed.

20 kittens are dressed to absolutely impress.

They're in tuxedos and frilly dresses.

Even though you can't see their knickers,

Potter went to the extent of making sure that they had them,

which is a testament to how much love he put into his work.

- Potter soon has more pieces

than his father's inn can accommodate,

so he opens up a space in the village of Bramber

called Potter's Museum, full of taxidermy,

wonders, and efforts.

- Visitors to Potter's Museum seem to ask the same question,

where does he get all these animals to stuff?

- Potter has made arrangements with farms and other places

that encounter dead animals frequently.

And he assures visitors that he has never killed an animal

for his creations.

- Eventually, taxidermy falls out of favor with the public

and the museum is closed.

His works are sold off to individual collectors,

but they continue to make appearances in museums

to this day.

- By the time he dies in 1918,

Walter Potter has given 10,000 creatures a second life.

Creepy?

Perhaps.

Unbelievable?

Absolutely.

- Since humans first began domesticating dogs

30,000 years ago, we've invented contests

to determine which pooch is the best,

from Westminster to the Iditarod.

But one unbelievable contest is dedicated to the premise

that your pup can't be the best until they look their best.

[rhythmic music]

- Every year since 1988,

there's something called the Groom Expo

held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Thousands of dog groomers descend on

the chocolate capital. They exchange trade secrets, they

talk about business, but at the heart of this

is an unbelievable competitive dog grooming competition.

- [Groomer] Who's a pretty poodle?

- These groomers don't just cut hair

from around the eyes or clip nails.

No, they are creating three dimensional works of art

on dogs.

[lighthearted music]

- Sometimes if a dog has a really thick coat,

they'll paint it so it looks like he or she

has other animals clinging to it.

So a panda or a sloth hanging off of the dog,

all made of hair.

- [Dan] But creating these furry masterpieces

doesn't happen overnight.

They take serious time and skill.

- Now, you have to keep in mind

that just like topiary work with hedges,

you have to wait for the dog's hair

to get to the point where you can do with it what you want.

- Poodles are the most common dogs in these competitions

because their thick fur lends itself to intricate design.

- They have tightly compact fur that you can trim and shape,

then make into all of these fantastical shapes.

- Of course, every year, these designs on these dogs

get more and more outrageous.

And the groomers are going

to more and more outrageous lengths to compete and win.

- [Dan] Like one woman, Angela Kumpe,

who's been called the Michael Jordan of dog grooming.

- Perhaps her masterpiece

is done on a white poodle named Moses

and is based off of the Stephen King novel "It."

She's designed a super creepy portrait of Pennywise

on the dog's right side.

And the rest of the dog is groomed

to look like he's in Pennywise costume.

- Some people see this competition as bad for dogs.

And some states have even banned the use of dyes on dogs.

But fans of the dog grooming competition push back.

- The dogs are not harmed by the food coloring dyes

that are not toxic to them.

And they love all the attention they're getting,

whether they realize why they're getting it or not.

- Dog grooming isn't the only mundane task

that's been turned into unbelievable performance art.

- It's 1997 in Leicester, England,

and Phil Shaw is just getting off of work at a factory.

He wants to have some fun after work,

so he decides to go do something that he loves,

rock climbing.

The thing that's standing in his way

is that Phil's got a long list of chores

that he has to get done at home.

And one of those chores is ironing.

- [Dan] In a flash, Phil has an epiphany.

Why not combine the activities?

- Now, to you and me, this makes zero sense,

but what he's thinking in the moment

is that this might make for a hilarious photo op.

So he takes his iron, his ironing board,

and his wrinkled shirts, grabs his roommate,

and they head to his favorite rock face.

- This rock climbing excursion

produces a pretty hilarious photo,

so Phil decides to take photos,

ironing in various other places.

- Now, we haven't quite reached the viral age at this point,

so people start hearing about Phil's crazy pastime

mostly through email and word of mouth.

But he's encouraged, so he keeps doing it.

- [Dan] Phil gives this new pastime a name, extreme ironing.

Soon, Phil embarks on an international tour

to promote his passion.

- So this seems like a joke, right?

What's crazy is that all over the world,

people love extreme ironing.

- They start doing it everywhere, on

mountains, up in trees, and even ridiculously underwater.

[upbeat music]

- [Dan] Extreme ironing continues to gain steam.

And in 2002, the very first world championship

is held in Germany.

[upbeat music]

- 12 teams from different countries iron various garments

in five different settings.

These locations include a fast-flowing river,

on top of a tree,

and a freestyle location of each team's choosing.

- Now, not only are the teams judged

by how they handle these crazy, precarious locations,

they're actually judged on their ironing,

a good press, the sharp crease, and so on.

- Since it is the birthplace of extreme ironing,

Team Britain takes home the first world championship

in 2002.

- Worldwide, there are some 1,500

extreme ironing competitors,

or ironists, as Phil calls them.

There's even brief talk about including it in the Olympics.

- [Dan] Unfortunately,

Phil can't chase ironing glory forever.

Eventually, the demands of family and work

force him to hang up his board, at least competitively.

- But ironists around the world

continue to keep up the pastime,

taking it to even more extreme lengths

beyond what I'm sure Phil could even imagine.

[upbeat music]

- If ironing on cliffs wasn't extreme enough,

wait until you see what's next.

- In the mid 1800s, Americans are besieged by death.

The Civil War and diseases like tuberculosis

combine to kill millions.

So you'd think that any reminder of this grim reality

would have no place in a leisure activity.

Well, think again.

[lighthearted music]

- At this time, people wanna go relax somewhere pretty

with their family and close friends.

So the big social event of any given week

is to go out and have a picnic on the weekends.

- [Dan] But these picnics aren't taking place

in grassy, shaded parks or rolling country fields.

They're happening somewhere else.

- On any given weekend,

you'd find people with picnic baskets,

and blankets, and pictures of tea, just relaxing,

in cemeteries.

- When we're looking at pictures during this time,

you see women out at a park-like setting.

They have parasols, they have big hats.

They are dressed to absolutely impress.

And when you look closer,

you realize, oh, that's a headstone.

- And these were big social events.

Picnicking in these cemeteries becomes incredibly popular,

and this is happening all over the country.

- [Dan] Why are people choosing to make merry

in a place where they're surrounded by markers of death?

[rhythmic music]

- For most of us today, it's easy to find a park

or an open space to spend time with friends or family.

These Victorian Americans didn't have that,

so they invented it, making makeshift use of spaces

dedicated to the dead to enjoy life.

- [Dan] There's also another more sentimental reason.

- When you have a number of folks in your family die,

very often unexpectedly, you wanna stay close,

you want to have those memories maintained.

Death to them was something held much more closely

because it was so common.

- There is even a really interesting interview

in a paper in 1884 with a young man

who says they're celebrating Thanksgiving with his father.

It doesn't matter that his father died the year before.

They're there and they're gonna celebrate with him.

- Even though it seems so strange to us today,

it's their way to show that they loved

and cared about somebody.

- Gotta hand it to Victorians.

They did some pretty weird stuff.

But partying with the dearly departed

isn't just a 19th century thing.

[dramatic music]

- Every March, a raucous festival is held

in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.

It attracts 25,000 revelers,

for sports, contests, partying, merry-making.

- So there are activities like snow sculptures

or even frozen salmon tossing.

- But there are other features of this big party

that are really odd.

- One of the big things is the coffin races.

- And there's signs everywhere that say FDGD.

So what does FDGD stand for?

- [Dan] It stands for Frozen Dead Guy Days,

and it has an unbelievable backstory.

[upbeat music]

- In 1989, in Norway, a man named Bredo Morstøl

passes away in his sleep.

Bredo is a much beloved father and grandfather.

And in fact, his grandson, Trygve Bauge,

wants to find a way to truly commemorate his grandfather.

Now, Bredo's grandson, who lives in Colorado,

also happens to have a bit of a fascination

with something known as life extension.

- [Dan] So he decides the best way

to extend his grandfather's legacy is to freeze him.

- This is a time when cryonics,

which is freezing the human body to preserve it,

is more and more in the public eye.

There are a handful of companies that do this.

Of course, at some point in the future,

the frozen bodies might be able to be brought back to life.

And Trygve is really into this idea.

- Trygve travels to Norway, takes his grandfather's body,

puts it on a bed of dry ice,

and flies him to a cryonics lab in California,

where the body is then frozen with liquid nitrogen

for three years.

- But Trygve has a plan

that does not involve it staying in California.

He actually wants to start

his own cryogenics company in Colorado.

- [Dan] Trygve decides to launch this venture

by moving Bredo's body

to a kind of improvised cryonics facility.

- Trygve's mother Aud has also moved to Colorado,

in this little tiny town of Nederland.

And they set up in her backyard a little shack,

with the intention that they will keep him there

until the science exists that they can wake him up.

[eerie music]

- This is slightly bit more low tech

than the cryonics facility in California.

It's basically packing his grandfather

in a metal sarcophagus with dry ice.

- All seems well until local town officials

pass an ordinance prohibiting keeping frozen dead guys

in your backyard.

Trygve is deported to Norway.

His mother Aud is permitted to remain in Colorado.

But what to do with grandpa's body?

- A local businessman steps up

and offers to build a new facility.

It's essentially still a shack,

but it is a place where she can continue

to preserve her father's body,

which miraculously is actually still frozen.

- [Dan] This story remains on ice until 2002,

when the Nederland Chamber of Commerce

is struggling to find a theme for their new spring festival.

- One resident brings up the story

of Mike the Headless Chicken.

- Mike was decapitated by a local farmer

but continued to live.

- And so the chicken ultimately is their main attraction.

So the officials in Nederland are starting to think,

okay, well what is our Mike the Headless Chicken?

And then they remember.

Oh, wait, we got a frozen dead guy in a shack in our town.

[upbeat music]

- Festival goers don't see Bredo's body,

but they can go and do tours of his shack,

and sometimes people even toast him with whiskey.

- What would Bredo think if he knew his frozen corpse

inspired such a bizarre pastime?

Maybe one day he'll tell us himself.

- Some pastimes may be strange, creepy,

or even hazardous to their participants,

but they pose no threat to the public at large,

unless it's the early 1990s

and you happen to be living in the town

of Golf Manor, Michigan.

[dramatic music]

- It's the early 1990s,

and you have a 17-year-old boy by the name of David Hahn,

who is ferociously working on a scientific experiment

in the shed in his parents' backyard.

- He wants to raise his ranks in the Boy Scouts

so he can become an Eagle Scout.

And this project is gonna help him do it.

- The problem here is David isn't your average kid,

and he's not doing your average experiment.

- [Dan] In fact,

David is definitely the only Boy Scout in America

who is attempting to build a nuclear reactor.

- This isn't some model nuclear reactor.

We are talking a real full-blown nuclear reactor.

[dramatic music]

- This all starts when the super smart Boy Scout

is 10 years old and his grandfather gives him

a 1960 children's publication

called "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments."

- This is a book that fascinates David to no end

because it's talking about a lot of chemicals

and experiments that are incredibly

dangerous to do at home. - But his family thinks it's a healthy

interest for such a highly intelligent kid.

He's only 10, but he starts reading

his father's college chemistry books with no problem

and doing his own experiments.

Now this becomes his favorite pastime,

pretty much to the exclusion of all else.

- When he chooses the Eagle Scout badge

that he's going after,

David doesn't pick photography or ice skating.

He chooses atomic energy.

- [Dan] By the age of 14, David has two clear goals,

make Eagle Scout and collect

every single element on the periodic table,

even the ones that are radioactive.

- So where does a kid in the '90s

collect a bunch of radioactive materials?

It turns out you can find radioactive materials

in a lot of everyday objects, things like smoke detectors,

and old clocks, gas camping lanterns, and even gun sites.

So David starts cobbling all these things together

in his parents' backyard shed and goes straight to work.

[apprehensive music]

- Now David may be incredibly smart,

but he's not terribly careful.

He used coffee filters and pickle jars

to handle radioactive materials.

He uses a very crude mask and improvised lead apron,

neither of which is very protective.

The experiments give him radiation burns,

turns his hair green at one point,

and even knocks him unconscious.

- [Dan] Despite the burns and close calls,

David's unconventional methods lead to a breakthrough

when he uses a clever ruse to gain crucial intel

from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

- He writes them, posing as a high school physics professor.

And they give him shockingly revealing information,

information that he's able to use

to solve some of the puzzle of how he can build

his nuclear reactor he's working on in his backyard shed.

- In 1994, amidst all of this,

David successfully creates a rudimentary nuclear reactor

that is held together by things like duct tape

and aluminum foil.

- David's creation is so successful

his Geiger counter gives him strong radioactive readings

five houses away.

Unfortunately, a chance encounter

is about to make his hobby front page news.

- One day, police are investigating reports

of a bunch of stolen and missing tires.

They see David parked on the street

and they decide to search his car.

[siren blaring]

When officers speak to him,

he warns them not to go touching the stuff in the back.

It's radioactive.

- [Dan] The discovery prompts local, state,

and federal authorities to descend on the area,

dismantle David's atomic shed,

and initiate an expensive cleanup.

- Eventually, they have to bring in the EPA

and they declare David's backyard a Superfund site.

[dramatic music]

The community does not suffer from David's experiments.

Luckily, disaster is averted.

- Although David never got to finish

building his reactor,

he did attain Eagle Scout rank

shortly after his lab was taken apart.

From putting ferrets down your pants

to tinkering with radiation and dolls,

these are the bizarre, dangerous,

and sometimes quite painful pastimes

that are truly unbelievable.