Split Screen: Thrill Seekers from the CBC

Would you go on a reality show if you didn’t know what it was about? Even if they promised you the adventure of a lifetime? In 2005, 12 people did just that. They answered an ad that read “Thrill Seekers wanted” and began auditioning for a show unlike any other in British television history. This week on Snap, we're featuring Split Screen: Thrill Seekers https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1426-split-screen-kid-nation, a new six part series that exposes how a TV show left contestants struggling to trust what’s actually real! Split Screen: Thrill Seekers is a co-production of Love + Radio https://loveandradio.org/ and Vespucci https://www.vespuccigroup.com/ for the CBC https://www.cbc.ca/. All six episodes are out now and available wherever you get your podcasts! This episode contains strong language, sensitive listeners please be advised. The series producer is Meera Kumar. The story editors are Thomas Curry and Steven Jackson. Thomas Curry is the managing producer. Audio mix and sound-design by Steven Jackson. Featured music from the RVNG catalog. Artwork by Anthony Campbell. The staff of CBC Podcasts are senior producer Kate Evans, coordinating producer Anna Ashitey, Senior Manager Tanya Springer and director Arif Noorani. The executive producers for Split Screen: Thrill Seekers are Chris Oke and Cesil Fernandes from the CBC, Matt Willis, Daniel Turcan and Johnny Galvin from Vespucci, and from Love + Radio, Nick van der Kolk. Guest Interviews: Louise Dekker, Ryan McBride, Steve Hester, Charlie Skelton. Season 15 - Episode 51 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  This message comes from Betterment. Dan Egan, VP of Behavioral Finance and Investing, explains how Betterment takes the time-consuming work out of smart investing.

• 0:17Speaker 01

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  Learn more at betterment.com. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. Betterment does not offer tax advice. TLH may not be suitable for all customers. Learn more at betterment.com/tlh-terms.

• 1:03Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so back in the day, I have a friend. Really a friend of a friend. She's super cute. She shoots me down a couple of times, but one day, out of the blue, she leaves a message talking about she has a big opportunity for me. Okay, I get her on the line, and now she's a junior assistant casting director. Right? Fancy. Says she has a role she thinks I'd be great for. A role? Act in Hollywood? For real, no doubt, I can act like crazy. Call me Danelle Denzel. Uh, she's like, "Well, not exactly acting. It's kind of a game show." A game show? "But not in a studio. And how good are you at camping?"

• 1:48Glynn Washington?

  "What?" "How far can you swim?" "Swim?" "Let me just send you the material, okay?" "Whatever."

• 1:57Glynn Washington?

  I get the packet and it's asking about allergies and how many pushups I can do. And would I eat a horse? Would I eat a dog? All this stuff. And it finishes with an arbitration agreement for me to sign in case of my severe injury or death. Nah, nah, son. I know some nonsense when I see it. So I throw that noise in the trash. Then a few months later, a new show comes out. It's called Survivor. And it changes the face of television. The granddaddy of reality shows. Everything from Big Brother to Amazing Race, The Bachelor, Housewives,

• 2:39Glynn Washington?

  even The Office and Modern Family, all come from this show. An opportunity I threw in the garbage. And even now, all these many years later, I'm not entirely sure if maybe I missed my big chance. Or maybe I dodged a bullet.

• 3:07Glynn Washington?

  Today on Snap Judgment, there'll be some folk who aren't sure either. Snap proudly presents Split Screen Thrill Seekers. I know it's Glynn Washington. In case there are any casting directors out there, I can act. At least when you're listening. The Snap Judgment.

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• 4:08Speaker 00

  This message comes from Betterment. Dan Egan, VP of Behavioral Finance and Investing, explains the benefits of automated dividend reinvestment.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  If you've ever invested, you probably have noticed that occasionally you get dividends. Your stock pays it out. You get that as cash in your account and it usually sits there until you remember that you're supposed to buy something else with it to reinvest it back. Automated dividend reinvestment makes that effortless and seamless. When dividends come into your account, we automatically reinvest available dividends, not necessarily into where they came from, but into whatever would serve your portfolio best. So automated dividend reinvestment keeps you invested and keeps your portfolio in balance.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Learn more about Betterment's dividend reinvestment methodology and other helpful investment tools at betterment.com. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed.

• 5:01Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name's Glynn Washington. Okay. So it's the early 2000s and TV producers release an ad promising to take 12 ordinary people on the adventure of a lifetime. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopeful participants agree, but in reality TV fashion, there is a catch. Cameras keep rolling and the audience knows a secret truth, but the contestants are kept in the dark. Split Screen Thrill Seekers is a six-part podcast from the CBC hosted by former snapper, Love and Radio's Nick Vanderkolk. The show dives into the twisted reality behind the multimillion dollar TV reality show industry.

• 5:46Glynn Washington?

  Snap proudly presents episode one of Split Screen Thrill Seekers entitled, Are You a Thrill Seeker? Snap Judgment.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome. Welcome to...

• 6:04Speaker 01

  How do you do it?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  First, you place a pretty fake ad in the press.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  So Louise, just to start things off, can you introduce yourself for me? And tell me about when you first saw the ad for the TV show?

• 6:23Speaker 06

  I'm Louise Dekker and I'm from Kent in the southeast of England. So I think I must have been living back at home after university. I definitely remember being at the computer in my mum and dad's house and

• 6:40Speaker 07

  Thrill seekers wanted. Are you missing out on life's great experiences? Is the British public missing out on you?

• 6:48Speaker 06

  I think it was an email or maybe a Star Now type thing.

• 6:52Speaker 07

  You need the personality to win over a nation, the determination to succeed and more balls than you can ever imagine.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  It said, do you want to go on an adventure and do something that's really exciting that hasn't been done before?

• 7:05Speaker 07

  We're launching a new TV show and we're looking for contestants to go on the adventure of a lifetime.

• 7:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was absolutely super duper vague.

• 7:14Speaker 07

  It's time to stand out from the crowd.

• 7:16Speaker 06

  My brain went off to doing some sort of exploration, canoeing up the Nile or climbing Mount Everest.

• 7:23Speaker 07

  If you're up for a challenge, then get in touch.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  I was a PE teacher at the time. I never wanted to be a PE teacher, so I kind of fell into the PE teacher role, which is something my dad did. So I think I was still looking for outlets of other things to try and do at the time. That seemed quite appealing and I clearly recall sitting there and looking at that email and thinking I'd like to do that.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  I mean, I've, I've never been to Kent, but it sounds like whatever this ad is promising is going to be pretty different from your life there. Is, is that right?

• 7:53Speaker 06

  Yes, a hundred percent.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  So the concept was, are you a thrill seeker? And what will you do in pursuit of the thrill? And we were asking, so what is the thrill? Can you, can you give us more detail? And they said, no, that's, that's it. So if you want to be on the show, stop asking that question and get on with the additions.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  And Ryan, remind me, this is like the mid 2000s and you were, I think around 28 at the time, still working on the railways? Yeah. Did you get an email, just like Luis did? I was lucky, it was just fortune. I did a few TV ads, done one for Burger King, I'd done a few other ones. And then the Channel 4 in Dammel contacted me and said, do you want to go on this game show? And yeah, I was like, yes, yes, let's do it. What do I need to do?

• 8:47Speaker 06

  I just remember being called to an audition in the centre of London by a really famous tall statue, a really tall, skinny one, like Nelson's column perhaps? I can't remember what the statue was, but I loved it. I've always been super, super competitive, competitive in everything and anything I do, which is very annoying. And it's such a bad character flaw that I have. And it was at that point, I started to wonder how some people had got that far. Because Steve, for example, I didn't understand why they would pick someone like Steve to go on an adventure.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  Oh, it's horrible. I guess I'm such a horrible person.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  I am Steve Hester. I have no artistic integrity whatsoever and will do anything for money.

• 9:29Speaker 06

  He couldn't cope with anything. He moaned about everything.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  I was about 25 when I got that first call. And I was very immature for being in my mid twenties. So did you have any like special tricks up your sleeve to stand out?

• 9:44Speaker 05

  They said they wanted to see some kind of improvisational thing. So I go down there and I had my guitar and then sat in the waiting room and no idea what was going on in the auditorium. And then they made me go through the usual rigmarole that you do in an audition. Oh, tell us who you are, where you're from. Okay, you've got a guitar. What if you've got a guitar? One, two, one, two, three, four.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  And I'd come up with this stupid song about a lemming.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  That that was pretending to be gay in order to get out of paying child support for his billions of lemming children.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  And so I played that for them. It was a terrible song. It was absolutely awful.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  And then they said, okay, that's brilliant.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  Fantastic.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  Okay, so what I want you to do is pick a card off this board, this big notice board. And I picked one off and it was the the first landing on Mars. So I then did this whole improvisational routine about landing on the surface. I do this, I do this kind of like noise of a ship landing, which is like.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  And then they said, okay, yeah, thank you.

• 11:26Speaker 07

  My name is Charlie Skelton. I'm a comedy writer and occasional journalist. It's a strange time for TV, I think, because we just missed all of the drugs. The massive coke explosion in British TV had just finished. Now, I don't think I ever saw a single line of cocaine in my time in British TV, which is, uh, dates it, I think, interestingly. I probably started on Eight Out of Ten Cats as a writer, which is a Jimmy Carr panel show.

• 12:01Speaker 07

  Stuff like that. But, you know, I was good friends with these people. So then they called me into some cryptic meeting at one point, a very peculiar meeting. For a start, I didn't really have meetings with these people. I would go out for a drink with them. So it was slightly weirdly formal and they were really shifty and they'd occasionally sort of disappear to the back of the room and have a whispered conversation. What is going on? What you do? And they wouldn't tell me anything about what the thing was. So they actually said to me, it was a bizarre situation.

• 12:26Speaker 06

  They said, we want you to sign up to this thing, but we can't tell you what it is. And I said, well, obviously I can't do that. I might be, I don't know, selling you my kidney. I don't know what it is. So they headed off to the back of the room again for another huddle and muttered a few things. And they said, okay, we can tell you some things about it.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  When did you first meet the other contestants? Like, what was that like?

• 12:47Speaker 06

  Well, I suppose I met some of them during the the initial psychological, sort of psychometric shakedown thing. From the 100 interviewed, we invited 50, but for a day of psychological tests.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  The most advanced psychological tests and empirical scientific profiling techniques were used to weed out the wrong stuff from the right stuff.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  The first series of tests were at Monument. I remember the building being a white framed, window framed office block. The floor that we were on, I think it must have been like the third floor or something.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  So they crammed us all in the lift.

• 13:30Speaker 06

  And I think it was before we'd even signed in. I'm nervous. Have they told you anything about the conditions? And there's three or four of us in there. It's a cozy elevator.

• 13:39Speaker 05

  Not exactly cramped, but it was fairly full.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  And then just dropped us down a few floors and then dum.

• 13:50Speaker 06

  Did you feel that?

• 13:52Speaker 05

  Everything just stopped.

• 13:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe on the right floor. In those kind of situations, whenever anyone or someone's panicking, I kind of do the opposite. So if everyone had been calm, I might have been a bit more like, oh, gosh, are we going to be okay? I just remember saying, you should all bend your legs so that if the lift does suddenly hurtle to the ground, your legs don't shoot up through your torso and kill you. It's fine. They'll come and get us. They'll come and get us. I remember thinking it was quite funny. I said, it'll be fine. There's nothing's going to happen to us, for goodness sake. You know, there's a number down there. There's a bell. Let's ring that. Because I think, well, I used to think I was quite clever and knew everything, which of course I didn't. So. Okay, we need some. Ah, it's really hot.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  We're just gonna press it.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  So after they rescue you from the elevator, I think they took you to another abandoned floor with all these empty conference rooms. Yeah. Along with the other contestants. So what happened after that? So there were two tests that they took us on individually. First, they held up these cards and on these cards they had these random patterns and swirls.

• 14:59Speaker 07

  They showed me a picture of nothing. I think it was paint or like a messy paint picture. And I'm like, what do you see? And I was thinking to myself, I don't see anything, but I need to say something. I just made up some nonsense about, I said, oh, it reminds me of a photo that my mum keeps of her dad on the mantelpiece. And they're like, yeah, yeah. And it was just complete nonsense.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  And that was very similar with the other test, which was a jar full of these balls, eyeballs, all of different sizes. So you had big ones that were the size of a tennis ball and there were other ones that were about the size of a ping pong ball and they're all mixed in this jar together.

• 15:37Speaker 06

  We had to say how many balls are in there. And again, they would question us, do you really think it's that many? Or so and so said this, what do you think?

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Do you remember the producers asking you to do any other weird tests?

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Just dance around with headphones on, noise cancelling headphones and like a set of blacked out goggles. So you couldn't see, you couldn't hear. And we just got told, dance. Just think of some music in your head and then just dance to it.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  No, no music at all? Yes. How did you find that?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  At that point, I'm really wildly outside my comfort zone. I just crushed all of my normal feelings down into a deep corner and got on with it.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  What was the purpose of these tests? Did they, did they tell you anything? I didn't know what the tests were for. I had no idea what the show was. Was at this point, I had no idea about anything.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  So we knew it was for a TV show that we'd be taking on an adventure. And that I would need a certain amount of time off work. I can't even remember if they told us how much time we would need off work. I know they said that it would be paid. Like if we were on jury service, my head teacher was like, she thought it would be brilliant. And I think she thought she could use me as a means to advertise the school for something positive I was doing. Cause if you'd had a teacher climb up Mount Everest, that would be quite cool, wouldn't it? But um, yeah, I still didn't know what we were doing.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  If you don't know anything, how do you know what kind of person they want for the show? Like, what's, what's going through your head? So I noticed a few people at the auditions. Running around like, look at how crazy I am and doing like really crazy stuff. I sort of picked up on the vibe that they weren't really looking for that. They were just looking for normal people. I just decided to be myself and not splash around like a TV addicted lunatic.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  I met a guy at the auditions. I was looking over him and I'm like, he stinks of booze. Sitting there, he's got his hands on his head and he was a mess. And I'm like, what are you doing here? And he's like, oh, I got an offer to come and do this show. I'm like, have you heard anything about it? What is it? He's like, I don't know anything about it. He's like, I'm, I'm really tired. I was out last night. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. It's like Wednesday. And he's like, I've not been to bed. I thought, oh, that's interesting. I quite like the sound of that guy. It turns out he's like royalty. He's related to the Queen. He's a very wealthy individual. His family are beyond wealthy. He was like a party boy. He's like a socialite.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  That's when I started to realise, all these people have got successful lives, but they want, they want more. And I found that fascinating.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  And then after that, they said, okay, thank you very much.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I wasn't expecting then to get another call.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I remember I was standing in Stockport Town Centre and there's this big glass shopping centre in Stockport. And then there's a little plazery bit in front of one of the doors with a road going through where the buses go through to the station. And I was just walking out of there and I got the phone call.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  My agent says.

• 18:51Speaker 06

  Are you free to talk?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm I'm free.

• 18:54Speaker 06

  Okay, right, right, right. Because I've got some really big news for you. People from Channel Four want to book you for this show, but there is this whole veil of secrecy across it. And I'm going to be sending you over a non-disclosure agreement. You need to be signing this non-disclosure agreement. You cannot do this without saying that you are not going to tell a single living soul about what is going to go on, not even your parents, not even your girlfriend. You can't tell anybody. And I thought, what the hell am I getting myself into here?

• 19:39Glynn Washington?

  More thrills after the break. Stay tuned.

• 19:49Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. Listening to the split screen thrill secrets episode from last we left. Twelve people auditioning for a reality TV show to be taken on an unknown adventure. An adventure of a lifetime.

• 20:05Glynn Washington?

  Snap Judgment.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  Okay, so you've done these auditions at Monument in London and you get a call back. Tell me about the next set of auditions.

• 20:16Speaker 06

  We did like lots of outdoor ed kind of adventurous stuff. Survivor or something like that was on the television at the time where they had to exist on the island. So this is what I'm thinking we're going to be doing. And at this point, my heart sank.

• 20:32Speaker 06

  I'm not an outdoorsy person. I'm I'm what we would describe as a rotund gentleman. The only thing which gets any kind of workout is my thumbs and my mouth. But I was there thinking, oh, my God.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  This could be the kickstart of my career. This was gonna be kind of Big Brother level production in my head. I can't say no to this. All these thoughts were going through my head a million miles an hour.

• 21:00Speaker 05

  Did anyone stand out to you at the auditions other than Steve?

• 21:03Speaker 06

  I think I remember seeing Ryan because you can't really miss him with all his hair.

• 21:08Speaker 07

  We went to the Lake District, which is about 400 miles north of London. Countryside basically with lakes. It's a really beautiful place that time forgot. The audition was big at that stage. There was maybe 50 odd people, all the media staff, cameramen. It was huge. We took over this big hotel, big jet, beautiful hotel. Like a castle, I suppose. Beautiful place. And we camped out, we went on walks, they made us do activities, we did like team bonding.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  There was abseiling.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Abseiling down a 90 foot sheer rock face.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Which terrified the living stuff out of me. I don't think I've been scared in a very, very long time. The rope was slippy, I couldn't get a grip on the wall, so that was like about, I don't know, maybe 20 seconds of sheer terror.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Ryan's off.

• 22:02Glynn Washington?

  I was terrified up top and then once I got going, it was really thrilling. And then I got a bit bold towards the end.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Nice moves, Ryan, but Louise impressed the instructors more.

• 22:16Glynn Washington?

  Great, well done, well done. She said she'd never done that before, but I'm not quite sure.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  What on Lou, that's well done, that's the best so far. I'm actually really scared of heights. I hadn't told them I was scared of heights, but I did it anyway. And I said something really silly when I got down that I'm not going to repeat because I'm very embarrassed of it.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Peasy peasy, really easy peasy.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, the rest of the group had an even greater test of their fear.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Then some daredevil stuff.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  A 30 foot bridge jump.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  We came to a bridge and they stopped us all at the bridge and we were waiting like to cross the road like children. And they're like, we're not crossing the road, everyone jump in the river right now.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  Many people would quite happily do that during the height of summer. This was not the height of summer. This was the middle of winter in Cumbria.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Wow. So we're queuing up to jump in the river and everyone's doing it.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Some people are more enthusiastic than others. I remember running up this jetty, thinking, what am I doing? This is absurd.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  It was like just being hit, punched as hard as you can imagine in the chest. It was absolutely terrifying. That water was icy cold to the point that I honestly felt like I needed to get hold of a spoon to get my testicles out. And I remember coming up and going, well, that's it. I can't, I'm going to die. I can't get back to the shore. There's simply no way I can swim back to the shore. The moment that your head came up out of the water, you were immediately gasping for breath. Not because you needed to actually breathe, but because it had just knocked all the air out of you. I've, I've killed myself for these [bleep] who aren't paying me enough for this [bleep].

• 24:05Speaker 03

  That was a, a, a real show of character as well. I think that was where they started to cross people off. Come on, Steve-O. Basically, they've all rushed up to the top, but I'm just absolutely shagged out. I'm just not used to this type of exercise at all. It's a bloody big mountain. So I'm just, uh, just gonna wait here. I wasn't taking part in some of the activities, like the kayaking. I was feeling so cold and so damp and withdrawn. I was hating every single moment of it. Steve struggles manfully on.

• 24:39Speaker 06

  Remember me for the bastards. He moaned about everything. He whinged about everything. We walked for five minutes. He'd be tired and his legs would hurt. He felt ill all the time. He was hot and sweaty. He couldn't breathe. Just everything he could think of. I didn't know how he could manage to live, let alone do anything physical.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  What did you hate the most? They blindfolded each of us in this wood and we had to hold on to the hand of the person in front. And we had no idea where we were going and we got to a tunnel. And I was aware of the tunnel at first because I could hear people getting down and scrabbling on their knees and someone that was nearby going, okay, you need to lie down here and move yourself forward. And I was, I'm still, I still am fairly a big chap, but I was big back then.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I was terrified that I was gonna get stuck. Being trapped in a really, really tight, enclosed, concrete tunnel.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Where you can feel everything squishing your shoulders in with no actual way out of it. By the time I came out, I think I was having another, one of those adrenaline hits and it really wasn't pleasant. I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I don't like those kind of things.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I would say it was enjoyable. It was just like, oh my god, it's really raining heavy. I'm happy for this audition to end. And like, we didn't know what was ahead of us, but we all wanted to be there. I mean, if they said to me, there's seven auditions instead of three, I would have done all seven, just to be around that atmosphere.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  After that second round auditions where we'd went away for the outdoor ed thing, I got an email to say I was gonna get picked up by a car at something like four o'clock in the morning.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  I remember it was a really cold, foggy, misty morning. My mum was horrified that she had to put me in this car with somebody that we didn't know who it was and I didn't know where I was going. I had to have my passport. I had to have two suitcases, a hot suitcase and a cold suitcase. This car was gonna pick me up with a chauffeur and take us to the airport and I was gonna meet somebody at the airport. And I remember getting to the airport and I met one of the runners and she told me the flight number and let me look on the board. She said, we're going to the Maldives. I went, oh, so you're not excited? I don't know where the Maldives are.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  And then she explained.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  They flew each person with a chaperone all around the world. Some people in Texas, some people in Rio, some people in Thailand, India.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  So still at this point, I didn't know if we were in the TV show yet, but I knew I was going to the Maldives. And she took my phone, my watch and everything off me from that moment. Then we spent a lovely five days, I think, in the Maldives. It was amazing.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  One minute we're in Heathrow and I thought, is this, is this the show? Has the show begun? And they're like, no, it's not. This is the final audition. Get on that plane, don't ask any questions. So I did, we did, me and my chaperone. He was really frank with me. He's like, just don't ask me those questions. And I'm like, all right, cool. I won't ask you them. Let's just go on with it. What do we do? He's like, we've got unlimited money. I was in Mauritius. We're going to have a good time. And we stayed in a five star resort. And I'm like, wow, this is crazy. It was like being Rod Stewart for the day. We just had five star treatment. Everywhere was amazing. And that was before the show. So it really sparked our curiosity, you know, and our imagination, like, what can this show be?

• 28:26Speaker 06

  And then on our return, I remember seeing some other people on the plane on our return, on our way out. And hearing bits and pieces of conversations and realising there was other people from the show there. So I thought maybe I was in at this point, but then I could hear lots of other people and I wasn't sure. And then.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  We all met up in Charles de Gaulle Airport, I think, at Paris. We all flew in from wherever we were. And everyone's like, where have you been? He's like, Texas. I've been to Mumbai. And everyone had the same experience. They're all chatting about how amazing it was. So.

• 28:59Speaker 06

  Oh, I can't remember. We ended up going to some hotel, being locked in some hotel for two days straight as well. And we still didn't have a phone and we still didn't have a watch or anything.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Two days of absolute tedium and boredom pacing around just this hotel room. And then eventually we get a call.

• 29:19Speaker 06

  We got called down to this big room. So I think in all, I'm probably in a good place here. I've been away for a whole week and they must be wanting to keep me on. And when we went down to this big room, I remember seeing loads of people and thinking, oh God, my heart sank. I mustn't be in. There's so many people here, including Steve. Then from that big room, we then got taken on a coach with all the curtains closed.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  No one had slept for over a day, maybe two days, some people. So we were all like. Really exhausted and running on adrenaline. And then they took us to Beggins Hill Airport. They lined us up in two groups and they said, 12 a year go through that door and 12 a year it'll go through that other door. One is the bus home and the other one is the beginning of the show and that means you're chosen.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  There were such big characters in the other half and they were talking about how they'd been on the trials for Big Brother and things. So I thought, oh my gosh, you know, I'm just playing old Louise, they're not going to pick me. And again, I was stuck in a room with Steve, so I thought I mustn't be in this group. I can't be, if he's in this, there's no way I'm in because there's no way they would pick him.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  Ryan, what were you thinking at this point?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  We were all like, ah, all going a bit crazy at that point. Most of the beautiful girls, they were in the opposite team as well. And I was like, hmm, I thought they would choose beautiful girls, but they're all on a different team from me. I thought, oh, maybe I'm not going to get on. But another, he'll handsome guy, I call him, like, he looks like Superman, Billy, Billy Jackson. He was in my team. I thought he's definitely getting on, young, handsome, charismatic TV guy, right? And then they just came in with a clipboard and everything and went, okay, want the following people to go with us. Ryan, Billy, Kerry, Astrid, Steve, Charlie. And then they took us out one by one onto the tarmac.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And the cameras were rolling, we were like, oh, wow, it's really happening. And it was at that point, standing right next to a private plane. Ramp came down, Johnny Vaughan appeared at the top. All right, gang.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  That was a real gotcha moment because we, we still didn't know what was going on. And then when you, when you see the cameras and you see the microphones and they're like, we're live, it's like, whoa, it's really happening, it just all comes in.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Back in June, you know, you all applied for a show called Thrill Seekers. Throughout the last five months, you've had no idea what that show.

• 31:52Speaker 07

  Show was, correct. Absolutely no idea whatsoever, okay. Now, you were promised a challenge and the ultimate thrill. That's what you were promised, yeah?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  You're trying to compute it all, you're like, what is it, can't we see it on a bit? And uh.

• 32:06Speaker 07

  Listen very carefully, I'm now gonna give you the big picture.

• 32:11Speaker 06

  I remember telling everyone to be quiet because I couldn't hear what he was saying, I'm so bossy. You know, be quiet, be quiet, I need to hear what he's saying.

• 32:17Speaker 07

  You are about to become.

• 32:19Speaker 06

  And I, I, I don't think I quite processed what was, he was saying.

• 32:24Speaker 07

  The very first televised British space tour.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  It's like, two, two things going on at the one time, so it was quite hard to put it all into perspective. We were ha- really happy, oh, we're on the show, what is the show? You're going to space, it's like, oh, that's too much. So it was just, it was extreme excitement and everyone was high as a kite.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Everyone else is jumping around being silly and hugging and, and I look bewildered almost. I don't think, I quite understand what's going on.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  God knows what I did in those, in those few moments. But uh, yeah, just I was, I was in my happy place at that point. As I tried to go whoop and click my heels and punch the air and high five everyone and hug and all of that.

• 33:15Speaker 07

  This plane here, it will take you to Russia. Once there, you will undergo three weeks of intensive astronaut training with Star, the space tourism agency of Russia. You may have seen when billionaires go up into space, they're the boys they use. At the end of your training, a lucky few of you, a lucky few, the best of the best, will be sent into orbit. But you don't have to. I'm gonna give you one minute now, really think very carefully about this.

• 33:52Speaker 06

  I'm not really sure I actually want to go to space. I don't love space. They just had that horrible thing happen to one of the space missions not that long before then, I'm pretty sure. My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. Communications with Columbia were lost at about 8:00 AM Central Time. We did not copy your last. Roger.

• 34:21Speaker 06

  A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas. I heard the big, huge sonic boom and it shook her whole windows of her door.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  In 42 years of human spaceflight, NASA has never lost a space crew during a landing or a ride back into orbit. As you remember, of course, in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  I remember watching live the Challenger exploding in the sky. We have main engine start, four, three, two, one, and liftoff. Liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I think it was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon or something like that. It was a beautiful day, but we're watching this amazing event. Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. And live on TV, you know, just like an explosion. Obviously a major malfunction. The whole thing was like shocking, oh, you know, it was like a cloak, the camera panned right in on it and just went. The rocket speeding the shuttle at 2,000 miles an hour exploded. The seven crew members, five men and two women were all killed. They included the first ordinary citizen to go into space, a teacher called Krista McAuliffe. It was just a tragedy, you know, like they look at the heroes going up to the space station, the poor teacher, she's the first civilian. That's one of my first memories.

• 35:54Speaker 06

  I remember that being back in my head and being terrified of something like that as well. So I think I was a little less excited than everybody else. Also, I'm not a huggy, clappy person like that anyway.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  And I had done my research before the show. I knew the company name. I knew it was Endomol and Zepetron was the smaller company. So I had researched and Googled as much as I could about Zepetron and I knew they were a comedy company. So I was then really thinking, well, what's this? Why is this comedy? What? I don't understand. Maybe they're going a different route or something. So I remember questioning things a bit more, probably because I was terrified about the whole space thing.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  What scared you about it?

• 36:38Speaker 06

  Um, I didn't want something horrible to happen to me. I didn't want to die. That's basically all I was thinking. I didn't want to die.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  So why'd you go ahead with it then?

• 36:49Speaker 06

  Because I'm stupidly competitive. It's so annoying. The competition, wanting to do well and want to please other people. That's the reason why I went ahead with it.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Okay, you may now board your plane and off you go. And then he kind of stepped to one side and invited us all aboard the plane. And I was actually the first one to go up the stairs because I was the one closest to the aircraft. I just remember standing at the top of the stairs, turning around and kind of just shouting with my hands in the air. We're going to space, baby! Oh God, I look like such an idiot.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  That's it for this episode of Thrill Seekers. It featured the voices of Louise Dekker.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  I've always been super, super competitive in everything and anything I do, which is very annoying.

• 37:50Speaker 05

  Ryan McBride. It was like being Rod Stewart for the day. We just had five-star treatment everywhere. Steve Hester.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  The only thing which gets any kind of workout is my thumbs and my mouth.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  And Charlie Skelton. I've killed myself for these [BLEEP] who aren't paying me enough for this.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Split Screen: Thrill Seekers is a co-production of Love and Radio and Vespucci for CBC. The series producer is Meera Kumar. The story editors are Thomas Curry and Stephen Jackson. Thomas Curry is the managing producer. Audio mix and sound design by Stephen Jackson. We featured music from the catalogue of Revenge, the finest independent record label on this or any other planet. The staff of CBC Podcasts are senior producer Kate Evans, coordinating producer Anna Asherty, senior manager Tanya Springer, and director Arif Noorani. The executive producers are Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez from the CBC, Matt Willis,

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Daniel Turcan, and Johnny Galvin from Vespucci, and from Love and Radio, myself. I'm Nick Vanderkolk. Thanks for listening.

• 39:02Glynn Washington?

  That was episode one of Split Screen: Thrill Seekers from the CBC. The show, hosted by snapper Nick Vanderkolk, is available right now wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, yes, if you missed even a moment, know the Snap Judgment Storytelling Podcast awaits your ears each and every week, snapjudgment.org. But this is not just a show. It's a movement. Empathy, soul, heart. Walk the Shadowlands with our evil twin podcast, Spooked, about the things that go bump in the night. Or you can hear amazing tales from the Askin

• 39:45Glynn Washington?

  Continent for Mind Your Own with Rapida Nyongo. All available wherever you get your podcasts. KQED is Snap Judgment's San Francisco Orbiting Hall of Justice. You are the keeper of Snap's eternal flame, and this is not the news. No ways it's the news. In fact, you get on a reality show, and in a fit of mad desperation and hunger, you could eat fistfuls of nasty, creepy crawleys from inside a rotten log because the producers missed the shot. They can tell you to do it again and again. And again. And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.