0:01

Hey, my past it listeners.

We’ve got a brand new episode coming up next week but in the meantime I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts called heavyweight.

I don’t like to be pretentious about people’s podcast choices, but when someone tells me they listen to heavy weight, I’m like, oh okay, so you’re cool.

0:21

Got it, you’ve got taste, you’ve got discernment.

Well, lucky for us.

Heavy weight is back with a brand new season.

So I called up host Jonathan Goldstein to hear more about what they have cooking up.

Welcome.

0:37

Hi it.

Hello.

Yeah.

I try to give options.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Where are you calling from right now?

By the way, I’m in Minnesota.

Well, I’m specifically, I’m in my closet in my basement, but I’m in Minnesota.

Oh, you’ve got such lovely floral wallpaper in your basement closet.

0:57

Thank you.

So, you know, I could try to tell the audience about heavyweight, but I think you would do a much better job than I could.

I was hoping you were gonna do it.

I was so relieved for a moment.

Just passing the ball here for those who aren’t familiar, how would you describe your show?

1:16

Well, broadly, it involves me returning with a guest on the show to some moment in their life that they are still troubled by.

I liken it to therapy.

But the way that we do it is we actually we actually go back to kind of the scene of the crime and we did an episode where My friend Gregor wanted to get his CDs back from the fame, Miss techno music in Moby.

1:45

So we went knocking on Mobis, door in ela, the Mobi got the Gregor will be episode was one of my favorites.

Yeah.

There’s a wonderful level of pettiness that Gregor is capable of that I admire.

Yeah, you know, something that I love about heavyweight is you weave a lot of personal stories?

2:02

A lot of moments from your own life.

I’m curious how How do you sort of put yourself into these stories while still, you know, also giving the stage to the people that you’re working with.

Yeah, I think well, I guess in the beginning because there was a lack of stories I guess and I think in the better episodes I we get the mix right where there’s not too much Goldstein.

2:23

But just enough Goldstein the kind of 2011 the broth I don’t know.

I don’t cook.

Is that a thing?

Leavening the broth sweetening The Swinging the broth sounds gross, I don’t know.

What leavening is exactly.

But yeah, I want to talk about this episode that we’re going to play which is Kenny.

2:44

This one’s a little bit different.

So yeah.

Could you tell me who is Kenny and what is the heavyweight that you are attempting to help with?

So Kenny the episode is called Kenny, right?

Yeah, I should know that.

So the main character is Ken, Carter who goes by the moniker the Mad Canadian.

3:03

He was a daredevil who wanted to outdo.

Ooh Evel, Knievel.

The Mad Canadian was going to do a jump over the st.

Lawrence River from Canada into America and the distance was a mile Ken.

Carter never actually makes the jump on the day that he’s intending to make the jump off, this monstrous ramp his understudy.

3:27

This guy named Kenny Powers jumps behind the wheel.

And it’s /, the moment decision decides that he’s going to make the jump.

I’ll just say that, it doesn’t go great.

Yeah, it’s a wild story.

What can you tell us about this new season of heavyweight?

3:44

What can people look forward to?

We have episodes about, doppelgangers mistaken identities.

Love stories.

Shenanigans we have someone who is looking to break a 500-year old curse that has brought Misfortune to their family for years and years and it takes It’s all the way to the Vatican.

4:06

Sounds like no shortage of drama.

Yeah, we’re about to play number 13.

Kenny any final final words before we send our listeners off buckle up.

Put on your safety helmet.

4:22

All right, here’s Kenny.

Hello.

I have a medical related question.

Okay you know my toe ring I think I think maybe I’m already done.

4:38

Yes I do have a toe ring.

You’ve never had a Terrain.

When is the last time you saw my bare feet three years ago since then?

I’ve gotten a toe ring.

Why I was drunk?

Some people get tattoos.

I don’t like painting up each other.

I can’t get it off my toe.

4:59

It really is.

Don’t give up.

Did you not take a Hippocratic Oath, son.

Find I know.

Bye.

I just hung up on myself.

Or is it hanged up from gimlet media?

5:23

I’m Jonathan Goldstein, and this is heavyweight today’s episode.

Kenny.

5:42

Like most when I hear the words tale of betrayal, I think of Judah snarking on Jesus, Brutus icing, Julius Satan cocking, the Lord.

But recently I heard a story of treachery that not only ranks among those, it might surpass them.

6:00

Well, those stories merely have Devil’s.

This one has something far better Daredevils.

This story of betrayal takes place in the 1970s a time when brave men and women mounted motorcycles or got behind the wheels of cars to jump anything in their field of vision.

6:21

Barrels, Chuck Wagons cement mixers stag meyerbeer trucks, pits of rattlesnakes and dens of mountain lions.

This was a time when jumping a shark didn’t mean Jumping the Shark, it was a time when daredeviling was not only a viable career path.

6:37

It was something your parents.

Could be proud of.

I grew up in the 1970s in a neighborhood.

Fully infected with Daredevil fever.

The older kids would lay us, younger kids down on the sidewalk and jump us with their bicycles.

6:56

All of us from the older kids with bath towels tied to their necks, like capes to us, younger kids, with tire tracks across our backs.

We all wanted to be Daredevils and the Daredevil we most wanted to be was Evel, Knievel.

We ate from Evel, Knievel, lunch, pails and played with Evel, Knievel dolls Evel.

7:21

Knievel was Elvis Captain America and Liberace all rolled into one.

It seemed like everyone in the world wanted to be Evel, Knievel?

7:39

But there was one man who wanted more than that, he wanted to surpass.

Evel.

Knievel altogether that man’s name was Ken.

Carter, aka the Mad Canadian before he was the Mad Canadian Ken was a grocery boy with a grade school education, his dream to beat Evel.

8:00

Knievel, at his own game is captured in a 1970s Canadian documentary called the devil at your heels.

The movie opens at a local Halifax racetrack, the crowds here to watch, Ken Carter, jump, 18 cars, it’s nighttime and the crowd.

8:19

Cheers wildly as Ken Carter barrels towards a ramp in a souped-up.

Hardtop convertible.

Ken doesn’t make it instead.

He lands with a crash flat on top of the last car in line.

8:41

A man runs over to pool.

Ken from the car apart, I get up early, I get an ambulance crew arrives and while being carried out on a stretcher, can wave to his fans.

Okay, take me over to the paramedics.

Carry the stretcher over to a microphone.

8:57

And while lying injured on his back, Ken makes an announcement.

Believe me, we’ll be back here tomorrow night at 8:00.

Sharp will be back here tomorrow night, thank you very much, thank you.

Thank you.

Rub on a little Bengay, soak the Tutsis and epsom salts, and hit it again.

9:16

The next night for three nights every week, this is how Ken Carter makes his living, but he has plans to change all that Ken had been watching.

9:32

Even An evil on TV for years and he wanted what Knievel had adulation respect and a lot more money up.

Until this point, Knievel’s biggest stunt was over the Snake River.

Canyon a distance of one quarter mile, can Carter’s plan was to jump the st.

9:49

Lawrence River, a distance, 4 times that length, a full mile, By applying a little Canadian elbow, grease Ken Carter was going to drive a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental off, a ramp in Canada and land in the United States watching the movie as a Canadian.

10:13

The idea of flying through the air in a Lincoln Continental while, listening to Gordon Lightfoot on the 8-track player for one mile and landing in America without so much.

As a Canadian passport nor written attestation as to whether my rocket car contains fruits or vegetables.

10:31

Noble.

This is my dream.

I don’t care if I never jump again, but this time going to do, this is my dream.

Nobody ever jumped a car.

A mile.

That’s what I’m going to do.

But right from the jump, there are problems over and over a date for the Super Jump is set and over and over things go wrong.

10:54

The crew building the 10-story ram, Miss calculates, the measurements.

No can is deeply disappointed.

He was dialed into as he says he was dialed in to do it.

There’s unexpected rain, that turns the ram to Mud, The Crew tries to dry it off using a helicopter, you know, I’m just coming to the end of my rope on another occasion an hour.

11:14

Jump.

The crew decides to strike demanding, 27 thousand dollars in cash before going back to work.

I got a budget here fuel tanks, explode repeatedly, holy Christ man what are we doing?

This goes on for five years again and again and again the jump is cancelled over a million Canadian Dollars are spent investors back out and new investors are found.

11:43

Countless problems are related.

They’d doubts are assuaged.

Go taser Crone and go taser.

Shaved But then Ken’s luck turns ABC’s Wide World of Sports wants to are can super-jump on live television for its millions of viewers, before making the deal official, the network needs to send an inspector over to the jump site to report back on the stunts viability and the inspector they send is none other than Evel, Knievel once Evel.

12:30

Will gives it, the go-ahead ABC will Air the jump.

And once ABC, airs the jump Ken will become an international star and kids will play with mad Canadian action figures and carry mad.

Canadian lunchboxes reminds me of the canyon.

12:46

I’m a tires is rampant about another 30 feet people.

It should be noted that while Evel Knievel’s Sports, The Sideburns of an outlaw Ken.

Carter Sports, the goat a of an assistant professor.

And while Evel Knievel looks like a rough and tumble.

Humble movie.

Matinee Idol, can Carter at the moment, wearing a leather jacket and a gold chain around his turtleneck neck.

13:07

Looks like your best friends, weird.

Uncle in a turtleneck like a dangerous jump to me.

Boy.

You got no elevation.

You got no room for error.

Later, ABC airs, Knievel’s verdict.

13:22

He delivers it while seated, atop a bulldozer at the jump site.

I don’t think I’d attempt to try this stunt.

Thank the time and preparation has been put into it just much too.

Little.

This is maybe a daredevil stunts.

That might end all their denniston’s Evel.

13:45

Knievel, is essentially saying that if Ken goes through with this super jump, he’ll end up killing himself live on national television, and in doing.

So, completely ruin the daredeviling industry for everyone.

Ken sitting on his livingroom, couch watches as Evel.

14:02

Knievel tears up his dream on TV.

I’ve been saying it for years, I still believe.

He will Knievel second-best Daredevil in the world and I say that because I feel that I’m number one, but I also feel that if you don’t think in terms of when you do not win, ABC was out.

14:18

This was a blow but not a betrayal.

The actual betrayal was yet to come Without the promise of a live, televised event, Ken’s investors Dropout desperate, Ken turns to a group of Hollywood producers who offered to fund his super jump with the stipulation a safety net, if you will, they would distribute it as a pre-recorded special.

14:49

In this way, the whole huge event would take place without an audience, a traumatized, able blood.

Splash able, we want our money back, a bowl audience, which meant Ken’s dream of And stands filled with cheering crowds and tables selling Ken Carter onesies beer cozies and go take ohms would not come true.

15:09

All there’d be was a lonely ramp a small crew, some cameras and Ken.

Months of delays follow.

And finally, a new date for the Super Jump is set.

And once again it rains, but the new investors, don’t care about safety.

15:28

They have limited funds and just want to jump to happen.

The scene opens on the jump site.

We see the ramp a group of journalists, a man holding out a boom mic.

And then the camera moves in on a man, wearing a yellow jumpsuit and a cowboy hat.

15:45

All right, the lights are green.

Get ready and go.

I want to go the man in the yellow.

Jumpsuit is not Ken Carter, but he poses on the ramp and gives quotes to reporters about the jump.

He’s about to make always like the state of New York.

16:00

So I’m sure I hope they like me when I get there.

The man has the same boat as Ken Carter the same style of hair but he’s shorter younger and Brasher.

Alright guys, my advice to get off the ramp.

You don’t want to tire tracks on you as I watch it all unfold.

16:17

I Grow increasingly confused?

Where’s Ken Carter?

Had I missed something was some key scene.

Accidentally cut finally the voiceover informs us that this yellow suited man is Cam Carter’s long time under study.

16:33

Kenny Powers.

It turns out the investors had begun to suspect that Ken Carter had lost.

His nerve that some excuse was always going to pop up and he would never make the jump.

16:51

So they came up with a scheme, simply put ditch Ken, Carter and Place.

Kenny Powers behind the wheel of the rocket car.

Have him do the jump instead, but first, they had to get can out of the way, so they invited him to a fake business meeting at a hotel, an hour from the jump site with Ken Carter out of Picture Kenny Powers steps up and Kenny Powers really seems to be enjoying the attention countdown was too long.

17:19

I think it was too long 10 second countdown.

That’s all I need and I’m not ready in 10 seconds, I’ll never be ready and I’m gonna give it hell.

Kenny warns the people of America to get ready staring into the camera.

He instructs them to clear off their breakfast tables.

17:36

Because when he crashes down on their roofs, it might rattle the dishes.

Kenny Powers Gets behind the wheel of the rocket car.

The named Ken Carter emblazoned along its side and then the car blasts off.

17:56

Races up the ramp and is Airborne Let’s press pause here to consider what’s happening.

The idea of jumping, a mile in a rocket car is completely insane.

But as the car soars into the air, so sores my heart, it might only attest to what hopeful creatures.

18:16

We humans are, but in this moment as the car reaches top velocity, it seems that Kenny Powers that Humanity might maybe somehow possibly make it across, But of course, this isn’t to be almost immediately after leaving the ram.

18:39

The car plummets into the river debris flies parachutes, open.

Someone screams during his nine.

Second flight.

Kenny Powers.

Made it a total distance of five hundred and six feet for our Canadian listeners.

18:57

That’s a lot less than a mile.

Benjamin.

Because the car was built specifically for Ken Carter Kenny Powers was too short to reach the gas pedal.

19:15

So we never gained enough speed before leaving the ramp several members of the crew trudged through the water and pull Kenny Powers from the driver’s seat as though.

The spinal injury has yet to be invented.

They carry him from the river a top, their shoulders Bar Mitzvah boy style.

19:35

I’ll Kenny Powers says how later he’ll learn.

He’s broken eighth.

Vertebrae cracked three, ribs and fractured his wrist.

19:56

After the jump as Kenny Powers, lay bandaged up in a hospital bed.

The film’s director showed up outside.

Can Carter’s hotel room door to tell him what happened and what the hell you want?

But Ken already knows eventually can pulls him into the room.

20:16

While the camera crew remains in the hallway.

Recording audio through the hotel door.

We Fade to Black.

Then a title card appears on screen it reads.

20:34

One year later Ken is shown sitting at the base of the ramp he promises he’ll make the jump someday and that’s it.

The credits roll some song about the power of a man and his dream starts to play and the movie ends without ever addressing the craziest detail.

20:52

In this whole crazy story as it turns out Kenny Powers the man who hijacked Ken’s car and his lifelong.

Dream wasn’t just can Carter’s understudy.

Kenny Powers was Ken’s, best friend.

Ken Carter, and Kenny Powers have both since died.

21:14

So, I called Bob for che the film’s director, to see if I could find out more.

When I asked Bob, why can’t he would betray his friend?

Would ruin the dream.

Ken had spent so many years chasing, Bob mentions, a drinking problem and rumors that Kenny had gotten himself into some sort of trouble down in Florida and was desperate for a way to pay his legal fees for Bob.

21:37

The reason for this betrayal is as classic as they come money, The backers offered.

Kenny a lot of money to betray his friend and Kenny took it.

That’s just the kind of guy.

He was Bob, says someone who’d betray, the guy who’d been supporting him for 10 years, right?

21:54

At the last moment, after the movie wrapped, Bob, never spoke to Kenny Powers again, Kenny Powers.

He says, isn’t the kind of guy you want to keep in touch with.

After the jump Kenny Powers was effectively, run out of Canada.

22:10

One stuntman website even refers to him as quote, Judas in a cowboy hat and Ken Carter.

He went back to his old life of racetrack jumps about a year after the st.

Lawrence River, jump Ken Carter died attempting to jump a pond.

22:27

He never achieved the Legacy, he hungered after all, because of his supposed friend, Kenny Powers.

I watched the failed super jump over and over.

And I’m not the only one to be transfixed by it on YouTube that one scene from the movie which has been retitled destroyed and S Jet Car Daredevil has over a million hits.

22:56

Before that the jump was immortalized in the gruesome faces of death to a movie.

Composed of boxing, ring deaths and failed stunts.

Ken Carter had spent years training for his stunt meticulously planning out every Last Detail, as a professional stunt man.

23:13

Kenny Ours.

Had to have known the risk of just jumping behind the wheel, like he was dipping out for drive-thru chicken nuggets.

Even for all the money in the world, he had to have known that trying to fly a rocket car across a mile wide river with absolutely no training was a death mission.

23:37

In a bid to better understand the Daredevil psyche, I bravely jumped down a rabbit hole of Daredevil.

Subculture.

I watched stunt video after stunt video and even learned the distinction between daredeviling stunt Manning and thrill.

Mastering.

23:53

I read about important industry figures, like Spanky Spangler and Spanky jr.

Lucky Teeter, Calvin scarecrow, shirk Big, Ed Beckley, Jim crash Moreau, Stony Roberts, Daredevil Doug.

Clang, dr.

Danger, mr.

Dizzy.

Corey, the headache.

24:09

Howell froggy.

Jasper.

The clown.

Walt King Cove has bumps Willard risky.

Rick Crews.

Dug danger.

Earl the squirrel.

Nikki Mighty Aphrodite.

Make Burnett Don snake Prudhomme.

Levi, the Kamikaze, kid, Troutman, and Snooks, wensel.

24:25

It’s while watching my stunned videos, that CEO and gimlet media founder, Alex, blumberg, sneaks up behind my desk and asks what I’m doing.

Research I say pausing, a video of a flaming station wagon falling from a drawbridge.

24:42

I close the browser window and open up a Ted Talk on how to do business and Alex miles approvingly.

I know folks, you’re wondering, why do you allow Alex to walk all over?

You like this but I’ve got a wife and child now and podcasting into a chicken drumstick on a Canadian bread line is the last thing I need.

25:06

At home that night.

A one-room Coldwater flat with a screaming baby in a secondhand bassinet I continued my research and somewhere around 3 a.m.

I stumble upon a video, that defies explanation, North America, the Mad Canadian, and your Madness.

25:26

I guess that’s the way to call you.

Well, I’ll tell you what, you know, this video was shot.

Just a few months after the failed.

Super jump, and Ken, Carter is back to working racetrack.

X here he is being interviewed before his stunt.

Look at Evel, Knievel.

Look at guys, you’re like yourself as Heroes.

25:44

Would you wrap?

This is where I spot something.

Unbelievable strolling in the background.

Right behind can Carter is the man who betrayed him Kenny Powers Kenny stops turns to can and just watches him smiling and then he walks out of frame and is gone.

26:12

I rewind.

The moment several times to look at Evel, Knievel.

Look at guy, who look at Evel, Knievel, look at guys, who look at even I can’t even look at Geico and they are Kenny is as clear as day.

A warm smile on his face watching.

Ken Carter, admiringly by all measures Ken, Carter should have hated, Kenny Powers, should have been trying to hunt him down and beat him up, but there they were happily spending a day together at the speedway, a betrayal as Grand as the one.

26:40

We see at the end of the documentary isn’t the kind of thing you get over, especially not after a couple months.

And so I hopped down a new rabbit hole and search for whatever information I can find about Kenny Powers.

According to the internet can and Kenny remained friends after the jump, not only that.

27:02

But to quote, the internet, Kenny Powers carried around an eight-by-ten, photograph of Ken, Carter taking it everywhere, he went right up until the very end of his life.

Why would Kenny Powers carry around a photograph of Ken Carter, the man he betrayed, I promise to answer this question and possibly other questions.

27:25

If you promise to patiently, sit through these messages from our sponsors, Steve.

27:44

Yeah to help make sense of Canon Kenny’s relationship.

I reach out to Steve be lock, Steve knew Ken Carter and Kenny Powers from the very beginning for years.

He spent countless hours with them on the road.

You’re in your car right now, it’s all hands-free, so I’m good.

28:03

Steve also toured in the Mad Canadian stunt show as a mechanic back then he went by the nickname super Ranch named after I, Assume the tool that professional mechanics use and not the feeling of sadness caused by a painful parting because I had limited time for our phone call and wasn’t looking for drama absolutes.

28:24

That was just me.

Who can for the first two years going around the country jumping Raptor ramp and He was he he was stubborn, he was fair, but he was stubborn.

Steve proceeds to pull back the curtain on the version of Ken Carter.

28:42

We see in the movie according to Steve, he put a lot of pressure on his crew often.

Requiring everyone to sleep in the same school buses they jumped over.

He aggressively book shows miles apart and while his team was forced to dry for days on end, Ken would fly ahead arriving at the events in a helicopter.

29:02

But in spite The cushy travel arrangements and is mr.

Macho Man, image things were getting tougher for Ken, he was only in his late 30s but in Daredevil years, Ken was old his bones, more brittle with each passing year 10 fractured his ankle, several several times.

29:20

That’s why I walk funny.

One jump in Tulsa he landed past the ramp and Split his sternum into when it hits a serum column.

When Ken was really Hurtin is when Kenny Powers would step in.

29:44

When Kenny Powers join the show.

He was a young guy in his 20s.

So with Ken, spent more and more time, laid up with injuries.

Kennywood step in to perform for him to the point where he was doing more jumps than Ken, but still getting none of the credit I wondered.

29:59

If on the day that Kenny got behind the wheel of that rocket car, he saw it as a chance to emerge from Ken Shadow and show the world that he was the better stuntman because Steve says, even when Ken was in top form for a stuntman, he was Only cowardly Chen Carter was never really into speed.

30:20

Okay, he did not like going fast.

Yeah, you know, there’s a scene in the, in the documentary where he’s taken into that rocket car for the first time and when he steps out of the car, you could see that he kind of has his is his stomach is just in his throat.

30:41

He probably had to change his underwear.

I don’t know if you can say that on radio but Lucky for us, we’re not on the radio.

We are on a podcast and so we could do all the cussing and fussing, we like butter, tart Lake and sugar crotch Kickin spam dagger, dorkin’s quacker pupu platter with a heinous, that’s right.

31:03

Rhymes with heinous, case of the trots, that’s just a few of the things I can say, here at gimlet media.

Probably should his pants.

Tell you the truth, he, he was scared.

I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind.

Even when we were in the ramp truck together, he did not want me driving over the speed limit whatsoever.

31:24

He just did not like to go fast.

You’d think that a need for only the legally, acceptable amount of speed would be a liability for a daredevil, not only that, but according to Steve Ken was even scared of water.

31:41

He never learned to swim.

So driving off a ramp and almost 300 miles per hour.

Over a deep fast-moving River, seemed like an odd career move.

I don’t think Carter had the cojones to do it.

So you think that that Kenny Powers had had had more cojones, I do.

32:08

Steve says that Ken Carter was never going to attempt that jump, that it was all an act, nothing more than Showmanship.

I can’t believe any other way.

Only because of being in the same hotel room with Ken Carter for three and a half years, knowing the promoting that he did knowing him as well as I did.

32:30

I just don’t think it was his intention to get into that Lincoln.

I don’t think it was According to Steve, Ken, must have asked, Kenny to do the jump for him, knowing that Kenny would do whatever Ken told him to just like, he always did.

32:47

So, to my question of, how is it possible that Ken, and Kenny, made up and became friends again, Steve’s answer is simple.

They were never not friends in the first place and I can just see the conversation going on.

Ken standing there going.

33:04

Kenny, you’re going to sit in that seat.

Do you think you can do it and Kenny saying yes, I think I can and I truly believe that Kenny Powers did this just out of the love of his heart for Ken.

33:23

The idea that Kenny had attempted to stun, not out of hatred, but out of love explains everything.

Is what I thought for all of two minutes before realizing it made no sense at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in love and have plenty of it.

33:39

If a friend asks me to pick him up at the airport while I never do it, I do make a point of apologizing profusely really scrunching up my face as though, my refusal is causing me as much Agony, as it is them, I’d even go so far as to say that this is because my momma raised me, right?

33:57

But we all know she hasn’t, but even if she had Going off.

A 10-story ramp only to plummet to my death because I wanted to do a pal, a solid for that.

I’m afraid my heart as well as my cojones are far too petite when I asked Steve about the photo of can that Kenny carried around with him.

34:22

He didn’t know anything about it but he says that Daredevil, share a special bond while I could.

Of course.

Imagine the love that unites a Spanky Spangler.

Clarinda, Spanky jr.

Or even Evel, Knievel at Isla Verde Eagle motorcycle.

This fell deeper somehow and more complicated.

34:39

Kenny nearly died for Ken.

What was the power that can exerted Over?

Kenny, what made Kenny?

So loyal that he was willing to speed off a ramp and into Oblivion just because he’d been asked to to find out iPhone Beverly Powers.

34:54

Let me give you the landline where I am cause I’m in the mountains right now.

Oh, Power.

Sorry.

After the break, the I love break.

35:22

Hello Beverly.

Yes, let me turn off the television.

Oh great.

Okay.

Every television solved.

Beverly is Kenny’s widow.

She grew up in the same, South Carolina town is Kenny.

I knew him back when he was the star halfback on the school football team.

35:41

When I was in the sixth grade Kenny was a senior in high school and I had a crush on him then, but you know, he didn’t know.

I existed years later.

After Kenny had already been married seven, possibly, eight times.

No one seems to be too sure they found each other again.

35:59

Kenny asked Beverly for a ride home.

One day.

And then asked her if she wanted to stay for jambalaya.

Oh, he was a wonderful cook and he was a barber in the Navy.

He cut my hair better than anybody has ever cut my hair in my life.

36:15

He should have just stuck to Barber and instead of the stuntmen and he had says Beverly.

He’d have avoided all the pain of the super jump all that.

He received a compensation for his jump, was his pay medical bills.

36:32

And that was it.

There was no, there was no profit.

Okay, and he didn’t make anything, you know.

Why do you think like he chose to remain relatively in the background with, with Ken Carter as the main?

36:48

That has always been a mystery to me because Kenny had a type, A personality that was totally out of character for Kenny to stay in the background.

Well, there’s a lot Beverly, still doesn’t understand about Kenny, like Steve the mechanic, she certain that Kenny attempted the jump not to betray can, but to protect him in Beverly’s, telling the investors were out of money, and they were getting threatening CUNY.

37:16

And Keon should have never become involved with these things and well, but what do you mean?

It’s not something over the phone that I could discuss.

It’s think about that for a while.

And so, I thought about it for a while.

37:35

You’re talking about, if I can say over the telephone, the m0b, Oh, so you were wrong.

So, Kenny Powers knew someone had to make that jump, and he also knew that because of his Youth and physical condition, he stood a better chance of surviving it than Ken, that’s why.

37:57

According to Beverly, Kenny decided to step up but unlike Steve the mechanics version of the story.

Beverly says, there was no secret plan, no plan at all.

Just Kenny deciding on his own spur-of-the-moment to help his friend.

38:13

And if that’s true, Ken’s getting Back at the hotel might have been less about having the jump stolen out from under him and more about being scared for Kenny and angry.

That Kenny would just up and try something.

So impetuous in the documentary.

38:29

When we first see, Kenny posing beside the ramp, the voice-over explains.

That Kenny always wears his back brace when making jumps, but that day he left it behind.

When I first saw the movie, I chalked it up to vanity that as he enjoyed his moment in the spotlight.

38:46

He wouldn’t want the brace visible under his tight jumpsuit, but thinking on it.

Now, how last second the whole thing was he probably didn’t even have time to put it on. 10-second countdown, that’s all I need.

I’m not ready in 10 seconds.

I’ll never be ready.

39:02

If Kenny had taken any time to consider the insanity of the jump?

He probably wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Kenny Powers standing alone on the ramp in his yellow jumpsuit and cowboy hat must have been terrified.

Beverly says that Kenny’s relationship with can was more complicated than just the special bond between stuntmen for.

39:28

Kenny, she says, the Story begins much earlier, he was always an injured so because of his abusive upbringing, he never could Escape that.

As his father was a binge Drinker, it is father’s often, very abusive to him.

39:48

He talked about his father, swing around by his testicles, wants to the air.

I think that one is that was pretty traumatic for him.

Do you know how old he was most men before?

He was 8 years old?

40:06

I think he might have gotten things from King Carter that he never got from his father.

And that he really needed emotionally.

Just spending time with him, he’s showing him affirmation and teaching him things and helping him to grow as a person and as a professional and making Kenny feel good about himself.

40:37

When the car was floating in the water, even with a broken foot vertebrae, he was getting his self out in the first thing that he said, did I do well?

Are you pleased?

He wanted to please people.

41:03

Beverly says that after the failed jump can visited Kenny in the hospital and that they made amends.

And the thing about the photograph that Kenny carried around in eight by ten picture of Ken for the rest of his life.

Beverly says that not only is it true but that she gave Kenny a special leather portfolio that he used to carry it around.

41:23

In everywhere, he went he had a briefcase.

Forward the and he used it but he started using the leather portfolio where there were there other photos in there that he had.

No just just came Carter’s.

41:40

Yes.

Why do you think that was?

I guess true of forgives?

Kimmy, never quit.

Loving, can I walk in?

But in the end all that love got, Kenny Powers was the role of Judas in the Ken, Carter life story.

42:06

But while most stories of betrayal begin as love stories, this is the rare tale that ends has one.

It takes guts to risk your life for Glory, but it takes even more guts to risk your life for someone else.

Knowing that risk will only lead to obscurity and shame.

42:22

A jump that big needs to be fueled by something bigger than money or the spotlight.

The greatest leaps always do After the failed, super jump, Kenny continued performing stunts on his own but he never achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that Ken Carter had in 2009.

42:49

Kenny died and Beverly planned his funeral, everyone ate hot dogs and watch videos of Kenny stunts and of course they traded their craziest Kenny Powers stories.

Could be hilarious.

You never knew what Keeney was going to do, like, any had a load of dynamite.

43:08

And he drove up into a horse barn of one of his friends and they maybe get it out real quick, he just never knew what Kenny was going to do.

You had to be there.

43:26

A lot of Kenny Powers stories.

And this way, you just had to be there for the time he snuck up behind a friend at the urinal and kissed him on the lips or the time he wore his best suit to visit the dogs at the town dump.

It’s while listening to one after another of these stories that something occurs to me.

43:43

It’s a crazy thought.

But when I’m compelled to share with Beverly, did you ever did you ever see this TV show called Eastbound & Down?

I did and this is interesting.

You ask me You cannot tell me the Riders.

Did not know my Kenny Powers.

44:01

Eastbound, and Down was a comedy series on each Bo.

The main character is a Brash foul-mouthed and washed-up athlete from the south and is named Kenny Powers.

44:30

But it’s not just that as name is Kenny Powers, the TV, Kenny Powers Macho, Swagger is eerily similar to the real Kenny Powers and so is his physical style right down to the goat.

A they said mean things that he said in that issue is exactly verbatim.

44:47

What?

Kenny used to say do you remember what those moments were in the show?

I don’t think I can repeat it.

Oh, please, go ahead after all it is a butter tart and podcast.

How about I thought?

Talk this way but I can only say Kenny motherfucking Powers this example.

45:09

Kenny, could use the f word as a man verb.

Adverb conjunction, adjective all in one sentence and every sentence of the paragraph, quite effectively.

I’m not kidding, I’m fucking in and your fucking Out and get the fuck out of my chair.

45:27

Konnichiwa bitches.

I’m Kenneth after Kini, bad?

Yeah.

My son.

And I used to sit and watch it.

Laughing reads like Kini Kini.

It was hilarious.

It really brought Comfort to me.

The idea of Beverly sitting on a couch in the days after Kennedy’s death and taking solace in the antics of possibly one of the crudest most offensive characters in the history of Television, was enough to warm my heart and my researching fingers.

45:57

I’m looking at the Wikipedia page, for Kenny, Powers the character from Eastbound and Down.

Okay.

Yeah, it has all of his nicknames here, the people’s Champion, the Shelby sensation, the man with the D IC K, Dr. C.

46:15

Okay, some of these, I can’t even I can’t even say some even a podcast has its limits.

But as I continued to read, I see that Wikipedia supports our Theory.

The named Kenny Powers it says was inspired by a real-life American Automotive stuntman in the 1970s by the same name but there’s no citation no way to confirm whether it’s true.

46:39

So before getting off, The phone with Beverly, I promised her, I’ll deploy all of my journalistic learnings and all of Alex Bloomberg’s Bitcoins to track down the truth.

Eventually, I get ahold of an executive at the production house that makes Eastbound and Down.

46:59

He forwards, my question about the Kenny Powers character, onto the show’s Creator and star.

Danny McBride, the executive says that mr.

McBride, quote wants to take the time to formulate a good answer.

For the next few weeks, I send emails checking in to see if there’s anything I can report back to Beverly, even a simple.

47:20

Yes, or no, would be fine, I say.

But I never get an answer.

In the end, I decided to take mr.

McBride’s unusual response to mean that the real Kenny Powers did receive a legacy after all for what greater omage can a person be paid then to be immortalized in a hit TV, show in such a way that there’s just enough ambiguity to avoid possible litigation over the non-consensual use of their identity, and, or likeness.

47:50

I’m Teddy Powers.

I don’t mean to offend you Wayne, you have fucking pissed.

Me off.

So I’m gonna go ahead and go, but I’m not gonna stop yelling because then that’ll mean.

I lost the fight.

I love you all very much peace out.

So, maybe somehow possibly Kenny Powers did land that jump into America after all. now that the furniture is returning to its Goodwill home now that the last month’s rent is We tried heavyweight is hosted and produced by me.

49:21

Jonathan Goldstein along with kalila.

Hold the senior producer is Caitlin Roberts editing by Jorge Justin Alex.

Blumberg, special thanks to Emily Condon risky.

Rick Cruz, Cody live, John Bolton, Sibley Anise is now scaly Fortenberry Tony as an accomplice, Adam, Szymanski Luann Leonard dick.

49:38

Keller Harry Simpson Gordon chaotic Sayid T, John Thomas, Blythe Terrell, Jessica Weisberg, Devon Taylor and Jackie Cohen.

The show was mixed by Kate Belinsky music by John K Samson Steven Page and the amazing Christine fellows.

Additional music credits for.

49:54

This episode can be found on our website gimlet media.com heavyweight.

Our theme song is by the weaker than his courtesy of Epitaph records and our add music.

It is by Hayley Shaw.

You can watch the wonderful National film Board of Canada documentary, The Devil at your heels at nfb.

50:10

TA follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimlet.

Media.com will have a new episode in two weeks.