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No Survivors: The Aftermath of Flight 5342
Update: 2025-01-31
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Authorities say the air crash over the Potomac River left no survivors. President Trump suggests diversity initiatives could be a cause of the deaths, while aviation experts examine the actions of Army helicopter pilots. And senators grill cabinet nominees Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel.
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00:00:30
It's Friday, January 31st, and it's as bad as it looked.
00:00:34
We start here.
00:00:38
Authorities announce the crash between a military helicopter and a passenger jet left no survivors.
00:00:44
They're going to focus on the perishable evidence.
00:00:47
Anything that could disappear in the water, in the elements, will get you caught up on the recovery.
00:00:55
Meanwhile, President Trump is already casting blame.
00:00:55
The Black Hawk was doing everything right in their mind up until they misidentified where their traffic was.
00:01:01
But there are other factors at play, so what will investigators be looking at?
00:01:05
And Democratic pushback is one thing, but these nominees face skeptical Republicans.
00:01:10
It is very rare in these confirmation hearings to see Democrats and Republicans agree on anything.
00:01:15
Some of the president's most polarizing picks, It's the Hill.
00:01:21
And ABC News, this is Start Here.
00:01:23
I'm Brad Milky.
00:01:30
On Wednesday night, people started showing up to the curb at Reagan National Airport in Washington, ready to pick up their family members, their friends from American Eagle Flight 5342.
00:01:41
One by one, they started realizing something was wrong.
00:01:46
Rescue boats began sprinting to the Potomac River nearby.
00:01:49
News outlets started reporting that a regional jetliner had gone down after hitting a helicopter.
00:01:55
These families were directed to a different wing of the airport, while they awaited news.
00:01:59
"American has set up a center in their in their lounge at the north end of the airport, and we've directed the families there, and there are folks there to counsels there to work with the families."
00:02:12
You know that moment where your plane is so close to the tarmac that the plane's getting cell service, you can send texts if you want to.
00:02:18
Well some family members describe getting texts from loved ones on board, saying things like "about to land," Andy Byer tried to text his wife, Justina, who was traveling with their 12-year-old daughter,
00:02:29
Brielle.
00:02:30
"My son and I were going to pick up my wife and daughter, and when it was time for the plane to land, they hadn't landed.
00:02:38
You know, we couldn't get text messages through.
00:02:40
I saw all the fire trucks and everything go by, and I knew."
00:02:45
There aren't that many planes that fly from Wichita to Washington on a given day, so once family members back in Kansas heard a plane had crashed, they gathered and waited.
00:02:54
We now know more about who was on these aircraft.
00:02:59
There was Wendy Joe Schaefer, a wife and mother, Ian Epstein, a flight attendant.
00:03:03
His family said he loved meeting new people.
00:03:05
There was first officer Samuel Lilly who had just gotten engaged recently.
00:03:09
"He just liked the adventure and seeing new places and doing things he often traveled with his fiancee, you know, when he wasn't flying, they just got back from a trip to Ireland."
00:03:20
And coincidentally, Wichita had just played host to the U.S.
00:03:23
National Figure Skating Championships.
00:03:25
"She was so proud of herself in Figure Skating for the progress she had made, and that making that team was one of her life goals, and she achieved it, and she was just so proud of herself."
00:03:36
These competitions include events for developing skaters, and this plane happened to be carrying several young promising athletes, along with parents and coaches, like the 1994 World Pairs Champions body Namav and Yenya Shishková.
00:03:50
"Everything you've heard of them, like, maybe being a little tough, but with a smile on your face."
00:03:56
Nancy Kerrigan, the famed Olympic medalist, said later that the legendary skating club of Boston had just suffered unfathomable losses.
00:04:03
"And then when you find out, you know, you know, some of the people on the plane is even a bigger blow."
00:04:15
At the ring, she described this feeling that a lot of Americans had yesterday, powerlessness.
00:04:20
"I don't come here that often, and I just didn't know what else to do, so I just thought I needed to be with some friends."
00:04:28
And after an agonizing wait for these families, on Thursday morning, DC officials gave a solemn update.
00:04:35
"We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.
00:04:40
At this point, we don't believe there are any survivors from this accident."
00:04:45
They are still recovering, remains from this crash site, which, because of strong currents and winds, now stretches from miles in the Potomac, but if there were indeed no survivors, that would make this the deadliest air crash on U.S.
00:04:58
soil in more than 20 years.
00:05:00
Let's go back to ABC's lead transportation producer this morning, Sam Sweeney, Sam, what can you tell us about the recovery effort over the last 24 hours?
00:05:08
Well, these first responders were on the scene within 10 minutes, but this airplane fell from several hundred feet after having a direct collision at hundreds of miles per hour with another aircraft,
00:05:18
and then it collided to the ground.
00:05:20
This was a difficult, you know, start for these investigators."
00:05:24
"These responders found extremely frigid conditions.
00:05:27
They found heavy wind.
00:05:29
They found ice on the water, and they operated all night in those conditions."
00:05:34
And just moments after they arrived on scene, they began pulling out bodies.
00:05:38
Of course, they were hoping for the best.
00:05:40
Was there an air pocket somewhere?
00:05:42
Was someone strapped into a seat?
00:05:45
They had to figure all that out and go in, but after several hours in those conditions, one could only last just a few minutes before they get hypothermia.
00:05:54
"What will the investigation be about if it's no longer about the rescue?"
00:05:57
They just found the American Airlines black boxes, right?
00:06:01
So what else will they want to recover from the site?
00:06:03
So right now, they're going to focus on the perishable evidence.
00:06:07
Anything that could disappear in the water, in the elements, they need to get that now to help them build this puzzle and figure out what happened.
00:06:15
"The fuselage of the American airline plane was inverted.
00:06:21
It's been located in three different sections.
00:06:25
This is about waste, deep water, so that recovery is going to go on today."
00:06:30
The goal of the investigation is to figure out exactly what happened.
00:06:34
And they're not doing that so they can tell the public and quench our curiosity.
00:06:39
They're doing it because they want to figure out what happened.
00:06:41
They want to learn from it.
00:06:43
They want to present a fix for it and prevent it from ever happening again.
00:06:48
And that's exactly why aviation is so safe in the United States.
00:06:52
And we haven't had a deadly crash on U.S.
00:06:54
soil on a U.S.
00:06:55
airline since 2009 because they have made so many changes to the airlines, to airplanes, to our national airspace system to make it safer for all of us.
00:07:07
"As one nation we grieve for every precious soil that has been taken from us so suddenly, and we are a country of really,
00:07:17
we are in mourning."
00:07:19
What was the reaction from the Trump administration because initially it was sort of the standard boilerplate stuff overnight of, you know, this is terrible tragedy.
00:07:27
But then President Trump seemed to start getting accusatory, right?
00:07:30
What are the issues here?
00:07:32
The president pointed at the helicopter pilot without saying it was the helicopter pilot at fault.
00:07:38
"A situation where you had a helicopter that had the ability to stop, I have helicopters.
00:07:44
You can stop a helicopter very quickly.
00:07:47
You had the ability to go up or down, you had the ability to turn, and the turn it made was not the correct turn obviously.
00:07:58
And it did somewhat the opposite of what it was told."
00:08:02
And then the president brought up DEI and DEI hiring within the Department of Transportation and the FAA, you know, insinuating sort of that these people who were in the control tower or in the cockpit were hired because of their race or ethnicity or their sexual orientation.
00:08:20
"Are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring?
00:08:25
And what evidence have you seen to support these claims?"
00:08:29
"It just could have been, we have a high standard, we've had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.
00:08:34
And there are things where you have to go by brain power, you have to go by psychological quality."
00:08:42
We have simply no evidence to point to any of that, that those people were a hired because of that or that they contributed to this incident.
00:08:52
In fact, it is extraordinarily difficult to work as an air traffic controller.
00:08:57
You know, in 2022 alone there was 57,000 applicants to be an air traffic controller.
00:09:03
Of those roughly less than 3,000 made it or were approved to go to the academy and only a thousand actually showed up because they qualified.
00:09:14
They passed the psych evaluations, the medical examinations.
00:09:17
They were willing to move to Oklahoma City.
00:09:19
They were younger than 31 years old.
00:09:22
And then of those people, there's roughly a 70% pass rate at the academy.
00:09:28
And then when you go to finish your training, which takes another roughly three years, only 60% will make it out of that.
00:09:35
It is really difficult and nobody is getting this job because of what they look like.
00:09:40
Well, and on the other side of that, there were also people who started saying maybe Trump is almost preemptively attacking the people in charge here because this could perhaps boomerang back on him, right?
00:09:50
His administration started this process of federal workforce buyouts.
00:09:54
There was reporting that perhaps staffing wasn't up to par at the air traffic control tower there.
00:09:59
What do we know then about the staffing situation?
00:10:01
Well, if there's been a staffing shortage in the air traffic control system for a number of years.
00:10:07
At the DCA facility, it is actually fully staffed.
00:10:11
I just checked in with the FAA on that yesterday afternoon and they have no staffing issues there.
00:10:17
However, there's now reporting that, you know, the FAA, preliminary report says that there was one person doing two people's jobs in the control tower the night of the incident.
00:10:28
And we checked into that.
00:10:30
And what it is is when the traffic, the air traffic in the area reaches a certain level, you can, a supervisor can determine that it is safe enough to have one person do both roles,
00:10:42
both the local airplane traffic and the helicopter traffic.
00:10:46
And that's what happened on the night of the incident.
00:10:48
The only difference is that they started that program about 40 minutes earlier than they normally do.
00:10:55
But it is not uncommon for one person to do both of these jobs when the number of aircraft in the area gets low enough.
00:11:03
That's interesting because you hear that the staffing is not normal.
00:11:06
And you go, oh no, there must have been layoffs here or something.
00:11:09
When in fact, it was probably a supervisor saying, hey, you can knock off for the rest of the night because there's actually not that much traffic tonight.
00:11:14
All right.
00:11:15
Sam Sweeney, there in Washington.
00:11:16
Thank you so much.
00:11:17
Thank you.
00:11:18
Now, there are still so many questions here.
00:11:21
So let's get some answers from someone who knows all about aviation.
00:11:24
I want to talk to former Marine fighter pilot and ABC News contributor, Colonel Stephen Ganyard.
00:11:29
Colonel Ganyard, first off, any surprise to you that there would be no survivors here?
00:11:33
No, Brad.
00:11:34
If you look at the video, we've seen the video that was taken from the Kennedy Center.
00:11:39
And you see that large fireball, that large explosion.
00:11:43
Remember that a helicopter is sort of these whirling knives above it.
00:11:47
And so when something like that collides with an airplane that is just about to land, it's never going to be good and watching that fireball.
00:11:55
And then the both aircraft falling into that frigid water.
00:11:59
There was just really minutes for if anybody was alive to be rescued.
00:12:03
So horrific all around and at least when I saw it, I said, nobody survived that.
00:12:09
Hey, and I mean, when you just look at the flight pass, you see, you know, the plane obviously descending, the helicopter is staying sort of at a constant height because, you know, it's just going from one place to another.
00:12:19
I mean, what's the most likely scenario for sort of how this happened?
00:12:22
Can you just walk us through it?
00:12:24
Things have changed in this modern age where we have so much data that's quickly available.
00:12:28
Both their craft have black boxes.
00:12:30
Those will be helpful.
00:12:32
But in this case, it's probably going to come back to the black cock, the black cock checked in with the tower.
00:12:38
They told the tower where they were coming around the monument.
00:12:40
So they just passed the Jefferson monument, they were turning south down the Potomac.
00:12:45
And the tower said, do you see the regional jet?
00:12:47
Do you see the American jet?
00:12:49
And they said, yes, we see it.
00:12:51
We will maintain visual separation at that point, legally in pilot terms, it is their responsibility to stay away from that airplane.
00:12:59
The tower then said, OK, go behind that regional jet.
00:13:04
At that point, the tower came back to most of the landing traffic.
00:13:07
It was looking at the landing traffic that was landing on the main north-south runway.
00:13:11
So it's pretty clear here that in the cockpit of the black cock, they probably fixated on something or they saw another airplane that was landing on the other runway or they saw a light.
00:13:22
And in their mind, that was the airplane that they had to stay away from.
00:13:26
Do you have visual on this plane?
00:13:27
Yes, I do.
00:13:28
I don't know if you're looking at the right thing.
00:13:29
They were looking at the wrong plane because they didn't, they were pretty much straight and level right until, until impact.
00:13:35
And so they thought they were going behind this airplane, but they were probably looking at, again, either a light on the, on the ramp at DCA or lights in the city of Alexandria on the other side of the Potomac.
00:13:47
So very, very tragic.
00:13:48
But this is something that is not unusual for pilots.
00:13:51
You know, you think they're down there at, at two, three hundred feet and really you're over that, that, that black water of the Potomac.
00:13:58
So there's nothing underneath you.
00:13:59
So the sky looks like the ground underneath you, the water underneath you.
00:14:03
And they're looking for, for things out there to, to establish a horizon and look out and, and see a horizon.
00:14:09
So if they saw something, an airplane strobe light can look like, you know, a flashing light from a police car on land.
00:14:16
So very, very difficult for anybody to have picked this up.
00:14:19
And it's not on a plane to like see the helicopter.
00:14:22
Like the plane pretty much stays on its path is, is the concept.
00:14:24
Yeah, because the plane was on short final, I mean, it was really just a couple hundred feet off the ground.
00:14:28
So you can imagine, as the pilots were coming in close, that runway three, three is actually a short runway.
00:14:34
That's why they'll take regional jets there.
00:14:35
It's only about 5,200 feet long.
00:14:38
And so those pilots are out there looking to make sure they were on glide slope, looking for the, for the landing area, making sure there were no other aircraft on that runway.
00:14:45
So they're totally focused right ahead of them.
00:14:47
So pilots, we're doing the right thing.
00:14:50
Everything we've seen so far, the American jet was absolutely doing everything right like everything that I've seen out of ATC was done absolutely right.
00:14:58
And frankly, the Black Hawk was doing everything right in their mind up until they misidentified where their traffic was.
00:15:05
And we heard initially this was a training mission and immediately your mind as a civilian goes to like, oh, so maybe these pilots weren't experienced, but you said that's not necessarily the case.
00:15:15
Yeah, these were relatively experienced pilots and, you know, the number of hours they had is one way to measure, measure proficiency, but it was a proficiency flight.
00:15:23
You need to go out and fly.
00:15:24
I don't care how much experience, how many years, how many hours you have under your belt.
00:15:28
If you are not proficient, if you're not flying dozens of hours a month, then you are behind that airplane and everything is hard.
00:15:36
So you have to get out, you have to fly at night, flying at night is hard.
00:15:39
Everything takes longer, you know, you don't have the same visual cues and so being proficient and comfortable at night is important.
00:15:46
And that's what these folks were out there doing is, is making sure that they were proficient flying at night, particularly around this, this city.
00:15:52
I guess, yeah, well, the city is the thing, right, this does sound like it's super congested air traffic.
00:15:58
I guess in your mind, what gets looked at from a policy and safety perspective going forward here?
00:16:04
Yeah.
00:16:05
The unfortunate part of that, Brad, is that helicopters have been flying in the vicinity of DCA for literally decades, you know, going back to the first Dwight D.
00:16:12
Eisenhower Marine 1 and there's never been a problem like this.
00:16:17
So human error, humans make mistakes, humans are still the vast majority of the kinds of mishaps that we see throughout the world that involve aviation.
00:16:25
So it's just one of these things we're going to have to look at.
00:16:29
We need to move them farther along the shore.
00:16:33
Were they above the maximum altitude normally in that spot?
00:16:38
You can't go above 200 feet.
00:16:40
There are reports that they were at 3 or 350 feet.
00:16:43
That's bad.
00:16:44
That could have contributed to the mishap.
00:16:46
So if they weren't following procedures, that's one thing.
00:16:49
If they were following procedures, but the procedures didn't protect the American jet, then that's going to result in some changes in the flight path and the requirements.
00:16:57
All right.
00:16:58
A lot more to come from this tragedy.
00:17:00
Colonel Stephen Ganyard, really helpful insight.
00:17:02
Thank you so much.
00:17:03
Thanks, Brad.
00:17:04
Next up on Start here, what do you have to say to get Republican senators to vote against you?
00:17:09
Well, perhaps it's more about what you won't say.
00:17:11
We're back in a bit.
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This episode is brought to you by Amazon.
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00:18:15
You know what's bizarre is how this terrible crash happened, right as we were transitioning to a new transportation secretary.
00:18:21
Sean Duffy had just been confirmed, in fact, his first full day of work was Wednesday.
00:18:25
By Wednesday night, he was overseeing the worst aviation accident in this country in years.
00:18:30
Similarly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a couple days in his job, is now consoling military families who lost loved ones in that Black Hawk.
00:18:37
He's answering questions about training runs.
00:18:40
And the yesterday, more of President Trump's cabinet picks were facing their own confirmation hearings.
00:18:45
And these were perhaps three of his most controversial choices.
00:18:47
Let's go to ABC senior political correspondent Rachel Scott, who's on the hill, keeping track of everything.
00:18:53
Rachel, first off, Tulsi Gabbard is up for Director of National Intelligence.
00:18:56
That kind of oversees all the intelligence agencies, right?
00:18:59
What was her hearing like?
00:19:00
Brad, this was quite the day of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.
00:19:03
These are three of President Donald Trump's most controversial nominees coming before senators.
00:19:08
Tulsi Gabbard, she was a former Democratic congresswoman.
00:19:11
She has since turned Republican, she was out there supporting President Trump on the campaign trail.
00:19:16
And she really tried to get ahead of a lot of the criticism that she was expecting from senators on both sides of the aisle.
00:19:22
Accusing me of being Trump's puppet, Putin's puppet, Assad's puppet, Aguru's puppet, Modi's puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters.
00:19:36
She went on to say, rather, that's completely incorrect, but it did not stop her from facing some really tough questions, especially from Democrats about her 2017 meeting with Bashar Alassad in Syria.
00:19:48
Would you view this trip as a good judgment?
00:19:51
Yes, Senator.
00:19:52
And I believe that leaders, whether you be in Congress or the president of the United States, can benefit greatly by going and engaging.
00:19:59
But Brad, you know, the hearing really turned heated.
00:20:02
When Gabbard was pressed about her past supportive Edwards noted.
00:20:05
Is Gabbard a simple yes or no question?
00:20:07
Do you still think Edward Snowden was brave?
00:20:09
Edward Snowden broke the law.
00:20:12
I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released nor the way in which he did it.
00:20:18
Remember, this is the former NSA contractor who leaked sensitive intelligence secrets and then ran away to Russia.
00:20:24
Well, Democrats and Republicans asking Gabbard again and again, one by one, if she believes that Edward Snowden is a traitor.
00:20:33
We'll see a traitor the time when he took America's secrets, released them in public, and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen.
00:20:39
And she would not answer that question.
00:20:41
Senator, I'm focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again.
00:20:47
Brad, I will tell you, it is very rare in these confirmation hearings to see Democrats and Republicans agree on anything, but that was one line of questioning that they kept throwing at Gabbard.
00:20:56
Really interesting.
00:20:57
Well, and you talk about people that make both Democrats and some Republicans uncomfortable and it kind of applies to the other person who is on day one of his hearing tour here.
00:21:05
Cash Patel, right, the guy who's been nominated to lead the FBI, what questions did senators have for him?
00:21:12
And, Brad, there's really a lot of anticipation around Cash Patel because Pam Bondy, who was nominated for Attorney General, she was on Capitol Hill and her hearing, well, she got a lot of questions about Patel who was nominated to lead the FBI because of his past statements saying that he would go after President Trump's political enemies,
00:21:29
that he would go after his political opponents.
00:21:32
And so, of course, Democrats had some questions about whether or not he could lead this department and keep it independent.
00:21:39
If President Trump were to order you to open an investigation into any of these individuals, let's say Vice President Harris, would you?
00:21:46
Senator, this question speaks directly to my ability to leave political bias and allow independent behavior to be the only guiding light.
00:21:53
It was notable, Brad, that Cash Patel really tried to strike a very different tone during this hearing.
00:22:00
And not politicize the FBI, Brad, he said he does not have that so-called enemies list that so many Democrats have been talking about.
00:22:06
It's not whatever we want to call it, Senator, with all due respect, it's not an enemies list.
00:22:10
He said there would be no retribution per se.
00:22:13
Any accusations leveled against me that I would somehow put political bias before the Constitution or grotesquely unfair, and I will have you reminded that I have been endorsed by over 300,000 law enforcement officers to become the next director of the FBI.
00:22:29
The question, of course, is whether Democrats believe him.
00:22:33
I will tell you, they've been following his moves very closely over the last couple of months.
00:22:37
And some Democrats, even making a point to say on the inauguration day, when President Donald Trump was having that rally inside of Capitol One in place of that parade, will Cash Patel was one of the speakers,
00:22:49
and they feel like that underscores this idea that he's not really remaining independent if he's so loyal to President Donald Trump.
00:22:56
But you never hear an FBI chief being like, we love this President because the whole job is into ten-year terms, so you know that you've got to be able to go beyond one party or beyond one administration.
00:23:06
The other thing that makes this complicated for him, of course, is Trump's role with the Justice Department and with the FBI, especially after these January 6th Partens.
00:23:14
How does he see this knowing that his potential future employees work for years on these cases?
00:23:20
And this was an interesting line of questioning, Brad, and one that I think caught a lot of people by surprise, because Patel was asked by Democrats if he supports President Donald Trump's decision to commute the sentences of the rioters who attacked officers on January 6th.
00:23:35
As for January 6th, I have repeatedly, often, publicly, and privately said, there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement.
00:23:45
And in a rare move, he broke from President Trump.
00:23:49
Anyone that commits an act of violence against law enforcement must be investigated, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
00:23:57
I have watched a lot of these confirmation hearings, Brad, and I will tell you I do not see this happen a lot, any Republican nominee breaking from the President who nominated them to serve in the cabinet.
00:24:06
I'm not to mention RFK Jr.
00:24:08
also had his second day of hearings remarkable moments as Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician from Louisiana, kept asking him again and again if he would agree with the mountain of research showing there is no connection between vaccines and autism.
00:24:21
Kennedy just would not do it.
00:24:23
Cassidy finally said he cannot get comfortable with RFK as a health and human services secretary, Rachel Scott at the Capitol.
00:24:29
Thank you.
00:24:30
Thanks, Brad.
00:24:31
One more quick break.
00:24:32
When we come back, the theater world is feeling just a bit blue today.
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One last thing is next.
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And one last thing.
00:25:46
For the last 30 years, they've been walking among us, being curious, bald, and blue.
00:25:54
The Blue Man Group began as an off-broadway, experimental theater piece, and eventually became known the world over.
00:26:00
If you've ever been to New York, you've almost certainly seen advertisement for these guys, these wide-eyed, silent alien characters who discover music and then quickly get really,
00:26:10
really good at it.
00:26:14
But this Sunday, they will give their final performance at their lower Manhattan home.
00:26:18
So I figured, why not ask these guys how they feel about it?
00:26:21
Hey, can I ask you a question in character?
00:26:24
Like if I was talking to one of the Blue Men, how do you feel about this show ending?
00:26:31
Hello?
00:26:32
Okay, so I should have thought this out better, they're silent.
00:26:36
But eventually, I got Jordan Woods Robinson to talk to me out of character.
00:26:40
I was a Blue Man for 13 years.
00:26:43
Jordan performed with the Blue Man as they pursued a rapid expansion from New York to Boston and Chicago to Orlando and eventually to Las Vegas and cruise ships.
00:26:52
Do you have a role?
00:26:53
So the Blue Man are actually titled Left, Center, and Right, depending on where we're standing on stage.
00:26:59
You gotta remember, when this act debuted in 1987, it was born of a vibrant, experimental theater scene.
00:27:06
But as the millennium approached, Broadway was being dominated by splashy musicals based on movies.
00:27:11
The pitch to audiences was, you know what to expect.
00:27:14
Well, not here.
00:27:15
The show is three beings who have been birthed out of art and who are witnessing human culture for the first time and the whole show is an interactive musical experience,
00:27:30
trying to figure out how people share a universal language.
00:27:34
The front row of Blue Man audiences had to wear punchhows to protect from water and paint.
00:27:39
There was a script, but also built in moments of crowd work, no two shows were ever exactly alike.
00:27:44
And crucially, no words were spoken in any language.
00:27:51
As the world was becoming more connected around us, these artists realized that the shows you could perform everywhere were going to be the most profitable.
00:27:58
Blue Man now has international tours, along with permanent residencies in Berlin and Shanghai.
00:28:04
It became a cultural touchstone, it's even a key storyline in arrested development, where the character Tobias paint himself blue in an attempt to join the troop.
00:28:12
Do you have an audition yet?
00:28:13
Oh no, no, I'm not in the group yet.
00:28:16
I'm afraid I just blew myself.
00:28:19
It's gotta be a better way to say that.
00:28:22
To this day, Jordan says there are lessons to be drawn from these strange blue men, beyond the ones he learned as a cast member.
00:28:28
I am really good at catching marshmallows in my mouth.
00:28:31
But now, like intrepid aliens themselves, New Yorkers will have to venture away from their city to learn.
00:28:40
And people of a certain age might remember, there was also this show called Stomp.
00:28:44
Remember this?
00:28:45
It was like a show of music made by like, brooms and trash canelids, it was like right across the way from the blue man group, we really loved percussion-based performances back then.
00:28:54
So here is produced by Kelly Torres, Jen Newman, Bika Aaron Sin, Anthony Ali, Mara Milwaukee, and Amira Williams.
00:29:00
Ariel Chester is our social media producer, Josh Cohen is director of podcast programming.
00:29:05
I'm our managing editor, Laura Mayer is our executive producer.
00:29:08
Thanks to John Newman, Terry Gimble, and Liz Alessie, special thanks this week to Chris Barry, Eric Strauss, Molly Nagle, Peter Harlambus, and Chris Boccio.
00:29:16
I'm Brad Milky.
00:29:17
See you next week.
00:29:18
Do you have to shave your head, Jordan, or do you have to give you a bald cap?
00:29:22
It's all a bald cap.
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
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