Evelyn Messinger: One interesting thing, we also did a scene from the play where they held hands. This was the big highlight, and it got news coverage across the whole U.S.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Evelyn Messinger: So it was the first breakthrough. Who wouldn't cover that? Reaching out beyond the divide, two kids holding hands.
Daniel Satinsky: Through space and all this. So, you and Kim became like the team to do this Space bridge.
Evelyn Messinger: I think that was the one I worked on after, because I didn't work on the two in between. That might have been the fourth or fifth, depending on how you count. From then on, there was a whole sequence of doing this until I had twins. So, you know, that was pretty wild. The amazing thing was going back and forth to Russia, where we tried so hard to get these things on TV. It was really hard. In fact, it was probably the UC San Diego one that got called execrable, maybe because it would have been the first one that actually aired. It was a university, so PBS probably took it. From then on, they took them all. People wanted to do this or that. It was very interesting to come up with it. If you could do this in person, don't do it on TV. That was one of the things we learned.
Russians started doing this with Bulgaria. Anyway, the Russians were into it. Our two producers were great, but we had no idea. We never knew if they would do it or not. They almost always did. Now we know why. But at the time, we didn't know why they would do this, let alone whether they would do any given one. The most important one, most people would say, was Nuclear Winter. Carl Sagan and a few other eminent scientists had published this paper that a nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter. That was terrible. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know, we're going to do a space bridge with scientists on both sides. It was going to be on CNN. CNN, I believe, was the one who ran it.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Evelyn Messinger: And so suddenly this was really important. There was a lot of tension. They wrote a lot about it. It was really important for the Russians to do this, and they wouldn't use our name, but we called it the world after nuclear war. They called it the world against nuclear war. I guess their bosses told them they had to do that. We had these very dark, gloomy sets on both sides. I was doing the American side, and Kim was on the other side. In the middle, there was a kind of break. Apparently, the Russians had to go off and decide whether they were going to say “yes.” They did. They said, “yes, it's important.” Carl Sagan was on it. You'll see that one too.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you ever go to Russia too?
Evelyn Messinger: Yes. I went there a lot, early on, and participated in the talks about these things and meetings with people. An experience I'll never forget was getting off the plane in Moscow with a suitcase full of video tapes. These tapes were pretty big. Kim must have already done that. He said, just say "telemost" when you get to customs. Or maybe it was Joel who said that. Anyway, I said it. I mean, can you imagine? I don't remember which trip that was, but I did produce one of them. Maybe I only really went and did one. I felt more comfortable back in the US. I think somebody was getting worried or I don't know what. This one was very complicated. It kept jumping up. This is Jim Garrison. I think this was his one. It was about some kind of scientific work. It wasn't climate change. It must have had something to do with nuclear power. I don't even remember the subject, to tell you the truth. I was on the Russian side, and it kept jumping time zones across Russia to different places. It was like the chief scientists of Krasnoyarsk and then in Siberia. I don't even know, except it was really hard to control. You get a scientist on there, and he's given like 20 minutes to talk. But there's no way he's going to stop talking. So, I'm going, we got to cut off, turning to their producer but he goes “no, you cannot stop a Russian scientist from speaking.” It was really a nightmare. I think the show came out okay, because it was edited. These never aired live in Russia. The Russian never aired it live. I don't know if they did it first. But we were on the front page of Pravda. I think somewhere Kim has all this news coverage. There was hardly any mention in the US press except the "execrable" comment and the Peace Child videos. But in Russia, it was front page news every time. Huge. I was on the bus with Pavel, and he goes, oh, they're talking about the space bridge. Just tremendous. In Russia, it was a sensation. Posner was back. I don't even think he worked on the one I was there for. He did most of it from then on. At a certain point, I had twins. That was 1987. Close to the end anyway. This all went on throughout the ‘80s. Then there was Donahue. I didn't work on those. I did a little bit on the side. That was a whole series, and it jumped it to another level. It kept going up, up.
Finally, my former partner, David Hoffman, who you might want to talk to, he knows a lot, not about this era, but the next phase of dealing with Russia. We were partners. He went and talked to George Brown, who had been a congressman, and introduced our company. Next thing you know, he's got all these congressmen excited about doing a Space bridge. He put together one between the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Soviet. This was on the far side of Phil Donahue. So, by now, it was a big deal. It had gone from being called execrable to being on Phil Donahue. David produced it. Sure enough, on ABC News, a huge special series ran, like 3 or 4 of these. Again, we went from heresy to orthodoxy. These were the most boring space bridges, they kept getting more boring. I mean, you had congressmen saying the same things. Oh, who was that anchor for ABC who died from cancer? Peter Jennings. He hosted them. And the big thing was, you're going to let Jews go. That was a big deal. They announced they were going to let Jews go. But really nothing interesting. Pontificating on both sides. The big thing was, the Donahue ones were the first ones that were live.
Daniel Satinsky: In the podcast, they talk about it being edited.
Evelyn Messinger: The Donahue ones. I think they were aired live in the US, but the Russians were still editing them. Then ABC News said, it's live on both sides or not at all. So suddenly this was live. The US Congress won two Emmys. Huge big deal.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Evelyn Messinger: Because, you know, it was a big thing. That was the whole scope.
Daniel Satinsky: And who produced those? Was that taken over by ABC, or did your crew do that?
Evelyn Messinger: Our company was always involved, between either me, David, or Kim. But yes, ABC News produced it. They hired Kim to work on TV, doing live stuff. He's really good at it. So we moved to New York. That was wild. There was a whole other phase of dealing with Russia. David and I started an office in New York. It was a good thing the way it turned out. It's a great place to be. We kept up with thinking about Russia this whole time. Although he went off to grow pot in Mendocino County, I think at that point. And so I was doing whatever. Kim was working for ABC. Just briefly, the way it came about was that a friend of mine, a German living in New York, went back to Germany as the Berlin Wall was falling down, and he started a pirate radio station in Leipzig, East Germany. That was the heart of the Berlin Wall falling. He figured out that you could take those old VHS machines, you know, and make a transmitter. There's an RF output at the back, and you put a little antenna on it, and you could transmit the signal out to a city block. People could figure out they could pick up the signal. The video of the revolution coming from the main center of it.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Evelyn Messinger: Wow. This is amazing. I called the Whole Earth Review, which was actually called the Coevolution Quarterly at the time.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah, I remember it.
Evelyn Messinger: I said, I want to go to Germany and write a story about this. They said, okay, we'll pay your expenses. Because that was the good old days. So I did. I went there and wrote this whole story about what had happened. I was fascinated with all this. Anyway, just to go quickly, I started to discover that this was happening all over Eastern Europe. Kim, as part of his ABC job, was going to Moscow with Diane Sawyer to interview Shevardnadze. This was early 1990, 1991.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah, it had to be.
Evelyn Messinger: Yeah, 1990. I said, look, while you're there, see if you can find any independent TV stuff going on because I'm finding it all over here. He comes back and there's like 3000 tiny TV stations all over Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. Using the same technology?
Evelyn Messinger: Well, the technology turns out to be the easy part if you are so inclined. I got a grant from USAID to go all over Eastern Europe and find all these. We made a book, a how-to guide on building your own pirate radio and TV stations. We translated and distributed it all over. But they were doing it in Russia too. The minute a government falls apart, the regulations disappear, and somebody starts broadcasting. It's true today. I could be broadcasting in my neighborhood here. That's exactly what happened everywhere. People would do it with a little UHF transmitter. In Russia, they had those big apartment building complexes, giant buildings. All of them would be wired together with one big antenna on the roof picking up Channel One. Cause what else was there? These people would literally go up and disconnect the main antenna, then plug in a VHS machine and play tapes they made. And in the basements, there would be a little TV studio where they would do the news of the neighborhood or whatever it was. They'd go out and interview people, then go around and knock on doors to collect money. They also put porn on there too, which always made it popular. This was happening everywhere, all over the region, and all over the Soviet Union too. I couldn't deal with the Soviet Union until I got hired by George Soros to go around and give these people money all over Eastern Europe who were starting these little radio and TV stations. That was fun.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Evelyn Messinger: For a job, because, you know, it's a slog, and then you end up in Romania where it's a mess. But it was very rewarding. And you end up helping them write the laws for free media in these countries, some of which have survived. The same thing was happening in Russia. So, David got all excited about this, and he and I wrote a big proposal about what was happening in Russia. Our friend and funder, Wade Green, bless his heart, decided he wanted to fund Russian TV. We met him and told him about the 3000 TV stations in Russia. He said, oh, good, we want to fund that. I was busy with Eastern Europe, so David took the lead on this.
Daniel Satinsky: Wasn't USAID money?