Man's 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' lifeline call to dad is still thrilling 25 years later
This might be the greatest game show moment ever.

Some moments never get old.
On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest moment of all time.
Carpenter was a contestant on the very first season of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Hosted by the late Regis Philbin, the quiz show featured three "lifeline" options to help contestants with difficult questions, the most popular being to “Phone-a-Friend.”
Carpenter had impressively not used a single lifeline for any of his questions. That is, until question 15. The million-dollar question, to be exact.
Philbin asked which U.S. President had appeared on the TV series "Laugh-In." The four options were Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
That’s when Carpenter chose to call his father.
As soon as his dad answered the phone, Carpenter, all smiles, said:
“I don’t really need your help. I just wanted to let you know that I’m gonna win the million dollars."
Cue uproarious audience applause and laughter.
Watch:
RIP to Regis Philbin. One of the best TV hosts ever. This is my favorite moment in game show history pic.twitter.com/9WA1OyejVh
— Steve Perrault (@Steve_Perrault) July 25, 2020
Looking back, you can see the exact moment Carpenter realizes he’s won the whole damn thing—and it’s before the answers were even shown. He would go on to (correctly) choose Nixon, becoming the first ever top-prize winner in the entire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire franchise worldwide.
And even now, a little over two decades later, it’s still such a boss move. Game shows might not have the same widespread appeal that they once did, but it's iconic moments like Carpenter’s phone call that still make them so fun to watch today.
This article originally appeared two years ago.
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared nine years ago.