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Man climbs a 1,999-foot tower to change a light bulb. It looks as wild as it sounds.

Just another day at the office.

you name it/YouTube

Man climbs 1999-foot tower to change a light bulb.

You know those big giant antennas that look like they reach just below the wing of an airplane at cruising height? Well, someone has to climb them every so often to inspect them or change the flashing bulb. You'd think it would be easier to have a helicopter or something drop them off, but there's probably a really compelling reason someone has to physically climb the antenna. If nothing else, it's probably a good workout.

For Nick Wagner, climbing these huge antennas is just another Tuesday at the office. Wagner works for a company called National Tower Controls, LLC, and apparently, they do maintenance on these towers annually. I'm not sure if there's some sort of process to decide who gets to be the one to climb the beast or if everyone that works there is expected to climb in some rotation. But Wagner took everyone on his climb to change out the light bulb and inspect KDLT-TV's antenna in 2015, and while the view is beautiful, I imagine it could also give you heart palpitations.

"Must not be afraid of heights" is likely in the job description multiple times, bolded, italicized and highlighted. It's not like if you get a little wobbly you can just step down. You'd need an airborne rescue team or a parachute, which makes you wonder if that's part of their climbing equipment. In the video, the climb itself took nearly 15 minutes and it's not clear where in the climb Wagner started filming, but the view is so spectacular that you can practically see the curvature of the Earth.

earth, curvature of the earth, height, tall, skyTalk about scraping the sky.Canva Photos

According to HuffPost, the KDLT-TV antenna's 1,999 foot height makes it not only one one of the tallest structures in South Dakota where it stands, but one of the tallest structures in the world. It's beaten only by Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and the Tokyo Skytree.

TV and radio are, of course, important, but the sheer height and might of the KDLT-TV antenna are dizzying to think about even if you aren't the one climbing the tower. In short, why does the antenna have to be so high? The answer is really simple: "the higher the mast, the farther the signal can travel." Can't argue with that.

TV, signal, watch tv, television, antennaHappy The Simpsons GIFGiphy

What makes this whole process even more interesting is that if someone were to ask what he did all day, Wagner's answer could be, "I changed a light bulb," and he wouldn't be lying. He would be severely understating his duties, but he wouldn't be lying.

At any rate, Wagner can have those light bulbs and I'll stick to the ones that require no more height than a kitchen chair.

Watch the incredible video below and try to keep your head:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Someone asked 'What's the single best episode of TV you've seen?' Here are the top 20 responses.

What's the best TV episode you've ever seen?

via Marques Kaspbrak /Unsplash

A TV set on the Disney+ streaming channel

It’s often said that we live in the "Golden Age of Television," also known as “Peak TV” or “Prestige TV.” Although some say this era goes back to the turn of the millennium, since 2010, we have had the joy of watching shows such as “Game of Thrones,” “Girls,” Better Call Saul," “Ted Lasso,” “Orange is the New Black” and “Stranger Things,” just to name a few.

Over the past decade, there has been so much good TV that people’s biggest complaint is that they don’t have enough time to get to it all.

A viral Reddit thread started by a user named Head_Hauncho may give you some ideas to choose the next show you’d like to binge. He asked the online forum, “What is the single best episode of television you’ve ever seen?” There were responses from shows as old as the ‘80s, but most of the responses were from the past 20 years.

What criteria does one use to choose the best TV series episode? It gets complicated when one considers how much television is produced yearly. A record 599 original scripted drama, comedy, and limited TV shows were aired in 2022 and Americans have produced regular content for broadcast television shows since 1939.

How do we choose one episode of one show?

To rank the responses on the Reddit post, I looked at the number of upvotes each suggestion received on the Reddit thread and then ranked them in order. It’s not the most scientific way of doing things, but it gives us a pretty good idea about who people think should make it to the monument.

Here are the top 20 most popular responses to the burning question: “What is the single best episode of television you’ve ever seen?”

1. Chernobyl - “Vichnaya Pamyat” (Memory Eternal)

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.” — KinmdaQuixotic

2. Band Of Brothers — "Bastogne"

"It came out the weekend before 9/11. I had never been looking forward to a TV series like that. There was football (the Saints beat the Bills), then Band of Brothers, then high school the next day, and all the guys hyped over BoB. Then 9/11 on Tuesday... and I remember watching the rest of the episodes but it wasn't really the same." — TheresA_LobsterLoose

3. The Simpsons — "You Only Move Twice"

"You Only Move Twice had the best Simpson one-off, Hank Scorpio." — Graehaus

4. The IT Crowd — "The Work Outing"

"When Jen turns around to Moss. I know it's coming every time and it breaks me." — Bi_gone_era

5. Doctor Who — "Blink"

"I'm not a fan of the series, I haven't watched all episodes, I've seen this very episode accidentally, years ago and it is stuck in my head ever since. It is based on one of the most creative, original, and disturbing ideas I have ever seen in my life." — Canred

6. Haunting of Hill House — "The Bent-Neck Lady"

"This absolutely gets my vote. It’s an example I use all the time when talking about excellent television. No explosions, no action, no insane stakes…Just a family sitting in a room confronting their trauma. The tail end of that episode had me in tears." — Vengeance2All

7. Community — "Remedial Chaos Theory"

"ROOOOOXXAAAANNNEEE." — Nathan Collier14

8. Arrested Development — "Top Banana"

"First non-pilot episode nails so many of the characters down and introduces an inside joke I repeat in nearly every scene." — Stuebbins

9. Scrubs — "My Lunch"

"Bill Lawrence said something that really stuck with me and that's that the guiding principle of the show was that everything could be goofy aside from the medical side. Made for a show that could do some great tone shifts on a dime." — Patrickwithtraffic

10. The Sopranos — "Pine Barrens"

"Mayonnaise! MAYONNAISE!" — PrincessBucketFeet

11. The Simpsons — "Marge vs. The Monorail"

"It’s probably been almost 20 years since I saw it last, but I can still remember the entire 'See My Vest' song." — Racer_24_4evr

12. Star Trek: Deep Space 9 — "In the Pale Moonlight"

"I can live with it... I can live with it." — Coffeehousebum

13. Firefly — "Out of Gas"

"Some of the love for Firefly on Reddit is a little overblown, but this episode, in particular, was spectacular television." — whitedevilwhitedevil

14. BoJack Horseman — "The View from Halfway Down"

"BoJack Horseman is, I can confidently say, the only cartoon about talking animals that can make me absolutely inconsolable. Seriously, seriously amazing show." — Poopiverse

15. Severance — "The We We Are"

"Unbelievably suspenseful the entire duration. So good." — the_pain_train24

16. M*A*S*H* — "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"

"Honestly this show ended almost a decade before I was even born and yet it’s single-handedly the best show I’ve ever watched." — rebelxghost

17. WKRP in Cincinnati — "Turkeys Away"

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." — Silent-Revolution105

18. Mindhunter — "The Lone Wolf"

"That Ed Kemper hug scene." — westzod

"The beauty of that scene is that Kemper hadn't really shown himself. Sure, he talked about his crimes. He was crazy. He performed theatrics. They knew his history. But, in that moment, Kemper was making him aware of the Pantheon and his sister wives. He was showing how incredibly, batshit crazy he was. He was being intimate the only way he knew how." — Canterbury Terrier

19. Buffy the Vampire Slayer — "The Body"

"'But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens, how we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's...There's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore." — Campmoore

20. House — "Three Stories"

"It’s so good...I love when they delve into the who/why of House, it really helps make him more than pill-popping Sherlock with a doctorate." — Deathsblade2002

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The new Doctor Who says of course her character can still be a role model for boys.

She's got a good point.

When "Doctor Who" announced the casting of Jodie Whittaker in the title role, some people kind of freaked out.

The series, which debuted in 1963, follows a time-traveling alien around the galaxy to solve crimes and right wrongs. Up until now, the titular character has been portrayed by multiple actors, all of whom were men. Whittaker made her debut as the Doctor at the end of the December 2017 season finale. The controversial casting decision was met with a mixed reaction among fans, which prompted the BBC to go on the record with its official ruling: The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey and yes, can switch gender.

Pretty silly, isn't it?

Jodie Whittaker attends Comic Con 2018. Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images.

During her San Diego Comic Con debut, a questioner asked if Whittaker had a message for young boys who are fans of the show.

Just last year, Peter Davison, who played the Doctor between 1981 and 1984, expressed his uneasiness with the casting of Whittaker, or any other woman in the role, saying, "If I feel any doubts [about Whittaker's casting], it’s the loss of a role model for boys, who I think Doctor Who is vitally important for. So I feel a bit sad about that, but I understand the argument that you need to open it up."

Now, of course, there's no shortage of male role models for little boys to look up to. That aside, who's to say that boys can't find inspiration in a female Doctor?

When asked about the debate, Whittaker said she doesn't see the issue. "It's OK to look up to women," she said.

Terri Schwartz, Jodie Whittaker, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill speak onstage during the Doctor Who panel at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

Representation does matter, but there's no reason boys should have to feel put off by a woman playing the Doctor.

Girls are expected to draw their inspiration from male characters without a problem. TV shows, movies, and video games have had a history of centering male protagonists. That's still the case, even today. Boys should be equally capable of drawing inspiration from girls and women.

Of course there's a need to be able to see yourself in the entertainment you consume, but boys aren't going to be finding themselves without heroes who look like them anytime soon.

In all, it's actually the perfect time for a woman to take on the role of Doctor. After 50-some odd years, you've got to keep changing things up to keep the show fresh, right?

Watch the brand new trailer for the upcoming season of "Doctor Who" below.

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Ask yourself these 5 questions when you see a Muslim character in a movie.

It's no secret that Hollywood has a diversity and representation problem.

For years, Hollywood has produced television shows and movies that often portray Muslims, South Asians, and Middle Eastern people with harmful stereotypes.

According to Jack Shaheen, a writer focusing on Arab representation in cinema, Muslim and Arab characters are often confined to three archetypes. He called them "the three B's": bombers, billionaires, and belly dancers. And sometimes, in addition to swinging their hips as belly dancers, some of the women are depicted as living under oppression in black abayas and burqas.

It's quite easy to find shows that fit the bill. The grand majority of Muslim characters in "Homeland" are either suicide bombers or Arab billionaires. Even in beloved children's movies, like "Aladdin," the characters are based in a "faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where they cut off your ear / If they don't like your face / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home!"

But it's time to change the outdated and redundant negative typecasting of Muslim and Middle Eastern characters.

A new test has been introduced to measure how Muslims and Arabs are portrayed in television and film.

The Riz Test is a concept formed by a small group of film buffs that were inspired by a speech that Riz Ahmed, known for "The Night Of," made to the U.K. Parliament about the Bechdel test and media representation.

"We're passionate film buffs but we're tired of the same old stereotypes and tropes being perpetuated in Films and TV shows," the group wrote in a tweet.

Like the Bechdel test, which measures how women are portrayed in fiction, The Riz Test has a quite simple criteria.

The Riz Test asks the viewer to consider five questions if their film or show includes one identifiable Muslim character:

  1. Talking about, the victim of, or the perpetrator of Islamist terrorism?
  2. Presented as irrationally angry?
  3. Presented as superstitious, culturally backwards, or anti-modern?
  4. Presented as a threat to a Western way of life?
  5. If the character is male, is he presented as misogynistic? If female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?

There have been some great improvements in recent years. A few television shows have featured Muslim characters that don't fall into the traps of The Riz Test, such as "The Bold Type's" Adena El Amin character and "Queer Eye's" Tan France.

It's important now, more than ever, to include accurate representation and portrayal of Muslims and Arabs on the big screen.

Hollywood is often a reflection of the society that we live in, and sometimes, it serves as an introduction to the unknown.

In the United States in 2017, Muslims only made up 1.1% of the general population, and not a lot of Americans have ever befriended a Muslim in real life. This means that most of the understanding Americans have about Islam, Muslims, Arabs and their society often come from what they see on television, films, and the news cycle. And with 80% of the media coverage on Islam and Muslims being negative, it's no wonder there's still a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment and misunderstanding across the country.

Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

But accurate portrayals isn't just about improving the way Americans view Muslims; it's also about benefiting our society as a whole.

As Ahmed said in his Parliament speech, "If we fail to represent, I think we're in danger of losing out in three ways, the three E's: (1) We're going to lose people to extremism, (2) we're going to lose out on an expansive idea of who we are as individuals and as a community, and (3) we're going to really lose out on the economic benefits that proper representation can bring to our economy."

In other words, the time is now for Hollywood to generate diverse and accurate portrayals of Muslims and Arabs on the big screen.

You can watch Riz Ahmed's speech below:

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