It's been a exciting day learning about Joybubbles. It all started when I was listening to a podcast on Radiolab from February 2012 called Escape and the last segment of the episode is about Josef Carl Engressia, Jr, aka Joybubbles. He legally changed his name in 1991 to Joybubbles because at the age of 39 he declared himself a 5 year old in a way to reclaim the childhood that he had lost. Anyway I became intrigued with his story and started searching him.
I found out that he was born blind and thus took an early interest in telephones as a way to escape. He had absolute pitch and could whistle at 2600 hertz which enabled him to hack into the telecommunication grid and thus call anywhere for free. He lived in Minneapolis and would sometimes do an interactive column for the Pioneer Press and hosted a radio program called "Stories and Stuff" as an outgoing message on his answering machine. His show was along the lines of Mister Rogers, which he was a huge fan of. He updated the show weekly and made the recordings available to anyone who called the telephone number +1-206-FEELING. Rachael Morrison is making a documentary on his story.
Anyway follow the links if you want to learn more about his story.
