Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I got to talk to
Speaker 1: Toby Ball recently. That's the creator and host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Rip Current. Rip Current explores the story of the
Speaker 1: two assassination attempts that were carried out against President Gerald Ford.
Speaker 1: Those took place less than three weeks apart in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. The first assassination attempt was carried out by
Speaker 1: Lynette from also known as Squeaky, who was already infamous
Speaker 1: because of her involvement with the Manson family. The other
Speaker 1: was by Sarah Jane Moore, who had become an FBI
Speaker 1: informant and is most known today for this assassination attempt.
Speaker 1: Our interview talks a bit about these two women and
Speaker 1: some parallels in what led each of them to try
Speaker 1: to assassinate Gerald Ford. But it's also really about what
Speaker 1: goes into creating a podcast like this, which incorporates a
Speaker 1: lot of things like interviews and archival footage. So we'll
Speaker 1: get to it. Hi, Toby, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Can you just start off telling me a little bit
Speaker 1: about your background.
Speaker 3: Sure, so I've sort of been a jack of all trades,
Speaker 3: master of none. I started off working out a magazine.
Speaker 3: I worked at a couple of universities. I've taught high school.
Speaker 3: I worked at our state Humanities Council. And then I
Speaker 3: started getting into podcasting. About ten years ago, I'm on
Speaker 3: a panel discussion that's still going on, sort of reviews
Speaker 3: true crime podcast and television. And then about you know,
Speaker 3: five or six years ago, I you know, I had
Speaker 3: been reviewing so many podcasts that I thought maybe I
Speaker 3: should actually and make one and see what that was
Speaker 3: all about and sort of the decisions you have to
Speaker 3: make and the issues run into And so I did,
Speaker 3: and that ended up being the first season of Strange Arrivals,
Speaker 3: which is a sort of a skeptical look at belief
Speaker 3: in UFOs. I did three seasons of that, and that's
Speaker 3: an iHeart podcast. And about two years ago started working
Speaker 3: on the podcast I'm here to talk about called Rip Current,
Speaker 3: which was sort of more kind of up my alley
Speaker 3: and in my area of interest.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'd like our listeners to have sort of
Speaker 1: a sense of the show that we're talking about so
Speaker 1: we are going to play the trailer for it right here.
Speaker 3: This summer, A lone gunman on a rooftop reminded us
Speaker 3: that American presidents have long been the targets of assassins.
Speaker 3: Nearly fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford faced two attempts
Speaker 3: on his life in less than three weeks. September fifth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five, Sacramento, California, in a crowd outside the
Speaker 3: Capitol Building, a woman pulls a gun on President Ford.
Speaker 2: President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the
Speaker 2: victim of an assassin.
Speaker 3: Today, a woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed
Speaker 3: a forty five caliber pistol at the President.
Speaker 1: And I saw a woman start to go down and
Speaker 1: her arm go back, and I saw the gun.
Speaker 4: September twenty second, San Francisco, on the steps of the
Speaker 4: Saint Francis Hotel, another woman tries to kill the President.
Speaker 3: A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Speaker 3: Francisco this afternoon.
Speaker 1: She was right at the front of the robe and
Speaker 1: forty feet away.
Speaker 4: When he walked out, President waved to the crowds and
Speaker 4: they had cheered him, and that's when it happened.
Speaker 2: I yelled the she's got a gun.
Speaker 3: In two hundred and fifty years of US history, these
Speaker 3: are the only two times we know of that a
Speaker 3: woman has tried to assassinate a sitting president.
Speaker 4: The two events were separated by seventeen days, in less
Speaker 4: than ninety miles, and the two assassins had never met.
Speaker 3: One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
Speaker 3: She is twenty six year old Lynette Alice from nickname Squeaky.
Speaker 4: I always felt like Glynnette was kind of his right
Speaker 4: hand woman, a.
Speaker 3: Good curtain, a very good person. The other a middle
Speaker 3: aged housewife, an aspiring radical, rookie undercover for the FBI
Speaker 3: in the Violent Revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Underground, identified by police Sarah Jane Moore in her forties.
Speaker 4: Because she didn't look like a radical, she could enter
Speaker 4: into these areas that other people couldn't.
Speaker 2: A spy.
Speaker 3: Basically, I was the person in the intent was exactly
Speaker 3: as I stated in court, to wealthily and know any assassinator.
Speaker 3: On Off four, the Persson of in United States.
Speaker 4: This season, on the podcast Rip Current, we ask why
Speaker 4: these women? She was a gentle client.
Speaker 3: I thought he's loving girl.
Speaker 4: Why did they want to kill President Ford, being the
Speaker 4: appointee of President Nixon, it's understandable to me that in
Speaker 4: their minds he should also be the object of their hatred.
Speaker 4: And why this time, this place.
Speaker 1: One does not have to condone everything in hate Ashbury
Speaker 1: to know that it exists.
Speaker 3: Back then, there were lots of communes, There were lots
Speaker 3: of guru varieties.
Speaker 1: Manson told his followers that this would be a blood
Speaker 1: bath in the streets of every American city. What starts
Speaker 1: as a hippie love called transmographied into a violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: Five persons, including actress Sharon Tape, were found dead.
Speaker 4: We realize that we're dealing with very violent underground groups.
Speaker 2: Or corporate enemies of the people. Will be shut on
Speaker 2: at any time and any play.
Speaker 1: The goals were anarchy, a lot of anarchy.
Speaker 4: The revolutionary groups would get their power.
Speaker 1: The bloodiest and most massive gun battle in the history
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Random violence, political violence. There was just no let up.
Speaker 1: Yes to the fact that insect the praise to find
Speaker 1: the life of the people.
Speaker 2: These people aren't just a bunch of nuts. They're perfectly
Speaker 2: willing to die for what they're doing. Someplace else that
Speaker 2: would have been like a big deal, but not in California.
Speaker 3: The story of one strange and violent Summer this season
Speaker 3: on Rip Current.
Speaker 1: So tell me what drew you to this particular story.
Speaker 2: So I was doing some research.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do something about, you know, radicalism. I
Speaker 3: was looking at the nineteen seventies. I was doing a
Speaker 3: lot of research, and I ran across the story of
Speaker 3: Sarah Jane Moore, who I'm sure we're about to talk
Speaker 3: more about. She's just a very interesting story. And then
Speaker 3: doing that research, found out that she was actually the
Speaker 3: second person to try and assassinate Gerald Ford in September
Speaker 3: of nineteen seventy five, and the first person was a
Speaker 3: woman named Lynette From, better known as Squeaky From, who
Speaker 3: is one of Charles Manson's followers. And in fact, those
Speaker 3: are the only two women who have ever tried to
Speaker 3: assassinate a sitting US president as far as we know.
Speaker 3: So starting with that seemed like a quirk of history.
Speaker 3: So started doing some more research into them and trying
Speaker 3: to find out are there commonalities between their two stories,
Speaker 3: like why in two hundred and fifty years of US
Speaker 3: history are there only two times that a woman has
Speaker 3: tried to assassinate a president and why was it seventeen
Speaker 3: days apart in September of nineteen seventy So I had
Speaker 3: sort of these questions. I wasn't sure if there was
Speaker 3: going to be sort of a satisfactory answer, right. It
Speaker 3: could just be a complete quirk, or one could have
Speaker 3: been inspired by the other. But the more I kind
Speaker 3: of dug into it, the more sort of pattern sort
Speaker 3: of emerged in things commonalities you could find. Even though
Speaker 3: it wasn't they didn't follow exactly the same path, there
Speaker 3: was enough that was common in their situations, and then
Speaker 3: also some other people who are sort of tangentially involved
Speaker 3: in the story.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that really has stood out
Speaker 1: to me in the episodes that I've listened to, which
Speaker 1: are the ones that are publicly available as of when
Speaker 1: we are recording this, is that you have really gone
Speaker 1: deep into the background on both of them. So the
Speaker 1: first several episodes we've got a lot of context setting
Speaker 1: about the Manson family to give all the detail of
Speaker 1: sort of how Lynette from got to where she was.
Speaker 1: Same thing with the episodes that get into the background
Speaker 1: involving things like the Symbonese Liberation Army and the SLA
Speaker 1: kidnapping of Patty Hurst, kind of telling the story of
Speaker 1: how Sarah Jane Moore got to where she was. How
Speaker 1: did you decide how much background you wanted to include
Speaker 1: on these two women and the other organizations and other
Speaker 1: movements that they were connected to.
Speaker 3: That's actually the stuff that I found most interesting when
Speaker 3: I was doing the research. I sort of feel like
Speaker 3: my sort of modus opera anddi is you know what
Speaker 3: am I finding really interesting? And can I sort of
Speaker 3: maximize that as I'm telling the story? And in fact,
Speaker 3: the actual assassination attempts themselves are interesting, and especially Sarah
Speaker 3: Jane moorees is sort of suspenseful, but that's just a
Speaker 3: very small part of the story. The the real story
Speaker 3: to me is how did they get to this point?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And then by going through the research, I sort of
Speaker 3: developed this theory is probably too strong a word, but
Speaker 3: sort of recognized sort of this pattern that was occurring
Speaker 3: with them, and I wanted to kind of demonstrate how,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that their lives were quite different in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, and especially the details they sort
Speaker 3: of unfolded in a sort of generally similar way, and
Speaker 3: that that might in some way have led them to
Speaker 3: taking this sort of very strong, probably irrational action, which
Speaker 3: is trying to kill the president. So as far as
Speaker 3: Lynette from goes, you know, her story is really about
Speaker 3: being with Charles Manson, and then when Charles Manson goes
Speaker 3: to prison, she still remains sort of very devoted to him,
Speaker 3: and so she tries to help help him while she's
Speaker 3: outside and he's inside prison, and she's in this very
Speaker 3: strange situation where she's famous. You know, people know who
Speaker 3: she is, but that doesn't really help her in a way.
Speaker 3: It actually hinders her, Like nobody's going to hire her
Speaker 3: to work. She really lives on the fringes up until
Speaker 3: the time that she takes a shot at Ford.
Speaker 2: With Sara Jane Moore.
Speaker 3: You know, the sort of the crux of her story
Speaker 3: in my mind is this is a woman who's lived
Speaker 3: this this fairly. You know, from a distance, looks very
Speaker 3: conventional life of she She was married and divorced several times,
Speaker 3: but you know, she was married to a couple of
Speaker 3: military men, she was married to a Hollywood sound designer,
Speaker 3: she was married to a doctor.
Speaker 2: So this was kind of her life beforehand.
Speaker 3: And then she goes through a series of events having
Speaker 3: to do with Patty Hursts kidnapping. She becomes an underground
Speaker 3: informant for the FBI in the radical scene in the
Speaker 3: Bay Area in nineteen seventy four. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 3: so she goes from this very well off, conventional lifestyle
Speaker 3: to suddenly being in the midst of really the furthest
Speaker 3: reaches of you know, violent radical groups. And so that
Speaker 3: was why sort of diving into the Simbonese Liberation Army,
Speaker 3: we probably haven't gotten to Tribal Thumb yet, no, or
Speaker 3: some of these other smaller groups that she interacts with,
Speaker 3: and her story is really one of feeling increasing pressure
Speaker 3: on her, feeling increasingly in danger as the months go
Speaker 3: on and.
Speaker 2: She gets further and further sort of ensconced in this
Speaker 2: app misphere.
Speaker 3: So some of it's set up to sort of tell
Speaker 3: these stories, but it's also I just found it really
Speaker 3: interesting in and of itself, especially Bay Area middle seventies.
Speaker 3: It's sort of the last vestiges of sixties radicalism, and
Speaker 3: you have these very small groups with these very big
Speaker 3: plans about overthrowing the government, but without really.
Speaker 2: Much of a plan to do it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how you overthrow the government
Speaker 3: with twelve or fifteen you know people. So anyway, that
Speaker 3: was kind of what I thought was really interesting and
Speaker 3: might have some parallels to stuff that's going on now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you also talk a lot about like the
Speaker 1: idea of Middle America and how Middle America was responding
Speaker 1: to what was happening with all the radicals in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area and the climate, like the political climate of
Speaker 1: the day, which that's the year that I was born,
Speaker 1: So I have no memory of it personally, but there
Speaker 1: are definitely elements of it that I'm like, this feels
Speaker 1: very comparable to things that happen now regarding sort of
Speaker 1: what you think of as the mainstream reacting to what
Speaker 1: the mainstream considers to be a fringe element, with some
Speaker 1: of those fringe elements later becoming like more of a
Speaker 1: mainstream thought. Like some of the things that were that
Speaker 1: you talked about in terms of Squeaky From's activism were
Speaker 1: about climate and what was happening to the planet. And
Speaker 1: I think the perception of people who are looking at
Speaker 1: the climate in nineteen seventy five versus today, Like there
Speaker 1: are some parallels and some dissimilarities, and so I thought
Speaker 1: those were all really interesting things. To talk about in
Speaker 1: your show.
Speaker 3: Also, Yeah, So it's funny because when Lynette from and
Speaker 3: her sort of best friend, this woman Sandra Good, who
Speaker 3: is also a Manson follower, moved to Sacramento, they catch
Speaker 3: this sort of environmentalism bug. But the way, the way,
Speaker 3: you know, two former Manson girls approach environmentalism is to
Speaker 3: send threatening letters to CEOs of companies and government officials
Speaker 3: who oversee the maintenance of you know, wilderness areas, particularly
Speaker 3: in California. So so, yeah, so they become very concerned.
Speaker 3: They're they're both sort of interacting with the local press.
Speaker 3: Instead of giving them press releases, they send these threatening letters.
Speaker 3: At the time, Lynette and Sandra are sort of dressing
Speaker 3: in these weird outfits, which are sort of these long
Speaker 3: gowns with these I don't know how to describe them
Speaker 3: other than as sort of like deflated witches hats, where
Speaker 3: they would be like tall coned hats, except there's nothing
Speaker 3: holding the cone up, so it just kind of flops
Speaker 3: over to the side.
Speaker 2: And Lynette would wear red and Sandra.
Speaker 3: Would wear blue, and they, you know, even in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy four, nineteen seventy five, they look very distinct They
Speaker 3: don't look like anybody else, And at one point they
Speaker 3: go to San Francisco and they go to Berkeley and
Speaker 3: they go to the offices of CEOs and try and
Speaker 3: get meetings with them dressed like this. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: very it's very strange, and I think, you know, people
Speaker 3: didn't know really what to make of it and whether
Speaker 3: to take them seriously. After Lynette gets tries to shoot
Speaker 3: forward and gets arrested, Sandra Good ends up being interviewed
Speaker 3: quite a bit, and she's talking about how they're part
Speaker 3: of this organization which is completely faittional, called the International
Speaker 3: People's Court of Retribution, that was going to carry out,
Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of assassinations around the world to save
Speaker 3: the environment. So it's really it's pretty it's pretty strange,
Speaker 3: crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listening to the like audio from interviews where she
Speaker 1: is being asked one question and the answers are not
Speaker 1: answers to that question. They are answers about the environment
Speaker 1: and what's happening to the planet. And the whole time
Speaker 1: I was I was like, this is this is wild,
Speaker 1: Like it goes much farther than hearing somebody spin an
Speaker 1: answer into the direction. It's just answering a totally different question.
Speaker 3: It just very aggressively. Yeah, right, she's just very antagonistic.
Speaker 3: In one of the episodes, we play sort of sort
Speaker 3: of an extended bit of an interview that Sandra does
Speaker 3: just a few days after the assassination attempts with the
Speaker 3: Canadian Broadcasting Company with this very sort of nice professional
Speaker 3: reporter and Sandra just, you know, she's just clearly so
Speaker 3: angry and she just wants to sort of take a
Speaker 3: bite out of this woman who's trying to get sort
Speaker 3: of the information that you'd expect a reporter to get,
Speaker 3: and Sandra just doesn't have any time for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So your podcast, rip Current is radically different from
Speaker 1: Stuffy miss In history class, we have a show. It's
Speaker 1: Holly and me most of the time. Sometimes we have
Speaker 1: a guest, but like it's each of us. We're talking
Speaker 1: into the microphone and we are usually telling a pretty
Speaker 1: linear story that has a beginning, in a middle, an
Speaker 1: end in most cases, and rip Current is very different.
Speaker 1: You've got all of these interviews and clips of audio
Speaker 1: or you know, the audio from video footage from the time,
Speaker 1: and in some cases reenactments tell me more about the
Speaker 1: process of what it takes to go through all of
Speaker 1: that and put it together into an episode of a podcast.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question the way it worked. I guess
Speaker 3: it's worked with all the sort of podcasts like this
Speaker 3: I've done limited series. It's really I do a lot
Speaker 3: of research before I even start working on scripts and
Speaker 3: things like that, and so it's some of it's sort
Speaker 3: of what you would consider I think, more traditional research.
Speaker 3: I go through newspapers, you know, that were current at
Speaker 3: the time, books that have been written about the subjects,
Speaker 3: court documents, things like that, and then I try and
Speaker 3: identify people who would have some insight or some firsthand knowledge.
Speaker 3: So in the case of rip Current, especially about Lynette
Speaker 3: from there's been a bunch of books written about her
Speaker 3: and and and you know, Charles Manson that whole thing. So,
Speaker 3: you know, identifying authors who I could talk to either
Speaker 3: generally about what was happening in her life or sort
Speaker 3: of about specific little bits. And so there's a there's
Speaker 3: a there's a bunch of author interviews, and then as
Speaker 3: far as sourcing sort of archival audio, you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's just a lot of web searching. To be honest
Speaker 3: with you, it's you know, it's finding what's what's available
Speaker 3: out there. As I kind of went through the process,
Speaker 3: I got a little bit better about finding where things
Speaker 3: might be. You know, there are universities that have, you know,
Speaker 3: collections of local news broadcasts at times. San Francisco State
Speaker 3: University is a place that I got a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff from some state history museums. Archive dot org, which,
Speaker 3: as we're recording, has has been taken down.
Speaker 2: Upset about a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, we just talked about it in our behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that I oh you did. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it will. It will have come out before this episode
Speaker 1: comes out because of that. Archive dot organ is a
Speaker 1: major part of our research.
Speaker 3: Also, Yeah, hopefully that comes back up. I think there's
Speaker 3: a lot of podcasts who are sweating it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, I've spent I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time listening to three hours of a pacifica radio broadcast
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy five to try and find little clips
Speaker 3: that are contemporaneous about the events that I'm covering, or
Speaker 3: about some of the people, or or sort of explaining
Speaker 3: how things were thought of at the time that we're
Speaker 3: talking about. So I guess that's kind of the process
Speaker 3: and then I end up I do. I'm kind of
Speaker 3: old school in the way. I mean, people aren't gonna
Speaker 3: be able to see it, but I'm holding out. I
Speaker 3: use these, uh, I use index cards, and I take
Speaker 3: notes on index cards and then sort them into piles
Speaker 3: about which notes go with which episode. And then it's
Speaker 3: I take from transcripts of interviews, transcripts from audio notes
Speaker 3: I've taken from written sources, and kind of sort of
Speaker 3: placement in order that seems to make sense in a script,
Speaker 3: and then write narrative to kind of tie everything together
Speaker 3: and explain the things I want to explain and set
Speaker 3: things up. So that's that's kind of the process. I've
Speaker 3: never really tried to explain it before, actually, but I
Speaker 3: think that's kind of what I go through.
Speaker 1: Index cards sorted into piles was my way of structuring
Speaker 1: writing for a long time before before like word processing
Speaker 1: software really got to the point that you could just
Speaker 1: move things around with the mouse, which has become how
Speaker 1: I do that kind of a thing now. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a blast of nostalgia.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've got colored note cards too. Yeah, there's green
Speaker 3: for one thing, pink for another, orange for another. Na
Speaker 3: it's definitely sort of seventh grade stuff.
Speaker 1: So like, how many people does it take to then
Speaker 1: craft that into an episode of the podcast? Because I
Speaker 1: know there are three producers from iHeart that are credited
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but I don't have a sense of
Speaker 1: like what each of them do on the show.
Speaker 3: Sure, So so I read all the scripts, I record
Speaker 3: voiceover and send it to them, and then there's an
Speaker 3: executive producer and then three other producers, and so there's
Speaker 3: a couple of rounds of putting things together. That's what
Speaker 3: they call the dry pass or the dry cut, which
Speaker 3: is without any sort of sound design behind it. It's
Speaker 3: just each piece of spoken or archival audio, you know,
Speaker 3: place in the right places, and you kind of listen
Speaker 3: and you say, you know, separate these a little bit.
Speaker 3: This looked great on paper, doesn't sound so good when
Speaker 3: you're listening.
Speaker 2: To it on tape.
Speaker 3: And then the second past is where they take the
Speaker 3: musical score or if you're going to add sort of
Speaker 3: you know, sound effects, which we don't really do very much,
Speaker 3: and you add that in to sort of create the
Speaker 3: tone and feel of the program.
Speaker 2: You know, add you know.
Speaker 3: Suspenseful music where it should be, propulsive music where it
Speaker 3: should be things like that, and that's each of the
Speaker 3: three producers would kind of take there's gonna be twelve
Speaker 3: episodes and then seven, I guess bonus episodes. So they
Speaker 3: get split up among the producers and they take a
Speaker 3: certain amount, so they're so responsible for both mixes, and
Speaker 3: then they pass it on to an executive producer who
Speaker 3: does sort of the final mix and quality assurance and
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you encountered while working on
Speaker 1: this was a news organization that did not allow footage
Speaker 1: of the reporters to be reused. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about that and how you wound up
Speaker 1: recording instead re enactments of that.
Speaker 3: One of the television stations in Sacramento, which is owned
Speaker 3: by a huge news organization.
Speaker 2: They you know, you can find on.
Speaker 3: YouTube if you just search on Squeaky from Ford Assassination,
Speaker 3: news coverage or whatever, you can find it all on YouTube.
Speaker 3: But they don't they don't license if any of their
Speaker 3: actual reporters are talking. And they had this really really
Speaker 3: interesting piece of a reporter who goes to when Lynette
Speaker 3: from and Sandra Good moved to Sacramento and it becomes known,
Speaker 3: she's like, well, I'll just go and see what they're
Speaker 3: up to. So she goes to their house and sort
Speaker 3: of interviews them and stuff. You don't see that, but
Speaker 3: after the after the assassination attempt, she's on the set
Speaker 3: of the newscast and she just kind of talked about
Speaker 3: her experience going in there and what they were like,
Speaker 3: and what their apartment was like and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: but in a very sort of conversational, not very newsy way.
Speaker 3: And you know, when we were putting together an early
Speaker 3: version of the episode, we cut the stuff we wanted
Speaker 3: in there to see how it sounded. Sounded sounded great,
Speaker 3: but you know, through multiple email exchanges, yeah, the you know,
Speaker 3: the parent company was just not going to budge. So
Speaker 3: it kind of it came down to we were trying
Speaker 3: to figure out is this something that we can just
Speaker 3: let let go? But we thought it was. It really
Speaker 3: gave the best picture of what Lynnette's life was like
Speaker 3: at the time, right before she made the assassination attempt.
Speaker 3: So then it was do we want me just sort
Speaker 3: of summarizing what she said as as sort of the
Speaker 3: omniscient narrator, or do we want to.
Speaker 2: Bring in an actor just sort of you.
Speaker 3: Know, basically read from the transcript, you know, but in
Speaker 3: a way that it's a little more immersive than my
Speaker 3: like struggling not to do a monotone.
Speaker 2: And so that's what we ended up doing.
Speaker 3: And it kind of felt like as long as we're
Speaker 3: upfront about the fact that this isn't actually that piece
Speaker 3: of footage, but that we have an actor reading from
Speaker 3: the transcript, and that we're doing it for this reason,
Speaker 3: which is we can't get the rights, but we still
Speaker 3: feel like it's important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was just that was sort of the
Speaker 2: process there. It was. It's frustrating.
Speaker 3: It's always kind of interesting what rights you can get
Speaker 3: and what rights you can't, because it's not always intuitive.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that had anything to do with like
Speaker 1: likeness rights for the reporter, and whether it just wasn't
Speaker 1: something somebody foresaw in that reporter's contract in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five that one day there might be a podcast want
Speaker 1: to use the audio for something. That's the explanation I
Speaker 1: can think of. Anyway, let's take one more quick break
Speaker 1: and then we'll be back to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the show. So earlier today I was listening
Speaker 1: to the seventh episode of the podcast, and there was
Speaker 1: an incident in which Sarah Jane Moore what did not
Speaker 1: have ID with her, but did have several pictures of herself.
Speaker 1: And it's obvious from the you know, the context the
Speaker 1: description of that that at the time that was weird
Speaker 1: to not have your ID and also to have several
Speaker 1: pictures of yourself just on you. And what really hit
Speaker 1: me in that moment was that today a lot of
Speaker 1: us are walking around with a phone full of selfies.
Speaker 1: It's very normal to just have a bunch of pictures
Speaker 1: of yourself on you at all times. Are there things
Speaker 1: that similarly really stuck out to you in terms of
Speaker 1: differences in day to day living between what was happening
Speaker 1: in this period that you are, you know, reporting on
Speaker 1: on this podcast.
Speaker 2: And now that's interesting.
Speaker 3: I guess what kind of struck me is how much
Speaker 3: more connected we are, or potentially connected we are with
Speaker 3: everybody all the time that we want to talk to
Speaker 3: now that everybody's walking around with cell phones because a
Speaker 3: fair amount of you know, what's going on in San
Speaker 3: Francisco at the time. Sometimes a communication is done like
Speaker 3: literally through the letters page of a newspaper. Right there's
Speaker 3: no way to get a message to somebody physically. When
Speaker 3: everybody's underground and people are suspicious of each other and
Speaker 3: they think there may be FBI plants and stuff, it's
Speaker 3: only communication becomes very, very difficult. So that was one thing.
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting question, you know. I just kind
Speaker 3: of feel like now, like somebody like Lynette from.
Speaker 2: Would be.
Speaker 3: In the news on cable TV all the time if
Speaker 3: she had been involved in something. I mean, she wasn't
Speaker 3: amongst the people who committed the Charles Manson associated murders,
Speaker 3: but she's a very well known, high profile member of
Speaker 3: his group.
Speaker 2: And the idea that.
Speaker 3: You know, she basically goes off the grid, like people
Speaker 3: don't really know much about what's going on with her,
Speaker 3: and she's kind of involved in these sort of sketchy dealings,
Speaker 3: and every once in a while she'll kind of pop
Speaker 3: up in the newspaper for something that she's she's involved in,
Speaker 3: but for the most part, she just kind of lives
Speaker 3: her life and there's no there's One of the controversies
Speaker 3: that comes out of her assassination attempt is that there
Speaker 3: wasn't any real security that she wasn't considered a security risk, right,
Speaker 3: so she wasn't put under surveillance people didn't really know
Speaker 3: where she was. I mean, she wasn't trying to hide,
Speaker 3: like she showed up dressed in her red gown and
Speaker 3: funny red hat, and I mean she stuck out. Like
Speaker 3: if you look in the crowd in some of these pictures,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, who's that And it's still that from
Speaker 3: and she's the one who's gonna pull the trigger. But
Speaker 3: the just you know, the heightened security awareness just kind
Speaker 3: of wasn't there. You know, there's that, and then there's
Speaker 3: just the general sense at that time in California of
Speaker 3: the potential for violence. I don't think we've gotten to
Speaker 3: it yet in what's been released so far, but San
Speaker 3: Francisco was a very, very sort of violent city at
Speaker 3: that period of time, both because of radical groups, but
Speaker 3: just i you know, not coincidentally necessarily, but unconnected is
Speaker 3: when the Zodiac murders were going on, thing called the
Speaker 3: Zebra murders, which were these apparently random didn't turn out
Speaker 3: to be random murders that were being committed on the street.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of sort of anti police sentiment
Speaker 3: going around, and then Patty Hurst was missing, and that
Speaker 3: is sort of the thing that hangs over everything to
Speaker 3: do with Sarah Jane Moore and sort of the radical
Speaker 3: scene in the Bay Area is that this you know,
Speaker 3: this Hurst heiress is missing and it's sort of the
Speaker 3: biggest story in the country is like can we find her?
Speaker 3: And all these groups that Sarah Jane Moore is associating
Speaker 3: with are, at least in the eyes of sort of
Speaker 3: the establishments or of law enforcement and journalism and it's such,
Speaker 3: are connected to the Simbonese Liberation Army, which is the
Speaker 3: group that has Patty Hurst. So they're under surveillance, the
Speaker 3: police raid places associated with journalists, get in touch with
Speaker 3: members of these groups, against touch with Sarah Jane Moore
Speaker 3: to see if she can provide information on where Patty
Speaker 3: Hurst is. So I guess I guess those were the
Speaker 3: things that kind of kind of stood out to me.
Speaker 3: But again, I'm you know, I'm looking at this fairly
Speaker 3: narrow slice of sort of people living in sort of
Speaker 3: one extreme situation compared to to most of what was
Speaker 3: going on in America.
Speaker 1: So beyond that sort of then versus now things that
Speaker 1: are different. What really surprised you as you were researching
Speaker 1: and working on this show?
Speaker 3: So what I kind of came around to really focusing
Speaker 3: on was this idea that if you live sort of
Speaker 3: a conventional life and then under duress, are soddenly given
Speaker 3: this whole new way of looking at things. In a
Speaker 3: situation where you're probably in danger, it happens very very fast.
Speaker 3: You don't really have sort of outside moderating influences around you,
Speaker 3: and what happens to somebody. And so that's what happened
Speaker 3: with Lynette from I mean, she essentially got kicked out
Speaker 3: of her house and left and very quickly ran into
Speaker 3: Charles Manson and jumped in his van and was part
Speaker 3: of his group. Sarah Jane Moore like volunteered for this
Speaker 3: thing that was associated with trying to get Patty Hurst released,
Speaker 3: met up with these sort of Marxist prison radicals or
Speaker 3: former prison radicals. The FBI told her to go underground,
Speaker 3: so she became radicalized while she was in these groups,
Speaker 3: Like she considered herself sort of a revolutionary. After amount
Speaker 3: of time, she felt like her eyes had been open
Speaker 3: to the plight of black people at that time that
Speaker 3: she hadn't really taken in and she was given sort
Speaker 3: of a framework with which to look at it. Both
Speaker 3: as it was and what could be done about it.
Speaker 3: She became she considered herself a Marxist or a Maoist,
Speaker 3: and then Patty Hurst herself. I mean, she was put
Speaker 3: in a closet for six weeks and sort of pilloried
Speaker 3: with the beliefs of the Siminese Liberation Army, which were
Speaker 3: sort of a combination of sort of typical revolutionary Maoist
Speaker 3: ideas and then this other really bizarre sort of conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 3: But when she was finally given some freedom, she whether
Speaker 3: it was a conscious decision or whether it was sort
Speaker 3: of course of control, joined her captors right and she
Speaker 3: went in. She helped rob a bank. There's famous picture
Speaker 3: of her holding a a gun. So that was that
Speaker 3: was what I found really interesting was sort of that
Speaker 3: dynamic and how these people changed. They start off as
Speaker 3: one thing, went through this process of just rapid, sort
Speaker 3: of under pressure change, and came out as people who
Speaker 3: were willing to do things that you never would have
Speaker 3: imagined them being involved in prior to that change.
Speaker 1: There is so much in the you know, the episodes
Speaker 1: that I've listened to so far, so much little details
Speaker 1: that I really did not know that nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: is a little more recent than what we normally talk
Speaker 1: about on our podcast. So it's because it's also a
Speaker 1: period where my life started was not a period when,
Speaker 1: like my school classes did not talk about the history
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy five and later really at all until
Speaker 1: I got to college, and even then it was just
Speaker 1: the sketchiest little amount, So I did not know much
Speaker 1: detail about a lot of what was happening that you
Speaker 1: talk about in the podcast. So it's been all very
Speaker 1: interesting to listen to you. I am hoping to keep
Speaker 1: on top of it. I tend to get very behind
Speaker 1: in my podcast listening very quickly, so as the subsequent
Speaker 1: episodes come out, there will be more of them out
Speaker 1: by the time this interview comes out for our listeners
Speaker 1: than there are right now, so I am looking forward
Speaker 1: to listening to them. Is there anything that you think
Speaker 1: our listeners should absolutely know, either about this podcast or
Speaker 1: about your work in general, Like, what is there any
Speaker 1: particular thing that just folks you want them to be
Speaker 1: aware of or have in mind?
Speaker 3: It's another good question that I probably should have some
Speaker 3: thought too before we started this, because I ask it
Speaker 3: of people myself. It's not an original thought, but I
Speaker 3: think being able to look at sort of analogous or
Speaker 3: somewhat analogous times in history. And for me, it's not
Speaker 3: even necessarily what people do, but kind of the way
Speaker 3: they conceive of the situation that they're in and what
Speaker 3: sort of the possibilities are and what's realistic and what's
Speaker 3: not realistic. I mean, I think one of the things
Speaker 3: I found interesting, and I think this is true of
Speaker 3: the late sixties or maybe even all the sixties as well,
Speaker 3: is this idea that you can take a look at
Speaker 3: at at our society and think about making major major changes, right.
Speaker 3: And I think that's you know, that's it probably started
Speaker 3: with the civil rights movement and then people said, well,
Speaker 3: what else is out there that can make our country,
Speaker 3: you know, fundamentally fairer or more in line with what
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 2: And the thoughts were big.
Speaker 3: The thoughts weren't, you know, we let's mess with the
Speaker 3: tax code a little bit. It's you know, or do
Speaker 3: things like that. It was really like, can we remake
Speaker 3: our country in a way that sort of is more
Speaker 3: aligned with what we feel it should be like. And
Speaker 3: by the time we kind of jump into it in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four nineteen seventy five, in sort of the
Speaker 3: radical scene. I mean, it's really kind of tailing off,
Speaker 3: so the people who are left, it's really sort of
Speaker 3: the most radical people and there's just not many people
Speaker 3: out there. But I do spend some time talking about
Speaker 3: you know, prison revolutionaries in California, which I think is
Speaker 3: you know, the more I learned about that, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I could have just done a podcast on this, because
Speaker 3: there was a sense that, especially for you know, black
Speaker 3: men and Latinos and Native Americans as well, that prison
Speaker 3: is sort of an extreme example of what society is
Speaker 3: actually like, and so that you know, you you become
Speaker 3: radicalized and become a revolutionary in prison. And the idea
Speaker 3: is that is when you're released, you can bring the
Speaker 3: fight against the same sort of inequalities and oppressive systems
Speaker 3: that are very clear in prison, where you have warden
Speaker 3: and you have guards, and you have you know, things
Speaker 3: that you can and can't do, and then you go
Speaker 3: out into the world outside prison and you see the
Speaker 3: same structures and you know you want to address them.
Speaker 2: And that was how.
Speaker 3: Groups like the Siminese Liberation Army or or Tribal Thumb,
Speaker 3: which there'll be stuff on them a little bit later
Speaker 3: in the season, they're they're really they're run by by
Speaker 3: guys who are prison revolutionaries, black men who come out
Speaker 3: and get largely young white, sort of college age radicals
Speaker 3: to kind of fall along with them, and they sort
Speaker 3: of take in this this way of looking at our society, right,
Speaker 3: is that it's it sort of the prison system and
Speaker 3: who has possibilities and things like that.
Speaker 2: So it's like a lot of words that I just said,
Speaker 2: we're just saying that.
Speaker 3: I just and I'm certainly not advocating for anything that
Speaker 3: any of these people did in the podcast, because you know,
Speaker 3: assassinating the president.
Speaker 2: I mean, these are violent groups that they sort of
Speaker 2: no hope.
Speaker 3: But I think the idea of, you know, looking at
Speaker 3: society in a way of can we make big changes
Speaker 3: to make things better for people? I guess that might
Speaker 3: have been actually the sort of the what makes me
Speaker 3: interested in that era is that it just seemed like
Speaker 3: there was just a lot more sort of big thinking
Speaker 3: about those things. And sometimes the big thinking ended up
Speaker 3: in the civil rights movement with its like absolutely positive outcomes,
Speaker 3: and then sometimes it's the weathermen or something who just
Speaker 3: sort of had this neilistic view about how you go
Speaker 3: about affecting that change.
Speaker 1: So do you already know what your next project is
Speaker 1: after this one or are you just trying to get
Speaker 1: this one out for everyone to hear.
Speaker 3: So, Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned that I
Speaker 3: was actually just working on a proposal for the next project,
Speaker 3: and it's in it's sort of a similar vein of
Speaker 3: taking a look at another movement that was trying to
Speaker 3: make significant change, sort of against the tide of sort
Speaker 3: of public sentiment, which, in hindsight, in this particular case
Speaker 3: i'm looking at right now, I think it's kind of
Speaker 3: been born out that people should have listened, right. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm sort of keeping with this sort of radical
Speaker 3: thought and action and trying to create a big difference,
Speaker 3: even in a way in this way it's I think
Speaker 3: a little bit less misguided, but the same sort of
Speaker 3: think big I guess is how to summarize it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to talk to me today.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Most of the episodes of this season of Rip Current
Speaker 1: will be out by the time this episode airs, so
Speaker 1: listeners you can go find all of this to listen
Speaker 1: to in the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you like.
Speaker 1: To get your podcast, and you'll still have I think
Speaker 1: two or three more episodes to look forward to that
Speaker 1: will be coming out after this one airs, but plenty
Speaker 1: to catch up on if you have not already. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much to Toby for talking to me. Rip Current
Speaker 1: is also co hosted by Mary Catherine Garrison, who played
Speaker 1: Squeaky from in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins.
Speaker 1: New episodes of rip Current come out on Thursdays on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. The whole entire limited series will be available
Speaker 1: just within a couple of weeks from when this episode
Speaker 1: is coming out. Now, do you have some listeners? I
Speaker 1: do have some listener mail. This is from a net
Speaker 1: and a net wrote to us with an update about
Speaker 1: William marsh Rice, who if you do not remember, we
Speaker 1: did an episode about the death of William marsh Rice
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about a
Speaker 1: statue of him that was on the campus at Rice University,
Speaker 1: which is named for him. So Annett wrote, Hello, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. A couple of years ago, I wrote to
Speaker 1: tell you that Rice University Task Force on slavery, segregation,
Speaker 1: and racial injustice had been charged with, among many other things,
Speaker 1: deciding what to do with the statue of founder William
Speaker 1: Marsh Rice that was located central to the main campus quadrangle.
Speaker 1: They announced in February twenty twenty two that the statue
Speaker 1: would be moved to the perimeter of the quadrangle as
Speaker 1: part of a design overhaul. In September twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: the academic Quadrangle was reopened after about sixteen months of construction.
Speaker 1: The statue was now in a corner of the quadrangle,
Speaker 1: near the first building on campus, love It Hall and
Speaker 1: the Welcome Center, and the newest building on the quad
Speaker 1: Sewell Hall. As the landscape architect said and their rededication ceremony,
Speaker 1: William Marsh Rice is essential to the Rice story, but
Speaker 1: not central to it. Rice's remains were reinterred in the
Speaker 1: Rice family plot at Glenwood Cemetery, a historic Houston cemetery.
Speaker 1: The statue was now at ground level rather than elevated
Speaker 1: on a high plinth. There's a sign with a QR
Speaker 1: code that links to information about Rice, including his connections
Speaker 1: to slavery. Unfortunately, it feels a bit labyrinthin even using
Speaker 1: the QR code to get to the document that acknowledges
Speaker 1: Rice as an enslaver. The platform on which the plinth
Speaker 1: statue was on has been incorporated into the quad redesign
Speaker 1: as sort of a speaker's corner near the center of
Speaker 1: the quadrangle by the platform is a quote from when
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy gave his We chose to go to
Speaker 1: the Moon's speech on the Rice campus in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a
Speaker 1: city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength,
Speaker 1: and we stand in need of all three sea attached photos.
Speaker 1: There are also some links about the redesign of the quad,
Speaker 1: and Nett talks about being an alumnus of Rice and
Speaker 1: one of the many things about this whole thing, meaning
Speaker 1: that there will now be green space around the quad
Speaker 1: so that it will not be a heat island as
Speaker 1: it has been previously. A net for pet tax Attached
Speaker 1: photos of Swirl, our border collie mix who crossed the
Speaker 1: Rainbow Bridge sometime ago, and a pet portrait that was
Speaker 1: commissioned for them, which is very sweet. So yes, I've
Speaker 1: got some pictures here that I'm looking at that sort
Speaker 1: of show where the new location of the statue is,
Speaker 1: as well as the plinth that it used to stand on,
Speaker 1: and all what a sweet puppy dog and I love
Speaker 1: this pet portrait. It was commissioned from a photo. There's
Speaker 1: also a paw print impression, so sweet. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much ANT for this and for forwarding along to your
Speaker 1: earlier email as part of it. I had not really
Speaker 1: kept up with any of the developments in that since
Speaker 1: we had done that episode a while back, so thank
Speaker 1: you so much for that. If you would like to
Speaker 1: send us a note about this or any other podcasts
Speaker 1: where History podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else
Speaker 1: you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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