Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know, just the two of us doing
Speaker 1: it together. We're hanging out. We're going to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of some stuff that's right and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Grabster helped us out with this one a little
Speaker 1: while ago. And it almost feels now like I was
Speaker 1: purposefully sitting on it because of the the turnout of
Speaker 1: the recent elections across the pond there. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with what happened. Well, the shin fain Uh is
Speaker 1: now in place as the largest party INO in the
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and this means that like this
Speaker 1: is probably the best chance they've had in a long
Speaker 1: time for reuniting Ireland. Oh wow, that'd be something. Wow,
Speaker 1: you really did save it for just the right right moment, Chuck.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 1: I read a bunch of articles on it on the
Speaker 1: likelihood and it seems um it seems like a hard
Speaker 1: road still, but they definitely is. It's something they're interested
Speaker 1: in I think that party that is, and polls are
Speaker 1: very split. Yeah, I'm I'm interested to see how it
Speaker 1: turns out. But that is pretty interesting that they're they're
Speaker 1: finally in a position to do that, because that means
Speaker 1: they've come a very long way in the last what
Speaker 1: fifty or so years um. For those of you who
Speaker 1: aren't familiar, shin Fan is considered the political wing of
Speaker 1: the Irish Republican Army. And the reason we're talking about
Speaker 1: either one of those is because we're talking about hunger strikes,
Speaker 1: specifically a set of hunger strikes that took place at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the
Speaker 1: end of the twentieth century, and they are very much
Speaker 1: associated with the I r A. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: ask most people who are familiar with hunger strikes, they
Speaker 1: will probably bring up the I ra A. It's like
Speaker 1: that closely associated with them. Yeah, and you know, we
Speaker 1: should just say we're we're gonna do our best to
Speaker 1: get this right, but this is one of those that is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's so fraught with emotion um on both sides.
Speaker 1: So we just want to tell all of our friends
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland and all of our friends in the
Speaker 1: Irish Republic that we were doing our best here, just
Speaker 1: two Americans trying to understand a very deeply, long rooted,
Speaker 1: oftentimes hostile situation. And for those of you, like Morrissey
Speaker 1: with Irish blood but English heart, um, we will hopefully
Speaker 1: not tick you off either. We're doing our best here,
Speaker 1: just a couple of Yankee American Joe's doing what we can.
Speaker 1: That's right. And we had a great time, by the
Speaker 1: way in Dublin, and our only regret was not being
Speaker 1: able to go and do a live show in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: which I couldn't squeeze it in, but we'd love to
Speaker 1: check it out one day, agreed. So you said that, like,
Speaker 1: this is a very emotionally fraught subject, and that is
Speaker 1: a gross understatement really, because um, what we're gonna focus
Speaker 1: on are called the troubles, which started at the end
Speaker 1: of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, but um,
Speaker 1: really it goes back even further than that, and uh,
Speaker 1: you can kind of place the beginning of hostilities in
Speaker 1: sixteen o nine when the Protestant English came into Catholic
Speaker 1: Ireland and said, hey, we're gonna take some of this land,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take some of your land rights
Speaker 1: away from those of you with documented land rights, and
Speaker 1: we're going to set up some English enclaves and we're
Speaker 1: just going to basically show up and and sit here
Speaker 1: for a while. And that didn't sit very well with um,
Speaker 1: the ethnic Irish or Gaelic people who lived in the area.
Speaker 1: So that was one part of it. And I also
Speaker 1: hit on another part two, Chuck, that we've got Protestant
Speaker 1: and Catholic basically versus each other. Now, yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think Ed makes a good point that it's it's
Speaker 1: not strictly about religion, but when you're over there and
Speaker 1: you're talking Catholic and Protestant, it's so intertwined in the
Speaker 1: fabric of kind of everything that goes on, including the politics,
Speaker 1: that it's really, you know, there's no way you can
Speaker 1: separate it. But it wasn't necessarily uh an Irish or
Speaker 1: a well, I guess Irish Catholic, English Scottish Protestant battle,
Speaker 1: but it is the seeds are there. So in particular
Speaker 1: in the North of Ireland around Ulster, a bunch of
Speaker 1: Protestant English and Scottish people kind of settled there over
Speaker 1: the years and Um formed what's basically known or what
Speaker 1: was known as the plantation of ulster Um. And so
Speaker 1: over time you've got this largely Gaelic population inhabiting the
Speaker 1: central and south part of Ireland and then a mixed
Speaker 1: Catholic Gaelic and um English and Scottish Protestant kind of
Speaker 1: group coexisting for better for worse in the northern part
Speaker 1: of the country. And it's remarkable that it lasted like
Speaker 1: this for you know, several centuries before it finally came
Speaker 1: to a head at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as far as you know, how those people in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland that were that were kind of you know,
Speaker 1: mixed in together felt about things then and how they
Speaker 1: feel about things now, you know, Ed makes some kind
Speaker 1: of sweeping statements that it's it's just kind of hard
Speaker 1: to do, especially when you look at like modern day
Speaker 1: polls on reunification and stuff like that. Those seeds run
Speaker 1: deep and people are still kind of divided on it,
Speaker 1: so you can't necessarily just say that, you know, these
Speaker 1: days the people in Northern Ireland favor Protestantism and want
Speaker 1: to be a part of the UK it's it's a
Speaker 1: mixed bag, right, Yeah, I would guess to be akin
Speaker 1: to UM, you know, people wanting to their state to secede,
Speaker 1: or the United States to break into five different countries
Speaker 1: or something like that, although UM probably with much much
Speaker 1: more emotional opinions about that. And then throw religion in there,
Speaker 1: exactly just that little light thing. So, like I said, this,
Speaker 1: this kind of precarious living situations living arrangement came to
Speaker 1: a head UM all the way in nineteen twelve when
Speaker 1: Irish nationalists kind of movement UM began. I think they
Speaker 1: started before that, but in nineteen twelves they started really
Speaker 1: pushing for Home rule, which is Irish um governing Ireland.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much as simple as that, UM. And that
Speaker 1: created the Home Rule crisis, and it was a crisis
Speaker 1: as far as the British were concerned, because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they're Irish people were saying, hey, we we
Speaker 1: basically want you out and we want to rule Ireland.
Speaker 1: So let's just end the four centuries of occupation, shall we.
Speaker 1: The way you put it there just sounds very nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's how they put in. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: sort of put off a bit by World War One.
Speaker 1: Obviously that kind of disrupted a lot of things. But eventually,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, the Nationalists did revolt and it was
Speaker 1: called the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen. And this was
Speaker 1: a bloody affair. It was I mean, I think there
Speaker 1: were more than a dozen leaders executed, many thousands of
Speaker 1: people in prison. It was just a it was a
Speaker 1: brutal conflict. Uh, And that was just you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of kick things off in nineteen sixteen. It continued
Speaker 1: again in nineteen nineteen with what we know now is
Speaker 1: the well, I guess what was called this then too,
Speaker 1: the Anglo Irish War. And there were a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of governmental policies going on during this time. The
Speaker 1: Government of Ireland Act of nineteen twenty officially, as far
Speaker 1: as they were concerned, created two Ireland's Northern Ireland and
Speaker 1: what they called Southern Ireland that we're all still under
Speaker 1: the rule of the UK and Great Britain. But Southern
Speaker 1: Ireland was like, no, we're not. What is Southern Ireland
Speaker 1: where the Irish Republic like, don't even call a Southern Ireland. Um.
Speaker 1: So that actually kind of got translated into a treaty
Speaker 1: UM that ended the Anglo Irish War. It was the
Speaker 1: treaty that basically recognized Ireland as two separate nations. You've
Speaker 1: got Ireland itself, which is again the central and southern
Speaker 1: part of the country, and then you have Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: which is part of the United Kingdom. It's a totally
Speaker 1: different country, um, at least geo politically speaking, it's a
Speaker 1: totally different country. And again there's a big distinction between
Speaker 1: Ireland and Northern Ireland and the population makeup because those Protestant,
Speaker 1: Catholic and Scottish people that settled in the northern part
Speaker 1: of Ireland over the centuries had um descendants. In those
Speaker 1: descendants stayed um loyal to the Crown, they stayed Protestant,
Speaker 1: and at times they they were more powerful than their
Speaker 1: Catholic neighbors. So in the late sixties, by the time
Speaker 1: the late sixties roll around and you've got to Ireland's
Speaker 1: you have a Protestant elite, small minority of Protestants ruling
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Um
Speaker 1: Gaelic people who lived there. Uh. And that kind of
Speaker 1: set up there set the stage I guess for the
Speaker 1: troubles that followed, yeah, and the troubles uh, and then
Speaker 1: he said began in the late sixties. They carried through
Speaker 1: till about nine more than I mean, the numbers kind
Speaker 1: of very depending on you know, what you're looking at,
Speaker 1: but at least thirty five hundred people died, fifty percent
Speaker 1: of which were civilians. And these were you know, it
Speaker 1: was a mess. There were paramilitary groups on both sides,
Speaker 1: there were British military taking part, there were street battles,
Speaker 1: there were bombings. I mean, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that in the like when you and I were
Speaker 1: growing up in the seventies and eighties, you know, this
Speaker 1: was all over the news at the time, and it
Speaker 1: was I had no idea. I didn't understand it at
Speaker 1: all at the time, and it took you know, me
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of you two and then trying
Speaker 1: to educate myself over what was going on over the years.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I fully really understood it until
Speaker 1: like the past few days, when I really dug in
Speaker 1: absolutely same here man. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: kicked off those troubles you just described, um, was the
Speaker 1: the Gaelic Catholics protesting the unfair rule as they saw
Speaker 1: of the Protestant minority. And the problem is these protests
Speaker 1: were kind of suppressed brutally by the Protestant government and
Speaker 1: with the aid of the British military, British um police,
Speaker 1: I believe, and that's that turned quickly into rioting and
Speaker 1: then eventually, like you said, the paramilitary groups assembling and
Speaker 1: basically guerrilla warfare breaking out in Northern Ireland. So imagine like,
Speaker 1: you know, going to work one day and you're Catholic
Speaker 1: and your co workers Protestant, and the next day you
Speaker 1: guys are fighting each other on the street, um for
Speaker 1: control of of your both of your country. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's nuts to think about it as an American
Speaker 1: because like we can't fathom something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: to Gen xers growing up in the in the Cold
Speaker 1: War Reagan era, right, I mean, we're pretty far removed
Speaker 1: from the Civil War here in the United States. This
Speaker 1: is like civil war that took place in the early
Speaker 1: seventies or started in the early seventies and continued for
Speaker 1: almost thirty years. Yeah, and previous you know, we should
Speaker 1: back up a little bit, I guess and talk about
Speaker 1: the origins of the ira Uh. This had to do
Speaker 1: with the Easter Rising that we talked about of nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: It was initiated by what was called the Irish Volunteers
Speaker 1: UH in nineteen sixteen, and by the twenties they were
Speaker 1: known as the i RA, a UH Irish Republican Army,
Speaker 1: and they fought a civil war in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: In the nine nineteen twenty three there were a lot
Speaker 1: of different nationalist factions fighting one another. One of these
Speaker 1: was the IRA, and there was civil war going on
Speaker 1: back then as well. So there's just been decades and
Speaker 1: decades of unrest by the time the nineteen sixties roll around, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that nineteen twenties civil war um was in Ireland itself.
Speaker 1: So after it became a sovereign nation, all those groups
Speaker 1: that had fought the British started fighting each other to
Speaker 1: figure out who was going to run the show from
Speaker 1: then on. So the IRA that you and I think about, UM,
Speaker 1: that you know, we learned about from you two and
Speaker 1: the news and the eighties and all that, Um, they're
Speaker 1: the ones that you would call the provisional IRA, and
Speaker 1: they formed out of the beginning of the troubles, those
Speaker 1: protests and riots beginning in nineteen sixty nine. They were
Speaker 1: one of the paramilitary groups that developed and they became
Speaker 1: UM pretty famous in no small part because of the
Speaker 1: hunger strikes they ended up carrying out. Should we take
Speaker 1: a break? I think so, I think we've reached breakness.
Speaker 1: I know, the nerves that was nervous during that setup.
Speaker 1: Were you You thought I was just gonna keep going
Speaker 1: and going. No, No, not that. I was just like, man,
Speaker 1: this stuff is so you know, there's there are fine lines,
Speaker 1: and I just don't want to misspeak. Oh I don't
Speaker 1: think we did. But now that I just said that,
Speaker 1: of course we did. All right, Well, we'll gather ourselves
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back to talk about the history
Speaker 1: of hunger strikes a little bit right after this, Okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So why would anybody engage in a hunger strike and
Speaker 1: why would they be most closely related or thought of, um,
Speaker 1: in relation to the I R A. Well, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there is some evidence that they were rooted in Celtic tradition, UM,
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago. There were you know, there were
Speaker 1: stories of people undergoing hunger strikes and it might you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily political at the time. So how it
Speaker 1: would go down is like maybe somebody owed you money
Speaker 1: and wouldn't give it to you, so you would go
Speaker 1: very publicly to where they live, camp out on their
Speaker 1: doorstep and engage in a hunger strike. And it was
Speaker 1: sort of just a very public display of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't have means to get it any other way,
Speaker 1: so it was a very public display and way of saying,
Speaker 1: this person is doing me wrong and I am out
Speaker 1: here like starving myself. Pay attention, right. It was so
Speaker 1: common it was actually written into Gaelic law. I was
Speaker 1: called the troupes cad or trust God, I'm going with
Speaker 1: trups cad um, and it was it was the concept
Speaker 1: of hospitality in Ireland among the Gaelic people was so
Speaker 1: strong that, um, it was just unthinkable to let somebody
Speaker 1: starve on your doorstep. So it was really kind of
Speaker 1: playing on two things. It was drawing attention to somebody,
Speaker 1: and then it was also showing what a terrible person
Speaker 1: they were for letting this person starve on their doorstep.
Speaker 1: The thing is this is real, that really happened, Like
Speaker 1: it's it comes up in some of the um epics
Speaker 1: from the Gaelic culture, and like it's documented that it
Speaker 1: was a real thing. But what's not documented is it's
Speaker 1: linked to the I r A hunger strikes of the
Speaker 1: beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the end
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Because nobody involved in those ever
Speaker 1: said I'm I'm doing I'm pulling a trop scad um.
Speaker 1: They didn't link it to it, but you could make
Speaker 1: a case that it was kind of like in the
Speaker 1: culture to think of doing something like that, because it
Speaker 1: had been around for hundreds of years. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's fair to say. And you know, it continued, like
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, there were how are you
Speaker 1: saying at suffragettes, suffragists, suffrage suffragists. Yeah, like how you
Speaker 1: call a female or male server a server, a female
Speaker 1: or male actor and actor? We don't do, you know.
Speaker 1: I know that David Bowie song always confuses me, though, well,
Speaker 1: it's a good song and it should remain. But they
Speaker 1: would undergo hunger strikes, but they would bring in sort
Speaker 1: of like religious iconography sometimes and sort of paint themselves
Speaker 1: as martyrs. They would invoke the Virgin Mary and Joan
Speaker 1: of Arc and stuff like that. And again, this is
Speaker 1: not exactly the same thing. But this is just to
Speaker 1: say that in the early nineteen hundreds there were, uh,
Speaker 1: there were women in Ireland that were undergoing these hunger strikes.
Speaker 1: They also happened in Russia, and I think they called
Speaker 1: some of these like the Russian method. Uh. They would
Speaker 1: get there, they would do this reverse like force feeding,
Speaker 1: like reverse stomach bumping to force feed some of these people. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that would killed them. So it was it was
Speaker 1: just a nasty way to draw attention, and the way
Speaker 1: that it was countered was also nasty. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: first i RA members to hunger strike want to go
Speaker 1: on hunger strike, um, were inspired by the suffragists um,
Speaker 1: who were sometimes in the same prison as them. The
Speaker 1: first ira A member to do it was James Connolly,
Speaker 1: who went on hunger strike in and was actually released
Speaker 1: from prison as a result. UM. And then a few
Speaker 1: years later, UM, the case of Thomas Ash drew national
Speaker 1: and I think maybe even international attention because he went
Speaker 1: on hunger strike and they accidentally killed him when they
Speaker 1: tried to force feed him. Yeah, they pumped milk and
Speaker 1: eggs into his lungs by accident, which is uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to think of like what kind of an
Speaker 1: awful death after you're already starving yourself. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: should also point out to that. Another similarity that they
Speaker 1: had with these original early nineteen hundreds suffragists with their
Speaker 1: hunger strikes is they were and this is a very
Speaker 1: key thing for what ended up being, you know, the
Speaker 1: hunger strikes in the nineteen eighties that we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about in a bit, But they one of their
Speaker 1: main aims was to be looked at as political prisoners
Speaker 1: and not criminal prisoners. Yeah. That was a big ongoing
Speaker 1: thread throughout all of this, starting with the suffragists and
Speaker 1: then all the way into the eighties with modern IRA.
Speaker 1: So um, I mean, should we talk about that for
Speaker 1: a minute? Yeah, sure, Well, you know, there's a huge
Speaker 1: difference in being viewed as a criminal and wearing prisoners
Speaker 1: clothing and having a prisoners rights which are to say,
Speaker 1: like criminal prisoners rights which are to say, not very many,
Speaker 1: and what they were fighting for and what the the
Speaker 1: I r. A Was later fighting for in the eighties
Speaker 1: and the seventies, which was we're political prisoners. We want
Speaker 1: to be able, we don't want to look like common criminals.
Speaker 1: We want to wear our own clothes. We want to
Speaker 1: be able to uh, to associate with with each other
Speaker 1: and walk about, um outside of ourselves and congregate. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, you know, they allowed this for
Speaker 1: a while, but nineteen seventy six of British government said no,
Speaker 1: we're going to treat you like your terrorists and like
Speaker 1: your common criminals. And you've got to wear these You
Speaker 1: can't congregate anymore. You've got to wear, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: a prisoners jumpsuit. And this was a big, big deal.
Speaker 1: It really was for a number of reasons. One UM,
Speaker 1: the reason why the Brits said we're not going to
Speaker 1: recognize you as political prisoners was because they had at
Speaker 1: first um and they decided that this was generating too
Speaker 1: much sympathy and legitimizing the i r A and its
Speaker 1: struggle for Irish independence way too much, and by casting
Speaker 1: them as criminals rather than political prisoners, they were saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: these people are dangerous, their thugs, they're terrorists, and you
Speaker 1: should be on the side of us, the Brits and
Speaker 1: the Protestants who are cleaning up the streets and getting
Speaker 1: these people off the streets and into jail. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the way your day to day life panned
Speaker 1: out in prison. It was also like the larger public
Speaker 1: perception a battle for that that was going on that
Speaker 1: both sides were really entrenched in their way of thinking
Speaker 1: with that. Well, yeah, and that's the reason a hunger
Speaker 1: strike in the case of the IRA was, or could
Speaker 1: be at least very effective as a pr tool, because
Speaker 1: a common criminal prisoner is it going to literally starve
Speaker 1: themselves to death for a cause. So on one hand
Speaker 1: you have the British government saying, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to recognize you, you're just terrorists. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you've got the i ra A starving themselves to death, Uh,
Speaker 1: fighting for rights to where their own clothing. I think, Uh,
Speaker 1: this one thing you sent me said as far as
Speaker 1: their them congregating, is that in prison they just saw
Speaker 1: that as another I ra A headquarters. Basically. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did a lot of strategizing in the early seventies and
Speaker 1: they were able to chuck because of something called um
Speaker 1: Operation Demetrius, and that was something that the British Army
Speaker 1: carried out in one and it ended up backfiring because
Speaker 1: it generated a tremendous amount of public sympathy for the
Speaker 1: i r A and its movement um because the British
Speaker 1: Army just started rounding up suspected members of the i
Speaker 1: r A and put them in what amounted to a
Speaker 1: prisoner of war camp um. There was no due process,
Speaker 1: they didn't get to plead their case in front of
Speaker 1: a judge if they accidentally got scooped up, and they
Speaker 1: really had nothing to do with the I RA A
Speaker 1: t s. There was no recourse for getting out of there,
Speaker 1: and they set up the Brits set up a prisoner
Speaker 1: of war camp um in Northern Ireland to hold I
Speaker 1: think hundreds and hundreds of of prisoners starting in UM one,
Speaker 1: and it really really rubbed the public the wrong way
Speaker 1: because it's nineteen seventy one. You know, this isn't like
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century all over again. It's one and they're
Speaker 1: rounding people up and holding them in prisoners of prisoner
Speaker 1: of war camps um against Theirwell that's crazy. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you know, a hunger strike could be a pretty effective
Speaker 1: way to draw attention to this. Uh you know. Ed
Speaker 1: points out a few um things about hunger strikes that
Speaker 1: could make it more effective, which is obviously to do
Speaker 1: it as a collective action is a much stronger message
Speaker 1: that you're sending than any individual. Um. So if you
Speaker 1: have a group with a political cause, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more attention. Um. You know, it casts the prison officials
Speaker 1: in a light of which they're either allowing these people
Speaker 1: to starve to death, which is, you know, a monstrous
Speaker 1: thing to do, or they're forced feeding them, which sometimes
Speaker 1: kills them, which is a monstrous thing to do. And
Speaker 1: you know, your body basically shuts down. I think we've
Speaker 1: talked about starvation and other episodes before, but you know,
Speaker 1: your body uses up your fat stores and once that's gone,
Speaker 1: once that's gone, it starts literally like eating at your muscle,
Speaker 1: eating at your internal organs, and between you know, forty
Speaker 1: and seventy something days, your your body is going to
Speaker 1: finally succumb to organ failure and you're gonna die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, once your once your body starts eating its
Speaker 1: own organs, you're in trouble. And even if you managed
Speaker 1: to survive the um, the hunger strike, um, you probably
Speaker 1: have done some serious permanent damage to yourself. So so,
Speaker 1: like we were saying, after Operation Demetrius, right, they rounded
Speaker 1: up a bunch of suspected ira A members treated them
Speaker 1: as prisoners of war. But at the same time they
Speaker 1: were also busting other ira A leaders with legitimate and
Speaker 1: legitimate criminal acts like gun possession things like that. So
Speaker 1: you had two groups of i ra A prisoners being
Speaker 1: treated separately, the ones in the interment camp being treated
Speaker 1: like political prisoners or prisoners of war, and then the
Speaker 1: ones in the jail being treated like common criminals. So
Speaker 1: to kind of get the same treatment in the jail
Speaker 1: as the political prisoners in the pow camps were given.
Speaker 1: A guy named Billy McKee who was an i ra
Speaker 1: A leader. Um, stage the first modern hunger strike in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, that's right, and um it was an
Speaker 1: effective strategy for about four years. But this was right
Speaker 1: at that time. I think it was VY six when
Speaker 1: they had that shift from recognizing them as political prisoners
Speaker 1: to uh just you know, criminal prisoners. So this was
Speaker 1: pre that time and kind of led up to that shift. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then, um, so you've got the criminalization campaign being
Speaker 1: carried out by the Brits and the Protestants in Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland who were running the government. Um, and remember it
Speaker 1: has a twofold effect, like you can no longer congregate,
Speaker 1: you can no longer strategize. We're no longer going to
Speaker 1: recognize your hierarchy of ranks, um, and just deal with
Speaker 1: your leaders like you're just a common criminal now. And
Speaker 1: it also turned the tables on the ira A prisoners,
Speaker 1: who had formerly been treated with general respect by the guards.
Speaker 1: The guards were let loose on these people, UM, and
Speaker 1: it led to a really horrible time to be an
Speaker 1: ira A prisoner because it's almost like there was pin
Speaker 1: up rage or something among the guards and they just
Speaker 1: released it on the prisoners. They poured scalding water on them,
Speaker 1: they hosed them down with um cold water hoses in
Speaker 1: winter time. UM. They they beat them regularly and routinely,
Speaker 1: and again they were treated as common criminals. And uh,
Speaker 1: it was a from what I can tell, from about
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, six to night one was about as bad
Speaker 1: a time as you could be an ira A prisoner
Speaker 1: as there ever was. Yeah, we'll take a break in
Speaker 1: a sec but before we do, I do want to
Speaker 1: mention the movie that I watched today because I figured
Speaker 1: there was probably a movie about this. UM. Steve McQueen,
Speaker 1: the director that did Twelve Years of Slave and shame
Speaker 1: directed the movie, his first movie actually directed. Huh was
Speaker 1: it an infomaniac? You watched? No? No, no, that wasn't him.
Speaker 1: Oh wait was that that? No? That thin? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he did one where um Fossbender is a sex addict. Right,
Speaker 1: that's shame, Okay, Shane, That's what I meant, is that
Speaker 1: what you watched? No, no, no, that's not watched. You're like,
Speaker 1: what when's the Hunger striking to start? Uh? It was
Speaker 1: his first movie from two thousand and eight, also with
Speaker 1: Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands who will you know? Get
Speaker 1: to after the Break, But it was called Hunger and
Speaker 1: boy oh boy. Uh. I recommend it in one sense
Speaker 1: and that it was a powerful film. Um, but it
Speaker 1: was hard to watch, my friend, I can't imagine. It
Speaker 1: was brutal. Um, it's a very The way he structures
Speaker 1: it is sort of a kind of a non traditional narrative.
Speaker 1: It's not like a traditional biopic that you would expect.
Speaker 1: It's a very quiet, not a lot of dialogue. Um,
Speaker 1: it's only ninety six minutes long, but it's a very
Speaker 1: slow paced film. But just a really I mean, I
Speaker 1: get the sense that it was a really realistic depiction
Speaker 1: of those years that were you were talking about between
Speaker 1: seventy six and eighty one, and these guys were just brutalized, man,
Speaker 1: they were uh, Like they would call in the riot
Speaker 1: squad and basically open the cells and throw their naked
Speaker 1: bodies into the hallway and beat them with batons and
Speaker 1: like like cut off their hair and their beards like
Speaker 1: until they were bloody. And it was it was a
Speaker 1: very very tough movie to watch. And at the Hunger
Speaker 1: Strike part of it is only like the last twenty
Speaker 1: minutes or so of the film. The whole first part
Speaker 1: is just sort of the conditions in prison, uh, and
Speaker 1: what's going on. So I recommend it on one hand,
Speaker 1: it is not for the faint of heart. But we'll
Speaker 1: kind of take a break now and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: what else is going on in the prisons in right
Speaker 1: after this, all right, so uh, in the film and
Speaker 1: in real life, in fact, this is how the film
Speaker 1: starts out. Is the first prisoner that comes in refuses
Speaker 1: his prison clothes, and that's what started the blanket protests
Speaker 1: when they were basically like, I'm not gonna wear your
Speaker 1: common criminal outfit, and they basically said okay, well, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna be naked seven for years, and here's your blanket,
Speaker 1: and that's that's going to be your clothing. And that's
Speaker 1: what they did. It's called the blanket protests. That first
Speaker 1: prisoner under this new criminalization scheme said, you know, final,
Speaker 1: just wear a blanket, and like, in very short order,
Speaker 1: I think four hundred other Iria prisoners did the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's called the blanket protest. They were all just naked
Speaker 1: in the movie the whole time where they really have
Speaker 1: you seen the new Kids in the Hall? I haven't yet.
Speaker 1: I'm dying too though, the naked the whole time. No,
Speaker 1: but in in some places and it's like, wow, it's
Speaker 1: pretty hilarious. Yeah, And I have to say I think
Speaker 1: they're they're better then they were in the first go round.
Speaker 1: It's which is very surprising, but it really they I
Speaker 1: laughed out loud more than I did that I remember
Speaker 1: doing in an average Kids in the Hall episode. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I was a little actually worried to watch it for
Speaker 1: fear of like, they're not, you know, going to be
Speaker 1: as great anymore, and I would be it would taint
Speaker 1: the original or something. No, definitely, and I'm never understood
Speaker 1: that how does something like a follow up taint an original?
Speaker 1: It does. It doesn't taint the original, it taints the
Speaker 1: whole For me sometimes as a as a whole memory sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes more sense for sure. But yeah, like those
Speaker 1: originals aren't funny now, it's not like that. It's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: like a boy. Then they went on to do something
Speaker 1: not good. So, um, yeah, I wouldn't worry about that,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to talk it up too much.
Speaker 1: So you're expecting like, yeah, I don't want you to
Speaker 1: be let down, but I don't think you will be fantastic.
Speaker 1: Can't wait? Yeah, so um yeah, So this blanket protest,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how long it went on, but it
Speaker 1: went on for quite a while, And it happened during
Speaker 1: that period that I guess hunger covers um, which again
Speaker 1: was about the worst time you could be an ira
Speaker 1: A prisoner, because like they weren't doing this too common
Speaker 1: criminals that were in the same prison, they were doing
Speaker 1: it to the ira A members. So they went from
Speaker 1: treating them as political listeners with a general amount of
Speaker 1: respect and all of the freedoms that that that came with,
Speaker 1: to regularly beating them and posing them down with cold
Speaker 1: water in the winter and like taking their clothes and um.
Speaker 1: Like that was the shift, the change in treatment, and
Speaker 1: they were doing it to the ira A because they
Speaker 1: were trying to send a message. The British government was like,
Speaker 1: this is what we think of you. This is how
Speaker 1: we're going to treat you. You should probably stop right
Speaker 1: now because this is what you can expect if we
Speaker 1: catch you from now on. That that like treat that
Speaker 1: gentleman's agreement that we had before, that's gone. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, and the film kind of portrays the
Speaker 1: Blanket protest is concurrent with the Dirty Protest. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's the case, because the Dirty Protest came
Speaker 1: around in night this is when. And this was really
Speaker 1: gross and hard to watch in the film. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: sure Steve McQueen covered very well, I know, and believe
Speaker 1: it or not, this makes me want to see Twelve
Speaker 1: Years of Slave more because, like I knew it was tough,
Speaker 1: but now that I've seen this, I know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard to sit through again. And I'm still avoiding it,
Speaker 1: but I want to see it more because i know
Speaker 1: it's going to be like super realistic. I think so
Speaker 1: hunger was your gateway drug to twelve years, I guess so.
Speaker 1: But the dirty protest is when the prisoner said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna be in here and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: give us any rights, we're not gonna bathe. We're gonna
Speaker 1: smear our feces all over the wall and our food
Speaker 1: all over the wall, and we're gonna take our our
Speaker 1: urine and feces and dump it under the uh the
Speaker 1: cell door out into the hallway. So you have to
Speaker 1: deal with it. And it was a very very it's
Speaker 1: a disgusting movie to watch, but this really happened. So
Speaker 1: one of the other things that happened to was that
Speaker 1: among those ira A prisoners who were treated like this,
Speaker 1: they formed a bond that has probably never been formed
Speaker 1: in the history of humanity, because you know, no group
Speaker 1: was ever necessarily subjected to that exactly like that, in
Speaker 1: exactly the same way. So, I mean, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are other similar bonds among you know, enslaved and um
Speaker 1: imprisoned populations. But because they were already fighting for a
Speaker 1: cause that they believed in, and they were suffering for
Speaker 1: a cause that they believed in, this stepped up treatment
Speaker 1: just made that bond between them even stronger. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that they they they that came out
Speaker 1: of all this was um, what's called the five demands,
Speaker 1: and it was basically, like you could summarize it as,
Speaker 1: we want to be treated like political prisoners again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were all reasonable demands. One was again to
Speaker 1: wear their own clothes. Uh. Number two was to not
Speaker 1: have to go on work detail. Uh. They said they
Speaker 1: wanted to be allowed a visit and a package in
Speaker 1: a letter, one one and one per week. And in
Speaker 1: the film they did get visitors and they were um
Speaker 1: small uggling in all kinds of things under the table,
Speaker 1: which is always a great part of any prison film. Uh.
Speaker 1: They wanted the freedom to associate again and organized and congregate.
Speaker 1: And then they wanted, um to revoke any of the
Speaker 1: punishments that happened because of these protests that were already
Speaker 1: in place. Yeah, and like you said, they're reasonable and
Speaker 1: there's so reasonable. They almost seemed small like the iris
Speaker 1: going through this and that's all they want. But again, remember,
Speaker 1: being treated like a political prisoner has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with optics in the general public, right, So that
Speaker 1: makes a little more sense that that it was just
Speaker 1: that is all they were asking for, um, and there
Speaker 1: was They got a big assist by a woman named
Speaker 1: Bernadette mccalis key UM, who had been a member of
Speaker 1: Parliament Parliament, not the George Clinton version, but like the
Speaker 1: original she played keyboards so um. So she was fairly
Speaker 1: well known and she actually ran in the European Parliament
Speaker 1: on a five demands platform in ninety seventy nine, and
Speaker 1: there was an assassination attempt on her life from the
Speaker 1: Ulster Defense Force, which was one of those paramilitary groups
Speaker 1: that that began at the beginning of the troubles, but
Speaker 1: they were a Protestant paramilitary group, um. And she survived
Speaker 1: the assassination attempt and would show up to rallies and
Speaker 1: protests on crutches. Um. But she did a really great
Speaker 1: job at focusing public support and attention on what was
Speaker 1: going on in the prisons and the protests that were
Speaker 1: being carried out and why they were being carried out.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. And following that the early nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when we saw sort of the two main modern hunger strikes. Uh.
Speaker 1: That was the one in the seventies, but the two
Speaker 1: in the eighties really I think got the most media attention.
Speaker 1: Uh one began October and this was I believe seven
Speaker 1: strikers quit eating again to try and get these five
Speaker 1: demands carried through. Lasted fifty three a's and remember that's
Speaker 1: right in the wheelhouse of where you Could die, and
Speaker 1: h one named Sean McKenna was very near death. And
Speaker 1: you know this whole time, Margaret Thatcher is you know,
Speaker 1: she's known as the Iron Lady for a reason, and
Speaker 1: she was very much a hard liner. And I think
Speaker 1: it was a direct quote in the movie. You know,
Speaker 1: she said basically that they're these terrorists are resorting to
Speaker 1: a last resort, which is pity that we should have
Speaker 1: pity on them. But basically that's not going to happen um.
Speaker 1: But she was prepared to come to a settlement in
Speaker 1: this case because of the optics. The strike did end
Speaker 1: because they didn't want Sean McKinnon to die because that
Speaker 1: would be really bad optics. So that was the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty strike, proceeding the one in March of eighty one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the reason the March of eight one hunger strikes
Speaker 1: started is because the Brits had agreed um verbally to
Speaker 1: to giving in on the five demands and treating the
Speaker 1: IRA prisoners as political prisoners again and then re naket
Speaker 1: on it. They just didn't follow through. Uh, they never
Speaker 1: got it in writing, basically is what it amounted to.
Speaker 1: And so they staged an even bigger, even more public
Speaker 1: hunger strike starting March one, and they, um it's I
Speaker 1: think it involved at least twenty three hunger strikers, but
Speaker 1: rather than all striking beginning at the same time like
Speaker 1: they did in October, um, they staggered it five people
Speaker 1: a week so that this hunger strike would be drawn
Speaker 1: out even longer. Yeah, and that, um, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I also was wondering too during the film, like or
Speaker 1: before the film, like why why can't they just squash
Speaker 1: this in the press and not let any of this out,
Speaker 1: because the hunger strike is only good if the public
Speaker 1: knows about it. But they were still getting visitors that
Speaker 1: throughout this whole time, So there were you know, Bobby
Speaker 1: Sand's parents visited him in prison and saw like his
Speaker 1: condition and as he was like slipping away, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we mentioned Sands because he was very much
Speaker 1: the sort of the main public face of this eight
Speaker 1: one strike. Bobby stands. Actually Um was elected to the
Speaker 1: British House of Commons while he was wasting away in prison. Um.
Speaker 1: He obviously wasn't allowed a campaign or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and couldn't have because he was, you know, slowly dying
Speaker 1: of starvation. But this was a very big deal that
Speaker 1: he was actually elected to the House of Commons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a big deal because it focused a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of public attention, Like every every paper in the
Speaker 1: world was writing about how a guy in prison was
Speaker 1: elected to parliament. Um, and and now that we're talking
Speaker 1: about him, why is he in prison? And oh, he's
Speaker 1: on a hunger strike? Why is he on a hunger strike?
Speaker 1: So it was a really big pr COO for the
Speaker 1: i r A. But then also politically speaking it had
Speaker 1: like a UM it was a really big signal that
Speaker 1: the only way he could have been elected was if
Speaker 1: moderate Catholics, who normally just didn't go to the polls
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to support the ira A, but
Speaker 1: they also weren't about to vote for a Protestant candidate. Um,
Speaker 1: they came out and they voted for the ira member.
Speaker 1: So it showed that the average person in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: the average Catholic was really upset with how the British
Speaker 1: were treating the IRA and their their treatment of the
Speaker 1: IRA was starting to backfire, and that it was generating
Speaker 1: public sympathy and support that hadn't been there before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he we should point out he was a young guy.
Speaker 1: He was twenty six years old when he started this strike,
Speaker 1: and I think he turned seven during the strike, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't you know. I think I had heard of
Speaker 1: Bobby Sands and I always just sort of pictured him
Speaker 1: as maybe some guy in his forties for some reason.
Speaker 1: But he was a very young guy. And uh, he finally,
Speaker 1: you know, died of starvation on May five. Uh, this
Speaker 1: was sixty six days into the strike. Riot start erupting
Speaker 1: um all over the place and protest all over the world. Basically,
Speaker 1: it was a very very public matter. And I remember
Speaker 1: hearing about this when I was a kid, even though
Speaker 1: I didn't understand what was going on. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about Bobby Sands dying. Oh yeah, wow. It was definitely
Speaker 1: not in my wheelhouse at the time. I think I
Speaker 1: was playing with a Tonka truck. Maybe. No. I remember
Speaker 1: big news events like that, though I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: I remember John Lennon dying and I was like, he's
Speaker 1: the guy with a round glasses. Yeah, that kind of thing, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So when Sands died, that was a really really big deal.
Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands of people turned out for his his funeral,
Speaker 1: including very famously um Ira A paramilitary members who were
Speaker 1: wearing like um Balaklava's basically um at the funeral, um
Speaker 1: along the streets along his funeral procession. There were thousands
Speaker 1: more people you know who turned out. So it showed
Speaker 1: just how much like people supported the IRA, or at
Speaker 1: the very least sympathized with the IRA, that they were
Speaker 1: willing to die, to starve themselves to death for their cause.
Speaker 1: And Bobby Saints knew he was gonna die. He said
Speaker 1: towards the beginning he fully expected to die. Um and
Speaker 1: he did. He put his He did what what I
Speaker 1: would say most of us would never do. He starved
Speaker 1: himself to death for the cause that he believed in,
Speaker 1: to help the cause that he believed in, help to
Speaker 1: basically serve as an inspiration to show this cause means
Speaker 1: so much that me and some other people are willing
Speaker 1: to die, to starve ourselves to brutal brutal death to
Speaker 1: help um to help further the cost, to help generate
Speaker 1: publicity for this cause. So by the way, Fastbender dropped
Speaker 1: forty pounds for this role, so he kind of pulled
Speaker 1: a Christian bale. It was. It was really like, uh,
Speaker 1: tough to see that, you know, I mean, he's already
Speaker 1: he's a pretty slight guy, even like under normal circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, he laid one seventy and dropped down to
Speaker 1: one thirty. Uh. He apparently ate like nuts and berries
Speaker 1: and stuff every day, and that was about it. So
Speaker 1: Sans obviously was the main headline. But he was just
Speaker 1: one of ten men that died in prison during these
Speaker 1: hunger strikes. I think there were twenty three total. Thirteen survived,
Speaker 1: and um Ed is keen to point out that, you know,
Speaker 1: the reason that some of these men survived is you know,
Speaker 1: eventually you're gonna lose consciousness and your family might step in,
Speaker 1: and you know you're gonna get your medical nutrition intravenously.
Speaker 1: In that case. That wasn't the case obviously with the
Speaker 1: ten who did who did die in prison. But I
Speaker 1: think in a lot of the cases of the thirteen
Speaker 1: that survived was because they weren't able to make their
Speaker 1: own choice and their family intervened, right, So this strike,
Speaker 1: get this, this hunger strike, the second one went on
Speaker 1: from March first to October three and claimed the lives
Speaker 1: of ten men in people died during that brief period
Speaker 1: of time from hunger from starving themselves. And it finally ended,
Speaker 1: at least in part because one of the villains in
Speaker 1: this story, Humphrey Atkins, who was at the time the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and was very much
Speaker 1: aligned with the UM the no pity viewpoint of Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 1: He was replaced. He was replaced by somebody who wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as much a hardliner, guy named James Prior. And
Speaker 1: Prior is like, I want to put an end to this,
Speaker 1: so let's start negotiating, and they ended the strike on
Speaker 1: October three, again with ten people dead in that six
Speaker 1: month period from starvation. Yeah, and it kind of you know,
Speaker 1: depends on which side you're on and whether or not
Speaker 1: you believe it was an effective thing, because they ended up.
Speaker 1: UM it's sort of been uh an a roundabout way
Speaker 1: getting a lot of the five demands met, but it
Speaker 1: was never like an official declaration that you are political
Speaker 1: prisoner and we're going to meet your five demands. It
Speaker 1: just sort of it wasn't so you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at it from the Thatcher side, they never gave in.
Speaker 1: If you look at it from the ira A side,
Speaker 1: they ended up in a roundabout way getting the same status.
Speaker 1: But I think there were probably a lot of i
Speaker 1: RA too that saw it as a defeat because they,
Speaker 1: you know, weren't officially recognized as such. Right and we
Speaker 1: should say going on outside the prison gates in in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland throughout this time, our car bombings, assassinations, protests, riots, um,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of riots around Northern Ireland. And
Speaker 1: when Bobby Sands died, um. And so it's not like
Speaker 1: this is the only thing that ira A was doing.
Speaker 1: We we just focused on this. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that came out of these hunger strikes, um was
Speaker 1: this idea, especially among the shinfan Um leadership, that they
Speaker 1: they were never going to liberate Northern Ireland just through
Speaker 1: the paramilitary, that they was going to require politics and
Speaker 1: and um. This this showed, especially the election of Bobby
Speaker 1: Sands to Parliament while he was in prison, that the
Speaker 1: i RA was viable politically speaking. Yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: really interesting to see what happens moving forward. But that's
Speaker 1: where they can kind of source that where they are
Speaker 1: today is pretty much there from those hunger strikes in Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I would love to hear from our listeners, uh
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Republic, like what
Speaker 1: they what their thoughts are of you know, because I
Speaker 1: trust stuff you should know listeners generally as being uh
Speaker 1: you know, alive in the world and having uh studied,
Speaker 1: learned opinions, learned opinions. So I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from both sides to see what they think. Um, I
Speaker 1: want to know what the tenor is over there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Same here the word on the street, the word on
Speaker 1: the cobblestone street. Uh, you got anything else? Uh? Now,
Speaker 1: this is a good one, Chuck good pick. I'm glad
Speaker 1: we did uh. And since I said I'm glad we
Speaker 1: did it, it's time of course for a listener. Now,
Speaker 1: by the way, did you know I'm way late on this,
Speaker 1: but you know Bono's son as a band Uh no
Speaker 1: sounds no. He has a band called Inhaler and I
Speaker 1: just heard about it and listened to it. They put
Speaker 1: out an album last summer, and it sounds exactly like
Speaker 1: you two. Oh boy, he sounds just like his dad,
Speaker 1: and it has the energy of like the early You two.
Speaker 1: It's really good. I like it. Yeah, okay, good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't mean that in a in a
Speaker 1: negative derivative way. You know, your your voice sounds like
Speaker 1: somebody related to just by genetics. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: he's like, I want to sound like my dad, you know, sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's using auto team like that. I'm
Speaker 1: just surprised he didn't go in like a totally different
Speaker 1: direction musically, like maybe like folk folk rock or folk
Speaker 1: progue or something. Yeah, I mean I did see that.
Speaker 1: I read some reviews to some people kind of knocked
Speaker 1: it for like going for that, you know, big stadium,
Speaker 1: anthemic you two thing right out of the gate. But
Speaker 1: you know, stuff, It is what I say, where the
Speaker 1: sun don't shine. Let someone make the music they want
Speaker 1: to make it good for them if they're getting huge.
Speaker 1: I love it, yeah for sure. All right. So this
Speaker 1: is just one of many squirrel emails we got. Who
Speaker 1: knew that that was going to generate so much email?
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's crazy, Like We got videos of people
Speaker 1: scritching on little squirrels that they've been feeding. Squirrels crawling
Speaker 1: up people's laps and up there sitting on their shoulder
Speaker 1: like wild squirrels. It's pretty amazing. I'll like, white albino
Speaker 1: squirrels are black squirrels. Where was it the head the
Speaker 1: ones with the big long ears. I don't know, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't see those those Toronto. Where is it Utah?
Speaker 1: I'm guessing Utah. I can't remember. I feel bad now,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they have these little sort of wizard long
Speaker 1: ears that stick up. It's it's amazing wizard ears. Wizard
Speaker 1: here's healf ears that wizards? Okay to me? Wizards? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, not according to Gary Guy. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, so here we go. Um. In the recent
Speaker 1: Squirrel episode, Chuck said, jommy kid that can get a
Speaker 1: squirrel and hit it with a stick. And here's my story.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were on a National Park road
Speaker 1: trip in the Western US and while hiking in Zion,
Speaker 1: I heard a commotion on the trail behind me. I
Speaker 1: looked back. A couple was rushing over to the side
Speaker 1: of the trail where there was a significant drop off
Speaker 1: because their son had gone over the edge. It's terrifying
Speaker 1: to witness, but thankfully the boy had been had gotten
Speaker 1: caught on a tree and was not noticeably injured. Here's
Speaker 1: how we got there. The boys spotted a squirrel in
Speaker 1: the trail and hit it with a sticky. It came
Speaker 1: after and screeched at the boy, startling him and causing
Speaker 1: him to retreat straight over the ledge. Let this be
Speaker 1: a teaching moment. Don't go after squirrels with sticks, or
Speaker 1: you may be in for a nasty spill. And that
Speaker 1: is from Read Stiller in Dallas, Texas, who is a
Speaker 1: Texas and A and M grad and came to Athens
Speaker 1: for the Aggies Bulldogs game a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: and had a great time in Athens and said to
Speaker 1: come out to College Station for a game and you
Speaker 1: will have a great time as well. Very nice. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the invite. We appreciate that. Who was that? That
Speaker 1: is Read Stiller? Well thanks a lot, Read, We appreciate
Speaker 1: that big time. That is a really good story. Actually,
Speaker 1: um my evil part says if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Read did, you can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeart Radio dot
Speaker 1: com Stuff you Should Know is a production of I
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H m hm