WEBVTT - Interview: Rip Current, with Toby Ball 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.680 From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:09.080 riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.119 learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:13.880 production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.560 Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:30.760 my name is Noah. 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:32.120 They call me Ben. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.400 We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.400 Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:40.280 You are here. 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.000 That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:48.279 Friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists, we have something special 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:53.199 for you tonight. It is a strange, deep, disturbing dare 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:57.840 I say, shaman Alan esque Cohen hell pro esque tale 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:02.000 that may not be familiar to everyone in the audience. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:03.680 The California Timber Wars. 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:05.760 Have you heard of it? Maybe? Maybe not. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.880 In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, activists hoped to 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:16.560 end overcutting of redwoods throughout well Redwood's in particular, timber 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.160 in general, throughout parts of California, and there was a 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:25.360 particular organization involved in this called Earth First with an 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:29.920 exclamation point. They took direct actions. One of the leaders 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:35.119 of these efforts was an activist named Judy Barry who Well, 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.000 we'll get to it in a second. It's a deep 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:43.040 and crucial story that is yet to be told in full. Luckily, gentlemen, friends, neighbors, countrymen, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.679 we are not diving in alone. We are joined by 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:52.120 get this, guys, none other than the legendary investigator, writer, podcaster, 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.840 and creator of multiple shows that we're big fans of, 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:01.240 our returning pal, the mythical, the legendary, the one and only, 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:02.280 Toby Ball. 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.520 Toby. Come on, man, thank you for showing up. Hey, 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:07.520 thank you. It's nice to see you, guys. 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.079 Guys behind the curtain. He's been there the whole time. 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:11.920 It's crazy. 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.160 Definitely a unicorn of a human. We've talked to Toby 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:19.640 about other series that he's done, including Strange, Rivals and Today. 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.240 And Rendallshim Forrest two seasons, Rivals First Seas check them 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:24.839 out right now. 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:26.320 Yes, yeah, this is. 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.520 RIP Current season two and Toby I was I was 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.720 looking into this because I'm a fan of tangential, non 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:34.840 relevant research. 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:36.280 I think as we all. 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:37.680 Are, big part of what we do here. 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:41.079 Yes, and one of the things that I noted, I said, Hey, 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.000 our pal mister b is coming on to the show. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.960 For the third time. Saturday Night Live rules say that 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.440 if you make it to the fifth appearance, we have 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.240 to get you like a special jacket and throw a party. 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.160 I want a special jacket. I've been on five episodes. 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.600 Well that's motivation to the other two going there you go, 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:02.680 it's gonna happen. 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.240 Maybe we'll all get matching jackets. That would be cool. 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.800 That'd be cool, especially if we roll as a group 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:11.480 in our jackets that do a heist. 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.360 You know, walk away from an explosion and slash into Oh. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:26.680 There we go, and that's apropos. That's what we call foreshadowy. 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:28.120 Toby, can you. 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.760 Set the stage for us with a little bit of 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:36.760 an origin story? We throughout the phrase timber Wars? What 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.040 were the timber Wars? What about this led you to 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:41.520 rip current season two? 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.600 So I even before the timber Wars and I was 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.280 actually Matt was in on this conversation at one point. 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:56.160 I wanted to do something sort of about environmental activism. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.560 You know, in this period where you know the consequences 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:04.000 of global warming are quite clear, but there doesn't seem 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.520 to be this kind of hair on fire reaction to it, 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:12.880 Like you don't see eco sabotage trying to you know, 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:18.640 sabotage pipelines or other things that might slow down fossil 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.680 fuel use and things like that. So I'd spent some 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.400 time kind of researching, trying to find what would be 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.000 sort of a compelling story. There's other things. There was 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.159 the Green Peace boat that was sunk by the French 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.480 intelligence services, a couple of others. But I ended up 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.279 coming across the Timber Wars, and part of you know, 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.839 the rip current. The idea behind rip Current is to 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.279 look at a crime that occurs in sort of a 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:52.839 complicated social and political setting. And in this case, I 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:55.640 sort of vaguely remembered this because this happened in nineteen ninety, 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:57.640 which is like right after I got out of college. 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.440 I remember reading about it. But Judy Barry, who was 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:08.080 this organizer for Earth Verst, a leader uh and her 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.560 you know, former lover and like long times her partner 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.039 and activism, this guy Darryl Churney, were driving in a 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.800 car in Oakland and a pipe bomb went off in 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.640 it and it should have killed them both, but it 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:26.640 slightly malfunctioned. Judy was grievously injured. She only lived seven 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:31.520 more years. She died of breast cancer, but she was 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.279 in pain for the rest of her life. Uh, you know, 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.120 I believe had to walk aided with a cane, you know, 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:44.720 really just physically messed up. And then Darryl got away with, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.640 you know, some some fairly light wounds. But it originally 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.359 came to the press and the FBI and the in 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.720 the Oakland police kind of put it out there as oh, 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.600 they were carrying these explosives and they and they detonated 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.799 in the car by accident, so theyre going to probably 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:05.960 actually do some terroristic action, but the explosive blew up 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:11.320 in the car, So that was kind of the central 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:14.720 sort of crime that could kind of focus these other 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.040 things that were going on. Do you want me to 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:19.960 go back a little bit to talk about Yea, the 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.880 timber wars themselves. Yeah, so the Redwoods used to be 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:30.159 this vast forest right in California, and so if you 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:34.680 go to sort of pre European contact seventeen hundreds, I mean, 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:40.159 it's huge and from basically the first time Europeans made 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:44.040 it to that area of California, they're like these these 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:46.839 are incredible trees. You know, you can't quite get a 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:49.599 sense of it from looking at pictures, but they're you know, 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.280 two hundred and fifty three hundred feet high. There's no 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.159 branches below. All the branches are very high where they 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.200 can get the sun. So this is very good wood. 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.160 It's not naughty. It's got these other properties as well. 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.880 They keep it from rotting and resistant from fire. So 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:10.040 over the course of you know, two centuries, with various means, 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.560 from two guys using a saw for a few days 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:17.840 to cut down one to all these technological advances, when 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.360 you get to the nineteen eighties, about ninety five percent 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.200 of the old growth redwoods are gone, right, and some 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:26.640 of these trees have been around for two thousand years, 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.840 so five percent are left. Some of that is in 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.440 public hands, so it's in state parks or national parks. 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.040 The largest bit of it that's in private hands is 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.600 owned by this place called Pacific Lumber, which was a 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:47.320 family owned and operated big lumber operation out of a 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.480 place called Scotia, which was a real company town. Like 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:54.920 everything there was owned by Pacific Lumber. So if you 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.040 worked there, you lived in a Pacific Lumber house and 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:00.960 all this stuff. So essentially teen eighty five, this guy 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.800 named Charles Hurwitz who was. I believe he was a 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.000 multi multi, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. It's 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.680 one of the first times people used junk bonds to 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.960 buy something. But he saw that Pacific Lumber, which had 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:19.360 been run really responsibly. They used sustainable cutting. They had 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:23.560 a big pension for retirees in their company. Not a 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.240 bad company down Yeah, yeah, I mean people people apparently 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:27.880 really liked it. 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.160 They're taking care of their people, yes. 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.880 Right, But they went public a little while before that, 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.760 so they issued stock and because they were so responsible 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:42.120 and so healthy they were, they were very undervalued, so 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:46.240 that made them sort of prey to these capitalistic forces. 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:52.000 Hurwitz comes in, uses junk bonds to purchase Pacific Lumber, 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:55.040 and it becomes very clear that the only way he's 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.160 going to be able to pay off the interest and 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:01.040 make this all work is by clear cutting the Pacific 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.360 Lumber forests, which includes this huge area of old growth redwoods, 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.360 which there's not much left, right, So. 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.080 So just Toby quickly, Yeah, the Redwood Force at this 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:17.880 point of the takeover by Charles hurwitzon was it maxim 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.240 his company, Yeah, yeah, So at that moment, the forest 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.439 of redwoods is already down ninety five. At that point 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.119 of old growth, there's still you know, there's second. 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:33.959 Growth, third growth, fourth growth, but that you know, these 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:39.280 are not mature trees yet. Okay, so the really old ones, 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.560 which are you know, I think in ecological terms, the 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.320 most valuable. I mean, it's sort of interesting how you 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.800 look at the value of trees, especially if you're a 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:52.280 lumber lumberman, you know, like what you're going to be 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.199 able to get out of your acreage on a sort 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.840 of year by year basis. So at that point it 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.000 becomes clear that this is probably what's going to happen 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.720 been and it starts happening, and a couple things, you know, 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.040 for timber workers, they're like, you know, this is actually 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:10.479 kind of awesome. You know, we're working all this overtime, 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.080 we're getting much more money because we're speeding up the cut. 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.960 And then you have environmentalists who are like, well, this 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.120 is you know, this is going to be the end 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:23.959 of a significant proportion of these old growth redwoods, which 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.600 are you know, I mean, they're like sort of quote 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.679 unquote a renewable resource because you can grow new redwoods, 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:32.800 but you're not going to get the same thing for 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.079 fifteen hundred years, you know, I mean, these these trees 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.640 have been around. You know. That was one of the 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.600 ads or pamphlets or something was like some of these 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.560 trees have been around since Christ walked the earth. Right. Yeah, 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:49.560 so Earth First, which is sort of, you know, on 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.199 the radical side of the environmentalists. I mean, they sort 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:58.600 of define the furthest radical edge at that point. You know, 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:00.640 they said, we're gon, we're going to try right and 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.400 stop this, slow it down. And that's kind of direct 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.120 led to the timber Wars. Yeah, it was. So, you know, 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.360 as with everything in this I could go on for 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.280 about twenty minutes about it, but direct action, you do, well, 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.599 it's definitely part of it. So that made you U 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.080 define that. Yeah. Yeah. So that so what direct action 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:22.840 really means is instead of just you know, protesting or 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.720 lobbying in the halls of Congress or you know, sending 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:31.080 stuff out to your membership, it means like blockading roads. Uh, 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:36.800 it means tearing up, uh, surveying spikes that they use. 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.320 Potentially it being sabotaging equipment. 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:42.960 Yeah, sabotage equipment, putting sand in gas. There's a hole. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.040 One of the founders of Earth First, this guy Dave 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:51.880 Foreman published a book called Ecotage, which was all these 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:56.400 different ways in which you can do uh economic sabotage, 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.400 which and I go into this fair amount in the 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.640 in the podcast. The most controversial of all these is 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:09.120 tree spiking. And what tree spiking is well, start off 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.200 as and it evolved a little bit, but you basically 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.439 take a big nail and you bang it into a tree. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.320 And that so people when they're using saws, it just 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:22.559 shatters the saw and it can be very dangerous. It's 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:27.800 to fly and right exactly. But but what Earth First 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.240 would do is they would go into like a grove 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.680 and this is not northern California, but this is you know, wherever. 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.600 They would do this and sometimes they would circle where 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.960 they were, uh, sometimes they would identify the grove like that. 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.680 The idea wasn't to hurt people. The idea was to 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:50.480 stop them from using their saws on the on this wood. 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.360 And you know what's what's funny is that it's not 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.520 really funny. But uh, you know, in my research, there's 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.520 only one real known incident that I could find. And 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:05.480 this is also like looking at senators and congressmen who've 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.200 tried to find more stuff about tree spiking and them 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.800 not being able to turn things up either. Was one 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:16.839 guy in a mill in northern California who he was 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.880 one of the guys who fed the logs to be cut, 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.560 and it hit a spike and the saw basically kind 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.679 of exploded and nearly killed him. And then there was 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:31.920 a lot of Initially it was like his earth first, 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.360 of his earth first, and it turned out although this 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.240 guy was in charge, they're fairly sure it was actually 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.880 this kind of curmudgeonly guy who didn't like the fact 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:45.160 that they were sawing down trees that were in his view, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.040 so he did have to try and stop them. So 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.679 that's really the only time that there's been like a 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:53.240 real serious injury that results from tree spiking. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:55.480 Well, let's just continue on that a little bit. Because 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.800 of that one case, as we hear in Rip Curren 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.640 season two, was used to what was used as the 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.600 argument against tree spiking and what was labeled as eco 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.440 terrorism at the time, right because it was so dangerous 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.439 because people may die, and he was maimed. It was 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:19.560 a you know, not some small incident that occurred, but 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:24.560 it definitely the argument then seemed to expand out as 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.600 though this tree spiking thing had killed many people, or 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.560 that was stated publicly even though it wasn't provable. 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:33.640 All they need is one inciting event to then balloon 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.240 into this is you know, the precedents, and then it 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.080 gives them kind of talking points to go after a 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:40.240 larger movement. 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.600 Right, the timber war has become an information. 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.560 War, right, I mean even recently. I've got a clip 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:49.800 and I'm trying to remember who the congressman was, but 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.920 he's from the Pacific Northwest or maybe Idaho. Anyway, he's 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:58.600 talking about they wanted to increase the the criminal penalties 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.360 for tree spiking, and so this guy in this mill, 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.040 same with George Alexander. So he's kind of given the 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.800 speech on the floor and he says and then George 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.000 Alexander and this happened to him, and then all these 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:12.920 other people have been killed or maimed or whatever. It's like, well, 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.320 can you name like one other person, you know, because 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.280 it's always the same guy. It's always George Alexander and 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:22.080 all these other guys. But I think it was Larry Craig, 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.640 who used to be a Senator, got in touch with 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:28.840 I don't know if it's a Department of the Interior 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.760 or one of the departments that said, can you give 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.080 me a list of everybody who's been harmed or killed 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:39.360 by tree spiking? And the only thing he got back 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:40.760 was George Alexander. 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.240 So so it was bupkiss. But it does, I think 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:50.160 show us a little bit more about how the media 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:55.200 was treating this. Right, people loved, people love a convenient 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.360 throwaway phrase like eco terrorism, right or now tree spiking? 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.520 At this point, could you tell us a little bit 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.720 more as we're setting the stage here about how the 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:13.840 local everyday folks in California felt about environmentalism. They're reading 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.960 the news. Do they think that Earth First is a 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.560 straight up eco terrorism outfit? Do they agree with them? 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:23.040 Like? How is? 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:28.160 What's the temperature of the room there around the redwoods? 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:33.320 So that's an interesting question. So at that time, and 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.640 I talked to a guy, well, I talked to a 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.040 few people who had sort of grown up there, and 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.840 they said there was really there's two sort of major 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:46.920 factions in northern California. One was these sort of generational 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:51.040 families of timber workers. The other were these sort of 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.000 back to the land hippies who'd moved up there. So 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.480 you really had you know, in schools they said, what 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.800 do we call It's like the rednecks and the hippies, 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.320 you know, those are the two groups. And so you 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.119 have these timber families. 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:05.440 Device of all of this, then, I guess. 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:10.680 Yeah, exactly, So you had these timber families who obviously 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.280 saw them as a threat and as terrorists. 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.080 And as a threat to their livelihood and their families 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.960 legacy or whatever it might be. If this is multi generational, 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.320 like they've got skin in the game in that exactly. 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.000 And I think there was a sense that Earth First 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:31.640 was sort of questioning the morality or nobility of timber 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.400 work in general, so that it kind of felt very 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:39.360 personal to some people, like an attack identity, right right, 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.600 It's like what you what your family for generations has 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.840 done is sort of immoral by by cutting these you know, 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.760 majestic trees. And then that, you know, the hippie families 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.480 were more likely to be you know, sympathetic to Earth First. 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.040 It's just a very it's a very complicated time, you know. 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.320 And this is at a time when timber is sort 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:04.359 of descending importance in the economy and marijuana is ascending 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:06.720 as like a big export crop up there. 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:07.840 Is Humboldt County. 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:14.920 Yeah, yeah, it's Humboldy. Yeah, it's weeah yeah, so anonymous, Yeah, exactly, Humboldt. 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:17.000 So yeah. So it was really it was kind of 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:23.480 a mixed a mixed feeling. You know, the timber companies themselves, 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.560 you know, sort of try to accentuate the potential for 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.800 violence from Earth First, and you know, Earth First had 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:35.400 to take several steps, including publicly renouncing tree spiking, which 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.080 was very controversial within Earth First, to try and prove like, 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:43.119 we're not we're not going after you know, the individual 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:47.080 timber worker, like these small timber companies that are contractors 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.399 or whatever. We're really going over these corporate people like 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.720 Charles Hurwitz, who's this guy from Texas, Like wouldn't be 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.200 able to identify or redwood if you you know, if 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.720 you pointed him at one and it's just these people, 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:05.000 it's you know, it's craven greed, you know, essentially, especially 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.240 in Hurwitz's case, I mean, he's just trying to make 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.439 money and all he sees are trees, is like a 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:16.080 monetary asset. And that's so sort of the opposite of 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.840 the Earth First idea, which is that we have to 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.840 preserve this, this is our natural heritage, right. 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:25.919 And just it was really there, Toby. Yeah, because the 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.240 concept of spiking trees, and we kind of talked about 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:30.199 it already, but the concept of doing that is to 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:33.800 destroy equipment, right, sabotage of equipment, which would cost the 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.480 company a lot of money, which would probably cause them 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.280 to stop cutting in that area at least temporarily if 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:40.320 not long term. 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:41.000 Right. 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:47.880 So it does seem like quite a non violent tactic 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.680 until you do have one person that's hurt. But it 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.520 just makes so much sense in my mind, at least 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.359 to spike trees to break the chains on chainsaws so 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.520 that that company cannot continue to function. And ultimately, if 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.960 the company is your enemy, as in Earth First case, 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.159 it would be really weird for a group who is 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.560 you know, who is fighting those companies to say, don't 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:16.320 do that thing. That is very that seems to be 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:17.119 very effective. 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:20.960 Yeah, and I think, you know, I talked to some 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:25.600 Earth First people who, you know, we're really angry about that, 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:31.240 and what what they basically said is it has been nonviolent. 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:35.000 You know, there's only one person you can point to. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.479 That's why we let them know when we do it. 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:40.480 The idea is it's gonna it's just gonna make a 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:42.760 cost more. You know, you're going to have to go 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.080 in with like metal detectors and try and find the 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.240 spikes in the trees and remove them. It's just it 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:53.200 takes time, it takes manpower. It's there's no easy way 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.840 to do it. And then they got the idea of 0:20:55.920 --> 0:21:02.480 using ceramic spikes be detected by metal detectors. So it's 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:06.800 really you know, they give the idea was we give 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:10.720 them enough information to not hurt their workers, right Like, 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.120 if they're sitting there workers out there with saws in 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.680 an area that we've spiked, that's them knowingly putting their 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:20.760 their workers in danger. You're not doing it, We're not 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:25.160 doing it secretly. Now it's the Timber company. Now it's 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:28.280 the evil guys from the Captain Planet episodes who are 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:32.960 at fault for endangering their workers because they had the information. 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.880 And this is obviously not a unique perspective. I think 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.760 this is something all of us can universally understand the 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:47.360 logic of. However, it seems that things begin to quickly escalate. 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.720 Right There's as as you already said, there's a deep division, 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.800 there's factionalism in northern California. There is a. 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:01.840 Narrative competition in conversation and the zeitgeist and the media 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:06.680 about who can be considered the bad or the good guys, 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:12.879 and we see we see actions escalate at an increasingly 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:25.400 dangerous pace. Now, we teased it a bit at the top. 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:29.959 We talked a little bit about the tragic bizarre, like 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:37.359 the heartbreaking attack on Judy Barry and her associate. Could 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:42.560 you tell us a little bit more about the I 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:44.840 have so many questions, folks. You're going to have to 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:47.920 listen to rip her At season two in full to 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.679 understand the depth of this story. But it's just astonishing 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:57.679 the way the bombing occurs and the way that the 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:05.240 investing negation goes. And then Falters, can you tell us 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.960 a little bit about the circumstances of the bombing and 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:11.280 a little bit more about the investigation. 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:15.400 Sure, at the time of the bombing, Earth Verse was 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:18.840 planning this thing called Redwood Summer, and the idea was 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:21.480 they were going to get lots of college students to 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:24.640 come up to the Redwoods to take place and protests, 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:30.160 direct actions just sort of you know, flood the zone 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.439 with people and they're sort of basing it on the 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:38.280 Freedom Summer Mississippi. It actually started off being like Mississippi 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:42.720 Summer in the Redwoods, I think. So anyway, the big plans, 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:45.760 and so they were actually down in Oakland to do 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.359 sort of a planning meeting with this group called Seeds 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:52.480 of Peace. But there's sort of this timeline, and maybe 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:54.960 it makes sense to stay up front that this pipe 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:59.320 bomb was on a timer. So there was a watch 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:04.399 that could be set back almost to twelve hours, like 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:07.400 eleven hours and fifty nine minutes, and it would go 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:09.200 and it hit a certain place and it would let 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:13.119 loose this ball bearing, and the ball bearing would go 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.680 into this little circle where there's all these wires sticking out. 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:20.359 If connected two wires together, that would detonate the bomb. 0:24:20.600 --> 0:24:23.359 So there's you know, there's a period of time in 0:24:23.400 --> 0:24:25.679 which the bomb could have been placed in the car. 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:31.440 So she has a couple of meetings up in Mendocino County, 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:34.000 She goes down Oakland, has a meeting at this place 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:37.399