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Speaker 1: Pushkin, maybe you remember it. August two thousand and three,

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Speaker 1: everything went dark. A couple of trees on the East

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Speaker 1: Lake transmission line outside of Cleveland grew a little bit

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Speaker 1: too tall, and the electrical line at that precise point,

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Speaker 1: perhaps because of the summer heat, sagged a little bit

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Speaker 1: more than usual and touched the trees. Contact causes short

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Speaker 1: The short cause of power that used to run along

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Speaker 1: that line to be rerouted along another line, which overloaded

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Speaker 1: that line, causing an even bigger electrical surge to be

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Speaker 1: rerouted to another line, and on and on, leading to

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Speaker 1: a series of failures that rippled across the entire Northeastern grid,

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Speaker 1: leaving fifty million people without electricity. The Great Northeastern Blackout

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Speaker 1: is what's called a failure cascade. One small mishap leads

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Speaker 1: to a second, bigger problem, and a third even bigger problem,

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Speaker 1: and finally, at the end of the chain catastrophe, I

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Speaker 1: want to tell you a story about a moral failure cascade.

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Speaker 1: It began with what looked like a robbery gone wrong.

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Speaker 1: A woman murdered in her home in an area of

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Speaker 1: northwestern Alabama known as the Shoals. But that crime would

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Speaker 1: soon attract the crowd, a host of others who would

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Speaker 1: get caught up in the cascade as it picked up

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Speaker 1: momentum onlookers, participants, people trying to stop the unfolding catastrophe.

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Speaker 1: For thirty years, people wittingly or unwittingly feeding it until

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Speaker 1: it consumed them too. Was he Was he a good preacher, charismedic?

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Speaker 2: Yes, I would say very charismatic.

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Speaker 3: There was this joke that said that it was easier

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Speaker 3: to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering

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Speaker 3: somebody than it was to be divorced. Thank you. Just

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Speaker 3: got on from work and they come and he said, well, mom,

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Speaker 3: can you come? He said, the police are here. There's

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Speaker 3: no sense in even having a jury. If you if

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Speaker 3: you're going to be able to overturn the jury, if

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Speaker 3: a judge can overturn the jury, he said, But I

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Speaker 3: was involved, and that's a horrible thing I was involved in.

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Speaker 3: I've been in prison twenty four twenty five years. That's

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Speaker 3: probably not long enough.

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Speaker 2: I didn't kill them. They get burned from the inside,

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Speaker 2: and then glad just pours into the lungs and I'm

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Speaker 2: sorry as I'm saying this, it's awful, and this is

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Speaker 2: what this is how lethal injection actually kills you.

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Speaker 1: Here's what I don't understand. Nobody notices till you. Apparently not,

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Speaker 1: He would say to himself, turn to the right, to

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Speaker 1: the victim's family and apologize.

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Speaker 3: Turn to the left, tell my family, I love him,

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Speaker 3: So he would have this little practice.

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Speaker 2: To the right, I'm sorry. To the left, I love you.

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Speaker 1: From Revisionist History, This is the Alabama Murders, a special

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Speaker 1: seven episode series in which we investigate why this case

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Speaker 1: went on for as long as it did, why it

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Speaker 1: took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way,

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Speaker 1: and maybe the most important question, why have we created

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Speaker 1: a system that, in trying to respond to suffering all

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Speaker 1: too often makes suffering worse. The mant have damage this

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Speaker 1: man did is incalculable.

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Speaker 2: It's still damaging all of us. It still hurts us

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Speaker 2: to think about.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to binge the entire season of

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Speaker 1: Revisionist History The Alabama Murders early and ed free. As

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Speaker 1: a Pushkin Plus subscriber, You also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks,

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Speaker 1: and binge's from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find

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Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the Revisionist History show page on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus,