Speaker 1: Flashpoint is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free,
Speaker 1: but for ad free listening, early access and exclusive bonuses,
Speaker 1: subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome everyone to Inside Tenderfoot TV. Today we're
Speaker 2: going inside Flashpoint, our latest show that takes an investigative
Speaker 2: look at the narratives of the nineteen ninety six Olympic
Speaker 2: bombing and the subsequent bombings in Atlanta, Georgia. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of themes in this story that are still
Speaker 2: very precient. Today I'm Laura from the Tenderfoot team, and
Speaker 2: today I'm talking to host and co creator Cole Lakassio
Speaker 2: and executive producer and co creator Doug Mattica to hear
Speaker 2: about their experiences digging into such an intense story with
Speaker 2: some seriously personal strings attached. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting down with col A Cassio and Doug Matica,
Speaker 2: the producers and hosts of Flashpoint, and I'm really excited
Speaker 2: to get into it. Welcome Cole and Doug. Thank you
Speaker 2: for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dor, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this show just wrapped up, which means that
Speaker 2: everything is very fresh, and I kind of wanted to
Speaker 2: start a little bit at the beginning of things before
Speaker 2: getting into some of the more kind of hard hitting
Speaker 2: topics of the show and your experience with it. Can
Speaker 2: both of you just give a little bit of an
Speaker 2: overview to our listeners of how you got involved in
Speaker 2: podcasting in the first place, a little bit of your
Speaker 2: history within this medium, and why you chose it for storytelling.
Speaker 1: I got into it through Doug. Actually, I was in
Speaker 1: college and I was working on in indie film over
Speaker 1: the summer, is like an internship in between my junior
Speaker 1: and senior year of college. I met Doug that way.
Speaker 1: He was a pretty around a film when I was
Speaker 1: wrapping up college. I did radio all during school and
Speaker 1: I loved it, but I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to not have a typical journalism job after
Speaker 1: I got out of college, and I'm glad I worked
Speaker 1: on that film. I never considered film or storytelling like
Speaker 1: that in any capacity until I met Doug, and so
Speaker 1: I hit him up after college, and you know, I
Speaker 1: went the typical like applying for jobs at like you know,
Speaker 1: local papers and like ESPN and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but they were all very entry level and not very
Speaker 1: creatively rewarding. I hit up Doug and asked him what
Speaker 1: he was doing, and he had just started a podcast company,
Speaker 1: so naturally it was a good fit. So I moved
Speaker 1: out to LA.
Speaker 3: Well, at first I told him, don't do it, just
Speaker 3: like my mentor told me, don't get in film. It's
Speaker 3: the worst thing you can do. Kid, don't do it.
Speaker 2: I was told that when I was studying film too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But you know, when you got it in your head
Speaker 3: and you need to creative stuff, you just do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when was do you mind have asked? When? This was?
Speaker 2: Just for a sense of kind of what the world
Speaker 2: of podcasting was at that time, since it's this was grown.
Speaker 1: I hit him up first in May of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's where I graduated.
Speaker 2: Okay, so established industry, but it's grown, right.
Speaker 1: And I moved out to Los Angeles in July of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. And you know, honestly, i'd never really listened
Speaker 1: to a long form narrative podcast of any kind. My
Speaker 1: first introduction to it, as I'm sure is the case
Speaker 1: for many people, was Cereal Doug. And Doug gave me
Speaker 1: basically a homework listening list and it included Cereal and
Speaker 1: included Shitdown. I can't there were a few more, but
Speaker 1: I started with Cereal and s Town Yeah, and kind
Speaker 1: of just took off from there. It's such an awesome
Speaker 1: medium to be able to craft the story you want
Speaker 1: to tell without having to worry about visuals, which was
Speaker 1: always actually my least favorite part of film. Were the
Speaker 1: visuals important, but being able to really tap into and
Speaker 1: take hold of the storytelling aspect of it was very
Speaker 1: intriguing to me. So I'd moved out to La. The
Speaker 1: very first thing I got to LA, I went to
Speaker 1: the office and met up with him. We caught up
Speaker 1: and he brought me inside and on his computer he
Speaker 1: had an article about Eric Rudolf from Outside magazine and
Speaker 1: I was like, why are you reading that? And he said,
Speaker 1: do you know about this? Like you're from Atlanta, Like
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know about Eric Rudolf. And the article
Speaker 1: was talking about how it was mostly focused on the
Speaker 1: man hunt and how he was able to sleep in
Speaker 1: the woods. I think the title of it was Eric
Speaker 1: Rudolf Slept Here. And he was blown away by it.
Speaker 1: And Doug can talk about this more on what fascinated
Speaker 1: him about it, but when I saw that article, I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have a connection Eric Rudolf, and I told him
Speaker 1: my story in my birth story, and the kind took
Speaker 1: off from there. He actually came up with our original
Speaker 1: title for the show on the spot right after I
Speaker 1: told him that story.
Speaker 2: Doug, were you looking were you looking into building a
Speaker 2: podcast around his story kind of in your head already
Speaker 2: before you talked to Cole about his connection to it?
Speaker 3: Totally? I thought his story was and I think Cole
Speaker 3: mentions this very briefly in one of the apps, but
Speaker 3: like Eric's story, his timeline is kind of like very
Speaker 3: synchronous with the timeline of the rise of the far right,
Speaker 3: the religious right domestically. And I thought that was interesting
Speaker 3: because he, you know, spoused a lot of those views
Speaker 3: quite publicly, and he's been pretty prolific from prison. I
Speaker 3: don't recommend you read his work, but he he's got
Speaker 3: time on his hands, for sure, but he's also got
Speaker 3: clarity of vision. But I was really interested in that
Speaker 3: the sort of cultural historical piece, but also I was
Speaker 3: amazed that somebody could hide for five years, How do
Speaker 3: you do that? And so you know, this outside magazine
Speaker 3: piece was fascinating. It really just got into the topography
Speaker 3: of the region, and so I was what I was
Speaker 3: doing is poking on trying to find an angle, like
Speaker 3: what's the angle? How do I tell this terrorist story
Speaker 3: and use it to give a broader cultural overview? But
Speaker 3: what's the angle? Like anybody can tell the story? And
Speaker 3: Jimmy Shoeshine here walks into my office. I mean, shit,
Speaker 3: you not within an hour of And we had worked
Speaker 3: together for two months NonStop in production, like we were
Speaker 3: on set every day, so like this never came up.
Speaker 3: Why would it? But yeah, he walks into my office
Speaker 3: sees this, and he's like, oh, I have a story,
Speaker 3: and I think he actually stepped outside.
Speaker 1: For a second.
Speaker 3: He's like, I want to confirm a couple of things.
Speaker 3: Hold on, And he went outside and he made a
Speaker 3: call and talked to Leah, his mom, and confirmed a
Speaker 3: couple of things before he dropped the bomb. And then
Speaker 3: he dropped it, and I was like, whoa. And it
Speaker 3: just so happened that I was in the process of
Speaker 3: setting up my first podcast, Whistleblower, with Tenderfoot. At the time,
Speaker 3: it wasn't set up yet, but we were getting close,
Speaker 3: and it was in production on Whistleblower that at a
Speaker 3: certain point we were I think, you know, midway through
Speaker 3: and in Atlanta, Cole's helping on that, he's editing on that,
Speaker 3: and I Donald just at lunch one day, I was like,
Speaker 3: what else you got? What are you working on? And
Speaker 3: I gave him like a two sentence pitch on this
Speaker 3: and he was like, I'll take that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's an incredibly compelling You have an incredibly
Speaker 2: compelling position within I guess the broader narrative of Eric
Speaker 2: Rudolph and the extremism that is growing. Cole, when did
Speaker 2: you first find out about your birth story and your
Speaker 2: relationship to Eric Rudolf? Because you talk in the show
Speaker 2: about always being fascinated with this bombing And forgive me
Speaker 2: because I don't remember if you had actually already been
Speaker 2: interested in that as a young person and then found
Speaker 2: out because you mentioned I think it was high school
Speaker 2: or college that she told you. So were you interested
Speaker 2: in this before you actually knew your connection to it
Speaker 2: and then it grew or was it something that grew
Speaker 2: out of finding out your birth story.
Speaker 1: I knew about Eric Rudolf pretty early on in my life,
Speaker 1: because I think when you grow up in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: know about that story, right, you know more than most would.
Speaker 1: I think most people only know typically when you tell
Speaker 1: them about the Olympic Park bombing, they know Richard Jewell,
Speaker 1: they don't really know the name Eric Rudolf. But I
Speaker 1: think for most people who have lived in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: know through the nineties, they're going to know about the
Speaker 1: man hunt, They're going to know about the additional bombings.
Speaker 1: So I kind of grew up with that story in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind, just knowing like this is
Speaker 1: a crazy story. I knew about my birth story parts
Speaker 1: of it. I knew about my biological father. I knew
Speaker 1: about the fact that he just wasn't part of our
Speaker 1: lives past the age of like two. For me, it
Speaker 1: was not a good situation. Thankfully, my mom got out
Speaker 1: of it. She had a lot of support from her
Speaker 1: parents and my grandparents. But I did not know about
Speaker 1: the Eric Rudolf part of it until high school. It
Speaker 1: was something that I mean, my mom's a very open person.
Speaker 1: She's an open book, but you have to ask her
Speaker 1: certain things to get those pieces of her life, and
Speaker 1: I think it's something that she wasn't trying to keep
Speaker 1: from me. She told me everything else. It's just something
Speaker 1: that she put away, and I don't think it was
Speaker 1: really important to her after she made the decision to
Speaker 1: keep me. I think trauma is a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1: I think it does a lot to memories. I think
Speaker 1: that played into that. So when I heard that part
Speaker 1: of the story and I was interested in going this
Speaker 1: route of journalism, I kind of always kept it up here,
Speaker 1: you know, to hopefully one day be able to tell
Speaker 1: that story. But in a way that doesn't come across
Speaker 1: as supportive of his actions, right, because I've always been
Speaker 1: a pro choice person as long as I've been able
Speaker 1: to understand what that means. So I certainly didn't want
Speaker 1: people to get the wrong idea about it. But it
Speaker 1: was always there and I always wanted to tell that story.
Speaker 1: I just need to find the right way to tell it.
Speaker 1: And thankfully linking up a Doug and then Tenderfoot, we
Speaker 1: were able to do that. Right.
Speaker 3: Do you mean to run with the old title a
Speaker 3: little bit here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That I think? Is it?
Speaker 3: So? Yeah? Cool was talking about trying to find the
Speaker 3: right way to tell the story, and originally we had
Speaker 3: intended to and just for like two years in our
Speaker 3: mind and our conceptualization of an ideation process. This podcast
Speaker 3: was called Eric Rudolf Saved My life, not mine his,
Speaker 3: but but and on the one hand, we wanted to
Speaker 3: embrace everything about the paradoxical nature of this story. Yes,
Speaker 3: Eric Wrudo was a monster. Yes, Cole doesn't exist unless
Speaker 3: his monstrous actions save his life. But to start off
Speaker 3: on that, the first foot forward being he saved me.
Speaker 3: And there was always something that felt off about that.
Speaker 3: But it was also cool because, well, but we want
Speaker 3: to we don't want people to be able to avoid
Speaker 3: the paradoxical moment here. We really want people to have
Speaker 3: to hold these you know, contradictory truths. Yet it was
Speaker 3: a bit it was a bridge too far at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. I mean, Alex was a was
Speaker 3: a really strong and sound voice in figuring that out
Speaker 3: with us, with the whole process for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just for contact, Alex Bespa said, is one
Speaker 2: of the other executive producers on the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't want to change it. I didn't want
Speaker 1: that didn't either, And we after we had that initial
Speaker 1: conversation with Donald and Alex about it, we kind of
Speaker 1: digging our feet in a little bit, like being a
Speaker 1: little stubborn, and we started talking about other potential titles,
Speaker 1: and nothing was coming up even close to that title
Speaker 1: in our minds, and how strong that title was. When
Speaker 1: I told people about the story prior to its release
Speaker 1: and I used that title, they said, Wow, that is
Speaker 1: such an amazing title. Do not change that title to
Speaker 1: get you attention. But those were very specific types of
Speaker 1: people that were telling me that too. Those were people
Speaker 1: that were more in line with our thinking and understanding
Speaker 1: the type of story we wanted to tell. Those were
Speaker 1: not people who were coming into it cold or seeing
Speaker 1: the title come up on their podcast feed for the
Speaker 1: first time. You know, so, I think it needs context,
Speaker 1: and when you're making a podcast, you don't always have
Speaker 1: that opportunity to vibe context before people listen to it.
Speaker 2: Right, I think from my perspective this hearing this, this
Speaker 2: is the first time I've heard the other titles, and
Speaker 2: option I do kind of get that there's this The
Speaker 2: whole show is a paradox. The whole subject is a paradox.
Speaker 2: Your relation to it is so paradoxical. And knowing, like
Speaker 2: you said, Doug, that Eric's continued to publish from prison,
Speaker 2: he is this kind of champion within this specific community,
Speaker 2: you may have ended up with a lot of people
Speaker 2: very non paradoxically clicking through right and listening to the
Speaker 2: show with very different like it'd be great to get
Speaker 2: people of different viewpoints listening to it, but I could
Speaker 2: see how that might have been one of the concerns, right,
Speaker 2: is that the sort of I don't want to say ironic,
Speaker 2: but like slightly ironic nature that that title has, Like
Speaker 2: you're saying, you can't give any context around it for
Speaker 2: that first introduction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we have a lot of people listening
Speaker 3: that are at the end of the day, when they
Speaker 3: get to the end, they're pissed off because a lot
Speaker 3: of maybe assumptions or beliefs or values that they think
Speaker 3: they need to hold on to are challenged maybe in
Speaker 3: a way they're not comfortable with. We're getting some of
Speaker 3: that anyways, which is fine. Another challenge, just on the
Speaker 3: creative side, was if that's the title, are we giving
Speaker 3: up the ghost here? Are we like teasing the listener
Speaker 3: into figuring out what the reveal is right from the drop,
Speaker 3: you know? And at the end of the day, I
Speaker 3: don't think the reveal was really that. It was cool.
Speaker 3: I think it was I like the way we handled it,
Speaker 3: but like that's not what it's about. Getting to that
Speaker 3: and owning the what you learned from the reveal and
Speaker 3: then taking that with you through the story is much
Speaker 3: more important.
Speaker 1: And I do want to give Alex a lot of
Speaker 1: credit too, because he is the only person that came
Speaker 1: up with the title where I was willing to let
Speaker 1: go of the old title because I think Flashpoint is
Speaker 1: such a st title and it speaks to the show
Speaker 1: in so many ways. Yeah, and where we are today
Speaker 1: in this climate, can you talk.
Speaker 2: A little bit about where you maybe once you decided, okay,
Speaker 2: we're doing the show, how you started that process of
Speaker 2: research and crafting the narrative arc and whether that shifted
Speaker 2: over time. Like, I'd love to hear about that whole
Speaker 2: process because of all that nuance. And yeah, where it
Speaker 2: begins versus where it ends up.
Speaker 1: You know, it all starts during COVID, like the peak
Speaker 1: of COVID. And I think it was that summer in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty I had my first It all started with
Speaker 1: an interview with my mom. It was in our basement.
Speaker 1: I was living with my parents at the time. I
Speaker 1: had just moved back from Los Angeles and was living
Speaker 1: at home all through COVID and we sat down and
Speaker 1: just I put a mic in front of her and
Speaker 1: we talked for two hours. And the bulk of what
Speaker 1: you hear in episode two is from that first interview
Speaker 1: that we did. Doug and I hadn't talked to anyone else.
Speaker 1: We talked to ourselves about the type of story we
Speaker 1: wanted to tell, but we hadn't talked to experts at
Speaker 1: this point. We hadn't talked to anyone related to the
Speaker 1: story except my mom. So we started with that interview
Speaker 1: and we took it from there.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Wow, all right, so she shared her story
Speaker 2: with you, And then how did you go about deciding
Speaker 2: who to interview who else? What other voices you were
Speaker 2: going to bring into the show, because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Doug was very good at helping me understand the Christian identity,
Speaker 1: the religious component to the story, and he was very
Speaker 1: good at pointing me to experts that could talk about that,
Speaker 1: people he's followed on Twitter for years, Substack wherever I
Speaker 1: was very much focused on the crime story and finding
Speaker 1: those people people connected Eric Rudoff family members.
Speaker 3: The Tenderfoot team was also really good at helping us find.
Speaker 2: Yeah Eye contacts and police.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also one person always inevitably led to another. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like we would talk to one FBI guy, they would
Speaker 3: teach us with a GBI guy, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Weird anecdote is that for a while there in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, everyone I reached out to or top to
Speaker 1: died or had someone close to them pass away.
Speaker 3: It was quite a wrong.
Speaker 1: Like I talked to GBI agent Charles Stone, who comes
Speaker 1: up many times in the podcast, and I found out
Speaker 1: I think it was a month and a half later,
Speaker 1: he passed away.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 1: I went to his house, we sat down for about
Speaker 1: two and a half hours. He just had surgery, and
Speaker 1: I found out about six weeks later he passed away.
Speaker 1: So I'm very fortunate to have been able to sit
Speaker 1: down with him. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, So was the narrative arc then sort of developed
Speaker 2: organically or did you have a really specific from the
Speaker 2: get go? We want to you know, start here reveal
Speaker 2: Cole's relationship to every like, you know, focus on the
Speaker 2: Olympic bombing first and then shift to the clinic and
Speaker 2: then reveal Cole and then like, how did you actually
Speaker 2: draft out where the show was going to go? Or
Speaker 2: was that something that really was kind of an organic
Speaker 2: result of all these conversations, one leading to the other.
Speaker 1: When we first started the show, we wanted to save
Speaker 1: the reveal until the last act of the whole series,
Speaker 1: so it would have been around episode six, and of
Speaker 1: course we revealed that in episode two, and I think
Speaker 1: that was the right move because I think once people
Speaker 1: understand my connection to the story, they're able to hold
Speaker 1: onto my words a little harder and maybe listen a
Speaker 1: little closer than they would otherwise given my connection. But
Speaker 1: the original outline we had certainly is not what we
Speaker 1: up with. We wanted to dig into the connections, the
Speaker 1: stuff that made people angry. We wanted to dig into
Speaker 1: that in episode two. Of course we didn't. I think
Speaker 1: that was the right move because, regardless of people's viewpoints
Speaker 1: or where they stand on abortion, I think most people
Speaker 1: listen to all eight episodes, and that is the most
Speaker 1: valuable tool we could have had in making this show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we initially were scripting episodes where each each episode
Speaker 3: had sort of a tangential history piece, and little by
Speaker 3: little it was taking you up through and it was
Speaker 3: going through the timeline of Rudolph's life. Also, the timeline
Speaker 3: of Leah's life and also the timeline of America's sort
Speaker 3: of cultural maturity from you know, the sixties when he
Speaker 3: was born, when we start our story with Goldwater, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and jumping back and forth in time was just proved
Speaker 3: really way too challenging. Donald and he's just he's so
Speaker 3: he's so savvy about this stuff without having to try.
Speaker 3: He's just like, no, simplify, tell the crime story, and
Speaker 3: then break it down. So we resisted that for a minute,
Speaker 3: and then we were like, yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about this whole process
Speaker 2: of crafting the narrative because there were so many people
Speaker 2: that you also talked to and connected with directly, Cole.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the name of the gentleman who you
Speaker 2: talked to on the phone, but you called for the question. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So you called him right and you told him your connection,
Speaker 2: Derek Rudolph, and then he made all these assumptions about
Speaker 2: your viewpoint, which is just how people are. But can
Speaker 2: you talk a little bit about just that experience that
Speaker 2: you had, maybe your internal experience around reaching out to
Speaker 2: people who you maybe disagree with, who might have been
Speaker 2: making assumptions based on your relationship it indirectly to Eric's actions.
Speaker 2: Was that experience like for you conducting interviews and how
Speaker 2: did you kind of maintain emotional clarity and try to
Speaker 2: stay a little I guess neutral and objective in those conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. I think when I first
Speaker 1: started reaching out to people, I wasn't getting the response
Speaker 1: that I would have liked because I wasn't explaining my
Speaker 1: connection to this story. I was coming into it from
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist doing a story on Eric Rudolf in
Speaker 1: his other bombings and the subsequent manhunt. I would love
Speaker 1: to talk to you in silence. I quickly realized if
Speaker 1: I followed up and didn't bury the lead on my connection,
Speaker 1: people were much more willing to talk to me because
Speaker 1: they were interested. They were interested in the story. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there were instances too where people came into
Speaker 1: it with their own set of views and they projected
Speaker 1: that onto me. And surely I must think this because
Speaker 1: of X, Y and Z, but that just wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: When I talked to Tom Brandham, he immediately assumed I
Speaker 1: thought Eric Rudolf was, in his words, a hero that
Speaker 1: couldn't be further from the truth. Now, did I correct
Speaker 1: him when I talked to him, No, because I was
Speaker 1: looking to get an interview, and I did. I ran
Speaker 1: into that a few times. But I think that on
Speaker 1: the flip side of that, when I talked to certain people,
Speaker 1: they understood where I was coming from. And in the
Speaker 1: case of talking to some of these victims, they certainly
Speaker 1: would not have talked to me if they thought I
Speaker 1: thought Eric Rudolf was some type of hero. For example,
Speaker 1: in the case of Emily Lyons, we sat down for
Speaker 1: three hours in Birmingham, and she gave me her entire
Speaker 1: powerful story and she did ask me where I stood
Speaker 1: on things, and I was very upfront with her from
Speaker 1: the start, and I think that giving her that context
Speaker 1: was very important to having a very good, fruitful interview
Speaker 1: with her, because otherwise I don't think she would have
Speaker 1: been comfortable telling me her story if she didn't know
Speaker 1: where I was coming from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not in the same way. I'll also add that
Speaker 3: you said it right there. Emily asked you. Tom didn't
Speaker 3: ask you if people. If people come into it and
Speaker 3: they're curious about oh wow, that's a wild story, I
Speaker 3: want to understand what you actually think. It's not like
Speaker 3: Cole was cagy and didn't tell them he told him.
Speaker 3: But in the case of somebody like Tom Branham or
Speaker 3: Dan Gamon, just so happened with those guys that they
Speaker 3: didn't ask. It's not like we were being coy and
Speaker 3: hiding this stuff. But we're there to listen for the
Speaker 3: most part. If someone asks us, we're there to answer.
Speaker 3: Certainly Cole is, but somebody doesn't ask if they're not
Speaker 3: expressing curiosity in you, if they just want to talk
Speaker 3: about themselves, that's okay.
Speaker 2: Right, That is a very good point. I loved. And
Speaker 2: it's Emily's voice is the last voice that we hear
Speaker 2: in the podcast, right. I love that. It made me
Speaker 2: cry so good. I actually I think that I actually
Speaker 2: exclaimed out loud, like yes, that's such a strong ending
Speaker 2: hearing her. I really thought it was powerful to hear
Speaker 2: so much of her and to bring her back in
Speaker 2: at the end. And I'm not entirely sure how to
Speaker 2: ask this question, but you know, she makes this point
Speaker 2: of this being about men exerting control over women, and
Speaker 2: I would love to know what your perspective is on this.
Speaker 2: Having interviewed so many people you talk about being a
Speaker 2: male voice telling the story, but yeah, what's your perspective
Speaker 2: on this and how did that narrative show up in
Speaker 2: this whole process?
Speaker 1: Early on, Doug and I were very aware of the
Speaker 1: fact that it was two men, three men, four men
Speaker 1: telling the story, the story about women, the story about choice,
Speaker 1: and I think early on we really shied away from
Speaker 1: my perspective and more we're trying to make it about
Speaker 1: my mom's story. And thankfully episode two does have a
Speaker 1: large part of her story. So we were always being
Speaker 1: very delicate with it until one day Doug told me, no,
Speaker 1: this is your story. You're telling it. It's time you
Speaker 1: take some authority and tell it the way you want
Speaker 1: to tell it and from your perspective. And I think
Speaker 1: that once we establish that, it sort of clicked for me.
Speaker 1: But that is to say, every single part of this
Speaker 1: story is about that narrative of men controlling women. Let's
Speaker 1: take my mom's story. For example, my biological father, as
Speaker 1: you hear in episode two, throughout that entire process, was
Speaker 1: very controlling of her. He's the one who went to prison,
Speaker 1: yet he expected my mother to wait around a high
Speaker 1: school student, wait around until he got out of prison, right,
Speaker 1: and then when she did get out of prison. He
Speaker 1: expected her to spend house arrest with him. That, as
Speaker 1: my mom says, isn't love. That's not a relationship. That's
Speaker 1: not healthy. And ultimately, I do think that if it's
Speaker 1: a large reason of why I'm here today is because
Speaker 1: of his control over her. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: want to say it like that, but I think my
Speaker 1: point came across there.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's fair. I think that you Again,
Speaker 3: it fits into the paradoxical nature of this story, where
Speaker 3: the critique of patriarchal control is something that is essential
Speaker 3: and it's baked into this, but it doesn't change the
Speaker 3: fact that the person who's telling the story exists because
Speaker 3: of patriarchal control. Patriot like an approach to inflicting your views,
Speaker 3: Eric Rudolf inflicting his views of the world on everyone else,
Speaker 3: and they are very misogynistic and male and racist and
Speaker 3: white supremacist, et cetera. Again, I think it's it's a
Speaker 3: tricky wicket, but it's nonetheless it fits with the rest
Speaker 3: of the story we're telling. And so yeah, we were
Speaker 3: extremely deferential to whether it was Leah or any of
Speaker 3: the other women whose stories we were trying to tell
Speaker 3: until it got to the point where it was it
Speaker 3: became clear that there had to be a framing device
Speaker 3: for all of that, and it had to be our host,
Speaker 3: and it is his story. Like be clear that that
Speaker 3: men controlling women is straight fuckery. Yet own the fact
Speaker 3: that you're here telling your story.
Speaker 2: You all had a very challenging task ahead of you
Speaker 2: to You're not remaining neutral, right, but like you're poking,
Speaker 2: like you said, the things that make people upset, but
Speaker 2: you're also attempting not to alienate everybody, you know, And
Speaker 2: that's a really important thing to try to do. And
Speaker 2: I appreciate that that's what you're you know.
Speaker 1: The good news is, I think both Doug and I
Speaker 1: both have experience in not alienating people. I mean, whether
Speaker 1: it's our families, our friends, We are around and interact
Speaker 1: with people who don't hold our set of beliefs right
Speaker 1: and so constantly, and those people are also listening to
Speaker 1: our show. And I think and I hope the fact
Speaker 1: that we were able to hold listeners for so long
Speaker 1: and to have them hear what we have to say. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's going to make people upset. We understood that coming in.
Speaker 1: But I do hope that people take something from the
Speaker 1: show that they didn't expect, and that's where the paradox
Speaker 1: comes in.
Speaker 2: So who do you think really needs to listen to
Speaker 2: this podcast?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm sure there's a preaching to the
Speaker 3: choir component of this that isn't who needs to listen,
Speaker 3: But I think that's I'd like to think that those
Speaker 3: people listen and recognize that maybe we got some things right.
Speaker 3: But I also think there's a component of people that
Speaker 3: they maybe aren't quite keen to some of the undercurrents.
Speaker 3: Like we talk about the murmurations and how movements happen,
Speaker 3: and movements always have like a fringe, and a murmuration
Speaker 3: has outliers and fringes that are pulling it. That's what
Speaker 3: gives the thing shape, right, is that the outliers are
Speaker 3: pulling out, sometimes even separating and coming back in those
Speaker 3: sorts of fringes, and a movement are and I'm not
Speaker 3: saying it's they're created with Machavelian and tent, but they are.
Speaker 3: They exist in a way that makes it a whole
Speaker 3: lot easier to ignore some of the ify stuff because
Speaker 3: while there's a really extreme person over there that's doing
Speaker 3: stuff that I would never subscribe to that. I would
Speaker 3: never recommend bombing an abortion clinic. No, no, right, but
Speaker 3: some of the stuff you are doing, if that person
Speaker 3: weren't there, it might be a little on the edge.
Speaker 3: So I think that that in political speak, it's called
Speaker 3: moving the Overton window. That also is kind of that
Speaker 3: drama being beat so loudly it's become boring. But I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of people that consider themselves very
Speaker 3: moderate that maybe don't realize how things are being nudged around,
Speaker 3: like maybe the ground they're standing on. I'd like those
Speaker 3: people to potentially hear this and at least say it's
Speaker 3: food for thought.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will chime in and say since episode one,
Speaker 1: two three four, the first part of this release, I've
Speaker 1: had people reach out to me who I know where
Speaker 1: they stand politically, belief set, and they just thought it
Speaker 1: was amazing, you know, is the word they would use.
Speaker 1: They couldn't wait to hear more. They thought my perspective
Speaker 1: was so interesting and unique. But I do think that
Speaker 1: they thought I was going a certain way with it,
Speaker 1: and that's been the case with a lot of people
Speaker 1: in my life. Is like, who I know lean or
Speaker 1: are fully blown on that end of the spectrum. They'll
Speaker 1: listen to the first few, take one thing from it,
Speaker 1: and then we go a different direction, and they feel,
Speaker 1: I guess, a bit isolated by that when they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: But I think naturally that's just where we are today.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's possible for people to hear certain
Speaker 1: words in a sequence and not take that as the
Speaker 1: end of the world.
Speaker 3: It's hard not to be defensive. That's again something that
Speaker 3: we're trying to do here. Is like, even if somebody
Speaker 3: may listen to this and feel like there's a lot
Speaker 3: of finger wagging, there's some I guess, but I hope
Speaker 3: that's not the point. But it's really hard not to
Speaker 3: be defensive. It's really hard to hear criticism. That just
Speaker 3: is always the case. It doesn't matter who you are,
Speaker 3: how righteous or humble you may be. It's just it's
Speaker 3: a difficult thing to take. And so even if you're
Speaker 3: not even being criticized, if you feel like you're being criticized,
Speaker 3: it's just hard. Right, nobody said being human was easy.
Speaker 3: Let'st I check.
Speaker 2: So what do you hope people will gain from this show?
Speaker 1: I think it's what we've been talking about. I think
Speaker 1: it's more than anything. Perspective that my story in my
Speaker 1: mom's story is not the rule is not should not
Speaker 1: be taken at face value. My mother had a lot
Speaker 1: of help. She had a lot of support financially, emotionally.
Speaker 1: If it were any other situation, I would not have
Speaker 1: turned out the way I am. And with that comes privilege,
Speaker 1: and I recognized that privilege, and I think for that
Speaker 1: for that reason, that is why choice must exist. And
Speaker 1: also I think we're giving too much power sometimes to
Speaker 1: Eric Rudolph because my mom could have gone to a
Speaker 1: different abortion clinic, right, she could have still carried out
Speaker 1: the procedure, but she didn't. But that was a choice.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, that was still a
Speaker 1: choice that she made.
Speaker 3: The world your mom grew up in afforded her a
Speaker 3: choice and we say this and allowed her to get
Speaker 3: her arms around her moment. Without that choice, who knows
Speaker 3: what she would have done. Honestly, who knows what she
Speaker 3: would have done. People do crazy stuff when they're in
Speaker 3: situations like that. But it's like that idea of arguing
Speaker 3: with someone whose argument is to take your argument is
Speaker 3: to take the ability or the platform to argue away
Speaker 3: from you, Like you have to just afford that much.
Speaker 3: But I think my takeaway that I would hope for
Speaker 3: is probably I came into this different from Cole. Cole
Speaker 3: really wanted to have a conversation about abortion and I
Speaker 3: wanted to have a conversation about the culture. They're not unrelated.
Speaker 3: But that's what I'd like to see, is just a
Speaker 3: more serious conversation about the culture instead of just like
Speaker 3: this tribal screaming match.
Speaker 2: When you say the culture, can you just expand clarifying?
Speaker 3: Yeah, about so the political dynamics in play and how
Speaker 3: it's kind of seeped into every every decision of our lives,
Speaker 3: the way in which we present ourselves to the world,
Speaker 3: Like it's all gotten a little bit infected by that,
Speaker 3: and I think that that's inevitable.
Speaker 1: Yet the way that we deal with it isn't.
Speaker 3: I'd like to think that there can be a conversation
Speaker 3: that's not pedantic or like trying to prove each other wrong,
Speaker 3: but rather if I may get really sacaraing and go
Speaker 3: ted lasso, just being curious, there's something to that that
Speaker 3: I can appreciate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a different I don't remember when you're
Speaker 2: engaged in curiosity, Like there's a different part of your
Speaker 2: brain that's activated than when you're engaged in a debate. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: being able to actually be in that space allows you
Speaker 2: to kind of depersonalize a little bit. I think it's
Speaker 2: like the science mind. You know, if you're researching and
Speaker 2: you're looking for a specific answer, you're going to find
Speaker 2: that specific answer to fit your hypothesis. If you're just
Speaker 2: openly exploring something and you're listening in a more neutral place,
Speaker 2: there's an infinite number of possibilities that can come out
Speaker 2: of that, right that probably aren't going to match that
Speaker 2: hypothesis that you may have set up for yourself.
Speaker 3: Right. Cole's story is a good example of that. The
Speaker 3: example of people hearing his story and making certain assumptions
Speaker 3: about him is perfectly fine, But the fact of the
Speaker 3: matter is he, in order to end up where he
Speaker 3: ended up, necessarily had to not personalize it.
Speaker 1: I think being able for me, being able to talk
Speaker 1: to everyone on every end of the spectrum in this
Speaker 1: entire show was incredibly valuable. And also to be able
Speaker 1: to sit in a room with someone like Emily Lyons
Speaker 1: where the actions of one man in a way saved
Speaker 1: my life but destroyed hers. That's pretty powerful. And to
Speaker 1: be able to talk to her about that and for
Speaker 1: her to love me and for me to love her
Speaker 1: is what mys And to be able to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about that and to be able to hold our
Speaker 1: contradictory truths at the same time, that's powerful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think sharing that is the best we can do.
Speaker 3: I'd like you, I can't I can't expect or even
Speaker 3: attempt to have someone else in habit Cole's experience of that,
Speaker 3: but sharing it, you'd hope that people would open up
Speaker 3: about the possibility of having a real conversation without you know,
Speaker 3: blowing shit up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for the conversation. It was really great
Speaker 2: to connect and I again really appreciate the work you
Speaker 2: did on the show and the conversation that it's hopefully
Speaker 2: will open up just one on one with people, if
Speaker 2: we get folks talking about some of these things in
Speaker 2: a more interpersonal, nuanced way, like great, amazing and I
Speaker 2: really appreciate you taking the time today. So thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Flashpoint.
Speaker 1: This series is released weekly absolutely free, but for ad
Speaker 1: free listening, early access and exclusive bonuses, you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts, or at tenderfootplus dot
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