This is exactly right. Hello. Hi. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder, the podcast you listen to sometimes, right? That's Karen Kilgariff, that's Georgia Stark. Hi. I haven't left the house in many days. Oh, I just left today. Oh, how what's it like out there?

Start the two week count today. No traffic.

Yeah. Beautiful skies. Beautiful skies.

Oh, listen, right before I came into the my office to because the one carpeted room in the house I was sitting at the kitchen table and all of a sudden the whole living room smelled like jasmine.

Oh it was crazy. I mean the air quality is so amazing in Los Angeles in ways it never has been before.

Absolutely. It's so beautiful. I've been going on my patio every couple of days or every so often and just sitting in the sun. And that has been the highlight of my week is just that like twenty minutes of sun. Oh, God, it's so good.

You should up that to thirty minutes. If you like it that much I should go ahead, give yourself that gift. The fucking world which I never thought I'd say or feel.

I mean it's the exact opposite of what you've been saying to me for the past two years.

Like I grew up at home and say, well, my cats like now you get it, but I want it to be voluntary. You should have said that the first time I listen, when you're manifesting, you have to be really specific to the universe, yet they'll just have to.

The problem is that it's spring as well. And there's this fucking bird and heat, but it's living in the tree outside of my house.

What are they get? It's trying to make whatever, you know, and trying to get not.

Yeah, it won't stop. Like trying to get like whistling and making all these bird sounds all fucking night. I have not been sleeping well. Oh, wait, hold on, Stephen. It's eight o'clock so everyone's losing their shit again.

Oh yeah. Let's go. I'm here at this time. You couldn't hear it last time, right?

I've never heard this.

I don't hear that. Yeah. A little song. I know. Yeah, a little something in the background. I love that people do that.

It's really nice. Try to play the The Star-Spangled Banner really loud on his phone the other night.

So yeah, I haven't been sleeping well because it was fucking bird and you know, that's it.

I mean that's kind of like the thing that symbolizes or like the audio cue that it's like the morning like the did it it did a no tweeting but it's happening all night long.

It's really eerie to hear a bird just tweet all fucking night. It definitely sounds like the beginning of the apocalypse.

Well, yeah, it's off. Right. But I had this morning I was on the phone with my dad in the kitchen and out the front window, a kitchen window, something caught my eye. And I look over and this gigantic grasshopper is climbing up to get onto the windowsill outside.

But I'm telling you that the head of the grasshopper was like the size of a dime.

Oh, my God. It's the head alone. Caught my eye.

And animals are taken back there. They're coming back big time, this thing.

I'm going to send you a picture of it. I actually caught a picture as it was lifting its leg up to like, get it. And it's it looks like it's coming to fight me, like, through the window. It's huge that it was honestly, it was a grasshopper that was this big, like two inches long. It was insane.

My God, they're coming back. I heard in Yosemite, like the bears are having a fucking field day. They're like like running around in the streets and shit because there's no fucking tourists there anymore. That's right. And they get up. They already are that afraid of tourists, you know what I mean? They're like kind of used to them. So now they're just like, what's Guillot like? Now we get to use this bench.

Great. I'm going to you know, I'm going to sit on this.

I discovered this today, too, because I drank a ton of coffee today.

And then right around five o'clock, I realized the last couple of times you've recorded because I'm like, oh, I don't know if I have it to give. And I don't.

It's so hard to podcast alone and from home and not in the same room. I realized the missing ingredient has been coffee this entire time.

I just need like four solid large Dantes of Starbucks and I can podcast through anything. This is going to be a five hour episode.

Everyone will tell you you're the first people I've talked to in three weeks that I just when we were trying to set up you, you hadn't come on the zoom yet, but I had I did not have to jump back off because there was a man standing in front of the window waving. And so I was like, no. Oh, hello, what's this? And I so he's waving and pointing. And so I. Just go over to my to the window in this room and open it up, because I've taken all the screens off of it, I opened it up and I'm leaning up and I'm like, hi, what's your name or whatever.

And he's kind of talking to me is a little bit of an accent.

He's like a grasshopper in a suit with an old man version of the grasshopper. He had finally transformed into his final form. Nobody was basically saying, I'm your neighbor. We haven't met yet. But he said, What's your name? And I said, my name's Karen. And then he went, Oh, you're so beautiful.

Oh, you're so beautiful. And I swear to God, I almost burst into tears and it's like I'm up. And I was like, first, I haven't put on makeup in so long.

No, like, absolutely. That is a blatant lie. My roots are the grass roots. Make it look like I'm going bald, blah, blah, blah. But I realize it's because I'm leaning half way out a window like Rapunzel, you know what I mean? Like, he I tricked him into saying that to me basically because I was like leaning I don't want to like.

So what's your name?

And you have like grasshoppers like flying in your hand and you're just, you know, fucking snow eating it up.

Then suddenly the grasshoppers on my shoulder and he's got a little top hat on.

Well and then he actually said, are you married?

And I go and I went divorced and then and I think then he felt bad.

So he said, you're so beautiful in this great accent. It was hilarious. So now he lives with you. Yeah. So that's my new roommate. I mean, these are the we can only go over what's been happening and all of the things that have been happening have been either directly outside our door or inside the house or on the computer.

I keep having these like zoom happy hour hangs with like, well, some of our friends will get together and want to have these happy hours. And I hate them and they're so awkward. And I end up getting shitfaced because I'm so uncomfortable and nervous with them. And Vince hates them too. And I realized I was finally able to let him know what it's like for me at a regular in person. Hang is how he feels on Azem call all awkward and weird and having a weird conversation is my every interaction.

So it's kind of like actually this moment that we shared. Good.

You finally got how uncomfortable I am in front of people now. Do you have a delay or when you clap, other people clap a second later in real life. I know, like that's basically your problem is required to delay everyone's beat behind you and it's so irritating at me.

OK, do you have any news, any updates, any suggestions. Oh, you want to talk about TV stuff. Stuff we've been watching for sure.

Well, I'm really excited because the people who made Downton Abbey have a new series on Epix. It's called Belgravia or Belgravia perhaps. I'm not sure, but it's so fucking good.

The second episode is on Sunday night and it's like so just for all the all the people, this is like I don't know what version of this is. I don't know if it's Victorian England. It's early. Eighteen hundreds. I'm not sure what the brackets are, but it's great outfits.

It's all the great actors, all the like great British period piece actors that you've seen in a ton of stuff are in this, including Tasmin Greig, who actually is more of a comedy person. She was on. Did you see episodes that Matt LeBlanc series with the two British writers? She's yeah, she's the the woman from that. But she was also on Friday Night Dinner, which is one of my favorites, Robert Popper's series. That was so funny.

She was the mom on Friday night dinner and she plays the lead person on this. And with Harriet Walker, I believe her name is who is just the bad ass. Is it Harriet Walker? I'm sorry, Harriet, Walter, Harriet, Walter.

Anyway, if you like period pieces and you're into all that kind of stuff. I love Belgravia. So far they've set up a real good this the drama is already in.

We're like, there's nothing of that. I love a soap opera from the Victorian age.

That's I usually don't, but I loved Downton Abbey, especially the first season so much that it was surprising to me how into it I was.

It's really well done. And it's like the interesting like the dynamics are interesting because it's not it's stuff that we're we're not as used to, you know what I mean?

The dynamics of having a, you know, a valet or a footman or a.

Oh, you don't know what that's like. Oh, how is it good times. Oh, it's so good. Oh my God. The politics of the footman. But yeah.

So if if I let into that, I also was watching the Pickwick Papers, which is a 70s BBC series based on the Dickens novel. And it's so it's like something they would bring in on a rainy day and make you watch in like British lit class when you like, against your will. But I found it so delightful. That's just I guess that's like British accents or my bakradze. Comfort sounds, you'll love it, you're going to move there one day, but maybe retire retired at the British countryside.

Oh, just get my own manor house and footmen. Yeah, that's right.

But then I'm also I'm on the staff because that's really my roots. That's my that's what my people are actually from. My grandmother was a maid for years.

You can't stay out of the kitchen trying to help. I'm down there like you should be doing it like this. Yeah. My she's just like everyone else. She's so down to earth she's under.

What have you been watching? I've been watching a period piece too, but it's nineteen forties which is like my favorite for like set design and clothing and stuff. So it's called, it's called the Plot Against America. I saw the promo for that.

It's our friend and murdering Zoe Kazan who's so fucking talented and it's and it's a really good show. And then also randomly Winona Ryder is like a 1940s New York Jew and it hear great in it. Yeah.

And then what's his name? Who's so incredible? John Turturro. It's just like a really good, quiet show. I feel like people would be like people should be screaming about it. Yeah, I like it. That's awesome. Yeah. And then I mean, that's it. I've just been waiting till five to start drinking and.

Good, good. The little women have a small steps.

Yeah. Garage hangs and trying to keep it together at therapy yesterday on the phone which is like getting good and deep. Yeah I was, I was talking to my therapist about, I was like all these things we talk about, I then get off the phone and have all this time to think about and work on Baracas. I know I'm going to talk to you again very soon. Yeah. And it's not like I can be like, oh, sorry, I didn't watch that.

I didn't read that article or whatever. It's like I it's all I have to do, really.

Think about some of the stuff and face it, my not my therapist gave me like a worksheet like homework to be like with your negative thoughts when you have them write down like where it came from. What are you thinking. Why, why do you think this happened? And I did it. I did one. And I'm like not a homework person.

Obviously I barely graduated high school, but I wrote Why did one after last week after the podcast of just like, how do I feel? And it helped. But then I got mad at myself for feeling those things. So that doesn't help.

And then it also doesn't help that then you're judging it from like coning all the way out there. Yeah. All right. Give yourself a goddamn break. I'm going to yeah. My therapist gave me homework, too, and it was like a send a thank you note to yourself, this part of yourself. And then I was just like, oh, I'm pretty sure this is not going to happen. I know.

I just want me to scream in a pillow. And I'm like, that's embarrassing.

What happens catches me screaming into a pillow better than screaming into his face.

Come on, pick one. You only have one one.

Get a pillow, go into the garage, make it out of garage hangings, OK? Make it part of the fun of my weight class on one hand and a pillow over my face in the other.

Maybe that's what you need for like social things when you finally do get to socialize again.

If you just have a small pillow to scream in, just like how are you. I know. I know. Have you seen the latest episode? Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry.

One second. Turn away. Yeah. Sorry about that girl who's that girl just carries a pillow around with her. I don't know. She's worried that I'm going to start doing that to just be a trendsetter. What should we do? Some network news. Oh yeah. OK, we're going to do some real quick. Exactly right. Network updates for you.

Well, I mean, the big one is just that finally are the brand new weird news comedy show Bananas premiered this week.

I always want to say today because that's real. Yeah, but day. But it was yesterday. Yes. Yeah. So please subscribe and listen to Banana starring our friends Scotty Landis and Kurt Braunohler. They have the hilarious Kristen Schaal on this week. And she is so delightful. Hilarious, truly. Yeah. I mean, it's Louise Belchers on their first podcast. What do you want as a selling point to listen to this? And also, it's like the perfect escape, hilarious comedy.

People, people chatting, being chill, just talking about weird shit.

Yeah. Laughing together. That's balm for the soul. You got to do this after you listen to your whatever news podcast you listen to. Why don't you hop on over to bananas and soothe your soul a little bit, counterbalance that counter. That's sure to always counterbalance. That's our where your therapists now and that's your homework. That's right. And then the purpose are our good friend Stephen and Sarah have Natoli Smith as a guest this week, which I think is so rad.

From The Simpsons, we have Lisa Simpson and we have culture, all the animated heroes, anime animated for years now.

Now Yeardley Smith is on for small town dicks, right. Or is is that what she promotes when she does? She's yeah, she's the co-host of Small Town, yeah, yeah, which is an amazing podcast, if you haven't listened. No, she was great and she has like a little sneak peek is that she basically built like a has like a designer cat jungle gym that goes all the way up the stairs in her house.

I mean, it's one of the most the way she describes it is amazing.

I mean, because it's just great to listen to her voice anyway. But, my God, it was incredible. So awesome. It's just thrilling that she's even a part of anything we do or honor in our world because in our work, so nice looking even.

Yeah, she was the best. All right. I think that's it for the network news right there. We're doing highlights now, so we don't have to walk everybody through every single thing. If you want more information about what's going on, on exactly what, you can go to our Web site, which I'm assuming is w w w dot. Exactly right. Dot com or media.

Exactly right. Media. Who would know?

It's exactly right. Media dot com.

Yes, you are professional.

Take a look at our Web site. I've ever seen the network Web site. It's fun.

Good. Great. Thank you. There's a video we're doing videos now of the mini sodas on our website.

My favorite murder, Dotcom, so you can check those out if you want to see what we look like when we're talking. In 2012, a 72 year old man named Samuel Little was charged with three Los Angeles murders dating back to the 1980s.

So we finally got to where we going? The crowd at Liverpool roar after only one appeal.

But since then, it's become clear he is the most prolific serial killer in the United States has ever seen, 93 victims, 19 states. Samuel Little has become infamous, but his victims, some of whom remain unidentified, are stuck in the shadows. It's time for that to change.

My experience in working with some of the victims families is that he was dead wrong. They were missed. They were very loved and their families were hurting.

The fall line presents a special limited series. The victims of Samuel Little will cover both solved and unsolved Southeastern cases and tell you how you can help the victims. Still waiting for justice, featuring rare interrogation tape, FBI interviews and in depth detail. This is a series you won't want to miss. Episodes begin on September 16th from Exactly Right Network. Find us on Stitcher Apple podcast or wherever you listen. All right, so your first this week that I won't drink too much of this very weird sweating vodka soda, I'm doing the crash of Flight 17 71.

So this is December 7th. Nineteen eighty seven. All right. So we're at LAX, 48 year old man named Ray Thompson, board flight PSA. Seventeen seventy one for San Francisco. He works in the L.A. office of USAir, but he lives in Tiburon. He's very high level U.S. air manager, Norco out north Northern California.

Yeah, Tiburon is the super rich city that's it's right above Sausalito. And Sausalito is the first city over the Golden Gate Bridge. So it's like the third city over the Golden Gate Bridge. Very exclusive, super, super fancy.

And it's I mean, he has the life that's very cool. You live in L.A. and then you just commute home on a flight and go to Tiburon like, awesome. OK, so that's that's his commuter flight. That's what he does to commute to work. So Flight 17, 71 takes off from L.A. at three thirty one p.m.. Now this is the flight, not PSA. Obviously, I usually do the Southwest version. It takes an hour. You know, the flight time is in a little over an hour.

So you basically have enough time to get served a drink, finish the drink and then hand the drink back and you've landed. It's a dream come true. So it's scheduled to land at San Francisco Airport at four forty three p.m. But about halfway through the flight, air traffic control receives a distress call from First Officer James. None in the cockpit. They hear him say over the radio, quote, There's gunfire on board. We're going down. Holy shit.

They hear a commotion. They hear a bunch of other stuff than a really intense, high pitched screeching sound. And then silence. Two minutes later, twenty two thousand feet over a small town called Templeton, California. I've never heard of it in my life. I heard of it. Now you know where it is.

It's in the mountain range. That's basically San Luis Obispo is on the west side of it. And then, like all those vineyard towns are on the east side of it, in the lake, the valley part where the where all the wine is planted and then no wine has all the wine is been planted in bottles in the ground and grows up.

Sam Cedro or no.

Yeah, Napa. Oh, that's a no, no, no.

We're we're still down by San San Luis Obispo. Bliss thank you. That's all. Thank you.

Stevenson I got married in San Luis Obispo and then went to Paso Robles for our honeymoon. Isn't it gorgeous? So this plane takes an almost vertical nosedive. It was going at seven degrees, seventy degree angle downward. Oh my God. And it crashes into a rocky hillside in a cow pasture, miraculously. Yeah, it was it was outside. Just outside of town, thank God. Yeah. The plane dove so fast it broke the sound barrier and when it impacted on impact, it was obliterated into millions of pieces and it killed all forty three souls on board.

Oh. So a CBS News helicopter was the first to spot the wreckage and they alert the authorities. And so there's this a TV show, this TV show I'm about to talk about. It's called Mayday and it's about plane crashes. I don't know why anyone would watch it, but you should, I guess. And but also, of course, murder media articles from the from the time from nineteen eighty seven from the L.A. Times, The Washington Post, AP News and Time magazine had an article about it.

OK, so there is they use video on that TV show, Mayday. It looks like it must be like the video from the sheriff's department or something because it's just like it's basically a far away full screen shot where they're kind of scanning this field that goes up into like a foothill. And it looks like somebody is just thrown a bunch of pieces of paper everywhere.

Just debris is only left and it's very small, very small debris. And the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office Detective Bill WOMAC, he's quoted in that video as saying about this crash site, quote, We saw nothing that resembled an airliner. We went on for hours before we heard the news reports of a missing airliner believing that we were dealing with a small airplane full of newspapers that had crashed. We saw no pieces of the aircraft that were larger than maybe a human hand it.

Did not look like a passenger aircraft, so when they when they finally found the crash site, they assumed that it was just like a it's like a small plane because everything was so tiny. And when you see this video, it's mind boggling that it was like a full size passenger airplane. Mm hmm. So for the next two days, the investigative team digs through the rubble for evidence of what went wrong.

So it aside from the cockpit voice recorder, which all commuter plane commercial planes have to record audio in case of emergency situations, they find two very important pieces of evidence, fragments of a Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum revolver with how do they find that?

It's in the video, too. You see a guy with this like a stick or a pen or something and go like this. And it's not even the whole gun. It's just pieces one, the piece of the gun with the trigger and the.

I don't the round part. Yeah, just part of it. Yeah.

Cartridge I was going to say cartridge but essentially they find that it has six empty cartridge cases. They also find a note that was written on an airsick bag that somehow managed to survive the crash. And that note read quote, Hi Ray. I think it's sort of ironical that we end up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family, remember? Well, I got none and you'll get none and. Oh, my God. Yeah. So investigators look at the gun fragments and they they end up finding near the trigger apart a fingertip that's stuck inside, you know.

Yeah. And then they fingerprint that fingertip and identifies that the finger belongs to thirty five year old recently fired U.S. Air employee David Burke.

Wow.

Yes. Because that part of the thing about and I'm sure lots of people have seen that like airplane crash sites, they go through and put little flags next to each piece of debris because they're like, I think cattle grazing, all of it or whatever, like so although everything they had, they have to search this field. And apparently I read somewhere I don't know if it was very verified, but they said that there was debris from this crash that was found eight miles away.

Oh, my gosh.

Because it crashed with such force that it was just like like just, you know, the one thing that it that the passenger plane like that would get high enough to to break the sound barrier when it crashed, which just shows how much force.

Well, yes, because I think they don't go that high. Right. Twenty two thousand feet.

But also, I think it's the what happened in it and the way it crashed because it didn't it didn't go back and forth. It didn't there was no pulling off at any point.

Yeah. It just went straight. It nose dived down into the ground and exploded. OK, OK. So let's talk about this USAir employee, David Burke. He was born in the U.K. His parents were Jamaican. They all the family immigrated to Rochester, New York, where his father gets a job as a cab driver. So that's where he grows up with his brothers, his two brothers, who would later describe David as a generous person who, quote, always looks out for the well-being of the family.

So David ends up getting a job working at us, air. US there will eventually be absorbed into American Airlines in twenty fifteen. So that USAir was around for pretty long time. Yeah, I remember that. And PSA was like one of the branches of U.S. Air, I guess. All right. So David gets a job working for us there in Rochester in nineteen seventy two and he works there for 14 years. But in nineteen eighty six he becomes a suspect in an alleged drug smuggling ring that brought cocaine from Jamaica to the U.S. on U.S. air flights.

He was never officially charged for for that alleged involvement. But he ends up putting in a transfer to Los Angeles just to get out of town and get away from the allegations. So he could have been completely innocent of that. And just like it could have been profiling, could have been anything. But he was like, I'm going to get out of town. He also had a girlfriend who lived in the L.A. area named Jacqueline Camacho, and she also worked for U.S. Air as a ticket agent.

So the move allows him to be David, to be closer to her. He gets himself a three bedroom condo in Long Beach and works out of Terminal one and L.A. acts around that time. USAir acquires Pacific Southwest Airlines, which everyone calls PSA, which I spent my childhood watching commercials for, but now is like nonexistent and anyone younger. Me has no idea what it is, just like everything else, OK, so by July of 1987, things are starting to sour for David at work.

Two of his co-workers with less experience than him get promoted to supervisor positions over him in the customer service department. He feels he's been slighted because he's black, because these co-workers are white and he blames his boss, Ray Thompson, for that. In fact, he actually brings this complaint to the California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing that same month.

But before the paperwork officially gets filed, he changes his mind and decides not to file a formal complaint. And that's the last. The State Department hears about it. But I don't think that it's not like that means that that complaint is any less valid. I think it's like, yeah, you you make that complaint and then what happens? You're still at that job, you know. So regulations weren't there or are in place to not get in trouble for even reporting it.

Right.

Exactly. Like you're going to be a whistleblower. Then you're just going to lose everything, you know, whatever. For whatever reason, he changes his mind. Then on November 15th, 1987, a hidden camera catches David's stealing sixty nine dollars from flight cocktail receipts. So Ray Thompson, David's supervisor, confronts him about it and tells him USAir is considering filing a misdemeanor charge against him for it. Those charges are never filed. But four days later, on November 19th, 1987, Ray Thompson fires David Burke.

So in the weeks following his termination, David's girlfriend notices that he's becoming Moutier and more violent. On December 4th, 1987, David actually forces Jacklin and her six year old daughter into his car at gunpoint and drives them around for six hours. Oh, my God, neither are injured. Jacqueline does wind up filing a report of assault with the police. Then on December 7th, 1987, David visits Ray's office in Terminal one at LAX to beg him for his job back.

And Ray refuses. He ushers David out of his office, telling him to have a nice day. And David fires back. I intend on having a very good day. So after he leaves Ray's office, David goes down and buys a one way ticket for a flight 1771. It's set to leave that same day, December 7th at three thirty one. And he knows that this is the flight that Ray Thompson takes to go home. So even though he was fired, no one took his employee badge.

So on his way to the gate, he just shows his credential to his former co-workers at the security gate and they just let him go right through. They had not been notified. They didn't know he had been fired and they would have never suspected that he was hiding a 44 magnum on his person that he had borrowed from a now former co-worker. They had no idea any of that was going on. And right before he boarded the flight, David called Jacqueline and left her a voicemail.

And he says, quote, Jackie, this is David. I'm on my way to San Francisco, Flight 17, 71. I love you. I really wish I could say more, but I do love you. So that's the message that she ends up getting at the nine o'clock that night, like five hours after the crash. Whoa. Yeah.

So basically, obviously, there's no survivors from this flight and from this crash. And investigators have to piece together all of the events of what may have taken place that day based on what they could hear on the voice recorder. So this is most of it is like conjecture, but they it is pretty fascinating how much they can hear and like where the apparently where the microphones are in the cabin so they they can hear a lot of stuff.

So basically, at some point during the flight, David takes that airsick bag that was in that seat pocket in front of him, writes the note to his boss who just fired him. Then he gets up from his seat. He drops that note onto Ray Thompson's lap and then goes into the bathroom. So basically, yeah, let's send him that message. And he not only that not only gives Ray time to read what the note says, it also gives David time to to get the gun ready.

Oh, my God. So he comes out of the bathroom, walks up to raise seat fires twice. The gunshots are heard on the audio recorder. And then at that point, First Officer James None calls radio's air traffic control and reports that shots have been fired. So now they pick up the sound of the cockpit door opening. And flight attendant Deborah Neil tells the pilot, Captain Greg Linda Mood, we have a problem. And Captain Linda Bood says.

What's the problem then another gunshot is heard, and that's David shooting Deborah in the back, followed by David Burke saying I'm the problem.

Oh my God. Yeah.

So then he fires two more times, presumably once at a Captain Linda Mood and once at first officer none. And they're both either killed or badly wounded. And now there's this high pitched, screeching sound which they believe is caused by either one or more bullet holes in the windshield. I'm sure they don't call it a windshield on a plane, but that's what you mean.

Yeah, that sound begins to grow louder, indicating the plane's rapid descent. And then another gunshot is heard. Some people theorize it was David Berg killing himself. Others think it's more likely that that was for Captain Douglas Arthur, who was on board as a passenger, and he was his chief pilot in Los Angeles. He was just riding on that plane, too. And they believe he probably approached the cockpit to try and help stop David and try to help the other pilots.

Yeah, because the piece of David's finger was found lodged in the trigger. Guard forensics experts think that means David was alive and holding the gun at the moment of impact.

Yeah, but it's all theory either way on this gunshot is the last sound recorded on the CVR before the crash.

Yeah.

So apparently from that this clip from May Day of the people that were at the site, there is one of the guys said, having been one of the investigators said there was no there was no seats, there was no fuselage. There is no tail of the plane. There was nothing that would indicate a plane was in this spot. That's how tiny all these pieces were. Crazy how crazy this.

And he said that they believe the G force that they were dropping at was like 5000.

I believe he said 5000 GS.

So you'd hope that those people were unconscious by the time it happened. Yes. OK, so the investigation afterwards, they start interviewing all the other employees, but they find no one else who had issues with Ray Thompson. All of them described him as firm but fair, which means he was probably a great boss. He left behind his wife, Dorothy, who also worked in the airline industry as a flight attendant for American Airlines. So this plane crash.

Forty three people died, five flight crew members. Thirty nine passengers, including David, were among these passengers. It's kind of interesting.

53 year old James Scilla was the president of Chevron and three other very high level Chevron executives, Owen Murphy, Joslyn Kemp and Alan Swanson. And there was also three executives from PAC Bell on that flight Pacific. Wow. For people who live in California, they were on board.

And this actually there was such a massive loss of high level executives at both of these companies. It led to an industry standard change where company executives cannot fly together at the same time.

And they've always found that rule so interesting and dark and fucked up. But it's. Yeah, and it came from this from this crash. That's crazy. Yeah. And then it made me think as I was writing this up, I was just like at Chevron. It was like everyone at the top. So then it's like someone's weird assistant.

It's like now that guy is the president like who moved up to take those places because that's fine.

You're down into like assistant area.

You really took over.

Oh, they must have gotten someone from Exxon or whatever to come over, I'm sure, to federal laws are also passed because of this with regards to airline worker policy. The first one was that any time an airline worker is fired or leaves their job, they there have to immediately hand over their security credentials.

I mean, seems to make sense. Yeah.

And the second one is that no matter what, all airline employees, regardless of their position, are subject to the exact same security procedures as every other passenger on board. If they are going to go back to a flight total, that makes super sense.

And this is obviously, you know, pre 9/11, like it was such a different world. Yeah.

Who knows if they would have even found the gun if they had been doing screenings because it was so lax, right?

Yeah, because I don't it's a person at work.

He worked at this company for four, 15 years like he was. Everyone probably knew this guy like this guy like. Yeah, you know. Yeah.

So this is really, really tragic. Of the forty three souls who died, twenty six of them. Twenty three passengers and three crew members, their remains could not be positively identified.

So they ended up having interdenominational mass graveside service in Los Osos, California, another city I haven't heard of. But that's right.

It's basically down the mountain and kind of a little bit it's closer to San Luis Obispo. Yeah. And at that service, Rabbi, a man, half who was of congregation Beth David in in San Luis Obispo spoke and he said, quote, Psalms and words of consolation cannot make sense of this senseless deed. Grief is a great teacher. If we learn from those who loved, take that love and use it to make the world better. Mm. Yeah.

And breaking the episode of Oh, it's a Canadian documentary series, Mayday, that details the events of this crash of Flight 17 71. The episode is titled I'm the Problem, and that is the story of the tragedy of Flight 17 71.

FAK, that's dark. Great job. Thank you. I had never heard of that. And it. It was 86 in Los originated in Los Angeles, that's 87. Yeah, I know heaven is not weird. I had never heard of it.

If I hadn't been collecting those weird news blurbs, that that's why it wasn't that I knew. It is because it just came up on that website of like, oh, here's the things that happened in 1987. But I didn't remember hearing it and I don't remember the crash in in San Diego itself. Oh, no.

And I'm from Orange County and I don't remember ever hearing about that. Yeah. Bananas. Wow. Great job. Thank you. OK, then get ready, because I'm about to do the Kent State massacre. Oh, shit. I mean.

Oh, man. Yeah, like now we cue the Neil Young. Yeah. Oh, hi. OK, so this came about because I'm reading this book called Chaos. It's this big old book. It's by Tom O'Neil, who's this incredible investigative journalist, and he spent 20 years researching this topic. And you and I don't usually aren't really into Charles Manson and the family stories. It's like boring. And it's it's just a horrible person and horrible people.

But this one's about Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the 60s and like is basically like the helter skelter theory is fucking bullshit.

And maybe was Charles Manson like, you know, did the FBI put him up to this, to the murder? I mean, it's just really, really interesting and gives you this whole history of the counterculture and what went wrong.

I kind of like the fact that these days I feel like in a lot of people said this, I'm definitely not the first, but it's like conspiracy theorists are so justified now because like, yeah, back then, if you say, oh, Manson was hired by the FBI or the CIA or whatever, you know, people would just be like, wow, you must be totally out of your mind.

And now you hear that and you're like, obviously like, all right. Well, now, because it's been so long and there's the Freedom of Information Act and now, you know, the people who were who could have been prosecuted are all dead. So other people are speaking, are talking. And, you know, there's just I don't it it's it makes more sense to me than the helter skelter theory. And it's an incredible book. I highly recommend it.

Joe Rogan just had the author, Tom O'Neil, on his podcast. And it's just a fascinating person. That's how you found out about Tom O'Neil, because you're you're doing your usually Rogan hard stuff.

Yeah. You know, it it's weird. I posted the book one day. The next day he was on the show.

So I knew at first. No, I obviously didn't. OK, and then so then when I got an Instagram message from someone named Hi. From Melissa saying you should do the Kent State massacre, it was kind of perfect timing in the you know, it goes all the way to the top, you know, brand. So I got information.

There's a lot of brands now that brand.

Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm a influencer and all the way to the top influencer, I'm sure. So this there's a documentary from PBS called The Day the Sixties Dies. That's really great. There's an article from the Kent State University paper by Jerry Lewis and Thomas Hensley, a Britannica article, a bunch of historical articles, and then James Renner, who's a friend of the podcast and is a really great true crime author. He has some cool information about it as well.

And then also some interviews from historian Howard means so in nineteen sixty eight, Nixon's elected to the presidency partially on the promise of ending the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War by the end of the 60s. There is this illusion, the baby boomer generation, they were raised to believe stuff like the United States was just like, you know, do your part and to be proud of the USA. But that kind of have had fallen away in the numbers like a cultural revolution of the student anti-war movement.

And this is I mean, you think about it now and it's it seems kind of normal, but that that was the first generation who kind of went against what their parents wanted for them or forcing them to do and kind of thinking for themselves for the very first time. And it was revolutionary. And it also incensed a large amount large. It also incensed a large part of the population as well.

Yeah, because you think about it, and most of people that lived in America were immigrants who had to come and like and fend for themselves. And like if they survive to have second and third generations of their family, it's because they sacrificed all that storyline. And then all of a sudden these kids were one or two generations away from that kind of suffering. And they were like, yeah, we don't have to do that.

We don't have to we don't have to participate in this same thing that we don't get to said.

We don't have to stand for the status quo. We don't have to be treated this way. We can have a voice. And I think from their parents generation, which went through World War Two and their grandparents through World War One, which is that you have to be so patriotic and being anything other is you being a fucking communist. You know, it was like unheard of. Yeah.

Because World War One and World War Two, literally, you would die if you didn't, like, get join the war effort. If you didn't sacrifice, you didn't do all those things. Right. It really was. You know, it it was real.

Yeah, definitely. So by 1970, the Vietnam War split the country into two factions, those that opposed the war, those that supported it. But even a large portion of those that opposed it are really critical of the student anti-war movement. And so in November nineteen sixty nine, the American public finds out all these things like about the My Lai massacre, which is the mass murder of over four hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by US troops. And it leads to increased opposition about the war.

And then there a month later, there's a first draft lottery since World War Two, which fucking makes people lose their minds. I mean, fairly, that means people who were previously able to defer enrollment because of education are no longer exempt. So that stirs the student antiwar movement as well. You know, it's mostly blue collar, middle class students who are having to go fight in Vietnam. If you're rich, you're kind of exempt from it. Yeah, yeah.

And so these people are sick of seeing their childhood friends, their fellow students, their brothers being killed in a war that the majority of Americans believe getting involved in was a mistake. So they're fucking pissed and they're fighting for their lives. It feels like it's really a passionate movement. So in its first year of his presidency, it does seem that the American involvement in Vietnam is starting to wind down. And that all changes on April 30th, 1970.

Oh, by the way, May 4th is the 50 year anniversary of the Kent State massacre. So on April 30th, 1970, Nixon goes on TV and announces the U.S. is invading Cambodia. And in fact, the the secretary of defense didn't even know this was happening until he went on to and announced it just says so much about him. And so Cambodia had been neutral up until this point. And so invading this, you know, neutral territory is obviously an escalation of the war.

It enrages the anti-war movement and college campuses around the country erupt in protest. And that sets the stage for the events that unfold at Kent State. So that's the history. And then Kent State University is around 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, 15 miles from Akron. It's a small town in Ohio in 1970. It has about twenty thousand students and many are first generation college students from working class families. It's considered a somewhat conservative university as far as politics are concerned, but it does have a history of student protests and radicalization.

So on Friday, May 1st, the day after Nixon's announcement, there is this widespread anger about invading Cambodia. And Kent State holds some smaller protests and rallies that are peaceful. But that night it's everyone goes to like the main drag in Kent, which is tiny and goes to the bar. They start fuckin drinking and anarchy breaks out and the protesters start, you know, lighting fucking garbage cans on fire there in the middle of the street. They the police respond and protesters throw rocks at them and bottles and eventually students.

And you know, who the fuck knows? It could be people inciting violence for a reason. They begin to break windows and loot stores and eventually they're more than a dozen people are arrested. The crowd's broken up with tear gas and the students go back to campus. You know, that's what happened in Ferguson. They were they would talk about that, those Ferguson protests. They were trying to be peaceful. And all of a sudden there would be like somebody would show up and they would throw something.

And it was like some white guy that no one knew, no one ever seen before.

Like, that's a lot of people can stay and Ferguson have a lot of similarities. And that's one of them. And the fact that, you know, National Guardsmen with who are armed to the teeth for war are sent into civilian locations. Yeah. You know, it's it's horrific, which is now standard fare. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the next night, Saturday, May 2nd, another protest march happens on the campus.

Thousands of students join in and some people are protesting Cambodia and the Vietnam War. And some people are just students watching what's going on. So that's just like a big gathering when the students pass the campus ROTC building ROTC is the Reserve Officers Training Corps. So when they passed that building, it's that building is normally guarded by police because obviously for people protesting the Vietnam War, that's going to be a big hotbed. But when they get there, there's no there's no guards there.

And eventually it's set on fire. But over a thousand protesters are celebrating the buildings destruction. Firefighters arrive as the firefighters try to contain the blaze. Protesters are throwing rocks at them. They slashed the hoses so they can't, you know, fight the fire. It burns to the ground. Kent Mayor Leroy Santorum declares a state of emergency and request assistance from Ohio's governor. So James A. Rhodes is this fucking conservative, staunch dude. He's campaigning for the Republican nomination to run for the U.S. Senate.

So he can't look soft on this. You know, he has to really, you know, come with force. He ends up dispatching the Ohio National Guard to the campus and surrounding. He proclaimed that the protesters are the worst type of people in America and says, I think we're up against the strongest well-trained militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America. So he just needs to seem strong on protesters who are students who are who are throwing rocks.

Yeah. Who are 19 and 20 year old students terrified of going to Vietnam. Yeah.

What he should have said is you can't tell a boys from the girls and I don't like it.

That's what dirty old hippies.

It was a cultural revolution where people were like, I'm going to see what I want to be in in every way that that could sentence could mean something. And the establishment was just like, holy shit, what the fuck is going on?

So the National Guard members arrive and they disperse the crowd with tear gas. That's on Saturday. And the next day, by Sunday, May 3rd, nearly 12 hundred National Guardsmen occupy the Kent State campus. And what really should have happened was that the president of Kent State University or, you know, this conservative governor should have shut the school down at that point and, you know, canceled classes for the week or whatever until order was, you know, ordered resume.

But thank you. But they didn't they didn't do that. And so on Monday, May 4th, you know, because a lot of students were just like normal middle class kids, they'd go home for the weekend. They weren't in town. So that wasn't a lot of the people who had, you know, done these demonstrations. So they don't even know what was going on. They get to school, they're going to classes. It's normal.

So Monday morning, more rallies are scheduled, crowd begins to gather, and by noon, the entire Commons area contains almost three thousand people. But it's estimated that only a fraction of them are actually like the core hardcore demonstrators. And they're protesting at this point the presence of the guard on campus. It's not even about Cambodia as much anymore. But there's a there's a strong anti-war sentiment, of course, and another larger group of students are there cheering in support of those demonstrators.

They're not even, you know, part of the pack, but they're supporting them. And then an additional fifteen hundred people are students just standing around the perimeter of the commons because class was still in session that day, just watching. So across the commons at the burned out ROTC building, there was about a hundred Ohio National Guardsmen carrying lethal M1 military rifles. Initially, the rallies pretty peaceful, but before noon, Ohio National Guard General Robert Canterbury orders the demonstrators to disperse.

Essentially, you know, Kent State police officers are there. They're trying to get them to disperse. It doesn't work.

The protesters start throwing rocks and yelling insults. And because it's a super windy day, that's another thing. It was a gorgeous day, one of the first ones of spring in this city. So it's just really eerie to have this going on then. But because there was some when the tear gas canisters they were lobbing weren't working, so it couldn't disperse the crowd, the protester essentially the protesters go up the steep hill and you can see all these incredible photos from the day they go down this hill and the Guardsmen follow and essentially get kind of blocked in by this gate that's surrounding a practice football field.

So they retreat back up the hill. And as they arrive at the top of the hill and it's from it just seems out of fucking nowhere. Twenty eight of the guardsmen turn around back to the crowd. They're retreating. They turn around back to the crowd and begin to fire their rifles and pistols. And there's photos of it. It's it's fuckin eerie. Many guardsman's fire into the air or the ground, but a small portion fire directly into the crowd.

And the shooting lasts for 13 seconds, which seems quick. But it's a long fucking time, right?

It's. Yeah, no, that's a long time. That's a long time. Because one shot's a second.

Like, it's not even not even a second. Right. So and they're able to fire up sixty seven rounds in this 13 seconds because they have military. What's it called. Because they have military grade weapons. Eyewitness accounts from the students and faculty show that people thought that they were firecrackers, that they were shooting blanks. But instead four students are killed and nine others are wounded. One of them's paralyzed from the waist down. So 20 year old Jeff Miller, who had transferred to Kent State four months earlier, he shot directly into his mouth from his two hundred and sixty five feet away.

So that's not a threat to anyone. The bullet exits the back of his skull and he's killed instantly. And he's the one in that, like, heart wrenching photo of the girl bending down.

And that's him. And she's screaming, right? That's right.

Let's talk about her nearby, his friend and fellow activist. Nineteen year old honor student Alison Krauss, she's shot three times in the back as they're trying to run away. The fatal shot enters through her left arm and travels to her chest. Killing her, both those two students had been actively involved in the demonstration, but the other two fatalities both shot at a distance of about three hundred ninety feet away, were bystanders on their way to class.

Twenty year old Sandy Shaw, who was walking with one of her speech and hearing therapy students across the green, is shot through the neck and dies of blood loss. And William Schroeder, who's 19 and attending Kent State on an ROTC scholarship, he's walking between classes. When he's hit in the chest, the bullet enters his back and shatters a rib and he dies almost an hour later at a local hospital.

And so one of the National Guard, only one of them admits to actually aiming at a specific person and that person's 18 year old demonstrator named Joseph Lewis because as they pointed their guns at them, he flipped them off, not knowing, obviously, that there were actual bullets in the guns.

He was the closest victim of the shooting. He was a full 60 feet away. So that was the closest person, which obviously is not a threat. Right.

So the argument that one, the National Guard was threatened, they were at least 60 feet to three hundred and fucking 90 feet away. That's not a threat.

And also, none of those people had weapons. So as much as you can talk about vibes or, you know, like a group of people or whatever, it just like that doesn't really hold up to people who are standing there with machine guns or whatever these whatever guns they had. Right.

And I mean, the more reading I did, the less I want to. I can't you can't blame the National Guard completely either. They were put in this impossible situation that the people who are higher up than them should have handled. They shouldn't have been put in that situation. Right. You know, and they are also 19, 20 year old kids who don't have experience. So, you know, and there they do feel threatened because they don't have the proper training to know what to do in a situation like that.

Yeah.

And they're they're feeling it's like it only takes one when there's one side with a bunch of guns and one without it. Like you see it, you see it in action movies all the time or whatever, where it's like hold that, hold your fire moment where it takes one person to fire and then other people start because they think that's what they're doing.

It's one fearful person who shoots the first or fucking.

Maybe there's one guy and there is absolutely a piece of shit and starts firing and the rest of them shoot as well. Yeah.

You know, and so he's just as a completely uneducated outsider who has read no books and and only knows about this from watching, you know, USA in the sixties types of documentaries. Yeah. As much as the National Guard can say. And that's obviously what official statements usually sound like, that they feel threatened, they feel threatened that someone 60 feet away might run toward them like eat no matter what. The students were unarmed like. There's just there's no excuse.

That's not it just doesn't hold water anyway. It doesn't know. You're absolutely right. It doesn't that's not an excuse because it's threatened as you feel.

That's why you have the gun in your hand. So. Right. You actually can't feel too threatened for someone who doesn't also have a gun because they can't kill you and you can kill them.

Right. They're not going to overpower you and take your gun. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, but this guy, Joseph Lewis, later says that he had been a relatively passive participant up until this point, but he sees the military threat, violence against the students. It pisses him off so much, the audacity he personally had worked through high school to save enough money for one year of college. And now these men are taking over his campus and he's so pissed off that he flips them off.

And this guardsman, Larry Schaefer, raises his MS1 and shoots Joseph Lewis in the stomach. And after he falls, another guardsman shoots him in the leg while he's on the ground. But he survives. But it's just it's you know, people were shot in the back by people who were people. It seems like people were targeted. The people who were actually actively protesting. Yeah. Somehow got shot from three hundred feet away. Clearly. Clearly. Yeah.

Yeah, right. Because this, that, that the second shot, the guy flipping people off, you could be right off the first shot. Second shot. What's the value of that. Like you shot someone in the stomach.

It's a body like totally that and that's shoot to kill. So if you shoot someone in the stomach.

So in the chaos that follows the shooting, the guard returns to the Commons and they're there. Full riot is threatening to break out. This hasn't fucking escalated yet, but thank God the faculty marshals, led by Glenn Frank, a geology professor, truly, I mean, they're the heroes of that day. They successfully persuade student students not to endanger their lives by taking. The guard, because now these students are fucking pissed and worked up, you know, they see their fellow students bleeding from the head.

So I looked at, ah, my favorite murder email. And Laura are her mom was there that day and she wrote to Elora, wrote to us and said that her mom said, thank God for the professors who stepped in, she says, putting themselves in danger and to try to de-escalate the situation. The guard was saying they would shoot again if everyone did not immediately get inside. So the professors were out there with bullhorns. And you can hear the recordings of them yelling and they sound like they're about to fucking cry and they're just shoving students into whatever building they could keep them out to keep them out of harm's way, like just trying to get them to disperse.

And she says, my mom was ushered into a random dorm and assigned a random room with a few other girls in order to stay in the room until further notice. And then she says once the whole shooting scene was cleared, they told all the students they had two hours to get their shit and leave campus indefinitely. Wow. And then if you weren't gone within the allotted two hours, you would officially be under martial law. So then then university president Robert White orders the university closed and it remains closed for six weeks.

So photographs of the dead are distributed and all these powerful photos are distributed in newspapers all over the world. Newsweek reports that a story, an article headlined My God, They're Killing US. And the cover features a photo of 14 year old runaway Mary Pacheco. She's the one who's screaming in anguish, kneeling over Jeff Miller's dead body. The photograph was taken by Kent State phone photo journalism student John Filho. He wins a fucking Pulitzer Prize and that for that photo.

And it becomes the most like enduring image of the of Kent State and also of the Vietnam War, like one of the most lasting images of of the protest and the following weeks, over 400 colleges and high schools and four million students across the country lead strikes and demonstrations against the shooting and the Cambodia invasion at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a campus known for radicalism. There's 20 firebombings. There's militant activism. I mean, people are just fucking losing their shit.

People who weren't involved before, you know, students are now just protesting this. And, you know, a lot of the colleges are canceled for the rest of the year, etc.. So Nixon and his administration's public reaction to the shootings are perceived as callous. Nixon says, quote, When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. Essentially don't dissent and there won't be fucking violence is what he's saying.

Right? No matter what's happening in your country, don't dissent or you get to kill you.

All right. And then there's tragedy. So great job to, you know, just five days after the shooting, one hundred thousand people demonstrate in Washington, D.C. it's the size of the strike, which is pretty peaceful. It stirs Nixon.

So Nixon, I mean, God, watch this documentary, but he goes out to the Lincoln Memorial and meets with student protesters and acknowledges them as citizens and not bums, which he had called them before the shooting. And he kind of is like, I understand your concerns and kind of validates them, which is shocking. And on May 14th and a much less publicized event, another on campus shooting results in the deaths of two students and the wounding of 12 others.

It's at Jackson State University in Mississippi. This time, law enforcement officers fire more than one hundred fifty rounds in thirty seconds into a woman's dormitory while the students, because the students were protesting, they went in there.

They shot one hundred fifty rounds in thirty seconds. Holy shit.

Why haven't you heard about it? It was a black university. That's right. Is that right? Yep. And the students who were killed were black. So of course the event is largely ignored by the media. But it's also important to note that the surge in anti-war sentiment leads to a rise of pro-war supporters known as the silent majority of these people who were the silent majority, who were just kind of, you know, not super political living their lives.

Now they want to show support of the US and they end up handing Nixon a landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election. Essentially, it caused all these people who were somewhat conservative, but not totally. A lot of them were Democrats who weren't really interested in politics to rally to show their disdain. They were almost voting for Nixon to show their disdain for the antiwar movement, you know, people who might not have even voted.

So, of course, there's always investigatory commissions and court trials that follow that I won't get into. But they're trying to answer whether the National Guard was under sufficient threat to use force. And they they testified that they felt the need to discharge their weapons because they feared for their life. But there is a civil suit by the injured Kent State students and their families. And a settlement was reached in nineteen seventy nine and the National Guard of Ohio agreed to pay those injured in the events.

Six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, which is like, I think five million or something in today's money. So November nineteen seventy four eight former Guardsman's are acquitted of violating the civil rights of the students by a US district court. So they're acquitted. Sounds like the silent majority was.

Was on that court and done, doesn't it? Yeah, the anti-war protests draw to an end when Nixon begins to withdraw. The US soldiers from Vietnam in 1973 basically ends the US involvement in the Vietnam War.

But the Kent State shootings continue to reverberate through society and our culture because two people who were at Kent State that day to art students Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Cazale, they react to their friend like they were friends with some of the people who were killed and they formed their band Devo. You know, DVO. The band's philosophy is that mankind has hit a wall in evolution and is now evolving in reverse, i.e. devolution. Is that really what that means? You evolution?

They couldn't have been more right. I mean, it's still happening. Dary Cazale Devo has been quoted as saying, All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people. I knew I would not have started the idea of Devo unless this happened. And Chrissie Hynde was also there of The Pretenders. Are you serious?

You went to school? Yeah, she was there that day as well.

She went to school at Kent State. Wow. And was friends with some of the murdered students. I know. So every year since nineteen seventy one on the anniversary of the shooting, it's been commemorated with a candlelight procession around the campus and an all night vigil at the sites where the students fell. And in January of twenty seventeen, the site of the shooting on Kent State campus is declared a national historic landmark. So this year on May 4th, it would have been the fiftieth anniversary of the shootings.

They would have they were going to have this whole speech and ceremonies and all this shit and then covid-19 came around. So it's not going to happen. And some of the survivors were going to speak. Historian John Fitzgerald Ohara says that the Kent State massacre became a source of public trauma and it came to symbolize the fracturing of the social body and the breakdown of democracy. And that is the murder of Geoffrey Miller, Alison Krauss, William Schroeder and Sandra Shaw, a.k.a. the Kent State massacre.

Wow. How fucked up is that? Who how do we not know more about this? You know, it's like a paragraph in our history books in high school, and that's it.

Well, I mean, I think yeah, I it is also the kind of thing was it the 60s were such a bizarre time that like when like I think young people these days, it's just like we're so far away from it that it's it's all been boiled down to like peace, love and like, you know, bellbottom jeans or whatever, when actually it was all you know, those were young people that were like, yeah, it shouldn't be like this.

And you can't just ship us off. You can't just ship us off when, like, half the people you're shipping off don't have voting rights or anything like that kind of shit like this stuff. Muhammad Ali stood up for I mean, it's just like people finally got to start saying, yeah, you don't just get to sacrifice me. Right.

I got to have a say in my life, in my country's life, in, you know, in the decisions that are being made that affect us specifically, not these people in the White House or their sons. It's fucking us that are going to war for this. None of us, you know, it doesn't affect us. No, exactly. I highly recommend reading this book, cos if you want to know more about I guess that's why I've had like a hard time this past couple of weeks is that I mean everything is fucked and nothing is real and we've been lied to for fucking decades and it's really shitty.

Yeah.

OK, we're going to switch you over to some Jackie Collins after this where you can just have a little hair. Harold Robbins. So you start listening to bananas before bed? No, I mean, like isn't helping me.

It's it's funny because you're right. It's like this is the time where I have all this time I can finally read these books. I should read this like. Right. I have the same feeling you do is I should know this and I should get into this. Yeah.

And we should maybe in the fall. I mean we're in a bit of a hot spot time right now where it's like, I don't know, the chaos. It's like I started watching the left overs. Right. Right. As like they were talking about, you know, this this great show, this little thing starting.

And I was like, I don't think this is a good idea for me.

No terrible idea. You know what I've been you know, it's been falling asleep to at night station eleven. You know, that fucking post apocalyptic story where there's a big flu called the Georgia Flu that hits and just fucking decimates the world and now people live off the grid. And no, I haven't heard of this at all. What channel?

It's one of it's it's a book called Station Eleven by a female writer.

Yeah. Yes. Sorry, you've read it. I think you and I talked about it. I haven't read it.

Someone recommended it to me because they said it's like the. It's like she predicted it happening in the beat, it came out years ago and in twenty fifteen it was it's a Gorgona, it came out in twenty fourteen. It's a gorgeous book station. Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I love it. It's not it's not for the faint of heart right now. But buy it and put it on your bookshelf.

It's a Chris a fun Christmas book. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, just timing. And my favorite books right here. I hear it's unbelievable. Honestly, it's incredible. Yeah. Greta. Wow, that was great. And I'm here.

I'm glad to know those details of I did not know they actually burned down the ROTC building. I hadn't that wasn't anything that I knew. I mean, I, I only knew is the very basics of the amount of people that killed the fact that the National Guard just turned and started shooting it at unarmed students.

I mean, it's just like the turned part really got to me, too, because you could have just kept walking.

You were not being you are not being what's the word pursued people. You were being threatened. They were what's it called when you get into a corner? They weren't cornered.

They were sorry. They were. No, it's good to leave it. They weren't being cornered. They could have kept walking. They were about to go over a hill. So, you know, the canisters of tear gas that the protesters were throwing back at them wouldn't have hit like and they turned and started shooting because that comes in. That's like ego and pride. It's like, I'm sorry if I become a full on nuts or Buddhist, but like, it's we have to solve the problems in ourselves so that we can solve the problems in the world, because that's how those things start, is is people with power, whether that means you have the gun or you're the you know, you're the person that has the most money or you're the person with the voice when those people can't relate any more or don't want to relate as human beings to the people that they are that are under them, that's when shit goes nuts.

And it's like the idea that somebody in a campus, an open campus with tons of people, it's like whoever you are mad at, you knew for a fact if you were trained with guns, you knew for a fact that shooting toward the person you were, maddah meant you were also shooting toward twenty people who are totally innocent and not involved.

And you knew that as a fact. And you did it anyway because you were pissed because these people were were insulting you and your lifestyle. What you've decided was important. Like it's all personal shit. It's it's mishandled personal shit, kind love.

When you drink coffee, suddenly start to make sense. Hello. So I don't know. I don't know.

That's all I get because I don't obviously I'm not I don't know anything historical. I don't know how most things work but what it's like. But I do understand human. Failure and failure, because we've all done it, we've all done a thing where we take a thing personally that actually has nothing to do with us, and we enter, we interject ourselves incorrectly, and then we fuck it up.

We become the wrench. We ran fucking we. Yes. And then we make it a thing that it doesn't need to be because we want that like we want.

Right. It's righteous indignation or its superiority. It's that kind of stuff that's deadly. It's deadly to us. It's deadly to other people.

Sorry. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mother fucker. Oh, by refired also by a Devo album, everyone. They're fucking incredible, my friends. Here's a spider fired Steven on the show. On the show.

And you didn't even care. You didn't even hear it. I don't give a shit. No, no.

That's the best part about this is honest to meeting you guys.

Stephen's background is that that cartoon panel with the dog sitting at the table with the room on fire saying it's fine. So I'm sitting in a cartoon burning room. And he just when I said he was fired, he just dropped his hands, his face into his hands like, oh, no, not again.

Don't take it, Steven. Fight the power. Fight the power. We're the power.

Like, this is the 11th time you fired me on air. Please stop it.

Oh, all right.

So what should we do? Let's talk on camera the fuck out of this. We need it. All right. OK, we're going to read you.

You're fucking hoorays if you want to contribute. I get them off of Instagram. When people respond to they are like this week's episodes post, you get them off Twitter, we get them off Twitter, Instagram. And then, of course, in the fan cult, if you post them, Jay pulls them down off of that too. So any way you feel like doing it, we will find them.

OK, my hashtag fucking her is that me and my boyfriend had our six month anniversary yesterday over face time. Oh, this is from Kelsey. Ninety five and we each got drunk and chilled out for two and a half hours. For me it's a big thing because he's only my second ever relationship. I'm twenty four years old and my first relationship was incredibly emotionally manipulative and abusive and left me with so much baggage that I've spent the last four years working through.

But I feel like I'm finally learning to trust again and I'm so happy with my boyfriend now. Fucking hurray for a healing and healthy relationship with a person who genuinely loves me. Messiness and all.

Hey, man, that's awesome. Congratulations. I love that. That's the dream right there is who like this mass shout out to the next. Oh man. Shout out to Vince for me too. He loves me in his own way. That's lovely. Let's see. This one's from Amanda. Her her handle is abnormal.

Amanda, I just love that. Welcome, Amanda. This is a wonderful fucking Soraya's my friend Simon, who accidentally started a nonprofit during this pandemic.

It's called Invisible Hands, and it's a volunteer grocery delivery service for elderly and in immunocompromised people who can't leave their homes in New York and New Jersey. She started it with a few friends just to help out. And she now has all caps, thousands of volunteers servicing New York and New Jersey. She's been doing it twenty four hours a day every day for the past month. And the need her organization is filling in this area is truly incredible. Thanks for listening, SDM.

Holy shit. So my own God, you are a badass. Chills and tears. I mean, floating in my eyes, helping hands its invisible hands. It's a nonprofit and it clearly takes volunteers and it has those I mean, that's the part people want to help each other.

People love each other, do not buy into everything that gets shown on the news of people hating each other and screaming at each other and fighting things.

The majority of this country has coalesced in the most magnificent way. And that doesn't get on the news because people aren't that doesn't scare anybody. And it doesn't it doesn't tick up ratings when you show a bunch of people going, yeah, thousands of people are volunteering for invisible hands, man.

So fucking true. It's so fucking sure. It's so true. So congratulations all that's so kick ass. You guys are awesome.

Invisible of this is from Jordan, thigh high on those much HGH.

My fucking girl, my fucking R.A. is that after a couple of years of infertility struggles, I gave birth to our first baby. I was worried to have a baby during this weird time for many reasons. That's the first thing I thought of, is people who are pregnant right now. That's got to be so scary, but need to shout out the maternity nurses at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio. Hey.

Hey, girls, you're doing it big time. I know that this is an incredibly hard time to be in the health care industry, but they all made me and my husband feel so welcome and so well taken care of during a scary time of not only birth, but during a pandemic such as this. We will forever be grateful for their support, knowledge, courage and encouragement to bring our little girl into the world and help us feel confident to take care of her.

Oh, say say the name of the hospital again. It's Aultman, a ulti Aultman hospital in Canton, Ohio. A utility man. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Aultman.

Amazing job, everybody at Aultman Hospital, a maternity ward. Nick, you whatever. Wherever you were. Thank you so much for showing up at work every day and putting your life on the line for everybody else. We appreciate it.

We really do. And how about those? Again, it is brought us nurses that have started showing up at those protests to counterprotest and they just show up with their arms crossed in scrubs and stand in the middle of it's one. No. Yeah, again, it's the kind of thing that they like. You see little pictures of it here and there on the Internet. But like, they're not covered. They should be covering that of just like health care workers that are going down to say that.

Actually, they did today. A bunch of health care workers stood in the Capitol. I can't remember if it was in front of the White House or where, and just read off names of health care workers who died because of coronavirus on the job. Just reading them out loud, because it's like you think this is fake, you're trying to tell people this is fake.

Here's all the people who have died. Nobody's having a fucking blast during this time. And so we just there's like rules and regulations and we need to just fucking sit back and let the people who are good at their jobs and who know what they're doing handle it and stop being little brats about you know, they're like there was something about forgot. Take that out.

The Lady with the Roots. Yeah, I, Tim Robinson, Tim Robbins. This is when I start buying my Halloween decorations. Are you still be. And that's why my Halloween decorations. I must have watch that fucking.

I love honey. Oh my.

What's a show called Detroit. I really. No, no. The other one has been like a sketch. Oh I think you should leave. That's what it's called. He's so Detroiters favorite thing. Yeah. Both ok. All OK Tim Robinson.

Let's shout out to do it well into the health care workers.

That's not rude or disrespectful at all.

Hold please. OK. Oh yeah. Go check this shit out.

OK, this is from Karen. Karen with a nine nine days ago I was dope sick for the last time nine hundred days ago. I could only focus on getting through the next second and then the next. But those seconds turned into minutes, turned into hours, turned into days, turned into months, turned into years. My life didn't become perfect the moment I became sober. I've always been prone to depression and melancholy, and I still am. But no matter what happens today, I know I won't steal, cheat or lie in order to get high.

And at the end of each day, no matter how shitty that is, always a fucking hurry. Nine hundred days sober.

Holy shit.

Can every everyone of these are giving me chills. That is incredible. It's beautiful. It's awful. And it's a whole new life. Congratulations, Karen. I'm amazing. Good job. I'm just amazed. Yeah, it's really impressive. This is my last one. This was called. This is from Randall Rose, CEO. I'm a watercolor artist.

And since being in quarantine, I have been painting greeting cards, writing uplifting notes and sending them to nursing homes to be distributed amongst amongst the elderly who are possibly the most lonely ones out there right now, often with no family or friends and definitely no one allowed to visit them. It might only be a small act, but it's bringing me joy to hopefully send a little joy to those older people who are so lonely. And it's a win win because painting is therapeutic for me, bringing me a sense of accomplishment and joy to craft these cards and know that they are being put to use.

We have to remember during this time that although being productive is wonderful, we also have to be kind to ourselves and do all we can to handle our own emotions with care. Whether that's laying on the couch for ten hours or becoming the next Einstein, it's whatever makes you happy, calm, centered and of course, sexy genius.

That's incredible. That's that's very lovely and beautiful.

I love having a craft and like, use it. Wait, I forgot. We're recording a podcast.

I'm like, I wish I had a craft, but I could send out to the world and make people happy. Maybe if this involved a little more wool, you would see it as your craft. This is literally your craft fucking rotting my stupid mouth, my stupid sailor man. Too bad you get to see your dad can't be that stupid.

Here's mine. And this is nuts because Avalon Monroe sent it to us. And I just need to preface this one by saying, my friend and friend of the podcast, Guy Branum, hey, months ago recommended, told, texted me and was like, you have to watch the Bon Appétit cooking videos.

That's the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen YouTube channel. And and Steven seems to like it. Stealing's literally been bingeing this for the last time.

I was watching it before we recorded today. I'm obsessed. Oh my God. I have to watch it. Completely obsessed.

Now, here's so but but but I do want to preface this because the reason I picked this is because this just happened. Basically, guy asked me to start watching this six months ago. I can't ever do anything anyone tells me. And we omma so like three days ago I was like it was like I had gotten up at five a.m. wandering in my house like a weird ghost.

I was like, oh, wait a second, I know it'll make me feel better.

I click on to this video, I just go on randomly and I'm like, that guy's cute and I start watching Brad Lelani. I assume you pronounce his name that way. Explain how to make bruschetta, which is a food obsessed with.

Sure, he is my full on boyfriend. He is.

He also made this amazing dish so quickly and easily. And he's one of the most compelling people I've ever seen on TV, on YouTube. It was I was immediately hooked. I immediately text guy and I'm like, I finally did it. I'm in. Guy then sends me an email, basically a syllabus saying, watch these videos in this order and then get back to me like I'll send it to me.

A full thing.

I will for sure.

And then he actually today tweeted about it saying, I sent Karen this email and then I sent it to this other. Karen, what other Karen's need to know about the Bon Appetit test kitchen.

And then as I'm scrolling through the fucking phrase, here's this one from Avallone Monroe. Hello, all. I've been struggling with insomnia even before this whole Banten pandemic both started. And now it's even worse considering I'm moving less and my sleep schedule is pretty much in the drain. I've been listening to a lot of MFM and I'm running out of episodes to binge and also watch videos from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen. I love, love, love all the videos and the series they make.

It's super calming and relaxing and generally sends me right to sleep when I'm not glued to the screen as they temper chocolate, make stock or do general kitchen things. I feel like I'm living vicariously through them as they work up wonders of food and all of the chefs calm, happy demeanors. Help me feel a little bit better about the current situation. Thanks for being you and continuing to commit to the work you do. I appreciate you supporting everyone in the community and local businesses.

You guys really are helping a lot of us through this difficult time with much love. SSD, GM, Avalon, Monroe in parentheses from Toronto.

Oh, not the Avalon. Monroe from Boston or. Yeah.

Isn't that crazy. You have to. I have to watch it. It's you can go on to the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen YouTube channel, click on any video. You start to get to know there's about six chefs that are in there telling you, here's our recipe, here's how we make it. Here's how we make it easy. This that the other it's in there the most every person that comes on screen. You want to be friends with them.

You love hearing them talk.

They're so a cooking is such a mystery to me.

And watching grandma's bruschetta, I was like, I'm going to make bruschetta. I literally was like, I'm making that tomorrow. I love it. I have so many Roma tomatoes in my kitchen right now. Hopefully they don't go bad. Hopefully I do it. But it's just like it feels like it's for a reason. Like it's too it's going to help something, you know, to me, like I'm actually learning. But then you just adore the people there.

I learned how to cook.

I learned how to cook from watching people cook on TV. Yeah. Rachael Ray. Yeah. Yeah. You talk about that that food channel. That's right.

To tell you I had a job. I'm speaking Illiana. Your craft. That's right. I didn't know I had.

Speaking of Canada, we want to give a warm shout out to the murderousness and everyone in Nova Scotia there for the tragedy that they're currently going through.

Yeah, there's a terrible shooting there. So we just we what we've heard about it from a bunch of you guys, you listeners that are that are up there in Canada and particularly at Nova Scotia. So the Halifax Motorino Group, we just want to let you guys know we're getting. Can about you and you know, you're not alone. That's right. Thanks for listening. Everyone, this has been a real long episode. Oh, my God. Again, we've done it again and we're not busy.

And we know you aren't there.

So shut out. Take your two hour episode. Yeah. Thank you. We're so hashtag blessed. Thank you guys for listening. Yeah. It's really nice to actually have something to mark time and look forward to doing and, you know, and to be doing this with you. Thanks for thanks for doing it with us, Stephen. Thank you for everything. Oh, and happy birthday, Steven. Oh, thanks.

Thank you. Last week it was last week. We didn't say it on the show last week because we're self-involved and we apologize.

Like, I took a day off and I watched Waterworld and took a nap. So it was very. Oh, that's right. You're a good thing. I took I'm going to blame it on you. You were gonna have birthday wishes. Happy birthday, Steven. Steven, Steven. Happy birthday, Steve, please. Yeah. If you didn't already.

And other than that, stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Go. Goodbye. Hold on, he's right here. Elvis, thanks. Oh, I just dropped. This is Elvis. You want a cookie?

There we go. I wish I was perfect. Good boy. OK, I agree. Was I recording?

I was called.