November 6, 2024 • 47 mins
Tracy speaks with Toby Ball, creator and host of the podcast Rip Current, which explores the story of the two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford that were carried out less than three weeks apart in 1975.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I got to talk to
Toby Ball recently. That's the creator and host of the
(00:21):
podcast Rip Current. Rip Current explores the story of the
two assassination attempts that were carried out against President Gerald Ford.
Those took place less than three weeks apart in nineteen
seventy five. The first assassination attempt was carried out by
Lynette from also known as Squeaky, who was already infamous
(00:43):
because of her involvement with the Manson family. The other
was by Sarah Jane Moore, who had become an FBI
informant and is most known today for this assassination attempt.
Our interview talks a bit about these two women and
some parallels in what led each of them to try
to assassinate Gerald Ford. But it's also really about what
(01:05):
goes into creating a podcast like this, which incorporates a
lot of things like interviews and archival footage. So we'll
get to it. Hi, Toby, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Can you just start off telling me a little bit
about your background.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Sure, so I've sort of been a jack of all trades,
master of none. I started off working out a magazine.
I worked at a couple of universities. I've taught high school.
I worked at our state Humanities Council. And then I
started getting into podcasting. About ten years ago, I'm on
a panel discussion that's still going on, sort of reviews
(01:45):
true crime podcast and television. And then about you know,
five or six years ago, I you know, I had
been reviewing so many podcasts that I thought maybe I
should actually and make one and see what that was
all about and sort of the decisions you have to
make and the issues run into And so I did,
(02:10):
and that ended up being the first season of Strange Arrivals,
which is a sort of a skeptical look at belief
in UFOs. I did three seasons of that, and that's
an iHeart podcast. And about two years ago started working
on the podcast I'm here to talk about called Rip Current,
which was sort of more kind of up my alley
(02:33):
and in my area of interest.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, so I'd like our listeners to have sort of
a sense of the show that we're talking about so
we are going to play the trailer for it right here.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
This summer, A lone gunman on a rooftop reminded us
that American presidents have long been the targets of assassins.
Nearly fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford faced two attempts
on his life in less than three weeks. September fifth,
nineteen seventy five, Sacramento, California, in a crowd outside the
(03:09):
Capitol Building, a woman pulls a gun on President Ford.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the
victim of an assassin.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Today, a woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed
a forty five caliber pistol at the President.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And I saw a woman start to go down and
her arm go back, and I saw the gun.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
September twenty second, San Francisco, on the steps of the
Saint Francis Hotel, another woman tries to kill the President.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Francisco this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She was right at the front of the robe and
forty feet away.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
When he walked out, President waved to the crowds and
they had cheered him, and that's when it happened.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I yelled the she's got a gun.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
In two hundred and fifty years of US history, these
are the only two times we know of that a
woman has tried to assassinate a sitting president.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
The two events were separated by seventeen days, in less
than ninety miles, and the two assassins had never met.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
She is twenty six year old Lynette Alice from nickname Squeaky.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
I always felt like Glynnette was kind of his right
hand woman, a.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Good curtain, a very good person. The other a middle
aged housewife, an aspiring radical, rookie undercover for the FBI
in the Violent Revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Underground, identified by police Sarah Jane Moore in her forties.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Because she didn't look like a radical, she could enter
into these areas that other people couldn't.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
A spy.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Basically, I was the person in the intent was exactly
as I stated in court, to wealthily and know any assassinator.
On Off four, the Persson of in United States.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
This season, on the podcast Rip Current, we ask why
these women? She was a gentle client.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I thought he's loving girl.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Why did they want to kill President Ford, being the
appointee of President Nixon, it's understandable to me that in
their minds he should also be the object of their hatred.
And why this time, this place.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
One does not have to condone everything in hate Ashbury
to know that it exists.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Back then, there were lots of communes, There were lots
of guru varieties.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Manson told his followers that this would be a blood
bath in the streets of every American city. What starts
as a hippie love called transmographied into a violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Five persons, including actress Sharon Tape, were found dead.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We realize that we're dealing with very violent underground groups.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Or corporate enemies of the people. Will be shut on
at any time and any play.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
The goals were anarchy, a lot of anarchy.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
The revolutionary groups would get their power.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
The bloodiest and most massive gun battle in the history
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Random violence, political violence. There was just no let up.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yes to the fact that insect the praise to find
the life of the people.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
These people aren't just a bunch of nuts. They're perfectly
willing to die for what they're doing. Someplace else that
would have been like a big deal, but not in California.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
The story of one strange and violent Summer this season
on Rip Current.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So tell me what drew you to this particular story.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I was doing some research.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I wanted to do something about, you know, radicalism. I
was looking at the nineteen seventies. I was doing a
lot of research, and I ran across the story of
Sarah Jane Moore, who I'm sure we're about to talk
more about. She's just a very interesting story. And then
(07:05):
doing that research, found out that she was actually the
second person to try and assassinate Gerald Ford in September
of nineteen seventy five, and the first person was a
woman named Lynette From, better known as Squeaky From, who
is one of Charles Manson's followers. And in fact, those
(07:27):
are the only two women who have ever tried to
assassinate a sitting US president as far as we know.
So starting with that seemed like a quirk of history.
So started doing some more research into them and trying
to find out are there commonalities between their two stories,
like why in two hundred and fifty years of US
(07:50):
history are there only two times that a woman has
tried to assassinate a president and why was it seventeen
days apart in September of nineteen seventy So I had
sort of these questions. I wasn't sure if there was
going to be sort of a satisfactory answer, right. It
could just be a complete quirk, or one could have
(08:10):
been inspired by the other. But the more I kind
of dug into it, the more sort of pattern sort
of emerged in things commonalities you could find. Even though
it wasn't they didn't follow exactly the same path, there
was enough that was common in their situations, and then
also some other people who are sort of tangentially involved
(08:33):
in the story.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So one of the things that really has stood out
to me in the episodes that I've listened to, which
are the ones that are publicly available as of when
we are recording this, is that you have really gone
deep into the background on both of them. So the
first several episodes we've got a lot of context setting
about the Manson family to give all the detail of
(08:57):
sort of how Lynette from got to where she was.
Same thing with the episodes that get into the background
involving things like the Symbonese Liberation Army and the SLA
kidnapping of Patty Hurst, kind of telling the story of
how Sarah Jane Moore got to where she was. How
(09:19):
did you decide how much background you wanted to include
on these two women and the other organizations and other
movements that they were connected to.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
That's actually the stuff that I found most interesting when
I was doing the research. I sort of feel like
my sort of modus opera anddi is you know what
am I finding really interesting? And can I sort of
maximize that as I'm telling the story? And in fact,
the actual assassination attempts themselves are interesting, and especially Sarah
(09:52):
Jane moorees is sort of suspenseful, but that's just a
very small part of the story. The the real story
to me is how did they get to this point?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
And then by going through the research, I sort of
developed this theory is probably too strong a word, but
sort of recognized sort of this pattern that was occurring
with them, and I wanted to kind of demonstrate how,
despite the fact that their lives were quite different in
a lot of ways, and especially the details they sort
(10:25):
of unfolded in a sort of generally similar way, and
that that might in some way have led them to
taking this sort of very strong, probably irrational action, which
is trying to kill the president. So as far as
(10:45):
Lynette from goes, you know, her story is really about
being with Charles Manson, and then when Charles Manson goes
to prison, she still remains sort of very devoted to him,
and so she tries to help help him while she's
outside and he's inside prison, and she's in this very
(11:07):
strange situation where she's famous. You know, people know who
she is, but that doesn't really help her in a way.
It actually hinders her, Like nobody's going to hire her
to work. She really lives on the fringes up until
the time that she takes a shot at Ford.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
With Sara Jane Moore.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know, the sort of the crux of her story
in my mind is this is a woman who's lived
this this fairly. You know, from a distance, looks very
conventional life of she She was married and divorced several times,
but you know, she was married to a couple of
military men, she was married to a Hollywood sound designer,
(11:52):
she was married to a doctor.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
So this was kind of her life beforehand.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And then she goes through a series of events having
to do with Patty Hursts kidnapping. She becomes an underground
informant for the FBI in the radical scene in the
Bay Area in nineteen seventy four. In nineteen seventy five,
so she goes from this very well off, conventional lifestyle
(12:21):
to suddenly being in the midst of really the furthest
reaches of you know, violent radical groups. And so that
was why sort of diving into the Simbonese Liberation Army,
we probably haven't gotten to Tribal Thumb yet, no, or
(12:41):
some of these other smaller groups that she interacts with,
and her story is really one of feeling increasing pressure
on her, feeling increasingly in danger as the months go
on and.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
She gets further and further sort of ensconced in this
app misphere.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So some of it's set up to sort of tell
these stories, but it's also I just found it really
interesting in and of itself, especially Bay Area middle seventies.
It's sort of the last vestiges of sixties radicalism, and
you have these very small groups with these very big
(13:23):
plans about overthrowing the government, but without really.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Much of a plan to do it.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I mean, I don't know how you overthrow the government
with twelve or fifteen you know people. So anyway, that
was kind of what I thought was really interesting and
might have some parallels to stuff that's going on now.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, and you also talk a lot about like the
idea of Middle America and how Middle America was responding
to what was happening with all the radicals in the
Bay Area and the climate, like the political climate of
the day, which that's the year that I was born,
So I have no memory of it personally, but there
are definitely elements of it that I'm like, this feels
(14:09):
very comparable to things that happen now regarding sort of
what you think of as the mainstream reacting to what
the mainstream considers to be a fringe element, with some
of those fringe elements later becoming like more of a
mainstream thought. Like some of the things that were that
you talked about in terms of Squeaky From's activism were
(14:32):
about climate and what was happening to the planet. And
I think the perception of people who are looking at
the climate in nineteen seventy five versus today, Like there
are some parallels and some dissimilarities, and so I thought
those were all really interesting things. To talk about in
your show.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Also, Yeah, So it's funny because when Lynette from and
her sort of best friend, this woman Sandra Good, who
is also a Manson follower, moved to Sacramento, they catch
this sort of environmentalism bug. But the way, the way,
(15:11):
you know, two former Manson girls approach environmentalism is to
send threatening letters to CEOs of companies and government officials
who oversee the maintenance of you know, wilderness areas, particularly
in California. So so, yeah, so they become very concerned.
(15:34):
They're they're both sort of interacting with the local press.
Instead of giving them press releases, they send these threatening letters.
At the time, Lynette and Sandra are sort of dressing
in these weird outfits, which are sort of these long
gowns with these I don't know how to describe them
(15:56):
other than as sort of like deflated witches hats, where
they would be like tall coned hats, except there's nothing
holding the cone up, so it just kind of flops
over to the side.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
And Lynette would wear red and Sandra.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Would wear blue, and they, you know, even in nineteen
seventy four, nineteen seventy five, they look very distinct They
don't look like anybody else, And at one point they
go to San Francisco and they go to Berkeley and
they go to the offices of CEOs and try and
get meetings with them dressed like this. I mean, it's
(16:33):
very it's very strange, and I think, you know, people
didn't know really what to make of it and whether
to take them seriously. After Lynette gets tries to shoot
forward and gets arrested, Sandra Good ends up being interviewed
quite a bit, and she's talking about how they're part
(16:57):
of this organization which is completely faittional, called the International
People's Court of Retribution, that was going to carry out,
you know, hundreds of assassinations around the world to save
the environment. So it's really it's pretty it's pretty strange,
crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, listening to the like audio from interviews where she
is being asked one question and the answers are not
answers to that question. They are answers about the environment
and what's happening to the planet. And the whole time
I was I was like, this is this is wild,
Like it goes much farther than hearing somebody spin an
(17:39):
answer into the direction. It's just answering a totally different question.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It just very aggressively. Yeah, right, she's just very antagonistic.
In one of the episodes, we play sort of sort
of an extended bit of an interview that Sandra does
just a few days after the assassination attempts with the
Canadian Broadcasting Company with this very sort of nice professional
reporter and Sandra just, you know, she's just clearly so
(18:10):
angry and she just wants to sort of take a
bite out of this woman who's trying to get sort
of the information that you'd expect a reporter to get,
and Sandra just doesn't have any time for it.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, So your podcast, rip Current is radically different from
Stuffy miss In history class, we have a show. It's
Holly and me most of the time. Sometimes we have
(18:43):
a guest, but like it's each of us. We're talking
into the microphone and we are usually telling a pretty
linear story that has a beginning, in a middle, an
end in most cases, and rip Current is very different.
You've got all of these interviews and clips of audio
or you know, the audio from video footage from the time,
(19:05):
and in some cases reenactments tell me more about the
process of what it takes to go through all of
that and put it together into an episode of a podcast.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's an interesting question the way it worked. I guess
it's worked with all the sort of podcasts like this
I've done limited series. It's really I do a lot
of research before I even start working on scripts and
things like that, and so it's some of it's sort
of what you would consider I think, more traditional research.
(19:37):
I go through newspapers, you know, that were current at
the time, books that have been written about the subjects,
court documents, things like that, and then I try and
identify people who would have some insight or some firsthand knowledge.
(19:58):
So in the case of rip Current, especially about Lynette
from there's been a bunch of books written about her
and and and you know, Charles Manson that whole thing. So,
you know, identifying authors who I could talk to either
generally about what was happening in her life or sort
of about specific little bits. And so there's a there's
(20:18):
a there's a bunch of author interviews, and then as
far as sourcing sort of archival audio, you know, it's
it's just a lot of web searching. To be honest
with you, it's you know, it's finding what's what's available
out there. As I kind of went through the process,
I got a little bit better about finding where things
(20:41):
might be. You know, there are universities that have, you know,
collections of local news broadcasts at times. San Francisco State
University is a place that I got a lot of
stuff from some state history museums. Archive dot org, which,
as we're recording, has has been taken down.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Upset about a little bit.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, No, we just talked about it in our behind
the scenes that I oh you did. Yeah, I think
it will. It will have come out before this episode
comes out because of that. Archive dot organ is a
major part of our research.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Also, Yeah, hopefully that comes back up. I think there's
a lot of podcasts who are sweating it out.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So you know, I've spent I spent a lot of
time listening to three hours of a pacifica radio broadcast
from nineteen seventy five to try and find little clips
that are contemporaneous about the events that I'm covering, or
about some of the people, or or sort of explaining
(21:41):
how things were thought of at the time that we're
talking about. So I guess that's kind of the process
and then I end up I do. I'm kind of
old school in the way. I mean, people aren't gonna
be able to see it, but I'm holding out. I
use these, uh, I use index cards, and I take
notes on index cards and then sort them into piles
(22:02):
about which notes go with which episode. And then it's
I take from transcripts of interviews, transcripts from audio notes
I've taken from written sources, and kind of sort of
placement in order that seems to make sense in a script,
and then write narrative to kind of tie everything together
and explain the things I want to explain and set
(22:25):
things up. So that's that's kind of the process. I've
never really tried to explain it before, actually, but I
think that's kind of what I go through.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Index cards sorted into piles was my way of structuring
writing for a long time before before like word processing
software really got to the point that you could just
move things around with the mouse, which has become how
I do that kind of a thing now. So, yeah,
that's a blast of nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yes, I've got colored note cards too. Yeah, there's green
for one thing, pink for another, orange for another. Na
it's definitely sort of seventh grade stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So like, how many people does it take to then
craft that into an episode of the podcast? Because I
know there are three producers from iHeart that are credited
on the podcast, but I don't have a sense of
like what each of them do on the show.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Sure, So so I read all the scripts, I record
voiceover and send it to them, and then there's an
executive producer and then three other producers, and so there's
a couple of rounds of putting things together. That's what
they call the dry pass or the dry cut, which
(23:40):
is without any sort of sound design behind it. It's
just each piece of spoken or archival audio, you know,
place in the right places, and you kind of listen
and you say, you know, separate these a little bit.
This looked great on paper, doesn't sound so good when
you're listening.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
To it on tape.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And then the second past is where they take the
musical score or if you're going to add sort of
you know, sound effects, which we don't really do very much,
and you add that in to sort of create the
tone and feel of the program.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
You know, add you know.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Suspenseful music where it should be, propulsive music where it
should be things like that, and that's each of the
three producers would kind of take there's gonna be twelve
episodes and then seven, I guess bonus episodes. So they
get split up among the producers and they take a
certain amount, so they're so responsible for both mixes, and
(24:41):
then they pass it on to an executive producer who
does sort of the final mix and quality assurance and
all that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
One of the things that you encountered while working on
this was a news organization that did not allow footage
of the reporters to be reused. Can you tell me
a little bit about that and how you wound up
recording instead re enactments of that.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
One of the television stations in Sacramento, which is owned
by a huge news organization.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
They you know, you can find on.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
YouTube if you just search on Squeaky from Ford Assassination,
news coverage or whatever, you can find it all on YouTube.
But they don't they don't license if any of their
actual reporters are talking. And they had this really really
interesting piece of a reporter who goes to when Lynette
(25:40):
from and Sandra Good moved to Sacramento and it becomes known,
she's like, well, I'll just go and see what they're
up to. So she goes to their house and sort
of interviews them and stuff. You don't see that, but
after the after the assassination attempt, she's on the set
of the newscast and she just kind of talked about
her experience going in there and what they were like,
(26:03):
and what their apartment was like and stuff like that,
but in a very sort of conversational, not very newsy way.
And you know, when we were putting together an early
version of the episode, we cut the stuff we wanted
in there to see how it sounded. Sounded sounded great,
but you know, through multiple email exchanges, yeah, the you know,
(26:26):
the parent company was just not going to budge. So
it kind of it came down to we were trying
to figure out is this something that we can just
let let go? But we thought it was. It really
gave the best picture of what Lynnette's life was like
at the time, right before she made the assassination attempt.
(26:48):
So then it was do we want me just sort
of summarizing what she said as as sort of the
omniscient narrator, or do we want to.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Bring in an actor just sort of you.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Know, basically read from the transcript, you know, but in
a way that it's a little more immersive than my
like struggling not to do a monotone.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And so that's what we ended up doing.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
And it kind of felt like as long as we're
upfront about the fact that this isn't actually that piece
of footage, but that we have an actor reading from
the transcript, and that we're doing it for this reason,
which is we can't get the rights, but we still
feel like it's important.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, So that was just that was sort of the
process there. It was. It's frustrating.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's always kind of interesting what rights you can get
and what rights you can't, because it's not always intuitive.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I wonder if that had anything to do with like
likeness rights for the reporter, and whether it just wasn't
something somebody foresaw in that reporter's contract in nineteen seventy
five that one day there might be a podcast want
to use the audio for something. That's the explanation I
(28:02):
can think of. Anyway, let's take one more quick break
and then we'll be back to talk a little bit
more about the show. So earlier today I was listening
to the seventh episode of the podcast, and there was
(28:27):
an incident in which Sarah Jane Moore what did not
have ID with her, but did have several pictures of herself.
And it's obvious from the you know, the context the
description of that that at the time that was weird
to not have your ID and also to have several
pictures of yourself just on you. And what really hit
(28:49):
me in that moment was that today a lot of
us are walking around with a phone full of selfies.
It's very normal to just have a bunch of pictures
of yourself on you at all times. Are there things
that similarly really stuck out to you in terms of
differences in day to day living between what was happening
in this period that you are, you know, reporting on
(29:11):
on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And now that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I guess what kind of struck me is how much
more connected we are, or potentially connected we are with
everybody all the time that we want to talk to
now that everybody's walking around with cell phones because a
fair amount of you know, what's going on in San
Francisco at the time. Sometimes a communication is done like
(29:38):
literally through the letters page of a newspaper. Right there's
no way to get a message to somebody physically. When
everybody's underground and people are suspicious of each other and
they think there may be FBI plants and stuff, it's
only communication becomes very, very difficult. So that was one thing.
(30:03):
It's a really interesting question, you know. I just kind
of feel like now, like somebody like Lynette from.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Would be.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In the news on cable TV all the time if
she had been involved in something. I mean, she wasn't
amongst the people who committed the Charles Manson associated murders,
but she's a very well known, high profile member of
his group.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And the idea that.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
You know, she basically goes off the grid, like people
don't really know much about what's going on with her,
and she's kind of involved in these sort of sketchy dealings,
and every once in a while she'll kind of pop
up in the newspaper for something that she's she's involved in,
but for the most part, she just kind of lives
her life and there's no there's One of the controversies
(30:57):
that comes out of her assassination attempt is that there
wasn't any real security that she wasn't considered a security risk, right,
so she wasn't put under surveillance people didn't really know
where she was. I mean, she wasn't trying to hide,
like she showed up dressed in her red gown and
funny red hat, and I mean she stuck out. Like
(31:18):
if you look in the crowd in some of these pictures,
it's like, oh, who's that And it's still that from
and she's the one who's gonna pull the trigger. But
the just you know, the heightened security awareness just kind
of wasn't there. You know, there's that, and then there's
just the general sense at that time in California of
(31:40):
the potential for violence. I don't think we've gotten to
it yet in what's been released so far, but San
Francisco was a very, very sort of violent city at
that period of time, both because of radical groups, but
just i you know, not coincidentally necessarily, but unconnected is
(32:04):
when the Zodiac murders were going on, thing called the
Zebra murders, which were these apparently random didn't turn out
to be random murders that were being committed on the street.
There was a lot of sort of anti police sentiment
going around, and then Patty Hurst was missing, and that
(32:25):
is sort of the thing that hangs over everything to
do with Sarah Jane Moore and sort of the radical
scene in the Bay Area is that this you know,
this Hurst heiress is missing and it's sort of the
biggest story in the country is like can we find her?
And all these groups that Sarah Jane Moore is associating
(32:47):
with are, at least in the eyes of sort of
the establishments or of law enforcement and journalism and it's such,
are connected to the Simbonese Liberation Army, which is the
group that has Patty Hurst. So they're under surveillance, the
police raid places associated with journalists, get in touch with
(33:08):
members of these groups, against touch with Sarah Jane Moore
to see if she can provide information on where Patty
Hurst is. So I guess I guess those were the
things that kind of kind of stood out to me.
But again, I'm you know, I'm looking at this fairly
narrow slice of sort of people living in sort of
one extreme situation compared to to most of what was
(33:32):
going on in America.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So beyond that sort of then versus now things that
are different. What really surprised you as you were researching
and working on this show?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So what I kind of came around to really focusing
on was this idea that if you live sort of
a conventional life and then under duress, are soddenly given
this whole new way of looking at things. In a
situation where you're probably in danger, it happens very very fast.
(34:10):
You don't really have sort of outside moderating influences around you,
and what happens to somebody. And so that's what happened
with Lynette from I mean, she essentially got kicked out
of her house and left and very quickly ran into
Charles Manson and jumped in his van and was part
(34:30):
of his group. Sarah Jane Moore like volunteered for this
thing that was associated with trying to get Patty Hurst released,
met up with these sort of Marxist prison radicals or
former prison radicals. The FBI told her to go underground,
so she became radicalized while she was in these groups,
(34:55):
Like she considered herself sort of a revolutionary. After amount
of time, she felt like her eyes had been open
to the plight of black people at that time that
she hadn't really taken in and she was given sort
of a framework with which to look at it. Both
as it was and what could be done about it.
(35:16):
She became she considered herself a Marxist or a Maoist,
and then Patty Hurst herself. I mean, she was put
in a closet for six weeks and sort of pilloried
with the beliefs of the Siminese Liberation Army, which were
sort of a combination of sort of typical revolutionary Maoist
(35:37):
ideas and then this other really bizarre sort of conspiracy stuff.
But when she was finally given some freedom, she whether
it was a conscious decision or whether it was sort
of course of control, joined her captors right and she
went in. She helped rob a bank. There's famous picture
(35:58):
of her holding a a gun. So that was that
was what I found really interesting was sort of that
dynamic and how these people changed. They start off as
one thing, went through this process of just rapid, sort
of under pressure change, and came out as people who
(36:19):
were willing to do things that you never would have
imagined them being involved in prior to that change.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
There is so much in the you know, the episodes
that I've listened to so far, so much little details
that I really did not know that nineteen seventy five
is a little more recent than what we normally talk
about on our podcast. So it's because it's also a
period where my life started was not a period when,
(36:48):
like my school classes did not talk about the history
from nineteen seventy five and later really at all until
I got to college, and even then it was just
the sketchiest little amount, So I did not know much
detail about a lot of what was happening that you
talk about in the podcast. So it's been all very
interesting to listen to you. I am hoping to keep
(37:12):
on top of it. I tend to get very behind
in my podcast listening very quickly, so as the subsequent
episodes come out, there will be more of them out
by the time this interview comes out for our listeners
than there are right now, so I am looking forward
to listening to them. Is there anything that you think
our listeners should absolutely know, either about this podcast or
(37:33):
about your work in general, Like, what is there any
particular thing that just folks you want them to be
aware of or have in mind?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's another good question that I probably should have some
thought too before we started this, because I ask it
of people myself. It's not an original thought, but I
think being able to look at sort of analogous or
somewhat analogous times in history. And for me, it's not
(38:03):
even necessarily what people do, but kind of the way
they conceive of the situation that they're in and what
sort of the possibilities are and what's realistic and what's
not realistic. I mean, I think one of the things
I found interesting, and I think this is true of
the late sixties or maybe even all the sixties as well,
(38:25):
is this idea that you can take a look at
at at our society and think about making major major changes, right.
And I think that's you know, that's it probably started
with the civil rights movement and then people said, well,
what else is out there that can make our country,
you know, fundamentally fairer or more in line with what
(38:47):
I believe.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And the thoughts were big.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
The thoughts weren't, you know, we let's mess with the
tax code a little bit. It's you know, or do
things like that. It was really like, can we remake
our country in a way that sort of is more
aligned with what we feel it should be like. And
by the time we kind of jump into it in
nineteen seventy four nineteen seventy five, in sort of the
(39:12):
radical scene. I mean, it's really kind of tailing off,
so the people who are left, it's really sort of
the most radical people and there's just not many people
out there. But I do spend some time talking about
you know, prison revolutionaries in California, which I think is
(39:33):
you know, the more I learned about that, I was like, oh,
I could have just done a podcast on this, because
there was a sense that, especially for you know, black
men and Latinos and Native Americans as well, that prison
is sort of an extreme example of what society is
(39:55):
actually like, and so that you know, you you become
radicalized and become a revolutionary in prison. And the idea
is that is when you're released, you can bring the
fight against the same sort of inequalities and oppressive systems
that are very clear in prison, where you have warden
and you have guards, and you have you know, things
(40:17):
that you can and can't do, and then you go
out into the world outside prison and you see the
same structures and you know you want to address them.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And that was how.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Groups like the Siminese Liberation Army or or Tribal Thumb,
which there'll be stuff on them a little bit later
in the season, they're they're really they're run by by
guys who are prison revolutionaries, black men who come out
and get largely young white, sort of college age radicals
to kind of fall along with them, and they sort
(40:53):
of take in this this way of looking at our society, right,
is that it's it sort of the prison system and
who has possibilities and things like that.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
So it's like a lot of words that I just said,
we're just saying that.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I just and I'm certainly not advocating for anything that
any of these people did in the podcast, because you know,
assassinating the president.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I mean, these are violent groups that they sort of
no hope.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
But I think the idea of, you know, looking at
society in a way of can we make big changes
to make things better for people? I guess that might
have been actually the sort of the what makes me
interested in that era is that it just seemed like
there was just a lot more sort of big thinking
(41:42):
about those things. And sometimes the big thinking ended up
in the civil rights movement with its like absolutely positive outcomes,
and then sometimes it's the weathermen or something who just
sort of had this neilistic view about how you go
about affecting that change.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So do you already know what your next project is
after this one or are you just trying to get
this one out for everyone to hear.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
So, Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned that I
was actually just working on a proposal for the next project,
and it's in it's sort of a similar vein of
taking a look at another movement that was trying to
make significant change, sort of against the tide of sort
(42:31):
of public sentiment, which, in hindsight, in this particular case
i'm looking at right now, I think it's kind of
been born out that people should have listened, right. But yeah,
so I'm sort of keeping with this sort of radical
thought and action and trying to create a big difference,
even in a way in this way it's I think
(42:52):
a little bit less misguided, but the same sort of
think big I guess is how to summarize it.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, Well, thank you so much for taking the time
to talk to me today.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Most of the episodes of this season of Rip Current
will be out by the time this episode airs, so
listeners you can go find all of this to listen
to in the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you like.
To get your podcast, and you'll still have I think
two or three more episodes to look forward to that
will be coming out after this one airs, but plenty
to catch up on if you have not already. Thanks
(43:29):
so much to Toby for talking to me. Rip Current
is also co hosted by Mary Catherine Garrison, who played
Squeaky from in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins.
New episodes of rip Current come out on Thursdays on
the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
your podcasts. The whole entire limited series will be available
(43:54):
just within a couple of weeks from when this episode
is coming out. Now, do you have some listeners? I
do have some listener mail. This is from a net
and a net wrote to us with an update about
William marsh Rice, who if you do not remember, we
did an episode about the death of William marsh Rice
(44:15):
a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about a
statue of him that was on the campus at Rice University,
which is named for him. So Annett wrote, Hello, Holly
and Tracy. A couple of years ago, I wrote to
tell you that Rice University Task Force on slavery, segregation,
and racial injustice had been charged with, among many other things,
(44:35):
deciding what to do with the statue of founder William
Marsh Rice that was located central to the main campus quadrangle.
They announced in February twenty twenty two that the statue
would be moved to the perimeter of the quadrangle as
part of a design overhaul. In September twenty twenty four,
the academic Quadrangle was reopened after about sixteen months of construction.
(44:59):
The statue was now in a corner of the quadrangle,
near the first building on campus, love It Hall and
the Welcome Center, and the newest building on the quad
Sewell Hall. As the landscape architect said and their rededication ceremony,
William Marsh Rice is essential to the Rice story, but
not central to it. Rice's remains were reinterred in the
(45:20):
Rice family plot at Glenwood Cemetery, a historic Houston cemetery.
The statue was now at ground level rather than elevated
on a high plinth. There's a sign with a QR
code that links to information about Rice, including his connections
to slavery. Unfortunately, it feels a bit labyrinthin even using
the QR code to get to the document that acknowledges
(45:40):
Rice as an enslaver. The platform on which the plinth
statue was on has been incorporated into the quad redesign
as sort of a speaker's corner near the center of
the quadrangle by the platform is a quote from when
John F. Kennedy gave his We chose to go to
the Moon's speech on the Rice campus in nineteen sixty two.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a
(46:03):
city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength,
and we stand in need of all three sea attached photos.
There are also some links about the redesign of the quad,
and Nett talks about being an alumnus of Rice and
one of the many things about this whole thing, meaning
that there will now be green space around the quad
(46:25):
so that it will not be a heat island as
it has been previously. A net for pet tax Attached
photos of Swirl, our border collie mix who crossed the
Rainbow Bridge sometime ago, and a pet portrait that was
commissioned for them, which is very sweet. So yes, I've
got some pictures here that I'm looking at that sort
(46:45):
of show where the new location of the statue is,
as well as the plinth that it used to stand on,
and all what a sweet puppy dog and I love
this pet portrait. It was commissioned from a photo. There's
also a paw print impression, so sweet. Thank you so
much ANT for this and for forwarding along to your
(47:08):
earlier email as part of it. I had not really
kept up with any of the developments in that since
we had done that episode a while back, so thank
you so much for that. If you would like to
send us a note about this or any other podcasts
where History podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else
(47:30):
you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I got to talk to
Toby Ball recently. That's the creator and host of the
(00:21):
podcast Rip Current. Rip Current explores the story of the
two assassination attempts that were carried out against President Gerald Ford.
Those took place less than three weeks apart in nineteen
seventy five. The first assassination attempt was carried out by
Lynette from also known as Squeaky, who was already infamous
(00:43):
because of her involvement with the Manson family. The other
was by Sarah Jane Moore, who had become an FBI
informant and is most known today for this assassination attempt.
Our interview talks a bit about these two women and
some parallels in what led each of them to try
to assassinate Gerald Ford. But it's also really about what
(01:05):
goes into creating a podcast like this, which incorporates a
lot of things like interviews and archival footage. So we'll
get to it. Hi, Toby, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Can you just start off telling me a little bit
about your background.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Sure, so I've sort of been a jack of all trades,
master of none. I started off working out a magazine.
I worked at a couple of universities. I've taught high school.
I worked at our state Humanities Council. And then I
started getting into podcasting. About ten years ago, I'm on
a panel discussion that's still going on, sort of reviews
(01:45):
true crime podcast and television. And then about you know,
five or six years ago, I you know, I had
been reviewing so many podcasts that I thought maybe I
should actually and make one and see what that was
all about and sort of the decisions you have to
make and the issues run into And so I did,
(02:10):
and that ended up being the first season of Strange Arrivals,
which is a sort of a skeptical look at belief
in UFOs. I did three seasons of that, and that's
an iHeart podcast. And about two years ago started working
on the podcast I'm here to talk about called Rip Current,
which was sort of more kind of up my alley
(02:33):
and in my area of interest.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, so I'd like our listeners to have sort of
a sense of the show that we're talking about so
we are going to play the trailer for it right here.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
This summer, A lone gunman on a rooftop reminded us
that American presidents have long been the targets of assassins.
Nearly fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford faced two attempts
on his life in less than three weeks. September fifth,
nineteen seventy five, Sacramento, California, in a crowd outside the
(03:09):
Capitol Building, a woman pulls a gun on President Ford.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the
victim of an assassin.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Today, a woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed
a forty five caliber pistol at the President.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And I saw a woman start to go down and
her arm go back, and I saw the gun.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
September twenty second, San Francisco, on the steps of the
Saint Francis Hotel, another woman tries to kill the President.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Francisco this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She was right at the front of the robe and
forty feet away.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
When he walked out, President waved to the crowds and
they had cheered him, and that's when it happened.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I yelled the she's got a gun.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
In two hundred and fifty years of US history, these
are the only two times we know of that a
woman has tried to assassinate a sitting president.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
The two events were separated by seventeen days, in less
than ninety miles, and the two assassins had never met.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
She is twenty six year old Lynette Alice from nickname Squeaky.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
I always felt like Glynnette was kind of his right
hand woman, a.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Good curtain, a very good person. The other a middle
aged housewife, an aspiring radical, rookie undercover for the FBI
in the Violent Revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Underground, identified by police Sarah Jane Moore in her forties.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Because she didn't look like a radical, she could enter
into these areas that other people couldn't.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
A spy.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Basically, I was the person in the intent was exactly
as I stated in court, to wealthily and know any assassinator.
On Off four, the Persson of in United States.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
This season, on the podcast Rip Current, we ask why
these women? She was a gentle client.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I thought he's loving girl.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Why did they want to kill President Ford, being the
appointee of President Nixon, it's understandable to me that in
their minds he should also be the object of their hatred.
And why this time, this place.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
One does not have to condone everything in hate Ashbury
to know that it exists.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Back then, there were lots of communes, There were lots
of guru varieties.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Manson told his followers that this would be a blood
bath in the streets of every American city. What starts
as a hippie love called transmographied into a violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Five persons, including actress Sharon Tape, were found dead.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We realize that we're dealing with very violent underground groups.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Or corporate enemies of the people. Will be shut on
at any time and any play.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
The goals were anarchy, a lot of anarchy.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
The revolutionary groups would get their power.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
The bloodiest and most massive gun battle in the history
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Random violence, political violence. There was just no let up.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yes to the fact that insect the praise to find
the life of the people.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
These people aren't just a bunch of nuts. They're perfectly
willing to die for what they're doing. Someplace else that
would have been like a big deal, but not in California.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
The story of one strange and violent Summer this season
on Rip Current.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So tell me what drew you to this particular story.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I was doing some research.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I wanted to do something about, you know, radicalism. I
was looking at the nineteen seventies. I was doing a
lot of research, and I ran across the story of
Sarah Jane Moore, who I'm sure we're about to talk
more about. She's just a very interesting story. And then
(07:05):
doing that research, found out that she was actually the
second person to try and assassinate Gerald Ford in September
of nineteen seventy five, and the first person was a
woman named Lynette From, better known as Squeaky From, who
is one of Charles Manson's followers. And in fact, those
(07:27):
are the only two women who have ever tried to
assassinate a sitting US president as far as we know.
So starting with that seemed like a quirk of history.
So started doing some more research into them and trying
to find out are there commonalities between their two stories,
like why in two hundred and fifty years of US
(07:50):
history are there only two times that a woman has
tried to assassinate a president and why was it seventeen
days apart in September of nineteen seventy So I had
sort of these questions. I wasn't sure if there was
going to be sort of a satisfactory answer, right. It
could just be a complete quirk, or one could have
(08:10):
been inspired by the other. But the more I kind
of dug into it, the more sort of pattern sort
of emerged in things commonalities you could find. Even though
it wasn't they didn't follow exactly the same path, there
was enough that was common in their situations, and then
also some other people who are sort of tangentially involved
(08:33):
in the story.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So one of the things that really has stood out
to me in the episodes that I've listened to, which
are the ones that are publicly available as of when
we are recording this, is that you have really gone
deep into the background on both of them. So the
first several episodes we've got a lot of context setting
about the Manson family to give all the detail of
(08:57):
sort of how Lynette from got to where she was.
Same thing with the episodes that get into the background
involving things like the Symbonese Liberation Army and the SLA
kidnapping of Patty Hurst, kind of telling the story of
how Sarah Jane Moore got to where she was. How
(09:19):
did you decide how much background you wanted to include
on these two women and the other organizations and other
movements that they were connected to.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
That's actually the stuff that I found most interesting when
I was doing the research. I sort of feel like
my sort of modus opera anddi is you know what
am I finding really interesting? And can I sort of
maximize that as I'm telling the story? And in fact,
the actual assassination attempts themselves are interesting, and especially Sarah
(09:52):
Jane moorees is sort of suspenseful, but that's just a
very small part of the story. The the real story
to me is how did they get to this point?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
And then by going through the research, I sort of
developed this theory is probably too strong a word, but
sort of recognized sort of this pattern that was occurring
with them, and I wanted to kind of demonstrate how,
despite the fact that their lives were quite different in
a lot of ways, and especially the details they sort
(10:25):
of unfolded in a sort of generally similar way, and
that that might in some way have led them to
taking this sort of very strong, probably irrational action, which
is trying to kill the president. So as far as
(10:45):
Lynette from goes, you know, her story is really about
being with Charles Manson, and then when Charles Manson goes
to prison, she still remains sort of very devoted to him,
and so she tries to help help him while she's
outside and he's inside prison, and she's in this very
(11:07):
strange situation where she's famous. You know, people know who
she is, but that doesn't really help her in a way.
It actually hinders her, Like nobody's going to hire her
to work. She really lives on the fringes up until
the time that she takes a shot at Ford.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
With Sara Jane Moore.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know, the sort of the crux of her story
in my mind is this is a woman who's lived
this this fairly. You know, from a distance, looks very
conventional life of she She was married and divorced several times,
but you know, she was married to a couple of
military men, she was married to a Hollywood sound designer,
(11:52):
she was married to a doctor.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
So this was kind of her life beforehand.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And then she goes through a series of events having
to do with Patty Hursts kidnapping. She becomes an underground
informant for the FBI in the radical scene in the
Bay Area in nineteen seventy four. In nineteen seventy five,
so she goes from this very well off, conventional lifestyle
(12:21):
to suddenly being in the midst of really the furthest
reaches of you know, violent radical groups. And so that
was why sort of diving into the Simbonese Liberation Army,
we probably haven't gotten to Tribal Thumb yet, no, or
(12:41):
some of these other smaller groups that she interacts with,
and her story is really one of feeling increasing pressure
on her, feeling increasingly in danger as the months go
on and.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
She gets further and further sort of ensconced in this
app misphere.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So some of it's set up to sort of tell
these stories, but it's also I just found it really
interesting in and of itself, especially Bay Area middle seventies.
It's sort of the last vestiges of sixties radicalism, and
you have these very small groups with these very big
(13:23):
plans about overthrowing the government, but without really.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Much of a plan to do it.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I mean, I don't know how you overthrow the government
with twelve or fifteen you know people. So anyway, that
was kind of what I thought was really interesting and
might have some parallels to stuff that's going on now.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, and you also talk a lot about like the
idea of Middle America and how Middle America was responding
to what was happening with all the radicals in the
Bay Area and the climate, like the political climate of
the day, which that's the year that I was born,
So I have no memory of it personally, but there
are definitely elements of it that I'm like, this feels
(14:09):
very comparable to things that happen now regarding sort of
what you think of as the mainstream reacting to what
the mainstream considers to be a fringe element, with some
of those fringe elements later becoming like more of a
mainstream thought. Like some of the things that were that
you talked about in terms of Squeaky From's activism were
(14:32):
about climate and what was happening to the planet. And
I think the perception of people who are looking at
the climate in nineteen seventy five versus today, Like there
are some parallels and some dissimilarities, and so I thought
those were all really interesting things. To talk about in
your show.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Also, Yeah, So it's funny because when Lynette from and
her sort of best friend, this woman Sandra Good, who
is also a Manson follower, moved to Sacramento, they catch
this sort of environmentalism bug. But the way, the way,
(15:11):
you know, two former Manson girls approach environmentalism is to
send threatening letters to CEOs of companies and government officials
who oversee the maintenance of you know, wilderness areas, particularly
in California. So so, yeah, so they become very concerned.
(15:34):
They're they're both sort of interacting with the local press.
Instead of giving them press releases, they send these threatening letters.
At the time, Lynette and Sandra are sort of dressing
in these weird outfits, which are sort of these long
gowns with these I don't know how to describe them
(15:56):
other than as sort of like deflated witches hats, where
they would be like tall coned hats, except there's nothing
holding the cone up, so it just kind of flops
over to the side.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
And Lynette would wear red and Sandra.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Would wear blue, and they, you know, even in nineteen
seventy four, nineteen seventy five, they look very distinct They
don't look like anybody else, And at one point they
go to San Francisco and they go to Berkeley and
they go to the offices of CEOs and try and
get meetings with them dressed like this. I mean, it's
(16:33):
very it's very strange, and I think, you know, people
didn't know really what to make of it and whether
to take them seriously. After Lynette gets tries to shoot
forward and gets arrested, Sandra Good ends up being interviewed
quite a bit, and she's talking about how they're part
(16:57):
of this organization which is completely faittional, called the International
People's Court of Retribution, that was going to carry out,
you know, hundreds of assassinations around the world to save
the environment. So it's really it's pretty it's pretty strange,
crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, listening to the like audio from interviews where she
is being asked one question and the answers are not
answers to that question. They are answers about the environment
and what's happening to the planet. And the whole time
I was I was like, this is this is wild,
Like it goes much farther than hearing somebody spin an
(17:39):
answer into the direction. It's just answering a totally different question.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It just very aggressively. Yeah, right, she's just very antagonistic.
In one of the episodes, we play sort of sort
of an extended bit of an interview that Sandra does
just a few days after the assassination attempts with the
Canadian Broadcasting Company with this very sort of nice professional
reporter and Sandra just, you know, she's just clearly so
(18:10):
angry and she just wants to sort of take a
bite out of this woman who's trying to get sort
of the information that you'd expect a reporter to get,
and Sandra just doesn't have any time for it.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, So your podcast, rip Current is radically different from
Stuffy miss In history class, we have a show. It's
Holly and me most of the time. Sometimes we have
(18:43):
a guest, but like it's each of us. We're talking
into the microphone and we are usually telling a pretty
linear story that has a beginning, in a middle, an
end in most cases, and rip Current is very different.
You've got all of these interviews and clips of audio
or you know, the audio from video footage from the time,
(19:05):
and in some cases reenactments tell me more about the
process of what it takes to go through all of
that and put it together into an episode of a podcast.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's an interesting question the way it worked. I guess
it's worked with all the sort of podcasts like this
I've done limited series. It's really I do a lot
of research before I even start working on scripts and
things like that, and so it's some of it's sort
of what you would consider I think, more traditional research.
(19:37):
I go through newspapers, you know, that were current at
the time, books that have been written about the subjects,
court documents, things like that, and then I try and
identify people who would have some insight or some firsthand knowledge.
(19:58):
So in the case of rip Current, especially about Lynette
from there's been a bunch of books written about her
and and and you know, Charles Manson that whole thing. So,
you know, identifying authors who I could talk to either
generally about what was happening in her life or sort
of about specific little bits. And so there's a there's
(20:18):
a there's a bunch of author interviews, and then as
far as sourcing sort of archival audio, you know, it's
it's just a lot of web searching. To be honest
with you, it's you know, it's finding what's what's available
out there. As I kind of went through the process,
I got a little bit better about finding where things
(20:41):
might be. You know, there are universities that have, you know,
collections of local news broadcasts at times. San Francisco State
University is a place that I got a lot of
stuff from some state history museums. Archive dot org, which,
as we're recording, has has been taken down.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Upset about a little bit.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, No, we just talked about it in our behind
the scenes that I oh you did. Yeah, I think
it will. It will have come out before this episode
comes out because of that. Archive dot organ is a
major part of our research.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Also, Yeah, hopefully that comes back up. I think there's
a lot of podcasts who are sweating it out.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So you know, I've spent I spent a lot of
time listening to three hours of a pacifica radio broadcast
from nineteen seventy five to try and find little clips
that are contemporaneous about the events that I'm covering, or
about some of the people, or or sort of explaining
(21:41):
how things were thought of at the time that we're
talking about. So I guess that's kind of the process
and then I end up I do. I'm kind of
old school in the way. I mean, people aren't gonna
be able to see it, but I'm holding out. I
use these, uh, I use index cards, and I take
notes on index cards and then sort them into piles
(22:02):
about which notes go with which episode. And then it's
I take from transcripts of interviews, transcripts from audio notes
I've taken from written sources, and kind of sort of
placement in order that seems to make sense in a script,
and then write narrative to kind of tie everything together
and explain the things I want to explain and set
(22:25):
things up. So that's that's kind of the process. I've
never really tried to explain it before, actually, but I
think that's kind of what I go through.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Index cards sorted into piles was my way of structuring
writing for a long time before before like word processing
software really got to the point that you could just
move things around with the mouse, which has become how
I do that kind of a thing now. So, yeah,
that's a blast of nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yes, I've got colored note cards too. Yeah, there's green
for one thing, pink for another, orange for another. Na
it's definitely sort of seventh grade stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So like, how many people does it take to then
craft that into an episode of the podcast? Because I
know there are three producers from iHeart that are credited
on the podcast, but I don't have a sense of
like what each of them do on the show.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Sure, So so I read all the scripts, I record
voiceover and send it to them, and then there's an
executive producer and then three other producers, and so there's
a couple of rounds of putting things together. That's what
they call the dry pass or the dry cut, which
(23:40):
is without any sort of sound design behind it. It's
just each piece of spoken or archival audio, you know,
place in the right places, and you kind of listen
and you say, you know, separate these a little bit.
This looked great on paper, doesn't sound so good when
you're listening.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
To it on tape.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And then the second past is where they take the
musical score or if you're going to add sort of
you know, sound effects, which we don't really do very much,
and you add that in to sort of create the
tone and feel of the program.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
You know, add you know.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Suspenseful music where it should be, propulsive music where it
should be things like that, and that's each of the
three producers would kind of take there's gonna be twelve
episodes and then seven, I guess bonus episodes. So they
get split up among the producers and they take a
certain amount, so they're so responsible for both mixes, and
(24:41):
then they pass it on to an executive producer who
does sort of the final mix and quality assurance and
all that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
One of the things that you encountered while working on
this was a news organization that did not allow footage
of the reporters to be reused. Can you tell me
a little bit about that and how you wound up
recording instead re enactments of that.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
One of the television stations in Sacramento, which is owned
by a huge news organization.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
They you know, you can find on.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
YouTube if you just search on Squeaky from Ford Assassination,
news coverage or whatever, you can find it all on YouTube.
But they don't they don't license if any of their
actual reporters are talking. And they had this really really
interesting piece of a reporter who goes to when Lynette
(25:40):
from and Sandra Good moved to Sacramento and it becomes known,
she's like, well, I'll just go and see what they're
up to. So she goes to their house and sort
of interviews them and stuff. You don't see that, but
after the after the assassination attempt, she's on the set
of the newscast and she just kind of talked about
her experience going in there and what they were like,
(26:03):
and what their apartment was like and stuff like that,
but in a very sort of conversational, not very newsy way.
And you know, when we were putting together an early
version of the episode, we cut the stuff we wanted
in there to see how it sounded. Sounded sounded great,
but you know, through multiple email exchanges, yeah, the you know,
(26:26):
the parent company was just not going to budge. So
it kind of it came down to we were trying
to figure out is this something that we can just
let let go? But we thought it was. It really
gave the best picture of what Lynnette's life was like
at the time, right before she made the assassination attempt.
(26:48):
So then it was do we want me just sort
of summarizing what she said as as sort of the
omniscient narrator, or do we want to.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Bring in an actor just sort of you.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Know, basically read from the transcript, you know, but in
a way that it's a little more immersive than my
like struggling not to do a monotone.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And so that's what we ended up doing.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
And it kind of felt like as long as we're
upfront about the fact that this isn't actually that piece
of footage, but that we have an actor reading from
the transcript, and that we're doing it for this reason,
which is we can't get the rights, but we still
feel like it's important.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, So that was just that was sort of the
process there. It was. It's frustrating.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's always kind of interesting what rights you can get
and what rights you can't, because it's not always intuitive.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I wonder if that had anything to do with like
likeness rights for the reporter, and whether it just wasn't
something somebody foresaw in that reporter's contract in nineteen seventy
five that one day there might be a podcast want
to use the audio for something. That's the explanation I
(28:02):
can think of. Anyway, let's take one more quick break
and then we'll be back to talk a little bit
more about the show. So earlier today I was listening
to the seventh episode of the podcast, and there was
(28:27):
an incident in which Sarah Jane Moore what did not
have ID with her, but did have several pictures of herself.
And it's obvious from the you know, the context the
description of that that at the time that was weird
to not have your ID and also to have several
pictures of yourself just on you. And what really hit
(28:49):
me in that moment was that today a lot of
us are walking around with a phone full of selfies.
It's very normal to just have a bunch of pictures
of yourself on you at all times. Are there things
that similarly really stuck out to you in terms of
differences in day to day living between what was happening
in this period that you are, you know, reporting on
(29:11):
on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And now that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I guess what kind of struck me is how much
more connected we are, or potentially connected we are with
everybody all the time that we want to talk to
now that everybody's walking around with cell phones because a
fair amount of you know, what's going on in San
Francisco at the time. Sometimes a communication is done like
(29:38):
literally through the letters page of a newspaper. Right there's
no way to get a message to somebody physically. When
everybody's underground and people are suspicious of each other and
they think there may be FBI plants and stuff, it's
only communication becomes very, very difficult. So that was one thing.
(30:03):
It's a really interesting question, you know. I just kind
of feel like now, like somebody like Lynette from.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Would be.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In the news on cable TV all the time if
she had been involved in something. I mean, she wasn't
amongst the people who committed the Charles Manson associated murders,
but she's a very well known, high profile member of
his group.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And the idea that.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
You know, she basically goes off the grid, like people
don't really know much about what's going on with her,
and she's kind of involved in these sort of sketchy dealings,
and every once in a while she'll kind of pop
up in the newspaper for something that she's she's involved in,
but for the most part, she just kind of lives
her life and there's no there's One of the controversies
(30:57):
that comes out of her assassination attempt is that there
wasn't any real security that she wasn't considered a security risk, right,
so she wasn't put under surveillance people didn't really know
where she was. I mean, she wasn't trying to hide,
like she showed up dressed in her red gown and
funny red hat, and I mean she stuck out. Like
(31:18):
if you look in the crowd in some of these pictures,
it's like, oh, who's that And it's still that from
and she's the one who's gonna pull the trigger. But
the just you know, the heightened security awareness just kind
of wasn't there. You know, there's that, and then there's
just the general sense at that time in California of
(31:40):
the potential for violence. I don't think we've gotten to
it yet in what's been released so far, but San
Francisco was a very, very sort of violent city at
that period of time, both because of radical groups, but
just i you know, not coincidentally necessarily, but unconnected is
(32:04):
when the Zodiac murders were going on, thing called the
Zebra murders, which were these apparently random didn't turn out
to be random murders that were being committed on the street.
There was a lot of sort of anti police sentiment
going around, and then Patty Hurst was missing, and that
(32:25):
is sort of the thing that hangs over everything to
do with Sarah Jane Moore and sort of the radical
scene in the Bay Area is that this you know,
this Hurst heiress is missing and it's sort of the
biggest story in the country is like can we find her?
And all these groups that Sarah Jane Moore is associating
(32:47):
with are, at least in the eyes of sort of
the establishments or of law enforcement and journalism and it's such,
are connected to the Simbonese Liberation Army, which is the
group that has Patty Hurst. So they're under surveillance, the
police raid places associated with journalists, get in touch with
(33:08):
members of these groups, against touch with Sarah Jane Moore
to see if she can provide information on where Patty
Hurst is. So I guess I guess those were the
things that kind of kind of stood out to me.
But again, I'm you know, I'm looking at this fairly
narrow slice of sort of people living in sort of
one extreme situation compared to to most of what was
(33:32):
going on in America.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So beyond that sort of then versus now things that
are different. What really surprised you as you were researching
and working on this show?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So what I kind of came around to really focusing
on was this idea that if you live sort of
a conventional life and then under duress, are soddenly given
this whole new way of looking at things. In a
situation where you're probably in danger, it happens very very fast.
(34:10):
You don't really have sort of outside moderating influences around you,
and what happens to somebody. And so that's what happened
with Lynette from I mean, she essentially got kicked out
of her house and left and very quickly ran into
Charles Manson and jumped in his van and was part
(34:30):
of his group. Sarah Jane Moore like volunteered for this
thing that was associated with trying to get Patty Hurst released,
met up with these sort of Marxist prison radicals or
former prison radicals. The FBI told her to go underground,
so she became radicalized while she was in these groups,
(34:55):
Like she considered herself sort of a revolutionary. After amount
of time, she felt like her eyes had been open
to the plight of black people at that time that
she hadn't really taken in and she was given sort
of a framework with which to look at it. Both
as it was and what could be done about it.
(35:16):
She became she considered herself a Marxist or a Maoist,
and then Patty Hurst herself. I mean, she was put
in a closet for six weeks and sort of pilloried
with the beliefs of the Siminese Liberation Army, which were
sort of a combination of sort of typical revolutionary Maoist
(35:37):
ideas and then this other really bizarre sort of conspiracy stuff.
But when she was finally given some freedom, she whether
it was a conscious decision or whether it was sort
of course of control, joined her captors right and she
went in. She helped rob a bank. There's famous picture
(35:58):
of her holding a a gun. So that was that
was what I found really interesting was sort of that
dynamic and how these people changed. They start off as
one thing, went through this process of just rapid, sort
of under pressure change, and came out as people who
(36:19):
were willing to do things that you never would have
imagined them being involved in prior to that change.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
There is so much in the you know, the episodes
that I've listened to so far, so much little details
that I really did not know that nineteen seventy five
is a little more recent than what we normally talk
about on our podcast. So it's because it's also a
period where my life started was not a period when,
(36:48):
like my school classes did not talk about the history
from nineteen seventy five and later really at all until
I got to college, and even then it was just
the sketchiest little amount, So I did not know much
detail about a lot of what was happening that you
talk about in the podcast. So it's been all very
interesting to listen to you. I am hoping to keep
(37:12):
on top of it. I tend to get very behind
in my podcast listening very quickly, so as the subsequent
episodes come out, there will be more of them out
by the time this interview comes out for our listeners
than there are right now, so I am looking forward
to listening to them. Is there anything that you think
our listeners should absolutely know, either about this podcast or
(37:33):
about your work in general, Like, what is there any
particular thing that just folks you want them to be
aware of or have in mind?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's another good question that I probably should have some
thought too before we started this, because I ask it
of people myself. It's not an original thought, but I
think being able to look at sort of analogous or
somewhat analogous times in history. And for me, it's not
(38:03):
even necessarily what people do, but kind of the way
they conceive of the situation that they're in and what
sort of the possibilities are and what's realistic and what's
not realistic. I mean, I think one of the things
I found interesting, and I think this is true of
the late sixties or maybe even all the sixties as well,
(38:25):
is this idea that you can take a look at
at at our society and think about making major major changes, right.
And I think that's you know, that's it probably started
with the civil rights movement and then people said, well,
what else is out there that can make our country,
you know, fundamentally fairer or more in line with what
(38:47):
I believe.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And the thoughts were big.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
The thoughts weren't, you know, we let's mess with the
tax code a little bit. It's you know, or do
things like that. It was really like, can we remake
our country in a way that sort of is more
aligned with what we feel it should be like. And
by the time we kind of jump into it in
nineteen seventy four nineteen seventy five, in sort of the
(39:12):
radical scene. I mean, it's really kind of tailing off,
so the people who are left, it's really sort of
the most radical people and there's just not many people
out there. But I do spend some time talking about
you know, prison revolutionaries in California, which I think is
(39:33):
you know, the more I learned about that, I was like, oh,
I could have just done a podcast on this, because
there was a sense that, especially for you know, black
men and Latinos and Native Americans as well, that prison
is sort of an extreme example of what society is
(39:55):
actually like, and so that you know, you you become
radicalized and become a revolutionary in prison. And the idea
is that is when you're released, you can bring the
fight against the same sort of inequalities and oppressive systems
that are very clear in prison, where you have warden
and you have guards, and you have you know, things
(40:17):
that you can and can't do, and then you go
out into the world outside prison and you see the
same structures and you know you want to address them.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And that was how.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Groups like the Siminese Liberation Army or or Tribal Thumb,
which there'll be stuff on them a little bit later
in the season, they're they're really they're run by by
guys who are prison revolutionaries, black men who come out
and get largely young white, sort of college age radicals
to kind of fall along with them, and they sort
(40:53):
of take in this this way of looking at our society, right,
is that it's it sort of the prison system and
who has possibilities and things like that.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
So it's like a lot of words that I just said,
we're just saying that.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I just and I'm certainly not advocating for anything that
any of these people did in the podcast, because you know,
assassinating the president.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I mean, these are violent groups that they sort of
no hope.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
But I think the idea of, you know, looking at
society in a way of can we make big changes
to make things better for people? I guess that might
have been actually the sort of the what makes me
interested in that era is that it just seemed like
there was just a lot more sort of big thinking
(41:42):
about those things. And sometimes the big thinking ended up
in the civil rights movement with its like absolutely positive outcomes,
and then sometimes it's the weathermen or something who just
sort of had this neilistic view about how you go
about affecting that change.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So do you already know what your next project is
after this one or are you just trying to get
this one out for everyone to hear.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
So, Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned that I
was actually just working on a proposal for the next project,
and it's in it's sort of a similar vein of
taking a look at another movement that was trying to
make significant change, sort of against the tide of sort
(42:31):
of public sentiment, which, in hindsight, in this particular case
i'm looking at right now, I think it's kind of
been born out that people should have listened, right. But yeah,
so I'm sort of keeping with this sort of radical
thought and action and trying to create a big difference,
even in a way in this way it's I think
(42:52):
a little bit less misguided, but the same sort of
think big I guess is how to summarize it.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, Well, thank you so much for taking the time
to talk to me today.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Most of the episodes of this season of Rip Current
will be out by the time this episode airs, so
listeners you can go find all of this to listen
to in the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you like.
To get your podcast, and you'll still have I think
two or three more episodes to look forward to that
will be coming out after this one airs, but plenty
to catch up on if you have not already. Thanks
(43:29):
so much to Toby for talking to me. Rip Current
is also co hosted by Mary Catherine Garrison, who played
Squeaky from in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins.
New episodes of rip Current come out on Thursdays on
the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
your podcasts. The whole entire limited series will be available
(43:54):
just within a couple of weeks from when this episode
is coming out. Now, do you have some listeners? I
do have some listener mail. This is from a net
and a net wrote to us with an update about
William marsh Rice, who if you do not remember, we
did an episode about the death of William marsh Rice
(44:15):
a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about a
statue of him that was on the campus at Rice University,
which is named for him. So Annett wrote, Hello, Holly
and Tracy. A couple of years ago, I wrote to
tell you that Rice University Task Force on slavery, segregation,
and racial injustice had been charged with, among many other things,
(44:35):
deciding what to do with the statue of founder William
Marsh Rice that was located central to the main campus quadrangle.
They announced in February twenty twenty two that the statue
would be moved to the perimeter of the quadrangle as
part of a design overhaul. In September twenty twenty four,
the academic Quadrangle was reopened after about sixteen months of construction.
(44:59):
The statue was now in a corner of the quadrangle,
near the first building on campus, love It Hall and
the Welcome Center, and the newest building on the quad
Sewell Hall. As the landscape architect said and their rededication ceremony,
William Marsh Rice is essential to the Rice story, but
not central to it. Rice's remains were reinterred in the
(45:20):
Rice family plot at Glenwood Cemetery, a historic Houston cemetery.
The statue was now at ground level rather than elevated
on a high plinth. There's a sign with a QR
code that links to information about Rice, including his connections
to slavery. Unfortunately, it feels a bit labyrinthin even using
the QR code to get to the document that acknowledges
(45:40):
Rice as an enslaver. The platform on which the plinth
statue was on has been incorporated into the quad redesign
as sort of a speaker's corner near the center of
the quadrangle by the platform is a quote from when
John F. Kennedy gave his We chose to go to
the Moon's speech on the Rice campus in nineteen sixty two.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a
(46:03):
city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength,
and we stand in need of all three sea attached photos.
There are also some links about the redesign of the quad,
and Nett talks about being an alumnus of Rice and
one of the many things about this whole thing, meaning
that there will now be green space around the quad
(46:25):
so that it will not be a heat island as
it has been previously. A net for pet tax Attached
photos of Swirl, our border collie mix who crossed the
Rainbow Bridge sometime ago, and a pet portrait that was
commissioned for them, which is very sweet. So yes, I've
got some pictures here that I'm looking at that sort
(46:45):
of show where the new location of the statue is,
as well as the plinth that it used to stand on,
and all what a sweet puppy dog and I love
this pet portrait. It was commissioned from a photo. There's
also a paw print impression, so sweet. Thank you so
much ANT for this and for forwarding along to your
(47:08):
earlier email as part of it. I had not really
kept up with any of the developments in that since
we had done that episode a while back, so thank
you so much for that. If you would like to
send us a note about this or any other podcasts
where History podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else
(47:30):
you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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