My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 211 - It Was My Birthday, Forensic Files!

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

Karen and Georgia cover the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 and the Tulsa race massacre.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. Welcome. Welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstar. That's Karen Kilgariff. It should be clear. Everything's the same and everything's different right now with this week. Yes.

Name five examples of which one different from whatever you're talking about. Well, for example, first of all, oh, well, for example, I can't name something. We're living in a world now. This is different. We're new episodes of Forensic Files. This sounds like a commercial, but it's not. Right. This is just from the heart.

It's from the heart. This is going straight out to you from us. That's right. Forensic Files 2, Electric Boogaloo is out now on HLN. That's right. We are not being paid to do this. We are not. We should.

No, we have been paid to do it. Yes. We've done commercials. We have, but we also, we're living it. As they should pay us to, I mean, we're like Kendall Jenner and Pepsi where we're just living it. We're not just talking about it. Yeah.

We are aspirational television. Thank you. Watchers. Whoo. Did you see it? Yeah. How was it? It's good.

It's got some fat from like the, which I like. I love fat. Oh, you do? Oh, yeah. In a good way though, where it's not like they take you for, you know, granted. Nobody likes when forensic files take you for granted. It was my birthday, Forensic Files. You just shit all over it.

How dare you? How dare you ruin another birthday? You said it would be different this time around. You said it would be different. You had no examples of how different it was going to be. You said it would be electric and there'd be a boogaloo and there's neither. Wow. We're off to a start.

So kind of more concise. Yeah. I'll say that. All right. Confidently. But still doing the same thing. Like when I go to bed tonight, I can throw that on. Absolutely.

And just be rocked to sleep. It felt weird watching it on the couch because I feel like I usually watch it in the hotel room. In a nice big fat bed. Yeah. It's almost like maybe we should get it. I'm really anti-TV in bedroom and I was like, maybe we do need one just to watch Forensic Files.

I wonder if that's because you read the same Feng Shui book I did in like 2008. No, it just makes me sad. Oh, okay. Yeah. Too hospitally. Too like dating a guy with a mattress on the floor and we have to watch it in his room because his roommates are out or he lives with his parents, let's say. Sure.

You know, it's that scene. He's constantly going, turn it down, my dad's going to get mad or he then turns it too loud and falls asleep. But then if you try to turn it off, he's like, oh, is he watching that? You woke me up. Yeah. That for some reason reminds me of the one time in my terrible 20s. Still drinking.

So I must, I was under 27 and I would guess I was 25. Okay. I had a party at my house. Terrible age. Terrible. Terrible time to be alive. Really difficult. Especially when you're taking speed.

Everything's going too fast. And I we had a party at my house and I was so kind of wired that I couldn't really get anything done. Like I remember just going in and putting on my scarf for literally an hour. Yeah. Like I couldn't, I couldn't do forward motion and you couldn't do next step. No. I was like caught up, very nervous, very like who's going to come and I was excited because

this person was going to be there. And when I went to clean my room, which was like the last thing I did, I just picked up all the clothes on the floor, which there were plenty because I had a shopping addiction at the time to replace my food addiction that had been supplemented by my speed addiction. You got to supplement. You're okay. Right. If you don't, if you're not working on one actively, move on to the other ones.

There's plenty of substances to abuse. I took all the clothes on my floor, threw them in the closet and it made a stack that was literally four feet high of a, like a solid mass of clothes. And then I just shut the door. Get off, smell like cigarettes too, I imagine everything smells like cigarettes. Everything smelled like cigarettes. Yeah, our clothes. It was like mid 90s.

Yeah. Everything smelled like nirvana and depression and kind of commercialized depression. So at one point during the party, everyone was in my room and I was like, this is the life. I'm so popular like having literally there's like acoustic guitar guy playing the guitar on the floor. My friend, Danny. Shout out Wisconsin and my friend Laura Milligan gets up to fucking leave and she opens the

closet door. She had hidden her purse in my closet, even though it was a party filled with people she knew. Oh no, I got it. I'm there. She threw her purse in my closet. So in front of everyone opens the closet door to the wall of laundry, picks up her purse off the top of it and then it's like, bye, I'll talk to you later and I was just like

something like, I'm going to kill you. It was so hilarious that you were humiliating. How did their rooms look like? Those people there. True. That's what made me think of it. It was like such a, that time is such a time of undone laundry, which is the grossest way to live.

I'm still there because I think my garage is haunted and I don't like going in there. So I'm just kind of like, oh, do laundry when Vince gets home because I don't want to go in there a lot. Yeah, that's, well, garages are kind of creepy and dark. Do you not have good lighting out there? No, it's an old like grand, like original LA grandma. Like it hasn't been touched since the 40s, except by like motor oil and like every kind of paint that's ever been used in the house from the since the 1940s is in there.

In its bucket, right? In its bucket. It's just piled up. And it says like what room it was. It's just like, it's scary. Yes. It's ancient. It's ancient.

I guess, I guess you can fix stuff like that. I don't know. I mean, I, we could go over there and we can put up some posters, black light posters. Yep. Do you want to get that thing of a thing? Yeah. It'll be our hangout. Come on.

Let's sing out in the garage. We're going to turn it into your she shed. Vince and I will do garage beers sometimes and it's pretty legit. That's fun. We'll open the garage. He bought us both camping chairs and we just sit out there and you got a refrigerator for the garage, which is something homeowners do that I had never experienced. Right.

And we just sit and drink MGD and like the neighbors walk by and they're like, they must be Airbnb because these people better not live in our neighborhood. And we're like, what's up? Garage beers is really making my heart grow to three times larger. Garage beers. That's called relationship goals. Yeah. Hell yes.

And we have a perfectly nice deck with a view. We sit in the f**king messy old f**king cob spider webs everywhere. Yes. You're making it your own. Trash. There's trash. It's for traffic. Okay.

So, I think it was, what was the one where everyone can confronts people about their addictions? Oh. Intervention. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I was obsessed. Did you ever see the one, the lady that was addicted to pills and she would sit in the garage in her house smoking, chain smoking because she wasn't allowed to stay inside

the house? Right. So, why even come in the house? So, literally she was only ever out sitting in this lawn chair in the garage and her children would come out to talk to her and her one son was like super kind of weepy all the time just because his mom was never inside the house and they finally got her to go to rehab. Yes. The thing I don't...

Yeah. I love that show. It's such a good show and it's that thing where that's how it is, especially these days with pills and as we've all learned with the f**king oxycontin, like deluge on this country, it's so easy to get pills and to live in a pill world. And to be like, they're prescribed to me. Yes. You know, like I'm allowed to take these, which I get, I have f**king crazy back pain.

Sure. And also, you need solutions for immediate awful problems and then when they turn into other problems, you just start adapting. She was... I identified with her so much of like, I just need to do this one thing and then she couldn't get out of that chair. Yeah. Amazing.

It's... Yeah. Garage beers is the polar opposite. Yeah. It's an energy. That's right. Sorry. I brought it up.

No, it's good. Speaking of, I don't know, clothes. Clothes. In your closet. They put in your closet. That's right. Smell like cigarettes. Sure.

We're having a 50% off lots of merch sale. Because it all smells like cigarettes. Yeah. We accidentally smoked in the warehouse, but there's just like a s**t and it's like, there's shirts that are 15 bucks, there's like everything's on, like a lot of great stuff's on sale. Perfect. So, go to my favoritemurder.com, just go to the shop. Go there and get the stuff and then we'll make new stuff and you can have the other

stuff and it'll be a continuous cycle. It's to make room for new merch that we're gonna create, which is exciting. So, that's if you feel like doing that, do it. It's not, you know, it's your world. Hey, hey man. Hey man. It's chill. Peace.

Whatever. Peace. Peace and stuff. I have this tweet here from a listener named Chelsea Sanders at Kali Blair on Twitter. She wrote in, my favorite murder. I made Steven's mug. Oh. I'm just using it again.

Mr. Jody Arias mug. Mr. Jody Arias mug. I was appearing on Mother May I Sleep with podcast and I wanted to bring gifts. It's a straight up Sharpie. It is straight up Sharpie, but then baked, so it'll last. Amazing. Glad it made its way over to exactly right and Karen Kulgarov. Oh, and then here's a follow up tweet.

Also on a weird coincidence, I was also an extra in sleepover like Georgia Heartstark, which I mentioned in my episode of Mother May I Sleep with podcast. So that's your new best friend. Say her name again. Chelsea at Kali Blair. Thanks Kali Blair. I love that we found the person who made this with a Sharpie. So good.

Great design. Good job. Work. What else? Lots of people telling me about the musical. Right. Jesus. Fucking crap.

Thank you guys. Great. Thank you. Check the comments. We love to know this information. Once. I like to know at 15,000. Oh.

There's a musical called Parade, it's beautiful, there's songs in it. It's about Leo Frank's death and about Mary Fagan's murder and Leo Frank's murder. And I guess now we have to, they have to restage it on Broadway. We need to go see it. But people were, the people who wrote in who clearly are musical errinos, really raved about how beautiful the music is. I want to see it. I'll see it.

I swear. And then many other people for the follow up, a pencil passion. Oh yeah. It reminded me that Blackwing pencils are the best there are and I do have some. Wow. I just couldn't remember the name while we were talking about them. This is a world that I didn't know about. I know.

Like that was a thing. If you would ask me what kind of pencil I'd like, I'd say number two. Right. I don't, there's no mechanical, I like mechanical pencil. You know, mechanical is a great choice though. Yeah. Because you don't need a sharpener. Yeah.

And the, and if you throw a lot of stuff in your purse, if it breaks, you just have a new pencil. Yeah. I love it. Mechanics have it right. And you're a mechanic at heart. That's right. Oh, and also just, we announced last week that our friend and co-worker, Bridger Weineger,

his new podcast, I said no gifts. Gifts, you guys. It sounds like we're saying gifts, like G-I-F, but it's gifts. Yeah. No one talks like that though. So if you can't put together the sentence, I said no gifts and not know that the word we're saying is not gifts, I said no gifts. Stop it.

For a vocal podcast. Stop being fucking 19, please, as a favor to me. Okay. Your favorite 68-year-old. I said no gift. The trailer is up on iTunes and everywhere you find your podcasts and you can listen to a sample of it and go subscribe and let's get those numbers up. Apparently numbers are the big thing on the iTunes charts.

What? It's all about the numbers. Cool. So let's play the numbers game, everybody. Look, we're not all about math. Like, that's not our thing. No. Just the pencils.

Yeah. So we're not even paying attention. No. We're more about spirituality. Yeah. Spiritual numbers. Yeah. Let's get those up.

I'm a 10 spiritually. I'm a diamond spiritually. Crystal. I'm a crystal. I'm platinum card member, a Buddhist. Cool. That's all on my list. Is that it?

I think so. My therapist has a podcast now, don't know how to do like that. No, you have to go to a second therapist about the first therapist podcast. Exactly. Is that real? Yeah. And it's good. I mean, it's, yeah, it's called your mental breakdown and it's good.

Check it out. Just a rave endorsement. It's just weird. I don't know if it's like, if it's like against protocol for me to plug something that my therapist does out. She keeps giving examples. She's like, I have this one girl brown hair in her mid to late 30s. Oh, she, well, it's mine and Vince's therapist.

So that's like a different thing. Right. Cause it's mostly his fault. Yeah. I get it. I'm on your side. 100%. We have therapy in our garage.

How great would that be? She comes to the garage. It's he, but I don't, but it doesn't matter. So I don't know why I had to correct you in that. Well, cause they, if they're looking for his podcast, they should know. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. That's smart. That's it. Okay. Your mental breakdown. It's actually, they, it's okay. What? It's a therapy session.

It's like a, they, they do a therapy session with this person who's anonymous and then they discuss it. And it's like, That's cool. And it's like interesting. And you can relate, even though the dude having his therapy lesson session is 24 year old guy. You can still relate to a lot of the stuff.

And it's also good for people who don't know what therapy is like it and are kind of nervous. Yeah. It's for nice. That for sure. Yeah. And, and the therapist I go to Doug is really fucking good. So it's like nice to listen to how, how it's supposed to work kind of in some cases. Now you should start a therapy practice and just be like, Oh, here really quick.

I want to give you my business. Yeah. Can you plug my therapy practice on your podcast? To your other clients. And I just wanted to get into your career path now. You know, you know how it is. You know. Wait, how was your trip to New Orleans?

Yes. It's a mistaken trip. I, I just got dates mixed up. And so instead of going to the New Orleans for my friend, Carrie, lovely Carrie Cassidy Vintage's fucking 40th birthday celebration with a bunch of friends at an Airbnb in New Orleans. Vincent and I went two weeks later on our own. When she actually made the ticket reservation.

Correctly. We were there for, for Mardi Gras and we had a great time just for two days. And I met of course a fucking lovely murdering, murdering as at every location and it was really fun. That's great. Yeah. Oh wait. Can we talk about my favorite murdering interaction lately?

Yeah. George and I were in, we were going to some, some appointment together. I can't remember what we were doing and this girl was coming out. We were in the parking garage and we were walking into the building and this girl was coming out and she was on crutches. And she looked at us and went, oh, oh, you know what? Fuck you. And I start laughing because her first initial look on her face was clearly like, oh, you

guys are here. Yeah. And she started yelling at us for being there and that she was just listening to us and fuck us. It was almost like so funny. It was like a fuck you to the universe and like, you can't trick me. Fuck you. It was good.

She kept going. Hilarious. She didn't stop to talk us. No, no, no. No, no, no. She was, she was like hobbling away. Yeah. She had like a cast on.

Oh, it was delightful. So shout out to her. She told us her name and now I can't remember. Yeah. But you're number, you're number one and I hope you're, you're whatever's wrong with you gets well soon. I hope you're happy. Fuck you.

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It gives you everything, everything you need. Also get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy

farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. This is a story I got from a Instagram account called history photographed and they post

like a historical photograph and then tell you about the story and I'd never heard this before and I was into it. That sounds like a good way to learn. It is. It totally is. Go buy the things that don't catch your eye. Yeah. Then when you're like, what's this?

Yeah, my Instagram feed is all history photographs and cats and dogs and some penguins and like random shitting out. It's pretty enjoyable. If this is a story about a cat a dog and a penguin going on an adventure in 1918, I will fucking kill you. Oh, fuck you. Shit. No.

I love this story. Oh, fuck. I don't have a story this week. Papers, wrestling. I forgot to. Okay. No, this is the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 and the heroin of hijacking. Wow.

Yeah. Wait, can I just ask one off my question? Always. On the mic only. Okay. Is there shooting in the plane on this one? Yeah. I was fucking going to do this.

No. Yes, I was. I had, I actually think I asked Jay to start researching it. Are you serious? Because it's so fucking good. It's the one from 1986. I think that's it. Okay.

Okay. You tell me. Great. Yes. No, you tell me. No, you fucking tell me with this. I wish you would tell me. We're acting like there's two hijacking stories.

You did one already and now here's the second one. Here's the second one. I grabbed it. If only. I plugged Jay and took his other hijacking story. This, I got article or info from a BBC article by Megan Mohan, an article from a website called View from the Wing by Gary Leff, a medium article by Karthik Nambi and Wikipedia. So Karen, a lot was going on in 1986.

True. You were there. I was there. Sophomore year, baby. Okay. It was my prime. I know. I know.

So I don't really remember this a lot, but you probably do. So please tell me about it if you want to jump in at any point. Oh yeah. You have no choice. I'm all about jumping in. Yeah. So let me tell you some shit about 1996 on January 28th, 73 seconds after launching space shuttle Challenger disintegrated in the middle of the fucking air, killing the entire crew.

Sally Ride was on that. That's right. Yeah. That's one of the reactors at Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine explodes, creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. I can't watch the movie Chernobyl because we kind of sat there while it happened, hoping it wasn't as like, hoping it wasn't worse than they were saying. It was such a strange, awful, like the whole nuclear threat.

Yeah. It's terrifying at the time. It was terrifying. Yeah. Would you go to Chernobyl if you had a chance to get like a... Oh. Yeah. I don't like cancer.

Me? Personally? I'm not one of those run for cancer. I think I'm very anti-cancer. Oh. Oh. You're going to take a stance? You know what?

Here I go. Fuck cancer. Okay. Of course, there's Haley's Comet. Fucking Harold Rivera opens Al Capone's Secret Vault. Remember that one? That's right. The black hole known as Ronald Reagan is president and is secretly in the midst of what will become

known as the Iran-Contra affair, read about it everyone. It's important history. What? I don't know anything. I know the name of it. Yeah. And I know it was bad. It's arms.

And there's tons of lying. And there's people arming, people they shouldn't, and nobody gets in trouble for anything. Oh, that's Oliver North stuff. Okay. I believe... Why am I doing this? Why do I continue after four years to guess and lie? I mean after 49 years.

It's just how I interact. I want people to know I understand them, even if I don't. Yeah. I get it. You want to be a part of it. I want to be with people. Okay. On April 14th, 1986, the United States launches airstrikes against Libya in retaliation for

the Libyan sponsorship of terrorists against American troops and citizens. There's a lot of history to unpack there. Just unpack it real quick right now. How dare you challenge me in the middle of this? I would get up and leave. Stephen Leving. Shit. Stephen.

Okay. Meanwhile, on September 5th, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 takes off from what is present-day Mumbai, what is then Bombay, en route to New York. And there's layovers in Karachi in Pakistan, in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Boeing. What? That's four layovers? Yeah. No, wait.

Did that ticket cost $102? I think there were even layovers at that point where we're like, it's just stopping. Yeah, they can't. But people are... They can't go all the way. People who are going from Bombay to New York have to stop at all those fucking places. Yeah. But it's a time when you can stay on the plane.

Oh, that's good. And then people depart who are going to these other places and then more people get on... So it's kind of like a city bus. But across the world. Exactly. So, the Boeing 747 lands at the Karachi airport for refueling at 4.30 in the morning. It's carrying 394 passengers, nine infants, an American flight crew, and 13 Indian flight attendants.

A total of 109 passengers to spark. Dispark? Disembark. Thank you. At Karachi and new passengers board around 6 a.m. So everyone's fucking doing their thing, getting on, getting off, going to the next... They're ready to go to the next spot. Yeah.

I don't want to fly for that long. No. Please don't make me. Yeah. So, there's a van that was modified to look like airport security, and it's driven by four hijackers. It gets through a security checkpoint and drives right up to one of the boarding stairways to the plane.

And this is when they were on the tarmac, so it's not like you had a board through the tunnel like you do now. Right. You just go right up to the plane. I mean, that's when they would be kind of like, does anyone want to roll by the plane just for shits and gigs? Right. Before we all leave?

Yeah. So, shots are fired outside the plane, killing two Kuwait airline staff members, working on a nearby aircraft, and then the four armed men enter the plane and start shooting. And they've got AK-47s. They have fucking grenades and shit strapped to them. I mean, it's... There's no... It's obvious that they're hijackers.

Right. I mean... Yeah. And they're shooting. Yeah. So, the hijackers fire shots at the feet of a flight attendant and force her to close the plane door. Oh.

So, a flight attendant named Shereen Pavan who was out of sight of the hijackers. And there might have been... There's varying reports of everything that's going on here because some people died, some people didn't. And it's just word of mouth at this point of what exactly happened. But one of the flight attendants who was out of sight, here's the gunfire, realizes it's going on and uses the intercom phone and calls the cockpit to let them know what's going on.

She gives them the hijack code alerting the crew. And another flight attendant named Sunshine Vesawala leads the hijackers. They say take us to the cockpit. She leads them there and she notices that the overhead escape hatch in the cockpit has been deployed and realizes that the whole crew has gotten out in the cockpit. So, she kind of... Are you allowed to do that? Yeah.

So, about that. Okay. So, people criticize it, people say it's a good thing, there's like differing arguments. One of the good things about it is that the plane can't then take off, can't be blown out in the air. Yeah, they can't force it to take off. Exactly. They're kind of stuck there.

So, the situation is confined to the airport. Okay. You know? I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. So, them getting out means there's no one to fly the plane. It foils their whole plan.

Okay. Great. So, I changed my mind. Okay. Great. So, the planes, they had to fucking climb out with ropes and shit like that and they get out of there. So, this whole thing definitely screws up the hijackers plan because the hijackers are

part of the Abu Nidal organization or ANO. It's a Palestinian terrorist organization backed by Libya. It's defunct now and it's opposed to U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East. And they're blamed for a string of attacks in the 1970s and 80s, killing and wounding hundreds of people. And their plan was to fly to Cyprus where other members of their militant group were incarcerated on terror charges and get them the fuck out of prison. Okay.

So, that's their plan and it doesn't work now because they have no pilots. Right. So, when the lead hijacker called Soferini realizes that the cockpit crew has escaped, he knows he has to negotiate with officials at that point. So, he orders the first and business class passengers to get back into coach and people are like sitting in the aisles, they're kind of just like confined to these two, this one space with the hijacker, two hijackers on either side of them. So, for nearly 17 hours, the hijackers hold the passengers and crew hostage.

So, the first casualty happens around 10 a.m. four hours after they hijacked the plane. Soferini goes through the plane and finds a 29-year-old Indian-American resident of California. She'd been recently naturalized as an American citizen, his name is Rajesh Kumar, and Soferini orders Kumar to come to the front of the aircraft and to kneel at the front doorway of the aircraft. Okay. I think this might be the same hijacking that is the story behind one of the first episodes of I Survived I Ever Saw, but I'll let you tell the rest.

It's basically just this hijacking story, but I'll tell you later if it is actually that one. Okay. Because there's more than three hijacking stories, unfortunately. And so, he has to face the front of the aircraft with his hands and feet, his hands behind his head. So, he's kneeling there with the gun to his head at the front, at the door. Soferini tells officials that if a new cockpit crew is not sent on the plane in the next

15 minutes, Kumar will be shot. So, when a pilot doesn't arrive within the hour, Soferini shoots Kumar in the head and pushes him out of the door onto the tarmac below, which I think I've seen video of. Is there a video of that? I don't know. And if not, then there's other hijackings that it could have been the video of. It's stuck with me since I was a kid. Of course.

Yeah. So, Pakistani personnel on the tarmac report that Kumar is still breathing when he's placed in an ambulance. They grab him. He's pronounced dead on the way to the hospital in Karachi. So, outside on the tarmac, Pan Am's Karachi director, Virof Daroga, uses a megaphone and tries to negotiate with the hijackers. He tells them that the authorities are looking for pilots to fly them wherever they need

to go, which is true. They're trying to get, like, people diverted into that, that, what's it called? Airport? Thank you. Mm-hmm. To get someone on the plane. Right. But it's just taking too long.

The terrorists then tell them. People are like, I'm about to land. Right. I just think, oh, I don't know. 36 more hours? Of course. I'm going the wrong way. So, the terrorists tell the flight attendants to collect the passports of all of the people

on the plane and the passengers so that they can identify the Americans on board because that's their target. So, the flight attendants who are led by the head of the head of flight attendants, Mirjah Banat, who, so she's in charge of the flight attendants because the pilots left and now she's the most senior cabin crew member. Because she is like, we're going to fucking, we're not, you know, we're, she's like, we're going to do what we were trained to do and we're not going to freak out. Yes.

So, they have plans to foil the hijackers and are ready to risk their lives to save as many passengers as they can. Ooh, I like this. Yeah. So, let me tell you about Mirjah. She grew up in Bombay, India in a Punjabi family with her father, mother, and two brothers. Her family calls her Ladu, which is the Hindu word for sweet and God gifted. Her dad describes her as very sensitive, deeply affectionate, and extremely decent.

At age of 16, she's spotted. Your dad describing you as decent. I think that he means like a decent human. Yeah. She's okay. You know, she's decent. She'll get the job done as a daughter. At the age of 16, she's spotted by a modeling scout, gets several modeling assignments at

ad agency. She becomes like, she's a model. She's fucking so beautiful. She attends several goods. She's not one of those weird models and tall personality. Stop it. Sorry, sorry. She attends several good schools and eventually graduates from St. Xavier College in Bombay.

So she's super smart. In March of 1985, she travels to the American Gulf for an arranged marriage, but it's a toxic and abusive marriage and relationship. Just to borrow money from him just to make phone calls back home. He's this really awful controlling person. She gathers all her strength and leaves him and goes back home, which is kind of unheard of at the time. Yeah.

You know. Leaving an arranged marriage. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. She then applies for flight attendant position with Pan Am who had decided to have an all Indian cabin crew for its Frankfurt to India routes that year. And out of 10,000 applicants, she's placed within the top 80 and she selected for training

in Miami, Florida. And she returns to India as a purser, which is what your dad did, right? Yes. On the cruise ships. Yeah. She carried a lot of luggage. I don't think so. It says in here that it's the title for the chief flight attendant.

So I think it may be mean something different there and it's considered the most senior crew position. Cool. So I think it's just like she's fucking in charge. Hell yeah. It's two days before her 23rd birthday when the plane is hijacked. 23rd. She's a little baby.

She's a baby. Yeah. Okay. And already so accomplished. The flight attendants collect all the passports and then Neersha directs the other attendants to secretly pull out any American passports and they fucking hide them. They like tuck them into seats. They throw them in the little trash bins and hide them in their clothes and they refuse

to give them any American passports and they managed to hide 41 passports total. Ooh. Ooh. Weird full body chills. Yeah. That's crazy. Isn't it? Yes.

And it's so like risky. It's really risky and it's really important and it's really brave. I mean when it comes down to it, these flight attendants are human beings just like everyone on board and yet they're, I mean they just have a certain job that puts them in this position and yet they are willing to sacrifice their lives because of it. Yeah. Because they're the ones that have to. Yeah.

That's what I think. They don't have to though. They just, it's like they have so much integrity that they're willing to. They know they're the, they're the final, they're the last line. If you're the person that's like, well they told me to do it and they have a gun so here. It's like, but you could also try to think of a plan and you could try to do something and they did. Which is kind of why the pilots leaving is touchy for me because like they had authority,

they had means they, you know, there could, it's hard. But I was on that side, but the rationale and the reasoning that the plane can't leave if the pilots are gone works for me. They couldn't have just thrown the keys out of that escape hatch? There's the spare key. Go get them. They're up in the ceiling. Go grab them.

I mean, it's basically saying you, it's like taking the engine out where it's like there's nothing we can do. A hundred percent. I buy that. Yes. Yes. I didn't like it in the beginning. Yeah.

I love it now. Okay. So over the next few hours, Mirza and the other attendants continue to serve people food and drinks on like, they're making sure everyone's eating and has drinks, which is like, it's so crazy. God bless. You never tasted a more delicious tiny bottle of Dewar's in your life than when that shit gets served up.

Amen. What would you, what beverage would you like? I'll fucking take anything. Yeah. At that point in the evening, the hijackers who seem to be like, they talk to the passengers. They don't, I don't think right away, kill anyone else. They spare a couple of people's lives as well. And they allow everyone to go to the toilet one after the other by crawling on the floor,

on the floor with their hands over their heads. Not saying the hijackers are good guys. It's just this weird message they're sending. At one point Mirza removes a, okay, so here's what she does. She takes a page out of flight manual that describes procedures for opening the aircraft door. And she fucking tucks it into a magazine and then is like to a passenger, here is a magazine. Yes.

This magazine. Here's the page 37. Here's the magazine. You asked for a man with huge biceps. Right. Who's sitting in the emergency exit. It's not amazing. And probably gave him a tiny eye flare as she handled.

Right. Here's the thing. And here's an extra doers for your trouble. Yes. Here's your payment. If people, if you're in a high pressure situation, pay close attention to what other people are doing. Because sometimes that's the only way people can communicate with you.

Yeah. I love that. I just like, you hope and pray that when you're in a panicked situation someday, because we're all going to be in one some way or another, you know, in our lives. And we react with, without panicking and with fucking foresight and calmness and can like take the next steps necessary to make the situation better. I just really fucking hope that. I believe in the calmness amidst worst case scenarios because it's happened to me in very

strange ways. Like I told you the story of when I thought there was a rattlesnake in my sister's car. But it was a hilarious college boy prank. But it was a coiled rattlesnake that was stuck. What? It was stuck in my sister's car to see how much we'd freak out. And I didn't know this. I leaned it.

Yeah. I leaned and we were loading up my sister's car when we were both in Sacramento. I opened the passenger door, put something in her car, looked down, saw a coiled rattlesnake and then moved backwards and shut the door so quickly. You did it. That the guys that were watching to be like, Har Har, are you screamed and cried or whatever. They were like, whoa. And they were super impressed.

And then I was super impressed. But I was like, don't fuck with Karen. I didn't realize I had that in me too. I just was like, get away, get it, get it, and close the doors and kind of get out the fucking door. I had a moment where I was in, I think like right before I met, I was in that head on or no, sorry. Right before I met Vince, I was in this like head on fucking car accident where someone

turned in front of me and I completely smashed into them. And a few seconds before it happened, I realized there was no way to get out of it. I was going to completely around this car. So scary. And I just thought, okay, here, like I have anxiety, so I'm always waiting for the worst case scenario. So I was like, here it comes. This is the worst case.

And I remember how you always read about people who are drunk driving. The drunk people don't get hurt because they're so relaxed. So I made myself relax my entire body when I hit the car. And you weren't injured? No. Oh, dude. Yeah. That's like that kind of magical.

I mean, I don't know if I wasn't injured because I had a good car. Thank you, Nissan Versa, or because the car accident wasn't as bad as I thought it was. You know, but it was a very high value endorsement. It was, right? Yeah. Jesus. That's a safe car. Well, that's amazing.

That's a little bit like the time I got sucked under in a wave in Hawaii where I couldn't get. I was basically a washing machine and I don't know which way's up. Yeah. And it was, and I just went, do not like, I just had this moment of like, I went so calm. I've never been that calm in my life. And I was just like, just continue to hold your breath. This is going to be over in like 10 seconds, like count to 10.

And then that's what happened. It came up. There was so much sand in my bathing suit. There was just so much sand everywhere. And then I was like, why did you save me? It was like one of those moments. But in the moment of it, I think we all have the capacity. There is that in you and you should know it.

So as evening starts to fucking set in and on the on board power supply is getting lower. And the lights are getting dimmer and the cool air isn't circulating anymore, which sounds terrifying. Yeah. Then the mechanic of the plane named Miragee Karras tells Sufferini that the emergency power is only going to last like 15 more minutes. And the airplane is going to experience a blackout and tells him to prepare for it. So around 9 p.m., almost 17 hours after the initial hijack, can you fucking imagine?

The aircraft auxiliary power goes down and the plane goes dark. And you can see in like the old the news reports that I watched, it's the whole tarmac is black and the plane is black because they turn the lights off so that the military could fucking rush in and shit. Oh, nice. So it's all dark. Yeah. And the hijackers panic because they think that the Pakistani security forces are getting

ready to raid the plane. That's why the lights went out and that's what they think. So a hijacker, they just panic at that point. And a hijacker tries to shoot out the explosive belt worn by another hijacker. He tries to ignite it to cause an explosion. That would be massive enough to kill the entire plane, passenger and crew, as well as the hijackers. But since the cabin is so dark, he misses, causing only a small detonation.

And then the other hijackers, hearing shooting panic and they begin shooting their weapons into the cabin at passengers and they start throwing their grenades and there's little explosions. And you can see in one of the videos, there's like a simulation, a computer simulation, there's little explosions all over the plane and it's terrifying. But the lack of light also means that they're not able to pull the pins fully and end up only creating these little explosions instead of what should be huge explosions. And ultimately the guns create the most damage since each bullet is just ricocheting off the

cabin and creating shrapnel. So everyone's in a panic at this point. Everyone. When the lights go out, all the flight attendants and passengers are in the middle section of the cabin and several seated on the ground and the aisles near the doors and Mahariji, the 28-year-old mechanic, they realize has been killed. And in the chaos and everything going on, people start opening the doors. They're like, they take this distraction to open some of the cabin doors.

But it's not clear who opens them. And although Nirja could have been, she was by a door and could have been one of the first people off the flight because of her proximity, instead she stays behind to help the passengers get off safely and starts ushering them out onto the slide. Like stays on board like a Mrs. Chaos. And when all the passengers are finally off the plane, the rest of the crew who had escaped, they go back into the dark plane because they realize that they're not hearing any more gunfire and so they go back on, which is so brave.

That's amazing. That's when Sunshine, the flight attendant, sees Nirja. She's been shot in the hip. She's conscious but bleeding heavily. And according to a surviving passenger, Nirja had been guiding the passengers to the emergency exit in this mayhem and the hijackers had noticed and they realized that she is shielding three American children with her body as the hijackers grab her by her ponytail and they shoot her multiple times.

So she's actually shot and down and bleeding. Sunshine calls over to another attendant. They get Nirja to the emergency slide. They like help her off and she's put into an ambulance and transported to the hospital, which is completely overflowing with other passengers at this point. Nirja has a pulse upon arrival, but she ultimately dies from her injuries, I know. With the combined efforts of the 14 flight attendants that day, it's thought saved hundreds of lives and for two more days after the attack, the crew stays with the young children who

are left alone until they can be reunited with their other family members, like fucking heroics. For real? Yeah. 22 people are killed and about 150 are injured from the attack. Three of the hijackers are caught fleeing the airport and Saharini is still on board when Pakistan's security forces enter the plane. The 381 total passengers plus crew, the crew on the Pan Am Flight 73 are citizens of 14

different countries. India represents about 26% of the people on board and they also represent 28% of those killed and out of a total of 44 American passengers, only two are killed during the hijacking. Whoa, that's a miracle. After a short break, all the members of the Flight 73 crew return to Pan Am to work and they work at least a couple of years, all of them. Whoa.

Yeah, they occasionally work the same flight together and run into each other and they don't like discussing the hijacking, obviously, and two of the six of them remain in the industry to this day. Wow. Yeah. During the interviews that they had with BBC in 2016, because a movie comes out about this whole thing and a lot of them hadn't talked to the media at that point. But some of them then finally do and they stress that there's no single hero that day,

that crew members not interviewed played an equally important role. So for the hijackers, so there's five total, there was one that wasn't on the plane. They are deported by Pakistani authorities to Palestine in 2008 and they escape. So on December 3, 2009, the FBI in coordination with the State Department announced a $5 million reward for information leading to their capture and the FBI released new age-progressed images of them and the case is still under investigation by the Washington Field Office of the Bureau. Whoa. Yeah.

To this day. Yeah. And you know, it's hard. I can't say that with total assurity because there's different reports of like how people got away and how much time they got and did they escape or were they let out? Like we don't, it's so, it's, it's, that's a whole different fucking story. Yeah. The Vietnam crew of Flight 73 are given Courage Awards by the Airline in 1986 and the U.S.

Department of Justice in 2005 and the U.S. Attorney General in 2006 and Neerja Bahanat is awarded posthumous bravery awards in India and Pakistan. And she becomes internationally known as the heroine of hijacking and becomes the youngest recipient of the Ashok Chakra Award, which is India's most prestigious military award for bravery during peacetime. Oh. She's three years old and sacrifices herself in that way. They release a statement with the award that says, quote, her loyalties to the passengers

of the aircraft in distress will forever be a lasting tribute to the finest qualities of the human spirit. She also receives multiple awards for her courage from the United States government and Pakistan. And in 2004, the Indian Postal Service releases a stamp commemorating her. Wow. Yeah. We'll put it on the Instagram.

That's very cool. And with her family sets up a Pan Am Trust with insurance money and a contribution from Pan Am and the trust presents two awards every year. One is for a flight crew member worldwide who acts beyond the call of duty. And the other is the Neerja Bahanat Award. And it goes to an Indian woman who is brave and helps other women in distress when faced with social injustice. Wow.

And a seven-year-old child who was on board that flight is now a captain for a major airline has stated that Neerja has been his inspiration and that he owes every day of his life to her. Oh, my God. And that is the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 and the heroin of hijacking Neerja Bahut. Unbelievable. Fucking crazy, right? I'm sweating right now.

You know, I was grasping my hands in front of me like a little child in prayer being like, oh, my God, what's going to happen? And that wasn't the same story as the I survived episode because the woman in the I survived episode was shot in the head by the terrorist and thrown out onto the tarmac. Oh, my God. And just waited there and they picked her up and they assumed she was dead. I think I saw that one. She tells this first-hand story.

It's very similar. Was it the one that you told Jay to do? I'm not sure. No, no, no. I think it's not because I think the one that I know. So there's four hijackings. Let's say no. There's been a minimum of four.

Look, hijackings used to be no way to go for because it got, this was pre-24 hour news cycle. So it got tons of press and it got, people got their way. They got to do it because there was never an effective way to change it. Right. Yeah. For a while. It was huge in the 70s and 80s, it seems like.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Great job. Thank you. This week I'm going to do the Tulsa race massacre. It's also called the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921 or the Greenwood Massacre. So did you watch Watchmen, the HBO series?

Yes. Okay. So you know how it started? And then there was that one episode that was highly dedicated to, that's a true fucking story. That was crazy. Okay. So this is very cool.

So I remember watching that and the whole time I was watching it going, please don't let this be real. And of course it was. And then I read articles about it, whatever. Or at least I read one article about it. Like confirming like, oh no, this is real. And it made me think of it because like the Wednesday, like after we recorded last week, someone, Akilah Green, who I follow on Twitter retweeted this amazing article from The Root,

which I'll talk about at the end of the episode, but basically reminded me what an amazing story it is. And it was told in Watchmen so compellingly and incredibly and in this way where you're just like, oh, this is, this is that what has been termed black history in this country where basically it doesn't get talked about because really fucked up shit happened. Yeah. And no one wants to acknowledge it. Yeah.

People don't acknowledge it in it. And when they do something, it gets whitewashed or mishandled. And then cue me walking in with my papers, hey. But the cool thing is when a show like that, that's popular and cool. And then taking notes, Alan Moore taking this historical context and then being like, hey, here's this character you care about. Yeah. This is this thing that happened to like her ancestors, essentially, and now you're in

this story. Yeah. Now you understand that this was a real place in time. Yeah. I just really did a good job of like showing the fear that you would have no matter, you know, in that situation and how dire and desperate and terrifying it was. Insane. So, just to quote the sources, obviously, the original concept was cause watching Watchmen

and me going, oh my God, oh my God. The work that got done around this and basically kind of in the retelling, there's an amazing article. So the root article was written by a writer named Jay Connor and a podcaster. There was also an article in The Washington Post by a writer named Denine L. Brown. And that article is unbelievable and it has pictures and it's lots of firsthand accounts and there's a city council woman who lives in Tulsa now and she talks about how, I believe it was her grandmother, she said, she learned about it from her but they barely talk about

it. It was literally a taboo subject. Sure. They just didn't want to discuss it because it was a massacre and it's been referred to since historically as a race riot. And classically, the phrase race riot means black people started it. And that's why it's called a race massacre and that people want it referred to as that because of how the story actually goes.

It's just one of those things where wording matters. Yeah. And it's a thing that you don't understand how ignorant you are until you learn how ignorant you are and then how you deal with that ignorance is you can either go, no, I'm not. Fuck you. It's just a sad for me, a white person or you could actually pay attention and read and try and try open it up a little and then do better try to clap, clap, clap, do better. Okay.

So there was the, there's also a great article in Smithsonian magazine by a writer named Allison Keys about the 2015 discovery of a firsthand 10 page type written, I should have said firsthand here firsthand account of this massacre by a lawyer in, in the Greenwood district named Buck Colbert Franklin. So he basically saw it all happening, walked outside like, and then when it was all over went home and typed up everything he saw and remembered and then folded it up basically and put it away and that wasn't discovered until like four or five years ago. Holy shit.

And now it's in the Smithsonian. Oh my God. So that's a great article if you want to look that up and see. And then there's a book by a writer named Scott Ellsworth called Death in a Promised Land about the Greenwood massacre. The forward of that book is by a man, a historian named John Hope Franklin, who I believe worked at the Smithsonian and he is the son of Buck Colbert Franklin. Wow.

Okay. So that's all. If you want to do more reading about this, those are good places also, of course, our friend Wikipedia was there for me. So was there for Jay, Elias, my researcher and our assistant. Okay. So this starts Monday, May 30th, 1921. It's Memorial Day in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the rest of America.

So a 19 year old boy named Dick Rowland who is a shoe shine that works nearby. He goes into the Drexel building at 319 South Main Street and he gets into the elevator because he needs to ride up to the top floor because that's the only place where there's a black's only restroom in the entire area. And he is a black man and so he has to go there, it's the only place he can go. So this elevator is operated by a 17 year old white girl named Sarah Page. So they've at the very least seen each other before because she's the only elevator operator and the only elevator in the Drexel building and he's clearly had to use that restroom

at the top of that building before. So soon after Dick Rowland enters the elevator, a clerk at the Drexel's first floor clothing store, Renbergs, hears a woman scream from the elevator. So that clerk rushes out to see a black man running from the building and then he goes into the elevator area to find Sarah Page still in the elevator in what he described as a quote distraught state. So the clerk assumes Sarah's been assaulted and he calls the police. The police arrive, they speak with Sarah, there is no written statement on the record.

None is ever taken. The police begin an investigation. And the exact details of what actually happened in the elevator are still unknown. But most people believe that Dick either tripped while he was walking into the elevator and fell and grabbed Sarah's arm to steady himself or he stepped on her foot as he walked into the elevator and then grabbed her so she wouldn't fall over. But there was basically physical contact and it's likely she screamed because she was like startled by it.

So Dick immediately ran knowing that the worst would be assumed about his actions and his intentions no matter how innocent the incident actually was. So Dick goes to his mom's house in the Greenwood district of Tulsa. So this here's a little historical context, all of which was mostly brand new information to me, the person with barely a high school education. Okay. So when the Civil War ended in 1865, the slaves in Oklahoma are emancipated and they stay in the area and resettle as free people.

So in the early 1900s, Tulsa experiences this huge boom because there's a discovery of a massive oil supply at Red Fork that's just across the Arkansas River from Tulsa. And then in 1905, workers strike another oil well that they call Glen Pool. And Tulsa becomes one of the most oil-rich areas in America. Did you know that? No. Oil in Oklahoma? I completely not.

No idea. No, no idea. No. Did not know. There's oil. So more and more people come to the area for work and the population grows from around the year 1900, there was like almost 1400 people that lived in Tulsa and 20 years later, 98,874 people live in Tulsa.

They couldn't get one more for a fucking round number there? Could be just to have a round number. I also like that this is an estimated number and it's the most random number of all time. But that was when I would normally step in and round it up myself and then give fuck Wikipedia over once again. So Oklahoma becomes a state in 1907. Basically it's the whole turn of the century and after this time of amazing growth, especially for the black community in Tulsa, they're thriving.

It's a huge accomplishment because this is post-Civil War Jim Crow South, their segregation and bigotry as a constant oppressive reality for all black Americans and yet the black citizens of Tulsa have figured out how to succeed and prosper despite like a whole system that's rigged against them. So it was a very big deal. So much so, the reputation of this thriving black community in Tulsa draws the attention of leading black intellectual and educator of the day, Booker T. Washington. And he takes a trip out to Oklahoma to see what's going on.

What year did you say? 1905. A year later with Booker T. Washington's guidance, they officially organized this 4,000-acre entirely black-owned neighborhood as the Greenwood District. There's two newspapers, two movie theaters. One of the movie theaters is featured in Watchmen. Grocery stores, churches, nightclubs, medical centers, dentist's office, all entirely black-owned. Amazing.

And for the next 13 years, Greenwood, the Greenwood District flourishes and its success earns the nickname Black Wall Street. After World War I ends in 1918, American servicemen returning from the war flock to Tulsa because there's a bunch of work and a bunch of money there because of the oil. But many of these white veterans are not happy that they have to compete for jobs with educated black citizens. Also, this is also the same time, black American veterans are coming back to America and they're trying to assert their equal rights because they just fought for the country.

They just fought and watched their fellow soldiers die for their country. They come back to us. But they have no fucking... They have no rights. They can't vote. They can't go to the bathroom in a regular restroom. It's so restrictive and ridiculous and they're just like, this is bullshit as it is. And then kind of like the third or one of the elements that's the topper, which I mentioned

in my story last week about the death of Mary Fagan, the murder of Mary Fagan and the murder of Leo Frank, it's around this time the KKK starts to have a resurgence. So tensions are high in the South and everywhere. In 1920, a white 18-year-old boy named Roy Belton is accused of murdering a local Tulsa Chaxy driver. And before his guilt is even confirmed, a group of armed men storm the jail, take Belton and lynch him. Holy shit.

Yeah. He was white or black? He was white. Wow. So many Tulsans blame the police for not protecting Belton. Others support this lynching as this vigilante act that's righteous. But this event makes the black citizens of Tulsa fear for their lives because if that can happen to a white boy, they know that they are definitely not safe.

So now we're back to 1921 with the elevator incident. The morning after, which is Tuesday, May 31, 1921, the police find 19-year-old Dick Roland at his mom's house on Greenwood Avenue, and they take him to the Tulsa City Jail at First and Main Street for questioning. Dick explains to police that although he did put his hand on Sarah, he was not trying to hurt her. That afternoon, around 3 p.m. with Dick and custody, the white-owned newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, prints a story about Dick's arrest with the headline, quote, nab Negro for attacking

girl in an elevator. The rest of the article supports this biased headline and makes Dick look guilty of an attempted assault. Yeah. Okay. So the same paper also publishes an editorial piece. It's like they had these ready to go. And they publish an editorial piece with the headline, quote, to lynch Negro tonight, essentially

calling for more vigilante justice. So obviously, this newspaper is putting Dick Roland's life in danger intentionally. It's like a call to action. It certainly is. So after the paper releases those articles, police commissioner J.M. Atkinson gets an anonymous phone call threatening to kill Dick Roland. So that coupled with the fact that the police are still shaking off the criticism that they didn't properly protect Belton, commissioner Atkinson moves Dick Roland to the more secure

jail on the top floor of the Tulsa County courthouse, but rumors of a potential lynching and the calling for a goddamn lynching in the newspaper yet a rumor draws more and more people to the courthouse. And by 730 that night, hundreds of angry white Tulsans are gathered outside the courthouse demanding to be shown Dick Roland. Oh dear. It's called a mob. It's an angry terrorist mob.

So Sheriff Willard M. McCullough sends six of his officers to the roof of the courthouse with rifles. He disables the courthouse elevator and he positions more officers on the top floor with directions not to open the door for anyone. Around 820, three white men from the angry mob somehow, quote unquote, get inside the courthouse. The sheriff immediately gets them out. And he then addresses the crowd telling them there isn't going to be a lynching.

They all need to leave. Now it's, you know, questionable whether or not he made a real effort here. Because despite his quote unquote orders, the crowd continues to build and by 9 o'clock that night, there are 400 angry white Tulsans outside of the courthouse. With rumors of a potential lynching swirling around the town, the people of the Greenwood District gather on Greenwood Avenue to come up with a plan because they know Dick Roland is basically a dead man. He's innocent and they're going to kill him terribly.

They don't know what their strategy should be though. The world war one vets want to collect up guns and ammo and prepare for a potential battle. The businessmen want to be as peaceful as possible because they don't want anything that would threaten their hard earned properties and businesses. About 20 to 50 of the men of the Greenwood District decide to go to the courthouse as a group, some of them armed and offer their services to the sheriff to help protect Dick Roland. Oh dear.

Right. But I was thinking about that where I was like, ugh, it's not the best idea, but you would have to go armed. Yeah. If you're going as this tiny group of black men, you can't not take- Sure. It's understandable. Come with you.

It's just like, you know where this is going. But the only option is to let them kill an innocent 19 year old. Totally. Totally. They're very empowered, intelligent people who are just kind of like, it ain't going to be this way anymore. Yeah. Like, let's not.

Yeah. When they arrive, the sheriff is like, no thanks, get out, we don't need your help, you're making it worse. They go back to the Greenwood District. But the angry white men who'd been standing outside the courthouse were surprised by this group of Greenwood District men. And they were enraged that they would appear there. So a bunch of them leave the courthouse, a bunch of the angry white mob, leave the courthouse,

go home to get their own guns. And a group of several hundred decide to try to get more weapons by robbing the National Guard. Oh, no. Yeah. So Mayor James Bell, who was of the National Guard's 180th Infantry Regiment, he knew what was happening downtown at the courthouse and he was prepared. He had his guards prepped and ready to shoot any intruders on site.

And so basically they come up to the National Guard, I guess, armory to go and be like, we're taking guns and we're going to go. And they were all just like, we'll kill you if you keep coming. So they just walked away. Okay, great. Right. So they give up there and go back to the courthouse. So now the crowd of the courthouse has swelled to nearly 2,000 angry white men, most of whom

are now armed. Part of the growing armed mob gets back to the Greenwood District and some of the men in Greenwood decide that this is their last chance to save Dick Rowland from being lynched. This time, 75 black men from the Greenwood District, now most of them armed, arrive at the courthouse just after 10 p.m. Again they offer their services to the sheriff. Again he says no. But now that the white mob is armed, they're feeling bolder.

One of them reportedly approaches one of the black men from Greenwood, the Greenwood group and demands he give up his pistol. The black man refuses, a shot is fired. So no one knows for sure who fired that shot, whether or not it was an accident, if it was just like every, you know, emotions were running high, if it was meant to scare both groups off. No one knows what happened, but ultimately it doesn't matter because it starts a shoot out that leaves 12 people, some black and some white, dead.

They're drastically outnumbered so the group of black men retreat back to the Greenwood District but this time the white men follow, looting stores along the way for more weapons and ammo. So now it's on. The gunfight continues along the Frisco train tracks which separate the Greenwood District from the neighboring white districts. Some of the white mob drive into Greenwood proper and start shooting at people and businesses drive by style.

So they just start and some of these people didn't know what was going on. So that was part of the watchmen thing that was so amazing is people coming out of a movie theater. They went into movie theaters where those people had no idea and then just murdered everybody in a movie theater. So they're just picking people off on the street, in some cases business owners trying to protect themselves, return fire. Meanwhile the National Guard officers come up with a way to stop the chaos but it's not

a great plan. They station guards at the courthouse but then they station protective guards only around the white neighborhoods. They send other guards to round up black people whether they're participating in violence or not and detain them at the convention hall on Brady Street. So immediately it's protect white people and arrest black people. The fighting continues through the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 1, 1921. Around 1 a.m. the white mob begins setting black businesses along Archer Street on fire.

Some reporters say the Tulsa Fire Department tried to put the fires out but the white mob threatened to shoot them if they did. Some other reports suggest that the fire department was siding with the white mob and deliberately didn't put the fires out. The fires rage and by 4 a.m. roughly two dozen black-owned businesses are burning. Oh my god. Okay. So this is where Buck Colbert, I'm pronouncing it Colbert like Stephen Colbert, or it could

be Colbert, but Buck Colbert Franklin, this is from his 10-page document where he wrote it right after he saw it. And you can also read this in Smithsonian Magazine. He wrote, quote, I could see planes circling in midair. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building. Down East Archer I saw the old Midway Hotel on fire burning from its top. And then another, and another, and another building began to burn from their top.

The sidewalks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught, first caught from the top. I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape. Where aware is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations, I asked myself, is the city in conspiracy with the mob? So people were flying overhead of the Greenwood District and throwing turpentine, flying, burning turpentine balls down onto the building so they'd all catch on fire and burn.

So it was like a complete, it was a blitz. A onslaught. Yes. It was a blitz. Completely. Overpowered by the mob, many Greenwood District residents flee the city. Troops from another Oklahoma National Guard station arrive on the scene around 9.15 a.m. on June 1st as backup.

At this point, roughly 4,000 black people have been detained by the local National Guard. What? 4,000. The National Guard declares martial law around 11.50 a.m. and tried to regain order between 12 and 1 p.m. The violence finally stops, but the fires rage on for two full days. Shit. The rounding up and detention of black citizens in the city continues throughout. When martial law is finally withdrawn on Friday, June 4th, 1921, there's still about

6,000 black people being held in detention. Some are held for as long as eight days. Wow. When all is said and done, more than 35 blocks in the Greenwood District are destroyed. 35 blocks. Oh, my God. 191 businesses, 1,200 homes, churches, and schools are burned to the ground. An estimated 10,000 black citizens are left homeless.

It's hard to say exactly how many people died because many media outlets at the time would change their counts and release conflicting information. But the estimates today range anywhere from 55 people to 300. Wow. When there is a really amazing in that Washington Post article, they talk about how there's a potter's field that's out in the back of the cemetery in Tulsa. They believe that they dumped a bunch of bodies out there that just, they just buried them in a mass grave.

And that's why they don't know the number. Governor James B.A. Robertson calls for a grand jury to investigate how the massacre came about. The investigation starts on June 8th, 1921, and includes both black and white witnesses as well as the sheriff and other city officials. They're all questioned about the events over a 12-day period. But the jury is made up of all white people. And they find the massacre was incited by the black citizens.

Of course they do. Well, they do acknowledge the law enforcement failed to prevent the violence. That's ultimately a worthless concession. The court reviews 27 different cases associated with the massacre, and 85 people are indicted. But when all the legal proceedings are done, not one person is convicted for the murders or the damages in the Greenwood district. When questioned about what happened, Tulsa police, firefighters, National Guard, and other officials try to say they did everything they could to stop the violence.

But witness accounts say otherwise. There are mentions of the city preventing the Red Cross from coming in to provide medical aid and firefighters either letting the fires rage or being persuaded by the white mob to stand down. There are even reports, which is not a hard thing to be persuaded by a fucking angry mob. There are even reports that local police had deputized some of the mob, giving them weapons and the authority to attack or detain black residents. Hope Franklin, the son of Buck Franklin from the man who wrote his eyewitness, he says,

the term riot is contentious because it assumes that black people started the violence as they were accused of doing by whites. We increasingly use the term massacre or I use the European term pogrom. It's a long road to rebuild the Greenwood district. And even though it's eventually rebuilt, of course, it's never the same. Today gentrification threatens to bury the history of the massacre and of the once thriving prosperous black community. Historians and activists have been fighting to have the story of the Greenwood massacre

taught in Oklahoma classrooms for years. But since the success and popularity of HBO series Watchmen starring America's queen Regina King, and their incredibly impactful use of the events of the Greenwood massacre, that has apparently pushed the argument over the edge. And this month, February of 2020, Oklahoma, and this was what that root article was all about. Yeah. Root article written by Jay Connor.

Oklahoma's Department of Education has announced that it will be officially adding the story of the Greenwood massacre to public school curriculums by this fall just in time for its 100th anniversary in 2021. Holy shit. And that is the up until very recently kind of untold history of Tulsa's Greenwood massacre. And if anyone's interested, the writer for the article for the root Jay Connor, he also produced and co-host a podcast called The Extraordinary Negroes. So you might want to give that a listen.

Amazing. Because it's a, yeah. And also just, I don't know any of this shit. I had to look up the details of what the Jim Crow laws were. There's so, especially like in the 80s, we were not educated in any, I think, effective way about black history. It says if it's our choice, whether or not we want to know stuff like this. Yeah, totally.

And so that's also not to overdo it, but the importance of diversity, especially in goddamn show business and in Hollywood, is because these stories are great, important, vital American stories that should be told and the people that made the Watchmen prove that point. Like what an amazing use of fact and horrible, like there's plenty of horrible stories in our history, but they don't have to just remain taboo unspoken, don't talk about that, because it actually helps people learn how to do better when we know how fucking bad it actually was. Not covering over, not rationalizing, not saying it was their own fault, it was someone else's fault.

It was a riot. They should have done that. Yeah. It's none of that stuff, but actually going, how do we make it so there's less angry mobs in general? Yeah. Still to this day. To this goddamn minute.

Good job. No, great. That was incredible. Thank you. I'm like speechless. That was hardcore. Well, it's fucking heavy. It's heavy and scary to talk about.

Totally. It's scary to talk about. It's important. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's do some fucking hooray. Yes.

There we go. Do we do ours first or these listeners first? I don't know. What do you think? I guess we do listeners. Okay. Then we can figure out what we want to do. Do you know what yours is?

I do. Me too, of course. Oh my. Okay. You go first. This one is my fucking hooray. Humanity doesn't always suck. This is from the fan cult forum by Katie E. She wrote, hi MFM crew.

My fucking hooray this week, I was driving home from work on an unseasonably warm winter day behind the same car for a good bit. There's an obviously squirmy kid in the backseat with the window down waving his hand out of the window. I could tell he was turning around and waving at me sometimes. So I waved back in parentheses. I'm not a total crank, but the best part as I followed this car through a pedestrian heavy road was seeing all of the folks walking who also decided to wave back to this kid.

He had a great big smile on his face with every wave and it was obvious he was soaking in the joy that came from waving to people and unexpectedly giving, getting a wave back. And it was an unexpected bit of joy for me in the midst of a shitty fucking week. So fucking hooray for the happy waving kid and all the people who wave back to him. Humanity doesn't always suck. Sometimes it returns the pure kind gestures in ways that we need. That's so pure. Isn't that good?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's the little things. It can be. I love that. I know. Okay, this one's from Instagram, katiegirl129. My fucking hooray is that I finally got off my pain medication after being on them for

15 years. Whoa. I have a jaw disorder and have undergone multiple surgeries and they never worked. March of 2019 I had another jaw surgery with a new surgeon and I'm without pain for the first time in my life. Whoa. Yeah. Amazing.

That's incredible. Yeah. Every day must be a gut. She's the waving kid every day. That's from the waving kid. Holy shit. Congratulations everybody. Oh, listen to this one.

This is also from the fan. I have the fan called form one. Okay. This is from Sherry. So tonight I went alone to see Chris Fairbanks in Milwaukee. I tried to talk myself out of it a few times. I hear that. But I drove an hour in the dark to a place I'd never been.

I felt weird and awkward at first, but very soon I met some murderinos and a few other solo attendees and all the awkwardness quickly went away. Another solo person, Jay, sat next to me and told me several times that she was proud of me for coming and she was right. I'm proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone and doing something I wanted to do even though I had to do it alone. It was so fun and I got up the courage to actually meet Chris after the show. Such a sweetheart.

So fucking hooray to me. Oh my God. I love it. I love the idea that there is a secret network of murderinos who go to things and other people and listeners know that they can go by themselves. They can practice that. Or if they see someone alone, they can be like, this is scary for them too. I'm acknowledging that and I'm going to approach them.

Even if they're not murderinos, it's just like, we all know how scary it is, how scary life is. How scary being alone can be and you can actually do something about that. Yeah. Just wear a little pin. Make yourself known. That's right. You've got friends waiting for you.

Here's one from ACG underscore MPLS. I don't know. She's from Minneapolis. My fucking hooray is that this Saturday, the day after my birthday, my miracle baby is due. We tried for three and a half years to conceive and we're convinced we couldn't and now here we are. Wow.

I know. A baby. A baby. In five years, that baby is going to be waving out the window, bringing joy to others. That's right. Babies, babies are miracles. There they are. I really believe in the good work babies do.

It's watching Nora grow up and all the goodness she brought to our horrible falling apart family. She really made it work. Keep us posted on the miracle baby. Yeah. We want to see pictures of that baby. Yeah. This one is from Chantel. It's C-H apostrophe N-T-E-L.

Okay. It's brand new. Wait a minute. Spell it. And the subject line is, guys, Tim Hortons has created a Kit Kat everything menu. What? If you didn't know, Tim Hortons is Canada's number one coffee slash donut chain restaurant. Oh, yeah.

It's like your Dunkin' Donuts, but better, sorry. Not sorry. Anyway, they've introduced a Kit Kat everything menu. There's one more reason for more live shows in Canada. Oh. What is that? We have to look up pictures of that. Kit Kat everything.

Kit Kat everything? Maybe it's like a Kit Kat donut. That's all I got. Hot chocolate. Hot chocolate. A hoppy Kit Kat chocolate. Kit Kat chocolate. Looking at that.

Let me read one more. While you read that, Stephen's going to look it up so right after we can look at pictures of the Kit Kat everything menu, I'm telling him to do it pass aggressively by saying that's what's going to happen. This is from Annalisa Denney and she says, my fucking hooray is I have been dealing with depression since last year after disclosing my sexual abuse to both my boyfriend and my family. It has been really hard and I was suicidal for a while, but I have had a really good

week. I know that my depression hasn't just gone away, but my God, does it feel good to just be genuinely happy even if it's only for a couple of days? Yep. Amen. Keep it up. That's right. Days turn into weeks.

That's right. Yep. I've seen pictures that I think that they've been promoting, so it's like a doughnut. A brownie? And like a brownie situation. Wow. Kit Kat everything. Wow.

Is Canada starting to discover how delicious their native candy is? What's your fucking hooray? Oh. My friend asked me to do a set. I just tried to start doing sets again. We've been kind of busy and crazy. It's been a little weird lately, so I was like, I'm always hedging. I love doing it.

It makes me feel better when I do it, but I just don't make the time to write, so then when I do it, I just feel like I'm just doing the same stuff over and over and I hate it. My friend asked me to do his show. I was like, I'm probably not going to. I'll say yes, but then I won't do it or whatever. And then whenever he said back to me, I can't remember, I just went, fine, I'll do it. And then I was kind of like, instead of doing the thing I always do, which is project forward about how bad it's going to be and how I'm going to fail, I was like, can you just write

five new jokes? And so I ended up writing, I think two. So it was basically Baby Steps Progress, but the two new jokes I wrote killed. And then I was like, I just need to keep doing this. I'm not going to be able to do it every single night. And the hilarious thing was, I kept stumbling over just saying words, where at some point I was like, have I talked out loud today? I should have warmed up a little bit before I walked out here.

But it didn't. Normally, what happens is if I stumble over a word, I will immediately make eye contact with a dude who has a bad look on his face. And then I'm like, I'm eating it. They hate me. This is terrible. And instead I was just like, yeah, I just didn't say it right. Like here, I'm here.

This is the idea of what I'm saying. And it all worked out great. And I saw a bunch of people that I really like, like Deb DiGiovanni is one of the funniest stand-up comedians doing it right now. And she was on that show. I just got to hang out in the green room with a bunch of people I really like. Dan Soder was in town from New York. He's a genius comic, really talented.

Josh out of Myers was there. He was the 500 podcast. He was really hilarious. And yeah. It was worthwhile. It was just like a super fun hang. So just the whole thing made me, I was just like, how about just stay neutral? You don't, it doesn't have to be the greatest night of your life and it also isn't going

to suck like the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Just go have new experiences and like give it a whirl. I feel like I've said that a hundred times. I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to continue to be positive. It's well, it's hard to practice getting, stepping out of my anxiety and just going, okay, you can think that now go see what actually the truth is. That's my practice that I'm proud to be practicing more because I know it conceptually. But then like that person said, like it's so easy to talk yourself out of actually

trying it. Well, that's the voice that you're used to listening to and that you've been listening to for so long. And what if they're not right and you're just, I mean, dude, I totally get that. Mine is that I've been having a lot of anxiety as well. I'm like kind of in between therapists and stuff. And our schedule has been fucking crazy with this great like Christmas break where we took some time off and it's starting to ramp up again to a way that's very stressful.

And I, my dad was like, are you free for lunch this week? And I was like, I'm not. I'm so sorry. I hate my schedule. So busy. And I was like complaining about it to him. And he texts me back and said, embrace your schedule as you would a blessing. Oh, Marty.

Shit. Yeah. I'm blessed that I have stuff going on and that my life has important meetings and important research that needs to be done and, you know, important shit. Take a picture of that and then show it to Office Georgia from 1998. Yeah. She'll be stoked. She will be.

And it's hard. Look, we both lose perspective saying this out loud on this podcast makes us look like assholes, but within any, any system you're in as great as things could be, the day to day is hard. And we actually work, you know, super fucking hard. Yeah. We just do. Yeah.

It's, but it's also fun. Yeah. But yeah. And it's, there's a fucking amazing payoff at the end of the day with it. It's very cool. I'm, I've, that could actually also be my fucking raise. Just the stuff we've been doing recently, the development stuff and like Bridger's show and, and the upcoming other shows we get to announce soon, it's really starting to feel

like there's this movement and it's so exciting because we've been working and kind of fighting for so long. And now it's actually like kind of unresults are being things are rolling out and furled and there's a reason for it all. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. It's kind of like how hard the book was.

And then the book came out. We're like, oh, yeah, this was so worth it. Um, well, I love that Marty's the one that did it though. That is such a like, uh, oh, scam likely from San Rafael. I'm not answering. Oh, that's right. By Petaluma. Um, yeah.

Embrace your schedule as you would a blessing. As you would a blessing. Yeah. We're fucking super lucky. Mazel tov. Hey. Shabbat. Shalom baby.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Oh yeah. Thank you guys for listening. You're the fucking best. You're a blessing. You're a blessing. You're a blessing.

We appreciate you. Thanks for letting us say really ungrateful things so we can get to the gratitude part afterwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your understanding means a lot to us. Thanks, Stephen Ramors for audio engineering. All our bullshit. Stephen has to sit through so much.

So much bullshit. I mean, true. And all he gets to do is read a KitKat menu at the end of the day. Poor thing. Stephen, get us that KitKat information. Yeah. Quick like, hey, what's going on on the per cast this week? Oh, we have Allison Tolman, who is the star of season one of Fargo.

Yes. And Emergence. And Emergence. Yes. And her cat Bud had all of his teeth removed and he's a big sweetheart. And you can just hear him on the podcast and be like, hey, like breathing and it's really cute. And she's hilarious.

Allison Tolman, I think is one of the most compelling actors in the game right now. They gave her her own procedural. That's how amazing she was. If you didn't see, was it season one or season two of Fargo? I think it was season one with Billy Bob Thornton, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that was season one.

No, it was with Billy Bob Thornton was in the movie. It was with, what's his cute British face? No, no, Billy Bob face. You're right. Martin Freeman, but Billy Bob Thornton was also, he was the villain. No, no. Ethan. Fuck.

No. Ethan. Oh, that was season three when he was his own twin or was it three or two? You're talking about Ewan McGregor. Yeah. He was a twin. He played his own brother. Yeah.

That was not her season. So it is season one. Sorry. Season, obviously Stephen knows this because he had a conversation with her. Yeah. So it was season one. We're confirming that. Colin Hanks too was also.

Colin Hanks. Oh, oh, and they fall in love and it's so good. Yeah. Three cheers for Alison Tolman. And if you haven't watched Emergence, it's really good. Cool. Yeah. All right.

Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Elvis, do you want a cookie? Elvis, do you want a cookie? Elvis, do you want a cookie?