Stuff You Should Know - What was America's first terrorist threat?

Episode Date: January 4, 2013

From the moment it was established, the United States had headaches with terrorism of the pirate variety. For decades, the federal budget even include bribe money to pay them off. Learn all about this early threat on this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm talking weird like a radio announcer, which means it's time for Stuff You Should Know podcast. That's right. Welcome, sir. How are you?

I'm good. Welcome to you as well. Great. I'm good. You? I'm fantastic. Are you? Sure. You feeling high? Uh, is that a trick question? Yeah, I'm feeling high.

Good, man. Feeling high, feeling gay, feeling ready to go. Good. Well, let's do this. All right. Okay, um, Chuck. Josh. Yeah, wait a minute. Wait, let me relish this.

There's no plugs. There's no lead ins. Wow. There's nothing here. Wow. Pretty good. Okay, Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard the word terrorism?

Terror, terroir, isam? No. Terror, I know I have a thick tongue. Terror, isam. Yes, I have. You have? Yes. Did you know it's from the French? Um, I did not know that.

It's pretty surprising, isn't it? It is to me. It's from the French terror regime. That's how I assume it's pronounced. You have to say it like you're condescending. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, nice. But it was coined during the reign of terror in the 1789, 1790,

during the French Revolution. So, uh, did it have the same meaning? Like, um, unconventional means of warfare that involved citizens? It was basically, it did have roughly the same, the same meaning in that it involved citizens. This is the one thing that terrorism is always pointed to. Yeah. It's, um, it's, it's when citizens' innocence or casualties are directly involved in big problems.

Yeah, and not just, you know, of course there's casualties all the time, including nowadays with U.S. drone strikes and our own wars, but literally abandoning the rules of war, which we've done a podcast on in favor of, uh, you know, homemade guerrilla tactics to fall outside those rules. Right. And to terrorize people. And to terrorize people. But you're, you're directly targeting normal everyday citizens.

Yeah. Which therein lies the terror. Right. So terrorism has been around the last couple hundred years, although in the U.S. here, it's, it's just only in the, I guess the fifties, it started to become kind of a household word. Right. Definitely by the eighties. Once, um, my hijackers started taking over airplanes all over the place,

we knew what terrorists were. Yeah, boy, remember that hijacking was such a big deal. It was, I used to be terrified of that. And of course that was a central component of 9-11, but, um, like hijacking as far as just taking over the plane. That was like a big deal back in the day. Yeah. Remember that very iconic image of the, uh, terrorist holding a gun to that pilot's head

on a tarmac and I think Cyprus. They're like leaning out the window. Yeah. Yeah. It was scary. And that was before they, you know, had the good sense to keep those doors secure. Or use metal detector before you got on the plane. So you couldn't get a 45 onto a plane.

Yeah, you're just on the plane smoking your cigarette with your gun. Right. Exactly. So the pilot's door is open. If you want to tour the cockpit, just come on up. Right. Yeah. You mind taking your burlap hood off so we can see who you are.

Man, things were so lax. So weird. So, um, so we, we came to understand terrorism from maybe the sixties to the eighties on. But the United States has been dealing with terrorism literally since the moment it was born. Yeah. Especially if you call piracy terrorism. And for our purposes today, we will. Yes.

To fall in line with the title of this article we're going to. Yes. From the moment we gained our independence from England. Yeah. And even before then. Yeah. Before then. Yeah.

Because Europe was dealing with it as well. Right. These, um, on the North African coast, the Barbary coast, so named for the Barbarossa brothers. Yeah, Keher and Dean. No, that's sorry. That's one guy. Carr Addeen was one Barbarossa. Yeah.

I'm not quite sure who he was, but there were brothers. Arouge and Hizir. Yeah. And Barbarossa, uh, Barbara, Beard, Rosa, Red. Red beard. Red beard. Just like the Ferrari Testerosa. Mm-hmm.

The Red Testis. Exactly. And, uh, former quarterback, Vinny Testerverde, my friend, he's called Vinny Greenballs. Yeah. Sorry. That was pretty funny. Yeah. And he played for, he was like 50, so he probably did have said, he played for the Bucs, right?

Oh, he played for a bunch of teams. But he was known to play for the Buccaneers. He was, yeah, and then later with the Jets and he, he, yeah, he was all over the place. Oh, really? Yeah. I was just associated with the Buccaneers. Yeah. Well, he, I think he played a portion of his career there.

But when you play for 25 years or whatever, you're going to get around. You know, there was never a better heyday for team logos than there were, than the 70s and 80s. Oh, God. Like the old Raiders logo, which I guess is still around. Yeah, that's, the Raiders stay pretty consistent. But the Buccaneers used to have a great one. Yeah, the Orange. The New England Patriots had like that mint man who was ready to hike the ball.

Loved it. They were, they were just great. The Pittsburgh Pirates had probably one of the better ones of all time. Uh, well, yeah, they were baseball, of course. Sure, I know. Yeah. I said sports logos. Oh, okay.

I think I said sports. Yeah, you're talking about the old stove top hats that the Pirates wore, the flat caps. They had. Oh, yeah, yeah. Those are awesome with the yellow bands. Yeah, they were terrible. So speaking of pirates, we were talking about the brothers, Red Beard, Barbarossa, and these guys were actually Turks, right?

But the Spaniards were the ones who named them Barbarossa. And the Spaniards were well versed in the school of the blade taught by Aruge and Hazir, Barbarossa. Yeah. And these pirates specifically were helping out Muslim Moors driven away from Spain by Christians. And this just reinforced to me like Christians and Muslims, man, they've been fighting for a long time. Yeah. Like anything you see on the news these days is like, yeah, this has got quite a bit of history here. Yeah, 1492 is a really big year for Spain.

St. Columbus over here to the new world and drove the Spanish Muslims, aka the Moops, yeah, from Spain. Are they the Moops? No, the Moors. Remember that Seinfeld where he's playing Trivial Pursuit with Bubble Boy? Yeah. And he's like the Moors. He goes, no, it's the Moops.

Yeah, I forgot about that. That I feel silly because I thought that might have been the Moops. Yeah. Yeah. The Spaniards like Moors, Moops, who cares? Okay. So after this happens, the Mediterranean Sea right there between North Africa and Southern Europe, all of a sudden because it was such a heavily traveled trade route became a haven for piracy

because there was lots of stuff to booty. Yeah. Lots of stuff to boot, lots of booty to pillage. Yeah, because at this time it was, that was the route between Europe and the East Indies and that's where Europe was making all of its money from the spice trade and all that. Yeah. And so to get there, you had to go through the Mediterranean when the Christians drove the Moors to North Africa.

Yes. And of course the North Africans are like, hey, we're living here. The Berber folks, isn't that where Barbary comes from? No, Barbary comes from Barbarossa. Oh, I thought it said it was a surname for the Berber people. No, the Barbarossa brothers. Those guys were so bad, they named the entire North African coast after them. Wow.

The four states of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli, which is what we now know as Libya. Liberty. That's the Barbary coast named after the Barbarosis. Wow. So you've got all this piracy going on. It's stepping up in earnest after 1492 and everybody's just getting taken every which way but Sunday. That's right.

Every which way. So Muslims and Christians were both getting in on the piracy game. We don't want to sling stones. That's a good point. Only at the Muslims. But because of where it was, it was just a haven for it. And I think you point out, this is your article, right? Yeah.

In the 17th century at one point, an estimated 20,000 people were captured by the Barbaries and held in Algiers alone, 20,000 kidnappings. That's like a couple of good sized cities back then. Yeah. That's significant. So they were doing a pretty good job, I guess, at the piracy. Yeah. That's like the average attendance on a Tuesday night of a Pittsburgh Pirates game in the late 70s.

Tuesday night, late 70s Pittsburgh Pirates, 20,000. Yeah, they were pretty good. Roberto Clemente era. He can fill those seats. He was earlier than that. But yeah, the Willy Sturgill era. That's what I said. Let's call it that.

So European, they did so much pirating. They thought, you know what? We can make more money if we start to extort people. Not only can we pillage their booty, we can extort money from them, aka getting tributes paid, which is really just extortion. It's a protection racket. Yeah. It was, we will protect you from ourselves.

These guys are like Sicilians all of a sudden. It's like, hey, we wouldn't want anything to happen to your ship. That's right. Give us some money. We'll make sure it doesn't. But they weren't even as sly as the average Sicilian. They said, if you don't give us money, we're going to attack your ships, take your goods and kidnap your crews.

And they had certain things. So in addition to tribute and then capturing goods, kidnapping a person could be kind of lucrative no matter what the person's station was socially. Well, yeah, because well, first of all, pay us if and we won't kidnap you. And then we will kidnap you and then try and get you to pay us the ransom. Right. Or if you won't do that, then we'll just sell you as a slave. And we're going to make money one way or the other.

One way or another. Yeah. If you are a member of a Barbary state and you're a pirate, you know how to make some coin. Yeah. And it was such a racket that nations included line items in their budgets to pay these tributes. Yeah.

It was like an actual, I guess you call it legit. But I mean, it wasn't legitimate because it was, you know, plundering, but it legitimately included it as like, hey, we got to pay these guys off. Exactly. This much money per year. So we just got to think about that. Yeah. And the, I think the United States in its 1784 fiscal budget.

Yeah. Had 80 grand set aside to pay as tribute to Barbary governments. Yeah. That is crazy. And that was actually small at first too. Well, yeah. It, I think you pointed out it goes up to a million dollars by 1795. And they paid a million dollars annually for 15 years.

That's a lot of coin back then. That was 10% of the federal annual income. No. At the time. No. Yep. Wow. So a million bucks.

The reason it went up so much was the Barbary states actually had tribute on a sliding scale. Yeah. They, they, the European nations, right? At the time, if you think of them as corporations, because essentially that's what they were. Oh yeah. Like the British East India Company. Sure. Was pretty much one of the same as the British government.

Yeah. They would use the Barbary pirates to, they would use their diplomats to get the Barbary pirates to attack some nations, leave theirs alone. Yeah. They would pay some tribute, but they were, it was definitely part of the political maneuvering was to just kind of keep this Mediterranean shipping channel open for the superpowers. Yeah. And squeeze out the little guys.

Well, the Barbaries were like, yeah, we'd like making money from you. But we also want to make it from the little guys too. So we're going to establish the sliding scale. Yeah. And based on the size of your economy, that's how much tribute we're going to extract from you. And when the US was born, they were like, oh, you're tiny. Just give us like 80 grand. How about that?

Right. And then within like 10 years, they were like, oh yeah, you guys have a whole continent of raw material. It's tough. Yeah. You show no scruples at stealing it from the natives who are living there. Right. So how about a million a year from now on?

So they did that for 15 years. One of the main reasons they did this for so long was because they were trying to form a Navy. They didn't even have a Navy at this point. Who, the US? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then in fact, this is why the Navy was born.

It would have been born at some point anyway, because you need a Navy. But this is what really spurred the creation of the Navy in the US. And Thomas Jefferson comes along and was like, told John Adams, dude, we can't be paying these, this old world stuff and worrying about paying off these tributes to these guys. Like we got to expand West, brother. Yeah. Like this is where it's at. We're sitting here playing these old games, paying these guys money and trading over the

Atlantic. Screw that. Let's just stay over here, expand Westward, and that's where the future of this country is. Right. He also made a pretty good point that it would be more cost effective. To take that million bucks and put it into a Navy and pound the Barbary States into submission than to just keep paying them a million dollars a year at Infinitum.

I wonder what the, because this is why they were doing this concurrently. They were building a Navy to try and stop this. Like if that was 10%, I wonder how much it cost to build a Navy. Like a substantial portion of the federal government's funds was tied up in stopping this at the time. Sure. Including building the Navy, paying these ransoms, or tributes, or extortion fees. Yeah.

Depending on which way you want to go. And it was a big problem, like we said, right out of the gate. But it wasn't handled for a while because Jefferson's ideas, I guess his Westward expansion concept, and then building a Navy rather than paying tribute, he was in the minority. He was the diplomat that succeeded Benjamin Franklin, who was the America's first diplomat to France. And Benjamin Franklin had, he took the tack that most people at the time took, which was this was just part of doing business with the East Indies.

Yeah. And, you know, we'll do what we can. Before we used to be under the protection of Great Britain. Well, we split from Great Britain. We're not under the protection anymore. We're still kind of a fledgling nation. So we need protection of superpower. So Franklin knew how to charm the French, and he set up the Treaty of Amity and Commerce

of 1778. Yeah. Just directly addresses this pretty much. Yeah. It actually had mentioned the Barbary Nations by name in this treaty. Yeah. And basically said, France, you guys help us out here in the Mediterranean. And France said, okay.

They did say, okay, which is good. So Jefferson, he doesn't have any real pull at this point yet. It was not until he became president that he actually really enact his plan, which was to get out of this whole mess. Yeah. And once he did, he basically said, you guys are toast. Yeah. I mean, as soon as he was sworn into office, the Turkish ruler, Pasha, demanded an extra

$250,000 from this new administration. They were like, well, you're the new guy. Well, we just need a bonus payment because you're now in office. Right. And I looked this up. I was like, God, that was so much money back then. It was about $3 million. It was less than $3 million, which is not that much.

Yeah. You never hear about this. It's like, I didn't want this in high school. No, I know. You know? I remember getting out of high school and realizing like there's so much more to history. Yeah. Well, I didn't realize what else Jefferson was doing in Paris.

You know? He was doing a lot of crazy stuff. Yeah. And some not so crazy romantic things. Sure. But you didn't learn about that in high school either? No. About himmings.

I bet, I wonder if they teach that stuff now. I'd be curious to sit down on a high school history class. I imagine it's very much the same. You know? Yeah. There's a certain school of thought that you're indoctrinated into and there's stuff you need to know and things you should know. And you don't need to know about that.

Sure. We don't like to talk about that kind of thing. And then, you know. College was where I first started getting my real education. Yeah. I had some really good history teachers. Yeah. Yeah.

The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs.

Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion.

And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions, and what we can learn from them.

I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Um, all right, so where are we? We are in office as Jefferson. Yes, and he already hates the Barbary States because he's been trying to get everybody to turn against him for 15 years. He's finally got the power to do something about it. That's right. They had taken control of a couple of crew members, captured American ships,

and they said, you know what, we'll release these guys if you increase your tribute. And Jefferson said, enough of this crap. We've got ships now, six of them, I think, at first. Is that right? Yeah. That's cute. You gotta start small. Yeah.

And we're coming over to pay you a little visit in our ships. And the first Barbary War from 1801 to 1805, it was, it was a pretty happening war. I mean, it was mostly at sea. And it lasted four years, right? Yeah. But at one point they captured, well, they captured because the USS Philadelphia, I think, ran aground and got stuck. So this is one-sixth of the entire US fleet?

At the time, I think so, yeah. Wow. So it got stuck in, like, working order still. So they captured the ship, take control of the crew, and they used the ship as a gun battery against us because it just parked right there, I guess, cannons aimed out toward the sea. Right. So they just used it that way for a while. And it was Stephen Decatur, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur of the Navy, led some Marines

and recaptured the ship and burned it so they couldn't use it. Yeah. And that guy is, I think there are 46 communities in the United States named Decatur. Including one where you live. Right here in Atlanta. And Jerry. So named, yeah, and Jerry, so named for Stephen Decatur. And there's a pic, there's a statue.

Is that Decatur or Jefferson? I think there's a Decatur statue right there at the largest station. What was the one that we shot at, though? Was that Jefferson? Oh, was that Jefferson? Yeah. The guy writing? You know, man, I don't even know.

That's sad. Be like, molested the statue. We're sitting here talking about this and we don't even know what statues was. Yeah. But I know there is a Decatur monument in the center of Decatur. Sure. Stephen Decatur. Sure.

He would, but yeah, this is where he really kind of proved his stripes as an admiral. Apparently he came very close to being killed. But one of his crew members, when they were going to attack the Philadelphia, one of his crew members threw himself in between Decatur and a Barbary, I guess, pirate. Yeah. And he survived, but like he threw himself in between the sword and Decatur. And Decatur went on to do even greater stuff. But yeah, so they destroyed the Philadelphia.

They get out. It's very daring. And you said Marines were there. Yeah. I mean, led by a naval officer, but it was definitely the Marines that did the 30 work. And that's why if you listen to the Marine Corps hymn in the first line, it's from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. This is what they're talking about.

Pretty cool. So the first Barbary War lasts from 1801 to 1805. It was mostly with Tripoli. They're the ones who were giving us the most trouble. Tunis and Algiers basically said, you know what? We're just going to stand over here for a little bit. We're fine. All of our alliances with you.

We're not going to break them. We're pirates. We're all pirates, everybody. What did you expect? And then several years later, Thomas Jefferson retires the Monticello and James Monroe comes into the presidency and we have trouble again. But this time it's with Tunis and Algiers. And James Monroe takes a totally different tack than Thomas Jefferson.

I think because we had a much bigger Navy by then for the second Barbary War. Was it just a little more aggressive? We just went into the coast of Tunis and Algiers and pounded their cities with our cannons. And they said, okay, okay. Sorry. Right. You guys are bigger now. You're right.

After that, the U.S. said, no more. We're never paying you another dime. Yeah. In the first war, you pointed out that they used the tactic used by the Green Berets, which was to find local insurgent groups to help them do the fighting. And I think in this case there were some Greeks and Arab and Berber mercenaries that we enlisted to help fight against them on land, what little fighting there was on land. And it worked.

And it was the first time a U.S. flag was ever raised on foreign soil, thankfully. Man, I am just overwhelmed with jingoism right now. Are you a jingoist? For the moment. You and Toby Keith? Yeah. Growing around. What happened to him?

He's around, I'm sure. Okay. I mean, I don't keep up, but nothing's happened to him as far as I know. He's still jingoing it up. Okay. So is that it? I got nothing else. I've got something else.

So we were talking about how U.S. Christians and Muslims alike were not shy about resorting to piracy, enslavement, all that stuff. And the Mediterranean had seen piracy for millennia, but it all really started in the Crusades. And that's when one side was just capturing the other's people. We're going to cover that at some point. The Crusades? Yeah.

I mean, we could only have to be an overview, obviously, because we could do like 10 shows on the Crusades. Sure, sure. But throughout this time, there's this order called the Matherians. And they are a French Catholic sect. And their whole gig was raising money to use to ransom sailors who couldn't pay their own ransom to keep them from being sold into enslavement, which is a pretty noble pursuit. And these guys were like, they were, you know, they took vows of poverty.

So they like weren't hoarding any of the money themselves. They weren't getting fat off this. They really used it. And over three centuries, they ran some 90,000 sailors that were captured. Wow. Yeah. And one of those guys turned out to be Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote. Really?

Yeah, he was captured in the Mediterranean. And I suppose wrote that after he was freed? I don't know. I would say so. Well, that's just a guess. Isn't that cool though? That is cool. He was captured by the Barbados.

I actually thought about one more thing, too. The apparently the slaves, I mean, it was not great to be captured as a slave, but it wasn't like European and American slaves. Like you could actually gain wealth and possession and status as a slave. In Africa? Yeah. Yeah. African slavery is much different than Portuguese style slavery that we're used to here in the

States. Yeah. And most of the time it was not like a great thing, but you could. I think one guy even rose to a position of advisor to a king of Algiers. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. And by used to, I meant aware of and disgusted by.

Okay. Right. I used to. Yeah. Accustomed to. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And on the prime example, okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever

you get your podcasts from Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington. The news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien. The senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition

collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. We'll listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is that uh, is that it? Yes. Okay, well uh that was America's first terrorist threat. Pirates, that's the answer. The red beards. If you want to learn more and uh read the article that I wrote, you can type in first terrorist threat. There's a lot of terrorism stuff.

We should do one on how terrorism works in general. Have we not done that? No, no. Um, you can find all that stuff by typing terror into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. I'll bet it'll bring up some surprising stuff. Uh, and since I said search bar, listen to your mail. Not quite yet, my friend. Okay.

Quick little TV show plug. Yes, by now everybody knows we have a television show coming out on Science Channel. At 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, January 19th. Yes. And we're very excited about it. Yes, we are following uh the series three premiere of Idiot Abroad with uh, Carl Phil from Tim and Ricky Gervais. Yeah.

Pretty pumped up about. Yeah. And then comes our show and if you don't have TV or cable, you can still get this on iTunes. You can purchase each show each week, I believe the following day, for $1.99 and the first show is free. Yeah. So uh, Saturday, January 19th at 10 p.m. is the world premiere of Stuff You Should Know Television show and then at 10 30 p.m. is episode two back-to-back episodes on January 19th. It'll be a big deal.

Uh, so what, listen to mail time now? Yes. Okay. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this asexual healing. You're not. Did you call it? Did you make that up? Yes.

That's awesome. Guys, when I first saw the podcast on asexuality, I figured it had to be about asexual reproduction like single-celled organisms or sea sponges. It was a little trepidatious when I saw it was actually about asexuality as a sexual orientation. Often I am not particularly happy with any brief overview of any subject I care about or have much knowledge about. I was pleased I had no such negative reaction to your podcast though. In fact, it was extremely uplifting.

Nice. Uh, you described much of the difficulty I had growing up, the talk of being confused by your friends, suddenly being into girls was particularly evocative. In high school and college, I also had a lot of really awkward or negative interactions with people, especially girls who just didn't get what I was. I even had a female friend stop being my friend when I turned down her sexual advances. I can only guess as to why, but I always felt like she just didn't believe me and that really sucked. Um, I also, uh, it also made me realize that at 31 years old, I'm not as okay with my sexuality

as I'd like to think I am. No matter how much I've told myself and others, I'm asexual. I'm cool with it. I've always had that itch in the back of my head that has told me that I'm crazy or delusional or there's something wrong with me. Uh, knowing that this is a real thing with such relief, I'm now looking into A-B-E-N and finding all sorts of exciting stuff. So thank you very much for covering the subject.

Nice. Yeah. Congrats. And that is, uh, an anonymous listener who, uh, got something out of the show, which is nice. Got asexual healing out of the show. I hope so. That's really cool. That is what we do, man.

That's why we do this. Psychic healers. Uh, we've asked for it before. We'll ask for it again. If stuff you should know has changed your life one way or another, especially for the better, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us if you can fit the whole thing into 140 characters or less at S-Y-S-K podcast.

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