Hey, everybody, Chuck here back. I'm still in my spooky mood from two weeks ago because I'm introducing this episode from January thirty at twenty eighteen. It's a follow up to two weeks ago about the Manson Family. It's called The Manson Family Murders Part Two. What happens? Will Charlie get away with it?
I doubt it.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know about the Manson Family Part two.
That's right if you're listening to this one first and you're doing it wrong, so no need to recap. Just go listen to part one and we'll pick up with the Beatles Wide Album, which was a very big deal in how this figure's in great great album. Obviously as a Beatles fan, I know you're not super into them, but I love the White Album arguably their weirdest album, and it spoke to Charles Manson for sure, because he really became pretty obsessed with it and diving into deconstructing
the album. It's a very dense long album anyway, and there's a lot to it. So it's no wonder that Charles Manson, with a head fallow acid, would think that the Beatles are speaking to him.
Right, and he definitely did so.
He apparently had a history already of deconstructing Beatles lyrics, but before he was deconstructing lyrics, so like Sergent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which compared to the White Album, is decidedly upbeat and positive, right, So while he was in prison, he was super into the Beatles. When he gets out, the Beatles released the White Album, he's already obsessed with, but now he's on tons and tons of acid.
The White Album is kind of a downer compared to Sergeant Pepper's and the fact that it's speaking to Charlis Manson like really made things turn dark, it seems like, as far as him and the people in his orbit are concerned.
Yeah, so they're hanging out, they're lighting bonfires, they're doing drugs, they're listening to Charles Manson stomp around with his tiny feet in his redneck voice talking about Helter Skelter, which is a great, great Beatles song and basically sort of sort of renamed his vision for this race war and impending apocalypse Helter Skelter. He kind of stole that from the Beatles, as Bono would later go on.
To say, yeah, he stole from the Beatles, but he also took it again as like a message that the Beatles were sending him aside that he needed to prepare his family for this because they were the chosen ones basically who should weigh out the race riot in Death Valley. So there's this whole idea that the all of the Tate LaBianca murders took place to further this idea of Helter Skelter to strike strike the match that would set
it off to get things going right. And this idea apparently is the creation of the prosecutor in the case, a guy named Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote a book called Helter Skelter, like a six hundred page book. Basically this the definitive true crime book on the Manson family and
the Manson family murders. And so most of the most of what we said in Part one and most of what everybody knows about the Manson family murders are come through this lens that was established by Vincent Bugliosi, who is the lead prosecutor in the case, was privy to tons of information, to confessions, to interviews, under questioning, to all this stuff. But he's the one who pieced together the idea that the Manson family committed these murders to start helter skelter.
That was his whole jam.
Yeah. Well, I mean some of the Manson family corroborated, cooberated. It's in there somewhere corroborated. That's a dark time with that word corroborated, corroborated. I don't have to say it much, luckily, because I'm not in a life of crime. No, but some of them back that up and saying that, you know, at one point he wanted them to throw a wallet of a victim in a black neighborhood so that people
would think it was, you know, black panthers that did this. Yeah, but it's some evidence that that was probably the case.
If you talk though to Manson and you or if you've listened to some of the stuff he says. Some of these ext nations because over the years people have said, what about this part, what about this part? And have basically presented him with every aspect of the whole case against him. You know, a lot of the stuff he has no explanation for nothing good. But that wallet is a sterling example of where it becomes obvious that.
Wait, we're basically hearing.
One point of view about this, and we've never that's all we've ever heard. Which if you're doing any kind of reporting, which you and I are not, but if you were inclined to do any kind of reporting, you never want to just stick to just one source. And with the Manson family case, it's basically one source, and
it's Vinsive Bugliosi, the prosecutor. But Manson explains it as he told I think it was Linda Kasabian to just get rid of that wallet, that he wasn't in a predominantly black neighborhood, and that he told her to get rid of the wallet because it was hot, and she hid the wallet actually in the tank of a toilet in a women's bathroom in a gas station, which is hardly where you'd put it if you wanted a black person defined it to use the credit cards inside and
to tip off the cops that a black person was behind the Tate La Bianca murders. So when you when you kind of dive into stuff like that, you see that there actually are two competing explanations in some aspects of this case.
Yeah, but I think Kasabian herself said that too, though, didn't she.
Yeah.
The thing is that if you are if you look at Charles Manson, right, I know that's.
That's the thing is.
It's a terrible realization when you're like, actually, I'm wait a minute, I understand what Charles Manson is saying.
Here.
The with with stuff like that when you look at the testimony, These were people who were on trial for murder who had every incentive to go along with the lead prosecutor's theory that it was all Charles Manson's fault.
They could have maybe immunity.
They could have they could have charges dropped against them that by saying yes, this is the case, or having their testimony jibe with what Vincent Bugliosi's case was, they had an incentive to do that.
Whether Charles Manson is right or correct or lying.
From an objective perspective, the people on Charlfer murder had an incentive to agree with Vincent Bugliosi all right.
So the way they got caught was actually pretty interesting. Unrelated to these murders. Police raided Spawn Ranch because it was sort of became known that the people were living there that were out on these creepy crawls doing these crimes, and so that's why they were originally fingered, as they say in the biz. And they went there and they rated Spawn Ranch and a lot of the family were arrested at that time for like car theft and burglary
and stuff. They were released on its technicality and then went to Death Valley to that weird ranch. If you ever been to Death Valley, it's not a place you want to hang out. No, it's not, especially in the summertime.
Is that where Joshua Tree is? No, that's it Joshua Tree, But that's not in Death Valley.
No, those are two different places.
But is it close by? There is the same type of terrain kind of thing.
Yeah, I mean I've been to both.
Are they similar?
Well, I mean Joshua Tree is the desert for sure, but it is very lovely. Like I don't remember much about Death Valley that was. I think it was not very hospitable for me.
It's appropriately named.
Yeah, I think so okay, And of course now people are going to say Death Valley's the best, you know what you're talking about, heavy sweater, so they go to
Death Valley. Then there were a bunch of raids at the Death Valley camp between October tenth and twelfth of nineteen sixty nine, and eventually they ended up rounding up the people responsible for these murders without knowing that they were responsible for these murders, so they were in jail kind of luckily already in jail when they sort of decided they could pin, will not pin like legitimately pin these murders on these people.
So this being the second time, there's something that I've ran across in research, Chuck that it never gets talked about,
but is I think really significant. At both of those raids, the Spawn Ranch raid and the Death Valley rate, the state took children from this, Like there were kids, babies, toddlers, little kids running around growing up like at the Spawn Ranch end at the Barker Ranch, which is extraordinarily troubling, and some of them have been are thought to have possibly been Charles Manson's kids, like he may have had. There's just so much free love going on, and so
many pregnancies that were the results was free love. It was difficult to say whose kid was whose, but it's they think that it's possible at least one or two of those kids was Charles Manson's kids, and they were taken by the state and later adopted by people. But it's like, you know, it's one thing to think of a bunch of hippies just out in the desert taking acid, just being idiots, you know, and then eventually turning dark
and murderous. But the idea that there were kids around at any part of this is really I find it very troubling.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I mean, all those cults had kids roaming around. They just weren't murderous cults, you know.
Yep.
So Susan Atkins, for her part, she agreed to testify initially against Charles Manson to avoid the death sentence, which for a few years more was still a thing in California. I think in nineteen seventy two they reversed that, but at the time the death sentence was a threat at the time of the crimes, so she had a grand jury testimony. It basically led to Manson being arranged for these murders. In December sixty nine, she recanted that testimony
and the deal was revoked by the prosecutors. It was kind of too late at that point. Linda Kasabian, who you might remember was I thinks that getaway driver and then the one who would not knock on the right apartment door to kill the actor, so she'd actually didn't commit any murders at all, was not in any of the houses. She was granted immunity for testifying, and I think she was the only one granted immunity.
Right, although I think, yeah, they just took the death penalty off, like you said, for Susan Atkins. And I don't know if you said this or not, but Susan Atkins is the reason the case broke open eventually, when they'd rounded up all of the Manson family and had him in jail for the death Valley raids for you know,
burglary and theft and stuff like that. The way that they found out that the Manson family was responsible for the Tate LaBianca murders was Susan Atkins bragging about it and a couple of her cell mates going and telling the cops and that's originally how the case began against the Manson family. That's how the authorities originally found out big mouth.
Yeah, I guess so.
All right, so let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about one of the weirdest, most sensational trials in American history right after this.
All right, Chuck, So, on December eleventh, nineteen sixty nine, Charles Manson, who the public had just been acquainted with, I think just in the last few months, was finally arraigned for the murders of the Tate Labiyonca murders. And I think that did they get him for his role in the Hyndman murder at.
That point, I'm not actually sure about that.
Definitely the Tate Labyonca murders, which was plenty enough.
And he.
It's it's it's kind of an understatement to say that he did not offer any public contrition.
He actually went the opposite way.
Yeah, for sure, he was well. The whole trial was chaos, and he he incited chaos at every turn to make it just a circus and was quite successful at doing so. Initially wanted to represent himself and did for a little while but the judge denied that, Judge William Keane and said, you have to work with a lawyer because of the fact that you're just making this into a circus. Basically,
we need this to stay on track. And he actually was successful, though Manson was getting Judge Keene oustered as judge and Judge Charles Older eventually would oversee the trial.
Yeah, and I read a twenty thirteen interview with Manson, and the thing that seemed to still get him the most was that he was denied the ability to represent himself in court, like he felt like he never got to have his saying court and that was that was the thing that got him more than anything else, not being locked up for his whole life or anything like that. It was that he didn't get to open his big mouth in court as much as he wanted to.
So I guess we could go over some of these things that happened in court that led to this circus atmosphere.
And by the way, if you want to see it yourself, there's a pretty good dramatic recreation in the movie Helter Skelter that was based on Mugliosi's book.
Yeah, nothing better than dramatic recreations. Yeah, lots of yelly and screaming, lots of shouting and cursing, lots of disrespect to the judge and the American flag. They threw a copy of the Constitution in the garbage. At one point, very famously, Charles Manson carved an X into his forehead, which later became a swastika, saying that he was exed
out of the world. And then his family members would do the same, and they would shave their heads and generally just try and disrupt things at every turn.
Right, And they did. I mean, they were quite successful. But the trial kept going on and on, right, I think it was. It went on for a couple of years, based on news articles I was reading about it. So it turns out, though that Richard Nixon supposedly had the most disruptive effect on the trial by saying while the trial was going on, quote, here's a man who was
guilty directly or indirectly of eight murders without reason. He was the sitting US president commenting saying that this guy was guilty of a trial that was going on, which is, you just don't do that. It doesn't matter what the case is, not for any compassion for Charles Manson or anything like that. But just because even on the other side, you could have blown the case and and he legitimately
could have created a mistrial there. Yeah, just because the President said something and everyone reported on it.
I can't imagine that happening today.
I totally can't.
It was a very Trumpian move. So we talked. I think we covered the helter Skelter thing enough, don't you.
We did.
But I think there's a there's a big thing that all this hinges on. Is that there the prosecution said, and you said earlier you even had a quote from Tex Watson that Charles Manson told him to go and just destroy the people in that house, gruesome as you can. And the prosecution said that that Charles Manson was trying to spark the Helter Skelter race war that he believed was going to happen. Manson's whole thing was this here, This is Charles manson since explanation for what happened and
why he's innocent. He said, Yeah, I believed in Helter Skelter. Yes, I believe there's a race war coming. I talked about it at night around bombfires with everybody on acid. I also talked about death of the ego and all sorts of other stuff. And if you ask me, what happened was my friends just took things and went it, took it too literally and went too far, and that it all hinged on this Bobby Bousselay thing, right, And even
before that, there lots of Papa thing. So Tex Watson rips off Bernard, lots of Papa Crow and he's got a problem with lots of Papa who wants to kill him now, and Manson goes over there to help Tex Watson solve this problem by shooting, shooting lots of Papa. So now as far as Manson and Text are concerned, Tex owes Watson a debt, any kind of debt, well
Manson's or Text owns Manson a debt. Now, Manson's friend Bobby Bousilla, who is one of his tightest family members, gets arrested for murder, the murder of Gary Hinman, and Manson says, well, you know, I mean you should do something to help my brother Bobby Bousola, And you know, Tex says, well what should I do? And apparently Manson flew off the handle and said, don't ask me what you should do, you know what you should do.
And that was that.
And the next thing, Manson knows Watson and cren Winkle and Atkins are over at the at the Tate residence, carving up Sharon Tate and the rest of the people in the house. He didn't say anything about going to kill anybody. He didn't direct him anywhere, he didn't say anything like that. He just said they took what all the other stuff that he'd said too far, and that really what they were doing was trying to cover up cover for Bobby Boussola to get him out of prison.
That's Manson's explanation for the whole thing.
Well, yeah, and for the part well, I guess we should go ahead and say that that all of these people went to prison, and Susan Atkins, Patricia Crenwinkle, Leslie Van Houghton, they all were, you know, still so under his spell that they were fully ready and did take the blame for these killings. But when it comes to parole, it was in January nineteen seventy one that they were all convicted on all accounts murder conspiracy to commit murder.
But years later, as parole hearings would come up for all these women and Tex Watson and Manson himself the reason why they were continually denied, even like Tex Watson became a born again Christian and you know, supposedly turned his life around, but they none of them would would take responsibility. All these years later, they would all still
say that it was Manson was Manson. And from what I understand, a big part of getting your parole approved is to finally take full responsibility for what you had done, and none of them would do it, and they were
all all denied over the years. Susan Atkins eventually died of brain cancer in two thousand and nine, and then just a few days ago, well, Leslie van Houghton in September of last year was actually recommended for parole in just a few days ago as of this recording, the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, denied that, oh really, and said,
now she still isn't taking responsibility. And I think these cases are just so loaded still that it would be really tough even though parole was recommended for the governor to approve that, you know, So we'll see, they're gonna apparently they're going to keep pursuing that and I'm not sure what the next steps are, but they're going to fight that ruling by Jerry Brown and we'll see where that go.
So so I think then Patricia Creenwinkle is still in prison. And I think now that Susan Atkins died, she is the longest serving female inmate in California prison system.
Yeah. Oh, and we should say too that Squeaky From tried to kill Nixon. That's where she gained later fame.
That was Ford.
Oh what I say, Nixon? Yeah, yeah, Gerald Ford. And she's she's out of prison. She she lives in upstate New York and I think the last I've seen of her was someone took her picture in a Walmart parking lot and she like smacked the camera down.
Yeah.
So she she's an interesting case. Squeaky From was out. She wasn't indicted for any of the murders or any role in the murders, but she was a number She was the number two person to join the Manson family. Remember, Yeah, and she still to this day refuses to denounce Manson. It's still very much all about Charles Manson, and just as much as she was before. And she went to I guess I'm not sure what she was doing with a gun and Gerald Ford, but she aimed a gun
at Jerald Ford. It was the gun wasn't loaded, but it still had the effect of sending her to prison for decades for an assassination attempt on the president.
Right.
I'm surprised she ever got out.
I am too, but she was paroled eventually, but she still she's still never denounced Charles Manson. All of the other ones denounced Manson. She's the only one who has it. And supposedly one time she escaped in the eighties because she heard that Charles Manson was sick, so she broke her way out of prison to try to get to him.
I guess.
Yeah, she was a Manson family member who tried to kill the president and escaped from prison and they she earned parole.
Yeah, hard to believe, but I think it's like you said, I think those the case that Tate la Bianca murders were so politically charged and so loaded that the like it's just didn't they just weren't going to get out the people who actually committed the murders.
Yeah. Yeah, Manson had an interesting time in prison too. He had a guy trying and kill him by lighting him on fire at one point in like I think like twenty percent of his body was badly burned. And he had a string of relationships with people from penpals, which will kind of cover at the end to a woman that he did he actually marry that woman.
I don't know.
She was in that twenty thirteen article that I was reading, and I don't know if they got married.
Man, we should do I don't know what we would call it, but an episode on generally women who who marry serial killers.
We totally should in prison, Let's do that, But first, let's take a break.
How about that.
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay, Okay, Chuck, we're back. We're talking about So Manson's in prison for a while there. This is just mind blowing to me. For a good decade. He enjoyed, Actually, more than that, he enjoyed the limelight. He could get interviewed by huge names like you said, Diane Sawyer, Charlie Rose, Heeraldo Rivera very famously did an interview with Charles Manson where apparently Manson you were saying how much poise Diane Sawyer showed during her interview.
Supposedly Manson just owned Heraldo during that interview.
I just totally took control of the whole thing. But the these were things that were televised like on national National news, and these these people were giving these networks were giving Charles Manson a platform to talk about himself, to talk about his philosophy, to show the world how crazy he was. Oh yes, to keep him in the public,
in the public eye and the public mind. Until finally after the Diane Sawyer interview there, they not only pulled the plug on his interviews, they said for there, you couldn't televise interviews with any inmates from in California because of Charles Manson basically. So it's just really strange to me, especially these days looking back, that he had a platform for so long to stay that boogeyman. You know that that just scared the be Jesus out of America.
Yeah, I think those last like whatever, like twenty three, twenty five years in prison with no limelight was that had to have been like the darkest time of his life because you know, he wanted he clearly wanted to be a singing star, and in a weird way, he ended up kind of getting what he wanted because some of his music ended up being recorded by you know, the Guns and Roses and the Lemonheads, and he became this kind of weird u cult figure and not as
in Jim James cult oh like movie My Morning Jacket Jim Jones, but like, yeah, like a cult figure and revered by some people weirdly. It just is so strange that people would look at him that way, you know.
So one person who revered him later on in life was a woman I believe he named Star, And she moved from her parents' house in Mississippi out to California to be just down the street from where Manson was held. And this is she was the woman who was posed to marry him, and she.
Was a follower of his.
She said she didn't care anything about nineteen sixty nine. He so Manson later in life became really interested in preserving the environment. He came up with a thing called Atwa air trees water.
I can't remember the last air.
Yeah air again, that would be awaa right.
So she became very interested in him.
For his ecological stance, right, And she moved out to be close to him and would visit him on weekends and they became very close, and I guess to kind of demonstrate to the world that he still had it.
I still got it world, he.
Asked her to carve an X in her forehead and she did so. She was also big time into collecting and selling Manson memorabilia, and Ed points out in this article. I think he's referring to her that the whole marriage thing may have been a ploy to get at Manson memorabilia,
but I don't believe that's the case at all. So she actually ran a website and still does called mansondirect dot com, and it's like up to date, So I think she had not abandoned him after some big, big score with memorabilia like she seems to have been the real deal follower, like an early Manson family girl reincarnated.
Huh. Weird. So there were a bunch of other I saw an article whether at least ten other weird deaths related to the Manson family that some people say could have been them or maybe not looked into a few of them. That was his original or at least this guy was originally going to represent Manson is an attorney named Ron Hughes. He ended up representing Think Leslie van Houghton. Yeah, but she he disappeared while on a There was a
ten day recess in the trial. So he goes camping with another couple and the couple left and he's like, I'm gonna stay on here in the woods. He was never seen again, so that was a little weird. They never found a body or anything.
I don't think it wasn't they even though he was one of their defense attorneys. They had a huge grudge against him because, like you said earlier, Van Houghton, Krenwinkle, and Atkins were all or not Atkins, I can't remember who the third one was. We're all going to incriminate themselves. So as Leslie Van Houghton's defense attorney, he said, I'm
not he rested after the prosecution wrested. He never presented a defense, Yeah, because he knew that they were going to incriminate themselves and he refused to take part in it. So they had a grudge against him.
So it's possible.
Possibly there was a spawn ranch worker that disappeared and he they were actually convicted. Some other family members of his murdered. His name was Shorty Shae Donald. Shorty say, there was this one dude Joel Pew who was married to Sandra Good who was a member, and he he was found dead in his London hotel. He had It was ruled a suicide, but his wrist had been slashed and his throat was slashed twice and there was something
written in blood on the mirror that was erased. You know, it was one of these shoddy jobs I think by the London cops. But some say it said Jack and Jill. Other people say they don't remember what it said. But that was definitely one of those that was like, hmm, could he have been killed?
Right?
And Manson family member, Yeah, well the list goes on.
One of those Manson family members who was convicted of killing Shorty Shay had made a couple of trips to the UK while Joel Pugh was there. So there's even there's even more. There's it's definitely weird that he died like that. Yeah, you know, having your throat slashed in a London hotel, it's weird no matter what.
And so like we said, you know, you said at the beginning, it was definitely the end of the peace love movement and sort of put a pin on the what people thought about what a lot of people thought about the counterculture, and like this is these are the hippies. They're not peace and love. They can murder people on drugs, and this is what acid can do to you. So
that was mainstream media. You had other alternative media or places like Rolling Stone that was still a pretty young magazine that would would not say things like that, would not kind of buy into the mainstream media portrayal, but it captured and still captures a lot of people's imagination. You know, it was a part of the zeitgeist, but it just endured for decades after, you know for sure.
And Rolling Stone actually did a tremendous amount of reporting on Charles Manson that was really good at the time. That twenty thirteen article I read was really good. That was from Rolling Stone. You can get into a Manson rabbit hole just going onto Rolling Stone's website.
And that.
The twenty thirteen article I read chuck that the author, I think he kind of summed up Charles Manson better than I've seen it anywhere else. But he said this, he said, sometimes he can be so transparent, which makes him look like nothing more than a goofy klutzy small timer who made some bad decisions that led to more bad decisions that led to murder, and who then got caught up in an ambitious DA's dream about a mastermind
saying golly with demonic visions of world domination. Some crook, some outlaw, some gangster, some desperado, probably the worst ever, but.
In the end a tiny redneck.
I mean that definitely falls in there too.
Yeah. So as far as these kids go, it's kind of hard to get good information because I read a bunch of different things. But from what I can tell, he had three sons, for sure. Yeah, one with Candy Stevens named Charles Luther Manson, one with Mary Brunner named Valentine or Valentine Michael Manson. Those two guys are impossible to find anything on. I'm sure they have probably changed their names. There was a Charles Manson Junior who killed himself in the I think early nineties.
Yeah, ninety three.
And then there's this dude. Did you see this Matthew Roberts guy.
I ran across his name, but I don't know anything about him.
Well, he claims too that his mother said, you know what, Charles Manson was your dad? We had sex in an orgy in samon Go in the late sixties, and I believe that he is probably your father, although given that it's an orgy, you know, those things go.
So that is the last does the last thing you ever want to hear your mom tell you that whole story. Yeah, the whole story from beginning to end. It's just bad news for you, the kid.
Yeah, so just look this guy up. And if he doesn't look like Charles Manson incarnate, then I don't know what to say. But the dude looks exactly like him. Here's the deal though, As he ended up, he tried to get DNA from the prison, tried to smuggle it out, but it got contaminated, the test didn't work. He ended up taking a DNA test to match with who we know was Charles manson junior son, a dude named Jason Freeman, who was you know, the grandson of Charles Manson, and
there was no match there. But Matthew Roberts says, well, that doesn't prove anything, because we ever see in the DNA match from Freeman and Manson. See he's still claiming to be his son, and I mean, the guy looks so much like him. It's a little creepy, So it's hard to not say, you know, why would his mom make up the story? The guy happens to look just like him, but who knows. And in the end, his
will and supposedly his estate is worth money. I don't know how much, but they say, you know, there could be a lot of dough there. And right now there's a legal battle going on between Jason Freeman, who is the grandson, and then this pen pal that Manson had for like decades named Michael Channels, who he scribbled out a will to this guy. And he's saying, hey, look, he wrote this will. He wants me to have this money. Jason Freeman saying it's mine. For their part, they're both
saying what they want to do. His body's on ice still is they want to they both want to scatter his ashes just where no one knows. So there it doesn't become like some weird trying. Yeah, but uh, the ongoing legal battle for his will, we'll see what happens there.
So and that Star lady weighed in saying if anybody who says he has a will is lying, that he purposefully said that he was not going to leave a will, right, But it would just it would be just like Charles Manson to scribble off a will, deny that he ever did it, and just leave a big mess behind afterwards, you know, yeah, just one more mess for everybody to sort out.
So strange, so strange, and said absolutely.
In the sixties there was some I know he talked about the uh god, who is that one cult that saw the documentary with Father Zod or whatever? Hm m I man, that was a crazy documentary. I mean, just that whole time was so so strange.
It really was.
Is people looking for something to belong to or something some meaning that wasn't their parents meaning, you know, yeah, yeah, well all right, Chuck, they found it. By the way they found it. They all became stockbrokers in the eighties. If you want to know more about the Manson family, well, like I said, there's rabbit holes all over the internet. And in the meantime, you can also read this great article by EDG. Grabanowski by typing the words Manson family
and the search bar at house Stuff Works. And like I said, it'll bring up this great Grabster article. And while I said that it's time for listening now, I'm.
Gonna call this Confederate monuments, well not Confederate monuments, but removal of monuments follow up.
Nice.
So we got a lot of great email about that podcast. I don't know how many of those you read, but you know, people roundly said we did a good, fair take on this tricky subject.
Yeah I saw that too, which always.
Makes me feel good and a shout out. This is not from her, but one of the people who wrote in was an artist named Kara Kara Walker who just look up her work. She is amazing. She's I think the second youngest person ever received a MacArthur Genius Grant and she does He's great. She does a lot of stuff and a lot of mediums. But what she's known for I think of these room sized silhouette like black cutout silhouettes depicting statements on race and gender and civil rights.
And she's just like a rock star in the New York arts scene. And she went to my high school.
Yeah I saw that.
Did not know that. She introduced herself. She graduated two years ahead of me at Ridan, So I wrote back to her and just told her how proud I was to be an alum.
Nice.
So, anyway, go check out Carl Walker's work. That's a mouthful, it is, but this is from someone else. Hey, guys, thanks so much for the podcast. I'm a big fan, especially enjoyed the Public Monument episode. I'm writing to clarify small point about the Georgia state flag that Chuck discussed in that episode. I got this thing wrong, by the way.
You pointed out that Georgia, like some other former Confederate states, included the familiar Confederate battle flag with the ex pattern in its state flag from fifty six to two thousand and one. However, that flag is not the Stars and Bars. The Stars and Bars was the official national flag of the Confederacy and is the flag after which the current
Georgia flag is patterned. It turns out that the flag Georgia use till nineteen fifty six was modeled after the national Confederate flag, and the state switched to the Confederate battle flag in fifty six. In other words, while the most familiar Confederate flag was removed in two thousand and one, it was replaced with another one.
That's so Georgia.
I thought we did the right thing. No, so I thought you guys wuld be interested. By the way, Mississippi is the only state that still uses the Confederate battle flag and its official state flag. Keep up the great work. And I don't have a name on this one.
Well, thanks a lot, I don't have a name on this one. That was some good info. We appreciate that. And Chuck, that was big of you to say, Hey, I got it wrong, I got it wrong.
That's all right, man, that's all right.
If you want to write in to tell us we got something wrong, lay it on us.
That's fine. You can send us all including Jerry an.
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