Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast 127. Bryan Burrough on '70's Political Violence, Youthful Activism, and "Days of Rage"
Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough is a modern classic. Nancy gushed over it so often Sarah finally read the thing, and damn, Nancy was right. Burrough is a longtime Vanity Fair contributor whose seven (!) books cover oil tycoons, Fortune 500 companies, and true crime, but we’re here to talk about his 2015 epic on 70s radicalism and political violence, which was criminally under-rated upon its release but has become a cult classic.
Trigger warning: This episode drips with fan-girling.
Also included, in TIME-STAMP FORMAT (possibly for the last time):
* Buc-ee’s: Pro or con? (7:30)
* George Mitchell, father of fracking, HL Hunt and Clint Murchison. (7:53)
* How Days of Rage came about, and why Burrough wouldn’t do it again. (12:30)
* When the media ignores your politically inconvenient book (19:50)
* Weather Underground (29:30)
* How journalism fell apart (31:00)
* Bernadine Dohrn: Radical-era bomb-thrower turned law professor (35:40)
* Protests were about race: “We didn’t really care about the war” (44:29)
* BLM activism compared to 70s: “This is kiddie college” (49:30)
* The Capitol was bombed by leftist activists?? (52:50)
* “More people in the FBI went to jail because of the Weather Underground than people in the Weather Underground went to jail” (1:00:00)
* “Our jobs are so much fun” (1:09:00)
* The heist book Burrough just inhaled (1:10:00)
Plus, why oil tycoons are low-hanging fruit, a podcast debate about George Floyd, the writer Burrough most wishes he could emulate — and more!
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