I’ve got a long travel day coming up tomorrow—heading to Tucson for a client’s event. I’ve been downloading podcasts to listen to on the flights, and while sampling shows over the weekend, I wound up listening to an entire series I thought I’d share here. It’s called Flashpoint. It’s a Tenderfoot/IHeartMedia show that came out this past summer (you can find it on Apple Podcasts here, or on Spotify here).
Flashpoint is nominally about Eric Rudolph, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber. What it really manages to do is to use his story as a lens to examine home-grown right-wing terrorism, which the show casts as “America’s greatest threat.” (Rudolph, by-the-bye, was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison in 2005 after pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty; he recently tried to weasel out of that deal, but the life sentence was just upheld this past February.)
It turns out that Cole Locasio, the young journalist presenting the show, has a strange personal connection to the case. I won’t spoil that for you. What I will express is my admiration for the way he works to present the points of view of the people most affected by Rudolph’s crimes, particularly those injured in the 1997 Atlanta Northside Family Planning Services clinic bombings.
If you listen to nothing else, listen to the final episode (episode 8, “The Paradox”). It is a full-throated defense of abortion rights—a former clinic nurse injured in the bombing gives exceptionally stirring testimony. It’s a rousing reminder of what we are deciding in this race: whether or not we as a country capitulate to the right-wing terrorists who have been working to crush our institutions and our rights for the last 60-plus years.
Another recommendation on this theme (and a few others that are great, but less relevant) after the jump.
Uneasy Listening – Two Podcasts About Abortion RightsPost + Comments (71)
