Episode 578: Patty Hearst Part I - 57 Days
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Did you know that you can watch Last Podcast on the Left and Side Stories on our Patreon right now? Yes, that's patreon.com slash lastpodcastsontheleft. But over on TikTok, you can see the hottest, tightest, funniest clips from the show right there. It's TikTok. TikTok. It's at LP on the left. It's the same as our Instagram. You already follow the Instagram. Why don't you go follow TikTok? But it's on TikTok. Yeah, because...

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I guess then the show must go on. Now, I would like to start today, first of all, by thanking Marcus for the work that you've done already.

Right? The work that I've done already. You've just done so much work on this. He's talking like he doesn't appreciate what you did. I did. And it's not just me. Carolina put in a ton of work on this. Yeah, too much. Shaw put in a ton of work on this. A lot of work. Joel put in a lot of work on this. This is a big team effort. But now I kind of feel like... You're starting to feel guilty. Don't feel guilty. He does this to himself. But if you look at him right now, and Eddie said this to him, is that like...

with all the work and with all the reading and the gravitas and the classes. Yeah. Because he's wearing, he is dressed like a liberal college teacher in the 1960s. No, you look like you're trying to talk me into like getting arrested. See, that's what I feel like.

Death to the fascist insect. Because of this story. Yeah, yeah, you look like a guy like, I feel like a trembling 15-year-old heiress who's like, can you change me? I am far more fashionable than the Symbionese Liberation Army. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Marcus Parks. Hi, I'm Fatty Hurst. Hi, I'm Spreed.

Yeah, it's my funny name. It's my funny burlesque name, Patty Hurst. Henry Zebrowski, Patty Hurst. I'm Patty Burst, bigger than the last. Yeah, see? Not as big as the gnat. There's so many ways to make fun of the name, even though she's a victim. Patty Burst is Ed Larson. Ooh, so much sizzler. Hear that groan? That's the belt. And of course, our subject today is...

Patty Hearst, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the subsequent odyssey that she went through afterwards. This is a classic example of a name I've heard and a type of story I've heard and the various scant details that I have known over all the years. And you always kind of think like, oh, I know the Patty Hearst case. Stockholm Syndrome. She goes in, she robs banks, she's a rich lady, but she hangs out with these crazy revolutionaries. And, you know, you never think about it, but the story itself is...

is amazing. Yes. And it's huge. Yeah, I never really knew much about this. This has been very exciting. And especially because I've always, like, hated William Randolph Hearst, you know, just naturally, just because I have to. And, you know, the Hearst family, because of Deadwood. Because of Deadwood. And so what I knew about Patty Hearst is, like, before this, I'm like, oh, she's just some criminal like the rest of them.

And then you start learning about this shit and all of a sudden, you know, you're like, oh, we've been fed bullshit for all these years. And that's the power of books and that's why I read the Bible to the homeless people around my house every day to teach them about how Noah fucked his family. Boo-woks.

Now, out of all the true crime stories of the 20th century, it's generally accepted that the top three, or at least the top three by name recognition, are O.J. Simpson, the Lindbergh baby, and today's subject, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. Man, that fucking baby was a criminal, dude. That baby fucking went, he went, he brought out the automatic weapons. I couldn't believe that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That freaked me out because the whole time I thought the baby was the victim.

them, right? I was going through all this shit. I was like, motherfucker, that baby's a serial killer? Fucking nuts, man. Fucking bandolero. Fucking debunk festival going on here. Oh, bandoleros are going to play an important part in this story later on. Believe you me.

Well, 50 years ago, on February 4th, 1974, the extraordinarily wealthy granddaughter of media mogul William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by a far left-wing militant cult who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, the SLA. Yeah, dude. Fucking eight-headed snake. Hell yeah, man. The Symbion Army, man. They worked with Howard Stern. Back in the day, man.

Yeah, I believe. Wasn't Jesse Jane in this? Was Jenna Jameson a member of the Sibian Liberation Army? Do your own research, I always say. That's how you know when the Sibian Liberation Army is coming, though, is you hear that. These horses don't move.

What's most remembered about Patty Hearst, however, is that she helped her captors rob a bank less than two months after her capture, right after the SLA released a photograph of Patty dressed as a revolutionary holding an automatic weapon in front of the SLA flag. Looking real fucking cool, real fucking scary to the squares at the time. And also kind of attractive. Yeah.

Now, since the SLA's beliefs were strictly political, Patty Hearst was vilified on the right for her participation in some of the SLA's crimes, which included multiple cold-blooded murders. That being said, those on the left...

also have their opinions on Patty, mostly because she was born into an extremely privileged and sheltered life. Privileged and sheltered doesn't even really even come close to what she was. She's like the last unicorn. Yeah, yeah. Like, I was privileged and sheltered. She was fucking taken away to a castle. She had a nice time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Hearst family is still, to this day, the 14th richest in America.

And Patty's grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, was one of the most visible and well-known symbols of the American ruling class oligarchy of his time. He's sort of like how we view Jeff Bezos today. I actually think that Jeff Bezos is nicer than William Randolph Hearst.

I don't know. I'd like to put him in the ground myself. We'll figure it out. Now, taking those facts into account, it may be tempting to look at Patty Hearst in a less than sympathetic light. After all, when Patty Hearst was kidnapped, she was indeed slumming it in a bad neighborhood in Berkeley, California. She was the very definition of the girl Pulp sang about in the song Common People.

But when you reduce this story to its most basic form, Patty Hearst was a young 19-year-old woman who survived by her own wits and strength a brutal kidnapping, months of torture, and multiple sexual assaults perpetrated by men who also saw Patty Hearst as almost a different species because of her background.

Now, with the Patty Hearst story, it's important to know the historical context. We know. Oh, we know. We got to know the context. It always is. It always is. That's why I love these series. Historical context are my two favorite words in the English language. Besides, I'm coming. This story, it's interesting because it's...

It is important to set the context because it's nice for us because it's modern history. Yeah. And it's something I can try to understand, except it's another time when I, another time, and I'm coming. Listen, guys, communists,

I hear you. All right. I'm trying to read it. I try to read the theory. All right. I don't understand a word of it. And so this is as far as I went. I did as much as I could, though, this time. As far as communism goes, it looks good on paper, but it's obviously failed every single time. But that's a long story in the whole thing. But yeah, just 50,000 bearded men just said out loud, but true communism has never actually been tried. Yes, that is the idea. And that's why we'll get there. Next time I need a nap, one of them can talk at least.

Well, this happened in the mid-1970s, which was a time of extreme inequality and social unrest when crime was at levels we can barely imagine today. And a fair amount of those crimes were politically motivated. There were bombings by leftist radicals. That's the crazy thing about the 70s is that there was so much crime in that decade that there were bombings like...

threw out and nobody talks about him anymore. Man, everyone always talks about how this is the craziest, worst time ever. It's like in the 60s, they used to like kill presidents. You know, like today is the craziest, worst time ever. It's like, no, no. The 70s were, and then the 70s made the 60s kind of look cute because that

What happened after what was like, because at least the 60s had this sort of like ideology attached to it in a way where it had this sort of like rising youth movement where the 70s was all about the absolute abject failure of that movement and what kind of led to how that changed America and to where we're at today. Yeah, the hippie peace and love turned into coming into beer cans. Ha!

Hey, man, there ain't nothing wrong with coming into a beer can as long as that beer can is my wife. You also you had racially motivated murders, both white and black. You had the KKK. You had the zebra murders. And at the highest levels of power, you had the Watergate scandal. Everybody's a fucking criminal.

In the middle of all this was Patty Hearst, who became a symbol of economic inequality while also further establishing the belief in the right that America was being murdered by its young people.

Now, Patty was indeed brainwashed, but not with the SLA's political ideology like many people assume. Instead, Patty was brainwashed into believing that because it appeared as if she'd fully joined the SLA, she would be gunned down on site by the FBI if she were to ever leave. If you're asking why she didn't escape on her own when she had hundreds of chances, it's really as simple as that. At some point during this, her saga with the SLA, she...

made several moves in order to ingratiate herself to her captors in order to not, number one, be killed from the inside. But then in those moves, made herself optically a fucking villain. She made herself a criminal. And at that point, if they're not negotiating and you got your family and you don't know that your family is constantly working in the background trying to find a way to find you, you believe in your mind you are fucked.

You are on camera with an assault rifle during a bank robbery. You know you're fucked. And guess who's not too fucking good with trigger discipline either? The FBI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, and these people, like, they're going to fucking kill you. Yeah, she's basically an undercover agent for her own survival. Yes. Yes.

That's actually a really fucking good way of putting it. Yeah. And indeed, after almost two years on the run from the FBI, that's years, not months, Patty was arrested and tried for the crimes in which she participated. And to be fair, there was plenty...

plenty of evidence to support the opinion that she'd fully bought into the SLA's political philosophy and their terroristic tactics. It goes real deep. She goes deep. The only, honestly, she Joaquin Phoenix'd it. And it's a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She Joaquin Phoenix'd it and then unfortunately she, instead of making the master, she made Joker. Yes. Laughter

But what nobody knew then, and what a lot of people still don't know now, is that from nearly the beginning of her ordeal, Patty Hearst never once bought into what the SLA was selling and had one goal during her entire ordeal.

Patty Hearst was only concerned with survival, and the journey she took with the SLA as a result is one of the most bizarre, fascinating, and incredible stories I've ever heard. Besides Lord of the Rings. Because I still feel like Lord of the Rings is better. It is. No, Lord of the Rings is better. It is. As far as epic journeys go, yes, Lord of the Rings is better. And this is the Simmerillion for Patty Hearst. Yes.

Now, in case you hadn't noticed, this is going to be a pro Patty podcast. Sure, sure, sure. Anybody who wants objectivity, good luck. It doesn't exist in the Patty Hearst story. It just doesn't. This is also one of these stories where there are so many perspectives coming in on this that it's,

We are going to try to balance it, but... We're going to try to be as fair as we possibly can. But also, anybody who tells you that their objective is lying to you, they're fucking lying to you. This is very subjective. If you watch the CNN quote-unquote top documentary of all time, you want to talk about fucking subjective? We'll get to that here in a second. I mean, our main source for this series is Patty Hearst's out-of-print autobiography, Every Secret Thing.

in which every moment of her time with the SLA is documented in detail. It's extremely readable and it's very entertaining. Why is it out of print? It just, you know, some books just go out of print. It's very long. Oh, okay. Yes, it's really long and it is very long.

It's exhaustive. Extremely detailed. Yeah, I mean, you're following her throughout this entire journey. It is an exhausting read. And obviously, we're covering this from, in that, in this part, in this episode, from her point of view. So this is all from her head. She had a whole version of this story, which is technically, she did the last podcast version of this.

of the story. She's playing them how I would play the characters in my head throughout the novel, which is hilarious. It's not a novel. It's non-fiction. It's non-fiction, but they don't get scary until you look from the outside.

Well, for a supplemental source used for historical context, events Patty wasn't privy to, and to get a different point of view to be as fair as possible, we use the decidedly anti-Patty Hearst book, American Heiress, written by infamous public masturbator Jeffrey Toobin. If I ever see Jeffrey Toobin, I'll be able to thank him. Certainly not shake his hand. No, never. I'll be like, where's your fly? Let's see those hands. But, you know, what he did brought...

One of the only light moments I had during that dark, dark time. During that COVID time when he didn't save me. So I want to thank YouTube for being a public masturbator. Because if it wasn't for your limp gray penis, nothing, I don't know if I ever would have smiled in 2020. I

I just still thank you for that. I just love that his last name's Toobin. It is the act of pulling your dick out on a Zoom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's my tube. I'm doing it. I'm Toobin. It'll never get old. And I'll never take a word seriously you have to say ever again, Jeffrey Toobin. You're fucking done, dude. And your documentary series is a piece of shit. Yes. For some reason, Toobin absolutely despises Patty Hearst. I think it's possible. I think it's because she declined to work with him on his book.

Because she's tried to put it behind her. She wrote every secret thing, and she's like, that's it. I'm done. I'm moving on. I'm going to go fucking, I'm going to go be in Serial Mom and get killed by Kathleen Turner. Hey, listen, Patty. I know I might be Jeffrey Toobin. And yeah, I might be cruising for a bruising, but I prefer to get a bit of the boobing.

His follow-up email to her was just, send nudes. Send nudes, please. All right, all right, sorry. Sorry, I actually totally get it. No worries. Send nudes, please. Toobin also executive produced and featured himself as a talking head in an absolutely awful CNN series on the Patty Hearst story, which gives an ephemeral

amount of time to a former member of the SLA who straight up says that Patty Hearst was asking for one of her sexual assaults. And then he completely ignores the other assault that occurred soon after. This dude drives the fucking narrative. This is Bill Harris. This guy, it's fucking, it's despicable. It's fucking, this CNN series is despicable. I do want to finish it just to see maybe if he ends it with something, but it just, the first three episodes are massive.

miserable. It doesn't matter. I think Toobin finishes it himself. She's guilty. It doesn't matter if he turns it around because there's still three entire episodes where Bill Harris, one of Patty Hearst's kidnappers and torturers, drives the narrative. Yes. And

It's remotely entertaining any version of thought from the SLA, which we'll get to next episode. But, you know, I guess they decided they needed to take the SLA seriously to make it scary. I don't know what the fuck they thought. I don't know what they... I think they just thought we have a member of the SLA who's willing to talk and that's going to get ratings. I think that's the only thing they thought. I'm fine that it's just nice to hate CNN again. It is nice.

But with all that in mind, let's dive into the odyssey of Patricia Campbell Hurst. Now, to really understand what the kidnapping of Patty Hurst meant, we've got to understand the place that the Hurst family occupied in the American consciousness in the 20th century. Patty's grandfather, William Randolph Hurst, was the face of media in America. He was the first person to be kidnapped by the American family.

He was a celebrity in his own right and was so well known that Orson Welles famously used Hearst as the inspiration for his movie Citizen Kane. And everybody knows Citizen Kane because of The Simpsons. Right? It's just one of those. The Bobo episode? I think it's that episode and then every single, you know, every time you've heard, well,

That was bad. Like, that's a fucking Citizen Kane thing. Love Citizen Kane. Love it. Surprisingly modern film for the time period that it was made. It's an unbelievable film. But also, isn't it weird that William Randolph first kind of looks like Herman Munster?

He's got a big head. But such was the power of William Randolph Hearst that when he just heard about Citizen Kane, he threatened to expose the private lives of multiple people in the film industry in his newspapers if the movie was released. And he came damn close to buying all prints of Citizen Kane and the negative in order to destroy the movie before anyone saw it. Before people called that fascist or

bad, just remember like that's the closest feeling that William Randolph Hearst has to vulnerability. Which is that just being like, they can't know I love to sled. They can't know I have a girlfriend. Because then you look at the movie, it's like technically, like yeah, he's sad and old and mean and he was ruthless, but also at the same time, if you're William Randolph Hearst, if I'm watching Citizen Kane, I'd be like,

man, that guy's got it all figured out. Yeah. Like, how bad was he really? The ultimate message of Citizen Kane is that success is worthless. Yeah, yeah, but still, at the same time, he doesn't feel that, right? He doesn't know that. So he's watching the whole time and like...

God damn, I'm a good actor. Like he doesn't even know it's him. Do you think he even watched it? I imagine he did at some point. Every one of these people hate, it's about him. Yeah. So he has to watch it. Well, as a result of Hearst's bluster, many theaters refused to show Kane out of fear that Hearst would sue them for libel and Hearst

banned all of his newspapers from even mentioning the movie in a positive or negative light. Hearst had such influence that in an attempt to get the boss to notice him, an employee at a small local paper owned by Hearst, he attempted to frame Orson Welles as a pedophile by hiding a 14-year-old girl in his hotel room closet along with two photographers. Welles only avoided this scandal because a policeman warned him not

To not go back to the hotel. Ooh, master stuff. And honestly, Kelsey, who's here helping us today, I just want to say this is a part of the, to be honest,

The kind of commitment we're looking here at LPN. I actually want a list of other top podcasters and how we are going to sabotage them so that we can move towards the top. Of what? I don't even fucking know. Getting another Webby? I don't know. I actually don't know what this leads to. I don't know where the end of this is. We just got to get a couple of photographers that snap a picture and go, wow, what a scoop. What a scoop. And then fucking run out the door.

But in the end, partly because people didn't understand the movie, admittedly, but mostly because Hearst decided to kill it, Citizen Kane bombed and only became known as a classic decades later.

Now, the Hearsts were that particular stripe of American royalty in the sense that there was no blue blood in their family. Woo! Yeah! Didn't deserve it. William Randolph Hearst's father was a 49er from Missouri who struck it rich in the silver mining business in California. Afterward, he became a senator despite the fact that he could barely read. Hey, man, you gotta read to pass laws. Yeah, now that just makes you president. Eddie! Right!

But once William Randolph Hearst came of age, he used his father's silver money to force his way into the media. As the line in Citizen Kane goes, I think it would be fun to run a newspaper. That's what you said. Yeah. And that's why you did it. Yeah, that's why I bought stock in the Reykjavik grapevine. For a week I walked around going, I think it would be fun.

to run a newspaper. Even though I don't run it in any way whatsoever. Well, you take it down, man. Dude. What we gotta do as we go to Reykjavik, we have to make sure that your newspaper starts decrying us as a, like, we are this rampant, like, this rage of, like,

teenage chaos is going to arrive. Gods are coming to town. Be careful. Oh, last podcast, Mania, shut Reykjavik down. It's a picture of me just like, hide your pigs. Hide your pigs. They ain't got no pigs. They got sheep. Oh, well, fuck them. And it ain't my newspaper. It's Reykjavik's newspaper. Honestly, if there was a picture of Eddie that said, hide your sheep, that means he's coming there to fuck.

It's a bad idea. Oh, man. Ed Larson here from last podcast on the left to talk to you about my Raycons.

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Now, as Citizen Kane portrays, William Randolph Hearst soon found success by selling sensationalism. And while he did have some principles, loose principles, his first goal was always to sell as many newspapers as possible. Case in point was when he began publishing op-eds from some of the most evil people of the 20th century because it was good for business.

Hearst actually commissioned Benito Mussolini to write regular columns for his papers. We're in unprecedented times. It's unprecedented times. It delighted him that the most famous Italian in the world had a byline in his papers and Italian Americans bought

papers as a result. He was the most famous Italian? More than Chef Boyardee? Yeah! Name one Italian more famous than Benito Mussolini in 1936. Leonardo da Vinci! I mean a lot. Famous living Italian. Maybe Rudolph Valentino. Romeo Spaghetti. You never met him? You never saw him? Romeo Spaghetti?

We fucked underage girls through a pile of pasta. Again, time does not show a lot of favor to Romero Spaghetti. Mussolini, however, never actually wrote any of the columns himself. His mistress ghostwrote most of them, and even then, it was usually difficult to decipher what Mussolini was even trying to say. Yeah. He wasn't a famous orator, was he? Mussolini. Was he like... Did people...

Like, was he a funny guy? I have pictures of him being super funny in my head, like standing on a balcony and yelling. Because he had the big, like, his lip out. He just looked like he was pouting. Yeah, he was a populist. Yeah. Mussolini, however, paled in comparison to the man Hearst gave an American voice to in 1930.

That year, in the Sunday March of Events section, Hearst published an op-ed called Adolf Hitler's Own Story. He tells what's the matter with Germany and how he proposes to remedy it. I like you, Adolf. You're a straight shooter. You've got a good haircut. I love the mustache. Now...

Who's that? For a time, Hitler was Hearst's favorite commentator because Hitler could produce big headlines and his copy was sharp and decisive. I love the use of exclamation points. And it also sold papers to a lot of German immigrants.

The only problem was that Hitler was shit for making deadlines. But still willing to give the Nazis a shot, Hearst replaced Hitler with Hermann Göring, the second highest ranking Nazi. That's the guy. That's the guy that you would bring in, right? Because he's the guy that wrote for the Nazis. Yeah. Hearst, well, no, Göring, he wasn't the propaganda minister. That was... Goebbels? Goebbels, yeah. Yeah, so what did Göring do? He was second in command. He ran the Luftwaffe, and he was just Hitler's guy. Oh, wow, cool. Yeah, he did a lot of really awful shit.

shit too. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. He was sitting and hanging in the Nuremberg trial. I don't think he was the fun one. But I'm just saying, they had writers. You should have a bull kill him. That was his last name. Goring. Goring. That's a good idea. But it's not spelled the same way. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Killed himself with a cyanide capsule the day he was supposed to be hanged. It's kind of funny.

Pussy. Yep. Hearst even went to Germany to meet with Hitler after some of Hearst's Jewish friends, particularly film executive Louis B. Mayer, they expressed some concerns. Yeah, we feel like there might be, we just gotta feel, we feel like your buddy's out of pocket. Yeah. But all Hitler said about his treatment of the Jews, all he said to Hearst is basically, don't worry, it'll all be over soon enough.

Okay, good. Yeah, so you got it covered. And it's his look. Because you know how Hitler loved that look, that sheepish, like, don't see the look over telegram. Now, Hearst chose to take this statement in a manner that I'd call willfully positive. Ah, well, good. Ah, excellent. Ah, exactly as I imagined. And he continued tacitly supporting the Nazi regime because Hitler's columns sold papers.

Hearst would finally be forced to speak out against Hitler after the events of Kristallnacht in 1938, but even then his criticism was lukewarm at best. Mostly about how it was a waste of glass and windows. And how sad it would be for the coming winter months.

That's all to say, of course, that William Randolph Hearst was not necessarily a beloved figure in the minds of the American people. And the Hearst name became associated with both ruling class arrogance and over-the-top opulence, as was portrayed in Citizen Kane. Well, his fucking house was a famous... San Simeon would become this, like, it's this otherworldly castle. Yeah. In the middle of the California countryside. It is gorgeous.

gorgeous, but you also wonder why they thought you were some kind of alien, right? From the outside because you're literally living like an old school European like royal family inside of the United States of America. That's interesting because weren't they building Hitler Castle in California? That's another crew. That was Lindbergh's baby.

Oh, okay. That's what I didn't find out, actually, also, until I started reading into the Lindbergh baby thing. The baby was the Nazi. Oh, so the baby was the one who convinced the father to be the Nazi? I'm pretty certain that Lindbergh's baby did the...

I believe, the contract negotiation between Hitler and William Randolph Hearst for the amount of words deliverable. Yeah. And set the deadlines and did a lot of the templating. Yeah. Which I saw was very strange. Getting his hands dirty. Oh, yeah. And his little gaga, and then he would do something about how, like, and then he said, juju no-no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was weird. Juju no-no. They loved working with the baby because he looked like a talking bratwurst. Yeah.

I was just making sure your person. Now, when William Randolph Hearst reached the end of his life in 1951, he found that he had not raised worthy heirs. Many of his sons were alcoholics, none did well in school, and most were living lives of leisure as playboys and layabouts. This, of course, included Patty Hearst's father, Randy.

Now, Randy had also taken up the newspaper business as a career, but he was boss more in name than in practice because he'd just pop into the paper every once in a while to see how everything was going and say, bye-bye. Has there ever been a responsible Randy? No. Like,

No, I don't think so. The dude, the pitcher, the big tall pitcher. Randy Johnson. Randy Johnson. Responsible. He showed up at every game he was supposed to. He showed up in practice. He killed those bird just like he promised his father he would. And were you ever disappointed by a Randy Newman song? No, I love Randy Newman. And Randy Bachman. Okay, we're okay. Yeah, okay. That's it. Randy Bachman saves me. I don't like Randy Newman. You don't like Randy Newman? Nah, he's smug. We can fight about this later. I think he's smug.

You've got every right to be smug. But Randy Hurst was a family man. He married his wife, Catherine, at the age of 19. He had five kids, and he actually raised them himself. His favorite was the middle child.

Oh, yeah. Patty was a lot of fun. Yeah, everyone loved Patty. Now, Patty was raised in a mansion in the Old Money area of San Francisco where they had a live-in maid and a governess. She described her childhood in her book as happy and affluent but sheltered, which is a bit of an understatement. She had no idea that there was a world outside her.

No, this is a woman who grew up with an actual castle as her summer home, the famous San Simeon property, which was once the home of the world's largest private zoo and is now an actual tourist attraction owned by the state of California. You can still see like zebras in the California countryside that escape from the zoo. When you drive, it's these switchback roads up to it. And the way it made, it was made to look

super, honestly, like it's far off. It looks far farther in the distance than it is because you're driving these kind of like switchback things up and it's like a fairy tale. You slowly watch this castle like crest over as wild zebras feed on

on the grass all around it. And apparently the goal for a long time was that no one know exactly where the castle itself was. So he would have people like when you went to go visit the Hearst mansion, he would call the Hearst castle. What he would do is you'd get a letter that saying you wouldn't know, but you'd get a letter that says from William Randolph Hearst. I mean, like you're coming over to the house. And so you'd be like, all right. And so a guy would show up and pick you up at the house or you'd meet at

somewhere down below on the bottom of the property, and he'd have somebody else come and take you so that no one would actually know how to properly get up to the castle itself. Now, why did they... Did they give it to California? Did they sell it to California? They gave the land because it sat on something over like 275 acres. Like, it was this...

Huge stretch of land that they just eventually slowly but surely sold off chunks to the state government. And this castle was like he'd throw these massive Hollywood parties there. Yeah, I know about that. Yeah, yeah, because he was friends with every nasty boy in Hollywood, like Charlie Chaplin. Well, he had every fingers. He had fingers in every single pie. Tongues in many soups. Tongues in many soups because he was like he liked getting inside information on people. That's how he controlled people. And what he would do is he had this big, long table and

And then you'd sit at the center. He'd be at the center. And how you knew how he liked you is that you'd be close to the center at the table. But then slowly but surely, the more you get invited, the closer you get to the outside of the table until eventually you're not invited anymore. And so that's like how you knew how he didn't want to talk to you. Did you guys ever see Manc?

Yeah, he has the whole thing in there. Yeah, it's fucking awesome. Now, when they got older, Patty and her sisters all went to Catholic school. But while Patty was rebellious enough to tell a nun to go to hell, she was not by any stretch an out-of-control, spoiled, rich brat. In fact, she bucked her socialite mother's expectations of being just another rich wife and even considered changing her name because of the connotations it held. I wouldn't even say she was that, like, special of a rebellious kid in that way you were saying. She's like, she really was...

In LA, you meet some of these people. She was, of course, very rich, but she was also just a very normal girl. Yes. Very normal young woman. If you went to any affluent...

city in the United States of America and went to any one of these fancy neighborhoods where like people went to sort of like cosplay being like regular, you know what I mean? You're having a lot of money and they're going to go out to like some area where you don't like in Brooklyn. If we got rid of all the people for faking that they weren't for money, the place would be empty. Also like someone's got to pick up the tab. Well, that being said, Patty Hearst had grown up so incredibly wealthy that she really had a

She didn't have a great idea of what it was like outside of her bubble, nor did she really know how to just be a regular person out in the world. Like, she didn't know how to set up an electric company, you know, set up bills. Patty needed a bridge, and that came in the form of a teacher named Stephen Weed, whom Patty started dating when she was 17 and he was 23. Oh, but he was cool. His last name's Weed. Yeah. Unfortunately. Look how young my girl is.

girlfriend is, man. Fuck you know what's crazy, man? Sometimes when I'm kissing her, I imagine if she was a little egg. I mean, like, how small can you fucking be, dude? Anyway, back to class. Learning about weed. It's about me being a full adult.

Steven Weed, I use cream. Yeah. Steven Weed was a math professor who ran a music workshop at Crystal Spring School, which was basically a finishing school to prepare young girls for a life of opulence. Yeah, I go there a lot of times and they'd call me like, all right, welcome to Alabaster Skin Class 101. First of all, here's a bucket of mayonnaise. Rub it on yourself. You worthless pigs. None of you are soft enough. Yeah.

That's what you got to do, man. You're going to get these debutantes into shape. Let's see them nipples. Let's go. We learned how to make spring rolls. All right, now we're doing my taxes. Steve met Patty as a guitar tutor. And even though the age difference is fucking very creepy and definitely inappropriate, they started dating and got more serious after Patty's first year in college.

As could be expected from a guy in his 20s who dates girls still in high school, Steve soon became difficult, arrogant, and condescending. They're always like that. Yep. It's always like, man, he's so cool. And then all of a sudden he's like, you start doing stuff where you think it's cool to act like a wife at home. She's starting to do that. Sort of like mothering him. And he's really excited about that. And then he really reverts to a childlike state, even though he's much older than her. Yep.

But even so, even though they were having problems, they still decided to get a place together in Berkeley, California after Steve won a fellowship at UC. At the Bong Sciences Department. Now, Berkeley at the time was a place that was dealing with the aftermath of the 60s. Not unlike how nearby Haight-Ashbury had, in just a few short years, devolved from a hippie paradise into a place where heroin addiction pimps and con men like Charles Manson thrived.

Patty, however, was thrilled to be living somewhat independently. And even though she had her doubts about Steve, she liked the idea of being married. Playing adult. She wanted to. She saw it like, you know, we hear people talk about all the time. Natalie talks about how when she dated a man that was 20 years older than her and she felt super mature because he fed the line of how mature and ready you are and how amazing and special you are.

So when Stephen asked for her hand in marriage, she said yes at the age of 19, which is the same age her father was when he got married.

The engagement was announced in a Hearst newspaper on December 19th, 1973, but unbeknownst to anyone, that announcement would change the course of history, for it was quickly noticed by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Oh, man, we need a Jimi Hendrix guitarist there. These fucking assholes and idiots don't deserve Hendrix. Well, because right now, we're from the outside. The way I'm viewing the series is like, we're on the outside now. So to this point, the SLA, like...

they're going to look pretty scary, pretty intense. Now we're going to get into the full story of the SLA in episode two, but the broad strokes are that the SLA was a small militant black revolutionary group that basically operated as a cult. As Henry told me earlier, think Charles Manson, but with left-wing politics instead of pure nonsense. Yes, and it comes from the same spot. It comes from someone that was also institutionalized by the United States government.

The only hitch about the SLA being a black revolutionary group, however... It's a big hitch. Yeah. I would say, honestly. Yeah. Was that out of the 10 members, only one of them, the leader, was actually black. Yeah. The other nine, lily white. And they just became more white. You know what I mean? As the time went. It kind of reminds me about how when we did West Side Stories in my high school, and they decided that everybody with a... Because we had no...

Hispanic students. That anybody with dork hair. In Queens? No, no. This was in Florida. By the time I was in Florida. In Tampa, you didn't have any Hispanics? Not in the theater department. And so, I obviously was on the white team because I'm translucent. But then everybody else, it was all the Italians. You were a jet, but you were a jumbo jet. Come on.

No, I was Snowboy. Oh, yeah. That's great. Good for you. Well, the white people in the SLA wanted to be black so badly that one guy, Bill Harris, a.k.a. Tecko, this is the guy that was in the fucking CNN series, he was known to sometimes pound the floor with his fists yelling, quote, Oh, God, how I wish I were black. Oh, God.

I wish I were black. I wish it were me. Can I be black? Can I close my eyes and open up these white lids and see a black skin underneath? Please.

I get it. I do this sometimes in casting offices. I mean, basically, it's a cult full of Rachel Dolezals with guns. It is wild, man. Now, the SLA were never really an organization known for their brilliant plans and schemes.

But they figured that they could kidnap someone important and trade them for the release of two members of their group that they felt had been wrongly imprisoned. And we'll get into next week why they thought that would be a viable plan. Now, they had a long list of names, but they eventually settled on Patty Hearst after seeing the engagement announcement.

This was not just because of what the Hurst family name meant in American society that was important, but it was also because Patty's living situation in a bad neighborhood in Berkeley made the kidnapping extraordinarily easy.

And so, on the night of February 4th, 1974, Patty Hearst and Steven Weed settled in for the evening. Yeah, let's fucking count our nugs before we go to sleep, Patty. Because if not, you know the nug fairy comes and fucking chiefs half your shit, man. So, when the nug fairy comes, you gotta say, I got exactly 34 nugs. And you're not counting, bitch.

All right. Could somebody tie my shoes? Oh, shit. Because every time I go to fucking tie them, man, all I see is noodles, man. This is freaking me out, dude. I'm stupid. Steve was planning on a nice evening of TV. He had a double feature. First, he was going to watch Mission Impossible, and then he was going to watch a TV show called The Magician.

Patty, meanwhile, was studying at the table, wearing her in-for-the-night outfit, a bathrobe and underwear. Little did she know that these would be her only clothes in the weeks to come.

Now, at 9 p.m. that night, the doorbell rang on Patty and Steve's second-floor apartment. Steve opened the door to find a young, agitated white woman. This was SLA member Angela Atwood, a.k.a. Jelena. She told Steve that she'd backed into a car downstairs, and she needed to use Steve's phone. Hi, is this Mr. Weed? I saw it here on your doorbell. Yeah.

I've had the most horrible set of circumstances. I'm going to stop you right there. It's Professor Weed. Oh, I didn't know I was talking to a professor. I should have seen and noticed by your weed-like smell in your small glasses. Immediately forgiven. Yes. Well, you have to know, I'm a bit of an emergency situation. Jelena was a former actor. Guess what I've learned about all of them.

all theater majors. Really? Did you notice? Oh, we're waiting until next week. The entire crew, the whole three of them that joined up with the first three, they're all theater. Well,

Before Steve even had a chance to answer Jelena, the door flung open and he was soon faced with two armed men, one black and one white. After them came Jelena, who backed Patty into the kitchen stove and pointed an automatic pistol in her face. You better watch yourself, little girl, before turning into human glue. Is an automatic pistol a thing? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, like RoboCop. Yeah. Like RoboCop. I don't know. I'm probably going to get some...

Maybe it's a semi-automatic pistol. It's a gun. It's a gun. It's a gun. It's a really dangerous fucking gun. It's a gun that Jelena shouldn't have had. No, for sure. For sure. I'm sorry. I got caught up on the wrong detail. No, it's fine. You'd probably save just like 20 emails from a bunch of fucking gun nerds.

Well, Jelena then clamped her hand over Patty's mouth and told her to be quiet and nobody will get hurt. I'm in the movies. It's like I'm a little revolutionary. Meanwhile, Steve and Weed had been pushed to the floor and was being kicked repeatedly by the white guy. Oh, man, my fucking show just started. Oh, man.

Oh, man. And this would be the last good thing they would ever do. Man, listen, dude. The fucking magician was about to pull the rags out of his sleeve. The guy kicking him was the aforementioned Tecko. Steve actually thought at first that Tecko was black because Tecko talked in an affected black voice, as did many members of the SLA. Henry, what did it sound like? What?

I actually was going to wait for next episode because there's a couple. It is really funny because they talk about it with each one. It's like, that's what's fucking hard. I don't even want to get. I have a breakdown for this.

But once both Steve and Patty were down on the ground, the actual black guy started asking him, where's the safe over and over again? Because he was under the impression that every rich person in the world had a safe in their home. There is a safe in every single fucking hotel room. There's a safe lots of places. The man yelling about the safe was career criminal Donald DeFreeze, a.k.a. Sinqyumtube, a.k.a. Sin.

Sin was the leader of the SLA and the only black guy in this black revolutionary militant group. You listen to me, you ever loving fellas. All right. It doesn't need to be me. One more black fellow in this group. Cause you got the number one guy. I know you worry about it. All right. I'm the blackest man you've ever met. That's how you stay in charge. Job security. Yeah.

We're going to get into that in the next episode. You're exactly right. It's so fucking stupid. This is the problem, man, is I don't want to even get into it. Right now, we have to remember, Marcus, the SLA is scary right now. It's scary right now. They can never at any point be scary to me. I know, but we have to.

to pretend like they're scary right now because we're going to find out that they're stupid soon. Well, the thing is that they are scary. They are very, very scary to Patty Hearst. Of course. And will remain terrifying to Patty Hearst throughout. To the end. Yes. Now, Patty and Steve didn't have a safe, but Sin's insistence that there was a safe made it seem like this was probably a robbery and would be over soon enough.

But then Patty's hands were tied behind her back, a knotted rag was stuffed in her mouth, and a blindfold was wrapped around her eyes and tied behind her head. But Steve, even after being hit over the head with a bottle of wine and kicked and hit in the face repeatedly, We're supposed to drink that! Is that my bomb? That's my fucking don't hurt my bomb! He managed to get his hands free before rushing out to the patio to get help. Help! That's when he noticed no one was running after him.

That's because the SLA were too busy dragging Patty the other way out the front door. She'd spit out the gag and was screaming for help because she was now fully aware of what was actually going down.

Not subtle. No. By this time, Stephen Weed had made it to a neighbor's apartment and was pounding on the door begging for help. Any nugs to help me get inspired to go to the police, please? Emergency nugs needed. I need to fucking chill to the max.

Man, this is so much pressure. I can't handle this, dude. A fucking rich-ass girlfriend's got a fucking kidnapping problem, man.

But Patty had already been tossed in the trunk of the car. The lid was closed, and just before the car sped off with Patty inside, one of the kidnappers let loose with one last burst of gunfire for good measure. Now they'll know we have bullets. She also said that she was having dreams about getting kidnapped. I feel like it was just in the air because there was a case. Getty, too. Was that around this time? Yeah, the Getty kidnapping was the year before. Oh.

So it's blatantly inspired. Well, we're going to get into the Getty kidnapping next week. There's a lot of inspirations, but she was having prophetic dreams. But I think, but she was saying that she had this feeling that something was going to happen. But I realized now, you know what it was? And she said so much kind of after the fact. It was like, because she was actively being tailed.

And they were watching where she was going. And sometimes, and this is great for my friends with OCD out there, is that sometimes when you're super paranoid thinking that somebody's following you, they are. It's actually completely a total real scenario. And they are coming to kill you. That's why I walk in zigzags. Always. I taught you that. Serpentine. Walk like a cat. Jump like a dog.

After a short drive, Patty was transferred to the backseat of another car, and she sat in abject terror, listening to her kidnappers congratulate each other on how smoothly their operation had gone. You were so scary. You were so good. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I did do good, right? Yeah, baby. You got all your lines right. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I rehearsed. Yeah. Yeah.

They also had all the windows rolled down, ready to, quote, shoot it out with the pigs if they needed to.

because all of these people are all ready to die at any second. They're begging for it. Oh, this is the story of a group of people heading towards total annihilation. Yep. But after anywhere between an hour and three hours, Patty was really fuzzy on the time. She found herself being led up a flight of stairs and down a series of hallways. Now, at first, Patty was terrified that she'd meet the same fate as kidnapping victim Barbara Jane Mackey.

Mackie was a 20-year-old college student who'd been kidnapped in 1968 and was buried alive in a coffin on an isolated hillside in Georgia for 83 hours before her father paid a ransom of half a million dollars. No, thank you. No. But while Patty didn't go in a coffin, her reality wasn't far off.

She was soon thrown into a walk-in closet, six feet long and two feet wide, modified so it could only be opened from the outside. It was filthy and stank from the old carpet and padding that had been used to soundproof the space, giving it the feel of a cell at an insane asylum.

Soon after she was thrown inside, the door flew open and a member of the SLA placed a small radio inside with the volume turned all the way up so Patty couldn't hear what her kidnappers were saying and so she would be disoriented even further. At the very beginning, so we said this, like, they're very frightening. You have these people who mean a lot of business. She's now watched her husband get the shit beat out of him. Fiance. Fiance.

Fiance is a piece of shit. It's a dumb name. It's a stupid role. Mrs. Weed. Mrs. Weed, man. That's actually kind of weird. Patty Weed? Dude! Yeah, that's a Peanuts character, man. Learned no lessons, man. But she's traumatized. And then the way it begins is extremely, like...

They seem like they're very capable. Yeah. And they are like they have a full on like like there's an agenda here. Yeah. A few hours later, the leader of the SLA opened the door and told Patty that his name was Sin Q and two May. And he was the fifth prophet and the general field marshal of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Now, as soon as Patty heard the name Symbionese Liberation Army, she knew she was in trouble.

While she did admit to being blind to most inequalities in American society at this time, she still read the news and she remembered the headlines the SLA had already made.

The reason why two of their members were in jail was because just four months earlier, the SLA had executed the superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in the school's parking lot, a guy named Marcus Foster. And that was not a good move. It was a bad move. It was a bad move because as we come from the other direction next week, you'll see why they made this move. But they really shit the bed. Yeah. Because they...

The thing is, if you're going to be a revolutionary group, a bit of advice.

Those first couple like roundabouts, those first couple engagements. Like your first headline? Yeah, dude. Super crucial to how everybody's going to view you for the rest of the time. And you really got to start off on the right foot. Yeah. Well, the murder had received widespread condemnation and bafflement from other black revolutionary groups because Marcus Foster was not only black, but a symbol of success in the community because he was the first black superintendent of a large American city school district.

the SLA had murdered him because they didn't agree with some policies. He was merely entertaining, not even implementing. And a lot of it was conspiracy theory. Yes. And paranoia. And paranoia. Like, he was... Basically, it was about creating an ID system for children in the elementary school system. And then he...

extrapolated it, Sinkuse, extrapolated to this concept that they were going to be bringing police officers in to monitor the everyday activity of children. Because he kind of had, he thought it was this slippery slope of, oh, they're going to start tracking the kids, kind of like in a Mark of the Beast movie.

style slash police state the kids are going to come and the cops are going to be teaching the kids classes and stuff. And he doesn't know the cops are lazy. They're not going to do that. They're not going to teach classes. If I was a cop and then I was forced to watch and like be in charge of an elementary school, like it's like class. We're going to watch Dumb and Dumber. Yeah. All right. Looks like old officer Zabrowski is going to put on one of his

favorite documentaries. Yeah, watch the Charles Larry Christmases. You know how mad they must have been when he wasn't killed by the KKK? Yeah, you're like, what the fuck? Yeah. Soon after, two members of the SLA were arrested for the crime. Russell Little, a.k.a. Osi, and Joseph Romero, a.k.a. Bo.

But even though Patty knew exactly who she was dealing with, she thought it would be best if she feigned ignorance. Perfect. Yes. This, of course, bruised Sin's ego, and he proudly and angrily gave Patty the SLA's entire resume, including the murder...

of Marcus Foster. They're still very proud of this. He still thinks that he's done a wonderful thing for killing this superintendent. Because where we're at right now in the SLA's life, we're into the Charles Manson section of we are going to have to ramp up the rhetoric in order for me to keep the cult. Sen then told Patty that she was a prisoner of war because she was the daughter of Randolph A. Hurst, a corporate enemy of the people. But

But since she was a prisoner of war, she was going to be treated according to Geneva Convention guidelines. She wasn't. Sen asked her if she had any religious medals on her person, explaining that under the Geneva Convention, she could hold on to any religious medals but had to forego every other item to the SLA. Ah, yes, I worship this gun. Yes. Yes.

Thank you, St. Barnabas's gun, for the protection that you give me each night. And thank you, the bullets of the Virgin Mary. Oh, holy night. But since Patty was wearing only her bathrobe and underwear, she thought for the first many times that the person talking to her might be insane.

Now, this is about half true because it's hard to tell how much Sin actually believed in what he was about to tell Patty. Although it's most likely he was just trying to make himself sound more impressive than he actually was.

See, during the kidnapping, Patty had been hit in the face with the butt of a rifle and had been cut, scraped, and bruised by the rough treatment she'd received between her apartment and the SLA's closet. For those wounds, Sin promised that an SLA doctor would soon arrive, but their medical team was, at that moment, very busy. We got a lot going on, a lot of different stuff there, madam.

All right, so you got to know, it's like we got arm fronts. We're fighting in Alaska right now. Did you know that the snowmen were conservative? And then we got a lot of stuff going on. A lot of places. Toledo, Milwaukee, a lot of places. We got Seattle. Some people need to be band-aids in Seattle. So we had to send them out super last minute for some crucial things.

Crucial Band-Aids. Well, Sin claimed that other SLA combat teams had captured five other prisoners that night across the state of California. The SLA, he said, was a huge army that had intelligence and medical units in addition to their ground troops, and that it was all financially backed by supporters of the revolution. And you can bet your buttons on that little mess. All right?

Because no hardcore fellas such as myself who just got out of the pen aren't going to mess around with no half measures, you little woman. All right? So you better cross your T's and dot them I's when it comes down to it because if not, Miss Buster Brown, I'm going to come over there and I'm going to, oh, you better watch it. I got to go. I got to go make sure as I'm sending the SLA doctors to Baton Rouge. Yeah, Jazz Fest, get out of control.

Yeah, I gotta get out of here. He then added that the SLA was linked internationally to the countries of Ireland, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. The whole country. Which are all known for how many black people they have. The blacks of Ireland, you wouldn't even believe. The type of crazy, loco fellas we got in Ireland right now.

What these guys are doing, they are keeping it real, my friend. And even though Puerto Rico is not, as we all know, a country. No. No. It's a vibe. Not since 1897. Finally, Sen told her that if she behaved herself, she wouldn't be mistreated. But if she dared make a sound or even touch the closet door, she'd be strung up from the ceiling like a dead pig.

She was then left there in the dark, blindfolded with her hands tied. Don't you mess with me, all right? Because I'm a cranky MF-er, all right? Have a good night. Love you. Now, the next day, Sin was furious that the papers hadn't printed anything about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. In his view, this was not a kidnapping at all, but an arrest. So he decided to send a so-called arrest warrant to the media.

Issued by the court of the people, the statement said that any attempt to rescue Patty would result in her execution. And this and any further communications had to be published in full in all newspapers. And any failure to do so would endanger the safety of the prisoner. The statement ended with the now infamous sign off death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.

Yeah. See, you got to say it in the middle too. You're allowed to with the glasses. Sure. Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. Yeah, I felt that a lot better. All right. Now there. You mind your B's and Q's, right? Because we're calling for the death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. And that's got to stop.

And our first person to do it is Sergeant Orkin. I will not let that stand. Now, almost immediately, Sin began drilling the thought into Patty's head that if the FBI were to show up at the SLA safe house, the SLA would kill her first, then shoot their way out or die trying because all of them would rather die than go to prison.

But when he wasn't telling her all the ways she could be killed, Sin lectured Patty in a phony, formal tone of voice, as if he were a judge or a general. His words, of course, barely made any sense, or at least they didn't make sense to someone from Patty's background. Or to a lot of people. Yes. Because I could already tell what he's doing, which is he's saying a lot of very intense left-wing words.

None of them mean any of the way that they say it. The word always means something else from the way they use it. And it's confusing. And then it feels in many ways as if the information is being held from me. And I do wish, because I'm not a dumb man. Well, what you just said is systemic. I'm not a dumb man. I try to read. And I feel like...

I'm gullible enough to be gotten. Yeah. You know? Because I go in there 110%. You always do. And I leave me behind. I go into the work. Now, I still don't really understand what dialectical materialism is. But I know that it's a thing.

But I know he said a lot of words that he did at first to sort of, I do believe it's a tactic. I believe that it's a tactic to be like, look how official we are. We have all of these crazy terms and all of this terminology and these meanings why and the validations.

But Sen wasn't the only featured speaker. Every member of the SLA took every opportunity to lecture Patty, sometimes opening the door to ask her if she wanted to go to the bathroom, then immediately launching into a diatribe about Marxism before she even had a chance to answer. And this happens everywhere you try to go to the bathroom with communists. No, but it is interesting. I find it interesting, but it's like, let me shit. Yeah.

Finally, though, Sen told Patty the reason why she'd been kidnapped, or at least the loose reason why. Loose principle. Two of their comrades had been held in a pig's prison, Sen said, and the SLA was going to trade her for them.

But in the meantime, the SLA was going to treat Patty exactly how their comrades were being treated in San Quentin. Yeah, and we're not going to be playing no hopscotch, and we ain't going to be playing no jump rope, little miss. All right? So you better get your head on straight, and you better be thinking about communism by the time I get back, all right? And tomorrow we got Johnny Cashbook. He's so mad about it, he doesn't want to play. He doesn't want to play. He hates it, all right? Good night. I love you.

Over the next few days, Patty settled into what she hoped would be a short, if torturous, ordeal. She learned how to eat blindfolded and sat through... Because that's important to remember. She was blindfolded. That's the one thing I don't know if we've said. Yeah. Is that she was permanently...

blind folded. Yes. And she kept it on and they also like this is part of also the reasons why she was like they might be fucking stupid because he kept saying stuff like she had to keep it on in the closet no matter what. Yeah. And so she was taking it off every once in a while they would let her take it off to bathe where they would wear a mask sometimes and she'd be able to take it off but then

She was noticing it was like blinding her because essentially she was at days at a time with no light. Also, it's just like it has to give you like weird like sores. Yeah. Yeah.

She learned how to eat blindfolded, and she sat through so-called interrogations conducted by Sen, who wanted to know as many details about her father and his financials as Patty could tell him. How many slides does he have? All right, how many llamas? How many carousels? I want to know. That sounds amazing. Working llamas or pets? That's incredible.

I wish I had access to that many llamas. You know what I'd do with that many llamas? I'd run a llama communist university. All right? You should be so lucky. The answer is four, 15, and three. That's all I needed to know. See, Sen was under the impression that Randy Hurst was a member of the Committee of 40, which Sen believed was a super secret high-level group of businessmen and corporate executives who were also CIA agents. Hmm.

And it was this committee who told the president what to do at all times. Just know that as soon as you hear the term committee of 40, you don't have to listen to a single thing that he says ever again. It's like one of those things. You're like, oh, you're wrong. Yeah.

Little did Sin know that Randy Hurst barely even showed up to the job he had most of the time. Yeah, dude, that's what rich people do. And after days of interrogation, Patty just told Sin that her father made, I don't fucking know, a million dollars a year. Yeah. And since that was a nice round number, Sin's like, cool, million dollars a year. Sounds right. Must be. Yeah. Yeah. Million dollars, huh? Yeah. I bet that's chump change for you, daddy. Mm-hmm. Well, how about, mm, well, I make five million. Ha ha ha ha.

Like, is that what I was supposed to say? Is that how I was supposed to react?

It didn't take long for Patty to learn each SLA member by voice because, again, as we said, she was almost never allowed to take off her blindfold in those early weeks. While Sin was always recognizable as the meanest male voice, Patty also heard a sharp, cold female voice that sounded, as she said it, like a schoolmarm.

And they all had fake voices. I'm not doing the real Sin voice. The real Sin voice is that he was an African-American, but he also pretended to have sort of like an Indian Island accent as well. He faked that. Yep. Because he was from Cleveland. What does an Indian Island sound like? Oh, it, um...

Well, the schoolmarm voice was often paired with a jumpy, nervous male voice who repeatedly tried, unsuccessfully, to sound like a black guy. Yeah, you fools. Yeah, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself, right? I like sneakers. Oh, I certainly like sneakers. Well, the nervous fella was the aforementioned Tecko, while the schoolmarm was his wife, Emily, a.k.a. Yolanda.

Oh God, I wish I was black.

Oh, God, I wish I could be black. Oh, please. Shut up. If you fucking, if I give you a black name, will you shut the fuck up? Yeah, I guess it's okay. What kind of black name? Fucking Swahili. I don't know. Cool. Do you know anyone else named Swahili? Just kidding.

Wow! What part of black is that? Well, apart from Yolanda's hard tone and Teko's nervous faux black accent, there was also the friendly, sing-songy, theatrical voice of the aforementioned Jelena, who often giggled and had studied to become an actor before joining the SLA. If you have a hard time memorizing these communist terms, you'd have an even harder time doing Sondheim a

a pillow.

Because of her theater background, she'd make over-the-top ridiculous disguises for the SLA to wear any time they left the safe house using her professional makeup kit. Look, now I'm an old woman with a little bit of gray hair. Now I'm an old man with long droopy balls. I attach and attach to my labias. Now I'm a dog. A rough, rough bark bark. One can be anything. One can be anything if you're in the theater.

Well, she'd previously been in a relationship with one of the SLA's arrested comrades, but now Jelena spent most of her nights sleeping with sin. Patty also got to know the voice of Patricia Soltysik, who had legally changed her name to Ms. Moon, that's M-I-Z-M-O-O-N. White people. Before adopting the so-called Swahili name of Zoya.

She was the real frightening one. Yeah.

But unlike Teco, Fahiza actually sounded black. So Patty was surprised to later find out that Fahiza was actually a white woman from Orange County named Nancy. She was surprised that they were all white. It's just the truth. She was just like...

Wow. She was really surprised when she got a good look at everybody. Patty also came to know Willie Wolf, a.k.a. Kajo. Not Kujo. Not Kujo, who mostly talked about Vacaville Prison. That was where both Ed Kemper and Charles Manson would eventually be held. Since Vacaville is where the state sends prisoners with psychiatric issues, Patty assumed Kajo was himself mentally disturbed. No. No.

You would be surprised how mentally well I could be. In reality, Kajo was just a big fat idiot who often ate so much he gave himself a tummy ache. Oh, man.

So far, it's the only appealing character. I just wish, can't somebody stop me? Because it's going to get to the point where I'm going to be too big for the revolution. I mean, I literally did this yesterday. I'm too big for it. You know how many tunnels we got to go through with the little bamboo sticks we got to whittle?

They'd actually have meetings where they're like, Kaju is eating too much. I don't know how to stop. I'm nervous. It's hard out here. It's a lot. We're in a war. Patty later described him as an overgrown, awkward high school senior with short hair dyed a hideous red that didn't match his facial features at all.

But since Kajo was big, he actually towered over Sin. And even though Kajo was soft-spoken and unimpressive in every way, Sin would still arch his back and try to appear taller when standing next to him.

Always go shorter. Always go shorter. Because it shows you're more powerful. And then there was poor Camilla, the saddest member of the group that no one particularly liked. Was she the maid? No. They might have liked her if she did shit. What was her name? Gabby? Yeah, she went by Gabby. She was heavyset, physically weak, and totally uncoordinated.

She was also Zoya's ex-girlfriend and had a fantasy of one day organizing an army of homosexuals to violently rise up against the establishment. Now, Patty soon figured out that the reason why all seven SLA members constantly lectured her was because no one else was listening to them. And in Patty's words, she was literally a captive audience. They got to the point where they were so excited to talk.

to her because she was somebody new that they started opening up the closet just to be like, you need some air? Just so you know. So Marx actually blah, blah, blah. And they would start talking more and more into their leftist like theology shit. But they'd open it just to crack.

Like they wouldn't open it up all the way. You know, there were times when she just pretended to be asleep. Of course. But she actually did an extremely good job, which is remember this. And this is a good lesson for our audience to hear if you're dealing with

with the aggressive idiot. Always say yes. Nod and move close to push away. Well, but in listening to them talk, Patty soon figured out that the only way out was through. She decided to humor them, listening to everything they said and doing whatever they asked. And she hoped that somehow, sometime, she would be rescued before they decided to kill her.

Now, the exchange of Patty for their comrades in San Quentin soon became a secondary goal for the SLA. They decided that as a show of good faith, they would have Randy Hurst feed the poor, just generally feed the poor. And if Sin found Hurst's action satisfactory, the SLA would make an actual ransom demand. Yeah, he wanted to see if he was good for it. Yeah. But unfortunately, he had a tacit misunderstanding of how money works in the country.

Yep. Now, once they discussed what this gesture of good faith would be ad nauseum, as the SLA did with every single subject, they decided that the Hearst Corporation should give $70 worth of food to every poor person in the state of California.

To sell the idea, Sin had Patty make her first of many recorded messages, urging her family to fully cooperate with the SLA. Joining Patty in the closet with a tape recorder, extensive notes, and a flashlight was Sin, who untied Patty's hands and handed her the microphone.

Sen then told Patty what to say, then had her repeat it back to him in her own words while he recorded her voice. Then after each point, he'd switch off the tape recorder so he could prepare her for the next point. He also would make her repeat things. He would say, do it again, take it back. Like, so she was heavily directed within her recording.

What you're about to hear is some of the first words the world heard from Patty Hearst post-kidnapping, in which you could clearly hear the stops and starts. I'm with a combat unit that's armed with automatic weapons. And there's also a medical team here. And there's no way that I will...

be released until they let me go. So it wouldn't do any good for somebody to come in here and try to get me out by force. These people aren't just a bunch of nuts. They've been really honest with me, but they're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing. And I want to get out of here, but the only way I'm going to is if

We do it their way. And I just hope that you'll do what they say, Dad, and just do it quickly. I've been stopping and starting this tape myself so that I can collect my thoughts. That's why there's so many stops in it. I'm not being forced to say any of this.

Defensive. Defensive. Well, because he was also re-listening as he was going. He's like, God, that doesn't sound right. We have to do it like this. Oh, no, no, no. They're going to think that you're the one. We're forcing you to do this. We have to make it so it sounds so, so involuntary. And so, so, so voluntary. And he...

kind of begin this back and forth relationship. I actually feel like in that way, that's what she's, he's starting to do where he needs her to participate fully. Yeah. Because at this point in time, this is way in the, this is the way in the beginning, they cannot afford to shoot her yet. No. How involved are the cops at this point? I mean, the FBI, we're going to get into that. That's how we're going to start episode two, but the FBI gets involved like immediately. Yeah. Like this is a massive operation.

Now, Patty collapsed and started sobbing immediately after recording that message, which ended up it's 12 minutes long altogether. We just listen to a minute of it. And that's when Sin crawled over and pinched her nipple and pinched her between her legs, heavily implying that if she didn't continue to cooperate, sexual violence would soon follow.

Now, the tape was sent out along with the demand to feed the poor of California, but the authorities soon deduced that the SLA's ultimate goal was the exchange of their two comrades in San Quentin. Yeah, they came out and just said it in the newspaper. Like, they're obviously going to use Patty Hearst as a way to negotiate for the release of these two other people. And Sin is immediately like, what the fuck? Dude.

Who's talking? Who's talking? We gotta move! And once deduced, then-governor of California, Ronald Reagan, responded with his now-famous quote. Well, you tell them. They can forget it. Oh, I thought his quote was, where are my pants? Ha ha ha!

Funny stuff. It's an old... Alright, just for those of you that don't know, that aren't 40 plus, Ronald Reagan was a controversial president back in the day. People seemed to enjoy him at Alzheimer's for the entire time of his presidency. Well, the last two years. That's enough. But he wouldn't read any of his reports. He had to make videos of it and show it to him on television every day. He was an actor.

Randy Hurst, meanwhile, immediately announced on TV that Sin's plan would cost no less than $400 million, which in today's currency is $2.5 billion. Well, he was like, because they just made this number up. Yeah. Yeah, $70 actually comes from Sin Q's actual inspiration, who is a very, very...

interesting person that is a, he was an activist and a revolutionary named George Jackson, who was a prisoner that wrote about finding like Marxism left-wing ideology in the prison community. And he was arrested for stealing quote unquote $70 worth of food. And then he was held in jail indefinitely. George Jackson is in a very compelling, interesting, like,

An actual activist slash revolutionary. Yeah. And he sort of kind of stole from that. But Sin Q never did the math. No. Being like, so there's 100 million people. Like, how many people in California? Well, he just said all the poor people in California. Yeah. And they're like... Yeah. So, like, Randy Hurst literally was like, did the math on television. He's like, that's like a billion dollars. Yeah. Because California by itself would be like the fifth biggest country in the world. And they could do it. They just...

just weren't gonna. I don't think they, no, they couldn't have. I mean, if all these guys, that's too much money. They didn't have that much money. If they all pulled, all of them pulled their fucking money together. That's exactly what CQ said. He's like, they could call like their friends, like the Shah of Iran. They didn't do it though. Yeah.

In the end, they didn't do it. That's not how it works. You can shit in one hand, you can call the Shah over on the other and see which kid fills first. Well, Randy couldn't pay that because the fact was Randy actually had access to a relatively small amount of cash.

See, the Hearst family's money was not liquid. They didn't have a Scrooge McDuck safe where Randy swam in gold coins. They should have, though, because that's cool. But if you jumped in a pile of gold coins, you would kill yourself. Yeah, you'd just die immediately. Yeah, he'd have brain damage. Yeah, Scrooge McDuck would literally be Harrison Ford from Regarding Henry.

In fact, Randy actually had very little control over even the Hearst Corporation, because when William Randolph Hearst died, he gave Randy and his brothers only five seats on the board out of 13 so they couldn't ruin daddy's company. It's almost like there was only one smart one.

It was like one super evil guy who realized like, oh, you guys are going to fuck it all up. I got to bring an evil from outside. Sin, of course, had no idea how true wealth worked. Where most of the money is tied up in stocks, real estate, and various other hidey holes, this is also the super rich can avoid paying taxes like the rest of the country. Also saw a fun little video that does remind me. It's like once money became not real, like once it became a place, it made much less

for like back in the day, you know, when they wanted to take the czar of Russia's money, they just wouldn't took it. Yeah. They took all his jewels. Yeah. He took the stuff. Yeah. Where like, there's no stuff. No. For this money. No. Like this is a fantasy world. America, baby. Yeah. Like it's literally fake. It's just numbers on a piece of paper. It's a million dollar loan that a rich person takes out that they don't have to pay taxes on. It's awesome. Good for them. Yeah.

Well, eventually, Randy negotiated a food distribution program that would cost $2 million, estimating that the program could feed 100,000 people a month for a whole year. In addition, Randy hired an attorney to represent the two SLA members who were in San Quentin for the murder of Superintendent Marcus Foster.

But none of this was satisfactory for Sin. Seems like a lot of good work. He did quite a bit of stuff. It's possibly one of the largest, I think it is the largest food distribution program that has ever occurred in America. And that's including the Great Depression, like all the New Deal shit. And none of this was satisfactory for Sin. And Patty could sense that Sin really had no idea what he was doing. The SLA had begun with the idea of exchanging Patty for their comrade's.

But now all of a sudden they're coordinating food distribution programs that cost millions of dollars. And he had no idea what even the concept of millions of dollars was and how to move that around and what to do with it. And so it's the dog caught the car. Yes.

Like most cult leaders, Sin was making it up as he went along. It also didn't help that the SLA was being criticized by radical organizations, black and white, for linking left-wing politics to the kidnapping of a teenager. Not to mention the murder of Marcus Foster, which everyone's still very pissed off about.

As the days turned into weeks, Patty began to realize that the SLA were truly pathetic. Starting to switch. From her closet, she could hear their daily training, which was calisthenics in the morning and so-called military maneuvers in the afternoon. This is in an apartment. Remember that this is like

literally there are other apartments in here and the SLA is one of them. They're doing up downs and shit. Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot

gotcha pig. Take that pig. You see, the thing is, then I would all be like, but then someone has to role play as the pigs, right? And go like, yeah, I'm the cop. So they're all like, I got your pig. And then Julien is like, what if I play Queen Elizabeth? Wait a second, Julien. All right. This isn't acting 101 anymore. But we need to kill that pig too. Yeah, let's get her. In other words, Patty Hearst began to realize they were delusional.

These delusions, of course, were only fed by the media because while the story had not yet reached its height, this still wasn't the biggest story yet. It was still massive news. Sniffing their own farts as much as they could, SLA members would spend their days listening to the radio or watching TV, flipping through the channels continuously until they found someone talking about them or the kidnapping. But then they talk a bunch of shit. Yeah.

Right, yeah, they'd be like, yeah, that's what they're getting at wrong. And they don't know what they're talking about, man. Meanwhile, like, it's just, it's just all just, they're doing it for attention. Yeah, but after getting to know the SLA, Patty realized that they were only going to keep moving the goalposts, and any fantasies she might have had about being rescued, set free, or even killed were a waste of energy.

And so, Patty decided she would not think about the future at all. Instead, she would concentrate on staying alive one day at a time. And we can all learn from that. That's right. Now, even though Patty's mind was strong, her physical state was starting to deteriorate because she'd been kept blindfolded for weeks on end in a six-foot-by-two-foot closet without exercise.

The SLA, of course, would never admit that this was indeed torture. And it's fucking sickening that the CNN series never even approaches this subject while talking extensively to Tecko, who pretty much drives the narrative of that entire series. It is seriously so fucking bad. It is. It's kind of like wildly irresponsible now after reading all of the other stuff that I've read. Because I just actually was so confused by their tone. Yeah. It's literally like they're mad at Patty Hearst. Yes. Yes.

But once Patty's health began to seriously deteriorate, the SLA at first just made fun of her for being a bourgeois weakling, or bougie in today's parlance. But pretty soon, they realized that if Patty didn't get some exercise, she might die. So several times a day, they began guiding her around the room outside the closet. When she got a little stronger, they had her do jumping jacks and knee bends, all while blindfolded.

But after just a few days, they either lost interest or just plain forgot to do it, and Patty remained in the closet. Now, Patty knew she had to get out of there somehow. She just had to not even get away from the clutches of the SLA. She just had to get out of the closet. She was going to die. Well, you know what it is, too? It's...

it wears on you this is what they talk about this is why torture is illegal is that what at this point she'll do anything to get out of the first level of her situation like there's no there's no even thought about escape because it's just how do i how in the living fuck do i just get out of this closet because the more because eventually i think in the back of your head you know

this is not a permanent situation. Yeah. And the longer I'm in this small room, the longer it's more difficult for me to leave this room. The more I become a liability to the people outside of this room. And

the more and more they got to shuffle me around and no one's responding or the things are not working out. Like the more and more my position becomes more fragile in this place. And once you thought of like as just something in the closet, you're not thought of as a human anymore. Exactly. And they already started off not thinking of her as human. Yeah. And so, but the thing was that the SLA was just as paranoid as you'd expect. So getting out of the closet was going to be difficult. They,

I know Milton Berle's looking. I know he is.

I mean, nowadays, both of these things are very possible. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, they're hearing it. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no. The government can listen to you through your TV controller. Very, very easy. Yeah. They can see you from space. Just ask Jeffrey Toobin. Wow. But he did it himself. He did it to his own self. But back then, of course, this was moronic when TVs were made of gigantic tubes and glass and wood.

But to further demonstrate the paranoia, the SLA started getting worried a few weeks in that their neighbors were going to catch on that they were a dangerous group of revolutionaries. Guys, we got to do something. We got to do, I mean, we got to make do like a bake sale. We're going to do like a garage sale or something. We got to put on a play. Yes. That's the best I've seen you. With us all together, I think we have just the perfect amount to do.

Merrily we roll along. Also, I was thinking maybe we should do our somersaults a little quieter. A little quieter because honestly, they are keeping me awake now. And Henry, you may jest.

But they put on a play. Yes, they did. Did they really? They held a make-believe party. Act like we're having fun. Because they didn't believe in drinking. No, they didn't. No smoking, no drugs. Well, nobody believed in drinking except CQ. Wow, it's so funny how CQ works out for him. I don't know why. And how he never had to do the calisthenics or anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was born good. But yeah, they had to like, they're like, all right, now wave your arms more.

Yeah, like you're really dancing. All right, now you dance with him. Cool, now make it funky now. Make it funky now. Make it funky now. Take it back. Take it back. Yeah, there's a lot of music. I mean, literally, get up on thing. That table is fragile. Let's go. All right, drink the brown tea. Fatty, you're eating too much.

I thought we were fake partying. They even had ice clinking around in drinking glasses. Like they put ice and it got clink, clink, clink, clink. Clink like you're yelling. Clink like you're laughing. See, the cover story was that the SLA, the house they were renting, the apartment they were renting, the cover story that they were telling people is that this is being rented by two stewardesses. Yep. So the SLA had to make sure to spill the party into the backyard where Kajo, playing a pilot,

Yeah, you know how it is flying in the sky with the clouds and all. The clouds are a lot more solid than you'd think they'd be. He discussed all of his various travel exploits in a loud voice while everyone else responded with their own tales of world travel. O'Hare certainly confusing. Oh, yes, Logan International also a miasma of lanes. Oh, there's so many. Oh, man.

birds, huh? What fucking pieces of shit they are. But little by little, Sin opened the SLA circle to Patty, and it was actually his paranoia that started it.

See, Sin believed that if the FBI ever found them, they'd be forced to shoot their way out. And Sin decided that it would be best if Patty learned how to shoot her way out, too. Well, you're hanging out long enough. Yeah. For three days straight, Patty practiced handling a sawed-off shotgun, breaking it apart, putting it back together, and getting comfortable holding it, mostly with the blindfold on.

For Patty, though, guns weren't that foreign because she'd often gone hunting with her dad when she was a kid. But pretty soon, Patty figured out that the more interest she took in what the SLA members were saying, the longer she was allowed to stay outside the closet. She was constantly thinking of questions to ask them, and no matter how silly or stupid those questions were, Sin and all the others would always answer in excruciating

excruciating detail. It's a good lesson to learn. People like talking about themselves. Ask questions. Mm-hmm. Patty also took up smoking to ingratiate herself even further because every SLA member was a chain smoker. Because he couldn't smoke weed and he couldn't drink booze, according to SinQ. Mm-hmm. One day, though, Sin told everyone else to leave the room so he could talk to Patty alone. He told her that he'd have to ask the Symbionese Liberation Army War Council first.

Just so you remember, throughout this whole thing, Sin Q is telling her that there's millions of units, that there's a whole army, that we were on the verge of some massive flip, like we were going to do all of this shit. And so she's listening and talking about this. It sounds crazy.

completely outlandish, but she doesn't know. No. You know, like she has no idea whether or not there actually is a sea of terrorists or not, but it sounds really legit at the very time. And then, but I told, but I think there's a little bit of like, you guys let me in real fast. Yeah. Well,

Well, in Sen's words, Patty was like the pet chicken people have on the farm. When it comes time to kill it for Sunday dinner, no one really wants to do it. He said this to her. Yes. So, like in other revolutionary movements, when an enemy soldier is captured, Patty was given a choice. Fight for us or die. I feel like a lot of farmers don't give a shit. Yeah, they just kill the chicken. I feel like that's the whole point of being a farmer is that you're raising it to kill it.

Yeah, you're done with the eggs. Now I kill you and eat you. What would happen to you? This is the Dust Bowl and you had one chicken left and then you're going to go feed the family and then you as the father tell your hungry children like, unfortunately, me and Dizzy are best friends now. You're like, no, you're going to eat the chicken. But before Patty was let into the SLA officially, she had to endure a horrible ordeal twice over.

One night, Jelena whispered in Patty's ear that Kajo wanted to, quote, get it on with her because everyone was feeling much more comradely towards her since she first arrived. That was their word, comradely.

See, Jelena explained that as a part of Patty's education, she needed to learn what it's like to live in an underground cell in every way. It's a whole lifestyle, girlfriend. Yeah. But the SLA, free sex, was a principle of the cell because underground revolutionaries, they couldn't very well go out into the street and pick someone up in the usual way. And it's not because we're not charming. It's not because we're not incredible, amazing, romantic revolutionaries. That's what's certain and attractive and ready to fuck. Certainly not that at all. No.

No, no, no, no. Everybody wants us. It's so hard to choose the date. So everyone in the cell had to take care of the needs of everyone else. And while no one was forced to have sex, or so Jelena said, it was very comradely to always say yes if asked. It's almost sort of like...

It's like forced. Yes. By the group. Yeah. Immediately after Jelena explained this, Kajo entered the closet, raped Patty and left. Three days later, Sin did the same thing.

Now, while Patty was just trying to survive the fucking closet, much less everything that came after, her father was looking for help to organize Sin's unrealistic demand that the Hurst family personally feed every poor person in California. I have very little nice to say about any other member of the Hurst family. They're all, they all don't need to be around, but he did try his best. Randy tried really fucking hard. He did try to find her.

Very, very badly. But it's like, that's what he kind of said. This story would be very different if this was the story of a young woman that was kidnapped for a month and then a very powerful family sent in a band of mercenaries to kill them all one by one, right? Like, this would be a very different story. He did try to work his way around this. And like, and weirdly in a way, he learned a lot about it.

Like Randy Hurst had to talk to poor people for the first time in his life. And it really was like, it sounds like it was kind of an educational experience for him. Now the SLA, I'm sorry if this is a little off topic. Did they have jobs? Where did they get money? My friend. We'll talk about it later. Okay.

Now, since this was San Francisco in 1974 and the operation involved the underprivileged class, who else should pop up their head offering help but the Reverend Jim Jones? Yeah. Six years before Guyana. Would you like a drink? It's...

His offer was politely declined. But incredibly, this will not be the last we'll hear from Jim Jones in this series. Yeah, dude. Everybody's hanging out in this type of area. It's wild. They're all there, dude. Like, L. Ron Hubbard's in town. He's literally in San Luis Obispo. So he's like right down the street. Even though Randy soon found people that seemed like they knew what they were doing, the program, which was actually attempted, was nevertheless a disaster on most fronts.

millions of dollars worth of food was distributed at points in San Francisco, Richmond, East Palo Alto, and Oakland. It actually happened. Yeah. And on the day of distribution, thousands of people lined up for food. But while it went okay at best in the first three cities, riots broke out in Oakland, 21 people ended up in the hospital, and one woman lost an eye. She ended up suing both the Hearst family and the city of Oakland for a million dollars.

Soon after, Hurst publicly communicated to the SLA that he could not contribute any more money to the food distribution program. So in response, the SLA left a package behind a toilet in a popular San Francisco restaurant. Inside the package was another tape, this one recorded by Jelena and Patty.

Now, Jelena was not one of the SLA members who spoke with a faux black accent, but she did speak with one on this tape, possibly because Sin was starting to feel insecure that there were no black people in his black liberation movement. Do you think that he would just straight up say like,

you need to sound blacker. I think so. Wow. I think on this one, because I mean, why else would Jelena use it? You know, like, I don't feel cool. Yeah. I think that they all are also like, that's or disguise her voice. Yeah. But they're posers. These guys are legitimately. These are the, these people are the definition of pose. They are.

You know what a good word for them is? Dips. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good word. These guys are, they're just, they're not good at any of this. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of it was just to kind of like make Sin Q smile. Yeah.

But after Jelena said her piece demanding that the SLA be allowed to communicate with their comrades in prison live on national television, she handed the microphone to Patty, whose frequent conversations with SLA members had somewhat changed the tone of her voice. In this communique, which was typed and written for her to read, Patty said that she no longer feared the SLA because they were not the ones who wanted her to die.

She realized now, it was written, that it was actually the FBI who wanted to murder her. She also said that she'd been issued a 12-gauge shotgun to protect herself, which did not sound good.

Now, Patty's tone and the content of the speech, this was the first time that public opinion started to turn against Patty Hearst. And it seemed like there were very few people willing to speculate that she might just be going along to get along. I think there's a couple factors here. I think one is she had learned to talk the talk of the SLA within the SLA in order to, according to her, clarify.

further ingratiate herself to the crew, which makes total sense. Just to stay out of the closet. Absolutely. And then what you're talking, like, legitimately, these guys, like, unfortunately, I'm not, it's like, it's why some of this, the political stuff is a little hard to understand. It's that it's a language. It's a language and there's a glossary of terms. And so she started inhabiting the terms. And so I think there's... And the patter, too. And the patter. And so I think that the second option is also, like, they're looking at her being like,

Oh, how would she even get to know all of this if she didn't want to be a part of it? Like, there's no way this little girl would be clever enough to fake this. She has to be an utter revolutionary now. Yeah. Even though it's been a couple weeks. It's a couple weeks. Yes. That's what I was about to ask. Or she has to be brainwashed. Brainwashed. Well, brainwashed is the big term. Yeah, that's the big term here. Yeah, but there's no... But no one's entertaining, like, maybe she's clever enough to fake it. Maybe she's lying. Also...

She was kidnapped. Yeah. You know, like she even if she did go to the other side, you still have to save her. We're going to come against this. We're going to come against this time and time again. But it's got to do with her last name. Yep. And this was, after all, 1974 and the elder generation after the tumult of the 60s had come to see the youth of America as dangerous and unpredictable.

To the establishment, it wasn't unthinkable that a young woman, even a Hearst. Almost especially a Hearst. Yep. Could very easily be turned into a violent Marxist in just a month. But as Patty put it, she was ready to do or say anything the SLA asked, however they wanted it said, because her life was firmly in their hands. And yeah, it was a month at this point. It was a month. Yeah, it was a month.

Still? Yeah. Now, on March 21st, Patty was told that their safe house was getting hot. So the SLA moved Patty to a new location in a plastic garbage can with two holes cut in the top that they tossed in the trunk of the car. Yeah, they put her in a garbage can. That's how they brought her back and forth. Oh, my God. You know they were just getting evicted. Yeah. Hey, listen. We heard you having that fake party last night. We're actually...

We just hate you. The whole building hates you. Everybody else just hates you. Have a real party, okay? As they left, Zoya told Patty that if she let out a single sound, she was going to fill the garbage can full of holes with her machine gun. So Patty did as she was told, spending 45 minutes silently banging around in the trunk of an SLA car.

Once they got to the new safe house, Jelena, usually the friendly one, made fun of Patty for how docile she'd been, saying that they could have taken her out into the woods to shoot her and Patty wouldn't have known the difference. And you're like, yeah. Exactly. It's kind of an issue here. Well, because it's funny because like someone like her, this shows the sort of like double layer of I am a revolutionary and I'm

I'm an actual child that just barely got out of college. And this is a fun adventure for me. Like, I believe that people like Jelena. You're talking about like Jelena? Yeah, Jelena looks at this as like, she wouldn't believe, she'd think that we would take her out to a field and shoot her in the head. Meanwhile, like, you have a submachine gun. Yeah. And you put her in a garbage bag and you've been telling her you were going to shoot her in the head. She's also been raped twice. And now we're all going to act like, pass.

Patty, you're crazy. Patty, so dramatic. Well, much to Patty's horror, when she was brought inside the new safe house, she found that her new closet was a pantry. It was only about two feet deep. The door, however, didn't close, which meant Patty could see what was happening outside at night.

That's when she discovered that she was guarded at all times by two heavily armed SLA members. In that moment, she realized that a simple escape in the middle of the night was nothing but another fantasy she had to disabuse. Now, after a few days in the new safe house, Sin approached Patty again about joining the SLA. And without hesitation, Patty told him that she wanted to join and fight for the people, knowing now that joining was the only way to survive. Wow.

But in order for her to join, all of the SLA had to unanimously agree. So they have the sit downs like they do in Drag Race All Stars? They do that. That's exactly what it was. Now tell me, like, why do you think you deserve to be the new SLA All Star? I just feel that I messed up one

time. I just feel that this competition's about consistency and according to the rules, Jelena's been in the bottom two twice now. So I just feel like it would be fair to send Jelena home.

So for a full week, Patty had to have heart-to-heart talks with every member of the cell where she regurgitated everything they taught her during her long re-education seminars. Just understand that this is the acting job of her fucking life. Yes. You have to get that on some point during this process, like whether you believe or not that she was quote-unquote capital B brainwashed.

You have to believe that during this section, she had to show that she truly believed. She had to... This is her knowing that if she doesn't convince them in this moment, she is very probably going to get shot in the head. Yeah. Because they did at one point say like, you know, you could maybe go home or you could stay and fight with us. That was not an option. No. Going home means...

Anybody that says, and I've seen several sources that try to say like they try to let her go home in the beginning. They did not. That is absolute utter horseshit. Yes. They've already killed people. There is no reason why she shouldn't think that she's not going to get killed by them. Yes.

While most members loved Patty's enthusiasm, Tekko and especially Yolanda weren't convinced. Yolanda was grim-faced, withdrawn, and mean, a perfect match for Tekko, who was himself an arrogant twat. As a result, they both questioned Patty for hours in front of the whole group. Even Sin had a bit of a hard time believing that Patty was truly as gung-ho about the cause as she seemed to be, and at one point, he asked her...

If she was sure that she hadn't been brainwashed. Have you been brainwashed? But Patty flipped the script and clinched it by asking Sin, you don't believe the pigs in the press, do you? That's just, it's brilliant. Genius. It's very smart. And so one day, Patty was led to a meeting where she sensed a decision had been made. Sin told her that the sisters and brothers had voted for her to join this particular SLA combat team.

Cyn declared that she was now a guerrilla fighter and soldier in the Symbionese Liberation Army. Wow! And that's when Patty took off her blindfold and got a good look at her revolutionaries for the first time since the night of her kidnapping. She thought, remember, that most of these people were black people, a part of this black liberation movement. Yes. And she thought that they would all be these sexy people.

dangerous looking... Commanding people. Big, strong. Yes. I'd be so fucking mad. I'd just be like, can I go? She pulled it off. Oh, yeah. I love this statement. She later wrote that her first thought was, oh, God, what a bunch of ordinary, unattractive little people. Yeah. Just like, oh, no, it's the C team. Because then she realized, like...

Oh shit, you're a bunch of children Yeah, but of course she didn't say this Instead, the first thing she said was like Oh my god, you're all so attractive Yeah, right

She then had to identify each SLA member by their voice and members were delighted when she was able to name all of them in turn reacting Who's she? Which one's she? Let me do the impersonation Hey how you doing? Which one's she? And they reacted as if they were celebrities being recognized by a fan That is so

me that's not what I sound like. It sounds like me. No awareness that that's how they were going to get sent to prison. It's been logged. Just like everyone else in the SLA, Patty Hearst needed a new name, but she was not given a Swahili name. Instead, she was given the name of one of Che Guevara's guerrilla fighters, which really burned Yolanda's ass. Oh, yeah.

But nevertheless, from that day forward, Patty Hearst was known as Tanya to the rest of the SLA. Tanya the Fierce. Tanya the Unredeemable. Tanya the Tucker. Well, Tanya. You know that Tanya is the name of Che Guevara's girlfriend? Yeah.

That's what she was named after. And that's why Yolanda was mad. She was like, I'm Che Guevara's girlfriend. Now, as the new recruit, Patty was given a tour of the safe house and was assigned cleaning duty.

See, contrary to what you might think, each member of the SLA was expected to be clean and they were expected to appear impressive at all times. Sin didn't even approve of blue jeans because he said black people don't wear jeans. And such clothes didn't instill the respect the SLA needed from the people. Sin, we're not black. But maybe one day, maybe one day, it'll all be different. You mean I'm going to stay this color?

It was during cleaning, though, that Patty realized just how heavily armed the SLA was. The bedroom closet had machine guns, rifles, a shotgun and weapons Patty didn't even recognize. They also had bombs. They had sticks of dynamite.

And as far as Patty's first SLA weapon went, she was issued an M1 carbine. Once they said that she was in, she was fucking in. Yeah, man. It was a quick initiation. All right, you're a prisoner, and here's your gun. Here's your gun. All right, honestly, I'm so glad we're over that prisoner bit, huh? Don't you love that gun? Yeah. Once she was in, once that day came when she said, I'm joining you, she had spent 57 days in the closet. And she had about...

540 days left to go with the SLA. Now, it's around this time that Patty first saw Yolanda bouncing around the house in the blue bathrobe Patty had been wearing when she was kidnapped. Since the kidnapping, the female members of the SLA had sewn up the rips and tears and delighted in sharing it with one another.

Patty also realized that the toothbrush she'd been using all this time was a communal toothbrush that every member of the SLA shared. Did it cod you? Oh, yeah, especially cod you. I used it twice. On my ass.

Yeah. I got a lot of plaque in there apparently. Having your own toothbrush, they said, was a bourgeois luxury, as was bathroom privacy. The SLA believed that no comrade should close the door while showering or going to the bathroom, no matter how nasty of a shit you were taking.

They insisted that it was uptight for anyone to be embarrassed over normal bodily functions. That's why I poop my pants. I just think it's fun. It's Cal. It shows my authority. It's the only thing they had in common with Lyndon Johnson. Yeah, pissing the door open. If they knew, they might have understood him more. Yeah.

Now, one morning, Patty noticed that Zoya and Sin were having a conversation that was far different from the regular revolutionary patter. Instead, they were discussing the logistics of robbing a liquor store. When they noticed Patty's confusion, they very simply said, look...

We need the money. We need money. Gotcha. But after discussing it more, Sin declared that the SLA had no choice but to rob a bank, which was met by audible gasps from the other members. Because they were all like, that's amazing.

Because they thought Because he was, Sin Q So delusional He was just like Fuck a goddamn liquor store It's like no, we need to go up to the top Where the pigs are, the bank But was he delusional? Because it fucking worked

People said I was wrong. People said that cum humor would never, ever get you a wife. But guess what, man? I'm living proof. Well, as Sin put it, the cell needed thousands of dollars, not hundreds. But while the robbery was still in its planning stages, the SLA wanted to show off their newest recruit. Sin ordered Zoya to dress up Patty like a combat soldier for a picture to send to the press.

After putting her in fatigues, they handed Patty a semi-automatic gun and had her pose in front of a homemade Symbionese Liberation Army flag. The only thing that makes me mad is because the flag's awesome. The symbol's awesome. I love it. It's stupid, but it's great. It's what, a Symbion on a white flag? No, no, the Symbion Liberation Army, it's a Symbion with two flaming wings and a woman hanging by her vagina at the very top.

Zoya then took a Polaroid and sent it to the press. And it's this photo with Patty holding the gun that lives in the minds of many when they think of Patty Hearst. The very front of the tube and fucking express video thing that he did. Along with the photo was a taped message from Patty in which she said that she was now Tanya, urban gorilla. And she ended the message with the words of the Cuban revolutionary from whom she took her name. She said, patria o muerte.

Venceremos. Ooh, aye, aye, aye. And that means...

Fatherland or death, we shall be victorious. And it makes absolutely no fucking sense in this context. It makes no sense. It makes sense in Cuba for urban guerrillas fighting for their freedom, but it does not make any fucking sense here. It's almost like they didn't have a tacit understanding of what they were talking about. Yeah. But Patty Earth, she's got a sense of humor about this. Years later, she had a conversation with John Waters in 2020 in Town and Country magazine.

and John Waters said that Patty Hearst once told him that that picture is going to be the picture they use in her obituary when she dies. But Patty said the only good thing about it

At least I was thin. Yeah, it's funny as hell. But either way, it's with Patty's further involvement with the SLA and the bank robbery that made this the biggest crime story of the decade that will return next week with Patty Hearst Part 2. Damn. Wow. There's a lot of shit here, dude. We're going to get into the full story of the SLA, their full history, and shit, man, what comes after...

after the bank robbery is fucking insane. It's just as crazy. There's a whole third act to the story that that's what made this kind of longer. Yeah. It was because there's a third act to this that I did not know even existed. And it's great. It's great. And if you don't like it, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to fucking tell you, but we're having fun. Come down to patreon.com slash last podcast on the left. You can watch us flop around and we can yell.

Add your eyeballs. Yeah, Henry stands up occasionally. It's incredible what I do. You have no idea what happens here. TikTok at LP on the left. You can go all the stupid socials. And be sure to check us out at LPN TV. That's twitch.tv slash LPN TV for all of our streams. And you can check out our YouTube channel for all of the streams after they air. And you can also come see us on tour. Go to lastpodcastontheleft.com and click share.

shows to see all of the live dates that we have coming up. We got Washington, D.C. coming up real fucking soon. July 13th. We also got shows coming up in Los Angeles and Brooklyn at the King's Theater. And of course, we're also coming to London and Reykjavik as well as many dates in Australia. We cannot wait and we shall see you there. Hail, Swiss Aiden. Hail, Randy Newman. Yeah, well, that's fine. Yeah, it is fine.

He's fine. He's great. I think that he's fine. Yeah, he's fine. He's a composer. I just think, again... Yeah, watch out, Henry. You'll get fucking dragged through the mud now for calling somebody fine. I'm fine with it. Because apparently it's not okay to say that a band is fine. I think Randy Newman is fine. But you know why? Really? Because you want to fuck him? Yeah, I want to have sex. No, it's because I'm fine. I like Billy Joel.

You can like both! No, I will not. You tell me if you like both. You're wrong! You're wrong! This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.

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