← Noble Blood
Noble Blood
Very Special Episodes: How to Make the Olympics (Without Supernatural Athletic Ability)
00:24:12
Loading summary
Transcript127 lines
- [00:00]
Dana Schwartz
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald had his own rules.
- [00:11]
Elizabeth Swaney
Segregation in the day, integration at night.
- [00:14]
Dana Schwartz
It was like stepping in another world. Was he a businessman? A criminal? A hero?
- [00:21]
Jason English
Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.
- [00:25]
Dana Schwartz
Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:34]
Elizabeth Swaney
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from.
- [00:37]
Dana Schwartz
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
- [00:40]
Elizabeth Swaney
Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they gonna do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high deserts. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:04]
Dana Schwartz
This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the red weather.
- [01:08]
Jason English
In 1995, my neighbor Anna Trainor disappeared from a commune.
- [01:11]
Dana Schwartz
It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.
- [01:15]
Jason English
So no, I am not your guru.
- [01:19]
Dana Schwartz
And back then I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years.
- [01:24]
Jason English
I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth.
- [01:28]
Dana Schwartz
Listen to the Red weather on the.
- [01:29]
Jason English
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:34]
Dana Schwartz
WSECU isn't just one of Washington's best credit unions. We're a Forbes Best in State five years running. Why? Because we put you first. Lower fees, early paydays, financial guidance and service second to none. As a member owned cooperative, we love Washington as much as you do. From the Olympic mountains to the rolling Palouse. Join us and discover how much we care about your financial well being. Because what we really do best is invest in you. Visit wsecu.org today to learn more. Washington let's Credit Union. Think back to when you were a kid. What was your dream job? Was it to become an astronaut? 32101 giant fleet for Manka. A cowboy ballerina. Maybe you thought you could teach defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts. For some, the biggest dream was becoming an Olympic athlete. Standing on a podium in a far flung locale, hearing your country's national anthem as you accept your gold medal. You've practiced waving to your family and friends who supported you on your way to glory. But childish dreams aren't meant to come true. Becoming an Olympic athlete is almost mathematically impossible. You have to win the genetic lottery. You have to dedicate your life to A sport. A sport where you're competing against the best your country has to offer. And that's just to get to the Olympics, where you then take on the world.
- [03:23]
Elizabeth Swaney
When I was seven, I decided I wanted to make Olympics, so it was my job to make it to the Olympics starting at age 7.
- [03:31]
Dana Schwartz
Those odds did not discourage Elizabeth Swaney from Oakland, California. In fact, it was her mastery of those odds that led her on her path to the Olympics.
- [03:44]
Elizabeth Swaney
And it was first for Olympic figure skating. That was the goal, but that obviously didn't happen. So it became then like rowing, and I got involved in baseball later on and ice hockey. So those were kind of the sports I was thinking of focusing on competitively before I transitioned to, like, skeleton and then freestyle skiing, which was ultimately my Olympic sport.
- [04:09]
Dana Schwartz
Elizabeth did end up becoming an Olympic athlete, but it wasn't supernatural athletic ability that got her there. And by the time she made it to the 2018 Winter Olympics, achieving her childhood dream, a lot of people were rooting against her.
- [04:29]
Jason English
Knowing her personally, I just felt so bad for all the hate.
- [04:37]
Dana Schwartz
Welcome to Very special episodes, an iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is Breaking the Olympics.
- [04:51]
Jason English
Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. My name is Jason English. I'm usually joined here at the top by Dana Schwartz and Zarin Burnett. I'm solo today. I got to see Zarin out in San Francisco last week before the super bowl. Iheart builds these two stages and we record podcasts all week leading up to the Super Bowl. Football podcasts, comedy podcasts, Vanderpump rules podcasts, you name it. Super Bowl's back in LA next year. Dana, Zarin and I are already planning to bring Very Special Episodes back to Radio Row, which is a good time. It's a surreal time, but fun. Football season is over now, so we're going to shift our focus to another sports obsession, the Winter Olympics. We've got a few Winter Olympics episodes coming. I've had curling on in the background all day. I don't quite understand it, but I like it. I like the sounds. I like. Visually, very pleasing. So I will continue to watch that. You listen to this and give it back to Dana.
- [05:58]
Dana Schwartz
Growing up in Oakland in the 90s, it was easy for Elizabeth to fall in love with the Olympics. Bay Area native Christy Yamaguchi became an international star during the 1992 Winter Games.
- [06:13]
Elizabeth Swaney
I remember being captivated by the figure skaters during the Olympics in the early 90s. One person that I really looked up to was Christy Yamaguchi, and I was living in the Bay Area at the time, she won the gold medal. So she was really inspiring to me. So I started figure skating. That was my intro really to sports. I think figure skating.
- [06:37]
Dana Schwartz
Probably Christie's greatest.
- [06:38]
Jason English
Strength is her lack of weaknesses. She does everything so well.
- [06:43]
Dana Schwartz
This is a very well done combination. Spin every position is perfect. Figure skating was her early sports pursuit, but Elizabeth has a habit of trying everything the buffet of athletics and life has to offer.
- [07:02]
Elizabeth Swaney
I did figure skating maybe like once a week growing up, was part of the figure skating team in college and then later transitioned to, like, the ice hockey team.
- [07:13]
Dana Schwartz
As a student at the University of California, Berkeley, Elizabeth won a spot on the men's rowing team, One of the power programs in the sport. Elizabeth was the coxswain, the person who steers the boat, strategizes and barks orders at the rowers. In an interview with California Sunday magazine, a college teammate described the normally kind and polite Elizabeth as a silent assassin.
- [07:41]
Elizabeth Swaney
I actually like credit that sportsman specifically being on the Division I men's crew team, which was always one of the top three rowing programs in the nation, with helping me kind of envision a future where I can compete at a national, international level because that team is so hard to be on such high performance.
- [07:58]
Dana Schwartz
But yet being a student and a member of the men's rowing team wasn't enough for Elizabeth. At the age of 19, she ran for governor of California in the 2003 recall election. That was the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gary Coleman from Diff'rent Strokes.
- [08:17]
Jason English
Well, let me tell you something. The answer is clear.
- [08:20]
Dana Schwartz
For the people to win, politics as usual must lose. Elizabeth went to grad school at Harvard, later ran for mayor of Oakland. She's a stand up comedian, a stunt double in movies, a ski instructor, corporate recruiter, and yes, an Olympic athlete.
- [08:43]
Jason English
When I first met her, she told me she had something like four or five jobs. And I'm like, how do you pull that off?
- [08:50]
Dana Schwartz
That's Brendan Newby, a friend and fellow athlete in freestyle skiing. Newby competed in two Winter Olympics representing Ireland. He calls Elizabeth one of the nicest, smartest and hardest working people he's ever met.
- [09:07]
Jason English
Most of the time you kind of have to get her attention to get her to talk. So maybe she's doing her four and a half jobs in her head at the time, but she's smart enough to do that.
- [09:20]
Dana Schwartz
By the time Brendan met Elizabeth, they were living in Utah, working toward their Olympic dreams. Elizabeth first tried skeleton. Have you seen skeleton? It's a sport where competitors on Tiny sleds launch their bodies down an icy bobsled track at speeds of 80 miles an hour. Eventually, she found the halfpipe event in freestyle skiing, which, hearing Brendan explain it, sounds equally terrifying.
- [09:49]
Jason English
You have all these tricks you have to learn and all the stuff you gotta get done. And excuse my language, but new tricks are fcking terrifying, man. The sport is absolutely gnarly. The halfpipe is 22ft tall. It's not snow, it's solid ice. Our skis are as sharp as race skis because it's solid ice and 22ft tall. The best guys are going 18 to 22ft out of it. So what? That's 44ft off the ground. And if you go a little bit too far to the left, you're going to land flat on solid ice and then bounce 22ft to the ground. Go too far to the other direction, you're just going to fall out of the sky.
- [10:31]
Dana Schwartz
Freestyle halfpipe was not a natural fit for Elizabeth's background. She barely skied until her early 20s. But she saw freestyle skiing as the clearest pathway to competing at the Olympics.
- [10:45]
Elizabeth Swaney
I think I'm like the best person in the world to try to figure out what sport someone can possibly make at the Olympics and maybe, like, if they have background in a certain country or heritage there, like, what country and what sport that might be a possibility for.
- [11:00]
Dana Schwartz
Elizabeth's special insight was derived from something most of us hate to do. Reading the rule book.
- [11:07]
Elizabeth Swaney
I know the qualification standards for a lot of the sports, especially the winter ones, less familiar with the newer Olympic sports. My own, like coaches that would coach athletes from several countries, even coaches and athletes from other countries. Because I knew I was so well versed in the rules, they would ask me, like, hey, do you think I'm going to qualify for the Olympics? Or do you think my athlete's going to qualify? And this was like multiple countries, US and non US Countries would ask me.
- [11:37]
Dana Schwartz
This obscure but useful knowledge helped her identify the best possible path to the Olympics. Elizabeth figured out that by consistently competing in Olympic qualifiers across the world, she'd accumulate enough points to get to the Olympics. But first she had to find a country that she'd be eligible to represent at the Winter Games and didn't already have someone competing in freestyle skiing. She wasn't good enough to represent the United States, which regularly competes for medals. Each country has their own set of rules to determine whether an athlete can represent them in the Olympics. Typically, an athlete needs some kind of link to the country through family or residents. But that's not always the case. For example, ahead of the 2008 Summer Games, Russia made a special exemption for women's basketball legend Becky Hammond to play for them, even though she previously played for the US in other international tournaments and had no family history in Russia. Luckily for Elizabeth, she had connections around the world. She tried competing for her mother's homeland, Venezuela, a country that nearly touches the equator. Not exactly a hotbed for winter sports. Then she decided a better path was through Hungary, where her grandparents were from. She mapped out a schedule, did the math, and figured out which events she would have to compete in to qualify. But all this mastering of the rulebook and an international family tree wasn't going to get her to the Olympics. It would take money. A lot of it.
- [13:25]
Jason English
I mean, it's a lot. Picture this, and it's happened to me multiple times. You spend 1200 bucks to get to Europe and then 800 on accommodations, whatever. The whole trip is going to end up being like four grand. You get there, weather blows it out, and the contest is canceled.
- [13:45]
Dana Schwartz
Brendan estimates it costs up to $30,000 each session to compete for a spot in the winter.
- [13:53]
Jason English
That's winter sports. That's how it works.
- [13:55]
Dana Schwartz
It sucks for the top end of Olympic athletes. They've been competing in their sports since they were young. And as they show promise and keep winning events, it attracts sponsorship dollars which cover all those costs, allowing the elite athletes to focus on performing, not budgeting. Elizabeth was the opposite of a freestyle skiing half pipe prodigy. She spent an incredible amount of time and, yes, money to give herself a chance at realizing her Olympic dream.
- [14:30]
Elizabeth Swaney
It wasn't, like, easy for me to get involved in all these sports. I was always, like, working multiple jobs. I almost had, I think, a few days off a year. And I was always trying to put everything I earned into paying for coaches or equipment.
- [14:49]
Dana Schwartz
Elizabeth estimates 75% of all the money she made went to training, food, and competing in competitions. But amazingly, her plan was working. Elizabeth's globetrotting, dream chasing expedition came to a crescendo just a few weeks ahead of the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea. In late January that year, she got a call from the Hungarian Olympic Committee. She had a spot in the Olympics waiting for her. The only problem, she had to get from the west coast to Budapest in less than 48 hours.
- [15:31]
Elizabeth Swaney
So I had to ask friends, family, some strangers through crowdfunding, like, hey, can you help me fly to Europe, like, immediately so I can still be considered for the Olympics? So I didn't even have, like, enough funds on my own to do that. But thankfully, again, like, the community pulled together to make that, like, possible for me. And it also worked because I just had my jacket and, like, a briefcase.
- [15:57]
Dana Schwartz
Even with her Olympic dream in sight, a dream she'd had since she was 7 years old, Elizabeth knew that just getting to the Olympics wasn't the goal. The goal was competing in the Winter Games.
- [16:11]
Elizabeth Swaney
There was no point where I was like, oh, this is, like, in the bag or secure, super thrilled. There was no time to be, like, happy. It was more just like, hey, I have to make it to Budapest by Friday morning and I have to hopefully, like, pass all these tests and then make it to the Olympics. So it was always like, boom, boom, boom. Here's the next task to do. When I finally, like, got to the Olympic Village, I realized, okay, I've, like, made it here. This is great. And that was the point where I knew, like, I will have the opportunity to compete. So that was a positive thing.
- [16:43]
Dana Schwartz
Elizabeth made it to South Korea, to the Olympics. And when she got there, her performance became one of the most talked about moments in the 2018 Winter Games. Time is valuable. That's why Lowe's blueprint takeoffs turn blueprints into quotes faster.
- [17:08]
Jason English
Bring us your plans and we'll generate.
- [17:10]
Dana Schwartz
Itemized material lists to make quoting easier.
- [17:14]
Jason English
So you can get back to building Plus.
- [17:16]
Dana Schwartz
At the Lowe's pro desk, you get.
- [17:18]
Jason English
Access to thousands of building materials not sold in store.
- [17:22]
Dana Schwartz
And when your order's ready, we'll deliver everything to the job site. Improving is easy at Lowe's. Segregation in the day, integration at night. When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own. We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world. Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.
- [17:53]
Elizabeth Swaney
You saw the kkk.
- [17:54]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here.
- [18:03]
Jason English
Charlie was an example. Power they had to crush him.
- [18:10]
Dana Schwartz
From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's Place. A story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:29]
Jason English
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from.
- [18:32]
Dana Schwartz
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. It's an all out manhunt for John Awjay.
- [18:38]
Elizabeth Swaney
Every search and rescue team in LA county has been called in to help.
- [18:41]
Dana Schwartz
Within days, tips started flooding into the sheriff's department.
- [18:45]
Elizabeth Swaney
The rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of.
- [18:51]
Jason English
Is this the story of a man.
- [18:53]
Elizabeth Swaney
Who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover up in the.
- [18:57]
Dana Schwartz
Inside the nation's largest sheriff's department.
- [19:00]
Jason English
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?
- [19:07]
Dana Schwartz
Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.
- [19:15]
Elizabeth Swaney
Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance?
- [19:20]
Jason English
I wouldn't do it alone.
- [19:23]
Dana Schwartz
Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:29]
Jason English
The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream car.
- [19:33]
Dana Schwartz
It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best selling car of all time. How did that happen?
- [19:39]
Jason English
I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On business history we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy. And the story of the Beetle is truly surprising. It has so much in it.
- [19:50]
Dana Schwartz
It has Nazis, it has the German economic miracle.
- [19:53]
Jason English
And it fe. Here's one of the most famous ads of all time. An ad that really redefined what advertising was in the United States. The calculation was that there was some number of Americans who were ready for.
- [20:06]
Dana Schwartz
Something different, who were ready for something.
- [20:08]
Jason English
That was counter to the culture, if you will. Perfect timing in this decade of the 1960s. Listen to Business History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and watch episodes on YouTube.
- [20:30]
Dana Schwartz
The 2018 Winter Olympics was a contained capsule of global conflicts and issues. Held in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, the Games featured a remarkable scene where athletes from north and South Korea competed in together as a unified team. In women's ice hockey, athletes from Russia could not compete under their flag after a massive state sponsored doping scandal was revealed following the 2014 games. Yet even with this geopolitical confluence, so much of the online conversation was dominated by the non medal winning performance of freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney.
- [21:19]
Elizabeth Swaney
I would say maybe like 80% of the world was kind of like negative or undecided about my Olympics performance. That had something to say.
- [21:27]
Dana Schwartz
It wasn't because she attempted a difficult trick or had an embarrassing fall. The reason why she became a lightning rod is because she didn't do much of anything during her run. Elizabeth simply went up and down, back and forth along the walls of the halfpipe for one jump. On her second run, the Olympic broadcast team measured she maxed out at 18 inches above the Halfpipe. To put this into context, the gold medal winner, Cassie Sharp from Canada hit nearly 14ft. The closest Elizabeth got to getting some air was a little 180 degree spin, which got her a couple feet above the half pipe, and that was it. She came in last in the competition. But among all the freestyle skiers, she received the most attention, which was not her intent.
- [22:31]
Elizabeth Swaney
I was just trying to do my best, like, try to treat it like every single day that I was training for half piper competing and half pipe, trying to have fun at the same time. Just really grateful to be there.
- [22:45]
Dana Schwartz
Some of the reaction was online anger, the idea that Elizabeth cheated the system. An unserious participant amongst a field of dedicated competitors.
- [22:57]
Elizabeth Swaney
But Elizabeth Sweeney is not average.
- [22:59]
Dana Schwartz
She is incredibly, incredibly below average. She's really not that good to be in the Olympics. She doesn't have Olympic standard skills.
- [23:10]
Elizabeth Swaney
She decided to do absolutely nothing.
- [23:14]
Jason English
She may have done the most embarrassing.
- [23:17]
Elizabeth Swaney
Thing I have ever witnessed.
- [23:22]
Jason English
Liz did nothing wrong. She didn't hack the system. She didn't do anything. She followed the rules to the letter. She knew the rules better than anyone.
- [23:33]
Dana Schwartz
Brendan Newby says all this newfound attention on freestyle skiing was not a good thing. The jokes, the memes, it didn't help. But he says the blame should be directed away from Elizabeth.
- [23:48]
Jason English
As far as Liz goes, I'll say there's two schools of thought. Mine is she did nothing wrong. She followed the rules to the letter, and the only people to blame, if there's anyone to blame. I don't think this is like a, she didn't do anything wrong. So it's not like blame, but it would be the qualification criteria that the IOC and the FIS had set up. The other school of thought that frustrates people is the other girls that go out there and fall and get hurt that Liz beats by not doing anything that's frustrating to the other girls. I know a women's coach that was really frustrated by it, and I have never once in my whole life seen Liz crash. So I do see why people got frustrated. But, like, they took their anger out on the wrong people. They took it out on her when she just followed the rules.
- [24:43]
Dana Schwartz
For Elizabeth, she drew encouragement from her fellow competitors while she was in the eye of the social media storm.
- [24:50]
Elizabeth Swaney
Whenever I would hear, like, a negative thing that really wouldn't affect. Affect me that much at all, because I would think, okay, who are the experts in this sport? They're not someone who's just making commentary online. They're my fellow competitors and fellow medal winners. And they were all supportive of me. Like Maddie Bowman, she told me personally, like we love you after the competition. So I knew I had the support of the best like athletes in the world.
- [25:19]
Dana Schwartz
For a brief moment, Elizabeth was one of the most talked about athletes in the world. But even as the closing ceremonies were wrapping up and she was flying back home, all of that attention was already dying down. And that left Elizabeth in an odd position. You see a lot of her life had been focused around achieving this goal of becoming an Olympic athlete and she did it. Then she was left with the question, what do you do after you achieve your big dream?
- [25:56]
Elizabeth Swaney
It was just always a dream since age 7 and I was just guided by that dream. I'm not sure if there's a good reason behind that, but I'm like wow. Now I think back like oh my seven year old self kind of guided a lot of my life and into my 20s, 30s. I think it's the power of the dream really kept me going and kept motivating me to keep training, keep competing.
- [26:24]
Dana Schwartz
Elizabeth found new mountains to tackle. A focus other high achieving Olympians have shared. Bill Bradley played for Team USA's basketball team in the 1964 Olympics, became a two time NBA champion with the New York Knicks, then switched to politics spending 18 years as a U.S. senator representing New Jersey. Gold medal winning boxer George Foreman is probably known as much for selling plug in countertop grills as he is for throwing punches. For Elizabeth, she still needed an outlet to put her energy. She competed in American Ninja Warrior. A connection there got her into stunt work for movies including the Steven Spielberg film the Fabelmans. She now runs a comedy show called Snark Tank. It mixes roast comedy with business feedback to startups. When Elizabeth meets other people with big dreams, she tells them that the journey towards a goal is worth pursuing. Even if the math is stacked against you.
- [27:32]
Elizabeth Swaney
I would say there are no odds there's more. There are sometimes obstacles, but you can use the obstacles as ways to help make you stronger. And if there's haters along the way I've realized and someone told me that oh haters are often just confused lovers. So why else would they spend so much like energy and time thinking about you? Also there always are going to be supportive people for is like a positive goal that someone has. There's almost always path to achieve something and even if you don't get to your final like destination, there's going to be a great story to tell and a great journey along the way.
- [28:14]
Dana Schwartz
Eight years after making the Olympics, Elizabeth decided to chase that dream one more time. This time, headfirst down an icy bobsled track, trying to qualify for skeleton for Team Israel. It didn't take her back to the Winter Games, but that first dream had already changed her life. And honestly, skeleton sounds terrifying. This might be for the best.
- [28:48]
Jason English
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. The show is hosted by Danish war Zarin Burnett and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Mike Smeltz. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Dew. Original Music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Our executive producer is Jason English. Got another Olympics tale coming next week. We'll see you back here next Wednesday. Very Special Episodes is a production of I Heart Podcasts.
- [29:41]
Dana Schwartz
When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner Charlie Fitzgerald had his own rules.
- [29:47]
Elizabeth Swaney
Segregation in the day, integration at night.
- [29:50]
Dana Schwartz
It was like stepping on another world. Was he a businessman? A criminal? A hero?
- [29:57]
Jason English
Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.
- [30:01]
Dana Schwartz
Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:10]
Elizabeth Swaney
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from.
- [30:13]
Dana Schwartz
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
- [30:16]
Elizabeth Swaney
Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:40]
Dana Schwartz
This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the red weather.
- [30:44]
Jason English
In 1995, my neighbor Anna Trainor disappear from a commune.
- [30:48]
Dana Schwartz
It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.
- [30:52]
Jason English
So no, I am not your guru.
- [30:55]
Dana Schwartz
And back then I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years.
- [31:00]
Jason English
I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth.
- [31:04]
Dana Schwartz
Listen to the Red weather on the.
- [31:06]
Jason English
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:11]
Dana Schwartz
When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner Charlie Fitzgerald had his own rules.
- [31:17]
Elizabeth Swaney
Segregation in the day, integration at night.
- [31:20]
Dana Schwartz
It was like stepping on another world. Was he a businessman? A criminal? A hero?
- [31:27]
Jason English
Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.
- [31:31]
Dana Schwartz
Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.