August 11, 2020 • 49 mins
Pirate radio started out in England as a way to sidestep the regulations of Big Radio. While outlawed, it still exists today in the UK and America. Learn all about it today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years.
It's great, it's flun You're gonna love it. It's called
Stuff You Should Know Colon an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. Ye, and it's twenty six jam packed chapters
that we wrote with another guy named Knowls Parker, who's
(00:22):
amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carl Manardo.
And it's just an all around joy to pick up
and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our
hands yet, it's like we have Chuck in our dreams
so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold
this thing and smell it. And so should you, so
pre order now. It means a lot to us. The
(00:43):
support is a very big deal, So pre order anywhere
books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of My Heart Radios How Stuff works, Hey, and
welcome to up up the volume. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's out there somewhere raging against the machine. And this
(01:07):
is um bubble to say, it's just Stuff you should Know.
I love it. When I sent you this, uh, this research.
You are like, the first thing you said, let's pump
up the volume. Sure. Man, it's such a great movie.
You know, it's funny is I didn't think about that
once until you said that, and I was like, oh yeah, yeah,
it was all about piracy and radios. Yeah, I love
(01:30):
that movie. I just hadn't seen it, and I don't know,
I don't think probably since then. It has a really
has a good soundtrack, has bad Brains and Henry Rawlins
doing kick out the jams you see five songs. It
also has probably the best sound Garden song of all
time heretic. Yeah, well it's tough to call for me
is a sound Garden nut, but yeah, good song. It
(01:52):
is a good song. Which one is better than that?
I like a lot of sound Garden, so yeah, I
have probably twenty tied for songs. Okay, but is that
one of them? Yeah, it's up there. Oh thanks for that.
I love it. It's great. I mean I love all
sound Garden songs. Yeah, I guess I do too, now
that I think about it, I think I could have
(02:14):
had something to do with Chris Cornell's voice to an extent.
Man r I P Yeah, for real. I used to
joke about the imagining the first time that he like
sung in the shower when he was thirteen or something.
He was like, what, I'm like, Oh, I think I
know what I'm gonna do for a living. Yeah, exactly, shower.
So we're talking about pump up the volume and Chris
(02:36):
Cornell right now, because this episode is about pirate radio,
and specifically it's about the British pirate radio invasion of
the sixties that I had no idea about. I've never
seen that movie, um, Pirate Radio, but I intend to
now have you seen it? I haven't seen the movie,
but I was acquainted with the story somehow. I think
(02:58):
I might have seen a short documentary or or something
about the Caroline and uh, really really cool stuff it is,
which is why we're going to talk about it in
this episode. But um, I just found the whole thing.
I don't know if mind blowing is the right word,
but certainly deeply interesting. And I think it's cool because
it's one of those like pieces to the jigsaw puzzle
(03:19):
of history, at least like rock history, that you didn't
even realize, like you didn't you didn't have you know,
And by you I mean me. Yeah, And Here's the
thing is, there were other pirate radio stations all around
the world, and there always have been since there's been
radio and restrictions on radio. But he and as long
(03:39):
as there's rock, Chuck, there always will be. That's true.
But the the UK version was sort of the most
celebrated and the most famous. I think obviously why they
made a movie about it. And one of the reasons
is because the man whose thumb they were under was
the BBC, which is a big deal. It was a
(04:00):
big deal because here in the United States and I know,
um ahoy to all of you listeners outside of the
United States who are you're like, well, yeah, we we
this is what it was like. Um, in the United States,
the radio spectrum has always been very free, or it
was intended to be very free, to where um, there
was a multiplicity of voices and you could say a
(04:21):
lot of stuff got a little stodgy, and it was
kind of stodgy from the outset. But for the most part,
it wasn't just one monolithic organization that controlled all of
the radio waves. That's just not how it's been in
the States and in places like the UK. That's how
it was basically, right out of the gate. They said, Um,
(04:41):
you know, we this is a really valuable tool. You
can really shape people's minds with this. So we're going
to leave it specifically under government control. Like we'll provide
a bunch of different stuff. Not everything you want, um,
but a lot of stuff. Especially if you're a stodgy conservative,
old establishment type, you're gonna love what we're pumping out.
(05:03):
But um, the point is it's too important to just
kind of let anybody come along as the money for
a radio license to just set up a radio station.
That seems absurd. Only the the Looney colonies would do
something like that. Yeah, So the BBC had a very
vice like grip, like you were saying, for geez, about
forty something years and then you know, the sixties come along,
(05:26):
and like so many other things in America and the UK, uh,
kids that were born of these World War two I
guess you would call them baby boomers or booms or boomers.
The babies of those boomers where rock and roll kids.
You know, they grew up seeing Elvis and the Beatles
on television, and they were not square like their parents were,
(05:49):
and they had different ideas and their parents did. And
this was the case in England in the nineteen sixties
when the BBC was you know, rock and roll was
was a thing and they were like, we're not playing this,
this devil's music. They probably didn't say that that was
more American if you, but if you, it was certainly controversial.
(06:09):
UM songs that seemed to us like I mean, like
you just hear him on an elevator today, like they
were highly controversial back then, you know, and like there
was genuinely nowhere on the radio in the UK for
you to reliably turn to to hear this stuff. You
have to go to like a club um to hear them,
and those were few and far between. And then if you,
(06:31):
um were lucky enough, you might be able to occasionally
dial in Radio Luxembourg, which played some of these like
pop hits, but they were also it was still largely
controlled by a few record labels, so it didn't just
they didn't go deep. It was still like whatever new
big band they were trying to promote, but it was
still way cooler than anything the BBC was promoting. The
(06:52):
problem is that the reception was certainly spotty. Have you
ever been to Luxembourg? I have not. I may have
passed through it not known it. They blinked, but I
don't believe I have. It's so under the radar. I
flew out of there once. That's the only thing I've
been to Luxembourg is flew home from Europe out of
Luxembobourg airport. So that's my only like, I don't know
(07:14):
anything about it as a place. It's it's interesting. It's
like the Delaware of Europe. It's right, it may or
may not exist. Yeah. So um, that was pretty much
the long and short of it. The BBC didn't really
didn't really care that the teenagers wanted more. They just
said no. They might have even said nine at this point,
(07:34):
you know what I mean. Yeah, And this is where
a gentleman comes in the picture that would really change everything.
And his name is uh Ronan and I've heard Americans
pronounced it O'Reilly. It's spelled oh little accent capital r
A h I L l y. And I heard him
speak his name in court when they asked his surname.
(07:57):
But he said it so quickly it sounded like a dolly.
It sounded like a d So it may just be
like some weird like you know, Irish pronunciation or something
that I don't know about, but we're gonna say Riley.
I mean that's how Yeah, that's how I heard it too. Um.
But yeah, so he sounded like Brad Pitt and snatched
(08:18):
sort of. I couldn't understand him. That's where there was
a d in there. But he was He was a
guy who uh figured out that their jurisdiction over the airwaves,
the BBC and the UK government's jurisdiction stopped about five
kilometers off the coast three miles here in the States.
And he said, and there were he didn't invent the
(08:40):
idea of planning a boat out there and broadcasting. Other
countries were doing this kind of thing and exploiting this
loophole already, but he said, this is this is something
we should do. The kids want their rock and roll,
they want their MTV. We don't know what that is yet,
and I'm gonna bring it to him. Yeah. So um,
he he actually took inspiration. Like you're saying, there was
(09:02):
some Scandinavian countries, specifically Sweden and Denmark that had been
home to pirate radio stations that were docked off of
their coast, and for very similar reasons too. There was
a state monopoly on radio broadcasting at the time, and
some people were like, uh no, that's I want to
broadcast what I want to broadcast. So they set up
(09:22):
those shops, I mean, all the way back in the fifties.
And I actually ran across one in the United States
to bring it on home that was operating in the
nineteen thirties three um, and it had a call sign
r x k R, and it was out of Panama,
even though it was off of the coast of Long Beach.
And I think, Chuck, I think, I think we either
(09:43):
talked about it in our Prohibition episode or we talked
about it in our Who Owns the Oceans episode, but
it was it was originally one of those floating speakeasy
casinos doctor National Waters. Then they started to broadcast radio
pirate radio is well for a little while, so it
had happened before. And there was actually because of the
(10:04):
success of the Scandinavian stations, there was kind of this
mad rush in the UK to be the first too,
to see I guess um and start broadcasting, and Ronan
O'Reilly beat them all with what came to be known
as Radio Caroline. Yeah, so he was sort of in
a tight race with another guy named Alan Crawford who
(10:26):
had a project called his was gonna be Radio Atlanta.
I think it was called Project Atlanta. Nothing to do
with Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta, Texas. From what I saw, really,
I figured it was just a riff on Atlantic As
in the ocean. No one of the one of the owners,
um was a from Dallas, I believe, is a radio
man from Texas, and for some reason he chose Atlanta
(10:48):
after Atlanta, Texas. I did another ones in Atlanta, Texas.
I didn't neither. Neither did the people who live in Atlanta, Texas. So, um,
they're the Delaware of Texas. That's all right. So there
was I think o'reiley got about half a dozen investors.
Because this is gonna call some money. Because you gotta
buy a ship. Um, it can't just be a little
(11:09):
dinghy or or a rowboat or anything like that. You
have to get it takes. It takes a shipload of equipment. Yeah,
it takes, and people to operate it and people to
stay on it and stuff like that in meeting rooms,
and so you gotta have a legit ship. So um
Crawford for Radio Atlanta got the MI Amigo and O'Riley
got a passenger ferry, a Danish ship called the Envy Frederica.
(11:34):
They each renamed them Uh Atlanta and then Caroline, respectively,
apparently Caroline after Caroline Kennedy because he, as Laura Goes,
saw a picture. O'Riley saw a photo of Little Caroline
and Little John Jr. Dancing in the Oval Office and
he was inspired by that because he was like, this
is what we're trying to do, like sort of uh,
(11:56):
you know, you're not allowed to dance in the Oval Office,
yet they're doing it, and we're not allowed to broadcast
rock and roll music because the government says so. So
you know, I'm gonna name after Caroline, very cute name.
It is very cute. Um. So that's the name that
he went with. And I'm glad that he was one
of the I'm glad he was the one who who
made it first because he was the one who was
(12:17):
doing it. I guess as as purely as you would
expect somebody to be doing with like a constant rotation
of DJ's operating twenty four hours a day, legitimately broadcasting
from the ship, and that was not Radio Atlanta's model.
At all. They were compiling shows or day's worth of
shows in the studio back in London, recording them and
(12:41):
then sailing it out to the ship. It was really
it was also, I mean there was like banking concerns
that were invested in it was. It was ill legit
as far as pirate radio goes from the outset. So
I'm glad that they weren't the ones who made it
to market first. Yeah. So Radio Caroline. Their slogan was
your all day music station because of seven format, and
(13:04):
it was new and in and of itself, right, Yeah,
I mean as far I mean as far as playing music, absolutely,
and they just within a few months. I think they
launched in on Easter Sunday nineteen sixty four with the
Stones tune It's all over Now perfect. I saw not
fade Away. I saw it's all over Now. Actually I
saw in the Guardian and then one other source not
(13:26):
fade Away, and then I I also saw um all
over Now. But I saw both enough legit places that
I'm I honestly don't know. Yeah, I saw not fade
Away was the station's theme song, so who knows, And
then they got someone else to compose an original theme
song because I think they didn't want to keep playing that.
(13:47):
But at any rate, they launched and it didn't take
long until they had a larger audience than all of
the BBC stations combined. That's wonderful. And they quickly merged,
I think if it goes from Easter Sunday, they merged
in July, just a few months later with Radio Atlanta.
I guess they figured they had uh, just more power together.
(14:09):
And then the Mi Amigo they became um the Carolina
North in the Caroline South, broadcasting from due different places. Yeah,
which covered almost all of the UK, but not all
of it. There was some southwestern parts that just didn't
didn't get it from either ship they had. They had
pretty good coverage of of the aisles for sure with
(14:31):
those two ships. And then eventually Radio Atlanta went under
as an organization and Radio Caroline was able to take
over both of those ships. So they had that they had,
I mean, for a pirate radio station, they they had
a lot of power behind them, for sure. Yeah, and
I don't I mean, we haven't said the obvious. They
were called pirate radio because they were operating on ships
(14:52):
in the ocean and flouting the law, So it was
sort of doing double duty there with the name. Yeah,
there's actually some really great pieces out they're on the
internet about this this era UM. And one of them
I saw was they said, like, from the moment they
started broadcasting, it was basically immediately called pirate radio. For
(15:12):
some reason, those two words together just seem they just
strike something in you, you know, Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And there's there's lots of cool documentaries to UM in
addition to the narrative film, which obviously takes a lot
of liberties, and we'll talk a little bit about that,
but a lot of cool short documentaries and even longer documentaries.
You wanna take an ad break, Yeah, true pirates. Right,
(15:36):
we'll be right back, everybody, all right, We're back, hopefully.
(16:07):
Those were the bosses ads you've ever heard. Yeah, I'm
sure they were very subversive and flouting h anti establishment exactly.
So UM Radio carolines up and running. And when I
said earlier, Chuck that there was like a UM it
(16:28):
represents a piece of the puzzle of rock and roll history,
even pop culture history that I didn't realize, what I
didn't know existed. But when I said that, I meant
this this specific group of pirate radio stations, but really
Radio Caroline, from what I can tell, had such a
pronounced effect on music that they they actually managed to
(16:51):
reshape it and rechange it because the BBC was basically saying,
we're only playing stagy stuff your parents like, like literally
square records. That's how square the music we're playing is. Um,
we there's no place for you bands to play the
music you want to play, so you have to make
your make music that we will play on BBC. And
(17:15):
all of a sudden, now there was this really potent
outlet that hadn't existed before. And those bands that had
started out kind of prim and BBC ready were now
able to start taking acid like on a daily basis
and really explore like their musical um abilities and try
new things. And they knew that there was a good
(17:37):
chance that it would get played on Radio Caroline or
some of the other pirate radio stations, and in that
it actually shaped psychedelia. It's shaped the psychedelic music scene,
um by just giving it a place to start. Yeah,
I mean they had to fill it. Says here about
songs each week because they were going seven that was
(17:58):
each DJ that had to Yeah, that's a lot of music,
and you know, you gotta you didn't want to just
play the same stuff over and over. They wanted to
follow and they could follow the American Top forty sort
of system where you you play the hits, and you
play the hits a little more, but then you also
try and break new music and this house stuff works.
(18:18):
Article says that the Moody Blues we're a band that
kind of came directly out of pirate radio as far
as being broken on pirate radio, starting to do experimental
stuff and that wouldn't obviously get played on the BBC anywhere,
but having started out as playing music that would get
played on the BBC and then being allowed to kind
of alter what they wanted to be totally. And Um,
(18:41):
one of the song I saw that's widely considered the
first pirate radio hit of um the Swinging sixties in
the UK because Tom Jones, it's not unusual. Good song. Now,
that is unusual as far as facts go. Uh you
think that makes the Carlton Dance one degree remove from
(19:03):
British sixties pirate radio. I would not have seen that
connection before. Yeah, And I mean you hear it's not
unusual it's a cool song and Tom Jones was a
cool dude. But it definitely it feels way more square
to my ears now than than early psychedelia for sure.
I mean sure, the whole thing is from front to
(19:26):
back about smoking hash and how much Tom Jones loved
his hash. But it's still today it seems a little tame,
for sure. Yeah, he was so great. He's Welsh, right,
I don't know, probably I think he's Welsh. Okay, we'll
go with that. So one of the big DJs, and
they had a you know, a whole rotation of DJs
(19:46):
that all loved what they did, and most of them
went on to be DJs for life. Some stayed with
Radio Caroline for life. Um. I guess that's the sort
of spoiler, is that they're still around today and you
can listen to them on the internet and on the radio,
even though they have a legal license now. But I
was listening to their their stream. Uh you can stream
(20:07):
sort of the classic version, which is music from back then,
and it's just fantastic. Uh, it's like a good WFMU playlist.
If you ever remember, we were on FMU for a while.
The classic New Jersey freeform radio station. That's so great.
They clearly had some space to fill too. Yeah, so
I encourage you to go listen to to Radio Caroline
(20:28):
and check it out. But one of the more famous
DJ's to come out of that scene was Tony Blackburn.
And he was a fan of Radio Luxembourg just as
a listener and saw an ad in the n M E.
Uh New Musical Express still a great magazine. Sure, it's
been around since the fifties. I read, Oh, it's fantastic,
Uh that Melody Maker are two of the best. And
(20:51):
he basically applied to this for this job, got it
and uh became one of the more popular DJs on
on that ship. Yeah, he was one. Um, I mean
kind of going down through history. Pete Tong started out
on Pirate Radio. Uh. He's very well known DJ and
supposedly also UM. I think we mentioned him in the
(21:15):
Cockney rhyming slang episode where Everything's gone all wrong. It's
gone Pete Tong. Well, yeah, we definitely did, because we
talked about that. It's better than nothing, I think. Um.
And then there was another very famous DJ. Um his name, Yeah,
he's I'm the DJ, He's the rapper. Remember that they
(21:38):
had to explain it to everybody on one of their
so H. The guy I'm thinking of his DJ Andy
Archer and Um. He is a very well known DJ,
has been for many many years. I think he started
out in the sixties. I don't know if he's on
Caroline or Radio London one of the competitors, but he
UM is known to have coined the term an iraq
(21:59):
and in the UK I didn't know this, but antarak
is slang for like a super nerdy obsessive fan basically
um and the term was coined because Andy Archer UM
called some of the nerdy mail radio pirate radio fans
who were like so obsessed with the whole thing they
(22:20):
would actually hire boats to take them out to the
ships that were UM broadcasting. They would normally wear like
antaracts because of the weather. So in anarak apparently gets
its its origin from pirate radio too well. And that's
one of the cool things about the early days of
pirate radio is they didn't have ratings to depend on.
(22:40):
They got their feedback from uh kind of like us
from from hearing from people. We we get it via
email and stuff like that. But they got bags and
bags of mail just like us. Just like us, um,
people would stop by their office, like you said, on
by boat, just specific us. That's happened to us before,
(23:01):
even though it's you know, not encouraged any longer, and
especially now during the lockdown there's no one here, um,
but people would show up. They would send them gifts.
I think Blackburn was the one that said he would
tell listeners that when he got back to land and
he would drive away in his little sports car, that
he would give away just you know, records. He would
(23:21):
give away forty five's and this obsolete vinyl. And he
said it would take him an hour and a half
to get out of town just because he was mobbed
by kids on the street looking for looking for him,
looking to get a piece of him, looking to get
one of those records. It was like true true fandom. UM.
I read uh, I read something about Tony Blackburn that
apparently he once did a live performance of Tie Yellow
(23:43):
Ribbon around the old Oak Tree um in a cage
full of lions with a lion t very psychedelic song.
It is, isn't that weird? Yeah? Why, I don't know.
I think that's just Tony Blackburn. That's the impression I
have Uh. Other DJ was an American named Mike Pasternak.
(24:05):
His DJ name was Emperor Roscoe, and he still sort
of apparently wears this skull and crossbones baseball hat. And
I get a feeling all these people like this is
their cred. They still really hang their hat on this
experiences like these rock and roll mavericks from the sixties, Right,
That's the impression I have too. But the thing is is, like,
(24:27):
you know, I think most people assume that these ships
were just like party boats basically, and from what I
can tell, that's just not the case at all. That
they were largely staffed by professional acting DJs, even though
a lot of them were not professionals at all. Like
you said, it was a Blackburn that that had. He
answered an ad in the New musical Express Blackburn. Did
(24:49):
Pastor knack the American was he had a little bit
of experience with military radio on an aircraft carrier two years. Yeah,
and thought he brought sort of a polish that the
British guys didn't have. He said they didn't have the
technique yet. But um, yeah, by all accounts they were pros.
They weren't like in the movie. I think they really
play it up as just sort of a big party barge, sure,
(25:13):
which I mean that's a movie kind of thing to do,
for sure. And they were allowed apparently only two beers
a day, and uh, they could play cards, they could
watch TV, they could sunbathe, and I think Pastor Neck
said occasionally some some women would come aboard for a
cup of tea. So, uh, you know, well, I don't
(25:34):
know if that story is fully true, but I don't
do either. I think they actually did have tea with
some of the antarraxx that showed up probably so so. UM.
So we've got Radio Caroline. It's operating, it's going pretty well. Um,
but there was an incident that went down, um, I
think in nineteen sixty six, maybe maybe sixty seven. Um,
(25:59):
which kind of us to show you, like, Radio Caroline
is this huge smash success and it's allowed to operate, um,
flouting the laws of the UK um for a few
years before the UK government finally said enough is enough
and um they passed something called the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act,
And supposedly the thing that really prompted them to take
(26:21):
action was that there was a hostile physical takeover of
one of the pirate radio stations. Um. There was a
radio station called Radio City that had taken over a
set of abandoned sea forts that were jutting out of
the North Sea. And there was a disagreement between a
(26:43):
Radio Atlanta owner, the chairman of it, and the guy
who was running Radio City, REDG. Calvert, and the other guy,
Lord Smedley. UM shot REDG. Calvert with the shotgun when REDG.
Calvert came to negotiate with him about getting a I
think a transmitter back or something like that. And the
fact that like these guys were now physically invading one
(27:04):
another's ships and we're shooting one another, um, really kind
of brought home that the you know, the fact that
everybody had been calling it pirate radio for a while
made it seem pirate, but not in the good kind
of pirate, you know what I mean, like the real
life kind of pirate thing all of a sudden, and
that forced the British government's hand. Yeah. I think what
(27:26):
I saw was that Smedley was trying to uh, trying
to get another merger going and just grow this empire
with Radio City, and offered up this transmitter to Calvert.
It didn't work. Calvert didn't want to pay him for it,
and so Smedley literally sent, like in the dead of night,
these guys to board the ship and get it back,
like true pirate style. And Calvert didn't take kindly to that,
(27:49):
so he threatened him went to his house and was
met with a shotgun. I saw that he was not
the type to threaten anybody, um, but that the Smedley's
house keeper tried to keep Calvert from entering I guess
his study or his office or something. They got into
a scuffle and um Smedley shot him with a shotgun
(28:10):
and fort manslaughter. He you know, apparently claimed self defense
because I don't know the laws were like back then.
But the guy did come to his house and he
claimed he felt threatened. Yeah, and so he was ultimately acquitted.
But the large the larger impact that it had on
pirate radio in the UK is that Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act,
which um, you could get up to two years in
(28:32):
the pokey for that, not to mention all of the fines,
and um. One of the things that they really kind
of passed this law on was not like, oh, these
guys are actually shooting each other and now we got
to do something. It was this idea that their broadcast
could interfere with marine distress signals, and that is an ongoing,
(28:53):
long standing establishment government opposition to pirate radio. That's typically
what they go to the public with, like, Hey, you
want to be out at sea trying to get help
and some kids are spinning the who and nobody can
hear you because your signals being infringed on. We don't
want that either. Let's all get rid of the pirate
(29:13):
radio stations. But that doesn't seem to be the real
reason why governments tend to oppose pirate radio. It's usually
that they're protecting the interests of the corporations who have
legitimate licenses and usually a lot more sway with the
government than some kids who got their hands on a
German merchant vessel and started broadcasting you know, sixties soul
(29:34):
from it. Yeah, and that's I mean, we'll get to
America today. But that's that's exactly how they frame it
today as well, is that you're going to get in
the way of legitimate signals in case of distress. Um,
because well, we won't go there yet, but uh O'Riley
keeps Radio Caroline going. His ship was seized by Dutch authorities,
(29:56):
but he got it back. Um, he kept it going.
There were some I think George Harrison gave them like
a substantial check to keep it going because he believed
in their mission in the seventies. And Tom Jones chipped
in a bunch of hash, of course he did, which
is more valuable than money, as we all know. Uh.
But both of the boats, the Caroline North and the South,
(30:20):
had a couple of incidents. I think the mi Amigo
ran aground at one point and was repaired, and then
the original Caroline I think I did a fire break
out or did it sink? No, sorry, the so the
Miamigo sank the original Caroline. I don't know whatever happened
to it. I could not find it, but I know
(30:40):
for a fact that it wasn't that the original ferry,
the the um M V Caroline that sank. It was
definitely the mi Amigo. Well, the mi Amigo must have
two then, because it ran aground and was fixed and
then it did it had a little bit of bad luck.
What cracks me up in this entire story is that
(31:00):
there was a German vessel called the Miamigo my friend
in Spanish, it's a German merchant vessel. Don't understand. I
think the Caroline is as a museum now, so that
one did survive, right, No, the UM the Ross's Revenge,
so they came up with another German ship, the Ross
Revenge UM, to replace the Mia Amigo and that one eventually.
(31:23):
UM has been outfitted to be a museum, which I
can't tell. They have a website and it sounds like
the last update was from two thousand fourteen, and I
don't know if it's actually open or not. If it is,
they definitely need to update their website. But um that's
the plan at least. I don't know if like they
ran out of money or something like that. Yeah. I
think there's a couple of different museums, but I would
(31:44):
love to on our next UK trip go check these
places out. There be a lot of fun. Yeah. I
can't wait to get back to the UK and Australia too. Man. Yeah,
I think we hit even sort of loosely earmarked this
year next year for another international trip and uh, you know,
I don't think that's going to happen. That kind of
fell through. And also sorry everybody, I'm also excited to
(32:04):
get back to New Zealand too. Yeah, because I didn't.
We didn't get enough time there. Oh wait wait and Canada, Well,
we always love to get to go to Canada. That's easy.
Should we take it that? Yeah, let's take a break,
all right, We'll go to Germany next time too. I'm
about to go to Germany. It's my homeland. Well that's
not true. We'll be right back, Chuck. By the way,
(32:54):
I said Germany was my homeland because I took German
in high school and college speak German and have been
to Germany and love it. I'm not German in any way.
What what's your what's your ancestry? Uh, it's fully Like
I did the DNA test, it's it's fully like uk Irish,
sort of European. And then it said like one percent
(33:18):
East African or something like that. I got, um, like
two percent or point two percent. Yeah, it was like
no point zero or two percent Ashkenazi Jew and then
I got I got two percent something Neanderthal. This all
checks out, it does, it does for sure. So I'm
(33:40):
celebrating both of my heritages. Thank you. So I think
it's back at you. So. Um, the US, we've kind
of overlooked the United States, they didn't have nearly the
sort of I guess cultural revolution that the UK had
as far as pirate radio goes. Um, they've had a
few sort of operations here and there. The one that
(34:02):
you were talking about, Uh, there was this this preacher,
Reverend Carl McIntyre. He was a fundamentalist who I think
he broadcast from a ship for like ten hours until
there was a fire. He worked so hard on it
for months, months. He thought he was going to be
up and running in a few days, maybe a couple
(34:24):
of weeks. It ended up taking him months to get
this pirate radio ship ready, and he got it going
and they shut him down in ten hours. And we've
talked about him before actually in our fairness doctrine, the
reason that he was operating from a pirate radio stations.
He went from being broadcast and like I think six
hundreds something radio stations across the South and the Midwest.
(34:47):
And he would preach like um, anti communism. He said
the Catholic Church was fascist. He said Billy Graham was
an appeaser. Um. He was a real firebrand and also
super political too. And because that fairnes doctrine said you
have to have equal airtime for opposing viewpoints. He didn't.
He didn't do that, so he kind of brought the
heat onto some of these stations that were worried about
(35:09):
losing their license. They started to drop him. So he
tried pirate radio for a minute, and it didn't pan
out very well for him. He tried for six minutes.
That's right. So, um, that's some fast math there. It's
pretty easy. Uh where you see pirate radio in the
United States, and it still continues today. In fact, uh,
there there was one study that said there are more
(35:31):
pirate radio station UH stations in New York on the
FM band than there were legit stations. Yeah, and that's
been going on for a while. I saw late eighties,
early nineties there was a big boom in pirate radio.
And like the epicenter seems to have been New York
because the Christians later I think so, or maybe they
wrote the movie because of the boom. I don't know. Well,
(35:53):
a lot of them are out of Brooklyn there, um
broadcast from rooftops. You know, you get a little equipment,
you get an ant in UH and and you're in business.
And here's the deal with pirate radio in the United States.
And what's going on now, which is currently the FCC
has has popped up, of course, and they used to,
like the article said, play kind of whack a mole
(36:15):
trying to knock these things back as they came up.
But I guess they thought it was such a problem,
especially in New York that the f c C has,
and especially this current FCC has stood up and said, Nope,
not going to happen on our watch. Uh. And in
January of this year, the President signed the and I
love it when they come up with a an acronym
(36:35):
that actually worked for this one. They had to reverse
engineer this one, the Pirate Act preventing illegal Radio abuse
through enforcement but also abuses in there, like stop abusing
that radio center. Yeah, but you know they needed an
A for sure. I'm saying, like, hats off to that
(36:56):
for to them for that one. It couldn't be radio
amusement through Actually, at least they used all the letters
from all the words. I hate it when they just
slip a couple of words and they're like nobody's gonna notice,
you know what I mean? So, um, the problem with
the Pirate Act is this, it takes uh already existing
(37:19):
FCC laws that allow the SEC to kind of go
after pirate radio stations and find them. I saw, um,
you're looking at fines of something like ten thousand dollars
a day, typically with the maximum of about seventy five
dollars for a total fine for operating an illegal pirate station.
That's that's bad. I mean, most people who are operating
(37:40):
pirate stations do so as as we'll talk about in
a minute, because they don't have the money to to
run a legit station and pay all the fees and
all the application fees and the license fees and all
that stuff. So that is significant. What the Pirate Act does.
It takes all those existing laws and just says you're
that seventy five max fee, let's up that to two
(38:01):
million dollars. And the whole point of that is to
specifically intimidate people out of out of pirate radio, out
of broadcasting pirate radio. And that that's that's terrible, especially
coming from an FCC that's led by a former telecommunications
lobbyists and the guy who presided over the end of
(38:24):
net neutrality. That's a that's some sour grapes right there,
if you ask me. Yeah, and the whole deal with
pirate radio these days, especially out of New York is
They're not just like spinning tunes for fun. I'm sure
there are some that do that, but a lot of
it is, UM are people starting these very small, small
(38:44):
operations that maybe broadcast over their neighborhood because they are
an underserved community as far as radio programming goes. And
they will speak in their native language to people who
are listening in their native language, and they are getting
news out to people in their native language. And these
(39:05):
are communities that don't that aren't represented on the on
the the regular FM spectrum. And there's a big argument
to be made that this is a almost like a
public service in a way to these underserved communities. Absolutely is,
and that's what radio. That's what radio has been, this
has been intended for since the inception of it. At
(39:26):
least in the United States, it's a and in the
u k two it's meant to be a public service,
UM for for everybody. The thing is is in the
U S we've long valued a multiplicity of different voices,
of competing ideas and thoughts of different music. I mean,
even if you are talking about pirate radio stations, UM
(39:47):
that are just playing music. They're not doing, you know, anything,
there's no like, you know, community discussion or anything like that.
The music they're playing is probably stuff you're not gonna
hear anywhere else on the radio, and there's definitely something
that's lost when you know, more and more radio stations
become homogenized further and further, then all of a sudden,
(40:07):
it's kind of like the radio equivalent of UM that
strip mall that you could go to Topeka or Miami
or Seattle and find the exact same stuff in the
exact same stores with almost the exact same layout to
where it's all the same. That's what pirate radio represents,
or even if you take the pirate out of it,
(40:29):
that's what a multiplicity of different um community radio stations represents. Uh,
the lack of homogeneity that kind of sucks the life
out of everything that in and of itself makes them
valuable and that they shouldn't be aggressively pursued or chuck.
There's one other thing too. If you are going to
aggressively pursue this, then also make an avenue for legitimacy
(40:52):
rather than just try to stamp them out or else.
It really makes you question what the ultimate motive is. Yeah,
and here's the thing, Like, it would be very easy
to sit back and say, well, you've got the Internet,
you can have an Internet radio station, you can have
a podcast. It's more democratized than ever before to get
your voice out there, which is true in a way,
but that's also a very privileged thing to say when
(41:13):
you just assume that someone has the money to afford
the Internet. Let's go get a new iPhone. What's your problem? Yeah, exactly, Like,
just download the app. It's that easy. Um. Radio, I
don't understand how you're not kidding. Radio is free and
you can you can buy a radio. You probably have
a radio if you're one of these people in an
underserved community. But if you don't, you can get one
(41:35):
of the thrift at a thrift store for five dollars
that picks up the FM and a M spectrum and
you don't have to play pay monthly fees. You don't
have to pay internet fees. And it is a true
democratized voice for the people who can't afford to get
it otherwise. Right, So, like, I didn't know anything about
this as far as like the Pirate Act, I didn't
(41:58):
know that existed until we started researching this episode, but
it's very clear that this is ah, this is a
law that's creating outlaws where they shouldn't necessarily be outlaws.
There's no inherent problem with UM pirate radio like from
what I've read UM and granted it was on a
pirate radio organization's blog, Prometheus Radio Project, but they said
(42:23):
they're very you can find very few instances of pirate
radio stations actually interfering with other stuff, but you can
very easily find major corporate radio stations interfering with stuff
and very frequently saying there's a There was an instance
in the nineties where North Perry, Florida's airport had to
(42:44):
change frequencies because the commercial radio station that was interfering
with their frequency that they were using to communicate with airplanes.
They wouldn't change their their frequency UM, so the airport
had to UM. You don't find that with pirate radio stations,
And from what I saw, there's a lot of self
policing that goes on in the community because you don't
want to infringe on somebody else's broadcast, because that means
(43:06):
that their broadcast is gonna infringe on your broad Yeah,
you want your own digits, uh in America. Like we
said before, UM to reiterate their standing behind the same
thing the BBC did, which is it's it can interfere
with sharing a vital public safety information, and it's just
that's such hooey. Like if a someone dropped a dirty
(43:27):
bomb on New York City, they're sure the radio stations
might issue some sort of public safety alert. But I
guarantee you so would the pirate radio stations, and they
would do so in their language. That's true, that's right. Yeah,
Because there's a lot of a lot of evidence that
pirate radio stations serve immigrant communities because they have like
(43:48):
kind of this cultural tie to UM radio as a technology.
So when they come over here to the United States,
there they expect to get their information from radio. Yeah,
and they wouldn't like the Twin Towers fall. I guarantee
you pirate radio stations weren't like, we're just gonna keep
spinning the tunes, you know. I'm sure they did like
every other broadcast and TV show and radio show in
(44:10):
the world. I'm sure they cease their programming and started
handing out vital information. Oh yeah, for sure. I can't
prove it, but I can't imagine that they did otherwise. UM,
I like what you did there too? You UM Like,
they're like, well, what are you gonna do? I mean,
pirate radio interferes with stuff? You're like, Oh, yeah, what
are you gonna do? If there's a dirty bomb in
New York? You just threw it right back in the
(44:33):
FCC's face. I don't know what the thing is is
from from this, from what I've seen, small government conservatives
and libertarians should be all over that Pirate Act. They
should be very much up in arms about this and
about the way that the SEC targets small illegal radio
stations without offering like a legitimate path to legitimacy. And um,
(44:57):
I would like to see that that's right. And by
the way, I have in show correction. I think I
said that Preacher's boat caught fire. I don't think it
actually caught fire. I think it just started smoking because
the antenna feeder line interfered with another radio station, so
didn't actually catch fire. When he was because I thought
(45:17):
that the ironies of preaching fire and brimstone and it
actually catching fire was too great, right, God went be
quiet smoke, so um, if you are interested in pirate radio,
The Verge did a whole series on it, really interesting
in depth stuff, and uh, yeah you could also do.
(45:38):
I ran across one called the Lot. It's out of
I think Williamsburg and it's on a little lot in
a shipping container. Of course it is. It's like, um,
all DJ sets all the time, but it's not a
pretty great and they have a webcam of what you
can see out the window. It's just cute, nice and
it's just cozy in a way. Yeah, and again, go
check out and stream the radio Caroline classic version. Uh.
(46:01):
If you're into like just good playlist, it's it's one
of the best. I gotta check that out. I didn't
run across that, so thank you for that public service, chuck. Um,
you got anything else? Nope? Okay, Well that's it for
pirate radio for now. Uh and um that means it's
time for a listener mail. This is called hot off
(46:22):
the Presses. Just got this email and it was just
so heartwarming I had had to share it. Hey, guys
and Jerry, I love listening to the recent episode on soap.
I consider myself a bit of a soap nerd because
when I served at the Peace Corps as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Senegal for three years late two thousand's
I guess two thousand sixteen to two thousand nineteen, late teens.
(46:45):
My main activity was training women's groups on how to
start small businesses making and selling soap. We trained them
on how to make all kinds of our soap using
local ingredients shape, butter, honey, mint, herbs uh. Teaching these
women's groups about soap making is a the excellent way
to improve their household financial security for a few reasons. First,
you're always going to have a market for soap because
(47:06):
everyone needs it. Secondly, there are a few barriers to
entry to making soap. You don't need to be able
to read or have fancy equipment. If you can measure
poor and stir, then you can make it. And Thirdly,
because women in Senegal are responsible for so much of
the daily chores in their home, soap making requires only
a little bit of time since much of the process
is waiting for the soap to cure fully into a
(47:27):
hard bar And fourth making soap is a great way
to teach all the basics of starting a business. Marketing, accounting,
record keeping, calculating unit costs, profit margins, making creative packaging.
Once they master these skills, they can expand to other
business opportunities. And fifth, it smells really good. Yeah, she said.
Some of the re fondest memories are her service seeing
(47:48):
the satisfaction on their faces as the lion shape butter
mixture spent ages stirring by hand became real soap for
them to sell and market. Uh I trained over a
hundred and fifty members or of more than five women's
group on soap making, and all of the groups continue
to make soap and sell it for a profit today,
helping to make their households more financially secure. Tell me
(48:09):
they included a website. Uh no, because it's a bunch
of different groups, but it is. It was from the
Peace Corps. You obviously want to support them, and that
is from Grace e uh Nagel. Thanks a lot, Gracey Nagel. Um,
we appreciate that. That was that was great. It was
a great email. She sent pictures. We appreciate Um, I'll
(48:31):
have to check them out. Well, we appreciate you what
you did over there and sending goal to totally. If
you want to let us know about something great you
did in your life, like grace E did. You could
send us an email, wrap it up, spanking on the
bottom twice, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(48:53):
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works from more podcasts
for my heart Radio. Because at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcasts are where every listening to your favorite shops
Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years.
It's great, it's flun You're gonna love it. It's called
Stuff You Should Know Colon an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. Ye, and it's twenty six jam packed chapters
that we wrote with another guy named Knowls Parker, who's
(00:22):
amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carl Manardo.
And it's just an all around joy to pick up
and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our
hands yet, it's like we have Chuck in our dreams
so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold
this thing and smell it. And so should you, so
pre order now. It means a lot to us. The
(00:43):
support is a very big deal, So pre order anywhere
books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of My Heart Radios How Stuff works, Hey, and
welcome to up up the volume. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's out there somewhere raging against the machine. And this
(01:07):
is um bubble to say, it's just Stuff you should Know.
I love it. When I sent you this, uh, this research.
You are like, the first thing you said, let's pump
up the volume. Sure. Man, it's such a great movie.
You know, it's funny is I didn't think about that
once until you said that, and I was like, oh yeah, yeah,
it was all about piracy and radios. Yeah, I love
(01:30):
that movie. I just hadn't seen it, and I don't know,
I don't think probably since then. It has a really
has a good soundtrack, has bad Brains and Henry Rawlins
doing kick out the jams you see five songs. It
also has probably the best sound Garden song of all
time heretic. Yeah, well it's tough to call for me
is a sound Garden nut, but yeah, good song. It
(01:52):
is a good song. Which one is better than that?
I like a lot of sound Garden, so yeah, I
have probably twenty tied for songs. Okay, but is that
one of them? Yeah, it's up there. Oh thanks for that.
I love it. It's great. I mean I love all
sound Garden songs. Yeah, I guess I do too, now
that I think about it, I think I could have
(02:14):
had something to do with Chris Cornell's voice to an extent.
Man r I P Yeah, for real. I used to
joke about the imagining the first time that he like
sung in the shower when he was thirteen or something.
He was like, what, I'm like, Oh, I think I
know what I'm gonna do for a living. Yeah, exactly, shower.
So we're talking about pump up the volume and Chris
(02:36):
Cornell right now, because this episode is about pirate radio,
and specifically it's about the British pirate radio invasion of
the sixties that I had no idea about. I've never
seen that movie, um, Pirate Radio, but I intend to
now have you seen it? I haven't seen the movie,
but I was acquainted with the story somehow. I think
(02:58):
I might have seen a short documentary or or something
about the Caroline and uh, really really cool stuff it is,
which is why we're going to talk about it in
this episode. But um, I just found the whole thing.
I don't know if mind blowing is the right word,
but certainly deeply interesting. And I think it's cool because
it's one of those like pieces to the jigsaw puzzle
(03:19):
of history, at least like rock history, that you didn't
even realize, like you didn't you didn't have you know,
And by you I mean me. Yeah, And Here's the
thing is, there were other pirate radio stations all around
the world, and there always have been since there's been
radio and restrictions on radio. But he and as long
(03:39):
as there's rock, Chuck, there always will be. That's true.
But the the UK version was sort of the most
celebrated and the most famous. I think obviously why they
made a movie about it. And one of the reasons
is because the man whose thumb they were under was
the BBC, which is a big deal. It was a
(04:00):
big deal because here in the United States and I know,
um ahoy to all of you listeners outside of the
United States who are you're like, well, yeah, we we
this is what it was like. Um, in the United States,
the radio spectrum has always been very free, or it
was intended to be very free, to where um, there
was a multiplicity of voices and you could say a
(04:21):
lot of stuff got a little stodgy, and it was
kind of stodgy from the outset. But for the most part,
it wasn't just one monolithic organization that controlled all of
the radio waves. That's just not how it's been in
the States and in places like the UK. That's how
it was basically, right out of the gate. They said, Um,
(04:41):
you know, we this is a really valuable tool. You
can really shape people's minds with this. So we're going
to leave it specifically under government control. Like we'll provide
a bunch of different stuff. Not everything you want, um,
but a lot of stuff. Especially if you're a stodgy conservative,
old establishment type, you're gonna love what we're pumping out.
(05:03):
But um, the point is it's too important to just
kind of let anybody come along as the money for
a radio license to just set up a radio station.
That seems absurd. Only the the Looney colonies would do
something like that. Yeah, So the BBC had a very
vice like grip, like you were saying, for geez, about
forty something years and then you know, the sixties come along,
(05:26):
and like so many other things in America and the UK, uh,
kids that were born of these World War two I
guess you would call them baby boomers or booms or boomers.
The babies of those boomers where rock and roll kids.
You know, they grew up seeing Elvis and the Beatles
on television, and they were not square like their parents were,
(05:49):
and they had different ideas and their parents did. And
this was the case in England in the nineteen sixties
when the BBC was you know, rock and roll was
was a thing and they were like, we're not playing this,
this devil's music. They probably didn't say that that was
more American if you, but if you, it was certainly controversial.
(06:09):
UM songs that seemed to us like I mean, like
you just hear him on an elevator today, like they
were highly controversial back then, you know, and like there
was genuinely nowhere on the radio in the UK for
you to reliably turn to to hear this stuff. You
have to go to like a club um to hear them,
and those were few and far between. And then if you,
(06:31):
um were lucky enough, you might be able to occasionally
dial in Radio Luxembourg, which played some of these like
pop hits, but they were also it was still largely
controlled by a few record labels, so it didn't just
they didn't go deep. It was still like whatever new
big band they were trying to promote, but it was
still way cooler than anything the BBC was promoting. The
(06:52):
problem is that the reception was certainly spotty. Have you
ever been to Luxembourg? I have not. I may have
passed through it not known it. They blinked, but I
don't believe I have. It's so under the radar. I
flew out of there once. That's the only thing I've
been to Luxembourg is flew home from Europe out of
Luxembobourg airport. So that's my only like, I don't know
(07:14):
anything about it as a place. It's it's interesting. It's
like the Delaware of Europe. It's right, it may or
may not exist. Yeah. So um, that was pretty much
the long and short of it. The BBC didn't really
didn't really care that the teenagers wanted more. They just
said no. They might have even said nine at this point,
(07:34):
you know what I mean. Yeah, And this is where
a gentleman comes in the picture that would really change everything.
And his name is uh Ronan and I've heard Americans
pronounced it O'Reilly. It's spelled oh little accent capital r
A h I L l y. And I heard him
speak his name in court when they asked his surname.
(07:57):
But he said it so quickly it sounded like a dolly.
It sounded like a d So it may just be
like some weird like you know, Irish pronunciation or something
that I don't know about, but we're gonna say Riley.
I mean that's how Yeah, that's how I heard it too. Um.
But yeah, so he sounded like Brad Pitt and snatched
(08:18):
sort of. I couldn't understand him. That's where there was
a d in there. But he was He was a
guy who uh figured out that their jurisdiction over the airwaves,
the BBC and the UK government's jurisdiction stopped about five
kilometers off the coast three miles here in the States.
And he said, and there were he didn't invent the
(08:40):
idea of planning a boat out there and broadcasting. Other
countries were doing this kind of thing and exploiting this
loophole already, but he said, this is this is something
we should do. The kids want their rock and roll,
they want their MTV. We don't know what that is yet,
and I'm gonna bring it to him. Yeah. So um,
he he actually took inspiration. Like you're saying, there was
(09:02):
some Scandinavian countries, specifically Sweden and Denmark that had been
home to pirate radio stations that were docked off of
their coast, and for very similar reasons too. There was
a state monopoly on radio broadcasting at the time, and
some people were like, uh no, that's I want to
broadcast what I want to broadcast. So they set up
(09:22):
those shops, I mean, all the way back in the fifties.
And I actually ran across one in the United States
to bring it on home that was operating in the
nineteen thirties three um, and it had a call sign
r x k R, and it was out of Panama,
even though it was off of the coast of Long Beach.
And I think, Chuck, I think, I think we either
(09:43):
talked about it in our Prohibition episode or we talked
about it in our Who Owns the Oceans episode, but
it was it was originally one of those floating speakeasy
casinos doctor National Waters. Then they started to broadcast radio
pirate radio is well for a little while, so it
had happened before. And there was actually because of the
(10:04):
success of the Scandinavian stations, there was kind of this
mad rush in the UK to be the first too,
to see I guess um and start broadcasting, and Ronan
O'Reilly beat them all with what came to be known
as Radio Caroline. Yeah, so he was sort of in
a tight race with another guy named Alan Crawford who
(10:26):
had a project called his was gonna be Radio Atlanta.
I think it was called Project Atlanta. Nothing to do
with Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta, Texas. From what I saw, really,
I figured it was just a riff on Atlantic As
in the ocean. No one of the one of the owners,
um was a from Dallas, I believe, is a radio
man from Texas, and for some reason he chose Atlanta
(10:48):
after Atlanta, Texas. I did another ones in Atlanta, Texas.
I didn't neither. Neither did the people who live in Atlanta, Texas. So, um,
they're the Delaware of Texas. That's all right. So there
was I think o'reiley got about half a dozen investors.
Because this is gonna call some money. Because you gotta
buy a ship. Um, it can't just be a little
(11:09):
dinghy or or a rowboat or anything like that. You
have to get it takes. It takes a shipload of equipment. Yeah,
it takes, and people to operate it and people to
stay on it and stuff like that in meeting rooms,
and so you gotta have a legit ship. So um
Crawford for Radio Atlanta got the MI Amigo and O'Riley
got a passenger ferry, a Danish ship called the Envy Frederica.
(11:34):
They each renamed them Uh Atlanta and then Caroline, respectively,
apparently Caroline after Caroline Kennedy because he, as Laura Goes,
saw a picture. O'Riley saw a photo of Little Caroline
and Little John Jr. Dancing in the Oval Office and
he was inspired by that because he was like, this
is what we're trying to do, like sort of uh,
(11:56):
you know, you're not allowed to dance in the Oval Office,
yet they're doing it, and we're not allowed to broadcast
rock and roll music because the government says so. So
you know, I'm gonna name after Caroline, very cute name.
It is very cute. Um. So that's the name that
he went with. And I'm glad that he was one
of the I'm glad he was the one who who
made it first because he was the one who was
(12:17):
doing it. I guess as as purely as you would
expect somebody to be doing with like a constant rotation
of DJ's operating twenty four hours a day, legitimately broadcasting
from the ship, and that was not Radio Atlanta's model.
At all. They were compiling shows or day's worth of
shows in the studio back in London, recording them and
(12:41):
then sailing it out to the ship. It was really
it was also, I mean there was like banking concerns
that were invested in it was. It was ill legit
as far as pirate radio goes from the outset. So
I'm glad that they weren't the ones who made it
to market first. Yeah. So Radio Caroline. Their slogan was
your all day music station because of seven format, and
(13:04):
it was new and in and of itself, right, Yeah,
I mean as far I mean as far as playing music, absolutely,
and they just within a few months. I think they
launched in on Easter Sunday nineteen sixty four with the
Stones tune It's all over Now perfect. I saw not
fade Away. I saw it's all over Now. Actually I
saw in the Guardian and then one other source not
(13:26):
fade Away, and then I I also saw um all
over Now. But I saw both enough legit places that
I'm I honestly don't know. Yeah, I saw not fade
Away was the station's theme song, so who knows, And
then they got someone else to compose an original theme
song because I think they didn't want to keep playing that.
(13:47):
But at any rate, they launched and it didn't take
long until they had a larger audience than all of
the BBC stations combined. That's wonderful. And they quickly merged,
I think if it goes from Easter Sunday, they merged
in July, just a few months later with Radio Atlanta.
I guess they figured they had uh, just more power together.
(14:09):
And then the Mi Amigo they became um the Carolina
North in the Caroline South, broadcasting from due different places. Yeah,
which covered almost all of the UK, but not all
of it. There was some southwestern parts that just didn't
didn't get it from either ship they had. They had
pretty good coverage of of the aisles for sure with
(14:31):
those two ships. And then eventually Radio Atlanta went under
as an organization and Radio Caroline was able to take
over both of those ships. So they had that they had,
I mean, for a pirate radio station, they they had
a lot of power behind them, for sure. Yeah, and
I don't I mean, we haven't said the obvious. They
were called pirate radio because they were operating on ships
(14:52):
in the ocean and flouting the law, So it was
sort of doing double duty there with the name. Yeah,
there's actually some really great pieces out they're on the
internet about this this era UM. And one of them
I saw was they said, like, from the moment they
started broadcasting, it was basically immediately called pirate radio. For
(15:12):
some reason, those two words together just seem they just
strike something in you, you know, Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And there's there's lots of cool documentaries to UM in
addition to the narrative film, which obviously takes a lot
of liberties, and we'll talk a little bit about that,
but a lot of cool short documentaries and even longer documentaries.
You wanna take an ad break, Yeah, true pirates. Right,
(15:36):
we'll be right back, everybody, all right, We're back, hopefully.
(16:07):
Those were the bosses ads you've ever heard. Yeah, I'm
sure they were very subversive and flouting h anti establishment exactly.
So UM Radio carolines up and running. And when I
said earlier, Chuck that there was like a UM it
(16:28):
represents a piece of the puzzle of rock and roll history,
even pop culture history that I didn't realize, what I
didn't know existed. But when I said that, I meant
this this specific group of pirate radio stations, but really
Radio Caroline, from what I can tell, had such a
pronounced effect on music that they they actually managed to
(16:51):
reshape it and rechange it because the BBC was basically saying,
we're only playing stagy stuff your parents like, like literally
square records. That's how square the music we're playing is. Um,
we there's no place for you bands to play the
music you want to play, so you have to make
your make music that we will play on BBC. And
(17:15):
all of a sudden, now there was this really potent
outlet that hadn't existed before. And those bands that had
started out kind of prim and BBC ready were now
able to start taking acid like on a daily basis
and really explore like their musical um abilities and try
new things. And they knew that there was a good
(17:37):
chance that it would get played on Radio Caroline or
some of the other pirate radio stations, and in that
it actually shaped psychedelia. It's shaped the psychedelic music scene,
um by just giving it a place to start. Yeah,
I mean they had to fill it. Says here about
songs each week because they were going seven that was
(17:58):
each DJ that had to Yeah, that's a lot of music,
and you know, you gotta you didn't want to just
play the same stuff over and over. They wanted to
follow and they could follow the American Top forty sort
of system where you you play the hits, and you
play the hits a little more, but then you also
try and break new music and this house stuff works.
(18:18):
Article says that the Moody Blues we're a band that
kind of came directly out of pirate radio as far
as being broken on pirate radio, starting to do experimental
stuff and that wouldn't obviously get played on the BBC anywhere,
but having started out as playing music that would get
played on the BBC and then being allowed to kind
of alter what they wanted to be totally. And Um,
(18:41):
one of the song I saw that's widely considered the
first pirate radio hit of um the Swinging sixties in
the UK because Tom Jones, it's not unusual. Good song. Now,
that is unusual as far as facts go. Uh you
think that makes the Carlton Dance one degree remove from
(19:03):
British sixties pirate radio. I would not have seen that
connection before. Yeah, And I mean you hear it's not
unusual it's a cool song and Tom Jones was a
cool dude. But it definitely it feels way more square
to my ears now than than early psychedelia for sure.
I mean sure, the whole thing is from front to
(19:26):
back about smoking hash and how much Tom Jones loved
his hash. But it's still today it seems a little tame,
for sure. Yeah, he was so great. He's Welsh, right,
I don't know, probably I think he's Welsh. Okay, we'll
go with that. So one of the big DJs, and
they had a you know, a whole rotation of DJs
(19:46):
that all loved what they did, and most of them
went on to be DJs for life. Some stayed with
Radio Caroline for life. Um. I guess that's the sort
of spoiler, is that they're still around today and you
can listen to them on the internet and on the radio,
even though they have a legal license now. But I
was listening to their their stream. Uh you can stream
(20:07):
sort of the classic version, which is music from back then,
and it's just fantastic. Uh, it's like a good WFMU playlist.
If you ever remember, we were on FMU for a while.
The classic New Jersey freeform radio station. That's so great.
They clearly had some space to fill too. Yeah, so
I encourage you to go listen to to Radio Caroline
(20:28):
and check it out. But one of the more famous
DJ's to come out of that scene was Tony Blackburn.
And he was a fan of Radio Luxembourg just as
a listener and saw an ad in the n M E.
Uh New Musical Express still a great magazine. Sure, it's
been around since the fifties. I read, Oh, it's fantastic,
Uh that Melody Maker are two of the best. And
(20:51):
he basically applied to this for this job, got it
and uh became one of the more popular DJs on
on that ship. Yeah, he was one. Um, I mean
kind of going down through history. Pete Tong started out
on Pirate Radio. Uh. He's very well known DJ and
supposedly also UM. I think we mentioned him in the
(21:15):
Cockney rhyming slang episode where Everything's gone all wrong. It's
gone Pete Tong. Well, yeah, we definitely did, because we
talked about that. It's better than nothing, I think. Um.
And then there was another very famous DJ. Um his name, Yeah,
he's I'm the DJ, He's the rapper. Remember that they
(21:38):
had to explain it to everybody on one of their
so H. The guy I'm thinking of his DJ Andy
Archer and Um. He is a very well known DJ,
has been for many many years. I think he started
out in the sixties. I don't know if he's on
Caroline or Radio London one of the competitors, but he
UM is known to have coined the term an iraq
(21:59):
and in the UK I didn't know this, but antarak
is slang for like a super nerdy obsessive fan basically
um and the term was coined because Andy Archer UM
called some of the nerdy mail radio pirate radio fans
who were like so obsessed with the whole thing they
(22:20):
would actually hire boats to take them out to the
ships that were UM broadcasting. They would normally wear like
antaracts because of the weather. So in anarak apparently gets
its its origin from pirate radio too well. And that's
one of the cool things about the early days of
pirate radio is they didn't have ratings to depend on.
(22:40):
They got their feedback from uh kind of like us
from from hearing from people. We we get it via
email and stuff like that. But they got bags and
bags of mail just like us. Just like us, um,
people would stop by their office, like you said, on
by boat, just specific us. That's happened to us before,
(23:01):
even though it's you know, not encouraged any longer, and
especially now during the lockdown there's no one here, um,
but people would show up. They would send them gifts.
I think Blackburn was the one that said he would
tell listeners that when he got back to land and
he would drive away in his little sports car, that
he would give away just you know, records. He would
(23:21):
give away forty five's and this obsolete vinyl. And he
said it would take him an hour and a half
to get out of town just because he was mobbed
by kids on the street looking for looking for him,
looking to get a piece of him, looking to get
one of those records. It was like true true fandom. UM.
I read uh, I read something about Tony Blackburn that
apparently he once did a live performance of Tie Yellow
(23:43):
Ribbon around the old Oak Tree um in a cage
full of lions with a lion t very psychedelic song.
It is, isn't that weird? Yeah? Why, I don't know.
I think that's just Tony Blackburn. That's the impression I
have Uh. Other DJ was an American named Mike Pasternak.
(24:05):
His DJ name was Emperor Roscoe, and he still sort
of apparently wears this skull and crossbones baseball hat. And
I get a feeling all these people like this is
their cred. They still really hang their hat on this
experiences like these rock and roll mavericks from the sixties, Right,
That's the impression I have too. But the thing is is, like,
(24:27):
you know, I think most people assume that these ships
were just like party boats basically, and from what I
can tell, that's just not the case at all. That
they were largely staffed by professional acting DJs, even though
a lot of them were not professionals at all. Like
you said, it was a Blackburn that that had. He
answered an ad in the New musical Express Blackburn. Did
(24:49):
Pastor knack the American was he had a little bit
of experience with military radio on an aircraft carrier two years. Yeah,
and thought he brought sort of a polish that the
British guys didn't have. He said they didn't have the
technique yet. But um, yeah, by all accounts they were pros.
They weren't like in the movie. I think they really
play it up as just sort of a big party barge, sure,
(25:13):
which I mean that's a movie kind of thing to do,
for sure. And they were allowed apparently only two beers
a day, and uh, they could play cards, they could
watch TV, they could sunbathe, and I think Pastor Neck
said occasionally some some women would come aboard for a
cup of tea. So, uh, you know, well, I don't
(25:34):
know if that story is fully true, but I don't
do either. I think they actually did have tea with
some of the antarraxx that showed up probably so so. UM.
So we've got Radio Caroline. It's operating, it's going pretty well. Um,
but there was an incident that went down, um, I
think in nineteen sixty six, maybe maybe sixty seven. Um,
(25:59):
which kind of us to show you, like, Radio Caroline
is this huge smash success and it's allowed to operate, um,
flouting the laws of the UK um for a few
years before the UK government finally said enough is enough
and um they passed something called the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act,
And supposedly the thing that really prompted them to take
(26:21):
action was that there was a hostile physical takeover of
one of the pirate radio stations. Um. There was a
radio station called Radio City that had taken over a
set of abandoned sea forts that were jutting out of
the North Sea. And there was a disagreement between a
(26:43):
Radio Atlanta owner, the chairman of it, and the guy
who was running Radio City, REDG. Calvert, and the other guy,
Lord Smedley. UM shot REDG. Calvert with the shotgun when REDG.
Calvert came to negotiate with him about getting a I
think a transmitter back or something like that. And the
fact that like these guys were now physically invading one
(27:04):
another's ships and we're shooting one another, um, really kind
of brought home that the you know, the fact that
everybody had been calling it pirate radio for a while
made it seem pirate, but not in the good kind
of pirate, you know what I mean, like the real
life kind of pirate thing all of a sudden, and
that forced the British government's hand. Yeah. I think what
(27:26):
I saw was that Smedley was trying to uh, trying
to get another merger going and just grow this empire
with Radio City, and offered up this transmitter to Calvert.
It didn't work. Calvert didn't want to pay him for it,
and so Smedley literally sent, like in the dead of night,
these guys to board the ship and get it back,
like true pirate style. And Calvert didn't take kindly to that,
(27:49):
so he threatened him went to his house and was
met with a shotgun. I saw that he was not
the type to threaten anybody, um, but that the Smedley's
house keeper tried to keep Calvert from entering I guess
his study or his office or something. They got into
a scuffle and um Smedley shot him with a shotgun
(28:10):
and fort manslaughter. He you know, apparently claimed self defense
because I don't know the laws were like back then.
But the guy did come to his house and he
claimed he felt threatened. Yeah, and so he was ultimately acquitted.
But the large the larger impact that it had on
pirate radio in the UK is that Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act,
which um, you could get up to two years in
(28:32):
the pokey for that, not to mention all of the fines,
and um. One of the things that they really kind
of passed this law on was not like, oh, these
guys are actually shooting each other and now we got
to do something. It was this idea that their broadcast
could interfere with marine distress signals, and that is an ongoing,
(28:53):
long standing establishment government opposition to pirate radio. That's typically
what they go to the public with, like, Hey, you
want to be out at sea trying to get help
and some kids are spinning the who and nobody can
hear you because your signals being infringed on. We don't
want that either. Let's all get rid of the pirate
(29:13):
radio stations. But that doesn't seem to be the real
reason why governments tend to oppose pirate radio. It's usually
that they're protecting the interests of the corporations who have
legitimate licenses and usually a lot more sway with the
government than some kids who got their hands on a
German merchant vessel and started broadcasting you know, sixties soul
(29:34):
from it. Yeah, and that's I mean, we'll get to
America today. But that's that's exactly how they frame it
today as well, is that you're going to get in
the way of legitimate signals in case of distress. Um,
because well, we won't go there yet, but uh O'Riley
keeps Radio Caroline going. His ship was seized by Dutch authorities,
(29:56):
but he got it back. Um, he kept it going.
There were some I think George Harrison gave them like
a substantial check to keep it going because he believed
in their mission in the seventies. And Tom Jones chipped
in a bunch of hash, of course he did, which
is more valuable than money, as we all know. Uh.
But both of the boats, the Caroline North and the South,
(30:20):
had a couple of incidents. I think the mi Amigo
ran aground at one point and was repaired, and then
the original Caroline I think I did a fire break
out or did it sink? No, sorry, the so the
Miamigo sank the original Caroline. I don't know whatever happened
to it. I could not find it, but I know
(30:40):
for a fact that it wasn't that the original ferry,
the the um M V Caroline that sank. It was
definitely the mi Amigo. Well, the mi Amigo must have
two then, because it ran aground and was fixed and
then it did it had a little bit of bad luck.
What cracks me up in this entire story is that
(31:00):
there was a German vessel called the Miamigo my friend
in Spanish, it's a German merchant vessel. Don't understand. I
think the Caroline is as a museum now, so that
one did survive, right, No, the UM the Ross's Revenge,
so they came up with another German ship, the Ross
Revenge UM, to replace the Mia Amigo and that one eventually.
(31:23):
UM has been outfitted to be a museum, which I
can't tell. They have a website and it sounds like
the last update was from two thousand fourteen, and I
don't know if it's actually open or not. If it is,
they definitely need to update their website. But um that's
the plan at least. I don't know if like they
ran out of money or something like that. Yeah. I
think there's a couple of different museums, but I would
(31:44):
love to on our next UK trip go check these
places out. There be a lot of fun. Yeah. I
can't wait to get back to the UK and Australia too. Man. Yeah,
I think we hit even sort of loosely earmarked this
year next year for another international trip and uh, you know,
I don't think that's going to happen. That kind of
fell through. And also sorry everybody, I'm also excited to
(32:04):
get back to New Zealand too. Yeah, because I didn't.
We didn't get enough time there. Oh wait wait and Canada, Well,
we always love to get to go to Canada. That's easy.
Should we take it that? Yeah, let's take a break,
all right, We'll go to Germany next time too. I'm
about to go to Germany. It's my homeland. Well that's
not true. We'll be right back, Chuck. By the way,
(32:54):
I said Germany was my homeland because I took German
in high school and college speak German and have been
to Germany and love it. I'm not German in any way.
What what's your what's your ancestry? Uh, it's fully Like
I did the DNA test, it's it's fully like uk Irish,
sort of European. And then it said like one percent
(33:18):
East African or something like that. I got, um, like
two percent or point two percent. Yeah, it was like
no point zero or two percent Ashkenazi Jew and then
I got I got two percent something Neanderthal. This all
checks out, it does, it does for sure. So I'm
(33:40):
celebrating both of my heritages. Thank you. So I think
it's back at you. So. Um, the US, we've kind
of overlooked the United States, they didn't have nearly the
sort of I guess cultural revolution that the UK had
as far as pirate radio goes. Um, they've had a
few sort of operations here and there. The one that
(34:02):
you were talking about, Uh, there was this this preacher,
Reverend Carl McIntyre. He was a fundamentalist who I think
he broadcast from a ship for like ten hours until
there was a fire. He worked so hard on it
for months, months. He thought he was going to be
up and running in a few days, maybe a couple
(34:24):
of weeks. It ended up taking him months to get
this pirate radio ship ready, and he got it going
and they shut him down in ten hours. And we've
talked about him before actually in our fairness doctrine, the
reason that he was operating from a pirate radio stations.
He went from being broadcast and like I think six
hundreds something radio stations across the South and the Midwest.
(34:47):
And he would preach like um, anti communism. He said
the Catholic Church was fascist. He said Billy Graham was
an appeaser. Um. He was a real firebrand and also
super political too. And because that fairnes doctrine said you
have to have equal airtime for opposing viewpoints. He didn't.
He didn't do that, so he kind of brought the
heat onto some of these stations that were worried about
(35:09):
losing their license. They started to drop him. So he
tried pirate radio for a minute, and it didn't pan
out very well for him. He tried for six minutes.
That's right. So, um, that's some fast math there. It's
pretty easy. Uh where you see pirate radio in the
United States, and it still continues today. In fact, uh,
there there was one study that said there are more
(35:31):
pirate radio station UH stations in New York on the
FM band than there were legit stations. Yeah, and that's
been going on for a while. I saw late eighties,
early nineties there was a big boom in pirate radio.
And like the epicenter seems to have been New York
because the Christians later I think so, or maybe they
wrote the movie because of the boom. I don't know. Well,
(35:53):
a lot of them are out of Brooklyn there, um
broadcast from rooftops. You know, you get a little equipment,
you get an ant in UH and and you're in business.
And here's the deal with pirate radio in the United States.
And what's going on now, which is currently the FCC
has has popped up, of course, and they used to,
like the article said, play kind of whack a mole
(36:15):
trying to knock these things back as they came up.
But I guess they thought it was such a problem,
especially in New York that the f c C has,
and especially this current FCC has stood up and said, Nope,
not going to happen on our watch. Uh. And in
January of this year, the President signed the and I
love it when they come up with a an acronym
(36:35):
that actually worked for this one. They had to reverse
engineer this one, the Pirate Act preventing illegal Radio abuse
through enforcement but also abuses in there, like stop abusing
that radio center. Yeah, but you know they needed an
A for sure. I'm saying, like, hats off to that
(36:56):
for to them for that one. It couldn't be radio
amusement through Actually, at least they used all the letters
from all the words. I hate it when they just
slip a couple of words and they're like nobody's gonna notice,
you know what I mean? So, um, the problem with
the Pirate Act is this, it takes uh already existing
(37:19):
FCC laws that allow the SEC to kind of go
after pirate radio stations and find them. I saw, um,
you're looking at fines of something like ten thousand dollars
a day, typically with the maximum of about seventy five
dollars for a total fine for operating an illegal pirate station.
That's that's bad. I mean, most people who are operating
(37:40):
pirate stations do so as as we'll talk about in
a minute, because they don't have the money to to
run a legit station and pay all the fees and
all the application fees and the license fees and all
that stuff. So that is significant. What the Pirate Act does.
It takes all those existing laws and just says you're
that seventy five max fee, let's up that to two
(38:01):
million dollars. And the whole point of that is to
specifically intimidate people out of out of pirate radio, out
of broadcasting pirate radio. And that that's that's terrible, especially
coming from an FCC that's led by a former telecommunications
lobbyists and the guy who presided over the end of
(38:24):
net neutrality. That's a that's some sour grapes right there,
if you ask me. Yeah, and the whole deal with
pirate radio these days, especially out of New York is
They're not just like spinning tunes for fun. I'm sure
there are some that do that, but a lot of
it is, UM are people starting these very small, small
(38:44):
operations that maybe broadcast over their neighborhood because they are
an underserved community as far as radio programming goes. And
they will speak in their native language to people who
are listening in their native language, and they are getting
news out to people in their native language. And these
(39:05):
are communities that don't that aren't represented on the on
the the regular FM spectrum. And there's a big argument
to be made that this is a almost like a
public service in a way to these underserved communities. Absolutely is,
and that's what radio. That's what radio has been, this
has been intended for since the inception of it. At
(39:26):
least in the United States, it's a and in the
u k two it's meant to be a public service,
UM for for everybody. The thing is is in the
U S we've long valued a multiplicity of different voices,
of competing ideas and thoughts of different music. I mean,
even if you are talking about pirate radio stations, UM
(39:47):
that are just playing music. They're not doing, you know, anything,
there's no like, you know, community discussion or anything like that.
The music they're playing is probably stuff you're not gonna
hear anywhere else on the radio, and there's definitely something
that's lost when you know, more and more radio stations
become homogenized further and further, then all of a sudden,
(40:07):
it's kind of like the radio equivalent of UM that
strip mall that you could go to Topeka or Miami
or Seattle and find the exact same stuff in the
exact same stores with almost the exact same layout to
where it's all the same. That's what pirate radio represents,
or even if you take the pirate out of it,
(40:29):
that's what a multiplicity of different um community radio stations represents. Uh,
the lack of homogeneity that kind of sucks the life
out of everything that in and of itself makes them
valuable and that they shouldn't be aggressively pursued or chuck.
There's one other thing too. If you are going to
aggressively pursue this, then also make an avenue for legitimacy
(40:52):
rather than just try to stamp them out or else.
It really makes you question what the ultimate motive is. Yeah,
and here's the thing, Like, it would be very easy
to sit back and say, well, you've got the Internet,
you can have an Internet radio station, you can have
a podcast. It's more democratized than ever before to get
your voice out there, which is true in a way,
but that's also a very privileged thing to say when
(41:13):
you just assume that someone has the money to afford
the Internet. Let's go get a new iPhone. What's your problem? Yeah, exactly, Like,
just download the app. It's that easy. Um. Radio, I
don't understand how you're not kidding. Radio is free and
you can you can buy a radio. You probably have
a radio if you're one of these people in an
underserved community. But if you don't, you can get one
(41:35):
of the thrift at a thrift store for five dollars
that picks up the FM and a M spectrum and
you don't have to play pay monthly fees. You don't
have to pay internet fees. And it is a true
democratized voice for the people who can't afford to get
it otherwise. Right, So, like, I didn't know anything about
this as far as like the Pirate Act, I didn't
(41:58):
know that existed until we started researching this episode, but
it's very clear that this is ah, this is a
law that's creating outlaws where they shouldn't necessarily be outlaws.
There's no inherent problem with UM pirate radio like from
what I've read UM and granted it was on a
pirate radio organization's blog, Prometheus Radio Project, but they said
(42:23):
they're very you can find very few instances of pirate
radio stations actually interfering with other stuff, but you can
very easily find major corporate radio stations interfering with stuff
and very frequently saying there's a There was an instance
in the nineties where North Perry, Florida's airport had to
(42:44):
change frequencies because the commercial radio station that was interfering
with their frequency that they were using to communicate with airplanes.
They wouldn't change their their frequency UM, so the airport
had to UM. You don't find that with pirate radio stations,
And from what I saw, there's a lot of self
policing that goes on in the community because you don't
want to infringe on somebody else's broadcast, because that means
(43:06):
that their broadcast is gonna infringe on your broad Yeah,
you want your own digits, uh in America. Like we
said before, UM to reiterate their standing behind the same
thing the BBC did, which is it's it can interfere
with sharing a vital public safety information, and it's just
that's such hooey. Like if a someone dropped a dirty
(43:27):
bomb on New York City, they're sure the radio stations
might issue some sort of public safety alert. But I
guarantee you so would the pirate radio stations, and they
would do so in their language. That's true, that's right. Yeah,
Because there's a lot of a lot of evidence that
pirate radio stations serve immigrant communities because they have like
(43:48):
kind of this cultural tie to UM radio as a technology.
So when they come over here to the United States,
there they expect to get their information from radio. Yeah,
and they wouldn't like the Twin Towers fall. I guarantee
you pirate radio stations weren't like, we're just gonna keep
spinning the tunes, you know. I'm sure they did like
every other broadcast and TV show and radio show in
(44:10):
the world. I'm sure they cease their programming and started
handing out vital information. Oh yeah, for sure. I can't
prove it, but I can't imagine that they did otherwise. UM,
I like what you did there too? You UM Like,
they're like, well, what are you gonna do? I mean,
pirate radio interferes with stuff? You're like, Oh, yeah, what
are you gonna do? If there's a dirty bomb in
New York? You just threw it right back in the
(44:33):
FCC's face. I don't know what the thing is is
from from this, from what I've seen, small government conservatives
and libertarians should be all over that Pirate Act. They
should be very much up in arms about this and
about the way that the SEC targets small illegal radio
stations without offering like a legitimate path to legitimacy. And um,
(44:57):
I would like to see that that's right. And by
the way, I have in show correction. I think I
said that Preacher's boat caught fire. I don't think it
actually caught fire. I think it just started smoking because
the antenna feeder line interfered with another radio station, so
didn't actually catch fire. When he was because I thought
(45:17):
that the ironies of preaching fire and brimstone and it
actually catching fire was too great, right, God went be
quiet smoke, so um, if you are interested in pirate radio,
The Verge did a whole series on it, really interesting
in depth stuff, and uh, yeah you could also do.
(45:38):
I ran across one called the Lot. It's out of
I think Williamsburg and it's on a little lot in
a shipping container. Of course it is. It's like, um,
all DJ sets all the time, but it's not a
pretty great and they have a webcam of what you
can see out the window. It's just cute, nice and
it's just cozy in a way. Yeah, and again, go
check out and stream the radio Caroline classic version. Uh.
(46:01):
If you're into like just good playlist, it's it's one
of the best. I gotta check that out. I didn't
run across that, so thank you for that public service, chuck. Um,
you got anything else? Nope? Okay, Well that's it for
pirate radio for now. Uh and um that means it's
time for a listener mail. This is called hot off
(46:22):
the Presses. Just got this email and it was just
so heartwarming I had had to share it. Hey, guys
and Jerry, I love listening to the recent episode on soap.
I consider myself a bit of a soap nerd because
when I served at the Peace Corps as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Senegal for three years late two thousand's
I guess two thousand sixteen to two thousand nineteen, late teens.
(46:45):
My main activity was training women's groups on how to
start small businesses making and selling soap. We trained them
on how to make all kinds of our soap using
local ingredients shape, butter, honey, mint, herbs uh. Teaching these
women's groups about soap making is a the excellent way
to improve their household financial security for a few reasons. First,
you're always going to have a market for soap because
(47:06):
everyone needs it. Secondly, there are a few barriers to
entry to making soap. You don't need to be able
to read or have fancy equipment. If you can measure
poor and stir, then you can make it. And Thirdly,
because women in Senegal are responsible for so much of
the daily chores in their home, soap making requires only
a little bit of time since much of the process
is waiting for the soap to cure fully into a
(47:27):
hard bar And fourth making soap is a great way
to teach all the basics of starting a business. Marketing, accounting,
record keeping, calculating unit costs, profit margins, making creative packaging.
Once they master these skills, they can expand to other
business opportunities. And fifth, it smells really good. Yeah, she said.
Some of the re fondest memories are her service seeing
(47:48):
the satisfaction on their faces as the lion shape butter
mixture spent ages stirring by hand became real soap for
them to sell and market. Uh I trained over a
hundred and fifty members or of more than five women's
group on soap making, and all of the groups continue
to make soap and sell it for a profit today,
helping to make their households more financially secure. Tell me
(48:09):
they included a website. Uh no, because it's a bunch
of different groups, but it is. It was from the
Peace Corps. You obviously want to support them, and that
is from Grace e uh Nagel. Thanks a lot, Gracey Nagel. Um,
we appreciate that. That was that was great. It was
a great email. She sent pictures. We appreciate Um, I'll
(48:31):
have to check them out. Well, we appreciate you what
you did over there and sending goal to totally. If
you want to let us know about something great you
did in your life, like grace E did. You could
send us an email, wrap it up, spanking on the
bottom twice, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(48:53):
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works from more podcasts
for my heart Radio. Because at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcasts are where every listening to your favorite shops
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Josh Clark
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