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The Hillsborough Disaster · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us and that's okay. And this
0:17
Speaker 2: is our ongoing Studies Abroad ped issue.
0:24
Speaker 3: That's right, and we you know, this is about the
0:27
Speaker 3: Hillsborough disaster, which was the very unfortunate and super sad
0:32
Speaker 3: and somewhat infuriating, deadly crush that happened at an English
0:38
Speaker 3: football stadium in nineteen eighty nine. So we enlisted Kyle,
0:42
Speaker 3: our one writer from the UK, to put this together
0:46
Speaker 3: for us, and he did a great job and used
0:48
Speaker 3: all the appropriate letters and terminology and his spelling and stuff.
0:52
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I was gonna say no z's throughout.
0:56
Speaker 2: They were all s's.
0:57
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
0:58
Speaker 2: He did a wonderful job this summarizing like a really
1:02
Speaker 2: big giant story that had we done this episode like
1:07
Speaker 2: when we first started, it would have been totally different
1:10
Speaker 2: because around twenty fifteen, the public opinion, the entire basically
1:17
Speaker 2: worldview of what happened at the strategedy completely flip flopped
1:21
Speaker 2: and the truth finally came out. We'll get to all that,
1:25
Speaker 2: but I'd say we kind of give everybody some background
1:28
Speaker 2: about what's going on here. The whole thing took place,
1:31
Speaker 2: like you said, in nineteen eighty nine at Hillsborough Stadium.
1:34
Speaker 2: That's in Sheffield, which is in South Yorkshire, which is
1:37
Speaker 2: a county in Yorkshire, And normally this is the home
1:40
Speaker 2: of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. That's where they play at Hillsboro,
1:45
Speaker 2: but this day it was actually hosting an FA Cup semifinal.
1:49
Speaker 2: That means it was all England teams and it was
1:52
Speaker 2: between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. So far, so good. This
1:56
Speaker 2: is just a normal Cup semifinal game that's a big deal,
2:00
Speaker 2: way bigger than the average Sheffield Wednesday Football club game.
2:04
Speaker 2: But you know, so far it's pretty normal.
2:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, they had Liverpool had more fans and
2:11
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how it is now, but nineteen eighty
2:13
Speaker 3: nine at least that was the case. I think it
2:16
Speaker 3: probably still is. But they were allocated the smaller end
2:20
Speaker 3: of the stadium and the entrance and you know, as
2:23
Speaker 3: you'll a lot of times with disasters like these, you're
2:27
Speaker 3: going to see it like a series of steps that
2:29
Speaker 3: happened to kind of ensure unwittingly that something terrible goes down,
2:34
Speaker 3: and this was sort of the first one was they
2:36
Speaker 3: allocated the larger fan base the smaller end of the stadium,
2:41
Speaker 3: and the entrance to that was at the end of
2:44
Speaker 3: Lepping's Lane, which was a street that dead ended into
2:48
Speaker 3: the stadium, and not only did it dead end, but
2:51
Speaker 3: it bottlenecks. It got more narrow as you got toward
2:55
Speaker 3: that dead end, and that the turnstiles there, which is
3:00
Speaker 3: where you get in at that part of the stadium.
3:03
Speaker 3: There were seven of them. They were old, you know,
3:06
Speaker 3: this is an older stadium, and they didn't you know,
3:08
Speaker 3: they just couldn't move people through as quickly as like
3:11
Speaker 3: you would be able to today exactly.
3:13
Speaker 2: And you know, under a normal game for Sheffield Wednesday,
3:17
Speaker 2: this was not that big of a problem. This was
3:20
Speaker 2: a very big problem this day because there were ten
3:23
Speaker 2: one hundred fans who were just the ones who had
3:27
Speaker 2: standing room only tickets in what are called pens. Right,
3:30
Speaker 2: So they're ultimately like basically little terraces with a bunch
3:35
Speaker 2: of little tiny steps on them and some railings which
3:38
Speaker 2: are called crush barriers, and you just stand in them.
3:43
Speaker 2: You just pack everybody in. But they're supposed to say like, okay,
3:46
Speaker 2: there're no more than this many people can go into
3:48
Speaker 2: this pen, no more than this many people can go
3:51
Speaker 2: into that pen.
3:51
Speaker 4: Whatever.
3:52
Speaker 2: So there's ten thousand people who are all going into
3:54
Speaker 2: these pens. They have to use these seven turnstyles so
3:57
Speaker 2: very quickly. Even outside of this stadium, a bit of
4:01
Speaker 2: a crush starts to happen, in part because the cops
4:04
Speaker 2: aren't doing anything about having people form a line or q.
4:10
Speaker 2: They're not directing anybody to do anything. It's just get
4:14
Speaker 2: in where you fit in, and whoever gets there first
4:16
Speaker 2: is the one who gets through that turnstile that moment.
4:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, there's plenty of surveillance footage and
4:23
Speaker 3: stuff out and it was not you know, as we'll
4:26
Speaker 3: see the story that was kind of cooked up to
4:30
Speaker 3: evade I guess being responsible for this, which is what
4:34
Speaker 3: they were, was that, you know, it was an unruly
4:37
Speaker 3: crowd of drunks. Hooliganism was a thing much more back then.
4:41
Speaker 3: They've basically eradicated that now for the most part. And
4:45
Speaker 3: if you look at the footage, it's you know, it's
4:47
Speaker 3: a bunch of kids, a lot of teenagers. It wasn't
4:49
Speaker 3: super expensive back then to get into soccer and football
4:54
Speaker 3: games like this. It was six pounds to get in
4:57
Speaker 3: for standing room only, and they were lively. They were
4:59
Speaker 3: have a good time, but it didn't look like anything
5:03
Speaker 3: threatening at that point at all. There were people just like,
5:06
Speaker 3: you know, kind of trying to get into the stadium
5:08
Speaker 3: to see a game. They were excited about.
5:09
Speaker 2: Yeah and all. This really kind of starts about ten
5:12
Speaker 2: minutes before kickoff. That's when people are like, come on,
5:14
Speaker 2: let's go, we got to get in. And like by
5:16
Speaker 2: this time that crowd had backed like the lines or
5:19
Speaker 2: whatever had backed up into Leppings Lane pretty far. So
5:22
Speaker 2: people wanted to hurry up and get through right, But
5:25
Speaker 2: like you said, everybody was generally good natured. Kickoff was
5:29
Speaker 2: set at three pm, and at ten till three pm
5:32
Speaker 2: there were still five thousand Liverpool fans who were outside
5:36
Speaker 2: on Lepping's Lane trying to get through these seven turnstyles.
5:40
Speaker 2: And so at this point the cops, at least one cop.
5:44
Speaker 2: The guy who was in charge of managing this side
5:47
Speaker 2: of the outside of the stadium, got in touch with
5:51
Speaker 2: the guy who was running all of the police for
5:54
Speaker 2: this soccer match. His name is David Duckinfield, and the
5:58
Speaker 2: guy outside said, hey, we need to open a gate
6:01
Speaker 2: and forget the turnstiles and tickets. There's a bunch of
6:03
Speaker 2: people who are about to get crushed out here, and
6:05
Speaker 2: we need to relieve some of this pressure. Please open
6:08
Speaker 2: this gate. You did that once, Duck and Field ignored it,
6:12
Speaker 2: did it twice, Duck and Field ignored it. The third time.
6:14
Speaker 2: It was almost frantic, and Duck and Field finally said, okay,
6:18
Speaker 2: go ahead and open gate. See they did that at
6:20
Speaker 2: two point fifty two pm and all of a sudden,
6:23
Speaker 2: just an enormous mass of people stream into essentially the
6:27
Speaker 2: foyer of the stadium. So now you go from a
6:30
Speaker 2: crowd crush outside of the stadium to the potential crowd
6:33
Speaker 2: crush just inside the stadium.
6:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so, and we'll get to more about David Duckinfield,
6:40
Speaker 3: the match commander, and his qualifications and stuff, I guess
6:43
Speaker 3: in a minute. But one thing we did not mention
6:46
Speaker 3: is these pins. And this was partially to kind of
6:52
Speaker 3: keep hooliganism down. They were fenced within the seating area,
6:57
Speaker 3: so once you got to this large standing there were
7:00
Speaker 3: different numbered pins within that that were you know, fenced
7:04
Speaker 3: off from each other. So there were literal pins and
7:08
Speaker 3: when people started flowing through when they opened gate, sea.
7:12
Speaker 3: They were all passing through towards this, you know, the
7:15
Speaker 3: central part of the field, down this long tunnel. I
7:17
Speaker 3: think Kyle said it was twenty three meters long to
7:21
Speaker 3: get to pins three and four, which were basically midfield,
7:25
Speaker 3: and there was plenty of room on the pins on
7:27
Speaker 3: the outside. But because nobody was directing traffic, nobody was
7:31
Speaker 3: relaying information, no one knew this, and those central pins
7:35
Speaker 3: were already full at ten till when that big crowd
7:38
Speaker 3: of people started to make their way to that spot.
7:41
Speaker 2: Right. So again, because I was standing room ontely, it
7:45
Speaker 2: didn't tell you what pen you had to go to.
7:46
Speaker 2: You could go to whatever pen. But since that tunnel
7:49
Speaker 2: was straight ahead, that's where people naturally went. And like
7:52
Speaker 2: you said, those pins were already full. So as this
7:54
Speaker 2: tunnel this crush of people, there's crowd of people after
7:57
Speaker 2: opening gate, sea floods in connects with the people who
8:01
Speaker 2: are all already coming through those seven turnstyles. Almost all
8:04
Speaker 2: of them start to go through this tunnel, and that
8:07
Speaker 2: tunnel opens up on two pens that are already full
8:09
Speaker 2: of people, way over capacity already. As they found in retrospect,
8:14
Speaker 2: there was about a thousand more people that they allowed
8:17
Speaker 2: onto each pen than they should have based on the
8:20
Speaker 2: kind of crowd control safety stuff they had in place.
8:24
Speaker 2: So it was already dangerously full before those people from
8:27
Speaker 2: Gate Sea even made their way down the tunnel. But
8:30
Speaker 2: when they did, they encountered this mass of other people.
8:34
Speaker 2: But there were people behind them who didn't know this,
8:36
Speaker 2: at the back of the tunnel, in the tunnel, and
8:38
Speaker 2: they all wanted in two so everybody was pressing forward
8:41
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden a crowd crush happened
8:44
Speaker 2: in those two middle pens.
8:46
Speaker 4: That's right.
8:47
Speaker 3: So it's about five till kickoff. At this point when
8:52
Speaker 3: people like later described just sort of a change in
8:56
Speaker 3: how things were going, you know, like I said, it
8:59
Speaker 3: was it was people generally happy to go see this
9:01
Speaker 3: soccer game. And by two fifty five it becomes clear
9:04
Speaker 3: that like something's wrong. Four minutes later it was a
9:09
Speaker 3: lethal crush had developed and those two central pins and officers,
9:14
Speaker 3: some of them are telling people to move back like
9:16
Speaker 3: this is part of the problem is the officers themselves
9:18
Speaker 3: were very disorganized and not sharing information. So some officers
9:22
Speaker 3: are telling people to move back. They're saying they can't
9:25
Speaker 3: move back because there's people behind them and those fences
9:30
Speaker 3: that were installed to I think that was in nineteen
9:32
Speaker 3: seventy seven to prevent the hooliganism. We're keeping people like
9:36
Speaker 3: once they got in from being like, oh wow, it's
9:38
Speaker 3: getting like super crowded, let's move to these outer pins
9:40
Speaker 3: where there's plenty of room. People started climbing fences and stuff,
9:45
Speaker 3: and this is where it gets really really out of hand,
9:47
Speaker 3: like the panic starts to set in. People are trying
9:49
Speaker 3: to drag people over the fences to safety. Some of
9:53
Speaker 3: the gates of the pins were opened by the cops
9:55
Speaker 3: at that point, but it's developed into like a real dangerous.
10:00
Speaker 2: Right, And so inside the pens there's those railings that
10:03
Speaker 2: they're kind of like intermittently staggered in the pens, right,
10:08
Speaker 2: So if you walk into one of these pens and
10:10
Speaker 2: you're facing the field, you'll eventually come to a railing,
10:12
Speaker 2: and that's a crowd barrier or a crush barrier, which
10:15
Speaker 2: means that if a crush develops, that barrier is supposed
10:19
Speaker 2: to stop it from going any further than the barrier.
10:21
Speaker 2: So the people behind the barrier, life's gonna suck for them,
10:25
Speaker 2: but the people in front of that barrier will be safe. Right,
10:27
Speaker 2: it's like limiting crowd crushes. Well, the problem is one
10:31
Speaker 2: of them was very very old, at least one, and
10:34
Speaker 2: it gave So there's a whole crush of people who
10:37
Speaker 2: are pressed up against this and a whole bunch of
10:39
Speaker 2: people on the other side of it too, And now
10:42
Speaker 2: one of those barriers fall and that crush of people
10:44
Speaker 2: just basically spills into this other group of people in
10:47
Speaker 2: the same pen and people it just fell over. It
10:50
Speaker 2: was like a wave of people that overcame the people
10:53
Speaker 2: who were standing on the other side of that barrier
10:56
Speaker 2: that broke.
10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all this time the match starts on time,
11:00
Speaker 3: word is not again. Communication was just kind of chaotic,
11:04
Speaker 3: and no one got word down to the pitch that hey,
11:08
Speaker 3: maybe we should delay this game and get this under control.
11:12
Speaker 3: And at three pm the game starts at three oh five,
11:17
Speaker 3: those barriers, at least the one in Pen three, had
11:20
Speaker 3: given away, and a human cascade starts. And this is when,
11:26
Speaker 3: you know, the devastating stuff. We're not going to read
11:29
Speaker 3: one thousand accounts of people getting you know, squeezed to death,
11:34
Speaker 3: because it's pretty awful, but you know what happens in
11:37
Speaker 3: a situation like that is you can't breathe because you're
11:41
Speaker 3: so packed into one another that you can't expand your
11:45
Speaker 3: chest out to get a breath, and you generally die
11:48
Speaker 3: of asphyxiation or like your heart stops right.
11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this happened to a lot of people in
11:56
Speaker 2: this We talked a lot about this phenomenon in the
11:58
Speaker 2: Crowd episode and I think in the Black Friday episode two.
12:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Crowd one was what inspired this episode.
12:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we we just touched on it just a
12:08
Speaker 2: little bit, right.
12:10
Speaker 3: I don't even know if I mean, I think if
12:12
Speaker 3: we mentioned it. I said, I brought it up because
12:14
Speaker 3: I had asked Kyle to write this.
12:16
Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha? Okay, But when there was like when this crowd,
12:21
Speaker 2: this human cascade happened, people got pushed over, and you know,
12:24
Speaker 2: there's a natural human reaction to try to get upright again,
12:27
Speaker 2: which means that you were standing on people beneath you,
12:30
Speaker 2: and so people got trampled. In addition to the people
12:32
Speaker 2: who were pressed up against the other crush barriers or
12:35
Speaker 2: against the fence. There's some really disturbing photos that were
12:40
Speaker 2: taken very close up of the people pressed up against
12:44
Speaker 2: the fence. Did you see those.
12:46
Speaker 3: I saw them when I was in high school and
12:48
Speaker 3: sports illustrated, Like, I remember this vividly. I didn't go
12:51
Speaker 3: back and revisit a lot of that because it's super upsetting.
12:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is upsiding. And there's a guy who
12:56
Speaker 2: took a lot of His name was David Cannon, and
12:59
Speaker 2: he was at least partially responsible for getting the police
13:04
Speaker 2: to finally stop the game. The reason why they wanted
13:06
Speaker 2: to stop the game so bad is because they think
13:08
Speaker 2: that that that crush or that movement that caused the
13:12
Speaker 2: human cascade was in response to one of Liverpool's players
13:16
Speaker 2: just missing a goal, and so they're like, we need
13:20
Speaker 2: to stop the game, right, So this guy, David Cannon,
13:24
Speaker 2: got them to stop the game, or at least he tried.
13:27
Speaker 2: He's one of the main photographers who was there at
13:29
Speaker 2: the time, so his pictures are like you said, it's
13:32
Speaker 2: very disturbing to see this because you can hear people
13:35
Speaker 2: describe it, you can read descriptions of it, but when
13:37
Speaker 2: you see the people pressed up against the fence like
13:40
Speaker 2: they were, it really comes home how horrific this was.
13:44
Speaker 2: Like you can kind of finally start to imagine yourself
13:46
Speaker 2: in that position.
13:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, it's pretty bad. That's why I didn't
13:52
Speaker 3: go back and look at three oh six. It was
13:54
Speaker 3: a superintendent who actually got the game stopped. He went
13:57
Speaker 3: down to the pitch and actually went to the referee.
14:00
Speaker 3: They had a couple of minutes before signaled to the
14:03
Speaker 3: police control box to stop, but it kept on for
14:05
Speaker 3: two more minutes. So that's when the superintendent finally like
14:08
Speaker 3: literally went on the field and told the referee, like,
14:11
Speaker 3: you got to stop this game. This isn't because you know,
14:14
Speaker 3: everyone thought it was just like rowdy fans, and he
14:17
Speaker 3: was like, no, that this is not what's happening. The
14:19
Speaker 3: match commander Duckinfield requested more cops to come. It was
14:24
Speaker 3: called Operation Support, and no one was explaining why or
14:30
Speaker 3: what's going on though, So once the officers and you know,
14:32
Speaker 3: communications are not what they are now. Certainly it's not
14:36
Speaker 3: an excuse, but they were not getting briefed on exactly
14:40
Speaker 3: what was going on. So a lot of the cops
14:42
Speaker 3: there assumed that the fans were just rowdy and we're
14:46
Speaker 3: trying to like storm the fence, to storm the field,
14:50
Speaker 3: and they formed a cordon on the pitch to kind
14:54
Speaker 3: of keep that from happening. And again some of them
14:56
Speaker 3: are opening gates, like they see what's going on and
14:59
Speaker 3: are some or trying to help the fans, but other
15:01
Speaker 3: cops are either ignoring them or like shoving people back in.
15:05
Speaker 2: Right or standing there facing this crowd crush in a
15:08
Speaker 2: line according with other cops. So imagine that, like just
15:11
Speaker 2: how surreal that would look because they didn't understand what
15:15
Speaker 2: was going on. So eventually they managed to open some
15:19
Speaker 2: gates which allowed the crowd crush to ease up. And
15:24
Speaker 2: so the crowd crush was bad enough, like the after
15:29
Speaker 2: effects like immediate after effects, or it just continued to
15:33
Speaker 2: go badly. The police response, the emergency response was just
15:40
Speaker 2: so uncoordinated that it surely I think they proved it
15:44
Speaker 2: cost the lives of scores of people. I think in
15:47
Speaker 2: the end, ninety five people died, seven hundred were injured.
15:53
Speaker 2: Two more people died years later. So really ninety seven
15:55
Speaker 2: people died from this crowd crush.
15:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirty seven people were teenagers, twenty seven were parents.
16:03
Speaker 3: There was one ten year old that died. He was
16:07
Speaker 3: very ironically, I guess, and sadly the cousin of Steven Gerard,
16:12
Speaker 3: who was became a big star for England in their
16:16
Speaker 3: soccer team, but I think the oldest I think that
16:19
Speaker 3: was the youngest at ten and the oldest was a
16:20
Speaker 3: sixty seven year old whose brother was playing for Liverpool.
16:25
Speaker 3: And it's yeah again you know to read through like
16:28
Speaker 3: each account is a little too depressing for this show.
16:31
Speaker 3: But you did mention the two that died years later.
16:34
Speaker 3: I think Tony Bland died four years after in nineteen
16:38
Speaker 3: ninety three. He had brain damage up into that point
16:40
Speaker 3: and then what they count as the ninety seventh victim
16:43
Speaker 3: didn't pass away until twenty twenty one, but they said
16:46
Speaker 3: it was due to you know, these life changing injuries
16:49
Speaker 3: that he suffered from this.
16:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think also brain damage as well. Andrew Devine,
16:54
Speaker 2: So there were there was like an immediate response to this,
16:59
Speaker 2: right spite what we'll see Liverpool just taking all of
17:03
Speaker 2: the blame for this, Liverpool fans, there was like a
17:09
Speaker 2: public response. One of the things was Paul McCartney jumped
17:12
Speaker 2: in because this is a Liverpool team and he's from Liverpool.
17:15
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew they're not Chuck, but he,
17:20
Speaker 2: I guess released a charity single cover of fairy Cross
17:23
Speaker 2: the Mercy.
17:24
Speaker 4: Have you heard that song?
17:25
Speaker 2: It's a good song.
17:27
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was a great but I think
17:29
Speaker 3: it was a great act.
17:31
Speaker 2: Did you listen to the I didn't listen to the
17:33
Speaker 2: eighty nine one that they released for as a charity single.
17:36
Speaker 2: Did you listen to the original, because that's very good?
17:39
Speaker 3: Oh? No, I listened to the one that pertained to
17:41
Speaker 3: the show.
17:42
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, at any rate, it's a good song originally,
17:46
Speaker 2: and it was, like you said, a very cool act.
17:48
Speaker 2: There were also tons like you can also see photos
17:51
Speaker 2: of just the the whole entire soccer pitch covered with flowers,
17:57
Speaker 2: just as in Memoriam. It was just there was a
18:01
Speaker 2: there was a good public response, but ultimately public opinion
18:05
Speaker 2: was much more venomous.
18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's probably a good time for a break,
18:11
Speaker 3: and we'll come back and talk about that venom right
18:13
Speaker 3: up for this, all right, So, right after this, the
18:37
Speaker 3: police basically immediately started trying to engage in successfully as
18:42
Speaker 3: we'll see for a while, engaged in a cover up.
18:44
Speaker 3: They wanted to, you know, not be on the hook
18:47
Speaker 3: for this, and the hooliganism that I talked about had
18:51
Speaker 3: been blamed. I thought we had done an episode on hooliganism,
18:54
Speaker 3: but I don't think we ever did, did we?
18:57
Speaker 2: No? Surely we talked about it in our soccer episode,
19:00
Speaker 2: but I don't think we ever did one just on that.
19:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was on the list for a while, but
19:03
Speaker 3: maybe we should wait in case things change again. Okay,
19:07
Speaker 3: but that was the narrative that was fed the public
19:10
Speaker 3: basically that match commander, and I guess we should go
19:14
Speaker 3: ahead and talk about David Duckinfield a little bit. He's
19:16
Speaker 3: the one that first started saying was that gate was
19:19
Speaker 3: forced open by Liverpool fans, Like he denied even opening
19:22
Speaker 3: that gate. This guy was not qualified for this job.
19:28
Speaker 3: I think previous commanders did things like go down before
19:33
Speaker 3: the game, like hours before, check things out, walk around,
19:36
Speaker 3: identify choke points or potential hazards, because this had happened
19:40
Speaker 3: a couple of times before, one time in this very stadium,
19:43
Speaker 3: I think in nineteen eighty one, and so it was
19:46
Speaker 3: top of mind or should have been, and he did
19:50
Speaker 3: not do that. He never actually inspected the grounds beforehand,
19:55
Speaker 3: and he kind of went missing from about noon to
19:58
Speaker 3: two o'clock on the day, never accounted for his whereabouts.
20:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had never commanded a match at the stadium,
20:05
Speaker 2: let alone a semi final match. Just even a regular match.
20:09
Speaker 2: He'd never commanded it, so he had no idea what
20:11
Speaker 2: he was doing. He was also a very arrogant person,
20:14
Speaker 2: so he felt like he could just do it naturally.
20:17
Speaker 2: He didn't need to familiarize himself. And he had served
20:22
Speaker 2: as a rank and file patrolman or PC like ten
20:29
Speaker 2: years before. That was the last time he'd worked a match,
20:31
Speaker 2: and he was definitely not in charge of it. So
20:34
Speaker 2: he was very much out of his league and like
20:39
Speaker 2: it took him decades to finally acknowledge that. Instead, he
20:45
Speaker 2: helped lead this police cover up that shifted all the
20:49
Speaker 2: blame unfairly and untruthfully toward the fans for Liverpool and
20:54
Speaker 2: off of the cops who were really responsible for the tragedy.
20:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So we'll get to kind of what
21:00
Speaker 3: happened in a timeline since as this goes on in
21:03
Speaker 3: a minute, But initially the police watchdog recommended that there
21:09
Speaker 3: was like a disciplinary case would be brought against Duckinfield.
21:13
Speaker 3: That did not happen at the time, and he was
21:16
Speaker 3: medically retired two years later on full pension, basically to
21:21
Speaker 3: evade these discipline from this incident. The case again that
21:27
Speaker 3: the cops built was that people were drunk. They got
21:31
Speaker 3: there late. It was the Liverpool fans, a lot of
21:34
Speaker 3: them didn't even have tickets and they were trying to
21:36
Speaker 3: just force their way in. And over the years they
21:40
Speaker 3: found out that they had gone back in. Even this
21:43
Speaker 3: is how despicable it gets. Not only did they cook
21:45
Speaker 3: up this narrative, but they went back in and cooked
21:49
Speaker 3: the books and altered witness statements and removed comments about
21:54
Speaker 3: that were unfavorable to the police and how things were handled,
21:58
Speaker 3: and they torched it basically.
22:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the force was very regimented, I saw, right.
22:06
Speaker 2: So there wasn't there wasn't going to be any descent.
22:08
Speaker 2: There wasn't going to be any secret tip offs to
22:10
Speaker 2: the press about what really happened by any of the
22:13
Speaker 2: police constables, you know, under these guys charge, right, So
22:17
Speaker 2: the top saying this is what happened. That's what everybody
22:20
Speaker 2: on the police force was going to say, what happened.
22:22
Speaker 2: And so that's what the media heard. And the British
22:27
Speaker 2: tabloids typically have like a fairly bad reputation, and they
22:32
Speaker 2: really showed up for it for this one. The whole
22:37
Speaker 2: idea that the soccer fans, especially the Liverpool fans in
22:41
Speaker 2: particular were responsible for this. Would they just beat that
22:47
Speaker 2: drum incessantly? They called the fans and by extension the
22:52
Speaker 2: victims beasts yobs, which means thugs, vile. And then The
22:57
Speaker 2: Sun printed a front page article called The Truth I
23:01
Speaker 2: think within a day or two after this that really
23:05
Speaker 2: drove this home, like just how despicable the tabloids could
23:09
Speaker 2: get about this stuff.
23:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, they said things like there were fans that were
23:14
Speaker 3: urinating on cops, that they were looting the dead at
23:19
Speaker 3: the time, and this was not the case. And The
23:23
Speaker 3: Sun ended up apologizing in twenty twelve and has been
23:26
Speaker 3: boycotted in Liverpool ever since. I still don't think they'd
23:29
Speaker 3: sell the Sun there good, even after the apologies. But
23:34
Speaker 3: this was, you know, this was the nineteen eighties and
23:36
Speaker 3: things were different back then. The hooliganism was, you know,
23:40
Speaker 3: much more prominent. So it was a narrative which was
23:43
Speaker 3: easy for people to believe in England, and when they
23:47
Speaker 3: were reading it, they you know, people were like, yeah,
23:50
Speaker 3: this is the typical sort of anti social underclass is
23:54
Speaker 3: how Kyle put it. They're trying to get in without tickets,
23:59
Speaker 3: you know, drunk it through in the afternoon, it was
24:02
Speaker 3: a different kind of It was a different sport back
24:06
Speaker 3: then in a lot of ways, as far as you know,
24:08
Speaker 3: as we'll see the kind of money that poured into
24:11
Speaker 3: the sport in the nineteen nineties after this, certainly with
24:14
Speaker 3: the start of the Premier League in nineteen ninety two
24:16
Speaker 3: and ticket prices rising and stadiums modernizing and just big
24:21
Speaker 3: money and big business. It just it was a lot
24:23
Speaker 3: more just kind of small time and old school and
24:26
Speaker 3: quaint back then, and so people were ready to accept
24:30
Speaker 3: this narrative, you know, kind of as it was being
24:34
Speaker 3: fed to them.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, Britain has a classist streak running through it and
24:38
Speaker 2: this certainly fit that idea, that supposition that lower classes
24:43
Speaker 2: were drunk and violent, and of course they were responsible
24:47
Speaker 2: for this, right, But so the public accepted this. The
24:51
Speaker 2: Thatcher government obviously was totally down with this idea, and
24:56
Speaker 2: that's just how it went. Like that was it, as
24:58
Speaker 2: far as everybody was concerned. Thanks to the police reports,
25:01
Speaker 2: thanks to the government stance, thanks to what the media
25:04
Speaker 2: was saying. What happened was a bunch of drunk Liverpool
25:10
Speaker 2: fans who didn't have tickets storm the gate and ninety
25:13
Speaker 2: seven people ended up dying as a result. Shame on
25:17
Speaker 2: Liverpool and its fans. That was the public opinion on
25:21
Speaker 2: this for years.
25:23
Speaker 3: That's right. So in nineteen ninety we get our first
25:28
Speaker 3: independent report. It was called the Tailor Report for Lord
25:31
Speaker 3: Justice Taylor, and they, I mean, this was kind of
25:36
Speaker 3: right after and they did come out blaming the police
25:39
Speaker 3: failure to control the crowd first off, and Duckinfield specifically
25:45
Speaker 3: for failing to close this tunnel. Like if they e
25:49
Speaker 3: would have closed that tunnel and it would have fed
25:51
Speaker 3: people to the empty pins, and that could that probably
25:54
Speaker 3: would have avoided this whole thing, despite like having way
25:57
Speaker 3: too many people down there. If they would have been
25:59
Speaker 3: fed to those empty your pens, this probably wouldn't have happened. Sure,
26:03
Speaker 3: and he made you know, safety recommendations in the final report,
26:06
Speaker 3: but very key, it didn't have anything in there about
26:10
Speaker 3: like like hey, these people were all just victims and
26:14
Speaker 3: they had no part in sort of making this happen.
26:18
Speaker 3: That didn't. That didn't come along until much later.
26:20
Speaker 2: No, for sure, that closing that tunnel too, or his
26:23
Speaker 2: failure to close the tunnel two is even worse than
26:26
Speaker 2: it seems because that was actually such a widely used
26:31
Speaker 2: technique for police superintendents who were in charge of overseeing
26:35
Speaker 2: matches over the years that one of them had his
26:38
Speaker 2: name on. It was called the Freeman tactic. And it
26:41
Speaker 2: was as simple as closing that middle tunnel and opening
26:44
Speaker 2: the entrances to the less the less full pens. And
26:47
Speaker 2: so that just shows you how little of a grasp
26:51
Speaker 2: Duckinfield had on the concept of safety at a football
26:55
Speaker 2: match that he was responsible for overseeing. He didn't even
26:58
Speaker 2: know about the Freeman if you ask me. And like
27:02
Speaker 2: rank and file cops who worked matches before knew about
27:05
Speaker 2: the Freeman tactic. It was like that was a huge
27:08
Speaker 2: deal in addition to all the people dying as a
27:11
Speaker 2: result that the fact that like everyone knew that you
27:14
Speaker 2: should do that and Duck and Field didn't is a
27:15
Speaker 2: big deal.
27:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And a year later, after the Taylor
27:20
Speaker 3: Independent Report, the Tailor Report, these inquests are coming back
27:26
Speaker 3: with verdicts. Accidental death is basically what they all were,
27:31
Speaker 3: you know, decided upon, and it was very controversial. Obviously,
27:35
Speaker 3: the victims' families are and they're the ones you know
27:38
Speaker 3: who kept us alive all these years until they, you know,
27:41
Speaker 3: finally got some measure of accountability. I guess the coroner
27:46
Speaker 3: ruled out evidence relating to death anything after three pm.
27:50
Speaker 3: He ruled out evidence because he said everybody was either
27:53
Speaker 3: dead or brain dead by three point fifteen, and there
27:57
Speaker 3: were there was like actual proof that would come out
27:59
Speaker 3: later that some people survived until four pm, and a
28:03
Speaker 3: lot of people would have survived for that forty five
28:06
Speaker 3: minutes had they gotten emergency services in there in an
28:09
Speaker 3: orderly manner.
28:10
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, those are the people I was talking about earlier.
28:13
Speaker 2: So that coroner essentially was just basically going along with
28:17
Speaker 2: the sentiment, the public sentiment that these people surely it
28:20
Speaker 2: wasn't the police who were responsible, right Yeah. In addition
28:24
Speaker 2: though to being disorganized, they were also like really cruel
28:28
Speaker 2: to the families, And this stuff came out in these reports,
28:32
Speaker 2: including the Hip report in the trials that like, if
28:36
Speaker 2: you were a victim family member, you were sent to
28:41
Speaker 2: a gym, a nearby gym that had been turned into
28:44
Speaker 2: a morgue, and the first thing that you encountered was
28:47
Speaker 2: standing out waiting outside in the cold before they led
28:51
Speaker 2: you in and handed you a stack of polaroids of
28:53
Speaker 2: the victim's dead bodies.
28:55
Speaker 3: Right yeah, I mean they had to look through those
28:58
Speaker 3: who identify their own. It was pretty brutal.
29:01
Speaker 2: But it wasn't even like are you looking for a child?
29:03
Speaker 2: Are you looking for a man? And they were sorted.
29:05
Speaker 2: It was like, here's the stack of polaroids, look through
29:07
Speaker 2: hi until you find your loved one. The parents of
29:11
Speaker 2: the children who died, they weren't allowed to hold or
29:14
Speaker 2: kiss them because they were told that they were property
29:17
Speaker 2: of the coroner. And the coroner himself seems to have
29:21
Speaker 2: been on the cover up to some degree, tangentially, because
29:25
Speaker 2: he ordered that all of the deceased, including the children,
29:29
Speaker 2: have their blood drawn to be tested for alcohol content
29:33
Speaker 2: to support this police narrative. Well, what turned out, what
29:36
Speaker 2: he did inadvertently was show that alcohol was not a
29:40
Speaker 2: factor in this really, Like there were very few drunk people,
29:44
Speaker 2: and the ones that were drunk weren't all that drunk.
29:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in a weird way, it's good that
29:49
Speaker 3: he did that, you know.
29:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.
29:50
Speaker 2: So, like you said, the families of the victims organized
29:55
Speaker 2: and tried to keep this thing alive and you know,
29:58
Speaker 2: keep the public from solidifying their about what had happened,
30:02
Speaker 2: and they managed to get a private prosecution I guess
30:05
Speaker 2: laid or charged against the police for this for the incident.
30:10
Speaker 2: Didn't know you could do that. Apparently you can still
30:13
Speaker 2: in the UK, America some other places. But a private
30:16
Speaker 2: group of people can get a court to prosecute people,
30:20
Speaker 2: and that's what they did. And this found that duck
30:23
Speaker 2: and Field, they couldn't reach a verdict on him, whether
30:26
Speaker 2: he was criminally responsible or not. One of his deputies
30:29
Speaker 2: was acquitted and the judge in this case said, that's it.
30:33
Speaker 2: Duck and Field will never face another a retrial like
30:37
Speaker 2: this is it. He's not responsible, even though we failed
30:39
Speaker 2: to reach a verdict, which is a weird thing to do.
30:41
Speaker 2: But that happened in two thousand.
30:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, charges against Sheffield the actual football club that wasn't
30:48
Speaker 3: even playing that day, but he played in that stadium
30:50
Speaker 3: Sheffield Wednesday, and the Sheffield City Council and the safety
30:55
Speaker 3: engineers the Eastwoods were ruled out. And this was I
30:59
Speaker 3: think years earlier, so they were already off the hook.
31:03
Speaker 3: So that was all in two thousand. Twelve years later,
31:06
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, there was another report that the Hip Report,
31:10
Speaker 3: the Hillsboro Independent Panel, and that brought about some new
31:15
Speaker 3: inquests more sort of digging into this thing about like
31:19
Speaker 3: what happened with the police, And this is the one
31:22
Speaker 3: that really started to kind of turn the tide as
31:24
Speaker 3: far as the public goes. And one of the reasons
31:27
Speaker 3: it happened was because MP Andy Burnham was at a
31:31
Speaker 3: twenty year memorial service and was just lambasted by the
31:35
Speaker 3: crowd people chanting justice for the ninety six. Really had
31:40
Speaker 3: a hard time at that event. So he's the one
31:43
Speaker 3: that was like, let's open this back up four hundred
31:46
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand pages of information, and this is when
31:50
Speaker 3: they really kind of started to make things right.
31:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, that panel apparently kept like releasing information piecemeal and
31:57
Speaker 2: the press is kept reporting on it, and very quickly
32:01
Speaker 2: the public was like, oh wait, we've been wrong. It
32:03
Speaker 2: wasn't these drunken Liverpool fans. They were mistreated. The families
32:07
Speaker 2: of the victims were mistreated, survivors were mistreated. It was
32:11
Speaker 2: actually these cops, and the cops had lied to essentially
32:14
Speaker 2: cover up their responsibility. Like the public opinion just completely shifted,
32:19
Speaker 2: and so that hip report led to new inquests, and
32:25
Speaker 2: the inquests found that the ninety six victims and later
32:30
Speaker 2: on the ninety seventh victim were all unlawfully killed. So
32:34
Speaker 2: it wasn't accidental anymore. Like the first inquest found they
32:37
Speaker 2: were unlawfully killed, which meant someone is criminally accountable for
32:41
Speaker 2: their deaths, right, And this inquest said go figure it out,
32:45
Speaker 2: like this is our we're saying, we're recommending that somebody
32:49
Speaker 2: is responsible for this.
32:51
Speaker 3: Yeah. It also found that forty one I was looking
32:54
Speaker 3: for the number earlier, but forty one of the ninety
32:56
Speaker 3: six who died, they said, quote had potential to survive
33:00
Speaker 3: if the you know, rescue had been a little more organized,
33:04
Speaker 3: because I don't think we said the first ambulance arrived
33:06
Speaker 3: on the scene at three sixteen, and even when the
33:09
Speaker 3: ambulances had been called, they didn't know the severity of
33:13
Speaker 3: the situation because they I think one cop called for
33:15
Speaker 3: like a big, you know, mass of ambulances to come,
33:20
Speaker 3: but it wasn't described what was happening, so they refused
33:22
Speaker 3: that initial. The medical services refused that initial like huge
33:27
Speaker 3: rush of ambulances and just sent like some They also
33:31
Speaker 3: didn't set up patriage on the field like you know,
33:33
Speaker 3: we'll get to that in a little more detail. But
33:36
Speaker 3: forty one of the ninety six would have survived, they determined,
33:39
Speaker 3: which is just a brutal number.
33:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, in twenty nineteen, after all this stuff had come out,
33:45
Speaker 2: public opinion changed, Duckingfield was dragged back into court. Remember
33:51
Speaker 2: that one judge had been like, he can't face a retrial. Well,
33:54
Speaker 2: they were like, well, circumstances have changed enough now that
33:57
Speaker 2: he's definitely going to be tried again. And he was
34:01
Speaker 2: found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. And then they
34:06
Speaker 2: also heard evidence about the altering of the police reports
34:11
Speaker 2: to make it favorable for the cops and make it
34:13
Speaker 2: unfavorable for the Liverpool fans, and those guys got off too.
34:18
Speaker 2: So now we have a place where the inquest, the
34:21
Speaker 2: government inquest, is saying these people are unlawfully killed, so
34:24
Speaker 2: someone's criminally responsible, and the courts are saying the people
34:27
Speaker 2: who are responsible are not criminally responsible, So nobody is
34:32
Speaker 2: liable anymore. Nobody's responsible officially.
34:35
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the final well, who knows it's a
34:38
Speaker 3: final report because they seem to still be happening. But
34:40
Speaker 3: last year, in twenty twenty five, an Independent Office for
34:46
Speaker 3: Police Conduct report came out and basically reiterated that nobody
34:52
Speaker 3: was going to be held like, actually held responsible. You know,
34:56
Speaker 3: they it wasn't as cold hearted as it sounds, they
34:59
Speaker 3: were basically saying like, hey, this is thirty six years later.
35:03
Speaker 3: All twelve of these officers are either have either passed
35:07
Speaker 3: on or have long since retired. And I got the
35:11
Speaker 3: sense it was like, can we can we put this
35:14
Speaker 3: all behind us now and not throw these old cops
35:16
Speaker 3: in jail.
35:18
Speaker 2: Essentially, But yeah, I think the families were like, well,
35:20
Speaker 2: they're still responsible even though they're old. And the reason
35:23
Speaker 2: that they got old because you took fourteen years to
35:25
Speaker 2: conduct this investigation.
35:27
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure, let's take a break.
35:29
Speaker 2: Chuck, and we'll come back and finish up.
35:31
Speaker 4: Huh. Yeah, let's do it, okay, Chuck.
35:54
Speaker 2: So not just the hip report, but a bunch of
35:56
Speaker 2: different reports basically showed quite clearly that the police response,
36:00
Speaker 2: the emergency response was just terrible. And you talked a
36:04
Speaker 2: lot about what the I guess the cluster with the ambulances,
36:07
Speaker 2: but the police as well were essentially disorganized about its
36:12
Speaker 2: disorganized as a group of police can be. And the
36:15
Speaker 2: reason why is because again David Duckinfield was just out
36:20
Speaker 2: of his depth through and through even though he was
36:22
Speaker 2: commanding the match. And I said that he was a
36:25
Speaker 2: rather arrogant type and he was. But in twenty fifteen,
36:29
Speaker 2: for the first time in decades, twenty five plus years,
36:35
Speaker 2: as these reports started coming out and public opinion changed,
36:38
Speaker 2: when he was tried, eventually he admitted. After seven days
36:44
Speaker 2: of intense grilling on the stand, he finally basically broke
36:48
Speaker 2: down and admitted like, yes, he was responsible for the
36:52
Speaker 2: death of those ninety six people because the ninety seventh
36:55
Speaker 2: hadn't died yet, and that he froze under pressure. This
36:58
Speaker 2: is a complete reversal of what he'd been saying the
37:00
Speaker 2: whole time, Chuck like he'd been saying it was the
37:04
Speaker 2: Liverpool fans. They were drunk. They were drunk. These guys
37:06
Speaker 2: have been saying it for decades. Now, all of a sudden,
37:07
Speaker 2: the guy in charge says, no, I failed and people
37:11
Speaker 2: died because I was not qualified to command that match.
37:15
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, you hear something like that as a
37:18
Speaker 3: family member of a victim, and it's I don't know
37:21
Speaker 3: how that feels, actually, I don't know if that would
37:23
Speaker 3: provide some solace to finally hear the truth, yeah, or
37:26
Speaker 3: if it just like re angers you all over again
37:28
Speaker 3: after all these years.
37:29
Speaker 2: Probably both.
37:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of mixed emotion about it,
37:34
Speaker 3: but at the very least that finally happened. I mean,
37:37
Speaker 3: there is something about somebody finally admitting something like and
37:41
Speaker 3: not just continuing to gaslight the world and the victims themselves,
37:45
Speaker 3: So I guess that is something. It really changed stadium
37:49
Speaker 3: safety and security after this, the Taylor Report. They basically said, hey,
37:54
Speaker 3: no more of these standing room only things. You have
37:57
Speaker 3: to have seats for everybody that's in there. I think
38:00
Speaker 3: it was all the clubs in the top two divisions
38:04
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four had to move to that, and
38:06
Speaker 3: then they established the Ground Sports Ground Safety Authority after that,
38:12
Speaker 3: you know, to oversee like all of these football stadiums
38:16
Speaker 3: over there.
38:17
Speaker 4: Right.
38:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a major turning point, not just in
38:20
Speaker 2: safety at football matches, but in the game of football
38:23
Speaker 2: itself because this happened to coincide with England making it
38:26
Speaker 2: into the semi finals in the World Cup in nineteen
38:29
Speaker 2: ninety and you know a lot of people who had
38:31
Speaker 2: been former football fans were now caught up in the
38:34
Speaker 2: spirit again. So that brought a lot of people back
38:37
Speaker 2: to being fans of pro football. Those upgrades that the
38:43
Speaker 2: clubs and the stadiums were required to undertake meant that
38:46
Speaker 2: they needed to up ticket prices, higher ticket prices, like
38:50
Speaker 2: you said, kind of change the social strata of fans.
38:53
Speaker 2: It got more expensive, it got more business like soccer
38:57
Speaker 2: changed almost directly as a result of the Hillsborough tragedy.
39:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that, you know, when the Premier League came
39:04
Speaker 3: on in ninety two, like that was that was a
39:07
Speaker 3: real game changer. Like the amount of money that is
39:11
Speaker 3: spent in the Premier League on players, on the teams,
39:14
Speaker 3: on I think there's the and I'll probably get some
39:18
Speaker 3: of this wrong because I don't call the Premier League,
39:19
Speaker 3: but my good friends do all of them almost And
39:22
Speaker 3: they were talking about the you know, you get relegated
39:26
Speaker 3: if you don't I guess when, or I guess if
39:28
Speaker 3: you're in the bottom of whatever category and you don't
39:31
Speaker 3: make that you don't win that game to stay in
39:35
Speaker 3: the Premier League, you get relegated down to the lower league.
39:38
Speaker 3: And so that game to see who gets relegated and
39:40
Speaker 3: who doesn't is called the most expensive game in sports
39:44
Speaker 3: or something like that, just because of like all the
39:47
Speaker 3: money that comes with or that you miss out on
39:50
Speaker 3: with being relegated or that comes with staying in the
39:52
Speaker 3: Premier League.
39:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys get paid like thousands and thousands of
39:56
Speaker 2: pounds a year to play, some of them way more
39:59
Speaker 2: than that.
40:00
Speaker 3: That even the first joke of the episode.
40:03
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Keir Starmer because he is under fire
40:07
Speaker 2: right now. That family or the organization of victims Families,
40:11
Speaker 2: they haven't gone away. They organized and they're still very
40:14
Speaker 2: vocal and one of the things that they have been
40:16
Speaker 2: doing is putting pressure on Kere Starmer and his labor
40:19
Speaker 2: government because he made a direct promise that he would
40:23
Speaker 2: see through the Hillsborough Law, which would it was pretty
40:27
Speaker 2: important legislation, or it would be if they get it
40:30
Speaker 2: passed through.
40:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the whole point, it seems to be
40:34
Speaker 3: of the Hillsborough Law would be to enforce and it's
40:38
Speaker 3: weird that you have the law to do this, but
40:40
Speaker 3: to enforce truth when cops are dealing with something like
40:44
Speaker 3: this and basically like almost like a whistleblower thing like hey,
40:50
Speaker 3: you can come out and tell the truth, Like you
40:51
Speaker 3: don't like you're obliged to tell the truth. You don't
40:54
Speaker 3: have to go along with this narrative that gets passed
40:57
Speaker 3: down and that loyalty that you were kind of talking
40:59
Speaker 3: about earlier on I don't I'm that didn't like really
41:03
Speaker 3: dig into the law. I don't know if they're like
41:04
Speaker 3: protections or anything involved, but that law was is hasn't
41:09
Speaker 3: been passed yet, which is really frustrating.
41:12
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not just cops too, but like any public
41:15
Speaker 2: official has to tell the truth and when it pertains
41:18
Speaker 2: to their work, which actually it is sad that you
41:21
Speaker 2: would need to make a law, but that would be
41:23
Speaker 2: revolutionary to have a law like that in any country,
41:26
Speaker 2: you know.
41:27
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think the hang up maybe or one
41:29
Speaker 3: of the hang ups is I five, And we did
41:32
Speaker 3: a pretty good episode on that at one point that
41:34
Speaker 3: I think Kyle helped us with that one too. But
41:36
Speaker 3: unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems like I five
41:39
Speaker 3: is hanging it up because they're like, hey, listen, like
41:42
Speaker 3: we deal in lies and subterfuge, like that's our bag,
41:47
Speaker 3: so we can't be included in this.
41:49
Speaker 4: That is our bag. Baby, That's right.
41:52
Speaker 3: I missed it. I missed the baby.
41:56
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
41:57
Speaker 3: I got nothing else, just to an awful tragedy, like
42:01
Speaker 3: I said. I remember this was right after spring break
42:04
Speaker 3: my senior year. I came home and I had been
42:07
Speaker 3: a regular Sports Illustrated subscriber since I was like nine
42:11
Speaker 3: years old and this was I think the cover issue
42:14
Speaker 3: even and that's where I saw those brutal pictures. If
42:18
Speaker 3: you're into a it's not like super hard to watch
42:22
Speaker 3: other than you know, it's about the tragedy, but they
42:24
Speaker 3: don't show like truly truly awful things. There's that twelve
42:27
Speaker 3: minute documentary from The Guardian that you sent that really
42:31
Speaker 3: encapsulates it, although there are some body bags and stuff
42:35
Speaker 3: like that, so I guess there should be a trigger
42:37
Speaker 3: warning there, Yeah, for sure, But thankfully there weren't. Like,
42:41
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't see any actual video footage of
42:44
Speaker 3: the fences and the people, like, I don't know if
42:47
Speaker 3: that exists.
42:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't know either. The photographs
42:51
Speaker 2: definitely do. I'd be surprised if there wasn't any footage, So, you.
42:54
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, I wonder if that photographer won an award
42:59
Speaker 3: for that work he did.
43:00
Speaker 2: You should have, especially if he was one of the
43:02
Speaker 2: people helping, because you know, so many fans helped, you know,
43:07
Speaker 2: try to render aid to the people on the field.
43:12
Speaker 2: One thing we probably should mention that that we didn't
43:15
Speaker 2: is that in twenty twelve, the United Kingdom government, through
43:19
Speaker 2: Prime Minister David Cameron at the time, apologized to the
43:23
Speaker 2: victim's families for the double injustice of the loss of
43:26
Speaker 2: life and the blame that was put on Liverpool fans.
43:30
Speaker 2: So at least they had that kernel of something. Yeah, Solace,
43:34
Speaker 2: maybe Salace, thank you a quantum of it.
43:37
Speaker 3: If you want to know more, you're just throwing around
43:40
Speaker 3: British pop culture references. Who knew that James Bond and
43:43
Speaker 3: Austin Powers were going to make an appearance.
43:44
Speaker 2: I'm going to start on my own sitcom called Suddenly
43:47
Speaker 2: Angle File, but it's gonna be spelled like that. I
43:51
Speaker 2: just Mangled Anglo file.
43:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, or black Adder, that's another good title.
43:55
Speaker 2: Sure, since Chuck made a joke about Blackadder has foretold
43:59
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, it's time for listener mail.
44:04
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this. I screwed up on that
44:08
Speaker 3: Van Go episode about the movie. Hey, guys, just finished
44:10
Speaker 3: the Visa Bango episode. Want to let you know the
44:13
Speaker 3: movie with Willem Dafoe is called at Eternity's Gate. This
44:17
Speaker 3: is something I remember now but I forgot at the time.
44:20
Speaker 3: You mustn't have seen it. But we're aware of it.
44:22
Speaker 3: More importantly, you must see Loving Vincent, and I think
44:25
Speaker 3: that's what I said.
44:26
Speaker 4: It was called.
44:27
Speaker 3: That's the movie that's animated using sixty five thousand paintings
44:30
Speaker 3: done in the style of Ago by one hundred Polish painters.
44:33
Speaker 2: Wow.
44:34
Speaker 3: It's visually amazing and incredibly well done. And the soundtrack
44:37
Speaker 3: includes the song from Don McClean. I think we talked
44:41
Speaker 3: about it in the episode of Vincent Storry Storry Night
44:44
Speaker 3: beautifully compliments the movie highly recommended. My wife and are
44:48
Speaker 3: huge fans of the show. Have been listening to every
44:51
Speaker 3: episode since almost the beginning. Keep up the amazing work
44:54
Speaker 3: and don't let those naysayers who complain about your sidebars.
44:58
Speaker 3: That's one of the things we enjoy most. And that
45:00
Speaker 3: is from Brian and Alexis in Bethlehem, PA.
45:04
Speaker 2: Nice Thanks Brian and Alexis. We appreciate that, Chuck. Since
45:08
Speaker 2: you stepped up and took a correction, I feel like
45:10
Speaker 2: I should admit to one. Okay, in are Lamon's short stuff,
45:17
Speaker 2: you mean Lamon, that's part of it. The bigger part
45:20
Speaker 2: is that I said Greece is an island. I even
45:23
Speaker 2: went back and double checked, and everybody's right. It is
45:26
Speaker 2: not an island at all.
45:28
Speaker 3: I didn't catch you saying that.
45:29
Speaker 2: So it's like Germany being landlocked. Now my geography skills
45:34
Speaker 2: are starting to match up with my math skills.
45:36
Speaker 3: I wish I would have caught that, because I remember
45:38
Speaker 3: very distinctly that you could take a train there.
45:41
Speaker 2: Well, in the episode, you said, yeah, yeah, it sure
45:44
Speaker 2: is an island. I swear to God it's an island.
45:46
Speaker 4: Josh, that's right.
45:47
Speaker 3: I doubled down verbatim.
45:50
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thanks to Brian and Alexis. And if
45:54
Speaker 2: you want to be like Brian and Alexis, you can
45:56
Speaker 2: get in touch with this too via email at Stuff.
45:59
Speaker 1: Podcast That I Heard, Stuff You Should Know is a
46:04
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows. H