Episode 557: Mount St. Helens: Horror in the Northwest

Explicit content warning

02/12/21 • 87 min

1 Listener

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at the largest volcanic eruption in the modern history of the United States, the eruption of Mount St. Helens. This volcano started grumbling and causing a superstring of earthquakes in March of 1980, but on May 18, the volcano erupted. Two hundred and thirty square miles of forest were destroyed instantly as the equivalent of 1500 Hiroshima level nuclear bombs went off. Even though it was being watch closely by volcanologists, photographers, and the world, it’s violent explosion surprised almost everyone. Luckily a scientist who died in the eruption convinced the government to keep people away; this action is thought to have saved as many as a thousand lives. The destruction was inconceivable, but it may be in forms you weren’t expecting. For example, much of it was a tsunami like flow of water as called a Lahar that turned 46 billion gallons of glacial melt into several rivers of cement. The ash plume circled the globe and erased all geological features. People in the Pacific Northwest remember this very vividly. After all, Mount St. Helens was completely transformed by the explosion, and dozens died in this cataclysm. Visit Our Sources: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-st-helens/1980-cataclysmic-eruption?qt-science_support_page_related_con=2#qt-science_support_page_related_con https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/us/mount-st-helens-facts-eruption-trnd/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/103/ https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/stratoguide/helenfact.html https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/624139/mount-st-helens-facts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYla6q3is6w

Previous Episode

Episode 556: Patty Hearst: Victim or Vicious?

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we hit you with a little urban guerrilla true crime and look at the kidnapping, crimes, and domestic terrorism or Patty Hearst. Patricia Hearst is the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. In 1974, she was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. While she was with them, she helped them rob a couple banks, shot up a sporting goods store, and made homemade bombs. Was she abused, drugged, and raped to become a victim-participant, or did she willingly join forces? Patty Hearst was born to a very wealthy family, obviously, but she was nowhere near granddaddy rich. She lived a normal life and eventually went to college at UC Berkeley to study art history. Meanwhile, a man named Donald DeFreeze was starting a terrorist group called the SLA. Their goal was to fight for the poor in America. Or something. After a few months, Hearst released recordings of herself saying she had joined the cause and shortly after that, she was seen on video footage in a bank robbery. The SLA killed some people, robbed some stuff, and demanded hundreds of millions of dollars to feed all the poor in American. Hearst’s dad managed to get two million, and the food delivery was a disaster. Eventually, this one got crazy. There was a Waco style shoot out between the feds and the SLA while their house burned. There was a nationwide manhunt by the FBI to find Hearst, and then when she was arrested, the trial was a circus. Was this a wild case of Stockholm Syndrome, or was it just a rich girl sowing her wild oats? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/patty-hearst https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/patty-hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/patty-hearst-kidnapped https://www.npr.org/2016/08/03/488373982/whose-side-was-she-on-american-heiress-revisits-patty-hearst-s-kidnapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/guerrilla-patricia-campbell-hearst/ Bank Robbery Video: https://youtu.be/xDPyT-6lh8E https://youtu.be/N17n8yleZKY

Next Episode

Episode 558: Underground Railroad: Light in American Darkness

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the history of the Underground Railroad. Some people estimate that this unofficial network of abolitionists helped 100,000 slaves escape to Canada. Key figures such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, and John Brown helped this movement grow and served as a beacon of hope for millions of American black slaves. The Underground Railroad was of course neither underground nor a railroad, but it did use railroad terminology to help code what they were talking about. In fact, everything from the roles people played to the religious songs that slaves would sing on the plantation served a purpose. Some songs would give directions North and others warnings to nearby slaves on the run, all in the guise of religious music. Pretty ingenious. There was no central leader or even a formal group that was the Underground Railroad. Instead, it was just a whole lot of like-minded individuals who wanted human lives to matter and parents a chance to see their children grow in safety and freedom. Some of the stories of these people are pretty amazing, ballsy, and inspirational, so you want to give this one a listen. Visit Our Sources: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/underground-railroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Underground_Railroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anti-Slavery_Standard#Editors https://www.history.com/news/underground-railroad-mexico-escaped-slaves