Not Your Century

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1950: "Peanuts" Debuts Oct 02, 2019

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"Good ol' Charlie Brown," a little boy sitting on a curb says as a soon-to-be-familiar character with a round head strolls pass. "How I hate him!" The angst-filled, psychologically fraught newspaper comic has arrived.

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1964: Free Speech Movement Born Oct 01, 2019

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A former grad student sits in a car at UC-Berkeley but he's not going anywhere. He's under arrest, the car is surrounded by fellow protesters, and Mario Savio is standing on the roof giving a speech. It's the first hours of the Free Speech Movement.

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1982: Extra Deadly Tylenol Sep 30, 2019

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Seven people die in the Chicago suburbs after taking Extra Strength Tylenol laced with cyanide. The murders are never solved. The case, which terrorized America, changed the way medicine and food are packaged.

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1983: Drug and Alcohol Crowd at the White House! Sep 27, 2019

Show notes

That's what Interior Secretary James Watt called the audience for the Beach Boys when he banned them from a July Fourth concert at the National Mall. But whoops: The Reagans dug the nostalgia act. Originally aired June 13, 2019.

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1923: General Theory of Relativity Confirmed Sep 26, 2019

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You'll be glad to know Albert Einstein was right. Astronomers at the Lick Observatory in San Jose confirmed it by examining photos of a 1922 eclipse. How did that confirm Einstein? We asked an astronomer at the Lick Observatory. Originally published April 12, 2019.

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1995: Talking With the Unabomber Sep 25, 2019

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"I'm just very fortunate that I'm not dead," UC Berkeley professor Tom Tyler said after receiving a letter from the Unabomber. It was his manifesto, not a mail bomb. And Tyler wrote back. Originally published July 3, 2019.

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1905: "I Am Poisoned!" Sep 24, 2019

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Jane Lathrop Stanford, co-founder of the university, survives a poisoning attempt at her palatial home in San Francisco. Devastated, she sails to Hawaii, vowing never to return to her house. She doesn't. A second poisoning kills her—a murder that Stanford's president covers up. Originally published March 1, 2019.

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1967: Ballet Superstars Busted Sep 23, 2019

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A complaint in the Haight leads to the cops breaking up a hippie pot party. Among those under arrest: Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn. Rudy pouts and tells reporters, "You're all children!" Originally published July 11, 2019.

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1989: The FBI's Gay Spying Program Sep 20, 2019

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The Chronicle's Randy Shilts reports that the FBI conducted exhaustive and apparently illegal surveillance of the gay-rights movement from the '50s to the '70s, despite never finding evidence of any subversive activity or crime.

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1952: Charlie Chaplin Exiled Sep 19, 2019

Show notes

Once one of America's most beloved movie stars, the great comedian was now being hounded by the FBI for his leftist politics and by the media for a series of personal scandals. Sailing for London, he learns he's not welcome to return to the U.S.

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