"Five Minutes of Fire": Punk Rock, Begin, Reagan, Palestine

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, This is Caleb Grays from Norman, Oklahoma, and
<v Speaker 1>you are listening to the greatest podcast of all time.
<v Speaker 2>I'm spiking the football here. It's the Sureley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the
<v Speaker 2>Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes
<v Speaker 2>of Fire. We are here talking about the lyrics of
<v Speaker 2>We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering
<v Speaker 2>only five minutes at a time, which is about the
<v Speaker 2>link of the song, so it works out kind of nicely.
<v Speaker 2>So please join us as we dive into some new
<v Speaker 2>lyrics today.
<v Speaker 1>All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
<v Speaker 1>going to be covering today.
<v Speaker 2>Punk rock, Begon, Reagan, Palestine.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, tell me about punk rock.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, this is the first one. I'm like, oh, I
<v Speaker 2>remember that. So punk rock started in the mid seventies.
<v Speaker 2>You had these proto punk bands like MC five, who
<v Speaker 2>had actually gotten record labels to endorse them, but then
<v Speaker 2>like their chance to their concerts include MFR, which got
<v Speaker 2>them in a lot of trouble. But they were a
<v Speaker 2>big inspiration for other bands who were like, we're tired
<v Speaker 2>of the way music is f the establishment f thisf that.
<v Speaker 2>And so then you get this club in New York
<v Speaker 2>City that you probably heard of called CBGB's. You know
<v Speaker 2>what CBGB stands for, I do not. It stands for
<v Speaker 2>Country Bluegrass Blues. What. Yeah, So Hilly Crystal started the
<v Speaker 2>club in nineteen seventy three and his only rule was
<v Speaker 2>you had to play your own original music. That place
<v Speaker 2>and Max's Kansas City. Somehow with all of that though,
<v Speaker 2>end up being the two places that the punk rockers,
<v Speaker 2>although they weren't really calling themselves that at this point,
<v Speaker 2>started to do stuff. You of course, in New York
<v Speaker 2>City have the Ramones. They made their debut performance at
<v Speaker 2>CBGB's in nineteen seventy four. Within a few months, they
<v Speaker 2>had done seventy four sets rise each of the sets
<v Speaker 2>was only seventeen minutes long, and they had a group
<v Speaker 2>that would play with them that was formed by Richard Hell.
<v Speaker 2>Group was called Television. Television actually helped them build the
<v Speaker 2>stage that they had at CBGB's like hammers and nails,
<v Speaker 2>oh wow. And so Television and the Ramones were not
<v Speaker 2>super popular in the US, but were a big influence
<v Speaker 2>on UK bands. And so you had guys like Iggy
<v Speaker 2>Pop and the Stooges in the Velvet underground. So what
<v Speaker 2>was happening was the guys in New York that were
<v Speaker 2>into different music were listening to those guys, and then
<v Speaker 2>the guys in the UK were listening to the Ramones
<v Speaker 2>and television, and they were like feeding off of each other, right,
<v Speaker 2>Like they weren't as popular in their home place as
<v Speaker 2>they were across the pond. Richard Hell was the guy
<v Speaker 2>who kind of started with the ripped T shirts and
<v Speaker 2>aggressive haircuts. That was really just probably because he couldn't
<v Speaker 2>afford it, you know. He came onto the stage one
<v Speaker 2>night with clothes pins holding his clothes together, and some
<v Speaker 2>guy from the UK was like, yeah, screw this fashion
<v Speaker 2>industry thing, and it was really just probably to keep
<v Speaker 2>his clothes from falling off. Wow, but that's how you
<v Speaker 2>get safety pins and clothes For the punk scene. It's
<v Speaker 2>just a feeding frenzy off of each other in this
<v Speaker 2>very underground sea. But then nineteen seventy six there is
<v Speaker 2>this tipping point and suddenly the world becomes aware of
<v Speaker 2>punk music and it builds and builds, and then in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventy eight, Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols spits
<v Speaker 2>on a guy and it becomes a worldwide phenomena. Tell
<v Speaker 2>me about Began, okay.
<v Speaker 1>Menachem Began was born in nineteen thirteen in modern day Belarus,
<v Speaker 1>but in nineteen thirty nine the Nazis murdered his father.
<v Speaker 1>Now he was a Jewish Man, so in nineteen forty
<v Speaker 1>three he decided he's going to move to Palestine. Began
<v Speaker 1>wanted to force the British out of Palestine. He was
<v Speaker 1>on wanted posters. This guy was like seen as a
<v Speaker 1>terrorist by the British government.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>He became the leader of the Lionised military group urgon
<v Speaker 1>the British left, turning Palestine over to the UN, who
<v Speaker 1>then declared in nineteen forty seven this to be the
<v Speaker 1>Jewish state of Israel. In nineteen seventy seven, Began was
<v Speaker 1>elected Prime Minister of Israel. In nineteen seventy nine, he
<v Speaker 1>led the Egypt Israel peace Treaty with Egyptian President Onwar Sadat.
<v Speaker 1>Now this is the first time that an Arab country
<v Speaker 1>recognized Israel. In nineteen eighty one, Saddam Hussein threatened Israel
<v Speaker 1>and was building a nuclear reactor. Began with the Israeli
<v Speaker 1>Air Force took it out, knock him began, passed away
<v Speaker 1>March third, nineteen ninety two.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Jason, can you tell me who was president in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty five? Ronald Reagan, the actor. Okay, this is,
<v Speaker 2>of course Ronald Reagan, the face of politics for the
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighties. He was born in February nineteen eleven to
<v Speaker 2>Jack Reagan and Nellie Wilson now Willie Nelson now his
<v Speaker 2>dad Jack was a populist Democrat, and as it turns out, Reagan,
<v Speaker 2>despite the fact what we know about him in our
<v Speaker 2>history experience with him, he actually tried to join the
<v Speaker 2>Communist Party whenever he was what whenever he was a
<v Speaker 2>young man, but they wouldn't let him in because they
<v Speaker 2>thought he was quote unquote too dim. And so obviously
<v Speaker 2>his politics changed over time, and in nineteen eighty he
<v Speaker 2>beat the incumbent Jimmy Carter. This was during the hostage crisis,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, I'm going to come in and I'm
<v Speaker 2>going to fix this, and he did, and he was
<v Speaker 2>probably one of the most popular at the time presidents
<v Speaker 2>in history. He was in office from January twentieth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty one to January twentieth nineteen eighty nine. Okay, tell
<v Speaker 2>me about Palestine.
<v Speaker 1>The Palestine Liberation Organization that is internationally known as the
<v Speaker 1>Official Representative of the Palestinian People was founded in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty four and initially sought to establish an Arab state
<v Speaker 1>over the entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine, advocating
<v Speaker 1>the elimination of the state of Israel. In March nineteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy seven, Jimmy Carter spoke of a need for the
<v Speaker 1>Palestinian homeland and wanted Palestine to participate in the peace process.
<v Speaker 1>Israel rejected the idea of the PLO participating in peace talks,
<v Speaker 1>and that battle still rages on today.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, guys, that does it for today's episode. Join us
<v Speaker 2>next time for five minutes of fire.