[00:15] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:18] Jessica: And I'm Jessica and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We went through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:26] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: On my way over here, Jessica, I thought of one thing that you would appreciate. I was on the subway yesterday, and I saw from the other side of the tracks, right? So on the opposite track, I saw a huge rat, I mean, the size of Alfie, running not on the track, Jessica, on the platform. The ripple effect that it had with the people. And I mean, I'm at a very safe distance on the other side, but just watching everyone sort of leap one by one like they were doing the wave. It was crazy, crazy.

[01:10] Jessica: That is so genuinely appalling and disgusting and hilarious. At least it wasn't you. Exactly.

[01:25] Meg: I mean, I was nervous someone who was going to accidentally jump onto the tracks.

[01:28] Jessica: That would have been preferable to touching one of those giant mutant cat rats.

[01:33] Meg: Rats. Yeah. So that's what I got.

[01:37] Jessica: It's pretty hair raising. Stomach churning.

[01:41] Meg: Are you ready for part two?

[01:43] Jessica: You said speaking of stomach churning. Exactly. Yes, I am.

[01:48] Meg: It's time to wrap this really sad, tragic story up. So we're going to do part two of the Central Park Five. Okay. I do have an engagement question for you this week.

[02:14] Jessica: Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

[02:15] Meg: I thought you might be. Do you remember when we had, when the school would tell us what to do to avoid being raped?

[02:28] Jessica: Run.

[02:29] Meg: But seriously, do you remember what the advice was? Because it wasn't really self defense class.

[02:34] Jessica: It was like, put your keys between your fingers.

[02:37] Meg: There you go. That's good.

[02:38] Jessica: Run.

[02:39] Meg: Walk in the middle.

[02:40] Jessica: Walk in the middle. Yes. Even walk in the middle of the road. I don't know if I learned this from Nightingale, but cab drivers are your friends. Like, go out into the middle of the road and hail even if someone's in it. Like, get in a cab.

[02:54] Meg: Oh, I don't know that on.

[02:55] Jessica: That might have just been my own brilliance. I don't know.

[02:58] Meg: What about screaming fire?

[03:00] Jessica: Screaming fire. Throwing your wallet and running.

[03:04] Meg: I love that one. I told Alice that when she was little.

[03:09] Jessica: Yeah, that's all I can remember. But I don't remember it being specifically anti rape behavior as anti attack behavior. But nonetheless, it was all the same.

[03:22] Meg: Well, the fire thing

[03:24] Jessica: I was always very upset because I couldn't get my keys to sort of stay straight in my hand, and I was like, well, I'm a goner.

[03:32] Meg: What I remember about screaming fire was that if you did scream something, like, someone is attacking me, or help, that people wouldn't want to get involved.

[03:43] Jessica: Yeah.

[03:44] Meg: And that if you screamed fire, people run towards the fire.

[03:48] Jessica: They run towards the fire?

[03:49] Meg: Curiosity.

[03:51] Jessica: Oh, look at that. Looky-loos. Interesting.

[03:54] Meg: Dark.

[03:56] Jessica: It's dark, but when has that ever stopped you?

[03:59] Meg: All right, this is it.

[04:01] Jessica: I'm ready.

[04:01] Meg: And again, this is part two of the Central Park Five story, but we're actually going to start a little bit earlier. We're going to start a few months before the attack. You ready?

[04:15] Jessica: I am so ready.

[04:17] Meg: Around lunchtime on Wednesday, September 21, 1988, Jackie Herbach was sitting in a pew at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue at 90th Street, right across from Central Park. She thought she was alone in the church until a young man tapped her on the shoulder and asked her for the time. The guy made her nervous, so she got up to leave, but he came up behind her, put a knife to her neck and dragged her to a staircase. He choked her and then told her to take off her shirt. She begged him not to rape her and then told him she had a venereal disease. That scared him and he ran off. That same guy later attacked and raped a woman practicing Tai Chi in Central Park. That time, he was chased off by a Good Samaritan. His victim noticed he had fresh stitches on his chin.

[05:15] Jessica: Oh, my goodness.

[05:16] Meg: And the detectives called around to the hospitals and were able to identify him as Matias Reyes, an 18 year old who worked at a bodega on 102nd and Third. But the case faltered and he was never arrested. Trisha Meili was attacked in Central Park two days after the Tai Chi woman. And in the following months, Reyes assaulted and raped and in one case killed eight more women in the East 90s and became known as the East Side Slasher. Did you ever hear?

[05:52] Jessica: I remember that. Yes.

[05:53] Meg: Okay.

[05:54] Jessica: Yes.

[05:55] Meg: Finally, on August 5, 1989, after raping a woman in her apartment on East 91st between Lexington and 3rd, right around the corner from where I grew up.

[06:08] Jessica: Yes.

[06:09] Meg: Reyes was subdued by her doorman and arrested. Michael Sheehan was assigned to the case.

[06:17] Jessica: That bastard.

[06:18] Meg: Callback Episode 29: A Very Special Episode.

[06:23] Jessica: The worst.

[06:24] Meg: Well, I mean, we kind of liked him in that story, but he does not do well in this story. In addition to eyewitnesses, Reyes was linked to the rapes and murder through DNA evidence and was sentenced to 33 years to life. On November 1, 1991, Judge Thomas Galligan said, quote, "it is incomprehensible that any human being would conceive of, let alone commit such terrible acts. If Mr. Reyes is ever at liberty, then civilized people are at risk." By the way, his signature was to try to blind his victims by stabbing them in their eyes. Fuck's sake. So now let's back up a bit. The week when Trisha Meili was attacked, the week of April 19, 1989, 28 rapes were reported in the city. 24 of the victims were Black or Latina, but the New York City papers barely mentioned those attacks, if at all. By contrast, the assault on the Central Park Jogger, Tricia, was on the front page of every newspaper in town and soon on the cover of national magazines as well; People, Newsweek, Time. The Central Park Five, those boys who we talked about last week, their guilt was never questioned by any of these publications. Journalists referred to the boys frequently as wolfpack, and the boys were quoted by the police as saying they were wilding. And while the term wilin existed before April 19, it was street slang for, like, cutting up, but not for anything violent. The police overheard some of the teenagers in the holding cell that night singing Tone Loc's song Wild Thing. oh, stop it. And misheard it as wilding. Once the police fed this term to the press with their definition of it, it was treated as fact. And millions of New Yorkers quaked in their boots at the idea of packs of marauding black teenage boys swarming the streets eager to attack.

[08:37] Jessica: So basically, Tone Loc has a lot to answer for. Does he? No, not at all.

[08:45] Meg: The boys were referred to as bestial. Savage, bestial, I say bestial. All right. Brutal, bloodthirsty, evil and mutant. Mutant. Pete Hamill, who again, I revere wrote in the New York Post very unfortunately quote "this was a savage little pack that came out of the darkness of a spring night, eventually to take what they couldn't get through work or money or love, the body of a woman. They were coming downtown from a world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference and ignorance. They were coming from a land with no fathers. They were coming from the anarchic province of the poor and driven by a collective fury brimming with the rippling energies of youth. Their minds teeming with the violent images of the streets and the movies. They had only one goal to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape. The enemies were rich, the enemies were white.

[10:01] Jessica: That is the most shocking non reporting. If Pete Hamill were clairvoyant, maybe he would know what movies, that's the most unspeakable.

[10:14] Meg: He just let his imagination go wild and it went right into a place of just like, obvious racism based on none of the things that he said were actually true about these particular boys at all.

[10:28] Jessica: No, it's completely sickening.

[10:29] Meg: Donald Trump took out full page ads in all four of the city's daily papers. "Bring back the death penalty" for the, quote, "roving bands of wild criminals." Death penalty for children.

[10:44] Jessica: Donald Trump.

[10:45] Meg: I know whatever we don't like.

[10:47] Jessica: Everytime that there's a moment where you could be really despicable, he manages to rise from the sewer.

[10:53] Meg: Ed Koch called them "alleged monsters."

[10:59] Jessica: All right, Ed's trying really hard there.

[11:03] Meg: In the meantime, after twelve days in a coma, Trisha Meili began to wak up. And she made remarkable progress in spite of her head injuries. By late May, she was able to form new memories, but the last thing she remembered of the events of April 19 was a 5:00 P.M. phone call to a friend. She had zero memories of the assault. Linda Fairstein was the prosecutor who was the head of sex crimes, and she assigned Elizabeth Lederer to the case. We talked about Elizabeth a little bit last week, she videotaped the confessions, and we remember Linda Fairstein because she had a lot to do with the Robert Chambers trial. Indeed, from the very beginning, there were serious problems with this case. The prosecutors decided to try the kids in two separate groups because some of the confessions contradicted each other. Which you would think, okay, if they contradict each other, then maybe we have a problem here. But instead they're like, we have a solution. We'll just try them in different groups so the juries won't hear anything that will confuse them. Right.

[12:10] Jessica: I'm in shock.

[12:12] Meg: Wait for this. The DNA of the semen from Meili's rape kit didn't match any of the kids. Quote, "I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach." Lederer told a colleague. What? I know. It's like, maybe they didn't do it then.

[12:28] Jessica: Well, at that point, they need their conviction.

[12:32] Meg: Right. It went too far. The East Side Slasher's DNA was available at the time, but none of the detectives, including Mike Sheehan, who was involved in the investigations of both the Central Park Jogger and the East Side Slasher, thought to compare it to Meili's rape kit sample. The answer was there all the time. Meili lost 75% of her blood, but not a drop was found on any of the boys. In fact, there was zero scientific evidence that connected the boys to her attack. Zero. And the timeline didn't match. Their alibi was that they were watching the other attacks happen elsewhere in the park, and they had all the correct details about those attacks. All the prosecution had on them was the confessions. But that was enough. Some jury members were baffled by the prosecution's case and were convinced that detectives were lying on the stand. But the concept of a false confession was just not very well known. The boys were all convicted of assault and rape. Judge Thomas Gallagin, remember the same judge who would eventually sentence Matias Reyes. So it's all the same people who are dealing with both these cases and no one's connecting the dots. He sentenced Antron, Raymond, Yusef and Kevin to 5 to 10 years in a youth correctional facility. Korey, who was 16 at the time of the assault, was sentenced to 6 to 15 years in an adult prison. 16 year old boy.

[14:08] Jessica: Why?

[14:09] Meg: And I will not if I start talking about all the horrible things that happened to him when he was in an adult prison, I will lose it. But you can imagine.

[14:19] Jessica: Yes. Why did he?

[14:21] Meg: Because 16 is the dividing point.

[14:26] Jessica: I thought it was 18. Oh, my God.

[14:27] Meg: Not then. It was there at one of these adult prisons in 2001 when Korey ran into Matias Reyes. Reyes approached him in the yard and apologized for a fight that they'd had years ago at Rikers Island. Corey said, yeah, no problem, I don't remember what you're talking about. But then they ended up having a friendly chat. After that Reyes told one of the prison employees that he, in fact, was the one who had committed the rape and attempted murder of the jogger and that he had acted alone. To back up his story he gave all kinds of details and then they checked the DNA and it was a match. After a thorough re-investigation by the FBI and a review of the trials by the New York Supreme Court, the convictions of all of the Central Park Five were vacated. All of the men, because now they're men, they grew up in jail, had already served their full terms when they were exonerated, except for Korey, and he was released in 2002.

[15:35] Jessica: How many years did he serve?

[15:37] Meg: They went away in '90.

[15:39] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[15:40] Meg: In spite of the overwhelming evidence, many people still believe in their guilt to this day, including Linda Fairstein, who insists that Reyes was simply the 6th attacker.

[15:54] Jessica: Oh, for frigg's sake.

[15:56] Meg: Quote "I think Reyes ran with those kids." What? She thinks. Well, they didn't run with each other. She just made that up. There's zero evidence of that.

[16:09] Jessica: Well, she and Pete Hamill can get a room together.

[16:12] Meg: Right? Michael Sheehan was furious that the men were exonerated. Quote, "this lunatic concocts this wild story and these people fall for it." And of course, Trump, of course, won't admit he was wrong. In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress. And in 2014, the city settled the case for $41 million. I think it is what's been rattling through my head the last few days is how it's easier to believe the absolute unthinkable than it is cold, hard facts.

[16:55] Jessica: Yeah.

[16:58] Meg: Because what was so upsetting about that situation. One of the most upsetting things about the situation was the age, that they were so young, that they were little boys doing this, and in fact, they hadn't done it. The unthinkable hadn't actually happened.

[17:14] Jessica: It was a well you know.

[17:16] Meg: A cold, hard criminal who had done the horrible thing.

[17:18] Jessica: I think that there's a couple of really interesting things at play. And what we do on this podcast is we look at things that happened in our youth from our current vantage point. And for anyone who is listening, who is not our age, but is younger. The first thing that popped into my head is no cameras on people. Like, no cell phones, no smartphones, no, nothing like that. There's so many different ways to gather evidence these days. The boys, there would have been some indication. There would have been something else for them, like someone would have. To show their innocence. Their innocence. You could have looked at a timestamp on the use of the phone or whatever. No, you're right. That is the first thing. We talk a lot about your kids and where are you and how we were just let loose into God knows what, and you can track your kids now. That's number one. And the other thing, to your point about why people can imagine the horrible. I was listening. Was I listening to or watching something? I can't remember what it was. And maybe I know you, you're going to look this up and find out where it came from. But believing the negative is a human psychological trait that is hardwired for us to protect ourselves. And so it comes out in modern society, modern times, as something that perverts justice.

[19:03] Meg: Believe the negative. What do you mean by the negative?

[19:07] Jessica: Meaning it's better to believe a bad story because then you can protect yourself. Better to believe something that's bad that can hurt you and react to that than be overly optimistic.

[19:21] Meg: Oh, so it's a self protection thing?

[19:23] Jessica: Yes, And so I wonder, first off, how much of that is true. So I'm not saying that that's gospel, but number one, it was intriguing to me that this was something I heard, and a lot of what we've talked about on this podcast is how terrifying the city was in the '70s, moving into the '80s.

[19:45] Meg: Well, that's why I started with the stories of the East Side Slasher that was in our neighbor or my neighborhood, in the heart of my neighborhood.

[19:57] Jessica: And there weren't any cameras in the streets. It was very hard to find information about what was happening right under our noses. But there was so much horror going on that it wasn't difficult to make the leap, because these police officers and the way that they were reporting and think about Pete Hamill's florid writing is that these were the people on the front lines.

[20:24] Meg: Right.

[20:25] Jessica: These were the people who were looking horror in the eye constantly, and there was a sympathy for them and a feeling of allegiance. And these really were the people who were looking at the worst of the worst.

[20:38] Meg: Why wouldn't we believe the police and the journalists? They're supposed to question. No one questioned.

[20:45] Jessica: Well, and especially because journalists have traditionally been the ones to expose injustice. Yeah, the alchemy was just right for this. I can't get the words warped and perverted out of my head. But that's really what this all feels like, is that it was a perfect mix for wanting to believe the worst, having the worst served up on a platter and total racism.

[21:17] Meg: And for the people who actually did have access to the evidence, for them to explain it away. Come up. I mean, they were doing backbends.

[21:26] Jessica: I wonder what was going on in the DA's office at the time that there was such a feeling of urgency to get these convictions.

[21:36] Meg: I read something about how there was a bit of an internal war. You know, sex crimes wanted it, but another department wanted it too. So it was like, who can handle it better? And then once Linda Fairstein had the case, it does sound like she felt a lot of pressure to see it all the way through and she believed it. But one of the things that I've been just thinking about in the last few days is like, okay, you made this huge, huge mistake. You convinced yourself that fact wasn't fact, but now it's obvious what the deal is, it's incontrovertible and you're still saying fact isn't fact.

[22:19] Jessica: I think that you're underestimating people's hubris. I think you're underestimating the incredible ego and pride.

[22:28] Meg: That is so depressing to me. I expect it from Trump because he's a lunatic. I don't expect it from people who in every other way seem reasonably decent.

[22:40] Jessica: Well, what I think is what just struck me about Fairstein and all of this is it's interesting how in their minds their careers were more important than lives, right?

[22:52] Meg: Yeah.

[22:53] Jessica: Maybe I'm more jaded than you are, I don't know. But I assume that when someone is in a high pressure job situation, especially back then, because now, I mean, whistleblowing and all of that has really changed the landscape. But there's no limit to what people would do to come out, if not on top, unscathed. Who was I talking to? I can't remember who it was. And this is a terrible this is not a real blanket statement, but my mom used to say, why don't you date boys who work on Wall Street and finance or whatever, meaning like security or whatever. And I was like, because they're douches. All of them are freaking douches. And it's kind of like you have to be a certain personality type to do certain jobs, right?

[23:51] Meg: Sure.

[23:51] Jessica: And so the other thing is it's part of the discussion now about law enforcement is that who are the people who are looking for that kind of either authority or status? There's always something in it for someone and when you figure out what that is, it's always depressing. Unless people are acting really altruistically, it's going to be depressing.

[24:22] Meg: I guess I was just thinking more in the power that you feel when you admit that you were wrong and you apologize, there's something that incredible that can happen.

[24:32] Jessica: No, that is a level of personal development reached by very few. That is holding people to a standard of those of us who have been in therapy most of our lives. That is not most people in my opinion. The concept that they would feel better by exposing their frailties is like kaboom to most people.

[25:01] Meg: I think people should try it because.

[25:04] Jessica: From your lips to God ears. Yeah.

[25:09] Meg: Yeah. Give it a shot.

[25:09] Jessica: Look, I mean, you bring to this podcast no shortage of despicable people that is one of the things in common. It's either ego or arrogance or greed or simple sociopathy.

[25:25] Meg: Or greed. We got a lot of those.

[25:27] Jessica: So dark.

[25:39] Meg: One more thing.

[25:40] Jessica: Yes.

[25:41] Meg: They all seem to be very happy now. And thank God they are not embittered and that their experience didn't turn them into, you know they grew up in jail. A horrible way to mature.

[25:51] Jessica: What's nice about their subsequent legal win is that they were affirmed, they were believed, which does a lot to heal people.

[26:03] Meg: By some not by all.

[26:07] Jessica: Hey, Meg?

[26:08] Meg: Yes.

[26:09] Jessica: What was your favorite band when we were in high school? And it can't be like a retro thing, like, of the moment.

[26:16] Meg: Oh, off the top of my head, I'm going to say U2, maybe.

[26:22] Jessica: Excellent.

[26:23] Meg: Oh, good.

[26:23] Jessica: That feeds right into my story.

[26:25] Meg: Thank God, I was so nervous.

[26:27] Jessica: I know. I was nervous, too.

[26:28] Meg: I was like, I can come up with something better.

[26:29] Jessica: Well and how did you first hear..

[26:34] Meg: Squeeze, I loved Squeeze.

[26:35] Jessica: Yes.

[26:36] Meg: Okay.

[26:36] Jessica: Did you listen to the radio? Yes. So another moment of when we were kids.

[26:42] Meg: Yeah. Casey Kasem.

[26:44] Jessica: Yes.

[26:44] Meg: And yeah, I would listen to I turned on the radio every morning while I was getting dressed for school.

[26:50] Jessica: Yes. And listening to it, doing our homework. And this is one of my all time favorites, of course, making mixtapes and holding your boombox up to another boombox so that you could tape off the radio. Sad and fabulous.

[27:07] Meg: But you know in a pinch.

[27:09] Jessica: But it wasn't even a pinch. It was just the way. Which is kind of delightful. It's sort of like, do you want to listen to those mixtapes now because they're so staticy and you can hear your mother yelling in the background? Or does that make them so much better?

[27:23] Meg: I still have them all.

[27:24] Jessica: Well, the radio station that I listened to a lot was sort of embarrassingly the oldies station. And so I listened to I learned. AM. No, I learned all about I think it was 101.1 or 102.1. And I learned all about Motown and the Laurel Canyon bands and all of that. And I loved it. But that was like one half of my musical awareness, and then the other half was very serious New Wave. Okay. Very big deal. I loved it.

[28:06] Jessica: And there were a couple of other girls in our school who were really into that kind of thing. And you could tell, even though we had uniforms by the way they dressed, and we talk about our big coats and the ones that were a little more, like, with buttons and they're a little funkier or wearing those pointy toed black patent leather shoes with the thick crepe sole or Doc Martens. Like, you could tell who was who. The person who really got me hooked on some bands that no one had ever heard of was one of our glee club friends who hit all those markers. And that was Jenny. Yeah. Are we using last names?

[28:52] Meg: I guess we are now.

[28:55] Jessica: So Jenny was a year younger than us in school, and she just knew everything. She was a music maniac. And I remember going to her house. She had some really complicated antenna system that she had created, to the best of my knowledge, using like, it was her radio that had a long antenna, that had another antenna wrapped to it. And then it was taped to the wall, and then there was some tin foil on it, and then it went up to the window. I was like, Jenny, what are you launching a rocket at your room? Like what's happening? She's like, this is the only way I can get WLIR.

[29:39] Meg: Oh, wow. Yes.

[29:40] Jessica: I was, hmm. What is this WLIR of which you speak? And that introduced me to all of this incredible music that I'm about to talk about. But I just wanted to give a quick shout out to BFF of the podcast Busy, because she called me earlier this week and she said, I have one idea for you, WLIR and I was like, Yay, that's great. And she grew up in Westchester.

[30:07] Meg: Does it stand for Long Island Radio?

[30:09] Jessica: Yes, it does. And she had the same arrangement that we did, because after Jenny showed me, I figured out how to know some crazy antenna. And halfway through listening, it would all fuzz out. And then you had to rip your whole thing apart and put it in some other direction and find it and then hold it like, that's crazy. I keep listening to this. And WLIR was yes, it was out of Long Island. And they were originally sort of like an adult rock album format. Not quite Top 40, but that genre. And then in 1982, they changed their whole format, and they needed to differentiate. They needed to distinguish themselves. And so they were trying to find music that no one else was playing. And their slogan was, Dare to be Different. Okay. I was so impressed by this. So they had a whole bunch of DJs, and we can put this up on Instagram. I'm not going to waste our time with everybody's name. But these were DJs who actually chose the records they were going to play. These were people who knew the music. It wasn't like a station manager was giving a playlist, none of that. So these were music freaks. And they knew that if anything was being played in the United States, everyone heard it. Everyone already knew. So they were like, ha ha. Because back at that time, what was being released internationally was not released at the same time here in the United States. Okay, so I don't know if you recall this, but if someone came from a different country, and they were like, I found this record, and you're like, oh, my God, you're so tragically hip. Oh, my God. Or you'd ask your friend who's going to Britain, could you find me an album, man is there any ska? Yeah. So, again, what's the big difference between then and now with streaming and everything needing to hit so many listeners or viewers or whatever, and having this everything has an international market. Not the case at the time. And in fact, British bands, I don't know if we've even talked about this, but British bands that were huge would come to the United States and play in a gross honky tonk and have people throw bottles at them, like Bowie and The Clash or not The Clash, The Sex Pistols. They were tragic. So what these people did was so brilliant, they created a relationship with a record shop in London and they would get all of the new releases and put them on a plane to JFK, which was really close to where the radio station was located. And they would send the radio manager, like the station manager, to greet the plane and get the records off the plane. So they were the first ones to break most of the British bands of the '80s into the United States, even though they were a tiny radio station. That's wild. With an incredibly limited reach, but they were the ones, and bands loved them. And so they would do first interviews ever on WLIR. So WLIR became the bastion of all things unbelievably cool. So who are some of the other bands that you just..

[33:54] Meg: Echo & the Bunnymen.

[33:58] Jessica: Yes.

[33:59] Meg: I said Squeeze already. There was a slew of them. The Cure.

[34:04] Jessica: The Smiths.

[34:05] Meg: The Smiths.

[34:06] Jessica: New Order, Tears for Fears, The English Beat.

[34:09] Meg: I'm like hooking onto this one, it's not going to come.

[34:14] Jessica: Depeche Mode?

[34:17] Meg: Yes! Jesus Christ. Thank you. I was going to be stuck on that until like I would be here all night.

[34:22] Jessica: Billy idol, Adam Ant or Adam and the Ants as their first incarnation. So W-L-I-R. If you were cool, if you were in the you, by being a New York kid, you could actually be part of what was breaking before anybody knew, because, again, their range was so small. I think they started out of, like, a basement in Garden City. Like it was this really little thing. But anyways, super, super cool. And they also had this thing that brought a lot of bands into people's awareness. Every week, people would vote on the best song and it would be called Screamer of the Week. And I don't know if that rings a bell with you. And then in 1987, they lost their license with the FCC.

[35:13] Meg: Why? What they do?

[35:14] Jessica: They were in the midst of, like they were getting taken over by another radio station and there was all of this basically hostile takeover kind of stuff. And so they lost their number on the FM band. So what did they do? Like, any good rebels, they went the other way and they went to the AM band and they were able to keep their call letters that way. WLIR. And they were out of Rockland County.

[35:45] Meg: It's so crazy. I don't know if people know, really the difference between AM and FM. I don't know, technically, but I do know that AM felt like news radio and like, old songs.

[35:58] Jessica: Well, it was mostly talk interviews. News. Yeah.

[36:03] Meg: And oldie stations. And FM was much more hip kids.

[36:07] Jessica: It was pop music.

[36:08] Meg: Pop music, yeah.

[36:10] Jessica: They trudged on into the aughts and then finally dissolved. But there's a great documentary that just shows everything beautifully that is, I believe, called Dare to Be Different. It's called New Wave: Dare to be Different. And Jenny, let's go back to Jenny for a second. Who was the most fun ever. I will never forget. Do you remember when we did our Glee Club trip to London?

[36:38] Meg: Do I?

[36:39] Jessica: Oh, my God. Are you serious right now?

[36:42] Meg: Was I there or was I, I think was that when I was in France?

[36:47] Jessica: We were junior. No. Were we sophomores? We were sophomores or juniors. You were definitely there.

[36:53] Meg: Are you sure?

[36:55] Jessica: Yes, I am sure. I'm frightened for you. Did you hit your head on the way here today?

[37:01] Meg: What did we do when we were there?

[37:04] Jessica: We stayed with other with, like, English families.

[37:06] Meg: No, I wasn't there. I swear to God. This is when I was doing my abroad thing in France. [37:11] Jessica: What year did you do abroad? 

[37:13] Meg: Junior year. 

[37:14] Jessica: Oh, well

[37:15] Meg: Yeah, I wasn't there.

[37:16] Jessica: Too bad.

[37:17] Meg: It sounds like a lot of fun.

[37:18] Jessica: It was a lot of fun, actually. I swear to God, it must have been our sophomore year because I remember what I was wearing. All right, I'm going to do the reasearch.

[37:25] Meg: You do the research, prove that I'm a crazy person.

[37:27] Jessica: Just because Jenny was such a music freak. This was also around the time that REM was breaking, becoming really something. And we're all these loud girls sitting together. And I remember Sasha Lazard brought, her aunt was Danielle Steele. So she brought bags filled with Danielle Steele albums, uh books for the plane. And I was like, I'm not going to read that. But people loved it. Anyway, so we're all there and Jenny gets up to go to the bathroom and she comes back, we're sitting together. She looks ashen, and I'm like, what's wrong? She goes, Mike Mills is on the train. Is on the plane. I'm like, Mike Mills? Who the hell is Mike? Mike Mills is on the plane. He's sitting in a seat next to the bathroom by himself. And I'm still clueless. And she looks at me like I have 14 heads and goes, R-E-M. And I was like, really? And so this poor guy, one by one, girls just started passing him, trying to look. It's like, don't look, as we try to be nonchalant, staring at him, like not even taking our eyes off as we cruise down the aisle, each one of us. And indeed it was him. So Jenny wasn't wrong. Yeah, that's that's a moment of New Wave. And the pervasiveness of New Wave cannot be stressed enough. Because I don't know if you remember this, but at the same time, do you remember that Nightingale had a gym class with a dance teacher? She was really pretty, blond. Of course yeah. What was her name?

[39:09] Meg: I'm going to have to look it up.

[39:10] Jessica: Miss something. Weah. And so she did this dance class. She was addicted to Howard Jones.

[39:18] Meg: Yes. That was the song. Whatever dance we did, we always did to the same Howard Jones song.

[39:24] Jessica: No One Is to Blame. It's, like, been burned into my psyche, and I can't think of it without thinking of leg warmers. Like, she was obsessed. So that's the soundtrack to our youth. Do you have anything you'd like to add? I know this is like a crazed monologue today. Is there anything you'd like to say about the bands that you listen to?

[39:45] Meg: The one thing that I wanted to add is now there is a I guess it's an app where you can connect to any radio station in the world.

[39:56] Jessica: You're kidding.

[39:56] Meg: It's a big globe, and you put your cursor on Norway, Australia, Long Island, and you can hear what is currently playing on the radio anywhere in the world.

[40:09] Jessica: What is this magical world we live in?

[40:12] Meg: It's crazy. I mean, doesn't that sound like the most amazing, but also impossible thing?

[40:19] Jessica: Yes, it does.

[40:20] Meg: But how different from the way people.

[40:24] Jessica: That's what people in the Midwest say when they mean, like, that's disgusting and terrible? Oh, that's different. Okay, so if you want to get a taste of what WLIR was all about, you can go to wdarefm.com. Some of the DJs who were involved at the time are featured on this website they have..

[40:46] Meg: So is this recordings from what happened, or is it something that's happening current?

[40:50] Jessica: Both. They have listings of all of the bands from the time that are still touring and where you can see them.

[40:56] Meg: Oh, cool.

[41:07] Jessica: I know what our tie in is.

[41:08] Meg: Oh, great. What is it?

[41:11] Jessica: Well, it's the radio, because those boys were listening to the radio and that's how they heard Wild Thing. Tone Loc.

[41:20] Meg: Oh, my God.

[41:24] Jessica: There you go.

[41:25] Meg: Well done. No, it's great. Yes.

[41:30] Jessica: And I appreciate for anyone who does not know the song Wild Thing, while it is not a good song.

[41:37] Meg: It's not. I Watched the video of it while I was doing my research. I was like, yeah, I remember that song.

[41:42] Jessica: Yeah. I regrettably whatever, but it is definitely a time capsule moment. So check it out."