A Guy Throws His Shoe At George W Bush [Some Sunday Context]
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For our "Sunday Context" series, we offer a follow up to our conversation about "Axis of Evil" and the start of the War in Iraq by looking at an incident from after the war was over -- when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at George W Bush.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, welcome to This Day from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan. And this is some Sunday context, where we bring you new conversations and episodes from the archives to try and provide a little context for what is going on in the world or in the world of our show. |
| 0:18.2 | So this past week, as you may have heard, we ran a two-part episode on the |
| 0:21.9 | phrase Axis of Evil and how it signaled where the 9-11 response was headed under George |
| 0:27.7 | W. Bush. Incidentally, thanks to everyone who got in touch about those episodes and thanks to everyone |
| 0:32.1 | who is sharing the show. We're really excited about those episodes and just in general how this |
| 0:36.4 | year-long series is shaping |
| 0:37.7 | up. So please, if you like it as well, tell someone about the show that is the best way to spread |
| 0:43.0 | the word. Okay. Now, some Sunday context. Look, we have done a lot of episodes about this era, |
| 0:50.1 | the war in Iraq era and what came next. There's lots of things we could choose to kind of try and |
| 0:55.1 | build on the conversation we had this week. We've done an episode about another short phrase that |
| 0:59.6 | Bush uttered a couple years after he said Axis of Evil. He said mission accomplished. We've done |
| 1:04.7 | an episode about that. We've done an episode about Iraq war protests, the rise of Obama and his |
| 1:09.0 | opposition to the war. All of that might help deepen the conversation. But let's be honest, the rise of Obama and his opposition to the war, all of that might help deepen the |
| 1:11.8 | conversation. But let's be honest, the episode from the archives that I want to bring you today |
| 1:16.2 | is about the time that someone threw a shoe at George W. Bush. There's not much more to say |
| 1:21.6 | about that, but I wonder if when he was standing on the podium in January of 2002 talking about |
| 1:26.9 | the axis of evil if Bush could |
| 1:29.5 | have ever anticipated that seven years later he'd be standing at another podium dodging not one |
| 1:34.3 | but two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. A lot of us saw how disastrous the war in Iraq |
| 1:41.3 | was going to be, but I'm not sure if any of us anticipated that little |
| 1:44.8 | capper. So that is coming up next. A reminder to all of you that if you are a paying |
| 1:48.8 | subscriber to our newsletter, it's about six, seven bucks a month, you get early access, ad-free, |
... |
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