Hands Across America (1986)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2020
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s May 26th. Jody Avirgan, Nicole Hemmer, and special guest Akilah Hughes (What A Day podcast) discuss “Hands Across America,” the charity event that tried to get Americans to line up from coast to coast in order to raise awareness about homelessness and hunger.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:09.0 | This day, May 26, 1986, over 5 million Americans, including President Ronald Reagan, |
| 0:16.9 | 54 Elvis Presley look-alikes, Mickey Mouse, Jerry Seinfeld, and Coretta Scott King |
| 0:21.9 | have just held hands for 15 minutes as part of a nationwide |
| 0:25.7 | campaign to fight American hunger and homelessness hands across America. |
| 0:31.2 | Let's talk about it. I'm joined as always by |
| 0:33.0 | Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello Nicky. |
| 0:35.4 | Hi Jody. |
| 0:36.2 | And we have a guest this episode who will be with us for this and the next |
| 0:39.2 | episode, co-host of Crooked Media's What a Day, |
| 0:41.6 | author of the book obviously and many other things. |
| 0:44.3 | Akila Hughes, welcome to the show. |
| 0:46.4 | Thank you so much for doing this. |
| 0:47.4 | Yeah, thanks for having me. |
| 0:49.0 | Okay, hands across America. |
| 0:52.0 | We'll discuss a lot of the elements around this I find it super |
| 0:54.8 | fascinating but for one let me just say I don't think any of us see Americans |
| 0:58.8 | lining up to hold hands with strangers anytime soon. Touching each other at all is out. |
| 1:04.0 | It is like the exact opposite of this current moment. |
| 1:08.0 | No, God, I could see someone like Galaxy-braining it and being like, |
| 1:12.0 | you know what we need? we need another hands across America and that |
... |
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