ICYMI - Was #FreeBritney Right All Along?
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Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Wednesday, Britney Spears spoke in court against her current conservatorship, which began in 2008. In recent years, fans have speculated that Spears was being controlled against her will by her father through this conservatorship, and started the #FreeBritney movement in an attempt to break her out of it. On today’s episode, Madison and Rachelle break down the history of Spears’ conservatorship, the conspiracy theories that arose around #FreeBritney, and what the pop star’s statement changes.
Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have we learned nothing from Anna Nicole Smith? |
| 0:03.8 | I know it's hard to see Britney Spears as a human being, but trust me, she is. |
| 0:09.1 | She's a person. |
| 0:12.9 | Hi, I'm Rachel Hampton. |
| 0:14.7 | And I'm Madison Malone Kircher. |
| 0:16.5 | You're listening to I see why am I. |
| 0:18.4 | In case you missed it. |
| 0:19.6 | Slate's podcast about internet culture. I know we usually do |
| 0:22.7 | some little fun dance up at the top, but today we got to launch right into the topic because there's |
| 0:27.5 | just so much, maybe too much to discuss. We're referring, of course, to the bombshell testimony that |
| 0:33.9 | Britney Spears gave in court on Wednesday that detailed the level of control that |
| 0:38.2 | her father has over her life as the custodian of her conservatorship. |
| 0:45.1 | Her statement describes, there's no other way to say it, a really fucking bleak life |
| 0:49.5 | where every single choice she has from how she spends her money to where she goes to therapy, to whether |
| 0:55.7 | or not she can get her IUD removed, none of those decisions are made by Britney Spears. |
| 1:02.2 | The testimony comes on the tail end of the rise of an influential online movement known as |
| 1:07.6 | hashtag free Britney. |
| 1:10.1 | So consider today's episode your kind of cocktail party crib sheet. |
| 1:15.2 | If you manage to get stuck next to somebody talking about this at a party, you'll be caught up to speed. |
| 1:21.4 | What exactly is hashtag free Britney? |
| 1:23.7 | When did it start? |
| 1:24.8 | What exactly do they want? |
... |
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