Lennon's FBI File (1971) w/ Hrishikesh Hirway

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s October 24th. This day in 1973, former Beatle John Lennon sued the U.S. government, demanding to know whether he was under FBI surveillance.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder to discuss Lennon’s post-Beatles political life, his personal evolution, the threat of deportation he faced, and what was in his FBI file.

Check out Hrishi’s new music, his TED Talk, Song Exploder episode with John Lennon, and lots more here.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

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.
0:10.0	This day, October 24th, 1973, former Beatles singer John Lennon sues the US government, demanding
0:18.2	that it admits or deny whether Mr Lennon or his lawyer Leon Wilde, had been the subjects of illegal wiretaps for surveillance.
0:26.6	I will spoil it for you a bit and say that eventually they learned and we learned that, well,
0:31.6	maybe there wasn't technically any illegal wiretapping of
0:35.1	Lenin going on but there was a ton of surveillance and monitoring a big FBI
0:39.8	file on Lenin attempts to deport him and mitigate his influence and all sorts of
0:44.7	FBI-related shenanigans. So let's dive inside John Lennon's FBI file because it is
0:50.9	full of fascinating tidbits and I also think helps us
0:53.9	reframe his politics and his activism and his legacy a little bit.
0:57.8	So here to do that as always are Nicole Hammer of Colombia and Kelly Carter
1:01.9	Jackson of Wellesley. Hello Jody.
1:04.7	Hey there! And our special guest for this episode, someone we've been trying to have
1:09.1	on the show for a long time. A radiatop, stalwart and compatriot.
1:13.8	Risha K Sheherway is here, a song-exploder.
1:17.0	You have some new music of your own coming out
1:19.0	that features Yo-Yo Ma, you just did a TED Talk.
1:21.2	Risha, you're having a moment.
1:22.8	Thanks for having me.
1:24.8	This is definitely the peak of all of the things.
1:27.0	Yes.
	...

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