Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day April 30th, 1994, 18-year-old American Michael Fay is in detention in Singapore,

awaiting punishment after being convicted of vandalism. If you know or remember this story, you'll of course remember that his punishment,

in addition to a fine, was corporal punishment, in this case caning.

And that is what made this case so explosive and controversial in the United States and around the world and led to lots of diplomatic

negotiations about whether Singapore would go forward with Caning Michael Fay and lots of conversations about different cultural approaches to punishment.

So let's talk about that 1994 incident here as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello

Jody. Hey there. So this was a really fascinating story that wrapped in all

sorts of bigger questions as I said about cultural differences and

our appetite for punishment of different kinds and there's some really fascinating stuff that

I certainly have not remembered on that front but on the

specifics of the case Michael Faye he's an American kid I know that's an interesting

use of word there actually I'm curious because yeah that was that's a big part of he's 18 years old but you know he's a young American living in Singapore and

Even by his own admission commits some sort of light vandalism but what are the specifics of the case and then we'll get into kind of the way that it blew up into a controversy?

So this is worth rehearsing because I think in memory his violations have been

contorted somewhat but he was responsible for vandalizing some cars stealing a

road sign he was doing things like egging the cars, maybe breaking out windows,

things like that, and gets caught as part of a group of young people, teenagers who were going around and engaging in, you know, vandalism like

property destruction as part of their night out. Yeah, it's so funny too because

when I remember this story I was always told that he like

spit on the sidewalk or he threw gum on the sidewalk that Singapore is

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