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Seriously...

The Silence and the Scream

Seriously...

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.1885 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Donegal is an Irish county where silence is a virtue. You can find it in the desolate landscape, the big skies and far horizons - but silence can be found in the people too. Maybe it's discretion or reticence. It could be shyness or a kind of wisdom.

So when radical free-thinking commune, The Atlantis Foundation, set up home in the remote Donegal village of Burtonport in the mid-1970s, it seemed like an unlikely choice of location.

Led by charismatic Englishwoman Jenny James and inspired by an experimental brand of counter-cultural psychology, the foundation practised 'primal scream' therapy. This was about letting it all out, yelling; shouting; shrieking to release deep rooted fears in the most challenging and visceral way. The locals simply called them the Screamers.

Author and Donegal native Garrett Carr was a boy when he first heard of the Screamers. His family would lower their voices when mentioning them. While he found the name unnerving, Garrett was intrigued. On the coast near his home, he liked to imagine he could hear their cries echoing across the water.

Now Garrett is returning to Donegal to find out who the Screamers were, what they wanted and if they ever managed to find it. Most of all he wants to know what happened when the quiet restraint of his local community was confronted by the outward abandonment of the Atlantis Foundation.

Garrett is going home to discover what happens when silence meets scream.

Producer: Conor Garrett.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box.

0:05.0

The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from.

0:09.0

And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape.

0:12.0

The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape.

0:12.5

The IRA inmates who found a way.

0:14.5

I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path

0:19.5

through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history.

0:25.0

The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them.

0:28.5

Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds.

0:34.0

This is the BBC.

0:39.0

Friends, Romans, podcast fans.

0:41.0

Lenders your ears.

0:43.0

Before you get to the podcast you've just clicked on,

0:45.0

I want to tell you about the Shakespeare sessions.

0:48.0

It's where you'll find original productions of Shakespeare's plays,

0:51.0

with some of our favorite documentaries and conversations

0:54.5

about the man himself for good measure for measure. Don't worry, we ease off on

1:00.2

the puns on the actual podcast. If that sounds like your pot avail, then

1:03.8

subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07.0

Hi, I'm Riana Dylan, and this is seriously.

1:15.0

If you live in Atlantis, what what you're doing is having moments at the most clean

1:21.6

pure ecstasy and masses of pain.

...

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