Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone, from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians, about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad, and I I have the best memories and the greatest experience, and that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez, IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. We were all facing 20 years and all that stuff.

The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent, and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it. The zombies are too popular. Listen to the true story of the Fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast, There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why? Listen to There and Gone, South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Owen Wilson stars in Tom Slick: mystery Hunter, an action-packed, thrill ride based on the mostly true tale of explorer, scientific legend, and alleged spy Tom Slick. No one has been able to find the Yeti. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here. Listen to my show Tom Slick: mystery Hunter on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your most thrilling adventure stories.

Callzone Media. There is a regular episode this week, a proper second episode for a brand new show, Something I put a lot of time into to give listeners to the show what I hope is an impressive introduction to it. It's already recorded and edited and scheduled. But I realized on Sunday night what the date was, August 11th. How can I tell you, my new listeners, about the weird little guys trying to ruin America without acknowledging that? Today, as I'm writing this, it's Monday, August 12th, 2024. Seven years ago, Charlottesville was invaded by neo-nazis, Confederates, secessionists, white supremacists, white nationalists, racist, and anti-Semites of all allegiances. That's what started my obsession. That's where this show was truly born, because I spent the last seven years trying to understand those men. What brought them here? What made them that way? What do they actually believe and what are they just saying out of opportunism or for shock value? And do they even know the difference anymore? Weird little guys, this show wouldn't exist but for the years I've spent looking for and then looking at those guys in particular, and then trying to track them back in time.

What groups were they in? Who runs those? Who founded them? What ideological lineage do they spring from? When I look at a photograph of a man beating my neighbors in the streets of my hometown, I wonder not just, who is he? But how did he get here? I don't mean did he fly into the Charlottesville airport and then rent a car? Did he park in the garage downtown or on some side street in front of a house where someone I love is raising their family. I mean, who did he follow? And how did that man arrive at a place where he could command strangers from the internet to follow him into battle? It's like making a family tree, but the fruit is bitter and rotten, and the roots are cracking our foundations. I think as the show progresses, many of the men who played a role in the Unite the Right rally will earn their own full episode. A lot of them are incredibly weird little guys, without a doubt. But it didn't feel right letting this week go by without marking it, without putting a pin in the state to say, Here is where the show was born.

Because over the years, as I accumulated thousands of pages of notes trying to find a source for what happened here, I realized the timeline of one man's crimes doesn't begin with the date of the charged conduct on the affidavit. It doesn't begin the day he decided ideological violence was an option for him. It doesn't begin the day he joined an extremist organization or the day he was radicalized or even the day he was born. The more I dug on any one story, the more I realized you have to reach decades into the past to even begin to understand why you were looking at a photograph of a man with his hands around the throat of a counter protester in full view of an entire police department. Charlottesville, as people refer to that day, that event in this place, didn't begin when they bought their boarding passes or joined the Discord. It started before they were born, and it continues long after the barricades were removed and everyone went home. That's a very long story, and I hope I can get started on it with this show, but today we can't start at the beginning. We're still in the middle.

I don't know how much preamble you need. I don't know if you remember the Unite the Right rally beyond a handful of the photos every outlet seems to run as shorthand for white supremacist violence. A few fleeting images. A close-up photo of men, shoulder to shoulder, torches in hands, mouths open mid-shout, faces contorted with the effort to be heard above the roar, to have their cry of Jews will not replace us be the loudest. A man's body tossed into the air, bouncing off a Dodge Challenger. You've seen the photo. I know you have. But do you know his name? A photo of a line men in homemade uniforms and plastic helmets, cosplaying as American Black shirts, plowing through peaceful protesters. You'd recognize these images if you saw them. You've seen them. You'd look at them and say, That's from Charlottesville. But you wouldn't mean Charlottesville a place, the mid-size college town where people cross the street in that spot every day to get to the public library. No, you'd mean Charlottesville, the moment in time, Charlottesville, the violence, Charlottesville, the Nazi rally. And that's not fault. That's completely understandable. That just means it's my responsibility to ground these stories in the places where they happen, to tether these individual men to the context from which they arose.

Today, as I write this, I had to get up from my computer to go downtown. I stopped at fourth Street. There are always purple ribbons tied around a street sign at the intersection where Heather Hyer was murdered. Her favorite color. Today, there is a small vigil. I didn't know Heather, but I stop on that spot often to think of her. Today, I stopped at that spot for a few minutes, and then I walked to the courthouse to sit for hours listening to lawyers argue motions in a case against one of the headline speakers at the rally that killed her. Seven years to the day, to the hour, to the minute even. And I'm sitting in a tiny upstairs courtroom with a man who never got to give his speech at the rally that day. A courthouse employee held a door open for me. I'm there so often. They're used to seeing me in my little notebook. He told me, I look nice today. I said, Thank you. Because the alternative was to say that I'm wearing my blue sundress with birds on it because the birds are purple, and it was the only thing I could find this morning in purple was Heather's favorite color.

It doesn't matter at all, but when there's nothing you can do, you do things that don't make sense. I didn't know her. I don't think she would care that the birds on my dress are purple. But I woke up this morning on the date that she died, and all I can really do is to keep trying to tell the stories of the men who set a murderer on a collision course with the crowd she marched with that day. Heather Hyer was a person, a real person, with a job, a little dog, and friends, and a family who loved her. It isn't fair to her memory to reduce her to a martyr, a concept, an idea, to shrink her down to the moment of her death and to use her name as shorthand for lives lost to fascist violence. She was not the first or the last innocent life lost to right-wing extremism. But her death is what set me on this path, and I remember her today, and I hope you will, too. It is perhaps a bit trite to end with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But in his 1963 book, Strength to Love, he wrote, Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate. Violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. Dr. King may have had the strength to love his enemies. Your pastor would tell you, Jesus wants you to love your enemies. I don't know that I have that strength, but I work so hard not to harden my heart. I'm actively working every day to remind myself, I don't do this because I hate my enemies. I do this because I love everyone else. I know Dr. King had something else in mind, but when I say only love can drive out hate, I don't mean we have to love the ones that hate us. I don't think our love can transform the hate in their hearts. Maybe your pastor can do that. Maybe you can do that. But what I mean is that we have to love each other enough to protect the most among us. We have to love our vision of the world that we want to live in enough to fight for it. We have to love the idea of a society without them in it enough to throw our bodies down like sandbags against a rising tide of fascism.

And the light driving out the darkness? That's what I hope to be. I want to shine a light into these dark corners. Like laundry hung on the line to bleach the stains, I want to be the hot Southern sun on an afternoon in August. And that's why I'm showing you these weird little guys. Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia. Com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame, athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad, and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez, IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and history. We were all facing 20 years and all that stuff. The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent, and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it. The zombies are too popular. Listen to the true story of the Fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast, There and Gone. It's a real life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why? Listen to There and Gone, South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Owen Wilson stars in Tom Slick, mystery Hunter, an action-packed, thrill ride based on the mostly true tale of explorer, scientific legend, and alleged spy Tom Slick. No one has been able to find the Yeti. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here. Listen to my show Tom Slick: mystery Hunter on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your most thrilling adventure stories.