Boy and Island

To commemorate the 47th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island, Andrew is interviewed by his wife Shona on a variety of topics including the reopening of T.M.I., the nuclear industry’s troublesome legacy, the Boy and Island project in relation to his other creative endeavors, the connection between the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the events at T.M.I., and more!

A provocative exploration of the Hurst family’s unlikely and little known encounter amidst the early aftermath of the accident at T.M.I. that transformed their evacuation experience into an esoteric pilgrimage in which Jim Hurst comes face to face with Jim Hurst—fleeing the danger of Three Mile Island to the mystery and salvation of another island called Vinalhaven. Woven together utilizing an essential cache of recently unearthed audio interviews from the Boy and Island archive. 

Thanks to Amy Davis, Bill Chilles, and Eric from the Vinalhaven Historical society, Maine.

*Contains “Communication” by Info Nympho from the album Info Nympho Volume 2 courtesy of Myth/Sound Records. Copyright Info Nympho. All other music by A. Hurst.

A revealing and soulful interview with Eric Epstein. Eric is chairman of T.M.I.A. (Three Mile Island Alert). Founder of EFMR, a non-profit radiation monitoring group, as well as the founder of Rock the Capital, a non-partisan good government watchdog organization.

A candid and heartfelt conversation with my dear friend, Don Hossler, who worked closely with my father in the grassroots community-based organization P.A.N.E (People Against Nuclear Energy).

A brief eulogy for my late father, James Hurst, who passed on September 2nd, 2024.

To commemorate the 45th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island, I present a very special interview with my sister Leigh Hurst!! In this impromptu and revealing discussion we share memories and compare notes on our personal experiences from the day of the accident 45 years ago and its aftermath to the present day. We cover in length the far reaching impact of our parent’s Anne and Jim’s involvement in the anti- nuclear grass roots organization P.A.N.E. (people against nuclear energy), and the ongoing ways it has effected and influenced our character and world view. We also explore Leigh’s journey as a breast cancer survivor and her creation of the Feel Your Boobies Foundation, which is currently celebrating its 20th year! There’s all this and much more.

An audio exploration of some profound, irreverent, unforgettable and unforgivable events of 2023 that continue to forcibly shape the psychic landscape of ’24 and beyond. Fragments of music by some of the artists we lost last year have been interwoven throughout this episode to pay tribute to their brilliance and invite their spiritual energy to invigorate and enrich the context of the information within.

Topics included:

-Buddhist meditation advice form Mary Finnigan from the Off The Record: David Bowie Podcast

-My dad retelling his famous tastycake/dog turd story

-Train song collage into news coverage of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment

-News coverage of Fukushima radioactive wastewater release into the Pacific

-Far East Nuclear Net Zero goals

-Nuclear Fusion breakthroughs

-US expands nuclear weapons arsenal

-Barbie/Oppenheimer films

-Pro Nuke “influencer” Madi Hilly on the Decouple Podcast

-Radiation leak cover up in Minnesota

-Trump legal woes

Music fragments included from artists who passed in 2023:

David Crosby, Damo Suzuki, Tina Turner, Wayne Kramer, Sinead O’ Connor, Andy Rourke, Tom Verlaine, Jamie Reid, Robbie Robertson

After a routine medical procedure goes awry, sending his father Jim into a months-long health crisis, Hurst embarks on an esoteric ponderance on the nature of errors that includes the zen wisdom of composer John Cage, Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies,” the roving spirituality of walking, the pleasures and terrors of misunderstood song lyrics, the tragic convergence of mechanical and human error at the center of the accident at Three Mile Island, and more!

In honor of Women's History Month, this episode contains a very special interview with my mother, Anne Hurst in which we reflect on the 44th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island with a revealing and heartfelt discussion on the trials and tribulations of caregiving amidst a nuclear catastrophe, the true spirit of activism and much more!

In this final part of Episode 2, the question; "How did Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant wind up in my backyard?" is finally answered through ruminations on violence as spectacle, the brilliant and turbulent early history of Radioactivity, from its inspired discovery at the dawn of the 20th century, to its weaponization by the U.S. Military in World War 2, and much, much more!