Boy and Island

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!

In this episode, Hurst weighs in on Meltdown the Netflix documentary on Three Mile Island, and continues his deep dive into Deja Vu and its ubiquitous presence in the modern popular psyche through revealing personal insights on The China Syndrome movie, his disturbing eyewitness account of the attacks on 9/11, the concept of Militainment, "wild history" and more.

In Part 3 of this multipart episode, Hurst continues to explore the question, “how did the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant wind up in my back yard?” Topics include the deception of photography, DADA’s transformation into surrealism, and Deja Vu on a mass scale in the turbulent years between WWI and WWII.

Hurst offers a candid glimpse into his mindscape during the 2021 Christmas and New Year holiday season. Including revealing audio snapshots of impromptu explorations of psychogeographic sites from his youth as well as updates on his father James’ current health struggles.

Amidst the festivities of the Thanksgiving holiday, Hurst ponders the connective tissues that bring people together. Topics include: the intriguing circumstances that link Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered King Tut’s tomb and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb; the international communion of savagery that was World War I; and the eclectic assortment of artists and poets spurned forth by revolt who called themselves DADA.

The Boy and Island Podcast is back with an exciting announcement!