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While I was reading about the Black Panthers, someone from Freakonomics Radio called to schedule an interview with Stephen Dubner to talk about hitchhiking and why it's not around any more. Life is very strange these days.
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No real time for context except that I was wondering about whether wunderground.com (the Weather Underground website) had anything to do with the Weather Underground leftist group responsible for bombings, among other things, in an effort to stop the Vietnam War, among other US Government violence. Cue Wikipedia. That page got me curious about the Weather Underground and their actions in the 60s and 70s, since my history classes either didn't mention them or glossed over them in the face of more important stuff like said Vietnam War.

Anyway, buried in the Weather Underground wikipedia page was a link to the Black Panthers, which, considering I'm now staying in a neighborhood where original members lived, I figured I might want to know more about. Also Marxist-Leninist thinking (on which wikipedia is surprisingly thin - go figure a crowd-sourced, free, for-the-people resource doesn't thoroughly treat Communist thinking). And The Chicago Seven. And Timothy Leary. And back to the Black Panthers. Oop, phone call!

I received an e-mail yesterday from Suzie at Freakonomics Radio, asking if she could call me for a few questions. We ended up chatting (well, I ended up blathering, mostly) for almost 40 minutes. Also, apparently I have an interview scheduled for 8:30 friday morning with Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics. W00t!

Oh, and it turns out wunderground.com and the Weather Underground started at the same University. I didn't dig any deeper to see if there were any other connections. Yes, they do have something to do with each other. And now I know a bit more about the Black Panthers.

Like I say, life is strange these days.

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